Bare-Bottomed Monkey

"I'm told I'm a summer, but my bottom is clearly a spring."

Brock: I'm a monkey!

Owen: Technically you have a blue butt, so you're a mandrill. Which is like a baboon, but not.

Brock: I HAVE A BLUE BUTT!?

— Animal Crackers (2017)

Monkeys and apes have a slew of stock characteristics associated with them in media, one of which being that they have a prominent hairless posterior, often brightly colored. Even if the particular species of primate wouldn't have this in real life, if they're identifiable as a primate and their rump is given any amount of focus then there's a decent chance it'll be portrayed this way. This is especially common with depictions of baboons, but any primate can be susceptible — except for humans, since it'd be quite redundant given our enduring lack of fur. If a work aims to play this trait up for humor (which is almost always the case) then it'll often have the primate character show their butt off to the audience, sometimes aided by a Gross-Up Close-Up.

This is Truth in Television for some primates, namely Old World monkeys (such as baboons, macaques, and mangabeys), gibbons, and certain subspecies of chimps. The hairless part is due to an anatomical adaptation known as ischial callosities. In real life, this adaptation exists to provide comfort and stability while sitting, especially in trees where maintaining balance is crucial.^note Humans don't have these callosities, as our upright stature has instead granted us the use of the gluteal muscles to act as cushioning instead. The distinct colors, which only some species exhibit, vary in purpose depending on species; for baboons, it's a trait mostly exhibited by females in estrus, whereas with mandrills it's primarily a marker for dominance and social hierarchy. Displaying of the rump is a behavior done either to convey submission or propose mating. Expect these aspects of the trait to be overlooked in most media depictions, however, in favor of simply portraying it out of context as a primate's humorous quirk — because butts are funny, after all.

Note: This trope doesn't necessarily apply to a character just because they're a primate with a bare bottom. Examples must involve the work itself bringing attention to the trait in some way, or deliberately depicting the trait in ways that are inaccurate to real life.

Has nothing to do with a Butt-Monkey.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Anti Monkey Butt is a brand of anti-chafing powder that, like the name says, markets itself entirely off of this trope and refers to chafing as getting "Monkey Butt". All of the powder's branding features monkeys with big red behinds.
• Referenced in an old ad bumper for Comedy Central featuring the network president —dressed as a clown— boasting that only his channel could be relied on for humor:
  "I mean, look at the competition: CNN, not funny. C-SPAN, not funny. The Discovery Channel... *starts to chuckle* Well, those baboons with the red asses, they are kinda funny! But then again, how often do you see those things?"
• Kozi's is a local African grill located in Athens, that has for its mascot a cheeky red-bottomed monkey named Ziko. He's referred to in marketing specifically as "Ziko the African MunkyBum" and his rump is prominent in several promotional images.
• The automated marketing platform Mailchimp is represented by a bare-bottomed mailman chimp named Freddie. His tush has been given nods in some of the company's merchandising, particularly with a release of vinyl figurines of the character where some of the different variations are marked by a unique symbol on Freddie's bum.
• Featured in some of the marketing for Sédorrhoïde, a French brand of hemorrhoidal medicine, with a baboon mascot displaying his bare rosy behind as a humorous innuendo for the ailment.

Anime & Manga

• Gintama: Kyubei's pet macaque Jugem has a pink bare bottom. One of the things Gintoki brought up when complaining about him is that monkey asses in fiction look cute and funny because of the art style, but in real life, they're actually ugly and gross.
• Inuyasha: Gon, Bun, and Ken are a trio of small monkey Youkai who at one point play a prank on Inuyasha, and after doing so they moon him in tandem while singing a little song about their red rumps. It doesn't end well for them.
• Invoked in Myriad Colors Phantom World, when a giant monkey Phantom invades Hosea Academy and converts the school grounds into a hot spring. After numerous failed attempts to subdue it, Haruhiko proposes distracting the Phantom by painting Mai's butt red and having her pretend to be a female monkey in heat. It works. After the Phantom is defeated it's discovered that he can't pass on until he has a mate, so Haruhiko himself is forced into a red-bottomed monkey costume to entice the Phantom to leave.

