Music / "Weird Al" Yankovic

aka: Weird Al

Daring to be stupid since the '80s!^note Above: His original appearance from his debut album till Bad Hair Day. Below: His current appearance, starting from Running With Scissors.

"He who is tired of Weird Al is tired of life."

— Homer Simpson, The Simpsons, "That 90s Show"

The reigning king of Song Parody, Alfred Matthew Yankovic (born October 23, 1959), is an American musical humorist with a career spanning over 40 years.

Sometime in 1966, a door-to-door salesman stopped by the Yankovic household offering either guitar or accordion lessons; according to Al, his parents figured that "the world needed one more accordion-playing Yankovic" (the first being polka legend Frankie Yankovic, to whom Al is not related), and young Alfred received his first lesson the day before his seventh birthday. As a teenager, he became a fan of Los Angeles-based radio host Dr. Demento, known for playing wacky novelty songs. Al began recording his own humorous songs in his bedroom with his accordion and mailing them to the good Doctor, who played them on the air; according to Al, Demento appreciated the novelty of a geeky teenager with an accordion thinking he was "cool". Al's first songs included "Belvedere Cruising" (an original ode to his family's car, a 1964 Plymouth Belvedere) and "Dr. D Superstar", a parody of "Jesus Christ Superstar" rewritten to be about Dr. Demento.

When Al went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to earn an architecture degree, he began performing his songs at the campus coffeehouse and worked for the school's radio station as a disc jockey, where he picked up the nickname "Weird Al". Sometime before he was kicked off the station for refusing to follow various airplay rules, he went across the hall into the men's bathroom with his accordion and recorded a parody of The Knack's "My Sharona" entitled "My Bologna", which became one of the most popular songs on The Dr. Demento Show in the following weeks. Knack frontman Doug Fieger turned out to be a fan of "My Bologna", and got the song released as a single on Capitol Records under a short-term contract.

Al scored another minor hit in 1980 with "Another One Rides the Bus" (a parody of Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust") and decided to pursue a career in music, feeling that architecture wasn't really his calling. After a modest start (including a disastrous gig opening for Missing Persons), Al and his band released his first album on Scotti Bros. Records in 1983, then hit it big with his second album thanks to "Eat It" (a song and music video parody of Michael Jackson's "Beat It") peaking at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100.

While his career has had various peaks and valleys, Al has been fully committed to the comedy genre since the beginning, with most of his albums during the '80s and '90s going platinum. Much of his early success has been attributed to the use of music videos to spread awareness of his songs, and he continues to adapt to changes in both comedy tastes and media consumption. Al shrewdly used Viral Marketing to saturate social media with publicity for his 2014 album Mandatory Fun, and he was rewarded with that album debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 (his first number one album ever).

Prior to 2014, Al usually released a new album and went on tour once every three to four years, which led John Garabedian of Open House Party to say that "every album is [Al's] comeback album, and then he goes away until the next one". After fulfilling his record contract with the release of Mandatory Fun, Al switched to fully-digital releases, giving him the opportunity to release new songs as they're completed instead of waiting until he has enough material for a full album.

Unlike other parody-centric artists, Al and his band (from the second album on) stay extremely close to the original melodies and instrumentation of the song they parody. In the most extreme example of this attention to detail, "Trapped in the Drive-Thru" (based on R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet") sounds exactly like the original. Al is additionally very sympathetic to geek communities and frequently gives them recognition in his songs. His habit of using pop culture metaphors (a.k.a. "Pulling a Weird Al") led to his being the former Trope Namer for that.

The popularity of Al's work eventually created Parody Displacement. In the early days of filesharing (LimeWire especially), a lot of comedy/parody songs were falsely attributed to Al. The Not Al List was created to catalog these songs and give them the proper attribution. Lots of these songs contain raunchy or offensive lyrics, and the lead vocal vaguely sounds like Al; since Al is the most visible parody musician alive, his name gets attached to them, despite having subject matter and lyrics that he would never touch. Even with the occasional dip into raunchy subtext, he still aims to be (in his words) a "more-or-less family-friendly" performer. The best way to tell if Al performed a given song is to look for music videos of them on YouTube. Take your heart medication first — wouldn't want to Die Laughing.

Over his career, Al has won five Grammys altogether: three for various albums, one for a video, and one for his 2017 collector's boxset Squeeze Box: The Complete Works of "Weird Al" Yankovic. Al was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in August 2018, and in 2022, Multimorphic released Weird Al's Museum of Natural Hilarity, a Licensed Pinball Table based on Al's works.

In non-musical work, Al starred in the 1989 film UHF, and in 2022 wrote and appeared in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, a 100% totally accurate and unembellished autobiographical film starring Daniel Radcliffe as Al. He also had a short-lived CBS "kids' show" in the 1990s, The Weird Al Show, and wrote two children's books, When I Grow Up and My New Teacher and Me.

Al's distinctive voice has appeared in a number of cartoons, with his roles ranging from one-off gag characters, supporting roles, and even the title characters of the Animal Man Animated Adaptation and the Disney XD cartoon Milo Murphy's Law. He has been involved with the Transformers franchise for twenty years, beginning with "Dare To Be Stupid" featured in the 1986 movie soundtrack to voicing Wreck-Gar in 2007's Transformers: Animated.

In 2002, Al married Suzanne Krajewski, a marketing executive, and their daughter Nina was born in 2003.

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Studio Albums:

• "Weird Al" Yankovic (1983)
• "Weird Al" Yankovic in 3-D (1984)
• Dare to Be Stupid (1985)
• Polka Party! (1986)
• Even Worse (1988)
• UHF - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack and Other Stuff (1989)
• Off the Deep End (1992)
• Alapalooza (1993)
• Bad Hair Day (1996)
• Running with Scissors (1999)
• Poodle Hat (2003)
• Straight Outta Lynwood (2006)
• Alpocalypse (2011)
• Mandatory Fun (2014)

EPs:

• Another One Rides the Bus (1981)^note Recorded under the non-existent, short-lived "Placebo" label. Only the title track was carried over as-is to Al's debut album while the other three ("Happy Birthday", "Gotta Boogie", and "Mr. Frump in the Iron Lung") were re-made. The EP version of "Happy Birthday" would, however, get a re-release on Permanent Record: Al in the Box.
• Selections from Straight Outta Lynwood (2006)
• Internet Leaks (2009)^note A collection of five tracks from the forthcoming Alpocalypse.

Compilation Albums:

• Greatest Hits (1988)
• The Food Album (1993)^note Japanese release includes the karaoke version of "Eat It" from the Japan-exclusive The Official Music of "Weird Al" Yankovic.
• Permanent Record: Al in the Box (1994)^note Four cassette/disc box set; includes the Capitol recording of "My Bologna" (earlier prints inadvertently used the Weird Al Yankovic one from a couple years after), the Placebo "Happy Birthday" from the Another One Rides the Bus EP, the shorter, music video cut of "UHF", plus bonus track "Headline News", parody of Crash Test Dummies' "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm"; some versions lose the first 27 seconds of "Hooked on Polkas"
• Greatest Hits (Volume II) (1994)
• The TV Album (1995)
• The Essential "Weird Al" Yankovic (2009)^note Includes the "Extra Gory" version of "The Night Santa Went Crazy"; special "3.0" edition released in 2010 includes third disc with six additional tracks
• Squeeze Box (2017), a massive collector's edition of all 14 of Al's studio albums on CD and vinyl. It also includes Medium Rarities, a bonus 15th album full of previously unreleased material and other non-album tracks.

Foreign Releases:

• Eat It (1984) (JP)
• The Official Music of "Weird Al" Yankovic (1984) (JP)^note Aside from the karaoke version of "Eat It", includes the extended "I Lost on Jeopardy!".
• The Best of Yankovic (1992) (KR)
• The Saga Begins (1999) (JP)

Other Assorted Songs:

• "The Brain Song", for the 2009 Orange County Fair exhibit "Al's Brain"
• "Captain Underpants theme", for Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie
• "Circus Parade", for Yo Gabba Gabba!
• "Comedy, Bang! Bang! theme", for Comedy Bang! Bang!
• "The Hamilton Polka," for The Hamildrops
• "Homer & Marge" (parody of "Jack & Diane" by John Mellencamp), for The Simpsons
• "It's My World (and We're All Living in it)", for Milo Murphy's Law
• "Let the Pun Fit the Crime," for Wander over Yonder
• "Litter Critter", for "Blaze and the Monster Machines"
• "Patterns", for the PBS series Square One TV
• "Polkamon", for Pokémon 2000.
• "Season 2 Finale", for Galavant
• "Sir Isaac Newton vs Bill Nye", for Epic Rap Battles of History
• "Spy Hard theme", for Spy Hard
• "Super Duper Party Pony", for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

Videography:

• The Compleat Al (1985)
• UHF (1989)
• The "Weird Al" Yankovic Video Library (1992)
• Alapalooza: The Videos (1993)
• "Weird Al" Yankovic: The Ultimate Collection (1993)
• Bad Hair Day: The Videos (1996)
• "Weird Al" Yankovic: There's No Going Home (1996)
• The Weird Al Show (13 episodes, 1997)
• "Weird Al" Yankovic: The Videos (1998)
• "Weird Al" Yankovic Live! (1999)
• "Weird Al" Yankovic: The Ultimate Video Collection (2003)
• Al's Brain (2009)
• "Weird Al" Yankovic Live! - The Alpocalypse Tour (2011)
• Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)

His many, many cameos:

Live-Action Cameos

• The Cabbage Man in the Amazing Stories episode "Miss Stardust" (1987)
• Himself in The Naked Gun and Naked Gun 33⅓; a criminal in The Naked Gun 2½ (1988-1994)
• Himself in the Space Ghost Coast to Coast episode "Banjo" (1994)
• Himself in Safety Patrol (1997)
• Himself in Halloween II (2009)
• Ringmaster in the Yo Gabba Gabba! episode "Circus" (2010)
• Himself in the Some Jerk with a Camera episodes "Halloween Time at Disneyland" (2011) and "It's a Small World Holiday Part 2" (2012)
• Himself in the How I Met Your Mother episode "Noretta" (2011)
• Himself in the 30 Rock episode "Kidnapped by Danger" (2012)
• Young Michael in the Childrens Hospital episode "Country Weekend" (2013)
• Isaac Newton in the Epic Rap Battles of History episode "Sir Isaac Newton vs. Bill Nye" (2014)
• Adolf Hitler in the Drunk History episode "Montgomery, AL" (2014)
• The Confessional Monk in Galavant (2016)
• Hammerleg Lead Singer in Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016)
• The Spuds Spa Manager in Ask the StoryBots (2016)
• Bernie the Hot Air Balloon Guy in the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend episode "I Have a Date Tonight" (2019)
• Ted Nugent in the Reno 911! episode "Nuge 2020" (2020)
• Himself in Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)
• Himself in The Eric Andre Show episode "Lizzo Up" (2020)
• Himself in The Muppets Mayhem

Voice Acting

• Himself in the Eek! The Cat episode "The FugEektive" (1997)
• Petroleum Joe in The Brak Show (2002)
• Himself in The Simpsons episodes "Three Gays of the Condo" (2003), "That '90s Show" (2008) and "Hostile Kirk Place" (2023)
• Singing Minstrel in the Lilo & Stitch: The Series episode "Tank" (2003)
• The Squid Hat in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy (2003-2005) and the announcer for the video game adaptation (2006)
• Himself in the Johnny Bravo episode "Johnny Makeover" (2004)
• Wreck-Gar in Transformers: Animated (2008-2009)
• Himself in the Back at the Barnyard episode "Get Bessy" (2010)
• Himself in Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "Bat-Mite Presents: Batman's Strangest Cases!" (2011)
• Banana Man in Adventure Time (2011-2017)
• Animal Man in Animal Man (2012)
• The Learnerer in WordGirl (2012)
• Cheese Sandwich in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episodes "Pinkie Pride" (2014) and "The Last Laugh" (2019)
• Wizard Jeff in Wallykazam (2014)
• Himself in The Animated Adventures of GWAR (2014)
• The Dollmaker in Batman vs. Robin (2015)
• Probabilator the Annoying in Gravity Falls episode "Dungeons, Dungeons, & More Dungeons" (2015)
• Dr. Screwball Jones in Wander over Yonder (2015)
• Darkseid in Teen Titans Go! episode "Two Parter" (2015)
• Pal.0 in the eponymous episode of Uncle Grandpa (2015)
• Captain Peanutbutter in Bojack Horseman (2016)
• Milo Murphy in Milo Murphy's Law (2016-2019, his first starring role on a cartoon)
• Shapeshifter in the eponymous episode of The 7D (2016)
• Blumfump in the Voltron: Legendary Defender episode "The Depths" (2017)
• Preston Change-O in the Star vs. the Forces of Evil episode "Trickstar" (2017)
• Lewis in the We Bare Bears episode "The Fair" (2017)
• Papa Kotassian in the Mighty Magiswords episode "They See Me Trobbilin'" (2017)
• Himself in The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (2019)
• Wizard Artbeard in Where's Waldo? (2019)
• Himself in the Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? episode "Attack of the Weird Al-Osauraus!" (2019)
• Litter Critter in "Blaze and the Monster Machines"
• Himself in the Close Enough episode "The Canine Guy" (2020)
• Himself in the American Dad! episode "First, Do No Farm" (2020)
• Shirt Cannon Guy in Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe (2020)
• Vic Vankoh in LEGO Star Wars: Summer Vacation (2022)
• Emmett in StoryBots: Answer Time (2022)
• Wacko Wally in Hamster & Gretel (2022)
• Documentary Announcer in Scott Pilgrim Takes Off (2023)
• Chip Dingle and Himself in Hailey's On It! (2023)

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"Weird Al" Yankovic's music and work provide examples of the following tropes:

