Running Gag/Literature/Magazines

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Running Gag in Magazines include:

  • Nintendo Power's got lots. There's the insistence that Alan Averill is a blue slime, Chuck Norris and Mr. T being godly, Steve Thomason's hatred of exercise and being forced to review fitness games, Chris Hoffman's love of pie, and Chris Shepperd being responsible for everything bad that's happened to the world.
  • NGamer is full of them. Including writer Christie's fondness for rats, and ex-editor Greener's... well, Greener Rage. Perhaps the biggest one came about when one of the gifts the came in the magazine was a Wii steering wheel that was WORTH SEVEN POUNDS!!!!
    • It's worth mentioning here that NGamer- a Wii and DS magazine- has a lineage that harks back through to the SNES era, and a magazine called Super Play. While none of the Super Play staffers are still directly involved with NGamer (although many still float about Future Publishing) many of its writers grew up reading it or one of its ascendants and often reference or revise older injokes, mistakes or staff members, to the point where the magazines practically have a verse. Not entirely unheard of in the rest of gamesmagazinedom, but certainly quite prominent within this series of magazines.
  • Private Eye has numerous ones, including Unusual Euphemisms to the point that a casual reader may not be able to understand half the jokes.
    • An embarrassing photo of political journalist Andrew Neill in a vest with a young Oriental woman. Eye readers will write in with a tenuous topical-based suggestion to reprint it (e.g. "as we are currently concerned about the spread of Asian bird flu, can you print a photographical guide to the proper way to safely handle an Asian bird?") which are printed under the headline 'Photo Opportunity'.
    • Referring to having sex as 'discussing Uganda', being drunk as 'tired and emotional' and former Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home as 'Baillie Vass' (all thanks to decades-old political scandals or misprints).
    • Middle Eastern news (especially to do with wars) is written in the style of the King James Bible and called 'The Book of (current Israeli leader's first name)' such as 'The Book of Ehud'. These segments usually end in 'And so it was back to the square that is called one'.