Visual Pun

"We were told to comb the desert, so we're combing it!"


When a phrase which is usually used as a metaphor is instead done, and shown as being performed literally. This can be because The Ditz didn't understand the statement, or can just be a simple gag. Often considered one of those "old-fashioned" forms of comedy, so its use nowadays rarely does little more than "produce some smiles." Occasionally this action can be performed literally but without much fanfare, implying what's going on. Can often be combined with a Literal Genie.

Common versions include requests to "give me a hand" being met with disembodied hands and quotes of Marc Antony "lend me your ears"... well, use your imagination.

B-Roll Rebus is when news and documentaries do this with Stock Footage. Compare Stealth Pun, which is sort of like a Visual Pun without the visuals. Supertrope to Rules of the Road in cases where road signs are literal, not figurative, depictions of what's up ahead.

Examples of Visual Pun include:

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Anime and Manga

  • The girls from Magical Pokaan realize the girls from the Hot Springs Episode are not biologically so. Cut to a huge phallic rocket taking off.
  • Near the end of Fullmetal Alchemist, Greed destroys Father from the inside.
    • Not to mention that the phrase "paying an arm and a leg" is taken very literally in this show.
    • Or a certain big green monster
  • The opening of Suzumiya Haruhi has Yuki ("snow") standing in the middle of the snow (though for the record, Yuki is actually written as "hope"). The light novels explain that it had been snowing when Yuki was given permission to have her own name, although this is kinda vague as it's described in really vague poetic symbolic odd prose written by Yuki during the short story.
  • Yotsuba&! does it from time to time, but whether she truly doesn't understand or is making a joke is up in the air.
    • In one, she draws a tsukutsukuboshi as a little guy wearing a cap (because in Japanese, "boshi" is a homonym for "cap").
    • When Miura identifies the groupings of stars as "seiza", Yotsuba kneels, because it's a homonym for both "constellation" and "kneeling position".
      • In one translation the joke becomes about how the names of constellations sit well.
  • Welcome to Lodoss Island, a series of omakes parodying Record of Lodoss War, has explanations underneath some of the comics, because puns in Japanese have a bad habit of turning into nonsensical absurdist gags when translated into English. For example, in one, Slayn tells Ghim that he's looking for his star, whereupon the dwarf produces a small lump on a stick and replies, "Your pickled plum?" Which is funny in English if you're into completely random shit happening because of translation, and funny in Japanese because "hoshi" (star) sounds sort of like "umeboshi" (pickled plum).
  • Ninin ga Shinobuden had truly terrible one involving "a furo" getting filled with an "afro". Even the characters point out how bad the joke is.
  • In Code Geass, the Siegfried, the Knightmare that Jeremiah (alias Orange-kun) ends up piloting...is basically a giant orange.
  • Goldfish Warning. Any time Chitose says "my school" (Watashi no gakuen), cue the school for scrubbing brushes (Tawashi no gakuen), although that may just be Wapiko not being able to hear properly.
  • Dia and Pearl's manzai verses from the Pokémon Special manga occasionally incorporate a visual pun for the punchline. This makes things even harder to translate to English in the fan translations.
  • One example that does translate, if not incredibly accurately, is in the third episode of Pokémon. Kasumi (Misty), who is afraid of bugs, spots a Caterpie, and screams "MUSHI!" (bug). Satoshi (Ash), mishearing her, pops up in a cow suit, and comments "Ushi?" (cow). The English dialogue opted for, after Misty's scream, having Ash (in the cow suit) comment "Maybe it's a..Cow-terpie!."
  • There's a spider in the Thriller Bark arc of One Piece. It had the head of a monkey and a verbal tick of 'Monkey.' Does this pun even make sense without knowledge of English?
  • An example of this getting lost in translation, in Osamu Tezuka's Dororo, when Hyakkimaru's fake hand falls off after he grows a real one, he decides to bury it to show the limb respect, to which Dororo says, "hey, it's a hand-grave!" The joke, explained in the English version with an asterisk, is that Tezuka's name can be broken down into "Te," meaning hand, and "zuka," meaning grave.
  • This composed a significant portion of the anime Bobobo-Bo Bo-bobo, resulting it it being nigh-incomprehensible when translated.
  • Boku no Pico: In Pico to Chico (The second OVA), Pico and Chico are using a cat-paw shaped vibrator. That same shape can be seen on Co Co's cellphone keychain, only this time it's a small dialing wand. This is also a kind of Continuity Porn.
  • If something startling happens, and the screen is suddenly filled with fish. Understand the the onomatopoeia for surprise is "gyoh", which is also one of the words for "fish".
    • There is actually a Yu-Gi-Oh! card named "Gyoh!" in Japan; its effect involves Fish-Type monsters and its art depicts a shark bearing down on a surprised monster. The US name, which skirts Getting Crap Past the Radar, is "Oh F!sh!"
  • Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai presents us with Maria Takayama who is a child, and a nun, who sees the main character as an older-brother type person in her life. I suppose that would make her... ugh... his little sister. Long way to go for such a groan worthy pun.
  • In Inazuma Eleven, Tsunami's surfboard has "273" written on it. This is a pun on his name: "two-seven-three" can be read in Japanese as "tsuu-na-mi".
    • In the first opening for Inazuma Eleven GO, we get a close-up of Matsukaze Tenma both times the line "Ten made todokeyou" occurs in the lyrics.
  • In Japan Inc, Ueda admits he likes America, and his female boss comments: "He must be an alien." In this panel, he is drawn as The Alien.
  • In episode 13 of Guilty Crown, you see Ayase reaching for a shoe on the floor. It becomes significantly funnier when you remember that the main character's name is Shu.


Card Games

  • Munchkin is rife with these. For example, the card "Steal A Level".
    • For those who haven't seen it, its effect is that you steal a level, as in the gaming term, from an opposing player. The illustration is someone stealing a level, as in the tool, from someone else.


