Actually Pretty Funny / Real Life

Instances of Actually Pretty Funny in real life.

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• The entire concept of roasts is based around this. If you're a witty enough comedian, you should be able to make even the target of your jokes laugh.
• Likewise, jokers/jesters are said to have been the only people who could get away with insulting the king or queen. Even today it's considered bad form for a political leader to be unable to take a joke at their expense.
• One of the police forces of Italy, the Carabinieri, is the butt of many jokes. Turns out, the Carabinieri have invented many of them, and have published an anthology of Carabinieri jokes. That said, telling them Carabinieri jokes when they're on duty still counts as offense.
• During the 2016 occupation of an Oregon wildlife preservation facility by a pro-Second Amendment militia, the occupiers repeatedly asked for snacks and supplies from those who supported them. Instead, they were mailed sex toys, glitter, penis-shaped candles, and other such paraphernalia. John Ritzheimer filmed a video of him unboxing the "supplies" and while he did throw everything off of the table, he did remark that he found the Bag of Dicks (a bag of gummy penis-shaped candies) pretty hilarious.
• This was George W. Bush's response when Vladimir Putin brushed off allegations of human rights abuses in Russia by referencing the fact that at least they didn't have Dick Cheney shooting people in their forests. Cheney himself said this more or less verbatim regarding Putin's comment, shortly after the infamous hunting accident that critical statements Cheney had made were "like a misaimed hunting shot".
• Comedian Frank Caliendo once related that he was watching President Bush making a "gobble-gobble" movement at the Correspondents Dinner, and he started mimicking Bush at the table...only to find out that Vice President Cheney was sitting next to him. Fortunately, Cheney was dying of laughter at this.
• During the final months of Barack Obama's presidency, Vice President Joe Biden became the subject of a number of memes depicting him coming up with pranks to play on the incoming administration (with Obama often cast as the Only Sane Man trying to wrangle him down from these plans). Biden thought it was hilarious.
• This former white supremacist tells the story of a defiant black reverend who makes a joke that gets even the Ku Klux Klan to laugh, of all people. (Also counts as a Moment of Awesome and Badass Pacifist.) This happened when he and several KKK members surrounded the reverend to intimidate him while he was eating in a restaurant.
  I said "I promise you we're gonna do the same thing to you that you do to that chicken [dinner]. So you think real hard before you touch that chicken." So he looked at me and looked at the Klan, then he picked up the chicken and he kissed it... Even the Klan was laughin'! "You gotta admit, that was funny!"
• Bill O'Reilly once made a joke that the cover of Earth (The Book) features a picture of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The cover actually features Stewart and a chimpanzee. Colbert liked it.
• In the middle of the Enron debacle, which created power outages in California, Jeff Skilling, the CEO of the company, made a joke at a meeting: "What's the difference between California and the Titanic? At least when the Titanic went down, the lights were on."
• During a monologue about his artificial right foot, Adam Hills talked about how his family would constantly crack jokes about it. The best came from his brother who broke up an argument between Adam and a (much shorter) friend by saying "You two are both the same — because you both need to grow a foot!" Adam commented, "Have you ever wanted to punch someone but couldn't because you were laughing too hard?"
• Comedian/motivational speaker John Bytheway has a bit where he laments the lame jokes people make about his last name. He then tells a story where an airport security guy asked him if he was going to name his son "Owen", which actually got a chuckle out of him.
• A man in Texas receives a $137 traffic ticket, and decides to pay it... with 137 single dollar bills, all of which are folded up into origami pigs and placed into two separate doughnut boxes. While the clerk at the police station was (initially) unamused, one of the officers there actually did find it rather amusing.
• Stanley Kubrick:
  • During the filming of Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick tricked George C. Scott, who intended to take a more subtle approach to his role of General Turgidson, into overplaying his character by assuring him that the cameras were off, and that only Kubrick and the rest of the cast and crew are the only people watching his over-the-top performances. Kubrick used those takes, leading to Scott swearing that he would not work with Kubrick again. Scott eventually saw this as one of his favorite performances and admired Kubrick for his genius behind the deception.
  • While filming A Clockwork Orange, David Prowse requested that he not do too many takes of him carrying Patrick Magee in his wheelchair, quipping "You're not exactly known as One-Take-Kubrick, are you?" The crew was shocked that someone would speak to the director like that, but Kubrick saw the funny side and agreed.
  • During Full Metal Jacket, R. Lee Ermey ad-libbed the line "Bullshit, I'll bet you're the kind of guy who'd fuck a person in the ass and not even have the goddamn courtesy to give him a reach-around". Kubrick cut the scene and asked, "What the hell is a reach-around?" When Ermey politely explained what it was, Kubrick burst out laughing and kept the scene in. Further, Kubrick found R. Lee's ad-lib so creative that he granted Ermey the license to "do more of that", something rarely allowed in Kubrick's films.
