Slapstick Knows No Gender

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

This is when a female character is regularly used for physical comedy. She might regularly suffer Amusing Injuries, get Covered in Gunge, receive a Pie in the Face, get Panty Shot of the I See London variety, and have other slapstick tropes done to her. She is usually the Butt Monkey or Chew Toy of the show and what happens to the girl is Played for Laughs.

It is rare to see women in these roles because of the Double Standard seen in things like Beauty Is Never Tarnished, Wouldn't Hit a Girl and Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female On Male. Also, due to all of these things, the women who do fit this trope are more likely to be amusingly injured by other women or their own clumsiness than by men.

Examples of Slapstick Knows No Gender include:

Advertising

  • Bonkers were chewy fruit candies better known for their commercials, which featured people - including an elderly woman - eating them and then having giant fruit dropped on them.
  • Miller Light's weird "Can Your Beer Do This" commercials had a couple:

Anime and Manga

  • All the girls of ACROSS in Excel Saga. Excel and Elgala mostly get Amusing Injuries, while Hyatt just dies a lot.
  • Kiyone from the Tenchi Universe branch of Tenchi Muyo! endures constant humiliation due to being partnered with Mihoshi, who is the personification of ditz.
    • Many female characters in this franchise are also qualified for this trope. Particularly Ryoko, Mihoshi and Sasami as Pretty Sammy.
  • A Certain Scientific Railgun actually has at least two: Psycho Lesbian Lovable Sex Maniac Kuroko and Alpha Bitch Kongo.
  • Mutsumune from Getsumen to Heiki Mina gets a lot of slapstick stuff happen to her
  • Shiina from The Secret of Haruka Nogizaka has a tendency to clumsily stumble into Fanservicey Panty Shot and Not What It Looks Like situations that are played for laughs at her expense.
  • Ryuubi, the Meganekko with Gag Boobs, from Ikki Tousen regularly finds herself in these situations. If she really is in danger, though, her dragon will come out.
  • In Yatterman, villianess Doronjo is punished for her failure in just about every episode. Punishments range from siccing a horde of pinching crabs on her to blasting her with meteorites and nuclear missiles. The 2008 remake keeps this tradition alive.
  • Pokémon loves this trope. Jessie, amongst other female villains (and even protagonists), gets attacked by Pokémon on a regular basis.
  • In Genji Tsuushin Agedama, a 1991 parody anime, villainess Kuki Rei frequently catches fire, falls down pits and gets caught in explosions.
  • The Fairy Tail anime/manga doles out some humorous abuse to protagonist Lucy Heartfilia, including a pillow to the face that sends her through a door and into a rock outside, and various evil women like Angel, whose post-battle struggle for survival is a bit of a joke.
  • Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro absolutely champions this trope, as Neuro himself frequently abuses his female cohort Katsuragi Yako by stretching her body into unnatural positions, electrocuting her, making her eat grass, and just generally roughing her up. One omake is actually a long list of ways to humorously torture a recently-defeated female villain.
  • The 1973 manga Dororon Enma-kun placed the literal ice princess, Yukiko Hime, on the receiving end of a large amount of comical abuse from friends and foes alike. When a monster puts her into a deep sleep, Enma wastes no time attempting to wake her through outrageous beatings and whippings.
  • Doctor Slump has the various heroines and villainesses getting knocked around quite frequently. Even Slump's love interest, Midori, gets boulders dropped on her and temporarily loses a few teeth.
  • Guu from Haré+Guu is chopping vegetables in class and ends up cutting her Rubber Hose Limbs into pieces. Unphased she gathers the pieces up and swallows them, quickly growing a new arm much to Haré's horror. In a much later OAV, Guu somehow shows up in a horror movie and her smirking head gets decapitated.
  • Mitsudomoe is, put simply, a series with lots of slapstick involving little girls. Mitsuba gets it the worst.
  • Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru's resident Butt Monkey Hotori Arashiyama is the biggest receiver of physical pain in the aforementioned story.
  • Nagasarete Airantou distributes the pain pretty fairly. Though male protagonist Ikuto gets hurt more consistently, girls Ayane, Rin and Mikoto get knocked around fairly often as well.