Comics

  • The reason why Gorsky and Butch has a really slim chance of ever being translated to English...
  • The Where's Waldo books have plenty of Visual Puns, which are spelled out in the checklists at the end of each book.
  • Paul Jennings, Ted Greenwood and Terry Denton produced a series of Where's Wally type books called Spooner or Later, Duck for Cover and Freeze a Crowd. All of them, especially in Duck for Cover, ran on visual puns. The worst offender is the three-page spread involving gnus, with each one involving a "new" or "news" pun.
    • Second place goes to the two pages of kings, each of which was a pun on the gerund form of a verb ending in "k" or "ke".
  • The delightful comic Pop Gun War had something approaching but not quite being a visual pun. The character Sunshine, a little person, informs another character that he will tell her a story along their trip. Upon being informed it's a short walk, he replies, "It's a short story." Thus, we have a short man on a short walk telling a short story. If nothing else, it was visual wit.
  • Zenith Phase II sees a henchman, observing the main character, commenting "Strange...he has his mother's eyes." The Big Bad comments wryly, "Really?...I thought that WE did." Cue shot of a glass jar, with...well, guess what suspended in it.
  • In the Anthology Comic The Beano in a Fatty Fudge strip (For a few dollops more) some outlaw cowboys say "we've got prices on our heads" whilst literrally having some prices drawn onto their heads (well hats).
  • By Wilhelm Busch: Cousin Franz is drawn blackhanded in the picture with the Chocolate babies and their not-father. "Your wife, my kids" indeed.
  • Moose Mason of Archie Comics is a gold mine for these gags. Here are a few:
    • Girlfriend Midge is away on vacation, and Moose is depressed because she hasn't written to him yet? Archie tells Moose to make Midge jealous by sending her a picture of him surrounded by chicks. When Midge sees the picture, it's Moose surrounded by...baby chicks.
    • When his car was elected for carpool to take to the beach, Moose turns his car into a pool (by filling it up with water).
  • In V for Vendetta, at a certain point V is breaking into the television station to have his own recording broadcast. In the background, you see a number of other TV shows playing. One is a sitcom with lots of innuendo, including a woman commenting on her (literal) melons.


Fan Works

Film

  • Mel Brooks is a shameless user of visual puns:
    • Robin Hood: Men in Tights,
    • Spaceballs:
      • When Lone Starr and Barf try to "jam" the Spaceballs, they launch a giant jar of jam at Spaceball One's radar dish, causing raspberry jam to leak out of the control panels. (And prompting Dark Helmet's line "Raspberry! There's only one man who would dare give me the raspberry: Lone Starr!")
      • And later, some mooks are told to "comb the desert" for survivors. They get out actual giant combs. Colonel Sandurz then glances at Dark Helmet:

Sandurz: Are we being too literal?
Helmet: (through megaphone) No, you fool, we're following orders - we were told to comb the desert, so we're combing it! (puts down megaphone, turns to searchers) Find anything yet?
Mook: Nothing yet, sir!
...
Helmet: What about you guys?
Black Mook: (using an afro pick) We ain't found shit!

  • As are Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker:
    • Airplane!!:
      • "Okay, boys, let's take some pictures." (all the reporters run over to the wall and start pulling down the pictures hanging there)
      • "Two more minutes! They could be miles off course." "That's impossible. They're on instruments!" (cut to jam session in plane cockpit)
      • "When Kramer finds out about this, the shit's gonna hit the fan!" (SPLORCH! ...sssscHWOop!)
      • Jars of mayonnaise line the shelves of the Mayo Clinic
      • Among this film's visual puns, we also have a "drinking problem" (he can't put the glass to his mouth and ends up splashing the drink in his face) and an automatic pilot that proves very troublesome to those attempting to fly the plane.
    • In one of The Naked Gun films the main character, Frank, says to a bartender "give me the strongest thing you've got", provoking a VERY muscular and oily man in a thong to walk in, flexing his arms. Frank decides against this, and instead asks for a "Black Russian". The bartender just looks at the camera and shakes his head.
    • Again from the Naked Gun franchise:

Adult-novelty store clerk: Is this some kind of bust?
Frank Drebin: Yes, it's very impressive.

  • A similar instance, involving Marvin's arm, was used in The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy. He wasn't at all amused, and complained that this made it hard to run the ship. This is one of the rare examples where the literal meaning was actually the desired one (Marvin's arm as a gun to threaten the Vogons).
    • Which doesn't work the way they intended. As soon as they enter the building, brandishing the arm, the clerk simply states that the director of robot arm repair is next door.
  • Turns up in a lot of Marx Brothers routines. Harpo is usually responsible for the "literal" version.
    • One particular instance that comes to mind is when he's trying to get into a secret room whose password is "Swordfish." When asked for the password, he promptly produces a fish and runs it through with a dagger, and is subsequently allowed in.
    • And if you're playing poker with Harpo, don't ask him to "cut the cards" unless you're using an inexpensive deck.
  • Who Framed Roger Rabbit?:
    • Eddie Valiant orders a "scotch on the rocks" from one of the penguin waiters at the Ink & Paint Club, which is staffed by Toons; seeing this joke coming, he then shouts after the waiter, "And I mean ice!" When the penguin comes back with the order, the glass is full of scotch... and rocks, real ones. "Toons!" Eddie says in disgust.
    • Later, in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it example, as Eddie drives into Toontown he runs over a pie with a cow's face on it: a "cow pie."
    • Around the end, one of the weasels puts his hand in Jessica's cleavage, only to get caught in a bear trap. Hence Eddie's comment: "Nice booby trap!"
  • In Prince of Persia the Sands of Time Sheik Amar, after running from a fight, hides behind a chicken coop.
  • In one scene in The Muppet Movie, Kermit instructs Fozzie to "turn left at the fork in the road". Kermit is quite surprised to see a literal giant fork stuck in the road at the turn-off.
  • In Hot Shots!, people repeatedly tell the main character that he has his father's eyes. He actually does have them and keeps them in a box in his pocket.

Gomez: He has my father's eyes.
Morticia: Gomez, take those out of his mouth.

  • In Hot Shots! Part Deux, one of the not-Iraqi soldiers is wearing a Holiday Inn towel instead of a turban. We have no idea how that one got by.
  • In It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, the whole plot starts when one of the characters "kicks the bucket" and then knocks over a bucket in his death throes.
  • Lover Come Back: "Believe me, the agency that lands this account is the one that shows the most attractive can." The scene then cuts to a certain part of a Chorus Girl's anatomy.
  • In the classic Lovecraft-inspired horror-comedy Re-Animator, the Big Bad gets decapitated fairly early on, and then reanimated as a classic shambling carrier-of-one's-own-head. Toward the climax of the film, he abducts the female lead and straps her down to a surgical bench, and... well, the head gives her head. The writer was reportedly so pleased with this that he called the producer and said excitedly, "I've just written my first visual pun!"
  • The Jerk - Navin is berating a waiter in an expensive restaurant: "Two boobs! That's what he takes us for!" We get a shot of Marie glancing down at her decolletage.
    • At the end, we learn that Navin's family had to tear down their old house, but, happily, they built a bigger house to replace it; tt's the exact same hovel as before, only scaled up about 40%, complete with an eight-foot-tall front door.
  • In his opening narration for Love and Death, Woody Allen's character mentions the "valuable piece of land" owned by his father. We see an old man pulling out a hunk of sod from inside his coat.

"This land is not for sale! Someday, I hope to build on it."

