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alt title(s): Dont Explain The Joke "Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog: you understand it better, but the frog dies in the process."
— Mark Twain (Get it? The frog is a joke in this metaphor, and by explaining it you're killing it!)
Few things can kill a joke faster than explaining it (assuming that the joke was even working). This can come in five variants:
- Someone doesn't get the joke, and has to have it explained. Then again, that doesn't actually kill the joke. It was already dead, since the listener didn't get it in the first place. It can still work if the joke actually is that someone doesn't get the joke.
- Explaining the joke with no prompting. This may be done as an attempt at Post Modernism, but it's usually done with jokes that wouldn't need any explaining. It can still work if the explanation is tongue in cheek, but Your Mileage May Vary on how actually funny it is. Sometimes the real joke is about killing the joke by explaining it.
- Explaining the joke actually is part of the joke, and by "part of the joke", I mean, "have sex with me".
- The joke-teller or writer has a tin ear for comedic timing, and overdoes the joke without knowing better.
- The listener has only the dimmest idea of what constitutes humor, and will blurt out the punchline to ensure that everyone knows s/he's got a sense of humor and they were laughing at something funny.
Note that the lines between these can be blurred. And despite the title, sometimes you can get away with explaining the joke. A way is hinting to the pertinent parts of the joke. That way you don't have to actually explain it completely.
It's very common to have the character explaining the joke wink at the audience, which can lead to homicidal mania towards winks.
Compare If You Know What I Mean, a close cousin of Variant 3. Contrast Stealth Pun, where absolutely no explanation is given.
Examples of Variant 1
Film
- In the first Austin Powers movie, one of the evil spies (an Irishman with a charm bracelet that has a unique trinket on it for every man he kills and is of vital interest to international law enforcement) proclaims "they're always after me lucky charms!" which causes the audience and everyone sitting at the table with him to snicker. He asks why everyone always laughs when he says that, and Frau Farbissina tries to tell him about the commercials. Her ridiculous description of the commercials doesn't help him one bit.
- The third movie was particularly rotten with this trope. Near the start, it cuts to The Osbournes and has them deconstruct the running gag of people seeing the spaceship and using sexual euphemisms to describe it. A later scene features a Japanese exec who speaks in subtitles, but parts of the sentences are blocked to make the remarks look offensive ("Please have some shittake mushrooms", "Your assignment is an unhappy one", "I have a huge rodent problem."); the scene ends with Austin Breaking The Fourth Wall to explain the whole thing to the audience.
- Oh, just choose any Mike Myers film these days.
- Although it was a threat instead of a joke, after the sheriff in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves threatens to Cut His Heart Out With A Spoon, Sir Guy of Gisborn doesn't get the comment, so the sheriff says, "Because it's dull, you twit. It'll hurt more!"
- Not a joke, but in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a general had to have it explained to him that X is the Roman numeral for ten. This means two things. The military has really, really low standards for officers, as he probably filled in his application with a purple crayon and spelled his own name wrong. This also means that whoever made this movie thinks their audience dumb as all hell.
Literature
- Witches Abroad. Granny Weatherwax tells a joke, or tries to anyway: "So he said, 'Get me an alligator sandwich — and make it quick!'"
- After much speculation on alt.fan.pratchett (it says here
), Terry Pratchett explained it thus:
"It is (I hope) obvious that Granny Weatherwax has absolutely no sense of humour but she has, as it were, heard about it. She has no grasp of how or why jokes work — she's one of those people who say "And then what happened?" after you've told them the punchline. She can vaguely remember the one-liner, "Give me an alligator sandwich — and make it snappy!" but since she's got no idea of why it's even mildly amusing she gets confused... all that she can remember is that apparently the man wants it quickly."
- So explaining a joke about failing to get the joke, because people failed to get the joke...
