Most surprising for me is the humor part. Let a normal everyday Japanese person watch ANY of the greatest US comedians of all time (translated or not) and they just won’t find it funny. Now use the techniques in the article with ambiguous meanings and they will be rolling on the floor laughing. This works in the reverse too, westerners won’t find everyday Japanese comedians funny (it is pretty much untranslatable though).
I wonder how much grammar interferes with comedy. It seems like there would be certain jokes which would be ruined depending on how a sentence is structured. Revealing a surprising punchline before the set up for example.
