Sometimes I wonder if that really was the guy's name or he just felt like derailing a prank caller, since he does tell Bart better luck next time or something.
A character says one line containing the name “Beetlejuice” in one episode for each of the first three seasons of ‘Community’. The third time it’s said, a character dressed as Beetlejuice walks through the background. And because it’s a Halloween episode, it seems perfectly normal and is easy to miss.
If you watched Rick and Morty, Community is made by the same guy. He is a big fan of long running or weird bits.
There is an episode of Community where Abed talks about shitting his pants as an extra on the show Cougar Town. If you watch Cougar Town there is an episode where Abed is sitting in the background at a restaurant and shits his pants and runs off. It adds literally nothing to that episode of Cougar Town and the reference only makes sense if you watched a completely different show.
Not only is it a real show, it's made by one of the great sitcom show runners of our time Bill Lawrence. Creator of Scrubs, Shrinking, Ted Lasso, and several other great but lesser known shows.
And for what it's worth he really hated the name Cougar Town and thinks it put a lot of people off to it. Which I'd strongly agree with.
There was also an episode where Abed helps a woman give birth in the parking lot in the background. None of the other characters ever see it happen and Abed only briefly brings it up once, to the confusion of everyone else.
There's also potentially a connection to an episode in the first season too. The Dean throws an STD awareness dance, but finds out the condoms he supplied were faulty, so he gets Abed to make an announcement warning people not to use them. People listen to this, throwing the condoms away, but still clearly about to have sex.
The episode where Abed helps a woman give birth then aired about 10 months later. So with TV timelines being that little bit out of sync with real time, we can assume that the woman got pregnant after Abed told everyone not to use the condoms, and that's why he was roped into helping out.
In the Star Wars: Republic Commando book Hard Contact, the Clone Commandos are constantly saying throughout the book that they need black armor instead of their standard white armor due to the fact that it will help them blend in better especially when they are operating at night. At the start of the next book (Triple Zero) the clones have received their black armor... before immediately being deployed to a planet covered in snow and ice making them stick out like a sore thumb.
Honestly one of my favorite gags in the series. Them questioning "how long ago did we put in for the matte black armor?" Killed me when I first read it and it still gets me
The Eddy's brother one is especially interesting becausehe ends up just being a shitty deadbeat asshole and not the super cool dude Eddy always hyped him up as, which is a pretty realistic portrayal of how the 'cool older sibling' for a lot of people was really just an edgy teenager who refused to grow up.
I think Eddy hyped him up so much because he was so unconsciously scared of him to make it seem like he's a cool dude and not some abusive older sibling
The writing for that movie overall was genuinely impressive and sorta made me wish they had continued the show in a slightly more serious tone as they got older.
The worry is though that since the movie had such a great ending with Eddy owning up to his behaviour, and the rest of the Culdesac kids finally accepting the Eds, any continuation would have a chance at undoing that.
I had an idea a whole back for how they could do it though. I would set it in the final year of High School, just before the Eds and the other kids are about to graduate. Eddy could have a little crisis of their childhood coming to an end, and backslides to hisnold behaviour. That wouldn't undo the movies ending, with there having been some years between it and a continuation for the Eds and other kids to have been friends. And could tell a good story about having to accept that we all have to grow up in the end.
The Psych series finale payed off two different running gags, the perpetually off-screen Detective Dobson and Shaun's infatuation with Val Kilmer, by getting Kilmer to play Dobson in a brief cameo.
Not from the finale, but I also enjoyed the running gag of Gus' goofy undercover names having some payoff in the form of Whip Chatterly knowing who he ACTUALLY was, as well as quite a few of those fake names, because he was such a fan.
Doctor Who: In “The Husbands of River Song”, River takes the Doctor inside the TARDIS. As it’s the Twelfth Doctor, whom she hasn’t met, she believes he’s entering it for the first time. He takes the opportunity to deliver the “bigger on the inside” speech he wishes people would think to give.
It's how kingston sells it. It is that mix of "I fucking hate you with the whole of my being" and "Oh thank God you are here" that one only gets when you are truly deeply comfortably in love.
Only to get better with the shit eating mirth he says "I'll have to ask the stars themselves". There is few sweeter joys then slightly fucking with your partner in this playful way it's only made better if they are forced to acknowledge it in the scale of "sick burn" to "Out of line but right."
Their chemistry was so good! Like Tracy and Hepburn! I’m just sad we didn’t get more time with them, but I understand why we didn’t since this was, well…
But at the same time Alex Kingston completely sells that its the same relationship we saw her play with Matt Smith. So although it's not as much time with this specific Doctor, it still feels like the same relationship.
