Pork jokes

Bolton's Farm Fresh Bacon in It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie

Floyd risks his life by deriding Miss Piggy

Professor Krassman's crack is the straw that broke the pig's back

From The Muppets (2015) episode "Pig Girls Don't Cry"

Stephen Dumaine, principal tubist for the National Symphony Orchestra, with Miss Piggy at the 2014 A Capitol Fourth

Since the first season of The Muppet Show, Miss Piggy has been the target of frequent porcine jokes specifically related to edible pork products. The least offensive usually target her dramatic tendencies and their relation to a popular luncheon meat.

Piggy usually sees such barbs as slurs, and their use directly to her often results in a karate chop. However, she has occasionally used the same cracks towards her fellow pigs.

Other jokes comparing pigs to pork products are included as well. For character names of pigs involving meat, see characters whose names are puns. See also Francis Bacon for jokes relating to his surname.

References

• Rita Moreno, arguing with Piggy in The Muppet Show episode 105, says, "How would you like a high heel in your ham hock?"

• Miss Piggy responds to an arduous pig suitor in episode 108 with "there's a lot of ham in you."

• After Charles Aznavour refers to Miss Piggy as the girl of his dreams in episode 109, Kermit says, "One man's poison is another man's bacon."

• During Piggy's reprise of "The Entertainer" in episode 203, accompanist Rowlf makes several pork jokes. This time, however, they're intended as compliments and encouragement of her spirited rendition: "She's a born ham." "Makin' the bacon!" "There we go, bringin' home the pork!"

• Rich Little, while himself doing a vocal impersonation of Miss Piggy, refers to her as "bacon hips" in episode 204.

• Piggy refers to Link Hogthrob as "bacon brain" in episodes 205 and 303.

• After Piggy delivers an over dramatic farewell speech in episode 211, Kermit remarks, "What a ham."

• Following Miss Piggy's impassioned musical declaration of love in episode 221, Kermit offers a harsh rebuttal: "Bib and napkin, knife and fork/is the only way that I'll touch pork."

• Kermit combines the meat product jokes with fat jokes in episode 222, saying he'll cut Piggy's ballet number since "the pork no longer fits in the barrel... that's the way the old pork rolls."

• In the 1978 special Julie Andrews: One Step Into Spring, Miss Piggy tells Julie that it's time she replaces her. Julie asks, "Pourquoi?" Floyd laughs, "Oh, yeah — pig joke, get it! Pork? Pourquoi?"

• Kermit calls Piggy a ham again in the 1978 special Happy Birthday, Bob.

• Doc Hopper, holding Miss Piggy captive in The Muppet Movie, tells Kermit to meet his men outside the motel, or "your girlfriend will be ham hocks by breakfast." A few scenes later, Professor Krassman derisively mocks Piggy, saying that after Kermit has undergone an electronic cerebrectomy, "he won't know you from kosher bacon."

• In their closing rendition of "Hooray for Hollywood" in The Muppets Go Hollywood, with original lyrics, Miss Piggy sings that "any humble pig with grace and glamor/Can make them clamor." Kermit chimes in with, "And everyone loves a ham."

• After Kermit and Miss Piggy read the rules for the 1979 Emmy Awards Ceremony, Piggy refuses to get off stage until she gets a close-up. Kermit pushes her, yelling, "Move the pork!"

• Floyd Pepper (who has a history of mocking Piggy) calls her "the pork princess" in episode 404.

• Floyd is at it again in episode 423, seeing Piggy struggle to walk in tight shoes: "Hey, Cinderella, who sold you the slippers? A shoe salesman or a sausage stuffer?"

• Kermit interrupts Piggy's overdramatic performance in The Great Muppet Caper and accuses her of "hamming it up."

• Miss Piggy's self-identified trucker radio call sign in The Great Muppet Caper is "ham hock" (also known as pork knuckle, the joint where a pig's foot attaches to its leg).

• Piggy is so infuriated to learn that Scooter intends to call her monthly newsletter "Bacon Bits" in the September 19, 1983 The Muppets comic strip that she winds up to throw a hair brush at him.

• An amnesiac Kermit (under the guise of Phillip Phil), when told that he's in love with Miss Piggy, jokes "Maybe you can bring home the bacon!"

• While appearing on The Merv Griffin Show in 1984, Miss Piggy says she did commercials for bacon early in her career.

• Floyd Pepper again mocks Piggy while watching the home movie footage of the infant Muppets in A Muppet Family Christmas. His remark: "It's Miss Ham Hocks. When she was just a little sausage roll."

• Miss Piggy's past with bacon ads is brought up again in a 1993 Larry King Live interview. Host Larry King notes that she was forced to pose for the product, and Piggy declares, "I'd rather not talk about it... This is something a woman sometimes has to do."

• On Muppets Tonight, Clifford watches Miss Piggy in the "Bay of Pigswatch" sketch. He says "Miss Piggy may be a ham, but no matter how you slice it, she really brings home the bacon!" Rizzo cautions him not to use all the pig metaphors, since it's just the first show.

• As Piggy leaves the boarding house in Muppets from Space, Statler asks if breakfast is over, "'cause I think the bacon just ran out."

• During the Cirque Du So Lamé number in It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, the coded cue for Scooter to lower Miss Piggy is "bacon down." When she gets caught, he says "The ham is jammed. Repeat. The ham is jammed."

• In the same movie, after Kermit is taken to an alternate universe, Miss Piggy appears in an alternate universe print ad for Bolton's Farm Fresh Bacon.

• A Ham Actor (porcine player) appears in the "Elmo the Musical" installment "Detective the Musical."

• When she expresses her dream of playing the Berlin National Theatre in Muppets Most Wanted, Piggy quotes John F. Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech. Floyd Pepper butts in, "More like Ein frankfurter!"

• In their tandem "Interrogation Song" in Muppets Most Wanted, Sam the Eagle inquires of Piggy, "Tell us how the art was taken." Less than tactfully, Jean Pierre Napoleon adds "if you want to save your bacon."

• Later in Muppets Most Wanted, when Constantine explains his plot to blow up Piggy after their wedding, he says, "Kaboom. Bacon for breakfast."

• As part of her 2014 mock feud with Miss Piggy to jointly promote QVC and Muppets Most Wanted, Joan Rivers made multiple ham and bacon jokes in various social media platforms.

• A line used in both the presentation pilot for the 2015 The Muppets and the first episode "Pig Girls Don't Cry" has Kermit remarking that "my life is a bacon-wrapped hell on earth" (in the former, seeing Piggy shove aside Denise; in the latter, watching the premiere of Up Late with Miss Piggy).

Actual pork products

Stop-motion hams cavort in the second Wilson's Meats meeting film.

• Years before Miss Piggy even existed, the Muppets cheerfully made commercials for several pork purveyors, including Esskay Meats, McGarry's Sausage, and Wilson's Meats.

• The Muppets promoted pork again decades later in a 2002 Denny's commercial, part of a series of spots all of which had famous pairs ordering a Grand Slam breakfast (containing bacon and sausage). This posed no particular issues for Statler and Waldorf. However, the spot with Kermit and Miss Piggy (hungrily saying "Let's get three!") sparked a minor media controversy. In response, Piggy was quoted as saying, "Pork? What are vous talking about? Moi is now 100 percent Botox! It's a diva thing, sweetie."