Western Animation / Extreme Doormat

Extreme Doormats in Western Animation.

The Amazing World of Gumball:
- Richard is shown to be like this at times. For example, in "The Castle", he's physically incapable of saying "no" even after people kick him out of his own house until Gumball, Darwin, and Anais Teach Him Anger. Another example was in "The Cycle", where Harold Wilson repeatedly insults him and all Richard can do is laugh nervously.
- Darwin is also shown as a doormat early on. In "The Words," Gumball decides to teach him to speak his mind after he sees Darwin completely unable to tell Sussie to be quiet, which of course doesn't end well. While he goes back to normal by the end of the episode, he's grown a spine since then.
American Dad! had the episode "One Little Word", where Stan Smith is portrayed as a doormat for his boss Avery Bullock, constantly at his beck and call no matter how inconvenient or demeaning his orders are. In particular, Bullock is having an affair and orders Stan to help cover it up and take care of his mistress, all while Stan is supposed to be on vacation with his wife Francine. At the end of the episode, Stan finally decides to say "no" to Bullock...but he does this immediately after he's been shot by his enraged wife and is on the floor pleading for help (and Francine, who'd spent the whole episode trying to get Stan to assert himself, is practically begging him to call 911).
Amphibia:
- Before she arrived in Amphibia, Anne was always submissive to Sasha, even being forced to cut school to hang out, but this changes in the Season 1 finale. After Sasha forces her to submit by dropping her sword and breaking the other frogs' spirits, Sprig stands up for Anne. She, in turn, grows a spine.
- Though it's not shown, it's implied that Sasha pushes Marcy around the same way she does with Anne. Interestingly enough, Marcy rarely speaks out or voices her own opinions whenever she is around both Anne and Sasha at the same time and just simply goes along with whatever they want to do.
- Toadie, the Mayor's loyal assistant. To this day, he has been pretty much the main example of a doormat. He is the one who receives physical abuse on this matter passed as a comedic relief moment like being used as a carrier (A small Frog, actually the smallest adult species) for the Mayor (a massive Toad) when the Mayor loses his own hot air balloon or being used as a step stool. Also, he is ok with everything he can say or do. It is revealed in the chapter "Battle of the Bands" that he stopped giving his own opinion voluntarily years ago, only willing to obey someone's orders, his excuse being that sometimes is more fun to be there for another person that he cares about. In fact, he has only lashed out three times during the series.
Batman: The Animated Series:
- Harley Quinn is this when it comes to the Joker. Lampshaded in this exchange:
  Harley: I'm not a doormat! Am I?
  Poison Ivy: If you had a middle name, it would be "welcome"!
Linda Belcher from Bob's Burgers has a terrible case of this involving her family and her own kids. Her parents tend to walk all over her, with her mother Gloria being the absolute worst at it for being a huge bitch (Linda's kids don't even have a high opinion of her) who gets away with her nagging (Linda reasons that it's the only way she can be happy... which Bob has all the right to complain that everyone else suffers for it for no real good reason). Linda's sister Gayle is a mess of a person who constantly asks the Belchers for large amounts of money and whose helplessness tends to get Linda roped into it. Linda's kids (mostly Louise) are the ones who know they can get away with most stuff when appealing to their mother's feelings.
Slinkman from Camp Lazlo, particularly when it comes to Scoutmaster Lumpus in earlier episodes.
Class of 3000: Philly Phil is a downplayed version. While not a complete pushover, he's generally passive, easy to hurt, tends to do whatever's told of him without a fight, and is not willing to stand up for himself. He loses this trait after "Big Robot on Campus."
Dan Vs.: Chris often gets roped into Dan's revenge schemes and eventually goes along with what he says while openly disagreeing with him. At one point, he has to remind Dan and Elise that he is his own person and can make his own decisions. That said, there are a couple of times where he puts his foot down like in "The Monster Under The Bed" or "Chris".
Stacy Rowe from Daria fits the bill, though she started to grow a spine in the final season.
