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Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male

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"Vis's devastating dry-humping finisher somehow made it into the WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2007 video game, which was rated Teen. For comparison, the Mature-rated Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas got recalled over its own clothed (but well-hidden) depiction of consensual sex."

A man raping someone is (almost) always depicted as a horrible thing and the source of much drama. Unless the rapist's victim is another man, in which case it's commonly dismissed, ignored, or even Played for Laughs. It doesn't matter if it's through force, deception, coercion, or drugs, male-on-male rape is almost always an object of derision—against the victim. Things that would not even be remotely acceptable are now fair game, rape presented as somehow fundamentally different just by changing the genders from "real" (male on female) rape.

There are multiple Double Standards at work here. Firstly, men being on average physically stronger than women, they are expected to be strong and dominant (including during intercourse), and rape is thought of as something that only happens to women and only done by men. With this postulate in place, men aren't supposed to be victims, especially not of anything sex-related, since a "real man" is always the one putting their penis into other people. Thus, the victim of male-on-male rape has been humiliated and defeated in the worst way possible as well as robbed of his masculinity, while the perpetrator will strangely be considered exceptionally virile for having been able to sexually dominate a man. Plus, remember that All Men Are Perverts and always want sex, so if the victim is homosexual then there's the perception he can't be raped in the first place because gay men are too horny to say no. Thus a man who is raped is by definition weak and unmanly; therefore he's comically pathetic and must have deserved it.

This is part of why even when it's not supposed to be funny, it's still considered funny. For one, comedy at base is the creation of an expectation and then the subversion of that expectation. A man being the victim of rape rather than the perpetrator fulfills that basic premise. Secondly, because the idea of such a violation of masculinity is such an extreme taboo, seriously contemplating it makes audiences very uncomfortable. Therefore people often resort to Black Comedy as a coping mechanism to make the idea seem harmless. The male-on-male rape scenes in Deliverance and The Shawshank Redemption are obviously supposed to be horrific; however, people routinely laugh at and parody these scenes. This might be why a non-camp, manly and dominant Depraved Homosexual or Depraved Bisexual is perceived as particularly dangerous to straight men.

Conversely, audiences may go as far as to actively wish for a character to be a victim of male-on-male rape if they're the villain. In police TV shows, cops will routinely threaten suspects with jail, and the "big horny men" inside. At the end, when the criminal is arrested, the cops will make a point to tell him that he will spend the next xx years of his life as a buttboy for the burly rapists who fill the prison. The writers obviously expect audiences to feel elated at the prospect of the bad man being raped again and again for years to come.

The Unfortunate Implications have Real Life consequences. People prefer to think of it as impossible for a man to be raped. If he was a "real man," he wouldn't have been raped in the first place! Therefore it's okay to mock and belittle victims even if they acknowledge the rape. Male rape victims have few resources available to help them, and they often avoid speaking out about what happened to them and seeking the few resources that do exist because they're afraid of being laughed at and seen as pathetic and weak. This unfortunately extends to sexual harassment too. Legally (to this day in many places) rape was defined as a man sexually assaulting a woman, excluding this by definition.

Compare with Double Standard Rape: Female on Male and Double Standard: Rape, Female on Female. Related to Black Comedy Rape and Queer People Are Funny. Prison Rape often overlaps with this trope.


Examples

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    Anime & Manga 
  • The Yaoi Genre anime Sukisho! plays an Attempted Rape in the first episode for comedy; also, the one on bottom is said to have enjoyed it.
  • While the anime of Green Green plays both the rape of Bacchi Gu (a teenage boy) by a giant bear and Reika (a teenage girl) getting molested by a group of monkeys for laughs, Reika eventually manages to escape while Bacchi's rape is depicted in detail, to the point the Bear orgasms inside of him.
  • FAKE: Dee attempts to rape Ryo while on vacation. Carol and Bikky are eavesdropping outside the door and betting on whether or not Dee will actually succeed.
  • Hetalia: Axis Powers:
    • France often gropes or undresses the other countries, which are almost all males. It's always played for laughs.
    • Implied in the Dating Sim strip, where the hypothetical bad ending has Korea shouting that he'll do this to China.
    • In a (wisely) deleted set of strips, France nearly did this to Italy to demonstrate to Spain how they didn't need their erotic paintings for pleasure. A footnote reads that it wound up not happening. Like the above, this was played for laughs, though the story was later removed by Himaruya.
  • Whispered Words has Wholesome Crossdresser Akemiya Masaki cornered by some scary yet goofy men. He takes off his disguise to stop them from pursuing him but it surprisingly ends up just emboldening them. Luckily, he's saved by Action Girl Sumika Murasame, so things never went too far. The scene was entirely played for laughs.
  • Karate Shoukoushi Kohinata Minoru has Pedro, a Brazilian martial artist that was revealed to have been the masked rapist that targeted male members of different martial arts clubs. He ends up having his sights set on Minoru, the protagonist of the series. This is played entirely for comedy, and the fact that he was a serial rapist that went around raping boys ended up being completely forgiven by the main characters, who ended up getting him to join their karate club because he's strong. It gets worse—he ends up being assigned to rooming with Minoru. Afterwards, numerous times he tries to rape Minoru (with failed results, thankfully), and all of these instances are made to make the readers go, "Ha ha ha! That wacky Pedro!"
  • Tokyo Tribe's infamous "Goosh Goosh" scene is either this combined with Bloody Hilarious or is just plain wrong.
  • Averted in A Cruel God Reigns, Greg's repeated assaults on Jeremy are very much Played for Drama and treated as serious and damaging to the latter.
  • Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!: After they have a bath, Isshiki informs Yuuta he was confessed to while working as a lifeguard, by someone named Chihiro. Yuuta congratulates him but Isshiki laments because he still loves Kumin and only worked to buy her a present. Chihiro appears and it's revealed that Chihiro is a guy. Yuuta goes through shock, Isshiki is shocked and frightened, while the former leaves and the latter is quickly accosted by Chihiro saying he and Isshiki must be destined to be together. The taller, seme Chihiro feels him up while the shorter, undesiring uke Isshiki tries to resist his advances. Yuuta quickly leaves, internally wishing Isshiki luck with Chihiro, a hanging bunch of flowers falls off the wall to the ground and Isshiki can be heard screaming.
  • In Attack on Titan, Armin gets molested by a Dirty Old Man. While Jean tries to comfort him, Connie and Sasha can barely stop themselves from laughing.
  • Welcome Back, Alice: Yo mentions his handjob from Kei wasn’t consensual but Mitani is just disgusted that he did something sexual with someone who’s biologically male.

