Fundamentally Funny Fruit

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Just try to look at this image without grinning.

Certain fruits are just really funny, and not only because their names are Inherently Funny Words:

  • Avocados. Also called "alligator pears." When life gives you avocados, you make guacamole. The original name for the fruit is ahuacatl, which literally means "Testicle." In French, Avocados are called Avocats. Lawyers are called Avocats as well. A "brown avocado" is a rotten one. It is also the term for a corrupt lawyer.
  • Bananas. Beethoven's favorite fruit. Watch for the Dancing Banana, and try not to slip on any banana peels. If you can't remember how many "na"s to say before the word is over, you're suffering from the condition known as "anananany." Also, Freud Was Right.
  • Durians. Textbook example of Foreign Queasine. They are so renowned for their foul smell that they're banned from many transportation outlets in Southeast Asia (where they're native to). They also look like the business end of a "Mace of Vitamin C."
  • Eggplants. Despite the eggplant being a bitter vegetable (and your inner child still doesn't have a fondness for bitter vegetables, does it?), it still has popularity in popular imagery because of its funny bouncy, phallic, shape and it being purple with a bit of green on the tip (i.e. looks nothing like an egg).[1] They were known as "mala insana", or mad apples, in medieval times, and are called aubergines (oh-ber-sheen) in Britain. Also note that if you're going with a strictly biological definition eggplants are a fruit, which is why we listed it in this article.
  • Kiwis. Just plain fun to say. Properly called Chinese gooseberries, but that doesn't sound half as good. Called kiwifruit in New Zealand, to avoid confusion with the bird or the demonym.
  • Kumquats. The name sounds vaguely dirty. Also: see Kiwis.
  • Pineapples. No other edible fruit looks anything like them.[2] References to fruit can also play off the name of a common hairstyle or the Mk 2 fragmentation grenade. Scientific name is Ananas comosus, which is hard to pronounce without giggling. Not necessarily related to Hula and Luaus. Sometimes used as Bamboo Technology. Makes a good Unusual Euphemism.
  • Pumpkins. Especially when things get turned into them. Also inherently funny in terms of smashing. Or chucking.
  • Zucchini. See Kumquats. That, and zucchini plants are known to be a little prolific. Known as courgettes in Britain.

When a character is carrying a piece of fruit for no reason, it's Fruit of the Loon. See also Trademark Favorite Food, Blessed Are the Cheesemakers, Everything's Better with Chocolate, Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables.

Examples of Fundamentally Funny Fruit include:

Avocados

Fan Works

Literature

  • The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death by Daniel Pinkwater. The MacGuffin of the story is an Organic Technology "vegputer" named the Alligatron, using the thought power of a giant avocado (Persea gigantica) to protect 750,000 licensed real-estate brokers from alien thought forms.

Web Comics

Bananas

Advertising

  • During the 1970s, commercials for BIC pens featured the BIC Banana (Match Game alum Charles Nelson Reilly in costume).

Anime and Manga

Film

  • Groucho Marx: "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana."
  • An early, funny Woody Allen movie only tangentially mentions bananas once, but that's its title, owing to Rule of Funny.
    • In another early Woody Allen movie, Sleeper, characters in one scene try to steal giant mutant bananas, and spend the whole time slipping on the giant banana peel.
  • The Gang's All Here has a Busby Berkeley Number, "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat," which included a line of Chorus Girls waving giant bananas.

Live-Action TV

"Now, it's quite simple to defend yourself against a man armed with a banana. First of all you force him to drop the banana; then, second, you eat the banana, thus disarming him."
"Suppose he's got a bunch."
"Suppose he's got a pointed stick."
"SHUT UP!"

  • In Doctor Who, the Doctor likes bananas and apparently keeps one in his pocket at all times in case of emergencies.

They're a good source of potassium!

