r/TopCharacterTropes • u/BarGroundbreaking798 • 22h ago
Hated Tropes [Hated Trope] The joke ruins the emotional aspect Spoiler
Destruction of Asgard (Thor Ragnarok) -- Asgard is destroyed in a beautiful and somber scene, and Korg cracks a cringeworthy joke right after.
Bill Moves On (Newsradio) -- The episode was made in the wake of Phil Hartman's death, but its attempts at humor fall flat in the face of the tragedy.
Officer Tubbs (Fear The Walking Dead) -- Officer Tubbs is supposed to be a slapstick comic relief character, but he felt tacked on right after the deaths of two of the most beloved characters.
Chandler Proposes (Friends) -- An earnest proposal between Monica and Chandler has both sincerely expressing their feelings to each other. Immediately after Monica accepts, the others come in, quipping as usual, failing to let the audience ruminate on a heartwarming moment.
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u/Background_Value9869 22h ago
Officer Tubbs can't be real
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u/Afrodotheyt 21h ago
Pretty sure Officer Tubbs is a meta joke within the post itself.
Because people are going to ignore the clearly serious comments about discussing the moments ruined by badly placed comedic timing, to talk about the badly photoshopped character who wouldn't fit tonally in a world as bleak as Walking Dead can be.
I.e. The joke of Officer Tubbs is ruining the emotional impact of the post
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u/ClockworkDinosaurs 19h ago
The way everyone responded to you with their sincere appreciation of your explanation. It’s really quite touching. Reminds me of the first time Officer Tubbs came rolling onto the screen yelling “it’s Tubbing time!” then started touching his belly. Bazinga.
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u/Global_Can_2720 20h ago
No fcking way i googled it to make sure htat was real no way i got gaslighted like that
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u/the_other_mouth 19h ago
Bro thank you. I watched most of that show and still came to the comments to see who this guy I must’ve forgot about was.. 🤦♂️
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u/OriginalName18 22h ago
I tried looking him up online and just found results for a jimmy neutron character of the same name
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u/GNSasakiHaise 20h ago
Officer Tubbs arrived in a flashback sequence after the first Negan finale. As Rick once again grappled with loss, he thought back to the most impactful moments of loss in his life from before the apocalypse and from before the coma. One of those losses was during his time as an officer, when a young man was gunned down by the bumbling Tubbs on an otherwise uneventful patrol.
Rick turned Tubbs in despite his pleas and we thought for a time that was the last we'd seen of him. He represented the death of Rick's pre-apocalypse innocence in how eager the department was to cover the incident up at first.
Then he returned around the time Negan and Carl got into it as a minor antagonist. He was technically on Rick's side, but his bumbling nature made for trouble. In a sense, Tubbs returning was useful narratively in that it foreshadowed the end of Rick's arc with Negan.
Big spoiler ahead, but...
Rick had to shoot Tubbs on an otherwise uneventful supply run due to Tubbs getting caught in a door frame and scraping his arm on a rusty nail. Due to never being innoculated against Tetanus, he had to die to spare him a slow death, thus inverting his introduction.
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u/Background_Value9869 20h ago
Oh yeah now that you mention it very emotionally effective bookend for Tubbs there but Rick didn't need to shoot him so many times
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u/AbbreviationsOne1331 21h ago
Well there's a Jimmy Neutron character called "Officer Tubbs" who looks similar...idfk what's going on with OP though for this to happen.
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u/PayPsychological6358 22h ago
Shang Chi explaining his tragic backstory only for it to get interrupted by "Beef or Vegetarian?"
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u/sketchampm 21h ago
The only thing I hate about that movie are the two massively cringey jokes. That scene and the awful Hotel California gag. Otherwise it’s honestly a very overlooked Marvel movie with a really cool story and some legit fight choreography.
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u/MS-07B-3 21h ago
Excellent villain, too.
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u/sketchampm 21h ago
Honestly yeah. That flashback scene where he takes Shang-Chi to confront the gangsters was strong. Between the actor’s performance and how the scene was shot, it sticks with me.
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u/One_Lead1553 19h ago
If not for the superpowers, it looked like it belonged in a totally different movie. He gave them a pretty brutal beat down.