Comic Books

• Spider-Man: Discussed in one issue. Spidey, having just caught Mandrill, jokes that he'd be more intimidating if he flashed his red butt at people. Mandrill scoffs at the insinuation, not just for being captured and mocked, but because his butt is orange, not red.

Films — Animated

• Animal Crackers (2017): When Brock eats the cracker he swiped from Owen and inadvertently turns himself into a monkey, Owen quickly points out to him that his butt is now blue, causing him to Freak Out. It's also mentioned that having a blue butt technically makes Brock a mandrill, but he looks more like a baboon with its butt painted blue.
• El Arca has a prologue featuring a baboon who gets a shot focusing on his hairless derriere.
• Robot Dreams: Used for a quick gag during Dog and Robot's beach visit, where the monkey man running the hotdog stand can be seen scratching his big red behind with the same pair of tongs he uses to make the hotdogs.

Films — Live-Action

• Jumanji: The Next Level: Part of Mouse's ill-timed Info Dump about the sort-of mandrills is about their distinct colorful rears.

Literature

• Many Japanese children's stories give amusing explanations for why the Japanese macaque has a bare red bottom. According to one, long ago macaques had long tails that they used to catch fish, by sitting opposite from the water and dipping their tails into it. When they tried to do this in winter, they wound up with their rumps frozen to the ground and their tails encased in ice; getting free left them with the stubby tails and naked backsides they have today.
• Always Lots of Heinies at the Zoo is a book about Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and the mandrill's blue booty is one of the titular heinies described in the book, as well as featuring prominently on the cover. The book also points out how the distinct blue coloration is exhibited specifically by males.
• The children's interactive storybook Baboon Bert's Bare Bum uses this trope as the basis for a Be Yourself aesop. In it, Bert is a young baboon who gets teased by his peers for his naked behind. He tries different tactics to be more accepted, like constantly covering his butt with his hands or even shaving the fur off of his head to stick onto his rear, but none of it works. In the end, after he and his friends get lost out in the wilderness at night, Bert discovers his bare rump is shiny enough to reflect moonlight and uses it to light the trail back home, earning everyone's respect as he is.
• The Baboon with the Golden Bum by Jed Lynch is a (mostly) metaphorical use of the trope, alluding to Frank the baboon in question being a rich and successful businessman rather than literally having a gold behind. Seamus does reflect on the real version of the trope while looking at a picture of Frank, but assumes he'd be offended if it were brought up — on the contrary, Frank embraces the stereotype enough to adorn his pager with an image of a golden-bummed baboon.
• In Cheeky Charlie! by Ben Redlich, Charlie the monkey spends all his time jeering and teasing all the other animals around, including ribbing the other monkeys about their big pink behinds. That is, until his brother retorts by asking him to take a look behind him, and Charlie realizes he also has a big pink butt. He's so embarrassed by it that he hides in a bush for the rest of the day.
• Featured in a few works by Heath McKenzie:
  • This is the entire premise of Butt Out!, with Baboon parading his big bare backside around despite growing protests from others for him to cover up. By the book's end he's finally convinced to put some pants on, only to immediately rip the seat off of them. The sequel Don't Butt In! is an inversion of the trope, with Baboon spending the entire book flaunting not having his butt hanging out until everyone is so annoyed they inadvertently convince him to go pants-free again.
  • Zoo House and Zoo School both have baboons among their wild ensemble, and gratuitous butt shots ensue whenever they're present. Zoo School also has a visual gag when the baboons are making a ruckus in the music room; one of them tries to play a drum that another baboon is sitting on, so he drums the other baboon's butt instead.
  • Whose Bum? At the Zoo has an orangutan's rump as one of the featured bums, and the book both shows and describes it this way.
• Hipster Animals: A Field Guide by Dyna Moe is a catalog of various Hipster stereotypes juxtaposed with different anthropomorphized animals. The mandrill, a Straw Vegetarian gelato vendor, is specifically described as having a "spectacular ass" with the accompanying illustration showing his pants to have a protruding red seat.
• In Journey to the West the Buddha explains to Sun Wukong that he is one of the four celestial monkeys, who exist outside the ten classifications of life, which includes the Red-Buttocked Horse Monkey. Said monkey has knowledge of yin and yang, human affairs, and how to avoid death.
• Invoked in The Monkey with a Bright Blue Bottom — after the eponymous monkey annoys all the other animals in the jungle by painting designs onto them, they decide to get revenge by painting his behind (and face) blue. The story is supposed to fantastically explain where mandrills come from, but the monkey in the book looks nothing like a mandrill.
• Played with in The Monkey with No Bum; while monkeys in general love to show off their bare behinds and even hold a parade dedicated to doing so, the main character's butt is smaller and less noticeable than most. This results in him getting teased and feeling too ashamed to participate in the parade, so his parents offer to get a new bum for him instead. Ultimately though, he chooses to keep his bum the way it is and show it proudly anyway.

