Conan (TV series)



He had a show. Then he had a different show. Then he got a Twitter account.

Then TBS gave him another show.

After his run on The Tonight Show and the fallout of Jay Leno's reappointment to the series, Conan O Brien went on a 30-city comedy/musical tour with his band and some of the show staff. During the lead-up to the Tour, speculation picked up as to which TV network would pick him up, if any (beliefs he would do incredibly well on the Internet still linger). On April 12, 2010, just hours before the start of his tour, he announced a deal with TBS for a new show. On September 1, 2010 he announced via Twitter and the Team Coco Youtube page that the show would be, creatively, titled Conan. He's now on TBS at 11:00.

This show has been called very similar to his run on Late Night, with a standard talk show format, consisting of a monologue, a couple of sketches, followed by two guests (sometimes separated by a short sketch) and ending with a musical guest or stand-up comedian. He is helped in his task by long-time announcer and Sidekick Andy Richter and his Tonight Show/Late Night band, with bandleader Jimmy Vivino replacing Max Weinberg (who left the show for health and family reasons).

Tropes associated with Conan include:
"Andy: Our fans are so stupid, they'll never know the difference."
 * Anachronism Stew: In a "Fan Corrections" about Thomas Jefferson helping James Madison write the Constitution from abroad in France, Jefferson and Madison are talking on cell phones.
 * "The Sarah Palin History Network" told the story of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which included the Founding Fathers as "plumbers, loggers, and truck drivers", George Jefferson, Paul Revere, and FDR, all wielding modern handguns, Hitler showing up to stop them, and the Fathers' secret weapon: R2-D2 with a gun.
 * Similarly, "The Michele Bachmann History Channel" talked about the Constitutional Convention, which had Andrew Jackson - "father of the Jackson Five", Sam Patch Adams, John Wayne, John Wayne Gacy, and John Quincy Jones, who then all recorded a song on modern studio equipment in "Orlando, Florida, 1927".
 * The Announcer: Andy Richter
 * Ascended Meme: Conyan shown on one of the show's bumpers.
 * Award Show: Parodied with the "Audiencey Awards" sketch. Awards are given to members of the audience for various random things (usually including several "best celebrity impression" awards). Comes complete with Conan hosting in a tux, a snarky fashion critic, and weird musical numbers.
 * Badass Beard: Grew one in preparation for the show, then shaved off in May 2011, and has grown it back as of November 2011, beginning with the series of episodes in New York.
 * Bad Boss: A recurring segment is Conan running a video on what the staff's kids say about what their parents think of working for Conan. Every comment paints Conan to be a sexist, greedy, violent monster.
 * The Band Minus the Face: With no Max Weinberg playing drums, The Max Weinberg 7 became Jimmy Vivino and the Basic Cable Band.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: LaBamba is still hanging around, though.
 * Berserk Button: Conan's beard to Will Ferrell, leading to the Beardpocalypse.
 * The Bet: Conan made a football bet with LaBamba that if the Patriots lost, Conan would wear a Jets cap at the start of the next show, but if the Jets lost, LaBamba would wear nothing at all. Conan lost the bet and held up his end of the bargain, but Conan still made LaBamba strip anyway, due to "audience demand".
 * Biting the Hand Humor: Among other digs at TBS, Will Forte occasionally pops by in character as TBS founder Ted Turner, who comes in to the studio riding a stuffed buffalo and proceeds to insult Conan, his audience and the current state of the network. Then, Conan got a bigger buffalo and chased Ted out of the studio.
 * Whenever Conan mentions Star Wars, Harry Potter, or any stereotypically geeky film, he'll do a nerd impression, then immediately apologize, due to fanbase overlap.
 * In a "Fan Corrections" about Conan's fake beard, Andy remarked while putting a fake, ground-up paper beard on Conan's face:

