Brick Joke

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"See, only made you wait a year before explaining what was up with that."

— The Adventures of Dr. McNinja

Named after an old joke, which seems at first blush to be a pair of unrelated jokes. At the end of the first joke, a brick is tossed away, leaving the confused listener without a punchline. At the end of the second joke, the brick returns and the listener falls on the floor laughing. For bonus points, the teller can tell an actual unrelated joke in between. Sometimes, the Brick Joke structure of introducing a seemingly irrelevant feature, only to return to it much later, after the audience has largely forgotten about it, can be used for drama as well as comedy; when that feature was a joke, it's known as Chekhov's Gag.

Popularized in early 20th-century Newspaper Comics by Krazy Kat. In a masterclass on playwriting, Alan Ayckbourn mentions this trope specifically, calling it "The Plant". Early on, one of his two demonstration actors mentions that he has an urge to sneeze when sexually aroused. Then at the very end:

Actress: Do you think we could become more than friends?
Actor: Aaaachoo!

The Stinger usually consists of one. Contrast All There in the Stinger, when the Stinger contains information that's vital to understanding the plot. Compare and Contrast with the Overly Long Gag, where the humor is in how long it takes to get to the punchline, as well as Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, which the setup of a Brick Joke can easily resemble until the punchline is delivered^note. See also Late to the Punchline, which is where a character who doesn't get a joke finally gets it, making it a kind of Brick Joke for that character. See Comeback Tomorrow if the character finally delivers their late comeback to a confused opponent. See also Something We Forgot and "Shaggy Dog" Story.

*throws brick in the air, the brick does not come down.*

Example subpages:

Other examples:

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Advertising

There were two different "The World is Just Awesome" ads run by the Discovery Channel. The MythBusters make an appearance in both of them. In the first, Adam lights Jamie's arm on fire (at about :50). In the second, at about :32 in, Adam's tied up in a cauldron, which Jamie has just lit a fire underneath.
- The Discovery Channel had an ad for Shark Week 2013 that featured a seal named Snuffy being released back into ocean, only to be eaten a Great White Shark. One year later, a fisherman managed to capture the shark, who then proceeds to puke Snuffy up, none the worse for wear.
One ESPN commercial about Shaquille O'Neal and Scrabble premiered when he was playing for the Phoenix Suns, in 2008. In October 2009, after he had signed with the Cleveland Cavaliers, this commercial aired. The videos are filled with other gags if you notice them, such as different analysts in the commercials suggest that he plays Scrabble the same way every game.
In a Swedish women's magazine, there was an ad for "mini-baguettes", baguettes you baked in the oven. It said: "If you put six mini-baguettes in the oven now..." About ten pages later, there was another ad for them, saying "...they'll be done by now."
In the US, AT&T wireless aired a commercial boasting about how extensive their service is. The announcer starts flipping through postcards of places they cover onto an 8-foot-wide map of the US on the floor. The commercial ends. You think that's the end, but three or four commercials later it cuts back to the man. He's still flipping the postcards, and the map is nearly covered.
The 2011 Volkswagen Super Bowl commercial displays a kid dressed up as Darth Vader. The 2012 Volkswagen commercial displays a fat dog that gets fit...and Darth Vader choking a viewer for saying it was cuter than him.
Hulu had an ad for a Toyota vehicle that was excited about the "limited commercial interruption". The woman in the commercial asks, "Have you ever seen a 5-second ad before?" When it gets to the first commercial break...
Woman from earlier: Mashed potatoes...oh, you're back! Does this mean it's time for the 5-second a— [commercial ends]
A magazine ad from 1977 shows two adjacent mansions (one of which looks remarkably similar to a mini-White House) and two distant human silhouettes in one of the doorways. The ad copy reads: "I was wondering if I could possibly borrow a cup of Johnnie Walker Black Label."◊ About 10 years later, another ad appeared with the same two mansions, but this time with the human figures in the other doorway, and the copy reading:
"I was wondering if you could possibly return the cup of Johnnie Walker Black Label you borrowed."◊
Polaner All Fruit preserves makes a ten year Brick Joke, starting with this commercial in 1989, and ending with this one in 1999.
One with a shorter payoff was a pair of commercials for Grey Poupon mustard, both of which were doing a Call-Back to the original advertising campaign (featuring two men in luxury cars, one borrowing the mustard from the other). In the first, after the "Do you have any Grey Poupon?" "But of course," exchange, the borrower accidentally drops the jar of mustard in the road, and both look down at the now-lost mustard. In the second, when the borrower once again asks the exchange, the one with the mustard treats the expected response as a Mathematician's Answer and motions his chauffeur to continue driving, clearly not wanting to lose his mustard again.
An anti-smoking PSA features Nick-A-Teen, a teenage smoker. At one point, he's passed over for a sports team for a geeky kid named Norman, who proves to be very poor at the game. Later, he starts calling girls asking for a date to a concert and one turns him down by saying she's dating a ball player. On her side of the shot, we see that it's Norman.

Asian Animation

BoBoiBoy: During a math test in season 2, Papa Zola allows his students to know an answer to a question involving his age by demanding in return a "truth teddy bear" (a pink teddy bear with a pirate outfit and sharp teeth). In season 3, Adu Du's mother gives Adu Du his childhood toy, Jaja Bear, which happens to match that description.
In Season 7 episode 16 of Happy Heroes, Happy S. tries to help Lele the alien Funny Animal dog repress his habit of chasing after things thrown in the air. After Lele seemingly fails to do so, a saddened Happy S. throws a dog bone he had gotten him as a gift into the sky; at the end of the episode, about five minutes after he does this, the bone comes back and hits him on the head.

