Rule Of Funny - Television Tropes & Idioms

What should I know about the vast territory that lies beyond the confines of my little subculture of textbooks, Ramen noodles, coin-operated laundry and TV shows that seem to think they can skate by with random jokes about giant chickens that have absolutely nothing to do with the overall narrative? The boys at South Park are absolutely correct: Those cutaways and flashbacks have nothing to do with the story! They're just there to be... funny. And that is a shallow indulgence that South Park is quite above, and for that I salute them.

— Seth MacFarlane, in character as Stewie Griffin, Harvard Class Day 2006

"I'll go where the humor takes me, and if that happens to create gross inconsistencies, then so be it."

— Rich Burlew, author of Order Of The Stick

Any violation of continuity, personality, or even physics is permissible if the result gets enough of a laugh.

This is the comedy equivalent of the Rule Of Cool, and is accordingly weighted more in comedy shows. It can be used in more action-packed or dramatic environments as well, but if the audience isn't expecting humor in general, or (more likely) the specific kind of humor employed, the joke falls flat and all that's left is "that made no sense!" Due to the naturally subjective nature of humor, a series that relies extensively on Rule Of Funny usually slips into Your Mileage May Vary.

Especially easy to invoke in humor-based American animation and webcomics, where people expect the lack of realism in the art to translate to other areas.

Compare Rule Of Fun.

Tropes existing purely due to the Rule Of Funny:

Examples

Anime and Manga

A running sight gag in Azumanga Daioh is Sakaki, after winning a race, running with the ribbon held up by her (for a Japanese teenager) extremely large breasts. Of course, this means that the ribbon was chest-level on the tallest girl, putting it high enough that some of the contestants would have run right under it...but it's still funny.
Excel Saga, in a nutshell.
One Piece uses this for a number of things (some of which later get a Cerebus Retcon), but one to note is Franky building a nice-looking wooden bridge out of scraps and rubble in less than a minute. It would be a Deus Ex Machina if the level of detail and craftmanship didn't make it hilarious.
In general, this trope applies to how the titular character beats enemies in Bobobo Bo Bobobo

Comic Books

Don Rosa uses this trope from time to time as a justification for breaking realism in his otherwise painfully serious comics. He even mentions it (though not by name) in one of the comment pages for The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, when he had retroactively added the Eisner comic award◊ he won for the series in its last chapter, hanging on Scrooge's wall. Donald even remarks that it has to be fake, since they're living in the 50s and the award reads "1995" with big letters. Rosa compares his relationship with the rule to the below-mentioned joke in Roger Rabbit.
Squirrel Girl breathes this trope. How else can you explain how a girl with a tail who has the power to talk to squirrels, can defeat super villains like Thanos (Magnificent Bastard), Dr. Doom (Crazy Prepared Personified) and Deadpool (Deadpool)?
Deadpool himself, the man who never stops talking even when he's getting beaten to a pulp.

Film

The Disney animation "The Emperor's New Groove" repeatedly emphasizes its own ludicrous plot holes with lines such as "How DID you make it here before us?" "Beats me, by all laws of nature, it doesn't make sense," and "Now, what are the odds that trap door would lead me out here?"
The film Who Framed Roger Rabbit declares this to be an actual law of cartoon physics:
Eddie: You mean you could have taken your hand out of that cuff at any time?!
Roger: No, not at any time. Only when it was funny.
In The Empire Strikes Back the Millenium Falcon malfunctions but Han Solo restarts the engines by punching the instrument panel.
Any given Jackie Chan fight sequence.
This is the entire point of Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter.
The scene in Transformers where the Autobots hide in Sam's backyard doesn't make that much sense - why wouldn't Sam's parents hear them speaking? - but it's so damn funny it barely matters.
- Transformers Animated has a scene where Starscream, revived and granted immortality by a fragment of the Allspark, repeatedly tries, and fails, to kill Megatron. You'd probably spend the whole time wondering why the other Decepticons didn't try to get rid of him in any other way, were it not so amusing to see him getting blasted to crap and tossed into a river repeatedly.
In Atlantis The Lost Empire a chalk map that rubs off on Milo's shirt is not reversed, as the gag of Milo having to stand in that position would have been voided. The directors were amused that test audiences complained more about that detail and its plausibility than in the following scene where a photograph whirs into life in a 1920's movie style.
- I thought it was pretty obvious that the "living photo" bit was Milo's Imagine Spot, triggered by looking at the real photo.
Certain comedy films can't go one minute without violating all sanity for a joke. Consider Top Secret, featuring a very young Val Kilmer as a rock & roll star protagonist in a spy plot: this movie includes a motel called Gey Shluffen, a high speed action chase to change a radio station, and an underwater bar brawl. Or watch Airplane! for the sheer number of visual pun gags.
- Woody Allen's early films were very much of this order. Consider Take The Money And Run where Woody is imprisoned and punished by being locked in confinement with an insurance salesman. Or Love and Death where a battle scene is intercut with scenes of Woody as a cheerleader.
Idiocracy. Bellisarios Maxim is writ LARGE across every element.
Pavi Largo's accent in Repo! The Genetic Opera. He's the only one in his whole family with any kind of accent. It appears only to be there to make him hilarious. (It works.)
- "All of-a eet? OHHHH NOOOOOO!"
Every Marx Brothers film revolves around this, to a varying degree. Many of their best routines have absolutely nothing to do with the plot
The final scene of the 1960's version of Casino Royale is so completely nonsensical that it's impossible to describe. Allegedly, the scene is the heroes trying to get out of the casino before it explodes. So why the cowboys, indians, flying roulette table, bubbles, kinescope police dispatchment, gun-turret banister, etc.? It's funny...at least if you're high enough to write a scene like that.
The climactic battle of Blazing Saddles, which features the characters leaving their soundstage and breaking up a dance number on another set, getting into a pie fight in the studio commissary, then (eventually) getting to the end of the movie by sneaking into a theater playing Blazing Saddles and watching it with us.
Seltzer And Friedberg aim for this trope... with unfortunate results.
More a violation of historical fact this one, but the trope applies- Kelly's Heroes. This film features what is essentially a hippy. In 1944 Normandy.
- I believe they had sort of hippies back then. They were called Beatniks. But, yes, he is more hippy than beatnik.