• One group of German prisoners in an internment camp during World War II. They weren't allowed to have radios, but wanting to know how the war was going, they built a radio into the seat of a chair. The camp commander suspected they had a radio and had their rooms searched repeatedly. Each time, the commander came along to see that the search was done properly. Each time, the prisoners offered him a chair — the one with the radio in it. Each time, the chair wasn't searched, because the commander was sitting on it. After the war, one of the ex-prisoners told the commander how it was done; the commander apparently thought it was pretty funny.
• Tim Allen copped a lot of jokes when he was a kid resulting from his real full name — Timothy Allan Dick. Yes, you read that right. In Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man, he commented that most of the resultant jokes were terrible, except one time when he was telling a woman about it, and she came back with "Too bad you don't have a sister named Anita."
• Ocasionally some celebrities that were mocked on South Park have laughed on a few occasions. Notably Cesar Millan The Dog Whisperer
• The general reaction to John McCain's quip during the 2013 government shutdown, in regard to Congress's approval rating, "We're down to blood relatives and paid staffers now." During a 2014 Letterman appearance, he said "After I made that comment, my mother called. Now it's just paid staffers." Even the biggest Democrats laughed.
• During the 2013 NBA Draft, David Stern was booed mercilessly by the crowd. Being that it was his last draft, he encouraged the response and a couple times outright trolled the crowd. When he came up to announce Utah's pick, he said, "We've had to explain to our international audience that the boo is an American sign of respect." The crowd laughed and applauded in response to that joke.
• Gary Bettman, the commissioner of the National Hockey League, is routinely booed in any public appearance he makes, which started around 2004 after the lockdown resulted in that season not taking place and only intensifying since. However, Bettman himself seems to enjoy the boos. He joked that Vegas wasn't a true hockey city till they'd boo'ed him on-stage during the entry draft (which they then did) and he'll repeatedly "admonish" the crowd and demand they try again if their boos aren't loud enough. While not many hockey fans will have nice things to say about him as a commissioner, just about the entire NHL fanbase enjoys the booing back-and-forth he does.
• Drew Droege is an actor who is known for making videos mocking Chloë Sevigny on the Internet. When Sevigny saw the videos she laughed hysterically.
• If you browse the Twitter sites of current (or former) child stars from Disney Channel or Nickelodeon KidComs, you find that many of them, if the joke isn't too disrespectful or inappropriate and they're in the mood, love to watch, share, riff on or even participate in many satires and Affectionate Parodies on their personas or their series that comedy shows like Family Guy, The Simpsons or Saturday Night Live make. The ultimate example may be the real Miley Cyrus participating in an installment of SNL's "Miley Cyrus Show" sketch the first time she hosted. This ability to laugh at themselves even extends into the kidcoms sometimes.
• The Saga of the Liberal Vikings was a long-running series of political cartoons in the Danish newspaper Politiken, which depicted the MPs from the Liberal Party as a clan of goofy and not very efficient Vikings, led by the grouchy, cigar-chomping Chief Erik of Ringe (Erik Eriksen, prime minister 1950-53). The cartoons became immensely popular among the politicians depicted, who would frequently get the good ones framed and keep them on the walls in their offices.
• Carrie Fisher once roasted Star Wars creator George Lucas and the latter nearly died of laughter while chuckling with the audience.
• Charlie Brooker once wrote a column about a documentary on the case of Jonathan King (a British pop singer who was serving a sentence for committing sexual offenses against underage boys) and ended the column with asking the readers to send in drawings of other acts of depravity involving celebrities. The only reply came from the imprisoned Jonathan King, who sent a drawing of Charlie Brooker writing a column. Brooker thought it was hilarious.
• In World of Warcraft, one server had a guild named "Razorfen Down Syndrome" ^note Razorfen Downs is an area in the game, which was Bowdlerised by Blizzard due to people being offended. (It was changed to "Razorfen Downsized". On the same server, when Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging, someone made a character named "Saddam", then a guild named "Hanging with Saddam". According to a Blizzard employee who saw the report, they actually thought it was really amusing and didn't order the name to be changed.
• Some of the reactions on "Celebrities Read Mean Tweets" on Jimmy Kimmel Live! end this way.
  Bill Murray: "I find Bill Murray not funny. I was glad he got shot in Zombieland." [begins cracking up] That's pretty good.
  • In another instance, Lisa Kudrow lost it and was practically howling with laughter when she read a Tweet that simply said, "Hope everyone has a great weekend. Except you, Lisa Kudrow. Fuck you."
  • In their Avengers: Infinity War edition, Benedict Cumberbatch cracks up when he's described as "always looking like he's having an allergic reaction to bad shrimp", Samuel L. Jackson tries (and fails) to keep from laughing at being described as "looking like a snapping turtle", Chris Evans absolutely loses it when a tweet says he plays Captain America "like he's a big dumb hunk of shit", and Chadwick Boseman giggles uncontrollably as a fan wonders how the "coolest black dude in the galaxy ended up with some whitebread-ass name like 'Chadwick.'"
