Too Important to Walk

At the very least, it must be great strength training for those two.

"When you're his bride
You can sit or ride;
You'll never need to walk!"

— Cinderella's Stepmother, Into the Woods ^contextExplaining to her daughter why she's cutting off her toe to fit into Cinderella's slipper

Walking is for schmucks. Luckily, some wealthy, Blue Blood people are rich enough to employ (or compel) schmucks to do the walking for them!

A character tends to travel everywhere in a sedan chair, litter or palanquin, or is otherwise propelled by the leg power of other people. This is evidence for their wealth and power, and depending on the setting can also indicate laziness, pettiness or both. If it crosses over (as it often does) with Adipose Rex, it may be implied that the king is actually unable to walk, at least not very far, because of his corpulence.

May be a case of the Ermine Cape Effect if they only do it when they're trying to look regal, rather than every day.

Truth in Television from the 1600s to the early 1800s, as horse-drawn carriages weren't always practical in narrow streets but powerful people didn't want to be seen walking around like normal people or soil their fine clothes. Of course, riding in a palanquin had advantages during time periods where the central sewage system ran down the middle of the road. Rickshaws are a slightly more Boring, but Practical variation still around today.

It's important that the character communicate their superiority by getting someone else to do the footwork for them: people getting around via telekinesis, personal electric vehicle or horse aren't really in the spirit of the trope. Obviously there are grey areas: non-sentient humanoid drones are likely an attempt to evoke the trope in a Speculative Fiction setting, while a Funny Animal riding a regular horse may do so by accident.

Can involve a Road Trip Across the Street.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Parodied in Ayakashi Triangle: Suzu gets carried around in a litter while visiting an ayakashi village. However, the ayakashi doing the lifting are only a couple feet tall, making the ride very slow and awkward—she has to fold her legs up to even fit on the thing.
  Suzu: I appreciate it, but I think I want to get down now.
• In One Piece one of the World Nobles makes his debut sitting on the back of slave who's crawling on his hands and knees. And to show how much of a prick he is, the Noble complains how slow the slave is.
• A guest character in an episode of Pokémon: The Series makes Ash and his friends carry him and his wife through a Pokémon preserve in a litter. Ash is not amused.
• Yaiba: when a revenant Tokisada Shiro Amakusa goes after the heroes, he forces Onimaru's mooks to carry him to Mt Aso with a wooden palanquin, lampshaded by the Spiderman, who rethorically asks why he gets this privilege.

Comic Books

• Asterix:
  • Chief Vitalstatistix is carried by two shield bearers. Frequent Running Gags are made of the facts that he's rather overweight and his bearers are of different heights. And then there's the additional Running Gag in which he falls off the shield for some reason at least once per story.
  • There is one story where Vitalstatistix's shield bearers quit, and he appoints Asterix and Obelix as their replacements. Since the height difference between them is even greater than the usual shield bearers', this doesn't work out so well. The obvious solution of having Obelix do it by himself was rejected as making Vitalstatistix feel unmanly (a half-pint, in fact, leading to the next panel of Obelix carrying him one-handed like a waiter all the funnier).
  • Also, whenever Cleopatra suddenly shows up some place, she's always sitting on a gigantic golden sphinx-shaped chair on wheels pulled by slaves flanked by dancers and trumpeters. She has at least once referred to one such appearance as "dropping by incognito" (she also once managed to sneak up behind Julius Caesar this way without him noticing until he was told he had a visitor).
  • A chief of a Gallo-Roman village also has a pair of shield-bearers. When he turns his back on someone, the shield-bearers also turn so that they may leave — which leaves him facing the person he turned his back on.
• King Smurf from The Smurfs comic book story of the same name required a few Smurfs to bear his palanquin as he went from his palace to the villagers and back. It is around the time that he launched his ill-fated expedition into the forest to find the rebel Smurfs' base that he chose to lead the expedition on foot.
• Footrot Flats. The Dog is annoyed at how Aunt Dolly is always carrying around her pet corgi Prince Charles, so brags that his owner would also carry him around if he wanted. Cut to the Dog hanging onto an exasperated Wal's gumboot as he slogs through the mud.
• The Far Side: Two explorers are in a native village, and meet a guy wearing a rainbow-feathered outfit and an enormous gaudy horned headdress, while standing on the backs of two other guys down on their hands and knees in the dirt. "Hey.. this could be the chief."
• Wonder Woman (1942): Vita Vain has servants carry her around campus in a palanquin, and when she has to walk orders them to roll out a carpet for her. The Holliday Girls despise her, and her father tries to buy Holliday College to make the changes she orders to keep her in school.

