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"Even I'm offended by this. And I'm a fat Southern sheriff."
Chief Wiggum lookalike, The Simpsons, "Love, Springfieldian Style"

Some tropes reference things that really should not always be Played for Laughs, but for some reason often are. One of the consequences of comedies using schadenfreude is that they can tread on subjects that are quite serious to some people. An attempt at a joke on such subjects can easily come across as insulting, offensive, or cruel, earning the reaction, "Dude, not funny!"

The academic terms "dark humor", "black humor", or "tragic farce" apply to some examples, although the exact execution is somewhat different. Black Comedy is not about making jokes at the expense of groups, but rather about using Irony and Fatalism to make them seem amusing while still showing their seriousness. "Dude, Not Funny!", on the other hand, is the reaction you get when a work attempts Crossing the Line Twice but only crosses it once. While black comedy may help people find humor in the midst of their suffering or misfortune, it's less helpful to laugh at the suffering itself as comical since, well, it isn't.

The reaction can also come from using humor against Unacceptable Targets. The saying goes that comedy should "Punch up, not down": mocking powerful authority figures may be bold and edgy but mocking marginalized or oppressed people just makes you look like The Bully.

A "Just Joking" Justification is usually not much help here; the problem isn't that people didn't understand the attempt was intended as a joke but that they found the joke to be about something that's no laughing matter.

If something that was funny falls into this following some related event in the real world, see Harsher in Hindsight. Also compare Distanced from Current Events, where an event's recency heightens the insensitivity.

The Politically Incorrect Villain is portrayed this way on purpose because Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humour and cracking a tasteless joke may be a good way to highlight this. It may also overlap with Comedic Sociopathy, in rather the same way that treating sensitive subjects callously in real life would overlap with actual sociopathy. Conversely, a villain who plays it with enough finesse may be considered Too Funny to Be Evil.

A gifted Insult Comic's skill largely depends on being funny enough to avoid this reaction while still being rude. Similarly, Cringe Comedy is intended to be so uncomfortable that the discomfort itself becomes humorous. Sarcasm Failure is when the situation is such that even the Deadpan Snarker knows better than to attempt a joke about it.

Compare Black Comedy, Refuge in Vulgarity, HA HA HA—No, and No Sense of Humor.

Contrast Actually Pretty Funny, Crosses the Line Twice, and Narm.


In-Universe Examples Only:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • In Birdy the Mighty: Decode, after Tsutomu makes a crass crack about Birdy doing whatever she wants after the death of her guardian Tuto, she balls up her fist, swings at her own face, and switches places with Tsutomu, so he's the one getting socked.
  • Buso Renkin: On one occasion in the manga, Gouta makes a sarcastic joke about how they'd be able to save on food money if Kazuki stopped eating normal meals and instead just started draining people whenever he gets hungry. All-Loving Hero Kazuki is not amused by the comment and gives Gouta, who he had previously been putting up with, an intense Death Glare in response.
  • Delicious in Dungeon:
    • Kabra jokes about how party members eating each other to stay alive in the dungeon depths, something the rest of his group doesn't find funny.
    • Laios, trying to lighten the mood after he comes to terms that he needs to do better now that his sister isn't there to help them, comments that they would not be able to enjoy such a wonderful sorbet if Falin wasn't eaten. Marcille and Chilchuck are not amused.
  • Doraemon: One of the shorts (which introduces the Memory Toast) have Nobita panicking over an upcoming exam, because he haven't studied for it. Doraemon then jokingly suggests using one of his gadget of the week to simply destroy the entire school or turn Sensei into an ape, and Nobita is not amused.
  • There are a couple of moments in Excel♡Saga where Hyatt will include the phrase "sleeping like the dead". Given that Hyatt has a habit of dying very suddenly (though she comes back to life later), no surprise that Excel comments that it's not funny when she says it.
  • Fairy Tail:
    • Gildarts returns from a several-years-long journey and teases Natsu about his crush on Lisanna like he used to do. Natsu gets upset and informs him that Lisanna had died while he was away. Gildarts is shocked and apologizes. In reality, Lisanna wasn't actually dead, but neither Natsu nor Gildarts knew that at the time.
    • Shortly after the Time Skip, Cana asks if anyone has seen Gildarts. Gray teasingly asks if she's getting lonely without him around (he's been an overprotective dad since he learned that he was her father), causing Cana to snap at him for saying this in front of Lucy, who recently learned that her own father passed away. Gray quickly apologizes to Lucy, but she takes it in stride.
  • In Future Lovers, when Akira learns that Kento's homophobic grandfather is still trying to set him up with women despite him and Akira being a couple, he jokes that Kento can solve this problem by waiting for his grandfather to croak. The very next panel shows Akira with a hand-shaped dent in his cheek.
  • In This Corner of the World: Suzu can't see the humour in the rest of her family laughing about the military police suspecting her of being a spy.
  • Kai in Mobile Suit Gundam tends to hear "Kai, enough!" quite a bit when his sarcasm gets too black.
  • One Piece
    • Nami gets mad when Luffy playfully mimics being frozen using flour while Usopp and Chopper laugh at it, right after he and Robin almost froze to death in a fight with Aokiji, who'd also frozen Zoro and Sanji's limbs for good measure.
    • When Arlong's name is brought up, Brook makes a pun based off his name in front of Nami, with Usopp kicking him suddenly for it. Usopp explains briefly to the crew members who didn't know about Nami's pastnote  about how her hometown was under the control of Arlong and how her adoptive mother was killed by him.
  • At one point in Queen's Blade, shapeshifter Melona impersonates Menace's former lover Anarista for a laugh, but since Anarista betrayed Menace and left her to be raped and killed, Menace is not amused and threatens to kill Melona if she ever does that again.
  • In Rent-A-Girlfriend, Kazuya visits Sayuri in the hospital, where they talk about Chizuru, Sayuri's granddaughter and the girl everyone thinks is Kazuya's girlfriend. During the conversation, Sayuri jokes about how she's going to die tomorrow, which horrifies Kazuya, until Sayuri says she was kidding. In response, Kazuya mirthlessly says, "Ha... Ha ha..." while thinking, "So not funny!" Part of the reason why this joke is particularly unfunny is because Chizuru and Kazuya know that Sayuri does not have long to live and she dies some time later, devastating Chizuru.
  • In Rurouni Kenshin, a group claiming to be Sanosuke's former military unit goes on a crime spree. When Yahiko hears that they have been leaving portraits of Sanosuke's beloved mentor/former captain (who Sanosuke last saw as a severed head after he was executed) at the crime scenes, he jokes that maybe Sanosuke was involved after all and starts laughing. Kaoru hits him and tells him "There are good jokes, and there are bad ones!"
  • In one episode of Sailor Moon, when Usagi is concerned about her weight, Luna jokingly shows her a fat drawing of her in 6 months. Usagi is not impressed by this at all.
  • In one scene in Spirited Away, Chihiro is trying to refill a bathing vat for the stink-spirit and having a very hard time doing so (which is hardly a surprise). Yubaba, who is watching from a balcony, can't help but laugh a little, but the toad-like bathhouse worker next to her who's also watching comments that he does not think it's very funny.
  • Steins;Gate: Okabe repeatedly calls Ruka — who is undoubtedly the most effeminate character in the series — a dude several times (sometimes to remind even himself, other times to tell unwitting newcomers like Kurisu). However, it eventually stops being funny when Ruka uses D-Mail to make it so he was born female, and it drives Ruka to tears every time he says it afterwards. Justified in the sense that Okabe's Reading Steiner, along with the fact that Ruka looks exactly the same as a girl meant he had no idea that Ruka's D-Mail actually worked, while to the others it just looks like he's making fun of her for no reason all of a sudden.
  • Variable Geo: Sexual harassment is never a laughing matter, especially when the girl they're doing it to has the innate ability to summon flames. So when Yuuki decided to 'get friendly' with Satomi, Satomi responded with her ultimate attack, which incinerated the ring and Yuuki along with it (at 21:09-23:03).
  • At the conclusion of the Duelist Kingdom arc in Yu-Gi-Oh!, the gang is searching for Kaiba after his soul was restored following the defeat of Pegasus. Jounouchi, who's made it perfectly clear that he hates Kaiba due to his actions during the Death-T arc, jokingly suggests that maybe his soul died and went to the afterlife instead, leading Anzu to mutter "Not funny!" right behind him.

    Comedy 
  • As he recounts in his concert film Delirious, Eddie Murphy has been confronted by angry Stevie Wonder fans for doing blind jokes about Wonder.
  • During the question segment of Them Idiots: Whirled Tour, a senility joke causes the host, Reno, to crack a euthanasia joke. While the audience laughs, Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, and Larry the Cable Guy all stare daggers at Reno (though Larry starts visibly chuckling after a minute). Jeff then tells Reno to go stand in the corner and think about what he just said.
  • During the Comedy Central roast of Flava Flav comedian/talk show host Jimmy Kimmel went into a bit about Flav having kids with multiple women (8 kids with 4 mothers per The Other Wiki), which went well enough until he capped it with "Chris Benoit is a better father than he is!" This was shortly after Benoit's Pater Familicide and the audience was not amused, and the expression on Flav's face was clearly invoking this trope.
  • During his stand-up routine at the Academy Awards in 2022, Chris Rock told a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith regarding her hair, or lack thereof. Her husband, Will Smith, was not amused. note 

    Comic Books 
  • Avengers: The Initiative: Drill Sergeant Nasty Gauntlet repeatedly insults the Initiative recruits by calling them "New Warriors," until he's found brutalized and comatose with the team name written on him. The attacker turns out to be Slapstick, who snapped and beat Gauntlet unconscious while screaming how enraged he was at the man using the names of his dead friends as an insult. Slapstick never gets found out, and it's implied Gauntlet didn't reveal his identity because he realized he did cross a line.
  • Batman:
  • In an Andy Capp strip released in 2013, Andy meets a professor in the tavern who says he's studying phobias, who quickly points out that "ergophobia" is the fear of work, and laughs in Andy's face. Given Andy's reaction, he really didn't think it was funny. (In the last panel, the bartender muses, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing...")
  • When Obelix gets Taken for Granite in Asterix and Obelix All At Sea, Vitalstatistix, Unhygenix, Cacofonix and Fulliautomatix all stand around making morbid rock-themed puns in the manner of the standard Asterix joke template of this kind. Instead, Asterix yells at them all that his best friend is dead and now is not the time, and Getafix agrees with the others not to make any more jokes in poor taste.
  • In one of The Beano annuals, Roger the Dodger reacts this way when a pair of newsreaders reveal that a meteor they claimed would hit Earth is actually going to miss the planet entirely... right after he'd just got rid of what he thought was it (actually a demolition ball snapping off a crane) with a giant flattened frying pan on a spring. However, Laser-Guided Karma quickly comes into effect when said demolition ball ends up crashing into their studio a few moments later.
    Roger: (goes to see the stunned newsreaders on seeing the ball hit on TV) Pleased to meteor, I'm Roger!
  • In Empowered, Oyuki impersonates Mind███. Ninjette tells her that's not funny. Given that Mind████ had died with Empowered unable to save her, if she had seen Oyuki, she probably would have had a Freak Out.
  • The Transformers: Dark Cybertron: Prowl smirks at the death of Chromedome's significant other, Rewind, as Chromedome's actions, under Prowl's direction, got Rewind killed. Chromedome throws him off a cliff for that.
  • The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: In Chapter 8, Soapy Slick and all of his cronies have a good laugh at the defeated Scrooge, with Soapy humiliating him over his defeat. Soapy reads all of Scrooge's letters from home, causing everyone to mock him for being a Momma's Boy, and laughing over their misfortune. When Soapy reveals to Scrooge that his mother has died, and laughs in his face for it, everyone else quiets down and looks sorry for it all, right before the ensuing Mass "Oh, Crap!" over Scrooge's Unstoppable Rage.
  • In The Pulse, the New Avengers end up taking Jessica Jones to Doctor Strange so she can have a baby (thanks to the person in charge of a hospital freaking out and thinking Jessica was going to give birth to a mutant). When he mentions that he helped give birth to the Scarlet Witch's children, Spider-Man replies that it has to go better than that did. Strange and the Avengers side-eye Spidey before he realizes he just put his foot in his mouth, stating that it was so much clever in his head before he actually said it.
  • Spider-Man/Deadpool: Deadpool's Secret Santa gift for Clint (which he accidentally gives to his successor Kate) is a Fun T-Shirt reading "I killed the Hulk and all I got was this lousy T-shirt". Everyone else at the Christmas party finds the gift tasteless and kicks him out.
  • Spider-Man: In The Amazing Spider-Man (J. Michael Straczynski) #522, Wolverine makes an inappropriate comment about Mary Jane. Spider-Man responds by punching the mutant through a window made of indestructible glass. After recovering, Logan grumbles that Parker can’t take a joke.
  • Scooby Apocalypse: When Shaggy thinks Scooby is in mourning because the chili dogs are rotten, Fred asks if a dog eating dogs is cannibalism and Shaggy replies with "Not funny, Dude". Fred later says the same thing word by word when Shaggy asks what's between him and Daphne other than Fred being a "serial proposer" but Shaggy argues that "Actually, it is".
  • Supreme Power: When two guards watch a toddler Hyperion accidentally incinerate his new pet dog with his heat vision, one of them makes a tasteless crack on Spot being a fitting name for the dog. The other guard calls him out on his terrible pun and proceeds to knock him over while calling him a "prick" after the jokester asks what he did wrong.
  • Ultimate Marvel
    • All-New Ultimates: Spider-Man makes a joke about Jersey, which was destroyed by Galactus in Cataclysm: The Ultimates' Last Stand. Black Widow tells him "Dude, too soon!".
    • The Ultimates: Pym stops a just-revived Captain America by squashing him with his giant hand and quips "the situation's well in-hand". Banner and Stark are horrified at the idea that he may have killed Cap right after his return.
  • The Superman story Emperor Joker sees this combined with Even Evil Has Standards as the corrupted Jimmy Olsen is killed by The Joker for trying to kill Superman after he was transformed into a dog.