• The iconic chandelier scene in the Only Fools and Horses episode "A Touch of Glass" — considered one of the funniest moments in British TV history — was based on something that actually happened to writer John Sullivan's father back in the 1930s. Sullivan found the story hilarious, but his father, who'd been sacked as a result of the incident, didn't. After the episode aired, however, Sullivan received a phone call from his father who, having seen the episode, was forced to admit that the incident was funny after all.
• At the 1998 Academy Awards, after Arnold Schwarzenegger showed a clip from Titanic (1997), host Billy Crystal quipped, "That clip cost $15 million." The camera cut to director James Cameron, whose expression clearly says "Yeah, that's about right."
• Andrew Hussie, author of (and sometimes a character in) Homestuck at one point showed up wearing an outfit themed after Jade's title of "The Witch of Space". Hussie's detractors began calling him the "Waste of Space" as a result. The comic's fans (and Hussie) found this to be highly amusing, and ran with it, to the point that "Waste of Space" is one of Hussie's numerous nicknames among the fans.
• As any parent or anyone who worked with kids can tell you, occasionally they'll break the rules and do something that's this trope. One parent submitted a story to a magazine where they had two kids with rooms on the other side of the hall from each other. They thought that when they were fighting with each other, they should send them into each other's rooms instead of their own, hoping that they would mess their rooms up. Instead, they yelled at each other through the air vents. They were actually quite amused at how it backfired.
• One episode of Rescue 911 featured a dog who got his head stuck in a vent. The kids who went to check up on the dog thought it was actually quite funny before calling 911 to get the dog free.
• Ricky Gervais:
  • These outtakes from an interview on Sesame Street. Asking Elmo if he knows what necrophilia is? Would get him kicked off the set, except the crew is laughing themselves silly upon hearing it.
  • At the 2008 Golden Globes, Gervais took the time to roast Kate Winslet for starring in The Reader — as she had appeared on Extras playing herself trying to get an Oscar for starring in a Holocaust movie. He said "what did I tell you, Winslet? Do a Holocaust movie, the awards come" — to which she howled with laughter.
  • His downright savage Take That! / "The Reason You Suck" Speech toward Hollywood's elite at the 2020 Golden Globes had most of the crowd in stunned offended silence or forcing laughs. Adam Driver, however, thought the whole thing was hilarious and was notably the only celebrity laughing at Gervais' Epstein didn't kill himself joke.
• Ronald Reagan:
  • When he watched Back to the Future, he got so amused with the scene where the 1955 Doc Brown balks at the idea of Reagan becoming President by 1985^note "Ronald Reagan? The actor? Then who's Vice President? Jerry Lewis?! I suppose Jane Wyman is the First Lady! And Jack Benny is secretary of the treasury!" that he told the projectionist to stop the film and replay the scene.
  • During a debate against his 1984 election opponent, Walter Mondale, Reagan was asked a question about his age. The 73-year-old Reagan replied, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." Both Mondale (age 55) and the debate audience burst out laughing at that quip.^note Mondale, born January 5, 1928, had served as a senator from Minnesota from 1964 to 1976, and was Jimmy Carter's vice president. After losing the election by a pretty significant margin (he was only able to carry Washington, D.C. and his home state of Minnesota, and he just barely won there), Mondale would say that in retrospect this was the moment that he was officially dead in the water.
  • Reagan was also fond of collecting Russian Humour jokes that he would tell his American audience at various press conferences, highlighting the dark humor of the USSR's citizens. One of these^note An American tells a Russian that he lives in the freest country on Earth, saying "I can walk into the White House, pound on the President's desk and tell him, Mr. Reagan, I don't like how you're running your country!". The Russian responds, "Oh, I can do that too". The American asks "You can?" in amazement. "Yes I can", said the Russian. "I can walk into the Kremlin, pound on the Secretary-General's desk and tell him, Mr. Gorbachev, I don't like how President Reagan is running his country!" he told to Secretary Gorbachev, and he actually got a laugh out of the Soviet leader.
• A story taken from Reddit about how a High School principal who transferred from a reform school really laid down the rule about how hats were not allowed in the school. A technologically savvy student photoshopped a picture of him to resemble Hitler, because students called him the "Hat Nazi", and distributed it around the school. Eventually, the teachers and even the principal got ahold of the image and thought it was actually really funny.
• South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut famously features "Blame Canada," a song about how Canada is the cause of all of America's children's problems. When the number was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song in 1999, the press asked Kim Campbell, the Consul General and first female Prime Minister of Canada, about her thoughts on the piece. She said that it was clearly meant to be funny—especially because the song is a clear case of American parents refusing to admit their own flaws—and wasn't offended in the slightest. Similarly, one of the lines in the song targets Anne Murray, a famous Canadian singer. Murray reportedly thought this hilarious and was willing to sing "Blame Canada" at the Oscars after Trey Parker and Matt Stone invited her, but couldn't due to a prior commitment.
• Prince Komatsu Akihito, who saw an 1886 production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado in London, took no offence at all, nor did he find its depiction of the Mikado demeaning. In addition, the 1907 revival was cancelled for six weeks due to a state visit by Prince Fushimi Sadanaru, but it backfired spectacularly when the prince expressed a desire to see the show. A command performance was put together, and both the prince and his entourage were "deeply and pleasingly disappointed" to find it hilarious.
