Funny / Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei

• After offering to commit suicide with her, Nozumu is stalked by Matoi... who is being stalked by her previous boyfriend who finds her sudden lack of interest in him jarring. And he is being stalked by a woman, who is being stalked by a man, who is being stalked by another woman, who is being stalked by a man who washes her underwear. The two students watching compare him to the Pied Piper of Hamelin, being followed by undesirables.
• According to a sign, hot springs can restore HP and cure other abnormal status effects and if we take into account that Kafuka can possess each of the girls, it adds more horror.
• The teacher and his most enthusiastic student get a hikikomori to leave her room by nailing the door shut and offering her dolls if she will remain inside.
• Chiri trying to divide a cake (including four strawberries) with mathematical perfection among an ever increasing number of people. She ends up blending it.
• The "Super Chiri" incident.
• One of the "in the last volume" nonsense stories, which starts out "Nozomu, a man who loved peace and Stalin..."
• The scene at the end of Abiru's introduction in which she forcibly pins a tail on Nozomu and he runs through the street screaming about her being a pervert. Harumi sees him and forces him to wear cat ears.
  Nozomu: THIS IS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FETISH!!!
• The whole "seen it a million times" incident, which includes Harumi realizing that her Yaoi Fangirl tastes aren't shared by the majority and Kafuka producing Komori's "older brother" (a smelly guy wrapped in a blanket).
• The incident in which the majority of the girls visit Nozomu at his ancestral home. While Chiri had planned to go, the others basically end up their accidentally, which includes Kiri being kidnapped and some random object put in her place, and Maria lured into a vehicle by a trail of fruit.
• The Gag Subbed second episode of Zoku. The whole thing. Commodore Perry goes on a hunt for magical oooo.
• The Accidental Marriage episode, the thing itself is pretty funny but the bit where two of the people who are "Good at making eye contact" who were hired (both of whom were guys) to make eye contact and marry Nozomu make eye contact with each other by mistake get shipped out on a minecart, now engaged.
• In the "maybe maybe fraud" segment, Nozomu is offered various possible relationships which are said to be able to work which include Nami ("normal love"), Manami ("unfaithful love"), Chie ("adult love"), Kaere ("violent love"), Ikkyu (a raised eyebrow), and Maria ("an acquaintanceship"). Then, Chiri comes and offers "proper love"... and is bluntly rejected. Then of course, she goes Ax-Crazy.
• In the All Just a Dream instance, nearly everyone's personalities are reversed, including Nami, who instead of being The Generic Guy and wanting to be special, is odd and wants to be normal. Ultimately, the characters resolve to kill Nozomu to stop the dream from ending, which includes a cackling Nami coming after him with an ax, leading to Nozomu shouting out, "That girl is definitely not normal!"
• The whole of Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei's introductory sequence, filled with 'should I be laughing at this?' humour:
  Kafuka: You were... trying to make yourself taller◊, right?
  • This is followed by Kafuka explaining that she knows he was trying to make himself taller because her parents do it all the time, especially when debt collectors come for them or companies go out of business. Nozomu also wonders if she thinks the suicide sites in Mount Fuji are just hotspots for people who are trying to make themselves taller.
  • After Kafuka tries to save Nozomu from hanging himself by just manhandling him until the rope breaks, he angrily yells "What if I had died!?"
• The CD in the suicide kit.
• One Word: IIIIIIIIIYAAAAAAAAA!
• One of the episodes in the first season has a brief parody of the famous James Bond opening credits, complete with panning shots of Itoshiki and random sliding geometric shapes in the background. In place of the James Bond theme music, is someone going "da-na-na-da-nanana!", and so forth, clearly making it up as they go along. Mock credits list the directors and animators, and Hiroshi Kamiya, Itoshiki's seiyuu, under "music".
  • You can hear the person doing the "da-na-na-da-nanana!" almost start laughing at one point. This somehow makes it a lot more hilarious.
• The sequence in Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei when everybody starts swapping voice actors.
• Episode 7, when they're talking about the 4 panel comics. While discussing the 4 panels, being introduction, development, turning point, and conclusion, Nozomu bursts in and explains there is a secret forbidden 5th panel, "Darkness". the first example used for the 4 panel is
  • Intro: two boys passing each other in a school hallway
  • Development: the two boys playing basketball together with sparkles everywhere
  • Turning point: the boys both punching each other in the face
  • Conclusion: the boys sleeping together, presumably after sex (it's a yaoi example)
  • Darkness: a picture of an asterisk with a dark liquid coming out and the word "Hemorrhoids". The sound effect accompanying that panel makes the moment even more hilarious.
• Episode 9 of the third season: the Shout-Out to the "Congratulations" sequence from the Neon Genesis Evangelion finale.
• Abiru's and Nami's snarking can be particularly amusing especially in Chapter 289, where they both gang up on Usui and brofisting as he laments over their snarks.
• When Nozomu laments the fact that today's society has a bad habit of casually revealing crucial info, his sister Rin suggests he does the opposite: say pointless stuff in an epic, overdramatic manner. He promptly does so, and when his students get in on the act, he even provides dramatic overreaction.
  • In one episode, Nozomu dies again and the following words pop up:
    And so, the main character of the story died...
  • Whilst someone is singing 'Happy Birthday' in the background.
• In one chapter made not too long after the 2009 North Korean missile launch test a missile lands at the school. The class, being afraid that if they try to report it they'll be punished for contradicting the Japanese government's statements, try to cover it up and each attempt just makes it worse. This includes trying to make it look like something from a sports festival^note which includes writing the kanji for flying on it, writing the word "fake" on it^note which just makes it look even more real and trying to disguise it as a pitcher's mound and accidentally making the kanji for "Kim"^note as in Kim Jong Il.

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I'm in despair! People laughing at me at my expense have left me in despair!