"Conan: Look here, carrot top, maybe you should spend- (realizes what he said and starts laughing, along with the audience) Who am I to mock his hair?!"
 * Black and Nerdy: Graphic Designer Pierre Bernard.
 * Blatant Lies: In the intro to the "Fan Corrections" segment, Conan says, "There have been many challengers, but no winners. No one has ever been able to catch me make a mistake." Of course, every correction that comes in is accurate, meaning that many, many people have caught him making a mistake.
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall: The title of the June 8, 2011 episode was "Is Anyone Paying Attention to These Friggin' Episode Titles?".
 * Followed on June 9 with "Wow! You Do Care About These Episode Titles."
 * Brief Accent Imitation: In the skit where Conan and Andy messed with Photo Booth (which caused their faces to distort), at one point Conan got into a position where his chin looked large. Upon seeing this, he wagged his head and said "Nnnnnnyah!", as a brief imitation of Jay Leno. The crowd went nuts.
 * Broadcast Live: It's not, but Conan tries to pretend it is.
 * Brooklyn Rage: Ever since his week of New York shows, Conan's been called out by an angry New Yorker for various reasons. He stands up in the audience and shouts at Conan, such as in the One Hour Earlier Best of Spectacular when he was angry that Conan wasn't showing any highlights from his trip to New York. As soon as Conan mentions that he's going to run some clips, the New Yorker suddenly becomes placid and calmly says, "Oh! Well that's delightful!" and sits down.
 * Butt Monkey: LaBamba, who has had to do things like sit in honey to see how much money will stick to his ass and was snowed on for practically the entire show. And let's not forget having to stand naked in front of everyone despite winning the bet involved with it.
 * Captain Color Beard: The episode where Will Ferrell shaved Conan O'Brien was titled "Redbeard's Last Stand".
 * Catch Phrase: Guest The Miz tried to give Conan a catchphrase: "Step into my dojo, mofo!" It didn't stick. He complained about this the second time he was a guest.
 * During the "Fan Corrections" segment: "Let's see if you've got what it takes to make chump meat out of the maestro!"
 * Clip Show: The Conan One Hour Earlier Best Of Spectacular, in celebration of the show's first-year anniversary.
 * China Takes Over the World: The sketch "Why China is Kicking Our Ass", showcasing something idiotic about American culture.
 * Cloudcuckooland: To promote the show, an HD webcam was set up next to a stairwell at the new offices. For a while it was also a regular webisode on Fridays. Apparently an "average day" includes dancing Tacos, lettuce baseball, bears doing aerobics, magic shows, a girl with green pants, puppet shows, raptor attacks, spontaneous Shakespeare lectures as Conan himself eats an apple, jolly ranchers used in eating contests, and a very irate Andy yelling at everyone to get back to work.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Anytime Harland Williams is a guest.
 * Companion Cube: His Eisenhower-shaped mug, which was on his desks at Late Night and The Tonight Show.
 * Cool Car/The Alleged Car: The 1992 Ford Taurus SHO that he's owned from new. Fulfills either role, or sometimes both simultaneously, depending on the bit. It seems that the dirtier the car is, the closer it swings into The Alleged Car territory.
 * Cool Sword: One of Steven Ho's segments featured him attacking Conan with a katana.
 * Couch Gag: Each episode has a different title, reminiscent of murder mystery titles but involving some sort of wordplay. On Thursdays, something often happens to the car and/or the house and/or the city in the opening credits.
 * Crouching Comedian Hidden Badass: Steven Ho can get Conan to do some pretty impressive stunts during his segments.
 * A Date With Rosie Palms: Well, the Masturbating Bear has shown up now...
 * Department of Redundancy Department: "Welcome to Andy Richter's Sports Blast. I'm Andy Richter and this is Sports Blast. Welcome."
 * Seems to be a favorite gag of Andy's. While he was driving cross-country to the New York shows: "Gonna check out Meteor Crater, which apparently is a crater that was made by a meteor."
 * Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: "I just told God to shut up!"
 * Don't Explain the Joke: Steve Zampanides
 * Conan will occasionally play with this to great effect when one of the monologue jokes bombs.
 * Ear Worm: Minty the Candy Cane's theme song. "Minty fell on the ground / For just a moment or twooo". Invoked when Conan kept saying he couldn't get it out of his head.
 * The 'War Horse' music. Invoked by Conan and Andy, and played again on the following show due to its popularity.
 * Embarrassing First Name: Discussed what it was like to grow up with the name Conan when Jason Momoa was on to promote Conan the Barbarian.
 * Episode Title Card: Every episode has a silly title such as "Baa Baa Blackmail" or "Murder She Tweeted".
 * With another episode title referencing Murder She Wrote right after Super Bowl XLV, entitled "'Whisper', She Shouted", one has to wonder if that in particular will become a Running Gag.
 * Most of the episode title cards have absolutely nothing to do with the guests or content of the show, but an episode in March 2011 featuring WWE Champion The Miz was entitled, "And In This Corner... Gingivitis!"
 * Followed in May 2011 by "Redbeard's Last Stand", as described in Important Haircut.
 * A June 2011 episode featured a series of title cards inspired by the opening credits from Superman, with the title "What Happens on Krypton, Stays On Krypton".
 * Fan Nickname: "Coco", bestowed by Tom Hanks on the second night of Conan's Tonight Show and quickly adopted by the fans. Conan has reluctantly embraced it since, and Team Coco is now the name of the show's website and all of their various official social media accounts.
 * Flashback Cut: A few episodes recently have featured a brief skit where Conan and Andy have a flashback to an event that occurred right before the show taping. It always involves either Conan or Andy acting in an exaggerated manner, and usually involves Conan throwing someone through the wall in a fit of rage.
 * Fun With Acronyms: "Conan's VD Explosion", a Valentine's Day contest for viewers.
 * In a skit about the world's longest cat, Conan remarked that his reaction to seeing the YouTube video about it was, "BFD". He immediately added: "I have no idea what that means."
 * Furry Fandom: On Feb 23, 2012, Andy portrays War Horse.
 * Game Show Appearance: On June 14, 2011 Conan played Basic Cable Name That Tune (using a nice recreation of the 70s logo with basic cable in the same font). He explains that unlike the network show, TBS can't afford the licencing fees to play real songs. To fix this, the band plays the intro only, and then plays a song 'that sorta sounds like the original'. For example instead of Born in the USA they sing a parody called C-Section in America. Conan also offered the audience members Bid-A-Note style clues like "If we were to play the real version of this Stadium classic chant, Queen's lawyers would undoubtedly say, 'We will, we will, sue you'".
 * Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Occasionally at the top of the show, someone from the studio audience will point at Conan. He'll remark that being pointed at is creepy, and likens that action to The Grim Reaper.
 * Gross Up Close-Up: In the 1/12/12 episode, Ricky Gervais found it amusing that TBS is on a really high number on some cable/satellite services, and theorized that people only tune in because they're looking for porn in those high numbers. He then decided to give those people a fake-out: He pushed his breasts together and the camera zoomed in on his "cleavage". Of course, since Gervais has a hairy chest, it turned into a Gross Up Close-Up instead.
 * Hilarious Outtakes: Team Coco posts unaired dress rehearsal outtakes on YouTube during hiatuses, such as a blooper from the "LaBamba covers his butt in honey and sits on some money" sketch where LaBamba sits on the honey without waiting for his cue to do so.
 * Hypocritical Humor: Realized by Conan during a "Fan Corrections" when he was "insulting" one of the viewers who sent him a video; the person in question had orange hair.