  • Ricky I is absolutely remorseless in its use of visual puns. Reviewed by the Angry Video Game Nerd here.
  • In The Great Dictator, the emblem of Adenoid Hynkel and his followers is the Double Cross. Hilarious in Hindsight, given the even more blatant backstab a year later: Barbarossa.
  • French film Coco is entirely made of gags performed by its main actor (a humorist in life), but there's one glaring instance of a visual pun: Coco's teenage son wants to show his firend the house's "porcherie" (pigsty). Viewers start wondering why a jewish man would keep swine in his house, until we see that it was actually a porscherie (a room chock-full of Porsche cars!)
  • La cité de la peur (City of Fear) has a lot of this. Examples include: "C'est une vraie boucherie" (literally "it's like a butcher's shop", meaning that a crime scene is very gory: the policeman enters an actual butcher's shop, looks terribly shaken, and then goes to the actual crime scene), "Jetez-moi ici" ("drop me here"), "la place du mort" (literally "the dead man's seat", in reference to the front passenger seat. Cue corpse being pulled out of the car's boot.)
  • Evil Dead II. After Ash laughingly cuts off his possessed hand with a chainsaw and sticks it to the floor with a knife, he traps it under a bucket. Thinking it might somehow escape, he places a stack of books on top. Featured prominately on top? A Farewell to Arms.
  • A dissolve at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull makes a molehill out of the Paramount mountain.
  • Scott Pilgrim Vs The World - which is marinaded in Video Game Tropes - has Scott walk off purposefully as a friend asks him what he's doing. He responds,"Getting a life," and snatches a 1-Up out of the air [3]
  • In The Dark Knight, during his rampage through the city streets, the Joker blocks Batman's path with a fire truck... set on fire. More like a visual oxymoron, but...
  • The Japanese crime comedy film Adrenaline Drive has a combination Visual Pun and Stealth Pun. The hero and heroine end up stealing from a Yakuza money laundering operation. Since the money was covered in blood when they got it, they take it to a laundry mat to clean- thus, they engaged in some literal "money laundering".
  • In Licence to Kill, the villian kills one of his own in a decompression chamber also filled with his money. When the guy explodes over the money, the villian, when asked what about the money, says "launder it."
  • One scene in the film Cars has twin fangirls Mia and Tia flashing their headlights in front of Lightning McQueen.
  • One of the animals living in Tulgey Woods appears to be a bird with an umbrella for a body. In other words, a literal umbrellabird. Also, the various insects that popluate the same area, such as Bread-and-Butterflies, Dog-and-Caterpillars, Rocking-Horseflies, and Copper-Centipedes.
  • In Song of the South in it's first musical number, a couple of birds come to hum as backup music. They're HUMMING BIRDS.
  • In Robots, when Rodney's parents are "making" him (literally, out of parts), there's the exchange below. Justified in that they're, well, robots.

Mr. Copperbottom: He's got your mom's eyes and my dad's nose. I knew we were smart to save those parts.

  • In Kung Fu Panda 2, Shen's nanny is portrayed as an elderly female goat. A female goat is called a nanny.
  • In the final segment in the anthology horror-comedy Chillerama, a man gets kicked so hard, he shits. So yes, he had the shit kicked out of him.

Literature

  • When the Watch are arresting a villain in Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards!, Vimes tells Carrot to "throw the book at him". Carrot, who doesn't understand metaphor, lobs The Laws and Ordinances of Ankh-Morpork in the villain's direction, causing the villain to lose his balance and fall five stories to his death.
  • The Amelia Bedelia series of illustrated children's books lives and breathes this trope; the titular maid is Literal-Minded, so every request made of her invariably results in an end product constituting a visual pun on the desired result.
    • For example: Dress the chicken. Draw the shades. Dust the furniture (Amelia Bedelia even finds Dusting Powder in the bathroom!).
  • In a rare serious example, at one point in Asimov's mystery novel The Naked Sun Baley the detective asks his partner, R. Daneel Olivaw (the "R." means he's a robot) to "give me a hand". This results in Olivaw briefly giving a puzzled look at his own hand, as if being asked to literally unscrew it and give it to Baley. This proves to be an important clue to solving the murder.
  • In John C. Wright's Golden Age, the laws of the Oecumene are carved on the floor of the courtroom—set in stone.
  • The books A Little Pigeon-Toad,[4] The King that Rained,[5] The Sixteen-Hand Horse,[6] and A Chocolate Moose for Dinner,[7] which are all about visual puns.
  • Also, another book called Catbirds and Dogfish, which is supposed to be about animals with portmeanteaus for names, actually depicts said animals as Mix-and-Match Critters (for example, the catbirds are all portrayed as cats with wings, and the dogfish are all portrayed as fish with bulldog heads instead of medium-sized gray birds and small, speckled sharks like in real life).
  • How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers by Robert Williams Wood ([8]) is composed almost entirely of plain puns "illustrated" by visual ones.
  • In Wedge's Gamble, there's a bar on the lower levels of Coruscant called the Headquarters. Its marquee features a stormtrooper's helmet being torn into four pieces.
  • In the Council Wars series the teams responsible for infiltrating and securing potentially hostile beaches are primarily composed of Changed Selkies. In other words they are SEAL Teams.


Live Action TV

  • Wayne and Shuster used the "lend me your ears" gag decades before Mel Brooks did, in their famous 'Rinse the Blood Off My Toga' sketch.

"I said 'Friends, Romans, countrymen! Lend me your ears!'"
"So what's in the sack?"
"Ears."

  • Susan on Desperate Housewives literally spilled a bag of beans when she revealed a big secret, but they never said it out loud.
  • Sabrina the Teenage Witch did this all the time. In one episode, Hilda contracted "Punitis" and any time someone used a metaphorical expression like this, whatever it was would literally happen.
    • The animated adaptation had an episode focusing on "Cliche Week", a week where any cliches uttered by a witch would literally happen.
    • The inhabitants of the Other Realm seem to LOVE puns - Just about every metaphor is taken literally for witches. When the Spellmans recieved a chain letter, it was a letter attached to an actual chain.
  • On Beakman's World, Beakman praises Lester by saying "Give yourself a hand." Lester, of course, has one already in his ratsuit...
    • And in an episode about earwax, Beakman says "Friends, Romans, countrymen! Lend me your ears!", and someone pushes a huge ear towards the stage.
    • Of course, there are a lot of visual puns in this show... but then, there are a lot of puns, period.
  • On Small Wonder, Vicki was notorious for misinterpreting idiomatic commands.
  • On Get Smart, Max asks Hymie to get him a hand and the robot promptly begins to unscrew its left hand, then screws it in again after Max clarifies the issue.
  • In one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Spike is being stalked by a shark-headed demon he owes money kittens to. A loan shark.
    • And why kittens? The kitten thing was introduced a few episodes earlier at a demon poker game. Where they played for kittens. Another name for the pot is the kitty.
  • In the first season of Strangers with Candy, Jerri finds out she needs braces. As she protests that she doesn't want them, the dentist says "Nobody wants braces, Jerri, but I'm afraid that's something you're going to have to learn tolive with." and stands up, revealing the metal brace on his knee.
  • Red Dwarf: the crew is disoriented due to things shifting around them (like the ship becoming transparent) due to passing through a reality-warping minefield. Lister says they'll be alright so long as they "keep their heads"...upon which, of course, there's a flash and they all have huge animal heads.
    • At the beginning of the eighth season, they're flying a miniature Starbug through the vents of the reconstructed Red Dwarf and end up piloting it up a rat's backside.

