The running gag is a popular hallmark of comedy television shows and movies. A running gag is an amusing situation or line that constantly reappears through the course of a movie or television series. Frequently, the humor in a running gag derives entirely from how often it is repeated.

Examples of running gags

Movies

• In Airplane!, Dr. Rumack (Leslie Nielsen) responds to sentences containing the word "surely" with "Don't call me Shirley". Many of the characters are extremely literal: "Cigarette?" "Yes, it is". Common throughout Airplane! (and Spy Hard) are the "what it is/but that's not important right now" gags, where one character defines a term the other has just said, when an explanation relevant to the situation is desired ("A hospital? What is it?" "It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now."). Capt. Clarence Oveur repeatedly mistakes the radio sign-off "Over" as his name.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail includes regular lamentations on the air speed velocity of swallows, beginning with the first scene in the movie. King Arthur (Graham Chapman) always says "five" instead of "three" and has to be corrected. Also, in some scenes someone believes a person is dead when the "dead" or "mortally wounded" person says he is fine and getting better. (This can be especially seen in the "Tale of Sir Launcelot", where it happens not once, not twice, but a full three times!)

Television

• In Match Game, a question frequently has the phrase "he was so xxxx", and the audience replies "How xxxx was he???", and the host finishes reading the question.
• In Monty Python's Flying Circus, a variety of running gags occur within certain episodes, or spanning several episodes. In episode 15, members of the Spanish Inquisition burst into several scenes, proclaiming "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!". Gags running throughout the series include an armoured knight carrying a rubber chicken, the "It's" man, and an announcer in a dinner jacket.
• The comedy series The Fast Show consists almost entirely of running gags. Examples include:
  • mentioning the name of English footballer Chris Waddle in a foreign news show
  • a TV weather forecast in the same show, in which a lady sticks sunshine markers all over the map proclaiming scorchio, because it is always hot in that country. The one time this gag deviated (by the instance of a single cloud, or nimbocumulus), the show ran a special emergency report and declared it a tragedy.
  • an advertisement for a fictional food called Cheesy Peas, a combination of cheese and peas. This was advertised several times throughout the series in increasingly novel forms (Strawberry Flavoured Squeezy Cheesy Peas, for example)
  • a raggedly dressed man getting out of his house and stating this week, I have been mostly eating <some random food>.
  • a man preparing a meal in a kitchen relating his extraordinarily fortunate circumstances as if they were nothing special, and ending with the gross understatement catchphrase ...which was nice.
• In Get Smart, a common running joke is "Don't tell me there's a (gun/knife/spy/whatever)!" to which the reply is always "There's a (gun/knife/spy/whatever)!" followed by "I asked you not to tell me that."; another is to respond to every colossal error ("you just pushed the red button and started World War III, Agent 86") with "sorry about that, chief" or to constantly mention "the old ____ in the ____ trick" (in trivial forms such as "the old gun in the hand trick"). "Agent 13" is always given the worst assignments, such as being a spy concealed in a dustbin or some equally awkward and undesirable place.
• In Pinky and the Brain, the Brain tries to take over the world in every episode, but always fails in some humorous way. The Brain frequently asks Pinky "Are you pondering what I'm pondering?"; Pinky always responds with an amusing non-sequitur beginning with "I think so Brain, but . . . ".
• In Pokémon, the Pokémon Wobuffett, Skitty and Psyduck will sometimes pop out of their Poké Balls at the wrong time, much to the amusement of viewers (but not the Pokémon's trainers).
• In Police Squad!, a shoe-shiner would furtively give information to Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) about the case he was investigating, and then proceed to give detailed professional advice to his next customer who would be e.g. a surgeon, or other unlikely customer. At the end of each show, a parody of the freeze-frame common at the end of 70s TV series was created by the actors trying to stand completely still with a rigid expression, while something else in the scene carried on moving (e.g. coffee being poured overflows).
• In the first five seasons of South Park, Kenny suffers a gruesome death in nearly every episode, to which Stan and Kyle exclaim "Oh my God, they killed Kenny. You bastards!"
• In Dangermouse, DM telling Penfold to "shush".
• The later series of Red Dwarf have a few running gags:
  • Rimmer quotes references to the Space Corps Directives in an attempt to get his own way, but always gets the wrong one. Kryten (who apparently has all the Directives in memory) then states the directive in full, and asks how it is relevant to the situation.
  • The Cat makes a quick suggestion (e.g. We laser our way through!), to which Kryten replies An excellent suggestion, sir, with just two minor drawbacks and lists the drawbacks (e.g. one, there's no power source for the lasers, and two, we don't have any lasers.)
• In Animaniacs, Yakko, Wakko, and Dot would often interrupt sketches whose plots did not involve them by running through the frame, chased by a studio security guard. This is a rare example of a running gag that plays on the meanings of "running".
• A similar gag in Histeria involving a horde of Vikings, in which the Vikings plunder the entire set, leaving it devoid of props and the characters often in their underwear. A similar gag involves a character, usually in the role of a talk-show host, calling for security, and the offending character is carried off by a horde of security guards screaming just like the vikings.
• In the Super Chicken series of cartoons produced by Jay Ward, SC would propose that his sidekick Fred, do something or handle something which was extremely hazardous or possibly fatal. When Fred would inevitably complain about the possibility of injury (to himself), SC would respond, "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred."
• In the Inspector Gadget cartoon Gadget's boss, Chief Quimby, always contacts Gadget with his latest mission in a strange disguise. The mission is written in self-destructing note paper which Gadget will invariably toss away after reading, only to blow up in Quimby's face. This is in reference to the self-destructing tapes used in Mission: Impossible.
• In SpongeBob SquarePants, the recipe for the Krabby Patty, a fast food burger, is never revealed. Extensive security protocols to protect the formula are the subject of several episodes. One episode takes the form of a training video for the Krusty Krab, home of the Krabby Patty. Throughout, SpongeBob begs the narrator for the opportunity to make a Krabby Patty, but is severely punished for not being ready. Just as the narrator is about to explain the recipe, the episode ends.
• In Azumanga Daioh, Sakaki usually ends up getting bit by a cat when trying to pet it.

