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Good grief, Charlie Brown.
If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well. If its not worth doing, give it to Rimmer.
Claret: And what valliant deeds did your employers do? Nodwick: They valiantly fed me to a hydra, sundered an ancient seal with my head, and spoiled an evil wizard's spell by substituting my nose for one of the spell components. Huzzah. — Nodwick
Paul: Hey, it's the comic relief! Entertain us, monkey!
C-3PO: We seem to be made to suffer; It's our lot in life.
The character who is always the butt of the demeaning joke or the "put him through hell" plotline. Nothing ever goes right for this character, he's constantly abused by pretty much everyone he knows, even his so-called friends, and if something bad is going to happen to someone, chances are, it's going to be him. Long story short, it sucks to be the Butt Monkey.
The Butt Monkey generally doesn't do anything to earn all the crap that happens to him, other than being a recurring target that's easy to mess with without wrecking the show's continuity.
The direct opposite of a Karma Houdini. 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 he's pushed too far.
If the audience sympathizes with them, they become The Woobie. If, however, the character's suffering is Played For Laughs and the reason the audience loves them is because of all the crap they get put through, they're generally The Chew Toy. On the other hand, if the audience begins to resent the 'unfair' treatment of the character, they can become the Designated Monkey.
See also: Costanza, Baldrick, The Unfavourite, Did Not Eat The Mousse. Is nearly always on the receiving end of Comedic Sociopathy.
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Examples
Anime and Manga
- Nanako Shichigusa from Amazing Nurse Nanako.
- Played seriously in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Shinji Ikari is constantly bullied and ignored (even by his father), even though he saves the world. Multiple times. And in the more light-hearted Sit Com scenes in the first half of the series, guess who is the butt of every humiliating joke? Imagine Charlie Brown with a giant robot.
- That gimmick was still pretty funny for a while... until it turned into all kinds of horrifying and disturbing.
- Nearly the entire Fourth Division (the Captain is the only one who is spared, because the bullies are afraid of her) from Bleach, especially Hanataro Yamada, are frequently looked down upon by the Eleventh Division and are given grunt duties because their specialty is healing, not fighting. P.S. Guess who he's voiced by?
- Among the Espada, Yammy. In all his fights with the good guys, he has made a fool of himself. To be fair, the two first times he ended up fighting Urahara Kiskue, and when Uryu attacked him he was prepared, but still.
- 7th Division Lieutenant Tetsuzaemon Iba gets this quite a bit in the omakes, especially as president of the Shinigami Men's association, which ends up being pushed around and often having its funding cut. He also gets treated somewhat poorly in the potentially last battle, where he ends up running from Poww until Komamura saves him, and then tries to attack Allon, but is blown away by a Cero in a matter of seconds.
- All of them pales in comparison of the Butt Monkey-ness of Omaeda Marechiyo, Vice Captain of the 2nd squad. Aside of being abused in daily by Soi Fon, he had the honor of being taken out in one punch by Ichigo. Then in the Arrancar invasion arc, he finally did a Crowning Moment Of Awesome... only to negate it by reverting into his Upper Class Twit self and the Fraccion he just beat comes back ready to kick his ass and ends up dead by a thrown rock, not by his power. Then he ran off in full fear when Barragan chases him (it's justified, though). Then in the Zanpakutou Tales filler, he didn't get to beat his Zanpakutou Gegetsuburi, Ichigo defeated him first, and then Ikkaku, a third seat officer, belittles him "It's Omaeda. Who cares about him." And then, Mayuri bissects and presumably destroyed Gegetsuburi, but since it's Ichigo who beats him, it doesn't return to Omaeda, now leaving him presumably without Zanpakutou.
- Keitaro from Love Hina; if it is bad, it happens to him, or he is blamed for it. The worst is almost always thought of him, no matter what he does. With violent results. He gets Character Development, and becomes lusted over by the other women once he starts behaving more competently.
- This is Lampshaded later in the manga when Keitaro suggests he has some kind of resistance to injury. He tells Naru (after they have fallen off a cliff) that it would be dangerous for Naru to fall but he would have no problem with it.
- Being around and eventually in love with Keitaro seems to bring out Naru's inner Butt Monkey, and if she is not a victim of his being an Accidental Pervert, then she is a victim of her friends' dubious efforts to 'help' the would-be couple. This may also apply to Shinobu, whose own efforts to win Keitaro may have 'infected' her. Almost any time she takes the other girls' advice to win their 'game', she suffers some mishap, triply so if this help comes from Kaolla Su.
- Haré from Haré+Guu.
- Manabu Kuchiki from Genshiken; when he joins the Genshiken, he becomes the frequent recipient of Saki's violence, once simply for being there. The others have him do grunt work at Comifest, leading to him going a entire day buying their doujinshi without food or water. However, unlike most buttmonkeys, he entirely deserves it, knows that, and accepts it all without complaint. In fact, he seems to like it; early on, he cheerfully declares himself to be a "shameless servant", and his masochistic streak causes him to smile whenever the Genshiken mistreat him. Except when they tied him to a lamp in volume 7 of the manga to keep him from peeping on the girls' bathing. Then he complained... for about ten seconds. And it was mostly acting.
- He's also highly self-sabotaging; the one time he was shown to be underneath a fairly
decent human being, managing to stop a thief from stealing from their stall, his reaction to the Not What It Looks Like that inevitably followed was to... wear the dress. In the middle of the crowded university. And scare off potential members.
- To be fair, Kuchiki is a complete and utter tool, all the time. Considering how likeable and "well-adjusted" Kio Shimoku makes the rest of the uber-geek Genshiken members, Kuchiki's behaviour is not only annoying, but embarrassing. Despite the Genshiken members acknowledging his creepy behaviour, they still include him as a form of loyalty.
- Every diclonius and even some humans suffer extreme Butt Monkey effects on the anime Elfen Lied.
- But nobody does it better than our Nana, though Manga-version Yuka is competitive, often placing herself in ecchi situations, to the point she even stops hitting Kouta for them. Even a primal Tsundere can hit this point, it seems.
- The titular character of the anime Naruto is the resident buttmonkey at the beginning of the series.
- Taniguchi (to a minor extent) in Suzumiya Haruhi. In Haruhi-chan It Got Worse. And let's just say it is not good to be the Computer Club president, unless you enjoy flying kicks to the head (and hey, some do).
- Furthermore, Taniguchi's voice actor Shiraishi "Sebastian" Minoru in Lucky Star.
- Yoki from the original manga version of Fullmetal Alchemist is fired soon after he appears after Ed tricked him into selling the coal mines he was in charge of. After he sells out the Ishvalans, they force him to become Scar's slave, he gets attacked by a midget panda, and everyone thinks he's worthless (he is). Envy soon learns that he can't even use him as a hostage as the rest of the cast just say their goodbyes to him (they were bluffing). Of course he totally deserves it as he's an obnoxious loser.
- You left out spineless.
- Vato Falman also qualifies. First he gets assigned the task of keeping an eye on Barry, which means he's stuck in his quarters with a crazy armored serial killer. His only contact with the outside seems to be Havoc, who just boasts about his new girlfriend. When he's transferred to Northern Headquarters, he does indeed get a promotion, but he has to constantly remind Ed and Al about it, and despite it his whole job seems to be picking ice off the ceiling. And believe it or not, readers who wanted to figure out who Pride was had guessed him. But in fact, Pride has a connection with Selim Bradley instead.
- Havok gets his far share of suffering. The fore-mentioned girlfriend actually paralyzed him from the waist down and Roy had to burn his wounds to keep him from bleeding to death. I'm pretty sure that was the end of that relationship.
- How many times has Winry had to build a replacement for Ed's right arm again? Honestly, I'll bet that once he gets his real arm back he'll lose it in five minutes.
- If you go by the first anime, he does. Actully it's more like 2 minutes.
- Kawachi from Yakitate!! Japan. Though in the beginning he was a bit of a Jerk Ass, the series soon began abusing him seemingly for the hell of it. If there was something painful or humiliating happening, it happened to Kawachi. The people that were supposed to be his friends and supporters without fail insulted, dismissed, and derided him behind his back, or sometimes to his face. One entire plot point was even dedicated to him having to be a complete screwup on purpose... after which the characterization was apparently absorbed utterly and his Flanderization was complete.
- Don't forget Kageto, who is ignored by everyone in the series, despite keeping the store going while everyone jaunts off to the next Tournament Arc.
- Kageto practically defines this trope. He is so full of suck that he actually gets Yukino, the show's psychopathic Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, to pity him.
- Sunohara Youhei of Clannad. Even his cute little sister treats him poorly.
- He gets redeemed a bit in the ~After Story~ when his little sister worried about his future — only to be smacked down hard in the following episodes. Literally.
- Kuririn in Dragonball. The man's died four times, he Cant Catch Up and his signature attack, likely the most deadly in the manga, just can't score a critical hit.
- Even sadder in that by the end of the series, Krillin has trained and powered-up to the point that he's probably the single strongest human being who ever lived. But compared to all the various aliens, magical beings and cyborgs zipping around, he's a relative weakling.
- Hell, The Abridged Series even has a Krillin Owned Count.
- Yamcha in the same series warrants mention. Once he died, he suffered permanent Cant Catch Up and loses Bulma to Vegeta as a result.
- His character didn't really develop though, so Bulma really left him because he was too immature. Still sad though.
- He smashed crotchfirst onto his opponent's head once. CROTCHFIRST.
- Which was made even worse by the fact that his opponent was a nerdy guy in glasses and a pocket protector possessed by God. Hitting below the belt is usually against the rules in that particular tournament, but Kami was acting like it was an accident and he was a nerd in glasses at the freakin' World Martial Arts Tournament. The announcer let it slide.
- In The Abridged Series, Raditz is pretty much this to Vegeta and Nappa. So much so, that they use "a Raditz" as their measuring unit. They can even grow monsters that are exactly the same strength, rendering him completely useless. Needless to say, he's not very happy about it at all.
- Keiichi from Ah My Goddess. Even in the pilot his life sucks so much that Heaven sends a goddess to grant him a wish to make up for it. Even though he gets a Magical Girlfriend out of the deal, he also becomes target number one for the former most popular girl at his school, Belldandy's sisters, a demon, the queen of Hell, and sometimes even Belldandy herself.
- On the other hand, he gets better digs (the temple), a job he likes (Whirlwind), a woman's love (Belldandy), and probably a life more interesting and enjoyable than he would have otherwise had. Not an easy one, but worth it perhaps?
- Now, if only he could just spit it out already...
- I can't disagree with you on that. Seinen Syndrome is a harsh thing.
- Eureka 7 starts main lead Renton Thurston as a Butt Monkey,particularly in episode 7, where he's given a completely bogus and embarrassing mission as a joke. (Namely, find an informant in the sauna that wears a toupee and has a legendary animal tattoo while wearing a fake mustache and a helmet.) Although This Troper thought the comedy died when Renton starts crying from happiness that they trusted him to complete his mission, and gives a 2 minute speech about how much he wants to protect everyone, even if the world turns on him, how he needs to become better to save innocent people, etc. And then they laugh at him. And put an embarrassing picture on a popular magazine. While his girlfriend was present.
- Natsuki in both Mai-HiME and Mai-Otome. Having one's underwear stolen and eaten? Being forced to Show Some Leg to hitch a ride back to school/town? Falling into an easily-avoidable trap set by a Trickster Goddess? It's funny how the most serious member of the cast is always the one to take the comedic pratfalls.
- Jonathan Joestar from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Dio made Jonathan's life absolute hell by burning his dog, stealing his girlfriend's first kiss, turning his friends against him and killing his father. This is all BEFORE he uses Jonathan's own blood to turn himself into a vampire. He almost gets his revenge,until Dio Beheads him in the last chapter of his story, while nothing more then a HEAD, and uses his body to kill his grandson, his great-great-grandson's friend, and almost the great-great-grandson himself
- On the plus side, the two times he got into a straight-up fight with Dio, he beat the everloving hell out of him... to the point Dio burst out crying after his first beating. Dio had to ambush him to kill him.
- The Claymores in the series titled after them are infused with the blood of Yoma, the monsters they are trained to fight and will eventually become them if they exert themselves too much; plus, if they start asking too many questions, the organization will send them on suicide missions to shut them up. The main character, Clare, generally has it the worst, since she started out as a human who was a companion to the most powerful Claymore, only to have her killed before her eyes. Her body is then used to turn Clare into a Claymore herself, except since she's only a quarter Yoma, she's the lowest ranked Claymore and everyone looks down on her.
- Tamaki from Code Geass.
- More so, Jeremiah "Orange-kun" Gottwald, that is, until he became a Ensemble Darkhorse.
- What about the main character? Lelouch "One the universe hates" vi Brittania?
- Kaidoh from The Prince Of Tennis can be counted as Seigaku's buttmonkey in some Slice Of Life-like anime chapters. Just see episode 22 named "Kaoru's Misfortune": Can't finish his morning lap? Check. Is run over by his rival on a bike? Check. Is stepped on by another guy? Check. Is mistaken for a thief? Check...
- As the story advances, his Big Brother Mentor Inui is the one who becomes a Butt Monkey. How many times the guy has been punished for trying to sneak out of something and/or has lost his pants? Specially in the OAV, where the punishments he suffers are even more embarrassing and funny
- Sakuya from Candy Boy gets treated as such, only for being in love with one of a very close pair of twin sisters.
- The titular character in Ode To Kirihito, pretty much from the minute he leaves the hospital. He is inevitably exposed to disease, human cruelty, murder, rape, imprisonment, pretty much everything possible that would destroy a person's faith in mankind. He doesn't even know about what his best friend is capable of as his mental fortitude disintegrates in Kirihito's absence. Here it's played for drama — Kirihito is a good person at heart, but hardens considerably as a result of his experiences.
- In the end, it's implied that his final visit to Japan led Kirihito to dare to hope again.
- Chamo of Mahou Sensei Negima is a mild case; he's constantly abused (punched, stepped on, squashed, etc.) by everyone (mostly Asuna), although he probably deserves it. A more recent battle has an opponent impale him on her horn, where he hangs for a while. He's perfectly fine afterward, of course.
- Also, Chisame seems to be the person most likely to get put into humiliating situations; she's always the first to get caught by Nitta for breaking school rules and seems to always suffer her portion of Clothing Damage in front of the whole class or on stage at a cosplay contest. Not to mention that incident with the clothes eating octopus...
- In the alternate universe series Negima!?, Makie is given the role of the Butt Monkey, especially when it comes to the Baka Rangers segments that appear at the end of a number of episodes.
- Keiichi from Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni seems to be a butt monkey sometimes. Though it may be due to his behavior.
- Satoko was once the butt monkey, within the fandom atleast. Until her death in Meakashi-hen. Even though some still considered her a nuisance until the first arc of the anime version of Kai, the second season.
- Flute, from Violinist Of Hameln (manga continuity only). Despite being the story's heroine, she's constantly bullied around by Hamel — dressed in embarrassing costumes, forced to dance for change, ignored in favor of more attractive characters and even used as a weapon with some frequency. Luckily for her, when things get desperate or when Hamel gets too mean, she usually triumphs thanks to the Divine Cross of Retribution.
- Angel Sanctuary has argueably a cast of them as there is probably none who doesn't get at least a Kick The Dog moment. Though the most suffering is probably Katou Yue, who is not only a drug addict in real life because his father hates him. He gets killed no less than four times throughout the series.
- Dallas Genoard from Baccano! seems to exist for the sole purpose of getting smacked around by every other character he comes in contact with in increasingly painful and embarrassing ways, starting with Firo effortlessly handing him his ass and ending with the Gandor brothers dumping him off to be perpetually drowned at the bottom of the Hudson River. Though, given that he tends to be a grade-A asshole most of the time, it's hard to feel sorry for him.
- Pedro from the Excel Saga anime. Practically tormented every episode, usually accomponied by his famous Big No.
- Patrick Colasaur and Saji Crossroads from Gundam 00 have had very embarrassing and very soul-crippling things done onto them, respectively. Patrick bounces back effortlessly every time; Saji has to work at it.
- Mullin Shetland from Last Exile becomes the series' Butt Monkey when he joins the Silvana crew as a mechanic. Basically, he sucks at it, no-one bothers teaching him anything and every woman he falls for rejects him. A former rifleman who survived 19 battles (where riflemen have a 33% survival rate) he's remarkably Bad Ass at other times of the series- after leaving the crew he ends up single-handedly saving the Anatoray flagship with his Heroic Sacrifice (he gets better).
