Bait And Switch / Western Animation

Shows with their own pages:

• American Dad!
• Family Guy
• Kaeloo
• Rick and Morty
• The Simpsons
• South Park
• Tiny Toon Adventures

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Individual examples:

#-L

• In the 2 Stupid Dogs episode "Show and Tell", a girl in class is shown in close-up saying, "And when you pull on this cord, it purrs! You would think she has a toy cat or something, but when the camera backs out, it turns out she actually has a chainsaw!
• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius:
  • In "Hall Monster", to decide who the new hall monitor will be after the old hall monitor, Chuck Lester, moves away, Ms. Fowl picks a random name from a hat. Carl hopes to be picked, and Ms. Fowl announces "Carl Wheezer!", implying that she picked him. Ms. Fowl then tells Carl that she forgot to tell him that his mother left him an extra pair of clean you-know-what at the principal's office. This gag is repeated at the end of the episode, when Jimmy deliberately breaks the rules to get fired. This time, Ms. Fowl tells Carl that his mother called to remind him to take his nose drops.
  • From "Men at Work":
    • When Sam and Ms. Fowl are seated at a table together, Sam tells Ms. Fowl "Winifred, there's something very important that I want to ask you.", implying that he's asking for her hand in matrimony. He then asks "Are you gonna finish those fries?"
    • When Sheen comes in with a wheelbarrow of money, Jimmy asks him if they're their profits for today. Sheen tells him that it was just in the tip jar, and they had to rent a truck for the profits.
  • In "Clash of the Cousins", when Jimmy gets on his family's good side by giving them gifts at Aunt Amanda's birthday party, Amanda says "It's too bad your dear old Granny couldn't be here to see this.", and funeral music plays as the Neutron family lower their heads, implying that Granny Neutron is dead. Amanda then says "But she's in Reno, kicking butt at the slots!"
• Adventure Time: In "Five More Short Graybles", the secret theme of Cuber's "graybles" seems to be the five fingers. It turns out to actually be the five tastes^ExplanationA book of nursery rhymes inspires Finn and Jake to stick their thumbs into a sweet plum pie, Marceline goes looking for a guitar that will play some savory licks, a seemingly-rude statue leaves Tree Trunks with a sour taste in her mouth, Ice King's penguins drink his salty tears of joy, and BMO drinks some bitter tea while giving his Imaginary Friend Football etiquette lessons, and Cuber teases the audience for expecting the theme of fingers, because "Nobody's had five fingers in over twenty-mabillion glables."
• In the Alvin and the Chipmunks episode "The C Team", Alvin and his brothers meet Mr. T having lunch at a diner. At one point, his food flies off the table he is sitting at. Theodore grabs his bag of French fries and is about to eat them when Mr. T butts in and says, "You can't eat those fries!" Theodore gets into his usual apologetic mood until Mr. T follows up what he said with: "...without ketchup."
• The Amazing World of Gumball:
  • In "The Joy", Ms. Simian splashes a vial of a yellow liquid on Gumball and Darwin thinking that it's water. Ms. Markham then informs her that it's not water... it's cough syrup.
  • In "The Test", Tobias ends up replacing Gumball as the protagonist and it seems his long-absent sister Rachel was going to reappear, only for him to show he replaced Gumball in more ways than one:
    Tobias: I'll just ask my genius sister for help. Anais!
• Angel Wars: In one episode, Eli and Kira have a mission to protect a messenger angel who's travelling through a demon-infested city so he can deliver a message to a mortal. They stand out in the open and taunt the demons while the messenger angel runs away, making it look like they're trying to create a diversion, but the demons ignore the guardians and chase the messenger. It looks to the audience like the angels' plans have fallen to pieces, but this is actually what they were hoping would happen: the guardians were the ones holding the message, and the messenger using his Super-Speed was the real diversion.
• Animaniacs:
  • In Slappy Squirrel's debut cartoon, "Slappy Goes Walnuts", Doug the Dog sets out a xylophone for Slappy to play that's set to explode when she hits a specific note. Slappy decides to play "Those Endearing Young Charms", and the viewer is set to believe she'll keep hitting the wrong note, which is a joke that's been done to death in the Looney Tunes franchise. The thing is, she actually does hit the correct note, and the explosion ends up going off on Doug the Dog.
    Slappy: Old gag, new twist.
  • One Hip Hippos sketch has the hippos in an American Gladiator spoof. After a number of contests with an athletic duo, the score is tied (the hippos' lack of athletic ability in some events made up for by their bulk giving them unexpected advantages in other events). The final tiebreaking event is to eat their way across a swimming pool full of beans and hot dogs. Easy hippo win, right? Their opponents sure think so and are ready to throw in the towel but decide to give it a shot anyway. And the human opponents win easily when the hippos deliberately throw the event. They're the Hip Hippos, remember? They'd never eat something as common as beans and hot dogs.
• Animaniacs (2020): In "Bun Control", Wakko calls some dingoes to remove the bunnies and when the dingoes appear, the viewer believes that they will eat them since they are seen growling at them and licking their lips, but when one lunges, the scene cuts to them putting the bunnies in a truck.