Films — Animation

• In the Hayao Miyazaki film of Howl's Moving Castle, the super-sized Witch of the Waste rides around town in a sedan chair carried by two magically-created mooks. This works well until she's summoned to the palace, and the mooks cross a magical barrier disabling them... at the bottom of a huge flight of stairs.
• In Kung Fu Panda, when Po is crowned the Dragon Warrior, he is hoisted up in a jiao and carried to the Jade Palace. The liter is several sizes too small for him, and his butt breaks through almost immediately.
• In The Emperor's New Groove, Yzma is carried in a little tent on Kronk's back.
• In Cars 2, the leaders of the Lemon clans don't risk putting miles on their substandard engines, but are instead towed everywhere they go.
• Theodore is given the litter treatment by a South Pacific bush tribe in The Chipmunk Adventure. Then Alvin and Simon learn the bush tribe is going to sacrifice him.
• The diminutive mob bosses in The Triplets of Belleville are carried wedged between their bodyguards.
• The King of Fools gets carried in a sedan on The Hunchback of Notre Dame. When Quasimodo is crowned the new King, the old King is unceremoniously tossed out of his chair and Quasi dropped in his place.
• Koati: While Zaina leads a caravan of animals on a Fatal Forced March, some alligators carry Zaina on top of a large leaf. When she is called out on this, she claims it is exhausting giving orders.
• The Pied Piper makes his entrance in Shrek Forever After borne on a swarm of rats.
• In Pocahontas, the original idea for Governor Ratcliffe was that he was constantly borne aloft on a chair by Putney and Chutney, two manservants who also didn't make the cut. The reason they discarded this was simple — he was easier to animate when he just walked.
• In The Spine of Night, Ghal-Sur, after becoming a God-King, travels across the lands sitting on a colossal throne that is carried around by a few dozen naked slaves.
• Strange Magic: The fairy king is too important to fly, requiring a litter to carry him. He's also overweight enough that he can't fly very far.
• In Arthur and the Invisibles, this trope is not obvious initially, since the Minimoy King at first appears as an imposing figure (for 2 mm-tall characters, at least). However, it's soon revealed he's no taller than the average Minimoy, but riding on top of a Yeti-like humanoid with another ferret-like creature standing in for a long beard and hiding the King's body, Totem Pole Trench-style.

Films — Live-Action

• 300:
  • Xerxes doesn't just have slaves to carry him, he even uses them as a staircase up to his gargantuan litter.
  • One of his subordinates has one, but it's not nearly as large.
• Chushingura: This trope is carried to an unhealthy extreme when, in this story set in feudal Japan, the shogun's dog is carried in a litter.
• In Dune: Part Two, Jessica, now a Reverend Mother for the Fremen, is transported in a palanquin once she reaches the South of Arrakis. Earlier, when travelling on a sand worm, she's put into another palanquin to protect her from the sandstorms while the Fremen around her only have their protective gear.
• Master Blaster in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome is an odd version: Master piggybacks everywhere on the shoulders of Giant Mook Blaster. Unlike most examples of this trope, Master genuinely cares for Blaster. It's also like the Goblin/Ogre pairing from Warcraft in the Video Games section: Master is much smarter and more tactically adept, but Blaster has more raw brawn than Master could ever hope to posses.
• Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. has Wednesday's despot father carried across the beach on a four-mook sedan chair like this.
  Wednesday: What Daddy doing now?
  Crusoe: (through binoculars, sees a litter bearer stumble; Daddy whacks him with a club, and another litter bearer replaces him) Changing a tire.
• In the not-quite-a-Monty Python film Jabberwocky, the two villain-merchants are borne on litters as they talk business to each other; but they constantly move at slightly different speeds, each trying to take the lead, causing the merchants each to constantly prod their litter-bearers to keep up with the other, to the point of running — eventually spilling them both.
• In The Bank Dick, W.C. Fields talks his way into taking over the job of a falling-down-drunk movie director. Being carried around in a sedan chair is apparently one of the job perks.
• In 1776, Benjamin Franklin is carried into the Congressional Hall by two men he apparently hired from the local jail. However, it should be noted he did have gout and was 70 at the time. Somewhat Truth in Television, in that Franklin notably was carried to the Constitutional Convention in a sedan chair 11 years later at age 81.
• In Animal Crackers, explorer Captain Spaulding (Groucho Marx) arrives via a sedan chair carried by African natives, just like the stage play.
• Justified in Gladiator with Lucilla, who is the previous Emperor of Rome's daughter. She is seen on the streets on a litter.
• The Phantom Menace sees trade baron Nute Gunray moving around in a throne-like chair with automated robotic spider legs.
• The Phantom of the Opera (2004): In "Prima Donna", Carlotta gets the theatre managers to transport her and her dogs on a litter.
• X-Men: Apocalypse: In the prologue, En Sabah Nur stands on an extravagant litter carried by 24 of his servants, and it's an indicator of his position as the god-king of Ancient Egypt.
• In Juliet of the Spirits, Juliet's sexy neighbor Suzy lounges at the beach in a tiny bikini, but not before she's carried there on a litter by her servants.
• Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons: Prince Important insists that he needs to be carried around on a litter because walking would make him the same as all the normal peasants.
• Cleopatra: Cleopatra tries this when she wants to make a good impression prior to surrendering to Octavian.
• In Ilya Muromets, King Kalin is shown to have a throne set upon human backs. Another group of Tugars is carrying a golden disk upon which his Fanservice dancer performs.
• Empress Nympho in History of the World Part I, at least outside the palace. She's not thrilled about her litter-bearer's performance, though.
  Empress Nympho: Could you please step on the same foot at the same time? My tits are falling off!
• The Ten Commandments (1956) :
  • Bithia, as the late pharaoh’s sister, rides on a litter even after she gets banished from the palace for the issues with Moses. She does end up with some of the Hebrew kids riding on it while passing through the parted Red Sea.
  • Dathan rides in a wagon pulled by other people in the beginning of the departure despite Joshua telling him he can pull his own cart. He does end up doing some pulling to get through the muddy ground, prompting Lilia to quip “so you like work so much?”

