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Mr. Bean and Teddy.

"Ecce homo qui est faba." translation:

Mr. Bean is an incredibly well-loved Brit Com created by writer Richard Curtis and writer-star Rowan Atkinson, originally broadcast on ITV from 1990–95.

The show is about a very odd man – about whom we know almost nothing except his last name – who spends his time wandering around, getting into trouble, finding unique solutions to predicaments, and both wittingly and unwittingly causing mayhem. Mr. Bean is perhaps the ultimate example of No Social Skills. Not only does he seem to be unfamiliar with all social conventions and standard methods for doing anything, he never even demonstrates normal human thought processes – witness his strategy for protecting his furniture and possessions when painting his flat, which is to wrap every single item (right down to individual grapes) in newspaper, not to mention that his method of painting the flat includes a stick of dynamitenote . Considering the mixture of stupidity and inspiration in his way of doing things, Mr. Bean epitomizes the aphorism, "Nothing can be made foolproof because fools are so ingenious."

The vast majority of the show's humor is visual, to the point that the eponymous character says only a handful of complete sentences throughout the entire run of the series. Pretty much every plot is based around how Mr. Bean handles an everyday situation, such as going to a department store, going to church, sitting for an exam, etc. In essence, it was a Sketch Show in disguise, especially considering the way that the "plot" was only maintained throughout a few of the episodes. Because of its largely visual and disconnected nature, it was cheap and easy to air in foreign markets as virtually no language dubbing was required, and so was bought by networks all over the world. As a result, the show is big pretty much everywhere, and is still Rowan Atkinson's most lucrative and recognized work.

The show was followed by an Animated Adaptation, which was less well-received by some fans who cited the whole point of the original show being Rowan Atkinson's physical performance. That said, it actually lasted a fairly long while, going for five seasons and 130 episodes.note  It can be found in kids' channels on Pluto TV or the full seasons streaming on Tubi. Two film adaptations, Bean (1997) and Mr. Bean's Holiday (2007), were also made.

Speaking greatly to the popularity of the character, Mr. Bean was part of the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, via a skit in which he's part of the orchestra playing the theme from Chariots of Fire (specifically only one note on the electric piano over and over again). That was later announced to be Mr. Bean's farewell, as Atkinson said in November 2012 that he was retiring the character, citing among other reasons the problem of playing a childlike man as he continues to age.

However, in October 2014, Mr. Bean returned in an ad for Snickers chocolate bars as part of the brand's "You're Not You When You're Hungry" campaign, where he plays the alter-ego of a Chinese assassin and blunders across rooftops, making a complete ass of himself ...until he's told to "eat his Snickers" and reverts to assassin mode. Atkinson also revived the character to take part in Comic Relief 2015, a fundraising event for the similarly named UK charity (founded by Curtis and Lenny Henry). In the short, Mr Bean gets into hijinks... at a funeral.

The entire series is available on YouTube, care of the official channel.


