Misused: Everythings Better With Cows

Everythings Better With Cows, according to its definition, is a trope about cows being gratuitously inserted in a work because they're funny or awesome. However, it follows the depreciated "Everything's Better With X" naming format and has issues with ZCEs and being used whenever a cow happens to be in a work. A wick check was performed to determine how the trope is used, and it shows the following usage patterns:

• 8/50 wicks (16%) had cows used for comedic effect
• 6/50 wicks (12%) had cows acting in an "awesome" manner
• 13/50 wicks (26%) were just "a cow is in this work"
• 19/50 wicks (38%) were Zero-Context Examples or potholes
• 2/50 wicks (4%) were straight-up misuse
• 2/50 wicks (4%) did not fit into any of the above categories

Given the trope's usage patterns and the fact that the page is trying to cover two concepts at once, I have a couple ideas for solutions:

• Rework to focus on "cows used for comedy"
• Create tropes for "cows used for comedy" and "cows are awesome", then disambiguate Everythings Better With Cows between them

Any other ideas?

Opening.

I think this can get the Everythings Better With Monkeys treatement and split into "cool cows" (including literal Sacred Cow) and "funny cows".

Are we sure that splitting off a Cool Cows trope won't result in decay like all the other Cool X tropes we have? I can see "cows as a comedic device" being tropeworthy, but unless the Cool Cows trope has a really awesome name, I can see it devolving back into chairs.

Well I did not propose Cool Cows as a name for exact that reason.

I don't know about having a cool cows trope but I definitely think we can retool this to be about funny cows

to at least a "funny cows" trope. It's definitely a thing—I can think of Chick-fil-A ads and maybe Ben & Jerry's ads already, and I'm also thinking of Earthworm Jim which had some cows inserted for humor.

On second thought, yeah, maybe simply retooling this into a trope about funny cows would be better.

Maybe something like Comical Cows or Comical Cattle.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 5th 2022 at 7:36:53 AM

I like Comical Cattle.

"Awesome" is too vague and may attract needless gushing. "Funny Cows" would be okay though.

Question: would Comical Cattle be applicable to funny cow characters, or just cows inserted for humor?

i'm probably in the minority here, but I genuinely don't get the point of a "cows but Played for Laughs" trope. Lots of things get Played for Laughs, technically anything can. What's the meaning being conveyed by that? If the answer is "depends on the joke" then I don't think there's a consistent enough pattern to trope. Otherwise we're essentially troping any time someone uses cows to make a joke.

Well, I guess cows can be seen as funny because they are perceived as sounding and acting funny, moreso than some other animals. Perhaps the mooing is seen as inherently funny, and I find the nonchalantness of cows in fiction to be a possible other source of comedy.

Breaking down my examples specifically:

• With Chick-fil-A, the cows are there not only because they are seen as funny on their own, but because the restaurant itself is a chicken fast food restaurant, and the cows are trying to promote chicken to avoid being turned into beef. Cows being inherently funny for the way they look and sound does play into it here, so I'll stick by this point.
• With Ben & Jerry's, the cows aren't really there so much as humor (although humor plays into it), but rather because B&J's is an ice cream company, and not only are cows dairy producers but B&J's (at least once) was very focused on being "natural" owing to their Vermont left-wing independent roots (even though Unilever now owns them) and the cows give an aesthetic of "natural" to the company. I'll concede here, as humor isn't the focus.
• In Earthworm Jim, the cows are there because they sound and look funny, hence the cows being in situations like being launched by the player or complimenting the player if they did a good job (I think, I've never played EJ 2.) Used for humor based on their appearance and sound.

So I'll concede on B&J's, but cows in general have specific attributes that I think are used for comedy—namely the mooing, strange appearance, and often nonchalant behavior.

