Troperville
Help us survive. All donations are anonymous on the wiki and unacknowledged, as we don't wish to create a hierarchy among Tropers.
Editing
Tools
Toys
|
|
|
The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything
|
redirected from Main.ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything
alt title(s): The Pirates Who Dont Do Anything You say you're nasty pirates Scheming, thieving, bad bushwhackers? From what I've seen I tell you You're not pirates! You're just slackers!
They don't pillage. They don't plunder. They don't invade Port Towns, kidnap beautiful maidens, or battle the Royal Navy on the high seas. They've never been to Boston in the fall. The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, in fact, seem to mostly just drift aimlessly on the high seas, drinking rum and possibly singing sea chanties. If you ask them, they'll probably just tell you they like the way it looks on their resume. Or maybe they'll just tell you, "We don't do anything."
In general, a member of The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything is any character who, despite having a certain canonical job, is rarely seen engaging in that job. They might indeed be a pirate who rarely goes out and steals treasure and raids ships — but they might just as easily be mobsters who don't steal or smuggle, students who don't go to class, office workers who never seem to do more that hang out in bars, or ninjas who just didn't get the memo about that whole "stealthy assassin" thing.
This may be because writers and fans are in love with the romanticism implied in a life of adventure and crime, but don't want to actually show the characters doing any of the myriad of things that makes thieves, assassins, mercenaries, bounty hunters, and other unsavory types pariahs in Real Life. This can result in a strange dissonance where the friendly, messianic nature of the characters is at odds with the openly predatory nature of the professions they claim to engage in. May bring A Million Is A Statistic into play.
See also One Hour Work Week. Contrast(In every possible way) Royals Who Actually Do Something
The trope name comes from one of the "Silly Songs with Larry" from VeggieTales (later covered by Relient K) which is about - well, pirates who don't do anything. It later provided the title and theme music for a VeggieTales movie.
Examples
Anime
- Naruto is full to bursting with Highly Visible Ninja. Virtually all formidable military personnel in its universe are ninja, and so the more familiar definition of the term has fallen by the wayside. They're more like Jedi-for-hire. Humorously, the ANBU Black Ops do act like ninjas — performing assassinations, covering their identities, appearing and disappearing from the shadows, etc. They are ninjas for ninjas.
- In one filler episode, Kakashi derides a ronin who had been utilizing skills such as wearing disguises and performing assassinations, saying that such sneaky tactics weren't the way of the Ninja! What the Hell?
- Especially stupid as it was previously shown in canon episode that there is no such thing as "cheating" to ninja; while most of the protagonists don't make much use of stealth (and do use things like animals and a variety of weapons), they would have no room to criticize others for it.
- The Straw Hat Pirates from One Piece don't pirate, pillage, or plunder in any manner — they're literally The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything. The crew's illegal activities are more in the nature of battling with various corrupt governmental ruling forces. But if any other pirates try to test their crew...
- To top it off, their one attempt to steal something blew up in their faces with only one of them even knowing. After God Eneru's defeat on Skypeia, Luffy convinced the others to steal what gold remained and run for it. Unknown to them, the Skypeian people, who held little value for gold, were perfectly willing to give them more than they could carry. Only Nico Robin seemed aware of the misunderstanding but didn't say anything.
- They all looked so happy about stealing it!
- Well, if you compare against the definition, they do "battle the Royal Navy on the high seas", or equivalent.
- The Vongola family from Katekyo Hitman Reborn have yet to do anything terribly illegal despite being The Mafia. Even Reborn, the teeny-tiny assassin, never manages to kill anyone with his array of magic bullets. They do engage in mob wars (mostly in self-defense) later on.
- In the Love Hina manga, Kitsune claims to be a freelance writer; there's exactly zero evidence to support this.
- Kochikame revolves around police officers who are rarely seen doing any police work.
- The vast majority of Soul Reapers in Bleach never seem to do any Soul Reaper duties like hunting hollows or cleansing souls; instead, they hang around the Seiretei all day and pop up whenever Ichigo is in need of reluctant allies or enemies. Apparently, making officer rank means you get delegated to a desk job... much like in most real-life armies, except that these don't run on Authority Equals Asskicking like the afterlife does. (But when they do do something, it counts.)
