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{{trope}}
Examples of [[{{TOPLEVELPAGE}}]]s in [[{{SUBPAGENAME}}]] include:
* In ''[[Community]]'' Abed has a whole subplot entirely in the background in the Psychology of Letting Go towards the beginning of the season - he refers back to this in one of the last episodes, Applied Anthropology, when Shirley goes into labor, to widespread confusion among the rest of the study group, and proceeds to coach Britta and Shirley through the delivery.
** In the second episode, when they are working on their presentations, Jeff complains that the Spanish skit Pierce wrote is, among other issues, "really, really specifically, surprisingly, and gratuitously, critical of Israel." Pierce replies that he will rework it. Then at the end of the episode when they are presenting the skit, at one point they are standing standing side by side waving the Israeli and Palestinian flags together.
* In the ''[[Only Fools and Horses]]'' episode "Time On Our Hands", while he tries to get Rodney to talk about Cassandra's miscarriage as they sort through their garage, Del picks up a random piece of junk and remarks that he wishes he could just put his hand into life's lucky dip and "go 'da daaa, there you are, Rodney, I've changed our lives'", and then discards it onto a nearby cooker. Later in the episode it turns out to be a priceless pocket watch that they sell for over £6 million.
* ''[[The Good Guys]]'': Played straight... and literally, in the episode "$3.52". At the start of the episode Dan vows to take down the drug smuggling ring with the $3.52 in his pocket. Fast-forward to {{spoiler|the last minute of the episode, when everyone believes that the brick of Heroin is long gone. In comes Dan with a flashback to where he buys a brick for three bucks and a nougat bar for fifty cents, loses the two pennies somewhere along the line, and swaps the bricks.}}
* Oh ''[[Babylon 5]]''. If you haven't done your homework before watching it, you'd see nothing but self contained story lines filled to the brim with unanswered questions in the early seasons. Of course, this being the [[Trope Codifier]] for the [[Myth Arc]], ''everything'' comes back in some way, shape, or form later on.
* The original ''[[Battlestar Galactica]]'' had lines in the opening monologue "There are those who believe that life here began out there." In the 2000s revival series "life here began out there" are the first words of the Sacred Scrolls, referring to the colonization of the twelve worlds by people from Kobol. In the original series, Earth was another such colony, humans not having evolved there at all. In the new series, with the revelation in "Sometimes a Great Notion" that the planet called Earth in this series is not our Earth, it seems that the words cannot apply to us. In the very, very last episode, {{spoiler|it is revealed our Earth is named after the original, and we are descended from a combination of humans who evolved there and Kobol-descended humans and Cylons who arrived 150,000 years ago.}}
* ''[[Friends]]'', "[[The One With...]] George Stephanopoulos". In the middle of the episode, Rachel is sitting on the balcony and drops a pillow over the side. She waves it off, and the audience chuckles. In [[The Tag]], there is a knock on the door. It's a stranger returning Rachel's pillow.
* In the opening scenes of the ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' episode "Stoke Me A Clipper", Ace Rimmer ([[Catch Phrase|what a guy!]]), his Nazi opponent and the villain's pet crocodile "Snappy" all fall out of an airplane while in flight. Ace manages to reach the villain and steal his parachute, only to land in a base full of more Nazis. He kills most of them, rescues the local captured princess and flies away on a sky-bike. Two surviving Nazis watch him go:
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*** Conversely, ''Timeslides'' contains another [[Brick Joke]]. Do you remember Hitler's lunchbox which contains a peanut butter and banana sandwich and a bomb planted by an assassin? Guess where {{spoiler|Rimmer gets his first meal from after finally returning from the dead... and guess how long that lasts when the bomb finally goes off.}}
*** Actually, {{spoiler|Lister drop-kicks the bomb back into the past as soon as they identify it as Stauffenberg's (it goes off shortly afterwards), and is later seen reading a paper with the headline "HITLER AVOIDS ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT". Although he eats Hitler's sandwich, Rimmer offs himself at the end of the ep by slamming his fists in joy down on a pair of crates that turn out to be full of explosives}}.
