Because of the "silent comedy" format, and no need for translation required, Just for Laughs: Gags has been purchased for use in over 150 countries throughout the world as well as various airports and by airlines. Reactions to said gags range from "inane" to cross-culturally funny.
The show commenced in 2000 and has filmed upward of 20 seasons. Much of their material is available on their YouTube channel
. Additionally, some of the content on the show are licensed from an Australian hidden camera show, Just Kidding!, and then edited to remove the dialog.
Just for Laughs: Gags provides examples of the following tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Examples of this abound in the "Crazy Moms Gags" and "Fathers" compilations. Luckily, the infant being abused is really a plastic doll.
- Accidental Pervert: In "Fishing in her Cleavage", a female prankster with no free hands "accidentally" drops her key between her breasts, and asks passing men to fish it out for her. Then her boyfriend appears.
- All Cloth Unravels: One gag involves people attempting to roll up an old woman's ball of wool, only to find that they are unravelling the pullover of the man sitting behind them.
- Beyond the Impossible: Masters of the art. Like having an empty bucket being tossed over a scaffold be full of water on the way down. Or a kid that stole a purse climbing up a wall. Or a kid walking through a painted tunnel.
- Bird-Poop Gag: One prank involves a cop putting a submarine sandwich on the roof of a car he's ticketing. Another person squirts a substance that looks like bird poop onto the sub and the people in the car watch disgustedly as the police officer eats it.
- Black Bra and Panties: In this gag, Marie-Pierre Bouchard asks male victims to watch a TV screen while she goes behind it to check that it's working. It turns out that the screen allows the guys to see through her clothing to her black lingerie.
- Bookcase Passage: In "Police Tricked into Taking a Shower", prank victims witness a man disappear into a secret door activated by the tap of a shower in the mall; they tell the policeman who is looking for him how to open the door, but when the policeman tries, he just gets drenched instead. In "Naked Statue Fondling Prank", a man opens a secret door under a statue by rotating the statue's penis and disappears inside; when the policeman shows up looking for him, the female victims try vainly to open the door using the same method.
- Buried Alive: Not quite - but in one gag, victims are lured onto a relaxation table, told to lie back and close their eyes, and when they open them they are lying in an open coffin while a priest is giving an eulogy!
- But Not Too Gay: Averted by a comically over-the-top PDA in "Gay Marriage Proposal Prank".
- Came from the Sky: The mysteriously landed UFOs in the compilation "Science Fiction Galore", including a NASA probe which lands on a car bonnet and is taken away by The Men in Black, a spaceship containing an alien chicken, two examples of The Greys, and a communist probe which sprouts legs and walks away.
- Candid Camera Prank: The show's format.
- The Casanova: A few of them in the compilation "Funny Picking Up Women Pranks", including a small boy showing some Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour.
- Chick Magnet: Male victims are made into this in "Babe Magnet".
- Chocolate Baby: In the segment "White Couple, Black Baby", the victims were black men who were greeted overly fondly by a white married woman and then confronted by her white husband over the couple's black baby.
- Con Man: Subverted in "Magician's Secrets Revealed"; victims are parted from their bag by a magician who vanishes into thin air, before turning up at the end to return it and reveal the prank.
- Cool Old Guy: The "Epic Old Man" and "Badass Grandpa" compilations.
- Cruella to Animals: In numerous pranks, such as the first two in the compilation "No Dogs Were Harmed in the Making of These Pranks", while the victim is not looking, the real animal left in their charge is secretly replaced by a toy lookalike, which is then subjected to seemingly lethal abuse to the victims' horror.
- Decoy Damsel: Used extensively on the marks, most often to distract them from a switch that is being performed behind their backs. Alternatively, a girl or woman seems to need help with carrying something, but the strong people who volunteer to help are made to seem useless at it, as in "God's Strength" and "Strongest Girl in the World".
- Disproportionate Retribution: "Little Girl Arrested for Selling Lemonade" and other such pranks portray people being arrested for nonsensical reasons.
- Failed a Spot Check: Two Asian tourists are looking for the Montreal Tower, and ask for directions from the victims, ignoring their pleas that the destination is right behind them.
- Fake in the Hole: Done "accidentally" by passing army guys in "Kid Mistakes Grenade For Ball", leading to a Grenade Hot Potato situation made worse by the fact that the young boy left in victims' charge mistakes it for a baseball!
- Farts on Fire: By a nun, no less.
