"Upon discovering that Miles Black, the famous phrenologist from Yorkshire, was going to take up yodeling to lonely goats in Bali, James White decided to balance four planks of wood on a beer keg and call it an abstract work of art in the style of a famous fourteenth-century architect, just going to prove that people will read any old garbage if they think there will be a good pun at the end of it."
— The Grand Panjandrum's Special Award for Vile Puns, The 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
A short-short story (300 words on the average), ending in a pun or a punchline that is the sole reason for the story's existence. The telling detail in a Feghoot is the groan emitted by readers/listeners when they hit the PUNchline. In essence, a Feghoot is an Overly Pre-Prepared Gag in short story form.
Named for the character Ferdinand Feghoot, created by Science Fiction author Reginald Bretnor using the pen name Grendel Briarton. Bretnor chronicled Feghoot's adventures in the multi-year series "Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot!", in which each installment was a short-short that ended in a horrific pun.
Compare with "Shaggy Dog" Story. A form of Overly Pre-Prepared Gag. See also Collective Groan, which will certainly result if the Feghoot is told well.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Comedy
- The Longest Joke in the World, a story of almost 11,000 words, also known by its punchline of "Better Nate Than Lever".
- So a big brown bear goes into a bar to order a beer...
note
- The Rarey Bird.note
- One joke builds up a convoluted setting on the island of the Trids. The short version is that a hostile giant lives on a mountain in the middle of the island and has a habit of punting Trids to their doom when they try to climb the mountain. Thus, the Trids decide to send a visiting rabbi to negotiate with the giant. Upon reaching the mountaintop, the rabbi encounters the giant and asks "Why Isn't It Attacking?" The giant responds: "Silly rabbi, kicks are for Trids!"
- There's a whole joke sub-genre or meme in Finnish based around Susikoira* Roi, a Heroic Dog character. The point is always to tell a story that can end with a sentence something like "Few can [description of action ending with a verb ending with "-roi"] like [adverbial] [descriptive noun]-Roi," where the first part of the sentence is a spoonerism of the first. Naturally, these are untranslatable.
For example: A story about how Roi becomes a famous movie star but later falls into disgrace due to his womanising ways and catching venereal diseases, but regains everyone's approval by saving the boat he's on by guiding it through fog raised by the waters being so hot by homing in on the smell of the lady dogs in their destination, prompting the comment:"Few can captain in hot weather like syphilis-Roi in heat."
or "Harva kuumassa kipparoi niin kuin kiimassa kuppa-Roi." - Dennis Weaver and Hugh Hefner met at Mick Jagger's home for a game of poker. Mick was running late so Dennis and Hugh started playing on their own. As the game progressed, tensions grew as Hefner thought Dennis was cheating. The tensions grew so great that the two started fighting. They tussled on the floor when Mick entered, seeing Hugh sitting on top of Dennis. Mick simply said "Hey, Hugh... get off McCloud!"
- A New Yorker named Kevin worked for the Central Park Zoo, the Bronx Zoo, and the Prospect Park Zoo. He caught strange and exotic animals for these zoos. The day after he officially retired, Kevin got a call from the Central Park Zoo. "We know you retired yesterday," they said, "but we need to send you to Africa to fetch us a short-necked giraffe!" When Kevin arrived in Africa, whom should he see but Tarzan, the legendary king of the apes. He was painting black stripes on a white zebra. "Do you know where there are any short-necked giraffes?" asked Kevin. Tarzan pointed to his left, and there was a whole herd of short-necked giraffes. Three days later, Kevin got a call from the Bronx Zoo. "We know you retired four days ago," they said, "but we need to send you to Africa to fetch us a hornless rhino!" When Kevin arrived in Africa, whom should he see but Tarzan, painting white stripes on a black zebra. "Do you know where there are any hornless rhinos?" asked Kevin. Tarzan pointed straight ahead, and there was a whole herd of hornless rhinos. Three days later, Kevin got a call from the Prospect Park Zoo. "We know you retired seven days ago," they said, "but we need to send you to Africa to fetch us a trunkless elephant!" When Kevin arrived in Africa, whom should he see but Tarzan, painting black and white stripes on a transparent zebra. "Do you know where there are any trunkless elephants?" asked Kevin. Tarzan pointed to his right, and there was a whole herd of trunkless elephants. Three days later, Kevin cut his phone line and never got any calls from any zoos again. And the moral of the story is, Tarzan stripes forever.
- One joke concerns a man named Steve searching for his friend Bob, who went to Africa to market a soda called Fresca. As he travels through Africa, Steve encounters all manner of locals, missionaries, explorers, etc., drinking Fresca with any food they gather or catch. They all learned from Bob that whatever they're eating "tastes good with Fresca." Eventually, Steve runs across a Cannibal Tribe who ate Bob after buying a bunch of Fresca from him. As the leader explains, "Bob tastes good with Fresca." Horrified, Steve inquires about what exactly the cannibals ate from Bob's body: "You mean you ate his eyes? His legs? His heart?" And so on. The leader explains that yes, all those body parts taste good with Fresca too. Finally:
Steve: Uh... wait a minute. Wait one minute. You don't mean to tell me you — you ate his — you know, his, uh, thing?
Leader: Yes.
Steve: ...You ate his thing with Fresca?
Leader: No.
Steve: Huh? But I thought...
Leader: Things go better with Coke. (Note: for younger readers, that was an advertising jingle for Coca-Cola in the 1960s.) - This is a joke that will only make sense to British people of a certain age: A man walks into a seafood restaurant. He goes over to the tank to pick what to eat and asks to have a small light green squid with a tiny moustache. The waiter calls for the cook, Gervais, to grab the squid, kill it and cook it. Gervais takes the squid into the kitchen, grabs a big cleaver, and is about to kill the poor creature when he sees that its eyes are filled with tears of fear. Pitying the poor animal, he goes back to the waiter and says he can't do it. The waiter nods and tells Hans the dishwasher to do it instead. So Hans takes the poor squid, grabs the cleaver, and is about to bring it down, when he too looks at the squid's sad, frightened eyes, and he, too, cannot bring himself to kill the squid. Defeated, the waiter goes back to the customer and says "Well, it just goes to show... Hans that does dishes can be as soft as Gervais, with mild green hairy lip squid!"
- There's an (in)famous Spanish-language joke with a long setup involving a circus coming to a remote town with an act called "EL PAN QUE HABLA" (the bread that talks). The isolated villagers sell out the circus week after week, with lines around the block to see the legendary bread. It all culminates when the ringmaster brings out a slice of bread on a plate with a glass of water. He asks a volunteer to try the bread after pouring the water on it, and asks if it's hard or soft. for non-Spanish speakers, the joke is that the volunteer's response of "it's soft ("está blando") sounds almost identical to "it's talking" ("está hablando").
- The London Philharmonic was performing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Berlin. There's a long section of the piece where the bass violins have nothing to do, so one of the bassists suggests they go to the local pub across the street. But one of the bassists says, "But what happens if it's our turn to play." The bassist who suggested it says, "Don't worry. I tied the conductor's score pages together to give us some extra time to sit back down." While they are there, they strike up a conversation with another patron, who himself turns out to be a very famous Count from a nearby province who also happened to be both a Beethoven enthusiast and a bass violin enthusiast. In fact, he was in town as a VIP to watch the Philharmonic's performance and was going to meet with the conductor for dinner after the concert to discuss possibly hosting a second concert at his castle. One thing soon leads to another and after a few hours, bassists are totally wasted, with the Count himself, having had his fill of drinks, commenting that he would have to postpone the dinner with the conductor. This, of course, reminds the bassists that they have a Ninth Symphony to return to, and they stumble back to the concert hall and into their seats. The conductor, who is currently struggling with untying the pages while still keeping the orchestra in time, glares daggers at them as they sit down. One of the trumpeters says, "Boy, that conductor looks pissed." The other trumpeter says, "Well, what do you expect? It's the bottom of the Ninth, the score is tied, the bassists are loaded, and the Count is full!"
- There was once a legendary Viking known as Rudolf the Red. His story started out rather humble, coming from a small clan that focused more on surviving the harsh winters of the North than doing much raiding of their fellow clans, but the one thing they did have was what essentially amounted to the world's earliest form of a meteorologist, a "shaman" who could predict the weather to almost the minute that it would arrive; they used this to their advantage, being able to tell when it was safe for their hunters to go out for food, and when they should take cover from any nasty storms blowing their way. Eventually, they prospered and grew, moving south into (slightly) more temperate climes so they could begin actually acting like Vikings, staging raids along the Eastern English Coast. Rudolf, once an apprentice of the Shaman, soon learned his trade, and used this knowledge himself during his raids, watching the weather patterns—particularly the rain, since the North Sea had a habit of brewing up some truly violent storms to go with it—and would then lead his raiding parties to attack just before and after the rain, knowing that the English villagers and most town guards would be taking cover in their houses, and therefore at their most vulnerable. This method made Rudolf the Red's clan—and by extension Rudolf himself—very rich and famous among other Viking clans, and they earned the nickname "rain-speakers", in honor of their favorite time to strike. Eventually, old Rudolf's axe-arm wasn't what it used to be, and at the urging of his wife, he finally decided to retire, but he never lost his eye for the weather, continuing his studies into meteorological phenomena as a sort of a hobby. One day, he and his wife were sitting at their hut, Rudolf watching the skies as intently as ever. His wife, whom had never much attention to his interests (what with having to take care of the village while he was out a-Viking), looked at him and asked what he was doing. Rudolf, without looking away, said "It's going to rain." This, of course, confused his wife even more, so she asked how he knew, to which Rudolf replied, "Because Rudolf the Red knows rain, dear."