** In the episode ''Polymorph'', at one point the band fires heat-seeking [[
* A variation in ''[[Pushing Daisies]]'': In the pilot, Emerson uses the word "narcoleptic" when he means to say "necrophiliac". Three episodes later, the characters run across a narcoleptic woman, and Emerson says "''That's'' a narcoleptic. Necrophiliac's the ''other'' one."
* In the ''[[Seinfeld]]'' episode "The Marine Biologist", Kramer decides to hit golf balls into the ocean, then later returns to the apartment complaining that his swing had deserted him, as he only hit one good shot all day. At the end of the episode, George relates the story of how he saved a beached whale from suffocating by removing an obstruction which was lodged in its blowhole. He then pulls out the obstruction to show it to the group- none other than Kramer's golf ball.
{{quote|'''Kramer''': What, is that a ''Titleist''?! ''(George nods)'' Well, a hole in one, huh?}}
** Midway through season four, Jerry's father finds his wallet gone after a visit to the doctor, and accuses the doctor of stealing it. In the season finale, Jerry finds it between his couch cushions.
** At the end of the series finale, Jerry gets in a [[Seinfeldian Conversation]] with George about how his shirt's buttons are positioned wrong, with the conversation ending with "Haven't we had this conversation before?" {{spoiler|They had. It was the first conversation in the first episode.}}
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* In [http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/127755/october-31-2007/hallo-weening this clip], for [[It Makes Sense in Context|perfectly rational reasons]], [[Stephen Colbert]] sets a live mousetrap on his desk. Then he forgets it's there. [http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/127665/october-31-2007/obama-s-grit-off-challenge Hilarity Ensues.]
* ''[[Malcolm in the Middle]]'' did a season long version of the gag. In an episode, Dewey learns that the class hamster that he is charged with watching for the weekend will go to the class bully (who makes a vague threat towards the hamster's life). So Dewy releases the hamster in a food pellet filled hamster ball, thus solving the problem. Later, as Malcolm and Reese leave a party towards the end of the episode, the hamster ball rolls by. After that, every episode in that season had, normally towards the end of the show, a hamster ball rolls by, unnoticed by anyone in the scene. It was last seen heading into the wilds of Alaska.
* ''[[Home Improvement (TV series)|Home Improvement]]'' has a [[Once an Episode]] type of Brick Joke in which Wilson tells Tim something, and later in the episode, Tim gives a hilariously garbled version of it to someone else.
* ''[[Bottom]]''. In the episode "Hole", one exclusively for the in-studio audience when Ade Edmondson was doing his bit in the warm-up he threw his brick up by saying "I'd just to start by saying; fucking, cunty, bollocks! These are words we are not allowed to use in the show, so it's best to get them out of the way now." Then the brick comes down towards the end of the episode with this exchange between the two characters, which did make it to broadcast, albeit censored:
{{quote|'''Richie''': Hey, Eddie. We know how to swear don't we...?
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** Episode 12B, ''How to tell different types of trees from quite a long way away''. "Number one, the larch. The larch." Starts off as a running gag linking sketches. Returns in the end credits.
*** Makes one more appearance ''seven episodes later''.
* ''[[Firefly (TV series)|Firefly]]'': very early in "Jaynestown", there's a scene where Kaylee is poking fun at Simon for his apparent utter lack of cursing (he claims he swears "when it's appropriate"). The joke ''seems'' to be finished by his stunned silence at the mess Jayne's making in the med bay. Until...
{{quote|'''Simon''' ''(having just discovered the statue of Jayne)'': Son of a ''[[Precision F-Strike|bitch!]]''}}
* In ''[[Doctor Who]]'', the newly-minted Tenth Doctor has his hand cut off in a sword fight, which he is able to regrow due to his Timelord-y Phlebotinum. It just seems a cute plot trick at the time, but the lost hand manages to turn up and be a useful [[McGuffin]] at least three more times - until {{spoiler|the hand regrows itself a duplicate Doctor, who gets banished to a parallel world}}. This brick element spanned ''three series'' of [[Doctor Who]] and one of Torchwood.
