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The Ridiculously Average Guy is pretty much middle-of-the-road in all things. He's not ugly, but he's not particularly handsome (or pretty) either. He's not a moron, but he's not one of the best in his class either. (He will probably tend towards the low end on grades, possibly even failing his entrance exams, but he's not portrayed as aggressively stupid, either.) He has no special powers, even if the rest of the cast does pretty much as a rule. He's not a complete weakling, but nor does he excel in any physical ways.
So why the hell is he the main character?
Well, obviously, it's because the writers intend the audience to find him easy to relate to. Of course, considering that he winds up completely and totally overshadowed in almost all things by everyone around him, this fairly easily winds up turning into This Loser Is You. Pretty much everyone around him will constantly be telling him just what a loser he is, and the Ridiculously Average Guy usually has very little, if anything, to say in his defense- unless he is the Only Sane Man of the group, and even then...
Of course, despite his aggressive and all-consuming mundanity, he will also likely be central to some world-saving plot, come out on top at the end of every chapter, and have exceptionally beautiful and sexy, cute and fun, or just plain goofy girls hanging all over him and begging to be allowed to fulfill his every fantasy, usually along with one who acts like she hates him but will probably wind up with him in the end anyway.
This trope is most noticeable (and confusing) for how he winds up with these girls, this fate, or those victories. The girls especially... sure, he's a decent guy and all, but often the only explanation seems to be that girls, when offered chances to be with the most handsome, richest, most famous, and in all other ways exceptional guys, actually prefer the dude who's going to give them a life with the absolute fewest surprises and least excitement possible. Can be (and probably has been) an example of Wish Fulfillment on the part of the writer. Or alternatively done so for the male audience.
Sometimes, the guy isn't a main character... he's just some plain, normal guy that nevertheless tempts a strong female character with her own life of excitement and adventure with the prospect of settling down to a nine-to-five in a city apartment to possibly have 2.5 children. He's also the surprise a lot of writers have waiting in the wings to make sure that the Romantic Two-Girl Friendship actually turns into Bait-and-Switch Lesbians.
Of course, some might claim this is Truth in Television, since some women do want stable guys they always know what to expect from, but just like the idea that All Girls Want Bad Boys, it's a generalization.
Most of the time he's the the hero of the story.
Compare Unlikely Hero, Unlucky Every Dude, The Everyman, AFGNCAAP, White Male Lead and The Nondescript (who only seems ridiculously average).
Examples
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Anime and Manga
Comics
- normalman himself is so unremarkable that his name is never capitalized. In fact, you may know that in comics, every letter in every word is usually capitalized, but none of the letters in norm's name ever are. Damn. Of course, that's mainly because he's the only guy without powers on the planet Levram, where being completely mundane makes him incredibly important to several key figures, from the Ultra-Conservative, who wants to give him powers so he won't disrupt the status quo to Sophisticated Lady, who finds his scrawny figure and utter helplessness maddeningly attractive.
- Recurring Spider-Man side character Joe Smith, better known as "Just A Guy Named Joe". Somewhat ironically, he's had an incredibly eventful life from certain perspectives; Boxer, wrestler, movie star, tv star, supervillain, superhero... it's too bad he's a born loser and failed at each of those professions.
- Joe's spiritual counterpart Guy Jones, "Just A Joe Named Guy", as well.
- For Better or for Worse- Anthony friggin Caine. Absolutely average, yet everyone in the cast is convinced he's the best man on earth, and of course the lovely Elizabeth gives up her exciting life teaching in a native village to move back to her home town to settle down and live a nice, respectable life with him.
- There is a Donald Duck short comic spoofing the story "Null-P" mentioned below: Donald is selected by a computer to be completely average, which makes him an instant celebrity. However, he does not get to enjoy it much, and in the end is saved by a literal computer bug.
Film
- Joe from Idiocracy was selected for the suspended animation experiment because he's so totally average. At least in 2005, he is. Several generations of declining intelligence later, he's the smartest man on Earth. Or at least, the only one with any common sense.
- Nemo from Little Nemo. What makes him different than any other kid? In the movie, he mostly just says "Yippee!"
- Something that's really creepy about Ulrich Thompson as The Consultant in The International (for some, at least) was how average he seemed to be.
Literature
- Martin from The Dresden Files is described as incredibly bland. He manages to even do things that should be dramatic in efficient but unimpressive ways. Or at least Harry sees him this way. Of course there is the fact that he's a half vampire that's running a Thanatos Gambit against the Red Court in order to Harry to destroy them with their own ritual. The fact that he manages to seem completely average (except for the half vampire thing) right up until the end of Changes shows the power of this trope.
- Somewhat similarly, in The Hardy Boys Casefiles, Frank and Joe's contact in the Network was a man who was only ever called "The Gray Man." He invokes this deliberately, making himself as dull and unremarkable as possible to make it easier to blend into a crowd and to be difficult to remember.
- In the short story "Null-P" by William Tenn, it is discovered that a man named George Abnego happens to be statistically average in every way. This makes him a celebrity of sorts, and he ends up becoming President.
- Part of the backstory for The Freedom Trap by Desmond Bagley is that Alison Mackintosh's father raised her to be a superspy — licensed pilot, expert shot with pistol and rifle, karate, things like that. And then she fell in love with and married an accountant named — wait for it — John Smith.
- The hero of Zarkorr The Invader was apparently The Chosen One because, of all the people on Earth, he's dead average on every axis. He's a schlubby white middle-class American.
- Dreams of Yoghurt by Neil T Stacey features Average Man, whose characteristics at any given time reflect the average of the planet's makeup. At most times, he is an Asian woman named Mohammed Smith. He gets kidnapped by the CIA, who intend to interrogate him instead of collecting census data.
