Nick Kroll Made a Pregnant Fan Laugh So Hard Her Water Broke

There’s a special tier of comedy accomplishment that only a select few funny people have ever reached throughout recorded history. For all the awards and accolades that a comedian can achieve, causing a medical emergency by being too funny is the mountaintop to which every comic should aspire to ascend. 

The most famous example of the feat comes from Robin Williams’ legendary appearance on Inside the Actor’s Studio when he made a woman laugh so hard that he put her in the hospital with a hernia. Last Friday night, Big Mouth creator and stand-up star Nick Kroll joined Williams at the apex of comedy achievement when his latest Netflix special, Little Big Boy, made a pregnant woman laugh so hard that it caused her to go into labor, according to a post from the comedian’s Instagram.

Typically, when a great joke leads to the birth of a baby, the responsible comedian is a part of the conception, not the delivery. Plenty of comics have gotten lucky off of laughs, but few can say that they’ve broken a woman’s water with the power of their material. 

Many figures in the comedy world have sent Kroll congratulations for his special’s role in creating life, with MADtv’s Ike Barinholtz arguing that the couple should have named their newborn daughter “Little Big Boy” out of respect for the set that started the labor – the parents named their baby Artemis instead, perhaps because they prefer It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia to stand-up specials.

Artemis and her family are recovering peacefully, thanks in part to the performance of Kroll and the crap in his karate suit. Though, if the family is American, both them and Kroll should expect an extra charge from the hospital – comedy-induced labor comes out of the copay.