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** In "Army of Ghosts", the Doctor laments that there's no one on the Torchwood staff named Alonso, because "Then I could say allons-y, Alonso!". In "Voyage of the Damned", he actually ''does'' meet someone called Alonso. Who will end up datin Torchwood leader Jack.
** In "The Shakespeare Code", for reasons wholly unknown to the Doctor, Queen Elizabeth I wants the Doctor's head. Then, two and a half years later in ''The End of Time'', {{spoiler|The Doctor mentions in passing that he's fled from her, mentioning in passing that her "nickname is no longer accurate".}}
** One that's 47 years in the making just hit, thanks to [[Doctor Who/Recap/S31
*** Which makes a throwaway line from Ace in ''Ghost Light'' funnier: "You're still a lousy parker."
** In [[Doctor Who
** Speaking of River Song, when we first meet her, she's trying to figure out how much of their relationship has happened to the Doctor, and she asks him if he's already done the crash of the Byzantium. It sounds like a random phrase thrown in to sound cool, but next season, the Doctor meets River Song again, on board a ship named the Byzantium, which promptly proceeds to crash.
** In "Robot", the Brigadier famously comments that just once, he'd like to face an alien menace that isn't immune to bullets. Fourteen seasons later, in "Battlefield", the Brig {{spoiler|takes out the alien menace known only as "The Destroyer" with a silver bullet}}.
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** In the beginning of Series 1, Gwyneth see the future and talks about "the oncoming darkness." It doesn't show up again until the fourth season finale, when {{spoiler|Rose}} tells Donna [[The Stars Are Going Out]].
*** Actually, 'the darkness' is mentioned several times in passing over the course of the first four seasons.
** One of the more memorable ones is from ''[[Doctor Who/Recap/S8
** Or how about the recently solved mystery of who River Song is? {{spoiler|She's Amy Pond's daughter, Melody Pond.}} The writers set us up for that one ''three years ago.''
* In ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'', Volume One, we hear that Angela Petrelli has been caught shoplifting socks. In Volume Four, she confesses {{spoiler|that she's stealing them to remember her sister who she thought was dead.}}
* In an episode of ''[[The Big Bang Theory]]'', while testing a space toilet, a chunk of meatloaf is shot into the ceiling, where it sticks. In the end of the episode, it falls down during dinner, much to the confusion of the cast. Not to mention that north Korean spy that they got deported-
** In the recent episode "the Toast Derivation", Sheldon discovers Leonard is the social nucleus of their group of friends (meaning Raj & Howard are more willing to do what he wants), so he forms his own group of friends (that will do what he wants) consisting of [[You Suck|Stuart]] the comic store owner, [[The Ditz|Penny's ex-boyfriend Zack]], and [[Sitcom Arch Nemesis|Barry Kripke]]. He also mentions he invited [[
* In ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'', when Marshall wants to find out whether he's passed the bar as soon as the information is posted on the internet, but Barney holds him up while trying to show him video of a dog pooping on a baby. When Marshall discovers that he needs a password, which he lost, Barney suggests that [[Hollywood Hacking|they hack into the law school's database]]. Barney takes a CD, puts it into the laptop, [[Rapid-Fire Typing|types in some random stuff]], and shows Marshall... a dog pooping on a baby.
** The show likes the [[Brick Joke]] quite a bit. There was the episode where Barney said his name was Ted Mosby, and several episodes down the line it was revealed that the woman he slept with at that time founded a website about Ted Mosby being a jerk.
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** Not the only brick in this episode, either. At the beginning of the show, Bernard is eating toast and jam. He takes one bite, goes "Euch!" and throws it onto the ceiling, where it sticks. The last act in the episode has Bernard exclaiming "Oh my god..." revealing a newspaper with the headline "Pope killed by inferior wine, man held." He points at the date on the paper: "It's my birthday!" As this happens, the toast falls and hits Manny in the face.