Haec progressio exempla praebet:translation

  • 6 Is 9: In "Goodnight, Mr. Bean", he is waiting in a doctor's office. Bean has ticket #52. He realizes that on the digital display, #25 and #52 are the same number flipped upside down, so he flips the counter over after #24 is called, causing his number to be called next by a confused receptionist.
  • Accidental Passenger:
    • "Mr. Bean Goes to Town": Mr Bean has an itchy foot. He takes off his sock and shoe and puts them on the roof of a parked car, which drives away. Only the roof of the car is visible to the audience, and the driver is Behind the Black.
    • "Mind the Baby, Mr. Bean": As well as the Accidental Kidnapping plot of the baby's pram attaching itself to Mr Bean's car, Mr Bean later ties the pram to a convenient object at the funfair. Unfortunately, he has tied it to the moving part of a flying car ride, which flies into the air, taking the pram and the baby with it.
    • In Mr Bean in Room 426, Bean hides in a trunk, which is wheeled away by a hotel porter, and dropped down the hotel stairs.
    • The final sketch of the series in "Hair By Mr. Bean of London" has Mr. Bean attempt to sneak onto a passenger train by hiding inside a mail bag and sneaking across the platform. Unfortunately, the train leaves before he gets aboard, and then the station crew retrieve the bag and loads it onto its train, bound for Russia, with Bean still inside the bag.
  • Accidental Proposal: Inverted. Mr. Bean's girlfriend points to an engagement ring in a store window when he asks her what she wants for Christmas. When she spies him going into the store a few minutes later, she assumes he's going to buy it and propose to her at Christmas dinner. Naturally, Mr. Bean thought she was pointing to the portrait of an engaged couple that was behind the ring and winds up buying that instead.
  • Achilles' Power Cord: Played with on two occasions.
    • "The Return of Mr Bean": When Mr Bean is shopping in a department store, he buys a telephone. He tries several of them on display by checking for a dialling tone; of course, none is heard, so he assumes they are not working. Finally, he picks up one not for sale which a member of staff had just used, puts it in his basket and walks off, ripping the plug out of the wall in the process.
    • "Merry Christmas Mr Bean": Mr Bean takes home a massive Christmas tree from a town display, putting it on the roof of his car and driving off, while the lights are still connected to the electricity. The connection is ripped out in the process.
  • Acid Reflux Nightmare: After Mr. Bean eats bad oysters in "Mr. Bean in Room 426" he has a nightmare about the waiter and his neighbour taunting him as he eats the oysters, which have deteriorated into yellow slime.
  • All for Nothing: Some of Mr. Bean's schemes end up being for naught. One such example is in "The Trouble with Mr. Bean". While waiting outside the dentist, Mr. Bean pours water onto a boy's lap so he has to go home, all so he can get the boy's "Batman" comic; no sooner does he start reading than he's called into the dentist's room.
  • All There in the Manual: The tie-in books Mr. Bean's Diary and Mr. Bean's Scrapbook provided a lot of background information that would later be used in the animated series.
  • Ambiguously Human: Some elements of the show imply that Mr. Bean may not be human. The opening sequence of Bean being dropped via a spotlight and the beamed back up in the episode's outro; the effect Bean has on various electronic devices like television sets; his ingenuity. It also offers another explanation for his bizarre behaviour and intrigue at the most basic everyday devices.
  • Amusement Park: "Mind the Baby, Mr. Bean" takes place at one, with the baby ending up in Bean's care altering his plans at the fair.
  • Angrish: The sergeant at the college Bean visits in "Back To School, Mr. Bean" goes mad with rage when he returns to find his troop all standing on one leg and waving, courtesy of Bean.
  • Anti-Sneeze Finger: The church skit in the first episode has one of these, albeit without the actual finger.
  • Apathetic Citizens: Even when the citizens notice Mr. Bean's childishness and silliness, they don't usually care enough to call him out on it.
  • Artistic License – Military: Played for laughs with Mr. Bean combing the Queen's Guard's fur hat and sticking flowers in it. As various hecklers have discovered (check YouTube), the royal guards will ignore just about everything except laying hands on them or otherwise actively interfering in their duties.
  • Artistic License – Physics:
    • The golf ball in "Tee Off, Mr. Bean" bounces quite a bit higher and farther all over the place than one would expect a golf ball to bounce.
    • When Mr. Bean acquires his new television set, he fits the plug by simply inserting the wires, and twisting them; the TV works.
  • Artistic License – Sports: In "Tee Off, Mr. Bean", he holds to the "play the ball where it lies" rule on a miniature golf course, no matter where the ball ends up. That rule is superseded if the ball leaves the course entirely, in which a penalty stroke is taken and the ball is placed near where it went out-of-bounds.
  • Aside Glance: The last thing Mr. Bean does in "Do-It-Yourself Mr. Bean".
  • Ass Shove: Mr. Bean uses Teddy as a paintbrush by shoving a bristleless brush up the stuffed bear's bottom in "Do-It-Yourself Mr. Bean".
  • Asshole Victim:
    • Some victims of Mr. Bean's antics actually deserve it, such as The Bully in "Tee Off, Mr. Bean" and the man who stole his pants in "Back to School, Mr. Bean." If you actually look closely when the man took Mr. Bean's pants, you'll realize that he actually took them on purpose rather than by mistake as he warily looked at Bean when he took the pants.
    • Mr. Bean himself, especially in the hospital episode, where his hand is stuck in a teapot and he steals the ticket of a woman in a full body cast to get ahead in the queue. He gets his comeuppance when the woman gets back her ticket and Bean gets his other hand stuck in a vertical stand-up ashtray after trying to get another ticket and everyone in the waiting room laughs at his clumsiness.
  • Audible Gleam: The American Express card in "The Return of Mr. Bean", and the engagement ring in "Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean".
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Many of Mr. Bean's plans are convoluted and impressive solutions to problems that are far from easy or reasonable to execute, and occasionally their impracticality undoes them.
  • Baby Carriage: In "Mind the Baby, Mr Bean", as one of many gags with the baby carriage itself: he accidentally abducts the baby when he reverses, and the trunk of his car falls open, catching the baby carriage, which is then pulled along as he drives forward. On discovering the baby, he tries to casually leave the baby carriage beside the road, but it rolls into the traffic: he dives and saves it. He then tries to leave it with a group of other mums with baby carriages; but they all wander off, leaving his one standing.
  • Backseat Changing Room: In the episode where Bean is late for a dentist appointment, he does this while driving. More specifically, he bends over the front seat to get his pants on while keeping his feet on the steering wheel and placing a brick on the gas pedal.
  • Balloonacy: A baby and his carriage are lifted into the air by an absurdly small number of balloons in "Mind the Baby, Mr. Bean".
  • Bag of Kidnapping: Twice, Mr. Bean does something similar to this:
    • In "Mr. Bean Goes to Town", a friendly passerby steals his camera in the park. Mr. Bean grabs a meshed litter bin, and plonks it over the thief's head and upper body, before wrestling him to the ground. But the thief escapes and runs off, still with the bin on his head.
    • In "Mind the Baby, Mr. Bean", a Snooping Little Kid interferes with Mr. Bean's fun on the slot machines. Mr. Bean pulls the boy's loose shirt over his head, spins him around, and shoves him aside.
  • Banana in the Tailpipe: Actually a golf ball in the tailpipe during Mr. Bean's golf game in "Tee Off' Mr. Bean". After the guy's engine sputters for a few seconds, it explodes which sends the golf ball flying out.
  • Bathos: "Back to School, Mr. Bean" has by far the saddest ending, with Bean's car completely destroyed and a tear-jerking rendition of the theme tune playing as he staggers towards the remains before dropping to his knees. Then we see him salvage the driver door's padlock and crack a smile before scurrying off, indicating that was the only thing he was dismayed about losing until he found it.
  • Bathtub Scene: In "Mr Bean in Room 426", Mr Bean discovers that his hotel room does not have a bath, and is furious when he puts his ear to the wall and hears his neighbour having a bath. Later, the neighbour finds he cannot get into his bathroom, and it is revealed that Mr Bean is inside using the bath, having drilled and smashed a man-sized hole through the hotel wall.
  • Behind the Black: Several jokes work like this.
    • One notable example is "Room 426" when Bean attempts to get past an old woman walking down the stairs by climbing through the outer side of the stairs and somehow doesn't notice an old man ahead until the old man is actually visible on the screen. This gets him trapped between the old man and the old woman, and while the gag works through a camera frame, it probably couldn't happen in real life.