- Nearly the same punchine is used in a simiar joke involving Olph the impolite Communist. Rude Olph the Red knows rain, dear.
- A father and his son arrive at the airport, intending to fly to Kansas to meet some relatives for the holidays. While the trip has gone well so far, the young son, who was fascinated with airplanes and airports, kept getting distracted and wandering off, much to the dismay of his dad, who is always the one who has to go track him down to see where he ended up. First time he was in the bathroom, the second time was at the airport store, and the third time, the poor kid had made it all the way to the TSA security station before the boy was finally caught up to. Fed up, the dad threatened, "If you wander away one more time, I'm checking you with the luggage and you can fly to Kansas with the suitcases!" Sure enough, however, the boy could not contain his wanderlust and left his parent's side once again. The father, once again, tracked him down and scooped him up, taking him directly to the baggage check-in. As he approached the check-in desk, he got the attention of the lady behind it. "Hey, I need to check this little hellion into baggage. Can you help me out?" The lady took one look at the now crying toddler and then to the dad, shooting him a skeptical look. "I'm sorry sir, we can't check people into baggage. They'll have to come with you in the passenger compartment." The father, of course, knew this, but he wanted to follow through to teach his son a lesson; besides he was committed to the bit. "What?!" he said in mock-outrage. "You mean I'm gonna have to Carry-On My Wayward Son?"
- Charles Hindenborg, a zoologist who was famous worldwide, had dedicated his life to finding and documenting exotic animals, hoping to preserve them from extinction — or, failing that, to make sure the animals of days long past were not forgotten. One of his greatest discoveries was an extremely rare breed of wooly manatee which, unlike its more marsh-preferring bretheren, inhabited the frigid Hugh Lake in Canada. Unfortunately, by the time he had discovered the wonderous beasts, their population had been in decline even before humans had settled the area, and as such, Mr. Hindenborg was unable to save their species from eventual extinction, which occurred when the last Hugh Lake Wooly Manatee died out about a decade after he'd discovered them. However, he was able to obtain the remains of the last one, and painstakingly had it stuffed and mounted in all its splendor, so that it could be put on display in his personal taxidermy museum, which he hoped to soon open to the public. To this end, he took in and hired a mute boy named Patel, teaching him how to be the official groundskeeper and security guard at the museum. Patel was very smart, you see, and highly observant, though his inability to speak did cause some communication problems, and he soon settled into the comfort life of caretaking and guarding the many preserved creatures on display the centerpiece of which was the Hugh Lake Wooly Manatee, a truly captivating beast that many looked upon with envious eyes. One night, Patel was awoken by a sound from the main hall. To his horror, thieves were stealing the Wooly Manatee! Quickly, he rushed to Hindenborg's room, awakening him and gesturing wildly. "What is it, Patel?" Hindenborg said, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "What has you so riled up at this hour?" Patel only gestured for Hindenborg to follow, which he did, leading him to the great hall. However, Patel stopped short; the thieves were still struggling with the massive stuffed manatee, but walking out in the open would surely cause the criminals to flee—or worse, attack. Thinking quickly, Patel began an impromptu game of charades, a game which Hindenborg loved but was not very good at — hence their difficulties communicating. Hindenborg was confused to say the least, but sensing Patel's urgency, he began to humor the boy. "What are you trying to say? Something is wrong with the...the..." Hindenborg squinted, trying to read Patel's frantic gestures. "The North Carolina Parrot?" Patel shook his head, making a swimming motion. "Ah...is it the...South Africa Sunfish?" Again, Patel shook his head. One more time he made the swimming gesture, flapping his arms like big flippers. Hindenborg narrowed his eyes more, racking his brain. So many animals in his collection, which one could Patel possibly be describing? And then, it struck him. He bolted straight up now wide awake, suddenly realizing why Patel was so frantic. "Oh, the Hugh Manatee!"
- Shrek was hit with a curse that rendered him unable to speak without singing. Unsure of what to do, he decided to visit a wizard named Juan. Juan told Shrek to make a potion from toadstools, eye of newt and the bones of a freshly deceased human. Shrek told him that he could handle the toadstools and the eye of newt, but he refused to kill an innocent person to solve his problem. Juan understood and said that, for a modest fee, he could break into the nearby medical school and steal a cadaver. Shrek agreed. The following day, Juan delivered as promised, bringing the cadaver to Shrek's house. After Juan left, Shrek began to prepare the potion in a large cauldron. Just as he was about to remove the flesh from the body, Donkey burst through the door. Mortified, he asked, "Shrek, what the hell is that?" In response, Shrek sang, "Some body Juan stole me."
- A father gnu wanders out of his cave to look for food for his family. He wanders for most of the day, only to come to a cliff. He peers over to look for food, loses his footing and tumbles off the cliff to his death. The following day, the mother gnu comes out, wondering where her mate has gone, and comes to the cliff. She peers over to see if she can see him, loses her balance and tumbles off the cliff. The two baby gnus, after crying all night over their missing parents set out looking for them. They come to the cliff and peer over to see if they can see them, only for one to lose their balance and crash into the other, sending them both over the cliff. That's the end of the gnus, over to Gary for the weather forecast.
- A doctor calls in the next patient from the waiting room, a man wearing a baseball cap. "What seems to be the trouble, Sir?" She asks. The man removes his cap to reveal a single blade of grass growing out of his head. The doctor is perplexed and tells him to see if he can snip it out, or get a barber to do it for him. The next day, the man returns, wearing a trilby. She checks his head again, and sees his entire hair has turned into grass. Of course, the doctor has no answer for this except to see if there is some weedkiller that might do the trick. The man returns the next day wearing a large stetson. This time, his head not only has grass, but a small river running where the parting should be. By this point the doctor is stumped, and can only recommend a full shave. The following day, the man is wearing a ten gallon hat, and his head now has fences and even a few hills. All she can do is try to calm him down as he's understandably distressed. The following day, the man now has a large box on his head- and complains he can no longer go out without people staring at him. Under the box is rows of fields, a winding river, several trees and mountains. The doctor throws her hands up and sends him to the hospital to see a specialist as this is beyond her. The specialist takes one look at the fields, rivers, trees and mountains, and gives the diagnosis. "You have a beauty spot."
- A bank clerk names Paddy Whack is at his counter, sorting through bank notes, when a frog hops before him, holding a porcelain elephant. Paddy, perplexed, asks the frog if he can help him. The frog holds up the porcelain elephant and asks to take out a loan, saying the elephant is a guarantee he will pay it all back within three months. Paddy, skeptical, asks if there is anyone who can be a guarantor, and the frog says he can call his dad- Mick Jagger. At this point, the floored Paddy asks if he's got this right. The frog wants a loan, is using a porcelain elephant as a guarantee of repayment, and his father is Mick Jagger. He asks the frog to wait, grabs the elephant and hurries to the manager's office. Paddy then explains he's got a frog at his counter who wants a loan, and claims his dad is Mick Jagger. And he thinks this strange porcelain elephant is somehow a guarantee as repayment. Paddy's not even sure what the elephant actually is. The manager takes one look at it and sighs. "It's a knick-knack Paddy Whack. Give the frog a loan. His old man's a Rolling Stone."
- Two men are walking on Ilkley Moor, one has a dog running around, and the other, strangely enough, is wearing a hat. It's a very windy day, and the second man's hat blows off, into the path of the first man's dog. Thrilled with his new chew toy, the dog reduces the hat to... not very much. The second man shouts at the dog and retrieves his ruined hat. He marches up to the first man, face red with anger. "Oi! Mate! That your dog?" He asks "Yeah, my dog. And?" Says the second man. "Look what 'e's done to me 'at. Just look at it." The second man said. The first man looks perplexed and says. "Mate, you walked on Ilkley Moor with an 'at on? We say bah'tat for a reason." The second man shakes his head. "You think I want to catch me death a cold? And get eaten up by worms, and then ducks, and then you lot." The first man sneers. "Nope, a rotter like you wouldn't be fit enough to feed me dog. Throwing a fit over an 'at. 'Onestly. 'E was 'aving a lake about." "That 'at was new." The second man said. The first man sighs. "It's an 'at. Replace it, and leave me alone." The second man, now almost purple with rage jabs his finger into the first man's chest. "Listen mate, I've 'ad it up to 'ere with your attitude." The first man steps back. "'Ang on, mate. It wasn't my attitude, it was your attitude."
- Two dazed travelers were walking in a barren wasteland, and they were clothed in nothing but thin, rough, woolen suits. That day a fierce snowstorm blew in, yet they maintained their resolve to trudge through. They passed a book of poetry by T. S. Eliot between themselves, reading from it out loud as they went along their path. All of a sudden, they encountered a mystic roaming in front of them. The mystic asked them what they were doing there, to which one of them replied, “We’re just traveling, nowhere in particular,” and the other traveler blurted out, “Do you have any advice for us?” The mystic replied, “I do, but it might be the same as one of those poems you keep reading.” One traveler then said, “How so?” The mystic answered, “You’ll find out. Here’s my advice: There’s a carnival over the ridge two miles south of here. You can’t miss it, there’s a suit shop next door to the grounds, where you can get thicker, softer clothes.” The first traveler thanked the mystic and asked how they could repay him. “Well, you can recite from memory one of those lovely poems you’ve been muttering,” the mystic replied. “I’m a bit forgiving if you don’t remember correctly.” The travelers racked their brains until they settled on a sailing-themed one. It was only when they got to the third part that they realized what the mystic meant, as they kept flubbing the lines. “Yes,” noted the mystic: “Not wear felt, but forge fairward, voyagers!”
