Everyone Hates Mimes - Television Tropes & Idioms

"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you mime can be used against you in a court of law."

"Until I came here to America, I'd never realized that you were right: nobody in the world likes mime."

— David Bowie's 60th Birthday Message to John Peel

Mimes are universally hated in fiction. They're an Acceptable Target of sorts. No real reason is ever given, but the Uncanny Valley may have something to do with it - after all, their pure white faces and refusal to speak give them a definite alien aura. This trope isn't limited to people who hate mimes, but also works of fiction that seem to have it out for them. In other words a character doesn't have to say "I hate mimes" for it to be this trope. All the character needs to do is fall on, punch, kick, or otherwise causes intentional or accidental harm to a mime.

open/close all folders

Advertising

The TBS commercial: "Which is funnier, mime pretending to be trapped in a glass box, or a mime really trapped in a glass box?"

Comic Books

From ''Batman: Enemy Mime: 1◊, 2◊

Literature

On the Discworld, Lord Vetinari is mostly a very, very rational tyrant who does nothing save for a purpose. But he apparently hates mimes. They get thrown into the scorpion pit with a view to a sign saying "Learn The Words." Not that the citizens have a problem with this. At one point, the leaders of the Guilds are discussing Vetinari:
"He does have all street-theatre players and mime artists thrown into the scorpion pit."
"True. But let's not forget that he has his bad points too."
Subverted in a scene of the historical novel Golden Coffin, though it could be the ancient roman setting. The mime in question seems to be very popular and the audience enjoys his performance, until he reveals that he's been christened, which immediately splits the audience.
Patrick Bateman is out, hunting someone to kill, and, passing a street juggler, mentions that if he had been a mime, he would already have been dead.

Film

Suburban Commando: Hulk Hogan thinks the forcefield is real....and tries to break the invisible box with a punch to the face. "Hold on little buddy, I'll get you out of there!"
- The poor mime eventually has to break character and vocally protest Hogan's violent attempts to assist him.
Deleted Vicki Vale line from the 1987 script for Batman (1989): "All street mimes should be executed."
Die Hard With A Vengeance: John McClain briefly considers shooting at a mime.
- That scene where he and Samuel L. Jackson are in a taxi screaming across Central Park:
Zeus: "Are you aiming for some of these people?!"
John: "No... maybe that mime..."
Mimes are the lowest class of clown in Shakes the Clown. They're also an allegorical counterpart of sorts for homosexuals ("You only pick on us 'cause we're artists!"), and are thus an Acceptable Target for manlier breeds of clown.
Robin Hood: Men in Tights when the villainous Sheriff of Rottingham and Prince John watch a mime for a few moments then the Sheriff shouts "kill him!" But Prince John changes his mind by saying,"A mime is a terrible thing to waste."
In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hugo the gargoyle prepares to hock a loogie on a mime below when Victor stops him.
Subverted in Tangled. One of the outcasts in the Not Evil, Just Misunderstood Guy Bar 'The Snuggly Duckling' has "interests in mime." He's actually a pretty well-loved character, despite hardly appearing. He later shows up as part of a Big Damn Heroes rescue, using The Power Of Distracting Mime-Artistry..