Comedy

Ron White had one happen to him, thanks to being a smartass. When Ron was 17 years old, he was arrested, and the arresting officer asked if he had any aliases. Ron responded "Yeah. They call me 'Tater Salad,'" as a joke. Seventeen years later, after getting thrown out of a bar in New York City, Ron was arrested again. The arresting officer asked "Are you Ron 'Tater Salad' White?"
- However, when he told the joke during a 2005 TV special entitled The Ron White Show, the bar was located in Texas.^note
The first Blue Collar Comedy movie has Jeff Foxworthy recounting a story told to him about a man who, upon hitting a beaver with his car, picked up said beaver upon mistaking it for dead, and managed to have it bite his nipple off. On a signature redneck joke to close the movie: "If you've ever had your nipple bitten off by a beaver, you might be a redneck."
Billy Connolly performed a long, long routine beginning with his account of a mysterious body found in the street in one of the more exclusive and upmarket suburbs of Edinburgh. He then meanders off into the intricacies of going to the toilet on aircraft, and how the food chain works, and the sheer logistics of so many people on board aircraft who will all need to use the toilet at some point... he gets back to the mystery corpse in Corstorphine (and its effect on local house prices) about twenty-five minutes later. By which time everyone's forgotten how the story started.
In Margaret Cho's stand-up special I'm The One That I Want, she talks about how her gay friends taught that the best way to quickly finish a guy during oral sex is to finger his ass while blowing him. She quotes, "You wanna go home don't you? You can wash your hand at home!" and mimics driving home with one finger off the wheel. Much later in the show, she mentions how someone once asked her if she's worried about embarrassing her Korean family. She replied, "I'd embarrass any family!", and once again starts "driving" with one finger up.
Gabriel Iglesias tends to have these for each standup special he does. The longest one he does references a gag he did in the previous stand-up special about his friend Philippe, who always gets Gabriel in trouble.
On Hannibal Buress' album My Name is Hannibal, Hannibal talks about buying prosthetic metal arms just in case something happens to his real arms. Near the end of the album, after joking about one of his cousins flipping out and cutting his arms off, Hannibal brushes it off with "Whatever, I got these metal arms!"
Danny Bhoy has a bit where he mocks the Australian term for a liquor store, "bottle shop", by acting out the meeting during which Australians voted on it (it narrowly beat out "shop bottle"). At the end of the meeting the leader tells everyone to come back next week because "apparently there's already a place called South Wales somewhere, we'll need to think of something else". Danny then says that most of the audience probably won't get the last part of that joke, but someday in the future they might happen to look at a map of Australia, see the area labelled "New South Wales", and then burst out laughing.
Early on in one of Dara Ó Briain's live shows, he interrupts one of his routines to go off on a short and seemingly irrelevant tangent about how much he hates those hands-free bathroom soap dispensers and how pointless they are. At the end of the show, he's built up to a lengthy routine about security systems, which ends in a hypothetical situation where someone has tried to use a frying pan to defend their house and accidentally killed a burglar, and has to get rid of all the evidence. They look down at their filthy, blood-stained hands, wondering how they're going to clean them without leaving any trace of evidence ... and then realise that if they had a hands-free bathroom soap dispenser, they could use the soap to clean their hands without leaving any traces on the soap dispenser.
John Mulaney makes extensive use of these in his routines. For example, in one he talks about how his classmates often thought he was of Asian descent due to his appearance in grade school, and then how he was often mistaken for a woman on the phone as a child. Later, after he's moved on to other, apparently unrelated things, he recounts how he got frustrated on a phone call, saying "I am a proud Asian American woman!"
While Eddie Izzard often employs this at least once per show, in one instance she notably ends up expanding on content from her Circle tour in Force Majeure, prompting a series of punchlines triggered by content from eleven years ago. Specifically, an instance of ordering penne at a canteen prompts Darth Vader to reappear, again leading him to try and escalate things into a fight over trying to order it.
In "Old Weird Harold (9th Street Bridge)", Bill Cosby and his friend, Harold, are forced to walk home alone late at night without parental supervision. Alone and scared, a nameless wino accidentally startles them, and in blind fear, they trample him, sending him to the hospital. During the next routine of the same album, Bill tells about a prank gone horribly wrong in which he tries to scare his other friend, Fat Albert. It ends with Bill getting trampled by Fat Albert, and going to the hospital, and being placed by a "wino who was run over by two kids". He and the wino end up agreeing that frightened people are very difficult to get along with.
In Jerry Seinfeld's original routine, he had a bit on the drugstore and commercials for medicine. He comments that medicine commercials always depict the human body as an open mouth with a tube leading down to a circle. He then insinuates that doctors haven't gotten further than that in understanding the human body. This bit goes on for a minute or two before going to the next one. This next bit is about the doctor's office. About halfway through, he comments on how the doctor will go into his little room and implies that he's looking things up. Among the examples of looking things up, he says "I'm in big trouble. That wasn't the tube or the circle."
Several in Dave Chappelle's Sticks and Stones:
- Dave's wife wakes him in the middle of the night. When Dave wakes up, he thinks that his wife finally wants sex, so he pulls his penis over his pajamas. His wife instead says that she hears someone in the house, so an exasperated Dave grabs his new shotgun and goes to investigate. After confronting and shooting the heroin addicts that have broken in, Dave mocks their dying words with a stereotypical "heroin accent", their final words being a confused "why is your d*** out?"
- Dave's bit about Leaving Neverland has him describing alleged behavior by Michael Jackson, including liking "a long gander at the anus". He insinuates that the children who hung around Jackson could not have gotten "a free trip to Hawaii" from him without the abuse having taken place. In a later bit, Dave recalls being despondent about his father not having $3 for Dave to attend a middle school dance. In Dave's despair, he rants about being poor and, out of desperation, says he will "show Michael Jackson my anus" if he gets the chance.
- Dave talks about how school shootings are a "white kids' game", and even though he hated school, the thought of killing everybody at school was always outlandish to him. At the conclusion of the special, Dave recalls how kids made fun of him when he had to count out a bunch of pennies to get into the middle school dance. Dave says it was probably the only time in his life when he thought "[clicks tongue] I should kill everybody at school!"
In the track, "Personal Information Waltz", Demetri Martin talks about how passionate most graffiti is in how it tends to say that one thing sucks, or another thing rules. He then says how he wants to make indifferent graffiti, like "Toy Story 2 was okay." A few tracks later, during "The Jokes with Guitar", he notes an instance of sitting in a bathroom stall, and reading a graffiti argument in which someone believes Metallica rules, while another believes Metallica sucks. Martin simply thinks about how so many people tend to shit with pens, and wonders why he doesn't have one. "Because Toy Story 2 was okay."

