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Memetic Troll

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A slightly less dangerous (usually) variant of the Memetic Psychopath, the Memetic Troll is a character the fandom likes to depict as a Troll.

Quite often, the character isn't really a troll, but gets this reputation due to something they did or said in-story for no apparent other reason than screwing with others (such as neglecting a major detail about something in a situation where it would have been crucial) that cannot be attributed to his stupidity. It's also possible for the character to actually be a troll in the original support, but get this reputation exaggerated for laughs by the fandom. In any case, the character has a reputation of being a Troll that has become a Memetic Mutation.

Obviously an example of Memetic Mutation. Compare Never Live It Down. The Gadfly is susceptible to this kind of depiction, especially by those who don't know the difference between that and a Troll. Characters with god-like powers or spectacular scheming skills also have a particularly strong tendency to be subject to this trope, the former because this provides a good explanation why they don't use all their power to end the story quickly, and the latter because it is hilarious to imagine them manipulating entire groups of people just to pull pranks.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • The Wendy's mascot, mainly due to the Deadpan Snarker tendencies of the official Twitter account. It eventually paved way for anime-styled fan art of the mascot categorized as "Smug Wendy's".

    Anime & Manga 
  • Kyubey from Puella Magi Madoka Magica lends himself quite handily to fanon portrayals as a troll, given his manipulative and duplicitous nature in the series proper.
  • Izaya Orihara from Durarara!!, who is a remorseless Troll in the actual series itself.
  • Kill la Kill has Nui Harime, who indeed takes pleasure in messing around with the protagonists' emotions, but the fandom ramps her up into an uber troll who not only screws with the cast, but the AUDIENCE as well: or fans, she practically trolled them in her own sendoff, and they like to see her as some sort of reality-warping trickster who denies the viewers the satisfaction of seeing her getting a comeuppance. (While she did eventually die, she did it on her own terms and furthered the Big Bad's plan by doing so, making the interpretation not too far-fetched). Not to mention that she did blatantly break the fourth wall in the penultimate episode's credits, where she appears in place of the usual Mako at one point, doing a "shush" motion to the audience before suddenly an extra scene interrupts the credits entirely...a scene beginning with a close-up of Nui's face as she makes an announcement.
  • Bleach offers us Sosuke Aizen, a Soft-Spoken Sadist who practically rubs his superiority in the protagonists' (and the audience's) faces at every opportunity. While his plans were carefully laid out with judicious use of his zanpakuto's totally hax powers during the Soul Society arc, the infamous Hinamori incident in which he brutally showcased his Kyoka Suigetsu's abilities automatically propelled him from Chess Master to God of the Bleach-verse in the eyes of the fandom, with countless parodies to boot. Even after his eventual defeat, fans could still be heard musing that he's just using his Bankai to progress the plot.
  • Hellsing: Alucard; in the original works, he is a Sociopathic Hero bordering on Villain Protagonist and a Showy Invincible Hero, and definitely has a fondness for messing with his opponents before killing them and laughing at their dismay. Hellsing Ultimate Abridged exaggerates all those characteristics and plays them for comedy, making him a Psychopathic Manchild who takes every opportunity to annoy his boss Integra (from blackmailing her into giving him a plasma screen TV, to doing exactly the opposite of what she asks him to do, to tilting every painting he found walking to her office and crashing her father's car, covered in goat blood, into the first British Dairy Queen) and everyone else (he's sent over four hundred absurd death threats to the Pope via carrier pigeon). Even his laugh has become a Memetic Mutation.
  • Yona of the Dawn: Zeno is considered a benign troll among fans. Zeno is one of the Four Dragon Warriors meant to protect the title character. He's the last of the dragons to join the group and does so by just randomly showing up in their camp one day. There's no backstory, no tension, and no explanation. He proceeds to be a enigma to both the readers and other characters. Most the time he acts childish and happy-go-lucky but will occasionally drop wisdom and harsh truths. When his past is finally revealed much, much later it turns out that Zeno's power is immortality. He's the original and only yellow dragon warrior. On top of that, he'd been following Yona and her group ever since she was forced out of the castle. His randomly joining wasn't random; after months of watching, Zeno finally decided Yona was worthy of his power. With this knowledge, fans looked over some of Zeno's past actions (like saying the dragons could take a castle and then immediately saying he doesn't have that kind of power, or that time he called an elderly woman "young lady") and declared him a troll.
  • Dio Brando from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure gained this reputation due to most of his behavior in the first half of Part 1 having little purpose other than to make life difficult for Jonathan, the protagonist. Even after Dio drops that to become a full-on villain later, fans will not forget the relentless trolling he did to Jonathan and consider that a primary character trait of Dio's. This reputation was then cemented in Part 3, where in certain episodes, Dio invades the opening sequence and steals the attention from the heroes. Due to his most memorable act of jerk-behavior being stealing the first kiss of Erina, Jonathan's girlfriend, simply so Jonathan wouldn't get to have it (and Erina being very displeased at this), Dio is now seen as a man who will swoop in to steal something for no reason other than to annoy people.
    "You thought that (insert anything you'd like here) but it was I, Dio!"
  • Vector from Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL. One of the Seven Barian Emperors, he masqueraded as a transfer student at main protagonist Yuma Tsukumo's school and quickly became best friends with him, eventually revealing that he was a Barian, but claiming to be one of their police and actually hunting himself. When he eventually revealed his true identity to Yuma, he did so after kidnapping himself and pretending he was dead while Yuma dueled his clones and proceeded to laugh and joke about the entire thing over the course of the duel. In subsequent appearances he tends to tease the heck out of his fellow Emperors and taunt Yuma about how they aren't friends anymore, was later revealed to have betrayed two of his fellow Emperors in the past simply because one of them reached 1 million on a points system he'd made where he'd add a point every time said Emperor said or did something that annoyed Vector, and pretended to have turned away from evil during his duel with said Emperor only to have been screwing with him the entire time. His utterly hammy facial expressions and body language, which mind you, he manages to make without having a mouth half the time, are also memetic in the fandom.