Live-Action TV

• Saru Brother, the Blue Ranger in Avataro Sentai Donbrothers, is themed after a Japanese macaque and has a red patch on the butt of his Ranger suit for no real reason except this trope.
• Count Arthur Strong: In "Doctor Two", Arthur can't keep himself from thinking about red monkey behinds throughout the episode after reminiscing about the events of Planet of the Apes (which he thinks actually happened in real life). This sets up a Brick Joke for later in the episode where he observes Michael wearing an Embarrassing Hospital Gown and likewise can't stop thinking about his bottom in the same way.
• Hannah Montana: Robbie Ray sometimes complains about the lack of comfort in wearing a fake mustache as part of his Paper-Thin Disguise, at one point describing it as "itchier than a baboon's butt in a flea circus".

Music

• The first verse of Lil Dicky's "Earth" starts with this trope, courtesy of Justin Bieber. The music video likewise has a baboon showing his behind to the viewer before shoving the camera into it for a Scene Transition.
  Hi, I'm a baboon
  I'm like a man, just less advanced
  And my anus is huge
• HyunA's song "Red" has a line referring to a monkey's red behind and comparing it to an apple, which is a reference to a famous Korean children's song where the color of a monkey's butt is used as the basis of a word ladder-esque game of association.
• Children's songs on YouTube:
  • The simply-titled "Baboon Song", of which multiple versions by different channels exist, is a song about a baboon who's perplexed by his own red behind and tries to find other animals with rears like his, only stopping when he finds other baboons to confirm for him that it's normal for his rump to be that way.
  • "Monkey Song" is a song produced by Korean educational company Kebikids, and is mostly about how monkeys have bright red behinds that they love to show off.
  • "Where Is My Bum", a nursery song released by the channel Little Angel, is all about a baboon having somehow lost his big red bum and spending the whole song looking for it. He makes sure to show it to the viewer once he finally has it back.

Mythology and Folklore

• The Japanese folktale The Crab and the Monkey has some versions that explain this trait of monkeys. According to one, the monkey's bottom became bare & red after being burnt by a flaming chestnut and stung by a bee, while another has the monkey's behind being shaved clean and pinched by the crab.
• Okinawan folklore tells a version of the story where the monkey was originally a greedy rich man who was transformed into a beast by a god as punishment for trying to exploit the god's blessings. As a monkey, the man begins heckling a kindly poor couple who move into his home, so the god tells them to pour boiling water on the stone he loves to sit on each day, causing his rear to get burned and left red & bare.

Puppet Shows

• Mr. Meaty: In the episode "Suburb of the Apes", where Josh and Parker accidentally travel to a future where the mall has been taken over by baboons, this trope is shown and discussed somewhat realistically due to Parker having done a report on baboons once. Displaying the rump is accurately mentioned as a sign of submission, and the baboons do just that when Josh and Parker manage to usurp their leader, much to their revulsion.

