Butt Monkey / Video Games

Butt Monkeys in Video Games.

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• The Ace Attorney series may as well be renamed Turnabout Butt Monkeys:
  • Protagonist status almost guarantees a character will be this. To wit:
    • Phoenix Wright himself. After all, everyone in the game seems to go out of their way to make his life a living hell. It's certainly more subtle, however... It's easy to not realize how far it extended until the third game came, and with it the chance to play as Edgeworth: suddenly witnesses are much more forthcoming, investigators more respectful, and judges less sarcastic. Phoenix notes he has enough bad karma as a reason for why he won't steal something. (At least when not preparing for a trial.)
      Phoenix: Nobody loves me.
    • Maya, who gets arrested, trapped, or kidnapped at least once per game. Not to mention accused of murder at least once per game. It's exaggerated in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice where she's framed for two murders (one and then another one later on) in the same trial and also gets kidnapped during the lead up to the final case of the game. Poor Maya can't catch a break.
    • Edgeworth, who sympathizes with Phoenix a little bit when he realizes how hard it is to gather clues as a defense attorney and if you screw up during a testimony at one point, Edgeworth gets mocked and he wonders to himself if there is a kick me sign on the defense's bench. For some magical reason, he seems to have a hard time getting witnesses to declare their names and occupations in court. He still gets treated better than Phoenix, however... While it's not so bad initially (the Judge, at least, seems to respect him regardless), it gets much worse in Ace Attorney Investigations, when he gets the spotlight to himself. In the first case, a dead body is found in his office and some files were stolen. The second case, he is accused of murder by a flight attendant and gets whipped by Franziska a lot. In the third case, he's knocked out by a Proto Badger and wakes up tied to a pole. He then finds a dead body and is insulted multiple times by the agent leading the case. The fourth case (a flashback), his first trial ever is delayed because the prosecutor and the suspect are murdered. The lead detective on the case continually calls him 'kid', Little Kay Faraday knocks him down then uses his cravat as a tissue, the defense attorney he was set to face continually laughs in his face, and he gets whipped by Franziska a lot. He solves the case, but the murderer escapes. The fifth case, he meets the Steel Samurai and the Pink Princess, but they're played by Larry Butz and Wendy Oldbag. And he gets whipped by Franziska a lot. Oh, and his Steel Samurai fanboyism is lampshaded. Mercilessly.
    • Apollo Justice somehow manages to get even less respect than Phoenix ever did. Every character seems to go out of their way to mock him in some manner whenever possible. Even you, the player, can essentially mock him: present the Fish to him when you get the chance in the DLC case of Dual Destinies. At one point, someone throws a grown man at him. Accidentally, but still. He's also Trucy's designated training dummy for practicing her magic tricks on.
    • Athena Cykes is prone to Amusing Injuries such as getting hit with a ballistic volleyball and falling down some stairs. She's also notable for having one of the widest ranges of cartoony expressions Played for Laughs. Like other main characters, she is not immune to a prosecutor's verbal and nonverbal assaults, the judge's swaying remarks, and witnesses' weird antics. Though she is evidently more emotionally fragile than other characters, to the point she invokes multiple Heroic BSoD, she is rather quick at bouncing back from all the damages she receives. She also becomes Trucy's new training dummy after Apollo moves to Khura'in at the end of Spirit of Justice.
    • Phoenix's ancestor, Ryunosuke Naruhodo, shows where Phoenix got it from. First, he gets framed for murder, and is forced to essentially fire his lawyer and represent himself despite knowing jack shit about being a lawyer (his actual lawyer is his best friend who is supposed to go to England to study their legal system, and if he represents Ryu and loses then he won't be allowed to go, thus Ryu decides to take the bullet for him). Then, in order to join his best friend on said trip, he has to stow away in his friend's luggage and then inside of the wardrobe in his room, living off whatever scraps his friend is able to sneak him (and due to the time period, this trip takes many months). Then, his best friend gets murdered and he gets framed again. Then, he has to take over his best friend's position as the lawyer being sent to England. Again, he's not actually a lawyer, so this means spending the entire rest of the trip relentlessly cramming law books so that he at least has some idea of what he's doing. His reward after all of that is to be a Japanese lawyer in Victorian England for two games, where almost everyone is racist to him, most notably his rival prosecutor, who has a burning hatred of the Japanese specifically. At the very least, unlike Phoenix, his prosecutor doesn't physically assault him and is content with sticking to verbal abuse. His assistant, on the other hand, enjoys judo-flipping him on a regular basis.
  • The minor characters don't get spared either:
    • Detective Dick Gumshoe, especially in the second game, where he gets his pay docked several times for goofing up, and near the end of the final case gets in a car accident while trying to rush some crucial evidence to the courthouse. He is also frequently on the business end of perfectionist Franziska von Karma's whippings. He also gets accused of murder twice over in Ace Attorney Investigations.
    • Gumshoe's love interest, Maggey Byrde (introduced in Justice for All), has a perpetual streak of bad luck, which culminated in her being accused of murder on three separate occasions, becoming Maya's runner-up for most common suspect. Byrde lampshades this a lot too, and considering her name is a pun on the magpie bird, believed to bring bad luck, she's practically the female version of Larry. When she was six months old, she apparently fell off the balcony of her 9th floor apartment...
    • Larry Butz, Phoenix and Edgeworth's old school friend and Unlucky Everydude to the extreme, who can never seem to hold a steady job or a girlfriend throughout the course of three games. He seems to be a danger magnet, and everybody in his circle often discredits the things he says, to the point where Phoenix and friends invented their own saying about him: "When something smells, it's usually the Butz." He's perhaps the only witness to be called an idiot in court.
      Judge: Who is this useless-looking young man?
      Phoenix: The fact that the guard was a pathetic loser who'd just been punched in the face by his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend was something the witness could not have known!
    • Winston Payne, despite having spent seven years undefeated, also seems to get the short end of the stick too often - he's so meek and inarticulate that he's always the default Warm-Up Boss - once being defeated in court by Phoenix who was suffering from amnesia after being struck in the head. After losing to Mia Fey, he pretty much lost all his dignity (and his hair). He's usually seen as "that other prosecutor" in side-cases. When about to get a guilty verdict? Phoenix barges in and says he needs the defendant for another case. When he finally does get a guilty verdict? It was only because the real murderer was impersonating Phoenix and lost on purpose. When Edgeworth sees him around the Prosecutor's Office, he assumes he's on the custodial staff. When Edgeworth sees him outside of the office, he doesn't even recognize him at all.
    • All of these characters pale in comparison to Sebastian Debeste in Investigations 2. A prosecutor so incompetent that Larry Butz can call him an idiot without a hint of irony. His arguments are only difficult as a result of how vague and non-descriptive they are, and his competence is inversely proportional to his ego. Even his father constantly berates his startling lack of intelligence. However, his father's disdain for him is quickly shown to not merely be comedic jabbing, but emotional abuse, and Sebastian is forced to confront that his father is responsible for every big break he's gotten in his life. It's only through Edgeworth's guidance that Sebastian becomes a halfway decent prosecutor.
  • Not even inanimate objects are completely safe. The Kurain Sacred Urn, most valued object of Kurain Village (Maya's hometown), gets broken a lot. Pearl accidentally hits it with a ball in the second game, and scrambles the writing on its front as she glues it back together (from "AMI" to "I AM"). Adrian Andrews drops it on the floor and spills paint on the pieces in the third game, though she at least gets the writing back into proper order. And at the very end of the third game, we see a picture showing a very young Mia and Maya Fey... reassembling the pot, revealing it's been broken quite a bit before.
  • The Judge himself isn't immune from the butt monkey antics himself. He's easily intimidated by the prosecution like the von Karmas, frequently goes on tangents, gets easily scared by the more intimidating witnesses, and is also subjected to some humiliation such as being whipped by Franziska and Simon's pet bird using the Judge's head as a perch.
• Steven Heck's "friend" Wen Shu in Alpha Protocol. When you first meet the two of them, Heck is subjecting Wen to Cold-Blooded Torture to force him to reveal the location of Heck's car keys. Later, if Heck likes you, he will frame Wen as the one who tried to assassinate Taiwanese President Ronald Sung in order to cover your escape. The end credits reveal that the Taiwanese government eventually executed Wen for his role in the attack.
• ANNO: Mutationem: Ann has several encounters with a mook that Ayane calls "Silly Swine", who acts as an incompetent target rather than a intimidating lackey. In the roofhopping area, his charge attack blasts him off towards the ground instead, then Ann tracks him to a secret room in Noctis City, and when he tries to challenge Ann at the Ship Level, she instantly curb-stomps him before sending him out the window.
• Miou in A Profile is mercilessly teased by both Masayuki and Kaine, who constantly point out how normal she is.
• Medea's uncle Pelias in the Argonauts Agency series just can't get a break. The poor guy's been turned into gold by wearing Midas' Glove, trapped in Hephaestus' Chair and acquired his very own bad luck streak and Personal Raincloud after opening Pandora's Box.
• Helion just can't seem to maintain her dignity in Aselia the Eternal - The Spirit of Eternity Sword. She's shy and rather ditzy, so everyone else likes to tease her.
• Wyzen from Asura's Wrath is both this in and even out of universe. He's stated to be the overall weakest of the eight gaurdian generals, yet he's the most bombastic, and is the only one who calls his attacks in traditional anime style. He's even made fun of for thinking getting bigger means he's stronger. In Real Life, there's even a Facebook picture on the official Asura's Wrath Facebook page of a wyzen diet, making fun of his over weight frame.
