Funny X-Ray

Thyme for surgery, eh?

In scientific, medical, or high-security settings, X-Rays are used and may sometimes show funny and/or unusual things on the subject they are used on. In other scenarios, X-Ray Sparks can serve the same purpose.

Examples include:

• Exaggeratedly large or small brains in the head, representing how smart or dumb a character is.
  • Sometimes a small object may be substituted for a brain to represent a character's stupidity.
  • Alternatively, specific sections of the brain may be seen, with oddly specific parts like "a love of daffodils".
• Unusual objects in the stomach, showing that a character is an Extreme Omnivore.
• Objects up the asshole... or in other funny places.
• Objects that probably shouldn't be shown on X-Ray, probably due to being an important element of a character. May invoke Bones Do Not Belong There.
• Very dangerous objects, usually at Checkpoint Charlie and other high-security settings.
• Nothing at all, including lack of skeleton, to show something is unusual about a humanoid character.

Compare with X-Ray of Pain and Funny Terrain Cross Section. In medical settings, ultrasound may be used as an alternative. If that ultrasound shows unusual objects in a pregnant mother's uterus, see Prenatal Possessions.

---

Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, when Rice goes to a hospital in the middle of the battle, Bo-bobo acts as his doctor. Bo-bobo shows Rice his x-ray, but instead of a human skeleton, it's a strange, cartoonish imp-like creature with a giant head, pointy ears, and a tail. Bo-bobo claims he found nothing wrong, but Rice starts screaming... because the x-ray shows some kind of growth on his ear.

Comic Strips

• Dilbert: In one of the more bizarre early strips, a hospital X-ray of Dilbert reveals a fugitive known as "Tiny Tom" clinging to his pancreas, as well as an absconded nurse.

Films

• In a Funny Background Event in one of the Airplane! movies, the X-Ray scanner somehow shows a sexually attractive woman as naked on the viewer while everyone else is fully clothed.
• Jackass: The Movie has Ryan Dunn inserting a toy Hot Wheels car into his rectum, mostly so they can take an X-ray of the incident and see the medical staff's reaction.
• In Osmosis Jones, Ozzy goes through an X-ray machine while entering the stomach to meet Drix. The X-ray shows his gun, and he gets a pass by showing his badge. The guy behind him, however, is a tough-looking sailor who is revealed to be wearing women's underwear.
• Return of the Jedi: When Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker attacks Emperor Palpatine and gets electrocuted by his Force lightning, the X-Ray Sparks show that Vader's neck bones appear to have been reinforced or replaced with artificial parts like much of the rest of him.

Literature

• In Oscar the Grouch's Alphabet of Trash, the page for the letter X shows Oscar's exhibit of X-ray pictures. Cookie Monster's X-ray picture reveals a bunch of cookies inside his stomach, Oscar's X-ray picture reveals a fish bone inside his stomach, S.A.M. the Robot's X-ray picture reveals a toaster inside him, and a Goat's X-ray reveals a bunch of tin cans in its stomach.

Live-Action TV

• Bones has an X-Ray of Homer Simpson visible in the lab in an episode that was part of a Fox Easter Egg hunt across multiple series.
• An episode of Married... with Children has Jefferson in the hospital telling the story of how he got there by wanting to get a gift for his wife, Marcy, culminating in his getting a tattoo that misspelled Marcy's name as Marty. Marcy's reaction is revealed at the episode's end when an X-ray of his rear end reveals the outline of a boot.
• Scrubs:
  • In the episode "My ABC's", J.D. fantasizes about the Muppet cast of Sesame Street joining the staff at the hospital. During his fantasy, he must inform a patient named Ex Ray (also a Muppet) that Ex Ray's X-rays show there is a human hand inside his head. According to Ex Ray, "This explains so many things."
  • Another episode has the X-ray of a man who has a light bulb up his ass.
    Dr. Cox: Either this guy's got a lightbulb shoved up his ass, or his colon has a really good idea.
• In one of Kermit's lectures in Sesame Street, Herry Monster stands behind an X-ray machine which displays high-resolution color animations. After Kermit sets the machine to show Herry's muscles, Herry steps away from the machine to watch the show. A puzzled Kermit gets behind the X-ray machine, and Herry turns the tables on him.
• St. Bear's Dolls Hospital: In one episode, everyone is looking for a missing ring, but can't find it. An X-Ray reveals that it's inside a teddy bear, having gotten mixed in with the stuffing it was to be filled with.