Tabletop Games

• The game Monkey Butt naturally features this trope. The object of the game is get rid of your hand as quickly as possible, and the eponymous "Monkey Butt" card that makes a player add more cards to their hand is illustrated by a monkey mockingly displaying his naked behind.

Theme Parks

• Dourakuen, a small and now-defunct Japanese theme park, had a pair of monkeys as mascots and their bright red bottoms featured in plenty of the branding. Most notably, the park's theater was known as the Akajiri Bunka Sentaa, or "Red Butt Culture Center", and the building's main sign was adorned with a big red monkey rump.

Toys

• Beanie Babies has Cheeks the mandrill, whose name says it all - Cheeks' bottom is bare and brightly-colored, due to being made out of a tie-dyed material. The poem drives the point home.
  Don't confuse me with an ape
  I have a most unusual shape
  My cheeks are round and ty-dyed red
  On my behind as well as my head!
• Hasbro's Elefun and Friends toy line had a toy called Chasin' Cheeky, where the object of the game is to chase after a purple bare-bottomed monkey and either grab rings held by his tail, or pull a banana out of his mouth. Getting the banana causes him to start Shaking the Rump.
• Jakks Pacific once released a game called "Pull My Finger" that's a cross between this trope and exactly what you'd expect from the name. Gameplay-wise it was similar to Hot Potato, with each player pulling the monkey's finger a number of times determined by a spinning wheel and his bare bottom growing bigger with each pull — anyone who makes the monkey blow his booty is eliminated until only the winner remains.
• Squishables has a retired Baboon toy which the official website describes at length as having a big red butt.

Video Games

• Baboon Butt was a mobile game with this trope as its central gimmick. The player had to collect hearts that emerge from holes in the ground in a way similar to whac-a-mole, while also avoiding the near-identical big red baboon behinds that appear alongside them.
• Gunfire Reborn: The Snowy Mandrill enemy encountered in the Hyperborean Jokul, oddly enough, displays a bare pink rear end only when it's by itself and not being ridden by a Mutant Penguin as a Mandrill Cavalry.
• Inkulinati: Apes are shown with bare, prominently displayed buttocks.
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: The monkeys encountered in the Forest Temple are all bare-bottomed, with a couple of jokes about them falling on their backsides ensuing. Of particular note is their boss Ook; not only does he taunt the player by spanking his big red behind at them, it's actually his weak point during his boss fight.
• Mega Man X: Among all the multicolored lights adorning Spark Mandrill's body, a large blue one right on his backside homages the animal he's based on. Soldier Stonekong also has a pair of red lights on his rear for the same purpose, despite being based on an animal that wouldn't have such a trait.
• Monster Hunter 2 (dos): The gorilla-like Conga and Congalala have bare bottoms that you'll likely be seeing a lot given their favorite methods of attack. The Congalala's behind, as well as its face, will even turn red when it gets angry. The subspecies Emerald Congalala in Monster Hunter Freedom Unite is bare-bottomed as well, and even more eager to expel farts during battle.
• Ōkami: The imps are essentially demonic apes, and they'll gladly smack their bare rumps at Amaterasu in battle.
• Sea of Stars: A trait of the gorillas, which is lampshaded when the party encounters a group of baby gorillas sticking their butts up while peering through holes in the ground.
  Valere: (dumbfounded) Uh... Zale?
  Zale: (also dumbfounded) ...Yes?
  Valere: Are you seeing a bunch of FURRY LITTLE BUTTS?
  Zale: Yup.
• South Park: Phone Destroyer: The four-assed monkey from the show is actually weaponized for its appearance in this game; upon being defeated its butts will fly off and explode on enemies.
• Super Monkey Ball:
  • Most of the cast have this trait, though it isn't usually drawn attention to. It is brought up in Touch & Roll via the title screen, which has AiAi Shaking the Rump at the player and prompting them to touch his behind to proceed to the rest of the game. It's also invoked in Rumble where, despite AiAi being given a pair of overalls, there's a hole cut out of the seat to keep his cheeks and tail exposed.
  • The Big Bad and Final Boss of Banana Blitz, Captain Crabuchin, can only be damaged by striking his glowing red behind.

