Visual Pun - TV Tropes

"We were told to comb the desert, so we're combing it!"

"I'm literally grasping at straws!"

— Bob, trying to reach a box of straws, Bob's Burgers, "The Deepening"

When a phrase which is usually used as a metaphor is shown literally. This can be because The Ditz didn't understand the statement, or can just be a simple gag. This kind of humor is considered dated and a bit old fashioned, so most audience won't do more than smirk — at least when adults are involved (children tend to be more easily amused). Occasionally, this action can be performed literally without the verbal set up. It is a frequent pitfall when dealing with a Literal Genie.

Common versions include requests to "give me a hand" being met with disembodied hands and quotes of Marc Antony "lend me your ears" — well, use your imagination.

These can be quite a nightmare for translators: purely textual puns can be rewritten into something else, but when the pun has a visual component (which usually cannot be changed), it becomes much harder to come up with something that makes sense.

Sub-tropes

Bar Sinister: Heraldic diagonal line indicates bastardy.
B-Roll Rebus: News put a short B-Roll clip with a visual association with what's being narrated on loop.
Metaphoric Metamorphosis: A character transforms into something alluding to their current situation.
Rules of the Road: Road signs are literal, not figurative, depictions of what's up ahead

Compare Stealth Pun, which is sort of like a Visual Pun without the visuals; of course, sometimes a Visual Pun can be a stealth pun, but you know, they're stealthy about it. Often a Sister Trope of Literal Metaphor.

When creatures, whether individuals or entire species, are designed as living visual puns, see Pun-Based Creature. Might overlap with Cue O'Clock (clock dial numbers are replaced by a non-time-related cue or nonsense).

Example Subpages:

Other Examples:

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Advertising

Used in combination with Gratuitous English in a Blu-ray commercial starring Kamen Rider Den-O's Momotaros, who refers to it as "Blu-Ray Disc". Cue a bunch of Blu-Ray boxes disco-dancing.
Axe's Clean Your Balls campaign.
The advert for the grand finale (For the Channel 4 series) of Big Brother UK had the text R.I.P. on a black background. Rather than an 'I', the show's logo was used in its place.
Dairy Queen Lips: The Lips say "Brownie Batter Blizzard" four times as a tongue twister and end up with a literally tied tongue the fourth time.
GEICO:
- Can switching to Geico can really save you up 15% on car insurance? Did the caveman invent fire? Do woodchucks chuck wood? Does a 10 pound bag of flour make a really big biscuit? Is a bird in hand worth two in the bush? Did the Piggy go wee wee wee all the way home?
- Yes! Switching to Geico will give you a smaller bill!
- They ran a series of commercials featuring these in 2020 for homeowner's insurance:
  - In one, a couple talks about the house they just bought. They mention a number of positive things but admit it has a clogging problem. Cut to a family clog dancing through their daily routine.
  - In the other, another couple sings the praises of the house they've just bought. They do admit it has a rat problem. Cut to the band Ratt repeatedly performing "Round and Round".
  - Another one has a couple praise their new house, but note that there are ants. Cue several aunts inspecting the house.
A commercial for EDS (an informations and technology company since acquired by Hewlett Packard) used the metaphor herding cats to describe their services in an beautifully shot tv ad.
The USA Network ads for Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Axe give a Title Drop right as Sam falls^noteoff of a roof. Doubles as a Stealth Pun.
The A&E Network blitzed all their commercial breaks with multiple promos for the second season of The Glades, most of which showed the mutilation of a blood orange with murder weapons, including a bullet, arrows, and a cleaver.
One Progressive ad involved a pair of representatives from another insurance company claiming to have one of the same services that Progressive does — as soon as they do so, their pants suddenly burst into flames. Also sort of a Stealth Pun, because no one actually calls out the "liar liar, pants on fire" thing.
The logo for the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant features a buffalo with wings.
An advertisement for a phone company had two girls promise a lap dance to two guys for Christmas (complete with a Something Else Also Rises Reaction Shot). Cut to the girls dancing a traditional Finnish dance and saying "This is how they dance in Lapland."
In the Farmers' Insurance "University Of Farmers" campaign, one class takes place on a collection of roofs. One agent finds a fiddler on the roof.
- In the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, Farmers' Insurance sponsors Kasey Kahne's #5 Chevrolet. In another University of Farmers commercial, Kahne appears as himself and admires the insurance agents' custom-tailored fire suits. Another guy shows up late… wearing a black track suit that has flames painted on it. Everyone looks at him with disapproval, and he says, "Ohhh… fire suit." Kahne then sprays him down with the fire extinguisher.
Taunton Cider's Red Rock Cider was advertised on British television in the late 1980s and early 1990s with a series of spots paying homage to Police Squad!, directed by John Lloyd and featuring Leslie Nielsen reprising his role as Frank Drebin. Among the many stylistic lifts from Police Squad!, the adverts featured many visual puns (some recycled from Police Squad!). For example, upon entering a pub, Drebin passes a sign reading "Pool" and bumps into a man at a pool table — which turns out to be full of water.
Stan Freberg's advertising agency Freberg, Ltd. had "The Great Seal," which was a seal wearing sunglasses. (This parody of old-fashioned corporate symbols was designed by Saul Bass.)
One Honda commercial features a Honda Accord Coupe owner having a doctor examine his heavy and metallic right foot — a stealth pun of the term "lead foot".
Sir George Martin has his own coat of arms, with puns on himself, his career as a Record Producer, and rising to fame due to The Beatles: atop it is a house Martin with a recorder flute under his wing, and the shield has three beetles. To top it off, the motto is "All You Need is Love" in Latin. Also his badge is a zebra bearing a crozier.
Mountain Dew has a taste that will knock your socks off.
The poster for the eponymous The Runaways biopic features a cherry with a lit fuse instead of a stem — a reference to the band's hit "Cherry Bomb".
Blockers, a comedy film about parents trying to stop their daughters from losing their virginity on prom night, consistently places a rooster silhouette above the title in ads... It's a movie about a bunch of "cock blockers".
A site called careerbuilder.com ran an ad campaign about an exasperated office man literally working with a bunch of monkeys. For their Super Bowl XL ad, said man is on the phone with a woman friend of his who sympathizes with him...as she has to work (literally) with a bunch of jackasses.
In a commercial for Chunky Chips Ahoy!, a bunch of punks and an anthropomorphic cookie are sing a rock song about "Punky Chips Ahoy!", until a British monkey cop comes along and corrects them.
The logo for GIT (the versioning software) is "GIT" written 90° sideways. Or a plus, a minus and a rotate arrow. Whatever you noticed first.
A series of commercials for the Nynex Yellow Pages featured a scene showing some odd happening, then an entry in the phone book where the scene was a visual pun based on it:
- An armchair is seen and pieces of fabric start to fly off as burlesque music plays. Cut to an entry for "Furniture Stripping".
- We see someone casting a hook on a fishing line offscreen. The person finally hooks a fish and reels it in, only for a football player to pounce on the fish. Cut to an entry for "Fishing Tackle".
- The camera moves past a group of pretentious snobs talking about their First-World Problems and issues. Cut to an entry for "Vanity Cases".
- We see a series of auditioning actors acting out death scenes. Cut to an entry for "Die Casting".
- We see a receptionist arguing with her offstage boss, sung operatically. Cut to an entry for "Opera Companies".
- We see a group of train engineers drinking tea together and conversing politely. Cut to an entry for "Civil Engineers".
- We see a group of men who all introduce themselves as "Herbert". Cut to an entry for "Herbs" (silent "H").
- The print ads followed suit, for instance a chicken playing tennis was listed as "Chicken Ready to Serve" and Barbie and Ken dressed as doctors was "Plastic Surgeons." The ads even ran without the listing for the first week so those looking at them would guess the pun.
Frequently found in McDonaldland commercials from The '80s.
In the Microsoft Office XP ad "Clippy Faces Facts", the mouse that can be briefly seen inside a Mouse Hole is a computer mouse.
A cinema advert for Silk Cut cigarettes in The '80s ends with a giant curtain of silk getting torn. This was done to circumvent British tobacco advertising laws.
In The World Cup in 2014, hosts Brazil were humiliated by Germany with a 7-1 score, and among the many Gallows Humor Self-Deprecation jokes the Brazilians indulged in were comparisons to the Volkswagen Gol. In 2022, as VW prepared to retire the Gol, they did for an ad a punny "retaliation" to the football game: seven 2014 Gols, made in Brazil, were sent to Germany.
Sexual Violence with the Birds and the Bees: The campaign is designed to educate about sexual violence, so all the characters are birds and bees as a reference to "the birds and the bees", the euphemism for sexual education.
Tommy McAnairey: In the first ad, Tommy mentions his "dear Uncle Pat" in a song. The camera pans over to a portrait of Patrick McAnairey, who is wearing mining gear, making him a literal canary in a coal mine.
Tommy (to crowd): Thank you. That was for my canary ancestors who worked down the mines detecting the lethal gas carbon monoxide.
The Washington State Department of Health's Quitline launched three anti-smoking PSAs featuring a headless raw turkey who smokes behind his human partner's back, who calls them out as they quit the act; a play on the phrase "going cold turkey".
Tagline: You can't rely on cold turkey alone.

