Iron Butt Monkey

So, you've got a funny character in a Slapstick, just lining up a wave of truly incredibly bad and unlucky physical traumas for the character to wade through for your audiences twisted amusement. Just one problem. The things your character is about to go through would kill any normal being. The solution? Enter the Iron Butt Monkey.

The Iron Butt Monkey is, simply put, practically immune to harm... purely for the purpose of having hilarious injuries happen to him. Drop an anvil on him? He simply gets a nasty looking lump. Throw him off a cliff and watch him bounce down in a brutal manner? He'll be carted off to the hospital, maybe. Incinerate him? He'll reform from the ashes, or even simply be back next episode. One wonders how many lives this guy could save in the military.

Obviously a form of Acceptable Breaks From Reality. Primarily an animation trope, Western Animation is particularly fond of this one.

A relation of Butt Monkey, Made of Iron and Slapstick. See also They Killed Kenny, when the comedy buttmonkey is not immortal but merely gets revived ready to get killed again like something from Valhalla. See also Iron Woobie, for when this is Played for Drama.

Not to be confused with Iron Monkey, a Hongkong action film set within the mythology of Once Upon a Time in China.

Anime & Manga
"Mistuba: "How many time are you going to try and kill me in this anime.""
 * In Angel Beats!, due to the fact that everyone is already dead and in the afterlife, everyone will fully recover from any injuries, no matter how fatal or violent. This leads to several scenes where characters are killed for humor.
 * Keitaro Urashima of Love Hina is a paragon of this trope, largely to make his parade of unlucky injuries stay amusing. Eventually lampshaded when Su claims he is "practically immortal" and when everyone is surprised that his leg has been broken by having part of a building fall on him and it stays that way for a few chapters. Oddly, being in a cast in no way stops him from fighting Motoko's sister who sends him flying, crashing head first into streets, or getting possessed. The original injury was a bit of Tempting Fate where Mutsumi says he has used up all his luck (which is usually low) just to pass the Tokyo U entrance exam. Then Hilarity Ensues.
 * Naru herself asks exactly why Keitaro isn't able to go school just because of his leg. Assuming it was not just a shoutout to an older series, more cynical fans noticed it was a convenient delay to the subplot of him finally entering the university of his choice.
 * When Shinobu runs away, Keitaro comes flying in on Naru Knuckle Airlines, making a perfect head-first landing in front of her. A pair of guys who were going to hit on Shinobu run away screaming "That thing's still alive!"
 * Other fans point out the apparent karmic rules of the series: every injury Keitaro sustains that actually lasts is a direct result of his own actions. Anytime someone ELSE tries to hurt him, it doesn't stick.
 * Dallas (immortal) of Baccano! when his deaths are being Played for Laughs.
 * Full Metal Panic!'s Sgt. Sousuke Sagara.
 * Yako of Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro takes constant physical abuse from Neuro, but is almost never actually hurt by it.
 * Hayate is the focus of physical and emotional torment that would kill a lesser man a thousand times over. He has been compared to a Gundam in show for his ability to survive things such as getting run over or attacked by a tiger repeatedly.
 * Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei has Nozomu Itoshiki. Although most of the injuries are self-inflicted, he has survived: drowning in wine, getting run over by a trolley, many many hanging attempts (including one in which he was yanked so hard the rope broke), his name written in the Death Note, surgery to get turned into a monster, and attempted murder by his students in a dream because
 * Nozomu has actually been murdered a couple of times by Chiri and/or most of the class, and he turns up fine at the end of the episode/next segment.
 * Bobobo-Bo Bo-bobo has Jelly Jiggler/Tokoro Tennosuke, who has a jelly body which Bo-bobo uses for attacks and physical abuse. Also Don Patch.
 * Youhei Sunohara in Clannad. Not only did he survive being a punching bag or beaten up with a baseball bat, but once he was dropped from a garbage chute SEVERAL FLOORS DOWN and walked away. Tomoyo was briefly worried if he'd be okay, but Tomoya assured her he was impossible to kill. Probably.
