Immune to Slapstick

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There are some characters who just won't be part of the slapstick. They won't indignify themselves with zany acting, they won't take a pratfall on that banana peel on the floor and generally avoid doing anything clownish or potentially humiliating.

Not all characters are comedic. The Stoic Anti-Hero certainly can't be seen indignifying himself in the wacky antics of the heroes, while that new more sinister Big Bad likely isn't going to fall victim to a comedic Humiliation Conga like the previous Harmless Villain did.

As such, whenever the scene gets a bit Denser and Wackier, such a character disappears, not to be seen until the mood gets a little darker.

Alternatively the character may still appear but generally doesn't involve himself in the antics of those around him. This is particularly prominent with another character type, usually The Fool or The Ace, who can be comical, however manage to always avoid the same slapstick pain and humiliation as almost everyone around them. Such an event is usually always Played for Laughs, and usually at the expense of those who aren't so immune.

Female characters were often prone to this, due to wariness to placing them in violent situations and still having the same comedic value, though as of recently, some works have become braver and shown slapstick knows no gender.^note This Very Wiki once had an entire trope dedicated to female exceptions to this trope, but such exceptions have become so common they are no longer tropeworthy.

Contrast The Comically Serious, a character that is normally dignified, but only to make their eventual fall to a gag more effective, and Only Sane Man where a character is the only one to actually recognise how absurd everyone else's behaviour is and/or how insane the situation they are all in is.

Compare Shoo Out the Clowns, when a comedic character disappears when the story gets more serious. Compare Bullet-Proof Fashion Plate, where a character does go through the abuse, but still comes out smelling like a rose.