- Jesus of Nazareth had probably the dullest students ever. They never got his statements the first time around. Most notably is when he said his friend Lazarus was only sleeping. Disciples: "....?" Jesus: *sigh* I mean he's dead. This Troper tells ya, nothing makes a Son of God more humanizing than watching him explain his jokes.
- To be fair, Jesus quotes from Isaiah, particularly the part about deliberately making unbelievers dull, when he explains why he speaks in confusing parables. Kind of ironic when nobody immediately gets that one either.
- And then there's the "wheat and chaff" parable, the only time where Jesus explains his parable in detail. One can imagine him doing a Face Palm beforehand.
Live Action TV
- The Daily Show, actor Russell Crowe makes a comment that falls flat with the audience and then remarks, "And the crowd goes mild". After Jon Stewart attempts to correct him on his phraseology Russell is forced to Explain the Joke.
- Father Ted episode "Flight Into Terror" features this example:
Ted: When everything's going OK, I just keep imagining all the terrible things that can happen, but when one of those things actually happens, it's just a rush! I am fearless. Like that film with Jeff Bridges. Dougal: I haven't seen that one. Ted: Not a lot of people have, Dougal, so it's probably a bad reference.
- Happens quite often on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, when Kevin Eubanks doesn't get the joke, and Jay has to take time out to try to explain it.
- Johnny Carson would often do this during his tenure on the show, and sometimes it would actually make things funnier.
Professional Wrestling
- Believe it or not, the subtitles that explain what is going on is beneficial to the Botchamania series. As a lot of the clips (botches) are taken from some of WCW's older stuff, explaining the context of the match, stipulations, etc. help the viewer understand why it's considered a botch in the first place (it should; this IS old WCW, after all.)
Video Games
- Mega Man Star Force has a "Don't Explain the Insult" variant at the beginning of the satillite admins segment of the first game, when Geo gets pissed off at Luna for following him everywhere and trying to get him to go to school, and calls her a "satellite". Luna doesn't get it, so Geo tells her what he meant, also adding that it's a play on her name.
Western Animation
Examples of Variant 2
Comic Strips
- The upcoming treasury collections of the legendary comic strip Bloom County
will probably runneth over this trope. Since much of the humor is a product of the 1980's, the collections will include "context pages" to help explain the cultural and political references to anyone born after the Reagan administration. Because of that, it might be born out of necessity to explain the background of the Meadowcrats...
- Not wanting to have to explain the joke was a huge factor in Breathed's decision to let the collections go out of print and not release any further reprintings.
Anime
- Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series Bakura in Episode 18. "Run while you can mortal, soon I will rule the world, and then we'll see who smells. (pause) It'll be you!"
- Also Kaiba in Episode 21, while inside a computer simulation: "Time for a trip to the recycle bin, Phantom. And then once you're in the recycle bin, I'm going to right click on it and select "empty recycle bin". Because otherwise, you'll just be taking up unnecessary space. In other words, I'm going to kill you."
- A failed example that wasn't intentional is when Tristan's voice changes, and Joey later punches him when he insults his fighting ability. According to Joey, "Ever since your voice changed you've been like a completely different person." He then continues with "Actually, you've been like the same person, just with a completely different voice".
- Team Four Star's Dragon Ball Z: The Abridged Series.
Goku: Hey, King Kai.
King Kai: What the hell, Goku?
Goku: I just realised. While trying to introduce the blooper special, we're making bloopers for it. Isn't that funny?
King Kai: No. No it's not.
ComicBooks
- Giganta is a giantess who sometimes wears a skirt. Obvious enough? Black Canary doesn't think so.
- Macrophiles have a poor grasp on what's funny and what's not, so they love to explain their jokes. And half of the stuff they say is more ridiculous than funny.
- Considering this troper/macrophile is the school comedian and is fairly successful at what he does, I'd say the above statement is simply untrue. Which is funny because...
