There’s probably a joke in the fact that Inuits have at least 50 different words for “snow.” Each word doesn’t mean exactly the same thing, of course — aqilokoq, for example, means “softly falling snow” while piegnartoq points to the white stuff that’s especially good for sledding. It’s not that weird, really. Because Inuits are so immersed in snow culture, they simply have more nuanced terms to describe it.
And so it is that Cracked has decided to get particular about comedy. We all have a sense of what “comedy” means, but what if we told you that there are at least 46 different types, none of which are particularly good for sledding? Let’s get granular with a ludicrous lexicon that describes every type of comedy we can think of. (And yes, we already see the comments section filling up with the ones we missed.)
Clearly out of style today but still in practice by comedians trying to be “edgy” and occasionally, Jimmy Fallon.
Deadpool gets laughs from Deadpool knowing he’s in a superhero movie. Hulu’s Reboot also falls into this category, a sitcom about a sitcom that makes fun of genre tropes even as it’s reinforcing them.
On television, sketch shows like Saturday Night Live feast on parody, both specific (Grouch was a parody of The Joker) and general, with most episodes featuring some combination of game show, talk show and commercial spoofs.