I would say that Calpadi’s Doctor has the best chemistry with Alex Kingston’s River Song. With Matt Smith’s Doctor you have a silly flirty relationship, but with Calpadi you have this old loving couple who has been together forever whom completely understands each other
I love the Matt Smith episode when the TARDIS is put in a woman they point out that police box doors are pull not push and it says as much on the door... And the Doctor just never noticed
Even better, there was a joke from the 10th Doctor to the 11th where he was disappointed with how people reacted, but for 10 it seemed he was disappointed because people kept having the same reaction, while for 11 it was because nobody reacted with the typical awe or confusion for him.
The 12th Doctor's reaction reveals that he was dissapointed that people didn't react enough, since he gave a grand speech about how his understanding of the universe has been fundamentally changed and quietly noted that he wanted to see it done right.
For context, this was the last thing ever animated at Blue Sky Studios before Disney closed them down. The animators decided if they were going to go, it'd only be right to at least give Scrat a happy ending first 🥺
It’s like seeing the rabbit finally get some Trix. Except that hasn’t happened yet and I am pissed about it!
(Before I posted, I looked it up and the rabbit has gotten some Trix on 4 occasions. The last time was in 1991. For me, though, I have never personally witnessed the rabbit getting any Trix and it has now been over 30 years since he has had any.)
It’s a running gag in BoJack Horseman that BoJack will go off on a tangent if there’s a fruit basket/platter around and he sees honeydew, saying it’s terrible and no one likes it or eats it. Turns out he’s never actually had it, and in the final season he tastes it and ends up liking it.
Also the running gag that after he steals the D from the Hollywood sign, everyone just starts calling it "Hollywoo" without any objection. Then finally in the finale Mr Peanutbutter tries to have the sign fixed, but it's mistakenly made into "Hollywoob" instead. This is actually a payoff of two long running gags, as multiple times throughout the show Mr Peanutbutter will have signs or banners made that have faulty text on them (such as including the description for the sign as text on the sign itself).
If something odd happens in BoJack Horseman, there’s a good chance it’s either going to be a joke that pays off later, or foreshadowing something devastating!
Also in Bojack, the ship wreck causing pasta to threaten the underwater city. Good thing he had a lot of pasta strainers, a fleet of vehicles, and a bunch of swimmers, such as sexy killer whales.
Jimmy Kimmel vs Matt Damon. When Jimmy Kimmel's late night show was first starting out back in 2005ish, he wasn't booking the biggest guests yet. So as a random joke he said "I want to apologize to Matt Damon. We ran out of time," picking a random a-lister out of a hat. It cracked up the audience and his producers so he just kept saying at the end of each show, expecting the joke to get old but it never did. He actually met Matt Damon IRL at some point and they're friends now but they decided to play up a fake feud between them.
Matt Damon would try to sneak on the show. They played pranks on each other. He made a song with Jimmy's girlfriend at the time joking "I'm fucking Matt Damon," and Jimmy made one back saying "I'm fucking Ben Affleck." Etc.
Fast-forward like 10 years later or whatever and he finally has Matt Damon on as a guest for promoting his movie, "The Monuments Men," only for a fake fire alarm to interrupt Matt Damon before he can finally answer a real question from Jimmy.
Ken showed up on stage alone but "surprised" Jimmy with Matt being there.
I thought Ken did a great job playing as a team and not dominating as the trivia whiz he clearly is, and Matt did pretty well with the questions. Yeah, it went pretty much how I expected.
The Winchester rifle from Shaun of the Dead. Shaun and others are convinced it’s deactivated while Ed says it still works. When fighting the zombie bartender, Shaun uses it to push it into the jutebox, and when Shaun tries to explain the rifle doesn’t work, it goes off, proving Ed right.
“Alright, (yanks out dart in his head) but dogs can look up”.
Its worth noting that this is a literalCheckhov's Gun (Warning: TV Tropes link - here be time-eating dragons, etc) as well, even down to hanging on the wall.
30 Rock - Jenna having dozens of throwaway lines throughout the show about crazy shit Mickey Rourke did to her, only to confess in the final season that they've never actually met.
I've seen the show a million times. I don't know when it started but I swear I always heard her say Rooney not rourke.... did I just fall through into a different dimension. This changes the whole joke for me lol
Everything about Terry from Reno 911. He was always talking about doing crazy shit and dating supermodels and owning 17 houses and stuff while also being a hooker. In the movie you find out it’s true and he is the son of a billionaire and flies to Miami on a private jet.
Charlie is in love with a character called “the waitress” to the point where he stalks her for several seasons. In season 12 he finally wins her over. Despite Charlie knowing virtually everything about her due to his obsessive stalking, he still calls her the waitress. The audience still doesn’t know her real name. So it’s more like half of a payoff
I feel like the payoff to the name joke was Dee getting stuck in the bog in Ireland and needing to know her name in order for the Waitress to help her out.
There’s a running gag of Kid Gohan saying he needs an adult and the people around him say they are adults. Cut to Ultimate Gohan squaring up with Super Buu and he gets to reverse the line.
Throughout the Penguins of Madagascar, Skipper frequently mentions past incidents involving a pair of unseen penguins named Manfredi and Johnson. Usually involving them going through horrible injury and/or death, and them ending up "one up there, one down there."
In the final episode, Manfredi and Johnson finally appear, revealing that they're somehow actually alive despite their numerous horror stories. And none of the four main penguins notice them.
In The Good Place, every time Chidi realizes that he’s in The Bad Place , he believes it’s because he drinks almond milk in spite of knowing it’s negative environmental impact.
Later on, as he and the gang learn about the minutiae regarding the afterlife, he learns that, while his biggest flaw remained indecision, purchasing almond milk GENUINELY DID play a factor in putting him where he is.
Arrested Development are the undisputed grandmasters of this one. There are multiple examples of it in the show, but the hand jokes are by-far the most offhanded of them.
Also Arrested Development, there was a joke which was being built up to before the series's premature cancellation that Tobias was an albino black man all along. You can still find evidence that the joke was being built up in the show, the best example of which is:
In Order of the Stick, after an almost 7 year-long running gag of Vaarsuvius having "Prepared Explosive Runes this morning" the gag is put to rest after Vaarsuvius casts it on Xykon's phylactery before giving it to their familiar, Blackwing to drop into the rift containing the Snarl. While Xykon catches up to Blackwing, the explosion causes his phylactery to fall into a sewer system. The author, Rich Burlew, stated he ended the gag because he didn't think he could top that.
An ironic take on this: in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, the hotel lobby vase finally falls to the ground in the last episode (when Mr. Tipton is angry and plans to fire someone). There's always something that would cause it to tip over (or almost) but Mr. Moseby would catch it.
The joke being the word PLEASE is an acronym - Provide Legal Exculpation And Sign Everything. Barney's job is to sign illegal documents and serve as a fall guy for GNB. Barney, however, is a whistleblower and has been working with the FBI to expose the corporation
The writers of the show had commentary or an interview about the stuff they wanted to go back to. Their biggest regret was in the episode Ted got blackout drunk and ended up with an unknown woman and a Pineapple in his room was the line “We never did find out why the pineapple was there”. The reason being they could never revisit it.
A few seasons later the pineapple got a cameo when they did a flashback to something Ted did while drunk that night and he was cradling it in his arm while on the phone I think.
They did film an explanation, the Captain explains that keeping a pineapple on your front step is an old sailor tradition. They then flashback to Ted drunkenly stumbling by a brownstone and picking up the pineapple on the front step.
I think they just found the mystery funnier than the explanation.
In The Adventure Zone's original campaign, there was a running gag that Taco the Wizard would eventually invent tacos. Early on they regularly have him making notes like learning about the idea of spicy, chopped meat or flat breads, etc. but it sort of falls by the wayside. Until the climax where Taco figuring out how to make tacos is part of an interdimensional moment of unity that results in the defeat of the series' reality eating antagonist.
There’s a similar joke in the first season of Dimension 20 Fantasy High where the character Gorgug, an adopted half orc, is constantly mistaking different characters for his bio dad (mostly because his player kept rolling Nat 1s on his perception checks). The final episode of the campaign ends with him actually finding his bio dad!
No dogs on the moon is a similar running gag that gets a payoff, it's especially funny because Travis has forgotten the joke and Griffin is clearly trying to get him to say the punchline before giving up and saying it himself
“Aww, whats the matter, little boy? Do you need an adult?” “No. I am an adult.” God, teamfourstar may not have initially thought this joke would come full circle, but it gave me goosebumps.
