Nuns Are Funny

Sister Mary's surfing habit is nun of your business.

A counterpart to Nuns Are Spooky, Nuns Are Mikos, and Nuns Are Sexy, this is when nuns are portrayed according to the Rule of Funny.

This could be because "nun" is an Inherently Funny Word, or that their outfits look silly. This trope mostly manifests as "normal" things being made inherently funny due to nuns doing them. Someone boarding a plane? Normal. A nun doing it in her religious habit? Hilarious! Of course, the majority of modern nuns do not wear habits anymore, preferring plain black or grey dresses instead, but...that's not as funny. Also, the conventional stereotype of them is that they are very stern, severe and disapproving, thus making them either foils for wackiness going on around them or upping the humor value when they do something wacky.

Monks, The Vicar (or occasionally a priest of another stripe) can become this trope, especially if for some reason he's in full robes doing something improbable (even less likely, as vicars and priests haven't worn robes on day to day activities for hundreds of years. Many do still wear cassocks, though.) There's something about the way long billowy clothes move when the wearer is in action.

IE, nuns are The Comically Serious. The only thing more hilarious than nuns would be Batman in a nun's habit. (You're picturing it right now aren't you? No doubt you're laughing your ass off).

Yes, this is sometimes Truth in Television. Like all people, it depends on the nun.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Chrono Crusade plays with this trope some in the first few episodes/volumes of the manga. Rosette is just not your typical nun and it makes it rather hilarious.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi, has Misora Kasuga, who acts nothing like the traditional stern nun. In particular, there's the incident where she took over a Confessional as her classmates came to it for advice. It's also implied that she's on nun duty as punishment for disciplinary infractions...
• One Pound Gospel - Quite a bit of the humor involves Kosaku's inability to understand Angela's situation and the inherent humor in a bunch of nuns dealing with the chaos typical of Takahashi works.
• One of the reasons why, after Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, the writers had the very childish and naughty Sein become a nun-in-training and placed her under the direct tutelage of the lecture-happy, super-serious Sister Schach. The other reason is Defeat Means Friendship.
• Index of A Certain Magical Index is technically a nun, but passes off her very un-nun like behavior such as indulging in sweets as the result of her only being in training.
• Seira Mimori of Kaitou Saint Tail is usually the Only Sane Girl of the cast, but she has a few crazy antics that get much funnier whenever she's in habit (such as mooching off a friend because a nun is not supposed to buy sweets but sharing them from a friend is accepting a gesture of frienship).

Comic Books

• And what Young Justice fan can forget the immortal words of Robin on a runaway supercycle: "Oh no! Nuns in a station wagon loaded with high explosives! Just my luck!" (Warning: sound)
• In one story in The Simpsons, Ned Flanders is trying to figure out who stole the Church's collection money when he's almost shot at by a passing car. Learning that a security camera captured the event, he checks out the footage to find that the car's driver was...
  Flanders: A nun?! But she tried to kill me in a red-hot shower of lead!
  Apu: Welcome to my world.
  • It turns out that it wasn't really a nun, just Rev. Lovejoy hypnotized by the villain
• In Xombi, despite not being comedic figures, there was Nun of the Above who had clairvoyant abilities and Nun the Less who could shrink. The humor mainly came from their punny names, and there was a third nun whose task was to guard a door to an underground prison. When asked which nun she was, she replied "None of your business."
  • There is some humor when David Kim asks how Nun the Less got her powers, expecting it be some big metaphysical or traumatic thing. Nun of the Above simply explains she ate some bad shrimp when she was a teenager, and that's how she got her powers. David is unable to say anything in response.
• The Italian comic book Suore Ninja (lit. "Ninja Nuns") has the Vatican have a trio of ninja assassins to sick on any and all threats to their survival... And because of this trope, they are the titular crazy nuns. Even The Pope was surprised when he was told (he had just been elected).

