A specific type of Tag. The plot is resolved just before the last Act Break, but the characters come back after the commercial and deliver one last joke, usually tangentially related to the plot. Very often afterwards, everyone laughs.
The trope name comes from The Cisco Kid, where Cisco would deliver the punchline, and Pancho would always go, "Oh, Ceeesco!" Still used in many shows, comedy or not.
Compare to And Knowing Is Half the Battle and End-of-Episode Silliness. Also compare with The Stinger, where this is after the credits. Usually a variation of Every Episode Ending.
Examples
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Live-Action TV
- Welcome Back, Kotter: The title character tells a joke about one of his relatives to his wife, Julie ... usually one of those unknown-until-now uncle and a bad pun. Even the episodes with somber or serious themes, or those ending on said note, ended not with a serious resolution to the situation but one of those "Did I ever tell you about my Uncle Jamie?"-type jokes.
- The Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" ends with an extended joke, with the punchline being a Pun on the similarity between "trouble" and "tribble".
Scotty: ...where they'll be no tribble at all.
- M*A*S*H invariably wrapped up the plot of an episode before the last commercial break, then came back for a quick one- or two-minute comedic scene before running the end credits.
- The more refined version of this is the joke without words that goes on during the credits of Frasier.
- Many episodes of My Name Is Earl play out the credits over a scene of Earl and Randy in bed having a conversation unconnected with the events of the episode, usually triggered by a Non Sequitur by Randy.
- Disney Channel shows have some form of this, most notably That's So Raven and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody.
- The Colbert Report has one last joke before the credits, generally delivered from Colbert's armchair by the fire (in reference to FDR's fireside chats). This can be anything from a one-liner to an entire scene.
- Also, The Daily Show has the Moment of Zen.
- The Avengers (1960s) used these kinds of tag scenes.
- The Brady Bunch always used these, usually courtesy of Alice. ("Oh, Alice!")
- The Big Bang Theory often brings back a throw-away joke and expands on it, to humorous effect. In one episode, the gang discusses how Sheldon's "species" reproduces. The theories are myriad, but later, Sheldon is shown eating large amounts of Thai food, eventually splitting into 2 identical copies. Leonard awakes from his dream, cursing the Mitosis Theory of Sheldon Reproduction.
- "What Did We Learn on the Show Tonight, Craig?" from The Late Late Show.
- The Blake's 7 episode "Children of Auron" where the premise is the almost total extermination of the Aurons, a race of empathic humanoids who are opposed to the evil Federation and are thus nominally allied with the protagonists. (Almost all alliances in Blake's Seven are nominal. It's their Hat.) Approximately five thousand children and a few adults survive and the crew manage to find them a location where they will be safe and can rebuild the Auron race. At the episode's close Avon makes a joke about the society being a gigantic nursery, which in the context of recent genocide is in incredibly poor taste. Auron main character Cally is notably absent from the bridge at this point.
- Funky Squad.
- Parodied in Police Squad!, along with the freeze frame ending.
- Spoofed to hell and back in Garth Marenghis Darkplace whenever one of the group makes a cheesy pun about what's just happened and the others laugh over-enthusiastically for a ridiculously long time.
- Parodied in That's My Bush!; "Oh, Laura! One of these days, I'm gonna punch you in the face!"
- How Corner Gas ends every episode.
- While Perry Mason devoted most of its end-of-episode scenes to explaining the key clue that let Perry solve the case, this style of joke was often included.
- Free Spirit (1989) does this in every episode.
- Starsky & Hutch: Most of the tags fall into this category, occasionally lapsing into End-of-Episode Silliness - sometimes to jarring effect in some of the darker episodes.
- Saturday Night Live: The sketch "The Love Boat: The Next Generation", which mashed up Star Trek: The Next Generation and The Love Boat, parodies this trope. During the sketch, Picard (host Patrick Stewart) tries to teach Data (Rob Schneider) what Valentine's Day means. And the sketch ends with Data giving Picard a literal human heart as a valentine.
Picard: Good lord, Data! It’s a human heart!Data: Yes, sir, but it's dipped in chocolate.Picard: Oh, Mister Data, you've got a lot to learn!(they lean back and laugh as the ending freezes frame)
Webcomics
Web Original
- Whateley Universe: From The Big Idea
:
[F]or now, Migraine is someone else’s headache.
Western Animation
- Used in every episode of The Proud Family.
- The end of most ThunderCats (1985) episodes.
- Used on at least one occasion in Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.
- Actually used with such regularity, an Adult Swim commercial was an entire montage of episode-concluding group laughing.
- The Transformers and G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero ended a fair number of episodes this way.
- In Mr. Magoo, after Waldo and Prezly would be involved in another big plan, Quincy Magoo would usually end the episode with "Oh, that Waldo and Prezly, what'll they be up to next, heh heh?"
- One of Magoo's catchphrases at the end of an episode was "Oh Magoo, you've done it again!"
- Used at the end of Adventure Time episode "Slow Love" with Finn and Jake towards Beemo.
- Used in most episodes of Family Guy. lampshaded in one episode wherein Peter says, "And I've learned something from this... ya know what, we've done this a billion times, so I'm just going to do the cadences" and the family just speaks gibberish (in the proper cadences, of course.) Followed by the obligatory laugh.
- Spunky And Tadpole (an obscure cartoon from Beverly Films, dating to 1958) had the two addressing each other this way at the end of selected story arcs.
- The SpongeBob SquarePants episode Graveyard Shift ends with SpongeBob, Squidward and a fish trying to get a job at the Krusty Krab reacting this way to the reveal that Nosferatu was the one flickering the lights.
