Visual gag

[4] Noel Carroll established the most influential taxonomy of sight gags, breaking down the varieties into six types, two of which are enumerated below.

[5] There are numerous examples in cinema history of directors who based most of the humor in their films on visual gags, even to the point of using no or minimal dialogue.

[7] Comedians including Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and the Marx Brothers[7] often used visual humour because the technology used to record voices in film (and play it back in a synchronized presentation) did not yet exist.

Often the differences between people are part of the comic duos, especially thin and fat actors are used such as Abbott and Costello and Laurel and Hardy.

[8] The New York Times cites the fourth Gilligan's Island episode, "Goodnight, Sweet Skipper", as a classic American sight gag.

After Skipper was unsuccessful, Gilligan got it to work by pounding on the radio; he used it to briefly contact a pilot flying overhead.