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Kai of Bakuten Shoot Beyblade (being The Stoic Anti-Hero of the team) rarely took part in comedic moments, usually acting as a bemused audience or leaving to do his own thing. Rei/Ray, though more jovial, usually only had a handful of cartoony moments per series as well.
• Gintama: Particularly serious Arc Villains, often doubling as Knight of Cerebus, tend to be immune to comedic situations. Exemples include Hosen, Jiraya, Oboro.
  • Takasugi was this for a long time, to keep him a intimidating vilain and potential Big Bad, but after a while he did start to have some light comedic moments as well, though he is still never the Butt-Monkey.
  • Generally speaking, while most characters in this series, even the relatively serious ones got involved in comedic situations, some benefited from a downplayed version of this trope by never being on the receiving end and ridiculing themselves far less than the average Gintama character. Okita was never the butt monkey in the early years of the manga, though it happened to him from time to time later. Tsukuyo has some comedic moment, but even her recurring gag of being a mean drunk tends to put other characters, mainly Gintoki, more than herself into embarrassing situations. And Nobume loses her comedic traits after the death of Isaburo.
• Meta Knight in Kirby: Right Back at Ya! to an extent. Though he does have moments as The Comically Serious he usually stays out of the lighthearted scenes in Papupu Village, only appearing when required to battle a threat to the village.
• The super-serious Signum and the Wolf Man Zafira are among the few members of Lyrical Nanoha cast who rarely appear in comedic sequences and even when they do, it's usually in a Deadpan Snarker way.
• Mon Colle Knights has Hanazono no Utahime^note Renamed Kahimi in English, and except for the effect of the Mirror of Lies and the angels, among others. None of these characters display any kind of comical motions or facial expressions. Zaha and Reda in particular are genuinely dangerous people because of this.
• Nico Robin and Nami from One Piece are both this in slightly different ways:
  • While Robin doesn't balk at partying and laughing with her crewmates, she's the only member of the Straw Hat crew that never gets Super-Deformed and is never targeted by a gag. The manga finally submitted her to the odd cartoony moment, though less out of fully breaking the taboo and more because the series was such a Long Runner that there had to be an exception in there eventually. Even then, it was just her making a cartoonish face, and she's still never on the receiving end of any Amusing Injuries, and scenes where she is harmed are always Played for Drama (being impaled by Crocodile, smited by Enel, physically and mentally tormented by Spandam, etc.,).
  • As for Nami, she, unlike Robin, frequently becomes Super-Deformed and makes Comical Angry Faces and the like, but when it comes to actual physical slapstick, she's almost always on the giving end rather than the receiving end, especially in the manga. The anime gives her a few scenes of being comically hurt herself, like being hit with a pillow in Alabasta or pecked by a South Bird in Skypiea, but even then she's still largely spared compared to her male crewmates, and jokes at her expense tend to be more situational than physical.
  • Strangely enough, Vivi actually averted this trope during her time on the crew despite being more calm and less hot-headed than Nami. While she wasn't a huge Butt-Monkey like Usopp or Sanji, she did have a few slapstick moments even after her Good All Along reveal, like being hit with a pillow (which, unlike with Nami, happened in the anime and manga) or being pinched by Nami. She had it much worse during her brief time as a "villain" as well.
• Played with in Pokémon the Series. While the hero cast aren't immune to cartoon injuries, a lot of suspense in the show is reliant on their supposed inability to perform the same Toon Physics as Team Rocket. One episode had the trio fall down a cliff in a manner reminiscent of a Road Runner cartoon, Ash even comments on this like he expects them to return fine and dandy later on. When one of the protagonists almost did the same seconds after, it was totally Played for Drama. For extra insult she even suffered a Thundershock from a random Pokémon while clinging for her life, again completely dramatically^note For those who don't know the Running Gag, Team Rocket suffer a comical Thundershock from Pikachu every single episode. Averted entirely in Sun & Moon where practically every main character falls victim to slapstick or Super-Deformed antics due to the more comical nature of the era.
• Ranma ½: The two elder Tendo sisters often come through the most insane of occurrences with hardly a scratch, though for very different reasons. For Kasumi it's that she's such a Nice Girl that there seems to be an unspoken taboo for harming her. Even when she gets taken over by an oni that can only be removed by knocking her unconscious, no one can bring themselves to do it (outside of Ranma, and he gets shouted down by her overprotective father), and so endure the "evil" actions she commits while possessed. For Nabiki it's often that she's manipulating the participants and has been known to sow wanton destruction simply for her own entertainment, and so makes a point to be somewhere else when the violence starts, thus never paying the price for her actions.
• In the 90's anime of Sailor Moon, the Outer Senshi (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Saturn) are a lot more dignified and sophisticated than the Inners. The Outers don't Face Fault, or Sweat Drop or have Wild Take reactions like the Inners. It's not quite the case in the original manga and, to a lesser extent, Sailor Moon Crystal.
• Sonic X: Shadow the Hedgehog, much like his game counterpart, is never once the butt of any physical humor, nor is he put in any embarrassing situations, especially compared to characters like Knuckles, Eggman, or even Sonic himself. Heck, even Cosmo and Rouge have a few moments. Shadow has none.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Duel Monsters: Whenever the tone needed to become more comedic, Yami Yugi would stay inside the Millennium Puzzle and leave Yugi in control, not reappearing until things became more dramatic. Similarly, the stoic and humourless Seto Kaiba would never be present for any of the show's zanier moments (keep in mind that Kaiba was originally supposed to be a Take That! against "Stop Having Fun" Guys).

Comic Books

• In The Castafiore Emerald by Hergé, one step in the marble staircase at Marlinspike Hall is broken, and every main character in the story seems to make a pratfall because of this (Captain Haddock even injures his foot), except for Bianca Castafiore, who never falls despite walking around in high heels all the time.
• Word of God explains this as the reason the female grey spy of Spy vs. Spy comics always won in her appearances, since Antonio Prohias was unwilling to put a female character in the same slapstick brutality as the male spies. The character was retired for a long period of time since the inability to place her in physical humour made her boring.

