This troper's mother walked in on me and my sister having a discussion. Right as she came in, I uttered the line (completely apropos so long as you'd be following the conversation) "You can't make it against the law not to wear a tuxedo!" Cue uproarious laughter from my sister... And a "What the ''hell'' are you two talking about?" look from my mother.

One from a conversation this troper had with his family recently. After an irrelevant anecdote the results of which could be seen coming, it was mentioned that some punchlines sometimes wind up being obvious enough that the rest of the joke seems superfluous. This troper offered "And so the dog says, 'Who's Jimmy Hoffa?'" as an example. His father remarked that he'd like to hear the rest of that joke,at which point the troper was forced to admit there ''was'' no rest of the joke, and the punchline was made up.

This troper and a roommate were discussing ''JohnDiesAtTheEnd'' and the inevitable changes a prospective movie adaptation would ''have'' to make. Another roommate walked in just in time to hear me say, "You know, because of all the penises."

Oh boy, is this troper ever subject to this all the time. A particular gem was a conversation that ended with "so I think it'd be best for all mankind if we didn't name the candle Enrique," much the to surprise of a late-arriving friend. Or maybe it's because he has weird friends; he once walked up on a group of his very bored friends trying hard to dig a large hole in the ground using a ten-foot long piece of very narrow CPVC.

''Excellent'', another use for a 10 foot pole. ''* Makes note on character sheet* ''

This troper has a group of friends who play this as a game called "Emplae". A point for making a bizarre comment when a newcomer comes close enough to hear the conversation, with bonus points for visible reaction, appropriateness to the conversation, etc.

This troper and her friends do this a lot. One of our StockPhrases might as well be "I came in at the wrong time, didn't I?" Also fun to do in public places - we like to go into random, just-this-side-of-naughty topics just as a group of passersby come along. It's quite fun watching middle aged ladies react to the sentence "Yes, but ''why'' was your dog in bondage gear in the first place?"

This troper started paying attention to a conversation before class just as someone was saying, "...so they take a live duck and beat it against the table six or seven times."

Additionally, he and the other members of his D&D group have taken up doing this whenever returning from a one-on-one with the DM. "...36 points of acid damage!?"

TheAristocrats!

This troper was at a coffee house and was fortunate enough to be present when the conversation died down and someone at the next table over said, "And that's when he gave me chlamydia."

A regular occurrence in this troper's circle of friends, when people start listening in during dinner conversations. Choice examples include: #QUOTE#"But I like cannibalism!" #QUOTE#"I'm going to marry [Insert Friend Name Here]!" (Marry was intended to mean preside over the wedding, but...yeah.) #QUOTE#"You're picturing Y in skin-tight leather?" #QUOTE#"...so, I don't see people picturing me naked as a problem." (Yours truly said that.) #QUOTE#"...and that's when X came out of the closet." #QUOTE#"You were contemplating what your babies with Y would look like?" (Both Y, and the person being asked, are men.)

This troper was once having a conversation about the phases of the moon with a friend while walking somewhere with a very noisy group. Cue the group quieting just in time to hear her say "But I really like it when it's waxing- it's just so pretty!" Awkwardness ensued.

Back in the day, this troper and his friends used to use "So I called him up and said "No! You get your own damn monkey!"'.

This troper once deliberately set this up by explaining something to a friend while another friend nearby wasn't listening, and then concluding his otherwise boring explanation with the completely sensible "So basically, the government bought me a Wii."

This Troper was at a wedding as a kid, and heard a guy in the catering say to another guy "Oral sex, eh?" (rough translation from finnish). Found out a few years later which joke it might be from (hint, Neil Armstrong, Mr. Gorsky).

{{Skazka}} must be dissuaded from doing this in class. If I can't quote the filthier jokes to my classmates, I can certainly (and quite casually) drop references thereto. Also, whilst walking in the hallways, you only really hear bits and snippets of conversation... by far, the best of these has been 'Well, I think he's sexy but she' (she being me) 'thinks he smells like a burning diaper' and completely non sequitur from a serious discussion, 'How old is Liza Minelli?' Also, apropos of nothing, 'Adolf Elizabeth Hitler?' In stereo.

