Stealth Pun / Live-Action TV

---

Stealth Puns in Live-Action TV.

---

• 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 cartilaginous fish that was lying there.
  • Lindsay has done a Cheek Copy and shows Michael a picture of that, thinking it's a picture of a car she wants to buy. Michael replies that what she showed him isn't a picture of a Vol-vo (it's a picture of her vulva).
• Babylon 5:
  • In the B5 prequel, In The Beginning, one of the few Minbari who advocates giving peace a chance is named Lennon. (Word of God confirms that this was intentional.)
  • There's a customs scene where Zack Allan is explaining customs procedure to a new security recruit. As he mentions that "anything unusual gets flagged", Londo shows up. Shortly followed by Bester. Zack then decides to get out of here before anyone else goes through the customs gate, since for all he knows it could be the Second Coming. After Zack leaves, the next people through the customs gate are... a trio of Elvis Impersonators. According to Word of God:
    J. Michael Straczynski: And who should come through... but the Three Kings....
  • At the start of "Walkabout" Captain Sheridan is walking about, wearing a space suit and magnetic boots, along the gantry on the top of Babylon 5, because he wants some time to contemplate and think about what has been happening. So he is "having ideas above his station".
• Black Lightning (2018): In the final episode, Tobias Whale quotes Moby-Dick.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Oz is practically a Hurricane of Stealth Puns.
    • For several episodes of Season 4 Oz wears a sheepskin jacket. As he's a werewolf, you know what that makes him...
    • His real name is Daniel Osbourne. He plays in a rock band. Sound familiar?
    • Finally, his band is called "Dingoes Ate My Baby". Dingoes are found in Australia. What's a nickname for Australia? Oz.
  • 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 another episode, Spike and others are gambling with baby cats instead of poker chips. In card games the betting pool is often referred to as "the kitty".
• Burn Notice: In the first season, Michael adopts the persona of good ol' boy Homer to repo a boat. He's working for a man named Virgil.
• Cheers: In the 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.
• Chuck: The title character'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".
  • Until the series' third-to-last episode, "Chuck Vs. The Bullet Train", when the villain Quinn calls the set of special cards he uses to force Sarah's defective Intersect to activate just that.
  • Also, the title of the fifth season opener ("Chuck Vs. The Zoom", "zoom" being what Morgan chooses to call a "flash" when he's using the Intersect) is a pun on the DC Comics hero The Flash and his number one enemy, Professor Zoom. The pun also foreshadows the deterioration of Chuck and Morgan's relationship over the first third of the season.
• 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.
• Cold Case: The episode Beautiful Little Fool opens with the 1929 New Year party in a mansion. In the next scene, one of the attendants is dead. It turns out the killer worked as butler in said mansion, meaning The Butler Did It.
• Community:
  • Britta is called a buzzkill by her fellow study group members throughout the series, but it's only in season 5 that she gets to do it (semi-)literally, "killing" Buzz Hickey by pushing him into imaginary lava.
  • In the sixth season finale, the group looks back on their six years at Greendale. Abed gives a "cool" for each one and Chang intentionally farts during the one for season four. Season four, which was not overseen by show creator Dan Harmon and is seen as lesser quality, is known as the "gas leak year".
  • Recurring character Alex Osborne is better known as "Star-Burns" due to him shaving his sideburns into the shape of stars. In one Valentine's Day episode, he shaves them into the shape of hearts. So, heart-burns?
• CSI: In the episode "Suckers" an antique Japanese sword is stolen from a vault that is impenetrable from the outside, but a lot easier to open from the inside where the locking mechanism is accessible. It was discovered that the crime was committed by a small Chinese person who had hidden inside a metal (fake) Samurai outfit that had been delivered to the vault earlier that day. There is a well-known phrase or saying that means "a flaw in the security", but nobody said it because, in context, it has a racist double meaning.

• There's an unspoken one in each episode of The Dead Files. The combination of psychic medium Amy Allen doing her reading of the haunted location at night and her cameraman previously removing or obscuring items in the house that could provide leading information leave her both literally and metaphorically in the dark.
