YMMV.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic S 5 E 22 What About Discord: The main cast spends a good portion of the episode laughing about their in-jokes (whether at Twilight or Discord's expense). While we never see what actually happened between Discord and Twilight's friends, some of the laughter they share still seems rather exaggerated, given what little information we do have of what happened that day.
YMMV.Recess: A lot of Randall's jokes in "Stand-Up Randall." Likewise there's the movie quotes in "Me No Know". Part of this seems to be justified by the movie being a fad of the week that stops being funny very quickly.
Recap.The Twilight Zone 2019 S 1 E 1 The Comedian: Invoked and lampshaded; Samir doesn't understand why a fellow humorist accused of murder is popular with the crowd, but his relevant stuff gets no laughs.The mere fact that Samir is onstage joking about someone seems to make everyone laugh, no matter if the actual jokes are funny or if certain people would normally find them so. The comedian who committed vehicular manslaughter while drunk seems to find it hilarious when Samir jokes about the crime that he committed, and Rena laughs both when Samir makes jokes about how David wants to have sex with her (which she had previously been offended by) and when Samir starts joking about himself, despite being upset with him mere seconds before.
YMMV.First Love Monster: The reason this series is at best regarded as So Okay, It's Average – a large number of viewers find the jokes too unfunny.
YMMV.Addicted To Curry: Koenji's mom lies to her daughter, claiming that her father had terminal cancer (he was just overexerting himself). All part of an elaborate scheme to marry herself to Makito (even if it was just pretend) in order to get the two together. This is treated as a light hearted joke. It's hard to see how this can possibly be funny.
YMMV.Chuggaaconroy: His puns, especially those involving the names of characters in Pokémon Colosseum. Are they incredibly witty considering how quickly he comes up with them, or is he trying too hard and spoiling the few genuinely good ones that he comes up with?
YMMV.I Carly: Many of the web show's sketches are supposed to be funnier than anything on live-action TV. Seeing some of the show's sketches, it's kind of hard to believe. Granted, the only parts of the sketches seen by the viewing audience are usually the very end, but "Random Dancing" does not seem to warrant the praise the (web) show gets.note As Pickle Rick showed us though, since it was a heavily used part of the show and advertising, it may just be an in-universe Memetic Mutation. Although given the live-action TV shows they've shown to exist in universe, it's not as big of a stretch as it may seem. Sam's actions on the show are very much this. Her abuse of Freddie is Played for Laughs, but it's often seen as quite cruel. She also clearly has no respect for the First Lady, who praised her along with Freddie for what they did for Carly, interrupting her mid-phrase about wanting a sandwich. This was also Played for Laughs. Many viewers just found it unfunny.
Recap.Big City Greens S 1 E 17: In-Universe. Tilly performs a stand up routine about chickens, The Greens find it hilarious but leave the Remingtons confused. Rashida decided to tell a story about her and a dentist which ends on a retainer pun. This time the Remingtons laugh but the Greens don't get it.
YMMV.Beavis And Butt Head Do America: Beavis, during the tour of the Hoover Dam, drops this barely-even-a-joke, that earns him dirty looks from the senior citizen tourists, yet it's somehow a fan favorite: Beavis: Yeah, uh, I just have a question; um, is this a God dam? [Butt-Head, and only Butt-Head, laughs, while everyone else just glares]
WebVideo.Phelous: invoked One Running Gag is him playing a clip of Peter Venkman saying "it wasn't that funny" after people laugh uproariously at a joke that really doesn't deserve such a response.
Funny.Avatar The Last Airbender Book Three: Ty Lee tries to help Azula talk with boys by suggesting that she should smile a lot and laugh at whatever a boy says, even when it's not funny. Azula finds it "shallow and stupid", but tries it anyways. Ty Lee: (In a deep voice, pretending to be a guy) Hey there, sweet sugarcakes. How are you liking this party? Azula: (laughs loudly and awkwardly) (Party noises stop and everyone stares at Azula and Ty Lee)
YMMV.Duke Nukem Forever: Values Dissonance: The game has Humor Dissonance thanks to its decade of Development Hell. The previous games of the early nineties were considered funny and the eponymous character was a fresh take for being an actual protagonist with a voice and personality rather than being a faceless, voiceless space marine. However, when Forever came out, Duke's dialogue, humor, and the overall tone of the game felt wildly out of date to some.
