Slapstick

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Kevyn: Define "funny."
Doctor Bunnigus: When it happens to you, rather than happening to me?
Kevyn: So... My bloodstream is full of slapstick.

— Schlock Mercenary

Slapstick is the essence of physical comedy—people getting hurt or embarrassed in hilarious ways (e.g. slipping and landing face first in dog crap). The defining feature of slapstick is its highly exaggerated nature, combined with a lack of serious physical consequences. The Pratfall is a staple of slapstick humor.

The name comes from a prop in the Commedia dell'Arte: the battacchio, or "Slap Stick", is two pieces of wood that sound more like punching than punching does, without causing any physical damage; making this Older Than Steam. It has been a staple of Vaudeville and Burlesque; and a consistent thread in many types of comedy, most notably the Farce. Exemplified in the modern era by artists like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy; and continued by recent performers such as the British comedy team of Rik Mayall and Ade Edmonson, and Canadian actor Jim Carrey.

While slapstick is present to some degree in many comedic works; examples should be works that depend entirely or predominantly on this form of exaggerated physical comedy for their humour.

An interesting bit of neurological trivia: finding slapstick funny is very deeply seated in the brain. A study was done of patients who had previously sustained head trauma who were shown comedy clips of varying types. It was found that while many had lost the capacity to "get" puns and higher humor, almost all still found slapstick funny. So while some people still complain that a show like America's Funniest Home Videos where people repeatedly fall and get hit in the crotch is not amusing, it's not really surprising that the show still continues to be popular across all demographics for well over 20 years.

For the Marvel Comics superhero character, click here.

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Anime & Manga

The first season of Pokémon. Which has a lot of people being electrocuted, burnt with flame breath, caught in explosions, subject to physical violence for awkwardly hitting on older women (Brock, mainly)... Which makes it really weird in comparison to the other seasons.
- Pocket Monsters has a lot of this. In one infamous scene, Charmander attempts to grab Red's Master Ball, but ends up grabbing one of his testicles.
The Comedic Sociopathy of Ranma ½ is, in large part, defined by the sheer amount of physical punishment the characters can withstand. And almost all of it would be a lot harder to stomach if not for the fact that the majority of them are selfish and petty jerks who, more often than not, have it coming.

Comic Books

Spanish comic book series Mortadelo y Filemón. Arguably the king of the trope in the entire medium.
Astérix is about about a couple of overpowered separatist terrorists defeating hundreds upon hundreds of notoriously powerful soldiers, but keeps it all child-friendly and cute due to how all the violence is slapstick (such as the iconic scenes of the Gauls punching Romans out of their sandals). The Gauls also pick on Cacofonix like this a hell of a lot.

Films — Live-Action

The oldest surviving slapstick film is The Curtain Pole (1909), in which Mack Sennett's character attempts to obtain and bring back a very long curtain pole. A curtain pole that is way too long to fit inside the carriage he's riding, thus sticking out both sides. Sticking out both sides of a carriage moving at high speeds. Hilarity Ensues as Sennett and his pole strike or antagonize everyone and everything they pass.
Keystone Studios, the silent-film studio created and ruled by the above-mentioned Mr. Sennett, pioneered most of the listed sub-tropes in motion pictures.
The Three Stooges, which pretty much perfected this art in the '30s. Perhaps most famous for the comedic Eye Poke.
Laurel and Hardy also had their share of Amusing Injuries, pratfalls, Escalating Wars, etc. This is one of the things the duo is primarily remembered for — even after they switched to sound and slapstick began to make way for verbal humor, they still used lots and lots of slapstick in their shorts and features, which is why they are still funny with modern-day audiences today.
Buster Keaton's and most of Charlie Chaplin's works are built on this trope.
The Pink Panther films, particularly the later '70s ones.
Jerry Lewis in all of his most famous films, both solo and with Dean Martin.

Idiocracy: the "Ow, my balls!" Show Within a Show

Home Alone: A movie with several sequels about a Kid (played by Macaulay Culkin in the first two movies) who is left at home by himself while his parents are on vacation. Two criminals try to break in. The kid sets up traps that cause pratfalls, taking out the floors, setting them up with remote control cars, ropes, etc. Dropping buckets on them from above. There's even some electrocution as slapstick. By the end the criminals are usually Covered in Gunge, scratched up, battered and bruised, and either completely humiliated or arrested.

Strange Psychokinetic Strategy uses slaptick comedy to keep itself entertaining. Watch it in the mind of a series of slapstick scenes held together by a larger (and largely irrelevant) plot, and you'll wet yourself laughing at the cast's loony antics.

Literature

In Discworld, the Fools' Guild has actually weaponised slapstick in the form of a martial art called sloshi, as seen in Making Money. One historical practitioner famously killed seventeen men with just a ladder and two buckets of paste.
Almost everything in How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse, which parodies tropes commonly used in zombie apocalypse scenarios and takes it Up to Eleven.