- Footsie Under the Table: In "Sexy Flirty Footsie Prank", a woman engages male victims in this, and unbeknownst to them, the man next to her takes over from her. A minor freak-out ensues when the footsie continues after she has got up from the table.
- Frame-Up: Some pranks, such as "Framed Shoe Thieves Gag" and "Framed Thief Prank", set the victims up to think they have been framed for stealing, leading to immense relief when the prank is revealed.
- Friendly Scheming: The pranks are generally benign enough for all the victims to take in good spirits.
- Gay Cowboy: The "Brokeback Mountain Prank" has the male victims dress up as a cowboy and left in the hands of Denis Levasseur.
- Gender Bender: Numerous gags present the illusion that someone has changed sex, including "Instant Sex Change", "Sex Change Toilet", "Little Girl Turns Into Boy", "Sex Change Shirt", "Little Boy Turns Into Little Girl". In "Young Japanese Girl Turns Into Old Man" and "Funniest Japanese Girls Prank", this is combined with Overnight Age-Up.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: The "Girls Making Out On Camera" prank, in which victims have been asked to hold the video camera.
- Good Samaritan: Exploited Trope. Most of the victims of the gags are people who are asked by the prank creators to assist in some way.
- Gospel Choirs Are Just Better: "Church Choir Attack!" and "Out of Nowhere Gospel Choir Prank" involve a choir surrounding people in the park and singing an uplifting gospel number to them.
- Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: The "Gravity Cognizance" version is parodied in "Magic Floating Plank Gag".
- Heroic Second Wind: In "Incredible Hulk", a small bullied boy is transformed into a large green hulkish man who chases the bullies.
- Hallucinations: A large staple of the series is to temporarily make victims believe they are seeing people and objects impossibly transform, appear or disappear.
- Hilarious Outtakes: More recently, they have filmed some of their gags with one or two bloopers appended to the end, showing instances in which the prank somehow didn't go quite right. This prank for example.
- I Have Boobs, You Must Obey!: The female wallet thief in "Sexy Thief" has this effect on the policeman.
- Impersonating an Officer: The Just for Laughs crew love to do this (with legal clearance of course). Many of the segments involve the pranksters posing as police officers - a small sample is in the compilation "Best Police Pranks".
- Internal Reveal: At the end of most segments, the pranksters are shown indicating the camera to the victims, who generally react with surprise and laughter.
- It Was Here, I Swear!: An often-used trope in this series; sometimes when confronted by police or someone else, victims will begin to explain their situation, turn to indicate a person or thing that was the cause of it, only to find that their alibi has vanished into thin air.
- Jesus Was Way Cool: In this compilation, prank victims are greeted casually by the arrival of Jesus who proceeds to heal a lame man before rising into the air, compel fish to jump out of the lake, bring a cooked fish back to life, magically set a Playboy magazine on fire, and cause a water fountain to spout red wine.
- Jump Scare: They are fond of pulling these - having someone or something suddenly jump out at the victim or come alive, or dropping a fake venomous animal in front of them - and repeating the footage of their scream reaction several times (including one in slow motion).
- Kids Are Cruel: The "Mean Kids" compilation involves kids being bratty and generally out of control. In the first one, they get some comeuppance from a Cool Old Lady with a giant water gun.
- Killer Gorilla: Used to scare, or sometimes simply amuse, victims in numerous pranks, such as "Gorilla Attack", "Wild Gorilla Attack", "Trapped With Gorilla, Harambe the Gorilla Interrupts Photo Shoot, "Biking Gorilla Boys", "Painting Gorilla Prank" etc.
- Laugh Track: Used in the segments to highlight the reactions of victims to the bizarre situations they find themselves in.
- Look Behind You: In some gags, victims are accosted by (fake) police officers, and try to alert the officers to whatever weirdness is happening behind them, but the officers assume the victims are trying to invoke this trope and do not fall for it.
- Losing Your Head: In "Screaming Severed Head", victims witness a worker carrying a mannequin doll down the street when the head falls off. When the victims move to pick it up, they find it has been replaced by a living woman's head, screaming at them when they try to touch her! A similar tactic is used in "Screaming Head Prank", in which a man's head on a serving dish screams when victims lift the lid, and "Face Cake Prank", in which the screaming face is embedded in an iced cake.
- Mad Scientist: A variety of them in the "Wacky Mad Scientist Pranks" compilation, which involves a time machine, a jetpack, a Not Quite Dead alien and a Merging Machine.
