See, the joke is that no one reacts. Even though it’s clearly abnormal. Weird.

Cafe Society
1

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou was on last night, so I looked up an old thread about it. The following quote caught ny atetion.

Mmmmmmm… Toplesssssss :stuck_out_tongue:

Snaps awake

Huh? Where was I? Oh yeah, the part about no one reaction to someone breaking social conventions. Basically, I was wondering about examples of no one reacting to something clearly odd, or maybe just one person noticing, and no one else.

Another example is at the end of the Christmas episode of “My Life as a Teenage Robot”, almost the entire cast breaks out in song. It creeped the lil’ hanger-on to no end.

Anyone else have any other examples, from any form of entertainment?

2

In one South Park (a two-parter), Kenny came back from the dead (to die again, IIRC). Stan just said “Oh, hi, Kenny” and ignored his return from that point on.

There’s an old one-act play by George F. Kaufmann called “The Still Alarm.” The basic premise is that the building is on fire, and everyone calmly goes on about their business as though nothing was happening.

3

There’s the bit in Ghostbusters where Venkman and Spengler are discussing their findings from the first ghost sighting at the library and Venkman starts speaking in rhythm, and music starts in the background (“Call it fate… call it something…”), and he almost breaks out into a song…

Then at the end of The Spy who Loved Me, Bond has been kicked in the leg with the lethally-poisoned shoe-dagger, and he’s lying on the ground, writhing in pain, all “yoohoo, dying here…” and people are standing around talking about stuff and completely ignoring him. Then, in the next book, he’s fine, with no mention of the incident.

4

There was a scene in one of the later episodes of Family Guy where Brian was trying to explain something to Peter and Peter said, “Wait a second…you can talk!”

In Not Another Teen Movie, Carina Vincent goes Robyn Cohen one better and appears nude throughout the entire movie.

5

In the opening sequence of Soap when the Tates and the Campbells pose for a group photo, the roof collapses around them, and nobody bats an eyelid.

6

“Call it fate, call it destiny, call it karma! I believe that everything happens for a reason!”

And it was Stantz, not Spengler. :slight_smile:

7

I always thought this un-acknowledged joke in Dumb and Dumber was quite clever.

Lloyd Christmas was smitten with a girl named Mary. If they had married her name would be…

But it was never mentioned outright, just something that is easily figured out yourself.

8

There’s a scene in Airplane!, in the control tower, where a number of characters are standing around talking when, for no apparent reason, a large watermelon crashes onto a desk in the background. Nobody notices. Just another of the great surreal moments in that film.

9

There’s this story about an emperor, who got new clothes, but there weren’t really any new clothes there; he was nude. No one seemed to notice. I forget what it was called.

10

“The Bus That Couldn’t Slow Down?”

11

That’s it!