brick joke

noun

Etymology

First coined on media analysis wiki TV Tropes, inspired by an older pair of jokes. In the first joke, a man throws a brick in the air in the punchline. The second joke appears to be unrelated, but then ends with a dog catching the brick.

Definitions

  1. A joke in a film, television show, book etc, in which there is a substantial gap between…

    A joke in a film, television show, book etc, in which there is a substantial gap between set-up and punchline; typically bringing back an unresolved plot point after the audience is expected to have forgotten about it.

    • The invisible car is a variant on something called a brick joke: actually a pair of jokes in which the first sets up an unresolved element that returns as the punch line of the second, ideally after the listener has forgotten about it.
    • Genre conventions raise familiar questions about the role the bowling ball might play later on. It is in fact the set up for a brick joke.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for brick joke. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA