Stealth Pun/Western Animation
Examples of Stealth Puns in Western Animation include:
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- In the episode "Boast Busters", Spike gushes over how Twilight Sparkle can do twenty-five tricks, since most unicorns can only use a little magic pertaining to their talent. Making them one-trick ponies.
- In the first episode, "Mare in the Moon", we can see that Twilight Sparkle (who is more interested in her studies than in making friends) makes her home in a tall, off-white structure (i.e. an ivory tower).
- In the second episode, "Elements of Harmony", the mane cast overcome Nightmare Moon and put an end to The Night That Never Ends. One could say they... save the day.
- And in "Feeling Pinkie Keen", Twilight stops to stand on a crate and lecture Pinkie about why she has a hard time believing in the latter's "Pinkie Sense". Said crate originally had some bars and bottles of soap on it, which means Twilight literally got on a soap box.
- In "Secret of My Excess", Spike goes on a greedy rampage through Ponyville. Part of that includes going to Sugar Cube Corner and taking all the cakes. Pinkie Pie immediately calls out, "How dare you take the cake!" This is a subtle reference to the phrase "taking the cake."
- In "Swarm of the Century", Pinkie Pie eventually leads the town-destroying Parasprites out of Ponyville by leading them with music. Making her the Pinkie Pied Piper.
- In "Lesson Zero", Twilight Sparkle shows the Cutie Mark Crusaders her toy, Smarty Pants, who comes with accessories such as homework. It also appears to be some kind of donkey, making it a smart ass
- In "Sonic Rainboom", Rainbow Dash pulls off the titular maneuver and wins the competition with it. One might say she passed with flying colours.
- In "Luna Eclipsed", Twilight Sparkle's Nightmare Night costume is Star Swirl the Bearded, "father of the amniomorphic spell". "Amniomorphic" means "bowl-shaped", which makes Star Swirl a long-bearded bowl-maker or, in other words, a hairy potter.
- "Luna Eclipsed" had quite a couple of these actually. Another, more obvious one would be Pinkie as a Chicken Pie.
- In "Sweet and Elite", when talking to Fancypants, after having mentioned staying at the princess' castle, she places Opalescence into one of her carrier-bags. Why? Because she let the cat out of the bag. Admittedly not the same bag, but still.
- In "Read It and Weep", a pony with a crazed expression and straitjacket makes dog noises - making her barking mad. Also, the fact that her cutie mark is a screw makes much more sense when you consider that she's literally screw loose.
- The day after "A Canterlot Wedding"—in which Princess Cadance (sic) is revealed to be a villain in disguise—aired, a music geek discovered that one of the songs contains a chord progression known as a deceptive cadence. And then the composer confirmed via Twitter that it was totally intentional. The song is an alternating duet with the genuine Cadence, and her parts contain an "authentic cadence" chord progression.
- A bit of a Fridge Brilliance pun involving the princesses: A lot of people wondered what Cadence's purpose was. Celestia and Luna basically run the sun and moon, respectively, but Cadence doesn't have any duty of that nature. Then the season 2 finale revealed that She was Twilight's foalsitter...
The Simpsons
- The Simpsons did it a couple times with the limerick about the man from Nantucket. For the record, "There once was a man from Nantucket/Whose cock was so long he could suck it/And he said, with a grin/As he wiped off his chin/"If my ear were a cunt I would fuck it!."
- "The" limerick? There's dozens with that starting line.
- Once:
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Barney: (doing handsprings) I am the very model of a modern major general! |
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- And again:
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Homer: You know, I once knew a man from Nantucket. |
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- And again:
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Homer: There once was this guy from an island off the coast of Massachusetts... Nantucket, I think it was. Anyway, he had the most unusual personal characteristic, which was, um... |
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- Another instance not using the man from Nantucket limerick, maybe even being a parody of its usage, comes in an episode where Krusty the Clown is giving Homer an old trampoline of his and talks about dirty limericks ("There once was a man named Enis...").
- So WHO had the most limericks written about them—was it the man named Enis, or the woman from Regina?
- Another from The Simpsons is the traffic guy for Channel Six News, Arnie Pie, who very deliberately avoids the painfully obvious pun on his name; his segment, live from the traffic chopper, is called "Arnie in the Sky".
- Still another: Krusty the Clown once mentioned that he and Bette Midler once owned a horse together, and named it "Krudler". For those who didn't get it, the more appropriate name is revealed in the DVD Commentary of the episode: Misty
- Alternatively, the far less appropriate Busty
- The Simpsons also gives us "Sneed's Feed & Seed (Formerly Chuck's)"
- In the episode "'Sideshow Bob Roberts", the character playing the role of "Deep Throat" is Mr. Smithers.
- The "Flaming Moe" drink, formerly known as the "Flaming Homer."