Oh god, this troper had ''far'' too many of these in his vo-tech programming class to even bother keeping track of, or remembering. It was just a general rule-of-thumb that you avoid entering a conversation partway through.

This troper has an ongoing story with a character from Ireland. Her dialogue often consists of OrphanedPunchlines about leprechauns, e.g. ::"So this guy sees a leprechaun in yellow knickers and a top hat..."

This Troper and his friend would do this intentionally just as a person was nearing us purely to see their reactions.

There is very little you can do to redeem yourself after somebody has just walked in to hear you say "if I wanted to, I could play with Aaron's balls", or "You're just jealous because my iridescent panties are so pretty." They made sense in context. Really.

This troper was at a class party full of cheery, GenkiGirl 15-year-olds-- all talking about ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', the movie of which having just come out. (This troper was among the ones who had attended the midnight showing. Scoff not.) So we were all babbling away happily about our tween fluff when there was one of those sudden, inexplicable lulls in our conversation, which had been at top volume before, near shouting-- right when one ''reeeeeally'' unlucky girl happened to say with the biggest, sweetest smile on her face, "Remember when Carlisle ''RAPED EDWARD''?" ... needless to say, crickets. Then really uncomfortable laughter. Then more laughter. That phrase may well become this troper's catchphrase.

I am perpetually early to gym class. One day me and a friend were the first to in, and we got into a conversation about miscolored {{Pokemon}}. another friend walked in to find us both changing and me saying, "Yes, but mine isn't green!". he misunderstood, leading to a very television example of a description of my story which could be taken the wrong way by many a bystander.

Thanks to a somewhat too large ego, this troper tends to drift in and out of conversations when they are not directed at or about him. This has led to somewhat strange places to enter discussion. Favorites include:

"That dog isn't blue!" (no dog is in the vicinity)

"Harry would RAPE Ron!"

"No, America is NOT a democracy!"

Too many to count...

This troper, like the above, is an absolute MASTER of these, especially the ones that make her sound like a perv when the conversation was actually completely (well, or mostly) innocent. Some examples:

"Periods? I thought you guys were talking about sex?" (not mine, but a friend of mine)

"I love waxing" (The phase of the moon, dammit!)

"It was the hugest stick I ever saw."

"So then I had to fish it out of my bra..."

This troper caught an orphaned punchline from a professional comedian. I was walking into the tube station while Sean Lock was walking out pushing a pram, accompanied by another dad doing the same. I would probably not have noticed if I hadn't heard, just as I walked by: #QUOTE# like a German border guard, GrrwRwhRwhRrwwrr The other guy found it hilarious.

This troper had a friend who would suddenly take a conspiratorial gossipy tone with someone he's talking to when noticing me approach and mutter something like, "Don't tell lies about him -- he doesn't like ''bread''!" and then look over at me as if genuinely noticing me at that point, with an "Oh, it's you!" As he was someone who liked to reuse jokes, he became predictable, obviously did it to others, and at one point told me the whole joke. #QUOTE#"You know, they say you like to eat shit sandwiches, but I told 'em they were completely wrong. I told them you don't like bread."

This troper also had an amicable antagonism with a gf's father, and we were often dropping random lines full of suggestion; his were usually about rednecks with guns, Deliverance camping trips, and survival cannibalism; mine were about meeting smack dealers and taking his daughter out to turn tricks, and making fetuses to sacrifice to our Dark Lord.

This troper and her sister were channel-flipping one day, when we landed on a children's TV show. As they flicked onto the show, we arrived just in time to hear a Talking Squirrel say: "That's a hoppin' good idea, but unfortunately, monkeys can't hula!" We don't even know if it made sense ''in'' context, but we broke down laughing anyway.

This troper is still trying to work out the context for the snippet she heard while innocently shopping. "So she never learned to pole dance, and then someone drove a 4WD through her back fence."

I wrote a few.

"...and that's when it hit me: ''I'm'' the reason the Europeans hate us.