    Comic Books 
  • In Preacher, Hoover phones up what he thinks is an escort service to get his boss, Herr Starr, laid. Unfortunately, he orders a man who rapes Starr in an alley. While parts of the aftermath are played for laughs, Starr's reaction isn't—the next morning, he attempts to strangle Hoover. Later, this incident is revealed to be only the overture to Starr's series-long Humiliation Conga (the next step of which is his realization that he can no longer achieve any sort of sexual satisfaction without anal penetration), shelving it right back under (very, very dark) comedic relief again.
  • At the end of the second volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a male-on-male rape (and murder) scene and its aftermath kept shifting between horrified amusement and genuine horror.
  • The Authority plays this somewhat straight when Midnighter, enraged at the brutality visited on his lover Apollo, apparently rapes the Commander in retaliation with a jackhammer. Though it's actually averted just beforehand with the Commander's implied rape of Apollo (which makes the first example more a case of Pay Evil unto Evil or Karmic Rape).
  • In Tangled Web of Spider-Man, the villainous Kangaroo is trapped by another villain, Tombstone, into being prison-raped as revenge for a previous betrayal. As with most of the injuries to Kangaroo in this series (laser cannon exploding in his crotch, getting a foot up his behind), it is played for laughs.
  • In The Filth, a deranged porn director and serial rapist (loosely based on real director Max Hardcore) unleashes a swarm of giant, murderous sperm on Los Angeles. A member of The Filth then violates him, injecting a substance into his colon that attracts the swarm to him, reducing civilian casualties and aiding easy disposal. The whole scene is played for queasy laughs.
  • DC's Hitman has got a troupe of unusual "friends", or they serve as his sidekicks, you got Dogwelder, who welds dogs to people, Sixpack, the perpetual drunk, and Bueno Excelenté. With the power to… rape people while going "Bueno, Bueno, Bueno." Victims include the knocked-out Lobo, and a drugged Kyle Rayner, Green Lantern, the last of which was not only treated as a joke in its original appearance but occasionally used as a Brick Joke afterward. In a separate throw-away gag, Bueno is shown surprising a murderous male scientist. A newspaper article later reports the death of said scientist due to severe internal injuries.

    Fan Works 
  • Averted in the Lois & Clark fanfic What Makes a Man?, where male rape is portrayed as horrific both physically and mentally.
  • Zigzagged in the Emergency! fic "Lost and Found'', Roy initially has trouble accepting the full scope of what Gage endured. He knew that John's captor raped him in the traditional sense, but it's more confusing when John admits to asking and even begging for sex at times. Roy quickly realizes as John continues talking that, even the times John was "willing" were still rape, as John was abducted, tortured, and manipulated, brought to the point of seeing "willing" submission as his captor's plaything as the only alternative to being tortured and killed like the previous victims. Brackett and Dixie are both horrified at John's acknowledgement he was raped, as is Roy. But Roy's temporary partner makes a crude joke, angering Roy and provoking a fight. Captain Stanley threatens suspension but makes it clear he won't tolerate any more of it. That guy becomes nicer later, but then one of Roy's neighbors says in front of Roy's son that John stayed because he liked it and called him a gay slur. Roy has to explain the word, but even the boy is smart enough to realize the guy's a jerk and John doesn't deserve it.
  • The prompts and works in the Hydra Trash Party Kink Meme strongly subvert and avert this, taking the nonconsensual nature of rape (usually but not always perpetrated against a male character) and the devastating effects it can have on the victim very, very seriously. One of the few hard rules for Hydra Trash Party is acknowledging non-con situations for what they are.
  • Averted in this Death Note fic, where L is literally raped to death and it is played for all due horror.

