Pie In The Face / Live-Action TV

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• 3rd Rock from the Sun, "Dick Jokes", an episode where the aliens try to figure out what is funny, culminates in Dick roasting Mary and Nina so badly in front of their colleagues that they get their revenge by slowly and methodically smashing pies over every inch of his body.
• In Adventures in Wonderland, pies in the face turn up in several episodes:
  • At the end of "That's All, Jokes," the Queen uses this as Restrained Revenge on all her subjects for the prank that was pulled on her, which no one will confess to.
  • In "Pie Noon," this is the bully Mike McNasty's specialty. The whole episode revolves around Hare's fear of getting pied when McNasty arrives in town. Everyone treats it as seriously as if it were real violence.
  • In "The Mirth of a Nation," the Queen has lost her sense of humor and tries to have a serious garden party where no one has any fun. But then the Rabbit trips and accidentally flings a cream tart into the Queen's face. Everyone bursts out laughing, much to the Queen's outrage.
  • In "Pizza de Resistance," the Hare accidentally knocks the slice of lemon meringue pie he and the Hatter brought for the Queen's pizza contest (It Makes Sense in Context) into the Hatter's face.
• Subverted on All That when the cast get a bunch of pies from the bakery. Kevin expects they will throw the pies at him but is told they are not going to do that. The baker also made a cake for such a purpose.
• A Season 14 Detour on The Amazing Race had teams pelt each other in the face with pies until they found one with a cherry filling.
• Ant and Dec once had a show which, amongst much else, featured a slot called Pie of the Week in which someone brought in a pie. In one episode, Dec read the cue-card and discovered that today's Pie of the Week was brought in by Ant.
  Dec: Alright, Ant, what is it?
  Ant: It is... a custard pie!
  Dec: Hold on, this isn't going to be "Dec gets a custard pie in the face" is it?
  Ant: Now, would I do something as obvious as that?
  Dec: No, of course not. Sorry.
  Ant: Wrong again. *splat*
• A.N.T. Farm. In "sANTa's little helpers, Fletcher gets a pie in the face as Chyba demonstrates her plan to make booby traps on Mrs Skidmore.
• The Avengers (1960s): An episode has a pair of murderous music-hall clowns with an arsenal of weapons that included a pie filled with fast-setting glue, which nearly asphyxiated a would-be victim.
• Ax Men: Craig Rygaard reconciles with the crew and especially rehired rigger, Dave Schroeder, in a recent episode using some lemon meringue humble pie. At least Dave sees the humor in the pie.
• The Baby-Sitters Club (1990), with a school carnival. Mary Anne is next in line to dunk Mallory with said thrown pie...but then Marci decides to rub in that she (thinks she's) got Logan to herself. She then finds out that Mary Anne has surprisingly good aim.
• Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters has a misfired Practical Joke.
• Bewitched, during one of the Serena episodes, which included Elizabeth Montgomery pieing herself from across the room.
• The Big Bang Theory has Sheldon demonstrate his sense of humor by suckering Leonard into thinking he's about to be a victim of the snake-in-a-can gag.
  Leonard: I don't get it, it's really peanut brittle in here. (Splut!)
• The Bob Newhart Show, as part of a practical joke Bob plans to play on Peeper.
• A staple of Chicago's The Bozo Show, usually with Cookie being on the receiving end. In the 25th anniversary special every person who had ever been a regular on the show, including both Bozos, get in an epic pie fight while posing for a commemorative picture.
• On Boy Meets World, Eric hits Jack with one at the end of a food fight.
• The Brady Bunch:
  • In the first Cousin Oliver episode, "Welcome Aboard".
  • The pilot episode where Mike and Carol marry has the former saving their wedding cake from falling off the table...only to lose his balance and have it hit him in the face.
• A Candid Camera gag involved a worker in a pie factory trying to keep up with a conveyor belt that kept increasing speed. When Allen Funt reveals it's all a Candid Camera Prank, he asks the victim what he intends to do with the pie he's still holding, clearly expecting this trope. However, the man resists the temptation to get his revenge.
