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Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy, and good with ketchup. — Bored Of The Rings
Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool! - A badly-singed Bilbo Baggins, '' The Hobbit"
See that guy over there? The one that can make Your Head Asplode with his Psychic Powers? What a weirdo. Let's throw rocks at him!
This is the suicidal tendency of characters to bully, persecute, or in some other way provoke people or things they really shouldn't be messing with. That weird loner who sits in a corner reading? Fine. That sweet girl who can heal people? If you're that much of an asshole, go for it. The blind kid that somehow knows what you're about to do and is powerless to stop you? Yeah, jackass, whatever floats your boat. But the kid who can warp the fabric of reality who just wants to be left alone? Bad idea.
A subtrope of All of the Other Reindeer, where the character is surrounded by tormentors even though they are known to have some incredible power conducive to being a Person of Mass Destruction, and most of the time because of this. This frequently crops up in Kids Are Cruel (in which case it would be "Kids Are Cruel And Also Freaking Idiots"). It's usually a way of getting us to sympathize with the main character, but, really, bullies should be smart enough not to mock the "freak" Blessed With Suck and Super Strength. Even when logically—or at least using the basest level of human decency and smallest inkling of self preservation—these bullies should find a weaker target or cut the poor kid some slack. So, in a sense, Strawman Bullies. Then, Youth Is Wasted On The Dumb.
The Fettered especially have it bad, because they choose not to fight back, and often protect their tormentors from the Forces of Evil.
If the victim snaps, they will turn the tables. Also, don't lie. It's kinda highly satisfying when the Big Damn Villains kill them off.
Compare Mugging The Monster, which is at least usually done by accident. If the would-be bullies are not aware of their victim's capability to arbitrarily destroy them, put the example in there.
Please note: the trope need not include actual bullying (though it is a popular method). As long as the provoker or provokers intentionally and excessively antagonize someone much more powerful than they are, knowing full well beforehand just what they are screwing with, then it's Bullying A Dragon.
Also see Fantastic Racism. A popular backstory for a Start Of Darkness. This trope doesn't usually have anything to do with The Dragon.
Examples:
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Advertising
- The Messing with Sasquatch commercials for Jack Links beef jerky fall under this as said much bigger and stronger Sasquatch immediately goes ballistic and inflicts harm upon people who decided to provoke him for cheap laughs.
Anime and Manga
- Claymore: Claymores are ostracized by society despite being the only ones who can fight the demons.
- Justified in that this ostracism never actually puts people at risk; it might not be very nice, but it's unlikely to make a Claymore break her vow never to harm humans. Claymores are usually not actually bullied or provoked, either (one exception being the band of robbers who wanted to gangrape Teresa and really kept pushing their luck with her vow). In fact, their every request is generally complied with quickly and without argument, because everyone is outright terrified of them.
- The fact that if the town don't pay up the Organization will never after help them and often a few weeks later the whole town is overrun by said demons because the organization sends them there doesn't help.
- To Aru Majutsu No Index: Accelerator is the strongest esper in the city, with absurd powers that make him literally untouchable. After being beaten by Touma (whose unique Anti Magic power handed him a miraculous victory), however, large gangs start regularly trying to attack him. The mess of twisted limbs he leaves in his wake doesn't seem to have any effect on this, to his complaint (they're so far beneath him that he doesn't bother killing them). They also completely trash his apartment while he's away, but even that fails to get a rise out of him.
- In Darker Than Black, humans who know about Contractors have a habit of telling Contractor employees how they think they are nothing but murderous scum who should be wiped out. Luckily for them, most Contractors just don't care, but this can get ridiculous when Huang is not only verbally abusing someone who can kill him instantly by touching him, but lifting him up by the front of his shirt and screaming in his face.
- So far averted in the second season, where the masquerade has been unveiled to the world, but so far, there's no evidence of the typical Fantastic Racism; instead, people either fear Contractors enough to say away from them, or think they're kind of cool. Seemingly, normal people in the Darker Than Black universe are Genre Savvy/don't have a death wish.
- Bleach. In the backstory of the Bount arc, the Bount are ruthlessly tormented by the human beings they live among. This was particularly stupid considering the Bount ability to eat the souls of human beings and summon huge, deadly Dolls as bodyguards.
- Happens to Robert Hyden in Law Of Ueki. Taunting a small child who can turn his arm into a six-foot cannon is not a good plan.
- Espers in Zettai Karen Children are treated with suspicion at best and as non-human scum at worst. So bad that one of said dragons will grow up to be the "Queen of Disaster" within the span of 10 years.
- The Children's previous handler, a representative from the education department, used shock collars on the girls in order to control them. She had a Freudian Excuse, though: her own mother was equally sadistic and would lock her up if she wasn't "perfect".
- This trope is the whole reason that Nagi Naoe in Weiss Kreuz is a member of Schwarz. He was ostracized and tormented as a child due to his telekinetic powers.
