Overly Long Gags in comedy.
- Martin Ljung's "Fingal Olsson"
monologue, in which he's trying to explain what makes a joke funny by telling the same joke over and over, varying the punchline slightly each time. The joke is less than hilarious to begin with, but after about seven repetitions... - Bill Hicks would generally try to keep to his schedule, but when he was doing a joke about an object of his ire—and especially if the crowd was enjoying it—he would milk it for all it was worth.
- Jim Gaffigan's Hot Pockets routine—at some point the joke becomes the fact that he's still talking about Hot Pockets. He has similarly extensive bits about ketchup and bacon, and he lampshades it continually with these little sotto-voiced asides designed to mimic an audience member's reaction to the fact that he's gotten twenty minutes of material out of bacon.
- Lewis Black's rants in general, but especially the one about frozen embryos. "THEY'RE FROZEN! THEY'RE FROZEN! THEY'RE FROZEN! THEY'RE FROZEN! THEY'RE FROZEN! THEY'RE FROZEN! THEY'RE FROZEN! THEY'RE FROZEN! THEY'RE FROZEN! THEY'RE FROZEN! THEY'RE FROZEN! THEY'RE FROZEN! THEY'RE FROZEN! THEY'RE FROZEN! THEY'RE LIKE MINI PIZZAS!"
- Dane Cook lampshades his whole style in Vicious Circle when he finally comments, "This has gone way too far, Way too long," about his depiction of what would happen if people really went in a B-line.
- Tim Vine has a fairly famous routine in which he tries to catch a pen behind his ear. It goes on for far, far too long, going through several cycles, but the audience are still laughing.
- But in the end he does finally catch the pen, to thunderous applause. It's never clear whether he was just faking his previous failures, or alternatively whether his eventual success was just a fluke.
- He then proceeds to do it again with a hockey stick. Mercifully this time he also wears a comically-large fake ear and it only takes him a couple of goes.
- Stewart Lee, the 41st greatest standup comedian, is a fan of this trope. Making a half-hour routine based entirely around Tom O'Connor, a cruise ship, his mum, and a sardine funny is an achievement.
- A shorter but very effective example: [1]
- A shorter but very effective example: [1]
- During his bit where he tells about how he was thrown out of a bar, Ron White pretends to recite a message sent in Morse Code. In his own words, "this part takes awhile". He then explains what the message was and says, "But those of you who know Morse Code already knew that."
- John Mulaney has a bit where he describes going to a diner with his friend, and his friend rigs the jukebox to play Tom Jones' "What's New Pussycat?" over and over and over with one case of "It's Not Unusual" being thrown into the mix. Hilarity ensues.
- Eddie Izzard - for instance, when he mentions offhandedly that Engelbert Humperdinck is dead (no he isn't) (he is) (he's not) (shake) (nod) (shake) (nod)...
- Kristen Schaal is a horse!
- Brian Regan does a bit about sending an overly formal and ridiculously long response to a misfired "Yo yo, we clubbin' tonight?" text message ("To whom it may concern..."). He reads out the whole thing very slowly while miming texting.
- Patton Oswalt often combines this with Genius Bonus for bits that are hilarious partly because he keeps going further and further out; i.e. his bit about insane chefs.
- Steve Martin tries repeatedly to do a bit about stereo equipment. It's hilarious.
- George Carlin was fond of these, especially later in his career. Probably his best example is Coast To Coast Emergency from Life is Worth Losing.
- Subverted by Daniel Tosh after his bit about Tourette's.Daniel: I think two examples is enough; next joke.
- The also plays it straight, very frequently:
Daniel: Do you like how I start jokes with mass appeal and continue 'til only six people have a clue what I'm talking about? - The classic Who's on First? routine works solely because of this.
- David Letterman does this often. And sometimes it is done to him.
- Adam Sandler is fond of this in his comedy CDs, perhaps most noticeable in the sketch satirizing Carrie: "NOOOOOO! They're all gonna laugh at you!"
- Margaret Cho does these as well. One that particularly comes to mind is the 'Asian chicken salad' bit where she goes on for several minutes miming a displeased samurai.
- "So I was on the ship, with 800 lesbians. We can't get off. So much drama. 'Were you looking at her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her? WELL, WERE YOU?!' We all got on the same cycle."
- The "Start-up Sound" practical joke from Prangstgrup.
- Making 'The Aristocrats' as overly long as it is overly, offensively obscene is a competition between comedians. This is Gilbert Gottfried's version of it.
