Typical constituents of this humour include nonsensical parodies, juxtaposition of contrasts, sudden surprises in spoken dialogue and action and improbable and deliberate anachronisms.
[citation needed] Immediately following the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and the subsequent tensions, the escapist nature of mo lei tau led to a surge in its popularity and it has since become synonymous with the comedy of Stephen Chow.
[citation needed] As typified by Chow's 1990s Hong Kong movies, mo lei tau developed into an 'anything goes' form of nonsensical humour that can and does ignore narrative conventions.
Generally, a mo lei tau scene gives one the feeling of incongruity, consisting of rapid comic banter, non-sequiturs, anachronisms, fourth wall references, and Cantonese slang and word play.
Compared to a Western comedy film, mo lei tau movies have greater attention on puns and other Cantonese word tricks.
[citation needed] A verbal example is the catchphrase "Co5 dai1 yam2 daam6 caa4, sik6 go3 baau1" (坐低飲啖茶，食個包), meaning "Let's sit down, take a sip of tea, and have a bao (a Chinese bun)", first uttered by Stephen Chow in the TV serial The Final Combat (蓋世豪俠).