- In the year 2744 a human survey team discovered a planet whose sole inhabitant was an enormous humanoid, three miles high and made of something very like granite. At first it was mistaken for an immense statue left by some vanished race of giants, for it squatted motionless on a vast rocky plain, exhibiting no outward sign of life. It had legs (two), but apparently never rose to walk on them. It had a mouth, but never ate or spoke. It had what appeared to be a perfectly functional brain, the size of a fifty-story condominium, but the organ lay dormant, electrochemical activity at a standstill. Yet it lived. This puzzled the hell out of the scientists, who tried everything they could think of to elicit some sign of life from the behemoth—in vain. It just squatted, motionless and seemingly thoughtless, until one day a xenobiologist, frustrated beyond endurance, screamed, "How could evolution give legs, mouth and brain to a creature that doesn't use them?"
It happened that he was the first one to ask a direct question in the thing's presence. It rose with a thunderous rumble to its full height, scattering the clouds, pondered for a second, boomed, "It couldn't," and squatted down again.
"My God," exclaimed the xenobiologist. "Of course! It only stands to reason."
Comic Books
- "Audition (1954)":Ethel wants "to be in" Phil Vitale's All-Girl Orchestra. "To be in" is the wording used over and over by both her and Phil Vitale. He rejects her multiple times until she threatens suicide. That gets him as well as the rest of the orchestra to grand her request. Ethel accepts that to be in the orchestra, she has to become a zombie first, believing that the orchestra's members all are zombies. They aren't. They're ghouls and ghouls only eat corpses and the moment that Ethel is one of the living dead they eat her. It is thus that Ethel gets "to be in" Phil Vitale's All-Ghoul Orchestra.
- Iznogoud: Pretty much every story.
- One short skit in Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) had Robotnik making a “criminal” profile of Sonic, just so Sonic could call it a “poortrait” (emphasis his).
- Judge Dredd: in one of the daily strips, Dredd busts in on the wedding of Milton Spilk, who pulls a gun and is shot. Dredd then tells his sobbing wife that Spilk was a Black Widow Serial Killer, and she was his next target. So there's no point to crying over Milt Spilk!
Comic Strips
- B.C. had a 1995 strip in which an inventor demonstrates a new, expensive model of unicycle equipped with brakes that allow a rider to pull up safely short of a bunch of tacks. The final panel had someone chanting, "Tacks brakes for the rich!"
- Dilbert:
- The arc that introduced Bob and Dawn had them discussing the theory that a meteor killed the dinosaurs, which Bob says was greatly exaggerated. It did land on one dinosaur; he actually survived, but as you might imagine, it took a lot of expensive medical treatment. Poor Larry was eventually recognized as the first member of a new species, the doctor-billed flattypuss.
- Another strip had Dogbert get Dilbert to discuss a marine biologist relative of his, who won awards for breeding sea anemones, but had little time for a social life. Dogbert wisely gets out of slapping range before delivering the punchline:
Dogbert: With anemones like that, who needs friends?
- The N's don't justify the "neans".
- Your Bart is worse than your bike.
- You should not judge a cook by its brother.
- This◊ FoxTrot strip. Jason sets up a complicated story about a miniature RV he'd built from LEGO, explaining what's in it, where it is, and where it's going, then asks Peter to grab it, just so he can say this:
Jason: Leggo my Eggo-carrying LEGO Winnebago full of preggo fans of Drago en route to Montenegro from Tierra del Fuego which is south of San Diego.
Peter: Remind me to start hiding your Pearls Before Swine books.
- Get Fuzzy:
- In the February 05, 2012 strip, Bucky shares a story about a prude who takes a nap, not realizing he's on a nudist beach, and wakes up to see a naked man next to him; the prude covers the man's genitals with his book, and gets in trouble as the man was a judge. Never cover a judge by his book.
- In the February 19, 2012 strip, there's another story about an engaged couple at karaoke who come across a man singing Stairway to Heaven beautifully. It turns out he's both a musician and a judge, so they ask him to officiate and sing at their wedding, but his own songs turn out to be awful. Don't book a judge by his cover.
- Peanuts featured a long story arc of Snoopy on a mission from the Head Beagle to rescue an operative named Thompson from trouble with rabbits all leading up to the mission summary, rabbit-tat-tat and it was all over.
- Pearls Before Swine has countless examples, mostly spoken by Rat to set up the strip's trademark Puns. And they're almost always followed with some kind of Self-Deprecation involving Rat — though sometimes he's replaced by Goat or even Pig — complaining to cartoonist Stephen Pastis for bothering to make such a pun.
- For example, in the April 11, 2010 strip, Pig hangs up a Texas A&M Aggies flag that has been colored green; when Rat objects, he offers to replace it with a poster of retired soccer player Mia Hamm, causing Rat to get angry because he doesn't like green Ags and Hamm.
- Defied in one strip: Goat starts to tell a story, only for Rat to tell him to hold on a minute, and then goes to preemptively clobber Stephen with a baseball bat. He then returns to Goat and says something to the effect of, "You've got to stop these pun strips before they start."
- The Mother Goose and Grimm comic from September 9, 2007 has Grimm watching a TV show about a dog superhero named Kal, whose superpower is his horribly bad breath, but he's weak and fragile in every other way.
Fan Works
- 221B is a Sherlock Holmes fic composed of a series of 221-word segments. One combines this with Continuity Nod; the entire ficlet (in which Holmes and Watson are wandering around the woods) is the setup for Watson quipping that Holmes is "lost period, with or without his Boswell."
- Anakin Shrugged: Obi-Wan ends his deconstruction of Anakin saying "the Jedi are evil" with "It's over, Anakin. I have the moral high ground."
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanauthors seem to be fond of these.
- The fanfic Shipping Sickness is a Cargo Ship story that ends with the following dialogue by Twilight Sparkle to a small table that she had magically brought to life: "I thought maybe I could love you. But you were right. We're not each others' soulmates. We can never be together, not truly. For I am a pony wizardess... and you are just my one nightstand." It's also extremely telling that, while this is a two-part story, the second part is a Rimshot.
- While that is the biggest groan-inducing pun in the story, there are many others that may cause you to groan or facepalm as well, such as Princess Mi Amore Credenza or her "husband", Shining Armoire.
- The flash recursive Friendship is Optimal fanfiction "A Shaggy Pony Story" ends with the line "Now is the winter of our disk contents made glorious summer by this sunny 'orse!" The main character being named Feghoof and the title of the story should be sufficient warning to the reader.
- The Legend of Falling Rocks, Buffalo Brave is a collection of three stories about buffalo mythology, written in the style of Native American legends. As Native American surrogates, Buffalo feature Native American-esque names, though in truth all characters in the My Little Pony universe tend to have strange names by human standards. The first two stories are pretty much what you would expect, and by the third story, any idea that the main character might have a strange name is forgotten. Unfortunately, in the course of the third legend, he goes missing, and the buffalo are forced off their land as a result. However, the buffalo do manage to exact a promise from the ponies that they would keep an eye out for their missing hero, even going so far as to erect signs in the mountains that he disappeared to in search of allies. The signs, of course, beseech the reader to watch for falling rocks.
- In "The Phantom of the Genre", Rarity and Pinkie Pie are called on to exorcise a ghost from a theater. The ghost isn't malicious, but the cows in the theater orchestra refuse to play in a haunted venue. Pinkie Pie finds a way to keep the bovine band by convincing the ghost to haunt Rarity's chaise lounge instead. As they say, "A herd in the band is worth boo in the tush!"
- "The Cheek's in the Mail" describes how mailed cheek copying developed as a serious insult, then as a friendly insult, in Equestria before telling of how the griffon king received such a letter right as a treaty between Equestria and Griffonstone was ready to be finalized. Misunderstandings over what the letter meant ensued, culminating in Luna making a colossal tapestry of her butt to persuade the king of the lack of seriousness in the letter. In the end, the treaty went off without a hitch, but due to how unstable the griffon king was, it's noted that this happy ending was highly unlikely and could only occur once in a blue moon.
- Triptych Continuum: In Dear Friend, Spike gets a spam flood, and the story ends on a pun on spam (canned meat):
And Twilight never let Spike eat griffon-made canned lunch meat again.
- Early on in Manehattan's Lone Guardian, discussion is made of the Lonely Heart Nightclub and how mediocre it is as an establishment. It is then pointed out that for all of its flaws, ponies still rated it higher than a certain other nightclub in the area:
- Forensic Punology has Twilight take Rainbow to an old crime scene and tell her the story of a fake psychic who was hunted down by the mob for defrauding them and was beaten to death in a rice field with her own good-luck figurine in Equestria's only knick-knack paddy whack.
- The fanfic Shipping Sickness
- The Legend of Korra fanfiction "The Last Heist" is a story set in the future about Kai stealing money to buy a wedding ring for Jinora. His victim hires the Triple Threats to kill him. The first chapter finished with Kai's death and the line "He was all I needed...I loved him, and he had changed and grown so much from when I met him on the streets...and now he's on a Kai-way to Hell..."
- The second chapter is just a paragraph about the leader of the assassins telling his men to return to their employer's company. The first name of Kai's victim and his company put together is "Bahdumm Tisse".
- "A Shaggy Faunus Story" is a RWBY fanfic about a snake faunus (named Pheghiss) dating Velvet the rabbit faunus. Weiss gets jealous, and eventually confesses her feelings to the snake boy at the end of the story, only for him to reply that "I'm sorry Weiss, but this anaconda DON'T, this anaconda DON'T, this anaconda DON'T want none unless if you are a BUN, HON!"