    Film 
  • At the end of The Hot Chick, the villain (now male again but in a female stripper's outfit and handcuffs) is making his escape from the police and climbs into the back of a car in a back alley, thinking that he will be driven to freedom. Unfortunately for him, the doors immediately lock and the driver turns around with a lecherous smile on his face before driving off as the villain screams in terror. It's insinuated that said driver is going to rape him after the fade-to-black.
  • Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny has JB offering Kyle to the Devil as a sex slave as their stake in a bet. The Devil sings a song about what he's going to do to Kyle when he gets his hands on him while dancing in front of a collection of sex toys.
  • In Little Nicky, it appears Hitler's punishment in Hell for, well, being Hitler, is having a large pineapple inserted up his ass daily. Though it is Hell and he is Hitler, this is, again, Played for Laughs. Note that Hitler is also in a French maid outfit at the time.
  • The rape of several men by an imposing black man (Michael Clarke Duncan) in the American remake of School for Scoundrels (a gag notably absent from the British original).
  • In Carry On Matron, Cyril Carter, who has infiltrated Finisham Maternity Hospital disguised as a female nurse to reluctantly help his father Sid pull off a heist of contraceptive pills, is continually pursued by the perverted Dr. Prodd, who goes as far as locking "her" in a room, ignoring "her" screams and making "her" aware that he "was a boxing champion at university". Furthermore, the scene turns out like it would be fairly funny even if the victim really were female.note 
  • Almost averted in Dirty Work after Norm Macdonald's character is raped in prison and his friend starts teasing him about it:
    Mitch: You know what hurts the most is the… the lack of respect. You know? That's what hurts the most. Except for the… Except for the other thing. That hurts the most. But the lack of respect hurts the second most.
  • An attempted rape of a young man by a much larger old man is played for laughs in Withnail and I, though for very Squicky ones. It's certainly supposed to be hilarious when he gets out of the situation by telling his attacker that his roommate is his lover and that he couldn't stand the thought of being made to be unfaithful to him. Also, his reaction to the "I fuck arses" graffiti plays with this trope.
    Uncle Monty: I mean to have you even if it must be burglary!
  • In the Bollywood film Kambakkht Ishq the female lead gets at the male by telling an airport security person that he's gay, which apparently is some secret rite that allows him the honor of getting heavily molested by a gigantic cross-dressing brute in the cavity search room for laughs.
  • Used in the film version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead:
    Showman: We can do rapiers! Transvestite and another actor start fencing. Rape! Transvestite jumps up on the other actor's waist and gyrates. Both! Another actor comes in and begins fencing with the transvestite as he is gyrating.
    • The original play had a bit of this too, where the Player offers to put on "a private and uncut performance of 'The Rape of the Sabine Women' —or rather, woman. Or rather, Alfred."
  • In Top Secret!, Nigel "The Torch" recounts to his former girlfriend, Hillary, how he was "rescued" off of a deserted island by Salvage Pirates. "They tormented me in ways I cannot describe." He then proceeds to smile crookedly at the memory. Later, Nigel being raped by a bull he was in the back half of a cow costume) is supposed to be funny.
  • In Half Baked, one of the stoners lands in jail and has been bailed out by his friends before his protector in prison gets released and he will be raped by a big, black prisoner. Played for Laughs when the characters imagine how he drops the soap in the prison shower, bends over to pick it up and the legs of the black prisoner come into view immediately behind him.
  • Allison Pregler has noted how much she despises this trope in schlock films. A particularly disturbing punchline in The Black Ninja had a hapless criminal raped by a several hundred-pound Jamaican crossdresser in prison, but it was played as a joke. Cue Lupa:
    Lupa: RAPE. IS NOT. FUNNY.
  • In The Mask, two car mechanics are assaulted and raped by the main character while wearing the mask. He rapes them in the ass with certain phallic car parts, and this is played for laughs in the movie.
  • American History X: Subverted. When Derek meets Cameron again after his release from prison, Cameron jokes about Derek's Prison Rape. It's only used to highlight Cameron as a Jerkass; the rape itself is portrayed dramatically.
  • By the end of Mallrats after Shannon is arrested for having sex with a minor it's heavily implied (and in the deleted scenes, outright confirmed) that he winds up getting raped in prison by his cellmate.
  • Thoroughly deconstructed in I'll Sleep When I'm Dead. Will Graham (not that one), the film's protagonist, played by Clive Owen, is a former mob boss who learns that his brother was violently raped. The rape scene is brutal and ugly, and the victim is traumatized (and later commits suicide). Graham goes to a medical examiner and a psychologist for information, and both doctors give in-depth, matter-of-fact descriptions of both the motives and effects of the rape. Graham doesn't want people to learn his brother was raped, as he fears - correctly - that this very trope might come into play.
  • In the film The Strange Thing About the Johnsons, Isaiah (the son) regularly rapes Sidney (his father). Isaiah has been raping his father since he was 12. When Isaiah gives Sidney a Hannibal Lecture, Sidney runs away in an attempt to flee, only to end up getting hit by a truck and killed on impact. While the sexual abuse is not played for laughs, one would wonder how an audience would react if the son was raping his mother.
  • Completely averted in The Prince of Tides, where Tom having gotten raped by one of the men who broke into his family's home, as well as the trauma that gave him, is treated as horrifyingly as such an experience would be and with the exact same seriousness as his mother and sister getting raped by the other men, with not a shred of indication that it shouldn't be taken seriously.

    Jokes 
  • A taxi driver picks up a suspicious man at the airport. Once the man has taken seat in the cab, he draws a gun and forces the cabbie to drive him into the woods. Once they are there, the man drags the driver out of his cab and rapes him behind a tree. Then he orders the cabbie back into the car and flicks his wallet. "Okay, here's a thousand bucks." Cue the taxi driver gasping. "A thousand bucks?! I would have volunteered for a 100!"
  • Superman is flying along when he looks down and sees Wonder Woman lying naked on a beach with her legs spread wide. He figures he'll use his super-speed to get some, so he flies down and screws her in an instant and then goes on flying, pleased with himself. Meanwhile, back at the beach, Wonder Woman says "What was that?" and The Invisible Man replies "I don't know, but my ass sure hurts."