Anime & Manga

Several works, including Sailor Moon and Here is Greenwood, have used the joke of showing or referencing a type of carp known as koi when matters of love are being discussed because another koi (in a different kana) refers to love.
If something startling happens, and the screen is suddenly filled with fish. Understand that the onomatopoeia for surprise is "gyoh", which is also one of the words for "fish".
- There is actually a Yu-Gi-Oh! card named "Gyoh!" in Japan; its effect involves Fish-Type monsters and its art depicts a shark bearing down on a surprised monster. The US name is "Oh F!sh!"
Quite frequent in the Asteroid in Love manga (but not in the anime), usually due to Mira misunderstanding a new scientific term.
- In the fifth chapter, Ao mentions the asteroid Vesta. Mira somewhat immediately switched to a "Western-style" school uniform with a vest (Hoshizaki uses Sailor Fuku), and asks whether Ao means a vest.
- In the eighteenth chapter, Mikage raises the term "boring" (as in drilling). Mira immediately pretends to be bowling. Japanese approximates "bowling" in a way that's identical to "boring".
When Charmy from Black Clover first unlocks her Food Magic, the giant sheep she summoned sheds the wool to reveal a giant, monstrous wolf. It's a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.
Bleach: Sui-Feng's Bankai consists of an oversized missile launcher strapped to her arm. One might wonder how a ballistic missile is the next step from a finger blade that can kill in two hits (beyond "a missile kills in one hit"), until one remembers that Sui-Feng's Zanpakuto is named Suzumebachi, which is Japanese for "hornet", and realizes that her Bankai is a "stinger missile".
This composed a significant portion of the anime Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, resulting in it being nigh-incomprehensible when translated.
Cells at Work!, which features an abstract depiction of life for cells in the human body, features a number of puns.
- Virii are depicted as various inanimate objects that attach to Ordinary Cells and turn them into Plague Zombies; the virus that causes dengue fever is depicted as tengu masks.
- Purine compounds are depicted as stacks of pudding cups, a play on the Japanese word for pudding, purin.
- The Boot Camp Episode shows the Macrophages and Dendritic Cells helping train thymocytes (developing T cells) by holding up cardboard cut-outs, representing their role as antigen-presenting cells.
Cells at Work! CODE BLACK, Cells at Work!'s Darker and Edgier Spin-Off, has the Leukyocytes grab assault rifles and rocket launchers when their usual attacks fail to destroy a purine crystal. They're literally breaking out the big guns.
In Code Geass, the Siegfried, the Knightmare that Jeremiah (alias Orange-kun) ends up piloting...is a giant orange.
Dororo: When Hyakkimaru's fake hand falls off after he grows a real one, he decides to bury it to show the limb respect, to which Dororo says, "hey, it's a hand-grave!" The joke, explained in the English version with an asterisk, is that the author Osamu Tezuka's surname can be broken down into "Te," meaning hand, and "zuka," meaning grave.
Dotto! Koni-chan: Used a few times in the Latin Spanish dub. For example, in the first episode of the Fish Samurai, Emi tried to stop him and he told her that she didn't have to thank him, turns out she wanted to warn him that he was going to fall into a chasm. While falling he says "ya caigo", which literally means "I'm falling already", but it's also a Mexican slang for "I get it now" or "I see".
In Dragon Ball, during the 21st World Marital Arts Tournament, there is a competitor called Bacterian. He is an extremely unkempt and filthy man who fights using all kinds of disgusting moves such as his bad breath, a touch with his finger after digging through his dirty underpants, and even farting on people's faces. He also forces others to fight with one arm as they use the other to hold their nose and Bacterian also uses other moves like chokeholds and spitting on them. In other words, Bacterian is literally a "dirty fighter."
In Eureka SeveN's soccer episode, Eureka wears number 7.
Fullmetal Alchemist:
- Near the end, Greed destroys Father from the inside.
- The phrase "paying an arm and a leg" is taken very literally in this show.
- Or a certain big green monster.
Girls und Panzer:
- Among the tanks of an utterly trashed Japanese-based team, you can briefly see an incredibly anachronic FT-KO.
- In a more noticeable example, Riko "Erwin" Matsumoto from Team Hippo has her hair constantly sticking out from beneath her hat in a manner reminiscent of fox ears, a reference to her namesake's nickname The Desert Fox.
- Katyusha of the Pravda team travels to meet the leader of the Ōarai team in a BM-13 "Katyusha".
Goldfish Warning!: Any time Chitose says "my school" (Watashi no gakuen), cue the school for scrubbing brushes (Tawashi no gakuen), although that may just be Wapiko not being able to hear properly.
In Episode 13 of Guilty Crown, you see Ayase reaching for a shoe on the floor. It becomes significantly funnier when you remember that the main character's name is Shu.
Haganai presents us with Maria Takayama who is a child, and a nun, who sees the main character as an older-brother type person in her life. That would make her his little sister. Long way to go for such a groan worthy pun.
The opening of Haruhi Suzumiya has Yuki ("snow") standing in the middle of the snow (though for the record, Yuki is actually written as "hope"). The light novels explain that it had been snowing when Yuki was given permission to have her own name, although this is kinda vague as it's described in really vague poetic symbolic odd prose written by Yuki during the short story.
Hayate the Combat Butler gives us◊ "Suzumiya Haruhi no U2"^note.
Highschool of the Dead: In episode 8, Saeko narrowly avoids two shots from a sniper rifle. The first one passes directly between her legs in Bullet Time, allowing for a gratuitous close-up of her panty-covered crotch as the bullet just misses grazing her. Making it a literal Panty Shot.
In the first opening for Inazuma Eleven GO, we get a close-up of Matsukaze Tenma both times the line "Ten made todokeyou" occurs in the lyrics.
In Episode 12 of Interviews with Monster Girls, Takahashi sees a photo of Hikari at night, noticing that her eyes flash like animals' ones, and explains her why they do this. Several animals have a membrane in the back of their eyes that reflects back the light, and this is shown with an animation of super-deformed smiling Hikari faces bouncing against said membrane. Hikari means "light" in Japanese.
In Japan, Inc., Ueda admits he likes America, and his female boss comments: "He must be an alien." In this panel, he is drawn as The Alien.
The opening sequence of Joran: The Princess of Snow and Blood includes a quick series of cuts that show the three main executioners in settings that fit their surnames:
- Sawa Yukimura (yuki meaning "snow")" is shown walking in a snowy landscape.
- Makoto Tsukishiro (tsuki meaning "moon") is shown standing in the light of a full moon.
- Elena Hanakaze (hana meaning "flower") is shown applying her lipstick with some flowers prominently in the foreground.
In the animation of The King's Avatar, after Excellent Era forcibly retires Ye Xiu, they literally throw him out into the cold; it begins to snow when he leaves the building.
Last Period: After an android is revealed to be evil and plotting to take over the world, a side character who's been distant and cold towards the android the whole time refuses to help. Her reason? "I don't like Androids." She then takes a bite out of her apple and holds it up — creating the Apple logo.
Choco: So that's what this is about.
In episode 10 of Let's Go! Tamagotchi, we're shown that the shell of the Gotchi King, a giant egg-like Tamagotchi, starts to crack when he laughs. The English version runs with the idea of him "cracking up" in more ways than one, which is carried over into the 2009 Tamagotchi! series as well - at least once, in episode 21a, with one of the Tamagotchi girls mentioning him "cracking up".
The girls from Magical Pokaan realize the girls from the Hot Springs Episode are not biologically so. Cut to a huge phallic rocket taking off.
Mobile Suit Gundam has the White Base stop at the neutral Side Six. As a condition of entry, its weapons are literally secured with red tape. For those who missed it the first time, Bright complains in the next episode about the abundance of red tape getting in the way of repairs.
Oi-chan from Mononoke Sharing is a nurikabe (basically a living wall) and is the only yokai in the series whose human form doesn't have large breasts, even when she's seen as an adult in the epilogue. She's flat as a board.
Naruto: The Akimichi clan have access to a super form that gives them incredible strength and they gain butterfly wings made out of chakra. Like with Sailor Moon above, the Akimichi clan have the butterfly motif because "butterfly" and "super" are both read as "chou" in Japanese.
Ninja Nonsense had truly terrible one involving "a furo" getting filled with an "afro". Even the characters point out how bad the joke is.
One Piece:
- Donquixote Doflamingo ate the Ito Ito no Mi (String-String Fruit). It allows him to create lethal Razor Floss which can cleave through most materials, do Building Swing using the clouds, and more. He also controls a massive Underworld empire, with moles in the Marine and involved in various weapons trafficking while maintaining a public persona of a benevolent king of Dressrosa. He's the man pulling the strings, figuratively and literally.
- There's a spider in the Thriller Bark arc. It had the head of a monkey and a verbal tick of 'Monkey.' Does this pun even make sense without knowledge of English?
Dia and Pearl's manzai verses from Pokémon Adventures occasionally incorporate a visual pun for the punchline. This makes things even harder to translate to English in the fan translations.
One example that does translate, if not incredibly accurately, is in the third episode of Pokémon: The Original Series. Kasumi (Misty), who is afraid of bugs, spots a Caterpie, and screams "MUSHI!" (bug). Satoshi (Ash), mishearing her, pops up in a cow suit, and comments "Ushi?" (cow). The English dialogue opted for, after Misty's scream, having Ash (in the cow suit) comment "Maybe it's a... Cow-terpie!."
Rebuild of Evangelion. In the middle of a battle, Asuka shouts at her fellow EVA pilot Mari to give her a hand. Mari then holds up her hand to project an AT-field to protect Asuka.
Sailor Moon: Super Sailor Moon has a butterfly motif. The Japanese word for "butterfly" is "chou" which also is a homonym of "chou" the Japanese word for "super".
After Kaede wordlessly laments her lack of chest in one end-of-episode short of Sakura Trick, this◊ title card is seen.
Shirokuma Cafe, at least the anime version, combines visual puns and Chain of Corrections into a Once per Episode gag. Polar Bear will misunderstand a word another character says, then rapidly appear in different costumes and scenery that suggest similar-sounding words. The extreme reliance on the Japanese language for these jokes probably means the series will never be dubbed.
Penguin: Seconds, please. [Okawari]
Polar Bear brings sunflowers.
Penguin: Those would be sunflowers (himawari).
Polar Bear returns as a chef with a labeled three-course meal.
Penguin: That would be the daily special (higawari).
Polar Bear returns with an axe and firewood.
Penguin: That would be splitting logs (makiwari).
Blindfolded Polar Bear menaces a watermelon with a stick.
Penguin: That's splitting a watermelon (suika wari). Seconds, please.
One Shugo Chara Chan! comic has the Guardian Characters wondering what the prince of flowers ("hana" in Japanese) looks like, and one of the princes is a nose (Also "hana" in Japanese). Ran says "That's not the right "hana" we're talking about!"
Welcome to Lodoss Island, a series of omakes parodying Record of Lodoss War, has explanations underneath some of the comics, because puns in Japanese have a bad habit of turning into nonsensical absurdist gags when translated into English. For example, in one, Slayn tells Ghim that he's looking for his star, whereupon the dwarf produces a small lump on a stick and replies, "Your pickled plum?" Which is funny in English if you're into completely random shit happening because of translation, and funny in Japanese because "hoshi" (star) sounds sort of like "umeboshi" (pickled plum).
Yotsuba&! does it from time to time, but whether she truly doesn't understand or is making a joke is up in the air:
- In one, she draws a tsukutsukuboshi as a little guy wearing a cap (because in Japanese, "boshi" is a homonym for "cap").
- When Miura identifies the groupings of stars as "seiza", Yotsuba kneels, because it's a homonym for both "constellation" and "kneeling position". In one translation the joke becomes about how the names of constellations sit well.

Asian Animation

In one episode of Happy Friends, Big and Little M. use a Trojan horse in Doctor H.'s Internet router. The Trojan horse is literally a giant rocking horse.
Kaun Banega Superstar stars a pair of celebrity stars who have star-shaped heads.
Lamput:
- In "Age Remote", when the thief is turned into a child by the docs' remote, he sees the baby the woman has with her and takes its lollipop from it instead of taking the necklace from the woman. "It's like taking candy from a baby" indeed.
- In "Dr. Lamput", a speech bubble containing a fire shows up from the Boss when he tells the docs they're fired.
In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Joys of Seasons episode 7, Paddi has his pet egg Eggy sneak into Mr. Slowy's laboratory to find him something to eat, and Eggy retrieves an egg that Paddi, after eating it, finds out is actually an egg-shaped bomb. The Chinese words for "egg" (蛋, or "dan") and "bomb" (炸弹, or "zhadan") have Chinese characters that are pronounced the same but are different (蛋 and 弹 both being pronounced "dan", in this case).
Simple Samosa has a tendency to use food puns due to having an Anthropomorphic Food cast, a few of the puns being visual:
- The show depicts potatoes as having Extra Eyes all over their bodies, because the spots on potatoes are called eyes in real life.
- The episode "Sabse Sweetest Kaun?" depicts Mayor Royal Falooda as a medieval king — in other words, a literal "royal" falooda.
- In "Super Blue Comet", the Simple Samosa Milky Way Galaxy is shown to be made of floating milk bottles.
- "Gnocchi Gnocchi Who's There?" has the potato don Kinochi send a letter to Jalebi. Jalebi calls the letter "fishy" - as in, suspicious - and it contains one of Kinochi's talking fish assistants, who delivers the don's message.

