11 Funniest Super Bowl Commercials Ever

In the early '00s, Reebok introduced us to Terry Tate, the fictional linebacker who tackles and berates any rogue office underperformers. Riding off the wave of movies like Office Space (complete with a reference to TPS reports), the hilarious ad contrasts the excitement of football with the monotony of a Xerox machine.

The Super Bowl spot begins with a spokesman from the fictional "Felcher and Sons," a company that has hired Terry Tate as its office linebacker. The position consists of tackling any employee who is doing a lackluster job, asking stupid questions, or playing too much Solitaire. In a parody of brutal American office culture, the stern-faced spokesman raves about the rough-em-up treatment: "Honestly, I wish Reebok sent us ten Terry Tates."

Notably, the ad was originally a short film (and not a particularly family-friendly one). Reebok's Terry Tate commercial generated lots of advertising buzz — as Campaign put it, "Terry Tate was viral before being viral was a good thing." Despite its popularity, the ad was not particularly good at selling shoes. AdAge said that "as a sales catalyst, Terry Tate seems to be as flat as the office workers he leaves in his wake," pointing to claims from Reebok with said the campaign was not up to snuff. Despite all that, Terry Tate lives on. Heck, he even appeared in a 2016 Funny or Die spinoff that depicts the linebacker taking on Donald Trump: "That's how Terry Tate makes America great, baby!"

In 2010, the handsome Old Spice spokesman (played by Isaiah Mustafa) appealed to women everywhere with a simple message: Your mouth-breathing husband will magically become hotter if he uses the right brand of body wash. The Old Spice Guy, as he came to be known, implored viewers to take a long, hard look at their man and take some things into consideration: "Sadly, he isn't me. But if he stopped using lady scented body wash and switched to Old Spice, he could smell like he was me."

Old Spice Guy is sexy, and he knows it. He calls himself "the man your man could smell like"— he's not making any promises here, but Old Spice will at least get your boyfriend part of the way to washboard abs and biceps of steel. The deodorant brand, which was previously associated with old men wearing tall white gym socks, surprised everyone with this quippy, frenetic ad. According to AdWeek, the side-splitting Super Bowl spot even won an Emmy, beating out the Betty White Snickers commercial for the honor. So what's Mustafa up to now? You can find him saying a new slogan while doling out advice to his mortified son as Old Spice Dad: "Smell like your own man, man." Seems like risky advice to give to a sweaty teenage boy, but if it works for Old Spice Guy, it works for us.

Ask people what they typically find funny, and the answer probably will not be "implied pet murder." But Ameriquest proved that wrong in 2005, when they aired an ad portraying just that.

The commercial starts with a man coming home from work to prepare a romantic dinner for his beau. As he chops vegetables, his feline friend decides to topple over a pot of soup— which, of course, is the scene that awaits the woman who walks in moments later. The ad lingers on the perfect horror tableau: a man in a dimly-lit room has a massive knife in one hand, a howling animal in the other, and a giant puddle of blood-like sauce all over the floor. Did someone tell this guy that cat sacrifice was romantic?

According to The New York Times, the "hilarious" ad was half of a two-part series that marked Ameriquest's first time advertising during the Super Bowl, and because the company "had not provided previews of the spots" before the game, that put "anticipation at low levels." The campaign used the witty commercials to illustrate Ameriquest's sentiment toward loan approval: "Don't judge too quickly. We won't." That's great, but our takeaway is still that tomato soup is not the best impromptu date night food.

Finally! An ad that answers the age-old question, "What if the New World Order were a bunch of bumbling idiots with the primary goal of concealing the health benefits of avocados?" The hilarious ad has a cloaked cult leader frustrated by the amount of world secrets being released to the public (except, apparently, for Bigfoot. According to this ad, there is no Bigfoot.). We see the perturbed leader get more and more frustrated with his seemingly randomly-chosen New World Order until we find out the reason for the meeting. Forget aliens, there is only one major secret that people can never truly be allowed to know: avocados are actually good for you.

The ad was not the first in the prolific Avocados from Mexico series (according to AdAge, this was the brand's "third Super Bowl in a row"), but it is our favorite. The little details are what makes this installment of the brand's game day advertising stand out. According to GSDM, the firm that developed the campaign, the advertisement was filled with subliminal messages: "The Internet loves conspiracies. So we filled our commercial with hidden references to actual conspiracies. Then, we put it online and waited for conspiracy nuts to take the bait." From that point, real-life conspiracy theorists set to work disseminating the ad's message. Two thumbs up to GSDM for working smarter, not harder (although we still don't think you are telling the truth about Bigfoot).

The Super Bowl marks the end of football season, and for those who watch the game for the actual sport being played in between commercials, that can be a huge bummer. TruTV played up this idea in 2010, when it treated viewers to a bizarre Groundhog Day scenario... except instead of a groundhog, we are presented with a teeny-tiny Troy Polamalu.

Just like the clairvoyant critter itself, Polamalu apparently has the ability to predict the future based on whether or not he can see his shadow. In this version of the holiday, the famous football player emerges from the ground and yelps in terror. The end result of this ritual, according to TruTV, is "six more weeks of football"— a line that cleverly advertised the network's upcoming NFL Full Contact series.

Not everyone loved the ad as much as TruTV hoped. Time, for example, gave the commercial a "C" grade, claiming that it cursed them with "six weeks of nightmares about creepy mini-Polamalu." Perhaps the most burning criticism (or, depending on your view, heartfelt compliment) of all came from the famed Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, who, according to Reuters, presented TruTV with a cease-and-desist letter. Who knew you could copyright the act of scaring a rodent?

Nationwide's Rollin' VIP ad from 2007 plays on the idea that there are just some things in this world that should be accepted as infallible truths, namely that water is wet; the sky is blue; and Kevin Federline's career is over. Rolling off the shared cultural knowledge of the messy Britney Spears and K-Fed divorce (which, according to People, was finalized in 2007), this Nationwide ad portrays Federline living a life of fame and riches, starring in his own rap video filled with gold bars and showers of money. The montage ends when Federline's face is shown in a security camera and we realize he has been working in a fast-food joint the whole time. It's a moment most of us can relate to (who hasn't dozed off at work dreaming of greener pastures?), but it is especially effective in the wake of the cultural phenomenon that was K-Fed.

"Life comes at you fast," the Super Bowl ad's tagline, has rarely applied to a celebrity so perfectly. As Reuters noted, the divorce, plus Federline's shaky music career, inspired Nationwide's VP of advertising to think of Spears' ex, who the VP said "epitomizes" the campaign. The outlet also reported that it landed in hot water, as "a leading restaurant association described the 30-second ad as demeaning to industry workers" — a notion Federline rejected, claiming it was "only meant to poke fun at himself."