Ed, Edd n Eddy: Ed, when around his friends (mostly Eddy) and especially around Sarah, probably because he's too stupid and seems just happy to be an obedient follower. He doesn't even mind being abused by his younger sister or treated like an object, despite being extremely strong. Not including "Little Ed Blue", he only stands up to Sarah once, because Eddy told him to, and immediately feels guilty about this when Sarah starts crying.
Eddy: If Sarah told you to jump in the lake with a rock tied to your head and wait for naked photos of you to develop so she could hand 'em out to all the kids in the cul-de-sac, would you?!
Ed: I had socks on, Eddy!
Family Guy:
- Cleveland's extreme doormat personality became a plot point in one episode, where it caused his wife, Loretta, to cheat on him with Quagmire because Cleveland wasn't passionate at all. Cleveland's response is to apologize to her. Peter tries to teach Cleveland to get angry and it worked so well that Cleveland wanted to murder Quagmire. Cleveland manages to regain control of himself and, while he is still the doormat in his own show, he isn't as bad as he used to be.
  Loretta: Apologize?! I cheat on you, and you apologize to me?!! Cleveland Brown, you are pathetic!
  Cleveland: I disagree, but I respect your candor.
  Loretta: [pushing Cleveland out the door] Goodbye, Cleveland!
  Cleveland: I love yo- [Loretta slams the door shut]
- Lois' mother is also shown as being a doormat to her husband, essentially bending to his will and even suppressing her Jewish identity because her husband wanted to get into country clubs. However, when she discovers in another episode that her husband cheated on her, she firmly tells him to leave.
- Lois herself is also an extreme doormat. While she does get angry at Peter's tendencies to embarrass her and other shenanigans he puts the family through, Lois always forgives him at the end of the episode and has never even thought about leaving him. She'll also rarely stand up for Peter whenever her father puts him down.
- Meg herself is a doormat incarnate. Because she's the universe's Butt-Monkey, she's very submissive and doesn't put in any effort to defend herself. Her school, the town, and even her own family always mock her, abuse her (physically and mentally), and act like she deserves it all. In the hurricane episode, Meg finally snaps and tells off her whole family by showing them just how horrible they are as a family and as human beings. This causes everyone else in the family to turn against each other for their terrible and annoying flaws while Meg walks away from it. In the end, she realizes that without her, the Griffin family will turn against each other to let out their aggression and her being the punching bag was the only thing that kept any form of peace in the household. Meg apologizes to her family for acting out and everything goes back to the way they were.
Wilt from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. His catchphrases are "I'm sorry" and "Is that okay?". When lost in the woods, his first suggestion was, "I can starve first if it helps". Occasionally he has outbursts of anger at being treated as a doormat... and then apologizes for it.
Futurama:
- Neutral Planet has nothing but doormats.
Neutral Advisor: (Seeing the Planet Express Ship about to crash into their planet) Your Neutralness, it's a Beige Alert.
Neutral President: If I don't survive, tell my Wife "hello".
- Kif Kroker is a more moderate example, justified by having Zapp Brannigan as his superior. Especially after he hooks up with Amy, he becomes more of a Deadpan Snarker and much less passive.
PJ on Goof Troop. Despite being the Only Sane Man, he is so insecure that he finds it difficult to say no to anyone, no matter how unreasonable their requests are. Max typically drags him into Zany Schemes despite his objections, while his father treats him like a slave on several occasions. Even his little sister pushes him around. He typically puts up a token resistance with Max (who always manages to break him without trouble), and no resistance at all with his father, mostly displaying his resentment while alone, though there are a few occasions he's pushed too far. He also takes verbal abuse and rejection without fighting back.
Hey Arnold!: Phoebe served as this for her friend Helga at times. One episode had her get tired of this after Helga's actions lead her to get hit by a car and she gets Helga to be this for her. Things go back to the way they were by the end of the episode though.
Jesse from Infinity Train is a rather severe example. Regardless of the consequences to himself or others, he’s unable to say “no” to anyone, not even when his Jerkass friends bully his younger brother and make him tape the whole thing. Eventually, he does learn to stand his ground when the Apex messes with MT and Alan Dracula.