- Tatewaki does not get any respect whatsoever. Even her profile page consists of a single phrase: "Whatever, really." OUCH.
- Hanai of School Rumble is usually the first target for pranks. In fact, when he tried to play the recorder to remind Mikoto of when they were kids, Mikoto laughed at how bad he was and had forgotten completely.
- In Wedding Peach Abridged, it seems that Limone is punished for his competence.
- Matsuda of Death Note. Everyone on the investigative team doesn't hesitate to point out what an idiot he is. L especially treats him like crap. Of course, he does get his hero moments, particularly at the end.
- Not to mention when he was kidnapped, they kept talking about his belt, never him. And at one point, L says that Matsuda's death would prove the kidnappers to be the second Kira, and so, they should just wait to see how it plays out. Unlike all the other times L gets yelled at for being so causal about human life, no one yells. Even though, y'know, Matsuda, for all his faults, has repeatedly proven his bravery (despite several chances to honourably walk away, he risks his life every day trying to find and capture a supernatural serial killer) and is one of their own. What The Hello Heroes.
- Rito of To-Love-Ru. Poor guy.
- Kotegawa too.
- Zastin gets it even worse. Especially in the Anime.
- Partially, Dante in the Devil May Cry anime. He says that people "usually leave him a bill instead of paying him".
- Shungo of Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun.
- Officer Kuhou of Franken Fran. A perfectly normal cop who managed to be a recurring character in a horror comedy manga. Poor girl had to be temporarily committed to the hospital for phychological analysis after witnessing Body Horror, then later subjected to Cloning Blues by Fran. Each chance meeting with Fran after the first one has her going in sheer hysterics thanks to all her past experiences with her.
- Nami from Sora Wo Kakeru Shoujo gets this treatment from her sisters—with rather nasty consequences.
- All the Dinoforce in Transformers Victory suffer considerable humiliation, but Kakuryu takes the cake. It's a rare episode where he isn't embarrassed or hurt at least twice.
- Angel Densetsu's Kuroda seems one, but his Idiot Ball propels too much of the plot to count. Ogisu on the other hand...
- Medabots gives us Iwanoi (or "Spike" in the dub); while he first enters the series as part of the gang of delinquets and bullies that make the main protagonist's life a misery, he is soon revealed to be a fairly good soul who is more or less bullied into being part of the gang, gets kicked out of it in one episode, and who is so terrible at meda-fighting that he is ranked among the worst players in the world. And the latter isn't just because he's lacking in skill, no, the problem is as much because of his Medabot, the only real friend he has. The Cyandog model of Medabot is a Dog Type Shooting Model, designed to attack from a distance with built-in guns, as is the Crosserdog model he eventually upgrades to. But his Medabot's Medal is a Monkey Type Medal- even without the reference to Japanese mythology of dogs and monkeys being enemies, the Monkey Type Medal is intended for melee models of Medabots, mainly wrestlers. Needless to say, it's no wonder that his Medabot can't fight.
- The blue ogre from Yu Yu Hakusho. He's so pathetically treated by Koenma, we don't even learn his real name (George) until partway through season 3.
- Kenichi of Kenichi The Mightiest Disciple starts out like this, and tries to learn martial arts so that he won't get picked on as much. He doesn't get it as much later on, but it still applies. Nijima also has his fair share of this.
- Mousse and Kuno, from Ranma One Half, are always knocked around or be played as the fool for laughs. Yes, Kuno is an idiot and sometimes that idiocy is the cause of it but it doesn't mean that he deserves it.
- To some extent, Ryoga in the anime version. He is always effortlessly beaten by Ranma and is always always always beaten by the martial artist of the week, even the relatively weak ones.
- Aoki of Hajime No Ippo gets no respect. He's Takamura's number 1 target of bullying (which means you won't live a good life) and he's the worst boxer of the gym. He is however, the only character in the story who has a girlfriend.
- Carrot in Sorcerer Hunters is the ultimate Butt Monkey - for basically everyone.
- Poor Gilbert Nightray. Even the mangaka goes out of her way to abuse him for everyone's amusement.
- While Yokoshima Tadao from Ghost Sweeper Mikami can be said to deserve a fair amount of the abuse Mikami sends after him (we're talking lust incarnate here...), it seems that misfortune makes a concerted effort to seek him out, even when he's not being that lustful.
Comics
- Ziggy
- Erica Pierce from Solar Man of the Atom is a rather unlucky woman. First off, she was with Solar when he had his accident in the reactor which gave her powers as well (she doesn't notice...at first), she later tries to have sex with the titular Solar but is turned down, Solar takes Erica with him outside the universe where she ends up cracking up do to her self-esteem issues, she tries to kill Solar due to the previous trip, Solar later on goes haywire which results in the universe being sucked into a black hole, she survives along with Solar, both of them being sent into a new universe. In the new universe, it's revealed that Erica (a another one albeit the same) has a abusive husband who impregnated her, said baby coming to life with powers similar to Solar, the baby ends up killing herself due to it's power which traumatizes Erica even more, and finally she kills her husband in a fit of rage. She is then killed by the Erica from the previous universe, who takes her son Albert with her into hiding.
- One of the last good things about Mad Magazine after all its old regular artists and writers started dying like flies, Monroe's titular character is a definite example of a Butt Monkey, with ridiculously neglectful parents, a cruel bully who constantly leaves him battered and bloody, his only friend is a nerdy toadlike kid who is the only person liked even less than him, and any spot of hope for him is usually destroyed by the end of the story.
- Herr Starr from Preacher is the recipient of ever-increasing quantities of humiliating violence. As a child, he has one of his eyes put out and goes bald; during the plotline of the comic, he gets raped by a male prostitute, has a large scar carved into his head (which makes it look like a giant penis), has one ear shot off, narrowly escapes cannibals who eat his leg, and finally has his genitals eaten by a Rottweiler, leading to his forlorn use of the phrase "my cock is in the bitch's mouth and not in a good way".
- And finally, to add insult to injury - literally - at the crescendo of his crusade of vengeance against Jesse Custer, he is handed prank binoculars and winds up addressing his troops for his final battle with black circles inked around his eyes.
- Filler Bunny from various Jhonen Vasquez comics was created purely to entertain the audience by being tortured. Appropriately enough, at one point he is even told to climb up inside a monkey's butt.
- Don't forget Todd (Squee) from Jhonen's comic Squee; throughout the series, he gets frequently harassed by space aliens who want to probe him, a gigantic dust mite, and his cyborg-Grandpa; his parents continuously ignore him, the worst offender being his dad, who constantly says stuff like, "I haven't smiled since the day you were born" (at one point he's even seen watching a video of Squee's birth being played in reverse); his classmates constantly pick on him and laugh at him for no apparent reason whatsoever; his only real friends are Shmee (his stuffed bear), Pepito (the son of Satan), and Johnny (Nny); heck, at the end of the series, his parents place him in a mental institution!
- Marvel's Trapster, favored punchline of heroes (especially Spider-Man), despite being reasonably dangerous with his glue-based weaponry. He simply can't live down his initial moniker of "Paste-Pot Pete" (or the costume he wore with it). Just calling him "Pete" usually puts the fight half in the bag.
- The Ringmaster flirts with this status as well; he was once beaten by Howard the Duck.
- Speedball is a bit of a Scrappy, simply for his ridiculous power. For this reason, he's often referenced, at least in the Ultimate line of comics, where he doesn't even EXIST.
- Hank Pym is the Butt Monkey for the Marvel superheroic community. In multiple universes. And it's carried over into the animated adaptations too, thanks to Ultimate Avengers.
- In the Ultimate comics, Captain America gave him a serious beatdown for beating up his wife. Just an example.
- This has gotten kind of ridiculous in recent years, perhaps epitomized by this quote from Mighty Avengers #23 (to give it a certain amount of context, Iron Man has showed up and told Hank he's going to now lead Hank's newly assembled team):
Hank Pym: You can take over from here? You? Tony Stark? Mister Fought-against-Cap-in-the-civil-war, shot-Hulk-into-space-and-caused-World-War-Hulk, gave-the-Skrulls-everything-they-needed-to-invade-Earth. You're taking over? Come on, give me one good reason why—
Iron Man: Three words. You're. Hank. Pym.
- Speaking of that, during the Skrull's infiltration, one Skrull impersonated Pym. Then he complained to the Queen why Pym got no respect, because by impersonating Pym, he's got the butt-end of jokes by many heroes. The Queen's response? "Nobody cares about Pym/Ant Man"
- Pym does have his moments of awesome. For example, the efforts he went to in redeeming himself after his period of psychosis that brought about the original Yellowjacket identity, and his current run with the Mighty Avengers. However, these come so few and far between that it's like every "badass" period is just set up as another grace for him to fall from.
- His Marvel Zombies counterpart was fairly respected amongst his comrades, although he was a Complete Monster even for zombie standards.
- Hank Pym's buttmonkey status was cemented when he recently met Eternity, the Anthropomorphic Personification of everything. The first thing Eternity does after saying hi is punch Hank in the gut. That's right: the universe itself is literally hostile to Hank Pym.
- It Got Worse; Deadpool and Spider-man recently had a "Yo Moma" battle and guess who was the punchline of the joke? Deadpool: Your mother's so fat, Hank Pym had to beat her up in the back of a Quinn Jet.
- After the controversial Civil War storyline in Marvel Comics, several heroes who were on the side of registering metahumans were very unpopular among the fans and turned into Butt Monkeys. Tony Stark, leader of the pro-regs, spent every guest appearance for a month or two afterwards being yelled at and slapped around by other heroes, including getting beaten up by THOR; Tigra, who spied on the anti-regs while being pro-reg the entire time, was shot and beaten by the Hood while barely putting up a fight, constantly screaming "AIIEE", and being videotaped. She also joined Stature in being kidnapped by Puppet Master, almost sold into slavery, and being forced to fight her rescuer, Ms. Marvel (and losing). Interestingly, she also has a relationship with Hank Pym around this time.
- The Hood is later retconned into having earth-shaking magic powers but... yeah.
- Not really, in that same arc he trasnformed into a demon(The same demon he took the Hood from in his mini) and beat the crap of Wolverine. The only thing that was changed later was that he was an agent of Dormmamu and even then he did show magicall abilities in his orginal mini(though he didn't fully control them then) and he was able to beat Shocker, Jack O'Lantern and Constrictor in said mini.
- The Hank Pym Tigra slept with was revealed to be a Skrull and she's now pregnant.
- The aforementioned Stature really deserves her own bullet. Her former team, the Young Avengers, were anti-reg and the others stayed anti-reg after she left. It's possible that the popularity of other members over her and the former cohesiveness of the team made her betrayal seem particularly egregious, which would explain her treatment in the later comics. Stature was kidnapped by Puppet Master, almost sold into slavery and had to fight Ms. Marvel. During this fight, she had a car hit her in the face. She joined a superhero boot camp some unspecified time after Civil War. Other instructors included former supervillains, including Taskmaster, who had fought Stature's superhero dad (Ant Man). New Ant Man Eric O'Grady mocked the former Ant Man to ingratiate himself with Taskmaster. Stature promptly tried to kill him, only for O'Grady to grow to giant size and smack her with a bus. They both were taken down by Taskmaster without Stature hitting O'Grady once. Later at the camp, a clone gone wrong combined with an alien weapon ran around maiming and beating trainees, including her. When she was eventually sent home, she had a screaming fight with her mother and stepfather and accidentally crippled her stepfather during a fight with a supervillain. The only good things were off screen reconciliations with the other Young Avengers and some Epiphany Therapy. Keep in mind that the last time we were updated on her age, she wasn't even fifteen.
- As depicted on www.superdickery.com, almost anyone that ol' Supes encounters becomes a Butt Monkey — he forces Lois and Jimmy to marry apes, leaves civilians in mortal peril (or just refuses to untie them) while he goes to hunt the bad guys....
- Some writers seem to think that the biggest appeal of Spider-Man is that things constantly go wrong for him. As a result, we get countless stories of Peter suffering humiliation, lack of money, sickly aunt, girl trouble and just all round unpleasentness, to the point that reading the stories can actually get a little depressing. Note that after John Romita Sr started working on the title with Stan Lee, the book became much Lighter And Softer than it had been recently, a move which led most fans to label it as the golden age of Spider-Man.
- Tails in the Fleetway Sonic the Comic. He's frequently the victim of Sonic's "strange sense of humour" and the people he rescues tend to complain that they wanted to be saved by Sonic.
- Detective Soap from the Garth Ennis era of The Punisher. Just a few of many examples; Assigned to a joke squad to catch the Punisher after the brass is blackmailed. Sleeps with a tranny, a convict, his own mother, and all three could have been avoided if the one person he thought was his friend said anything. Intimidated by the Punisher into feeding him info on crooks to kill. Regularly gets splashed in bodily fluids. Gets blackmailed himself, left and right. His love interest turns out to be gay. As a CHILD... dropped on his head as a baby, avoided rape because the pastor thought he was ugly... In the end, though, he gets his just rewards. It turns out he has a huge penis and is now a porn star. The gender of his companions is not revealed.
- Charlie Brown from Peanuts. Woodstock and Snoopy have their moments as well.
- Weasel, Bob Agent of Hydra.....Any of Deadpool's side-kicks really.
- With the possible exception of Blind Al, who dished it out as much as she took it.
- Garryn Bek from L.E.G.I.O.N. is almost always the most picked on member of the cast. Nobody in the whole galaxy takes as much punishment and humiliation as Garryn Bek, at least for the first forty issues or so.
Films
Literature
- Agrajag in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy books has his fate intertwined with Arthur Dent's in a unique way. He has been reincarnated as a bowl of petunias, a baby rabbit, and a cricket spectator, not to mention countless flies and other bugs, all of which died at least in part due to Arthur Dent's actions. Agrajag suspects malice on Arthur's part, but Arthur insists it's just "the universe playing silly buggers with the pair of us."
- Reading carefully, it seems indeed every single thing for whose death Arthur is in any part responsible is an incarnation of Agrajag, and every single incarnation of Agrajag is killed at the hands of Arthur. It's understandable that he'd hold a grudge....
- Rincewind, from Terry Pratchett's Discworld. He doesn't just want to be left alone, he actually wants his life to be boring. But due partly to being the pawn of Luck, and partly to his own self-defeating cowardice, he always end up in the middle of some gigantic disaster surrounded by people who want him dead.
- Lampshaded (hilariously) in The Last Hero.
"I do not wish to volunteer for this mission." he said.
"I beg your pardon?" said Lord Vetinari.
"I do not wish to volunteer, sir."
"No one was asking you to."
Rincewind wagged a weary finger. "Oh, but they will, sir. they will. Someone will say: hey, that Rincewind fella, he's the adventurous sort, he knows the Horde, Cohen seems to like him, he knows all there is to know about cruel and unusual geography, he'd be just the job for something like this." He sighed. "And then I'll run away, and probably hide in a crate somewhere that'll be loaded on to the flying machine in any case."
"Will you?"
"Probably, sir. Or there'll be a whole string of accidents that end up causing the same thing. Trust me. sir, I know how my life works. So I thought I'd better cut through the whole tedious business and come along and tell you I don't wish to volunteer."
"I think you've left out a logical step somewhere," said the Patrician.
"No, sir. It's very simple. I'm volunteering. I just don't wish to. But, after all, when did that ever have anything to do with anything?"
- Also from the Discworld novels, the Bursar. He went insane, and accidents are constantly happening to him; if someone throws away something, you can bet that it's going to hit the Bursar.
- Born as a deformed dwarf, having his own mother die bringing him into the world, growing up being reviled and hated by his father, having his first wife gang-raped by his father's garrison, becoming the laughingstock of Westeros despite being kind and wise, falsely accused of murder and imprisoned twice, protecting a city with his life only gaining more scorn, getting half his nose cut off, denied of his birthright, forced into a second marriage with a woman who finds him repulsive, finding his lover in his father's bed and becoming an exile wanted by the whole of Westeros after killing both — Tyrion Lannister from A Song Of Ice And Fire is, without a doubt, one of the best examples of a dramatic Butt Monkey.
- Another character from the same series that also could definitely be considered a Butt Monkey would be Brienne of Tarth. She's an ugly woman warrior in an incredibly sexist world who has had to deal with one of her masters dying, another one mistakenly believing she betrayed them, being a suspect in a murder she didn't commit, attempted rape, getting put in a bear pit for someone's sick amusement, and being constantly mocked. Not to mention her issues with unrequited love.
