The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything - Television Tropes & Idioms

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alt title(s): The Pirates Who Dont Do Anything

Their favorite hobby is vegetating.

We are The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything.
We just stay at home and lie around.
And if you ask us to do anything,
We'll just tell you,
"We don't do anything!"

— The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, VeggieTales

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!

— A Pirate I Was Meant To Be, The Curse of Monkey Island

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 Super Soldiers-for-hire. Humorously, the ANBU Black Ops do act like ninja — performing assassinations, covering their identities, appearing and disappearing from the shadows, etc. They are ninja for ninja.
- 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?
  - Well dude. FILLER episode. What did you expect?
  - 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.
In Beyblade absolutely no one goes to school. The only ones who have legitimate explanations for this are the Blitzkrieg Boys (they're from Russia, beyblading = life) and the Majestics, who have tutors, even though they're all so obscenely rich they don't need an education anyway.
Despite being sent to school in the second episode, as well as numerous arcs that center around school characters or are set in the school, the students of Ranma 1/2 don't seem to be doing that much...schoolwork. Sure they are shown sitting down in class and standing outside in the hallway, but it seems they spend way more time with extracurricular activities (like sports) and martial arts than they actually do learning which is common of most stories involving schools.
- This also applies to other characters...Ranma, Akane, Ukyo, Nabiki, and Kuno are all shown going to the same school, Kodachi goes to another school, while other commonly assumed similar-aged characters like Shampoo and Mousse don't seem to go to school at all. Ryoga it seems has dropped out of school after Jr. High to hunt down Ranma or what-have-you, there is an anime only episode in which Akane tries to help Ryoga study to pass the enterance exam for Furiken but situations come up leading to him not taking 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.
  - They're still terrible Pirates. And by terrible pirates, I mean they're not good at being pirates.
  - By our world's standards. The World Government of One Piece would qualify a pirate as anyone who willingly puts up a flashy flag on their ship or opposes the Marines. That and deciding to explore the Grand Line qualifies you as a Pirate (it seems) because apparently the rest of the world doesn't need to know more than it sees in its backyard and the newspaper.
- This seems justified. Their captain is more in love with the adventure associated; his somehow still alive mentor didn't bother teaching him more than the partying lifestyle of piracy and did his damnedest for a while to prevent Luffy losing his innocence. His swordsman has on several occasions proven he'd be scary good at pirating, including suggesting kidnapping a princess by force. The other members of the crew, aside from Nami and Brook (the former being a well accomplished thief and Brook showing the stereotypical lecherous behavior) have absolutely no experience as a pirate.
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.
- This is mainly due to Tsuna being a pacifist and not wanting anyone to die. In the past the Vongola were known to be fiercer and much more violent. Xanxus and the Varia live up to this.
In the Love Hina manga, Kitsune claims to be a freelance writer; there's exactly zero evidence to support this.
- More socially acceptable to list "writer" instead of "Con Artist" as your occupation.
Kochikame revolves around police officers who are rarely seen doing any police work.
The vast majority of Shinigami in Bleach never seem to do any Shinigami 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 Shinigami we see are Captain's and Lieutenents, the Shinigami who do the grunt work are the unranked Shinigami.
- Also justified considering that Shinigami would be needed to protect the Soul Society should the Hollows become powerful enough to lead an assault on it.
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.
- Don't smoke? They smoke all the time! It's just that the cigarettes create a living, spiky gel which instantly coagulates from a gas the instant it comes into contact with air.
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 label.
- Cosmo Warrior Zero, however, does portray him as a legitimate and somewhat bloodthirsty villain.
  - Who is still opposing a Vichy Earth.
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.
- Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series mentions this at every opportunity, of course.
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.
"Make Mahiru-sensei teach a class!" "Nope."
In the OVA version of Tenchi Muyo, Ryoko is referred to as having been a Space Pirate, but as far as this troper can tell her actual duties involved raiding ancient abandoned ruins for her Mad Scientist master and blowing up planets. The TV version of Ryoko, however, is a real Space Pirate, actually raiding spaceships to steal cargo.
The only thing Nozomu Itoshiki ever actually taught his class was that potato starch turns purple if you add iodine. No, rants on society don't count...
Kuryugumi's Sandaime in Tokyo Crazy Paradise forbids the Yakuza to take part in drug trafficking, human trafficking or underground fights. What they do take part in is never made clear.