Card Games

Dang You To Heck is essentially an unofficial, mormon-themed version of Cards Against Humanity. The creators had to change its name from Mormanity for legal reasons but kept a visual reference to the original name in their logo: A sea cow playing a trumpet in the manner of most depictions of the Angel Moroni, or a "mormon manatee".
Magic: The Gathering:
- The symbol for Phyrexia sets greatly resembles the Greek letter Phi. As in, Phi-rexian.
- Look at the illustration for Bronze Calendar. It's a bronze colander.
- The Revised Edition game manual included Richard Garfield's account of the creation of the game. He mentions that the pre-release version used placeholder art for the cards, including a few of these. For example, "Heal" was a photograph of someone's foot, while "Power Sink" showed Calvin sitting in a toilet, "because what is a toilet except a power sink?"
- Foresee depicts a four-eyed woman.
Munchkin is rife with these. For example, the card "Steal a Level", where the card's effect is that you steal a level, as in the gaming term, from an opposing player. The illustration is someone stealing a level, as in the tool.

Comic Books

In All-New Marvel NOW! Point One #1, a short vignette shows the Silver Surfer taking Dawn Greenwood to Planet Nautikos to see their centennial Festival of Light. Silver Surfer describes it as an event where the skies are filled with cosmic rays that are "[unlike] anything on Earth". Indeed, those cosmic rays were quite impressive.
Archie Comics: Moose Mason is a gold mine for these gags. Here are a few:
- Girlfriend Midge is away on vacation, and Moose is depressed because she hasn't written to him yet? Archie tells Moose to make Midge jealous by sending her a picture of him surrounded by chicks. When Midge sees the picture, it's Moose surrounded by...baby chicks.
- When his car was elected for carpool to take to the beach, Moose turns his car into a pool (by filling it up with water).
The Beano: In a Fatty Fudge strip, some outlaw cowboys say "we've got prices on our heads" whilst literally having some prices drawn onto their heads (well, hats).
Blacksad: Ivo Statoc makes a big point to Blacksad about how much of a "cold-blooded" bastard he truly is. He's a toad.
By Wilhelm Busch: Cousin Franz is drawn blackhanded in the picture with the Chocolate babies and their not-father. "Your wife, my kids" indeed.
In "Capt. Sprocket Meets His Greatest Foe Dr. Neutron" in Mad House Comic Digest #5 Captain Sprocket remarks that with simple types like him, everything goes in one ear and out the other. When Super Sally asks how he can be sure, he shines a flashlight into one ear and the beam comes out the other one.
The Incredible Hulk: When Rick Jones marries his girlfriend Marlo shortly after she comes Back from the Dead, DC Comics' Death makes a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo, crashing the reception and giving Marlo a silver hairbrush.
Judge Dredd: Judge Dredd never being seen without his helmet. "Justice is blind", anyone?
My Boyfriend is a Bear: When Bear and Nora are at the zoo, one of the couples freaking out at seeing Bear is a man clinging to a large hairy man with him. He's got his own bear.
My Little Pony: Set Your Sail:
- Sunny's seapony form has a curly tail and short dorsal fins, like a seahorse (and also the Generation 1 seaponies).
- Cover B of issue 5 includes several clownfish with red clown noses.
Nero also enjoys making such jokes. Examples are Nero literally rolling up a gang of thieves (in a carpet) or seeing a head on a desk with the caption "head of the police". When Nero went in space he always saw a bunch of milk bottles flying around (the Milky Way) and a great bear floating in space (named after the star sign).
Olivier Rameau: There's an anthropomorphic frog wearing a scuba diving suit, hence the name "frogman".
Panic #5 features a story based entirely on depicting baseball terms literally while describing a game — warming up the pitcher, etc. This is followed by giving the same treatment to golf, football, and basketball e.g. a player "making a basket" is shown weaving a wicker basket.
Pop Gun War had something approaching but not quite being a visual pun. The character Sunshine, a little person, informs another character that he will tell her a story along their trip. Upon being informed it's a short walk, he replies, "It's a short story." Thus, we have a short man on a short walk telling a short story. If nothing else, it was visual wit.
Secrets of Sinister House: One of the "Witch's Tails" cartoons in the 11th issue shows a play on "TV dinners" by depicting Eve feeding several TV dinners to a sentient television set.
Suske en Wiske: Wiske literally "burning with curiosity", Suske and Wiske followed by swans ("swans" is a nickname for police on motorcycles in Belgium),...
Tintin: The cover for The Calculus Affair has one related to the original French: the cracked yellow glass somewhat resembles a sunflower, as in Professeur Tournesol (Sunflower).
The UglyDolls comic has the story "Climb, Wage, Climb!", where Wage gets groomed into being the replacement manager...by getting his head shampooed and getting a facial.
V for Vendetta: At a certain point, V is breaking into the television station to have his own recording broadcast. In the background, you see a number of other TV shows playing. One is a sitcom with lots of innuendo, including a woman commenting on her (literal) melons.
Wonder Woman:
- Wonder Woman (1942): Issue #2 proudly declares itself the fall issue, with the cover colors in oranges, yellows and blacks which are colors associated with the fall and depicts Diana tipping Mars off a wall, with him falling.
- Wonder Woman (2016): Phobos and Demios are minor war gods and the children of Ares who often manifest as monstrous dogs with skeletal heads or a pair of doberman pinschers. They're war gods pretending to be war dogs.
A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel mostly takes itself seriously, but does literally have Meg Murry "shooting daggers" out of her eyes, and later, a raincloud over her, both times to indicate her mood.
Zenith Phase II sees a henchman, observing the main character, commenting "Strange... he has his mother's eyes." The Big Bad comments wryly, "Really?... I thought that we did." Cue shot of a glass jar, with... well, guess what suspended in it.

Comic Strips

Calvin and Hobbes: An early strip features Calvin showing Hobbes an "antelope"... by taking him over to an anthill, pointing to one, and saying "See, she's climbing down the ladder to her boyfriend's car!" Hobbes is not amused.
Dykes to Watch Out For #346, before the 2000 election:
Ginger: Vote for Nader and you'll get what you deserve. Bush.”
Which is exactly where the croquet ball ends up.
The Far Side: One strip shows a couple driving around with a map of Nowhere, approaching a sign that reads "Now Entering The Middle."
Garfield: The 1980-01-23 strip features Frank, a friend of Jon's, meeting Garfield for the first time and rubbing him. Garfield reacts violently and states "Some people rub me the wrong way".
Inside Woody Allen: One strip features a store which runs on this trope. Suitcases are shaped like hearts, spades, clubs and diamonds; hand mirrors have a thumb and four fingers, etc. When Woody says he'd like to complain to the manager because it's "too literal" the clerk points to a door labeled "Head Office" which is shaped like a person's head.
In the 2002-09-29 The Wizard of Id strip, Blanche writes a check to pay for her groceries. But when she tries to hand it to the cashier, it jumps out of her hand and bounces away. She ends up paying cash instead.

Fan Works

AMV Hell 3: This site has a "MULTI KILL!"... only it's not three players being fragged in quick succession as per Unreal Tournament but rather Multi from To Heart killing.
In Altered Histories Harry casts a disarming spell on a Polish thug with a rather literal result.
Bad Traffic SMP Ideas (Life SMP): In the hypothetical season Wild Life (not to be confused with the canon season of the same title), each of the players are morphed into a different animal in-game.
In Cinders and Ashes: the Chronicles of Kamen Rider Dante, a major theme is letting your emotions out, as many of the Kamen Riders in the fanfic are tied to an emotion that fuel their Elemental Powers. All of Dante's armors have pipes or vents to air out flames, with his core emotion being anger. The one exception to this is his Yellowstone Mount which has none and just lets the heat accumulate, which consequentially causes Dante's user to get more and more angry. In other words: Dante's armor vents out his own grief save for one that just bottles it up.
In A Collection of Harmonious OneShots Hermione gets annoyed at Ron dating Lavender to try to make her jealous and Harry comments that a ton of shit is going to drop on Ron if he keeps up this sort of thing. Hermione then decides to get revenge by conjuring a brown cloud which drops a literal ton of shit on Ron immediately after the Gryffindor/Hufflepuff Quidditch game.
Completely Bludgered (Potter Verse): After Ron and Ginny give Harry and Hermione a Love Potion, Hermione decides to use them as human Bludgers. In other words, this is a story which contains actual Weasley bashing.
CouncilRyS RPG (hololive): One of the early game enemies are a sentient pair of gardening clippers. Who do you call those that make video clips of streamers, much less Virtual Youtubers?
Cutie Mark Crusaders 10k (My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic & Warhammer 40,000): When Discord is explaining the rules of his game, he says that whispering sweet nothings to the pieces that represent who the player wants to influence works well. He is then shown literally whispering the phrase "sweet nothings" to his piece.
A Different Professor:
Sirius: That was beautiful, Madam Bones. I don't think I have ever seen anyone cut a politician off at the knees with that amount of skill and so little bloodshed. In fact the last time I saw anyone cut off at the knees I actually saw my cousin Bellatrix cut someone's legs off at the knees.
A Diplomatic Visit (My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic): Used by Discord a few times in the sequel Diplomat at Large.
- In chapter 6, he pops in and claims "My ears are burning" (because he was being talked about). They're literally on fire.
- Twice in chapter 7. First, when he says he needs to cause more chaos to get back in shape, he's enclosed in a dodecahedron-shaped bubble. Second, when he tells Luna that "The timing is key", his head morphs into an old-style skeleton key.
Effects of Basilisk: Ron literally swears a blue streak.
Neville: Gran always said that expression about cussing up a blue streak was something only a really pissed off wizard could do.
Fighting Back: Sirius eats a sundae with all the bells and whistles — edible ones which actually play music.
A Game of Cat and Cat:
- Leon the dead Crusader's introduction to the fic is him sitting on an Ottoman. As in, the cushion.
- During an argument, Soma protests that just because Naoki is a Physics Major, that doesn't mean that he can build a particle accelerator. Naoki "responds" by tossing an eraser at him (which is technically particle acceleration).
  Soma: Okay I walked right into that one.
Horrortale: A penny is shown dropping as Undyne realizes Papyrus's claim of being Aliza's uncle means that by implication, Sans is (supposedly) her dad.
In the Bleak Midwinter (Harry Potter): Tom Riddle Sr and Serpens Malfoy have lunch at a restaurant that serves fancy dishes playing on words, such as toad-in-the-hole that releases live hopping toads when the crust is pierced, and blackcurrant flummery that needs to be earthed to be safely eaten. Serpens is a little confused by the "current" pun since he doesn't know anything about electricity, but Tom is amused.
Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail (Infinity Train & Pokémon the Series & Silent Hill): In the Dead Carnival Car, Chloe Cerise is fighting off the Organ Man. She tells him that he's got "a screw loose", to which he mutters how uncreative the insult is while tightening a screw.
Later, Traitor: Maloof's mental world is populated by invisible mafia mooks wearing suits, making them literal Faceless Goons.
Owl's Hell That Ends Well (Helluva Boss): Stolas, a noble of Hell, literally bleeds blue blood when injured.
Put a Taboo to Use: After Professor Sprout is wrong about something, the house elves make her "eat crow" for a week by transfiguring all her food to look like a dead crow.
Sunrise Over Britain: Harry asks Peeves to pay attention to him and Peeves' four brothers transform themselves into corncobs, with Peeves stating that they're "all ears".
Swung by Serafim: Neville's toad Trevor literally kicks the bucket as he dies.