  • Achakura and Haruhi in Haruhi-chan. Others too (everyone's an Abusable Cutie) but they seem the most prone to it.
  • Azumanga Daioh has several scenes of this, Yomi and Tomo hit each other, Chiyo and Osaka get bonked a lot, and even Sakaki is always bit on the hand by cats. Of course, this is all girl-on-girl (or animal-on-girl) slapstick.
    • Yukari-sensei is also placed on the receiving end of some physical comedy courtesy of Tomo. As punishment, Yukari spends the next several minutes slapping Tomo around with a lunch tray in each hand.
  • Sakura Wars tends to female characters on the receiving end of slapstick, usually from other female characters, tripping over stuff or having things blow up in their faces.
  • In Magikano, the main male character, Haruo, douse take some abuse especially in the form of a mind erasing hammer. But that pales in comparison to what the Yandears who are (unknowingly to him) fighting for his attention do to each other.
  • Kelly from Transformers: Robots in Disguise is most definitely the series human Chew Toy. She's not stupid or clumsy, just incredibly unlucky. Usually the funny stuff happens to her property rather than her, but she's still been the victim of the occasional damage. She is almost always caught up in the conflicts of the (mostly male) Transformers. Not even running to the middle of the world's most remote desert moves her out of the way of the conflict!!
  • Hotori from Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru falls victim a large number of unfortunate mishaps. A little sneeze sends her face-first into a cup of coffee, and she trips while trying to clean it up, getting a bucket stuck on her head.
  • With its all-female cast, it's no surprise that this trope should apply to Ichigo Mashimaro.
  • Also happens with frequency in Urusei Yatsura, usually featuring Ryuunosuke, Benten, Ran and the Spice Girls (No, not THOSE Spice Girls).
  • One particularly well done male-to-female example is in Toradora! when Ryuuji accidentally hits Taiga in the head with a broom. It's hilarious.
  • Along with the general stupidity and incompetence that made up part of her You Suck character, the anime version of Sailor Moon was the victim of a fair number of slapstick gags.
  • Tantei Opera Milky Holmes, absurd as it is, heaps slapstick on everybody, with the heroines getting it the hardest, though G4 (particularly Kokoro) get theirs too.
  • Kanako Miyamae from Maria Holic takes some slapstick pain, including getting trampled by a schoolgirl stampede, which after provides her with the obligatory Amusing Injuries.
  • Slayers often subjects its female characters to slapstick, every semi-important woman that appears in the show, suffers it sooner or later (even Sylphiel was blasted by Lina in one ocassion) Amelia is a notable one.
  • Nodame from Nodame Cantabile is part of a Boke and Tsukkomi Routine with other main character Chiaki, and the usual Tsundere slapstick violence is gender-inverted.
  • Happens in Dragon Half, where King Siva drops a huge weight on his own daughter Vina's head. The entire scene is funny, but it also shows that the two of them are utterly horrible people. Vina's half-slime, so she survives because she's Nigh Invulnerable. She then attempts to smother her father once she escapes.
  • The unlucky Chinese Girl protagonist of the weird anime Ippatsu Kikimusume gets involved in a whole lot of this.
  • Angel Beats! has Hinata's assaults on Yui be played just ast much for laughs as hers on him.
  • Pani Poni Dash! lives on this trope, due to its mostly female cast.
  • Sanae from Ika Musume gets bloody beaten up a lot by the eponymus protagonist, and she enjoys it.
  • Merrill from Rune Soldier Louie gets involved in lots of bad situations, usually thanks to her greediness or some misfortune.
  • Sailor Moon frequently featured slapstick gags with the main female cast as the victims. Usagi was the most common victim, due to her extreme clumsiness getting her hurt, but plenty of gags featured the rest of the cast as well. Ironically, Mamoru, the only male in the regular cast, was the least likely to be on the receiving end of the show's physical comedy.
  • In Mahou Sensei Negima, main female protagonist regularly takes the chance to smack about one or to other girls in their sillier or more lecherous moments, but none so much as Elegant Gothic Lolita Vampire Evangeline. This being Negima, it's promptly lampshaded:

Chachamaru: "Asuna-san's the only person who's ever been able to engage with Master in physical slapstick."

