History Main / NEET

* ComicBook/ScottPilgrim freeloads off his friend Wallace for most of the comic, doesn't have a job, isn't in school, and is frequently told to get a life. This eventually changes, starting with him getting a job dishwashing at Stephen Stills' restaurant.

* In ''Film/BigDaddy'', Creator/AdamSandler's character starts as a law school graduate who hasn't taken the bar exam and lives off a settlement he received from a lawsuit and operating a toll booth one day a week. By the end, he decides to get his act together and becomes a practicing lawyer.
* ''Film/DownInTheDelta'': Rosa wants her drug-addicted adult daughter Loretta to find gainful employment, but no one on the WrongSideOfTheTracks is hiring. Early in the movie she tries to get a job as a cashier, but she's rejected for her lack of mathematical ability, which would be a problem if the machines broke down.
* ''Film/HaroldAndKumarGoToWhiteCastle'': Kumar starts out this way. In his medical school interview, he admits that he isn't actually interested in going to medical school and is there just so his father will keep paying for his apartment, despite his interviewer pointing out that he has perfect MCAT scores. However, after his experiences by the end of the movie, including [[ItMakesSenseInContext saving a patient while disguised as a doctor]], he decides to take medical school seriously, telling Harold that the real reason he was so reluctant to consider medical school was [[StopBeingStereotypical he was scared of being seen as a stereotypical Indian nerd]].

* Todd Chavez, Bojack's "roommate" in ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman'', is essentially this. He came to a party Bojack held five years ago and never left, and currently sleeps on Bojack's couch. He doesn't have any education past high school and is rarely ever employed anywhere for long.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheLooneyTunesShow'', WesternAnimation/DaffyDuck has been living in WesternAnimation/BugsBunny's house for five years, has no job, credit, or [[NoSocialSkills social skills]], and gets all his money from Bugs and WesternAnimation/PorkyPig, almost always without his consent. There have been a few episodes where Daffy gets a job, but they never last beyond said episode.

* Mae Borowski, the protagonist of ''VideoGame/NightInTheWoods''. She drops out of college due to [[spoiler:having such severe disassociative episodes that she can't even function at school anymore, which [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane may or may not have been caused by an]] EldrtichAbomination known as the Black Goat]]. Mae spends most of the game running around town, talking to her friends, committing crimes, and doing WomanChild things, while her parents encourage her to have some ambition.

* All six of the Matsuno brothers have become this in ''Anime/OsomatsuSan''. They're all unemployed [[VagueAge twenty-somethings]] still living with their parents, and whenever they ''do'' manage to get jobs [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption they can't keep them for more than one episode]]. Their mother goes so far as to address them as [=NEET=]s to their faces.

%%* Ben from ''WesternAnimation/DrKatzProfessionalTherapist''.

Anything else, such as treating their situation as a symptom of a systemic problem of modern society, is uncommon enough to be considered a subversion, except in KitchenSinkDrama, where joblessness is depicted as the side effect of capitalism's grinding wheels and boom-bust cycles. Regardless, it must be noted that the [[BurgerFool modern]] [[SoulSuckingRetailJob unfortunate]] [[JobStealingRobot conditions]] on the job market in many developed countries mean that the unemployed gradually undergo a shift from AcceptableTargets to [[DudeNotFunny being considered genuinely unfortunate]]. Thus, in order to actually deserve mockery, a NEET in modern media is often given other typically negative qualities such as being a slob.

* "Series/MyNameIsEarl":
** Both Earl and Randy dropped out of high school and were unemployed for most of their adulthood aside from working the occasional odd job. Prior to the list, Earl and Randy sustained themselves through petty theft, but after turning their lives around, Earl won $100,000 on a lottery ticket. Earl eventually realized that he couldn't just rely on the lottery winnings, so he and Randy set out to get their GEDs and jobs at an appliance store, with both losing their jobs after Earl went to prison for a crime that his ex-wife Joy committed (Earl took the blame in order to save Joy from getting her third strike and serving life in prison). Randy got a job as a prison guard so that he could still be with Earl, but after Earl got out of prison, he struggled to find work due to being a felon and he had spent all of his lottery money by that point. After a brief return to crime and a horrible marriage to a friend's former girlfriend, he is given a $75,000 insurance settlement and is back to where he was before.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheLooneyTunesShow'', WesternAnimation/DaffyDuck has been living in WesternAnimation/BugsBunny's house for five years, has no job, credit, or [[NoSocialSkills social skills]], and gets all his money from WesternAnimation/PorkyPig, almost always without his consent.

** A later episode saw Earl attempting to make amends with his former babysitter, who was impregnated by her boyfriend as a result of Earl poking holes in the condom. The babysitter married her boyfriend and they are seemingly living a good life. Except that their now 22-year-old son is still living with them, unemployed and not in school. Earl decides to make up to them by forcing the son to get a job and move out.