  • One Sesame Street Sketch was apparently designed to teach viewers the words "dog" and "banana", both spoken and written, and to associate them with their appropriate meanings. For an example of a dog, we have Barkley. Not exactly average in terms of size, but not too far-fetched. On the banana side... Bob McGraff in a banana costume.
  • The Muppet Show's Fozzie got his best laughs by doing the apparently classic Banana Sketch on the advice of the legendary "Gags". We never see the sketch; Kermit (who's never heard of it, much to the shock and amusement of his employees) can't find out how it goes, even when guest Sandy Duncan tries to tell it (it's too funny for her to get past the first sentence), and in the end, Sandy receives a bunch of bananas (in place of flowers) as a parting gift.
    • When Joel Grey thinks he's going bananas, a banana pops in to say he thought Joel was going for a spin.
    • At the dance, a banana makes banana puns.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Willow makes a move to be badass and self-assertive.

...and I'm eating this banana, lunchtime be damned!

Newspaper Comics

Theatre

Video Games

  • Worms has the explosive Banana Bomb.

Web Animation

Web Original

Western Animation

Real Life

  • In Britain there are banana fritters, similar to pinapple fritters below but tastier.
  • Japanese author Mahoko Yoshimoto writes under the pen name Banana. The icon for her website is also a banana.

Durians

Film

  • A film by Fruit Chan (yes that's his real name), Durian Durian, uses the comedic potential of said fruit's unbearably stinky smell. It's also used as a weapon by one of the characters, who knocks somebody out with it.

Video Games

  • Super Mario Sunshine had durians as being so bouncy, they could be used like soccer balls. And they can't be picked up, only kicked or FLUDD'd around.
  • Pokémon Black and White introduces the Ferroseed line which is based on these fruits. Like the durian, they have a hard shell (good defence and Steel typing), as well as Spikes of Doom that damages anything using a physical contact move on it.
  • Sonic Unleashed has Dureek's. Which are obviously the Sonic world equivalent of the Durian. The inventory even describes them as the "King of fruits" and in a reference to their Love It or Hate It reputation in the real world, also suggests that you "try it and see". Chip can't make up his mind about how he feels about them after being fed one but Sonic seems to absolutely love them going by the extremely high EXP value he gains from just one.

Web Original

  • In one episode of Brad Tries, Brad Jones and his wife try durian.

Real Life

  • Durians are a big favourite in Singapore. However, that doesn't make the citizens of this country averse to poking fun at the fruit, like with this joke that plays on the 'Newton's apple' tale:

Newton wasn't the first person to realize the theory of gravitation. A man from Singapore was - only, he didn't survive to publish his findings because it was a durian that fell on his head, not an apple.

Eggplants

Anime and Manga

  • Fennis in Edens Bowy carries a lot of things with an anthropomorphic sunglasses-wearing eggplant on it, kinda like a Hello Kitty merchandise.
  • The anime Onegai My Melody and its sequels (based on the Sanrio bunny My Melody) have the character Baku, a purple, rotund tapir with the ability of flight. Basically the Butt Monkey with a heart of gold, he is repeatedly called (and sometimes self-identifies with) an eggplant. Later it is revealed that he has a guardian angel of sorts in the form of an eggplant god.
  • Anthropomorphic eggplants show up in Hidamari Sketch for some reason. Not in meals or New Year's dreams, just... outside.
  • When Chiyo comes to her class looking for an idiot for the scavenger hunt race, an eggplant appears by Tomo's head when she thinks she knows what the item is.

Comedy

  • From George Carlin's "Fussy Eater" routine: "Well which is it, an egg or a plant? Tell it to make up its mind and then come on back."

Comic Books

  • F. Ibanez loves them and the eggplants have become one of his running gags on the series Mortadelo Y Filemon, where he uses them as props everywhere (you see, portraits of eggplants, eggplant trees, people with eggplants instead of hair, etc.).

Film

  • The mysterious killer in the slasher parody Student Bodies kills one of his victims with an eggplant.
  • As Prymaat went shopping in the Coneheads movie, she screamed real loudly upon witnessing them, then placed several of them in her cart.

