Running Gag / TV Tropes

IMPORTANT NOTE: Since anyone can edit this wiki, a lot of the Running Gags listed here may have been removed or changed (especially if they would technically be considered Natter). Please keep that in mind while reading and/or editing this page.

---

• Whenever someone asks a question better suited to Trope Finder in Ask The Tropers, inevitably someone would mention a Big Green Banner (or by extension the Hulk) before said banner was removed. Even after the banner's removal, it still shows up on occasion.
• Egregious. It even has a place in the TV Tropes Drinking Game!
• Zardoz: The penis is evil.
• Many pages which reference the Red Dwarf character Ace (what a guy!) will contain the in-show response to his arrival. The page itself has three. TheAce.Live Action TV even lampshades it. What a guy.
• This Is a Drill with Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann references, and Grappling-Hook Pistol with Batman.
• Mind Screw and Gainax Ending potholed near Neon Genesis Evangelion.
• The the page for Attack of the The Eye Creatures duplicates every instance of the the word "the".
  • The.
• Any mention of the Reavers from Firefly invariably leads to the description of them raping you to death, eating your flesh and sewing your skin into their clothing, as well as the mention that if you're lucky it'll be ...In That Order.
  • Any mention of anything remotely sexy from Firefly will lead to someone going to their bunk...
• Is there an entry on this wiki that mentions Metal Gear Solid without either linking to Even the Guys Want Him or mentioning Snake's ass?
  • Metal Gear Solid, huh? Or an entry which doesn't mention the series' love of Parrot Exposition?
    • Love of Parrot Exposition?!
  • Also, "We think" on many entries about the series, particularly Metal Gear Solid 2.
• For WMG: "Character X is a Time Lord."
  • "Y is their TARDIS".
  • Character X is Haruhi.
  • "Series X is an Alternate Universe of Neon Genesis Evangelion."
  • "X is powered by Spiral Energy."
• Anyone who is a sufficiently Large Ham will get their name spelled in all-caps. Examples include:
  • BRIAN BLESSED
  • DAN GREEN
  • Batman: The Brave and the Bold's AQUAMAN.
• Certain characters have a sufficiently impressive Large Ham Title that Tropers like to include at every opportunity:
  • Captain Gordon, Defender of Earth (Yes, the bold text is part of the gag too.)
  • Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!
  • Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer!
• Frank Miller: whores, repetition, and the word goddamn. And repet— OW!
• The Twilight Saga's sparkling vampires.
• Every page mentioning ¡Mucha Lucha! would like to remind you that it takes place at the FOREMOST, WORLD RENOWNED, INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF LUCHA!!!!
• Every separate page in the Final Fantasy series is described as "The (number) entry in the (ridiculous adjective depicting massive body harm)ly popular Final Fantasy series". This gets lampshaded in the page for Final Fantasy XI, which is described as "thesaurus-exhaustingly popular".
  • There seem to be a lot of crunches, as well. One has to wonder how you make your toe do exercise crunches.
• Haruhi Suzumiya: "We've entered an endless recursion of time... Kyon-kun, denwa..." and it keeps going for a thousand more lines.
• Every instrument solo in the Van Halen pages.
• Check out the Department of Redundancy Department for a long running gag.
• On several pages, it opens with some variation of "Describe Topic Here," in such a way that demonstrates the article in question. For example, on the Team Fortress 2 page, it says "Pootiscription here," referencing the Heavy Weapons Guy's memetic quote "Pootispenser here" (Put dispenser here).
• Questioning Zordon's rules, especially with a Jerkass course of action, will usually result in a variation of "...and that is why you're not a Power Ranger" on the Power Rangers Headscratchers page.
• From Mister Miracle (2017): Darkseid Is.
• Almost every entry in Wearing a Flag on Your Head will make some reference to AMERICA somehow. Even if it's discussing something IN BRAZIL, or AUSTRALIA, or SOME OTHER COUNTRY.
• Loading....
• The page for Assassin's Creed II seems intent on reminding you that you FIGHT THE POPE!
• The D.N.Angel page pointing out that the series has lots and lots of Ho Yay.
• Deer being described as in season and tasting good smoked and/or made into sausage on the Disney Animated Canon Headscratchers Page.
• Check out the Department of Redundancy Department for a long running gag.
• The episode recap of Rassilon, and (name of exotic alien planet) being potholed to BBC Quarry.