• In the Degrassi franchise, nobody ever called Mr. Raditch "Radish" until JT and Liberty in his actor's last episode on the show.
• Dexter: The very name of Dexter Morgan is most likely a Stealth Pun, given that it's Latin for "right". The corresponding term for "left" is "sinister".
• Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve: Since 2006 ABC's annual New Year's countdown has had a west coast portion that airs after midnight on the east coast hosted by the Black Eyed Peas' frontwoman Fergie. In case you do not understand the pun you are traditionally supposed to eat black eyed peas on New Year’s Day to bring you good luck in the upcoming year.
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Macra Terror" features a Crapsaccharine World Stepford Holiday Camp where a theoretically healthy way of life has been subverted from the inside by crabs — a societal cancer, if you will.
  • Tom Baker's "bohemian" Fourth Doctor was conceptualised by Philip Hinchcliffe as a return to Patrick Troughton's Depression-tramp-styled Second Doctor. So, Two is a "cosmic hobo", and Four is a "cosmic boho".
  • "The Brain of Morbius" concerns a Mad Scientist trying to steal the head of the Doctor (played, at this time, by a notoriously egotistical actor) because it's large enough to house Morbius' large brain... basically, a whole story about Tom Baker's bigheadedness.
  • In "The Masque of Mandragora", the Doctor accuses an antagonist called Hieronymus of "talking bosh".
  • "City of Death" takes place in Paris. Paris is also referred to as "cité de l'amour" (city of love), which is a homonym for "cité de la mort" — city of death.
  • In "Attack of the Cybermen" the Sixth Doctor, midway through his allotted regenerations and up a level in Jerkass, repairs his TARDIS's Chameleon Circuit to give it an updated appearance... a giant organ.
  • "The Unquiet Dead":
    • The Arc Words "Bad Wolf", in their use in this episode. The first time Rose is referred to as "the big bad wolf", it's in 1895 Cardiff, where she shows up wearing makeup — something only worn at the time by prostitutes. In olden times, "she-wolf" was slang for "prostitute".
    • Charles Dickens says "What the Shakespeare is going on?"
  • "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...
  • "The Parting of the Ways":
    • Rose shows up at the last minute to save the day, with new powers that she drew from the omnipotent consciousness at the heart of the TARDIS — a literal deus ex machina. What's more, she's using them to kill the Emperor Dalek, a Little Green Man in a Can which fancies itself as a god.
    • The Doctor mentions the planet Barcelona:
      The Doctor: They've got dogs with no noses. Imagine how many times a day you end up telling that joke, and it's still funny!
  • "Doomsday": Dalek Sec claims that "This is not war, this is pest control!" Or, in other words, the Daleks see themselves as exterminators.
  • "The Unicorn and the Wasp":
    • The alien wasp turns out to be a WASP: White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
    • At the end, the Doctor pulls things marked "C" out of a sea-chest.
  • "Midnight": The hostess says that the Doctor just showed up "out of the blue". Now, what colour is the TARDIS?
  • "The End of Time": The Master turns the entire human race into copies of himself, and tells the Doctor that the human race has now become "The Master Race". Although this initially seems like a lame pun, it becomes a Stealth Pun when you realise that this Master has blonde hair and blue eyes.
  • "The Eleventh Hour": While hurrying through the village, the Doctor and Amy have a discussion about a duckpond. Later, the Doctor texts Amy, whose last name is Pond, a warning to "DUCK!" Duck, Pond!
  • "The Vampires of Venice" features a race of fish aliens working out of the guise of an educational institution. (A school. Of fish.)
  • "The Curse of the Black Spot": The Siren disappears injured people away to a hospital sickbay. When someone requires medical attention and help is being sent, it's generally heralded by a siren.
  • In Peter Davison's parody for the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary, The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, a security guard suspects "illegal aliens" have broken into the Doctor Who studio. Who actually broke in? Sylvester McCoy, Colin Baker and Peter Davison. Illegal aliens from Gallifrey!
