Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei. Approximately less than half a minute from the beginning, somebody is hanging from a tree by the neck. Hilarity Ensues.
The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, both due to the bizarreness of the setting; the main characters ship corpses around for a living in return for being allowed to loot the corpse's material possessions (and the occasional karmic payoff) by the souls of the deceased, but also from the way they deal with said job.
Welcome to the NHK certainly was advertised as this and generally works well like this, although it works better as a comedy to some than to others.
Detroit Metal City at its best/worst.
Being There (and its source novella) starts with the death of an old businessman and the expulsion of his mentally challenged gardener into an outside world he's never seen beyond its presentation on TV. The story that ensues has him rise to considerable power solely because most of the people he encounters don't realize he's an idiot and interpret his comments about gardening as metaphors. And there's more death to come as he becomes the confidante of a dying billionaire... Distressing on the surface, extremely funny and touching in its execution.
Terry Gilliam's Brazil lives this trope, unless you're watching the "Love Conquers All" edit
Burke and Hare, a comedy that is very loosely based on the real-life murderers.
Dr. Strangelove (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb). Also a touch of Gallows Humor on the director's part, since it was made at a time when nuclear war was a very real possibility. The filmmakers originally started to it a serious film about an accidental nuclear war, but they didn't want to make it seem like they were copying Failsafe and decided to change it to a comedy. Notably, they didn't tell Slim Pickins, so his performance was completely straight.
Fight Club is completely built on this, to the point that a lot of people don't even realize it's intended as a comedy. Most notable is the line "I haven't been fucked like that since grade school" (the film version of the below book line).
Four Lions, a comedy involving Jihadist suicide bombers.
Bobcat Goldthwait's God Bless America is built on this trope "up to eleven" to the point it "crosses the line back and forth". It's worth noting that it's "played for laughs"
Paddy Chayevski's 1970 film The Hospital has doctors dying from unusual causes, while at the same time the Chief of Surgery (George C. Scott) is so despondent over the meaninglessness of life, as well as being impotent, he's trying to kill himself, until he rapes the daughter of a patient at which point he realizes he does have a reason to live!
In Bruges In a film about two hitmen on the run after one of them botched a hit by shooting an innocent child, who spends his time drinking and contemplating suicide the only humour you'd expect to find is the black kind.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Man Bites Dog. How black? Like goth panthers in a coal mine.
Network presents Howard Beale's descent into insanity and assassination at the order of his boss as a long joke with a killer punchline.
- Shallow Grave, the breakout film for a young Ewan McGregor, is a British black comedy about three roommates who put out a classified ad for a fourth person to fill in an empty spot in their flat. They heckle most of the applicants, until finding someone they all agree would make a fine roommate. Or so they think... Turns out he's a drug runner for the mafia and, shortly after he moves in, the three find him dead in his room of a drug overdose, with a large briefcase full of money lying next to him. They make the decision to not report the crime, dismember the body, and keep the money for themselves. Hilarity (and psychopathy) ensue.
- This is far Older Than They Think in film — some of the very earliest silent comedies feature prop babies getting trampled, thrown out windows and hit by trains (carried over from vaudeville, where everybody got hurt).
Catch-22 is one of the best examples, and the Trope Namer from a review of it that coined the term.
Candide, by Voltaire.
In John Gardner's book Grendel, the title character's philosophical musings as he tears Danes to shreds just for the lulz are about as black as black comedy gets.
Tik-Tok by John Sladek (not the one from the Land of Oz).
Any of Derek Robinson's novels. The war novels are more black than comedy, but the spy novels are more comedy than black (but still pretty black).
Everything Bret Easton Ellis writes falls under this trope.
Ephraim Kishon has died and sometimes even gone to hell at the end of several of his short stories. It didn't exactly last.
A Modest Proposal.
There's a book called The Bunny Suicides and a sequal Return of the Bunny Suicides. It's exactly what it seems, usually having Shout Out to other things (Terminator, Aliens, etc.). And good lord is it hilarious.
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are filled with grim jokes about injury and death. For example, this passage from the first chapter of the first book:
- "Well!" thought Alice to herself. "After such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down-stairs! How brave they'll all think me at home! Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house!" (Which was very likely true.)
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