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The Three Stooges (view source)

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* [[Aside Glance]]: Shemp's trademark.
* [[Attractive Bent Gender]]: Should the Stooges be [[Disguised in Drag]], someone ''will'' find them attractive.
* [[Baby Carriage]]: The Stooges knocked over one while running from some authority figures in ''Grips, Grunts and Groans''. [[Harmful to Minors|There WAS a baby in it]], [[Dude, Not Funny|and it was played for laughs.]]
* [[Badly -Battered Babysitter]]: In episodes where the three are babysitting. You definitely do not want these three guys anywhere near your children.
* [[Bald of Awesome]]: Curly
* [[Balloonacy]]: In an odd variation of this trope, Moe ''becomes'' a balloon in one episode. In ''Dizzy Pilots'', Moe falls into a tub of tar, and to get the tar off of him, Larry and Curly cut a hole in his clothes and begin filling it up with gas. [[Hilarity Ensues]] as Moe begins to float away when Larry and Curly aren't looking, and they spend the next sizable chunk of the episode trying to get Moe down. He eventually floats through an opening in the ceiling and into the sky. Hearing Moe cry during the ordeal makes this a candidate for [[Crowning Moment of Funny]].
** Played straight in the movie, when a little girl gets lifted by a bunch of balloons. When a bullet pops them and she falls onto a big cake, she says "That was awesome!!!".
* [[BANG Flag Gun]]: Used on occasion.
* [[Beam Me Up, Scotty]]: While Curly could psych himself up when dealing with the bad guys and occasionally needed to be restrained, he never said, "Lemme at 'em! Lemme at 'em!"
* [[Berserk Button]]: Curly has 4 of them, each of which turns him into a [[Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass|wrecking machine.]]
** Hearing the song "Pop Goes the Weasel" in ''Punch Drunks''. When the music stopped, so did he.
** Seeing a mouse in ''Horses' Collars''. The only way to stop him was to stuff cheese into his mouth.
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* [[Einstein Hair]]: Larry
* [[Everything Explodes Ending]]: ''Three Little Sew and Sews''
* [[EverythingsEverything's Worse With Bears]]: In the short ''Idiots Deluxe'', the stooges have to contend with a bear which wanders into their cabin as they're camping. [[Hilarity Ensues]], as just about everything they try backfires on them.
* [[Extreme Doormat]]: Larry comes across as the most sensible of the three in most of the shorts but apparently only goes along with what the others do--and puts up with Moe's abuse--because he's just very passive. [[Your Mileage May Vary|Arguably]], the fact that Curly and Shemp also put up with Moe's abuse makes them examples of this as well.
* [[Extreme Omnivore]]: Curly, when hungry. At a fancy dinner, he was presented with a crab ("Ooh, a tarantula!") and ate it, ''shell and all''.
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* [[Flowery Insults]]: [[Drinking Game|Take a shot]] every time Moe calls one of the other stooges a "chowderhead", "numbskull", "mental midget", "muttonhead", "porcupine", or some other creative insult.
* [[Food Fight]]: They always had an uncanny ability to make a formal party regress into the formerly snobby, cultured rich people partaking in an epic food fight.
* [[Four -Temperament Ensemble]]: [[The Bully|Moe]] is choleric, [[Only Sane Man|Larry]] is phlegmatic, [[Cloudcuckoolander|Curly]] is sanguine, and [[Nervous Wreck|Shemp]] is melancholic.
** In real life, it was otherwise: [[Big Good|M]][[The Perfectionist|oe]] was choleric/melancholic, [[Nice Guy|Larry]] was sanguine, [[The Woobie|Curly]] was melancholic, and [[The Quiet One|Shemp]] was phlegmatic.
* [[Gargle Blaster]]: Seems to be the only type of alchohol available to the stooges.
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* [[Hero Syndrome]]: The Stooges flirt with this in Pest Man Wins when they infest a mansion with common household pests in order to exterminate them and get paid.
* [[He Went That Way]]
* [[Hollow -Sounding Head]]: Curly's head is apparently [[Made of Iron]] ''and'' hollow.
* [[Hollywood Healing]]: All three Stooges had the endurance of a typical cartoon character.
* Homage: the minor 1984 hit "The Curly Shuffle" is all about watching the Stooges on late night TV.
* [[Hot Potato]]
* [[How Many Fingers]]: A common gag would be Moe asking one of the stooges how many fingers he was holding up, and when they answered "two" he'd poke them in the eyes.
* [[I Ate What?]]: A [[Running Gag]] had the characters, whether a stooge or a supporter, to drink brown paint instead of coffee.
* [[Ill Girl]]: The stooges help one reunite with her father in "Nutty But Nice".
** Another one shows up in the movie.
* [[Impossible Leavening]]: Done with beer instead of bread. In "Beer Barrel Polecats", each of the Stooges add the prescribed amount of yeast to their beer, not knowing that the other two stooges have done (or will do) the same. They end up with enough beer that they have to move it to a bathtub to contain it all.
* [[In One Ear, Out the Other]]
* [[Incredibly Lame Pun]]: Many of Curly's jokes, which invariably earn some abuse from Moe.
* [[Ink Suit Actor]]: In the 30s up to the 40s, the Stooges cameoed in animated cartoon form, usually from other studios. Warners used them in "Porky's Hero Agency" and "Hollywood Steps Out."
* [[Instrumental Theme Tune]]: Most famously, instrumental versions of "Listen to the Mockingbird" and "Three Blind Mice". In both cases, doubles as a [[Real Song Theme Tune]].
