Origami Gag

Just a snip here, and a fold there...

McCroskey: Johnny, what can you make out of this?

[hands him the weather printout]

Johnny: This? Well, I can make a hat! I can make a brooch! I can make a pterodactyl—

[McCroskey snatches the report out of Johnny's hands]

—Airplane!

An Origami Gag is a visual joke where someone does something silly with paper and papercraft. Common forms of this trope include:

• Someone takes an ordinary piece of paper and folds it into a wildly improbable item, such as a complex clockwork mechanism.
• Someone folds a piece of paper and cuts it up to make a snowflake. When he unfolds it, the resulting figure is anything but a snowflake.
• Someone makes an intricate origami figure using something other than their hands.
• Someone takes a rigid, non-paper item and manipulates it as it if were paper.

Of course, other paper-folding shenanigans are possible. Might actually be justified if the character is a Paper Master.

When the item being folded is a cartoon character, then this is a subtrope of Forcibly Formed Physique. Not to be confused with Black Belt in Origami, though performing an Origami Gag does require a high level of paper proficiency.

Note that this trope is specifically about doing something funny, strange, or unexpected with paper (or whatever material); simply folding or cutting paper does not fall under this trope

May involve Impossibly-Compact Folding. Also see Paper Fan of Doom and 1000 Origami Cranes.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A Little Caesar's Pizza commercial shows one of their (fictional) competitors advertising a buy-one-get-one-free deal which actually gives the customer a pizza and a box. When the customer asks what he can do with a box, the cashier folds the box into a pterodactyl.

Comic Strips

• The Addams Family: In one sketch, Wednesday cuts out a string of paper dolls, one of which inexplicably has a third leg.

Film — Animated

• The Nightmare Before Christmas: Jack Skelington is studying Christmas and tries to make a simple paper snowflake. He folds a piece of paper into a triangle and cuts it up, then opens it to reveal a hexagon with a spider in the middle. (Followed by a great Double Take.)

Film — Live-Action

• Airplane!: Alluded to when air traffic control officer Steve McCroskey asks Cloudcuckoolander Johnny to interpret a weather report. Johnny grabs the printout and proceeds to excitedly list the various objects he can make with it.
• Liar Liar: The credits have an Hilarious Outtake where Jim Carrey crumples up a piece of paper and turns it into "a goose!"

Literature

• Interesting Times: Played for extreme Gallows Humor. Lord Hong has promised a man to not speak nor write orders for his execution. When the man inevitably outlived his usefulness, Hong shows his guards an origami man — without a head.

Video Games

• Mortal Kombat II: One of Jax's "Friendship" finishers involves presenting a chain of paper dolls.
• Paper Mario: The Origami King, unsurprisingly, does quite a bit with the origami motif. Many standard Mario enemies appear as origami versions of themselves, while the Mushroom Kingdom's Toad residents need to be found and rescued after King Olly transformed them into intricate shapes like a dog, a beetle, or a fried egg, and scattered them around the land. Meanwhile, series villain Bowser is reduced to a basic rectangle, hopping around like a greeting card.
• SPY Fox: In the third game, Operation Ozone, Fox infiltrates a Scottish hydroelectric dam in a parody of GoldenEye's introduction sequence, and an informant there gives him a sheet of paper from which to build a rocket-powered origami skateboard. The player's job is to click on the three parts in the proper order to build the skateboard. Clicking on the parts in the wrong order turns the skateboard into an origami model of one of three Humongous Entertainment characters; Pajama Sam's head, Freddi Fish, or Putt-Putt.

Web Animation

• The Colors of Evil: Vivian summons the demon Belphagor in order to kill Nancy, a mean girl who bullies her. She tears apart a photo of Nancy to demonstrate what she wants Belphagor to do, then hands him an identical photo. He swishes it around in his mouth for a few seconds before spitting out an origami crane, which makes Vivian pound her head against the desk.
• Homestar Runner: In the Strong Bad Email "parenting", a flashback shows Strong Sad and Strong Mad practicing changing the diapers on their banana-pudding babies. Strong Sad makes a paper boat instead, while Strong Mad ends up with a paper crane and squashes the "baby" in the process.

