Brick Joke/Live-Action TV: Difference between revisions

* ''[[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:

(Snappy falls out of the sky, crushing both of them.) }}

** The original series' finale, ''Only the Good...'', shows Rimmer arguing with a vending machine which claims that one day it'll destroy him. {{spoiler|At the end of the episode, it triggers a chain of events which may or may not result in Rimmer's death}}.

* 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.

** 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.

* In an episode of {Jonas}, Kevin, Joe, and Nick explain Hide and Seek to Frankie, who then runs away to hide. Midway through the episode, someone (not one of the brothers) goes to throw something in the garbage, and finds Frankie curled up in the cabinet. At the end, the boys realize that they forgot to find Frankie, who has been hiding in the cupboard for days, having their father bring him meals.

* A ''literal'' [[Brick Joke]]: Father Jack's pet brick in ''[[Father Ted]]''. First, Ted trips over the brick which Mrs. Doyle had placed in the middle of the floor following advice from a magazine. Father Jack lovingly adopts it as a pet ("I LOVE MY BRICK.") and moments later discards it ("FED UP WITH BREEEEECK.") towards Ted's head. It returns later on as a vital component of a plan [[It Makes Sense in Context|to save Father Dougal from an explosive milk float]] and finally, thrown by the ensuing explosion, coming shooting down from the sky to wallop Ted on the head [[The Stinger|after the credits]].

* 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]]'' 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:

'''Eddie''': You fucking well hit the clit right on the nail there, you cunting bastard! }}

** ''Digger'' -- Richie's evening with a noblewoman, funded by selling one of his kidnies, ends with her in his bed and Richie having a heart attack within two feet of losing his virginity...

* [[Monty Python]] ''loves'' this gag. Probably one of their less known examples, from an early ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus|Flying Circus]]'' episode, has a mock film opening with narration about an ordinary couple shown on screen. The couple are said to be average and perfectly ordinary in every way, and not the sort you would expect to get into anything exciting "so we'll leave them for now" much to the couple's surprise. The film shifts its focus to deal with an alien attack and completely different characters, and when all seems hopeless, the couple from the beginning shows up and saves the day.

'''(The husband)''': We tried to tell you at the beginning of the film but you just panned off us. }}

** Also '''(Spiny Norm)''': Dinsdale!

*** Makes one more appearance ''seven episodes later''.

* ''[[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...

* 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.

** A very notable Brick in ''Doctor Who'' is "[[Arc Words|Bad Wolf]]" which shows up in various places throughout the first series (Doctor #9) {{spoiler|It ends up that Rose herself goes through time putting "Bad Wolf" various places so that she would be able to figure out how to save the Doctor in the season finale.}}

** ''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:

* 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".