"Andy: "Car on fire."
 * I'm Going to Hell For This: Sadly, the "I'mma gonna go to hell when I die" song hasn't shown up on TBS yet, but Conan will often announce that they're all going to hell when jokes move towards crossing the line.
 * Important Shave: On the Apr 18, 2011 episode (which was also Conan's birthday) Will Ferrell sent in a "Fan Corrections" video claiming that the "rusty pubes" on Conan's face were a mistake and threatening to shave them off when he was a guest on the show on May 2. This was followed-up with further threatening videos from Will, and a photoshop contest for the fans to portray what was dubbed "Beardpocalypse". And, as promised, Will's guest appearance on May 2nd was entirely centred around shaving Conan (badly, the job was finished for real by a professional during the commercial break). Conan said afterwards that it felt like he had come full-circle, as the last time Will had been his guest was on his last Tonight Show, right before he started growing the beard.
 * Even better was when Tina Fey was interviewed and said she had a "clip of her book," Bossypants. The clip played and it was another Will Ferrell video, catching the audience by surprise.
 * Incredibly Lame Pun: In an interview with NBA Rookie of the Year Blake Griffin, they discussed how he would top jumping over a car to win the dunk contest:

Blake: "With my teammate on fire."

Conan: "Teammate on fire. Car on fire, alley-oop from teammate on fire, you're dressed as Chewbacca." *Beat* "Which would of course make you wookiee of the year, thank-you." Stands up and waves, crowd cheers and groans."

""Once again, I've learned nothing and wasted everyone's time.""
 * Inner Monologue: As with the same recurring sketch from Late Night and The Tonight Show, Mike Merritt's derisive inner monologue while Conan speaks about racial equality. What follows is a series of Conan's So White... jokes.
 * Instrumental Theme Tune: Composed by Jimmy Vivino and Conan.
 * Jerkass: Conan is portrayed as this in the "Staffers' Kids Say the Darndest Things" segment, and also during the one-shot skit where he phoned various staff members' parents - he got irritated with certain kinds of chairs and threw the chairs out of their cubicles.
 * Basically, he'll play this up whenever he does a remote or interacts with his staff.

