Funny / Cheating Death: Those That Lived

• The fact that Pliny slept through the majority of her Games, and President Orion's increasingly wild temper tantrums thrown in response to this.
• In Fir's chapter, she wonders What Would X Do? to channel the survival skills of her Parental Substitute and ends up looking for the nearest bar (the arena is an abandoned city). She uses the bar counter as a comedy club stage and, after running out of puns of her own, asks the Capitol audience if they have any requests. They send a note asking for political jokes, and spend three hours finding her jokes about dictatorships Actually Pretty Funny. Then Fir mentions Pliny and the 2nd Hunger Games and Orion immediately orders the Gamemakers to destroy the bar, with Fir barely escaping.
  Fir: Gee, tough crowd.
• In Crystal's chapter:
  • After her first meeting with the warm-hearted Harp, Crystal thinks that her grandfather was right when he said the nobles of their district were alright. The narration notes that he did say that, but Crystal misunderstood the meaning of that comment due to being Sarcasm-Blind.
  • During the interviews, Crystal regales the audience with a story of battling a mutated plant monster, which is really a grossly exaggerated version of a time she removed a dandelion from her back yard.
  • Crystal is almost as big of a Motor Mouth as her future fellow Victor Crown while she makes one logical leap after another while trying to outwit a Riddling Sphinx that will eat her and her allies if they get a question wrong. After she solves the riddle, the sphinx lets them pass, but says that her deduction was "far more complicated than it had any right being."
• In Crown's chapter:
  • During his pre-Games interview, Crown rambles about how someone who he thinks was either a werewolf or a furry once stopped at his candy store to order blood-flavored gummies.
  • The subtitle makers for the Games are described as having an unbearable time following Crown due to his Motor Mouth tendencies.
• Crazy Survivalist Dollar making a speech about the danger of zombies during the tribute parade causes one of the trainers who selected her as tribute to drink himself into a coma out of embarrassment.
• In Beetee's chapter:
  • A District 7 sponsor fondly recalls a night of partying with Percussive Pickpocket Jack and then wonders what happened to her wallet.
  • There is a Running Gag about the gambler who favors District 9 stuffing himself with bread too much to pay attention to anything else in Beetee's chapter.
  • District 10's sponsor keeps hoping that the tributes will be furries like him.
• According to legend, in Porter's Games, a sponsor sent a Snickers bar to Fisher while he was raging in a cave where Dezz and Porter stayed a previous night, with a note telling him that he was being a "right diva" from being hungry and should just take a bite of the chocolate bar.
• After Spool celebrates with Tag over his victory, the latter sheepishly admits their parents already know about the Twin Switch and that Spool's now grounded.
• The sadistic Tabbock gets a Crosses the Line Twice moment when he turns one of his victims into a Dead Guy Puppet (or rather, unconscious guy puppet).
  Tabbock: What's your name, son?
  Tabbock: (using ventriloquism to make it sound like his victim is talking) I'm District 10 male.
  Tabbock: (back in his normal voice) What a name only a mother could love. Would you like to fly?
  Tabbock: (using ventriloquism to sound like the other tribute again) Oh yes[,] sir, yes please.
• Everything about Chaff being a Teacher's Pet with implied OCD is Played for Laughs in a Refuge in Audacity way, such as when vulture mutts are chasing him and Chaff yells at the cameras that this is scientifically incorrect due to how vultures only eat dead bodies. The annoyed Gamemakers only send more mutts after him and program them to peck harder.
  • At one point, Chaff says Snow's beard looks like an albino hedgehog stuck to his head. Bear comments he should've insulted his mother.
• Every time Neon Erg engages in Dirty Coward screaming while being chased by an angry mob of female tributes he made unwelcome passes at is used for comedic effect.
• Brutus accidentally head-butting President Snow during the Victor's crowning ceremony. In front of the entire country, on live television.
• During the Second Quarter Quell, Attention Whore Stage Magician Tabbock gets Teff to be his Lovely Assistant for a magic show for their uninterested tributes. Mizar and Gwenith slip away to talk rebel business and then say they should go back before "Teff tries to strangle Tabbock again", and sure enough, she is attempting to do so once they return to the room.