  • "Face the Raven": Clara raises the subject of "trap streets" — non-existent streets in maps that cartographers throw in to see if they turn up in plagiarists' work. The street they find is the opposite — a real street that doesn't appear on any map — and is never explicitly named, but it gets called Trap Street. Guess what it turns out to be?
  • "Fugitive of the Judoon": When Ruth Clayton's true identity is restored, she's no longer Ruth... thus becoming ruthless.
• Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real: In the Forest Dragon part, there's a confrontation between the dragon and a tiger. While the tiger is crouching around, the dragon is hiding in the forest trees. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
• Farscape has Rygel, a deposed king who has a tendency to release farts similar in effect to helium. Helium is a noble gas.
• Father Ted: The 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.
• Firefly: Overlapping with an ILP, in the episode "Safe", River wanders 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.
  • In the DVD's scene selection for the episode, this scene is actually called "River Dance".
• Frasier: From "Ham Radio", the actor Mel White, whom Frasier even describes as "Man of a Thousand Voices".
• Game of Thrones:
  • Heroic Bastard Jon Snow wields a bastard sword.
  • Stannis' sigil is a Baratheon stag within a fiery heart, but it could just as easily be a fiery "hart", another word for "stag".
  • The Freys guard their bridge with twin fortress and are known as Lords of the Crossing, suggesting that they might be "double crossing".
• Glee: The episode, "Furt", revolves around Finn's mother and Kurt's father marrying, making them into a family. Finn gives a speech in which he says that, as they're together, they should have a portmanteau name (no); they are now "Furt". Left unsaid is that, as of their families joining, they're Kin(n).
• On Glue, the title refers to the ties binding the main characters together, but it is also a pun that's never made explicit - glue is what horses end up as.
• In an episode of Good Luck Charlie, Teddy's boyfriend Spencer gets his finger bitten by Charlie
• Hawaii Five-0: season 5 episode 4 has one as a Brick Joke. It starts of with a man getting killed, said man is a hitman, killed by a hitman. It turns out the first hitman was sent to kill the first hitman and... people the second hitman didn't manage to kill. The reason he didn't manage to kill those people mercilessly as he had done in the past was because he got ill, and had a heart transplant. This was the heart of a nice man. So one could say that the hitman had a 'change of heart'.
• Horrible Histories: The Owain Glyndwr song is a pastiche of "Delilah" by Tom Jones - however, when Owain mentions being given the title of Prince... of Wales, it segues into a pastiche of "Kiss", which was also performed by Jones, but originally by Prince.
  • The Henry VII song (a Glam Rock pastiche): "I said 'This crown ain't big enough for the three of us!' and had one slayed!
• How I Met Your Mother had an episode where Ted was lecturing his class about the work of an architect who had died midway through his work, leaving it unfinished, and repeating the word "unfinished" until the word lost all meaning. The background music? Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. Might double as a Genius Bonus.
  • In Last Cigarette Ever, Marshall is shown talking to his 13 year old self, who pulls an I'll Be in My Bunk with a picture of his future wife. That's right, a Picture of Lily
• Kitchen Nightmares: In "The Great British Nightmare" special episode, 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".
• LazyTown: Robbie Rotten makes one during the You Are A Pirate song. After the first chorus he turns to his parrot and repeats the line "You are a pirate!" but his pronunciation of "pirate" sounds an awful lot like "parrot".
• 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.
• In Luke Cage (2016), Turk trash talks Bobby Fish during a chess game, saying "just 'cause you're called Bobby Fish don't mean you're Bobby Fischer". It's never acknowledged that Turk shares his name with a chess machine.
• In the 1986 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, host Pat Sajak introduced the Kermit balloon saying that the other balloons might be jealous of Kermit, because his balloon was the only one at the time to have traveled outside of the States^note in 1979 for the Year of the Child celebrations in the UK. As he brought this up, however, Sajak neglected to use the term "green with envy" (which is a real shame, considering that the parade's color commentary has prided itself on incredibly lame puns).