""Hey, wait a minute, I thought you died in the last segment. There's no continuity in this show. We killed him not eight minutes ago... well we need him for another bit, stick him over there.""
 * Joisey: Chris Ultimo, a PA for the show, is more Jersey Shore than the cast of Jersey Shore, although he comes across as a lot nicer and smarter than them.
 * Jumping the Shark: Invoked by Conan, who said the jeggings episode was the moment, and claimed that because he had jumped so early (3 weeks in), he could just coast for the rest of his career.
 * The Love Boat: The title graphics for the 2012 Valentine's Day episode incorporated The Love Boat circle and anchor graphics.
 * Milestone Celebration: The 11/8/11 episode was Conan's one year anniversary. May not seem like a big deal, but keep in mind, Conan's last gig didn't even make it that far.
 * They celebrated it a little later with a prime-time "Best Of" Clip Show.
 * Mood Whiplash: Just due to the nature of the show sometimes. When you have an episode where the two guests are Pee-Wee Herman and a presidential historian, it's going to feel a bit schizo.
 * In the 8/3/2011 episode, there was a brief sketch where Andy got earlobe spacers. Conan ridiculed how ridiculous Andy looked, to which Andy ran out of the studio with hurt feelings. Moody piano music played when Andy ran out to the parking lot. Suddenly, a group of pirates in a PT Cruiser drove by Andy and hooked his large earlobes with their hooks and dragged him down the lot, sending the sketch right back to comedy.
 * The last show of the week in New York. Started with a sketch with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, Triumph at Occupy Wall Street, and an interview with the always-hilarious Louis CK. Then the final segment of the show was Conan officiating for the wedding of a gay staffer and his partner, which was incredibly sweet and heartfelt... then the just-married couple rode out of the theater on Teddy Jr, fake Ted Turner's stuffed buffalo on wheels.
 * The 12/13/2011 episode featured Bob Costas as a guest. While the first half of the interview was light-hearted, the second half got serious as he shared his thoughts on his recent phone interview with Jerry Sandusky.
 * Mr. Fanservice: This promo. Even inspired a few claims of Even the Guys Want Him.
 * My Eyes Are Up Here: In an interview with Nicole Scherzinger, Conan is caught looking at Nicole's cleavage and called out on it (to be fair, and as Conan himself pointed out, how could you not?).
 * Used word-for-word by Conan when he wore the jeggings.
 * Negative Continuity: Between segments. In one episode, LaBamba was "killed" in a wood-chipper, then was featured alive and well in the very next sketch. Conan, of course, points this out:

