4 Times Karens Lodged Complaints Because They Didn’t Get A Joke

4 The Real-Life Reno PD Got an Earful After ‘Reno 911’ Premiered

While a lot of viewers were probably tipped off by the fact that Reno 911! aired on Comedy Central (and not This Is Actually Happening Central), according to co-creator and star Thomas Lennon, when the show first started, some people mistook it for a genuine documentary about law enforcement.

The real-life Reno Police Department even “got a fair amount of complaints that they shouldn’t let their officers be filmed making these bad decisions in the field.” Yes, America is totally cool with cops, say, recklessly crashing a motorcycle into a medical supply shop while wearing a skintight yoga unitard, just as long as nobody catches it on camera.

3 Half of Rose Parade Viewers Seemingly Didn’t Recognize Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon

In 2018, Prime Video partnered with Funny or Die for an alternative stream of the Rose Parade hosted by “L.A. Law alum” Tish Cattigan and “fitness expert” Cord Hosenbeck — two fictional characters played by comedy icons Molly Shannon and Will Ferrell. 

Apparently, a not so insignificant number of people didn’t recognize the former Saturday Night Live stars because Amazon was littered with negative reviews from “disappointed” viewers who felt compelled to complain about the hosts’ “inappropriate comments.” One reviewer even bemoaned that he was forced to listen to Cord — who, again, was just the guy from Elf wearing a bald cap — recounting a lengthy “tale of depression” while “eating raw salmon.”

2 Audiences Were Annoyed That ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ Wasn’t About a Better Band

Today, nearly 40 years after its release, pretty much everyone on the planet is aware that This Is Spinal Tap is a mockumentary about a fictional band, but back in 1984, people weren’t so sure. Despite the fact that documentarian “Marty DiBergi” was clearly just Meathead from All in the Family, and no Marshall amplifiers ever used the “up to 11” scale, some early audiences were convinced that the movie was a legit rock documentary.

According to Rob Reiner, he fielded complaints from folks who thought Spinal Tap “was a real band” and who questioned the director: “Why would you make a movie about a band that no one has heard of?” Reiner later reasoned that how the movie inadvertently fooled so many people was that it “was very close to the bone.” And to be fair, they did eventually become a real band.

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1 ‘Arrested Development’s Watermark Gag Irritated and Confused Netflix Subscribers

When the beloved but sadly-canceled Arrested Development was necromanced back into existence by Netflix (for better or worse) the show couldn’t help but include a meta-gag poking fun at its own tumultuous behind-the-scenes production history. Whenever the fourth season flashed back to previous scenes from the Fox era, the clips were branded with a watermark for “Showstealer Pro Trial Version.”

Perhaps due to news reports concerning the show’s various technical challenges, social media was quickly flooded with complaints from confused fans who assumed this was some kind of editorial goof rather than an elaborate joke implying that Netflix was forced to pirate Arrested Development DVDs to access footage from past seasons (and couldn’t even be bothered to pay for the full version of the disc-burning software).

Presumably, these same fans later realized they’d made a “huge mistake.”

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