- Magical Camera: Polaroid cameras loaded with pre-shot photos are often used to confuse victims, such as this one, where the camera makes the victim look like they have the Male Gaze.
- Manchild: Denis Levasseur portrays one in a police uniform in the compilation "Cops VS Kids".
- Man in a Bikini: With a surfboard at the beach, in "Bikini Man". One "Instant Accomplice" segment also surprised female victims by recruiting their boyfriends to wear a bra under their shirt.
- The Men in Black: There are plenty of them in the "Secret Agents Pranks" compilation, fitting the trope to a T, to the apprehension of the prank victims.
- Mistaken for Cheating: Staged a number of times between the actors with the victims as witness, but was once done to the victims themselves in "Caught Cheating with Sexy Girl".
- Mistaken for Gay: This is pulled on unsuspecting male drivers in "Just Married Gay Couple Prank".
- Mooning: Several examples in the compilation "Bare Butt Pranks". Another example is "Priest's Serious Wardrobe Malfunction".
- Mummies at the Dinner Table: In this gag, the corpse of an old man gets showered with lipstick kisses while victims' backs are turned.
- Mustache Vandalism: Men are secretly recruited to deface a poster of Denis Levasseur's face with a felt marker, to the horror of their girlfriends, in "Instant Accomplice - Graffiti Artist".
- My God, What Have I Done?: Deliberately invoked in the victims when something disastrous happened as a result of them looking away for an instant to give directions to that passer-by.
- Naughty Nun: A sample from "Naughty Nuns Gone Wild" involves nuns going crazy over a male stripper, showing leg during a photo shoot with male victims, kissing a priest on the lips, drinking excessively etc.
- Needle in a Stack of Needles: In the famous "Pink Blond Gag", a blond girl dressed in pink drops her wallet, but when prank victims pick it up and attempt to return it, she keeps impossibly disappearing and reappearing all around them, sometimes being in two places at once. Hilariously subverted as it turns out to be a pink-clad blond man who owns the wallet!
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Unfortunately, people often find themselves prank victims as a direct result of stepping in to help someone.
- Not What It Looks Like: Many of the gags live on this trope. Victims are set up to have to explain how they got into embarrassing or criminal-seeming situations.
- Overnight Age-Up: In "Sexy Lady Turns Into Old Woman", this happens behind a large cloth that prank victims are asked to hold up in front of her so that she can change her clothes.
- Painted Tunnel, Real Train: A kid and a mother end up walking through a portable version of one.
- Pants-Free: The "Pantless Fish Salesman".
- Pie in the Face: The focus of the few gags in this compilation.
- Pineapple Surprise: The "Instant Accomplice" prank "Bombs Away!" horrifies victims by secretly recruiting their friends or partners to pull the pin on a grenade while the soldier is wearing it.
- Pink Elephants: In "Pink Elephant Prank", the victim is stopped by a police officer, and every time the cop turns toward the victim, a literal pink elephant with polka dots crosses the open area behind her. The victim, with growing desperation, urges the cop to turn around and look, but by the time she does, the elephant is already out of view. Once the elephant is revealed to "actually" be a woman in a pink polka dot dress, the officer assumes the victim is drunk and hallucinating and makes them take a breathalyzer test.
- Playing Possum: A very common tactic for the pranksters, setting up a minor scare for victims when the supposedly dead body or inanimate body part suddenly comes alive.
- Power Perversion Potential: Played with in "Naked Girls on Security Camera". Female victims are led to believe that the security screen has just portrayed them naked.
- Prince Charming: Played for Laughs in "Sexy Prince Charming Prank"; women are given a vision of him in the psychic's crystal ball, and upon leaving, they encounter the prince for real, on horseback, ready to sweep them off their feet.
- Queer People Are Funny: Invoked numerous times, but particularly by Denis Levasseur's exaggerated antics as a stereotypical flamboyant gay man in the compilation "Best Gay Pranks".
- Real Men Wear Pink: "Big Biker, Tiny Pink Bike". The victims, whose bicycle is locked to a minuscule pink one on the rack, all ask the little girl playing nearby if that's hers, and she shakes her head. Then a tough-looking, bearded man comes out of the nearby building, unlocks his pink bicycle, and rides away as the victim watches in disbelief.
- Right Out of My Clothes: Done in "Naked Survey Prank with string-pulled tearaway clothes, while victims are looking away.
