Visual Pun / Live-Action TV

"The doctor will see you now."

Visual Puns in live-action TV.

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• When covering cricket matches and a batsman is out for a duck (i.e. out for zero), one Australian TV channel shows a very frustrated cartoon duck on the screen as the batsman walks back.
• Merv Griffin Enterprises (The Merv Griffin Show, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!) used a griffin◊ in the logo.
• In an MTV Movie Awards skit parodying The Da Vinci Code, Andy Dick (playing a wannabe Silas) fails to kill Jimmy Fallon at first attempt, and upon inquiry, muses "Well, I have another plan, but I have yet... to hatch it." Then he pulls out a hatchet, prompting Fallon to quip "May I axe what it is?" It doesn't end well for him.

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• On 30 Rock, Floyd is griping about missing a promotion. "I'm so sick of New York, I'm sick of the rat race!" Cut to a shot of Floyd's apartment building, where a bunch of guys are racing rats down the hallway.
• In 'Allo 'Allo! when the General went on a particularly long and bizarre rant, Bertorelli stood up behind him and waved a bunch of bananas in air in silent commentary of the General's mental state.
• Episode 3 of American Gods opens with Mrs. Fadil cooking while her Sphynx cat watches. Shortly after, she's visited by the Egyptian god, Anubis.
• As a Parody of police procedurals where everything is Played for Laughs, Angie Tribeca is wrought with such gags, usually paired with the Literal-Minded situations.
  Geils: Good police work, Tanner.
  Tanner: Hey, hey! I'm just building off your footprint thing.
  Scholls: As soon as the sausage-fest is over, we can get back to some police work.
  (cut to a shot of a German sausage festival happening across from the trio)
• The MC Bat Commander and Jimmy the Robot play Fantasy Football in The Aquabats! Super Show! episode "Pilgrim Boy!", except the kind they're playing is a sports video game with wizards and dragons.
• On an episode of Ask This Old House during the Once per Episode segment "What Is It?" the item in question is a large plastic coil resembling a spring. Tom Silva proceeds to place it on the outside of a plastic water bottle which he claims is a convenient handle to label the bottle as "spring water".
• Meta example from Battlestar Galactica here.◊ Yes, they actually did that.
  • In the series itself, when Helo and "Boomer" are hiding in an abandoned restaurant, Helo loads a shiny chrome toaster with bread. Then the Cylons come by. They're about to leave, having missed Helo hiding inside, when... *POP* goes the toaster. Combine this with the established derogatory epithet for Cylons, "toaster", to complete the visual pun: Helo was betrayed by a toaster.
• Beakman's World
  • Beakman praises Lester by saying "Give yourself a hand." Lester has one already in his ratsuit...
  • In an episode about earwax, Beakman says "Friends, Romans, countrymen! Lend me your ears!", and someone pushes a huge ear towards the stage.
  • There are a lot of visual puns in this show... but then, there are a lot of puns, period.
• Between the Lions:
  • Click the mouse is an intelligent computer mouse, but her design is of the rodent of the same name.
  • There was one episode where Lionel temporarily takes over for Theo as librarian. When he receives an e-mails marked "freebee" and opens it, he gets a computer virus that actually resembles a bee.
  • For that matter, the entire Sam Spud sketches are nothing but visual puns!
  • Heath the Thesaurus is a large dinosaur, because his name is similar to "the-saurus".
• Blackadder II
  Baldrick enters holding the front door under his arm
  Blackadder: Baldrick, I would advise you to make the explanation you are about to give phenomenally good.
  Baldrick: Well, you said "Get the door"...
  Blackadder: Not good enough, you're fired!
• In The Borgias, one episode deals with the Bonfire of the Vanities. Savonarola's followers are going from door to door threatening people for books, artwork and other vanity items, and they come to the house Cesare and Machiavelli are staying in. After a tense exchange, Machiavelli gives them the bird...that is, he retrieves a stuffed owl from the house and hands it to them.