- Given the stuff he thinks he doesn't need to explain, it's surprising that Alan Moore does this in the League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier story "What Ho, Gods of the Abyss!" The idea that Gussie Fink-Nottle can continue operating without a brain is fairly obviously a comment on the Wooster set being "brainless" to start with; it doesn't need to be followed by Mina and Allan explaining it to each other.
Film
- In Epic Move, a Samuel L Jackson lookalike says the "muthafucking snakes" line (although a PG-13 variant), and then keeps repeating it instead of getting rid of the snakes. Could have worked (just not in that movie), but then after the third time, he says that the fanboys in the Internet love it when he says it.
- Agony Booth's recap of Epic Movie makes a nice comparison
of all the joke-explaining:
So, don't just tell a joke, tell it twice in a row. That way, it's double-funny. Imagine Leslie Nielsen saying, " I am serious, and don't call me Shirley. Because, when you said 'surely', I mistook it to mean that you were calling me by the woman's name 'Shirley'. They sound alike and I became confused."
- The Soup made fun of Meet the Spartans (and Epic Movie and Date Movie) by making a trailer for Reference Movie
, including one girl dressed as Britney Spears saying, "I'm just fighting for custody of my kids, y'all. Get it?"
- In the new Mike Myers movie The Love Guru: "Bring me alligator soup, and make it snappy! ...See, 'snappy', because it's 'alligator' soup. And also because I want it 'promptly'." (grins for camera)
- Mike Myers also used it in Austin Powers: "I like to see girls of that... caliber. By "caliber," of course, I refer to both the size of their gun barrels and the high quality of their characters... Two meanings... caliber... it's a homonym..."
- "I'm a zit. Get it?" from Animal House.
- Subverted by Craig Shoemaker who will find a young person in the audience and explain the older jokes (like his Barney Fife impression) to them, making age jokes at their expense.
Literature
- The puns in the recent Xanth novels are often explained rather than actually showing their pun nature. Take the "Hippo-Crite". Does it actually do things that are hypocritical? No. It just says, "I never mean what I say."
- Well, since it's a series of books built exclusively on puns, anymore, it's not hard to imagine the guy'd run out of steam eventually.
- Discworld often had characters who after making a pun(e), or other clever word play would usually start to explain the joke before the other character even has the time to react to said joke. Death tends to be the biggest offender - being The Spock of the series. Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs are repeat offenders, too.
- Kurt Vonnegut does this constantly in Breakfast of Champions to emphasize the narration's ironic and misanthropic point of view. He even explains and illustrates things which would be ridiculously familiar even to not very smart readers, which gives the weird impression that readers are not expected to be familiar with life on Earth.
- Nintendo Power magazine used to do this. Whenever they cracked a joke, they'd always say "That's a joke; we kid the (target attacked)!" One fan letter pointed this out and said that it kills the joke; he should know, he went to a comedy school. NP responds with, "Oh, really? I guess you must have some pretty lousy teachers, then! That's a joke; we kid your teachers!"
- Dave Barry briefly indulged in this after receiving one too many letters from people who didn't grasp that he was joking when he wrote something. The rest of the article was written with "closed-captioning for the humor-impaired", in which he explained every single joke he made immediately after making it.
Live Action TV
- Used often in Monk, such as in this example from the episode "Mr. Monk Gets Lotto Fever":
Disher: Glad you like numbers, Billy. You're gonna be wearing some numbers on your shirt.
Murderer of the Week: Is that right?
Disher: And they won't be lottery numbers.
Murderer: I get it.
Disher: 'Cause you're going to prison.
Murderer: Yeah, I get it.
- Martin from Frasier does this sometimes - "Tommorrow, I'm going to the birthday party of one of my old friends from the force, he'll be 16... Because you see, tomorrow's the 29th of February... It only comes every four years... He's really 64..."
- "The previous act was a guy with a parrot - Sargent Joe and Officer Chirpy. Dick Chirpy was one of the finest men I ever worked with... Did you see what I did? Chirpy sounds like it would be the parrot but it's actually the man... Dick Chirpy, you see, you'd think he'd be Sargent Joe... Joe is the parrot."
