William Telling: Difference between revisions

{{trope|wppage=Shooting an apple off one's child's head}}

 

{{quote|'''''Calvin:''' Look, I put a snowball on top of this snowman's head. Now I'll be the next William Tell, and I'll hit the snowball clean off!''

* One of the most famous moments of ''[[The Tonight Show]] with Johnny Carson'' was when he had famed actor Ed Ames (who played the Indian "Mingo" on ''[[Daniel Boone]]'') demonstrate his tomahawk-throwing skills. Ames was to throw an axe and try to hit the head of a cowboy silhouette set up on stage - unfortunately he hit the drawn cowboy's crotch, with the handle pointing up, eliciting the longest laugh in television history.

* Done in a "Secret" game on ''[[Whose Line Is It Anyway?]]'', with Ryan Styles as William Tell and Colin Mochrie as his son. After Colin bites into the apple and finds hidden nude pictures of Friar Tuck, Ryan unsubtly attempts to [[Make It Look Like an Accident]] by attempting to shoot a ''grape'' off his head. And then doing it ''[[Crosses the Line Twice|blindfolded]]''.

* Actually subverted in the live-action series ''Crossbow'', which is a fictionalised version of Tell's legend. How so? {{spoiler|Tell (Will Lyman) faints after passing the test, thus in a [[Kick the Dog]] moment Gessler (Jeremy Clyde) makes him and everyone else believe that his son Walter (David Barry Gray, who is here renamed Matthew) is dead, via having the the kid taken away and slandering Tell to Hell and back. It'll takew a while to see that it's not true.}}

* In the 2000 ''[[Arabian Nights (TV series)|Arabian Nights]]'' mini-series, one of Scheherazade's stories concerns a prince who sets out to obtain a great treasure. As he is justly proud of his archery skills, the guardians of the treasure tell him he must prove himself worthy of it by shooting a target balanced on a child's head. It turns out to be a [[Secret Test of Character]]: when he declines to take the shot, admitting he's not certain he won't hit the child, he passes the test.