• In the second episode of Breaking In, the team steals a safe containing a thumb drive...shaped like a human thumb.
• In one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Spike is being stalked by a shark-headed demon he owes kittens to. A loan shark. Lampshaded in Angel: After The Fall when he is shown again: "The man's career path is based on a pun." And why kittens? The kitten thing was introduced a few episodes earlier at a demon poker game. Where they played for kittens. Another name for the pot is the kitty.
• In a chapter of Castle:
  • Beckett and Castle have to go to a male striptease in order to arrest a suspect of the killing of a male stripper. The show at the moment is of strippers dressed as firemen, and one of them is the suspect. Beckett tells the suspect to "cool off", but he doesn't listen, and all the strippers surround Beckett. Then Castle appears with a fire extinguisher and cools them down enough for her.
  • Episode 2 has a woman find a body after trying to remove someone else's clothes from a dryer after she becomes tired of waiting to dry her own clothes. One of the detectives makes a joke, saying this is why you don't go poking around in other people's "dirty laundry".
  • A visual Stealth Pun (perhaps even an accidental pun); during The Big Damn Kiss in "Always", Castle pushes Beckett against the door, closing it behind them as they continue kissing. As Beckett has been known to say in the past, "Shut the front door!"
• The Game Show Catchphrase pretty much runs on this trope, where contestants have to watch a short animated sequence and guess the "catch phrase" it represents. Many of these sequences featured visual puns of one sort or another.
• El Chapulín Colorado: El Chapulin saying that there is nothing wrong with wearing glasses, because even him needs them. He takes out a pair of glasses with a plug and when asked what were those: "My contact lenses." Later he was seen reading the paper with them, and actually plugged in.
• Community:
  • In a Valentine's Day episode, Starburns has shaved his sideburns into the shape of hearts instead of the stars they're normally shaved into (thus his nickname). So, heartburns.
  • After Star-Burns' death, his ashes are contained in urns with tiny stars all over them. Star urns.
    • Containing what was left after Starburns was burnt
• Team Awesome from Curfew decide to pull out all of the stops to win the race by stripping the interior of their van of anything non-essential and tossing it out. At one point, they jettison a kitchen sink. Yup, they tossed everything including the kitchen sink.
• Susan on Desperate Housewives spilled a bag of beans when she revealed a big secret, but they never said it out loud.
• In the Dexter episode "Shrink Wrap", Dexter kills a psychiatrist who enjoys convincing his patients to commit suicide. He does it in his usual manner — by restraining him to a table with thin sheets of plastic while he tortures him. Therapist. Plastic wrap. Shrink wrap! It's even the name of the episode.
• Doctor Who:
  • Autons shoot people with "handguns" — as in, their hands literally are guns.
  • The Fourth Doctor deals with one peril by physically hurling a lit lantern while saying "Let's throw some light on the subject."
  • "The Runaway Bride": The Doctor deals with the fledgling Racnoss (who are spider-like aliens) climbing up a borehole from the centre of the Earth by drowning them with the contents of the River Thames. Or, to quote a certain classic nursery rhyme:
    "The Itsy Bitsy Spider climbed up the water spout, down came the rain and washed the spider out."
  • "Evolution of the Daleks": In one of the last scenes, Pig Man Laszlo is wearing a porkpie hat.
  • "The Vampires of Venice": When Francesco draws his sword and Rory looks terrified, the camera repeatedly cuts to the nearby chickens.
  • "The Lodger": The Doctor, believing that Craig is in trouble, hops out of the shower and goes to help him after grabbing what he thinks is the sonic screwdriver... only to discover it's an electric toothbrush. Or, a sonic toothbrush.
  • The prison that River Song is in is called Stormcage. Outside her "cage", there's a storm going on consistently.
  • "The Girl Who Waited": Amy says she disarmed a robot. Rory asks how, then looks at the robot... it has no arms.
  • "Pond Life": The Doctor is toasting a savoury griddle product when a naked woman approaches him — and he can't take his eyes off the crumpet.