Literature

• In A Brother's Price, once he's invited to the royal palace, Jerin doesn't walk anywhere in the capital city. Justified, as a pretty boy like Jerin would certainly attract kidnappers if he walked around in public. (He does walk when he's at home, but there, his sisters know where everyone lives, and everyone knows not to mess with the Whistler clan).
• In The Elenium trilogy by David Eddings, Otha, the Emperor of Zemoch, is an immortal graced with unimaginable magic powers by his god. He's also lazy and stupid, and over the millennia of his existence has morphed into something that is described as being roughly analogous to Jabba the Hutt in appearance. Otha can't even walk; he has to be carried around on a litter by slaves.
• Seen several times in Discworld:
  • In Feet of Clay, the Patrician gives Vimes a sedan chair as a wedding present, which he is obligated to use. This is something of a double insult, as Vimes both loves walking (it helps him concentrate) and hates the idea of nobility being above the common people. Naturally, the one time it's seen, Vimes tells one of the servants to get in and carries the chair himself. (His legs are "beginning to give out" by the time he gets where he's going.)
    Vimes: It's a lovely day. I think I'll drive myself.
  • It's mentioned in The Fifth Elephant and Thud! that the deep-downer dwarf grags ride in closed palanquins, borne by trolls. Officially this is due to them being unused to, and mistrustful of, sunlight, but it also sends a clear signal about their social status.
  • Downplayed with the "troll taxi" or "trolley bus" in Unseen Academicals. This consists of being carried in a pannier slung around the neck of a troll and is "really expensive", but apparently not beyond the means of a couple of working-class women, at least on special occasions. (But you get glared at by the other women in the street, because you're Giving Yourself Airs.)
• Invoked in The Land of Painted Caves. Ayla creates a padded chair that can be attached to a travois and drawn by a horse for Zelandoni Who is First to use. Because domesticated animals are nigh unheard of in the setting, seeing the First being carried by a horse is quite awe-inspiring. It's also justified; Zelandoni is overweight and getting on in years, so travelling long distances on foot is difficult for her.
• One bad guy in Redwall is a ferret so very fat he has to be carried around by non-vermin slaves on a palanquin. When the heroes came in and kill the guards, the slaves march the palanquin into the water and come out, the ferret's last words being "I cannot svim, I cannot svim!"
• In The Horse and His Boy, Calormene nobles are carried in sedan chairs. Later, in The Silver Chair, the giantess Queen of Harfang goes hunting carried on a litter (ignore the Square-Cube Law here).
• The Star Wars Expanded Universe holds that Hutts start off relatively muscular and svelte, becoming progressively fatter and less mobile as they grow in power. At some point they stop slithering and ride repulsorlift sleds to get around. Subverted with Beldorion, who is a warrior Hutt, and remains active his entire life. He is 9 meters long and solid muscle. And despite his enormous size, he is fast.
• In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer plays with this trope through the Small Name, Big Ego version of Chanticleer the rooster from "The Tale of the Nun's Priest":
  "He looked as it were a grim lion,
  And on his toes he roamed up and down;
  He deigned not to set his feet to ground..."
• In James Clavell's Shogun, all of the important female characters (and not a small number of the important male characters) traveled this way when going long distances.
• In the Doubled Edge novels by Mercedes Lackey, the dark Sidhe Aurelia occasionally travels by sedan chair, in part because steering the slaves via magical torture produces more magical power than she's expending.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Sedan chairs and litters are common as status symbols in the Free Cities and Essos, but not so much in Westeros, where they're limited to lords who are too old, infirm and/or overweight to ride a horse.
  • Wyman Manderly is mocked as Lord Too-Fat-To-Sit-A-Horse, and plays into the trope for the sake of Obfuscating Disability.
