Jerkass / Other Media

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Advertising

• The Panda from the Never Say No to Panda commercials appears out of nowhere and then wrecks your day because you didn't buy/eat his cheese.
• It is rare for Happy Bunny to say anything that isn't an insult or a rudely dismissive retort.
• Big Bill Hell's: Big Bill Hell is an open scam artist who insults his customers, screws their wives, and threatens said customers with violence.
• Mayhem, a character from various Allstate commercials (played by Dean Winters), is the personification of various troubles that Allstate advertises coverage against, and he prides himself on it.

Music

• Denis Leary's signature song "Asshole" (and arguably, his entire stand-up career) is a celebration of this trope.
  • Israeli stand up comedian Gil Kopatz's translation of Leary's song adds a distinctly Israeli spin, celebrating and lampooning the ars subculture.
• While it's rather hard to tell whether or not they actually were like this, The Sex Pistols certainly presented themselves this way, much to the horror of Moral Guardians and awe of fans.
• Murdoc Niccals from the band Gorillaz
• Aimee Mann's boyfriend in the video for 'Til Tuesday's "Voices Carry."
• Mr. Douchebag.
• The guy from The Lonely Island's Threw It On The Ground who angrily throws anything given to (or taken by) him on the ground, including a sample of a new energy drink, a free hotdog, his girlfriend's cellphone, a boy's birthday cake (after which he calls the kid a jackass to his face), and a pair of so-called Hollywood phonies' dinner table, all for purely perceived insults. He gets what he deserves in the end when the pair of phonies repeatedly tase him in his butthole.

Mythology

• Almost every single Greek Hero is one. Also every Greek God, varying between "Jerkass to some extent" and "Jerkass on steroids." (Athena is an example of the former, while Zeus is definitely the latter.) Considering the jobs of the Greek Heroes in Myth is to get completely screwed in the end (and they know it too) it is sort of understandable for them. Then you notice that the Greek Gods are doing most of the screwing on the Heroes and that most of the Heroes are children or grandchildren of the Gods, which only makes the Gods even worse Jerkasses.
  • Among the Greek Gods, the exceptions are arguably Hestia, Demeter, and Hades - and there are stipulations even there. Hestia hardly did anything in any myths, so her personality's a little flat, and Demeter did go into a sob-fest over not having her daughter Persephone by her side every waking hour of every day (case in point - it's when Persephone is with Hades that Autumn and Winter occur, never mind the mortals that suffer for her "grief"). Hades is generally considered a whole lot nicer that his siblings, but he can also be a Jerkass depending on which story featuring him you read. (Did he take Persephone callously? Did she seduce him? Did Aphrodite have him struck by Cupid's arrow?) Hades was at least a lot more lawful that the rest, and despite a capacity for cruelty he was more sympathetic towards others (particularly compared to his brother Zeus).
    • Compared to Zeus and the others, Hades was downright saintly. He was willing to compromise and give fair deals, whereas the others would make a bet with you and then change the rules so they win, and punish those who dare to go against them.
  • There is an exception to the Greek heroes: Perseus. Possibly the only decent person in all of their mythology.
  • To be fair to the heroes, some of them like Hector, Cadmus or Hercules tended to be all-around nice guys. Some of their jerkiness is from Values Dissonance between ancient times and now or doing what they had to to survive in a harsh world. Many of their victims had it coming both then and now. Others like Jason and Achilles suffer from that, but are such big jerks that even back then they were regarded as complete assholes.
  • With regards to gods, though, Ares takes the cake. Granted, he was also relatively stupid and was the closest thing the Greek gods had to The Brute, but the fact that he was the god of unrestricted war...well. Athena, his equal and opposite, hated him. But then, so did everyone else.
  • In nearly any incarnation of the Greek gods in media whether it be comics, books, or television they will come across as this. Sometimes it will be toned down so they are more balanced or even likable, but they will somehow or another come across as jerks.
  • Interestingly, perhaps the noblest hero of Classical Mythology is Hector, greatest of the warriors of the Trojans. He actually opposed the Trojan War, only fought to protect his family and his people, treated his foes with honor, and actually treated his wife like a human being instead of a trophy (which was unheard of). He was even considered one of the Nine Worthies by medieval scholars, and it was said he was the first to wield Roland's legendary sword Durandal. Why is this interesting? Because he was neither a Greek nor the descendent of a god. This is all, however, partially mitigated by his truly vicious desire to drag Patroclus's corpse round Troy on his chariot, then dismember it so he can hang Patroclus's head on the city gates and feed everything else to his dogs.
• Encantados (Amazon were-dolphins) are Jerkasses of the first calibre. Their Handsome Lech behaviour includes using their powers to seduce girls and trick them into sleeping with them, knock them up and leave. Not only that, they lie to the women in question, promising marriage. They even kidnap girls and take them deep into the river, where the kidnapped girl will be a Sex Slave for the rest of her life (making them rapists as well).
• The parents in Korean legends are usually that type, but those in the Korean legend "The Child General" take the cake. In the story, the couple who wished for a son for a long time (as they need one to carry on the family cult) finally gets one. He is predestined to be a lead general and as a child can already fly and do wonders. So, with this gift, the parents come to the conclusion that because of the danger that the child could become a rebel against the king (although the prophecy said he will be a general...) they kill the kid via asphyxiation with a pillow. Epic.