Holly: I hope we don't get stopped by the cops: they don't like it when you're rat-arsed.

  • On 30 Rock, Floyd is griping about missing a promotion. "I'm so sick of New York, I'm sick of the rat race!" Cut to a shot of Floyd's apartment building, where a bunch of guys are racing rats down the hallway.
  • On Top Gear, Hammond once used a pie placed next to a key to describe himself.
  • Police Squad!! (also by Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker) had so many that cataloging them all could be an article in itself.
    • In one episode, Frank Drebin sits on a barstool that's too low, then when the bartender asks what he'd like, he says "Screwdriver." The bartender hands him an actual screwdriver from a toolbox; Drebin uses it to raise the barstool, then he orders a drink.
    • The police are said to be looking through the records of recently released prisoners - in the background, several cops are examining vinyl LP's.
    • Drebin follows a lead to the Club Flamingo, which has a mechanical sign of a man hitting a large pink bird with a cosh.
  • On the old Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, Carson often did a sketch called "The Teatime Movie" where he played movie host Art Fern, who also did the commercials. Whenever he had a map for direction to the advertiser's store, you could expect the 'fork in the road' visual gag. Either that or the 'Slausen Cutoff' joke.
  • In one episode of Maid Marian and Her Merry Men, the Sheriff is collecting taxes. This includes a large carpet (the carpet tax) and a small mint (the Tic Tax).
  • In an MTV Movie Awards skit parodying The Da Vinci Code, Andy Dick (playing a wannabe Silas) fails to kill Jimmy Fallon at first attempt, and upon inquiry, muses "Well, I have another plan, but I have yet... to hatch it." Then he pulls out a hatchet, prompting Fallon to quip "May I axe what it is?" It doesn't end well for him.
  • In Noah's Arc, at the start of the second season Noah is trying to figure out if Malik is the one. His friends tell him to kiss him, and if the earth moves he knows its love. Noah kisses him, and an actual earthquake occurs.
  • Raumschiff Gamestar (Spaceship Gamestar), a science-fiction/game parody made by the staff of German PC Gaming magazine Gamestar, has those on every possible occasion. Most consist of Captain Langer ordering his crew around, and when his orders get executed literally, responding "Oh Gott, wir werden alle sterben!"("Oh god, we're all gonna die!"). This has become a case of Memetic Mutation in the German gaming community.
  • In Look Around You, the signs warning about the Helvetica Scenario use the Helvetica font.
  • Blackadder II

Baldrick enters holding the front door under his arm
Blackadder: Baldrick, I would advise you to make the explanation you are about to give phenomenally good.
Baldrick: Well, you said "Get the door"...
Blackadder: Not good enough, you're fired!

  • In The Monkees episode "Monkees Marooned", one of the boys gets an actual tongue-lashing, beaten with a giant rubber tongue.
  • In the second episode of Breaking In, the team steals a safe containing a thumb drive...shaped like a human thumb.
  • In Doctor Who, the prison that River Song is in is called Stormcage. Outside her "cage," there's a storm going on consistently.
    • In The Girl Who Waited, Amy says she disarmed a robot. Rory asks how, then looks at the robot... it has no arms.
  • The SNL digital short "3-Way" has Andy Samberg singing about meeting a girl who "likes the way I knock on her boots" - Cut to him literally hitting a pair of hiking boots with a stick.
  • On Glee in 'The Sue Sylvester Shuffle' "She's Not There" by the "Zombies" is performed in full zombie makeup
  • A frequent occurrence on The Muppet Show, especially with the Swedish Chef(his "Chicken in a Basket" involves dribbling the chicken and shooting it into a basketball hoop) and the Newsreader(when he announced that the price of beef fell today, a cow landed on him). One of their most notable examples was the "Muppet News International" sketch where British comic Spike Milligan mimed the newsreader's stories, starting with "Things look grim--"(Spike stares sternly at the camera).
  • Merv Griffin Enterprises (The Merv Griffin Show, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!) used a griffin in the logo.
  • In a chapter of Castle, Beckett and Castle have to go to a male striptease in order to arrest a suspect of the killing of a male stripper. The show at the moment is of strippers dressed as firemen, and one of them is the suspect. Beckett tells the suspect to "cool off", but he doesn't listen, and all the strippers surround Beckett. Then Castle appears with a fire extinguisher and cools them down enough for her.
  • Meta example from Battlestar Galactica here. Yes, they actually did that.
  • In Sherlock, Watson at one point refers to Mycroft's "bloody stupid power complex," immediately followed by a shot of the Battersea Power Station.
  • Monty Python's Flying Circus made occasional use of this trope. One example was the animated link "One Dozen Communist Revolutions."

