Small Name Big Ego / Other Media

Comic Strips

• Even before he Took a Level in Dumbass, Roger Fox of FoxTrot had a seriously over-inflated self-image. Though obviously out of shape and clumsy, he felt that he was still in perfect health and capable of playing football with his older son; he also fancies himself a capable chess player, when he STILL loses games where he has 15 Queens and the computer has 15 Pawns. Later strips exaggerate this to the point where even his younger son kicks his tail in golf.
• Rat from Pearls Before Swine has a very high opinion of himself and a low opinion of everyone else. While Pig follows this rather blindly, the others don't.
• Earl Slackmozer from Knights of the Dinner Table, who thinks having had modules published by Hard 8 makes him the greatest gamemaster in Muncie. His condescension towards BA is astounding.
• Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes has a massively inflated opinion of himself. At one point calling himself the "acme of evolution". Despite his bragging, in practice he's usually outsmarted by Hobbes or Susie, is a lazy and poor student, sometimes forgets to put his pants on correctly (or at all) and his plans usually go pear-shaped because he doesn't think them through, even when Hobbes tries to warn him that something is a bad idea. Much humour arises from the fact nobody puts up with Calvin's ego.
  "Calvin the Bold. All stand up and hail / his humbleness now; may his wisdom prevail!" - Calvin "humbly" introducing himself at their club meetings.

Music

• The theme of Ben Folds song "There's Always Someone Cooler Than You":
  ...and you won't
  Even know
  that they're not sizing you up
  They know your mom fucked you up
  Or maybe let you watch too much TV
• There's a song called "I'm Awesome" by Spose. It's completely counterpoint to the title because the guy is describing how much of a loser he is and yet still thinks he's the greatest human being alive.
• "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)" by The Offspring describes a classic example of this phenomenon.
• The lyrics to "O.M.G." by Jenna Rose give off this feel (the fact that she dons an "All About Me!" shirt around the 52-second mark in the music video does not help). Sample lyrics:
  Just take a picture, baby
  Look at what I'm wearing
  Just take a picture, baby
  No need for staring
  [...]
  Oh my god, she looks good
  Oh my god, you know you wish you could
  Oh my god, she looks good
  Oh my god, you know you wish you could
  But you can't be like this
• Blondie's "Rip Her To Shreds" describes someone like this, and, well, rips her to shreds.
• The protagonist of English novelty song "Don Alfonso" (released by Mike Oldfield on his second single) continuously boasts about his abilities as a toreador ("I kill bulls by the score/ And sometimes more"). In the end, when he faces a real bull onto the arena, he instantly chickens out and gets rammed into his, well, posterior.
• Baxter Dury's "Miami", in spite of its Word Salad Lyrics, is fairly clearly about this kind of person. According to Word of God, the protagonist "thinks he’s got swagger, he thinks he’s someone, but he’s not."
  I don't think you realize how successful I am
  I'm like a shipping tycoon
  Full of promise and cum
  [...]
  And you can't shit me out
  'Cos you can't catch me
  'Cos you're so fat
  So fuck ya
  I'm Miami
  Welcome to Miami now
  Broken promises are here
  I don't know, you don't know
  Welcome to Miami now

• They Might Be Giants:
  • "I Should Be Allowed To Think" from John Henry is about a guy who thinks he's a persecuted genius when really no one is listening to what he has to say because he's a pretentious dullard.
    I saw the worst bands of my generation
    Applied by magic marker to drywall
    I should be allowed to shoot my mouth off
    I should have a call-in show
  • The narrator of "Dog Walker" seems to think of himself as a tough guy with a hidden brilliant streak, despite being a humble dog walker.
• "Movie Star" by Harpo is about an actor who thinks he's a cross between Steve McQueen, James Bond and James Dean, but who has only ever appeared in TV commercials.
• It's not very clear from the lyrics, but apparently "The King of Rock'n'Roll" by Prefab Sprout is about a One-Hit Wonder who was famous for a Word Salad Lyrics novelty song ("Hot dog, jumping frog, Albuquerque"), but believes himself to be "the king of rock'n'roll, completely".

Pinball

• The Earl of Ego from Medieval Madness.
  "I am the Earl of Ego, and I am far superior to you."

Podcasts

• Binary Break has Heirmon. When he introduces himself to the others, he declares that the entire Digital World is his kingdom. This is after he got attacked and almost defeated by a corrupted Nekomon.
• Parodied in episode six of Mystery Show:
  Starlee: As someone who's been in the mystery business for weeks, this case frankly seemed a little beneath my experience level.

