Butt-Monkey

Rinse and repeat ad nauseam.

"You know what? I'm sick of this crap. I'm sick of being the guy who eats insects and gets the funny syphilis. As of this moment, it's over. I'm finished being everybody's butt-monkey!"

— Xander Harris, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The character who is always the butt of the demeaning joke or the "put them through hell" plotline. For whatever reason, the Butt-Monkey seems to walk through life with a permanent "Kick Me" sign attached to their backs, invisible to them, but all too visible to the rest of the world. Nothing ever goes right for this character, and if something bad is going to happen to someone, chances are it's going to happen to them. Long story short, it sucks to be a Butt-Monkey.

Simply having a character go through hell once or twice (no matter how severely) is not enough to be the Butt-Monkey. With primary and secondary characters, it must be a regular occurrence. With tertiary characters, it must be their sole purpose to exist. It's not necessarily karma - they don't have to deserve what they go through, but they're an easy target. Sometimes, it's all the writers can think of to do with the character.

The direct opposite of a Karma Houdini (although technically the definition applies to those who escape from karma regardless of whether it's good or bad). If carried too far, may result in Deus Angst Machina. This can be counteracted if you occasionally Throw the Dog a Bone, though many writers just can't resist Yanking The Dog's Chain. The Butt-Monkey is occasionally dangerous if they're pushed too far.

If the audience sympathizes with them, they become a Woobie. Furthermore, if the audience begins to resent the "unfair" treatment of the character, they can become the Designated Monkey. The joke can also be dragged too far in other ways — to make a character a Butt-Monkey of fate is one thing; to have them constantly taking the punishment for the misdeeds of an unsympathetic cast is another. However, if the audience relishes the character's misfortune and looks forward to seeing them suffer, congratulations; your Butt-Monkey has devolved into The Chew Toy.

While the trope is often played for laughs and we are encouraged to find the misery at least somewhat amusing, some portrayals go for a much darker presentation, deconstructing the idea and showing what an emotional and psychological wreck such a person may very well be in Real Life.

More commonly male, but female examples are not unheard of. If every conceivable misfortune happens to the Butt-Monkey, regardless of its logic or lack thereof, you've got yourself a Cosmic Plaything.

If someone is Giving the Sword to a Noob, nine times out of ten this person is the noob. When a plan needs to be executed and others won't touch it, chances are they'll get the dirty job. If a plan requires someone to be The Bait, if the other members of the team don't volunteer, they'll usually get volunteered to do it. However, if someone in the cast other than The Hero is going to Take a Level in Badass, it's almost invariably the Butt-Monkey who does it. If the Butt-Monkey is fat, they may or may not be a Fat Comic Relief, which often are Butt-Monkeys. May be the subject of Speaking Up for Another.

See also: Bumbling Sidekick, The Un-Favourite, Guilt by Association Gag, Humiliation Conga, Misplaced Retribution, Iron Butt Monkey. Is nearly always on the receiving end of Comedic Sociopathy. When a character isn't a Butt-Monkey in the work itself, but gets treated as one in Fanon, that's Memetic Loser. If the Butt-Monkey is an Only Sane Man, they're the No-Respect Guy; and if the Monkey is a Nice Guy, it's Kafka Komedy. If the Butt-Monkey's suffering is a result of their bad deeds coming back to bite them, then they're a Karmic Butt-Monkey, which is also a Sub-Trope. See Bare-Bottomed Monkey for actual moments about monkey butts.

Do note that the Butt-Monkey is often not meant to be hated by the audience. For characters completely intended to be dislikable, see Hate Sink.