• Every sub-page for WarioWare has a short instruction at the beginning (ex. DESCRIBE!), like the instructions given to the player before microgames. Originally, the whole description was divided by instructions, but this was eventually excised.
• CSI: Miami. Like you didn't... * Sunglasses Pull* see it coming. YEEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!.
• Whenever anyone mentions Paranoia someone is bound to respond with one of the in-game catchphrases.
  • Speaking badly of Alpha Complex and Friend Computer is a treason, you commie mutant traitor!!
  • Metagaming is grounds for summary execution. Both the above tropers should report to Friend Computer.
  • The main page itself will remind the readers at several points of actions (usually something described in the page previously) that are considered treason.^note Calling attention to the notes referring to acts of treason is an act of treason.
• Whenever a page has Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee on it (Truthfully, it needs more recognition), expect to see the word Heart bolded, probably because in the manga, that's how it is.
• Check out the Department of Redundancy Department for a long running gag.
• Potholing the third instance of a running gag to Rule of Three.
• Whenever anyone mentions just how Badass Mickey Mouse is in the Kingdom Hearts series, they will assure you that, yes, they are talking about that Mickey Mouse.
• No matter the subject matter, there's a good chance there is an entry mentioning how Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) used that trope. Although this may not have been intended as a running gag, it has emerged as one. And if not that, then My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Or The Simpsons.
• On The Princess and the Frog page 'in other words, perfect Disney tradition!' seems to be one since it's been potholed to this very page.
• Many of the trope examples in The Lion King (1994) are augmented with quotes from the movie; you can't read any section of the trope page without seeing at least one. Apparently, the dialogue is just that good.
• Use of the "it's definitely not Stonkers" gag on at least one Headscratchers page that has nothing to do with Video Games nor the ZX Spectrum.
• The pages for Mad Max films all have jokes based on Men at Work's "Down Under" with the lyrics changed to fit the films. To name an example from the linked page: "Livin' in a land down under. With Immortan Joe and Toecutter."
• A comment that something is for the greater good...
  • Followed by the echo, "The greater good"...
    • Followed by the response: "SHUT IT!!"
• The doctor (no, not that Doctor).
• On the Burn Notice page, Larry (yes, dead Larry).
• Want a long running gag? Check out the Department of Redundancy Department.
• Potholing the fourth instance of a running gag to Overly Long Gag.
• We're almost certain that Alan Moore isn't actually Rasputin the Mad Monk using a fake name. Almost.
• As you'll see on The Quiet Man page, the main character of that movie is Sean Thornton-er, John Wayne.
• The pages on the Fallout series would like to remind you that Vault 13, Arroyo, Vault 101, the Mojave Wasteland, the Massachusetts suburbs and Vault 76 are all okay places to live. Hopefully, you can make your own okay place to live, or at least a place more okay than Texas. Various Fallout fan work pages incorporate the gag too.
• Forum Game ITT: We Are All Pokémon Trainers. The frat Mon party. That is all.
• From the Anime Theme Song Game: Is it God Knows?
• For WMG: X never wanted to be a Y anyway. He wanted to be... A LUMBERJACK!
• Also for WMG: Everything in the series was just X's Dying Dream/hallucination.
• It is not uncommon to see "Necrophilia is awesome" on the Warp That Aesop page
• Look on the pages referencing Pokémon: The Series and try to find a page that doesn't get Botch's— ahem, Butch's name wrong. It will, without fail, be followed by "THE NAME IS BUTCH!"
• There are some articles on this site that tropers can't get enough of potholing to.
• Has it been mentioned that the Department of Redundancy Department has a long running gag?
• Welcome to Corneria!
  • I Like Swords. ^note See the image on that trope page. It helps that "I like swords" is named for Fighter McWarrior.
• Armbar!
• When Batman appears on a character page, one must always note that HIS PARENTS ARE DEEAAAAAAAD!!!
  • Also, expect the phrase "I'm Batman." to pop up a few times. But if you're talking about his All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder incarnation, he's the goddamn Batman.
• Robot Unicorn Attack being the most awesome game ever. Harmony harmony oh love...
• Many mentions of Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills include a "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer saying that it's a real series and not just invented by Team Four Star for a joke in Dragon Ball Z Abridged.
• The page for the NES A Nightmare on Elm Street game will not let you forget that the name Freddy Krueger™ is trademarked.
• Statler and Waldorf being at the bottom of the page, with a full list on the page. Includes the page itself.
