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''My name is Dave
''This poem makes no sense
''Microwave'' }}
[[Anti-Humor]] is the practice of removing the expected punchline or joke from a familiar humorous situation and replacing it with something non humorous and serious. The laugh is supposed to come from [[Subverted Trope|subverting]] the audience's expectation of a punchline or humorous twist. Often this is simply done by playing the normally humorous situation straight, being [[Literal Minded|literal]] and truthful. For example, take the following, which sets up and then subverts a [[Bait and Switch Comparison]]:
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'''A''': One is a large aggressive mammal dwelling in or near bodies of water. The other is a United States Senator. }}
Sometimes an Anti-Joke goes a step further and creates humor out of a [[Mood Whiplash]]. An example here from Jimmy Carr:
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'''A''': [[Crosses the Line Twice|Being raped.]] }}
A third broader category of anti-humor is essentially a form of [[Surreal Humor]] where the punchline is completely unrelated to the set up. Not all [[Surreal Humor]] is [[Anti-Humor]] and not all [[Anti-Humor]] is [[Surreal Humor]]. Humor can be surreal while still following a formula or having a humorous internal consistency.
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'''A''': The defense rests. }}
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* Perhaps the best-known joke in the English language is an example: "Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side!" Few people realize it now, but it was a subversion of older iterations of the joke. Most people hear it before they are old enough to have come to expect the typical conventions of a joke (like a punch line), so the joke is simply [[Seinfeld Is Unfunny|unfunny]].
* [[Bill Bailey]] is fond of these.
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* [[Andy Kaufman]] loved to dance on the edge between comedian and avant-garde performance artist. Some of his more infamous "routines", such as reading at length from ''[[The Great Gatsby]]'', are anti-humor. He often got audiences laughing because they couldn't ''tell'' whether it was supposed to be funny. Andy mined [[Humor Dissonance]] for all it was worth.
* Comedian Brian Regan reports his son had one of these.
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'''A:''' Because they're dead. }}
* [[Gilbert Gottfried]]: "[[David Hasselhoff]] walks into a bar, around 9 am every day and stays there till closing time."
* John Thomson used to do a character called Bernard Righton who as a [[Political Correctness|Politically Correct]] stand-up comedian whose anxiousness to avoid offense resulted in this trope.
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* When [[Monty Python]] performed its famous Parrot Sketch at the ''The Secret Policeman's Biggest Ball'', a benefit for Amnesty International, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTV3lQc4AmQ they took it in this direction].
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'''Shopkeeper''': ''[looks at the parrot]'' So it is. 'Ere's your money back and a couple of holiday vouchers.
''[(audience goes wild]''
'''Mr. Praline''': ''[looking completely flabbergasted]'' Well, you can't say Thatcher hasn't changed some things. }}
* French Canadian stand-up comedian Jean-Thomas Jobin combines this with [[Self-Deprecation]] as his bread and butter. He has a whole routine in the middle of his show where he reads off (fake) hate mail he got, most of them [[Brick Joke|referencing earlier failed jokes, one of them making fun of the ridiculous shirt he's been wearing since the beginning, which has gone unmentioned since then]]. Then there are gems such as this one:
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'''A:''' You demand they get out of the pool and remove their caps. }}
* One performance by Frank Conniff before a ''[[Cinematic Titanic]]'' show contained about half a dozen fat jokes about Chris Christie ("I don't want to say Chris Christie eats large portions of food, but all of his silverware was designed by Claes Oldenburg"), followed by this gem:
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* An unattributed joke found on the Internet employs this:
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* And then there's:
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* [[Eddie Izzard]] subverts a cliched expression, with this effect.
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* There's also this old joke:
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'''B:''' Who's there?
'''A:''' ''(silence)'' }}
* The whole premise of [http://www.stevewhite.org/stuff/BrokenJokes.html Broken Jokes], as popularized by Richard Ford:
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"Your dog has no nose?"
"Nope, no nose."
"How does he smell?"
"He can't; he has no nose!" }}
** And:
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"Oh, I'm terribly sorry, sir!" }}
** Oh, just one more:
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* [[Rowan Atkinson]] at ''The Secret Policeman's Ball'' did an entire skit posing as a schoolmaster taking the register, utterly stonefaced and serious. Despite not containing a single joke, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiWJWLCoH2M it was riotously funny.]
* And there's always:
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A pool table. }}
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== [[Comic Books]] ==
* [[Watchmen (comics)|Rorschach's]] hyperminimal recitation of an old groaner veers into this:
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== [[Film]] ==
* From ''[[Freddy Got Fingered]]'':
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== [[Literature]] ==
* In his book ''[[The Areas of My Expertise]]'', John Hodgman lists a couple cursed jokes. These are jokes with a setup, but a mundane punch line.