  • A multi-layered one in "The Day of the Doctor". A future incarnation of the Doctor suggests, without explicitly saying so, to his past self that he should go and search for Gallifrey. When the present Doctor asks him if that's what he's saying he's going to do, the future Doctor taps on his nose (in the gesture indicating "on the nose"), while repeating "who knows?" This works as a verbal Pun ("'Who' knows") while also confirming his identity ("'Who'-Nose").
  • "The Doctor Falls": After the Master explains his plan, the Doctor tells him to "knock himself out". Missy — who is a later regeneration of the Master — then slugs him in the side of the head.
  • A teaser for the 2018 season has the Thirteenth Doctor standing in a room roofed by an elaborate stained-glass dome, where her presence apparently creates a shockwave that shatters the glass ceiling.
• Pointed out in-universe on Elementary. Sherlock mocks up a map of the city in lockdown due to an oncoming blizzard and inadvertently uses locks to represent certain points in the city. When Joan points it out, he gets indignant.
• Feel Good: Mae hides in the closet of George's classroom to avoid being caught, after making a pointed remark about how George is the one with a fetish for being in it (she hasn't revealed their relationship).
• Game of Thrones:
  • Jon Snow, the Bastard of Winterfell, wields a bastard sword.
  • The Bastard's Girls are literally Ramsay's bitches.
• On Get Smart, Max asks Hymie to get him a hand and the robot promptly begins to unscrew its left hand, then screws it in again after Max clarifies the issue. In another scene, he asks Hymie to "kill the light." The robot points his pistol at the lightbulb until Max stops him.
• Glee: In "The Sue Sylvester Shuffle", "She's Not There" by the Zombies is performed in full zombie makeup.
• Grimm:
  • In one episode, Nick and Monroe have a walk together in the park. Specifically, a park for walking dogs.
  • In Season 4, Monroe is captured by the Wesenrein secret society. The person who betrayed him turns out to be a Corrupt Cop whose Wesen form is a Bauerschwein, i.e. a pig. No jokes are made about this in-show, because everyone's too pissed off to make them.
  • An almost literal Red Herring shows up in one episode in the form of a red fish-like Wesen, who appears throughout the episode, says nothing, and everyone (including the audience) assumes he had something to do with the episode's crime. Nope, nothing at all. For bonus points, his nickname is Red and his middle name is Herring.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022):
  • "In Throes of Increasing Wonder...": Lestat de Lioncourt succeeds in seducing Louis de Pointe du Lac and sweeps his lover off his feet... literally.
  • The Season 2 promo "Portrait of a Former Flame" features an old, late 18th-century painting of Lestat (who is Louis' ex-boyfriend) engulfed in flames.
• Jessica Jones (2015): While testing out the soundproof glass in the hermetically sealed room they plan to isolate Kilgrave in, Simpson says to Jessica through the glass, "So, what, you think because you have these abilities, you're some kind of hero? I've seen heroes. You're not even close." The scene then segues into a flashback of Jessica dressed as a hero sandwich advertising "Two for $1 hoagies all day!" and saving a little girl from getting hit by a car.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: Taiga Hanaya wears a shirt with a tiger and a flower pictured on the back early into the story. Taiga is a approximate Japanese pronunciation of tiger and hana means flower.
    • In the movie sequel series Another Ending, Ren Amagasaki carries around a hand mirror probably only to show it to Hiiro Kagami and make the pun on his surname ^note  Kagami means mirror.
  • Kamen Rider Build:
    • Sento is written as 戦兎 in kanji. 戦車 (sensha) means tank and 兎 (usagi, used as to) means rabbit in Japanese. The default form of Kamen Rider Build is RabbitTank.
    • Kazumi has once implied that he thinks Ryuga has something with Sento by biting in a carrot. Rabbit + carrot = Unusual Euphemism. Kazumi is weird like that.
    • Build's last episode has a shot of a rabbit strolling in a meadow followed by a shot of Sento laying on said meadow.
    • Ryuga is written with 竜 (ryu), which means dragon. He tends to wears clothes with dragon pictures and is a dragon themed rider, Cross-Z.