    Live-Action TV 
  • In The Comic Strip Presents South Atlantic Raiders, one of the characters is trapped in a prison cell with a huge prisoner who says, threateningly, "Oh dear, you're going to get a very sore botty." (In the original broadcast version the hero takes one look at the big guy's genitalia and cries "oh, God, no!", but the line appears to have been cut from the DVD release.) However, our hero escapes before he can be raped.
  • In Max and Paddy's Road to Nowhere, Paddy signs up to star in a porn film for some easy cash. But he discovers too late that "Willy Wanker and The Chocolate Factory" is a gay porn movie. Despite what the writers were intending, hilarity does not ensue.
  • On an episode of Mind of Mencia, parodying the "To Catch a Predator" segments of Dateline, the sketch ends with the would-be predator being raped by a very large man not-quite off-screen as the punchline.
  • The phrase "community soap" on Veronica Mars. In an episode in Season 3, a frat boy is found passed out on campus, stripped naked, and with a plastic egg shoved up his ass. This is the source of much humor on campus, including amongst the college feminist group that had been raising hell over the lack of initiative in catching the serial rapist on campus. Veronica gives them an earful over it.
  • In Prison Break, the rape in prison (more suggested than actually shown) is very disturbing. However, when Bellick is put in a cell with a rapist, it is actually Played for Laughs.
  • Also completely and horrifyingly averted in OZ. Every scary aspect of it is played up, including hospitalization, loss of respect, sex slavery, PTSD, and HIV infection.
  • Averted in I May Destroy You: Malik's rape of Kwame after he refuses to engage in bareback sex is brief but unpleasant to watch as it's very clear what's happening and Kwame keeps asking him to stop.
  • Son of the Beach had a ball with this one. Notch Johnson has ended up raped in gay porno, raped in prison, raped by a homeless man while sleeping on the beach, and he was "reared by two uncles" and a priest who "took [him] in the rectory."
  • One of the "stunts" in The Jackass Movie involved Ryan Dunn inserting a Hot Wheels toy car into his rectum. The crew then filmed the reactions of the doctor when Ryan explained how he had supposedly passed out at a Frat Party and woken up that way.
  • In The Vicar of Dibley, Geraldine tells Alice the joke in which Superman sees Wonder Woman lying naked on a rooftop and attempts to have sex with her in the shortest time possible. Wonder Woman asks what happened, and then the Invisible Man climbs off her and says "I don't know, but it hurt a lot." Alice doesn't laugh, pointing out that this joke besmirches Superman's reputation by implying that he committed homosexual rape on the Invisible Man, which she doesn't consider funny.
    Alice: And quite frankly I think you should be ashamed of yourself.
    (Alice leaves)(beat)
    Geraldine: …prude!
    • Kind of an inversion, in that Alice is annoyed about Superman inadvertently raping the Invisible Man but appears to ignore the fact that he meant to rape Wondie.
  • In the Seinfeld episode "The Jimmy", Jerry wakes up from a dental appointment during which he was unconscious from nitrous oxide to find his shirt untucked, and his (male) dentist and (female) hygienist are getting dressed. It's never firmly established whether Jerry was hallucinating the incident or not, or whether his shirt was untucked before getting the knock-out gas, but the situation, including the uncertainty, is played for laughs when he describes the experience to Elaine. Her remark is "So your dentist and hygienist violated you while you were unconscious. So what?" despite the fact that Jerry is obviously deeply disturbed by the incident.
  • The phrase "he got raped from behind" was thrown out in ESPN's coverage of the Big East Championship Game after a particularly full-body foul and steal. Color commentators at their best...
  • Repeatedly on The Mighty Boosh, whose offenders include Kodiak Jack (attempted) and Elenore the Tour Whore (unintentional), both played by Rich Fulcher.
  • Pretty much all of the humor in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia involving The Nightman revolves around this trope, particularly since Charlie can't see why everyone interprets it as male rape. Subverted in that the implication that Dennis rapes women is also Played for Laughs.
  • Used in Red Dwarf when Lister sprinkles Rimmer with a sexual magnetism virus. The latter is then surrounded by burly male prisoners, and we fade to black. (That we've previously only ever seen said virus work on women—wouldn't Lister himself be affected?—is ignored for the sake of the joke.)
  • Double-dipped in an episode of Smallville. A young quarterback under the influence of a love drug attacks his coach, and later when the effects wear off, he has amnesia. Lois laughingly speculates that he's claiming this because he wants to avoid "playing 'tight end'" for the local penitentiary.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • The "Go Fish" episode. The evil swim coach forces Buffy into the water below his office with the mutant fish-men, but not to feed them: "Boys have other needs." (Buffy herself doesn't like the idea that she'd "made it with the whole swim team"). Xander helps her out, the coach falls through the trap door, and while he yells and splashes below, Buffy quips "Boy, those boys sure like their coach!"
    • Another one for Jonathan, when he and Andrew are in jail. Jonathan is scared and talks about how one of the inmates keeps looking at him.
    Jonathan: The joint changes you. I hear they like the small ones, with little hands like their girlfriends.
  • ER
    • Invoked on an episode, which had Carter in jail. His cellmate, a stereotypical Scary Black Man, approaches him, unbuckling his pants, declaring, "I've got something for you". Carter screams in panic… and the man reveals a sore on his leg that has been bothering him—Carter had mentioned that he was a doctor. It's obvious that the guy had no intention of assaulting him, but we're supposed to find Carter's panic, in addition to the Unfortunate Implications of his would-be assailant being a black man, amusing.
  • Rik's tendency to panic at the very thought of being raped ("I can't go to prison!") was similarly played for laughs a couple of times on The Young Ones.
  • In The IT Crowd when Douglas, under the effect of Rohypnol (which makes him horny, instead of sleepy as he should), is locked in a room with Roy and Moss and kisses Moss on the lips. His original plan was to give the Rohypnol to Jen which wasn't played for laughs as much.
    • In a season four episode, Roy is molested by a male masseuse. Jen finds the whole thing hilarious while everybody else is deadly serious on the matter (at least to the Spaceologists who make up the entire jury). Her lack of understanding and finding comedy in male-on-male rape is played for laughs and deconstructed to a degree.
  • Played straight in a Saturday Night Live game show parody, "Who Wants To Be Groped By An Eleven-Thousandaire?". The contestants included two women and a very confused man, apparently sent by his friends as a joke. The audience is to vote on who will be sent to the "thousand-aire's" car, where the groping will take place. Of course, the man receives 98% of the vote. The skit concludes with the panicked and unwilling man struggling in the backseat of the car, while the audience roars.
  • Zig-zagged in a Friends episode, where the audience is supposed to find the situation funny, but the characters take it completely seriously. Joey talks about a great tailor he has had since childhood and refers Chandler to him. Chandler goes there and comes back horrified. He informs Joey that his tailor "is a very bad man!" Joey defends the guy, explaining to him that "that's how they do pants", but Ross says no, that is definitely not how they do pants. It looks like Joey's been violated by his tailor for the past twelve years…
    Chandler: Joey's tailor… took advantage of me.
    Ross: What?
    Joey: No way. I've been going to the guy for 12 years.
    Chandler: Oh, come on. He said he was going to do my inseam, and then he ran his hand up my leg, and then there was definite… cupping.
    Joey: That's how they do pants! First they go up one side, they move it over, then they go up the other side, they move it back, and then they do the rear.