Films — Live-Action

• Played with in The Great Race, The Great Leslie is a Bullet-Proof Fashion Plate - he manages to walk through a giant pie fight in a bakery in a white suit without getting anything on him until the very end when he gets hit with a white pie.
• Downplayed when Joe Besser joined The Three Stooges. Because he wasn't as experienced with slapstick as the other Stooges, he did request for them to dial back the Comedic Sociopathy a bit, but he still regularly took part in a lot of the Stooges' usual slapstick-heavy antics. including taking plenty of hits and smacks from Moe.
• The live-action Tom & Jerry (2021) features Chloë Grace Moretz as Kayla, a conning hotel employee that unexpectedly (and disappointedly) makes it through the entire film without any errant bops to the cranium, mallets intended for others, pratfalls, or anvils dropped on her head. See also They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character.

Literature

• Terry Pratchett's Discworld series of novels.
  • The Guild of Fools, Joculators, Clowns, Buffoons, Minstrels and Mime Artists in Ankh-Morpork specialises in physical comedy. Pratfalls, tumbles, amusing escapades with custard pies, buckets of water and joke flowers that squirt liquid are their stock-in trade. But one Clown never, ever, lands in the middle of the pies or buckets or general pratfalling. In a funny sort of way, he is Ground Zero. But Ground Zero from the point of view of the nuke. Doctor Whiteface, the stern, austere and utterly joyless Head of the Guild, is above that sort of thing. He walks unscathed through the circus ring whilst physical humour happens to other people.
  • Enforced with Lord Vetinari, enlightened tyrant and ruler of Ankh-Morpork: in Making Money, a character sees a custard pie flying toward him and realises that if it hits him and destroys his dignity, nothing and no one is safe, so he dives in the way and cops it himself. One dollop of custard still heads towards his lordship, but he very calmly catches it out of the air.

Video Games

• BlazBlue has Hakumen play this, being a character entirely defined by his seriousness. For example, the first game only had him in a single scene in Tager's humorous route, but even then is not involved with any of the comedy. Continuum Shift expands this further by denying him an entire gag route just because of his seriousness. Ironically, he's an alternate version of Jin from another timeline, and he is used fairly often in several gag routes.
• In the first two Mortal Kombat games, Johnny Cage's comical Groin Attack couldn't be performed on the female kombatants, Goro or Kintaro. This changed in later games.
• Shadow of Sonic the Hedgehog for the large part upkeeps a Darker and Edgier tone and rarely engages in highly comical moments. This actually became a hinderance during his inclusion in the sitcom heavy Sonic Boom, as writers stated they had trouble utilising him without turning him into a joke. His Archie comic counterpart will subvert it every now and then however.
• The girls of Street Fighter are an interesting example, while they are just as vulnerable as the males in terms of what they could be hit by in certain attacks such as Seth's Ultra the male characters tend to have some extreme effects such as eyes popping out of their heads, tongue sticking out, eyes rolling to the back of their heads among other things. The girls of the same game all simply show mild discomfort, annoyance, and even sometimes confusion without showing any visual quirks. Ryu's Ultra 2 infamously makes the jaw of most male characters stretch out from its original position, for the girls all they do is simply make an unpleased face.

Web Animation

• Disventure Camp is basically a darker and more mature version of Total Drama, and is more focused on Character Development and drama than physical comedy, and jokes tend to be verbal or situational, but even then, the series does still feature slapstick, and pretty much every character participates in it just a little bit... with some exceptions:
  • Kristal McLane, the host of Season 2, is based on Total Drama's Chris McLean, albeit more sympathetic (if still a Jerkass). But while Chris was a Karma Houdini who more often caused slapstick rather than receiving it, he did have plenty of moments of getting hurt or humiliated himself (some of which are pretty spectacular). Kristal, on the other hand, never trips, gets hit, splashed or anything of the sort, and even when there are jokes at her expense, they're always verbal or situational. The one time she even got hurt at all was when she collapsed from exhaustion, which was Played for Drama. While the other hosts (Trevor, Derek, and Emily) all get at least a little bit of physical comedy, Kristal is always completely untouched.
  • New-Age Retro Hippie Kai is the only contestant so far who never gets physically hurt at all, but it's a little bit less surprising than Kristal because Kai is an early boot who only appears in one season.
• Zig-Zagged all across SMG4, particularly its female characters such as Meggy, Saiko, and Melony, a rule of thumb being that they rarely make goofy faces or suffer the same Amusing Injuries as the males in their early appearances (and when they do get hurt, it's usually Played for Drama), but grow more susceptible to slapstick as Characterization Marches On. This is straight-up averted with Tari and Peach, both of whom are just as slapstick-prone as any other character.

