“He Didn’t Say a Word… and the Entire Cast Lost Their Minds”: The Day Tim Conway’s Bunny Suit Destroyed The Carol Burnett Show Forever

It aired on March 18, 1978, as part of Season 11, Episode 21 of The Carol Burnett Show. On paper it was a simple courtroom sketch titled “The Plaintiff.” In The Case Of The Missing Carrot.” In reality it became the single most legendary corpse-fest in television history, the moment Tim Conway walked onstage wearing a full pink bunny suit and turned comedy into a crime scene.

The setup was classic Burnett: Carol as a stern prosecutor, Harvey Korman as the pompous defense attorney, Vicki Lawrence as the no-nonsense judge, and Ken Berry as the bailiff trying desperately to keep order. The plaintiff was supposed to be a farmer suing the Easter Bunny for stealing his prize carrot. Nothing groundbreaking.

Then the courtroom doors swung open.

Tim Conway shuffled in wearing floppy ears, a powder-pink onesie, oversized feet, and a deadpan expression that suggested he’d been tranquilized by chocolate. He carried a single giant carrot like a lawyer’s briefcase. He did not speak. He didn’t need to. The second his whiskers twitched, the dam broke.

Harvey Korman’s face went crimson trying to deliver his opening remarks. Carol Burnett bit her lip so hard she later said she tasted blood. Vicki Lawrence, behind the judge’s bench, stuffed her gavel in her mouth to muffle the laughter. Ken Berry turned his back to the audience and simply vibrated.

Conway finally opened his mouth. His first line, delivered in a dreamy, half-asleep voice: “I’m here about my carrot… but I think I left it in my other burrow.”

That was it. Game over.

Harvey’s knees buckled. He slammed the table, wheezing, “Your Honor, I object… to everything!” Carol tried to cross-examination: “Sir, do you deny eating the plaintiff’s carrot?” Conway slowly lifted the vegetable, stared at it like he’d never seen it before, then took the loudest, crunching bite in television history. A single piece of carrot flew out of his mouth and landed on Harvey’s legal pad. Korman lost it completely, collapsing sideways into the witness stand, tears streaming, unable to breathe.

The camera cut to Vicki Lawrence pounding her gavel with one hand while wiping her eyes with the other. Offstage, the crew was in shambles. Director Dave Powers later admitted, “We had three cameras rolling and all of them were shaking because the cameramen were laughing so hard they couldn’t hold steady. We almost had to shut production down.”

Conway, true to form, refused to break character. He hopped (literally hopped) to the witness box, sat down, and began methodically chewing while staring blankly at Carol. Every time someone tried to regain control, he’d take another slow, deliberate crunch. The audience was screaming. The cast was crying. The sketch ran eight minutes over schedule because nobody could speak actual lines anymore.

Backstage legend has it that Harvey Korman stormed off set afterward, still laughing, shouting, “I’m quitting! Nobody can work like this!” (He was back the next week, of course.) Carol Burnett herself called it “the single funniest thing that ever happened on our stage,” and in her 2016 memoir she wrote: “Tim didn’t tell a soul he was wearing the bunny suit. He just showed up in wardrobe, ears and all. That blank face… I still wake up laughing thinking about it.”

The clip has been viewed more than 70 million times on YouTube alone, routinely topping “greatest TV moments” lists alongside Lucy in the chocolate factory and Kramer’s entrances on Seinfeld. When the official Carol Burnett Show channel posted the remastered 4K version last month, it crashed the servers within six hours.

Comedy historians point to the bunny sketch as the perfect storm of Conway’s genius: zero dialogue needed, total commitment to absurdity, and the willingness to sacrifice the entire show for one perfect bit. “He weaponized silence,” writer Jenna McCarthy noted. “He walked in, crunched a carrot, and murdered four legendary actors without saying ten words.”

Tim Conway passed in 2019, but every Easter the clip resurfaces like clockwork, and a new generation discovers why Carol, Harvey, Vicki, and the entire studio audience lost the ability to function that night in 1978.

As Carol said in her final tribute to him: “He didn’t just break the sketch. He broke us. And we loved every second of it.”

Somewhere up there, Tim’s probably still chewing that carrot, waiting for the next courtroom to hop into.