• Archer: Season 7 ended with Archer shot and lying face-down in a swimming pool. At the beginning of Season 8, the rest of the cast is seen attending a funeral. The grave shows that the funeral is for Woodhouse. Archer's in a coma, setting up the next several seasons.
• ''Arthur:
  • In "D.W. All Wet", after the air conditioner breaks...
  Mr. Read: That's it. I've had it.
  Arthur: Had what?
  Mrs. Read: You're right. I can't take it anymore.
  D.W.: Now you're in really big trouble.
  Mr. Read: No, she means we just can't take the heat, so we'll just have to... go to Bear Lake!
  • In "Arthur's Big Hit":
  Arthur: So I missed Bionic Bunny last night, and I'm not allowed to watch TV for a whole week! Can you believe it?
  Buster: No, I don't believe it. You hit your sister? That's terrible!
• In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Mean Seasons", one-shot antagonist Calendar Girl wears a White Mask of Doom to conceal her face, and there are rumors that she'd tried to hide signs of aging with plastic surgery that had gone wrong. When she's unmasked at the end of the episode, she screams for people to not look at her face... which is perfectly normal, even lovely, but which she perceives as hideous because of the way the modeling industry had rejected her because she's gotten "too old".
• Big City Greens:
  • In the opening scene of the episode "Axin' Saxon", it looks like Gramma Alice is about to attack someone with her sword... Turns out she's just cutting the grass.
  • In the climax of "Bleeped", Bill realizes he can't control what Cricket says and he's going to say whatever he wants, which includes (G-rated) swear words. When he gives him a lesson and leaves, it appears Cricket didn't listen to him and seems ready to drop a B-bomb at the choir concert... but then he sees Bill smiling at him in the audience and sputters, realizing he can't do it, and simply sings the final lyric as it's supposed to.
• In the CatDog special "The Great Parent Mystery", there is a segment where Cat and Dog go to a sanctuary where cats and dogs live together in peace and harmony. They find a female cat and a male dog with color schemes very similar to them and assume they are their parents. However, when they come up to them, the Greasers show up as well, and we find out those two were actually Lube's parents.
• City Island (2022): Circus Beach appears to be clean and beautiful at first, but once the doors open, the park is dirty and broken.
• Classic Disney Shorts: Near the start of the Goofy short "Home Made Home", Goofy is sawing through a plank that's hanging over thin air. It looks like he's about to cut through it so that he falls, but then he catches himself and moves to the side that's supported. But as Goofy finishes sawing, the side of the plank he's now standing on is the one that breaks, and the part he was cutting through hangs in the air for a bit before falling.
• The Cleveland Show episode "'Til Deaf" with two kids placing the letter R over the "ELECTIONS TODAY" sign outside the high school. They actually placed it over the letter I.
• Close Enough:
  • When Candice comes home from school one day, she says that she watched a really old movie called King Kong. The average viewer will assume she's talking about the 1933 original, but she says that it had Jack Black in it, meaning she watched the 2005 version, which is old to her.
  • In "Secret Horse", after Alex finds Pickles (the titular horse), he figures that since he needs money and Pickles is a horse, they can have a beneficial arrangement. Cut to them at the horse racing stadium, implying that Alex would enter Pickles in a race, but it turns out he just wanted Pickles to help him choose a racing horse to bet on.
• In the pilot episode of Codename: Kids Next Door, the Delightful Children from Down the Lane say at the end that the girl they chose to prevent the Kids Next Door from taking their birthday cake (that they refuse to share) was a horrible choice that they never should have used. The girl makes this face and gets angered, not because of what the Delightful Children said, but because the Delightfuls' cake was coconut flavor, which she hated.
• In the Cow and Chicken episode "The Day I Was Born", Cow asks multiple people about the day she was born, but each tells her a completely different story. It turns out the Red Guy told her the true story. The story is shown in flashback with Chicken and his Dad in the waiting room at a hospital, and they hear the Red Guy yelling, "Push! Push!" You would think Mom is in there giving birth to Cow, but then suddenly Mom appears right next to Dad asking what's going on in the room! The Red Guy was actually telling himself to push the cart he was wheeling out which Cow was laying on.
  • The Red Guy also did this to Cow and Chicken in "Perpetual Energy", in the role of Rear Admiral Floyd. He announces he'll be taking Cow and Chicken to The Pentagon, but it then cuts to having taken the siblings to a pentagon-shaped tent, to which Floyd announces "Welcome to the Tentagon!" Chicken points out that Floyd had previously said "Pentagon," but Floyd dismisses it with a "Walk This Way!" (with his distinctive butt-walk).
• Dexter's Laboratory:
  • In the episode "Unfortunate Cookie", Dee Dee comes into Dexter's lab to tell him about a Chinese finger trap she found in her box of fortune cookies. Dexter responds by saying, "How can it be?" and begins a mathematical lecture about what we think is the possibilities of that happening, but it turned out he was just complaining about how Dee Dee keeps coming into his lab.
