The best inside jokes in the history of television

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

Television shows have often been filled with cliches, tropes and overt jokes written for a broad audience. Even the plotlines to some shows are so overdone, the mere inclusion of a certain narrative commonplace is enough to elicit eye rolling. 

How many times have we seen a main character wrestle with having two dates in one night and, rather than reschedule them, they go to the same restaurant with both and try to pull it off? Or two characters sharing a living space and dividing it down the middle with tape? Or dragging out a budding romance for years only to have their first kiss interrupted by a knock at the door, a phone call or another character entering the scene? 

These might make for funny scenes, but TV audiences of today are (generally) too smart for low-hanging plot devices like these.

Enter: the callback.

For savvy viewers, there’s nothing that hits quite the same as an inside joke, callback or internal allusion that only those who pay attention will understand. 

For a stand-up comedian, a callback might refer to a joke told earlier in their set. For sitcom writers, it might refer to a situation alluded to in an earlier episode, or it might go back even further than that.

Here are some of the best inside jokes and callbacks in television history.

Paul Rudd pranks Conan O’Brien for 20+ years

Actor Paul Rudd is a pretty likable guy with an “everyman” appeal that has even earned him a spot as People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” in 2021 (Rudd later claimed he was getting business cards made with that as his job description).

However, Rudd’s running gag with late night talk show host Conan O’Brien has put him in a whole other category.

Back in 2004, Rudd made an appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien to promote his appearance in the upcoming series finale of Friends. Rudd told Conan he’d smuggled out a secret clip of his scene and explained to the audience and Conan what they were about to see. 

The alien from the 1988 film Mac and Me in Rudd’s hilarious clip. Courtesy photo.

Instead, Rudd rolled a clip from the 1988 film Mac and Me showing a kid in a wheelchair roll off a cliff into a quarry (with an obvious ragdoll double used in the falling shot), followed by an animatronic alien raising his eyebrows afterward. 

It’s one of those clips that probably makes sense in the film; but, taken out of context, was enough to cause Conan’s audience to crack up.

That wasn’t the end of it, though. Oh, no. Rudd proceeded to bring that same clip to every subsequent appearance made on Conan’s various late night shows, always with a deadpan delivery. To make the joke even better, Conan always seemed to be taken by surprise by it.

There’s a video on YouTube that compiles the entire 20-year chronology of Rudd’s ruse, which culminates with pranking Conan twice in a row during his final week. Somehow, the clip just gets funnier and funnier the more you watch it.

‘Apologies to Matt Damon, but we ran out of time’

The titular host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! has waged a “feud” with actor Matt Damon that goes all the way back to 2005, when he jokingly said at the end of a taping, “Apologies to Matt Damon, but we ran out of time,” when Damon wasn’t even scheduled to be on the show. 

Over the years, Kimmel and Damon have continued to egg on the “feud,” often enlisting other celebrities to help prank each other publicly.

The initial mention by Kimmel was just a gag after a particularly bad show in which he was trying to think of an A-list star that they wouldn’t bump for any reason. Kimmel then continued to end his show with that same comment, and, a couple years later, Damon played into the gag with his first appearance on Kimmel — only to have Kimmel introduce Damon and quickly cut him off to end the show. Damon then cussed and screamed his way off stage, causing many fans to believe his reaction was genuine.

The gag has run for nearly 20 years, with each keeping it alive in good fun.

The Schrute graveside weddings

Dwight Schrute and Angela Martin getting married while standing in their own graves. Courtesy photo.

In an Season 3 episode of The Office (U.S.) Rainn Wilson’s character Dwight Schrute explained that the Schrute family usually gets married standing in their own graves, saying, “It makes the funerals very romantic, but the weddings are a bleak affair.” Six years later in the series finale, Dwight and Angela get married while standing in their own graves.

Better call Cinnabon

In the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad, Saul Goodman (played by Bob Odenkirk) tells Walter White (Bryan Cranston), that he’s no longer his lawyer and, “if [he’s] lucky, a month from now, best-case scenario, [he’s] managing a Cinnabon in Omaha.” During the opening scene of Better Call Saul — a spinoff of Breaking Bad that takes place years before the events of the latter show — we see Saul (wearing a nametag that says he’s “Gene”) indeed running a Cinnabon in Omaha.

George and Jerry’s conversation

In Seinfeld, the famous “show about nothing,” George and Jerry (played by Jason Alexander and Jerry Seinfeld, respectively) begin the first episode of a nine-season run with a conversation about George’s shirt: “The second button literally makes or breaks the shirt,” Jerry tells him. “Look at it, it’s too high. It’s in no man’s land.” In the series finale, all four main characters share a jail cell and the camera pans away as Jerry launches into the same conversation about George’s shirt button being “too high,” bringing this critically acclaimed show to a close with an obscure callback specially catered to superfans.