Cheek Copy

Considering all the other images we could have used...

Now is not a good time to photocopy your butt and staple it to your boss's face -- oh no!

—Weird Al Yankovic, "Your Horoscope For Today"

A standard juvenile office prank, where the subject drops his trousers, plants his rear end against the glass of a photocopy machine and presses start. Hilarious!

Don't Try This At Home, kids. See Truth in Television below to find out why.

Examples of Cheek Copy include:

Advertising

• This Japanese chocolate commercial.
  • Shot for Shot Remake for a Western Office Supplier. But do note that this is a commercial for printing paper. The girl in this version climbs on top of the machine because the paper tray is empty...
  • Re-used wholesale for the UK launch of the product, with a locally-relevant box comped in.
• A Public Service Announcement by anti-smoking group Stand, where a guy photocopies his butt (with his pants still on) and posts it above an ashtray with the caption "I don't like seeing yours either." "Costs a buck a week, but it's worth it!"
• One for, astonishingly enough: Copier Repair
• Subway
• This scene from Carrer Builder.com's Monkey Business ads

Comic Books

• She Hulk was fired from a law firm for crushing the copier while making photocopies of her butt. She asks how they knew it was her. Turns out it was a color copier.
• Fantastic Four #527: Ben Grimm experiences a significant windfall, and rushes off to do this, so he can send the picture to Bill Gates (The Other B.G.). Bill wonders why the Fantastic Four sent him a picture of the Grand Canyon.
  • The Thing's Mego toy counterpart does this, and similar pranks, on a regular basis in Twisted Toyfare Theater.
• The first issue of Mad to feature its current Hotter and Sexier format had this lovely cover.

Film - Animated

• Monsters vs. Aliens has a scanner to Mission Control only admitting someone after scanning their eyes, hands, ears, elbows, and yup...dropping their pants so it can scan their butt.
• Gru's Minions are seen doing this to amuse themselves in one scene from Despicable Me.

Film - Live-Action

• The Spirit: Sand prints a copy of her rear, The Spirit retrieves it, immediately knowing that it's her "perfect ass". Considering the last time he saw her was when she was 12, that's particularly squicky.
  • And then he shows it to every bellboy at every swanky hotel in Central City to find where she's staying. A few complimentary comments later, it works. The one that recognizes it, incidentally? A midget.
• In 40 Days and 40 Nights one of the protagonist's female coworkers does this to try to make the protagonist lose his bet of not having sex (or masturbating) for 40 days.
• Ed Begley Jr's character in She Devil is stone cold busted because of this. Did it never occur to him to take the ring off?
  • Hold on a sec. A picture of a butt grabbed by a man's hands with a ring on one finger?
• Tina was handing out pictures of her butt she'd copied at the Christmas Party in Scrooged.

Literature

• The Laundry short story "Overtime" deals with Bob pulling Christmas watch duty in the aftermath of the office party. The first sign that something's wrong is when he goes to the photocopier, finds a few cheek copies, and realizes one of them shows the thorax of a giant cockroach...

Live Action TV

• Monk goes to an office undercover, his deductive skills are noticed by his co-workers who ask him to identify the photocopy of a pair of Caucasian buttcheeks pinned to the bulletin board.
• Saturday Night Live featured a Parody Commercial for a photocopier made just for this, with special buttock-shaped platen glass.
• An episode of TLC had a patient who had photocopied her butt, and broken the glass. Her only response (holding up the photocopy) "Does my bum look big in this?"
  • Later, in the same, she's being treated for burns after doing the same with her breasts. Again "Do my boobs look small in this?"
• Lindsey once did this (or so we're lead to believe) at a celebration at the Bluth Company in Arrested Development
• Done by Kevin in The Office.
• In the Bones episode "The Man in the Fallout Shelter", Angela implores Brennan to come to the office Christmas party to stop her from repeating what she did last Christmas party. "...it took me WEEKS to collect all those copies... Friends don't let friends photocopy their butts"
• A recent episode of Heroes has an interesting example when Hiro attempts to prevent the suicide of a co-worker incited by a Humiliation Conga started by, you guessed it, drunkenly photocopying his butt during an office party. We never see Hiro actually prevent it, however, since history refuses to change and the co-worker somehow finds ways to embarrass himself by doing the same thing at a different time (Hiro's friend Ando even refers to the poor sap as "The guy with the famous butt.") After about 47 failed attempts, Hiro just gives in and manages to talk the guy out of it.
• On an episode of Malcolm in the Middle, Hal frets over meeting his new boss because he never makes a good first impression. The scene cuts to previous disastrous introductions including one in which Hal is caught by a new boss copying his backside while being cheered on by his co-workers.
• One session of "Weird Newscasters" on Whose Line Is It Anyway involves Wayne as a secretary demanding to know who left photocopies of a butt in her intray. He takes his search into the audience.
• A unique variant comes up in the Japanese Soramimi Hour, dedicated to Japanese Mondegreens of songs from all over the world. Apparently the Japanese have misheard the line "tea, tea and coffee" (from "You're So Great" by Blur) as "Chinchin Copy", whereupon a quickie music video shows a man buck naked and lying face down on the copier. There should be no need to translate "chinchin" at this point...
• On Mock the Week, the game "Scenes We'd Like To See" throws up the suggestion "Things You Don't Want To Hear In The Workplace":