Literature

  • In Daniel Pinkwater's book Borgel, the title character tells his nephew a fable called "The Rabbit and The Eggplant", about an an eggplant who challenges a rabbit to a footrace. The townsfolk assume the eggplant has some big secret way it's going to win, so they bet all their money on it. On the day of the race, the rabbit runs to the finish line, while the eggplant sits there. Later, the spectators eat the eggplant. (MORAL: Never bet on an eggplant.)

Live-Action TV

  • A character in the British Indian sketch comedy series Goodness Gracious Me can make anything "at home for nothing", provided that she has "a small aubergine".
  • Occasionally mentioned in Friends as a result of Pheobe's vegetarianism, most obviously in "The One With Five Steaks And An Eggplant".

Web Comics

  • One of the classic Spamusement characters is Eggplant Mike.

Video Games

  • To quote SydLexia, "it's disconcerting to realize that the eggplant appears in more NES games than a vegetable that actually tastes good, like an avocado or a cucumber." Cases in point of Nintendo's love of eggplants:
    • The Eggplant Wizard from Kid Icarus and Captain N: The Game Master may well be one of the most famous anthropomorphic eggplants around. His power being turning you into an Eggplant (actually just dropping a giant eggplant on your head).
      • He's so memorable, the announcement trailer for the new Kid Icarus: Uprising included a stinger featuring him.
    • In Ice Climber, the first vegetables you must gather on the top of the mountain are eggplants.
    • Wrecking Crew had robotic Eggplants called Eggplant men as enemies.
    • And in the Mario baseball games, it's revealed that Waluigi's favorite food is eggplant (to go with Wario's garlic, presumably).
    • In Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom NES adventure game, among the fruit and vegetable characters are Miss Eggplant the barmaid (even Sydlexia wants her) and the villainous Eggplant Soldier (who supposedly looks like Manuel Noriega).
  • Unkillable and life-draining eggplants are enemies in the Adventure Island games.
  • Kogasa Tatara, the stage 2 boss of Touhou Project 12: Undefined Fantastic Object, possesses is a silly umbrella with an eggplant motif.
  • Kamui Gakupo of Vocaloid has the eggplant as his Trademark Favorite Food.
  • In the first Rayman videogame on PS 1, there are round, eggplant-like berries that can be dropped on enemy heads with the right timing, and are also used as raft/boats (they make a stuttering motor noise when moving in water) and are used as swings on the stage leading to a giant mosquito. They bounce.
  • I Wanna Be the Guy's sixth secret item is in a room containing eggplants that bounce up and down.
  • Parodius Da! had a volcano spewing eggplants.

Web Comics

Web Original

  • This is one of the few real-life veggies that appear in Neopets on a regular basis, and the one that appears the most often.

Western Animation

Real Life

  • In Real Life, the eggplant is one of the three symbols of New Year in Japan. (The other two are Mt. Fuji and the hawk.)
  • The Philippines' favorite funny fruit. This troper once watched a Filipino game show where the answer to the question was eggplant, or "talong". The audience could not help giggling.

Kumquats

Comedy

Film

Literature

  • In Edward Eager's children's book Seven-Day Magic, the father of the protagonists works as a backup singer, and it's because he's short not because he doesn't sing well enough for a star. So the kids make a wish that he'll be noticed during a TV show... and all the other music falls silent, leaving the father's voice to ring out, singing the lines that the backups had been scatting: "Chickadee kumquat, chickadee kumquat, skedaddle skedaddle pow!" It's a sensation, of a sort: the newspapers rave about what a novel comedy idea that was, and how "the look of surprise on the little man's face was priceless." And he gets an offer to sing about some other kind of fruit, which he turns down; but it comes out all right in the end.
  • In National Lampoon's novel Doon (a parody of Dune), Pall "Mauve'Bib" Agamemnides is the long-prophesied Kumquat Haagendasz.

Newspaper Comics

  • One Garfield comic has Garfield musing about funny foods. When Jon suggests pickles and kumquats, he laughs hysterically.
  • One of the very first U.S. Acres strips with Booker the chick had Orson explaining why he chose that name: because he loves books. Booker's response is "I'm just glad you don't like kumquats".