- It's justified by the fact that most soul reapers we see are Captain's and Lieutenents, the soul reapers who do the grunt work are the unranked Soul reapers.
- The main cast of Cromartie High School are "The World's Best Behaved Delinquents". They constantly talk about how tough they are, but the only fighting between school is Maeda constantly being kidnapped. They don't smoke and never do anything illegal on purpose.
- Space Pirate Captain Harlock. He once robbed a ship and threw the valuables in space. He has claimed that pirates who steal are dishonoring the name of pirates.
- Lampshaded in Captain Herlock: Endless Odyssey, when Tadashi Daiba lambasts the good Captain for his reluctance to give orders and keep discipline onboard the Arcadia.
- To be fair, he didn't set out to be a pirate, he simply wanted to get away from a totalitarian Earth. Presumably, it was the authorities who gave him that lable.
- Cosmo Warrior Zero, however, does portray him as a legitimate and somewhat bloodthirsty villain.
- In Yu Gi Oh, the main characters are all supposed to be in school, but they sometimes spend days or weeks at a time out of school to participate in card tournaments - even the characters who don't duel. Even when they're at school, they are never shown doing work. Most of the time, they sit around playing Duel Monsters or developing the plot in non-school-related ways.
- The thieves of Mount Reikaku in Fushigi Yuugi make a few nominal stabs at banditry when they first appear, but mostly seem to hang out, drink and squabble. Tasuki himself, despite having been appointed their leader, is almost never seen actually stealing things or even expressing a particular desire to do so. In fact, he's one of the more gullible characters in the series.
- Not to mention, they later show up as The Cavalry, even pledging their loyalty to the Emperor in the war against enemy kingdom Kutou.
Comic Books
- Jon Arbuckle from Garfield is supposed to be a cartoonist. He has spent the past 30-odd years as a professional Butt Monkey instead.
- He -has- been shown (mostly in early strips) at a drawing table, and at least one episode of The Animated Series dealt with him submitting drawings in an attempt to get a job.
- Tintin's official occupation is a reporter, but not once is he ever seen doing anything in the least bit like reporting or writing. It seems the only reason he is a reporter is so that he can go on adventures all over the globe, ostensibly on assignment.
- Like many of these examples, this was brought up more early in the series. Actually, in the first story, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (which was not rereleased in color for obvious reasons) Tintin does act quite like a reporter. It was also his original reason for visiting America, though he forgot about it for most of the story. Fairly early in the series he's sitting pretty on Haddock's fortune at Marlinspike, so employment probably wasn't too important.
- His reporting job is the starting-point for two later adventures, The Broken Ear and Land of Black Gold. (For the record, Capt. Haddock moved into Marlinspike at the end of Red Rackham's Treasure, but Tintin didn't move in until a few adventures later.)
Film
- Bounty Hunters in the Star Wars Expanded Universe act more like mercenaries.
- The protagonist of the B Movie Werewolf identifies himself as a news writer, but we don't see him writing at all. The Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew, writers themselves, do not let him off easy for this.
- The various pirates in Pirates Of The Caribbean are generally implied to be a bunch of murderous thieving scum, but we don't see a whole lot of "honest pirating" going on after the raid on Port Royal in the first film by the Black Pearl crew under Barbossa. And we certainly never see Jack's crew attacking any merchant vessels or raiding any settlements, which is, you know, what pirates do. This is brought up in the beginning of the second movie: Gibbs tells Sparrow of the crew's annoyance that they hadn't been doing anything to get any money in the year since the first film, and were completely broke as a result.
- The title Pirates of the Caribbean is something of a misnomer in the third film, in which not only is there a complete lack of piracy, the film isn't even set in the Caribbean (largely taking place in Singapore or "World's end").