• The title of the Mad Men episode "Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency" is one of these crossed with a pretty black Brick Joke. A character named Guy does indeed walk into the offices of Sterling Cooper, but he doesn't walk out again: one of his feet is sliced off by a riding lawnmower before he can.
• Malcolm in the Middle: One episode has 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.
• Merlin on The BBC features King Uther, who used to keep a dragon penned up in the dungeon.
• 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.
  • Later, Tez Ilyas lists Piers Morgan, Katie Hopkins, and Donald Trump.
    Tez: "Escape to the Country"? No, this is escape to the cu-...
• Monk: Adrian Monk (notice the last name) is an OCD-ridden detective, making him a Creature of Habit.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus: In the fourth-series sketch "A Doctor," a doctor hands a questionnaire to a patient bleeding profusely (where his nurse stabbed him) and gives him failing marks for wrong answers (correct answers include "The Merchant of Venice" and "the Treaty of Versailles"). He never says he's giving his patient an exam.
  • In the "Killer Joke" sketch, while the British Army conducts testing on the eponymous joke during World War II, a voiceover informs us that it is "50,000 times more powerful than Britain's great pre-war joke" — while the B-Roll Rebus briefly shows Neville Chamberlain.
• Morecambe and Wise had a recurring bit where a former Special Guest would declare "I worked with Morecambe and Wise ... and look what happened to me", before the camera pulled out to reveal they were working in a menial job. Andre Previn turned out to be working on a London bus ... as a conductor.
• On one episode of [adult swim]'s NTSF:SD:SUV::, the villain is a dolphin by the name of Lundgren. Get it...? Dolph Lundgren?
• Odd Squad:
  • In the Cold Open of "Party of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1", Olive and Otto are helping a client who has a One-Man Band named Gerard living in her ear, playing the same tune over and over. Olive's solution is to simply ask Gerard to play a different tune, only for him to play the same thing he was playing before, just at a faster pace. One could call him an Ear Worm...playing an earworm. (If he weren't human...)
  • In "Best Seats in the House", Oren insults Otto by way of Malicious Misnaming. The name that he calls him? "Risotto". Bonus points for the fact that Otto is a Big Eater who most likely enjoys eating risotto.
  • While confronting Freeze Ray Ray, a villain with ice powers, in "The Perfect Score", Olympia weaponizes her Motor Mouth and begins telling him how his Evil Plan isn't perfect, which leads to her having a "Eureka!" Moment about how she's a good agent regardless of what other people say. Eventually she reveals that she was buying time to warm up her mirror suit in order to send Ray's attack back to him. In other words, she put him on ice.
  • In "Other Olympia", there's an agent retiring whose name is O'Revoir.
  • The Shmumbers brand, seen in numerous episodes, is a play on the "Numbers Schmumbers" phrase.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • In the episode "Second Star to the Right", Regina Mills, played by Lana Parrilla, is tortured with a Parrilla.
  • In the episode "Ruby Slippers", Mulan (previously established as having a hopeless crush on Aurora) and Ruby go to Oz and help Dorothy Gale, who turns out to be Ruby's True Love. So Mulan and Ruby are both friends of Dorothy...
• In Power Rangers Mystic Force, Udonna is The Mentor and Reasonable Authority Figure tasked with training five very different teenagers to become superheroes. She’s also An Ice Person. In other words, she tries to get everyone to chill.
• Preacher has an American casino called the Mumbai Sky Towers, which features entertainment from Frank Patel and the Great Ganesh. While the words are never stated in the show, it could be called an "Indian Casino."
• Pushing Daisies had this gem from the 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.
• 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".
• Red Dwarf:
  • In one episode, Lister suggests a game of squash with Rimmer's light-bee, a device which flies around and projects his holographic image. Squash is a game played with a small hollow ball. Hollow, holo...
  • The name of Red Dwarf 's subship Blue Midget is based on the main ship's name, with Midget being a synonym for Dwarf, and blue being a different colour.
• Revolution: One of the first things Mia talks about is how she was Missing In Action (M.I.A.).
