Playing Up the Stereotype

"She is from Kansas City. Why is she talking like Speedy Gonzales?"

— Amy Sosa about a fellow Latina employee, Superstore, "Shots and Salsa"

Despite what some people think, not every member of a certain group falls into a stereotype. This rings true even in media, as complex characters can come from all sorts of backgrounds. Such characters will often chew out others for believing stereotypes and try their best not to fall into them.

Then one day, these characters start acting less like themselves and more in line with those stereotypes. Maybe the Straight Gay becomes a lot more camp, or the intelligent Latina girl throws on an exaggerated accent and starts acting hot-tempered and flirty, or the caring Jewish man suddenly becomes obsessed with money, or The Lad-ette puts on a pink dress and makeup and starts quivering for a man to save her.

If it feels ingenuine, that's because it is — they're just pretending to be stereotypical for their own benefit. Perhaps they're trying to annoy the hell out of somebody who keeps acting bigoted towards them, or they're trying to impress somebody by playing up their heritage. Maybe they're caricaturing themselves just to entertain others. Whatever it is, chances are they'll be relieved once they can finally drop the charade. If they get too into their part, they'll probably start pissing off other members of their group for feeding into stereotypes, and may have an identity crisis.

This may also occur if the character is only newly discovering their identity and thus has a very limited idea of what it entails, or if they have been forced into a new identity via bodily transformation and are playing the part in the most one-note way possible.

This isn't just restricted to humans either. Works with anthropomorphic animals, for example, may have characters play up Animal Stereotypes, and a Reluctant Monster may use their species' terrifying reputation to play up a Monster Façade.

A form of Invoked Trope, as the character deliberately plays up common tropes related to their identity. Often overlaps with Fauxreigner if the character is playing up the Funny Foreigner trope. Also often overlaps with Deliberately Distressed Damsel when Action Girl (or at least girl who can save herself without others' help) decides to play Damsel in Distress. Compare Stereotype Reaction Gag for characters who don't want to fit stereotypes, but do so without thinking. Also compare Then Let Me Be Evil, for characters who become evil because everybody saw them as such. See Deliberately Cute Child for when a child plays up the "sweet and innocent" view of children to get their own way. See also Stop Being Stereotypical for when someone berates someone (sometimes even themselves) for being and/or thinking stereotypical (usual reaction for playing this trope).

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Azumanga Daioh: When Osaka transfers in from a school in Osaka, resident Genki Girl Tomo believes that she'll perfectly embody The Idiot from Osaka and gets disappointed when she turns out to be gentle and soft-spoken. Tomo angrily accuses her of being an imposter, and when Osaka tries to explain that Osakans aren't all loud and brash, she recognizes that it's not working and instead lightly strikes Tomo in an imitation of an Osakan Boke and Tsukkomi Routine. Tomo immediately and enthusiastically responds "You pass!"
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Ling plays up the stereotype of foreigners not speaking Amestrian whenever he thinks it will make him seem harmless or get him out of trouble. The only time it's actually worked, though, was when he stuck Ed with a massive restaurant bill right after meeting the Elrics.

Comedy

• One of Gabriel Iglesias's routines is recounting a tale of trying to get out of ignoring the designated drop-off at his kid's school by trying to play up the "clueless Mexican who can't speak English" by only speaking in really rapid Spanish. The Principal he's trying to convince responds in perfect Spanish, then adds she's not stupid.
• A comedy skit by Katt Williams praised doing this trope, recalling a time where rapper Flavor Flav chose to do a skit with other prominent black entertainers presenting himself as a "Flying Monkey" doing a modern-day Minstrel Show written by racist writers in Comedy Central in exchange for large profits. In the end, he describes if people are going to ascribe to stereotypes, you might as well work it for all its worth and for every dime they have.

