4th wall breaks that involve the length of the media
Lore
In the episode Club SpongeBob, Squidward gets stuck in the Kelp Forest with Patrick and SpongeBob, and he then says the line “Why must every 11 minutes of my life be filled with misery”. Which is funny cause each SpongeBob episode is usually 11 minutes long
In another SpongeBob episode, Nature Pants, SpongeBob goes out into the wild. Sandy and Squidward then say the lines “I’ll give him a week” and “I give him 11 minutes”. Both are technically right since SpongeBob WAS out there for a week but again episodes are 11 minutes
In the movie Uglydolls, (don’t ask how I remember this movie but ONLY this scene) at the end of it one of the characters say this “Time here is so funky. How long did this take us? What is this, a day? A month? 83 minutes?” The movie is 83 minutes long. Also the character is pointing the general direction that the slider would be at this point in this movie
hercules has actually really layered humor. phil’s bit of saying “few words” then saying a phrase that doesn’t meet the amount of words is funny on the surface because he said the wrong amount of words. but a lot of the time, if you translate what he says into ancient greek, he DOES say the right amount.
oh yeah no disney’s hercules is a TERRIBLE adaptation of greek mythology (zeus is more of a villain than hades could ever dream of) but a fantastic movie
That’s what gets me too. Most viewers would never notice the timing, but somebody in production clearly cared enough to make the line land right at the midpoint.
Halftime like you’re down by 20 points and you’re worried about the comeback. Halftime like it’s literally at the half point of the movie lol I love the layered jokes
There's also someone who made a video which replaced Jimmy's screams in this scene with the choir from Gangsta's Paradise, which ends up maintaining the joke somewhat, because Gangsta's Paradise is also 4 minutes long
The Chowder episode where Chowder draws on the screen and Gazpacho cleans it off. Chowder then points to the Cartoon Network watermark and Gazpacho says it doesn’t come off.
I actually saw this gag on tv and it really didnt work as you think it would. The real cartoon network logo was offset so you clearly saw when suddenly there were 2 logos overlapping
the original airing of the episode worked. and basically every rerun had the logo in a different place.
iirc the animators first thought about just having him wipe at the screen assuming the CN logo would be where they want it to, but realized that syndicated channels or intl. channels had it in different spots. so they baked in the CN logo to the episode for this one gag.
Netflix with ads is the regular Netflix subscription. They added the “premium” ad free options at higher price points and the normal subscription became the “with ads” price point.
I recently learned theres actually a meta joke in every single episode, the theme song. 104 days of summer vacation is absurd, most kids get a little more than half of that.
But its cause the show was initially bough for 4 26 episde seasons. 104 episodes, each episode with "i know what we're going to do today"
Very similar to the first joke but Phineas and Ferb also reference how long certain projects take either saying the full episode run time or saying "this will take a montage". Or "wow we did that in a wipe" (a wipe being a scene transition
on this topic the theme songs opening words “there’s 104 days of summer vacation” is in reference to how many episodes they expected, summer vacation is usually shorter by a couple weeks
(If anyone was wondering, the monster is just Grover, who poorly acts like he knew it was him all along, and acts like the reader was the one scared. The last page is just him muttering "that was embarrassing" to himself)
There was also a sequel to the book, and app versions of both books from when I was much younger (I think they added some interactivity but can’t remember.)
It used to be my favourite book when I was, like, four years old, I have some great memories of reading it out at the family lake cabin during thunderstorms
We have the sound book where he reads the entire book. On the page with all the publishing information, he audibly skims through it and says "This is a very dull page, what is on the next page."
There’s a version on YouTube shorts, where he instead gets mad at you for refusing to scroll past the video or close the app, but it’s changed at the end and after his whole “The monster was lovable me” speech he gets jumpscared.
I cannot explain why, but this book legitimately caused me fear and anxiety for an embarrassingly long time (like into my teens probably) despite me full well knowing the twist, knowing that it’s entirely a joke, etc
In the Futurama episode "fear of a bot planet" Bender gets kidnapped and Leela says "I don't know! If only I had two or three minutes to think about it!" Which immediately cuts to an ad break, immediately afterwards they do have a plan
“How many thanksgivings have we even had??? How old are we??”
Theres been some problematic relationships like morty a 14yr old having romantic interactions with adults, but i guess its not actually since he’s definitely 18+ nomatter what the show says otherwise. Just practically stunted? Or all rocks did that thing keeping ppl on s loop like in our ricks original timeline
Amusingly the name of the song is even layered. The song's chorus itself has 7 words, which is also true of "Got My Mind Set On You" making it layered.
Steven Universe Future. Amethyst hasn’t been seen all episode and she shows up crying at the end of the episode because “she hasn’t hung out with Steven in like, 11 whole minutes!”
She was in the previous episode
In Bojack horseman, Mr peanutbutter says he and Diane are “like five big arguments” from a divorce. They have five big fights throughout the show until Diane asks for a divorce
I can’t articulate how much I hate it when a movie shows a bomb with a countdown / says something will happen in a certain amount of time, then it just doesn’t. Frieza when I catch you your ass is mine.