  • Doran Martell, afflicted with gout, prefers a wheelchair but uses a litter for long trips or if he's in a lot of pain.
  • The very old and overweight Erik Ironbreaker strikingly inverts the litter-as-status-symbol trope, as the Asskicking Leads to Leadership Ironborn people would never buy it; when he suggests himself as a candidate to be the new king of the Ironborn, Asha Greyjoy publicly humiliates him by promising to support his claim if he can simply stand up.
  • Magister Illyrio travels everywhere in litters and palanquins. Some notable instances include when he takes Daenerys to meet Khal Drogo and when he smuggles Tyrion out of Pentos.
  • Daenerys rides in palanquins a number of times, such as when she visits the market at Vaes Dothrak, preferring to luxuriate in the soft cushions while her husband Khal Drogo isn't around to judge her.
  • The slavers of Slaver's Bay ride through the city streets in palanquins held by slaves. The Yunkish general Yurkhaz zo Yunzak rides a palanquin so large that it takes 40 slaves to life it.
• In the Myst novelisation The Book of D'ni, sedan chairs are the favored way for lords to get around the city streets. As the city is not very big and is mostly lake, everyone else walks when they're not in a boat.
• Sedan chairs are chic for nobles and royalty in The Wheel of Time, but carriages seem to be more popular as they're safer in traffic.
• The Saga of Seven Suns: Ildiran Mage-Imperator is considered too holy and important to ever allow his feet to touch the ground. Subverted in the third book after Jora'h replaces his father in the position and quickly decides the tradition is stupid and abolishes it (as Mage-Imperator, he's allowed to do things like that).
• In the Belisarius Series this is used as a method to hide a refugee princess.
• In The Future is Wild, a future species of termites has developed a specialized "porter" caste which carry members of the various other castes around on their backs.
• In Courtship Rite the planet they live on has no beasts of burden, so to travel over land people need to either walk or be carried. Fortunately there's a clan who selectively bred themselves as porters who can carry a lot.
• Palanquins seem to be common in Nine Worlds in Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein. Together with slavery and extreme social stratification. When the hero needs to be smuggled to a space port, his friend hires a palanquin with a set of tongueless slaves, pretends to be a capricious noblewoman and makes a scene at an entrance to distract the guards.
• Exaggerated in the prequel novels of The Belgariad: the Physical God Torak travels in an iron castle on wheels, pulled by a full herd of horses and a thousand of his priests. It's one of many signs of his narcissistic insanity and disregard for his followers.
• Discussed in the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella, Cinderella's stepsisters are told to cut off a part of their feet (one cut off her heel and the other her toe) in order to fit into Cinderalla's slipper, explaining that they won't need to walk again once they marry the prince. Into the Woods, which adapts this story along with several other fairy tales, provides the page quote.
• In The Potter's Field, Donata is brought to the site where her son is about to be arrested in a litter borne by the household servants. She's dying of cancer and in far too much agony to walk, but has vital information with which to exonerate the young man of a murder charge.
• Ascendance of a Bookworm: Myne has the combined penalties of poor health, very young age and being small for said young age. Because of that, many people would much rather carry her than match the slow pace at which she needs to walk to conserve energy. When she learns to use magic to make what is essentially a moving animal statue to be used for aerial transport, she gets a lot of Mundane Utility out of it.
• Bazil Broketail: High officials in Ourdh wear platform shoes they can't walk in at all, instead getting carried everywhere on sedan chairs.
• Played With in Inheritance Cycle: The High Priest of Helgrind moves around in a litter in part because of this, and because he was ritually amputated of all his limbs.

