Everybody Walk The Dinosaur is a bait-and-switch copypasta built around the closing lyric of the 1987 Was (Not Was) single of the same name1. Posters set up a suspenseful or dramatic anecdote, then cut the ending off with the line "opened the door, got on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur," leaving readers with no real payoff2.

The joke works because the lyric contains the phrase "opened the door," which slides naturally into a first-person narrative before the reader realizes the story has been hijacked by a 40-year-old novelty pop song3. On 4chan, the format is treated as a standard rug-pull alongside classics like the Bel-Air copypasta2.

The common convention is to write a normal-sounding personal story, often building tension or intimacy, and then break off the final action with the lyric "opened the door, got on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur." Posters typically append "op" or a similar sign-off to mimic the DerbyTrail original3. The joke lands hardest when the setup is long enough that the reader forgets they are being set up.