Comic Strips

In one Twisted Toyfare Theatre strip, a Smurf tells Spider-Man that "there is no Keyser Soze!" On the back of the trade collecting that strip, featuring an Unusual Suspects-style police line-up, Spidey wonders, "What the Hell's a 'Keyser Soze'?"
Garfield does this a lot:
- Once◊, Garfield kicked Odie into next week for eating his food. Odie was absent in the strip for the remaining◊ two◊ days of the week (and in the Saturday strip, Garfield comments that "Lunch isn't the same without Odie"). Sure enough, on the Monday of the next week, Odie came crashing down◊ into the strip. Onto Garfield.
- The strip from November 8, 1992 featured a joke about Garfield getting ready for bed and being unable to get to sleep. On February 9, 2017 (Twenty five years later!) Garfield remarks "Sometimes I can't sleep...I think it was November 8, 1992"!
Pearls Before Swine
- In the comic's 10-Minute Retirement, Stephen Pastis was sent to court and sentenced for life, because Rat advocated the overthrowing of the government. He convinced the judge to run one more Croc Story Arc. Said arc was about Zebra building a wall to keep the Crocs out, and eventually they strap tons of dynamite to a Croc named "Melvin", but he goes in the bathroom to read the newspaper and do the crossword. So, to keep their house from blowing up, two Crocs drag him out of the house, and launch him a great distance with Junior's see-saw. Where did he land? The courthouse Pastis was in. The dynamite then exploded, blowing it to smithereens and freeing Pastis.
- There was a short arc at the very end of 2003 where Pig teaches his army men toys to be Oprah-loving hippies, much to Rat's annoyance. It heavily influenced the Viking characters that would appear a few years later. 3 years later, there was a strip where Rat gets a bunch of girl magazines in the mail, and says they had better not be for The Vikings. He then enters the house to see that Pig is reading a magazine about guns with them. Rat says "Uhhh...Nevermind." and leaves. After a Beat Panel, we see that the same army men are next to him, with one saying "If that Cosmo's not here today, I will just SCREAM."
In an old Baby Blues strip, Wanda thinks she should wean Hammie off of the pacifier because she read a magazine article that says babies could become too attached to it. In a later strip, Zoe learns that Hammie still sucks his pacifier in secret, at six years old.
In For Better or for Worse, Mike bought a doll named Naked Ned at a yard sale, thinking it an interesting curio. During college, he kept the doll suction-cupped to his dorm window; when he graduated, Mike and his roommate, Weed, argue over who gets to keep the doll. After Mike has retrieved the doll from Weed's girlfriend, it is flushed down the toilet. Years later, it's removed from the pipes.
The January 15, 2012 Brevity featured a pair of kids stepping out of a box. The boy points at something, and says "It worked!". Many readers were perplexed, others thought it to be a reference to the 2011 Doctor Who Christmas special. Come January 22... The same pair stand in front of the closed box, which reads 'Time Machine'...on the 15th, he'd been pointing at the strip's date.
Bloom County once had a string of 4 strips where Opus repeatedly called 911 for non-emergency purposes like "There's a 465-pound woman across the street pruning her azaleas wearing pea-soup-green hot pants!!" Five days later, Steve Dallas was abducted by aliens, and the punchline to the scene was Opus calling 911 and their immediately hanging up.
Doonesbury did a literal brick joke in August of 1974 at the height of the Watergate scandal. As dialogue from President Nixon's secret tapes were shown, a brick wall was built in front of the White House. After Nixon's resignation, another strip was published on September 2nd showing the wall coming down.
A week-long arc of The Boondocks sees Huey and Riley struggling to find a birthday present for their Granddad. Every gift turns out to be too expensive or hard to find. In the end, they surprise Grandad with... absolutely nothing, to his disappointment. Later, Riley ineffectively protests rapper Shyne's jail sentence. While outside with a sign that reads FREE SHYNE, a presumptuous white man asks the boy to polish his Prada shoes. Riley steals the shoes and runs back home... where he gives them to Grandad as a belated birthday present.
Calvin and Hobbes: There was a May 1988 arc where Calvin breaks his dad's binoculars and spends several days awaiting his punishment. Calvin's family goes camping a month later, and Calvin accidentally drops a bag into the lake. In the next day's strip, Calvin's dad recovers a pair of binoculars.

Game Shows

Taskmaster
- Throughout Series 5, if you listen really closely, you'll occasionally hear Alex make terrible fish puns like "He didn't do it on porpoise". On the final episode of the series, Sally is tasked with making as many fish puns as possible in a minute, making 8. Alex then counts his puns throughout the entire series, 11 in total, declares himself the winner, and gives himself the 5 points (though Greg threatens to bash his head in with an iron bar if he doesn't get his face off the scoreboard).
- On Episode 5 of Series 6, Asim randomly declares during one task that he'd like everyone to know he's now officially a vegan, much to the confusion of the other comedians and even Greg and Alex. Next episode, during the "Make an announcement" challenge where they are tasked with making an announcement to the most people possible, he reveals his vegan declaration was his entry. Since it was made to the whole audience, broadcast on TV, and shown as reruns on Dave, he sweeps the task and wins 5 points.

Jokes (And... THE BRICK JOKE(S))

Tell this joke or a variant on it:

Once upon a time, there was a man who wanted to build a house. But, being a little eccentric, he wanted to build the house using only 99 bricks. The masonry store would only sell in lots of 100, so he bought 100. After he finished his house he simply chucked the extra brick over his shoulder. (End of joke)

Now tell a few more jokes and end with this:

A woman with a dog and a man with a cigar are sitting across from each other on a train. The woman complains about the cigar smoke, the man complains about the yapping dog. The woman, in fury, rips the cigar out of the man's mouth and throws it out the window. The man then grabs the woman's dog and throws it out the window. Both sit in silence. Finally the man says "I am so sorry, I lost my temper. I shouldn't have done that." The woman, also sorry, says she was unladylike in the first place. Then they both look agasp out the window, for running along the side of the train was the woman's dog—and guess what it had in its mouth? THE BRICK!
One variation of this joke goes: Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to your house. (If you want, tell some other jokes here). Knock knock. (Who's there?) THE CHICKEN!
There's a joke/riddle that goes "-What is green, eats rocks and lives 3 meters underground? -Why, The Green Little Stone-eater of course!". After telling it, you follow up with another one: "-How far can you drop a rock into a hole? -3 meters, because after that, The Green Little Stone-eater eats it".
One very long variation of the brick joke goes like this:
- An airplane had 100 bricks in it. One brick falls out. How many are left? 99, of course.
- What are the three steps to put an elephant in the fridge? 1. Open the door. 2. Put the elephant in. 3. Close the door.
- What are the four steps to put a horse in the fridge? 1. Open the door. 2. Take the elephant out. 3. Put the horse in. 4. Close the door.
- It was a lioness' birthday party, and since she was a very social lion, she invited every animal in the world to come. Who didn't make it? Why, the horse. It couldn't get out of the fridge with its hooves.
- A little old lady was walking through a swamp infested with crocodiles, and no one who went in there came back out uninjured before. However, the old lady made it through just fine. Why? Because the crocodiles were all at the party! Later, the little old lady was walking through a meadow in a park, but was rushed to the hospital just a few minutes later. Why was that? Because the brick fell on her!
A similar joke tells about a farmer with a talking pig which annoys him greatly and so he tries diverse methods of sending him away, but the pig always returns and complains about being abandoned "You're so mean. That was really far. Why don't you say you don't hate me already? You heartless monster". At the end the farmer puts the pig in a rocket and never sees him again.
- Then after a couple of jokes, the next one is about a concert expecting a big name singer. The public gets excited when a limo pulls up, but it turns out to be (insert another celebrity). Then a tour bus comes by, but it's another celebrity. Then an helicopter, same result. Then a UFO comes by... "You're so mean. That was really far. Why don't you say you don't hate me already? You heartless monster".
Yet another version starts with a sentient donut on a cruise, who attempts to ask the captain over and over for permission to drive the ship. When the captain (and your audience) is fed up with the donut's antics, it is summarily thrown off the ship.
- Then, in a later joke, a couple is enjoying a cruise, when one of them proposes. In the excitement of the moment, however, he drops the ring into the ocean. His now-fiance is apologetic and understanding, and the two decide to forget the ring and have a nice dinner to celebrate their engagement. When the server brings the gleaming silver platter to their table, he opens it, revealing a lobster, and what do you think it has on its claw? The donut!
Why should you never enter the jungle on Tuesdays between 3PM and 5PM? That's when the elephants have skydiving practice. (A few more jokes, and then...) Why are crocodiles so flat? They entered the jungle on a Tuesday between 3PM and 5PM.

Let's Play

Drunk Fortress: At the end of Ruhn's Turn he mentions flipping a wagon with a bridge, but not seeing anything land. Later at the start of Scruffy's Turn the wagon lands, to Scruffy's utter bewilderment.
Skawo: In Part 2 of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker in the credits joke Skawo was hit by stray cannonballs while the huge bird that tried to kidnap Tetra flies overhead. In Part 3 the bird kidnaps Skawo.

