http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrickJoke

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja "See, only made you wait a year before explaining what was up with that."

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Named after an old joke , which seems at first blush to be a pair of unrelated jokes. At the end of the first joke, a brick is tossed away, leaving the confused listener without a punchline. At the end of the second joke, the brick returns and the listener falls on the floor laughing. For bonus points, the teller can tell an actual unrelated joke in between. Sometimes, the Brick Joke structure of introducing a seemingly irrelevant feature, only to return to it much later, after the audience has largely forgotten about it, can be used for drama as well as comedy; when that feature was a joke, it's known as Chekhov's Gag.

Popularized in early 20th-century Newspaper Comics by Krazy Kat.

In a masterclass on playwriting, Alan Ayckbourn mentions this trope specifically, calling it "The Plant". Early on, one of his two demonstration actors mentions that he has an urge to sneeze when sexually aroused. Then at the very end:

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Actress: Do you think we could become more than friends?

Actor: Aaaachoo!

The Stinger usually consists of one. Contrast All There in the Stinger, when the Stinger contains information that's vital to understanding the plot. Compare and Contrast with the Overly Long Gag, where the humor is in how long it takes to get to the punchline. See also Late to the Punchline, which is where a character who doesn't get a joke finally gets it, making it a kind of Brick Joke for that character. See Comeback Tomorrow if the character finally delivers their late comeback to a confused opponent. See also Something We Forgot and "Shaggy Dog" Story.

*throws brick in the air, the brick does not come down.*

Arguably, what is probably the longest brick joke in history occurs in the series finale of Newhart, where Bob is hit on the head, and wakes up in bed with his wife Emily from his previous series The Bob Newhart Show as a parody of the "It Was All A Dream" story line in the series Dallas, implying the series Newhart is a dream Bob has each night.

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Examples:

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Asian Animation

In Season 7 episode 16 of Happy Heroes, Happy S. tries to help Lele the alien Funny Animal dog repress his habit of chasing after things thrown in the air. After Lele seemingly fails to do so, a saddened Happy S. throws a dog bone he had gotten him as a gift into the sky; at the end of the episode, about five minutes after he does this, the bone comes back and hits him on the head.

Comedy

Ron White had one happen to him, thanks to being a smartass. When Ron was 17 years old, he was arrested, and the arresting officer asked if he had any aliases. Ron responded "Yeah. They call me 'Tater Salad,'" as a joke. Seventeen years later, after getting thrown out of a bar in New York City, Ron was arrested again. The arresting officer asked "Are you Ron 'Tater Salad' White?" However, when he told the joke during a 2005 TV special entitled The Ron White Show, the bar was located in Texas. note The bar story is a made-up anecdote, but "Tater Salad" is a real nickname of his; he picked it up during his time in the Navy.

Many Comics may point out something in their anecdotes then later on use it as a punchline, leaving those that come in later confused at why people are laughing so hard at something that seems unimportant.

The first Blue Collar Comedy movie has Jeff Foxworthy recounting a story told to him about a man who, upon hitting a beaver with his car, picked up said beaver upon mistaking it for dead, and managed to have it bite his nipple off. On a signature redneck joke to close the movie: "If you've ever had your nipple bitten off by a beaver, you might be a redneck."

Billy Connolly performed a long, long routine beginning with his account of a mysterious body found in the street in one of the more exclusive and upmarket suburbs of Edinburgh. He then meanders off into the intricacies of going to the toilet on aircraft, and how the food chain works, and the sheer logistics of so many people on board aircraft who will all need to use the toilet at some point... he gets back to the mystery corpse in Corstorphine (and its effect on local house prices) about twenty-five minutes later. By which time everyone's forgotten how the story started.

In Margaret Cho's stand-up special I'm The One That I Want, she talks about how her gay friends taught that the best way to quickly finish a guy during oral sex is to finger his ass while blowing him. She quotes, "You wanna go home don't you? You can wash your hand at home!" and mimics driving home with one finger off the wheel. Much later in the show, she mentions how someone once asked her if she's worried about embarrassing her Korean family. She replied, "I'd embarrass any family!", and once again starts "driving" with one finger up.

Gabriel Iglesias tends to have these for each standup special he does. The longest one he does references a gag he did in the previous stand-up special about his friend Philippe, who always gets Gabriel in trouble.

