History Main / GallowsHumor

*** Oh, you Anglo-Saxons and your odd calendars. Monday is the first day of the week for most of us.

** German humor is pretty fond of gallow humor. Another old literal one: "Back in the middle ages the criminal who was about to be hanged on monday tells the judge 'Great start of the week, huh?'"
*** But... [[FridgeLogic Sunday is the first day of the week]].

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** German humor is pretty fond of gallow humor. Another old literal one: "Back in the middle ages the criminal who was about to be hanged on monday tells the judge 'Great start of the week, hu?'"

* According to medieval Catholic legend, Saint Lawrence of Rome was martyred by being roasted to death on a gridiron. After roasting over a hot fire for a while, he supposedly told his torturers, "''I am done on this side; you may turn me over''". The Catholic Church decided that because of this, he should be considered the patron saint of cooks and chefs, making this first-rate BlackComedy as well.

* Strangely, there is no ''literal'' GallowsHumor in Creature Feature's "A Gorey Demise," a song that is an ABCs of a year's Obituaries. This is perhaps out of difficulty of using the word "hanged" in a song. Though "hung" (although not proper grammer) would provide a lot of comedy, all by itself. (W is for [[TakeThat William]] who was [[BiggusDickus very well]] [[IncrediblyLamePun hung]]?)

* ''{{Saikano}}'' is the king of this trope, OrSoIHeard.

** Another episode had several Starfleet officers casually discussing the merits and drawbacks of various ways of dying as they awaited a battle they had little chance of winning. Maybe not strictly humour, but the nonchalance is quite chilling, especially for one character who tells them to knock it off.

-->'''Mercutio''': (Having just been mortally wounded by Tybalt) "No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man."

* Yet another political one: when Ronald Reagan was shot, his first words to his wife were "Honey, I forgot to duck." And when the surgeons were about to operate on him to remove the bullets, he told them "I hope you're all Republicans."

-->-- '''Benjamin Franklin''', to the Continental Congress, just before signing the Declaration of Independence

-->''"The two funniest groups of human beings I've ever been around are Indians and Jewish folks. So I guess that says something about the inherent humor of genocide."''
---> Sherman Alexie

Quite often this world is filled with horrible things: disease, war, suicide, drive-by shootings, racism, democrats, republicans, terrorism, drug abuse, [[RapeAsDrama rape]], Windows Vista and UweBoll. Letting these things consume you is not healthy, psychologically ''and'' medically.

* Protagonists in {{ResidentEvil}} games (particularly after their second game, when they've become more {{GenreSavy}}) tend to have this reaction to the villain's OneWingedAngel forms.

** Similar to yet another joke that was popular among German soldiers in the last weeks of WorldWarII:
--->Berlin ist die Stadt der Warenhäuser. Hier war 'n Haus, da war 'n Haus.
*** Which roughly translates to: 'Berlin is the city of department stores. There was a house here, there was a house there.' The joke being that ''Warenhäuser - department stores'' and ''war 'n Haus - was a house'' are homophones. So it?s just a pun, but a good one at that. And that in a time when most of Berlin was bombed to the ground and instead of houses there was nothing but heaps of rubble.
*** This joke was featured in {{Downfall}}, and the English subtitles offered a not too bad translation, going roughly like this: "Berlin is the city of warehouses. 'Where's my house?' 'Where's my house?'"
**** Dude, that's not good at all! The pun works exactly the same in English: "Berlin is the city of warehouses. There were houses, and there were houses."
*** Actually, the joke works much better in plural (it still works in singular) since then the latter part is 'Hier waren Häuser, da waren Häuser...' which is completely homophon to Warenhäuser.

* Brook of OnePiece constantly makes jokes and puns at his own expense over the fact that he is a [[DemBones skeleton]]. It lands solidly in this category when you realize that the series has more than once acknowledged that being a skeleton is not actually very funny.

*** This joke was featured in {{Downfall}}, and the English subtitles offered a [[Woolseyism
not too bad translation]], going roughly like this: "Berlin is the city of warehouses. 'Where's my house?' 'Where's my house?'"

*** This joke was featured in {{Downfall}}, and the English subtitles offered a [[{{Woolseyism}}

*** This joke was featured in {{Downfall}}, and the English subtitles offered a not too bad translation, going roughly like this: "Berlin is the city of warehouses. 'Where's my house?' 'Where's my house?'"

* Similar to the ''FinalFantasy'' example above, the ironically named ''Happily Ever After'' was {{Filmation}}'s last film before going bankrupt.

Quite often this world is filled with horrible things: disease, war, suicides, drive-by shootings, racism, UweBoll movies, [[AcceptableTargets Uwe Boll]], Apple fanboys, Windows fanboys, Linux fanboys, Windows Vista, liberals, republicans, terrorism, [[RuleOfThree Uwe Boll]], Yu-Gi-Oh: The Movie, ''{{FATAL}}'', drug abuse, [[RapeAsDrama r]][[UweBoll a]][[RapeAsComedy p]][[CrowningMomentOfAwesome e]], [[CrowningMomentOfFunny gorn]], the 4Kids dub of ''OnePiece'' and, of course, [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment Uwe Boll]]. Letting these things consume you is not healthy, psychologically ''and'' medically.

* ''Eat Your Feelings'' by Heather Whaley (based on a blog of the same name) is essentially relentless mockery of life under mental illness and other forms of stress. As a cookbook. Sort of "SarahSilverman cooks'' kind of thing. To this chronically depressive troper, it is ''awesome''.