History ButtMonkey / LiveActionTV

* ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'' has Fitz, at least early in the series. In addition to the RunningGag that has him getting knocked out all the time, he's almost always the one who's held hostage, trapped (unarmed) in the middle of a siege, inadvertently helping out the VillainOfTheWeek, or some combination of all the above. Added to that is the fact that seemingly nearly every guy they meet feels compelled to hit on his LoveInterest (who is herself ObliviousToLove, while he simply CannotSpitItOut). Whether all this is played for laughs or drama generally depends on the overall tone of the episode. In the DarkerAndEdgier second season this is exclusively played for drama with [[spoiler:his brain damage leaving him TongueTied.]] It's finally averted starting with Season 3, by which point Fitz has [[TookALevelInBadass taken a level in badass]], is more forward in his relationship with Simmons, and is overall a tougher character.

* Tommy Merlyn on ''Series/{{Arrow}}''. The poor guy was just a lightning rod for bad luck and every time something good happened, something horrible was waiting around the corner to beat him down again. Before the series started, he saw his mother murdered and was neglected by his father, who simply abandoned him for two years. As an adult, he loses his best friend for five years, loses his fortune after his father cuts him off and then tries to make him close down a clinic that his mother cared about, he finds out Oliver and his father are both murderers, his relationship with Laurel falls apart because he can't keep Oliver's secret and she still has feelings for him and he gets beaten up and nearly murdered by Huntress. And then [[spoiler: he dies saving Laurel by being impaled and crushed by concrete]].

* ''Series/TheDefenders2017'' makes [[Series/IronFist2017 Danny Rand]] the Butt Monkey of the group. His naive and pompous demeanor and fantastical backstory to how he got his powers causes everyone to shit on him at every turn. Even Stick, the last of the Chaste who are supposed to defend him, calls him a "thundering dumbass".
** The Creator/{{Netflix}} [[Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse MCU]] shows as a whole have Turk Barrett. Virtually every scene he shows up in, no matter the show, involves him getting his ass kicked.

* ''Series/{{Smallville}}'''s version of Jimmy Oslen becomes something of a snowballing butt monkey, especially once Lex the Woobie left the show after Season 7.
** Apart from getting his share of the standard amount of grievous physical trauma experienced by most characters on the show, Jimmy's buttmonkeyness was evident early on by his being generally treated like dirt as the designated love interest for Chloe Sullivan, but ballooned in Season Eight, where [[spoiler: his not-unfounded jealousy over Clark is the least of his problems, what with getting constantly and very obviously lied to by everyone and most especially by his fiancée. His joy at discovering that Clark is the Red-Blue Blurr is crushed through an elaborate deception by his closest friends, and his boss refuses to take him seriously.]] Things ratchet up several notches when [[spoiler: his wedding gets literally crashed by Doomsday who just about eviscerates him. After being thus benched for a good chunk of the season (in which his wife oddly does not seem to spend much time visiting him in hospital), he becomes addicted to painkillers, discovers that Davis Bloom is a serial killer and when he tries to warn his friends ''nobody believes him'', not even his wife. He gets repeatedly beaten, tortured and tied up, keeps getting lied to over and over again by Chloe, is dismissed as a crazy junkie by all his friends, even witnesses that Chloe apparently has romantic feelings for the guy he discovered is a killer, precipitating the total collapse of his marriage (which doesn't even rate more than a handwaved mention of their divorce).]] To top it all off, [[spoiler: gets gratuitously murdered in the finale by the same guy he tried to warn everyone about.]] To add insult to injury, [[spoiler: his funeral scene reveals that he wasn't even the "real" Jimmy Olsen from the comics that he had hitherto been presented as being, but rather a "Henry James Olson", evidently an older brother to the canonical "James Bartholomew Olsen".]]
** Apparently it ''really'' sucks to be Jimmy Olsen, [[spoiler: even when you're actually not.]]
** Lana Lang is supposed to be TheWoobie, but really comes off more like this. Of course, given many fans' opinions of her, this also makes her TheChewToy.

* ''Series/WonderWoman'': Harold Farnum spends most of his time being an annoyance that is only barely tolerated due to [[{{ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections}} his father being a Senator]]. His one contribution was, while trapped in a locked cell, to make an arc pencil that would possibly free them in a few hundred years. Wonder Woman breaks the door open to save the audience from watching him grow old and die before escaping.