#-F

• 419 Scam: In "Lame Claim To Fame", he claims that the email he got from the Nigerian prince certainly sounded legit.
• A Cappella: "Since You've Been Gone".
• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: Invoked in "Smells like Nirvana". The second verse starts with "it's uninteLLIIIIgible".
• Achievements in Ignorance: In the music video for "Living With a Hernia" (a parody of James Brown's "Living in America"), Al was able to pull off some seriously impressive dance moves despite not being a professional dancer or even attending any dances in high school. According to Al, he can figure it out just by analytically dissecting the choreography.
• Acid Reflux Nightmare: The video for "Eat It" is framed as one, by the final scene.
• Actually Pretty Funny:
  • When Al asked Kurt Cobain for permission to parody one of his songs, Kurt asked what it would be about. When Al said it was making fun of the fact that people had difficulty understanding Kurt's singing, he said “Oh, sure, of course, that’s funny.” He also hinted that a food-based parody of the song would be boring, especially considering that Al had done a lot of them in the past (and, coincidentally enough, an earlier food-based parody had been nixed for reasons relating to the message of the original). When Kurt finally watched the music video, his former bandmate confirmed that he was on the floor laughing so hard from the video.
  • Al has since disowned "It's Still Billy Joel to Me" although Joel himself admitted to loving the parody, and he even performed it a few times.
• Adam Westing:
  • Pal.0 in Uncle Grandpa is a robot version of Weird Al himself/conformist car control panel.
  • Plays a version of himself who is Julia Sweeney's husband in Work in Progress.
• Adolf Hitlarious: Played Hitler in an episode of Drunk History.
• Aerith and Bob: In "Albuquerque", the two kids, Nathaniel and Superfly.
• Affectionate Parody: Most of his original works fall under Affectionate Parody. It helps that he always asks permission from the source artist to do a parody of one of their songs (even though legally he's not required to do so in some cases^note Under copyright law, parody is defined as a derivative work that makes a commentary or critique of the original. While some of Al's songs that comment on the original such as "Achy Breaky Song" and "Smells Like Nirvana" would be protected by this, many others that simply change the lyrics to be humorous would not.).
  • Michael Jackson gave Al permission to parody any of his work that he wanted for the rest of his life. The only condition was that Al not record a version of his "Black or White" parody (titled "Snack All Night") as he felt it would cheapen the message of the song. Al agreed and plays the song only at his live shows.
  • The only song for which he didn't have permission was "Amish Paradise", but there was nothing malicious about it; a miscommunication led Al to believe he actually did have permission, and by the time it was cleared up, it was too late. Coolio (the original artist) got over it and gave Al a hug, even noting years later that he found the parody Actually Pretty Funny and that he regretted his arrogant behavior towards Al at the time. As Al put it, "I doubt I'll be invited to Coolio's birthday party, but at least I don't have to wear a bulletproof vest to the mall anymore."^note The situation with Coolio also led to Al changing how he got permission. Instead of having "his people" talk to "their people", he himself now directly gets permission from the actual artist he is parodying.
  • With Lady Gaga, he announced that his 2011 album was delayed after he was given a flat "no" by her manager when he sent her a recording of "Perform This Way", a parody of "Born This Way" which was intended as the leadoff single. After several hours of backlash, it was revealed that the manager never gave her the song to listen to, out of the assumption she would hate it. Of course, this turned out to be completely untrue; upon actually hearing it, Gaga not only loved it, but considered it an "expansion" of her original song — while the original was a straight-up celebration of alternative lifestyles, Gaga considered the parody a celebration of her own Cloudcuckoolander-ness.
    Lady Gaga: I actually really appreciate the philosophy behind the song. It's actually very empowering, I think. And he's, in a way, although he's parodying the song, he's kind of standing up for me. And I never would have said no to that. And I never did say no to it.
  • The only Weird Al parody that isn't affectionate is the early 1980s demo "It's Still Billy Joel to Me", which may be part of the reason it didn't appear on his debut album. (Billy did eventually give him permission to use "Piano Man", which became the Spider-Man-themed "Ode to a Superhero".)
  • Al has said that "Achy Breaky Song" is pretty harsh, apologized to Billy Ray Cyrus for it, and donated the song royalties to the United Cerebral Palsy Association. That song actually bashes several artists, though Billy Ray Cyrus gets the worst of it. Al recalls being asked by Donny and Marie to play the song on Donny And Marie. The looks on their faces made it clear that they hadn't heard the very first line of the song, which is "You can torture me with Donny and Marie." As mentioned earlier, the singer preferred them, among other artists, to Billy Ray. (He would eventually parody one of Billy Ray's daughter's songs, giving the world "Party in the CIA".) Donny would later appear in Al's "White and Nerdy" video.
  • "You're Pitiful", a parody of James Blunt's "You're Beautiful", received Blunt's approval and was all ready to be included on Straight Outta Lynwood. But at the last minute, Blunt's label, Atlantic Records, stepped in and said Al could not put the song in the album. So instead, he released it for free on the internet. And then performed it in concert, slowly peeling off layers of clothing (in parody of the original song's video), one article of which was a t-shirt saying "Atlantic sucks" (and later "Atlantic still sucks"). His "White and Nerdy" video has Al defacing their Wikipedia page with a big "YOU SUCK" on it. Ever since, the real page has mostly remained semi-protected or full-locked due to trolls doing exactly that whenever the page was left unlocked.
  • Huey Lewis brutally murdered him with an axe in an homage to American Psycho in "retaliation" for "I Want A New Duck" (a parody of Lewis' "I Want A New Drug").
  • Eminem gave Al permission to parody "Lose Yourself" ("Couch Potato")...but then refused to give him permission to do a music video to the song.
  • Kurt Cobain was contacted by Al on the set of Saturday Night Live (due to failing to reach Cobain's band Nirvana by conventional means). When Al stated he wanted to do a parody of "Smells Like Teen Spirit", Cobain quickly agreed, though initially he inquired if the song would be about food, a trademark theme of Al. Al instead explained that the song would be about Cobain's incomprehensible lyrics, to which Cobain replied "Oh, sure, of course, that's funny." He reportedly fell about laughing when he saw the video for the parody version and later considered the parody as a sign that Nirvana had "made it" as a band.
• Album Title Drop: "Nature Trail to Hell" In 3-D!
• The Alleged Car: "Stop Dragging My Car Around" centers around a 1964 Plymouth (which would be 20 years old at the time of release) that at one point gets towed just for being an eyesore in the parking lot, and in the final verse the singer considers trading it in as a downpayment for a used bicycle.
• All Jews Are Cheapskates: Poked fun at in "Pretty Fly (for a Rabbi)."
  He shops at discount stores, not just any will suffice.
  He has to find a bargain 'cause he won't pay retail price.
  He never acts meshugga and he's hardly a schlemiel
  but if you wanna haggle, oy, he'll make you such a deal!
• All Just a Dream: "Stuck in the Closet with Vanna White" is about a string of these.
• All of Them: In "Jerry Springer": "Baby, I've been sleepin' with your sister." "Which one?" "All of 'em!"
• All or Nothing: In "I Lost On Jeopardy!"
  Don Pardo: "That's right, Al! You lost! And let me tell what you didn't win! A 20-volume set of Encyclopedia International, a case of Turtle Wax, and a year's supply of Rice-A-Roni, The San Francisco Treat! But that's not all! You also made yourself look like a jerk in front of millions of people. And you brought shame and disgrace on your family names for generations to come! You don't get to come back tomorrow! You don't even get a lousy copy of our home game! You're a complete loser!!!"
• All-Star Cast: Invoked. His music videos are slowly growing into this, but it really shows in the video for "Tacky" which guest stars Jack Black, Margaret Cho, Kristen Schaal, Aisha Tyler, and Eric Stonestreet.
  • In Al's non-music video work, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story takes the prize, where nearly every speaking character is a cameo of some sort.
• Anal Probing: Mentioned in "Foil".
• Animated Music Video: Several, including "Skipper Dan", "Another Tattoo", and "Party in the CIA". It's become quite popular lately for professional (and non-professional) animators including Bill Plympton^note With whom Al is very close friends and John Kricfalusi to create their own music videos for his songs. Craig Bartlett animated Jurassic Park for the album Alapalooza. Steve Barron animated "Beverly Hillbillies" for the album UHF Movie Soundtrack (The music video was actually from the film itself).
• Anthropomorphic Typography: The music video of "Word Crimes", a song about common grammatical errors, has the letter B and various punctuation marks (!, @, {, ?, ;) with arms and legs dancing in front of an off-white background.
• Anti-Christmas Song: "The Night Santa Went Crazy" (which entails Santa Claus going on a killing spree) and "Christmas at Ground Zero" (which is about the perils of nuclear war occurring during the holidays).
• Anti-Love Song: He's got five great ones.
  • "Since You've Been Gone", which appears to be about the singer lamenting his ex's absence before he admits that he was miserable even when she was still there.
  • "I'm So Sick of You", a lengthy tirade against an Abhorrent Admirer.
  • "You Don't Love Me Any More", where a man is completely oblivious of his ex trying to kill him and is only focused on how he suspects she doesn't love him anymore.
  • "One More Minute", where the singer describes all the negative experiences he'd rather endure than get back with his ex.
  • "I Was Only Kidding", where the singer dickishly confesses to being insincere about everything he said to his so-called girlfriend.
• Anything but That!: The whole point of "Achy Breaky Song".
  Or play some Tiffany, on eight-track or CD
  Or scrape your fingernails across the board
  Or tie me to a chair, and kick me down the stairs
  Just please don't play that stupid song no more!
• Appeal to Tradition: Parodied with "Weasel Stomping Day." The Lyrical Dissonance about a holiday where people stomp weasels to death also includes the lines "why we do it, who can say, but it's such a festive holiday" and "it's tradition, that makes it okay."
• Appropriated Appellation: While attending California Polytechnic State University (also known affectionately as "Cal-Poly"), some of his classmates referred to him as "Weird Al" because of his looks. He went on to use it as his DJ handle when he took over the night shift of the school's radio station.
• Arc Number: 27.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • "One of Those Days" is about this. A good illustration:
    The bank called me up and told me I'm overdrawn,
    Some freaks are burning crosses out on my front lawn,
    And I can't believe it! All the Cheetos are gone!
  • "Confessions, Part 3" is all about this. Apparently having a babymama on the side was forgivable, but eating the last of the Rice Krispies was the last straw!
    • Actually the last straw was "....And I lied, yes, that dress makes you look fat". NOW THAT'S what got the gal's goat the most!
  • Plentiful in "Virus Alert"
    Then cause a major rift in time and space,
    And leave a bunch of Twinkie wrappers all over the place!
  • At the end of "Germs":
    They're out to get me
    They wanna control me
    They wanna destroy me
    They're tryin' to kill me
    It kind of upsets me
  • In "A Complicated Song", he says this about being headless:
    "Can't spit or blow my nose or even read Sports Illustrated"
• Artistic License – History: Al's two "biographical" movies, The Compleat Al and Weird: The Al Yankovic Story play very fast and loose with the facts.
• Artistic License – Physics: Not as major as most other examples, but Al manages to incorrectly describe the Law of Universal Gravitation in "Pancreas". While one's pancreas does attract any other pancreas with a force proportional to the product of their masses, said force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The song leaves out the "square".
• As Himself: In the series finale of Johnny Bravo, he played himself alongside Don Knotts as himself and Gary Owens reprising his role of the Blue Falcon.
  • Also in an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold which was doing an homage to The New Scooby-Doo Movies, where he defeated the Joker with his accordion.
• Asshole Victim:
  • In the Video for "I'll Sue Ya," Weird Al plays a litigation-happy person who sues anyone and everyone for frivolous reasons. In the end, while he's driving off with all the money he won from the lawsuits, he gets distracted by a Burger Queen billboard and crashes into a truck carrying kitty litter.
  • The douchebag Al plays in the "First World Problems" video gets hit by a car at the end because he's too busy texting to pay attention to the road.
  • The eponymous Larry in "I remember Larry". After what appears to be a lifetime of tormenting the Narrator/Singer with cruel, mean-spirited pranks ranging from humiliation to property destruction to bodily harm to poisoning, The Narrator finally snaps, breaks into Larry's house, gags and restrains him, and proceeds to drag Larry out into the middle of the woods. From there he stuff's Larry into a large plastic bag and leaves him to suffocate to death. The narrator insists, a little tongue in cheek, that if Larry were still around, he'd "agree it was a pretty good gag".
• An Asskicking Christmas: "The Night Santa Went Crazy."
  From his beard to his boots, he was covered with ammo
  Like big fat drunk disgruntled Yuletide Rambo
  And he smiled as he said with a twinkle in his eye
  "Merry Christmas to all, now you're all gonna die!"
• Author Appeal: Al admits that he didn't need to do any research for "White and Nerdy", as he could simply draw from personal experience instead.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Al doesn't perform the song "Hardware Store" because he isn't sure he could pull the coda off again, especially live.
  • Similarly, "Albuquerque" — he saves it for the encore, as it wrecks his throat and makes it difficult for him to sing anything else afterward.
• Badass Boast: Al's rap parodies tend to be full of these, in keeping with the spirit of the artist being parodied.
  • "It's All About the Pentiums" is a great example, with Al bragging about his computer's impressive specifications.
  • "White and Nerdy" combines this with equal amounts of Self-Deprecation.
  • The music video for "Word Crimes" ends with "'Weird Al' Yankovic has a big dictionary."
• Bad Santa: "The Night Santa Went Crazy".
• Badass Bookworm: "That Boy Could Dance".
  He was kind of a jerk, he was kind of a bore.
  But the women would scream when he walked in the door.
  'cause one thing I could tell you for sure — that boy could dance
• Bait-and-Switch Comparison: From the December 1998 edition of "Ask Al":
  Stacy of Louisville, Ky asks: Do you like Barenaked Ladies?
  Yes, very much. And I'm a big fan of the band, too.
• Bathos: "Jackson Park Express" has a number of them:
  I gave her a penetrating stare, which could only mean
  "You are my answer, my answer to everything
  Which is why I'll probably do very poorly on the written part of my driver's test"
  