*** This brick only appears at the end of the episode after the Cleaner has done his work. The the toast falling jam-side-down onto Manny's face, just after original setup for it came at the start when Manny saw a slice of bread stuck to the ceiling.
** The passerby alluded to above is also the payoff to yet ''another'' series of [[Brick Joke|Brick Jokes]] set up in the pilot. To recap; in the pilot, the C-plot involves Fran becoming increasingly fixated on a weird object she's found in her shop, to the point where she becomes so obsessed with figuring out what it is that she completely forgets that she's agreed to be the birth partner for a pregnant friend who is inducing labour that day. We see this pregnant friend later in the same episode, where she is giving birth, frantic about where her birth partner is, and subject to Manny's delirious ''Little Book Of Calm''-inspired wisdom. [[Brick Joke]] one. However, this same friend is also the passerby who happens to be walking her baby when she witnesses Bernard and Manny renacting the [[Mad Scientist]] horror movie above.
** In another episode, a customer comes into the shop and goes offscreen to hunt for a biography on Schubert. Bernard, Manny and Fran discover that the extremely loud building works going on next door are to continue for the next two weeks, and decide to go on holiday. At the end of the episode, upon returning two weeks later after an extremely circuitous series of plane transfers, they find the customer, desperately clutching the biography and driven half out of his mind by all the noise from the builders.
* The first episode of Season 5 of ''[[The Wire]]'' has a scene where some journalists editing a co-workers copy tell her that she can't use the word "evacuated" to apply to people. ("A building could be evacuated. To evacuate a person is to give that person an enema.") All fine and pedantic, but then in episode nine, Det. McNulty does use the word to apply to a person, but this time in [[Squick|its proper context]]. His conversation with a rookie cop about the meaning of the word calls back to the journalists' earlier discussion, although he's much less eloquent than they were. ("He probably evacuated." "What, he left and then came back?" "No, he shit himself.")
* ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'': the season 35 episode hosted by Jon Hamm (for the second time; his musical guest this time was Michael Buble) had a fake commercial for the Closet Organizer, a guy in a blue spandex suit (played by Will Forte) standing in a closet hired out to store anything and everything you throw into the closet (including stuff normally not kept in a closet, like water, cheese, cream pies, and dirt). It seemed like a normal SNL fake commercial, with its frenetic, slapstick action and broad jabs at corny infomercial-type commercials for ridiculous products. One sketch and one musical performance later, another sketch takes place in a bar, in which guest host Jon Hamm's character thinks the guy next to him, played again by Will Forte, looks familiar. Finally, Hamm's character recognizes him... as the Closet Organizer guy!
** On the Will Ferrell/Green Day episode from season 34, there was a funeral sketch where a wannabe comedian (played by Will Ferrell) interrupts a funeral to announce that the deceased wanted him to have his watch when he died and leaves a boot on the casket as a reminder to pick it up later. This piece of story info is forgotten as more and more weird speakers come to give their last respects -- until Will Forte's creepy blond anti-Obama speaker finishes his eulogy with, "I took the watch."
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* In the episode "Jack Frost" of ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'' , the hero of the movie comes across a gang of bandits. After fighting them off, he tosses a load of logs into the air that never come down and remarks with a grin that they'll "come back down next winter". After that, the rest of the plot goes on, lasts a year, and true enough, at the end the same bandits get clobbered by the logs.
** ''The Rebel Set'' has a different variation. The episode starts with a lighthearted short called "Johnny At The Fair", but the main feature is a dark movie about a bank heist gone wrong. As the protagonist is led away to his cell in the end, Tom quips, "So, uh...all of this happened because Johnny got lost at the fair?"