• Captain and Tennille Show, during Masterjoke Theater sketches, primarily.
• Charmed (1998): In "Payback's a Witch", one of the Elders visits the Halliwell Manor during Wyatt's third birthday party. The Elder comments on what a good boy Wyatt is, only for the boy to telekinetically throw a birthday cake into the Elder's face.
• A Thanksgiving Day episode of Cheers. Notably, it's the first time Norm's wife Vera ever appears on screen, but it's after a pie has hit her, so the audience can't see her face.
• A recurring theme on Dick & Dom's shows, from Dick & Dom in da Bungalow (hosts splatting contestants, contestants splatting hosts, or giant free-for-all) to Splatalot (with "Splat" written on the bottom of the pie plate).
• The Dick Van Dyke Show: In "When a Bowling Pin Talks, Listen", At Rob's suggestion, Alan proposes that he appear as a guest star on The Uncle Spunky Show. Unfortunately, Rob didn't know that every guest star gets pied in the face. Alan orders a pie to use on Rob in revenge, but Mel becomes accidental collateral damage.
• Diff'rent Strokes, when the cast visits Universal Studios.
• In one episode of the 1970s Donny And Marie Show, Marie delivered one to Donny in retaliation for his tying her ice skate laces together.
• Double Dare:
  • Pies in the face might not have been as iconic as the gak or memorable as pies in the pants. However physical challenges that required a contestant to get their face covered in whipped cream have been a part of the show's physical challenges since day one. However, the one that takes the cake (no pun intended) was the "Flying Trapeze" from the final season of Family Double Dare, where a person was put on a platform being moved back and forth by his family and had to throw four pies at his teammate's face while she sat in front of him.
  • This was not limited to the contestants. Sometimes, during the show's Ad Bumpers, when the camera zoomed in on the audience the operator would zero in on a particular person and smash a pie in the fan's face. Marc was also the occasional target of pie pranks by Harvey, Robin, or other members of the crew.
  • A subversion happened on the President's Day special when a contestant was told to make a pie by putting cherries on a plate, put a few handfuls of cream on it, and put it into his partner's face. Instead, with the clock nearing zero, he put the cherries in the big bowl of cream and smashed the whole thing in her face! (The judges declared this a rule violation, and the money went to the other team.
  • On a handful of occasions, Marc and Harvey would have a gentleman's bet before the obstacle course began: The team got to pie Marc in the face if they got through all eight obstacles and if they lost, Harvey would get the pie instead.
• Ernie Kovacs may be best remembered for the surreal visual gags of his TV shows, but that didn't mean he was above pieing an attractive woman to get a laugh. One such target was actress/singer Edie Adams, who would become the second Mrs. Kovacs. Ironically, Adams recalled a live appearance where Kovacs himself took a pie in the face - and was knocked out cold because the stagehand hadn't removed the pie from the metal pan first!
• Not surprisingly, pies were also heavily featured in The Family Channel's later Family Challenge, which was from the same producer (Woody Fraser).
• The Facts of Life. At the end of season one episode "Dieting," Sue Ann shoves Blair's face into a dish of rice pudding. It's a Karmic Nod for Blair, because Sue Ann had gone on a crash diet and passed out because Blair had told her that a boy that she (Sue Ann) liked wouldn't like her back because of her weight.
• Family Matters, the episode "Stop In the Name of Love."
• On Far Out Space Nuts, Chuck McCann gets one during the opening credits, helpless to avoid it while flailing around in zero-gravity.
• Fawlty Towers: In "The Hotel Inspectors", Basil takes revenge on Mr Hutchison for being the fussiest guest ever, by squashing a squidgy pie in Mr Hutchison's crotch, and another in his face. He also instructs Manuel to pour cream into Mr Hutchison's briefcase.
• Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende: This trope was taken to an extreme when in 2002, Matsumoto lost a bet on a baseball game between the Yomiuri Giants and the Seibu Lions. His punishment is to spend a day while Hamada, Hosei and fellow comedy duo Cocorico throw pies at him.