- There's also the rather disturbing Aesop treaded throughout the first film that someone can be both "A pirate and a good man," and Will having to come to terms with the fact that his father was both...except that by definition a pirate steals, murders
and rapes. It shows many pirates as upstanding citizens by simply not being pirates. And in the subsequent films, the Aesop apparently becomes that pirates are unfairly discriminated against, like the Jews in the Holocaust...or something like that. It portrays people taking action against their crimes as shameful intolerance.
- Not so much with the rape, actually. Pirate captains tended to crack down on rapists among their crew - not because Even Evil Has Standards, exactly, but because it was bad for morale if some pirates were getting more action than others.
- At least in the first movie, this was something of an intentional joke. Part of the writer's concept of the script was to do a pirate movie in reverse: a band of murderous rogues sailing about and collecting treasure so that it can be returned to its rightful owners.
- The Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride. Who doesn't raid and plunder other ships. Or spend much time on ships. Or seem to have any crew whatsoever. Or do anything all that dreadful. And isn't even named Roberts.
- Of course he isn't the Dread Pirate Roberts by that point and previous ones apparently did plenty of that.
- In the Spy Kids universe, the definition of the word "spy" seems to be "person who dresses sharp, has cool gadgets and kicks butt". Actual espionage
 never seems to be depicted. Not even the martini-flavoured kind.
Literature
- Several of the nobles and royalty of the Discworld are trained as assassins (although many are not, since the assassin final exam is lethally off-putting), but that's more for the quality of the general education offered by the Assassins' Guild. They rarely, if ever, kill anyone. Of course, in the world of the nobility, knowledge of how assassins think is also a valuable life skill for anyone wanting to live past twenty.
- Also, Rincewind pretty much lives to be a wizard, complete with hat, beard and robe... but he very rarely performs any magic, simply because he has absolutely no magical talent whatsoever. On the other hand, the most powerful wizards in Unseen University rarely perform magic either, because it's their job not to. As they have said, it's much easier for a random person not to do magic than for a wizard to refrain from doing so.
- Likewise, proper witches, like Granny Weatherwax or Nanny Ogg, make a point of not using magic. Witchcraft on the Discworld is about hard work, doctoring, hard work, knowing things most people can't be bothered to remember or would prefer to ignore, headology, and hard work. Magic is involved, but it's more something you try and control than something you use.
- Pratchett himself put it best: "Magic is a lot like Nuclear power: In controlled conditions it's useful, perhaps even neccesary, but you don't want to rely on it, and only a loony uses it to catch fish."
- Witches and wizards both avoid using magic whenever possible because they recognize that, while turning someone into a lobster is an incredibly beguiling notion when they're annoying you, magic is a little bit alive and the more you use it, the more likely it is to take it into it's non-head to liven things up a bit. Considering that there are still places on Discworld today where you don't go if you want to come out the same shape you went in, this is sound advice.
- The faculty at the Unseen University seem to avoid their students whenever possible, and are at one point described as running the other way or hiding behind doors whenever they see them.
- But this is normal behavior for university teachers, wizards or not.
- Rincewind, in particular, is only allowed to be a professor (of Cruel and Unusual Geography) on condition he makes no attempt to teach anything or publish any papers.
- The two exceptions that we've seen are Ponder Stibbons (whose enthusiasm for High Energy Magic is shared by his students, which just makes senior wizards more nervous) and Professor Hicks of the
Necromancy Post-Mortem Communications Department.
- King Galbatorix, the Big Bad of The Inheritance Trilogy by Paolini, is said to be an evil and oppressive tyrant who deserves to be stopped. His past crimes aside, however, he doesn't really do anything to merit the evil tyrant title save for opposing the good rebellion because they're a constant thorn in his side. It got to the point where some people adopt an Alternate Character Interpretation that says Eragon and crew and the bad guys, and Galbatorix is just trying to run his kingdom, or empire or whatever he calls it.
- The Thieves Guild in Jennifer Fallon's Demon Child and Hythrun Chronicles series is practically an official branch of the government, with high-ranking officials — even sympathetic ones — constantly looking the other way regarding their activities and frequently enlisting their help.