• The Sesame Street pages have paratext over tropes whose actual names include expletives or other objectionable terms. As a result, Oscar is labeled as a Jerkbutt.
• "The mind boggles..."
• Every Fire Emblem page must ask if the characters in their images are Marth and/or Roy. This is usually played with when it is one of them. Played with even more with TearRing Saga and Berwick Saga.
  • The Laconic page for every Fire Emblem game must also bring up if a character (or characters) from the game appears in Super Smash Bros. (in the form of a The One With…).
• Any time Tony Stark is mentioned, someone has to point out that he was able to build his Powered Armor IN A CAVE! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!
• Any trope related to Those Wacky Nazis usually begins with telling us that, with few exceptions, most people consider the Nazis to have been very, very bad people.
• Whenever anyone mentions Hedy Lamarr from Blazing Saddles it must always followed up with 'That's "Hedley!"', a running gag borrowed from the movie itself. Except on the actual Hedy Lamarr's page, where it really is Hedy.
• Night of the Lepus doesn't try to hide that the monsters are Giant Killer Bunny Rabbits.
• By the way, how about the Department of Redundancy Department?
• Evony - It's a spyware program in disguise.
• A.K.A.-47 being potholed near PAYDAY: The Heist and PAYDAY 2 on the Cool Guns pages when it existed.
• Every time [PROTOTYPE] is mentioned, we kindly remind you that Alex Mercer eats people.
• The majority of the Laconic descriptions for the Artistic License subjects^note  and Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma used to be written: "X DO/ES NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOOD NIGHT!" in reference to Futurama.
• Most of the Useful Notes pages regarding the nuclear arsenals of various countries used to have the corresponding country's line in Tom Lehrer's "Who's Next?" for a quote, with "Who's next?" often being a pothole to the page that corresponds to the next line. As of the end of 2020 only The Dragon's Teeth and The Rest of the Nuclear Club still have the quote... which one's next?
• The replacement of the letter "s" with "ſ" in Antiquated Linguistics.
• Doctor Who:
  • On the Recap pages for the Sixth Doctor era, all of the picture captions reference his rainbow coat. This even extends to "Time and the Rani" (which features his regeneration into the Seventh Doctor at the start), "Dimensions in Time" (a multi-Doctor story featuring him), and some of the Expanded Universe stories starring him.
  • Also, keeping with the Running Gag in the main series, we all know who Harriet Jones is.
• Referring to Larry Blamire as "That lucky bastard" when commenting on the attractiveness of his wife who appears in his films
• Recap pages for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episodes than end on a Cliffhanger usually end by describing in what manner the villain has the heroes hopelessly on the ropes. *Cue happy credits music* It's started spreading to other shows when episodes end in the same kind of Mood Whiplash.
• If Major Armstrong is in a trope, someone has noted that the trope HAS BEEN PASSED DOWN THROUGH THE ARMSTRONG FAMILY FOR GENERATIONS! *sparkle*
• Symbology Research Failure has an example of a common and much-repeated mistake, where something called the Kremlin in a work... is actually St. Basil's Cathedral.
• Lampooning Kaepora Gaebora's Annoying Video Game Helper nature wherever appropriate. Do you want to hear what I said again?
  ->Yes
  No
• Lampooning Kaepora Gaebora's Annoying Video Game Helper nature wherever appropriate. Do you want to hear what I said again?
  Yes
  ->No
• The page for Sand Worm has repeating "Dune" periodically. It's not intentional, as Dune has been adapted to several media, but it still looks like a running gag.
• A minor gag on Frozen (2013) and its subpages involves the misspelling of Weselton as Weaseltown. The Duke of Weselton inevitably disregards our Repair, Don't Respond policy to call us out on it.
• Plants vs. Zombies' WMG page would like to remind you that Crazy Dave is CRAAAAAAAZY!
• The Drinking Games often have a "don't drink every time [super-common thing in that work] happens, or you will die" condition.
• The Dragon Age pages joking about the blood motifs.
• Superheroes from The DCU, particularly members of the Justice League of America, will get introductions to their pages listing off various titles the hero has, followed by "The (whatever superhero archetype that hero belongs to)".
• The Laconic Wiki entries for most Our Monsters Are Different tropes used some variation of "The original <monster> myths couldn't keep the details straight, either." This laconic template also used to apply to Our Presidents Are Different.
• Small-caps, or just a different format in general, is mandatory whenever talking about something happening IN SPACE!. Same with the exclamation mark.