    Fan Works 
  • Dear Old Dad: When Akechi tells the Phantom Thieves that he's Shido's son, Joker is struggling not to laugh at the morbid fact that Akechi is another one of Shido's illegitimate children like all of his human teammates. Yusuke explains to a fuming Akechi that this is Joker's reaction to the shock, but it's clear by the other thieves' Death Glare at him that they don't approve of his reaction.
  • Discussed in Eleutherophobia. Tom considers making a "who are you and what have you done with my father" joke in The Day the Earth Stood Still, and a sarcastic comment that he was never a good host in Back to the Future, but both times he stops himself because being infested by Yeerks has been a traumatic experience for his entire immediate family.
  • Empath: The Luckiest Smurf: In "Papa Smurf & Mama Smurfette", when Papa Smurf and Smurfette announce that they're going to be married, most of the Smurfs laugh as if they think it is a joke. Polaris responds that he assumes that Papa Smurf and Smurfette are very honest and determined about this while the two look at the other Smurfs in distaste. However, the other Smurfs stop laughing when Empath calls out Papa Smurf and Smurfette for being in an relationship to the point of getting married...
  • I Ain't a Doll, This Ain't a Dollhouse: In chapter 7, when Joseph and Jotaro are talking about how Johanna almost married Dio, Joseph decides to impersonate Dio wanting to celebrate his wedding anniversary with Johanna in a carnal matter. He has to avoid a punch from Jotaro's Star Platinum, the latter sicken at the thought of Dio having sex with their ancestor and still mad finding out about Joseph's infidelity years before their time of origin while they were in Morioh 1999.
  • Ino and Sakura are talking about Naruto in Shards when Sakura starts making fun of him for being an orphan. Ino stares at Sakura and asks what is wrong with her; when Sakura tries to double down, Ino explains not only were Sakura's words needlessly cruel, but that Ino almost became an orphan herself, since her mother died in Kyuubi's attack and her father almost died of his wounds. Ino leaves in disgust, ending their recently repaired friendship right then and there.
  • In one Harry Potter story, Harry and Sirius accidentally land in an Alternate Universe where they (and Voldemort) died but Lily and James Potter lived. When Sirius makes a joke that since Gabrielle drowned during the second task, Harry won't be able to hit on Fleur, Harry furiously tells him that Gabrielle was a wonderful child whose life he personally saved and her death means far more than not being able to date her sister.
  • Wocky and Apollo are horrified in Dirty Sympathy when a radio announcer jokes about Klavier's near strangulation by saying that he should suck on ice cubes because he has another concert to perform.
  • In The Stalking Zuko Series, Katara did not like Zuko joking that he'd rather get hit by lightning than do something else, once he was on the mend after his duel with Azula.
  • Remembrance: While Tyrion does correctly guess why Jon Snow is fighting in Daznak's Pit (he was kidnapped by slavers hoping to make a profit), he also jokingly theorizes that Jon Snow enjoyed his company so much that he considers fighting to the death just so that he can be in his presence Worth It. The looks he gets from everyone around him makes it clear that this is not the time for jokes.
  • Luna decides to sneak up and surprise Joker in Lightning Among the Stars. Harry rather sternly tells her it wasn't remotely funny as Joker (who has brittle bone disease) broke his knee hitting it against a console when he jumped in fright.
  • According to Scott in A Third Path to the Future, when Evan first joined the X-Men he tried making a joke about Kurt looking like the Devil. Scott came down on him hard for that as not only is such a comparison rather insensitive to begin with, but Kurt's a devout Catholic.
  • Defied in Blue Belle when Cordelia makes a joke that Kendra's death "left [them] with the defective Slayer". Buffy insists she crossed the line but Cordelia fires right back that everyone in the room has joked about somebody's death; what difference does it make that this time it was someone they "kind of knew". The other Sirens admit that Cordelia does have a point.
  • In The Mouse of Konoha, Inoichi tries to tell Tsume this after she jokes that the Nara exist to be a legal alternative to necrophilia. It falls flat however as everyone else is laughing their asses off.
  • In Vapors Naruto and Sasuke try to break the tension on a mission by teasing Aiko about the time she was kidnapped by Sasori. It only stresses her out more, because they didn't realize how close she came to dying or being vivisected into a puppet since she never ever talks about what happened.
  • Coreline: The "Fakehuggers" found in Legends of the Fourth of July (Coreline) are made of this Trope. Designed to look and act exactly like a real Facehugger, right down to knocking out their victims and wrapping around their faces, they were intended to be a harmless prank. However, they instead resulted in some people having fatal heart attacks.
  • Doing It Right This Time: Asuka and Misato have this reaction to Shinji making a rather dark joke about seppuku in Chapter 3, though it's not so much the joke itself as the fact it's the known suicide-risk making it that sets them off.
  • Fire Emblem Fates: Aftermath: Takumi is not amused when Izana shows up, reveals that he faked his death, and proceeds to make jokes about it.
  • Wednesday fanfic Either Way What Bliss: When Enid jokes about having scars now, Wednesday promptly tells her that this no laughing matter.
  • Influenced Out of Normality: When Tony Stark hears that Sunnydale doesn't even have an aquarium, he ponders how people survive growing up there. Xander (his son), remarks that most don't. Tony tells him he really shouldn't say that to his father who only hasn't taken him out of that deathtrap of a town on his wishes.
  • In Of Princesses and Changelings, Princess Luna chastises Princess Cadence for using a Fantastic Slur when talking about Changelings, noting that as both royalty and diplomats they must put aside any personal feelings while dealing with others.
  • Charles Xavier chews out several of his students in One Way to Become an Ex-X-Man after a prank war culminates in them stowing Xander in the women's locker room just before all the female telepaths entered, then locking everyone inside with their telepathy forcibly turned on. They for all intents and purposes forced their teammates to rape someone who considered them a friend, all as part of a prank. It's later revealed that Xander avoided it by focusing on his other main fantasy of having a loving family. This still resulted in Psylocke raping him, though they're getting married.
  • In A Year Too Soon, Draco Malfoy starts to express his wishes that the troll had killed Hermione instead of just injuring her before being shut up by a Death Glare from roughly a third of Slytherin. For wishing death upon a fellow student, Snape gives him detention until the holidays and informs Dumbledore of his actions.
  • In A Triangle in the Stars, Bill falls victim to this In-Universe in Chapter Forty-Seven. Wendy tells a scary story, and Bill tries to help it by supplementing it with an image of the monster. He laughs. The others don't, and Connie calls him out, which confuses him for a bit.
  • One of the Beauxbatons students in Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum jokingly threatens to reveal where Sirius is when she overhears Harry and friends talking about it. Harry and Luna both give her an Implied Death Threat and she learns later Sirius has a Kiss On Sight order out for him. She apologizes afterwards, admitting that she thought it was something minor rather than them harboring an escaped (but innocent) felon.
  • Fantasy of Utter Ridiculousness: Reisen has this reponse when Eirin gives her some herbs and spices from the kitchen to take with her, shortly after she'd just gotten done reassuring her subordinate that Reimu wouldn't turn her into rabbit stew for not safeguarding Megas's crew.
  • If You Had This Time Again, Darcy Lewis jokingly threatens to taze Tony Stark if he makes a move on Jane Foster. While Tony tries to play it off, both JARVIS and Jane are rather upset with her for brandishing a taser at a man who has an electromagnet in his chest keeping him alive. A strong electrical shock could very well kill him.
  • In Where Talent Goes on Vacation, after Azuki and Nagato read through the rules for the school trip, Azuki flippantly asks if the school expects them to start killing each other, only for Nagato to call her out on it, saying that she recalled a time when a student got stabbed at her old school. Azuki then apologizes, admitting that her comment was in poor taste.
  • In Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness Act III, Kokoa, in penance for accidentally turning Tsukune into a ghoul, swears loyalty to him and becomes his servant to regain her damaged pride. When Akua and Kahlua find out in chapter 6, they tell Kokoa and the others that, in order for Kokoa to truly regain her pride, she will have to be do whatever Tsukune says and be his slave in every sense of the word, including sexually... only to reveal they were only joking about that part; nobody in Tsukune's group is amused.
  • Maria Campbell of the Astral Clocktower: The Third Prince informs the children who Maria rescued that Maria won't have time to come around to play any more, since a new knight agreed to take over their protection. All the kids cry... at which point he reveals that Maria was recently knighted and is officially taking them as her wards. Maria and Katarina yell at him for the cruel joke.
  • Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail: During a discussion where many of the Alolan characters are shocked at why Mallow never mentioned the Infinity Train to them before (as she was on it when she was younger and sensed Gladion got on it prior) she finds out that everyone assumed that she was only worried for Gladion because she crushed on him. When she asked what would they have thought if she got on the Train, Kiawe and Sophocles give good points. Lana, Mallow's Childhood Friend, goes "Elopment". This does not go well with Mallow because Mallow's reason for getting on the Train was running away in tears over the fact that her mom was dying of terminal illness — something Lana of all people would know about. Lana later apologizes and states her brand of humor doesn't fit every situation.
  • Downplayed in the Midsomer Murders fanfic Surfacing. When Ben wakes up in the hospital after nearly drowning, he finds both Tom and John Barnaby at his bedside. In order to check he's OK, Tom asks him what his name is; Ben cheekily answers "Jack Morris" (his undercover alias from Last Man Out, which John knows about but Tom doesn't).
    John: Still not funny. Change your answer before he has a stroke.

    Films — Animation 
  • In Epic (2013), MK doesn't like how Nod and Ronin are making fun of stompers, particularly her dad who is sitting beside them and saddened by his daughter's departure. Then she blatantly points out that she is also a stomper.
  • The Lion King (1994) has Banzai complaining about the scratches Mufasa had given him and the other hyenas, while Ed (despite being thrashed earlier by Mufasa as well) laughs at him. Banzai tells him angrily that it's not funny. To be fair, though, Ed always laughs uncontrollably.
    Banzai: It's not funny, Ed.
    Ed: (laughs even louder)
    Banzai: Hey, shut up!
  • In The Sponge Bob Movie Sponge Out Of Water, Plankton remarks, after he and SpongeBob were exiled from Bikini Bottom, that they could rename Bikini Bottom to "Dirty Bottom". SpongeBob's reaction is "...that's kind of gross, Plankton."
  • In The Super Mario Bros. Movie while traveling to Peach's castle, Toad clears a path for himself and Mario by shouting that "This guy's brother is going to die imminently!” Mario is not amused by this, causing Toad to immediately backtrack and assure him Luigi will be fine.
  • A deleted sequence from Who Framed Roger Rabbit reveals that we would have seen a multitude of Toons attend Marvin Acme's funeral. A gag would have focused on the pallbearers. note  Goofy and Popeye would have shared banter about their duty, which Bluto, of all characters, considers inappropriate for the occasion. This would have led to a graveside fight among them.
    Goofy: Gawrsh, pallbearin's sure hard work, ain't it? A-hyuck!
    Popeye: So we're bearin' Paul, huh? I thoughts we wuz bearin' Acme!

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The movie Heathers had an example when Veronica's boyfriend J.D. cracks a joke at the funeral of two of their victims that they made look like a double-suicide and the little sister of one of the boys killed turns to look at them while crying. It's at that point that Veronica begins to realize how messed up she's becoming under J.D.'s influence.
  • American Psycho:
    • Patrick pretends to be offended by a racist joke one of his associates tells, though he's actually a virulent racist himself.
    • Patrick tells what he think is a hilarious anecdote about Ted Bundy. His colleagues are less than impressed.
  • In Wag the Dog, the movie producer shows his pet musician (played by Willie Nelson) a political cartoon poking fun at the President's sex scandal. The musician immediately composes an impromptu song mocking the whole thing, but stops when he realizes that everyone else in the room (most of whom work directly for the President) is staring at him in horror.
  • At the beginning of Star Trek: Generations, the officers are having a promotion party for Worf on the holodeck, where they're on an 18th-century naval ship. They make Worf walk to the end of the plank and jump for his new rank insignia, then Riker shouts "remove the plank" — which is interpreted by the computer as a command to remove it from the simulation. As a result, the plank disappears, dropping Worf into the sea. Picard chides Riker, saying that he should have said "retract the plank". After Crusher attempts to explain the humor to Data, he pushes her overboard.
    LaForge: Data!
    Data: (smirking) That was...
    LaForge: ...not funny!
  • In Tropic Thunder Alpa makes a crack about a "dingo eating your baby" to the Australian Kirk Lazarus, which he is so offended by he almost breaks character.
    Alpa: Why am I in this movie? Maybe it's because I knew I had to represent. They had one good role for a black man, and they gave it to "Crocodile" Dundee!
    Kirk: (stops smiling) Pump your brakes, kid. That man's a national treasure.
    Alpa: I just wanna throw another shrimp on your barby.
    Kirk: That shit ain't funny.
    Alpa: I'm just messin' with you, Kangaroo Jack. I'm so sorry a dingo ate your baby!
    Kirk: Y'know, that's a true story? Lady lost her kid. You 'bout to cross some fuckin' lines!
  • During the astronaut tryouts in The Right Stuff, Alan Shepard frequently mimics 50s comedian Bill Dana's Mexican astronaut character "Jose Jimenez", but it eventually gets on the nerves of Gonzalez, the Mexican orderly, who tells him "me and my friends think your Jose Jimenez imitation is A-OK. But what you're doing with it is B-A-D.".
  • In The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Kíli joked about orcs to a nervous Bilbo. Thorin immediately sternly lectures him on taking the matter so lightly. It's understandable why Thorin doesn't think it's something to be joked about, because orcs had overrun the dwarf kingdom Moria and killed many dwarves (including Thorin's grandfather) which Thorin had witnessed firsthand.
  • In The House of Yes, Jackie once went to a costume party as Jackie Onassis in the pink dress she wore when JFK was assassinated, complete with fake blood. Also, little bits of pasta she glued on the dress. Because a Jackie Kennedy The Day Of The Assassination costume would not be complete without little bits of brain. This trope was the reaction she got from the rest of the guests at the party.
  • In Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, Bruce Lee and his girlfriend/future wife Linda go to see Breakfast at Tiffany's. Linda is shown laughing at the antics of Mr. Yunioshi until she sees Bruce is visibly unamused. This scene emphasizes how typically Asian characters were stereotyped at the time, and how Bruce would help change their image for better.
  • Mean Girls: Cady thinks Aaron will find it funny when she tells him that she pretended to be bad at maths so he can tutor her. However, Aaron takes it the opposite way as he realizes that Cady has become a second Regina and storms off.
  • The Hangover: Stu has this reaction to Alan wiggling a baby's arm to pretend "he's jacking his little weenus!"
  • Three examples in Neighbors (2014).
  • In The Descendants, Sid laughs uncontrollably at Elizabeth's mother's dementia. Elizabeth's father eventually punches him in the face.
  • Home Alone:
    • When Kevin's parents realize they left him behind, Uncle Frank attempts to cheer them up by telling them he forgot his reading glasses. His wife and Kevin's parents then give him this reaction.
    • Harry feels this way about Marv's Kick the Dog For the Evulz habit of plugging the drains and leaving all the taps running to flood the houses they've robbed as their "Wet Bandits calling card", admonishing him for it and calling it a sick thing to do.
  • Home Alone 2: Lost in New York:
    • When Kevin gets on the wrong plane and his parents find out while checking their baggage. They report to security where his father jokes that at least they don't lose their luggage. His mother laughs but the head of security answers with a disapproving stare.
    • An audience laughs at Kevin while singing a solo at a Christmas pageant because his older and taller brother Buzz was holding two electric candles up to his ears and pretending to use them as drumsticks. Thinking it was a harmless prank, everyone except Kevin's parents, aunt, the piano teacher, and the conductor laughed, including the fellow children on stage. Kevin discovered Buzz humiliating him, punched him, disrupting the performance. Granted, the officious audience was probably not as harsh as perceived, to do that to someone let alone a child, is quite sadistic and unfunny. Thankfully, it did not scar Kevin and Buzz later apologized to him (later genuinely), Kevin accepted his apology.
  • eXistenZ: After Pikul assembles a new Gristle Gun from his meal, he jokingly points the weapon at Allegra and repeats the line used by an assassin who previously tried to kill her. She's not amused, and he apologizes.
  • Scary Movie 4: The entire UN Assembly are appalled the President's racist jokes. That's what ends up making the scene so funny.
  • Jurassic Park (1993):
    • Alan is not amused by Malcom's quip about always being on the lookout for a "future ex-Mrs. Malcom", if the disgusted scowl he gives the man is any indication. Mostly because he's irked by Malcom putting the moves on Ellie.
    • Later, Alan pretends to get zapped by an electric fence. Lex's reaction is this trope; Tim's isn't.
      Lex: That's not funny.
      Tim: (snickering) That was great!
  • In Jurassic World, Claire considers Lowery sporting a classic Jurassic Park t-shirt after what happened in the first film to be in poor taste and orders him not to wear it again.
  • In Hot Tub Time Machine, Kelly is appalled when Lou starts laughing at the Bellhop losing his arm.
  • Morris in Purple Rain: The day after the kid's father tried to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head, his rival, Morris poke his head in the dressing room and ask "How's the family?" Partly subverted when a shot of Morris’ expression outside the dressing room seem to show his regret of the taunt and the realization that he had gone too far.
  • Elf has the scene where Buddy mistakes a little person, Miles Finch, for an elf. Miles takes so much offense that he beats the crap out of Buddy for it.
  • It (2017): When the Losers find a shoe belonging to one of the missing kids in the sewer, Richie cracks a joke how he wouldn't want to be her: wandering around with only one shoe. The others all give him a disapproving stare.
  • In Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Larry Talbot is upset that no one takes his warnings seriously about being the Wolf Man ("I'm sort of a wolf myself," quips Wilbur), which to him is no laughing matter. However, he's downright offended when the cast goes to a costume party and Chick Young shows up wearing a werewolf mask.
  • In Tremors, teen Jerkass Melvin at one point pretends that the Graboid tongue that Earl and Val got (and then sold to Walter) became alive and grabbed him. Burt makes a point of telling Melvin, quite angrily, that he almost shot him out of fright.
    Burt: You came this close. Too close. No more games.
  • In the film Dreamgirls, when Jimmy drops his pants on national television, he expects others to find it funny. The others then criticize him for making a fool out of himself instead.
  • In Deadpool 2, Wade muses that he'd like to go to a planet filled with weak morons and be their equivalent to Superman. Weasel asks if he's just describing Canada, which actually manages to piss Wade off. note 
    Wade: You shut your god damn mouth!
  • In Romeo Must Die, after Colin's death, Trish recalls a story to Han that as children, she and her brother pranked their mother by pretending he had been hit by a car. It was when they saw their mother's reaction that they realize the prank went too far.
  • Joker (2019) has the titular character appear in a talkshow and tell a "Knock Knock" Joke about a mother's son being killed by a drunk driver, prompting booing from the audience and a scolding from Murray and the other guests.
    Dr. Sally: No, no no no no, you cannot joke about that!
    Murray: Yeah, that's not funny, Arthur. That's not the kind of humor we do on the show.
  • In Short Circuit Howard theorizes the potential danger of having their laser-armed robot roaming free.
    Howard: What if it decides to melt down a bus full of nuns? How would you like to write the headline on that one?!
    Ben: Nun soup?
    Newton: BEN!
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • During Iron Man 2, Happy has this reaction to Tony Stark when, at the worst possible time with Pepper Potts, Stark quips "I lost both kids in the divorce!" and looks around with a big grin for reactions. Pepper and Natalia just look at him with utter scorn while Happy silently gives him a "just don't" kind of gesture.
    • Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) gasps in shock when Rocket mocks the death of Drax's family.
    • In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, this is Played for Drama. In the first movie, Yondu mentions that when he first picked up Peter on Earth, his crew wanted to eat him, and Yondu stopped them. Yondu has been bringing that up for twenty-six years. It was always just a stupid joke to him, but Peter seriously thought there was a chance he could have been eaten.
      Yondu: That was bein' funny!
      Peter: ...Not to me!
    • Kraglin tells everyone about how Yondu cruelly shot down Peter's attempts to share Christmas with the Ravagers in The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. Drax's first response is to burst out laughing. Mantis and Nebula give him a look that tells him his response was inappropriate.
  • In Vertigo, Scottie storms out after Midge gives him the painting of Carlotta with her own face on it. She thought it would be nice to tease him about his recent obsession, but he couldn't take it.
  • In V for Vendetta, Gordon makes a joke about secretly being V after he cooks the same breakfast that V made for Evey. Evey is unimpressed, as she's seen people go to jail for less than that.
  • Austin Powers: Said In-Universe by Austin in regards to his father writing off Austin's quite legitimate complaints about his parenting skills with a joke.
  • Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers: A teen dresses up like Michael Myers and pretends to attack his friends in front of two policemen. When he reveals himself, the cops angrily yell that is not funny, especially since they almost shot him.