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* Occurs early on in the ''[[Father Ted]]'' Christmas special when Ted finds a baby [[Door Step Baby|left on the parish doorstep]]. Before Ted can bring the baby in the mother appears, takes the baby from his hands, and heads off to leave the infant with someone else. Ted muses on the [[Hilarity Ensues|hilarious hi-jinks]] the priests and the baby would have gotten up to, but stops when Dougal reminds him it wouldn't be funny.
* Toward the end of ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'' episode "The Hellcats", as the biker gang confronts the even-badder-guys on a pier, Joel subverts an old joke into a [[Stealth Pun]] in this way.
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'''Servo''': ''Eh, really?''
'''Joel''': ''Yeah, I'm eating a lot of fish and shrimp and stuff like that.''
(The averted punchline is "I see food, I eat it.") }}
* This is basically the point of ''[[Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!]]''. It's [[Cringe Comedy|awkward]], uncomfortable, and often downright scary, but you laugh anyway. If you're into that.
* ''[[Childrens Hospital]]'' is one giant example of this. It can have its own page of this, actually.
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'''Little Girl''': Ow! }}
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* One song of Italian band Elio e le Storie Tese was entirely based on this kind of humour. First of all, the jokes were more than deadpan, since they were told by a vocal synthesizer. Then, among the "normal" jokes, it featured gems such as: "An Englishman, a Frenchman and a German are on a plane. The plane crashes and they die".
* In the "Talk Like a Pirate Day" song, there's an interlude
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'''A''': ''No, what's it rated?''
'''Q''': ''[[PG 13]]. They want to appeal to younger audiences, and pirates are really popular with that age group.'' }}
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== [[Radio]] ==
* ''[[A Prairie Home Companion]]'' did one of these in a series of [[Light Bulb Joke|light bulb jokes]].
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'''A''': ''One.'' }}
* One episode of ''[[I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue]]'' featured a round of ''Closed Quotes'' (the panellists get the start of a quote and have to finish it) where the quotes came from Christmas crackers.
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'''Graeme:''' Because he was ''dead''. }}
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== [[Web Animation]] ==
* An episode of ''[[Smashtasm]]'' had the two villains speaking with each other. When one remarks that it's time to get serious, the other one says something along the lines of:
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* One clip in [[Asdfmovie]] has a guy pressing a button that reads [[Schmuck Bait|"POINTLESS BUTTON: Warning, pointless"]]. It does absolutely nothing.
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* ''[[Dragon Ball Abridged]]'' uses this by avoiding the [[Memetic Mutation|"it's over 9000" Meme]] - when Vegeta finds out what Goku's power level is, all he does is crush the scouter while calmly saying "It's over 9000. Rah." This is *after* he assumes it's 1006 due to having the scouter upside down.
* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series|Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series]]'' - "Season 0 Abridged 2" does this with the series' memetic [[Screw the Rules, I Have Money]] line.
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'''Kaiba:''' Actually, there are several situations in which summoning multiple monsters at once can be considered totally legal in this game.
'''Yami:'''...That...that wasn't very funny.
'''Kaiba:''' Why would it be funny? I'm just trying to explain how to play.
'''Yami:''' This is all kinds of wrong! }}
* ''[[The Lazer Collection]]'': The first skit of Part 2 is simply a guy eating a red pepper.
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* In one ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|Simpsons]]'' episode, Homer throws Mr. Burns off a balcony into a crowd of people. Burns is promptly crowd surfed before being shoved into an idling taxi. Homer thinks this looks like fun, jumps off the balcony, and ... is crowd surfed as well, suffering no [[Slapstick|humorous injuries of any kind]].
** There are a ''lot'' of examples of this kind of thing in ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]''; for instance the scene where Homer says "A ''think tank'', eh?", and we see into his imagination ... which shows a perfectly accurate portrayal of a think tank.
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** Another one: Homer squirts way too much lighter fluid onto a barbeque, to the point it becomes an [[Overly Long Gag]]. He sets it alight... and it works perfectly.
*** This is, of course, a throwback to an early episode where he does the same, which results in a huge mushroom cloud over the city.
* ''[[Cartoon Planet]]'' '''''thrived''''' on this kind of humor.
* Kevin Spencer once told a joke like this:
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'''A''': A mop never points at you and laughs and make you feel so dirty inside that you're sure your soul is crying. And then you lie awake at night in a sea of tears, praying for the blackness of your heart to wash over you and obliterate obliterate the cruel world around you, as you long for the welcome imbrace of death to release you from the undending torment of your meaningless and cruel existence. }}
* In one episode of King of the Hill Bill began singing "Puff the Magic Dragon". Hank, embarrassed and annoyed says "Bill, do you know what that song is about? It's about a dragon. We're grown men." The anti-humor is a subversion of the expected punchline, where you expect Hank to repeat the urban legend that the song is about marijuana. Instead, Hank correctly identifies the subject of the song (it is literally about a little boy and a dragon).
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