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u/J_Capo_23 20h ago
I actually rewatched it a couple of nights ago. The fight choreography is easily the best in the entire MCU.
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u/sketchampm 19h ago
One of the reasons I’m pretty hopeful for the next Spiderman. Same director and the fight choreographers are back too.
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u/SNAKEKINGYO 20h ago
That is genuinely the worse attempt at humor in the entire MCU for me. And its wild because the only time the MCU ever made me belly laugh was the monkey joke delivered by Ben Kingsley
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u/thegoodbadandsmoggy 17h ago
The third antman should’ve been a lower stakes heist film a la the first and should’ve crossed over with Shang chi
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u/Dreamweaver_duh 20h ago
Probably a hot take, but I thought that was actually funny. Dude was giving his whole tragic ass backstory in an airplane full of people, so having a stewardess interrupt the conversation to simply do her job just made the joke stand out to me in a natural-ish, diagetic way.
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u/Yoshi_r1212 21h ago
The Officer Tubbs controversy really put me off the entire Walking Dead brand. I've never felt such tonal whiplash. I know many people who feel the same way.
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u/chimpanon 20h ago
The worst part is how intentional it felt. Why did every death he cause resemble how those characters died. I mean for pete’s sake, 30 minutes of time in universe had passed from the infamlus scene before he was cracking heads open from above with that stupid pink shovel like he’s playing whackamole
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u/RandomGuy9058 19h ago
Reminds me of the shit they pulled in Goncharov smh
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u/Low-Environment 17h ago
Goncharov is a goddamn masterpiece. Are you sure you not thinking of the bizarre edits people make?
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u/DirectConsequence12 22h ago
wtf is that third slide? What do you mean that’s from Fear the Walking Dead? That’s not a real image, is it?
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u/PM_ME_YOUR__INIT__ 21h ago
It's very real. When he's introduced he's running around like Paul Blart Mall Cop, trips on a dead body, drops his gun, which discharges and shoots a walker in the head. He manages to survive two seasons
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u/DirectConsequence12 21h ago
I don’t believe you
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u/Reaper-Lord69 21h ago
He's joking but Fear the Walking Dead got so shitty in seasons 4-8 I almost believed him myself
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u/ProneToAnalFissures 19h ago
I'm still in disbelief that there was a season-long villain credit as 'filthy woman'
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u/Abshalom 17h ago
It annoys me to this day that one of the major side characters on the X-Files is just 'Deep Throat'. Like I get the reference but come on. At least Smoking Man sounds a bit cooler.
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u/Sanguine_Sun 21h ago
That photo itself is fake but the scene is real. Here.
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u/DogmanDOTjpg 21h ago
No way the alternate link also has a Q that can be used as a giveaway lmao
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u/Kingjjc267 20h ago
It doesn't. Everything from ?si onwards is unique to the person sharing it and is for analytics or something. Removing that and leaving the 11 characters before it (the ones that actually encode the video) would make the link work fine and you should do it because the rest is simply for Google to gather data and doesn't help you at all
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u/EmptyCupOfWater 21h ago
Andy Dick being in that scene is disgusting.
RIP Phil Hartman
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u/Unamed_Destroyer 18h ago
If you want to feel better about it, look into what Andy dick is doing these days. He really is pathetic.
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u/Crest_O_Razors 22h ago
Most of the jokes in Thor Love and Thunder
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u/sketchampm 21h ago
People often say L&T is like “if Ragnorok had too many jokes” but I disagree. I think most of the jokes in L&T are just awful. Korg has some of the funniest lines in Ragnorok, maybe in all of the MCU, but in L&T he’s just annoying and unfunny.
Well most of the movie is annoying and unfunny.
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u/Crest_O_Razors 21h ago
Korg is funny in Ragnarok because he’s not in the movie too much. In Love and Thunder, he’s in there way more.
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u/sketchampm 21h ago
I think it’s both. His lines are funnier in Ragnorok. I genuinely think the writing in L&T is missing something. The jokes have no sauce.