    • On two other occasions, a car is parked, but the audience cannot see that somebody is inside it. In "Mr Bean Goes to Town", Mr Bean takes off his shoe and sock and puts them on the roof of a parked car, which drives away. In "The Trouble with Mr Bean", he parks his car in an impossibly narrow space by getting out of the car, and pushing it into the space; then one of the adjacent cars drives away, the driver invisible to the audience.
  • Big Blackout:
    • In "Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean", Bean goes into a side room at Harrods and pulls an electric cord out of its socket to test a pack of Christmas lights he wants to buy. This plug apparently controlled all of the power to the store, and we see the exterior go completely dark before Bean is satisfied with the lights and reconnects the power.
    • When Bean fails to keep Irma Gobb away from another man while clubbing, he spitefully makes his exit by cutting out the power in the club.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Or at least the closest a show like this can get. In "Mind the Baby, Mr. Bean", Bean rescues the baby carriage from being carried away by balloons by shooting them with one of the carnival's bows and arrows.
  • Birthday Episode: "The Return of Mr. Bean" has him celebrating his birthday by eating out at a restaurant.
  • Bits of Me Keep Passing Out: Mr. Bean accidentally injects his dentist with Novocaine in the latter's leg. The dentist struggles with a numb leg until he grabs onto the X-ray machine, which falls over and knocks him out, forcing Bean to do his own dental work.
  • Bizarre and Improbable Golf Game: Mr. Bean finds himself playing one in "Tee Off, Mr. Bean", in which he accidentally knocks a ball out of the miniature golf park, but continues to play the golden rule: "Always play the ball where it lies." It doesn't matter where the ball goes, even if it's on a bus, down the sewers, or into the dump truck, he will continue his game. By the time he finally gets back to the course, it's just about to close, and he's surpassed three thousand strokes.
  • Blindfolded Trip: When Mr. Bean arrives in room 426, he takes his blindfolded Teddy out of his suitcase, as if it was a surprise journey for him.
  • Book Snap: Played with in "The Trouble with Mr Bean". Mr Bean is trying to eat a picnic and read a book, but he is constantly bothered by a wasp. He finally catches it by placing a crumb of cake in the fold of his book, and holding the book open. When the wasp lands, Mr Bean slams the book shut with great ferocity, and jumps up and down on it for good measure.
  • Bootstrapped Theme: Inversion. The original theme song (used throughout the first episode) was reused as the Reliant Regal's leitmotif for its appearance in "Tee Off, Mr. Bean".
  • Boring Religious Service: In Act 3 of the self-titled first episode, Mr. Bean attends a church service that is so mind-numbingly dull that he does everything he can to avoid embarrassing himself by dozing off. This is accentuated by the vicar's sermon, which consists entirely of unintelligible mumbling (also voiced by Rowan Atkinson.
  • Brick Joke:
    • "Do It Yourself, Mr Bean": During Bean's failed New Year's party, one of his friends leaves his hat on the mantel, and leaves the party without it. The next day, when Bean paints the apartment with explosives, while he waits for the explosion, the aforementioned friend walks out of the party next door, realizing his hat was missing, and walks into Bean's flat to retrieve it. When Bean enters the room after the explosion, everything has been painted perfectly white... but the silhouette of Bean's friend reaching for his hat is visible by the mantel.
    • "Mr Bean Goes to Town": The first part of the episode involves Mr. Bean setting up his new television set, which only works when he is in just the right position. At the end of the episode, he walks past a shop window full of televisions, causing them all to show fuzzy lines.
  • British Brevity: The original TV show consisted of only 14 episodes (with a 15th as a direct-to-video exclusive), airing gradually from 1990 through 1995, unusual for a British series. Two movies and several shorts came afterwards, however. Subverted with the animated series, which ran for 52 episodes, before getting renewed twice for more, totalling 130 episodes by the end of it.
  • British Royal Guards: In "Goodnight Mr. Bean", Bean does an assortment of increasingly pesky things to a guard in preparation for a posed photograph, all while the guard remains perfectly still. It all basically amounts to one hell of a Motionless Makeover. Among the things Bean does to the guard, he polishes the trigger of his gun, trims the guard's moustache to resemble Hitler's, and decorates him with flowers. At the end, the guard receives his orders to march to his next post, Last-Second Photo Failure just before the picture can be taken.
  • The Bully: The jock that harasses Mr. Bean in the first act of "Tee Off, Mr. Bean" makes him miserable at the laundromat and teases Bean for his own amusement. He is even credited as "The Bully".
  • Bullying the Disabled: In the "Bus Stop" sketch, Mr Bean is determined to be at the front of the queue for a bus. When a blind man takes this position, Mr Bean walks along the road and imitates the sound of a bus approaching and the door opening, causing the blind man to walk straight into the road, in front of an actual bus. Another passenger grabs him.
  • Can't See a Damn Thing: In "Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean", he gets his head stuck inside his enormous turkey, and has to stumble around with it on his head.
  • Cargo Envy: In Mr Bean's Diary, he writes a poem about longing to be Shirley Bassey's microphone, so she can sing to him.
  • Cartoon Conductor: Done in "Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean", where Bean conducts a Salvation Army brass band playing "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen" using a highly complex series of gestures, including fast twitchy movements to indicate a light tempo, sweeps for a more Wagnerian feel, and a funky pace to turn it into a jazz number. It culminates in him modifying the volume by making a gesture indicative of turning down a volume dial on a radio, making the band stop playing. He continues conducting, but nothing is heard until he remembers to turn the band on again.
  • Catapult Nightmare: Not so much from a nightmare, but whenever he drifts off and is suddenly woken, he jolts awake and makes a loud "BUH!" sound. The only time he wakes from an actual nightmare, in "Mr. Bean in Room 426", the reaction is rather subdued - he sits up and just gasps relatively quietly.
  • Censor Steam: Mr. Bean's crotch is hidden by bubbles when he takes a bath in "Mr. Bean in Room 426".
  • Chekhov's Gag:
    • In "The Best Bits of Mr. Bean", after the church scene from the first episode, Mr. Bean throws a boomerang away, but it comes back to him. He throws it away again, and we see the "meeting royalty" skit from "The Return of Mr Bean". After that, the boomerang comes back again, and Mr. Bean, frustrated, throws the boomerang out the attic window. In the end, Mr. Bean reopens the window to discover that it stopped raining, and, inconvenienced, shuts the window again, and the boomerang comes back to rest on the roof.
    • In "Back to School, Mr. Bean", there's a brief scene of Bean in a chemistry lab mucking up a little boy's experiment and causing an explosion, but getting away just in time. In the next scene, Bean is in an art class, extremely prudish about drawing a nude model, so he scurries away to the pottery section. Just as he does, the boy from the chemistry lab (who is now covered in blue chemical powder) and his mother burst into the room to find Bean... only for the mother to grab the boy and rush right back out as soon as the boy notices the nude model.
  • Cherubic Choir: The opening sequence has a choir chanting Ecce homo qui est faba, which literally translates to "Behold the man who is a bean".
  • Christmas Carolers: After finding nothing but violent films playing on TV on Christmas Eve night, Mr. Bean is greeted by carolers so he adjusts his armchair to watch them. After listening for a few seconds, the song starts making him fall asleep, so he goes to the door and slams it in their faces. This might be a nod to "Blackadder's Christmas Carol", where Blackadder says, "Here's your present, it's a door in the face".
  • Christmas Episode: "Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean".
  • Chronically Crashed Car: The Reliant Regal, Bean's nemesis, which gets tipped over or crashed almost every time it shows up.
  • Clip Show: "The Best Bits of Mr. Bean" is a direct-to-video example.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Mr. Bean seems to exist in his own private universe of eccentricity.
  • Comedic Sociopathy: Bean occasionally demonstrates this. In the first few minutes of "Goodnight, Mr. Bean", for instance, he blocks an ambulance by parking directly in the back of it, cuts in line at the hospital, grabs the last empty seat in a waiting area just ahead of an old man, mocks a wheelchair-bound patient in a neck brace and full-body cast by moving around in his seat and then swipes her number ticket so he can be seen ahead of her.
