A foul called in ComedySportz for using a swear word, or for making an offensive joke. Can be called on both players and audience members. The penalty is to wear a brown paper bag over your head for the rest of the current skit.

Aside from keeping the show suitable for children, the brown-bag foul also forces a certain amount of originality onto the players. When I got to college, I watched a campus improv group perform skits without the need for/ enforcement of the BBF. When a player got stuck, s/he would scream out "FUCK!" and get a cheap round of nervous laughter.

I was at a ComedySportz game one night, and the referee asked the audience to name a profession. One woman called out 'harlot', and immediately got brown-bagged. When she complained that the word was in the Bible, the ref's response was classic:

"This is a family show, ma'am. We don't do everything that's done in the Bible."