On Hannibal Buress' album My Name is Hannibal, Hannibal talks about buying prosthetic metal arms just in case something happens to his real arms. Near the end of the album, after joking about one of his cousins flipping out and cutting his arms off, Hannibal brushes it off with "Whatever, I got these metal arms!"

Danny Bhoy has a bit where he mocks the Australian term for a liquor store, "bottle shop", by acting out the meeting during which Australians voted on it (it narrowly beat out "shop bottle"). At the end of the meeting the leader tells everyone to come back next week because "apparently there's already a place called South Wales somewhere, we'll need to think of something else". Danny then says that most of the audience probably won't get the last part of that joke, but someday in the future they might happen to look at a map of Australia, see the area labelled "New South Wales", and then burst out laughing.

Early on in one of Dara Ó Briain's live shows, he interrupts one of his routines to go off on a short and seemingly irrelevant tangent about how much he hates those hands-free bathroom soap dispensers and how pointless they are. At the end of the show, he's built up to a lengthy routine about security systems, which ends in a hypothetical situation where someone has tried to use a frying pan to defend their house and accidentally killed a burglar, and has to get rid of all the evidence. They look down at their filthy, blood-stained hands, wondering how they're going to clean them without leaving any trace of evidence ... and then realise that if they had a hands-free bathroom soap dispenser, they could use the soap to clean their hands without leaving any traces on the soap dispenser.

John Mulaney makes extensive use of these in his routines. For example, in one he talks about how his classmates often thought he was of Asian descent due to his appearance in grade school, and then how he was often mistaken for a woman on the phone as a child. Later, after he's moved on to other, apparently unrelated things, he recounts how he got frustrated on a phone call, saying "I am an Asian American woman!"

While Eddie Izzard often employs this at least once per show, in one instance he notably ends up expanding on content from his Circle tour in Force Majeure, prompting a series of punchlines triggered by content from eleven years ago. Specifically, an instance of ordering penne at a canteen prompts Darth Vader to reappear, again leading him to try and escalate things into a fight over trying to order it.

In "Old Weird Harold (9th Street Bridge)", Bill Cosby and his friend, Harold, are forced to walk home alone late at night without parental supervision. Alone and scared, a nameless whino accidentally startles them, and in blind fear, they trample him, sending him to the hospital. During the next routine of the same album, Bill tells about a prank gone horribly wrong in which he tries to scare his other friend, Fat Albert. It ends with Bill getting trampled by Fat Albert, and going to the hospital, and being placed by a "whino who was run over by two kids". He and the whino end up agreeing that frightened people are very difficult to get along with.

In Jerry Seinfeld's original routine, he had a bit on the drugstore and commercials for medicine. He comments that medicine commercials always depict the human body as an open mouth with a tube leading down to a circle. He then insinuates that doctors haven't gotten further than that in understanding the human body. This bit goes on for a minute or two before going to the next one. This next bit is about the doctor's office. About halfway through, he comments on how the doctor will go into his little room and implies that he's looking things up. Among the examples of looking things up, he says "I'm in big trouble. That wasn't the tube or the circle."

Several in Dave Chappelle's Sticks and Stones: Dave's wife wakes him in the middle of the night. When Dave wakes up, he thinks that his wife finally wants sex, so he pulls his penis over his pajamas. His wife instead says that she hears someone in the house, so an exasperated Dave grabs his new shotgun and goes to investigate. After confronting and shooting the heroin addicts that have broken in, Dave mocks their dying words with a stereotypical "heroin accent", their final words being a confused "why is your d*** out?" Dave's bit about Leaving Neverland has him describing alleged behavior by Michael Jackson, including liking "a long gander at the anus". He insinuates that the children who hung around Jackson could not have gotten "a free trip to Hawaii" from him without the abuse having taken place. In a later bit, Dave recalls being despondent about his father not having $3 for Dave to attend a middle school dance. In Dave's despair, he rants about being poor and, out of desperation, says he will "show Michael Jackson my anus" if he gets the chance. Dave talks about how school shootings are a "white kids' game", and even though he hated school, the thought of killing everybody at school was always outlandish to him. At the conclusion of the special, Dave recalls how kids made fun of him when he had to count out a bunch of pennies to get into the middle school dance. Dave says it was probably the only time in his life when he thought "[clicks tongue] I should kill everybody at school!"

