Butt Monkey/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Butt Monkeys in Live-Action TV include:

  • Even though he took levels in Badass, Merlin I believe qualifies for this roll.
  • Claudia Donovan spent most of her first episode of Warehouse 13 pointing a gun at Artie's head, but later on became a tool for physical comic relief, usually through messing with an artifact, and was revealed to be socially inept. They toned that down in the next season, though, as she gained more skill at and respect for her job. She remains socially inept, but that's justified by her backstory.
  • Robbie from Victorious. For example, the one time, in Helen Back Again, when he buys Sinjin's bike and Helen promptly runs over it with her car, but only AFTER he pays for it.
  • Practically everyone at different times in One Foot in the Grave, with the exceptions of Margaret and Mr. Swainey. The show's entire raison d'être is little more than a demonstration of the permanent surreal sadism of the universe towards Victor, and to a (marginally) lesser extent Mrs. Warboys and Patrick.
  • In most Sketch Comedy, one of the actors fills in this role more often on the set. In the case of Saturday Night Live's early days, it was either a female cast member or one of the token black cast members (if any). These days for SNL, it's a crapshoot as to who gets buttmonkeyed (usually it'll be a cast member who's not very popular with the audience [like Chris Kattan whenever he plays Paul Begala on the "Hardball" sketches], but even that doesn't happen much).
    • In Almost Live, John Kiester got saddled with it, because Ross Schaffer's comedy persona was an obnoxious, smug Eighties yuppie, and they wanted "the anti-Ross" to act as a foil. When Schaffer left the show, and Keister became the host, he still suffered a bit from it, mixed with a bit of Only Sane Man.
  • The Tom Green Show had Glenn Humplik. To be Tom Green's butt monkey is not an enviable position.
  • On Community side character Starburns is this.
    • Also main character Britta, to an extent. She a Phrase Catcher for "You're the worst!"
  • Mike Callahan in My Boys.
  • Pete Campbell of Mad Men. Everyone hates him. Viewers included.
  • X-Play's Roger: The Stan Lee Experience uses Bob Kane as this due to his hatred for him.
  • Whose Line Is It Anyway? had Colin, who was constantly being made fun of for being bald.
    • And Canadian.
      • And having strange shirts. (Though in his defense, they were found and chosen by Whose Line's wardrobe staffer.)
    • He knew it, too, and even Lampshaded it in an episode when Ryan and Drew's picking on each other went on a little too long.

Colin: I'll be your lightning rod of hate!

      • That same episode had a game where Colin ended up doing a handstand and not being able to get all the way up, with him saying that his battery pack got wedged up his ass, and Drew thought it was the funniest thing in the world for some reason, topping it off by saying "I don't know why I find it so funny whenever you get hurt."
  • In House, you can't help wonder why, why Wilson is still his friend. Every scenes between the two show sarcastic arguments and in later seasons crazy pranks, with House always having the last laugh. Poor Wilson is his most cherished victim because even though he always reads House's character, he's overall too nice to get back at him.
    • Even the rest of the staff sometimes make fun of Wilson, and Cuddy often punishes him for covering House!
      • They all get their share, however. If having House as a friend is already a pain, you see in every episodes what it's like to have him as a boss! (Especially Chase) Cuddy always had to deal with his antics, even more when they were dating.
  • Xander from Buffy the Vampire Slayer introduced the term, with his line "I'm sick of being everybody's butt monkey." in the Dracula episode. (The term first appeared on TV in BtVS, but was heard "on the street" well before that.)
    • Andrew was also frequently abused in the seventh season, though really no more than he deserved.
    • Harmony gets this occasionally as well on the evil side of the fence, but never more than in Angel's episode "Harm's Way".
    • Cordelia frequently gets this treatment in the Sunnydale High episodes, almost as much as Xander. Perhaps even moreso, seeing as everyone, including Xander, makes sarcastic quips at her expense.

Buffy: Cordelia, your mouth is moving. Words are coming out. This is never good.

