Comedic Conflict Improv List

What’s funnier than a fight? Presented for your amusement is an exhaustive list of the very many subjects appropriate for a comedic dispute within an off-the-cuff bit of improv. The definitive comedic conflict improv list. 

I’ll be adding improv challenges and little tips/thoughts in between lists.

The Comedic Conflict Improv List - What it looks like if you print it out.

Let’s not waste any time, but jump right into a list of 10 absurdities ripe for squabbling over in an improv scene. 

BASIC COMEDIC CONFLICT IMPROV LIST

1. A magician and audience member disagree over whether "pick a card" can be interpreted to include library cards, credit cards and the like, not just playing cards. 

2. A job interviewee arrives dressed in full snorkel gear, insisting it's "professional attire for diving into the corporate pool."

3. A new museum employee refuses to use chairs, sitting always on an inflatable dinosaur while in the office.

4. A mailman tries to mail letters using his invention, a repurposed toaster that fires letters in a fashion similar to a rocket launcher.

5. A DMV clerk demands an applicant solve a Rubik's Cube to prove their "commitment to organization."

6. A high status corporate exec tries to "like" real photographs by physically stamping a heart-shaped potato onto them.

7. A barista never gives you your coffee while creating elaborate coffee art (full Renaissance paintings in latte foam).

8. A waitress insists that a diner ordering breakfast refer to cereal as “Morning Soup”.

9. Trick or Treat scene at a neighbors house where the spooky decorations have crossed the line out of fantasy and are actually dangerous themselves.

10. A job candidate thinks they're auditioning for a cooking show and prepares Beef Wellington during a corporate board meeting.

IMPROV CHALLENGE: Read through the conflicts above and for each one pretend you are in an improv scene and your scene partner is insisting that the absurd element is true. How would you dispute that? How can you focus on the absurdity and what threatens to distract you from it? Consider the Start-Your-Improv-Scene-Boring advice and what application it may have here.

Sometimes conflict is invited into a scene when an absurd idea is introduced. Other times it starts when one character takes an absurd action. Here are 10 examples of scenes ready for comedic conflict after an absurd action has been taken.

ACTION ORIENTED COMEDIC CONFLICT IMPROV LIST

1. During a staff pizza party, one co-worker takes an entire pizza meant for everyone else and hides it in their desk drawer.

2. A math professor writes a bizarre, melodramatic love note on the chalkboard and signs it with a fellow professor’s name instead of their own.

3. A roommate builds a literal cardboard “fortress” around the fridge, complete with homemade “booby traps.”

4. Around Halloween an office worker insists she is Amelia Earhart, is dressed as Amelia, talks like Amelia, etc.

5. A neighbor fills another neighbor’s mailbox with confetti. 

6. While at a museum, a visitor decides famous paintings look “better” with some personal flair and attempts to add doodles.

7. A friend aggressively offers free haircuts during a casual hangout, insisting “you’ll love the result.”

8. An emergency room doctor decides to throw a surprise foam party in the ER hallway—complete with bubble machines.

9. Blind date who picks you up with a menagerie of baby goats, rabbits, and ducks in the trunk of their van, claiming they’re starting a “mobile petting zoo.”

10. Two friends at a buffet, one misunderstands “All-You-Can-Eat” as a personal challenge, piling multiple plates until they form a precarious tower and refusing to slow down or take it easy.

IMPROV CHALLENGE: Go through the above conflicts asking yourself how you would respond in each of the above scenes. How is responding in conflict to an absurd action different than responding in conflict to an absurd idea? If the absurd action in the scene would negatively affect your character, is it more fun for the action to be stopped or for it to happen?

Not every conflict is funny and sometimes we can mistakenly fight over the non comedic elements of a scene instead of the comedic ones. Here are ten ideas for scenes that have both comedic and non comedic disputes baked into them. See if you can’t avoid disputes over those non comedic elements.

NON COMEDIC / COMEDIC IMPROV LIST

• A dentist wants to know if you want just a regular rinse or to pay extra for a flavored rinse, but the flavor he offers is salted gefilte fish rinse. 

• A mid level manager informs you that you are fired from your job professionally, but also that you are invited to join his amateur barbershop quartet.

• Your partner is breaking up with you and wants to make sure that the bagels are being split evenly.

