A character on the side of a road or street is doing something that no reasonable or sane human being would be expected to do.
Cue the rolling of a bus full of moral types (nuns, children, etc) past the character, and the resulting mouth gapes and bulging stares from the formerly unblemished people of judgment.
It truly becomes Comedic Sociopathy for the unlucky character when said bus is a tour bus. Complete with flashing cameras and narration from the guide.
Should the bystanders choose to mock and jeer, congratulations—the victims might have picked up their very own Freelance Shame Squad. Lucky them!
This is often the response a character who made a Fee Fi Faux Pas gets. Often overlaps with Tour Guide Gag, when a tour guide explains to their tourists the action happening outside their vehicle. Despite the description, don't confuse this with Bus Full of Innocents, when the hero must save a vehicle full of people that is rushing to its doom.
Examples:
Advertising
- A circa-2000 Levis ad has a sexy young woman walking down a railroad track. As a train approaches, she strips off her jeans and stands to the side in her panties as the train goes roaring past, while various passengers gawp out the windows at her. (After the locomotive has passed, we see that she removed the jeans to lay them across the track, so the wheels of the train would convert them to cutoff shorts.)
Anime & Manga
- Inuyasha: Kagome tries to dress the wounds that Inuyasha took in the previous episode, but he insists he's fine and refuses to take off his shirt to let her see. Moments later Kaede walks by with a group of kids as Kagome is sitting on Inuyasha's chest demanding that he take his clothes off.
- Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Stardust Crusaders: Joseph Joestar and Muhammad Avdol become stuck together by Mariah's magnetic powers. Hilarity Ensues when their attempts to separate lead to them looking like they're dancing. Then Avdol's attempts to slide himself down to Joseph's legs makes it look like he's sucking the old man off. THEN when they finally become unstuck, Avdol's crotch gets stuck to Joseph's rear before the magnetism forces Avdol to vigorously dry hump Joseph. All the while, they draw in an increasingly large crowd of people, who just stare at the two in confusion. Eventually, an old lady who was smitten with Joseph walks in on the two during the worst of their curse, at which point she angrily starts whipping Joseph with her umbrella. At this point, Joseph is humiliated enough to start crying.
Joseph: HELP ME!! OH MY GOD!!
Films — Animation
- Turning Red: During the intro, Mei's attempt to do a cartwheel on the sidewalk ends up with her falling over and the contents of her back spilling out resulting in everyone in the vicinity staring at her.
Film — Live Action
- Ali G In Da House: Ali is chained to a railing when his pants get pulled down. After trying to get an erection when a girl he likes passes (so as not to appear small), the next group along is a group of nuns.
- Crank: Jason Statham is having sex with his girlfriend in the middle of Chinatown. In public (long story). The passing judgment? A bus of attractive Japanese women who later comment on the news about his robustness and vigor.
- Independence Day: Hiller and his best friend are discussing brown-nosing in a locker room. His best friend is on one knee when Smith drops the engagement ring he was going to give his girlfriend. Just as the best friend holds it up to give it back, someone else on their squad passes by, makes an "I didn't see anything" gesture, and leaves.
- Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid: Arthur, in a conversation with Lenore, is caught by Mike, who thinks he's fallen in love with the aquarium.
- Napoleon Dynamite: A farmer shoots a cow just as a school bus passes by.
Jokes
- Outdoor humorist Patrick McManus comments in one of his stories that if you're hopelessly lost in the wilderness, the surest way to be rescued is to do something incredibly embarrassing and/or take off all your clothes. People will be drawn to your location like a magnet.
- A similar joke (told in Good Clean Jokes) has two hunters realize they're lost. When one, panic-stricken, asks what to do, the other coolly answers to shoot another deer to draw the game warden.
- There is a story told by a comedian where a train is traveling through Wales and a man is, per stereotype, shagging a sheep right next to the rail tracks. Somebody complained, the police were called and they found the man in the same spot. You'd think he would have moved.
- There's the classic urban legend about a guy who decides to be a jerk and throw his annoying cat at the window. The cat digs its claws into the curtains and its falling brings the curtains crashing down, rod and all. There is a group of now horrified children passing by right at that moment. The man is nude.