- Tom and Joe decide to become this type of pirate in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, because stealing is a sin. Huck isn't troubled, since he calls it "borrowing".
- Patrick Bateman in American Psycho is a Vice President at Pierce & Pierce, a prestigious Wall Street firm. Despite all that information, what his job actually involves is never explained, and he it is implied that he mostly hides in his office watching TV and compares business cards during lunch, while his evenings involve eating at expensive restaurants and murdering people.
- It is pretty clear to the reader — and quite possibly to every character in the novel except Patrick himself — that his job is 100% sinecure. Which makes it hilarious how he feels infinitely superior to his brother because the brother just leeches off their rich father, as opposed to making his own money like Patrick does.
- Alternatively, maybe the entire company is a Bernie Madoff-style pyramid scheme and there isn't any real work to do. Many of Madoff's real-life employees, even those not directly in on the scam, were somewhat suspicious at the high salaries and low workloads found at his company.
- Messrs Ibram Gaunt and Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM! from the Warhammer 40000 novels are Commissars Who Don't Shoot Their Men Very Often. Gaunt picked up his abnormal leadership style from his mentor, who also believed in this style of encouraging over shooting too, while Ciaphas, being a Dirty Coward for whom self-preservation is top priority, recognises that not earning the enmity of troops by field-executing them is vital to avoid getting "accidentally" killed by them. As Cain put it, "Commissars who throw their weight around tend to end up dying heroically for the Emperor even when the enemy is suspiciously far away."
- And that goes double if he was to work with Catachan.
- Gaunt and his fellow commissar Hark do execute officers on occasion, for cowardly incompetence that costs lives, but almost never the rank-and-file.
- The Commissars's job is to keep the morale high. Shooting their men is an option, not the task.
- In fact in "Duty Calls" a minor character is a Commissar that was sent to a Penal Legion because he shot some of his men without a proper reason (He cracked under the pressure of battle and shot the men because they failed to salute an officer while they were engaged in fighting.).
- Many of the officers in Catch22 don't actually perform their jobs. Major Major Major Major (not a typo) actually structured his entire day around avoiding people.
- The pirates in Gideon Defoe's The Pirates! series are a perfect example. In An Adventure With Whaling, they actually realize this — one of the money-making activities they try is "actual pirating". Alas, they find it's just not in character for them.
- The characters of "The Three Musketeers" by Alexander Dumas are rarely, if ever, actually depicted as using muskets.
- It wasn't until this troper played Civilization for the first time that he realised that's where the word "musketeer" came from.
- Robert A Heinlein's "The Man Who Was Too Lazy To Fail", from Time Enough For Love. He structures his whole life around avoiding work while seeming to work hard, to the point where he become an Admiral while expending next to no effort. Then, of course, promptly retires at a young age.
Live Action TV
- See the Monty Python sketch Non-Illegal Robbery.
- Although the first couple of episodes showed them in high school, pretty much all the school-age characters — especially Bobby, Donna, Audrey and James — in Twin Peaks soon joined The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything. The trouble was that each episode of the show was supposed to chart the investigation a day at a time — but the plot also required the teenagers to investigate murders, hatch plots, seduce hapless detectives, blackmail... everything except attend class on a school day. On the other hand, the adults in the show tended to have jobs that tied into the small-town community — and therefore the plot — much more, and were shown at work all the time.
- Many Soap Operas include business executives who spend most of their time on the job planning man-hunting schemes or ways to character-assassinate their boss and take his place, and rarely do any actual work. This also applies to police officer characters on soaps who seem able to drop everything and take three-month tropical vacations once a year. Conversely, medical doctors on soaps are frequently seen doing their jobs, perhaps even being overworked, as the main doctor characters will be involved in any sickness or injury whether the patient is a child, gunshot victim, cancer patient, or heart attack patient.
- Come to think of it, how many times did Doctor Who's Sarah Jane Smith cry out, "Stop the TARDIS, Doctor — I'm on deadline!"?