Live Action Television

Mimes sometimes pop up during any "world's worst"-type games on Whose Line Is It Anyway?.
Colin: (In a singsong voice) I'm a MIIIIIIIIIIME!
In part 2 of The Invisible Man's "Money for Nothing", invisible and temporarily Quicksilver-Mad Darien beats up a mime. At the end of the episode he anxiously confirms with his partner that he didn't do too much damage when out of control:
Darien: There was a mime; I beat the hell out of a mime. What happened to him? Is he okay?
Hobbes: Relax, he did not recover.
Darien: Thank God. ...You're kidding, right?
- (Hobbes then reassures him that the mime is in fact okay.)
Monty Python's Flying Circus has Graham Chapman's Marcel Marceau impersonation, which ends with him miming being hit with a 16-ton weight, followed immediately by a 16-ton weight falling on him.
On Empty Nest, a patient of Harry's who's a mime laments about how much hatred they are subject to. "People throw fruit at us!"
An episode of Monk set around a carnival features a mime who follows the main characters around mimicking their actions, which causes them no end of irritation. It gets so bad that the police captain ends up arresting him for "impersonating a police officer".
On 3rd Rock from the Sun when Evil!Dick traps Dick in an invisible box in the basement, Dick bemoans, "He's turned me into a mime!" His tone implies that it's a Fate Worse than Death.
Cheers One episode saw a mime enter the bar in full make up & performing his trade. The regular cast where generally bemused by his antics.
Alexei Sayle did a stand-up routine on Alexei Sayle's Stuff about how you wouldn't pay money to watch someone actually walk into the wind, sew their fingers together and get shut in a glass box, but if someone pretends to walk into the wind, sew their fingers together and get shut in a glass box...
A 1980s Saturday Night Live sketch had Randy Quaid trying to tell guest host Pee-Wee Herman that he needs to see a hooker, but is couching it in euphemisms:
Randy: Well, they wear a lot of makeup...
Pee-Wee: Clowns!
Randy: No-o-o, let's just say you'd be embarrassed to be seen with one...
Pee-Wee: [nods knowingly]...Mimes!
In an episode of The Golden Girls, Sophia asks a mime if he wears makeup and doesn't speak because his mother is ashamed of him. When Blanche tells her that nothing she says is going to make him break character, she simply turns and says, "Hey, Buddy, your fly's open." He then falls off his platform and lands face-first on the ground.

Music

Weird Al's song "She Never Told Me She Was a Mime".
In Fall Out Boy's "I Don't Care" video, Pete Wentz is shown harrasing a mime on the street.

Newspaper Comics

There are several Garfield strips with mimes as Butt Monkeys.
Opus attacking a mime with a olive-loaf in Bloom County gets him in court but is widely regarded as a good thing. Bloom Beacon headlines include:
Mystery man mugs mime with meat—millions make merry
Hundreds call police praising mystery man
- It should be noted that this arc was in response to the real-life Bernhard Goetz shooting four men who tried to mug him. While some vilified him, many praised his actions.
One Pearls Before Swine strip involves 2 characters whose speech balloons have popped. They then proceed to argue via body language. However, 2 bystanders confuse them for mimes, and promptly punch them in the head. In the treasury which this strip is in, the author comments that every treasury should end with someone punching a mime.
The Far Side: "If a tree falls in the forest and no one's around, and it hits a mime, does anyone care?"

Video Games

In the online game Pizza City, you can earn points for running over mimes,eventually getting a reward from the "Mime Prevention League."
Mimes are but one variety of harmless characters in Blood that Caleb can test out his weapons on. He enjoys this a good bit.
In Gabriel Knight, you have an irritating Mime that would follow Gabriel and just be generally annoying. Later on, you have to use the Mime to piss a Cop off so badly that he actually abandons his motorcycle to chase after him.
In Planescape: Torment, a mime in the Clerk's Ward is the Butt Monkey of a magical curse - he is really trapped by an invisible wall - and even the usually kind-hearted Fall-From-Grace makes a disparaging throwaway comment at Mimes.
In the arcade Shooter Carnevil, the final stage features a number of mimes throughout... miming. They're the only "enemy" in the game that can do absolutely nothing to you, and you're free to shoot or ignore them at your leisure.
In The Sims, a mime sometimes shows up to your party. Not only do the Sims hate him (he shows up to a party that wasn't much fun, and makes it worse instead of better) but the player probably does.
Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipice Of Darkness (the first episode, at least) features many mime Mooks, leading up to Final Boss Yog Sethis, who is essentially Mimethulhu

Webcomics

This Questionable Content strip http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=418
- It seems "strangle that mime" is even used as a metaphor.
Scary Go Round: "Why am I such a failure at life? I'm lower than a drug mule or a mime."
Schlock Mercenary gives us "If a coffee machine passes a baseball bat in the forest, and the only one to see it happen is a mime, what does he say to the police?"
The protagonist of Chopping Block usually speaks of a "quota" of people he has to kill, but he'll kill mimes even if he's already over quota.

