The Friend Nobody Likes in Films and Animated Films.
Films — Animation
- Encanto:
- Downplayed with Mirabel. Her family doesn’t outright dislike her, but they do find her to be a bit of a nuisance, since her klutzy nature tends to cause more problems than it solves, which is why most of the family seems to much prefer it if she just left them alone. Also, being the only member of her family without a gift has caused a bit of tension between Mirabel and her family. This is part of why the film’s main conflict begins, since she tries to seek a way for her family’s approval. After the Casita is destroyed, however, the Madrigals admit that they were wrong and start treating Mirabel just like they would anyone else in their family.
- Bruno is a more straight example, since he is loathed by the entire town, to the point that they refuse to speak about him. His fortune-telling abilities were said to have caused misfortune all across town, and they believe that these disasters are what caused him to leave. It turns out that Bruno is a perfectly normal person (if a bit quirky), and that he isn’t in control of the misfortunes that he predicts. He still wants to be apart of the family, even if they dislike him. Thankfully, like Mirabel, the Madrigals come to admit their mistakes at the end, and happily accept him back into the family.
- Bobby from A Goofy Movie and An Extremely Goofy Movie is a goofball, always happy, and not self-conscious in the least. His friends, Max and PJ, who can both be described as serious, angsty, and awkward but to different degrees, are far more likely to be disgusted, confused, and/or mortified by Bobby's behavior than they are to actually appreciate having him around. When they meet another friend in college, Beret Girl, who is also serious and angsty but not awkward, she goes even further, thinking Max and PJ are "cool" and that Bobby is a "fool." Max and PJ are closer to each other than they are to him in both movies. So why is it that they keep him around and treat him like a True Companion in the sequel? Because he's a Bunny-Ears Lawyer who is good at both rigging stage equipment and playing extreme sports, which helps the other two achieve Max's goalsnote . However, Bobby is closer to the two of them in the sequel, and while they may be weirded out by his behavior, they do regard him as a good friend.
- In Ice Age, Sid the Sloth is this. Out of a combination of pity and the acknowledgement that he holds the herd together, nobody kicks him out. If there's one thing they can agree on, it's that Sid is a loser. However, they do care about him.
- The LEGO Movie and The LEGO Batman Movie:
- Hal Jordan to the Justice League. Even Superman himself tries to avoid him and makes it clear he can't stand him, yet he's still a part of the league.
- Batman himself comes across as prideful, self-obsessed, antisocial, and trying way too hard to be cool. He makes up for it with his impressive competence and is considered famous and beloved by the general populace, but it's suggested that most of the League doesn't really like having him around. Fortunately, he does mellow out.
- Minions: The Rise of Gru: Otto appears to be this for the Minions as a whole, as his overly chatty and easily distracted nature and tendency to go off on long-winded stories annoys everyone around him quite easily. The fact that he trades away an all-powerful magic stone that Gru needed to become a big-time supervillain and trusted him with for, of all things, a pet rock, certainly doesn't help his reputation.
- Exploited in My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks. Ex-Big Bad Sunset Shimmer considers herself to be this among the Rainbooms, who are the only people willing to interact with her after the previous movie, since the rest of Canterlot High School still hates her guts. When the Dazzlings infect the school with a Hate Plague through Mind-Control Music, they taunt Sunset about her past as the Alpha Bitch of Canterlot High, preventing Sunset from speaking up about what she knows of the Dazzlings' plans.
- In the same film, Rainbow Dash consistently gets on the nerves of her bandmates in the Rainbooms. The Dazzlings' influence causes nearly everyone to voice out their frustrations with their friends and allies, but Rainbow does a very good job at alienating everyone on her own.
- Shrek: Donkey annoys everyone (especially Shrek and Puss) with his constant singing and talking and they can't stand him sometimes and consider him a bit of a nuisance. However, he remains an important member of the team and they do in fact care about him and the three are quite close.
Films — Live-Action
- A Wedding (1978): It's implied that Briggs and Tracy are only invited to the wedding and the reception due to being the bride and groom's respective exes and Briggs being Dino's roommate. They miss the wedding itself and arrive late with excuses that may or may not be true. When Briggs dies after stealing Dino's car and it's speculated that Tracy was with him, most of their peers are unconcerned and resume partying. Granted, they did just think that Muffin and Dino died and are overcome with relief to find them alive, but Luigi is the only one to show any concern over telling their families what happened.