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.
  - Maybe it's a metagag; We're reading the Slice Of Life comic he is actually drawing off camera. Either that, or its a similar question as to what happened to Lyman.
  - So, he's restricting his drawing to the basement, right next to where he's keeping Lyman's dead body?
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.)
  - It should be noted though, that Tintin pretty hypocritcally shows disgust at journalists in the beginning of one of his adventures.
  - Hypocritical, nothing. It's practically a job requirement to be contemptuous of other journalists.
Wally from Dilbert does absolutely nothing at his office, to the point of being referred to as "the Wally" by those outside the organization. He claims he only comes to work because he doesn't know how to make coffee.
- The character of Wally started out as a plot (Based On A True Story) about a competent worker who was deliberately trying to get himself fired by acting lazy and abusive because the severance package was so good. However, he's long since been Flanderized into being lazy and incompetent.
  - Maybe he just became the mask.
Der Inspektor from The Katzenjammer Kids, arguably the world's first comic strip. Although he was known only by his title as School Inspector, he never really did that job. This might by partly due to the fact that he was initially representing Imperial Prussia, a power which no longer exists, and partly because he realized that getting Hans and Fritz (i.e. the Katzenjammer kids) to stay in school is next to impossible

Film

Bounty Hunters in the Star Wars Expanded Universe act more like mercenaries. Despite the fact that actual mercenaries are also plentiful in the setting.
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").
  - Well, what exactly do you expect, from the second sequel of a movie that was officially based off a theme park's glorified electric swing set?!? After all that, its not enough that they're hilarious, they have to make sense too? AND be accurately named?!? It's based on another movie, that's based on another movie, that's based on an ELECTRIC SWING SET!!!
- 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. He's mostly just going off their reputation.
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.
The film version of Road to Perdition (not the comic) rarely shows "ruthless gangster" Tom Hanks actually kill anybody onscreen.
- It's not spread throughout the film, but Sullivan does rack up a decent body count in the last fifteen minutes.

Literature

Several of the nobles and royalty of 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 kill anyone (largely because not many people can afford their services, and they never kill for free, except in self-defense). 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.
  - Rincewind may not possess a lot of magic power, but a lot of magic power possesses ''him.'' His life actually gets easier after he gets rid of it.
- 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 its 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~~ Hix of the ~~Necromancy~~ Post-Mortem Communications Department.
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 Alexandre Dumas are rarely, if ever, actually depicted as using muskets.
- This is true of most musketeers, these days.
- And they do use muskets on the one occasion at which it would be appropriate to, when there's a war on. Using muskets when they're just wandering around Paris causing trouble would be unsporting.
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.
Older Than Radio: in pastoral poetry and romances from antiquity to the Renaissance, shepherds and shepherdesses tend to just sit around looking pretty and having Love Dodecahedrons, mysteriously free from all the hard work (and variable weather conditions) attendant on outdoors animal husbandry. The genre was parodied and criticised for this at least as early as the 17th century.
The pirates in Peter Pan don't get up to any actual piracy within the story, they just seem to spend all their time trying to kill the Lost Boys and the Indians.
Cameron "Buck" Williams in the Left Behind series is an investigative reporter who not only doesn't investigate anything he actually helps the Big Bad cover things up.

