10 Greatest Running Gags In Movies

3. Ice Fishing -American Hustle

FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) has lined up the perfect score: having caught a pair of con artists (played by Christian Bale and Amy Adams), he offers them to chance to help him for a reduced sentence. DiMaso's boss, Stoddard Thorsen (Louis C.K), however, has some reservations about delving deeper into the criminal underworld and so, as a way of telling his colleague to be careful, he begins to tell DiMaso a story about his family going ice fishing. Immediately, DiMaso rolls his eyes. He can see what's going on here. Says Thorsen: ''One year my brother says 'Let's go in October.' Who wants to go ice fishing in October? My dad says 'no, the ice is too thin...'" At which point DiMaso interrupts him to say that yeah, yeah, I get the message; the brother didn't listen and fell in and that's what'll happen to me, too, right? No. Thorsen continues with his story... until he is interrupted again. DiMaso dismissively rushes to what he thinks is the moral of the story - Trusting your instincts? Teamwork? - only for Thorsen to accept defeat and sigh ''You know what? We'll finish the ice fishing story later.'' They try and try again but an unfortunate incident with a telephone quickly overshadows the whole thing. Ultimately, when DiMaso inevitably finds himself in too deep, he desperately wants to know the end of the tale, yelling at Thorsen: ''Tell me the ice fishing story!'' as though it were a prophecy or if, somehow, hearing this anecdote would magically wish all his problems away. Of course, it isn't and it doesn't - but it does make for the film's biggest laugh. If you too cannot bear to be left in suspense, Louis C.K "revealed" the ending to the story on The Tonight Show last month. But rest assured: whatever fanciful conclusion you had in your own mind is probably a hundred times better than the real answer.