Cartoon Conversations #4: My Top 10 Running Gags in Cartoons

Welcome to Cartoon Conversations, now in list format! It’s the semi-regular written essay series where I make a list about an aspect of the animated medium to examine what works, what doesn’t, why, and why it matters because I’ve already kind of committed myself to this whole ‘make your shtick that you like cartoons’ thing and lists are inherently easier to write.

This time, I’m examining a tried and true trope of the cartoon industry: the running gag. While not exclusive to cartoons, the versatility and speed that animation provides makes it so that the best examples of this humorist device are found outside of live-action. After all, the power of a running gag doesn’t come from sheer repetition, but from escalation to extreme degrees. And no other form of media does extreme like cartoons can. Often beginning with a single, innocuous joke that just happens to land particularly hard, running gags are often used in cartoons to establish new or continuing character dynamics, provide a much-needed break from tension, and can even further narrative or set a new tone for the entire show.

Now, the problem with this list, and any top ten list to be honest, is that the honorable folks of Watchmojo.com have basically done EVERY POSSIBLE TOP TEN LIST UNDER THE GOD DAMN SUN. And for every top ten list they have, they have a second list of another top ten so-and-so. They’ve pretty much cornered the market on the very concept of a top ten list. Lo and behold, they already have a top ten list of running gags in cartoons. So just to avoid accusations of plagiarism, yes, there are few crossovers between my list and theirs because they have some smart cookies working for them over there at Watchmojo. Without further ado, here’s my list of the ten best running gags in cartoons.

10. “Stop quoting your dad’s law commercials!” – Big Mouth

Starting off my list is a relative newcomer to the cartoon scene. ‘Big Mouth’ is the Netflix-produced brainchild of master comedians John Mulaney and Nick Kroll who respectively voice Andrew and Nick, two boys from upstate New York being thrown crotch-first into the deep end of the puberty pool. The show is a masterpiece of perspective humor and features one of the best running gags of recent years. It centers around the character of Jay, a hyperactive, super-sexual, wannabe magician teen boy voiced by Jason Mantzoukas. Raised in a broken household, the main source of Jay’s skewed and often offensive worldview seems to be his father, Guy, a sleazy greaseball lawyer with a history of defending sketchy clients. For example, he once defended Cotton Candy Brandy, the first booze made for kids by southeast Asian child slaves.

While only one has ever been shown in the series, Guy produces several commercials to promote his cheap law practice and riddles them with incendiary phrases that only an unrepentant jackass would utter. However, Jay has a bad habit of quoting his father’s ads, prompting other, more sensible characters to tell him “stop quoting your dad’s law commercials.” Due to his youth and general naiveté, it’s clear that Jay does this more out of obliviousness to the implications of his words than actual agreement with his neglectful and misogynistic father, but that only makes it funnier when he drops pearls of wisdom like “You guys know DNA is a hoax created by gay scientists, right?” and “Hey man, a mouth is a mouth.” Each reference to Guy’s commercials further exaggerates what a scummy person he is. Eventually, the joke evolves beyond Jay to other characters referencing Guy’s advertisements separate from his involvement in a scene. It’s become shorthand for someone doing or wanting a selfish or unethical thing that continues to cement just what an unredeemable person Guy is. ‘Big Mouth’ is still a young show, only two seasons and a mini-movie in at the time of this writing, but I’m eager to see this joke continue to grow and see how far Mulaney and Kroll are willing to take it.

9. “For Canada!” – Fugget About It

While not an underappreciated show, the Hulu-produced cartoon ‘Fugget About It’ doesn’t quite get the attention it deserves. It’s far from perfect, in fact you can see exactly what was stolen and tweaked from other, more popular cartoons, but the show, about a zany family of former gangsters forced to relocate to suburban Saskatchewan, still had a few saving graces that elevated it above its station. One of these diamonds in the rough was the character Special Agent Strait McCool, an uber-competent but gullible Mountie who plays everything by the book and loves Canada so much that his patriotism gives him superpowers.

McCool is almost never seen entering or exiting a scene without his beloved, pure-white horse, named Horse. Upon leaving any of his clandestine meetings with the series protagonist Jimmy Falcone, McCool enthusiastically leaps onto Horse, rears him back, shouts out “For Canada!”, inserts a scene-relevant declaration, and then zooms offscreen like a Canadian Speedy Gonzalez. My personal favorites are “For Canada! And the fact that we’re not Australia!”, “For Canada! Where you can live as you want so long as you keep it down!”, and “For Canada! Where no one has fun after 9 PM!” While this could be seen as a catchphrase, which by definition would exclude it from being a running gag, the fact that McCool switches up the second half of the phrase differentiates each iteration of the joke enough that you look forward to hearing how one particular version will resolve. There are also the times where the formula is broken, like the episode in which McCool loses Horse due to gambling debt and is forced to gallop miserably offscreen himself, which are not only funny in that they violate an established joke, but prove that there is an established joke to violate. While the show isn’t a pristine example of classic cartoons, the “For Canada!” gag is funny enough to shine higher than the show’s quality and that in and of itself deserves a place on this list.