Jokes

A classic joke on the internet goes like these: A pussycat and a cockerel are walking by a stream when the pussycat slips and falls in the water. The cockerel starts to laugh.
Why? Because when the pussy is wet, the cock is happy.

Literature

Amelia Bedelia lives and breathes this trope; the titular maid is Literal-Minded, so every request made of her invariably results in an end product constituting a visual pun on the desired result. For example: Dress the chicken. Draw the shades. Dust the furniture (Amelia Bedelia even finds Dusting Powder in the bathroom!).
The Cask of Amontillado: Fortunado asks if Montressor is a Mason (of the Freemasons), Montressor says he is. Fortunato asks for proof, and Montressor produces a trowel.
Catbirds And Dogfish, which is supposed to be about animals with portmanteaus for names, actually depicts said animals as Mix-and-Match Critters (for example, the catbirds are all portrayed as cats with wings, and the dogfish are all portrayed as fish with bulldog heads instead of medium-sized gray birds and small, speckled sharks like in real life).
Council Wars: The teams responsible for infiltrating and securing potentially hostile beaches are primarily composed of Changed Selkies. In other words they are SEAL Teams.
Discworld:
- Guards! Guards!: When the Watch are arresting a villain, Vimes tells Carrot to "throw the book at him". Carrot, who doesn't understand metaphor, lobs The Laws and Ordinances of Ankh-Morpork in the villain's direction, causing the villain to lose his balance and fall five stories to his death.
- Feet of Clay: Vimes is introduced to the tradition of canting arms mentioned under the Real Life section. The Heralds, in creating arms and mottos for newly-rich tradesman, use boxing gloves for a man named Sock and so on, which Vimes is duly unimpressed by. However, one coat-of-arms proves to be a confession Hidden in Plain Sight: Arthur Carry the candlemaker is given a traditional lampe au poisson, and his family motto "Art Brought Forth the Candle" is Ars Enixa Est Candelam... though in true Discworld fashion, the "Eureka!" Moment doesn't hit Vimes until after he's worked that out already, and it only serves to further enrage him as he's apprehending the perpetrators.
- Pyramids: Whenever Pteppic tries to read hieroglyphs he reads them out literally (e.g. reading an ancient king's name as "thin eagle, eye, wiggly line, man with stick, bird sitting down, wiggly line").
- The coat of arms of the Assassins' Guild features a cloak and dagger on the upper half and a double cross on the lower, both fitting a Murder, Inc. and Spy School (that has actually double-crossed the city leadership on numerous occasions, though at least one of them was justified.)
Franny K. Stein: Attack of the 50-Ft. Cupid has a chapter where Franny is let down by her family and friends showing little interest in her inventions. She attempts to talk to a friend from school named Percy over the phone about a machine she made that can bring pictures to life, but Percy doesn't pay attention and only babbles about how much he likes corn chips. An illustration shows Franny glaring and hanging up the phone while imagining that Percy has a safety pin for a head, making him a literal pinhead.
The Golden Oecumene: The laws of the Oecumene are carved on the floor of the courtroom — they're set in stone.
Paul Jennings, Ted Greenwood and Terry Denton produced a series of Where's Wally type books called Spooner or Later, Duck for Cover and Freeze a Crowd. All of them, especially in Duck for Cover, ran on visual puns. The worst offender is the three-page spread involving gnus, with each one involving a "new" or "news" pun. Second place goes to the two pages of kings, each of which was a pun on the gerund form of a verb ending in "k" or "ke".
The King's Avatar: After Excellent Era forcefully retires Ye Xiu against his will, they literally throw him out into the cold as it starts snowing as soon as he leaves the building.
The books A Little Pigeon-Toad^note pigeon-toed, The King that Rained^note reigned, The Sixteen-Hand Horse^note, and A Chocolate Moose for Dinner^note mousse, which are all about visual puns.
Monday Begins on Saturday: The protagonist is sent to a world of (mostly bad) sci-fi literature and is surprised to see Technobabble-speaking engineers... reinventing the wheel. (In original Russian, it's a bicycle.)
The Naked Sun: In a rare serious example, at one point Baley the detective asks his partner, R. Daneel Olivaw (the "R." means he's a robot) to "give me a hand". This results in Olivaw briefly giving a puzzled look at his own hand, as if being asked to unscrew it and give it to Baley. This proves to be an important clue to solving the murder.
The Where's Waldo? books have plenty of Visual Puns, which are spelled out in the checklists at the end of each book.
X-Wing Series: In Wedge's Gamble, there's a bar on the lower levels of Coruscant called the Headquarters. Its marquee features a stormtrooper's helmet being torn into four pieces.

Magazines

New Scientist: One cover feature about how we don't know what most of the chemicals in food actually do is illustrated by a picture of a lettuce, with 90% of it hidden underwater. An iceberg lettuce.
Cartoons from the National Enquirer:
- Three doctors are crowded around an operating table with a lace stretched out on it.
First doctor: This won't be easy — we're operating on a shoestring.
- A string leads from an open window to a kite high overhead.
Unseen speaker: You really do take the time to read the stuff in the suggestion box, don't you, boss?
- Three vultures and a woman are gathered around a pile of bones.
Dismayed man: When you said you eat like a bird I had no idea this is what you meant, Dorothy!
- A paper chain sticks out of a middle-aged couple's mailbox and trails across the sidewalk.
Wife: Looks like a chain letter . . .

Mythology & Religion

God sometimes does this sort of pun when giving prophets visions in the Bible, helped by the fact that the ancient Hebrew writing didn't include vowels so the two words would often be spelled the same. For example, Jeremiah 1:11-12:

The word of the LORD came to me: “What do you see, Jeremiah?” “I see the branch of an almond tree [saqad],” I replied. The LORD said to me, “You have seen correctly, for I am watching [saqed] to see that my word is fulfilled.”

Pinballs

Dr. Dude: Done with the Gift of Gab, which is a gift-wrapped box with a mouth on it.
In Bally's Capt. Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, one of the triangle bumpers has a large-breasted woman holding a sign that reads "Feel Them Bumpers".
WhizBang Pinball's Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons has several:
- A horse on the playfield gets its flatulence lit by a match, making it a hot ass.
- On the backglass is a collie dog playing with a melon; maybe he's feeling melon-collie?
Fish Tales shows a string of six fish, each holding rulers, pencils, and textbooks — in other words, a school of fish.
The backglass for Earthshaker! shows a yuppie being ejected out of his car; "YUP E" is written on his tie.
In Scared Stiff, the television set on the backglass has a rabbit on top of it, with its rabbit-ears antenna.
A fairly obvious one shows up in Guns N' Roses (Data East), as the left plunger is shaped like a blooming rose, while the right plunger is a pistol gun grip. In other words, a gun and a rose.
The various activities of Silverball Mania occur under the watchful eye of a Wizard Classic, shown holding a pair of pinballs in his outstretched hands. This makes him a Pinball Wizard.
In Capcom's unreleased Kingpin, using an extra ball is accompanied by the display showing a tiny mobster with butterfly wings, a.k.a. a "Fairy Godfather."

Puppet Shows

In one scene in The Muppet Movie, Kermit instructs Fozzie to "turn left at the fork in the road". Kermit is quite surprised to see a literal giant fork stuck in the road at the turn-off.
In one episode of The Muppet Show, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew's latest experiment is a new liquid element he keeps in a beaker. This leads to him asking his assistant, "Get the beaker, Beaker."

Professional Wrestling

Any time a garbage can was weaponized in Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling after Giant Baba coined the phrase Garbage Wrestling to describe it.
Women's Extreme Wrestling champion T.H.A.I. wore fishnets under jeans, with a fish shape cut into the jeans so you could see them.
Johnny Curtis had the gimmick of creating visual puns when he first showed up on WWE SmackDown.

Roleplay

In We Are Our Avatars, Kari's moniker is "Blind Follower"; after her brief Gender Bender moment, she is near-sighted, and needs glasses.

Software

Beta versions of Windows 7 had a wallpaper with a fish (a betta to be exact) blowing 7 bubbles. This is a pun on Windows 7 beta. This wallpaper also sneaked its way into some of the final versions as well.
This same fish was used for the Consumer Preview edition of Windows 8. The bubbles here form the number 8, as a pun on Windows 8 beta.
Also in Windows, the button to close an open window is a red button with an "X" in the middle. So to close the window, you have to "X"-it.

Theatre

In The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged), two of these are thrown in near the end: Pontius Pilot and the Axe of the Apostles.
Spamalot has one during this musical number at around 4:31.
- What's the... oh, "Hay". Duh.
The SpongeBob Musical has the number "Poor Pirates", where Patchy sings about the poor life pirates face alongside some other pirates — and a baseball player from Pittsburgh, a "Pittsburgh Pirate".
The Deaf West revival of Spring Awakening has an actor-specific example during "The Bitch of Living":
- The line referencing a girl named Marianna Wheelan has Anna — played by wheelchair-using actress Ali Stroker — wheel by with a bit of a sassy flourish.

Theme Parks

In Animal Actors, one of the show's birds is taken off the stage by a "stage hand" — a human hand sticking out of a part of the set.
The Haunted Mansion has the opera singers as a visual pun on The Phantom of the Opera, and the Grand Ballroom scene contains a ghost of Caesar, as in "Great Caesar's ghost!"
Mickey's PhilharMagic used to have a smell pun. During the "A Whole New World" sequence they would pump in the scent of Jasmine's perfume, which, naturally, smelled like jasmine. Unfortunately, too many people were allergic to the scent, and so the scene is now odorless.
Muppet*Vision 3D has Waldo, the new 3D Muppet, allowing his nose to jump off his face, grow legs, and start dashing in circles. "Don't cha just hate it when your nose runs?"
A hidden detail on the pathway surrounding Popeye & Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges at Universal's Islands of Adventure shows a different kind of "school of fish" — a small schoolhouse sitting on top of water.