- The entire Stark Family seems to be the buttmonkey clan of Westeros.
- Every time you ask "When will the next book come out?", George R. R. Martin kills a Stark. Please, won't you think of the Starks?
- Everyone other than the Bastard or the PFY in Simon Travaglia's Bastard Operator From Hell series of short stories.
- The whole point of Candide. Everyone is a ButtMonkey.
- Justine, the title character of one of Marquis de Sade's (in)famous works, is the ultimate embodiment of this trope. At every turn, she's subjected to abuse hidden under a mask of virtue. She is forced to become a sex-slave to monks, is locked up in a cave and abused, publicly humiliated and raped numerous times. And just when things begin to look up for Justine, she gets struck by lightening and killed. Butt Monkey indeed.
- This is, of course, a reflection of the philosophy of Sade's that virtuous people finish last. Every virtuous character in a story of Sade's is a complete butt monkey.
- Many a Thomas Hardy protagonist, particularly Jude of Jude the Obscure and Tess in Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Jude and Tess both begin as wholesome, virtuous innocents until about the fourth page of their respective books, in which a endless series of escalating tragedies designed to rob them of all hope begin because God Is Evil and Victorian morality stifles any hope of a freethinking life. When things do improve in some minor fashion, it is only to make the next tragedy all the more poignant. Thomas Hardy biographers have tried and failed to come up with a reason for his unrelenting grimness; perhaps a contemporary review of Jude the Obscure sums the case up best by saying that, "He is depressing because he himself is somewhat depressed."
- Mr Bagthorpe of The Bagthorpe Saga. Yes, he brings a lot of it on himself, but fact remains he's bedevilled by more disasters, wrong bank statements, goats and awful relatives than anyone else in children's literature. If he doesn't break his arm trying to stand on his head he's accidentally bidding for hundreds of pounds of junk in auctions. And he's suspected of being a terrorist and murdering his wife in the later books. To quote, "I am the archetypal can carrier of all time!"
- 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 Buttmonkey too.
- Neville Longbottom was very much the Butt Monkey for the first four Harry Potter books, being there mainly just as a source of comic relief. However he Took A Level In Badass in the fifth book and if you're laughing at him by the seventh book, you have a very weird sense of humour.
- Peter Pettigrew took away Neville's title ever since the third book was released. Mostly because of the snark delivered his way by people from his ex-friends like Lupin and Sirius, to Voldemort himself. And all verbally assaulted him and gave him crappy jobs for the mere pleasure in seeing him squirm. But then again, when you decide to do a Face Heel Turn on your best friends knowing it'll lead them to death or worse, then spend thirteen years as a rat, you kind of deserve the title of Butt Monkey.
- Even Peter's death was pathetic; he gets strangled to death by his own hand in a scene that's basically treated as an afterthought by Rowling, while so much other stuff is going on that you barely notice his passing. Not that he didn't deserve it, mind you.
- In an extremely minor case, the Auror John Dawlish, who, though described by Dumbledore as a very good student in his first appearance, is the subject of a Running Gag where he is constantly being beaten up, by, among others, Dumbledore himself (twice) and Neville's grandmother.
- Can't believe he wasn't mentioned. In JRR Tolkien's The Silmarillion (and the individually published story The Children of Húrin), Túrin Turambar gets cursed by Morgoth when he is eight. He gets sent to safety and never sees either of his parents again, he runs away from his foster father the King of Doriath after sort-of-accidentally killing someone, he kills his best friend after he shows up trying to help him, his overconfidence causes the fall of Nargothrond, he fails to rescue the woman who loves him, (and him rescuing her was his other best friend's dying wish), and when he finally falls in love with someone else, gets married, and gets her pregnant, she turns out to be his sister Nienor. "O master of doom by doom mastered, O happy to be dead" indeed.
- Children's fantasy novel The Hounds of the Morrigan has the Sargeant, who is only ever known by that name. Almost his entire screentime in the book is devoted to having the Big Bad torment him in increasingly ridiculous, magical ways — which he blames on drink, as he's a Muggle. They send him up the Amazon river on a rubber duck, change the cross-stitch wall hanging in his room to insult him, and do various, other cruel things to him which include using him as a pawn to get close to the Mac Guffin.
- Job in the Book of Job. Getting literally everything taken from him by Satan — with God's consent no less — made him the ultimate Butt Monkey used by both Satan and God in attempt to prove their point to each other. The fact that eventually Job regained his status and property because God happened to win the argument (or rather Job won the argument for him by being the Extreme Doormat) does not diminish his status as a Butt Monkey, because God, rather than bringing his family back from the dead in all his wisdom, decided to just give him a new one (probably because women and children were considered much like cattle and other property in other regards as well).
- Just a thought here-first wife and children were already at peace. What would be proven by dragging them back to the mortal world?
- Many people were restored to life in Scripture, and seemed to be okay with it.
- That doesn't change the fact that all of Job's family were dead and gone. If Job's family truly could be completely replaced without him missing the old one, then Job wasn't as great a the tale makes out.
- When the Book of Job was written, the concepts of an omnipotent and all-benevolent God hadn't even surfaced yet, and his wife and children were sent to Sheol, a non-punitive, non-rewarding Land of the Dead. Job's friends, who speak to him about God's infinite justice, are the ones God punishes in the end. Job rails against God's injustice and gets rewarded for it. Satan, Hebrew for "adversary", is more like a prosecuting attorney than a Big Bad, and takes a place among "the sons of God", which is an entomylogical and spiritual adventure in and of itself.
- In the Old Testament there is no direct indication of existance of an afterlife; hat line of thought only became popular later on. The worst God ever does to anybody is to kill them horribly - no mention of post mortum punishments.
- No one's going to mention poor, poor Joseph? To be fair, his life did get better once his knack for interpreting dreams was found out by the pharoah...
- PG Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster could easily be classed a butt monkey. He's forever insulted by everyone he knows, berated by his aunts, and is made to perform degrading errands by people who lean on ties of family or friendship to make him do those hideous tasks. Even Jeeves called him "mentally negligible".
- Most Tom Holt main characters have things go hideously wrong for them more or less nonstop. Everything from jackass parents to being a pawn in century-old Xanatos Gambits to having the Queen of the Fey wipe your girlfriend's memory of you. At the end of the story, they are usually given a lot of money and/or a vast region of land somewhere on the other side of the world as a karmic payoff for putting up with vast amounts of misery.
- Little Nell from Dicken's The Old Curiosity Shop is a 14-year-old orphaned girl raised by her grandfather, who loses all of his money gambling. They are forced to flee his debtors and live as beggars, pursued by the villains, one of whom wishes to force her to marry him and one of whom wants only to torment them both. They finally reach relative safety. Then she dies.
- Peter David's Sir Apropos of Nothing. For three whole books.
- Oh, hell. Nick Chopper (the Tin Woodsman) was the Butt Monkey of Oz. Ordinary Munchkin woodcutter, falls for a girl and wants to marry her. Problem: the girl, her family, or both (continuity wasn't Baum's strong suit) work for the Witch of the East. So, the Witch puts a spell on Nick's axe. When he tries to use it, he ends up dismembering himself. Adding insult to injury, the Witch dangled his hacked-off limbs from her broom like a bad pair of fuzzy dice. Oh, the tinner always came along and replaces his hacked-off parts with tin, but Nick was more machine than man by the time Dorothy found him. The reason he wanted a heart in the first place was so that he could go back to his girl and be a proper husband for her!
- Now here's where the Butt Monkey part kicks in. In Tin Woodsman of Oz, he sets it upon himself to find out what became of Nimmie-Amiee. He finds that she had taken up with another man, Captain Fyter (who was cursed like he was, but isn't much bothered about the lack of a heart). He finds the tinner, who either owed the Witch a favor, was working for her, and possibly both. The tinner now has some "magic glue," and set about making new creations from it. His "first and finest" was a creature named Chopfyt, made from the body parts of both men. Topping it all off? Nimmie-Amiee married Chopfyt to essentially get the best of both worlds.
Live Action TV
- Pete Campbell of Mad Men. Everyone hates him. Viewers included.
- Whose Line Is It Anyway had Colin, who was constantly being made fun of for being bald.
- And Canadian
- And having questionable taste in clothing.
- He knew it, too, and even lampshaded it in an episode when Ryan and Drew's picking on each other went on a little too long.
Colin: I'll be your lightning rod of hate!
- Xander from Buffy The Vampire Slayer introduced the term, with his line "I'm sick of being everybody's buttmonkey" in the Dracula episode. (The term first appeared on TV in BtVS, but was heard "on the street" well before that.)
- Josh Nichols from Drake and Josh. He gets taken advantage of by Drake quite a lot and is the butt of many jokes, and on some occasions Megan will say that he has a huge head- when in actuality there's nothing wrong with his head at all.
- In one episode, literally assaulted in the streets several times.
- Miles O'Brien from Star Trek Deep Space Nine was the character of choice when the writers needed to put somebody through hell for an episode. This led to the "O'Brien Must Suffer" in-joke among the writers, who intentionally tried to inflict something truly awful on him at least once per season. If an alien attacks one crew member, it's almost always either O'Brien or Worf (although the latter is for a different reason).
- On Star Trek Voyager, fans were fond of observing that Ensign Harry Kim was killed and brought back to life with something approaching regularity. Seems even being a major character isn't enough for an Ensign to survive. Not to mention his terrible luck with women.
- Subverted in the episode "Timeless", where everyone BUT Harry Kim (and Chakotay) dies.
- Until the end of the episode, when, of course, they both die.
- Don't forget, he really did die in the episode where a Negative Space Wedgie duplicated the ship. The duplicate had the sense to send over his replacement before it blew up. Oddly, many in The Other Wiki fail to recognize this.
- And since Status Quo is God, no one ever mentioned this again. They don't even see fit to hold a memorial service for the original Harry — they just welcome the duplicate on-board and pretend he was the real deal all along.
- He's a 100% identical clone, created only a day or so before the original Harry's death. Aside from a minor divergence of memory, he is the real deal.
- Let's not forget about Geordi from Star Trek The Next Generation who gets pwned nearly as much as Worf. He's even worse with women than Harry Kim ever was. One particularly cruel episode had an alien taunt his blindness by moving his visor around, just because. The series seems to never let us go on the fact that he's blind (until the movies, well actually he gets taunted again in Generations, which may or may not have led him to go get cybernetic replacements by Star Trek First Contact.). And apparently his mom disappears as some plot of the week. Worst yet is that nobody gives a damn about his mom afterwards. And to add insult to injury, in Voyager's "Timeless" he tries to stop Harry Kim and fails. Ouch.
- In one episode, he's heading on his merry way to Risa for some rest, relaxation and poontang. He gets kidnapped by Romulans and gets a Mind Rape from them.
- Look at the bright side. It's not as though Geordi would have actually gotten any of said poontang had he made it to Risa.
- And, of course, on the original Star Trek, Chekov did more screaming-in-pain than the rest of the crew combined.
- He even got a torture scene in the episode "Mirror, Mirror".
- In a nice inversion, he's the only one who doesn't get hit with the aging disease in "The Deadly Years". He still ends up getting subjected to a thousand and one medical checks, though.
- Adam Mitchell in Doctor Who. The Doctor didn't want competition. That's the only reason he got rid of Adam. Adam's probably rocking back and fourth mutated right now.
- Although he did kind of bring it on himself; it was his own unethical attempt to profit by learning information from the future and using it in the past that almost got the Doctor and Rose killed, which was partly what prompted the Doctor to dump him back on Earth.
- Mickey from Doctor Who eventually realizes that he gets less respect than the Robot Buddy.
- Jamie McCrimmon is this to an even bigger extent. Sometimes (just sometimes), the Second Doctor.
- Arguably Turlough, who was constantly getting captured/locked up or otherwise abused, predominantly because the writers at the time had no real clue what to do with a male companion who was meant to be both intelligent and technically apt. Arguable because he at least partially brought it on himself through being a devious and treacherous coward.
- One could arguably say that Ten was the Master's Butt Monkey in the Season 3 finale. And in the Season 4 opener, he was kinda sorta Donna's Butt Monkey. He certainly is mine at times. -giggles-
- And I don't think we can forget Jackie, who was occasionally the Doctor's source of entertainment. "Although, knowing your mother... Nut loaf would be more appropriate."
- Numerous Characters on Heroes have super-powers which give them nothing but grief...
- Ted, whose unchecked radiation powers give his wife cancer before killing her, force him to go on the run after he's accused of being a terrorist, imprisoned by The Company and eventually getting killed by Sylar.
- Niki, who develops Multiple-Personality Disorder as a response to her power's manifesting. The product of an abusive home, she is forced into a job stripping to pay back the money she owes a gangster, commits herself to an asylum (where she is, naturally, hassled by the evil redneck guards) after she realizes just how much control her alter ego has, indirectly causes the death of her husband D.L. and is generally manipulated by The Company, the gangster who runs it and her alter ego up until the point where she is Stuffed In The Fridge.
- Maya, whose power to poison people from a distance cannot be focused at all. After killing most of her family and friends at her brother's wedding, she flees to a church to become a nun, kills everyone in the church and then lives the harrowing life of an illegal immigrant trying to get to America and the one scientist she thinks can cure her. She has the misfortune to cross paths with Sylar, indirectly causes her own brother's death when he realizes what she fails to regarding Sylar being dangerous. And then she gets in a relationship with Mohinder, who puts her in a cocoon in his lab as he's turning into a spider.
- Matt, whose telepathic powers lead him to discover his wife has been cheating on him with his former partner. Over the course of the first season, Matt is also mistakenly , kidnapped, manipulated by Eden's power, suspended from his job, thrown out a window by Jessica, and SHOT WITH HIS OWN BULLETS.
- Somewhat subverted in the second season when he rebuilds his life, gets a new job as a detective in New York City, adopts Molly, and learns the extent of his powers but he still gets his ass kicked on multiple occasions.
- Back in full force in Chapter Three, where Matt is forcibly teleported around the world, left for dead and he finds out that he is destined to get married in the future but that his wife will die.
- Back with a vengeance in Chapter Four, when Matt is illegally arrested, framed as a terrorist on national television, finds out that he has a son and that, oh yes, he really IS a dead-beat dad like he was afraid of becoming. He's also blackmailed into saving the Big Bad's life. Also, he's Blessed With Suck in that he also gains the power to draw the future... but it doesn't do him a lick of good. And in a final crowning blow, the future where his true soul mate dies is averted... but only because said soul mate (Daphne, his girlfriend) is killed from complications due to multiple gunshot wounds she received while trying to save him.
- And taken to its' final logical conclusion in Chapter Five, where Matt tries to imprison Big Bad Sylar's mind inside his own body... only to have Sylar prove to be better at using Matt's powers than Matt is, with Sylar proving capable of making Matt see things within one episode and taking total control of Matt's actions within two episodes.
- And then we have Sylar, whose ability to literally NEED to know how everything works led to him turning from what might have been a brilliant genius into an attempted suicide case, followed by a psychopath who just can't lead a normal life even when he tries his damnedest.
- Boomer (David Morse) on St Elsewhere was the ultimate Butt Monkey; losing his wife, having his son abducted, and even getting raped in prison. Kind of puts the "butt" in buttmonkey. Poor Boomer.
- During the middle seasons of The X Files, A.D. Skinner suffered a lot of abuse: being shot, framed for murdering a hooker, blackmailed, and poisoned with nanotechnology (this last was never really resolved).
- Daniel Jackson on Stargate SG-1 is often getting killed, captured, kidnapped, or injured. One might argue, however, that this was because Daniel was The Chick — gender notwithstanding.
- During his short run, Lt. Colonel Mitchell also seemed to get more than his fair share of beatings, so much so that the actor even described the character as the "whipping boy". This may have been a way of presenting his relative lack of experience in comparison to the older characters. And possibly a way to cheer up fans who didn't like seeing Jack replaced.
- This was a symptom of Ross' degeneration on Friends, beginning with his three divorces, nervous breakdown, and job loss, he was also to be humiliated by the writers in front of women again and again and again. No matter what situation he is in, his so-called friends will not have much of a problem with reminding him how many times he has been divorced or how much of a failure he is. Sometimes he brings it on himself, but even just feeling a bit good and smug about himself is enough for them to forcefully bring him down.