    Comic Books 
  • Aquaman: Black Manta is just as petty as Professor Zoom and goes out of his way to screw with Aquaman as much as he can. The moment that cemented this status is when he got Aquaman to cure his Hollywood Autism under the belief that it was his Freudian Excuse for being evil, only to later backstab him and clarify that it wasn't the case and that was always evil no matter what, even implying that he was faking autism all just so he can screw with Aquaman. He also murdered Aquaman's son and will never let him forget it.
  • The Avengers: M.O.D.O.K., normally a half-comical, half-sadistic villain of Marvel Comics, becomes this in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. From his Evil Laughs in many in his attacks (and in his Victory Pose in particular), some of his quotes that can come off as sadistically insane, his unorthodox playstyle (in that he can fly freely and mainly excels in keep-aways), and the fact that he just looks plain ridiculous and comes rather out of the blue (when compared to many other Marvel fan favorites that don't come in), the fans seemingly see him as a potent troll. Oh, and his theme goes with trolling.
  • Deadpool: Deadpool is unquestionably a Troll in-universe, and the fact he is fond of Breaking the Fourth Wall just helped him to get this reputation to Memetic Mutation level. Any fictional character you can come up with, there's probably fan-art out there of Deadpool being a dick to them while winking at the audience.
  • The Flash: Eobard Thawne, better known as Professor Zoom or the Reverse-Flash, is known for being incredibly petty, coupled with his abuse of time travel powers and tendency to personally cause traumatic events in Flash's life. This has caused him to gain a half-joking reputation amongst fans as a petty troll who goes out of his way to be responsible for every bad thing that has ever happened to Flash, no matter how insignificant or harmless said bad thing is.

    Fan Works 
  • Dragon Ball Z Abridged's depiction of Goku looks like a Cloud Cuckoo Lander on the surface, but his knack for using his stupidity to annoy people happens at such a rate that one wonders how much of is intentional. It's even brought in universe thanks to his moments of Hyper-Awareness that imply he really is trying to get a reaction out of people.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The Wizard of Oz: Glinda doesn't just tell Dorothy from the start that Dorothy's ruby slippers have the power to bring her back home. In-story, the justification would be that, had Glinda told her, Dorothy wouldn't have gone through her travel and grown up with it, but most people like to attribute it to Glinda just wanting to screw with her.