Recap.South Park S 4 E 6 Cherokee Hair Tampons: In-Universe. Stan, Kenny and Cartman decide to mess with the substitute by pretending to be each other during roll call. They all laugh hysterically when each kid responds to a different name while the rest of the class stares at them in silence. Wendy: It's not that funny, you guys. Jesus.
YMMV.How I Became Yours: Some might consider the following joke amusing; to others, it's fairly pointless. Aang: Guys, I have great news! I finally did it! Zuko: What, you lost your virginity? Sokka: MKKKFFF, good one.
YMMV.The Cosby Show: "Theo's Gift," the episode where Theo finds out that he's dyslexic. While the episode finally did explain why Theo struggled so much in school, his diagnosis is mostly played for laughs. Bill Cosby himself said this happened as early as the third season when, after Phylicia Rashad had her Hide Your Pregnancy time, Cliff and Clair's onscreen romance moments become much less frequent.
JerkassHasAPoint.Gravity Falls: In "Dungeons, Dungeons, & More Dungeons", Mabel seems to have one when Dipper says he hangs out with Stanford partially because he's cool, but also because he, unlike Grunkle Stan and Mabel, doesn't make fun of him. Unlike her dramatic realization in "Sock Opera", this one is very subtle and we don't see her response directly. Mabel: You're uh, spending a lot of time with old Fordsy lately, huh? Dipper: You have no idea. I knew the author must be cool, but he's better than I imagined! And... he doesn't make fun of me all the time, like you and Grunkle Stan do. Mabel: Give him time, haha! Heyooo! (Beat) Nah, you got me! (lies down) You got me.
YMMV.Roddy Piper: His, let's say, unusual choice of attire for his WrestleMania VI match with Bad News Brown. Not helped by André the Giant allegedly deciding to switch out the solution to get that stuff off Piper with water after the match, leaving Piper to go through customs looking like that. This was meant to be funny, but many didn't see it that way.
DependingOnTheWriter.The Simpsons: Krusty the Clown rates anywhere from a highly influential TV comic beloved by many celebrity fans to this day, to a washed-up has-been struggling to regain a bit of his former glory, to a no-talent hack who was never widely considered funny in the first place. The original idea behind him was that he was the star of a local TV program in the vein of Bozo the Clown—hence why the show is filmed in Springfield and Krusty's presence seemed mostly localized there—but as the parody drifted, so too did the character, and he became the show's default representative for Hollywood and celebrity in general. The one thing that's consistent is that Bart loves him. Whether he owes his pale face and red nose to his unhealthy lifestyle or simply wears clown makeup constantly also varies.
YMMV.No Matter How I Look At It Its You Guys Fault Im Not Popular: Justified. For the in-universe audience, A Youth Like This comes off as an awkward amateur movie, with most of the jokes failing to land. This would probably be the impression readers would have, but given they would be aware of the movie's Troubled Production, the reasoning behind the weirder choices in it, the in-universe Reality Subtext, and the awkwardness of the whole thing feeding into the manga's trademark Cringe Comedy, they're more likely to find it funnier than the characters do, albeit for different reasons than Tomoko intended.
Recap.Peeking Through The Fourth Wall Episode 38: In-Universe. Fanfic Lane sees the phrase "I caught you red-handed" (when Linka's hands weren't literally red, so there's no wordplay) as a "joke". The real Lane is not amused and tells fanfic Lane to learn what a joke is.
YMMV.Thirty Rock: While most of the in-show sketches are intended to be Stylistic Suck and considered terrible in-universe (thus avoiding the problem Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip had), some of them end up being funny anyway. The "Black Hitler" gag in particular is meant to come off as cheap shock-value humor to highlight how much Liz is sabotaging TGS, but comes off as a hilarious Crosses the Line Twice sketch idea.
JustForFun.The Universal Genre Savvy Guide: I won't feel any pressure to be funny if it's an MST fic. Instead I'll just state the obvious and this will be considered hilarious. If it's a particularly gross fanfic I'm MSTing, I will abandon ship immediately.