- Apu attended the Springfield Heights Institute of Technology.
- "I'm Dick Tracy! Take that, Pruneface! Now I'm Pruneface. Take that, Dick Tracy! Now I'm Prune Tracy. Take that--" (is physically subdued)
- In another episode, Bart gets lost in a corn field, and the family sends the dog to help. The music that plays is "Freak on a Leash" by Korn.
- In "Wedding for Disaster," Homer is kidnapped and chained up in a cell. When his kidnappers return him back home out of guilt, he still has a chain on him. Marge tells him that they should take that chain off him, to which he responds, "Won't it just dry up after a while and fall off in the bath?" Such is what typically happens to a bandage, not bondage.
- In the first season episode "The Crepes of Wrath":
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Bart(watching his pet frog): Ah, the life of a frog. That's the life for me. |
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Other Shows
- A lot of the names in Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends are puns, especially when combined with other characters' names. For instance: Blooregard Q. Kazoo, thus Bloo Q. Kazoo Kukukachu.
- Warpath from Transformers Generation 1 is an Autobot who is best known for his Verbal Tic of adding onomatopoeia to his dialog... to the point where he might have Tourette's. The kicker? He turns into a tank and his upper body is made from the turret.
- In the third season, the Decepticon leader Galvatron, who turns into a gun emplacement, is crazy and unpredictable, as likely to attack his allies as he is the Autobots. He's quite the loose cannon.
- And in the Japanese dub, the Cassetteicons often call Soundwave "aniki". In addition to being what gang members call their leader, it also translates to 'big brother.' So, since Soundwave is the Decepticon communications officer who reports treachery to their leader that means that Big Brother Is Watching you.
- In Filmation's Ghostbusters, the Team Pet of the group is a little pink bat named Belfry. His name is based on the saying "To have bats in the belfry", meaning "To be a bit crazy".
- Also, Hot Scoop Jessica Wray is the fiancée of ghostbuster Jake Kong. Wray... Kong... does it ring a bell?
- In Kim Possible, when we are first introduced to Team Go, Ron asks why Mego wears a purple costume. Team leader Hego replies, "He's a shrinker" and drops the subject. He's a shrinking violet (but not a Shrinking Violet, mind you); Warner/DC would not be amused.
- Mego's power is to shrink to the size of an action figure. He shares his name with a popular line of action figures from the 70s and 80s, including the unintuitive pronunciation.
- Austin's fur color in The Backyardigans.[context?]
- Also in The Backyardigans, in the episode "Mission to Mars", Austin controls a Mars Rover named Rover. This Trouper also realized the joke about this also meaning the car Austin Rover.
- In The Fairly OddParents book-jumping episode "Shelf Life":
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Wanda: Egad, he turned The Three Musketeers into the three Mouse-- |
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- And later in the same episode:
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Cosmo: So he gets into a physics book, what's the worst that could happen? |
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- The segment "Dread and Breakfast" has a cameo by two Shaggy and Scooby-Doo lookalikes. Not-Shaggy refers to Not-Scooby as "Doob", which would probably make "Doob"'s name Doobie.
- Don't forget how Timmy's fairies are usually disguised as goldfish, so Timmy has A Fish Called Wanda.
- In one episode, where Jay Leno is interviewing pop star Britney Britney, he says that he feels the same way about her as he does asparagus. As in, both of them being spears.
- George Frankly, of Math Net on Square One TV, also visited the island of Noman. (Back when Kate Monday was still his partner, and he was still with the LAPD.) He explained the name as being of Native American origin.
- Surprisingly, The Snorks was full of this. Allstar's pet octopus, Occy, goes berserk when he's called icky. As in the skin parasite.
- In The Mysterious Benedict Society, the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened is on Nomansan Island.
- One episode of Tiny Toon Adventures has a Credits Gag explaining that Plucky Duck was "inadvertently omitted from 'The Name Game'."
- In fact, Wikipedia warns that using Alice, Dallas, Tucker, Chuck, Buck, Huck, Bart, Art, Mitch, Rich, Richie, Maggie, or Danny will result in "profanity or rude language."
- Robot Chicken once had a shot of the Fourth Doctor standing on the first base of a baseball diamond. After waiting a second, the Doctor says "Do ya get it?"
- I thought the joke was the "Senreich-Green University" sign. But when you think about it, that joke make sense.
- What about it being the Fourth Doctor on a square?
- I dunno.
- Third base!
- Well, diamonds are four-ever...
- I dunno.
- In The Tick, there is a running gag where several villains are never actually named, but they are very obvious visual puns. So we have an evil boy genius with see-through plastic cranium, but never actually called "Brain Child". Or the man dressed as someone's granny, obsessed with stealing inventions is never called "Mother of Invention".
