Top 20 Best (& 10 Worst) Jokes From “Airplane!”

Shockingly, I hadn’t watched the 1980 comedy “Airplane!” until a few days ago. It’s a classic. No surprises there. I was immensely impressed by the thick-and-fast jokes, as well as the high quality of a lot of them … but some of them didn’t tickle me in the same way.

I was inspired by Medium’s “Every Joke From Airplane Ranked” list. Well, partially inspired. I’m not going to rank every joke, but I am going to point out my twenty favourites and ten that I thought were fundamentally flawed (so hopefully you’re not red-green colourblind).

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10 (WORST) – The Dog “Attack”

I have a dog, so I know the difference between when he’s playing and when he’s genuinely aggressive. The adorable dog in this scene was clearly playing.

I’m not saying they should’ve had the actor be realistically attacked by a feral dog, but the blatant lack of danger took me out of the joke entirely.

20 (BEST) – Bird Flu?

In general, I’ll have more to say about the worst jokes than the best ones. It’s much easier to critique a bad gag than it is to point out the humour in the good ones – if anything, over-analyzing them might kill the joke.

Dr. Rumack diagnoses a sick passenger, who ends up laying lots of eggs from her mouth. After the first one I was rolling my eyes, but I found it funny when the eggs just kept coming.

19 – Deadly Dancing

I didn’t love the “Saturday Night Fever” flashback as much as other people do. I’ll talk about one of its problems in a later entry, but there was one joke near the start that I enjoyed.

While dancing to the disco, a man get stabbed in the back – but his jerky movements fit right in and so Elaine boogies along. An easy, classic gag.

9 – Ted Breaks The Fourth Wall

“What a pisser”

The first five minutes of “Airplane!” were a bit rough. Lots of the terminal jokes didn’t land, and the obvious ADR was very distracting. It picked up once the cast reached the plane, thank goodness, but this opening stretch was the weakest of the movie.

I could look past most of the jokes, but one that annoyed me was when Ted broke the fourth wall. He says “What a pisser” to the camera after Elaine rejects him … so where’s the joke in that?

18 – The Wrong Week To Quit

Something that “Airplane!” does better than most comedies is the commitment to the bit. There are a fair few “runners” in the film where a gag is repeated over and over again, and it inexplicably gets funnier each time. The filmmakers must’ve used dark arts to turn something that should’ve been mundane into comedy magic.

One of my favourite runners is McCroskey’s “I picked the wrong week to quit [blah]”. It starts off as almost a non-joke, but it gets more and more absurd as the film goes on.

17 – Clearance, Clarence. Roger, Roger. Vector, Victor.

That title pretty much sums up the joke. It’s a fun play on words that got a well-deserved chuckle out of me.

8 – A Gust Of Wind

Apparently, an extra in the background of this scene was supposed to have his beard fly off. Would that have made the gag any funnier? Probably not.

It feels very trite and cliché to have an “overhead fan blows too hard” joke. But maybe that’s just me.

16 – Airport Phone

“Alright, give me Hamm on 5. Hold the Mayo”

This was the first joke of the film to really make me chuckle. The whole phone scene is great, from the captain picking up the wrong phone (“No, the white one!”) to the bizarre bouncing heart at the Mayo Clinic.

You can’t quite tell where the scene is headed, and then the punchline hits. Well played, writers.

15 – Good Luck. We’re All Counting On You.

The first time Leslie Nielsen entered the cockpit and said “Good luck. We’re all counting on you”, I struggled to see the joke. By the third time I had a stupid grin on my face.

7 – Boomerangs & Sound Effects

I mentioned before how the “Saturday Night Fever” parody was underwhelming, and a big part of that was to do with how the scene was presented.

I wasn’t a fan of the hat and jacket being boomerangs for a start, but all the exaggerated sound effects that played throughout the scene got on my nerves. It was like I was watching a Family Guy Funnies compilation.

14 – Captain Oveur Shows Symptoms Of The Virus

Great physical comedy. Dr. Rumack lists symptoms of the virus, Captain Oveur shows them. Solid bit.

13 – Baggage Claim

No notes. A perfect cutaway gag – quick and simple.

6 – The Horse Affair

I can’t be the only one who watched the horse scene and was too shocked to even think about laughing.

Mrs. Oveur wakes up next to a horse, and the implications are clear and disturbing. One of the most psychotic jokes in the film.

12 – At Least I Have A Husband

Sure, it may be misogynistic by today’s standards to have a woman so dedicated to finding a husband, but the punchline was excellent.

11 – Shirley

“Surely you can’t be serious!” “I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley”

The most famous joke in the film. I’ve heard the “Surely you can’t be serious!” exchange quoted too many times to count, which is probably why the scene didn’t crack my top ten.

It’s still a very funny reply, though. A classic “Airplane!” misunderstanding / wordplay.

5 – Elaine Explains Tupperware To Tribal People

“Airplane!” is a film that regularly shows its age. There were moments of misogyny and racism which made my eyes roll, but the whole Tribal People flashback was too much for me to handle.

The basketball scene is bad enough, but Elaine showing Tupperware to the Tribal People is such a non-joke. They’re portrayed as mindless animals who are easily pleased, and it’s one of the times this film veers too close to outright offensive.