- While Stifler is more of an outright antagonist in the first American Pie, he becomes this in American Pie 2 since they're staying at his place in the summer, and works to redeem himself in the third movie American Wedding. By the reunion movie American Reunion, Stifler plays dumb when the other friends offer lame excuses as to why they didn't call him to hang out with them. Later, after they yell at him for mocking Finch's arrest, he calls them out on this, forcing them to realize that even though he's a jerk, he's also a true friend to them by virtue of being a dick and making things much less boring.
- Beau Geste: Gussie hangs out with his adopted cousins a lot, but they view each other with mutual annoyance. Gussie is actually pleased to role-play as King Arthur's betrayer Modred when Beau is role-playing as King Arthur.
- The Big Lebowski: Donny. Walter and The Dude only seem to tolerate him because he's on their bowling team; the Dude almost never talks to him and the most common lines Walter says to him are "Shut the fuck up, Donny" and "You're out of your element, Donny". This is not due to a failing on Donny's part, but because Walter and The Dude are varying degrees of assholes. The only time they showed care for him was when he was dying from a massive heart attack, and even then his funeral was mostly spent with Walter going on a tangent about the Vietnam War and him improperly dumping Donnie's ashes.
- The Big Short: While none of Danny's co-workers actually dislike him, but his optimistic outlook on life and upbeat nature annoy the hell out them, but they keep him around because he's a very good trader.
- Capps Crossing: Justin seems to be this among the group, going from how they start talking about him after he's falsely accused of peeping on Robin undressing (it's implied it was actually David). They only hang out with him because he's dating Robin's sister, and Kyle's his adopted brother.
- Dazed and Confused has O'Bannion (a very young Ben Affleck), a hot-tempered sadistic bully. He is at best tolerated by his fellow seniors for a combination of reason 1-3. They've known him forever (he's actually been in school longer than they have), they're all stuck in the same high school, and as Randall "Pink" Floyd admits, he's a really good offensive lineman in American football.
- Cameron in Dead Poets Society is a fairly unpleasant individual who kisses up to the school staff and mocks people behind their backs. The others only hang out with him because he's part of the study group and Charlie's roommate. In the end he's the one to betray them and Keating.
- Deranged (2012): Silvia is so obnoxious from the moment she appears on screen, that it appears that none of her so-called friends can stand her.
- Barry from Four Lions is kept around by the group because he's by far the most idealistic and enthusiastic about jihad. He's also a very charismatic preacher, and adds a fifth member to the team by radicalizing him at an outreach event. Unfortunately, he's also a stupid, cruel, violent psychopath whom Omar cannot control.
- Game Night: No one in Max and Annie's friend group likes Gary due to his complete lack of social skills and creepy presence, and only invited him to their weekly game nights because his wife Debbie was a friend of theirs. As soon as they got divorced, the group stopped inviting him to game night and Max and Annie try to avoid him as much as they can.
- The Godfather: Philip Tattaglia is disliked by the other Mafia bosses for being a Dirty Old Man, his cowardice, and always whining about the petty costs his businesses face. Even his bungled hit on Vito Corleone fails to bring him respect from the other dons due to his over-reliance on Virgil Sollozzo and Emilio Barzini's support.
- Alan in The Hangover. He's immature and screws things up. His group membership is based on being the bride-to-be's brother.
- In Happy Birthday to Me, Alfred is one of the Cameron Top Ten, but nobody in the Ten actually seems to like him; Ginny and Ann show him pity and the others play pranks on him.
- As shown in the page quote, Hot Tub Time Machine has Lou, who is a both a big jerk and a loser that no one seems particularly fond of, but he's been ostensibly a friend of two out of three of main characters for years and they still run out to the hospital after hearing he attempted suicide.
- Richie Tozier seems to be this in It (2017). His friends always leave him as a lookout when they're doing something important, and they tell him to shut up all the time, due to his trashmouth. But deep down he's really a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, and does have an Undying Loyalty towards all of his friends.
- Leo Getz from the Lethal Weapon movies. Introduced in the second film, Leo was originally a federal witness that Riggs and Murtaugh are assigned to protect. The two cops not only hated the fact that they had to play babysitter but also that Leo was very obnoxious. Leo later returned in the following two sequels, now a friend of Riggs and Murtaugh but the two are still annoyed by him and sometimes even abuse him. In spite of this, Leo remains very loyal to them, and the two cops have shown to genuinely care for him at times.