Multiple Media

• Strakk from BIONICLE. He's not good, nor is he evil, he just hangs out with the good guys because they don't really want to kill him. While he has honorable moments, like when he kept Malum from killing an unconscious Vastus, he's selfish, has a huge ego, only helps others for money, is not above belittling his teammates, nor taking the time during a fierce battle to start looting dead combatants. This behavior eventually escalated to the point where he himself attempted to kill a downed foe in the arena, which lead to the society banishing him to the desert.

Podcasts

• Pretending to Be People features Francis Beans, a Mad Scientist, Torture Technician, and all-around asshole who is gleefully abrasive to anyone that she doesn't directly work for.

Roleplay

• Darwin's Soldiers:
  • Spc.Crota has a tendency to make offensive comments.
  • Gustave is openly speciesist, foul-mouthed and violent.
• Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
  • Finn is openly rude, obnoxious, arrogant, and dismissive of his peers. His player specifically described him as the 'obligatory antagonistic asshole' in his character bio.
  • Jessica has a Hair-Trigger Temper and spends most of her screentime complaining about the other students or using her Compelling Voice for her own selfish desires. Her backstory explains why she grew up to be so prickly, but doesn't excuse it.
• Quite a few characters in Survival of the Fittest at times. One of the most notable was Monty Pondsworth of v4 pre-game, who is a schoolyard bully with mommy issues. Many characters don't like him for a reason. Whilst Monty never actually made it onto the island, two characters in particular have taken his spot as the top jerkasses in V4. The characters in question being Philip Ward, the resident school bully who whilst not technically a player, has commitied some truly dickish acts including stealing Dominic Stratford's stuff, beating Maria Graham to a pulp, and wearing a Sonic the Headgehog T-Shirt. and Maxwell Lombardi, a smug, egocentrical if somewhat well-dressed English "gentleman". Unlike Philip though, Maxwell quickly wasted no time in crossing the Moral Event Horizon after he kills Augustus MacDougal and realises that Evil Feels Good...