  • Captain Jack Harkness of Torchwood, being unkillable, is repeatedly subjected to Fates Worse Than Death over the course of the show, especially in Children of Earth.
  • Josh Nichols from Drake and Josh. He gets taken advantage of by Drake quite a lot and is the butt of many jokes, and on some occasions Megan will say that he has a huge head- when in actuality there's nothing wrong with his head at all.
    • In one episode, literally assaulted in the streets several times.
    • Not only that, he has been arrested. Several times, in fact.
    • His dad, Walter, is an even bigger one.
  • Miles O'Brien from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was the character of choice when the writers needed to put somebody through hell for an episode. This led to the "O'Brien Must Suffer" in-joke among the writers, who intentionally tried to inflict something truly awful on him at least once per season. If an alien attacks one crew member, it's almost always either O'Brien or Worf (although the latter is for a different reason).
  • On Star Trek: Voyager, fans were fond of observing that Ensign Harry Kim was killed and brought back to life with something approaching regularity. Seems even being a major character isn't enough for an Ensign to survive. Not to mention his terrible luck with women.
    • Subverted in the episode "Timeless", where everyone BUT Harry Kim (and Chakotay) dies.
      • Until the end of the episode, when, of course, they both die.
    • Don't forget, he really did die in the episode where a Negative Space Wedgie duplicated the ship. The duplicate had the sense to send over his replacement before it blew up. Oddly, many in The Other Wiki fail to recognize this.
      • And since Status Quo Is God, no one ever mentioned this again. They don't even see fit to hold a memorial service for the original Harry -- they just welcome the duplicate on-board and pretend he was the real deal all along.
      • He's a 100% identical clone, created only a day or so before the original Harry's death. Aside from a minor divergence of memory, he is the real deal.
        • Except without Harry Kim's soul, perhaps. Then again, all of the Star Trek characters probably lose their soul whenever they get beamed from one place to another.
          • Or he has his original soul, and the rest of the crew don't. Or the soul has the good sense to go to the new body when a crewmember is teleported, and Harry's went from dead body to live body, or got temporarily split between them, or it's a sci-fi show so the topic of souls isn't important and doesn't make all the much sense.
          • In the Metaphysics of Star Trek, the author uses the concept of "Closest continuer" to get around the Transporter problem (Was it the real you that was disintigrated, and the one who arrives at the other end is just a soulless copy?) In terms of the Closest Continuer, the "Copy" is most like the original, and therefore essentially IS the original. Then again, there's The Prestige.
  • Let's not forget about Geordi from Star Trek: The Next Generation who gets pwned nearly as much as Worf. He's even worse with women than Harry Kim ever was. One particularly cruel episode had an alien taunt his blindness by moving his visor around, just because. The series seems to never let us go on the fact that he's blind (until the movies, well actually he gets taunted again in Generations, which may or may not have led him to go get cybernetic replacements by Star Trek: First Contact.). And apparently his mom disappears as some plot of the week. Worst yet is that nobody gives a damn about his mom afterwards. And to add insult to injury, in Voyager's "Timeless" he tries to stop Harry Kim and fails. Ouch.
    • In one episode, he's heading on his merry way to Risa for some rest, relaxation and poontang. He gets kidnapped by Romulans and gets a Mind Rape from them.
      • And when the Romulans are desensitizing him after he's been captured? They have him kill O'Brien.
      • Look at the bright side. It's not as though Geordi would have actually gotten any of said poontang had he made it to Risa.
      • Are we sure? If Curzon Dax (appearance as seen in the flashback in the Deep Space Nine pilot) could have, Geordi shouldn't have a problem. (Though Curzon Dax is a Kavorka Man with a slug with 200 years of memories inside him, so...)
    • See here for further proof of his incredibly poor luck.
  • And, of course, on the original Star Trek, Chekov did more screaming-in-pain than the rest of the crew combined.
    • He even got a torture scene in the episode "Mirror, Mirror".
    • In a nice inversion, he's the only one who doesn't get hit with the aging disease in "The Deadly Years". He still ends up getting subjected to a thousand and one medical checks, though.
      • "Blood sample, Chekov...Skin Sample Chekov...If this keeps up...I'm going to run out of samples!"
      • This was explained as a convenient way to show there was mortal peril. Apparently, Kirk, Spock and McCoy all being older, dignified men would have made it improper for them to scream, but Chekov is in his early twenties and still very boyish, so it's all right for him. Doesn't make it any easier on the poor guy, though.
  • Mickey from Doctor Who eventually realizes that he gets less respect than the Robot Buddy. In an Author's Saving Throw, he promptly decides to Take a Level in Badass.
    • Rory Williams has a lot in common with Mickey in this sense, though he progresses to The Woobie level with surprising speed and doesn't so much take a level in badass as bypass the concept of levels completely and end up becoming a near legend in plastic, guarding an ancient box for two thousand freaking years.
      • Yet a butt monkey in that he dies/is wiped from existence/turns into plastic...how many times?
      • So many times that in the series six finale "The Wedding of River Song", the Silence torturing alternate universe Rory as they are about to kill him Lampshade the fact. Subverted in this instance as alternate-universe Amy shows up. With a machine gun.
    • Jamie McCrimmon is this to an even bigger extent. Sometimes (just sometimes), the Second Doctor.
    • Arguably Turlough, who was constantly getting captured/locked up or otherwise abused, predominantly because the writers at the time had no real clue what to do with a male companion who was meant to be both intelligent and technically apt. Arguable because he at least partially brought it on himself through being a devious and treacherous coward.
    • Fitz, of the Doctor Who Expanded Universe Eighth Doctor Adventures, is a reconstruction of this trope. His friends all constantly make fun of him for the fact he's Book Dumb and a Lovable Sex Maniac. The Doctor, who kind of doesn't know any better, makes quite a habit of telling him to his face he's not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Despite the fact he's just a normal human Action Survivor, he suffers about as much as the Doctor does, which is setting the bar really high. But his friends only mock him affectionately (or in the Doctor's case insult him with no malice intended); even grumpy-to-the-bone Compassion trusts him and is almost content to tolerate him. It almost seems like some of his fellow companions like him because, for one thing, they do genuinely like him, and for another, they enjoy picking on him. And since he's had such a hard life, learned to take a rather sensible attitude to all the crazy, scary shit that goes on, and isn't an emotionally-stunted stoic like the Doctor, he eventually takes up the role of Team Mom.
    • The Doctor, particularly Eleven, really is "everybody's buttmonkey", even his own. See: "Amy's Choice", in which the Doctor, as the Dream Lord, makes fun of himself for his "tawdry quirks" (vegetarianism, stupid costumes, dragging around a cutesy space dog, etc.), and the Doctor admits, indirectly, that nobody hates him as much as himself. Amy, via Bait and Switch Comparison, says he "could almost be mistaken for a real person". River keeps shooting his hats. Going back a little, Donna kept calling him "Martian boy". And the Worf Effect has its way with him about Once an Episode, and he has (recently?) developed a habit of getting killed off constantly even between regenerations.
      • Not to mention, in a recent killing off, he spoke with the TARDIS's voice interface. When it first showed up with his face he yelled "No, not him, someone I like!".
    • The Ood seem to be going this way too as an entire race of Butt Monkeys. Whenever an Ood shows up you can bet something awful will happen to it.
      • The Doctor even lampshades this in the episode 'The Doctor's Wife', after accidentally vapourising an Ood. He casually says 'Another Ood I failed to save' in a mildly regretful tone.
  • Numerous Characters on Heroes have super-powers which give them nothing but grief...
    • Ted, whose unchecked radiation powers give his wife cancer before killing her, force him to go on the run after he's accused of being a terrorist, imprisoned by The Company and eventually getting killed by Sylar.
    • Niki, who develops Multiple-Personality Disorder as a response to her powers manifesting. The product of an abusive home, she is forced into a job stripping to pay back the money she owes a gangster, commits herself to an asylum (where she is, naturally, hassled by the evil redneck guards) after she realizes just how much control her alter ego has, indirectly causes the death of her husband D.L. and is generally manipulated by The Company, the gangster who runs it and her alter ego up until the point where she is Stuffed in The Fridge.
    • Maya, whose power to poison people from a distance cannot be focused at all. After killing most of her family and friends at her brother's wedding, she flees to a church to become a nun, kills everyone in the church and then lives the harrowing life of an illegal immigrant trying to get to America and the one scientist she thinks can cure her. She has the misfortune to cross paths with Sylar, indirectly causes her own brother's death when he realizes what she fails to regarding Sylar being dangerous. And then she gets in a relationship with Mohinder, who puts her in a cocoon in his lab as he's turning into a spider.
    • Matt, whose telepathic powers lead him to discover his wife has been cheating on him with his former partner. Over the course of the first season, Matt is also mistakenly , kidnapped, manipulated by Eden's power, suspended from his job, thrown out a window by Jessica, and SHOT WITH HIS OWN BULLETS.
      • Somewhat subverted in the second season when he rebuilds his life, gets a new job as a detective in New York City, adopts Molly, and learns the extent of his powers but he still gets his ass kicked on multiple occasions.
      • Back in full force in Chapter Three, where Matt is forcibly teleported around the world, left for dead and he finds out that he is destined to get married in the future but that his wife will die.
      • Back with a vengeance in Chapter Four, when Matt is illegally arrested, framed as a terrorist on national television, finds out that he has a son and that, oh yes, he really IS a dead-beat dad like he was afraid of becoming. He's also blackmailed into saving the Big Bad's life. Also, he's Blessed with Suck in that he also gains the power to draw the future... but it doesn't do him a lick of good. And in a final crowning blow, the future where his true soul mate dies is averted... but only because said soul mate (Daphne, his girlfriend) is killed from complications due to multiple gunshot wounds she received while trying to save him.
      • And taken to its final logical conclusion in Chapter Five, where Matt tries to imprison Big Bad Sylar's mind inside his own body... only to have Sylar prove to be better at using Matt's powers than Matt is, with Sylar proving capable of making Matt see things within one episode and taking total control of Matt's actions within two episodes.
    • And then we have Sylar, whose ability to literally NEED to know how everything works led to him turning from what might have been a brilliant genius into an attempted suicide case, followed by a psychopath who just can't lead a normal life even when he tries his damnedest.
  • Boomer (David Morse) on St. Elsewhere was the ultimate Butt Monkey; losing his wife, having his son abducted, and even getting raped in prison. Kind of puts the "butt" in Butt Monkey. Poor Boomer.
  • Leo Johnson on Twin Peaks was interesting because he was a terrifying and menacing figure all through the first season, but after his injury in the finale, he became a butt-monkey for everyone from his wife and her boyfriend to Windom Earle in the second season. It just never stopped! Certainly it was warranted, given his status as an abusive jerkass for the first bit of his existence, but after a while you couldn't help but notice it was getting silly.
  • During the middle seasons of The X-Files, A.D. Skinner suffered a lot of abuse: being shot, framed for murdering a hooker, blackmailed, and poisoned with nanotechnology (this last was never really resolved).
    • Don't forget the episode where he has the crap kicked out of him by a woman. But some men would pay good money for that.
  • Daniel Jackson on Stargate SG-1 is often getting killed, captured, kidnapped, or injured. One might argue, however, that this was because Daniel was The Chick -- gender notwithstanding.
    • During his short run, Lt. Colonel Mitchell also seemed to get more than his fair share of beatings, so much so that the actor even described the character as the "whipping boy". This may have been a way of presenting his relative lack of experience in comparison to the older characters. And possibly a way to cheer up fans who didn't like seeing Jack replaced.
    • And amongst the supporting characters, there is Sergeant Siler. After the first few seasons, whenever he appears on screen, there's a good chance something bad (or at the very least, painful) happens to him.
  • Ross on Friends, beginning with his three divorces, nervous breakdown, and job loss, he was also to be humiliated by the writers in front of women again and again and again. No matter what situation he is in, his so-called friends will not have much of a problem with reminding him how many times he has been divorced or how much of a failure he is. Sometimes he brings it on himself, but even just feeling a bit good and smug about himself is enough for them to forcefully bring him down.
    • Chandler, while not normally suffering as directly as Ross was also a Butt Monkey of sorts. He is the one character who is constantly belittled behind his back and sometimes to his face, usually by Rachel and Phoebe. In one episode Rachel even admits that she often wants to punch Chandler -- and she doesn't know why. This is always played for humour.
      • One episode actually has Phoebe and Rachel discussing a guy who they think is Monica's soul mate. While Chandler is RIGHT THERE. Rachel even says "It's a shame they never had a chance to meet". Of course, this is played for laughs.
    • Another Butt Monkey is the minor character Sophie. Rachel's boss, Joanna, verbally abuses her every single time she appears. Sophie is delighted when Joanna dies, but that scene is her last appearance on the show.
  • Paul on Spin City, most memorably when he was sued for being shot in the head. (And the plaintiff was rewarded more than he asked for.)
  • Sid from Skins.
    • One could argue that Chris from the same show is an even more extreme example; not only is he abandoned by his family, dubiously lucky in love, and prone to unfortunate drug-related incidents, his, er, underendowment is not only apparently common knowledge but a series running joke.
      • Chris was more of a Woobie than a Butt Monkey. He suffered in his life but was not ridiculed and taken advantage of half as much as Sid. Also the size of his penis didn't seem to bring him lack of success with women
  • Battlestar Galactica:
    • Chief Tyrol. The list is frighteningly long, so we'll just run down the list: Finds out his girlfriend is a Cylon. Girlfriend gets shot by co-worker. Girlfriend's clone has baby with someone else. Loses everyone he loves. Mercy-kills Socinus. Almost executed, multiple times. Freaky dreams. Accidentally hurts people. Almost Thrown Out the Airlock. Populist leanings are inevitably doomed. Married to fan-hated Cally, the co-worker who shot his Cylon girlfriend. Enough for you? Did we mention he's a Cylon? And when Cally finds out, she nearly goes insane and attacks him. Then she gets Thrown Out The Airlock by another person who recently found out that she's a Cylon. And he thinks she committed suicide. Then, in a fit of drunken emotions, loses the commander's good will and forfeits his post, finds out he's not the father of his child. Gets played by his old girlfriend, who manipulates his feelings into springing her from the ship's brig, leading to her almost destroying the ship. Poor bastard.
    • If there is one hapless character who just sort of happens to be the butt of all the jokes, it's undoubtedly Gaius Baltar, especially in the first season when he's still trying to get used to seeing Number Six everywhere (and, in one episode, is surprised that everyone else can see her, and Hilarity Ensues). Whether or not he deserves it depends on which side of the Face Heel Revolving Door he is that episode.
  • Ted, the lawyer on Scrubs, is so often the victim of abuse he was dubbed in one episode the hospital sad sack.
    • J.D. himself gets the Butt Monkey treatment often, usually in the form of the Janitor pulling some kind of prank on him.
    • It is even law that every intern is a Butt Monkey.
  • Major Frank Burns from Mash. Although he usually deserves it by virtue of being Frank, being accused of rape by a female superior officer who was trying to seduce you is a bit over the top.
    • Also Major Charles Winchester after Frank's departure. He too often deserved it, just not quite as often.
      • Ironically, it was because of his Butt Monkey status that Frank Burns was written out: Larry Linville expressed his opinion that Frank Burns had been developed about as far as possible, and could never advance beyond the uptight, reactionary portrayal that had become so well-known.
  • John Melendez as portrayed in sketches on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
    • Before that Branford Marsalis. Like in the Beyondo segment where Jay played a floating head that made predictions.
  • Toby in the US version of The Office. Pretty much anything he says is guaranteed to get an undeserved nasty and insulting response from Michael. And sometimes his just being there can provoke Michael.

