12 Best Running Gags In TV History

When a TV show lasts for years, viewers feel a certain bond with the series' characters. They begin anticipating little quirks, and even if a series isn't serialized, there are certain things hardcore fans will notice that casual watchers simply won't. Some shows reward those who pay attention by including running gags that evolve over time. These gags start off as a one-off joke, but if it's funny enough, the writers can bring it back in a slightly different context. It grows in hilarity over time, and something that may seem inconsequential to someone flipping through channels will break a long-time viewer into fits of laughter.

Of course, not every running gag lands. The key is to make it feel fresh every time while calling back to a previous joke. The set-up may differ, but the punchline should always remain the same. The running gag is a common concept in virtually every sitcom (at least those that last more than one season), and the following are the best there are. These shows know how to make the same ol' thing feel fresh every time. And if you're just planning on starting any of these shows, these are the jokes you have to look forward to. 

When "South Park" isn't too busy offending people, it's killing off one of the central four cast members. Kenny has been on the show since the very beginning, and he has two main schticks: Everything he says gets garbled by his hoodie, and he dies before the end of the episode. From drinking water after eating too many antacid tablets (which he mistakes for mints) to getting his heart replaced with a baked potato during surgery in the movie "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut," part of the fun of early "South Park" involved seeing what bizarre way Kenny would die. This would typically be followed by Stan and Kyle shouting, "Oh my God, they killed Kenny! You bastard!"

The gag became so integral to the show that "South Park" eventually came up with a canon explanation for it with "The Coon" series of episodes. In it, we learn that Kenny's parents were involved in a cult that worshipped Cthulhu, granting Kenny immortality so that every time he dies, he comes back to life even though no one seems to remember it by the next day.

Sadly, "South Park" doesn't kill Kenny too often these days. Whereas it used to happen practically all the time, we're lucky to get it once a season these days. But that's all right; when it does happen, it makes it all the more surprising and special.

"Arrested Development" was practically designed to be filled with as many running gags as possible. It wasn't the kind of sitcom you could hop into whenever, as you'd likely miss crucial set-ups to jokes, with payoffs coming episodes later, which is probably why it didn't last long on cable TV. But fans knew this show was something special and were treated to all sorts of great recurring bits, like Lucille (Jessica Walter) reacting wildly every time Gene Parmesan (Martin Mull) reveals a new disguise. You could make a "Best TV Running Gags" list from "Arrested Development" alone, but for our money, there's something sublime about Dr. Fishman (Ian Roberts), aka the "literal doctor."

Whenever the Bluth family would visit the hospital, Dr. Fish would deliver some news in roundabout ways. For example, he tells the Bluth family that they lost George Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor), implying that he died when he actually just ran away, so they literally lost him. 

Easily, his best joke comes after Buster (Tony Hale) gets his left hand eaten by a seal. He tells the family Buster's going to be "all right," which they see as a relief, but he then elaborates that since he lost his left hand, he's going to be "all right" from now on. The literal doctor is great because you know what's coming anytime a scene is set in a hospital, and you're just waiting to see how he explains each new ailment. 

The best "Community" episodes are filled with meta commentary on pop culture and copious inside jokes. And jokes don't get much more "inside" than the show spending three seasons paying off a glorious bit.

Season 1's "Communication Studies" sees Professor Slater (Lauren Stamile) refer to Britta (Gillian Jacobs) as "Beetlejuice." Season 2's "Cooperative Calligraphy" has Britta poking fun at how Jeff (Joel McHale) wears Beetlejuice-themed underwear. And finally, season 3's "Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps" has Annie (Alison Brie) bemoaning the Halloween playlist for having podcasts and the "Beetlejuice" soundtrack. As anyone who's seen "Beetlejuice" knows all too well, saying the titular character's name three times summons the demon, and when Annie mentions Beetlejuice, you can see a guy dressed as the ghoul walking behind her. 

The best part of this gag is that it's something you really need to pay attention to catch. It's easy enough to miss the Beetlejuice impersonator walking by the window if you're more focused on Annie, and the episode doesn't make a point to draw attention to him. It's something just for the hardcore fans to catch onto. "Community" is one show where it pays not to look at your phone all the time. 