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000:
  • There's an entire Space Marine Chapter dedicated to this trope, namely the Marines Malevolent, who are all a bunch of arrogant, prideful bastards that don't care for the lives of those weaker than themselves. This pretty much includes the entire Imperium they're supposed to be defending. Their callousness toward human life tends to piss off the more sympathetic Chapters, particularly the Salamanders after a nasty friendly fire incident.
  • The Iron Hands in the book Wrath of Iron ended up being jerkasses to a lot of readers. Most of the allied Imperial Guard force's casualties come from the resident Iron Hands company repeatedly appropriating Guard companies and returning them to the main force after suffering staggering losses. At the beginning of the main assault they left two whole ''regiments'' of men to die to draw forces away from where they came in. The Lord General in charge is understandably upset by the circumstances.
  • There's also the Minotaurs, a fleet-based chapter with a mysterious record and seemingly the personal hit squad of the High Lords of Terra. Now most Astartes will happily tell you that the only thing that could stand up to one of them one-on-one is another, better Astartes - and the Minotaurs take this to the logical conclusion: They specialise in fighting and killing other Astartes. One of their battle-brothers even had the gall to insult Marneus Calgar to his face. Don't even get us started on how they treat the Imperial Guard.
  • Eidolon, of the Emperor's Children. He's probably the most arrogant member of a painfully arrogant Legion, is sycophantic to a fault, and regularly misreports his accomplishments or takes credit for his subordinates' successes to whitewash his own screw-ups. Note that all of this is before his Legion falls to Chaos. Eventually Fulgrim, Eidolon's Primarch, calls him out and cuts his damn head off...then later has Fabius Bile resurrect him because Fulgrim needs him for a ritual. Eidolon doesn't learn anything from the experience.
  • Many of the Craftworld Eldar come across as uppity, snobby jerks, but from his description, the corsair leader Prince Yriel is haughty even by their standards. Saying the Dark Eldar are jerks is a bit like saying the Sun is somewhat tepid.
  • The Necron Cryptek Orikan is said to treat other Necrons with a quiet, sneering contempt.
  • This was actually Leman Russ' big character flaw, besides his My Master, Right or Wrong attitude. He often argued and fought with his brothers and demonstrated a distinct lack of tact and understanding in dealing with them. So when the Horus Heresy kicked off (yep, you guessed it), nobody liked Russ and nobody trusted Russ.
  • To say nothing of the God-Emperor himself. Many of the Primarchs who followed Horus during the Heresy simply did so because the Big E had previously wronged in some petty, nasty way. For example, he earned Angron's animousity when he abducted him away from his friends and fellow gladiators just as they were about to perform their Last Stand, and he turned Lorgar against him by having the Ultramarines raze Monarchia (the capital of the Word Bearers world) and having them publically reprimanded and humiliated.
• This is what the Pathfinder blog has to say about Alain the cavalier.
• In the Magic: The Gathering fandom, this is how many, many people view blue decks (and many partially blue ones as well). Given that a large part of blue magic is built around counterspells ("yeah, that cool spell? No."), this was perhaps inevitable.
• In Shadowrun we have Clockwork, a hobgoblin rigger and probably the most hate-filled, paranoid jackass on Jackpoint. At least his paranoia (the kind that isn't shared by every other Shadowrunner) is relatively contained to technomancers, but it still was enough to make him try to sell NetCat (a technomancer and fellow Jackpoint user) to the megacorps when he knew they'd perform horrific experiments on her and was practically freaking out when he learnt she was pregnant. When he mentions the child's eye colour at one point, NetCat, Slamm-0! (the child's father) and their friends are suitably disturbed.
• Ambuscade in Sentinels of the Multiverse is a vain, arrogant French Jerk Attention Whore who decided that it would be fun to hunt heroes for sport, although admittedly he first set his sights on Haka, a guy who is Nigh-Invulnerable and once beat him without even realising he was there. In his episode of the lore podcast, The Letters Page, Christopher and Adam say that while Ambuscade isn't a big-league evil kind of character, he's definitely a jerk. Even his Heel–Face Turn did not make him less of a prick, it just meant that his obnoxious showboating was now pointed at OblivAeon instead of anyone else.

