Funny / Dilbert

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Comic strip

• The PHB's epic moment of revenge for his secretary's plotting: here.
  • Chalk up another for the PHB.
  • Honesty.
  • Another.
  • Fifth.
• Catbert.
  • "Two wrongs made a right."
• Speaking of Catbert, there's the entire story arc initially introducing Catbert to the strip. Special mention should be given to how, after an optimistic Ratbert randomly has Catbert leap on his head while he's on a midday walk (which Ratbert cheerily mistakes as "a hat blowing onto my head!"), Dogbert and Bob the Dinosaur try to save Ratbert... with "mixed" results.
  Dogbert: [to Bob] Bob, I'll yank the cat off of Ratbert's head and you stomp on it!
  [Dogbert quickly yanks Catbert off of Ratbert's head... and Bob then stomps on Ratbert]
  Dogbert: [while holding onto Catbert, looking sheepish] ...I could have phrased that better.
  Ratbert: [weakly, from off-panel] I'm not an optimist anymore.
• The "Dogbert Touchy-Feely Institute" teaches teamwork at the office:
  Dogbert: We'll start with an exercise about trust. I want each of you to sign blank checks and give them to me."
  Dilbert: (handing him the checks) What will this teach us about trust?
  Dogbert: It will teach you that trust is an excellent quality for other people to have.
• Future Wally: here.
  • Present Wally: here
  • Wally comparing himself to Gandhi.
• Alice also gets a few
• And of course, Dilbert
  • Another
• Carol
• In one story, Dilbert accidentally kills a CEO with an ear of corn and is sent to jail. The very tough-looking criminal looks at the skinny Dilbert and asks what he's in for. Dilbert responds with how he killed a man with an ear of corn... then looks over and says "Oh hey! Corn for lunch!", causing the toughened criminal to look legitimately scared.
  • A few strips before that, we see why Dilbert was having lunch with the senior executive in the first place:
    Boss: This is how executives show that they are regular people, just like you and me.
    (Cut to the lunch)
    Executive: I could squash you like a bug! HA HA HA!
• The elves and their weirdness and extreme failures to impress Dilbert and Dogbert.
  • The elves try to impress Dogbert with elf magic — the old Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat trick. Unfortunately, the rabbit turns out quite a bit tougher than they are. Nonetheless, they seriously think the Intimidation Demonstration went well until the rabbit forced one of them to eat a bug.
  • The elves present demands to Dilbert, who thinks it would be funny to flatten their pointy hats with a pancake turner. Cut to the next panel, where the flat-hatted elves are lamenting the low standards of humor.
  • Ratbert tries to infiltrate the elves and gives a crazy possibility for the Secret Handshake...which the elves nonetheless admit is a good guess.
• Dilbert's project is behind schedule because the vendor delivered defective equipment and the PHB says he should have chosen a more reliable vendor:
  Dilbert: You told me to use this vendor because the sales guy took you golfing and bought you a hat.
  PHB: Well, you should have seen that coming and burned down all hat factories a year ago.
• The PHB describes a customer satisfaction survey in which the focus group spontaneously went berserk and started stabbing the researchers with pencils. What's funny is that he actually considers this an improvement because last year the group's attack was premeditated.
• "IDEA SQUIRREL!"
• Using a microscope, Dilbert discovers a tiny, subatomic civilization, and is quite excited.
  Dilbert: Let me get you focused a bit better. *CRUNCH*
  • Cut to Dilbert sitting outside with his hands over his eyes.
  Dogbert: My favorite part was when you said, "I mean you no harm."
• This exchange:
  PHB: I've decided to move to a rolling forecast.
  Dilbert: So, the problem is that forecasts are worthless, and your solution is to do more of them?
  (Death Glare from the PHB)
  Dilbert: If my sarcasm is a problem, I can solve that by doing more of it.
• The boss tries to pitch in.
• The boss tries to improve communications.
• Dogbert suggests a new name for the company.
• Dilbert's sand-filled stressbuster backfires:
  PHB: You need a new kybard? What's a kybard?
  Dilbert: JUST SIGN THE STUPID THING!!!!
• "THEY LOVE ME!"
• In one series of strips, Dilbert briefly became CEO:
  Dilbert: (thinking) The employees respond to my merest gesture. This gesture means 'all is well.'
  (*Crash!*)
  Employee: We tossed Johnson out the window like you gestured, sir.
  Dilbert (thinking) Oops.