    Interestingly, this is actually an error from the adaptation, since the film combines two characters from the book: Glinda the Good Witch of the South and the (unnamed) Good Witch of the North. The one from the North tells Dorothy to go to the Wizard; and after the Wizard flies off in his balloon, everyone suggests that she visit Glinda, who is the one who tells her that she [Dorothy] had the power all along.
  • Downfall: Hermann Fegelein is generally depicted in Hitler Rants videos as annoying Hitler and the other occupants of the bunker with cartoon antics. Unlike many of these portrayals, this one has no basis in his characterization in the film or in real life, being based mostly on a scene where Hitler has one of his famous rants about Fegelein's desertion.
  • Captain America, of all people, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, following the opening of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, where he keeps lapping future partner Sam Wilson, while subtly gloating.
  • Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi is depicted as this toward Anakin Skywalker during his days as Darth Vader, with the fandom using him to poke fun at Anakin for being defeated by Obi-Wan at Mustafar before being burned to near death.

    Literature 
  • Harry Potter: Dumbledore has earned this reputation for awarding Harry and friends a bunch of last-minute points to hand Gryffindor a House Cup victory over Slytherin after he had already declared Slytherin the winners at the end of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, with fans exaggerating his bias to claim that he will screw over Slytherin and give Gryffindor wins against them for the flimsiest of reasons. His eccentricity and status as The Chessmaster in the series proper has also led to fan depictions of him screwing with people just because he can.
  • Sol of the Warrior Cats series has gained a memetic reputation as a troll thanks to his Affably Evil attitude and the smug expression he had on a book cover (which later got edited so it wasn't so smug). Here is a macro that got passed around for a bit with that original image.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Roose Bolton and his bastard son Ramsay, who often taunt and torment their opponents in overt or subtle ways, are members of "House Trollton" in the eyes of the internet.
    • Also in the running are Littlefinger (who has a magical transport system that allows him to pop up anywhere) and Ygritte with her famed "You know nothing" line.
  • The Flash (2014): Reverse-Flash carried on his reputation for trolling from the comics, but season 3 saw him get joined by Savitar. His constant declarations of godhood, tendency to needlessly brutalize opponents and than leave, and the scene where he uses his powers to predict Flash's friends all dying or betraying him - for the sole purpose of screwing with Flash - have combined to make fans see him as Jerkass Trickster God who gets off on trolling people.
    • Season 2's Zoom was a typical villain asshole right from the start, but the reveal that He was Earth-2 serial killer Hunter Zolomon who also assumed the identity of Earth-2's Jay Garrick/The Flash, and had done so by his own admission purely to screw with people by giving them hope that there was a hero who could fight Zoom, but could never quite stop him, makes him an even bigger troll than Reverse-Flash.
  • Paul Rudd has become infamous for trolling Conan O'Brien (on both Late Night and Conan), by ostensibly rolling teaser footage to promote an upcoming movie, only to show a clip from "Mac and Me" instead.
    • Afterwards, he'll often promise that he has "the real clip" available, and ask the crew to show it. Three guesses what happens.
  • In Kamen Rider Decade, Daiki Katou/Kamen Rider Diend; he will give out vague information about Tsukasa to him, will switch sides midway because he’s bored, will steal something important and sometimes give it back at the last second, and will turn invisible. It helps that unlike Tsukasa and Yusuke, he was meant to be seen as annoying, making his ability to mess with them look even better.