Toys

The "Happy Version" of the iDog has stars for its LEDs — it's literally starry-eyed.

Video Games

Advanced Variable Geo: In Advanced V.G. II, Satomi's taunt animation has her wipe her forehead with the back of her hand. Then shows off by posing with one hand on her hip, while briefly emitting a miniature flame in the palm of her other hand (i.e. she's literally Playing with Fire). Bonus: She's actually mimicking Kyo Kusanagi's taunt pose from The King of Fighters. It's the same pose, except he wags his finger while emitting a miniature flame from the tip of it. So they're both doing it.
Agarest Senki (aka Record of Agarest War) has an enemy named Jumbo Cock. It's a giant rooster.
Atlus:
- Despite its status as the company's first fully 3D video game, Maken X remains one of Atlus' more obscure — and equally experimental — titles. In 2001, two years after the original was released for the Sega Dreamcast, the game would receive a remake on the PlayStation 2 titled Maken Shao (or Maken Shao: Demon Sword in Europe). While the naming choice comes across as odd at first glance, it's actually this trope plus Bilingual Bonus, as explained by Hardcore Gaming 101. Maken Shao takes the characters used in Maken X (魔剣Ｘ), but replaces the "X" with "爻" (which is pronounced "yao" in Mandarin but "shao" in Cantonese). 爻 itself is a symbol used in Taoist cosmology and other forms of Chinese esotericism (specifically referring to a hexagram found in the I Ching), which ties into the game's liberal use of the taijitu^* as a power-up, but the character also looks like a "XX" — essentially going the Lettered Sequel route.^note "X" Makes Anything Cool, but since Maken X already had an "X" in the title, Atlus decided to add a second one.
- Persona:
  - Persona 1 and Persona 2: Vice-Principal/Principal Hanya's face is based on a Japanese Hannya mask. Luckily enough for the English-language versions, this also gives him an over-the-top Sadist Teacher look.
  - Persona 4: Teddie's Persona is named after Kintoki-Douji, a mythological figure who carried a tomahawk. Teddie's Persona carries a Tomahawk missile.
  - Persona 5: After yakuza boss Junya Kaneshiro transforms into his boss form as a fly-man, he starts displaying stereotypical Gangsta Rap poses and dialog. In other words, he's acting pretty fly.
- Shin Megami Tensei and several of its related offshoots (including the aforementioned Persona) have the rather questionable-looking Mara, whose name translated from its Japanese colloquialism means "Penis." You can guess what it is for yourself. It also fits the original depiction too; Mara is the name of a demon that tried to "tempt" to Buddha while the latter was meditating. Kazuma Kaneko's depiction of Mara is a penis (sexual temptation)^noteLet's try to ignore the tentacles... drawing a chariot (temptation to do aggressive and violent things) made of gold (greed).
In Balatro, the Seed Money Voucher is represented by a dandelion coin seedling.
In Beecarbonize, the Doughnut Economy card is represented by a frosted donut.
Cel Damage: One of the maps, Shooting Stars, has a shower spout with meteors pouring out of it.
In Code:Realize, Queen Victoria is dressed in mostly yellow with some black stripes and the Royal Guard wears an insignia of golden hexagons. In other words, she is their queen bee.
Duke Nukem 3D: At the end of the level "Pigsty", after fighting their way through a court room, you find a room containing... wait for it... a hanged jury.
Electronic Popple have you assuming a sentient Antivirus software who battles andromorphic computer viruses. Among them, the virus worms and virus bugs looks like literal worms and bugs.
The old Fantastic Four beat-em-up game for the original PlayStation has a neat one. If you keep spamming the same attacks, a cheese icon will pop up next to your health (ergo, the game calling you a "cheesy" player). Use a different variety of moves and the game shows you a thumbs-up instead.
Final Fantasy:
- Final Fantasy VII: Sephiroth is the One-Winged Angel. The problem is, Kingdom Hearts already has enough Disney OWA bosses, and Dissidia would have to stop and load every time he entered EX Mode if they used his Safer form. How do they get around this? Simple: Give him a single black angel wing and turn him into That One Boss.
- Final Fantasy XIV:
  - After Thancred is found in the Dravanian Forelands, he regales us with the story of how he escaped the events of ARR's ending. Turns out it was due to rare forbidden teleport spell cast by an ally... Which left him lost in the wilds hundreds of malms away, naked and without equipment. During the telling, the player is given a series of still images of his actions, which are only leave the T rating intact due to a well placed squirrel-like creature blocking their view of any naughty bits. Or as the creatures are known in universe, a Nutkin.
  - The trailer for the Shadowbringers expansion features a brief shot of rich and overweight miqo'te lounging around. Literal fat cats.
- Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles has the Lilties, a race of onion-looking people who are the greatest knights and fighters in the world with their spears. Some actually fail to notice that it's an entire race making a visual pun on the class of Onion Knights from previous games in the Final Fantasy series.
This Google Doodle web game has crickets playing Cricket (in addition to the usual duck pun).
One of the subjects you can learn in Growing Up is "Birds and Bees", and the Player Character is shown trying to hook up a bird with a bee when studying it.
Guilty Gear Xrd newcomer Elphelt Valentine. In keeping with the series' rock-and-roll theme, she wields guns and wears a dress decorated with roses.
Haunting Starring Polterguy: One of the fright 'ems is the family's computer. Its mouse will turn into a huge real mouse.
Intake is a puzzle/arcade game where the player shoots at multi-colored capsules to make them explode into glitter. Or, to put it more simply, it's about "popping pills".
Katawa Shoujo: There is one that refers to something that was cut from the final game. In Hanako's good ending, the final images involve the camera zooming out from Hanako kissing Hisao in public, until it is looking at the two from the inside of a bakery, with two muffins inside. This was supposed to imply that Hanako became pregnant (having "a bun in the oven") as a result of their having sex, but the scene was revised so that Hisao uses protection, and there is no indication that it failed. The scene can also be interpreted as Hanako and Hisao having children of their own in the future^note.
Kirby: The series has Tacs, small feline enemies dressed like bandits who try to steal your copy ability. They're "cat burglars." They also possess the Copy ability. They're copy-cats.
In Kitty Powers' Matchmaker, choosing date topics involves pulling the Love Handle aka a heart-shaped lever to activate the slot machine (or the panel-flipping board in Makeover) and determine the topics for your client to talk about.
Left 4 Dead:
- The box art is of a dead left hand with four fingers (thumb ripped off). The sequel takes it a step further: two of the fingers are bent.
- At one point in the game, in the DLC "Crash Course", you will walk past some very big fuel-holding tanks. One of the survivors, a biker named Francis, will then exclaim: "Look guys, we're passing gas!"
LEGO Adaptation Game: The series has a few examples.
- In LEGO Harry Potter, in the Hufflepuff common room, you cast a spell on two pillows and they fight each other.
- In LEGO Harry Potter 2, you have to bring a dying Snape a bucket to see his memories. When he actually dies, he kicks it.
- In LEGO The Lord of the Rings, when King Theoden says "My body is broken", the legs have literally broken off his minifig.
- In LEGO Indiana Jones, there are puzzles you have to solve by getting items from monkeys. Mostly, they're wrenches.
- Literal skeletons in closets are something of a Running Gag of the games, turning up in LEGO Indiana Jones, LEGO Harry Potter, and LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean.
Love, Ghostie: In Felix and Ollin's epilogue, Ollin brings his favorite frog dish while Felix brings his favorite polar bear dish to their dinner date — a plate with a polar bear's face, that is.
Mass Effect 3: After the abysmal reaction to the original ending, BioWare released the Extended Cut DLC for free, which contained both new and extended cutscenes plus an epilogue to make the ending make a little more sense. In one such cutscene, Shepard is charging to the beam with their crew when they are hit by Harbinger's laser, causing a nearby Mako armored-personnel carrier to flip over and injure a crew member. Shepard jumps over the wrecked Mako to save that person. In other words, they jumped the shark.
Mega Man 1: Cut Man's weakness is Guts Man's weapon, which lets Mega Man throw stone blocks, in a literal case of rock beating scissors.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance: Mistral uses a polearm called L'Etranger. Said polearm is a pole made of robotic arms linked together, with an arm holding a combat knife at either end.
Mishap 2 An Intentional Haunting has one which shades heavily into Black Comedy. After Larry Lerpis, aka "The Savage Romeo" fights a wrestling robot built by one of the main characters, he announces that now that he's proven he wasn't just a phony, he can hold his head up high. And since his neck was elongated by the accident which killed him, he proceeds to do exactly that.
Neptunia: The CPUs' bust sizes are a play on the relative sizes of their consoles, from flat and bitter about it Blanc to XBOX HUEG Vert.
In OMORI, characters whose HP is reduced to 0 become "toast," having their portraits replaced by slices of toast. They can be revived in battle with an item called Life Jam.
Pokémon, oh so many Pokémon:
- Exeggcute is a group of eggs that hatch and grow into a palm tree when it evolves, making it an egg-plant.
- Alolan Exeggutor is believed to have been partially inspired by the Dracaena genus of plants, often called "dragon trees". Alolan Exeggutor is a Dragon-type walking palm tree, therefore it's literally a "dragon tree".
- Alolan Dugtrio's appearance with its long golden hair (making it look like a group or surfers or a rock band), its Steel typing and its increased weight compared to its normal Kanto variant make it literally a "heavy metal band".
- Marill and its relatives are round balls of water with polka dots. In Japanese, polka dots are called "water balls" (水玉).
- Nosepass is a compass whose nose always points north, making it literally follow its nose.
- Empoleon is a literal emperor penguin.
- Shaymin is a hedgehog that's also a hedge.
- Applin is a wyrm (dragon) that lives inside an apple as if it were a worm.
- Fidough and Dachsbun are purebread dogs.
Polyroll: One of the enemies in the computer-themed Digital Mind world is a ram with a RAM stick for a body.
Portal: In the first game, as GLaDOS says "despite your violent behavior", her randomly flashing screens pause on a picture of a violin, and when you destroy the morality core, they flash to a picture of a couple of screws.
Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask: Layton's childhood friend Randal Ascot wears an ascot. The Masked Gentleman also has a visual pun, but it's spoilerific: he's Randal Ascot, and he's still wearing an ascot!
Progressbar 95: Occasionally you may find ladybugs in the system menu. Tapping on them brings the message "You found a bug!" and the option "Report it", which gives 2500 after a level. In other words, you're literally finding and reporting "bugs" in the system.
Psychonauts: While exploring the insides of people's minds and mentalities, you will find several hatboxes, duffelbags, and purses that all bear sad, sobbing faces. That's right, emotional baggage!
Psychonauts 2 opens with a circus strongman lighting a match on an Xbox Game Studios matchbox to launch Double Fine's mascot out of a cannon. In others words, Microsoft helped Double Fine launch their game.
Quest for Glory: There's scarcely a scene that goes by without some sort of sight gag. Gnomes (Keapon Laffin, Punny Bones and Gnome Ann) especially are prone to this, and the gags in general are affectionately nicknamed "Silly Clowns" both by the fandom and within the games themselves. The Clown himself actually cameos in Quest for Glory III.
Rockman 7 EP:
- Freeze Man freezes time as one of his attacks.
- Spring Man's level, "Viva! Spring World!", takes place in a hot spring at springtime.
Sam & Max: Freelance Police: Prismatology alludes to the phrase "technicolor yawn;" the Gastrokenisis talisman, as well as the cover of "Emetics," is depicted as a man vomiting a rainbow, and it makes other character vomit in technicolor as well.
Sega Superstars:
- In Jet Set Radio Future, Professor K describes Gum as "A real cool lady who leaves a trail of broken hearts wherever she goes." In Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed, Gum's All-Star Move involves her literally leaving a trail of broken hearts on the track.
- In the PC version of Transformed, Pyro, Heavy, and Spy are playable characters. Spy takes over driving in the plane segments. Notice: Spy Plane.
The Sims 2:
- Olive Specter is a literal Black Widow (as in, she's black, not that literally).
- The bubble blower makes Sims float after being used for a while. See, they're getting high!
Slay the Spire: The unlockable Beta Art of the cards (unlocked by slaying the True Final Boss with one of the characters) are full of these. The most well-known example is probably the Defect's "Boot Sequence" card, whose Beta Art is the Defect inside a comically large boot.
Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill: The Rush Limbaugh boss literally throws sticks while stones fall onto Socks. This is also a Take That! at his pro-deforestation views.
One particular B-12 memory in Stray is a bowl of broth topped with RAM chips. Those who know their cyberpunk will immediately recognize this as the robotic equivalent of ramen.
Super Mario Bros.:
- The three major princesses have motifs (Peach/Mushroom, Daisy/Flower, Rosalina/Star) that match the three power-ups from the very first game.
- Super Mario Bros. 1: Fire Flowers are known as hi-banas in Japanese, and the Japanese word for "fireworks" is hana-bi.
Team Fortress 2:
- The game features two characters that are responsible for continuing the war between RED and BLU, The Administrator and Miss Pauling. Guess what color they wear?
- In the Capture the Flag mode, players have to steal briefcases of sensitive documents from each other's base. When a player has a briefcase, some documents will fall off and hang on the floor for a few seconds, letting the enemy team track him down through a very literal "paper trail".
TinkerQuarry: Staya, the main antagonist, is a vicious toy dog who makes sure no toys leave the Dollhouse. He's covered in mechanical clock parts, so one could say he's quite literally a "watchdog".
Touhou Project has Parsee Mizuhashi, a Green-Eyed Monster. Take a wild guess as to what her eye color is. Parsee also has a visual Stealth Pun going on: she's a Persian (hashihito) bridge princess (hashihime).
Unleash the Light: The Flanker Badge, which boosts the wearer's attack by 5% if they're on the top or bottom of the diamond formation, is represented by flank steak being cut with a sword.
VVVVVV: The title doesn't just refer to the six members of Captain Viridian's crew. It also refers to your most common obstacle.
In Wilmot Works It Out, one puzzle shows various creatures with numbers painted on their sides. It's called "The Numbers of the Beasts".
World of Warcraft:
- The icon representing the passive Shaman ability "Mental Quickness" is a picture of a brain running around on little legs.
- Patch 10.1 in Dragonflight introduced the niffen, a race of mole people. Their flight master is called Avogadro. Get it? Because he's a mole!
Worms: The animation for skipping a turn is skipping rope.
Xenoblade Chronicles: When Melia wears the Infantry Attire, the cape clasp looks like an 8 on its side... the infinity symbol.