Podcasts

Dice Funk: Jess jokes in Episode 1 that Jayne will yell "Flaafy!" if she ever casts the spell Thunderwave. Guess what happens many, many episodes later?
The Hidden Almanac: The episode for October 23rd, 2013, begins with an account of an 18th-century law that banned goats and goat cheese and resulted in the establishment of several "cheese-easies". The episode ends with a fake sponsor message from "Heywood's, the oldest cheese-easy still in existence".
Rooster Teeth: Burnie tells a joke in podcast 395 post show about three guys who were trying to see who could throw bricks the highest, so they use how far the brick sinks in mud to test. First guy lands a brick one foot in the mud. The second guy three feet. The third guy throws up the brick and it doesn't come down. Burnie moves on to the next joke (to Barb and Gavin's confusion; Gus thinks it's just an anti-joke) where a woman wants to bring a parrot with her on a plane but can only take the no smoking, no parrot airline. So she hides the parrot under he coat and pretends she's pregnant. While on the plane, the pilot comes down the aisle smoking a cigar and talks to the lady. When he sees the parrot, he gets angry and throws it out the window, saying "no parrots on the plane!" The woman takes his cigar and throws it out the plane, saying "no cigars on the plane!" So the pilot goes back to the cockpit, and while he's there, he hears a knocking and looks out to see on the window ledge is the parrot, who is holding in its mouth... "Is it the cigar?" Barb asks. Burnie replies bluntly, "No, the brick." He promptly walks off as Gavin and Gus lose it and Barb judges him.
- You can watch the whole scene or an abridged animated version.
In the Cool Kids Table game Bloody Mooney, Jake tries to get Alan to let his character Jess have a passive music bonus because it can calm her down, suggesting Scandal's "The Warrior" as a song that'll get her pumped up in a fight. Alan denies it. In the second episode, Jake pulls out an email from the creators that justifies his initial attempt, and immediately has Jess start playing "The Warrior".

Print Media

In Issue #41 of MAD (from 1958), the cover picture of Alfred E. Neuman is half-finished because the artist got a call from Time magazine. Cut to the article "The Next Day's Headlines" which shows disastrous headlines based on the advice columns shown on the previous page... and one about Time firing their new artist because all their people looked like Alfred E. Neuman.
The Onion did it with pictures. The front cover of the February 21, 2011 issue shows a picture of Blake Griffin jumping over a car with the headline "Car Blake Griffin Dunked Over Vows Revenge". Cut to the March 21, 2011 issue which has the cover showing a picture of Blake Griffin run over by a car with the headline "Car Blake Griffin Dunked Over Exacts Bloody Revenge".

Pro Wrestling

In one episode of Monday Night RAW, The Hurricane was trying to teach his sidekick, Rosey (an over-300-pound Samoan), how to be a superhero. His lesson for the day was how to change into his costume in a phone booth. Roughly an hour later in the show, we see Steve Austin walking backstage... and he happens across the phone booth, in which Rosey is trapped by his own girth.
Rosey: (pleading) Can you let me out? Please? I'll pay you!
Near the beginning of an episode of Monday Night RAW, Booker T starts his catchphrase ("Can you dig that... SUCKA!") to Chris Jericho, who cuts him off and leaves. About an hour and a half later, as Jericho's heading to the ring for his match, Booker pops up to finish: "—SUCKAAAAA!"
In 2009, Edge mocked Sheamus, comparing him to Beaker. Two years later, when the Muppets appear on Monday Night Raw, Sheamus tells Beaker that he "can't make it to the family reunion this year."
During the three-way John Cena, CM Punk, and Alberto Del Rio feud for the WWE Title, Cena and Punk would frequently mention mullets and skateboards to new General Manager John Laurinaitis for seemingly no reason. After the jokes became less frequent, CM Punk played a montage of Laurinaitis clips from the early 90s, during his time wrestling in the Dynamic Dudes with Shane Douglas, complete with skateboard and mullet.
WWE pulled off one of the longest Brick Jokes in history — a 14-year long joke. Back in 1998, Mae Young gave birth to a hand in an angle that has never been spoken of since. On the 1000th episode of Raw (2012-07-23), AJ Lee and Layla El opened their dressing room door to a guy dressed as a hand and Mae, introducing her "son". Even announcer Michael Cole wound up corpsing at it.
One potential Brick Joke stems from a segment on the June 23rd, 2003 edition of Raw in which Kane breaks a mirror◊ shortly before his unmasking against his will. A seven year run of big losses and bad breaks follows this, concluding on the June 22nd, 2010 edition of SmackDown where he loses to CM Punk. Immediately after this seven year run ended, he went on an eleven match winning streak, including his first World Heavyweight Championship victory in over a decade. The incident is never brought up or referenced in any way until one Reddit user notices in late 2013.

Radio

A brick with relatively short air-time — in one episode of Hello Cheeky, Tim announces that they'll be broadcasting Rigoletto in two parts. This is immediately followed by a cry of "Rigo—", and fifteen minutes later, we hear a yell of "—letto!"
Round the Horne managed a clever two-stage joke: early in the episode, Kenneth Horne is phoned by a listener, and Horne asks him "can you give me your name?", to which the man replies "Elias Mooseblaster." Elias then asks Kenneth to give him his name. They then say goodbye, apparently literally having given each other their names. Later on, the Australian character, Judy Coolibah^note, makes fun of a man called "Dunnet", which sounds rather like "done it", and she remarks that men with suggestive names should have them changed. She then asks Horne what his name is. Horne then gives his name as "Elias Mooseblaster."
In Season 64, episode 3 of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, recorded in York, Jack's introduction to the city includes casually mentioning that Captain Cook was born there and died mysteriously in the Pacific, leading into a joke about the first England/Australia cricket match. He then continues on the cricket theme by describing how Yorkshire County Cricket Club changed its rules from insisting players were born in Yorkshire to just having an ancestor with Yorkshire blood. The first player to take advantage of the new rules was a Pacific islander whose great-grandfather ate Captain Cook.
In The Men from the Ministry, after a christmas pudding that Lamb accidentally placed in Big Ben's leaver is removed from the machinery, Lennox-Brown tosses it out of the clock tower's window and dismisses Lamb's worries that it might've hit someone. Later on during a news-broadcast the newsreader mentions that the Prime Minister was hit in the head by a christmas pudding near the House of Commons.
One episode of Dragnet Ben Romero is making a Spanish omelette as he and Joe Friday discuss the armed robbers they are hunting. Romero is particular about how to cook the onions and tomatoes for the omelette. He actually makes a nice looking omelette. Too bad the robbers have just struck again. At the end, when the last thug has been chased down and arrested, Joe and Ben go to a nearby cafe to call it in. Ben says that they are going to have to return. The cook is making a Spanish omelette exactly the right way.

Roleplay

In Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, Nadine mentions to Hyeon that a member of her gang (who the reader knows is Luna) gained the ability to control lightning. Later on he comes across Josephine, who can also control lightning, and with cheerful obliviousness takes her to Nadine under the belief that she's the person Nadine was talking about earlier. Made funnier by Nadine angrily point out that Josephine is white, whereas Luna is black.
Destroy the Godmodder has a handful of these. Namely Dave, a mostly pathetic robot who was repeatedly summoned, and repeatedly destroyed. Not many people found it funny though. More successful recently. Upon being reminded of this by the TV Tropes page (stated by him in the post), the owner of Dave proceeded to summon him again. One game after his most recent death.

