Visual Pun / Western Animation

Gramma's really mad, she's even grinding her teeth!

Visual Puns in western animation TV.

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• Visual puns pertaining to characters are a common gag of western cartoons. Common ones include but are not limited to:
  • A donkey (Jackass, an idiot or asshole)
  • A lollipop (Sucker, someone who fell for a trick)
  • The bottom of a shoe (Heel, someone who should be ashamed)
  • A skunk (Stinker, someone who's up to no good)
  • A screw and a ball (Screwball, someone weird)^note  Moreover, the ball is usually a baseball, making it a double pun; a screwball is a kind of pitch.
  • A dripping faucet (Drip, a loser)
  • A broken pot (Crackpot, someone crazy)
  • A bell and a swarm of bats (Dingbat or having Bats in the Belfry, also someone crazy)

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• 101 Dalmatians: The Series: In "Oozy Does It", when Lucky is making a speech to the other animals of Dearly Farm about how sometimes a small group can make a big difference, he is literally standing on a soapbox.
• 3-2-1 Penguins!:
  • In the song "Fair and Square", Midgel holds a picture of ham when Zidgel sings his second solo.
  • "12 Angry Hens": Midgel stops the ship due to an actual fork floating in outer space.
• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: In the episode where Cindy and Libby host a TV show, Nick announces he's going to comb his hair without his hands and asks for a drumroll. Cue an actual drum rolling across the stage.
• Abby Hatcher: When the Squeaky Peepers become sad enough, their fur turns blue so that they're literally and figuratively feeling blue. They also sing the blues.
• Adventure Time has a couple:
  • The Earl of Lemongrab. He himself is a pun on the term "sourpuss"; he looks like a lemon, he is obviously a very angry person and his original name in the storyboards was "Lemonsnatch". All of the clothes he wears are grey, so he's also a pun on "Earl Grey tea".
  • "The Party's Over, Isla de Señorita": The Ice King tries to impress/seduce Princess Bubblegum by sneaking into her room with a pot of honey and pouring it on her waffles. Clearly, he's misunderstood something important about the honey pot.
• Aladdin: The Series: In one episode, Genie conjures up a sandwich on his head and says, "Hey Al! Lunch is on me!"
• The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Shell", after accidentally headbutting Penny the antlered peanut because he's too nervous to kiss her and leaving a crack around her eye hole as a result, Gumball makes a joke about being a nutcracker.
• Animaniacs. Every single short featuring the Warner Brothers (and sister). For instance, in the first episode, psychiatrist Dr. Scratchansniff tries to make them stop doing this — like, when he says "plant yourselves on the couch", they turn into flowers. "This isn't a joke — it's a visual gag."
• Archer: In "Skorpio", when Malory says on the phone "Put a lid on it!", Archer thinks she tells him to get things under control, but in turns out she's just telling Jakov to literally put a lid on his grill because of some pesky seagulls.
• Arthur:
  • "Arthur's Lost Library Book": Arthur has a nightmare about the library book he lost. In one scene the police surround his house and tell him he can't escape the "long arm of the law". Just then an actual long arm with the sleeve of a judge's robe comes in, grabs him, and pulls him across town to the library.
  • "D.W. the Copycat": In-Universe. In the Bionic Bunny show, he uses his brute strength to escape from a crab-villain's clutches, which he calls his "built-in escape claws".
  • "D.W. All Fired Up": D.W. is told the class will have their first fire drill, and immediately imagines a drill that shoots fire instead of using a metal bit. Justified in that she is a 4-year-old kid and has never heard the phrase "fire drill" before.
  • "Mom and Dad Have a Great Big Fight": Arthur and D.W. have a fantasy sequence in the style of Oliver Twist. It parodies the scene where Arthur as Oliver Twist asks the chef for some more food. The chef obliges by giving him an oar, or "some oar" as he puts it.
  • "The Big Riddle": Arthur winds up having a dream where he winds up in a world like Alice in Wonderland where everything is a visual pun. His falling out of the sky produces a "break in the clouds" which the Tibble Twins can't fix because they are "all thumbs". He winds up in the middle of the group's "T" party.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: In "The Southern Raiders", Zuko runs into Suki on the way to Sokka's tent. Suki slips away, and Zuko enters Sokka's tent. Sokka was expecting... someone else. Zuko leaves, and Sokka calls for Suki. The next morning, Sokka is playing with a flower necklace (not dissimilar to a Hawaiian flower necklace). He got lei'd. (And if you're assuming that Suki gave it to him, then Suki got de-flowered.)