- Milk: No one on Harvey's campaign team seems to like Jack that much, being annoyed by his clingy, overbearing personality and thinking that Harvey can do far better than him, but still tolerate him because he's Harvey's boyfriend.
- In Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End Jack Sparrow realizes he's this trope. It doesn't help that he has Chronic Backstabbing Disorder."Did no one come to save me just because they missed me?"
(None of the main characters reply. Calypso and Gibbs exchange long-suffering looks. Marty the dwarf, Pintel and Ragetti, Cotton the mute and the Monkey Jack raise their hands)
"I'm standin' over there with them!" - Charlie is this in School Ties. Everyone knows he's a Jerkass, but all of his friends — including his girlfriend — are with him because of his family name and to get in good with his father. The protagonist, David, is well-liked and has friends who actually like him, and he steals Charlie's girlfriend without even trying. So Charlie exposes David as a Jew to turn everyone against him, which works until Charlie gets exposed as a cheater and gets expelled from college.
- The Shaolin Temple (1976), a Shaw Brothers epic with an Ensemble Cast. The heroes are among a band of kung-fu practitioners who joined the Shaolin Temple to avenge their loved ones who died in the war, save for Ma Fu-yi, a particularly obnoxious trainee with a jerkass streak that his fellow trainees couldn't stand. No surprise at the end when Ma eventually betrays all his friends and assists the Manchurian court in the Shaolin Temple massacre.
- In Sheitan, it is hard to see why Bart's friends hang out with him. He is whiny and obnoxious, won't take any kind of hint, starts trouble that Ladj and Thai have to bail him out of, and has bad breath. He even hits on their girlfriends. Ladj and Thai constantly insult him and, in the dream he has while unconscious, they both abandon him and tell him he's on his own.
- Star Wars:
- Anakin Skywalker is shown to be widely disliked and/or distrusted within the Jedi Council, especially by Mace Windu. This is deconstructed as their distrust and distance with Anakin along with the Clone Wars and his tragedies that led him to become Darth Vader in the first place. However, he does have plenty of positive interaction with the lower-level Jedi, his clone troopers (which got carried over to the storm troopers when he became Vader and it's implied their deaths gave Anakin more issues), Obi-Wan, Padme, and his padawan Ahsoka.
- Even after Anakin becomes Darth Vader, he remains this trope among Imperial forces who tolerate him solely out of fear, necessity, or in Tarkin's case, begrudging respect. Palpatine holds a small quantity of affection for the fallen Skywalker, but being pure evil, he doesn't truly care about Anakin and is more than willing to cast him aside if he can find a stronger apprentice.
- C-3PO in the original trilogy. Han, Leia, and Chewy find him to be annoying and insufferable and R2-D2 belittles and bullies him most of the time (though to say they are True Companions is an understatement). Luke Skywalker is the only member of the group that 3PO has a friendly relationship with most of the time, and even Luke loses patience with him sometimes.
- Begbie in Trainspotting clearly terrifies his "friends" with his Hair-Trigger Temper. When Renton flees his former lifestyle, Begbie tracks him down and becomes The Thing That Would Not Leave. In the sequel we learn that Begbie has a learning disorder and was held back at school and this is when Renton befriended him, but by the time of the movies he is an extremely violent paranoid lunatic and they are just afraid of him...though, ironically, he's the only one of the group that isn't an addict and he keeps telling them they need to give up the drugs.
- Truman from The Truman Show: The people who play his friends and family go out of their way to avoid him and mostly only care about their paycheck. Unusually for this trope, this is not the fault of Truman or his personality, and is more that the "cast" of the show are associated with him because they're actors and not his friends.
- Trumbo: Hedda Hopper, as played by Helen Mirren, is an utter Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, and everyone hates her for her Affably Evil narcissism and holier-than-thou attitude, but because she's also one of the most famous gossip columnists in Hollywood who can ruin lives with a single article, no one wants to piss her off, not even the big-time studio execs like Louis B. Mayer.
- Unfriended has Val, an Alpha Bitch the rest of the cast doesn't like but tolerates. It's suggested she can do a lot for them that other people can't.
- Played with in Wine Country. Catherine feels like the others exclude her, and distances herself somewhat from them as a result by throwing herself into her work. The others point out that this only increases the feeling of being left out.
- In The World's End, Gary is an alcoholic selfish Jerkass who never outgrew his teenage mentality, and his friends find him irritating and wearisome. It's also played for tragedy, because they all hoped he'd eventually grow out of his immaturity, and he never did. Although in the Distant Finale he seems to be making progress.