Recap.The Simpsons S 4 E 16 Duffless: Invoked in-universe, where Wiggum insists that there's a bit in his home movie where he does something really funny. Said thing is spraying his wife with a hose while she's carrying a plate of food for no reason, something that provokes a laugh from Wiggum but leaves the rest of the room stone quiet.
YMMV.Yoshizilla Rhedosaurus: The humor in way too many of his fics consists entirely of "Look! This character farted! How funny! Look! They farted again! Isn't that hilarious?"
YMMV.The Twilight Saga: The Cullens, in particular Emmett, joking about Bella having trouble controlling herself when she becomes a vampire. They all find it quite amusing...except they're joking about the very real possibility of Bella inadvertantly killing innocent people. It gets even worse when one recalls that Emmett actually has done exactly this.
YMMV.Werewolf The Apocalypse: The Nuwisha are presented to readers as hilarious trickster mentors, but your mileage may vary as to whether they're funny or just annoying. This also applies In-Universe, with Garou often finding their actions baffling where the Nuwisha find themselves hilarious.
YMMV.Power Rangers Megaforce: In Last Laugh, Noah is criticized for over-analyzing jokes rather than simply relaxing and laughing at them. The problem is, the jokes in question are legitimately awful (unless you're, say, a seven-year-old), and he comes off more like the Only Sane Man in some sort of world gone mad, where people will break into laughter at the slightest provocation. Especially the monster's last resort: a good old-fashioned fart. It gets Troy, but not Noah.
YMMV.The Simpsons S 1 E 2 Bart The Genius: Bart defrauds his way into a school for the gifted. The teacher writes the equation y = (r^3)/3 on the board and asks the students to calculate the derivative. Everyone except Bart does and finds it hilarious. The solution is given as "RDRR" or "har de har har". Even though that's not the proper way to write the solution (it should be dy/dr = r^2), apparently gifted children find it funny? (Then again, anyone familiar with engineering jokes can tell you that for "smart people", humor value is often secondary to getting the joke.)
YMMV.Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Even if Roger had the best intentions, some people can't help siding with Eddie over Roger trying to make people laugh, especially since he was supposed to be keeping a low profile and causing inconvenience for himself and Eddie.
YMMV.Tony Zaret: In the Zaretverse, what's "funny" is treated like an objective ranking system rather than subjective based on taste. Saying "based", "amogus", and showing off pictures of Big Chungus are so funny they can be lethal. Impersonations of Bruce Springsteen are the breaking point in a "try not to laugh" challenge.
YMMV.Dead Connie Society: The scenes where Robin's characters are supposedly improvising (to the delight of other characters. Well, most characters anyway) aren't really funny. That is because although I am quite good at spoken improvisation, I cannot capture Robin's magic in a fanfic. Rest assured, were this an actual script to be recorded in a studio by Robin, those parts would say "Robin can go off here".
YMMV.Kangaroo Jack: Charlie and Louis find it funny to put clothes on a kangaroo they believe they killed. Most audiences found this tasteless.
Characters.Delicious Cinnamon: Berserk Button: Do NOT mention Game Grumps to him. He will rant how he doesn't hate them, but is somewhat bothered that they always seem to be laughing.It seems less like Bert actually hates them, and more like Mysh won't stop talking about them. He also does not like anime at all.
Film.Nope: In-universe, the "Gordy's Home" incident supposedly got both a MAD cover and a Saturday Night Live sketch dedicated to it, despite being a genuine tragedy that involved the death of an animal and a human actor, as well as the brutal maiming of a second human actor, the young girl getting her face ripped apart, as well as a third human actor getting her hand mutilated.
YMMV.Recess S 4 E 41 Me No Know: The Nitwitz 3 quotes. Part of this seems to be justified by the movie being a fad of the week that stops being funny very quickly.
YMMV.Going Overboard: The movie tries to claim that Shecky has good jokes and would be funny if he worked on his delivery and learned how to play to an audience, while Dickie is a hack who uses over-the-top edginess and vulgarity as a substitute for humor. In practice, however, things are different: while Dickie's jokes aren't funny by any stretch of the imagination, they're so ridiculous and exaggerated that they can wring the occasional laugh out of the audience; in contrast, Shecky's jokes are just unfunny, even after the narrative presents him as having improved.