- Chandler, while not normally suffering as directly as Ross was also a Butt Monkey of sorts. He is the one character who is constantly belittled behind his back and sometimes to his face, usually by Rachel and Phoebe. In one episode Rachel even admits that she often wants to punch Chandler - and she doesn't know why. This is always played for humour.
- Paul on Spin City, most memorably when he was sued for being shot in the head. (And the plaintiff was rewarded more than he asked for.)
- Sid from Skins.
- One could argue that Chris from the same show is an even more extreme example; not only is he abandoned by his family, dubiously lucky in love, and prone to unfortunate drug-related incidents, his, er, underendowment is not only apparently common knowledge but a series running joke.
- Chief Tyrol on Battlestar Galactica. The list is frighteningly long: Girlfriend a Cylon. Girlfriend shot by co-worker. Girlfriend's clone has baby with someone else. Loses everyone he loves. Mercy-killed Socinus. Almost executed, multiple times. Freaky dreams. Accidentally hurts people. Almost Thrown Out The Airlock. Populist leanings inevitably doomed. Married to fan-hated Cally, the co-worker who shot his Cylon girlfriend. Enough for you? Oh, and, almost forgot - did I mention he's a Cylon? And when Cally finds out, she nearly goes insane and attacks him. Then she gets Thrown Out The Airlock by another person who recently found out that she's a Cylon. And he thinks she committed suicide. Then, in a fit of drunken emotions, loses the commander's good will and forfeits his post. Doesn't look like things are going to go any better for him in the last season.
- It has to get better for him. Things literally can't get any worse. Note his reaction to the reveal at the end of the mid-season finale, he's almost happy because anything would be good following everything that has happened to him.
- Oh it gets worse. Now he finds out that he isn't actually the father of his kid.
- Things do seem to be looking slightly up, as Adama seems to have given Tyrol his post back.
- Things are looking right back down. Boomer comes back, and he realizes that they're still in love. Only, she's going to be tried by the Cylons for treason, and Roslin won't cut her a break. So he springs her from the brig. He only finds out a while later that she was playing him like a grand piano and had just kidnapped Hera and seriosuly damaged Galactica. Now it's hard to see how things could get any worse for him. Poor bastard.
- Saul Tigh makes Tyrol look lucky. He: has a drinking problem, has an alcoholic manipulative wife, survived through the first Cylon War, seen his best friend shot, got captured on New Caprica where he lost an eye, then when he got out, had to murder his wife for being a Cylon collaborator about four seconds before they're all rescued, and then guess what? He's a Cylon, too! And because the universe hasn't stomped his nads enough — he finds out the final unknown Cylon? Ellen, his {not-so) dead wife.
- Though just about everyone on that show has elements of this, because Ron Moore loves torturing his characters, though it is appropriate for the setting.
- Gaius Baltar is another frequent victim. Whether or not he deserves it depends on which side of the Face Heel Revolving Door he is this week.
- Throw in Boomer too. Quite possibly the most shit upon character in the entire show.
- This Troper would argue the Mr. Gaeta had it worse than any of these people. He risked his life as a spy for the Cylon Resistance fighters on New Caprica, only to be rewarded by nearly being shot out an airlock by an angry lynch mob who thought he was in league with the Cylon occupation force; got shot in the leg defending Starbuck in a mutiny, only to not get medical attention in time to save the leg because Starbuck wanted to follow a hunch a little longer; got a prosthetic leg that doesn't even fit right because the ship's doctor can't be bothered with such trivialities as living without constant pain; and when he followed Tom Zarek on an ill-fated coup d'ete, and realized he'd made the wrong choice and did the Right Thing at the last minute, he and Zarek were the only two people executed for the crime.
- Is there even a single major character on this show who HASN'T gone through absolute, unimaginable hell? Lee Adama's wife committed suicide, Roslin's mind snapped like a twig when she learned that her religion is a load of crap, Starbuck stumbled upon her own corpse, there's the whole Admiral Cain/Number Six plot thread... however, if there is one hapless character who just sort of happens to be the butt of all the jokes, it's undoubtedly Gaius, especially in the first season when he's still trying to get used to seeing Number Six everywhere (and, in one episode, is surprised that everyone else can see her, and Hilarity Ensues).
- Ted, the lawyer on Scrubs, is so often the victim of abuse he was dubbed in one episode the hospital "sad sack."
- J.D. himself gets the Butt Monkey treatment often, usually in the form of the Janitor pulling some kind of prank on him.
- Major Frank Burns from MASH. Although he usually deserves it by virtue of being Frank, being accused of rape by a female superior officer who was trying to seduce you is a bit over the top.
- Also Major Charles Winchester after Frank's departure. He too often deserved it, just not quite as often.
- Ironically, it was because of his Butt Monkey status that Frank Burns was written out: Larry Linville expressed his opnion that Frank Burns had been developed about as far as possible, and could never advance beyond the uptight, reactionary portrayal that had become so well-known.
- John Melendez as portrayed in sketches on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
- Before that Branford Marsalis. Like in the Beyondo segment where Jay played a floating head that made predictions.
- Toby in the US version of The Office. Pretty much anything he says is guaranteed to get an undeserved nasty and insulting response from Michael. And sometimes his just being there can provoke Michael.
Michael: "Toby is from corporate, so he's not really a part of our family...also he's divorced, so he's not really a part of his family."
- Even when he agrees with and/or helps Michael he gets this
- Ben on Reaper. If something nasty is going to happen to one of the trio of Sam, Sock, and Ben, it always heads straight for Ben.
- To some extent, all of the main cast of The Young Ones, but most especially Neil.
- Essentially the entire premise of Curb Your Enthusiasm seems to be that horrible things are funny when they happen to Larry David.
- Trivette from Walker Texas Ranger. Next to frequently kidnapped district attorney Cahill, he's the most hapless character in the show, being the butt of every joke and the victim of every attack by redneck thugs.
- It should, however, be noted that Trivette is also quite a Deadpan Snarker and said rednecks thugs are usually very sorry afterwards. That is...
- Gareth in the original UK version of The Office is set up for pranks at his expense regularly by co-worker Tim, some of which can seem quite mean-spirited... However Tim often gets away with it because Gareth is depicted as being gormless and irritating, and often mean-spirited himself along with it, so you could say that Tim is simply giving him payback. Gareth still catches a break every now and then, though.
- Dawn is also portrayed as such, at least later in the series where David Brent is constantly leaving her to clean up after him. She is much more sympathetic than Gareth though.
- Tony Lewis of The Tenth Kingdom is a Butt Monkey for pretty much three-fourths of the miniseries, culminating when the seven years of bad luck he receives for breaking the Traveling mirror causes him to break the entire complement of the Dwarves' mirrors, compounding his bad luck by thirty times so that he ends up falling and breaking his back. After this, aside from continued snarkiness, he even Took A Level In Badass during the climax, sort of.
- Howard Steel in The Worst Week Of My Life.
- Jerry the perpetual understudy from Slings And Arrows, who averages a hilarious injury every three or four episodes and inevitably gets parts snatched away from him as soon as he starts enjoying them.
- Chris Kattan as Paul Begala in Saturday Night Live's recurring "Hardball" sketch.
- Jon Stewart is frequently tormented by correspondents and guests alike on The Daily Show, from jabs about his height to insinuations that the departure of previous host Craig Kilborn was the worst thing to ever happen to the show.
- Recently there was John Oliver's particularly brutal criticism of Jon Stewart's hosting the Oscars.
John Oliver: You know the only thing you'd be good at hosting, Jon? The funeral of fun. No, you're right, I take that back. You know who'd be better at that? Hugh Jackman. The guy's amazing!
- Let's not forget the line "...the George W. Bush of comedy" Oliver said to Stewart in the same bit.
- Bud Bundy in Married With Children. If he isn't having his scholarship money stolen by his parents or missing out on a once in a lifetime chance to meet the president, he is losing a toe to frost bite after being tricked by a girl, growing breasts from an allergic reaction to an experimental pesticide or being dumped live on radio in front of his entire college. Still, he is marginally luckier than his father....
- Bud's sister Kelly isn't much better off. Whether it's going from being the most popular girl in school to being reduced to working as a waitress in a miserable run-down diner, having her potentially hit TV show destroyed by Executive Meddling, being fired from her job for refusing to wear a bikini in a TV ad, losing all her hair and growing a beard when she tries an experimental zit remedy, getting bitten by poisonous insects that either force her to tell the truth or drive her insane, being forced to take the Bundy dog's place in a dog food commercial, being rejected by a hot rich guy because of the expensive makeover that was meant to attract him, being tricked by Bud into babysitting a group of bratty children while he takes all the money for his date, or suffering through consuming a series of bad-tasting diet drinks for a commercial and then being digitally replaced by the company president's daughter when the ad actually airs, Kelly is proof that the women of the family are just as apt to fall victim to the Bundy Curse.
- Al. Period. To list the things that have happened to him would require it's own website.
- E.B. Farnum from Deadwood is the camp's resident Butt Monkey, who constantly suffers physical and verbal abuse and degradation from just about everyone, even his hotel guests. At one point, one of the villains spits in his face twice and tells Farnum that he will kill him if he wipes it off, so Farnum has to walk around with spit and mucus on his face for a while. After justifiably being frozen in terror for hours.
- If it's possible for an inanimate object to be a Butt Monkey, Buster the dummy from Myth Busters qualifies. (And if he doesn't, Tory from the build team comes close at times.)
- Isn't Grant usually the guinea pig?
- Chris Skelton from Life On Mars; his condition's improved slightly in Ashes To Ashes, in which he's acquired a steady girlfriend, learned to shoot straight, and stopped falling into goal nets, but he's still the go-to guy when it comes to fishing abandoned guns out of chemical toilets.
-
Egg Anne from Arrested Development is constantly belittled and she gets abandoned in Mexico. Her?
- And don't forget Buster Bluth, especially in the episodes after he got his hand bitten off and replaced with a hook.
- Reviews on the Run host Tommy Tallarico frequently makes jokes at the expense of co-host Victor Lucas, implying he has a huge head when in fact his cranial proportions are quite normal.
- It's usually played quite serious with Dean from Supernatural (in that he really doesn't like himself much either) but, bloody hell, in "Sin City"? Dean, sweetie, remembering an exorcism that will send a demon back to hell should really be one of your top priorities, you know?
- In season 5, Sam seems to be turning into this. A Groin Attack and being forced to do a commercial for genital herpes, as well as getting chlamydia (from a 500 year old witch, no less) all within episodes of each other.
- Corey and Trevor fulfill this role on Trailer Park Boys, constantly screwing up when they try to help the Boys commit their crimes, being tricked by the Boys into taking the fall when they're busted by the cops, and being insulted and humiliated despite their idolizing Ricky and Julian.
- Mary Ingalls, from Little House On The Prairie. The tragic blindness could be excused as historically accurate... but not the sandstorm on her wedding day, the miscarriage of one child, the horrible death of another in the same fire that destroyed the school she and her husband ran and just generally having her isolation and helplessness exploited for every last drop of drama. They even devoted an entire episode to raising her hopes about getting her sight back, only to dash them in the last act.
- Red's nephew Harold suffered through this role for the first several seasons of The Red Green Show.
- Detective Carlton Lassiter in Psych. He's constantly being upstaged by a Deadpan Snarker Slacker who, despite having no formal police training or official standing with the department, effortlessly sweeps him aside in any investigation they become involved in, usually managing to charm the socks off everyone present in the process. Whatever leads he follows or moves he makes in those cases? Usually are wrong. And the Deadpan Snarker he loathes so intensely? Usually proved right. None of the other characters seem particularly inclined to show him any respect whatsoever (which is something that, admittedly, is partly his own fault, given how abrasive and uptight he is), and any misfortunes or unhappy circumstances that occur, will usually occur to him.
- To a lesser extent Gus, as part of his role as the Straight Man, usually finds himself taking this role when Shawn manipulates him into doing something he doesn't particularly wish to do.
- Post-season 1 Bellick in Prison Break. He was something of a Smug Snake in season 1, definitely not likeable. But the payback he get's is far worse than what he deserves. It is implied that he got raped by a prisoner at the end of season 2, was forced to drink water from a mud-puddle in season 3 and all such stuff, despite actually starting to become more likeable. In season 4 he seems to have regained a "good guy" status (and is on the team) and occasionally actually helps the plot.
- Murray, the incompetent "manager" of Flight Of The Conchords. The Conchords number "Cheer Up, Murray" practically lampshades this, as the list of things that are supposed to cheer him up includes "You've got a wife... but she comes and goes" and "You've got all of your limbs" before the song just puts him down again: "Some people don't return your calls, they don't return your calls/ And some people call you Gingerballs, they call you Gingerballs..."
- The Shield has two dueling butt-monkeys
- Detective Ronnie Gardocki is largely treated like a red-headed stepson of the Strike Team, forced to run the other guys errends, had his car shot up by gangsters, mocked for his lack of a sex life, and suffers great physical harm over the course of the series (disfigured, mauled by dogs, hit over the head with a large cross) and ultimately made to be the fall-guy for Vic Mackey's crimes, as so far as Vic refusing to let him flee town when he wanted to leave, as far as Vic basically telling Ronnie that he had put his life in Vic's hands and trust him, lest he fuck up Vic's own quest to get immunity/a job working with the Department of Homeland Security after getting run out of the LAPD.
- Holland "Dutch" Wagenbach was "The Barn's" go-to target for derision and disrespect, despite probably being the best actual cop in the building. In the pilot episode (later confirmed on DVD commentary) it's shown that his own partner, Claudette Wyms, is responsible for a continuous wave of mean-spirited pranks pulled on him (including putting dog shit in his desk drawer) as part of a long-standing LAPD tradition to keep certain talented officers "humble". Dutch's relationship with Claudette is tense on a good day, due to Dutch having his various overtures of friendship and concern rebuked by his partner, who wouldn't even tell Dutch that she had a potentially fatal medical condition (lupus) until several years into their partnership. When Claudette gets promoted to Captain, Dutch is forcibly partnered up with Steve Billings, a lazy detective determined to spend his last years on the force doing as little work as possible and forcing Dutch to cover up his attempts to scam the department (most notably with a fake disability lawsuit). His relationship with series main character Vic Mackey is more complicated: while Vic acknowledges that Dutch is the precinct's best detective (and is terrified of him possibly uncovering the Strike Team's crimes), Vic generally goes back and forth from bullying Dutch for sport and feeding his ego, in order to manipulate Dutch to do his dirty work for him. Dutch's butt-monkey status also extends to his relationship with women; the few successful relationships he has are with women formerly involved with Vic, furthering the rivalry between the two men.
- Dutch's personal life is even worse, especially since he's one of the few characters on the show whose private life has been revealed in graphic detail: spent his youth/teenage years being mercilessly bullied, raised by an emotionally distant father for whom Dutch became a police officer in order to try and gain his father's approval, failed marriage to an alcoholic who got knocked up by a guy she met while in rehab (which led to him becoming the Butt-Monkey of the Barn in the first place, when another detective revealed this to the other officers), and generally has crappy relationships with women in general as far as women seeing him mainly as a friend/mentor and not a love interest.
- Dr. Stephen Franklin from Babylon 5 who, despite always trying to do the right thing, generally winds up suffering for it, especially in later episodes.
- Centauri ambassadorial aide Vir Cotto also might loosely qualify, but also seems to display qualities of the Baldrick (at least in the early seasons), The Unfavourite (by his own account, the only reason he got such an important job is that his family didn't want him at home), the Did Not Eat The Mousse and The Woobie.
- If we're going to count Vir, then don't forget Delenn's lackey who was in love with her... whatever his name was. Unrequited love is a bitch.
- That would be Lennier. Also, I think Marcus Cole deserves an Honorable Mention, what with having to do incredible amounts of risky dirty work that he can't even talk about for most of Season 3, and (yet again) his unrequited love for Ivanova...
- Joel, and later Mike, from Mystery Science Theater 3000 usually ended up being the butt of most of the jokes made by robots Crow and Tom Servo. This didn't only happen in the host segments, sometimes the robots manage to include mockery of Joel/Mike in their movie riffing.
- Detective Randy Disher on Monk is definitely that series' Butt Monkey. He is the butt of every joke and is probably way too dumb to be a police detective.
