Un Entendre

"We're here to buy some smoked ham! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Fred turned everything into a sex joke, whether it made sense or not
—Greeting card.

Double Entendres are a staple of comedy. Characters are so used to double meanings and innuendos flying all over the place, in fact, that sometimes they jump the gun and assume everything someone says is a Double Entendre (probably because Freud Was Right). It can take a few moments for them to realize that they don't actually know what other meaning "put some parsley on the chicken" is supposed to have. It just felt like it did.

Definitely Truth in Television. We've all done it or had it done to us at some point.[1]

Compare Imagined Innuendo, Accidental Innuendo and Is That What They're Calling It Now?. Contrast Entendre Failure. Can be used for Double Entendres.

No real life examples, please; we'd be here all day.

Now we're going to give you some "Examples":

Anime and Manga

  • One of these kicks off Hanamaru Kindergarten. In the first episode, one of the main characters, a 4-year-old girl, is standing alone along on the side of the street. Another main character, a male kindergarten teacher, comes by on his bike and asks the little girl, "Excuse me, Ojou-chan. What are you doing here?" "Ojou-chan" essentially means "Miss" or "Little lady". Not an unusual way to address a young girl whom one does not know. Anzu, the girl, has a very active imagination, however, and she jumps to the conclusion that he's hitting on her. He turns out to be her teacher at kindergarten and the misunderstanding persists. Hilarity Ensues.

Comic Books

Ruby: So, did you do him?
[...]
Layla: It didn't suit my fancy.
Ruby: Your "fancy"? Is that your pet name for your--?
Layla: Shut up.

  • The punchline of the Finnbarr Saunders strip in Viz would be that, after Finnbarr had spent a page desperately finding double entendres in everything, the other two characters would go off and have sex and Finnbarr would assume that they were doing something completely innocuous.

Film (Animated)

Film (Live Action)

Jimmy: Get out of my face!
Chaz: I'm gonna get inside your face!

Literature

  • A Running Gag in A Song of Ice and Fire involves Shagga, son of Dolf, and his threats to cut people's "manhoods" off and feed them to goats. Shagga is in fact referring to beards when he says that, which Grandmaester Pycelle discovers to his dismay.

Live-Action TV

  • In one Wings episode, Antonio (played by Tony Shalhoub) gleefully attempts to participate in stereotypical American male sex-humor with the guys just after the vixen seducing him beckons him to her room:

Antonio: Oh, man. We're going to go upstairs and 'have sex' if you know what I mean.

Marshall: It's breakfast time in China.
Lily: (sultry) Yeah it is.
Marshall: Not a euphemism... wait, what would that even mean?
Lily: I dunno. Hot buns, spicy pork, there's something there.

    • In another episode, Marshall comes home from work, ready to have sex with Lily, and this dialogue ensues:

Lily: A package just arrived.
Marshall Yeah, it did!
Lily No, it's a big package from your dad.
Marshall Well, that's a little weird, but, yeah it is!

Servo: Hey, Joel. We've got... commercial sign. Heh heh heh...
Joel: And now a word from our sponsors, BOOM!
Crow: She was built like a brick sh...
Servo: Crow!
Crow: ...ow... boat. Showboat.

    • Sometimes, the entendres are implied to be about to occur, but then avoided entirely, see Riding With Death, Where a spinning number dial gets to 69:

Servo: Hey, guys, it's my favorite number! Woo-hoo!
Mike: What, 70?
Servo: Yeah, I love 70!

  • This trope is the only reason The Todd exists as a character on Scrubs.
    • In-your-end-o!
  • In an episode of Arrested Development Tobias Fünke uses peculiar phrases when trying to say that he accidentally used a gift card whilst thinking it was just a preview of what he could get for it.

Tobias: Well, yes, but I’m afraid I prematurely shot my wad on what was supposed to be a dry run, if you will, so now I’m afraid I have something of a mess on my hands.
Michael: There's just... so many poorly chosen words in that sentence.

    • Tobias is made of this trope, and it's lampshaded more than once.

Tobias: Oh, Tobias, you blowhard.

Joey: [sexy voice] There's always room for Jell-O...
Rachel: How do you make that dirty?
Joey: Oh, it's easy. Yeah, I can do it with anything. Watch, uh... [sexy voice] "Grandma's chicken salad!"

Jeff: Hey! Troy sneezes like a girl!
Troy: How about I pound you like a boy… that didn’t come out right.

Puppet Shows

  • In It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, Pepe becomes Rachel Bitterman's assistant and assumes everything she says is a come on... eventually annoying her into to saying "You know... not everything is an innuendo!"
    • He then assumes that the word "innuendo" is itself an innuendo.

Video Games

  • Oghren makes some of these when talking about weapons in Party Banter in Dragon Age Origins. Varric and Isabela also do this at one point in party banter in Dragon Age II.
    • For the record, Varric and Isabela were talking about knives. Well, technically daggers, but Varric can never remember the difference.
  • Uncharted 3 lampshades that Sully manages to make everything sound like some sort of innuendo.

Web Original

  • An article in The Onion featured a person who tried to make an innuendo about a colleague looking after a co-worker's plants while she was on holiday. It was pointed out that 'I'll bet you'll "water her plants" while she's away' cannot be an innuendo as no sexual action whatsoever can take place between the two.

Web Comics

Riff: How did your blind date go?
Torg: She got eaten by the alien.
Riff: All right! Way to go man! ... Oh, you meant that literally.
Torg: How the hell did you think I meant it?
Riff: Not sure, didn't really think about it too much, but it sounded dirty.

    • Or the one where the Nanite Queen says she'll eat Sam's brain, and Sam assumes it's slang for something naughty. She meant it literally.
  • Sam and Fuzzy has an example of this when Fuzzy rattles off a string of euphemisms after Sam's first date with Candice. Sam treats them straight, but the reader immediately discovers that Fuzzy is still under the influence of his home-made hallucinogens and all his euphemisms refer to things he is hallucinating.
  • Fun fact from The Whiteboard: "Brass nipples" are an actual component of a marker.

Western Animation

  • Archer: Charles: "where have you been all night"

Archer: "Way the Christ out in the Everglades burying some Dominican guy's rooster!"
Charles: "Fun! Wha— Oh, you mean literally."

  1. ↑ fnarr fnarr
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