Live-Action TV

• Arrested Development: Uncle Jack, a family friend of the Bluths, has lost the use of his legs after attempting to lift more weights than he could handle. He hires a burly man to carry him around because he's too prideful to use a wheelchair.
• The Book of Boba Fett. It's noted that important people on Tatooine usually use litters, and that Boba Fett, the new crime lord of Mos Espa, stands out for choosing to walk. In contrast we see the Twins, Jabba the Hutt's cousins, being carried by more than a dozen human servants who are visibly straining under their combined weight. Not that Hutts can "walk" that much anyway.
• Farscape. "Rygel the XVI, Dominar to over 600 billion people" insists on traveling everywhere on his throne sled, though as he's a deposed Dominar it's a hoversled rather than one carried by people. As he's a very short amphibious alien, there's also pragmatism involved in zipping about the huge spaceship they travel on.
• In a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch, a nobleman is carried to the seashore in a sedan chair, gets out and is disrobed by the bearers, gets back in and is then carried into the ocean for his swim.
• In Power Rangers RPM, we see (in a flashback) that Summer (initially a Rich Bitch) forced her butler to carry her part of the way to Corinth, despite the former being a healthy teenager/young adult, and the latter an old man. She even complains that they need to stop so she can take a rest. Eventually, even she realizes how insufferable she is and starts walking on her own feet.
• T'Pau from the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Amok Time" is carried to Spock's wedding in a sedan chair. This is a person described by Captain Kirk as "all of Vulcan wrapped up in one package", so she certainly is important.
• One episode of World's Dumbest... features an event called "sedan chair racing". One team shows up dressed as Iraqi soldiers and claims that they misheard it as "Saddam chair racing".
• Avataro Sentai Donbrothers has Don Momotaro always entering riding his Cool Bike… carried on a palanquin by several dancers. He only actually uses for bike for Megazord battles or when he’s in a rush, the latter time prompting someone to remark “That’s still a super weird entrance. Why do you even need the palanquin?”
• Rory Bremner portrayed the Conservative politician Oliver Letwin as a 17th-century fop. In one sketch, he was shown avoiding the London Congestion Charge by travelling in a sedan chair rather than a car.
• The BBC adaptation of Nostromo opens with a man in a suit and top hat apparently riding through the jungle, but when he gets close he's revealed to be sitting on a wooden platform born by prisoners.
  The Narrator: In the year 1890, in the South American country of Costaguana, its dictator Guzman Bento is cleansing his land of foreigners.
• Rome. Cleopatra is introduced apparently traveling in a caravan across the desert, until a Reveal Shot at the end of her scene shows she's actually in an enormous litter conveyed by slaves.
• Game of Thrones:
  • High-ranking members of the Royal Court who go on official tours of King's Landing are usually carried around in a palanquin. This is partially because many of the streets are too narrow for a horse and carriage, partially because of safety concerns; the one time the highly unpopular King Joffrey goes out on foot he is attacked by a mob of starving peasants.
  • While meeting with his grandfather Tywin, Joffrey starts to whine that he doesn't want to climb any stairs to attend the Small Council meetings in the Tower of the Hand. Tywin shuts him down (while towering over him) by pointing out that they could simply arrange for the King to be carried.

Mythology

• Aphrodite's chariot was oft depicted as being drawn by a pair of the Erotes, a group of young winged men that includes Eros.

Pro Wrestling

• Several wrestlers bearing the title of "King" would make their way to the ring on a litter carried by jobbers, ranging from King Mabel to Randy Savage.
• One of the few good things to come out of WrestleMania IX was The Undertaker's entrance. He was carried to the ring in a throne on a litter borne by men in ancient Egyptian style headdresses.

Tabletop Games

• Hordes: Dominar Rasheth, the Skorne warlock, is a non-combatant among the Proud Warrior Race Guys, screwing hoksune in several ways, and employs malnourished, tormented, broken pachyderm-folk infants as carriers.
• Lizardmen One of the variant Lizard Folk are the Mad Lizardmen of Pang-Leng. Generations of selective breeding and lifestyle differences have caused their laborer class to grow into huge, brutish Warders, who carry the frail, diminutive Artificers (descended from the elite class) around on their shoulders.
• Warhammer:
  • Champions and Daemonic heralds of Nurgle are occasionally gifted with palanquins carried by a mass of tiny Daemons called Nurglings.
  • Warhammer Fantasy:
    • Dwarf kings are fond of being carried on shields. Thorgrim Grudgebearer, the High King, is carried around on his throne by four guards, as tradition demands that he only be allowed to sit on his throne. Notably, being the High King's throne carrier is a position of great honor and only given to respected and accomplished warriors.
    • In older editions, Slann were carried around by their Praetorian Guard. This was eventually dropped in favor of using magically floating thrones.
    • The ogre warlord Greasus Goldtooth is carried on the bare hands of gnoblars. Lots and lots of gnoblars. Greasus exemplifies pretty much all the rationales behind this trope, being monstrously obese, incredibly petty, massively wealthy and keen to display his status to all concerned (and bonus points for actually having a special rule called "Too rich to walk").
    • Skaven warlords can ride to the battlefield on top of a Rat Ogre, a gigantic plague-ridden Rodent of Unusual Size, or a shield carried by slaves and guarded by the warlord's personal elite. Grey Seers can ride to battle on top of a gigantic church bell wagon pushed by normal rank-and-file skaven, while Plague Priests who replace the bell with a sphere filled with burning raw chaos stuff. This can potentially kill the unit pushing it, so only the most devoted (and insane) skaven can do it.

Theater

• Anyone Can Whistle: Cora Hoover Hooper, the mayoress, is usually carried on a litter by four young men (her "boys"). When Hapgood arrives and turns the town toward him, the boys carry him on the litter instead, which is part of Cora's motivation to get rid of him.
• Black Friday: In the second act, Linda becomes the leader of an Apocalypse Cult and is carried around by her followers, who often lift her up above their heads as if to make up for the fact that she's very petite.