- A premise of Tekkaman Blade II, in which the events of Space Knight Tekkaman Blade led to a segment of humanity gaining the power to become a sort of proto-Tekkaman. These "Primary Bodies" have partial Tekkaman powers, but are inexplicably persecuted, and twice during the series, the Primary Bodies revolt and try to convert themselves into full Tekkamen to take over the world.
- In at least "Teknoman" (the English dubbed version of Tekkaman Blade), Ringo's constant attempts to pick fights with Blade in the first half-dozen or so episode could well count as this, seeing as how he's deliberately provoking someone he claims to consider unstable and whom he has seen effortlessly tear through dozens of Spider-Crabs (which are, themselves, killing machines capable of wiping out whole platoons of ordinary soldiers).
- This shows up in Fruits Basket. Hanajima, one of the main character's friends, is rumored—correctly—to be capable of killing people with her thoughts. The reaction of her peers? "Let's bully her!" Luckily for them, she turns out to be one of The Fettered, but still...
- Code Breaker: Yuuki, who can manipulate sound waves, tries to use their shared abusive pasts to reason with the poison (and other liquids - she hides her many scars under a thick layer of "makeup")-secreting Lily, to no avail.
- Anyone who tries to bully Sousuke in Full Metal Panic. Yeah, good idea trying to bully the boy that's carrying an automatic, who was seen sniping at people from the bushes, planting land mines around the school, and threw grenades at anyone who looked at him or Kaname funny. It's actually very surprising how many bullies try to antagonize the "weirdo military freak," considering how outwardly violent he is with everyone, along with how he gets away with any crime he commits.
- Naruto Let's see if we can't isolate and otherwise mentally and emotionally abuse a small child who has a giant demon stuck in him, thus ensuring that he doesn't have a reason to keep said demon there. Said demon is noted for being unstoppable unless you're the fourth Hokage. Good job, Konoha. Suna, you're even worse trying to kill your kid.
- Does apply to Gaara, but none of the kids in Konoha knew about the Fox because the Fourth's last act was to make it illegal to tell them. As far as the kids knew, Naruto was just the weird kid with no family and whiskers on his face.
- The parents, at least the ones that were Ninja, should have known.
- Pretty much every adult in the village knew, yes.
- The thing is Naruto didn't know himself. He didn't know that he had a killer demon in him. I'd bet the adults felt pretty safe in being jerks, since they knew Naruto didn't have any reason to believe he could get back at them. When he found out, however . . .
- Actually, many of the villagers seemed to think that Naruto was possessed by the Kyuubi. As far as they were concerned, their evil adversary was now helpless, and they could take vengance without reprisal. Those that did understand that Naruto was not being controled by the demon tended to ignore him or show some sympathy towards him. Its those that thought that Naruto's human mind was being influenced by a demon with plenty of experience with causing humans extreme pain and suffering, and/or that the seal might break and release the demon were following this trope.
- The villagers of the Sand Village are more of an aversion; everyone just avoids him entirely because they're freaking scared of him, and never tried to make friends with him because the one time he tried he accidentally injured the kid.
- And that lack of control is a large part of why assasins are sent after him. This is not trying to bully the demon-boy, this is trying to outright eliminate a being that everyone has a healthy respect for and fear of.
- Nico Robin in One Piece was picked on as a kid for having devil-fruit powers; her particular power lets her instantly break most people's spines.
Comic Books
- Used in the most literal sense of the title in Firebreather.
- It was established in Damage's own series that his "parents" were actually employees set to watch him until the superpowers he'd been genetically engineered for showed up. Given that, later retcons that his foster-father physically and sexually abused him make the guy look extremely stupid.
- The writer who came up with the abuse? Second.
- Happens very frequently to mutants in X-Men comics.
- X-Men was supposed to be about how racism is wrong. It always seems to come across as Bullying A Dragon since most of them can easily kill you. Yeah, there are some that don't have good powers, and picking on them is kinda like racism. Picking on the guy that can shoot lasers from his eyes? Not so much.
- Well, let's be clear- it IS racist, or at least highly bigotted. Its just also extraordinarily stupid.
- And some do not seem to have much in the way of power at all, just odd appearences. Picking on someone who is just green is mean, but expected. Guys picking a fight with VICTOR CREED in a bar? Your Darwin Award is waiting.
- Beast Boy spent most of his life enduring this kind of bullying, which has had a profoundly negative effect on his self esteem; so much so that he's afraid to let anyone know that he can make multiples of himself.
- A prisoner does this to Rorschach in Watchmen. Of course Rorschach, being triple-Homicidal, Ax Crazy, and The Combat Pragmatist, throws hot grease in his face. These are not the last prisoners to make this mistake. But it's the last time that one did.
- To be fair, this example strays outside the immediate boundaries of this trope since Rorschach was acting in self-defense as said prisoner was about to attempt to shank him.
- Then again, it's hard to figure out who's really A Dragon in prison and who isn't. Usually starting a fight is the way to figure it out... and that guy did.