• General Sir Garnet Wolesley was immortalised by Gilbert and Sullivan as Major General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance (the Trope Namer for Modern Major General). However, unlike W.H. Smith (who was the model for another incompetent high-ranking official, namely Sir Joseph in H.M.S. Pinafore), Sir Garnet took the spoof in good humor and would often sing the associated song to amuse his friends at parties.
• A rather humorous exchange happened about a DotA 2 team named Starladder, where someone said "Darn Russians", and they were corrected with "They are Ukranian, not Russian." However, they were then countered by "Well, soon-to-be-Russians doesn't really flow off the tongue as much, does it?" Someone else then said, "...I should not have laughed as hard at that as I did."
• Eliot Chang is a stand-up comedian who was once heckled by a drunk bride-to-be. He assured the audience that he had the situation under control since he began his career in Harlem, NY and knew that he wasn't in trouble unless he heard someone say, "Fuck you! *Click Click*". The drunk woman then shouted, "Fuck you! Click! Click!" Chang began to laugh and said, "Okay, that was actually pretty funny".
• British comedy show The Real Mc Coy which starred British Black and Asian comedians, parodied the British Army's equal opportunities recruitment campaign by producing a spoof advert with a black soldier insisting he had "the same opportunity to get shot as anyone else." — the Army's recruiters went on to borrow this argument for future adverts.
• In Bavaria, there is a tradition called "Derblecken", most famously celebrated at the annual Nockherberg beer festival at the eponymous Paulaner Brewery in Munich, where major politicians (usually Bavarian or federal) are mocked. It's considered an honor to be mocked and politicians in attendance are often scrutinized for their reaction. Finding a joke not funny is the surest way to ruin a political career, but some politicians are clearly shown enjoying being taken down a peg or two.
• The legendary insult comic Don Rickles was famous for this — in fact, it made his career. While still a young comedian struggling to find his niche, he noticed Frank Sinatra in the audience of a show one night and decided to start mocking the singer. Sinatra loved the jokes, and Rickles realized he had found his gimmick: insults. In this montage from Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Rickles relates a specific incident in which he, his wife, and Sinatra, along with the singer's whole entourage, went for dinner in an expensive restaurant decorated completely in white. Sinatra, notorious for his Hair-Trigger Temper, became oddly annoyed when a ketchup bottle was brought to the table, and abruptly picked it up and threw it against a wall, creating a massive mess. The entire restaurant went completely silent... except for Rickles, who, without missing a beat, asked: "Frank, can you pass the ketchup?" Sinatra burst out laughing, and the tense situation was defused.
• Saturday Night Live frequently makes fun of its guest hosts. Jon Heder takes it like a champ. Political candidates have to learn to take a joke to be relate-able... Most times, that is.
  • Gerald Ford was highly amused by Chevy Chase's impersonation of him. In fact, they later became friendly with each other.
  • George H. W. Bush liked Dana Carvey's impression so much he actually invited him to stay overnight at the White House to perform for him personally. He even had Carvey prank the Secret Service using his voice.
  • Fred Rogers found Eddie Murphy's "Mister Robinson's Neighbourhood" parody amusing. Unlike most parodies, Rogers enjoyed Murphy's skit because it was an Affectionate Parody aimed at a late night adult audience, thereby ensuring that children wouldn't see it and mistake the skit for the real Rogers.
  • Julia Child loved Dan Aykroyd's French Chef sketch so much that she would play it for guests at parties.
  • Frank Sinatra notoriously disliked impersonations of him. When he saw Joe Piscopo's take, he said, "He's good — the little prick".
  • Gayle King endorsed the show's take on her R. Kelly interview.
  • When Jon Hamm hosted, Amy Poehler, then nine months pregnant, got the news that her neurologist had died, prompting her to burst into tears. Hamm calmed her down by telling her to "get her shit together". Poehler laughed so hard she peed herself.
  • In a 2022 episode, Chloe Fineman imitated Jennifer Coolidge in the sketch "Jennifer Coolidge is Impressed by Christmas Stuff." Coolidge herself posted the entire sketch on her Instagram account the following day and praised Fineman's impersonation as hilarious. In a Heartwarming Moment, Coolidge also took the time to commend the new actors on the show, remarking that she'd auditioned herself and knew what a challenging process it was.
• Overlapping with Meme Acknowledgement, Hajime Tabata, director of Final Fantasy XV, saw memes of people photoshopping an image of the game's main characters in the car looking out the left, with something behind them. He thought it was hilarious — and then released high-quality images for people to make memes out of.
• Kathy Griffin used to tell a story in her stand-up about guest-appearing on Seinfeld and annoying Jerry asking him to record a message for a party she was hosting. Larry David showed the bit to Jerry later, and Jerry immediately asked they incorporate the story into the show somehow.