  • In the episode "G.I.R.L. Squad", Dee Dee and her friends come into Dexter's lab to ask him what "Lick crime" means. Dexter gives the girls a tour of stuff they might need to help them with their mission, which eventually leads to a teleporter, which Dexter winds up using to teleport the girls out of his lab so they won't bother him.
  • In the episode, "Dexter is Dirty", Dexter starts yelling at Dee Dee after she fails to help him up while he's laminated. She starts to look sad and imagine herself out in the snow, but it turns out she's picturing herself sledding down a mountain, and this gives her the idea to use Dexter as a sled.
    • Subverted: What Dee Dee ends up doing causes Dexter to destroy the living room in the house. Mom comes in an angrily yells, "Dexter!" She walks up to Dexter, and then suddenly changes to a happy mood and says, "Just look how clean you are!"
  • In "Dexter's Lab: A Story", Dad stumbles upon Dexter's bedroom and sees the lost dog Dexter is experimenting on. He angrily summons him upstairs about the "lab" in his room, causing Dexter to freak out, confess, and face severe punishment, but Dad was actually talking about the dog — a Labrador retriever — which he allows to keep, and Dexter is relieved.
  • In the episode "A Hard Day's Day", Dexter's Mom in an angry and shocked tone yells at Dexter. She says this as Dexter is standing outside, butt-naked, covered in mud, and has a bird nest with live birds in it on his head, and what is the one thing Mom is mad at Dexter about? "Dexter! Where are your glasses?"
  • In the episode "Coupon for Craziness", Dee Dee is about to give Dextor (Dexter's hyper counterpart) a cookie, but he says he's not allowed to have sweets. Dee Dee says, "Oooooooohhh!" That means...she gives Dextor the other cookie!
• In Dragon Tales as the dragons are searching for Max and Emmy who got shrunken by shrinking violets. As the search continues...
  Wheezie: AHA!
  Zak: Aha?
  Cassie & Ord: Aha?
  Wheezie: A purple button! I just LOOOVE purple! And I especially LOOOVE purple buttons!
  Zak: I thought ya found Max and Emmy!
  Wheezie: Oops. Sorry.
• A trailer shown in theaters for DuckTales (2017) started out as the intro for the cartoon... before a cell phone goes off before the chorus, causing everyone to stop what they're doing and complain about whose phone is going off.
• Lampshaded in The Emperor's New School. Kuzco claims to have the perfect way to get into a store he's been kicked out of. Cut to a llama with a head and feet that look suspiciously like Kuzco's walking into the store. Kuzco then jumps out from offscreen and attacks the guard. Kuzco then stops the show and says, "You're probably wondering what that llama that looked just like me had to do with my plan: absolutely nothing."
• Family Dog: In the original Amazing Stories episode, the family is arguing and the dog appears to be irritated. It looks like he is about to bark loudly enough to get their attention, but he pees on the carpet instead, only to get kicked out of the house once he's finished.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends:
  • In House of Bloo's, Coco's introduction scene to Mac and Bloo makes it seems like she was asking if they wanted coco, with her repeatedly asking Bloo that question, until Wilt reveals all Coco can say is "Coco", and what she was asking - according to Wilt - was "Do you want any juice?"
  • In "Bride to Beat", Bloo thinks that Mac is getting married (he's really just being the ring bearer for his cousin Tammy), so he tries to stop the wedding. When he comes to Mac's apartment, he says "Desperate times calls for desperate mesarures" as he picks up a rock, implying that he's going to throw it at the window. It is then revealed that the rock is really a rock-shaped container that has a key inside, which he uses to get into Mac's apartment with.
  • In "Jackie Khones and Case of the Overdue Library Crook", Mac seeks the aid of Jackie Khones to find out who stole his library card and used it to check out a now-overdue book, resulting in Mac being put on the library's Most Wanted list. Not wanting the librarians to spot him, Mac makes Jackie go into the library by himself to search for clues. Some time later, Jackie comes outside and says "Solved it!", to Mac's relief, until it was revealed that he was working on a crossword puzzle, and was having a difficult time finding the answer to 5 Down; "Haberdashery".
  • In the Series Finale, "Goodbye to Bloo", Mac doesn't show up at Foster's, and a family arrive to adopt a new imaginary friend. On their way to Bloo's bedroom, Mr. Herriman informs the family that a new imaginary friend had recently been put up for adoption, this one being short, blue, round, and having no nose. As Mac had made a deal with Madame Foster that Bloo wouldn't get adopted as long as he visited him every day, Bloo begins to accept his fate. As it turned out, the family had adopted a new imaginary friend named No-Nose Ned instead. Bloo is still safe because Mac had earlier phoned Mr. Herriman telling him that he had some important business to attend to and wouldn't be able to go to Foster's, so Mr. Herriman allowed it.
• Fudêncio e Seus Amigos: In the episode "Capeta Mirim", the kids all get to ask for one wish each to the devil. Zé Maria tells him she wants something she was not born with, but really wants. Since the character is a trans girl, viewers are expected to think she wants a vagina, but she actually wanted a pink dressing table.