* [[Sports Night]]: At the beginning of the episode "Thespis," Dana is stressing about having to cook a Thanksgiving dinner, and she confesses that she is trying to thaw a turkey out by placing it in the light grid. In the second act, Dana is at her wit's end because so many things have gone wrong with the show, including water dripping on the anchor desk in the middle of live broadcast. During the next commercial break, she makes this little speech:
{{quote|"For one hour every night, this is my little corner of the world, and nothing screws up here unless I screw it up. You got that?! Why is there still water dripping on this desk?" '''* frozen turkey falls out of light grid and onto anchor desk* '''}}
* A fantastic example from the show "Look Around You". Occasionally people/animals used to assist on the show would be thanked by making a portmenteau of their name and the word 'thanks' (for example, "Thanks, ants. Thants." This seemed like just an odd quirk, but 2 years after it started, in the series finale, you realize it's all been building to "Thanks, Hanks. Thanks".
* The IT Crowd s4-e1 'Jen the Fredo' In the first minute of the show Moss plays Jen a piece of mood music which she describes as "quite mysterious", Moss is disappointed as he was hoping for it to be "ruddy mysterious". 15 minutes later during the gangs RPG evening Moss press's play on his remote, the music plays and one of the players looks spooked and remarks "That's ruddy mysterious".
* In a first season episode of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]], Giles, wanting to get rid of Cordelia, only says the words "Your hair", and a panic Cordelia takes off, with a bemused Giles muttering "Xander was right". Skip to the next episode when peoples worst nightmares start coming to life, with a panicked Cordelia with frizzy hair that would put Shepherd Book to shame running about.
** Way over on ''[[Angel]]'', Cordelia loses her memories and believes she's a teenager again and is horrified by her new haircut. "The government gave me bad hair!"
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* In an episode of Jeeves and Wooster, Bertie Wooster is again forced on to pinch (steal) something. Part of the plan of attack involves gluing a piece of paper to a window with treacle, so the window will break silently. When Bertie pops the lid off the can of treacle, it flips up and sticks to the ceiling and doesn't come down. At the end of the episode Bertie is sitting in the same room and the lid falls into his hand.
* In season one of ''[[Slings and Arrows]]'', episode 2, Geoffrey has to take on the unpleasant task of getting Oliver's skull cleaned for use in future productions of Hamlet. So much happens that viewers (and Geoffrey himself) forget about it, until the show is underway on opening night in the season finale and Oliver reminds Geoffrey at the last possible moment, forcing him to race through the building and crawl under the stage to put it in place just before it's needed.
* Another brick joke in ''[[Slings and Arrows]]'' spanned the entire series. In the last episode, out of the blue, Ellen tells Geoffrey that her answer is yes. Geoffrey doesn't understand what she's talking about, but she is replying to his marriage proposal of ten years earlier, which we saw in the very first episode when Oliver flashed back to that night. Geoffrey had proposed after they acted together in Hamlet. He had a nervous breakdown on stage the next night and never acted again, until circumstances force him to take part in King Lear in the final episode. Thus her answer comes after the next time they perform together, although a decade passes before that occasion.
* On ''[[The Daily Show]]'', Jon Stewart plays a clip related about a pep talk in which the coach screams at the teams that they "will go out there, and rip their heads off!" Later, when talking about a political candidate who believes illegals are leaving headless bodies in the Arizona desert, he wonders who is really doing it, and replays the clip.
* [[Warehouse 13]] has an almost literal example in the first episode when Pete and Myka discover the Long Distance Football, which when thrown will circle the [[Overly Long Gag|entire planet]] and return to the thrower.
* One episode of ''[[
* In [[The Basil Brush Show]] the [[Cold Open]] of an episode features [[Butt Monkey|Mr. Steven]] being asked by a [[Star Wars|Darth Vader]] parody if he has seen his bees. The main episode begins and goes on with a different plot with no reference to the bees. Then during the credits, {{spoiler|Basil and Steven hear a noise while in their beds and Steven checks under his covers when Basil asks him about missing bees...}}
* One episode of ''[[The Office]]'' has Michael and Dwight drop a watermelon onto a trampoline [[It Makes Sense in Context|for reasons that make perfect sense]]. It bounces off and hits a car, with Michael telling Dwight to find out whose car it is. The episode ends with Stanley at his now messy car, only able to stare confused.