- The Stargate SG-1 fanfiction "Hero of the Soviet Union" spends several pages detailing the operation of a Soviet-run SGC, all to set up the punchline when a KGB major mocks a captured Goa'uld: "In Soviet Russia, gods bow to you!"
- Stained Glass Shade, a Daria and Osamu Tezuka Crossover fanfic in which recurring star system character Lampe finds out that an actress he had a brief fling with gave birth to a daughter shortly after moving to America. Said daughter turns out to be Tiffany.
- The Good Omens fic ask, and ye shall receive has Crowley repeatedly tell God to smite him with increasing anger and desperation until the ending where he meets Aziraphale in the Garden of Eden and God says smugly, "There. You're smitten."
- Unexpected Talent has Harry and Hermione find he has a bizarre talent to unhinge his jaw like a snake and swallow packages to teleport them to their destination because he's a parcelmouth.
- Harry Potter and the Garden has Harry concealing a unique talent with plants that got him and his friends through many scrapes, though his friends couldn’t quite figure out how he did it. It isn’t until his final confrontation with Voldemort, where he is able to use a mandrake to take down the wizard, that Professor Sprout realizes in awe that he is the Badger’s Heir: a parsleymouth.
- Chili and the Chocolate Factory: Fudge Revelation goes on for about 80,000 words of alternately delightful and horrifying insanity while throwing in references to as many Roald Dahl stories as possible before having a thoroughly insane pun as a punchline. Road dill hates juice!
- Starscream and the Drones is a short story about Megatron wanting to replace his treacherous second-in-command Starscream with several drones that do whatever they're told. The fic spends a lot of time describing Starscream leading the drones to a cliff, ordering each drone to go to a specific spot and hold a unique silly pose while jumping off, then surveying the wreckage before instructing the next one. When Megatron eventually catches on and goes out to ask Starscream what he's doing, the latter replies that he's playing Tetris.
Films — Live-Action
- The Court Jester. Pretty much the whole point of "The Maladjusted Jester" is to lead up to the pun: "And a jester unemployed is nobody's fool!"note
- The entirety of Wavelength (1967) is a slow zoom-in on a photo of ocean waves; the film is literally about the length between the camera and the "waves".
Literature
- Isaac Asimov wrote several stories that are more or less excuses for ending with tortured puns:
- "Battle Hymn" is ostensibly about someone trying to influence the outcome of a vote by Mars colonists on whether to allow Mars to be used as a location for potentially dangerous hyperspace experiments. To counter the other side's jingle (No, No, A Thousand Times No), they get the colonists, who were of French descent (but don't speak the language any more), all singing the French national anthem. It works, because although they don't really understand the lyrics, they know the title: Mars say yea!
- "Death Of A Foy": At the end, the eponymous Starfish Alien, having been tricked into believing that giving his large-sized hearts will lead to a doctor playing a choir for him as his soul returns to his homeworld, wills, "Give my big hearts to Maude, Dwayne. Dismember me for Harold's choir. Tell all the Foys on Sortibackenstrete that I will soon be there".
- "Dreamworld": A boy who reads a lot of science fiction and keeps telling his uninterested Aunt Clara about the crazy science-fiction inspired dreams he keeps having. His aunt keeps telling him that he has to face reality, or else, one day, he'll be stuck in one of his dreams and unable to wake up. The next time he goes to sleep, he has a dream in which hundreds of giant-sized duplicates of his Aunt Clara are all chasing him and demanding that he face reality. He desperately hopes that he'll be able to wake up from this dream, or else he'll have suffered the worst science-fictional doom of all: being trapped in a world of giant aunts.
- "The Hazing": The whole story builds up to a punchline to showcase Humanity Is Insane, because despite advancing to a "civilized" level of technology, they admit that most of their species is still psychologically primitive.
Forase: "You screwball Earthmen! At least, this little episode has taught us all one thing."
Williams: "What's that?"
Forase: "Never [...] get tough with a bunch of nuts. They may be nuttier than you think!" - "A Loint Of Paw": This concerns a man who, after stealing several hundred thousand dollars, used a time machine to travel to the day after the statute of limitations expired. After the prosecutor and defense attorney finish arguing, the judge renders his decision: "A niche in time saves Stein."
- "My Son, the Physicist": The story builds up suspense with the chaos, expectation of dangerous aliens, and lost spacemen, and ends with a common instruction given to young children; listen to your mother.
- "Shah Guido G": A particularly notorious story, although arguably the title gives fair warning.
- "Sure Thing": In a race between alien pets, Sloane's pet rock Teddy crosses the line first when it suddenly displays the ability to teleport. Yes, "Sloane's Teddy wins the race."
- "The Watery Place": The whole story is a joke at the similarity in sound/description between Venus and Venice. Sheriff Cameron confuses Venus for Venice, since both places might be called "the watery place".
- "Battle Hymn" is ostensibly about someone trying to influence the outcome of a vote by Mars colonists on whether to allow Mars to be used as a location for potentially dangerous hyperspace experiments. To counter the other side's jingle (No, No, A Thousand Times No
- Arthur C. Clarke wrote the two pager, "Neutron Tide", about a spaceship passing too close to a neutron star and being ripped apart by the huge tidal forces in order to facilitate a pun about the single piece from the astronaut's toolkit that was found in the wreckage. It was a "Star-mangled spanner."
- Spider Robinson wrote a collection of short stories that started with Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, all taking place in the eponymous Weirdness Magnet Inn Between the Worlds. Slightly different from the normal format, the stories are weird little philosophical pieces with puns in several places. One of the things they do there is have Tall Tales Night to see who can tell the most outrageous shaggy dog story with the worst pun-filled punchline.
- Derin Edala's short story "A Cinderella premise". The entire thing is a setup for a pun on "salmonella".
- Gravity's Rainbow is a long story, but it has digressions within it to go off on long tangents crossing half a dozen pages about something like the fur trade just so that it can abruptly end in a pun. For instance, on page 563 there's a pun on the song "Forty Million Frenchmen can't be wrong". For De Mille, young fur—henchmen can't be rowing.
- Athyra has an extended digression about the difference between the kind of flax used to make salad and the kind of flax used to make linen, all so Brust can sneak in the line, "The true, true salad flax would melt..."
- The Holes Around Mars, by Jerome Bixby: The first manned mission to Mars discovers a line of holes drilled through the terrain, created by a four-inch ball that orbits the planet at tremendous speed. When they report their discovery, Mission Command back on Earth gives the expedition leader the responsibility of naming it, and the man, a notorious Pungeon Master, decides to keep to the Theme Naming, and so the moons of Mars are, in descending order, Deimos, Phobos, and Bottomos(t).
- "The Casque of Lamont T. Yado" by Victor Milan is a short story rather transparently based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado", which you'll recall ends with the words "For the love of God, Montresor!". The hero blames the villain for the death of his shipmates, but has agreed to help him steal the eponymous casque — an alien time-controlling helmet. The villain, incidentally, is a "tracer" who can teleport by tracing lines of force, and attributes his powers to "Tracergod". He also affects a Jamaican accent and says things like "mon" instead of "man". After they have succeeded in teleporting the casque out of its secure location, the villain puts it on, believing that it will give him superhuman speed. Instead, he finds himself inexorably slowing down — the hero has reprogrammed the helmet to freeze the villain like a statue for eternity. The very last thing the villain is able to say before his speech grinds to a halt is "For the love of Tracergod, mon!"
- Roger Zelazny liked to sneak these into his works. For example, the entire second chapter of his Hugo-winning novel Lord of Light, while plot-critical and not forced in any way, does elaborately prepare for a punchline delivered towards the end of the chapter. The protagonist, Sam, was offered a new body via brain uploading, but suspects the person in charge wants revenge for an old disagreement and will have tampered with the body in some way. So he hypnotizes a local nobleman called the Shan into believing he is Sam and accepting it in his place. In fact he was correct: the body Sam is being offered has brain damage, leading to an epilepsy-like condition. Everything seemed fine at first, and Sam was ready to go and reveal his subterfuge and receive another body... "Then the fit hit the Shan."
- In fact, the whole purpose behind his novel A Night in the Lonesome October is this trope.
- Unwind has an in-universe example, an urban legend about a boy whose surnamee was Dunfee, and whose first name began with an H, but who will always be known as Humphrey. His father was one of the strongest advocates of the policy of using Delinquents for organ transplants, so when he started to misbehave in school, his father was pressured into having him "unwound." Mr. Dunfee eventually snapped, and started hunting down and reclaiming all the donated organs — but "all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humphrey back together again." (It later turns out that this story isn't wholly inaccurate, and the story ends with a reunion of all the people who received the boy's organs.)
- The infamous Marquis de Sade, known for works of a questionable nature, once took the time out of his busy schedule to write a story about a man cheating on his wife with a nun, and claiming that since nuns are dedicated to God, surely this is a method of unlocking the gates of heaven. The man's wife, after sleeping with a priest, comments that it must have worked, because she'd never seen a bigger key.
- "Flush Fiction", the Uncle John's Bathroom Reader book featuring a lot of short stories, has a feghoot about an ugly boy, Tool, and his attempt to impress a beautiful girl, Honey, by joining some pirates. In the end, the pun is "A Tool and his Honey are soon parted."
- In John Dies at the End, Amy tells Dave about an incident of Spontaneous Human Combustion:
"I have a friend, Dana, who was in the grocery store one day, and her arm, like, bursts into flame. Just like that. Just her arm. And she's screaming and waving her arm around and around, flames shooting everywhere. Finally the cops showed up and arrested her."
"Arrested her? Why did—"
"Possession of an unlicensed firearm."
A great, heavy silence settled over the room. She looked down at the table again, a smile playing at her lips, looking extraordinarily pleased with herself.