• Rufus the Gargoyle in A Vampyre Story. A significant amount of progress is made just by ruining his day. Over the course of the game you threaten him with a mace, get a bird to crap over his head, reduce him to a disembodied head (mocking him once you've reached this point is optional but entertaining), plug his nose, and turn him into a golem. This last one annoys him on multiple levels, because he's forced to do your bidding, and the body you use is rather portly. It's not as though he wasn't asking for it, though-he's kind of a jerk and refuses to help out voluntarily. He doesn't make the greatest impression on Mona and Froderick, so the constant torment starts out as "if he won't help willingly we'll take what we need by force", but by the time you're finished with him it's become "Hey, we have another problem. Let's see if we can solve it by pissing off Rufus."
• Reese Worthington of Backyard Sports. He is constantly insulted by the other kids (like Dmitri, Kimmy, Ronny, and Barry Bonds) because they think he is a big nerd. This never changes throughout the series.
• Banjo-Kazooie:
  • Kazooie, one-half of the eponymous duo, is Butt Monkey in avian form — especially in the first game, but still so in the second. Not only is she subject to quite a bit of slapstick, but she always seems to learn her moves in the most humiliating fashion. To be fair, she does give the universe plenty of grief in return.
  • There's also Roysten, Banjo's long-suffering goldfish. He was tossed on the barbeque at the fake ending of the first game. Then in Banjo-Tooie, he was blasted along with Banjo's house and poor Bottles in the opening cinema, subsequently buried under a huge rock, and found himself as part of Bottles' charcoaled dinner at the end of the same game.
  • They also gave us Gobi the Camel, whom you first meet in his eponymous level. You have to Ground Pound his back several times, forcing him to cough up his precious water. After several rounds of this abuse, he runs away to another level... where you have to seek him out and do the exact same thing. After suffering much abuse at the hands of Kazooie's beak, he gets annoyed and vows to go to the "lava world." There's no lava world in Banjo-Kazooie. But he shows up in the sequal, trapped in a cage. You have to set him free, for once helping him. After he finally makes it to Hailfire Peaks, his "lava world," you get to abuse him with the Bill Drill again. Fun times!
  • Also arguably Clanker, a mechanical whale (who looks more like a giant shark with a blowhole). In the first game, he appears in his level, "Clanker's Cavern," a sewer where he serves as a garbage grinder for the villain, Gruntilda. He also has a terrible toothache. Later, in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, he appears in the nostalgic wonderland, Banjoland. Now torn to pieces, his torso, head, and jaw are all located in different places...but he's still alive. His eyes also end up the target of some baddies in one of the missions in Banjoland.
• Enzo from Bayonetta, who is supposed to be a rather feared member of the underworld, but unfortunately lives in a world with witches, demons and angels which puts him squarely in the role of comic relief. He frequently gets his car wrecked and is usually in the wrong place at the wrong time — namely in the middle of Bayonetta fighting a load of angels. And he narrowly misses getting his balls crushed about once a game. He's so much of a Butt Monkey that he's featured on the Stone Award, the very worst level award you can get.
  Enzo: Ahhhh!! Damn it! Who did that!? I just bought the damn thing!
• Bendy and the Ink Machine:
  • Three cartoon shorts were created for Chapter 3, one, "Tombstone Picnic," even featuring in the reveal trailer. In the cartoons, Bendy apparently was the butt monkey.
    • "Tombstone Picnic:" A skeleton trips Bendy, Boris steals Bendy's lunch, and the short ends with a shadow looming over Bendy.
    • "Haunted Hijinx:" Halloween time - Bendy falls victim to a prank in an attempt to scare Boris. It results in Bendy running away and Boris taking the trick-or-treat bucket Bendy left behind.
    • "Snow Sillies:" Just as Bendy makes a new friend in a living snowman, it melts seconds later. Then Boris eats the carrot nose, and at that point Bendy cries. And that's where the short ends.
  • It's implied in Wally Frank's Chapter 2 recording that he often loses his keys, which gets Sammy angry at him. He also complains in Chapter 4 about having to clean up after the warehouse workers while they just play games all day.
• Beyond Good & Evil has poor, poor Double H, who seems to be picked on by the universe itself. When you first meet him, within the span of about five minutes, he gets tortured, Easy Amnesia, and thrown off a cliff. In the grand scope of things, he's stricken with an evil alien disease, scolded by Jade for trying to kiss her, made fun of by children (one kid derisively calling him "canned food"), and used as a Human Shield in the Final Boss by both sides. This is to say nothing of his apparent unrequited Bodyguard Crush on Jade, though that depends on who in the fandom you ask. In comparison, the other main sidekick, Pey'j, is a Distressed Dude for part of the game, but otherwise goes unharmed.
• BlazBlue:
  • Bang Shishigami spent Calamity Trigger being the local stress toy - if you can name a character, they've likely beaten him up for whatever reason. The only exception, of course, is Hakumen, who commended his undying spirit. He Took a Level in Badass in Continuum Shift, and has shrugged off this role in the main story. Gag reels, however...
  • Speaking of gag reels, both Ragna and Makoto get the short end of the stick more often than not in them. While Makoto was unambiguously safe in Lambda's CS gag reel (if you could call it that) and Bang and Tager's CP gag reels (with Carl's CS gag reel as a 'maybe'), her endurance and sanity have been pushed to their breaking point on numerous occasions, with her tail as a casualty in one such instance. As for Ragna, name a gag reel where he isn't beaten up, scared off with a ghost joke, or outright humiliated. For bonus points, Carl's CS gag reel notwithstanding, both of them get to drown in two separate orgies of violence, deal with a casting debacle, swap bodies with Jin and each other, job to Platinum's Magical Girl squad, and sample Noel's cooking.
  • Add Tager, too. He usually has to deal with the lunacy of the rest of the cast (especially Kokonoe), and gag reels dial it up further still. The "Bloodedge Curse" also applies here - pair him with Ragna or Makoto in a gag reel and he will suffer with them. And say what you will about them, but they never had to literally inhale Arakune's goo (see Arakune's Help Me!! episode).
  • A good chunk of the humour present in the series is played at Noel's expense. Which doesn't help her abysmal self-esteem at all.
  • If a villain has to be subjected to comedic abuse in a gag reel, count on it being Hazama. His cat allergies are a lesser Running Gag, he's been fired upon by Kokonoe, and he got body-swapped, too (thankfully, not with Makoto or the brothers). There's also the time where, after being tossed into another world For Science!, Relius doesn't think of taking Hazama back with him.
  • While it doesn't come up in the gag reels, Kagura learns during Chronophantasma story mode that if he wants Ragna's "protagonist" title, he's getting all the baggage that comes with it. While Hibiki scolding him can be unintentionally funny, Kokonoe making an elevator out of his room was meant for humor at his expense. And then there's all the times Makoto chops the wood...
• The Claptraps from the Borderlands series were Scrappies in the first game due to their annoying voices, obnoxious personalities, and sidequests requiring you to rescue them for much-needed inventory space upgrades. The developers responded by making Claptrap the Butt-Monkey of the Borderlands universe in the second game. In-universe, nobody except for Angel and maybe Amara likes Claptrap. Handsome Jack apparently hates them so much he had all of them except for the one the player interacts with destroyed, rendering him the Last of His Kind. He's frequently subjected to slapstick violence and torture, by both villains and heroes (including the Player Character). At one point he attempts to throw himself a birthday party only for nobody to show up, and he frequently talks to himself about how lonely he is. Ironically this resulted in him being Rescued from the Scrappy Heap, since while he's still annoying, players tend to view him as The Woobie.
• In BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm, poor Shift just can’t catch a break. Most of the time, the rest of the party treats his personal quest as a joke, (even though it ends up being related to the one they’re all on). He’s always being left out of the loop on plot details, and he seems totally oblivious to the fact that the girl he likes is pretty clearly a lesbian. Even the random enemies get in on the action – one sidequest has the party get kidnapped by shapeshifters, who then impersonate them, but the ones who grab Shift can’t even be bothered to try, and end up shapeshifting into a bunch of totally different characters instead. He finally comes out on top in the True Ending, where he becomes the King of Amazon “through a chain of wacky misunderstandings.”
• The Brief and Meaningless Adventure of Hero Man: The majority of endings don't end well for Hero Man, since he will be punished if he diverges from the generic ending too much. Ending 12 goes as far as to have him slip and fall into a moat, leading to him drowning to death.
• Bully:
  • Pete is one of the weakest kids in school. Despite trying his best to help out, his only two friends bully him relentlessly, he gets refused entry to all the cliques bar the Nerds for "being too nerdy" but is "too weird" to join the Nerds, and the headmaster has never even heard of him. At the end though, he gets promoted to head boy after a recommendation from Jimmy.
  • Because he's a fat Momma's Boy who regularly pisses himself, nobody at Bullworth takes Algernon seriously or gives him any respect.
• In Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle, Arno never comes out of anything well. When first encountered, he's knocked out with a wooden sword, tied up, and rolled down a hill. Then he's stampeded by a donkey and cart. When next seen, he loses his new sword in the sea in a particularly humiliating way. After that, he screws up his latest job by getting chased down, beaten up, and tied to a post. Then he notices that his captain is sailing away without him. His personality is such that he gets no sympathy.
  Arno: But why would Simpkins leave without me?
  Morgane: See? No-one likes you.
• Vincent and Toby in Catherine. Vincent is a freaky Every Man who is involved in a nasty infidelity exercise, and is risked getting killed in recurring dreams while he isn't failed to be viewed as a loser in real life. Toby, meanwhile, is a typical loud and unlucky bestfriend who ends up being in a relationship that is more uncanny than it seems.