Web Animation

Black Rhino Ranger: In "Now That's What I Call Skylanders Polka", during the "Wrecking Ball" portion of the song, the Skylander named Wrecking Ball is the one breaking the walls.
DEATH BATTLE!:
- In the battle between Wario and King Dedede, when Wario's and Dedede's Paper-Thin Disguises (Wario-Man and Masked Dedede respectively) fall apart, a Waddle Dee and Goomba discuss it, before doing a jaw drop before exploding. In that sense, they quite literally had their minds blown.
- This happens twice at the same time at the end of Deadpool vs. The Mask, where after reducing Deadpool to a head, The Mask pulls out a comically large nuke named "Fat Lady" to finish him off with.
- And again in Venom vs. Crona, where Venom, hiding in the rafters of the church they're fighting in, grabs Crona's ankle with his Overly Long Tongue and subjects them to Metronomic Man Mashing. In other words, he's giving them a literal tongue-lashing.
Fred Again: One man called Fred a road hog while driving. Fred is seen as a pig driving his car.
FreedomToons: "Journalism in 2018" has two reporters literally patting themselves on the back repeatedly while engaging in a bloviating and self-aggrandizing speech about the moral fortitude of the fourth estate.
Fresh Guacamole: Most of the items used to make the guacamole are look-alikes, but some puns are thrown in too.
- When the baseball (which resembles an onion) and pincushion (a tomato) are cut, they turn into dice. They are literally being diced.
- The guacamole is served with a side of chips. No, not potato chips; poker chips.
Combined with a Lame Pun Reaction in BrainPOP's Hiccups video, after Moby gets the hiccups.
Tim: They're gone, huh? I didn't even know you had a vagus nerve!
[Moby reveals a Las Vegas slot machine in his compartment]
Tim: And that is quite possibly the worst joke we've ever done.
Hello Kitty and Friends Supercute Adventures: When Hello Kitty lifts Kuromi's spirits, her Personal Raincloud rains jelly beans on the countertop. She went from being in a bad mood to being "full of beans". ^note
How to Kill a Mockingbird uses a pickle to represent Dill.
Kurzgesagt: In "The Workout Paradox", the narrator says that working out not only burns calories like dieting, but it's also "healthy somehow", and therefore exercise should be able to "kill two birds with one stone". Cue the jogger accidentally pushing a giant stone ball onto two birds exercising.
The Natural Habitat Shorts episode "Gym Rat" features two spotted skunks that offer to spot the titular rat during her workout.
Taiyang, the father of Ruby and Yang, in RWBY is a good father who clearly cares for his daughters and has a spiked heart tattoo on his arm. He literally has his heart on his sleeve.
In the web animation StarCrafts based on Star Craft, the Terrans dress up for Halloween. Guess which unit dresses up as a ghost?
"Super-Showdown-Bowl!":
- To get the being shaped like an Oscar statue out of his sphere and into the arena, the heroes and villains resort to... an Oscar Bait. A literal one, by having several characters quote lines from their respective award-winning movies.
- In The Stinger, the "Super-Cereal-Bowl" isn't a showdown between cereal mascots, but actual frosted cereals... in a milk bowl.
One episode of Teen Girl Squad depicts Tompkins' mom, who is preparing to go out "prospecting for future ex-husbands," as a literal grizzled Old West gold prospector. She's also a robot, for no particular reason.
The Welcome to... series has a lot of these. Boobies are represented by the birds, and the user in the Facebook video is a duck named "Duck Fayce".
The snarky video game reviews of Zero Punctuation consist of an almost constant string of these.
- During the God of War: Chains of Olympus review, he subverts it. When describing Kratos' behavior as "incongruous" the screen cuts to the text "A word I can't fucking illustrate."
- The previous image for this page illustrated his comment that Super Mario Galaxy had "many interesting levels" with Mario looking at a pile of spirit levels and saying "How interesting." This was such a groaner that Yahtzee lampshaded with a big sign reading "VISUAL PUN".