- Spaced: "So it wasn't so much an Eskimo roll, as a case of rolling right Inuit!" (blank look) (Delivered in the same tone) "Inuit's another word for Eskimo!"
- Arrested Development is more subtle about it than most of the examples on this page, though... the number of forumites I've seen complaining about "the narrator who explains all the jokes"...
- Ron Howard chipping in with the intended audience reaction did actually become something of a problem during the third season ("Gee, why wouldn't she want him back?", etc). Yeah, we get it Ron.
- Darrel Hammond's impersonation of Sean Connery did this frequently in the Celebrity Jeopardy sketches on Saturday Night Live.
- Frequently done by Conan O'Brien, in a high pitch laugh as a follow-up to a joke that no one in their right mind could possibly not get in under a second, as if the joke required any amount of explaining. "BECAUSE HE'S FAT!"
- Which he'll re-explain, quickly. if one of the following jokes bombs. "—becauseshe'sfat.
- According to a DVD commentary, back when Conan worked on The Simpsons, he pitched that if a joke was obscure and might not work, his head would appear on the sceen for a split second to explain the joke.
- Two words: Dane Cook.
- One of the many highlights from Norm MacDonald's term as Weekend Update anchor:
Norm MacDonald: Who are safer drivers? Men, or women? Well, according to a new survey, 55% of adults feel that women are most responsible for minor fender-benders, while 78% blame men for most fatal crashes. Please note that the percentages in these pie graphs do not add up to 100% because the math was done by a woman.
*uneasy laughter, groans*
Norm MacDonald: For those of you hissing at that joke, it should be noted that that joke was written by a woman. So, now you don't know what the hell to do, do you?
*riotous laughter*
Norm MacDonald: Nah, I'm just kidding. We don't hire women.
- Played with several times on Mystery Science Theater 3000, where the characters (usually Servo or Crow) would sheepishly explain a joke or Incredibly Lame Pun that they knew was bad.
- from No Heroics:
The Hotness: I've got a risotto to heat up, and there's a certain little lady called Vicci who wants to play with fire... by that, I mean my cock and balls.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer: in the episode "Gingerbread":
Cordelia: And If you hang with them, expect badness, 'cause that's what you get when you hang with freaks and losers. Believe me, I know. *begins to walk away, turns back* That was a pointed comment about me hanging with you guys.
Radio
Video Games
- Whoever wrote the Cutscenes for the earlier Harry Potter games had a tendency to murder JK Rowling's wit by reformatting her jokes into the most obvious, overstated manner possible. Combined with the bad voice acting and the occasional Captain Obvious moments ("This leads to the dungeons."), the result borders on So Bad Its Good.
Web Comics
Web Original
Western Animation
- In the Danny Phantom episode Shades of Gray, Danny needlessly explains the joke "Who let the dog out?".
- Fozzie on Muppet Babies killed his already tepid jokes by explaining them.
- Occasionally done by O'Farrell on Fillmore. This one followed a Chase Scene in which the perp was caught with a roll of bubble wrap.
O'Farrell: I'd say you two wrapped this case up rather nicely. Bubble wrap, that is! Get it? It's basically a play on the word "wrap"...
- The Emperors New Groove:
Kuzco: Okay, I admit it. Maybe I wasn't as nice as I should have been, but, Yzma, do you really want to kill me? Yzma: Just think of it as, you're being let go, that your life's going in a different direction, that your body's part of a permanent outplacement. Kronk: Hey, that's kinda like what he said to you when you got fired! Yzma: I know. It's called a 'cruel irony' — like my dependence on you.
- A similar thing happens in Bolt. This troper considers it the most painful moment in an otherwise fantastic movie.
Mittens: That wasn't the deal!
Bolt: The deal changed.