Music

  • Many album covers are built around visual puns based on their titles. For example, the cover of Moving Pictures, an album by Canadian rock band Rush, features up to three different puns: a group of men carrying paintings from a museum, as in moving the pictures, a group of women crying at the sight of the paintings, being moved by said pictures, and a person filming the whole thing, making a moving picture.
    • The cover image of Permanent Waves by Rush also has visual puns related to the title. There is a wave of water, the man is waving his hand, and the fabric of the woman's clothing is waving in the wind; all of these "waves" are permanent because it's a photograph. Also, "permanent wave" is the name for the woman's hairstyle.
  • The Pink Floyd compilation set "A Nice Pair" (now long since deleted) used artwork that consisted entirely of visual puns, beginning with the front cover which depicted a nude woman (with a "nice pair" of breasts) holding up a fruit (a "nice pear").
  • Tom Lehrer's comedy song "Bright College Days" includes the line "To thee we sing with our glasses raised on high". When performing the song live Lehrer would illustrate the line by removing and holding up his spectacles, a joke unfortunately robbed of impact on recordings.
  • In the music video to Weird Al's "Fat", there is a section where Al and friends start running in one direction while yelling "Hoooo!"... at which point one of the backup dancers hands Al a hoe.
  • The Michael Jackson video "Leave Me Alone" (originally part of the anthology film Moonwalker) includes a few scenes that involve dogs wearing business suits. In other words, "corporate dogs".
  • The album Force It (see here) by UFO has a cover illustration of a room containing many faucets. "Force It"... "faucet"... groan.
  • Blink-182's Take Off Your Pants and Jacket (already a Punny title) has on its cover a traffic light. Red = a plane ("Take off"), Yellow = pair of jeans, Green = jacket.
  • Queensryche's Hear In The Now Frontier: While the "now" part isn't really represented, the cover features ears in jars spread out across, well, an Old West frontier.
  • In Psalty's Singalongathon Maranatha Marathon Hallelujah Jubilee, Psalty's wife trips on a bucket that was left on stage. The bucket's purpose: helping the kids carry a tune.
  • The cover of REM's Lifes Rich Pageant is a picture of bassist Bill Berry coupled with a picture of some bison, as a visual pun on "Buffalo Bill". This also qualifies as a Stealth Pun, since the cover art has nothing to do with the album title, and the actual words "Buffalo Bill" don't appear anywhere else either.
  • Roger Daltrey's Tommy Reborn Tour is accompanied by an animation projected onto a screen behind the band. We start with an ovum being Fertilized by a sperm, which then turns into a red, white and blue ball, which is then dropped into the eye of a bird, representing Tommy Walker's conception. After Captain Walker goes off to war, we see various stylized images of a battle field including the Bird!Tommy carrying a Thompson Submachine gun in it's feet. That is to say, it has a Tommy gun.
  • Van der Graaf Generator's album A Grounding in Numbers has a cover illustration of the circuit diagram symbol for "ground" over a background of 0s and 1s.
  • Brad Paisley plays a guitar with a paisley pattern on it.
  • The cover of REO Speedwagon's "You Can Tune A Piano But You Can't Tuna Fish" shows a fish with a tuning fork in its mouth.


Newspaper Comics


Tabletop Games

  • The symbol for Phyrexia in the more recent Magic: The Gathering sets greatly resembles the Greek letter Phi. As in, Phi-rexian.
    • Look at the illustration for Bronze Calendar. It's a bronze colander.


Theater

  • Spamalot has one during this musical number at around 4:31.
    • What's the... oh, "Hay". Duh.
  • The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged) includes Pontius Pilot and the Axe of the Apostles.


Theme Parks

  • Muppet*Vision 3D had Waldo, the new 3D Muppet, allowing his nose to jump off his face, grow legs, and start dashing in circles. "Don't cha just hate it when your nose runs?"
  • The Haunted Mansion has the opera singers as a visual pun on The Phantom of the Opera, and the Grand Ballroom scene contains a ghost of Caesar, as in "Great Caesar's ghost!"


Video Games

  • In Persona 4, Teddie's Persona is named after Kintoki-Douji, a mythological figure who carried a tomahawk. Teddie's Persona carries a Tomahawk missile.
    • The Megaten games also have the rather NSFW Mara, whose name translated from its Japanese colloquialism means "Penis." You can guess what it is for yourself.
      • It also fits the original depiction too; Mara is the name of a demon that tried to "tempt" to Buddha while the latter was meditating. Kazuma Kaneko's depiction of Mara is a penis (sexual temptation)[9] drawing a chariot (temptation to do aggressive and violent things) made of gold (greed).
    • In the original Persona and Persona 2, Vice-Principal/Principal Hanya's face is based on a Japanese Hannya mask. Luckily enough for the English-language versions, this also gives him an over-the-top Sadist Teacher look.
  • The Left 4 Dead box art is a fine example: a dead left hand with 4 fingers (thumb ripped off). The sequel takes it a step further: two of the fingers are bent.
    • At one point in the game, in the DLC "Crash Course", you will walk past some very big fuel-holding tanks. One of the survivors, a biker named Francis, will then exclaim: "Look guys, we're passing gas!".
  • In Portal, as GLaDOS says "despite your violent behavior", her randomly flashing screens pause on a picture of a violin, and when you destroy the morality core, they flash to a picture of a couple of screws.
  • Prismatology, from Sam and Max alludes to the phrase "technicolor yawn;" the Gastrokenisis talisman, as well as the cover of "Emetics," is depicted as a man vomiting a rainbow, and it makes other character vomit in technicolor as well.
  • Record of Agarest War has one enemy named Jumbo Cock. It's a giant chicken!
  • Zone of the Enders gave us cockpits taken a bit too literally.
  • Touhou Project has Parsee Mizuhashi, a Green-Eyed Monster. Take a wild guess as to what her eye color is.
    • Parsee also has a visual Stealth Pun going on: She's a Persian (hashihito) bridge princess (hashihime).
  • At the end of the Duke Nukem 3D level "Pigsty", after fighting their way through a court room, you find a room containing... wait for it... a hanged jury.
  • Olive Specter from The Sims 2 is a literal Black Widow (as in, she's black, not that literally).
  • Most levels in the first world of New Super Mario Bros. Wii have rolling hills, yet a couple of levels take this literally.
    • In the original Super Mario Bros game, Fire Flowers are known as hi-banas in Japanese, and the Japanese word for "fireworks" is hana-bi.
  • The title of VVVVVV doesn't just refer to the six members of Captain Viridian's crew. It also refers to your most common obstacle.
  • In Katawa Shoujo, there is a Visual Pun that refers to something that was cut from the final game. In Hanako's good ending, the final images involve the camera zooming out from Hanako kissing Hisao until it is looking at the two from the inside of a bakery, with two muffins inside. This was supposed to imply that Hanako became pregnant (having "a bun in the oven") as a result of their having sex, but the scene was revised so that Hisao uses protection, and there is no indication that it failed.


Web Animation

Tim: They're gone, huh? I didn't even know you had a vagus nerve!
(Moby reveals a Las Vegas slot machine in his compartment)
Tim: And that is quite possibly the worst joke we've ever done.