• A firefighter barks instructions in a burning house that help the fire grow larger.

• Your doctor has terrible news for you, but won’t tell you what it is until you friend him on Facebook.

• Your roommate can’t pay rent again because they blew their weekly paycheck on hotdogs for their hotdog collection.

• A history professor tells their pupil that they are failing, but only communicates this through the game charades,

• A banker is closing your checking account against your will in order to “keep things spicy”.

• A police officer pulls you over for speeding, and while he’s got you there he’d like to tell you a bit about the history of sandwiches.

• A mugger demands your wallet and that you take a selfie with him.

IMPROV CHALLENGE: Read through the above suggestions, each of which contains one item to fight about that is funny and a second element to fight about that isn’t funny. How can you lean into conflict with one while leaning away from conflict with the other? Are there ways to use a non comedic conflict to heighten the absurdity of a comedic conflict?

You can see with the above suggestions that there are big differences between things in a scene that could create a comedic conflict vs things that could create a non comedic or everyday conflict. Typically the opportunities to have a comedic conflict contain a central absurdity, like a police officer really wanting to teach you about sandwiches, while non comedic conflicts may be negative but are more “Oh No” than they are “Ha Ha”, like the speeding ticket.

It can be very easy to confuse conflict for comedy, when so many of our favorite comedy bits involve conflict. Abbott and Costello are in conflict throughout Who’s On First, the substitute in Key & Peele’s popular substitute sketch is in conflict with the class, John Cleese is in, perhaps, the ultimate state of conflict in The Dead Parrot Sketch.

But consider the sandwich teaching police officer. If you were in a scene with that character, let's consider how you might respond.

POLICE OFFICER

I pulled you over because you were going 15 miles over the speed limit.

This is an opportunity for conflict, it would be easy to say you hadn’t been speeding or that there was a very good reason for you to be speeding. But getting a speeding ticket isn’t all that funny, so getting into a conflict over it would only slow down the part of the scene about this unfunny matter, Better to Yes And this element.

YOU

Yeah I was going too fast. Sorry about that.

You play nice, choosing not to fight over the ticket. By playing this way you avoid an unnecessary energy suck in your scene, what would have been a meaningless, boring dispute about a speeding ticket. 

POLICE OFFICER

Well, I’m going to have to write you up a ticket. While I’m doing that, how about I run you through the four main ways a sandwich is put together?

Bingo! A big opportunity for comedic conflict now exists. There is no reason for a police officer to teach you about the 4 main types of sandwich construction. It is clearly comedic and if you push against this idea the scene will slow down, only this time it will slow down over a comedic portion of your scene.

YOU

I’m not sure I heard you right, but if you’re offering to teach me about sandwiches, I’m going to say, no. I’m good. I pass.

By saying No you break the cardinal Yes And rule in improv and the scene is now descending into conflict. But it is okay! Because you chose a funny part to have the conflict over. Now this delay will spotlight the funny idea and the scene will be funnier for it.

In this way you get to apply your sense of humor to your scene. You can slow down parts of your scene you think are funny by introducing conflict, problems or questions. Or you can speed through the parts of your scene you think are boring by adopting a generally agreeable demeanor.

And you could disagree with me on what counts as comedic! Maybe you think a traffic ticket dispute is the funniest thing you have ever heard of (and maybe with the right performers in front of the right audience it really would be). Well then, you can dig into that part of the scene by suddenly applying a negative perspective to whatever direction the scene seems headed in. By introducing comedic conflict. 

But what does it look like when non comedic conflict slows a scene down? Consider the DMV clerk who demands an applicant solve a Rubik's Cube to prove their "commitment to organization." What if you were in that scene and said No to the wrong thing?

DMV CLERK

Well, everything seems to be in order. I can issue you a new driver’s license once you complete our Commitment To Organization Challenge: A Rubik’s Cube.

Okay so certainly whoever is playing the DMV Clerk is swinging hard and they seem to be behaving in a way I would associate with an unusual point of view. This tees the other player up to voice of reason the scene.

YOU

You can’t withhold my license if all of my paperwork is in order.

Here you react negatively, in opposition to the unusual point of view. That’s to be expected of a voice of reason, but you focus on whether you’ll get a license, not on your scene partner’s demand that playing a Rubik’s Cube demonstrates a commitment to organization. That’s the absurd part and this reaction focuses the scene just to the side of it.

