"Why, you little…!"
One character gets on another character's nerves. The other character gets so agitated in fact, that they actually start strangling them for it. Normally, doing such a thing would be horrible and disheartening, but in this scenario, the strangling is very much played for laughs.
More often than not, the strangling in this scenario doesn't actually have any ill consequences. In the event that it does though, said consequences are also made to be comedic. This is often combined with a Neck Lift, especially when the strangler significantly outweighs the stranglee.
Sometimes used simultaneously with Minion Maracas. May overlap with Comedic Sociopathy or Hilariously Abusive Childhood. Contrast Sinister Suffocation.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Kirby: Right Back at Ya!: The show has a slight Running Gag of King Dedede strangling his underling, Escargoon. Dedede does this in "The Thing About the Ring", "A Novel Approach", "Prediction Predicament - Part I", "Pink-Collar Blues", "Snack Attack - Part I", and "Waddle While You Work".
Comic Books
- The Avengers: A one-shot story done in the art style of The Simpsons ends with Thor, who has been rendered bald thanks to Loki deciding to prank everyone, strangling his brother while remarking "why thou little-!"
- Bone: At the end of the first book, Phoney and Fone Bone reunite. Fone Bone happily runs up to Phoney, only to start strangling him as Phoney gets comically big eyes and his tongue hangs out.
- Futurama: Directly references The Simpsons when the Professor reveals thanks to trouble with the IRS he has to pay back several trillion dollars, and has "oodles" of time to do it. Or a whole week. At which point Fry snaps.
Fry: A week? Why, you little-!
Professor: Oh - my - no!
Leela: Okay, Fry has the right idea, but as usual his mind is somewhere "special".
Fan Works
- Three Sheets to the Wind: After Weiss was crushed by a Boarbatusk, Nurse Tsune has to keep increasing her dosage of painkillers to settle her down because she kept trying to strangle Jaune with her own I.V. tube after he visited her.
Films — Animated
- Aladdin (1992, Disney): When Jafar is laughing, Iago tells him to "get a grip". Jafar grabs Iago by the throat and Iago chokes out, "Good grip!".
- Kronk's New Groove: When Kronk is having a crisis over swindling his elderly friends out of their homes, his angel and devil argue over whether or not he did. Kronk ultimately accepts that he did when he starts choking his devil for claiming he didn’t.
- The Nightmare Before Christmas: After Lock, Shock, and Barrel realize that they've kidnapped the Easter Bunny instead of Santa Claus, Shock briefly starts strangling Lock while scolding him for his incompetence, which he is entirely unharmed by.
- The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie: When King Neptune gives SpongeBob ten days to find his crown, Patrick pops in and boasts that SpongeBob could do it in less time, causing the time limit to drop to six days. Patrick would have made it even lower if Mr. Krabs didn't start strangling him to keep him quiet.
- Tom and Jerry: The Fast and the Furry has this as a minor Running Gag between the race commentators, as one is constantly grabbing the other's binoculars without caring about whether the strap's off his neck first.
Films — Live-Action
- In Making Whoopee, a Laurel and Hardy picture, Stan and Ollie are working as doormen/footmen at a hotel, and Laurel makes the mistake of blowing a whistle Ollie was given earlier. As happened earlier in the film, a cabbie shows up in response to the whistling, only to find he doesn't have anybody to pick up, whereupon he accuses Ollie of blowing the whistle again just to waste his time calling him over, and he starts pulling off Ollie's coat buttons. Stan, unhappy at the way his friend's being treated, calls a policeman over (a policeman who earlier threatened Ollie into giving Stan back the tip he stole from him), and the policeman walks in front of Ollie. Not noticing this, the cabbie keeps pulling off buttons, only to realize who he's doing this to, and duck and run the moment the policeman's hands come for his throat, so the policeman ends up strangling Stan for a few seconds before realizing his mistake and running after the cabbie. All of this is Played for Laughs.
- Young Frankenstein:
- Frederick turns around and strangles his Frankenstein's Monster, whom he has seemingly failed to bring to life, after promising to take the failure with "quiet dignity and grace". Even funnier, Inga cries out, "STOP! YOU'LL KILL HIM!" despite the fact that he's seemingly still dead.
- The Monster starts strangling Frederick when he is startled by fire. Frederick, unable to speak, has to play charades with Inga and Igor to get them to give the Monster the sedative.
- When Frederick realizes Igor gave him an "Abby Normal" brain to put in the Monster, he strangles Igor so hard he bounces off the floor.
Live-Action TV
- Cheers: Played for extremely dark laughs in the season 5 premier when Frasier tells Sam any man who's gone through the sheer insanity he's been in with Diane would entertain murderous thoughts, and starts digressing into his own increasingly unhinged train of though suggesting the doc (who Diane left at the altar) has been thinking about it way too much, before he snaps back to cheerfulness. "And I'm a respected psychiatrist!" Later on in the episode, an oblivious Diane asks Frasier for a massage, and he nearly snaps there. As Diane leaves to try and woo Sam again, Frasier just darkly mutters he should've taken the chance.
- The Drew Carey Show: Drew and Mimi both do this to each other at the same time at one point during the "Five O'Clock World" dance number/show opening theme.