• Dalton from Chrono Trigger.
• Jez from Chuck Rock II: Son of Chuck. The unfortunate Jez, an obese caveman, has no function save to be the Butt-Monkey. He is trodden on by the rampaging dino in Stone Age Suburbs; gets chewed up and spit out by the ti-tular boss in Dippy the Dinosaur; catches fire, panics, and falls into the ti-tular hazard in Lively Lava; and plummets along with an an avalanche in fruit mountain.
• Command and Conquer series:
  • In Command & Conquer: Generals, the GLA workers. While the rest of the GLA faction are an army of Middle Eastern Terrorists Without a Cause and probably one of the most evil factions to ever appear in a Command and Conquer game, their builder units are probably the most down-trodden and pathetic schmucks in all of gaming. Just listen to their unit quotes.
  • Another Butt-Monkey, this time from Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: the Soviet Hammer tank in the tutorials. Due to him often asking stupid questions and getting on the nerves of the other two instructor tanks, they take painful pot-shots at him. Although it does lead to a Funny Background Event where he slinks off and comes back as one of the huge Apocalypse Tanks, causing the Japanese Tsunami tank (his main bully) to do a Double Take. The Soviet faction in general counts for a lot of the game as well, although to a lesser extent: they underwent a lot of Villain Decay/Badass Decay.
• Crash Bandicoot:
  • Dr. Neo Cortex just can't seem to catch a break. Even in the first three games, he had already been sent careening into his own island after his first battle with Crash, got stuck in time after the events of Warped, and was already the laughing stock of the entire scientific field before the events of the first game. Things got even worse since Crash Twinsanity; since then, he's been: spun around by Crash, knocked into pits, chased by bees and a bear, thrown into a totem god's mouth, used as a sled, kicked in the groins by Coco, the list goes on. As if that wasn't already bad enough, he's usually made the scapegoat and punching bag of Uka Uka for when his latest plan goes awry. One must wonder how this man hasn't completely snapped yet.
  • Crash and N.Gin count as well. Crash is usually the victim of tons of slapstick abuse and is usually put through some pretty embarrassing/painful death animations. As for N.Gin, he's always either being mistreated, abused, or straight up ignored by Cortex. There's also the fact that a live missile is attached to his head that sometimes goes off when he's stressed, and it's implied he didn't have the most supportive of parents..
• Cuphead: Out of all the debtors you fight throughout the game, Wally Warbles has it the worst out of everyone; you destroy his house, force him to lose all his feathers, beat up his son while you're at it, then beat him up while two medic birds are carrying him on a stretcher, and finally, said medics are preparing to eat him after his defeat.
• Danganronpa:
  • Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: Yasuhiro Hagakure's status as a Phony Psychic combined with his weird beliefs and general absent-mindedness leads to pretty much every character treating him like the punchline to a bad joke. Even Makoto, despite probably being the one who is most friendly towards him, has problems taking him seriously. He also ends up the primary suspect of two murder cases in a row
  • Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: Kazuichi is common target for Monokuma, Hiyoko, and later Sonia, as his tendency to end up the butt of jokes and having horrible things escalate to the point that in Chapter 5, he flat-out gets Blown Across the Room by an explosion.
  • Danganronpa: Ultra Despair Girls: Komaru tends to find herself the butt of jokes at several points in the game, mostly owing to her naivete or how completely out of her depth she is. The fact that Toko is a natural Deadpan Snarker certainly doesn't help matters.
  • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony: Kokichi Oma. A justified case since it's almost always meant to be seen as karma, given how often he bullies and harasses the others. Gonta traps him in a room full of bugs after he tricked Gonta into forcing everyone else he could through it and got exactly as much sympathy as he gave Gonta's previous "victims". He gets nearly strangled by Maki in Chapter Two only after he keeps pushing her even after learning how dangerous she was to prove his own point. In chapter 4 his "joking" murder threats result in Kaito punching him and Miu is later revealed to have been trying to kill him which resulted in him turning the tables instead.
• Destiny: Crota was supposed to be The Dreaded, but players discovered that his raid is laughably easy to cheese and began replaying it to slaughter him in ridiculous ways, like wearing blindfolds while playing or only using Joke Items like Necrochasm. Given the series' love of Ascended Fanon and integrating gameplay with plot, Bungie shifted his characterization from a terrifying monster to the Dumbass Teenage Son of the Hive Gods. Since then, Crota has: been mocked by his big sisters for using a sword, accidentally infested his father's throne room with Vex, gotten repeatedly outwitted by said Vex, been beaten up and hurled through a Vex portal by his own dad, had his physical form destroyed, had his attempts to restore his physical form foiled multiple times, watched his wife get killed by Guardians, gotten permakilled in his Ascendant Realm (where he's supposed to be at his strongest), and finally, had his funeral get crashed and a chunk of his soul stolen by the same Guardians who killed him. Talk about a Humiliation Conga.
• Disgaea:
  • The Prinnies are a species of Butt Monkey penguins. They get forced to do every last bit of the gruntwork for their masters, they explode if you throw them (and this is often a valid combat tactic), and their masters often torment them for amusement; the opening of Disgaea 2 shows a character throwing a knife at one. And no matter how much damage they take, they're valued so poorly that healing (or resurrecting) them only costs one Hell. Somewhat justified, seeing as Prinnies are the souls of murderers, thieves, etc.; doing the grunt work is how they atone for their sins. The Celestia Prinnies seem to have it a bit easier, as well. But still, Etna and company could go a little easier...
  • Even when they get their own spinoff game, Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?, the Prinnies are still Butt Monkeys. In "Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?" Etna thinks nothing of sacrificing the lives of 1,000 Prinnies toward the task of bringing her a rare dessert.
  • In addition, there's Tink, the "Dirty Frog" from Disgaea 2. Originally a handsome servant, he was cursed and turned into a lecherous frog. The Dark Court issued a subpoena against him, with his very existence being an unpardonable crime. (sure, Felonies are actually a good thing to have in the game, but still...) One of the endings has him mobbed by a crowd, and his best attack has him going suicidal... only no one cares.
  • Axel is a series wide example. In his first appearance, he gets beaten up by Adell and company because of a misunderstanding and ends up having the press mistake him as being dead as a result, which only hurts his attempts at regaining fame even further. While he finally does get his fame back at the end of the game (After getting beaten up again), he's back to being a nobody by the time the third game rolls around. In the fourth game, it yet again seems like things are going his way, having become the warden of the Hades prison facility, but some scheming from Fenrich ends up getting him beaten up and overthrown in short order. Then he temporarily gets to be the president of the Netherworld, only to lose that position as well...after getting beaten up yet again.
  • And in the first game there's Vyers, who is quickly recognized by Laharl as recurring comic relief boss unceremoniously dubbed "Mid-Boss" by the prince, his party, everyone Vyers meets, and the game itself before becoming the butt of most of the team's jokes whenever he shows up. This is subverted in the end, however, as all of his foppish, bumbling behavior turns out to be a mask of Obfuscating Stupidity. He starts to drop the act as the endgame approaches, and in subsequent games has almost shed it entirely (save for the vanity). By the time Disgaea 4 comes around, he's reassumed his former identity and all the badassery that comes with it: Laharl's father, King Krichevskoy.
• His schemes notwithstanding, Dennis from Double Homework never gets anywhere with the ladies, and he gets humiliated whenever he tries. When he’s in a room with Johanna in his underwear, the protagonist throws him out the window into the snow. When he gets up and starts running, the protagonist follows him and beats him up. Then, after insulting him, Dr. Mosely/Zeta kills him in cold blood.
• Dragalia Lost: If anyone at the Halidom is going to be on the receiving end of torment, then chances are, that it’s going to be either Ranzal or Luca. Since they act as most of muscle for the main gang, it’s not all that surprising. Although Ranzal is more likely, Luca is especially vulnerable if Sarisse is around. Emile also gets a mention, since he’s the member of the royal family who’s always getting the short end of the stick.
• Dragon Age:
  • Alain, a Kirkwall mage in Dragon Age II, is a pretty benign mage who always ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time. In Act I, he joins a group of runaway mages who end up resorting to blood magic to protect themselves, causing him to desert them just as Hawke and companions go in after them. He turns himself in to the Kirkwall Circle, only to learn it's a lot nastier than the one he's from. In Act III, he is shown working with a group of mages and templars conspiring against Meredith, but refuses to kill their hostage when Hawke confronts the conspirators.
  • Dragon Age: Origins: Oh, Alistair. Everyone in the party enjoys teasing the poor guy, even the dog. Partially because he's a statuette loving Manchild, but also because he's the only party member you can't kick out until the end of the game, and is often referenced by other characters; it's hard for Leliana to pick on Sten for being a softie when you both left them to die at Lothering. You bastard. And letting Loghain survive and join the Gray Wardens is pretty much the pinnacle of Alistair abuse. You Bastard!.
• Dragon Quest V: Crispin has been friend-zoned his entire life and ends up getting burned alive. Most of the townspeople also talk bad about him behind his back. He does get thrown a bone no matter who the Hero picks to get married to, marrying his lifelong crush Nera if Bianca or Debora is chosen or falling for and marrying the equally beautiful Ashlee if Nera is chosen.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • The Orcs have long suffered this as a race. Their bestial appearance and "barbaric" culture (as it is perceived by the other races of Tamriel) make them frequent victims of Fantastic Racism. Several times the Orcs have tried to unite and create their own city-state known as Orsinium, but each time, their neighboring nations (the Bretons of High Rock and Redguards of Hammerfell) have forced them to abandon it. By the 4th Era, the Orcs were forced at swordpoint by the Bretons to officially renounce the kingdom of Orsinium and assimilate into High Rock as slaves in all but name. Only a few Orc tribes still live independently in destitute, scattered "strongholds", scorned by all. Notably, their patron deity, the Daedric Prince Malacath, teaches them to take these trials in stride, as he preaches "strength through adversity."
