A funny t-shirt shows that you, too, can appreciate humor, provided that someone else writes the jokes for you and literally stamps them onto your chest. Hey, creativity’s hard—who has time to think up pithy puns on their own?
We looked through Woot.com’s excellent selection of high-quality tees to find a few funny shirts to replace our rotating selection of plain gray Hanes crewnecks. As it turns out, they’ve got some pretty solid stuff. If you’re looking for a humorous upgrade to your wardrobe, here are a few ideas.
Disclaimer: Just so you know, if you order an item through one of our posts, we may get a small share of the sale.
Math and Science
1. Show that you’re not going to drop that sarcastic tone anytime soon.
This wonderful shirt is exactly what you need to impress your oh-so-smart chemistry teachers.
We appreciate that it uses real elements for its message, although we haven’t thought about samarium since we learned the periodic table (in, like, third grade, because we’re really smart). If you notice people shaking their heads when they see you walking the halls of your Ivy League school, just tell them to stop being so salty, then bust out a few sodium puns.
2. Demonstrate your love of physics, rocks, and “The Princess Bride” all at once.
The Princess Bride taught us everything we’ll ever need to know about physics. Well—okay, not really, but there was a character named Fezzik.
If you’re a fan of Andre the Giant, but you’ve been struggling to find a way to celebrate his (literally) enormous impact, you might find this shirt appealing. It shows Fezzik throwing a stone, along with a simple physics equation.
Get it? It’s a pun. Sort of. We keep using that word; we do not think it means what we think it means.
Brute Squad Science, $19.00 from Woot
3. Celebrate the fact that the Voyager 1 is flying out there, somewhere.
The Voyager 1 has all but completed its mission, and right now, it’s celebrating its semi-retirement by delving deeper and deeper into the cold, unforgiving nothingness of interstellar space. True, it’s expected to continue collecting data until about 2025, but its final transmissions will consist solely of the words, “Only now, when confronted with absolute eternity, do I truly know the meaning of love.”
This shirt lets you show the Voyager 1 that you care. Plus, if anyone understands the reference, you’ll definitely have a really long, boring conversation that will make you wish you were stranded somewhere in the cosmos.
The Long Goodbye, $19.00 from Woot
4. Is this a good shirt or a bad shirt?
Quick; order it right now before you’ve decided. You’ll only know for sure if you open the box.
The famous Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment was created by physicist Erwin Schrödinger to demonstrate the stupidity of quantum mechanics.
“See,” Schrödinger said, “Your ideas are stupid, and I can prove it by poisoning a cat. Or not poisoning it, or something. Science.”
Of course, there are plenty of competent responses to the Schrödinger paradox, but it’s still one of the most famous thought experiments of all time. If you’ve ever spent hours thinking about the nature of quantum entanglement—or if you like cats—this is the garment for you.
Where Schrödinger & Venn Overlap, $19.00 from Woot
5. When you really think about it, astronauts are kind of like cowboys.
They spend their days fixing spacecraft, wrangling steers, and…okay, astronauts are nothing like cowboys. Still, this “space cowboy” shirt looks pretty sweet, and if you’re a Taurus, it’s even more appealing.
Fun fact: The Taurus constellation includes the red giant star Aldebaran, which is about 65 light-years away from Earth. In other words, that had better be a really long lasso.
Space Cowboy, $19.00 from Woot
Music
6. This is either a reference to a Harry Nilsson song or a terrible drink recipe.
Nilsson’s “Coconut” (as in, she put the lime in the) might not have been his best song, but it was his only song constructed from a single chord. It was a surprise hit, which must have been somewhat perplexing for Harry; you write great tunes like “One (is the Loneliest Number),” but your most well-known contribution to pop culture is that song where you sing about coconuts with a fake Jamaican patois.
Well, in any case, this shirt lets you show your affinity for putting limes into coconuts and then drinking them both up. Makes a great gift to give your doctor after you’ve called him and woken him up.
Now Let Me Get This Straight, $19.00 from Woot
7. “Bowser-ill-a! No! We will not let Peach go!”
Ever notice that Nintendo ran out of ideas for Mario characters pretty quickly? They had Mario, then Luigi, then…uh, Wario, and, uh, Waluigi. It’s like they exhausted their budget for naming things.
In any case, this tee shows that you appreciate the finer points of both Queen and Princess Peach. We’d also love a “Fat-Bottomed Toads” option, or maybe a Donkey Kong “We Are the Chimp-ions” thing. T-shirt people, make it happen.
