" The Funniest Joke in the World " is the title most frequently used for written references to a
Monty Python's Flying Circus comedy sketch , which is also known by two other phrases that appear within it, "Joke Warfare " and "Killer Joke ", the latter being the most commonly spoken title used to refer to it. The premise of the sketch is that the joke is so funny that anyone who reads or hears it promptly dies from laughter .
The sketch appeared in the first episode of the
television show Monty Python's Flying Circus (" Whither Canada", first shown on 5 October 1969.

The joke in the sketch is made of a series of meaningless, German-sounding nonce words , and so does not have an English translation.

Summary
The sketch is framed in a documentary style, and opens with Ernest Scribbler ( Michael Palin ), a British "writer of jokes", creating the funniest joke in the world only to die laughing. His mother ( Eric Idle ) finds what she believes to be a suicide note , then reads it and immediately dies. A brave Scotland Yard inspector (Graham Chapman ) attempts to retrieve the joke, with the playing of very sombre music on gramophone records and the chanting of laments by fellow policemen to create a depressing mood. The inspector leaves the flat with the joke but also dies from laughter.

The British Army wish to determine "the military potential of the Killer Joke." They test the joke on a rifleman ( Terry Jones ), who snickers and falls dead on the range. They then translate it into German, with each translator working on only one word of the joke so as not to be killed (one of them saw two words and was hospitalised). The German translation [note 1] is used for the first time on 8 July 1944 in the
Ardennes, causing German soldiers to fall down dead from laughter:

The German version is described as being "over 60,000 times as powerful as Britain's great pre-war joke" (a reference to Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain 's " Peace for our time " speech). The joke is then used in open warfare, with Tommies running through an open field amid artillery fire shouting the joke at the Germans, who die laughing in response. Afterward, a German field hospital is shown with uncontrollably laughing German soldiers in blood-stained bandages, being attended to by medics with stoppered ears.

In a subsequent scene, a British officer from the Joke Brigade (Palin) has been taken prisoner and is being interrogated by Gestapo officers. The British officer uses the joke to escape as his German captors die laughing, with one German officer (Cleese) uttering a Woody Woodpecker-style laugh before expiring.
The Germans attempt counter-jokes. For example, film is shown of Adolf Hitler supposedly saying "My dog has no nose," then a German soldier asking "How does he smell?", with Hitler replying "Awful!" Eventually their best "V-joke" (in reference to the V-1 flying bomb ) is attempted on a radio broadcast: "Der ver zwei peanuts, valking down der strasse, und von vas assaulted...peanut." Although the joke is followed triumphantly by the German anthem
Deutschland über alles , the attack is ineffective.
The British joke is said to have been laid to rest when "Peace broke out" at the end of the war, and countries agree to a Joke Warfare ban at the Geneva Convention. In 1950, the last copy of the joke is sealed under a monument in the Berkshire countryside bearing the inscription " To the Unknown Joke". Thus, the English version of the joke is never revealed to the audience.
The footage of Adolf Hitler is taken from Leni Riefenstahl's film Triumph of the Will . The section (about 34 minutes into the film) where
Konstantin Hierl presents the Reich Labor Corps to Hitler is the source of the speech used for the joke. The first clip shows Hitler saying
Inbesondere keiner mehr in Deutschland leben wird... ("In particular, no one will live in Germany anymore [without working for their country].", subtitled "My dog has no nose." In the film, the camera cuts briefly away from Hitler; the punchline of the joke is the next shot that shows Hitler's face: "Awful." The original words are eure schule , from "[The whole nation will go through] your school." "How does he smell?" is from a scene just before Hitler's speech; the original German is Wir sind des Reiches junge Mannschaft! , "We are the Reich's young men."


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I3zCQzZx68

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Funniest_Joke_in_the_World

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