With these dogs playing, the game is bound to get a bit ruff.Left to right
"Ah, you see, the poor dumb beasts have no thumbs, so I ask you... how are they holding their cards? ... It should be impossible, and yet somehow they go on... playing the game. In the end, Razputin, aren't we all just dogs playing poker?"
— Edgar Teglee, Psychonauts
This is a Stock Parody of Dogs Playing Poker.
To those not in the know, Dogs Playing Poker is not a painting, but rather the name of a collection of oil paintings by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge. Eighteen in fact, each set in a poker room or a courtroom or some other place with dogs in varying levels of civility gathered together playing cards or betting on horse races. It's Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
While not all of the paintings from the Dogs Playing Poker portfolio have the dogs actually playing poker, the idea has long since stuck in the public consciousness: dogs put into a set with cards and ash-trays and emptied glasses of scotch as if the dogs were people, and it's funny. Hell, they aren't always dogs. They could be cats, mice, lizards, bug-eyed aliens, and even full-grown people in cartoonish dog-suits.
Sub-Trope of Art Imitates Art.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Dogs Playing Poker TV ads were aired during ESPN Sunday Night Football during the 1998 and 1999 NFL seasons.
- A Cartoon Network bumper from the network's 20th anniversary has Huckleberry Hound, Scooby-Doo, Jake, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Dukey, and Monroe playing poker when Gumball interrupts them and attempts to lampshade it. See here.
Art
- A The New Yorker cover from 2012 shows Santa's reindeer playing cards, while Santa anxiously points at a clock.
- Matthew Inman, the artist and writer of The Oatmeal, drew a parody of the original Dogs Playing Poker painting that he titled Cats Playing Hungry Hungry Hippos.
Comic Books
Comic Strips
- Parodied in The Far Side, where a homeless artist lays in the street with unsold paintings depicting variations with other animals such as giraffes, insects, chickens and crocodiles. The caption states that he eventually rose to fame after a friend told him, "Gus...have you ever tried dogs playing poker"?
Films — Animation
- In Barnyard, during the party in the barn house some dogs are seen playing poker while one animal is painting a picture of them in the exact same likeness of the original painting.
- Looney Tunes: Back in Action has Chester, Spike, Charlie, and other Looney Tunes canines playing cards at a table inside Yosemite Sam's Wooden Nickel casino. Their game gets interrupted by The Hero falling from an exposed hallway onto the table, wrecking it. All the dogs bark at him, though most have spoken conversational English in their cartoons.
- Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: In the montage of how Puss lost eight of his nine lives, Life #2 shows him beating some dogs at poker with a hand of five aces. They were not amused.
- Pixar films:
- Up: There's a scene where some of Charles Muntz's dogs are playing a game of poker, and the bulldog with a big pile of dog biscuits in front of him.
- In Toy Story 4: There is a painting of Muntz playing cards with the dogs in the antique shop and in certain posters.
Films — Live Action
- In The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), Catherine Banning's team searches Crown's house and recovers what appears to be the Monet he stole. However, once an art expert examines it, he finds that it was painted on top of a copy of Poker Sympathy, exposing it as a fake Crown planted to troll them
Detective McCann: Monet's unknown masterpiece: Dogs at Cards.
- In SHAZAM! (2019), one of the inter-dimensional doors leads to a room where some crocodile men are playing poker in a setting directly lifted from the paintings. As soon as one of those crocodile-men lunges towards the protagonists, they slam the door on its face and the incident is soon forgotten.
- Cool World: While Holli Would caused everyone in the real world to transform into Doodles, a group of men at a poker table transform into dogs.
- Hundreds of Beavers: The Master Fur Trapper's sled dogs are seen playing cards each night at camp. When there's only one left, it's playing solitaire.
Literature
- In Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Idgie keeps a painting of poker-playing dogs on the café wall, labelled "The Dill Pickle Club" (a group involving her and several friends).
- The short story A Gamble with Wildthyme by Steve Lyons concerns the cheating taking place in A Friend in Need.
- In the comedy book "How To Keep Dinosaurs", there's an image of a group of Deinonychus playing poker (with slabs of meat in place of chips) as an obvious pastiche on this trope. It also comes with this caption:
"Deinonychus will only play poker for high steaks."
- The Last Dogs: In Dark Waters, the three main characters are introduced to many dogs living on a fancy riverside boat. Some of those dogs are playing a card game, but since they don't fully understand card games like poker or blackjack, they make up their own rules (like throwing their cards onto the table and yelling "Bingo!").
- Ravirn:
- WebMage: In the second time Eris's game room is seen, such a picture is seen on the walls.
- Cybermancy: The story starts with Cerberus, the Hellhound of Greek Mythology, a.k.a a three-headed dog, playing poker with Ravirn.
Live-Action TV
- In an episode of Cheers, Sam Malone loves the paintings (in particular one of Dogs Playing Blackjack) while his more sophisticated lover, Diane Chambers, hates them. Sam says that he sees something new every time he looks at it.
- In the That '70s Show episode "Hunting", Dogs Playing Poker is parodied by the characters taking the places of the dogs.
- Near the end of the Snooker Commentators sketch series on That Mitchell and Webb Look, snooker broadcasting dries up and the commentators begin covering dogs playing poker. This proves difficult as dogs can't actually do that.
- The cast of Whose Line Is It Anyway? do this as an example of what animals do when their humans aren't around.
- One episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch ends with Sabrina playing Go Fish with a group of dogs. She wins the game but then offers to buy them all treats to cheer them up.
