6 Weird Things That Show Up In Every Sitcom

In the SECOND EPISODE EVER of Night Court, a crazy ol' drunk claiming to be Santa Claus gets taken downtown, but it's gradually revealed that he knows everything about everyone's childhoods, down to the last intimate detail. Then he offers Harry Anderson the opportunity to succeed him as Santa. Again, this is the second episode, and they have already established that this courtroom exists in a world where Kris Kringle wants the judge to take over as the actual, real Santa Claus. And the next 191 episodes take place with all the characters in the show knowing that.

In Home Improvement (in the very first season!), Mark starts questioning Santa's existence after Brad and Randy tell him that Santa died before he was born. "Wilson" then shows up dressed as Santa and gives everyone early presents, thus restoring Mark's faith. As Saint Nick leaves, Tim remarks that it's really nice of his neighbor to do something, only for Jill to point out that Wilson is over behind the fence, as always. So holy shit, who was Santa??? Mark stares up at the sky in wonder ...

In a near-identical twist, a Christmas episode of Gilligan's Island from almost 30 years earlier featured Santa visiting the castaways and bringing them gifts. They all assumed it was the Skipper dressing up to lift their spirits, but when Santa walks away, the Skipper immediately enters ... from the other direction! HOLY WHAT THE WHOA NOW.

Santa's even real in an episode of fricking ER, a show that won 22 Emmys. A normally non-insane character screams into the night, "There's no God, there's no Christmas ... THERE IS NO FRICKIN' SANTA CLAUS!" Suddenly, snow starts to fall and he looks up to see how wrong he was. Santa is flying overhead, laughing at him. Seriously, this really happened. On ER. Watch this crazy shit.

Each of these characters has a legitimate reality-shattering experience, and then proceeds to live the rest of their lives completely unaffected. Not ONE time in the subsequent episodes of any of these shows does one character turn to another and say, "Pretty crazy how Santa's been real this whole time, huh? Puts your little two-dates-for-the-dance problem into perspective, huh?"

Marie manages to get the entire damn car into the house on Everybody Loves Raymond, which prompts a discussion about whether old people should still be driving. These people manage to turn the tiniest misunderstanding into 22 minutes of awkward hijinks, but they live in a world in which everyone they know gets killed by a speeding car while watching TV in their own home.

Something about a laugh track seems to attract vehicular manslaughter, because it happened again in The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody, when London drives into a building.

This doesn't only happen when a stupid kid or an elderly idiot gets behind the wheel. Sometimes sitcom characters do it on purpose, like this jealous lover in the '90s show Wings.

And another jealous lover in Two And A Half Men.

There are many questions here, several about creative bankruptcy, but most pressing is: How fast does someone have to be driving to crash a car THROUGH a house? The answer, as any Mythbuster will tell you, is "any speed, so long as it's a plot point."

In an episode of The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air that aired THREE MONTHS LATER, Will drives Uncle Phil's Benz to a seedy pool hall, where he proceeds to crush a bunch of locals and become hilariously cocky. He then goes down $300 against a local hustler named Charlie Mack, and has to put up his uncle's car for collateral. Uncle Phil then shows up and turns out to be ... hold on a second ... a world-class pool player? He sinks trick shot after trick shot and wins back the money (plus $600), teaching the kids and the hustler a lesson: The good guy is the hustler who's holding the money when the credits roll.

Half a decade later, in a 1996 episode of The Steve Harvey Show, a kid named Bullethead crushes some locals and gets lesson-learning cocky. He ends up losing the school's field trip money to two hustlers named Raven and Jody. This prompts Steve Harvey and Cedric the Entertainer to win back the money by dressing in African garb and pretending to be clueless Rwandan tribesmen who have never heard of pool. They win all the money back with a montage of trick shots and teach the same lesson: Only gamble against people who are worse than you at pool.