• Saturday Night Live: A famous example from this show's "Celebrity Jeopardy!" sketches: "What's the difference between you and a mallard with a cold? One's a sick duck... I can't remember how it ends, but your mother's a whore." Presumably, one is a sick duck, and the other a dick-suck.
• Scrubs: In this 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.
• Seinfeld: After George gets fired from the Yankees, he discovers he will continue to get paid throughout the summer. He uses this as an excuse to spend the summer being as lazy as possible, dubbing it "The Summer of George". His plans come to a crashing end when he falls down the stairs and injures himself. In other words, summer ends with fall.
• Smallville had one episode all about nightmares. Every single song in the episode is by R.E.M..
  • In another episode, Lionel drove his wife insane, and the episode ends with him listening to Madame Butterfly.
  • In the scene where Lex proposes to his girlfriend, there's a slow acoustic guitar playing quietly. In a brilliant bit of ominous foreshadowing, near the end of the scene it becomes recognizable as a cover of Blue Öyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" — the main stealth humor coming with the lyrics "Take my hand, we'll be able to fly" in a show featuring Superman.
  • In Escape, Lois was wearing Scottish attire when she was possessed by the (Scottish) Silver Banshee.
• The Sopranos: Phil's men are 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.
• Stargate SG-1 has 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....
    • So when it comes to names, he doesn't know Jack.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation has a variant in the 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: Captain to security!
  • And speaking of TNG, there's the emotionless android Data and his more human brother Lore. This borders on Fridge Brilliance.
• Star Trek: The Original Series: Kirk claims to be from the island of Noman at one point.
  • Another episode sees Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam into a library and meet a librarian named Mr. Atoz. Which is the name you get if you compress the phrase "A to Z" into a single word.
• Stranger Things: In the first season, a group of Dungeons & Dragons players have to find their missing friend, Will Byers. In other words, the first season is about a DnD group attempting a Will save.
• Supernatural: One episode has 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.
• Tensou Sentai Goseiger: The ending song has a line which mentions Five Star. That's a possible meaning for Gosei, as used in Gosei Sentai Dairanger.
• In the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles episode "Adam Raised a Cain," Savannah teaches John Henry to sing the old Scottish comedy song, "Donald, Where's Your Trousers?" Meanwhile, our heroes get caught with their pants down.
• 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.
• Torchwood: In the episode "Dead Man Walking", after learning how much it sucks to be a zombie, Owen (unsuccessfully) attempts to drown his sorrows in beer. And then he literally tries to drown himself.
• The Twilight Zone (1985): In "Dealer's Choice", Pete plays a game of one-on-one with Nick, who is in actuality the Devil, for his immortal soul. In the closing narration, it is pointed out that he did not heed the old saying "Never deal with the Devil."
• 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.
  • In one episode, Veronica hides a listening device in a preserved insect. (It's a bug in a bug.)
• Warehouse 13: An artifact-carrying vigilante dresses up as comic book superhero, "The Iron Shadow". According to the comic-loving Lattimer, the Iron Shadow has no powers, he has simply trained himself to near physical perfection. At the end of the episode, briefly-visible text as the artifact is being cataloged reveals it to be Charles Atlas' gym trunks.
• WandaVision: When Monica is kicked out of the Sitcom reality and enters the real world, she crashes through a bookshelf, wall, fence, and the barrier between the two realities. She ends up crashing through four walls, essentially Breaking the Fourth Wall when she goes through the last one.
• Occured on an episode of Wheel of Fortune. Three consecutive puzzles in the category "Food & Drink" were PEPPERONI PIZZA, PICKLED PEPPERS, and DOUBLE HELPING OF PEAS. As the previous two puzzles had two sets of the letter P in them, they did indeed have a "double helping of P's".
• During the fifth season of Young Sheldon, Georgie gets a girl pregnant and the scandal makes pariahs of the Cooper family. Mary still takes Sheldon and Missy to church in the sixth season premiere. The other parishioners shun and ignore them to the point where Mary suffers a Crisis of Faith. The sequence is set to an instrumental version of R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion".

---