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This is true. They sing: "Send in the clowns".
"Send in a clown" or weirder still "send in The Clown" has a much more ominous tone to it, though. Like it is a threat.
"send in The Clown"
Is that like "Bring Out The Gimp"?
"send in a clown", come to think of it, sort of implies that one keeps a heap of clowns around and can just peel one off and throw it at a problem.
Giving me flashbacks to the game Space Station 13. It was never "the clowns", just "The Clown". And it absolutely was a threat.
More often than not, the person who picked the singular clown role on the station (or who mugged the person who did and stole the costume), would be someone who was highly skilled with the game who wanted to get up to shenanigans.
I've watched a clown armed with nothing but two banana peels single handedly take out an entire security force, steal their gear, disappear while the station gets wrecked by a changeling, then pop back out and lure the changeling into a carefully built conveyor belt system that traps them in an inescapable loop of being knocked over forever, trapped, forced to listen to infinite bicycle horns and a farting robot made out of their own cut off butt.
The clown then used the opportunity to set the station's black hole engine loose, destroyed the end of the hall to the escape shuttle, and lubed the floor. The survivors, rushing to escape, slip, and glide out into the void. More bicycle horn honks are the last sound they hear.
Honka honka honka honka honka honka...
An amazing short story