8. The Boating Test – Spongebob Squarepants

For most children of my generation and younger, ‘Spongebob Squarepants’ may be our first introduction to cartoons that are meant to entertain more than educate. Ironically, the show’s late creator Stephen Hillenburg (R.I.P.) wanted the show to inform a young audience about the beauty and complexity of marine life. While it’s hard to say whether or not he was successful in this endeavor, he at least created a silly show that kids have loved for the better part of twenty years now and kept prolific voice actor Tom Kenny employed and relevant for the same period. I may talk about ‘Spongebob’ in more detail in a later edition of Cartoon Conversations, for now I’m going to focus on a particular running joke that has been featured in the series from the beginning.

Spongebob, a character of bottomless optimism, is perpetually trying to get his boating license from Mrs. Puff’s Boating School but his every attempt ends in disaster, each more destructive and hilarious than the last. Despite his many failures, his unending cheer and self-confidence has led him to retake the test at least 38 separate times and it is indicated that he’s made other bids offscreen. Entire episodes have been dedicated to chronicling the various methods by which he fails his exam, ranging from an ill-timed anxiety attack to feeling guilty over cheating to accepting sub-par tutoring from his conniving boss. This gag has gone on so long that it has seamlessly transitioned into another running joke of the show: Mrs. Puff going to extreme lengths to somehow get Spongebob to pass his test so she can finally be rid of him. And just like Spongebob’s many undertakings, she too has experienced repeated busts that have left her trapped in a cycle with her most enthusiastic and incompetent student. Now that’s how you can identify a joke’s running power.

7. Alliteration/Rhymes – Bojack Horseman

Have you seen Netflix’s ‘Bojack Horseman’? Why not?! Go see Netflix’s ‘Bojack Horseman’! This article will still be here when you’ve seen all current seasons of the streaming giant’s animated tentpole. Needless to say, ‘Bojack Horseman’ is far and away one of the best written and most insightful shows in the zeitgeist and anyone not watching it is all the worse for it. The tale of a depressed, alcoholic actor who starred in a family sitcom in the 90s’ (and is also an anthropomorphic horse) is not only hilarious but provides some of the most fitting visual depictions of substance abuse, mental illness, and the Hollywood cultural machine ever put on a screen. And the show’s writers are so aware of how unapologetic and impactful their show is that they seemingly chose to throw in a running gag that is, in and of itself, a running gag.

Every now and then on the show, a character will unintentionally spout a long alliteration or rhyme that fits into the episode’s narrative but is so abrupt and funny that it almost always breaks whatever tension is meant to be built. It feels like the writers are building themselves a handicap because everything else on their show is so raw and fresh, but then they just turned the handicap into a perfect running joke throughout the series just to prove they could. Any serious scene could be interrupted by the sudden introduction of rhymes like:

And that’s only a taste of the kind of clever wordplay that the writers adore peppering into their scripts that we mere mortals get to enjoy every couple of episodes.

6. Roger’s Personas – American Dad

‘American Dad’ has several stellar running gags that could earn a place on this list. Jokes like the 1970s’ action show parody ‘Mind Quad!’, the fake detective agency of Wheels and the Legman, and the saga of Roger’s cursed golden poop are all brilliantly paced and plotted in their own right. But only one running joke has woven itself so deep into the fabric of the show that it has become an integral part of it. In the early seasons of the show, the bizarre, alcoholic alien Roger lived in the attic of the Smith household and couldn’t leave without risking being discovered, endangering his adopted family. However, he soon learned that he could don elaborate disguises to enjoy public life. Over time, these simple disguises started to develop their own personalities that Roger would meld into whenever he wore them. In various episodes, the show has retconned itself to reveal that Roger has been using different personas to party with humans for the better part of a hundred years.

Roger’s personas number in the triple digits and he’s been using them in the show so long that the Smith family, and by extension the audience, has just kind of learned to accept them. He has so many and dives so deep into them that more than once Roger himself has forgotten that certain characters are actually just one of his alter egos. One or two of them have even developed entire lives and reputations outside of Roger, accruing jobs, families, and even enemies. Needless to say, these personas often have hilarious names and outrageous personalities. The most famous is probably Ricky Spanish, a sociopath so sadistic and chaotic that anytime a character even says his name, a cutaway shows one of his heinous acts of villainy. Other notable aliases include Jenny Fromdabloc, a promiscuous teenage girl from Jersey, Horse Renoir, a stoner parody of Dog the Bounty Hunter, and Tearjerker, a Bond-style criminal mastermind. All of his personas are unique, but they almost always contain a shred of Roger’s catty, selfish, and judgmental self at their core, allowing him to unleash his vitriolic sass against anyone at any time from any given disguise.