• A strip featuring Dogbert as a police negotiator contained Dogbert convincing a criminal to surrender. It's followed by the police (wielding donuts) opening fire. What really makes it funny is Adams' recollection of it. Apparently it originally involved the police being shown holding guns and opening fire, and then holding guns and with a single panel of just gun noises, but he was forced to change it both times. Not because it implied the police were shooting a surrendering suspect, but because it clearly showed firearms being fired.
• Wally is wearing noise cancellation headphones.
  Wally: What?
  PHB: I said, are you wearing noise cancellation headphones?!
  Wally: What?
  PHB: I SAID...
  Dilbert: This won't end well.
• The PHB makes Dilbert write a rebuttal to his own recommendation, and when Dilbert complains about this, the PHB makes him write himself up for insubordination. Later, Dilbert tells Dogbert about this and Dogbert replies, "Mock yourself and go to bed."
• This strip of Ratbert as an overpowered consultant, which Scott Adams pointed as an example of a strip with so many humorous elements that virtually everyone can find something to laugh about in it in The Joy of Work.
• Dilbert: "I wonder what would happen if you let [the Senators] talk as long as they wanted. I bet they'd starve to death... but there's probably a downside."
• "I cannot allow this withdrawal."
• Dogbert bluffs his way through a square dance call.
• Dogbert tells a hapless customer how to make a pie chart:
  Dogbert: Crush your computer into small chunks, add flour and bake one hour. While you're waiting, read the free novel we sent you. It's a Spanish story about a guy named "Manual." Repeat the process until you get the desired result.
  Customer (reading while baking): This lost a lot in the translation.
• The PHB hires a motivational speaker who used to be a famous athlete until drug and alcohol abuse ruined his life. The guy then drunkenly stumbles onstage and Alice has to point out that's not inspirational until he stops doing those things.
• An unintentional example where the joke is on Scott Adams: a strip where the joke is supposed to be that the black diversity hire identifies himself as white is an old worn-out bit when viewed online, but viewed monochrome in a newspaper there is no clue whatsoever that he's supposed to be dark skinned and it comes off as a completely different joke. The result is much funnier.

Animated Series

• In the series pilot, there's Dogbert tricking Dilbert into changing the temperature of his voice activated shower. First changing it to 14 (the age Dilbert rode a full bicycle) degrees, and then to 2001 degrees. When Dilbert gets out of the shower, he's beet red, and his towel catches fire.

  Dogbert: On the plus side, you look very clean.

  • Speaking of the pilot, there's the very first exchange with the PHB.
    PHB: Well, there's no sense in killing a dead horse.
    Dilbert: ...You mean there's no sense in beating a dead horse.
    PHB: [rolls his eyes] ...Why would anyone beat a dead horse?
    Dilbert: Why would anyone kill a dead horse?
    PHB: Maybe it'll kick ya!
    Dilbert: [aghast] It's dead!
    PHB: And so is every customer who used our flagship product!
  • When discussing why the name shouldn't be the first step to make a product:
    Dilbert: How do you know what to make if you only have a title? Do you think the guy who invented the mousepad started with the name?! What's a mousepad??!
    Wally [whispering to Alice] Heh, feminine protection for mice!
    [Alice promptly smacks Wally in the face with a book]
  • The episode revolves around Dilbert trying to avoid the Curse of The Chicken Man, a bizarre transformation that befalls engineers stuck in charge of dead-end projects where they slowly begin acting like a giant chicken out of frustration, such as ranting that sounds like clucking, waving their arms around like wings, etc. This apparently befell a former employee named Jack Cooper who also got stuck with an unnamed project.
    Dilbert: What happened to him?
    Wally: I think he's with the circus.
  • After one aimless meeting, Dilbert finally puts his foot down and picks the name "Acorn" for the product, but actually securing it turns out to be a challenge of it's own, as the name is trademarked by a small laundromat that refuses to sell it (and owned by a couple that enjoys acting like a French Jerk because being rude sounds better in French). After finally buying it (thanks to Dogbert causing a Disaster Dominoes effect that burns down the laundromat) and putting together an elaborate pitch, including a guy in an acorn costume, the executive they're pitching it to goes off on a tangent right before the pitch starts, and reveals that his humiliating childhood nickname was Acorn, much to the horror of everyone at the meeting. They quickly have to destroy all the props and pitch material they brought with them.
  • Oh, and the laundromat owners? They were the guy's parents!
• In "Little People", Dilbert, Wally, and Alice get to a vendor meeting before everyone else, only to find that all of the food had already been eaten. When the other employees arrive and begin accusing them, Alice tells one of the accusers to look at something on a nearby table; when he does, she slams his face into it. Later on, Alice threatens to get HR involved when Wally starts annoying her by excitedly reading a porn mag the Little People left behind.
  Dilbert: ...You beat a man senseless.
  Alice: [dismissively] Eh, he was senseless before I beat him.
  • At the end of the episode, Dilbert tries to help the Little People, but ends up getting so annoyed by their constant partying that he has Dogbert round them up and sell them as limited edition toys.
• Wally's bit of Insane Troll Logic here:
  Dilbert: How about we use the money to give raises to those who worked hard to make this bonus possible?
  Wally: That would discriminate against those of us who didn't work as hard.
  Alice: If we started rewarding lazy people like you, the whole system would fail.
  Wally: [crosses his arms] Oh, that's the same argument they used to deny women the right to vote!
  Alice: [annoyed] Are you comparing your laziness to the Woman's Suffrage Movement?
  Wally: There are many similarities.
  Alice: [aghast] Name one!
  Wally: Women weren't allowed to vote, and I'm too lazy to vote. In both cases, there's taxation without representation.
  Alice: That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
  Wally: [curt] Bigot.
• When signing for Dilbert's new computer, PHB signs for it with the name "Eunice" and says its an alias he uses for line-dancing. When the delivery guy mentions that you don't need an alias to go line dancing, the PHB replies, "You do when you kick as hard as I do"
  • Later in that same episode, we see one of the people PHB used to line-dance with under the Eunice alias. He's in a wheelchair, and reminisces about when Eunice showed up wearing steel toed boots.
  • In the same episode, we also find out he regularly commits postal fraud by using the names "Jim Smith" and "Bob Johnson" at the post office. And completely unintentionally at that, he's under the impression that the names are some sort of secret code word, and the postal workers never bother asking for ID!
  • Dilbert's duel against Comp-U-Comp, which consists of three challenges; chess (which Comp-U-Comp wins by predicting every single move Dilbert could possibly make before the board is even set up), Scrabble, and surprisingly enough, Badminton. Even more surprising, the badminton match is very even... until Alice points out that the only reason it's an even match is because Dilbert keeps hitting the shuttlecock so hard it keeps bouncing back to him from the completely inanimate (and limbless) Comp-U-Comp. Dilbert ends up bouncing a light hit, winning the match, and Comp-U-Comp whines about a leg injury. The fact that he's voiced by Jerry Seinfeld makes it even funnier.
    Comp-U-Comp: I hurt my leg! OW OW!!
    Dilbert: You don't have a leg! Tie score!
  • All of this becomes a Brick Joke at the end of the episode, after Dilbert and Dogbert defeats Comp-U-Comp. The company ends up being taken over by Dilbert's company, and the PHB is named CEO.
    Reporter: A new CEO was named, Bob Johnson! *a photo of the PHB is shown on the screen* Also known as "Jim Smith", also known as "Eunice". In an unexpected move, he vowed to "loot the assets of the company", and, I quote, "skedaddle!"
• The PHB playing chess against a pineapple... and losing.
  PHB: STUPID FRUIT! ...best 3 out of 5?
• Pretty much everything Loud Howard says.
  • invoked His first appearance immediately guaranteed him Ensemble Dark Horse status: "I HEARD A RUMOR!" Everyone shushes him and he apologizes, then continues even louder, "I HEARD A RUMOR!!"
  • "SOMETIMES I JUST FIND STUFF AFTER I TALK." (Mitten falls from the ceiling)
    • (puts mitten on) "Ooh!"
  • "I'm afraid of tiny people! They can run in your mouth!" (Confused looks from everyone at the table) "Am I the only one worried about that?!"
  • "I'd like to be treated like a human being just once!" (Wally gives Loud Howard a dog biscuit, which he promptly eats)
  • When Dilbert hires Dogbert as a consultant for a project that they're working on in the first episode:
    Loud Howard: HE DOESN'T LOOK LIKE ANY CONSULTANT I'VE EVER SEEN!
    Dogbert: [starts writing on a clipboard] "Recommendation... downsize the loud guy."
    Loud Howard: UHHHHHHH, I TAKE IT BACK!