In the track, "Personal Information Waltz", Demetri Martin talks about how passionate most graffiti is in how it tends to say that one thing sucks, or another thing rules. He then says how he wants to make indifferent graffiti, like "Toy Story 2 was okay." A few tracks later, during "The Jokes with Guitar", he notes an instance of sitting in a bathroom stall, and reading a graffiti argument in which someone believes Metallica rules, while another believes Metallica sucks. Martin simply thinks about how so many people tend to shit with pens, and wonders why he doesn't have one. "Because Toy Story 2 was okay."

Comic Strips

Jokes (And... THE BRICK JOKE(S))

Tell this joke or a variant on it: Once upon a time, there was a man who wanted to build a house. But, being a little eccentric, he wanted to build the house using only 99 bricks. The masonry store would only sell in lots of 100, so he bought 100. After he finished his house he simply chucked the extra brick over his shoulder. (End of joke) Now tell a few more jokes and end with this: A woman with a dog and a man with a cigar are sitting across from each other on a train. The woman complains about the cigar smoke, the man complains about the yapping dog. The woman, in fury, rips the cigar out of the man's mouth and throws it out the window. The man then grabs the woman's dog and throws it out the window. Both sit in silence. Finally the man says "I am so sorry, I lost my temper. I shouldn't have done that." The woman, also sorry, says she was unladylike in the first place. Then they both look agasp out the window, for running along the side of the train was the woman's dog—and guess what it had in its mouth? THE BRICK!

One variation of this joke goes: Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to your house. (If you want, tell some other jokes here). Knock knock. (Who's there?) THE CHICKEN!

There's a joke/riddle that goes "-What is green, eats rocks and lives 3 meters underground? -Why, The Green Little Stone-eater of course!". After telling it, you follow up with another one: "-How far can you drop a rock into a hole? -3 meters, because after that, The Green Little Stone-eater eats it".

One very long variation of the brick joke goes like this: An airplane had 100 bricks in it. One brick falls out. How many are left? 99, of course. What are the three steps to put an elephant in the fridge? 1. Open the door. 2. Put the elephant in. 3. Close the door. What are the four steps to put a horse in the fridge? 1. Open the door. 2. Take the elephant out. 3. Put the horse in. 4. Close the door. It was a lioness' birthday party, and since she was a very social lion, she invited every animal in the world to come. Who didn't make it? Why, the horse. It couldn't get out of the fridge with its hooves. A little old lady was walking through a swamp infested with crocodiles, and no one who went in there came back out uninjured before. However, the old lady made it through just fine. Why? Because the crocodiles were all at the party! Later, the little old lady was walking through a meadow in a park, but was rushed to the hospital just a few minutes later. Why was that? Because the brick fell on her!

A similar joke tells about a farmer with a talking pig which annoys him greatly and so he tries diverse methods of sending him away, but the pig always returns and complains about being abandoned "You're so mean. That was really far. Why don't you say you don't hate me already? You heartless monster". At the end the farmer puts the pig in a rocket and never sees him again. Then after a couple of jokes, the next one is about a concert expecting a big name singer. The public gets excited when a limo pulls up, but it turns out to be (insert another celebrity). Then a tour bus comes by, but it's another celebrity. Then an helicopter, same result. Then a UFO comes by... "You're so mean. That was really far. Why don't you say you don't hate me already? You heartless monster".

Yet another version starts with a sentient donut on a cruise, who attempts to ask the captain over and over for permission to drive the ship. When the captain (and your audience) is fed up with the donut's antics, it is summarily thrown off the ship. Then, in a later joke, a couple is enjoying a cruise, when one of them proposes. In the excitement of the moment, however, he drops the ring into the ocean. His now-fiance is apologetic and understanding, and the two decide to forget the ring and have a nice dinner to celebrate their engagement. When the server brings the gleaming silver platter to their table, he opens it, revealing a lobster, and what do you think it has on its claw? The donut!

Why should you never enter the jungle on Tuesdays between 3PM and 5PM? That's when the elephants have skydiving practice. (A few more jokes, and then...) Why are crocodiles so flat? They entered the jungle on a Tuesday between 3PM and 5PM.

