You Can't Do That on Television

Trademarks

Episodes of YCDTOTV included recurring gimmicks and gags. The following is a partial list.

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Opposites

Each episode had an "opposites" segment, introduced by a visual effect of the screen rotating 360 degrees. When this happened, the cast would say, "It must be just the introduction to the opposites," and several sketches would follow in which the normal principles of daily life were reversed, often with children having authority over adults.

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Locker room

During the "locker room" segment, cast members, residing in gym lockers, would tell jokes to each other. The person telling the joke would open their locker, sticking their head out to call another cast member to tell the joke to. For the duration of the joke, those cast members would be the only ones seen with open lockers. When the punchline was delivered, there would be a laugh track and the actors would close their lockers, allowing the process to start again with different people and a different joke. This was almost certainly an homage to the "joke wall" segment on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.

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Water and Slime

Certain key words would result in cast members having substances poured on them from off-camera. When someone said "water," a large amount of water would mysteriously cascade onto them from above. Likewise, when someone said "I don't know," green slime would pour on them from above. This was known as being "slimed." Nickelodeon quickly adopted "slime" as a feature in several shows it produced, and used it heavily in its marketing. In one episode in which the studio has been taken over by Communists, uttering the word "freedom" would send a cascade of red slime pouring over whoever said it.

Related Topics:
Slime - Communist

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