  • The Dunmer (Dark Elves) have reached this status between the events of Morrowind and Skyrim. The events of Morrowind stripped them of their guardian Physical Gods, which had the delayed but direct effect of causing the rogue moon Baar Dau (which the Dunmer Tribunal deity Vivec froze in place after Sheogorath hurled it as his Egopolis in a past age) to resume its fall which caused Red Mountain to erupt, rending all of Vvardenfell and much of mainland Morrowind uninhabitable due to choking ash. Then, one of their former Slave Races, (the Argonians) invaded, capturing much of what remained of habitable Morrowind. The Dunmer people were forced to flee, with most settling on the barren frozen island of Solstheim or in Skyrim, where they are treated as second-class citizens (at best) by the native Nords. At the beginning of Skyrim, Hadvar even notes that "the gods really have abandoned" the Dunmer people.
  • Peryite, the Daedric Prince of Pestilence and Tasks, gets this treatment from the other Daedric Princes. They consider him "loathesome" and constantly look down upon him. It also doesn't help that he is considered to be the weakest of the Princes. Further, being associated with order puts him at odds with the other Princes, who have a generally chaotic nature.
• In Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold, we have marksman Flavio who is constantly made the butt of many, many jokes through the game by almost the entire cast, be they seniors, children, and many times indirectly from Arianna. This is probably retribution for all those years as a kid when he used to be an annoying Crying Wolf to the Midgard Library.
• The Fantasy Quest games delight in heaping punishment on the long-suffering Indian, Runs-With-Scissors.
• Fate/Grand Order: Being a game that has so many characters to choose from, there are couple of characters who end up filling the role of butt-monkey to the point where it needs its own page. Examples involving Jeanne D'Arc Alter, Jason, Okita, Robin Hood, Siegfried, Arash, Oda Nobukatsu, among others.
• In the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, main character Cloud fits this to a T. Wanted to join SOLDIER? Nope, stuck in the Shin-Ra regulars. Captured and tortured by Hojo for years after his hometown is destroyed by his former idol and his mother burns to death in front of him. Upon escaping, witnesses his best friend Zack getting set upon and killed by the aforementioned Shin-Ra regulars. All of them. His mind then shatters and he constructs a persona based on Zack and other SOLDIER members to cope. Is convinced to dress up like a woman to infiltrate the home of a pimp to save his childhood crush, and is the one picked to entertain the pimp for the night. Oh, not to mention the fact that the potential love interest gets skewered like a mini hot dog on a toothpick in front of our hapless hero by the former idol, the original One-Winged-Angel himself. Once he recovers from that, he tries to stop Sephiroth, but insteads gets totally Mind-Raped by Sephiroth into handing over the Black Materia, the key to the destruction of the world, then gets chucked into the Lifestream. Once he recovers from that, he does okay... until Advent Children, where it's revealed that he's contracted the lethal disease Geostigma, is suffering from a combination of depression and PTSD, and one of the children he's taking care of with the aforementioned childhood crush has the disease as well, causing him to question his ability to get anything right and leave to, well, in all probability to die alone somewhere. At this point he just can't fathom anything going his way. You can see it in the relieved look he has in the movie's happy ending that he's really, really amazed that everything turned out okay. In short, the poor bastard is a walking Diabolus ex Machina magnet. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong for Cloud.
• Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light has Yunita... poor Yunita. Brandt and Jusqua first find her about to be killed by monsters as the Sole Survivor of Aire's retainer. Then Aire thoroughly berates her for not rescuing her quickly enough. When the party splits, Brandt ditches Yunita in Guera out of his own inferiority complex, and the next time the player finds her is when Jusqua goes to Urbeth—she's one of the vagabonds in the town square, having been conned out of the very clothes on her back and feeling like a worthless failure. And then Jusqua runs off during the night! After that, fortunately, she gets herself out of her funk and things improve for her.
• Final Fantasy XIII-2 has Mog being poked, hold, and thrown around.
• Galen "Starkiller" Marek of The Force Unleashed. Father dies before his eyes as a child, taken by his father's murderer and raised to be a Jedi killer, enduring an abusive upbringing. Receives no kind words from his surrogate father whatsoever and after one of his greatest achievements, said surrogate father literally stabs him in the back for one little slip up, beats him up and almost kills him, saving him only that he might continue his work. After finally turning against him, Starkiller's ultimate fate is either Heroic Sacrifice or being horribly disfigured and enslaved for the rest of his life as punishment for one moment of weakness where he tried to get revenge.
• Played with in Freelancer. Main character, Edison Trent was a pitty mechanic who believed naive stories of making a fortune on alien artifacts. He actually managed to broke deal that would make him rich. But guess what? The Freeport 7 station he was aboard when sealing the deal gets destroyed even with his ship. He and few refugees (one of them his trade partner) is taken to distant planet in different House state. He then took a few police helping missions to pass the time before his trade partner gets better and pay him his money. And those few easy mercenary mission ends up in government conspiracy that eventualy turns up to be alien invasion. During his journey, Took a Level in Badass, saved Colonies (If the Sol is really destroyed, then basically saved whole human race) and destroyed more ships than elite dogfighting Ace Von Claussen. But was also declared as renegade and terorrist, being shot at by every House except Bretonia, many times being pointed by gun wielding guy, punched to stomach by stun batton, then slaped to wake up, and was also target of several jokes by his companions. Oh, and yes, whole game he wants nothing but a good drink and his money. He never gets any of it. But he definetly made up for his butt monkey role with quite a lot of Big Damn Heroes moments.
• The Ship Captain in God of War, who has been eaten alive by the hydra for captaining the ship Kratos was on; dropped into the hydra's gullet by Kratos, who only wanted the key he was wearing; been stabbed, used as a human ladder, and flung into the River Styx by Kratos; and resurrected as a spirit warrior promptly killed by Kratos. As he's trivial to the plot, reappears frequently, and all his misfortunes are caused by Kratos, he's also a borderline Recurring Extra. In a nice shout-out, his appearance in God of War II was solely to have him scream, "Oh no, not you again!"
• Michiru in The Fruit of Grisaia takes a fair amount of abuse, but also has her own role in the group and actually seeks out the ridicule she receives. However, by The Eden of Grisaia her role in the group has largely been supplanted by Amane and she's not trying to be ridiculous for the sake of attention anymore, meaning she's mainly just used as the butt of jokes.
• The character Bennett in Genshin Impact is known for being extremely unlucky and often brings bad luck to others around him. This is especially seen in his Hangout Event.
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • Radio DJ Lazarus "Lazlow" Jones is the quintessential Butt-Monkey of the entire series. Chronologically, he starts out as the much-abused assistant DJ to Jerk Jock Cousin Eddie, who routinely insulted and belittled him. Flash forward to the mid 80's, he manages to replace Eddie as his channel's DJ, only to be forced to flee Vice City due to the events of the game. In the early 90's, he manages to become the new host of a San Andreas talk show after the previous host was murdered by a drugged out film star, only to again be forced to flee for his life during the Riots in Los Santos. Finally, in the late 90's, he gets a job as the host of one of Liberty City's talk shows, only to get bombarded by the psychopaths, morons and general crackpots of the city. Things finally start looking up for him in the 2000's, where, due to a deal with Donald Love, his talk show becomes the sole radio talk show in the city, and he becomes very successful, albiet still having to deal with Liberty City's more... eccentric personalities. By the time of Grand Theft Auto IV, however, he's lost his job, his money, his family and his home, and is forced to work as a freelance street corner reporter just to get by. As you might expect, the whole experience has left him quite bitter. By Grand Theft Auto V, he moved to Los Santos, and started working on 'normal' talk radio again. He also becomes presenter of the reality show Fame or Shame, and is constantly mocked by the judges and polls made by the program. He gets chased by main protagonists Michael and Trevor after they find him simulating sex with Michael's daughter Tracy, and is later forced to take off his pants and dance while being videotaped. Later in the game, we find Tracy begging Lazlow to be allowed to reappear in Fame or Shame; he says he will do so if she gives him a blow job. Michael enters and, outraged by what he's just heard as well as Lazlow's previous actions in the mission Fame or Shame, attacks him, forcibly piercing his nose, ear and brow, then tattooing a penis on his chest or back (player's choice). Finally, Michael cuts off his pony tail.
  • Grand Theft Auto IV: Roman Bellic, Niko's hapless cousin. A loser through and through, at one point he gets kidnapped, shot in the stomach when he can't stop screaming, healed in a filthy basement, and has to ask Niko to buy him some adult diapers.
  • Grand Theft Auto V:
    • Throughout the storyline of the game, Michael De Santa has a Dysfunctional Family, a cheating wife, two bratty children, is drugged and robbed by his own son, beaten and threatened by a mob boss, and kidnapped more than once. Although most of what happens to him is his fault, it almost seems that the universe conspires to put him in humiliating and dangerous situations. In other words, Michael just can't take a break.
    • Wade Hebert puts up with a lot of shit, both figuratively and literally, as one of Trevor Philips' favorite punching bags and being dragged along on his schemes. This also applies for Ron Jakowski to a lesser degree.