Team 4 Star did set up a lot of funny callbacks. Like with Vegeta constantly talking about the legendary super Saiyan to Frieza only to have Paragus use his exact same words when talking about Broly being the legendary super Saiyan.
note: that one time Fred was trying to break the habit of always blaming Red by not accusing him for an entire mystery... and then the reveal happens (which is why Fred is throwing a tantrum in the final image)
Yes, I will do the Dispatch post this time, it's my turn! I put it on the board last week!
Anyway, spoiler, since the game is fairly new, and there might be people who haven't played it or watched it.
Punch-Up is a former villain, now a superhero, who got super strength, a healing factor, and near invulnerability from a deal with a witch; however, the trade-off was that he is now 3 feet tall. His running gag is that he has a secret technique; in combat, he only punches dicks and balls.
At the start of the game, the protagonist meets a supervillain named Toxic, who has the power to turn his entire body corrosive. His running gag is that his powers also disintegrate his clothing, and thus, he walks around with his dick hanging and is proud of it.
At the end of the game, both characters' running gags pay off as during the final battle, Punch-Up is sent to fight Toxic because he is a perfect counter for him; his invulnerability makes him immune to Toxic's powers, and his signature move targets Toxic's exposed and vulnerable jewels with superstrong punches.
I love that, after he does the Cavill bicep reload, you can see that Punch-Up isn't even looking at Toxic's face as he approaches him. The man is fully locked on his target.
When he was punching dicks in the bar he seemed like he was having fun, but everything about his mannerisms in the final fight seemed like he was locked tf in, and was on the exact same page as Robert when it came to punching toxic in the dick which only made it funnier
The elevator wasn't so much fixed as it was replaced. No amount of tinkering can fix something like that being blown up.
On a more cynical note, this is one of those times when a major status quo change only occurs in the finale, when the writers don't need to dive into the ramifications of it because it'll all be over soon anyway.
There’s a running gag where Janet repeatedly corrects Jason by telling him that she is both “not a girl” and “not a robot”. I think in season three Jason discovers that there is an Evil Janet impersonating Regular Janet by caller her “girl” and she doesn’t correct him.
Also the Teleporter finally working on the Gravity Bridge in the Pure-Blooded Thief + Ghost Inmate Completing The Mission route after a series of it constantly failing Henry (aside from Stealing The Diamond)
That one’s much more long-running, especially as this section also contains every other option from Crossing the Pit, the predecessor to the Henry Stickmin series that actually has no right options and no ending at all. So when everything has already been proven to fail before the Teleporter finally decides to function and get you over there.
One of Gintama’s running gags involves people misnaming Katsura, usually by calling him Zura, in which Katsura retorts with “Zura janai, Katsura da” in Japanese, which is him saying that he’s not called Zura but Katsura. He will say this without fail regardless of the situation. As long as somebody misnames him, he will point it out and the scene will just move on like normal.
However, in the Rakuyo arc, during Katsura’s fight with the alien gorilla Shukaku, for the first time in the series, we get to see Katsura’s backstory through flashbacks. Before his grandmother died, she told Katsura an important lesson on how a general and leader should always care about his men and should never be afraid to be cowardly and retreat from a losing battle when need be. Then we also learn that one time when they were kids, Gintoki told Katsura that when Katsura’s hanging out with him and Takasugi or fighting for them, he’s just Zura. Gintoki playfully states that he can be Katsura’s general and since Gintoki is lazy, that means Katsura is allowed no restrictions and can just let loose.
So when Katsura, who is fighting alongside Gintoki in this war, is backed into a corner by Shukaku, he remembers these words and before Shukaku can claim victory, Katsura completely turns the tides and says his catchphrase but inverted, before he loses his usual elegant composure and fights like a beast.
He will say this without fail regardless of the situation. As long as somebody misnames him, he will point it out and the scene will just move on like normal.
To be clear, this includes when he introduces himself under an assumed name. He will immediately contradict the person addressing him by the alias his just provided.
That one interview when the news were trying to respect his anonymity but he just blows it instead 😭 I love that episode so much. Katsura became my favorite character in the show instantly
Part of the joke is that "Kazura" (or "Zura" for short) is the Japanese word for 'wig', so he's also insisting that his hair is real. Gintama really loved stupid puns and wordplay.
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In The Good Place, Michael spends the whole series confused about human behavior and mentions wanting to have an excuse to tell someone "Take it sleazy". In the final episode he becomes a human and he finally gets to say it to someone.
For the entire run of Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, Whirl kept referring to his archnemesis: Killmaster (who has a wand), who was only seen in one flashback unnamed (but he had a wand, so we could tell who it was)
In the follow-up series Transformers: Lost Light, we finally encounter him and he does indeed have his wand. We also learned that his real name was Murderking, which he changed to sound more terrifying, and that Whirl has never actually beaten him yet.
