Genius Bonus / Jokes

Genius Bonus jokes are hilarious to those in the know, however they are notorious for having to be explained to folks who simply don't know the reference. That makes these jokes specific to certain crowds because of Don't Explain the Joke.

Some below jokes span several categories.

History Genius Bonus

• A new preacher comes to a small town on a Friday, and decides it would be a good idea to visit each member of his congregation at home to get to know them before Sunday's service. All goes well until he comes to one house. The preacher knocks, and rings the door bell, but even though the lights are on and activity can be seen inside, no one answers the door. Exasperated, but deciding it's best not to bother them, the preacher takes a card out of his pocket and writes "Revelation 3:20"^note Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me. on it, before slipping it under the door and leaving. Come Sunday, after finishing his sermon at the local church, the preacher finds the card in his collection basket, and sees that the resident of the house has written "Genesis 3:10".^note I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked.
• If your Tesla^note a brand of electric car gets stolen, does it become an Edison?^note Thomas Edison was once believed to have stolen many of Nikola Telsa's ideas.

Math Genius Bonus

• An inappropriate 9/11 joke relies on a person's knowledge of geometry, generally above Lowest Common Denominator knowledge:
  Q: When does a pentagon only have four sides?
  A: When it's bisected by a plane.
• When the Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat, Noah told all the animals to go forth and multiply. The animals all went on their way except the snakes, who slithered up to Noah and said "But Noah, we can't multiply, we're adders."^note "Adder" is both a term for snakes and people who add things up in math. Noah picked up the snakes and took them into the ark, placing them on the rough-hewn furniture, telling them "Even adders can multiply on a log table!"^note A table made of logs and a logarithmic table.
  • A variant of the joke has the snakes ask Noah to cut down some trees for them and later explain that "We're adders. We need logs to multiply."
• A Denver pizza restaurant near a university had this sign: R𝜋R^2note "Our pie are square."
• An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first asks for a pint of beer. The second asks for a half pint. The third for a quarter pint. The fourth for an eighth pint. The fifth for a sixteenth pint. This goes on for a bit until the bartender slams his fist down on the bar and says "You mathematicians need to know your limits!"^note A limit is a value that becomes so infinitely small it can be discarded or ignored, and "knowing your limit" is knowing how much you can drink and still function.
  • A variant of this joke goes like this: An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first mathematician orders a beer. The second orders half a beer. "I don't serve half-beers" the bartender replies. "Excuse me?" asks mathematician #2. "What kind of bar serves half-beers?" The bartender remarks. "That's ridiculous." "Oh c'mon," says mathematician #1. "Do you know how hard it is to collect an infinite number of us? Just play along!" "There are very strict laws on how I can serve drinks. I couldn't serve you half a beer even if I wanted to." "But that's not a problem" mathematician #3 chimes in "at the end of the joke you serve us a whole number of beers. You see, when you take the sum of a continuously halving function-" "I know how limits work" interjects the bartender. "Oh, alright then. I didn't want to assume a bartender would be familiar with such advanced mathematics." "Are you kidding me?" The bartender replies, "you learn limits in like, 9th grade! What kind of mathematician thinks limits are advanced mathematics?" "HE'S ON TO US" mathematician #1 screeches. Simultaneously, every mathematician opens their mouth and out pours a cloud of multicolored mosquitoes. Each mathematician is bellowing insects of a different shade. The mosquitoes form into a singular, polychromatic swarm. "FOOLS" it booms in unison, "I WILL INFECT EVERY BEING ON THIS PATHETIC PLANET WITH MALARIA!" The bartender stands fearless against the technicolor horde. "But wait" he interrupts, thinking fast, "if you do that, politicians will use the catastrophe as an excuse to implement free healthcare. Think of how much that will hurt the taxpayers!" The mosquitoes fall silent for a brief moment. "My God, you're right. We didn't think about the economy! Very well, we will not attack this dimension. FOR THE TAXPAYERS!" and with that, they vanish. A nearby barfly stumbles over to the bartender. "How did you know that that would work?" "It's simple really," the bartender says. "I saw that the vectors formed a gradient, and therefore must be conservative." ^note A mosquito is a vector of disease transmission. "Gradient" can refer to a gradual change of color. In vector calculus, a conservative vector field is a vector field that is the gradient of some function.
• Why do programmers get Halloween and Christmas confused? Because OCT 31= DEC 25 ^note 31 in octal (base 8, which is often used by programmers) is equal to 25 in decimal (base 10, the base we normally use.)

Chemistry Genius Bonus

• Two chemists walk into a bar. The first says "I'll have a glass of H₂O". The second gives the first a weird look and says "I'll have a glass of water too." The first chemist, angry that his murderous plot failed, drinks on in silence.^note He wanted the other guy to say, "I'll have a glass of H₂O too." in which case, he'd get a glass of H₂O₂, or Hydrogen peroxide.

Grammar/Language Genius Bonus

• There's a grammar joke that goes like this:
  Sex. Sex. Sex. Sex (Oh, Crap!)^note The joke being that the periods after each "sex" are menstrual periods, the lack of one at the end implying a Surprise Pregnancy.
• A businessman arriving in Boston for a convention found that his first evening was free, and he decided to go find a good seafood restaurant that served scrod, a Massachusetts specialty^note  it's a kind of ocean fish that can actually be found all over the Eastern seaboard and indeed in Europe, but "scrod" is simply the local name for it. The word rhymes with "squad", not "crud" or "strode". If you're from the West Coast or Asia though, it's a must-try dish. Getting into a taxi, he asked the cab driver, "Do you know where I can get scrod?" "Sure," said the cabdriver. "I know a few places... but I can tell you it's not often I hear someone ask that question in the third-person pluperfect indicative!"^note There's actually a lot of debate among grammar nerds over what is the actual proper name for using "screwed" in this sentence (The last time any English-speaker conjugated a verb in the pluperfect was probably when Massachusetts was still a Colony: so this is obscure even by grammar nerd standards), but if you're telling jokes, most Genius Bonus people will get it's a play on obscure grammar.
• A Roman (in other versions: a Classical philologist) walks into a bar and orders a 'Martinus'. The bartender asks, "Surely you mean a Martini?" The man replies, "I would have told you if I wanted two!"
• Another similar joke has a beaten up Latin professor complaining he was assaulted by a pair of hoodla.

Philosophy Genius Bonus

• Is it solipsistic^note The belief that only the self exists in here, or is it just me?

• Russian political humor practically runs on this, because you have to know the popular caricatures of every Russian leader since like 1900 in order for the punchlines to make any sense. If you don't know, they are just weird and sometimes don't even sound like jokes. If you do know, they're so hilarious it's practically impossible to be mad even if the joke is skewering a politician you agree with. Unfortunately, the humor can tend to be lost in translation since much of it operates via puns that may only work in Russian: so English-language publications talking about the jokes usually have to Explain The Joke.
  • Although not actually Russian-made, the popular YouTube video Complete History Of The Soviet Union Arranged To The Melody Of Tetris (link) is a good example of how Russian political humor works (but in a way that an average non-Russian can understand).

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