Noticing running gags

I like to end the day with watching comedy. Yesterday evening I was watching Seinfeld, one of my favourite television shows, and started noticing little details that call back to previous jokes in the show. I didn’t know the term for this, if there was one, so I turned to Google. My query was “what are callbacks to previous stories called in media”, the answer to which is a “running gag”.

I watched the episode of Seinfeld in which Kenny Bania “follows on” from Jerry in various ways: first appearing on comedy shows after Jerry, then, at the end, NBC exposing an interest in working with Bania. Jerry theorized that Bania was getting a lot of attention because Jerrey was warming up the audience. I will not spoil the episode with more details thereof. The episode is hilarious.

The trope of NBC being interested in working with Bania harks back to the time in which, in the same comedy club, Jerry is offered to make a pilot with NBC. I have lost track of how many times I had seen the episode and this is the first time I noticed the reference. I cannot remember the others right now but I remember saying to myself “oh, that references something from a previous episode.” It is amusing that, years after first seeing Seinfeld, I am still discovering these little details. This realization brought me joy.