Webcomics

• Cyanide and Happiness: In this comic, a blue shirted guy confronts a green shirted guy for destroying his origami swan. Green shirt threatens blue shirt by saying he'll "rip him a new one," to which blue shirt thanks him. Green shirt then holds up a new origami swan in the last panel, which blue shirt admires.

Web Original

• SCP Foundation: Hinted at in one incident with subject SCP-914, which produced a glass orb that inspired a volunteer to take a piece of paper and create something inexplicably indescribable.
  D-8742, upon contact with the object, requested a sheet of paper, which he folded into a paper [DATA EXPUNGED].
  Update: It's been five months since D-8742's termination, and that thing is still in the air.

Western Animation

• Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown: Charlie Brown tries to teach Sally how to cut construction paper to make a heart for Valentine cards, but she produces stencils of a club and a diamond instead. By contrast, with a flourish of scissors, Snoopy manages to cut his paper so as to form a complex, moving carousel that even plays music.
• Gravity Falls: In "Irrational Treasure", while following a series of clues, Dipper and Mabel find a parchment full of seemingly nonsensical symbols. Spotting one that might represent fire, he concludes that a clue will be revealed by burning the parchment. Before he can, though, he turns to see that Mabel has already taken the parchment and folded it into an origami hat… which actually turns out to have been the correct thing to do as she has unknowingly folded it into a map that leads to the next clue.
• Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs: In one episode, Harry tries to make an elephant out of origami, but being a young boy of approximately five or six who's never been taught, he just makes a pile of paper that his dinosaurs mistake for a house, boat, or houseboat.
• House of Mouse: In the short "Relaxing with Von Drake", Ludwig Von Drake demonstrates various massages on Donald Duck, including the "origami massage" that involves folding him into a paper swan.
  Von Drake: Looks like we made a swan out of that ugly duckling.
• Looney Tunes:
  • "Mouse Wreckers": Claude Cat is being gaslighted by mice Hubie and Bertie. He goes to a book on psychological disorders and says, "Here it is, the very page!"... then tears out the page and folds it into a Napoleon hat.
  • "Porky Pig's Feat": The hotel manager hands Daffy his card. Daffy responds by taking out a hole puncher and using it to make a paper doll chain out of the card.
• The Patrick Star Show: In "Home ECCH!", when Squidina demonstrates how to make a bed, she folds up the blanket like an origami crane.
• The Simpsons: In "Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood", one of the many problems that Homer causes on the father-son rafting trip involves him folding Ned's river map into a hat and wearing it.
  Ned: Now, what happened to that gosh-darn map I brought?
  (the map-hat suddenly blows off Homer's head)
  Homer: Um, I don't know.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • The season one episode "The Paper" focuses on SpongeBob having fun with a paper candy wrapper. At one point, he uses his tongue to fold the wrapper into complex origami shapes. Squidward tries to replicate the feat, but only makes a mess.
  • In "Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy II'', SpongeBob is riding on his heroes' Invisible Boatmobile and while fooling around with the controls, accidentally hits the origami button, which folds the whole thing into a paper crane.
• Walt Disney Presents: In "Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom", Professor Owl begins talking about the "three R's" while cutting a paper doll chain with "R" shapes, but when he sees his chain has four R's, he snips the extra one off. He then does more cutting to make a chain that spells "R-E-A-D".

Real Life

• In magic, there is an illusion called "The Origami Box", in which an illusionist will place their assistant in a large box, then folding it down to roughly 12x12'', then going on to pierce it with three swords, only to unfolded the box, and the assistant reemerging unharmed, sometimes changing costume, or even changing gender.

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