Comic Books

• Archie Comics: In one comic, Jughead tells Betty that Archie might give her more attention if she pretends to be a Dumb Blonde. All this does is annoy him. Betty later angrily tells Jughead that the secret to being a dumb blonde is following his advice.
• In a The Sandman (1989) issue that takes place in 19th century San Francisco and centers around Emperor Norton, Norton is speaking to his Chinese "chamberlain" Ah How when a sailor clearly suffering from withdrawal bumps into them and asks Ah How if he knows where to find an opium den. Ah How gets rid of the sailor by explaining that he doesn't speak English in broken English, and as soon as the sailor is out of earshot, he continues speaking to Norton in English with perfect fluency.
• In Superman Smashes the Klan, Tommy makes up quotes from Confucius, calls himself a wonton, and acts along other Chinese stereotypes while trying to fit in after he and his family move to downtown Metropolis. His sister Roberta calls him out on this, but he retorts that she's so stuck up about not being that everyone keeps her at arm's length.
• The Unwritten involves a Cabal that attempts to control and weaponize fiction and imagination itself, using them for their own ends. One issue shows how they made use of Rudyard Kipling, elevating him from obscurity while using Kipling's works as Propaganda Pieces to promote western imperialism and colonization of other cultures. After Kipling has begun falling out with the Cabal, he meets with Mark Twain and inquires if Twain was also approached by the group. Twain confirms that he was, but he either knew about the conspiracy beforehand or had a bad feeling about them, because, as he says, when they approached him he acted all country and "red in the neck" until they decided he was just a useless country bumpkin and left him alone.

Films — Animated

• Puss in Boots: Puss's signature move is to give people Puppy-Dog Eyes so that people will do as he says and/or spare him due to viewing him as cute and innocent, like a stereotypical cat.
• Zootopia begins with a scene of a vicious tiger stalking an innocent bunny, which is revealed to be part of a school play about how predators and prey no longer have to fit those stereotypes. The jaguar who played the tiger revealing himself to actually be an intelligent prospective actuary, and Judy Hopps the bunny reveals that she wants to become a police officer. This setup comes back in the climax of the film: after seemingly getting hit with the Night Howlers, Nick "reverts" to his predator instincts and attacks Judy, only for Nick to reveal that he's totally lucid — it was just a setup to catch Bellwether in the act.

Films — Live-Action

• American Fiction: Monk is a black professor from a well-off background, and resents how the white-dominated publishing industry only wants to sell stereotypically black stories (i.e. about racism, urban crime, etcetera). As a joke, he writes a "hood" novel filled with stereotypes like deadbeat dads and drug addiction, and passes himself off as a thuggy ex-con (even affecting a ghetto accent). It gets rave reviews.
• Blazing Saddles: The racist, ignorant townsfolk of Rock Ridge all hate black people. So when Big Bad Hedley Lamarr sets up the African-American Bart as the new sheriff of Rock Ridge, the townsfolk are all prepared to shoot him. Thinking quickly, Bart holds himself hostage, acting as both a brutal hostage taker and a stereotypical black man while moving towards the safety of the sheriff's office. The townspeople are so stupid and/or dumbstruck that this actually works, allowing Bart to escape the situation with no trouble. Later on, Bart and Jim disguise themselves as Ku Klux Klan members by having Bart ask "Where da White Women At?" (which also named the trope), luring the KKK members away, knocking them out, and stealing their uniforms.
• Dear White People: Sam uses the term "oofta" to describe black people who modulate their blackness around their white friends, dating it back to the Jazz Age when "bojango-types" would "black it up" for white audiences. Troy is depicted as one example — he's highly academic and fluent, but when hanging out with his white friends at a party, he cracks jokes about being black and his affinity for white women so he can make them laugh.
• Glass Onion: Deep South detective Benoit Blanc tells his client that while investigating the mystery he'll "really lay on some Southern hokum", thereby distracting the suspects into dismissing him as a silly Southerner while his partner secretly investigates.
• In Hussar Ballad, Lieutenant Rzhevsky expects his fiancee Shura to be a silly, gossipy flirt, so Shura (a Tomboy who has found it all out by talking to Rzhevsky in her Sweet Polly Oliver disguise) puts on lots of powder, some fake curls to hide the fact that she wears Boyish Short Hair, a frilly dress, and successfully trolls him. She flutters her eyelashes at him all the time, forces him to listen to her chatter about romance novels and sewing (complete with an exaggerated French accent), and tells him she loves to weep. The hoax is a bit too successful as Rzhevsky begins to loathe the very thought of marrying her, while Shura actually is in love with him.
• In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the black Captain Katanga attempts to save Marion from the Nazis by expressing his desire for her and the objective to sell her into sexual slavery, traits very much in line with what the Nazis would assume of him. Watch the scene here.
• Deconstructed in A Soldier's Story. Sgt. Waters set up C.J. for murder because he thought C.J. was being a stereotypical "Geechee". He even reveals to C.J. that he has done this before to others under his command. This all started with an incident in France where a black soldier colleague of Waters in Paris accepted payment from French soldiers to dress up and behave like a monkey to fulfill their racist beliefs for profit. Feeling his choice reflected poorly on the other black soldiers, Sgt. Waters and some fellow soldiers decide to punish him by slitting his throat.
• Sorry to Bother You: In order to climb to a promotion at his job at WorryFree, Cassius uses a "white voice" to get ahead when calling customers. Once he finally gets to the upper level, as one of a few Black people there he's encouraged by the nearly all-white management to instead play up his Blackness. Cassius thus spends an uncomfortable night at the executive party doing awkward raps and dodging questions about life in the "hood".

