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alt title(s): Dont Explain The Joke
The Joker does not like people who explain their jokes. Because his name is the Joker. *gunshot*
Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog: you understand it better, but the frog dies in the process.
Explaining a joke, for better or worse, 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, but only 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 (cf. Hypocritical Humor).
- 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. See Seltzer And Friedberg if you need a better explanation.
- The joke is German, where a lot of jokes are explained in the end, for some reason.
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), Just Joking Justification.
Contrast Stealth Pun (where absolutely no explanation is given).
Examples of Variant 1
open/close all folders
- 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 subtitled Japanese, but parts of the subtitled sentences are blocked by conveniently placed objects 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(who doesn't understand Japanese, so is forced to read the subtitles) finally getting fed up, at which point the conversation switches to English to avoid any more misunderstandings.
- It's actually spelled shiitake mushrooms anyway.
- 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.
- There is a German movie called Französisch für Anfänger ("French for Beginners") that contains a dialogue that goes something like this:
Boy: French is friggin' boring. And those French people … selfish, arrogant baguette munchers!
Girl: I guess you won't be getting along with my mother too well …
Boy: No?
Girl: She's French.
- Witches Abroad. Granny Weatherwax tells a joke, or tries to anyway: "So he said, 'Get me an alligator sandwich — and be quick about it!'"
- 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."
- This joke predates Terry Pratchett; on an episode of "I Love Lucy" we hear Lucy tell a joke about a man ordering chicken "without too much fat," to which the waiter responds, "Which way?"
- DEATH has a similar problem with the concept of humor, as seen in this line from Hogfather:
Death: LET'S GET THERE AND SLEIGH THEM. HO. HO. HO.
Albert: Right you are, Master.
Death: THAT WAS A PUNE OR PLAY ON WORDS, ALBERT. I DON'T KNOW IF YOU NOTICED."
Albert: I'm laughing like hell deep down, sir.
- 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.
Jesus: *siiiigh* Oh-kay, so imagine you've got this farmer who has a field of- Hey, You in the back! Are you paying attention? -okay, so he has a field of wheat, and Oh for Dad's sake, will you stop faffing about? I'm trying to better your lives here!
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.
- Here, explaining how "Obama got served".
- 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.
- In the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode "Killed By Death":
Cordelia: Oh, right. Your obsession with protecting Buffy. Have I told you how attractive that's not?
Xander: Cordelia, someone's gotta watch her back.
Cordelia: Yeah, well, I've seen you watch her back.
Xander: What is that supposed to mean?
Cordelia: Well, I was using the phrase "watch her back" as a euphemism for looking at her butt. You know, sort of a pun.
Xander: Oh! Right. Hey!
- The Big Bang Theory does this all the time, mostly via Sheldon. Like when he summarizes the entire point of one episode:
Sheldon: It's the juxtaposition of the high-tech nature of space exploration against the banality of a malfunctioning toilet that provides the comic fodder here. [beat, then his weird laugh]
- Bill Maher sometimes feigns a halfhearted explanation of a joke, if there's not enough laughter. Sometimes he still does this when there is (to more laughter).
Newspaper Comics
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.)
- Ironically (or not?) this Troper finds the subtitles and asides to be the most hilarious part. They're quite witty, IMO. Plus, who can ever get tired of "Nevermind that shit, here comes MONGO!"
- Especially when the subtitles are translated into a foreign language.
Close Professional Wrestling
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
- In Batman The Animated Series, Harley Quinn tries to explain the deathtrap she built for Batman, but she needn't have bothered. With the Joker it was more a case of The Only One Allowed To Defeat You.
- The Simpsons, "We're on the Road to D'owhere", with customary Lampshade Hanging:
- In Robot Chicken, they likewise allude to this Abbott and Costello routine with a shot of The Fourth Doctor from "Doctor Who" standing on first base eventually waving exasperatedly "Do you get it?!" ...Which is more like alluding that there's a joke present without saying what it is.
- The REALLY sad thing, This Troper JOST got it just now.
- South Park:
Cartman: Eh, too bad drinking scotch isn't a paying job, or else Kenny's dad would be a millionaire. [Silence] I said your dad would be a millionaire, get it?! Kenny?! Your family is poor Kenny!! Your family's poor!!!