- The Mysterious Benedict Society: Reynie Muldoon. "He was of average size, of an average pale complexion, his brown hair of average length, and he wore average clothes."
- In the Xanth novels, Grey Murphy has, according to his driver's license lists his eye color as "Neutral" and his hair as "hair-colered". He's also the sun of the Magician Murphy and the Sorceress Vadne, and a Magician in his own right.
- John Doe from JPod, who grew up in a lesbian commune in British Columbia. To compensate for is insane upbringing, he has dedicated his life to making himself as statistically average as possible up to and including his favorite snack foods.
- The Idiot discusses this at length:
- Varvara Ardalionovna Ptitsyn, her husband Ivan Petrovich Ptitsyn, and her brother Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin are all described as completely ordinary people. Ivan Ptitsyn is stated to be blissfully unaware of how ordinary he is, and Varvara knows she's ordinary and has more or less made peace with that fact, while Gavrila knows that he's ordinary and is constantly striving to distinguish himself but lacks the ability to do so.
- In addition, the author launches into an aside describing how the vast majority of people in Real Life are "ordinary", and wondering how an author, interested in realism, is supposed to accurately portray these ordinary people.
Live-Action TV
- Jerry Seinfeld in Seinfeld. He is easily the least interesting character in the whole show despite being the main character. The main reason for this is to show a contrast between him and the crazy people he hangs out with. He has a different girlfriend almost every time he's seen with one, and breaks up with them for the pettiest reasons, yet has such a relaxed attitude about the whole thing that we rarely see him upset. He does get annoyed when Kramer comes into his room and 'borrows' his possessions/food, though.
- Ted Moseby from How I Met Your Mother. His worst faults are that he corrects people and he wants to find true love. Plus he doesn't go all the way with his crazy friends. Oh wow, he's so daring.
- He's a borderline example, due to Flanderization making him more distinct as time goes on. He's more of the Ego to Barney's Id and Marshall's Superego. His desire to have a family and his single status as a thirty-something-year-old male living in New York City still sticks him with this trope, however.
- In one episode of Star Trek: Voyager, Captain Janeway is sincerely tempted to give up her life as a Starfleet captain and her promise of getting her crew home to settle down with a decent but fairly bland guy she met on a planet and become a minor power plant supervisor.
- Todd Dempsey on Outsourced. One of the main reasons the show received claims of being racist was because there was so much focus on him when the Indian characters had better personalities.
- Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger: Out of all the Gokaigers, Don "Doc" Dogoier, aka Gokai Green, is the only one without a backstory or known past. Initially, he was planned to have a back-story as the son of a scientist who was murdered at the hands of the Zangyack forces.
 However, Naruhisa Arakawa, the show's head writer, discovered that he preferred to leave Don without a back-story.
- On The Colbert Report and The Daily Show, there is a Running Gag that Mitt Romney is an extremely bland guy. For example, a joke on The Colbert Report was that he got indigestion from a "particularly spicy Wheat Thin".
Tabletop Games
- The gaming magazine Shadis had a recurring comic strip about the adventures of "Joe Genero, the Average Man" which consisted of amazing or absurd things that characters with "average" stats in various games could accomplish.
Video Games
- Aran Ryan was this in Super Punch-Out!!, a series known for wild characters, but thankfully, Next-Level Games gave him a Hot Blooded Scotireland/border-line Ax Crazy personality in the Wii version of the game. Now, he's probably the most memorable character in the entire cast!
- Also, based on seeing his name in the game's code, Kid Quick from the original arcade Punch-Out!! was supposed to make a comeback in the Wii version, and its assumed he was "cut" because his only trait in his original appearance was his speed. However, it seems Next-Level Games tried so hard to give Kid character, he became an entirely new character: Disco Kid.
- Played for Drama in Rainbow Six. The Dragon, Renegade Russian Dmitriy Popov's features are so unremarkable that no one really knows how to look out for him until learning the extent of the Big Bad's plan prompts an Even Evil Has Standards reaction and something of a Heel Face Turn, causing him to voluntarily approach John Clark.
- Russel Bagman is the most normal guy in Super Robot Wars. Literally. As a result of this, he stands out even more. Ironically subverted by Fanon though, considering he gives his Hot Blooded commander a Bright Slap once, leading many to apply Memetic Mutation and refer to him as the Original Generation Bright Noah.
- The protagonist of MDickie's The You Testament is just some generic schmuck (so that you can use a photo of your own face to make him you) who fulfils the role of every incidental person in The Bible who encounters Jesus without becoming a dedicated disciple. This occasionally necessitates that a story be mangled out of shape so that "some generic schmuck" can learn the lesson instead of "the very specific person who Jesus actually talked to in the Bible whose very identity was instrumental in giving the lesson meaning".
Webcomic
- A non-romantic example is Tyler Marlocke from PS 238. He's a completely average kid who has been sent to a grade school for superheroes, because his parents refuse to believe he isn't one.
- Except that he's the future Nightwing.
- The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! is about Bob Smithson, officially the World's Most Average Man. As time goes on though, it becomes clear that he does have one significant thing going for him: a higher than average wisdom score.
Western Animation
Real Life
- Carson Daly. On Saturday Night Live, a skit about TRL had this line- "Hi I'm Carson Daly, and I'm average in every way."
- One study found that the most typical face on Earth was that of a 28 year old Chinese male.
- Dev Patel was chosen for the part of Jamal in Slumdog Millionaire because the director wanted a completely ordinary looking guy to play the role rather than any of the muscle bound guys which had auditioned for the role before.
- Similarly, Tim Burton chose Michael Keaton rather than an action star for the role in 1989's Batman because Bruce Wayne was an "average" (albeit rich) guy who became a vigilante.
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