Black Comedy: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20140219230538/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUnu8mm551I This] [[Candid Camera Prank|hidden camera mailbox prank]] seems innocent enough, [[Deadly Prank|right]]?

* [http://www.adrants.com/images/la_senorita_mexican_restaurant_billboard.jpg This billboard], [[Drinking the Kool Aid|which is a reference to]] [[wikipedia:Jonestown|the Jonestown Massacre]].

* ''[[Detroit Metal City]]'' at its best/worst.

* ''[[Hokuto no Ken]]'' has [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po77bJk1DdI this]. Made even funnier when you apply [[Fridge Logic]] and realize it's not [[Epic Fail]] on the mook's part but ''Kenshiro's own brand of [[Dark Comedy]] at work''.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* The narration in ''[[Aeon Entelechy Evangelion]]'' sometimes leads to this, mostly as a result of combination of [[Lemony Narrator]], [[Sophisticated As Hell]] and [[Understatement]].

* The ''[[Day of the Barney Trilogy]]'' is a very notable [[Hate Fic]] of ''[[Barney and Friends]]'' that has Barney commit [[Corruption of a Minor]] on a large scale, personally maim and kill people, {{spoiler|rape teenage girls after taking them under his wing as his Special Friends and impregnating them with mutant offspring that they die giving birth to,}} cause every catastrophe in world history, and it's ''still'' darkly humorous.

 

* [[The Coen Brothers]] tend to specialize in this sort of comedy: ''[[Miller's Crossing]]'', ''[[Fargo]]'', ''[[Burn After Reading]]'', and ''[[A Serious Man]]''.

* [[Don Hertzfeldt]], when his films aren't out-and-out [[Surreal Humor|surreal.]]

* ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]''

 

* ''[[iCarly]]'' uses this on occasion:

** ''iQuit iCarly'': T-Bo talks about his best friend Eddie Robinson who was hit by a bus and now became [[Incredibly Lame Pun|"Dead-die Robinson"]].

* ''1000 Ways To Die'', especially in its later episodes. As one tagline put it: "We glorify stupidity and put a smiley face on Death".

* As the title might suggest, ''[[One Foot in the Grave]]'' was a [[Britcom]] about [[Reluctant Retiree]] Victor Meldrew looking for ways to occupy his time and featured an uncommonly large amount of material, [[Mood Whiplash|humour and otherwise]], touching on old age, death, loneliness and having to [[Humans Are the Real Monsters|put up with everyone else]].

 

== [[Music]] ==

* Noah And The Whale's "Jocasta". Unsurprising to anyone who knows [[Oedipus the King|the story of Jocasta]], it involves actual baby death.

{{quote|''When the baby's born

* Big Black addresses issues such as murder, rape, necrophilia, suicide, racism, and the works. "Jordan, Minnesota" is a song about a parent-child molestation ring in the town that the song is named for. Their first LP, Atomizer, includes songs about the aforementioned molestation ring, a black man who's light-skinned enough to pass off as a white guy, a corrupt police officer, a guy bored with arson and easy sex (the only two things teens in rural America do for fun) and decides to combine them, a man who goes to "houses of ill repute," a wife-beater and/or fist-fucker, a recovering alcoholic who relapses, a veteran with shellshock who becomes a hitman, and two teens who go to a slaughterhouse for entertainment.

** Their 2nd LP, Songs About Fucking, features asshole truck drivers, [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|a Kraftwerk cover]], a guy who has sex with other people's girlfriends, a young girl who slept away 15 years of her life and wanted to kill herself but couldn't, sexual humiliation as a habit, a killing method in which the throat is cut open and the tongue is pulled out through the hole, an eccentric man who parties all night, a fungus that can grow on bread and cause serious hallucinations if ingested, a mafia killing in which a parked car was rigged to explode when the target's car passed by, a guy who had sex with a woman, who refused his brother's earlier advances, and killed her with his shoe then hid her body in a pond while hosing down his truck with loud music on, people who slowly turn into what they hate most without trying, and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|a Cheap Trick Cover]]

 

== Religion and Mythology==

* The [[Classical Mythology|Classical]] Goddess Justicia was goddess of Justice in the universe during the Golden Age. [[Fridge Brilliance|She hasn't been seen round this neighborhood since.]]

 

* Although many stories from ''[[The Onion]]'' don't involve this, quite a lot do. Their book ''Our Dumb World'' is a landmark in the history of black comedy literature, as it succeeds in brutally mocking every nation on the planet.