    Literature 
  • In one scene from Stephen King's novel Christine, a bunch of high school hoods are cruising and drinking beers after a school basketball game, and complaining that their team lost. At one point, one of the hoods compliments the athleticism of the school's basketball star (in one of those "The rest of the team sucks, but this one guy is a good player" sort of way), who just happens to be black. The leader of the gang sneers, retorting, "I hate that fucking spade." This prompts one of the newer gang members to make a racial joke, to which the rest of the gang reacts with this. Specifically, the gang leader says, "I said I hated that spade. I got no problem with the rest of them..." and threatens to toss the "fucking bigot" out of his car at high speed. The new guy shuts up quickly.
  • In Cold Days, Harry jokes about having sex with Molly. Molly—having unrequited feelings for him—is not amused.
  • Skippy's List has examples.
    93. Nerve gas is not funny.
  • Nicko Heap in Septimus Heap often gets criticized for this, having an habit of not understanding the seriousness of a situation.
  • In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the cinema plays horrid newsreel footage of refugees being murdered, including a woman and a small child. The audience laughs, except for a single prole woman who loudly objects to it, only to be carted outside by the police to whatever horrid Fate Worse than Death awaited her.
  • In The Honor of the Queen Admiral Courvosier, while discussing the patriarchal nature of Grayson society with his (female) protégée Honor, jokes that the lack of women in Grayson's armed forces might be "a bit restful, now and then". Honor gives him a brief Death Glare, after which he admits that it "wasn't quite as funny as I thought it would be."
  • Harry Potter: Peeves the Poltergeist is often called out for his pranks. In The Chamber of Secrets for example, he accuses Harry Potter of attacking students and creates a song to go with it. Professor McGonagall orders him to stop.
  • In Wings of Fire: Moon Rising, Moon reads Kinkajou's mind about hoping to tell Glory about Moonwatcher's mind-reading powers. Darkstalker suggests killing her and then says "Just kidding". Moon scolds him, and his response is "Too soon?"
  • In the novelization of Revenge of the Sith, Anakin reacts this way to Palpatine's manipulations at first. He's so utterly convinced that Palpatine is trustworthy that he can only think he's joking whenever he starts praising the Sith. More than once, he cautions Palpatine not to say such things in front of the Jedi.
  • In The Serpent's Shadow, Maya has to deal with catcalling Upper-Class Twit observers when trying to remove an inflamed appendix on a pregnant Irishwoman without excising the uterus, respecting her beliefs on the matter. However, when Simon Parkening says that "one less Irish bitch pumping out litters of whelps" won't matter anyway, the catcalls and mockery die down and one of his fellows calls him out of order.
  • Captain Underpants: After Professor Poopypants is defeated in Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants, George exclaims "Let's all give Captain Underpants a big hand!" Harold, whose hand was accidentally enlarged a few chapters prior, glares at George who apologizes.
  • Journey to Chaos: Annala tells Eric about her grandfather, Nueces, who suffers from chaotic madness that makes him think he's being chased by squirrels. When it's especially bad, he thinks they are in his pants. Eric laughs when he hears this but Annala's stern glare quickly silences him. Chaotic madness is not the least bit funny and especially not among elves.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes: Actually used to argue that Carlton really was kidnapped instead of faking it to make the police search for him. Carlton has a habit of making tasteless jokes and pranks including pretending to be "twins" when he started school then pretended that one was kidnapped, but he would never make any jokes about Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria because a friend of his died there and his friend's Trauma-Induced Amnesia was casued by it.
  • Guardians of Ga'Hoole: Primrose the pygmy owl suffers from a slug allergy (the slug was her dessert) and has to be taken to the hospital (or the owl equivalent of it). A Pure Ones spy named Ginger makes a joke that she can have the dessert now. Immediately, she gets Death Glares from Gylfie and Otulissa, who tell her off sharply about making jokes like that.
  • Due to being a Cute Ghost Girl, Rosalie in I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level is very casual when it comes to talking about death and souls, something the others often find disturbing. Some examples include: being glad her death led to meeting Azusa's family, looking forward to getting a new friend if Halkara does get executed, and commenting that Azusa's soul shrunk too when she ate a mushroom that shrunk her to child size.
  • In Shadow of the Conqueror, Lyrah and Cueseg regard each other's humor as offensive, especially when food, culture, or religion is involved. Him accidentally hitting her Trauma Button doesn't help things.
  • When the figure of the Red Death first appears in The Masque of the Red Death, Prince Prospero angrily denounces the "blasphemous mockery" of (what he assumes to be) a partygoer dressed up as a plague victim.
  • In Emma, Jane Fairfax is genuinely pissed when Frank—her secret fiance—encourages Emma's fanciful speculation that there must be a secret love between Jane and the unseen Mr. Dixon (the new husband of Jane's best friend, who is like a sister to her). It doesn't help that Frank is choosing to allay suspicion of their engagement by flirting with Emma.
  • Ellen and Otis: Invoked in Otis Spofford when Otis cuts Ellen's hair and, rather than laugh, the class just stares at Otis. Otis even realizes right before he does it that he's going way too far; however, when Ellen calls his bluff, pride prevents him from backing down and he does it.
  • Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Katie brightly summarizes Nanao's detailed explanation on her Dark and Troubled Past that led her to become a Death Seeker after Oliver turned down her offer of a duel with the line, "Um... to sum up... you got all depressed because Oliver rejected you?"
    Oliver: Sorry, Katie, but could you shut up?
  • The Left Hand of Darkness: At a party in Orgoreyn, word gets out that their antagonistic neighboring country's ruler recently had a stillborn child, so someone toasts and wishes for all their kings to live as long. It falls fairly flat, with one person calling him out for mocking the Death of a Child.
  • The Golden Hamster Saga: In Freddy to the Rescue, the field hamsters are in despair over the bulldozers that have been destroying their burrows and killing them one by one. The guinea pigs Enrico and Caruso try to cheer them up with a skit in which Caruso plays a bulldozer, but the hamsters boo them off the stage and chase them out of the cave.