    • Although given her insane skill in martial arts, she probably lets it happen.
  • Literature Girl in Daily Lives of High School Boys had once in High School Boys and the Way You are, when her clumsiness caused a long string of Epic Fail.
  • The premise of Kill Me Baby lies in Yasuna being physically abused by Sonya at least Once an Episode.
  • Misty got this from time to time in Pokémon. One noticeable example was in "Pokemon Fashion Flash." In the course of that episode, Misty got burned in the face by Vulpix's fire breath, got burned by Vulpix's huge Fire Spin at the climax, AND got a ridiculous face paint makeover that looked so bad, it had Ash and Brock (especially Ash) laughing themselves half to death when they saw it!
  • Happens a lot in Rock Lee's Springtime of Youth, there was actually two chapters dedicated to this trope.
  • Violence against female duelists was commonplace in the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise, but Yuzu from Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V - tended to get this harder by it than any other female lead, justified as she had a far more important role than any previous female duelists and was presented as a genuine Action Girl.

Film

  • Scary Movie features a lot of this, from start to finish.
  • Dirty Love does this to Jenny McCarthy, who wrote and produced it.
  • Many Columbia short subject comedies (including those with the Three Stooges) did this. Vera Vague was on the business end of a lot of violent comedy in her shorts. Even the classiest female supporting players were not exempt; Christine McIntyre has been, in different shorts, hit over the head with a guitar, splashed with water, and smacked in the face with a loaded shaving brush.
  • Notably averted with Lola Bunny from Space Jam.
    • Granny on the other hand...
  • Orin's middle aged female assistant gets hit several times(such as getting punched in the face and slammed by a door) in his Villain Song in Little Shop of Horrors.
  • The network censor in Scrooged is beaten throughout the film by falling sets, carelessly opened doors, and everything else that can get hurled her way. It's very effective at keeping her from doing her job and the smut gets right past her onto the airwaves.
  • In Babe: Pig in the City, Mrs. Hoggett gets dragged around in pretty undignified fashion.
  • Disney movies are known for having their female characters avoid this sort of thing, which makes the subversions of the untouched beauty rule all that more noticeable.

Live-Action TV

  • Probably the best known example is Lucy Ricardo from I Love Lucy. Really, any character Lucille Ball played counts.
  • The title characters of Hope And Faith also regularly suffered slapstick misfortune.
  • That's So Raven: The main character, Raven, gets involved in a lot of slapstick, usually on the receiving end.
  • Dee from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is just as liable to have her leg broken by homeless people, or her face smashed in by a metal folding chair as the rest of the guys, and has been poisoned the most out of them all.
  • The main female characters on Married... with Children also count. Peg has had both Al and a fat woman fall on her, Kelly has been electrocuted and gotten hit in the head with a frisbee, Marcy's been electrocuted, and all three of them have fallen down the basement stairs.
  • Laverne and Shirley: Both Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams were made honorary members of the Hollywood Stuntman's Guild for all the slapstick and the beating that they took to do it.
  • In her eponymous sitcom, Miranda Hart subjects herself to copious amounts of slapstick.
  • The Worst Witch has a lot of the girls affected with slapstick. 95% of the cast are female so it's justified.
  • CJ Cregg get this a lot in The West Wing
  • There is also the "Oh my nose!" scene from The Brady Bunch, where Marcia (Marcia, Marcia!) gets struck in the nose with an errant football from when the guys are playing in the backyard. The resulting swelling drives the plot for the rest of that episode, ending with Marcia learning an Aesop about not being too self-concious about her looks. The scene has also been parodied a few times since by other shows, including the Simspons during a Couch Gag where the family runs through the sets of a couple different classic TV shows.
  • The Nanny is a notable aversion to the "other women or their own clumsiness" rule. C.C. Babcock was the most abused character on the show, and most of it came at the hands of Niles, the butler. He would hand her a scalding hot teapot, squirt lemon juice in her eye, "forget" to tell her he just mopped with very slippery floor polish, slam a door on her head, the list goes on and on. The only way they really got away with it was that C.C. was such a Rich Bitch that treated everybody so horribly throughout the whole show, all of his slapstick abuse came across a little more like Kick the Son of a Bitch.

Newspaper Comics

  • Peanuts never seemed reluctant to have some of the girls take a shot. While Wouldn't Hit a Girl was invoked quite a few times (usually by a girl), there'd still be quite a few brawls and pratfalls for either gender. And not restricted to just Peppermint Patty taking her lumps in football, either.