- Celia Hodes on Weeds suffered more than any character on the show. She suffers breast cancer, falls in love with a religious man who cheats on her with her best friend, gets jailed all thanks to her own family and friends, and nearly gets shot by Nancy's employers once they discover her spying on them (Nancy saves her life by hitting her on the face with a gun, resulting in her losing a front tooth).
- Then she gets addicted to cocaine.
- Alan Harper on Two and a Half Men is the patron saint of this trope.
- Aaron on Ghost Adventures.
- Increasingly, Lutz on 30 Rock. When Jack asks the writers what their parents tell people they do for a living, the others' answers are things like "surgeon". Lutz's response: "Died".
- Jenna is also the butt of many jokes. Such the writers all acting like she is ugly when she clearly isn't.
- Tony DiNozzo on NCIS tends to be the team's Butt Monkey, often justified in that he is a Jerk Jock with a very hidden heart of gold. Sometimes McGee fills this role instead; either way, at least one of them is often the butt of an episode's Running Gag.
- Joxer on Xena Warrior Princess. Nearly every climactic scene involving "Joxer the Mighty" invariably has him getting knocked unconscious. No one hesitates to insult him, be it Xena, Gabrielle, Autolycus or even his murderous brother Jett. This is coupled with his affection for Gabrielle, who barely tolerates his existence. He's even reviled on fansites.
- Power Rangers RPM. Poor Ziggy. It seems that barely an episode can go by without the Green Ranger totally embarrassing himself in some way. Best reflected by his first ever morph. Previous rangers, whether they Jumped At The Call, were thrown in the cockpit or even stole their powers, always morphed with a fair amount of dignity and grace the first time. What's Ziggy's first line upon realising what he has become?
Ziggy: Woah! I'm a Power Ranger! I don't wanna be a Power Ranger! I do not want to be a Power Ranger!
- He then proceeds to get kicked all over the place.
- In QI, Alan Davies.
- Off-island Locke on Lost. His flashbacks are one agony after another. He's abandoned by his teenage mother, raised in foster care, foster sister and mother die, bullied in high school, and then it gets bad. His biological parents team up to con him out of a kidney. He loses the love of his life. He's kicked out of his commune "family." Finally, his own father pushes him out an 8th-story window, paralyzing him. Crashing on the island is probably the best thing that ever happened to him. After he leaves the island, he's again in a wheelchair, everyone mocks him for being pathetic and lonely, he finds out his ex-girlfriend is dead, and he's unable to convince the Oceanic 6 to return. He's ready to hang himself when Ben arrives, talks him out of it, and then strangles him. But he gets better as soon as he's back on the island.
- NOT!!! Turns out Locke is actual the universe's buttmonkey. Or at least the Anti-Jacob's one
- In the second episode of the Walking with Monsters "documentary", the giant Mesothelae spider is something of a Butt Monkey. When it returns to its burrow after catching a lizard, the burrow is flooded. On its way to find another burrow, a giant dragonfly steals the dead lizard. It goes to get a drink, only to be scared off by a giant predatory amphibian. It finds a good number of other holes, but they're all occupied by other spiders. It gets chased off by a giant millipede. Finally, it finds a hole... which is struck by lightning once the spider's done building the web inside. The spider is roasted, and later eaten by another of the lizards.
- Col. Klink in Hogans Heroes. Constantly duped by Hogan and his men, threatened and intimidated by his superiors and held in contempt by his own men who lined up to volunteer when he was imprisoned and facing a firing squad. Admittedly he was a Nazi but...
- Freddie in iCarly. He has a hopelessly unrequited crush on Carly, that gets used against him by Carly to do things he doesn't agree with. The first time he actually goes against what Carly wants (to do something he really likes), she insults him then tells Freddies mother about it. The main source of his buttmenkeyness lies in Sam who endlessly insults, harasses, physically abuses him, humilates him in front of other people at school and on the webcast, breaks his possessions and causes him constant problems. And then there's his monstorously over protective mother.
- Pilot episode: Freddie doesn't have a single apperence in the episode that doesn't invole Sam insulting him, Freddie being reminded that Carly doesn't love him back (by both girls, Sam does this especially harshly) and being physically abused by Sam for making a simple mistake. Carly convinces Freddie to keep helping the girls, not by getting Sam to stop insulting him, but by manipulating Freddie through his crush on her. It doesn't get better.
- Deputy Ben Healy in American Gothic. Anytime his conscience looks to be getting the better of him, Lucas Buck will subject him to a cruel and elaborate joke to get him to keep his mouth shut.
- Connor in Primeval's employment contract must have Butt Monkey in the job description. He doubles up as the Plucky Comic Relief and part time Woobie as well.
- Everyone (even the husbands) on Desperate Housewives gets this treatment at one point or another during the show, but Tom Scavo takes the cake. His wife Lynette has a love-hate complex for Tom with a passive-agressive passion that has resulted in her doing horrific things to her husband (like destroying his entire career, attempting to get him drunk and thus be late for his entrance exam), that would have led any sane husband to file for divorce from his wife.
- On the female side, you have Bree who among other things: had her husband murdered, had one child turn into a sociopath bent on his mother's destruction (though he ultimately gets redeemed), stalked by a psychopath who tried to kill her therapist, lost the grandson she was raising as her own third child to her daughter (the child's biomom) who then decided to raise him in an ultra-liberal form just to spite conservative Bree, the loss of said (grand)child causing her marriage to her second husband to collapse, and nearly being killed by said second-husband's psychotic mother not once but twice.
- Tommy from the sitcom Titus and in some episodes Titus himself.
- George from Dead Like Me. Oh so many ways...
- Killed by a deorbiting toilet seat on her lunch break of the first day of a job she hates at a temp agency.
- Finds out that since she never made anything of her life, she is now doomed to serve as a Grim Reaper, helping to ferry souls to their individual afterlives.
- Has to find somewhere to live, as she can't live with her mother.
- Ends up working at the same office, under her "new" name.
- Is called "Toilet Seat" by everyone but the supervisor of the reapers, who affectionately calls her "peanut".
- And that's just the first episode or two...
- Also, Mason, who is ridiculed by his colleagues, shot at, run over and hurt in various other ways, and once had a stash of drugs dissolve in his anal tract. Oh, and he died drilling a hole in his head.
- Kagami in Kamen Rider Kabuto. Even after becoming Kamen Rider Gattack, heralded as the God of Battle, he remains the punching bag of the series for comic relief.
- In Sons Of Anarchy Half Sack, as SAMCRO's porbationer is the clubs ''official butt monkey.
- Spencer Reid in Criminal Minds isn't abused by his friends (they do treat him like a younger brother, but he's not abused), but he is abused by the writers, so much so that whenever another character is the victim, fans rate the trouble on how close this is to a "Reid Trauma". Reid's been kidnapped, beaten, drugged, held at gunpoint, forced to dig his own grave, and poisoned by anthrax, just to name a few.
- Beaker (pictured above) is the resident Butt Monkey of The Muppet Show, always the victim of the experiments of his "friend", Dr. Bunsen Honeydew.
- The presenters on Top Gear pass this around: Richard Hammond tends to suffer physical abuse and has become ever-so-slightly Woobiefied as a result; James May (aka "Captain Slow") has to deal with the ridicule of his co-presenters and their occasional (okay, frequent) attempts to sabotage his efforts; and Jeremy Clarkson seems completely unable to cope when he's out of his depth. However, since this so seldom happens, and since Clarkson is such a self-assured character most of the time, watching him suffer is highly entertaining.
- Diandre, or Sweet Dee, on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is the Butt Monkey for her entire group of friends. They crash her car, ignore her and generally crap all over her. In a special where the gang invents an alternate story about how their ancestors cracked the liberty bell, they call Sweet Dee their Witch Slave and force her to wait on them, threatening her with calling her out on being a witch if she doesn't comply.
- However, Dee's one-way love interest Rickety Cricket is even more of a Butt Monkey. Dee convinces him to leave the priesthood to be with her, then loses interest. Later, she and her friends recruit him to sell crack for them and he becomes a homeless crack addict. Eventually, they even end up conducting a manhunt for him, just for fun.
- Kopelman on True Jackson, VP. Mr. Madigan constantly kicks him out of meetings for no reason, and everyone in the show treats him like dirt. This is even funnier when you learn that the character is named after and played by the writer for the show.
- Dr Sweets on Bones, every episode involves someone mocking his last name, demeaning his subject of expertise (psychology) and conclusions despite the fact that he is usually right, or just plain treating him like some doormat.
- Tommy Gavin on Rescue Me. Every. Single. Episode. By the end of the second season, his wife has left him, twice. The first time, she took the kids with her and didn't tell him where she went. The second time, it was because she blamed him for the death of their son. Said son was killed in front of him by a drunk driver. Another child is miscarried, and he has seen two people shot to death in front of him. He is constantly haunted by the ghosts of people close to him who have died.
- Sly Winkle of California Dreams was pretty much this, even though he had a greedy streak and was a literal embodiment of The Complainer Is Always Wrong. But because it was a Peter Engle Saved By The Bell clone, that type of character was just frowned upon.
New Media
- Furry Fandom is pretty much the punching-bag of the Internet.
- Shippers show a lot of the classic signs of this, even on this very wiki. Although let's face it; you can't really run out of jokes about the stereotypical shipper whose compilations of "evidence" are inaccessible to those with common sense and earthly logic, and will viciously verbally attack you for basically saying "No, the sky isn't plaid." And laughing about the worst cases is all the rest of the internet can do to keep from crying from the sheer absurdity of it all.
- FMyLife.com is a site where people post their Butt Monkey moments online.
Print Media
- 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.
- Guy Haley from White Dwarf was one of these, due to his horrible luck - His Guard army once played an entire game of Warhammer40000 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.
Professional Wrestling
- Santino Marella. When he's not doing something to hurt/humiliate himself (like trying to mimic someone doing the splits and hurting his crotch in the worst possible way) or getting dumped when the dummy he's dating abruptly grows a brain, he's getting mauled by everyone up to and including the weakest females on the roster. It's vaguely implied his current girlfriend Beth Phoenix might occasionally beat him up just for the hell of it.
- Chavo Guerrero as well. While not as great as his uncle Eddie, Chavo's a pretty solid wrestler, but constantly gets stuck in this position. Hell, he's in a months-long feud where all he does is repeatedly job to Hornswoggle, the wrestling leprechaun.
- There's also a long running joke among the RAW guest hosts as to who can humiliate Chavo the most. This has resulted in him getting beat up by the likes of Snoop Dogg and Bob Barker.
- For TNA it's Eric Young, at least until he pulled a Whos Laughing Now style Face Heel Turn.
Close Professional Wrestling
Radio
- 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.
- Bluebottle from the Goon Show (though there's a reasonable number of Goon Shows where the whole cast dies, or is screwed over).
- Greg T, the Round Headed Frat Boy, of Elvis Duran and the Z100 Morning Zoo in New York.
Table Top Games
- An example of this trope played seriously is in War Hammer 40000. The Imperial Guard tends to be Games Workshop's favorite punching bag as the guard tends to get picked on the most in other faction's battles in their respective codex. For a while, this extended to Imperial Guard players as well as they have had to play with an underpowered codex with half of their units were useless, and during 5th edition actually had a game type that was literately unwinnable because Annihilate was obviously not play tested wih Imperial Guard. Forge World however sees the guard as The Favorite. IG players eventually got the bone tossed in a big way during the last few years as they got the mother load of Apocalypse releases and the new guard codex not only resolves the Annihilate problem but also allows guard players to use their Forge World goodies in normal games. Everyone else is scared that guard players are going to enter Whos Laughing Now mode.
- Even Relic treats IG players as the Butt Monkey. In Dawn Of War, the guard is always the bottom tier faction. The only good thing about this is that if said guard player lives long enough, they get the Bane Blade. Who's dying now?
Theatre
- 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.
- Where would this list be without 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 Buttmonkey of epic proportions is Sir Andrew. Dense, naive and good natured, 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!
- Mistaken for mad? He was framed for being mad! Every bad thing that happened to him was a plan by Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, even the yellow stockings!
- In an alternate take on the story, in Alan Gordon's novel The Thirteenth Night, the first of his Fools' Guild books, Malvolio's punishments are proven to be more deserved. Malvolio, it turns out, was an agent of Saladin, sent to disrupt the regional politics by driving a wedge between Orsino and Olivia, encouraging her mourning for her brother and dissuading her from falling for Orsino. Feste was secretly an agent of The Fools' Guild, a secret society dedicated to protecting the innocent during the Dark Ages. Feste(real name Theopolus) secretly arranged for Viola and Sebastian to arrive in Illyria(by somehow causing their ship to sink), believing that Viola and Sebastian would make better matches for Orsino and Olivia, respectively, and with the aid of Toby, Andrew and Maria, running interference against Malvolio. Years later, he learned of Orsino's murder, and(correctly as it turns out) suspected Malvolio of the crime.
- 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.
- Ophelia in Hamlet (although almost everyone in that play could qualify).
- 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 Dont 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!
Toys
Video Games
- Eugene from Whacked! Pushed to the point of fulfilling the Whos Laughing Now? trope.
- Detective Dick Gumshoe from Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney probably qualifies, especially in the second game, where he gets his pay docked several times for goofing up, and near the end of the final case gets in a car accident while trying to rush some crucial evidence to the courthouse. He is also frequently on the business end of perfectionist Franziska von Karma's whippings.
- His love interest, Maggey Byrde (introduced in Justice for All) has a perpetual streak of bad luck, which culminated in her being accused of murder on two separate occasions.
- And then there's Larry Butz, Phoenix and Edgeworth's old school friend and Unlucky Everydude to the extreme, who can never seem to hold a steady job or a girlfriend throughout the course of three games. He seems to be a danger magnet, and everybody in his circle often discredits the things he says, to the point where Phoenix and friends invented their own saying about him: "When something smells, it's usually the Butz."
- On the flipside, those girlfriends? Supermodels, each and every single one of them.
- The series is more or less overflowing with gorgeous women. Larry Butz is perhaps the only witness to be called an idiot in court.
- Arguably, Phoenix Wright himself, almost to a You Suck extent. After all, everyone in the game seems to go out of their way to make his life a living hell. It's certainly more subtle, however... It's easy to not realize how far it extended until the third game came, and with it the chance to play as Edgeworth: suddenly witnesses are much more forthcoming, investigators more respectful, judges less sarcastic, and prosecutors never whip you!
- Edgeworth even sympathizes with Phoenix a little bit when he realizes how hard it is to gather clues as a defense attorney and if you screw up during a testimony at one point, Edgeworth gets mocked and he wonders to himself if there is a kick me sign on the defense's bench.
- Phoenix notes he has some enough bad karma as a reason he won't steal something. (At least when not preparing for a trial.)
- Not even inanimate objects are completely safe. The Kurain Pot, most valued object of Kurain Village (Maya's hometown), gets broken a lot. Pearl accidentally hits it with a ball in the second game, and scrambles the writing on its front as she glues it back together (from "AMI" to "I AM"). Adrian Andrews drops it on the floor and spills paint on the pieces in the third game, though she at least gets the writing back into proper order. And at the very end of the third game, we see a picture showing a very young Mia and Maya Fey... reassembling the pot, revealing it's been broken quite a bit before.
- Don't forget Maya, who gets arrested, trapped, or kidnapped at least once per game.
- Apollo Justice somehow manages to get even less respect than Pheonix ever did. Every character seems to go out of their way to mock him in some manner whever possible. Even his own mother!
- The Ship Captain in God Of War, who has, as far as this editor has gotten in the series, been eaten alive by the hydra for captaining the ship Kratos was on; dropped into the hydra's gullet by Kratos, who only wanted the key he was wearing; been stabbed, used as a human ladder, and flung into the River Styx by Kratos; and resurrected as a spirit warrior promptly killed by Kratos. As he's trivial to the plot, reappears frequently, and all his misfortunes are caused by Kratos, he's also a borderline Yuppie Couple.
- In a nice shout-out, his appearance in God of War II was solely to have him scream, "Oh no, not you again!"
- Metal Gear Solid has Johnny Sasaki, whose Grandfather was also a butt monkey. In the first MGS he had diarrhea, and in MGS4 he joins the new Foxhound to fight Liquid Ocelot. When Snake sees him, he is astounded that Johnny's been able to survive for 10 years (Snake confused him for a rookie). The 2007 TGS video has him farting and trying to take a crap in a barrel, when a guy sees him and starts chasing him while his pants are down. Butt Monkey indeed.
