As depicted here. Does this “style” of bomb have any basis in reality? Where did it come from?
It was originally called a “grenade” and as such was used by “grenadiers” in the XVIII[sup]th[/sup] century and after.
It’s a big iron ball filled with gunpowder. When it explodes, you get shrapnel.
IIRC, they used bombs like this in mortars about 200 years ago. You light the fuse, drop the bomb into your mortar, shoot it, and it explodes when it gets where it;'s going. It’s a very different kind of damage than you get from the simple kinetic energy of a rapidly-moving cannonball. C.S. Forester describes such bombs in a couple of his Horatio Hornblower novels, in particular in Commodore Hornblower.
They came in various sizes, many of them too large to be carried by a cloaked spy with a handlebar moustasche. I don’t know if these were ever used as hand-carried devices. I rather doubt it.
But those early grenades didnt’t have fuses, did they? At lest the ones in those pictures don’t seem to.
Those early 20th century grenades did have fuses, but the fuse (called a powder train) was lit mechanically, by pulling the safety pin, rather than lighting the fuse by hand. Visual explanation.
The canonical cartoon version is considerably bigger than a grenade, and often has the word BOMB on it in large white letters.
It also possesses the strange property of being able to be pulled from a bag or coat pocket with the fuse already lit.
There were grenades that looked like that in the 18th century. This page shows some pictures of a replica. This one shows real ones but without the fuse, but there are holes where the fuse would go
I want to know why bombs are being singled out. Lotsa stuff depicted in cartoons takes on shapes more in line with icons. Trees don’t look like trees, hands don’t look like hands and shoes don’t look like shoes.
Cannonballs were round, early grenades were round and had fuses sticking out the top, with the little ‘nub’ where the fuse enters being consistent with cartoons.
At one time, the movie version of the spherical grenade was virtually identical to the real thing. In 1919, Hollywood actor Harold Lloyd was posing for publicity photos. One was to feature Lloyd as a devil-may-care lighting his cigarette from the lit fuse of a spherical grenade-type bomb, using a replica. But a real bomb, one of several acquired for an explosion scene in a movie, got mixed in with the others in the prop box. The lit fuse caused too much smoke for a photo, and as Lloyd put the grenade down to get another, it exploded, sending shrapnel into his face, and severing the thumb and forefinger from his right hand. More here.
It’s called a petard. If you make the fuse too short, it explodes too soon, and you are hoisted by your own petard.
http://www.roennebech.dk/www_fredericiashistorie/html/fredericia/lex/billeder/Petard.gif
Because we’re familiar with the real-life antecedents of cartoon trees, hands, and shoes. The real-life antecedent of a cartoon bomb is no longer part of our popular culture.
That guy was a comedy genius.
Petards weren’t generally spherical like grenades, though. They served a different purpose - shaped charges to blow doors in.
The US Army Ordnance Corps’ branch isignia is such a device:
Bless you, you are among the few in the entire Universe who knows what petard is and what the phrase actually means. Most people think it is some kind of a lance or hook or something.
Cecil did this one: What’s a petard, as in " hoist by his own …"?
So… the thing was basically called a “farter”? 
Uhm. That’s what I thought it was.
See also Hornblower and the Hotspur.
See the diagram I linked to. It’s round on one side, and flat on the other. And it’s got the burning fuse. Seen from the right angle, it looks exactly like the classic cartoon bomb.