The Friend Nobody Likes in Webcomics.
- Awkward Zombie has this characterisation for Roy. His oldest friend — Marth — finds him actively unbearable, and, after being absent from Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the other residents of the Smash Bros do too. House quickly forgets he exists, culminating in the 400th comic, featuring Mewtwo and Lucas' triumphant return to the roster (after being announced as DLC), with Peach happily declaring during the ensuing party that the gang's all back together... while Roy gazes inside in tears from outside in the rain. Even when he gets back, his return party is almost completely overshadowed by the arrival of Ryu. Robin mistakes him for a different annoying goofball sidekick from Fire Emblem; he suffers an existential crisis when he meets Marth's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-greDESCENDANT Lucina, wondering how long he was away; he's relegated to hanging out with irrelevant side characters like Roy Koopa, Grey Fox, and Waluigi, and the only person who recognises him and seems happy to see him... is his replacement, Pit.
- Basic Instructions: None of the other superheroes like or respect the Knifeketeer. Unlike his real-life model, Rick, there's no Vitriolic Best Buds element; everyone just finds the Knifeketeer annoying but just useful enough to keep around. Ironically enough he's actually the most consistently effective superhero, boxing glove knife and all, because he's the only one who ever fights crime.
- Better Days:
- Rachael serves as this for her housemates. Lucy initially doesn't think highly of her cheating on her boyfriend, then Rachael exasperates the others with her hatred of Lucy after Lucy steals her boyfriend away. The reason she's kept around mostly seems to be necessity, namely for financial reasons. ("Are we sure she's worth one fifth of the rent?")
- The sequel, Original Life, has Angela serve as this. She gets on the nerves of her friends and even Elizabeth by expressing a support of her parents' new-age spiritualism, global warming, Justin Bieber, and many other things the author dislikes. She herself doesn't seem too attached to Janie, but justifies keeping their friendship as knowing the value of having connections. It's unclear exactly why Janie remains friends with her, though.
- In Between Failures Thomas calls this the "Cock paradox". Every group has one friend who fits this bill. When Ed says his school group of friends didn't have one, Thomas points out that this means ED was the cock for his group.
- Da Pukas has Ali Pines, a goat who's idiocy is only rivaled by her ego. She constantly causes anyone she comes in contact with misery and is completely unaware of it. Ali sees herself as a great hero, despite the fact everything she does fails. Even the optimist of the main characters, Alegre, finds that she can't stand Ali... and she likes practically anyone.
- Debugging Destiny gives us Morton, who has a special ability that makes people dislike him. Most of the time, he is also the Only Sane Man and the only one capable of competently running the kingdom. As a result, nobody likes him, but no one is willing to get rid of him.
- May also involve blackmail, since Morton has shown an aptitude to make sure people owe him favors.
- Does Not Play Well With Others: Naga the lamia is, hands down, the Villain Protagonist in a webcomic series about a World of Jerkass. None of the other protagonists like her at all; her roommate Francesca has taken advantage of her being seemingly dead to skin her scales at least once, and the rest would not bat an eyelid at her death. Since she's a jerkass troll on her best behavior, and a Literal Man Eater at her worst, the disdain she's held in is justified. The only reason she's allowed to hang around the group, if not wiped out, is because everyone else is so messed up that they can just barely tolerate her. In particular, her roommate Francesca is such a lonely, friendless, sexually-messed up loser that even having a slutty cannibal as a roommate is better than being alone, whilst reluctant neighborhood vampire Nikki likes having somebody around who she can use as evidence that she's not a total monster, despite regularly drinking human victims to death.
- Drowtales has this in the Five Girl Band of Chrys'tel's group of friends, with her "protector twin" Shinae clearly only being there because of her duty to Chrys requiring her to, and her rather abrasive personality makes it extremely unlikely any of them would hang out with her on their own.
- Black Mage from 8-Bit Theater fits for almost all of the reasons listed above, except that nobody would ever think about dating him, and, if it wasn't for Fighter, nobody would care about him either. He's a dangerous, genocidal sociopath who would sell out his team for gain/fun, and he smells too. But he's just so ineffectual and pathetic about it that his friends would feel bad about leaving him behind. And every once in a while, when he's pointing his powerful magic at the enemy instead of his teammates, and he's actually aiming properly, and he hasn't wasted all of his spells for the day on petty annoyances, he can almost come close to being as big of a help as he is a hindrance.