* In ''[[NCIS]]'' Season 5 when Vance and Gibbs are first seen together (ep titled "Internal Affairs") in a meeting, Vance slides a danish across the table to Gibbs and says something like "I bet you thought I'd forgotten" and Gibbs replies saying "No I didn't think you had" or some such (doing this from memory). And that's it - no explanation, no nothing. We never find out what that was all about and after some head scratching forget all about it. Then, THREE SEASONS LATER - on episode "Enemies Domestic" Season 8 Ep 9 has flashbacks to earlier times, including earlier days when Leon Vance and Gibbs were just starting out in NCIS (NIS at the time) and met each other for the first time. In that scene the young Gibbs is about to eat a danish when Leon Vance walks in and inadvertently destroys the danish. He promises he'll buy Gibbs another one and that he won't forget about it (Leon never forgets things apparently). So NOW we know what that first exchange was about!
** Close, but not quite. Vance gives Gibbs an oddly precise amount of money (something like $2.97), counting it into his hand almost before he says anything else (in his first, apparent guest, appearance, and first scene with Gibbs.) Gibbs asks what it's for, and Vance says "For the danish." Gibbs replies "That was nine years ago." But he keeps the money.
* In the [[Modern Family]] episode "Dance Dance Revelation," Phil, after being nonconsensually sprayed with cologne, snatches the bottle and ends up chasing the salesman around the mall, continually spraying him. Then, during the closing credits, Mitchell and Cameron invite to their home a friend who had a terrible day at work because some crazy man chased him around and kept spraying him with cologne.
** Said fellow is named Longinus, and shows up in a later episode with Cam & Mitchell's group of gay friends.
* In one of the more recent episodes of [[CSI]], there's a subplot revolving around the "murder" of a couple who happened to own a cat and a parrot, with one member of the team convinced the parrot was somehow holding out on them. Late in the program, it was discovered foul play wasn't a factor; the pets just accidentally killed their owners by feuding with each other. This still left the mystery open as to how the wife managed to place a distress call to 911 seeing as how she couldn't possibly have made it to the phone before dying. Cue the parrot operating the phone with his beak to place a distress call, followed by said team member exclaiming, "I knew you were holding out on us!"
* The ''[[Sabrina the Teenage Witch]]'' episode "The Long and Winding Shortcut" at the start has Salem moaning that he can't vote, stating he wanted to change the pronounciation of "Friday" to "frid-yah". At the end of the episode when the election results are over, Salem comes into the room and says "thank god it's frid-yah".
* In one episode of ''[[The Last Detective]]'', the episode opens with [[Butt Monkey]] protagonist Dangerous Davies responding to a car alarm going off at a home, leaving after giving the man there a warning, and it turning out that man wasn't the resident of the home- he was a car thief. At the end of the episode, Dangerous is walking on a street and hears the same alarm and proceeds to calmly walk into an adjacent store, and arrest the guy from the beginning of the episode.
* Pretty much every episode of ''[[Jonathan Creek]]'' will have at least two incidents which seem unrelated to the general plot of the episode, one of which will often turn out to be the key to unlock the mystery; the other one will be a [[Red Herring]] and will come back after [[The Summation]] and prove to be the set-up to a (usually hilarious) brick joke.
* One brick joke happens (along with somewhat of a brick joke) in the ''Cheers'' episode "50-50 Carla":
** Towards the end of the episode, Same says he gave Woody a wristwatch from the lost and found (he says it was in there for 30 days) as a present before his community theater play opened. When he comes back after the play, Woody thanks Sam and Rebecca for the watch, saying he lost one like it about a month ago.