• Batman: The Animated Series: The Joker and Harley Quinn:
  • "Harley's Holiday":
    • Harley declares she's armed and promptly hits Bruce Wayne with the arm of a mannequin.
    • A mob boss named Boxy gets his pants torn off by Harley's hyenas, revealing that he's wearing boxer shorts.
  • "Almost Got 'Im": At the very beginning, as the assembled villains share theories about who Batman is, Two-Face pours some half-and-half into his coffee.
  • "Trial": At the end, after playing judge at a villains' Kangaroo Court trial of Batman, Joker attacks Batman while swinging from a rope and announces himself as "the hanging judge".
  • "The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne": Two-Face tells the Joker, "Get out of my face, clown!" The Joker replies, "Which one?"
• Beany and Cecil is loaded with visual gags.
  • An example has the Boo Birds serving a hammerhead shark to Cecil. It's a shark with the top of a hammer on its head.
  • This is really prominent when they describe their journey at the beginning of many episodes. Example: "Okay, men, we've cut through the Sandwich Islands (cut to a map with islands shaped like sandwiches, one of which their boat bisects) and saw the Thousand Islands dressing (cut to a still picture of a bunch of islands in various states of dressing)". And that particular gag ended with them looking at a map of their destination: a large island in the shape of a woman with jungle for skin, a desert for hair, and mountains in the shape of a bikini top and bottom, named "No Bikini Atoll".
• Inversion: The Beatles are at an abstract art show (episode "Twist and Shout") where Ringo approaches what looks like a drum set. Its creator says it's his exhibit which he calls "Portrait of Father." Ringo quips "Oh... it's 'pop' art!"
• Beetlejuice: The Animated Adaptation sees its title character do this about a dozen times an episode; it's described as a reflex, his powers causing him to transform according to the idioms he uses.
• Big City Greens:
  • "Space Chicken": After someone launches a chicken offscreen, Tilly gasps, "Holy cow!" The scene zooms out to reveal the culprit is Miss Brenda the cow.
  • "Gramma's License": Cricket points out Gramma is so mad, she's even "grinding her teeth". Gramma is then shown grinding her dentures on a grinding wheel.
• Bob's Burgers: In "The Deepening", a giant mechanical shark breaks through the floor of the restaurant and Bob tries to throw things at it. He ends up literally grasping at a box of straws.
• Bonkers: In one episode, the title character is infected with a 'toon disease called "Literalitis".
• Bump in the Night: In "Penny for Your Thoughts", Squishy uttered the pun, simply made a random thought, and a penny fell on him from out of nowhere. Bumpy put all his effort into producing a random thought, but it took him a while to do so.
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers: In "Double O'Chipmunk", Dale, after his devices wreck the Ranger HQ, in shown wearing only a bowtie, like a Chippendales dancer.
• Chowder has quite a few from time to time.
  • "Banned from the Stand": Gazpacho bans Mung from every other fruit stands (apparently he has the power to do that, according to the "code") and keeps saying "Banned! Banned! Banned!". In the last "BANNED!" we then cut to a shot of a marching band looking at Gazpacho.
  • When Mung teases his rival, Ms. Endive, that an ugly beast has just escaped the zoo, a bizarre monster appears out of nowhere and says "Oops, gotta go!" and jumps through a window.
  • When an extremely hot day comes along, Chowder asks why they don't turn on the Air Conitioner, when Truffles says it's because they have a corn-dish-oner. Cut to a scene of a strange washing-machine like thing dishing out corn.
    Truffles: Stupid visual puns!
  • "My Big Fat Stinky Wedding": Chowder tries to stop Kimchi’s wedding, but ends up staying all night building a pony ride. And when morning comes:
    Chowder: Oh, no. The sun rising!
    (cue the sun rising out of a gorge and attacking a group of warriors)
• The Critic has had two examples:
  • "A Song for Margo": An interview with O.J. reports that her refuses too speak, before the shot changes to focus on a pitcher of orange juice.
  • "From Chunk to Hunk": Penny writes Mary a letter, which is just a sheet of paper with a large P written on it.
• Danger Mouse:
  • "How was I to know he had a voice-activated bean spiller?"
  • Dangermouse is following a series of directions around an underground temple one of which is to take a fork left...after colliding with it he asks "Who left that fork there?"
• Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines: One "Wing Dings" installment has Klunk asking the rest of the Vulture Squadron if they're going to the barn dance. He points to a barn with arms and legs, dancing.
• DC Nation: The Sketch Artist Plastic Man short runs on these. The purse snatcher is male? Plas turns into a mail box. Pug nose? Pug dog nose!
• Donald Duck: The opening to the educational cartoon, "Donald in Mathmagic Land" shows a forest where trees have square roots.
• DuckTales (1987): Fenton Crackshell (a.k.a. Gizmoduck) has a day job as a literal "bean counter". He counts beans as they fall into jars and tells his assistant how many to add or remove. He can count hundreds of beans accurately in a fraction of a second, so good for him.
  • Turns out it's not limited to beans. He tried his darndest to get hired as Scrooge's new accountant, and when Scrooge tried to tell him no with a blunderbuss, Scrooge was amazed to hear, "465!" Turned out Fenton counted all the pellets that had been shot. After a quick check revealed he was just as good with counting money (a real plus when your money bin is so big it's a local landmark), Scrooge hired him.
  • Later, after he's taken on duties as Gizmoduck, this is a Chekhov's Skill. The money bin is taken to a planet of robots ruled by a malicious supercomputer and its robot army. After trying the Gizmoduck frontal-assault approach, Fenton challenges the computer to a counting contest, winner takes all. And he outpaced the computer easily.
• The Fairly OddParents!: Thoroughly exercised over the course of the run with the goofy but godlike Cosmo and Wanda.
  • As Timmy once said, seated inside a solid-ice convertible after wishing for a Cool Car, "Not funny."
  • "What's the Difference?":
    Mandie: Prepare to meet your doom! [holds up a sausage] MEAT?!
    Timmy: Thank you, horrible visual pun!
  • "Mother Nature":
    Timmy: [to his mom, who is ignoring him] Uh, you're still mad at me and dad for not listening, aren't you?
    Timmy's Mom: Not very fond of getting the cold shoulder, are you?
    [Timmy's right shoulder freezes]
  • The one time it's not Cosmo and Wanda, it's A.J.'s dad that invokes a visual pun by installing a parental block on the TV, which appears as an actual block with the words "Parental Block" on the screen.
• La Familia Telerin informs the (younger) viewers that they're done showing family shows, and that it's time to go to bed. During the song that appears, the family are seen literally "marching off to bed".
• Family Guy:
  • In an early episode, Peter screws up setting up an extravagant birthday party for Stewie, and remarks that he was at least able to find the "big-ass piñata" he promised. Zoom out to reveal a giant piñata shaped like a pair of buttocks.
    Brian: I sure hope candy comes out of that.
  • In a Stephen King The Shawshank Redemption parody, Peter (Andy) accuses Mr. Pewtershmidt (Norton) of being "so obtuse", then Norton is shown to be sitting in a geometrically obtuse position.
    Norton: How about now?
    Andy: No, now you're acute.
    [cut to Norton in an acute position]
  • A man in a supermarket walks up to Lois and says "Nice melons." Peter gets appropriately angry, until Lois holds two cantaloupes and says "Peter, I'm holding melons." The man does it again with "Her hooters ain't bad, either." Peter yells again, and Lois is seen with two owls on her arm, "Peter, I'm holding hooters." The man finally says "Your wife's hot" and Peter tells him that's enough.
  • In a later episode, Peter claims to have found out how to kill two birds with one stone. He then pulls out two little birds and crushes them with a big rock.
  • "Petey IV": Peter finds a Russian bootleg of Rocky IV and says that it's better than nothing. Cut to a gray background with literally nothing saying "Hey!", offended by Peter's comment.
• Freakazoid!: In one episode, after a bit of badly-synced animation, it cuts to Freakazoid saying "Oy, let's watch the lip-sync, okay?", and then cuts to a clip of a disembodied pair of lips sinking into the ocean.
• Futurama:
  • "The Lesser of Two Evils": A robot strip joint has a (rotary-style) fan dancer.
  • Bender's Big Score ushers in their return with a long line of visual puns, where they take some pretty big jabs at their former network Fox in the form of making fun of the "Box Network". Notable ones include them being "on the air" (flying) and a comment about their many fans (their latest job has them delivering fans).
  • Another episode has Leela telling Fry to "cool his jets". Cue a shot of Fry's jetpack burning Bender's face.