Theater

  • From the top of the second act of The Fantasticks: "You're . . . standing . . . in . . . my . . . kumquats!" "Sorry!"

Western Animation

  • In an episode of The Fairly Oddparents where Cosmo has magically hypnotized Britney Britney so he'll look better at his high school reunion, Britney Britney randomly blurts out "Kumquat!" at one point.
  • My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic features a scene in "The Last Roundup" where Pinkie Pie rambles about how much fun "kumquat", among other words, is to say.

Persimmons

  • In addition to having a somewhat funny name, persimmons are sometimes used as practical jokes or as a way to describe someone's expression, viz.: "like he just ate a green persimmon." Ripe persimmons, which are yellowish-orange, taste a little bit like a cross between an orange and a pineapple. Unripe persimmons, which are greenish, taste a lot like cotton balls dipped in alum.

Western Animation

  • Daffy Duck, in one Looney Tunes cartoon, spits out a disgusted "Thanks for the sour persimmons, brother!" when something doesn't quite go his way.

Pineapples

Anime and Manga


Comic Books

  • In one Muppet Babies comic, the kids go to Upside-Down Land to find upside-down pineapples for a pineapple upside-down cake for Nanny's birthday.


Film

  • Little Nicky: The Devil personally shoves a pineapple up Hitler's rear end every day in Hell.
  • Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs has this memorable line:

Manny: "Buck, when exactly did you go insane?"
Buck: "Hmm, three months ago. I woke up one morning, married to a pineapple. An ugly pineapple! Ah, but I loved her"


Literature

  • Xanth uses pineapples as grenades.
  • In the Discworld, Vetinari famously comments on a pie tasting like pineapple in Making Money.
    • In The Last Continent, the Senior Wrangler is suspicious of a deserted island because it may have pineapples on it; this is because he had an aunt that choked on one: "You're not supposed to eat them that way, we said, but did she listen?".
  • In Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Strange goes mad and sees pineapples everywhere.
  • Ugly subversion, from The Brothers Karamazov: Lise's fantasy of watching horrendous child torture while eating stewed pineapple.


Live-Action TV

  • Psych loves this trope, as pineapples (both in word and as in actual pineapples seen on screen) are slipped into episodes at every possible opportunity. Pineapples are also Shawn's default housewarming/baby gift of choice.
    • It comes from an ad-lib with an off-camera prop in the first episode. The scene was cut short immediately, but so funny that they re-shot it, pineapple and all. And thus, a running gag was born.
    • There was even a contest involving the trope. Viewers were to look out for the pineapple appearing in the episode, and go to the website and select the correct place out of three choices.
    • Shawn will give a pineapple as a gift for any occasion, not just baby showers and housewarmings.
    • There have also been pineapple-flavored jelly beans, and pineapple upside-down cake baked in an EZ-Bake Oven.
  • Used as a code word on Chuck.
  • "The Pineapple Incident" on How I Met Your Mother
  • Lt. Reed's favorite food is Pineapple as seen on Star Trek: Enterprise.
  • In early episodes of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Sabrina's inexperience caused a number of her attempted spells to summon pineapples instead of their intended purpose.
  • "PINEAPPLE? WHERE? WHERRE?"
  • Charlie Crews on Life's Trademark Favorite Food is fruit, and he's been seen with a pineapple.
  • One episode of Friends sees Joey reading lines from a love scene... to a pineapple. For apparently no other reason than everything being better with pineapples. This lack of reason is subverted by Rachel: "I think a cantaloupe would hurt less."
  • The main character of French Canadian educational series Telefrancais is the frankly horrifying pineapple puppet Ananas.


Music


Theatre

  • One adorable moment in Cabaret is the song "It Couldn't Please Me More," where the Jewish grocer, Herr Schultz, presents Fraulein Schneider with a pineapple (which would be rationed in this time period and therefore a very valuable gift).


Video Games


Web Original

  • "Pineapple" is used as a self censor in the http://www.southperry.net forums. It's also a common reply in the funhouse section.


Web Comics

Wight 1: Did-- did that halfling just hit me in the face with a pineapple??
Wight 2: I think he did. Also, I think no one has ever asked that exact question in the history of civilization, so bonus points there.