Web Animation

• One of the past winners of CITV's Share A Story competition was for a short called "Boonzy The Baboon", another rendition of the tale of how baboons got their red bottoms. In it, a baboon named Boonzy (who's really a mandrill) is going to do an acrobatics performance and prepares for it by painting himself, only to accidentally fall butt-first into a can of red paint. Unable to wash it off in time, he decides to play it off as intentional for the performance, and the other baboons are so impressed they all immediately paint their butts red as well. The short ends with Boonzy Shaking the Rump at the camera.
• Virtual YouTuber and musician Hino Arashi is an anthropomorphic monkey who, while he does have a bare bottom according to concept art, hardly ever shows it in his videos. Instead, his casual outfit includes a pair of pants with a couple of red circles sewn onto the butt, as a visual homage to this trope.
• One episode of Jabu's Jungle has Jabu teaming up with a baboon named Bobo, who makes good use of his callosities by using his butt as a sled to slide him and Jabu safely down a rocky cliffside. Right before this he gives Jabu a brief explanation for why baboon bums are the way they are, and mentions that they're adapted to sit comfortably.
• JunyTony: "Why Do Monkeys Have Red Bottoms?" is all about this trope. A guy accidentally grabs a monkey's red butt (mistaking it for an apple), so Juny and Tony sing about the scientific reason monkeys have red bums; the skin on their buttocks is thin and their blood is reflecting off their skin. It's also noted that some monkeys have blue bottoms.
• DandyBrain's animation The Monkey's Butt is about a baboon getting accosted for smoking inside a restaurant. The title is therefore actually a Pun-Based Title referring to a cigarette butt, but the animation's title card completes the double-meaning with a shot of the baboon holding a lit cigarette between his big pink butt cheeks.

Webcomics

• Bananahead Bongo: Bongo the chimp's big pink behind serves as a punchline for several comics, as well as a Running Gag where no matter how much clothing he and his orangutan friend Grunge wear, their butts will always be hanging out. One episode of the comic's Animated Adaptation even opens with a close-up of Bongo scratching his rear, which was subsequently featured on some of the comic's merchandise.
• In the world of Twinkie & Mars Bar, one comic establishes that among primates, those who exemplify this trope get teased in a similar fashion to men who have trouble growing body hair. Unfortunately for Twinkie, it doesn't take long for Mars Bar to deduce he has a bare bum through his usual methods, and he immediately bullies Twinkie over it.