In Real Life, every single one of us runs into bad luck now and then. Even if some of us may have it worse or better than others, said examples are not possible.

noreallife

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Examples with subpages:

• Anime & Manga
• Comic Books
• Fan Works
• Film – Animated
• Film – Live-Action
• Literature
• Live-Action TV
• Music
• Professional Wrestling
• Tabletop Games
• Video Games
• Web Animation
• Webcomics
• Web Original
• Western Animation

Other examples:

Advertising

• Chester Cheetah was this in the late 80s and early 90s, taking all sorts of abuse in his fruitless attempts to get his hands on some Cheetos. This aspect was dropped later, then the David Feiss-directed commercials from the early 2000s had another character named Chutty who went through similar torments at Chester's hands.
• Claude the Cat's owner is very accident-prone, passing out from gas, falling off his ladder, etc.
• The mascot for the dating app Hinge, Hingie, always gets torn apart while Hinge users go out on dates, and is eventually killed when the app is deleted. Justified as the point of the ads is Hinge works so well at matchmaking you can delete the app soon after.
• The Honda workers in recent Honda commercials had become this. The standard scenario they wind up in they mention a great deal for some car. say that their job is to be helpful, customers ask for something and then a cut to them doing something ether painful, humiliating or both.
• The basic overall premise of the Messin' with Sasquatch commercials
• A series of commercials for Mario Party 6 turn Bowser into one as he's the butt of a series of classic slumber party pranks.
• Nipper & Gramophone's Christmas Tales: Things often tend to go wrong for Gramophone.
  From the website: But because gramophones (even excitable ones) aren’t the most agile of contraptions, his antics often end in disaster. He’s invariably disappointed when they do, but he needn’t worry. It’s his hapless high jinks that makes Nipper such a fan in the first place. [sic]
• Progressive Insurance's Flo and Box have been such on rare occasions, yet Jaime winds up with more misfortune than either. At other times, Jaime ends up sounding obnoxious.
• The commercials based on The Simpsons turn Homer Simpson into this.
• The Trix Rabbit. "Trix are for kids!"
• Wonderful Pistachios ran a series of ads known as the "Snackface" ads: Some oblivious Stepford Smiler would snack on pistachios while an NFL star would stand beside them, filling the audience in on how horrible their life is. But they feel like a winner, because of the pistachios.
  Richard Sherman: Kate has had a rough life. The first time she sat on Santa's lap, he cried. It was her fault her parents got divorced. Today, she found an actual frog in her throat.
• In an advertisement for Cell C, a woman finds herself hitting her head on a cupboard door, slipping on wet floor, getting electrocuted by a toaster, her hand catching on fire by the stove and she jumps through a glass window to land in the pool. But it doesn't end there as after getting out of the pool all drenched, a bird drops a poo right on her eye and a helicopter floats above her, sending huge gusts of air as she lies on the floor. All of these happen to her in rapid succession.

Audio Plays

• Bert and I...: Harry Whitfield, a recurring character who goes through several horrible stories, typically while traveling to (or returning from) visiting his niece Winona, who lives in Oyster Bay on Long Island.

Comedy

• Israeli comedian Adir Miller once said that he finds humbling experiences funny. He gave an example of a man who stopped at a red light next to him and gestured at him to lower his window; when Miller complied, expecting a friendly compliment, the man said, "You’ve never made me laugh!"

Manhwa

• Han-Kyul from Need a Girl!, the guy is nice at heart, is seen as handsome by his classmates, then he became acquainted with a group of perverts, he himself did not change, but his reputation in the other hand. Now Han-Kyul is the Butt of all Punishments for his friends actions: peeping on girls and harassing them, even when he had nothing to do with with, or was outright trying to prevent it; there are some who even credits him as being the group's leader and greatest pervert, the guy's reputation went downhill from that point on.

Mythology & Religion

• Humanity itself in Greek traditions. Almost every god or goddess had at least one story in which they got bored and wanted to randomly screw with a mortal or groups of mortals. And then there's that hideous mess with Pandora and the plagues ruining all our lives collectively.
• The Bible:
  • The patriarch Isaac is depicted exactly twice: getting led into the wilderness, tied up, and nearly sacrificed by his father Abraham; and getting duped into giving away his birthright by his wife and younger son Jacob. That's it. That's how posterity knows you.
  • While he made good in the end, Jacob's son Joseph waded through a lot of crap to get there. His older brothers planned to kill him for mouthing off so they tossed him in a pit, then changed their minds and sold him into slavery in Egypt. Things were okay for a while after that until Potiphar's wife started hitting on him. When he refused to sleep with her, she accused him of attempted rape and off he went to prison. He was stuck there for years until one of Pharaoh's staff remembered he was good at interpreting dreams. And he was played by an Osmond in the musical.
  • Job in the Book of Job. Getting everything taken from him by Satan — with God's consent — made him the ultimate Played for Drama Butt-Monkey and Cosmic Plaything. It all worked out in the end, though — for his faith, he got twice of everything back (with the sole exception of offspring; his original children remained dead, and he fathered only the same number of children afterwards).
  • Jesus. He was born in a stable, after all. Then he was betrayed by his close friend, and abandoned by his other friends. And then he endured beatings, spitting, scourging, a crown of thorns, and being nailed to a cross to be executed as a criminal. And he was completely innocent.