Pigeon: Oh, irony, she said the same thing to me!
- On Arthur, the eponymous character was called upon to decide where the family should take their trip. Arthur decided upon Washington, D.C.:
Arthur's father: That's a capital idea! (chuckles) Washington's the nation's capital.
Arthur: We got it the first time, Dad.
Other
- Japanese humor can have a lot of this. A common "gag" is one character blurting out a non sequitur and another character shouting "THAT DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE!"
- "Turn that everyman into a BEVERYMAN! Bevery stands for BEVERAGE!
"
- During the roast of Bob Saget, Norm Macdonald did this with lame and predictable jokes, turning his roast into a Post Modern mockery of roasts themselves.
- In a fan translation of the Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei manga, during the part where they're reading Kafuka's 'impossible goals list', we see that her third answer is some sort of obscure creature, confusing Nozomu and Jinroku. The translation includes a small footnote which explains what this creature is. Helpful, but ruins most of the joke...
Examples of Variant 3
Literature
Live Action TV
- On Pushing Daisies, Olive knows that Lily is actually Chuck's mother and talks to her at a convent:
Lily: This place knows things about me nobody knows. Olive: You mean that you holidayed here thirty years ago and found a baby in a cabbage patch? And by cabbage patch, I mean your lady parts?
- "That was a pune, or play on words..."
Theater
Web Comics
Western Animation
- A diner worker in Garfield And Friends: "No more burgers until I see some lettuce, cat. It is money to which I refer."
- Seen It A Million Times, particularly from Zapp Brannigan.
- "You may have to metaphorically make a Deal With The Devil. And by 'devil', I mean 'Robot Devil', and by 'metaphorically', I mean 'get your coat'."
- John Kennedy from Clone High, who often used the joke type: "I'd like to X her Y....and by Y, I mean SEX!"
- In one Family Guy, Brian catches a rerun of One Day At A Time. Mocking Schneider's comic schtick, he announces that he's there to "fix your pipes. And by 'fix your pipes', I mean 'have sex with you'. And by 'have sex with you', I mean 'fix your pipes'. And by..." he goes on and on while Brian desperately tries to change the channel and, failing that, tries to unplug the television. When even that doesn't work, he eventually gives in and resigns himself to watching it.
Brian: "Woo! Damn, Schneider; what won't you say?!"
- From (where else?) The Simpsons:
Lionel Hutz: He's had it in for me ever since I kinda ran over his dog... Well, replace the word "kinda" with "repeatedly" and the word "dog" with "son."
- From American Dad:
Klaus: "I'd buy you ten muffin kiosks if I still had my human body. I'd do lots of things if I still had my human body. Because, you know, I'd have a penis."
- Form Superjail
Prisoner: "Hey Gary, I got a worm for your right here... I'm talking about my penis..."
- Bird then tears off the guy's penis so he and Gary can eat it.
- Clerks The Animated Series: The Overly Long Gag explaining Caitlyn's charity kissing booth which costs nothing, isn't for charity, has no booth, is more than just kissing, and doesn't require customers to be male ends with "Dude, she's cheating on you."
Real Life
- This Troper has discovered that he's able to save a bad joke someone else made by exclaiming "HA! Its funny because [reason its funny]" Or, if the joke is bad enough, he exclaims "HA! Its funny because [something irrelevant]"
Examples of Variant 4
Live Action TV
- Anytime someone tells a joke on Garth Marenghi's Dark Place, it'll probably end up like this, probably with Thornton delivering the over-done line. For instance, in an episode where a character is killed by a screwdriver:
Sanchez: Let's all go for a drink.
Liz: As long as it's not a screwdriver!
Thornton: I'd prefer a beer!
- A certain skit on The Kids in the Hall featured Kevin McDonald and Dave Foley as a burlesque comedy duo, with Dave's character as the overly literalist straight-man. Two lines into Abbott & Costello's "Who's on First" routine, Dave's character interrupts and says, "Oh, I see what your problem is! You're confused by their names because they all sound like questions!" and proceeds to go on spouting excessively detailed descriptions of all the baseball player names.