Iron Man: The Animated Series: MODOK has aspects of this trope, constantly putting up with the Mandarin belittling him and even having to be persuaded out of helping him enact a plan that would kill him. When asked why he puts up with it he answers "He makes me laugh. Seriously, I like him."
There was a short-lived Terrytoons character called John Doormat. However, this is only when he's with his wife; when he's at work he's actually a mean, scary boss. Which would make this Truth in Television in far too many cases.
- In the short Dustcap Doormat, John’s neighbor chastises him for being such a doormat and tries to teach him to stand up for himself. Every attempt fails, and it turns out his neighbor is just as much of a doormat to his own wife, if not more.
Kaeloo:
- Quack-Quack is easily manipulated and passively accepts both verbal and physical abuse. It's often suggested that he allows Mr. Cat to beat him up without retaliating just because it makes Mr. Cat feel happy, even going as far as to suggest that Mr. Cat should beat him up when he's feeling down. He also allows Kaeloo and Stumpy to boss him into doing stupid or difficult things for them without refusing.
- Eugly the rabbit. She's willing to do anything her sister tells her to do, even though she's constantly being mean to her.
King of the Hill:
- Bill can fit this trope sometimes, although it can be tragic just as much as it's played for laughs. He was really a go-getter guy when he was in high school and pretty tough and likable, but his current doormat status is implied to partly be because he joined the army, but mostly due to his leeching, cheating, dominating ex-wife Lenore, who left him with a broken heart and a missing spine.
  Bill: When people yell at me, I usually do what they say!
- Bobby can be like this too, mainly because even for someone his age, he's astonishingly easy to influence and can be pushed into behaving in strange ways just from being around certain people.
- Cotton's second wife Didi is maybe the most extreme possible version of this. She's always shown as quiet, depressed, and submitted, all of which are desirable traits in a spouse to the Jerkass Cotton Hill. With little free will of her own, she seems more like a slave than a wife.
Looney Tunes:
- Norman from "Norman Normal" is a nebbishy businessman who follows his father's advice to "not make waves" to a fault, being easily pressured by his boss into getting a sale through unscrupulous means and laughing at jokes he doesn't find funny just to fit in. The only hint of a backbone he shows is at the end when he angrily storms out of a cocktail party after getting mocked by the bartender and telling a needy, annoying friend "Go soak your head!"
- Tommy Cat from "The Night Watchman," who has to fill in for his father while he's out sick. Even while he's asking the rats to leave, he finds himself following their orders and getting pushed around by them. When he eventually yells at them to be quiet, he gets socked in the face and walks off crying. It's not until one of his nine lives chastises him for being so pathetic (pointing out that his dad trusted him) that he musters up the courage to stand up for himself and fight the vermin off.
The Looney Tunes Show:
- This incarnation of Porky Pig will put up with or go along with anything because he's soft-hearted and wants to have friends. Bugs Bunny is determined to make him more assertive, but Daffy Duck takes advantage of him on a daily basis.
- In his first episode, Gossamer is depicted as very passive, simply enduring all of the bullying he receives from his classmates, all of whom are much smaller than he is. Daffy sees this and tries to teach him to stand up for himself.
Making Fiends: Mr. Milk has quite a few doormat qualities, although it's mostly because he's stuck being school teacher to local Villain Protagonist Vendetta. Having an evil red bird fiend constantly keeping him in check doesn't help much either.
Mickey Mouse: In "No," Mickey is depicted as literally incapable of saying "no" whenever someone asks him for a favor, leading to people constantly taking advantage of him. He relies on Donald to teach him how to say "no" to people, but it Goes Horribly Right.
Miraculous Ladybug:
- Marinette Dupain-Cheng is stated to be this, as she is supposed to be shy, can't say no, and let Chloe bully her for years. But it sounds like an Informed Flaw as Marinette is only shy in front of Adrien, otherwise nobody impress her... including Cat Noir (Adrien), whom she constantly bosses around. She also chews Chloe out every time it's needed and is very assertive in general.