  • When Julia Louis-Dreyfus was pregnant, she was discussing with the producers how to cover it up until she gave birth. Jerry suggested they just say her character had gotten really fat out of nowhere. She was really upset by the suggestion at the time, but acknowledged years later they totally should have done it.
• At a Lana Del Rey concert, one guy in the audience yelled at the top of his lungs, "Lana, SIT ON MY FAAAAAAAAACE!" Lana proceeded to absolutely lose it and crack up laughing on stage, along with the rest of the audience.
• Gone Girl features, as a supporting character, a jerkass tabloid hack named Ellen Abbott who relentlessly hounds Nick over his wife Amy's disappearance, and refuses to apologize for leading a media crusade against him even after it turns out that Amy faked her disappearance in order to ruin Nick's life. In the film adaptation, she was played by Missi Pyle as a very thinly-veiled, unflattering parody of former prosecutor turned talk show host Nancy Grace... and reportedly, the real Grace loved the character and thought it was hilarious, saying that she felt "flattered" by the portrayal and even remarking that the scene of Abbott's on-air grilling of Nick seemed to based on her own on-air analysis of the Scott Peterson case. The only point she criticized was that she thought Abbott's necklaces were "way too tasteful".
• James Milner's reputation for being controversy-free has undergone Memetic Mutation via the 'Boring James Milner' spoof Twitter account. He's not above poking fun at himself by reading some of these tweets out loud.
• During the 2002-03 English Premier League season, Howard Wilkinson was having a terrible time as manager of Sunderland. During the press conference after a particularly abject performance, Wilkinson got upset at the criticism he was receiving from the gathered journalists, and angrily asked them how many England caps they had. One of the assembled reporters just happened to be 1966 World Cup winner Jimmy Armfield, who promptly shot back, "Forty-three, actually, Howard."^note For the record, this is 43 more than Wilkinson. The journalists burst out laughing — and so did Wilkinson.
• During a match in August 2003, Birmingham's Robbie Savage was accidentally clotheslined by referee Matt Messias as he signalled for a free kick. As the TV cameras focused on Messias and another Birmingham player laughing the incident off, the commentators wondered whether Savage, a notorious "hard man", would also see the funny side — cut to Savage lying on the ground laughing his head off. To top it all off, Alan Shearer then stole Messias' red card and pretended to send him off, which Messias found equally hilarious.
• During a match against Tottenham Hotspur in December 2023, Manchester City's Erling Haaland was fouled as he played a pass to Jack Grealish. Instead of playing advantage, with Grealish clean through on goal, referee Simon Hooper controversially gave City a free kick instead. City were incensed, especially after the match ended in a 3-3 draw, with Haaland in particular seen furiously screaming at Hooper. The following day, Haaland retweeted a "The Scream" Parody featuring his screaming reaction, noting that it was the first thing to make him smile since the incident occurred.
• The Furry Fandom actually liked CollegeHumor's Furry Force series, which was intended to make fun of the sexual parts of the Furry Fandom. The second and third parts came about from suggestions they made for it, even.
• In 2012, a middle school class decided to take advantage of the alleged apocalypse and prank their teacher. On the fated day, one student signaled to the others by coughing loudly in the middle of class, prompting everyone to collapse to the floor in unison, much to their teacher's bewilderment. Once he got over his initial shock, his response was uproarious laughter, having to practically force himself to order his students to, "Stop being dead right now!". Here's the video if you're curious.
• When Stephen Colbert infamously appeared at the 2006 White House Correspondent's Dinner and more-or-less lit the entire room on fire, most of his targets were so quiet you could barely hear a pin drop... except for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who visibly had a humongous grin on his face when he came under Colbert's crosshairs.
• A throwaway line in Scream (1996) was about who would play Sidney Prescott in a movie. Sidney says "with my luck they'd cast Tori Spelling". Tori Spelling found the gag funny and sure enough in Scream 2 the Film Within a Film (based on the first's events) she plays Sidney.
• Mel Brooks recounted an experience where he played on a celebrity week of the game show Eye Guess in 1966. Unaware that host Bill Cullen survived a childhood bout with polio and was in a motorcycle accident in his teenage years, Brooks decided to imitate his jerky walk. Though Brooks was dismayed when he found out, Cullen liked it, telling him he wished more people wouldn't have pity on him for the way he walked.
• Not the Nine O'Clock News did a sketch parodying The Two Ronnies titled "The Two Ninnies". Ronnie Corbett found it hilarious. ^note  Although he was slightly put out that it had appeared on The BBC, and told Mel Smith himself when they were at a BBC party a few months later the he would have preferred it if they'd found a way to do it on ITV. Luckily, Ronnie expressed this in such a way that Mel's worries about bumping into Ronnie were completely put to rest, and they spent the rest of the party talking about comedy and Rugby
• While filming The Breakfast Club, John Kapelos warned the young actors not to go too far, reminding them that Martin Sheen had a heart attack while filming Apocalypse Now... unaware that Emilio Estevez was Sheen's son. Estevez was offended, Kapelos apologised, and the incident was forgotten, but he still felt awful about it. Years later, Kapelos appeared opposite Sheen in The West Wing and recounted the incident, prompting Sheen to burst out laughing.