* [[Iron Butt Monkey]]: Though this applies to Curly most of all, all three Stooges have their moments.
* [[I SophagusISophagus]]: Played straight in ''[[The Three Stooges]]'' film ''Disorder in the Court''. When the stooges are reenacting a musical performance during a trial Curly slaps Moe on the back causing him to swallow a kazoo. They then find that when they press on Moe's stomach they can hear the kazoo, and soon Curly and Larry begin to make Moe play "Ach Du Lieber Augustine" by pumping his arm and squeezing his stomach, before he coughs the kazoo up
* [[Is There a Doctor In The House]]: In the episode ''From Nurse to Worse'', a doctor shouts this frantically while in a hospital surrounded by other doctors, after accidently giving another doctor sleeping gas when he was supposed to give it to Curly, before slowly realizing that he is a doctor.
* [[Jerkass]]: Moe. ''And then some''.
** In ''Pop Goes The Easel'', his [[Jerkass]] attitude gets cranked [[Up to Eleven]] when, following a clay fight, Moe demands to know who started it, Larry says "YOU did!", Moe responds by angrily yelling "Oh YEAH?!", and then promptly spins around with his hand extended, [[Hair -Trigger Temper|slapping Larry, Curly and three or four other guys with one continuous slap]].
* [[Jerk With a Heart of Gold]]: Moe's character on-screen would sometimes reveal his heart of gold whenever a woman or a child was somehow in trouble.
* [[Juggling Loaded Guns]]: "Disorder in the Court" introduces a gun as evidence. Curly is told to try to pull the incredibly rusty trigger, after being told "[[Tempting Fate|Never fear, it's not loaded.]]" After one harmless click, he then accidentally shoots off the baliff's toupee when his finger gets stuck in the trigger guard.
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* [[Maniac Monkeys]]: Gorillas were always bad news in Three Stooges shorts.
* [[Marathon Running]]: In 2011 cable channel Antenna TV began running mini-marathons of the shorts over the weekend.
* [[Mean Character, Nice Actor]]: Moe's off-screen persona was a vast contrast to the [[Jerkass]] he normally portrayed. While still the "leader" to a fault, he was reportedly very selfless and kind. The Stooges loved to do charity benefits, and stories of them clowning around in kids' hospitals are plentiful.
** For all that Moe loathed Curly onscreen, when Jerome (Curly) died, Moe mourned his brother deeply.
** In addition, perennial supporting player Vernon Dent, who mainly played villains or hot-tempered comic foils, was actually a very generous, friendly, and easy-going person in real life.
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** ''Example:'' Moe tries to kill a pair of moving pants with a wooden board. On the back swing, he breaks a priceless vase. To Larry: ''Why didn't you bring me a softer board!?''
* [[No Ending]]: A lot of the shorts just end suddenly without resolving the plot.
* [[Non -Fatal Explosions]]
* [[Not So Above It All]]: Not only is this the ending to "Hoi Polloi", but the audience is often reminded that Moe (the "boss" Stooge) was not really that much smarter or more sensible than Curly.
* [[Offscreen Crash]]: Sometimes used straight and sometimes averted.
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* [[Scooby Dooby Doors]]: On a few occasions.
* [[Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You]]: In-story, the trio tried two 3-d shorts, 'Spooks!' and 'Pardon My Backfire'. To help enhance the gags, some shots were done at the camera. Which means [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/25/Sppooks.jpg Moe Is About To Poke Your Eyes!]
* [[Self -Deprecation]]: More than once in their shorts, such as this exchange in ''Crash Goes the Hash''.
{{quote| '''A butler''': Say, you three remind me of the Three Stooges.<br />
'''Curly''': Hey! That's an insult!! }}
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* [[The Tooth Hurts]]: Used in "I Can Hardly Wait", where Curly gets a toothache.
* [[Trademark Favorite Food]]: Burnt toast and a rotten egg - "I've got a tapeworm and it's good enough for him".
* [[Ugly Guy, Hot Wife]]: Scads of attractive actresses played love interests for the Stooges. Later in an autobiography Moe would say that producers and directors would butter up a woman by telling her she could be in a Stooge short. That many of them had no acting abilities and little stage presence didn't seem to matter.
** Yes, but one of them was ''[[I Love Lucy|Lucille Ball]]''!
** Not to mention the lovely and talented Christine McIntyre, whom many Stooge fans fondly dub "the female Stooge".
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** The stooges had wanted to do a full length feature film for years, but weren't able to do one until the late 50's, by which time it was Moe, Larry and Curly Joe.
** Curly was supposed to have a part in "Malice in the Palace" as the cook who the stooges mistakenly think is chopping up a dog and a cat and cooking them, but unfortunately Curly was too sick to play the part so it was given to Larry. Had Curly been able to do it, it would have been the only time Curly would appear in a Shemp short as more than just a brief cameo.
* [[What Happened to The Mouse?]]: In ''Even As I.O.U.'', the plot of the first half of the short, where the stooges are helping a homeless mother and her child, is forgotten after they go to the horse races to raise money for them.
* [[Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?]]: The stooges are basically doing something different in every episode, that is when they actually have a job.
* [[Yellowface]]: In "No Dough Boys", a wartime short, the stooges are dressed as Japanese soldiers for a photo shoot, and later stumble upon a hideout with Nazi spies and have to take on the identity of the Japanese spies they were expecting to meet with.
* [[You Can Say That Again]]: In "Micro-Phonies", as they see a beautiful woman:
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