Pinball

• Jar-Jar Binks in Star Wars Episode I (as in many other works). Most notable in the "Jar Jar Juggling" mode, where the player is rewarded for tripping the Gungam while he's trying to juggle various objects.
• Bigfoot in White Water. Particularly during the "Bigfoot Hotfoot" mode, where you can distract him and get into his cave for rewards.
• The Pinball itself in every pinball game ever. You smack the poor thing around. What if your whole existence was to be smacked around painfully for a higher being's entertainment?!
  • You mean it's not!?
• In Humpty Dumpty, the titular character is mistreated by all of the other characters to fall off a wall for their amusement.

Podcasts

• Caiden from Sequinox gets the short end of the stick all over the place, either being mistreated by his classmates, disregarded as a loser by Hannah, getting his stuff wrecked or destroyed, or being mocked by his little sister. This also carries over to him as Vivaldi, because the Sequinox girls rarely take his advice and will go off on minutes-long tangents whenever he tries to help them.
• Constable Wiggs from On the Threshold is repeatedly confounded and publicly embarrassed over the course of less than a week. Adaman evades his arrest in front of a crowd, and later wrestles him into unconsciousness in front of the town's children. He's later tricked by Alexandra into letting the Traveler family go with legal nonsense, has his prisoner jail broken and money from his personal vault stolen, and finally is brutally burned to death after he attempts to arrest Adaman.
• Jason of Podcast: The Ride is constantly teased by his friends/co-hosts for everything from his short stature to his love of sweets, which usually serve to make him seem like even more of a child in a man's body than his other hosts. Co-host Mike has stated multiple times that he has "never forgotten a single thing about Jason" that could be used for the purpose of mocking him, though Jason is usually fully in on the joke.
• Steve Carlsberg from Welcome to Night Vale is constantly berated by radio host Cecil Palmer for petty or nonexistent reasons.
• Keith Vigna from Pretending to Be People tends to bungle even basic tasks, due partially to his Lack of Empathy, partially due to his general ineptitude, and partially due to his extremely poor luck. The roles each of the three play are up for grabs.
• Mission to Zyxx: As the frail and incompetent Token Human, Pleck is the target of abuse from his nonhuman coworkers, weird alien guest stars, and planetary environmental hazards.
• Most recurring guests on Ethan Van Sciver's YouTube show (and ComicsGate in general) are this. It's effectively stipulated that everyone on the show can take a joke, however.
  • Ethan himself is frequently mocked by his own audience for his physical appearance, particularly his impending baldness, his weight, and his "addiction" to pies. Fans often pay good money to send him derisive super-chats mentioning those things (which he is guaranteed to read out-loud during the show).
  • Doug TenNapel deliberately turned himself into a Heel by antagonizing various other ComicsGate artists and competing with them over money totals raised for their respective projects. After revealing on a livestream that he avoids washing his hands in public places, Ethan, the other guests and the audience have started shaming him for having filthy hands and calling him "Dirtworm Doug".
  • The audience often calls for Nasser Rabadi to be kicked off the livestreams, and jokes at his expense are common. He is also pitied as a hopeless virgin by Ethan and the others. On several occasions, Ethan has asked female guests to give Nasser dating advice while he's present.
  • Cecil is mocked for his alcohol abuse and bizarre living conditions (living in his sister's family's basement). It is yet unclear whether either of those things are part of his real life or his on-line persona (most likely both).
  • Mike S. Miller revealed on the show that his wife (a model and dancer) is often on the road participating in dancing competitions, where she dances with various male partners. From that point on he has become the frequent target of particularly mean cuckoldry jokes, to the point where one audience member permanently renamed his YouTube account to "My Wife Is Dancing With Another Man".
  • Shane Davis is knee deep in this trope. After he told the others that he had never finished watching Schindler's List, Cecil started a Running Gag where Shane is an anti-Semite. That gag has been running for more than a year, with no sign of stopping. As time went on, more and more Running Gags about Shane have been created, including that all of his stories are depressing and humiliating; that his wife (artist Yanzi Lin) controls their marriage with an iron fist; that his name is an anagram of "Shaved Anis"; that he has the facial expressions of a young child; that he lives in regret after failing to get in bed with porn star Riley Reid (whom he met at a convention); and that he clumsily destroys all of his expensive toys (after having dropped a $500 Soundwave statue). When Yanzi became pregnant, the Running Gag was that Shane is the one who's pregnant with the child. Though he reacts negatively to these jokes, Shane actively plays into them once in a while.
  • "That Star Wars Girl" Anna turns herself into this simply by constantly revealing multiple bizarre facts about herself and her life. She is often referred to as "Lesbianna" (despite having a long-time boyfriend and protesting that she has no interest in women), mocked for her short stature and many genetic deficiencies, and ridiculed for her obsessions for Star Wars, Star Trek, and Henry Cavill. Most importantly, her boyfriend Peaches is permanently Shipped with Cecil by the entire audience.