Podcasts

Dice Funk: Jess jokes in Episode 1 that Jayne will yell "Flaafy!" if she ever casts the spell Thunderwave. Guess what happens many, many episodes later?

The Hidden Almanac: The episode for October 23rd, 2013, begins with an account of an 18th-century law that banned goats and goat cheese and resulted in the establishment of several "cheese-easies". The episode ends with a fake sponsor message from "Heywood's, the oldest cheese-easy still in existence".

Rooster Teeth: Burnie tells a joke in podcast 395 post show about three guys who were trying to see who could throw bricks the highest, so they use how far the brick sinks in mud to test. First guy lands a brick one foot in the mud. The second guy three feet. The third guy throws up the brick and it doesn't come down. Burnie moves on to the next joke (to Barb and Gavin's confusion; Gus thinks it's just an anti-joke) where a woman wants to bring a parrot with her on a plane but can only take the no smoking, no parrot airline. So she hides the parrot under he coat and pretends she's pregnant. While on the plane, the pilot comes down the aisle smoking a cigar and talks to the lady. When he sees the parrot, he gets angry and throws it out the window, saying "no parrots on the plane!" The woman takes his cigar and throws it out the plane, saying "no cigars on the plane!" So the pilot goes back to the cockpit, and while he's there, he hears a knocking and looks out to see on the window ledge is the parrot, who is holding in its mouth... "Is it the cigar?" Barb asks. Burnie replies bluntly, "No, the brick." He promptly walks off as Gavin and Gus lose it and Barb judges him. You can watch the whole scene or an abridged animated version .

In the Cool Kids Table game Bloody Mooney, Jake tries to get Alan to let his character Jess have a passive music bonus because it can calm her down, suggesting Scandal's "The Warrior" as a song that'll get her pumped up in a fight. Alan denies it. In the second episode, Jake pulls out an email from the creators that justifies his initial attempt, and immediately has Jess start playing "The Warrior".

Print Media

In Issue #41 of MAD (from 1958), the cover picture of Alfred E. Neuman is half-finished because the artist got a call from Time magazine. Cut to the article "The Next Day's Headlines" which shows disastrous headlines based on the advice columns shown on the previous page... and one about Time firing their new artist because all their people looked like Alfred E. Neuman.

The Onion did it with pictures. The front cover of the February 21, 2011 issue shows a picture of Blake Griffin jumping over a car with the headline "Car Blake Griffin Dunked Over Vows Revenge". Cut to the March 21, 2011 issue which has the cover showing a picture of Blake Griffin run over by a car with the headline "Car Blake Griffin Dunked Over Exacts Bloody Revenge".

Pro Wrestling

Radio

A brick with relatively short air-time — in one episode of Hello Cheeky, Tim announces that they'll be broadcasting Rigoletto in two parts. This is immediately followed by a cry of "Rigo—", and fifteen minutes later, we hear a yell of "—letto!"

Round the Horne managed a clever two-stage joke: early in the episode, Kenneth Horne is phoned by a listener, and Horne asks him "can you give me your name?", to which the man replies "Elias Mooseblaster." Elias then asks Kenneth to give him his name. They then say goodbye, apparently literally having given each other their names. Later on, the Australian character, Judy Coolibah note Intended as a parody, or a Take That! , of attitudinal Antipodean feminist Germaine Greer

In Season 64, episode 3 of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, recorded in York, Jack's introduction to the city includes casually mentioning that Captain Cook was born there and died mysteriously in the Pacific, leading into a joke about the first England/Australia cricket match. He then continues on the cricket theme by describing how Yorkshire County Cricket Club changed its rules from insisting players were born in Yorkshire to just having an ancestor with Yorkshire blood. The first player to take advantage of the new rules was a Pacific islander whose great-grandfather ate Captain Cook.

In The Men from the Ministry, after a christmas pudding that Lamb accidentally placed in Big Ben's leaver is removed from the machinery, Lennox-Brown tosses it out of the clock tower's window and dismisses Lamb's worries that it might've hit someone. Later on during a news-broadcast the newsreader mentions that the Prime Minister was hit in the head by a christmas pudding near the House of Commons.

