It all comes back to me now

Sam Weller, Mr. Pickwick's good-natured servant in Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers, and his father were fond of following well-known sayings or phrases with humorous or punning conclusions, Merriam-Webster tells us.

For example, in one incident in the book, Sam quips, "What the devil do you want with me, as the man said, when he see the ghost?" Neither Charles Dickens nor Sam Weller invented that type of word play, but Weller's tendency to use such witticisms had provoked people to start calling them "Wellerisms" by 1839, soon after the publication of the novel.

Wellerisms, according to Wikipedia, make fun of established proverbs by showing that they are wrong in certain situations, often when taken literally. In this sense, wellerisms that include proverbs are a type of anti-proverb. Typically a Wellerism consists of three parts: a proverb or saying, a speaker, and an often humorously literal explanation.

Some examples:

• "Everyone to his own taste," the old woman said when she kissed her cow.
• "We'll have to rehearse that," said the undertaker as the coffin fell out of the car.
• A body can get used to anything, even to being hanged, as the Irishman said.
• "This week is beginning splendidly," said one who was to be hanged on Monday.
• "Much noise and little wool," said the Devil when he sheared a pig.
• "So I see," said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw.
• "It all comes back to me now," said the Captain as he spat into the wind.

Over the years, this writer says, as wellerisms kept going through cycles of thematic adjustments and creative regeneration, the focus started to shift from the comic situation towards the linguistic pun, the wordplay. The following two examples of 20th century wellerisms illustrate this shift:

• "Don't get in a jam," said one strawberry to the other.
• "I'll raise you two," said the wealthy lady to the orphans.