• In the "Weekend Update" sketches on Saturday Night Live featuring Norm McDonald, Norm would frequently insert a random mention of Frank Stallone into news stories.

Video Games

• In the You Don't Know Jack multiple-choice trivia computer games, "Tootie" is occasionally presented as one of the choices, but is never the right answer.
• In the Monkey Island series, people often distract each other with "Look behind you! A three-headed monkey!"
• Many games in the Final Fantasy series will have two minor characters named after Biggs Darklighter and Wedge Antilles from Star Wars.
• In the Sonic the Hedgehog universe, the character Knuckles the Echidna will very easily be tricked by the main villain Dr. Eggman - all the time- into believing that Sonic and/or the other good guys are are actually the bad guys out to get the Chaos Emeralds that Knuckles is in charge of guarding- ironic, considering Knuckles is somewhat of an antisocial, distrusting loner.

Comics

• In Groo the Wanderer there are a lot of them. For instance, every ship Groo enters will sink soon. Also, frequent references to "cheese dip" and, later, "mulch." Another example was a character calling Groo "slow of mind" early on the story, and almost on the end Groo thinking "what did he mean, 'slow of mind'"? Also, there is a hidden message in every story -- it usually spells "hidden message" or "this is the hidden message."
• In many of the Asterix adventures, a band of pirates meets with disaster at the hands of -- or simply while trying to avoid -- the protagonists.
• In the webcomic called 1/0, the running gag manifested itself as an actual character. It took the form of the word "gag," with arms and legs. Not only a running gag but also a pun, it would occasionally appear during a lull in the main action, running by and shouting meaningless training-related phrases, which were the limit of its intelligence.

Unplanned running gags

Some running gags were not meant as such, but are errors or plot holes that keep repeating themselves, such as the Redshirt problem from Star Trek (TOS). Basically, security officers wore bright red shirts. Every time the main cast brought the frequently unnamed red shirts with them on an away mission, all or all but one of the red shirts would die. Other unplanned running gags for Star Trek include William Shatner's stunt double looking nothing like him, and being rarely hidden from the camera; and all aliens simply being humans with a little make-up and bizarre clothing, (see Klingons).