  I wanna ride dolphins with you, in the moonlight
  Until the staff at Sea World kicks us out
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Al's record label insisted on a Christmas song for his Polka Party! album. Al answered back with "Christmas at Ground Zero".
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: invoked Referenced in "Stop Forwarding That Crap to Me":
  And by the way, your quotes from George Carlin aren't really George Carlin...
• Bestiality Is Depraved:
  • "Virus Alert" lists, among the other consequences of the virus, making you physically attracted to sheep.
  • The spoken interlude of "Jerry Springer" includes the couple going back and forth on who they cheated on the other with. Including a pet goat. And the dog Woofie.
    WOOFIE YOU BI*bleep*...!
  • In "CNR", Charles Nelson Reilly "made sweet, sweet love to a manatee." Rather than thinking it depraved, the singer is very impressed.
• Big Eater:
  • Many songs like "Fat", "My Bologna" and "Eat It" are about eating too much. There's enough of them to compile an album in the early 90s.
  • The trope appears in the song called "Grapefruit Diet", which is about needing to lose weight after eating a lot of food.
  • In "CNR", several lines say that Charles Nelson Reilly eats excessively, and that he's an Extreme Omnivore.
    He ate his own weight in coal
    and excreted diamonds every day…
    I've seen the man unhinge his jaw
    and swallow a Volkswagen whole.^*In the video, he does this while the Volkswagen has live person inside.
  • In "Complicated Song" the singer eats so many pizzas that he gets severely constipated.
• Big "NO!": "Jurassic Park," of course, being a parody of "MacArthur's Park," ends every chorus with this. The last one is a pretty impressive display of vocal range.
• Big Rock Ending: "Albuquerque" in a double subversion, with the burp subverting the big rock ending at first.
• Big "SHUT UP!": During his "interview" with Eminem when his guest's Verbal Tic got out of hand, y'know what I'm saying'?
  Al: "YES, I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE SAYING, OKAY?!?!?!?"
  Eminem: "Yeah, whatever..."
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • "Pretty Fly for a Rabbi" uses Yiddish to make puns such as "The parents pay the mohel and he gets to keep the tip."
  • "Perform This Way" has «Excusez-moi, qui a pété?», which means "Excuse me, who farted?"
  • "Taco Grande", much like the song it parodies, is filled with Gratuitous Spanish. While Al's simple phrases are mostly things about foods he wants and paying for them, Cheech Marin's cameo in the bridge is a lengthy recommendation and description of a particularly hot dish and the side effects of eating it, ending by asking if the stupid customer can understand what he's saying.
  • One of the images in the Mandatory Fun album booklet has Al triumphantly holding a wrench in the style of old Chinese Communist posters. The Chinese text beneath him says, "I'm not wearing underwear".
• Birthday Party Goes Wrong: "Your Horoscope For Today" informs Geminis that their birthday party will be ruined once again by their explosive flatulence.
• Black Comedy: In fact, lots of Al's songs fall into this. Sometimes it's just a line or two instead of a whole song.
  • "Another One Rides The Bus" is about Al on a ridiculously overcrowded bus and he sings "I haven't been in a crowd like this/Since I went to see The Who!"
  • "Mr. Frump in the Iron Lung" which should not be funny but really is.
  • "Christmas at Ground Zero" is about nuclear war.
  • "Good Old Days" is a sentimental reminiscence about a youth spent torturing animals and committing arson, assault, and kidnapping.
  • "Melanie" is about stalking a woman he barely knows, ending with him killing himself.
  • "You Don't Love Me Anymore" is a ballad about all the ways his girlfriend has tried to kill him.
  • "I Remember Larry" recounts how the singer was bullied (sometimes quite viciously and dangerously) and how he killed the bully.
  • "The Night Santa Went Crazy" details Santa Claus going on a killing spree at the North Pole.
  • "Party in the CIA" is about assassinating foreign leaders, overthrowing governments, and waterboarding.
• Black Comedy Animal Cruelty:
  • For Harvey the hamster in the AlTV specials. He's been flung against a wall, smashed with a hammer, and even eaten. Helped immensely by the use of not-even-trying-grade fake prop Harveys.^note The one where he's eaten very clearly uses a black ball of fuzz, where Harvey is actually orange and white.
  • As for songs, "Weasel Stomping Day" is about a Fictional Holiday that's about stomping on weasels — it's tradition, that makes it okay!
• Bland-Name Product:
  • Taco Belle, Starbux, Toysaurus and Homey Depot among others in the music video for "I'll Sue Ya", despite the real companies being mentioned in the song itself (although the first two would sound the same if spoken).
  • Nearly every product shown in the "Whatever You Like" video, which is interesting, since many real-world products are named in the song, similar to the example above.
• Blatant Lies: "(This Song's Just) Six Words Long". The title/chorus might be just six words, but the filler's certainly not. A common fan debate is whether the song's title and lyrics are actually "(This Song Is Just) Six Words Long", which makes seven words.
• Blind Without 'Em: His eyesight was extremely poor until he got Lasik surgery in 1997. By then, his glasses had become such an iconic part of his look that fans were disappointed.
• Bowdlerise: Averted with "The Saga Begins". When it was sent to Radio Disney in 1999, he wanted the song to entertain the kids who were Star Wars fans, but Radio Disney felt uncomfortable with the lyric in the second verse about Anakin Skywalker ("Now do you see him hitting on the Queen...?") and wanted to have the part of the second verse removed, since "to hit on" meant something sexual and age-inappropriate. Al, however, had another idea: rather than let them simply remove that part of that verse and ruin the song, he re-recorded the song from scratch, but changing the line to "Now do you see him talking to the Queen...?"
• Brain Bleach: "My Own Eyes" is all about this, talking about things the singer wishes he could unsee.
• Brand Name Takeover: Arguably the reason so many non-Al songs are attributed to him. There are thousands of amateur parody artists out there (all you need is an idea and a recorder to make one), but Al is the big guy on the block — no other parody artist comes close to his success. His name has probably become so synonymous with song parodies that this trope kicked in. Al doesn't like it for the reasons explained in the lead.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick:
  • "One Of Those Days" features this as well as Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking mentioned above:
  I lost one of my socks in the drier
  I can't find my wallet and my hair is on fire
  • "Tacky" goes on at length about stereotypically tacky clothing and behavior, but towards the end we hear "If I'm bit by a zombie, prob'ly not telling you".
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: During the opening from Spy Hard:
  By the way, if you walked in late,
  allow me to reiterate
  the name of this movie is Spy Hard.
  They call it Spy Hard.
  You're watching Spy Hard.
  It's the theme from Spy Haaaaaaaaa...! (held for twenty seconds until his head explodes)
• Brick Joke: After eleven minutes of insanity, the song "Albuquerque" finally winds its way back to the original point: the narrator doesn't like sauerkraut.
  • In Al-TV 2K, during his interview with Michael Stipe he asks him to say something and he'll make a song using only that sentence, resulting in "Cell Phones". Later in that special, he sings the song to Snoop Dogg.
  • Bernie the hitchhiker in "Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota".
  • Al ordering onions on his cheeseburger in "Trapped in the Drive Thru". The very last line has him lamenting that they forgot the onions.
• Buses Are for Freaks: Invoked in "Another One Rides the Bus".
• Butt-Monkey: Ruben Valtierra is often put down by everyone else, probably due to the fact that he was originally added purely to handle keyboard duties on tour while Al (who usually does them on albums) handles other duties. Mostly just played for comedy, though it's notable that he wasn't credited or appeared at all on any albums before Alapalooza and didn't appear in the band group photo until Running With Scissors (where he appeared face-down, with scissors sticking out of his back).
  • His first non-concert appearance in Weird Al's works was the video for "Headline News", in which he portrayed Crash Test Dummies pianist Ellen Reid. A noble start.
• By Wall That Is Holey: The side frame of a barn falls on Al in the video for "Amish Paradise".
• Call-Back: One of Al's costumes in "Perform This Way" has a hat with a train on it; this hat was also seen in "White and Nerdy".
  • May also be a Shout-Out to Peter Gabriel and his seminal "Sledgehammer" video.
  • A lady wearing a hat with a train on it is also in one of the vintage stock video clips in "Dare to Be Stupid".
• The Cameo: He's done so many that his concerts have clip shows of them during set changes.
  • In Al's work:
    • Al works his mentor, Dr. Demento, into many of his videos.
    • "I Lost On Jeopardy!": The music video takes place on a reproduced version of the 1964-75 set and features both Art Fleming and Don Pardo reprising their roles plus cameo appearances by band members, family members, Demento, and even the guy who sang the song Yankovic was parodying (Greg Kihn).
    • Seth Green, Key & Peele, and Donny Osmond make pretty hilarious cameos in the music video of "White and Nerdy"; Weird Al later returned the favor.
    • Drew Carey and Emo Philips show up in "All About the Pentiums".
    • Dick Van Patten shows up in a lot of his videos.
    • Florence Henderson in "Amish Paradise".
    • Heather DeLoach reprises her role as "Bee Girl" (from Blind Melon's "No Rain" video) for the opening of the "Bedrock Anthem" video.
    • Robert Goulet plays piano in the video for "You Don't Love Me Anymore".
    • The video for "Foil" has Al hosting a cooking show which is directed by Patton Oswalt (who is also secretly one of the Reptilian Conspiracy). And then he's later sedated and taken away by Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant.
    • The video for "Tacky" brings together Aisha Tyler, Margaret Cho, Eric Stonestreet, Kristen Schaal and Jack Black!
    • Weird: The Al Yankovic Story puts all previous efforts to shame, with cameos like Lin-Manuel Miranda, Thomas Lennon, Patton Oswalt, Scott Aukerman, Jonah Ray, Michael McKean, Seth Green and others playing bit parts. That's before mentioning the pool party scene, which includes more celebrities such as Jack Black, David Dastmalchian, Conan O'Brien, Emo Philips, Nina West, Paul F. Tompkins, and another dozen too numerous to mention.
  • Al in other works:
    • All three The Naked Gun movies. The first and last were As Himself. In the second movie, he's the criminal who Frank opens the door on.
    • Rob Zombie's Halloween II (2009).
    • He performed the theme song for Spy Hard.
    • He is Banana Man in one episode of Adventure Time.
    • Al has directed several of Ben Folds' videos, and appears as himself in his role as the director in the video for "Rocking The Suburbs". In return, Ben Folds played piano for "Why Does This Always Happen to Me?" and later invited him to sing background vocals on his song "Time."
    • Al has played the tambourine with Hanson quite a few times.
    • He also got a humorous moment in Michael Jackson's music video for "Liberian Girl", which is a music video about a bunch of celebrities waiting to film a music video...
      Blair Underwood: (Seeing Al's hairdo from behind, and assuming it's Michael) Mikey?
      Al: No, but I think Bubbles is here.
    • He was brought in to discuss Autotune on Know Your Meme.
    • Appeared in The Aquabats! Super Show! as President Stuncastin and SuperMagic PowerMan.
    • He appeared on the Some Jerk with a Camera Christmas Special to complain about pointless celebrity cameos.
    • Voiced a new version of Wreck-Gar in Transformers: Animated (marking his second collaboration with the Transformers brand since the old animated movie).
    • He played Cheese Sandwich in two episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, marking his third work with Hasbro.
    • Played Isaac Newton in Epic Rap Battles of History, battling against Bill Nye and later Neil Degrasse Tyson.
    • He played a rather annoying yoga practitioner in "Enlightening Strikes", the tenth episode of the 2015 The Odd Couple reboot. The episode reunites him with Thomas Lennon (see above), who here plays Felix Unger, Al's yoga instructor in the episode.
    • He played the conformist, normal control panel Pal.0 in the eponymous episode of Uncle Grandpa.
    • In the official video for Weezer's cover of Toto's "Africa," Al takes Rivers Cuomo's place as the lead, and things go suitably off the rails.
    • Canadian rock band Cybertronic Spree's music video for Dare To Be Stupid features numerous shout outs to other Weird Al songs, along with a large number of Weird Al impersonators. At the end of the video, Al comes on to the set and tells Hot Rod that he doesn't need to do another take because "I know stupid, and believe me, this is stupid."
    • He's part of the All-Star Cast in the music video for the 2021 reissue of George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord", playing a concession stand employee at a movie theatre who sells popcorn to Fred Armisen, Ringo Starr and Joe Walsh.
• Camera Abuse: Al breathes on the lens in the middle of "Eat It", accidentally punches it while fist-pumping in the segment spoofing Billy Idol in the "UHF" video, and licks it near the end of the video for "Smells like Nirvana."
• Canadian Equals Hockey Fan: In "Canadian Idiot", he sings, "Don't wanna be a Canadian idiot! Don't wanna be some beer swillin' hockey nut."
• Captain Obvious:
  • In "Albuquerque," while flesh-eating weasels are assaulting Al's face, he meets a girl who says "Hey. You've got weasels on your face."
  • The predictions in "Your Horoscope for Today" that don't fall under Refuge in Audacity are this, but the biggest offender is "The stars predict tomorrow you'll wake up, do a bunch of stuff, and then go back to sleep."
• Car Song: "She Drives Like Crazy."
• Careful with That Axe:
  • During the bridges of "Jurassic Park" and "Nature Trail to Hell" and the end of "Cavity Search".
  • The guitarist ^note Rick Derringer, who was Al's producer at the time in "Eat It" actually explodes!
  • "Albuquerque", but a box of one dozen starving, crazed weasels will do that.
  • "Bite Me", the infamous hidden track on Off The Deep End, is eight seconds of Al screaming bloody murder following 10 minutes of silence.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: The titular "Germs" want to control him! They want to destroy him! They're trying to kill him! It kind of upsets him.
• Changing Chorus: He does this with almost every song he does. Take "Eat It" for example.
  • First verse:
    Just eat it. (Eat it). Eat it. (Eat It)
    Get yourself an egg and beat it.
    Have some more chicken. Have some more pie.
    It doesn't matter if it's boiled or fried.
  • Second verse:
    Just eat it. (Eat it). Eat it. (Eat it)
    Open up your mouth and feed it.
    Have some more yogurt. Have some more spam.
• Chirping Crickets: Heard as the camera pans up Al wearing the MJ costume in the video for "Fat".
• Chroma Key: This is used most likely purposefully obviously in the music video for "Smells Like Nirvana" (parody of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana) from about 1:55-1:57 when guitarist Jim West walks by a crowd scene munching on a banana and then spits it out.
• Classically-Trained Extra: "Skipper Dan" is built on this trope. It's the tale of a former up-and-coming, critically-acclaimed Broadway actor... who is stuck giving shows on the "Jungle Cruise" at Disneyland.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Used in a number of songs, most notably "Good Old Days" and "I Remember Larry". See Black Comedy for details.
• Comically Inept Healing: The titular doctor in the Madonna parody "Like a Surgeon" is not good at all and knows it.
  It's a fact, I'm a quack
  The disgrace of the A.M.A.
  'Cause my patients die
  Yeah, my patients die
  Before they can pay
• Comically Missing the Point: In an "Al Music" special, Al holds a trivia contest in which people are asked to name all five members of The Rolling Stones. The grand prize (a Neil Diamond 8-track tape) is awarded to the person who named them all "Bob."
• Commissar Cap: One of the images for the "Mandatory Fun" album shows Al wearing a commissar cap.... while exposing his Goofy Print Underwear with his pants around his ankles.
• Conspiracy Theorist: The entire second verse of "Foil" talks about The Illuminati finally being primed for world domination, black helicopters coming from across the border, the government's refusal to admit to faking the Moon landing. Just in case aliens get involved, he's got a Tinfoil Hat to protect him, and someday he'll prove there's one giant conspiracy.
• Continuity Nod: "School Cafeteria," the B-side to Al's debut single "My Bologna," includes the lyrics "the cook still hasn't got the knack," a play on the band The Knack and their album Get The Knack which includes "My Sharona," making both sides contain an homage to the same band.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: The sandwiches he makes during the 'nutrition breaks' of AlTV. He's used peanut butter, gummy bears, carrots, ice cream, mustard, jellybeans...
• Cover Drop: The cover art for Bad Hair Day is featured in the "Amish Paradise" video.
• Cover Version: Al very rarely plays straight covers with the lyrics unchanged, but there are a few exceptions, most notably the theme song of George of the Jungle on his album Dare to Be Stupid. He also is known to play Elvis Costello's "Radio Radio" in concert when there are technical difficulties, and played an obscure New Wave song, "I Got Your Number (Written On the Back of My Hand)" by The Jags, during his college coffeehouse days.
  • On the "Alapalooza" album, "Bohemian Polka" is basically a Polka version of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody".
  • In 2017, he released a cover of "Beat on the Brat" by The Ramones as part of the Dr. Demento Covered in Punk album project.
  • 2018 saw the release of "The Hamilton Polka", a medley of songs from Hamilton with the lyrics unchanged.
  • At all of the events of his 2018 Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour, Al did straight covers of other songs. To wit, during the April 3rd show in Minneapolis, he kept launching into All Star and then stopping, before finally playing the full song in the encore. Other songs include Free Bird, Cinnamon Girl and God Save The Queen.
    • For the May 17, 2018 concert at Monterey, California, Al did a cover of Tom Lehrer's "The Elements".
• Crossdresser: Often cross dresses in his music videos.
  • Just listen to "Truck Driving Song".
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: The director for Al's cooking show in "Foil" reveals himself to be part of the Reptilian Conspiracy after The Men in Black drag Al off the set.
• Curse Cut Short: The last part of "Another Tattoo", at the very end, is the closest he ever comes to swearing in a song (as in, Seven Dirty Words levels of swearing). The line in question? "Ow! Motherf..."
  • From his "interview" with Uma Thurman:
    "WHAT THE FUUDGESICKLE?!?"
  • The ending to "Phony Calls" has Al singing "Pain in the ass" during the fade. The last word gets interrupted at the cutoff.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: To himself in "One More Minute".
  I'd rather spend eternity eating shards of broken glass
  Than spend one more minute with you
  [...]
  I'd rather rip out my intestines with a fork
  Than watch you going out with other men
• Damned by Faint Praise: "School Cafeteria" starts with this, and it only gets worse from there.
  Let me tell you 'bout the school cafeteria
  It's got all the others beat
  It sells over four million burgers a year
  Just think, that's almost two pounds of meat
• Dancing Royalty: "That Boy Could Dance" is about a homely social misfit who made it big because he was an incredible dancer.
• Death by Music Video: In the Animated Music Video for "Party in the CIA", a parody of Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA", Al plays a young CIA operative undergoing a number of illegal missions to destabilize other countries. He's eventually captured and tortured by the general he's supposed to assassinate, last seen having a good-hearted laugh as he stares down the barrel of a gun.
• Death of a Child: In "Albuquerque".
  "You know, I'd never been on a real airplane before ... And the little kid in back of me kept throwin' up the whole time ... And, oh yeah, three of the airplane engines burned out / And we went into a tailspin and crashed into a hillside / And the plane exploded in a giant fireball / and everybody died"
  • The entirety of "Nature Trail To Hell" is about a psychopath who murders a bunch of Cub Scouts (Boy Scouts between 5 to 12 years old) at a summer camp.
• Deconstruction: Not by him, but with his participation: the Behind The Music featuring Weird Al — who's never had any real career adversity (by music-industry standards) or scandal — deconstructed entertainment behind-the-scenes shows.
  Weird Al: "And then... my fourth album only went Gold instead of Platinum! *sobs* I had to get the medium-sized Jacuzzi!!"
• A Degree in Useless: The aspiring actor in "Skipper Dan" who ends up hating his life as "a tour guide on the Jungle Cruise ride."
  I shoulda listened when my grandfather said
  "Why don't you major in business instead?"
  • Al has made jokes that his own degree (in architecture) is one for him, given how his career path almost never makes use of what he learned.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The video for "You Don't Love Me Anymore", which in itself parodies the one for Extreme's "More Than Words".
• Department of Redundancy Department:
  • From "Albuquerque": "Hey! You can't have that! That snorkel's been just like a snorkel to me!"
  • "Sports Song" can basically be summed up by saying we're great, you suck, you really suck, and in case you missed it, YOU SUCK.
  • In "Jackson Park Express":
    I pointed to the side of my mouth, as a way of indicating
    "Hey, I think you got something on the side of your mouth".
  • "Polkamon" lists Ditto twice.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Implied in "Bob" with the line "Ah, Satan sees Natasha; no devil lived on."
• Die Laughing: In the video for "Party in the CIA", some of the agency's enemies have caught up with Al, and Al dies this way.
• Digital Head Swap: The video for "Perform This Way" (a parody of Lady Gaga's "Born This Way") digitally superimposes Al's head on other dancer's bodies at times. It's most noticeable during the contortionist sequence.
• Digital Piracy Is Evil: Averted. Al doesn't have that many problems with people downloading his songs, and instead has many more problems with false attribution, the type that labels him as the author of such songs as "Wienie in a Bottle", "Elmo's Got a Gun", and others that he wouldn't be caught dead singing.
  • He parodied the phenomenon with "Don't Download This Song", which, ironically, was DRM-free when most online retailers were stuck with it and can be downloaded legally for free.
  • Al also has a habit of leaking one or more songs from his upcoming albums early, usually by posting it to YouTube or some other such site.
  • And now for some Irony. YouTube seems to have blocked one person's upload of his music videos in the U.S. due to copyright concerns from Sony... said person is Weird Al himself.
  • Al also mentions in the DVD Commentary for The Weird Al Show coming across a fansite that was distributing episodes of the show, saying that he was fine with it as long as they stopped after the official DVD release by Shout! Factory.invoked
  • Al himself authorized his album Alpocalypse to be streamed over the internet a week before its release date.
• Disney Acid Sequence: One occurs during the instrumental in the middle of the video for "Jurassic Park." This may be a parody of the music videos from the 60's (the era that "MacArthur Park," the song being parodied, was released).
• Disproportionate Retribution: In "One More Minute", a malt shop was burnt down just so the song's narrator doesn't want to remember his ex.
• Disturbed Doves: These show up in the music video for "If That Isn't Love" during a couple of repeats of the chorus.
• D.I.Y. Disaster: "The Plumbing Song".
  When I flush the john, it turns the shower on!
• Does Not Like Spam:
  • From "Albuquerque": "I! HATE! SAUERKRAUT!".
  • Averted when he sings about the Trope Namer in "Spam"; he pokes fun at it for being Mystery Meat, but seems to be genuinely pleased with its versatility
  • Played straight in "Trapped in the Drive-Thru":
    I hopped up and I said: "I don't know, do you want to get something delivered?"
    She's like "Why would I want to eat liver? I don't even like liver!"
    I'm like "No, I said 'delivered'."
    She's like "I heard you say liver!"
    I'm like "I should know what I said..."
    She's like "WHATEVER! I JUST DON'T WANT ANY LIVER!"
• The Dog Bites Back:
  • The last verse of "I Remember Larry". The singer ends up tying Larry's mouth with a rag, "[dragging] him by the ankles to the middle of the forest and [stuffing] him in a big plastic bag".
  • The end of "I Was Only Kidding".
• Don't Explain the Joke: In "Sports Song", among the Sophisticated as Hell trash talk, Al twice explains he isn't being literal:
  We’re gonna kick your collective posterior
  Of course you realize we're speaking figuratively
  [...]
  We’re gonna grind up your guys into burger meat
  Again, of course, we're speaking in the figurative sense
  • From "Wanna B Ur Lover":
    I wanna be your Krakatoa
    Let my lava flow all over you
    I wanna be your anaconda
    And your heat-seeking missile too
    I wanna be your beef burrito
    Am I making this perfectly clear?
    I wanna be your love torpedo
    Are you picking up the subtle innuendo here?
• Doomed Autographed Item: In one part of "Albuquerque", Al's lucky, autographed glow-in-the-dark snorkel is stolen by "some big fat hermaphrodite with a Flock of Seagulls haircut and only one nostril". Al tried to fight for it back, but the perpetrator got away.
• Doo-Wop Progression: The chorus of "Stop Forwarding That Crap to Me" uses it.
• Downer Ending:
  • "Party in the CIA" readily comes to mind, as in the music video the protagonist is captured and about to be executed.
  • Averted by "TMZ", which is more of a downer song with a sort of heroic The Dog Bites Back ending.
  • "The Night Santa Went Crazy". Depending on which version you listen to, it ends with Santa Claus either in jail for several hundred years, or dead.
• The Dreaded Toilet Duty: In "One More Minute", the narrator sings that he'd rather clean all the toilets in Grand Central Station with his tongue than spend one more minute with the girl he broke up with.
• Dramatic Choir Number: "Amish Paradise", a parody of Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise" is backed by a short, looping choir riff, with the choir leaving in disgust at the end.
• Drives Like Crazy: The subject of "She Drives Like Crazy" (Al's Trope Namer parody of Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy").
• Drive-Thru Antics: "Trapped in the Drive-Thru" is a very long song about a man who tries to take his wife to a fast-food restaurant and goes through all sorts of mishaps in the drive-thru. First, they can't just go inside because he's wearing bunny slippers, then the guy gets into a weird conversation about a guy named Paul and finally forgets that he didn't find his wallet, forcing him and his wife to dig for change.
• Drunken Song: "Feel Like Throwin' Up," a parody of Bad Company's "Feel Like Makin' Love" from an early food medley recorded in the same Cal Poly bathroom as "My Bologna."
• invoked Dude, Not Funny!: Al himself later felt this way about "Achy Breaky Song", and apologized to Billy Ray Cyrus by donating money to his favorite charity.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • His self-titled first album. Al played accordion on every song (helped by guitarist Jim West not being present for the recording sessions, and thus featured nowhere on the album), the parodies weren't as close in sound to the originals as they would later be, and only one of the non-parody songs is a style parody.
  • Initially, his singing style was strictly his crazy, shrill-sounding voice; he'd largely phased it out by the time of the Dare to Be Stupid album.
  • With rare exception, Al's track list follows the pattern "parody, original song, parody, original..." resulting in a roughly even number of both. His first album has only 5 parodies out of 12 tracks, leading to a couple instances of two or more original songs in a row.
  • Some of the lyrics in his first album can be shocking to someone who thinks of him as a family-friendly act who mostly sings about food and popular culture. "Happy birthday" has lyrics that are faintly racist, and one verse in "Such a Groovy Guy" describes what could at best be called a non-consentual BDSM act. Al has stated that if he'd done that album later in life, a lot of material would not have been in it.
• The '80s: The "Dare to be Stupid" video.
• Embarrassing Ringtone: "Ringtone" is about this:
  Why did I buy the stupid ringtone?
  I just can't imagine now
  what I was thinking at all!
  My friends all stare at me whenever I get a call!
  When everybody (everybody)
  everybody (everybody)
  everybody in the world really hates my ringtone!
• Ending Fatigue:invoked Played for Laughs in "Albuquerque".
• Epic Rocking:
  • "Albuquerque." Emphasis on epic; the song is over ten minutes long, and it's easily Al's longest song.
  • "Trapped in the Drive-Thru," "Genius in France," and "Jackson Park Express" also qualify. Each song is at least eight minutes long, and some of them get close to ten minutes.
• Even the Dog Is Ashamed: Whoever is being targeted in "You're Pitiful" (parody of "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt) must be a bad case of this, if the following lyrics are anything to go by:
  Your dog would much rather
  Play fetch by itself.
• Even the Subtitler Is Stumped: The music video for "Smells Like Nirvana," in one hilarious moment:
  It's hard to bargle nawdle zouss???
  with all these marbles in my mouth
  • And according to the insert for the CD, those are the actual lyrics.
• Everyone Has Standards: No matter how much his fandom wants a new parody of "My Sharona" called "My Corona", Al has the common courtesy to explicitly name it as a parody he won't do on his official Twitter account, because even for a trendy, highly topical musician like him, a parody centering on COVID-19 would be too insensitive to even attempt.
• Everyone Hates Mimes:
  • "She Never Told Me She Was a Mime" is built on this, as the singer grows isolated from his girlfriend due to her mime tendencies.
  • One of the lines in "My Own Eyes" is: I saw a mime get hacked to death. With an imaginary cleaver.
• Evil Lawyer Joke: From "Jurassic Park", though it's ambiguous if he's referring to the lawyer or the dinosaur:
  A huge tyrannosaurus ate our lawyer
  Well, I suppose that proves
  They're really not all bad
• Expospeak Gag: "Mission Statement" is a series of buzzwords and vaguely positive-sounding metaphors that all roughly translate to "we need to make more money".
• Eye Scream: Discussed in one of the lines from "Perform This Way", which warns "I'll poke your eye out with a dress like this..." the dress in question being adorned with huge spikes.
• Facial Dialogue: "Jackson Park Express" is about the narrator seeing a woman on a bus. The song is nine minutes long, but describes the "conversations" taking place between a man and a woman discussing the hypothetical process of forming a romantic relationship, engaging in sexual activity, breaking up, and moving on with their lives. All this is implied to all take place over the course of a few minutes ...and that it's all one-sided and all in the narrator's head (while the woman in question probably sees him as a creepy guy staring at her).
• Fake-Out Fade-Out: Al lampshades this twice in the song "Now You Know". "Double Fake-Out!"
• Fan Flattering: Al and his band (though the band features more prominently; Al only plays accordion) recorded the song "Al's Band". The third to last stanza has:
  Straight Outta Lynwood we hit top ten
  White And Nerdy went platinum too
  We really hope that someday we might do it again
  If we do we know that it’s all thanks to you
  All thank you's to you
  And you're welcome too
  Come and see us play when you can
  Then you can see for yourself what is
  Making all of this happen
  You're the reason why we play
• Fan Hater: invoked One of the defining characteristics of the protagonist in "Close but No Cigar". He dumped a girl because she owned a DVD of Joe Dirt, despite all the other amazing things she had going for her. Keep in mind, this was the only reason he broke it off with her, and he had described her as flawlessly perfect otherwise.
• Fat and Proud: "Fat", of course.
• Fat Slob: "Inactive" is about a lazy slob who's completely given up on exercising and keeping himself healthy.
• Fat Suit: Al wears one with facial makeup in the "Fat" music video, and he also wears one (and a latex mask instead of makeup) when performing "Fat" in live concert shows.
• Fiery Redhead: Al had flaming auburn hair as a child and young teen, which darkened to deep auburn by the time he came to public attention. And if "fiery" can include "wild, chaotic, and fiercely individualistic", then he absolutely could fit here.
• Finger-Snapping Street Gang: His parody hit "Eat It" has a music video that mirrors Michael Jackson's, including a West Side Story homage to the finger-snapping Jets.
• First-World Problems: The name of the song from his Mandatory Fun album, in which he rants about the most insignificant of such problems.
  My barista didn't even bother to make a design in the foam on the top of my vanilla latte!
• Flaming Emblem: Done in the "White and Nerdy" video which is a parody of Chamillionaire's "Ridin'" where he's eventually standing on a blacktop in front of a flaming version of his logo. In Al's video, the flaming logo is of Pac-Man.
• Food Songs Are Funny: Many examples, enough to fill an entire compilation album (appropriately named "The Food Album") and then some. He's migrated away from this trope in his later years, however.
• Football Fight Song: "Sports Song" is done in the style of one.
  We're great, and you suck!
• Four More Measures: Lampshaded in "You're Pitiful".
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: In "CNR", Charles Nelson Reilly goes onstage and starts attacking Weird Al's band, then smashes the screen.
  • Went meta with "White & Nerdy". A scene where he pretends to deface the Wikipedia page for Atlantic Records led to people trying to actually deface the page in a similar fashion. Wikipedia ended up locking the page for Atlantic Records for a while as a result.
• Free Prize at the Bottom: Appears in "She Drives Like Crazy," a parody of "She Drives Me Crazy" by Five Young Cannibals
  When you drive, I can't relax/Got your license from Cracker Jacks
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • From the music video of "Word Crimes":
    • At the beginning, a dictionary's pages are turning through the A's. The definition of "Accordion" has a picture of Al next to it.
    • On a shot of a piece of homework paper, the homeroom teacher is listed as "Mrs. Krabappel".
    • The Reddit user goes by the handle George Newman.
    • On the graphic for the lyric "lost cause", which uses a promo graphic from Lost, the print next to the ABC logo reads "learn your [ABC]'s (sic), doofus" instead of the network slogan.
    • Likewise, the "Write words using numbers" is in the style◊ of NUMB3RS.
  • In the video for "White and Nerdy", the line "I'll ace any trivia quiz you bring on" begins with a closeup of a Trivial Pursuit card with amusing questions. "A&E: What's the deal with Lindsay Lohan? I mean, seriously?" and "SN: What is the melting point of a gorilla's head?"
    • In the comic book shop, Al's t-shirt reads "Carl Sagan Is My Homeboy".
  • After Al starts singing about The Illuminati in "Foil", there's a few red frames of Al's face looking the worse for wear — see Subliminal Seduction.
  • In the animated video for "Skipper Dan", the female tour guide who mimes shooting herself in tandem with Dan is the same redhead with whom he'd appeared in "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" during one of Dan's acting flashbacks. It seems that Skipper Ann's career prospects as an actor didn't work out either...
• Friendly Shopkeeper: Mr. Fender from "Good Old Days" is described as such, smiling as he walks down the aisles, greeting patrons with "Howdy", and giving the singer advice. At least until the singer burns down his place and bashes his head in.
• Frivolous Lawsuit: "I'll Sue Ya" is based entirely upon this.
• The "Fun" in "Funeral": Mentioned in Tacky.
  I would live-tweet a funeral
  Take selfies with the deceased
• Funny Background Event: Pretty much every music video has something funny go on behind the action, like the basketball players in "Smells like Nirvana."
• Fun with Palindromes: The lyrics of "Bob" (a style parody of Bob Dylan) are all palindromes.^note So's the title.

