10 Long TV Running Jokes You Never Even Noticed
Peaky Blinders' Tommy is intentionally never shown eating on-screen.
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00:00So with the longer-form nature of TV that we have today, it allows storytellers to set
00:04up running gags that don't merely just run for a mere two hours, but whole seasons,
00:09and perhaps the entire length of a multi-season TV show itself. These 10 shows, from universally
00:15acclaimed dramas to goofy animated comedy series, all offered up deviously sneaky running gags that
00:21you almost certainly didn't notice, at least not on your first viewing. So let's take a look at
00:25them as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 Long-Running TV Gags That You've
00:30Never Even Noticed.
00:3110. CJ's Goldfish Bowl Contains Episode-Specific Props – The West Wing
00:37The West Wing boasts an especially creative and subtle running gag which endured from its first
00:41season through until its seventh and final one. Now, you might recall this in one of the show's
00:46first episodes, Danny buys CJ a goldfish for her office, but the prop master for the series
00:52decided to go one step further by ensuring that new episodes had a thematically appropriate new
00:56prop inside the goldfish bowl. For example, a Christmas episode had a Christmas tree in the
01:01bowl, a Capital Punishment episode had a fake dead fish floating in it, and when there were
01:06leaks at the White House, there's a plumbing pipe placed in the bowl. There are almost 50 different
01:11versions of the gag throughout the West Wing, and yet it is just subtle enough that you couldn't
01:16be blamed for missing it.
01:189. Rick Never Wears A Seatbelt – Rick and Morty
01:21Rick and Morty is another show that rewards those who pay close enough attention. Though,
01:26here's a running gag so slight and unassuming that you might have spaced on it entirely,
01:30and that is that Rick never wears a seatbelt. Aside from the brief appearances of Detox Rick
01:36and Pickle Rick, Rick doesn't wear a seatbelt throughout the show, a nod towards his cavalier
01:40attitude towards his own safety, and to be kind, his generally suicidal levels of despondence.
01:46Rick's refusal to wear a seatbelt isn't ever directly brought up in the show itself,
01:50but it's nevertheless a neat morsel of character shading which confirms the kind of place he's in.
01:55Only in his alternate, healthier states is Rick ever shown wearing a seatbelt.
02:00Now that is character development.
02:028. The Riker Chair Maneuver – Star Trek The Next Generation
02:07It's entirely possible to have watched all 178 episodes of Star Trek The Next Generation
02:12and never noticed the tendency for Riker to sit down on chairs in a rather unusual way,
02:18straddling them almost as though he's mounting a horse. In more recent years,
02:21the Riker Chair Maneuver became a bit of a meme as fans started to take notice,
02:26and yet, despite how distracting it seems in retrospect, so many millions of fans never
02:30once picked up on it themselves. There's actually a practical reason for this move, though.
02:35Quill Wheaton confirmed on Reddit that Jonathan Frakes suffered a back injury while moving
02:40furniture prior to working on The Next Generation, and so this peculiar means of sitting was actually
02:45an attempt to take off some of the strain on his back. Similarly, Riker can often be seen leaning,
02:50or otherwise bracing himself against objects throughout the series, all of it in an attempt
02:55to prevent further aggravation of his real-life existing injury. Despite its basically medical
03:00purposes, that hasn't stopped the internet embracing it in recent years as a charmingly
03:04odd character trait. 7. Reoccurring Use of the Song Daybreak – Community
03:09Community is unquestionably one of the most meta and self-aware TV shows ever,
03:14and though eagle-eyed fans are committed to catching every last split-second gag,
03:18there's one hiding in plain sight throughout the series that you may have well missed.
03:22This is in large part because it's not something that can be seen,
03:25so scouring every inch of a single shot won't actually help you. You see, the instrumental
03:29jazz-tuned Daybreak can be heard on no less than a dozen different Community episodes between
03:34seasons 3 and 6, and characters are heard humming it in separate episodes. It also plays on a radio,
03:40and in an elevator, amongst other situations. According to the creator Dan Harmon, the reason
03:45for this is that the production spent so much money securing licensing rights to play the police's
03:49Roxanne in the legendary season 3 episode, Remedial Chaos Theory, that the season's music
03:54budget had mostly been eaten up, and so Daybreak was used to fill the gaps for the season, with
04:00Harmon ultimately deciding to run with the ball and turn it into a wider Community gag that you
04:04probably had no idea about.
04:056. Tyrion's Half-Told Joke – Game of Thrones
04:10If you're not a hardcore Game of Thrones fan and have only seen each of the episodes once,
04:14then you wouldn't have much hope of noticing this sly running gag subtly deployed over the
04:18course of eight seasons. On three separate occasions, Tyrion Lannister attempts to tell
04:23a joke about bringing a jackass and a honeycomb into a brothel, but each time he's interrupted
04:28before he's able to finish it. It first shows up in his trial in season one's A Golden Crown,
04:32and he attempts again to tell the joke in season six's No One, but is cut short by a ringing bell,
04:38while his third and final effort in the series is in the finale The Iron Throne,
04:42where the scene simply cuts away as he starts to tell the joke.
04:45Now, some of Thrones' more obsessive fans did catch wind of this. However,
04:49they were infuriated by the lack of closure and attempted to come up with their own answers,
04:53while the Huffington Post even asked some comedians to complete the punchline.
04:57Again, if you're not a hardcore Thrones fan, this is incredibly easily missed,
05:01especially if you've not revisited the series since it ended. Committing to the
05:04bit three times over an eight-year period is impressively sneaky.