Roleplay

In Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, Nadine mentions to Hyeon that a member of her gang (who the reader knows is Luna) gained the ability to control lightning. Later on he comes across Josephine, who can also control lightning, and with cheerful obliviousness takes her to Nadine under the belief that she's the person Nadine was talking about earlier. Made funnier by Nadine angrily point out that Josephine is white, whereas Luna is black.

Destroy the Godmodder has a handful of these. Namely Dave, a mostly pathetic robot who was repeatedly summoned, and repeatedly destroyed. Not many people found it funny though. More successful recently. Upon being reminded of this by the TV Tropes page (stated by him in the post), the owner of Dave proceeded to summon him again. One game after his most recent death.

Theatre

British mentalist/illusionist Derren Brown did it in two different stage shows. In his third show, An Evening of Wonders, during the show broadcast on TV, he played a game of 20 Questions with several members of the audience. One, he sent back, saying he was too unsure of her object (brick number 1). Later, he performed the "Oracle Act" (it's billet reading). Seems one teenaged boy, on a dare from his friends, had written only the word "cock" on his billet, much to everyone's amusement (except Derren's, obviously) (and, by the way, brick number 2, although unintentional). Both bricks pay off at the end of the show, when he unrolls a big scroll that had been in a box since the beginning. On the scroll, he had written the word "bracelet" three times, and the lady that he had sent back revealed that she had thought of a bracelet during the 20 Questions segment. Upon finding this out, Derren said, "That kid's right, I am a cock!" And then in his fourth show, Enigma, at the beginning of the show, he asked people in the audience to write down a list of their three favorite things, and he would have a member of the audience draw one, and then by the audience member saying random words, Derren would guess the items. The first item that was written down on the chosen slip, he guessed was a favorite band, but couldn't identify the band. Upon finding out that the band was Mc Fly, he simply said, "Never heard of them." Guess who performed a song revealing one of his predictions at the end of the show?

The comedy pair Rahmens uses Brick Jokes in their routines. The best example is probably this one: (about namehage) "Who drove the demons out of Akita?" "This mystery will be unraveled in... (looks at watch) 14 minutes." It is indeed revealed about 14 minutes later. A pun reveals it was Momotaro.

Bill Cosby has a story about the time him and Old Weird Harold went to a scary movie. They got so scared that they got down on the floor and didn't get up until 10 o'clock. They were so frightened on the walk home that when a wino stumbled a little too close to them, they trampled him in terror. Later, he tells another story about a game called "Buck Buck", which involves one team trying to get the other team to collapse under their weight. After their opposing team shows confidence in the fact that they would never collapse, Cosby's team brings out their secret weapon: Fat Albert. The opposing team surrenders the second they see him. "Now, I told you that story to tell you this one". Cosby then tells the story of the time they scared Fat Albert, but Cosby forgets that he was standing behind Fat Albert. He ends up in the hospital and shares a room with a wino who was trampled by two kids, and they both agree that frightened children are very dangerous. Bill enjoyed this technique. His famous "Chocolate Cake for Breakfast" starts with his wife waking him up at weird o'clock in the morning so he can start making their children's breakfast. After some protest about how it's not healthy to eat this early, he heads down and gets to work, leading to a long and hilarious story about how his youngest asks for chocolate cake and he realizes how HEALTHY it is. (Eggs! Milk! Wheat! Oh, goody!) By the time, his wife comes down, all the kids are eating chocolate cake; she grows furious and they blame him... "And my wife sent me ... to my room." (smile) "Which is where I wanted to be in the first place."

In Ellen DeGeneres's stand up special Here and Now, early on, she talks about procrastination, and, quite appropriately, gets sidetracked. About an hour later, she returns to the topic out of the blue. Also, in her later special The Beginning, she talks about needing silence in her life. Then she tells an increasingly bizarre story involving a vegan food shop, and a sex toy store, culminating in her being arrested while wearing nothing but a captain's hat and a paddle, along with her new blow-up doll named "Linda". Cop (In story): You have the right to remain silent. Ellen : And I was like "Thank you! That's what I've been looking for all along!"