Michael: Toby is from corporate, so he's not really a part of our family... also he's divorced, so he's not really a part of his family.

    • Even when he agrees with and/or helps Michael, he gets this.
    • Michael's reaction to seeing that Toby has returned after an aborted escape to Costa Rica:

Michael: NO, GOD! NO GOD, PLEASE NO! NO! NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...

    • To a lesser extent, Phyllis also fulfills this role, having Michael constantly belittle and humiliate her. And let us not forget the time she got flashed by a pervert in the office parking lot and when Dwight drove her to a bad side of town to only leave her there without a phone, forcing her to walk miles back to the office.
  • Ben on Reaper. If something nasty is going to happen to one of the trio of Sam, Sock, and Ben, it always heads straight for Ben.
  • To some extent, all of the main cast of The Young Ones, but most especially Neil.
  • Essentially the entire premise of Curb Your Enthusiasm seems to be that horrible things are funny when they happen to Larry David.
  • Trivette from Walker, Texas Ranger. Next to frequently kidnapped district attorney Cahill, he's the most hapless character in the show, being the butt of every joke and the victim of every attack by redneck thugs.
    • It should, however, be noted that Trivette is also quite a Deadpan Snarker and said rednecks thugs are usually very sorry afterwards.
  • Gareth in the original UK version of The Office is set up for pranks at his expense regularly by co-worker Tim, some of which can seem quite mean-spirited... However Tim often gets away with it because Gareth is depicted as being gormless and irritating, and often mean-spirited himself along with it, so you could say that Tim is simply giving him payback. Gareth still catches a break every now and then, though.
    • Dawn is also portrayed as such, at least later in the series where David Brent is constantly leaving her to clean up after him. She is much more sympathetic than Gareth though.
  • Tony Lewis of The Tenth Kingdom is a Butt Monkey for pretty much three-fourths of the miniseries, culminating when the seven years of bad luck he receives for breaking the Traveling mirror causes him to break the entire complement of the Dwarves' mirrors, compounding his bad luck by thirty times so that he ends up falling and breaking his back. After this, aside from continued snarkiness, he even Took a Level in Badass during the climax, sort of.
  • Howard Steel in The Worst Week of My Life.
  • Jerry the perpetual understudy from Slings and Arrows, who averages a hilarious injury every three or four episodes and inevitably gets parts snatched away from him as soon as he starts enjoying them.
  • Jon Stewart is frequently tormented by correspondents and guests alike on The Daily Show, from jabs about his height to insinuations that the departure of previous host Craig Kilborn was the worst thing to ever happen to the show.
    • Recently there was John Oliver's particularly brutal criticism of Jon Stewart's hosting the Oscars.

John Oliver: You know the only thing you'd be good at hosting, Jon? The funeral of fun. No, you're right, I take that back. You know who'd be better at that? Hugh Jackman. The guy's amazing!

