Arrested Development (TV series)/Funny

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Michael takes Maebe to take-your-daughter-to-work-day and is visited by police inquiring about the disappearance of his his father's secretary, Kitty:

Maebe: So, you killed Kitty, huh?
Michael: No, I did not kill Kitty. However, I am going to oblige and answer the nice officer's questions because I am an honest man with no secrets to hide.
[whoops and hollers heard from the conference room]
Michael: And apparently, a fun one. Why don't we go see what's going on in the back, shall we?
Maebe': Were those the last words Kitty ever heard?

Annyong: Okay, Mom want someone to come with her to my soccer game. She don't want other soccer moms think she single. She old school.

Michael: I liked it better when he just said Annyong.

Gob: Franklin said some things Whitey wasn't ready to hear.
Michael Bluth: G.O.B., weren't you also mercilessly beaten outside of a club in Torrance for that act?
Gob: He also said some things that African-American-y wasn't ready to hear either.

  • Any of the chicken impressions.

Has no one in this family ever seen a chicken?

  • Hot ham water!
    • "So watery...and yet, there's a smack of ham to it."
  • "How much clearer can I say that THERE IS ALWAYS MONEY IN THE BANANA STAND?!"
  • George Senior dressing up in a turban and delivering a threatening video to his employees. We only see one part of it, which has him imitating Osama bin Laden with the phrase, "This is my demand", complete with finger pointing.
  • This one happened within the first few minutes of the series:

Michael: So, this is the magic trick?
Gob: Illusion, Michael. A trick is something a whore does for money. (Michael gestures to nearby children) ...Or cocaine!

  • Tobias' audition to announce a fire sale.

Tobias: Oh my God, we're having a fire!... sale. OH THE BURNING!

  • Undoubtedly this exchange, which was the culmination of an episode's worth of rock/paper/scissors jokes:

Narrator: G.O.B. charged at Michael with the scissors, but Michael...
Michael: Put it down.
Narrator: ...as he always did, picked rock...
G.O.B.: Make it collapse. Make me look foolish.
Michael: G.O.B., don’t do this. G.O.B., the scissors!
Narrator: ...which beat scissors. Unfortunately, the whole incident was covered by the paper.

  • In a series that was basically one big sustained CMoF, particularly memorable is the climax of Mr. F, where all the subplots come crashing together to simulate a Kaiju battle in the Bluths' backyard—all of it witnessed by Japanese investors who promptly withdraw their funding.
  • This exchange:

Michael: Hang on, that's your trick isn't?
Gob: No Michael. That's not my trick.
On the next Arrested Development...
Gob: It's my illusion!

  • This exchange in the season 1 finale:

Michael: What kind of job?
Lindsay: Beads!
Gob: Bees?!
Lindsay: Be-eeds.
Gob: Beads!

  • George Sr. informing Michael that they killed J. Walter Weatherman "when you left the door open with the air conditioner on."
  • Tobias putting his role of "Analyst" and "Therapist" together to create Analrapist.

Tobias: It's pronounced Uh-Nale-Ruh-Pist!
Buster: It's not really the pronunciation that concerned me.

  • In the third episode:

Buster (Impersonating Lucille): I'm an uptight [bleep] BUSTER! [Longer bleep] YOU OLD HORNY SLUT!
Michael: Well no one's gonna top that.

      • Said by Tony Hale to be his favorite moment in the show.
  • Mrs Featherbottom's (i.e. Tobias') attempt to give Maeby a "magical entrance" Mary Poppins-style by jumping off a landing into the living room holding an umbrella. It doesn't end well.
  • Pretty much everything Tobias says.
  • Maeby and her school's grading system.

Lindsay: I know you got a crocodile in Spelling!

  • Tobias attempting to break into Maggie Lizer's house. With Unnecessary Combat Rolls. Keyword: attempting.
    • Plus, Maggie comes home but can't reveal that she knows he's there without giving away that she's not blind, so both of them are forced to spend quite some time awkwardly moving around each other, neither acknowledging the other's presence.
  • Aw, is this our little bundle of TWO GAY COPS' BABY??
  • Gob's single-episode obsession with how expensive his business suits are, and the resulting hysterical babbling he's reduced to when Michael makes a silly remark about his pants. In fact, any interaction between Michael and Gob when the latter becomes highly emotional is pretty much gold.
    • And speaking of Gob's Pants:

Buster: You can wear stripper clothes when you're not stripping?
Gob tears off velcro pants: You tell me.

  • In one episode, previously unrelated subplots regarding a jetpack, a mole, a model city and Japanese investors inevidably build towards a completely unintentional Kaiju battle being staged. Probably one of the funniest punchlines in the history of the show.
  • In Top Banana

Michael: You burned down the storage unit?
T-Bone: Oh most definitely!

  • "Alias is a show about a spy!" Now even better thanks to Tony Hale's role on another show about a spy.
  • The narrator's constant jabs at his competition on Scandalmakers. "And that's how you narrate a story!"
  • NO TOUCHING!
  • GOB Bluth buys a yacht called The Seaward, and his brother Michael is annoyed. Then their mother shows up at the tail end of the conversation and mishears "The Seaward" as "the c-word":

Michael (to GOB): I want you to get rid of The Seaward.
Lucille: I'll leave when I'm good and ready!

    • Note that GOB's other yacht in the final episode is actually called The C-Word, so written.
    • He also calls another of his yachts (after The Seaward. sunk) the Lucille II., making the link explicit.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Arrested_Development_(TV_series)/Funny?oldid=1447648"