• Garfield and Friends: In one episode, Roy buys a voice-activated weather-summoning robot, which starts interpreting all of Roy's insults ("I said rain, you bucket of bolts!") as requests for the items in question to fall from the sky. Roy finds himself on the receiving end of a bucket of bolts and an overgrown vacuum cleaner before he starts running... and narrating. "It's driving me up a tree! I have to get somewhere safe!"
• God Rocks!:
  • The show's premise is a pun on Luke 19:40 - "If the people fall silent, the stones will cry out." The rocks in God Rocks! play music, just in case the people fall asleep.
  • The God Rocks! band consists of rocks. They're quite literally a rock band.
  • The BibleToons episode "Put on Love" is a literal interpretation of verses from Colossians naming the Fruits of the Spirit and encouraging the reader to "put on love", which "binds together everything in perfect harmony". Chip wears an actual jacket that represents the Fruits of the Spirit, and it causes him to do nice things when he otherwise wouldn't.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: In one episode, as Billy and Mandy are shouting "Mine!" while fighting for possession of Grim, the scene momentarily cuts to show an underwater mine.
• Hotel Transylvania: The Series: In the first episode, a critic is coming to inspect the hotel and Mavis claims that a single bad review from them could sink it. Cut to another hotel quite literally sinking into the ground when a fissure forms underneath it.
• House of Mouse is full of them.
  • In one scene, someone tells Mickey "The crowd's turning ugly" and there's a cut to the Queen from Snow White turning into the old witch disguise and Prince Adam turning back into the beast.
  • The shorts are as prone to Visual Puns as the House segments. In "The Phone Company" Donald tells a speaker he wants to "pay his bill" and the speaker extends arms and pops his beak off of him. And in "How to Be a Spy", Goofy smashes cockroaches that are coming out of his phone during the lesson on "De-bugging."
• Jimmy Two-Shoes: In "Cellphone-itis", Beezy, going through cell phone withdrawal, says he's cracking up. His body then breaks like glass and falls, in pieces, on the ground. A similar moment happens in the episode "Scent of a Heinous" where Samy, panicking about Lucius possibly humiliating himself on TV, says he's having a meltdown. He then melts into a pile of green sludge.
• Johnny Test:
  • "Johnny to the Center of the Earth" has Dukey exclaiming, "We're sitting ducks!" with the camera showing Johnny and him sitting in a duck boat.
  • "Princess Johnny": Johnny is pretending to be the missing princess of a small country while agents Black and White find the real one. The princess has a laundry list of royal duties and we are taken through each and every one until he is told "Three O'clock, you must kiss the Royal—" Johnny interrupts and says he's tired, but as the sentence was said, both were looking at a donkey.
• Justice League: The Justice League Unlimited episode "Epilogue" used one to do a Shout-Out to another cartoon. Remember the Royal Flush Gang in that episode? Now, remember how one of them was a samurai, complete with Kabuki samurai costume? That's the Jack of the gang. And to make the pun more obvious, when he lost his powers, his real form closely resembled Samurai Jack voice actor, Phil LaMarr. Also, Ten had prehensile cornrows and resembled Bo Derek (from the movie 10 (1979)), Queen reverted to a large man after the group lost their powers (i.e. he was a drag queen), and King resembled M.O.D.O.K. (a character created by Jack "The King Of Comics" Kirby).
• Lilo & Stitch: The Series: In "Yaarp", at one point Stitch and Gantu are trying to catch an experiment at a electronics store:
  Store PA: Attention shoppers! Come see our home theater system...
  [Stitch launches a large television at Gantu]
  Store PA: ...a picture so big it hits you like a ton of bricks!
  Gantu: Oh, blitznak.
• Looney Tunes cartoons use visual puns by the carload. A few examples:
  • "Ballot Box Bunny" has Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam running against each other for mayor of a small town. At the end of the cartoon, they're both defeated...by a literal dark horse ("Our new mare").
  • In "The Fair Haired Hare", after Sam builds a house over Bugs's rabbit hole, Bugs vows to "take this to the highest court in the country"... and so he does (Elevation 6723 ft.).
    Bugs: [out of breath from climbing all that way] I shoulda picked a lower court. I'm bushed.
  • "Yankee Doodle Bugs" has Bugs explaining American history to his nephew Clyde. Among other jokes, he says that Manhattan was bought from the Indians "for a song" (Indian being given sheet music) and describes the Boston Tea Party in terms of tea with "tacks" (which is both shown visually and made into a verbal pun).
  • "Bugs Bunny Rides Again" has Sam telling to Bugs to leave because "This town ain't big enough for the two of us!" Bugs runs offscreen, we hear sawing and hammering noises, and then Bugs reveals he made the town bigger.