- Scooby-Dooby Doors: A prank involves reproducing this trope with two pairs of twin actors, one pair playing the police and one pair playing the thief. After a "theft", the target's attention is drawn to a hallway of doors as a chase between a cop and the thief ensues.
- Sea Monster: Several varieties are fabricated in the "Underwater Pranks" and "River Monster Pranks compilations to scare the victims.
- Secret Other Family: The basis of "Instant Accomplice - Who's Your Daddy?", in which some brave men are recruited to shock their girlfriends by pretending to have a son with another woman.
- Shameful Strip: A partial one in "Biker Humiliates Cop".
- Shirtless Scene: Provided by the compilation "Topless Pranks".
- Shout-Out: Many pranks are based on famous films; a collection of them is in "Movie Inspired Pranks.
- Sleazy Politician: A few portrayed in the compilation "Best Politician Gags".
- Slip into Something More Comfortable: Hilariously subverted and inverted in "Sexy Bikini Nun". A bikini-clad young woman asks victims to hold a cloth in front of her while she changes, hangs the two parts of the bikini on top of the cloth, and then emerges dressed as a nun.
- Sticky Fingers: Girlfriends of alarmed male victims are recruited to shoplift or steal items off of a restaurant table in two of the "Instant Accomplice" gags.
- Straight Gay: The army boys involved in the "Gay Army Prank", although they become slightly more camp toward the end of the segment.
- The Tease: Men are the victims of this in "Sexy Seducing Cashier".
- Teen Pregnancy: Exaggerated as a child pregnancy, in "Pregnant Little Girl".
- Tickle Torture: During their "Tickle Torture Therapy" compilation, three women and one man have their soles subjected to this, under the impression that they'll be receiving a nice, relaxing foot massage. When their "masseuse" begins to break out feathers, a rotary brush and a toothbrush to assault their toes, they begin to pick up on the act.
- Time Stands Still: "Time Freeze".
- Time Travel Episode: "Time Machine Prank" is one.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour: "Little Boy Flashes All the Girls", "Rude Kid Womanizer" and others show young children exhibiting disturbing behaviour that children should not have been exposed to yet.
- Twin Switch: Plenty of them in "Funny Twin Pranks".
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Quite often, this is the role taken by the actors who distract the victim by asking for directions or help so that something disastrous can happen to the person, animal or property that was left in their charge while they are looking away for one moment.
- Visible Invisibility: Invoked in "Disappearing Victim Prank": a magician brings victims onto the stage in front of an audience of pranksters, who all pretend not to be able to see the victims.
- Wardrobe Malfunction: Pranksters allow articles of their clothing to become detached, to the victims' surprise, in such gags as "A Bride Loses the Back of Her Dress", "Lost Skirt Prank", "Priest's Serious Wardrobe Malfunction" and "Major Sexy Wardrobe Malfunction". Sometimes, as in "Fancy Underwear Priest", "Police Officer Loses His Uniform", "Girl Loses Top Prank", "Sexy Lady Loses Dress in Public", "Sexiest Wheel of Fortune Ever", victims are tricked into thinking they have caused the clothing loss.
- What the Hell, Hero?: The reaction of prank victims to their significant others or friends who have been secretly recruited by Just for Laughs to do something batshit crazy and/or immoral in the "Instant Accomplice" gags, such as those in these two compilations.
- "Which Restroom?" Dilemma: In "Wrong Side", men are bamboozled as whichever bathroom they enter suddenly becomes the female bathroom.
- Yandere: The "Crazy Girlfriends" compilation has several wives/girlfriends who go over the top with jealousy (including one elderly Black Widow). The "Instant Accomplice" pranks "Jealous Girlfriend Eliminates Sexy Competition" and "Angry Girlfriends Slash Sexy Cop's Tires" involve secretly recruiting women to lash out at their "competition" (a female prankster), to the consternation of their boyfriends.
- You Can See That, Right?: In some cases, victims who see weird things happening ask this of the pranksters, who most often can not.
- You Wake Up in a Room: One tactic used a number of times is to lure victims onto a relaxation table with a blindfold and earphones and quietly change the surroundings into something completely different, so that when they open their eyes they find themselves as the centerpiece of a buffet or a presumed-dead body at a funeral service, or simply abandoned in the middle of a busy mall. In one case, victims being given a complimentary fortune-telling are asked to close their eyes to meditate - only to be awoken by a security guard to the fact that they are now sitting on a toilet, next to rolls of toilet paper, in the middle of the mall.
- You're Drinking Breast Milk: Done in "Breast Milk Coffee".