Web Comics

  • Homestuck has one in Act 6 for John and Nanna. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, after all.
  • In Irregular Webcomic, there's a recurring strip with the (literal) Writer's Lego Block.
  • In The Heroes of Middlecenter, "Could somebody give me a hand?" while fighting zombie ninjas. Was included in the amateur video that spawned the comic.
  • In General Protection Fault, a similar example to the Muppet Movie above happens, save that the characters in question come across a fork(); in the road.
    • Generally speaking, though, forking a process involves taking both paths—the original process one, the newly spawned offspring another.
  • Life and Death has a long, wonderful history of puns, visual and otherwise. Even several characters owe their mere existance to visual puns, like "love is blind," and such. Lampshaded as often as not, but hey. Tropes Are Not Bad.
  • Three of these in a single strip of Sandra and Woo, all involving Woo's name in conjunction with movie or TV series titles.
  • Dominic Deegan has this splash page
  • In Order of the Stick, the strip "The Polearm Shop" has a snake slither in in the last two panels. The entire strip is an homage to Monty Python's Flying Circus.
  • In the Gunnerkrigg Court side-story City-Face 2, the titular pigeon, who believes he is turning into a human businessman, is told "Every human businessman needs one of these" and given a blackberry. Which he eats.
  • The Author Avatar in DAR describes herself as a "fairly hairy girl" in one strip, then proceeds with six panels involving various ways of shaving . . . a cat. This is returned to in a later strip at a waxing party, where all the girls are drawn as carrying cats and a guy is drawn as carrying a squirrel.
  • In Dubious Company, Walter and Tiren get shipwrecked and their primal instincts kick in. Walter builds a house while Tiren hunts for food.
    • In a backstory side piece, Sal and Leeroy get a visit from Phred. He appears as a pair of sweatpants.
  • This Cyanide & Happiness comic; don't slip.
  • The Whiteboard: Like many a Time Travel story, a time travel arc in May 2011 contains a pair o' Docs.[10]
  • VG Cats once dropped a very literal F-bomb.
  • Diglett and pals is just a series of strips with visual puns on Pokémon attack names. One example would be a Voltorb attempting to flee from a fight with a Diglett who summons an arena in order to trap the Voltorb, this is followed by the text "Diglett's arena trap prevents escape".


Web Original

  • The snarky video game reviews of Zero Punctuation consist of an almost constant string of these.
    • During the God of War: Chains of Olympus review, he subverts it. When describing Kratos' behavior as "incongruous" the screen cuts to the text "A word I can't fucking illustrate."
    • The previous image for this page illustrated his comment that Super Mario Galaxy had "many interesting levels" with Mario looking at a pile of spirit levels and saying "How interesting." This was such a groaner that Yahtzee Lampshaded with a big sign reading "VISUAL PUN".
  • Much like Yahtzee, The Game Overthinker often uses this, though he does this in combination with Running Gag, such as using a picture of The Question when he uses the word question, using Shigeru Miyamoto for God, using a picture of a butt for but and others.
  • This YouTube video, at around the 1:15 mark.
  • Dr. Horrible used a trans-matter ray to steal some gold "in bar form" that got liquefied in transit and ended up in a freezer bag, looking like nothing so much as soup broth. That smells like cumin, no less. (They never say it out loud, but what he's got is basically a bag of "gold bouillon.")
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd does a few from time to time, like in the last part of his Castlevania retrospective:

AVGN: So, you've got the Canon of the games, with the canon of the novel - it's like taking two canons and putting them together!

Spoony: "Man, this dimension sucks!"
Linkara: "Oh, don't be so negative."

Western Animation

  • Visual puns pertaining to characters are a common gag of western cartoons. Common ones include but are not limited to:
    • A donkey (Jackass, an idiot)
    • A lollipop (Sucker, someone who fell for a trick)
    • The bottom of a shoe (Heel, someone who should be ashamed)
    • A screw and a ball (Screwball, someone weird)[11]
    • A dripping faucet (Drip, a loser)
    • A broken pot (Crackpot, someone crazy)
  • In the episode "Hide and Seek" of Phineas and Ferb, Baljeet (who is shrunk at the moment) poses for a picture with a dust bunny. Yeah, it's an actual clump of dust in the shape of a bunny.
    • "Picture This" begins with the boys having turned the garage upside-down (quite literally) trying to find Ferb's favorite skateboard.
    • In "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo" the two travel to the future and see that "The museum finally added that new wing." The museum has a giant angel wing on it.
    • During their pre-flight checklist in "De Plane! De Plane!" Phineas mentions "co-pilot's instruments", and they cut to Ferb standing in front of a bunch of musical instruments hanging on the wall.
    • In Mommy, Can You Hear Me? Doofenshmirtz traps Perry in a giant pickle. He then proceeds to explain that it's funny because he's literally "in a pickle."
  • Danger Mouse: "How was I to know he had a voice-activated bean spiller?"
    • And similar to the The Muppet Movie example above, Dangermouse is following a series of directions around an underground temple one of which is to take a fork left...after colliding with it he asks "Who left that fork there?"
  • There is an old MGM cartoon by Tex Avery, Symphony in Slang, about a zoot-suited hipster arriving at the Pearly Gates and explaining to St. Peter his life story... largely in slang from The Fifties, which Peter can't understand at all. St. Peter enlists Noah Webster to sort out the man's speech, but Webster is almost as clueless, and the action is displayed on screen as if these phrases were literally true.
    • Avery's short The Cuckoo Clock also opens with a series of gags of this type.
  • Looney Tunes:
    • Ballot Box Bunny has Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam running against each other for mayor of a small town. At the end of the cartoon, they're both defeated...by a literal dark horse ("Our new mare").
    • In The Fair-Hared Hare, after Sam builds a house over Bugs's rabbit hole, Bugs vows to "take this to the highest court in the country"...and so he does (Elevation 6723 ft.).
    • Yankee Doodle Bugs has Bugs explaining American history to his nephew Clyde. Among other jokes, he says that Manhattan was bought from the Indians "for a song" (Indian being given sheet music) and describes the Boston Tea Party in terms of tea with "tacks" (which is both shown visually and made into a verbal pun).
    • And yet another one has Sam saying to Bugs to leave because "This town isn't big enough for both". Bugs then get saw and wood and made the town bigger.
    • In The Daffy Doc, Daffy Duck is a doctor's assistant and gets kicked out for causing trouble in the operating room. He expresses anger that anyone would do this to someone with a "sheepskin" (an actual sheep's skin) and a "license" (plate).
    • Both "Hyde and Go Tweet" and "Lighthouse Mouse" have Sylvester, faced with a monstrous bird/mouse, freeze in horror, and then collapse into a pile of cat bits on the floor. The Visual Pun is that he's "falling to pieces".
  • The Animated Adaptation of Beetlejuice saw its title character do this about a dozen times an episode; it's described as a reflex, his powers causing him to transform according to the idioms he uses.
  • Similar to the Sabrina example above, in an episode of Bonkers, the title character was infected with a 'toon disease called "Literalitis".
  • Adventure Time has The Earl of Lemongrab. He himself is a pun on the term "sourpuss;" he looks like a lemon and is obviously a very angry person. All of the clothes he wears are grey, so he's also a pun on "Earl Grey Tea."
  • Thoroughly exercised over the course of Fairly Oddparents's run with the goofy but godlike Cosmo and Wanda. As Timmy once said, seated inside a solid-ice convertible after wishing for a Cool Car, "Not funny."
    • From Non Sequitur Scene Episode|"What's The Difference?"]]:

Mandie: Prepare to meet your doom! *Holds up a sasauge* MEAT?!
Timmy: Thank you, horrible visual pun!