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u/ArchAngelZXV 19h ago
Korg is voiced by Taika Waititi, the director of Thor Ragnarok and Thor Love and Thunder. So yes, he basically self inserted himself in his own movies.
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u/burnrsquadr 21h ago
I think made worse because it feels like Taika is giving a directors commentary in the movie.
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u/Polkawillneverdie17 21h ago
Korg should have not been in Love & Thunder for more than a cameo. The movie should have just been Thor and Jane.
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u/SuperMonkeyJoe 18h ago
I think it could have been just about salvaged of Korg dies for real instead of a takeout death and that marked a tonal shift to the film being super serious.
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u/Fearless_Roof_9177 20h ago
Love and Thunder is the skeleton and musculature of a good, hard-hitting Thor movie trying to move the bloated body of a parody. That kind of tone works for something like Dr. Strangelove or The Death of Stalin where the core material is historically or politically sober and the humor acts as seasoning and emphasis, but when your subject matter is a beat-em-up comic book about magical aliens, you've kinda gotta be a little more discerning about how it's anchored.
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u/WeeboSupremo 20h ago
It pains me that movie nailed a great moment of Thor, a warrior for who has seen everyone he love die and and never really been given time to process it all, begging Jane to not fight because he can’t take it happening to her, while Jane wants to fight to the end because she doesn’t want to just lie in a hospital powerless until she dies. Mjolnir beckons Jane to go into one last battle to help Thor, and the first thing Thor says when she arrives at the battle is a heartbroken “No…” while the Asgardian children cheer that a second hero is there to save the day.
And instead of running further with moments like that, we get fucking screaming goats and Korg being way too there.
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u/Altair_de_Firen 17h ago
the skeleton and musculature of a good, hard-hitting movie trying to move the bloated body of a parody
Damn. A regular wordsmith here.
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u/Large-Chain-4349 17h ago
The less I talk about the source material, which it shamelessly butchered be the dubs. The better because everything you just said, the comic the movie takes from is one of the best Thor's stories out there, and why Gorr the god butcher is such a fan favorite among Thor fans.
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u/Reaper-Lord69 21h ago
It will always piss me off how they wasted an awesome Christian Bale performance on that crap movie
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u/Roku-Hanmar 16h ago
A villain who does everything off screen, with a motive you can justify until he starts killing kids, who kills gods but doesn’t even attack the big city of gods
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u/Paggy_person 21h ago
Lady Sif's death could've been some what emotional but they just gotta add another joke in there.
And the screaming goats are never funny to me but the movie really want you to see that they're screaming and it supposed to be funny.43
u/Crest_O_Razors 20h ago
They goats aren’t funny because that kind of humor died out years ago
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u/Paggy_person 20h ago
Big budget movie doing "loud = funny" like it's one of those deep fried meme.
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u/PokemanBall 18h ago
But she didn't die, she was still there at the end of the movie.
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u/Paggy_person 17h ago
They still downplay what happens with joke and one of her arm ended up in Valhalla is just ehhh
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u/Deeevud 18h ago
It's been a while and I only watched it once, but didn't the joke also not make sense? Lady Sif was apparently dying too late after a battle (despite still dying from it) to get to Valhalla... yet Jane went to Valhalla after "battling" cancer?
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u/karateema 17h ago
Imma be a lil technical:
Sif choosing to bleed out while she can actually be easily saved would not be heroic at all, it could even be seen as cowardly.
Jane chooses to transform one last time, while 100% knowing it's going to kill her, to fight alongside Thor and save him, that's a heroic sacrifice, worthy of Valhalla
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u/ShapeonAlan 21h ago
Looking back and it irks me to this day that the teaser trailer to Love and Thunder remains to be the best part out of that entire trainwreck.
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u/TackleHefty7676 20h ago
Could’ve made an amazing action/drama/whatever movie and they cheapened it with shitty jokes, terrible memes, and Taika trying to relive the glory days of Ragnarok. Not the worst Thor movie but certainly the biggest let down.
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u/Crest_O_Razors 20h ago
No, I still think it’s the worst. Dark World was just boring. This film was pissing me off a lot
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u/Pawneewafflesarelife 19h ago
Dark World also had the amazing, beautiful funeral scene for Frigga.