    Live-Action TV 
  • One episode of The Adam and Joe Show featured a parody of Jam, in particular the infamous dead baby sketch. In the skit, Joe plays a TV repairman who finds a "dead baby" (a cheap-looking doll) behind the set and says he will have to rape the corpse in order to fix the TV. Adam is horrified, refuses to film any more and storms off the set while Joe complains that it's supposed to be uncompromising and "you don't understand my genius."
  • Not played for laughs in one episode of All in the Family. In the episode, Archie's boss has to lay off a worker, and tells Archie to recommend one of the guys he supervises. A smart man would choose "Stretch" Cunningham, the slacker who does nothing but tell jokes all day and never works. However, being the type of guy he is, Archie eventually does the stupid thing and lets Stretch keep his job because he's white, lays off the competent Hispanic worker, giving all sorts of lame excuses as to why, including that the other workers would hate him for choosing the other two over Stretch, and that he actually thinks the guy's jokes are good for morale. (Not that his family actually believes it.) In The Stinger, when he comes home from work, hours late and exhausted, he tells Edith, "You know that Stretch Cunningham? He ain't so funny."
  • Video compilation programs such as America's Funniest Home Videos occasionally fall prey to this. A bicyclist flipping over a suddenly opened car door is only funny when it does not result in serious injury; a toddler at the beach being entirely engulfed by a wave is only funny if the child is not drowned or swept away.
  • In Around the World in 80 Days (2021), the trio ends up in the company of legendary African-American lawman Bass Reeves as he's transporting a Klansman to justice while trying to stay ahead of the man's fellows, who are out to free him and murder Reeves. Reeves takes a moment at a pit stop to warn Passepartout (who is a Black Frenchman in this series) about the Klan. Passepartout starts to snicker incredulously at their name and the description of their costumes, but Reeves cuts him off to say that as stupid as they may look, what they do is deadly serious and Passepartout needs to be on his guard if he wants to make it to New York in one piece.
  • Babylon 5: After an accident resulted in his friend being ejected into space, Dr. Stephen Franklin relates to a reporter in the episode "And Now For a Word" that he does not find jokes about spacing others funny.
  • The Baby-Sitters Club (2020): When Stacey finally confesses that she has diabetes and was worried that the club would make fun of her, everyone tries to comfort her and Kristy wittingly ponders if she's overreacting because her blood sugar levels are dropping. Claudia scolds her with, "Too soon."
  • Bar Rescue:
    • If an owner or staff member is caught laughing or smiling at him during a rant, Taffer will read them the riot act.
    • Taffer's initial reaction to the horse entering the bar in "Chilleen's" was concern for the animal (given how easily it could have injured itself amongst the chairs and tables), and disgust over the Road Apples it left behind.
  • Battlestar Galactica (2003): In "Blood on the Scales", Apollo tricks a group of mutineers by throwing a grenade with the pin still in down the hall. Starbuck, who thought it really was about to go off, tells him that it wasn't funny.
    Apollo: It would have been if you had thought of it.
    Starbuck: No, still not funny.
  • In an episode of The Bernie Mac Show, when Bernie Mac convinced Jordan to fake an asthma attack to go to a Clippers game, guest actor Billy Crystal criticized Bernie's actions, emphasizing how he suffered from asthma as a kid and how it should never be used for nefarious purposes. Then Billy Crystal started faking an asthma attack to mess with Bernie's head.
  • The Brady Bunch: Peter tries to help Cindy with her fear of magic. When he and Bobby show her how the disappearing act works, Bobby decides to sneak out of the garage instead of reappearing. He thinks it's funny, but everyone else is mad at him for exacerbating Cindy's fear.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • When Robin Wood asks Buffy out on a date, he makes a joke about firing her if she says no, which he immediately regrets.
      Robin: I may have to make up a little document saying "I didn't just say that" and have you sign it.
    • Xander, shortly after having an eye gouged out by Caleb quotes Giles:
      "No more fun and games, Xander."
  • Canada's Worst Driver:
    • The fourth season featured a street-racing incident on the way to the Rehabilitation Centre. Since, being illegal, it could have gotten the entire franchise shut down on the spot, host Andrew Younghusband was not impressed.
    • Andrew is not impressed with Dale from Season 6 chasing him with a car. You read that right. He would later say it was the scariest moment of his time on the show.
  • Subverted in the Castle episode "The Lives of Others"; Castle, stuck at home with a broken leg, becomes increasingly obsessed with what he thinks is a murder in an apartment across the street. When he sees the alleged killer pulling a knife on Beckett, he, Esposito and Ryan race to the apartment, where it turns out that Beckett staged the whole thing as an elaborate birthday surprise for Castle. When he finds out that there was no murder, he initially stands there in utter shock, muttering, "You made me think I was crazy?", and you can see the apprehension in Beckett's face as she worries that they may have carried this a bit too far. Finally, Castle declares, "This is... without a doubt... the GREATEST BIRTHDAY PRESENT OF MY LIFE!"
  • The Chosen: Played with when Jesus and His disciples spend the evening with Melech, a Samaritan who injured himself while robbing a Jew on the road. When Jesus indicates it's time to return to town before bad men and robbers start to lurk the roads, Melech and his wife stare at Him in disbelief, but a "too soon?" from Jesus lightens up the mood and causes the two of them to smile.
  • Clarice: Some of Clarice's fellow FBI agents prank her by putting some body lotion in her desk drawer, explicitly invoking Buffalo Bill's practice of making his captives use it, to her horror. Esquival apologizes for what they did since he knows this was completely wrong (it clearly triggers her PTSD).
  • Community:
    • Abed pantses Troy, who pantses Abed back in retaliation — only to see Abed had anticipated it by wearing Goofy Print Underwear. Everybody laughs, then Shirley comes in, smiling "What's so funny?" Pierce says "This!" and pantses her. Everyone's horrified but Pierce, who laughs, "Get it?"
    • Troy calls out Chang who referred to Troy and Shirley as "dirty".
    • In Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking, Jeff is not amused by Pierce's attempt of a Mind Screw, in which he is made to believe his deadbeat father was coming to see him. He even makes it clear to Pierce that he will beat him to a pulp if he tries to make some kind of elaborate, F/X: Murder by Illusion-style practical gag out of it. And when Pierce still does it on the third act, he barely manages to outrun an irate Jeff.
    • In general, many of Pierce's jokes and shenanigans get this reaction.
    • Subverted when Britta makes an inappropriate joke, and Annie is aghast.
      Annie: Britta, don't make jokes! You're bad at it!
  • Control Z: Quintanilla is attacked and humilliated by the avenger at his own farewell party, locked up in the men's restroom and stung by bees. Shortly after he is released and shows up before the gaze of the students gathered there, Darío jokingly remarks that "it must have been a good poop", at which point they burst out laughing. Quintanilla lampshades this to Darío asking "You think you're so funny?", as he is visibly offended by the joke right before launching his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to them and outright making an angry Screw This, I'm Outta Here.
  • CSI: The episode Loco Motives features as one of the killers of the week an impressive example of a Lethal Klutz that had killed his wife and a Nosy Neighbor completely by accident (and he got stuck in cement up to his waist and was mugged while trying to dispose of his wife's body... and on his backstory he'd also accidentally run over and crippled his daughter, the day after he'd given her a puppy). Katherine cannot stop herself from giggling at how much the absurdity of the situation Crosses the Line Twice, but Grissom remains melancholic and gives a Schiff One-Liner about how ugly living with such a kind of luck must really be that sobers her.
  • Doctor Who: In "Tooth and Claw", Queen Victoria is NOT amused by the Doctor and Rose's playful antics while there's a werewolf running amok and killing people. How much "not amused"? She exiles them from Great Britain (Rose is especially miffed because she's a native and she's being kicked out of the country long before she's been born) and orders the creation of the Torchwood Institute to deal with the Doctor if/when he ever appears again.
  • In an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Geoffrey unveiled his hidden shame of leaving England, because years ago, he was caught taking a taxi in order to win a marathon (he thought the information might ruin Philip's political campaign, and yes, that marathon thing has happened in real life, albeit accidentally). After showing them the video, everyone sat in silence for a good ten seconds before bursting into laughter. Geoffrey was not amused.
  • Friends:
    • In the episode "The One with the Girl who Hits Joey", Chandler has a fight with Monica, and proposes to her out of guilt. Monica says no, and the rest of the gang teases Chandler:
      Joey: Hey Ross, will you pass me that knife?
      Ross: No, I will not!
      Joey: Oh, it's okay. You don't have to be so mean about it.
      Ross: You're right, I'm sorry. Will you marry me?
      Phoebe: Aw, and I was gonna ask you to marry me because I forgot to say hello to you last week.
      Rachel: Oh no wait Pheebs, I think for something like that you just ask them to move in with you. But I'm not sure, Chandler?
      Chandler: Okay, how long is this going to go on?
      Monica: Well, I think the length of teasing is directly related to how insane you were so, a long time.
      Ross: This is fun. Hey Rach, remember that whole "We were on a break thing?" Well, I'm sorry, will you marry me? (nobody laughs)
      Chandler: That's not funny.
      Joey: That's not funny at all!
      (they all get up and leave Ross)
    • Downplayed but still implied during Chandler's job interview. He aces it until he makes a "poo" joke, befuddling the interviewer and ultimately costing him the job.
    • "The One with the Birth", when Rachel jokes about a taxi charging for each contraction during labor, everyone looks at her like she made a tasteless joke. Rachel points out that Chandler does stuff like that and it is considered funny. Shortly after Chandler picks a better joke and moment where everyone laughs, reminding Rachel to pick her spots more carefully.
    • In "The One With Ross' Thing", Phoebe introduces her new firefighter boyfriend to the gang. When Chandler makes a joke about him and Joey playing with matches the firefighter sternly tells him not to do that because "fire safety is not a joke, son".
    • During a prank war, Chandler posts on the college alumni website that Ross has died. Ross angrily confronts him and points out that people who don't know it's a joke might call his parents who will be upset and confused.
    • In the alternate universe episode, Phoebe in this timeline is a successful stock broker, but the stress of her job causes her to have a heart attack. When Ross tells her that having a heart attack is a sign that Phoebe should slow things down, Chandler jokes that having a heart attack is a sign that she should have died instead, causing everyone in the hospital room to shoot him dirty looks.
  • In Glee, Sue and Roz Washington scold several of the girls for making jokes about domestic violence in response to Coach Bieste's black eye. The injury was later revealed to actually be the result of domestic violence.
  • In The Golden Girls episode "Where's Charlie?" Rose believes she's receiving a message from her deceased husband Charlie in regards to her current relationship with her boyfriend Miles. After saying she'd "Pay anything" to speak to Charlie again, Sophia pretends she's channeling Charlie's spirit to get money from her. In the process she convinces Rose "Charlie" is unhappy with Miles being with her, and Rose almost breaks up with Miles. When Dorothy realizes Sophia's tricked Rose, she flat out calls her a horrible person and orders her to come clean. Rose is absolutely furious when Sophia admits she lied, both for mocking Charlie and practically ruining things with Miles before asking just what is wrong with her.
  • The Great British Bake Off: The competitors usually go along good-naturedly with the hosts' comic asides at their expense, but when Mel attempted to joke with Paul the prison governor about "taking security measures" in series 6, he immediately clammed up, looking extremely uncomfortable even as she tried to apologize.
  • In the season 3 premiere of Happy Endings, the gang is laughing at a video of Penny falling down the stairs, when Penny (who is in a half-body cast due to the accident), finally gets fed up with the mockery, and tells them it's not cool — she actually died for two minutes on the ambulance on the way to the hospital. They immediately stop after hearing this.
  • In one episode of Home Improvement, Jill wants Tim to get a vasectomy, because they both feel they're done having children, and he's nervous about it. At Harry's store, Benny and Marty start to make a lot of jokes about it at Tim's expense, while Al tries to defend him and Harry himself bluntly tells the two of them to shut up, clearly not finding them funny at all. It's later revealed that Harry is so quick to defend Tim because he has had a vasectomy, and doesn't want Tim to be discouraged by dumb jokes about the procedure.
    • The three kids cracked on their father all the time, but one such wisecrack was met not with canned laughter, but instead Tim pushing Randy's head back so that he could meet his father's stony, unamused glare:
      Randy: (squeaking) ...Over the line?
      Tim: Way over.
    • Discussed in one episode where Jill's dad dies, and as the family prepares for the funeral Randy keeps cracking bad jokes. Tim talks with him and says he understands that the joking is a coping mechanism, and advises Randy to save the jokes for him because he won't be offended by them.
  • I, Claudius: Tiberius and his younger brother Drusus discuss their roles in life. Tiberius criticizes their mother's treatment of Drusus, and her overall abrasive nature. He quips that "a snake once bit her and died." Drusus takes offense as she is still their mother.
  • The Flemish mockumentary series In de Gloria had a sketch about talk show blooper. The former host said the show got cancelled after an episode about medical failures went Off the Rails. One guest's vocal cords were damaged due to a botched surgery, making him speak in a squeaky voice. The host started laughing, losing even more composure as the in-show segment continued. The guest understandably got upset, even more so when an audience member admitted to almost losing his voice from the same procedure.
  • The Inbetweeners:
    • In one episode, when the lads are ribbing Will over Kerry, this exchange happens:
      Jay: I don't know what you're moaning about, I've never been out with a girl I liked anyway.
      Will: What, except the last one who made you cry? [Jay's face immediately falls]
      Simon: Will!
      Neil: Oh, that is bang out of order!
      Will: What?! After everything he's said?!
      Simon: Yeah, well, some things just aren't okay!
    • In an episode about a school trip, Jay, jealous of Neil impressing the classmates by getting a lorry driver to sound the horn, tries to one-up him. Jay's attempt? Waving sweetly at a bus full of old ladies before showing them rude hand gestures. Neil laughs. The others are not amused.
  • Jessica Jones (2015): After her bed-breaking sex with Luke, Jessica is buying bourbon from an all-night deli. The clerk is listening to a call-in radio show talking about Hope Shlottman, and one of the callers comments, "Ever since those guys quote, 'saved the city', people have been making up stories about more super folk out there. Now some kid is pinning her murder on one? Have you ever heard a more made-up name than 'Kilgrave'? I mean come on. Give me a break." The clerk laughs at the guy mocking the silliness of Kilgrave's name, causing Jessica, herself a fellow victim of Kilgrave, to glare at him and say, "What, are you trying to drive customers away with that shit?"
  • A recurring skit in Late Night With Seth Meyers is a segment where Seth Meyers talks about a few jokes that were written before the show, but due to him being a straight white male, may not be able to properly tell. To get around this, he invites his writers Amber Ruffin (a black woman), and Jenny Hagel (a woman who identifies herself as gay) out to help him tell the jokes, with him setting up the joke, and Amber or Jenny delivering the punchline, which involves blacks, women, or gays. After a few jokes, the two writers will beg Seth to tell a joke, much to his hesitation. After he does, Amber and Jenny immediately take offense and scold him.
  • In the "Infected" episode of The Last of Us (2023) Joel announces that he will shoot Ellie if she so much as "twitches". Ellie chooses that moment to gag and choke dramatically and cross her eyes. Tess, Joel's partner, just gives her a "Don't" with a side of Death Glare.
  • In an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit called "Zebras", Munch calls upon a member of a conspiracy chat room he knows in real life to find a missing suspect. The woman, named Gwen, shares Munch's conspiracy theorist tendencies, as did the suspect, although Gwen appears to be slightly mentally ill and has mentioned that she is thinking of going back on her medication. After Munch is able to find out what he needs to know about the missing suspect, Fin makes a crack about Munch "hooking up with loony lady" before Munch tells him Gwen is his ex-wife.
  • In-universe on Law & Order: UK. While investigating the murder of a boy whose remains were found in the basement of his building, Matt and Ronnie track down the man who was one of the prime suspects, thanks to the then-detective's belief that All Gays Are Pedophiles. 20-something years later, the man is still bitter and angry about the prejudice he faced, leading him to sarcastically confess to killing the boy. At this, Matt snaps, "That's not funny, Mr. Connor."
  • Madam Secretary: "Catch and Release" has Jason come running down the stairs crowing about how the US "just lit up Jihadi Judd,note  BOOM!" Henry, knowing it was a Shoot the Dog call and that Liz had been asked by the guy's mother to save his life, is furious and sends him to his room.
  • In an episode of Married... with Children where Al gets a circumcision by mistake, he warns everyone when he comes home NOT to ask him "What's up?", saying that the nurses and doctor at the hospital asked him that several times, and he did not find it funny. (Bud and Jefferson do not hear this warning, unfortunately, and they learn not to say it the hard way.)
  • The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel:
    • In-Universe. At her wedding, Midge ends her speech by saying they put shrimp in the eggrolls, to the horror of everyone present, since they're all Jewish. Her father doesn't help by arguing with the rabbi that shrimp aren't explicitly banned.
      Abe: Show me where it says that Jews can't have shrimp!
      The Rabbi: Leviticus 11:12 "Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that is a detestable thing unto you."
      Abe: THAT DOESN'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT SHRIMP!
    • In season 2, Midge offers to help her B. Altman coworker Mary with her wedding. During the reception, Midge does a toast that starts with light jabs, which become increasingly uncomfortable as she begins making tasteless jokes about Catholics, culminating in her joking that it must be a Shotgun Wedding because of how little time has passed between Mary meeting her fiance and them getting married... seconds too late to realize that's exactly what it is.
  • On an episode of M*A*S*H, Hawkeye pantsed Winchester while they were in the OR. No one laughed and Hawkeye was vilified by the camp for it. It's revealed later in the episode that BJ was in on it but played dumb because of how bad it went. The finale had Colonel Potter reveal that he also found it funny but had to keep up appearances.
  • Mimpi Metropolitan: After Bobby is revealed to be the one who accidentally caused Soleh's heart attack via a Deadly Prank, but is quickly forgiven by Soleh's wife, Alan tells Bobby that if he is Soleh's son, he would pray for Bobby to get the worst punishment Bobby could have... and tells Bobby he was just joking. Since Bobby is really afraid of retribution from Soleh's family, he is not amused.
  • In an episode of The Mindy Project, Mindy is going through a lengthy and argumentative questionnaire with her love interest/frenemy Dr. Castelllano (who is recently divorced because his wife had an affair). When he checks that she isn't planning to have kids because she's not married or in a serious relationship, Mindy says "Yeah, but when I do get married, I'm gonna stay married, unlike you". Danny's response is to list a terrible hypothetical life Mindy is going to have, step by step. He never says he's upset by what she's said-because he doesn't have to.
  • Misfits: Jess gets quite upset when Finn tells her about how his uncle raped him as a child, then admits it was a joke to "lighten the mood". Naturally she doesn't find it funny at all.
  • The Monk episode "Mr. Monk is On the Air" has Howard Stern-style Shock Jock Max Hudson mock Trudy's death right after Monk brings it up in conversation. Even Max's toadie sidekicks consider this too far, give their condolences to Monk, and also try to stop Max from making said joke... just a little bit too late to prevent Monk from trying to beat him up in a rage. It also more firmly convinces Stottlemeyer and Disher that Max is guilty of murdering his wife.
  • Monty Python's Flying Circus:
    • The "Musical Mice" sketch has a performer get on stage, introduce his musical mice, then starts making them sing... by hitting them with wooden mallets. The audience immediately reacts with shock and disgust, and he is swiftly forced off the stage and chased outside.
    • One sketch, in which an undertaker suggests cannibalism as an alternative to interment or cremation, ends with the studio audience storming the stage in disgust (which is part of the show). Apparently, it was written in due to Executive Meddling on the part of the BBC — they wouldn't allow the sketch if the audience was to approve of it, so the Pythons suggested that instead of laughing, the audience react violently to appease the censors. This works just as well.
  • In Mystery Science Theater 3000, it's not uncommon for Joel, Mike, Jonah and/or the Bots to do something a little over the top and get chided for it.
    • At the end of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Joel shushes Tom Servo twice in a row when Tom's riffs start getting a little too dark.
    • A well known one was in Riding With Death where Mike and Tom get tired of Crow's Double Entendre quips.
    • Mike and the Bots end up apologizing for a very racist scene in The Wild World of Batwoman. Equally, Crow gives a stern "thank you" for a stereotypical Asian tune in The Skydivers.
    • Jonah actually pops Tom's head off and tosses it away after he gets carried away with an Overly Long Gag in Starcrash.
    • When Tom nearly dies from his head exploding in Star Force: Fugitive Alien II, he responds by making a joke. Joel is not pleased with this and Crow suggested they should have just let him die over that.
    • In Santa Claus (1959), Tom takes great glee in mocking each and every one of the bad stereotype country children, much to Mike and Crow's horror. Probably helps that the first country/continent we see is Africa, which is portrayed as black kids dancing around hitting drums and wearing bones in their hair, which causes all three to groan out in despair.
    • In The Beast of Hollow Mountain, Jonah and the bots are unamused that the film's comic relief takes the form of an alcoholic absentee father who is mourning the death of his wife.
  • MythBusters: This was Adam Savage's reaction to taking the full force of an electric fence device across his body. He'd been tricked into it by the Build Team, at the urging of a producer. After this incident, the producer was dismissed from the show. This was also likely one of the motivations for (original BT member) Scottie Chapman leaving the show.
  • Never Have I Ever: When Devi says she wishes the Nazis killed Ben, she's rebuked for it by the principal, as not only isn't that funny, but Ben's Jewish (so even worse). She apologizes.
  • Paper Girls: After Mac makes remarks over KJ being from a rich banking family (she's Jewish) the latter tells her that's inappropriate and she cites the Holocaust for evidence why. Mac protests this isn't like that, but KJ tells her she's had antisemitic graffiti put on her locker before so this kind of attitude hasn't yet gone away, and Mac's mollified by this. Mac later apologizes, and KJ invites her with their friends to her bat mitzvah.
  • In Power Rangers in Space, Zhane had a habit of making jokes at inappropriate times, but one time really took the cake. In the episode where Psycho Red, Psycho Black, and Psycho Yellow were finally defeated and it appeared they had finally seen the last of the Psycho Rangers which was sadly, wishful thinking, as it turned out someone who appeared to be Psycho Red ambushed Andros. It was actually Zhane, who was wearing a copy of the villain's costume to try to scare him. Andros did not think it was funny.
  • The Price Is Right: On one episode of the syndicated night-time series in 1976, host Dennis James yelled out "THERE GOES FRITZ" after the contestant lost at Cliff Hangers when the mountain climber when tumbling over the cliff, not realizing that model Janice Pennington's husband Fritz Stammberger had disappeared while mountain climbing in Afghanistan. This upset Janice so much that she ran off and remained backstage crying as she did not appeared on camera for the rest of the episode.
  • The Punisher (2017): Curtis Hoyle is telling Billy Russo about Lewis Wilson's living conditions, trying to convince Russo to not hire Lewis to work at Anvil. Namely, that Lewis is sleeping in a foxhole in his backyard and nearly shot his father. On the latter, Russo quips "God I've always wanted to do that," causing Curtis to give him a cold look. Russo attempts an awkward laugh to break the tension, but ultimately concedes to Curtis's request. It also foreshadows the later reveal that Russo has a very fucked up childhood of his own.
  • Queer Eye (2018): In an episode involving the makeover of a cop, the nominator (who is also a cop) plays a joke on the Fab Five by pulling them over as they drive into town, then revealing who he is. Mostly they laugh it off, but Karamo (who was driving) is not amused, and later has a heart-to-heart talk with the cops about how frightening that kind of thing is for a black man. Karamo and Tan also threatened to quit immediately afterwards, and almost did.
  • Ramez in Control is a notorious prank show that receives a lot of criticism for its disturbing pranks. These include making people think they were being attacked by sharks and making Paris Hilton think the small plane she was on was going to crash (the pilot was an actor who started flying the plane erratically and claimed he was losing control, and one of the other passengers who was in on it was a trained skydiver who jumped out). When the prank was revealed, Paris angrily threatened to kill them, and many of her naysayers are on her side.
  • Reservation Dogs: Willie Jack's contrite after making a crack about Jackie's brother and learning he killed himself, trying to apologize. Jackie doesn't accept though, saying to watch her back. She's forgiven however after offering one free punch to Jackie.
  • In the Robin of Sherwood episode "The Time of the Wolf" one of Gulnar's warriors, who worship the mythical Norse wolf Fenris as a god, jokes that the stores of food in the abbey they've seized "should keep the wolf from the door". The other men burst out laughing but stop abruptly when they see the Death Glare Gulnar gives them. Apparently even an evil sorcerer and leader of a murder cult won't tolerate blasphemy.
  • Scrubs
    • In "My Heavy Meddle" JD hears from his mother that his favorite former schoolteacher Mr. Peters has died. When Turk asks if JD is okay, JD responds that he's doing a lot better than Mr. Peters. In the same episode, after JD arrives home and announces he's going to bed. Turk asks Elliot, JD's ex, if she's going with him. JD and Elliot both give him an annoyed look, which makes Turk realize that it's way too soon.
    • In "My Best Friend's Wedding", Jordan and Perry decide to sleep through Carla and Turk's wedding ceremony and arrive the reception, Jordan suggesting to Perry that he should just say the ceremony was beautiful. Because of this, they don't know that Turk missed the ceremony completely, so when Perry compliments Carla for the ceremony, she gets offended believing Perry was joking about it.
    • In "My Jerks", JD makes a joke about sending some annoying interns to an internment camp. Turk tells him that internment camps are never funny.
    • In the episode with Colin Ferrell, Billy and the guy he knocked out play a prank on Turk and JD. Billy pretends to have knocked the guy out again and when JD goes over to check on him, he pops upright, scaring JD so badly that he screams and falls over. JD is not amused.
      JD: Oh, you think that's funny, do you? Well, good, because YOU'RE DYING!
      Guy: [panicked look]
      Turk: [disapprovingly] John Dorian, you are a doctor!
      JD: Well, he started it!
  • In Supernatural, conversations between Sam and Dean tend to use this trope a lot, with Sam protesting Dean's use of Gallows Humor.
    • In Faith [1.12], when Dean believes he is about to die, the dialogue directly echoes this trope:
      Dean: Hey. You better take care of that car. Or I swear I'll haunt your ass.
      Sam: I don't think that's funny.
      Dean: Aw c'mon, it's a little funny.
    • In Fresh Blood [3.7]:
      Sam: You know what, man? I'm sick and tired of your old stupid kamikaze trick.
      Dean: Whoa. Whoa. Kamikaze? I'm more like a ninja.
      Sam: That's not funny.
      Dean: It's a little funny.
      Sam: No, it's not.
      Dean: What do you want me to do, Sam, huh? Sit around all day writing sad poems about how I’m going to die? You know what, I've got one. Let’s see. What rhymes with 'Shut up, Sam'?
    • In My Heart Will Go On [6.17] after a victim of the week, whose a personal injury lawyer, gets hit with a bus with one of his ads on it:
      Dean: Sam, check it out (points to the ad).
      Sam: (Gives a Disapproving Look)
      Dean: What, too soon?
      Sam: Yeah Dean, I'm pretty sure six seconds is too soon.
  • Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: When John weasels out of doing the laundry by getting Cameron to do it, she gives a completely human reaction by giving a Death Glare indicating that she is not amused.
  • The Thick of It:
  • This occurs during the tenth season of Trailer Park Boys, where Ricky screws up with Lucy and J-Roc made it worse with an needless comment.
    Ricky: Fuck my tits with a fucking rainbow.
    J-Roc: That's what your momma said!
    Bubbles: Inappropriate timing.
  • The Stinger of every episode of The Vicar of Dibley consists of title character Geraldine telling a joke to Alice, and then usually trying to explain why it's funny after Alice doesn't get it. In a variant used in one episode, she tells a Black Comedy Rape joke where Superman sees Wonder Woman apparently sunbathing nude and using his Super-Speed to have sex with her without her reacting, only for it to turn out she was already in the middle of consensual sex with the Invisible Man. Alice gets the joke but doesn't think it's funny and storms out after telling Geraldine she should be ashamed of herself for impugning Superman.
  • In the episode of The West Wing where Leo McGarry dies of a heart-attack, Senator Vinick (the opposing presidential candidate) and his campaign staff watch the news reports. One of them makes a tasteless crack about how Leo, who had plenty of health problems, was only the Democratic vice-presidential candidate because the Democrats "thought he had a few thousand more miles left in him". Vinick, who is genuinely affected by news of Leo's death, doesn't say anything but sends her a cold Death Glare that clearly indicates how little he thinks of her at that particular moment. The staffer shuts up quick.
  • On the American edition of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Colin Mochrie frequently gets mocked for being bald and/or Canadian. In one sketch, when he made a joke about Ryan Stiles' nose, the audience booed him even though moments earlier, they applauded Ryan for a joke about Colin's head. After the sketch, Colin said "Notice all the melon jokes, the bald jokes? I make one nose joke, it's OOOOOOOHH!".
    • One playing of "Let's Make a Date" ended before it could begin due to Drew making a crack about how Greg Proops would be unlikely to be chosen as the "bachelor" if it wasn't for the stage directions. Greg brings the game to a halt by asking Drew what the point would be if he was not likely to be chosen. The other performers and the audience then begin to pile on Drew until the director steps on-stage and kills the segment. Drew subsequently apologizes (and hugs) Greg, at which point the jokes resume.
    • It's also Invoked for one "Scenes From a Hat" game where the performers have to say things that make the audience boo them.
      Jeff Davis: Okay, so we leave the potatoes simmering. Now after you fillet the baby seal...
      (audience boos)
  • The Wire: Carcetti finds out about McNulty's invented serial killer. As he's processing, his aide Norman Wilson is trying not to laugh at the ridiculousness of the scheme:
    Tommy Carcetti: So, um, let me just...understand this. Um...so I've been going out there for weeks, slamming the governor for his neglect of the homeless and declaring at how we will stop at nothing to find the person responsible for preying on the homeless, (Norman, who has been trying valiantly not to laugh, loses it) and all — hey, Norman, this is my ass here!
    Norman: (pulling himself together) That's true, boss. But it does have a certain charm to it. They manufactured an issue to get paid; we manufactured an issue to get you elected governor. Everybody's getting what they need behind some make-believe.
  • In an episode of Workaholics, Ders gets this when he offers to fire people for Jillian (acting boss while Alice is sick).
    Ders It's not that hard, give me the list, and I'll Schindler those fools right now.
    Blake: I don't think you want to say that.
    Adam: So inappropriate.
    Ders: I never saw the movie.
    Adam: It's a tearjerker. Morgan Freeman, Jack Nicholson. They have a whole list that they need to Schindler before they die.
    Blake: Well, that's Bucket List.

