Nuns Are Funny

How do you solve a problem like religion?
How do you handle Nuns and not offend?
Just simply have them doing things they wouldn't!
Don't follow the norm,
Or stay true to form...
Pretend!
Just show a kookie Nun who rides a scooter:
Or show a Sister try to fly a kite.
The movies can make folks feel
That all these events are real,

And being a Nun is fun from morn' till night!

—Mad Magazine parody of The Sound of Music

A counterpart to Nuns Are Spooky, Nuns Are Mikos, and Nuns Are Sexy, this is when nuns are portrayed according to the Rule of Funny.

This could be because "nun" is an Inherently Funny Words, or that their outfits look silly. Of course, the majority of modern nuns do not wear habits anymore (preferring plain black or grey dresses instead, maybe including the headdress), but...that's not as funny. Also, the conventional stereotype of them is that they are very stern, severe and disapproving, thus making them either foils for wackiness going on around them or upping the humor value when they do do something wacky.

IE, nuns are The Comically Serious. The only thing more hilarious than nuns would be Batman in a nun's habit. (You're picturing it right now aren't you? No doubt you're laughing your arse off).

Yes, this is sometimes Truth in Television. Like all people, it depends on the nun.

Examples of Nuns Are Funny include:

Anime

• Chrono Crusade plays with this trope some in the first few episodes/volumes of the manga. Rosette is just not your typical nun and it makes it rather hilarious.
• Mahou Sensei Negima, has Misora, who acts nothing like the traditional stern nun. In particular, there's the incident where she took over a Confessional as her classmates came to it for advice.
  • Of course, it's implied that she's on nun duty as punishment for disciplinary infractions...
• One Pound Gospel - Quite a bit of the humor involves Kosaku's inability to understand Angela's situation and the inherent humor in a bunch of nuns dealing with the chaos typical of Takahashi works.
• One of the reasons why, after Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, the writers had the very childish and naughty Sein become a nun-in-training and placed her under the direct tutelage of the lecture-happy, super-serious Sister Schach. The other reason is Defeat Means Friendship.

Comics

• And what Young Justice fan can forget the immortal words of Robin on a runaway supercycle: "Oh no! Nuns in a station wagon loaded with high explosives! Just my luck!" (Warning: sound)

Film

• There was a gag in that theatrical short with the Madagascar penguins where the penguins fell in behind a group of nuns to appear inconspicuous.
• Sister Act. Everything the nuns do is hilarious, either because of a display of naivete resulting from their sheltered lives, or because it's a mundane thing that you just don't expect a nun to do (dancing to a jukebox), or both.
• In Mel Brooks' History Of The World, Part One, the Spanish Inquisition attempts to convert Jews to Catholicism in a torture chamber with a song and dance number. When it doesn't seem to be working, "Send in the nuns!"
  • Said nuns are dressed... interestingly, to say the least, and are rather impressive in their range. The synchronized-swimming team (of nuns), for example, ...
• The Trouble With Angels is a movie about the hilarious antics of two Catholic school girls in a boarding school run by nuns.
  • Its sequel Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows addresses the trope when Sister George says she doesn't want to be patronized as a "darling little nun" who's "just like a real person." While both movies draw humor from nuns doing things in their bulky habits, the second one ends with the sisters changing to a modified version.
• The obscure film Greaser's Palace has a nun played by a man by no reason.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 has Mike & The Bots doing humorous dialogue for the nuns waiting for a bus in Soultaker.
  • Even better is their treatment of Girls Town, a 1950s movie about a reform school run by nuns, which is about an hour and a half straight of this trope. Such as when the sisters break up a fight: "Paul Anka's beefy security nuns step in!" Although actually, the movie itself contains a few examples of the trope to start with, such as the nun who gleefully advocates severe asskickings for delinquents.
• The Blues Brothers, mostly for its parody of Nuns Are Spooky, and their habit of referring to her as "the Penguin" all the time.
• Running Scared - Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines play cops who arrest a priest and a nun who they think are smuggling drugs from Columbia. After they find out they aren't, the nun hits one of them with a ruler.
• The Princess Diaries: Bystander calling the police on a cell phone? Whatever. Nun calling the police on a cell phone, getting put on hold, and letting out an exasperated "Oh for the love of God"? Hilarity Ensues!
• Short Circuit: "What if it goes and melts down a busload of nuns? How would you like to write the headline on that?" "'Nun Soup'?"
• The Le Gendarme series of French films had several eccentric nuns on motorcycles aiding the eponymous policeman.
• The British film Nuns on the Run cranks the zany up to 11 by having two men crossdress as nuns to escape criminals.
• In the original version of Bedazzled, The Devil tricks Stanley into using his final wish to be transformed into a nun.
• Airplane! has a gag where a nun is seeing reading the magazine "Boy's Life", followed immediately by a boy reading "Nun's Life", with a cover featuring a nun riding a surfboard.