- In Roots, slaves seem to have an awful lot of free time. Much is made of major outrages (rape, children being sold away, mutilation of runaways) but little emphasis on the horror of performing agricultural work 70 hours a week for no pay from age six till death.
- In Edgemont, a show based around teenagers in high school, the students are never shown actually in class (and rarely studying or doing homework). Of course, showing a scene in class would clash with the fact that There Are No Adults.
- Sean from Mega64 was initially introduced as someone who delivers Rocko and Derek e-mail from the Big Bad's other Mega64 test subjects, but Rocko and Derek don't answer their e-mail much throughout the series, and Sean spends most of his time instead getting involved with the episode plotlines and Xanatos Gambits.
- Once on The West Wing, the president is bedridden and watches a daytime soap opera. He asks, "Do any of these people have jobs?" His bodyman answers, "One of them's a surgeon... I... think."
Opera
- The Pirates of Penzance. At best, it's mentioned that they attack other ships, but they have rules about only attacking bigger ships than themselves, and to let orphans go unharmed, with obvious results. What we actually get to see them do is drink, sing about poetry, attempt burglary, and try to get married! When they capture the General's daughters to force the last, they succeed in overcoming the still more ineffectual police, but instantly surrender in face of an appeal to their loyalty to Queen Victoria.
Video Games
- The MMORPG EverQuest features gnome pirates who have to constantly remind each other to talk "piratey." They're bad at following through on the details, but they like the idea of being pirates.
- Although Samus Aran from Metroid is described as being a Bounty Hunter, she's usually never seen hunting bounties. She seems more like a kind of mercenary than anything. It's possible the definition has changed in the future, though; all of her jobs are given to her by the government.
- Not to mention her nemeses the Space Pirates, who seemingly exist only to antagonize her; then again, Samus keeps breaking into their bases. The Prime subseries manages to deal with this in a decent way - the Pirate Logs throughout the games establish that the Space Pirates do have a life outside of trying to kill "the Hunter". (there little nickname for her gives you a guess what Samus does during her down time)
- Captain Falcon from F-Zero falls into a similar rut, although the focus of his series is mainly on his side-business, racing. All of his shown Bounty Hunting is literally All There In The Manual.
- The Super Mario Bros. are allegedly plumbers. However, the only thing they ever seem to do involving plumbing is their habit of traveling via pipe — which real plumbers are not noted to do either◊, but nevermind...
- In the live-action movie and Mario And Luigi Superstar Saga, they do use their plumbing skills to stop an attempted sabotage/flooding at a dig site and then in a castle basement. Likewise, the animated series would occasionally show them using their plumbing skills and equipment, either for actual plumbing or for dire situations.
- Blue Rogues in Skies Of Arcadia are more in the nature of random do-gooders and adventurers, and look down on pirates who actually engage in, y'know, piracy. After the opening scene, they never do anything illegal again.
- As they do spend a lot of time messing up the navy of the not-Spanish-really Empire, one could think of them as English privateers without an actual England to endorse them.
- They do kill people and take their stuff. It's the genre standard after all. They're just very selective of who they do the killing part to.
- Early on in the game, you might find you're getting less money than you could be for discoveries because a treasure hunter is discovering them first. You'll eventually meet him, in a restaurant run by a pirate you trounced earlier. He'll join you if you've discovered thirty discoveries, but if not he'll just hang around in the restaurant, not hunting much of anything, until you have.
- In Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness, there's an exploration team composed of a Slakoth and a Slowpoke who call themselves "Team Slackers, the zero-motivation exploration team". Each time they appear, they point out the fact that they don't really do anything besides just laying around, and they wonder why they even formed an exploration team in the first place.
- Let's not beat around the bush here: In Monkey Island, pirates who actually do anything pirate-related are about as frequent as chicken's teeth. Even the protagonist, self-proclaimed "mighty pirate" that he is, never does anything more nefarious than your average Kleptomaniac Hero.
- Justified in the first game because the pirates are afraid to sail because there's an evil ghost ship on the loose, and in the second game because the Largo Embargo does not allow them to sail (and Largo's enough of a Bad Ass to enforce it). Also lampshaded all the time by the responses Guybrush gets when he claims he's a mighty pirate ("you look more like a flooring inspector!").