Literature

Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series, has cited this rule in interviews.
Two Words: Bible spoilers!

Professional Wrestling

CHIKARA Pro Wrestling, Incredibly Strange Wrestling, and Lucha Va-Voom practically run on it.

Television

Any "plot" elements in Mystery Science Theater 3000. See the mantra.
The title character of Angel could go from dead serious to goofball surprisingly fast.
- In fact, the entire point of "Smile Time" seems to be this trope. There is a mysterious bad guy, it could do anything. Why would it turn Angel into a puppet? Because it's hilarious, that's why.
Red Dwarf has briefly flanderized Holly's senility for a joke multiple times, with the extreme being "White Hole" (in which (s)he was counting by banging her head on the screen). However, (s)he is shown to be much more lucid (if not necessarily brilliant) in other episodes, notably in "Queeg" with a well-planned hoax based on the idiot-perception and in "Back to Reality" when (s)he saves the entire crew. Also, "White Hole" itself establishes that the ship's power generation requires her input, making you wonder why something hasn't exploded yet.
- Although it could be that so much of Holly is required to keep the ship running that there's only enough left to communicate with the crew at idiot level. In which case, one has to wonder just how much of the ship had to be deactivated during the run of "Queeg"...
- Perhaps the flaw of the final two series where whole scenes seem to have been tacked on mainly for laughs. The most glaring are the tap dancing shuttle craft scene and the Tyrannosaurus rex, (of course) eating a giant curry. Pretty base stuff by the series previous standards and not helped by some not-very-convincing CGI.
  - There's a glorious peice in the script book, where Naylor describes, step by painstaking step, just how complex the dancing Blue Midget scene was to do, then going on the messageboards and learning "the fans hate it, they think it's filler".
Many of the "challenges" in Top Gear. Why turn a truck into an amphibious vehicle? Why launch a car on a rocket only to see it hit the ground and then explode? Why make James May try to drive fast? (Or why let him get lost—actually lost—on a race track? Because it's funny, durn it!)
On The George Burns And Gracie Allen Show, George made it clear in his occasional asides to the audience that he would go along with anything as long as it was getting laughs.

Video Games

A relentless Hurricane Of Puns and a bizarre array of Everything Trying To Kill You make up only a fraction of the silliness in the MMORPG Kingdom Of Loathing.

Web Original

The "Just For Fun" tropes on this site.