  • "The Daffy Doc": Daffy Duck is a doctor's assistant and gets kicked out for causing trouble in the operating room.
    Daffy: Where does he get that stuff? Where does he get that stuff? He can't do that to me! I've got a sheepskin! [pulls out an actual sheep's skin] I've got a license! [pulls out a license plate reading "2B or not 2B"] I'll get a patient of my own! So there!
  • Both "Hyde and Go Tweet" and "Lighthouse Mouse" have Sylvester, faced with a monstrous bird/mouse, freeze in horror, and then collapse into a pile of cat bits on the floor. The pun is that he's "falling to pieces".
  • "Hop, Look, and Listen" ends with a dog who refused to believe Sylvester's stories about a "giant mouse" encountering Hippety Hopper riding in his mother's pouch. The dog runs off with Sylvester and concludes "When you see mice that big, with two heads, then it's time to get on the water wagon!" Then it zooms out to show the cat and dog are riding on the back bumper of a truck carrying a tank of water (a literal "water wagon").
  • The sequel to "Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century": Daffy instructs his space cadet (Porky Pig) to wipe the smile off his face and to get the lead out. Cue the cadet literally doing both, which is the last straw for Daffy.
  • "Yankee Doodle Daffy": Besides the "screwball" pun, Sleepy Lagoon^note the "client" that "actor's agent" Daffy is representing. also pulls out pictures that call Daffy a "ham" (a picture of ham^note As in the meat., and his Carmen Miranda impersonation act "corn"y (a picture of a corn-on-the-cob).
  • In another Bugs Bunny short, Bugs pretends to die, finally kicking a bucket. This leads to celebration between Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny (until Elmer realizes with whom he's celebrating):
    (Sung to the tune of "Nanny-Nanny Boo-Boo") "The wabbit kicked the bucket! The wabbit kicked the bucket!"
  • "Jack Wabbit and the Beanstalk": Bugs goes inside a giant's ear and comes across the eardrum, which is shown as an actual drum. He proceeds to bang on the drum to mess with the giant.
• The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack: While Flapjack and K'nuckles are traveling wesssssst, Bubbie comments that they're running low on food, water, and overall enthusiasm. K'nuckles reveals that he's wearing his last pair of overalls with the word "ENTHUSIASM" on it, accompanied by some really creepy voices singing OVERALL ENTHUSIASM OVERALL ENTHUSIASM OVERALL ENTHUSIASM YEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAWWWWWWWW.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Applejack normally has both her mane and tail tied up in a ponytail.
  • "Call of the Cutie" has a scene with a close-up of Apple Bloom, who is feeling depressed, when Rainbow Dash sticks her head into the audience's view:
    Rainbow Dash: Whoa. Looks like somepony's got a dark cloud hanging over her head! Let me do something about that...
    [the camera pulls back, revealing the dark cloud that was hovering just a couple feet above Apple Bloom]
  • "Suited for Success": During Rarity's first fashion show, Hoity Toity says Rarity's designs were "a piled-on mishmash of everything but the kitchen sink." Cut to Rarity kicking a kitchen sink away behind the curtains.
  • The kitchen makes a return appearance amongst Spike's pile of ill-gotten gains in "Secret of My Excess" and among the stuff Sweetie Belle uses to bar Cheerilee from leaving the dressing room in "Hearts and Hooves Day". It returns yet again, but this time in the Pie family's possession in "Pinkie Apple Pie". During the song, one of Pinkie's lines is "The love I feel here is swim, not sink" Cue Pinkie throwing a sink out of the kart.
  • "Feeling Pinkie Keen": Twilight stops to give a speech about the difference between magic and the Pinkie Sense — after literally stepping up onto a soapbox that happens to be nearby.
  • "Over a Barrel": During Braeburn's tour of Appleloosa, he points out the horse-drawn carriages, then immediately mentions "horse-drawn horse-drawn carriages" as the camera cuts to several artists sketching out the horse-drawn carriages.
  • "MMMystery on the Friendship Express": The griffon chef uses a Dramatic Spotlight to show off his eclairs, but suddenly he is shown holding a lamp, which he throws away.
  • "Magic Duel": Trixie turns Spike into a Dragon Ball.
  • "Keep Calm and Flutter On": Discord sports a second face when telling Fluttershy about how he thinks he's becoming reformed already, implying that he's a two-faced liar.