    Podcasts 
  • The Last Podcast on the Left
    • The narrators have been able to laugh at and crack jokes about a ton of serious, heavy subjects, even when it's incredibly irreverant, but absolutely none of them were able to make light of the case of Junko Furuta, an innocent teenage girl who was abducted at random and tortured to death in an unbelievably gruesome way over 44 days by a group of teenage boys.
    • The hosts regularly discuss dark topics like serial killers and cults and treat them with all the respect they feel the people involved deserve: None. That changes when the discussion goes to the victims of these people. For example, in their Children of God series, jokes about the cult's founder being a Dirty Old Man pedophile fly freely, but in the final part, when the main topic is a man raised in the Children of God's sexually abusive environment who went on to murder one of his abusers then kill himself, the number of jokes drops sharply and they express sympathy as they refer to statements he made before the act showing he knew what he was going to be doing.
  • Rifftrax:
    • The Rifftrax for the movie Glitter has Mike make a joke about Eric Benet's sex addiction. Mary Jo doesn't think there's anything funny about sex addiction and keeps trying to explain this to Mike as he keeps making more jokes about it. Eventually she gives up, which is for the best since there aren't many other places to go when making jokes about Eric Benet.
    • In the Rifftrax for Star Trek: Generations, Disembaudio keeps declaring "BUY MORE RIFFTRAX" during Kirk's death scene with Bill joining in as well. This is vastly different from when they deal with Picard's breakdown over the death of his mother and brother.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Ed Ferrara's "Oklahoma" parody of Jim Ross. It goes from jibing about BBQ sauce (JR has his own brand) to making fun of his Bell's Palsy. It pissed off Jim Cornette so much that he flat out slapped Ferrara across the face and Ferrara refuses to defend it.
  • The "Pillman's Got a Gun" incident, where "Stone Cold" Steve Austin attempted to break into Brian Pillman's home, only for Pillman to pull a gun on him and curse on live TV while threatening to kill him. This terrified the audience and viewers so much that Pillman and the WWF had to apologize for the segment. This segment also nearly got the show cancelled.
  • The New World Order's parody segment of Arn Anderson's retirement. Everyone hated this. Supposedly Ric Flair had to be held back from rushing the ring. Even Vince McMahon found this so offensive that he gave Jim Cornette airtime on Monday Night Raw the following week to defend Arn and bury a few other people in the process. Kevin Nash has since said he regrets doing this (especially as he's friends with Anderson), as not only was it in really bad taste but it did absolutely nothing for business.
  • Matt Hardy making his triumphant return to Monday Night Raw, the crowd firmly on his side against Edge and Lita, till Matt mentions he wishes they died in a car accident.
  • During a feud against Samoa Joe, D'Angelo Dinero mocked Joe's obesity by showing footage of two pigs mating and claiming that he was showing Joe and his wife. Nobody was amused.
  • Matt Striker, in his gimmick of an obnoxious teacher who insults the intelligence of the audience and other wrestlers, once made a reference to the death of Steve Irwin (the day after he died, which should have never okayed the segment), saying he wouldn't be stupid enough to go swimming with stingrays. Vince McMahon immediately released a public apology on WWE's website.
  • Drew Gulak's Campaign For A Better Combat Zone was the most hated group in CZW because Gulak argued the need for change by bringing up CZW wrestlers whose lives had legitimately been ruined, such as Nick Gage.
  • Lord Tensai (Albert/A-Train) did a short video on Tout where he was riding in a car with his Japanese manager at the wheel and yelled at him to "open his eyes". Not very tasteful (WWE had to apologize for that too).
  • Most of Wrestling Observer Newsletter's Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic especially those that involved a deceased wrestler:
    • 1983: Eddie Gilbert pretending to break his neck after having done so legitimately.
    • 1984: Blackjack Mulligan pretending to have a heart attack.
    • 1985: Usage of Mike Von Erich's near-death to sell tickets.
    • 1986: Comparing Chris Adams' blindness angle with the death of Gino Hernandez.
    • 1987: Exploitation of the death of Mike Von Erich.
    • 1988: Fritz von Erich pretending to have a heart attack.
    • 1989 and 1990: Angles surrounding Jose Gonzalez, the wrestler accused of murdering Bruiser Brody; note  pushing him as a babyface in 1989 and partaking in a stabbing angle in 1990.
    • 1991: Sgt. Slaughter as an Iraqi sympathizer during the height of The Gulf War.
    • 1992: Erik Watts constantly getting pushed due to nepotism.
    • 1993: Cactus Jack in an angle where he gets beaten up and suffers amnesia.
    • 1994: Ric Flair retiring and almost immediately coming back.
    • 1995: "Mean" Gene Okerlund's "900 hotline advertisements" promo.
    • 1996: WWF getting a fake Diesel and Razor Ramon to replace them after they left the company.
    • 1997: WWF interviewing Brian Pillman’s wife Melanie the day after he died.
    • 1998: WCW exploiting Scott Hall’s real life alcoholism problems.
    • 1999: Over the Edge continued to air even after Owen Hart's death.
    • 2000: WCW booking actor David Arquette to win their world title.
    • 2001: Stephanie McMahon comparing 9/11 to the WWE steroid lawsuit.
    • 2002: The Katie Vick necrophilia angle during the feud between Triple H and Kane.
    • 2003: WWE’s increasingly McMahon-centric programming.
    • 2004: Kane and Lita’s pregnancy and miscarriage storyline
    • 2005: Muhammad Hassan sending masked terrorists to beat The Undertaker angle that aired the day of the 7/7 London bombings.note 
    • 2006: Randy Orton mocking Eddie Guerrero, who had died four months earlier at the time of the angle, in front of Rey Mysterio.note 
    • 2007: TNA signing NFL player Pacman Jones to the company despite his criminal history,
    • 2008: WWE teasing that Jeff Hardy had a drug overdose shortly before Survivor Series.
    • 2009: LayCool fat-shaming Mickie James and calling her "Piggy James".
    • 2010: WWE's whitewashing campaign to coincide with Linda McMahon's Senate run.
    • 2011: WWE running an anti-bullying campaign while promoting the bullying of Jim Ross onscreen.
    • 2012: CM Punk mocking Jerry Lawler after he almost died from a heart attack live on Raw.
    • 2013: CM Punk again mocked the recently deceased Paul Bearer during his feud with The Undertaker and played with an urn that supposedly contained Bearer's ashes.
    • 2014: WWE mocking fans who purchase pay-per-views instead of subscribing to the WWE Network.
    • 2015: Paige mentioning Reid Flair's death in front of Ric and Charlotte.
    • 2016: Bellator MMA allowing Kimbo Slice and Dada 5000 to have a match even though they both failed their pre-fight drug tests, resulting in both fighters getting fatigued early and Dada collapsing and having to be rushed to the hospital.note 
    • 2017: WWE promoting Jimmy Snuka as a hero in death despite the allegations of murder a few months before his death.note 
    • 2018 and 2019: WWE partnering with Saudi Arabia despite their record of human rights abuses.
    • 2020 and 2021: WWE mass firing people during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
    • 2022: Vince McMahon showing up for a crowd pop shortly after being sued by two women for sexual misconduct.
    • 2023: WWE and TKO allowing Vince to remain in charge despite the ongoing sexual misconduct lawsuits.
    • Many of the things listed about also "won" the WrestleCrap Gooker Award (since 2000 anyway, when it was first "awarded"), handed out annually to recognize the worst thing in wrestling that year, though unlike the Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic award the Gooker tends to focus more on what's seen on camera rather than the business side of wrestling.
  • Dean Ambrose made a reference to Roman Reigns having Leukemia just to get some cheap heat.note 
  • Matt Riddle constantly boasts that he can beat up Brock Lesnar and Goldberg and has occasionally threatened to cripple or give them concussions backstage and on social media. Several coworkers ask what in the world is wrong with him and call him out on being unprofessional. Lesnar reportedly just laughed and told Riddle "That's okay buddy, because we're never going to work together anyway!" Riddle was fired shortly after the parent company of UFC bought WWE, proving Lesnar correct.
  • From 2005 to 2006, WWE would air a segment called Lunchtime Suicide, where referee Tim White would attempt suicide, only to botch it. This segment was derided for being in poor taste, with the first segment airing only weeks after the death of Eddie Guerrero.

    Puppet Shows 
  • In one episode of The Muppet Show, Fozzie makes the joke 'What do you get when you cross the Atlantic with the Titanic? Half way!" Waldorf thinks it's funny, but not Statler — he was ON the Titanic when it sank! (And, according to Waldorf, still has the dress he wore to get on a lifeboat.)
    Fozzie: [to Kermit, backstage] Just my luck, a Titanic survivor in the audience!

    Theatre 
  • In Fangirls, Brianna has this reaction to the 'joke' Jules' boyfriend texts about the abduction of the lead singer of True Connection ("One down, four to go"). Even though the joke is in extremely poor taste, she is even more upset about Jules pretending to find it funny.
  • In Jasper in Deadland, most of the dead citizens don't mind jokes about death:
    Gretchen: ...But don't be surprised when we find your friend, if she's having too good a time to leave, 'cos I'm telling you, this city is unplugged like life support!
    Jasper: That's not funny.
    Gretchen: It is when you're dead!