• Futurama:
  • Bender has been rigged to a bomb which is set to go off on his most frequently used word. As it goes through the list, it starts to get to his catchphrase, "Number 5:Bite... Number 4: My... Number 3: Shiny... Number 2: Daffodil..."
  • In "Bender's Game", when the characters enter a cave called the Cave of Hopelessness:
    Frydo: Mr. Wizard, why is this place called the Cave of Hopelessness?
    Greyfarn: Oh, fear not, lad. 'Tis named for its discoverer, Reginald Hopelessness...
    Frydo: Whew!
    Greyfarn: ...the first man to be eaten alive by the Tunneling Horror.
  • In "The Problem with Popplers", the crew wants to find a name for a new food:
    Bender: They're tasty, right? Let's call 'em "Tasty-cles".
    [collective groan]
    Leela: We can't call them that.
    Bender: Why not?
    Leela: It sounds too much like those frozen Rocky Mountain oysters on a stick. You know, Test-cicles?
  • The Mars University Professor Fisherprice Shpeekenshpell (a robot with a Mattel See 'n Say for a head) continually talks with programmed lines like "The cow says 'Moo'" (apparently he proved that 50 years ago and had been coasting on it ever since). When it comes time to vote on Amy's doctorate:
    Professor Katz: We shall now vote, "Yay" or "Nay". Nay.
    Wernstrom: Nay!
    Bubblegum: Hell, nay!
    Shpeekenshpell: The horse says, "Doctorate denied".
  • From the first episode.
    Cop: Keep you big nose out of this, Eyeball!
    Leela: No one makes fun of my nose.
  • From "Anthology of Interest", when Bender approaches the WHAT-IF machine, asking it to show a hypothetical scenario:
    Bender: As a robot living among humans, I've never really felt accepted at parties or nude beaches. So I've always secretly wondered: What if I was 500 feet tall?
  • Later in that segment, after devising a plan to stop said giant Bender, the Professor says that they'll need a guinea pig. As it turns out, he needed a literal guinea pig to lure Zoidberg so they could make him large enough to fight Bender.
• Green Eggs and Ham: One of the most important lessons of the series is that people and things are not what they appear to be.
  • BAD GUYS are here to chase after Sam and Guy... because Sam is the actual villain, not them. It turns out they're wildlife conservationists (with BAD GUYS being an elaborate acronym) who were hired to track down Sam, a serial scam artist and animal smuggler.
  • The penultimate episode ends with E.B. seeing Sam selling Mr. Jenkins to Snerz...the next episode reveals that it's actually a Girooster painted to look like Mr. Jenkins.
  • The way Guy talks about his family and how they'll react to his failure makes them sound like they put too much pressure on him and are emotionally abusive. It turns out that they have nothing but love and support for him, but he feels inferior compared to how much they've all achieved.
  • The end of the season has Sam tasting the eggs in his Green Eggs and Ham and realizes they taste like his mom's...cue him entering the kitchen to find a male chef. However, the chef reveals that the eggs are from "Ma's Farmhouse' in East Flubria so that gives Sam hope that his mom is still out there.
• In The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy/Codename: Kids Next Door crossover, Billy spills mustard on his father's pants. He reasons, out loud, that there's only one group of kids who can help solve his problems, and grabs the phone... where he calls the cast of Ed, Edd n Eddy... who then tell him to call the Kids Next Door.
• Hilda: Season 1 seemed to be setting up that Hilda could become a witch, with her love of magic and adventure. Hilda even considered herself something of one after performing the Tide Mouse Spell. In Season 2 though, Hilda and Frida meet actual witches and they find out it takes more than just casting a spell or two to be considered a witch. Witchcraft is more about knowledge and study than spell casting. Hilda's interest in magic begins and ends with "doing cool stuff". It turns out Frida is the one capable of becoming a witch thanks to her love of studying.
• The Jem Bizarro Episode "The Day The Music Died" begins with Jem's sister Kimber breaking the fourth wall to tell you that she's "gone". This, combined with the episode title referencing the famous death of several musicians, makes it sound like Jem is dead. Nope, she really is just gone. Jem ran off with Riot and never returned.
• On Jimmy Two-Shoes, just before Jimmy is about to perform a particularly irresponsible stunt, Beezy tells them to be careful not to break his dad's Priceless Ming Vase. Jimmy performs the stunt...and misses the vase entirely. Beezy dances around and celebrates... and spikes the vase.
• In the Justice League Unlimited episode "This Little Piggy", Wonder Woman gets turned into a pig by Circe. Toward the end, Batman offers to bargain with Circe to get her back.
  Circe: I want something from you that's very precious. Something you've worked very hard to conceal. Something when gone, you can never reclaim. Something... soul-shattering.
• In The Legend of Korra, incest is teased between Creepy Twins Eska and Desna when it's mentioned that there is only one bed in the hotel room they are staying in. Eska clarifies that it is not a mistake. "Desna sleeps in the tub."
• Looney Tunes:
  • There is a classic short that ends with this. Bugs Bunny has to deal with some hillbilly hawks. The short ends with a series of gags that end with one of the hawks shooting the other every time he hears the word "four" (or any homonym of that word). At the very end, it shows Bugs dressed like a golfer about to yell out, "Fore!" but then he stops himself by saying, "Nah. Why should I get in on the act?"