    Music 
  • Inverted with Akita Neru from Vocaloid. She's a Miku derivative who acts as a personification of trolling following an incident of Google censoring every Miku picture in the net (long story); her name means "I'm tired; off to bed" coming from people who tried to stop the talk about the issue. The inversion comes when her origins become glossed over over time and she's mostly depicted as a Deadpan Snarker (and sometimes Tsundere) in Fanon.
  • Russian singer Eduard Khilnote  sang "I'm Very Glad Because I'm Finally Coming Home" in the 1970s. The wordless tune was supposed to be a "rambling cowboy" ballad. Once it hit the internet, however, Khil's oddly disturbing smile and the vocalizations making it sound as though he was laughing mockingly fit the trolling ideal all too well. (It doesn't help that at least one line comes across as him saying "Trol-lol-lol-lol-lol".) To this day Khil is considered the greatest troll of all time. (In Real Life, the man appreciated the resurge in popularity but didn't really understand it.)
  • Rick Astley. Not by himself, but because of a certain internet...
  • Eminem is legendary for gleefully and effortlessly taking the piss out of anyone and everyone who gets in his way. His entire "Slim Shady" persona is a testament to his ability to piss off personal enemies and Moral Guardians alike with zero fucks given.
  • Artists infamous for Christmas songs — mainly due to how frequently they're played in department stores and on radio stations — often get this treatment:
    • Mariah Carey, best known for "All I Want For Christmas Is You". It's often joked that she's frozen after Christmas ends, and starts to defrost again in November when the song starts being put into rotation on stations and store playlists.
    • Jose Mari Chan, best known for "Christmas In Our Hearts", often starts appearing in meme posts about Christmas around the time Filipinos celebrate Christmas. Mind you, Filipino Christmas celebrations typically begin in September, longer than that of most other countries.

    Mythology 

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Kevin Owens has built up quite a reputation as a troll, particularly on Twitter, due to his hilarious Deadpan Snarker responses to (often poorly-written) hate comments.

    Puppet Shows 
  • The Muppets: Statler and Waldorf are considered by many fans and others to be the original trolls (in fact, one popular meme names them as, "Trolling before there was trolling." Given that their main schtick on The Muppet Show was sitting up in the balcony and heckling almost everyone in the show (they're especially merciless with Fozzie), which is a characteristic that continually follows them from medium to medium, helps validate this opinion. Their Screw Politeness, I'm A Senior! personalities also help. For a short while circa 2005, Statler and Waldorf actually had their own webcast where they would review (or rip apart) the latest movie releases. They even got their own Just for Fun page on this site.

