Impractical Jokers: 3 Wild Punishment Ideas That The Guys Eventually Abandoned
Even a show as unapologetically chaotic as "Impractical Jokers" knows when to hit the brakes. The hit truTV reality series has brought countless viewers to tears with the unbridled insanity of its lead comedy troupe, The Tenderloins, who put each other through a series of humiliating pranks and punishments. But even this tenacious team had to hold back when it came time for their biggest venture.
James "Murr" Murray, Brian "Q" Quinn, and Sal Vulcano were asked to recall a punishment that went too far in a February 2023 interview by Staten Island Advance. It perhaps makes sense that their most elaborately planned punishments would come from their big screen debut, "Impractical Jokers: The Movie." Murr describes the first one, saying, "We wanted to send Sal to prison for a month."
But even before that was considered, Sal mentions another more noble, albeit permanent punishment. "The first punishment for the movie was you had to donate a kidney because we wanted to make it good but bad at the same time," he says. Neither of those sound like an especially fun time, but it can't quite match the bizarre absurdity of the last punishment as Sal describes, "Live on an island for a month with only VCR, but no electricity. Which is excruciating!"
It's safe to say that any one of these punishments would be excruciating to some degree. But in most cases, that fact would do little to stop other nightmarish punishments from becoming reality.
The Jokers rarely toss out even the worst gags
The punishments that got thrown out of "Impractical Jokers: The Movie" are very well not the norm for the comedy troupe's more usual television ventures. No matter how extreme things get, it'll more than likely find its way on the air — and the Jokers use that as an opportunity to learn.
The Jokers are asked in an interview by Deadline what they do when they realize a bit isn't working. Rather than toss them out, the team are more than likely to keep gags and punishments in, no matter their quality. "We retire bits when we feel like they have run their course," Murr explains. "Sometimes we do stinkers. But we don't leave them on the cutting room floor. We air almost everything. We almost get arrested doing it, but almost everything gets aired."
But while this practice has its economical purposes, as it prevents the waste of the network's spending, the team also see the good in what they can learn from it. "We decided early on that there's funny in the failure," says Vulcano. Whether they're destroying children's art projects, getting insulting tattoos or giving lectures to angry motorcycle gangs, there's no corner the Jokers will leave unexplored — or unaired — in the name of comedy.