Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
"Not a joke, but an incredible simulation!"
"Can you spot the pun? It's incredibly, unbelievably subtle."
The writers put in a joke (almost always a pun), then omit the punch line. Some percentage of the audience will "get" the joke, but the rest will know it was there and be going, "What? Why didn't you say it?" There can be several reasons.
- It's naughty/ecchi and not appropriate for this timeslot, in which case this serves the same purpose as a Last Second Word Swap.
- It's an Incredibly Lame Pun and is only remotely funny when realized later; using it in story would grind everything to a halt.
- Telling the punch line would keep our lawyers busy for months, so we'll just leave a blank here and let you do the copyright infringement.
- The writer thinks they're being clever. Sometimes they even are.
Figuring these out can sometimes be a form of Fridge Brilliance known as being Late To The Punchline. If you're on the Internet, expect someone to respond " I see what you did there".
Also, as this page is about puns that are intentionally obscured in-work, it is one of the few times when it is good form to explain the joke.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Stand Up Comedy
- David Letterman did something along these lines when he gave a list of the top ten Bill Clinton jokes. He never actually got to the punchline, he just would trail off and look at the audience, who could figure it out for themselves and were hysterical by that point.
- A somewhat well-known joke concerns a pair of hikers who die while rock-climbing. As their souls ascend to heaven, they see a pair of eagles and exclaim, "Ah, eagles!" The eagles, to be polite, say nothing.
- "Ah, souls!" (Say it out loud. Works best with a British accent.)
- Another variation involves a flounder and a sole who bump into each other on the bottom of the ocean. Same puchline.
- Conan O'Brien in Late Night, doing one of the 'cat is to kitten, what dog is to puppy' routines:
The New Orleans Hooker (long pause) had sex with several minors.
Michael Jackson (an even longer pause, with audience already chuckling) famous in the 80's! What did you think I was going to say?
Anime & Manga
- The Geneon dub of Lupin III once had Jigen describe a house-fly that turned out to be a listening device as "a flying pun".
- In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Nanoha is pursuing Jewel Seeds, which grant wishes. One such Jewel Seed had possessed a tree that was near a couple's confession of love, and it responded by turning into a massive maurdering monster, trapping them inside itself and trying to consume everything. The pun comes when you realise what the guy must have been wishing for: wood.
- A less dirty way of interpreting this was that they pined for each other. (This pun actually works in Japanese, too.)
- Because we're too old for "sitting in a tree" here.
- During one of Adam Warren's Dirty Pair stories, a villain introduces a clone of "good girl" Yuri into the convention the girls are hosting, to shake things up. We first hear about "clone-Yuri's" antics from one of the con-goers (much to real Yuri's distress). Then we cut to Clone Yuri's room and we can clearly see (though the words are never spoken) that she has been literally "screwed, blued, and tattooed".
- The main character of One Piece is named Monkey D. Luffy, and his first appearance in the anime was breaking out of a small barrel (though not in the manga, as this wasn't until the second chapter and we saw how he got in there first). Perhaps the implication is that the show will be more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
- Or about Donkey Kong.
- Another pair are for Mr. 1, who wants to be a super hero. The obvious one is "super" a play on "Supa", his devil fruit name. The second not quite pun is he is literally the Man of Steel.
- Later in the series, Sanji uses a move called the "Parage Shot" to change people's looks by kicking them in the face. In other words, he can literally "rearrange your face".
- Cowboy Bebop - Spike goes out with a bang.
- Most Actor Allusion Fan Art of characters cosplaying as other characters with the same seiyuu for both characters is never said out loud unless someone actually asks. Like all those Shana, Louise, Nagi and Taiga Fan Art.
- Possibly unintentional, but Edward Elric's attempts at human transmutation in Full Metal Alchemist literally cost him An Arm And A Leg.
- A particularily painful one is the Mobile Suit Gundam MSV model MS-07H-4 Gouf Flight Test Type, a prototype Zeon mobile suit adorned with their iconic mono-eye camera & forehead-mounted communications antenna and painted in outrageous magenta demo-colours. An early, unsuccessful attempt at creating a flight-capable Humongous Mecha, it was scrapped for its unfortunate tendency to kill its test pilots. Long story short, it's a one eyed, one horned, flying purple people-eater.
- In another, more obscure Gundam example, one of the various artbooks features a scene with Haman Karn eating a piece of cake with a candy on top shaped like one of her Humongous Mecha Quebeley's funnels.
- At the end of the first episode of Gankutsuou, Albert is making out with Peppo, the local "Bridget" (although he doesn't know that yet), when she stops him and, points a gun at him, and helps kidnappers take him hostage (thus, she had a pistol in her pocket, but might have been was happy to see him as well).
- Also, it really was a trap.
- Because of their Make Me Wanna Shout / Magic Music powers, those operating the Dolems (sort of living mecha) in Rah Xephon are termed instrumentalists. The series has a big inspiration from Neon Genesis Evangelion, so while the obvious implication is that the Dolem operators are trying to bring about "Instrumentality", no one ever uses that term.
- In Darker Than Black, April has the power to create areal hurricanes that make it rain. No one refers to "April Showers" though.
- The Pokemon episode that introduced Barry is titled "Barry's Busting Out All Over!" Even if you get the reference, it sounds inexplicable, unless you are aware that Barry's Japanese name is Jun.
- In New Getter Robo, there's a pun in the first episode. When Ryouma is told by Professor Saotome that he is to be one of the pilots of the Getter Robo, Ryoma replies "Getter?" with the scene being shot at floor level, focusing on Saotome's "geta"
- A flashback in Naruto has someone hearing what Sasuke's name is, and commenting that's also the name of the Third Hokage's father. The Third Hokage's real name is Hiruzen Sarutobi, thus making his father...
- Another example could be during one of the fillers, Naruto has to sit in during the funeral and has to not laugh the entire time or else the person they're doing the mission for will not get the inheritance which causes for everyone trying to get him to laugh. One of the gags that happened were with a guy having a flower coming out of his nose. In Japanese, the word for nose can also mean flower.
Comic Books
- Two issues of James Robinson's Firearm involved the title character entering a virtual world based on Glasgow, mostly as a gift to Glaswegian artist Gary Erskine. In one panel, Erskine drew a figure that resembled Alex from A Clockwork Orange outside an underground station. The local nickname for Glasgow's underground railway is "the clockwork orange".
- In Watchmen, Rorschach breaks Nite-Owl's lock to get into his apartment. It gets replaced. Then he does it again. It gets replaced. Then the police break in. The lock holds but the door is destroyed. The pun? The lock company was called Gordian Knot Lock Company.
- This is less likely to be a pun than an intentional thread in Moore's insanely complicated web of incestuous connections just in Watchmen, since Ozymandias later refers to Alexander the Great and cutting through the Gordian Knot, which is also, metaphorically, what he himself ends up doing.
- Rorschach's foe in prison is short, and his two henchmen are, respectively, nasty and brutish. All three of them perceive Rorschach's comments ("small world", "fat chance", etc.) as being snide remarks about them. ...Hrm...possibly true. Must look into later.
- Ultimate Spider-Man updates Peter Parker's status quo; he still works for the Daily Bugle in this version, but he helps manage their internet site instead of taking pictures. That's right, Spider-Man's a webmaster.
- The second issue of the Great Ten series is called The Tao of Archery. It involves Celestial Archer, whose real name is Xu Tao.
- One of Brian K Vaughan's earlier works was a backup story in a Batman special where, among other things, the Joker breaks into a chemical lab to steal bomb ingredients. While he's there, he decides to amuse himself by re-arranging canisters so the abbreviations on the labels spell out funny things. Boron Argon and Flourine spell BArF, which is "Positively tame" compared to what he did with Copper (Cu) and Niton (Nt).
- That must have been a very old canister - 'Niton' has been officially named Radon for almost eighty years.
- Where do you practice your Deathstroke? In the Deadpool, of course.
- In Preacher, two minor villains list their 'services' as Sexual Investigators.
- Or to put it another way, private dicks.
- Gladiator, the Superboy counterpart in Marvel's Captain Ersatz Legion Of Superheroes comes from the planet Strontia. While his Kryptonite Factor is actually self-doubt, it's probably not a coincidence that Strontianite
 is a real mineral.
- J. Jonah Jameson was mutated in Earth X. It wasn't revealed until the end that he had a head of a donkey. That's right, he became a jackass.
- A stealth pun in Salvation Run (Stealth rhyme? I swear I didn't mean it. Anybody want a peanut?) is explained in the third story here.
Commercials
- Anyone remember the "Charmin" toilet paper commercials with the cartoon bears? Left entirely unsaid is they're all about bears shitting in the woods.
- Similarly, there's an advert currently airing in the UK which has an angry bear in the middle of a cubicle farm, who turns back into a flustered office worker when given a painkiller. Implying, of course, that she's acting like a bear with a sore head.
- Boost Mobile has a commercial with Danica Patrick racing and going into the pit where her pit crew are a bunch of men dressed in outfits similar to the Dallas cowboy cheerleaders, one even has tan lines for a bikini. So it features drag racing.
- In the 1980s, noted football/baseball player Bo Jackson appeared in a series of ads under the concept "Bo knows". Inevitably, there would be a sport he didn't know, often leading to the response "Bo don't know diddly!" The stealth was later removed and lampshaded when several ads featured the noted guitarist.
- In fact, he was trying and failing to play a guitar when the famed performer himself said, "Bo, you don't know Diddly."
- In another commercial of the same type, Sonny Bono showed up, saying "I thought it was another 'Bo Knows' commercial."