Webcomics

Blood Reverie: In the second episode, Cassia is describing her night of passion with Grey to her friend. When she gets to the *ahem* climax, the condiment packet she's trying to open spurts out mustard into her eye.
Cirque Royale: Red during her running away sequence wins a "parting gift" from one of the booths instead of a good prize. A comb.
CoyoteVille: In the May 5, 1998 strip, Sean deals with a runny nose that's running away from him.
Cyanide and Happiness:
- In this comic, Hank's Hamburger Joint is actually a man named Hank with a hamburger for a knee.
- In this comic, an employee tells his boss that he didn't go to work because he is "feeling a little horse". He is shown touching a small horse the entire time.
- In this comic, a guy says he avoided getting mugged by a bully at school because he was "saved by the bell". It then cuts to the bully being pummeled by a large, anthropomorphic bell.
- In this comic, a guy claims to have been breaking into hives all morning. It then cuts to the inside of a beehive, where the wall has been smashed open and their TV has been stolen.
DAR!: The Author Avatar describes herself as a "fairly hairy girl" in one strip, then proceeds with six panels involving various ways of shaving . . . a cat. This is returned to in a later strip at a waxing party, where all the girls are drawn as carrying cats and a guy is drawn as carrying a squirrel.
Daughter of the Lilies: When Thistle tosses seeds into Brody's empty eye socket, it immediately sprouts... Black-Eyed Susans.
Diglett And Pals is just a series of strips with visual puns on Pokémon attack names. One example would be a Voltorb attempting to flee from a fight with a Diglett who summons an arena in order to trap the Voltorb, this is followed by the text "Diglett's arena trap prevents escape".
Dominic Deegan has this splash page
Dregs: At one point, the nudist has a "private property" sign covering her privates.
Dubious Company:
- Walter and Tiren get shipwrecked and their primal instincts kick in. Walter builds a house while Tiren hunts for food.
- In a backstory side piece, Sal and Leeroy get a visit from Phred. He appears as a pair of sweatpants.
El Goonish Shive: The Writer's Block is a fairly common Running Gag in the Sketchbook section.
Foxhole: Miss Faraday is an electromagnet-themed cyborg, and also a violent Mood-Swinger whose current status is indicated by the "+" and "-" symbols on her breastplate. She's quite literally bipolar.
Girl Genius has, among others, a Battering Ram. And in a holiday filler page, Santa Klaus.
Gunnerkrigg Court: In the side-story City-Face 2, the titular pigeon, who believes he is turning into a human businessman, is told "Every human businessman needs one of these" and given a blackberry. Which he eats. Gunnerkrigg Court also features a decidedly non-humorous example in the main storyline. Mort's death is depicted with an exploded diagram of a bomb.
Hello from Halo Head:
- Achilles is a cat who is obsessed with hurting himself. Appropriately his fur is colored black-and-blue.
- Peachykeen is a fruit bat whose head is a literal peach.
The Heroes Of Middlecenter: "Could somebody give me a hand?" while fighting zombie ninjas (sadly apparently lost forever like the rest of the site). Was included in the amateur video that spawned the comic.
Homestuck has one in Act 6 for John and Nanna. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, after all. A number of things Rose writes (on Pesterchum, in Complacency of the Learned, etc.) are in purple text, because she literally and figuratively (or the other way around for both) writes in Purple Prose.
Huckleberry:
- In a page titled "Nightcrawler", a worm is seen crawling his way into town at night.
- The Diamondback really has diamonds on its back.
Irregular Webcomic!: There's a recurring strip with the (literal) Writer's Lego Block.
Lackadaisy:
- While inside Gracie's pool hall, Mordecai locates Gracie's hidden speakeasy when he noticed smoke escaping from behind a picture of two cabaret girls. The girls in the picture were literally and figuratively smoking hot.
- Asa Sweet is an overweight feline who wields a great deal of power in the St. Louis crime world. He's literally and figuratively a fat cat.
Life and Death has a long history of puns, visual and otherwise. Even several characters owe their mere existence to visual puns, like "love is blind," and such. Lampshaded as often as not, but hey. Tropes Are Not Bad.
Lightning Made of Owls: This strip has Ambrose on a line that is tangent to a cubic function, while talking to a calculus class about something irrelevant.
Mimi:
- In the very first comic, she makes the well-known joke about the Ambiguous Syntax of "shrimp fried rice", but then sees that a giant shrimp is indeed making fried rice in the restaurant she's in.
- When a customer asks for a sandwich with "everything", the Literal-Minded Mimi hands him the Earth between two pieces of bread.^note
- When Roy tells Mimi to "be more realistic", there's an Art Shift where she's suddenly drawn in color and much more realistically.
- Mimi does a "footjob" for Roy—she fills out a job application holding the pen with her feet.
Monstrously Cute: Tia finds Ophilia playing videogames and reminds her she has an article due. She says that she got a ghostwriter to help her out, then we cut to Rosabel the ghost editing the document.
The Order of the Stick:
- From one of the filler strips: "Comic is running late."
  Rich Burlew: Get back here, you ungrateful...
- "The Polearm Shop" has a snake slither in in the last two panels. The entire strip is an homage to Monty Python's Flying Circus.
- The Cliffport Police Department is trying to fight off Pompey's summoned centipedes, so they send in the SWAT team... who happens to be heavily armored officers with flyswatters. SWAT team, indeed...
- Because Gnomes have a racial ability to speak with burrowing animals, Fox News is an actual fox.
- After Redcloak lampshades the stupidity of the Order of the Scribble having to be ignorant about the protection of each other's gates due to their distrust of each others, a hobgoblin presents a lampshade to him.
  Redcloak: Just hang it anywhere.
- Lien claims it's ridiculous that "a superhero would just show up on a random island in the middle of nowhere", and Elan insists that it's happened before. A cutaway panel shows Cyclops, with a flock of sheep, meeting some sailors getting off a boat...
- This strip (caution; it is full of spoilers) has Elan combining this with a non-visual pun: in response to the question "Are you enjoying the parade?" he states "I'm on the fence" while fencing with Tarquin and also literally standing on a fence.
- "Passive Voice": Even D&D spell names can be used for this gag. When Durkon cast a hold person spell on Tarquin, the latter just throws off the effect and responds "OK." as he's grabbing the dwarf by the beard for a Human Hammer-Throw.
- In the "Beach Party" wallpaper, you can see a "horseshoe crab"... i.e. a actual horseshoe with crab legs and pincers.
- A plasma-screen television in Hell leaks blood when smashed.
Rain: When Rain's brother Aiken is coming to stay for a week, Rain (who's not out as Transgender to Aiken yet) suggests she should literally hide in the hall closet instead of facing him.
In Rusty and Co.:
- When Gelatinous Cube seizes the Belt of Genre Changing, the result in the next panel is naturally... Cubism.
- Schmetts, the alcoholic fairy, is found in a bottle, making her a "bottle fairy". She's also a green fairy.
- Level 6 ends in a cliffhanger... with Rusty catching Madeline falling down as he's climbing a cliff.
- In Level 8, the "8-bit 8-ball" is quickly identified as an artifact. What does it do? Artifacting, Dirk muses. Indeed, the comic's picture all around is getting low-resolution, as in an 8-bit picture. Which in computer parlance is called... artifacting.
- Level 9: The artifact Rusty, Madeline, and Y.T. are sent to retrieve is a device that can cast magic, providing its own verbal components so long as the correct words are typed into it. It's a Speak & Spell.
- Also in Level 9, Y.T. is pursued by zombies and thinking that she'd need someone good at fighting undead, at healing her, and willing to help. Then she bristles at the idea that she's "putting paladins on a pedestal"... right next to a fountain where Madeline, turned to stone, had been put on a pedestal.
- In Level 10, the instructions to find the Black Market end with "Now take a long walk off a short pier." This is not a diss, that's exactly what is needed to do.
- And right afterward, as a swordfish-man questions her, Stabs warns him to not get too nosy... because his pointy bill almost took out an eye.
Three of these in a single strip of Sandra and Woo, all involving Woo's name in conjunction with movie or TV series titles.
Schlock Mercenary: Dr. Bunnigan uses a waldo wearing a red and white striped sweater and hat.
Sonichu: Internet trolls are represented as troll dolls.
Swords: CX - "Pocket Knife" features a knife that can cut open a portal into a Pocket Dimension... which turns out to be filled with actual pockets.
Alt Text: It's a pocket dimension? Do you get it? DO YOU GET IT?
Unsounded: The lady acting as General Bell's arm candy during the Treenahin festival is dressed in a candy costume.
Vampire Cheerleaders at one point has Captain Nemo captaining a submarine in the shape of a giant spiral shell.
VG Cats once dropped a very literal F-bomb.
Wand Scum: When Pemineth transforms between their male and female aspect, it usually involves them melting into a puddle of goo, making them literally gender-fluid.
The Whiteboard: Like many a Time Travel story, a time travel arc in May 2011 contains a pair o' Docs.^note

Web Original

Mr. Mendo summed up the absurdities of the backlash against The Lone Ranger (2013) by depicting it as an argument between two drinking straws.
The social media website Bluesky uses a butterfly as its logo, which makes it a social butterfly.
Most, though not all, of Cryptid-Creations' daily paintings are literal (and quite adorable) takes on puns or wordplay. BullDog (#1088), Sourpuss (#1313), Investi-Gator (#1541), Swineapple (#1777), the list goes on and on...
Daredevil: This photograph taken by Deborah Ann Woll (Karen Page) on her Instagram takes Matt's first alias name "The Devil of Hell's Kitchen" quite literally by placing a Daredevil figure by her kitchen sink.
When not showing examples of Epic Fail, a number of "You're doing it wrong" meme images depict this, like this one.
Minecraft Championship: For MCC Pride 2022, the Ace Race map is redecorated to be pride-themed, with not just rainbows floating in the skies with rainbow balloons, but platforms rebuilt with asexual (or ace) pride flags.
The staff behind Neopets are known as The Neopets Team, which is frequently shortened to "TNT". Accordingly, the collective account they use for communicating with players has a unique avatar◊ depicting a bundle of dynamite exploding.
SCP Foundation:
- The object SCP-1091-RU contained by Russian branch. It's an anomaly which visualises idioms said within it. When, during a test, an American doctor said "It's raining cats and dogs", actual cats and dogs started falling from the sky.
- SCP-586 is a green pipe that causes anyone writing about it to make at least one spelling mistake per sentence (including the Foundation's own database entry about it). The page image, instead of being a green pipe, is a green Pope.
SF Debris: The introduction to Star Trek: The Original Series episodes is taken from William Shatner's -performance of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", that — where possible — is cut with appropriate images from TOS episodes. When Shatner is proclaiming that the flowers "grow so incredibly high!!!", there's a shot of one of the space hippies from "The Way To Eden".
The World Wide Web Consortium has a completely image-based one with their "Valid Code" icons. Most, such as the icon for valid HTML 4.01◊, sport a nice big checkmark. The icons for MathML use a square root sign instead.◊
What If? (xkcd): The third image on "The Constant Groundskeeper" shows a cougar chasing a guy riding a John Deere riding mower. Explained by the Alt Text:
"A cougar chasing down a deere."
The Wisecrack icon — a donkey wearing a monocle — is clearly a play on the term "wise-ass."
The Wikipedia page on the rhombic triacontahedron mentions that it is made of "golden rhombi", and illustrates this with an image of a golden rhombus — with a literal gold fill.

