2022-06-05, Sunday

As one might, I have been watching the fourth season of Stranger Things, and in the fourth episode there was a moment – a little joke – which I derived great pleasure from. Mostly because I imagine not a whole lot of people would notice or have the prerequisite knowledge of English garden landscaping to laugh at it.

So, for your benefit, so that you can also enjoy this little moment of the episode, let me introduce the “ha-ha”:

As you can see, a ha-ha is kind of a wall, but the ground on one side is as hight as the wall. A ha-ha is useful when you want a wall, but don’t want to ruin the view from the inside. Here is a real world example:

And here is one from one of my MineCraft castles:

Back to Stranger Things. In episode four of the forth season, Nancy and Robin visit an asylum in an attempt to get one of the inmates there to talk about how a demon killed his family fifty years ago. They pretend to be psychology students, and while they are given a tour of the place, we briefly see what looks like a ha-ha. So, like anyone with an interest in obscure walls, I nodded to myself: “Ah, see now there is a nice ha-ha, if ever I saw one.”

Nancy and Robin get to talk with the fellow, but in the end their cover is blown, and they have to make a run for it. And as they do, we get a great shot showing how ha-has are almost invisible from the top:

For a moment I worried that they would not notice the drop and fall. Indeed, one can imagine the origin of the term “ha-ha” to be “Ha,ha! You fell and broke your leg!”. But they actually jumped down rather gracefully:

And then, the creators had a brilliant idea, as a tip of the hat to anyone enjoying the landscaping at the asylum, one of the inmates exclaims “Ha ha ha ha ha ha!”.

Here is the whole sequence: