From Fozzie's Funnies
From The Muppets comic strip.
The fly in my soup joke is a long established gag wherein a restaurant patron complains to the waiter, pointing out the insect's presence ("There's a fly in my soup!") leading to one of several possible joke responses (i.e. "Not so loud, everyone will want one" or "It won't drink much.") A variation asks it as a sharp question ("What's this fly doing in my soup?") The waiter responds with "the backstroke" or something similar.
The earliest print incarnation of the joke can be found in the 1870s, repeated verbatim through the 1880s in magazines such as Harper's Bazaar and Life. This version initially stressed how the dead fly came to be in the soup, and the waiter pondering at length how the bug met its demise. The joke was gradually simplified to the more familiar form and remained a staple of magazines, reader contribution columns, and standard joke books through the decades.
Inevitably, the fly has shown up in Muppet-served soup on many occasions.
References[]
- The "At the Dance" segment of The Muppet Show episode 223 is devoted to fly in the soup jokes, including the "not so loud" and "backstroke" answers.
- A Sesame Street sketch has Mr. Johnson complaining about the fly in his soup. Grover looks everywhere except in the soup, and then takes a different approach than usual by blaming the customer for not requesting no flies.
- A waiter apologizes and rushes to replace Fozzie's soup with a fly in it, thus ruining Fozzie's joke in the July 29, 1983 installment of The Muppets comic strip.
- At the Don't Drop Inn in Follow That Bird, a Grouch patron reverses the complaint: "Where's the fly in my soup?" ("It's coming!" says the waitress.)
- In Hey, You're as Funny as Fozzie Bear, Fozzie, Kai-Lee, and P.J. go through a few fly in the soup jokes, including the "not so loud" and "backstroke" answers.
- Kermit the Frog, writing in the 1993 book One Frog Can Make a Difference, has a similar complaint, as a frog who expects flies in his soup.
- Fozzie Bear dramatizes the joke in the 1993 book Fozzie's Funnies, with Lew Zealand as the waiter.
- A variant of the joke is done in Episode 3181 of Sesame Street, when Slimey lands into Maria's bowl of soup; Gina responds that he's doing the backstroke afterward.
- In the audio commentary of Kermit's Swamp Years, Horace D' Fly says he played a fly in a bowl of soup in a commercial where he delivers the backstroke punchline, which he claims he wrote.
- During "Moulin Scrooge" in It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, Kermit asks the Green Fairy (Robin) what he's doing in his drink. The answer is the backstroke.