    • Let's not forget the line "... the George W. Bush of comedy" Oliver said to Stewart in the same bit.
  • Bud Bundy in Married... with Children. If he isn't having his scholarship money stolen by his parents or missing out on a once in a lifetime chance to meet the president, he is getting fired from the Department of Motor Vehicles for working too hard and being forced to work as a chimney sweep, losing a toe to frost bite after being tricked by a girl, getting caught masturbating in the library, being raped by a huge fat woman while trying to sneak past a bodyguard to have sex with a hot female singer, growing breasts from an allergic reaction to an experimental pesticide or being dumped live on radio in front of his entire college. Still, he is marginally luckier than his father....
    • Bud's sister Kelly isn't much better off. Whether it's going from being the most popular girl in school to being reduced to working as a waitress in a miserable run-down diner, having her potentially hit TV show destroyed by Executive Meddling, being fired from her job for refusing to wear a bikini in a TV ad, losing all her hair and growing a beard when she tries an experimental zit remedy, getting bitten by poisonous insects that either force her to tell the truth or drive her insane, being forced to take the Bundy dog's place in a dog food commercial, being rejected by a hot rich guy because of the expensive makeover that was meant to attract him, being tricked by Bud into babysitting a group of bratty children while he takes all the money for his date, getting electrocuted after accidentally stepping in a fountain while wearing Al's "shoe headlights", or suffering through consuming a series of bad-tasting diet drinks for a commercial and then being digitally replaced by the company president's daughter when the ad actually airs, Kelly is proof that the women of the family are just as apt to fall victim to the Bundy Curse.
    • Al. Period. To list the things that have happened to him would require its own website.
  • E.B. Farnum from Deadwood is the camp's resident Butt Monkey, who constantly suffers physical and verbal abuse and degradation from just about everyone, even his hotel guests. At one point, one of the villains spits in his face twice and tells Farnum that he will kill him if he wipes it off, so Farnum has to walk around with spit and mucus on his face for a while. After justifiably being frozen in terror for hours.
    • Richardson is usually the victim of Farnum's impotent rage
  • If it's possible for an inanimate object to be a Butt Monkey, Buster the dummy from MythBusters qualifies. (And if he doesn't, Tory from the build team comes close at times.)
    • Isn't Grant usually the guinea pig?
      • True, but Tori's the guy who's always hurting himself or getting hit in the nards. A male Dojikko, if you will, with overtones of The Chew Toy because so many of the series' fans find the nutshots and other misfortune hilarious.
  • Chris Skelton from Life On Mars; his condition's improved slightly in Ashes to Ashes, in which he's acquired a steady girlfriend, learned to shoot straight, and stopped falling into goal nets, but he's still the go-to guy when it comes to fishing abandoned guns out of chemical toilets.
  • Egg Anne from Arrested Development is constantly belittled and she gets abandoned in Mexico. Her?
    • And don't forget Buster Bluth, especially in the episodes after he got his hand bitten off and replaced with a hook.
      • Well, he is a monster.
    • Tobias also qualifies. Over the course of the show he is run over by a car on several seperate occasions, has his hair plugs reject his body (resulting in a near fatal condition), and to add insult to injuries, his wife constantly attempts to have an affair.
  • Reviews on the Run host Tommy Tallarico frequently makes jokes at the expense of co-host Victor Lucas, implying he has a huge head when in fact his cranial proportions are quite normal.
  • It's usually played quite serious with Dean from Supernatural (in that he really doesn't like himself much either) but, bloody hell, in "Sin City"? Dean, sweetie, remembering an exorcism that will send a demon back to hell should really be one of your top priorities, you know?
    • Slightly justified at this point because it was still the early days and demons weren't necessarily any more important than other supernatural beings (except the Yellow Eyed Demon, and they were using the colt for that, not an exorcism.) Dean still is a serious Butt Monkey though.
    • In season 5, Sam seems to be turning into this. A Groin Attack and being forced to do a commercial for genital herpes, as well as getting chlamydia (from a 500-year-old witch, no less) all within episodes of each other.
  • Corey and Trevor fulfil this role on Trailer Park Boys, constantly screwing up when they try to help the Boys commit their crimes, being tricked by the Boys into taking the fall when they're busted by the cops, and being insulted and humiliated despite their idolizing Ricky and Julian.
  • Red's nephew Harold suffered through this role for the first several seasons of The Red Green Show.
  • Detective Carlton Lassiter in Psych. He's constantly being upstaged by a Deadpan Snarker Slacker who, despite having no formal police training or official standing with the department, effortlessly sweeps him aside in any investigation they become involved in, usually managing to charm the socks off everyone present in the process. Whatever leads he follows or moves he makes in those cases? Usually are wrong. And the Deadpan Snarker he loathes so intensely? Usually proved right. None of the other characters seem particularly inclined to show him any respect whatsoever (which is something that, admittedly, is partly his own fault, given how abrasive and uptight he is), and any misfortunes or unhappy circumstances that occur, will usually occur to him.
    • To a lesser extent Gus, as part of his role as the Straight Man, usually finds himself taking this role when Shawn manipulates him into doing something he doesn't particularly wish to do.
  • Post-season 1 Bellick in Prison Break. He was something of a Smug Snake in season 1, definitely not likeable. But the payback he gets is far worse than what he deserves. It is implied that he got raped by a prisoner at the end of season 2, was forced to drink water from a mud-puddle in season 3 and all such stuff, despite actually starting to become more likeable. In season 4 he seems to have regained a "good guy" status (and is on the team) and occasionally actually helps the plot.
    • Can't mention PB without touching on T-Bag...sure he deserved all the crap heaped on him,and if anything, showed himself to posses a rather preternatural ability to survive, but crikey the man took more than a fair few blows.
      • Or even better- Mahone. Starts out as Michael's only real mental rival with possibly the same condition/disorder as Michael. But he's a junkie. And a Government flunkie. They break his kids leg to force his compliance(he kills the agent responsible in a Crowning Moment of Awesome) He's shot. Then he's fired. Then arrested and imprisoned. And that's just season TWO! Season Three see's him trapped in prison, getting addicted to heroin to replace his ANTI PSYCHOTIC MEDS, getting OFF the heroin, escaping(barely) from the Panamanian prison. Season 4? Well to force him out of hiding the One World conspiracy has his wife and son attacked. His wife is made to watch their SEVEN YEAR OLD SON be slowly beaten to death.(The scene in the diner when he promises her revenge is award worthy, seriously, William Fichtner...god damn) Eventually though, he gets his revenge-he slowly tortures the guy who killed his son, to make the man APOLOGISE to Mahone's wife. Then he kills the guy. It's made even more awesome because the man is literaly mid sentence, launching into a 'we're not so different, you and I' speech when Mahone kicks him off a jetty and into the ocean. Crowning Moment of Awesome indeed
  • Murray, the incompetent "manager" of Flight of the Conchords. The Conchords number "Cheer Up, Murray" practically lampshades this, as the list of things that are supposed to cheer him up includes "You've got a wife... but she comes and goes" and "You've got all of your limbs" before the song just puts him down again: "Some people don't return your calls, they don't return your calls/ And some people call you Gingerballs, they call you Gingerballs..."
  • The Shield has two dueling butt-monkeys:
    • Detective Ronnie Gardocki is largely treated like a red-headed stepson of the Strike Team, forced to run the other guy's errands, had his car shot up by gangsters, mocked for his lack of a sex life, and suffers great physical harm over the course of the series (disfigured, mauled by dogs, hit over the head with a large cross) and ultimately made to be the fall-guy for Vic Mackey's crimes, as so far as Vic refusing to let him flee town when he wanted to leave, as far as Vic basically telling Ronnie that he had put his life in Vic's hands and trust him, lest he fuck up Vic's own quest to get immunity/a job working with the Department of Homeland Security after getting run out of the LAPD.
    • Holland "Dutch" Wagenbach was "The Barn's" go-to target for derision and disrespect, despite probably being the best actual cop in the building. In the pilot episode (later confirmed on DVD commentary) it's shown that his own partner, Claudette Wyms, is responsible for a continuous wave of mean-spirited pranks pulled on him (including putting dog shit in his desk drawer) as part of a long-standing LAPD tradition to keep certain talented officers "humble". Dutch's relationship with Claudette is tense on a good day, due to Dutch having his various overtures of friendship and concern rebuked by his partner, who wouldn't even tell Dutch that she had a potentially fatal medical condition (lupus) until several years into their partnership. When Claudette gets promoted to Captain, Dutch is forcibly partnered up with Steve Billings, a lazy detective determined to spend his last years on the force doing as little work as possible and forcing Dutch to cover up his attempts to scam the department (most notably with a fake disability lawsuit). His relationship with series main character Vic Mackey is more complicated: while Vic acknowledges that Dutch is the precinct's best detective (and is terrified of him possibly uncovering the Strike Team's crimes), Vic generally goes back and forth from bullying Dutch for sport and feeding his ego, in order to manipulate Dutch to do his dirty work for him. Dutch's butt-monkey status also extends to his relationship with women; the few successful relationships he has are with women formerly involved with Vic, furthering the rivalry between the two men.
      • Dutch's personal life is even worse, especially since he's one of the few characters on the show whose private life has been revealed in graphic detail: spent his youth/teenage years being mercilessly bullied, raised by an emotionally distant father for whom Dutch became a police officer in order to try and gain his father's approval, failed marriage to an alcoholic who got knocked up by a guy she met while in rehab (which led to him becoming the Butt-Monkey of the Barn in the first place, when another detective revealed this to the other officers), and generally has crappy relationships with women in general as far as women seeing him mainly as a friend/mentor and not a love interest.
      • He also has an unhealthy obsession with serial killers and strangles a cat
  • Dr. Stephen Franklin from Babylon 5 who, despite always trying to do the right thing, generally winds up suffering for it, especially in later episodes.
    • Centauri ambassadorial aide Vir Cotto also might loosely qualify, but also seems to be a Bumbling Sidekick (at least in the early seasons), The Unfavourite (by his own account (the only reason he got such an important job is that his family didn't want him at home), the Guilt by Association Gag and The Woobie.
      • If we're going to count Vir, then don't forget Delenn's lackey who was in love with her... whatever his name was. Unrequited love is a bitch.
        • That would be Lennier. Also, I think Marcus Cole deserves an Honorable Mention, what with having to do incredible amounts of risky dirty work that he can't even talk about for most of Season 3, and (yet again) his unrequited love for Ivanova...
    • Vir, Lennier, and Marcus, before the series was done, all all Took a Level in Badass (Ok, Marcus close to leveling, but still)
      • Vir becomes Centauri Emperor as a result of his family exiling him. As is their custom with deceased Emperors, the Centauri will elevate him to godhood upon his death. He took several levels in badass during his Redemption Quest.
  • Joel, and later Mike, from Mystery Science Theater 3000 usually ended up being the butt of most of the jokes made by robots Crow and Tom Servo. This didn't only happen in the host segments, sometimes the robots manage to include mockery of Joel/Mike in their movie riffing.
  • Detective Randy Disher on Monk is definitely that series' Butt Monkey. He is the butt of every joke and is probably way too dumb to be a police detective.
  • Celia Hodes on Weeds suffered more than any character on the show. She suffers breast cancer, falls in love with a religious man who cheats on her with her best friend, gets jailed all thanks to her own family and friends, and nearly gets shot by Nancy's employers once they discover her spying on them (Nancy saves her life by hitting her on the face with a gun, resulting in her losing a front tooth).
    • Then she gets addicted to cocaine.
    • Her husband, Dean, is also a butt monkey, usually in a more slapstick fashion then Celia, and rarely without the high points Celia experiences between her bouts of bad luck.
    • Your mileage will definitely vary as she is also a horribly abusive person who gave her daughter laxatives, shaved her husband's head, and destroyed Nancy's supply forcing her to work for U-Turn. The last straw is when she tries to blackmail Nancy who doesn't take to it kindly
  • Alan Harper on Two and A Half Men is the patron saint of this trope.
  • Aaron on Ghost Adventures.
  • Increasingly, Lutz on 30 Rock. When Jack asks the writers what their parents tell people they do for a living, the others' answers are things like "surgeon". Lutz's response: "Died".
    • "Shut up, Lutz."
    • Jenna is also the butt of many jokes. Such the writers all acting like she is ugly when she clearly isn't.
  • Tony DiNozzo on NCIS tends to be the team's Butt Monkey, often justified in that he is a Jerk Jock with a very Hidden Heart of Gold. Sometimes McGee fills this role instead; either way, at least one of them is often the butt of an episode's Running Gag.
    • Marty Deeks on NCIS: Los Angeles just loves this trope to bits. Though, Callen, Nell and Eric could fill this trope just as easily as well. It's even more hilarious in staged missions where the characters are under a different alias other than their main name.
  • Joxer on Xena: Warrior Princess. Nearly every climactic scene involving "Joxer the Mighty" invariably has him getting knocked unconscious. No one hesitates to insult him, be it Xena, Gabrielle, Autolycus or even his murderous brother Jett. This is coupled with his affection for Gabrielle, who barely tolerates his existence. He's even reviled on fansites.
  • Power Rangers RPM. Poor Ziggy. It seems that barely an episode can go by without the Green Ranger totally embarrassing himself in some way. Best reflected by his first ever morph. Previous rangers, whether they Jumped At the Call, were thrown in the cockpit or even stole their powers, always morphed with a fair amount of dignity and grace the first time. What's Ziggy's first line upon realising what he has become?