In 1995, there were episodes of Martin AND Living Single in which the main characters get hustled at pool halls. Queen Latifah's sudden pool skills win back all the money in Living Single, but of all the wacky characters Martin knows, none of them are secretly world-class pool players. This was probably because his wig kept falling off when he played, and not because of a choice made by the writers. Still, it led to this being the only black sitcom of the '90s wherein a character lost his or her money to a pool shark without winning it back via magically lucky circumstances. And so Martin remains, as ever, an unimpeachable bastion of realism.

Monkey plots in sitcoms fall into a few categories. One classic is the monkey-from-the-zoo episode, like the time Kramer has to apologize to one on Seinfeld.

On Full House, they somehow end up bringing a chimpanzee home, which is cute, but also the reason we don't call them the Olsen Triplets anymore.

The zoo conceit works because it gives the show an air of plausibility. Zoos exist in cities, so it's sort of possible that the animals might have to be temporarily placed into the homes of non-zookeepers with unpredictable, fragile children. But what's really strange is how often we see sitcom characters straight up get a monkey as a pet. Monkeys are not great pets. They poop, throw poop, and screech maniacally as they tear out your eyes, which is why New York absolutely doesn't allow them as pets. Yet here is Ross, palling around with little Marcel.

And here's Jenna with her gibbon-son.

In Family Matters, Urkel ends up with a pet ape, which, according to Illinois law, means his home is classified as a research facility or zoo, making this only the 123rd most ridiculous thing to happen on that show.

The Big Bang Theory, an abyss of diarrhea popular among the over-medicated, also has a pet monkey, and this one ... smokes!? *laugh track*

Besides the visiting monkey and the illegal pet monkey, there's a stock plot even more dangerously wacky: the evil monkey. Here's one from the worst episode of How I Met Your Mother, in which a monkey villain robs Marshall at banana-point.

Malcolm In The Middle has a knife-wielding helper monkey that tries to murder Craig and Hal.

And in Community, the school is terrorized by Annie's Boobs, a kleptomaniac monkey living in the vents.

Of all the overused tropes, this is the easiest to forgive, because monkeys are the best. After all, if you had the opportunity to replace someone at your job with a monkey, wouldn't you do it? They're silly, they look hilarious in people clothes, and death by monkey is easily in the top 50 ways to die.

In an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, it's discovered that Patrick has had a piece of coral acting as his brain for years, thereby making him the dullest water creature in all of Bikini Bottom. At first he's happy with his newfound intelligence, but when it starts making his friend miserable, he yanks out his brain and puts the coral back in. The point is, everyone hates the smart, so try to be dumber.

Futurama even did a version of this plotline wherein the monkey, Gunther, decides his intelligence comes with too much responsibility, so he reduces his brain power voluntarily.

John Stuart Mill, the Utilitarian philosopher, famously asked: Is it better to be a dissatisfied Socrates or a perfectly satisfied pig? It's a complex problem worth discussing with the humans and pigs you know, but as you can see, cartoons vote pig every time.

In "Porko II," an amazingly titled episode of Gimme A Break, Nell Carter hosts a meeting for her weight loss group, PORKO. Yes, PORKO. The head of the group shows up, and they all mock him for regaining the weight he lost. But oh no! The PORKO members soon find themselves stuck in an elevator that can't handle all their porking weight. In the end, Nell talks their leader out of suicide, and everyone agrees to lose two pounds a week. That's what TV used to be like, kids.

In the Night Court episode "The Blizzard," lady-chasing sex addict Dan gets stuck in an elevator with a ... a gay man!?

And can you imagine getting stuck on an elevator with two sumo wrestlers!? The writers of Night Court could, in the episode "Earthquake!"

OK wait, this can't be right. In yet another episode of Night Court, "The Blues Of The Birth," Christine gets trapped in an elevator with two men and goes into labor. It took them a couple of tries, but Night Court, the industry leader in trapping actors in elevators, finally delivered its first elevator baby!

Joel B. Kirk resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and thinks the retro '80s music group The Midnight is too cool for words.

If Santa is real ... is Elf on the Shelf?

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For more check out 6 Weirdly Specific Characters That Are in Every Sitcom Ever and Why Every '80s Sitcom Decided to Kill Off the Mom.

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