    Joey: [Chandler and Ross stare at him] What? Ross, would you tell him? Isn't that how a tailor measure pants?
    Ross: Yes. Yes, it is… in prison! What's the matter with you?
    • After Ross assures him that the tailor's behavior isn't normal, Joey changes his tune, and a subsequent scene shows Joey informing his father of this over the phone so that they can avoid him in the future.
    • In another episode, the gang briefly think they're going to be sent to jail, and Phoebe wishes Chandler "good luck" with a suggestive look. The audience laughs as he looks appropriately freaked out.
  • In the Barney Miller episode "Heat Wave", much "humor" is mined from Wojo (who is wearing drag in order to attract muggers) almost being raped. Especially "funny", since the rapist elbowed Wentworth aside in order to get at him, and this offends her.
  • A lot of sitcoms kind of milked the Prison Rape joke. In an episode of The Golden Girls, Stan and Dorothy are being audited, and when Dorothy realizes that Stan has made a huge and potentially illegal mess of their finances after Stan mentions they could go to jail, Dorothy says, "Good, I want you to go to jail. And I hope you get a big, bald cellmate called Bubba who really needs a girlfriend!!" Later, in The Nanny after Fran goes through her typical dating nightmare, she mutters under her breath, "I hope he ends up in Attica with a cellmate who finds him attractive."
  • In Happy!, Nick is captured by Smoothie, who manages to forcibly penetrate him with a dildo. He treats it as a minor inconvenience afterward, and the situation is throwaway dark humor. This is not the first time a Christopher Meloni character downplays male rape.
  • Jay Leno once joked about Karl Rove's various illegal scandals, "I think Karl Rove is getting a little worried. Like today he said the biggest problem facing Americans: prison rape." Of course, the bigger joke being that Karl Rove avoided prison altogether… and helps this to avoid being a Real Life example.
  • A sketch on The Kids in the Hall had two men going to a bar out in the country (specifically bear country) to pick up women. It turns out to be a gay bar. One of the men starts to get groped by a large, hairy man and immediately starts recalling his boyhood scout leader's instructions for dealing with a bear. He tries to implement these steps against the man coming on to him but to no avail. He finally just chooses to play dead once he's been dragged back to the man's apartment. The next day on the ride home, his friend asks him how his night was, but he refuses to talk about it.
  • In the last season of Misfits, Alex develops the power to remove other people's powers by having sex with them. Every time it's a woman being de-powered it's voluntary, but every time it's a man, it's a rape played for comedy. In the final episode, he rapes Sam the flying man without hesitation, but when attacked by a woman with powers he just threatens to kill her.
  • Heavily implied in Louie Season 1. While visiting the dentist, Louie experiences an anesthesia-induced hallucination where he has a banana placed into his mouth and, when he suddenly awakens from the said hallucination, his dentist is shown hurriedly tucking in his shirt and zipping up his pants. Possibly a reference to Real Life anesthetics that can cause vivid sexual dreams, which have led to similar accusations and are a big reason (besides the obvious) why no one is ever allowed to be in a room alone with an anesthetized patient without a witness to verify their good behavior.
  • Subverted in an episode of Private Practice. A soldier suffering from PTSD tries to commit suicide, later revealing to Sheldon that he was raped by his commanding officer. His wife is upset and even says that he let it happen, but the doctors treat it seriously and convince her that’s not the case.
  • Averted in Borgia where Cesare's rape by Marcantonio Colonna is treated as the horrid assault it is. Though Juan treats it like this.
  • Season two of American Crime revolves around a male rape accusation that most people don’t take seriously especially when it is revealed the victim, Taylor, isn’t heterosexual and that he had been flirting with his rapist prior to their encounter. Subverted for the fact that the season as a whole is about how male-on-male rape isn’t dealt with properly (both in real life and in pop culture) and the repercussions the taboo has on masculinity and rape culture.
  • Implied at the end of an episode of My Name Is Earl, when Earl punches his Bad Boss in the face, which leads to the latter's wife finding out he'd been cheating on her, his girlfriend finding out he was married to someone else the whole time (thus lying to her as well), his wife kicking him out of the house and finding money he stole from the fast-food restaurant he managed while giving him a Defenestrate and Berate routine, and finally him going to Prison. He had a collection of "World's Best [Whatever]" mugs, and when he's in prison (after losing both his wife and his girlfriend), he's drinking coffee out of a tin mug with the words "World's Best Bottom" scrawled on it in marker, while his cellmate looks on. It overlaps with Karmic Rape.
  • One episode of Blue Bloods sees a personal trainer as possibly connected to criminal activity, but he refuses to cooperate. Danny sends a Scary Black Man into the room where the suspect is waiting, and the larger man starts talking about how the trainer is going to be his "date" for the evening. The panicked trainer immediately starts talking… at which point Danny reveals that the supposed criminal is a fellow cop who's married! To a woman! Isn't that funny?
  • The Alienist: While investigating the murder of several male prostitutes in 1890s New York City, John Schuyler Moore gets drugged by a brothel owner, who has his working boys do something to him, then dump him out on the street. It's never made clear what, exactly, but it's some kind of sexual assault. Nobody else on the investigation team makes a big deal about this, due to a combination of this trope and some Deliberate Values Dissonance about male behavior in the 19th Century. Moore himself doesn't seem particularly traumatized by the incident: an infamous high-society cad and gadabout, he's used to waking up in compromising positions. He's more concerned with what happened to his trousers than what may have happened to his...other parts.
  • Defiance: Averted. Pottinger's Rape as Backstory by VC soldiers is taken just as seriously as Amanda's by some random assailant (who turned out to not have been random at all, but actually also Pottinger, who became obsessed with Amanda after Connor had left him for her, stalked and later raped her).
  • CSI: Subverted and Played for Drama in the episode "Death and the Maiden." In the episode, a young man is found bloodied and bruised and becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a pawnshop owner, who was found to be part of a fencing operation, as well as burning down the shop. The investigation reveals that the young man may have been motivated by revenge because the shop owner raped him, though the young man denies being raped. In the end, it turns out that the shop owner became enraged when he found out that his sister had (consensual) sex with the young man, the shop owner tracked him down, beat him up, and raped him as "pay back" for his sister. When the young man's brother found out what the shop owner did, he went to confront him, but the shop owner was unresponsive from having been shot by his girlfriend, who was helping in the fencing operation, and burned down the store. Once everything is cleared up, Nick Stokes, the CSI, handling the investigation, refers the young man to a counselor to help him recover from the trauma and to talk to his girlfriend so they can have a future together. At the end, it's implied the young man will refuse the counseling and he breaks up with his girlfriend because she reminds him too much of her brother.
  • Discussed in an episode of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, where Sam calls attention to the uncomfortable amount of male-on-male rape jokes in media, especially regarding Prison Rape, and how male victims should be included in #MeToo. She then teams up with Terry Crews, who has discussed his own experiences with sexual assault, to give examples of jokes that are much funnier than rape jokes.