Radio

• Phil Harris played this type on both The Jack Benny Program and his own program The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show. (Jack Benny himself, of course, displayed many of these traits as an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist.)
• Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve on Fibber McGee and Molly was a pompous gasbag, although once the character moved to his own spinoff show these tendencies were downplayed.
  • Then there was Mrs. Uppington, a rich society matron who Fibber frequently traded barbs with.
• Denis King on Hello Cheeky, although subverted in that he was genuinely competent as a pianist. However, he gets the fewest acting parts and is the worst actor, yet keeps insisting that he's the real star of the show.
  • In one episode, he complains about the others picking on him, and goes to see a psychiatrist. His philosophy is more or less summed up in their dialogue:
  Denis: Doctor, I'm worried! I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't play the piano...
  Psychiatrist: Well, why don't you quit showbusiness?
  Denis: I can't, I'm a star!
• Dead Ringers: David Davis purports himself as "the master negotiator", when in fact he's a complete moron whose blustering, ludicrous ideas, and mind-bending stupidity keep getting him into trouble he could easily avoid if he just paid attention to what he was doing (including nearly getting killed by Mafioso).

Sports

• Parodied by San Francisco Giants broadcaster Duane Kuiper, who managed in 3,700+ at bats to hit a single home run. He jokingly has milked this for all it's worth to the point of it becoming a Running Gag among the fan base
  • He had a single t-shirt printed up with Official Duane Kuiper Home Run T-shirt. A recreation of this shirt can be purchased from The City Graphics
  • In 2014 The Giants had as a giveaway an Official Duane Kuiper Home Run Bobblehead. Prior to the broadcast of the game, a short faux tongue-in-cheek documentary aired about the event, complete with his grown children showing off all his memorabilia from that game and complaining about how often they have had to hear the story.
• Former Major League catcher (and current Milwaukee Brewers broadcaster) Bob Uecker is well-known for a long-running gag about how he should be in the Hall of Fame^note He was an excellent defensive player, with a .981 fielding percentage, but a very subpar batter with only a .200 batting average, 7 home runs, and 74 RBIs over a six-year playing career. Uecker has since been honored for his work as a broadcaster but his limited achievements on the field are still a subject of self-deprecating humor for him.

Tabletop Games

• Many GMs, especially novice ones, can also fall into this trap. Being in charge of the setting, from the NPCs to the weather, can give some people an overinflated sense of importance. They tend to forget that their job is to weave a tale that everyone can interact in and enjoy, not just to impress everyone with their cleverness. See Railroading for more details.
• Excessively Righteous Blossom in Exalted. Because awesomeness is required to be an Exalt, he actually isn't too bad — it's just that he thinks his most impressive gifts are in areas that he isn't actually any good at while neglecting his very real skills.
  • Another example would be the stunningly inept Lunar known as Ten Stripes, whose total lack of talent in social manipulation is matched only by her pride in the social manipulation skills she does not in fact have.
• The Tau Empire of Warhammer 40,000. They like to think they are a Superior Species with super-advanced technology and their "The Greater Good" ideology, and are incredibly confident in their manifest destiny to unite the stars under their banner. They're really dangerously overstating their race's potential; they became a space-faring race only relatively recently, their empire is relatively small and weak, they are utterly naive and completely unaware of the kind of Crapsack Galaxy they inhabit and what nightmares lurk in it, and every encounter they have had with the galaxy's major players (the Imperium of Man, the Tyranids, the Orks, the Dark Eldar and the Necrons) mostly resulted in the Tau getting their asses kicked until another race intervened, or they manage to pull a win through sheer blind luck. For context's sake, every time the Tau lose a world, it is a big deal, and their major expansions essentially consist of them taking over a dozen or so worlds. The Imperium, by contrast, as the second youngest species in the galaxy, has controlled and held on to a million-planet empire for ten thousand years, with all of the internal strife the Tau are only just beginning to experience.
  • Commander Farsight and his followers defected from the Empire more or less because they realized just how utterly screwed the Tau are barring severe changes to the status quo and that their leaders were aware of all of this and hid it from the general public for the sake of preserving "The Greater Good".
• Dr Owl of the Midnight Circus. Given that he's a mage and a member of the Electrodyne Engineers^note  ie: what the Sons of Ether used to be before they left the Technocracy , ludicrous self-confidence is kind of expected, but Owl takes it all the way into borderline solipsism: he's actually convinced himself that he's in charge of the Circus, and that circusfolk like Cavendish the Ringmaster, Calabris the Magician and Astarte the Autumn Queen are just around to pad out the Circus lineup with "childish illusions" and "quaint folk shows." In reality, Owl is just a member of the Circus' Third Circle^note  ie: just important enough to stand above the rank-and-file workers, but still a level below the Circus nobility in the Second Circle and far below Cavendish and the other members of the Infernal Trinity, little more than a jailer to the many supernatural creatures Cavendish has abducted, and has no idea of the Circus' true purpose or who it truly serves. Owl's arrogance is so predictable that Cavendish is fully prepared to use him as a scapegoat if the players start sniffing around, knowing full well that Owl will readily agree with any accusations of being the true power behind the Circus - giving Cavendish enough time to rig the inevitable battle in his favour.
• Dungeons & Dragons: The Epic Level Handbook features the City of Union, a Pocket Dimension hosting a Bazaar of the Bizarre for the most powerful entities in The Multiverse. Two recent arrivals are the self-proclaimed "Jade Pair" Sword and Sorcerer duo, who think their Character Level 7 entitles them to deference and exorbitant pay in a city where the bottom-shelf beat cops are Level 14.