I said, "You know, in the Middle East, a woman can be flogged for telling a story like that." - Robert J. Sawyer's The Good Doctor with Isaac Asimov as the pun.
- Marilyn Manson's autobiography The Long Hard Road Out of Hell featured an entire chapter about a girl he dated who had an unusual circular birthmark around her vagina. Though many events happen during this chapter, he does close it by stating that someone else he knew started dating her and "snatched her away like a greedy little Hobbit and indeed became the Lord of the Ring."
- "A Clockwork Lemon" (warning: PDF), attributed to A. Bertram Chandler, is a tale of a dystopian future where fuel shortages have resulted in automobiles being made of clockwork and delivered by airship. When one such airship must jettison its cargo, a spectator on a nearby rooftop warns, "Take cover! It's raining Datsun cogs!"
- The Mensa Puzzle Book has a series of these which are turned into puzzles by presenting the story and asking the reader to guess the punchline.
- The Illuminae Files: Gemina features a dark twist on this type of story. One of the Mooks starts telling a "joke" to his comrades. It's about a man who travels to a foreign land and stops in this little bar, but every time he tries to drink a beer, the bartender sounds an alert and screams "The wolves are coming!" Everyone runs and hides, and every time they come back the traveler's glass is empty. Finally fed up, the traveler refuses to join everyone else in the cellar, arguing with the bartender until he's left alone to enjoy his beer in peace. The "punchline": "Then the wolves came. And they ate him. And drank his beer." It's creepy in context, especially due to the surrounding circumstances.
- One of Alan Dean Foster's Mad Amos Malone stories has the mystical mountain man and a Snake Oil Salesman named Sam both asked by a group of farmers to try to purify a plot of cursed earth so they can farm it. After the two compete with demonstrations of magical produce growing, Amos warns the farmers that the land's curse is too strong, and bad things will happen if they don't leave it alone. Sam assures them he can fix it (and he's cheaper than Amos) so they hire him. After Amos leaves, Sam says that if anything does go wrong with the land, they can tell everyone that it's his fault. His fault, or his name's not Sam Andreas.
- The short story "Too Far," by Fredric Brown, involves a womanizing scoundrel who turns himself into a deer, and attempts to seduce a local doe. She takes exception to this, and makes the change permanent—being of a magical persuasion herself. Whenever they cross paths in the future, and he asks her to lift the enchantment, she replies that she "wants to keep the first buck she ever made."
- Bred Any Good Rooks Lately?: A Collection of Puns, Shaggy Dogs, Spoonerisms, Feghoots & Malappropriate Stories is an anthology gathered by James Charlton, and is full of short stories that all end with spoonerisms or other puns. The title comes from the last line of "For the Birds", a humorous short story contributed by none other than Stephen King.
- "Alien Cornucopia" by Walt Liebscher tells of an Eldritch Abomination called Splend who comes to Earth and demands thousands of human females as concubines; the women all go with him quite willingly, and somewhere off in space, Splend is a many-lovered thing.
- The short story "Riddle Of The Sphinx II: Sustained Release Riddlin'" by blogger Scott Alexander has the Sphinx return in the modern day, and the hero gives a different answer to the traditional Riddle of the Sphinx. The punchline depends on knowing which character from Greek mythology originally defeated the Sphinx: "That's a good answer. You wouldn't believe what the lame motherfucker I asked last time tried to pull on me!
Live Action TV
- Played for drama- in the Black Mirror serial "Playtest", a young man is asked to test an up-and-coming horror game that adapts to the player's fears. Unfortunately, the game zeroes in on his deepest fears and plays mind games with him that way; he has to deal with his id, his fears of Alzheimer's, and many other horrors. The game even fakes him out of leaving twice— and the third, most sobering exit, where he sees his mother in the exact same Alzheimer's fate he feared, was a fakeout as well. In reality, he never left the game, much less started it; he was killed when his phone's signal interfered with the system, frying his brain. After convulsing and calling out to his ailing mother in vain, the staff coolly sits and writes down his final moments: "Called 'Mom'."
- F Troop has the Hekawi tribe of Native Americans, whose name is a G-rated version of an old Feghoot variously told about either Native Americans or Africans. The original plan was to call them the Fugawi tribe, but censors spotted that one before it could air.
Chief Wild Eagle: Many moons ago tribe move west because Pilgrims ruin neighborhood. Tribe travel west, over country and mountains and wild streams, then come big day... tribe fall over cliff, that when Hekawi get name. Medicine man say to my ancestor, 'I think we lost. Where the heck are we?'
- The Flip Wilson Show: One episode begins with Flip telling a long story about a man who gained fame by picking a berry, which he then gave to his wife, until two men came to steal the berry, saying "We've come to seize her berry, not to praise it."
- An episode of Frasier brings to a climax a plot-line involving Daphne developing an eating disorder and putting on a lot of weightnote , which everyone except Niles notices and awkwardly tries to avoid bringing up. When there is a confrontation at the end of the episode, Daphne ends up slipping and being unable to get back up under her own strength, leading Frasier, Niles and Martinnote to try and help her. While they're doing so, Martin is struck by a thought: "Hey Daphne, I just realised something. It took three Cranes to lift you!" Everyone glares at him.
- Pee-wee Herman delivered one during an 1984 appearance on Late Night with David Letterman.
- Quite a few of Dave Gorman's stories on Modern Life Is Goodish are eventually revealed as feghoots, or at least turned into feghoots by the addition of a terrible pun at the end, usually to groans from the studio audience.
- The Restaurant Sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus featured the waiter, head waiter and manager (played by Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Eric Idle, respectively) and offering numerous apologies regarding a dirty fork, brought to their attention by a man played as Graham Chapman. After a few minutes of brief chaos, Chapman wraps it up by saying: "lucky we didn't say anything about the dirty knife." Cue the crowd booing, much to Chapman's protests.
- The Muppet Show: The Peter Ustinov episode had a skit where Ustinov tells Fozzie a rambling story about a man named Benny who was told he would live forever if he never shaved his beard. When he tried to shave for the sake of love, he was turned into a Grecian urn. The moral of the story: A Benny shaved is a Benny urned.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000: "The Sword and the Dragon" has a segment called "A Joke by Ingmar Bergman". Servo and Crow walk along a pier, counting the wooden boards and the slits between them, until they reach the end and Servo falls in. Crow summarizes, "When you're out of slits, you're out of pier." This is a play on an old beer commercial tagline, "When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer." In true Bergman style, it's all black and white with almost no dialog or action, and is over four minutes.
- Quincy, M.E. once spent a whole 45-minute episode on the investigation of how a man died of radiation poisoning courtesy of an X-ray machine used in construction, all to set up Quincy's last-second pun on the surname of the killers: "You've known [whodunnit] for years! The Butlers did it."
- In Red Dwarf, Lister tells one to Rimmer:
Lister: My mate Petersen once brought a pair of shoes with artificial intelligence. Smart Shoes, they were called. It was a neat idea. No matter how blind drunk you were, they would always get you home. Then he got ratted one night in Oslo, and woke up the next morning in Burma. See, the shoes got bored just going from his local to the flat. They wanted to see the world, man, y'know? He had a helluva job getting rid of them. No matter who he sold them to, they'd show up again the next day! He tried to shut them out, but they just kicked the door down, y'know?
Rimmer: Is this true?
Lister: Yeah! Last thing he heard, they'd sort of, erm, robbed a car and drove it into a canal. They couldn't steer, y'see.
Rimmer: Really?!
Lister: Yeah. Petersen was really, really blown away by it. He went to see a priest. The priest told him, he said, it was alright, and all that, and the shoes were happy, and they'd gone to heaven. Y'see, it turns out shoes have soles. - The Soviet series Seventeen Moments of Spring spawned a great many jokes and anecdotes due to the Fountain of Memes nature of the series, and about half of them are feghoots. Unfortunately, almost none of the puns translate well into English. Some of them just might work in translation. An example:
Stierlitz was struck by a bullet in the nape.
"An explosive bullet," flashed through his head. - Small Wonder: One later episode pits two robotic children against one another- the protagonist Vicki, and Russian rival Vladimir Godunov. At the very end, Vladimir's robotic nature is exposed, and his creator is left to protest "You couldn't leave Godunov alone?" That one was so bad, even the studio audience could only moan at it.
- Star Trek: The Original Series: The "no tribble at all" line in the famous episode "The Trouble With Tribbles" seems to count.
- The Weekly with Charlie Pickering: A segment on National Security has Charlie looking at how Prime Minister Tony Abbott had been appearing at press conferences surrounded by increasing numbers of Australian flags, suggesting that he awards himself two extra flags when he believes he's made the country safer. Charlie then examines a string of gaffes connected to the inquiry into the Lindt Cafe Siege, penalising Abbott two flags at a time until there's none left.
Charlie: Failing to immediately correct the Parliamentary record despite your office knowing Parliament had been misled? You're out of flags, Prime Minister. [The remaining flags are removed in the graphic.] Luckily, he doesn't pay attention to the poles. [The audience responds with a combination of laughter, applause and groaning.]
- Most episodes of Welcome Back, Kotter begin and end with Gabe telling one of these, couched as a story about a family member, usually to Julie. Her reactions range from enthusiastic amusement to weary resignation to strong annoyance. Occasionally other characters get in on the fun, either as victims or storytellers.
- In Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Colin usually starts off games of Weird Newscasters with one of these.
Colin: Convicted hit man Jimmy Two-Shoes McClarty confessed today that he was once hired to beat a cow to death in a rice field using only two small porcelain figures. Police admit that this is may be the first known case of a knick knack paddy whack.