    Video Games 
  • Mass Effect 2: Just before Commander Shepard's crew board the Heretic Geth station during Legion's Loyalty Mission, Joker mocks Legion when it's not looking by mouthing its words and making robot arm gestures. Shepard comes over and gives him a Disapproving Look, prompting him to make an "Okay, okay!" gesture and get back to work.
  • In Mass Effect 3:
    • During the mission on Sur'Kesh, the party crosses paths with a rampaging yahg. Shepard and Garrus can't resist the opportunity to crack jokes about the last yahg they encountered, which teammate Liara T'Soni replaced as Shadow Broker after she and Shepard killed him. Liara is not amused:
      Shepard: Careful, there goes the next Shadow Broker.
      Garrus: Could've sworn he was muttering "T'Soni!" the whole time.
      Liara: Not funny!
    • Done seriously later when Joker cracks a joke about the asari after their homeworld, Thessia, falls. Shepard usually lets those kinds of jokes slide but, in this case, they're at their lowest point and blames themselves for the fall of Thessia, so they proceed to snap at Joker. Joker, on the other hand, points out that he knows exactly how serious the situation is: His family was probably killed already when Reapers hit the colony they live on. On a more general scale, most of Joker's jokes appear not to be funny to anyone but himself.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda: During the search for Meridian, when Ryder finds out what they and the kett are looking for isn't there, Peebee declares it funny. Ryder glowers at her, and she backtracks.
  • Grand Theft Auto V: Surprisingly, we get one from Trevor of all people when Wade accidentally calls Ashley Butler a bitch, which Trevor, despite all the crazy things he does, finds very disrespectfulnote .
  • Dragon Age II has lots of snarky dialogue options (usually the one in the middle) which tend to involve cracking jokes at very serious situations. Sometimes your party members or NPCs will tell you that they're not funny, but there's a few examples of Hawke realizing that himself/herself mid-joke:
    • An attempt to reassure Anders about having accidentally given himself a Superpowered Evil Side by saying "What's the worst that could happen? You turn into an abomination and start... Never mind. Bad joke."
    • "You were going to kill a lot of people anyway? That's...not funny at all, really."
    • Hawke gives this out to Carver at one point. After s/he's been snarking at him during an argument, he tries to snark back, implying that s/he's indirectly responsible for the death of their sister, Bethany. Hawke immediately drops their fun demeanor and gets noticeably angry.
      Carver: Sure, make light. We all know what happens when someone leaves big brother/sister's protection.
      Hawke: Fair is fair, but you are taking this little pissing match too far!
    • An example of Hawke being called out on this:
      Hawke: If they're not dead, watch out for a bunch of boneless women flopping through the streets.
      Ser Emeric: Show some respect, serah!
    • On very rare occasions, Hawke is on the giving ends of these, such as when trying to convince Fenris to join them with Bethany present in the group. Bethany will answer his suspicions with a joke about going crazy and murdering everyone, to which Hawke will reply "not now.".
  • Tales of the Abyss:
    • Guy is surprisingly afraid of women for the first half or so of the game, since every time a woman comes into close contact with him, he recoils in fear or starts screaming. Everyone, even in-game laughed at this and thought it funny, but also wanted to help him get over his gynophobia. Then the truth comes out to why he's so afraid of women. His sister and the maids from his childhood home threw themselves onto Guy to protect him as they were all killed by invading soldiers, and when Guy came to, he was smothered in a pile of dead female bodies. Nobody was laughing after that, and the female half of the party have a collective My God, What Have I Done? reaction over how they were treating the subject.
    • Despite being a Jerkass, Luke gets one during the beginning of the game. When he is being mocked for his lack of any knowledge of the world and its workings he delivers a great line that shuts people up fast.
      Luke: "I didn't have time for any of that! I had other things to learn. Like my parents' faces."
  • Final Fantasy:
    • In Crisis Core When Zack encounters Angeal after he's been missing and considered a traitor and asks him what he's after:
      Angeal: (completely deadpan) World Domination.
      Zack: That's not even funny man!
    • Final Fantasy X has a moment near the end:
      Jecht: You've really grown.
      Tidus: Yeah. But you're still bigger.
      Jecht: Well, I am Sin, you know.
      Tidus: That's not funny.
    • In Chapter 10 of Final Fantasy XV, after the group finds a key to the generator in Fodina Caestino, Ignis asks where the generator is, at which point Prompto says "Didn't you read the sign, Iggy?" Since Ignis recently went blind, Noctis says "Not. Funny."
    • This happens occasionally in Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia when one of the series villains decides to make themselves available to the party in battle. This occasionally leads characters to make flippant remarks on their Card-Carrying Villain status, to be met with coldness from the people who actually experienced the worldwide devastation wrought by people like the Emperor.
    • Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: Just like in the original game, Cloud can go rifling through Tifa's wardrobe during the Nibelheim flashback sequence. When Tifa asks incredulously if you really did go through her stuff, you can either a) admit to it in which case Tifa and Aerith call you an asshole, or b) you can deny it and try to play it off as "I was just making a joke", in which case Tifa remains absolutely unamused and everyone else in the party call him out on it.
  • In Borderlands 2 Mad Moxxi reveals that her double entendres and suggestive comments are a defense mechanism, when she makes a joke about one of her ex-girlfriends being eaten alive, then promptly apologizes and throws up a little in her mouth.
  • In Doom & Destiny, one of the bonus dungeons in the game has the heroes fighting against enemies named after astrological signs. In one of the floors, there will be nothing but a tombstone that reads "Here lies Cancer, died of...cancer." The guys were disgusted by it.
  • In The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, two mercs are discussing the punishments Revas metes out to the crew to keep them in line. When one of them makes a black humored joke about the apparent Torture Technician known only as "the Dentist", his older colleague reminds him that there's nothing funny about it with a Precision F-Strike.
  • In the Duke Nukem Forever DLC The Doctor Who Cloned Me, Dylan makes a sexual reference to the now deceased Holsom Twins, then apologizes when he sees that Duke is still mourning for them. It doubles as an Author's Saving Throw after fans and critics reacted negatively to Duke making a similar joke in the original game.
  • One quest in World of Warcraft has this conversation between two characters at its conclusion, in which one character tries to joke about the serious situation, and the other is less than amused:
    Malynea: Did you hear that, Clubnik? Those that died defending Lake Mennar are heroes. Their selfless actions may have even saved this entire world! A memorial should be erected.
    Clubnik: Sure, I hear ya. Howsabout a... Memorial Fuel Depot? It'll be very tasteful!
    Malynea: Clubnik? I hope you die. In a fire.
  • Persona 4 has a piece of armor you can equip on you male party members that consists of just a towel. While Yosuke protests to it comically, gave it to Kanji and he says it makes him uncomfortable due to it reminding him of his Shadow.
  • Serious Sam is a Guest Fighter in Oh...Sir!! The Insult Simulator. His weakness is insults that make light of serious subjects, like "[Your father] [supports] [the Nazis] [and] [your math teacher] [has bum cancer]!"
  • At one point in Ninja Pizza Girl, Gemma decides that perhaps the abuse she's been getting from the enemy ninja is just good-natured trash talk, and tries responding in kind. The enemy ninja immediately prove her theory wrong by mocking her brother's wheelchair-bound condition and threatening to snap Gemma's neck as well, leaving Gemma (and probably the player as well) horrified.
  • In Batman: The Telltale Series when Batman and Commissioner Gordon figure out that The Riddler was feuding with the other members of "The Pact", Gordon remarks "Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll kill each other". Batman doesn't say anything, but the look he gives Gordon and Gordon's innocent shrug say it all.
  • On the subject of the Riddler, one of his patient interview tapes in Batman: Arkham Asylum has him share his interpretation of the Riddle of the Sphinx with Dr. Young. She's horrified at his reply, though the reasoning he offers showcases his sociopathy front and centre.
    Riddler: What is it that walks on four legs, then two legs, and finally three legs?
    Dr. Young: A human being. As a baby it crawls on four legs, as an adult it walks around on two, and in later years it uses a cane.
    Riddler: [laughs] Good try, but the answer to all three is a baby. True, it crawls on all fours, but cut off its legs and it can only wiggle on two limbs. Give it a crutch and it can hobble around on three. You see?
    Dr. Young: That's horrible. How can you even joke about that?
    Riddler: Easily, Doctor. It's not my baby.
  • Randal's Monday: The Jay cosplayer does not appreciate mom jokes.
  • In Until Dawn, after Hannah runs away into the woods out of embarrassment, only Sam and Beth show concern for her while some of the others accuse Hannah of overreacting and says she can't take a joke. Said "joke" was playing with Hannah's feelings, getting her to be almost naked in front of the guy she had a crush on and taping it. While Hannah knew Mike was already taken and was willing to cheat, it was still dangerous that she ran out into a storm, which would lead to her death. a full year later, after her sister dies immeidately and she Is trapped, forced to eat her sisters corpse, possessed, turned into a man-eating monster, possibly murders her own brother, only to be killed a full year later!
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses,
    • Midway through Part 1, Flayn, a young girlnote , goes missing, and the students, faculty and knights frantically search for her. Sylvain, an infamous womanizer, jokes that the person in question must have eloped, which earns him a smack from his long-time friend Ingrid.
    • At the Battle of Gronder Field, if you have Edelgard and Dimitri fight, Edelgard will muse that they can fight all they want if the Empire and the Kingdom go to war. Dimitri tells her that this is not something to joke about, since he finds the prospect of fighting her troubling. Edelgard was actually planning on declaring war against the Church and other nations all along, and Dimitri's hesitation goes out the window once he erroneously concludes Edelgard is responsible for the Tragedy of Duscur.
    • Late in the Azure Moon route, after the rest of the Blue Lions learn that Edelgard is Dimitri's stepsister, Sylvain points out that Dimitri gave the person in question a dagger as a gift (Dimitri finding that dagger is a clue to Edelgard being the Flame Emperor). Dimitri exasperatedly tells Sylvain to save those foolish remarks for another time.
    • If a female Byleth meets Dimitri in the Goddess Tower late in the Blue Lions route of Part 1, Dimitri talks about wishing to the goddess that he and Byleth could be together forever, then laughs it off as a joke a moment later. Byleth's possible responses are, "That's cruel," and "It didn't sound like a joke."
  • In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the AI Colonel's mocking of Luigi immediately invokes this trope from Solid Snake during the man in green's Codec Conversation.
  • In Grim Fandango, when examining the Bone Wagon in Year 4 after it's been booby-trapped by Domino:
    Manny: Soon to be known as the "Blown Wagon."
    Glottis: HEY! THAT'S NOT FUNNY!
  • In Streets of Rogue, the Comedian class's special ability is to tell a joke, which might convince people to become followers, but also has a chance to make them angry.
  • In Darkest Dungeon, the Grave Robber's "Gallows Humor" camping ability will either decrease the entire party's Stress, or increase it.
  • Brütal Legend:
    Eddie: So, who died and made Lars king?!
    Lita: OUR FATHER, YOU JERK!!!
  • Endless Sky: If you attempt to dominate a planet but they deem you too wimpy to back up your threats, you'll be kindly told not to make such jokes.
  • Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story: When Starlow mockingly asks Luigi if he vanquished the Shroobs with some “serious crying”, he's visibly saddened by this. Mario tells Starlow that Luigi actually discovered the Shroobs' weakness. Starlow quickly backpedals on her comment.
  • Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown: During the player's time in a penal unit, the resident gambler is shot down and killed. The resident blabbermouth and rumour mill puts on a very bad impression of him at mission's end, and mocks his death. No one, not even your asshole commanding officer-cum-prison warden, finds it funny, and your warden even sarcastically lights him up for his stupid "joke".
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic: Part of Vette's companion questline involves buying her sister Tivva out of Sex Slavery. When they arrive at the brothel in question, before recognizing her sister, Tivva says unprompted that she doesn't service women or couples. The Sith Warrior can question this policy, to Vette's annoyance. (Whether they mean it or are just being a smartass is up to the player.)
    Tivva: No women, no couples, and no, I don't want to hear any argument.
    Vette: Tivva?
    Warrior: Let's step back a second and talk about that "no couples" policy.
    Vette: Shut up. Please? Crazy Sith Channel turned to mute?
  • In Persona 3, late in the game, S.E.E.S. is facing a Sadistic Choice- kill Ryoji, thus dooming humanity to die when Nyx arrives in a few months(albeit passing away without fear), or let him live and face a hopeless battle against death itself for the sake of humanity. Yukari needles Junpei about whether he's scared, and in response, Junpei, who usually takes Yukari's barbs in stride, loses his temper, reminding everyone about the gravity of the situation. Yukari, realizing she went too far, apologizes.
  • The Gerudo of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild were regularly harassed by the Yiga clan, up to and including stealing a sacred relic that was needed to quell Vah Naboris. Said sentiment has not disappeared with the years by the time of Tears of the Kingdom: should Link be wearing a Yiga uniform in their presence, they will immediately arrest him and keep him locked up until he takes it off. The Sheikah, who the Yiga split off from and regularly antagonize, will also tell Link his Yiga disguise is in very poor taste, but won't do more than that in comparison.

    Visual Novels 
  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney:
    • There is a moment when Phoenix can decide not to take Edgeworth's murder case. ("Sorry, charley! No way!") An appropriate reaction occurs.
      Phoenix: H-hey, don't look so serious, guys! I was kidding! Just a little joke!
      Edgeworth: There was nothing little...
      Maya: ...or joke-like about it!
      Phoenix: (I thought it was funny...)
    • In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, Betty and Bonny both reveal to the court that the incident that occurred at the magic show that Trucy Wright is currently on trial for was all just a prank on Trucy that was set by the TV station that was filming the show. The victim was supposed to have tumbled from the coffin, pretending to be dead, which would horrify Trucy, before the set piece came crashing down, causing Trucy to become even more horrified, along with prompting the audience to go into a panic, thinking that she had gotten crushed. Then the victim would "come back to life", and "fly away" via a harness, startling everyone. The only thing that wasn't part of the prank was that the victim actually ending up dead from a real stab wound. After they reveal this to the court, Apollo and the Judge are both pretty disgusted at how cruel the prank is.
      Apollo: (What type of sick joke is that...?)'
    • In The Great Ace Attorney, during the fourth case of the second game, Ryunosuke meets Sholmes in Madame Tuspell's Museum of Waxworks, where Sholmes mentions how the museum has wax replicas of some of London's vilest criminals.
      Sholmes: Naturally, most of the miscreants portrayed here were sent to the gallows. So they're even stiffer now than the models of them! Ah ha ha ha hah!
      Ryunosuke: ...Have you heard of poor taste?
  • A Little Lily Princess: On Jessie's route, Sara, having been forced to become a servant to the seminary where she once studied due to her father's debts, stops by the classroom. Lavinia, who's sitting with her best friend Jessie, makes insulting comments about Sara to Jessie while Sara is in earshot. Jessie then tells Lavinia that her remarks aren't funny.
  • Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair:
    • Raiko flippantly says that she'd rather kill herself than wear her mother's embarrassing cat costume (although she forgot to take the cat ears off). This strikes a nerve with Momoko, who, with uncharacteristic seriousness, tells her not to joke about suicide, and Raiko apologizes. It turns out that Momoko was plotting a Murder-Suicide of herself and her boyfriend Hiro, which may be why she reacted so strongly.
    • After Momoko is found dead or rather, supposedly dead, Rie reveals that during the blackout (which she herself had caused) she'd planned on having her best friend Runa pretend to have been murdered to give everyone a scare when the lights came back on. Taiko, the guy Rie has a crush on, calls her out on how tasteless her joke would have been.
    • One of the party decorations is a tombstone with the names of all the guests besides Rie(the party host) and Taiko(the guy she likes) that Halloween. Nobara freaks out upon seeing it, and Taiko reassures her that Rie doesn't mean anything by it, but offers to have a talk with Rie about how the joke's in poor taste, never realizing why he's the only other person whose name isn't on the tombstone.

    Web Animation 
  • In the latest April Fool's Day Episode of The Annoying Orange, this is Orange's friends' reaction to Orange's April Fool's Day pranks. Turns out Orange was actually Liam the Leprechaun in disguise.
  • In RWBY Volume 4, this is Subverted when Yang has an argument with her father in the kitchen and Taiyang makes a comment about how she may have "lost some brain cells to go with that arm". Yang jumps back in shock and Oobleck and Port are also lost for words, but then she playfully punches him with a "You jerk!" and laughs at it. Quite a sweet moment as it shows she is beginning to recover from the Trauma Conga Line she went through in the last volume.
  • RWBY Chibi:
    • In Episode 7, Weiss gets back at Ruby for a water bucket prank by doing the same thing, except freezing the water solid. The bucket knocks her out and Yang and Blake are obviously not laughing at a possibly-concussed Ruby.
    • When Sun, Neptune, Ren, and Yang find Nora in a food coma in Season 2 Episode 4, Yang, in the spirit of her VA Barbara Dunkelman, starts making terrible puns instead of trying to help, much to the annoyance of the boys. When Sun demands to know why Yang does this, he promptly gets his answer... in the form of her dad, Taiyang, who starts making terrible jokes of his own, demonstrating that ill-timed humor apparently runs in the family.
  • MrSpherical: When seeing the frozen Nazis and saying nice in "Nazis invade Russia!", the Soviet Commander warns the Soviets not to laugh at him, saying it's not cool, which leads to the Soviets laughing at him again.
  • My Little Pony Meets: In "Sailor Moon Meets My Little Pony", Discord gets sliced in half defending Sailor Moon from Tirek. Sailor Moon cries over his body, then Discord bursts into laughter and points out he's immortal and she should have seen the look on her face. Enraged, Sailor Moon punches him and verbally tears into him for joking at a time like this.
  • A rare case where the person who made the joke calls themselves out: Near the end of the Behind The Scenes video for JaidenAnimations' "Empty" music video, Boyinaband jokes about how annoying it'd be to find a different youtuber to watch if Jaiden had died of her eating disorder. He regrets it immediately and calls Jaiden to explain that he made a horrible joke and ask how he can make it up to her. In the next shot, no fewer than three pieces of Jaiden merch are seen.
  • In the Animator vs. Animation video Animation VS Minecraft, Red got possessed by Herobrine. When Red fakes it in the AVM short "The Rediscovery", this trope is how everyone reacts. In particular, Blue takes off his helmet and uppercuts Red with it.
  • In the AOK video Muppet Elderlies, Kermit gets pissed off when Fozzie makes inappropriate jokes about Miss Piggy dying from complications in the surgery Bunsen and Beaker are performing to try and fix her broken hip.
    Fozzie: What do you call a surgery that doesn't go well?
    Rowlf: Fozzie, don't.
    Animal: [from offscreen] Please don't.
    Fozzie: An autopsy! Get it? Wocka wocka wocka!
    Kermit: You son of a bitch!
  • RObotzi: In the season 2 episode "Concurs" (Contest), MO's comedy shtick during the titular contest involves him adding "with my dick" to the end of every song or poem suggested by the audience. When FOCA tries to do the same with Christmas carols (without taking suggestions from the audience like MO), the crowd boos him for insulting something religious.