     Literature 
  • In The City Who Fought, the Kolnari who invade an unarmed Space Station and assault the people living there are mostly men attacking women. Late in the book, one of their captains thinks about the way he would like to humiliate one of his rivals, and the stationer man he'd slept with, and also reflects on forcing a kiss on a twelve-year-old, then backhanding him when he went into convulsions. None of this comes across as funny, perhaps because it's all remote and from the perception of the perpetrator.

    Music 
  • Sublime's "Date Rape". The first half of the song details the titular male-on-female act, and in the second half, the rapist is caught and sent to prison with predictable results. Some listeners claim the second half is noticeably lighter in tone than the first, while others think it doesn't really sound any different than the first.
  • From a live recording of "Alice's Restaurant" by Arlo Guthrie (although the laughter may also be because the line was an unexpected ad-lib):
    Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the Army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly-looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. (*silence*) Father stabbers. (*silence*) Father rapers! (*raucous laughter*)
  • "When You're In Prison" by The Offspring has this in spades. It sounds like a pop song from the '30s or '40s, while the lyrics are about how to make sure you don't get raped in prison, warning you "don't turn the other way" and "don't pick up the soap, it's bad for you".

    Mythology 
  • In Euripedes' The Cyclops, the only still extant Satyr play, it's implied that Polyphemus rapes his drunken satyr manservant as punishment for bogarting the wine, making this one Older Than Feudalism.
    "It's a bitter wine I must drink now!"

    Professional Wrestling 

    Stand-up Comedy 
  • Dave Chappelle did a stand-up bit about a serial rapist who targeted men. Most of the humor coming from the bit is less about the actual rapes being funny and more about society's expectations on how men should usually react to it being absurd. He sums up that while women are given hotlines and concern, society "don't give a fuck" about men, and they're expected to "walk that shit off."
  • In her (semi-)autobiography Book Club Selection, Kathy Griffin tells a story about witnessing an appearance by Andy Dick at a college in Florida in which he arrived late and stoned as fuck and pretended not to have a stand-up routine planned and called the audience "faggots" for a while, and then gave an audience member a completely undesired lapdance. He then invited a random 400-pound man (really a plant who was part of his group) up on stage from the audience to sing a song. Andy then dressed as a go-go girl and began to dance along with the man's singing, at which point the man lost control of himself, grabbed Andy, lifted his skirt (and revealed he was wearing nothing under it), threw him down and raped him (well, pretended to) and ran offstage. Andy began screaming "I was just raped, and you did nothing!" at the horrified audience, at which point someone hit the fire alarm and everything went apeshit. It's not funny by most people's standards, but it's hard not to laugh at the way she tells it.
  • Louis CK jokes that if he had a time machine, he wouldn't kill Hitler, he'd rape him. View it here.
  • Ron White tells a joke where he was on a chartered flight, and the pilot informed Ron that he was both a black belt in Jiujitsu and an aggressive homosexual, and if Ron didn't allow the pilot to have his way then he'd be forced to jump off the plane. When asked whether he jumped: "A little, at first."

    Video Games 
  • Shadow Hearts
    • The predations of Wanderer Meiyuan in the original Shadow Hearts are played for laughs… including featuring a character who was so incredibly unworldly that he didn't realize what was happening and thus didn't object. It's even treated as a joke when the "treatment" is given to a fourteen-year-old boy.
    • In Covenant, it's all but stated that Joachim gets sodomized at the end of his sidequest, and all is warrants is Yuri's worried look and Anastasia's "Isn't it beautiful? Love comes in so many different shapes!".
  • In a bonus, non-canon cutscene in Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, Raiden is comically mistaken for Col. Volgin's gay lover, Ivan (understandably, as the latter is a parody of the former). Seeing as Volgin is a seven-foot-tall musclebound sadist and Raiden is a pretty boy, things end up extremely badly for the latter.
  • Conker's Bad Fur Day features a Does This Remind You of Anything? version of this. A surly talking cog with a Split Personality gets mounted on the "shaft" of a large, smirking cog, which results in the first cog's Camp Gay alter ego taking over.
    Carl: Oh no, not Mr. Big Cog! That's me buggered!
    Conker: (thinking) It certainly is.
  • In .hack//G.U., try to befriend any of the Azure Knights and give them a promise card. Go ahead, see what happens… Also, for good measure, try Natsume too.
  • In BlazBlue, Jin's "Help Me Professor Kokonoe" segment.
  • The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 both feature alien abductions which result in Mister Seahorse pregnancies for adult males but have no such effect on adult females. It's pretty clear that female abductees don't get pregnant to avoid uncomfortable connotations of Child by Rape, but the fact that it's deemed OK to play the whole thing for laughs in the case of male abductees has come in for a bit of criticism.
  • Subverted and made very traumatizing and squicky in the DLC Episode of Outlast, where Eddie Gluskin repeatedly finds a "bride" and wants to have children. He knows that his brides are men and still have some… unnecessary obstacles on their bodies, so he removes them with the intention of consummating their "marriage" shortly after and having a family.
  • BL game, Miracle No-ton has several endings, excluding the happy ones, where the main character, Akira, gets raped. It's particularly traumatizing with the sounds Akira makes during the scene.
  • In Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up Or Ship Out, an encounter like this is a mandatory event. After acquiring everything that Shablee wants, Larry is horrified to learn that "she" is actually a transvestite when she takes the condom he had to get and puts it on her own penis, whereupon she grabs him whilst he's on the ground spitting in disgust and the screen fades to black, save for a distorted trumpet noise and Larry's pained scream.
  • Far Cry 3 straight-up defies this trope, hard. Jason Brody learns that his friend Keith Ramsay was sold as a slave to evil Australian Psycho for Hire Bambi "Buck" Hughes. Buck offers to give Keith back to his friend if Jason goes on a Fetch Quest for him to collect an ancient Chinese knife. After multiple death traps and confrontations with pirates, Jason finally delivers said knife to Buck at his house... and then finds Keith downstairs in an S&M dungeon. And Keith- formerly a Jerkass Blood Knight- is now a traumatized wreck who Hates Being Touched and desperately begs Jason to get him out of there because he can't take anymore. And then Buck walks in and decides to "show (his) appreciation for (Jason) proper, like a man should", stating that he never intended to let Jason leave with Keith in the first place. Jason is so enraged by what Buck did to his friend, and the fact that he was deceiving him all along, that he straight up slaughters Buck in a Knife Fight right in that same dungeon. What makes this even more shocking is that we never actually see Buck rape Keith. Nothing Is Scarier, sure enough. Pretty much the only person who treats Keith's rape as funny is Buck the rapist himself.