- They all knew Rorschach's reputation as a crime fighter, at the very least Bad Ass enough to put many of them in prison in the first place (i.e. no one to mess with). They MAY have been somewhat unclear on the parts where he is an Ax Crazy paragon of retribution devoted to coldly and dispassionately disposing of society's dregs. But they still should have known not to mess with a superhero.
- Happens to the Hulk all the time. Many of his rampages could have been avoided had they'd just backed off a bit. Considering his Catch Phrase (apart from "Hulk Smash!", of course) is usually a variation of him bellowing "LEAVE HULK ALONE!" you'd think the denizens of the Marvel Universe would have cottoned on, but then you remember this is the Marvel Universe, where Dragon-bullying (and bitching about the results afterwards) is a widely accepted passtime.
- Marvel Comics also has Super Hero hate groups. SUPER HERO HATE GROUPS. These people should just form a drink a gallon of bleach club; it'd be safer.
Films
- The bizarre homoerotic scene in Powder where a bunch of bullies try to strip the main character naked after they catch him checking out other boys in the shower. Seems more like a scene from a porno, really, but the point is that the eponymous character was established to have electromagnetic superpowers.
- This scene takes on an even darker and more disturbing tone when you consider that director of the film is a convicted pedophile.
- Liz in the Hellboy movie: Hey, it's that freaky introverted Pale Skinned Brunette kid who starts fires with her mind! Let's throw rocks at her (on her birthday no less, according to the art book)! Hey freak, you're smoking, are you on fi— (insert Apartment Block-Shattering Ka-Boom here).
- The Dark Knight:
Lucius Fox: Let me get this straight: You think that your client, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands. And your plan is to blackmail this person? Good luck.
- Lampshaded and averted by Ray in Hancock. He lets Hancock pretty much do whatever he wants, because as Hancock is basically a Jerkass Flying Brick, he could kill the whole family if he wanted to (at least as far as he knew). Everyone else, though...
- Especially inexcusable with the inmates in the prison, most of whom had already encountered Hancock personally!
- Portrayed as the South African government's Idiot Ball in District 9. Yes, let's confine a million alien refugees with highly advanced weaponry and space-faring technology to a hideous slum, treat them like garbage and deny them basic rights. It makes you hope that Christopher Johnson comes back with an entire alien armada.
- To be fair only the evil Mega Corp is doing this.
- And there are human-rights activists, who are kept in the dark about the shadier things the MNU does to the prawns, that are protesting their crappy treatment.
- In District 9's spiritual ancestor, Alien Nation, The Idiot Ball is held by Los Angeles. Yes, let's piss all over the guys that are super-strong and highly intelligent. Let's recapitulate every moronic Race Trope our society worked to get past. Yeah, that's bright.
- In Ang Lee's Hulk, after Bruce Banner is captured and contained in a purportedly Hulk-proof room, Glenn Talbott, needing a blood sample, enters the room, and shocks Bruce repeatedly with a cattle prod to try to get him to change into the Hulk. At this time, Talbott is wearing a cast and a neck brace, because earlier in the movie, when Bruce changed into the Hulk, he used Talbott as a melee weapon to beat two other people into unconsciousness. Luckily for Talbott, this attempt fails.
- Don't forget how he tries it again, this time giving Banner some sort of nightmare. They then try to subdue the Hulk with cement and explosives. Let's just say it turns out worse for Talbott this time.
- All this succeeds in doing is pissing Hulk off even more, and those who know the character know what happens when you make an already-angry Hulk even angrier...
- In The Ninth Configuration, a bar full of bikers decide that it's a good idea to mercilessly taunt and humiliate a pair of soldiers. One of the soldiers is Colonel Vincent "Killer" Kane, an unbalanced walking death machine from the Vietnam War. After suffering through monstrous indignities, he finally snaps and slaughters the entire gang of bikers, including the women, with his bare hands.
- Mighty Joe Young (the original) has a trio of drunkards give the titular giant gorilla alcohol—enough to inebriate him. This clears them out of booze and in retaliation, one of them burns his hand as Joe begs for more. Joe then bursts out of his cage for a drunken Roaring Rampage Of Revenge through a nightclub.
- 20 Million Miles to Earth can best be summarized as "Please do not bully the Ymir." It's one of Harryhausen's iconic and most sympathetic monsters.
- King Kong post-Skull Island tends to suffer one indignation after another (not that Skull Island was a picnic), so that when he bursts out of his bonds, the audience is usually behind Kong's rampage.
- The Tyrannosaurus Rex's death toll in US/Japan Co-Production The Last Dinosaur might have been less if the Great White Hunter didn't insist on trying to kill it again and again. Then again, the title refers to the Great White Hunter as it does the Tyrannosaur.
- The climax of The Iron Giant features the US Military hounding the giant again and again. When he snaps, it is truly epic. To be fair, one man was basically goading them by lying about the giant's motives, and the military gets a lot better when the reasonable people point out the obvious.
- Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - National Security Advisor Galloway actually makes demands to Optimus Prime and his allies that they share their weapons with them. After declining the demand, under the assumption that the humans will use the weapons to wreak destruction on each other, he then actually has the BALLS to imply that Earth could kick them out anytime they want. Optimus then states that while freedom is their right, he ominously concludes what would happen when the Decepticons invade their planet and they are not there to offer assistance. This finally convinces Galloway to shut his trap. Need I remind any non-Transformer fans that Optimus is a giant two-story robot who could easily punch through a building?
- It gets worse. As soon as Optimus dies, Galloway's balls grow back and he makes good on his threat to try and kick them out. This is when BFG specialist Ironhide no longer has anyone holding back his desire to use said weapons on the humans, which he has expressed several times. That he doesn't is nothing less than astounding. Thankfully, Galloway gets owned by the rebellious military faction loyal to Prime later on.
- Happens briefly in the first Spider-Man movie, where Peter is called a freak by one jock after he beats another up.
- Con Air. Nicholas Cage's character Cameron Poe finds himself in prison because a few drunks in a bar decided to bully him. What makes this go from a mere bar brawl to suicidal stupidity was that Poe was a US Army Ranger in full uniform (including tabs, which MOST people know is universal shorthand for Bad Ass) at the time—and that the bullies escalated from words to an actual attack. Ranger hand to hand combat training takes over, the bullies die by the numbers, and Poe finds himself facing a judge who doesn't go in for 'self defense' pleas.
- First Blood: After Rambo beating the hell out of the jackass police officers, they're told by the guy that trained him that they're lucky to be alive and they should let Rambo cool down. They ignore this sage advice.
Literature
- Carrie's mother from Stephen King's Carrie. Unlike Carrie's jackass classmates who knew nothing of her telekinetic powers, Ms. White was all too well aware of her daughter's potential so her persistant abuse of Carrie definitely classifies as Bullying A Dragon bordering with Too fanatically pious to live.
- The Dursleys in Harry Potter. In what little fairness that could be mustered, it is illegal for Harry and other wizards to retaliate via magic, but that doesn't stop Hagrid and Harry on occasion.
- They also seemed to think that they could "stamp the magic out" of him by treating him badly.
- A similar incident turned Dumbledore's siter Ariana into a squib.
- Pointing this trope out is how Zedd drives off a lynch mob after him in the first book of the Sword Of Truth series. The mob is going after him because they believe he has terrible magic powers, so Zedd asks them to list what some of these powers might be, and once they do, Zedd points out how brave these men must be to come after a Person Of Mass Destruction with nothing but torches and pitchforks. This is enough to make them back down, though Zedd throws in an additional mind game to make them really sorry.
- In the Deepgate Codex books, we have Carnival, who is the scapegoat of the eponymous city. To be fair, they have reason to hate her—she kills one of their citizens every month to sustain herself—but they tend to take things a little too far by blaming her for every little thing. In one of the books, she's just looking for a safe place to hide when a little girl wanders up to her; the girl's mother grabs her away, starts screaming "Don't you touch her, bitch!" at Carnival, and calls the guards down. The mother then reports that Carnival had attacked them to the Church (which tries to hunt her down), when all she did was run away.
- People try to bully Drizzt a lot, on the assumption that he's a normal evil drow. Amusingly, the fact that he isn't is the only reason they don't end up holding their intestines with their hands.
- Bullying any drow pretty much constitutes Bullying A Dragon and makes the bully Too Dumb To Live.
- If the drow isn't already bullying/killing you, there's something strange going on, and there's a reasonable chance you may even live. (Which is not to say it's a sensible risk to take.)
- In two books (The Wizard Heir andThe Dragon Heir) there is a girl named Madison who is a witch. People frequently blame her for the many fires that happen around town. This is disproved when the fires are revealed to have been being started by the son of a prominent businessman that wants the mountain Madison lives on because the mountain has a very large deposit of coal that he wants to mine. The boy, even though he's a wizard, takes this to extremes by eventually trying to burn down Madison's house, with her and her younger siblings inside, claiming that the town knew something was wrong with her and all he had to do was point the finger at her and they'd all believe him because of his position.
Live Action TV
- Non-powered example: Veronica Mars demonstrates over and over that a) she's very helpful to have on your side when you're in trouble and b) she can and will mess you up if she feels like it. Doesn't matter; everyone at Neptune High continues to mock her and treat her as a scorned outcast.
- Lampshaded in season three when Veronica asks Dick how after all he's seen her do, he still doesn't fear her.
- In early episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, it was known to all that at the very least Buffy had burned down the gym at her previous High School, yet people like Cordelia and Harmony picked on her anyway.