• Being a chap with a good sense of humour, Roger Moore appreciated a parody of him, such as on Spitting Image.
  • While making The Persuaders!, Tony Curtis was in a bad mood and yelling at people, to which Moore grabbed him and said, "To think those lips once kissed Piper Laurie." This caused the whole crew to burst out laughing, including Curtis.
  • While filming The Man with the Golden Gun in Thailand, Moore came across a cave filled with bats. Moore turned to Christopher Lee and said, "Master, they are yours to command". Lee, who was trying to avoid being typecast as Dracula, appreciated the joke, answering with "Not now, Stanislaus".
  • Speaking of Lee, while filming his duel with Yoda in Attack of the Clones, the crew played a prank on him by showing him a Yoda model with Dracula fangs. Lee found it amusing.
• Doctor Who writer Terrance Dicks was so annoyed at the changes Robert Holmes made to his script for "The Brain of Morbius" that he requested that his name be taken off it. When Holmes asked what pseudonym he wanted, Dicks replied that any bland one will do. He was greatly amused to read that the story was credited to Robin Bland.
• South African cricketer Daryll Cullinan's batting average against Australia was just over a quarter of his overall average on account of being Shane Warne's "bunny" — that is to say he couldn't handle his bowling. In 1997, Warne, in the field, repeatedly said to Cullinan, "Don't you dare get out, Daryll. I've been waiting four years to get you again." ^note Warne missed his opportunity, but succeeded in South Africa's second innings, leading to Cullinan being dropped for the remainder of the series, just as had happened four years earlier Cullinan eventually replied, "And it looks like you've been spending it eating." Warne laughed and said, "Not bad from you, Daryll. Not bad."
• This exchange on Twitter, between '90s footballers Matt Le Tissier (formerly of Southampton), who is something of a Troll, and Kevin Pressman (formerly of Sheffield Wednesday):
  Pressman: (posting a panoramic view of Hillsborough, Sheffield Wednesday's ground) Memories...
  Le Tissier: Of the penalties I put past you there?
  Pressman: Thanks for that. At least I helped your career lol.
• Abraham Lincoln went on record as calling the Beefsteak Raid, which inspired the film Alvarez Kelly, "the slickest piece of cattle stealing I ever heard of".
• Professional baseball pitcher Bob Cain reportedly laughed his head off when he was made to pitch to 3'7" Eddie Gaedel, and was later the only MLB personnel member to attend his funeral.
• When John Wayne was asked to verify the Urban Legend concerning him and the movie The Greatest Story Ever Told (where he accidentally proclaimed "Aw, truly this was the Son of God!" when asked for more reverence -- "awe"), he denied it, but found the story hilarious.
• Reportedly, this was the cause of John Romero's Creator Cameo in Doom II. The designers were annoyed at him, and put his severed head in the game as a Take That!. Romero thought it was funny, and even recorded a Sdrawkcab Speech line that would be used for the game's final boss ("To win the game, you must kill me, John Romero").
• For the 2016 Olympic Games, Great Britain decided to issue all of their athletes matching luggage to further promote an image of national/team spirit. When the flaw in this plan became apparent, the team's official Twitter account went in on the joke even though it was highlighting their own mistake.
• English comedian Les Dawson made a career out of telling mother-in-law jokes. His own mother-in-law thought they were hilarious.
• One of Christopher Titus' jokes pokes fun of the fact that his father- and brother-in-law from his second marriage are both in law enforcement by indicating that if his second marriage fails, he'll be on the evening news as a corpse whose demise has law enforcement completely baffled. Both men took the joke in good humor and then turned the joke around by explaining that no one will find Titus's body. Chris doesn't think they're joking.
• Chuck Norris was quite flattered and amused by the countless "Chuck Norris Facts" ascribed to him, so much so that he capitalised on the meme by incorporating it in some of his works, among them a Gameloft mobile game based on the actor, a book ^note The Official Chuck Norris Fact Book: 101 of Chuck's Favorite Facts and Stories and a reference in The Expendables 2. Being a staunchly conservative Christian, he doesn't take kindly to those facts which make irreverent references to God and/or Jesus Christ.
• In 1951, Screenwriter and producer Paul Jarrico was embroiled in legal conflict with Howard Hughes, who had fired Jarrico from The Las Vegas Story, for which he had written the script, over Jarrico's Communist sympathies. During a hearing in the case, Jarrico's lawyer got a shot in at Hughes by quoting a Times article from 1948, that said that Hughes would "never die in an airplane, he'll die at the hands of a woman with a .38!" Hughes' lawyer protested this, but Hughes himself, who was present at the hearing, reacted by laughing heartily at the quip.
• Michael Caine found Paul Whitehouse's impersonation of him on Harry Enfield and Chums (Michael Pain) to be very amusing.