    • Wade's cousin Floyd gets it the worst. While most other characters are either criminals, corrupt law enforcement officials or just general sleazebags who deserve whatever fate befalls them, he is a meek, hen-pecked, blue-collar guy with no criminal connections and no desire to be part of the criminal underworld. Too bad Floyd is related to Wade and lives in a city Trevor wants to relocate to: Trevor shows up, invites himself to stay, and then systematically destroys his apartment, his job, and his personal life. He leaves Floyd to get beaten to a pulp as a distraction during one heist set-up mission, and it's heavily implied that Trevor repeatedly rapes Floyd during his stay at the apartment. Much later, just when Floyd thinks he's finally been left alone, Trevor returns and causes an argument between him, Floyd, and his shrewish fiancée Debra which culminates in the latter two being brutally killed. Finally, to top it all off, just before their death it's revealed that Debra was cheating on Floyd, making the circumstances even more tragic.
    • Martin Madrazo, who gets his house teared down by Michael for a comparatively trivial misunderstanding, and later has his ear cut off and wife kidnapped by Trevor.
    • In terms of heists and big scores, poor Trevor himself seems to be getting the short end of the stick whenever he tries to do something big and profitable without prior input from Michael or Franklin. To date, his first possible big break falls through when his Chinese investors cut a better deal with his rivals, his next big score, despite succeeding, ends with him being forced to return the loot or risk ending up on the front page of every most-wanted list in the world, his third heist almost succeeds only for the plane carrying the loot to be shot down and crash into the ocean, and his fourth, while going off without a hitch, ends with him having to part ways with his love interest, rather tearfully too. Even in GTA Online he doesn't get a break; the "buyers" who he was setting up a big drug deal with turn out to be undercover narcotics officers, and he's forced to flee amid a hail of gunfire with the only thing he could salvage: an Impotent Rage figure filled with a menial amount of molly pills.
• While it depends on the situation, Sakazaki Yuuya of Hatoful Boyfriend sometimes qualifies. In the second game he keeps pulling Big Damn Heroes moments that help but don't manage to resolve things, so he's constantly upstaged and never appreciated. In both games he loves his brother Sakuya, but Sakuya disdains him strongly. For all the work he does and all the times he's injured, no one much appreciates him. It's worse in the first drama CD, where Sakuya outright attacks him - Yuuya never fights back - is unsympathetic to injures Sakuya caused, and arranges for the Deadly Doctor to cut pieces off of Yuuya in "payment" for things Sakuya wants. Of course, he's Yuuya and never seems to mind.
• Norman Jayden from Heavy Rain. While he doesn't reach the Woobie status of Ethan Mars, "winning" a fight means getting his ass kicked and living, he suffers constant abuse at the hands of Rabid Cop "partner" Blake (and to a lesser extent, Da Chief), struggles with an addiction to ARI and triptocaine, and his happiest endings involve either him solving the case only to get hit with hallucinations due to Cybernetics Eat Your Soul, or failing to solve the case, throwing his hands up, and quitting the FBI entirely.
• Hollow Knight:
  • Zote. He's a Boisterous Weakling who gets put in situations he can't get out of without your help ( you can even leave him to die at the hands of one of the first bosses in the game), is mocked by the audience in the Colosseum of Fools when he actually attempts to fight, and may have had Abusive Parents. That said, you probably won't feel much sympathy toward him, considering that he's Zote.
  • Tiso could be considered this too, as he is built up for the majority of the game as a tough opponent to face in the Colosseum, only to be killed offscreen, and unceremoniously dumped down the pit for you to discover later. His status as one is fully cemented in the Godmaster campaign: when it seems he's finally got his chance to shine as a full-fledged Boss Fight... they literally drop a Brooding Mawlek on him. Poor guy gets killed both in the real world and in the dream world.
• Ultradimension Noire from Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory cannot catch a break. New character falling from the sky? She'll land on Noire. Iris Heart deciding she needs (or wants) to go full sadist on another CPU? She'll target Noire. Neptune deciding to pick on someone? You guessed it, Noire. The poor girl cannot catch a break, and this is even reflected in her stats. Her Luck Stat is the lowest of all the characters in the game.
• Jagged Alliance: "Elliot, you IDIOT!" Smack-smack! To explain: Elliot is the oft-put-upon advisor to Queen Deidrianna of Arulco, whose unique combination of Undying Loyalty, unfortunate position as the bearer of all direct reports to the mentally-unstable queen, inability to parse his words correctly, and sheer durability result in him getting berated and slapped every time he reports on the progress of the war with your band of mercenaries. Even when Deidrianna's troops manage to retake a city, he still gets smacked around and yelled at for being an idiot. As the game progresses he gets more and more bloodied by the queen's beatings, until she finally opts to just shoot him in the head. He survives and keeps on faithfully serving his queen right up until you storm the place itself.
• In the Jak and Daxter games, Daxter often finds himself at the receiving end of a misfortune, such as being sprayed with gunky water, riding a missile or being chased by a spider. He lampshades this in the second game after having a totem poll collapse on him.
  Daxter: It's a curse, isn't it!?
• Pit in Kid Icarus: Uprising just can't catch a break; he's trolled constantly by Palutena and the other gods, and the frequent butt of jokes.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Of the main trio, Donald Duck is most likely to wind up in a misfortune, especially in the manga adaptation. One noticeable moment is when he tackles Stitch after the latter drops in front of them, and the alien escapes laughing, enraging the wizard duck. Unfortunately for Donald, as well as Sora and Goofy, this alerts the Master Control Program, who arrests them and zaps them into the computer.
  • Sora himself shows signs of being a Butt Monkey in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]; he is more likely to wind up in a misfortune than Riku. This is noticeable in Symphony of Sorcery when the 15-year-old Keyblade wielder attacks a Dream Eater-possessed book... and gets Blown Across the Room in a humorous matter.
  • But the "champions" of this are Terra, Aqua, and Ventus. All three get more Nice Job Breaking It, Hero and Pyrrhic Victory moments than any other character. And then Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] hits them with Senseless Sacrifice and Shoot the Shaggy Dog. When they're not even present!
• In The King of Fighters, if anything comically bad were to happen, it would go either to Chang Koehan, Choi Bounge, Jhun Hoon or Sie Kensou.
• Louis in Left 4 Dead. In the opening, he is almost attacked by a Witch due to shining a light on her and gets tackled by a Hunter. Despite the fact he hates everything, Francis doesn't hate the fact of letting Louis die by either the zombies or special infected.
• Ellis in Left 4 Dead 2 gets the worst end of the stick just from the opening cinematic! He gets grabbed and pounded to the ground by a Charger, has a Jockey leap onto his back and winds up slamming Ellis into a car, gets ambushed by a Spitter when he is hiding with Rochelle, and gets caught by a Smoker while he's trying to run to an elevator to safety. Ellis isn't any safer in the actual game either. Compared to the other survivors, Ellis has the most painful screams when being attacked by the infected. Valve also revealed concept art of the Jockey doing, you guessed it, riding Ellis.
• Link is a Butt Monkey to Midna for the first half of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a Butt Monkey to Linebeck and Oshus (and occasionally Tetra) in the first half of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and a Butt Monkey to everyone in the first half of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. After that, he always gets so badass, that nobody even dares anymore to put him down in the slightest possible way.
• Light Fairytale: The fat Class 2 soldier has a Running Gag of being knocked out by his mutant or mechanical allies, only for his allies to fail to defeat the party anyways. One has to wonder how he got promoted from Class 3 to begin with.
• Little Busters! has three: genki, trouble-making Haruka takes the brunt of the snarky ripostes and My Friends... and Zoidberg-type comments, Cute Clumsy Girl Komari gets most of the physical humour, and Masato gets them both and anything else left over.
• Marvin from MLB Power Pros: Using a Marvin Fate Card basically throws the guy at whatever story event you're encountering. It's best used when you suddenly need him to suffer misfortunes in your place.
• Lufia:
  • Dekar, due largely to being an utter Idiot Hero. His stupidity tends to earn him just as many awesome moments as stupid moments, though.
  • In Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals, Guy's a magnet for teasing, with most of the party, Idura, his own girlfriend, and even Dekar jumping in on the "Dumb Muscle" bandwagon.
• The Black Baron (stop starin') of MadWorld. He introduces the various violent Minigames, and the introduction inevitably ends in his death, only for him to come back unscathed to introduce the next one. Although he is the Final Boss, so it could just be he's a lot tougher than he looks.
• Mass Effect:
  • Shepard can be one of these, if you give him (or her)both the Colonist and Sole Survivor backstory. One results in their entire colony, and then every one of their fellow soldiers die on Shepards first backstory mission!
  • Conrad Verner as well, especially if he survives to Mass Effect 2 and you play a renegade.
  • Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani, a.k.a. The Reporter That Renegade Shepard Keeps Punching Out. In "Lair of the Shadow Broker", the Broker has footage of her being punched out by a krogan, and kicked in the shins by a volus.
    
    She's also a chew toy for Paragon Shepard. Using all Charm responses in the first game results in her coming off (in the words of Admiral Hackett) "like a babbling idiot" when her report airs. The Paragon responses in the second game result in Shepard ever-so-politely tearing her a new one.
    Shepard: (if Shepard saved the Council) The Alliance lost eight cruisers. Shenyang. Emden. Jakarta. Cairo. Seoul. Cape Town. Warsaw. Madrid. And yes, I remember them all. Everyone in the Fifth Fleet is a hero. The Alliance owes them all medals. The Council owes them a lot more than that. And so do you.