- In Volume 5 of Heroes, Edgar the Knifethrower deliberately starts a feud with amnesiac arch-villain Sylar, not only despite but even because of Sylar apparently having a well-known reputation amongst the superpowered community as an unstoppable brain-stealing murder machine. Sure, Edgar is Darth Maul and amnesiac Sylar is quite mild-mannered, but it still looks like Edgar is just asking for trouble.
- In Dexter, it's really not a good idea to threaten the title character, or especially his family, but most people don't know that he's a serial killer. There are the occasional exceptions, like Lila, and Miguel Prado
- Many episodes of The A Team have some incredibly small and weedy looking men attempting to push an angry looking Mr.T around, and then actually looking surprised when they get thrown through a window.
- In an episode of The Twilight Zone, a dead boy revives in the middle of his funeral, which leads the townspeople to believe that his corpse was possessed by a demon. As the episode progresses, these people decide to attempt to force the young man out of town. The boy gets them to back down by invoking this very trope by stating that if he really is a demon, then they would have more sense to treat him nicely because he could really mess up their lives if he decided to.
Tabletop Games
- In the Tabletop RPG Shadowrun, magic users are looked upon with distrust and fear by a large segment of the population, and many actively discriminate against them, often on religious grounds.
- Though the exact measure of this trope varies. In Shadowrun, most awakened NPCs (especially those who don't work in the shadows and don't invest in furthering their talents) have such a low magic stat that in most case they aren't necessarily more dangerous then your average street kid with off-the-rack augmentations. It's when Muggles decide to taunt the PC who was born with a maxed out magic stat that this trope comes into play.
- There's also that in Shadowrun, while some people may try to socially or legally discriminate against mages, very few people actually try to beat one up. (Although they will sometimes try to shoot the mage in the head, from ambush, but that's really the most sensible way of going about fighting a mage anyway.)
- This is also true of sorcerers, youngsters with innate magical talent, in Dungeons & Dragons; while young sorcerers are indeed easy to persecute if you are a hapless villager, in about five levels they'll learn how to vaporize the main square.
- Warlocks suffer an even worse treatment (due to their powers often but not always having a demonic origin) and Complete Arcane (the book introducing the class) points out how it should be standard for most settings to scorn, resent and persecute warlocks. Given that warlocks are casters who have an unlimited store of spells (unlike the sorcerer, who will eventually run dry), and have a built-in, 60-foot range weapon that ignores armor and shields, this really makes no sense.
- Well, even the smallest villages and towns are likely to have a 5th-to-7th level ranger, so maybe they just don't understand Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards?
- This is partly because 5% of very small towns (thorps, hamlets) get a special +10 modifier to the normal maximum level of rangers or druids.
- There is also half-dragons who are almost always treated badly by humans in Dungeons And Dragons. Yes, they think it's a good idea to pick of the person with claws and sharp teeth who can breath dangerous substances and often has a parent that can level the town.
- The same for the Wizards and Psykers of Warhammer and Warhammer 40000 respectively. The Wizards normally don't give a damn about what peasants think but soldiers love them, and psykers, well, their powers come from Chaos...
- Considering that psykers are incredibly vulnerable to Power Incontinence, Demonic Possession, and in more than a few occasions having their skull turned into a portal to allow The Legions Of Hell to overrun the planet, this trope becomes even more ridiculous if treatment of them within the Imperium wasn't less "ostracism" and more "immediate execution".
Video Games
- In The Witcher the eponymous Witchers have to take a lot of verbal abuse from normal people. None of them stops to ponder whether it's smart to mock someone who you'll need when you're once again troubled by some undead menace (a common occurrence in this world), and who can break the finest human fighters in half with his superhuman mutant reflexes and Healing Factor.
- Phantom Brave: The People of Ivoire think main character Marona is "The Possessed One" who can kill them all. So they hire her to solve their problems, insult her, then cheat her out of payment. They do get better.
- Probably the funniest/most Wallbanging moment had to be the one little girl's mother who pulled the example mentioned in the Deepgate entry, sans the cursing.
- City Of Heroes: The thoughts running through every single street gangsters' alleged mind must be: "I live in a city where people wielding earth-shattering powers run around dressed in bright colored spandex. I'm bored and I have a baseball bat. Let's attack the very next person we see dressed like that!" The only question is whether it's dumber when they're attacking any hero they see or when they're entirely ignoring REALLY powerful heroes bearing down on them as if they weren't even there.
- The second one is very clearly a useful survival strategy. Most of the time, heroes of a high enough level to mop the floor with a spawn of villains won't get enough XP from it for them to bother, but if the villains went around hitting first...
- "Just pretend he isn't there, and he'll go away..."
- After a few days of lockdown in Devil Survivor, mobsters start to hunt down devil tamers. This either end with killing a tamer who was trying to save them or a pissed tamer countering with summon demons.
- The beginning of Overlord II has kids tossing snowballs and taunting the Witch-boy, a Creepy Child who blasts lightning with his hands and gains controls of vicious little Minions early on. It Gets Worse later on when after being tossed out of Nordberg by the village for The Empire, frozen in a block of ice and later raised by an Evil Chancellor, he returns as a full-fledged Evil Overlord ready to either enslave or slaughter Nordberg.