- Let's look at the list. The murder of G.P. Le Chuck (and several hench ghosts). The use of witchcraft on the person of Largo La Grande. Graverobbing. Trespassing. Larceny without a permit. Premature entombment of a non-dead individual. Two counts of unauthorized exiting from a penal institution. Impersonating a federal mail boat. Necromancy. About a zillion counts of theft.
- Also wanted for questioning regarding the disappearance of prescription eye wear.
- And then all that gets tossed out the window in the third game. You even get defenseless tourists to prey on if you want. And listen to them beg and plead for mercy. I made a save point there called 'Piracy at last!'.
- The fourth game ramps this trope up to 11, to the extent that it lessens the blow of the pirates getting overrun by tourists. For instance, compare the SCUMM Bar from the first game, where pirates are downing grog, swinging on chandeliers and passing out on tables, to the one in the fourth game, which has about two or three people sitting around and playing darts. And we're supposed to care that this place gets turned into a Sushi restaurant?
- Though the "pirates" from The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker love to boast about being the terror of the seas, they mostly just act as roughneck ferrymen for Link and the many people he rescues or works with over the course of the game. They're even ruled by a little girl whose mother was the previous pirate leader. To be fair, they do engage in about one and a half acts of actual piracy, but they don't seem particularly cutthroat in either case.
- They hold the hostages they just saved for a ransom (though they did let at least one go for free because their father couldn't pay), steal an entire shop of bombs and don't seem very upset over the total destruction of Greatfish Isle. Pirate may not be exactly accurate, but they do do some fairly unpleasant things for money.
- It gets worse in Phantom Hourglas, where Tetra seems to have gone crusader of the seas and wants to scold the owners of the "Ghost Ship" for kidnapping people. - Which should be common business for pirates.
- Dungeons And Dragons-based video games (such as Neverwinter Nights or Stormreach) tend to feature an inordinate number of career adventurers sitting around in taverns or campsites, practically begging you to delve into loot-filled dungeons in their stead, as well as a bunch of adventurers who are just waiting for someone with actual work ethic to turn up and talk them into seeking fortune and glory (i.e., the main character).
- Particularly glaring in NWN, because the Pirate Who Doesn't Do Anything is a paladin. After the first day or so of "pay that malevolent, Chaotic Evil Black Mage wannabe to hunt reagents for me"...well, Aribeth, there's this thing called "falling". It happens to paladins who act like you do. Yes, it happened eventually, but that was an actual choice motivated by vengeance and grief, rather than a logical conclusion to using hired sociopaths as guided missiles.
- The Baldurs Gate series at least tries to justify the latter as much as it can manage (mostly that said adventurers have come into a situation they couldn't handle alone and need a group to help them with), but still lets in a few Fridge Logic NPCs here and there.
- The town of Rogueport in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is a parody of the Grand Theft Auto Vice City-style setting, and as such has several examples of rogues, bandits, and roughnecks who are rarely, if ever, seen stealing or doing other unsavory things. Goombella even remarks of one character: "At least he's supposed to be a thief, but I've never seen him steal anything."
- The "great adventurer" Toma in Chrono Trigger spends pretty much the entire game drinking in a bar and talking big. In the game's present day, you learn that he did find what he was looking for, at least.
- Gordon Freeman of the Half Life series is a scientist who is never really seen doing any science.
- In the MMORPG City of Villains, you play a supervillain. Strangely, most of your missions seem to be either hits against other villains, or battling even worse villains. Occasionally, you actually rob a bank or battle The Statesman.
- The Westin Phipps missions are a good example of why it's like this: no one wants to play 50 levels of making sure poor children don't get school books.
- The explorer in Flipside in Super Paper Mario never actually goes out and explores anything, but he might say a few things about places Mario and company have already been to as the game progresses.