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.
- 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".
- "It is funny because "wang" means "penis"."
- 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.
- Also this pretty blatant (but hilarious) example:
Vegeta: Now it's time to reveal my giant monkey... [camera over his crotch, crowd gasps]...form [camera pans to face. Crowd sighs in relief].
Man in Crowd: Thank god, I thought he meant penis!
- Kenichi The Mightiest Disciple has a Running Gag that if anyone comes up behind Miu, she'll throw them. Every single time this occurs, there's a little caption box that says something like "Miu has a habit of throwing anyone standing behind her". It gets to the point that the caption itself is its own Running Gag.
- Jojos Bizarre Adventure: The Abridged Series:
Joseph: Do you know where the building in this photo is?
Bartender: Depends. Do you know where my foot will be if you don't order anything?
Joseph: *sigh* Alright, we'll have four iced teas-
Bartender: It will be up your ass. Just saying.
Comic Books
- 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...
- No, it really isn't obvious enough. What the fuck?
- 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.
- In Epic Movie, 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 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..."
- Granted, it's likely a failed attempt by Dr. Evil trying to be funny, forcing him to explain the joke to the others.
- "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.
- 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 that Piers Anthony would 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.
- The Fools Guild, naturally, teaches its students to do this. Its founder, Jean-Paul Pune, perfected the art of pronouncing brackets, as in "Q. When is a door not a door? A. When it's ajar (A. Jar)."
- The Fool in Wyrd Sisters does this in the middle of a joke: "Marry, nuncle, if'n I had a Knighthood (Night Hood), why 'twould keep my ears Warm in Bedde."
- 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.
- (THOSE ARE NOT GRAMMARIANS. THOSE ARE HIS DOGS.)
Fan Fic
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.
- Norm Macdonald as Burt Reynolds in the Celebrity Jeopardy sketches on Saturday Night Live finds an over-sized hat backstage. "It's funny. It's funny because it's ah, bigger than, ah...you know, a normal hat." Darrel Hammond's impersonation of Sean Connery did this frequently:
Alex Trebek: Where did you get that magic marker? We frisked you in on the way in here.
Sean Connery: I didn't have it in my pocket.
Alex Trebek: That's disgusting. Please.
Sean Connery: I bet if you frisked me, you would have found it.
Alex Trebek: All right, that's enough.
Sean Connery: Because I was keeping it in my butt.
- 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?
*laughter increases*
Norm Macdonald: Nah, I'm just kidding. We don't hire women. (riotous laughter and applause)
- 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.
- 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.
- On The Drew Carey Show Drew attends the wedding of Nicki, his former fiancee. In a toast Nicki's dad mentions that she's been involved with
losers, characters, and ne'er-Drew-wells. I mean ne'er-Drew-wells. (points to Drew) Hell, I mean that guy right there.
- On Filthy Rich And Catflap, deluded failed light entertainer Richie Rich makes a poor joke implying that his minder, Eddie Catflap smells. When Eddie remains silent, Richie feels the need to explain the joke ("Because you're so smelly.") Eddie bluntly responds that he got the joke, he just didn't think it was a very good one. hence the lack of laughter.
- BBC Radio 4's The Now Show has a Running Gag that, before the audience has time to react to particularly lame puns (and there's a lot of them), they'll be lampshaded with "Do you see? Do you see what we did there?" Most notably:
Jon Culshaw: (as Alan Sugar, as the coroner in the Diana inquest) "Your task was to try to prove a conspiracy by Prince Philip to kill Diana. You've offered no real evidence and wasted my time. I have no choice — You're Fayed!
Hugh Dennis: You see? Because it sounds like "fired"! Fayed! It's his name!
- Used in Fags, Mags and Rags:
Rameesh: Ted, do you like kids.
Ted: Yeah... but I couldn't eat a whole one! You get it? I'm implying that I eat children!
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
- "The hammer is my penis."
- Carson Baye has become one of the most hated characters in Survival Of The Fittest V3 due to his habit of referencing anime, then immediately explaining the references. There are a number of other (mostly out of character) reasons for this too.