Theater

• Bertram, Count of Rousillon, in All's Well That Ends Well. Because he is married to a peasant girl (in the Distaff Counterpart of the Standard Hero Reward), he rebuffs her, saying he will only bed her when she can prove he has gotten her pregnant. Then he goes off to fight in one of the wars between Italian states.
• Freddie, the American champion in the musical "Chess", certainly fits the bill. Throughout the plot, Freddie engineers offensive publicity stunts to get more money, constantly abuses Russia and his opponent, mocks/manipulates his second, generally acts like a whiny little child, and eventually breaks down after he loses the championship. Moreover, he's also violent and sensitive, making him easily provoked. Yet, oddly enough, he doubles as The Woobie, considering he sings a song called "Pity the Child."
• Four words: Tom and Amanda Wingfield. In The Glass Menagerie, the former is an Aloof Big Brother who, while shocked at the latter's own jerkassery, goes as far as to not pay the electric bill to get into the merchant navy, and leaves her mother and mentally shaken sister for broke. The latter is the former's mother, talks about her past of having gentlemen callers constantly in front of her insecure daughter, and may have sent Tom into HIS aforementioned bouts of jerkassery.
• Hamlet: At his worst, Hamlet himself can be quite terrible to the people he interacts with, and his words are always cutting. Case in point: his mocking of Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern and his tirades towards Ophelia and Gertrude.
• Oh, Henry Higgins from Pygmalion! So very, very much! To wit: when he first meets the heroine Eliza he insults her accent even as she's trying to scrape enough money just to pay her rent; and he's endlessly patronizing and insulting to her when she comes to him for speech lessons. He makes no bones about the fact that other people annoy and bore him; and most of his interactions with other characters involve him insulting them, bullying them, challenging them, complaining about how bored with them he is, or else just bluntly identifying their accents. What's satisfying, though, is that the characters do notice this, and every single one of them Lampshades it when they remind him to have better manners.
  • In a potential case of Misaimed Fandom, the musical version My Fair Lady actually makes him something of a He-Man Woman Hater (Misaimed Fandom because a key point of his personality in the original play is that he doesn't at all discriminate in his treatment of anyone— he's just horrible to everybody around him)! The musical also attempted to soften him into something of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold in an attempt to make romantic overtures between him and Eliza okay...
• Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire is a sexist, arrogant brute who refuses to listen to anyone else and cares about little but his own poker game. There's a reason he's a Capricorn, as Blanche points out.
• Almost all of the good guys in A Very Potter Musical qualify, but Harry takes the cake. He's got an ego the size of the sun, constantly rubs it in the faces of all the other characters, and thinks the fact that he's Harry Potter makes him entitled to everything. By contrast, Voldemort's actually a pretty nice guy. Ron, too, especially since he explicitly says "I know I've been a Jerkass lately" when apologizing to Hermione.
• Dear Evan Hansen has Jared, who fits this trope pretty well. He is the titular character's only friend, but tells him numerous times throughout the musical that they are merely family friends, and that his parents pay his car insurance for him to hang out with Evan. While it is made clear later that Jared is lying, and is just as lonely as Evan, this does not excuse the apparent years he spent making fun of Evan. Even if he meant it to be a joke (which is not clear), Evan took it seriously as a result of his crippling social anxiety and severely low self-esteem.