Ziggy: Woah! I'm a Power Ranger! I don't wanna be a Power Ranger! I do not want to be a Power Ranger!

He then proceeds to get kicked all over the place.
  • In QI, Alan Davies, especially to start with. He was clearly placed on the show to serve as a foil for genius host Stephen Fry, making inane points and earning forfeits with practiced ignorance. As such, he is commonly on the receiving end of numerous traps, into which he glibly walks. Later seasons have shown that he can play well, though, if he wants to and the studio happens to be lenient.
  • Off-island Locke on Lost. His flashbacks are one agony after another. He's abandoned by his teenage mother, raised in foster care, foster sister and mother die, bullied in high school, and then it gets bad. His biological parents team up to con him out of a kidney. He loses the love of his life. He's kicked out of his commune "family". Finally, his own father pushes him out an 8th-story window, paralyzing him. Crashing on the island is probably the best thing that ever happened to him. After he leaves the island, he's again in a wheelchair, everyone mocks him for being pathetic and lonely, he finds out his ex-girlfriend is dead, and he's unable to convince the Oceanic 6 to return. He's ready to hang himself when Ben arrives, talks him out of it, and then strangles him. But he gets better as soon as he's back on the island.
    • NOT!!! On return to the island, Locke turns out to be the biggest Unwitting Pawn Chew Toy of the universe. He's still dead, the Big Bad's using his body as a suit and everything he believed about the island led him to that end. The only good thing that can be said is that there is literally no possible way for things to get worse for the poor bastard.
    • But you're supposed to sympathize with all of them. Well it comes to purely gleeful buttmonkeys, there's no better example tha season 3's Mikhail, who gets severely and bloodily beaten in every episode that features him - and apparently killed in most of them. And the audience cheers every time.
    • There's also Ben Linus who is beaten up so many times that it's Lampshaded more than once. Turns out that he got so tired of being the butt monkey that he killed Jacob because of it.
  • In the second episode of the Walking with Monsters "documentary", the giant Mesothelae spider is something of a Butt Monkey. When it returns to its burrow after catching a lizard, the burrow is flooded. On its way to find another burrow, a giant dragonfly steals the dead lizard. It goes to get a drink, only to be scared off by a giant predatory amphibian. It finds a good number of other holes, but they're all occupied by other spiders. It gets chased off by a giant millipede. Finally, it finds a hole... which is struck by lightning once the spider's done building the web inside. The spider is roasted, and later eaten by another of the lizards.
    • And, in a meta example...the Mesothelae probably didn't even *exist*. It was based on Megarachne, which was found to be a eurypterid rather than a spider.
  • Col. Klink in Hogan's Heroes. Constantly duped by Hogan and his men, threatened and intimidated by his superiors and held in contempt by his own men who lined up to volunteer when he was imprisoned and facing a firing squad. Admittedly he was a Nazi but...
    • Oddly enough, Klink's Butt Monkey status was deliberate on Werner Klemperer's part. Although when you consider that Klemperer was a German Jew who's family had to flee the Nazis before the war or risk getting killed, and that he took the role partly to take revenge by making Nazis look utterly ridiculous, this suddenly makes a lot more sense.
  • Freddie in iCarly. He has a hopelessly unrequited crush on Carly, which she exploits for all it's worth in order to get him to do things he doesn't agree with. The first time he actually goes against what Carly wants (to do something he really likes), she insults him then tells his mother about it. The main source of his buttmonkeyness lies in Sam who endlessly insults, harasses, physically abuses him, humiliates him in front of other people at school and on the webcast, breaks his possessions and causes him constant problems. And then there's his monstrously overprotective mother.
    • Pilot episode: Freddie doesn't have a single appearance in the episode that doesn't involve Sam insulting him, Freddie being reminded that Carly doesn't love him back (by both girls, Sam does this especially harshly) and being physically abused by Sam for making a simple mistake. Carly convinces Freddie to keep helping the girls, not by getting Sam to stop insulting him, but by manipulating Freddie through his crush on her. It doesn't get better.
      • It's finally starting to get better, about halfway through season 3.
      • And It Got Worse again in Season 4.
    • Freddie isn't the only one suffering this trope, Carly herself and her older brother Spencer also get this treatment from time to time, especially Spencer. In Carly's case, it's dealing with stuff such as trying to promote a crappy shoe line and suffering through a bitchy teacher taking her heartbreak-induced rage out on her students. It's enough to make Carly a woobie.In Spencer's case, hilarity often ensues, some incidents involving that bratty boy Chuck.
  • Deputy Ben Healy in American Gothic. Anytime his conscience looks to be getting the better of him, Lucas Buck will subject him to a cruel and elaborate joke to get him to keep his mouth shut.
  • Connor in Primeval's employment contract must have Butt Monkey in the job description. He doubles up as the Plucky Comic Relief and part time Woobie as well.
  • Everyone (even the husbands) on Desperate Housewives gets this treatment at one point or another during the show, but Tom Scavo takes the cake. Practically every idea he comes up with seldom ever lasts in the long-run (such as his pizzeria which was successful for, oh, two or three seasons at most). Then his lovechild with a former one-night stand turns out to be borderline-sociopathic and he ends up having to send her to live with her grandparents. Then the Flanderization for both him and his wife kicked in full-force in season five, and the two got caught in a seemingly endless loop of arguing over every little thing that would've led most married couples to divorce in real life.
    • On the female side, you have Bree who among other things: had her husband murdered, had one child turn into a sociopath bent on his mother's destruction (though he ultimately gets redeemed), stalked by a psychopath who tried to kill her therapist, lost the grandson she was raising as her own third child to her daughter (the child's biomom) who then decided to raise him in an ultra-liberal form just to spite conservative Bree, the loss of said (grand)child causing her marriage to her second husband to collapse, and nearly being killed by said second-husband's psychotic mother not once but twice.
      • And then there's season six: Getting caught up in an extramarital affair over a miscommunication with her husband, having her loved killed in a bizarre plane crash, and her husband being paralyzed as a result of said affair/plane crash is the least of her worries by the time we reach the last few episodes: Her attempts to make her first husband's lovechild feel welcome ultimately result in said lovechild blackmailing her, and her husband leaving her over giving in to said blackmail.
  • Tommy from the sitcom Titus and in some episodes Titus himself.
  • George from Dead Like Me. Oh so many ways...
    • Killed by a deorbiting toilet seat on her lunch break of the first day of a job she hates at a temp agency.
    • Finds out that since she never made anything of her life, she is now doomed to serve as a Grim Reaper, helping to ferry souls to their individual afterlives.
    • Has to find somewhere to live, as she can't live with her mother.
    • Ends up working at the same office, under her "new" name.
    • Is called "Toilet Seat" by everyone but the supervisor of the reapers, who affectionately calls her "peanut".
    • And that's just the first episode or two...
      • Also, Mason, who is ridiculed by his colleagues, shot at, run over and hurt in various other ways, and once had a stash of drugs dissolve in his anal tract. Oh, and he died drilling a hole in his head.
  • Kagami in Kamen Rider Kabuto. Even after becoming Kamen Rider Gattack, heralded as the God of Battle, he remains the punching bag of the series for comic relief.
  • In Sons of Anarchy Half Sack, as SAMCRO's probationer is the club's official Butt Monkey.
  • Spencer Reid in Criminal Minds isn't abused by his friends (they do treat him like a younger brother, but he's not abused), but he is abused by the writers, so much so that whenever another character is the victim, fans rate the trouble on how close this is to a "Reid Trauma". Reid's been kidnapped, beaten, drugged, held at gunpoint, forced to dig his own grave, and poisoned by anthrax, just to name a few.
    • The one time that he was present at an issue but wasn't the one that got the trauma? He got to listen while one of his coworkers was dragged into a nearby room and beaten because she took the fall so that the cult they were being held hostage in wouldn't know he was with the FBI.
    • While it's obviously a much smaller issue than everything listed above, no-one ever seems to want to hear any of his interesting facts. Poor guy.
      • Oh yeah, what about Kevin Lynch, played by the original Butt Monkey, Xander? He's one who got accidently seen in the buff--by Rossi!