    Dogbert: [leans forward threateningly] Anyone else wanna piece of me?!
  • PHB off-offhandedly mentions Howard's inability to keep a secret. Howard: "WHY DO YOU SAY THINGS YOU KNOW WILL HURT ME?" Keep in mind he said this while his mouth was gagged, showing exactly how useful doing such a thing to him is.
  • In the Sick Episode, a miserable Loud Howard reveals that he's lost his voice... and gets a standing ovation due to this.
  • "PLEASE DON'T DATE ME! I PROMISE I'LL WORK HARDER!"
  • "YOU'VE RUINED SEX FOR ME! FOREVER!"
• The celebrity judge for Dilbert's parental trial turns out to be "Stone Cold" Steve Austin.
• Wally actually manages to be worse in the cartoon than he ever was in the comic strip. Among his schemes to do as much slacking as possible: going to interviews at other companies for the sole purpose of exploiting their desperation for experienced engineers during the dot com boom, exploiting the chaos caused by an impending merger and fear of layoffs from the HR department, and somehow always managing to avoid disciplinary action by appearing busy just as the Boss walks by.
• Wally is apparently under the impression that you can transfer sick days between employees, as it's revealed in one episode he's been saving up his own sick days and trading others for theirs for years until he has enough to retire early. Of course, everyone else knows that not only can't you trade, but sick days don't accumulate, they expire at the end of each year, and are just using Wally to steal office supplies for them, as this is easier than ordering through the catalogue. He eventually finds this out after having mutated into a human-fly hybrid due to the incredibly unsanitary conditions of the office, and immediately begins twitching like a dying fly.
  • Hell, all of the mutations in this episode qualify. Most of the employees end up with various mutations, such as Asok's head swelling up three times its size when he sneezes at one point, another man transforming into a hunchback and Alice's cold getting so bad it apparently turns into multiple sclerosis, as she eventually loses all muscle control and is confined to an electric wheelchair.
    • From the same episode, it turns out Wally is literally covered in insect fecal matter. Apparently flies just like him. By the end of the episode, he has danger signs all over him.
  • The building itself, which is diagnosed as literally dying of sick building syndrome. As in, they have it hooked up to an ECG and an IV drip, and its heart stops and they have to use a truck-sized defibrillator.
• When Dilbert goes to the Big Mall to find his father, the PHB is at the cineplex there, having used Moviefone to try and check his stocks. While there, he does everything you're not supposed to do — switch between movies, jabber during the movie, and spoil movie endings for people in line, resulting in a horde of ushers chasing him.
• Dogbert's financial discussion show, which includes three stock advisors and a bear from the circus. The results are predictable.
  Dogbert: No, I don't think faces grow back.
• The Pointy-Haired Boss's Brutal Honesty:
  PHB: This is very hard for me to say...well, actually it's not: you're fired. Clean out your desk and leave.
• From The Dupey:
  Dilbert: Do you know where the landfill is?
  Garbageman [Deadpan]: This might seem odd to you, but I do. Get in.
• In '"Charity"', the PHB chooses the company's "charity co-ordinators" (i.e people to walk around begging for donations) from a pool of their most useless employees.
  PHB: Wally
  Wally: Hey, top of the list four years in a row! Woo-woo!
  PHB: A dead guy we found in the stairwell, and the chair he's sitting in, which we've named Ronald!
  Wally: Hmm, tough competition.
  • The other charitable causes, which include organizations such as "Farmers Who Are Afraid of Cows", "Women Who Cut their Hair too Short and Don't Realize How Bad it Looks" and "Mountain Goats With Three Legs". That last one is just hiding its fourth leg behind its back though.
  Dilbert: Why don't they just change jobs?
  Farmer: How's a cow gonna change jobs, silly boy? Use your head!
  • The ex-pro basketball player who had his life turned around by the charity group after he got hooked on drugs.
  Player: I was a star, life was good, until I turned to drugs and alcohol. Actually, that was pretty good too, I love drugs and alcohol!
• Testing features Dogbert in space trying to fire a satellite laser to destroy an asteroid being aimed at Dilbert's prototype Gruntmaster 6000. Only beforehand, he misses and hits a person undergoing laser eye surgery.
  Doctor: You won't even feel the laser on your cornea.
  (space laser blasts the patient into nothing more than a smoldering skeleton)
  Doctor: Now that is embarrassing.