"Why is there a rapper here?
 * News Parody: The segment "Local News Roundup", where Conan points out that to watch Conan, you are missing your local news broadcast. But that's okay, because they're all pretty much the same anyways. Cue Conan and Andy's parody including generalized news stories, weather, sports, pet segments, and crazy local commercials.
 * No Budget: Conan often complains that because they are on cable, they "don't have a lot of scratch". Particularly as the premise for "Basic Cable Name That Tune".
 * N-Word Privileges: To introduce a bit where Deon Cole, the show's only black writer, discusses Rick Perry's unfortunately-named ranch, Conan says, "I should stress, he's the only guy on our staff who can say the real name of the ranch."
 * Once Per Episode: As with Late Night and The Tonight Show, at the top of every show, Conan scrunches his legs together and jumps forward on a trumpet sting. Conan then stands up and points to the band, as they wrap up the opening theme.
 * One Head Taller: Conan (6'4"), and Andy (6'2") tower over most of their female guests (who are often wearing really high heels to compensate) and some of their male guests.
 * On one episode, there was a guy in the audience who was one head taller than Conan. Conan noticed this and brought him over to meet him. It is incredibly strange to see Conan have to look up at anyone.
 * Also notable here is that the warm-up comedian for the audience, Jimmy Pardo, is 5'4". This photo illustrates the difference rather dramatically.
 * One Steve Limit: Averted. Two of Conan's writers and frequent sketch performers are Brian Stack and Brian McCann.
 * Another writer's name is Matt O'Brien. He is not related to Conan.
 * Painted-On Pants: The jeggings. Oh dear God, the jeggings.
 * And now there's Andy with the skinny jeans. What is it with these guys and tight pants?
 * Pop Cultural Osmosis Failure: "Basic Cable Name That Tune" features audience members tasked with identifying knockoff versions of well-known songs. Since the sketch's humor is based around how poorly disguised the copying is, the bit falls flat whenever the audience member isn't familiar enough with the original song to identify it.
 * Precious Puppies: Following the 2012 edition of the Animal Planet Super Bowl alternative Puppy Bowl, Conan showed off Puppy Conan, a puppy scaled version of the set with Puppy Conan and Puppy Andy sitting in the seats. Conan and Andy joined them, with Conan saying "You know, we should really do the show from this set one of these nights!"
 * Puppy Conan became very popular, with more installments introducing more elements such as Puppy Cameraman, Puppy LaBamba, and guests Puppy Flav-a-flav and Puppy Lady Gaga.
 * Podcast: The Team Coco Podcast, hosted by two staffers: Aaron Bleyaert and Christian Lynch (along with Sharon Hardy before she left for a different job). Released on Mondays, they sit down with a staff member and talk to them about their job on the show, life in LA, and anything else that comes up.
 * Portmanteau: Leprekong, which combines a leprechaun with King Kong. It's as funny as it sounds.
 * Portmanteau Couple Name: "Candy", for Conan/Andy. Invoked by Conan on the 05/11/11 episode while talking with Miranda Kerr, and a couple of times since.
 * "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Conan's retorts to those who submit fan corrections. Of course, this is done in jest and exaggerated for comic effect.
 * Redheaded Stepchild: Ginger-bashing is occasionally commented on for obvious reasons. Notably, when the news came out that a sperm bank was refusing red-headed donors. Conan was a bit insulted by this. He also wondered what people were seeing every night that was turning them off of redheads.
 * Tim Minchin played his anti-ginger-bashing song "Prejudice" for his second appearance on the show, which made the already funny song extra funny.
 * Retcon: The Fan Corrections segments, in which Conan responds to allegations of Did Not Do the Research with implausible (and bogus) "proof".
 * Rhyming With Itself: Parodied and lampshaded in "Thursday", Conan's parody of "Friday":

Why exactly am I here?

Did I just rhyme here with here?

I am getting out of here."

""Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my second annual first show."
 * Running Gag: When Conan says something about how an episode won't air or is completely unusable, usually following some mistake or something completely random.
 * When something particularly absurd is going on, Conan will often say, "I love how anyone tuning in right now will have no idea what's going on."
 * A recurring segment began in March 2011, where "Entertainment Tonight-exclusive" clips from Captain America the First Avenger were introduced, except Conan showed clips from the 1979 made-for-TV Captain America movie instead, which are lower quality. At the conclusion of every clip, a clip of Mark Steines, the Entertainment Tonight co-host would have him say "Oh it looks gooood!" Starting with the 6/29/11 episode, Conan began imitating that sound byte: "Looks goooood!". When the sketch gained popularity, Steines ended up appearing on the show in support.
 * When Captain America the First Avenger was released, the sketch then used Rise of the Planet of The Apes for its jokes instead.
 * For a couple weeks in early August 2011, someone named Steve Zampanides was announced as a guest. But he was continuously bumped in every episode due to running out of time, and each new episode listed him under a different specialty. Because of this, and also since there were few Google results for his name (aside from a Twitter account that was suspiciously created on August 9th and a website whose domain was owned by Team Coco), fans quickly caught on that this "Steve" wasn't a real person but actually a running gag created by the Conan staff. Probably as a result of this, the running gag abruptly ceased after a couple weeks.
 * Self-Deprecation: Regularly takes shots at his new home on basic cable; his new band is referred to as the "Basic Cable Band".

"Next week, WikiLeaks is threatening to leak what channel TBS is on.""

"Conan: Don't worry, this episode will never air."
 * Conan sometimes opens the show with some variation of: "We've got a great show for you tonight. I'll watch this one, and I'm not a fan of this program. I don't like the host."
 * Also, if something goes wrong on the show, Conan can be counted on to point it out, even if it was something that the viewers would never know about otherwise.