• Back when Headscratchers was called "It Just Bugs Me", there was a page on "school". Someone asked why people don't like school, and got a bunch of responses. Naturally someone responded with "Learn to Box", prompting a "You get expelled for that" response.
• The Complete Monster cleanup thread has entire posts dedicated to how dangerous an individual BB-8 is, to the point where he's gotten more upvotes than any actual CM.
• Every caption for a Five Nights at Freddy's game asks if you/someone else is ready. This extends to its fan-games, with variations: e.g. "Are you disposed to play POPGOES?" or "Everything's dandy when you're with Candy!"
• Most Spyro games have a caption with the keywords "legend" and "generation" inserted within it.
• The captions for the images on the And the Fandom Rejoiced pages for Super Smash Bros. all mention how much the internet exploded at the moments depicted.
• Besides the first one in the episode description, every mention of THE AWESOME STORE on the recap page for The Amazing World of Gumball episode "The Console" has the name capitalized and bolded thusly.
• Due to similar names and the amount of trivia most editors know here, all over the wiki there's instances where someone's name is followed with a (no, not that one) potholed to the work from which the character of the same name originates.
• The pages of the Sub Tropes for Came Back Wrong all start with the same paragraph.
  The great love of the hero's life has died, and the hero simply cannot take the grief. Desperate to have his significant other returned to him, the character delves into things better left unlearned and discovers a way to bring the loved one back.
  Unfortunately, something goes horribly awry, causing them to come back wrong.
• The character index for Warframe describes the titular 'frames' introductions to the game based on their themes. (For example, Mesa described as having "moseyed into town", Gara "crystalizing," Ember "igniting," etc.)
• The summaries for the various Splatoon pages each detail the Turf War gamemode: using gallons upon gallons of the player character's own body fluids to soak every last inch of surface visible. This will get potholed to It Makes Sense in Context.
• The fact that Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier has a lot of Video Examples to its credit. (the video examples don't list the troper who added it's name, and that's a good thing for one certain reason).
• The work page for The Avengers (1960s) has a running gag of pointing out how many of its stars have also appeared in James Bond films.
• Every main page for the Ratchet & Clank series will introduce the tropes with a slightly modified quote from whatever entry the page is for.
• SPACEBALLS: THE BULLET ENTRY ON THIS PAGE!^note The kids love this one. Every single TV Tropes page on Mel Brooks' Star Wars parody begins with a line referencing the iconic merchandising scene in the film, plus another such line for the images used, another such line for the main page's image caption, another such line for the note attached to that caption, and another such line for The Stinger. The only exception is the Video Examples page due to how such pages are automatically formatted, but the main page has that page covered with the final such line on its page just before the Video Examples module.
• The image quotes for the Like a Dragon series all refer to legends. To wit:
  • Yakuza: "The legend of the Dragon of Dojima begins here."
  • Yakuza 2: "The legend of the Dragon of Dojima continues."
    • Yakuza Kiwami 2: "The retold legend of the Dragon of Dojima continues."
  • Yakuza 3: "The legend of the Dragon of Dojima begins anew."
  • Yakuza 4: "The legend of the Dragon of Dojima is no longer the only one."
  • Yakuza 5: "The legend of the Dragon of Dojima spreads across Japan."
  • Yakuza 6: "The legend of the Dragon of Dojima ends."
  • Yakuza 0: "The legend of the Dragon of Dojima has not yet begun."
  • Yakuza: Like a Dragon: "The legend of the Dragon of Rock Bottom begins here."
  • Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth: "The legends of two dragons go global."
  • Ryū ga Gotoku Kenzan!: "The legend of Miyamoto Musashi takes a turn for the wild."
  • Like a Dragon: Ishin!: "The legend of Sakamoto Ryoma dawns."
  • Yakuza: Dead Souls: "The legend of the Dragon of Dojima rises from the grave."
  • Judgment: "The legend of the Yagami Detective Agency unfolds."
  • Lost Judgment: "The legend of the Yagami Detective Agency takes a dark turn."
  • Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise: "The legend of Hokuto Shinken unfolds like you've never seen it before."
• On the Nightmare Fuel cleanup thread, it's popular for tropers to introduce a page they've looked at with a parody of the work's theme song (especially for kids' shows) or an iconic line from it.
• Since Google's image-interpretation algorithms aren't creepily accurate just yet, one of the most common results in the "Google search the above avatar" thread is the disappointingly imprecise "cartoon". It's usually technically accurate, at least!