Literature

• In All Creatures Wise and Wonderful by James Herriot, Herriot sneaks off to see his wife without official leave from the army but is caught in the act by an officer. Herriot realises the latter is from Glasgow, like him, and plays up his own Glasgow accent to convince the officer to help him.
• The Avenger, Josh and Rosabel, who are both black, often play up to the common black stereotypes when they are undercover as domestic servants. They tried to do this to The Avenger when they first met him, but he saw through the charade and told them not to hide their intelligence around him.
• Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: A Calcutta native in 19th-century England, Ramy often exaggerates his accent and makes up fanciful stories about his background. He explains to Robin that the English are racist against him either way, so it's better to be dismissed as a Funny Foreigner than to attract suspicion.
• In Brig Scarlet Flamingo, Izzy comes from an impoverished family and is married to an older rich man. She immediately figures out that people would see her as a typical Gold Digger, so at the first ball she attends after marriage, she shows up dressed in a silk dress with lots of jewellery and makes one silly remark after another whenever she opens her mouth. As a result, most people in the city still don't realise she is a very Brainy Brunette who is her husband's equal partner in business and should really be taken seriously.
• Demon Lord, Retry!: The bunnygirls Momo and Kyun live in an impoverished village where racist humans rarely interact with their kind. When the protagonist Kunai (a human from the modern world) goes to the village, both girls end their words with either -pyon (Japanese onomatopoeia for "hop") or -usa (a shortened form of usagi, Japanese for "rabbit"). When an annoyed Kunai asks why they keep doing it, they say it's because humans expect it and get disappointed if bunnygirls don't speak that way. He only becomes further annoyed when they don't say it when excited or when they believe no humans are around.
• Discworld:
  • It's noted, particularly in the novel The Truth, that black ribboner vampires like Otto Von Chriek will play up their vampiric eccentricities such as Vampire Vords and wearing evening formal wear all the time because that's what the people of Ankh-Morpork expect. It puts their minds at ease and obfuscates the fact that they're also dealing with what is by nature a bloodthirsty predator that could potentially throw even the toughest of them around like a ragdoll while shrugging off damage that could kill normal humans.
  • Igors on Discworld have shown that they often exaggerate their lisps and hobbled walking because that's what people have come to expect from an Igor. The Igor working at the Royal Mint is more than capable speaking without one and drops the lisp entirely when having a private conversation with his employer because it made it easier to explain the accidental Sympathetic Magic link formed between the water based financial computer and the Morporkian economy. Likewise, one Igorina drops it entirely, if briefly, in Monstrous Regiment. Like the stitches (or rather, "thticheth") it's a clan thing. Conversely, Igors also feel much more comfortable when their Masters (at least on a one-to-one basis) are properly insane and performing crazy experiments. It's not a requirement, but a bit of mad cackling every now and then does wonders for the employer/Igor relationship.
  • Jingo: 71-Hour Ahmed acts like the stereotypical image of Klatchians when visiting Ankh-Morpork in order to throw off suspicion and get people to lower their guard around him. Furthermore, since Ahmed was educated in Ankh-Morpork, he states that sometimes at home in Klatch he acts like the Klatchian stereotypes of Ankh-Morporkians, explaining that it can be useful to be "a little bit foreign" wherever he goes. This is because both cultures tend to view foreigners as a little bit stupid, and being underestimated in such a manner is something an extremely well-educated and experienced wali (head policeman) like Ahmed can take advantage of.
• Dracula: Quincey Morris is a gunslinging Texan cowboy stuck in a Gothic Horror novel, but the discrepancy between his normal behavior (which is more along the lines of a Southern Gentleman) and his hamming it up when proposing to Lucy implies he plays up his Eaglelander qualities to make her smile.
• Chinese-American Lee of East of Eden, although holding a college degree, is held as an "Oriental" and felt obligated to speak Pidgin to draw less attention to him:
  Lee: You look at a man's eyes, you see that he expects pidgin and a shuffle, so you speak pidgin and shuffle.