Theatre

British mentalist/illusionist Derren Brown did it in two different stage shows.
- In his third show, An Evening of Wonders, during the show broadcast on TV, he played a game of 20 Questions with several members of the audience. One, he sent back, saying he was too unsure of her object (brick number 1). Later, he performed the "Oracle Act" (it's billet reading). Seems one teenaged boy, on a dare from his friends, had written only the word "cock" on his billet, much to everyone's amusement (except Derren's, obviously) (and, by the way, brick number 2, although unintentional). Both bricks pay off at the end of the show, when he unrolls a big scroll that had been in a box since the beginning. On the scroll, he had written the word "bracelet" three times, and the lady that he had sent back revealed that she had thought of a bracelet during the 20 Questions segment. Upon finding this out, Derren said, "That kid's right, I am a cock!"
- And then in his fourth show, Enigma, at the beginning of the show, he asked people in the audience to write down a list of their three favorite things, and he would have a member of the audience draw one, and then by the audience member saying random words, Derren would guess the items. The first item that was written down on the chosen slip, he guessed was a favorite band, but couldn't identify the band. Upon finding out that the band was Mc Fly, he simply said, "Never heard of them." Guess who performed a song revealing one of his predictions at the end of the show?
The comedy pair Rahmens uses Brick Jokes in their routines.
- The best example is probably this one:
(about namehage) "Who drove the demons out of Akita?"
"This mystery will be unraveled in... (looks at watch) 14 minutes."
- It is indeed revealed about 14 minutes later. A pun reveals it was Momotaro.
Bill Cosby has a story about the time him and Old Weird Harold went to a scary movie. They got so scared that they got down on the floor and didn't get up until 10 o'clock. They were so frightened on the walk home that when a wino stumbled a little too close to them, they trampled him in terror. Later, he tells another story about a game called "Buck Buck", which involves one team trying to get the other team to collapse under their weight. After their opposing team shows confidence in the fact that they would never collapse, Cosby's team brings out their secret weapon: Fat Albert. The opposing team surrenders the second they see him. "Now, I told you that story to tell you this one". Cosby then tells the story of the time they scared Fat Albert, but Cosby forgets that he was standing behind Fat Albert. He ends up in the hospital and shares a room with a wino who was trampled by two kids, and they both agree that frightened children are very dangerous.
- Bill enjoyed this technique. His famous "Chocolate Cake for Breakfast" starts with his wife waking him up at weird o'clock in the morning so he can start making their children's breakfast. After some protest about how it's not healthy to eat this early, he heads down and gets to work, leading to a long and hilarious story about how his youngest asks for chocolate cake and he realizes how HEALTHY it is. (Eggs! Milk! Wheat! Oh, goody!) By the time, his wife comes down, all the kids are eating chocolate cake; she grows furious and they blame him...
  "And my wife sent me ... to my room." (smile) "Which is where I wanted to be in the first place."
In Ellen DeGeneres's stand up special Here and Now, early on, she talks about procrastination, and, quite appropriately, gets sidetracked. About an hour later, she returns to the topic out of the blue.
- Also, in her later special The Beginning, she talks about needing silence in her life. Then she tells an increasingly bizarre story involving a vegan food shop, and a sex toy store, culminating in her being arrested while wearing nothing but a captain's hat and a paddle, along with her new blow-up doll named "Linda".
Cop (In story): You have the right to remain silent.
Ellen: And I was like "Thank you! That's what I've been looking for all along!"
The juggling pair Strahlemanne and Söhne do one of these at Carl-Einar Häckner's 2013 variety show and at least one another performance. At the start, they both take a bow, with Söhne reaching into his breast pocket to display his pocket handkerchief. Strahlemanne digs around in his own pocket, but finds nothing. They begin juggling, and as they do, they take off their clothes and throw them to one another. When they're both stripped to the underwear, they begin putting on the other's clothes. At the end, when they're fully dressed again, Söhne moves to adjust his handkerchief but finds nothing. Strahlemanne reaches into his own breast pocket and tugs it up with a smile.
In the final scene of the 2013 musical adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a bit of Breaking the Fourth Wall reveals that Willy Wonka's going to enter the audience's world to continue his creative work. This becomes a brick joke when, during the curtain call, he initially reappears in one of the theatre's box seats to applaud Charlie as he takes his bow.
In the first scene of Boston Marriage, Anna's maid reports that the cook has quit, and also that she "said as how you could kiss her arse. Till... She said some holiday, but I've forgot it." In the final scene, the maid comes in with an apparently urgent announcement, only to be repeatedly shushed — but when she does get to deliver it, it's only that she's finally remembered that the holiday in question was Michaelmas.
Jára Cimrman plays often contain some sort of brick joke. Probably the most memorable one is the fourth-wall-breaking one in Vražda v salonním kupé which carries from the pre-play seminar into the play. To prevent them from leaving too soon or not recognising the play has ended, the audience is told the ending of the whodunnit... a character will say "It will be a nice cherry on top of our case." I repeat: "It will be a nice cherry on top of our case." At the end of the play, Inspector Trachta says "It will be a nice cherry on top of our case. I repeat: It will be a nice cherry on top of our case."

Theme Parks

In Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast at Universal Studios, Ooblar creates a large, Yolkian-shaped hole when he breaks into Jimmy's lab. Later, at the end of the ride, this hole is now seen patched up with a bunch of wood, only for the hole to be opened up again when King Goobot blasts his way in.
When the ride vehicle gets hijacked on The Great Movie Ride at Disney's Hollywood Studios, the tour guide tells the riders that they’ll be back after they get some popcorn. Later after the hijacker is killed, the tour guide returns, saying, "See, I told you I was just going for some popcorn!"
Ever since it first opened, The Enchanted Tiki Room had a throwaway line the first time the Birdmobile comes down, where Jose wonders where Rosita is. When the Tropical Hideaway restaurant behind the Disneyland version opened, Rosita was found there, preparing to depart on a world tour.

Toys

In one of the BIONICLE comics from 2004, the Kaiju Tahtorak randomly awakens in the city of Metru Nui, and goes on a rampage, demanding the other characters to answer a question that no one knows. In 2005, that question is revealed to be "How did I get here?" Later still, in one of the 2006 books, Brutaka reminisces about teleporting a Tahtorak into Metru Nui out of fun.

Web Animation

ASDF Movie:
- 2: "I like trains. [is hit by train]" Repeated, but then later: "Ha ha! Yes you do. [glares at viewer]" Next segment: "Hey! You know who's gay? Y— [train]."
- 2: A mad scientist teaches a llama to drive a car, but it drives off cliff. 2 years later in 5: A man refuses to step on Mine Turtle, but then is crushed by a falling car. Llama gets out of the car and runs off.
Battle for Dream Island:
- “Barriers and Pitfalls”, during the Obstacle Course Challenge, Pin gets her point stuck to a rising platform, as Woody comes and to reach to her, Pin shoves Woody, sending him sliding to the other players from behind. Tennis Ball and Golf Ball jump over him, but as soon as he heads for Rocky, Tennis Ball warns him to jump, but he just idles, so Tennis Ball just screws it, and kicks Rocky into the air, as Woody slides down to the pit. Meanwhile as Pencil, Match, and Bubble were taking the ski-lift portion, Rocky hurls from the sky, and slices the ski-lift’s elevation cord, causing them to fall to their doom.
Battle For Dream Island The Power Of Two:
- In “The Worst Day of Black Hole’s Life”, after Remote’s death from last episode, team “Death P.A.C.T. Again” has been trying to get a battery from Robot Flower, but no matter how many times they ask, she ends up giving them some random item, other than a battery. But later during the block stacking challege, Bell asks Robot Flower to hand her some blocks for their tower. Robot Flower receives her message, but then, she just dashes off, and comes back with a bunch of batteries!
- Also in the episode, while Death P.A.C.T. has been trying to get a battery from Robot Flower, Marker has been fiddling with a little paper clip he got from her. But later, when his team’s stack is about to collapse, Marker uses his stretched out paper clip to hold the blocks in place, of course the stack just collapses afterwards.
- In “Gardening Zero”, when Nickel stumbled into Two, he was joyed, for he now has a coin so he can purchase a gum ball from the gum ball machine. After the intro, Two has now been chewing on the Gumball.
- As Fries scolds him to spit it out, Two understands and just blows the gum into a bubble for it to float away. After the elimination, the Team 8’s used Saw’s funny plant as a shrine for her departure, but immediately, the plant gets damaged when the gum bubble from earlier flies in, and pops on it.
brewstew:
- In "Toys R' Us", Tyler kept telling customers that whatever they were looking for was in aisle 12B. While the narrator mentions that he sucked at assembling bikes, there is a clip of a girl riding one of his bikes, only to lose a wheel and explode into several pieces. When he was released after Christmas season, a customer asked about where he could go to talk about a bike that caused his daughter to explode. Tyler told him "Aisle 12B".
- In "Neighborhood Argument"...
  Tyler: Oh my God. Michael, you are a fucktard...Jesus.
  Michael: Don't call me "fucktard Jesus"!
  Tyler: [confused] I didn't call you a "fucktard Jesus".
- Later on, at the dream fight, there's a sign that says "Go Fucktard Jesus!"
At the end of the first Charlie the Unicorn video, Charlie wakes up to discover the other two unicorns have stolen his kidney. At the end of the third video, released 3 1/2 years later, Charlie wakes up to discover they've used his horn as a snowman's nose...and the snowman also has his kidney.
- During the musical segment of the third video, a starfish repeatedly appears proclaiming its love for Charlie. It reappears at the climax of the fourth video to save Charlie from being blown up along with the moon.
DSBT InsaniT: When Knobs is helping Asia get a door in 'Store Story', he accidently crushes her with it. At the end of the episode, it cuts back to her still pinned under the door, and Lisa runs up and kicks her.
Dinosaurs: The True Story: The short begins with two dinosaur astronauts on the moon being the first to see the meteor pass overhead as it approaches Earth. The end has them still there, looking at each other as the fireball sweeps across the planet.
Dork Souls 3: During Shez's visit to the grave tower, he discovers that the pump-a-rum crow is a naked bald dude wearing only cloth with feathers, who then offers him some C4. During the fight against Aldrich, he proceeds to use it against him.
Shez: Peekaboo, Bitch.
Vegeta is seen watching the final battle of Dragonball Evolution at the start of Ducktalez 7. Guess how he ultimately defeats Julia Roberts.
The Gaston Trilogy: One of the villagers with a facial structure similar to Aladdin's genie turns blue and says "Phenomenal!" when Lefou dies the first time in "Gaston Plays Lefou's Quest IV." He does the same thing at the end of The Stinger of the next video.
Homestar Runner has a few.
- Nearby the beginning of "Strong Bad is in Jail Cartoon", Strong Sad says in a letter that he and Marzipan have a bakavla in the oven. At the end of the cartoon, Marzipan serves it to the other characters.
- At the beginning of "Drive-Thru", Strong Bad is using an air compresser to launch a toy rocket to Europa, in the hopes that it'll return to Earth and bring him back some lobsters. At the end, sure enough, it falls back to Earth and cracks open, revealing a space lobster. The Drive-Thru Whale asks it to sever its leg, which it does, and the whale eats it (but not its severed leg, oddly) and flies into outer space. ...Yeah.
- In sbemail #38, titled helium, we discover that Strong Mad's voice doesn't change at all when he sucks helium, to his annoyance. Exactly 114 emails later in sbemail #152, isp, we find out that Strong Bad's Internet connection is so slow because Strong Mad is siphoning his bandwidth through a garden hose. Apparently bandwidth acts like "super helium" and Strong Mad finally gets his helium voice.
- The short "The Luau" begins with Homestar presumably peeing behind Marzipan's gazebo. Later on in the short, when Homestar visits Strong Bad's party, and finds out that he can't get the wood to start on fire, Homestar then asks if Strong Bad got the wood from behind the gazebo, in which Strong Bad answers "Yes, why?". Homestar then explains "Well it all started when I drank 32 glasses of melonade..."
- In email #55, "cheat talk", Strong Bad waits patiently for Strong Mad (and The Cheat) to say the word "Douglas" (and jams his keyboard into Strong Sad's stomach to get him to say the word). In an Easter Egg for email #76, as Strong Bad tries to get other characters to say "Fhqwhgads", Strong Mad instead says, "DOUGLAS!", to which a surprised Strong Bad says, "Whoa! We've just had a breakthrough! You get a gold star."
- The short "Play Date" has two. First, Homestar calls Bubs, who tells him that he's in federal prison. However, he shows up in two scenes throughout the cartoon. In the Easter Egg, Homestar asks why he's not in prison, and he says he got time out for "snitchy behavior". Second, Homestar calls the King of Town, who tells him that it's apparently "[his] and Brunswick stew's anniversary." Another Easter Egg at the end shows the King having a romantic candlelit dinner... with a bowl of Brunswick stew.
King of Town: You know, Brunsy, the 50th anniversary is the (holds up a spoon with sour cream in it) dollop of sour cream year!
- In email #103, "haircut", Strong Bad, while coming up with various eyebrow-cuts for Strong Mad, randomly comes up with one looking like a character from Sweet Cuppin' Cakes, a cartoon he invented in an earlier email, whom he immediately dubs "Ready for Primetime". Fast forward to the Decemberween in July Sweet Cuppin' Cakes short; at the very, very end, guess who makes an unexpected appearance?
- In the cartoon "Date Nite", Marzipan discovers she and The Cheat have both always wanted to see a wrestling match between public radio personalities Ira Glass and Ira Flatlow. An Easter egg at the end of the cartoon has Strong Sad hearing an ad on public radio for an event called "Public Rage-O", which advertises a "no-holds barred lumberjack match" between Glass and Flatlow.
  Strong Sad: Oh, geez, I gotta pledge more next year. They're really getting desperate.
- Near the beginning of the Strong Bad Email "pet show", Strong Bad catches Homestar trying to put relish on his boots ("Homestar's always trying to give me the old relish-foot.") Near the end of the cartoon, Strong Bad and the Cheat are disqualified from the pet show not because of the cheating they actually did, but for "flagrant use of relish-foot" (the cause of which is implied to be Homestar).
- In "hremail7", Homestar offhandedly mentions he's contractually forbidden to even bathe in any liquid other than Melonade. At the end of the email, he walks off singing that he's going to take a bath in Melonade.
- senior prom begins with the theme song for "The King of Town's Very Own Quite Popular Cartoon Show", but it's interrupted by an announcer saying that instead they are showing "Strong Bad's Very Popular Cartoon Show, already in progress". Cutting to Strong Bad in the middle of reading an e-mail. At the end of the cartoon, an easter egg shows Strong Bad singing his usual song before opening an e-mail and starts to read it, stopping at the very moment the cartoon cut to him.
- In "On the Next Epi-Snowed", after Gunhaver's in-universe voice actor Crack Stuntman takes over the role of Crackotage, he breaks character to declare that "this looks like a cool place for a casino or a dinosaur to happen." A couple of scenes later, we see Gunhaver sitting in a Jacuzzi with "New Bad Guy Girl Character" (played by Crack Stuntman's girlfriend) and a Velociraptor, outside Blue Laser's base, which now has a neon "CASINO" sign out front. Looks like he got his wish.
In one of the special episodes of If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device, there is a joke about the Custodian Guard Little Kitten having a forbidden romantic relationship with a Tau, who eventually broke up with him and led to the development of his intense hatred for the entire Tau race. Many, many, many episodes later, Magnus the Red winds up using his psychic powers to forcibly strip Little Kitten in front of an assembled band of other Custodians. Upon seeing his physique, one of them blurts out, "What was she THINKING?"
JoCat:
- Instead of the usual opening that accompanies the "A Crap Guide to D&D" episodes, the episode on the fighter class begins with Musical Exposition to the tune of the 60s Spider-Man theme. At the end of the episode, instead of the usual outro, the rest of the song is sung.
- In "A Crap Guide to D&D: Dungeon Master", JoCrap tells a group of players currently bickering about an ambush plan "I'll give you 6 minutes and 44 seconds; if you don't come to an agreement on a plan I'm feeding your minis to the Wigglers". JoCrap reaches his Rage Breaking Point exactly 6 minutes and 44 seconds after he says that line.