  • As of the third game, the entire batarian race is paying for their Kick the Dog moments with interest - and pain. First, the Alpha Relay in one of their systems is destroyed, releasing enough energy to wipe out the entire system and every batarian in it - a little over three hundred thousand of them. Which is nothing compared to the casualties they suffered when the Reapers popped into the galaxy right on their doorstep and flattened every single one of their defences in hours, toppling their entire government and and their homeworld. It later comes to light that an ancient piece of technology they stole out from under the salarians was a dead Reaper, which indoctrinated most of their higher-ups and their best scientists just in time for the invasion. When they join the rest of the galaxy in fighting the Reapers out of sheer desperation, the other races are a little slow to forget all the slavery, piracy and terrorism, with one joke commenting that Alliance medics will be sure to use medi-gel to patch up any wounded batarians, once they finish using it on any wounded humans, asari, krogan, turians, quarians, volus, vorcha and geth (who, being robots, don't even use medi-gel). They do, however, make sure to pre-emptively "honour" the many, many, many casualties the batarians are certain to take.
  • Volus characters tend to be the butt of many jokes, as well. You get many opportunities to threaten volus at various points. There's even one point where the Paragon option is to knock one over. And then there's the skycar lot volus in the Citadel DLC.
• Sir Daniel Fortesque, the undead protagonist of Medievil. In life, Fortesque was a knight who became friends with the king of Gallowmere through exaggerated tales of his exploits. When the evil necromancer Zarok tried to conquer the kingdom with an army of demons, Fortesque was thrust into battle at the head of Gallowmere's army, but killed ignominiously by an arrow to the eye in the opening minute, and his teenage second-in-command had to take charge and win the day; to save face, the king made up a story about how he slew the sorcerer singlehandedly, gave him a hero's burial and promptly metaphorically rolled a boulder over his grave. Everyone he meets knows what a loser he really is and won't skip a chance to remind him. If the player does well then Fortesque can save Gallowmere and rightly earn his place as a hero.
• Metal Gear:
  • Metal Gear Solid has Johnny Sasaki, whose Grandfather was also a Butt Monkey. In the first MGS he had diarrhea, and in MGS4 he joins the new Foxhound to fight Liquid Ocelot. When Snake sees him, he is astounded that Johnny's been able to survive for 10 years (Snake confused him for a rookie). The 2007 TGS video has him farting and trying to take a crap in a barrel, when a guy sees him and starts chasing him while his pants are down. Butt Monkey indeed. He also has two hidden cameos in MGS2. You can listen to him talking to himself in the bathroom, complaining about how getting knocked out and left lying in the prison floor gave him an even worse diarrhea while spying on Ocelot in the Shell 1 core. He gets another bout once he encounters Emma Emmerich on the Strut L Oil Fence. Poor guy.
  • Let's not forget Raiden in MGS2 and MGS4. He's double-crossed by his colonel (actually an AI designed to control the world), beaten up by Snake and Olga to use as bait for Ocelot and Solidus, groped by the President of the United States (who is then shocked to discover he is a man), subjected to torture and having to run around nude until Snake brings him his gear, and subjected to an experiment by the Patriots where they cut his head off and attach it to a robotic body. He's frequently mocked in MGS3, despite the game taking place years before he was born, with a Russian officer named Raikov who looks like Raiden, is gay for Colonel Volgin, and gets his clothes stolen by Naked Snake (later to be known as Big Boss) to use as a disguise, revealing that he wears a thong. Colonel Volgin himself later gropes Naked Snake, who is disguised as Raikov — and he is caught because, unlike Raikov, he doesn't get an erection from it! The fact that American and European audiences were not very receptive to the idea of an effete Bishōnen protagonist is probably the root of much of Raiden's (and his Russian body double's) suffering. And then there's the short comedy series in MGS3 where Raiden tried to take the spot of Main Character from Snake by killing Big Boss... only to continuously fail so horribly, from beating up by Volgin (mistaking him for Raikov), raping by Volgin, slapping by The Boss, and getting a slight respect to Big Boss, only to be run over by Russian soldiers and the Metal Gear-like machine.
  • Don't forget Hal "Otacon" Emmerich. While he becomes much less of a butt monkey as the series progresses, he had to put up with a lot of crap in the original MGS, from pissing himself in fear of the Cyborg Ninja to having Sniper Wolf die. All that on top of the fact that his father commited suicide after his stepmom seduced him, causing his sister (with whom he was close) to bear a grudge against him for a long time...
  • On the villainous side of things, poor Metal Gear RAY. In MGS2, it's portrayed as a brand-new model that nonetheless gets trashed en masse by Raiden (until Cutscene Incompetence kicks in, of course). It comes back in MGS4 solely to get its ass handed to it by a long-obsolete and half-destroyed REX. It makes another appearance in Rising as a Warm-Up Boss and is cut to ribbons for its trouble in the "Rules of Nature" sequence by a Raiden who hasn't yet received his new cyber armor. Poor, poor RAY.
  • Bladewolf is also treated like this in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. His DLC Campaign has him try to leave Desperado behind, only to be stopped and humiliated by Mistral. Not long after, Raiden "kills" him. He gets better treatment once he's rebuilt as Raiden's companion until the last act, where Armstrong beats him up Offscreen. When he gives the Muramasa to Raiden, Armstrong kicks him away while he lets out a dog-like whine. The last time we see him in the penultimate cutscene, Sunny accidentally steps on his tail, he hits his head with the desk he was under, gets hit in the head by a book and falls unconscious.
• Gary from ModNation Racers is usually heard/seen being picked on by his co-worker Biff, and let's not even start on his butterfly-sticker collection!
• Monkey Island's Guybrush Threepwood is always a bit of a Butt Monkey, but in The Secret of Monkey Island and The Curse of Monkey Island this is overshadowed by his good nature and occasional heroism. In Escape from Monkey Island, on the other hand, he is constant running joke, either with his efforts falling flat and being made fun of for it, or being mocked by every other character in the game (a great deal of which seems to go over his head). And let's not even get started on his treatment in LeChuck's Revenge, which seemed determined to make him an unlikeable Jerkass as well as an (Iron) Butt-Monkey.
• Salsa from Mother 3 is a Butt Monkey in the figurative and literal sense — he's constantly administered electric shocks from Yokuba, the Pig Masks kick him around, and he generally goes through all sorts of abuse all in the name of saving his girlfriend. It's rather satisfying when Kumatora and Wess help him bust out of his situation.
• Rottweiler from Neighbours From Hell is on the receiving end of Woody's pranks. To make things worse for him, he normally doesn't notice his neighbor intruding the house, neither is he aware that all the mishaps in his daily life are broadcasted on TV.
• Nobody Saves the World: Randy experiences quite a bit of pain trying to capture Nobody, from a boulder falling on top of him to getting whipped around by a tentacle.
• Quaver of the Overlord series. It gets particularly blatant in the early levels Overlord II, when he manages to lose an eye merely by inspecting the block of ice the Overlad arrived in. Also in the early levels, he gets knocked down a chasm when he tries to sing a ballad in the newly-crowned Overlord's honour.
• Chickens in Paladins only exist to for painful slapstick. In-game, Pip's ultimate turns enemies into helpless chickens for his allies to slaughter. In the trailers, the only time a chicken shows up is to get blown up or smacked around.
• Persona 4:
  • Yosuke Hanamura.
    • First he found out his beloved Saki-senpai didn't love him — and worse, he found this out AFTER she died! Also, if you follow his Social Link, he gets complaints at his job from bitchy girls. And don't remind him of the countless times Chie kicked him in the nads, and the hot springs incident as well. Though its justified to some people, as Yosuke has the unfortunate tendency to stick his foot in his mouth quite often and is a bit of a Jerkass (ultimately good, but quite oblivious to it).
    • This treatment carries over into Blazblue Cross Tag Battle, where practically every character except Yu Narukami and Makoto Nanaya has a joke at his expense.
    • Also, in the spinoff Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, Yosuke has the most mediocre luck as compared to everyone else. And worse still, his initial Persona Jiraiya, has HIGHER luck than his evolved Persona, Susano-o at 57 to 47 at max level.
  • All of the boys got their share of Butt-Monkey-ness. Especially in the Camping Trip, where Yosuke and the protagonist tasted the terror that is "Mystery Food X" after expecting good results. Then at the night, Kanji Tatsumi is still teased by the boys about his... err... issues and spends the whole knocked out by the girls while trying to prove about his 'manliness'. The next day, all of them got kicked into a waterfall, which their Sadist Teacher puked into from above. Then they all get much more laughable misfortunes in their visit to the Amagi Inn, from being tossed around with items for entering the bath at the wrong time (because the girls didn't remind them about the time shift), into stumbling upon two Gonks and being chased around...
• Persona 5:
  • Ryuji Sakamoto just can't seem to catch a break: He makes a lot of comical screw-ups and most of his teammates always call him out for this, especially Morgana, who always insults and downplays his intelligence in front of others for little to no reason, and when he does something right he gets backhanded compliments at best. Unsurpsingly, he has the worst luck stat out of everyone in the group and his ultimate Persona IS a monkey.
  • Yuuki Mishima is probably an even bigger Butt-Monkey than Ryuji. Despite being responsable for most of information on Mementos targets for the Phantom Thieves and creating and managing their Phan-Site, he is pretty much The Friend Nobody Likes and is only close to Ryuji and the protagonist (The latter who can even express annoyance at him), having only interacted with Ann, Yusuke and Futaba once (with the last one even calling out how generic he is, calling him "Nishima" and outright asking him if he is an NPC) and not even meeting Makoto or Haru. His Social Link is actually one of the few ones that always ranks up regardless of what responses you choose. Mishima himself says that he has always been the butt of all of the jokes and just learned to accept it overtime.