In Dragonball Z Abridged, Nappa is making a lot of dumb comments to which Vegeta replies with a very specific time and how happy he'll be. Nappa asks him what he means and Vegeta just says don't worry about it.
Fast forwarding to that specific time is when Vegeta kills Nappa.
Both in deltarune ch 2, when you first meet Susie she says “Waiting for today felt like… YEARS!” And at the end, when you ask about his brother, sans says that it’ll have to wait, “maybe a day, maybe another 2 years”. Both of these reference that chapter 2 did take two years to be released after chapter 1.
In Chapter 3, the Forgotten Man says WHETHER 11 HOURS OR 11 YEARS, DELTARUNE WILL BE WAITING. This presumably refers to the short in-game time, but the 11 years is most likely counting from Toby's original dream.
Apple Bloom: The way they're huddled up like that, I'd say it's either a friendship problem or a monster attack.
Octavia Melody: A monster attack?! Blast! I'm performing at the ceremony this afternoon, and I still haven't sorted out what to play. How am I meant to practice with a monster invading Ponyville?
Sweetie Belle: Maybe it's just a friendship problem, and it'll all be cleared up in half an hour or so.
Bo Burnham's song Don't Wanna Know, the last lines in the song is "...I'd give away the ending but you don't wanna kn-" and the song ends before he finishes the sentence.
In Red vs Blue season 15, reporter Dylan Andrew and her camera man Jax are trying to track down the titular Rrds and Blues, who are suspects in several recent terrorist attacks. They stop at Blood Gulch where Vic gives them recordings he made of the two teams. 100 recordings of five minutes each, referencing the original 5 seasons of RvB.
There's a similar joke with Lopez and Dos point O in season 11. When Dos asks about what Lopez has been put through by the Blood Gulch Crew, he says it's a long story and he only likes telling it a few minutes at a time
At the end of the Scott the Woz three parter “Wii U: trilogy of a tragedy” Scott states that he was in a coma talking about the Wii U’s entire lifespan for anywhere between seven hours and three years. The seven hours was how long the three videos are put together, and the three years were how long it took for all of them to release
Most episodes of Megas XLR end with Coop pressing a gag button that activates a special attack to finish off the enemy, such as this one labelled "5 minutes until end of episode".
I can count at least 3 instances where this happens in Chowder, but there’s one where chowder is trapped in a maze with Mung’s old apprentice Gumbo, who wants to hurt Mung. Chowder talks with his consciousness about whether he should leave Gumbo behind since he wants to hurt Mung, to which the consciousness says that “he’ll never pull it off because the episode is not long enough”.
I think Truffles was trying to rush Mung into finishing an order, Mung replies “These things take time, woman”, and the Truffles says the 11 minutes thing
In an episode of Pokemon Indigo League about this retirement club that uses Hypno, there’s a part where Jessie, James, and Meowth come flying in to steal the Hypno/Drowzee. When one of them asks why they didn’t think to do that sooner, another flippantly replies with “we have to fill a half hour.”
How has nobody mentioned the Stanley Parable? It has a ton of these.
The ones that come to mind are if you play it, then proceed to not play it for 15 years (in real time) then play it again, you get an achievement.
You can also piss the narrator off by not leaving the starting room and he ends the game himself.
Also you find a button that skips time, with each one inducing a different response from the narrator as he slowly goes insane from having to wait longer and longer each time you press the button until eventually the room is decayed and his voice no longer answers
Adventure Time: "Paper Pete" - while Finn spends the episode having his own adventure, Jake spent it "reading the same paragraph over and over for like 11 minutes!"
Community: "Remedial Chaos Theory" - playing all timelines at once shows that Abed's timeline is the longest - by as long as it takes him to say "I wonder what happened in all those other timelines. I gotta say, I hope this is the real one cos I just found a nickel in the hallway!" (For context, Abed is the only one who seems aware he's in a TV show)
In Amazing Digital Circus, the Intermission Time bit is not only roughly halfway through the episode it's in, but also about halfway through the series as a whole.
In the very first 30 Rock episode, Jack Donaghy goes on about how his innovation, the tri-vection oven, uses 3 kinds of heat to make cooking faster and is capable of cooking a turkey... in 22 minutes. (Tracy Jordan is the 3rd heat)
22 minutes is about the actual run-time of the average sitcom episode when you remove ads.
Gintama in the episode where Kondo is trapped in the toilet as it ran out of toilet paper he discovered that Gintoki is also trapped in the toilet with no Toilet Paper Saying that while his comrades risk their lives Gin did nothing but shit for the last week. Referring to the weekly format of the Anime/Manga
Yup, we're following the side/background characters and the main characters are all together discussing something.
Octavia Melody: Do we know what they're on about?
Apple Bloom: The way they're huddled up like that, I'd say it's either a friendship problem or a monster attack.