- In "A Crap Guide to D&D: Bard", JoCrap claims that if you don't follow the exact stereotyping of your character's class, Matthew Mercer will sneak into your house and throw foam noodles at you from the corner of your living room.^note During Matt's cameo appearance in "A Crap Guide to D&D: Dungeon Master", he's carrying around a bunch of foam noodles, which JoCrap slaps out of his hands.
In Lackadaisy, a Freeze-Frame Bonus during a Car Chase Shootout shows a sign outside a quarry (before Venturous Smugglers Rocky, Freckle and Ivy smash through it) that says 'Sable Stone & Quarry Inc'. When they eventually make a delivery at Lackadaisy Speakeasy, patron and well-heeled businessman Wick is disturbed to hear of Rocky using dynamite and heavy machinery that Rocky hints is his with a petty friendliness before referring to him as "Mr. Sable". The Stinger shows a sepia-photo styled double-still of Wick, revealed as the Quarry's owner, discovering the copious damage done to his property, utterly horrified.
Manga Soprano: My twin sister, whom I had insulated, pretended to be me and did evil things. has Ram's twin sister Rui ask little Haru about what Ram's precious thing is, she answers it's a Puni pillow. Later on when Rui calls Ram from the beach to hint about having stolen the latter's precious (read: fiancé), Ram asks if she stole said pillow, which irritates Rui.
As Red vs. Blue is a comedy series that has been running since 2003, it's to be expected that a few jokes will take a while to reach their punchlines:
- In the series' first episode, Simmons asks Grif "You ever wonder why we're here?", to which Grif responds with a lengthy speech about the meaning of the universe, only for Simmons to explain that he was actually asking why they were put in Blood Gulch and not somewhere else, all while the Blue Team spies on them. In the Season 1 finale, this scene happens again, only for Grif to instead respond with "No. I never, ever, wonder why we're here. Semper Fi, bitch.". Then in the Season 5 finale (which also marks the end of The Blood Gulch Chronicles), this scene happens again, only this time, it's reversed, with the Blue Team having the conversation while the Red Team spies on them.
- In Season 1, Grif revives Sarge using CPR after Sarge had been shot in the head, leading to Sarge pointing out how stupid of a decision that is, comparing it to rubbing someone's neck with aloe vera after they had been stabbed in the toe. In Season 2, Church shoots Caboose in the toe so that Doc would take care of him. Doc's treatment is to rub his neck with aloe vera.
- In the first episode of Season 1, Simmons points out that the only consequence to letting the Blue Team win would be that they would now have two bases in a box canyon in the middle of nowhere, with no real actual victory between the two teams, ending the sentence with a "whoop-dee-fucking-do". In Season 5, the Blues finally take Red Base... and feel exactly as unsatisfied as Simmons predicted.
  Church: I guess now we have two bases in the middle of a box canyon.
  Tucker: Whoop-dee-fucking-do.
- In Season 3, Church, currently undergoing a Stable Time Loop, meets a bunch of other versions of himself, one of which has yellow armor. When asked about it, he states that they shouldn't ask. In Season 5, the audience learns what happened: turns out the yellow Church isn't actually Church, but Caboose's mental image of Sister, who is apparently Church's twin brother, who ended up getting ejected from Caboose's head and sent back in time by Wyoming's temporal distortion unit.
- In Chapter 18 of Reconstruction, Washington gets the idea to use an EMP to destroy The Meta's A.I.s, only to end up in an argument with the Reds and Blues over whether or not it's pronounced "E.M.P." or "Emp". In Chapter 19, when Wash sets off the E.M.P., the computer ends up using the latter pronunciation, much to Wash's bafflement and anger.
- In the sponsors-exclusive ending to a Chapter of Reconstruction, Doc arrives at the UNSC Wind Power Facility after having been called there by the Reds, only to find that they're not there anymore. In a deleted scene from Recreation, which was put on the Season's DVD, it's shown that he's still there.
- Revelation, the show's 8th Season, has a number of what were originally Running Gags in The Blood Gulch Chronicles make surprise returns:
  - In Season 1, Church talks about Private Jimmy, a soldier who he worked alongside with until Tex beat him to death with his own skull. Throughout The Blood Gulch Chronicles, a mysterious skull would sometimes appear, implied to be Jimmy's. In Revelation, the words "Private Jimmy was here" can be seen spray painted onto a wall with a skull lodged into it.
  - The Blood Gulch Chronicles had a gag of Tucker getting covered in soot (referred to by the characters as "black stuff") whenever he went through a teleporter. In Revelation, during a fight against Tex, Tucker falls through a teleporter and ends up covered in black stuff.
  - In Season 1, Church states that Private Jimmy's last words as Tex beat him to death with his own skull was "This doesn't seem physically possible!", leading to a Running Gag of characters exclaiming this when something seemingly impossible happens. In Revelation, Epsilon gets beat up by Tex using the Monitor that used to house him, with Grif stating that beating someone with their own body "doesn't seem physically possible".
- In the first episode of Season 10, an Insurrectionist grunt gets Thrown Out the Airlock, and can be seen floating through space in the following episode. This joke then comes back in the Season's credits, where he's still floating through space.
- At the end of Revelation, the Reds and Blues steal a Hornet from a random UNSC trooper. In Season 10, the same trooper returns to arrest the Reds and Blues for their crimes against the UNSC, and they end up stealing his Hornet again.
- In what might be one of the longest Brick Jokes ever, during a discussion about the Freelancers in Season 3, Church mentions "Poor Florida" without actually revealing what happened to them. Then in Season 10, nearly 8 real life years later, we finally learn what happened to Florida.
- In the first episode of Season 11, Sarge misses a shot with the tank because the controls are inverted. Then in Episode 18, Sarge tries to use the tank again... only to end up shooting above his targets.
  Simmons: Still inverted, sir.
- Early on in Season 11, Grif and Simmons have a Seinfeldian Conversation about "robot overlords". Near the end of the Season, when Lopez Dos.0 is about to deliver the killing blow to Freckles, he states that the two could have ruled together as "robot overlords".
- Around the midway point of Season 11, Donut starts downloading a picture on Basebook, but because it's such a high-quality picture, the download is going very slowly. By the the time of the Season's climax, not only is it still downloading, but the download is draining both bases' entire power supply.
- In Season 9, Epsilon and Epsilon-Tucker create the name "Andersmith" to refer to a non-existent, dead member of the Blue Team to explain why they called Tex. In the Season 12 finale, Caboose's lieutenant, referred to up to that point as "Smith", reveals his full name to be John Elizabeth Andersmith.
- In the 10th episode of Season 13, Sarge suggest they make an escape via driving through enemy lines in slow-motion. No one takes him seriously... until the following episode, where they do exactly that.
- In the 4th episode of Season 13, Dr. Grey explains that Caboose's gun is controlled by Freckles, and when Caboose pulls the trigger the gun merely "shoots out confetti and makes a funny noise". This occurs twice in this episode, once immediately after she says it and later when Caboose thinks he sees Church and fires the gun. This is it for the joke until the otherwise very dramatic penultimate episode of the Season, where Felix steals the gun from Caboose and aims it directly at his face in a very dramatic moment and...
  Felix: (staring at the gun in disbelief) What is wrong with you people?!
- In Season 15, Episode 8, Lopez dismisses an order by saying "I'm a robot, not the Starship Enterprise.". In the 15th episode of the same season, his decapitated head is seen floating in space while he imitates the opening narration of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
- In Season 15, Episode 2, Jax talks about a script for a film he's working on called "Moon Doom". This then gets brought back in The Stinger for the Season, as part of another possible movie pitch.
- The Shisno Paradox features what might possibly be the longest Brick Joke ever. In Season 5, Capt. Flowers is about to reveal some big secret to Tucker when he's shot by an offscreen source. In The Shisno Paradox, Tucker and Sister Time Travel back to Blood Gulch and Tucker finds a sniper rifle lying around. As he spies on Flowers talking to his past self, his finger brushes the trigger, and...
- At the beginning of The Shisno Paradox, Genkins is seen hitting a golf ball into a black hole. In the final episode of Singularity, Genkins, having been sucked through a black hole and trapped at the beginning of time, gets hit by the same golf ball.
Refreshing Stories:
- "My wife found out I was ill, so she went on a trip with her boyfriend": While chatting with her lover Kazuto about the ways they hoped Hiroshi would die, Reiko mentioned him falling down a flight of stairs and hitting his head hard. However, at the end of her affair trip, Kazuto ends up being the one falling down the stairs in an attempt to run away from Hiroshi and Nana.
- "Wife accidentally sent the message she was going to send her lover to me": When Nana chewed him out for leaving their window open despite living on the 11th floor, Hiroshi jokingly asks her if she's worried about Spider-Man. Later on, when her lover Ryu hid by hanging out the window and crying for help, Hiroshi joked that it was Spider-Man before asking Nana about him.
Spooky Month:
- The demon that Skid and Pump summon in the first installment is revealed to be still stuck in the attic in the second installment and plays a large role in the third one.
- In "The Stars", the stranger that locked Skid and Pump inside the house on the hill books it when one of Eyes' tentacles bursts out of the floor and grabs the two. When Eyes and the Spooky Kids leave the house to engage in Spooky Month shenanigans, Eyes accidentally steps on the fleeing stranger, leaving a small blood splatter on the ground.
- At the beginning of "Deadly Smiles", Lila talks to Jaune on the phone, complaining that Skid and Pump spend all their time sharing the Happy Fella. At the end of the short, Jaune arrives at the house with a new Happy Fella for Pump, having misunderstood Lila's complaints.
- In "Deadly Smiles", after John sneezes on the Happy Fella, Jack simply says "told you" before walking off. In the Newgrounds ending of the short (which is set before the short itself), Jack notices how dirty John's coffee mug is and remarks that drinking out of it will get him sick, which John brushes off.

