I don’t know why, but these sorts of things just tickle me to no end. They aren’t even necessarily remotely funny aside from pinging a connection between one thing and another in my brain, but I’ve always enjoyed them.
And I know we’ve have a few threads that have mentioned or approached the subject, but I wanted to try to zero in on exactly what it is that tickles me so much.
I just wish I knew what to call it.
Anyway, I was watching an episode of “The Middle”, and Dave Foley was playing a school counselor who was trying various methods to get the youngest kid of the family to socialize. He finally suggested observation. You know, watching what goes on at recess, or, “Hey, d’you ever watch the kids in the hall?”
That totally cracked me up, beyond any level that such a joke actually merits. I love that stuff.
Is there a TV trope that zeroes in on this type of reference? Does anyone else have any examples that just might blow my mind (or, at least, squish my head) as much as that one?
The show Psych (a comedy where a guy with amazingly perceptive abilities pretends to be a psychic detective) references the show The Mentalist (a guy who does the exact same thing but it’s a drama, not a comedy) several times. Psych was first so they’re allowed. They even say “we’re like The Mentalist, except we’re the real thing.” Which they weren’t.
I’m not sure whether this is exactly what you were talking about, but I love it when in the Discworld books, one book in the universe brings to mind events that happened in another. Sometimes it’s not even a reference, but, say, the reader knows a minor character who appears in one scene in a novel as the main character of another book. It’s one of my favorite aspects of the series, as it creates this sense of unity.
In the movie Maverick, Danny Glover has a cameo as a bank robber, and there’s a scene when he and Mel Gibson do a double-take when they see each other. That cracked me up!
Your question is not for a listing, but to understand why they’re so amusing. I think there are multiple things causing amusement:
(1) part of the answer is they take you out of the film itself, “breaking the fourth wall.” They remind you that it’s only a movie. My favorite of these was Oliver Hardy, who would often turn to look straight at the audience with a look of despair at whatever Stan Laurel had inflicted on him.
(2) sometimes, they’re funny on their own. I mean, c’mon, an ancient Egyptian tomb with R2D2 painted on the wall (in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK)?
(3) they’re “in” jokes – if you catch the reference, you get it, and you’re part of the “in” crowd. That’s always self-pleasing. FairyChatMom’s example: it’s not inherently funny, but you understand and “in” on a secret not understood by other viewers. (I recall when THUNDERBALL first opened, there’s an early-on sequence where Sean Connery opens the control-panel on the Austin Martin – a quick ref to GOLDFINGER – causing audiences to laugh. This isn’t inherently funny, it’s not breaking the fourth wall, it’s just an “in” joke that most people caught quickly.)
That’s it, exactly. It even had the example I gave in the OP. I was going to post a bunch more examples, but that link has every one I came up with.
And I think Dexter’s list is pretty good, and I’ll add another point (or maybe a “Subsection A” to point one): It breaks the rules in a fun way. Not only does it take you out of the movie, but it is purposefully breaking or at least warping story continuity by referencing the milieu the story resides within in order to provide a happy connection. Which is a pretty close parallel to many people’s definition of humor.
The very first time I saw that was when Mork made a reference to the movie Popeye. Though in a later episode they ruined it when Robin Williams appeared as himself.
In a semi-related joke, in the final episodes of Mork and Mindy, guest star Joe Regalbuto and Mork are singing the last “Nah Nah Nahs” of “Hey Jude.” Much later in an episode of Murphy Brown, Joe Regalbuto’s character again sings the last “Nah Nah Nahs” of “Hey Jude.” I guess that’s just a call back.
The database at TV Tropes is pretty exhaustive, I’d be amazed if anyone came up with an example that isn’t listed there.
So here’s an example that isn’t listed there (at least, not on the page Kimbal linked to, which means it’s probably in a different sub-section):
In The Sopranos, Dr. Melfi and her family are discussing her patient Tony and gangster films. One of them asks, "What does Tony think of Goodfellas?" Dr. Melfi, of course, is played by Lorraine Bracco, who played Henry Hill’s wife in Goodfellas.
There’s also the scene where a store clerk gets shot in the foot by Christopher, who’s played by Michael Imperioli, whose character “Spider” was shot in the foot in Goodfellas.
Another thing – I haven’t been keeping up with Modern Family recently, so I’m wondering, has there ever been any reference along the lines of: “So Jay, how’d you wind up married, with children?”
Also Giovanni Ribbsi did the same creepy dance he did in Ted.
Another example is when Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce played brothers on The Simpsons there were a ton of Frasier references in the episode. The title was even “The Brother from Another Series”.
On Roseanne, they replaced daughter Becky with a different actress; in fact, they switched them back and forth several times. At the end of one episode the whole cast took part in a self-referential thingie fest (starting at :39). Very blatant, but still funny:
I don’t know if this is what the OP is looking for exactly, but it’s a musical example. The band Old 97s has a song with the lines “Strum it on a Telecaster/Sing it like a train disaster song.” The band’s name, of course, is taken from the from the classic train disaster song “The Wreck of the Old 97.”
Then they ended the show with Ryan and Esposito dressed as a doctor in scrubs and a soldier, reflecting the actors previous roles on General Hospital and Generation Kill.
It’s the little things that take a movie/TV show from fun to fun.
I just saw an episode of Bones, season 5, in which Doctors Sweets, Hodgins and Fisher took shifts waiting in line to get opening-night seats at the premiere of Avatar. Fisher was played by Joel David Moore, who was one of the supporting actors in Avatar…