• Kath & Kim: One so subtle it's hard to know if it was intentional: In a series 1 episode, Kath and Kim are discussing Kath's and Kel's upcoming wedding. Kim says they should just elope and save everyone a lot of effort. Kath replies that she can't elope, having just gotten a particular type of melon out of the fridge.
• On his late night shows, David Letterman often wore a letterman jacket in pre-taped remote segments.
• In Look Around You, the signs warning about the Helvetica Scenario use the Helvetica font.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Galadriel having a copious amounts of Ship Tease with Halbrand on a raft of a ship, and than on Elendil's ship. And later, she ditches any possibility of a future romance with Halbrand aka Sauron, after refusing his offer to be his Queen Consort, on the same raft of a sunken ship.
• In one episode of Maid Marian and Her Merry Men, the Sheriff is collecting taxes. This includes a large carpet (the carpet tax) and a small mint (the Tic Tax).
• Die Maus had a fitting one for their Tür-Öffner ("Door Opener", i.e. open house) Special 2016, enacting a German phrase "Mit der Tür ins Haus fallen" ("to go like a bull at a gate"). They played even more with it: literally the door would belong to the house, but the hostess stumbled with an (unhinged) door onto a toy model of a house.
• In the Israeli version of The Masked Singer, the Stork (Hasida in Hebrew) was dressed up in modest clothing, the type religiously observant women would wear — including women who belong to Hasidic Judaism.
  • The pun is even better in Hebrew: the words for "stork" and "female Hasidic Jew" are identical.^note This actually led to speculation that the person under the mask is religiously observant — but no, it's actually Israeli Arab news anchor Lucy Aharish.
• In The Monkees episode "Monkees Marooned", one of the boys gets an actual tongue-lashing, beaten with a giant rubber tongue.
• Mr. Belvedere has an amusing (and surprisingly uncommon) one. During the Yet Another Christmas Carol episode, Mr. Belvedere is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Present (in the form of Heather), who is dressed up as a Christmas present.
• The Muppet Show
  • The Swedish Chef: His "Chicken in a Basket" involves dribbling the chicken and shooting it into a basketball hoop.
  • The Newsreader: When he announces that the price of beef fell today, a cow lands on him).
  • One of their most notable examples was the "Muppet News International" sketch where British comic Spike Milligan mimed the newsreader's stories, starting with "Things look grim — "(Spike stares sternly at the camera). And when the newsreader mentioned that "eyebrows were raised", Spike removed his eyebrows and replaced them a little higher on his forehead.
  • Floyd, bassist and lead vocalist of The Electric Mayhem. His coloration is bright pink. Making him a Pink Floyd.
• In The Muppets (2015) the day after Miss Piggy's Wardrobe Malfunction on the Red Carpet, Yolanda warns Kermit that Sam the Eagle, who's in charge of standards and practices, is waiting in Kermit's office and "he's got steam coming out of his ears." Cut to a very angry Sam with what appears to be actual steam coming out of his ears. Turns out he's just sitting in front of Kermit's humidifier.
• The MythBusters are not above this either. To whit, when they were firing automatic weapons into a pool with a cube-shaped ballistics-gel target at the bottom:
  Adam: The box jellyfish is one of the most lethal foes you'll encounter in your average swimming pool.
• In New Girl, we see a tragic reversal of a classic pun.
  Jess: Some of these kids have lived in L.A. their entire lives and they've never seen the ocean! Last week I asked them to draw what they thought the ocean looked like, and I got a lot of stuff like this.
  Principal: Is that a bagel with wings?
  Jess: Yes, sir. It is.
• In Noah's Arc, at the start of the second season Noah is trying to figure out if Malik is the one. His friends tell him to kiss him, and if the earth moves he knows its love. Noah kisses him, and an actual earthquake occurs.
• Olmos y Robles: When a flock of sheep passes by the road just as Robles is going through it, he uses his Sherlock Scan to determine the sheep are of two races, "churras" and "merinas". It's a reference about a Spanish proverb about not mixing churras with merinas (i.e. do not confuse different concepts).