- He also has a hidden cameo in MGS2. You can listen to him talking to himself in the bathroom, complaining about how getting knocked out and left lying in the prison floor gave him an even worse diarrhea. Poor guy.
- Let's not forget Raiden in MGS2 and MGS4. He's double-crossed by his colonel (actually an AI designed to control the world), beaten up by Snake and Olga to use as bait for Ocelot and Solidus, groped by the President of the United States (who is then shocked to discover he is a man), subjected to torture and having to run around nude until Snake brings him his gear, and subjected to an experiment by the Patriots where they cut his head off and attach it to a robotic body. He's frequently mocked in MGS3, despite the game taking place years before he was born, with a Russian officer named Raikov who looks like Raiden, is gay for Colonel Volgin, and gets his clothes stolen by Naked Snake (later to be known as Big Boss) to use as a disguise, revealing that he wears a thong. Colonel Volgin himself later gropes Naked Snake, who is disguised as Raikov - and he is caught because, unlike Raikov, he doesn't get an erection from it! The fact that American and European audiences were not very receptive to the idea of an effete bishonen protagonist is probably the root of much of Raiden's (and his Russian body double's) suffering.
- And then there's the short comedy series in MGS3 where Raiden tried to take the spot of main character from Snake by killing Big Boss... only to continuously fail so horribly, from beating up by Volgin (mistaking him for Raikov), raping by Volgin, slapping by The Boss, and getting a slight respect to Big Boss, only to be run over by Russian soldiers and the Metal Gear-like machine.
- The Prinnies are a species of Butt Monkey penguins in Disgaea. They get forced to do every last bit of the gruntwork for their masters, they explode if you throw them (and this is often a valid combat tactic), and their masters often torment them for amusement; the opening of Disgaea 2 shows a character throwing a knife at one. And no matter how much damage they take, they're valued so poorly that healing (or resurrecting) them only costs one Hell.
- Somewhat justified, seeing as Prinnies are the souls of murderers, thieves, etc.; doing the grunt work is how they atone for their sins. The Celestia Prinnies seem to have it a bit easier, as well. But still, Etna and company could go a little easier...
- Even when they get their own spinoff game, the Prinnies are still butt monkeys. In "Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?" Etna thinks nothing of sacrificing the lives of 1,000 Prinnies toward the task of bringing her a rare dessert.
- In addition, there's Tink, the "Dirty Frog". Originally a handsome prince, he was cursed and turned into a lecherous frog. The Dark Court issued a subpoena against him, with his very existence being an unpardonable crime.
- Luigi of Super Mario Bros. is occasionally a butt-monkey, when he's not a Recolor of Mario. He is often the butt of cross-dressing jokes, self-delusional about his own abilities if he's not being depicted as an outright coward. He is always being kidnapped by ghosts, as some kind of backlash to his own game Luigi's Mansion.
- Nintendo seems to take a practically unholy glee in always ramping it up, too. In Luigi's latest appearance (Super Smash Bros. Brawl), he seems to have gone quite mad from the stress.
- In Super Mario Galaxy, Luigi even plays second banana to himself.
- Bowser is also a subject of mockery.
- Wario and Waluigi are usually this in the intro to the Mario sports games.
- Both Mario and Luigi play the butt-monkies in PETA's Super Chick Sisters.
- Kazooie, one-half of the titular duo from Banjo-Kazooie series, is Butt Monkey in avian form - especially in the first game, but still so in the second. Not only is she subject to quite a bit of slapstick, but she always seems to learn her moves in the most humiliating fashion. To be fair, she does give the universe plenty of grief in return.
- There's also Roysten, Banjo's long-suffering goldfish. He was tossed on the barbeque at the fake ending of the first game. Then in Banjo-Tooie, he was blasted along with Banjo's house and poor Bottles in the opening cinema, subsequently buried under a huge rock, and found himself as part of Bottles' charcoaled dinner at the end of the same game.
- They also gave us Gobi the Camel, whom you first meet in his eponymous level. You have to Ground Pound his back several times, forcing him to cough up his precious water. After several rounds of this abuse, he runs away to another level... where you have to seek him out and do the exact same thing. After suffering much abuse at the hands of Kazooie's beak, he gets annoyed and vows to go to the "lava world." There's no lava world in Banjo-Kazooie. But he shows up in the sequel, trapped in a cage. You have to set him free, for once helping him. After he finally makes it to Hailfire Peaks, his "lava world," you get to abuse him with the Bill Drill again. Fun times!
- Also arguably Clanker, a mechanical whale (who looks more like a giant shark with a blowhole). In the first game, he appears in his level, "Clanker's Cavern," a sewer where he serves as a garbage grinder for the villain, Gruntilda. He also has a terrible toothache. Later, in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, he appears in the nostalgic wonderland, Banjoland. Now torn to pieces, his torso, head, and jaw are all located in different places...but he's still alive. His eyes also end up the target of some baddies in one of the missions in Banjoland.
- In the Compilation of Final Fantasy 7, main character Cloud fits this to a T. Wanted to join SOLDIER? Nope, stuck in the Shin-Ra regulars. Captured and tortured by Hojo after his hometown is destroyed by his former idol and his mother burns to death in front of him. Upon escaping, witnesses his best friend Zack getting set upon and killed by the aforementioned Shin-Ra regulars. All of them. His mind then shatters and he constructs a persona based on Zack and other SOLDIER members to cope. Is convinced to dress up like a woman to infiltrate the home of a pimp to save his childhood crush, and is the one picked to entertain the pimp for the night. Eventually the former idol, the original One-Winged-Angel himself shows up, breaks Cloud's mind again, and also gets him to hand over the Black Materia, the key to the destruction of the world. Oh, not to mention the fact that the potential love interest gets skewered like a mini hot dog on a toothpick in front of our hapless hero. Once he recovers from that, he tries to stop Sephiroth, but gets Mind-Raped again and chucked into the Lifestream. Once he recovers from that, he does okay...until Advent Children, where it's revealed that he's contracted the lethal disease Geostigma, is suffering from a combination of depression and PTSD, and one of the children he's taking care of with the aforementioned childhood crush has the disease as well, causing him to question his ability to get anything right and leave to, well, in all probability to die alone somewhere. At this point he just can't fathom anything going his way. You can see it in the relieved look he has in the movie's happy ending that he's really, really amazed that everything turned out okay. In short, the poor bastard is a walking Diabolus Ex Machina magnet. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong for Cloud.
- Roman Bellic of Grand Theft Auto 4, protagonist Niko Bellic's hapless cousin. A loser through and through, at one point he gets kidnapped, shot in the stomach when he can't stop screaming, healed in a filthy basment, and has to ask Niko to buy him some adult diapers.
- Also Lazlo from the radio. All the time, he'll reminisce about his (not so glorious, in fact, really crappy) Glory Days.
- Soul Nomad And The World Eaters is chock full of Butt Monkeys. Gig, the evil force possessing the protagonist, takes glee in tormenting virtually every single party member the player meets. At first, the Hero's slightly ditzy friend Danette is his sole target, as Gig calls her by "stupid cow" instead of her name for literally the entire game, but the prospects open up as more of the less-serious story characters join... until the player meets Odie, who serves as Butt Monkey to not only Gig but virtually everyone else as well. He's so pathetic that he's a member of the Dio family, a lineage of the most powerful mages in recorded history... who flunked out of magic training.
- Salsa from Mother 3 is a Butt Monkey in the figurative and literal sense - he's constantly administered electric shocks from Yokuba, the Pig Masks kick him around, and he generally goes through all sorts of abuse all in the name of saving his girlfriend. It's rather satisfying when Kumatora and Wess help him bust out of his situation.
- About half the cast in Psychonauts are Butt Monkeys of some variety, but the standout is probably Raz's friend Dogen. Bullied by seemingly everyone at the camp (with the possible exception of Lili, though even she makes jokes at his expense), he's even menaced by the squirrels, and everything seems to terrify him. He gets constantly blown up in Coach Oleander's training course, and he's the first child at the camp to get Brainwashed - after being held hostage, of course, and tortured by a deranged dentist. Other, lesser Butt Monkeys of note include Elton, a shy, sweet kid who makes friends with the fish in the camp's lake - prompting the bullies to go fishing. He's generally the first to get kicked out of any mental world. The long-suffering Unfunny Sasha also gets his fair share of abuse.
- Beyond Good And Evil has poor, poor Double H, who seems to be picked on by the universe itself. When you first meet him, within the span of about five minutes, he gets tortured, Easy Amnesia, and thrown off a cliff. In the grand scope of things, he's stricken with an evil alien disease, scolded by Jade for trying to kiss her, made fun of by children (this editor recalls one kid derisively calling him "canned food"), and used as a Meat Shield in the Final Boss by both sides. This is to say nothing of his apparent unrequited Bodyguard Crush on Jade, though that depends on who in the fandom you ask. In comparison, the other main sidekick, Pey'j, really only has to play James Bondage.
- Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja and its sequel have Mitsumoto, and to a lesser degree Shino.
- Touhou series can be said to practically run on Butt Monkeys. First off, there's Cirno, even abused in the manual. Then there's Reisen Udongein Inaba, abused by her mistress with punishment times, forced to be guinea pig and even her fellow rabbit Tewi plays prank to frame her for it. Then there's Hong Meiling AKA China, whose name is so hard to remember they turn into her Fan Nickname, and even the resident of Scarlet Devil Mansion (especially Sakuya) treat her poorly.
- Fanworks, however, show that even Sakuya could become a Butt Monkey towards both Remilia and Flandre, the same can be said for other master-Battle Butler relationship (E.g: Yuyuko-Youmu). Likewise, there's also Alice Margatroid, who is turned into some sort of Moe character in the fanworks, practically a Butt Monkey bait for her partner Marisa.
- Galen "Starkiller" Marek of The Force Unleashed. Father dies before his eyes as a child, taken by his father's murderer and raised to be a Jedi killer, enduring an abusive upbringing. Receives no kind words from his surrogate father whatsoever and after one of his greatest acheivements, said surrogate father literally stabs him in the back for one little slip up, beats him up and almost kills him, saving him only that he might continue his work. After finally turning against him, Starkiller's ultimate fate is either Heroic Sacrifice or being horribly disfigured and enslaved for the rest of his life as punishment for one moment of weakness where he tried to get revenge.
- Shepard from Mass Effect can be one of these, if you give him (or her)both the Colonist and Sole Survivor backstory. One results in their entire colony, and then every one of their fellow soldiers die on Shepards first backstory mission!
- One of the selling points of You Don't Know Jack: The Ride was the return of all five hosts from the series so far. They get competitive about it. In particular, everyone repeatedly screws Buzz (the host of YDKJ2) out of his hosting duties. By the time you've played every round of the game, he has only asked one trivia question.
- Pierce in Saints Row 2, in the first instance you see him, he involves a plan to break in to a casino down to the second. Cue Gat, "Real nice dollhouse, but how 'bout we just go in and blow up the security guard, and every other motherfucker that stands in our way?" After the mission cue News Reporter, "The leader of the 3rd Street Saints, Notorious criminal Johnny Gat, and an unknown accomplice (Pierce)" Butt Monkey thru and thru.
- The Black Baron (stop starin') of Mad World. He introduces the various violent Minigames, and the introduction inevitably ends in his death, only for him to come back unscathed to introduce the next one. Although he is the Final Boss, so it could just be he's a lot tougher than he looks.
- Team Fortress 2 turns the BLU team into this through the Meet The Team videos. Every single episode revolves around the exploits of a single class on the RED team, and always ends with the BLU team receiving horrible beat downs from the starring character. In particular is the BLU Heavy, who is always the one who gets the most pathetic or humiliating deaths (usually). To date, BLU Heavy has been headshot, gibbed by a single rocket (twice in the same video), splattered by running blindly into over a dozen sticky bombs, killed with two shots by a level 1 Sentry, stabbed to death, and batted in the balls by the Scout in a fight over a sandwich. This Troper also assumes that he got mowed down by the Red Heavy in the first video.
- Less obvious is the BLU Soldier, who has usually been right next to BLU Heavy in all his worst deaths. BLU Soldier has died in every single video. He was ventilated by RED Heavy, headshot by Sniper, blown down by a Level 2 Sentry, decapitated by the RED Soldier, gibbed by the aforementioned sticky trap, stabbed by RED Spy, and flattened by a train while chasing RED Scout. In fact, BLU Soldier's deaths are sometimes more spectacular (but not always as funny) than BLU Heavy's. Apparently they're being set up as a Butt Monkey tag team.
- Rufus the Gargoyle in A Vampyre Story. A significant amount of progress is made just by ruining his day. Over the course of the game you threaten him with a mace, get a bird to crap over his head, reduce him to a disembodied head (mocking him once you've reached this point is optional but entertaining), plug his nose, and turn him into a golem. This last one annoys him on multiple levels, because he's forced to do your bidding, and the body you use is rather portly. It's not as though he wasn't asking for it, though-he's kind of a jerk and refuses to help out voluntarily. He doesn't make the greatest impression on Mona and Froderick, so the constant torment starts out as "if he won't help willingly we'll take what we need by force", but by the time you're finished with him it's become "Hey, we have another problem. Let's see if we can solve it by pissing off Rufus."
- Reese Worthington of Backyard Sports. He is constantly insulted by the other kids (like Dmitri, Kimmy, Ronny, and Barry Bonds) because they think he is a big nerd. This never changes throughout the series.
Web Animation
- Strong Sad from Homestar Runner, whose two brothers Strong Mad and Strong Bad enjoy heaping physical and psychological abuse on him.
- Also from Homestar Runner, almost everyone in Strong Bad's comic book Teen Girl Squad.
- Nebulon, Rumble Red, the King of Town, Cartoon Mary Palaroncini, and 1-Up are also frequently abused. There's only one person who does like Nebulon's style... and she's an enormous alien cow. However, it's justified in Red, Mary's and 1-Up's cases, in that they're parodies of annoying cartoon sidekicks.
- Germaine in the Neurotically Yours cartoon series. She's a magnet to stalkers and perverted men, has trouble controlling her weight, is the butt of Foamy's criticisms and Jerkass rage, and can't get any of her poetry published. She recently shaved her hair and gained more weight as a desperate attempt to get men to stop hitting on her.
- Red Vs Blue. Pretty much all the characters get their turn, but Grif probably qualifies the most, getting yelled at, insulted, threatened, beat up and even shot on occasion, all because he didn't want to risk his life in a war. Oh and because he's snarky.
- Washington sort of strays into the territory when you consider his speech at the end of Recreation, leading to a possible case of The Dog Bites Back:
Chairman: Agent Washington, when you find these blue soldiers that you're talking about, what makes you think that they are just going to give you the Epsilon unit when you ask for it?
Washington: Heh heh. For as long as I can remember, I've been lied to, taken advatange of, shot in the back and left for dead. And now, I have a way out of all of this. What in the hell makes you think that I'm going to ask for it?
Web Comics
- Syphile from Drowtales.
- Almost the entire cast of the webcomic 8-Bit Theater takes turns being the butt monkey. Black Mage takes center stage (Brian has even flat-out said "everything that happens, happens to hurt Black Mage"), but Fighter is being stabbed by him almost constantly. Red Mage gets his fair share of pain. White Mage is emotionally tortured by the utter lack of interest the chosen warriors have in their quest and the frequency with which they kill innocents or each other. Garland, the first boss, started as this before becoming just incompetent. The recurring Onion Kid character only even exists to have his new foster families casually slaughtered. Thief has to deal with Berserker attacking him at sight and being torched by Bahamut, and Black Belt got near-slaughtered by several encounters including Black Mage, until he eventually died . In a mild subversion, Black Mage actually deserves buttmonkey status.
- Also, recently, Sarda has revealed that he too is a Butt Monkey in a roundabout way-he's the Onion Kid, all growed up and looking to exact vengeance upon the ruffians that repeatedly ruined his life. Not only that, he's his own Butt Monkey, because as Red Mage points out, all the bad things that happened to the Onion Kid, almost without exception, happened because Sarda sent the Light Warriors on their quest in the first place.
- Davan of Something Positive. Within the last three years, his long-time girlfriend left him to pursue her dream job, his mother died, his father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, he's had a paternity scare (which the author admitted he almost made Davan the father just to spite some of his critics), and his acting career is a string of roles as rapists and psychos. All this doesn't even include the casual cruelties heaped upon him by his (so-called) friends.