Western Animation

Rosey: There. The pineapples are right-side-up.

Notice the texture on this meatloaf, and the pineapples give it a festive touch.


Real Life

  • Drinking pineapple juice improves the flavour of a certain body fluid.
  • You Cannot Remove Your Fingerprints With Pineapple.
  • Many bars, even without the Hula and Luaus theme will serve certain drinks in cups shaped like pineapples, or a hollowed-out pineapple.
  • Yagyu Jubei.[context?]
  • In some cultures, pineapples are a symbol of welcome and hospitality.
  • Three Words: Upside-Down Cake.
  • Southern Hospitality ice cream. It is vanilla with pineapples, strawberries, and pecans, and it is extraordinary.
  • Carmen Miranda. More accurately, her Nice Hats.
  • Providence, Rhode Island's Little Italy (known locally as Federal Hill) has an archway over the main drag, Atwell's Avenue, with a large... thing... hanging from it. Since it has a scaly surface and big leafy bits attached to it, many people mistake it for a pineapple. (Word of City Hall is that it's a pignolia pine cone.)
  • There used to be a Creole custom of giving guests a pineapple (Usually left on the guest bed) as a polite (Or Passive-Aggressive) way of informing them that they should be concluding their stay and moving on. In a real life Lampshade Hanging, there are examples of Creole furniture featuring carved pineapples, for instance on bedposts.
  • Pineapple Grenades
  • Pineapples are one of the few fruits you can actually grill.
  • The British present, for your "enjoyment," The pineapple fritter - Served in some fish and chip shops. In our tradition for battering just about anything we can get our hands on, The Pineapple Fritter is a pineapple slice, dipped in batter and fried. it's tastes better then you might think.
  • Pineapple makes a good meat tenderizer. Really! Pineapple flakes are an easy way to tenderize meat.

Pumpkins

Anime and Manga

"Pum-pumpkin, pumkin."

Comic Books

  • One issue of The Punisher had a guy who took a tranquilizer dart to the eardrum, he became enamored with a large pumpkin. He ended up leaving everything to camp out in the country, with his newfound love (and if the number of holes in the pumpkin is any indication, they are very much in love).
  • Subverted with Green Goblin's pumpkin bombs.

Literature

  • Discworld:
    • In Witches Abroad, Magrat is given a magic wand that turns everything it's pointed at into pumpkins (but this is only because she never figures out how to use it).
    • In Lords and Ladies, when the wizards are stopped by bandits, Archchancellor Ridcully turns the lead Bandit into a pumpkin.
      • He's okay. He's just pumpkin-shaped now.

Poetry

  • Apparently, putting your wayward wife in a pumpkin shell is a good way to keep her. ...?!?

Video Games

  • The piranha plants in Something are replaced with Pumpkin Plants.

Web Animation

Web Comics

Web Original

Western Animation

Various Foods

Stand-Up Comedy

Zucchini

Literature

  • The pages of Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway are infested with giant prehistoric zucchini.
    • Not to mention that Bill Gates, according to Dave Barry In Cyberspace, "has over 743 billion 'megs' of RAM, and he still routinely feels the need to stuff a ZUCCHINI in his UNDERWEAR".

Newspaper Comics

  • FoxTrot had a story arc where Andy planted 23 Zucchini plants, under the mistaken impression they only grow one Zucchini per plant.

Real Life

  • An unfortunately common incident at emergency rooms is people (men as well as women) needing to have vegetables (zucchini being the most common) removed from various orifices. It's amazing how many people "fall down while gardening nude."
  • Many gardeners will attest to the prolific nature of the zucchini, telling stories of leaving bags full on neighbors' porches and running away.
    • In our little town, we never lock our doors or cars, because we know everybody and nobody's going to steal our stuff. Except in August, when everybody locks up, lest they find a bag of zucchini waiting for them.
  1. ↑ The name comes from an old variety of the fruit which was small, white, and egg-shaped.
  2. ↑ Well, that's because they're bromeliads!
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