- This one's a bit complex, but stay with me for a bit. There's a recent advertisement for Sharp Quattron Pixel Technology, which features George Takei promoting the four-color TV in question. It would seem that Takei is only in the commercial for his hammitude, but some careful thought reveals a dastardly hidden pun. Watch:
- George Takei is very, very gay.
- He is also very, very Asian.
- The new Quattron technology adds yellow to the standard RGB array of colors in a TV's pixels.
- So, what is George Takei describing? He's describing adding YELLOW to the RAINBOW. Now, the reason why the pun in question needed to be made is beyond any mortal's understanding, but it's a sneaky one regardless.
Fan Fic
- In Three Messengers, one of the fortune-tellers is Old Woman Riley - in Japanese, this would be Riley-obaba. The author is a fan of The Who.
Film
- Saved has several blink-and-you'll-miss-it stealth pun moments, including "is he going to come out or not?!" and "your mother's missionary position...." They make no sense out of context and are pretty hard to explain, but in the film they're just a few of many subtle moments of brilliance.
- In the middle of Honey I Shrunk The Kids, Nick asks Russ where he learned artificial respiration after he delivers it to Amy. Russ replies, "In French class". Nick doesn't get it and the build-up is left unfinished...then, at the very end of the movie, right after the Fade To Black, Nick suddenly gets it and laughs hysterically.
- In Evan Almighty, Evan's wife is called Joan. And the movie is about building an ark.
- This one may also count as a Genius Bonus. When God shows up in the back of Evan's car and scares the pants off him, God replies "Let it out, son. It's the beginning of wisdom." Proverbs 1:7 states "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom"
- In The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the meal the characters have been eating is suddenly revealed to be the remains of Eddie, played by the singer Meat Loaf. The audience traditionally fills in the joke: "Not Meatloaf again!"
- "That's a rather tender subject."
- "That's a rather tasteless joke."
- And don't forget the well hung speakers.
- In South Park Bigger Longer Uncut, Gregory (the French revolutionary kid), at the beginning of the song montage that got the film nominated for Oscar, jumps up on a wooden box to sing about freedom and rights etc. On the box in big stenciled letters is the word SOAP.
- In Scotland, PA, an adaptation of Macbeth, it is casually mentioned that Donald (Donalbain in Macbeth) and Malcolm's father, Duncan, made most of his money through donut sales. Duncan Donuts. Later, Donald takes over the restaurant, which had been renamed to McBeth's, and calls it, well, guess what... McDonald's, of course.
- In the recent Star Trek movie, the alien in the bar that sits between Uhura and Kirk has elongated features. So why didn't the bartender say "Why the long face?"
- Riff Trax did it.
- The character was credited as "Long Face".
- In yet another Star Trek film, the commanders of a Klingon vessel give the order of "Fire at will." There is an immediate cut to the the bridge of their target, the Enterprise, currently commanded by Commander Riker. Will Riker.
- Picard did the same thing in the series during a training exercise.
- In Shrek, the evil Lord Farquaad is alleged to have been based partially upon then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner, who had a falling out in the mid-Nineties with Jeffrey Katzenberg, who would go on to found Dreamworks - the company that produced Shrek. 'Farquaad' is rumoured to be a cloaked insult aimed at Eisner, calling him a fuckwad.
- According to Word Of God, it's a reference to the "Far Quad" on the campus of the writer's alma mater, Notre Dame - full name Notre Dame du Lac (Dulac is the name given to Farquaad's little kingdom). However, the obvious pronunciation-gag was not missed by Fox Trot, which used the second meaning as a stealth punchline.
- Besides, does anyone who goes to Notre Dame actually call it the "Far Quad?" No.
- Ahem. This Notre Dame troper and every student he knows does.
- Also, anyone familiar with ND will recognize a certain building outline (The Golden Dome) on the back of Shrek's vest.
- In Shrek 2 The potion given to the King to make Fiona fall in love with the first man she kisses is labeled "IX". It is not mentioned then that it must be Love Potion Number 9.
- In the scene where Shrek and Donkey (in human and horse forms) are in a bar after their plan fails, the barmaid says to Shrek "Why the long face?", while Donkey is standing right next to him.
- In Coraline, the seats of the theater are filled with small dogs — Scotties. Later, when the world shows its dark side, the dogs become skeletons... Night Terriers?
- The toy tank in the Otherworld bedroom resembles the British Mark 1, which nickname is... Mother.
- In Up, there is a scene in which several dogs pilot fighter planes, making them... dogfighter pilots.
- Another Pixar example: in Cars, Sally Ferrara, the female lawyer car, is a Porsche. The term Portia is a slang term for a female lawyer; it was lifted from the female lead from Shakespeare's The Merchant Of Venice, who impersonated a lawyer to defend Antonio against Shylock.
- In Disney's Robin Hood, Maid Marian (a vixen) has a hen as a nursemaid, but nobody references the aphorism about "setting a fox to watch the henhouse".
- Probably because a hen is watching the foxhouse, which isn't a thing.
- There is, however, the saying about someone who is constantly anxious and worried being a 'mother hen'.
- In The Incredibles, the name of Syndrome's island is only mentioned once: a passing reference to "current temperature on Nomanisan" during Mr. Incredible's second visit. "No-man-is-an Island"
- In Corpse Bride, this◊ is the Head Waiter. Get it? Head waiter?
- Not to mention the bar where Victor first arrives is called the "Ball and Socket." Making it the Ball and Socket joint.
- Which makes the bar a popular place, or a "hip joint."
- Its A Mad Mad Mad Mad World, the guy at the beginning of the movie, who tells the four drivers about the treasure buried under a big W, as he dies, his foot kicks a bucket.
- The Muppet Christmas Carol. In order to get both Statler and Waldorf into the movie, they had to invent a brother for Jacob Marley. They called him Robert. Think about that for a second. Get up, stand up...
- Actually, when watching the movie, I was just annoyed their tune didn't match the pun.
- In The Dark Knight, the police convoy is diverted by a large vehicle that had been set ablaze. When you see the vehicle up close, you realize what it is and the stealth pun indicates it as one of the Joker's jokes. It's a fire engine.
- And by the end of the second act, the Batmobile has lost a wheel (well, two, but whatever) and the Joker got away.
- In the original Flash Gordon the aliens have ray guns that fire gauntlets/armored gloves which strangle and throw people. That's right, the aliens have HAND-guns.
- In the episode "Rose" of Doctor Who, the mannequins that come to life inexplicably also have guns contained in their hands.
- Not inexplicable — the "mannequins" are Autons, classic Doctor Who foes, and the concealed weapons in their hands are canon.
- Dude, did you mean to say "canon" in reference to guns?
- The first Veggie Tales movie contained - without comment - a bunch of city guards whose weapons were long poles with fish on the ends of them.
- The writers behind Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs claim they had to turn one of the opening lines into a version of Stealth Pun #2. To whit:
Flint (narrating): But when all seemed lost, I stared at da feet and found hope.
- In Jeepers Creepers, the two main characters are nearly run off the road by a truck with a Vanity License Plate which says "BEATNGU". Darry guesses it just meant "beating you", but it's never stated what it really meant: "be eating you", as the driver is really the man-eating monster.
- For the first shot of the villain in The Neverending Story II, she has no face until she takes a swipe of some mystical glowing gunk on her hands and swipes it over her face. Guess she just had to put her face on as The Nostalgia Critic points out, regretfully.
- Either that or it's Face creme.
- The excellent German short film Schwarzfahrer can mean black rider, or fare dodger. It features a black man sitting on a tram next to a Racist Grandma who puts him through racial abuse, including saying all black people had AIDS. When the conductor comes round to collect the tickets, the black man eats her ticket, making her a lawbreaking type of schwarzfahrer. For added irony, a biker onlooker who never had a ticket gets let off.
- This may or may not be a stretch, but after the makers of Monty Python And The Holy Grail ran out of money, they just had the film end with everyone being arrested by the police for the death of a historian earlier in the film. In other words, the ending is a cop-out.
- The Bride's exchange with O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill Vol. 1 could count, since(unless you were able to get a good look at her passport when she flew to Japan) we don't learn until Vol. 2 that her name is Beatrix Kiddo:
O-Ren Ishii: You didn't think it was gonna be that easy, did you?
The Bride: You know, for a second there, yeah, I kinda did.
O-Ren Ishii: Silly rabbit.
The Bride: Trix are...
O-Ren Ishii: ...for kids.
- In Clue, Professor Plum: "I work for U.N.O., the United Nations Organization. I work for a special branch, the World Health Organization." (I.e., he works for UNO [you know] WHO.)
- In Terminator 2, the T-800 chases John Conner through a mall carrying a box of flowers with a rifle inside. For 50 points, what was the name of the band that had a breakaway hit for the movie?
Literature
- In The Wee Free Men, a talking toad is introduced as a guide for Tiffany Aching. Although it was explained that said toad's yellow colour was caused by his being unwell, nobody ever actually told her to "follow the yellow sick toad". As the author said:
Terry Pratchett: I just happened to note a toad had a skin which had had unfortunately gone a bit yellow because it had been ill. Far be it from me to make a pun. You did that.
- This was played as a straight Pun in Moving Pictures, where a man in half a lion suit says "I don't know what it's called, but we're doing one about going to see a wizard. Something about following a yellow sick toad."
- Similarly, in Jingo!, when Carrot is investigating an attempted political killing with strong similarities to the Kennedy assassination, he interviews a gnoll. In addition to being an informant, the creature has plants growing on it. That's two possible routes to the phrase "grassy gnoll", but it never happens.
- The worst offender has got to be Soul Music. There's a scene where the main character, Imp Y Celyn, explains his name- imp being a term for new growth at the end of a stalk, and celyn being a member of the holly family. The entire book is full of music puns like that, some more subtle than others. Of course this is made even more obvious when he starts going by the name Buddy.