- Some might argue Mike is a bigger Buttmonkey, but it's clear that most of the stuff that happens to him is both deserved and self-inflicted.
- And don't forget Kharisma, who was burned and disfigured and is currently serving a life sentence in prison for a murder that, ironically, she didn't even commit. Why is that ironic you ask? Because she was actively trying to kill the person whose murder sent her to jail.
- The entire line of Boxbots from Gunnerkrigg Court. After only two appearances, it's become clear that nobody, not even the Cast Page, likes Boxbot.
- And then there's this: an entire strip of nothing but Boxbot being a Butt Monkey.
- In contrast, everyone loves Robox. Must be the legs.
- The character Head-leg (a head on a leg, go figure) from Irritability was literally made by Evil Genius Exoth to be tortured and die in horrifying ways over and over again. Exoth just doesn't like poor Head-leg.
- Hannelore from Questionable Content, with elements of The Woobie.
- To a certain extent, Vaarsuvius from The Order of the Stick, who in the recent arc keeps getting screwed over by the plot in painful and imaginative ways.
- Riku in Ansem Retort is the target of countless acts of violence that should have killed him by now. He's been cut in half God knows how many times, burnt, blown up, electrocuted, stabbed, violated, tortured, and even had his heart removed. While he found a girlfriend in season 5, for the most part, even the comparatively friendly characters in the comic go out of their way to hate Riku.
- Myrith Mc Rain from Mortifer. It starts with Joey capturing him, chaining him to a desk near the breakroom, and forcing him to do hacking work to find black market kingpins. But the crowning moment of this has to be when Alyce, who is revealed to have known him from childhood, finds out he's there... And, well, just look.
- In the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Fan Web Comic by Q-Ice, being one of Nanoha's befriended ones automatically lands you in this role. Just ask Fate◊, Vita◊, and Teanna◊.
- Nodwick; one of the many Butt Monkeys to adopt the Deadpan Snarker path to make up for it. Even when he isn't shown "onscreen" to be suffering from fates ranging from being eaten by an ogre to being actively disintegrated by evil adventurers, well... the page quote is a pretty good indicator of the kind of things his employers put him through for a quick laugh. And then there's the henchapult....
- Sore Thumbs: Fairbanks, the Strawman Political Republican, who at this point is even starting to actually resemble a monkey. (It's all about the ears and facial expressions!)
- Jyrras Gianna from Dan And Mabs Furry Adventures never seems to get a break. He's frequently harassed by his family, choked by girls, teased by Abel, written into an embarassing novel, and finally, cursed by The Fair Folk shortly after having a nervous breakdown when discovering his feelings for his best friend and, as a result of the Fae meddling, has been declared "Bachelor of the Year" by a major woman's magazine, which sounds great until you remember he hates people calling him cute, is painfully shy and, oh, that said best friend is a guy. Good Lord!
- Twokinds: Poor, poor Keith...
- Subverted in Tales Of The Questor where the lead character, Quentyn, is the apparent Butt Monkey of the story. He is a runt, bullied and put down by many of his peers, the governing counsel of his town largely doesn't take him seriously, and he is unable to use the Lux power around him like almost everyone else. However, when he finally makes the big sacrifice that gets him hailed as a hero in his hometown, the chief bully, Rahan, drunkenly complains about how Quentyn actually has an unfair advantage. Rahan wails that since Quentyn is seems to be such a Butt Monkey to everyone, they always feel sorry for him and thus he has gotten away with a variety of antics that would have had anyone else run out of town. Quentyn comes close to believing that, but his friend Kestrel reminds him forcefully that he deserved that sympathy and he never abused it.
- Doug from Fletcher Apts, but only when Bill is involved.
- In Misfile Rumisiel started out as a Butt Monkey, however as he has become (marginally) more competent, the job of Butt Monkey has fallen more and more to resident Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain Cassiel who has sunk to the point where she has been defeated by a caterer.
- A Game of Fools: Neeg. Poor, poor Neeg.
- And, to a lesser degree, Joey.
- Penny Arcade's Safety Monkey. Don't tell me you don't have one.
- Also count Tycho, one of the core characters. Among other mishaps, gets abused by his "friend" and fellow main character Gabe.
Web Original
- Almost every character in the dark-comedy short story Vatsy and Bruno falls under this description. Vatsy is an insane, unscrupulous journalist who can't understand why his laughably poor articles aren't making it big-time. Bruno, his stoic bodyguard, gets pretty badly thrashed in a fight against a bounty-hunter pastiche known only as trenchcoat. Most badly, the character referred to as Chinbeard gets hunted like an animal, mutated into a freakish abomination, and then put down like a dog by Bruno because it's more convenient than finding a way to turn him back.
- Dr. Poque from Mega64 can never get his way. The worst time was when he gets into a bet to get a girlfriend with stolen money of his being used. He eventually gets one but she's taken away by one of his roommates (who's a puppet), gets made fun of by her and when it appears he won her back she's hit and killed by a car.
- AH Dot Com The Series has Luakel, who in his various incarnations has been shot, stabbed, eaten by cannibal supermodels, turned into a bizarre squid/yeti hybrid, had his brain transferred to several different bodies, lost his virginity to a transgendered gay Welshman, etc...
- Done for comedy in A Very Potter Musical, Ron and Dumbledore repeatedly harp on Hermione for being a know-it-all, buzkill, and "ugly". She's the only student in the cast who ever loses points for her house (except Harry, once), often for things that other characters are doing, flagrantly, at the same time as her. Harry is the only one relatively nice to her... because he needs her to do his homework, research for the first task, and everything else he's too lazy to do. This lightens up in the second act, though there's still a few jokes made at her expense.
- Phase, in the Whateley Universe. Turned into a mutant, when he was one of the people who couldn't manifest as a mutant. Thrown out of his family and impoverished, tortured by a mad scientist, had to go live in a basement, his body turned into a weird inter-sexed mess so he looks mostly female, in his first superpowered scrap had his clothes burned off in public and got kicked in the family jewels, and then got chewed out by the police for stopping a cop-killer supervillain, is roundly hated by most of Whateley Academy because of his last name and his intersexed status and has been physically attacked maybe two dozen times for these reasons, usually gets injured the most in any Team Kimba battle, in their first trip to Boston he got dumped in the sewer, you name it.
- The title character in the Charlie The Unicorn videos. The blue and pink unicorns apparently come up with extremely convoluted and surreal plans just to make Charlie miserable. This is probably why Charlie is a Deadpan Snarker.
Western Animation
- Meg Griffin on Family Guy goes through all kinds of crap, primarily being ignored, neglected, and ridiculed by her family.
[hanging off the edge of a cliff, being held only by Lois's hand]
Joe: Hold on to me like I'm your child!
*hand begins slipping*
Joe: Not Meg! Not Meg!
*she pulls him up*
- With everything that she deals with for no particular reason, it seems quite possible that she's a parody of the trope.
- Word Of God seems to indicate that it's played straight, and the only thing the writers can think of to do with the character.
- That says a lot about the skill of the writers.
- Peter goes so far as Breaking The Fourth Wall to tell the viewer that no-one'd blame them for changing the channel, as it's a "Meg episode".
- Tellingly even that episode isn't really a "Meg episode" - her storyline is just a setup for Brian to take over the plot in the second half and deliver a hamfisted Aesop.
- Thanks to a mix of Flanderization and Peter's Jerkass nature, the paraplegic Joe Swanson has also become quite a Butt Monkey for most Dead Baby Comedy in the show following its return. A quick gag in a recent episode reveals that he retains suicidal intentions.
- Brian
is was also a very big butt monkey on the show. Let's see, his mother got turned into a table, bad things always happen whenever he's left in charge of the house, his brief stint as a cop inadvertently made him a drug addict, and he's dating a woman whose stupidity rivals that of Ralph Wiggum. It probably explains why he drinks wine out of Big Gulp cups. Oh, and he once got the everloving crap beaten out of him by an infant. Granted, he's hardly the first of Stewie's victims, but still.
- The Toiletnator from Codename Kids Next Door, sure the guy has the power to control all toilets and has the coolest name but none of the other villains give him any respect they all think of him as being annoying.
- It is made apparent at one point that he CAN be incredibly dangerous in his own right. After a team of villains rejects him, he decides to go commando on the KND himself (armed with plungers, urinal cakes, etc.). It turns out that the villains had already invaded their treehouse, Toiletnator mistaking them for the KND in disguise and soundly beating them all, apparently his only victory done against his teammates.
- It's somewhat poetic that, in the Grand Finale, Toilenator is the only villain to not go on the big scavenger hunt that has been set up and stays behind at the starting place to goof around. As a result, he's the only nemesis that winds up completely unscathed in the end.
- Butters of South Park is a naive, wide-eyed, sweet-hearted little boy who Matt and Trey exhaust their imaginations thinking of new torments to inflict upon, including beatings, attempted murder by his mother, ninja star in the eye, etc. The character he has effectively replaced, Kenny, was also a prime example of a Butt Monkey.
- Pip, the little British kid from the earlier seasons was a definite Butt Monkey before he was phased out of the show. He was so unpopular with the other school kids that in one episode they tried to see who could spit on him the most. In another episode, Cartman makes fun of him because his parents are dead. Like Butters, he had a polite and pleasant disposition and generally took all the abuse with good nature.
- Then there's a literal butt monkey on the show, the multi-buttocked Five-Assed Monkey.
- Wouldn't that be a butts monkey?
- Cartman was also a buttmonkey, as he's the character that the other boys make fun of the most. ("Wow, this place is huge!" "Yeah, it's almost as big as Cartman's ass!") The pilot episode is literally about things going into and coming out of Cartman's ass. Of course, he stopped being a buttmonkey when he started to actually deserve all the bad stuff that happened to him. And there comes a point at which it could be argued that the four boys are all buttmonkeys, in that they always find themselves inextricably involved in absolutely ludicrous situations that they have no interest in ("we don't care, we just want our Okama Gamesphere back"). And, of course, there's Scott Tenorman, who was tricked into eating his parents, and was then mocked by his favorite band of all time. While not a recurring character, he had the show's Ultimate Buttmonkey Moment.
- Although Cartman rarely played along with the fat jokes involving comparisons to the size of his ass.
- Kenny used to South Park's resident Chew Toy/Butt Monkey. In much earlier seasons he dies at the end of nearly every episode. It's Lampshaded in the Thanksgiving short with Jay Leno making a guest appearance.
- Sokka on Avatar The Last Airbender, as a frequent source of comic relief throughout the series, is a victim of increasingly violent slapstick. Aside from humor, he once fell for a princess, only to learn that she was engaged, which was a moot point once she got killed off. It culminated in the second season in which, for the entire length of an episode, he was stuck in a hole.
- Dib, from Invader Zim, is the butt of everyone's jokes, due to his perceived insanity regarding the paranormal (as well as the size of his head). An interesting example as he is the show's designated protagonist. His father is generally absent, using the little time he has with Dib to bemoan his "insanity" and pressure him to study "real science"; his younger sister, Gaz, is eternally unsympathetic to him and often turns horribly violent if Dib, for example, takes her last piece of pizza or talks too much. One could say the Halloween episode "Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom" quite literally "put him through Hell." (In a twist, by the end of the episode he was the only character who wasn't injured).
- Almost subverted in "Dib's Wonderful Life of Doom", when Dib actually gained superpowers, thwarted the Irken invasion, and became hero of the world. Unfortunately, it was all a simulation so Zim could get him to confess that he threw the muffin.
- Pushed even further, and here not because of people seeing Dib as a lunatic, in the video game Nicktoons: Globs of Doom, where Dib is stuck with the Card Carrying Villains because Zim managed to lie his way to the heroic side (The entire game is a Strange Bedfellows situation). No one (except Plankton, whom Dib complained to) raised an eyebrow. Not even Jimmy Neutron, who should know better than this. And when the villains snap back (and take them Dib with them, booting Zim out with the heroes for whatever reason), only to be defeated and left stranded in space? He complains that he's still not a bad guy. No one still cares.
- Zim, the titular character, is that too. Like for Dib, he's regarded as being a freak by his classroom. Being a "failure is the only option" show, you can imagine what happens to him a lot of times and... well, his leaders sent him to Earth (not even knowing its existence) just to not see him anymore. And they gave him GIR. And now is regarded by them both like a pain and a joke. However, they do have their reasons—-with the odd exception of Earth, which Zim cannot destroy, Zim's presence on a planet tends to cause lots of destruction and death.
- Keef could also be called a Butt Monkey; he is an overly-friendly child who wants nothing more than to be friends with Zim and Dib, yet his attempts usually end with him being horribly hurt. However he is only significant in two episodes, one of which was unfinished and unaired. Iggins, who only appears in one episode, could also be called a Butt Monkey, though there is a reason for his admittedly over-the-top suffering (taking a video game that rightfully should have been Gaz's).
- Bill Dauterive from King Of The Hill. He's a divorcee, a loser, and a source of many, many jokes. Illustrated most poignantly in "Soldier of Misfortune," where the villain smacks him when Boomhauer mouths off.
- Either that or in "Unfortunate Son" where a running gag that has almost nothing to do with the main plot has Bill get repeatedly attacked by a falcon.
- Many characters from Drawn Together end up being butt monkeys in one way or another, given the deranged nature of the show. In particular, Ling Ling, Woldoor, and Toot suffer the worst effects.
- Tom Dubois of The Boondocks. He's an upstanding citizen who tries to distance himself from the negative stereotypes associated with African-American males in his neighborhood (his wife is Caucasian and is heavily involved in many Black causes), but still gets the majority of mistreatment from Riley and the self-loathing Uncle Ruckus. In a recent episode, he became the unwilling host of the ghost of Colonel Stinkmeaner, and nearly wrecked his own reputation by acting completely out of character at the most inappropriate times.
- Jon Arbuckle, in Garfield And Friends, frequently finds himself in this role.
- And it's wonderfully Lamp Shaded by the webcomic Garfield Minus Garfield, in which the artist removes Garfield (and other minor characters) from the strips — and leaves the apparently-schizoid Jon talking to himself. Trust me, it's very amusing.
- Jon's counterpart on U.S.Acres would be Wade. If anyone is bored on the farm (Roy more than anyone else), the solution is to make Wade run screaming in a fear-induced panic.
- I. R. Baboon of I. M. Weasel. He fits the trope perfectly, but with a bonus. As a baboon with no pants, he's about as close to a literal butt monkey as you can get.
- Donald Duck, from the classic Disney cartoons, frequently finds himself in this position, open to torment by various supporting characters or simply cruel fate. Other times, he brings on his own misery by virtue of being hot-headed and kind of a Jerkass.
- There has been a vocal outcry in Italy over Donald's butt monkey status in the late 1960's, so comic book writer Guido Martina and fellow artist Giovan Battista Carpi made it up for them by creating a superhero alterego for him called "Paperinik", a portmanteau of Paperino (Donald's name in Italy) and Diabolik. The Paperinik stories eventually spun off into their own canon.
- Tom Peters of Tom Goes to the Mayor. His wife is hateful and grotesque, he can't connect to his step-sons on any level, he's an utter failure as an entrepreneur, and his every plan is doomed to failure merely by his association. When other characters are in a position to help him they never do. While it seems that Tom meets the mayor for the first time in every episode due to Negative Continuity, it's also hinted that Tom is so tragically insignificant that the mayor simply forgets who Tom is. The sole instance Tom was actually successful he turned into a complete Jerkass.
- For Totally Spies!, let's put it this way: a good idea for a drinking game. If you happen to be watching a Totally Spies! marathon or are watching the show on DVD, take a drink every time something bad happens to Clover. You won't be sober for long.
- Timon in Timon and Pumbaa.
- To be fair, a lot of what Timon goes through is karmic retribution for some recent act of Jerkassery, usually by being overly rude, selfish, or proud. When using his powers for good such as dressing in drag and doing the hula to distract hungry, bi-curious hyenas, he's untouchable.
- Greasepit from Biker Mice From Mars.
- Adam Lyon in My Gym Parter's A Monkey. Everytime Jack Spidermonkey has does one of his shennigans Adam is usually the poor sap who has to go along with it.
- Candace from Phineas And Ferb. Might actually be considered the Costanza, were it not for the fact that much of her suffering is inadvertedly self-inflicted.
- Besides, she usually gets the boy (Jeremy) in the end, so it's hard to feel too sorry for her.