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.
Green Wing deliberately uses this: though set in a hospital, there are no medical storylines.
- Guy, Caroline and Mac do perform surgery from time to time but, naturally, the whole thing is played for laughs. On one occasion Dr. Statham burst in, had an argument with Mac about a parking space and attempted to eat the patient's gall bladder.
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!"?
- She's got all the time she wants. She's got a time machine!
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.
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."
- The show itself is guilty of a partial version of this. While the main cast always looks very busy and we see them do all sorts of important stuff (like advising the President and negotiating with other politicians), it can be a little vague and unclear what each individual character's job title and responsibilities actually are. For example, one can watch several episodes in a row without realizing that Toby Ziegler is supposed to be a speechwriter. He seems more like the show's paid pessimist. (The two biggest exceptions are President Bartlett (obvious) and Press Secretary CJ Cregg who is regularly seen adressing reporters in press conferences.)
Captain Feathersword, Sixth Ranger of The Wiggles, sings pirate songs and causes mischief with his crew but doesn't actually do anything very piratey. Which is just as well, what with his... feather sword.
The Royal Family on The Kingdom of Paramithi do little other than reward citizens, read stories and watch plays.
The title character of Angel claims to be a private detective. When actual detective work is required, he has at least once hired a real private detective to do it for him.
- It's not like he has any interest in being a detective, he just tells people that because it's easier to explain than "I go around protecting people from monsters" which he does quite successfully.
- On that note, Giles from Buffy The Vampire Slayer often fell into this - he was the school librarian and in charge of a very large and nice-looking library that nobody ever seemed to use for non-occult reasons.
  - Subverted, when the occasional clueless kid wanders in looking for something decidedly library-related, and the Scooby gang stares in shock and confusion.
Susan Meyer from Desperate Housewives is meant to be a children's book illustrator. Five seasons in, the episodes actually featuring her on the job are still in the single digits.
In Father Ted, Fathers Dougal and Jack are, respectively, an idiotic manchild and a lazy, violent alcoholic, both of whom are completely incapable of doing any work that might reasonably be expected of a priest. Ted himself seems to have a One Hour Work Week.
- Justified in the case of Jack, who seems to be retired and being ~~nursed~~ supplied with alcohol by the other two priests. As for Dougal, the one time he attempts to perform his priestly duties at a funeral, they somehow end up with more corpses than they started with. You'd make sure he didn't do anything either.
Rick, Vyvyan, Michael and Neil in The Young Ones are nominally students, yet are never seen in university (outside the opening credits) or doing any studying. Lampshaded a fair bit, of course. (Though they did compete in the University Challenge in one episode.)

Theater and 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.
- Humorously before it came out people speculated Pirates would be about a group of pirates who went out and raped a bunch of women. Which seems odd until you consider "rape" didn't mean the same thing at the time.
- Their other navy comedy, HMS Pinafore has Sir Joseph Porter proudly sings that he achieved the rank of First Lord of the Admiralty without having seen as ship in his life.
  - Truth In Television, since First Lord of the Admiralty was a political appointment, effectively Secretary of the Navy. The First Lords would be members of parliament rather than naval officers, so Sir Joseph's career (lawyer turned politician) would be entirely unremarkable for a First Lord (and this aspect of his character is reckoned to be based on the then First Lord, WH Smith).
  - This feat can be replicated in the Total War games because the title doesn't have any effect on ship performance, meaning that it's better to just give it to some general who could use the bonuses, and may have spent his entire life landbound.