5. All of It – Archer

Watchmojo named the animated James Bond parody ‘Archer’ in their list, but specified that their pick was the titular character’s obsession with the classic Kenny Loggins anthem “Danger Zone.” But pulling the scope back on the show reveals a key truth: ‘Archer’ is pretty much built on running gags and they’re all too funny to pick just one above the others. It’s not the only show like that, by the time it was booted off television ‘Arrested Development’ was just one running joke after another for twenty-two minutes at a time, but ‘Archer’ stands out from that particular crowd because it makes a point to evolve all of its gags over time. For example, one of the most prominent gags is that the entire cast of characters will giggle “phrasing” anytime someone says something that could be misheard as sexual. At a certain point, the characters’ instinct to use the joke fades, which results in a new running gag of characters questioning “are we done with ‘phrasing?’ Is that still a thing?”

Among the dozens of running jokes in ‘Archer,’ the best are probably the aforementioned “Danger Zone,” the sarcastic Archer family motto of “Do you want ants?! Because that’s how you get ants!”, Archer screaming “LANA!” louder and louder when his partner and love interest is ignoring him, his love of elaborate voicemail pranks that often lead his callers on for several minutes before they realize they’re listening to a pre-recorded message, characters swearing they had a witty one-liner that they conveniently forget when the moment arises leaving them to mutter only “I swear I had something for this,” and Archer’s penchant for making sure he uses the term ‘literally’ literally. Again, there’s a lot of them on this show. Watchmojo even has an additional list of the ten best running gags from ‘Archer,’ which only covers about a third of the running gags that make up the bulk of the series. But the more running gags there are in a given show, the more likely they are to gel together until it becomes difficult to grade one against another, which speaks to their collective hilarity.

4. The Chicken Fight – Family Guy

As loath as I am to stroke Seth MacFarlane’s ego more than necessary, I’m kinda forced to include his shows twice on this list because the epic chicken fights in ‘Family Guy’ are slapstick comedy gold and the epitome of why running jokes work better in cartoons. In practice, the joke is pretty simple. Peter, the patriarch of the central Griffin family, has a long-running feud with an unexplained giant, sentient chicken named Ernie which runs so deep and so vitriolic that whenever they see each other they lock eyes, squint at each other, and proceed to throw themselves into an uber-violent and often graphic fist fight that takes them to increasingly insane extremes until the Ernie seems to die at Peter’s hand. Most times, he is then shown to have survived their brawl, thus promising that their epic war is destined to continue the next time they’re both invited to the same party. All of this started because Ernie once gave Peter an expired coupon.

Due to the show’s internal logic, their fights have taken them to a cloning facility where they both created an army of themselves to fight the other, back in time and fought on top of the DeLorean from ‘Back to the Future III,’ to space where they sent a shuttle careening into the ISS with their chaos, and to a flaming oil rig where they beat each other with pieces of flaming metal. And all of that was in the same fight. Their bouts get only more and more creative in their violence each time, but by now the running joke of their fights has gone on so long that the writers feel comfortable removing the chicken from the equation. Their crossover episode with ‘The Simpsons,’ climaxes with a ‘chicken fight’ between Peter and Homer where they both become nuclear-powered demigods who end up bringing down an alien spaceship with their blows. The fights are only limited by the writers’ imaginations and they are dead-set on topping themselves every time. God bless violent, animated extremes.

3. The Bastards Kill Kenny – South Park

Some running gags grow so big and so popular that an entire episode can be devoted to expanding or highlighting its accomplishments within the context of its show. But then there are the running gags that an entire three-episode arc which builds upon the joke to the point of absurdity and elevates its nature to make it the singular best part of an already great show. Enter ‘South Park.’ Foregoing how some may feel about the nature of the show (I will probably end up doing a Cartoon Conversations article on it in the future), one of its first and most prominent gags was that Kenny, one of the four central characters of the show who was famous for always being muffled by his orange coat, would die in numerous episodes for the first twelve seasons. This would prompt his friend Stan to cry out “Oh my God! They killed Kenny!” to which their buddy Kyle would scream “You bastards!” Creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker later revealed in an interview that they were the “bastards” Kyle refers to. Kenny’s creative and often hilarious deaths were made even funnier by the fact that he would simply show up in the next episode with no explanation as to how he was resurrected and why nobody seemed to notice his miraculous recovery.

