Ha Ha Only Serious

The practice of wrapping uncomfortable or unpleasant truths in humor, most commonly parodies, absurdities and ironies. The humor employed is usually an in-joke or self-referential structure familiar to the group or subculture at hand.

The Trope Namer is the Hacker's Jargon File.

Can be seen as a variety of By "No" I Mean "Yes". Compare "Just Joking" Justification. Not to be confused with Ha Ha Ha No.

Examples of Ha Ha Only Serious include:

Fan Works

Kyon: Big Damn Hero: Kyon jokes about his new PDA (made with alien technology) conquering the world, comparing it to SkyNet—which is what he then ends up calling it.

Film - Live Action

Team America: World Police has an instance of this buried in the There Are Three Kinds of People In The World philosophy espoused by one of its characters—see the trope entry on that work page for more details.

Literature

The Fabulists by Rudyard Kipling:

When all the world would keep a matter hid,
Since Truth is seldom Friend to any crowd,
Men write in Fable, as old AEsop did,
Jesting at that which none will name aloud.
And this they needs must do, or it will fall
Unless they please they are not heard at all.

In Gaping Heights by A. Zinoviev, one character notes that anecdotes in their imaginary land are born in unbelievable quantities and cover areas one would expect to be out of reach for anecdotes, or humor at all, but what's most amazing is that they are not really jokes - merely observations of life told in an aphoristic form. Example?

Q: Why there are no muskrat hats in shops anymore?
A: Because the muskrats reproduce in arithmetical progression, while the party bosses in geometrical. Also, culling of the bosses was not done for a long time.

The Principia Discordia is a prime example... Or Is It?

Web Original

And of course, there's the entry in the Jargon File which is the Trope Namer.