• Blight's chapter has quite a few gems:
  • The narrator proves themself to be just as snarky as Blight:
    Blight swung through the trees like a sort of monkey with the furious tracker jacker in hot pursuit. On the ground far below[,] they were hopelessly tailed by the rest of the disposal crew and the peacekeepers. Some wanted to save Blight and others wanted some cheap tea time entertainment. No prizes would be awarded for anybody who guessed which was which.
  • The first time Blight gets stung by a tracker jacker somehow turns into Crosses the Line Twice territory:
    From the perspective of his fellow removal staff and the peacekeepers[,] it seemed like Blight was either drunk, drugged or both as he stumbled around in a mad circle. He soon eyed them the same way a cow might look at an oncoming train.
    From Blight's perspective[,] it seemed like a crowd of jelly babies standing upon an island made out of toast were giving him the evil eye.
    After all, tracker jackers did cause particularly powerful hallucinations...
    "Go jump off a cliff[,] general jelly!" Blight slurred, pointing accusingly at the peacekeeper he'd been messing with mere minutes ago.
  • At Blight's reaping, he notices a large "hive" (actually nest) of tracker jackers growing on a tree to next to the twelve-year-old girls' section of the square, and tells the escort who read his name out to wait for him to remove the nest before anyone else ends up dying. When one lone tracker jacker ultimately escapes, it laser-focuses on Blight as he runs for seven minutes and ten seconds through the square, ignoring "literally every single one of the hundreds of other targets in its path".
  • In his first day in the arena, Blight gets stung by another tracker jacker, and proceeds to babble "absolute nonsense about strawberries of friendship and something about seeing four dozen peacekeepers in flaming bikinis".
  • Blight's bungled attempt at trying to form an alliance with one of the sole remaining outliers is best described as deserving of a gold star saying "YOU TRIED" in Comic Sans MS font:
    "Greetings[,] comrade!" Blight exclaimed as soon as he saw the boy [from Eleven]. "Wanna be allies? There are four careers out there who need a good killing and I think if we work together[,] one of us might be able to fuck the reaper and, you know, live."
    Blight would later admit he probably should have seen it coming when the boy tried to murder him then and there.
    The fact the boy had been holding a short sword soaked in blood probably should have served as a slight giveaway.
  • The resultant fight ends with Blight throwing the boy from Eleven into a tree, dislodging a tracker jacker nest in the process. Naturally, there had to be one mutant wasp that chased after him and stung him.
    Blight: (biting into his sleeve while trying to cauterize a serious wound) Nrrggghhh! To burn is to live! To bleed is to tell the reaper to suck it!
  • Blight's final showdown against the Careers involves him lobbing a nest of collected tracker jackers at the four. While Ferrus, the boy from Two, manages to evade the brunt of the swarm, he and Blight end up having some... interesting hallucinations:
    The boys didn't see the lack of anything that the nation did. They believed they were fighting against some disco raptors that only spoke in [M]orse code as the sky turned to fire around them.
• Arendellian's chapter has a couple of laughs:
  • A brief mention is made of her having to be removed from the ceiling fan after her Freak Out over being prepared for the tribute parade.
  • Bonus points for her stylist having just as big of a Freak Out over a small cut on his cheek.
  • Caesar "interviewing" Arendellian's imaginary friend after her stage-fright makes her refuse to do the interview herself.
  • In a Guardians of the Galaxy Shout-Out, a tribute named Groot is too scared to say anything besides his own name.
• Pasture, being a Cloud Cuckoo Lander, is a walking, talking Large Ham Funny Moment, most prominently seen in the first time she threatened her fellow competitors with beating them to death with her shoe... though it becomes less funny and more awesome when she actually goes through with it.
  • Following her win, both Lammy and Stallion realize this crazy girl is gonna be their new neighbor in the Victors' Village, and plan to prepare accordingly to avoid getting a shoe in the face.
• Pasture is just as much of a Large Ham while mentoring Skinner as she was in her own Games, while also showing a bit more of a snarky side. She gives reporters who interview her nicknames like "man-of-much-ego" and "man of much pink hair and little in the upstairs", and goes off on the occasional silly tangent like how the Feast was the "Worst feast ever" due to not having any meat.
• Katniss and Peeta are not fans of Numi's music. During her Victor Tour, she made Prim cry when she visited Twelve and Peeta adds that Gale actually likes it.
  • Upon realizing Numi is among the surviving Victors, the two immediately agreed to cover their ears.

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