Brohemian Rhapsody, $19.00 from Woot
8. Some scholars say that Bach still lurks in the murky depths of the Loch Ness.
Of course, those scholars are total idiots. With that said, this classic shirt shows the Bach Ness Monster in its prime. It’s a dumb pun, but it still made us giggle.
And really, is there a better way to combine your fascination of German Baroque music and your love of cryptozoology? Until someone comes up with a Shostakovi-Kraken shirt, this will have to do.
Bach Ness Monster, $19.00 from Woot
9. Joy Division’s “Unknown Pleasures” has nothing to do with cats.
Then again, it’s the type of record that critics described as a “bleak nightmare soundtrack,” so maybe someone should have bought Joy Division a couple of kittens.
After all, does anything cause as much “Disorder” as a few rambunctious felines? Who among us hasn’t remarked “She’s Lost Control” when seeing a playful kitten? Don’t cats love to “Shadowplay”?
We tried to make references to other Joy Division songs, but we kept feeling more “Isolation” until we were eventually lost in our own “Atrocity Exhibition.” Look, just buy the shirt.
Furrdivision, $19.00 from Woot
10. We love a good Star Trek joke.
This is a pretty good one, although it did get a Meghan Trainor song stuck in our head, and we’re not sure if we can forgive that.
On the plus side, the shirt’s a reference to the most famous episode of the original Star Trek series, and while it’s not as cute as a tribble, it’s still an effective reminder of the consequences of interacting with weird alien fluff balls. Plus, if someone sees you wearing this shirt from a distance, they’ll think that it shows your opposition to chest hair.
11. There’s no joke here; this is just a really cool music shirt.
Of course, vinyl has nothing to do with nature, but we get the same sense of fulfillment from a hike through the woods that we get from our favorite Steely Dan records.
If you wouldn’t dream of going on a camping trip without your Audio-Technica AT-LP120, this shirt’s for you. Oh, and it’s also pretty neat if you like Grizzly Bear (either the band or the animal).
Vinyl Nature, $19.00 from Woot
12. This shirt is retro, but, like, really retro.
It shows a creature from the Cretaceous period. How much more retro can you get?
While we love the design, we do have to point out the obvious logical issues. A Tyrannosaurus might be able to hold a Walkman, but he’d never be able to load in a new cassette. That dino’s probably been listening to the same side of Van Halen’s 1984 for eons.
Pop Culture
13. We love the dire wolves in “Game of Thrones,” but they could use more meme-ing.
If you’re tired of trusting your heart to a show that regularly disposes of your favorite characters, you can get some comfort from Doge, the internet-famous dog with terrible grammar. He has nothing to do with Game of Thrones, but we doubt the Seven Kingdoms would be fighting if they had little Shiba Inus running around everywhere.
Put on this shirt before switching on the next episode of the HBO hit and try to tell yourself that Tyrion’s going to live to the end of the series. Go ahead, try.
So Games Much Thrones Wow, $19.00 from Woot
14. If they hate, then let them hate, and watch the shillings pile up.
Modern rap owes a lot to Shakespeare. The Bard famously invented words regularly, blazing the path that Lil Wayne would eventually walk down when he invented “bling” (according to him, anyway). Shakespeare’s dialogue frequently rhymed, it adhered to a syllabic rhythm, and, we can assume, the playwright would have loved Gucci bags.
He also dealt with his share of haters, although he probably didn’t deal with them by sending fire emojis on the Elizabethan equivalent of Instagram. Show your own detractors that you’re going to deal with them like Shakespeare did: By ignoring them, getting famous, and dying.
Alas, haters, $19.00 from Woot
15. Remember playing “The Oregon Trail” in grade school?
It seemed like a lot of fun until you realized that the teacher had tricked you into learning.
The basic gameplay went like this: You’d organize a party, set out on the titular trail, and get dysentery. Then, you’d reset, hunt for a while, and…get dysentery. Eventually, you’d ford the Snake River, at which point you’d…get dysentery. The Oregon Trail was a pretty hardcore game, now that we think about it.
This shirt is probably the most fashionable thing you’ll find when you type “dysentery” into Google, and we think that’s a good thing.
Souvenir Shirt, $19.00 from Woot
16. You thought that the shark from “Jaws” was the bad guy. You were wrong.
He really just wanted to hug people. With his teeth. Really, really hard. If only Richard Dreyfuss had known that, we might have been able to avoid the terrible Jaws sequels.