- Hugh Fink does a routine where he demonstrates his (quite impressive) skills on the violin. He claims that audiences get nervous when they see him bring it out, and theorizes that people find classical music intimidating because they can never tell when the songs are ending. He then demonstrates by playing a song that "ends" about ten times before he actually stops.
- The "Urban Spaceman" number by Monty Python note follows a similar model - the tambourine player keeps breaking off her dance when she thinks the song is over, only for him to launch into the next verse. When he finally ends the song abruptly and walks off, she keeps dancing until he comes back and drags her off stage.
- In the TV series Alan Davies' Teenage Revolution, Davies and Mark Steel reminisce about an act which appeared on the UK alternative comedy circuit around the time they were starting out in the mid-80s. It consisted of a man with a block of ice and a power saw, who would simply come on and start carving the ice - not into anything in particular, just attacking it with a saw. It got a laugh at the start, then about 40 seconds in, and then a minute or so in...and then he'd just keep going until he got booed off.
- German sketch example: Nikolausi If you can watch it without a growing urge to maim the author, congrats for your steel nerves.
- Same author, same vein: Der Softbiss (Quick'n'dirty Translation: Various brands of crispbread are presented, all with the characteristic "scronch" bite sound. The last one...is a softbite. Yeah, now you know why Germany lost the war.)
- Same author, same vein: Der Softbiss
- The vast majority of the humour found in "The Purple Joke". Naturally the teller of the joke can drag it out for as long as he or she likes.
- Noel Fielding likes these. The best one is when he pretends to be a bluebottle for most of his five-minute skit, with absolutely no build-up or explanation. He does lampshade it though - "I've got three hours of this". It goes on for so long that it's funny, then goes through boring back to funny, back to boring, and then gets even funnier.
- Paul F. Tompkins has a comedy bit in which he has a conversation with a migrant worker. He then calls out how the migrant worker’s accent is all over the place and suggests that they end the bit. The migrant worker admits that the bit should have stopped a long time ago, but will just keep going until all of the audience’s goodwill has evaporated. Even then, he continues on a long-winded tangent lamenting the bit's length.
- Dutch comedian Toon Hermans had a sketch where he would ask his band leader to fetch a tennis racket and balls from his car. He would then proceed to wait 5 (literal) minutes for him to return, being mostly quiet or making small banter with the audience.
- Mitch Benn is the 37th Beatle ends with "The Long Medley", Mitch's parody of the Medley from Abbey Road. Yep, all of it. The "Golden Slumbers" pastiche acknowledges this was possibly a mistake "'Cos I've run out of things to say/And we're still only halfway/Through the long medley", followed by a version of "Carry That Weight" which goes "Boy, I think I'm flogging this joke, flogging this joke to death now".
- Jon Dore tells a joke that starts with "I think it's okay in a relationship when I let myself go, but I don't think it's okay when she lets herself go..." and then forgets the punchline. After beating himself up for it for a few minutes, he says not to worry, he did this joke on stage recently and he always uses a tape recorder to record his shows, so he pulls it out and cues up the tape to the right spot. Tape!Jon starts telling the same joke... and forgets the punchline in the exact same spot. But not to worry, because Tape!Jon also has a recording of him doing the joke. Tape!Tape!Jon starts telling the joke, and actually remembers the whole thing... but it's cut off only a few words into the punchline because Original!Jon recorded over it with music.
- Norman Lovett used to start his standup act by coming on stage and just standing there. The audience would wait for him to do something. Then there'd be a bit of nervous laughter. Then it would die down. Then Norman would continue to stand there. Then one person would laugh and Norman would turn to them in surprise, making everyone laugh. Then he'd continue to just stand there. In his memoir, Robert Llewellyn recalls that the first time he met Norman, he was asked to time this.At seven minutes twenty seconds, after a huge wave of laughter, Norman said "What?" and got a standing ovation.
- Canadian comedian Mark Forward (some of you may know him as the hockey coach from Letterkenny) has mastered these kinds of bits, and blended them with Black Comedy. He'll take a seemingly innocuous scenario, like feeding a chipmunk, or seeing hats at a convenience store, and create a long, elaborate and possibly tragic backstory for each. Most comics would riff on this concept for three or four minutes tops. Mark Forward goes nearly ten minutes on each, to the point that part of the joke is that these backstories are still going and keep getting more horrible.
- This "Knock Knock" Joke:A: Knock knock.B: Who's there?A: Banana.B: Banana who?A: Knock knock.(repeat enough times for B to get visibly annoyed, then...)B: Who's there?A: Orange.B: Oh... orange who?A: Orange you glad I didn't say "banana" again?