    Webcomics 
  • Questionable Content had an arc where Angus started making jokes about suicide to Faye, whose father killed himself in front of her when she was a kid. When she tells him off, he initially doesn't believe her, and Faye realizes that her constant sarcasm has "set an unfortunate precedent". Angus also calls out Faye for making jokes at his friend Marigold's expense.
  • The web-comic Fans! featured a murder investigation involving a crossword puzzle convention. When crossword fan Hilda makes a comment about the case while putting on her glasses, Marc shouts "YEEAAAAAHH!", a la the Roger Daltrey shriek from "Won't Get Fooled Again" in CSI: Miami. He gets roundly chewed out for it.
  • Defied in the child kidnapping episode in Monster of the Week. The whole premise Monster Of The Week is taking The X-Files episodes and abridging them in funny way, but this episode was surprisingly serious. Author notes in The Rant that child kidnapping is not funny and it's very hard to joke on it without invoking Dude Not Funny.
  • In Platypus Comix's Family Guy parody, Herman calls his mistaking the fire station's lunch bell for a fire alarm "funnier than beating a homeless man to death." After the Cutaway Gag that features Herman finding enjoyment in physically abusing a homeless man, Herman's companion tells him in-universe that he didn't find the scene funny.
  • In Act 6 Intermission 3 of Homestuck, John was already in a shitty mood when he realized (on his birthday, no less) that his most beloved movie Con Air is actually pretty terrible, and then that Davesprite and Jade have broken up, all of which only adds to a slowly growing case of Cabin Fever, but the breaking point comes when Davesprite leaves a note in the style of John's dad (who died on this day two years ago, no less) mockingly telling him how proud he is for finally realizing that Con Air sucks. He is not pleased.
    • During the Alterniabound flash game, Karkat mocks the higher-class Equius with a snarky comment about butlers, when Equius mentions that his butler/father-figure is dead. Karkat, realizing he's just stepped over this line, apologizes immediately, but denies Equius' offer of a bro-hug.
    • Karkat tells Dave that Rose's issues, her drinking, make her funnier and charming. In contrast Kanaya's particularly distressed, as she feels Rose is throwing her talents away, and has developed a severe problem.
  • Goblins features a scene where Dellyn Goblinslayer mentions that he rapes his Yuan-Ti slavegirl Kin every night, clearly expecting Minmax to laugh along. Minmax however is not amused and promptly throws Dellyn through a window.
  • At one point in L's Empire, they find themselves in a pocket dimension inside Daisy's womb (don't ask), and Geminiman decides that the best way to get out is to blast the fetus. Mr L whips out his lightsaber and scolds Geminiman for even thinking of threatening his child. The author even says that they've gone beyond the realm of good taste.
  • In 8-Bit Theater, Fighter calls this on Black Mage shortly after Black Belt's death.
    Fighter: I mean, really. Ignoring the gross display of insensitivity these remarks represent and looking at them from a strictly structuralist perspective, they just aren't funny.
  • In True Villains, Mia makes an offhand comment about being a vampire, which makes Bayn sober up and tell her not to joke about them. When a vampire does show up, it's a feral One-Man Army who tears their boss Xaneth limb from limb, curb-stomps the rest of the party, and takes a large-scale Enemy Mine team-up to neutralize before it can summon in an even stronger vampire.
  • Dumb_RWBY: In one strip, Qrow make a bunch of hand-related jokes after Yang lost a arm, the others character just wonder what's wrong with him.
  • The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: Inverted (in a sense, which is enough to count) in "There is a Raptor in My Office" when Dr. McNinja tells a patient his cancer is back, the patient suggests a way the Doctor could have joked about it in his next line, and the Doctor is angry at how inappropriate that is.
  • Trixie Vs: While Rainbow Dash is on a trip to her past with Trixie and The Hearts Warming Ghost (It Makes Sense in Context), She sees how she unintentionally knocked Fluttershy off of Cloudsdale without even noticing during her race against their fillyhood bullies, prompting a Jerk Ass Realization... before they're interrupted by Trixie laughing at Fluttershy's misfortune, prompting this reaction.
  • Echo Creek: A Tale of Two Butterflies: A mime does the old "invisible wall" gag to a group of monsters, unaware that they are trapped in Echo Creek due to a literal invisible wall. They beat him up, and Marco identifies the mime as new in town.
  • Pet Foolery: In "Fly", a seagull keeps dismissing a penguin's attempts to be poetic about the way they look while swimming being like flying, eventually to the point of outright mockery. The penguin does not find this funny and eventually loses their temper and shoots back with a crack about seagulls eating garbage. The seagull in turn is genuinely hurt by this, and the final panel has the two calmed down and apologizing to each other for going too far.

    Web Original 
  • The Inappropriate Timing SpongeBob meme mocks this trope. note 
  • Protectors of the Plot Continuum:
    • Meta example: The writer who had originally claimed Sweet Apple Massacre gave up because there was just no way to make the mission funny — for those not in the know, that fic is a Not Safe for Work My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fic wherein a character replacement of Big Macintosh does unspeakable things to the Cutie Mark Crusaders. And more to the spirit of this trope, the disastrous in-universe sporking of the fic in question also gets this treatment whenever it's brought up by Rayner, who was one of the survivors of the so-called "Killer Mac Incident". Even his Jerkass partner, E.V.L., flat-out refuses to make snide comments about said incident, partly because her telepathic connection with him gave her access to the traumatic memory of the mission itself, which directly led to the death of his previous partner.
    • In "The Gods Must Be Crazy", Backslash openly derides Lapis' severed hand as a liability and refuses to let her join the other agents on their pending mission because of it. Since the events that led to Lapis losing her hand were almost as traumatic as S.A.M., and could've easily led to the loss of her life if it hadn't been for a bout of Power Incontinence, this strikes a nerve with her to a far greater extent than he thought. Her partners are quick to call Backslash out on this, and he himself agrees with them.
  • Binder of Shame: Al Bruno III walked away from a Dungeons & Dragons game when he realized the DM (Psycho Dave) had transported the group to WW2 Germany and expected them to help Hitler. Apparently the rest of the group thought this was a bit much even for them, because it's not long after this that he stops getting invited to their sessions.
  • From The Onion: "Circus Train Wreck Not Funny, Investigators Emphasize" is an article about an incident where a train wreck resulted in the injury or death of various circus performers and animals, with investigators stressing that there isn't anything remotely amusing about their suffering or their inept attempts at mitigating the disaster.

    Web Videos 
  • French Baguette Intelligence: Fuck Cares considers Volkeh’s humour to be either a mediocre attempt to replicate dark humour or an excuse to make genuinely bigoted statements, since it seems like the punchline of his jokes can be broken down to 'minorities exist'.
  • In CinemaSins, during the third released EWW of The Force Awakens trailer, when they account a sin of trailer, they remark upon themselves for being "Too Mean".
  • The Cinema Snob: In his look at Dracula: The Dirty Old Man, the Snob was disgusted at the movie's Gag Dub trying to turn sexual assault scenes that were originally played fairly seriously into moments of Black Comedy Rape.
  • In Midnight Screenings, Jake saw That's My Boy and got so enraged at the jokes involving a teacher having sex with an adolescent boy that he wasn't even doing Comical Overreacting. He was actually furious.
  • Dragon Ball Z Abridged:
    • Early on in the series, it was a Running Gag for Krillin to be called out for making tastleless jokes or remarks during tragic moments of the series. For example, when he cheerfully claims that he wasn't the first to die in the series, Master Roshi calls him out for that remark.
    • When Vegeta makes a joke at the expense of Christopher Reeve while crushing Goku's legs, Goku complains about it being tasteless but Vegeta doesn't care because he's evil.
    • When Vegeta calls Android 18 a "cunt", everyone present is shocked, including the Androids. 18 herself goes into a Tranquil Fury and delivers a beatdown to Vegeta that ends with her breaking his arm. And it's pretty hard to feel sorry for Vegeta while it happens.
  • Subverted in Hellsing Ultimate Abridged where a mercenary balks at Willingham's insulting joke only to be told Willingham doesn't care if it offends the Nazi vampires.
    Willingham: Uh so, sir? What's the over-under on any of us finishing this mission alive?
    Pip: About as good as any of getting laid tonight.
    Willingham: I don't know, those vampires do look kind of rapey.
    Mercenary: Holy shit dude!
    Willingham: Oh, who the fuck am I offending?! The Nazis?!
  • Sword Art Online Abridged:
    • Episode 12 has Suguha trigger two of these moments with Kirito.
      • The first is when she calls him a retard for tearing his dick in half after coming out of his VR coma, to which he sounds shellshocked from the resulting surgery.
      • The second is when she tells Kirito to bring some tissues with him to clean up anything he leaves on Asuna's face. Kirito, who fully comprehends Asuna's condition, is offended this time.
    • Episode 13 reveals that Yui's death was an attempt to "humanize herself through clever witticisms", but Kirito did not find it funny in the slightest, even calling her out on it.
      Kirito: Okay, sweetie? I'm gonna let you in on a little-known secret of comedy: bad things aren't funny when they happen to Daddy.
      Yui: What about Mommy?
      Kirito: (without skipping a beat) Oh, Mommy's fair game, go for the throat.
  • The Smosh video "If Video Games Were Real 2" has a clip explaining they removed a Bomberman clip because "terrorist jokes aren't funny".
  • When Retsupurae made fun of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, they handled the attempted rape scene by having Diabetus pretend not to know about it, then get angry and threaten to leave when he "learned" that slowbeef had just tried to trick him into making fun of rape.
  • In an Achievement Hunter video on Black Ops 3: Zombies — Shadows of Evil, Ryan Haywood is trying to compare one of the game's guns, the Shiva, to the M1A1, but forgets the name and somehow ends up asking "What's the 9/11 that everyone loves?" This causes the rest of the AH crew to call him out on it.
  • When Kyle Kallgren reviews Mister Lonely, he gets to a scene near the end where the Marilyn Monroe impersonator hangs herself. Ven comes in singing Elton John's "Candle in the Wind", about the death of the real-life Marilyn Monroe, and Kyle is not amused.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series:
    • Yami and Joey rib on Mai while they duel the Big Five possessed Tristan.
      Yami Yugi: 5 guys in one body, eh? Sounds like a typical day for Mai Valentine, am I right?
      Joey: Yug, she's in a coma!
      Yami Yugi: Am I right?
      Joey: It's just very inappropriate.
      Yami Yugi: But am I right?
      Joey: YUGI!
      Yami Yugi: JOEY!
      (beat)
      Yami Yugi: AM. I. RIGHT?
    • When Mai pretends to have never woken up from her coma, everyone thinks that she and Serenity went too far on Joey there. Even Yami.
  • The creators of Bad Call TV changed the facts on a person dying because instead of seeking medical help their associates instead tried to employ faith healing by making it about a man dying of a seizure and his friends being idiots... instead of a small child dying of pneumonia while their parents prayed for them to get better.
  • Epic Rap Battles of History:
    • The rap battle between Stan Lee vs Jim Henson has the two mostly boasting and good-naturedly sniping at each others' careers until Lee suddenly threatens to put Henson "out to pasture like Mr. Hooper". Henson (and Kermit) respond with a Jaw Drop and the music stops in response. Lee immediately walks it back and apologizes to Henson, showing that even he thought the line was beyond the pale.
    • As one of a series of short videos on suggested Epic Rap Battles, Epic Lloyd of ERB rejected "John Wilkes Booth vs. Lee Harvey Oswald," because even though there was a clear theme to it, it just didn't seem fun or appropriate.
  • The Hardly Working episode "Wacky Hijinks from 80s Comedies Were Mostly Rape" involves Pat, Trapp, and Zac trying to come up with ways to prank Emily and Murph using pranks from 80s comedies, only for Pat to realize that the majority of them are at best non-consensual spreading of nude photos, and at worst, straight up rape.
  • Final Fantasy VII: Machinabridged: When Cloud is rendered catatonic from Mako poisoning, the doctor monitoring him starts making jokes at his expense. Cid and Yuffie yell at him and say that was inappropriate.
  • LegalEagle once mentioned a lawsuit between a pair of neighbors, where the loser of the case was quoted as saying "She won, and I hope she spends every dollar on chemotherapy". His reaction to this was nothing more than a completely humorless and shocked "JESUS!"
  • In one DanTDM video, Trayaurus pretends to die for April Fool's Day. When Dan figures it out (and after Trayaurus spells it out for him), he is not amused, especially after Trayaurus asks if he thought it was funny.
    I'm gonna get you guys SO BAD!!!
  • Internet Historian:
    • He frequently dips into this, when talking about various internet raids and the like. Often he'll admit to finding something pretty funny initially, like calling for /b/lackup to block the pool in Habbo Hotel, baiting slacktivists into mistaking Carl Weathers for Joseph Kony so they can call them racists, using Twitter to put messed up things on large convention screens, or taunting Cracker Barrel for firing Brad's wife, but will cross into this territory when people inevitably take the joke way too far and begin calling actual real-life pools and telling them the water is infected with Aids, doing the Carl Weathers joke on official Kony 2012 forums, attacking the convention hosts directly and hacking their webhost, or just beating the Brad's wife joke into the dirt to the point it just became obnoxious.
    • And one he didn't find funny in the slightest, was when Digornio Pizza's Twitter tried to make light of #WhyIStayed, an anti domestic abuse hashtag, to try and make a cute joke and push their brand.
      "Here comes Digornio, throwing on the accelerator, no fucks given, driving right through the front door. '#WhyIStayed You had pizza' (Rimshot). Ugh..."
  • In SMPLive, this is Connor's reaction when Schlatt starts laughing at the Eat Pant Conar statue again.
    Connor: Are you talking about the... Stop! It's not funny!