G-O

• Game Show Appearance: The subject of "I Lost on Jeopardy!." Amusingly, he later appeared on Rock & Roll Jeopardy! in 2001 and lost. The music video was even played in the credits.
  • However, he fared much better on a Celebrity Edition of Wheel of Fortune in May 1994. Appropriately, he won $27,800 on his first appearance, and $2,700 more on the "Friday Finals" tournament at the end of the week.
  • The lyrics and video for "CNR" fittingly give many nods to Match Game, arguably Charles Nelson Reilly's most well known gig.
• Game Show Goofballs: Al does so poorly in “I Lost On Jeopardy!” that his podium starts emitting smoke and Don Pardo gives him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Gassy Gastronomy: Towards the beginning of the song "Trapped in the Drive-Thru", when the narrator and his wife are trying to decide where they want to go for dinner, he mentions that "Burrito King would make me gassy, there's no doubt."
• Gem-Encrusted: Like a swimming pool. Those things don't grow on trees.
• Genre Roulette: His band is good enough to play any type of music and Al himself can sing in a multitude of styles, able to pull off rock (both classic and modern), country, pop, reggae, boyband, soul, rap, folk and more vocals. He even wrote an original speed metal song called "Hardware Store". There is a reason they have sometimes been referred to as "The world's greatest cover band". In fact, Al has been known to get very annoyed and defensive when people refer to them as a joke band.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Invoked in "Genius in France", in which the singer of the song is very popular in France despite being a self-described complete moron. Even he's not sure why, but he's not complaining.

• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: In spite of being more than somewhat risqué (see above), Al is a decidedly family-friendly entertainer who generally avoids profanity, and will often Bowdlerise the original lyrics to remove them.
  • Not just in his lyrics. The final episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in 2016 ended with a series of people, both celebrities and people on the street, all declaring "Fuck you, 2016!", often along with Flipping the Bird. Al appears in the middle of this, with "2016 fffffell way below my standards of quality" and vigorously gives his index finger.
  • Al has described his sense of humor as "clean, but not squeaky-clean", and compares it to what one might find in MAD magazine.
• Grade Skipper: Al started Kindergarden a year early, skipped the second grade, and ended up graduating high school at the age of 16 — as the class valedictorian.
• Grammar Nazi: See here and here.
  • Let's not forget this part of "Close But No Cigar"
    She was gorgeous, she was charming
    Yeah, she was perfect in every way
    Except she was always using the word "infer"
    When she obviously meant "imply"
    And I know some guys would put up with that kind of thing
    But frankly, I can't imagine why
  • The entirety of "Word Crimes" focuses specifically on this trope.
• Gratuitous French: Parodied in "Perform This Way"
  And for no reason now I'll sing in French
  Excusez-moi, Qui a pété? (Translation: Excuse me, who farted?)
• Gratuitous Italian: Parodied in "Lasagna". Al attempted to play it straight by having the song be written completely in Italian but realized 99% of the audience wouldn't understand it. Instead he made the song about Italian foods with the rest consisting of Italian phrases and expressions.
• Greatest Hits Album: The Essential "Weird Al" Yankovic, Greatest Hits, Greatest Hits II, and Permanent Record, a four-disc box set of Weird Al's favorite tracks from "My Bologna" to his then-latest single, "Headline News" (which was only available on that box set and Greatest Hits II).
• Happiness Is Mandatory: His album Mandatory Fun has Al on the cover standing in military dictator garb with an army at his beck and call.
• Handyman: "Handy" is all about being one, though louder and less laid-back.
  I'm so handy
  You already know
  I'll fix your plumbing
  when your toilets overflow.
• Hard Truckin': The "Truck Drivin' Song" where he sings with a low, deep voice about his job as a truck driver... and wearing women's clothing.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: The heartbeat monitor in "Like a Surgeon".
• Hell of a Heaven: "Everything You Know Is Wrong" has the singer violating Heaven's dress code, and getting stuck with the room next to the noisy ice machine for all eternity as a result. This suggests that Heaven is a mid-priced hotel.
• Here We Go Again!: From the last verse of "I Lost on Jeopardy!":
  Well, I sure hope I do better
  Next weekend on The Price Is Right!
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood:
  • "When I Was Your Age".
    Dad would whoop us every night till a quarter after twelve
    Then he'd get too tired and he'd make us whoop ourselves
    Then he'd chop me into pieces and play frisbee with my brain
    And let me tell ya, Junior, you never heard me complain
    When I was your age!
  • In "Albuquerque," the narrator's mother chains him to a wall and force-feeds him nothing but sauerkraut for his whole childhood and well into his adult years.
• Hitler Cam: Used in "One More Minute" at the end, where Al rips out "his" (plastic) heart.
• Hollywood Silencer: A sound effect in "Party In The CIA"^note A lyrical parody of "Party In The USA" by Miley Cyrus. Lampshaded by the lyric "And my silencer was on".
• Home Porn Movie: Here. Compare the "White and Nerdy" video
• Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: "Christmas at Ground Zero".
  What a crazy fluke
  We're gonna get nuked
  On this jolly holiday!
• Horrorscope: About half of the entries in "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Your Horoscope For Today" are predictions of catastrophes and disasters played for laughs. The other half are bizarre instructions.
• Hostile Show Takeover: Hostile Network Takeover, in this case. His AlTV specials that ran on MTV and VH1 from 1984-2006 (typically whenever he had a new album) had him taking over the network with a pirate satellite transmitter, airing music videos he wanted to play (including his own of course), his fake celebrity interviews, and various other comedy bits. Similar specials aired on Canada's MuchMusic during the 90s under the name AlMusic.
• "How I Wrote This Article" Article: "(This Song's Just) Six Words Long" is about this.
  Couldn't think of any lyrics!
  No, I never wrote the lyrics.
  So I'll just sing any old lyrics
  That come to mind, child.
• Human Head on the Wall: The video for "CNR" has a brief look at a wall in Charles Nelson Reilly's house which is covered with trophy heads. One of them is human. Even better: it's Chuck Norris.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • The second AlMusic special has Al reading a letter putting him down for his riffing of Guns N' Roses' "Don't Cry" in a previous special, getting broken up over it and vowing to never make fun of music videos again. Right after this? His take on Nirvana's "Heart Shaped Box".
  • Amish Paradise contains the line "I know I'm a million times as humble as thou art!"
  • Al once made a cameo appearance on Some Jerk with a Camera to rant about how much he hates celebrity cameos.
  • In the video for "Word Crimes", a song about proper grammar, one of the degrees on the wall is a "Bachelor of Writing Good".^note Proper grammar would make it a "Bachelor of Writing Well".
    • The same song — which, as a reminder, is all about poking fun of grammatical errors — itself ends with a split infinitive which was inserted deliberately.^note Although whether split infinitives are a grammatical error is a matter of debate.
  • "Don't Download This Song," a song scolding the listener for illegally downloading songs rather than buying CDs, is available as a free download.
  • One line of "eBay" features the line: "Tell me why, I need another pet rock". Because the singer's ''first'' pet rock had served such a practical function...
• I Am Not Shazam: "Perform This Way"^note A lyrical parody of "Born This Way" by Lady Gaga has the line "I'm Frankenstein, I'm Avatar". Not an Example of Cowboy BeBop at His Computer though, as it was deliberately invoked.
• Iconic Outfit: Earlier in his career, there was a particular pair of horrendously ugly pants given to Al that he wore at every concert (which can be seen on his first album cover). He eventually ditched them. Later, he was known for his large collection of Hawaiian-print shirts and Vans sneakers. He still pulls these out, though not as frequently.
• I Gave My Word: Yankovic swears by this trope in his dealings with the music industry. Specifically, he always asks the artists he plans on lampooning for permission to write a parody of each of their songs. This is even though, according to American copyright law, one does not need permission to parody something from the entity which is being parodied. Most artists, who find Yankovic's riffs on them hilarious, respond positively. However, there have been instances when the singer in question didn't give Yankovic an OK to publish or record a piece. For example, Paul McCartney, a dedicated vegetarian, refused to allow "Live and Let Die" to become "Chicken Pot Pie," while Michael Jackson, one of Yankovic's biggest fans (he even let him use the same set as "Bad" for the parody "Fat"), felt uncomfortable with "Black or White" being turned into "Snack All Night," as the song's message of racial harmony didn't lend itself to jokes. The only thing keeping Yankovic from recording and profiting off those songs is his personal promise that he will never record a parody that the artist has asked him not to.
• "I Hate" Song: "Albuquerque" starts off with Al talking about how his mother fed him nothing but sauerkraut for a good portion of his life. He then details winning a contest where the prize is a one-way trip to Albuquerque, surviving a plane crash, getting a treasured item stolen, trying to order doughnuts, a failed marriage, and a couple of chance encounters. In the end, he loses his train of thought and admits the song was just a roundabout way of saying how much he hates sauerkraut.
• Impossibly Tacky Clothes: In "Tacky"; both described in the lyrics and worn in the video.
• Incendiary Exponent: Parodied in "Perform This Way"
  I'll wrap my small intestines round my neck
  And set fire to myself on stage
• Incredibly Lame Fun: "Hardware Store"
• Incredibly Long Note: The piano hit at the end of "Nature Trail To Hell".
• Inherently Funny Words: Frequently among his lyrics. Many of his favorites include "weasel," "uvula," "plumber," "bowling", "hamster" and occasionally "poodle." And of course, "AAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAA-AAAAAA-AAAAAAALBUQUERQUE!!!!"
• Ink-Suit Actor: His roles on Transformers: Animated, Lilo & Stitch: The Series, and Cheese Sandwich from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Also appeared as himself on The Simpsons. Of course.
• Intercourse with You: "Wanna B Ur Lovr", a Beck-style pastiche with Prince-style lyrics, with "Weird Al" reciting a lot of ridiculous and sometimes unsubtle pickup lines.
• In the Style of / Musical Pastiche: At least half of Al's non-parodies pastiche the style of another significant musician, perhaps the most famous being "Dare To Be Stupid", his take on Devo (particularly basing the melody on "Big Mess", but including references to a number of other Devo songs as well).
  • In addition, every album but the first and fifth contains a medley of then-recent hit songs performed as a polka.
  • "Dog Eat Dog" parodies Talking Heads, with prominent musical references to "And She Was" and "Artists Only" in particular, and even includes modified versions of lines from "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)" and "Once in a Lifetime". Al even puts on a David Byrne-style big suit when performing this song live.
  • "Trigger Happy" is a take on early 60s surf pop, particularly The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean.
  • "Bob" is a bunch of palindromes sung like Bob Dylan. The video even parodies the "Subterranean Homesick Blues" video from the documentary Don't Look Back.
  • "CNR" is a style parody of The White Stripes.
  • "Close But No Cigar" is an absolutely spot-on pastiche of the band Cake's signature style, including blurty trumpet, ad-libs (yelled off-mic), and rampant Vibra-Slap abuse.
  • "You Make Me" is a parody in the style of Oingo Boingo, complete with various percussion, a prominent horn section, and distinct guitar solo, all sounding quite Boingo-esque.
  • In a lot of cases, his "style parodies" are a result of not getting permission to do a parody of an actual song by the band. For example, after Trent Reznor refused to let him do any Nine Inch Nails songs, Weird Al came out with "Germs," which clearly borrows from several NIN songs (especially "Terrible Lie", "Closer", and "Mr. Self Destruct").
    • For similar reasons, he did the song "Traffic Jam" in the style of Prince (specifically "Let's Go Crazy"), who consistently refused to let Al parody any of his songs.
  • "Wanna B Ur Lovr" is thought by many to be another Prince hit, but is styled more along the lines of Beck circa Midnite Vultures; Al claimed that the song is himself "trying to sound like Beck trying to sound like Prince."
  • "If That Isn't Love" is mostly a style parody of his close friends, the boys of Hanson, but there's definitely a few jabs at Justin Bieber in there too.
  • "Mr. Popeil" is a style parody of The B-52s, with Al's female backing vocalists^note (one of whom, Lisa Popeil, is the daughter of the "Mr. Popeil" the song's named after) doing a perfect imitation of Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson and Al himself doing the Fred Schneider part.
  • In a slightly less musical example, Carnival of the Animals, Part Two (the B-side to Peter and the Wolf) includes recited poetry in the style of Ogden Nash.
  • Other examples:
    • "Velvet Elvis" = The Police (particularly "Driven to Tears")
    • "Frank's 2000' TV" = R.E.M. (circa Murmur or Reckoning)
    • "Everything You Know Is Wrong" = They Might Be Giants
    • "Why Does This Always Happen to Me?" = Ben Folds Five (to the point where Ben Folds himself plays piano on the track)
    • "Skipper Dan" = Weezer
    • "Ringtone" = Queen (with the intro nearly matching that of "Don't Stop Me Now")
    • "Craigslist" = The Doors (more specifically, main verse="When The Music's Over/Soul Kitchen", chorus="The Changeling", keyboard solo= "Light My Fire", and spoken-word interlude="The End". Ray Manzarek, the Doors' keyboardist, plays keys on that track).
    • "I'll Sue Ya" = Rage Against the Machine. The main riff and outro is similar to "Killing In The Name", and the chorus closely resembles the one from "Bombtrack".
    • "Mission Statement" = Crosby, Stills and Nash (particularly "Carry On" and "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes").
    • "Lame Claim to Fame" = Southern Culture on the Skids (the opening riff in particular is directly inspired by "Camel Walk").
    • "First World Problems" = The Pixies (the opening bass line is almost exactly the one from "Debaser", while the verse melody quotes "No. 13 Baby").
    • "Virus Alert" = Sparks
    • "Genius in France" = Frank Zappa, with musical and lyrical quotations from and references to pretty much the entirety of Zappa's back-catalog; sharp-eared Zappa fans will note that damn near every compositional choice on the album is a reference to a specific song. Zappa's son Dweezil even showed up to play the intro guitar solo, with the same guitar used on "I'm the Slime".
  • A rare producer-based instead of artist-based example is "Stop Forwarding That Crap to Me", which emulates Jim Steinman's production style to a tee.
    • An additional example is "Christmas At Ground Zero", an Anti-Christmas Song that emulates Phil Spector's production style.
  • Less likely, but still possible: "When I Was Your Age" = early Alice Cooper, "Young, Dumb & Ugly" = intended as AC/DC (although it sounds much more like L.A. hair metal, Skid Row in particular).
  • "My Own Eyes" is in the style of Foo Fighters, which is probably why it is (so far) the only one of Al's songs to ever appear in the Rock Band video game series (which is often given the disparaging nickname Dave Grohl Band due to the ludicrous amount of his songs available as DLC in comparison to any other artist).
  • The polka medleys are a Spiritual Successor to Spike Jones' musical "travesties" (i.e., keep the lyrics the same, but make the music goofy) ^note Also serves as a homage to "Stars on 45", as referenced by the first's title, "Polkas on 45".
  • Speaking of "Dare To Be Stupid", the instrumental tune sounds a tad bit like "Temple Of Love" by Sisters Of Mercy, which predates DTBS by 2 years. Hard to say if this was intentional or not though, as DTBS is also clearly an instrumental parody of Devo's "Whip It" and it may be a total coincidence.
  • The video for "It's All About The Pentiums" spends plenty of time parodying the original video and "Mo Money Mo Problems", but even the unrelated scenes mimic the fisheye-heavy visual style of Hype Williams.
  • "Truck Drivin' Song" is, naturally, in the style of 70's country trucker songs, with Al's low voice sounding a bit like C.W. McCall's.
• Intimate Marks: The video for "Tacky" has Kirsten Schaal living up to the title by wearing a top with hot pink handprints over her breasts.
• It Came from the Fridge: The aptly titled "Livin' in the Fridge" provides the page quote.
• It Makes Sense in Context: Part of the humor of "Gump" involves Weird Al taking Forrest Gump's encounters with JFK and LBJ entirely out of context.
• It's All About Me: "Waffle King", "Why Does This Always Happen To Me?", and "If That Isn't Love" all feature this trope in different ways.
• It Will Never Catch On: Al's first show with his band was opening for Missing Persons. It was a disaster, with people booing them offstage and Al wondering if he should give up music.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Played for Laughs (obviously) in "Party in the C.I.A."
• Jaywalking Will Ruin Your Life: "Don't Download This Song"
• Jerkass: "Tacky" is all about this, with the protagonist never letting you forget a favor he did for you, asking women if they're "pregnant or just really fat", making you pay for a movie after inviting you to see it, threatening waiters with bad Yelp reviews, getting drunk and making a scene at the bank, taking the whole bowl of mints at a restaraunt ("Hey, it said they're free"), live-tweeting funerals while taking selfies with the deceased, and printing out his CV in Comic Sans.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: "Don't Download This Song"
• Jumping the Shark: In-Universe. A line in "Couch Potato" says that The King of Queens did this. In the first minute. Because Richard Simmons wasn't in it.
• Jump Scare: Al has stated that "Bite Me" (the Hidden Track at the end of Off the Deep End) was made specifically for this effect on the poor people that forgot to turn off their players.
• "Just Joking" Justification: From "Trash Day":
  Some Lysol, some Comet, I got a mop and it's got your name on it. (What?!)
  I'm just kidding, doggone it. (Oh)
  Unless you're gonna do it.
• Karmic Death:
  • "I Remember Larry" which has Larry being murdered by the target of many of his malicious gags, with the target making it sound like it was only another malicious gag.
  • In the video for "I'll Sue Ya", while Al and his band are driving with all of the money they won in their lawsuits, they're distracted by a billboard and crash into a large truck. The billboard and truck are for two brands that Al had earlier sued.
  • The protagonist of the "Party in the CIA" video gets kidnapped, beaten, and (maybe) murdered by The Generalissimo after spending the whole song talking about how awesome kidnapping, beating, and assassinating people is. He also killed the general's friend by accident while trying to kill the general himself making it a case of Laser-Guided Karma.
• Kazoos Mean Silliness: Al often uses kazoos for comedic effect in his song parodies:
  • In "Smells Like Nirvana", a parody of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", part of the bridge is sung with a chorus of kazoos.
  • "Headline News", a parody of Crash Test Dummies' song "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm", ends with an instrumental consisting of Al on accordion and a chorus of kazoos.
• Kissing Cousins: "A Complicated Song" includes a man inadvertently dating his cousin.
• Kitschy Local Commercial: The "Handy" video is done in this style, mainly by way of hammy acting and deliberately bad special effects.
• Lampshade Hanging: “(This Song’s Just) Six Words Long” is mostly composed of describing the Music Tropes the song itself is employing.
• Larynx Dissonance: The narrator of "Truck Drivin' Song" seems to be either a male Crossdresser or a female with a very low voice.
• Last Note Hilarity: "Albuquerque" (the ending track from Running With Scissors) ends with Jim West playing a dissonant chord on his guitar (and faintly laughing afterwards). Al would also use the dissonant chord gag at the end of "Now You Know" from Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.
• Last Note Nightmare: Parodied; Off the Deep End has one at the very end. After the track "You Don't Love Me Anymore", there are 10 minutes of silence followed by 6 seconds of backwards drumming, guitar feedback, and Al screaming at the top of his lungs, after which, the song ends. According to Al, this "most annoying six seconds of audio ever recorded" was meant to scare the listener if he or she forgets to turn the CD player off. (This snippet is called "Bite Me".) This was a parody of "Endless, Nameless" by Nirvana from Nevermind, which came on after 10 minutes of silence and was, essentially, six minutes of cacophony.
• Last of His Kind: Al was the only artist signed to Scotti Bros. Records whose contract was carried over to its successor Volcano and who put out any albums for that label.^note According to The Other Wiki, Volcano dropped all of the Scotti Bros. artists except for Al and Survivor (Band), who never put out any albums with them anyway, releasing their only post-'80s album for a European label.
• Last-Second Word Swap: At the end of the "Word Crimes" video:
  "Weird Al" Yankovic has a big dictionary.
• Limited Wardrobe: Al has almost always been seen wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt, black trousers, and brightly-patterned Vans shoes since the 1980s. Until Al had his vision corrected with LASIK eye surgery in the 1990s, his distinctive large wire-rimmed eyeglasses were also part of his trademark look.
• Lip Losses: Implied to have happened to the narrator's Hibachi dealer in "Everything You Know Is Wrong", as the song states that the dealer "takes off his prosthetic lips" before informing the narrator that everything he knows is wrong.
• List Song: Lots. "Hardware Store", "eBay", "Bob" (a list of palindromes done in the style of Bob Dylan), "Virus Alert", "I'll Sue Ya"...
  • A lot of the songs on Mandatory Fun fall under this, mostly due to its rushed production. ^note This wasn't due to Executive Meddling, which is often the case, but rather Al had to rush the release while the originals were still popular enough. That, coupled with the stiff competition from YouTube satirists, is what led him to declaring Mandatory Fun as his last LP, allowing him to focus more on singles and EPs to better keep up with the times.
• Literal Metaphor: On Jerry Springer, that bitch Woofie really is a female dog.
• Lobotomy: in the song "I Can't Watch This," he proposes that getting one will improve the appeal of HBO, the Playboy Network, Showtime, and MTV.
• Location Song: "Albuquerque" is a parody song describing "Weird Al" Yankovic's fictional lifestory in this city.