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". (their little nickname for her gives you a guess what Samus does during her down time)
- In a few issues of Nintendo Power there was a tie-in comic series to Super Metroid. A new character - a male bounty hunter - was added in as a sort of rival and irritant to Samus. While she continued blasting her way through the underground tunnels, he would stop to pick up the space pirates' "ears" or claws or whatever the heck they were. After he started going on about how rich he was going to be after turning these body parts in for the bounties, Samus actually expressed disgust at his mercenary ways.
- The reason for this is that in Japan, she never has been a bounty hunter. Although she has been officially called a bounty hunter since her first appearance in the English version, no one at Nintendo of Japan had any idea! When Retro Studios tried to work actual bounty hunting into the Prime series, the Japanese execs were immensely confused, because, in their view, bounty hunting is outside her code of ethics. Between Japan and English speaking countries, Samus is an almost completely different character!
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.
- Referenced in Banjo-Tooie:
Kazooie: Then call a plumber. I think Mario's free at the moment.
Loggo: I don't think he actually does that kind of work anymore...
- Also referenced in There Will Be Brawl, where Mario claims to have done a lot of things, but denies being a plumber.
- Then again, in the original Donkey Kong he was working on a skyscraper...
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. LeChuck (and several hench ghosts). The use of witchcraft on the person of Largo LaGrande. 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?
- Then you finally see some proper pirates besides Le Chuck in The Seige of Spinner Cay (the second chapter of the ~~fifth~~ sixth game). You do not fuck with Mc Gillicutty.
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.
  - However, Tetra does express her feelings toward Greatfish Isle's destruction, and worries about what might happen to Outset Island, since this is where Jabun fled to. Naturally, the other pirates are confused by this.
- It gets worse in Phantom Hourglass, 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.
- In The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons, the skeletal pirates eventually stop being stranded and set sail on the open seas, only to immediately become seasick, dock their ship and proceed to stand around on a beach for the rest of the game.
  - Although, to be fair, they have been shipwrecked for a couple hundred years.
  - And they do eventally go out to sea again if Oracle of Seasons is chained into Oracle of Ages. This troper does not remember what excuse they use for being seasick if Oracle of Ages is chained into Oracle of Seasons and they consequently were shipwrecked for only a token amount of time in comparison, unfortunately.
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.
- Lampshaded in the sequel, after Gordon has thrown a switch as part of a lab experiment:
  Barney: "Good job, Gordon, throwing that switch and all. I can see your MIT education really pays for itself."
- Maybe not the theoretical physics he was trained for, but he's been engaged for years in an exhaustive study of the laws of ballistic motion, with hundreds of thousands of trials.
- Considering the entire Black Mesa incident was caused by Gordon Freeman's "experiments", I think it is for the best that he not work do any science.
  - ...what do you mean "his" experiments? We was ordered by his superiors to push a cart into a beam. The responsibilty for that incident rests purely on Dr. Breen and possibly the G-Man.
  - And Gordon Frohman
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.
- Didn't he run into you in Sammer's Kingdom?
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.
- Actually even lowly NPC's will order you around while doing nothing. They typically won't even do anything with the quest items you bring them (blacksmiths don't make weapons to defend the settlement, etc.). Wrath of the Lich King has taken steps to advert this. For instance one quest requires you to retrieve some weapons for peasants who are being attacked by the Undead. Turning in the quest causes them to run and use the weapons for a short time.
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 Tales Of 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.
Reimu 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.
- Reimu is a very lazy miko, but you gotta give her credit and admit that doesn't stop her from going ahead and actually doing something when Gensokyo's in trouble, otherwise there would be no Touhou games. She even does more than it's needed of her and generally beats up at least two innocents over the course of the game, often more. Of course, it's not like she actually puts her life on the line or something, since it is explicitely mentioned danmaku is designed to be non-lethal as if Reimu was to die, Gensokyo would be doomed along with her. Thus, she's probably maintaining the border merely by existing.
- Reimu's counterpart and rival Marisa pretty much averts this. She's not evil, but with many of her adventures being centered around her stealing magical artifacts just for the kicks of it, beating up people in the process, and her stealing of Patchouli's books, she is really somewhat of a Wicked Witch. Also, she's an earnest hard worker unlike Reimu.
Magi in Tsukihime are described as people who research and study magic intently far away from other people all by themselves their entire lives. Then they made the next game, Fate Stay Night and based it on magi. And what do you know, not a single character is like that, and the prequel and supplementary materials illustrate quite clearly that it's actually kinda rare for a magus to actually do this, and not always voluntary. May simply be a retcon, though.
- You would seem to be overlooking that Kara no Kyoukai was written before Tsukihime and it involves magi actually doing things. Such as killing and enslaving the residents of entire apartment buildings for the sake of magic experiments.
Extremely averted in Sid Meier's Pirates! game (both the old one, and the remake with nicer graphics and more plot). The whole purpose of the game is to pillage, raid and plunder, with occasional swashbuckling and rescuing pretty maidens (although you don't actually capture any, you just save them from other pirates who captured them). An interesting layer is the politics: you can be a noble gentleman in towns owned by countries that like you, and a hated outlaw with a bounty on your head in towns owned by people you keep robbing.
- Off course, you can be boring and play a game as a glorified trader with a nifty flag.
Dupre in Ultima was apparently the mayor of Trinsic in Ultima IV. He joins the Avatar's party in the local tavern, where he's mostly busy drinking. And nobody ever brought his job up in the following parts of the series. But being a mayor was easy in Ultima IV, when characters didn't have daily schedules implemented yet, anyway!