- Later on in the book, the Dean of UU spends several scenes constructing an elaborate coat. Later, Death, knowing that some things have to look right, borrows it before going very quickly to an important place. When he gets there, he kills The Music. None of this is ever spelled out.
- The Dean also spends a lot of time riveting trousers out of denim. The Archchancellor complains, and the Dean replies that soon everyone will be wearing them, and they certainly won't be called Archchancellors.
- There was a slightly more obvious pun than that there.
- One of the bands manages to acquire a leopard, which is a bit hard of hearing.
- Don't forget Death riding to the rescue on a motorcycle, which turns ghostly as parts break off...meaning that by the end, he's hitting the highway like a battering ram on a silver-black phantom bike. (Like a Bat out of Hell...)
- Plus, the motorcycle was built in the basement, so Death gets it out of the building via the ceiling... through the ground above◊.
- In Witches Abroad, there's a couple of puns where the first two witches give an outright pun or Allusion but Nanny Ogg delivers the stealth pun.
- The three of them are deliberating on the idea of a transport system built on broomsticks. Their ideas for names are puns on well know real world airlines but Nanny Ogg gets cut off before she says hers. However, note she is looking at Magrat and being rather coquettish. Consider Magrat's role in The Hecate Sisters trio. Virgin.
- In a later scene, while stuck in a Wizard of Oz parody, Magrat and Granny have a falling out. As they walk along the obligatory yellow brick road, Magrat says "some people" need a little more heart, Granny Weatherwax says "some people" need a lot more brain, and Nanny Ogg, both literally and figuratively stuck between the two, thinks to herself that she needs a drink. i.e., Dutch Courage *
Bonus: The "courage" the Wizard gave the Cowardly Lion was a drink.
- There's also a recurrence of Granny trying to tell a joke about an alligator sandwich ("...and make it snappy!"), but she keeps blowing the punchline ("...and do it fast!").
- In Pyramids, a voting system involving each elector placing round beads into a jar is described as giving rise to a popular saying about politics. Presumably that it's a load of balls.
- I always thought that was a reference to being blackballed.
- Or: "When you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow."
- Or it could just be "-insert party here- has no balls."
- In Going Postal,
John Galt Captain Flint Reacher Gilt dresses up as a pirate and has a parrot sitting on his shoulder that continually shouts "twelve and a half percent!" Twelve and a half is 100 divided by 8, or, in other words, one Piece of Eight, which is the traditional coinage that all pirates are after, and "Pieces Of Eight!" was the Catch Phrase of Long John Silver's parrot in Treasure Island.
- The Last Hero includes some pages that are excerpts of fictional documents. One of these is a list of "Varieties of the Swamp Dragon". One of the listed varieties is the "Nothingfjord Blue", which is given this description: "Wonderful scales, but a tendency to homesickness". In other words, it's pining for the fjords.
- In Night Watch, Dr Lawn briefly refers to "the founder of my profession, the philosopher Scepturn". Since this is obviously the Disc version of Hippocrates, the highly cynical Lawn has presumably taken the Sceptic Oath.
- The Guild of
SeamstrWHORESLadies of Negotiable Affection (pre-legalization and renomination) employed Dotsie and Sadie, known as the Agony Aunts since that's what they inflict on badly behaving customers. Now say their names the other way round.
- In British English, an Agony Aunt is an advice columnist.
- If you swap Dotsie and Sadie around and drop the the "ie" you get Sad-Dots or Sadists.
- I might be overthinking this one myself, but I got a Late To The Punchline moment on the train home from work by a pun in Thud! Mr. Shine is a troll made of diamond, making him the troll king by their ancient mythology, spoilered for convenience. I'd be surprised if Pterry meant this one, but would that make him King Diamond?
- Another absolute genius Late To The Punchline turns up in Discworld/Thief of Time. The whole way through the book it is emphasized that Susan hates Nougat. The book finishes with her eating a chocolate privately in the closet. The chocolate turned out (to her dismay) to be Nougat. She is then interrupted when Lobsang arrives. They kiss and the book closes with "Even with Nougat, you can have a perfect moment." This line doubles in Heartwarming when you remember what Lobsang was called before he joined the History Monks' clan; Newgate Ludd.
- In Unseen Academicals, a girl calls Glenda "the leftover queen," then thinks it might be taken insultingly and explains she meant that Glenda was very good at cooking with leftovers. Why would someone not like to be called the leftover queen? Because in the card game, the left-over queen is the Old Maid.
- There are many in the
Latin Latatian mottoes of various families, groups, and guilds: The City Watch motto, 'Fabricate Diem Punc' is translated as 'To Protect and To Serve', but means something else ... "Make my day, punk." My favourite is Non Timetis Messor (but I like Blue Oyster Cult, so what do I know?). That one is translated correctly at one point, though.
- Becomes a minor plot-point in Feet Of Clay.
- In Guards Guards, Vimes refers to an unusually weak beverage as 'love-in-a-canoe' coffee. The punchline goes unsaid - it's fucking close to water.
- One of the creatures in The Phantom Tollbooth is the Everpresent Wordsnatcher, a bird who comes from a place named Context and likes to take words from other people's mouths and twist them. He comes this close to explaining the pun:
"I'm from a land very far away called Context. But it's such a nasty place I try to spend all my time out of it."
- The book is really entirely made up of these puns.
- In The Rock Rats by Ben Bova:
Fuchs: So, Mr. Ripley, will your crew be able to assemble the latest additions on schedule?
Mr. Ripley: Believe it or not, they will.
- In Godel, Escher, Bach, the dialogue "Aria with Diverse Variations" (named after a piece by J. S. Bach more commonly known as the Goldberg Variations) mostly concerns the Goldbach Conjecture and variations on it. Near the end of the dialogue, Achilles suddenly offers the Tortoise the gift of a "very gold Asian box." This pun doesn't get to sink in until after the true ending of the dialogue: a fake ending in which a cop arrives and Achilles turns the Tortoise in for the reported theft of a Very Asian Gold Box.
- In The Dresden Files, there's a supporting character named Virginia, who is a werewolf. No one mentions that they are afraid of Virginia Wolf.
- Also in The Dresden Files, Harry is asked to guess the name of the wizard who is the newest member of the Senior Council. His guess is "Klaus the Toymaker." It is implied that Harry is not joking, but he's wrong.
- In Summer Knight, we meet a very small fairy that looks to be nothing more than a spark of light. Her name? Elidee. Say it aloud.
- Norse related characters tend to have names that are Kenning, and if you can figure it out tells you exactly who and what they are.
- For instance: MonOc Securities. MonOc is a combination of words for "one" and "eye;" it didn't take the fans long to realize it was led by Odin One-Eye. And one of their employees is Ms. Gard: If you read up on your Norse Mythology, you'll know that Asgard is the home of most of the gods and location of Valhalla. She's a Valkyrie.
- The Archive asks Harry to tell his kitty hello for her. This means that, had she not gone through a third party, she would have said, "Hello, kitty."
- Swedish children's comic Bamse has an anthropomorphic wolf named Virginia. Note that you'd have to jump languages to make it work too.
- In War of the Dreaming, there's a brief mention of Parliament as "something owls do when they get together. Boring, but then it's better than what crows do."
- In the classic Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle", Holmes and Watson find a priceless gem inside a stolen Christmas goose, and figuring out how it got there takes them all over London. Somehow, Conan Doyle managed to resist having Watson complain about a wild goose chase.
- Combined with a Shout Out in Randall Garrett's Too Many Magicians, in which a character named Tia Einzig learns that her uncle Napoleon has escaped to the Isle of Man. Since "Einzig" is German for "solo", this would make him Napoleon Solo, the UNCLE from Man. (For extra Shout Out points, she learns this from her uncle's friend Colin McDavid; Napoleon's partner, of course, is played by David McCallum.)
- The last of Patricia C Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles features a character called Daystar. Guess how he relates to the previous main characters.
- In the Ciaphas Cain (HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!) novel Duty Calls, the pilot of Amberley's ship is named Pontius. Also one of the major players in the novel are soldiers from an all-female religious order based in the planet's region of Gavaronne. The fact that they are literally the Nuns of Gavaronne is never explicitly made.
- In The Traitor's Hand, there is a brief mention of an animal called the nauga, whose hide is particularly useful for "certain hard-wearing applications."
- A Civil Campaign introduces Armsman Roic, who battles against the off-planet law enforcement coming to take away Dr. Borgos. It could be said that the Armsman was acting he-Roic-ally. (This only works if you pronounce his name that way; reportedly the author Herself pronounces it differently, thus didn't see the pun coming.)
- Thursday Next has a ton of these. The best is probably when Thurs has to remove Hamlet from his play, while in the A-plot, recurring villain Yorick is running around. You do the math.
- In one Star Trek New Frontier book (all written by Pungeon Master Peter David), a beast is described as cyclopean, with a large horn, wings, and purple fur, hunting crew members for food. Lampshaded later as one of the stalked crew members says, "It sure looked strange to me." "He was a one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater // Sure looked strange to me"
- Although almost certainly not deliberate, The scene with Count Ugolino and Archbishop Ruggieri in Dante's Divine Comedy has one of these. Ugolino only stops gnawing on Ruggieri's head long enough to tell Dante about the horrible way Ruggieri killed him, in effect giving the Archbishop a good chewing out.
- In Harry Potter, Vernon Dursley works at Grunning Drills - or, in other words, his job is very boring.
- The names of some locations in the magical world are symbolic puns, which are never mentioned or called out by the characters at all. "Diagon Alley" (Diagonally) was said by JKR to reference Harry's entrance into the magical/adult world, because it was very unusual, or some such. "Knockturn Alley" (Nocturnally) is a dark and frightening underbelly sort of place.