- When it comes to boys, however, this is a frequent flaw. Adrien Agreste let his father control every aspect of his life, including the love one in the parallel time line of Cat blanc, where Gabriel would forces his son to break up with Marinette. As Cat Noir, Adrien lets the girl he loves, Ladybug, belittle and mistreat him. His time dating Kagami was very brief, but she still had the time to be very controlling. Adrien tends to find excuses for everyone, including Chloe and Lila, and can't say no to them (well, for the second, only once).
- Luka pushes it to the extreme by not minding at all that Marinette is already in love with Adrien. He does not show a modicum of jealousy towards the latter (to the point you can wonder if he is really into Marinette) and even encourages them. This is a Yo-Yo Plot Point, though, as in Truth, Luka was for once extremely pushy into forcing Marinette to tell him her secrets. Or that in Crocoduel, he seemed to have a bit of regret to be the Romantic Runner-Up... only to be an Extreme Doormat again in the next episode.
Mole from Mr. Bogus finds himself in this trope very frequently. It makes a lot of sense since he often serves as Ratty's Sycophantic Servant and will very blithely listen to anything that he says.
The Bushwoolies from My Little Pony were frequently troubled by the difficulty they had disagreeing with anyone, especially each other; their leader Hugster seemed to be the only one who really had a mind of his own. It was probably all they could do to decide to rebel in "Escape from Katrina" in the first place.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- Fluttershy, who kowtows to pretty much everything under the sun. Don't push it, though. And don't threaten her friends: Fluttershy doesn't stand up for herself, but standing up for her friends is another story entirely. An episode revolves around her doormattitude, which has been turned Up to Eleven for the sake of the episode; she's even pushed around by Angel Bunny, who up until now tended to make it his job to keep everyone else's pushing around to a minimum. So she goes to a seminar on assertiveness, which causes a complete personality 180. She actually calls Pinkie Pie and Rarity worthless to their faces before the Heel Realization rolls around.
- In Season 6, we find out her parents are even worse about it, which her freeloading brother gleefully takes advantage of. Apparently she was always the assertive one in her family.
Discussed and subverted in Over the Garden Wall. In the episode "Schooltown Follies", Beatrice accuses Wirt of being this. Annoyed, Wirt purposefully obeys everything Miss Langtree and Greg say just to slow down their progress to Adelaide's and spite Beatrice.
The Powerpuff Girls (1998): Downplayed with Professor Utonium. While he's often affectionate with his girls and does mean well, he rarely ever gives them a punishment whenever they do something immoral. Seasons 1 and 2 seem to give him a more balanced parenting style, but later on, he becomes this to the point of forgiving them easily.
Played with in The Ren & Stimpy Show. Stimpy appears to be like this sometimes for Ren. However, that's the gag: it isn't so much that he's a doormat (extreme or not), it's more that he's...well, an "eediot".^note
The title character from Rocko's Modern Life fits this trope perfectly. He lets everyone (mainly his friends Heffer and Filburt) take advantage of his kindness, and no matter how many times they wrong him, Rocko is quick to forgive them even though he knows full well they will wrong him again in the future.
Sidekick: Golly Gee Kid the janitor, in his sidekick days, this is basically his job as Maxum Man's sidekick.
The Simpsons:
- Waylon Smithers, an assistant to Mr. Burns. For much of the series he helps with Burns' schemes almost unquestioningly, but he may be a subversion in that there are some schemes even he will object to at the risk of losing his job. (See "Who Shot Mr. Burns Part 1.")
- As Homer Took a Level in Jerkass, Marge Simpson appeared to be more and more of a doormat, forgiving him over and over again, not only for stupid accidents and acts of ignorance, but huge acts of genuine deceit. While Bart and Lisa weren't willing to put up with it in many cases, Marge overlooked almost everything he did.
  - Finally addressed in the movie where Marge declares she had put up with Homer's jerkass nature and shenanigans long enough and decides to leave him. Homer spends the rest of the movie figuring out why Marge left him and what he can do to correct it.