Video Games

• Bug Fables has Queen Layra II of the Termite Kingdom. Whenever she enters the throne area of the Colosseum, she has several attendants carry her there. This is in large part because, being a termite queen (see Real life below), she's quite large and likely has trouble walking.
• Warcraft:
  • Warcraft III: The Goblin Alchemist unit rides an Ogre. Less laziness and more a mutually beneficial arrangement, as the ogre has melee power the goblin can never hope to achieve, while goblin can hurl his potions and give the ogre more sensible commands.
  • World of Warcraft: Some Goblins ride around on the big, mentally stunted Hobgoblins, such as Helix Gearbreaker and Lumbering Oaf in Deadmines, Fran and Riddoh in the Brawler's Guild, and Hoff Greasegun and Mugg in the "Battlefield Barrens" event. Helix even decides to ride players while sticking bombs on them, and after Lumbering Oaf is defeated.
• Super Smash Bros.: King Dedede enters the stage being borne on a palanquin by an army of Waddle Dees.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Link is sent to rescue Ruto and the Zora's Sapphire from Jabu-Jabu's belly, but she makes him carry her throughout the whole dungeon. Players can take out their frustration with her by throwing her around like a clay pot, and she even becomes a necessary game mechanic by serving as a weight to trip switches throughout the area.
  • Hyrule Warriors: Ruto's boss intro has her being carried into battle by a hapless Hyrulean soldier.
• Diablo II: In the Lord of Destruction expansion's opening scene, Baal is carried on a massive litter by his soldiers when he parleys with a herald.
• Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars: During the credits parade, Valentina's float is carried by her fateful stooge, Dodo. When Dodo stops to catch his breath, Valentina Dope Slaps him.
• Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow: Soma Cruz gets an attack which is this. He summons a palanquin carried by skeletons, sits in a Villainous Slouch, and then the entire vehicle causes damage to any enemy in its path while Soma gets to chill, invincible.
• Half-Minute Hero: The Princess has her retainers carry her around as she mows down her foes with her automatic crossbow. As they take damage, she slows down, making it harder for her to dodge incoming attacks.
• Mortal Kombat: Deception: One of the scrapped ideas in Chess Kombat was for The King Piece Player to be carried around on a Sedan by a slave. The slave was shown to be sickly and weak explaining why The King can only move one spot across the board.
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice: Paul Atishon campaigns in a palanquin that shows off his name.
• The Princess Guide: Veronica, the Witch Princess, uses you as her personal horse whenever she needs to go out on quests.
• Total War: Warhammer: A number of character mounts are actually litters carried around by servants or underlings.
  • Thorgrim Grudgebearer, who is required by Dwarf law not to leave the Throne of Power unattended, goes into battle sitting on his throne and carried by four stout warriors.
  • Greasus Goldtooth lounges around on a wheelbarrow pushed by gnoblar, in a slight departure from his tabletop palanquin.
  • Ku'Gath Plaguefather rides on a palanquin lifted by a horde of nurglings.
• Titan Quest: You meet the shade of a nobleman who complains about afterlife services: Charon has left his post and no longer ferry souls across the Styx. When you resolve the problem, the shade is upset that he has to walk to get into the ferry.
• Xenogears: In one cutscene, Emperor Cain's throne is carried by a group of cultists who worship him.

Web Animation

• Les Kassos: A parody of Frodo and Sam from The Lord of the Rings has Froton riding on not-Sam's shoulders while badmouthing him.

Webcomics

• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: One strip involves a man at an orphanage, "hypothetically" asking how many orphans would be required to carry a man around on a pedestal.

Web Original

• Bosun's Journal: Brat barons are far too self-important to bother moving any real distance on their own, and instead have themselves carried around by their robotic and posthuman servants.