Recap.The Simpsons S 7 E 3 Home Sweet Homediddly Dum Doodily: In-universe. Bart and Lisa cackle madly on seeing an episode of Itchy & Scratchy where Itchy violently murders Scratchy by pretending to be a baby just to commit theft, while Rod and Todd are completely traumatized.
YMMV.The Sarah Jane Adventures S 1 E 5 E 6 Warriors Of Kudlak: To establish that he hasn't yet mastered humor, there's a scene where Luke tells Maria a joke that falls flat. Except his "cereal killer" joke is perfectly normal and genuinely funny for some viewers.
YMMV.Twenty One Jump Street: The trailer for the movie has a scene where the police captain, played by Ice Cube, asks the two officers played by Tatum and Hill if they're autistic, intending it as an insult. It's supposed to be seen as very funny. That didn't go over very well with the autistic community.
Recap.The Simpsons S 5 E 3 Homer Goes To College: In-universe. In Homer's nuclear physics class, when the professor greets his new class by saying "Out with the old, in with the nucleus...", everyone except Homer laughs. But when the professor accidentally drops his notecards, Homer is the only one who laughs, prompting everyone to stare at him as he does so.
WesternAnimation.Dave The Barbarian: Used In-Universe by Ned Frischman. The people of the past have never heard his incredibly lame futuristic "why did the chicken cross the road"-class jokes and therefore considers him to be the funniest man in existence.
YMMV.The Orville: Mercer admits that Grayson's Bond One-Liner "You got wood" after destroying a spaceship with a rapidly growing tree is better than his own "Happy Arbor Day." Several fans have stated that they found the other way around to be the case. Granted, it's implied that the holiday has become very obscure even among humans by this time, as the only one to get the joke immediately is a recently-rescued botanist. Also, Grayson's joke is more international, as "Arbor Day" is relatively meaningless outside the US.
YMMV.SWAT Kats: A lot of the TV shows the characters watch, especially David Litterbin's show in "Enter the Mad Kat", offer some, at best, mildly amusing jokes that are treated like Grade-A humor.
Trivia.Tales Of The Dekuverse: What Could Have Been: In MHA watches Death Battle, Zayden had originally intended the aphrodisiac subplot to last longer than it did, wanting Izuku to be under it's effects for the entirety of that days viewing, and only be fixed later in the day. Following complaints of the treatment Kaminari and Mineta were receiving leading to Humor Dissonance and the Sisterhood coming across as too unsympathetic throughout the subplot however, Zayden decided to accelerate the timetable, having the effects of the aphrodisiac cured earlier and the girls undergoing a Heel Realization earlier.
YMMV.Superbook 2011: Base-Breaking Character: Gizmo is either loved by fans as the show's Adorkable Plucky Comic Relief or despised for his shrill, annoying voice, constant interjectory quips that rarely land, and lengthy whining that many find extremely grating. This version of Gizmo tends to be The Scrappy for fans of the original anime in particular due to how drastically different the portrayal is to the original series.
Recap.Peeking Through The Fourth Wall Episode 35: In-Universe, Luan in The Godsisters makes a "joke" which is actually just a threat to hit Lincoln with a baseball bat, which the real Luan doesn't see the humour in.
YMMV.Man On The Moon: Owing to the aforementioned Fridge Brilliance, the film inverts the trope in that the viewer understands the anti-jokes of Andy's act better than the in-universe audiences do — once the tricks are revealed, anyway. This inversion was actually a problem during filming: Milos Forman frequently had to tell the extras "not to love [Jim Carrey] so much" as they came in expecting to laugh at anything he did and thus saw things differently than Andy's actual audiences.
Recap.Peeking Through The Fourth Wall Episode: In-Universe, Luan in The Godsisters makes a "joke" which is actually just a threat to hit Lincoln with a baseball bat, which the real Luan doesn't see the humour in.
YMMV.Family Guy Back To The Multiverse: Again, this is to be expected given this is a Family Guy game. See Crosses the Line Twice. Not everybody will find this funny.
YMMV.The Clone Saga: You can tell that the writers wanted the Jackal to be seen as a Laughably Evil Large Ham in the same vein as Deadpool or The Joker, but his constant wisecracks and pithy remarks make him come across as annoying and smug - and the jokes themselves are either too weak to make an impact or are otherwise inappropriately timed and interrupt the flow of the story. The fact that this isn't anything like how Jackal was when he started out makes it more annoying. Jack, who was intended to be the Plucky Comic Relief of the story, is also subject to attempts at humor that just feel forced and inappropriate.