"Conan: ...I gotta tell ya, it just sounds horrifying. To anyone listening to this at home, it sounds like we're butchering hogs in this room. And that whole Conan chanting thing: "It's Late Night With Stalin!""
 * Shoot the Money: When TBS sent out a blimp to promote the show, Conan declared on the air that they were obligated to get their money's worth for it, and did a series of sketches wherein the blimp was sent around LA to stalk Gary Busey. And it was hilarious.
 * Show the Forehead
 * Show Within a Show: Puppy Conan, and its Spin-Off Hamster Conan.
 * Sidekick: Andy Richter
 * Single Tear: Conan often mimes this, then "drinks" the tear to make him strong.
 * Smarter Than You Look: Given his penchant for lowbrow and downright silly comedy (eg. The Masturbating Bear, The Gravyboat Lighthouse, or just Conan dancing around like an idiot), it often surprises people that Conan is exceptionally smart. He graduated from Harvard magna cum laude, was the editor of The Harvard Lampoon for two years straight (only one other editor has accomplished this), and now has an honorary doctorate from Dartmouth.
 * Something Completely Different: When the mini set was debuted in the Puppy Conan sketch, Conan made an offhand comment that he wanted to do an entire show from that set. A few weeks later they did, and booked Shaquille O'Neal and Steve Schirripa as guests. Hilarity Ensued.
 * Studio Audience: Naturally, being a talk show and all. Some of the funniest bits in the show are Conan acknowledging quirky members of the studio audience, or gauging the amount of applause/cheering they provide. One particularly amusing moment was when the audience kept hooting and hollering at the start of the show, to which Conan replied:

""Obama is appearing with Jay Leno to highlight the one job that was saved during his administration.""
 * Stylistic Suck: Conan's Video Blog. Complete with all the awkward pauses, low-quality webcam resolution, and the best title screens Windows Movie Maker can provide. It was "designed" to reach out to his younger viewers.
 * Suicide As Comedy: Apparently, cows find hanging themselves from the set's rafters an effective way to commit suicide.
 * Suspiciously Similar Song: The precept behind "Basic Cable Name That Tune", where contestants identify off-key knockoffs of popular songs, like "Tuba Guy", "Have Intercourse With Yourself", or "Scrabble Foot".
 * Take That: Never unprompted, but if there's an opportunity to take a shot at NBC because they're in the news or a guest brings it up, Conan is sure to take it.
 * On one episode, Conan delivered this monologue joke: "Oprah now has a half-sister, that’s a big story… Oprah says that when she was looking for advice on how to approach her half sister, she consulted Dr. Phil. Unfortunately, Dr. Phil wasn’t much help, because he’s a big dumb fraud."
 * A particularly pointed one came when President Obama went on The Tonight Show in October 2011. Conan's punchline:

"Conan: ...How come you can't speak?! You're like a silent film actor from 1918."
 * Conan continues to razz Kirstie Alley on his new show.
 * Undesirable Prize: Andy has awarded audience members with "prizes" such as; a shoebox full of hair, a custom-made "World's Best Sex Offender" coffee mug, an N.P.R. gun holster, and a jar filled with an unidentified whitish liquid, with a hand-written label reading "NUZZ".
 * Visual Pun: Ever since Slash made a guest appearance with the band any written out URL has had the forward slashes replaced with his face.
 * The Voiceless: A running gag is how LaBamba never seems to talk when Conan addresses him during sketches, instead using gestures.

"Conan: OK, well just imagine that went a little further... before the computer crashed. Y'know what? I'm not gonna let it bother me. I'm just gonna take it like a man. Hehehe... (starts mock shouting into the camera)"
 * We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: The April 5, 2011 episode suffered this when the west coast feed of TBS aired 5 minutes of dead air, followed by about 20 minutes of commercials (Lampshaded the next day by Conan, who said they made a fortune), followed by the show airing completely out of order. A sketch on the following episode explained the "reason" for the mix-up.
 * During a skit in one episode, Conan and Andy lip synched to an imitation Morgan Freeman voiceover. Conan had planned to carry the voice over to announcing the guests as well, but just as he was about to announce the first guest's name, the machine that was providing the Morgan Freeman voice crashed and nothing was heard when Conan opened his mouth.


 * Weird Moon: The huge moon in the background of his TBS show can be controlled via remote, and possibly be used to crush Andy Richter. It even has "that lunar wobble"!
 * What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: Conan has a remote-controlled moon as part of his studio. It is awesome.
 * The Fishtank underwear, which has a submarine to cover the buttcrack.
 * Conan's superhero alter-ego, the Flaming C, with his weird steaming oven mitt of power. He was even animated and edited into an episode of Young Justice.
 * The Blimp.
 * The way the set was decked out for Christmas 2010, including the giant inflatable chicken sandwich.