About
Carlos is a fictional character from the animated children’s television series The Magic School Bus who is known for making pun jokes throughout the show. Online, screen captures of Carlos are often posted in association with word play humor.
Origin
The children’s animated television show The Magic School Bus[1] originally ran from September 1994 to December 1997. In the show, a third grade elementary school class embarks on various field trips led by their teacher Ms. Frizzle on her magical school bus, educating the viewers about science along the way. One of the recurring characters in the series is Carlos, the class clown best known for his constant pun jokes that lead his classmates to groan “Carlos!” in unison (shown below).
On September 19th, 2007, a thread discussing an abortion was posted on 4chan featuring messages written from the perspective of characters from The Magic School Bus. In the thread, Carlos responds with an abortion pun, to which another poster replies with “Carlos!” (shown below).
Spread
On July 17th, 2010, a thread was started on 4chan’s /co/ (Comics & Cartoons) board, featuring several pun jokes accompanied by screen captures of Carlos (shown below). On September 13th, a screenshot of the original 4chan thread was submitted to FunnyJunk,[2] gaining more than 41,000 views and 1,100 up votes in the following three years.
On May 8th, 2012, Tumblr user Boltong published a post about her experience with the video game Fallout: New Vegas,[4] which turned into a series of Carlos pun jokes between Tumblr users Thegoodoneisbad[5] and Diarrheaworldstarhiphop[6] (shown below, left). On September 20th, Tumblr user Judaara[7] published a night blogging post, to which Tumblr user Serenitywarrior[8] replied with a Carlos image macro (shown below, right). Within six months, both posts received more than 11,000 and 131,000 notes respectively.
On December 5th, FunnyJunk[3] user dingbox posted an animated computer reaction image, representing the FunnyJunk community’s reaction towards Carlos comments. Within one year, the post garnered over 44,000 views and 1,000 up votes.
Notable Examples
Additional examples can be found on Funnyjunk[10] and Tumblr under the tag “#carlos-ramon”.[9] Carlos related replies to puns can also be found on the online archive, Foolz.[11]
Search Interest
External References
[1]Wikipedia – The Magic School Bus
[2]Funnyjunk – Magic School Bus Abortion
[3]Funnyjunk – Carlos posts in a nutshell
[4]Tumblr – I’ve Literally Been Playing this Game For Like 10 Minutes
[5]Tumblr – Thegoodoneisbad
[6]Tumblr – Diarrheaworldstarhiphop
[7]Tumblr – What if you hit your alarm clock one morning and it hits you back
[8]Tumblr – Serenitywarrior
[9]Tumblr – #carlos-ramon
[10]Funnyjunk – Search: ‘carlos pun’
[11]Foolz – Search: ‘carlos’