A ''switcheroo'' is a sudden unexpected variation or reversal,
often for a humorous purpose.
It is colloquially used in reference to an act of intentionally or unintentionally swapping two objects.
As a
comedic device Comedic device refers to a kind of device used to make a statement more humorous. In layman's terms, it is what makes things funny.
List of comedic devices
Repetition
Repetition is the essential comedic device and is often used in combination with ...
, this was a favorite of
Woody Allen
Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career writing ...
; for a time, he used so many switcheroos that friends referred to him as "Allen Woody."
Some of Allen's switcheroo gags include:
*Carrying a sword on the street; in case of an attack it turned into a cane, so people would feel sorry for him.
*Carrying a bullet in his breast pocket; he claimed someone once threw a Bible at him and the bullet saved his life.
Another example comes from the film ''
The Aristocrats
"The Aristocrats" is a taboo-defying off-color joke that has been told by numerous stand-up comedians since the vaudeville era . It relates the story of a family trying to get an agent to book their stage act, which is revealed to be remarkably ...
'', wherein
Wendy Liebman
Wendy Liebman (born February 27, 1961 in Manhasset, New York) is an American stand-up comedian. Her standup style involves the use of gently paced, subtle wordplay.Katz, Leslie (December 22, 2015)"Three-timer Wendy Liebman savors her S.F. kosher ...
pulls "the old switcheroo". Whereas the joke normally is narrated as a vulgar series of actions followed by the clean punch line, Liebman narrates a very aristocratic series of actions followed by a very vulgar punch line.
In his book ''
Gödel, Escher, Bach
''Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid'', also known as ''GEB'', is a 1979 book by Douglas Hofstadter.
By exploring common themes in the lives and works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, t ...
'',
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, an ...
names one of the rules in his version of
propositional calculus
Propositional calculus is a branch of logic. It is also called propositional logic, statement logic, sentential calculus, sentential logic, or sometimes zeroth-order logic. It deals with propositions (which can be true or false) and relations b ...
the Switcheroo Rule, apparently in honour of an Albanian railroad engineer, name Q. Q. Switcheroo, who "worked in logic on the siding".
This is in reality the ''
material implication''.
See also
*
Comic strip switcheroo
The comic strip switcheroo (also known as the Great Comics Switcheroonie or the Great April Fools' Day Comics Switcheroonie) was a massive practical joke in which several comic strip writers and artists (cartoonists), without the foreknowledge of t ...
*
Bait and switch
Bait-and-switch is a form of fraud used in retail sales but also employed in other contexts. First, customers are "baited" by merchants' advertising products or services at a low price, but when customers visit the store, they discover that the a ...
*
I Said My Pajamas (and Put On My Pray'rs)
"I Said My Pajamas (and Put On My Pray'rs)" is a popular song with music by George Wyle and lyrics by Edward Pola. It was published in 1949. The songs describes somebody who is in love, but whose descriptions about what she does are full of swi ...
*
Paraprosdokian
A paraprosdokian () is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence, phrase, or larger discourse is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used f ...
*
Man bites dog
The phrase man bites dog is a shortened version of an aphorism in journalism that describes how an unusual, infrequent event (such as a man biting a dog) is more likely to be reported as news than an ordinary, everyday occurrence with similar cons ...
*
The Great Switcheroo
"The Great Switcheroo" is a short story by Roald Dahl."The Great Switcheroo" in '' Switch Bitch'' collection,
Plot
Vic Hammond and his wife Mary go to a cocktail party hosted by their friends Jerry and Samantha Rainbow. Vic lusts after the dif ...
*
The Old Switcheroo
*
In Soviet Russia
"In Soviet Russia", also called the Russian reversal, is a joke template taking the general form "In America you do ''X'' to/with ''Y''; in Soviet Russia ''Y'' does ''X'' to/with you". Typically the American clause describes a harmless ordinary ...
*
Transpositional pun A transpositional pun is a complicated pun format with two aspects. It involves transposing the words in a well-known phrase or saying to get a daffynition-like clever redefinition of a well-known word unrelated to the original phrase. The redefinit ...
*
Rickrolling
Rickrolling or a Rickroll is an internet meme involving the unexpected appearance of the music video for the 1987 song "Never Gonna Give You Up", performed by the English singer Rick Astley. The video has over 1 billion views on YouTube. The m ...
References
Narrative techniques
Discourse analysis
Sociolinguistics
Jokes
English words
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