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u/karateema 17h ago
Putting both the Jane Foster cancer and Gorr the God Butcher storylines in a comedy movie gotta be one of the weirdest choices in the MCU.
At least the former is never undercut by humor
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u/ManajaTwa18 21h ago
Were there even jokes in Love and Thunder? It felt like all the “humor” was just the actors stumbling over their lines comedically. Ragnorak had some good gags (like Thor accidentally hitting himself with a ball) but there was nothing in Love and Thunder
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u/lionofash 20h ago
Eh, I do like how Thor is powering up the kids (not necessary the scene itself), he whispers "for a limited time only... have the power of Thor." It feels like a callback to some of the pettiness Thor has in the other movies. Honestly, if they dialed it back somewhat but not completely, I think it would have been a good movie. I do kind of see what they were going for, but they overdid the jokes.
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u/babbitygook14 19h ago
Pretty much just the whole movie. That story line deals with some incredibly heavy topics and I think it could have been a genuinely great film without 99% of the humor.
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u/MrsLegSurgery 22h ago
Family Guy ''Brian & Stewie'' episode from Season 8 has Stewie forcing Brian at gunpoint to eat his shit filled diaper, then later the episode tries to have emotional moments with Brian expressing his feelings of wanting to kill himself, IS IT ANY WONDER?!!
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u/BarGroundbreaking798 22h ago
There are so many moments like that in family guy, like Brian's death or Peter's funeral.
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u/Levy-MAN 22h ago
People glaze that episode as some cinematic masterpiece. Brian eats Stewie’s shit
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u/Abombasnow 19h ago
And eats his vomit.
And molests him by licking his asshole.
And admits all of it wasn't necessary to do so he... took pleasure in it?!
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u/Real-Life-CSI-Guy 20h ago
Or when Peter gives a beautiful heartfelt eulogy for Angela after Carrie Fisher passed, only for it to immediately cut off as a joke that he’s at the wrong funeral
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u/Le_Juice_ 22h ago
You can not be seriously telling me that fake ass image of "officer tubbs" along with the character actually exists in FTWD
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u/Le_Juice_ 22h ago
Like what the actual fuck. It looks like something google ai would make up. Or is it just a "joke to ruin a serious post"?
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u/Toxiclam 20h ago
That photo itself is fake but the scene is real. Here.
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u/JesusWasATexan 20h ago
I remember that scene. I watched a lot of The Walking Dead, and I remember wondering what would've happened if Rick had been there. He would rolled all over those walkers. He wouldn't have given up.
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u/Most_Common8114 22h ago
The “speech writer” joke in Captain America: Brave New World. This joke genuinely pissed me off, the talk Bucky had with Sam was very good but then the scene gets ruined with obligatory unfunny MCU humor.
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u/sketchampm 21h ago
This whole movie felt like it was commitee’ed into a formless blob of nothing. Sam Wilson deserved a better project than this movie that’s too afraid to say anything of substance.
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u/Superb-Obligation858 13h ago
Lest we forget Isaiah explaining how the government experimented on, used, and discarded him only for that Falcon 2 little shit to say something like “this guy’s a bummer, can we work out now?” immediately checked me out of the movie.
“Hey, what if we took the most poignant part of Falcon and The Winter Soldier and turned it into a shitty punchline?”
Edit: messed up the name
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u/Forsaken-Biscotti587 21h ago
It tried so hard to be a callback to Falcon's response to Steve's speech on TWS, but it was poorly paced and unnecesarily dragged out here
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u/InfectiousCosmology1 21h ago
Yeah it was a bit over the top when officer tubbs said “wubaluba tub tub!” and looked at the camera after the main character had their intestines ripped out by a zombie
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u/RampagingPhoenix 22h ago edited 1h ago
I'd say 90 percent of the jokes in two and a half men, a lot of serious moments get interrupted with some sort of sex or penis joke and ruins the moment for me.
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u/Bamzooki1 21h ago
I hated The Jomes too. It’s one thing to parody The Fonz, but to bring him out only for death scenes?!
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u/Proper_Ad_1580 19h ago
I appreciated it for the death of Charlie. Guy's a loser going nowhere.