Literature

• One character tells a lewd joke about "dwarf nuns" in House of Leaves. And we'll leave it at that.
  • Is it the one where the punchline is "You fucked a penguin"?

Live Action TV

• The Flying Nun
• Monty Python's Flying Circus loves funny nuns: one sketch has the nuns and monks playing football.
• The 1960's Batman combines Batman with Nuns for great hilarity.
• The "bowling nuns", Abby's bowling team in NCIS.
  • By which is meant, Abby is the only member of the team who isn't a member of the cloth. It's not the team name. They're actual nuns.
• On Pushing Daisies, Olive spends a short time in a convent during the second season, where the habits are vibrant turquoise with frills around the faces. There's one episode where the gang has to solve the murder of a nun. Hilarity Ensues when the nun tries to run away after being brought back to life.

Ned: Nun on the run, nun on the run!

• The Suite Life of Zack and Cody has London and Mady go to a Catholic School. The nuns there always wear their hats, even when hiking through the woods in tracksuit or coaching the volleyball team.
• Buffy saved a nun from a vampire. Then she got to try on her wimple.
• The nuns who show up in the first-season House episode "Damned If You Do" are treated as sympathetic but very quirky characters, and end up producing some pretty funny moments (like when we catch them watching wide-eyed a hunky-looking surfer on the hospital room TV, and hurriedly explain to the team that they were just looking for the remote that controlled the bed...).
• The comedy show Four on the Floor has the videogame "Karate Nuns", which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • Also, the skit "Mr. Canoe Head vs. The Kung Fu Nun".
• "Plan Z"'s Tennis-playing Nun
• Hello Cheeky had a skit about nuns being brought into football crowds to curb hooliganism. Cue the news that 162 nuns have been arrested for assault and disturbing the peace.

Police Officer: ...and so, I retrieved the nun's teeth from the referee's ankle and returned them to the nun in question.
Judge: What question?
Officer: What fun can a monk have?
Judge: I don't know, what fun can a monk have?
Officer: Nun.

• Call the Midwife - A lot of the comedy comes from their interactions, and how they don't match up to the stereotype of nuns.

High, hot and a hell of a lot.

Other

• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking was formerly known as "Bus Full Of Nuns" because of this trope.
• There exists a calendar called "Nuns Having Fun", which depicts nuns on roller coasters, eating ice cream, etc.
• Barenaked Ladies: But how do you plan for a bank full of nuns?

Theater

• Part of the humor in The Sound of Music is Maria's antics compared to the other nuns when she's in the convent, and then Maria's complete Fish Out of Water reaction to "normal" life in the Von Trapp household.
• The entire point of Nunsense.
• Mostly averted in Doubt: A Parable, but Sister Aloysius has a line about nuns falling over like dominoes when one trips over something. The mental image of that is made of this trope.

Web Original

• Discussed in The Nostalgia Chick's review of the Sister Act movies (see above). She takes time to note that nuns are not only funny, but funnier than monks, though this doesn't make monks unfunny.

Web Comics

• This is a large part of the point of Sister Claire.

Western Animation

• A episode of Dexter's Laboratory had a rather eccentric nun as one of the potential replacements for Dee Dee.
  • Because Dexter wasn't clear enough in his ad for a "Spastic Sister".
• Throughout the entirety of A Goofy Movie, Goofy and Max keep on bumping into the same four nuns at various escalatingly unexpected times, including during an impromptu musical number on the highway, at a monster truck rally that they seem to be very excited about, and finally a huge rock concert which we must assume is the entire reason they were on the road in the first place.
• The Family Guy episode "When You Wish Upon A Weinstien" has a gaggle of nuns go out, Church Militant style when they (somehow) detect Peter, a Catholic, entering a synagogue.
  • In a later Cutaway Gag involving The Sound of Music, during the scene where the Von Trapp family escapes from the Nazis, one of the nuns mentions that she's sinned, and takes out Rolf's severed head.

Nun: Hey, I didn't start this war but it's on!