Films — Animated

• Throughout the entirety of A Goofy Movie, Goofy and Max keep on bumping into the same four nuns at various escalatingly unexpected times, including during an impromptu musical number on the highway, at a monster truck rally that they seem to be very excited about, and finally a huge rock concert which we must assume is the entire reason they were on the road in the first place.
• One gag in the short The Madagascar Penguins in a Christmas Caper has the penguins walk behind a group of nuns to appear inconspicuous in the city.

Films — Live-Action

• A gag in Rush Hour 3 has Carter (and eventually Lee as well) trading insults with a French-speaking triad through a nun. Lee (at first) reminds Carter to watch his mouth: "Sister, you tell this piece of S-Word that I will personally F-word him up."
• Sister Act. Everything the nuns do is hilarious, either because of a display of naivete resulting from their sheltered lives, or because it's a mundane thing that you just don't expect a nun to do (dancing to a jukebox), or both.
• In Mel Brooks' History of the World Part I, the Spanish Inquisition attempts to convert Jews to Catholicism in a torture chamber with a song and dance number. When it doesn't seem to be working, "Send in the nuns!"
  • Said nuns are dressed... interestingly, to say the least, and are rather impressive in their range. The synchronized-swimming team (of nuns), for example, ...
• The Trouble with Angels is a movie about the hilarious antics of two Catholic school girls in a boarding school run by nuns.
  • Its sequel Where Angels Go Trouble Follows addresses the trope when Sister George says she doesn't want to be patronized as a "darling little nun" who's "just like a real person." While both movies draw humor from nuns doing things in their bulky habits, the second one ends with the sisters changing to a modified version.
  • When their bus breaks down in New Mexico, one nun advises that they'll need to change out of the habits to deal with the heat. When another nun protests that they will be showing their legs, she points out that it's no secret that they have legs.
• The obscure film Greaser's Palace has a nun played by a man by no reason.
• The Blues Brothers, mostly for its parody of Nuns Are Spooky, and their habit of referring to her as "the Penguin" all the time.
• Running Scared (1986) - Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines play cops who arrest a priest and a nun who they think are smuggling drugs from Colombia. After they find out they aren't, the nun hits one of them with a ruler.
• The Princess Diaries: Bystander calling the police on a cell phone? Whatever. Nun calling the police on a cell phone, getting put on hold, and letting out an exasperated "Oh for the love of God"? Hilarity Ensues!
• Short Circuit: "What if it goes and melts down a busload of nuns? How would you like to write the headline on that?" "'Nun Soup'?"
• The British film Nuns on the Run cranks the zany up to 11 by having two men crossdress as nuns to escape criminals.
• In the original version of Bedazzled (1967), The Devil tricks Stanley into using his final wish to be transformed into a nun.
  A nun, moreover of the order of Leaping Beryllians who show their devotion by bouncing on trampolines while singing a silly song!
• Airplane! has a gag where a nun is seeing reading the magazine "Boy's Life,"^note The official magazine of the Boy Scouts of America followed immediately by a boy reading "Nun's Life", with a cover featuring a nun riding a surfboard. Later, she's playing her guitar singing "Respect" to the two jive-talking black guys who are sick from eating fish. Also, when the passengers started panicking after learning no one's flying the plane, the nun is seen strangling a Hare Krishna.
• Even Agnes of God, an intensely serious film, has lighthearted moments: the novice Genevieve taking a few joyous minutes on the convent swing, and the entire sisterhood on a frozen pond, ice skating, badly. And let's not forget this:
  Martha. What'd you have for dinner?
  Agnes (hypnotized). Fish. Brussels sprouts. (wrinkles up her nose)
  Martha. You don't like Brussels sprouts?
  Agnes. I hate them.
• A scene in Spy Hard takes place in a convent, with various assassins working for the bad guy chasing Agent Dick Steele and Veronique Urkinsky through the place while a pastiche of Sister Act plays out in the background. Steele and Veronique make an escape while the nuns, finally tired of the constant interruptions, push the bad guys down while one of them declares "Sisters, make 'em holy!" at which point, the nuns produce Tommy guns and ventilate the Mooks.
• The German and Hungarian nuns in Lilies of the Field are pretty badass, having come over the Berlin Wall and on to New Mexico, and living on nothing; but even the ironclad Mother Superior has her cute, funny moments and they have a lot of Fun with Foreign Languages.
• Sister Clotilde in Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez series. Sister Clotilde is a very enthusiastic young nun who Drives Like Crazy a comically small Citroën 2CV. She's myopic and wears no glasses.