  • The presenters on Top Gear pass this around: Richard Hammond tends to suffer physical abuse and has become ever-so-slightly Woobiefied as a result; James May (aka "Captain Slow") has to deal with the ridicule of his co-presenters and their occasional (okay, frequent) attempts to sabotage his efforts; and Jeremy Clarkson seems completely unable to cope when he's out of his depth. However, since this so seldom happens, and since Clarkson is such a self-assured character most of the time, watching him suffer is highly entertaining.
  • Diandre, or Sweet Dee, on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is the Butt Monkey for her entire group of friends. They crash her car, ignore her and generally crap all over her. In a special where the gang invents an alternate story about how their ancestors cracked the liberty bell, they call Sweet Dee their Witch Slave and force her to wait on them, threatening her with calling her out on being a witch if she doesn't comply.
    • However, Dee's one-way love interest Rickety Cricket is even more of a Butt Monkey. Dee convinces him to leave the priesthood to be with her, then loses interest. Later, she and her friends recruit him to sell crack for them and he becomes a homeless crack addict. Eventually, they even end up conducting a manhunt for him, just for fun.
  • Kopelman on True Jackson. Mr. Madigan constantly kicks him out of meetings for no reason, and everyone in the show treats him like dirt. This is even funnier when you learn that the character is named after and played by the writer for the show.
  • Dr Sweets on Bones, every episode involves someone mocking his last name, demeaning his subject of expertise (psychology) and conclusions despite the fact that he is usually right, or just plain treating him like some doormat.
    • In fairness, since Sweets has been on the show, he's deliberately withheld from Brennan, who has severe abandonment issues, that her partner was alive so he could watch her reaction; intervened to convince Booth that his desire to be with his partner was a transient result of organic brain damage, despite the fact that he's working on a book about the partners being in love; and instructed Booth, who's going to meetings as a recovering gambler, to solve a personal problem by "being a gambler." There is a case to be made that after that level of professional malpractice, Sweets is being treated with far too much respect if he's allowed to treat patients at all.
  • Tommy Gavin on Rescue Me. Every. Single. Episode. By the end of the second season, his wife has left him, twice. The first time, she took the kids with her and didn't tell him where she went. The second time, it was because she blamed him for the death of their son. Said son was killed in front of him by a drunk driver. Another child is miscarried, and he has seen two people shot to death in front of him. He is constantly haunted by the ghosts of people close to him who have died.
  • Sly Winkle of California Dreams was pretty much this, even though he had a greedy streak and was a literal embodiment of The Complainer Is Always Wrong. But because it was a Peter Engle Saved by the Bell clone, that type of character was just frowned upon.
  • Ryan Wolfe has become the Butt Monkey of CSI: Miami. He's frequently shown at the crime scene making the wrong conclusions (which another character quickly points out), if anyone's evidence turns out not to be what was expected, it's his, other characters make fun of his wardrobe...basically, everyone except Horatio treats him with total contempt.
    • Don't forget when he got shot in the eye with a nail gun. Yeouch.
  • Arnold Rimmer from Red Dwarf spends his entire life trying to live up to his parents' insane expectations. After legally divorcing them, he spends the rest of his life trying to become an officer in the Space Corps. And things don't go much better for him after his death.
  • Detective Kevin Ryan in Castle seems to be a low-level version of this; he'll be the one who has to stop drunken rock stars from peeing into hotel lobby plant pots while his partner (successfully) chats up the pretty concierge he wasn't getting anywhere with, will be left with an entire room of files to pack up after everyone ditches him to follow a lead, will sit down to finally drink a cup of coffee before being dragged out by everyone before he can...
  • Smallville's version of Jimmy Oslen becomes something of a snowballing butt monkey, especially once Lex the Woobie left the show after Season 7.
    • Apart from getting his share of the standard amount of grievous physical trauma experienced by most characters on the show, Jimmy's buttmonkeyness was evident early on by his being generally treated like dirt as the designated love interest for Chloe Sullivan, but ballooned in Season Eight, where his not-unfounded jealousy over Clark is the least of his problems, what with getting constantly and very obviously lied to by everyone and most especially by his fiancee. His joy at discovering that Clark is the Red-Blue Blurr is crushed through an elaborate deception by his closest friends, and his boss refuses to take him seriously. Things ratchet up several notches when his wedding gets literally crashed by Doomsday who just about eviscerates him. After being thus benched for a good chunk of the season (in which his wife oddly does not seem to spend much time visiting him in hospital), he becomes addicted to painkillers, discovers that Davis Bloom is a serial killer and when he tries to warn his friends nobody believes him, not even his wife. He gets repeatedly beaten, tortured and tied up, keeps getting lied to over and over again by Chloe, is dismissed as a crazy junkie by all his friends, even witnesses that Chloe apparently has romantic feelings for the guy he discovered is a killer, precipitating the total collapse of his marriage (which doesn't even rate more than a handwaved mention of their divorce). To top it all off, gets gratuitously murdered in the finale by the same guy he tried to warn everyone about. To add insult to injury, his funeral scene reveals that he wasn't even the "real" Jimmy Olsen from the comics that he had hitherto been presented as being, but rather a "Henry James Olson", evidently an older brother to the canonical "James Bartholomew Olsen".
    • Apparently it really sucks to be Jimmy Olsen, even when you're actually not.
  • Chuck has Morgan Grimes, the titular Chuck Bartowski's sidekick and Heterosexual Life Partner. Other than the occasional episode, Morgan generally ends up playing second fiddle to Chuck... and that is ignoring Chuck's sans Masquerade identity as the ultimate Accidental Badass.
  • Tristan tends to serve this purpose on All Creatures Great and Small. It's usually his own fault, but this just makes the times when he's genuinely trying (to take out a girlfriend, for example, or to do his job) more painful, as we count the seconds to the inevitable catastrophe. Fortunately he bounces, and never seems to suffer lasting damage.
  • Tony Soprano once told a story about a boy with a speech impediment he and his bully friends used to abuse in school (namely, made him sing silly songs and laughed their asses off). It took him quite a while to understand this wasn't the nicest thing to do. More recently, Artie Bucco serves as the resident Butt Monkey; he becomes increasingly pathetic to watch as the show progresses.
    • Also, Bobby Baccallieri, who, along with Vito, is constantly mocked due to his weight and his non-mobster-like niceness toward others. Even Tony, who isn't exactly a male model, can't seem to stop harping on how fat Bobby is - to his face, of course, as often as possible.
    • Adriana, once the feds get their meat-hooks in her.
  • Josh, Jules' younger boyfriend in Cougar Town, is a perfect example. It's galling that he falls for her with all the abuse she and her friends put him through (for no apparent reason), and when she eventually breaks up with him, everyone joins in on the mockery and cruelty.
  • In The Thick of It Glen Cullen is a pretty extreme example of this trope. He's regarded as an aging, irrelevant joke despite all his attempts to claim his 'experience' (read: age) has given him connections, sex-starved to the point where even his friends don't hesitate to point out "the last time you saw snatch was Basic Instinct" and scapegoated numerous times for the screw-ups of other people in the department. By the second series, it's become enough to give him a pitiable but quite hilarious mental breakdown.
    • In "Spinners And Losers", the less sympathetic Ollie Reeder becomes a Butt Monkey, bullied left and right by Malcolm Tucker, sucking up to the various Smug Snakes, forced into embarassing himself trying to rekindle a relationship he just broke off and then reduced to the status of cheese monitor while his ex-girlfriend and Arch Enemy laugh at him.
  • Jerry on Parks and Recreation seems to exist primarily to be abused by the rest of the cast. Part of the humor comes from the fact that he seems like a totally normal, likable guy who does nothing to provoke or deserve this treatment, yet he is dismissed or insulted by the others at the slightest opportunity. Additionally, he's treated as a Butt Monkey not only by the insensitive or thoughtless characters, but by everyone, even the "nice" characters. Even Chris manages to be mean to him, if only by obliviously forcing him into a leadership position where he can't perform.