    Webcomics 
  • VG Cats constantly, and providing the page image for Black Comedy Rape.
  • A few examples appear in Cyanide and Happiness:
    • In "Senor Cleanfist," one of the strip's animated shorts, the titular character is a superhero with the power to make things sparkling clean by punching them with his massive fists. When he ends up in prison, The Stinger reveals a group of men showering. One drops the soap, and bends to pick it up… and a huge shadow looms over him. The dropper cringes in terror; a few seconds later, he comes running from the bathroom with bubbles shooting from his rear end.
  • A meta and inverted version appears in the Port Sherry strip "Classic Vintage Comedy Collection".
  • My Husband Was Actually a Woman: Wafuko has been sexually harassed by cis men who think it's okay to do so to a "man."

    Web Original 
  • The creator of Berserk Abridged played the rapes of Guts, Griffith, and even himself for—admittedly very dark—laughs but consciously chose to leave out Casca's rape during the Eclipse as he felt there was no way to make it funny.
  • The Cinema Snob's review of Can't Stop the Music frequently cut to two dudebros watching the movie, mistaking it for a 'man's movie' (context: it's loosely based on the formation of the Village People). It ends with one dudebro forcing the other to give him a blowjob.
    • His earlier review on I Spit on Your Grave ends up discussing both this and the Female on Male trope when Craig and his friends realize the only possible way to bring some levity to a very dark movie and a very dark rape scene was to reimagine/spoof it with Craig as the 'victim' and Candy, Nancy, and Neil as the 'rapists'. Set to "Pleasant Valley Sunday".