• Hercule Poirot:
  • The titular detective uses Poirot Speak to affect a harmless Funny Foreigner persona and put people at ease. From Three Act Tragedy:
    Poirot: I will explain. It is true that I can speak the exact, the idiomatic English. But, my friend, to speak the broken English is an enormous asset. It leads people to despise you. They say — a foreigner — he can't even speak English properly. It is not my policy to terrify people — instead I invite their gentle ridicule.
  • In After the Funeral, Miss Gilchrist takes care to show her own gentleness, ladylike manner and baking talents, all of which are qualities one would expect from someone who works as companion to an aging lady, to hide the fact that she is a clever and brutal murderer.
  • In Evil Under the Sun, Christine Redfern, an English lady stuck with a husband who's led astray by Arlena, behaves as a standard meek, unassuming, fragile English Rose Housewife, no competition to the glamorous Arlena Marshall. In fact, Christine is a resourceful, athletic woman and, together with her husband, murders Arlena.
  • In Murder on the Orient Express:
    • Mrs. Hubbard is an American and an embodiment of many negative Eagleland stereotypes, being an easy-going but terribly talkative, not to mention rather stupid and judgmental woman. She is American all right, but she is Linda Arden, one of the greatest tragic actresses of the world, and she is the one who masterminds the eponymous crime.
    • Countess Andrenyi, being a beautiful Hungarian aristocrat, actively invokes the "exotic beauty" stereotype, presenting herself as fragile and delicate and speaking English with a heavy but charming accent. She is only Hungarian by marriage, because in fact she comes from an American Jewish family, speaks perfect English, and is involved in the murder conspiracy (though doesn't participate in the murder directly).
  • In Peril at End House:
    • Commander Challenger behaves exactly as Hastings would expect a military man to behave, being not too bright, but hearty and honest. He is actually a drug dealer.
    • Mr. and Mrs. Croft speak with an Australian accent and are welcoming and friendly, causing Hastings to remark that they are "typical Australians". In fact, they are con men and forgers hiding from the police and pretending to come from Australia as part of their next con.
    • ''The Labours of Hercules: General Grant is another military stereotype, in this case the crusty old relic of the Raj. He's another drug-dealer, with Porot specifically pointing out he was overplaying it — in particular by claiming to have gout; even his cover of having a brace of twentysomething daughters (actually his pushers) should make him too young to have gout.
• Mercy Thompson: Kyle is an attorney who's noted as being a bit Camp Gay to begin with but according to Mercy he likes to really turn up the campiness whenever he's dealing with a homophobe just to annoy them.
• Slayers: Happens when Lina first met Gourry. She was attacked by bandits but Gourry decided to save her. Lina wanted to help at first but then decided to play Damsel in Distress and Neutral Female for fun.
• In Spectrum, Prairie-2 is an American interplanetary colony that looks like a wildly stereotypical version of the American frontier, with sheriffs, cowboys, bar brawls, etc.; even the local humanoids are called Indians as Native Americans used to be. When Martin arrives on Prairie-2, he thinks this Theme Park Version of the Wild West would be too exaggerated even for a Hollywood western. However, he is aware that in fact Prairie-2 is involved in some high-secret political projects of the States (the projects being high-secret, Martin only knows the barest minimum about them and the readers never learn much either).
• Star Wars:
  • X-Wing: Wraith Squadron: Agamarians are stereotyped as dumb hicks in the Galaxy Far, Far Away. To get onto an Imperial planet, Face, Wedge, and Myn go undercover as a trio of especially dumb hicks from Agamar, and are assisted in getting it right by Colonel Choday Hrakness, who really is from Agamar.
  • "Of MSE-6 and Men": The stormtrooper TK-421 affects a guileless Southern-Fried Private act to seduce a superior officer. He has an Accent Slip-Up gushing about the officer's interior decor, but gets away with it.
    TK-421: He's a graysuit, he went through the Academy. They always want the whole 'backwater, rough-around-the-edges military grunt' thing.
• In Whateley Universe, Chaka is noted to massively increase her use of African American slang whenever teammate Ayla is around because it annoys her walking thesaurus of a teammate and amuses herself.