Ron: A schlemiel is the guy who spills soup at a fancy party. A schlemazel is the guy he spills it on. Jerry is both the schlemiel and schlemazel of our office.

    • Subverted in that recent episodes imply that outside of work, he has a happier life than any of the other characters. He's been happily married for over 25 years, for example, while no one else on the show can even keep a relationship going for more than two or three episodes. The gag seems to be that Jerry's life is actually pretty good... except for the parts of it that the viewer sees.
      • Also, according to a doctor doing checkups on City Hall employees, he has "the biggest penis I've ever seen."
    • Kyle, another government worker (though not in the Parks Department), is even more of a butt monkey. It's telling that in their only scene together to date, Jerry treated Kyle like everyone else usually treats Jerry (all because he thought a turkey burger was better than a regular beef burger).
    • In the episode with the Time Capsule, Leslie ensures Jerry's loserdom will be his legacy in the future:

Leslie: So enjoy watching it. Assuming you still have electricity. And sorry about the weird blank gap in the middle. A man named Jerry Gergich screwed up the recording somehow. He had one job to do.

  • Gossip Girls Chuck Bass. His father hated him, his BFF Nate is a hot candidate for Worst Friend Ever, his adoptive sister Serena verbally abuses and sabotages him except for when she needs his help, his uncle wants his company so bad that he didn't particularly mind when Chuck was wobbling on the edge of a building after his father's death, and now most recently the not-so-dead-mommy storyline. The only two people who don't treat him like crap are Lily, who still tends to forget that he exists most of the time, and Blair.
  • Vila from Blake's 7 an old-school comic relief character, given relatively little in the way of consistent development or opportunities for sympathy. He always gets disproportionate punishment for his cowardly and hedonistic nature, and Avon insults him daily (by the fourth season, so does almost everyone else). The one heroically Vila-centric episode came about because the actor's young daughter told him, "Daddy, you're stupid!" while watching the show.
  • Rodney Trotter on Only Fools and Horses', since he's both teased and used by his big brother Del Boy in his long-running journey to become a millionaire.
    • The 2010 dramedy prequel Rock & Chips has the future Dirty Cop Roy Slater as the Butt Monkey for Del and his gang.
    • There's also Denzil Tulser, because there's barely an episode that he features in where he doesn't end it far worse off than when he began, and practically always due to Del. At one point (in "To Hull and Back") Denzil's even convinced he's going insane because of Del.
  • Bill Schulz on Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld (Fox News' Daily Show-esque late-night talk show). Bill is Greg's "disgusting sidekick", Red Eye's New York Times Correspondent. He is constantly derided, especially when Greg introduces the panel and closes the show, to the point that he goes along with it.
    • "He smells of cat urine and broken dreams. I'm talking, of course, about my disgusting sidekick, Bill Schulz."
    • "Bill Schulz, you suck."
      • While it's easy to call Bill the show's Butt Monkey due to how often Greg goes after him (due to Greg portraying himself as a Comedic Sociopath), the show is more of a revolving door of Butt Monkeys. Bill is a Butt Monkey to Greg, Greg is a Butt Monkey to the show's Libertarian Ombudsman Andy, and Andy is often the target of Bill's ridicule, as well as Greg's. Then there's all the regular panelists who are often nice to Bill while poking fun at Greg (most notably the show's interplanertary correspondent; GWAR frontman Oderus Urungus).
  • Eddie. Poor, poor Eddie. The gang treat him like a chew toy. In one episode he had a highly unusual streak of luck, and Mickey deliberately sabotaged it.
  • Andre from The League receives far more ridicule and taunting than any of his friends.
  • Frank Spencer, the main character of the classic BBC sitcom Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, is a likeable disaster magnet who has at one point rollerskated under a semi truck and hung off the side of an airplane.
  • Beaker is the resident Butt Monkey of The Muppet Show, always the victim of the experiments of his "friend", Dr. Bunsen Honeydew.
  • Rachel Berry from Glee is actually such a Butt Monkey that even within a club full of Butt Monkeys, she still gets frequently insulted and snarked at for laughs over how irritating her fellow glee club members find her.
    • Sandy could also qualify for this trope toward the beginning of the series.
  • Nick Stokes from CSI got buried by a madman, got molested by his babysitter, had a stalker, was accused of murder when his prostitute girlfriend was killed, and is one of the few people who ever cries on the show.
  • On Talkin Bout Your Generation, Generation Y is generally the Butt Monkey, but mainly Josh.

