2014-09-05
Explanation
The Joke
Someone has eaten a man's pie, and he doesn't know who did it. He announces he will use "the medieval practice of trial by ordeal." He declares he will tell an endless series of dad jokes, and "if God knows you to be guiltless, he will spare your ears." The accused protests, "But I'm innocent!" The man responds with the quintessential dad joke: "Hi Innocent, I'm Dad."
The Humor
The comic combines two concepts for comedic effect. First, it references the medieval practice of trial by ordeal, where the accused would undergo a painful test (like holding a hot iron) and God would supposedly protect the innocent. Here, the "ordeal" is being subjected to terrible dad jokes. The punchline then immediately demonstrates how unbearable this ordeal will be: when the accused says "I'm innocent," the man instantly deploys the classic dad joke of deliberately misinterpreting "I'm [adjective]" as a name introduction, responding with "Hi Innocent, I'm Dad." The joke works on multiple levels -- it's a punishment so awful it functions as torture, and the setup perfectly walks into the most well-known dad joke of all time.
References
Trial by ordeal was a judicial practice in medieval Europe where the accused would undergo a physically painful test (fire, water, etc.). The belief was that God would intervene to protect the innocent from harm.