- The Tick is pretty famous with this trope for villain names like Chairface Chippendale, a chair-faced man in a tuxedo (Chippendale is both the name of a famous maker of furniture and a male strip club) and Milton Roe. Milt means fish sperm and Roe means fish eggs.
- Surprisingly, The Powerpuff Girls does this at one point: despite the series' tendency towards the Incredibly Lame Pun, the Mayor's secretary is referred to only as "Miss Bellum." Given her brain capacity relative to that of the Mayor, it's not hard to guess what her first name is... Sarah.
- They have stated her name at least once. However, it was in fact Sarah.
- The Mayor is so old his first secretary must have been Antebellum.
- Also, Him looks like Satan and dresses like Santa Claus. He also has claws. This is never commented on directly.
- Him IS Satan...
- The septic truck in "Down N' Dirty" is full of it.
- They have stated her name at least once. However, it was in fact Sarah.
- The Central Bureaucracy of Futurama has a giant Rubik's cube made out of Rubik's cubes made out of offices. I call it the Rubik's Cubicle.
- Batman: The Brave And The Bold, "Deep Cover for Batman": Batman thinks he may have found an ally in The Scarlet Scarab based on a conversation he heard, but it turns out to just provide misdirection, meaning that the Scarlet Scarab was a Red Herring.
- In the Justice League episode "The Terror Beyond", Hawkgirl taunts Icthultu when he wishes to speak to her: "Nothing to say! I have a gesture for you, but my hands are tied." That's right, Hawkgirl wants to flip him the bird.
- In the episode "The Balance" Wonder Woman receives a message from Zeus saying "By Decree of Zeus Father of Olympus it is so ordered: Diana of Themyscira will travel to Tartarus and set right that which has been disturbed." She starts to respond with "He's telling me to go to..." but is interrupted by Hermes saying "Basically".
- And in "Epilogue", the team is up against another team called the Royal Flush Gang, who Ace gave powers to. One of them is wearing kabuki make-up, with a top knot and swinging a katana. By process of elimination, he's the Jack, and when depowered happens to look like Phil LaMarr. Ten looks like Bo Derek did in the film Ten, Queen is a transformed guy (drag queen), and King looks like Jack "King" Kirby.
- In the Unlimited episode "Panic In The Sky", there's a stealth pun allusion to Galatea being the DCAU expy of Power Girl when Supergirl defeats her by (fatally?) electrocuting her with a power cable.
- Subverted in American Dad!:
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Hayley: You have angina.[1] |
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- Another episode has a secondary story revolving around bees. What's another term for "secondary story"?
- In an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the scene after greeting Suki in a robe, under candlelight, a rose in his mouth, Sokka is seen wearing a flower necklace -- he got lei'd.
- And Suki got deflowered.
- In "The Ember Island Players", a bad in-universe reenactment of the series thus far, the audience starts falling asleep during the sequence with the drill. It's boring.
- In an episode of Family Guy where Stewie and Brian go to a Disney universe, this universe's Joe is a coffee pot. Joe. Coffee.
- Of course, that's a spoof of Beauty and the Beast, where the teapot is Mrs. Potts and her grandson is a teacup with a chip in it... named Chip.
- Teen Titans has one of the first type in the episode "Can I Keep Him?" While fighting Johnny Rancid's new "pet", Rancid remarks that the beast is "kicking [Robin's]--", and is then interrupted by two green hooves to the gut. One shot later, it is revealed that Beast Boy has, indeed, turned into an ass.
- In SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Karate Island", one of the enemies is named "The Tickler". He also happens to be French. Making him... a French Tickler.
- In Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, the Team Pet is a fly named Zipper. The fact that this is a pun is never brought up.
- Late in the third season of Ben 10, Ben's antagonists consisted largely of aliens that resembled Universal/Hammer horror monsters, and he gained the ability to become each of them. First was a werewolf, which he cleverly named Benwolf. (Insert Gwendel joke here.) Next, a mummy, which was called Benmummy in the credits. The third villain, Dr. Vicktor, turned out to be a Frankenstein's Monster pastiche. The credits called the resulting transformation Benvicktor, avoiding the more obvious choice: Benstein.
- In the third season of Ben 10: Alien Force, Kevin ends up stuck in a composite form, with various body parts made out of various materials, from metal to crystal. In particular, everything from his groin down is made of wood.
- For years, the opening sequence of Animaniacs got away with showing Yakko getting lunchmeat shoved down the front of his trousers, while all three Warners sang "there's bologna in our slacks". Yep, they played "Hide the Sausage" in full view on a kid's show...
- In the South Park episode "The F Word", the head editor of the dictionary is Emmanuel Lewis.
- In "Tsst", Eric's egotistical behavior becomes too much for Mrs. Cartman to handle. When reality TV shows like Nanny 911 and Supernanny fail to subdue him, it is Cesar Millan the Dog Whisperer who shows Cartman that not everyone is willing to put up with his crap. That's right, the episode implied that Cartman is a "son of a bitch".