• The moments subpages on [Work Name] all contain a "meta-example about the mere fact that the work exists", in reference to a form of Gushing About Shows You Like that occasionally appears on real Awesome Moments and Heartwarming Moments subpages. Because it's a running gag, this extends even to the moments like Shocking Moments and Nightmare Fuel where it doesn't actually make a lot of sense and the joke is literally just the fact that it appears on every moments page.
• Several of the Crappy Trope Definitions are just the two words "[something] exists", potholed to People Sit on Chairs.
• Better Than It Sounds:
  • The description for each game in the StarCraft series ends with a variation of "Korea loves it.", and every alternate description ends with "Billions die in the process".
  • The description for each game in the Warcraft series is changed to be about immigration and race wars.
  • The descriptions for Ghost Recon Breakpoint and its associated DLCs all describe a specific plot character as an Elon Musk-Expy.
• Any time Princess Peach shows up in a page image the caption will contain a long string of words beginning with the letter p.
• In the page of playing with Do Wrong, Right, the examples has many examples (apart of the straight example), also most of them are (generally) lampshaded non sequiturs.
• Anytime Challenge Pissing is mentioned in an article, expect it to be followed with "THAT'S RIGHT! CHALLENGE PISSING!"
• Most entries for the mainline Sonic the Hedgehog games used to begin with The One With… and the game's unique gimmick or selling point following up on it right afterwards. This gag was later scrapped and scrubbed off.
• Earlier versions of the Huey Lewis and the News trope page had references to American Psycho.
  • As is the page for Treble Charger, given that their most popular song is also titled "American Psycho" (a song so catchy most people don't even listen to the... well, you know).
• Pages on Prestige Tree and its mods always have "The tree (not shown: lower rows/rest of row 3 and lower rows)" in the caption if the whole tree's not shown in the image or "The tree (yes, in its entirety)" if it is. Several pages would also ask "Can you reach [current endgame]?", until that stopped being viable as several mods have been receiving updates to extend playtime.
• Pages for Strawberry Shortcake content often replace the word "very" with "berry".
• The HourofPoop page refers to the archery tournament from "Friar's Rubbing Wood - Fall of Nottingham" as "the Ara Ara Turd" per Little John and its hosts' insistence.
• Who Wants to Live Forever? begins by telling you to put your hand down and repeatedly chastises you for keeping your hand throughout the article. It even extends to the analysis page.
• Every page for every entry in The Neverending Story film series has its plot synopsis paragraph start with Bastian (Actor Name) with the actor's name changed in every page, in reference to how nearly the entire cast was recast in every installment.
• In the article for House of Leaves, anytime the titular house is mentioned, the word house will always be potholed to a trope related to the house, as a reference to how the house is always highlighted with blue text in the story itself.
• Flannery O’Connor and the word "realistic".
• Dead End: Paranormal Park and its subpages are full of run-on sentences.
• Regarding the Trope Launch Pad:
  • People questioning why certain parts of the website still refer to it as "YKTTW" (You Know That Thing Where...) over a decade after that name was discontinued.
  • Poorly-written drafts getting bombed into oblivion, despite only needing five net bombs to discard them (which is the whole point of the bombs, any more than that is overkill) and the more sensible tropers repeatedly telling others to stop dogpiling.
  • People commenting just to say that a very minor formatting change should be made and not doing it themselves, despite the fact that anyone can make quality-of-life changes to a TLP draft without question, as long as it improves the draft (i.e. "Rename [folder name] to [almost identical, but technically more commonly-used folder name]).
• People who make ATT reports about tropers having to be reminded to send notifiers before making the report, not after.
• Mentions of the NPC Dr. Desmond Bradford from Rifts will inevitably note that he literally believes he is a god, using basically those exact words.
• The subpages for DuckTales (2017) all have a penchant of beginning with "DuckTales, woo-oo!" from the theme song, but replacing "Woo-oo!" with something related to the subpage, like "Who's who?" for the character page and "Boo-hoo" for the Tearjerker page.
• On Fanfic Recs pages, it's common for the opening line — "Proof that the remaining 10% is worth dying for." — to replace "die" with some other bad thing or certain-death situation characteristic of the work in question.
• On Sea Monster, since the list of subtropes opens by saying that "there are many flavours of Sea Monster", each subtrope entry ends by saying what the associated sea monster tastes like.
• And finally, you should check out the Department of Redundancy Department for a long running gag.

---