    • Subverted: Bugs starts to sing the first couple of lines of "I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover". On repeat.
  • A clip from a Warner Bros. gag reel (not meant for public release) shows Porky Pig hitting his thumb with a hammer. He starts to stammer "Son of a bi-bi-bit...!", but in his usual fashion, he changes what he's going to say after he finishes stuttering. In this case, he changes it to "Son of a gun!" However, the real switch is, Porky goes Breaking the Fourth Wall and says to the audience, "You thought I was gonna say, "s-suh-son of a bitch", didn't ya?"
• The Looney Tunes Show:
  • In "Peel of Fortune", Daffy tries his hand at inventing. His speech indicates he's invented a time machine... but he's invented a suitcase.
  • In "That's My Baby", Daffy has to babysit Zachary, Tina's infant nephew. At one point, Zachary stops crying after seeing a trailer for the Marty the Whale movie on Bugs' TV, so Daffy decides to take him to the movie theater. However, instead of seeing Marty the Whale, Daffy takes Zachary to see a war movie called Guns, Guts, Glory, which upsets him even more.
  • The "President's Day" Merrie Melodies music video (part of "French Fries") begins with Lola dressed in a winter coat and singing festively about celebrating her favorite holiday underneath a tree covered in Christmas lights. She then says that her favorite holiday is President's Day.
• The Loud House:
  • In "Tricked!", Lucy tells her mother Rita (dressed like a zombie) that she needs to lose a limb, so she takes out a chainsaw. Rita thinks that Lucy is going to cut her arm off, but the latter is actually handing the chainsaw to Lynn. Lucy instead stuffs Rita's arm in her sleeve and adds fake blood to it to make it look like she lost an arm.
  • In "Pasture Bedtime", Rusty accidentally mistakes some hot sauce for ketchup and puts it on his sandwich. However, rather than the expected stereotypical gag wherein a character would suffer intense heat from having ingested hot sauce, Rusty instead turns out to be allergic to the stuff.

M-Z

• In the Martha Speaks episode "Dogs from Space", Martha opens a refrigerator and takes out bread, Bologna, pickles, ketchup, mustard and mayo and says, "I know exactly what to make out of this!" What do you think she's going to make? A sandwich, right? No! She makes what she calls "a delicious mess"!
  • In "Martha Smells", while Martha is trapped in a box, she sees Weaselcraft and Pablum talking about a talking dog they are trying to catch, and she says to herself: "I feel bad about that talking dog they are after...Wait a minute!...I gotta finish that peanut butter!"
  • In "Dog Fight", while Alice and T.D. are quarreling with each other, Martha interrupts the fight by yelling, "Stop it!" Alice and T.D. stop thinking Martha was talking to them, but she was actually talking to a flea that she was trying to scratch.
• In the Mickey Mouse (2013) episode Roll 'Em, Mickey and Minnie try to run away from the director of a movie they're working on because the film roll broke loose from the camera and instead filmed Mickey and Minnie's attempts to get it back. Eventually, they get caught and this happens:
  Director: I'm gonna make you... MY NEWEST STARS! Such poise! Such nu-nu-nuances!
• Miraculous Ladybug: Several times the series has teased the viewers with a possible Akumatizaion of the main character, Marinette Dupain-Cheng, either in her civilian or superhero form, but something always goes wrong before she can be transformed into a villain.
• Molly of Denali:
  • In "Dream Tube", the kids want to buy a tube, but they don't have enough money. Auntie Midge also has her eye on it. Every time she goes into the Denali Trading Post, the kids think that she's gonna buy the tube, but she doesn't.
  • In "Suki's Bone", Molly, Tooey, and Oscar discover what seems to be an ancient washer, but later it turns out to be a piece of metal from a vacuum cleaner, much to their disappointment.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "Mare in the Moon", Twilight Sparkle has been told by her mentor to make some friends, but she has absolutely no interest in doing so. However, every pony she interacts with makes some kind of "we're gonna be friends" comment, causing her to have a reaction of some sort (spit take, eye twitch, etc.). When the last pony, Pinkie Pie, throws her a party so "now you have lots and lots of friends," Twilight nearly hurks her drink... not because of Pinkie's comment, but because she accidentally took a big sip of hot sauce.
  • In "Discordant Harmony", while Discord and Fluttershy are having a tea party, he compliments Fluttershy on how she cut off the crusts on the sandwiches for him. He starts to reach for a crustless sandwich, but then shifts his hand over to another plate that has all the crusts, one of which he takes and eats.
• Each episode of OOglies ends with a walnut performing the theme song by playing it on a guitar and whistling the melody. However, in all but one case, he gets interrupted, broken or sabotaged. Sometimes, something seems like it's going to happen but instead, something comes out of nowhere and squashes him instead. For example:
  • He plays on top of a bottle of champagne and, near the end of the song, a rumbling noise is heard. Instead of the bottle spraying him into the air, a bowling ball rolls past and breaks the bottle from underneath him.