• From what we can see of Portal 2 from the trailers, the two robot characters in co-op mode seem suffer much humiliation at the hands of almost everything the enrichment facility has to offer.
• Psychonauts:
  • About half the cast are Butt Monkeys of some variety, but the standout is probably Raz's friend Dogen. Bullied by seemingly everyone at the camp (with the possible exception of Lili, though even she makes jokes at his expense), he's even menaced by the squirrels, and everything seems to terrify him. He gets constantly blown up in Coach Oleander's training course, and he's the first child at the camp to get Brainwashed - after being held hostage, of course, and tortured by a deranged dentist. Other, lesser Butt Monkeys of note include Elton, a shy, sweet kid who makes friends with the fish in the camp's lake - prompting the bullies to go fishing. He's generally the first to get kicked out of any mental world. The long-suffering Comically Serious Sasha also gets his fair share of abuse.
  • Don't forget Maloof. Not only is he bullied, but if you go to his MySpace page you discover that even the people comforting him ultimately decide he's a crybaby not worth consoling. However, in this case, The Dog Bites Back. By becoming a seven-year-old mob boss.
  • This is pretty much Fred Bonaparte's shtick.
  • The sequel has Raz in this role at first, getting his clothes taken away by Norma.
• The refree in the Wii version of Punch-Out!! is this, never being able to catch a break. Among other things, he got beat up several times by certain boxers, such as Aran Ryan, Bald Bull, and Super Macho Man, and was greatly humiliated by Mr. Sandman for no apparent reason.
• After being shoved out of the spotlight for two games by the Rabbids, Rayman became a good example in Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party. No matter what he did, he couldn't get rid of his bunny-infested television, and his change into a sniveling wimp didn't help a thing. He was eventually run out of his own home by the Rabbids after suffering a Heroic BSoD.
• John Marston is the constant butt of vicious insults from both his future wife, Abigail, and protagonist Arthur in the first half or so of Red Dead Redemption II. Abigail's is in more of an Anger Born of Worry way but Arthur's is in more of a Green-Eyed Monster/disspointed older brother kind of way.
• Resident Evil has Ethan Winters, the protagonist of 7 and 8. In the first hour of those two games alone, Ethan suffers more bodily harm than the rest of the cast of the series combined.
• Zorne Sepperin of RosenkreuzStilette, who is constantly desperately yearning for her adoptive daddy, Michael Zeppelin, to someday accept her as his real daughter ever since Iris was born. The fact that Iris killed him to make her suffer for having always hated her and refused to get along with her, and having to put up with her easy defeat courtesy of Tia who was asking her to calm down and listen to her (and Grolla who was suggesting her to follow her friend Trau's example and therefore refrain from actually helping Iris cause as much mayhem and destruction as possible for fun)? Yeah, she's one unlucky girl. But, in the sequel, Freudenstachel, she really Took a Level in Badass to make up for her unluckiness in the first game.
• Pierce in Saints Row 2, in the first instance you see him, he involves a plan to break in to a casino down to the second. Cue Gat, "Hey, I really like the dream house ya built here, but why don't we just walk into the casino and shoot all the motherfuckers between us and the money?" After the mission cue News Reporter, "The leader of the 3rd Street Saints, Notorious criminal Johnny Gat, and an unknown accomplice (Pierce)" Butt Monkey thru and thru.
  • Saints Row: The Third is a little lighter on him, but he's still given his share of abuse. The Star Wars-esque opening text crawl at the beginning of the same even poses the question "Who gives a fuck about Pierce?". Exaggerated if the player chooses the Russian female voice for the Boss; She is romantically obsessed with Pierce, and it doesn't help that she's a complete psychopath that has a murder record on her that runs into the thousands. Good luck telling her you're not interested, Pierce, old boy.
  • Agents of Mayhem throws him a desperately needed bone. In a world where the Saints never existed, Pierce became the leader of the Vice Kings and then conquered all of Stilwater in one fell swoop by simply giving the other gang leaders a shitload of money in exchange for joining him.
• Schwarzerblitz: Being a comic relief, Shaz Aliart gets put through a lot more indignities than the other characters. He was created to star in a show that bombed badly, leaving him unemployed and turning to a life of crime. He has since changed his name several times to avoid the Fishface Crime Syndicate after taking away a large sum of money from them. In the present day, he's a drunkard with money troubles, some of his alternate costumes are an "Unpaid Bills" Janitor outfit and a Penguin Mascot animal suit. When forced into a fight against H-168 Krave, Shaz breaks his hand when he punches the robot as it continues to mock him. Near the end of the game's story, he gets his butt kicked by Evilobster, much to the amusement of his former crime boss, Don Go. And the Final Boss of Arcade Mode is embarrassed for being defeated by him.
• Shantae: If someone is having misfortune befall them, nine times out of ten it will be Bolo. Whether it's getting caught in Techno Baron's mermaid food production line or Rottytops tricking him into eating a hot pepper (although, to be fair, that one also applies to Sky), Bolo just cannot catch a break.
• Spain in Sid Meier's Pirates!:
  • They have a lot of really valuable cities, and a crapton of treasure fleets. Unfortunately for them, their ability to defend these possessions is really inadequate. Their cities have comparatively poor garrisons, and their ships rapidly become obsolete; treasure galleons are total pushovers even in the early game, and war galleons may be tough nuts but they are also very slow and easily outmanoeuvred. Got a decent Brig-class ship? You can dance around them. Got a Ship of the Line? Curb-Stomp Battle waiting to happen.
  • As a further point, the game's villain characters fly under Spanish flags, not Pirate ones, hence a Spanish-aligned Player Character will find it hard going to completing the main plot while maintaining a good standing with holy Spain. To English, French and Dutch-aligned pirates, Spanish stuff is 100% fair game, especially seeing as how they outnumber the previously mentioned three factions, occasionally all put together.
• Terry the Earth Elemental from Skully doesn't have the best of luck, if at all, ranging from being the No-Respect Guy of the elemental quartet to being a Disappointing Older Sibling for his brother and sisters. Every single cutscene where he attempts confronting the younger elementals ends with him getting humiliated and his butt kicked, from Wanda the Water Elemental dropping a tidal wave on him to Brent the Wind Elemental trolling him to climb up a cliff before blasting him away and Fiona the Fire Elemental instantly trying to sink him in lava.
• Soul Nomad & the World Eaters is chock full of Butt Monkeys. Gig, the evil force possessing the protagonist, takes glee in tormenting virtually every single party member the player meets. At first, the Hero's slightly ditzy friend Danette is his sole target, as Gig calls her by "stupid cow" instead of her name for literally the entire game, but the prospects open up as more of the less-serious story characters join... until the player meets Odie, who serves as Butt Monkey to not only Gig but virtually everyone else as well. He's so pathetic that he's a member of the Dio family, a lineage of the most powerful mages in recorded history... who flunked out of magic training.
• The Clown aboard Space Station 14 is often harassed by the rest of the crew. As the Clown often interprets their job as "terrorize the crew in non-violent ways" the crew often snatch at any reason to do the same thing right back.
  • Passengers are often terrorized as well, as they are at the very bottom of the command structure and are probably up to no good either way so why not steal their bag?
• In Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, Ultimate Spider-Man gets the worst treatment out of all the Spider-Men. His hazards are Electro (whose powers are his weakness), being fought by a somewhat Genre Savvy nut that just refuses to shut up, and not just Carnage, but Slayer robots designed to destroy parasitic organisms...which includes the suit that Ultimate Spidey is wearing. Then he has to outrun tsunamis and collapsing heli-carriers. And Mysterio disses him on his height]].
• After getting his ass kicked by Akira at the start of the game, Maruhashi from Spirit Hunter: NG spends the rest of it getting bossed around and insulted by Seiji for the sake of comedy.
• Star Wars Chess: C-3PO. Not only does he get most of the more humiliating defeats when he's captured, but even the battles where he wins have him bumbling his way to victory and getting hurt a lot such as when he defeats Darth Vader, he ends up losing his arm as it was cut off by the latter's lightsaber.
• Star Wars: Jar Jar's Journey Adventure Book features a number of click points that cause Jar Jar to fall victim to slapstick when they are clicked on.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Poor Luigi. When the man in green isn't getting forgotten and overlooked in favor of Mario by both allies and enemies alike or tortured by his crippling fear of everything (especially ghosts), he's the target of most of the physical and verbal abuse that happens throughout the franchise. This is at it's peak in the Mario & Luigi games, where no one outside Mario seems to respect him at all, with even allies regularly mocking him to his face. Luigi's original Final Smash in the Super Smash Bros. series plays with the character's status as this, with his Negative Zone attack stated to be the manifestation of the dark side he embraced from being in his brother's shadow. In Super Mario Galaxy, Luigi even plays second banana to himself. The The Year of Luigi advertising campaign reversed this somewhat, with New Super Luigi U, Luigi Bros. and Dr. Luigi being basically New Super Mario Bros. U, Mario Bros. and Dr. Mario Online Rx respectively with little to no acknowledgement of Mario and a greater emphasis on Luigi, even having the implication of Mario, the word "Bros.", crossed out in green paint on Luigi U's title. Other games in the celebration, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon and Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, don't remove Mario any more than their predecessors but give Luigi particular love by having him more or less overcome his fear of ghosts and having Bowser remember his name for once.