  • The Comically Serious:
    • The Royal Guard in "Goodnight, Mr. Bean" doesn't move or even change his facial expression, no matter what increasingly ridiculous things Bean does to him (although he's shown eyeing Bean nervously whenever he comes up with a crazy new idea try out on the guard), and it eventually comes time for him to change shifts, and he marches off with total seriousness.
    • When Mr Bean takes an exam, he tries all sorts of tricks to cheat and look at his neighbour's paper. The invigilator is completely unphased and merely stares at him.
    • When Mr Bean has an itchy foot, he takes off his shoe and sock and puts them on the roof of a car, which then drives away. Mr Bean hops to a nearby shoe shop and is greeted by a helpful salesman who has a complete non-reaction to Mr Bean hopping about, or trying to buy just one shoe.
      Salesman: Yes? Can I help you, sir?
      Mr Bean: (handing him a shoe from the display) Could I have this, please?
      Salesman: Certainly, sir. (Enters shop, leaving Mr Bean hopping, and returns with a pair of shoes)
      Mr Bean: No, I only want the one.
      Salesman: No no, I can only sell them as two shoes.
  • Companion Cube: Teddy, and possibly Mr Bean's car.
  • Complexity Addiction: Many of Mr Bean's methods to solve simple problems fit this trope, such as transporting an armchair on the roof of his car, and driving the car from the chair.
  • Congruent Memory: In "Mr. Bean Goes To Town", Mr. Bean's camera is stolen by a thief. Bean manages to catch him by putting a wastebasket on his head and poking him with a pencil, but he runs off with the bin still over his head when an officer arrives. Later, in a police lineup, Mr. Bean cannot recognize any of the suspects by appearance, so he asks for bins to be put over their heads and pokes each with a pencil until he hears the same sound, picking out the thief.
  • Contrived Coincidence: In "Mind the Baby, Mr. Bean", the titular character ends up with somebody else's baby when his car's trunk opens and the knob catches on the baby's pram. After several scenes of him dealing with the baby, which starts crying inconsolably, he ties balloon after balloon to its pram to get it to stop crying with predictable results. He rescues it by shooting out the balloons with a bow and arrow from a carnival stall from earlier in the episode. And of course, it floats down directly in front of its panicking mother.
  • Counterfeit Cash: In Mr Bean's Diary, the diary features a hand-drawn ten-pound-note with "TEN POUNS" on it. Underneath is written: 1. Photocopy this ten million times, then 2. SPEND it.
  • Counting Sheep: Parodied. In "Good Night, Mr. Bean", Bean tries to get to sleep by literally counting the sheep in a large photograph. When he gets frustrated that he keeps losing count, he counts the sheep along two adjoining sides and then multiplies the results in a calculator. After marvelling at the tally, he instantly falls unconscious.
  • CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Subverted Trope. Mr. Bean does try and give CPR to a man that has suffered a heart attack, using a rolled-up magazine to avoid mouth-to-mouth contact, and having fun with the rise and fall of his chest. He revives him with the jumper cables from his car only to accidentally knock him out again, then he uses the ambulance that shows up to save him to jump his car's dead battery, disabling the ambulance.
  • Crazy Enough to Work: After a shopping spree for household appliances and furniture, Mr Bean puts everything in and on his Mini, and has to tie the chair he bought on the roof. No longer being able to fit in the car, he instead rigs some wires to control the car while sitting in the chair!
  • Crazy Jealous Guy: In "Mr. Bean Goes to Town", Bean doesn't seem to take well to another guy trying to dance with Irma in a club. Mr Bean's Diary takes it further with him actually stalking Irma and, when he discovers she has become engaged to someone else, makes plans to kill the guy.
  • Creator Cameo: Co-writer Robin Driscoll appears as a minor character in several episodes. The composer of the theme music Howard Goodall also briefly appears in the pilot episode, as the church organist.
  • Cringe Comedy: Mr. Bean's bizarre behaviour is often offset against normal people to make him look more shameful and ridiculous.
  • Cut the Juice: In "Mind the Baby, Mr Bean", Mr Bean causes mayhem on a bumper car ride, when a baby is hidden in the bumper car activating the throttle, and Mr Bean is standing on top, clinging on. When the baby starts crying, Mr Bean then activates the baby's squeaky toy. The attendant sees this, and switches off the power, stopping all the cars. He even says "Cut the juice".
  • Dangerous Key Fumble: Played with in "Do it yourself, Mr Bean", although not with the key, but the doorknob itself. Mr Bean paints his room by putting a firework in a can of paint and wrapping everything not to be painted in newspapers. He lights the fuse on the firework and dashes for the door, only to remember that the doorknob is detached and in the fruit bowl, wrapped in paper. He hastily unwraps an apple, and fails to open the door with it, before realizing, finding the knob, and making his escape.
  • Danger Takes A Back Seat: In Mind the Baby, Mr Bean, there is a Running Gag that a Doberman barks and runs after Mr Bean when he squeaks a baby's toy. Near the end of the episode, the dog climbs into his car when he squeaks it, unseen by Mr Bean. The episode ends when Mr Bean squeaks it again while driving, and the dog barks, scaring Bean out of his wits.
  • Detachable Doorknob: Bean often removes the doorknob from his apartment door, which causes a hitch in his strategy to repaint his living room by detonating a firecracker in the paint can.
  • Deteriorates Into Gibberish: A rare scene involving dialogue, and somebody else being funny. In "Back to School, Mr Bean", the very composed judo instructor has a momentary loss of coherence in the face of Mr Bean's extreme nervousness about being "thrown". Having tried to coax Mr Bean to co-operate, and having pursued him around the room, the instructor briefly flails his arms and stutters.
    Instructor: Look, just... just... jus.. jus.. j. j. (finally regains composure, and speaks in a reassuring tone) Look, just calm down.
  • The Diaper Change: Mr Bean has to do this in "Mind the Baby, Mr Bean". He improvises a nappy by dissecting a teddy bear, which he ties around the baby's bottom.
  • Didn't Think This Through: In the "Library" short, after destroying a rare tome, Mr. Bean manages to replace it with the book of another customer. This works out well... until Bean returns to retrieve his bookmark, which he put inside the damaged book.
  • Dinner Order Flub: At a fancy restaurant for his birthday, Mr Bean orders the only thing he can afford, Steak tartare, believing it is just a fancy steak. After trying and failing to eat it, the rest of the scene revolves around him trying to get rid of all the raw beef by hiding it in ludicrous ways.
  • Disaster Dominoes: Bean's schemes often collapse, with a notable case being his attempt to drive his car from the chair strapped atop it.
  • Ditzy Genius: While his social skills and personal hygiene leave a lot to be desired, Mr. Bean is an incredible driver, and his zany and outlandish schemes are often workable, if not successful.
  • DIY Dentistry: In "The Trouble With Mr. Bean", Bean accidentally renders his dentist unconscious and has to resort to filling his own cavity. He ends up putting paste on several teeth (due to the X-ray being readable in four different ways because the holder it's placed in spins around both horizontally and vertically), resulting in him gluing his jaw shut. The dentist wakes up and a startled Bean screams, thus ungluing his jaw.
  • Double Take: In the art class segment of "Back to School, Mr. Bean", Bean only notices the fruit still life has been swapped out for a nude model when he sees that he's drawn a smiley face on his page—the mouth being the banana from the still life and the eyes being the model's breasts.
  • Downer Ending:
  • Drives Like Crazy: A number of sketches take Bean's antics to the streets as he drives around in his Mini.
  • Ear Ache: In "Mr Bean in Room 426", Mr Bean wears Danny La Rue's drag outfit; until Danny La Rue approaches, and pulls one of the clip-on earrings off Mr Bean's ear.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • The first episode is different from all that would follow right from the start, as it omits the usual 'falling from the sky' intro and choral theme song and instead simply begins with a subtitle and jaunty theme, though the standard intro is added on in later releases. In the exam scene, Bean speaks a couple of sentences to another student that are slightly wordier and more coherent (albeit still in a funny-sounding voice) than his usual mumbling. In the same episode, he drives an orange Mini instead of a green one, which he crashes during the credits, perhaps explaining why he probably gets a new Mini later on.
    • The first three episodes are shot entirely on video, before the remainder of the episodes go for the Video Inside, Film Outside more typical of British sitcoms of this era.
  • Easter Egg: In the church sketch, the vicar is speaking complete gibberish (in a satire of boring and barely coherent sermons) and is voiced by Rowan Atkinson himself.
