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Form of humour predicated on deliberate violations of causal reasoning

Surreal humour (also called surreal comedy, absurdist humour, or absurdist comedy) is a form of humour predicated on deliberate violations of causal reasoning, thus producing events and behaviors that are obviously illogical. Portrayals of surreal humour tend to involve bizarre juxtapositions, incongruity, non sequiturs, irrational or absurd situations, and expressions of nonsense. Surreal humour grew out of surrealism, a cultural movement developed in the 20th century by French and Belgian artists, who depicted unnerving and illogical scenes while developing techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself.

In the early 20th century, several avant garde movements, including the dadaists, surrealists, and futurists began to argue for an art that was random, jarring and illogical. The goals of these movements were in some sense serious, and they were committed to undermining the solemnity and self satisfaction of the contemporary artistic establishment. As a result, much of their art was intentionally amusing. One example is Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917), an inverted urinal signed "R. Mutt". This became one of the most famous and influential pieces of art in history, and one of the earliest examples of the found object movement. It is also a joke, relying on the inversion of the item's function as expressed by its title as well as its incongruous presence in an art exhibition.

The word surreal first began to be used to describe a type of aesthetic of the early 1920s. Surreal humour is also found frequently in avant garde theatre such as Waiting for Godot and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. In the United States, S. J. Perelman (1904–1979) has been identified as the first surrealist humour writer. Surrealist humour appeared on British radio from 1951 to 1960 by the cast of The Goon Show: Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, and Harry Secombe. The Goons' work influenced the American radio comedy troupe the Firesign Theatre (1966–2012). The Firesigns wrote sophisticated comic radio plays, many of which were recorded on albums. Surrealist humour is predominantly approached in cinema where the suspension of disbelief can be stretched to absurd lengths by logically following the consequences of unlikely, reversed or exaggerated premises. Luis Buñuel is a principal exponent of this, especially in The Exterminating Angel. It is a prominent feature in the television and cinematic work of the British comedy troupe Monty Python (1969–2015). Other examples include The Falls by Peter Greenaway and Brazil by Terry Gilliam. Surrealist humor has become increasingly popular in both children and adult oriented western animation, most notably in shows such as Regular Show, South Park, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Contemporary Internet meme culture, such as Weird Twitter and YouTube poop, is also influenced by surreal humour.

Mary K. Rodgers and Diana Pien analysed the subject in an essay titled "Elephants and Marshmallows" (subtitled "A Theoretical Synthesis of Incongruity Resolution and Arousal Theories of humour"), and wrote that "jokes are nonsensical when they fail to completely resolve incongruities," and cited one of the many permutations of the elephant joke: "Why did the elephant sit on the marshmallow?" "Because he didn't want to fall into the cup of hot chocolate." "The joke is incompletely resolved in their opinion," noted Elliott Oring, "because the situation is incompatible with the world as we know it. Certainly, elephants do not sit in cups of hot chocolate." Oring defined humour as not the resolution of incongruity, but "the perception of appropriate incongruity," that all jokes contain a certain amount of incongruity, and that absurd jokes require the additional component of an "absurd image," with an incongruity of the mental image.