Knock Knock Jokes

My favorite knock-knock joke is as follows:

Knock-knock

Who’s there?

Panther

Panther who?

Panther no pants, I’m going swimmin’!**

**This is only funny when recited by a child with a lisp. A real knee-slapper. 

Knock-knock jokes are the most popular joke, the easiest to construct, and probably one of the first jokes many of us learned. The formula is simple and it is, at its heart, a pun joke. The first possible inspiration for the knock-knock joke probably came from my boy Shakespeare in his hilarious play Macbeth. The drunken porter exclaims to the gates of the castle:

Knock, knock! Who's there, i' the name of

Beelzebub? Here's a farmer, that hanged

himself on the expectation of plenty: come in

time; have napkins enow about you; here

you'll sweat for't.

Knock, knock! Who's there, in the other devil's

name? Faith, here's an equivocator, that could

swear in both the scales against either scale;

who committed treason enough for God's sake,

yet could not equivocate to heaven: O, come

in, equivocator.

[I totally get the joke. It’s super funny. Shakespeare is funny. No, really, I get it. So funny.]

However, the first modern version of the joke as we know it was first published in a newspaper in 1936, under a column entitled “Hee Haw News” and went like this:

Knock, knock!

Who's there?

Rufus.

Rufus who?

Rufus the most important part of your house.

Hee Haw indeed. What is it about the idea of someone knocking at the door that sets up the opportunity for hilarity? Is it the easily subverted expectations? Is it the easy call-and-response format? Is it the fact that we have all, at one point or another, knocked on a door, thus making this the ultimate everyman experience? Will we still be able to do knock-knock jokes when we no longer hand doors and are just floating consciousnesses? One can only hope. 

[originally posted to Patreon on 20/2/25]