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"Or does it explode?"
Langston Hughes, "A Dream Deferred" (last line)

Sometimes a comedic piece, rather than a punchline, will have everything suddenly explode instead. The randomness combined with the coolness factor of explosions is guaranteed to get some laughs.

This is a subtrope of Stuff Blowing Up. Also compare Drop the Cow.

As this is an Ending Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 
    Advertising 
  • Some Old Spice commercials played with this trope.
  • A recent (as of June 2017) ad for Johnsonville Brats featured an ad guy discussing his new ad campaign. At the end he comments on this trope:
    "I don't know haw it ends. Maybe an explosion." *BOOM*

    Fan Works 
  • The Marionette tries to listen to his musicbox ends with the Marionette suddenly throwing a nuclear bomb at Balloon Boy while frenzied electronic music plays, creating an explosion. The credits acknowledge the randomness of this ending:
    You as the one who is probably confused about what just happened and why everything exploded
  • This Touhou Project doujin explains how to wrap up your story if you run out of ideas.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Near the end of Caddyshack, Carl Spackler uses a bunch of plastic explosives as a last resort against the gopher. (Never mind that there's a crucial golf game going on.)
  • The Three Stooges used this ending in quite a few shorts.
  • Dr. Strangelove ends in this precise manner, in a very Black Comedy sense.
  • Luis Buñuel's last film, That Obscure Object of Desire, ends with an unexpected explosion (foreshadowed by terrorist attacks alluded to during the film) apparently killing the main characters as they seem to be working toward some resolution of their differences.
  • The film adaptation of V for Vendetta ends with Evey blowing up Parliament with V's Subway Train filled with Explosives, both to honor his last wish to avenge the years of torture he had suffered from their experiments, and to help free London from its corrupt government. Doubles as a Book End since the film started with an early explosion as well, with V blowing up the Old Bailey.
  • Bride of the Monster, which as shown by Ed Wood, was a request by the film's new financial backer - which certainly raises questions as for why the mad scientist being attacked by an octopus suddenly leads to a nuclear explosion.
  • Doppelgänger ends with Ross crashing the replacement lander into a parked spacecraft, killing him and causing a chain reaction that destroys most of the Space Centre and all records of his presence on the counter-Earth.

    Live Action TV 
  • The Goodies episode "Earthansia" ends with the BBC1 spinning Earth logo blowing up.
  • Several skits end that way in Monty Python's Flying Circus.
    • The "Penguin on the Telly" sketch begins with: "that was episode two of "The Death of Mary, Queen of Scots", specially adapted for radio by Gracie Fields and Joe Frazier. And now, Radio Four will explode." BLAM! So the old ladies watch a TV show instead, which ends with a presenter announcing "It's just gone 8 o'clock, and time for the penguin on top of your television set to explode." Cue the penguin exploding violently.
      Pepperpot: How did he know that was going to happen?!
      Presenter: It was an inspired guess.
    • "Le Fromage Grande", a parody of French arthouse films, ends with a head of lettuce turning out to be a ticking bomb, which explodes.
  • Many, many episodes of MythBusters. If it's a montage of explosions (as used in several specials), expect the climax of The 1812 Overture to accompany the montage.
  • The end of the pilot and the end of the series finale of The Young Ones.
  • The punchline to the MacGruber skits on Saturday Night Live, where the room that the eponymous character and his partners are trapped with always explodes, due to MacGruber's incompetence.
  • The Secret Life Of Machines' ending sequence is usually a bunch of the machines du jour exploding while "Take Five" plays.
  • The Brittas Empire: The episode “Back With A Bang” ends with Gavin's car getting blown up.

    Music 
  • On the P.D.Q. Bach album The Short-Tempered Clavier and other dysfunctional works for keyboard, the final chord of "Sonata da Circo" is followed by a track of sounds of the steam calliope exploding.
  • In Stan Freberg's version of "The World is Waiting for the Sunrise", the music gets faster and faster until the point where the equipment is smoking. Freberg tells everyone to run for their lives and screams before it explodes.

    Puppet Shows 
  • A favorite of The Muppet Show. Jim Henson was on record stating that whenever he can't think of an ending for a skit he just has everything explode.

    Radio 

    Tabletop Games 

    Video Games 
  • Exaggerated in the best ending of Hyper Princess Pitch. After defeating Mecha-Santa, you crash him head-first into the moon; then piledrive him and the moon into his polar base, causing it to explode; then the explosion hurls the earth into the sun, causing that to explode; THEN that explosion (somehow) causes the entire galaxy to explode. This move is called Galactic Princess Bus TAAH for a reason!
    Pitch: Awesome.
  • In the Flash puzzle game Shift 4, taking the escape rocket somehow causes the universe to explode.

    Web Animation 

    Web Comics 

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 
  • Sealab 2021 ends many episode with Sealab exploding, sometimes justified by the plot, sometimes purely for Once an Episode Rule of Funny.
  • The SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Dying For Pie" ends with the exploding pie completely destroying Bikini Bottom, using footage from the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests as said explosion.
  • Ren & Stimpy:
  • The Tom and Jerry cartoon "The Missing Mouse" has Tom scared by a lab mouse that swallowed a powerful explosive. By the end a radio announcement declares that the mouse will not explode and Tom gives it a good kick. It explodes anyway.
  • Courage the Cowardly Dog has the episode "Hothead", which ends with Eustace blowing himself up (his first death in the series), as well as the whole house, from his anger (courtesy of a hair growth toxin he used excessively), and Muriel, rocking in her chair with Courage on her lap, reminds said dog to remind Eustace to fix the chair.
  • Looney Tunes

    Real Life 
  • A lot more things can explode than one would expect. For instance, there is such a thing as a "dust explosion," which can happen where there is a sufficient particulate density in the air of an enclosed space of any combustible substance like sawdust, flour or talcum powder and there is a sufficient large spark to ignite it.


 
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Fazbear Lottery

Freddy Fazbear's Pizza gets blown up after Freddy realizes that the ticket he gave to the landlord was fake.

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