• Used by Penn & Teller: Bullshit! to get around legal issues. In the episode on multi-level marketing schemes, after describing how these companies operate, the show cuts to Penn and Teller, dressed as pharaohs and standing in front of a picture of the pyramids, angrily asking why they can't call them what they are.
• In Person of Interest episode "God Mode", Shaw tells Reese that she'll be driving the Ferrari they have just found and hands him a shotgun.
• Police Squad!, by Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker, had many:
  • In one episode, Frank Drebin sits on a barstool that's too low, then when the bartender asks what he'd like, he says "Screwdriver." The bartender hands him an actual screwdriver from a toolbox; Drebin uses it to raise the barstool, then he orders a drink.
  • The police are said to be looking through the records of recently released prisoners — in the background, several cops are examining vinyl LP's.
  • Drebin follows a lead to the Club Flamingo, which has a mechanical sign of a man hitting a large pink bird with a cosh.
  • The rich family's Japanese Garden consists of Japanese people standing in large pots.
  • In one episode, a background character opens a drawer labelled "MUG DRAWER" and takes out not mug shots, but coffee mugs.
• Power Rangers Mystic Force has the Plucky Comic Relief Phineas the troblin showcase his asskicking skills against a bunch of mooks. When he knocks one off his feet and starts dragging him around the room:
  Clare: Phineas, what are you doing?
  Phineas: I'm wiping the floor with him!
• In the BBC's Professor Branestawm Returns, the Professor claims to have invented a skeleton key that can open any lock. This turns out to be an animated skeleton with an axe, which opens locks by smashing the door down. While spouting 'burglar' clichés in a cockney accent.
• Raumschiff GameStar (Spaceship Gamestar), a science-fiction/game parody made by the staff of German PC Gaming magazine Gamestar, has those on every possible occasion. Most consist of Captain Langer ordering his crew around, and when his orders get executed literally, responding "Oh Gott, wir werden alle sterben!" ("Oh god, we're all gonna die!"). This has become a case of Memetic Mutation in the German gaming community.
• Red Dwarf:
  • The crew is disoriented due to things shifting around them (like the ship becoming transparent) due to passing through a reality-warping minefield. Lister says they'll be alright so long as they "keep their heads"...upon which there's a flash and they all have huge animal heads.
  • At the beginning of the eighth season, they're flying a miniature Starbug through the vents of the reconstructed Red Dwarf and end up piloting it up a rat's backside.
    Holly: I hope we don't get stopped by the cops: they don't like it when you're rat-arsed.
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch did this all the time.
  • In one episode, Hilda contracted "Punitis" and any time someone used a metaphorical expression like this, whatever it was would literally happen.
  • The animated adaptation had an episode focusing on "Cliche Week", a week where any clichés uttered by a witch would literally happen.
    Hilda: I'm so hungry, I could eat a horse. [a horse appears beside her]
    Salem: Would you like fries with that?
  • The inhabitants of the Other Realm seem to LOVE puns — Every metaphor is taken literally for witches. When the Spellmans received a chain letter, it was a letter attached to an actual chain.
• Saturday Night Live:
  • The Digital Short "3-Way" has Andy Samberg singing about meeting a girl who "likes the way I knock on her boots" — Cut to him hitting a pair of hiking boots with a stick.
  • The Digital Short "Party Guys" has two guys at a party (played by Andy Samberg and Bill Hader), bored and complaining of the other guests. They start insulting party-goers with common American idioms, most of which get depicted literally. It's a visual Hurricane of Puns.
    Samberg: Oh, here we go. Look at these jokers. [points to a bunch of guys dressed as The Joker]
    Hader: Oh boy, check out mister personality. [points to a pageant winner wearing a "Mr. Personality" sash]
    Samberg: Why do we keep coming to these?
    Hader: I don't know.
    Samberg: Look at this numb-nuts. [A man sits with his balls on a block of ice.]