Real Life

On July 8, 1958, New York Yankees manager Casey Stengel gave testimony before the Senate Anti-Trust and Monopoly Subcommittee. During the mid-20th century, Stengel and Yogi Berra were both thought to be Baseball's premiere Cloudcuckoolanders. However, with his Stream Of Consciousness "Jabberwocky"-like testimony, Stengel revealed that he was really the Bunny-Ears Lawyer of baseball. And the brick joke? That would be Mickey Mantle's One-Liner at the very end.
In 2008, someone created a Frank N. Furter Twitter account and tweeted "I see you shiver with antici..." Five years to the day later, they tweeted "...pation." Both tweets promptly went viral.
In 2009, a Twitter user named Marcus Lepage sent out the tweet "Going to sleep." The account lay quiet for seven years, until it was followed up with the tweet "Fuck, I slept in." Like the Frank N. Furter account above, this too went viral.
This anecdote involving a young boy who once met Roger Moore at the airport and was initially saddened that his name was not really James Bond. Moore convinced him that he was James Bond, but had to sign his name as "Roger Moore" because Blofeld might find out where he was. The young fan met him again years later, and Sir Roger made the same gentlemanly snark.
One anonymous poster on 4chan replied to a post, stating that he "didn't have a slowpoke slow enough for this", and that he'd be back two years later. He was.◊
In 2007, an anonymous Twitter account tweeted "Going out for lunch." After 14 years of inactivity, the account tweeted "Back from lunch."
On February 29, 2020, an Imgur account called "PlannedForTheLongRun" posted a meme about how they waited for 4 years to post for their first Cakeday^noteThe anniversary of an account creation, and that they would be back in 4 years for the next Leap Day. Come February 29, 2024, and they posted again about how they were going to make an elaborate meme for Leap Day, but completely forgot about it and just posted the same meme from the last post.

The boomerang has returned!

Statler: You know, I just don't understand this brick joke trope.
(brick lands on Statler's head)
Waldorf: Now THAT'S what I call a brick joke! Do-ho-ho-hoh!
Statler: Ow...

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