A scene in Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part I opens on a comedian in the court of Emperor Julius Caesar. His performance starts off strong, but after a series of jokes that offend the Emperor, the comedian is ordered to be executed. A panicked servant spills wine on the Emperor’s lavish robes and meets the same fate. Then Caesar stumbles on a brilliant idea: he’ll have the comedian and the servant fight to the death as entertainment during dessert. As the condemned men duel, an amused Caesar tosses a banana peel into the fray, just to shake things up a bit.

Last week, a minor news story broke about Elon Musk. According to a former Tesla executive, Musk occasionally sends emails to his subordinates consisting of only three letters: “WTF.” Whenever his circle of senior managers receives one of these vague indictments, they are gripped by terror and the operation descends into chaos.

“It would cause huge scrambles, and you would spend days chasing down some issue that wasn’t a real problem,” the former executive told Business Insider. The blasé ruler, the groveling subjects, the diffuse apprehension punctuated by moments of utter pandemonium — it’s pure Brooksian slapstick.