- There's also Durmstrang, a Spoonerism of the German phrase Sturm [und] Drang (Storm and Stress).
- It's not just places. Character names like Sirius Black are never explained, though more obvious.
- In the second book of the Artemis Fowl series, Artemis is meeting with the school psychologist. Internally, Artemis smugly comments that he has in fact helped to write a psychology textbook by contributing several articles under the pseudonym "Dr. F. Roy Dean Schlippe." The pun is later lampshaded in the fifth book, where he complains about the fact that nobody can understand his humor and references another article written under the pseudonym "Dr. C. Niall DeMensha."
- In the fifth book, Artemis is delighted when someone actually gets the pun, even though it would be hard not to - they hear it on the phone. Phonetically.
- This Troper's personal favorite is his article written by a "Sir E. Brum."
- Redwall's seagoing rodent villains are referred to as "corsairs" specifically to avoid an endless string of "pi-rat" puns.
- In the kids' story Bee-Wigged (about a giant bee who passes himself off as a schoolboy thanks to a Paper Thin Disguise) the main character Jerry Bee is noted to be extremely good at spelling. Which of course makes him a spelling bee.
- There's a character in the Codex Alera named Rook. Rook is a watercrafter powerful enough to manage Voluntary Shapeshifting. At one point, she uses this to switch places with a member of the nobility, providing protection for the noble and increased maneuverability for herself. Rook castles.
- Blood Trail, the second book in Tanya Huff's Blood Books series, features Henry and Vicki protecting a family of werewolves living near London (Ontario). Not one character ever mentions Warren Zevon or his song, "Werewolves of London".
- One of the Foundation short stories, "...And Now You Don't" / "Search by the Foundation", mentions that students in the Composition and Rhetoric class were required to write their names as initial-of-given-name followed by surname, "except for Olynthus Dam, because the class laughed so when he did it the first time."
- In Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, boko-maru, the only real ritual of the Bokononists is described as a meeting of souls. It is performed by having the two participants remove their footwear, and then press the soles of their feet together.
- The dangers of the Stealth Pun are featured in one of the Callahan's stories, while the actual Stealth Pun is subverted through explanation; a story on Tall Tales Night is about to bomb because of a Stealth Pun that went over everyone's head, so the narrator steps in to state the pun that the pun-making Star Wars fan was O.B. Juan's kin, Obie.
Live Action TV
- Overlapping with an ILP, in the Firefly episode Safe, River wonders off and starts dancing (and it's stated in her backstory that she was a ballerina (Real Life Writes The Plot, Summer Glau is one)). How is this a pun? Her name is River, and she is dancing. River. Dancing. Riverdance.
- The guys behind Monty Python's Flying Circus (and all other Monty Python media) are famous for avoiding punchlines in almost everything they've done. Their reason was that they would see great skits, but would usually end up disappointed by the weak punchline. They resolved to end their sketches before the punchline, unless they wanted it to be ironic.
- The Father Ted episode "Chirpy Burpy Cheap Sheep" is about a sheep who is being driven neurotic. There's a concealed pun implicit in this concept (and [formerly] revealed in The Other Wiki's relevant episode entry) but it is something of a subversion since neither the pun nor the punchline are actually spoken.
- The famous Nantucket limerick shows up in the pilot of Babylon 5. Delenn has heard it, and thinks it's a typical example of Earth poetry....
- And again in this Daily Show/Colbert Report bit, as a shorter alternative to an epic poem.
- A variant appears in the Star Trek The Next Generation episode "The Naked Now". As the Enterprise crew succumb to an inebriation-inducing virus, Data reports picking up numerous disturbances on internal sensors, including a crewman singing a limerick:
Data: There once was a woman from Venus, whose body was shaped like a—
Picard: Security!
- And speaking of TNG, there's the emotionless android Data and his more human brother Lore. This borders on Fridge Brilliance.
- One from the Pushing Daisies episode 'Dummy':
Chuck: But where are the real dummies?
Emerson starts sniggering
Narrator: Before Emerson Cod could reply with a clever, if slightly insulting remark, something moving caught his eye.
- The Colbert Report has Gorlock, a Signs-esque alien who advises Stephen on various topics. He was first introduced as Stephen's financial advisor and an excuse to make Scientology jokes, but we later find out that he's also Stephen's attorney. Making him... A legal alien.
- Was there ever a mention of him taking a sick day?
- In Veronica Mars, the late Lilly Kane called her younger brother Duncan by the nickname "Donut". One (admittedly cute) fanfic posited that it was because he wanted to be a cop as a kid. Someone clearly missed the pun.
- One episode of The Muppet Show opened with the Bug Band, a group of four insects, singing She Loves You. Backstage after the song, Kermit says that the group needs a name and instead of the obvious suggestion they come up with The Who and The Grateful Dead.
- In the "Bear on Patrol" segments, Patrolman Fozzie Bear's superior officer is Link Hogthrob, a "pig". Think about that for a second.
- The BBC's series Merlin features King Uther. He keeps a dragon penned up in the dungeon.
- In Star Trek The Original Series, Kirk claims to be from the island of Noman at one point.
- A famous example from Saturday Night Live's "Celebrity Jeopardy" sketches:
Sean Connery: "What's the difference between your mother and a mallard with a cold? I forget the rest but your mother's a whore."
- Presumably, one is a sick duck, and the other a dick-suck.
- Works more than one way. Hint: Precision F Strike.
- The full quote is "What's the difference between your mother and a mallard with a head cold? One's a sick duck... I can't remember how the rest of it goes, but your mother's a whore." So, only one way, methinks.
- In Reaper, the Devil gives Sam his phone number. We never see it, but Sam's reaction to the area code makes it pretty obvious it's 666.
- On Mock The Week, Milton Jones comments that farmers have recently started using heroin but finding the evidence has been difficult. It's like finding a needle in a haystack.
- In this Scrubs episode an imaginary patient has a kitten in his mouth. Probably he misunderstood the concept of eating pussy.
- Either that or the cat's got his tongue.
- He might also have kitten breath.
- For several episodes of Season 4 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Oz wore a sheepskin jacket. As he's a werewolf, you know what that makes him...
- Another Buffy example : in the episode Tabula Rasa, Spike is being pursued by a demon he owes money to. The demon has the head of a shark. Which makes him... a loan shark.
- In an earlier episode of Buffy, we see Spike and others gambling with baby cats instead of poker chips. Bit of a genius bonus, but in card games the betting pool is often referred to as the kitty.
- In Angel, Wesley and Angel are trying to translate a passage from memory, leading to the predictable gibberish. One of the "nonsense" phrases they come up with is "strangling poultry".
- Stargate SG 1 had the following exchange:
Anis: "You may call me Anis. It means 'Noble Strength'"
Daniel: "I am Daniel It means 'God is my judge'"
Jack: "I'm Jack. It means....what's in the box?"
- Parodied in that this is an actual conversation change because he didn't know the meaning of his name...
- In The Sopranos, Phil's men is hiding in Vito's motel room, where they ambush and plan to kill him due to the revelation that he's gay. Phil himself is hiding in a closet, and once Vito has been subdued, Phil reveals himself to Vito by coming out of the closet.
- On Top Gear, there is a joke award for the biggest presenter error called the Golden Cock award (a small figurine of a rooster). In the 2009 Top Gear Awards, the award was given to their "tame racing driver," The Stig, who refused to give it back and got quite violent when Richard Hammond tried to take it away from him. So you could say The Stig really likes the cock.
- Cheers episode "Little Carla, Happy at Last": Carla finds out she's pregnant by Eddie LeBec. Worse yet, it's twins. She thinks that's bad news but the father disagrees:
Eddie: Twins means we're twice blessed! I can't believe it! This is the happiest night of my life!
Sam: You know, I had twins once. It was the happiest night of my life too.
- An episode of Malcolm In The Middle had Dewey being menaced by a girl in his class. Reese offers to help him come up with some barbs to throw at her, and suggests finding something that rhymes with her name. Dewey says she's "Regina Tucker," and Reese says that isn't much to work with, but he's sure they'll think of something.
- The How I Met Your Mother episode Showdown has the following, in regards to Barney competing on The Price Is Right:
"When I win all the prizes, the only thing you guys are getting is Rice-A-Roni and Turtle Wax."
- Fairly funny in and of itself, but when you consider the Weird Al song "I Lost On Jeopardy," in which two of the prizes he didn't win were a case of Turtle Wax and a year's supply of Rice-A-Roni, it's even funnier. One run-on sentence later, you are fully up to speed.
- Lost has a ridiculous amount, if you stop to think about it. Locke - a man known for thinking out of the box - used to work at a box company. Naomi in 4th season didn't have a Ruth, making her ruthless. And in 6th season, episode "The Substitute", Sawyer dangles for a while between the devil and the deep blue sea.
- Doctor Who episode "Aliens of London" features a pig being put into a spaceship and fired at Big Ben in order to create a fake alien invasion which will scare the populace. So the entire plan revolves around a flying pig...
- Chuck's ability to access data on threats to the country is called "flashing". When he temporarily is unable to do so, he tries to practice, and is shown using a series of cards with images of spies on them, which are never actually called :"flash cards".
- In the Torchwood episode "Dead Man Walking", after
being raised from the dead as a zombie, Owen (unsuccessfully) attempts to drown his sorrows in beer.
- In "The Great British Nightmare" special episode of Kitchen Nightmares, Ramsay's attempts to prove a local restaurant is better than a chain restaurant are accompanied by the instrumental opening of Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain".
- Tensou Sentai Goseiger's ending song has a line which mentions Five Star. That's a possible meaning for Gosei, as used in Gosei Sentai Dairanger.