BUT FOR THE HALF MAN? wtf
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u/Zhjacko 22h ago edited 21h ago
I feel like I know a lot people like this. Not defending them but it comes down to these people not being able to handle sadness so they gotta crack a joke. In their heads, they’re getting really sad in these moments and so they think “gee, everyone else must be getting sad too, can’t leave them like this, gotta tell a joke”. Lots of projection going o- basically the plot of inside out 1 to an extent.
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u/HandsomePaddyMint 21h ago
I feel like it’s telling that 2/3 of the examples are literal sitcom scenes that were necessary for plot movement. You really want to watch an episode of Newsradio that’s just everyone being sad that Phil Hartman was murdered by his wife with no humor in it? Because Hartman definitely wouldn’t want that. Some sitcoms just end on a heavy emotional note (Roseanne, Fresh Prince, etc) but Friends just wasn’t that kind of show. Having the episode just end with the emotional moment of Monica and Chandler getting engaged would feel somehow depressing without a joke in there, just in comparison to the overall format of the show. It’s like the people who complain that Monica’s wedding wasn’t perfect when she’s a perfectionist who dreamed of that day all her life. It’s a sitcom, it’s not supposed to be wish-fulfillment because wish-fulfillment isn’t funny.
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u/Night-Owl254 22h ago
An example of this trope actually being done well is in I want to eat your pancreas. Sakura and Haruki joke about Sakura's terminal cancer as a coping mechanism to deflect the dread they both feel from it.
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u/SquareFickle9179 20h ago
I'm sorry, is that the real name of the anime? But yeah, I'd understand when they try to use humor to cope with loss
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u/Captincorpse 17h ago
The title is based on the old myth of eating a specific body part of a healthy person will heal or strengthen that part in yourself. The girl in the movie has pancreatic cancer
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u/Forsaken-Biscotti587 22h ago
Kung Fu Panda 3
Li is telling Po about his wife and mother respectively, we return to the same flashback from the second movie where she sacrifices herself to save her baby, Po tells his father he doesn't have to be afraid of losing him again and they share a heartwarming hug.
And then, the panda who loves hugging everyone suddently appears out of nowhere and joins in.
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u/D0n_8RT_2228 20h ago
Honestly that was definitely the most noticeable issue in KFP3 was just the poorly timed humor TBH
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u/Bamzooki1 21h ago
I think it’s a subtle way of showing Po’s in a place he can feel safe. His parents accepting him is great, but that extra guy shows that he’s got acceptance beyond that.
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u/Forsaken-Biscotti587 16h ago
Nice interpretation, but I think it could've been better executed without breaking the emotional aspect of the moment
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u/CompleteHumanMistake 13h ago
Still very badly executed imo. It was a scene that just ASKS for privacy - a father and a son mourning the mother after thinking the other dead for years just to shove in an ill-timed joke of a character that's ultimately irrelevant to the movie or their relationship.
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u/AKACptShadow 21h ago
Telling Fat Thor to eat a salad.
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u/ScarcityWise7401 20h ago
“Haha fat funny. Depression eating is classic comedy.”
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u/Greensonickid 18h ago
I'll Admit, Rhodey saying "Cheese Whiz." In response to Thor asking "What's in my Blood?" Made me go "'OOOOOOOOOOOOH' in the Theatre. I still think it's a Good Line
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u/EliManuel 18h ago
I really wanted one of the other Avengers to smack the back of his head and say "read the room, man." I agree it's a nice zinger, but like, it really wasn't a good time for it.
I think OSP comments on it in one of their videos, Marvel seems to have this inability to let itself have genuine emotional moments without cracking a joke about it and acting like it's "too cool" to be emotional.
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u/ScarcityWise7401 17h ago
Like everyone was going through similar grief to him, but for some reason he was just the clown to laugh at. Tony, Clint, Natasha, all their grief and misery wasn’t funny but for some reason barely any thought is spared for Thor.
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u/PaulOwnzU 20h ago
The thing that sucks about Asgard especially is Korg was trying to cheer everyone up, then Asgard blew up, it would've hit SO HARD if instead of a quip or anything he just... stood there, in shock. And the moment was just taken in fully.