Webcomics

• El Goonish Shive NP (NewsPaper) edition's "Oblivious Wand-Waving" arc, in which Tedd buys a magic wand that randomly warps reality.
  • In one of the strips Susan is shown reading and totally unaffected by the weird goings-on (she was originally supposed to have turned part-armadillo) because of her serious nature. There's even a sign on the wall behind her saying "Plot Free Zone".
  • In this strip Adrian Raven tries to resist the weirdness but fails: he ends up being turned into a woman.

Web Original

• During To Boldly Flee, Mechakara (Linkara's evil robot duplicate), did not engage in any of the wacky antics or zaniness of the show. In commentary, Linkara stated that Mechakara was one of his most menacing, most serious antagonists, and so he felt that it would be out of character for him to be the butt of jokes. He had a few moments of being The Comically Serious or forcing slapstick onto OTHER characters, however.

Western Animation

• Early on, The Amazing World of Gumball exempted most of the female cast from its copious painful physical humor. For example, the episode "The Pressure" is about a group of boys and a group of girls (plus Leslie): the boys' scenes including things like skateboarding into a car door and getting crushed under a tree, while the humor of the female group is all dialogue-based. A few seasons later, This no longer the case. The difference can perhaps best be seen by contrasting Teri's roles in "The Virus" (second season) and "The Advice" (fourth season). Despite having a major role in the earlier episode, she suffers no physical injury, and when she appears to be decapitated, the other characters react as if she died. Her minor role in the latter episode involves being torn in half twice.
• In the Animaniacs (2020) intro, when Yakko is playing a line of people's heads like a xylophone, it cuts off just before he can get to Nora, the new stern and serious CEO.
• Darkwing Duck: Taurus Bulba is unquestionably the most competent villain in the show's run and the only one who is never on the receiving end of slapstick—in sharp contrast to far more comedic villains like Megavolt, Quackerjack, Bushroot, and even Negaduck. He's initially defeated by being caught in an explosion (and is later brought back to life as a Cyborg), but it was offscreen and not done in a cartoony way in the slightest.
• Scenes in The Dreamstone taking place in the Land Of Dreams give something of a slight Mood Whiplash against those in Viltheed, due to the heroes' usual avoidance of slapstick violence or cartoony Wild Takes. The Noops at least may suffer the odd non deformed pratfall every now and then, albeit for every dozen or so times the Urpneys get comically squashed, fried and beaten to a pulp.
• Family Guy is a Sadist Show where no major character is completely safe from Black Comedy violence, but it's prototype, Larry & Steve, has Peter Griffin's prototype, Larry, who, like Peter, is an Idiot Houdini, but unlike Peter, he surprisingly never even gets any physical comeuppance for his carelessness, since all the Amusing Injuries are instead aimed solely at Brian's prototype, Steve.
• Even Looney Tunes, the quintessential slapstick cartoon series, has examples of such:
  • A key criticism towards Lola Bunny in her debut in Space Jam, who despite being boosted a new leading character to the franchise, played very little part in the cartoony antics of the original cast (to the point even some of the live action characters fall victim to squash and stretch slapstick more than she does). The one instance she is put at harm by one of the Monstars, it is Played for Drama and averted by Bugs performing a Heroic Sacrifice. The character was revised for The Looney Tunes Show, with the character having a more abrasive personality, albeit still mostly in a dialogue centric sense. Even in New Looney Tunes, which is based more in physical comedy than dialogue, Lola is still immune to slapstick most of the time (if more outwardly wacky to compensate for it).
  • The Road Runner is one of the few regulars to never be the butt of a gag. While most Looney Tunes protagonists like Bugs and Speedy Gonzales are more frequently dishing out slapstick abuse than taking it, they at least have some exceptional cases. The Road Runner's most distinguishing wacky characteristic was holding up a sign reading his opinions. Some of the 90's Warner Bros cartoons averted this however - in Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation he's run over by a truck, while in one Animaniacs episode Buttons and Mindy fall on top of him and crush him.