YMMV.Funky Winkerbean: The strip slowly declining in humor value has been a common accusation by readers ever since its dramatic shift, and in spite of the heavy subject matter involved (depression, addiction, illness, death, etc.), most of those complaining don't even find it offensive or upsetting in practice: they just think it's not funny. Given that the punchlines are usually either gentle wordplay (which is sometimes directly acknowledged as being annoying), old characters smugly griping, or wistful irony, it comes off as a failed attempt at poignancy at best — and at worst, passive-aggressive towards its own readership.
Literature.How Not To Write A Novel: invoked"A Confederacy of Shills" advises against having characters laugh uproariously at every joke during a conversation. At best, it alienates readers by, in effect, telling them when to laugh; at worst, if the jokes are truly weak, it disorients the reader the same way as would having characters cry or smash things for no reason.
WesternAnimation.The Looney Tunes Show: In-universe. In Year of the Duck, Porky tells the old "I just flew in from New York and boy are my arms tired" gag. Lola finds this joke so funny that she spends the next 30 seconds crying in laughter and even falling out of her chair as if it was the funniest thing she ever heard in her life, all while explaining the punch line. Bugs, on the other hand, doesn't even chuckle.
YMMV.Sonic Boom Rise Of Lyric: Memetic Mutation: This cutscene (alongside a glitch) went viral upon the game's release, for all the wrong reasons. The line "I want rocky road ice cream!" in particular was generally considered not funny. BOUNCE PAD! This and numerous other lines the characters cannot go even two minutes without saying in the stage areas resulted in the lines becoming a collective meme of how annoying they can get. So much so that people have taken to modding them into other Sonic games for the insanity novelty. "There are things inside these things!" Expect to read the comment "Guess they're EX-Naughty Dog developers for a reason", the "they're" in question being the developers of Sonic Boom, VERY often. Became Harsher in Hindsight when news came up that the team was screwed over from the very beginning.
YMMV.The Honeymooners: "Six Months to Live" certainly has a touch of this. While we are supposed to find uproarious humor in Ralph believing he is dying, the letter he reads could easily double as a Tear Jerker for any dog owner.
Characters.Twisted The Untold Story Of A Royal Vizier: invoked A deliberate case of this. Virtually all of his dialogue consists of out-of-context pop culture references that have nothing to do with the situation at hand, and yet everybody except Ja'far finds him absolutely hilarious.
DesignatedHero.Live Action TV: Gilmore Girls: The 2016 reboot, A Year in the Life, has Rory, who was considered a paragon of virtue in the original series, spend the entirety of the show casually disregarding and cheating on her boyfriend. Somehow, the disregard is Played for Laughs, though fan reaction suggests that the screen writers are the only ones who found it funny.
YMMV.Design For Living: Tom's play is so hilarious that the entire theatre audience lies rolling on the floor laughing. Yet, to the casual viewer the jokes are pretty lame.
YMMV.Charlie The Unicorn: "Charlie teh unicron" was created as a demonstration of why the fans shouldn't be in charge of the series, as it is a Stylistic Suck version of the series with a tonal shift to edgy imageboard "lol random" humor which Jason Steele is positing as unfunny and a bad thing for the series, thus why he doesn't listen to fan suggestions for what to make. Many viewers actually find the "unicron" videos hysterical and well worth watching in their own way.
Characters.Healin Good Pretty Cure: Invoked in-universe. Chiyu has a weakness for bad puns and similar wordplay jokes, a fact that leaves other characters wondering why someone would find such things humorous.
Recap.Gravity Falls S 2 E 13 Dungeons Dungeons And More Dungeons: Jerkass Realization: Mabel seems to have one when Dipper says he hangs out with Stanford partially because he's cool, but also because he, unlike Grunkle Stan and Mabel, doesn't make fun of him. Unlike her dramatic realization in "Sock Opera", this one is very subtle and we don't see her response directly. Mabel: You're uh, spending a lot of time with old Fordsy lately, huh? Dipper: You have no idea. I knew the author must be cool, but he's better than I imagined! And... he doesn't make fun of me all the time, like you and Grunkle Stan do. Mabel: Give him time, haha! Heyooo! (Beat) Nah, you got me. (lies down) He got me.