- In Supernatural, we get a quick scene of the producer of a movie named Jay talking on the phone to a man named Bob. We never hear Bob's side of the conversation.
- Lampshaded somewhat in a vintage Sesame Street short where Kermit the Frog reports live from the court of Old King Cole, just as he's about to call for his pipe, his bowl and his fiddlers three.
Old King Cole: Bring me my royal pipe, and step on it!
Kermit: At this point you probably think we're going to make a dumb joke. But we're not.
- A possibly unintentional one from Coupling: Jeff has brought up the question of what would happen if breasts were given the power of independent thought, suggesting that "similar people in similar jobs, working in the same bra," wouldn't get along. Patrick suddenly comes up with an idea for a new porn film about battling breast-brains and spends the rest of the episode suggesting titles, including Wobble Wars, Two Minds, One Bra, The Girl with Two Brains ("Three brains, Patrick!") and The Girl With Two Breasts which Steve calls the stupidest title yet. At no point does anyone suggest the obvious pun: Bra Wars.
- One episode of Smallville is all about nightmares. Every single song in the episode is by R.E.M.; another has a story where Lionel drove his wife insane - it ends with him listening to Madame Butterfly.
- Arrested Development at one point had Henry Winkler walking along a dock, and had to take a bit of a leap to get past a cartelagenous fish that was lying there.
Music
- Pick a song by Relient K. Any song, really. It will contain at least one of these, if not an Incredibly Lame Pun in the title.
- Just for clarification here is an example from the song "Bite My Tongue", "I'm sweeping up the seconds/That tick off the clock/Save them all for later/When I'm too ticked to talk."
- In the song "Necessity" from Finian's Rainbow, the lines quoted below provoke the shouted question "Do you mean he's a —?", which is answered in the affirmative (the implied statement being that Necessity is a bastard):
Oh, hell is the father of gin,
And Cupid's the father of love.
Old Satan's the father of sin,
But no one knows the father of
Necessity.
- It also seems to be a stealth pun on the saying "Necessity is the mother of invention."
- From a Cunninlynguists song: "kill an unborn baby and you still couldn't defeat us."
- Girl Anachronism by The Dresden Dolls: about a girl who blames her constant sickness on having been born too soon by C-section. Including the line "You can tell (...) that I'm not right now at all."
- A couple in Don McLean's "American Pie". Did Lenin or Lennon read a book on Marx? And "It landed foul on the grass" isn't refering to the green stuff on your front lawn.
- There's so many in that song it deserves its own page really.
- Singer/drummer Robert Wyatt of Soft Machine left after four and a half albums to form another band called Matching Mole, after the French words for soft machine, machine molle.
- Weird Al Yankovic's "I Can't Watch This" contains the lines:
Can't stand Twin Peaks, Wish they'd lynch those donut-eating freaks!
- The cover of R.E.M.'s Lifes Rich Pageant is a visual pun: It's a collage depicting band member Bill Berry and a pair of bison... as in "Buffalo Bill".
- All tracks on the Oldboy soundtrack (except Vivaldi's "Winter") are named after classic movies, but the titles of the tracks are also punny references to the scenes in which they were used in the movie.
- When Oh Dae-Su finally remembers Lee Woo-Jin's sister, it's the sound of a bell that triggers his memory; he has a flashback to his school days, watching the girl on her bicycle. From that scene on, it is clear that the entire plot hinges on her. The waltz that plays over his flashback? "For Whom the Bell Tolls".
- The "band" City and Colour is really just one guy, named Dallas Green.
- The front cover of The Pixies' "Gigantic" single depicts a close up of a baby, while the back cover depicts a driving glove laying on the ground. This may seem like a True Art Is Incomprehensible sort of thing, until you realize it's actually a play on a potential mondegreen of the song: "A baby glove" instead of "A big, big love".
- The real name of 2D, lead singer of Gorillaz, is Stuart Pot, a.k.a. Stu-Pot. He spent some time in a coma. At least one fanfic, but nobody in the canon, has pointed out that this would make him a vegetable Stu.
- From Steely Dan's "Bodhisattva": "The shine in your Japan, the sparkle in your China..."
News
- One issue of Private Eye, covering the scandal after Jacqui Smith's husband used her expense account to buy adult films, ran with the joke "At least he's not a banker!", the unspoken pun being that he is however (literally) a wanker.
- Private Eye also often refer to themselves as an "organ". On the obvious level, it's a pun on the fact that the eye is an organ, the Stealth Pun comes in with the fact that this then makes them a "Private Organ".
- Stealth Running Gag - A Private Eye Caption Competition photo showed Chris Woodhead (former Chief School Inspector, who had a relationship with an ex-student) and a teenage girl looking at a large book. The winning caption was "Look, there it is, next to Kenya." - the suggestion being that they really were discussing Uganda.
- Rachel Maddow has nicknamed the fillibuster "The Tarantino" because it kills bills.
Newspaper Comics
- In The Wizard Of Id a visitor to the untrustworthy King's castle notices that the King's flag consists of a pair of black X's on a white background. The visitor asks for the name of this emblem. The king moves on to another pun before it mentioned the king is represented by Double Crosses.
- This Mallard Fillmore strip. The punchline sounds almost like a parody of his usual Strawman Political rants; eventually someone figured out it's a Stealth Pun. (Because NASCAR fans are "race-ists".)
- A recent (late 2009) Housebroken strip had DJ Dog mentioning his plans to expand his empire. His plans include a line of handbags called DJ Doggie Bags, a soft drink called DJ Doggie Dew, and a fashion and lifestyle magazine called DJ Doggie...Fashion Magazine. Maya says she can't think of a better name for the last one without them getting cancelled.
- Fox Trot sometimes has the characters making references to Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity being on TV - which of course means that the Fox family is watching Fox News.
- Man, does Scott Adams love this.
Radio
- From The Very World Of Milton Jones: ...and when we were naughty at school, we used to be sent to this man with no arms and no legs and no body. He was the Head. And if he wasn't in, we used to be sent to this other man with no arms and no legs and no body and a cowboy hat. He was Mr Roberts. (The correct punchline is, of course, "the deputy head".)
Theatre
- The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged):
"He [Joshua] slew the people of Midian, known as Midianites, the people of Girgash, known as Girgashites, and the people of Paris, known as the French."
Theme Parks
- Kennywood in Pittsburgh has an inverting pendulum ride called the Aero 360. It's shaped like... um, the Kennywood logo◊.
Toys
Video Games
- In Half-Life 2, Dr. Kleiner's pet headcrab is named Lamarr, and later confirms the pun when he can't find it.
Alyx: We'll get you a new headcrab.
Dr. Kleiner: There's only one Heddy!
- In case 2 of Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations, a valuable jewel is called the "Tear of Emanon". If you don't get it, read it backwards.
- In the third case, the murder victim was a computer programmer working for a company called Blue Screens. The phrase "blue screen of death" is never used.
- Maya comments that it "sounds like a really stable company".
- The final case features two characters using false names with the surname "Deauxnim". Considering the series' love of Punny Names, it's quite surprising that neither is called "Sue".
- Well, all the false first names for the "Deauxnims" end with an "s" sound. "Elise," "Laurice," etc. So, at least in Japanese, an "u" (as in, while, "Sue") would be added to the end, since every consonant in Japanese has to have a vowel sound following it.
- Except those are Woolseyisms, and they're completely different in the original Japanese.
- The character's name in Japanese is also a Stealth Pun: her pseudonym is "Elise", but her real name is "Maiko" (one translation of which is "dancer").
- The Ace Attorney series is famous for giving the characters incredibly punny names. Like Shelly de Killer, the assassin who leaves cards with the images of shells at the scene of the crime to draw suspicion from his clients. The killer with the conches.
- In Ace Attorney Investigations, it's eventually revealed that the Yatagarasu's Key has a handle that opens up to reveal a concealed knife blade. They key part has a bit shaped like a butterfly, and the way the handle opens makes it a literal butterfly knife.
- No points for guessing which animal is featured on the coat of arms of Aswan in Crusader Kings by Paradox Interactive. A lion.
- Not a swan?
- It's a Stealth Pun that's subverted by a deeper Stealth Pun. Whoa.
- At the beginning of the second episode of Tales of Monkey Island, Morgan tells Guybrush how much she admires him, and says she even learned how to hold her breath for five minutes. Guybrush informs her he can hold it for ten. "You mean that's true? I thought the stories were exaggerated! Impressive!" So in her opinion, the rumors of his breath...
- In Kingdom Hearts II, Namine tells Kairi at one point to "Believe in yourself", whilst trying to convince her to step through a dark portal. If you don't get it, remember that Namine is Kairi's Nobody.
- Almost certainly unintentional, but a large element of the plot of Sonic The Hedgehog 2006 is Princess Elise's budding romantic feelings for the titular anthropomorphic hero. Thus making her a fur Elise.
- The head of Pokemon's mafia-esque Team Rocket is named Giovanni, making him Don Giovanni.
- Also, Spoink and Grumpig are pig-like creatures adorned with pearls. Pearls before swine?
- The most powerful axe in most modern Castlevania games is the Golden Axe. In Dawn Of Sorrow, Yoko is able to make said weapon even more powerful by combining it with a boss's soul. Specifically, she adds Death.
- In Thief: Deadly Shadows, one mission requires you to break into a clock tower operated by the Hammerites (colloquially, the Hammers) and sabotage the mechanism, causing the clock to stop. In other words, you have to Stop Hammer Time.
- In Bowser's Inside Story, there is a character named Broque Monsieur who speaks with a heavy French accent and is made out of blocks. If you try saying his name with a fake French accent, it sounds like you're saying "block monster".
- Or, of course, Mr. Block.