- In Final Fantasy XII Vaan wants to escape the poverty and oppression of Archadian occupation to become a sky pirate. Fran and Balthier are notorious sky pirates. And Reddas is a former sky pirate who runs a whole smuggler's port full of sky pirates. Don't expect to see any actual piracy in the skies though (or on the high seas or anywhere else for that matter), or even an explanation of what sky pirates actually do with the massive amount of free time they seem to have.
- It's mentioned in-game that the moniker "sky pirate" has drifted from "person who robs airships" to a generalized sort of adventurer-type who probably spends more time hunting monsters and raiding ruins.
- We do get to see plenty of sky pirates in action in Revenant Wings. Aside from the player characters it seems to involve theft, murder, slavery, and the odd bit of genocide. The player characters prefer to beat up other sky pirates and take their money, which is only somewhat less reprehensible.
- Vaan makes an appearance in Final Fantasy Tactics A 2, and actual does steal things. When a pair of people impersonating him and Penelo steal a jewel form a noble he comments that he wouldn't steal from that kind of person—and then just takes the jewel and leaves. "Sky Pirate" is also his default job class, and it centers mostly of ways to gain/steal loot and gil (like an ability that turns traps into loot).
- Final Fantasy V has a band of pirates stuck in an inland sea where there is little to no sea travel due to the Torna Canal being closed. Pillaging seems to be beyond their understanding; if you do sail into town, they'll just head for the inn and get drunk, forcing you to actually pay the undefended townsfolk for any goods you need.
- Mother 3 has a Thief family, one of whom is a main character, Duster. One of the conversations with the townsfolk involves a girl calling you "a thief that doesn't steal anything." They do do sneaky things, but not in a criminal way. They are considered to be somewhat odd.
- Remember all those mighty heroes of the first three Warcraft games? Well those who survived long enough to appear in World Of Warcraft apparently earned the privilege of sitting around getting other people to do all the heroing for them.
- In The Elder Scrolls series, you (the player) can become the head of several guilds and factions. Fortunately, nobody expects you to do things like run the organizations, participate in politics, debate religious doctrine, etc. After all, that would interfere with your actual job of delving into caves and fighting bandits and monsters.
- Dr Z in Dinosaur King (the DS version) wants to realise his dream of riding on the backs of dinosaurs. He does nothing (aside from his initial act of acquiring a Dinoshot to summon dinosaurs) towards that aim during the entire game, instead getting his minions to go around, menace the local populations, and infest areas with robots.
- Faith, of Mirror's Edge is a Runner, carrying important data across one of the few remaining unmonitored channels left in the City. Or at least, that's what we're told. She only actually gets one message to deliver, and passes it off to Celeste before the end of the first chapter. Later events reveal it probably never got there. There are some Kent Brockman News reports paranoid about those employing the Runners suggesting a good portion of the population has hired one before, but there isn't much reason to actually believe them. Most of the other Runners seem to be more interested in political assassination or selling out friends.
- The nominally "mercenary" Star Fox team aren't very mercenary-ish in their business plans. Despite turning General Pepper's offer to join the army down cold in Star Fox 64, Peppy replaces him and leads the army in Star Fox Command. The ending to Star Fox 64 shows that Pepper paid the team quite a bit (depending on the score), but the aparoid thing was apparently a freebie. Star Fox Adventures was actually begins with the team in a financial crisis from their lack of mercenary activity.
- The (non-canonical) comics and a good deal of fanfiction on the other hand deal with the mercenary aspect of the team a bit more.
- For that matter, the rival Star Wolf team seem to get it wrong too, since they are considered criminals. Granted, realistically mercenaries are always a bit shady, but just living out the "whoever pays"-style doesn't warrant bounties.
- They were more mecanary-esque in 64 and Adventures, with them actually getting paid at the end of 64 and agreeing to do the job in exchange for payment in Adventures. It was the last two games with somewhat threw away the mercanary thing, opting instead to do the job more out of a sense of duty.
- For bandits, we really don't see much banditing from Moses Sandor and his band in Talesof Legendia Even when they move their base into town after being forced to leave their former base, the townspeople come to consider them to be pretty friendly people. Though their former does appear to show that they may have done plenty in past based on Moses room and all the gold they had.