In any case, this shirt shows that you can make anything sickeningly cute. It probably would have worked with Robert Shaw’s iconic speech, too:
“Sometimes, that shark goes right at you. Hugs you. Right in your arms. And the thing about a shark is, he’s got soft arms. Cuddly arms. Like a doll’s arms. When he comes at ya, he doesn’t even seem to be livin’…till he hugs ya, and those black eyes turn into big, pink hearts.”
Food
17. We bet you didn’t know that the artichoke is a species of thistle.
Technically, they’re flower buds that haven’t bloomed. That’s sort of a metaphor for our lives, except that unlike artichokes, we’re slightly bitter, and we don’t pair well with anything.
Anyway, this adorable artichoke shirt should help you celebrate your favorite mild, slightly nutty vegetable. Be prepared: People will say “Okey dokey, artichokey” all of the time, then laugh as if they didn’t just read that off of your shirt.
18. If only the “Titanic” had looked a-head, they’d have missed that iceberg.
Sadly, the captain didn’t leaf the controls, choosing instead to romaine with his ship. He tried to butter up the crew, but they realized that their salad days were over.
“Asparagus the details,” they said sadly. “We know that we’re going to take an endive into the cress of the ocean’s waves.” Then, they all died, as they’d been making puns instead of calling for help.
Iceberg, A Head!, $19.00 from Woot
19. The grilled cheese sandwich makes life worth living.
Get yourself a few slices of white bread and American cheese, and you’ve got heaven on Earth. When you can’t make it over to the stove to cook yourself up the greatest comfort food ever invented, you can at least wear this shirt.
Just be warned: If you put anything in your grilled cheese besides cheese, you’ve got a melt—not a grilled cheese. Add tomatoes? You’ve got a tomato melt. Onions? That’s an onion melt. Hamburger? You’ve got…well, a cheeseburger. You get the point.
Grilled Cheese, $19.00 from Woot
20. A pizza-loving cat sounds cute, but think about the ramifications, here.
Somewhere in every sane adult’s list of top 10 favorite things ever, you will find cats and pizza. They’re both objectively terrific. But sometimes, putting two great things together goes wrong.
Take the cat depicted on this graphic tee. The cat is full. The cat has just eaten an entire pizza, and the cat’s owner must now go hungry. The cat does not admit any guilt, even though it’s clear that the cat has eaten the whole pie of pizza. (Yes, “pie of” is the appropriate unit of measurement for a pizza.)
Shaking our darn heads.
Missing Pizza, $19.00 from Woot
21. So that’s where the name comes from…
The taco is the pinnacle of food technology. Tacos keep your hands clean while you eat gooey things. They’re very portable. In fact, tacos beat out even the sandwich in terms of sheer eating practicality.
But why are they called tacos? This graphic tee thinks it has the answer. “Taco is short for spectacolar,” the shirt declares, and it makes sense to us.
22. Please don’t feed the lions…snack cakes.
Life would be a lot easier on the African plains if the lions didn’t have to go hunting all the time. It’d be better for the lions, who could devote more time to roaring and generally looking cool. It’d be great for the wildebeest and the zebras, who wouldn’t have to watch out for hungry lions. But if not prey, what would lions eat?
Snack cakes, of course. Probably Little Debbie. This shirt imagines such a perfect world, and it’s about as cute as you’d imagine.
Hunting is a Piece of Cake, $19.00 from Woot
23. Have s’more graphic tees, won’t you?
Despite being the most awkwardly named dessert food we can think of, s’mores are pretty darn tasty. You just need four ingredients: marshmallows, chocolate, Graham crackers, and fire. In a way, this shirt is a recipe. It shows everything we just listed, except the flames. Instead, it riffs on the instant-food mantra, “Just add water.”
Great. Now we’re craving s’mores. We’re going to have to start a fire in the middle of this office. It might get us in trouble, but for s’mores, anything’s worth it.
Just Add Fire, $19.00 from Woot
24. Does low blood sugar make you mean? Here’s a shirt for you.
Being hungry is the worst. You can get irritable. You can snap at friends and loved ones. Later, after you’ve gobbled a peanut butter sandwich or two, you start to feel guilty. That’s when you just put on this shirt.
“I’m sorry for what I said when I was hungry,” it says. It’s not a joke, either. The bear (or sloth or something?) in the image looks truly remorseful. Wear this one when you know you’ll be too busy to stop for lunch. It’ll save you a lot of time apologizing verbally.