Web Videos

• Arby 'n' the Chief:
  • Master Chief. He's a deluded Manchild who frequently makes inappropriate jokes, especially towards The Arbiter, and believes everyone that doesn't agree with him is stupid.
  • Travis, who was pretty much Chief in an Arbiter action figure, has his moments, but is nowhere near as extreme an example as the Chief.
  • Cameron and Cody as well. Mostly Cody.
  • Adam from Season 6 was the absolute worst one. He yells and swears at everyone, including his own mother and his teammates. And when his mom tells her about his dying grandmother, he just insults them both.
• The singer that's not saying the Pokémon names in this Dropout video of the Pokérap with 718 Pokémon ... it's Played for Laughs though.
  Water is a type of Pokémon!
• Dark Souls Misadventures: Lautrec's defining trait is that he's a complete ass to everyone, including resident nice guy Solaire. Though his dickinishness is so over-the-top it's downright hilarious. And Lautrec does have a few Pet the Dog moments every now and then, particularly towards the Darkmoon Knightess in the 2014 Christmas Special episode.
• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog gives us Captain Hammer, an egotistical gloryhound "superhero" who shows contempt for everyone around him and turns into a pathetic wimp the moment he first encounters something that actually hurts him.
• Don't Hug Me I'm Scared:
  • Red Guy dismisses all of Sketchbook's ideas as boring or uncreative.
  • Tony cuts off the trio's navel-gazing about time by beeping loudly and aggressively at them until Yellow Guy's ears bleed.
  • But who could forget our friendly neighborhood guide, Sketchbook? From the first film alone, she ruined Yellow Guy's painting of a clown by smearing black ink on it just because she thought Yellow Guy wasn't following what she thought being creative was, and also notified him about green not being a creative colour when he wanted to use it.
  • Shrignold keeps telling Yellow Guy that he is alone throughout the video, and also dismisses Yellow's ideas of what love is about. Near the end he also forces Yellow Guy to get married to his 'special one'.
  • Colin, despite saying several times how smart and helpful he is, keeps interrupting people, does not seem to acknowledge the original question being asked of him, and forcibly takes the puppets on a journey.
  • The talking steak won’t stop jabbing Bird Guy with a meat fork, and condemns all his choices of food as “greedy”—even when he wasn’t going to eat it in the first place. No matter what suggestion is offered, he insists that it will "make your teeth/gums all grey", and stomps on the model of the body repeatedly to prove a point.
• Tom from Echo Chamber.
  Tom (to Zack): If you get in front of the camera, I will stab you. I will actually stab you!
• Epic's Gameshows: DevinWithDevin competed in the 2nd season of Epic's Minecraft Survivor and spent his time being a bully that left contestants really hurt due to his comments. Some comments didn't air due to how bad they got.
• Alpha Bitch Nikita and Cloud Cuckoo Lander Bretman from Escape the Night can be incredibly harsh towards other characters, thanks to their It's All About Me attitudes. Destorm is the biggest one in the show, however, thanks to having a Lack of Empathy. He openly bullies other guests and even decides to Speak Ill of the Dead by insulting Alex' dead girlfriend just to piss off Alex For the Evulz.
• Gordon Freeman is depicted having this kind of personality in Freeman's Mind. He hides it well by being a Heroic Mime, but his inner monologue holds nothing but contempt for almost everyone that crosses his sight.
• Hot Bikini Beans: Features an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist named Hinkler who is dodging a thirty dollar debt owed to a old underground figure named Clyde. Clyde himself could be considered a Jerkass, in one episode he is entertained by a cruel prank he pulled on Hinkler one night when he is in a drunken state; Hinkler orders a hooker from Clyde who sends over a pro who turns out to be Hinkler's own cousin named Francis!
• A jerkass has a brief appearance in 20 Reasons Why NOT to Be "In Da Club" by Matt Santoro. A man named John is chatting it up with a girl at a club, and an unnamed man suddenly comes in and mentions that John has herpes. John is not happy.
• Microsoft Sam of Microsoft Sam Reads Funny Windows Errors can be quite the butthole, especially when provoked hard enough.
  • Other examples are alarm clocks and even your stomach which are treated like people from foreign countries who want to teach you about their culture even if you are not at all interested, thus playing you "the song of their people" at very inappropriate times (that is, beeping in case of the alarm clock, growling/farting in case of your stomach).
• Jonas from The Platoon of Power Squadron has quite the mean streak. There was even a comment on one of the earlier episodes when the team's powers weren't yet clearly defined asking if his power is “being a dick”.
• Professor Shadow: Jeremiah and Joe don't hesitate to use name calling or rudeness, particularly when in a competitive mindset.
• RedLetterMedia:
  • Mr. Plinkett, in both Half in the Bag and the Mr. Plinkett Reviews. Half in the Bag's Mr. Plinkett started out as an Asshole Victim and Jerk with a Heart of Jerk, but was flanderized into The Chew Toy. While the one from "Mr. Plinkett Reviews" is more of an Affably Evil Caustic Critic.
  • Jay and Mike from Half in the Bag, they're VCR repairmen who con Mr. Plinkett. Instead of fixing his VCR, they can get drunk and talk about recent movies.
  • The Grawboskis are Abusive Parents and have a very unstable relationship.
• The SuperMarioLogan cast is filled to the brim with jerks, but the ones that stand out are Jeffy, Mr. Goodman, and Bowser. Even the more reasonable ones such as Rosalina and Mario dove right into that trope as of late.
• Steely Dan in Vaguely Recalling JoJo. Dio and J. Geil cannot forgive him for hurting and lying to Enya Geil. He also treats his part-time worker abbd Jotaro like crap.
• Yugi from Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series. Joey saying "Yugi is such an asshole!" is practically a Catchphrase.

Other

• The Meme character Scumbag Steve, obviously. He is especially amoral at the matters of girls, drugs and parties. His iconic hat has achieved even more meme status than himself, though, to the point that if you crop the hat into a picture of any human/animal/inanimate thing, that human/animal/inanimate thing will automatically become a jerkass. The real guy behind the picture is actually a lot less scummy, though he's since embraced the meme in a self-deprecating way.
  • An example is "Scumbag Alkohol" which describes all the stupid things you may do when drunk (for example texting to your ex that you love her and stripping naked in front of the whole party) and features a picture of a vodka bottle wearing the hat. The vodka bottle is treated as if it's a sentient being who talks to you and suggests you to do all these things, convincing you that they are good ideas.

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