- Blanka's intro in Street Fighter 4 shows him, an eight-foot-tall, muscular ogre with electricity powers, being taunted by the people of his hometown. Great plan, folks.
- Ar Tonelico has an evil company of mercenaries that actively abuse and denigrate their magic-wielding partners. This is doubly stupid, since there's the obvious "oops I fireballed your face" factor plus being mean to them severely limits the power of the abilities they can use to help you.
- In Yggdra Union, Gulcasa was born the first pureblooded descendant of the dragon Brongaa in hundreds of years. This made him a savior to his people, and gave him the right to the throne. The previous Emperor did not like this, and under his orders, Gulcasa was treated as a harbinger of disaster and abused throughout his childhood. Too bad for the Emperor of that time that Gulcasa is literally the descendant of a demonic dragon. At least the coup d'etat was over really fast. There was much rejoicing.
- Done in Arc The Lad: when they find a more-or-less 5 years old child who's already able to kill soldiers by summoning flammes, Seiyras scientists decide to turn him into a guinea pig: the adult version of said kid, last survivor of a genocide, tortured during his childhood eventually team up with the world most wanted terrorist and is instrumental in destroying the Ancient Conspiracy for which the scientists worked.
- Two of the Masters in Fate Stay Night have a real problem with this. The first is Shinji, who only evades being killed because it would upset Sakura, Rider's real master. The second is not so lucky and is in fact dead quite a while before the story starts. Caster's Master was jealous of how much better a magus she was, so he put a power limiter on her and then abused her. She got tired of it and tricked him into using up his Command Seals then brutally murdered him.
- If you choose the "Earthborn" origin in Mass Effect (You were born on Earth, orphaned, and grew up on the streets), you eventually run into a former member of a gang you used to be a member of. Commander Shephard is both the commanding officer of a Black Ops Human Alliance Ship, and a Specter, essentially given carte blanche by the Galactic Council to do whatever they want. Your "friend" tries to blackmail you, because apparently he thinks revealing that you were a former gang member would ruin you; even though the Alliance and Council are willing to look the other way if mow down mind controlled civilians or exterminate an entire race. You can choose to point out that you're legally authorized to execute him where he stands... or you can just shoot him.
Western Animation
- Disney's Hercules has kids mocking the title character and calling him "Jerkules" specifically for his superhuman abilities making him a "freak".
- In Billy & Mandy, Nergal Junior is constantly bullied in school. Even though everyone knows he's a shapeshifter with electric tentacles.
- X-Men: With the powers that crop up, this tends to happen a lot.
- The writers of the original cartoon seemed aware of this, and supplied a harmless but visible mutant - a timid little man with fur, Neanderthal features and claws instead of fingernails - as a recurring background character constantly harassed by mobs.
- X-Men Evolution was probably one of the worst offenders, with one bully named Duncan trying to threaten Cannonball. Yeah, threaten the guy who you just saw blow a hole in a brick wall by accident, there's a life-lengthening move. He doesn't even have the brains to back down when the magma-creating girl threatens to burn a hole through his car. This isn't even the half of it. The X-Men team in Evolution had a mostly offense-oriented team, with about half of them having some variation on "shoot deadly stuff from hands" as a main power. Of particular note, people kept on bullying Scott, despite the fact that every time they did there was a good chance he'd accidentally blow a hole in the wall (or them).
- To compliment the last point, there's also another little gem to show off Duncan's incredible intelligence. After Jean dumps him because he's a jackass he tries to get Scott expelled for using his powers... by stealing his glasses and trying to beat him up with two other friends! Eye beams! Deadly! It's like they want to die.
- Duncan might be something of a subversion, though, because while he does bully dragons, he is smart enough to pick on the ones that either can't or won't skin his sorry ass alive. He harasses the X-Men because he knows they go out of their way to not use powers to stay in school, and won't rough him up too badly outside. He's smart enough to know that pulling this crap with the Brotherhood or Magneto's crew would get him killed in an instant. While all this does make him smarter than the average dragon bullier, it also makes him twice the asshole.
- Of course, Duncan does eventually bite off more than he can chew. After Spyke, back from being Put On A Bus and having taken a level in badass while gone, shows Duncan and his cronies that he won't stand by and put up with their shit, Duncan decides to get some mining lasers and explosives to teach Spyke and the other Morlocks (sewer-dwelling mutants) a lesson. Granted, Spyke did blow up his car, so he wasn't thinking clearly. Even though he brought a ton of friends to even the odds, this very stupid and very public display of violence ends with him getting trounced by the X-Men and arrested (then presumably jailed for a good long time). Regardless of the attitude toward mutants, destruction of city property is not looked kindly upon.