• Canadian Politics: New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton was once laying into the Conservative government's predilection for subsidizing fossil fuel companies when he had a slip of the tongue, inveighing against the Conservatives' chumminess with "Big Oil and Big Ass — uh, Big Gas..." When the laughter died down, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, not usually known for his wit, straight-facedly answered, "Mr. Speaker, we promise to get to the bottom of it." Even the New Democrats joined in the second gale of laughter that ensued. See it for yourself here.
• Steve Irwin of Crocodile Hunter fame caught a whole lot of flack in 2004 for feeding a crocodile while holding his son Rob. His wife Terri acknowledged the headline, "Steve Irwin: Australian For 'Stupid,'" but said her favorite was "Crocky Horror Picture Show."
• Opening Night 1959 at the old Metropolitan Opera House was a new production of Verdi's Il trovatore. As the Count di Luna, Leonard Warren was costumed in, among other things, a hat adorned with bright red plumes. When he asked Zinka Milanov (herself a veteran Leonora, but not the one he was singing opposite^note It was Antonietta Stella who sang Leonora that night.) how he looked, Milanov laughed at him and said that he looked like a rooster. Then, Leonard Warren laughed at himself.
  • Speaking of Il trovatore, Placido Domingo has recounted an incident in his youth, where his (presumed dead) hero Manrico was to swing onstage on a rope, Douglas Fairbanks - style, and rescue the soprano. During the first rehearsal, he misjudged the distance and crashed painfully to the floor, but managed to get up and signal to the rest of the cast that he could continue. The soprano then changed her line "Have you descended from Heaven?" to "Have you plummeted down from Heaven?" and then he had to sing through pain and laughter combined.
• Cricketer Ashley Giles found that mugs created for his Testimonial were printed as "King of Spain" instead of "King of Spin". But instead of getting on his high horse, Giles asked whether they could print more mugs with that mistake on it, and was nicknamed "The King Of Spain" by fans ever since. But don't ever compare him to a Wheelie Bin...^note  He also received a letter from the real King of Spain, imploring him - in jest, of course - not to commit lese-majesty. Giles found this hilarious and the letter is one of his prized possessions
• A rare example of this backfiring is when Joe Garden, a former writer for The Onion, regrets having helped craft the site's satirical portrayal of Joe Biden, namely the "Diamond Joe" persona of the cool uncle who owns a Trans Am and a Harley and eagerly partakes in the "finer" things in life (Hair Metal, sexy barbarian women, good weed). He felt that it went soft on his actual politics, and that the first red flag that The Onion's Biden parody wasn't cutting deep enough was him finding out that people in the White House, Biden included, were huge fans of it.
• Jeff Dunham is huge in the Middle East, and his "Achmed the Dead Terrorist"-routine regularly sells out halls in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
• In 1831 "The Lion of the West", a thinly veiled satire about the life of Davy Crockett, opened in New York. According to legend, Crockett himself was in the audience on opening night, and laughed uproariously.
• When Gareth Chilcott at a rugby dinner introduced French rugby union legend Jean Condom as "Jean Willywarmer", the room went quiet, as Condom was a notorious tough-guy with a bit of a temper. Cue Condom bounding on stage with a big cheesy grin on his face and a joke about how willywarmers are technically illegal in France. He did give Chilcott a friendly knuckle rub though...
• Aristophanes' play The Clouds makes fun of several Athenian figures of the time, but most notably to a modern audience the philosopher Socrates. According to legend, Socrates rose and waved to the crowd during the premiere of the play to show how it didn't bother him in the slightest.
• Nicki Minaj retweeted "Super Balls" - Stephen Colbert's parody of Super Bass that makes fun of her tweet that spread Covid 19 misinformation.
• Filmmaker Vincent Gallo ended up in a series of Volleying Insults with Roger Ebert following the premiere of the widely-panned cut of The Brown Bunny shown at 2003's Cannes Film Festival. Ebert sparked the flames by declaring it "the worst film in the history of Cannes", with Gallo firing back by calling Ebert "a fat pig with the physique of a slave trader." At one point in their back-and-forth, Gallo claimed to have put a hex on Ebert's colon, but when Ebert quipped — having actually gotten fresh out from a colonoscopy — that watching the recording of the process "was more entertaining than The Brown Bunny", Gallo ended up finding it amusing, to the point that he realized that their whole feud had descended into total farce and decided to make up.
• The Power Mac G4's design attracted some pretty weird comparisons in its day, including to a box of Kleenex tissues. Jony Ive and the rest of the design team seemed amused enough that they started using spare G4 Cube shells for just that purpose.
• John Landis was so worried that the black bar scene in Animal House^note "Those negroes stole our dates!" would be seen as racist that he showed the scene to Richard Pryor. He found the scene hilarious and said, "White people are crazy".
• On July 19, 1986, Tim Teufel celebrated the birth of his son by going out for drinks with New York Mets teammates Ron Darling, Bob Ojeda, and Rick Aguilera. All four were arrested for brawling with off-duty police officers and were bailed out the following morning. The rest of the team put duct tape on their lockers to simulate holding cells. When Tim saw this, he started ripping the tape off his locker in rage. He then broke down in laughter when he saw the rest of the club laughing.