- The script writers for The Simpsons never seem to run out of new afflictions to plague Milhouse with. Perhaps the greatest insult to Milhouse comes from behind the scenes. In the movie's DVD commentary, the writers stated that originally Milhouse was going to be portrayed as "finally getting a break" with Lisa, even getting to the point where he would help save Lisa and the rest from the angry mob and generally being all around useful in the second half. However, due to fear that Milhouse' long, long time infatuation with Lisa would go over viewers' heads...this story was toned down and Milhouse was replaced with Colin...now making the subplot seem tacked on. It just really isn't ever coming up for poor Milhouse is it?
- No, the worst insult to Milhouse is in a Twenty Minutes Into the Future episode where Lisa is getting married, and discusses her wedding plans with Marge:
Lisa: I don't know, Mom. I feel kind of uncomfortable wearing white. You know, Milhouse...
Marge: Oh, Milhouse doesn't count.
''(They both laugh))
- Speaking of The Simpsons, need we mention Hans Moleman?
- From about seasons 9/10, Moe and Kirk van Houten become two of the major butt monkeys of the show.
- Homer himself has his moments of Butt Monkeying. From his frequent injuries (which reached the point that the Behind the Music parody stated that Homer became addicted to painkillers due to said injuries), humiliating situations (such as losing his clothing, getting covered in mud, running into other campers which led to him being chased and captured, and being examined by scientists because they thought he was Big Foot) and general bad luck and mistreatment. Granted he usually really deserves it (and most of the time causes it).
- Many of the couch gags end with him killed, maimed, or humiliated.
(family sits on the couch)
Lisa: (looks at the camera) "What? Can't we just sit on the couch with any thing weird happening?"
Homer: (hit by a spear) "Do'h!"
- Martin Prince, Springfield Elementary's resident nerd and perhaps second only to Lisa in terms of intelligence at the school is a textbook example of the butt monkey. The boy is a generally nice, gentle person but is berated, beaten, and tormented to almost sadistic reaches. Although the characters' occasionally pandering ways does bring this on himself sometimes.
- Actually, Martin can be seen as smarter than Lisa, as in "Homer's Enemy", Homer tells Frank Grimes her IQ is 156 (and Lisa doesn't correct him) and in "Bart the Genius", Homer, thinking Martin's IQ test is Bart's, reveals that "Bart's" IQ is 216 (at first, Homer thinks it's 912 because he was reading it upside down).
- Thankfully, Martin got some much needed vengeance and a temporary level in badass near the end of the Simpsons Movie.
- Pretty much every character in this show could be considered a Butt Monkey at one time or another.
- No individual mention of Frank Grimes yet?
- Perhaps the most notable recurring example is that of Gil, a character whose only reason to exist is to fail at everything he does.
- Pud'n from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, who seems to be a dumping ground for the weirdest, most horrible incidents that Maxwell Atoms can think of.
- Irwin is twice the butt monkey Pud'n is. Let's see: he's in love with Mandy, who hates him and hurts him commonly; he goes through torture like being eaten, made fun of, physically attacked in every way, ended up in a few downer endings, and more; he got caught in the tub twice both in court and a warp hole. He's like the black equivalent to Milhouse.
- Granted, at least he Took A Level In Bad Ass in Underfist.
- He's genetics are quite interesting: his mom is a mummy and his grandfather is Dracula.
- Grim himself. Just think, he's The Grim Reaper, subjected to a life as eternal
Chew Toy friend to a complete meathead with uncontrollable destructive tendencies and a Machiavellian sociopath of a girl. The Grim Reaper as Straight Man? How ironic.
- Prince Nestor from World of Quest always seems to have something slimy and gross cover him multiple times in an episode.
- Not to mention the rivalry he and Quest have is pretty one-sided, as Quest is big and muscular and, well, an adult, therefore usually always prevailing over poor Nestor.
- Iago of Aladdin: "When in doubt, hurt the bird," was the actual mantra of the writing and animation teams.
- The entire purpose of Eek The Cat was about placing an incredibly sympathetic, sincere, likable character in a series of gags designed to bring harm to him.
- In Teen Titans, Beast Boy. Poor guy even suffers in the Downer Ending. No wonder he's embarrassed that his first name is the same as that of a certain well-known cat.
- Kif Kroker of Futurama is a bit of a cross between a Butt Monkey and the Eeyore. He gets put upon a lot because Zapp blames him for his failings, and he's gotten a bit depressive as a result.
- Oh, And Zoidberg.
- The fact that Zoidberg wasn't even identified first from this show is merely another example of his status as that universe's King Butt Monkey.
- In one episode Leela crashes the Planet Express ship through the roof. Hermes turns to Zoidberg and promptly docks his pay.
- Inverted once (and only once) in the Xmas episode, where Robot Santa tries to kill everyone for being naughty, except Zoidberg, who has been very good, and gets a pogo stick.
- Fry also gets a fair bit of this, although not the the extent of the other two.
- As a matter of fact, the time Amy snuck onto the Nimbus was probably the only time Kif gladly obeyed Zapp's command.
- Kevin of Ben 10 Alien Force can't catch a break with his Troubled But Cute persona. On top of being too
afraid macho to ask Gwen out, even after she kissed him, he gets his butt handed to him at least once an episode. In the premier, Ben thoroughly trounces him as Swampfire, and the Highbreed brushes off his attacks. Next episode, he winds up frozen and needs defrosting (Although to be fair, he was frozen along with Ben, Gwen and a police squad). Then he's chained down and turned into a giant chandelier and mined for crystal by Oompa Loompas little robot henchmen. Then his instant self-made armor gets blasted off of him by a sparkly blond prettyboy. Episode six gives him a break (though he does complain it's "the worst road trip ever"), but in seven it's back to being pounded, this time right into the ground by Gwen's grandmother. And in eight, he ends up being ripped into by an old school bully of Ben's who's possessed by a vicious metal armor. He was threatening in the original Ben10. One wonders why he's respected by the rest of the cast...
- If you get annoyed at Jerk Ass Sentinel Prime in Transformers Animated, just wait five minutes and something nasty will happen to him. Usually it's related to Earth's weather/inhabitants/road structure, but he's also had his body stolen by a human, been humiliated in front of his comrades, screamed like a little girl when encountering organics, failed at driving in the rain, and been wrong in pretty much every arrogant assertion he's made.
- From season 2 onward, Starscream also becomes a Butt Monkey in this series. It starts with the infamous "Starscream Death Montage" with Megatron killing him over and over again (with the allspark fragment on his head being the only thing keeping him alive). All of his plans always fail and in the finale in which may be his Crowning Moment of Butt Monkery, his clones (with one heavily implied to represent his self-loathing) betray him for Megatron. He spends the majority of season three as a disembodied head trapped with Megatron aboard Omega Supreme, and just when he fnally gets a new body, Megatron blasts him (He recovers). And in the finale, The allspark fragment that was keeping him alive is pulled out, thus killing him. And if you count the comic adaptation, he gets humiliated and blackmailed by Professor Princess. One can't help but feel a bit sorry for him.
- Then there's Skyfire from the original series, an 'old friend' of Starscream's who is revived and used by the Decepticons, and then seems to heroically sacrifice himself to save the Autobots. Only a sequel episode shows that he didn't actually die, but was buried in some ice to the extent where it took the Autobots seconds to dig him back up, they just didn't bother until they needed him to fly somewhere. In that episode, he befriends Thundercracker for all of about thirty seconds, until the Decepticons shoot him. He's then routinely ignored by the other Autobots unless they need carting around the world, and forgotten about entirely when the Aerialbots arrive towards the end of the second series.
- Sissi from Code Lyoko. She's supposed to be The Libby, but you would be hard pressed to find a single character that doesn't enjoy constantly insulting her to her face. She's basically involved in a kind of Vicious Cycle, acting like The Libby in response to the bad treatment she gets from everyone else, which is essentially a response to her Libby behavior. The Lyoko kids do manage to break this cycle in the finale, and Sissi does prove that she's been a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold all along.
- Odd from the same show also gets little respect and is constantly failing at various goals he pursues, such as holding on to a girlfriend (though, to be fair, it doesn't help that he dates multiple girls at the same time). He also is notoriously bad at school that even the teachers mock him for it. Let's not forget the constant dissing he gets from his friends, most infamously them stealing his own virtual pet toy and giving it to Yumi's little brother, who soon afterwards breaks it.
- Of course, neither of the two above examples combined could make the Butt Monkey magnitutde of the show's resident gym teacher, Jim Moralés (but he'd rather not talk about it).
- In the Animated Adaptation of the Bubsy video games, Arnold the Armadillo is dragged along on an adventure he wanted no part of and is put through seemingly endless physical abuse by the title character, as well as Bubsy's hyperactive, destructive niece and nephew.
- Virtually everyone living in the Valley in The Oblongs. Helga and James get the absolute worse treatment though.
- Beast Wars Waspinator's many deaths can be watched here.
- Terrorsaur and Sporponok were also co-Butt Monkeys before they met their fate at the start of season 2, then Waspinator became arguably the sole Butt Monkey (Inferno has been picked on a bit as well).
- It's only fitting that at the end of Beast Wars, Waspinator is the only Predacon to get a happy ending, becoming ruler of the early humans. Though, I guess it doesn't last long before he's booted from Earth by the humans. Though, by the end, Waspinator is the only Predacon who doesn't meet his/her fate (minus Blackarachnia, who's a Maximal by the end)
- Rattrap becomes kind of a Butt Monkey in Transformers: Beast Machines, at the beginning. In Beast Wars he was considered slightly obnoxious but otherwise a valuable robot to have on your side. Then along comes Beast Machines and the only thing standing between Rattrap and getting thrown off a cliff is Optimus. When Optimus gets put out of commission temporarily, everyone gets downright hostile, even after he learns to transform again, because he doesn't offer anything in the way of firepower (Cheetor even says they're only keeping him around because he sits on the outside fringes of being "one of us", and therefore they're not ditching him). Then they're surprised when he turns to Megatron for a little sympathy and weaponry.
- Also from the Transformers verse are Ransack and Crumplezone, a Terrible Trio duo. Quoth Crumplezone:
"When he [Optimus] sees our true power and feels our vengeance, he'll regret beating us over and over and over and..."
- Mr. Persnickety on The Mr. Men Show often falls victim to this.
- Principal Haney from PBS' Arthur. In one episode, two characters even related flashbacks which ended in him suffering some form of abuse, and when a third character related a flashback that did not, Arthur asks "Aren't you forgetting something?" Cue the continuation of that flashback in which, yes, Principal Haney suffers abuse.
- Coconuts on The Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog (who actually was a monkey). He appeared the least out of the Badnik Trio, and when he did appear, he would always get defeated by Sonic and Robotnik would demote him to janitor duty. His catchphrase is even, "I hate (insert noun here)! Hate it, hate it, hate it, HATE IT!!!"
- Similarly, Antoine in the SATAM version was the usual butt of Sonic's jokes, constantly reprimanded, and only Tails ever listened to his stories.
- Tucker of Danny Phantom. He's dumped on quite a lot and has saved Danny more than once and yet, he only gets thanked once and it's a "thanks for being my friend" that Danny throws out to Sam as well. Although it's heartfelt, the execution of how that came about feels rather tacked on and awkward. Later seasons have him either virtually ignored or usually getting victimized.
- Eugene from Hey Arnold! And probably Brainy too (the one that is always behind Helga "breathing" and gets punched in the face as a result).
- Ron from Kim Possible has elements of this, gets no respect, villains never remember his name, gets ignored by everyone in favor of Kim. Of course he ends up dating Kim, so it's hard to feel bad for him.
- A better example maybe is Dr. Drakken. Kicked out of university, unable to achieve anything by himself, constantly and vigorously berated by his sidekick who is undeniably superior to him in just about every way, constantly and repeatedly beaten by Kim, often with little or no effort.
- Like Ron, he ends up with his female partner, so it evens out in a way.
- Ron gets a bone thrown to him whenever Monkey Fist appears. Since he's a gentleman of class (who just happens to have a bizarre, all-consuming obsession), he makes a point to remember Ron's name as well. After Ron gets mystic monkey juju, Monkey Fist even becomes something of a nemesis to him, and he's better suited to dealing with Fist than Kim is (because, you know, monkeys).
- The Looney Tunes team, particularly Chuck Jones, liked to pit "winners" against "losers," which meant that many of the villains (Daffy, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester, Yosemite Sam) got the stuffing kicked out of them on both a physical and personal level. However, the defining character of this trope in undeniably Wile E. Coyote, who has never once had a chance to be anything BUT a Butt Monkey.
- Tiny Toons had Plucky and Hamton.
- Pretty much every character in Animaniacs. The most consistent examples are Dr. Scratchnsniff, the mime, Buttons, and Chicken Boo.
- The Fairly Oddparents has two. First is Binky, a fairy whose every apperance has something bad happening to him. The fact that he seems to be Jorgen's assistant probably makes it worse. Then there's Veronica, a member of the popular kids. Despite her status, most jokes involving her involve something painful happening to her. Or the fact that she's insanely in love with Timmy.
- It takes someone this long to mention Squidward from SpongebobSquarepants the worst things tend to happen to him: his head exploded, shot out of a cannon, got set on fire twice, been squished by a boulder, stampeded by a crowd, attacked multiple times by a seabear, zapped multiple times by the Flying Dutchman, exploded after eating too many krabby patties, a piebomb was accidentally thrown in his face, got his toenail ripped off,etc. At one point, he actually asks, "Will I ever win?" In fact, only ONE episode ("Band Geeks") has ever played out in his favor.
- And also Plankton who's had just as bad luck as Squidward.
- and Ms Puff, Barnacle Boy, Patchy etc.
- Naturally, these all fall under "Spongebob and Patrick not understanding what leave me alone means."
- Every character in The Venture Brothers is a loser, more or less. But Billy Quizboy is the true Butt Monkey. Everybody treats him like crap and mocks his pathetic attempts to exaggerate his own abilities.
- Many characters in BeavisandButthead including the title characters, their teacher Mr. Van Dreissen, Tom Anderson, and Stewart.
- After his first run in with physical abuse, the writers of Total Drama Action seem to now make it a point to have Justin hit at least once per episode.
- Rocko in Rocko's Modern Life.
Real Life
- Horatio Spafford.
- Ryan Seacrest. He seems to take it pretty well, though. It helps that he gets paid a lot of money.
- Louis Walsh is The X Factor's designated Butt Monkey. He doesn't always take it well.
- Minority populations usually get persecuted by the majority population. Notable examples include:
- Jews, perhaps the most famous minority of the world. They have a long and storied history of being at the mercy of other ethnicities and forced into various levels of subjugation and indignity. Any time a disaster struck a European town, the people's first reaction was often to go kill some Jews. After the Holocaust, however, the western world was so ashamed that antisemitic remarks have become one of the ultimate taboos.
- The Palestinians have continually been screwed over by everyone, including (arguably even especially) the other Arab countries and their own political leaders.
- Nomadic people are generally mistrusted by whatever local population they pass through. Romani were thought to steal children and possess witchcraft. They were also one of the major targets of the Nazis. Irish Travelers are generally thought to be a society of con-artists, a view made more popular by the film Snatch and the television show The Riches.
- An Italian government official recently justified some antiziganist (Gypsy-phobic) legislation by saying that all gypsies were thieves and that they should be watched. Jesus f'ing Christ.
- The term 'gypped' is so old and common that most people don't even know it's a racial slur against gypsies.
- Most "indigenous people" become "indigenous" by being conquered and pushed aside by another ethnic group. Native Americans are perhaps the most famous example due to American cinema, but just about every major geographic area was once inhabited by a totally different group of people than those living there now. The respect with which indigenous people are treated varies from place to place.
- Also note they were not original people either; very few societies can claim to have lived in an area before anyone else.
- Blacks. Some idiots say they get special treatment. This editor has seen the special treatment they get. He doesn't want it.
- Women are second class citizens in almost every society. Interestingly, in western media, most buttmonkeys are men.
- Gays enjoy fewer rights than straight people even in progressive western societies, and can be outright executed in others.
- Most Acceptable Targets are examples of this.
- At every workplace there will be one coworker who is the Butt Monkey. No exceptions.
- This also applies to school classes.
- Every team that plays the Harlem Globetrotters will be the Butt Monkey for at least that game.
- Most of the time, the Globetrotters are playing "exhibition" games, meaning that everyone's in on it and just trying to have fun; all that showmanship would be a huge liability in a straight matchup.
- Poland.
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