Web Original

Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series:
Yugi: He's still a human being!
Marik: He's also a mime.
Yugi: Oh, in that case, yeah, I'll kick his ass.
A That Guy With The Glasses sketch featured Doug Walker and Brad attending an anime convention as a pair of incompetent jerkass mimes who talk a lot, disrespect their audience, and barely do any miming. And what miming they do do, is pretty lousy. They don't even like being mimes, they were just misinformed into thinking that mimes are well paid.

Western Animation

The Simpsons love this trope. "If a tree falls in the forest on a mime, does anyone care?"
The Animaniacs series does it a ton with its "Mime Time" sketches, whose whole purpose is to show a mime going through Amusing Injuries.
- In the Animaniacs movie Wakko's Wish, it's stated that Acme Falls would be an Old-World utopia were it not for the mime, who is physically abused even through the saccharine epilogue.
Family Guy does this in the episode "From Method to Madness" in which Stewie joins an acting program for small children. The instructor, Simon, gives a hierarchy of performance: "Legitimate theater, musical theater, stand-up, ventriloquism, magic, mime."
Shrek: "Oh great, after mimes, magicians are my favorite people."
Garfield once used magic to turn someone into the most horrifying creature of them all: a mime.
Averted in an episode of Dexter's Laboratory where mimes are depicted more heroically: In "The Laughing", Dexter transforms into a were-clown, and since mimes are apparently a natural enemy of clowns Dee Dee trains with a mime troupe to stop her brother from wreaking further havoc.
The character of Mime on Happy Tree Friends, created so the creators would be able to kill a mime, again and again and again.
The mime gets abused with Amusing Injuries in Paris in Phineas and Ferb: Summer Belongs to You. Finally his makeup gets washed off and he exclaims, "I can talk!"
- In another episode, Doofenshmirtz traps all mimes in the Tri-State Area in actual glass boxes. Major Monogram told Perry the Platypus it took some time for it to be noticed because it was initially assumed the mimes had just improved their act.
Clay states that this is the moral of an early episode of Xiaolin Showdown, disregarding other suggestions.
Jack: First order of business when I rule the world - vaporize all mimes.
One episode of American Dragon Jake Long features Spud wanting to be a mime. Jake and Trixie conspire to get him to use his Genius Ditz brain instead. Spud spoke during his mime acts and explained it took time to learn to be silent.
Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi had one episode where Ami and Yumi had to endure a mime.
The Powerpuff Girls once had to stop a clown-turned-mime who was turning everything and everyone soundless and black-and-white after a truckload of bleach fell into the clown and removed his colors and his voice. The girls saved the day with the power of music.
- You forgot the part where, even after turning back to normal and being grateful for having his colors and cheerful personality back, they still kicked the crap out of him at the end of the episode.

Real Life

In real life, it's a mixed bag. Similarly to clowns, they can't seem to take the "I'm not in a good mood, annoy someone else" hint and try to cheer them up, only irritating them in the process. However, there is one famous aversion, Marcel Marceau, considered by some to be the father of mime, was widely respected by almost everybody. In fact, when two reporters for World News Now got the giggles during a report of his death, the next day, Whoopi Goldberg completely shredded the two, saying that he had an influence on how she acted (and remember, even with Theodore Rex, she is an Oscar-winning actress), that doing anything completely in pantomime is incredibly difficult, and that the two reporters should be ashamed of themselves.

Equal Opportunity Offender

Stereotype

Feminine Women Can Cook

Depraved Bisexual

Designated Acceptable Targets

Evil Lawyer Joke

∇
troperville

∇
tools

∇
toys

∇troperville

∇tools

∇toys

∇
troperville

∇
tools

∇
toys