The juggling pair Strahlemanne and Söhne do one of these at Carl-Einar Häckner's 2013 variety show and at least one another performance. At the start, they both take a bow, with Söhne reaching into his breast pocket to display his pocket handkerchief. Strahlemanne digs around in his own pocket, but finds nothing. They begin juggling, and as they do, they take off their clothes and throw them to one another. When they're both stripped to the underwear, they begin putting on the other's clothes. At the end, when they're fully dressed again, Söhne moves to adjust his handkerchief but finds nothing. Strahlemanne reaches into his own breast pocket and tugs it up with a smile.

do one of these at Carl-Einar Häckner's 2013 variety show and at least one another performance. At the start, they both take a bow, with Söhne reaching into his breast pocket to display his pocket handkerchief. Strahlemanne digs around in his own pocket, but finds nothing. They begin juggling, and as they do, they take off their clothes and throw them to one another. When they're both stripped to the underwear, they begin putting on the other's clothes. At the end, when they're fully dressed again, Söhne moves to adjust his handkerchief but finds nothing. Strahlemanne reaches into his own breast pocket and tugs it up with a smile. In the final scene of the 2013 musical adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a bit of Breaking the Fourth Wall reveals that Willy Wonka's going to enter the audience's world to continue his creative work . This becomes a brick joke when, during the curtain call, he initially reappears in one of the theatre's box seats to applaud Charlie as he takes his bow .

. This becomes a brick joke when, during the curtain call, . In the first scene of Boston Marriage, Anna's maid reports that the cook has quit, and also that she "said as how you could kiss her arse. Till... She said some holiday, but I've forgot it." In the final scene, the maid comes in with an apparently urgent announcement, only to be repeatedly shushed — but when she does get to deliver it, it's only that she's finally remembered that the holiday in question was Michaelmas.

Theme Parks

In Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast at Universal Studios, Ooblar creates a large, Yolkian-shaped hole when he breaks into Jimmy's lab. Later, at the end of the ride, this hole is now seen patched up with a bunch of wood, only for the hole to be opened up again when King Goobot blasts his way in.

When the ride vehicle gets hijacked on The Great Movie Ride at Disney's Hollywood Studios, the tour guide tells the riders that theyll be back after they get some popcorn. Later after the hijacker is killed, the tour guide returns, saying, "See, I told you I was just going for some popcorn!"

Toys

In one of the BIONICLE comics from 2004, the Kaiju Tahtorak randomly awakens in the city of Metru Nui, and goes on a rampage, demanding the other characters to answer a question that no one knows. In 2005, that question is revealed to be "How did I get here?" Later still, in one of the 2006 books, Brutaka reminisces about teleporting a Tahtorak into Metru Nui out of fun.

Real Life

On July 8, 1958, New York Yankees manager Casey Stengel gave testimony before the Senate Anti-Trust and Monopoly Subcommittee. During the mid-20th century, Stengel and Yogi Berra were both thought to be Baseball's premiere Cloudcuckoolanders. However, with his Stream Of Consciousness "Jabberwocky"-like testimony , Stengel revealed that he was really the Bunny-Ears Lawyer of baseball. And the brick joke? That would be Mickey Mantle's One-Liner at the very end.

, Stengel revealed that he was really the Bunny-Ears Lawyer of baseball. And the brick joke? That would be Mickey Mantle's One-Liner at the very end. In 2008, someone created a Frank N. Furter Twitter account and tweeted "I see you shiver with antici..." Five years to the day later, they tweeted "...pation." Both tweets promptly went viral.

In 2009, a Twitter user named Marcus Lepage sent out the tweet "Going to sleep." The account lay quiet for seven years, until it was followed up with the tweet "Fuck, I slept in." Like the Frank N. Furter account above, this too went viral .

. This anecdote involving a young boy who once met Roger Moore at the airport and was initially saddened that his name was not really James Bond. Moore convinced him that he was James Bond, but had to sign his name as "Roger Moore" because Blofeld might find out where he was. The young fan met him again years later, and Sir Roger made the same gentlemanly snarker.

involving a young boy who once met Roger Moore at the airport and was initially saddened that his name was not really James Bond. Moore convinced him that he was James Bond, but had to sign his name as "Roger Moore" because Blofeld might find out where he was. The young fan met him again years later, and Sir Roger made the same gentlemanly snarker. One anonymous poster on 4chan replied to a post, stating that he "didn't have a slowpoke slow enough for this", and that he'd be back two years later. He was. ◊

Statler: I just don't understand this brick joke trope. (brick lands on head)

Waldorf: Now THAT'S what I call a brick joke! Do-ho-ho-hoh!