- Remiu from the Touhou series is a miko in charge of maintaining the Great Hakurei barrier. From what everyone's seen, that consists of drinking tea, sweeping, and more tea.
Webcomics
Web Original
- Untitled Pirate Movie: the ex-pirate indeed doesn't do anything (anything pirate-related, anyhow), but so desperately wants to.
Western Animation
- Lampshaded in The Simpsons
Bart: Do you even have a job any more?
Homer: I think it's pretty obvious that I don't.
- Earlier seasons did focus a lot on Mr. Burns and the Power Plant, but after that well ran dry, they Brother Chucked an entire section of Springfield. This is also true of the school, although less so.
- Also lampshaded when Homer becomes a police officer. He lists every single one of his previous jobs.
- For a literal example of this trope, see the Chip And Dale Rescue Rangers episode "Piratsy Under the Sea". The Rangers encounter the Pi-Rats, rat pirates who like to go treasure hunting. However, the Pi-Rats are stuck inside a sunken pirate ship, so all they can do is hunt the same treasure over and over.
- Popeye's a sailor man (toot toot), and certainly engaged in lots of high seas adventure in the comics, but famously had very few encounters with ships or even water in his animated cartoons. An average of one Popeye cartoon per year (out of ten to twelve made) showed the sailor actually doing his job.
- A big exception was during World War II, where quite a few cartoons portrayed him as having (re)joined the navy.
- Captain K'nuckles from The Marvelous Misadventures Of Flapjack claims to be an adventurer, yet he seems to actively avoid doing anything that involves leaving the harbor or performing manual labor. If he ever does go on an adventure, it's usually because Flapjack guilts him into it, or else by sheer accident.
- The Whalers of the Moon in Futurama, who freely admit there aren't any whales on the moon, and even have a song about it. (Of course, their real job is "amusement park robot", but still...)
- The Trope Namers in Veggie Tales.
- The Net Pirates in ReBoot originally did actual piracy, then were talked out of it by Dot to become proper businessmen. Once they quit piracy they are never seen doing any business, simply standing around and acting pirate-y.
- In Spartakus And The Sun Beneath The Sea pirates are the primary villains of the series and do indeed rob and plunder, but are more interested in performing snappy song and dance numbers about themselves.
- The Aqua Teen Hunger Force are a detective agency that never solve any mysteries. They make a pretty stupid attempt at crimefighting in the first episode but quickly drop the concept entirely. They are also rarely seen doing anything with water, teens, hunger, nor force, unless you count being food objects and having a neighbor with a pool.
- Word Of God admits that this whole aspect was created to appease the studios so they would produce the show. A pitch with "A fry, milk shake and ball of meat just do random stuff" would not go so far, so the writers created this false premise which they held on to only for the pilot, in order to get the show produced.
- Plus, in-universe Frylock says at one point that they gave up on the detective agency because it wasn't making them any money.
- The title characters of the short-lived Undergrads are not once seen attending class, talking to instructors or even studying. Every university student on the planet wishes post-secondary school offered that much free time.
- This is pretty much the gist of minor character The Huntsman in Freakazoid, a superhero who is constantly out of a job and never actually gets around to doing the sort of heroics his intro suggests he does.
Other
- Many Renaissance Festival village ensemble stock characters are like this. There's a ratcatcher who's almost never seen actually catching any rats, the highwayman who almost never robs anybody, and of course pirates and privateers who are there on shore leave and don't actually loot or plunder (though of course they may sing about such things).
- Try and get an executioner to do his civic duty during a ren-faire. And if you do, make sure you get it up on YouTube please.
- One Twenty-Sided blog entry parodies the Veggie Tales quote at the top of the page with the (Video Game) Pirates who don't buy Anything
- There are entire countries ruled by "revolutionary" governments who don't seem to engage in much reform.
- Larry the so-called Cable Guy.
- Not that any more either.
- According to Sax and Violins, the band Talking Heads are "criminals that never broke no laws".
|
|