** Also, halfway through the episode, Sam asks where Cliff is (he doesn't appear in the episode). A few minutes later, we find out that {{spoiler|he's at the hospital having minor surgery.}} To get the joke, you have to had watched the previous episode, "Indoor Fun With Sammy and Robby" first, where {{spoiler|Cliff got hit in the forehead with the 8-ball while watching a game of pool.}}
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** One scene can defiantly be described as a Brick Joke, one episode has Eliot inform Hardison that he has a tell when playing [[Rock-Paper-Scissors]]. A season later, he mentions it again
** The stuffed bunny Parker went after in the first episode flashback, is seen again in her so called "house"
== copied from the front page - need to be checked for duplicates ==
* In ''[[Malcolm in the Middle]]'', Dewey releases the hamster in a ball full of food so he has a chance at survival and won't be taken care of by the class bully. Throughout the rest of the season, you can spot the Hamster Ball rolling in the background. By the end of the season, you can even see it roll by as Francis and Piama leave Alaska.
* ''[[Seinfeld]]'' was ''full'' of these.
** As does ''[[Curb Your Enthusiasm]]''.
* ''[[Father Ted]]'', "Speed 3", has a literal brick joke - twice. Father Jack has become to be affectionate to a brick, which later Father Ted trips on because Jack left it in the middle of the room. This, however, gives Ted the inspiration to use the brick to hold down the accelerator of a milk trolley ([[Speed|rigged to explode if the trolley falls below 4 miles per hour]]) to keep it going. The trolley explodes. Post-credits, Father Ted is taking out the trash when he spots something in the sky—and is struck head-on by a charred and smoking brick.
* ''[[Friends]]'' "The One With Frank Jr" has Ross consider adding Isabella Rosselini to his list of celebrities he can sleep with but eventually bumps her because she's "too international". At the end of the episode, guess who walks into the coffee house?
** Also, in one chapter the girls are in the balcony, drinking and telling stories of older times, when Rachel accidentally drops a cushion to the street. At the end of the chapter, someone calls to the door, and Chandler opens. A man returns the cushion.
* ''[[M*A*S*H (television)|Mash]]:'' Near the start of the episode "It Happened One Night", Hawkeye puts a can of beans on a stove in post-op, to heat it up. At the end of the episode, after a busy night dealing with patients, and shelling, and other things, just as things are settling down, the can of beans explodes.
* ''[[Community]]'': A brick joke three years in the making: over the course of three episodes across three seasons, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19FMU3M7Jtk a certain word is said three times]. [[Beetlejuice|Only on the third time]] does the brick [[Shout-Out|pay off]].
* ''[[My Name Is Earl]]'': While Randy is fishing junk out of the river that a storm drain flows into, he says, "Another dolls head, Earl! That makes four." Eight episodes later, in the next season, an orphan girl tells Earl, "I used to live in a storm drain, rain washed my doll heads away."
* In one episode of [[That '70s Show|That 70's Show]], Jackie has Kelso reading Cosmo magazine, hoping that it would give him insight into women (specifically, Jackie, and what she wants at any given moment). A bit later, Eric is griping about Donna to Kelso, and Kelso spouts off some helpful wisdom, and, when Eric is [[OOC Is Serious Business|incredulous]], Kelso explains that he's been reading Cosmo, and offhandedly mentions that there are some diagrams to women's internal organs that look like a map to Six Flags. This isn't mentioned for the rest of the episode, until the very end...
{{quote|'''Fez:''' Oh look! Six flags!}}
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' had a particularly long lasting one. At the end of the serial ''[[Doctor Who/Recap/S14/E02 The Hand of Fear|The Hand of Fear]]'', The Doctor is forced to drop Sarah Jane Smith on Earth. When last we see of her, she realizes she isn't in her home city of Croydon. Cut to [[Doctor Who/Recap/S28/E03 School Reunion|30 years later]], we find out that she'd been left in Aberdeen, Scotland instead.