• Galavant: During the song "Comedy Gold," Jester teaches King Richard that a pie in the face salvages any comedy routine. When Richard's stand-up set fails to amuse his wife, he pies Gareth and gets a laugh out of her. Wanting to repeat his success, he calls for another pie, only to nix that idea when Gareth reaches for his sword.
• The Good Wife: "The One Percent" episode begins with a cream pie being prepared and then thrown in the face of a CEO by a protestor who pretended to be one of the catering staff at a board meeting.
• The Goodies
  • In "Lighthouse Loonies", Bill is driven nuts by the fact that everything in the lighthouse is round. Tim prepares a pie to cheer him up, which of course is also round so Bill grabs it with obvious intent. When he gets tired of chasing Tim round and round the lighthouse, Bill just turns and waits for Tim to run into it, then says calmly, "I feel better now."
  • In "The Movies", the Goodies take over the British film industry, but end up fighting each other over what type of movie to film. Bill prefers making silent movies, leading to his actors throwing pies at Graham's cowboys and Tim's centurions.
  • In "Clown Virus", the US military is invading after infecting the country with a virus that turns everyone into clowns. The Prime Minister appears on television to make an Emergency Broadcast, only to cop a pie in the face instead. Later the Goodies lure in the US troops by offering free pies, only for the table to flip up and send them flying into their faces.
  • In "The Goodies Rule - OK?" the government has banned laughter, so the Goodies become outlaw comedians. First they're Just Like Robin Hood and fire an arrow with a pie into the face of a government Mirth Inspector, then they become Prohibition gangsters, but when their violin cases are opened they're packed with custard pies instead of tommy guns, which they proceed to throw at the Moral Guardians.
• Growing Pains, the "20th Anniversary" episode.
• Happy Days: In the episode where Chachi tries to join the Leopards. At one point Chachi & Roger are about to pie the next person who walks in. It's Fonzie. They take one look at him and pie each other instead. But in a Blooper Reel gag, they get him.
• Head of the Class, "Make Fun of the Teacher" episode.
• Horrible Histories: A sketch on Victorian manners in which almost everything a gentleman does results in him being slapped by a lady, ends with him shoving an apple pie in her face. (She did say "There is nothing improper about apple pie".)
• I Love Lucy has a couple of pie episodes, including "The Diner."
• The Jackie Gleason Show at least twice.
• On The Jerry Springer Show, any time a wedding cake is set up in the studio, you can guarantee that it's not going to get properly cut and eaten... it will end up in the face of the cheating fiancé.
• In "Make Someone Laugh," one of the original Johnny and the Sprites shorts, Johnny tries pieing himself in order to get Basil, who's not feeling well, to laugh. It doesn't help.
• Kularb Neua Mek: In the very first episode, Airin does this to her Anawin and Oranuch's little sister, Ornnich. With a Birthday Cake. His Birthday Cake meant for the Surprise Party!
• On an episode of Late Night, Jimmy Fallon and Kelly Ripa played a game of rock, paper, scissors with a pie in the face as a penalty for losing.
• Legends of the Superheroes: The second and final special "The Roast" has Mordru get hit in the face with a pie thrown by Batman at the end of the evil wizard's performance of "That's Entertainment".
• On a late episode of the original version of Let's Make a Deal, one of the Zonks was an old pie wagon; after the reveal, Carol Merrill hit Jay Stewart with one of the pies.
• An episode of the current series of Let's Make a Deal featured a large pie as a Zonk; when it was revealed, Wayne Brady went down to the pie and pulled a real one out from behind it, with which he hit Jonathan Mangum. At the end of the show, Mangum got his revenge, at which point a curtain opened revealing an entire rack of pies, resulting in a pie fight among the entire cast.
• Love, American Style, the episode with Susan Howard.
• In The Love Boat episode "America's Sweetheart," Vicki acts as a double on a TV show. Her job is to do anything that's too messy or unpleasant for the bratty teen star, which includes having a pie thrown in her face.