I’m Sorry For What I Said While I Was Hungry, $19.00 from Woot
25. What if Pac-Man were actually Homer Simpson?
It’s not a thought that keeps us up at night. In fact, we’ve never connected the two, and have never wondered what they have in common until this very moment. But a goofy T-shirt answers the question approximately no one has been asking: They are both yellow.
Of course, Homer Simpson loves donuts, not dots. The graphic on this tee pays homage to the classic pink-frosted donut that the cartoon character so famously loves. So here it is: the Homer Simpson/Pac-Man mashup you didn’t know you needed.
Sci-fi
26. Sci-fi fans of a certain age will totally recognize this Oregon Trail callback.
As we said before, you might remember The Oregon Trail for getting dysentery repeatedly, but you might also remember that back in the MS-DOS days, when the world was a simpler place, we played a game called The Oregon Trail. It was a simple game—the version we remember had us type “bang” within a certain time limit to succeed at hunting—but there were lots of ways to lose.
This is not one of them. There were no temporal anomalies, no wormholes, and, suffice it to say, no dinosaurs. But we wish there were.
A Wormhole in Oregon, $19.00 from Woot
27. Say what you want about fully-grown Xenomorphs, but the second stage in their life cycle is probably the scariest.
This is where chestbursters come from. Facehuggers—which you’ll remember from the 1979 dark sci-fi classic Alien—implant the embryos in their victims, and horror ensues. That’s right: It all starts with a hug.
This shirt riffs on that theme, depicting a facehugger alongside the threat—or is that a promise?—of “Free Hugs.”
Remember when the Aliens franchise used to be really, really good? That’s what this shirt reminds us of.
28. Sea monsters have to eat, too.
You know when you eat a really big, really good meal, and your gut sticks out like you swallowed a bowling ball? This graphic tee shows you what happens when a sea monster has a moment like that.
Of course, sea monsters eat pretty much anything they come across, whether that’s a whale, a submarine, or a clipper ship. This particular beast seems very pleased to have filled its belly for another day. This is the perfect shirt for the Loch Ness Monster enthusiast in your life.
They Were Delicious, $19.00 from Woot
29. Can you really prove that dinosaurs weren’t mechanical robots, though, really?
Steampunk. Renaissance festivals. Swing dancing. We love to mix and match our time periods, don’t we? Well, here’s a new one for us: robot dinosaurs.
This graphic tee reimagines the terrible lizards of yore as clockwork monsters. They’re powered by gears and horns and engines, and this image shows just how complex a robot dinosaur can be on the inside. Also, we feel sorry for that triceratops-bot.
The Gearassic Period, $19.00 from Woot
30. We love the smell of lightsabers in the morning.
Star Wars and surfing may not seem to have much to do with one another, but consider this: Francis Ford Coppola directed Apocalypse Now with its surf-obsessed Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore. Coppola had previously given George Lucas his first movie job on the set of the 1968 musical Finian’s Rainbow. Lucas, of course, gave us Death Stars and Wookiees and the Force and all that stuff.
So now that we have that link established, time to check out the shirt. It’s a chill stylized wave, which looks like any old surfing shirt. In the sky above the sea, though, there’s a hovering sphere that looks unsettlingly like a certain spacestation you might know…
May The Surf Be With You, $19.00 from Woot
31. Breakfast and “Star Wars” have more in common than you think.
Actually, scratch that. Breakfast and Star Wars are two totally different subjects. That’s what makes this graphic tee so satisfying. It reimagines all your favorite characters from the Star Wars universe as, well, breakfast foods.
So you’ve got your Skywaffle locking lightsabers with Tart Vader, who appears to be some sort of Pop Tart or Toaster Strudel. You’ve got your Chewbacon and your Ham Solo. And, our personal favorite, there’s a blue circle of fried dough named “Greedonut.”
Bring Balance to the Breakfast, $19.00 from Woot
32. Here’s the Tardis from “Doctor Who,” but it’s more neighborly than usual.
The Tardis is arguably the winner of the “Best Method of Travel” trophy—plenty of space on the inside, the ability to manipulate space and time, and we hear it smells vaguely like pine.
Its biggest competitor is a little more cuddly and probably doesn’t smell quite as fresh. My Neighbor Totoro‘s Catbus offers offroad capabilities and a grin big enough to give the Cheshire Cat pause (or, ahem, paws). So why not combine them into one reality-defiant transport? Talk about arriving in style.