DMV CLERK

I can and I will. It is my job to withhold licenses as a DMV Clerk.

Now we’re in a conflict about whether a DMV employee can withhold a license. Doesn’t sound like an SNL sketch, does it? If the reaction had focused on the Rubik’s Cube we would be focused on that absurdity instead, perhaps learning more about the thinking underneath it. That’s where we want to be when entering into a conflict in an improv scene. Focused on the funny part.

Here’s a twist:

COMEDIC CONFLICT LIST FOR SCENES SET IN THE OLD WEST

1. Two cowpokes play poker in a dusty saloon. Although one is winning and has plenty of money, he keeps trying to strip off some of his clothes with each hand.

2. A duel between the fastest gun in the west vs the dandiest bootspur in the west.

3. A cowpoke is making coffee over the campfire when his traveling buddy starts in on the impact caffeine has on your cholesterol.

4. A sensitive rancher pitches the idea of just signing your cattle with a pen instead of the whole branding thing.

5. A deputy is hanging up “Interested in” posters instead of “Wanted” posters, because “wanted” posters felt so needy.

6. A blacksmith suggests horse sandals instead of horse shoes.

7. Two outlaws are in the stocks, one keeps insisting he can get a horse to open the stocks and release them if one would just get close enough for him to whisper.

8. Two cowpokes are preparing to break in a new wild horse, one of them really wants to use his “highly attuned fashion sense” on the horse.

9. A farmer at a farmer’s market can’t get any sales because he keeps trying to get customers to enter into complicated investment strategies in order to get them to pay for their produce. 

10. A farmhand is always asking his fellow farmhand for feedback and to check his work, even if it is only that he just swept a little bit of the floor.

With these we have a new breed of interesting things not to react to, these are the interesting details inherent to stories set in the Old West as opposed to modern day Dallas or San Antonio. Yes, you and your scene partner may very well be riding your horses to a watering hole, but is it worth getting into a dispute over? Isn’t that fun detail just humdrum for the reality your characters are in?

IMPROV CHALLENGE: Read through the above suggestions, many contain one item to fight about that is funny and a second element to fight about that isn’t funny but may still be a fun detail of the elevated reality the scene is occurring in. How can you tell these apart and how can you handle this conflict so that it is funny and not just an irritating exchange between two actors fighting to seem “right”? Are there ways to include fun elements of the motif while still staying focused on a central absurdity?

Or how about:

COMEDIC CONFLICT LIST FOR SCENES SET IN A DAYTIME SOAP OPERA

1. Ralph Mountenaille is confronted by an evil twin of his fiancee’s dead father while trying to prepare backstage for a body building competition.

2. At a ritzy family dinner the meatloaf is delicious, but the family chef keeps asking guests to be honest and to share their honest feedback.

3. Chaz Rimno has taken Rebecca Dilal for dinner at a nice restaurant where he intends to confront her about her infidelity, but Rebecca only wants to sneak pickles on other people’s plates and calls herself a street pickle artist.

4. A father and son take a selfie in a public park. The father keeps being upset with the son’s pose and asks him to please “give-me-something-to-work-with” when setting up the shot.

5. A priest takes a confession and the confessor keeps confessing that they don’t like other people’s clothes which the priest keeps needing to explain is not a sin.

6. Bill Landings has had a heart attack and is in the ER consulting with heart specialist Cathy von Sturman, who thinks he may not have much time left and is therefore suggesting a wide array of elective surgeries.

7. Becky Anderson and Laura Timony Hylath prepare for a picnic packing lunch in the kitchen. Becky likes to put each food item in her mouth so she knows she could have eaten it.

8. Chief of Police Tim Castors has his man in the interrogation room. But he wants to talk about hair care more than he wants to talk about the crime.

9. A jilted lover show’s up at Jillian St Dooley’s apartment door late at night, threatening to begin eating a diet likely to cause early onset diabetes, if she doesn’t take him back.

10. A grandmother shares family photos with her granddaughter. The photos, taken by the great matriarch, focus strangely on a set of chimney tools, which appear in almost every  photo.

IMPROV CHALLENGE: Same as the one set in the Old West. What elements of the above scenarios would be ripe for a comedic conflict and which would be tiresome conflicts?