  • Electric Joy Buzzer: Played with in the episode "Mr Bean Rides Again". Mr Bean goes to great lengths to revive a man who has had a heart attack at a bus stop. He finally succeeds by connecting a pair of jump leads to a lamp post, and shocking the man's chest. When the man is on his feet again, he holds out his hand to shake Mr Bean's. Unfortunately, Mr Bean still has the jump leads in his hand, so the man is shocked again, the lamp post explodes, and the man collapses again.
  • Enmity with an Object: It's not clear whether Bean's Sitcom Arch-Nemesis is the unseen driver of the blue Reliant Robin or the car itself.
  • Epic Fail: The comedy of the series pretty much relies on Bean's hideous incompetence to perform the most standard of tasks.
  • Everything Is an Instrument: In "The Return of Mr Bean", Mr Bean plays "Happy Birthday" to himself in a restaurant, by tapping the glasses and plates on the table, with some success.
  • Exact Words: In "Tee Off, Mr. Bean", Bean is told to not touch a golf ball with his hands and to use the putter to move it instead. Normally, the rules make an exception for when the ball goes out of bounds (in which case you return it to the course by hand and set it on the spot closest to where it fell out), but because Bean isn't told about this, the rest of the episode involves Bean going across town attempting to retrieve the ball using only the putter.
  • Exercise Excuse: A dance variation shows up; while at church, Mr. Bean is trying to get a piece of candy that fell through a hole in his trouser pocket during the singing of a hymn. When the man sitting next to him stares at his movements, Mr. Bean pretends to be dancing to the hymn.
  • Failed a Spot Check: After Bean is done showing off his impressive pen and prop collection at the beginning of the trigonometry exam he's taking and the invigilator tells the students they can open the envelope containing the questions, he pulls out a sheet only containing calculus questions that the man next to him starts working on and not having studied the subject, he spends most of the segment trying to cheat by copying answers off him and despairing over his inability to answer any of the questions. However, a few minutes before the exam time is up, the invigilator mentions a white trigonometry sheet in addition to the green calculus sheet and Bean realizes he never took it out of the envelope and desperately tries to finish the test within the 2 minutes before time is up.
  • Foreign Remake: Pakistani Mr. Bean. Tired of the constant barrage of death, violence, and tragedy in his home country, a Pakistani man took on the persona of Mr. Bean so that he could get people laughing and having fun. Apparently, Rowan Atkinson himself loves it.
  • Free Wheel: Every time Mr. Bean crashes the Reliant Robin offscreen.
  • Friend to All Children: Hilariously subverted in "Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean". After getting frustrated that everything on TV is either violent or horrific, Mr. Bean hears some young carolers outside his door, and greets them, turning his chair to face them and watch. However, the song starts to make him sleepy, so he gets up with his box of chocolates and nonchalantly slams the door in their faces.
  • Genius Ditz: Bean seems to have great difficulty handling everyday problems, but comes up with quite intricate and ingenious ways to navigate them. One example involves him attempting to get changed into a pair of swimming trunks in public without exposing himself. He succeeds, but it turns out the person he was so self-conscious about changing in front of was blind.
  • Genre-Busting: The Snickers ad is an absurdist comedy Wuxia parody.
  • "Getting Ready for Bed" Plot: "Good Night, Mr. Bean" shows Bean's bedtime routine and ends with him falling asleep trying to count the sheep in the picture.
  • Girls Have Cooties: Though Irma is his girlfriend, Bean is reluctant to kiss or hold hands with her.
  • The Ghost: We never get a look at the driver of the Reliant Robin, so it isn't even clear if it's the same driver and car in each encounter with Bean.
  • A Gift for Themselves: During Mr. Bean's Birthday Episode and the Christmas Episode, Bean is shown giving cards to himself to demonstrate his friendlessness. In the former, he writes a card for himself and puts it on the table while at a restaurant, and in the latter, it's shown that he collects Christmas cards by buying packs of identical cards, putting them in envelopes, walking out the door and pushing them through the slot and then walking into his own apartment with a feigned "surprised" look on his face at the number of cards he had received.
  • Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen: In "The Curse of Mr. Bean", Bean falls into a pool so hard his trunks get blown off, and unfortunately, a little girl innocently picks them up with her snorkel and leaves with them without her parents noticing.
  • Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks: In "Back to School, Mr Bean", an unattended laboratory arrangement of various connected pieces of glassware attracts Mr Bean's attention. He finds a beaker of liquid nearby and pours it into an opening in the highly complex arrangement. The glassware starts vibrating furiously, and Mr Bean makes his escape, just before an explosion is heard. Later, a young boy who was nearby is seen covered from head to toe with blue powder.
  • Gratuitous Latin: The theme tune. "Ecce homo qui est faba: Behold the man who is (a) bean."
  • Green Around the Gills: In "Mr. Bean in Room 426", Mr. Bean turns green after he realizes he has eaten a whole plate of bad oysters.
  • Gross Gum Gag:
    • In "Mr Bean Rides Again", Mr Bean is on a train journey, with a fellow passenger who cannot stop laughing at his book. Mr Bean tries many ways to block out the sound of this, and finally finds some discarded chewing gum under the seat, which he stuffs in his ears. This works so well that he is completely unaware of the ticket inspector approaching.
    • In the "bus stop" sketch, a baby in a pram cries, and Mr Bean tosses some chewing gum into the pram to silence the baby. The mother then pulls it out, as a long strand.
  • Gross-Up Close-Up: In "Mr. Bean In Room 426", Mr. Bean has a nightmare over some rotten oysters he'd binged earlier. We get a sickening closeup of Bean holding an oyster shell up to his mouth, only for slime to spill out.
  • Hand-or-Object Underwear: In "Mr. Bean In Room 426", Bean gets locked out of his hotel room naked, and must get through the hotel unseen. He picks up a few signs (with comedically appropriate messages) from the hotel to cover his front and behind, though he doesn't hold onto them for long.
  • Hand Stomp: When Mr Bean is trying to lower himself from a high diving board, hanging on by only his fingers, a boy who has had enough of waiting stamps on Mr Bean's hand, causing him to fall into the pool.
  • Handing Over the Crap Sack: Mr. Bean takes a thread from a waitress's outfit, causing a strap to detach. After using the thread to floss between his teeth, he gives the thread back to her.
  • Headphones Equal Isolation:
    • In "Mr Bean Rides Again", Mr Bean wears headphones on a plane, and is enjoying the music so much that he is unaware of a member of cabin crew near him. He accidentally slaps her, just before she asks him to look after a young boy sitting next to him.
    • In "Tee Off, Mr Bean", Mr Bean tries to retrieve his trousers which accidentally ended up in a woman's laundry. The woman is wearing headphones (with music loud enough for the audience to hear) and is unaware of Mr Bean's presence. She puts her clothes inside the tumble drier and switches it on, completely unaware that Mr Bean has climbed inside.
  • Hero's Classic Car: Played for Laughs. Bean's BMC Mini is a small econo-car with character, and Bean makes occasional eccentric modifications to it. Depending on your taste, it could qualify as a Cool Car.
  • Highly-Visible Ninja: Bean in the Snickers ad is so incompetent at parkour that he smashes through a tiled roof.
  • Hot Librarian: Mr. Bean's recurring love interest Irma Gobb, though it's only revealed she works as a librarian in the tie-in book Mr. Bean's Diary.
  • Hot Potato: In "Mind the Baby, Mr Bean", Mr Bean disposes of the baby's dirty nappy by leaving it on a fairground ride. When the ride starts moving, the nappy flies off, hitting somebody in the face, who throws the nappy away. It then ends up in the face of two more people on different rides, finally ending up over somebody's ice cream.
  • His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Upon being specifically asked what his first name is, he simply replies "mister", until its subversion in Mr. Bean's Holiday (see No Full Name Given below).
  • Iconic Outfit: While Bean will dress differently for certain occasions (pyjamas in bed, a swimsuit at the pool), when he is normally out and about, he will always be wearing a brown tweed sport coat, a thin red tie, a white shirt, dark pants and black shoes.
  • Idiot Savant: Played with, since in most circumstances he is actually competent, he merely deals with problems in an unconventional way and appears strange and idiotic to others.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every episode of the series includes "Mr. Bean" in its title.