- On The Rotten Tomatoes Show, while reviewing the baseball movie Sugar, Brett Erlich says "And he tries to steal home, if you know what I mean. By having sex with her."
- Homestar Runner goes through several layers of this, along with an implied Type 1 and unnecessary Lampshade Hanging, when Strong Bad reads through a computer catalog.
Catalog (as read by Strong Bad): The Roomy-Vac is a real power-HOUSE... Get it? Oh, you don't? Well, because it's the size of a... Oh, you were kidding? You do get it? Pretty good, huh? No?
Strong Bad: Why would they print that whole exchange?
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.
Mittens: That wasn't the deal! We had a deal!
Bolt: The deal just expired.
Pigeon: She said the same thing to me not ten minutes ago! The irony!
- 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.
- In Family Guy during the epic FCC song:
And if you find yourself with some young sexy thing,
You'll have to do her with your ding-a-ling!
...'Cause you can't say "penis."
- Dug the dog from Up gives us a particularly hilarious example: "Hey, I know a joke! A squirrel walks up to a tree and says, 'I forgot to store acorns for the winter and now I am dead.' Ha! It is funny because the squirrel gets dead."
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
Live Action TV
Other Sites
- One common stock gag on news aggregator Fark is for a submission to woodenly summarize what happens in a news article using increasingly stretched Unusual Euphemisms for a prominent "impolite" concept, then stiffly drop the anvil in the last word. Penis.
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]"
- You aren't saving jokes. Your friends think you're a douchebag.
- If you have good comic timing (hint: wait until after the next sentence or two), and if the original joke is extremely obvious so that you absolutely know everybody else in the group got it the first try, you can make this work. Maybe once a year, max.
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 vaudevillain.
- 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."
- 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.
- The first Harry Potter book contains Hermione's amusing tirade, "We could all have been killed — or worse, expelled. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to bed." Where Rowling's line, buried in the middle of an angry speech, causes a humorous double-take, the equivalent line in The Film Of The Book, written by Steve Kloves, not only emphasizes the joke in a glaringly obvious manner, but explains it as well:
Hermione: I'm going to bed before either of you come [sic] up with another clever idea to get us killed. Or worse...expelled!
Ron: She needs to sort out her priorities.
- Done a bit too much in the movies, mostly owing to the fact that Harry's observations, while funny in his head, were rather forced when spoken aloud. Another example from the first movie, when Neville gets his Rememberall and it turns red:
Neville: The only problem is, I can't remember what I've forgotten!
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!
- 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.
- Like Data, Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory feels compelled to explain any joke he hears (and the few he tells) in similarly long-winded fashion.
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.
Guy: Hey, Fouad, can I buy you a cup of coffee?
Fouad: Ho Ho Ho Yes, it's funny cause it's free... anyone can have.
Guy: That's right...
Fouad: Ohhh Ho Ho Ho!
Guy: That's the joke.
...
Peter: I think Fouad is an illegal immigrant. I cannot stand by while he steals wages and opportunities from citizens. I mean this is an American company, you don't see Nike or Microsoft or General Motors or Ford or Boeing or Coca Cola or Kellogs profiting from non American labor.
Fouad: Ohhh Ho Ho Ho... it's funny because they all do!
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?"
- This is likely due to the fact that College students are often viewed as innocently holding misconceptions drummed into them by their detatched from the world professors, while still being malleable. They are thus viewed as being both deserving and possibly accepting of correction. Lawyers are... Lawyers.
- 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.
- This Troper had a friend who was a type 4, who would infuriatingly ruin my jokes, which were good, funny, and most importantly subtle on their own by shouting out the logical extension of the joke and badly overacting it.
- I find the best way to deal with idiots like that is to say, "Heh, it's funny because there's a punchline," ''before
'' they get a chance to do that.
- Many stand-up comics use this as part of their act, especially to single out a heckler to explain the joke very slowly to them. Examples include Stephen Wright (who already has a notably slow delivery) and Ron White. Also helps to SPEAK VERY LOUDLY, in case they don't understand English in a normal (ie, amplified through microphone) tone.
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