- This is one of the best:
Colin: Famous playboy Hugh Hefner managed to successfully stop an order of monks from operating a business on his property. The police forced the friars to close down their stall, which was outside the Playboy Mansion, where they had been selling flowers. Said one friar, "Well, if it was anyone else we might have gotten away with it, but unfortunately, only Hugh can prevent florist friars."
- In one particular game of Greatest Hits, Colin mocked Ryan's Pun segues by coming up with a few of his own, ending with:
Colin: When I was a jockey [Ryan scoffs] No, I was, just for a little while. In my bed - well, it was more of a cot - we had this sort of sanitary paper for the fillies. Wait a minute... bed cot filly papers? Red Hot Chili Peppers!
- More examples can be seen on the Overly Prepared Gag page.
- Similar to the Colin Mochrie example, but predating it, The Two Ronnies often did these as one of their fake news stories.
- This
Magazines
- Amazing Stories:
- The magazine had a regular contribution called "Through Time and Space with Benedict Breadfruit" by Grandall Barretton (a pseudonym for Randall Garrett) which were all Feghoots that used the names of other well known science fiction writers.
- A later Briarton story had somebody ask Feghoot if Breadfruit could be trusted. "Absolutely," replied Feghoot. "He was conceived in our Garrett."
Music
- In P.D.Q. Bach's "Knock, Knock" cantata, the fourth and last movement has the recitative telling the story of an aquarium worker being ordered to catch some baby seagulls and bring them back immediately in order to stop indecent acts from going on in the dolphin tank. Walking his way back, the worker steps over a drowsy lion that recently escaped from the zoo, and a policeman suddenly appears to arrest him. The punchline (sung by the chorus) gives the charge: "Transporting young gulls across a staid lion for immoral porpoises."
- Joe Nichols' "Revelation" is about a nightmare involving the Second Coming; the song ends, "If I never go to Hell, Lord, it'll be because you scared it out of me."
- Barry Cryer and Ronnie Golden's song "Flamenco" ends rather abruptly with the heroine being crushed in a revolving door by separatists. The moral of the story: Never put all your Basques in one exit.
- The children's song "Little Bunny Foo Foo" ends with Foo Foo turned into a goon (whatever that is) after pissing off the Good Fairy one too many times. The moral of the story: Hare today, goon tomorrow.
- In Blues Traveler's song, "Hook," a song written for the purpose of criticizing popular music, vocalist John Popper explains in the second verse that everything he sings is insincere. The word "hook" is used to refer to a musical hook throughout the song, but by this verse, he confuses the listener once he starts making allusions to Peter Pan: "To confuse the issue I'll refer/To familiar heroes from long ago/No matter how much Peter loved her/What made the Pan refuse to grow..." Staying a child meant Peter Pan could never be with Wendy, but growing up meant he would never again battle with Hook, tricking the listener into believing there will be some kind of deep poetic reason for why Peter chose to stay with Hook instead, but it instead leads effortlessly into the chorus with this lame dad joke: "...was that the Hook that brings you back."
- Window-Washing Cowboy, by Da Vinci's Notebook is a western ballad about a squeeqee-slinging cowboy who falls in love and is mistakenly Driven to Suicide, which all sets up for the last line: he loved windows, but he couldn't stand the pane.
- The Smothers Brothers (the same ones from The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour) sang a supposed folk song about a little town with three churches, and how every night, the bells rang to create a melody. That melody only shows up at the very end of the bit — it's to the tune of Shave and a Haircut.
Radio
- Take this trope and stretch it out to 25 minutes with musical interludes, potshots at the BBC, brandy, shorter sub-feghoots existing solely to put in awful puns, Insane Troll Logic, and silly noises, and you've got The Goon Show and quite possibly a hangover.
- In later seasons of My Word!, the final round consisted of Frank Muir and Denis Norden each telling a convoluted shaggy dog story that ended with a pun based on a famous phrase or quotation. Muir and Norden later compiled several volumes of books containing some of the My Word! stories. Examples included Norden's explanation of how he worked his exit from the army with pedantically exact interpretations of his superior officers' orders ("Brief on 'shun' is better than QR" (that is, Queen's Regulations) - "prevention is better than cure"), and Muir's account of his desperately scouring the contents of his neighbour's greenhouse, having bet him £50 that he could work them into a My Word! story ("A snipe, a harp, a fern, corn, seeded trayfuls" - "a snapper up of unconsidered trifles").
- Right Between The Ears has a recurring sketch called "The Casebook Of Mobile Holmes", which is basically a setup of bad puns done in Sherlock Holmes style. This pretty much ends up with a Feghoot like this:
- Mobile wanted the rest of the gang to take a plumbing course in Egypt: "Yes, we'll all be pharaoh faucet majors."
- Or in a case about a general who was looking for his brother's ziggurat but died because it was on fire: "The searching general has proven that smoking ziggurats can be hazardous to your health."
- Stop Messing About, the short-lived successor to Round the Horne, had a weekly "Stories With A Moral" sketch, based entirely around a punchline that was a pun on a well-known proverb or similar phrase.
Video Games
- Antimatter Dimensions: One news ticker is a vignette about someone starting a soccer team of ants with their aunt Diana, ending with '"How can we make this ant team matter?" Di mentions.' (The last few words are a homophone for "Antimatter Dimensions".)
- In Baldur's Gate II, a drow NPC in Ust Natha tells the story of the first drow, and how they all lived in reed huts before they'd learned how to mine stone properly. One day, the followers of their greatest matron mother raided a neighbouring dwarf kingdom, taking as plunder the dwarf king's solid stone seat. Intending to surprise their matron with the plunder, they secretly stored the seat in her hut's attic, where it sank through the reed floor and onto the matron below, squishing her flat and proving that you should never stow thrones in grass houses. One of the other drow in the audience tries to kill him for it.
- The entirety of Can Your Pet?, a short Flash Game that ends with your pet chicken being turned into canned food.
- Death Trips ends by turning its title into a joke: during what would have been a climactic confrontation with the serial killer known as "Lady Death," she trips in the middle of a hallway and dies from the fall. "Death Trips", indeed!
- Deekin tells one in Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide during a break in the action. It is a story of a cruel monarch's interrogator whose favorite method of torture is to chop the fingers off a prisoner with a hatchet one by one until he confesses. The monarch captures a count who was accused of plotting rebellion against him and takes him down to the dungeon where the interrogator cuts off first his fingers, then his toes. The count remains silent. The monarch is so impressed that he orders the interrogator to give him a quick death, but as the hatchet swings for his neck, the count finally cracks. By then, it is too late and his head is severed from his body. The moral of the story: Never hatchet counts before they chicken!
- Paper Mario: Color Splash: A sidequest throughout the game revolves around rescuing various Toads, who head to a meeting spot by a tree in the Hub Level and reminisce about their old friend Piper. Piper was quiet, played a bush during a school play, and stood up for his friends. After all the friends gather, we learn that Piper died, and a nut drops from the tree to reveal a Ptooie. Mario is about to fight the Ptooie when the Toads interrupt and tell him that's who Piper really is — the joke being that he wasn't a Toad all along like you'd expect.
- Professor Sycamore in Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy provides one that ends with the punchline "Never judge a buck by its mother." The character he tells the joke to doesn't get it, but takes it on as valuable life advice.
- In Star Wars: Rebel Assault 2, one Easter Egg allows you to access an alternate subtitle track, filled with jokes. One of these involves a story about a tribe that worshipped the sun god, and killed the evil witch Sybil, then danced in celebration holding her severed head. The sun god was displeased, and struck them down, because you should never end a sundance with a dangling part of Sybil.
- Squid Ink: The entirety of Goth's mission storyline is a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax by a squid farmer pretending to be a ghost in order to scare squids back to his farm. When he's finally revealed and outed by Goth the squid, the story ends with the punchline: "and he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for that meddling squid!"
- The first story in Tales of the Wild Zeep involves butterflies flying into the Wild Zeep's mouth and down his throat prior to a performance in a play, just so the narrator can make a joke about him having "butterflies in his stomach" on the last page. More bizarrely, it's the only story out of the three that does this, making the other two just straight-up Shaggy Dog Stories.
- Team Fortress 2: The "Meet the Soldier" video depicts the titular Soldier doing this unintentionally while giving a rambling anecdote/pep-talk to a bunch of apparent recruits (which turn out to actually be a bunch of severed enemy heads lined up on a fence), in which he confuses Sun Tzu with Noah, culminating with Sun taking two of every animal onto a boat and "[beating] the crap out of every single one!". He then concludes his story with "And from that day forward, any time a bunch of animals are in one place, it's called a Tzu!" (zoo) *.
Webcomics
- The U2-themed webcomic Achtoon Baby, hosted on the fan site @U2, gives us "the best U2 joke (the author) has ever heard", a convoluted story involving a partial breakup of the band and special appearances by Phil Collins and Paul McCartney. Even worse for the uninitiated: the eventual punchline is meaningless unless you know the lyrics to "Running to Stand Still" from The Joshua Tree. The joke is explained in the last panel for those that really can't figure it out.
- Basic Instructions had a strip in which Rick defends a Zombie Apocalypse as being a Utopia — after all, when Zombies rule the world, "Everyone will be valued for their brains."
- Buttersafe gave us the story of how a certain bird found its place in the world. It's the only animal that can open the mysterious turdoor, because it is the turkey.
- This page of Erfworld has a group of knights take residence in a giant moai named Jed, stationed at its eye level so they can look through the eyes to watch over the city. And thus the Jed Eye Knights are born.