  • Even better is moments later when Dogbert finally hits the asteroid, causing it to break into several pieces. We cut back to the very same eye surgeon, talking to the patient's wife while her husband's still smoldering skeleton is barely perched on a wheelchair, wrapped in bandages.
  Doctor: When you take the bandages off, don't rip them off. Or he'll turn into a charred skeleton.
  (asteroid fragment immediately crushes said skeleton)
  Doctor: Someday, I'll look back at this and laugh.
  • Dilbert originally created the laser to help him make a perfect glass of peach-flavored drink mix.
• The Dupey revolves around a new fad toy called The Dupey, in the style of other 90's fads such as the Furby or the Tamagotchi. For some reason, implied to be to drive up market demand, it's marketed long before the product actually exists! Naturally, Dilbert ends up being roped into designing the thing, which ends up looking like an adorable ball of fluff with arms and legs. Loud Howard faints at the sight.
  • When Dilbert first brings the Dupey home, Ratbert has a breakdown because he's not the cutest person in the family anymore.
  • Being Dilbert, turns out he's actually created a sentient artificial lifeform by accident, and it's still in its infant stage, meaning it cries at night looking for attention like a human baby. The next morning, he tries explaining the problem to the Boss.
  PHB: Sounds familiar. I remember when I'd be trying to sleep, and the little tykes would be crying all night in the next room, hehe...
  Dilbert: How'd you stop them?
  PHB: Didn't have to! Turns out I was in the wrong house!
  • The Cold Open where Dilbert runs into Wally at a fast-food restaurant during lunch - turns out Wally doesn't eat there, he just enjoys abusing the employees. And apparently so does everyone else, judging by one customer in the background smacking a cashier with her to-go bag. While normally, Dilbert is too moral to do something like that, even he indulges in it when the guy at the register annoys him enough.
• Hunger:
  • Dilbert creates a revolutionary new food product called the "To-Meat-O", a hybrid meat/tomato plant that can grow virtually anywhere and contain all the nutrients needed for adult humans. Problem is, it tastes like crap, and is rejected by almost everyone. In fact, it creates more problems than it solves - Elbonia is plunged into an actual famine after the introduction of the Tomeato saps all the nutrients from their edible mud, and eventually turns the whole country into a belligerent nuclear nation using the Tomeato as a weapon, due to the inherent fertilizer they contain making them explosive without refridgeration.
  • The overwhelmingly negative reception the Tomeato gets from Dilbert's co-workers.
  Alice: It's so uneappealing, it's hard to know what to criticize first! It's like Wally, but small enough to flush down the toilet.
  Wally: Thank god for my oversized head...
  • When the Marketing Guy points out that the Tomeato will put the company out of business, the Pointy-Haired Boss turns out to have a cheat sheet written on his hand to remind him that staying in business is good, and going out of business is bad.
  • Dilbert has an Elbonian child he donates money to through charity that not only turns out to be a very short adult (as all Elbonians have beards from birth, making it hard to tell the difference), he's actually the richest man in the country thanks to scamming millions of other westerners like Dilbert.
  • Dilmom's cooking show that helps clean up the mess Dilbert caused (with a bit of Scott Addams's outspoken vegetarianism slipping through) - pointing out that the Tomeato isn't a vegetable, it's a combination of meat and tomato, which is a fruit, not a vegetable, so it has to be "thoroughly disguised before anyone would want to eat it", which she achieves by roasting it black and covering it in ketchup.
• Y2K
  • Dilbert is stuck trying to fix the company's Y2K problem with just Alice, Wally, Loud Howard, Ashok, and a trio of redundant employees (Ted the generic guy, The Useless Guy, and Zimbu The Monkey). The group is Off to See the Wizard, in this case Catbert, who, in an uncharacteristically helpful mood, gives the group the advice they need to overcome their shortcomings.
  • Wally, who programmed the company mainframe back in the 1970's when he was a young and idealistic engineer, needs to recover the memories of his past. Catbert tells him that false memories are almost as good, and gives Dogbert several books on hypnosis therapy.
  Dogbert: You don't have these on video, do you?
  • Alice needs more time due to her busy schedule. Catbert tells her she needs to stop wasting time on her hair and makeup every day (because it's a lost cause), and put that time to better use.
  • Ashok, being much younger than the others, needs more experience ("I am a blank slate!"), only for Catbert to tell him that cynicism is basically the same thing.
  Catbert: Just assume the worst about everyone, and you'll usually be right.
  Ashok: I feel wiser already!