- Switcheroo
A switcheroo is a sudden unexpected variation or reversalcite book| title = The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language| edition = Third Edition| last =| first =| coauthors = | year = 1992| publisher =
Houghton Mifflin Company| id = ISBN 0-395-44895-6| pages = p. 1816] often associated with a joke (sometimes "the old switcheroo").cite journal| journal = Time Magazine| volume = | issue = | year = Jul. 03, 1972| pages = p. 25| title = Woody Allen: Rabbit Running| last = Kanfer | first = Vedi S. | url =http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,877848,00.html | format = | accessdate = ]As a
comedic device , this was a favorite ofWoody Allen ; for a time, he used so many switcheroos that friends referred to him as "Allen Woody"."cite journal| journal = Time Magazine| volume = | issue = | year = Jul. 03, 1972| pages = p. 25| title = Woody Allen: Rabbit Running| last = Kanfer | first = Vedi S. | url =http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,877848,00.html | format = | accessdate = ] Some of Allen's switcheroo gags were:
* Carrying a sword on the street, in case of an attack it turned into a cane, so people would feel sorry for him
* Carrying a bullet in his breast pocket; he claimed someone once threw a Bible at him and the bullet saved his life.Another example comes from the film The Aristocrats, wherein
Wendy Liebman pulls "the old switcheroo". Whereas the joke normally is narrated as a vulgar series of actions followed by the clean punch line, Liebman narrates a very aristocratic series of actions followed by a very vulgar punch line.cite book
title = The Aristocrats| edition = | last = Provenza| first =Paul | coauthors = | year = 2005| publisher = Mighty Cheese Productions| id = IMDB tt0436078| pages = ] [cite web|url=http://youtube.com/watch?v=yfaKld5ahfw|title=Video of Wendy Liebman's "Aristocrats" contribution]In the book
Gödel, Escher, Bach , the author names on of the rules in his version ofPropositional calculus the Switcheroo Rule, apparently in honour of an Albanian railroad engineer, name Q.q.Switcheroo, who "worked in logic on the siding".cite book
title = Gödel, Escher, Bach | edition = | last = Hofstadter | first = Douglas R. | coauthors = | year = 1979 | publisher = Basic Books | pages = 187] This is in reality the rule of "Transposition".ee also
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Comic strip switcheroo
*Variation on a theme
*Bait and switch References
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