Farce - Television Tropes & Idioms

Farce is very broad comedy, generally appearing in acted media. It's characterized by double entendres, misunderstandings, deceptions, and in general very contrived and ridiculous situations. Farce is almost never leisurely-paced; "breakneck" is more apt to describe it. Look for a lot of doors opening and shutting and characters stumbling upon other characters when they're in compromising situations/situations that appear compromising.

See the Mistaken for Index for all of the many misunderstandings in the genre. See Fawlty Towers Plot for farces specifically based on escalating lies.

Examples:

Theater

The form is closely associated with theater:

Farce was popularized by Georges Feydeau, whose La Puce a l'oreille (A Flea in Her Ear) was one of the earliest examples of the classic form.
Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest
Then there was Joe Orton, the 'Oscar Wilde of the Welfare State gentility,' who mixed farce and black comedy to hilarious effect.
Boeing Boeing
La Cage Aux Folles
Noises Off
Lend Me A Tenor
Rumors (Neil Simon)
Charley's Aunt
The School for Scandal
No Sex, Please, We're British
A Flea in Her Ear
The Man who Came To Dinner
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Pierre Corneille's Le Cid got the author into trouble with Cardinal Richelieu, who wasn't just a fictional Big Bad. Apparently mixing tragedy with farce was considered a bad thing in the 1700s, and the argument between the two even got its own cool sounding name, La Querelle du Cid.
Cyrano de Bergerac: A similar example to La Querelle du Cid, Cyrano de Bergerac is a play which mixes Tragedy with Farce with great success, and it even presents Cardinal Richelieu... as The Ghost. It's characterized by misunderstandings, deceptions, and in general very contrived and ridiculous situations (Playing Cyrano, for instance), or the Gascon Cadets stumbling upon Cyrano and Christian when they're in a situation that appears compromising and a Fetch Quest... in the middle of the death of the protagonist.
Shakespeare loved this trope for his comedies, with A Comedy Of Errors probably being the most overblown one of all.

Television

Fawlty Towers follows this formula quite closely, most episodes a snowballing sequence of things going from bad to worse via a combination of bad luck and Basil Fawlty's own magnetism for karmic retribution.
I Love Lucy (without the innuendo and double entendres)
Several Friends episodes relied on this, particularly ones that advanced the various story arcs.
Several episodes of Coupling
Frasier. Not an episode goes by without awkwardly hilarious crises opening up as characters frantically rush around and juggle lies as they try to hide their messes from each other at break-neck speeds, often causing waves of misunderstandings.
Three's Company was so archetypal an example of sitcom farce that many later shows explicitly refer to it when farcical situations are unfolding. It was even the Former Trope Namer for the entire Mistaken for Index, which used to be called simply "Three Is Company".
'Allo 'Allo!.

Film

Burn After Reading.
The Fifth Element: has various factions in the movie attempting to impersonate "Korben Dallas" in order to get on a cruise ship to get the cosmic trinket. Hilarity Ensues. Each faction has absolutely no contingency plan, and they end up interfering with each other to such an extent that Dallas manages to slip away.
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
Noises Off and The Bird Cage were both based on plays.
The Danny Kaye film The Court Jester features double identities, hypnosis, a Gambit Pileup worthy of Death Note, broad comedy, and fast-paced patter.
The Pink Panther films: Clouseau is completely unaware of his incompetence. A Shot In The Dark increases the stakes with the growing pile of bodies apparently murdered by Maria Gambrelli and Clouseau's absurdly steadfast belief in her innocence.
- A Shot in the Dark is also based on a French stage play which originally had nothing to do with The Pink Panther and which was not a farce but a murder mystery with some comic elements.
''The Rules of the Game"
Robert de la Cheyniest: Corneille! Put an end to this farce!
Corneille: Which one, your lordship?
True Lies is a farce, when it's not being a kick-ass action flick.
In the Loop
The Palm Beach Story
Oscar
Weekend at Bernie's

Literature

E
Locklear Letters
Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign
Just about everything written by Tom Sharpe especially Wilt
P. G. Wodehouse was the master of the literary farce. Everything flows from one misunderstanding or blunder to another, culminating to a perfect mess and an even more perfect rescue.

Webcomics

The "Dinner for Six" arc in Penny and Aggie involves escalating misunderstandings, mistaken identities, compromising situations and contrived, Slapstick accidents.

Western Animation