  • Improbable Parking Skills: Mr. Bean thrives on these.
  • Improvised Diaper: In "Mind the Baby, Mr. Bean", Bean uses a girl's teddy bear as a makeshift nappy for the baby that he accidentally kidnapped. When the mother gets the baby back, she is understandably bewildered by it.
  • Indy Hat Roll: In "Mr. Bean in Room 426", after Bean accidentally locks himself out of his hotel room naked, he finds signs to cover himself with and has to crawl underneath a long rug to get to an elevator (to avoid a couple making out). He realizes one of his signs isn't with him and tries to pull it back in by the cord, but the elevator shuts before he can do so.
  • Insomnia Episode: The last part of "Goodnight, Mr. Bean" is about Mr. Bean not being able to get to sleep. He finally succeeds at the end by Counting Sheep...with a calculator.
  • It Won't Turn Off: A semi-realistic example in "Mind the Baby, Mr. Bean" involves him putting the titular baby inside a coin-operated kiddy ride and depositing a massive number of coins into it so that he can visit rides and attractions himself without having to worry about the baby. This causes a huge line of angry mothers to form in front of the ride that just keeps going on with a baby inside it with nobody attending them, and when Bean returns, the first mother in line asks what the hell he's doing as the ride finally comes to a stop.
  • Jerkass:
    • In "Tee Off, Mr. Bean", one of the patrons harasses Mr. Bean by shoving him away from one of the front-loading machines, teasing him for wearing a dress, and stepping on his underwear when he tries to put it back on. In response, Mr. Bean secretly switches his fabric softener with coffee, and the bully's white gi is stained brown. The bully chews out the owner of the laundromat for this.
    • Throughout the series, Mr. Bean often comes off as not only bumbling and eccentric but also mean-spirited. He's at his worst in the hospital scene in "Good Night, Mr Bean." He parks his car right behind an ambulance so they can't open their doors, throws a little girl's doll across the room and gets two men to start a fight with each other just so he can be first in line, steals a seat from an old man with a cane, mocks the woman sitting next to him who's in a body cast and switches numbers with her, and changes the number of a little boy from 85 to 850.
    • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Bean isn't malicious for the sake of it; it's more that he has little to no sense of perspective or sense of self. The movie Bean explores this more fully when he's confronted with the fact that his actions can have horrendous consequences for people around him, and he makes a Herculean effort to set things right.
  • Jingle the Coins: In "Mind the Baby, Mr. Bean", Mr. Bean tries to beat a fairground arcade machine by taking a run at it, and throwing his whole weight against it. He smiles happily as he hears the sound of lots of coins falling; then he is faced with a grinning young boy who has seized the money and is gleefully shaking his clothes full of it.
  • Karma Houdini: Though he occasionally gets a small dose of Laser-Guided Karma, Bean always escapes any serious consequences for his more destructive or antisocial actions.
  • Kids Are Cruel: In "The Curse of Mr. Bean", a young boy stomps on Mr. Bean's hand as he dangles precariously from the edge of a high-dive board at a pool which he is terrified to fall from.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Although Mr. Bean isn't usually a bad guy, some of his more outrageous antics do receive this:
    • When he cuts in front of a young boy at the carnival to win the coin slot game, the boy himself won the coins that he illegally obtained.
  • Last-Second Photo Failure: In "Goodnight, Mr. Bean", Mr. Bean tries to take a picture with one of the Royal Guards. After he spends the entire segment outlandishly preparing him for the photo, he sets the timer on his camera and before it can run out, the Change of Guard is called and the Royal Guard marches to his next post, leaving a shot of Mr. Bean starting to chase after him.
  • Laugh Track: The show includes one as a mark of its era, though it is obviously shot with a single camera.
  • Lethally Stupid: Bean can be destructive at times, though he never hurts people too seriously.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Mr. Bean is almost always attired in his trademark ensemble of dark brown trousers, white shirt, red tie, and brown tweed sport coat.
  • Linked List Clue Methodology: Played with in "Mr Bean Rides Again", in that Mr Bean sets up a chain of keys to be unlocked one at a time, to start his car. Unlocking the door (fastened with a padlock) reveals a key to the boot, which contains a small purse containing the key to the bonnet, under which is the key to start the car.
  • Look Behind You: Mr. Bean does this on several occasions: to distract a fellow candidate in an exam so he can copy it; when his girlfriend is hiding his gift behind her back while she waits for him to kiss her; and to distract somebody sitting in a toilet cubicle who has mistakenly taken his trousers so that he can reclaim them by force.
  • Lost Food Grievance: In "Tee Off, Mr. Bean", Mr. Bean's golf ball lands in a child's double ice-cream cone, displacing one of the balls of ice cream. Mr. Bean then hits the golf ball away, leaving the child holding a tiny stump of a cone, looking disappointed. Not seeing what had happened, the child's mother says sternly "No more".
  • Lost Toy Grievance: A particularly cruel Kick the Dog moment in "Mind the Baby, Mr. Bean". Mr Bean helps a young girl to climb on a merry-go-round horse, quietly stealing her teddy bear. The girl's reaction is not seen, only her distant cries of "My teddy!" can be heard as Mr. Bean mutilates the teddy to use as an emergency nappy for the baby.
  • Manchild: Mr. Bean sleeps with a teddy bear. In the first episode, he puts two dolls on the table when he sits down to take an examination. In general he is of the more common, Fish out of Water type, although his strangeness goes beyond childlike and into the realm of truly bizarre.
  • Marilyn Maneuver: In the episode, "Back To School, Mr. Bean", rather than the wind causing this, a lady's ankle-length skirt receives a static cling to her upper body, which is caught in the skirt when it blows up, due to static electricity on a piece of paper Mr. Bean hands her to get rid of it.
  • Mistaken for Fake Hair: In a Christmas-themed episode, "Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean", Mr. Bean goes around pulling off the fake beards of several Mall Santas, but then tries to pull off the beard of one that has a real beard (who screams in pain, causing Mr. Bean to run away).
  • Mister Strangenoun: The titular protagonist. There was also a Mr. Sprout in the first episode.
  • Naked People Are Funny: Mr. Bean is stripped naked in "The Curse of Mr. Bean", "Mr. Bean Goes to Town", and "Mr. Bean in Room 426". In the lattermost episode, this leads to him employing Hand-or-Object Underwear and then dressing in drag.
  • Naked People Trapped Outside: He locks himself out of his hotel room naked in "Mr. Bean in Room 426".
  • New Year Has Come: He hosts an awfully dreary party in "Do It Yourself, Mr. Bean", where he feeds his friends twigs covered in Marmite and sugared vinegar in place of champagne because he didn't remember to go shopping beforehand and ran out of his planned refreshments, and offers no interesting ways to pass the time. His friends escape by winding his clock forward and pretending it's already midnight.
  • Nightmare Sequence: A dream about bad oysters in "Mr. Bean in Room 426".
  • No Ending:
    • "Mr. Bean Rides Again" cuts to black at the exact moment Bean pops a barf bag filled with puke on a plane. The Movie reuses this gag, except it actually shows the immediate results.
    • "Mr. Bean in Room 426" ends with Danny La Rue angrily confronting Bean for wearing his gown and cuts to credits after the former yanks an earring from Bean's ear.
  • No Full Name Given: Bean is never given a first name.
    • In "Mr. Bean's Diary", there's a clipping of a report card from Bean's school years. Despite the presence of ink stains, it can be seen that his first name starts with an S.
    • In Bean, his passport has his surname as "Bean" and his first name as just "Mr."
    • However, in Mr. Bean's Holiday, his passport reveals it to be Rowan.
  • No Name Given: Bean's girlfriend is simply billed as "The Girlfriend" in her first couple of appearances, although she's eventually identified as one Irma Gobb.
  • No Peripheral Vision: Literally any extra character in any episode of Mr. Bean. One would think he could do anything and get away with it, because no other character ever seems to notice anything he does unless he's directly in front of them, and maybe not even then.
  • No Social Skills: The starting point for much of the humour—in fact, Atkinson's original concept for the character was "the most embarrassing man in the world", both to himself and to others.
  • Not What It Looks Like: Occasionally, Bean is caught in embarrassing scenarios that look understandably suspect to onlookers who don't have the context of the audience, such as when Bean attempts to retrieve his trousers from the man in the bathroom stall in "Back to School, Mr. Bean" and the drill instructor walks in on them.