    • From "Mother Nature":

Timmy: (to his mom, who is ignoring him) Uh, you're still mad at me and dad for not listening, aren't you?
Timmy's Mom: Not very fond of getting the cold shoulder, are you?
(Timmy's right shoulder freezes)

  • Animaniacs. Every single short featuring the Warner Brothers (and sister). There's actually an episode where their psychiatrist tries to make them stop doing this- like, when he says "plant yourselves on the couch", they turn into flowers.
    • "This isn't a joke -- it's a visual gag."
  • Sheep in The Big City loved this sort of humor. In one episode, the narrator shouts "Hold the phone!", and there's a brief cut to Lisa Rental holding up a telephone.
    • In the very first episode, when searching for Sheep, the army guys are told to turn the city upside down. While General Specific is talking to the disguised Sheep in the foreground, we see the army guys literally turning all of the buildings upside down in the background.
  • In an episode of Freakazoid!, after a bit of badly-synced animation, it cuts to Freakazoid saying "Oy, let's watch the lip-sync, okay?", and then cuts to a clip of a disembodied pair of lips sinking into the ocean.
  • Done hilariously in an episode of Garfield and Friends. Roy buys a voice-activated weather-summoning robot, which starts interpreting all of Roy's insults ("I said rain, you bucket of bolts!") as requests for the items in question to fall from the sky. Roy finds himself on the receiving end of a bucket of bolts and an overgrown vacuum cleaner before he starts running... and narrating. "It's driving me up a tree! I have to get somewhere safe!"
  • On DuckTales (1987) Fenton Crackshell (a.k.a. Gizmoduck) had a day job as a literal "bean counter". He would count beans as they fell into jars and tell his assistant how many to add or remove. He could count hundreds of beans accurately in a fraction of a second, so good for him.
    • Turns out it's not limited to beans. He tried his darndest to get hired as Scrooge's new accountant, and when Scrooge tried to tell him no with a blunderbuss, Scrooge was amazed to hear, "465!" Turned out Fenton counted all the pellets that had been shot. After a quick check revealed he was just as good with counting money (a real plus when your money bin is so big it's a local landmark), Scrooge hired him.
    • Later on, after he'd taken on duties as Gizmoduck, this is a Chekhov's Skill. The money bin is taken to a planet of robots ruled by a malicious supercomputer and its robot army. After trying the Gizmoduck frontal-assault approach, Fenton challenges the computer to a counting contest, winner takes all. And he outpaced the computer easily.
  • In an episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, as Billy and Mandy are shouting "Mine!" while fighting for possession of Grim, the scene momentarily cuts to show an underwater mine.
  • In The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, while Flapjack and K'nuckles are traveling wesssssst, Bubbie comments that they're running low on food, water, and overall enthusiasm. K'nuckles reveals that he's wearing his last pair of overalls with the word "ENTHUSIASM" on it, accompanied by some really creepy voices singing OVERALL ENTHUSIASM OVERALL ENTHUSIASM OVERALL ENTHUSIASM YEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAWWWWWWWW.
  • Chowder has quite a few from time to time. In Banned from the Stand, for example, Gazpacho bans Mung from every other fruit stands (apparently he has the power to do that, according to the "code") and keeps saying "Banned! Banned! Banned!". In the last "BANNED!" we then cut to a shot of a marching band looking at Gazpacho.
    • When Mung teases his rival, Ms. Endive, that an ugly beast has just escaped the zoo, a bizarre monster appears out of nowhere and says "Oops, gotta go!" and jumps through a window.
    • Another scene also counts as a Lampshade Hanging from Truffles; when an extremely hot day comes along, Chowder asks why they don't turn on the Air Conitioner, when Truffles says it's because they have a corn-dish-oner. Cut to a scene of a strange washing-machine like thing dishing out corn. Truffles follows this up with 'stupid visual puns!'
  • Family Guy: In a Stephen King The Shawshank Redemption parody, Peter (Andy) accuses Pewtershmidt (Norton) of being "so obtuse", then Norton is shown to be sitting in a geometrically obtuse position.

Norton: How about now?
Andy: No, now you're acute.
(cut to Norton in an acute position)

    • Another from Family Guy. A man in a supermarket walks up to Lois and says "Nice Melons." Peter gets appropriately angry, until we see Lois holding two cantaloupes and says "Peter, I'm holding melons." The man does it again with "Her hooters ain't bad, either." Peter yells again, and we see Lois with two owls on her arm, "Peter, I'm holding hooters." The man finally says "Your wife's hot" and runs off.
  • Creature Comforts used these a lot. And I mean a lot.
  • In the ending of Aardman Animations' Stage Fright (included on the Chicken Run DVD), just before the villain is killed, he kicks a bucket.
  • In A Matter Of Loaf And Death, the van has a toaster mounted below the radio and Gromit has set this to do a slice of toast for Wallace's breakfast. It pops out (having been done almost black) and Wallace looks at it.

Well done, lad! (pause)
Very well done.

As noted above, Aardman (or at least Nick Park) use a lot of visual puns.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • "Squid on Strike" - When instructed to make a picket sign, SpongeBob makes two visual puns: the first being a part of an actual picket fence and the second being the image of someone picking their nose, a "pick-it" sign.
    • "No Weenies Allowed" - SpongeBob calls out Sandy for a karate challenge. She appears from the sand and grabs with the lines "Oh, I'm Sandy all right. Very Sandy." And SpongeBob gets the joke while flying in the air!
      • Another "sandy" example, this time from "Ripped Pants"

SpongeBob Hey, Sandy! Look! [covered in a mound of sand] I'm Sandy!

    • In one episode where Krabs flicks Plankton back to the Chum Bucket, he yells, "So long, shrimp!" An actual shrimp is then seen exiting the Krusty Krab.
    • Combining this with a normal Pun, SpongeBob's phone is shaped like a conch; a "shellphone" if you will.
    • One episode had Barnacle Boy sick of being sidekick and decided to become evil. He then announces that 'he's crossing over to the Dark side. Zoom out to show half of the Krusty Krab that's pitch-dark. When everone stares at Mr. Krabs, this is his response:

Mr. Krabs: Why should I waste money lighting the whole store?

    • In one episode, Patrick gets a letter (cue paper with giant "B" on it). On the other side, there's a note (cue flip; other side has quarter note on it). He also got a message from his parents.
  • In Toy Story, Woody asks Buzz Lightyear to "give me a hand". Buzz throws his (disconnected) arm to him.
    • And in Toy Story 2, Buzz tells Rex to "use his head" to open a vent. The next scene involves Rex being used to batter the door down.