• Maude, where most of the cast — including Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan — gets into a big pie fight at the end of the episode "Musical '78."
• The newer version of The Mickey Mouse Club had a sketch in which 13-year-old Christina Aguilera and Ryan Gosling both get a pie to the face.
• Moe Howard demonstrates pie techniques with Ted Knight on The Mike Douglas Show. Host Mike Douglas gets splatted too.
• Modern Family: Cam is woken up with a pie in the face as a result of taking Lily to a clown camp.
• The Monkees endured this when they appeared on Show Within a Show Captain Crocodile.
• A Monty Python sketch at an Army recruiting office comes to a halt when the applicant complains that he hasn't got any funny lines. A couple of restarts later, the recruiting officer is dressed like a clown, pelting the applicant with a pie (after dumping a bucket of whitewash on him and dropping a large fish down his trousers.)
• Moonlighting: David ducks a missile, which scores a bull's-eye on Maddie. He glances at her face, turns to face their attackers, and lets out an uproarious laugh. One guess as to where the next missile lands.
• An episode of Night Court had a man being sued because he ran a business where he would take money to hit a target in the face with a pie, except he neglected to thaw one, and smashed a man's face with a frozen pie. Later in the episode, he gets Dan Fielding with a pie. Everyone wonders who paid the fee to throw the pie, and everyone taking credit for it. Then Dan reveals that it was all of them. They all paid to have a pie thrown at him. But he'd anticipated them doing so, and told the pie assailant that if he only hit him with one pie and forked over the extra cash to Dan for the rest, he wouldn't sue him..
• Our Miss Brooks: Mr. Conklin finds himself the victim of this trope a couple times.
• A staple of Brazilian game show Passa ou Repassa (at a certain point, a sound effect was added, making it even funnier). Two contestants put against each other answering a question. Get right, pie the other one. Get wrong, pie in your face. Then come the next two of the team. And due to rotativity, eventually the first two return, allowing for either revenge or getting the opponent even dirtier. (The same Speed Round was later used on Megamatch in Venezuela (rerun through out Latin America) and College Mad House in the USA. )
• The Patty Duke Show, during a modeling photo shoot.
• At the end of the Penn & Teller: Bullshit! episode on manners, Penn (who spent most of the episode at a fancy dinner as part of the framing device - and acting like his usual self because he can) wraps up the episode just as a waiter arrives and serves cream pies to the dinner guests. Penn tells the audience that no social event is complete without pie and that we should try not to take ourselves too seriously, and on that note, everyone at the table pies themselves.
• Power Rangers:
  • Bulk and Skull on Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers frequently received these (well, typically it was cakes, but the principle is the same).
  • And in Power Rangers Zeo, the Rangers once defeat a group of Cogs by pieing them. (Leading King Mondo to go into a Surrounded by Idiots rant, and you can't blame him.)
• On Press Your Luck, one of the Whammy animations has "Tammy Whammette" singing "It's good to have your money back again" as her guitar player takes a pie in the face. Another has a Mayoral candidate getting a pie in the face after announcing "If elected, I will raise your taxes!"
• The Price Is Right:
  • During one of Drew Carey's Showcases, the models hit each other with pies. Near the end of the narration, Rich Fields is hit with a pie, and at the end of the show, Drew himself is hit with a few by the models as well. Here's a clip. And here is Rich Fields making sure the showcase winner isn't left out on the fun.
  • Here's a way earlier episode (January 1976, as the title says). These predecessor models are dressed as Keystone Kops pieing one another throughout the showcase.
• Radio Enfer: After reading in a magazine for women that women love to be surprised, Galgouri puts a pie on Jocelyne's face to surprise her. He does it again to her the next day (this time for comedy), except with plaster because he ran out of whipped cream.
• In "Ludlow Laughs" on Reading Rainbow, LeVar Burton is given a "comedy makeover." The pie-in-the-face is part of his routine.
• Route 66, during an episode with Guest Star Soupy Sales.