• Long-Runners: He's been around for quite a while. As one [adult swim] Eye Catch observed, if you went back to 1984 and told people that "Weird Al" was still relevant in 2006 while Michael Jackson had flamed out, they likely wouldn't believe you.
  • And after 30 years in the business, and in a musical landscape where sites like YouTube have made comedy music commonplace, Weird Al's savvy marketing ploy for Mandatory Fun (debuting each song on a different website) combined with a brilliant batch of music scored him and his bandmates their first-ever #1 album.
• Long-Runner Line-up: Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz, Jim West, and Steve Jay have been with him for almost his entire career. The lineup's only change since the beginning has been the addition of Ruben Valtierra, and that lineup has been stable since around 1992 or so. This is an unusual example in that these four are almost totally overshadowed by Al himself.
• A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...: "The Saga Begins".
• Love Martyr: "You Don't Love Me Anymore" takes this trope to extremes.
• Lyrical Dissonance:
  • "Amish Paradise" is a rap song about how cool it is to be Amish.
  • "Christmas At Ground Zero". Although maybe subverted during the bridge and end, as air raid sirens are mixed in with the festive music.
  • "Good Old Days", a James Taylor-esque folk ballad about childhood. However, this particular childhood involved torturing rats with hacksaws, burning down a corner store and brutally beating the shop owner, and taking a girl from highschool to a dance, and shaving her bald and abandoning her in the desert. Al has said the song was an attempt to write a collaboration between Taylor and Charles Manson.
  • "Weasel Stomping Day" is composed like a holiday song, and it's about killing weasels by stomping them to death.
  • "The Night Santa Went Crazy" is an upbeat tune over lyrics about Santa Claus killing people.
  • "Skipper Dan" is a pop-style song about an actor being forced to work on the Jungle Cruise Ride at Disneyland because he can't find any more work.
  • "You Don't Love Me Anymore" is a properly somber ballad, but the lyrics about the singer's girlfriend trying to kill him in various gruesome ways still give it the proper humorous dissonance to it.
  • "Party in the CIA" is about how the CIA will kidnap and torture people, even assassinate world leaders and destabilize nations, all set to the same pop tune as "Party in the USA" by Miley Cyrus.
  • "Trigger Happy" is a style parody of The Beach Boys and 1950's surfer rock about how much fun it is to shoot guns at people.
  • "Why Does This Always Happen To Me" is about how major tragedies that happen to other people personally affect the singer in minor ways.
  • And then there's "Happy Birthday" — keeps peppy all the way through, but hits serious dissonance in the last verse:
    I guess you know the Earth is gonna crash into the sun
    But that's no reason why we shouldn't have a little fun!
    So if you think it's scary, if it's more than you can take
    Just blow out the candles and have a piece of cake!
  • "Bohemian Polka", which takes Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" about a man facing execution, and turns it into a polka.
  • All the polka medleys dip into this to varying degrees, but it's most glaring when he uses particularly violent songs such as "Hey Joe" or "Pumped Up Kicks" and throws in whimsical-sounding stock gun sound effects.
  • The original "Dare to Be Stupid" averts this trope. But then Al performed that song with backing from a...string quartet?
  • "Inactive", which combines a badass fist-pumping melody with hilarious Black Comedy lyrics about a phenomenally lazy, fat, apathetic loser.
  • "Angry White Boy Polka" has several songs that lose some of the negative emotion simply by being written as a polka.
  • "Mission Statement" is a very close style parody of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, whose songs dealt heavily with anti-corporate and anti-capitalist themes and generally defined the tune of left-leaning folk music. The song itself is composed entirely of corporate jargon and empty statements of the sort you'd hear from a manager in a particularly boring meeting.
• MacGyvering: "Handy" is about a Mr. Fixit who mentions this particular skill by name.
• Made of Iron: In "Ringtone", Al's wife smashed his iPhone with a brick and he miraculously got it fixed.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Goes with the territory when your songs are so cartoonish.
  • In "A Complicated Song", he describes being beheaded as a "major inconvenience".
  • In "Jurassic Park", he only admits to being "kinda mad" about getting his guts torn out.
  • In "Headline News" John Wayne Bobbitt is physically perfectly fine and merely surprised, annoyed and puzzled over his severed penis. Sure, he initially screams, but there's no blood, his pajamas aren't disturbed and he merely starts searching the house like he's trying to find lost car keys.
  • In "Everything You Know Is Wrong", he doesn't react at all to having his internal organs sucked out by aliens from another dimension.
• Manipulative Editing: AlTV's fake interviews, where Al adds weird questions to a famous person's answers (original / edited). And sometimes, the interviewee acts weird enough to help!.
• Medium Awareness: Lucy seems to be this in "Ricky":
  "Oh Ricky, what a pity you don't understand / That every day's a rerun and the laughter's always canned"
• Medley: All but a couple of the albums contain a polka-style medley of popular songs, and these are run down in their albums' pages. The one that is not on any of them, which will serve as an example on this page, is "The Hamilton Polka", comprised of songs from the Hamilton musical:
  • "Alexander Hamilton"
  • "Wait For It"
  • "The Schuyler Sisters"
  • "Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)"
  • "Dear Theodosia"
  • "You'll Be Back"
  • "The Room Where It Happens"
  • "Right Hand Man"
  • "Guns and Ships"
  • "Washington On Your Side"
  • "Helpless"
  • "Non-Stop"
  • "History Has Its Eyes On You"
  • "My Shot"
  • "Alexander Hamilton (Reprise)"
• The Men in Black: Two agents come and drug Al, then drag him off the stage at the end of the video in "Foil".
  • Al becomes one of them in the video for "Party in the CIA," and the song is from the point of view of a CIA agent.
• Meatgrinder Surgery: Both the lyrics and the video (moreso the latter) for "Like a Surgeon."
• Meet Cute: Parodied in "Albuquerque." Al meets the girl of his dreams, while being mauled by starving crazed weasels that he bought at a donut shop. They immediately become a couple.
• Memetic Badass: In-Universe example — Charles Nelson Reilly.
• Mickey Mousing: In the video for "I'll Sue Ya", the lawsuits print out to the beat of the bass.
• Mind Screw: "Everything You Know Is Wrong", among others.
• Miniscule Rocking:
  • "Let Me Be Your Hog", coming in at 16 seconds. Justified in that Al wrote it as filler for a scene in UHF when the studio couldn't license "Kung Fu Fighting."
  • Al's live Cover Version of Jethro Tull's "Aqualung (Jethro Tull Album)", in full:
    (introductory drumbeat) "Snot running down his nose! Thank you."
• Minor Flaw, Major Breakup:
  • In "Close But No Cigar", the singer breaks up with otherwise amazing women because of very minor, inconsequential things. He dumps three women because the first one used the word "infer" when she should have used "imply", the second owned a copy of Joe Dirt on DVD, and the third one had one earlobe that was a little too big than the other.
  • In "Albuquerque", he's suddenly shocked by his wife when she asks for a new level of commitment — joining the Columbia Record Club. He divorces her as a result.
• Minsky Pickup: He throws this into several of his polka numbers.
• Misplaced Sorrow: "Why Does This Always Happen to Me?" is all about this. The singer is upset about various tragedies, but only because they affect him personally in minor ways. In one verse, he complains that he can't tape an episode of The Simpsons properly because there was a news flash about a devastating 8.2 earthquake in Peru that interrupted the taping.
• Mistaken for Gay: Shortly before he began dating his wife, his mother recounted that one of her friends had told her "Well, Al's almost forty, and he's not married, and he lives in L.A. You know what that means."
  • In "Couch Potato", while recounting the television shows that he's watched, he claims that he watched Will & Grace "one time, one day" and regrets it because TiVo is convinced therefore he's gay.
• Mockumentary: Several.
  • There's The Compleat Al, originally made to help promote the Dare to Be Stupid album.
  • There's also the 1985 book The Authorized Al, released as a companion piece to The Compleat Al. Sadly, while The Compleat Al is available on DVD, The Authorized Al is long out-of-print.
  • Then there's the Disney Channel combination Mockumentary / Rockumentary "There's No Going Home". This was included as an Easter Egg on the Running with Scissors album.
  • Finally, there's Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, a Parody of musical biopics that also serves as a 100% authentic and unvarnished account of Al's life and career.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • A perfect example is on the album Straight Outta Lynwood, after his Rage Against the Machine imitation "I'll Sue Ya." After an angry song like that one, there's an abrupt guitar chord, which is directly followed by a one-second pause going into "Polkarama," which has the "Chicken Dance" as an intro. Of course, that then goes into a polka cover of "Let's Get it Started" by The Black-Eyed Peas.
    • A similar example is on the album "Running With Scissors", where the Nine Inch Nails style parody "Germs" is followed by an intensely happy polka (the first track in the medley being the Spice Girls, for crying out loud). Mood Whiplash at its finest, folks.
  • In "Your Horoscope for Today" the prediction for Sagittarius begins like this:
    All your friends are laughing behind your back. (beat) Kill them.
  • "Foil" starts out as a typical Lorde parody about food before suddenly taking a left turn into Conspiracy Theorist territory. The video emphasizes this, with a television director played by Patton Oswalt who reacts negatively to the new topic. He's in on the conspiracy.
  • "You Don't Love Me Anymore" is a humorous breakup song but it has this pair of lines, equivalent to a punch in the gut:
    You slammed my face down on the barbecue grill
    Now my scars are all healing, but my heart never will.
  • "Why Does This Always Happen To Me?" is of the "serious to silly" variety. It first appears to be a very straight account of a tragic earthquake in Peru, sung in a very earnest fashion in a song whose melody and tempo is quite fitting to the sad mood... then he admits he's upset that the news report about the earthquake interrupted his watching and taping The Simpsons...
  • "Theme from Rocky XIII (Rye or the Kaiser)" paints a surprising portrait of the post-retirement Rocky, the friendly sandwich-shop owner, after the first verse leads with the image of the once-former boxing great now fat and weak...
• Moon-Landing Hoax: Al is convinced that the government staged it in "Foil". In the video, there's footage of the landing being interrupted by stagehands clacking the marker and moving a boom mic out of the camera shot.
• Motor Mouth
  • The bridge of "Hardware Store" has Al singing 242 words per minute, or all of the below in 30 seconds and in one breath. It's the one song he absolutely refuses to sing live because he genuinely doesn't know if he'd be able to pull it off again.
    They've got Allen wrenches, gerbil feeders, toilet seats, electric heaters
    Trash compactors, juice extractors, shower rods and water meters
    Walkie-talkies, copper wires, safety goggles, radial tires
    BB pellets, rubber mallets, fans and dehumidifiers
    Picture hangers, paper cutters, waffle irons, window shutters
    Paint removers, window louvers, masking tape and plastic gutters
    Kitchen faucets, folding tables, weather stripping, jumper cables
    Hooks and tackle, grout and spackle, power foggers, spoons and ladles
    Pesticides for fumigation, high-performance lubrication
    Metal roofing, waterproofing, multi-purpose insulation
    Air compressors, brass connectors, wrecking chisels, smoke detectors
    Tire gauges, hamster cages, thermostats and bug deflectors
    Trailer hitch demagnetizers, automatic circumcisers
    Tennis rackets, angle brackets, Duracells and Energizers
    Soffit panels, circuit breakers, vacuum cleaners, coffee makers
    Calculators, generators, matching salt and pepper shakers...
  • Also in the middle of "Your Horoscope for Today," also all in one breath:
    Now you may find it inconceivable or at the very least a bit unlikely that the relative position
    of the planets and the stars could have a special deep significance or meaning that exclusively applies to only you,
    but let me give you my assurance that these forecasts and predictions are all based on solid, scientific, documented evidence,
    so you would have to be some kind of moron not to realize that every single one of them is absolutely true.
    Where was I?
  • Taken up to eleven with first verse of the theme song for The Weird Al Show. It's not only a Patter Song, but the first verse is a run-on sentence!
  • The "Hamilton Polka" takes some of the fastest lines ever to be sung on Broadway and makes them even faster.
• Mondegreen Gag: Done in the song "Trapped In The Drive-thru"
  I hopped up and said, "I don't know, do you want to get something delivered?"
  And she's like, "Why would I want to eat liver?
  I don't even like liver."
  I'm like, "No, I said 'delivered'."
  She's like, "I heard you say liver."
  I'm like, "I should know what I said."
  She's like, "Whatever... I just don't want any liver."
• Mouthful of Pi: In White and Nerdy the title character claims to know Pi to a thousand places.
• Mouth Screen: "Dare To Be Stupid" and "Bedrock Anthem" featured Al's mouth, even scenes of him performing in Chin Face.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Lots, but "Hardware Store" sticks out most.
  • The subject of Waffle King presents his waffle recipe as this.
  • I present to you the tale of his trip to Albuquerque.
  • "Trapped In The Drive-Thru". Al said he picked getting fast food as the topic of the song because it was the most banal thing he could think of.
  • Behold! The most epic shredding ever!^note Paper shredding, that is.
  • "The Biggest Ball of Twine In Minnesota", which is about a family road trip to a tacky roadside attraction.
  • During the "Strings Attached" tour, Al touted up how now that they had a 40-piece orchestra behind them, they could do a song that they'd never before done in concert. Cue "Harvey the Wonder Hamster".
• Mundane Utility: The main character of "Everything You Know Is Wrong" is given the chance to go back in time. He decides to go back to the previous Thursday so he can pay his phone bill on time.
• Mystery Meat: "School Cafeteria"
  • "Spam" describes the titular product as this... while still praising it to the heavens.
• Naughty Birdwatching: In "Melanie", this is how he first meets her.
• Nerdgasm: In-Universe. The singer in "Hardware Store" gets one over the store's grand opening.
• Nerds Are Virgins:
  • The singer of "White and Nerdy" spends his nights with a roll of bubble wrap...
  • The subject of "You're Pitiful" is a 42-year-old example. He wears a "homemade Star Trek uniform" and "never had a date he couldn't inflate."
• Nerds Love Tough Schoolwork: The subject of "You're Pitiful" is a 42-year-old virgin who does vector calculus just for fun.
• Nerds Speak Klingon: In "White and Nerdy", the protagonist claims to be fluent in both JavaScript (a computer language for web pages) and Klingon.
• Nice Guy: Although fair-use law regarding parody mean Al doesn't need anyone's permission, he makes sure that he does have permission from an artist in order to poke fun. This has worked out for him in several ways, with the originals artists often contributing resources to the final project to thank him for his politeness. He also adores his fans.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Many of his songs, mostly the ones involving talk shows, are loaded with this.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: The UHF video features Al and his band parodying numerous musicians, including Robert Palmer (''Addicted to Spuds" never got its own video), Prince, and The Beatles.
• Non-Appearing Title: Happens sometimes when the parody title has no relation to the original title, like "Couch Potato" (parody of "Lose Yourself" by Eminem). Also all but two of his polkas (the sole exceptions being "Polkamon" and "Polka Face"), which generally have pretty random titles anyway.
  • A few of the songs on Poodle Hat (which also contains the aforementioned "Couch Potato") have these, such as "A Complicated Song" (parody of "Complicated" by Avril Lavigne) and "Ode to a Superhero" (parody of "Piano Man" by Billy Joel).
• Nose Nuggets: "Gotta Boogie".
  Gotta boogie on my finger and I can't shake it off!
• Nose Shove: One of the many lawsuits filed in "I'll Sue Ya" is against Duracell, after the singer shoved one of their batteries up his nose.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: In the booklet that came with Permanent Record, Al notes that the song "Midnight Star" (about ridiculous tabloid headlines) contained mostly real headlines from various tabloids. He specifically noted that he held onto one about The Incredible Frog Boy from the Weekly World News for years.
• Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: Part of the reason the protagonist of "Hardware Store" is so excited, because the town he lives in is so boring that a hardware store is considered exciting.
• Now How Much Would You Pay: Called out verbatim in "Mr. Popeil."
• Obsessed with Food: He was known early in his career for writing songs about food, to the point where a compilation album of food songs, The Food Album, was released. When he approached Kurt Cobain about parodying "Smells Like Teen Spirit", Cobain's first question was whether it would be about food (which it wasn't).
• Ode to Food:
  • "I Love Rocky Road" is a parody of "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" about the ice cream flavour.
  • "My Balogna" is a parody of "My Sharona" about the meat.
  • "Addicted to Spuds" is a parody of "Addicted to Love" about potatoes.
  • "Spam" is a parody of "Stand" about the meat.
  • "The White Stuff" is a parody of "You Got it (the Right Stuff)" about Oreos.
• Off the Rails: In the video for "Foil", Al is doing a commercial for aluminum foil wrap, then starts talking about conspiracy theories that his Tinfoil Hat will protect him from. The director is visibly upset because he's secretly one of the Reptilian Conspiracy, so he has The Men in Black carry Al off.
• Off with His Head!:
  • The singer in "Complicated Song" gets his head knocked off after standing up on a roller coaster.
  • One of the patients in the video for "Living with a Hernia" is a construction worker who's been decapitated while on the job. It's done for humorous effect, however; he's holding his sentient disembodied head in his left arm.
  • A woman in a Bad Guy Bar has her head yanked off her body and passed on to another person in the video for "Eat It."
  • During "Smells Like Nirvana", a member of the audience has his head pulled off.
  • Barney, the purple dinosaur, gets his head bitten off in "Jurassic Park".
• Old-Timey Ankle Taboo: In the music video for "Amish Paradise" two Amish teens are seen looking at a supposedly erotic magazine, with the centerfold girl lifting up her long skirt to show her ankle.
• Once an Album: Almost every album^note "Weird Al Yankovic" and "Even Worse" are the odd ones out here contains one polka medley of songs popular at the time ^note The exceptions being "The Hot Rocks Polka", which is a medley of Rolling Stones' songs from a wider span of time, and "Bohemian Polka" is a double-speed full cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody", and one song in any style ripping on TV shows popular at the time. There's also always at least one song about food.
  • Since 1999, every album has included bonus video content that can be viewed on a computer (if not also a DVD player), though Alpocalypse had it as an extra DVD packaged with the CD.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted in "Trapped In the Drive-Thru" — both the song's protagonist and the girl at the drive-thru speaker know a guy named Paul.
• The Oner: The "Tacky" video is one long continuous shot.
• Only a Flesh Wound: From Trigger Happy
  Oh, I accidentally shot Daddy last night in the den
  I mistook him in the dark for a drug-crazed Nazi again
  Now why'd you have to get so mad?
  It's just a lousy flesh wound, Dad
  You know I'm trigger happy, trigger happy every day
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Nobody really calls him Alfred anymore. It's all "Weird Al".
• Origin Story: According to Uncle Grandpa, Weird Al was the RV's conformist, normalizing control panel, who becomes weird due to the RV crew merging forms and spitting Smile Juice on him.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: Of a sort. Nothing musically, but he did direct the music video for The Black Crowes' "Only a Fool." It's not a funny song. It's not a funny song. It's not a funny video. Why he directed it, over anyone else, is a mystery. Perhaps he's just a fan?
• Overly Long Gag:
  • He wrote "Albuquerque" because he wanted to annoy people for 12 minutes straight. The extended version he uses for live performances goes further, with a much larger list of pastries in the donut shop scene. Sometimes he even starts the song over from the beginning just before the finale.
  • The end of "eBay", with him singing the last note.
• Overly Narrow Superlative: "The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota". (Are there bigger balls of twine in other states?) ^note Yes, actually. There is a larger ball of twine located in Cawker City, Kansas. However, the Minnesota twine ball is the largest ball of twine rolled by one person.