YMMV.The Love Guru: Considered one of the worst comedies of all time, anything that the characters in the film find funny generally makes a viewer groan.
Recap.American Dad S 3 E 13 Black Mystery Month: Hypocritical Humor: Roger takes several days to determine his move at Jenga, including creating a second tower and hiring an engineer to plot out possible moves. Once he finally does move, he yells at Hayley when she hesitates for a moment to move. In the scene immediately before, Steve reads an old newspaper with a The Katzenjammer Kids strip, says the dad getting hurt isn't funny at all and muses how much comedy has evolved in a hundred years. This is said while his own father is comedically, and painfully, plummeting down through several flights of rickety wooden stairs.
YMMV.Littlest Pet Shop 2012 S 2 E 24 Stand Up Stinker: All the adults in the audience, including a professional comedian, find Pepper's grade school level puns hilarious.Jasper's pun bombed, but it was no better than any of Pepper's jokes in this episode.
YMMV.The Crown 2016: Charles tells a joke about England's heavy rain that flops horribly and is supposed to show him as stiff and awkward in contrast to the publicly beloved Diana, but a lot of fans said they thought it was actually funny.
NightmareFuel.Nineteen Eighty Four: Near the beginning of the novel, Winston starts his diary with a frantic, semi-coherent paragraph about his experience at the cinema with the audience enjoying a movie about a refugee boat in the Mediterranean being blown up and people trying to escape from it being shot and bombed to death. People guffaw at a scene of a fat man trying to swim away in desperation being shot to bloody pieces with the water turning pink around him. They give mass applause to a scene in which a lifeboat full of mothers trying to comfort their terrified children gets blown up with a bomb sending the children's dismembered limbs flying into the air (and the camera follows that, by the way). The only one who criticizes the film is some prole woman who is promptly arrested. What it says about the sheer level of fanatical indoctrination of Oceanian citizens is truly horrifying.
Recap.Angel S 05 E 07 Lineage: Angel is glowering at Wes for nearly blowing up the entire building. Angel: What happened? Spike: (jumping in front of Wes) I can explain. Apparently, when Percy here was younger, he was known as "Head Boy"! Angel: (Beat) Right, I already knew that. Spike: Well, I have nothing else to report.
WMG.IM Meen: Perhaps he actually meant "a special kind-of-guy. "Or he could just be referring to himself, being the Large Ham that he is.
Theatre.A Very Potter Musical: A number of in-jokes specific to the actors scattered throughout the show, like Devin Lytle always being cast as a Southern Belle, or Harry and Ron's bromance thanks to Darren Criss and Joey Richter being real-life roommates. (Or, for that matter, Hermione's sexual preference being "Waiting Until Marriage" in the sequel, with Bonnie Gruesen being a devout Catholic in real life.) On a meta level, this is responsible for much of the invokedHumor Dissonance on the original YouTube recording, especially in the opening number — this was originally a college production where much of the humor just came from the audience seeing people they knew dressed up as Harry Potter characters.
YMMV.The Simpsons S 5 E 1 Homers Barbershop Quartet: Played for Laughs twice.Bart and Lisa find a Be Sharps album. Bart: Dad, when did you record an album? Homer: I'm surprised you don't remember, son! It was only eight years ago. Bart: Dad, thanks to television I can't remember what happened eight minutes ago. (Homer, Marge and Lisa laugh hysterically.) No, really, I can't, it's a serious problem! (They keep laughing. Bart uncomfortably joins in.) What are we all laughing about? Homer: Who cares?! When the barbershop quartet are trying to come up with a name for themselves, Skinner says that they need a name "that's witty at first, but that seems less funny each time you hear it." Apu suggests "The Be Sharps," and everyone is accordingly in hysterics.
Recap.South Park S 15 E 2 Funnybot: Pretty clearly invoked in Funnybot's performances, which range from passably good jokes to downright nonsense, all anchored around a badly forced and cliched catchphrase. It is interpreted as the funniest thing in existence.