Tech
33. This is the perfect T-shirt for anyone with Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V knuckle tattoos.
Where would we be without keyboard commands? We’d wear out our mouses, for one thing. This winking T-shirt casts all your favorite Ctrl functions in their old-school, pre-digital guises. So we get Ctrl+V, which you’ll recognize as the “paste” command, rendered as a tube of glue. The command for making text bold appears as a Sharpie. And so on.
The graphic appears on a nice, soft, 100-percent cotton t-shirt. People who use computers a lot will see this shirt and go, “huh.” People who do not use computers much will be confused and think it’s some Soundcloud rapper thing, probably.
Instruments Of Ctrl, $19.00 from Woot
34. Here’s a great gift for the white-hat hacker in your life.
Hackers are cool, but being destructive is not cool. That’s why we have white-hat hackers, digital security specialists who use their powers for good, not evil. They keep bad actors out of your Amazon account. They protect your financial information…mostly. Hey, nobody’s perfect.
Anyway, this shirt is all about digital security. It kind of imagines a successful blocked password hack as a guy in glasses saying, “Ah-ah-ah, you didn’t say the magic word.” It’s got a bunch of binary code in the background. You know. Hacker stuff.
Access Denied, $19.00 from Woot
35. Celebrate Google Chrome’s hidden dinosaur game while telling folks to leave you alone.
The folks at Google know that a failed internet connection can be a real bummer, so they built a little consolation prize into the Chrome web browser. When you can’t connect, you’ll see a pixelated dinosaur on the error screen. Press the spacebar and the game begins; you make the dinosaur jump over the cactuses and stuff.
Anyway, that’s what this T-shirt refers to. But it also packs a very important message by way of metaphor: You are currently offline, not at work, possibly even unavailable for communication. This is the programer’s day-off shirt, and it is pretty cool.
36. Remind your co-workers that there’s a world beyond the computer screen.
“Visit Outside,” this T-shirt says. “Where real stuff happens.” It’s a decent reminder. Most of us are glued to our screens 24/7. We’d all benefit from a little unplugged time.
There’s just one problem with wearing this T-shirt to remind people to go screenless every now and then: They’d have to look up from their screens to see you wearing it. Your best bet is to buy the T-shirt, take a selfie that displays its logo prominently, and then post it all over social media. Then get ready for the camping trip.
Visit Outside, $19.00 from Woot
37. Paleontologists have finally proven that the figure of the “nerd” predates humanity.
Filmmakers usually depict the Tyrannosaurus rex as a massive, terrifying beast that physically dominates any dinosaur that dares to challenge it. But maybe what the T. rex really wanted was a quiet night of comic books and math.
The art on this shirt imagines that sort of T. rex. He’s got glasses and braces. He carries a calculator and wears a pocket protector. His bowtie has polka dots, for goodness’ sake. In short, this dinosaur checks all the boxes for the old-fashioned stereotype of the nerd. We’re not sure what it means, but we like it.
Nerdasaurus-Rex, $19.00 from Woot
38. What do circuit boards say when they meditate?
According to this shirt, the answer is “Ohhhhhm,” of course. It’s an electrical resistance joke, you see; resistance is measured in “ohms”—but if you’re looking at this shirt, we don’t have to tell you that.
This is cute, cartoony art, and it definitely marks you as a person who cares about things like, well, electrical resistance and circuit boards. Also, meditation, we guess.
39. Wear your love of traditional NES gaming in true ugly-sweater glory.
Children of the ’80s, gather ’round. You remember ugly Christmas sweaters. You also remember the original Nintendo Entertainment System and all its strange and delightful peripherals. Now, you can celebrate your love of both in a single shirt.
This graphic has it all: the NES, controllers, a pair of old-school zappers, a Gameboy, and not just one but two Power Gloves. Shoot, it’s even got the Robotic Operating Buddy, or R.O.B. It ties everything together with a truly ugly faux-knit design. This shirt is, in two words: “so rad.”
Ugly Gaming Sweater, $19.00 from Woot
40. Take those kitschy Dogs Playing Poker paintings into the 21st century.
In 1894, American artist Cassius Marcellus Coolidge painted “Poker Game,” which featured the image of a bunch of dogs playing cards. The world of kitsch was born. Since then, Coolidge created 16 more paintings in the series. You’ve probably seen some of them.
Today, though, no one sits around playing cards in person. We do our gambling online, like respectable people. Why shouldn’t dogs step into the modern era, too? This shirt fixes the oversight. It’s also kind of sad, though; the lonely pup in the foreground is staring at a classic Coolidge painting, as if longing for the company. So that’s a weird, dark note in an otherwise comic image.