Webcomics

In 8-Bit Theater. Fighter and Red Mage regularly take actions that other characters realize should be completely impossible. The creator has said that the comic's continuity is whatever makes for the funniest joke at the time.
- Black Belt, who is notoriously bad at navigating, manages to get himself so lost that he goes back in time and encounters himself. Without any outside help. In a straight hallway. Yeah.
- Lampshaded recently when the character Drizz'l uses a joke to "break the ice". Literal ice. Everyone involved is amazed it worked. Drizz'l outright states he hates that it did.
- 8-Bit Theater isn't above having characters act completely out of character. At least, we've seen Fighter be intelligent and rational, Black Mage be cordial, and Red Mage briefly play The Straight Man.
Sluggy Freelance lives and breathes this trope.
- Ferrets can break the sound barrier when they're given sugar.
- A Cannibals' Anonymous support group includes a pair of zombies, an alien, and a minature wooly mammoth clone.
- A small bunny can produce a switchblade from nowhere and proceed to beat up a grizzly bear.
- Brief references to the French Revolution or Oprah's Book of the Month club can instantly put people to sleep.
- This quote should be at the top of the page:
  Dr Schlock: I'll be brief.
  Kusari: I'll be briefer [kills Schlock, turns to Daedalus] I've located and eliminated Dr. Schlock as you ordered, Daedalus.
  Daedalus: I wanted to hear what he had to say, but that was pretty funny so you get a pass.
This very much governs Brat Halla. It tends to hew surprisingly closely to accurate Norse mythology within the confines of its premise... except when it would be funnier not to. Thus, Tyr is a pacifist, Fenrir is a rock star, half the dark elves are poser goths and emo kids who hang around coffee shops, and the closest thing the comic has to a Big Bad is the eye Odin sacrificed to the Well of Mimir, imbued with sentience and severe abandonment issues.
In Jayden and Crusader this is referenced by a simple Saxon/Norse superstition being used in the 21st century, and turning out to be true for only the comic in which it is mentioned.
- Later the Artist of J&C himself cited the Rule of Funny regarding his own work
As does the webcomic Bob And George where this is called "The Gag Reflex".
In Stickman And Cube, Humour is one of the main guiding forces of The Verse, the other being Necessity, that is to say, stuff happens according to what is funny or needed at the time.
The The Wotch spin-off webcomic Cheer! features a pie catapult with an automatic targetting system designed to maximize laughs.
Teen Girl Squad. "Wave o'babies."
In Order Of The Stick, Redcloak is able to summon Elementals based on the chemical elements even though no explanation is given for how he has come to learn of their existence in the first place.
Questionable Content - "I have no idea whether this comic actually makes sense. All I know is I could not stop laughing as I drew the last panel."

Radio

Why does Bluebottle in The Goon Show keep getting deaded by explosions even when he's in the middle of a desert on a different continent to the pile of dynamite he's fleeing, then come Back From The Dead to complain about being killed? Because it's funny. The same applies to...well...pretty much everything else related to the Goons.

Western Animation

The Afterlife was never discussed in Season 1 of The Boondocks. However, in Episode 201, Stinkmeaner comes Back From The Dead. This is officially (citation needed) the funniest episode.
The "flashback"/manatee gag moments in Family Guy often depict moments that almost certainly never happened (e.g. Stewie and Brian running a talk show). Their prevalence amped greatly following the series' return, which attracted criticism from various other cartoonists and comedians and was parodied in the "Cartoons Wars" episodes of South Park. MacFarlane's response is quoted at the top of the page.
Spongebob Squarepants takes this trope to physics. For some reason, the characters can light fire, have snow, and running water, while the series takes place under water. Naturally, this leads to Lampshade Hanging:
Patrick: Hey, if we're underwater, how can there be a fi—(fire goes out)
- Evidently Their Minds Make It Real.
In the Avatar The Last Airbender episode "The Serpent's Pass" Toph is rescued from drowning by Suki and (thinking she is Sokka) gives her a big kiss. Even though Toph is blind, there was nothing to stop her from noticing the makeup during the kiss, but the resulting scene is funny.
- It's funny because of Toph's deadpan delivery after she figures out it's Suki, not Sokka.
  Toph: You can let me drown now.
A similar instance occurs in the Futurama episode "The Deep South", when Zoidberg's house burns to the ground... underwater. Zoidberg wails "How could this have happened?" and Hermes notes, "That's a very good question." Implicitly claiming responsibility, Bender picks his still-lit cigar out of the ruins and puffs on it — eliciting a cry of, "That just raises further questions!"
- What makes that really funny is that they explain everything that happens in that episode with psudo-science (in fact, most of the episode is things being explained away.) But for that one last thing, there's absolutely scientific reasoning.
- Futurama is fond of both this rule and lampshading it. In an early episode, aliens are threatening to invade Earth and the planet sends Zapp Branigan to destroy the mothership. After an epic battle with a massive, well-guarded space installation, Earth succeeds in destroying the thing. Zapp celebrates the victory, before a substantially larger ship pops into view. This, it turns out, is the mothership. When Zapp asks what they just destroyed, Kiff looks at a computer screen, groans and says, "The Hubble telescope." Series producer David X. Cohen said in the episode's commentary track that he knew the joke made absolutely no sense, but loved it so much he had to keep it in.
Most classic theatrical cartoons, particularly Tom And Jerry, Looney Tunes and much of the oeuvre of Tex Avery. Don't question where the anvils are coming from, just laugh at it because it's silly.
In perhaps one of the most bizarre applications of the rule ever, the size of the character Endive in Chowder is governed by Rule of Funny. She can vary from about the same size as everyone else, if rather... large, to a towering giant, depending on what's needed for the joke at hand.