Frankie Boyle: "That wasn't the copier, that was the paper shredder; and what did you do to your arse?!"

• In a sketch from A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Tony Inchpractice (Hugh Laurie) hosts a talk show titled "Photocopying My Genitals With". After Tony photocopies his genitals, his guest Sir Alan Beaverby (Stephen Fry) elects to copy his bottom instead.
• In an episode of Made in Canada, one of the grips makes a Cheek Copy during a wrap party.
• On Boy Meets World when Shawn and Cory are working in an office mailroom Shawn starts to do this before Cory stops him.
• In the Torchwood episode "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang", Jack apparently loves the strange quirks of office life, including cheek copies.
• Deconstructed on the 1000 Ways to Die story, "X-Mess Carol": A drunk intern at an office party decides to photocopy her butt for her boss during a Christmas party as a gift to him. The glass breaks out from under her and electrocutes her to death.

Music

• The song "We Photocopy Our Body Parts" by Songs to Wear Pants To.
• As quoted above, Weird Al Yankovic's "Your Horoscope For Today" offers Leos the following advice: "Now is not a good time to photocopy your butt and staple it to your boss's face, oh no!" Which rather begs the question of whether there is a good time to do so.
• Occurs in the music video of Britney Spears's "Womanizer".
• In the early 90s, The Simpsons released an album of blues songs. In one of them, "Look at All These Idiots", sung by Mr. Burns, he comments on his employees' "Xeroxing their buttocks".
• The Fiery Furnaces "I'm Gonna Run".

I slit my wrists with my Swingline
Copied myself 500 times

New Media

• This digital painting called "Xerox"

Newspaper Comics

• Dean in Liberty Meadows does this. Brandy tells him that he'll break the glass. Which is exactly what happens.
• Other Comics: ,
• The stormtrooper in this Brewster Rockit comic
• One Bloom County strip features Steve Dallas and Opus the Penguin working at the town newspaper. Steve asks what the mysterious pages are in the copier, and Opus suggests that it may be loaves of bread, deflated volleyballs... or one attractive posterior.
• An unusual example in On the Fastrack: Meg the Cyberdog did it to produce binary code in a shape that confused Art.

Video Games

• You can do this in Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition. On the level "Pigsty", there are several photocopy machines and if you step on them, an image of Duke's rear end comes out. (He's got a tattoo with a lady's name on there.)
• A Flash game called Slackman, set in your office, allows you to, among other things, do this for lots of points.
• Salem does this in one of the trailers for Army of Two.
• One of the items you can collect for your clan's lounge in Kingdom of Loathing is a fax machine, which can be used to copy and distribute photocopied monsters to other players. If you use a photocopier out of combat, however, the monster you make a copy of is your butt (which can then be played in a fax machine like any other monster).
• In Pajama Sam: Thunder and Lighting Aren't So Frightening", Sam can attempt this in George Someone's office (without removing his pants, thankfully). The paper, however, comes out blank.

Web Comics

• The Spanish Geek Trip Tira Ecol subverts this: Main character Nano tries the prank in a Microsoft Surface. The system crashes and displays a Blue Screen.
• Amazing Super Powers predicts it getting worse with 3D printers.
• In Sequential Art it's implied that Pip did this with Art's scanner.
• The university copy machines in Questionable Content seem to get a lot of use. a lot of use.
• One Wapsi Square guest strip featured Bud and Brandi doing this as part of a failed employment montage.