    Hader: Check out that turd-burglar. [A Blatant Burglar steals poo out of a toilet.]
    Samberg: Hey look at that guy.
    Hader: [looks at the karate uniform] No, I think it's pronounced "gi."
    Samberg: Well, look at that gi.
    Hader: Look at those sons-of-bitches. [a bunch of adorable puppies]
    Samberg: Those guys are so baked. [gingerbread men in an oven]
    Hader: It's a real sausage fest. [Yodel Landers with sausages]
    Samberg: Look at that knuckle-head. [A hand says "hey."] Hey there, cowboy! [A guy with a cow head moos.]
    Hader: What's-his-face. [Guy with Pixellation obscuring his face says "Hi."]
    Samberg: Check out this asshole.
    Fred Armisen: Not cool.
    Samberg: [holds up a dead rodent] Look what the cat dragged in.
    Hader: Check out that hot piece of ass. [a butt cooking on a grill]
    Samberg: Here comes the cavalry. [Soldiers in 19th-century military uniform march through.]
    Hader: Look who decided to show his face. [A guy dressed like Batman (but without a mask) gets clobbered by one of the Jokers.]
    Samberg: Look at these motherfuckers. [A few young men date middle-aged mothers.] Oh man... I can't believe they let Tom in here. That guy's a cereal rapist. [Tom is violating a box of cereal.]
    Hader: Dude, this party blows!
• Scorpion's 2017 Halloween Episode ended with the team leaving for a costume party. All of their costumes were visual puns. Ralph (who has a crush on Sylvester's punctuality-obsessed assistant) goes as an Early Bird (a bird with a worm). Sylvester goes as The Devil's Advocate (he's just passed the bar exam and wears devil's horns). Happy goes as a Sad Sack (a paper bag with a sad face drawn on it). Tobey goes as a Ceiling Fan (he simply wears a sign around his neck that says "I Love Ceilings!!!").
• Sherlock: In "A Scandal in Belgravia" Watson at one point refers to Mycroft's "bloody stupid power complex", immediately followed by a shot of the Battersea Power Station.
• From the third episode of The Steam Video Company, we get this exchange.
  Waiter: There's a queue outside for the alphabet soup.
  Chef: Bring them in!
  [waiter brings gigantic Q over]
  Chef: Oh, jolly good. [puts it in a saucepan — music starts] Ah! It was a Q for a song!
• In the first season of Strangers with Candy, Jerri finds out she needs braces. As she protests that she doesn't want them, the dentist says, "Nobody wants braces, Jerri, but I'm afraid that's something you're going to have to learn to live with," and stands up, revealing the metal brace on his knee.
• During the Road So Far portion of the season finales on Supernatural, the clips often produce a Stealth Pun when paired with the lyrics of "Carry on Wayward Son" which plays. For instance, during the words "lay your weary head to rest" scenes of multiple beheadings were played, and during "I flew to high" we saw Sam flying through the air from a punch.
• On the old The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Carson often did a sketch called "The Teatime Movie" where he played movie host Art Fern, who also did the commercials. Whenever he had a map for direction to the advertiser's store, you could expect the 'fork in the road' visual gag. Either that or the 'Slausen Cutoff' joke.
• Warehouse 13 is fond of using visual puns in its title cards (the ones that introduce new locations). One scene set in Boston had the letter S throwing the letter T and throwing it into the harbor.
• Wayne and Shuster used the "lend me your ears" gag as well in their famous 'Rinse the Blood Off My Toga' sketch.
  "I said 'Friends, Romans, countrymen! Lend me your ears!'"
  "So what's in the sack?"
  "Ears."
• The Wire: A great example that overlaps with Black Comedy when Omar walks into Proposition Joe's repair shop (a cheap front for his criminal enterprise, but otherwise legitimate) out for revenge for Joe previously having betrayed him, but just presents an old, broken clock and asks Joe to fix it up. When Joe asks what's wrong with it, Omar immediately whips out a Desert Eagle and says "Ran out of time!"

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