Music

• Allan Sherman's song "I See Bones" is all about this, including a list of all the unlikely things the doctor sees while looking at an X-ray of a patient's body.
  I see hips
  And fourteen paper clips
  Three asparagus tips
  Among the lovely bones
• The music video for the song "Self Esteem" by The Offspring has a snip of an x-ray video clip among the clips of people doing the la-la's at the beginning of the song. This harkens back to the cover of the album it's on, Smash, which is an X-ray.

Print Media

• The Annals of Improbable Research article "The Taxonomy of Barney" includes an X-ray photographic composite of Barney as its first illustration, which shows the hominid skeleton underneath the fuzz.

Video Games

• Batman: Arkham Series:
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum: Using Detective Mode on Clayface reveals that he has no skeleton.
  • Batman: Arkham City: Using Detective Mode during the Joker fight reveals that Joker has no skeleton. It later turns out Clayface was impersonating Joker, meaning Clayface's cameo in the previous game was foreshadowing.
• BlazBlue: The X-Ray Sparks of some characters show some funny tidbits:
  • Taokaka apparently stuffs a fish under her long sleeves. Kokonoe stuffs sweets in the same manner.
  • Hakumen doesn't show any skeleton (being an Animated Armor), instead he just shows some odd Tron Lines.
  • Terumi briefly shows his ghostly features instead of his skeleton.
  • Relius apparently has his arm and a leg replaced by prostheses.
• Darkstalkers has a few, fitting its slapstick nature:
  • BB Hood's/Bulleta's skeleton has angry eyes and a mace in her basket.
  • Q-Bee does not show a skeleton, instead showing a small version of her on stilts, perhaps hinting that what we see in-game is a disguise.
  • Pyron is a being of fire who has no skeleton, so he has a constellation in place of a skeleton, presumably from the planets he's eaten.
  • Hsien-Ko's/Lei-Lei's x-ray reveals, fittingly, several weapons up her sleeves
  • Donovan's sword and Lord Raptor's/Zabel's guitar both have skeletons, despite being inanimate objects. Then again, they're both living weapons...
• In Persona 4, Teddie has no skeleton in his human body, which dumbfounded many doctors.
• Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time: Several of the Zombies have weird looking X-Ray Sparks when killed by electrical plants:
  • Gargantuars reveal a whole dinosaur skeleton inside their bodies.
  • Dodo Riders show a single, huge comical bone connecting both the Dodo Rider Imp and the Dodo together.
  • Bug Zombies show an internal skeleton. Bugs don't have internal skeletons.
  • Balloon Zombies (when killed by the Electric Blueberry) will show a monkey with a fez riding a small bicycle inside the balloon.
• Pokémon: One of Bronzor's dex entries mentions X-Rays couldn't reveal anything about its internal structure.
• Skullgirls: Valentine's Steam Trading Card shows some X-Rays of Valentine's body, one of showing her cracked heart, Filia and Samson's head, and Peacock's hand.
• Street Fighter:
  • Q and Twelve in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike don't show their skeletons when shocked. Q instead shows his muscular system, with his head still looking mechanical, further adding to speculation as to whether or not he's human. Twelve doesn't show anything at all, as he's made of a malleable substance that allows him to shapeshift. Necro is also shown to have an unusual skeleton, with his bones being broken into small segments, explaining how his stretching powers work.
  • Necalli in Street Fighter V is shown to have no skeleton at all when shocked. Just an empty, black void.
• In Super Smash Bros. 64, when Samus gets hit by an electric attack, instead of a skeleton, the X-Ray Sparks reveal a silhouette of her body.
• Team Fortress 2: An X-ray showing a ribcage with a bomb inside is seen in "Meet the Medic", along with the Medic displaying it in his "Results Are In" taunt. Very likely it is an X-ray of the Heavy's body.
• Trauma Center (Atlus): As the diagnostics in Trauma Team involve examining various scans, you can spot interesting anomalies to get achievements, one of the easier ones being the EKG machine being on the fritz.

Visual Novels

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice: After Pierce Nichody goes into his One-Winged Angel form by dressing more like a surgeon, the FXR-UPR mech that he modified produces X-rays of Phoenix Wright and Miles Edgeworth, which contain their Anime Hair and Classy Cravat, respectively.

Web Animation

• The Homestar Runner Halloween toon "Halloween Fairstival" has the King of Town show Strong Bad and The Cheat an x-ray of his heart, which resembles a honey-glazed ham. Strong Bad says it isn't scary, but it is promising that this probably means the King of Town will die soon.

Webcomics

• Cheer Up Emo Kid combines this with Ambulance Cut in this strip.
• Jones, a mysterious immortal denizen of the court in Gunnerkrigg Court, seems to be entirely impervious to any form of harm, including radiation. Her X-rays resemble silhouette portraits more than they do medical scans.
• In one part of Sparklecare, Dr. Memento takes an X-ray of an anthropomorphic banana. It has what looks like a normal banana inside it.

Western Animation

• In the Barney Bear cartoon "Wee-Willie Wildcat", after Barney tries to kick a football with a rock inside it, a cross-section of his body shows his entire skeleton shattering to pieces.
• Big City Greens: When Tilly gets Brain Freeze in "Desserted", a cross section of her head shows her brain freezing up and snapping in half.
• In Season 3 of BoJack Horseman, Todd accidentally falls asleep in BoJack's suitcase, but passes through airport security without comment, as does the suitcase full of firearms immediately after him. The one with a shampoo bottle, on the other hand...
• In the Donkey Kong Country episode "From Zero to Hero", Cranky Kong has an x-ray machine which he's trying out on various members of the cast. Funky Kong's brain is not just tiny, but also floating skull full of water ("How's it look?" "Shipwrecked."), while Krusha's brain isn't in his skull, but his butt. ("No brain...I might have suspected.") Of course, the x-ray device was also malfunctioning, so it's unclear how accurate these readings are.
• Family Guy: In an infamous pre-9/11 deleted scene where Stewie distracts airport security by singing, an X-Ray reveals a tiny AK-47, grenades, and other weapons inside Stewie's baby backpack. He is followed immediately by Osama bin Laden doing a similar routine.
• Futurama:
  • In "Fry & the Slurm Factory", the Professor is using his "F-Ray" on Bender to figure out why he's not feeling well. While the F-Ray is showing the inside of Bender's head, a computer chip with the number 6502 on it can be seen briefly.^note The 6502 was one of the processors commonly used in 8-bit home computers back in the late 1970s to early 1990s, as well as several early game consoles such as the Atari 2600 and NES.
  • When Hermes is X-rayed in "The-Duh-Vinci-Code", we see a disproportionately small skeleton inside his stout body, so he remarks:
    "I'm not big-boned, I'm just fat!"
• In the Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart episode "Strange Bedfellows", Mao Mao and Orangusnake are in traction in the hospital, but are still trying to destroy each other. At one point Mao Mao makes Orangusnake bounce up and down, and every time he lands, a cross section of his legs shows his bones breaking until they turn to powder.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "Bloom and Gloom", Apple Bloom is the victim of an X-Ray Sparks gag, she has an apple in her stomach (or an apple-shaped bone).
  • In "Newbie Dash", a similar X-Ray Sparks incident reveals that Rainbow Dash has a cloud near her pelvis, and bones in her wing feathers.
• In the opening sequence for the Pinky and the Brain segments on Animaniacs, the two title characters walk by an X-ray machine. Brain has gears turning inside his head, while Pinky has a peanut.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Deep Space Homer", the power plant security X-ray uncovers various unusual things: several employees packing heat, two kids in a Totem Pole Trench, and some sort of ape-like hominid.^note "Oh, hey, Homer!"
  • In "HOMЯ", an X-ray shows that Homer has a crayon stuck in his brain, dating back to when he shoved it up his nose back in school. It's lampshaded that it was never seen before because Dr. Hibbert always had the crayon blocked by his thumb on other X-rays.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Pressure", as Sandy is holding her breath underwater, an X-ray view of her chest is shown with her lungs collapsing, and one breaking off.
• In Steven Universe: Future, the Gems let Dr. Maheswaran take X-rays of them for scientific purposes. Their bodies don't show up on the X-rays (which makes sense, since they're Hard Light beings); the only things visible are their gems, and, in Amethyst's case, everything she's eaten that day.
• Jof the cat from the What A Cartoon! Show short "Help!" by Bruno Bozzetto sees a doctor about a sore finger. The peculiar doctor wants an X-ray and indicates a large container of disclosing fluid for Jof to drink. Jof downs all the fluid — which doubles his body mass — then stands behind the x-ray screen. At first, Jof's skeleton appears normal, but Jof develops hiccups that rearrange his bones into a spider-like pattern, then a Jolly Roger pattern, and lastly a hammer and sickle symbol. The last one makes the doctor forsake his oath to "above all, do no harm." Jof runs for his life.

---