* ''[[The Dick Van Dyke Show]]'' did this in the third season premiere episode, "That's My Boy??" Mel's sister-in-law has just had a baby, which prompts Mel to make a [[Switched At Birth]] joke. Laura prods Rob into a [[Whole-Episode Flashback]] retelling of how, a few days after Ritchie's birth, he became convinced that they took the wrong baby home from the hospital. They contact the other parents—who have the similar last name of Peters—and invite them over to discuss the possibility. The doorbell rings, Rob opens the door and is stunned at the sight of them. Then he invites the Peters in. Their entry is the brick joke. {{spoiler|They're African-American.}}
** ''[[Kenan and Kel]]'' did an episode based on that Dick Van Dyke episode, but because the show is made up of {{spoiler|African-Americans}}, the brick changed. {{spoiler|The parents are Asian.}}
* On ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'', Marshall's {{spoiler|slap bet}} with Barney turned into a Brick Joke spanning the entirety of the series to date. {{spoiler|As of season 7, Marshall has been granted three additional slaps (one of which he used immediately), leaving him with three slaps remaining.}}
** There's a lot of them in ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]''. In S2E02, Ted enthusiastically tells Robin that he found a 1945 penny in the subway. Many episodes later, we see a flashback of Ted and Robin buying ice-cream with the money they just got from selling a 1945 penny Ted found on the subway.
** In "The Pineapple Incident", Marshall is curious about why is there a pineapple in Ted's bedroom. In "The Third Wheel", we see a flashback fom that night where Ted and Trudy are licking the pineapple while having sex.
** Also from "The Pineapple Incident", Ted claims he's "vomit free since '93". In "Game Night", Ted confesses that he threw up on Robin's carpet:
{{quote|'''Marshall:''' I knew you weren't vomit free since '93! }}
* The cold opening for one ''[[All That]]'' episode has Kenan blowing up a scarecrow, causing the Big Ear Of Corn to be kidnapped by Elvis and professional wrestlers. Later on, Lori Beth Denberg (as Miss Fingerly) kisses a stuffed monkey despite the superstition about what happens... then Elvis and the professional wrestlers come out and beat her up.
* ''[[The IT Crowd]]'': Roy gets caught in the handicapped bathroom at a theater and pretends to be disabled so he won't get in trouble. He tells the theater staff and police that his wheelchair was stolen by a bearded, [[Evil Redhead|red-haired]] man with glasses. Later, the police see a man matching that description leaving the theater and quietly take him away. In the same episode, Moss is caught using the employee bathroom and is mistaken for a new employee. Later, Jen goes to a party at the theater to find Roy in a wheelchair and Moss tending bar.
* On the last episode of ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'''s 36th season, [[Seth Meyers]] leaves for summer vacation with Bill Hader's Stefon character. About three episodes into season 37 (the episode hosted by [[Ben Stiller]] with musical guest Foster the People), Stefon returns and Seth mentions that the vacation they took last summer was bizarre ([[Noodle Incident|and when Stefon asked Meyers if his back was okay, Meyers quickly changed the subject]]).
* One episode of ''[[Corner Gas]]'' had Davis and Oscar trying to catch a mouse in the gas station. Oscar was going for the traditional mouse trap, while Davis was advocating being humane and letting the mouse go. He mentioned that, once, he'd nursed an owl back to health and released it. At the end, they catch the mouse, they let it go, they watch it scamper off into the world...and the same owl Davis rescued swooped down and carried off the mouse.
* Over three seasons, characters on ''[[Eureka]]'' occasionally refer to something called an "Einstein-Grant Bridge" until in the season four opener, when they accidentally pull Dr. Grant into the future from his original timeline in 1947. Thereafter, they use the term we normally use for that object, the [[wikipedia:Wormhole|Einstein-Rosen Bridge]], thereby proving that the timeline they had been in was different from our own.
* In the ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' episode "The Fifth Race", Jack spars with Teal'c in a boxing ring. Teal'c knocks Jack over with one punch. Fast forward to "Upgrades", where with the benefit of a bodily-capabilities-improving Atoniek armband, Jack KO's Teal'c.
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