- Fawlty Towers: In "The Wedding Party", Manuel keeps trying to read a prepared speech to Basil, which Basil refuses to listen to. When Manuel is drunk and on top of Basil who is lying on the floor, he tries to recite his speech again, and Basil reaches up and tries to strangle him.
- La familia P. Luche: Being subjected to verbal and physical abuse, Ludovico is occasionally the victim of this.
- In "El funeral de Ludovico," Federica strangles him at his fake funeral for blowing his cover and screwing his family out of ending her credit card debts.
- The episode "La primera vez de Ludoviquito" ends with Don Camerino attempting to strangle Ludovico (whom he beat up in retaliation for wrongly accusing him of corrupting minors) at his niece's birthday party when Ludoviquito gave her a teddy bear stuffed inside an inflated condom.
- Married... with Children:
- In "The Gas Station Show," the family is struggling to push the seemingly broken-down Dodge to a gas station while Kelly is behind the wheel. When she admits that the car was actually in park all along, an infuriated Al puts his hands on her throat and chokes her as Peg and Bud try to pull him off. He then stops and calms down, only to resume strangling her.
- In "Desperately Seeking Miss October", when Al learns that Peg sold his lifetime collection of Playboys to purchase a statuette of an ostensibly luck-bringing Panamanian god named Tubro, Al asks the hold it and then begins to strangle it to her annoyance.
- Discussed in "Who'll Stop The Rain". When Peg complains that Al, who was trying to fix a leaky roof, knocked down the satellite dish when he fell off of it, he states that since neither any live wire nor her neck were available, he instinctively had to grab the first thing he could to break his fall.
- Scrubs: J.D. is jealous of a fellow intern and has an Imagine Spot of choking him. Despite his jealousy, even J.D. has to admit he's such a Nice Guy, that in his imagination, the other intern is giving him pointers on how to choke him better.
Puppet Shows
- Dinosaurs: In "License to Parent", Earl loses his parenting license after getting three citations (yelling at Baby, cursing in front of him, and eating his cupcake) and is sentenced to a parenting test. He hopes to be able to pass it in order to get his license renewed. In the first test, he tries to tolerate Baby's behavior when he pretends to have his milk spilled, but when Baby tosses his milk carton at him, Earl loses his temper and strangles Baby. Baby isn't fazed because he knows that this infraction will cause Earl to fail his test.
Theater
- Aladdin (2011): At the beginning, Iago states how unsurprising it is the third peasant they sent into the Cave of Wonders was not worthy of entering. Jafar responds by choking him to shut him up.
Iago: Choking... The bird is choking...
Video Games
Web Animation
- 13 Cards: In Clones Order Pizza, Kuromaku strangles Waru for throwing a pillow at him while Spade cheers him on.
- The Amazing Digital Circus: In the pilot, Zooble chokes out Jax after the latter uses their detachable hand as a backscratcher without permission.
- Monkey Wrench: When the crew is hurdling toward a sun doing a job for Scratch, Shrike begins to take his anger out by choking Scratch. He continues to do this even after they are saved by Us.
Web Video
- Foxitron Prime
: A Running Gag in his Transformers: Animated Reaction Video series is Ratchet strangling Bumblebee, usually due to Bumblebee making a crack about him being old. Doubles as a Shout-Out to the The Simpsons due to Ratchet usually prefacing his strangling by saying "Why, you little...".
Western Animation
- In American Dad!, "Naked to the Limit, One More Time" has Stan reprimand Roger for wandering around the house without a disguise when Jeff is living with the Smiths, warning him that he will have to kill him to protect the family. When Roger calls his "bluff", Stan casually chokes him to death... and resuscitates him immediately after.
Roger: YOU'RE MEAN!
Stan: And you're a pain in my ass! Now, go put on an outfit!
Roger: MEAN! - Courage the Cowardly Dog: Downplayed. There are times when Eustace strangles Courage to show his hatred toward him. The humor comes not from Eustace strangling Courage though, but rather the karma he faces for doing so.
- The Simpsons is essentially the Trope Codifier if not the Trope Maker. Homer frequently strangles Bart as part of an ongoing Running Gag, often when Bart heavily agitates Homer. For the most part, Bart comes out alright, and occasionally gets the opportunity to strangle Homer back. This gets deconstructed in the episode, "Love Is A Many Strangled Thing", where Homer goes to a parenting counselor who's utterly horrified to find out that strangulation is his go to disciplinary practice. Eventually a drastic practice to break Homer of the habit is having Kareem Abdul-Jabbar dress as Homer and strangle him whenever he tries to strangle Bart, with the consequence of making Homer too fearful to discipline Bart at all because now he's conditioned to imagine Kareem strangling him whenever he tries.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: Near the end of the episode "Can You Spare A Dime?", SpongeBob bursts into Mr. Krabs' office and demands he rehire Squidward. When Krabs refuses because he still thinks Squidward stole his first dime, the normally cheerful SpongeBob picks him up by the throat and starts shaking him, ranting about how Squidward has been an entitled freeloader towards him for months.
- Timon & Pumbaa: Pumbaa suffers a lot of slapstick during Timon's cover of "Stand By Me". Among these is getting strangled by a Creature from the Black Lagoon-like monster.