    Western Animation 
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: In the Grand Finale, Aang, having been told that he must kill Fire Lord Ozai, says he can't go around wiping out people he doesn't like. Sokka responds that he can because he's the Avatar and Aang angrily tells him that this isn't a joke.
  • Batman Beyond: "Out of the Past" opens with Terry taking Bruce to a Batman-themed musical for his birthday. While Terry is enjoying it, Bruce really hates how the musical pokes fun at his crime-fighting career.
    Bruce: You hate me, don't you?
    Terry: Come on, lighten up, it's your birthday.
    Terry: Hey, it took me weeks to get tickets to this show. It's shway!
    Bruce: Its schw-arbage.
  • Camp Lazlo: In "S is for Crazy", Samson gets his brain fried by a jellyfish and starts acting crazy. In the beginning, Scoutmaster Lumpus initially goes along with his antics but eventually stops finding it funny when he falls in a vat of pudding his bed was nailed over, and finds a salt-melted Slinkman. He even tells Samson "You're fun when you were crazy, but now you're just crazy!" after he continues to laugh.
  • The Crumpets: In "Shake It Up", Ditzy stops smiling and gives a worrisome look at her infant brother Li'l One, who is being laughed by the other siblings because he wishes to move to his parents' bedroom and have only their mother, and Triceps is about to throw Li'l One.
  • Daria: Jane and Daria collaborate to produce a portrait of a pretty and happy-looking girl looking into a mirror with the caption reading, "She knows she's a winner, she couldn't be thinner, now she goes in the bathroom and vomits up dinner." Their art teacher immediately reprimands them for making fun of someone suffering from an eating disorder, but they rebuttal by saying that it's not meant to be funny and was actually pointing out the dangers of conformity through the most shocking way possible. After some deliberation, their teacher accepts the portrait for what it is and enters it in the school contest. Later, when Principal Li and Mr. O'Neill try to change the message into something more approachable and mellow, Jane and Daria are not happy.
  • Drawn Together: Spanky Ham once laments the existence of a cell filled with stereotyped "Red Indian" animated characters, noting that poking fun at them isn't funny and they "got a raw deal" as people. To put this in perspective, he's fine with laughing at the racist stereotypes of black people, Asians and Mexicans in other cells.
  • The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants:
    • No one likes the comic George and Harold use to mock Erica.
    • George and Harold themselves have this reaction to Diddlysaurus's idea for a prank; slipping laxatives to the entire school faculty, then locking all the bathroom doors so they couldn't get in to use the toilet.
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show: At one point, Ed and Eddy fall into a pit of quicksand and seemingly sink to their deaths in front of Double D... but it turns out that they were just pulling a prank on him. Double D is understandably pissed at them for it, furiously chews them out, and gets in a fist fight with Eddy before deciding to return home and face the kids' wrath, declaring he'd rather accept the consequences of his actions than wander aimlessly with a "so-called friend" like Eddy.
  • Fairly OddParents: In one episode, Timmy summons the April Fool to help him get back at everyone who's ever pranked him. Wanda has this reaction to the Fool's mean-spirited pranks from the start, but Timmy thinks they're funny enough... at least until one of the Fool's "pranks" almost horribly kills his parents, at which point he breaks off the deal and states the trope name almost verbatim.
    Timmy: Dude, you're not being funny. You're being harsh!
  • Family Guy:
    • "Death Has a Shadow" has a cutaway gag of the Griffins watching Philadelphia. Peter recognizes Tom Hanks in the movie and, thinking he is playing a comedic role, says out loud that every line of his is pure gold. Hanks' character says, "I have AIDS." which prompts Peter to laugh uncontrollably while the other moviegoers glare at him.
    • "The Kiss Seen Around the World", an attempted invoking comes when teenager Neil Goldman (Jewish pharmacist Mort Goldman's socially awkward, annoying son) is humiliated and plans to jump off the roof of city hall. Quahog 5 News anchor/reporter Tom Tucker is assigned to cover the breaking news. As police are trying to talk Neil down, Tucker takes his cameraman aside and discusses what to do if a fatal jump is recorded on tape: add cartoon-type "object falling" sound effects, along with humorous commentary in an attempt to amuse the audience. Before it is invoked, Meg (who had a crush on Tom throughout the episode) overhears Tucker and his cameraman talking and tells him that what he plans on doing is wrong.
    • "Back to the Woods": After James Woods steals his identity, Peter takes revenge by stealing Woods's identity and ruining his career. He does this by stating on David Letterman's show that he's working on a comedy based on 9/11 called September 11, 2000-FUN!. The entire audience gasps at this, and Letterman says, "That sounds unbelievably offensive to Americans." The film, Peter claims, focuses on a window washer who sees the plane coming toward him while he wipes the window of the Twin Towers and exclaims, "Aw, c'mon!"
      Peter: And the voice of the plane is David Spade.
      James Woods: What?! I would never work with David Spade! That dwarf, that skinny chicken shit.
    • Invoked again by Mayor West in "Brothers & Sisters":
      Mayor West: Oh, by the way, I should tell you that I've got AIDS.
      Carol: What!?
      Mayor West: Yeah, they're right over there waiting for me.
      Aides: Ready to go when you are sir.
      Mayor West: Poor guys, they both have AIDS.
      (Cutaway to Live Action)
      Robert Loggia: NOT OKAY!
    • And this moment from "Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q."
      Joe: It's an intervention.
      Peter: Now's a perfect time to tell my jokes.
      Lois: Peter!
      Peter: They can wait 'til later.
    • The opening to "E. Peterbus Unum":
      Peter: Okay, here's another riddle. A woman has two children. A homicidal murderer tells her she can only keep one. Which one does she let him kill?
      Brian: That's...that's not a riddle. That's...that's just terrible.
      Peter: Wrong! The ugly one.
    • The Simpsons Guy has Stewie prank-calling Moe and tells him "Your sister is being raped.", and Bart looks at him with a disturbed expression on his face.
    • In "It Takes A Village Idiot and I Married One" Stewie angrily rips into Peter over his impersonation of a woman with postpartum depression. It probably didn't help that he was holding Stewie's head underwater as he was doing so.
      Stewie: You son of a bitch! Don't even joke about that!
  • The Flintstones: In "A Haunted House is Not a Home", Fred is set to receive an inheritance from his not-all-there uncle, Giggles, who had passed away and who in life was fond of practical jokes. However, there is a catch: Fred must spend the night in his uncle's creepy estate to receive the inheritance, or the inheritance will be null and void. What's more, if anything were to happen to Fred, then the inheritance will revert to Giggles' staff, including his butler, his chef, and his gardener. As one might expect, the staff then try to get Fred (and by extension, Barney, who agrees to spend the night with his friend) killed so they can claim the inheritance. As a result, Fred and Barney must endure the night eluding the attempts on their lives, not helped by either the rather creepy-looking portrait of Giggles on the wall, whose eyes seem to move or very maniacal laughter that sets Fred and Barney's hair on end. They survive, however, and they explain to their wives all that has happened. Evidently, the creepy laughter appears to be coming from the creepy picture, at which Fred throws a vase to shut it up. To everyone's surprise, however, it's not actually a painting — it's the actual Giggles, alive and well. He had faked his death as a prank, which his staff was in on. It seems that the joke was a test to see if Fred was worthy of receiving the inheritance, admitting that he is a kook: "But a rich kook, don't forget that!" What's more, he wanted to see if Fred had a sense of humor like he did. In response, Fred, who is so not amused at all that has happened, smiles dementedly as he admits that he, too, is a kook ("Not rich, but still a kook.") and then takes out a huge-ass cleaver and chases his uncle and his staff out of the mansion, cackling insanely, with Wilma, Barney, and Betty all cheering Fred on.
  • Futurama: In "Obsoletely Fabulous", Bender says he's scared of the Robot 1-X. Leela breaks out laughing, while Fry, Amy, and Professor Farnsworth shoot her Death Glares.
  • Gravity Falls: "The Legend of the Gobblewonker" has Grunkle Stan interrupt a proposing couple with a joke ending with "It's funny because marriage is terrible." They are predictably not amused and leave immediately in disgust.
  • Justice League:
    • The episode "Kid's Stuff" has Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern magically transformed into kids. Batman remains the closest to his adult counterpart, composed and grim, while the others are hyper, childish and sometimes a danger to themselves or others. When changed back to normal, Wonder Woman light-heartedly comments that it was nice being a kid again. Batman responds "I haven't been a kid since I was eight years oldnote ."
    • In "The Doomsday Sanction," when Batman questions what's to stop Superman from Jumping Off the Slippery Slope, Superman quips, "Well, there's always that kryptonite you carry around," only for Bruce to snap that Superman does not get to joke about that after he essentially took a bullet for Superman.
  • Kaeloo: This happens so very often with Mr. Cat's "jokes" that "That's not funny!" may as well be Kaeloo's catchphrase. It happens even more often in the French dub than the English one.
  • Mike Tyson Mysteries: In the episode "Mite Tyson", Marquess cracks a molestation joke at Yung's expense (Pigeon was kicked out of the house after a doctor suggested that Mike's numerous bites were caused by mites on Pigeon's body. Yung is relieved because she no longer has to worry about being molested, to which Marquess responds "Well, I'm still here". Making this joke even weirder is the fact that Marquess is gay.), she and Mike are disgusted by the joke and Marquess realizes that it was a very poor attempt at humor. Mike and Yung exit the room, leaving Marquess alone, regretting the joke. It's still awkward in the morning.
  • Mission Hill: One episode has a customer of Ron's Waterbed World claim their bed just spontaneously broke and, when told by Andy that their beds don't break like that, presents proof in the form of an amateur sex tape of he and his wife. Watching the tape, and noting how the couple finished at the exact moment the bed broke, Andy remarks "Okay, the bed broke. But you gotta admit, the timing was pretty great!" The customer is not amused.
  • My Gym Partner's a Monkey: In the episode "The Hyena and the Mighty", Adam is trying to give a report on an oil spill and how it harmed wildlife, but the titular hyena's laughing and Jake's mockery of the situation do not make him happy. For frame of reference, Adam's report mentions that millions of animals died in the spill; but Jake is joining the hyena's laughter by mocking the animals for being dirty. Adam's expression is a good representation of this trope.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • Some of Rainbow Dash's pranks are seen as this by the other ponies. For example, In the episode "Luna Eclipsed", she shocks Pinkie Pie with a lightning cloud. Not only did it scare her, Spike was startled and dropped his candy (in a pose that implied he was choking). Twilight Sparkle scolded at RD for her prank. But it's perfectly fine for Luna to do the same to Dash.
    • In "The Mysterious Mare Do Well", Rainbow Dash says there’s something wrong with the baby she just rescued: “She’s not cheering for everyone’s favorite hero, Rainbow Dash!” Afterwards, Dash gets distracted by the paparazzi and casually tosses the baby to her mother, who doesn’t look too pleased by such carelessness.
  • Rick and Morty: "Promortyus" features Rick and Morty escaping from a planet of body snatchers. They gleefully destroy parts of the city as they're leaving, only to find themselves flying toward a pair of skyscrapers. They both go silent and slowly fly around it without harming either, instead choosing to destroy some ships in a harbor. They later explain to Beth that they're okay with "doing a Pearl Harbor" but not "a 9/11".
  • Robot Chicken:
    • One sketch had a young kid dressed up as Iron Man follow the real Iron Man to a big fight in the city. The Avengers mistake the kid for the real Iron Man and throw him into battle, causing him to get fatally injured and accidentally taking down a giant robot by jamming its motors. The kid is given an iron statue to honor his sacrifice, when Iron Man makes this joke:
      Iron Man: Look on the bright side, now he's a real Iron Man. Get it? Iron? Man? Because he's made of iron?
      (The other Avengers sigh)
      Iron Man: What? What?
      Hulk: Too soon, Tony. Too soon.
    • In a sketch where Anakin Skywalker is carrying the body of his deceased mother in the scene from Attack of the Clones, as he walks in front of Owen, Beru, and Padmé, Owen whispers something to them both, causing them to burst out laughing, resulting in this exchange.
      Anakin: What is so funny?!
      Padmé: Well, Owen just said "I guess that makes him Little Orphan Ani!"
      [they laugh]
      Beru: It's funny!
      Owen: Come on, man! Comedy— It's just tragedy plus time—
      Anakin: No time has passed, I'm holding her dead body in my arms!
      Padmé: Sheesh! Fine, well you just mark the date on the calendar when it's okay to lighten the mood!
      Anakin: Never! It will never be okay!
    • This is revisited in a later sketch with Owen and Beru being interrogated, and killed by stormtroopers in A New Hope by being burned alive. Before they're killed, one of the stormtroopers gives them a message from Darth Vader, saying that they may now laugh at the Little Orphan Ani joke, causing Owen to say that it was funny then, and funny now. Owen continues this trope until his death.
      Owen: Well, Beru, people always said we were a hot couple.
      Beru: You know Owen, you really are an asshole.
  • Rocket Power: In the episode "Radical New Equipment", Twister makes a comment about a group of handicapped snowboarders that leaves the rest of the crew in shock.
    Twister: Squid, don't worry. You're not the lamest snowboarder on this mountain anymore.
    Reggie: Twister, harsh!
    Otto: That's not cool, man!
    Sam: I can't believe you said that, dude!
  • The Simpsons:
    • In "King of the Hill", After McBain snaps a Commie-Nazi pilot's neck in a TV movie despite the latter surrendering, Marge quips "Now, that's what I call 'breakneck speed'." Bart responds by coldly telling her that a man just died.
    • In "Cape Feare", Bart doesn't find McBain's very politically incorrect talk show funny either, with Lisa saying "The Fox Network has sunk to a new low."
    • In "Insane Clown Poppy", a flashback to where Krusty was performing for Gulf War soldiers at a USO show had him mocking Saddam Hussein by calling him "So Damn Insane". A soldier then calls him out saying he's fanning the flames of hatred — a bit hypocritical, since at least one of the soldiers is there precisely to kill Saddam. In the same episode, Homer's tasteless joke about the late Maude Flanders also elicits an appalled reaction from everyone in the family, including Bart himself.
    • In "My Mother The Carjacker", as Homer is chasing after the car taking his mother to jail, the driver stops the car to tempt Homer and speed off when he gets close. The other man in the car complains that the guy is losing his mother, but when the driver asks if he can do it one more time, the other guy admits it's Actually Pretty Funny and allows it.
    • In "Round Springfield", "Bleeding Gums" Murphy tells Lisa (via flashback) how his own mentor Blind Willy Witherspoon tried to give him his saxophone, only for Murphy to tell him it was an umbrella — meaning that Willie had been playing an umbrella for thirty years. When Willie asks why no one told him, Murphy chuckles and says, "We all thought it was kinda funny!" Willie's reply is, simply, "That's not funny."
    • In "Burns' Heir", Bart is watching The Itchy and Scratchy Show with Burns; at first, Bart laughs like he always does at Scratchy's violent, gory murder. But then, Burns starts to enjoy it a little too much. Bart is noticeably creeped out.
    • In "Love, Springfieldian Style", during the "Homer and Marge re-enacting Bonnie and Clyde" short, at one point Homer and Marge enter a theater where a Woody Woodpecker Captain Ersatz short is being played. Even Wiggum is offended at the excessive (although (unfortunately) somewhat period-accurate) racism towards Mexicans (and their food) playing on screen.
    • In "King-Size Homer", Ralph's jokes about Homer's weight get this response from Lisa, who insists that Homer's not a gluttonous monster because he's obese. Cue Homer driving past in a stolen ice cream van stuffing down a popsicle.
    • In "I Love Lisa", Krusty holds his 29th Anniversary Special and shows a clip from the 1960s of poet Robert Frost reading for him on his show:
      Frost: (reading) "He will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow..."
      Krusty: (excitedly) Hey, Frosty, you want some snow, man?
      (Krusty pulls a cable, dumping a pile of snow on Frost)
      Frost: (pause) We discussed this, and I said no.
    • In "The Last Temptation Of Krust", Krusty tries to perform at a comedy club and everybody is aghast at his horribly outdated and racist material.
  • The Smurfs (1981): At the ending of "The Purple Smurfs", when all the Smurfs have been cured of their illness, they hear another Smurf's voice yelling "Gnap! Gnap!". Expecting an uncured Purple Smurf, Papa Smurf and some of his fellow Smurfs run towards the voice... only to find out that Jokey Smurf had just pranked them. The other Smurfs are not amused, and throw him out off the village as a result.
  • Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Crisis Point", Tendi has this reaction the further they get into the movie. Mariner wrote her into a sexy Orion pirate role, something she has been trying to avoid in her Starfleet career. Then, during Mariner/Vindicta's assault on the ship, she seems to be having too much fun slaughtering holographic versions of real people, which causes Tendi to bow out.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • In "Fools in April", SpongeBob pulls several harmless pranks to various people at work during April Fools' Day. Squidward quickly begins to find the pranks increasingly annoying, so in an effort to put an end to them, he sets his own, far more sadistic prank for SpongeBob—which involves him stepping in a snare trap, flung/smacked all around the Krusty Krab, sliding through Bubble Bass' rear end, and landing into a trash can after a fall from the ceiling. SpongeBob is far from amused and runs out of the Krusty Krab in tears as the on-lookers walk out, disgusted by Squidward's cruelty.
      "April Fools...jerk!"
    • "Ripped Pants" provides the page image. One of SpongeBob's many, many stunts involving comically ripping his pants involves pretending to drown at the beach. The beachgoers, who were already getting sick of his "ripped pants" schtick all desert him in disgust.
      Sandy: That wasn't funny, SpongeBob! You had us all worried sick!
      Scooter: *shakes his head in shame* Dude...
      SpongeBob: Let's see,
      Lifting weights = Big laugh
      Frisbee in the face = Kills
      Surfing = Knocks em dead
      Pretending to drown = Noooooo...
    • In "One Coarse Meal", Mr. Krabs discovers Plankton has a phobia of whales and begins using such to his advantage, disguising himself as Pearl and tormenting his rival to the point of attempting suicide by being run over by a bus. SpongeBob, despite being rivals with Plankton as well, is not happy at Mr. Krabs's plot and calls him out for it, but he doesn't listen.
      SpongeBob: Mr. Krabs, I know you and Plankton are sworn enemies and all, but... Putting on a dress to frighten him?! Isn't that taking it a little too far?
    • In "Demolition Doofus," SpongeBob's latest failed driving test lands Mrs. Puff in the hospital with a ruptured inflation sac, ensuring she'll never puff again. Rather than apologize or show any remorse for hurting her, SpongeBob instead tries to lighten the mood by cracking jokes about her situation; unsurprisingly, Mrs. Puff does not take this well.
      SpongeBob: From now on, I guess we'll have to call you Mrs. Pop! [laughs]
  • Steven Universe,: "Too Far" revolves around this trope. Steven has to tell Peridot that by joking about how Amethyst is "defective", she really hurt Amethyst's feelings. Peridot realizes her mistake and apologizes.
  • Superman: The Animated Series: In the Origins Episode "The Last Son of Krypton", Clark tells Lana that weird things have been happening to him, such as being able to see through walls. Lana asks him if he's been using this ability to peek into the girls' locker room. Clark is genuinely freaked out and in no mood for jokes; Lana apologizes when she realizes that he's trying to deal with a serious issue.

So funny I forgot to laugh!

Top

What's Weird About Steven?

Peridot makes Amethyst laugh with her thoughts on Steven. Steven himself… not so much.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (2 votes)

Example of:

Main / DudeNotFunny

Media sources:

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