- The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! has a multi-year long story arc involving the discovery of Uplifted Animals from a secret civilization known as Furmia, whose citizens had been uplifted millenia ago by aliens. They had contact with the Nemesites (who humans did know about), but two of Professor Duck's ancestors had negotiated a treaty with them to keep their existence a secret. Jean reacts with Fourth Wall-leaning horror when she realizes that all of this has just been leading up to a terrible, terrible pun:
Bob: Wow, so humans coulda known about aliens hundreds of years ago, if not for a Furmese pair o' ducks!
- Nip and Tuck has the "Whehthehekawee" Native American tribe, an homage to the same Feghoot that spawned the Hekawi of F Troop.
- qxlkbh: 76: filler comic is a four-panel comic about Hungarian currency — in other words, fillér content.
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal:
- A comic about anthropomorphic knot detectives ends in one of them being betrayed and shot by the other, who reveals he's Domingo, a former friend who was thought to be killed years ago (by tying him up and cutting up his head). The former refuses to believe it, insisting Domingo must be dead because No One Could Survive That!, at which point Domingo removes his disguise revealing he's "a frayed knot".
- One comic is about a man talking very solemnly about the emotional pain he experiences when he remembers he feels more at home when he's drunk at the local pub than anywhere he's ever lived sober. Or, as he sums up: "A man walks into a bar and says, 'ouch!'" Arguably invoked, as everyone thought he was leading into a joke since he started his rant with "A man walks into a bar".
- This groaner involves an affair set up in-universe entirely for the purposes of making a terrible math pun on the basic algebraic phrase "There exists an x (variable) such that y (input) is z (outcome, pronounced 'zed' in British English)."
- A comic about anthropomorphic knot detectives
- This page from Square Root of Minus Garfield recolors the characters. The author's comments are an in-depth examination of what issues and implications a sudden change in Garfield's color might bring with it. It ends with the statement that there is more than one way to skin a cat.
- Thinking Too Much to Think Positively: In "Pride Crossover", Pandora appears in several pride-flag-themed outfits with her name changed accordingly ("Bidora", etc)... until the asexual Pandora, "Adora", is instead an asexual-themed Adora.
- Times Like This has Cassie tell the story of classmate Eli, who joined the band Cake, then ended up with the legal rights to the name and tried to play all the instruments himself when the other bandmates objected, so The Cake is Eli.
- xkcd:
- Cueball writes a math paper about generalizing friendly numbers into the complex plane to set up an "imaginary friends" pun. The professors listening to the presentation catch the pun early, and revoke his math license in retaliation.
- "Future Timeline" compiles popular predictions using Google search results, using terms to the tune of "By [year], [event] will happen". Results are extensive, with a lot of doomsday climate change predictions by 2100. Right after that entry, for A.D. 2101, "War Was Beginning".
- "Fantastic Four" has Ponytail explaining to Cueball how The Fantastic Four: First Steps has Sue Storm giving birth while the crew is attempting a Spaceship Slingshot Stunt to escape the Silver Surfer. Which Cueball then summarizes as, "Ah yes, the Obirth effect."
- Cueball writes a math paper
Web Original
- 4chan's greentexts are well suited to this sort of joke:
- One convoluted anecdote concerns Chinese twins named Ving and Ling (never mind that Ving isn't a real Chinese name). The twins go to the town hall so Ving can change his name to Lee ("like Bruce Lee"), but Ving hesitates at the last minute because he doesn't want to betray his family tradition. Just as Ling is pulling out some money to pay the cancellation fee for Ving's paperwork, their dad appears and encourages Ving to go through with the decision: "Don't stop. Be Lee, Ving. Hold on to that fee, Ling."
- A considerably raunchier greentext is about a young tourist in Freestate Amsterdam losing his virginity to a Swedish New-Age Retro Hippie named Sky. While the narrator is tonguing Sky's ass in a nightclub bathroom, a burly bouncer (also a Sexy Scandinavian) interrupts them, then starts performing the same sex act on Sky and declares: "Sky's rim belongs to the Nords."
- There is another famous greentext that recauts a story of a 12 year old Anon living in a counryside on an old farm in an abusive family with his aunt and uncle. One day, Uncle brings a very filthy mare from a market that is supposedly bred from a prize stallion. Aunt loves her and decides to name her Dirty. Anon always loved horses and riding them but the family didnt approve and threatened to beat him if they ever catch him riding their horse and they did beat him before. A few days later Anon was playing with a tractor tire in a field with Dirty eating grass beside him. Out of boredom, he decides to climb inside, but because the ground wasn't flat, the tire started moving and he can't stop. The aunt and uncle come oustside to check on him, and Anon recounts the following as such: "They see me rollin'. They hatin'. Patrolling and trying to catch me riding Dirty ."
- A greentext is told from the point of view of a father suspects his son is gay, but he's pays it no mind. One day, his son invites his best friend Kerry over, and they excuse themselves to the bedroom to hang out. The father is preparing dinner, and he just needs a few more minutes before the peas are ready to be served. He calls out to his son to be down for dinner, but hears no response, so he walks up to the son's bedroom to make sure he was heard. He knocks on the door, opens it and sees: Kerry on my wayward son, there'll be peas when you are done
- AC-bu's short Anzenunten no Shiorinote does this in Japanese. It's all about a humble salaryman trying to drive to work, only to run a red light and get chased down by the police. Eventually, the chase gets so bad the cars end up somewhere near a mountain road with a lot of steep curves; the police and salaryman lose control of their vehicles and drive over the edge, but before they can die in the ensuing explosion, a mysterious cop on a motorcycle catches them all and carries them to safety. The cop removes their helmet, revealing she was a woman the whole time. Noting her careful driving saved their lives, she promptly introduces herself as ...Shiori. That's right, Shiori's safe driving (Anzenunten no Shiori) kept them alive.
- The BagelBoy video, serious business about a skeleton trying to get a job via his skill of managing to conjure up a banana out of nowhere, only to be told the company he's applying for is a factory making lightbulbs. The rest of the video is a somewhat sombore monologue from the skeleton lamenting he spent all his life on such a skill, pushing away friends and family, and screwed it up at the last minute, rendering his acomplishment meaningless. He notes he spiralled into a mental breakdown...one could say, he had gone bananasnote .
- A common joke by Brazilians in comment threads is making long posts that are unrelated to the topic solely to end with the sentence "comi o cu de quem tá lendo". Translation: "I fucked the ass of whoever is reading this".
- The Cinema Snob review of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace ends with one.
Snob: But, you know, the movie serves its purpose in letting people debate which is the better Superman film: Superman IV or Man of Steel. And Man of Steel fans can say "Only an idiot would think 'Superman IV' is the better movie!", and Superman IV defenders can always respond with "Yeah, well, at least 'Superman IV' is canon." (shit eating grin)
- Word of God from TeamFourStar is that the entire first season of Dragon Ball Z Abridged was a setup so they could end the season with the revelation that Vegeta is now being haunted by the ghost of Nappa, Vegeta's annoying henchman that he killed in a fit of rage during the previous episode. More to the point, to have Ghost Nappa sing a parody of the original Ghostbusters theme song.
- During the 2016 presidential election in The United States, a convoluted pun◊ originated on Facebook about the candidates trying to determine the winner by racing around the White House. Hillary Rodham Clinton wins in "just under ten minutes" and declares: "That must be some kind of record!" Barack Obama corrects her: "Bush did 9:11" (for those not in the know, that phrase is a meme riffing on conspiracy theories that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job by the George W. Bush administration).
- Entries in the "Vile Puns" category of the yearly Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest tend to consist mostly of feghoots. The page quote is a subversion.
- Fine Structure: On Digital Extremities is about a group of scientists developing technology that can transmit information faster than light. As they attempt their first test of this technology, they find that instead of receiving the other testing groups message as expected, it gets cancelled out and they recieve a mysterious signal that seems to originate from nowhere in particular. For the next few years, they attempt to decode this signal and understand what it's trying to say, until one scientist finally figures it out: they have to buy a more expensive broadband package.
- Max Gilardi's "Tarantino's New Business" toon is about Quentin Tarantino opening a morgue exclusively for black people. While there are a lot of jokes throughout the cartoon, for the most part the whole thing seems to just be a set up to have Quentin say "Because storing dead niggers is my fucking business, that's why!"
- Homestar Runner: Apparently invoked in the Strong Bad Email "pet show", where Strong Bad ends the email on a strained pun to distract the audience from the fact he and The Cheat didn't win at the Cat Mess Inbredtational Pet Show.
Strong Bad: Don't worry, we're currently appealing the decision of the judges. We're also currently a-peeling... POTATOES!
(Strong Bad jumps into a pile of potatoes, which The Cheat is peeling while still in his pet show regalia)
Strong Bad: (whispering to The Cheat) Hey, The Cheat. Do you think we successfully glossed over the fact we lost the competition?
The Cheat: (affirmative The Cheat noises)
Strong Bad: Man, is there anything potatoes can't do? - In 2021, Jacksfilms held a 48 Hour Film Festival, where his fans were given 48 hours to make a short video which had to contain the line "That's a spicy meat-a-ball-a!" One fan's entry starred a man playing a midi keyboard at a bowling alley, who throws a tantrum after he gets a gutter ball. The punchline? "Now that's a spicy midi bowler!"
- Hayley Morris: "An Unexpected Christmas Present at The V Hotel" has the Hotel receive a heavy package addressed there, only to find Period having shipped herself there by Human Mail, telling them to "enjoy the Christmas period".
- One of Egoraptor's earlier Newgrounds shorts is "Mr. Literal", about the titular character having trouble understanding turns-of-phrase, which escalates in a confrontation with his boss to the point of Mr. Literal's boss accidentally tearing his arm off. After a moment of horrified realization, the boss then says, "Let's give him a hand!"