05:095. The Secret McBane Movie Hidden Throughout The Show – The Simpsons
05:13The Simpsons is, of course, jam-packed with running gags, both blatant and subtle,
05:18from Bart's prank-calling Moe's tavern to the reoccurring crow that always caws distinctively
05:22during any establishing shot of Springfield's nuclear power plant. But an altogether more
05:27ingenious running joke occurs between the second and fourth seasons, where five separate episodes
05:32show clips of the fake movie McBane starring the action hero Rainier Wolfcastle. Viewed across
05:38three years, the clips seem simple enough. But more recently, as more fans began to binge The
05:43Simpsons, they started to realize that these clips all form part of a continuous narrative
05:47and are, in effect, a truncated version of the McBane movie. The four minutes of footage are
05:53a McBane short film, showing McBane's best pal and partner being killed by the corrupt Senator
05:58Mendoza, and McBane's blood-soaked quest to avenge his fallen friend. We all remember McBane,
06:03but these excerpts are by themselves such typical parodies of corny action movies that most fans
06:08didn't even realize that they were connected in a kind of coherent way. Pretty incredible, right?
06:134. Pineapples Everywhere – Psyche
06:16Hit detective comedy series Psyche touted a most bizarre running gag across its 120 episodes
06:22that a pineapple would appear in some form in almost every single episode. Perhaps it might be
06:27a whole pineapple, mere slices of one, a pineapple smoothie, a pineapple pizza, or even just images
06:32of pineapples somewhere within the frame, but the commitment to the bit is nothing if not admirable.
06:37Fans cottoned on enough that a website was made to track the pineapple's location in each episode,
06:43all 170 of them, amounting to an average of almost 1.5 per episode. There's never been
06:49any official explanation for the gag beyond the showrunners doing it to amuse themselves,
06:53and it caught on enough with the hardcore fans that eventually it would have been a crying
06:56shame to stop it. Sometimes a running gag is its own weird reward, whether it makes sense or not.
07:023. The Gang Always Reuses the Same Video Tape – It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
07:08It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is basically built on the foundation of in-jokes and running
07:12gags. Though one of the sneakier ones involves the gang always using the same damn grotty VHS tape
07:18to record and display their latest audiovisual scheme. The ads for Fight Milk and Kitten Mittens,
07:23Dee's Invigoron video, Dennis and Mac's Fake Terrorist video, and so many more were all shot
07:28on the same tape, with each recording over the previous one. Several times throughout the show
07:32when their latest video is playing, we'll see scattered fragments of their previous ones at the
07:36beginning and the end of the tape. It's easily missed if you're not paying total attention,
07:40but a hilarious ongoing callback if you do. Hopefully they'll never ditch this gag,
07:45because the longer it goes on, and the further that we as a society stray away from VHS,
07:49the funnier it actually becomes.
07:512. Tommy Shelby Never Eats – Peaky Blinders
07:55Peaky Blinders might not be a show where you'd expect to see anything in the way of a major
07:59reoccurring joke, and that's likely why this running gag is rather on the sly side.
08:04While recently promoting the show's final season in an interview with the BBC,
08:08star Cillian Murphy confessed a gag that's been part of the show since the very beginning,
08:12that his character, Tommy Shelby, is never seen eating on screen. Obviously,
08:16it's a given that Shelby, being a living human and all that, does eat, but Murphy confirmed that
08:21once the production team realised that Tommy hadn't been seen eating in the first two seasons,
08:25that they opted to keep it going for the remainder. He said,
08:27I remember we had gotten through the first two series and then we realised that Tommy
08:31had never eaten. We've never seen Tommy eat. Like, he's sat down at tables,
08:35but he's never consumed a morsel. So we then made it a kind of running gag.
08:39Throughout the 36 hours of television, Tommy Shelby never consumes anything,
08:43except I think once he consumes a sprig of mint when he's with his son. In its own way,
08:48it subtly implies Tommy's obsession with his life's work, something a small quarter of fans
08:52picked up on years ago, but which was only recently confirmed as an intentional character
08:56flourish by Murphy and the creator of the series. 1. Foreshadowing Buster Losing His Hand
09:02Arrested Development Perhaps the single most memorable
09:05moment in Arrested Development happens in the season two episode, Out on a Limb, where poor
09:10Buster Bluth has his hand bitten off by a loose seal, with the missing limb then being replaced
09:15by a hook. Hilariously though, Buster's impending dismemberment was foreshadowed almost an entire
09:20year in advance, with a series of gags throughout the latter part of season one and the first half
09:25of season two. These include a flashback to Michael performing in the play The Trial of
09:30Captain Hook, Buster declaring this party is going to be off the hook, a mention of a seal
09:34attack on the news, Buster playing a claw game and winning a toy seal, and Buster sitting on a
09:39bench which reads ARM OFF. Obviously it says more than that, but the way he's sitting obscures the
09:44rest of the text. These are just a few examples, but of course nobody read into these gags on an
09:49initial viewing, because nobody knew the fate awaiting Buster. Even on repeat watches, most of
09:53these sight gags and one-liners come so thick and fast that you might well miss them, and that makes
09:58them utterly brilliant. And there we go my friends, those were the ten longest running TV gags you
10:03never even noticed. I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it
10:06down in the comments section below. As always, I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on
10:10Twitter at RetroJWithA0, or you can swing by Live and Let's Dice, where I do all of my streaming
10:15outside of work, and it'd be great to see you over there. But before I go, I just want to say one
10:19thing. Hope you're treating yourself well with love and respect, my friend, because you deserve
10:23all of the best things in life, and do not let anything or anyone else tell you otherwise,
10:27right? You're a massive ledge, and we need to go out there and smash it. As always, I've been
10:32Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.