Josh: "I never thought we had a problem, Shaun, but people keep telling me on Twitter that it's obvious you don't like me."

  • Fez from That '70s Show, ever the effeminate, unlucky-with-the-ladies guy. Kelso also fills this role to some extent out of sheer stupidity.
  • Lee Mack has become this on Would I Lie to You??; the producers play up the fact that he is a Bad Liar by giving him the stupidest lies possible, and he gets mocked a lot by the host's autocue jokes.
  • Mel Cooley on The Dick Van Dyke Show.
  • Chris from Everybody Hates Chris. The title should already give you a clue about how the show treats him.
  • Sharon from Kath and Kim gets treated like one of these, especially from Kim.
  • Rick Geddes on Fifteen Love was used and manipulated by Squib and Cody, disrespected and mocked by his nominal boss, President Bates, and insulted frequently by the coaches. At least he managed to score a hot girlfriend in the last season.
  • Gloria Acolidas in Nurse Jackie
  • Richard in Crownies.
  • Eric on Boy Meets World became this in the later seasons after he Took a Level In Dumbass. In one episode he gets struck by lightning. While indoors.
  • In the Mockumentary series People Like Us, documentarian Roy Mallard often falls prey to accidents in the course of filming.
  • In the 1995 CBS dramatic series Central Park West, Rachel Dennis (the fashion editor for a fashion magazine called Communique) suffers the brunt of almost every humiliating incident - if something bad happens, it's usually to her. Even though she tries many plans during the series, almost all of them backfire on her (and leave her worse off than before). From the time she's introduced, she gets hit with a divorce settlement, gets thrown out of her hotel because she can't pay her bills, is scared that she'll be deported because she doesn't have a valid passport, gets rejected twice by lead character Peter Fairchild (even after she openly admits her feelings for him), her co-workers belittle and insult her, she gets fired shortly after she assumes control of Communique during a staff shake-up and the new editor humiliates her when she's gone by producing better material. And that's just the first season - she then goes on to humiliate herself (by getting covered in mud) to get her job back, and then disappears into the background because of the plot.
  • Batly on Eureekas Castle
  • In Round the Twist, who gets targeted by bullies, attacked by rubbish and mauled by pigs? Poor Pete Twist. Out of all the characters in the show, even including the bad guys, he probably gets the worst deal.
  • Dr. Simon Tam on Firefly. The other characters frequently point out how much he doesn't fit in and he's the only one who gets pranks played on him. In "Bushwhacked," Jayne tells Simon that Mal wants him to get suited up to treat surviviors on an abandoned ship they found. Cue Simon showing up, uncalled for, in a spacesuit he put on incorrectly, with everyone staring at him as if he'd grown a third eye.
    • An even meaner prank was played on him in the pilot by Mal, who told him that Kaylee had died when she had actually completely recovered from the bullet wound Simon had been treating her for. Note that Mal had earlier threatened to space him if Kaylee didn't make it.
  • ER's Dr. Mark Green, who within 8 seasons on the show, experienced his wife leaving him for another man, his friend Susan leaving him before they get a chance to explore their feelings for each other, mishandling a routine delivery resulting in the death of the patient and a malpractice suit, being brutally beaten and another malpractice suit for a case that he did not mishandle, the death of both parents within months of each other, and finally a brain tumor that he battled for a year and half before it finally killed him. And did I mention that during that he was grappling with his bratty teenage daughter, whose recklessness nearly killed his other daughter and trying to support his second wife through her own malpractice suit? Yeesh.
  • Zathras from Babylon 5. That poor guy. I think his immortal line from War Without End about sums it up: "Zathras is used to being beast of burden to other peoples needs. Very sad life. Probably have very sad death, but at least there is symmetry."
    • "But only Zathras have no one to talk to. No one manages poor Zathras, you see. So Zathras talks to dirt. Sometimes talks to walls, or talks to ceilings. But dirt is closer. Dirt is used to everyone walking on it. Just like Zathras, but we've come to like it. It is our role. It is our destiny in the universe. So, you see, sometimes dirt has insects in it. And Zathras likes insects. Not so good for conversation, but much protein for diet."
    • "No one ever listens to poor Zathras, no, he's quite mad they say. It is good that Zathras does not mind, has even grown to like it."

If take Zathras with you, Zathras die. If leave Zathras here, Zathras die. Either way, not good for Zathras.

  • Janine Butcher in Eastenders, after her return in December 2008 devolved dramatically from her previous Magnificent Bitch status, ended up as a janitor for Ronnie's club, her Evil Plan to take control of it blew up in her face and she lost her job, she got kicked out of the house she was sharing with her aunt, Pat and then had to go an live in a shabby flat. Eventually things started looking up for her when she took over her father's business but Pat just couldn't stand seeing her do well and smashed a picture of her father over her head. Then Libby Wicks threw a tub of paint over her. Somehow she eventually lost the business, was savagely beaten by Stacey Slater of all people (in the middle of the square with everyone watching!), the man she loved left her for Stacey Slater, her suicide attempt failed and her loving grandmother died. Then she finally got the break she deserved when she inherited her grandmothers millions. She could have just left Walford and lived the life of a millionairess somewhere else but no, she still lives in her pokey flat for some reasona and these days just goes around the square trying to talk down to people but generally getting her ass handed to her.
  • Morgana Pendragon from Merlin. Even before her Heel Face Turn, the writers did not seem to like her.
  • Vila Restal from Blake's 7 is usually the victims of Ker Avon's caustic putdowns.

Vila: I can't go out there. I'm very susceptible to low temperatures. I've got a weak chest!
Avon: The rest of you's not very impressive either.

  • The title character on "Cory in The House".
  • Due to the rotating panel format, Chelsea Lately has a regular selection of Butt Monkeys to choose from. It's usually either Jo Koy or Loni Love that get the most abuse from Chelsea.
  • Jerry Lewis and Lou Costello, typically, when they appeared on the Colgate Comedy Hour.
  • Ziggy Sobotka from The Wire acts like a clown to entertain his coworkers and is usually put in bad situations for it. Later he gets a moment in the end of the second season which puts him in jail, probably for a very long time
  • The Tony Randall Show had Mario Lanza (Zane Lasky). The Running Gag with the character was that Randall's character constantly insulted, belittled and hated him for no clear reason.
  • Theon Greyjoy of Game of Thrones. Its not just that he's grown up as a hostage of the Stark family to keep his once-rebellious father in line. When he goes home at the behest of Robb Stark to secure an alliance between the Starks and Greyjoys, he gets scorned right off the docks when he first arrives. Instead of a royal welcome, the only two people who are there are an old man who is entirely unimpressed by Theon, and a flirty young woman who he manages to feel up and then discovers was his sister. Things get progressively worse for Theon as he gets snubbed by his own father multiple times until he accepts his place as a Greyjoy and works with his father to conquer the North, including the very Starks that raised him. He gets a single small ship and is ordered to harass small fishing villages, gets disrespected by his own crew, and when he invades Winterfell, Bran Stark, a young crippled boy, drives Theon to total exasperation by refusing to yield. And he can't even execute a man right, as it takes four swipes with his sword and a bunch of kicking to get Ser Rodrick's head severed, and this is before he gets made a complete fool of by Osha who sleeps with him just so she can slip out of the castle with the Stark boys, Hodor, and the two direwolves. That's right: Theon managed to turn a flawless, audacious conquest into a massive Humiliation Conga... which continues over the next few episodes, beginning with his attempt to save face: it results in him being manipulated by his right-hand man into killing two children and making it look as they were the Stark boys. Not only does it fail to get him any respect whatsoever, but it also gives his sister the opportunity to drop a barrage of insults in his lap and tell him that all of his successes are for nothing because he won't be able to maintain any of them for long- especially since his father refused to send him any reinforcements. After being driven half-insane over the next few days by the horn-blowing of the Stark bannermen marching on Winterfell he tries to rally his men to go down fighting, even delivering an impressive Rousing Speech to that end, and for a moment it looks as though he's finally earned their respect... And then he gets knocked out by his own treacherous right-hand man and left to face to the approaching army while his own men retreat.
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