This troper's sister is fond of exclaiming, in a thick Scottish accent, "I'm not shearin' this sheep with anyone!" She swears she doesn't know the rest of the joke, and has claimed that the punchline came to her in a dream.

This troper hasn't heard the joke either, but suspects it goes as follows: A tourist is walking through the Scotch countryside, and notices a native in a field, examining a sheep in great detail. The tourist hails the native, and asks if he's shearing the sheep. The punchline is noted above.

While looking at a website's shoutbox, this troper scrolled up to see what the least recent shout was. What was it? "I can tell, I've seen worse stuff. Still, it amazes me he managed to capture zoophilia and pedophilia in one artwork." This troper is both very happy and very disappointed that she missed out on the conversation leading up to that.

After everybody stopped talking in English class, I heard: #QUOTE#'''Stephanie:''' More like, thrown into a fan. #QUOTE#'''Garrett:''' Well, yeah, a couple times.

This Troper has been a few IRC rooms where I managed to rope the other people in the room into playing a prank on the next person to come in where I spouted an orphaned punchline and they acted as it were funny. Anyone with the brain to use the /back or /backtime commands could figure it out, but those people were surprisingly few.

As an addendum, someone who knew I use this trick "walked in" on one occasion when the chatroom really was going nuts. ''(Something about using a dirigible, two ducks, half a ton of explosives, a condom, burnt toast and emergency plans 427, 893 & 175 to move the {{Playboy}} mansion to Luxembourg, then using that, a hypercube and violin kata, we could secure control of the internet. Need I even say NoodleImplements?)'' It took him some time to realise we weren't trying to pull the trick on him and we had been talking that madly before he had even come in...

I've done something similar once in a chatroom when someone announced they were leaving for a few minutes. The orphaned punchline was something like "and the strange part was that it wasn't even a real raccoon". The twist was that I got everyone to act squicked about it instead, and then refused to explain when he asked about it due to the horrified reactions of everyone else. I did eventually fess up of course.

This troper heard "I hate this flooring, I put meat on it," from someone walking past his room in on-campus accommodation.

When this Troper was in high school there was naturally an annual school play. He can't remember the play in question but that's not important.\\ One scene was set in a pub. As part of the setting a group of walk-ons were sitting around one of the tables to the side, and one was standing at the bar collecting a round of drinks. There was no scripting for them beyond general "pub conversation" directions, so during rehersals what they got into the habit of this: immediately before going on stage, the guy at the bar would start telling the others a joke; the scene would shift, they'd take their positions, and when the lights came up he'd collect the drinks, start walking back to the table, and deliver the punchline as he approached.\\ He told a different joke each night, so the group's reactions were spontaneous and each audience heard a different punchline.

This troper and his girlfriend were having an animated discussion in a supermarket about various things that would result in DrivenToSuicide moments. As we came around the endcap of one of the aisles, I said "if you did that, I'd shoot you in the head then shoot you again just to make sure you died." The look on the poor grocery-stock girl in the aisle was ''priceless.''

This troper has a classmate who likes to give random orphaned punchlines to invoke this trope.

Just now, This Troper's friend walked into class saying "...and all the penises! Why is it always about penises?"

He also, while having a conversation about Rule34, caught his friend with "Elmo love sucking cock!"

And to top them all: #QUOTE#'''This troper:''' (During a conversation about his friend's... promiscuous guinea pigs) Guinea pig incest?! #QUOTE#'''His friend:''' Well, yeah.

Discussions of plans in this tropers RPG group begin soft and get louder as people attempt to interject ideas. This has led to the GM (whose house we play at) having to order us to 'keep it down" or "shut up" so that the 'Alert Not Alarmed' neighbours don't call the cops on us. I mean what would you do if you heard :"We just need to find a way to put the explosives under the classroom.", "Look if we kill these guard we can break in and kill the king without resitance" or "Exactly how much do slaves go for in the Middle East?"

Happens to this troper in lectures all the time. He tunes back in just in time to badly mishear something.

When This Troper and his friends are talking on the phone and someone approaches, the signal that this has happened is a line from StarCraft: "So I says, answer that and stay fashionable!"