I've also seen the presence of cows to be a humorous way of showing that a character is now in a farmland setting, particularly if that isn't the setting they are usually used to seeing. Can't name specific examples right now but I know I've seen it, I think in a commercial once. EDIT: Actually I kind of thought of one—in Cars Lightning McQueen is roped into "tractor tipping" by Mater and the tractors are obviously meant to be a stand-in for cows, with their behavior being mined for comedy in both that scene and in others. It fits because McQueen is a race car who is not used to the small-town nature of Radiator Springs and the cow-tractors help illustrate that.

I think there's something here, but if others determine there isn't I'll concede.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Apr 5th 2022 at 10:05:39 AM

The reason to have a trope about cows being Played for Laughs is the fact that cows are perceived as funny, like how we have Clucking Funny for a different kind of livestock that's perceived as funny.

But is that cow specific? Animal sounds being used for comedy is fairly common, especially if the point is to play off of a pun of sorts. That's why the Aflack duck exists, because Aflack vaguely sounds like a duck so the comedy comes from the similarity in sound. I imagine some of the jokes are similar: some word or phrase has a long "oooo" sound, which sounds like cows moo-ing, so you insert a cow.

In the first example you offered the cows are there because they're "inherently funny," (something I don't fully even understand since comedy is subjective: nothing is inherently comedic). The cows are there as part of a larger joke about one animal trying to upsell a food product made from a different animal to save itself from being eaten. It's Black Comedy. I don't know enough about Earthworm jim to say what's going on there.

to be clear, precedent is on your side given that we have Quacking Up, Clucking Funny, Everythings Better With Penguins, and Silly Simian, but I do question if all of these tropes are missing the point of being specific about what jokes writers are actually trying to make and the rhetorical tools they are using to do so, tropes being tools and all that.

Edited by amathieu13 on Apr 5th 2022 at 10:51:28 AM

You do make good points. I'll concede on my specific arguments.

I still support a "comedic cows" trope based on precedent unless we agree to abolish that precedent.

I think we might need a larger discussion about this. Maybe in Trope or Wiki Talk?

Maybe there's a supertrope here?

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Apr 5th 2022 at 10:29:51 AM

Maybe because "cow" is an Inherently Funny Word and cows have that kinda dumb look that's really easy to make fun of that makes "funny cows" more tropeworthy than "funny random animal X".

I recall an interview with Cyriak where he mentions this as a reason why he often use cows as a subject for his vids.

Edited by Adept on Apr 5th 2022 at 9:33:29 PM

I spent two minutes coming up with a name that involved "humoor" before giving up.

In any case yes to "funny cow", no to "awesome cow", yes to "disambig between 'funny cow' and Garnishing the Story". I agree with , cows are comedic because they're big, recognizable barn animals that look 'slow'. Like how Voltron: Legendary Defender introduced a pet cow for its cast of spacefarers for no reason except for the comedic value:

Edited by Synchronicity on Apr 5th 2022 at 11:25:02 AM

I still think it might be worth addressing amathieu's points about "animal used for humor" subtropes in a separate Trope or Wiki Talk thread. If everyone thinks it's fine though I won't push.

For the sake of this thread, To funny cows, to awesome cows.

More broadly, I agree with The "animal is funny" tropes are probably worth a trope talk thread at least.

My take on it is the same as the "animal morality" tropes — they are not tropeworthy by themselves and it's better to focus on the traits that make them frequently portrayed as good/evil (eg. Brutal Bird of Prey instead of 'evil bird of prey'), but if there's a biological, historical, or cultural reason that they are frequently portrayed as good/evil, then those may be workable.

Edited by Synchronicity on Apr 5th 2022 at 12:18:46 PM

Bovine Comedy?

Other than that, can't think of anything.

to "funny cow"

Cows being inherently funny is why Drop the Cow is called Drop the Cow. The trope isn't about cows, but Monty Python chose a cow.

I agree with the "funny cow" trope. We often do have tropes that are like "X, but Played for Laughs", like Right on Queue is essentially "waiting in line played for laughs".

As for the names, Comical Cows and Comical Cattle do sound like good names. For other name ideas, maybe Comedic Cow, Cows For Comedy, or Cows Are Funny.