Live-Action TV

• Lionel Jefferson from All in the Family sometimes plays up black stereotypes just to tease Archie.
• In Bones Arastoo speaks in a heavy Arabic accent for the first several episodes he appears in, before revealing that it's a fake. His explanation is that people are more willing to accept his faith if he sounds more like a stereotypical foreigner than a well-educated scientist and that fewer people make terrorist jokes around him.
• Charmed (1998): In the third season episode "All Hallowell's Eve", when the sisters are escaping witch hunters in 17th century New England, Phoebe uses her levitation powers to impersonate a wicked witch flying on a broomstick to scare off their pursuers. As she tells her sisters, "I'm embracing the cliché."
• In Everything's Gonna Be Okay, Nicholas claims that he always acts gayer than usual around straight couples, because "they need it".
• In Life on Mars (2006), Nelson (who is black and has dreadlocks) speaks in an exaggerated Caribbean accent around most characters, but drops the accent around Sam. At one point, he tells Sam not to tell anyone else about his fake accent, because "folks seem happier with the other Nelson".
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Rascals", when Picard, Ro, Keiko, and Guinan are de-aged into twelve-year-olds, there are two instances of them behaving like stereotypical children for ulterior reasons. One is when Picard pretends to be a Bratty Half-Pint and stamps his foot saying, "Now, now, now!" so the Ferengi captain will give in and let him see Riker. The second is when two of them pretend to play tag and tap the combadges they put on the Ferengi's backs, transporting them away.
• Superstore:
  • In "Shots and Salsa," Glenn asks the Latina Amy to work at the salsa stand. When an offended Amy turns down the offer, another Latina employee, Carmen, takes it up. She wears a sombrero and puts on a fake Mexican accent, which offends Amy. Eventually, Carmen twists her ankle and Amy needs to run the booth. The customers ignore her when she tries to sell the salsa normally. Amy eventually resorts to putting on the accent and sombrero once she learns the salsa profits go to charity. Mateo even joins her, despite being Filipino.
  • In "California, Part 1," Amy attends a job interview for a corporate position, but soon realizes the room is full of Latinas, implying the company is just looking to add a Latina person to their roster. She tries to improve her chances by playing up her heritage, using lots of Gratuitous Spanish and dropping random references to Latin culture. Eventually, she breaks the façade and chews out her interviewers for reducing her to a diversity hire.

Theatre

• Bye Bye Birdie: Albert's mother Mae objects to Albert marrying his Hispanic secretary Rose. Rose eventually decides to spite Mae by playing up her Spanish heritage with the song "Spanish Rose," bragging to Mae in an exaggerated accent about all the stereotypical Spanish activities she'll do with Albert, despite being raised in Pennsylvania.
  I'll be the toast of chi-chi Costanango
  And all day long my castanets will click
  I'll hide behind my fan and do the tango
  I'll be so Spanish it will make you sick!
• In M. Butterfly, Chinese opera singer Song Liling acts meek, delicate, and submissive to appeal to Gallimard, who longs for a Mighty Whitey and Mellow Yellow romance. In fact, Song Liling is a male who is manipulating Gallimard to get him into espionage.

Video Games

• BioShock Infinite — which takes place in 1912 in the uber-Eagleland of Columbia — features one brief encounter with an African-American janitor who can be heard grumbling to himself about his job in a clearly educated, articulate tone of voice. However, when he notices Booker and Elizabeth — two white people, and one of them is armed — he very quickly switches to "ignorant Negro mode" and tries to pass off whatever they heard as "Jus' sum foolish-ness, y'know! Jus' monkeyshines!" Considering the incredibly xenophobic atmosphere of Columbia, one can easily guess this is something he's needed to keep up on the regular.
• Choice of the Vampire: Clotho cultivates a Voodoo Priestess mystique, complete with a heavy Funetik Aksent that she can drop on a whim, to draw in customers in 1830s New Orleans. She's a sincere practitioner, but more reserved about it in her private life.
• Fahrenheit has a scene with Takao, the Japanese owner of an antique book shop who speaks mangled English and dresses like an ancient Asian mystic. If you continue talking to Takao, he eventually drops the accent and, in perfectly grammatical English, explains he was born in the US and is only playing a role because his customers love "that wise old Japanese master stuff".
• Grand Theft Auto V: In response to what he sees as patronizing treatment from Franklin, Lamar briefly acts like a Minstrel Show stereotype.
  "Oh, my bad, 'Mr. Gold Card'! Excuse me, suh! Thank yuh fo' helpin' out a po' street nigga like me, suh!"
• Mass Effect: Urdnot Wrex is highly intelligent and insightful. However, he's got no issue pretending to be nothing more than a brutish thug like the stereotypical krogan in order to get his foes to underestimate him.