Western Animation

• Futurama:
  • As an Affectionate Parody of the Star Trek example, the ruler of Zoidberg's planet had a sedan chair made of a giant clamshell.
  • Parodied on the Space Egypt planet — the pharaonic barge is rowed by slaves, and then walked onto land by more slaves who had apparently been underwater the entire time. When Bender becomes Pharaoh, he goes everywhere in a throne on the back of a kneeling Fry and Leela.
  • Despite being built into a bench that does his walking for him, Hedonismbot occasionally gets around this way.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Fire Nation royals travel by palanquin within the capital city. Even when they're just going next door, and would rather walk. Must maintain appearances, don't you know. In Zuko's case, it is useful for getting past a mob of Fangirls, though.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • The Pixies claim their ability to grant Flappy Bob's wishes comes from incredible wealth, and their ability to float is because "walking is for poor people".
  • In the episode "Remy Rides Again", Remy tries to make Timmy too happy to need Fairy Godparents so he'll lose Cosmo and Wanda. To accomplish this, Remy shares with Timmy the perks of being a spoiled child. One of those perks is taking a limo from the school yard to the classroom. Remy states that walking is for poor people without wealthy friends.
• Jimmy Two-Shoes:
  • Lucius is occasionally carried around by his Minotaurs, and in the second season opening he's seen being carried by Samy.
  • One episode has Jez being carried into a party by Lucius' Minotaurs as well...until Saffi knocked them all over.
• In Planet Sheen, the Emperor is usually carried around by one of his Giant Mook guards when he needs to go anywhere. In his defense, the Emperor is so little (an average imperial guard can carry him in the palm of one hand) that it's probably much more practical this way.
• In the Dexter's Laboratory episode "Ego Trip," Mandark creates a Bad Future by stealing Dexter's Neurotomic Stabilizer and reversing its polarity. He becomes so obese he needs machines to transport him wherever he wants and/or needs to go.
• Ganon rarely ventures into Hyrule himself in the animated The Legend of Zelda (1989), because his power is stronger when he remains in his own underworld. He risks it a few times, however; in the episode "The Ringer," in which he enters a magicians' competition in disguise, he arrives on a palanquin borne by skeletons (who are also disguised, since that would be a bit of a giveaway).
• On Recess, during the occasions when King Bob of the Playground is actually seen leaving his lofty perch, he's carried about on a palanquin-like conveyance.
• In "The Princess and the Po" episode of Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness, a small pig princess has servants carry her in a sedan chair, using them as Xerxes above to get in and out of it.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In general, any example of a pony riding in a vehicle (other than the steam-powered trains) fits this trope, as these vehicles are invariably pulled by other ponies. Sometimes they take turns.
  • When the famous fashion photographer Photo Finish travels, she goes around on a palanquin supported by two other ponies. This is even lampshaded when Hoity Toity is hitching a ride on her platform:
    Hoity Toity: I'm going to have to get one of these!
    Photo Finish: It is the only way to travel!
  • In "Magic Duel", Trixie forces Snips and Snails to drag her around on a small cart without wheels (because she finds wheels untrustworthy). She later turns the cart into a huge, lavishly decorated wagon, still without wheels, and makes the colts drag that as well.
  • When Princess Celestia has to leave the palace, she's often on a chariot pulled by pegasi, even though she has wings and can(and often does) fly herself.
  • In the IDW Friends Forever comics, Shining Armor calls out Prince Blueblood's palanquin for the opulent display that this trope entails. The servants actually defend Blueblood, saying they enjoy the job benefits and appreciate how the weight is distributed painlessly across their shoulders. At the end, the palanquin is used to cart home all the souvenirs, gifts and trade goods Blueblood managed to acquire through savvy dealing, while he walks on his own without any problems whatsoever.
• American Dad!: This is Played for Laughs in an episode. Steve and his friends are LARPing their MMORPG characters, and since Steve (or "Agathor") is the strongest out of the four of them, he is the leader. "Agathor" randomly chooses not to use his muscles and demands his friends "walk him forward", so Snot and Barry literally move his legs in a walking motion for him.
• Grojband: Trina has her friend, Mina, to carry her on piggypack when she doesn't feel like walking.
• Mike, Lu & Og: Lu frequently has her pet turtle Lancelot carry her around on his shell, much to his burden.
• In The Brothers Grunt, Poobah is carried everywhere by his servant, Ringo.
• Betty Boop: I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You has Betty being carried a sedan chair Bimbo and Koko. When the two stop to take a breather, the chair walks by itself.
• Steven Universe:
  • When Steven is almost run over by Mayor Dewey's van while walking down the sidewalk, Mayor Dewey defends himself by saying that, as the mayor, he has no intention of walking anywhere himself.
  • "The Answer": Blue Diamond is enthroned on a palanquin that can both fly and walk with spider-like legs.
• Droids: Sise Fromm uses a hover-chair to get around.
• We Bare Bears: The bears travel around in a stack, with Grizz, the eldest and self-appointed leader, on top, Panda in the middle and Ice Bear, the biggest and strongest, on the bottom doing all the walking. In "Brother Up", when Panda becomes the new leader, he and Grizz switch places on the stack, and Ice Bear has a turn on top at the end of the episode.
• Monsters vs. Aliens (2013):
  • Coverton in the TV series uses a hoverchair to move about, since his spindly legs are useless on Earth's gravity.
  • General Monger uses a Jet Pack briefly on the movie, but he uses it to go everywhere in the series. When the base is trying to conserve energy in one episode, he has two soldiers carry him around in lieu of the jet pack.
• Kaeloo: Pretty gets Eugly, her twin sister/slave/bodyguard, to carry her around in several episodes.
• Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: The Dubstep Bee Queen is apparently too important to fly, as she's introduced standing on the backs of a small swarm of her subjects in flight.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Temporal Edict", the Gelrakian leader is carried on a seat held up by two servants.