- That's also a normal Punny Name; it refers to a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. If you add a fried egg to the top, you get a Croque-madame. Hee...
- Of course there's also a Madame Broque, his ex.
- Also in that game, the villain Fawful, who is from the Beanbean Kingdom, has a pig henchman named Midbus, making them pork and beans.
- Midbus also has spikes down his spine so he's also a razorback and when he gets ice powers he can give Bowser a cold. A little coincidence with a recent panic.
- In Mass Effect, when accessing a computer system in a trashed laboratory, the computers personality asks you: "It looks like you are trying to restore this facility. Would you like help?"
- One response option is labeled "Crap. A pop-up"
- If you buy Mass Effect 2: The Collector's Edition, you get some extra content: namely suit of armour and a rifle modelled after those of the Collectors, the chief enemy in the game.
- Quarians bear the name of their home ship in their names, which can be somewhat embarrassing if the ship name is ridiculous, as is the case with Admiral Zaal'Koris vas Qwib Qwib. If you ignore Tali's advice and ask him about the name, he'll mention that he's considered transferring to the Defrahnz or Iktomi.
- In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, one of your last tasks is to explore the derelict vessel Valhalla to obtain a "pirate code" that will grant access to one of the enemy's leviathans. But the only reason you need it is so that the leviathan can plot a course for you and the Federation fleet to follow to Phaaze, the living Phazon planet. So when you think about it, the pirate code is really more like a guideline...
- Samus manages to kill a B.O.X. security robot infected by the X parasites in Metroid Fusion. If you've been paying attention to the naming scheme for X victims, this makes it an "X-B.O.X."
- Guilty Gear XX has two characters with connections to each other named Eddie and Venom. Would you believe that one of them is a black shape-changing symbiote who combined with a human and went on to control his body?
- That's subtle?
- Considering that the symbiote is the one named Eddie...
- Brutal Legend features a demon named Fletus who's obsessed with cars and racing. No-one mentions that this makes him a speed demon.
- Or that if he ever got more than one, he'd have a fleet of cars.
- In Katawa Shoujo, the protagonist Hisao is hospitalized after a confession of love provokes his arrythmia and gives him a heart attack. The girl in question eventually breaks ties with Hisao, which is one of the many reasons he's depressed at the start of the game. In other words, Hisao's got a broken heart.
- In Team Fortress 2, one of the Demoman's unlockable weapons is the Eyelander, a big Scottish BFS. Since it's a Scottish BFS, that makes it a claymore. However, there's more than one type of weapon called a claymore. The aforementioned type of sword, and a kind of bomb.
- There's also the strong possibility his real name is Angus...
- Do not forget the line "DON'T RUN! IS JUST HAM!" when eating the Sandvich (a ham and/or baloney sandwich) as the Heavy, a character who is extrememly boisterous and over the top.
- And the Sniper's camper van. A "camper" in FPS terminology is a guy who rarely moves from one particular spot to kill people. Which is something snipers usually do.
- Huh. I thought it had something to do with the fact that "sniper" was originally used in fowl hunting terminology for hunters skilled enough to shoot a snipe, a bird that's infamously difficult to shoot. And given he's dressed in a bush hat and hunting garb, and that he drives around a camper van...
- Similarly, the "Meet the Engineer" video has him sitting at a campfire. Guess what one of the main Engineer strategies is.
- Nezumi Man has Milky Nezumi, who doesn't attack with dairy products (like Butter Nezumi), but stars. In case you're wondering, he named himself after our resident galaxy.
- Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door has two in the gameplay machanics. the first is Ms. Mowz's standard attack, a slap that ignores enemy defences and the fact that machine type enemies are easy to freeze with ice attacks, (one of the hints old Wonkey tells you).
- The text based game 'Scapeghost' had you as detective Alan Chance killed during an undercover drugs operation and coming back from the dead to take revenge. You are literally the Ghost of A Chance.
- Duksana Pond.
- The newest Touhou game, Double Spoiler, is another camera-based Gaiden Game starring the reporter Aya Shameimaru. Given how much fans love Aya, one has to wonder why? Well, it's been joked that Aya is ZUN's girlfriend. And ZUN is apparently aware of this, because he's releasing Double Spoiler on White Day, i.e. the day that boys give gifts back to their girlfriends to thank them for the Valentine's Day chocolate.
- From Viewtiful Joe 2: The Black Film.
- Sheep Man from Mega Man 10. He's an electric-themed robot master.
- In the same vein, Mareep and Flaafy are electric-type sheep Pokemon.
- From Metal Gear Solid:
Meryl: I'm not green!
Snake: Oh yes you are.
(The joke is, this conversation takes place over codec. Meryl is, in fact, green. Just like everyone else.)
- The American release date of Blaz Blue: Continuum Shift is July 20, roughly 19 days after the Japanese release. 7/20. As in the 720 degree motion required for Iron Tager's Genesic Emerald Tager Buster distortion drive. REAL SOVIET RELEASE DATE! Which was now turned into a Missed Moment Of Awesome instead.
- The main characters of Mega Man ZX start out delivering packages. Consider the pronunciation of the game's name in British English, and think of a famous company name that rhymes with it.
- While he was reverse-engineering the Wii's architecture, Segher discovered that the Hollywood processor (officially the graphics processor) contains a tiny ARM core in addition to its normal ATI core. *
It handles apploading and security authentication, though obviously this wasn't known at the time. Since it wasn't documented anywhere (not even in the developer's guide!) it didn't have a name, so he nicknamed it "Starlet." Because it's a little piece of Hollywood.
- In the seventh Fire Emblem game, three Pegasus Knight sisters share similar names. The first two, Florina and Fiora, are Latin words for "flower," while third sister Farina's name means "flour."
- In Red Dead Redemption, a high-stakes poker game in Mexico results in several people pointing their guns at each other. Someone notes that "There must be a name for this."
- The general of the Cornerian forces in Star Fox is named Pepper. Which means he had to have been a sergeant at some point in the past.
- Long before the N64 version, the Nintendo Power comics (which promoted the then-recently released Super NES game) actually incorporated this pun into one chapter.
Web Comics
- This Irregular Webcomic strip. Also, comparing "hobbit" and "habit" is so common that the author promised to only do it once every 100 strips. Mostly averted, though... The author is abnormally fond of puns. Somehow, he makes it work.
- Not to mention this strip. ( "I'll get you, store of hay! And your little togs, too!") In which he mentions this very article.
- Hmmm. I wrote the comic, and that's not the pun I had in mind...
- I'm guessing it's the more obvious stealth pun "Don't make a hobbit of it!" that's intended.
- Another example: in this strip, Lambert's hobbit-pun is ruined by a (rather ominous, but that's not the point) cough.
- In this episode of Striptease, in a flashback to high school, Max and Em are squirted with red paint by another student, who is then caught by the teacher... red-handed.
- In this episode of Adventures in ASCII (a strip where the characters are letters and other printables), Miss B reacts with a stony silence upon learning that Bold H is taking the guest Miss Delta (she's from @hens) down the river to see the estuary.
Miss B: ...
Bold H: What?
Miss B: I didn't say anything.
Bold H: It was the way you didn't say it.
- Here's another one from the same comic about an injured number. Apparently a three falling in a forest does indeed make a sound.
- This xkcd comic doubles the stakes. It's based on another joke with an Stealth Punchline.
- Tally HO, a somewhat obscure webcomic, does the Stealth Pun here with a common cry of Windows supporters and creators alike. "It's not a bug, It's a feature." This isn't original; it's an old geek joke.
- Allegedly someone at Microsoft actually has such a car.
- You actually named it "Variety"?
- The guy in white is Bobby, the incarnation of Life.
- Nerf Now with a classic riddle and a..."modern classic" Dracula. "What is a man?"
- Chopping Block Here.
- This Precocious strip, which was actually explained by its creator:
"Et Tu, Brute?" - Famous line from Julius Caesar.
The Et family really should know better than to go out in pairs.
- This Nukees. "Duck Orations" would be "Quacks."
- In this Order Of The Stick strip: Fleeing the burning city, Elan stops to break into a music shop and steals a lute. The setup is palpable, but the inevitable pun goes unsaid.
- Not to mention here, in which Roy must get familiar with Blackwing.
- In Triangle and Robert, one of the plotlines involves Triangle fighting things to recover a series of "Dragon Circles," which are lettered A, B, C, etc. When he gets to the 25th one, Dragon Circle Y, he discovers that's the end of them, there are only 25. "Somehow, avoiding the pun makes it even worse."
- In The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob, Bob's unseen next door neighbor is named Ray, a reference to the old comedy team, Bob And Ray. Even more obscurely, another unseen neighbor is Mrs. Spitoonelli (a play on "spitoon," of course), with a husband named Harold. It is later mentioned her first name is Maude, referring to the Black Comedy movie Harold And Maude. And in Galatea's French adventure, she rides a Vespa with the name "Princess" on the side.
- In this filler strip of Keychain Of Creation, we're treated to the Orphaned Punchline of a (naughty) joke that ends with "What I really meant is that we'd need cunning translators." See, in Exalted, your translation ability is measured by your score in "Linguistics", so apparently the joke began with her telling the king that she needed... I'll leave you to figure out the rest.
- Dr Mc Ninja provides you with this image of a train accident to use if your forum discussion gets off topic it has been derailed. Additionally, your train of thought has been broken.
- Also, there's one bit of alt text that imagines Dr. Mc Ninja being followed on a quest by his refrigerator. A subsequent panel gives alt text of the fridge huffing as it tries to keep up. His refrigerator is running.
- Shortpacked! features a character named Leslie Bean, who is, as her name suggests, a lesbian... but the more subtle pun comes from the fact that she joined the main cast around the time Ethan lost his role as Only Sane Man, and now tends to be the voice of reason in Seinfeldian Conversations and hijinks, making her... the straight man.
