Blackadder/Funny

As with many British comedies, and pretty much anything Rowan Atkinson is involved in, Blackadder has had its share of funny moments.

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The Black Adder

• Every other line given by Peter Cook as Richard III qualifies for this category.
• This exchange, when Edmund thinks Henry Tudor's army is on its way:

Edmund Blackadder: Run for your lives! Run for the hills! Baldrick: No, my lord, they're coming from the hills! Edmund Blackadder: Oh, sorry! Run away from the hills! Run away from the hills! If you see the hills, run the other way!

• And, to think, Edmund almost called himself (drum roll please?) the Black Vegetable!
• Let's just say that the Black Russian Codpiece makes quite an impression at court.
  • As well as his attempts to conceal it once everyone's attention zeroes in on him.
• "Quick! The nunnery's on fire!"
• Virtually everything Brian Blessed does in this series is hilarious.
  • One example: "As the Lord said, love thy neighbour as thyself, unless he's Turkish, in which case kill the bastard! HAHAHA!"
  • While Richard III is giving an epic battle speech before Bosworth Field, and Harry is giving a rather mild piece of optimism, Mr. Blessed declares "Let BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOOD be your motto!! Slit their gizzards!!"
  • At the end of that same episode, King Richard, who is presumed dead, strides into the scene, covered in blood from head to foot, and bellows "Blood! Death! War! Rumpy-pumpy! BRILLIANT!"
  • "I LIKE NOT THIS NEWS! BRING ME SOME OTHER NEWS!"
  • "YOU TURKISH PIGS!"
  • "Do you want me to honest, or tactful?" "Tactful, I think." "Tell him to get stuffed!"
  • "CHISWICK! FRESH HORSES!"
• After Edmund challenges MacAngus to a duel, he makes a right show of spinning his sword around as a way of challenging his opponent...only for the Scotsman to split his sword right down to the hilt with just one swing! That sure escalated fast.
• When Baldrick is off to meet the Spanish Infanta, him and Percy shake hands and hug as if Baldrick's off to war!
  • Then there's the state he's in after the encounter.
• The hilariously over the top Witchsmeller Pursuivant from the episode of the same name, as played by Frank Finlay. When you're out-hamming Brian Blessed, you're doing it right.
  • The. Entire. Trial.

Blackadder II

• Pretty much any episode from this series, with particular mention of "Beer" ("Sounds almost exactly like fu-") and "Chains" ("Oh, it's a scythe!").

Elizabeth: Lord Percy? Percy: Yes? Elizabeth: It's up to you: either you can shut up, or you can have your head cut off. Percy gives this ultimatum painful and lengthy consideration. Percy: I'll... shut up.

• • The scene leading up to this, when Elizabeth mentions how Edmund and Melchet "simply vanished". Percy replies "Like an old oak table." In a rare moment of lucidity, Elizabeth thinks about this before replying "'Vanished', Lord Percy, not 'Varnished.'" Percy then explains how his Uncle Bertram's oak table simply vanished, along with his house, his other things and himself. Coincidentally, this was the night of the great Stepney Fire. "It was a most perplexing mystery."
  • I'll add: pretty much any dialogue between Blackadder and Baldrick.

Blackadder: Get the door, Baldrick. (Blackadder sits down) CRASH! Blackadder: (seeing Baldrick coming back carrying the door) Baldrick, I would advise you to make the explanation you're about to give phenomenally good. Baldrick: You said "get the door". Blackadder: Not good enough. You're fired. Baldrick: But my lord, I've been in your family since 1532! Blackadder: So has syphilis; now get out.

• The "adding" scene from the start of "Head".
• The "Great Booze-Up" monologue from "Beer".
  • "Cold is God's way of telling us to burn more Catholics!"
  • "In our house, Nathaniel sits on a spike! I sit on Nathaniel; two spikes would be an extravagance!"
  • "He was banging on the castle gates and falling over, and singing a very strange song about a girl who possessed something called a 'dickie-die-do'?"
• Lord Flashheart's appearance in "Bells". "I'VE GOT A PLAN! AND IT'S AS HOT, AS MY PANTS!"
  • "The best sword, the best shot, the best sailor...and the best kisser in the kingdom!"
  • "Hey bridesmaid, love the beard! Give's me something to HANG onto!!"
  • "Nursie! I like it firm and fruity! Am I pleased to see you, or did I just put a canoe in my pocket?!"
  • After Blackadder's bride-to-be has run off with Flashheart:

Melchett: Of course it's customary on these occasions for the groom to marry the bridesmaid. I presume you intend to honour this? Baldrick: I do.

• Blackadder's conversation with Captain Redbeard Rum (played by Tom Baker) in the series two episode Potato.

Rum: Courtiers to the Queen; you're nothing by lapdogs to a slip of a girl. Blackadder: Well, better a lapdog to a slip of a girl than a... git!