Web Videos

American High Digital: The usual avatar for the American High Shorts channels is of the logo decorating a pair of shorts.
The Angry Video Game Nerd does a few from time to time.
- Like in the last part of his Castlevania retrospective — The last line is accompanied by two cannons put together.
  AVGN: So, you've got the Canon of the games, with the canon of the novel — it's like taking two canons and putting them together!
- During the "Dam Busters" segment of his Action 52 review, he gets frustrated by his inability to turn back after getting trapped by a dead end, to which he exclaims, "This game is shitting me!" Cut to an image of the Action 52 cartridge laying a Nerd-shaped turd.
- When attacked by a Klingon during his Star Trek games review, he asks:
  AVGN: You want Genesis? You can have Genesis. [holds up his Sega Genesis]
- In part 3 of his review of The Legend of Zelda CD-i Games, he gets mad enough to start dropping literal F-bombs.
The Cartoon Man: Several in Return of the Cartoon Man when Peter tries to question Roy and Karen. Among other puns, they produce a literal "elephant in the room."
Channel Awesome:
- The Nostalgia Critic:
  - The Critic once is reminded to bring up the suicide of The Neverending Story 2's lead actor by someone who he's been ignoring for a while, who's been in the room for a while, and happens to be an elephant. An elephant in the room, if you will.
  - The Review of Wish starts and ends with the Critic beating up a dead horse. Yeah, literally beating a horse-masked corpse. Just to give an idea of what he thinks of the movie.
- The Nostalgia Chick's Showgirls review has a running gag of censoring the movie's frequent breast shots with, well, boobies.
- In the Crisis Crossover storyline Kickassia, the Critic assures his "army" that "I got you all a hotel room." Cut to the large group of people — in A hotel room.
  Phelous: Well, gee, I didn't see that one coming.
- In the Nostalgia Chick's Labyrinth review, to point out a Running Gag (namely, Hoggle's name being pronounced incorrectly), the word "Gag" on legs runs across the screen.
- In the review of The Room (2003), a picture of a donkey's face is used to censor a shot of... you guessed it, an ass.
- In Spoony and Linkara's review of the Warrior #1 comic, one scene shows them sitting in their hotel room with all of the on-screen colors inverted, leading to this exchange:
  Spoony: Man, this dimension sucks!
  Linkara: Oh, don't be so negative.
Climate Town: In "The Troll Army of Big Oil" while discussing an oil industry astroturfing effort that was full of misinformation and directed lawmakers to websites that didn't exist, Rollie starts saying how this obviously didn't work, only for it to cut back to him filming in front of a JK Petroleum truck while saying that actually it did work, and the legislation with major popular support ended up getting chucked out.
In the Dropout sketch "The Matrix Runs in Windows XP", which is a spoof of both The Matrix and Windows XP (and thus contains many computer-related jokes), the Oracle welcomes Neo into her kitchen while she's holding a plate of freshly-baked cookies, and tells him that she hopes he has "cookies enabled".
Dad: In "Dad Is The Best YouTuber," Dad sets up a pie with a figure of Felix the Cat on top, before proceeding to smash it all with a hammer. This is a pun on him wanting to smash PewDiePie, also known as Felix, to take his place as the best YouTuber.
Danny Gonzalez:
- One Vine has the mail-man deliver a "letter", as in a paper letter "A", complete with wacky music to emphasize the point. Immediately subverted, as the "A" is an actual letter — a "Dear John" Letter, to be exact.
- "Your destination is ahead on the right." Cue Danny looking out the window to see a disembodied head on the curb.
- In being told that he, the owner of a "White Explorer", left his lights on...he goes out and yells at a literal Caucasian explorer, holding a light.
In Doom House, the dying terrorist declares, "I'm so bored", while clutching a wooded board.
Double Life SMP: Joel and Etho, being soulbound to each other, have built a large ship as their base called the Relation-ship. Scott burns half of it to ashes on Day 5; combined with Joel's resultant Madness Mantra of "If the ship burns, everything burns", it ends up as unintentional Foreshadowing to Joel and Etho's final death on Day 6 by burning in lava.
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: Dr. Horrible uses a trans-matter ray to steal some gold "in bar form" that got liquefied in transit and ends up in a freezer bag, looking like nothing so much as soup broth. That smells like cumin, no less. (They never say it out loud, but what he's got is a bag of "gold bouillon.")
Dream Shorts: The profile picture of the channel is the same as Dream's usual profile, except the MS Paint-Dream is depicted as literally being short.
In an Eons of Battle video (a YouTube channel devoted to wargaming and miniatures) that had paid promotion for Manscaped (makers of razors and accessories geared towards cutting pubic hair), the host demonstrated the electric razor by cutting a tuft of model grass that was attached to the genital region of a Troll Warhammer miniature. Yes, he was trimming the creature's bush.
The Game Overthinker often uses this, though he does this in combination with Running Gag, such as using a picture of The Question when he uses the word question, using Shigeru Miyamoto for God, using a picture of a butt for but and others.
"Incredible Rickroll" features Kirby rolling on a hamster named Rick.
Due to YouTube's inconsistently strict content policies regarding depictions of self-harm and suicide, The Kill Count replaces any related footage in the media it covers with an animation of Kermit the Frog sliding down a sewer pipe, depicting "Kermit sewer-slide."
Linus Tech Tips:
- In "The BEST Keyboards Under $75!", Linus sets down the keyboard boxes and says "Now let's see how they fall into place", then knocks them down like dominoes.
- In "This GPU SLIDES into this Case!", Linus tests cooling configurations of a graphics card in a small case. The testing with and without a plastic shroud shroud respectively show a green checkmark and a red X over the profile picture of Polish-Canadian esports gamer Michael Grzesiek, better known as Shroud.
From the Map Men series:
- Jay's costume of Arno Peters from "Why every world map is wrong" has him holding a giant inflatable penis, or a peter as it's known in some slangs.
- In "How many continents are there?", Jay mentions that a continent can be defined by its culture, while holding a cup of yogurt (a dairy product derived from fermenting milk with bacteria cultures).
- In the longitude problem episode:
  - Admiral Sir Cloudesly Shovell is depicted as a shovel with googly eyes. The disclaimer text at the bottom helpfully points out that Shovell didn't actually look like that in real life.
  - It's mentioned that Nevil Maskelyne, who had become the new head of the Board of Longitude by the time John Harrison finished his H4 chronometer, decided that the clock needed to be put through several more tests. This was accompanied by the visual of Jay and Mark lifting up a soccer goal and then carrying it a few meters away — literally Moving the Goalposts.
- In "You'll never guess the most popular internet country code", Mark tells the viewers to "strap in" for the explanation on some internet jargon. Quick cut to him or Jay trying to buckle up in his car seat.
In Hayley Morris' skits, there are many mentions of Period packing heavy bags as a way to convey heavy blood flow.
During The Necro Critic's review of the Fanservice anime Call Me Tonight, there is a very suggestive scene of a girl out in the rain with her wet, now-transparent clothes clinging to her body. Cue Necro enjoying a piece of cheesecake.
In the teaser of the QSMP, in spite of being told they cannot speak to each other, Spanish-speaking Quackity breaks down the wall placed between him and his English-speaking counterpart to talk to him. In other words, he's breaking down the language barrier.
In Saberspark's review of the Balto trilogy, he talks about how the first movie's soundtrack gives him the goosebumps. Quick cut to Stella's seductive song for Boris in Balto III: Wings of Change, where Saber quickly clarifies that he's not talking about those goosebumps.
Matthew Santoro:
- In Triumphant Return!, Matt says, "Me being the smart guy I am, I decided to do a little digging." He then picks his nose, and says, "No, not that kind of digging."
- In 40 Fascinating SEX Facts!, Matt says, "That's a cock in the background", and points to a picture of a rooster.
Songs to Wear Pants To and Hannah Hart's collaboration "Show Me Where Ya Noms At" is already full of food puns to begin with, so when Hannah says "drop that beat", the video cuts to Andrew dropping a beet. And then there's Hannah having a literal chip (of the nacho variety) on her shoulder.
In Stampy's Lovely World, many of the shops and minigames are built with this in mind. For example, the 'iC Optician' has ice for windows, and the 'Farmacy' is a pharmacy which is shaped like a barn. Of course, since the world is the brainchild of the Pungeon Master known as Mr. Stampy Cat, this is bound to happen.
Tom Scott: This video, "Appalling Visual Puns #1", one of four. Did you get it before the caption?
Vaguely Recalling JoJo: When a Star Platinum gets a Strike in Telence's baseball video game, a Scyther ^noteScyther's Japanese name is Strike appears.
WitchCraft SMP: In her backstory, Lauren wishes to become a Sand Witch. While she is granted Sand Blaster abilities at the start of the story, she also turns into a literal anthropomorphic PB&J sandwich. She later admits she should have been more specific about her request to the universe.

Real Life

One example of a rare cross-cultural visual pun that works is a T-shirt and set of stickers that have the U.S. State of Ohio on them, with the Japanese word "gozaimasu" written on said pictured State. "Ohayo, gozaimasu" is one of the most common greetings taught in most beginner-level Japanese language classes in most English-speaking countries, and essentially means "Good morning". Even better, "gozaru" is the polite form of "aru", or "is" for inanimate objects. In other words, the T-shirt is literally saying "This is Ohio."
One meaning of the word "clock" is "a short embroidered or woven ornament on each side or on the outer side of a sock or stocking, extending from the ankle upward." [1] Many of them look like the usual type of clock.
A similar thing is with "pig", which is both the animal and "an earthenware crock, pot, pitcher or jar." [2], and "piggy banks".
There is set of shirts at some online stores that has "I love tits", "Great tits" with tits (specific breed of birds) on chest. "great tits" specifically place tits where body's tits would be. There is also boobies version, again, 2 boobies (birds) on chest.
This tequila factory bottle puts the shot in shot glass.
Rebuses (visual puzzles) are made of this trope. For example, one music rebus is a picture of a Leica camera followed by one of Mick Jagger◊; Leica Rolling Stone == Like a Rolling Stone.
Sign language allows for this quite literally. For example, signing the word "milk" in front of your face is "past-your-eyes" (pasteurized) milk.
In heraldry, this is known as "canting arms" where the design references its owner's name in some way. For instance, the arms of the Spanish region/historical kingdom of Castilla y León (whose name, in Spanish, means "Castle and Lion") are a castle and a lion. Similarly, the arms of the Bowes-Lyon family (the family of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother) features bows and lions. This has also led to a saying in the Society for Creative Anachronism, that "Heralds don't pun, they cant."
This is one of the traditional reasons given for why fish became an early Christian symbol. In Greek the acronym for "Jesus Christ, God's son the Saviour" (ἸΧΘΥΣ, for "Ἰησοῦς Χρῑστός Θεοῦ Υἱός Σωτήρ", Iēsoûs Khrīstós, Theoû Huiós, Sōtḗr) was coincidentally also the word for fish (ἰχθύς, ichthýs). It was just obscure enough (you had to know the phrase was a thing) to use fish symbolism as a secret sign during times of persecution. It helped that the fish sign was easy to make and even use as something of a Trust Password (you could make a casual arc in the dirt while talking with someone, and if they were Christian they could casually make another intersecting arc to complete the fish sign, and then you would both know you were part of the Church).
Some people has did this with the literal meaning of their own names:
- Japanese voice actress Sakura Nogawa took a photo of her watching the cherry blossoms (sakura) at the side of the No River (No-gawa in Japanese) in Tokyo.
- Another Japanese voice actress, Kujira, did the same in her Twitter account: She took a photo of herself with a bucket full of plush whales in her hand. Keep in mind her stage name means "whale" in Japanese.
- Tara Strong also pulled a similar one, when she was seen in a photo with boxing gear and punching a sandbag. You know, Tara is... strong.
In the Soviet Union, it was typical to display images of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin just about everywhere. In 1994, the breakaway Republic of Abkhazia issued a postage stamp◊ featuring Marx and Lennon.
At a November 2017 NFL game between the Chicago Bears and Philadelphia Eagles, a Bears fan waved a sign featuring the Mozilla Firefox logo as a way of expressing dissatisfaction with Bears head coach John Fox ("Fire Fox").
When Formula One reintroduced wheel covers in the 2022 season, McLaren, who had sponsorship from Google Chrome, chose to put the browser's logo on them. That's right: they have Chrome rims.
An unintentional example happened in April, 2022, when footage recorded by the Russian intelligence agency FSB claimed to show evidence recovered at the scene of a raid on a terrorist cell. The evidence was apparently manufactured by a very confused spy who misunderstood his orders. Among the guns, brand-new Neo-Nazi paraphernalia, and a book signed by someone named "Signature Unclear" were several hard copies of The Sims. Journalists puzzled over why video games were being shown as evidence of terroristic intent until someone figured out that they were supposed to be SIM cards, but someone misinterpreted the memo.
After taking over ownership of Twitter in a $44Bn buyout, Elon Musk posted the message "Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!" accompanied with a video of himself carrying a kitchen sink into the office. Collective Groan ensued. This acquired a new interpretation after Twitter, under Musk's leadership, rebranded itself, saw a huge increase in bigoted and racist content (some posted by people Musk had unbanned from the platform), and an exodus of subscribers and advertisers. The resulting substantial drop in revenue and company value led many to joke that Musk had arrived to "sink" the company.
This spaghetti measuring tool has three holes shaped like humans and the last one shaped like a horse—for when you're so hungry you could eat a horse.
London's Brixton tube station has a mural◊ of a ton of bricks.

Visual Pun
(aka: Visual Gag)

59 Following

Example Subpages:

Other Examples:

Video Example(s):

"Look at the buns On That Guy"

Alternative Title(s): Sight Gag, Visual Gag

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"Look at the buns On That Guy"

Visual Pun (aka: Visual Gag) 59 Following

Example Subpages:

Other Examples:

Video Example(s):

"Look at the buns On That Guy"

Alternative Title(s): Sight Gag, Visual Gag

Previous

Index

Next

"Look at the buns On That Guy"

Visual Pun
(aka: Visual Gag)

59 Following