Web Original

• LOLcats: Copyin Mah Butt
• The Annoying Orange: Done by Midget Apple in Wishful Thinking. But considering what he is, it just looks like a circle.

Western Animation

• This is Bart Simpson's signature prank, culminating in putting the copies into prayer books and handing them out to the parishioners.
  • In "The Debarted", Skinner foils Bart's prank by putting Super Glue on the photocopy machine and having Bart be the unwilling living model for an art class.
  • One episode featured Bart being caught between doing an assignment, and being tempted to take advantage of the free copies on the machine at the library by doing a Cheek Copy. He prays for guidance, and his shorts fall down. Naturally, he runs into the copy room, and the next thing the audience sees is the green glow of the copy machine.
  • Another moment has him reveal that merely reciting the teacher's copy machine code makes his butt feel warm.
  • In the Treehouse of Horror story where the world plunges into the technological apocalypse that was thought to have happened because of the Y 2 K virus (thanks to Homer not updating the computers at the nuclear plant), Nelson breaks into school to photocopy his butt. Unfortunately, he does this while the machines begin to go haywire, and Nelson gets sucked into the machine.
• Parodied in Ed, Edd n Eddy, when Johnny gives Nazz a picture of... a wooden board, much to her bewilderment. He quickly explains: "Plank photocopied his butt!"
• Robot Chicken depicts a photocopier being charged with sexual harassment.
  • Another sketch had a boss demanding an employee give him several copies of his ass. And to try to keep his balls off the glass this time.
• In The Fairly OddParents episode "Pixies, Inc.", Cosmo is seen doing this (though at least he keeps his pants on) as the Pixies discuss the need to set a stupid patsy up with an important-sounding but meaningless position as a sop to the Fairies who now work for them.
• As with pretty much every juvenile prank imaginable, this shows up in Beavis and Butthead.

Butt-Head: Huh huh. I'm enlarging my butt.

• • An entire episode revolved around this. While trying to copy his butt, Beavis ends up falling through the glass. Soon the fire department is called in to get him out with a local news crew covering the story. They're worried that his femoral artery may be cut, meaning he could bleed out if they get him out. Butt-head tries to activate the machine (wanting to see his "female artery") which makes him pop out. Later, with the machine fixed and Beavis' butt stitched up, he wonders what his stitches look like. Butt-head suggests that he use the copier and he does—and of course, falls through again.
• Cow and Chicken play with the school's photocopier in "Bad Chicken"—The photocopy of Chicken's wattle, at first sight at least, is disturbing—and again with the photocopier in dad's office in "The Full Mounty".
• Kowalski does this as a sight gag in The Penguins of Madagascar episode "Fit to Print".
• My Gym Partner's a Monkey exaggerates Cheek Copy a bit: Jake Spidermonkey sees a photocopier in Principal Pixiefrog's office and makes good use of it. When he's done with his butt, he's still not satisfied. So, he proceeds to plant his face on the glass instead, which gains him some very sore red eyes later on.

Truth in Television

• Just remember, kids, you're putting some highly sensitive body parts on top of fragile glass, beneath which are moving metal parts and electrical wiring. And keep in mind you may not be the first.
  • Also, any copies acquired by your coworkers may be used in ways detrimental to your promotion prospects, though if your line manager can recognize you in one then they probably weren't that great to start with.
  • ...so, seriously. Don't try it.
• The Mega Book of Useless Information says: "Over 23% of all photocopier faults worldwide are caused by people sitting on them and photocopying their bottoms."
  • Unfortunately, that's a lie.
• There is actually a sign in many high school copy rooms specifically telling students not to photocopy their butts. The hilarious part is that the reason they give is because it wastes toner.
  • For the ultimate office prank, make enough copies that you can tape them end to end (so to speak) in a chain that you can then feed into a fax machine, closing the loop as it feeds: enter the fax number for someone you don't like, and you've just sent them an infinite series of butts. Or at least, wasted all their toner.
• Subverted in a security tape that went viral. The man was so heavy that he broke the glass when he sat on the copier and fell into the machine.