17 Funny Footnotes From Books, Novels, & More

Plus, learn more about the books these footnotes appear in

Co-authored by Maryana Lucia Vestic, MFA, M.Phil.

Last Updated: December 3, 2025 Fact Checked

Footnotes appearing at the bottom of a page (or as endnotes in the back of a book) are usually super-detailed extra bits of information that the author wants you to know. While that may be true, the 17 footnotes we’ve listed ahead are also unusual, wacky, strange, and downright funny. Keep reading for a list of the funniest footnotes in books ranging from historical nonfiction and novels to choose-your-own-adventure stories. You’ll find an explanation of the footnote itself, and get further info on the book it came from.

Funny Footnote Examples

Collage with different funny footnotes from books.

“To clarify, a turkey vulture is a vulture, not a turkey. Though turkeys, too, have crashed into planes. But only wild ones. Supermarket turkeys have never hit planes, but supermarket chickens have, because they are fired at jet parts to test their ability to hold up to bird strikes.” — Fuzz by Mary Roach

1

Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum

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Context: Ozma of Oz is part of L. Frank Baum’s Oz series, including The Wizard of Oz. In the book, characters from The Wizard of Oz include the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion, along with new ones like the Nome King and the Wheeler creature. The footnote is a humorous take on the fact that even members of royalty have everyday problems, like holes in their stockings:^{[1]
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- Footnote: "It may surprise you to learn that a princess ever does such a common thing as darn stockings. But, if you will stop to think, you will realize that a princess is sure to wear holes in her stockings, the same as other people; only it isn't considered quite polite to mention the matter.”

2

Watt by Samuel Beckett

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Context: Watt by Samuel Beckett is an absurd style novel about a central character named Watt who goes to work for the mysterious Mr. Knott. Watt includes 9 footnotes total. One focuses on how hemophilia almost always affects males, but it might be different in Beckett’s story:^{[2]
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- Footnote: "Hemophilia is, like enlargement of the prostate, an exclusively male disorder. But not in this work.”

3

The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker

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Context: The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker is narrated entirely through footnotes. They contain the narrator's thoughts on his work lunch break, where he goes to buy shoelaces. His constant commentary through footnotes highlights how pairing something ordinary with something special makes all the difference:^{[3]
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- Footnote: “The idea of a cross-section of olive-encircles pimiento set like a cockatoo’s eye in the white stretch of cream cheese hit me very hard as an illustration of the same principle I had rediscovered that morning: on their own, olives are old, pickled, briny, rusty—but set them off against a background of cream cheese and you have jewelry.”

4

Hollywood's Eve by Lili Anolik

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Context: Hollywood's Eve by Lili Anolik is a biography of Eve Babitz. It’s filled with gossipy, fun, and personal footnotes. The nonfiction book is about the life of Eve Babitz, a 1960s and 70s Los Angeles "it" girl, artist, and writer, whose love of platform shoes wasn’t always received positively:^{[4]
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- Footnote: “I came in wearing platform shoes and a floppy hat, and they said, ‘You’re obviously trying to attract men.’ They hated me!”

5

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

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Context: Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan includes several footnotes from the satirical trilogy. The following footnote talks about the Singapore Island Country Club that characters attend for context:^{[5]
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- Footnote: “The Pulau Club is my thinly disguised name for SICC, the Singapore Island Country Club, known simply as 'Island Club' to its members. ("Pulau" is Malay for island.) And that quote is 100% authentic—I overheard a family friend saying those exact words. What makes it funny to me is that there are so many people dying to jump through all the insane hoops and pay hundreds of thousands in membership fees to join this ultra exclusive club in order to enjoy the club's superb golf courses and other facilities, while these friends only ever went there to eat a simple shaved ice dessert that one could find practically everywhere.”

6

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach

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Context: Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach is a nonfiction book about the conflicts between humans and wildlife. One of many funny footnotes in Fuzz lists some unusual, hilarious facts to talk about the differences between vultures vs. turkeys:^{[6]
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- Footnote: “To clarify, a turkey vulture is a vulture, not a turkey. Though turkeys, too, have crashed into planes. But only wild ones. Supermarket turkeys have never hit planes, but supermarket chickens have, because they are fired at jet parts to test their ability to hold up to bird strikes. The device that fires them is called, yes, it is, the chicken gun.”

7

To Be Or Not To Be by Ryan North

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Context: To Be Or Not To Be by Ryan North is a comedic choose-your-own-adventure book. It re-tells Hamlet with new twists and plot changes and includes footnotes as witty asides, commentary, and commentary on commentary. One footnote comments on summarizing a pirate adventure in a single sentence while alluding to the fact that Shakespeare skipped over an entire pirate fight in Hamlet:^{[7]
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- Footnote: "Hah! That'd be the worst. Who puts a pirate-attack scene in their story and doesn't show it to the audience?”