- The X-Men franchise as a whole is basically an Aesop for persecution, oppression, etc. Pick something that can make someone different: race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., you name it, that's what The X-Men is about. Of course, it also happens to be literally about people with superpowers, which can make it into a Fantastic Aesop in the hands of poor writers: yeah, it's wrong to be mean to people who are different than you, but the fact that they can shoot laser beams from their eyes shouldn't be your main prejudice deterrent.
- In an odd, "friendly" case, the Teen Titans episode, "The Beast Within". Specifically, Robin's um, "questioning" of a possibly unstable Beast Boy, and with predictably disastrous results. To be fair, this almost seems have been intentional, by the writers — it seems like the kind of Patton-esque personnel management tactic that a scared, stressed out teenager raised by Batman might think was a good idea to try in a crisis.
- In the episode "Troq", Val Yor openly belittles Starfire to her face with a racial epithet directed toward Tamaranians, despite her species' Super Strength, durability, Flight, ability to withstand vacuum, energy attacks with occasional Eye Beams, and advanced technology being common knowledge. And apparently multiple aliens have this attitude toward Tamaranians. To be fair, however, while us lowly humans would no doubt be threatened by such a line up, Val Yor has powers nearly equal to hers (minus space breathing and somewhat weaker energy projection), so, from his perspective, the dragon isn't all that tough (though this does make you wonder why he treats the puny, primitive earthlings with respect while the alien princess from an advanced, superpowered society gets treated worse than dirt).
- One fanon theory was that over the passage of time several space-faring societies saw the Tamaranian's naturally happy surface personalities, assumed they would be an easy species to conquer, and then got their rear ends handed to them. The Troq insult is literally a galaxy-wide case of sour grapes. It was also suggested that Starfire's traumatic past is why she was more prone to be hurt by the insult then you would think.
- Subverted in Ed Edd N Eddy: Ed is unbelievably strong, yet he allows himself to get bullied by almost everyone. Sadly, he's just too stupid to realize he could probably kick Kevin's ass. In the movie he does kick the ass of Eddy's much feared older brother though.
- ...As seen in the episode where he was in a bad mood. He inspired genuine fear in his little sister Sarah, he brought his strength to bear against the same people who usually have no trouble antagonizing him, and in lieu of drumming his fingers impatiently against the tree stump he was sitting on, he dug tracks into it with his fingernails. Hell, even the skies darkened over him. Good thing he got went back to his goofy lovable self by the end of the episode.
- For the curious, there was a rock in his shoe.
- An episode of The Venture Brothers combines this with Mugging The Monster. A random bar owner constantly insults Brock's hairdo, and while he likely did not know that Brock is a secret agent who normally murders people who show him disrespect and has a license to kill (which he likes to use with gusto but had expired at that point), Brock was still twice the man's size (in muscle) and had biceps bigger than the man's head. Combined with his perpetual angry scowl, you'd think he'd know better than to insult the guy who looks like he could bench press an armoured vehicle and is looking for any excuse to blow off steam.
- And of course the first thing Brock does after his License to Kill is renewed? Show it to the guy, who insulted him again on the way in. Cue the Oh Crap.
- Parodied in The Simpsons, where one of Ranier Wolfcastle's films involves him going undercover as a nerd at a high school. Ranier Wolfcastle is a huge, muscle bound actor, but he's dressed as a nerd so obviously some bullies try to pick on him. They even lampshade it by saying "Look, a huge, muscle bound nerd!" It ends with Wolfcastle *throwing one of the bullies through the chest of the other*.
Web Comics
- The first episode of minus.
- It happens a few times later in the comic. It depends on her mood whether she'll retaliate or go do something else. Later on other kids start to realize that it's cool to have someone who can warp the fabric of reality as a friend. Unfortunately, asking her for a favor can be just as bad.
- A plot-arc on Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic had the human inhabitants of a village relentlessly bullying both a female Orcish innkeeper and her young daughter, who is able to bite through chunks of wood and drive a large metal spike into a board with one hand. It appeared the trope had been subverted when the pair was suddenly kidnapped from the village by a raiding party of unrelated orcs, but the daughter eventually returned to wreak bloody vengeance.
- Gunnerkrigg Court: Jack, who made an accidental trip into Zimmy's world, viciously teases Kat (whose parents are teachers) and Annie (who is friends with two god-like Trickster Mentors as well as most of the staff). Earlier he edged into Too Dumb To Live territory when he threatened Annie in front of one of the said trickster mentors, who was a giant wolf at the time (he casually brushed it off. Once you've been to Zimmy's world nothing in this one can scare you).
- A flashback had a student (coincidentally Jack's ancestor) teasing Surma's group after one of them conjured a giant portal. The portal-conjuring student, according to Word Of God, is a Valkyrie and her "Old Man" is Odin.
- Stunt and Bumper in Dominic Deegan insistently kept trying to rob the eponymous character, despite them knowing he's a capable magic user who can see the future. The stuff they kept stealing would inevitably be worthless and booby-trapped.