Not only did Watchmojo also recognize this as one of the best running jokes in cartoons, but they even have a top ten list of the best Kenny kills, many of which I agree with as well. My personal favorites include being crushed by a falling satellite, random spontaneous combustion, and being pecked to death by turkeys. I refuse to give the unfamiliar any context to any of those. The running gag was essentially retired in the show’s twelfth season where it culminated in the famous Cthulhu arc. With the kids of South Park parodying superheroes, Kenny reveals that his many deaths in the show aren’t just parts of a gag, but are actually canon and he is the only person who can recall his multiple lives and morbid executions. When the 2010 BP oil spill summons Cthulhu, Kenny discovers that his unusual power is a result of his parents being worshipers of the eldritch god when he was conceived and that every time he dies, his parents rebirth him, tuck him into bed, and he is back to his regular self by the next morning. Kenny’s quest to uncover the truth of his power made up a significant portion of the three-part story and it’s hilarious to watch his journey fall apart around him due to a climactic twist that I won’t ruin here. The show has used this joke fleetingly since, but it’s always a welcome and familiar joke that fans consider integral to the fabric of the show.

2. The Couch Gag – The Simpson

Watchmojo has this legendary gag as their number one pick and I’m hard pressed to defend my decision to have it in the number two spot. At the end of the day, my placement comes down to the fact that, despite ‘The Simpsons’s famous couch gag being one of the longest running and most recognizable running gags in the history of television, they are not as consistent in their hilarity as some other gags on this list. Nevertheless, the sheer legacy of this joke ranks it suitably high. For those who have lived under a rock since 1989, the gag takes place in at the end of every single intro to the show. While the celebrated theme to ‘The Simpsons’ plays, the titular family is shown going through the ups and downs of their average day, culminating in them running into the living room together where they attempt to congregate on the couch in front of their television only to be interrupted by some manner of cartoonish absurdism.

Over the 600+ episodes of the show, the couch gag has been used to do pretty much anything. It’s parodied everything from 70s’ action movies to Tolkien, it’s been used as a music video for multiple pop tunes across different generations, and guest directors and animators like Guilermo Del Toro, Dan Harmon, and Hanna-Barbera have come on board just to do the running bit. Watchmojo has a list of the top ten couch gags as well, but given that there are literally more couch gags then there are days in the year, I’d like to add the AOL parody, the Gumby Claymation-style intro, and the 2009 funeral for the couch bit to the conversation. But the sheer number of couch gags over the years has ensured that it’s as hit and miss as any long-term joke. It has its highlights, and to be sure the best couch gags are some of the most hilarious animated content on television, but it has enough duds that I can’t in good conscience put it in the number one spot. I reserved that one for the most important gag in the history of slapstick animation.

1. Running Doors – Scooby-Doo

The running door gag, also called Scooby-Doo Doors, actually predates modern cartoons by a considerable margin. Their first recorded use was in French farces of the late 1800s’, a predecessor of vaudeville and slapstick. It’s first use in film came in 1930s’ but was difficult to edit in live-action and soon became a rarity in physical comedies. However, in 1969 Hanna-Barbera debuted ‘Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!’ which featured repeated chase scenes where the teenage crew of Mystery Inc. would lead the monster of the week into a hallway with several doors. The monster would chase the team into a door only for them to emerge from another, sometimes on the opposite side of the hallway, with no explanation as to how they managed to get from point A to point B.

The use of the running gag in ‘Scooby-Doo’ was originally a practical decision. The repeated and simple movements used in the bit were cheap and easy to make. Hanna-Barbera was famous for its tight budgets and schedules, so animators found an excuse to throw it into every episode they could. However, as time went on and their per-episode budget increased, the company started to get creative with the bit. In the fifty years since the gag first become associated with Scooby-Doo, innovations to the joke have included the sudden appearance of other Hanna-Barbera characters in a brief and unexpected crossover, characters running back into the hall with bizarre props that change the dynamic of the chase, and the same character coming out of two or more doors at the same time to face a mirror image of themselves.

In the modern day, the Scooby-Doo Doors are something of a comedy rite of passage. They’ve been used by everyone from Monty Python to ‘The Peanuts’ to pretty much every cartoon made in the last fifty years to even ‘Doctor Who.’ It’s even shown up in some anime shows. And yet, to this day, the best use of the classic absurdist bit is still the Scooby-Doo franchise, which still includes it in most of their direct-to-DVD movies. That lasting power, coupled with its vast cultural influence and comedic legacy, is why the running doors are my number one running gag in cartoons.

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