• • Not to mention the whole "You have a woman's (whatever) my lord!" scene.
• Percy's attempts to unlock the secrets of alchemy in Money.

Percy: (awed tones) Behold! Gold! Blackadder: Percy, it's green. Percy: I know. Blackadder: Percy, not to be pedantic or anything, but the colour of gold, is gold. That's why it's called gold. What you have created, if it has a name, is some green. Percy: Oh, my lord! You mean that I hold here, in my mortal hand, a nugget of purest green?! Blackadder: Well, I wouldn't exactly call it a nugget. It's more of a splat. Percy: Just a splat today, but who knows...or dares to dream... (he and Baldrick look towards the sky) Blackadder: ...Oh, God...

• "Jane 'bury me in a Y-shaped coffin' Harrington?"
• "Baldrick, you wouldn't see a subtle plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on top of a harpsichord, singing "Subtle plans are here again !"."

Blackadder the Third

• The finale, "Dual and Duality":

George: I die. I hope men will say of me that I did duty by my country. Blackadder: I think that's pretty unlikely, sir. If I were you, I'd try for something a bit more realistic. George: Like what? Blackadder: You hope that men will think of you as a bit of a thicky? Prince George: Alright then, I'll hope that.

• In "Sense and Senility", George has hired two actors to teach him how to deliver an effective speech. After being instructed to stand with his feet spread as far apart as possible and his crotch thrust forward, and to open his speech with a ROAR, George finally delivers the speech for the first time:

George: (ahem) WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH-unaccustomed as I am to formal speaking...

• • During the aforementioned instruction on an actor's stance, the following exchange takes place:

Keanrick: Oh yes, Your Highness. Why, your very posture tells me, "Here is a man of true greatness!" Blackadder: Either that, or "Here are my genitals, please kick them."

• • The same episode, where one must only say The Scottish Play and not Macbeth.
  • In the same episode, Baldrick discussing his family member who was an actor in a production of Macbeth. To be precise, 'Second Codpiece.' Used only in the fight scenes ("So he was a stunt codpiece?"). What makes the scene hilarious is when Blackadder absolutely deadpans the following conversation.

Blackadder: Did he have a large part? Long pause, including a cut back to Blackadder to show just how deadpan he is, then finally back to Baldrick. Baldrick: Depends who was playing Macbeth.

• • Again, same episode, Blackadder making his way over to the actors.

Blackadder: Let me just squeeze past this adoring rabble. [pushes through non-existent crowd]

• • After Baldrick and the Prince think the actors are going to kill them (actually reading lines from their play):

Blackadder: Are you sure they meant it, sir? George: Quite sure! Baldrick, how far apart were their legs? Baldrick: Oh, this far. (stands with feet at shoulder distance, thrusts out crotch) George: And their nipples? Baldrick: That far. (gestures with his hands)

• • And while we're on the subject, the play itself. All of it.

Mossop: It is a piece we penned ourselves, called "The Bloody Murder of the Foul Prince Romero and His Enormous-Bosomed Wife". Blackadder: A philosophical work then. Keanrick: Indeed yes, sir. The violence of the murder and the vastness of the bosom are entirely justified artistically/ ... Mossop: Spring has come, with all its gentle showers. Methinks it's time to hack the Prince to death. ... Keanrick: Oooooaaahhh, let's kill the Prince. Who will strike first? Mossop: Let me, and let this dagger's point prick out his soft eyeball and sup with glee upon its exquisite jelly. Keanrick: Have you the stomach? Mossop: I have not killed him yet, sir, but when I do, I shall have the stomach and the liver, too, and the floppily-doppolies in their horrid glue. Keanrick: What if a servant shall hear us in our plotting? Mossop: Ah ha! Then shall we have servant sausages for tea! Keanrick: And servant rissoles shall our supper be! ... Mossop: To torture him, I lust. Let's singe his hair, and up his nostrils... (turns page) ...hot bananas thrust.

• • During the Prince's speech practice he finds Baldrick in a chest and thinks he's an anarchist. Blackadder explains that it's just Baldrick spring cleaning. George says "Well he's got a bomb!", and Edmund replies "It's a sponge"; George says "Well whatever it is, get it out of here!" What really sells the bit is Baldrick leaving the room, holding the sponge at arm's length and tip-toeing gingerly.
• In the episode "Nob and Nobility" when the Prince has trouble putting on this trousers.

Blackadder: If I was feeling malicious, I'd say that's the sound of the Prince Regent still trying to put his trousers on after a week.

• "You'll be as dead as, as... that squirrel!" "What squirrel?" [BANG!] "Squeak!" [thud]
• The appearances of Pitt the Younger in the first episode of this series. His opening speech begins:

Mr. Speaker, Members of the House, I shall be brief, as I have rather unfortunately become Prime Minister right in the middle of my exams. I intend to fulfill my duties in a manner of which Nanny would be proud...