Web Video

• In Caravan Of Garbage's Pacific Rim video, the Australian hosts posit that the reason that the (not-Australian) actors playing Aussies sound so cartoonish is that they're in Hong Kong and are playing up that Aussie charm.

Western Animation

• Big City Greens: When Cricket decides to turn the house into a Share BNB for what he assumes will be some easy money, their renters are a pair of big city hipsters thrilled to get an "authentic" country experience. Realizing how much work it actually is, Cricket and Tilly act out stereotypical Big City personas to drive them off, but after a talking to from Bill about seeing through his responsibilities, Cricket decides to make it up to them by switching over and playing up the family's country roots with a hoedown. Unfortunately, the renters see right through it as being fake, and even Bill admits he doesn't know anyone who acts that "country."
• Gargoyles: Despite being intelligent and good-natured, humans often assume gargoyles are dangerous monsters based on their appearance. Sometimes, the gargoyles will play along.
  • When a Jackass Genie turns the gargoyles into humans and all the humans in the city into gargoyles (but alter their memories so the humans don't realize anything has changed and they still have the same reaction to the gargoyles), the clan has to face an angry mob of humans without gargoyle strength. They bluff the mob by snarling and growling at them to scare them off.
  • In the tie-in comics, Brooklyn has to rescue two women from a lynch mob by telling the humans to run away before his clan arrived to eat their brains. Afterward, he lamented that he probably set human-gargoyle relations back a thousand years.
• King of the Hill:
  • One episode sees Khan and Minh trying to sell their house and asking Hank and his friends not to act like "rednecks" and embarrass them in front of prospective buyers. Incensed by this, Hank and the guys decide to act like complete hicks when the buyers come around.
  • In "The Company Man", Hank Hill tries to secure a deal with a businessman from Boston. The problem? The businessman believes that Texans are gun-toting cowboys, so Hank has to pander to those beliefs just to get the businessman to pay attention to him, or lose the deal to a competitor who is exactly that stereotype.
• The Loud House:
  • In The Loud House episode "Toads and Tiaras", Lana is instructed by her brother Lincoln to behave in a way more stereotypically associated with the little girl she is instead of her usual messy personality who loves repair work so that she can compete in a beauty pageant instead of her injured twin sister Lola. He has Lana wear a pink dress and perfume, stop scratching her butt, and get rid of her tools.
  • Invoked in The Casagrandes episode "Mexican Makeover". Rosa's mother Lupe is coming to visit, but Lupe is a very strictly traditional Mexican woman and hates when her relatives in America act "too American". To avoid disappointing Lupe, Rosa makes her son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren act more stereotypically Mexican — wearing traditionally-Mexican clothes, eating very spicy food, speaking Spanish, learning about Mexican history, and doing Mexican dances and wrestling.
• Subverted twice in the South Park episode "Cartman's Mom is a Dirty Slut," in which Cartman tries to find his birth father. First he hears that his mom slept with a Native American named Chief Running Water, so Cartman dresses like a stereotypical Native and goes to the reservation to meet his dad. Cartman then hears that Chef could also be his father, which would make Cartman half-black, so he starts dressing and behaving like a Jive Turkey. However, neither of them turns out to be his real dad.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Squirrel Jokes", SpongeBob becomes a hit telling jokes about how stupid squirrels supposedly are. Sandy, a squirrel, takes offense to this, and when her complaints fall on deaf ears, she decides to act extremely stupid as an excuse to mistreat SpongeBob, such as "forgetting" that he needs water and then giving him way too much water. This finally gets SpongeBob to stop centering his entire act around squirrel jokes.

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