Rex: But I don't wanna use my heaaaaaaaaaaad!!

  • Many of the Fleischer Studios and Famous Studios Screen Songs cartoons from the 30's, late 1940s and early 1950s lived off of this trope.
  • In The Princess and the Frog, the Fenner Brothers (the realtors selling the property Tiana wanted to buy for her restaurant) turn up at a costume party. There, they tell Tiana that she's been outbid, and that "a woman of your... background" probably wouldn't be able to maintain a high-profile restaurant anyway. All while dressed as a donkey, i.e. a jack-ass.
    • Other examples occur throughout the movie. In the first musical number, the line "there's some sweetness goin' around" is accompanied by Tiana dusting pasteries with powdered sugar while spun on a lazy susan.
    • While in the swamp, Prince Naveen states his parents cut him off because "I was a-----LEECH!! A LEECH!" as he lifts his arm out of the water to reveal a giant, fat leech.
  • There was a rather dark one in The Little Mermaid. When Ursula sings the line "It's she who holds her tongue, who gets her man.", she tosses a human-looking tongue into her cauldron.
  • The Justice League Unlimited episode "Epilogue" used one to do a Shout-Out to another cartoon. Remember the Royal Flush Gang in that episode? Now, remember how one of them was a samurai, complete with Kabuki samurai costume? That's the Jack of the gang. And to make the Visual Pun more obvious, when he lost his powers, his real form closely resembled Samurai Jack voice actor, Phil LaMarr.
  • Bump in the Night: In "Penny For Your Thoughts," Squishy uttered the pun, simply made a random thought, and a penny fell on him from out of nowhere. Bumpy put all his effort into producing a random thought, but it took him a while to do so.
  • Sometimes happens in classic Popeye shorts. One of the more frequent ones is when Popeye eats his spinach. He is seen appearing to have "muscles on his muscles".
  • Try Avatar: The Last Airbender, Book 3. Zuko runs into Suki on the way to Sokka's tent. Suki slips away, and Zuko enters Sokka's tent. Sokka was expecting...someone else. Zuko leaves, and Sokka calls for Suki. The next morning, Sokka is playing with a flower necklace (not dissimilar to a Hawaiian flower necklace). He got lei'd. (And if you're assuming that Suki gave it to him, then Suki got de-flowered.)
  • In the episode of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron where Cindy and Libby host a TV show, Nick announces he's going to comb his hair without his hands and asks for a drumroll. Cue an actual drum rolling across the stage.
  • In one episode of Aladdin, Genie conjures up a sandwich on his head and says "Hey Al! Lunch is on me!"
  • On Jimmy Two-Shoes, Beezy, going through cell phone withdrawl, says he's cracking up. His body then literally breaks like glass and falls, in pieces, on the ground.
  • In the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic episode "Call of the Cutie," Rainbow Dash comments that a mopey Apple Bloom has a dark cloud over her head. Then the camera pulls back to show that there's an actual dark cloud hanging over Apple Bloom's head, and Rainbow Dash is dangling from it.
    • And in "Feeling Pinkie Keen", Twilight Sparkle literally gets on a soap box to explain why she has a hard time believing in Pinkie's "Pinkie Sense".
    • Another example in "Over a Barrel." During Braeburn's over-enthusiastic tour of Apple-loosa, he points out the "horse-drawn carriages" (which are driven by sapient ponies taking turns), then mentions "horse-drawn horse-drawn carriages". Cue a camera cut of several pony artists sketching out the horse-drawn carriages.
  • One challenge in an episode of Total Drama World Tour involves carrying giant apples from the middle of a pond to shore. When Tyler has trouble doing this, Alejandro tells him to "use his head". Cue Tyler headbutting the apple across the pond.
  • The Critic has had two great examples:
    • From the episode "From Chunk to Hunk":

Penny: (Giving Marty a sheet of paper) Goodbye Marty. I wrote you a letter. (Marty sees only the letter P written on the page) You can read it on the bus.

    • From "A Song For Margo":

Hard Copy reporter: Tonight on Hard Copy, O.J. refuses to speak. (Shows a pitcher of orange juice on the witness stand.) Part 2 tomorrow.

  • The Futurama movie "Bender's Big Score" ushers in their return with a long line of visual puns, where they take some pretty big jabs at their former network Fox in the form of making fun of the "Box Network". Notable ones include them being "on the air" (flying) and a comment about their many fans (their latest job has them delivering fans).
    • Another episode has Leela telling Fry to "cool his jets". Cue a shot of Fry's jetpack burning Benders face.
  • The Cars short toon "El Materdor" actually portrayed bulldozers as acting like actual bulls (in the movie said short was based on, the role of bulls were portrayed by farm equipment).
  • In The Swan Princess, Prince Derek orders his musicians to dress up as animals so he can have target practice, and they're not happy about it. Cue one saying "This masquerade is more than I can bear!" He's dressed up as a bear.
    • For some, this is a potent source of Fridge Horror... the supposed hero of the story is shooting at his servants for fun.
      • With harmless arrows. He's basically playing paintball.
  • In the Lilo & Stitch: The Series episode Yaarp, at one point Stitch and Gantu are trying to catch an experiment at a electronics store:

Store PA: Attention shoppers! Come see our home theater system...
Stitch launches a large television at Gantu
Store PA: ...a picture so big it hits you like a ton of bricks!
Gantu: Oh blitznak.

  • House of Mouse is full of them. In one scene, someone tells Mickey "The crowd's turning ugly" and there's a cut to the Queen from Snow White turning into the old witch disguise and Prince Adam turning back into the beast.
  • The Sketch Artist Plastic Man short for the DC Nation ran on these. The Purse snatcher was male? Plas turns into a mail box. Pug nose? Pug dog nose!
  • The Joker and Harley Quinn in Batman: The Animated Series, of course. One of the lightest was when Harley declared she was armed and promptly hit a guard with the arm of a mannequin.

All The Tropes Wiki

  1. ↑ off of a roof
  2. ↑ the joke being that the "2" would be pronounced "tsu"... in other words, exactly the the show's actual title
  3. ↑ It's an extra life, geddit?
  4. ↑ pigeon-toed
  5. ↑ reigned
  6. ↑ hands are the unit of measurement used to determine the height of a horse, a typical adult horse is 16 hands high
  7. ↑ mousse
  8. ↑ here and here, in different editions
  9. ↑ Let's try to ignore the tentacles...
  10. ↑ Play on "parodox", for anyone who missed the "pun" part.
  11. ↑ Moreover, the ball is usually a baseball, making it a double pun; a screwball is a kind of pitch.
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