>>211920061But it's not clear that his superior is oblivious. That's part of why this scene falls flat. The name is first introduced by a solider as an example of a joke name, to which the superior replies that he has a friend in Rome by that name. Sure, "biggus dickus" has some kernel of humor in it in the same way that adding -us to the end of any other words is funny. But why would a Roman have the name "Biggus Dickus" anyway? There's nothing Roman-sounding about it. Is the superior telling the truth? It stretches the audience's credulity. Then the superior deliberately teases the soldiers to try to get them to laugh at the name, and adds the Biggus Dickus has a wife with a similarly obscene, and similarly improbably name. Sure, fake sounding Latin names could be funny, but funny enough to carry the full length of the scene? Is the joke that the superior is oblivious? By his behavior, it doesn't seem so. It seems rather that the superior is just taking his pleasure in finding some petty excuse to punish the soldiers, which is just mean-spirited and not funny at all.