{{Excel-2009}}. "...and then it hit me: I'm the reason everyone hates America!"

This Troper will often walk into a room or a crowd of people, throw his arms around people, and start ''off'' a conversation with one of these. His favorites are "...So I said ''rectum'', damn near KILLED 'um!" and "...So I said Liquor Cabinet? I barely know her!"

This was during lunch. #QUOTE#'''Person A:''' "...the way I see it, if the dog turns around and bites my nuts off, it's not consensual." #QUOTE#'''Person B, who just tuned in:''' ''"DUDE!"''

A brother talking to his sister: "C'mon, you've got two of them. Just slice off one of your breasts and let me have it, you can keep the other one." Sister:"I dunno, mine are pretty small, they barely really count as boobs."

So he says to the robot 'Oh, my apologies! I thought you said '''solder''' me!'

ThisTroper was with a group of friends conversing entirely in OrphanedPunchline. Everybody agreed I won with "... and that's why I can never go back to Canada."

This Tropette was once having a conversation that ended with "...Shut up and let me enjoy my Left4Dead rapefics in peace!" Of course, that's exactly when her family entered the room.

This Troper deliberately did this to his friend, he waited until the second he opened the door before saying to the other person in the car "And that's why I want to try a strap-on."

This Troper overheard an orphaned CONVERSATION and couldn't figure out for the life of me what the two were talking about. It sounded dirty, but I don't think it was supposed to be... #QUOTE#Jon: Really? How did it feel? #QUOTE#Zack: Awkward...Noticeable...I mean, how could I not notice it? #QUOTE#Jon: So what'd you do? #QUOTE#Zack: I just put some lotion on it and went back to my room.

This Troper was talking to his friend over lunch about the SCPFoundation and various SCP's, and got to the topic of SCP-335, which in a nutshell is the ''entire Internet'' on a series of 150 floppy discs. The funny part of this SCP is that the first twelve discs contain ''all the porn in the internet''. The troper and his friend were having a laugh over this bit, and a third friend that was always there but was tuned out of the conversation tuned back in at the exact moment they exclaimed "IT'S THE LARGEST DATABASE OF PORN ON THE INTERNET!!"

So I said; 'well, technically, Officer, you're the one who opened the box so you killed the cat!'

..."But he wouldn't put down the squirt gun, so I just put my clothes back on and went home."

This troper does this on purpose straight after he knows people weren't listening, or there was a loud noise drowning out my voice. Such as "....which means that jellyfish can travel through time." or "....and whistled for a baboon." (From ZP.).

"It was the goats again, with their popcorny goodness." It didn't even make sense in context.

So, there was this one time I connected to a game of Team Fortress, and the first thing I heard was "My favorite part is where they start eating the poop." Kind of a subversion in that it's somewhat obvious what they were talking about, but still. There was also this one time I said to a friend "what if Gary Coleman used explosive diarhea as a means of transportation?" right as a teacher walked in the room. The look on the teacher's face implyed some kind of fear, although the trope was kind of subverted in that it was a standalone statement that wasn't really a punchline or anything.

This troper told a two part joke to a couple of friends who where going to be the hosts of our school's talant show. But since the jokes was to be told while the contesters was getting ready, they did not have time for the punchline. #QUOTE#He: "What is it that is swishing around in the treetops in 180 km/h?" #QUOTE# "A squirrel with a motorbike." #QUOTE# "But how do you know that it is a squirrel in the refrigerator?" #QUOTE# "Oh, now we're out of time."

When this troper was still in school, he was once walking through the hallways with his friend and a bunch of his classmates. Without any form of conversation having taken place up to that moment, one of them loudly proclaimed the equivalent of "Good thing i shaved my armpits." in bulgarian. Orphaned punchlines were also pretty common in my own class, where someone would, after some 10 minutes or so in total silence (''in class''), shout in feigned disgust with the person sitting next to them "Enough with your enema man!". Cue mortified look from the teacher.

Want to make your OWN OrphanedPunchline? Simple, just throw in something dirty or sex related into what you're saying. Instantly, everyone will be paying attention to you, just wondering what the HELL you were talking about.