Video Games

  • Quite a lot happens to Bandage Girl in Meat Boy series.
  • The female protagonist of the old Sega CD game Time Gal has tons of funny deaths.
  • Every time the eponymus protagonist of Bayonetta gets squashed by anything we can see a nice slapstick animation, of the "paper leaf" type.
  • Metal Slug plays this trope straight with Eri, Fio and Nadia, getting slapsticky electrocuted, burned or even dissolved or eaten alive by aliens or man-eating plants. A notable one is in Metal Slug 4: if you get caught in the explosion at the end of the final level, your character, regardless of gender, ends up covered in Amusing Injuries. And there is also a notable aversion in the third game, played for Fan Service
  • In Donkey Kong 64, Tiny Kong gets squashed to the ground as well as the other kongs if you fall from high heights (and Mad Jack doesn't hesitate to stomp her)
  • Laura Bow is a two-part Sierra adventure game with a female protagonist, and, in the same fashion as other games from the company, she is subjected to lots of deaths, averting also the Beauty Is Never Tarnished trope. Some of these includes hillariously falling from stairs and high places, being hit by a car, burned to ashes, stomped by a bell, crushed by an elevator and a chandelier... the poor girl even gets chopped in half by an axe onscreen. All of these are, of course, Played for Laughs, being a Sierra game after all.
  • Lux-Pain: Mika Nozaki is the only female among the main cast to consistently be abused by Rui. And it's funny.
  • Played with for Crash Bandicoot, Coco Bandicoot and Nina Cortex are subject to the odd Amusing Injuries, albeit not nearly as much as Crash and Neo. Coco even has her own ascending angel death animation in Wrath Of Cortex just like her brother, though she doesn't have anything near the more over the top deaths he gets from other things.
  • Two of the animated shorts for Kid Icarus: Uprising feature the beautiful Goddess Palutena facing a variety of culinary mishaps from an oven exploding in her face to getting a giant pumpkin stuck on her head. Pit remains entirely unaffected by, and oblivious to, the harm that's befalling his beloved goddess throughout the skits.
  • Mass Effect gives us Khalisah bint Sinan al-Jilani, a tabloid reporter who tries to do a smear job on your character. One of the available dialogue options is to punch her in the face. In the second game you not only get to do it again (or do it if you didn't the first time around) but video clips show her getting similar treatment from members of the alien races, including the harmless-looking and generally comic-relief volus. By the third, she's wised up a little; attacking her will result in her dodging the blow, and lamping Shepard to the floor with a counterattack unless you go on to headbutt her into a wall.
  • In Metal Gear Solid V Phantom Pain, the "easy way" to bring Quiet down is very slapstick-ish; her senses are so acute and she's so good with a gun that using conventional ways won't work. But, call in a supply helicopter with a crate and have them drop it directly over her, and BONK! she's out. Well, actually, you have to do that twice (in Normal Difficulty) but still works.
  • In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, a lot of Amusing Injuries can befall the heroes, like being Squashed Flat, given an Ash Face from an explosion, and giant Mousers trying to eat them (something Leatherface also does) requiring Button Mashing to break free; April O'Neil is a playable character here, and is just as susceptible to all of this as the Turtles are.
  • In MadWorld, Elise is the only boss whose death is not confirmed, but clearly not immune to slapstick. Jack spanks her until she is propelled through the stained glass window of the castle.
  • If Peach and/or Daisy are playable characters in any game (be it Super Mario, Mario Kart, Mario Party, Super Smash Bros, or any of the sports titles) they will be subjected to whatever indignities suffered by the male characters, count on it.

Web Comics

  • In Something*Positive, Davan comments several times that he "doesn't hit women," but has hit Aubrey or Peejee several times, and once "magically" slapped a pretentious witch on the head with a ruler.
  • In Narbonic, the cartoonist made it a point to have Helen and Mel do their share of physical gags, due to the mentioned double standard. Helen was the only character getting injured by her own ur-gerbils.
  • The Order of the Stick: "Oh gods, my mouth was open!! Oh gods, I'm gonna be sick!"
  • The only thing stopping the girls of Precocious joining in the Big Ball of Violence is a good enough excuse. One strip even featured a Melee a Trois where Bud, Roddy, and beauty pageant queen Dionne took turns doubleteaming each other or having a free-for-all.

Web Original

  • The Nostalgia Chick will often get caught up in cartoonish violence, particularly in her joint review of Ferngully with The Nostalgia Critic and in Kickassia. This is most likely due to the site's views on gender equality and feminism.
    • In the Anniversary Brawl, the Chick, Marzgurl, and That Chick with the Goggles all were beat up plenty. Most notable was when the Critic asks Goggles if she was on his team or not and, when she said she wasn't, he promptly punched her in the face.