Western Animation

• The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police: The opening of the episode "The Second Show Ever" — which is a spoof of the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey — has one of the monkeys express an interest in evolving to the point where they can wear suits, to which Max asks why he'd want that. The monkey answers by sticking his naked behind in Max's face, along with this exchange:
  Monkey: Ever seen a chimp's rear end? (presents his rump) It ain't pretty.
  Max: Enough! Please! No! Show me no more! I can't take it. I... I... I... Hey, I can see my face in it!
• The Amazing World of Gumball:
  • Miss Simian is a very old monkey with a bare, wrinkly pink butt to match her age. Suffice it to say anyone who sees it is utterly disgusted, as shown in the beginning of "The Apology" where her dress is accidentally parted in the back to expose it and her entire class is continuously squicked out whenever she turns around.
    Gumball: Why do monkeys have hair all over their bodies except for the bad part where they need it the most?
  • While Hector isn't explicitly a primate — he's only ever called a "giant" in the show — physically he resembles a hairy ape Kaiju with multicolored skin, including his gigantic bare blue behind. This is used for a few gags: in the pilot Gumball and Darwin get stuck to Hector's rear after Gumball's Rube Goldberg Device launches them into it, and later on in "The Colossus" Gumball is forced to initiate a Colossus Climb on Hector by landing on his backside. It's later revealed that the real reason it looks like that is because, due to his size, Hector needs to use a volcano in lieu of a toilet, which has left his backside permanently bald.
• Back at the Barnyard: Bingo, a chimpanzee test pilot who crashlands on the farm in "The Right Cow", tries to prove to Freddy & Peck that he isn't a space alien and their attempts to kill him with terrestrial diseases won't work since he's a fully immunized test animal. He does this by briefly showing them his bare backside, which at first seems like he's showing them where he was injected but instead it turns out he has information about all his shots tattooed on his butt — and also wants to discreetly tell them to kiss his ass.
• The ChalkZone episode "Purple Haze" features ChalkZone inhabitants known as Moonkeys, who are simians living on the moon and wearing spacesuits that leave their prominent buttocks exposed.
• Creature Comforts:
  • In Sport, when the mandrill is explaining his interest in climbing whilst laying in a tire swing, the swing gradually rotates until his rear is shown off to the camera and he punctuates his thought by ripping a fart at the viewer.
  • One of the monkeys in Safara Park expounds that male monkeys have a preference for cars that are red, because it's reminiscent of the color a female's bottom becomes during mating season.
• Futurama: In "Fry and Leela's Big Fling", Amy (who is dressed up as a marmoset) gets the attention of a sapient mandrill who shows off his blue bottom to her, which Gunther calls him out on.
• I Am Weasel: Aside from being Lethally Stupid, I.R. Baboon's defining character trait is his big red bottom that gets milked relentlessly for comedic purposes. One TV promo for the show consisted of nothing but I.R. rubbing his butt against the TV screen. Even the show's own Theme Tune alludes to it: "you don't need pants for the victory dance".
• MAD: In Super '80s, Donkey Kong is given a big bare behind as part of Lawyer-Friendly Cameo.
• My Gym Partner's a Monkey: Deuteragonist Jake Spidermonkey is actually obsessed with his own bare backside (which real-life spider monkeys don't have) and much akin to I.R. Baboon it's one of the show's main sources of humor, being shown as soon as the show's opening where Jake plays his butt like a pair of bongos. The jokes about Jake's butt are so prominent that they even got one episode banned for putting too much focus on it — said episode was actually a Deconstruction of the show's reliance on that type of humor, with Jake's obsession being treated like an addiction that requires intervention, and ended with an entire concert of monkeys showing off their butts like addicts in relapse.
• The Simpsons: In "Black-Eyed, Please", Ned Flanders has a Nightmare Sequence about dying and going to a personalized version of Hell that features various Faux Horrific things, including "those monkeys with the red butts".
• South Park: Dr. Mephesto, being fond of genetically engineering animals with multiple butts, creates a monkey with not one but four bare asses, and later on adds a fifth one.
• One episode of Tinga Tinga Tales explains how Baboon came to have a bare bottom in the first place. Because he enjoyed playing tricks on the other animals, they devised a plan to teach him a lesson that ended in him sliding down a cliff on his bum, setting it on fire. By the time it was extinguished, all the hair on Baboon's behind was gone.
• Tiny Toons Looniversity: Hamton's mental vault of secrets in Extra, So Extra is managed by a monkey who keeps the vault secured with his biometric data, including a scan of his bare butt.
• Turbo F.A.S.T.: The climax of "African Queen" has everyone race across the African Savannah, during which White Shadow launches into the air and we get a closeup of him ricocheting off of a baboon's bouncy red behind.
• The Wild Thornberrys:
  • The first theatrical film has a bit where Debbie, while seated in a motorcycle, is treated to a baboon perching on the hood and Shaking the Rump right in her face. This is reincorporated in the film's Dance Party Ending where an entire troop of baboons start doing it.
  • When Debbie learns that failing as Secret-Keeper for Eliza's powers will result in her being turned into a baboon herself, she angrily rejects the idea on the grounds that she doesn't want to have "a big purple butt".
• Zig & Sharko: In "Goin' Home", Zig accidentally stabs a baboon in the bum when he mistakes the monkey's red rump protruding from a tree for an apple and tries to harvest it with a spear.

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