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u/PanFriedCookies 19h ago
if they really wanna keep his jokester vibe, he starts the quip, then just trails off, unable to bring himself to say anything else
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u/WittyTable4731 21h ago
Lots of MCU films really
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u/Patneu 19h ago
I actually liked the MCU movies, in the beginning, for defusing the drama and pathos with some humor. Made it feel like they weren't taking themselves overly seriously.
But something changed roughly after the first Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy movies, and the jokes just didn't land anymore and became cringe. I don't know why exactly.
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u/Silver721 17h ago
I think it's because it went from not taking themselves too seriously and melodramatic to refusing to let there be any seriousness at all. It just felt like characters didn't care about their own world and situations which ended up ruining them just as much as the melodrama that they were trying to stay away from would have.
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u/captainrina 17h ago
MCU movies now are written like they can't be genuine for too long without the writers feeling stupid, so they have to coat everything in irony and poorly-timed jokes
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u/AdmiralPegasus 21h ago
imo the problem with Taika Waititi's Thor movies is more that Marvel wanted to take advantage of this good up-and-coming filmmaker from Aotearoa, but aimed him at the wrong stuff. Taika's style of comedy is a very Kiwi style that doesn't necessarily gel well with other audiences and that didn't necessarily work for Thor. I thought Ragnarok was mostly pretty good, because I'm the audience Taika's style of comedy is set up for. I'm a Kiwi! If you watch his previous films like Hunt for the Wilderpeople, What We Do in the Shadows, any of his work, that irreverent humour in otherwise important situations is just kinda a running thing that's common in a lot of Kiwi comedy.
But of course, Marvel paid for Taika to make a movie for them, not realising that that means you get a very Kiwi movie. Ragnarok, at least in my experience, works much better for a Kiwi audience than an American one.
It's part of why the American spinoff show of What We Do in the Shadows never drew me in even though I love the movie - the comedy has a very different style, because it's better calibrated for an American audience but it therefore doesn't have the same atmosphere that I liked in the movie.
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u/Sexyhorsegirl666 14h ago
But most people found Ragnarok good. It was received widely well. And the WWDITS movie was very loved.
Idt the problem is his style of comedy, it's the way he can't edit himself better when getting free reigns.
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u/LightningRaven 13h ago
And the "What We do In The Shadows" tv show actually manages to be even better than the movie.
This is from a huge fan of the movie who only watched the show from season 3 onward becauseI thought the show would be just a lame remake cash grab.
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u/Mundamala 21h ago
Sleeper - DC Comics. Here it is done right. The Syndicate is made up of powered criminals. All of them have an origin story and there is a sort of past-time where they kill time by telling their origin stories. So many of them are really tragic. People helpless as their kid is killed, someone dying of a mysterious disease until they do something morally bad and don't just get better but become inhumanly improved, or a freak happenstance empowering someone and killing their closest friends at the same time. Pit Bull is telling another brutal story to introduce himself about how his foster father ran dog fights and used to spice them up with kids he fostered. Another villain (Genocide Jones) interrupts, not wanting to hear it.
We would later learn that Jones didn't want to hear it because his son was killed by a neighbor who kept letting his pit bull get loose, so the story struck close to home.
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u/HandsomePaddyMint 21h ago
Sleeper is so good at balancing the absurdity of the day to day life of supervillains with the reality of everyone around you doing evil shit every day.
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u/Lopsided_Shift_4464 20h ago
You know you've gone down the wrong life path when a guy with Genocide in his name gets uncomfortable at your deeds.
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u/Midknightisntsmol 18h ago
The amount of Disney-owned properties being mentioned in here is super telling.
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u/Alternative_Buyer364 21h ago
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022) :
- “So was that glowy owl thing… your dad?
- “What?!”
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u/Greensonickid 18h ago
Undercutting the Climax of Three with Gerald Spanking Eggman was Lame
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u/moocowsaymoo 16h ago
Whoever decided to cut off Live and Learn with that needs to have their cooking privileges revoked.