Print Media

• Charlie Brown in Peanuts is known for being very unlucky, especially since Lucy always pranks him into landing hard on his back by offering him kicks of a football or being pursued by lovesick Patty.
• The original The Addams Family comic strips often depicted Wednesday as one - her frequent unhappy expressions, Pugsley's attempts to outright kill her, and Charles Addams himself describing her as "underprivileged" and "pretty lost" are evidence enough.
• Odie in Garfield is the titular cat's favorite punching bag, with Jim Davis stating that it's very hard to write about Odie besides getting kicked by Garfield off the table because Odie never says anything and isn't as anthropomorphized as the other animals. He stays cheerful, though, and does get back at Garfield occasionally.
  • At least Odie's not Jon; the universe seems to hate the poor guy. Rarely anything goes right for him. Although he does eventually get together with Liz after many years of failed attempts at dating, that doesn't really change much for him, as he's still a loser at the end of the day. However, it should also be noted that, despite everything he goes through, his general quality of life isn't too bad, and makes enough money to keep his pets and himself fed (which is a challenge when you have a cat like Garfield) and a decent middle-class roof over his head.
• Jazmine DuBois in The Boondocks, who creator Aaron McGruder wrote as being more known for her ethnic background than her personality. She is a mulatto born to a black father and a white mother, and neither the black or white kids in her neighborhood accept her as one of them. She doesn't even like herself because she feels unattractive and an "abomination" for being the product of two races mixing.
• Mr. Wilson, a Grumpy Old Man whose dream of a quiet retirement was ruined by living next to Dennis The Menace, who considers Wilson his best friend and is always bothering him, interrupting his leisure, and at times even damaging his property.
• Chris Shepperd in Nintendo Power. Whenever they need an image of somebody in a bad situation, they always use Chris Shepperd. According to NP, he also broke their only time machine. To a slightly lesser extent, there's Steve Thomason, who is jokingly accused of trying to turn Nintendo Power into Sega Visions. He also happens to be the one reviewing most fitness games, despite him openly expressing that he has trouble doing even 10 push-ups. To an even lesser extent, there's Justin Cheng, who received some of this in a few issues following his joining. However, this has diminished incredibly.
  • Before Shepperd, there was "Nester." The creation of former Nintendo fan club president Howard Phillips, Nester's sole purpose in the comic strip "Howard and Nester" was to claim to be a know-it-all gamer who ultimately would be Hoist by His Own Petard while the comic version Phillips revealed the true secret to whatever Game Nester was involved in (This was back when Nintendo Power was more devoted to providing hints and guides to games instead of reviews).
• Guy Haley from White Dwarf was one of these, due to his horrible luck. His Guard army once played an entire game of Warhammer 40,000 without killing a single enemy; his Orc warband in the studio campaign of The Lord of the Rings ended up being led by a one-armed, one-legged orc with a chest problem called Ugbrag the Unlucky and he was mocked constantly for a TV appearance meny years before. He was the Editor for some of this period, but was still Butt Monkey, and at one point attempted to console himself on a particularly bad result.
  • The magazine's internal campaigns also develop this a lot, as someone with no army — boosting victories is likely to continue to lose.
• The newspaper comic Herman plays by the rule that whomever the bizzarre shennanigans are happening to this time is Herman.