Kevin: So, I understand you manage a baseball team!
Dave: No, I'm a vaudevillian.
- In an episode of "House", Cameron attempts to imitate House by holding his red coffee mug, leaning on the white board and asking "Foreman, are you going to contribute? Or are you too busy stealing cars?" Everyone one stares at her blankly, prompting her to say, "I'm being House." It's funny."
- In an episode of "Top Gear", the Star In A Reasonably Priced Car was asked if he knew Tom Cruise well. The response was a rather clever joke about not knowing him well because of attending different churches. After getting a respectful nod from Jeremy Clarkson, the guest then proceeded to ruin his own joke by adding "I'm in the one with Jesus, baby."
Webcomics
LiveActionTV
- After comparing the British version of Whose Line Is It Anyway to the American version, this troper honestly believe the American version would be superior in every way if Drew Carey had just known when to stop making jokes.
Film
Examples of Variant 5
Comic Books
- A series of Rooster Teeth comics featuring the guys involved in an escalating prank war culminates with them in the hospital calling a truce they clearly don't intend to keep. One of the first comments on it? "I like how they're all holding weapons." You, sir-slash-madame, are a master of observation.
- It's funny because he's not really a master of observation! He's merely stating the obvious!
Literature
- From Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain:
"You mean...oh, I see now - how marvelous!" Hans Castorp laughed. "What a jokester you are! 'At half past nine' - did you hear, cousin? Herr Settembrini is saying that it's too early for some of 'last year's participants' to spend a little time at the ball. Ha, ha, how spooky. He means the people who have finally put aside all 'lusts of the flesh' - if you know what I mean."
Live Action TV
- From Star Trek: The Next Generation, when La Forge is telling a joke to Data, the android.
La Forge: ...so the guy staggers to his feet, and goes back to the girl, right? Well, she smiles, looks him straight in the eye, and says, "Just try that in hyperspace!
(La Forge laughs while Data remains silent)
Data: I see. So the difficulty in attaining such complex positioning in a zero gravity environment, coupled with the adverse effects on the psychological well-being of the average human male is what makes this anecdote so amusing! Yes. Very humorous, indeed. Hysterical, in fact.
Western Animation
- From Family Guy:
Michael Eisner: Are aces high or low?
Peter: They go both ways.
Bill Gates: He said they go both ways.
(Everyone chuckles)
Ted Turner: Like a bisexual!
Michael Eisner: Thank you, Ted, that was the joke.
- Funny Foreigner Fouad does this all the time. Interestingly, the first Peter was happy, because he's a dumbass and didn't know what sarcasm was. Now it just pisses him off.
- From Futurama:
Announcer: And now, the woman who Momopolizes the robot industry...
Announcer: ..."Mom"!!
Fry: Ohhhh, now I get it!
Real Life
- Horribly, horribly Truth In Television. If I walked out in my "Trust me, I'm in college" T-shirt, guess how many people will tell me that's exactly why they shouldn't trust me?
- PS If you didn't answer "too many" I may have to revoke your math degree. And by revoke your math degree I mean hurt you.
- Yeah, we got it the first time.
- "Trust me, I'm a lawyer," oddly enough, gets fewer reactions than expected. Anyone want to crank it Up To Eleven with "I'm a Congressman?"
- So, it's the mid-eighties. A movie made from a book by a wildly popular author has just come out. As the car stops at a light, a wildly angry dog barks and growls from the corner. "Cool it, Cujo," I say. "'Cujo!'" giggles my friend. "Like, by Stephen King. 'Cujo,' that's funny, because the dog is, like, acting like Cujo!" My mom and I still sneeringly use the phrase "Cujo, by Stephen King!" when someone Explains the Joke.
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