• The Proud Family:
  • Among the titular family themselves, while Penny, Suga Mama, Puff, and especially poor Oscar all get their fair share of slapstick, Trudy is almost never the butt of any physical gags, and even when there are jokes at her expense, they're usually verbal or situational. One of the few notable exceptions would be in "There's Something About Rene" (an episode mainly focused on Trudy), where she gets hit by a door. Her best friend, Sunset, is also mostly spared from physical comedy (with exceptions, just like Trudy), though it's less noticeable because she doesn't appear that often.
  • BeBe and CeCe may inflict slapstick onto others (mainly Puff, but also Oscar a few times and LaCienega on one occasion), but they themselves never get hurt. Justified since they're infants.
• The Simpsons
  • As seen in the page quote, Krusty the Clown's old sidekick Sideshow Raheem proves completely unwilling to engage in the scripted slapstick. Krusty is intimidated into not pressing the issue.
  Krusty: Angry, angry young man.
  • This is a major issue in-universe in the episode "The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show." Poochie was designed pretty much entirely by Executive Meddling, and his reason to exist was mostly to be as popular and cool as possible to draw in viewers. This came at the cost of any slapstick moments, with his debut episode instead focusing on how Totally Radical he was. It had the opposite effect of him not integrating at all into the show's formula, giving him a fervent hatedom overnight. To further his detachment from the show's rules, the creative team's decision to solve this is to have him Killed Off for Real, when almost all the humour in the show is the characters (usually Scratchy) being comically and brutally killed and then returning next cartoon. The audience hates him enough that they still cheer his very humourless and blatantly tacked-on death.
• Thomas & Friends (and The Railway Series novels they were based on):
  • Older and Wiser engines such as Edward and Toby were initially depicted as far more experienced and competent than the other more arrogant or childish engines, rarely causing accidents or getting into standard unusual predicaments (Toby's first appearance even notes he hasn't had an accident in years). As the show became more Aesop-centric, the cast was rewritten to have more equal shortcomings, leading most of said engines to get into scrapes of their own.
  • Gordon boasted being this in "Off The Rails", having never had a true accident, but was only Tempting Fate.
• Total Drama is a Sadist Show where pretty much no one is completely exempt from Amusing Injuries, but even it has a few examples:
  • While the Smarmy Host, Chris McLean, is a Karma Houdini who more often causes slapstick rather than receiving it, he still does have quite a few moments of getting hurt himself (some of which are pretty spectacular). In the Reboot seasons, however, he is the one and only character to go through both seasons completely untouched the whole time with the sole exception of being shoved to the ground by Axel once.
  • A very strange example would be in "Dodgebrawl", where Heather, who is usually the show's quintessential Karmic Butt-Monkey (heck, she actually has the highest injury count of anyone in the entire franchise), is actually the only contestant who is never shown getting hit with a single dodgebrawl. Heck, before the challenge even starts, Courtney tries to throw food at Heather, only for the latter to effortlessly dodge it and have it hit Gwen instead. Later Courtney tries to throw a dodgeball at Heather, but Owen saves her from it. Then again, she is shown to be in and out of the game like everyone else, so she likely did get hit a few times, just not on screen. It may be a case of Early-Installment Weirdness, since Heather's injuries before the episode are relatively minor and her Karmic Butt-Monkey status wasn't fully established until the next episode, where Gwen dumps Harold's red ant farm onto her for reading the former's diary for the world to see.
  • In Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race, the "Geniuses", Ellody and Mary, are the one and only team who never get a single comedic injury with the exception of the LARPers, who are the first boots (and Leonard did get hurt a few times in Pahkitew Island).