Puppet Shows

• Between the Lions: The Fun With Chicken Jane segments have the titular Chicken Jane, who is the only one aware of the danger of whatever antagonist is after Scot and Dot. The two children always get away just in time due to her warning them, but she's always the one who ends up taking beatings from the antagonist.
• The Muppet Show has Beaker, the long-suffering lab assistant and guinea pig to Bunsen Honeydew.
• Pili Fantasy: War of Dragons: Usually it's Chin Chia-hsien, but Chin Shao-yeh takes the brunt of it. He's the target of assassins, trapped in an unbreakable net, kidnapped by his Stalker with a Crush, shrunk and imprisoned in a bottle, and then tied to a palanquin to pull Chi Lu-jen around.
  • Yeh Hsiao-chai qualifies by virtue of his incredibly traumatic life. He goes prematurely white haired, cuts out his own tongue to master the martial art of Nothing, and at one point has both his legs cut off in a duel (he gets better though).
• Grampu from Oobi. This is most obvious in the "Make Pizza!" episode, where the kids accidentally cover him in pizza dough, and "Make Art!", where Uma sticks a paper circle onto his face, and Kako inadvertently covers him in paint.

Radio

• The Brewing Network: For a long time, JP. After some years though he lost it and told the others that the insults they were hanging off him were actually getting to him and they should lay off a little. There are still jokes about JP, but they are less harsh as they originally were.
• A fictional example: Gary Bellamy from Down the Line. Not only does he have to put up with his many bizarre callers, he's been drugged, had his money stolen and been attacked by ghosts. He always seems to come right back for more, though.
• Bryan "Flounder" Schlossberg, from Elliot In The Morning. Elliot and The Class (though usually just Elliot) make fun of him for everying they can think of, including his real name, address, local hangout spots, alleged Marajuana use, and his blatant fanboyism of Hulk Hogan, Comic Books, and Power Rangers.
• Greg T, the Round Headed Frat Boy, of Elvis Duran and the Z100 Morning Zoo in New York.
• The Goon Show:
  • Bluebottle (though there's a reasonable number of Goon Shows where the whole cast dies, or is screwed over).
  • Neddy Seagoon probably qualifies too, given that he's usually the target of Grytpype-Thynne's schemes.
• Denis King — supporting actor and piano accompanist — was this on Hello Cheeky, constantly insulted by the others for his height and alleged inability to play the piano.
  Barry: Ladies and gentlemen, as a favor to music lovers everywhere, I shall now kick Denis King.
  (thump)
  Barry: ...It might not be very entertaining, but it's done me a power of good.
• Gary Dell'Abate A.K.A. "Baba Booey" from The Howard Stern Show. He got that nickname over twenty years ago for pronouncing a cartoon character's name wrong, and that's probably one of the nicer things that's happened to him over the years.
• I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue:
  • If something bad's going to happen to someone, it probably happens to Tim-Brooke Taylor. Especially where Mornington Crescent is concerned. He's also frequently asked to sing songs he just cannot sing along with.
  • Colin Sell, the show's pianist, is on the receiving end of much verbal abuse.
• Karl Pilkington in Ricky Gervais' radio and podcast series, The Ricky Gervais Show. Despite it being Gervais' goal to make Pilkington a bona fide star, he introduces him as "a shaven monkey with a head like a f*** ing orange", and it all goes downhill from there.
• Sergeant Ortis on Richard Diamond, Private Detective is the frequent target of wisecracks by Diamond (and occasionally his superior Lieutenant Levinson) who constantly makes fun of his looks, intelligence, competence as a policeman and his alleged big feet.

