Crank Yankers

"You're on CNN! The show that leads into me is puppets making prank phone calls! What is wrong with you?"

—Jon Stewart (to Tucker Carlson)

Crank Yankers is a live-action and puppet show that used to air on Comedy Central.

The premise: transcripts of real crank calls are re-enacted, cutting between the rooms of each end of the call (usually with lots and lots of Background Gags going on). The victims and pranksters are played by Muppet-esque puppets. It's an ensemble cast.

In the U.S., it is illegal to record and broadcast prank calls without both parties' consent... except for Nevada, which only requires one (i.e., the callers). So, nearly all the calls are made in Nevada. However, this made taping and broadcasting episodes fairly uneven due to many of the celebrities being based in California.

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Tropes used in Crank Yankers include:

• Bear Trap Bed: Featured in one segment.
• Candid Camera Prank: A variant, as the show consists of re-enactments, but it's the same idea.
• Don't Explain the Joke: The short Confucius sketches where he tells a classic dirty joke. He explained the "Wife who puts man in doghouse will soon find him in cathouse" joke in two words when closing.
  • He normally closes with "Get it?" which can easily kill the other jokes he tells.
• Early Installment Weirdness: The first season featured a different 'Cammie' who was blind, has curly blonde hair, and was accompanied by a seeing-eye dog.
• Funny Background Event: Sometimes the gags going on in the background are actually funnier than the contents of the calls themselves.
• Hypocritical Humor: Elmer (old man character) called a cable provider and complained about a show featuring "sick, puppet things".
• I Can't Hear You: Elmer tries to make an appointment to get hearing aids. Over the phone. You can see how this could go wrong, can't you?
• Potty Failure: One sketch involves the mentally handicapped character "Special Ed" tearfully phoning a health club to apologize for peeing in the pool. The manager acknowledges his apology, and kindly reassures him that it's okay... which prompts Ed to happily shout, "I peed in your pool! YAAAAAAYYY!" repeatedly.
• Sound Effects Bleep: For certain names and establishments, but phone numbers are interestingly bleeped out with their respective DTMF counterparts.
• Super OCD: The aptly-named OCD Ken, who requests bizarre things from his callers such as pushing certain buttons on the phone.
• Third Person Person: Karl Malone. "Don't hang up on Karl Malone!"