Webcomics

Dechs, aka Shadehawk, of Antihero For Hire, functions more like a Bounty Hunter than an antihero "for hire". It's mentioned that he advertises his services, but almost all of his hero activity is random patrolling. We only see him actually hired for something once, and that job gets broken up by a Lets You And Him Fight between him and Crossroads.
Terror Island has Ned Q. Sorcerer, DDS, who was bathed with "rays of pure dentistry" in his backstory, but has never been seen to perform the functions of a dentist, preferring instead to give long tedious speeches about "moonitaurs."
- That's because he's not. His superpower is that everyone knows he's a dentist, but he isn't actually a dentist.
Seem to crop up a lot in Sins Venials. Everyone wants to be a pirate, no one really knows what they do.
Vincent from Spiky-Haired Dragon, Worthless Knight don't take arms and fight, even though he's a knight. Justified by that he has a curse that rendered him unable to take up weapons.
Gunnerkrigg Court: Sir James Eglamore is a Dragon Slayer. The closest he's come to slaying a dragon is when he beats a dragon-ish Rogat Orjak into submission in chapter 3. The discrepancy is eventually explained:
Sir Eglamore: Well, that's just an official title. Dragons don't really need slaying so much these days.

Web Animation

Homestar Runner doesn't seem to be much of a "terrific athlete" anymore...

Web Original

Untitled Pirate Movie: the ex-pirate indeed doesn't do anything (anything pirate-related, anyhow), but so desperately wants to.
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.

Western Animation

Didi in Rugrats is supposedly a teacher. Other than the requisite 'taking Tommy to work' episode, we have no indication of her job. Whatsoever.
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...)
- Also Professor Farnsworth, who is only seen teaching in one episode. (He intentionally makes his course titles sound difficult so no one will sign up.)
  Professor Farnsworth: I don't know how to teach. I'm a professor.
  - Likewise, this episode is the only one in which Amy, ostensibly an engineering student, is shown attending class. She's also an intern at Planet Express, but never seen to do actual work there.
  - She's kept around because she has young, healthy organs and the same blood type as the professor.
- This troper also noticed that Bender very rarely bends anything as a form of work. He only bends if it's convenient for him for some reason or another.
  - This is actually incorporated in the plot of one episode. Bender's continued bending abstention makes him start sleepbending things which were not meant to be bent, including Professor Farnsworth.
- Hey! Everything is just a modified application of bending.
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 between their first appearance and season 3, they were engaged in offscreen intersystem transport. When we do see them again, they're on the lam from the Guardians, who have made the net into a police state.
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.
- Well, that's because his intro song is SO DAMNED LONG, the villains get away by the time he's at the scene!
Dr. Orpheus in The Venture Brothers is by trade A NECROMANCER!, yet is never seen actually raising anyone from the dead (apart from an attempt at resurrecting Hank and Dean). What he actually does appears to be random magic and protecting the fabric of the universe from the forces of chaos. Lampshaded in Season 4, where he mentions that he only chose his title because, unlike terms like "wizard" or "magician", it hasn't been tainted by popular culture.

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.
- Likewise the words "People's" and "Democratic" in the name of a country are almost a sure sign that it will have little relation to either.
Larry the so-called Cable Guy.
- Not that any more either.
  - Either way, would you want him installing your cable?
- Didn't he explain his name in one of the Comedy Central Blue Collar Comedy tours as being more marketable than "Larry the guy who sits on his couch and watching TV"?
According to Sax and Violins, the band Talking Heads are "criminals that never broke no laws".
Hot Scientists are usually Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, they just look hot in glasses. This is because scriptwriters don't actually have the first clue how to think like a scientist. The canonical example is Denise Richard's Dr. Christmas Jones, in the James Bond movie The World Is Not Enough.
- Presumably she got her PHD by submitting a photo of herself in the shorts she wears for most of the film, labelled 'Thesis'.
- This scientist troper thinks most scriptwriters don't actually have the first clue what scientists do.
- Um...sci-science?

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