Literature

• One character tells a lewd joke about "dwarf nuns" in House of Leaves. And we'll leave it at that.
• Referenced in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, as readers are informed if their adventuring party picks up a young nun - and she will always be young - then she will turn out to be "not nearly as nun-ish as you expected" and they will be glad to have her around.

Live Action TV

• The Flying Nun
• Monty Python's Flying Circus loves funny nuns:
  • One sketch has the nuns and monks playing football.
  • One sketch (the Gits) ends and is immediately followed by "a nice version" of the very same sketch. Cue a nun saying that she preferred the dirty version.
• The 1960's Batman (1966) combines Batman with Nuns for great hilarity.
• The "bowling nuns", Abby's bowling team in NCIS.
  • By which is meant, Abby is the only member of the team who isn't a member of the cloth. It's not the team name. They're actual nuns.
• On Pushing Daisies, Olive spends a short time in a convent during the second season, where the habits are vibrant turquoise with frills around the faces. There's one episode where the gang has to solve the murder of a nun. Hilarity Ensues when the nun tries to run away after being brought back to life.
  Ned: Nun on the run, nun on the run!
  • The turquoise habits are real; they are worn by the Intercessors of the Lamb. The frilled cornette belongs to a French order, the Sisters of Christian Charity.
• The Suite Life of Zack & Cody has London and Mady go to a Catholic School. The nuns there always wear their hats, even when hiking through the woods in tracksuit or coaching the volleyball team. Heck, they’ll even throw in a Silly Prayer for good measure.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Buffy saved a nun from a vampire. Then she got to try on her wimple.
• The nuns who show up in the first-season House episode "Damned If You Do" are treated as sympathetic but very quirky characters, and end up producing some pretty funny moments (like when we catch them watching wide-eyed a hunky-looking surfer on the hospital room TV, and hurriedly explain to the team that they were just looking for the remote that controlled the bed...).
• The comedy show Four on the Floor has the videogame "Karate Nuns", which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • The skit "Mr. Canoe Head vs. The Kung Fu Nun".
• "Plan Z"'s Tennis-playing Nun
• Hello Cheeky had a skit about nuns being brought into football crowds to curb hooliganism. Cue the news that 162 nuns have been arrested for assault and disturbing the peace.
  Police Officer: ...and so, I retrieved the nun's teeth from the referee's ankle and returned them to the nun in question.
  Judge: What question?
  Officer: What fun can a monk have?
  Judge: I don't know, what fun can a monk have?
  Officer: Nun.
• Call the Midwife: It's set in a convent for an order of Anglican midwife-nuns (with a few midwives not in Holy Orders also living there). A lot of the comedy comes from their interactions, and how they don't match up to the stereotype of nuns. Sister Julienne is spirited and snarky; Sister Evangelina is a Battleaxe Nurse (and also snarky); Sister Bernadette is extremely sweet, and she runs off with the local GP, though they do have to earn their happy ending; and Sister Monica Joan is just... strange, full stop.
  Sister Evangelina: [instructing Jenny about enemas] High, hot and a hell of a lot!
• Mystery Science Theater 3000:
  • Mike & The Bots do humorous dialogue for the nuns waiting for a bus in Soultaker.
  • Even better is their treatment of Girls Town, a 1950s movie about a reform school run by nuns, which is about an hour and a half straight of this trope. Such as when the sisters break up a fight: "Paul Anka's beefy security nuns step in!" Although actually, the movie itself contains a few examples of the trope to start with, such as the nun who gleefully advocates severe asskickings for delinquents.
• Quite a few of the pranks on Just For Laugh Gags revolves around nuns doing naughty things. Incidentally, the show is mostly filmed around Montreal and Quebec City, one of the few places in North America where actual nuns in full habits could be regularly seen walking around the streets.
• There was an episode of Will & Grace that featured a nun in a brief but humorous cameo. The nun was played by Ellen Degeneres, so you know she's gonna say something funny.
• Impractical Jokers: In the season 6 challenge "You Didn't See Me", the Jokers have to get a stranger to cover for them as they dodge someone they've been avoiding, one of which was a nun.
  Q: I've always wanted to say this - send in the nun!