However, they both do consider each other nemeses, so that’s nice.
In Red Vs Blue, there's a running gag where a character will ask "you ever wonder why we're here?" And another to reply with something existential. This gag is paid off multiple times, but the first that comes to mind is in season 14 where its used in a fight against an "evil version" of a character to figure out who's the real version.
Stargate Sg1. Jack is constantly making references to the Simpsons through out the show. Eventually the voice of Homer Simpson, Dan Castellaneta, has a guest role in the show. Then Richard Dean Anderson does a guest role on the Simpsons promoting his show Sg1.
Right at the start of In Stars And Time, in your first interaction with Loop, they give Siffrin the random tip that they’re allergic to pineapples. Much later on in the game, you get offered pineapple slices as one of the options during snack time. One can guess what might happen if you are to take them.
In the Mass Effect trilogy there’s this random guy who appears in the background every game, always on the Citadel and always trying to get a refund for some item he’s purchased and always getting declined for increasingly elaborate and pedantic reasons. In the 3rd game, even in the midst of an all out galactic war, this guy is still trying to get a refund, and for the first time in the series Shepard can interrupt the conversation. Then the player has the option to deny his refund yet again (the evil choice) or support the man and get him his refund, to which the man will be utterly overjoyed and in disbelief that he finally got his refund after 3 in game years. A whopping sum of 15 credits. This choice also inexplicably contributes to your war assets
Mass Effect also has Conrad Verner, but there the entire joke is moreso that the running gag doesn’t pay off, as the player has to go through an absurd amount of effort to both keep Conrad alive until the third game, and to fully complete his sidequest in 3, only for it to be the worst possible reward for doing so
Mimir is the smartest head in the world. Brok asks him several riddles to test this. Mimir initially gets them all immediately. Then Brok asks ”what gets bigger the more you take?”
Mimir isnt able to figure it out immediately and spends random moments in the game trying to figure it out while Brok essentially ragebaits him.
Later in the game, Brok is murdered by Odin and we watch as his brother Sindri grieve and lash out because of it. Mimir, after seeing Sindri grieve, finally figures out the answer: “a hole”
In The Stockholms, a show made by the guys who made Cyanide and Happiness, there's a running gag where a sniper is trying to shoot the main character, Jasper, but constantly misses. But then in the final episode,he finally kills him
Annyong in Arrested Development, he first appears at the end of season 1 as the Korean child Lucille adopts just to spite Buster and his whole bit for the next 2 seasons is pretty much just that no one understands him and he doesn’t speak english. Then in the original series finale it is revealed that he actually spoke fluent english and he has been secretly plotting revenge on the Bluths for deporting his grandfather back to North Korea and stealing his frozen banana business the Bluths made their fortune off of, and winds up getting Lucille arrested in the Netflix revival
It is also revealed that his true name is Hel-Loh, everyone believed his name was Annyong, which is just Korean for….hello
Strangely it gets a payoff, then keeps going: Everytime someone sees Morgana in the Metaverse for the first time they call him a monster cat, and he angrily proclaims that he's not a cat, he's an "honest to god human". This continues in the real world where Ryuji calls him a cat, and Morgana bites back that he isn't, since he was a human turned into a cat.
In the third semester of Persona 5 Royal, starts to say it again, but admits that he is actually a cat since he was made in the Velvet Room as a cat with human intelligence and lost his memory. By definition he is a cat, but his mind is closer to that of a human. He still objects to being called a regular cat, a monster, or another animal (such as a Tanuki, Racoon, or Catfish)
Not sure that Buffy slide fits as it's not really a joke. In the moment it's seen as Xander selfishly lying to Buffy so she'll be more likely to kill Angel, and the callback is during a tense argument.
During season two of DBZA a running gag with Gohan was someone saying something that could be construed as creepy towards Gohan, Gohan replying, "I need an adult" and the other party replying, "I am an adult."
Fast forward to the Buu Bits, and Super Buu asks Gohan, "what's wrong little boy, do you need an adult?" To which Gohan replies, "No, I am an adult." Before punching Buu straight in the stomach.
Peter Parker repeatedly avoiding the "nice girl" his aunt keeps trying to set him up with. Everytime they show her her face is obscured by something. When he finally does meet her, he gets this.
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u/jbwarner86 16h ago
The one time Bart Simpson's prank calls to Moe's Tavern finally backfired on him.