  • "Rarity Takes Manehattan": Applejack stops under a damaged carriage and lifts it off the ground with her back, so that they can repair the broken wheel.
  • "Twilight's Kingdom -- Part 1":
    • Invoked by Pinkie Pie in the cold open.
      Pinkie Pie: [stretching Twilight's lower jaw] Why the loooooong face?
    • Discord as usual. The best being his "ears burning" listening to gossip.
    • Later he shapeshifts into a bird solely for the sake of making a "free as a bird" joke.
    • Cadance sings "Soon will come the day it turns around" while the camera orbits around Twilight.
  • Crusaders Of The Lost Mark introduces Spoiled Rich, Diamond Tiara's Rich Bitch mother who struts around and treats everyone, even her own kid, with contempt. Her muzzle is pushed upward, unlike any other character — she is literally turning her nose up at everyone she meets.
  • Fans of Gordon Ramsay are likely to immediately get and appreciate the little background gag in Grannies Gone Wild of a ponified Gordon yelling at Cranky Doodle Donkey.
• Oswald: Weenie is the titular octopus' pet dog. Weenie is a living hot-dog who resembles a Dachshund.
• Phineas and Ferb
  • "Hide and Seek": Baljeet (who is shrunk at the moment) poses for a picture with a dust bunny. Yeah, it's an actual clump of dust in the shape of a bunny.
  • "Picture This" begins with the boys having turned the garage upside-down trying to find Ferb's favorite skateboard.
  • "Ladies and Gentlemen, Meet Max Modem!": Doofenshmirtz makes his (attempt at) an impassioned speech standing on a soap box. Phineas does the same thing with a bit more success in "Summer Belongs to You".
  • "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo": The two travel to the future and see that "the museum finally added that new wing." The museum has a giant angel wing on it.
  • "De Plane! De Plane!": During their pre-flight checklist, Phineas mentions "co-pilot's instruments", and they cut to Ferb standing in front of a bunch of musical instruments hanging on the wall.
  • "Mommy, Can You Hear Me?": Doofenshmirtz traps Perry in a giant pickle. He then proceeds to explain that it's funny because he's "in a pickle."
  • Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension: Doofenshmirtz' alternate dimension self quips that he has one last ace up his sleeve — and he arrives in a Giant Mecha of himself, where the control section is in the sleeve. He immediately asks if they get it.
  • "Tree To Get Ready": Candace remarks on "all the bells and whistles!" in her new treehouse while she and Stacy pass a wall lined with actual bells and whistles.
  • "Canderemy": After being zapped with the Combine-Inator, Candace and her boyfriend Jeremy spend the day joined at the hip.
  • Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars: The tractor beam control is represented with an image of the piece of farm machinery.
  • "The Remains of the Platypus": Buford complains, "All right! Who cut the cheese?!", as Baljeet and Ferb are shown cutting a giant block of cheese.
• Pinky and the Brain: In "The Third Mouse", when Pinky and the Brain are on the Ferris wheel, Pinky says, "One of those dots is waving at us." Cut to Dot Warner (from Animaniacs) waving at them. Even though the cartoon is in black and white, her nose is red.
• Popeye: A frequent one occurs when Popeye eats his spinach. He is seen appearing to have "muscles on his muscles".
• Private Snafu: "Booby Traps" has a female dummy whose breasts turn out to be disguised bombs; i.e. literal 'booby traps'.
• Razzberry Jazzberry Jam: In “Super Sounds”, Buddy and Krupa (anthropomorphic drums) are attempting to find their “new sounds” by hitting themselves with what are essentially random objects. One of the things they try is a food item that is never referred to by name, but which is obviously a chicken drumstick.
• Robot Chicken:
  • The series has the "Le Wrath di Khan" sketch, which is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan as a musical sung in Italian. A Space Opera, if you will.
  • In another sketch, a boy is given an allergy shot. The man who gave him the shot asks, "All right, who brought the Peanuts?", then the camera moves to Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, and Snoopy sitting at the table across from the boy.
  • One sketch featured a brief shot of the 4th Doctor playing baseball.
  The Doctor: ...Do you get it?
• Rocko's Modern Life:
  • In "Driving Mrs. Wolfe", Rocko is teaching his friend Mrs. Wolfe how to drive and tells her to "always follow the road signs". The first sign they come upon is "SLOW CHILDREN PLAYING" and sure enough, two children are in the middle of the road playing very slowly.