  • Offscreen Crash: The ending of the first episode, when Mr Bean drives his mini into a no-through road (shown by a sign). "The Trouble with Mr. Bean" has what could be called an Offscreen Splash, when a young boy playing with a model boat is unknowingly operating a motorised wheelchair, which then pushes him into a pond.
  • Ominous Latin Chanting: Parodied with the intro and outro song Ecce Homo. While at first glance it seems to invoke this trope, the lyrics for the song are actually just as ridiculous as the show itself. The intro lyrics are Ecce homo qui est faba (Behold the man who is a bean), while the outro lyrics are Vale homo qui est faba (Farewell to the man who is a bean).
  • One-Person Birthday Party: In "The Return of Mr. Bean", Mr Bean goes to a restaurant on his own for his birthday, and gives himself a birthday card. This reflects his general isolation, however, since he gives himself all of his Christmas cards as well.
  • Overly Long Gag: Just before Mr. Bean takes an exam, he takes a pen out of his pocket; then a pencil, then another pen, and another, and another, and another. Then he reaches inside his jacket and takes out a whole handful of pens. Not content with this, he then produces two mascots and an alarm clock. When the exam begins, he dithers over which pen to use; and finally, at the end of the exam when he is writing furiously, the pen in his hand stops working, so he grabs one from his neighbour, oblivious to all the other pens in front of him.
  • Page-Turn Surprise: Mr Bean's Diary contains a couple of these.
    • After turning the page on 14th February, the next few pages are completely blank; followed by "FOUND DIARY!!" in big letters. It is hinted at by the entry "Put out bin" just before the blank pages, and the diary is found in the bins.
    • After Mr Bean has fawned over a "Mr Wilkinson", the last entry on the page is "Mr Wilkinson borrowing car this afternoon", followed by "car due back". Then, over the page: "Where is Mr Wilkinson???", as it is revealed that Mr Wilkinson is a con man who has stolen Mr Bean's car.
  • Pet the Dog: By Mr. Bean's standards, the scene where he encounters a busker playing the saxophone, finds he doesn't have any small change on hand, and then goes so far as to start dancing nearby just so he can earn some money to tip him.
  • Please Put Some Clothes On: Mr. Bean feels uncomfortable in the presence of nudity and the show has him disapproving not only of nude models but also of nude art. So whenever he sees a nude statue or a painting of a nude he uses the closest piece of cloth or paper to hide the offending area. With the nude model, he crafts a makeshift bra out of the art studio's clay and gets it on her without the instructor noticing.
  • Plane Awful Flight: In "Mr Bean Rides Again", Mr Bean is given the task of amusing a young boy who is flying alone, and is feeling unwell. Despite Bean's efforts, the boy remains silent and miserable. When the plane enters turbulence, the boy throws up into a paper bag.
  • Police Lineup: "Mr. Bean Goes to Town" has the scene where Bean has to identify the man who tried to steal his camera in the park. When he can't figure it out by sight, he arranges for all five to be lined up with a rubbish bin on their heads, and he pokes each of them with a pen so he can identify the high-pitched noise that the thief made. It works.
  • P.O.V. Cam: During the judo lesson in "Back to School, Mr Bean", there is a shot seen from the point of view of the instructor, who bows while facing Mr Bean, and then rises to discover that Mr Bean is no longer there.
  • Properly Paranoid: Mr Bean often goes to ridiculous lengths to secure his property. He's right to do it. (A carjacker tries to steal his Mini only to discover that there is no steering wheel.) However, Bean habitually removing his own doorknob for similar reasons almost gets him caught in a paint explosion when he can't find it in the objects he's wrapped up in newspapers.
  • "Psycho" Strings: A horror film that Bean goes to see with his girlfriend is never depicted to the camera, but to convey its genre and fear factor to the real-world viewers, much of its audio consists of unsettling shrill strings.
  • Reed Snorkel: Invoked in "Tee Off Mr Bean". When Mr Bean puts his teddy in the washing machine, at first the teddy resists going in. Mr Bean offers him a drinking straw to use as a snorkel, which seems to pacify the teddy. When Mr Bean unloads the machine, he is first puzzled by the straw; then he remembers what it was for.
  • Removable Steering Wheel: Present in "The Trouble with Mr. Bean" and "Mr. Bean in Room 426", in both cases to prevent the car from being stolen. In the latter case, Mr Bean grumpily hands the steering wheel to a bellhop who asks to move Mr Bean's car, which Mr Bean had parked directly in front of the hotel entrance.
  • Ring-Ring-CRUNCH!:
    • In "The Trouble with Mr. Bean", the titular character's response to his electronic alarm clock going off is to drop it into a glass of water and then hang it up to dry on a clothesline off the lanyard hanging off it, implying that it's what he does every day and somehow the alarm clock isn't permanently damaged by it.
    • In "Do It Yourself, Mr Bean", Mr Bean saws a new serving hatch through his kitchen wall, without checking what is on the other side. The telephone rings, just before Mr Bean saws through the cable.
  • Road Apples: In the spin-off book Mr Bean's Diary, Mr Bean starts "the Bean Anti-Poop Association", involving giving "a punch up the bracket" to owners of dogs who foul paths, and sends letters to residents inviting them to join. He receives angry replies from dog owners, and a letter from the police. Later, he devises an elaborate plan involving fitting wings to his car, from which dangles a duvet cover containing half a ton of horse manure, and launching the car from the top of a tall building to crush dog owners; but he is stopped by the police.
  • Road Trip Episode: "Mr. Bean Rides Again" is all about Bean taking a trip first by train and then by plane, although we never do see where he was going.
  • Rollerblade Good: A Comic Relief special episode "Torvill and Bean" has Mr Bean in the audience of Torvill and Dean on ice skates. When he finds he is sitting on the wrong side of the arena, he takes a short cut across the ice, in his regular shoes. When he discovers he has left his programme on the other side, he hangs on to a line of skaters, and swipes the programme as he passes. Later, he steals Dean's skates, and surprises Torvill by turning up in Dean's place, performing all kinds of improbable stunts.
  • Running Gag:
    • When driving about, Mr. Bean is continually having unfortunate encounters with a three-wheeled blue Reliant. The Reliant often gets tipped over.
    • In "Mr Bean in Room 426", Mr. Bean turns everything he does into a competition with the man in the room next to him. He races to receive his room key before this man, races up the stairs while the neighbour uses the elevator. When choosing food for dinner, Mr. Bean takes double of everything his neighbour takes, and imitates his every gesture, including pouring water from a jug, in perfect synchronicity. Once the man actually starts eating, Bean takes it up to eleven and does things like stuffing multiple whole sticks of celery in his mouth and rapidly chomping on them like a rabbit when the man takes a bite out of a single one and ravenously taking alternating bites from a pair of chicken drumsticks he's holding in his hands when the man starts eating his own. This ends up getting him severely ill when he pours multiple oysters down his gullet when the man was just preparing to start eating them before noticing that they had gone bad.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story:
    • Mr. Bean in the titular episode tries to change into his swimming trunks without exposing himself in front of a man with sunglasses. After going through all that trouble, the man turns out to be blind.
    • For his birthday, Mr. Bean celebrates at a lavish restaurant but with an unpalatable steak tartare after not realizing what it meant. After a waiter trips and Bean plays off the pieces of meat he's been hiding as scattered by the accident, he's given a new table... and a fresh steak tartare.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The postie van kiddie ride in "Mind the Baby, Mr. Bean" plays the Postman Pat theme.
    • In "Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean", when Bean is playing with the Nativity figurines, he pulls out a group of toy drummers and starts humming "The British Grenadiers", which had been used in the intro to Blackadder Goes Forth. (In the same scene, he has a toy dinosaur "threaten" baby Jesus, then fights it using toy tanks and a Dalek.)
    • Mister Bean and his teddy bear read an Asterix comic in the episode "Goodnight Mister Bean".
  • Shrunk in the Wash: Teddy gets shrunk in the wash in "Tee Off, Mr. Bean". Of course, he's back to normal again next episode.
  • Signature Team Transport: His compact Mini, which keeps coming back despite being trashed every odd episode.
  • Silly Prayer: When Mr Bean goes to church in the first episode, he tries to discreetly retrieve a sweet he has dropped on the floor. After he has bent down a couple of times during a hymn, he makes the sign of the cross just before finally picking it up.