Live-Action TV

The Young Ones, as well as its Spiritual Successors Filthy Rich & Catflap and Bottom, all featured healthy amounts of (mostly) Rik Mayall getting punched, stabbed, mutilated, electrocuted, falling down stairs, dropped off rooftops, set on fire, having all his teeth punched out and getting killed in funny ways. Notable for pushing the envelope even on British TV and getting some ire from Moral Guardians.

The Mighty Boosh loves exaggerated comedy violence, usually directed at Howard, who is often hit with something equivalent to a stick.
One of the other more common kinds of videos on AFV, usually a Groin Attack.

The Studio100 series Kabouter Plop is mostly focused on slapstick with each of the characters. Mainly from Klus's pranks.
Lucille Ball in many of the classic I Love Lucy episodes, for example Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory.

Music Videos

The videos for Twisted Sister's "I Wanna Rock" and "We're Not Gonna Take It".

Pinballs

In Hurricane, making key shots during Clown Time frenzy will show clowns performing assorted slapstick antics.

Puppet Shows

A "Punch and Judy Show" is a very old (dating back to at least the 17th century, and with roots in 16th century Italian live theatre) type of puppet show that lives on grotesquely exaggerated violence for the sake of humor.
The Muppet Show: A deliberate homage to the days of vaudeville. Jim Henson also famously opined that if you couldn't think of an ending for a sketch, have a character blow up or eat the other.

Theater

A staple of circuses, from Ringling Brothers to Cirque du Soleil, via their clowns.

Video Games

The Super Smash Bros. series contains are great deal of slapstick which has been refined over the course of the series. Some fighters such as Villager and Bowser Jr. have a number of moves based on slapstick, while the more serious fighters act better as Straight Man Foils for them. Items include banana peels, hives that cause a swarm of bees to pursue whoever they're thrown at and curry so spicy it makes anyone who eats it run around uncontrollably while breathing fire. Opponents are sent flying through the air when hit, and you score knockouts by making them fly all the way off, or into, the screen. Older games in the series also included a Paper Fan of Doom, which is a staple of Japanese slapstick comedy.
The Raving Rabbids franchise is practically programmed around the word slapstick, since much of the games' humor revolves around the cartoonish, physical abuse the titular Rabbids receive as a cause of either a punishment from other characters or objects in the game, the player himself, or sometimes even from each other.
The Legend of Zelda Is generally devoid of this, having a subject matter that leans more towards seriousness, with the occasional comic relief being more surreal in nature. However, Wind Waker uses slapstick generously, which goes well with its cartoony aesthetic. At one point, a group of pirates attempt to sneak Link into the Big Bad 's compound via catapult. It goes about as well as you'd expect, with Link smashing against a wall and losing his sword. This Link in particular is very prone to falling and getting in all sorts of funny accidents.
- In the same game, you have to solve a few puzzles involving picking up Medli and throwing her so she can glide to otherwise unreachable spots. If you accidentally (or on purpose) throw her against a wall, she'll get dazed for a moment and occasionally say nonsense.
- Twilight Princess features Yeto. He's a very nice, generous guy, really, but he also has a habit of knocking Link on his ass whenever he takes something from him.

Web Original

Spoof video Rorschach's Plight
Deconstructed by The Onion here.

Western Animation

Tom and Jerry: A lot of the humor comes from Jerry's abuse of Tom, by causing Tom's schemes to catch him to backfire. On occasions Jerry and other characters will fall victim to it as well.
Looney Tunes similarly is a Trope Codifier for Amusing Injuries, usually with the cartoon's antagonist falling victim to cartoon abuse from either their opponent or their own stupidity.
- Possibly the purest example: the "plot" of every Road Runner cartoon is, essentially, "Wile E. Coyote tries to catch the Road Runner and hurts himself in hilarious ways". This happens to other characters also, but it's the only thing that ever happens to Wile E. (except for a couple of cartoons that replace "the Road Runner" with "Bugs Bunny").
Felix the Cat: The B&W shorts featured a lot of slapstick in the vein of Charlie Chaplin movies along with a hefty load of urban surrealism.

Happy Tree Friends turns it Up to Eleven and accidentally hits the button marked "Blood Spray".

Ed, Edd n Eddy: There's a lot of the slapstick humor in this show, usually because one of Eddy's Get Rich Quick Schemes either fails spectacularly and causes them to get beaten up during the episode, or the things they build for their schemes cause them to get hurt. The Eds will inflict slapstick on each other a lot too.

Rocko's Modern Life is replete with a lot of these, thanks to numerous Amusing Injuries any character suffers and surreal humor.

Sokka in Avatar: The Last Airbender is the common victim which involves being the practice dummy, the one who always gets beaten up, always lands face first, getting hopped up on cactus juice, getting hit in the head (especially by Katara when he says Kyoshi has an alibi when Chin the Conquer was killed in the Clear My Name Episode), the one who always gets Chi-blocked by Ty-Lee, etc.

There was a lot of slapstick in Courage the Cowardly Dog: since the creator of the show, John Dilworth, is a big fan of classic Warner Bros and Tex Avery animation. Much of the gags in the episodes are a result of Courage outsmarting the Monster of the Week to save his family.

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