• The encounter with the Duke of Cheapside and his daughter Sally. Before meeting Blackadder, the Duke dotes on his daughter to the point where her revelation that she's an opium fiend who's gotten knocked up by a poet "who's a famous whoopsie" and killed her mother provokes nothing more than a cheery "Well, never mind!" After Blackadder, who has turned to the life of a highwayman, holds them up...

Sally: Father, you did nothing to defend my honour. Duke of Cheapside: [Dismissive] Oh, shut your face you pregnant junkie fag-hag.

• • "A single kiss of those soft lips is all I require." "Never sir! A man's soft lips are his own personal kingdom! I'll protect them with my life!"
    • In this scene: Blackadder. Kisses. Baldrick!
• The absolutely sublime minute from Sense and Senility that start at 1:00 here
• When the "party" at the French Embassy turns out to be less cheerful than it was supposed to:

Lord Frou-Frou: don't worry, in a moment we will hear the sound of music and happy laughter! Cue Scare Chord and Evil Laugh.

Blackadder Goes Forth

• Captain Flashheart in "Private Plane", especially when meeting the man who considers him to be a Worthy Opponent:

Red Baron (with a hilarious Just a Stupid Accent): How often I have rehearsed this moment of destiny in my dreams. The opportunity to encapsulate the unspoken nobility of our comradeship. (bang) Flashheart (loudly): What a poof!

• • The first thing Flashheart does in the fourth series is leap into frame, punch Edmund out, and step on him:

Flashheart: Eat knuckle, Fritz! How disgusting, a Boche on the sole of my boot. I shall have to find a patch of grass to wipe it on. I'll be shunned in the Officer's Mess. 'Sorry about the pong, you fellas; trod in the Boche and can't get rid of the WHIFF.' Blackadder: If we could dispense with the hilarious doggie-doo metaphor for a moment, I am not a Boche, this is a British trench. Flashheart: Thank heaven for that, thought I'd landed sausage-side. Mind if I use your phone? If word gets out I'm dead, five hundred girls will kill themselves. I wouldn't want them on my conscience, not when they oughta be on my FACE.

Captain Darling? Funny name for a guy, isn't it? The last person I called Darling was pregnant twenty seconds later!

• • WOOF WOOF
• Blackadder's telephone message to the commander of the RAF during the German bombing raid: "I'd like to leave a message for the head of the Flying Corps, please. That's Air Chief Marshall Sir Hugh Massingbird-Massingbird, VC, DFC, and Bar. Message reads: Where are you, you bastard?".
• Every scene in the episode "Major Star" where Lieutenant George is in drag. Particularly when he first shows up and pronounces "I...feel...fantastic!"
  • From the same episode, the scene where General Melchett prepares for his date was voted the second greatest Blackadder moment of all time. And for good reason.
  • "..and before I could say 'Don't tread on a mine', she trod on a mine (...) When I say 'a mine', it was a cluster of mines.."
• Baldrick's war poetry.
• The game of I Spy in "General Hospital".
  • "What begins with come here, and ends with ow?"
• The Western Front in a nutshell:

Captain Blackadder: It looks like Field Marshal Haig is making another gargantuan effort to move his drinks cabinet six inches closer to Berlin.

• In "Goodbyee", the scene in which Blackadder is on the phone with Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig. Haig is seen moving figures of soldiers across a map - then sweeping them off with a dustpan and brush.
  • Could verge into Fridge Horror, given how many regular soldiers died under the real Haig's orders (see the first day of the Somme)
  • Another good one from "Goodbyee" is Darling going to see Melchett. We don't see Melchett for a moment... and then we see the moustache net.
  • Baldrick's improvised coffee
• Baldrick as a would-be revolutionary in Major Star:

Baldrick: Can't you smell it, sir? There is something afoot in the wind. The huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Blackadder: Baldrick, have you been at the diesel oil again? Baldrick: No, sir, I have been supping at the milk of freedom. Already our Russian comrades stand poised on the brink of revolution, and the huddled woss-names such as myself will rise up to throw off our hated oppressers like you and the lieutenant... present company excepted, sir. Blackadder: Go clean out the latrines. Baldrick: Yessir, right away sir.

• The Kangaroo Court in Corporal Punishment, especially when Baldrick is called as a witness.

Blackadder: Deny everything, Baldrick. George: Are you Private Baldrick? Baldrick: No. George: Um, but you are Captain Balckadder's batman? Baldrick: No. Blackadder: *Head Desk*

• Lord Flasheart says that "anyone can be a navigator as long as he can tell his arse from his elbow", and Blackadder mutters "Well, that's Baldrick out then." Shortly afterwards, Baldrick says that joining the Air Force would be "better than just sitting around here on our elbows".