- Sam Starfall has managed to make himself this for an entire planet in Freefall. Nearly every character has at some point expressed frustration towards him and his antics, which default to petty theft and the general creation of chaos. On the other hand, they also recognise that while he is a madcap scoundrel with an ego and a lack of forward planning skills, he's also extremely useful when you can get him aimed correctly: he's quick-witted, cunning, a surprisingly good social engineer and perversely honourable, so there's not really a concerted effort to get rid of him, even though, for robots, "after shaking hands with Sam, count your fingers" is meant entirely literally.Sawtooth: I don't want Sam on my side. However, I don't want Sam on the other side even more.
- General Protection Fault has Trent. Virtually everyone in the eponymous company dislikes him for trying to kill Dwayne with a safe in order to frame his ex-girlfriend Trudy, and the few people who don't dislike him at that point (e.g. Sharon, who'd barely even met him when he got hired), soon realize that he's an arrogant Jerkass who's purely out for himself. His feud with Fred gets bad enough that the two threaten to sue each other, and Trent tries to kill Fred with cleaning fluid. He's a Necessity example, since the company needs a marketing person... at least until Dwayne gets fed up and fires him.
- Girl Genius: Martellus has become this to the protagonists. They recognize that he has talents, connections and resources they desperately need, and he is willing to actively throw everything he has at his disposal behind their fight against the Other. That doesn't stop him from being a narcissistic, power-hungry, manipulative, ruthless and vaguely psychotic asshole, even when he isn't in The Madness Place, and no-one wants more to do with him than they have to.
- Candy from Girls with Slingshots is in the same boat as Sheldon above; no one really likes her all that much, but she's attached to Jameson, whom they do like, so they have to live with her. At least until her repeated efforts to sabotage his relationship with Maureen come to a head at the wedding and he wakes his ass up that Candy is possibly the worst friend in existence.
- Gai-Gin's Kitsunefoxy is a compulsive liar who makes a hobby out of attempting to break up the relationships of the rest of the gang for no apparent reason. Pyon hangs out with her out of pity.
- Slade Chasme, from Heartcore, is the second-ranked Overfiend (only one rank below the Lord of the Overfiend's Dragon), and is feared and/or despised among his fellow demons for being a sadist who would like to cannibalize his fellow Overfiends and would betray his comrades at the drop of a hat.
- Homestuck:
- Eridan, pre-flipout. It says something about him that even Kanaya and Equius can't stand him and Feferi actively resigns from being his Morality Pet. Among their ancestors, Eridan's counterpart Cronus is the sleaziest scumbag anyone has ever seen, and nobody willingly hangs around Kankri if they can avoid it, due to his interminable lectures.
- Even after being talked down from his psychotic killing spree, the only thing anyone has to say about Gamzee is "fuck that guy". He even ruined the one semi-positive relationship he still had by ending his moirallegiance with Karkat. In the timeline where John prevented Terezi from killing Vriska, everyone ended up just locking Gamzee in a chained up fridge and trying to pretend that he doesn't exist.
- Vriska by the time the trolls get to the meteor. It's especially clear during the Alterniabound segment, where the only person who seems to get along with her is Equius. Everyone else either hates her, distrusts her, or is just scared of her. To seal the deal, John Egbert has confessed that after meeting her in person, he really kinda hates her for being so incredibly unpleasant. Opinions vary as to whether she really deserves the treatment she gets from the other characters.
- Equius is also on the lower end of popularity among the trolls, mostly because he's a sweaty pervert who gets off on both obeying and disobeying the troll caste system, and also has a thing for being strangled because why not at this point.
- Kill Six Billion Demons: The Seven Black Emperors have taken a lot of hits to their cooperation over the years, but they’re still able to tolerate each other and avoid going back to open war... With the sole, pointed exception of Incubus, whom the other six all despise. It’s bad enough that he’s a smug, self-obsessed dickhead, but he’s also a pretender wielding a power that wasn't his by right; the Key in his head was Maya's by right of conquest and Incubus only got it because she decided to walk away, a fact that the others are all too glad to remind him of. Even Jagganoth, his erstwhile 'ally', doesn't respect Incubus and ultimately undercuts him by starting his omnicide early, forcing Incubus to side with the Six out of sheer survival.