P-Z

• Pain to the Ass: From "It's Still Billy Joel to Me":
  Maybe he should dye his hair bright pink and stick a safety pin through his cheeks
  Then he'll really fit the new wave image but he couldn't sit down for weeks.
• Parody Assistance: Sometimes Al gets more than just permission to parody an artist's songs.
  • Michael Jackson donated the subway set used for "Badder" (the kid version of "Bad" filmed for Moonwalker) to Yankovic for his parody "Fat."
  • Favored by the video for "I Lost on Jeopardy!". The Jeopardy! end has then-last announcer Don Pardo on the track telling Al what prizes he didn't win, and an appearance and additional announcing in the video. Also in the video is then-last host Art Fleming, and all is topped by Greg Kihn himself (of the original "I Lost On Jeopardy") carrying Al off in the car at the end.
  • Ray Manzarek of The Doors played keyboards and bass on "Craigslist."
  • Mark Knopfler would only allow Al to parody "Money for Nothing" if he was permitted to do the guitar work himself.
  • "Like A Surgeon" was conceived because Madonna was asking why Al hadn't parodied her song "Like A Virgin" yet.
  • Ben Folds played piano on "Why Does This Always Happen To Me"... which is a parody of Ben Folds songs.
  • "Genius in France", a style parody of Frank Zappa, features Frank's son Dweezil on guitar.
  • Though more of a stretch, singer and voice coach Lisa Popeil has done female backup vocals for Al since 1983. The first song to feature her? "Mr. Popeil", a song that makes fun of her father's products and brother's infomercials in the style of The B-52s.
  • James Brown, who was signed to the same label as Al in the mid-1980s, arranged for the music video to "Living With a Hernia" to use the same backdrop that he performed the original "Living in America" song in Rocky IV.
  • On Al's 2011 album Alpocalypse, he did a style parody of Hanson called "If That Isn't Love." Al and the Hanson brothers are friends, and Taylor Hanson plays keyboards on the song.
  • The "Smells Like Nirvana" video actually had some of the actors from the original "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video, including the janitor and the cheerleaders.
  • Imagine Dragons assisted with the creation of "Inactive", a parody of their own song "Radioactive", to help reproduce as authentic a sound of the original as possible.
  • Inverted with “White and Nerdy.” Chamillionaire credited Weird Al’s hit with making his song, “Ridin' Dirty,” an even bigger hit and ultimately winning him the Grammy for "Rap Song of the Year."
• Peacock Boy: "Perform This Way" (he also wears it in the actual music video)
• The Pearly Gates: In "Everything You Know Is Wrong", the singer dies and meets up with St. Peter at the pearly gates... and is almost denied entry into Heaven because his jacket violates the dress code.
• Plane Awful Flight: In "Albuquerque", he has to take a plane for the first time. He claims it was really great... except that he had to sit between two smelly Albanian women, the kid behind him kept throwing up, the movie was Biodome, the airplane engines burned and crashed... and they ran out of Dr.Pepper and salted peanuts.
• Poe's Law:
  • Some people believed that "Don't Download This Song" was actually trying to spread the message that Digital Piracy Is Evil.
  • At least one faction of gun nuts takes "Trigger Happy" literally.
  • YouTube commenters seem to actually believe the conspiracy theories that Al posits in "Foil".
• Polka Dork: A very prominent aspect of his image from the outset. Word of God from Dr. Demento is that Al was featured on The Dr. Demento Show due to the novelty of a young teen playing parody songs on an accordion.
• Poke the Poodle: "Young, Dumb & Ugly" is a song all about this — the singer boasts about his gang's rebellious activities, such as driving cars with one hand on the steering wheel and returning library books late.
• Popcultural Osmosis Failure: "CNR" probably won't make much sense to anyone outside the United States (or below a certain age) as Charles Nelson Reilly died in 2007, and he is pretty much unknown in other countries because his fame came through his long-running career in his homeland.^note While he did have roles in some well known films such as All Dogs Go to Heaven, these were nearly all voice only roles. The only film that overseas audiences might recognise him from is Cannonball Run II where he played Don Don Canneloni.
• Posthumous Narration: In "Melanie", the singer completes the song even after he's dead.
• Precision F-Strike: In "Jerry Springer"; appropriately, Yankovic himself doesn't use the word, but guest vocalist Tress MacNeille does during a portion of the song parodying a typical episode of the show:
  Tress MacNeille: Woofie, you bi[ineffectual bleep]tch!
  • ...and even then it's a pun, because Woofie (the dog) is literally a bitch.
  • Yankovic himself finally gets one in with the comparatively mild "You cheap bastard!" during the outro of "Don't Download This Song".
  • He also lets out an uncensored "shit" in "Dead Car Battery Blues", an early demo recording from apparently before he dedicated himself to being a mostly-family-friendly performer.
  • An implied one appears in the liner notes to "Mandatory Fun", which says "AFP appears courtesy of herself". Anyone familiar enough with Amanda Palmer should know what the F stands for.
  • "The Hamilton Polka" begins with a couple of words ("bastard" and "whore") that Yankovic had only touched once each before.
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Chamillionaire complimented Al on his rapping skills.
• Produce Pelting: According to Al, when he opened for Missing Persons in 1982, the audience threw "anything that wasn't nailed down" at him for 45 minutes.
• Product Placement: This man has written many song parodies and original songs with product placement. For example, his original song "Albuquerque" mentions Holiday Inn, His parody of "You Got It (The Right Stuff)" by New Kids on the Block is about Oreo cookies, he wrote a parody of R.E.M.'s "Stand" entitled "Spam", his original song "I'll Sue Ya" mentions Taco Bell, Panasonic, EarthLink, Starbucks, Toys R Us, PetCo, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Duracell, Home Depot, Dell, Fruit of the Loom, Verizon and Neiman Marcus, "eBay", his parody of the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way" is not only about the titular auction website, but also mentions Beanie Babies, Kleenex and PEZ, and that's just some of them.
• Professional Wrestling: In "Jurassic Park", one of the T-Rex's jump off of a turnbuckle with the WWF logo on it.
• Pun: Real life example — his long-time drummer is Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz.
  • An example in "I Remember Larry," after he talks about tying the titular pranker's mouth with a rag and leaving him for dead:
    If the cops ever find him, who knows what they'll say
    But I'm sure if ol' Lar were still with us today
    He would have to agree with me — it was a pretty good gag!
  • "Party at the Leper Colony" is loaded with puns, but especially:
    There's a guy in the hot tub, I don't know who
    Wait a minute, it looks like Stu!
  • From "Perform This Way," regarding Gaga's meat dress, which the woman in the video also wears:
    I'll strap prime rib to my feet, cover myself with raw meat
    I'll bet you've never seen a skirt steak worn this way
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "I! HATE! SAUERKRAUT!"
• Percussive Maintenance: In the "Tech Support" videos on his YouTube channel, the first one has him throw his DVD player into a pool in an attempt to fix it, and the latter involves him taking his television to a cliff-side and hitting it with a large rock. Neither seem to work.
• Purely Aesthetic Glasses: Briefly worn after he got Lasik. He still uses glasses with fake lenses whenever he performs "Fat" to help the fat mask stay on better.
• Quack Doctor: The song "Like a Surgeon" is from the point of view of a self-admitted quack surgeon who engages in various forms of medical malpractice. However, the main reason the A.M.A. considers him a disgrace isn't because all his patients end up dying, but because they're dying before they can pay.
• Quirky Curls: One of the few male examples. Despite rumors to the contrary, it is not a perm; he's naturally just that curly (although he has teased it up on occasion to achieve something close to a Funny Afro).
• Random Events Plot: "Albuquerque."
• Rap Rock:
  • "It's All About the Pentiums" parodies a rock remix of "It's All About the Benjamins".
  • There's also "Bedrock Anthem", where he parodies the beginning of "Under the Bridge", but then changes to a parody of "Give it Away".
  • "I'll Sue Ya" is a style parody of Rage Against the Machine.
• Real Trailer, Fake Movie: This hilarious trailer from Funny Or Die for a heavily fictionalized (to put it mildly) biopic, which depicts Al (portrayed by Aaron Paul) as an alcoholic who has a torrid affair with Madonna. The real Weird Al makes a cameo. Later defictionalized as Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, a comedy biopic written by Eric Appel and Weird Al, and starring Daniel Radcliffe.
• Reality Warper: The titular computer virus from the song "Virus Alert".
• Rearrange the Song: For the 2018 and 2022 Ridiculously Self Indulgent tours, Al rearranged "Dare To Be Stupid" (originally a style parody of Devo) in different styles. The 2018 version was arranged in a similar style to "Truckin'" by the Grateful Dead, while the 2022 version was done in an acoustic lounge style.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Al gets a doozy of one from Don Pardo at the end of "I Lost On Jeopardy!" which crosses over into Disproportionate Retribution.
  • His uncharacteristically nasty mock interview with Kevin Federline qualifies in its entirety, but the most directly insulting piece would be:
    "Really? You mean like if somebody got right up in your face, and said that you're an IGNORANT, NO-TALENT, WHITE TRASH, FORTUNE-SQUANDERING VANILLA ICE-WANNABE LOSER, you'd be okay with that?"
  • "You're Pitiful" contains several brutal lines eviscerating the subject of the song, including "You're suffering from delusions of adequacy" and "Your dog would much rather play fetch by itself," before concluding with "Well, it just sucks to be you."
• Reckless Gun Usage: The singer in "Trigger Happy" accidentally shoots both his father and his cat.
• Replacement Goldfish: Part of the numerous minor confessions in "Confessions Part 3" listed killing his girlfriend's goldfish and replacing it.
• Reports Of My Retirement Were Greatly Exaggerated: When it was reported that Mandatory Fun (His contract with Volcano expires after its release) would likely be his last album, many people took it to mean that he was done making music. In reality it meant that he plans on releasing future music in an untraditional ad-hoc manner, instead of the traditional album format.
• Retconning the Wiki: The music video for "White And Nerdy", in which he replaces the entire text for Atlantic Record's wiki page with huge type reading YOU SUCK!!!!! This was a personal Take That! from Al for slights the company had done him in the past. His fans thought it was so funny, they started doing it for real, resulting in That Other Wiki having to lock the Atlantic Records page.
• Rewind Gag: Near the end of the video for "Amish Paradise", he sings through one scene which obviously plays backwards. Most notably, a buggy rolls past in the background backwards.
• Rhyming List: "Hardware Store"'s list of everything the store has in the back.
• Ridiculous Future Sequelisation: "Theme from Rocky XIII".
• Ridiculously High Relationship Standards: In "Close But No Cigar" Al sings about how a series of unbelievably beautiful, loving, successful women fell for him and he rejected them for the most trivial of reasons.
• Ripped from the Headlines: "Headline News" has three verses describing the American kid who got caned in Singapore, the Nancy Kerrigan incident, and Lorena Bobbitt.
  • And new verses (from the 2007 tour) about Paris Hilton's DUI and Britney Spears's going commando and head shave.
  • "Midnight Star" contains several headlines from actual supermarket tabloids including one about "The Incredible Frog-Boy!"
• Rockers Smash Guitars: At the end of the "Smells like Nirvana" video, Al smashes his guitar, the audience smashes plates on a guy's head, and then Al pushes a plunge-detonator to demolish a building. He also used to smash his accordion at the end of his polka medleys in concert when they ended with The Who's "My Generation."
  • The video for "You Don't Love Me Anymore"—which is a sad, acoustic ballad—ends with Al (who is not holding an instrument) being suddenly overcome by the dejection expressed in the song, at which point he violently wrests the acoustic guitar from his guitarist's grasp, demolishes it thoroughly against the floor, shoots a disgusted look at the camera as if to say, "what are you looking at?", and finally drags his feet off the set.
  • The Compleat Al opens with a Hendrix-esque sight of Al setting fire to his accordion during a rather bizarre performance by him and his band.
• Rule 34: In 2014, pictures were released portraying two women dressed (and undressed) as characters from UHF — including one with an Al wig, glasses and Hawaiian shirt.
• Rummage Sale Reject: Appropriately enough, everyone appearing in the video for "Tacky," including two different awful outfits worn by Al.
• Running Gag: The number 27, poodles, hamsters, spatulas, food, television, weasels, nerd culture...
  • Also, a hatred of Prince, especially in his fake interviews.
  • Similarly, Al taking potshots at Pauly Shore.
• Runs with Scissors: Al is shown doing this on the title and image art of his album Running with Scissors.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • "Albuquerque" follows a man who gradually loses his mind after escaping a Hilariously Abusive Childhood and being the sole survivor of a horrific plane crash, then killing about two people.
  • "Everything You Know is Wrong" can be seen as one of these too (if you consider that all the things that happen to be inside his head, maybe after being horrifically injured in the car crash at the beginning)
  • The singer in "I Remember Larry" goes from quiet milquetoast victim to vengeful murderer.
• Santa Claus: Santa is the star of "The Night Santa Went Crazy", a song that tells of the time he was far from jolly.
• Saw "Star Wars" Twenty-Seven Times: From "Cable TV,"
  My friends are getting kinda worried,
  They think I'm turning into some kind of freak.
  Aw, but they're just jealous, 'cause I've seen Porky's,
  Twenty-seven times this week
  On my cable TV!
• Scary Teeth: The subject of "Toothless People".
• Self-Backing Vocalist: A large amount of the time. Notable exceptions include female vocals, lines low enough to be sung by Steve Jay, and several songs such as "Trigger Happy" and "Don't Download This Song".
  • "Since You've Been Gone" is a bunch of Weird Als singing a cappella (except for the bass line, which is Steve Jay).
• Self-Deprecation:
  • In regards to "Skipper Dan", Al has admitted that he feels a certain sympathy with actual Disney Jungle Cruise tour guides, as his own live shows can get repetitive for him. This makes the following line an example:
    Instead I'm telling these lame jokes again and again and again and again and again and again and again.
  • The name of one of his albums: "Weird Al" Yankovic - Even Worse.
  • In Teen Titans Go!, he makes fun of himself as the villainous Darkseid, wishing that he could be so evil as a musician who parodies other artists' works.
  • Every time he plays a fictionalized version of himself, the character is a Jerkass.
  • In 2018, Al went on tour in smaller, more intimate theaters, with limited production (no costumes, props, or video screens), and a set list comprised almost entirely of original non-parody songs. It was called "The Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour."
  • He once said "I think my chances of getting into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame are about as good as Milli Vanilli's."
  • At one point in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, the movie Al (played by Daniel Radcliffe) yells at Tony Scotti (played by Al), "What kind of sick freak changes the words to someone else's song?!"
• Self-Parody: Not Al himself, but his music video for "Mission Statement", which combines every meaningless business platitude under the sun into a Crosby, Stills & Nash pastiche, features whiteboard art from TruScribe, a company famous for laboriously illustrating similar lectures and advertisements on behalf of economic firms and the like.
  • His parody "Foil" sounds like a return to Al's old food-themed parodies. At first.
• Sequel Hook: "Confessions Part III" teases a fourth part at the very end of the singing portion.
  Anyway, I shouldn't say anymore until I give you part four of my confessions!
• Serious Business: Going through the drive-thru is very serious, and don't you dare forget the onions.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: "Mission Statement" is all about using all sorts of overly-sophisticated corporate buzzwords.
• Severely Specialized Store: "Spatula City" is about a store that sells nothing but spatulas.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: "Albuquerque", running 11 minutes and 22 seconds long, starts out with the narrator's mother feeding him sauerkraut until he was 26 and 1/2 years old, when he won a first-class, one-way ticket to Albuquerque. He survives a plane crash because he had his tray table up and his seat back in the full upright position. While in Albuquerque, the narrator meets a hermaphrodite with a Flock of Seagulls t-shirt and only one nostril who takes his snorkel. Before he seeks revenge on the one-nostriled thief, the narrator goes to a donut shop and gets a box full of rabid weasels, only to meet the girl of his dreams, but breaks up with her when she asks him to join the Columbia Record Club. He gets a job, meets a guy named Marty, and when he asks if he can help, Marty tells him "No, I just want you to cut off my arms and legs with a chainsaw", which he takes literally and cuts Marty's limbs off with a chainsaw. Then, he meets a guy who hasn't had a bite in three days, so he bites him on the jugular vein. Later on, near the end of the song, the narrator finally gets back to his original point... which is that he hates sauerkraut.
• The Shameless: The protagonist of the song "Tacky" is unable to be shamed by his cheesy attire and his mutiple breaches of the social code.
• Shaped Like Itself:
  • "That snorkel's been just like a snorkel to me!" Doubles as a Shout-Out to Cheech & Chong.
  • From "Bob": "'Naomi', I moan, 'a Toyota's a Toyota'."
• Shave and a Haircut: Often appears near the end of the polka medleys.
• Shoulders of Doom: When performing "Dog Eat Dog", a style parody of Talking Heads, Al wears a suit with massive shoulderpads as a spoof of David Byrne's Iconic Outfit. He also wears it briefly in the "UHF" video.
• Shout-Out:
  • The cover for Even Worse is a parody of Michael Jackson's Bad, from the title to Al's outfit and pose.
  • In "Eat It", Al even mentions Michael Jackson's "Beat It" in its lyrics:
    Just eat it (eat it), eat it, (eat it)
    Get yourself an egg and beat it
  • The video for "Eat It" also feautures some of the same dancers from the "Beat It" video, the most noticeable being Vincent Paterson, aka "The blonde gang leader".
  • These lines from "Amish Paradise" make reference to the ending song of Gilligan's Island:
    There's no phone, no lights, no motorcar,
    Not a single luxury!
    Like Robinson Ca-rusoe,
    It's as primitive as can be!
    • Not to mention "Isle Thing", a song entirely about Gilligan's Island.
  • According to Word of Al, "Slime Creatures from Outer Space" includes a line from an SCTV sketch and the vinyl of Dare to Be Stupid had "More Songs About TV and Food" etched into the inner groove.
  • One of the last lines of "CNR" is "'Cause you can spit in the wind or tug on Superman's cape", a shout-out to the Jim Croce song "You Don't Mess Around with Jim".
  • "Amish Paradise" also includes the line "But I ain't never punched a tourist even if he deserved it", a reference to the movie Witness, in which Harrison Ford is a police detective placed undercover in an Amish community to protect a murder witness and punches out a tourist who steals his hat.
  • There is even a Shout-Out to Al out there. Chamillionaire's remix of "Ridin'" called "Ridin' Overseas" mentions "White And Nerdy". (1:59 in the linked video)
    A year later, after "White And Nerdy",
    On the grind, still tryin', still flyin' birdies.
  • There are several shout-outs to Monty Python.
    • "The Truck Drivin' Song" is one to "The Lumberjack Song", as both are about a man in a masculine occupation who likes to dress in ladies' clothing.
    • "Albuquerque" has a donut shop that has no donuts, in a reference to the "Cheese Shop" sketch.
    • Monty Python and the Holy Grail gets a mention in "White and Nerdy," and is also referenced in "Trigger Happy" with the line "it was just a lousy flesh wound."
  • To Frank Zappa's Weasels Ripped My Flesh in "Albuquerque", when the guy at the donut shop counter is all out of donuts, and has nothing left but a box of starving, crazed weasels:
    So he hands me the box and I open up the lid and the weasels jump out
    And they immediately latch onto my face and start bitin' me all over
    (rabid gnawing sounds)
    Oh man, they were just going nuts,
    They were tearin' me apart!
  • As mentioned above, Shaped Like Itself line in "Albuquerque" is a reference to the Cheech and Chong song, "Basketball Jones."
  • The gargling-while-singing and exaggerated gulping on "Smells Like Nirvana" are an homage to Spike Jones, to whom Al is something of a Spiritual Successor.
    • His polka medleys are all tributes to Spike Jones, in that they're travesties of popular songs rather than parodies.
    • Al has name-dropped Spike Jones, Allan Sherman, and Tom Lehrer as his "personal Mount Rushmore" of comedy music.
  • "Horoscope" mentions "naked pictures of Ernest Borgnine", something first mentioned in George Carlin's "Stuff" routine.
  • "Perform This Way" has a shout-out to Madonna's "Express Yourself", due to the perception of Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" being a Suspiciously Similar Song. The video even has a Madonna lookalike dressed in the style of her "Blonde Ambition" concert tour costume.
  • At one point, the video for "Word Crimes" shows some doodles including Pac-Man and Trogdor.
    • There's also visual references to Doge and the "Use your brains, morans!" picture.
    • There's also a grammar exam for Mrs. Krabappel's class.
    • At the point of the song for "literacy's your mission", there's a visual reference to Mission: Impossible.
    • Plus the visual reference for Lost at the section "you're a lost cause".
    • Similarly, the bit about writing words using NUMB3RS.
    • At the line “irony is not coincidence”, a graphic shows up depicting an ironic situation and a non-ironic one. The non-ironic situation is a couple getting rained on during their wedding day.
  • The computer virus described in "Virus Alert" is described to perform increasingly implausible unpleasant things to the life of everyone it comes in contact with, much like the Bad Times virus hoax.
  • The song "Tacky" includes the line "If I'm bit by a zombie, prob'ly not telling you." In the video, Al accompanies this line with a dance move taken from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video.
  • One of the two handymen dancing in the backgrounds of the "Handy" music video wears Mario's red-overall-blue-dungarees combo.
  • "Midnight Star" featured several headlines originally used in Weekly World News. In the liner notes to Permanent Record, it was noted that Al kept the article about "The Incredible Frog Boy" for a long time.
  • "Trigger Happy": "I always keep a Magnum in my trunk/You better ask yourself, do you feel lucky, punk?"
  • "Handy" has the line "I got 99 problems but a switch ain't one!"
  • A non-musical one — in his first children's book, When I Grow Up, the main character's teacher is named Mrs. Krupp, after the principal in Captain Underpants (but she's thankfully much nicer than the latter's Principal Krupp). This may be in acknowledgement to the references to him in said series, and which may have led to him doing the theme for the movie.
  • The line "Sell some wine before its time" in "Dare To Be Stupid" is a reference to the tagline of a famous television commercial starring Orson Welles.
• Shown Their Work: Behind the scenes, Al does a lot of research about the songs and artists he parodies.
  • "Trigger Happy" and "Pancreas", his Beach Boys homages; the former song has elements of "Fun, Fun, Fun", "Catch A Wave", "No-Go Showboat", "Surfin USA", and "Little Deuce Coupe" in it; the latter has elements of "Our Prayer", "Do You Like Worms", "God Only Knows", "Vegetables", "I Know There's An Answer", "Wind Chimes", "Heroes and Villains", and "Good Vibrations", all in one song.
  • In live performances of "Skipper Dan", Al not only wears an authentic Jungle Cruise uniform but even uses the two-fingered style of pointing at things required of actual Disneyland cast members.
  • Al actually walked around a clothing department store for hours taking careful notes on various fabrics and fashions as research for the lyrics to "King Of Suede."
  • "White And Nerdy" is the most accurate depiction of a subject that, he, of course, didn't have to do any research for.
  • "Jerry Springer", aside from the talking interlude in the bridge, is a note-for-note parody of Barenaked Ladies' "One Week".
  • The various functions and secretions mentioned in "Pancreas" is accurate enough to be used by medical students.
• Sidekick Song: "Al's Band".
• Signed Up for the Dental: According to "Party In the CIA", they have a better dental plan than the FBI.
  • "Spy Hard" includes a few lyrics about the great dental plan at the agency.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: Prince is a regular target in Al's works, as he was the only artist who consistently refused permission for any parodies of his songs, allegedly due to the Purple One having No Sense of Humor^note Al once recieved a telegram from Prince's lawyers before the American Music Awards, demanding that he did not make eye contact with Prince. The antagonism is played for laughs by Al, and typically consists of throwaway song lyrics or quick jokes in interviews.
  You should never
  Write words using numbers
  Unless you're seven
  Or your name is Prince.

