Running gag Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
The running gag is a popular hallmark of comedy television shows and movies. A running gag is an amusing situation or line that constantly reappears through the course of a movie or television series. Frequently, the humor in a running gag derives entirely from how often it is repeated.
Some examples of running gags
- In Airplane, Dr. Rumack (Leslie Nielsen) responds to sentences containing the word "surely" with "Don't call me Shirley". Also in this film, Capt. Clarence Oveur (Peter Graves) and Victor Basta (Frank Ashmore) are comically addressed with lines like "... Oveur, Over." or "What's your vector, Victor?".
- In Match Game, a question frequently has the phrase "he was so xxxx", and the audience replies "How xxxx was he???", and the host finishes reading the question.
- In Monty Python's Flying Circus, a variety of running gags occur within certain episodes, or spanning several episodes. In episode 15, members of the Spanish Inquisition burst into several scenes, proclaiming "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!". Gags running throughout the series include an armoured knight carrying a rubber chicken, the "It's" man, and an announcer in a dinner jacket.
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail includes regular lamentations on the air speed velocity of swallows, beginning with the first scene in the movie. King Arthur (Graham Chapman) always says "five" instead of "three" and has to be corrected. In a few scenes, someone believes that another person is dead and the "dead" person keeps saying "I'm not dead yet... I'm getting better... I think I'll go for a walk".
- In Get Smart, a common running joke is "Don't tell me there's a (gun/knife/spy/whatever)!" to which the reply is always "There's a (gun/knife/spy/whatever)!" followed by "I told you not to tell me that."; another is to respond to every colossal error ("you just pushed the red button and started World War III, Agent 86") with "sorry about that, chief" or to constantly mention "the old ____ in the ____ trick" (in trivial forms such as "the old gun in the hand trick"). "Agent 13" is always given the worst assignments, such as being a spy concealed in a dustbin or some equally awkward and undesirable place.
- In Pinky and the Brain, the Brain tries to take over the world in every episode, but always fails in some humorous way. The Brain frequently asks Pinky "Are you pondering what I'm pondering?"; Pinky always responds with an amusing non-sequitur.
- In Pokémon, the Pokémon Wobuffett, Skitty and Psyduck will sometimes pop out of their Poké Balls at the wrong time, much to the amusement of viewers (but not the Pokémon's trainers).
- In Police Squad, a shoe-shiner would give information to Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) about a case being investigated, and then advise the next customer who would be e.g. a surgeon, or other unlikely character. At the end of each show, a parody of the freeze-frame common at the end of 70s TV series was made by the actors trying to stand really still and grin stupidly, while something in the scene carried on moving (e.g. coffee being poured overflows).
- In Seinfeld, a superman appears somewhere in each episode.
- In the first five seasons of South Park, Kenny suffers a gruesome death in nearly every episode, to which the other children exclaim "They killed Kenny. You bastards!"
- In the You Don't Know Jack multiple-choice trivia computer games, "Tootie" is occasionally presented as one of the choices, but is never the right answer.
- In Groo the Wanderer there are a lot of them. For instance, every ship Groo enters will sink soon. Also, frequent references to "cheese dip" and, later, "mulch." Another example was a character calling Groo "slow of mind" early on the story, and almost on the end Groo thinking "what did he mean, 'slow of mind'"? Also, there is a hidden message in every story -- it usually spells "hidden message" or "this is the hidden message."
- In Dangermouse, DM telling Penfold to "shush".
- In series six of Red Dwarf, Rimmer consistently misquotes the Space Corps Directives in a sadly misguided effort to get his own way by using regulations.
- In Animaniacs, Yakko, Wakko, and Dot would often interrupt sketches whose plots did not involve them by running through the frame, chased by a studio security guard. This is a rare example of a running gag that plays on the meanings of "running".
- In many of the Asterix adventures, a band of pirates meets with disaster at the hands of -- or simply while trying to avoid -- the protagonists.
- In the Super Chicken series of cartoons produced by Jay Ward, SC would propose that his sidekick Fred, do something or handle something which was extremely hazardous or possibly fatal. When Fred would inevitably complain about the possibility of injury (to himself), SC would respond, "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred."
- In the Inspector Gadget cartoon Gadget's boss, Chief Quimby, always contacts Gadget with his latest mission in a strange disguise. The mission is written in self-destructing note paper which Gadget will invariably toss away after reading, only to blow up in Quimby's face.
Some running gags were not meant as such, but are errors or plot holes that keep repeating themselves, such as the Redshirt problem from Star Trek (TOS). Basically, security officers wore bright red shirts. Every time the main cast brought the frequently unnamed red shirts with them on an away mission, all or all but one of the red shirts would die. Other unplanned running gags for Star Trek include William Shatner's stunt double looking nothing like him, and being rarely hidden from the camera; and all aliens simply being humans with a little make-up and bizarre clothing, (see Klingons).
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