- This◊ Perry Bible Fellowship strip has one as an added bonus joke: Imagine what the hammer is saying in the last panel.
- VG Cats gives us Super Effective, a side webcomic, giving us breaking news of the death of a legend...Elvis. Note which pokemon is giving us the news.
- This Arthur King Of Time And Space strip has the stated punchline "Beware of Greek bearins GI Fs", but leaves out the obvious "Trojan horse" joke.
- Sluggy Freelance [1] shows what happens when you try to go through a dungeon designed for several players by yourself in a MMORPG like World Of Warcraft. When Torg tries to do it, all the monsters get together and hand him a gift. When he opens it to see what it is, it turns out he is, in fact, getting his ass handed to him.
- Bloody Urban features a character with blue hair named Pandora
- An early El Goonish Shive comic could have easily made a Hammertime joke
- The number of examples in Homestuck (see the works page) seem to cement that if we had individual pages for Stealth Pun, Homestuck would be one of the first.
- This Everyday Heroes strip shows the characters scowling at all the taxes taken out of their paychecks. In addition to the usual federal, state, local, Medicare, and FICA, there are also deductions for "snieca", "hearta", "pollex" (Latin for "thumb") and "Persian 9' X 12'" ... in other words, sneak attacks, heart attacks, thumb tacks, and carpet tacks.
Web Original
- A recurring thread on Something Awful is "Real pictures that look like photoshops". And eventually, someone will post this◊. It's a photo shop.
- Fark.com is enamored of headlines with StealthPuns of its more memorable memes. For example: "Duke upset in NCAA tournament. If only there were some pithy catch phrase to describe their ineptitude."
- Vista-tan has huge tracts of land.
- And we all know huge tracts of land are vistas.
- Plus, we all know Vista was a huge bust.
- Unforgotten Realms has Professor Strap, who after a memory erasing spell goes by the name of "Jacques". Jacques Strap.
- Clef and Dimitri Hit the Road: At the very end. Alas, poor Yoric, I've never seen him before in my life.
- Possibly unintentional, but it was combined (or rather, not combined) with a Running Gag in The Nostalgia Critic review of Jack Frost. I WAS FROZEN TODAY!
- There's a possible one in episode 45 of Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series. When Melvin asks how Bakura knew he worked for 4kids:
Bakura: Let's just say I put two and two together.
- Another possible one in episode 31:
Serenity: Hey Ash?
Annoying Kid: Yeah Misty?
Serenity: The doctor told me you have cancer.
(Beat)
Annoying Kid: Oh... Is that some sort of new Pokémon that can't be found in the Johto region?
Native to the Hoenn region, which is directly after the Johto region, is a Pokémon called Cacnea. Which cannot be found in the Johto region.
- Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: Moist went on a double date with Bait and Switch. He thought he was going to end up with Bait, but...
- Dr. Horrible is full of this: On his blog, the Doctor mentions transporting several gold bars from a safe. He lifts up a bag of brownish "cumin-smelling" liquid and says that the molecules shifted in the transportation Bouillon/gold bullion
- One of the guests at Donkey's funeral in Weebl And Bob is a giant ape. Chris identifies him as Donkey's father ("He doesn't like to talk about it."), but the character's name is never mentioned.
- Occasionally done in AMV Hell. For instance, the first clip in the third collection is Grenadier, an anime where women reload pistols with their cleavage, coupled with the instrumental opening to Nightwish's "Dark Chest of Wonders".
- In this video, which recreates the infamous Faces Of Evil intro, look at what the Soldier is drinking before he says "This peace is what all true warriors strive for!". It's Jarate, Peace and Piss have a very similar sound, so it may or may not have been intentional.
- Fools Gold there is a mention of a Giant Panda who drives a truck containing stolen ingots of lanthanide metals. His truck is #71 and his name is Lu. 71 is the atomic number of the lanthanide Lutetium. Its symbol in the periodic table is Lu. Lu is also a common Chinese surname.
Western Animation
- A lot of the names in Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends are puns, especially when combined with other characters' names. For instance: Blooregard Q. Kazoo, thus Bloo Q. Kazoo kukukachu, Cheese and Louise, and others.
- Cheese is a veritable minefield of these puns, two of which (Bloo Cheese, Mac & Cheese) are spelled out in his introductory episode.
- Warpath from The Transformers is an Autobot who is best known for his Verbal Tic of adding onomatopoeia to his dialog... to the point where he might have Tourette's. The kicker? He turns into a tank and his upper body is made from the TURRET.
- In Kim Possible, when we are first introduced to Team Go, Ron asks why Mego wears a purple costume. Team leader Hego replies, "He's a shrinker" and drops the subject. He's a shrinking violet (but not a Shrinking Violet, mind you); Warner/DC would not be amused.
- Mego's power is to shrink to the size of an action figure. He shares his name with a popular line of action figures from the 70s and 80s, including the unintuitive pronunciation.
- Austin's fur color in The Backyardigans.
- Also in The Backyardigans, in the episode "Mission to Mars", Austin controls a Mars Rover named Rover. This Trouper also realized the joke about this also meaning the car Austin Rover.
- In the The Fairly Oddparents book-jumping episode "Shelf Life":
Wanda: Egad, he turned the Three Musketeers into the three Mouse— (Timmy then swiftly covers her mouth and teleports them out.)
- And later in the same episode:
Cosmo: So he gets into a physics book, what's the worst that could happen? Timmy: He could turn gravity into gravy. He could turn the planets into plants. He could turn Uranus into— Wanda: Oh my God, we have to stop him!
- The segment "Dread and Breakfast" has a cameo by two Shaggy and Scooby-Doo lookalikes. Not-Shaggy refers to Not-Scooby as "Doob", which would probably make "Doob"'s name Doobie.
- Don't forget how Timmy's fairies are usually disguised as goldfish, so Timmy has A Fish Called Wanda
- George Frankly, of Math Net on Square One TV, also visited the island of Noman. (Back when Kate Monday was still his partner, and he was still with the LAPD.) He explained the name as being of Native American origin.
- Surprisingly, Snorks was full of this. Allstar's pet octopus, Occy, goes berserk when he's called icky. As in the skin parasite
- One episode of Tiny Toon Adventures has a Credits Gag explaining that Plucky Duck was "inadvertently omitted from 'The Name Game.'"
- In fact, Wikipedia warns that using Alice, Dallas, Tucker, Chuck, Buck, Huck, Bart, Art, Mitch, Rich, Richie, Maggie, or Danny will result in "profanity or rude language."
- The Rugrats movie had Charlotte say towards the beginning of the movie, when referring to the soon-to-be-born Dil, "You know what they say - born under Venus, look for a—" which is then interrupted by her cellphone ringing.
- Robot Chicken once had a shot of the Fourth Doctor standing on the first base of a baseball diamond. After waiting a second, the Doctor says "Do ya get it?"
- I thought the joke was the "Senreich-Green University" sign. But when you think about it, that joke make sense.
- What about it being the Fourth Doctor on a square?
- The Simpsons did it a couple times with the limerick about the man from Nantucket. For the record, "There once was a man from Nantucket/Whose cock was so long he could suck it/And he said, with a grin/As he wiped off his chin/"If my ear were a cunt I would fuck it!."
- "The" limerick? There's dozens with that starting line.
- Once:
Barney: (doing handsprings) I am the very model of a modern major general!
Homer: That's nothing! (doing cartwheels) There once was a man from Nantucket, who... D'oh! (runs into wall)
- And again:
Homer: You know, I once knew a man from Nantucket.
Bart: And?
Homer: Let's just say the stories about him are greatly exaggerated.
- And again:
Homer: There once was this guy from an island off the coast of Massachusetts... Nantucket, I think it was. Anyway, he had the most unusual personal characteristic, which was, um...
- Another instance not using the man from Nantucket limerick, maybe even being a parody of its usage, comes in an episode where Krusty the Clown is giving Homer an old trampoline of his and talks about dirty limericks ("There once was a man named Enis...").
- So WHO had the most limericks written about them - was it the man named Enis, or the woman from Regina?
- Another from the Simpsons is the traffic guy for Channel Six News, Arnie Pie, who very deliberately avoids the painfully obvious pun on his name; his segment, live from the traffic chopper, is called "Arnie in the Sky."
- Still another: Krusty the Clown once mentioned that he and Bette Midler once owned a horse together, and named it "Krudler." For those who didn't get it, the more appropriate name is revealed in the DVD Commentary of the episode: Misty
- Alternatively, the far less appropriate Busty
- The Simpsons also gives us "Sneed's Feed & Seed (Formerly Chuck's)"
- In the episode Sideshow Bob Roberts, the character playing the role of "Deep Throat" is Mr. Smithers.
- The "Flaming Moe" drink, formerly known the "Flaming Homer."
- Bart's teacher is named Mrs. Krabappel (pronounced "kra-BOPPLE"), and no one ever bothers to point out that her name is essentially "crabapple."
- "I'm Dick Tracy! Take that, Pruneface! Now I'm Pruneface. Take that, Dick Tracy! Now I'm Prune Tracy. Take that-" (Is physically subdued)
- In The Tick, there is a running gag where several villains are never actually named, but they are very obvious visual puns. So we have an evil boy genius with see-through plastic cranium, but never actually called "Brain Child". Or the man dressed as someone's granny, obsessed with stealing inventions is never called "The mother of invention".
- The Tick is pretty famous with this trope for villain names like Chairface Chippendale, a chair faced in a tuxedo (Chippendale is also the name of a furniture) and Milton Roe. Milt means fish sperm and Roe means fish eggs.