    Tabletop Games 

    Video Games 
  • The original memetic troll of gaming is that smug goddamn dog from Duck Hunt who laughs at you if you're not a good enough duck hunter. Yes, that's right, he literally laughs at someone armed with a gun... The dog's memetic status was eventually acknowledged and reached ascended levels once he was included as a playable character in Super Smash Bros..
  • Touhou:
    • Yukari Yakumo is portrayed in fanworks as an incredible troll, ranging from simple tricks with her gaps to pulling elaborate schemes just to piss someone (usually Reimu) off. In canon, she does do strange things and have an odd nature, but generally has a good reason for what she does.
    • Tewi Inaba probably doesn't count on the basis that this is entirely canon for her.
    • Seija Kijin canonically likes pissing people off and hatches elaborate schemes to overthrow the social order. Fanworks tend to dial down the scale of what she does, resulting in this trope.
    • Players of the fanmade spinoff Touhou LostWord give this honor to Sunny Milk, who is often outclassed by other units in gameplay. Given that she's a canon prankster, the troll reputation followed, to the point where she is given a Person as Verb treatment when players attempt to summon someone more sought after and she spooks the player in a prayer round.
  • Hazama, a.k.a. Terumi Yuuki, from BlazBlue. This bastard trolls everyone in the series, and such is his nature that he feeds on other people's hatred of him, which he instills in others through his horrible acts. As a result, his trolling has reached out Memetic level that goes even beyond his usual high-level trolling. More or less, he's the go-guy to copy-paste the Trollface in and it'll still work in context. Sometimes, though, it makes people forget that he's an utterly nasty bastard, and just focus on the trolling (sometimes lumped with the more 'harmless' trolling) aspect.
  • The Ancient Dragon from Dark Souls II, while simply delivering a Disproportionate Retribution to the fool who provoked its ire, is often lauded by the fandom as a merciless troll who revels in the frustrations of players who die way too often to its incredibly random attack pattern, sometimes taking flight just for the sake of it (and not raining down fire), and possibly crushing some hapless fool upon landing.
  • Persona:
    • Yukiko Amagi from Persona 4. Usually a Ditzy Genius Yamato Nadeshiko, the event at the Amagi Inn where she messed up the schedules of the boys on purpose and makes their stay at her inn just hilariously unpleasant has made people think she's a rather sneaky Troll.
    • If you search Morgana from Persona 5 on the internet, chances are that you are likely to find jokes about him trolling Joker to go to bed.
  • Castlevania has the Medusa Heads, notorious for enraging the tempers of millions of gamers and instilling a fear of sine waves with their tendency to appear in areas with Bottomless Pits.
  • Star Fox brings us Wolf O'Donnell, famous for his Signature Line "Can't let you do that, Star Fox!"
  • Tatsuta of KanColle is known for trolling and teasing her fellow kanmusu, especially her "sister" Tenryuu. On Danbooru, there's an image pool dedicated to her trollish (and sometimes Memetic Molester) tendencies, called "God Damn It Tatsuta!"
  • Tsurumaru Kuninaga from Touken Ranbu loves to sneak up on people and surprise them, which naturally earns him this status in the fandom. Much like the Touhou examples and Tatsuta above, this has earned him an image pool on Danbooru dedicated to his trolling moments.
  • Kid Icarus: Uprising has Hades, the hammy Big Bad of the game. After all, his first act of trolling is to troll the player by tearing away the fake credits sequence in the biggest Wham Episode up to that point. His later efforts include dropping Mimicuties everywhere just to freak out Pit even though they're temporarily on the same side, butting in on serious moments like Dark Pit trying to rescue a mortally-wounded Pit, and, after swallowing Pit, making jokes about Pit exiting through the other end. And he almost always has a smile on his face, showing that he does what he does For the Evulz.
  • Monster Hunter:
  • Javik of Mass Effect 3. Being the last Prothean, he's quite fond of sharing stories of what things were like in his cycle, which are either complete lies or said just to screw with the "primitives" of the current cycle. He's abrasive, arrogant, and oh so hilarious. But he will admit there is one thing primitives are good at.
  • Tubbs from Neko Atsume will eat all your cat food without remorse.
  • The Spy in Team Fortress 2 was initially depicted as a snooty, cold-blooded professional killer. The players, on the other hand, quickly made him out to be a troll by virtue of his playstyle (deceiving the enemy in disguise, sneaking around invisibly, and delivering a One-Hit Kill when his enemies' back is turned). Valve noticed, and in a later update gave the Spy domination lines to his opponents full of insults, puns, and deranged laughter.