Theatre

• In Can-Can, Boris proudly declares himself a greater sculptor than Michelangelo, but has never had a public showing of his work let alone sold anything.
• Inverted in Fly by Night. Joey Storms comes from a family of highly successful playwrights, and clearly has some skill in writing, however, he seems utterly convinced that all his work is actually terrible.

• Pozzo in Waiting for Godot expects Vladimir and Estragon to be terrified by the mere mention of his name. They've never even heard of him.

Web Animation

• In RWBY, James Ironwood is a downplayed example. He is a genuinely high ranking person, being leader of Atlas' military and huntsman academy, and a member of the secret conspiracy led by Ozpin to protect the world from Salem. The problem is that he vastly overestimates his own importance, viewing himself as the true opponent of Salem, and believing that everyone else would do better if they deferred and served him instead. It's to the point that when Ironwood suffers a humiliating defeat at Beacon, he believes that Salem is out for him specifically. In reality, while Salem and most of her inner circle do acknowledge his capacity to be dangerous, it's only because he's the provider of an army for Ozpin to fight against them. Salem only sees Ozpin (and the Brother Gods who gave him his mission) as her true enemy, with Ironwood being at most one of many fools that Ozpin has recruited in his war against her. In addition, due to his arrogance and inability to care about the smaller pawns and people, he overlooks the real dangers to his operation: Former Atlesian scientist Arthur Watts, and former Atlesian slave and key component of Salem's master plan Cinder. Both have a very personal grudge against Atlas as a whole, and end up proving to be instrumental in Ironwood's fall from grace, while Salem barely cares about his existence.
• Dragon Ball Z Abridged takes Vegeta's own ego and shoots it to new heights. A good point of that is when Piccolo and Imperfect Cell face off against each other and The Stinger has a shocked Vegeta, sensing their power, going "Is that the Namekian? Is that me? Is that me stronger than me?! I'll f#$%ing kill me!"
  • Notably, when Piccolo fuses with Kami (aka God), Vegeta's confused because "I'm still here". And when Cell remarks that he's only semi-perfect, Vegeta responds, "How can you be semi-perfect? Either you're perfect or you're not me. There is no grey area."
  • Upon getting a relatively minor power-up, Vegeta goes on a rant that he's finally surpassed Freeza by becoming the legendary Super Saiyan. Freeza just bemoans that he's heard this speech before, and quickly subjects Vegeta to a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
  • Also, Bulma snidely notes that for all that Vegeta insists on his grandiose title as "Prince of All Saiyans", there's only two living Saiyans. ^note Vegeta: "Three and a half — shut up!!"
• While Strong Bad from Homestar Runner is actually one of the more rational and intelligent ones in the cast, this doesn't say much. He is convinced he is cool, edgy, and popular with the ladies, although his actual track record makes it fairly clear he's a chubby Casanova Wannabe whose idea of "cool" and "edgy" is similar to that of a middle-school boy from The '90s.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series has Hank Ishtar, Marik's father, who thinks he is "the finest human being in the world".

---