Real Life

• Lacking adequate animals to drag people around, this trope was very common among the nobility of the pre-columbian Americas. Among the Muisca, for example, it was an honor and a privilege to be carried around in the chair and litter, actually having to be granted directly by the chief of state himself.
• Also common among the elite of Ancient Egypt, as it lacked horses, camels, and even the wheel itself for a huge part of its history.
• Shieldbearers were used in Real Life, but like horned helmets and Bling of War, it was very rare, to celebrate victories and commemorate triumphs. It's basically the Ermine Cape Effect. It was also used as part of an Awesome Moment of Crowning.
• Ancient Rome: In Real Life, sedan chairs and litters could be hired by anyone who could afford the fare, and if middle class families could afford more than one or two slaves, chair-bearers were sometimes included in a household staff. When not bearing chairs, they would be employed at whatever other heavy lifting tasks the family needed.
• French general the Marquis de Saxe, who used both a sedan chair and a coach when he was not fit enough to ride, e.g. at the battle of Fontenoy, which his army won against the allied Austrians, British, Dutch and Hanoverians in 1745.
• In the Musée de l'Armée at the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris you can see a sedan chair captured at the battle of Rocroi (1643). It belonged to the gout-ridden Spanish infantry captain, a Frenchman in the service of Spain named Paul-Bernard de Fontaines, who died upon it, riddled with wounds. The winner of the battle, the Duke of Enghien (later the "Great Condé"), is said to have said: "Had I not been able to win, I would wish to have died as he did."
• During the River of Doubt expedition organized by Theodore Roosevelt, one member of the party managed to piss Roosevelt off royally by demanding that he have some of their porters carry him in a sedan chair because "Indians were made to carry priests". Roosevelt repeatedly refused the demands, both out of respect for the porters and their commander and because it was a deeply inefficient use of manpower; when the priest kept requesting anyway, Roosevelt gathered the expedition's leaders, and they en masse forced him to go back to America.
• Ben Franklin was carried in a sedan to the constitutional convention due to his advanced age (81) and rapidly failing health (he died only 3 years later). He was carried each morning and night by four prisoners from the city jail since he was too frail for the jostling of a horse or carriage.
• Nepal's famous Kumari doesn't normally walk around (instead being carried), because she is supposed to be a vessel for the goddess Durga, and if she were to be injured (say, by tripping and scraping her knee) the goddess would leave her body.
• In Jewish weddings, the bride and groom are carried around in chairs during the reception. Mazel tov!
• In one variation of the traditional Chinese wedding, the bride arrives at the groom's house in a four- or eight-man covered sedan chair, and then is carried to the red carpet by her father, if she were to trip or stumble, it would considered to be a bad omen.
• Termite queens play this trope straight because they can't walk, due to their colossal size (in relation to the other termites). When the colony has to move her somewhere else, hundreds of them have to pick her up and push her to a new location. She can't move on her own.
• Fire ants will do something similar when faced with floods. The entire colony will band together to form a living raft for the queen and her eggs and larva to ride on until the floodwaters carry them to dry land. Unlike termites, ant queens actually can walk but if the fire ant queen were forced to swim herself she'd be at serious risk of drowning or being eaten by an aquatic predator, so it's much better for the colony to simply sacrifice a few dozen workers.
• Prince George of Denmark, Queen Anne of England's husband, was too crippled with gout to walk or ride; he was carried into Westminster Abbey in a sedan chair through a side entrance for her coronation, and was carried out the same way.
• The Pope used to be carried around during public audiences. Paul VI was the first one to stop using this privilege.
• Justin Bieber once said "Sometimes I don't feel like walking, so I make enormous people carry me around."
• On a similar note, Rihanna infamously rode on a security guard's shoulders into a crowd at Coachella, then proceeded to roll a blunt on the guy's head.
• Visayan nobles and other rich people had a caste of women (and sometimes men) called the binukot, selecting the prettiest girls to stay inside so they could cultivate a fair complexion and learn arts and culture; it was thought offensive for them to be seen by common people without permission, so when a binukot DID go outside, it was a big affair and she was carried on a litter. Unfortunately, keeping someone shut inside a few rooms from childhood to adulthood had the unwelcome side effect of making them UNABLE to walk. Initially this was a status symbol akin to Chinese footbinding, since only the wealthiest people could afford such a frail spouse, but when World War II happened and the binukot couldn't flee from invading Japanese, most were either killed (which naturally lost huge amounts of cultural knowledge) or raped. Even modern Visayans can't help viewing the practice as prettied-up child abuse.
• Ellen DeGeneres tweeted a joke about how she would have loved to use Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt as transport.
• During the "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match in 1973, both Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King did this as part of their entrance to the tennis court in order to build heat as, respectively, a Straw Misogynist and a Straw Feminist. Riggs entered in a rickshaw drawn by scantily-clad female models, and King, in homage to Cleopatra, was carried in on a litter by four shirtless muscle men.

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