Recap.Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia S 09 E 01 The Gang Broke Dee: invokedDee's routine is deliberately this; it starts out as being passable self-deprecation, but quickly degrades into shouting "VAGINA" and making random noises. The audience laughs all the way anyway, which is a plot point.
Series.Drake And Josh: A deliberate in-universe example. In "Josh is Done," Craig and Eric are telling a story about how they were at a pool party once...and one of them accidentally left his socks on! Josh and the other person with him are cracking up at this story.
PreMortemOneLiner.Live Action TV: Discussed: Discussed in The Orville's pilot. At the climax, Ed and Kelly trick the Krill captain into testing a time-accelerator device he'd just stolen from a human lab, except they glued a redwood seed to the emitter. Ed remarks, "Happy Arbor Day" right before a redwood tree grows to its full height in seconds and tears the Krill ship in half. The others then start critiquing the line and Kelly suggests, "You got wood." (The audience seemed to prefer the former, though.)
Series.SCTV: In-universe in Neil Simon's Nutcracker Suite ("SCTV Staff Christmas Party"). In The Sammy Maudlin Show leading up to the film's debut, Simon makes a quip about something being "an uplifting experience, not unlike Jane Russell's Cross-Your-Heart Bra" that has trouble getting laughs from the host and sidekick, much less the audience. In the film itself, the main character — a Simon Expy — makes much the same quip while trying to check into an overbooked hotel, and the staff thinks it's so funny that they find a room for him and his wife on the spot.
YMMV.Bob Chipman: His Really That Good episode focusing on the original National Lampoon's Vacation is entirely predicated on how funny it is. After making this statement, Bob cuts to a montage of Orphaned Punchlines from the movie which is completely unfunny. This is especially odd given that half the video is him explaining just how specific to its intended audience the movie is.
YMMV.South Park S 13 E 5 Fishsticks: The "fish dicks" joke, which is chuckle-worthy at best, is treated In-universe as the funniest joke ever and becomes a national phenomenon.
YMMV.Star Trek Generations: Depending on how you interpret the scene, Riker is either a dick for making Worf fall in the water (if you think that it was intentional and not an accident like he says) and Data's pushing Dr. Crusher in afterwards is hilarious, or Worf's status as a Butt-Monkey means his getting pushed into water is hilarious but Dr. Crusher getting pushed in and looking quite upset about it while Data looks on in what is probably too-happy a smile.
YMMV.Total Drama Letterz: In-universe, Jimmy's jokes cause listeners to go into hysterics. To the reader though... not so much.
WebVideo.Scott The Woz: invoked Discussed in the 200th episode special Borderline Forever. The episode opens on Scott doing an instructional video on how to be a Video Game Talker, lampshading and deconstructing YouTube Video Game reviewer tropes. One of which is when you are worried that a joke won't land, just throw up yellow text on the screen declaring it to be a "Funny Moment!" and another is to constantly use a humorous tone even without actual comedy, to make escaping criticism easier. Scott: You gotta be funny, especially if you're not funny!
HonestTrailers.Tropes E To M: invoked In the trailer for Grown Ups, there's a montage of the characters laughing at jokes the narrator doesn't find funny at all.
YMMV.The Brady Bunch S 5 E 22 The Hair Brained Scheme: One of the major ongoing disputes between Robert Reed and the father-son team of Sherwood and Lloyd Schwartz ... what was considered "funny." In some views, while surely not the funniest thing ever seen on TV, one can see the humor in Greg's horrified realization that his hair was possibly ruined for graduation, and that he had only hours to fix it or risk complete humiliation and embarrassment. Reed, however — and to be fair to him, other well-respected critics have agreed, although not necessary for the same reasons — saw this as scene as Exhibit A as to why he wanted no part of this episode ... unfunny tripe that had no place on American television and was not representative of what he viewed as real American families.
Film.Superman IV The Quest For Peace: Kick the Dog: There's a scene where Superman is flying Lois around and "accidentally" drops her, and then catches her. While it's supposed to be funny, it makes him come across more as an asshole than anything elseinvoked especially considering he could have screwed up and killed her for real.
YMMV.Pokemon Adventures: Diamond and Pearl's Boke and Tsukkomi Routine doesn't always appeal to Western audiences, but the characters that they're performing it for in-universe seldom fail to find it hysterical.