  - One episode lampshades this behavior of hers. The family is kicked out of town because of Homer's drunken antics, Bart's destructive pranks, and Lisa's expensive environmental initiatives. At the townhall meeting when Marge tries to defend the family, she's told she's the worst of them all for always turning the other way and acting as an enabler to their behavior.
- In "Bart vs. Thanksgiving," Abe implies that Homer Simpson himself was this when he was younger, and the way Homer responds indicates that it hasn't totally worn off.
  Abe: Homer was never stubborn. He always folded instantly over anything. It was as if he had no will of his own. Isn't that true, Homer?
  Homer: Yes, Dad.
- Ned Flanders (specially post-Flanderization). He's a bit of a pushover, and easily lets Homer insult him or take advantage of him. In their first meeting, when he asks Homer if he needs something, Homer agrees to "borrow" the TV tray that Ned has just bought for himself. Eight years later the tray is still in the Simpsons' living room.
- Kirk Van Houten. After he gets divorced "A Milhouse Divided", his self-esteem goes alongside everything else he loses.
- A notable example is Seymour Skinner, obsessed with being the "perfect son" for his mother Agnes and not capable of saying NO to her. One episode even had him win an award for being the biggest doormat in Springfield and was represented in said scene with a doormat with a picture of his face on it. He is such a doormat that, in "The Principal and the Pauper", when it's revealed that the Seymour Skinner we know is not actually Skinner but a former teen rebel named Armin Tamzarian, Agnes is not only capable of kowtowing Armin into falling into line with one sentence when he tries to go back to his roots but the specific reason she gathered all of Springfield to kick out her returned true son is that he is not this and it ticked her off.
Pushover in The Smurfs (1981) episode "The Smurf Who Couldn't Say No", who basically is a Smurf who has trouble saying no until he accidentally causes the Marsh Monster to be released by extinguishing the ancient Foxfire Flame in the Great Swamp, and then he and Scaredy return to the swamp to relight the flame and Pushover insists on Scaredy doing the honors. By the time the episode ends, Pushover is no longer a pushover!
South Park:
- Liane Cartman, Eric Cartman's mom. She will give her son anything and everything he wants to ridiculous extremes, without objection. The episode "Tsst" focused on this, with the Dog Whisperer basically explaining that her social ineptitude means her son is the only real companionship she has, which is why she will do anything to make him happy so she can spend time with him. This is one of the reasons Cartman is such a Jerkass and a spoiled brat. She finally decided enough was enough in "HumancentiPad" and started denying Cartman...only to have him convince everyone that she repeatedly raped him — in public. It seems that she will now occasionally stand up to him and put her foot down. He'll whine and complain about it, but more often than before, she stands firm.
- Chris from the two-part episode "Do The Handicapped Go To Hell?"/"Probably" is also an example of this, as he lets the rude/abusive Saddam walk all over him during the episode and reacts very passive-aggressively to Satan cheating on him.
- Butters Stotch in his pre-breakout days. Though he sometimes sill qualifies when he's not playing The Woobie or Badass Adorable.
The title character of SpongeBob SquarePants is this to the extreme; several episodes show he's virtually incapable of saying no to anyone, and in "Walking Small," he's so passive that he actually lets a random fish sit on him without a fight. Several episodes show him try to grow a spine, only to conclude that he's fine with being stepped on... sometimes literally. That being said, as shown in "Can You Spare a Dime?", SpongeBob does have his limits on how much abuse and exploitation he can take, though it took several months of Squidward taking advantage of his kindness before he reached that point. SpongeBob tended to Squidward's every ridiculously demanding need while being forced to wear a French Maid Outfit, with Squidward refusing to get a job or even get out of bed. SpongeBob finally snapped.
Amethyst in Trollz realizes this about herself after watching old movies, where she only ever did what everyone else wanted to do.
Luxor the cat from Tutenstein, thanks to the magic that compels him to serve the pharaoh.

Extreme Doormat / Western Animation

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