Literature
- James Herriot noted that in daily practice as a country vet in Yorkshire, he could be driving between farms all day and see absolutely nothing else moving on the roads. But when all the cups of tea offered by hospitable farmers took their toll, and he pulled over to the side to urinate against a wall... a carload of nuns drew up and asked for directions to Whitby, which Herriot had to give while a large puddle was forming at his feet.
- Memoirs of an Invisible Man: Nick has sex with his girlfriend on a train which just happens to pass by a few old ladies, who are not amused by their antics. After turning invisible, Nick wonders if he was cursed by them.
Live-Action TV
- NCIS: Jimmy is often on the receiving end by virtue of being unbelievably terrible with his choice of words. He usually says just one thing that turns out to be highly irreverent and gets a really dirty stare from Gibbs or an appalled look from Ducky, sometimes both at the same time.
- Seinfeld: Invoked in "The Doorman". Kramer sees a tour bus passing by and pretends to mug George in order to get a horrified reaction from them.
Roleplays
- We Have All Become Pokémon: Seems to be Togekiss Nurse's trademark, but she's especially hard on Jani — who she deems to be someone who's undertrained and well out of her league.
Web Animation
- The Adventurous Adventures of One Direction: The kids on the Polar Express say "stay away from us" and "y'all are crazy" when the boys want to know they're okay after surviving the train derailment.
Western Animation
- The Cleveland Show: Arianna the Bear does this to Donna all the time, criticizing everything about how she runs her life. In "Ladies' Night", it's mentioned that before marrying Cleveland, she didn't even allow Donna into her house, because she doesn't like single mothers.
- Family Guy:
- "Brian the Bachelor": Not on the street per se, but in one episode Cleveland has an audition for The Bachelorette and begins getting nervous, so Peter tries to calm Cleveland down. It escalates quickly, with Peter ripping off Cleveland's clothes and his own clothes and holding Cleveland in his chair. Then the executives walk through the door to call in Cleveland.
- There's an incident when Peter wrecked his car and a bus full of supermodels laughed at him.
- "Perfect Castaway": Peter, Joe, Cleveland, and Quagmire are stuck on a deserted island. Following the cliché, they decide to have an orgy. Realizing they aren't attracted to each other they try to disengage but are too tired to move. Naturally a cruise ship sails by; the tour guide describes the scene in English and Spanish.
- The Powerpuff Girls (2016): In "Bubbles of the Opera", Bubbles is distraught over having taken a bad school photo. Her sisters try a number of things to cheer her up but she keeps having accident after accident, resulting in her face becoming more disfigured. After leaving the dentist's office, Bubbles says she's starting to feel better but her horribly disfigured face doesn't sit well with a large group of students on a passing school bus, the last of which screams "KEEP DRIVING!! FOR THE LOVE OF HUMANITY, KEEP DRIVING!!"
- The Simpsons:
- Skinner loses his pants as Chief Wiggum drives up.
- Ned Flanders gets pulled over for suspected DUI just as the church bus drives by.
- Inverted in "D'oh-in' in the Wind", when Homer becomes a hippie and decides to defy the establishment. Acting out of his mind while driving in his car, he passes Krusty the Clown, who is at that moment riding a unicycle pulled by his pet monkey... and calls them weirdos.
- The Running Gag of Nelson showing up out of nowhere and pointing and laughing overlaps when he's boarding any kind of vehicle, most usually it being his bicycle.
- Spongebob Squarepants: In "Pranks a Lot", SpongeBob and Patrick's joke competition deranges into the two of them roughhousing over a can of paint while being naked. A tour bus drives right beside them and the guide describes what the passengers are seeing. When they recover from their brief shock, the passengers start taking pictures.
Fish Tour Guide: ...And if you look to your right, you'll see two naked guys fighting over a can of paint!
- Tiny Toon Adventures: In "Bacon Strip", Hampton tries to get home in the nude after his clothes get stolen during a disastrous attempt at skinny-dipping. Naturally, one of the first things he runs into is a late-night tour bus, with the guide pointing out "And to your right, a naked pig."