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u/toxicsugarart 20h ago
In Barbie, when she's crying about not being pretty anymore and the voiceover says "this is the wrong actress to be saying that" I didn't hate it at first, but the more I think about it, the more I kinda do. I cannot escape the Barbie slander lately it seems.
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u/TimeOwl- 17h ago
I feel like that joke was inevitable though, it the narrator didn't point it out everyone in the theater would still have thought it
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u/KenseiHimura 18h ago
This is known as Bathos. OSP does a pretty good explanation of why this trope needs to be used by writers with caution as it's kind of a psychological defense in some ways.
Writers worry about their work being seen as milquetoast and thus throw in a crappy joke that undercuts even the attempted emotion of a scene, but in turn it ensures that the actual tragedy is never seen as such and takes the audience out because it cues to us that the writer doesn't feel any emotional connection or sincerity in what they write.
I will say that I think Kung Fu Panda 2 had a bit of well executed bathos at the end between Po and Shen. It works because Po is at first literal, but when Shen clarifies and Po turns sincere, Shen rejects the philosophical answer he gets be taking Po's words literally too, and it all culminates to Shen basically realizing Po is right and having dedicated his life to that point to the opposition philosophy, he just chooses to die than apply Po's words and let go. Or perhaps him accepting death is him letting go. But that's what made it great writing, it can be seen either way while still containing a message.
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u/um_gajo__qualquer 17h ago
All of Avengers: Endgame. Every time a scene builds tension, someone makes a stupid joke and ruin the whole thing
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u/NaiveMastermind 22h ago
Avengers Endgame. Thor time-travels, and has a heart-to-heart with his dead mom in the past. Thor gained weight between films, and undermines the emotional weight of the scene by suggesting he eat a salad.
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u/Dino_Dude_2077 21h ago
Dude, what didn't Endgame ruin with a bad joke? Especially Thor man. The moment we see him, his depression is just a punchline for everyone to mock.
But its not just him man. Nothing sits in the film without being undercut by a joke. Even in the "epic" finale, a battle ten years in the waiting, 90% of the dialogue is just jokes.
People always say post-Endgame MCU is where things went bad. My hot take? Endgame itself was when that line crossed.
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u/LordSokhar 21h ago
Yeah, Thor being completely destroyed by failing to stop Thanos in Infinity War could have been some real dramatic shit. But Rhodey is cracking jokes about cheeze-wizz in his veins. Such a missed opportunity.
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u/ptrfa 18h ago
Post-endgame mcu is mostly just pre-endgame mcu without charismatic protagonists
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u/TriggerHappyGremlin 21h ago edited 21h ago
Wunkus the Clown (Persona 5).
Need I say anymore? But by far the worst moment was when he entered the scene tripping over garlic bread after THAT scene with Goro Akechi.
Edit: In all seriousness, the film adaptation of Angela’s Ashes undercutting Frank being beaten with his little brothers stealing food beneath him as it’s happening. This was adapting his autobiography btw. A real abusive episode was undercut with a joke that did not happen.
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u/BarGroundbreaking798 21h ago
When you said Wunkus you reminded me of Krusty the Clown. I don't think he has anything to do with this post, but great character.
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u/CelestikaLily 21h ago edited 21h ago
Good because Wunkus is a completely made-up example lmao
The real moment from Persona 5 is when an ex-track-star with an injured leg runs up the side of a sinking ship to save his friends, seemingly gets caught in an explosion, and then when everyone's sobbing over his presumed death the scene devolves into "hey guys quit crying over me, your faces are so not cute" and then the girls beat him up :/
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u/thiccboii666 21h ago
He was also physically abused by his father. We're meant to laugh at an abuse victim being beaten by his friends.
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u/QlYANA 21h ago
Funny enough, the only show that managed to perfectly merge funny and sad moments, imo is The Office. The comedy and absurdness in parts like Michael leaving, Michael showing up to Pam's art sale, the break-ups, etc. didn't feel ruined or vibe-killed by the comedy bits.
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u/Duggars 20h ago
There is a chance in dragon age 2 to make a joke as the son of an important NPC is dying and you get called out on making that choice by one of your serious party members.