Western Animation

  • Half the slapstick in Cats Don't Dance comes from Danny (and occasionally Pudge). The rest? Surprisingly enough, it comes from Sawyer, who despite being graceful, wise, and snarky is amusingly very accident prone (though it should be noted that most of her accidents are in some way Danny's fault).
    • Let's not forgot all that happens to the films' villainess, Darla Dimple, at the end of the movie.
  • Phineas and Ferb: Candace seems to be the Chew Toy of the show. If someone is going to fall, be attacked, hit in the face, dropped in embarrassing goo, covered in hair, or have any other unfortunate yet hilarious thing happen to them, there's a good chance its her.
  • Amy Wong from Futurama was created specifically to see whether audiences could laugh at a female victim of slapstick. Happened to Leela a lot too, even when said slapstick turned Bloody Hilarious.
  • The Total Drama series has quite a few of them.
  • The Fairly OddParents shows Cosmo accidentally slapsticking Wanda so often, including torching her with a flamethrower, that it's considered entirely possible that she would deliberately get him sent back to live with his mother.
  • Stacy Stickler on Stickin' Around sometimes had her fair share of Amusing Injuries.
  • Kitty Katswell from T.U.F.F. Puppy is arguably subjected to more abuse than Dudley Puppy himself.
  • Frida on El Tigre received more harm and abuse than any other character in the series. And it was hilarious.
  • As the show's resident Butt Monkey, Meg Griffin has gotten quite a bit of this on Family Guy.
  • My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic has quite a bit of this, with Twilight Sparkle getting the brunt of it. "Applebuck Season" has Applejack go through a conga line of abuse and pratfalls courtesy of sleep deprivation and overstretching herself.
    • The first half of "Feeling Pinkie Keen" is pretty much dedicated to this happening to Twilight Sparkle. Complete with Anvil on Head and Piano Drop.
    • Even Moe Fluttershy and girly fashionista Rarity get animals vomiting (onscreen) in their faces.
  • Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy involves the entire cast in over-the-top slapstick comedy, both male and female. This is most readily apparent with frequent cause and slightly less frequent recipients, the Kanker sisters. This trope is generally less apparent when distinguishing between the females (5 total, plus one Camp Gay) and Nazz, the closest the show gets to a regular chick. Nazz generally only suffers slapstick violence as a result of indiscriminate group damage.
  • While Heloise was rarely a victim of Amusing Injuries in season 1 of Jimmy Two-Shoes, she suffers more in season 2 than just about any other character. The episode "Heads Roll" practically centers around Heloise's head getting completely battered.
  • Harley Quinn on Batman: The Animated Series was often the subject of slapstick humor due to her Bumbling Sidekick status. Notably, in the episode "Girl's Night Out," she shoots an over-sized knockout glove at Supergirl, only for it to bounce harmlessly off of Supergirl and rebound right back in her face.
  • Mrs Puff from SpongeBob SquarePants is always victim of SpongeBob's stupidity. Sandy is also victim of slapstick in certain episodes.
  • Nicole, the mother character in The Amazing World of Gumball, goes through quite a lot of this when chasing Gumball and Darwin in "The DVD".
    • On "The Responsable", Anais, along with Gumball and Darwin literally smack into the ground after falling from the sky.
  • Both the male and female characters get their share of slapstick comedy in Tiny Toon Adventures.
  • Slightly inverted with The Dreamstone. Amberley for the large part bumbled as much through missions as Rufus did. Both cases however were usually portrayed in a Lighter and Softer manner compared to the extreme slapstick the Urpneys suffered each episode.
  • Princess Clara from Drawn Together tends to be beaten up, sometimes randomly, by the housemates in several episodes
  • The female zoologist from the Hip Hippos segments of Animaniacs falls in this trope.
  • Minnie Mouse in the House of Mouse short "Minnie Visits Daisy".
  • Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi: The duo goes through plenty of slapstick.
  • Every character on Amphibia goes through amusing perils, and Anne gets it as much as anyone else.
  • The girls in Codename: Kids Next Door are subject to the same cartoonish violence as the boys. Some examples: Abby and Kuki are stuffed into soda bottles in "Operation: P.O.P.", both are hit by a nudifying missile (at the north pole, no less) in "Operation: Arctic", Kuki is turned into a hamburger via a Rube Goldberg Device in "Operation: Fast Food", and many, many more.
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