10 – Dragging The Pilot / Co-Pilots Through The Cabin

I don’t know why, but this one really tickled me.

After the pilot and co-pilots all pass out, the stewardess announces over the Tannoy that there’s no reason to be alarmed … while the unconscious bodies are dragged through the cabin to the back of the plane.

What sells it for me, I think, is how unfazed all the passengers seem to be.

9 – A Hospital? What Is It?

“This woman has to be gotten to a hospital” “A hospital? What is it?” “It’s a big building with patients, but that’s not important right now”

God … I was irrationally frustrated when the film pulled this joke off. I was in such disbelief that I couldn’t help but chuckle.

You can imagine my surprise, therefore, when the Headquarters and Cockpit variants were just as funny.

4 – Spear To Wall, Watermelon To Table

I simply don’t understand this joke.

While Kramer and McCroskey are arguing about something or other, a spear hits the wall and a watermelon falls and breaks on a table.

Are these supposed to be metaphors for what they’re talking about? I genuinely don’t know. Utterly bizarre.

8 – Dr. Rumack And The Pilot

“Can’t you take a guess?” “Not for another two hours” “…You can’t take a guess for another two hours?”

This whole exchange is gold. Leslie Nielsen’s delivery of “…You can’t take a guess for another two hours?” is exquisite.

7 – Everyone “Calms” The Female Passenger

At first the initial slap seemed a bit overkill, but then the next one made me chuckle. And the one after that made me laugh. And the queue of people, makeshift weapons in hands, waiting to slap this poor woman had me in delighted disbelief.

3 – A Duo Of Outdated “I Haven’t Seen” Jokes

Namely the sick woman’s “I haven’t felt this awful since we saw that Ronald Reagan film!” and Dr. Rumack’s “I haven’t seen anything like this since the Anita Bryant concert!” when everyone gets sick.

Not only are both of those references outdated by current pop culture standards, but they also feel like cheap, easy digs.

6 – Ted’s Story Makes The Old Woman Hang Herself

I could tell the long-winded story was gearing up to a punchline, but I never expected the film to commit to something so dark!

5 – Ted’s “Drinking Problem”

One of the stupidest recurring gags in the whole film. I loved it every single time.

Ted laments how he picked up a “drinking problem” after the war, but he literally means he keeps throwing the cups of water in his face. Genius.

2 – Dr. Rumack’s Pinocchio Nose

There were a fair few gags where I thought “What the hell was that? Oh well, I can see the humour in the randomness” … but Dr. Rumack’s nose growing as he lied was the most nonsensical, nothingburger joke of the whole film. Which is saying something.

It’s a spoof of Pinocchio, obviously, but why is there a non-sequitur Pinocchio parody in the middle of this airplane parody? It doesn’t make any sense! It has no setup and it never comes back as a recurring gag! It’s a waste of a scene!

4 – Ted’s Orders

“My squadron ships out tomorrow. We’re bombing the storage depots at Daiquiri at 1800 hours. We’re coming in from the North, below their radar” “When will you be back?” “I can’t tell you that. It’s classified”

I wasn’t sure where this joke was going, but then the punchline hit. It’s tickled me for days.

3 – Kramer Overthinks It

“Captain, maybe we ought to turn on the search lights now?” “No … that’s just what they’ll be expecting us to do”

The slow zoom, the dramatic music, the deadly serious line delivery … my god. It’s such a small moment but it hit me like a crashing airplane.

1 – All Of Johnny’s “Jokes”

I can’t forgive this film’s sexism and racism, but I can forgive every other bad joke it makes. They take lots of swings and sometimes they miss, which is fair enough. But one problem that kept cropping up again and again – a fundamental flaw of this film’s comedy, which tarnished my overall opinion of it – was the character of Johnny.

Johnny is a campy comic relief character within the air traffic control unit, and I can only assume he was a beloved 80’s comedian by the way he kept breaking the fourth wall and wink-wink nudge-nudging the audience. I, however, have no idea who this actor is. I was not amused.

He would randomly interject in a scene with “Me John! Big Tree!”, or poke at a guy’s belly and say “And Leon’s getting larger!”, or pretend to unplug the runway light during the finale. It wasn’t always bad (the “What do you make of this?” exchange is pretty good) but it got to a point where every time Johnny came on screen he deflated the scene and jokes around him.

2 – Dr. Rumack Delivers A Baby

“What the hell’s going on up there?”

I’m ashamed to say this was the most I laughed at a single joke across the whole film. It was so bizarre, and it came so completely out of nowhere, that I cracked up.

Dr. Rumack, totally serious, lambasts those in the cockpit for messing around … while delivering a baby. The absurdity of it all made me collapse with laughter.

1 – Ted Gets Reassured Before Take-Off

“Nervous?” “Yes” “First time?” “No, I’ve been nervous lots of times”

It’s not the joke that made me laugh the hardest, nor is it the most famous joke of “Airplane!” … but I think the “Nervous?” exchange is the best possible joke this film could have made.

This is the ultimate flying joke. It’s very common to ask someone if they’re nervous for their first time flying, but this film framed it in a way that’ll stick with me for the rest of my life.

In the end, that’s why I chose this as the best joke in the film – I’ll now be thinking about it every time I set foot on an airplane.

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