- In the Pinky and The Brain episode "It's Only a Paper World," the title characters attempt to Take Over the World by building a life-sized replica of the planet Earth out of paper-mâché and luring the population onto it so they can rule the real Earth without interference. All the music in the episode is based on themes from Dvorak's Symphony No. 9: otherwise known as the New World symphony.
- Similarly, an episode dealing with the art world used themes from Mussorgsky's "Pictures At An Exhibition".
- In one episode of The Spectacular Spider-Man, Peter hears a radio informing everyone about an attack by Sandman at the harbor. Then it says: "Now for an oldie but a goodie by the Chordettes" before the next scene. One of the Chordettes' most famous songs? Mr. Sandman.
- Also, Sandman is trying to steal The Urn of Morpheus.
- In the Looney Tunes cartoon "A Gruesome Twosome", two alley cats try to fool Tweety by wearing a horse costume. The one in front reveals himself and tells us "I'm the horse's head!" The one in back says nothing.
- "Buckaroo Bugs" has Bugs as a messenger asking which of the two characters lying dazed on the ground is Red Hot Ryder. Red points to his horse's ass before pointing to himself. "Scrap Happy Daffy" does a similar gag, with Daffy pointing at a horse's ass and exclaiming "How do ya like that, Schickelgrüber?"
- Beavis and Butthead actually subverted this once. They find an injured bird, nurse it back to health, and Butthead sends it on its way by flipping it into the air. Beavis then takes the stealth out of the pun by telling him "Hey, Butthead. You flipped the bird."
- Maggie the housefly's older brother in The Buzz on Maggie is named Aldrin... for "Buzz" Aldrin.
- Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated shows that the characters are divided as a result of their relationship issues. This would seem to imply that the gang is splitting up.
- A French stealth pun for Wakfu: the Havresac. It's a real word (haversack in English), but Ruel's is also a bag (sac) which provides a haven (havre) for the heroes.
- Similar to the Futurama example above, there's a Polish cartoon called Generał Italia. Hmmm...
- In Jimmy Two-Shoes, Lucius Heinous I-VI have all been frozen alive by their sons. So basically, Hell freezes over.
- In Real Life, early computers had names like ENIAC, EDVAC, and UNIVAC. In the Rocky and Bullwinkle side feature, "Peabody's Improbable History", the time machine is called the WABAC ('cause they go "way back" in time).
- Speaking of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Boris Badenov's name was an allusion to Pushkin's play Boris Godunov. The name is lampshaded in one story arc's next-episode titles: "Don't Make It Worse, It's Badenov."
- "Ex Marks the Spot," the penultimate episode of Time Squad, opens with Larry behaving unusually happily, as if basking in the afterglow of...something. He stuffs a turkey full of gravy until it overflows, then tops the dish with a cherry...which sinks into the gravy never to be seen again. In other words, Larry has just lost his cherry.
- The Penguins of Madagascar episode "Jiggles" features a gelatinous cube which only eats fruit. It then proceeds to absorb the Ambiguously Gay King Julien.
- There were two instances of a Griffin named Merv who had a talk show in cartoons:
- The first was in "Hamelot," a U.S. Acres segment of Garfield and Friends, where Merv voiced by Frank Welker, and he was interviewing the farm cast (who were imagined as knights).
- The second was in Disney's |Hercules: The Series, where Merv Griffin himself played his animated, mythological counterpart as he interviewed Herc. A Casting Gag that went into Parental Bonus and literal Mythology Gag perhaps?
- The Classic Disney Shorts Pluto's Judgement Day, which is about Pluto the Pup imagining himself going to hell after being scolded by Mickey Mouse for chasing a cat. Pluto is actually the name of the Roman god of the underworld, as well as the former ninth planet in which the dog got his name from.
- In Phineas and Ferb: Summer Belongs To You, it's revealed that Baljeet has a relative who runs a factory in the Himalayas that makes rubber bands and balls. It's never said outright, but he's literally making India rubber.
- Done ever so discreetly in Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy during the episode "The Eds Are Coming". Once Ed emerges from the radiant goo, Kevin has a soapbox moment upon a soap box.
- In an episode of Birdz, Morty Storkowitz remarks that he went to school with a peacock who went into television.
- In the Rugrats episode "Vacation", Chuckie can be seen running on a roulette wheel. In other words, it's rushing roulette.
- One scene in Robbie the Reindeer: Hooves of Fire has a singing seal… voiced by singer Seal.
- In Archer "El Secuestro" (s2e10), when Cheryl informs her co-workers that her surname is actually Tunt, Archer's mind heads to the gutter:
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Tum again? [beat] C'mon, nothing? |
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