  — Lyrics for "Word Crimes"
  • Following Prince's untimely death in 2016, Al took the high road, simply saying in a tweet that "the music world will miss his prolific genius."
• Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon: In "Lame Claim To Fame", with six degrees, no less.
  I know a guy who knows a guy
  Who knows a guy who knows a guy
  Who knows a guy who knows Kevin Bacon!
  • Al's own Bacon Number is two. David Bowe was in UHF with Al, and also in A Few Good Men with Bacon.
• Slasher Movie: The genre's tropes are mocked in "Nature Trail To Hell".
• Small Name, Big Ego: "Waffle King" is actually a downplayed example since the Waffle King does seem to be a truly successful chef/businessman. But his ego is way out of control.
  "Don’t you know who I am? You’ve gotta be kidding me! I'm the Waffle King!"
• Small Reference Pools: In addition to the part about parody musicians, there are a number of people to this day (as evidenced by the comments left on videos on YouTube) that don't realize that about half of Al's output has been original songs, due to his biggest hits all being parodies.
• Something Blues: "Buckingham Blues" and "Generic Blues".
• Something Something Leonard Bernstein: "Smells Like Nirvana" is all about how hard the lyrics of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" are to decipher. The only lyrics that match the original's are "never mind" in the final verse.
• Song Parody: It is not an exaggeration to say that "Weird Al" Yankovic is the world's best-known and most successful performer of song parodies. The only other musicians who have ever come close are Spike Jones, Allan Sherman, and Tom Lehrer, all of whom Al admires.
• Sophisticated as Hell: "Sports Song" is a reimagining of the classic college fight song, except with lyrics that directly insult the opposing team. After giving a number of different wordy explanations of how much better the home team is than the visitors, it sums up the argument by repeating "We're great, and you suck!" Several times.
  Oh, and if somehow we are still failing
  To effectively articulate the points at hand
  Allow us now to summarize them in a manner
  That your feeble brains can understand
  We’re great (We're great!)
  And you suck (You suck!)
  We're great (We're great!)
  And you suck (You suck!) [etc.]
• Sound-Effect Bleep: Al's rendition of "Closer" during "The Alternative Polka":
  I want to (POINK!) you like an animal!
  I want to feel you from the inside!
  I want to (CLANG!) you like an animal!
  You bring me closer to God!
  • And again in "Angry White Boy Polka"'s cover of Papa Roach's "Last Resort":
    Suffocation, no breathing
    Don't give a (slide whistle) if I cut my arm bleeding.
• Special Effect Failure:invoked Done deliberately in several videos, such as during the second chorus in the "Jurassic Park" music video.
• Spelling Song:
  A! (A!) L! (L!) B! (B!) U! (U!)
  Beat
  Beat
  Querque!
  (Querque!)
• Spoofed with Their Own Words: Al usually thinks up silly imagery to put into his song parodies, but in "Perform this Way," most of the lyrics mention things Lady Gaga has actually done, like being born out of an egg on stage.
• Stalker with a Crush: "Melanie". Complete with peeping into her bathroom with a telescope and being willing to jump out a sixteen-story window for her love. Even being dead cannot stop him.
  • Also, "Do I Creep You Out". Played for Laughs, of course.
• Stealth Parody: "Foil" is not just a parody of "Royals," it's also a Self-Parody of Al's food-themed parodies.
• Stealth Pun: "Polka Face" uses a section of Frankie Yankovic's "Tick Tock Polka" as a bridge. The next song in the medley? "Tik Tok".
  • At the end of "Polka Power", Al segues from the song "Closing Time" to a line, "bring us home!" In music, this refers to wrapping up the song, which is what happens next.
• Stepford Smiler: At the end of the "Skipper Dan" animated music video, the title character, a miserable washed-up actor working the Jungle Cruise ride, forces a smile while posing for a photo with the family.
• Stereotypical Nerd: Described in detail in "White & Nerdy". According to the song, too white and nerdy to hang out with gangsters because he's an MIT grad, wears braces, a pocket protector, and Uncool Undies, and has a slew of nerdy interests like Dungeons & Dragons, Star Trek, LARPing, math, science, chess, and tech.
• Stink Snub: The lyrics of "You're Pitiful" include this part:
  And you smell repulsive, too.
  What a bummer, being you.
  [...]
  Everybody you know still calls you "farty-pants".
• Stock Scream:
  • There's a portion of "Jurassic Park" that involves a lot of stock screams.
  • During the "Perform This Way" video, after the line, "I'll poke your eye out with a dress like this." S/he hits a backup dancer with the spiky dress and, well... "AAUGH!"
• Stop and Go: "Nature Trail To Hell" has no less than four false endings. When it finally does end, it does so with a ludicrously sustained piano chord.
• Strangely Specific Horoscope: "Your Horoscope For Today", in which Aquarius are told that their tongue will be frozen to the back of a speeding bus, Pisces are the true lord of the dance (no matter what those idiots at work say), and Cancer should spend the rest of the week face down in the mud because of the position of Jupiter. Among many, many more for each sign. The bridge of this song even provides the page quote. Inverted in the same song for Taurus, who will "wake up, do a bunch of stuff, then go back to sleep."
• Stuff Blowing Up: The end of the "Smells Like Nirvana has Al depressing a box plunger, which immediately triggers a building to collapse for no apparent reason.
  • Also applies to Al himself at the end of "Spy Hard".
• Stylistic Suck: "Girls Just Want to Have Lunch". See Writer Revolt for details.
• Subliminal Seduction:
  • Parodied in the backmasked phrase from "Nature Trail to Hell" ("Satan eats Cheez Whiz!").
  • Also done in "I Remember Larry" ("Wow, you must have an awful lot of free time on your hands.")
  • The video for "Foil" intercuts the line "Be aware" with single frame shots of Al covered in blood.
• Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: Al does this a couple of times to get around cursing, like in this couplet from "I'm So Sick Of You":
  You don't have an ounce of class
  You're just one big pain in the neck!
  • Also "(This Song's Just) Six Words Long":
    I know if I put my mind to it
    I know I could find a good rhyme here ^note Probably a rip on the parodied song rhyming the word "it" with ..."it."
  • From "It's Still Billy Joel to me"
    It's a big hit,
    isn't it,
    even if it's a piece of junk!
  • Used in his very first song, “Belvedere Cruising”, written when he was seventeen years old:
    I don't think that I could cruise
    In one of those small VW's
    Or zip along the highway in a classy pickup truck
    There's somethin' 'bout a Comet
    That makes me wanna vomit
    And those Datsuns just ain't worth a Fudgesicle
    ** Used for a different purpose in "Word Crimes":
    You should never
    Write words using numbers
    Unless you're seven
    Or your name is Prince
• Suckiness Is Painful: In "Achy Breaky Song", listening to "Achy Breaky Heart" makes the narrator vomit, and he describes it as worse than having a pitchfork shoved into his brain.
• Take That!:
  • "One More Minute" was written to get over an ex-girlfriend, and he rips up her picture in the video.
  • "I'll Be Mellow When I'm Dead" is a Take That! aimed at yuppies, hippies, and health food fads from the 1970s.
  • He does a lengthy one against Atlantic Records over his James Blunt parody "You're Pitiful," which eventually led to Wikipedia being forced to lock Atlantic's entry due to excessive vandalism. (Which was caused by Al pretending to deface that entry in his video for "White and Nerdy".)
  • "Don't Download This Song", mentioned above.
  • There's also the unreleased "It's Still Billy Joel to Me" (parody of "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me"), which is no more than one long attack on Billy Joel.
  • Al generally tries to avoid blatantly making fun an artist who has given him permission to parody their work, but sometimes he does his fair share of good-natured ribbing. Examples include the above mentioned "It's Still Billy Joel to Me," "Smells Like Nirvana," and "Perform This Way."
  • "Brady Bunch" and "Achy Breaky Song" are thematically similar, in that Al would rather do literally anything than watch/listen to the aforementioned subjects (The Brady Bunch and "Achy Breaky Heart", respectively). In the case of the latter, Al chose to donate the single's grosses to a charity of Billy Ray Cyrus' choice after deciding the song was on the harsh side.
  • "My Baby's In Love With Eddie Vedder" is more sarcastic than harsh, and Al even apologizes in the liner notes.
  • Subverted with "Canadian Idiot"; while the title suggests that the song is targeted at Canadians, it's actually a Stealth Insult at jingoistic Americans. Not surprisingly, it's very popular in Canada.
    Sure they've got their national healthcare
    Cheaper meds, low crime rates, and clean air
  • "I'll Sue Ya" is about Al's string of frivolous lawsuits. "I sued Delta Airlines, 'cause they sold me a ticket to New Jersey. I went there, and it SUCKED!"
    • When he comes to Ben Affleck, there's silence in the spot where normally he gives the reason for the lawsuit. Finally he just says "Aw, do I even need a reason?"
  • Al rags on Pauly Shore every once in a while.
  • Apparently, even if you're "the prettiest girl on the planet", he'll break up with you if you own a DVD of Joe Dirt.
  • Usually, his AlTV fake interviews with music celebrities are Affectionate Parodies with just some light ribbing. His Kevin Federline interview, however, is nine straight minutes of him genuinely calling the man a terrible musician and a worthless human being. ^note  To put this in perspective, the aforentioned "Achy Breaky Song" Al felt was so meanspirited he donated the proceeds to charity reads like a love letter compared to the venom Al unleashes at Federline via what's effectively a nine minute "The Reason You Suck" Speech
  • "TMZ" calls out both the website and the entitled celebrity behavior that ends up on it.
  • The virus described in "Virus Alert" will have a myriad of negative things happen to you if you get infected, two such things being that it will "make your TV record Gigli" and "make your iPod only play Jethro Tull".
  • There's a brief, easily missable one towards Alanis Morissette in "Word Crimes", specifically her song "Ironic". Just pay attention to the animation on screen when Al is talking about what irony is and isn't.
    • He was also more than happy to break the rhyming scheme just to take a shot at Prince, mentioned in the Sitcom Archnemesis entry above.
    • "Word Crimes" itself is arguably a big one against both bad writers and Grammar Nazis.
  • The music video for the mid-80's "Christmas at Ground Zero", made up almost entirely of appropriated stock footage, has a young Ronald Reagan standing in front of a Christmas tree and warmly saying, "Well, the big day's only a few hours away now... I'm sure you're all looking forward to it as much as we are." Jeez.
  • "Sports Song" is a jab at the hostility and poor sportsmanship often seen between sports teams.
  • "If That Isn't Love" has Al still attached to his lover even after she forced him to see Mamma Mia!.
  • The video for "Jurassic Park" has the line "I'm afraid those things'll harm me/Cuz they sure don't act like Barney" accompanied by Barney's head getting bitten off by a real t-rex. When shown at his concerts, the crowd regularly responds with thunderous applause.
    A huge Tyrannosaurus ate our lawyer
    Well, I suppose that proves
    They're really not all bad...
  • One early one to increasing sensationalism in network news coverage: "If you like the six o'clock news, then you'll love 'Nature Trail To Hell'!"
  • I Can't Watch This is a giant Take That to the TV shows of the late 1980s/early 1990s. An entire verse bashes America's Funniest Home Videos. Al also sneaks in one against Siskel & Ebert for their scathing review of UHF.
    Those Siskel and Ebert bums
    Oughta go home and sit on their thumbs!
• Talking with Signs: Al does a "woo" with a sign near the latter end of the video for "Fat".
• Tears of Awe: "The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota" has the narrator falling to his knees and bawling at the sheer immensity of the title ball. "And that's when those security guards threw us out."
• Technology Marches On: Invoked.
  • An In-Universe example in "First World Problems", where the singer becomes angered that somebody actually called him on his cell phone, as texting has become the norm in recent years, and barely anyone actually uses their phone to make phone calls anymore.
  • "Frank's 2000-Inch TV" is deliberately meant to sound ridiculous — if it had had the 4:3 aspect ratio that TVs had when the song was written, a 2000 inch diagonal TV would have had a screen 100 feet tall. Technology likely won't march that far.
• Teen Genius: Al was one growing up, not only graduating high school at the age of sixteen, but was also valedictorian.
• Terrible Pick-Up Lines: Invoked in "Wanna B Ur Lovr". The song consists of nothing but cheesy pick-up lines, like "Girl, you smell like Fritos / that's why I'm giving you this hungry stare".
• That Poor Cat: Al runs over a cat with a lawnmower in the "Handy" music video.
• The Oner: The "Tacky" music video. Which is an Homage to the song it's parodying, Pharrell's "Happy", as most of the segments of his "24 Hours of Happy" are Oners.
• The Show Must Go On: Al went ahead with a concert just hours after learning his parents had passed away in their home from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, explaining later that performing would take his mind off the tragedy, at least for a little while. However, he did cancel the meet-and-greet and autograph sessions afterwards, to give him some time alone.
• Tinfoil Hat: The second verse of "Foil" focuses around fashioning an aluminum foil hat to protect himself against thought control rays and psychotronic scanning.
• Title-Only Chorus: "Why Does This Always Happen to Me" and "First World Problems".
• Title Track: "Dare To Be Stupid" and "Polka Party".
• Toilet Humor: Many songs, especially in early albums, have gratuitous fart or belching noises added. In some cases this is done to provide an alternate interpretation for the lyrics.
• Toilet Seat Divorce: According to "Albuquerque", joining the Columbia Record Club is too big of a commitment for Al.
• Tomato Surprise: A minor one in "Jackson Park Express". The woman on the bus is assumed to have no anomalous features, and more than halfway into the (9-minute) song:
  And I'm pretty sure she looked at me out of the corner [Beat] of her good eye.
• Too Much Information: The other major component of the humor in "Confessions Pt. III".
  I haven't changed my underwear in 27 days!
• Transatlantic Equivalent: In Britain for many years, the undisputed kings of the parody song were a band called Barron Knights. Peter Brewis has been a one-man industry, writing parody songs of current hits for both radio comedy shows and for TV series such as Spitting Image. Philip Pope also wrote and voiced memorable style parodies for Spitting Image and Radio Active, and part of the cast of the latter released two albums of some of his songs under the stage name The Hee Bee Gee Bees. Ian Hislop has also had fun writing comedy parodies. Meanwhile in South Africa, musical comedian Robbie Wessels is the Afrikaans-language version of Weird Al.
• Trash of the Titans: "Trash Day" is about this.
• Trekkie: "White and Nerdy":
  The only question I ever thought was hard
  Was, do I like Kirk or do I like Picard?
• Trivially Obvious: Used in "Your Horoscope for Today" to parody the overly-vague predictions of actual horoscopes.
  The stars predict tomorrow you'll wake up, do a bunch of stuff, and then go back to sleep.
• Turn Your Head and Cough: In the song "Living With A Hernia," the narrator goes to see his physician, Dr. Jones, who we are told takes off the narrator's pants and tells him to cough. Justified, in that turning one's head and coughing is used to diagnose an inguinal hernia.
• Triple Nipple: "CNR" claims that Charles Nelson Reilly had a third nipple on the back of his neck.
• Truck Driver's Gear Change: Appropriately used in "Truck Driving Song". Lampshaded in "I Need a Nap":
  Change keeeeeeeeey!
  • Also occurs in some of his parody songs, but those were based on songs that also had one.
• Umpteenth Customer: From "Hardware Store:
  "Every twenty-seventh customer will get a ball peen hammer free!"
• Uncanny Valley: Weird Al's Perform This Way, as his face is digitally subbed over a female dancer. The effect is seriously creepy in a hilarious sort of way, which is certainly intentional, considering who he's parodying.
• Uncommon Time:
  • "Genius in France" shifts time signatures and rhythms incessantly, naturally enough since it's a style parody of Frank Zappa (and quite an impressive one at that).
  • "Jackson Park Express" has sections in 7/4, and the rare song "Al's Band" (sung by said backing band) is entirely in 7/4 and 7/2. "Now You Know", written for the ending credits of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, is also in 7/4 for the first two minutes and 20 seconds.
• Understatement:
  • This bit of "A Complicated Song":
    I gotta tell ya, life without a head kinda makes me irritated
    What a bummer.
  • From "Jurassic Park":
    I cannot approve of this attraction,
    'cause getting disemboweled
    always makes me kinda mad.
  • From "The Saga Begins":
    But their response, it didn't thrill us,
    they locked the doors and tried to kill us.
• Uniformity Exception: In the video for "Party in the CIA", all the CIA agents are in black and white, except for Al. Interestingly enough, Al is deliberately trying to conform to the crowd — something he (notwithstanding some eccentric approaches to his work) completely succeeds at.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: Al's live shows feature numerous costume changes to fit with the songs, like the yellow jumpsuits for "Dare To Be Stupid", wacky outfits for "Perform This Way", fat suit for "Fat", tacky clothes for "Tacky", and so on, with the band usually changing along with him. During the costume changes, video clips are played, generally one of Al's celebrity interviews, one of his numerous cameo appearances, or even clips from UHF and The Weird Al Show.
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: "Sports Song" is essentially one long, preemptive parade of this, put into song.
• Upper-Class Equestrian: "Buckingham Blues" mentions HRH Prince Charles as being somewhat accomplished at the upper-crust sport of polo in the second stanza:
  Chuckie wants to grow up
  And be a polo star
  And ride his little horsies
  All around the backyard, oh yeah.
• Useless Spleen: "Pancreas" has the line "My spleen just doesn't matter."
• Viewers Are Morons: "I Can't Watch This", and some of the other songs about television to a lesser extent.
• Villains Out Shopping: In "Party in the CIA", the protagonist shoots the wrong man at a speech, then happens across his target — a South American dictator implied to be a nasty piece of work — having a drink at an outdoor bar ("when he walked right in my laser-sights, and my silencer was on...") where he quietly shoots him and makes off with his drink.
• Vocal Evolution: On his earlier albums, he tended to sing in a nasal shout more often than not. His voice gradually became more mature and toned-down over time without completely losing the "silly" edge.
• Voice Clip Song: Al created one based on the Donald Trump-Joe Biden televised debate called "America Is Doomed, The Musical."
• Wacky Sound Effect: Present in a few songs, but most noticeable in the video for "Eat It". Later, Al notices the odd sounds his gestures make and shrugs them off.
  • Hand farts courtesy of "Musical Mike" Kieffer are common in his earlier works. Mike can be seen performing in the videos for "I Love Rocky Road" and "Headline News".
• Wham Line:
  • "Foil" sounds like Al's usual food parody song until the second verse, when Al reveals it is a Self-Parody.
    By the way, I cracked the code.
  • "Since You've Been Gone" seems to be an a capella describing (with typical "Weird Al" wackiness and exaggeration) how a man has suffered since a breakup, until the last line:
    I feel almost as bad as I did
    When you were still here.
  • "Good Old Days" is a wistful song about the singer's youth and how life was simpler then before it takes a dark turn:
    And I'd spend all day long in the basement
    Torturing rats with a hacksaw
    And pulling the wings off of flies.
  • "Why Does This Always Happen To Me?" doesn't reveal the true nature of the title and viewpoint character until halfway through the first verse.
    Why'd they have to interrupt The Simpsons just for this?
• What Happened to the Mouse?: We never do find out if Al got his snorkel back or not in "Albuquerque", or what happened to the hermaphrodite male with one nostril whom Al swore revenge against and forgot about when he went into the donut shop.
  • Subverted in the uncensored version of "The Night Santa Went Crazy" (in which Santa is killed in the shootout); no mention is made of Vixen and Donner's fates, except that Vixen's in therapy and Donner's still nervous.
• When I Was Your Age...: The subject of "When I Was Your Age", naturally. It's full of ridiculous claims, such as working twenty-two hours a day in a coal mine, or walking naked to school through a blizzard.
• Who You Gonna Call?: Heard in "Slime Creatures From Outer Space".
• Wiki Vandal: In-Universe, he pretends to replace the entire Atlantic Records Wikipedia entry with the phrase "YOU SUCK!" in 72-point letters during the video of "White And Nerdy." This resulted in the real Wikipedia entry for Atlantic Records being locked because of legions of fans doing the same thing.
• Word Salad Lyrics: If an artist is known for obscure lyrics, you can bet Al will have something to say about it in his parody. Notably, "Bob" parodies Bob Dylan's style by having Fun with Palindromes, and "Smells Like Nirvana" is all about how the singer doesn't even know what the words are but that's okay since it's a Nirvana song.
• Would Hurt a Child: The homicidal maniac in "Nature Trail to Hell".
• Would Rather Suffer: "One More Minute", which is a song about an ex.
  That's right, you ain't gonna see me crying
  I'm glad that you found somebody new
  'Cause I'd rather spend eternity eating shards of broken glass
  Than spend one more minute with you.
• Yiddish as a Second Language: Pops up in a few of his songs, most obviously "Pretty Fly for a Rabbi," the latter of which helped stir a false rumor than Al himself was Jewish (he's a non-practicing Christian of mostly Yugoslav ancestry).
  He's doin' well, I gotta kvell
  The yentas love him,
  Even shiksas think he's swell!^TranslationI gotta be delighted; The gossips love him, even non-Jewish women think he's swell!
• You Don't Look Like You: Al looks almost nothing like the above image nowadays, thanks to laser eye surgery and an image change. Some early videos ("Ricky", "UHF") foreshadowed his modern appearance.
  • Al himself has relayed a story of a television appearance he had soon after the surgery and shaving off his moustache (The Drew Carey Show, season 4 episode 4, "Drew Between the Rock and a Hard Place"). The people at the TV studio wanted him in his "classic" look, and got him prop eyeglasses and a fake moustache. Al described the experience as surreal, "like I was wearing a Weird Al Halloween costume". See it here.
  • Averted, however, with an appearance on How I Met Your Mother — the segment Al appears in takes place in 1985, and he looks almost exactly like he did in those days.
  • Al has stated that he is flattered by his fans who prefer his "classic" look, especially how it remains a popular style for their Halloween costumes.
• You Put the "X" in "XY": "Jerry Springer" has this:
  Jerry's the king of confrontation;
  He's a sensation!
  He puts the "sin" in "syndication"!
• Your Head Asplode: Al's head explodes while holding out the last note to the opening theme of Spy Hard, a Shout-Out to the rumor that Tom Jones passed out while holding the last note of the opening theme of Thunderball.
• Your Mime Makes It Real: In "My Own Eyes", one of the many things the singer wishes he could unsee is a mime being hacked to death with an imaginary cleaver.
• You Watch Too Much X: Al has described himself as watching too much television, and he has a song about television on nearly every album. Enough for his label to compile them into a full-length album of its own.
• Zombie Infectee: Not telling you that he's been bitten by a zombie is Al's closing example of tacky behavior in "Tacky".

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