Some of the best Michael Scott moments on "The Office" come from him saying his favorite thing, "That's what she said." It almost borders on a catchphrase, as Michael (Steve Carell) spouts it off anytime someone says anything that could even remotely be construed as having a sexual connotation. But part of the fun is seeing how other characters respond to his inappropriate jokes. 

"The Deposition" in season 4 sees Michael as part of an investigation where slightly dirty-sounding phrases get him to say it, and he's annoyed at the stenographer for not delivering the line right. There was also the time when Dwight (Rainn Wilson) got in a "That's what she said," much to Michael's annoyance.

Plus, this is one running gag that actually gets emotional by the end. Carell famously left "The Office" toward the end of season 7 but returned for the series finale for Dwight's wedding. When Dwight says, "I can't believe you came," Michael responds with his most famous line. Carell isn't a huge presence in the finale, but he made his brief time count with something that's both funny and heartwarming.

"BoJack Horseman" often gets a reputation for being the "sad horse show," but the reason it's one of the best Netflix original series ever is how it manages to balance sadness with hilarity. "BoJack Horseman" doesn't get enough credit for being a genuinely silly show, and one of the best parts of the show is seeing what kind of odd tongue-twisters and word avalanches characters, usually Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris), come up with. 

Season 4 had a ton of these as Carolyn worked with an actress named Courtney Portnoy (Sharon Horgan), leading to statements like, "Courtney, more importantly, audiences are going to adore your tour de force performance as the forceful denim-clad court reporter in The Court Reporter Sported Jorts, the jet-setting jort-sporting court reporter story." You can't help but wonder how many takes Sedaris needed in the recording booth to get some of these statements right. 

Reportedly, the reason why Princess Carolyn is usually saddled with these absurdly long, complicated phrases is that Sedaris hated saying them so much. As such, the writing team came up with increasingly convoluted ones just to mess with her. She may have supposedly hated recording them, but they were always fun to listen to. 

"The Simpsons" has a ton of great running gags. Many episodes open with Bart writing a new joke on the chalkboard and then the whole Simpson family doing a couch gag. One of the most famous gags involves Homer strangling Bart, which will continue despite reports otherwise. However, there's one highly underrated gag from the early seasons that deserves far more attention because it's so odd and wonderful.

Homer Simpson is known for being a dolt, yet when the show began, he was incredibly knowledgeable about Supreme Court Justices. In Season 4's "Itchy and Scratchy: The Movie," Marge asks him if he wants Bart to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court or a male stripper, to which Homer responds, "Can't he be both, like the late Earl Warren." And in Season 5's "Homer Goes to College," Lisa lists off some notable nerds, including Supreme Court Justice David Souter, prompting Homer to say, "Not Souter!"

Homer having a vested interest in Supreme Court Justices doesn't make much sense, but it's hilarious. Most of the time, Homer's jokes boil down to him being stupid, but his rare moments of brilliance are so unexpected that you can't help but crack up. 

Definitely the saddest (yet still very funny) running gag on this list involves the slow descent into poverty of Rickety Cricket (David Hornsby). The character was introduced in season 2's "The Gang Exploits a Miracle" as a priest who used to have a crush on Dee (Kaitlin Olson). He quits the priesthood after she starts flirting with him, but she wasn't actually interested. From that point forward, every time we check in with Cricket, he's always worse for wear, becoming homeless and disfigured due to his frequent run-ins with the gang.

Easily, one of the worst things the gang has ever done on "Always Sunny" is to completely ruin this man's life. Although, to be fair, that's pretty much the case for any recurring character the gang runs into regularly. The Lawyer (Brian Unger) loses an eye and is sentenced to prison after being framed by the gang. Bill Ponderosa (Lance Barber) falls off the wagon heavily after partying with Frank (Danny DeVito). It's like commentary that whoever is even remotely in the main characters' orbit will suffer because that's how awful they are as human beings. But no one has suffered quite like Cricket, who still regularly gets roped into the gang's schemes.

"All in the Family" made history by becoming the first American TV show to include the sound of a toilet flush. It was far too taboo before then, with even the image of a toilet being a rare sight, but the sound, indicating that someone had used said toilet, was a big deal. And it would become a recurring gag as "All in the Family" continued. 