  • Trying to get a Play of the Game in Overwatch? Well you can forget about it if any of the other players is Bastion, because he will go into turret form and mass-kill his enemies to secure it. Even that aside, he'll repeatedly mow down enemies before they can do significant damage to him (unless they get smart), resulting in those enemies getting angry, which has led to jokes that Bastion is powered by salt (more specifically, the "salty" Berserker Tears of Sore Losers).
  • Super Smash Bros.:
    • Fans have tons of jokes about Sonic which essentially revolve around him spamming his "You're too slow!" taunt over and over.
    • Masahiro Sakurai. He'll crush your expectations about upcoming Smash games' rosters by not announcing that character (or three) you really wanted in Smash, announcing some weird out-of-the-blue character instead, and then demanding that you never ask him for anything ever again.
    • The Piranha Plant became this in record time due to nobody seeing it coming and the direct it appeared in obliterating the much publicized "Grinch leak" with extreme prejudice, with fanart often depicting it trolling the characters implicated in the Grinch leak, as well as Waluigi (as Sakurai got a moveset for a potted plant but not him), in numerous ways.
  • Pokémon:
    • Shiny Ralts has picked up this reputation in the fandom for its rarity even compared to other Shinies and the below-mentioned instance of one being infuriatingly uncatchable (other uncatchable Shiny Pokémon can spawn due to oversights in earlier games, but Ralts is the most infamous).
    • By that same token, Wally. In the tutorial section of Pokémon Emerald, there is a scripted battle where the player character helps Wally catch a Ralts. This Ralts can spawn as a Shiny and there is no way to get it for oneself. So naturally, some poor souls were unfortunate enough to see Wally get a shiny Ralts instead of them. Ironically, he doesn't even get to keep it, as it will be normal-colored in subsequent encounters with him.
    • Mindy is an NPC in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl who'll trade Pokémon with you: your Medicham for her Haunter. Considering that Haunter needs to be traded to evolve, and that its final form Gengar is a powerful Pokémon, this seems like a good trade... until you perform it, and discover that the Haunter is holding an Everstone, which prevents it from evolving. Because Mindy's dialogue after the trade sounds like she's taunting you over falling for this trick, the fans like to depict her as a troll.
  • Fire Emblem Fates features a plot point known as the "curse of Valla", which is explained by Azura. Basically, the dragon god ruling over the Kingdom of Valla, in order to be sure that nobody can find out in time about his plan to have the Kingdoms of Hoshido and Nohr destroy each other, has put a curse on the name "Valla" (à la Taboo curse, as seen with Voldemort's name in Harry Potter). Therefore, anyone who mentions Valla's name outside of it immediately disappears and dies. However, due to how the aforementioned curse of Valla is handled in the story (i.e. barely mentioned), fans tend to joke that Azura is either making up the curse's existence, making the curse seem more powerful/deadly than it actually is, or some combination of the two, presumably just to mess with everyone.
  • The mischievous goose from Untitled Goose Game, since the entire point of the game is to have the goose screw with people For the Evulz. Naturally, this has led to a lot of crossover fanart depicting the goose playing pranks on characters from other series, namely by stealing various characters' belongings or important Macguffins.
  • Dwarf Fortress has Kea, a species of bird known for this in real life. Somehow these things are able to steal items several times their size/weight and fly away before anyone can react — they are known to steal anvils, axes and other important items. As mentioned earlier this is Truth in Television (except for the anvils), as real Kea are known for their tendency to breaking into cars, stealing items and keeping people awake at night by rolling down items from steel roofs.
  • Space Engineers has a unique take on this with the game's physics engine, personified by the community as "Clang". Named after the last noise you want to hear while constructing machinery in the vacuum of space, Clang is worshipped as a devious trickster god that no player should say in vain lest you incur his wrath, resulting in your spaceship tearing itself apart from a combination of buggy physics, collision detection, or other jank.
  • Sonic Frontiers has SQUID, a Miniboss that free-roams the overworld on a few islands. Due to this, it's infamous for its ability to Jump Scare the player with its Boss Subtitles while they're in the middle of something else, along with its tendency to "photobomb" cutscenes if left alone. Even the official Sonic Youtube channel got in on the meme.