  • In "I See London, I See France", the bus driver leading the tour across Paris grows increasingly insane when Rocko (and later Heffer) sneaks away from the group and goes off on his own. He's a goat. Mad like a goat, indeed.
• Rugrats:
  • In the Chanukah special, when Angelica tosses away a potato latke, a man dressed in a dreidel costume slips, spins around a little, and falls "gimel"-side-up. The next man who sees this shouts "I win!" and grabs the donut box the dreidel man has been holding. Later, the dreidel man emerges from the bathroom and shouts to Angelica, "I broke a shin because of you!" showing some bandages on his "shin" side.
  • "The Word of the Day": As the kids watch Miss Carol's Happy House at their home and hear Angelica using a dirty word she heard Miss Carol use backstage, Stu, Didi and Lou make the "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" faces.
  • "Tricycle Thief": When Tommy tries to prove that Angelica didn't steal Susie's trike, Angelica gets caught "red-handed", as in she has red paint on her hands. As Randy had painted the shed earlier, the paint was still wet, and this leads Susie to believe that Angelica really did steal her tricycle. As it turns out, Angelica's red paint was from an apology card she made for Susie for crashing her tricycle.
• Sheep in the Big City loved this sort of humor.
  • In one episode, the narrator shouts "Hold the phone!", and there's a brief cut to Lisa Rental holding up a telephone.
  • In the very first episode, when searching for Sheep, the army guys are told to turn the city upside down. While General Specific is talking to the disguised Sheep in the foreground, the army guys turning all of the buildings upside down are seen in the background.
  • The narrator, while listing the kinds of things in the Big City that give trouble to Sheep, mentions that Sheep has to deal with attacks from a German shepherd. Rather than a dog, we see Sheep being assaulted by a shepherd who happens to be German.
• The Simpsons:
  • In one episode, a Huell Howser Expy falls off the back of a turnip truck. The saying "I didn't fall off the back of a turnip truck" is roughly the equivalent of "I wasn't born yesterday".
  • "Lisa the Vegetarian": After being laughed out of Homer's barbecue by offering a meatless alternative, Lisa pouts in her room that they don't have to rub their eating meat in her face. Guess what flies through her window and where it lands.
  • "Please Homer, Don't Hammer 'Em": When Marge finds out that someone at Springfield Elementary (later revealed to be Principal Skinner) has a life-threatening peanut allergy and all peanut products are no longer allowed on school property, she makes Bart empty his lunchbox of all peanut products. After taking out a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a bag of trail mix, she exclaims, "Good Grief, More Peanuts!" as she takes out a copy of the book of the same name.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • "Plankton!":
    • When Plankton takes control of SpongeBob's brain and makes him walk into his kitchen, SpongeBob says "Time for a well-balanced breakfast." He walks through the wall and out through the fridge with a loaf of bread, a jug of milk and a carton of eggs balanced on his head and adds "This isn't what I had in mind."
    • When Plankton forces a mind-controlled SpongeBob to come to his lair, he dramatically points out his lab — that is, his Labrador retriever. He then points out his actual laboratory.
    Plankton: Brace yourself, SpongeBob, this is my lab! [labrador retriever barks] And this is my LABORATORY!
  • "Survival of the Idiots": Trapped in Sandy's treedome during winter, SpongeBob and Patrick shave off her fur to keep themselves warm, only for it to immediately turn to spring. When she sees what happened and is rightfully pissed, SpongeBob assures her that they've "got her covered". Cut to SpongeBob and Patrick wrapped around Sandy to keep her warm until her fur grows back.
  • "Squid on Strike": When instructed to make a picket sign, SpongeBob makes two visual puns: the first being a part of an actual picket fence and the second being the image of someone picking their nose, a "pick-it" sign.
  • "No Weenies Allowed": SpongeBob calls out Sandy for a karate challenge. She appears from the sand and grabs him with the lines "Oh, I'm Sandy alright. I'm very Sandy." And SpongeBob gets the joke while flying in the air!
  • "Ripped Pants": After covering himself in Sand, SpongeBob jokes that he's also Sandy.
  • "The Algae's Always Greener": When Krabs flicks tiny Plankton back to the Chum Bucket, he yells, "So long, shrimp!" An actual shrimp is then seen exiting the Krusty Krab.
  • Combining this with a normal pun, SpongeBob's phone is shaped like a conch; a "shellphone" if you will.
