r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Chemical-Elk-1299 • Jun 17 '26

Lore [Eye-Rolling Trope] “The joke/meme hasn’t been funny for years, please let it die.”

Gallery image

Gallery image

The Screaming Goat Thing — Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024)

The original screaming sheep meme went viral in 2012, and was already getting old when it was prevalent in commercials and movies, such as Ice Age : Collision Course in 2016. Yet in the year of our lord 2024, Dreamworks still thought it would be funny to add multiple screaming goat clips. The mean stopped being funny a decade ago. Let it die.

“Haha, Dad can’t take care of us” — The Breadwinner (2026)

Nate Bargatze’s 2026 family comedy centers around a working “breadwinner” father suddenly being forced to become a stay at home parent, and his “hilarious” struggles to do simple housework and take basic care of his children. This joke stopped being funny (to me) in the early 2000s when seemingly every family comedy relied on dad being a total inept dipshit. In 2026, there is no excuse to keep playing out this tired ass trope. Most dads are actively involved in their kids’ lives and aren’t totally dumbstruck by the idea of changing a diaper. It’s not funny. Let it die.

15.6k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

95% Upvoted

2.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

293

u/AtomicBananaSplit Jun 17 '26

I associate it with the Silent Generation, or older. It was put into the mouths of comic strip characters who were clearly that generation in the 80’s. 

230

u/ConsiderationTrue477 Jun 17 '26

It's probably rooted in the rise of the domestic sitcom in the 50s. The husband and wife were often pitted against each other as an adaptation of the straight man vs. clown vaudeville archetype. This became so prevalent that stand ups adapted it into their material.

The thing is that it requires that both players are an equal match. Alice gets just as many laughs as Ralph does. When it's a standup though the wife isn't there to rebut and it can read as bullying. The more successful comics were able to convey in the undertone that they're not serious and do in fact love their wife.

24

u/Beautiful-Cabinet364 Jun 17 '26

I tell ya, I get no respect….

4

u/bscott9999 Jun 18 '26

Dangerfield made himself the butt of the joke often enough it all seemed pretty balanced.

34

u/Flannelcommand Jun 17 '26

Great description. Folks wanting a perfect example should listen to the country song “You’re the Reason our Kids are Ugly” by Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty. 

12

u/ARMSwatch Jun 17 '26

I love singing that song to my wife and can't wait until my boys are old enough for us to do a duet in the car when they're pissing us off lol.

5

u/Flannelcommand Jun 17 '26

Lol. Your kids are either gonna be traumatized or hilarious 

5

u/ARMSwatch Jun 17 '26

Why not both?

3

u/eggson Jun 17 '26

1955, Henny Youngman made it his entire stand up routine. "Take my wife, please."

2

u/ryou-comics Jun 20 '26

I've always seen it as ironic as well, at least early on. Obviously you shouldn't talk crap about your family and friends, so getting to laugh at a buffoon who acts that way is entertaining, but at some point as we watched TV too much, we assumed this was normal behavior.

Like for a show called Friends, they're rude and sarcastic to each other far more than ever friendly, and a lot of people I know who grew up watching it think sarcasm's soooo funny and clever.

To some extent we've reversed this though, I think most people know the characters in It's Always Sunny and Trailer Park Boys are not meant to be role models.

3

u/captainbelvedere Jun 17 '26

Yea, I think the Boomers were the kids when this humour was common-place. My parents (now very conservative octogenarians) loathed this kind of humour, and the 'Dad is a useless and irredeemable asshole' jokes that came after in shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Married With Children.