Music

• Sister Cristina Scuccia, who won the 2014 season of The Voice Italy.

Pinball

• The backglass for Hurricane shows two nuns riding the rollercoaster; one's cheering excitedly while the other is praying in fear.

Video Games

• Played straight and then subverted in Dragon Age: Origins: when a usurpers's knights try and arrest you one such nun tries to prevent violence before slaughtering them all, then depending on your responses she can act coy, insightful and...yes, funny. Reject her and she'll chase you up again later, and her...manner suggests she is maybe just a little...off. Say hello to Princess Stabbity, Stab Kill Kill, otherwise known as Leliana, not just one funny Naughty Nun, she subverts it in never actually being a nun and before being a vicious lesbian assassin, and meeting her sisters it's clear that some are Not So Above It All.

Theatre

• Part of the humor in The Sound of Music is Maria's antics compared to the other nuns when she's in the convent, and then Maria's complete Fish out of Water reaction to "normal" life in the Von Trapp household.
  • And that a couple of nuns would know how to disable the Nazis' cars—and have the moxie to do it.
• The entire point of Nunsense.
• Mostly averted in Doubt, but Sister Aloysius has a line about nuns falling over like dominoes when one trips over something. The mental image of that is made of this trope.

Web Original

• Discussed in The Nostalgia Chick's review of the Sister Act movies (see above). She takes time to note that nuns are not only funny, but funnier than monks, though this doesn't make monks unfunny.
  "Nuns are so funny, they're nunny! Look at 'em, all penguiney."

Webcomics

• This is a large part of the point of Sister Claire.

Western Animation

• The Dexter's Laboratory episode "Dee Dee and the Man" had a rather eccentric motor mouthed nun as one of the potential replacements for Dee Dee.
  Nun: "Spastic sister", that's what the ad said! You asked for a spastic sister, and who do you get? "Nun" other than me! Get it? Nun other!
• Family Guy:
  • The episode "When You Wish Upon A Weinstein" has a gaggle of nuns go out, Church Militant style when they (somehow) detect Peter, a Catholic, entering a synagogue.
  • In a later Cutaway Gag involving The Sound of Music, during the scene where the Von Trapp family escapes from the Nazis, one of the nuns mentions that she's sinned, and takes out Rolf's severed head.
    Nun: Hey, I didn't start this war but it's on!
• In Animaniacs, there was a group of nuns in "The Big Candy Store" who ran an orphanage. The head nun asked stingy candy store owner Flaxseed if he could donate some candy for the children, and he rudely threw her out of the store. When the Warners show up and start annoying Flaxseed, after he gets his hands on Wakko and Dot the head nun comes back and is not happy with what he's doing. She gets her fellow nuns to gang up on Flaxseed, preparing to beat his ass with rulers, but then Flaxseed reminds them nuns can't resort to violence. Realizing he's got a point, the head nun gets the group to pray, and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team immediately shows up and pummels the crap out of Flaxseed for them.
• In Hazbin Hotel, Alastor briefly dons a nun habit during a musical number while singing the line "I’ve been as devoted as a nun," for little reason other than because it’s a funny image.

Others

• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking was formerly known as "Bus Full Of Nuns" because of this trope.
• There exists a calendar called "Nuns Having Fun", which depicts nuns on roller coasters, eating ice cream, etc.
• Barenaked Ladies:
  "But how do you plan for a bank full of nuns?"
• A MAD parody of The Sound of Music included a spoof of the song "Maria", detailing how religious movies become more accessible and marketable when they focus on nuns who-like Maria-spend more time goofing around than performing their duties.

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