Music Videos
- The music video for Snoop Dogg's "What's My Name" has a scene with dogs playing craps while smoking cigars and wearing sunglasses.
Puppet Shows
- In the Dog City special, some of the dogs in the background of the bar scenes are playing poker (and also pool, based on Arthur Sarnoff's Coolidge homages).
- Done in The Muppets at Walt Disney World during Rowlf's "Dogging It" number with a group of Muppet dogs, though it's unclear if they're actually gambling or just playing for fun.
Tabletop Games
- In Magic: The Gathering's 2004 Arena league, the card 'Mise' has a picture of dogs playing MTG.
Theater
- In the play The Foreigner, a character complains that she doesn't want to be in her motel room because there is a "Damn picture on the wall of some dogs playin' poker."
Video Games
- After Razputin cures Edgar Teglee of his psychosis in Psychonauts, Edgar creates his own painting of the anthropomorphic dogs that populate his mind playing a game of poker. Should you enter his mind after clearing it, you will find him playing that very same game with the dogs.
- Edna & Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes: Seen in Saloon hallucination. You have to join the game to get from one of their cigars needed in later puzzle.
- Fallout: New Vegas: If you have the Wild Wasteland trait, then during Old World Blues, in the cyberdog training area of the Big MT, you can find some dogs learning how to play poker.
- Seen in the Scavenger Hunt portion of The 11th Hour.
- Pajama Sam: One of the rooms in Darkness' house has such a painting, and some of the dogs move when clicked on.
- Parodied in Undertale in which the Lesser Dog is playing poker alone against himself (despite his numerous guard dog colleagues being present at Grillby's). Somehow, it's losing. In the True Pacifist ending, it seemingly finally won.
- One of the players in Telltale Games' Poker Night 2 is Sam, the canine star of Sam & Max: Freelance Police. In one of the game's many humorous asides, Brock Samson points out the obvious joke.
Brock: I just realized, you're a dog, playing po- (laughing) playing poker!Sam: ...I don't get it.
- One of the in-game paintings in Terraria, titled "Goblins Playing Poker", replaces the dogs in the original painting with, well, goblins.
Webcomics
- Housepets! has some of the canine characters recreating the famous painting here.
- A piece of Sandra and Woo fanart◊ created for a contest features foxes and raccoons playing poker.
Web Original
- The Great Muppet Mural◊ created by various artists for the Muppet fansite Tough Pigs includes a scene of Rowlf, Baskerville the Hound, Sprocket, The Storyteller's Dog, Bugsy Them and the Afghan Hound playing cards, drawn by Kenny Durkin.
Western Animation
- Carmen Sandiego: After Carmen steals a painting by Vermeer, Zack says that he doesn't get the hype because his idea of fine art is dogs playing poker. Later, when Zack has to go undercover as a professional art thief The Duke, he scoffs that it's probably Dash Haber's art preference too.
- Clarence: In “Man of the House”, Clarence’s idea of having the house to himself is, oddly enough, hosting a Poker party with dogs.
- An episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog has Courage enter such a painting and pick up an untouched card hand. He laughs and puts it down, which shocks the other dogs upon seeing that the hand is a royal flush. Courage is then kicked out of the painting by one of the dogs.
- In the Disenchantment episode "Love's Tender Rampage", the characters walk past a shop where dogs are playing poker.
- Family Guy:
- In the episode "Saving Private Brian", Mayor West is discovered playing poker with dogs.
- In the episode "Road to Rhode Island", Stewie comments on the Dogs Playing Poker paintings hanging on a wall and suggests that since Jesus is alone in one of the other paintings, the dogs should invite him to their card game.
- In the Lilo & Stitch: The Series episode "Finder", Stitch (who was adopted by Lilo as a "dog") plays a game of poker with his experiment "cousins" with cookies in place of poker chips.
- In the Mickey Mouse (2013) episode, "You, Me, and Fifi", when Mickey calls Goofy for advice on how to get Fifi to like him, Goofy is seen playing Go Fish with Pluto, Nana, Tramp, Peg, Pongo, Copper, Tito, and Sultan (in his footrest form).
- The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In the episode "Monkey See, Doggie Do", Mojo Jojo's spree of transforming the citizens of Townsville into dogs with the Anubis Dog Head includes a party of men playing poker.
- In the Rick and Morty episode "Lawnmower Dog", five intelligent dogs play poker and smoke cigars while using their advanced robotic suits.
- The Simpsons:
- In "Treehouse of Horror IV", Homer is driven to insanity by his mix of intense fear and intense amusement in response to one of the paintings.
- In "The Mansion Family", Mr. Burns has a painting like this where he is shown playing poker with the dogs.
- The episode "Days of Wine and D'oh'ses" has Bart and Lisa trying to recreate the painting in real life for a photography contest.
- T.U.F.F. Puppy: In "Lie Like a Dog", Dudley sneaks out of T.U.F.F. headquarters to avoid boring work days so he can do something fun. One of the things he does is play a card game with other dogs at his friend Phil's house.
- The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald: "The Monster O'McDonaldland Loch" has a scene where Ronald and friends are shown by Sundae's cousin Scotty a gallery displaying parodies of famous paintings where the subjects are anthropomorphic dogs. The last painting shown is a parody of Dogs Playing Poker that depicts bearded human men at the poker table.
- Similar to The Powerpuff Girls (1998), in an episode of Wunschpunsch a spell makes everyone in the city undergo a dog/human hybrid transformation. When the spell effects are shown, there are some dogs playing poker (and starting a fight because one of them supposedly cheats).
