Loriot

"Life without a pug is possible but pointless."

Victor "Vicco" von Bülow (aka Loriot) was a German humorist, caricaturist, director and actor. His importance for the German Humor could be compared to Rowan Atkinson's or Monty Python's for the British.

Though he has directed and starred in two movies (Ödipussy in 1988 and Pappa ante Portas in 1991), Loriot is better known for his little sketches - mainly parodying the German everyday life - and his potato-nosed cartoon characters, who seldom change their dull expressions.

And if we say "Germany", we mean The Bonn Republic.

He passed away on August the 22nd, 2011.

Loriot provides examples of the following tropes:

• Anti-Christmas Song: The poem Advent, which tells us the grisly tale of a forest warden being murdered by his wife on St Nicholas' Day.
  • And then there is the very short "Christmas" poem by Dicki Hoppenstedt:

"Zicke, zacke, Hühnerkacke!" ("Zip, zap, chicken crap!")

• Art Shift: Some of the sketches of his tv show were in live action, others animated in his drawing style.
• Bathtub Bonding: The animated sketch Die Herren im Bad (The Gentlemen in the Bath). The conversation between Dr. Klöbner and Mr. Müller-Lüdenscheidt, while relatively well-mannered, is more bickering rather than bonding, though.
• Beware the Nice Ones
• Catch Phrase: Ach?! or Ach was?! (Oh, really?)
• The Comically Serious: Loriot in most of his roles is a pretty good example, though one could argue that this also applies to his co-actors. Without the seriousness their characters display in almost everything they do, it wouldn't be as much fun to watch them.
• Cringe Comedy: Pretty much the source for every single joke in all of his works. Though in a light hearted way.
• Disaster Dominoes: The classic sketch Das Schiefe Bild (The Askew Picture) starts with Loriot trying to straighten a picture hanging askew and ends in the destruction of every item of furniture in the room.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: In the sketch Filmspektrum - Besprechung eines Heiteren Films (Film Panoply - Review of a Merry Movie), two film critics get into a heated argument about a silent movie slapstick clip, that is just 4 seconds long. One of them sees the "movie" as one of the greatest examples of cinematography and artistic quality, while the other one regards it as a socialist allegory about the population revolting against the exploitation by the ruling class.
• German Humour
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: For a show that focuses mostly on the conservative middle-class in 70's Germany, there's a lot of innuendo.

Interviewer: "Your jokes never turned sexual..."
Loriot: "Then you didn't pay enough attention."

• Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?: Would you remove the mask for us? - Which mask?
• Mars and Venus Gender Contrast: A common topic, at one point coining the quote: "Männer und Frauen passen einfach nicht zueinander!" (Men and women simply don't fit together!)
• Meaningful Name: His artist name is the French name for his family's coat of arms' mascot, the oriole.
• Mood Dissonance: Basically the underlying concept for most of his later works. The speech of the characters is almost never appropriate to the situation. But especially prominent in the Christmas Poem, in which a kind elderly gentleman recites a cristmas poem that Tastes Like Diabetes, but tells the story of murder and cannibalism.
• My Little Panzer: In his classic sketch Weihnachten bei Hoppenstedts (Christmas at Hoppenstedt's), Grandfather Hoppenstedt buys for his grandchild ^[1] a model nuclear power plant. It makes "poof!" if you did a mistake while assembling it.
  • It makes a poof so loud the neighbours below them complain. Through the hole it blasted into their ceiling.
• My Name Is Not Durwood: Herr Oldenberg from a TV discussion (in-sketch). The other talking heads manage to get his name wrong each time, and never call him by the same wrong name twice. At one point, he's so confused he forgets his own name.
• Naked People Are Funny: The animated sketch Die Herren im Bad (The Gentlemen in the Bath).
• Noodle Incident: One of Loriot's most famous sketches shows an incident involving a noodle... But admittedly, it otherwise doesn't fit this trope at all.
• One Scene, Two Monologues: When they have to kill some time before the real interview can start, because of technical difficulties.

Interviewer: "My wife is a capricorn."
Professor: "I own a longhaired dachshund."

• Pen Name: It's French for oriole! (A specific kind of bird, part of his family's coat of arms.)
• Porky Pig Pronunciation: A newsreader in her attempt to summarize the first part of a British mini series - which hasn't much of a plot, but makes up for it with long and complicated names - gets tangled up in the difference between German and British pronunciation. Schlipth.
• Romance-Inducing Smudge: Averted in a famous sketch in which Loriot tries to seduce a woman in an Italian restaurant, but happens to have a piece of noodle in his face. When she points it out, he removes it, but the next time he uses the napkin, the noodle returns to his face. Hilarity Ensues as the noodle moves around. No, he doesn't get the girl.
• The Von Trope Family: Loriot's real name.

1. ↑ There is some confusion about the grandchild's gender; especially since the grandfather can't tell. In the episode it is (purposely) never revealed, but Dicki is played by a girl.