• During an election episode of Salute Your Shorts.
• Saturday Night Live:
  • Julia Louis-Dreyfus receives one in a commercial for "Calvin Klein Cream Pies," which has the tagline, "For girls you hate."
  • The "Heavy-Wit Championship of the World" sketch.
  • Also, "Just Desserts!" from the 5/13/17 episode, a game show where a wrong answer means a pie in the face.
  • In the "Hidden Camera Commercials" sketch, when a customer (Chris Farley) is informed his coffee was in fact another brand's coffee, he gets so mad that he throws several pies in the direction of other diners in the restaurant.
• Subverted in Secret Diary of a Call Girl when Belle gets a client who's into "sploshing;" her pie hit momentarily blinds her when the cream gets in her eye, then she twists her ankle and falls from all the glop on the floor.
• The Sopranos: In a very rare Played for Drama example Uncle Junior smashes a pie into his girlfriend's face as he breaks up with her. Given that he is a violent mobster with a Hair-Trigger Temper, the effect is more frightening (and sad) than it sounds.
• The Soupy Sales Show has this as a trademark. This was extended to Soupy's appearances on TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes.
• Starsky & Hutch: Hutch's ex-girlfriend aims one at him at the end of "Deckwatch," but he ducks and poor Starsky gets hit instead.
• The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: There is a scene in which London and her friends start a book club, but the first meeting ends up in a pie fight, with the girls smashing small pies in each other's hair and later face.
• Many Talk Show hosts and guests have been pied. Sometimes by themselves.
• That Girl in a Show Within a Show sequence.
• This was a regular staple of The Three Stooges, with many episodes featuring a pie in the face, and some involving an all out pie throwing brawl! It even became a minor plot point of "Spook Louder" where people end up randomly getting a pie thrown in their face, and the journalist interviewing the professor telling the story gets more exasperated and perplexed wondering just who was throwing those pies. Turns out it was the professor all along, who also gets a mysterious pie in his own face as the episode ends. Moe Howard once demonstrated proper pie-throwing technique to Mike Douglas and Ted Knight during a 1973 episode of Douglas' daytime talk show.
• Three's Company, the "bake-off" episode.
• Tiswas has the Phantom Flan Flinger, a recurring character who pied people. Including a number of celebrities, mainly recording artists such as the Pretenders, Adam Ant, Phil Collins, and Annie Lennox (while still with The Tourists, pre-Eurythmics). One of the most memorable moments in the show's run had Sheena Easton covered from head to toe in shaving foam and multi-coloured slime — perhaps she should have titled her hit song "For Your Pies Only"?
• Johnny Carson would often get hit with pies in a recurring The Tonight Show sketch theme.
• Unfabulous, where a classroom presentation on the American Revolution turned into a Boston Cream Pie fight.
• Treasure Hunt, several times.
• In one gag of the Spanish sketch show ¡Vaya semanita!, they are asked to do more intelligent humor, so they decide to pie Stephen Hawking in the face.
• Webster, but only during a Dream Sequence.
• The Nickelodeon semi-game show What Would You Do? featured pieing as a penalty in nearly every episode; in fact, the show came up with a number of pieing devices involving multiple or giant pies or jets of whipped cream (the Pie Wash in season two). Sometimes, though, pieing was a prize or privilege. Most of the people who went down the Pie Slide did so willingly or because they wanted to. Also there were two episodes in the first season called "Pie-a-Thons" which pitted Kids vs. Adults, and being pied was a way to add "points" for your "team".
• Even an episode of Wheel of Fortune, with Pat and Vanna pieing each other!
• Wild and Crazy Kids:
  • Once featuring the fire department.
  • In an earlier episode (and season), an "organized" pie fight between camp kids and their counselors quickly spiraled into a free-for-all.
• You Can't Do That on Television featured this in several episodes, most strikingly in "Drugs".
• Zoey 101 has Zoey do this to Chase after she catches him trying to steal back his valuable radio that he sold to her.

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