    Western Animation 
  • In one American Dad! episode, Stan strongly suggests that he was molested by a priest when he was a kid. Later on, he admits that he had in fact molested a priest when he was a kid. "I don't even know why I wanted him, but I wanted him."
  • Archer:
    • Archer's friend Lucas Troy admits in a Deathbed Confession that he once raped an Archer while he was passed out after a long night of partying. It's played totally straight, and in the unnerving silence afterwards, that ends the episode, Archer looks like he's miles away mentally, and Lana and Cyril look completely horrified.
    • It is implied that Ray once had his way with Cyril in the bathroom while he was pretty much out of it from blood loss and heroin in his system. Besides admonishing him afterwards, Cyril's never shown any sign of holding it against him.
  • Paired with Creepy Physical in an episode of Beavis And Butthead when Beavis idly mentions that his dentist "inspected his nads". Butthead tells that his dentist isn't supposed to do that, his doctor is. Despite the comedy setting, they both appear pretty shocked at the realization that Beavis has been molested.
  • Whenever a male character rapes another male character in Brickleberry, it's always depicted as Black Comedy Rape. However, the pilot deserves a special mention. After Bobby subjects Malloy to a Played for Laughs example of I Have You Now, My Pretty, the other characters mainly dismiss it, with Steve revealing it was a "misdemeanor" due to it being same-sex bear molestation.
  • Drawn Together, being a Black Comedy, has this in scores. A particularly twisted example is in the episode "Little Orphan Hero", where Captain Hero, in his childhood montage, disobeys his mother by going to a keg party dressed as a promiscuous woman. At the party, he is promptly gang-raped on top of a pinball machine, shouting in a woman's voice, "Leave me alone!", in a parody of the film The Accused, despite being by far the largest man there (and having super-powers). Captain Hero also sodomized his parents and Xandir in an attempt to erase their memories—an over-the-top parody of Superman's amnesia-inducing kiss to Lois Lane in Superman II.
  • Family Guy does this a lot…
    • "Stewie Loves Lois" had Peter accusing his doctor of rape (really just a prostate exam), and featured black and white depictions of such scenes, all the while parodying actual well-known rape cases. And in an in-universe example, Lois starts laughing when Peter says he was raped even before learning it was actually a prostate exam.
    • Season 4, Episode 14 "PTV": Peter is raped by Jake Ryan from Sixteen Candles.
      Peter Griffin: Man, this sucks worse than my 16th birthday party. (cut to Peter's birthday)
      Peter Griffin: Thanks for coming to my birthday party, Jake Ryan.
      Jake Ryan: Thanks for having me at your birthday party, Peter… make a wish.
      Peter Griffin: It's already come true.
      Jake Ryan: Here's your present. [They lean in to kiss, but Jake knocks the cake and Peter to the floor, rips off his shirt… and then proceeds]
      Peter Griffin: No, Jake, not like this! Aah!
    • Peter is really unlucky with this as it includes not only men but male animals as well. In a particularly bizarre example, he is raped by a bull in front of a live audience which includes his wife and kids. The bull then proceeds to ask Peter out on a date.
    • Peter gets raped by a pie once. While Quagmire is Forced to Watch.
    • One minor flashback-aside has Peter recalling how he'd lost his virginity. The memory he calls up is of a massive pile-up of high school football players, from the depths of which is heard Peter's "Oh-oh".
    • It also happens offscreen in one episode in which he ends up in jail for trying to get Quagmire's job back; he says at the end of the episode that he was raped in prison.
    • Quagmire mentioned once that Peter saved all their (Joe, Quagmire, and Cleveland) butts, apparently literally. The cutaway shows the three bound and gagged and bent over a table with their pants down, while a thug wrings his hands in anticipation. Peter breaks in and kills him with a sword. However...
      Peter: Yeah, too bad I didn't get there until after the sodomy.
    • Again this happens in a flashback where Peter is a strawberry and a worm crawls inside of Peter. Cut to Peter the Strawberry crying in the shower afterwards.
    • In "Fighting Irish", when Peter is convinced he can beat up Liam Neeson, he attempts to draw him out by disguising himself as Mrs. Potato Head. Instead, he attracts Colin Farrell, who rapes him offscreen.
    • One of the earliest examples comes in "One if by Clam, Two if by Sea," when Peter, Joe, Quagmire, and Cleveland are all sent to jail. As they walk through the cells, other inmates hoot and holler at them, with special attention given to Peter and his extra "cushion for the pushin'." Peter is flattered by the compliments, but worries the inmates will be upset when they find out he's not gay.
  • Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids: Implied as possible in the infamous Scare 'Em Straight episode where Albert and his friends are given a tour of a maximum-security prison, and several of the inmates hoot and holler as they see the juveniles, making remarks about wanting them to enter their cell so they can have their way with them. Afterward, when their friend Larry is sentenced to prison (for grand theft auto), the boys make a dark remark about what Larry is about to endure.
  • Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law:
    • One scene has Phil trying to establish dominance over Doggie Daddy, while Doggie just looks onward uninterested.
    "I'M THE ALPHA MALE!"
    • Implied in one episode, where an incarcerated Birdman is shown in a montage being married to a fellow inmate. While the whole ordeal is revealed in the end to be an elaborate surprise birthday party, the marriage is stated to have been real.
  • Even children's shows have gotten away with implied male-on-male prison rape, as The Powerpuff Girls (1998) depicted Mojo Jojo being in prison next to a burly prisoner. Cue announcer going "Love is in the air, can't ya just smell it?" in addition to another point where Mojo Jojo is transformed into a dog and in a cell with a larger dog seductively going 'Wuff'.
  • Zigzagged in Rick and Morty. Male characters mentioning being raped by other males is always done purely for Black Comedy, but the on-screen occurrences of it are always played dead serious. Even the one involving a sentient jellybean.
  • In Rocko's Modern Life, Rocko's car gets impounded and it calls Rocko, begging him to bail him out. In the background a huge truck laughs at him, followed by a cut back to Rocko as there are mechanical beating sounds in the background. When Rocko gets his car back, a worker at the lot tells him that "the other cars call him 'fancy fenders'".
  • Robot Chicken had a skit about a (male) "rape ghost" raping males in a haunted house (and explicitly not raping the females). Rape Ghost is implied to be the spirit of Liberace.
  • The Simpsons:
    • "Homer vs. Dignity." Homer. A panda suit. A male panda.
    • "Kiss Kiss Bang Bangalore" features Groundskeeper Willie being cornered by a group of nerds at a sci-fi convention because he chose to wear a kilt, and him being the 'closest thing to a girl they'd ever meet'. Cue the crowd tackling Willie to the ground as he struggles to escape.
  • South Park
    • In "Cartman Joins NAMBLA", Kenny's father ends up getting gang-raped by the entire South Park chapter of NAMBLA after a Scooby-Dooby Doors sequence.
    • In a later episode, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are charged for raping Indiana Jones, more or less literally. In the same episode, Spielberg and Lucas are arrested while in the middle of raping a Stormtrooper.
    • In "Cartman Sucks" Cartman is about to trick a blindfolded Butters into letting him put his penis in his mouth. Butters' father storms in and assumes that Butters was allowing it and is gay. Butters is completely flummoxed. Of course, this is after Cartman had invited Butters over for a sleepover, then proceeded to take naked pictures of him in order to make him look gay. One of these pictures is of Cartman putting a sleeping Butters's penis in his own mouth. The other kids tell Cartman that makes him look homosexual, not Butters, so Cartman plots to reverse the gay polarity. Note that most of the conflict (and humor) arises from Butters being Mistaken for Gay and Cartman trying to avoid looking gay. Nobody brings up that Cartman basically committed rape, not even Stan or Kyle.
    • This happened to Cartman a few seasons earlier too. Cartman got some "sea-men" from a guy in an alley who told him to close his eyes and "suck it out of a hose."
    • The show also satirized jokes about the Penn State child sex abuse scandal, in which football coach Jerry Sandusky got busted for molesting dozens of boys. The South Park episode "The Poor Kid" introduced Mr. Adams, a Department of Child Disservices worker who enjoys awkwardly shoehorning jokes about the scandal. Cartman calls him out on how unfunny and uncreative the jokes are: "All you’re doing is taking something topical and revamping old Catholic jokes!"
  • The Venture Bros.:
    • In the 2005 Christmas Episode, Doctor Venture is nearly raped by Krampus seeking retribution for an unidentified wrong on Christmas Eve, although it was All Just a Dream.
    • In a season two episode, a supervillain tries to rape The Monarch in prison, but fails to get an erection because The Monarch's "built too much like a girl". King Gorilla, the villain in question, was initially incarcerated after eviscerating and sodomizing Vince Neil on live television.
    • In the second season episode "I know why the caged bird kills" Hank reveals that he and Dean were molested by a villain named Sergeant Hatred, and this is played for laughs. It comes up again a few episodes later in "Showdown at Cremation Creek Part One". Perhaps the biggest joke made out of this situation is that in Season Four Sergeant Hatred becomes the boys' bodyguard.
    • In the season 4.1 episode "The Revenge Society", recovering pedophile Sergeant Hatred finally has his way with the boyish-looking Billy Quizboy, who was unconscious at the time. A later episode reveals that Hatred merely cuddled Billy.


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