Web Original
- Occurs in Whateley Universe to Tennyo, who has very, very bad luck. Unfortunately, she can also blow up very big things.
- Proving that the Whateley authorities are not as stupid as you'd think, Tennyo now has a special order on her. Taunting her, bullying her, starting a fight with her, etc., can now subject you to immediate expulsion!
- There has only been one case where this is not so. Let me just say that it involved the simulators, the reincarnation of the Greek god of the underworld and two hackers. Greek God has issues and wasn't expelled. Those who set it up, however...
- Said reincarnation didn't get expelled because he was trying to commit Suicide By Cop. He's in a rubber room instead. The two hackers got a lot worse than just expelled.
- Most of the "Class X Entity" students fall under this — Fey, for example, is a Wiz-7 — a mutant/mage so powerful that her special order says that the corrupt Mutant Control Office has pre-approval to use lethal force on her if she gets out of line.
- Pointed out to Carl, after he provoked the former top Ultraviolent: "First it's you getting mixed up with demon-girl, then you aggravate Merry, and now you can't leave the giant clawed, spined mutant kid who tears the demons apart like a wolf in a chicken hatchery alone? When will you learn?" Minutes after this admonition, Carl taunts said "spined mutant kid" AGAIN, resulting in a beatdown ending with the loss of a femur.
- Carl's a young werewolf, and is thinking with his nose, so to speak.
- How about Gotterdammerung? He's a skinny, cute kid who gets picked on a lot. His power is mass disintegration. He isn't going to kill you, so he's easy to bully.
- Happens to Mackenzie Blaise, the half-demon protagonist at Tales Of MU. She's super-strong, invulnerable to non-magical attacks, and can conjure fire at will, but she's had it impressed on her that she doesn't dare fight back.
Real Life
- Fans at WWE, TNA, or other Professional Wrestling shows who jump the rails to attack the wrestlers or interfere in the matches to get themselves over... especially considering even the very, VERY tiniest wrestlers weigh at least 160 pounds and probably bench twice that; even the women typically have the ability to fuck you right up without messing up their hair. Typically the fans who do this look like they'd lose to a stiff breeze. Occasionally becomes hilarious when the referee of all people knocks the intruder out.
- Then there was the time Triple H and some other talent was doing a promotional stunt with MTV. Some mouth-breather in the crowd thought it was a good idea to throw rocks at them...
- One hilarious example came from a Wrestling Observer article regarding a WWE house show in Jonesboro, Arkansas: a 'fan' jumped the barricade, punched out a guard, charged into the ring and attempted a double-leg takedown (right out of amateur wrestling or mixed martial arts) onto Gregory Helms. When taken down, Helms promptly swept his would-be assailant, ended up in the mount and promptly started raining down elbow strikes until his nominal opponents, security, the referee and even the ring announcer interceded.
- There would also Ring Of Honor Final Battle 2008 when a fan attempted to shove heel Austin Aries off of the entrance ramp — Aries promptly turned around and started throwing haymakers. Without venue security in sight for some time, it ended up falling on the referee Paul Turner to de-escalate the situation, for which he received a standing ovation that actually delayed the show's continuation.
- Often times, many bullies find it more fun to pick on someone who is very violent in response. This is part of the reason my sister was bullied as badly as she was. She would fight, throw things, chase them, and wonder why they would come back for more knowing she isn't someone you would mess with.
- Part of the strategy of the Pearl Harbor attack against America was to intimidate the USA from fighting Japan as it swept through the Dutch East Indies. Despite the significant blow to its Pacific Fleet, America abandoned its previous isolationist stance and fully committed to entering World War II.
- Famously happened to Andre "The Giant" Roussimoff, who was harassed about his size by four drunks in a bar. Andre attempted to avoid confrontation, but they persisted. Eventually, he chased them out of the bar, and when they locked themselves in their car, he rolled their car over with them in it. Andre was never charged, probably because the police never believed the four drunk guys ranting about an angry giant that knocked their car over.
- Honorable mention: "Tickling the Dragon's Tail" is a name given to an experiment performed at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. It involved allowing a sample of fissile fuel to reach a state very close to critical mass, and then monitor the results. The procedure carried a lot of risk, as going just a little bit further could nuke the whole complex.
- "Nuke the whole complex" is not an accurate way to describe it; critical mass does not mean nuke happens.
- There is an old story from the Manhattan Project (don't know whether it's true), where they were conducting an experiment in which they dropped a piece of uranium through a hole in another nearly-critical piece, very briefly attaining critical mass, so they could measure the radiation coming out of it. Bad idea. The piece got stuck, and the sample began to advance toward meltdown, so one of the scientists ran up to it and jammed at it with a pen until the piece fell through. He then walked to the chalkboard and calculated the radiation doses of himself and the other scientists, and calmly concluded that the other scientists were fine (except they didn't know about cancer), but he would be dying very soon. He was right.
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