- SCP Foundation has a few of these as tales and as joke SCPs:
- SCP-649-2568-J is a snake that is compelled to tell the truth when asked a question, and causes changes to geological surfaces it finds too short. Because "I like big buttes and I cannot lie." (there are two Stealth Puns in the build-up: the snake is an anaconda, and the number spells MIX-ALOT). Should be noted that basically everyone in the comments page gives a grudging upvote / Lame Pun Reaction.
- SCP-0002-j is a talking toilet that wants to write a book about his life because he's seen some shit.
- Dr. Palanez's Proposal is written in the style of an SCP-001 proposal (as the site does not have a defined SCP-001, but rather multiple "proposals" with one, all, or none of them being the true SCP-001) regarding a phenomenon affecting Palanez, particularly when in contact with a certain fellow researcher. The last lines of the document make it clear that it is, in fact, a marriage proposal instead.
- SCP-9999-J describes a scenario where all sorts of meats and eventually living bovines start mysteriously levitating high into the upper atmosphere, forcing the Foundation, various world leaders, and various GOIs to hold a meeting discussing the flying beef. O5-1 states that they don't want to strongarm the others into helping find a solution, however in their words, "But what choice do I have when the steaks are this high?"
- The 12 Days of Site 87's Christmas takes place over the course of twelve days before Christmas 2014, and involves the Krampus, a magical Christmas tree that makes its own ornamentation, and a fight between the two of them. In the final fight between the Tree and the Krampus, one Dr. Partridge gets knocked on his ass by a blast from the former, and transformed into, as one of the characters puts it, "A small tree of the genus Pyrus." In other words, Dr. Partridge is a Pear Tree.
- Again, in Happy Howlidays, which involves a werewolf Santa of all things. Said Werewolf Santa followed throughout the story by a character named Virginia, and eventually ends up concussing a Foundation researcher and a claw shot off by a sniper before dying. After the fact, the delirious, concussed researcher finds the claw and proclaims, "Yes, Virginia, There's Santa Claws."
- Although it isn't pun SCP-3305 turns out to all just be an elaborate build up to the joke at the end.
- SCP-5987 is an unusual Downplayed example, as it's an entity known as the Sirenhead, whose physical description is obfuscated through notes and file updates, before it's revealed to be... a sculpture of a siren used as the figurehead of a ship (with anomalous, hypnotic properties to boot). The Bait-and-Switch of this comes from the fact that there's a much more famous "Siren Head" among internet horror circles (a giant, incredibly lanky Humanoid Abomination with an air raid siren for a head) that is commonly mistaken and mislabeled as an SCP, so the existence of the entry is very much made as a "Ha, gotcha!" joke.
- SCP-649-2568-J
- Computer scientist Tom Murphy VII, aka "Tom 7", has a number of unusual videos on his YouTube channel "suckerpinch". One of them, "Badness 0 (Apostrophe's Version), is about using a large language model AI to change words in a document to make it look better when typeset so as to fill the entire width of the column without changing what the original author meant. It ends with two puns: one is about AI "alignment", and the other is a Quip to Black one-liner in the style of CSI: "Looks like this use of LLMs was... fully justified."
- This story is ostensibly about the poster's bratty cousin, but ends with the reader getting Rick Rolled.
- From Tumblr:
- Each post in this reblog chain starts with safety tips for hikers who encounter a bear, but ends with lyrics from "Teenagers" by My Chemical Romance.
- A couple is walking in St. Petersburg Square on Christmas Eve …note
- Each post in this reblog chain
- From Twitter:
- This 93-part Twitter thread is ostensibly about a cancelled Tomb Raider game and its... unique... developer, who somehow managed to predict pretty much the entirety of 2020. It ends with Lara locked underground, with nothing but depressing news from the outside world to read through on her phone. In other words, she's "tombscrolling".
- This 100-part Twitter thread is about the history of a monastery and the floral trade in Turin. A little over half-way through hits you with the "Only you can prevent Florist Friars" punchline before pivoting into another story culminating in "Kicks are for Trids", a rare double.
- This
- Yahtzee has admitted to doing this with a few Zero Punctuation episodes:
- From Red Faction: Guerrilla: "...which is less guerrilla and more chimpanzee! (spent years working on that last pun)"
- From Mass Effect and the controversial sex scene: "...it's hardly going to make your mass erect. (yes, the whole review was leading up to that terrible pun in the end)"
- In the GARANIKOR video "To Catch a Taxi," James and Brady are playing Crazy Taxi, only for James to send Brady to get some drinks. What follows is an extended To Catch a Predator reference where Brady is accused of playing Crazy Taxi. In the end, when Brady asks if he's about to be arrested, James answers with Yah, yah, yah, yah, yah!
Western Animation
- The The Amazing World of Gumball episode "The Catfish" is about Gumball (cat) and Darwin (fish) making up a person online to be their grandpa Louie's friend. Most of it leads up to the pun in the episode title.
Louie: Do you know what a cat and a fish pretending to be someone else online is called?
Gumball: Cat... fishing?
Louie: No! It's called... wait. Actually, yes, that is what it's called. - Celebrity Deathmatch: With each episode's fights normally having a justification, Flea vs. Kenny G doesn't really have one... Until the fight's end basically shows it as an excuse to reference South Park.
Johnny Gomez: Oh my God! Flea killed Kenny G! Flea killed Kenny G!
Audience kid: You bastard! - Family Guy: In "Wild Wild West", Lois and a few of her friends decide to nominate the town's librarian to be a candidate in the mayoral race. When Lois asks for her name, she replies that it's Elle Hitler ("No relation"), so they all raise their hands and say "Hi, Elle Hitler!".note
- Over the Garden Wall: The episode "Mad Love" is a "Shaggy Dog" Story where Greg throws away the two cents Endicott and Margueritte gave him. Why?
Greg: Because I've got no sense. No sense at all.
- The Powerpuff Girls (1998): Towards the conclusion of "Meet The Beat-Alls" (a parallel to The Beatles filled with Beatles references), Judy of the Townsville Zoo recruits one of her chimpanzees to defeat Mojo Jojo. She notes that the chimp was going to learn to play piano, but—as she notes—"Someday monkey won't play piano song, play piano song." note
- Rocky and Bullwinkle:
- Mister Peabody in the Peabody's Improbable History sketches would end on him making a summation of the historical goings on in a Pun. Lampshaded on one occasion when he makes the awful pun in the middle of the segment:
Sherman: You should've saved that one for the ending, Mr. Peabody.
Mr. Peabody: Oh I have one that's worse than that. - The alternate titles for the segments of the main cartoon were, quite often, Puns as well. In many cases, it seems strongly likely that plot developments were thrown in specifically so they could work the puns in as titles.
- The Aesop and Son segments would end with Aesop giving the moral of the story, followed by Aesop Jr. giving an alternate "moral" as a pun.
Jr.: Dad, I think the lesson here is "People in grass houses shouldn't throw bones."
Aesop: Takes after his mother, he does. - The "Fractured Fairy Tales" segments were likewise overly long gags that were usually twists on familiar fairy tales, setting up for an excruciatingly bad pun at the end.
- Mister Peabody in the Peabody's Improbable History sketches would end on him making a summation of the historical goings on in a Pun. Lampshaded on one occasion when he makes the awful pun in the middle of the segment:
- The Simpsons: The episode "Apocalypse Cow" has Bart befriending a cow that he names Lou. At the end, after they part ways, Bart remarks that "For once in my life, I had a cow, man."
- The South Park episode "More Crap" turns out to be this. The reason why Bono tries so hard at everything is because of a major case of envy. He is literally made out of feces — according to his father, "He will always be my Number Two." The rest of the joke is finding ways to say that Bono is the world's biggest shit.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Wet Painters", SpongeBob and Patrick are hired by Mr. Krabs to paint his house, warning them that the paint they're using is incredibly permanent and promising traumatic amputation of their backsides if they stain any of his valuables with it.note After a series of mishaps and close calls, the duo manage to paint the entire house—but they get a tiny, microscopic speck on Mr. Krabs' first dollar earned. Their panicked attempts to remove the speck only make the stain worse until it covers the entire bill, and Mr. Krabs invariably discovers the act. When he does, he grabs the dollar off the wall and...licks it clean; apparently, he was only joking about the permanence to mess with the two, and the paint actually easily comes off with saliva. The little prank leaves Spongebob and Patrick unimpressed, and they take their leave, but Krabs is so amused by his own joke that he breaks into hysterics—and in the process sends his laughter-induced spittle all over the walls, which subsequently dissolves the paint and leaves him right back where he started. Seeing the unfortunate results of his laughter session, Old Man Krabs has but this to say:
Mr. Krabs: Aww, crud! I really gotta learn to say it, not spray it.
- The Teen Titans Go! episode "The Art of Ninjitsu" revolves around the team trying to capture the "Golden McGuffin", an indeterminate object that is important to Robin, because... reasons. At the end, they find out that the McGuffin they were questing for is an egg, bacon and English muffin sandwich. Cyborg drops the by-now-mandatory pun:
Cyborg: You mean we did all this for an Egg McGuffin?
Real Life
- In France, the concept of "Fable-express" was popular at some point and consisted of making poetry or fables for the sole purpose of ending with a punny moral.
- A man in China was faced with rescuing his girlfriend Rong or his ex-girlfriend Jun after they both jumped into a river. He chose Rong.
- After taking LSD, a man in Oregon attacked a car, claiming he was an Elf and the car was the Dark Lord Morgoth. He was a high elf.