    Visual Novels 
  • From the When They Cry series:
    • Fans of Higurashi: When They Cry, often have Shion Sonozoaki serve this role. Images of her crazed laughter and psychotic expressions she had during her gradual mental deterioration will be used in other, often sillier contexts. The image of her laughing at Rika's suicide is especially popular to use. It doesn't help that her methods of trolling really were pretty nasty.
    • Beatrice the Golden Witch from Umineko: When They Cry is quite infamous for her trolling of Battler, especially since one of her expressions in the original sound novels looks very similar to the memetic Trollface. However, it turns out that her trolling nature is largely an act, and that Bernkastel is a much more cruel and merciless troll than Beato ever was.
  • Zelretch. While his apparitions within main Nasuverse works are quite limited and somewhat formal note , the fandom seems to have taken a liking to him as a bored old man whose sense of humour always causes others to suffer. His creation of the user-not-so-friendly Kaleidosticks and the mention of all his apprentices (bar Rin, so far) ending up insane due to his mischief being the main aguments of this theory.
  • Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth from the Ace Attorney series, particularly when it comes to updated autopsy reports.

    Web Comics 
  • The poster boy of this trope is none other than Rage Comics' Trollface, a grotesquely smirking face that screws with people (and sometimes logic itself), often with the phrases "U MAD, BRO?" and "Problem?" Typing the word "troll" into Google's search engine will bring up images of Trollface, and other memetic trolls will sometimes be depicted with their own trollface. U mad, trope page?
  • The milder Dolan comics portray Donald Duck (or a character very similar to Donald) as a troll. In most comics, he goes beyond that, being a Memetic Psychopath and a Memetic Molester.
  • Rain: Rain and Emily's daughter Lydia is given a highly mischievous, chaotic trickster personality by most of the fanbase. This likely originated from her behavior in this post-epilogue page.

    Web Original 
  • RWBY: Professor Ozpin can be the target of this, oftentime to Ron the Death Eater levels. He certainly was something of The Gadfly early on, though it's a trait he largely (though not completely) drops after Volume 3's tragic events. Note that even the creators get in on this in RWBY Chibi, which gives everyone a healthy dose of Flanderization for the sake of comedy, including turning Ozpin into a full-on Troll.
  • Twitch has the Kappa emote. Shortly after its debut in the Justin.tv era, it quickly became associated with trolling or sarcasm.
  • Danbooru has the "God Damn It (character)!" series of image pools, used for instances of a particular character being a troll, whether to other characters or the viewer.
  • During the transitional period between the 2016 U.S. election and Donald Trump's inauguration, then-Vice President Joe Biden started getting portrayed as this.
    Biden: What if I just played it from my phone real quick?
    Hillary Clinton: We're not playing the Imperial March when he gets here.
    • As of 2020, these jokes have started to include Kamala Harris... usually as Biden's enabler.

    Web Videos 

    Western Animation 
  • Bugs Bunny. Trolling his enemies, friends, and even the audience sometimes since 1940!
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • Princess Celestia. She's depicted in the series as a Reasonable Authority Figure who genuinely tries to make everything go for the better, but her tendencies to sometimes use deception to those ends, play occasional mild (but good-spirited) pranks, neglect some crucial details (such as the fact her pet is a Phoenix in "A Bird in the Hoof" or that she could give Twilight invitations to the gala for all her friends from the start in "The Ticket Master"), and of course the fact she banished her then-evil sister Luna to the Moon led to people commonly depicting her as a trolling ruler who borders on Caligula territory.
    • Discord as well, though it helps that he's an actual troll in canon.
    • Twilight Sparkle has become known on the internet for intentionally spilling chocolate milk and derailing 4chan threads as a result.
  • Soundwave from Transformers: Prime often gets this treatment due to often outwitting anyone who opposes him, and being a Silent Snarker.
  • Papa Smurf of The Smurfs can be interpreted as one, creating holidays like Unhappiness Day, where every Smurf has to be miserable while he walks around making sure they aren't having fun, and Hug a Smurf Day, which almost just becomes "Torture Grouchy" day because he hates hugs, not that Papa Smurf doesn't find this hilarious.
  • The Omnitrix, of all things, is considered this by some fans in Ben 10. It's heavily implied to be an Empathic Weapon and has a tendency to give Ben the wrong alien at the worst times, with this in the original series believed to be it trying to coach him to think tactically and not just use Four Arms to punch all his problems. In Ben 10: Omniverse it happened with such frequency that people started to think it was just screwing with him, until Azmuth reveals it was at least partially due to a flaw in the new design.
  • In King of the Hill, some fans believe that Dale Gribble is Obfuscating Stupidity regarding his Chocolate Baby Joseph in order to torment John Redcorn with the knowledge that he may have had Dale's wife but he'll never have his son.

    Real Life 
  • Flying birds in general, especially pigeons have gained the reputation of pooping everywhere, to the point where you aren't allowed to feed them in Paris.
  • Monkeys are sometimes considered thieves, pickpocketing things like food when you're not looking. Some people are also annoyed by their grimaces and laughter-like chanting.
  • The Greek philosopher Diogenes has often been depicted as the original shitposter or a troll, notably including the "featherless biped" meme.

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