Skulduggery Pleasant/Funny

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Pretty much all the book dedications are hilarious.
  • Stephanie notices that Skulduggery is walking, talking skeleton. This conversation occurs.

Skulduggery: Are you going to faint?
Stephanie: I've never fainted before but I think you might be right.
Skulduggery: Would you like me to catch you?
Stephanie: If you wouldn't mind?
Skulduggery: Not at all.
Stephanie: *faints*

Caelan: We're meant for each other.
Valkyrie: Holy God! Do you always come on this strong?

  • This exchange from the first book.

Serpine: Where are your oh so clever taunts now?

Skulduggery: You've got big ears!

  • Also, this:

Skulduggery: Besides, I need you out here in case something goes horribly, horribly wrong."

Stephanie: What do I do then?

Skulduggery: ...Panic.

  • And, when they're in the caves underneath Gordon's house:

Valkyrie: What is that?
Skulduggery: That, my dear Valkyrie, is what we call a monster.
Valkyrie: You don't know what it is, do you?
Skulduggery: I told you what it is, it's a horrible monster. Now shut up before it comes over here and eats us.

  • Most scenes involving Billy-Ray Sanguine.
    • After a fight, Sanguine disappears into the ground. Thinking he's gone, Tanith insults him, only to have him pop back up again. There's a bit of Witty Banter between Valkyrie, Tanith, and Sanguine, and then we get this:

Sanguine: When you have served your purpose, I swear to you I'm gonna kill you for free.

  • disappears*
  • Beat*
  • pops back up*

Sanguine: Or at least half price.

    • When Billy-Ray Sanguine gets his razor stolen.

Billy-Ray: Women. They always take stuff from me. Bits and pieces of my soul. But now you take my damn straight razor? How am I supposed to kill people? How am I supposed to even shave?

  • "I seem to have lost track of this speech, I'm not sure where it is going, but I know where it started and that's what I want you to remember. Has anyone seen my hat?"

Valyrie: Well my morale is certainly boosted.
Skulduggery: Really?
Valkyrie: God, no. That was awful.

  • Kenspeckle is pissed off at Skulduggery. So he makes him wear a pink hospital gown covered in ducks.
  • Vaurian Scapegrace enters a funeral home in the hopes of being embalmed. The following scene must be read to be believed.
  • Erskine Ravel's response to Skulduggery suggesting that making him an Elder wasn't such a bad idea.

Erskine: Take that back!

  • "Your reflection is still naked, by the way."
  • Clarabelle's job interview with Doctor Nye somehow manages to be a Crowning Moment of Funny and High Octane Nightmare Fuel at the same time.
  • Two words. Zombie Queen.
  • Skulduggery and Dexter Vex, shamelessly teasing Ghastly at the Requiem Ball.

Vex: By the way, all joking aside, do I call you Ghastly or Elder Bespoke?
Ghastly: You can call me whatever you want.
Vex: Thank you Gladys.

Vex: Francoise. Remember her, Ghastly? Remember that weekend we couldn't find you? We thought Mevolent had snatched you away and was torturing you within an inch of your life. Valkyrie, would you like to know what he was really doing that weekend?

Valkyrie: Yes I would.

Ghastly: No she wouldn't.

Skulduggery: I think she would.

Ghastly: If you tell her, I will have the both of you arrested. And possibly flogged.

Valkyrie: So, if that had been our code, and Dragonclaw had told you that all we have to do is pull a lever, how would you have worked the sparrow flies south for winter into the conversation?
Skulduggery: I would have said Ok, Bison, so you're sure we only need to pull a lever? And he would have said Yes, and I'd have said Excellent, thank you. Did you know, by the way, that the sparrow flies south for winter? And then I'd have punched him.

  • Fletcher verbally castrating Caelan. Doubles as a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
  • The fact that Skulduggery's subconscious is going around killing people really shouldn't be funny. But then you get this.

Valkyrie: *on the phone* It's me.
Skulduggery: No, it's not. Because then I would be talking to myself and I don't do that any more.

  • Valkyrie deciding that dingoes are cute and that she wants one as a pet . While looking after her infant sister. I may have just found that funny because I'm Australian.
    • This American troper thought it was pretty funny too.
    • I'm Australian too, and I loved not only this, but Fletcher telling Val he's moving to Australia partly because Australians 'Talk funny.'
  • China's Freak-Out when Valkyrie accidentally uses the Sceptre of the Ancients and disintegrates her books.
  • One of the short stories, Gold, Babies and the Brothers Muldoon, has this golden moment:

Valkyrie: So smile, goblin. Skulduggery Pleasant has been here all along, and tonight's the night when he gets to kick your green and wrinkly little-

*Skulduggery falls through the roof and lands on his face*

Skulduggery: Oh my God. Oh my God that hurt.

Valkyrie: Bloody vampires.
Ryan: That was a vampire? That guy who looked like an accountant?
Skulduggery: We don't talk about vampires.
Ryan: But it was daytime. How could he have been out during the-
Valkyrie: We don't talk about vampires!