Theatre

• Bye Bye Birdie: Randolph Macphee is a goodie two-shoes boy, who despite being good always seems to never get his way. Always gets yelled at by his dad. No one seems to like him.
• Arguably the original Butt Monkey can be found in the character of Pedrolino from the Commedia Dell Arte. Pedrolino is eternally in unrequited love, and is also the butt of every available joke. In family Commedia troupes, this role would be given to the youngest member of the family.
• Kilroy from Don't Drink the Water is such an annoying kiss-ass that there's a Running Gag throughout the second act of him getting horribly injured: he slips and breaks his arm, gets hit in the head with a brick, causing him to go crazy, and to top it off Walter accidentally shoots him!
• The Duchess of Malfi. Poor girl. All she wanted was to get married... and look at the horrors that unleashes! Imprisonment, mental torture, her eventual murder... Her hapless husband Antonio also applies. Malfi probably has the earliest instance of the hitman being something of a Butt Monkey too.
• In the ballet Fancy Free, one of the three sailors always gets conned by his two buddies into having to pay for everything at the bar.
• Papageno from The Magic Flute. Lips sealed with a magic lock; coerced into the initiation rites for an organization in which he has no interest; and taunted with the contrived inaccessibility of his love interest until he literally attempts suicide. To be fair, Papageno brings the magical lock thing on himself as punishment for lying, but throughout the opera the punishments for his actions tend to be disproportionate.
• Miss Saigon: Kim. Orphaned when her parents and other family members are killed in an attack, forced to work as a prostitute to support herself — this is how she loses her virginity — has the love of her life all but literally ripped away from her during the Fall of Saigon, has to endure pregnancy and childbirth all on her own, lives in poverty, has to kill her cousin when he tries to kill her mixed-race son, flees to Bangkok, finally thinks she's going to be reunited with her lover after three long years (and this belief is basically the only thing that has sustained her all this time), only to find that he's married and his wife doesn't want her or the kid around, and finally kills herself both out of grief and to force them to take the child to America with them. Oh, and by the time this is all done, she's all of 20- to 21-years-old.
• In The Most Happy Fella, Herman gets pushed around a lot by Pasquale and the other workers, but he has no complaints until the last scene.
• There are dozens of Shakespearean examples. The most extreme would be the entire cast of Othello, not just its criminally naive hero (one character, the perpetually stupid Roderigo, is even referred to in the cast list as "a gulled gentleman"). Iago, revolting creep that he is, grins as he puts them all through hell.
  • Another major example would be Shylock of The Merchant of Venice. He's forced to endure endless abuse from the Venetians, his daughter runs off with a Christian and steals his dead wife's ring, he's forced to convert and give up his profession in a trial that's completely unfair... Yes, his wish for a pound of flesh is villainous, but Values Dissonance has made this alleged "comedy" almost unwatchable.
  • Malvolio in Twelfth Night. He's a haughty Puritan who doesn't like roistering, it's true, and has a daft infatuation for Olivia, but being mistaken for mad and incarcerated leaves something of a bitter taste in modern viewers' mouths. Another Butt Monkey of epic proportions is Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Upper-Class Twit extraordinaire. Dense, naive and good-natured, with absolutely nothing going for him except for his money, it's possibly a good thing he's so stupid as he never seems to realise the contempt everyone else holds him in. He tries to woo Olivia with no success, his 'friend' Sir Toby is forever sponging off him... He can't even get a challenge to a duel right!
  • In The Taming of the Shrew, everyone at least breaks even, except for Hortensio, who gets beaten up by Kate and ends up marrying a widow who hates him, but needs a husband to be reaccepted into Paduan society.
  • Thurio in Two Gentlemen of Verona
  • Ophelia in Hamlet (although almost everyone in that play could qualify).
    • While most of the cast gets some butt monkery, Ophelia is arguably the least deserving of her fate.
• Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire. She's basically put between a rock and a hard place, forced to side with either her psycho, gold-digging, mooching sister Blanche or her boorish, abusive husband Stanley. Even after Stanley hits her while pregnant and later rapes Blanche, she ends up having to side with Stanley.
• Westeros: An American Musical: When Jon announces that he'll go out scouting early the next morning, Pyp complains about he and Grenn being "left with Sam". Jon is next seen telling Sam to not let Pyp and Grenn give him a hard time, which indicates demeaning comments towards Sam are a regular occurrence.

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