History Main / DisabilityAsAnExcuseForJerkassery

** In "[[Recap/SouthParkS16E9RaisingTheBar Raising the Bar]]", he gains weight in order to obtain a mobility scooter through his mother's health insurance. The first thing he does is attempt to drive it into Kyle's bathroom, and demand that he modify his house to make it handicap-accessible. He then proceeds to bemoan how humiliating it is to live with severe obesity while acting like an EntitledBastard, doing things like holding up traffic by driving his scooter in the road. At Disneyland, he even harasses a boy in another mobility scooter, assuming that he has no business in the handicap line because he isn't fat when he's using the scooter because he has no legs.

* Captain Caïn from, well, ''Caïn'' was already an asshole before he ended up in a wheelchair, but now he can mock the "bipeds" around him and watch them hesitate to respond in kind to a disabled man. The few that don't hesitate get slightly more respect from him.

* Jeffy Jeffy from ''WebVideo/SuperMarioLogan'' literally is the [[KidHero younger]] version of this when revealed to be quote on quote "disabled" by Brooklyn T. Guy, which this is compared to how much of [[InsufferableImbecile a retard he really is]] and how much a [[SpoiledBrat insufferable brat he also is]] to [[ButtMonkey Mario]] in a way that it is more easy to say that it was intolerable for using disabilities as a excuse instead.

Another variation will have the character claim to have the disability despite the lack of a professional diagnosis, or fake the symptoms so that they can get diagnosed with it. This character generally comes from a privileged background and has thus become accustomed to treating other people poorly. Usually, this character is just a {{Jerkass}} or AttentionWhore, and would be exactly the same if they did not have or did not claim to have the disability. A popular subject for this over the Internet is UsefulNotes/AspergerSyndrome.[[note]]On the internet, people who falsely claim to have Asperger's are often referred to as having "[[WesternAnimation/SouthPark Ass-burgers]]"[[/note]]

Another variation will have the character claim to have the disability despite the lack of a professional diagnosis, or fake the symptoms so that they can get diagnosed with it. This character generally comes from a privileged background and has thus become accustomed to treating other people poorly. Usually, this character is just a {{Jerkass}} or AttentionWhore, and would be exactly the same if they did not have or did not claim to have the disability. A popular subject for this over the Internet is UsefulNotes/AspergerSyndrome.[[note]]On the internet, people who falsely claim to have Asperger's are often referred to as having "Ass-burgers"[[/note]]

** In "Petarded", Peter [[ExploitedTrope uses his recent diagnosis of being intellectually disabled]] to be even more of an asshole than usual, being abusive to people, shoving to front of lines, breaking into a women's bathroom, and just generally misbehaving all with a "sorry, retarded" to avoid any punishment. Deconstructed when his ridiculous behavior causes Lois to end up in the hospital with severe grease burns, and then [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome child services make the Griffin kids live with Cleveland until Lois heals up because Peter's actions have proved he's too unfit to be a single father]].

* In the 1990 Paul Hogan comedy ''Film/AlmostAnAngel'', the film's hero, Terry Dean, is in a bar when he encounters Steve Garner (Elias Koteas), a wheelchair-bound {{Jerkass}} who is using his disability as an excuse to push other people around. Dean calls Garner out on his behavior with a veiled hint that if Garner doesn't stop being such a jerk, Dean will beat the crap out of him. The other bar patrons object, claiming that you shouldn't fight a guy in a wheelchair. So Terry Dean pulls up a chair, puts it within Garner's arms-reach, and sits down in it. He then raises his fists, saying that the fight will now be fair.

* The wheelchair-bound title character of German satirist Robert Gernhardt's short story ''Henry der Krüppel'' (Henry the cripple) behaves in ways that make the oh-so-politically-correct narrator cringe all the time, referring to himself and others like him as "cripples" even though the narrator insists that the term is demeaning to the disabled. When the narrator mentions Helen Keller and Frida Kahlo as inspiring examples, Henry retorts by invoking disabled Nazi war veteran Hans-Ulrich Rudel. The story plays with the trope since most of the time Henry enjoys making the narrator (who somewhat patronizingly wants to feel better about himself by helping a disabled person) feel uncomfortable. Gernhardt got quite a bit of flak for this story - from non-disabled readers who expressed outrage on behalf of the disabled. Meanwhile, he got positive reactions from disabled readers, including requests to allow them to reprint the story in their own magazines.

* In ''Literature/TheSecretGarden'', wheelchair-bound Colin combines this trope with SpoiledBrat at first. He gets better by the end though, both [[CharacterDevelopment morally]] and [[ThrowingOffTheDisability physically.]]

* ''Series/TheGoodWife'': Recurring antagonist Louis Canning is a lawyer with tardive dyskinesia incurred as a side effect of medicine and invariably plays up his disability in court to elicit jury sympathy. The big joke being, his professional specialty is defending corporations from class-actions over the very type of wrongdoing from which he incurred his disability in the first place. {{Lampshaded}} in one incident where he tried it on a wheelchair-bound judge in conference; the judge basically went, "Yeah, I'm a paraplegic, so what? Knock it off and present your case."

* The Lou and Andy sketches in ''Series/LittleBritain'' were built around the concept of a jerkass who is pretending to be wheelchair-bound and possibly faking learning disabilities in order to both be lazy to the nth degree and get away with being demanding ("Want that one..."), contrary ("...don't like it."), and to get away with horrible and ludicrous behavior [[spoiler:up to and including murdering a woman who wouldn't take his attitude]]. All this to the complete unawareness of his carer Lou Todd, a rather put-upon man who Andy basically treats as a slave.

* In ''VideoGame/DanganronpaAnotherEpisodeUltraDespairGirls'', [[spoiler:BigBad Monaka fakes being wheelchair-bound in order to garner sympathy from the other kids at Hope's Peak Elementary, manipulating her fellow Warriors of Hope by playing TheCutie. She shows absolutely no sympathy or remorse for her actions, callously dismissing the death and destruction they're causing, as well as the suffering of her supposed allies. She even declares that pitiful children are able to get away with anything]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheProudFamily'', ValentinesDayEpisode, Penny dates Johnny, a wheelchair-bound boy (voiced by a young Creator/ShiaLaBeouf), who seems angelic at first but turns out to be a rude prick who uses his disability to get his way. When Penny finally tells him off for his behavior and breaks up with him, her parents tell her that they're proud of her for standing up for herself and their family.

* In ''House Rules'', Jacob is a Jerkass and considers his autism as a legitimate excuse for being such, as well as that autism is [[GoalOrientedEvolution the next step in evolution]].