- Kiwi Blitz: Tigris hates everyone and isn't afraid to say it, so no one is particularly fond of her. When she tells everyone that the new boss tried to kill her, her coworkers just say "eh, she probably had a good reason."
- Never Satisfied has Lucy and Sylas, for different reasons:
- Lucy puts up a superior act to hide their feelings of inadequacy, and most of the competitors don't read too deeply into it. Only Broom Girl and Philomena make (unsuccessful) attempts to reach out to and connect with them.
- Sylas is autistic, and the other competitors shun him for being emotional (January calls him "Crylas"), awkward, and nebulously "weird". January goes as far to assume that Seiji feels the same way, saying outright she believes he only hangs out with him as a joke. He takes this very poorly.
- Head over Heels has the Class Clown Jung Jiwon. His friends don't hide their disdain for him, missing his talent show performance and making a group chat without him in Chapter 17. When he complains, Suh Woohyun says "don't tell him about the group chat without him or we'll have to make another one". The only one who seems to tolerate his presence is Joon-Hyuk, and that's because of proximity.
- In The Order of the Stick:
- Miko Miyazaki is this for her entire Paladin order. She's a loyal and skilled Paladin, but her Knight Templar nature and Jerkass tendencies prompt her fellow Paladins to send her on long missions far from home whenever possible.
- The Order's Token Evil Teammate Belkar invites this, but it's his unrepentantly boorish, Ax-Crazy, uncooperative tendencies that really cement it. Roy keeps him around only to sic him on even worse people until Belkar's prophesied death. This is actually an important plot point, as Belkar gradually builds a slightly more
respectful relationship with Vaarsuvius and the rest of the team while actively trying to be more of a team player. - He also actually felt guilty about Durkon's Death, and when he was eventually raised apologized for hitting him with a palm tree
- Differences of opinion lead the Order of the Scribble to disband, but the group seemed to unilaterally despise both Soon Kim (whom Dorukan and Girard nearly came to blows with) and Girard Draketooth (whom only Serini seemed to get along with).
- Paranatural: Isaac starts off as the Activity Club's punching bag, and has a strained relationship with every single other member. It's only in chapter five that he finally talks things out with Isabel and truly starts to feel like part of the team.
- Gnoma from Pewfell — an extremely self-centered, rude, obnoxious gnomenote who is only tolerated in the Pewfell housefold because she helped Tina — Pewfell's wife — through a rough patch when they were schoolmates (what that "rough patch" was has yet to be revealed).
- Seth from Sorcery 101 is more or less tolerated by the characters because one of them is bonded to him and he's pretty good at manipulating people in a way that's beneficial (though usually very messy, and in poor taste as he is almost always the last resort).
- Walkyverse:
- Mike from the is a bizarre example — his relationship with other characters is so strong because he's a major Jerkass. Hell, he married a character who loves him for (or possibly in spite of) who he is.
- When Mike and Amber were Put on a Bus to Denver, this spot was filled by Malaya, a foul-mouthed misanthrope who lacked Mike's
Chaotic Good/Jerkass Has a Point attributes. She was only tolerated for her roommate (and would-be love interest) Ken's sake. And later via her "relationship" with Ultra-Car. Her Dumbing of Age incarnation, while toned down in personality, still fills this role within Sal's circle of friends.
- Weenie Licked: Implied with Mugen, given how Jeffory and Chuckles are fascinated with the idea of Paul beating the shit out of him yet still let him hang around, much like the site hosting the comic.
- White Dark Life:
- Collin is stupid, greedy, and incapable of seeing anything but his selfish views, he genuinely thinks he is friends with the cast and there is literally nothing they can do to get rid of him. He does however get better after the timeskip. Not that anyone notices.
- An odd version is Caroline. She has a reasonable(if gloomy) personality and wouldn't be in this position if it wasn't for the fact that of her "friends", one is The Maid, who Hates Everyone Equally, Rebecca, her childhood friend even, sees her as a tool to be used, and Leon is a Straw Misogynist.
