Laugh Track: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

'''Comic 1:''' [[Anti-Humor|To get to the other side]]!|''(Enormously loud blast of screaming laughter from audience).''}}

 

=== Literature ===

* Laugh tracks are mentioned in Chuck Palahniuk's ''Lullaby'':

 

 

* Infamously (at least in Canada), the Canadian sketch comedy show ''[[The Red Green Show]]'' didn't have a [[Laugh Track]]... until it was imported into the United States.

* Referenced in ''[[Annie Hall]]'':

"Yeah, well, that's why this machine is dynamite." }}

* In the 1970s, the British pop music show ''Top of the Pops'' used a bizarrely fake-sounding applause track after each performance.

* Also appears in ''[[Dragon Ball Abridged]]'' when Vegeta makes an [[Incredibly Lame Pun]].

* In [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMj1ijOOAjA&feature=related this] episode of the [[Puyo Puyo]] anime, we are first given a message with tells us to laugh when the icon <ref> Suketoudara is that icon.</ref> prompts us to. <ref> Followed by a practice in which the laugh is heard twice.</ref> Here are all three icon prompts:

{{spoiler|During the chase scene.}} }}

 

* A certain single-episode show summed up its content by taking the name ''[[Canned Laughter]]''. While the end credits rolled, the same quick laugh track was played over... and over... and over...

* Done during the sitcom segment of the ''Changing Channels'' 5th-season episode of ''[[Supernatural]]''. Of course that episode was a [[Affectionate Parody|riff]] on TV in general...

'''Dean:''' ''How is that funny''? Vultures! }}

* A [[French And Saunders]] sketch (featuring Dame Helen Mirren and Julia Sawalha) parodying sitcoms had the incessant laugh track constantly interrupting the already terrible punchlines, ruining the timing of the actors by cutting them off when they were speaking, making the whole thing [[So Unfunny It's Funny]], until they got annoyed and basically walked off the sketch.

=== Music ===

* Sent up in [["Weird Al" Yankovic|Weird Al's]] song, "Ricky," which parodies ''[[I Love Lucy]]'' (to the tune of Toni Basil's "Mickey"):

that [[Lampshade Hanging|every day's a rerun and the laughter's always canned!]]" }}

 

=== Web Original ===

* [[Youtube Poop]] videos will occasionally parody this. An example comes from "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnyHsY9W1_A ARNOLD THE PIG RAPES EVERYONE]".

* Used in ''[http://spacetree.keentoons.com/bee.html Face Bee] [[Space Tree|The Face Bee]] [[Department of Redundancy Department|in Your Face]]!''

* Used in [[The Nostalgia Chick]]'s review of ''[[Grease]]'' after Sandy says that she now knows that Danny truly respects her.

* In ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HTqbxYsYwc The Dr. Steel Show, Episode 1]'', [[Doctor Steel]] enters his lab at the beginning of the show to wild applause, which he reacts humbly to... then [[Lampshade Hanging|reaches over and turns a dial which turns off the applause track]].

* [[The Cinema Snob|Brad Jones]] uses this in his ''[[Eighties Dan]]'' web series, which is a parody of 80s era sitcoms. He lampshades it in his ''[[Cannibal Holocaust]]'' review as The Cinema Snob.

* See ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' turned into [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CrjYpX5M3o "a crappy 80's sitcom with a few sound effects"].

 

** From the same series, there's ''Christmas with the Joker,'' where he uses a laugh track in grossly inappropriate fashion while discussing violence/terrorism. It's possibly a secondary [[Lampshade Hanging]] that the "audience" he's using is revealed to be cardboard cutouts.

* ''[[The Simpsons]]'' played with this a couple times, as in the "Love-Matic Grandpa" portion of the spinoff episode.

'''Canned Laughter''' }}

** Another episode had a [[Studio Audience]] hoot after Marge makes a suggestive comment. Homer immediately says "Bart, I told you not to play the TV so loud!", followed by Bart looking ashamed and the "TV audience" going "Uh-oh!"