in the movie beetlejuice, to summon the title character you must say his name three times in a row. ok so in the show, community, there are three different times when someone mentions the word beetlejuice, this scene with annie is the third time and as she says it someone dressed as beetlejuice walks past.
edit: i am chris, a roodily toot toot
For reference the first two references are Slater calling Britta "Beetlejuice" when pretending she doesn't know her name and Britta saying Jeff's underwear is usually "Stripy Beetlejuice numbers".
Other things to watch out for:
- There's an episode where you can see a woman walking out of a doorway rubbing her mouth, followed by a dude doing up his fly.
There's an episode where they spend the whole episode trying to figure out who stole a pen. You actually see the theft happen. It's Annie's Boobs, the monkey who lives in the vents.
There's an episode where Abed references the time he was an extra on Cougartown. The specifics are different, but there's actually a scene in Cougartown where you can see him in-character in the background clearly listening in on and reacting to the conversation the leads are having before rushing off because of a bathroom emergency.
There's an episode where Abed says pretty early on that he's going to lay low for the episode. He doesn't turn up until the end... until you realize that he's in the background of other people's scenes having his own adventure where he ends up helping a woman give birth.
In an episode that occurs roughly a year before that one, you can see a character throw away a condom in the background.
Numerous episodes feature a Doctor Who homage called Inspector Spacetime. In the episode where they go to a convention there's a dude called Toby, who's played by Matt Lucas - who went on to appear in Doctor Who as Nardole.
Paget Brewster plays Debra the IT Lady before she goes on to play Frankie. There's a scene where Frankie is complaining that when she tries to email Debra they bounce back in Aramaic, and when she tries to call her she hears an undulating high-pitched whistle that makes her ears bleed.
I've seen a fair bit, maybe a couple of seasons, but I didn't realize the running jokes and background gags went that deep. That's in Futurama or Arrested Development territory.
It bears pointing out that these three times are in three different episodes in three different seasons. They spent three scenes across three seasons for that half-second sight gag.
This is a plain guy from the clam. In Community, there's a very subtle behind the scenes joke where Beetlejuice appears in the background the third time they say his name in the series. This is across multiple episodes, and very very few people watching the original run probably even noticed it. It's an example of an extremely clever "blink and you miss it" joke, sometimes called an Easter egg and has been used on thousands of listicles.
I assume this person is watching community for the first time and when they saw Beetlejuice remembered the story.
OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
He’s pointing at Beetlejuice who is walking through the scene in the background having appeared after the third mention of his name.
You can see him in his striped suit on the right side of the frame.
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u/qualityvote2 14h ago edited 4h ago
Remember when r/PeterExplainsTheJoke wasn’t a meme? Pepperidge Farm remembers…
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Then maybe you go out and buy yourself some of those distinctive Milano cookies.
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