• Dan Rather laughed at a Family Guy clip that made fun of his lisp when he first saw it.
• In the King of the Hill episode "The Son That Got Away", Hank Hill tries to talk his son Bobby out of becoming a comedian by claiming ""Weird Al" Yankovic blew his brains out in the late 80s after people stopped buying his albums". Al himself loves the scene and often plays it at his concerts.
• After infamous Troll Frank Hassle drove to boogie2988's house and threatened him Boogie2988 fired a warning shot to get him to leave. After the image went viral and the ordeal Boogie2988 encouraged people to send him memes of that screenshot to cheer him up.
• In 2016, the popular open-source disk cleaner BleachBit was caught up in controversy when it was used by Hillary Clinton's staff during the 2016 email scandal. Despite the serious implications brought about by the scandal (which was one of the factors that contributed to the derailment of Clinton's presidential ambitions), BleachBit author Andrew Ziem took this in stride and released merchandise to poke fun at the controversy involving his software.
• Anthony Fantano seemed to enjoy Ryantheleader's sketch "Living with Anthony Fantano" with his comment being a bunch of laughing emojis.
• In 1988, then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton gave an overly-long speech at the Democratic National Convention, an act which subjected him to much mockery. The following week, on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Johnny Carson started his interview with Clinton by setting an hourglass on his desk, an act that amused him.
• During the development of Family Ties, NBC Entertainment president Brandon Tartikoff was skeptical of casting Michael J. Fox as Alex P. Keaton, relenting only when creator and executive producer Gary David Goldberg fought hard for him. Tartikoff insisted that his was "not the kind of face you'll ever see on a lunch box". Fast forward a few years to 1985, and Fox personally sent a Back to the Future lunch box with, you guessed it, Marty McFly's face on it, and a note saying "Brandon, they wanted me to put a crow in here but... Love and Kisses, Michael J." Tartikoff took the gesture in stride and kept the lunchbox on display in his office.
• The Swiss footballer Bernt Haas was a much loved right-back for West Bromwich Albion, and inspired the "Ooh, ah, I've gone and Bernt my Haas" chant amongst both WBA and away fans. Although Bernt was puzzled by it at first, he found it hilarious once it was explained to him, and would occasionally "conduct" the chanting with a big beaming smile on his face.
• The Boys (2019) took a pretty big swing at Zack Snyder with its In-Universe movie "Dawn of the Seven" parodying much of Zack Snyder's Justice League, including by posting #ReleaseTheBourkeCut on Twitter. Snyder himself took the joke in stride and even played along by congratulating the movie's fake director, complete with saying he's excited to "see your vision realized" (a phrase he had often used regarding the making of his own movie).
• "On the Coke Again", the Queens of Pop's parody of "Whole Again" by Atomic Kitten, pokes fun at band member Kerry Katona's turbulent, tabloid-grabbing past. It might seem pretty harsh until you realize that it's actually how Kerry became a fan of the Queens of Pop.
• In 1992, Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating was asked by Opposition Leader John Hewson why he wasn't going to call an early election. Keating's response was a downright gleeful "because, mate, I wanna do you slowly." In sharp contrast to the raucous laughter from Keating's side of the hall, the Opposition remained completely stone-faced... all except Hewson, who actually laughed.
• Reports have it that, when the "PTV" episode of Family Guy was screened for censors, the FCC representatives enjoyed and even applauded the "Villain Sucks" Song "The Fellas at the Freakin' FCC", aimed directly at them.
• During the Three Kingdoms period, after Zhuge Liang of Shu died on a campaign, the enemy general Sima Yi of Wei gave chase to the retreating Shu forces, only for them to form up to fight. Clearly assuming they had an actual plan, Yi retreated his troops and only later concluded that Liang had indeed passed away before giving chase again (unlike the Romance of the Three Kingdoms account, the actual event did not involve a wooden effigy of Zhuge Liang). When he heard on his chase that "A dead Zhuge scared away a live Zhongda^note "Zhongda" being Sima Yi's courtesy name" had become a common saying among the locals, Yi's response was reportedly to laugh and quip "I can predict the thoughts of the living, but I cannot predict the dead."
• In January of 2024 after GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out of the presidential primary and Donald Trump implied he was planning to appoint him to a cabinet position, the Babylon Bee posted a joke announcement of Trump appointing Vivek to be the manager of the White House 7-Eleven. The joke received backlash online for being rooted in stereotypes, but Vivek himself thought it was funny and made a post on Twitter telling his supporters to stop getting offended on his behalf.
• This famous photo of Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out is a case of this trope. Einstein was attending a birthday party in his honor at Princeton University and eventually got tired of having to smile for reporters all day; when he saw a throng of even more paparazzi approaching his car as he was trying to leave, he grumpily stuck his tongue out at them instead and sped away. Arthur Sasse, one of the photographers, snapped a photo of the moment and shared it. As it happens, Einstein thought the photo was hilarious and asked for copies so he could use them as greeting cards, prompting Sasse to trademark the photo for wider distribution.

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