- Surprisingly, The Powerpuff Girls does this at one point: despite the series' tendency towards the Incredibly Lame Pun, the Mayor's secretary is referred to only as "Miss Bellum." Given her brain capacity relative to that of the Mayor, it's not hard to guess what her first name is... Sarah.
- They have stated her name at least once. However, it was in fact Sarah.
- The Mayor is so old his first secretary must have been Antebellum.
- Also, Him looks like Satan and dresses like Santa Claus. He also has claws. This is never commented on directly.
- In Futurama, Fry's grandfather is named "Enis". His rank is "Private".
- The Central Bureaucracy has a giant Rubik's cube made out of Rubik's cubes made out of offices. I call it the Rubik's Cubicle.
- Batman The Brave And The Bold "Deep Cover for Batman", Batman thinks he may have found an ally in The Scarlet Scarab based on a conversation he heard, but it turns out to just provide misdirection, meaning that the Scarlet Scarab was a Red Herring.
- In the Justice League episode "The Terror Beyond", Hawkgirl taunts Icthultu when he wishes to speak to her: "Nothing to say! I have a gesture for you, but my hands are tied." That's right, Hawkgirl wants to flip him the bird.
- Remember, it's the DCAU.
- In the episode "The Balance" Wonder Woman receives a message from Zeus saying "By Decree of Zeus Father of Olympus it is so ordered: Dianna of Themyscira will travel to Tartarus and set right that which has been disturbed." She starts to respond with "He's telling me to go to..." but is interrupted by Hermes saying "Basically".
- And in "Epilogue", the team is up against the Royal Flush Gang. One of them is wearing kabuki make-up, with a top knot and swinging a katana. By process of elimination, he's the Jack.
- The entire RFG is like that. Ten looks like Bo Derek from 10, Queen is a transformed guy (drag queen), and King looks like Jack "King" Kirby.
- Subverted in American Dad:
Hayley: The doctor said you have angina * This is a real disease . Francine: Which the doctor said sounds a lot like vagina but I don't hear it.
- Another episode has a secondary story revolving around bees. What's another term for "secondary story"?
- In an episode of Avatar The Last Airbender, the scene after greeting Suki in a robe, under candlelight, a rose in his mouth, Sokka is seen wearing a flower necklace - he got lei'd.
- In an episode of Family Guy where Stewie and Brian go to a Disney universe, this universe's Joe is a coffee pot. Joe. Coffee.
- Of course, that's a spoof of Beauty And The Beast, where the teapot is Mrs. Potts and her grandson is a teacup with a chip in it...named Chip.
- Also from Beauty And The Beast, the talking candle holder is Lumiere (light in French), the clock is named Cogsworth, and the name of Gaston's sidekick Le Fou means, adequately, "the fool".
- Teen Titans has one of the first type in the episode Can I Keep Him?. While fighting Johnny Rancid's new "pet", Rancid remarks that the beast is "kicking [Robin's]-", and is then interrupted by two green hooves to the gut. One shot later, it is revealed that Beast Boy has, indeed, turned into an ass.
- In A Matter Of Loaf And Death, Wallace attempts to stop Piella's bicycle by having Gromit throw tea cakes between his knees and the bicycle and squeezing them. He says he should have tried the granary rolls, which makes sense; after all, Let us break bread together on our knees... no?
- In the third season of Ben 10 Alien Force, Kevin ends up stuck in a composite form, with various body parts made out of various materials, from metal to crystal. In particular, everything from his groin down is made of wood.
- In Spongebob Squarepants episode "Karate Island" one of the enemies is named "The Tickler." He also happens to be French. Making him.. A French Tickler
- In Chip And Dale Rescue Rangers, the Team Pet is a fly named Zipper. The fact that this is a pun is never brought up.
- Late in the third season of Ben 10, Ben's antagonists consisted largely of aliens that resembled Universal/Hammer horror monsters, and he gained the ability to become each of them. First was a werewolf, which he cleverly named Benwolf. (Insert Gwendel joke here.) Next, a mummy, which was called Benmummy in the credits. The third villain, Dr. Vicktor, turned out to be a Frankenstein's Monster pastiche. The credits called the resulting transformation Benvicktor, avoiding the more obvious choice: Benstein.
- For years, the opening sequence of Animaniacs got away with showing Yakko getting lunchmeat shoved down the front of his trousers, while all three Warners sang "there's bologna in our slacks". Yep, they played "Hide The Sausage" in full view on a kid's show...
- In the South Park episode "The F Word", the head editor of the dictionary is Emmanuel Lewis.
- In the Pinky And The Brain episode "It's Only A Paper World," the title characters attempt to Take Over The World by building a life-sized replica of the planet Earth out of paper-mâché and luring the population onto it so they can rule the real Earth without interference. All the music in the episode is based on themes from Dvorak's Symphony No. 9: otherwise known as the New World symphony.
- In The Great Mouse Detective, Basil and Dr. Dawson walk into a bar to find information on Ratigan, who lures them into his lair and into a gigantic trap. The name of the bar they enter? The Rat Trap.
- In one episode of The Spectacular Spider Man, Peter hears a radio informing everyone about an attack by Sandman at the harbor. Then it says: "Now for an oldie but a goodie by the Chordettes" before the next scene. One of the Chordettes' most famous songs? Mr. Sandman.
- In the Looney Tunes "A Gruesome Twosome", two alley cats try to fool Tweety by wearing a horse costume. The one in front reveals himself and tells us "I'm the horse's head!" The one in back doesn't.
- Beavis And Butthead actually subverted this once. They find an injured bird, nurse it back to health, and Butthead sends it on its way by flipping it into the air. Beavis then takes the stealth out of the pun by telling him "Hey, Butthead. You flipped the bird."
- Maggie the housefly's older brother in The Buzz On Maggie is named Aldrin... for "Buzz" Aldrin.
Real Life
- There are a number of riddles of the form "What's the difference between a X and a Y?" where only the first half of the punchline is ever given, to avoid speaking profanity. Suffice it to say there are many half-punchlines with the word cunning in them, followed by a word that rhymes with hunt and doesn't start with the letter C.
- What's the difference between (annoying female celebrity) and the Panama Canal? Well, the Panama Canal is a busy ditch ...
- In the famous F.A.O. Schwarz Toy Store, New York City, there are a pair of life-sized stuffed animals over the display case for board games. They don't say, but they are, of course, cheetahs.
- While certainly not intentional, one of the largest elevator manufacturers in the world is the Schindler group. Schindler's Lift.
- A possible Stealth Visual Pun: as Richard Hammond pointed out on Top Gear, the Lamborghini Miura was built with doors shaped so that, when both were open, they looked like the horns of a bull. Lamborghini's logo is a bull, and the Miura is a breed of bulls.
- Arguably the AT-4 disposable rocket launcher. You'd only really get it if you knew a lot about guns, but it fires 84mm rockets. AT-4. 84. Geddit?
- Solaris uses the magic hexidecimal number 0xDEFEC8ED in certain debug outputs... specifically, core dumps.
- Cockney Rhyming Slang.
- The local highschool for Papillion, Nebraska, has "The Monarchs" for its mascot. Given that the town's name comes from the French word papillon, or butterfly...
- The mascot Arkansas School for the Deaf: Leopards.
- The reasoning behind this may have originally been mentioned with its first usages, but the standard explanation of any cryptographic system is that Alice is sending a coded message to Bob, and Eve is trying to intercept it. She is, of course, e(a)vesdropping.
- Allies are named Alice, Bob, Carol, and Dave, while Eve is the Enemy.
- any "e" name works, of course, meaning the selection of Eve is probably a stealth pun.
- When a US military weather station experiences an earthquake, it is required to fill out a SEXX bulletin describing the event and any damage that occurs. Yes, you disseminate the SEXX bulletin when the Earth moves.
- The US military combat dog handler training programme has code K-9.
- I'm not sure that's subtle enough to be a stealth pun...
- Mensa groups in the Chicago area host an annual "HalloweeM" gathering, in which extremely smart people dress up to embody the pun of their choice. As these costumes are designed by, and intended for the amusement of, Mensa-caliber intellects, the puns are usually coy enough to qualify for this trope.
- The canting arms in heraldry. A canting arms is a coat-of-arms which represent the realization of one's surname. Sometimes they can be witty puns of the bearer's name.
- The official Dive Sign used by professional scuba divers to indicate they forgot to bring something along is to point at your eye, then your left nipple, and finally your rump. Eye ... Left Tit ... Behind.
- This shirt design took me a while to finally get.
- I don’t get it.
- I once saw a T-shirt with Lenin, Mao, Castro, and Stalin, all in little hats and carrying drinks.
- Many of the shirts from Woot.Com are pun based. Good luck if you get the random pack and then finally get it while in the middle of the street.
- Actress Jean Harlow was allegedly at dinner with Margot Asquith (wife of Herbert Henry Asquith, the former British Prime Minister), and kept pronouncing Mrs. Asquith's name with the 't' at the end. Eventually Asquith told her "No, Jean, the 'T' is silent, like in 'Harlow'".
- In post-war Europe, America ran various covert operations to gather intelligence from Soviet soldiers. One particularly successful campaign in Italy hinged on the fact that getting gonorrhoea was a serious matter for a Soviet soldier; it guaranteed a recall back to the Soviet Union (where none of them wanted to go back to) and perhaps harsher punishment. So, the Americans got in touch with a doctor who ran a clinic that secretly treated gonorrhoea and recruited the doctor, in exchange for money and free medicine. Then, the doctor would pick up anything he could from casual conversation and see if there were any likely defectors in the group. What did the Americans call this endeavor? Operation Claptrap.
|
|
JustBugsMe 
Quotes 
Analysis 