  • Silence Is Golden: Much of the show's international success has been attributed to its reliance on physical comedy over dialogue.
    • The title character is pretty much The Voiceless in the TV show apart from some wordless grumbling, or the very occasional comment. This is averted in the first film, which climaxes with the character giving a big speech about Whistler's mother.
  • Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Bean is in an inexplicable feud with a light-blue Reliant Regal, which he runs off the road practically every time he encounters it. In "Tee Off, Mr. Bean", he's hitchhiking and when the Reliant stops to offer him a lift, Bean refuses. Because the driver is never seen, Bean seems to object to the car itself.
  • Sleeping Dummy: In "Do It Yourself, Mr. Bean", he plants a dummy in a sleeping bag in front of a shop he wants to be first in line at for January sales. It's made from some balloons (which he pops in front of the stunned queue while revealing his deception) and a head of cauliflower (which he throws in the nearby rubbish bin).
  • Slippery Swimsuit: In "The Curse of Mr. Bean", Bean loses his trunks and is horrified, but successfully avoids getting seen by the lifeguard. Then he runs into the girls' swimming team when trying to leave the pool.
  • Something Something Leonard Bernstein: Mr. Bean attends a church service, but when the time comes to sing the hymn "All Creatures of our God and King", the man next to Mr. Bean refuses to share his hymnal (due to Mr. Bean's earlier off-putting antics). Mr. Bean is left mumbling all the words along with the general tune until it gets to the one word he knows and shouts triumphantly: "ALLELUIA!" The rest of the first verse has him alternating between mumbling and "ALLELUIA!"
  • Special Guest: The late drag queen Danny La Rue in "Mr. Bean in Room 426". Bean steals some of his drag to cover up after getting locked out of his room naked.
  • Staircase Tumble: In "Mr Bean in Room 426", Mr Bean has a staircase tumble inside a trunk. He hides in one to steal Danny La Rue's outfit, and a porter wheels the trunk away, but drops it down the hotel steps.
  • Stairs Are Faster: Parodied in "Mr. Bean in Room 426''. Another guest makes it into the elevator to head to the top floor, and the doors close just before Mr. Bean gets there. He races up the stairs to the next floor and presses the button there so that the elevator stops; he does this on every floor.
  • Status Quo Is God: Poor Teddy gets decapitated in "Mr. Bean in Room 426", used as a paintbrush in "Do-It-Yourself, Mr. Bean", and shrunk in the wash in "Tee Off, Mr. Bean", but is back to normal at the beginning of the next episode. (On the other hand, since Teddy's look varies from episode to episode, there may be a succession of individual toys Bean uses in the universe as he constantly damages poor Teddy.)
  • Stealing from Thieves: In the episode "Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean", while Mr. Bean is collecting money for a Salvation Army band he comes across a young pickpocket at work in a crowd. He forces the thief to put all of the money and goods he has stolen into the collection basket and is allowed to conduct the band as a reward while the actual conductor takes the collections somewhere more secure.
  • Storefront Television Display: Just before the closing credits of "Mr. Bean Goes to Town", an entire window display of televisions goes fuzzy when he passes, in a reference to earlier in the episode, when his television at home would do the same thing.
  • Strangely Specific Horoscope: In the spin-off book Mr Bean's Diary, he sees a horoscope telling him that he will receive shattering news on 27th March, possibly regarding the number 77. This is just after he bought a raffle ticket number 77 for a raffle which is drawn on 27th March, with a first prize of a week in the Bahamas. Believing that he will win, he buys all his holiday supplies before the raffle is drawn. The ticket does win, but unfortunately, he has lost his ticket, which may be in a rubber band round his diary, as seen on the back cover.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: Bean's method of repainting his entire flat in one fell swoop basically consists of putting some fireworks into a tin of paint, lighting the fuse and running. This was actually busted by Mythbusters.
  • Take a Number: While in a hospital waiting room, Mr. Bean does a number of nasty things to get a lower number. He gets his comeuppance in the end, though.
  • Take Our Word for It: When Mr Bean is watching television, usually the audience does not see what he sees, only Mr Bean's reaction. The same happens in the horror movie sketch in "The Curse of Mr. Bean"; the audience knows it is a horror movie from the shot of a sign saying "A Nightmare", and Mr Bean making spooky noises before the movie begins.
  • Tongue-Out Insult: In the exam sketch, Mr Bean takes the paper from the student next to him; then meekly hands it back. The student snatches it and puts it down aggressively, out of Mr Bean's reach. Mr Bean then sticks his tongue out.
  • Toplessness from the Back: In "Back to School, Mr. Bean", Mr Bean is horrified by the sight of a topless model he is expected to draw. The audience only sees the model from the back.
  • Title Drop: Take a wild guess what Mr. Bean says at the end of "Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean".
  • Unexplained Recovery: At the end of "Back To School, Mr. Bean", his Mini is crushed by a tank. This doesn't stop it from showing up again (with the same numberplate, even) in two subsequent episodes, "Goodnight Mr. Bean" and "Hair by Mr. Bean of London". (That said, given the nature of the show, Anachronic Order or even Negative Continuity may be in effect.)
  • Unknown Rival: Mr. Bean sometimes decides to "compete" at a mundane task with a random stranger.
    • In "Mr. Bean in Room 426", he starts racing with a fellow guest at check-in, trying to get to his room first. Despite doing everything in a mad rush (including copying the other man's answer when filling in the guest book), Bean gets his key stuck in the lock and loses the "race", with the other man oblivious to what he was even trying to do. The next day, Bean stages another contest at breakfast, taking double portions of everything the man takes and eating them twice as fast. This is what leads to Mr. Bean guzzling an entire platter of spoiled oysters while the other guest, taking his time, realizes they are off and sends them back. Amusingly, Bean's resulting Acid Reflux Nightmare depicts the other guest laughing at Bean and offering the oysters, because it was clearly his fault Bean ate them.
  • Unplanned Crossdressing: "Mr. Bean in Room 426" finally found clothing to prevent going around naked, and to get the room key from the reception after he broke into the luggage of a professional drag artist Danny La Rue. However, La Rue spots him wearing it, angrily informs Bean that that's his frock, and rips off the earring he's wearing.
  • Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: It's a bit complicated. On occasion, he can be casually cruel, as when he torments the calligrapher in "Back to School, Mr. Bean." On the whole, however, his misdeeds are the result of childish selfishness, curiosity, or misunderstanding, and when Laser-Guided Karma catches up with him it's hard not to feel bad for him.
  • Vacation Episode: "Mr. Bean in Room 426". Also, both movies feature this, each taking Mr. Bean to a different country.
  • Vertigo Effect: Used in "Mr. Bean in Room 426", when he realizes he's just consumed a bunch of rotten oysters.
  • Video Inside, Film Outside: Not totally consistent, as some inside scenes are shot with film when on location, but it's fairly obvious when one is used versus the other.
  • Visual Pun: "Goodnight Mr. Bean" features Mr. Bean pulling out a photograph of a herd of sheep and counting them.
  • Vomit Discretion Shot: A variation. When Bean tries to entertain an airsick boy during a flight, he looks for a bag to pop. When his back is turned looking for one, the boy vomits into one of the plane's barf bags. Bean then turns around and takes it, thinking it's empty, blows it up, and the episode cuts to black right as we hear the bag pop.
  • Wake Up Fighting: After Mr. Bean falls asleep on the floor in the church sketch, he suddenly wakes up, runs around a bit panicked and confused and briefly strangles a bewildered Mr. Sprout who was sitting nearby.
  • Zany Scheme: A lot of the humour comes from the fact that Bean approaches the same problems as everyone else using his own improvised plans along these lines. And quite often, they work.

"Vale homo qui est faba" translation:

 
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Mr. Bean Cinema Policy

To promote the "Bean" movie, the Movieplex chain of cinemas made a policy trailer featuring Mr. Bean smoking from a cigar, a pipe and a hookah, talking on a mobile phone, operating a vacuum cleaner and serving cocktails. Of course, all of that were taken away since smoking, using alcoholic beverages and talking during the performance are all strictly prohibited in a theater.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (8 votes)

Example of:

Main / NoTalkingOrPhonesWarning

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