  • He performs right between the cymbals of a cymbal-banging monkey toy. Throughout the song, the monkey winds up its cymbals until it looks like it's about to clash them into the walnut but before it can, a weight falls and crushes it. The monkey then lightly taps its cymbals together.
  • He rocks out under a shelf. As the song plays, a strongman monkey nut pushes a brick to the edge to try and squash him under it but before that can happen, an anvil beats him to the punch, much to his confusion.
• OPAL: When Opal gives the cigarettes to Claire's grandfather, Claire's grandfather gets suspicious of Opal because she's not talking; after smelling Opal's, he concludes that Opal is not his granddaughter and angrily demands that she leaves his house. This seems to confirm that Opal and Claire are two different people, but with the ending that confirms Opal and Claire are The same people, this probably shows that the grandfather properly lost his sense of smell and was just confused that Claire wasn't talking.
• Happens sometimes on Phineas and Ferb, a show full of Running Gags:
  • Near the end of "The Fast and the Phineas", Candace brings Mom home to show her the empty garage as proof the boys are not home and get them busted; at first Mom appears to be shocked as Candace is looking away, but then Mom becomes overjoyed and Candace shocked, as the car is somehow back and clean of all the modifications due to Perry crashing through the roof with it.
  • Double Subverted in "Flop Starz"; Candace attempts to show her mom a building with an ad for the band Phineas and Ferb started. Then Doofenshmirtz's robot building starts going towards the building, making it look like it's going to crush it. However, Perry manages to turn it away at the last minute. Then it turns out that the building was scheduled for demolition right at that moment anyway.
  • "S'Winter": Doofenshmirtz creates the Meltinator 6-5000 ray, leading one to think that it will melt the boys' mountain of snow. Instead, it shorts out the city's power when he plugs it in, shutting off the fans that kept the snow cooled, and the snow melts on its own.
  • In "Voyage to the Bottom of Buford", Candace uses a disposable camera to document the boys' adventures; meanwhile, Doofenshmirtz has invented the Media-Erase-Inator. That seems to fit perfectly, but the ray actually ends up erasing a stop sign, causing a traffic accident which knocks over a water tower, and the resulting wave of water destroys the camera.
  • In "Gaming the System", Candace gets sucked into Phineas and Ferb's video game when she was in the middle of getting ready for the cotillion with Jeremy. Meanwhile, Dr. Doofenshmirtz has created a laser that puts fancy dresses on anyone who is shot with it. Right before Jeremy shows up, Perry and Dr. Doofenshmirtz fight and cause the laser to accidentally go off and shoot... everyone in the yard except Candace. Soon after that, Perry gets out of the dress he was wearing and it falls on Candace (and somehow does her hair).
  • In "It’s A Mud, Mud, Mud, Mud World", Doofenshmirtz creates a Monster-Truck-Awayinator, and we're lead to believe he will use it to erase Phineas and Ferb's monster truck show. However, Perry proceeds to make the Inator disappear via a reverse dial (Doof is very bad with Inventional Wisdom). The monster trucks and stadium are instead sold to the rival driver Candace had been competing against the entire episode.
  • One unrelated to the show's running gags occurs in "A Real Boy". Candace gets Stacy to hypnotize her into not wanting to bust the boys anymore, with the result that the phrase "Holy guacamole!" will make Candace give up her urges to bust her brothers, and "Leaping lizards!" will make her go back to normal. When Candace heads off on her date with Jeremy, the two of them spot a literal leaping lizard, and Jeremy rattles off several treacherously-close synonyms for the code phrase, which actually ends up being said by a passing kid.
• In the Pound Puppies (2010) episode, "Beauty is Only Fur Deep", Champ tells the Pound Puppies the story about how he lost his fur and his self-esteem in a flashback. As he tells the story, he keeps coming to parts where he could have possibly lost his fur. For each one, Niblet interrupts by saying, "Is that how you lost your fur?" but it wasn't. It turns out he lost his fur...from eating a piece of boysenberry pie! (He's allergic to boysenberries.)
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): At the beginning of "Just Desserts", the narrator talks about how Townsville is safe from crimes. He talks to a random guy who acts like he doesn't know what keeps Townsville safe from crime while the girls are playing behind him. The narrator then tells the man to look behind him, but it turns out he (the narrator) was actually referring to a prison that's located further out in the distance.
• Primal (2019): From "Slave of the Scorpion", Mira uses stick drawings in the dirt to tell Spear her story of how she was taken from her people by a group of marauders led by a large figure with horns. The drawing made it seem like this being was some kind of monster. After Spear and Fang travel across the sea and rescue her from her captors, we see no sign of this creature. The viking chieftain after death encounters this entity, who appears to be this world's equivalent of Satan, yet his reaction implies he's never seen this thing before. So... what exactly is this thing and what did have to do with Mira's capture? The answer came in "Echoes of Eternity". Nothing. The figure she drew was in fact a viking in a helmet, a very human being and a coincidental resemblance to the horned giant. This entity that we thought was being built up since the end of season one was in fact something completely unrelated and has no interest in Mira, or in Spear and Fang, and just wanted to tempt the chieftain into becoming a demon to seek revenge.
• Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja: "The Tale of the Golden Doctor's Note" follows Randy and Howard's attempts to get out of rope climbing in gym courtesy of the titular paper. Halfway through the episode, Randy admits that he only went through with this because he thought Howard couldn't climb a rope. It seems like Randy is referring to Howard's weight at first, but he's actually referring to Howard having tiny hands.
• Ready Jet Go!:
  • After a full season of Mindy not being allowed to go to space with the older kids, came the episode "Mindy in Space"... which is about the kids pretending to take Mindy to space, complete with Mindy singing the take-off song.
  • In "Mars Rock for Mom", when Sean shows his mom the rock he found, Dr. Rafferty comments that she knows where it came from. At first, Sean is worried that she knows that it came from Mars, but Dr. Rafferty says that she knows that it came from Sean.
• Regular Show: The third and final part of the Grand Finale is named after "The Power", the first episode of the show, and it starts off in the exact same way as that episode. The viewer might think that there was a mistake in the broadcasting schedule until a minute in, when Rigby realizes they've done this before.
• Done in the bloopers sketches on Robot Chicken.
  • A man tries to fix a lawnmower while his wife tells him not to hurt himself and that it would be better for a mechanic to do the job. The man tells her he can do it if she would just be quiet. Then their daughter announces she's pregnant.
  • Footage is shown of the actors playing Cylons in Battlestar Galactica having trouble moving around in their costumes. In the final segment one Cylon moves slowly toward a banana peel on the floor… only to be hit by a wrecking ball.
  • A sketch based on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where Splinter tries to teach the turtles about sex begins with Splinter saying "You are teenagers now. It is finally time for The Talk." In the next scene, Splinter turns off his television set as he says "That was a good episode of The Talk. Now, we talk about sex."
• Recess: Throughout the episode "Parents' Night," Spinelli does all she can to prevent her friends from meeting her parents or knowing anything about them. Finally, she reluctantly brings them to Parents' Night – they're a pair of rude, trashy bikers who stay for only a minute, demand that Spinelli pay them for coming, and then turn her upside down and shake her to get the money from her pockets. For a moment it seems like we're watching a Very Special Episode about Abusive Parents... but then it turns out that the trashy couple were strangers Spinelli hired to pose as her parents, and then her real parents show up. They're perfectly nice and loving, but amazingly embarrassing, and that's the real reason why she hid them from her friends.
• Rocko's Modern Life:
  • "A Sucker for the Suck-O-Matic" begins with Heffer sitting on the couch and watching television as Rocko says insulting things like being useless and pathetic and that he's had enough. He then pulls out a hammer and pounds with it, implying that he's beating up Heffer for being lazy. It is then revealed that Rocko is actually beating up his old vacuum cleaner while Heffer is trying to watch TV.
  • In "Who's For Dinner?", When Rocko first meets the Wolfe family, Virginia tells Heffer that George is inside, watching the game. In the following scene, George says, "Come on, come on! What are you, blind? What kind of move was that?". It is then revealed that rather than a football game, he is watching a nature documentary, specifically a scene where a cheetah is trying to catch a gazelle.
• Rugrats (1991): "Doctor Susie" begins with what looks like a tornado carrying a cow through a field of grass. However, it is soon revealed that the cow is Mrs. Moo-Moo, Susie's toy cow that gets caught in Lucy's vacuum cleaner when she vacuums the living room.
• Masters of the Universe: Revelation was advertised as starring He-Man, but he is killed in in the first episode to focus on Teela instead.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: When Scorpia is introduced to Catra, Scorpia emerges from the shadows, towers over Catra, and is covered in an exoskeleton with dangerous claws. Her badass image lasts about two seconds before she decides that Catra is now her best friend.
  Scorpia: Just so you know, I'm a hugger.
  Catra: Wha— [gets scooped up in a giant hug]
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "SB-129", when SpongeTron sees Squidward frozen in ice, he pulls out a hammer...but instead of using it to smash the ice, it shoots a laser beam which melts the ice and burns Squidward's ass.
  • In "Big Pink Loser", When Patrick applies for a job at the Krusty Krab, he tells SpongeBob that it was nice of Mr. Krabs to give him a job. SpongeBob then says "And at $50.00 an hour, too.", implying that's going to be Patrick's salary. SpongeBob then says "When I started working here, I had to pay Mr. Krabs $100.00 an hour."
  • In "Dying For Pie", SpongeBob seems to explode after the sun sets, but it turns out that he was just blowing bomb-shaped bubbles.
  • In "Procrastination", SpongeBob attempts to finally get started on writing his essay for boating school, leading to a lengthy sequence of him writing it, then it turns out he just wrote the word "The" in a fancy script.
  • In "Krusty Towers", Squidward requests some cookies from his mother, so SpongeBob and Mr. Krabs visit Mrs. Tentacles... dressed as robbers for some reason, whom she's shocked about. When it seems in the next shot they've kidnapped Mrs. Tentacles and are trying to close their boat's trunk with the buffy sack inside, Mrs. Tentacles casually walks into the scene and Mr. Krabs reveals his laundry was in there.
