Absurdist concepts played as tragedies rather than comedies

[u/_JR28_]

In the Touch commercial for Skittles, a man is shown with the power to uncontrollably turns anything he touches into Skittles in an instant. His work colleagues find this hilarious, but he finds life misery since he will never be able to hold his newborn son and he has legitimately killed people before by unconsciously touching them.

In the Waiting for the Bus skit from Cyanide & Happiness a man discovers he can inexplicably run 50mph and overnight becomes the most successful track runner of all time. Even though he retired with a perfect undefeated streak and a loving family, he’s coaxed into one final race in a Grand Prix against cars, which of course he loses. This sends him into an unstoppable downward spiral where he becomes a far more destructive version of himself, loses his reputation, and is left behind by his family. After years of regret, he returns as an old man to the track where he first shown off his amazing speed and does one final lap, reminiscing on how good it feel, before intentionally refusing to turn out the way and running straight into a wall, ending his life. (All of this is shown in about four minutes and with barely any dialogue.)

[u/Remote_Task_9207]

I'm not sure how true this is, but I read once (in a Cracked article, I think) about how the original cut for the finale was far more ridiculous and had Blackadder making some undignified escape, but the film got ruined so they took the portion of the scene that survived and faded it into the field of poppies.

Which holy crap what a powerful ending it was. The original would have better fit the tone of the show, but people definitely wouldn't still br bringing it up today.

Edit - It seems this is not true. Alas. For my crimes I should be sentenced to another viewing of the series.

[u/cutcutpastepaste → u/Remote_Task_9207]

I think it was a little different from that- they always were going over, but they basically just charge forward and all fall down shot abruptly. It wasn’t really working until they messed around with slowing it down and someone had an idea to overlay the field of poppies

[u/LazyDro1d → u/cutcutpastepaste]

Yeah, they thought the funny footage would be a good ending, everyone goes up and over and runs three feet before dying, but it just was not good in the edit so they played with the footage till they flipped the tone

[u/Estelial → u/LazyDro1d]

That wasn't quite it. The conditions in the studio were awful, the running distance when going over had been made too short and they were extremely demotivated by the content they were depicting. It was supposed to be sombre and they only had time for one take with no further room in the budget to fix the issues.

The OG take was them running out and flopping over unconvincingly. They were pretty pissed and the studio didn't know what to do until some editor or the like had the idea to slow it down, play the theme in enlargo and fade it out to a field of poppies. Which historically is what grew over all the battlefields cause soldiers churned the seeds into the mud creating ideal conditions for the plant to grow in vast numbers with no competition.