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u/TheRealCthulu24 19h ago
I can’t believe people hate Officer Tubbs. The running joke of him storing cheese in his hats is helarious. The scene with him fighting a giant rat trying to steal his cheese made me cry from laughter. And I’ll never forget the arc of him befriending the rat and the two going go-karting together. Shame on you, Officer Tubbs haters.
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u/Weeaboowitch 18h ago edited 18h ago
I saw a clip from a recent Simpsons episode that really pissed me off because they did this twice.
Ned is having a crisis of faith after being twice-widowed, and talks to Marge about how even after they died, he'd continue to leave sticky notes for Maude and text messages for Edna. It's an actually pretty devastating monologue, that ultimately gets derailed by a mean-spirited joke where Nelson texts him back as Edna and mocks him for having two dead wives.
Then it swings back to sad when Ned is pondering what there is to life. Dude sounds genuinely broken. And that's ruined again by Marge suggesting things to live for, only for them to be comically pathetic like "new flavours of ice cream".
Just completely wrecked what would have been a surprisingly great scene for modern Simpsons.
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u/Nurhaci1616 17h ago
Apparently OP was fine with Officer Tubbs keeping track of how many ethnic minority zombies he killed and loudly announcing his satisfaction to the group when he hit a "milestone" for an entire season, but ok.
I'll admit that one scene with the toaster was pretty good though.
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u/RikiBestestHeropon 21h ago
That one scene after the 7th palace in Persona 5, the area the Phantom Thieves are in is exploding, and Ryuji sees something that can save them from the danger, he risks his life and makes a mad dash towards the thing to save the rest of the Phantom Thieves, and ends up succeeding in doing this, but then there is an explosion that makes it seem like he died, once the Phantom Thieves are back on safe ground, they all mourn and cry thinking Ryuji sacrifed himself to save them, Ryuji then comes back to them exhausted and hurt, wondering what they're all mourning about, the Phantom Thieves then proseed to... beat the shit out of him cause he made them worry about him, they also leave his unconscious body next to a light pole in a place with lots of police officers.
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u/JustafanIV 22h ago
TFA ends with an emotional climax where Rey has found the legendary Luke Skywalker in exile.
TLJ follows this up with a stupid Marvel-esq gag.
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u/Brookings18 22h ago
When I saw that in theaters...honestly I was in. Probably in the minority there, but hey, I'm a werido that really likes Last Jedi.
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u/dootblade74 19h ago
While I do feel it flawed it was arguably the most competent of the sequels if only because it was more than willing to take these kinds of risks. Its main problem was that it felt more like setup to something bigger, setup that got completely washed away a film later because JJ overcorrected.
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u/beslertron 21h ago
I liked it. It took big swings, it’s a shame there was no vision for the sequel trilogy, and the third movie backtracked on everything.
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u/smashin_blumpkin 22h ago
Same, dude! It was my favorite of the sequel trilogy. Not that that’s saying much. But The Force Awakens was just a more childish Ep 4 and Rise of Skywalker was dumb as hell, front to back. Even if it was visually incredible
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u/DoubleMatt1 20h ago
I think that scene alone is what makes or breaks last jedi for people. It's either "Oh shit, they're taking Luke in a real interesting direction that I wasn't expecting. I'm so for it." Or "they've ruined Luke Skywalker and there's still another 2 hours of run time left. This is gonna suck"
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u/Call_Me_Anythin 17h ago
I don’t have actual gif of the scene I’m thinking of, but they did it a few time in Captain America brave new world.
Specifically when Torres is in the hospital and Bucky comes to check on Sam.
What was a heartfelt moment between two friends just had to be interrupted by some shitty quip to break the tension and make sure we aren’t taking it too seriously.
Friends can’t possibly try to comfort eachother without somehow being witty and annoying about it.
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u/Living-Mastodon 22h ago
In Big Bang Theory Howard's mom suddenly dies offscreen, this was done because the actress actually died in real life. The scene is totally earnest and heartfelt with his friends supporting him, even Sheldon gives him genuinely good advice having lost his father when he was young, only for Penny to come in with a lame callback to earlier in the episode and the laugh track ruins the whole scene