8

Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera

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Context: Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera is about how modern Britain is shaped by its past. Specifically, Sanghera discusses the cultural influences of Britain as an imperial empire. Sanghera listed things he was grateful for in his Empireland footnotes, ranging from British pop music to Pizza Express:^{[8]
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- Footnote: "But I resent being instructed to demonstrate my gratitude whenever I analyse any aspect of British life, when my white colleagues don't get the same treatment.”

9

George Orwell: A Life in Letters by Peter Davison (Ed)

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Context: George Orwell: A Life in Letters by Peter Davison (Ed) is a collection of George Orwell's letters. The letters and Davison’s commentary provide insight into Orwell's life, political beliefs, and processes as a writer. Davison’s footnote focuses on the fact that Orwell believed that the phrase “Coming Up for Air” had no semicolons:^{[9]
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- Footnote: "Despite Orwell's expressed wishes, the Uniform Edition includes three semi-colons.”

10

In The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett

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Context: In The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett is the 2nd book in the Discworld series. It continues the story of the wizard Rincewind and other characters, including Twoflower and Luggage. One footnote clarifies Pratchett’s reference to “trees bursting into flame”:^{[10]
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- Footnote: "Trees didn't burst into flame… A better simile would be 'not like molten gold.’”

11

Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens

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Context: Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens is a memoir about journalist Christopher Hitchens’ life. The title uses a play on Joseph Heller's Catch-22 to make reading the book more enjoyable. Christopher Hitchens includes a footnote with a story about him getting fired. While the original line reads, “My first job ended when the editor said something to me that made it impossible to go on working for him,” the footnote clarifies:^{[11]
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- Footnote: “‘You're fired’ were the exact words as I remember them.”

12

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes by Leslie S. Klinger

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Context: The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes by Leslie S. Klinger includes Sherlock Holmes stories. The book includes illustrations and commentary on Arthur Conan Doyle's original detective stories. Klinger’s most famous footnote references the many scholars of Sherlock Holmes who have discussed the possibility of false eyebrows in the story "The Adventure of the Speckled Band”:^{[12]
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- Footnote: "This is the only reference in the canon to Holmes's eyebrows.”

13

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

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Context: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is a postmodern novel about addiction. It also focuses on entertainment and the search for meaning, and is famous for containing hundreds of footnotes. Many of them center on facts about tennis, which figures as a major plot point in the book. One lengthy tennis-related footnote is super detailed:^{[13]
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- Footnote: “Serious juniors never pick up tennis balls with their hands. Males tend to bend down and dribble the balls up with the face of their stick; there are various little substyles of this. Females and some younger males less into bending stand and the trap the ball between their shoe and racquet and bring their foot up in a little twitch, the stick bringing the ball up with it. Males who do this trap the ball against the inside of the shoe, while females do this against the outside of the shoe, which looks more feminine…”
- Fun Fact: Infinite Jest has a total of 388 footnotes, which equal roughly 96 pages of the 1,079-page novel.^{[14]
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14

Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis

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Context: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis focuses on high-frequency trading (HFT). It’s a non-fiction account of how the U.S. stock market is rigged to benefit insiders through HFT. Lewis points out a possibly controversial website address in their footnotes, referring to this fact in the book: “The Investors Exchange, which wound up being shortened to IE X.” The footnote reads:^{[15]
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- Footnote: “They discovered a problem... with the [website]: investorsexchange.com.”

15

The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918 by A.J.P. Taylor

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Context: The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918 by A.J.P. Taylor is about the history of diplomacy. Specifically, it relates to diplomacy at the time of the European revolutions of 1848 to the end of World War I. Taylor adds a footnote focusing on how Italians are often excluded from standards of European diplomacy, and how he’s rather not keep mentioning it:^{[16]
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- Footnote: “It [is] wearisome to add 'except the Italians' to every generalization. Henceforth, it may be assumed.”
- Fun Fact: Another footnote offers unusual and entertaining context about King George V’s trousers: “…his trousers were creased at the sides, not front and back.” (English History 1914-45)

16

Gladstone by Roy Jenkins

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Context: Gladstone by Roy Jenkins is a biography of Victorian 4-time Prime Minister William Gladstone. This footnote concerns Queen Victoria's all-too-personal preference for claret wine:^{[17]
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- Footnote: "Strengthened, I should have thought spoiled, by whisky.”
- Fun Fact: Another footnote mirrors Gladstone’s real-life marriage proposal to his future wife, Catherine Glynne, in 1839, known for being extremely wordy and formal.

17

Conveyancing by Profs George Gretton and Kenneth Reid

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Context: Conveyancing by Profs George Gretton and Kenneth Reid is a legal textbook. In it, the writers specify one very important detail about the color of “red tape.” In their footnotes, Professors Gretton and Reid refer to the fact that pink was actually the traditional color used for briefs in barristers' practices:^{[18]
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- Footnote: “It is one of the mysteries of existence that what is called red tape is in fact pink.”