  • "Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy V": Barnacle Boy gets sick of being an unrespected sidekick and decides to become evil. He then announces that he's crossing over to the dark side. Zoom out to show half of the Krusty Krab that's pitch-dark. When everyone stares at Mr. Krabs, this is his response:
    Mr. Krabs: Why should I waste money lighting the whole store?
  • "Clams": After Mr. Krabs is crying over the loss of his dollar SpongeBob says "I've never seen Mr. Krabs so broken up" right before his body appears to be in pieces.
  • "I'm With Stupid": Patrick receives a note (cue paper with a musical note on it). On the other side, there's a letter on it (cue flip; other side has a giant letter "B" on it). He also got a message from his parents.
  • "New Leaf": Mr. Krabs tells his employees to keep their "eyes peeled". You can guess how SpongeBob interprets this.
    Mr. Krabs: Plankton's concocting another hair-brained scheme to steal me recipe. So keep your eyes peeled.
    SpongeBob: Whatever you say, cap'n. [literally peels his eyelids]
    Mr. Krabs: [impressed] Now that's an employee who follows orders.
  • Sandy finds Wormsign. Literally. It's a road sign with the word "Worm" written on it.
  • "The Bully": Mrs. Puff tells the class to "put on a happy face" for the new student. Cut to the class all wearing smiling masks.
  • "Something Smells": Patrick tells SpongeBob that he needs to "Get this thing off your chest" in order to feel better. Cut to a pulsating purple creature attached to SpongeBob's chest.
  • "Imitation Krabs": SpongeBob remarks that "As long as these pants are square, and this sponge is Bob, I will not let you down!" We then see him holding Mr. Krabs over his head and Mr. Krabs asks if he could please let him down.
  • "Krusty Krusher": The champion wrestlers put SpongeBob and Patrick in a sleeper hold, which involves rocking the two to sleep like babies.
  • "Sailor Mouth": Patrick imagines himself with 40 eyelashes after SpongeBob says that Mr. Krabs will give them "40 lashes".
  • "Sun Bleached": SpongeBob and Patrick tell Craig Mammleton they are putting on coats of sunscreen to stay protected from the sun, and the time comes to put on another coat. They literally make coats, as in outwear, out of sunscreen and put them on, along with a top hat and walking stick to match.
  • "Sportz?": SpongeBob and Patrick's idea of kickboxing involves them punching each other with boxing gloves on their feet.
  • "Sleepy Time": When SpongeBob disguises himself as a thumbtack and Plankton steps on him, causing himself to shrink back to his normal size, SpongeBob delivers the following line: "I think he's got the point!"
• Strawberry Shortcake: In the first episode of the 2003 series, Strawberry sees Angel Cake to get a birthday cake for Apple Dumplin. The second cake she offers is a sponge cake that she says is very moist. When she sets it down on the table, water gushes out of it.
• "Symphony in Slang" is about a just-deceased zoot-suited hipster arriving at the Pearly Gates and explaining to St. Peter his life story... largely in slang from The '50s, which Peter can't understand at all. St. Peter enlists Noah Webster to sort out the man's speech, but Webster is almost as clueless, and the action is displayed on screen as if these phrases were literally true. For example, to explain his brief stint as a short-order cook at an understaffed diner where he was fired for subpar performance, the hipster says he got a job slinging hash (he grabs handfuls of hash from a pile and throws them aside), as the boss was short-handed (his hands are directly attached to his shoulders), but he couldn't cut the mustard (he tries to cut a pool of mustard with a knife), so the boss gave him the gate (straight from a picket fence).
• Tangled: The Series:
  • "Cassandra's Revenge": In the climax of the song "Nothing Left to Lose", the camera rotates around Varian and Cass in the line "You can't stop the turning of the screws."
  • When Rapunzel is reciting the Hope Incantation to defeat Cassandra, we get an Extreme Close-Up of her eyes glowing gold when she says "Restore our fading sight."
• Teen Titans (2003) does one that crosses over with Curse Cut Short: Johnny Rancid is taunting Robin about his dog "kicking your a—", cut off when he's struck from off-screen by a pair of hooves. The camera angle reverses to reveal Beast Boy, who has turned into a donkey.
• Total Drama World Tour: The challenge in one episode involves carrying giant apples from the middle of a pond to shore. When Tyler has trouble doing this, Alejandro tells him to "use his head". Cue Tyler headbutting the apple across the pond.
• Trucktown: One of the characters, Max, is a literal monster truck with four eyes and an Overly-Long Tongue where none of the other Sentient Vehicle characters possess those traits.

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