* Globe Magazine is a tabloid magazine that often [[Blatant Lies|completely fabricates]] stories about celebrities. Oftentimes, it gets past the line that's accepted as satire i.e. [[The Onion]], into making unsubstantiated and vicious rumors about celebrities. They [[Moral Event Horizon|reached a low even more vicious than usual]] by making their front-page article titled "[https://web.archive.org/web/20110907045529/http://www.globemagazine.com/story/526 Who will die first?], and [http://gossiponthis.com/2010/06/09/globe-magazine-releases-gary-coleman-death-photos/ publishing the deathbed photos of Gary Coleman].

== [[Puppet Shows]] ==

* On the 11/14/10 episode of ''[[The Funday Pawpet Show]]'' everyone was watching a reporter show footage of an angry man in a Rascal scooter ram an elevator door three times, the third time disappearing down the shaft to his real-life death. As the reporter showed the footage again, out of nowhere cast member Blitz said "Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" completely catching everyone off guard.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* Every single production by Pittsburgh-based theatre company Rage of the Stage falls into this category. Their [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] was a ''[[Wizard of Oz]]'' adaptation featuring a mentally insane and heavily medicated Dorothy, a heroin-addicted Scarecrow, and a sex-obsessed Lion.

 

* ''[[The Haunted Mansion]]'' has quite a bit of this mixed in with all the [[Nightmare Fuel]].

 

* The page image of [[Irony]] can become funny because of this. On the page it used to illustrate (the [[Real Life/Tear Jerker|real life subpage of]] [[Tear Jerker]], [[You Bastard|not so much).]]

** When you have no tears left there's nothing else but to laugh.

* ''[[Tales of the Abyss]]'' towards Guy's fear of women. During a good portion of the game, whenever a girl comes very close to him (especially if they touch him) he recoils in fear and starts screaming. ''Hilarious'', and becomes a [[Running Gag]] But then we learn why he's so afraid of contact with women... {{spoiler|When he was young, his home, Hod, was being attacked by Duke fon Fabre's men. Guy was hidden inside a (Thankfully extinguished) fireplace by his older sister and the house maids, and then the soldiers came in. In order to protect him, Guy's sister and the maids threw themselves onto Guy as the soldiers killed them all. He passed out, but when he came to, he was smothered in a pile of dead women}}. Suffice to say, [[Dude, Not Funny|nobody was laughing after that]].

 

* ''[[8-Bit Theater]]'' revels in this.

** The sister comic, ''Warbot In Accounting'' includes an example. The eponymous warbot, in an attempt to become a father, buys a kit to build a robot, only to produce a distorted, agonized thing. Warbot proceeds to dump the malformed baby robot in the trash.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

* The [[YouTube Poop|YouChewPoop]] forums has a topic devoted to these sorts of jokes. Possibly the funniest/most offensive is this:

{{quote|'''Manwith10toes:''' What did the blind, deaf, mute, crippled, retarded kid get for Christmas? Cancer.}}

* ''[[Skippy's List|Skippys List]]'' has examples:

{{quote|54. "Napalm sticks to kids" is *not* a motivational phrase.}}

 

* In the ''[[American Dad]]'' episode "Tearjerker" the evil plot involves a film about a mentally retarded, alcoholic Jew in the holocaust with a cancer riddled puppy.

** It's really more of a parody of [[Oscar Bait]]. The film's name is even 'Oscar Gold'.

* One famous animated segment on ''[[The Electric Company]]'' starts with a well-dressed woman leaving her parrot home alone; a plumber comes and knocks on the door, and the parrot says, "Who's there?" The plumber answers, "I'm the plumber, I've come to fix the sink." But the parrot says "Who's there?" causing the plumber to repeat, "I'm the plumber, I've come to fix the sink!" [[Overly Long Gag| After several repetitions of this]], with the plumber becoming more annoyed each time, he has a heart attack and collapses. The owner of the house comes back, notices him, and exclaims, "Who's this?" The parrot replies, "He's the plumber, he's come to fix the sink."

 

* In [http://ursulav.deviantart.com/art/Where-Zombie-Babies-Come-From-6979550 this] picture by Ursula Vernon [[Delivery Stork]] [[X Meets Y|meets]] dead babies. Enjoy.

* Q: What is the best way to get 100 dead babies out of a blender? A: With chips! http://www.dead-baby-joke.com/introduction.htm