From that point forward, people would occasionally visit the Bunker household and ask where Archie (Carroll O'Connor) was when he was out of the room. Perfectly on cue, a toilet (or "turlet" as Archie would call it) would flush in the background, indicating how Archie was on the commode. It never got old, as Archie was often preoccupied during a big event. These days, sitcoms get away with far worse toilet humor, but a chronic toilet flush was about as risqué as a sitcom could get in the 1970s. 

Captain Raymond Holt (Andre Braugher) was the straight man on "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," acting calmly when everyone else around him was bouncing off the walls. But every so often, he would literally become a straight man when he needed to go undercover and pretend to be heterosexual. Sometimes he adopts the persona of "Straight Holt" to charm a woman he needs to get something out of, or when he went into witness protection, he pretended to be straight to some of his elderly gal pals to fly under the radar. 

Braugher's deadpan delivery was perfect for pretending to lust after women, often referring to them as having "heavy breasts," which he liked while supposedly straight. Or he'd talk about how his favorite part of a woman's anatomy is the thigh gap. Mostly, Straight Holt felt like an excuse for the writers to make Holt say the dirtiest things imaginable, and the only thing that made it better was watching his subordinates react to this whole new side of their captain that somehow fooled everyone else. 

One would assume that after years of being a Spanish substitute teacher, Peggy Hill (Kathy Najimy) would pick up some more Spanish by verbal osmosis or something. But it's a good thing that never happened because her inability to speak Spanish well is one of the best running gags on "King of the Hill." 

It's made all the better by Peggy insisting she's fluent. It's not enough for her to know a few simple phrases; she has to act like she can have full-on conversations with native Spanish speakers. Most of the time, this merely leads to some humorous misunderstandings, but then, there's the "Lupe's Revenge" episode, where she accidentally kidnaps a young Mexican girl because she doesn't understand what she's saying.

The jokes aren't just that Peggy pronounces Spanish words incorrectly. There's a cognitive dissonance, perhaps, associated with her believing she needs to be just as good as a regular teacher even though she's a substitute. It's not only funny but also reveals something deeply personal about Peggy. 

There's no denying the one true Prank Sinatra. Winston (Lamorne Morris) became known as the prank master on "New Girl," but you never knew what you were going to wind up with. He had a habit of either doing something totally inconsequential, like putting a blueberry in Schmidt's (Max Greenfield) cereal, or going too hard, like registering Nick (Jake Johnson) as a sex offender.

Winston's pranks brought an extra layer of chaos to already chaotic situations, and it all culminated in his greatest feat. The "New Girl" finale sees Nick and Jess (Zooey Deschanel) getting evicted from the famous loft, and when all is said and done and they're ready to leave, Winston reveals how he conducted the most elaborate prank ever by convincing them they needed to leave when they didn't. It's a hilarious reveal that brings back so many great supporting characters from throughout the show's run, and even though they don't need to actually leave, they do because that's growing up is about pursuing the unknown. Ending a beloved sitcom at the peak of a running gag is about as good as it gets. 

Plenty of sitcoms have running gags. They're harder to come by in other forms of media, especially talk shows, but Paul Rudd managed to get a great one going on Conan O'Brien's various shows over the years. Starting in 2004 on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," Rudd appeared to discuss the "Friends" finale, and instead of showing a clip from it, he showed a scene from the 1988 sci-fi film "Mac and Me," which is basically an "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" rip-off about an alien befriending a young boy. The scene in question sees wheelchair-bound Eric (Jade Calegory) fall off a cliff, and when he lands in the water below, the titular Mac appears, looking befuddled. 

It was hilarious the first time, and Rudd kept on doing it. Even when he went on "Conan" to promote "Ant-Man," he inserted footage of himself as Ant-Man into the "Mac and Me" clip as a way to throw everyone off guard. And even changing mediums hasn't slowed down the "Mac and Me" assault. 

When O'Brien stepped away from his late-night talk show, Rudd later appeared on his podcast, "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend," and still played the "Mac and Me" scene, even though listeners wouldn't have been able to see it. Although that's probably a moot point because any fans of O'Brien are probably well familiar with the joke at this point. It's a running bit that transcends a single show, and we hope it keeps going for decades more.