  • Wario and Waluigi are usually this in the intro to the Mario sports games, though with what they go through, they can be considered more of an Iron Butt Monkey.
  • Despite being a regular in the Mario spin-offs, Waluigi hasn't appeared in any other games. No Mario appearance, not in Wario Land, not even claiming a microgame collection in WarioWare.
  • Bowser's been kicked around as well, which can be seen throughout the Mario RPGs. Super Mario RPG has his castle and a chunk of his minions being taken by the Smithy Gang, which leads to him joining forces with Mario. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door had Bowser spend most of his screen time lagging behind Mario's party, where among other things, he goes through an entire level only to find a Peach poster in Koops' village, breaks into Rawk Hawk's training where he pummels Rawk Hawk and finds a fake Crystal Star, and when he finally meets Mario in the final part of the game, he and Kammy are promptly beaten. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga has Bowser get stuck in a cannon and blasted off, get amnesia and become Popple's sidekick, become possessed by Cackletta, get blasted into the sky and smash into the screen in the process.
  • In the Super Smash Bros. series, Mario himself is this, though to a much more downplayed and lesser extent than his brother. In one cutscene (one that is actually important for unlocking Luigi) in Melee's Adventure Mode, Mario attempts to jump up onto the Mushroom Castle rooftop... only for Luigi to jump upon his brother's head and use it as a platform to jump higher, sending Mario falling down in one of the rare moments of the two brothers' roles being reversed. And it doesn't stop at Melee... the trailers and gameplay videos for Brawl, SSB4, and Ultimate have a habit of beating and humiliating Mario (getting cooked by Kirby, netted by the Villager, sent flying by the Wii Fit Trainer, got viciously "murdered" by Ridley, etc.), and in Brawl's Subspace Emissary, he gets turned into a trophy far more times than any other character. It's both surprising and funny when you consider that Nintendo rarely, if ever, puts Mario through the same kind of Humiliation Conga in his own series.
• Kirby:
  • Kirby and King Dedede have their moments as Butt Monkeys. In Kirby's case, he even gets conked on the head by a Waddle Doo in an Imagine Spot during a cutscene in Kirby's Adventure.
  • The Waddle Dees, the Mooks of King Dedede and goomba of the series, also get the short end of the stick in a few games.
• Pretty much everyone working for Spooky in GL Labs in Spookys Jumpscare Mansion. The best example is when one of her men showed concerns about Specimen 3, she just laughed him off and causally left.
• Super Robot Wars:
  • As far as treatment by other characters go in Super Robot Wars V, Soji tends to get the short end of the stick compared to Chitose. This is especially true in regards to his success (or lack thereof) with women.
  • The Super Robot Wars Z series has Hibiki Kamishiro. He's effectively a scapegoat for Sôsuke Sagara (Kaname Chidori chews Hibiki out) and Alto Saotome. In the "Sayonara, Idol" Downloadable Content for Jigoku-hen, Johnny Barnett plays from a clip from a movie starring Eida Rossa, in hopes of having Hibiki understand her charm as a Idol Singer. It winds up with him mentally broken with Dull Eyes of Unhappiness saying "Chu! Chu! Chu! Chu!"^note The Japanese equivalent of a kissing sound again and again.
• Zelos Wilder of Tales of Symphonia. Although handsome, he is almost always shown to fail frequently at flirting with women, including his party members. He is light-hearted and tends to keep his worries in check, although he does become more important to the game's plot later on. Conversely, he is also "The Chosen One" of his planet, and his unique ability is charming female NPCs to receive gifts. Exaggerated in a skit, where the party is playing with Genis' kendama, and it seems to be heading towards Raine again...but then it defies gravity and hits Zelos instead.
  Mithos: "But I'm glad the professor's okay."
  Zelos: "What, so I don't matter? *sob, sob*"
• Raven of Tales of Vesperia throws "respect your elders" out the window, and gets the blunt end of many jokes, although many of the jokes are either made by, or played along with, himself.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • The BLU team is turned into this through the Meet The Team videos. Every single episode revolves around the exploits of a single class on the RED team, and always ends with the BLU team receiving horrible beatdowns from the starring character. In particular is the BLU Heavy, who is always the one who gets the most pathetic or humiliating deaths (usually). To date, BLU Heavy has been headshot, gibbed by a single rocket (twice in the same video), splattered by running blindly into over a dozen sticky bombs, killed with two shots by a level 1 Sentry, stabbed to death, and batted in the balls by the Scout in a fight over a sandwich. Exaggerated in Meet the Pyro.
    • Less obvious is the BLU Soldier, who has usually been right next to BLU Heavy in all his worst deaths. BLU Soldier has died in every single video. He was ventilated by RED Heavy, headshot by Sniper, blown down by a Level 2 Sentry, decapitated by the RED Soldier, gibbed by the aforementioned sticky trap, stabbed by RED Spy, and flattened by a train while chasing RED Scout. In fact, BLU Soldier's deaths are sometimes more spectacular (but not always as funny) than BLU Heavy's. Apparently they're being set up as a Butt Monkey tag team.
    • Let's not forget the BLU Spy. RED Engineer's turret mows him down, RED Sniper impales him from behind with his knife (something the Spy is supposed to do to the Sniper), RED Soldier smacks him with his shovel, he runs into the same sticky-bomb trap that RED Demoman set up, and BLU soldier, mistaking him for RED Spy, shoots him in the head.
    • Somewhat subverted in the Spy update, in which the RED Sniper gets stabbed by the BLU Spy.
  • In a game play example, we have the Pyro and Engineer, more specifically the players of said classes. The Pyro gets next to no screen time in any of the "meet the X" vids or even the trailer, is constantly whacked with the nerf bat whenever the class starts to become something better than mediocre, suffers from its after burn mechanic being on other classes but better (bleed does more damage AND is harder to treat), and is labeled with a W+M1 label that is very untrue (the class is ambush based) yet no one calls out classes in which W+M1 is more accurate (Heavy, Soldier). The Engineer suffers from being The Un Favourite from a development standpoint, and thus is grossly neglected when it comes to class updates. To date, Engineer is the only class to only have one Class Set update, while other classes like Soldier have three.
• Thrillville has Mortimer a constant one.
• The Touhou Project series can be said to practically run on Butt Monkeys.
  • First off, there's Cirno, even abused in the manual. One of Cirno's shining moments of Butt Monkeyness is in the fangame Touhou Soccer 2. While bosses below her on the power/intelligence scale, (including stage 1 bosses) like Wriggle, or Rumia^note too bad about Mystia there, though get fairly awesome, powerful special kicks, Cirno's combo with Letty Whiterock has her utterly failing to hit the ball with her infamous Icicle Fall -Easy- (which is mocked for having a safe spot directly in front of her), resulting in her getting horribly pummeled in the face by the ball and then dying.
  • Then there's Reisen Udongein Inaba, abused by her mistress with punishment times, forced to be a guinea pig and even her fellow rabbit Tewi plays pranks to frame her for it (not to mention being considered by a lot of fans to be "useless, only good for her sex appeal").
  • Fanworks, however, show that even Sakuya could become a Butt-Monkey for both Remilia and Flandre, and the same can be said for the other master-Battle Butler relationship (E.g: Yuyuko/Youmu). Likewise, there's also Alice Margatroid, who is turned into some sort of Moe character in the fanworks, practically Butt-Monkey bait for her partner Marisa.
• Whacked!:
  • Eugene. Pushed to the point of fulfilling the Who's Laughing Now?? trope. (This was actually a fantasy.)
  • Lucky is teased just as much as Eugene. Probably more as, unlike Eugene, Lucky threatens them for real, which only serves to feed the troll.
• Beat from The World Ends with You. He has a trail of failures behind him.
• The Xenoblade Chronicles games tend to give this role to The Big Guy, namely, Reyn, Zeke, and Lanz. Each of them are usually on the receiving end of misfortune and ridicule from their friends, but Zeke gets a special mention, due to his comically bad luck.
• Yakuza: A recurring character in the series is Goro Majima's dogsbody/assistant/second in command Nishida, who attempts to be the Only Sane Man counterweight to his Bunny-Ears Lawyer boss, and spends most of his time being humiliated, brutalized and roped into his boss' latest shenanigans for his efforts.
• Yandere Simulator:
  • Kokona Haruka, who is the default rival of the playtest versions of the game until Osana Najimi gets put in. As a result, she gets the worst of every single bad thing you can do to her. You can murder her, get other students to bully her, drown her, electrocute her, burn her alive, push her off the roof, torture her into Brainwashed and Crazy mode, drive her to suicide, poison her, get her expelled, frame her for murder...the poor girl just can't catch a break. She only gets two major options that result in a happy ending — one is the Matchmaker option, which sets her up with a boy other than Senpai, and the other is doing her a good turn by kidnapping the daughter of a loan shark who her father is in debt to and convincing the loan shark to void everyone's debts to him. And at the end of the last option, you have the opportunity to betray her and drag her down into your Torture Cellar. Poor girl.
  • YandereDev also does NOT like Midori Gurin, the green-haired girl on the roof of Akademi High, who is only there to kill so you can dump blood on someone. She's basically the embodiment of everyone that likes to send the Dev useless emails, and thus, the Dev does not like her, even killing her in some of the update vids.
• One of the selling points of You Don't Know Jack: The Ride was the return of all five hosts from the series so far. They get competitive about it. In particular, everyone repeatedly screws Buzz (the host of YDKJ2) out of his hosting duties. By the time you've played every round of the game, he has only asked one trivia question.

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