  • In "The Slumber Party", SpongeBob wants to go to Pearl's girls-only slumber party. We then see someone who looks just like him but with brown hair and a purple dress, claiming to be a newcomer named "Girly Teen Girl". It seems as though this is SpongeBob in disguise, but it turns out that she really is a teenage female sponge who moved from another town.
  • Overlaps with Black Comedy Burst in "Are You Happy Now?", where in one scene it looks like Squidward is about to hang himself, then it turns out that he's just hanging a birdcage.
  • "SpongeBob vs. The Patty Gadget" serves as a Whole-Plot Reference to the tale of John Henry, and just like Henry SpongeBob collapses after he defeats the Patty Gadget. It then cuts to SpongeBob's friends sadly standing over a grave... and then SpongeBob walks up and happily dances on top of the grave. They buried the Gadget.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks:
  • "Much Ado About Boimler": Division 14, which is tasked with handling people mutated by scientific accidents, seems authoritarian and cruel. The ship that they operate is darkly lit and full of sinister angled shapes, its passengers have been stuck there with no information for months now, and the officer in charge has an evil laugh. Is Starfleet really just going to lock up all these poor folks in a space prison to hide its mistakes? Turns out, the answer is no. The officer in charge of transporting the patients in Division 14 isn't evil, that's just how he laughs. "The Farm" that they're heading to is actually a nice place, the trip just happens to be long, and all the victims of these space accidents are going to be taken care of in a reasonable, humane, and uplifting way. The office does end up agreeing that he should remodel the ship, however.
  • "Veritas": The entire episode is made out to be a trial of the senior officers, but it's actually a celebration party for them rescuing the alien who first seemed to be holding the trial.
  • "Crisis Point": Rutherford jumps at the chance to tell Holo-Billups whatever he wants without consequences, corners him, and then... starts praising him profusely.
  • "Mugato, Gumato": Boimler and Rutherford storm the cages and point what looks like a bamboo bazooka at the Ferengi... and then reveal that it's a holoprojector for their presentation on why running a mugato preserve would earn them more money than selling their horns.
• Star Wars Resistance: In "The Disappeared", Kaz and Torra need to get into a turbolift guarded by two stormtroopers. Cut to CB-23 pushing a cart laden with crates up to the door. The troopers note that this isn't a routine delivery and open the largest crate... to be greeted by a number of gorgs, which hop out and attack the troopers. While they're distracted, Kaz and Torra come out of the spot they were hiding in down the hall and sneak into the lift.
• Steven Universe:
  • At the end of "The Zoo", after Steven and Greg finally manage to get the attention of the Gems who run the People Zoo so they can have an opportunity to escape by hurting the Zoomans' feelings, causing them to start loudly crying and wailing, a bunch of Amethyst guards come charging in like riot police, suggesting violence is about to ensue. Instead, the Amethysts behave more like counselors, working to calm the Zoomans down.
  • Near the end of "That Will Be All", the Crystal Gems get caught sneaking Greg and Steven out of the Zoo at the very last minute, but they manage to rally together and subdue Holly Blue Agate. Garnet summons one of her gauntlets and says "I've been waiting all day to do this," as she approaches a tied-up Holly Blue. Garnet then punches her with her unarmed hand, causing Holly Blue to fall over and embarrass herself in front of the subordinates she had spent the whole episode belittling.
• In the Teen Titans (2003) episode "Troq" (a Very Special Episode about racism), Starfire asks Cyborg if he understands what it's like to be judged for how you look. Cyborg, who is black, answers that of course he does... then, after a Beat, clarifies that he's referring to how he's part-robot.
• Teen Titans Go!:
  • "The Return of Slade" brings up the titular villain in the first few minutes, then according to a transition card he's defeated offscreen over the course of 3 episodes and a made-for-TV movie.
  • "Batman vs. Teen Titans: Dark Injustice" was almost entirely this, for the episode was about April Fools Day pranks.
• Wander over Yonder: In "The Prisoner", Wander comes across a room on Lord Hater's ship where several animals are locked up in cages, and gasps. At first it would seem to him that Hater captured them and it's a trap, but then...
  Wander: (gets angry) Well! That's one star off my five-star review! These guest accommodations are lousy! (opens their cages and exits)
• What If…? (2021): In "What If Thor Were An Only Child?" Thor responds to Captain Marvel's attempt to break up his fratboy hijinx with "You know, there's a Midgardian word for women like you." She glares at him with glowing eyes, the scene is played up as if it's leading into a fighting-words misogynistic insult... and Thor calls her a "party pooper".
• WordGirl: In "Return of the Reprise of Lady Redundant Woman", WordGirl sits next to a man with a beard on a bench while talking about the shoes Lady Redundant Woman stole. At first, we would think the man is Captain Huggyface in disguise, but the man is actually real and Captain Huggyface is disguised as a fire hydrant instead.
• Work It Out Wombats!: In "The Treeborhood Harvest Day," there is a fog that is ruining the harvest. The characters manage to make the fog go away by saying "Fog, fog, go away"....only for it to come back seconds later.

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