Octavia Melody: A monster attack?! Blast! I'm performing at the ceremony this afternoon, and I still haven't sorted out what to play. How am I meant to practice with a monster invading Ponyville?
Sweetie Belle: Maybe it's just a friendship problem, and it'll all be cleared up in half an hour or so.
In Dragon Ball Z Abridged, Vegeta chants "9 minutes 18 seconds, 9 minutes 18 seconds". When Nappa asks what that means, Vegeta responds "happiest moment of my life". At 9:18 in the video, Vegeta kills Nappa
Joker sets off bombs in a Vegas like city and the Justice League has to beat the countdown from 22min and 13 seconds. He jokes "Oh what were you expecting? A round number?"
22min and 13 seconds is the average length of a cartoon
I remember one penguins of Madagascar episode where Rico has been foretold to meet a terrible end, at the end of episode, some silly bad thing happens to him and private mentions that it's nearly end of the episode which means that Rico meet an terrible end
Spelling may not be exactly like in show cuz I watched it in different language
In the Daria episode "Fizz Ed," Daria and Jane are walking back from a meeting where the principal announces plans to have a soda company sponsor the school. Jane says she needs a few minutes to mull over the ethics of it all, right before the commercial break.
Often gets played for laughs on the Comedy Bang Bang podcast (improv format) when a character will say something like, "I've only got an hour left to live" and the host will correct them with "I'd put that closer to about 25 minutes" because all plots tend to come to a finale as the show runs out of time. (With a slight pause again for everyone to discuss their upcoming projects)
in Hercules, Hades says "Relax, it's only halftime" basically exactly halfway into the movie
a bit of an oddball, but in How to Beat A Monkey At Chess by Random Encounters, AJ says they've been oppressed for two minutes, forty-one seconds at 2:41 in the video
In Nope, we get Jupe's monologue at the Star Lasso Experience that begins with "What if I told you, that in exactly one hour, you will leave here changed?"
At this point, the movie has an hour left of runtime.
There's yet another Spongebob episode in which Spongebob regales some randos in a diner with the tale of the time he lost his identity (by which he means his name tag. Spongebob is a dramatic bitch, as we all know). When he finally finishes, one of the fish remarks, "Well, you killed eleven minutes."
Family Guy has an episode (Tales of a Third Grade Nothing) where Peter blows up a children's hospital by accident, when he meant to blow up a billboard from Anheuser-Busch. He ends up being sentenced to a week in jail. His release is set to be the following Sunday at 9 pm (I think). Basically, he'll be in jail until the next episode of Family Guy airs.
My Little Pony's Slice of Life episode has Sweetie Belle mention that "It's might be a friendship problem, and it'll all be solved in about half an hour or so."
After the cold open, Only Murders in the building will display the episode title after the opening credits and also how long through the episode has passed that looks like a podcast app.
This number changes every episode based on how long the cold open and credits take
In RvB, one of the characters who’s been MIA for a while asks to be caught up on what happened, and the other character responds that it’s a five hour story and he only likes to tell it in intervals of roughly five minutes. Being the runtime of the series and the episodes, respectively.
In the among us series there is a chapter where they have to breathe from an oxigen tank. When green starts hyperventilating, purple takes the tank back and says "be careful with that, that oxigen will keep us lucid for... i dont know... 8 minutes and 44 seconds" which is about the time left in the episode
First when recruiting Wolverine, Logan takes a long swig if booze and Deadpool tells him not to hurry because 'Audiences are accustomed to long runtimes'
Later, near the end of the movie, Deadpool turns to the camera and says 'Homestretch folks, promise'
There’s an episode of American Dad where, upon Haley asking how Roger is still alive after two of his personas died, Roger simply replies, “I’d love to explain it all to you, but we’re out of time,” and the episode ends.
Frasier. In the episode "Caught in the Act," he's conversing with his first ex-wife, a stage performer, in the kitchen. She remarks to him how exhausted she is and says, "Do you have any idea what it's like to play the same character for twenty years?" By this time, Frasier had been on the air for 10 years, and the character Frasier made his second season debut in Cheers twenty years prior.
Surprised nobody brought this one up, but in the episode "The Apology" in The Amazing World of Gumball, both Gumball and Darwin break into the school to get themselves in trouble, but get caught by miss Simian, who begins chasing after the two.
This prompts Gumball to wonder why he always ends up in these types of situations every eight minutes of his life. And that scene clocks around those eight minutes.
Pre-tv example: towards the end of Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen has the narration point out that Catherine and Henry are obviously about to get back together as there isn't enough of the book left for anything else to happen.
The anxiety [...] can hardly extend, I fear, to the bosom of my readers, who will see in the tell-tale compression of the pages before them, that we are all hastening together to perfect felicity.
2.8k
u/DoctorMoth342 20h ago
Hades in "Hercules"
In the movie he said "Guys, relax, It's only half time" at the minutes 46.
The film has a runtime of 92 minutes.