 * Ataru from Urusei Yatsura. He is basically the very incarnation of this trope. It's even lampshaded in one book, where he gets a broken arm, and everyone can't believe it.
 * This was forever happening to Zelgadis on Slayers. He's been used as an anchor and shot in the face with a cannonball and come out of it fine every time due to his part-golem nature.
 * He does bleed and gets injuries, from time to time. What does it mean? The story's gonna take a turn for the worse.
 * Ryoko from Tenchi Muyo!. More justified in the OVA continuity, where she's capable of regenerating from just about anything. Interstingly, she tends more to be the one inflicting the pain in said continuity.
 * Yakumo Fujii from 3×3 Eyes. It's really A Good Thing He Can Heal.
 * Yukinari from Girls Bravo.
 * He is actually somewhat of a subversion as he has been shown to still have cuts and bruises hours after Kirie or another girl beats him. Fukuyama on the other hand just bounces back from similar abuse but he is Too Kinky to Torture and just brushes it off.
 * Tatewaki Kuno from Ranma ½, if it's painfully hilarious it will happen to him, usually without leaving a dent in his stoic expression.
 * Keigo Asano from Bleach is beaten and walked all over in pretty much every one of his appearances, but he never seems to get tired of it, keeps trying to get the girls that smack him around, and at one point actually blocked a kick from Rangiku, Shinigami who tend to be at least slightly stronger than normal humans.
 * Tsubasa Jumonji of RIN-NE. To list a few of the things that have happened to him: fallen out a two-story window, got his head chewed on by a lion at the zoo, has gotten run over by a team of sumo wrestlers, had bowling balls fall on his head, and has fallen into multiple kinds of holes. Those are only some of the things he's suffered, in two chapters alone—and he came out fine. (Albeit, he did have multiple casts on, but only for a week. At the end, he had a single bandage around his head).
 * Mitsurugi Hanagata in Saber Marionette J tends towards this. Particularly notable in a few scenes where he only takes Clothing Damage from attacks explicitly stated to be fearsomely deadly to Otaru and even the Marionettes.
 * Excel in Excel Saga, but also Hyatt and Elgala in the manga, as well as Ropponmatsu and Iwata on the opposite side. Of these Ropponmatsu and Iwata are justified by their artificial bodies, and Hyatt by her explicit Healing Factor, but Excel and Elgala just seem to be that tough; once both got stuck in a massive explosion in the top floor of a building that collapsed on them, and they got out "just" practically covered in bandages.
 * There was also an incident where Hyatt received severe burns in a fire, but was shown peeling off her bandages to reveal her usual unburnt self the following day. Much to Elgala's shock.
 * Matsuya has started to notice though that the technology the Department of City Security uses (which may come from a lost civlization) simply does not work on Excel.
 * The titular character of Naruto, thanks to his Healing Factor, gets this treatment every now and then. A single punch from Sakura or Tsunade would kill most men, but Naruto just gets some lumps and bruises.
 * Mitsuba from Mitsudomoe, once she lampshades it in the first couple episodes.


 * Yokoshima from Ghost Sweeper. He always gets injured, and has spent some time in a hospital from some of his nastier injuries, and has even died on a few occasions, but always gets right back up at the mention of booty. He has also survived getting struck by lightning and falling from orbit with just Easy Amnesia as a side effect in the last one.
 * Mr. Satan from Dragon Ball gets smacked by Perfect Cell and goes flying into a mountain, survives getting smacked around by Kid Buu, is hilariously drowned in a bathtub by Fat Buu, obliterated in a public fight against Kid Trunks, dropped by Dende from 100-something feet and crushes his crotch against a rock, and more. Although he is hopelessly outpowered by the main cast, it is agreed that he is very skilled for a human that cannot use ki.
 * In Chibi Devi, the principal of the daycare center is constantly set on fire, electrocuted, and frozen, but he always recovers after a bit of bed rest.
 * If you thought Keitaro was tough, meet Tomoki from Sora no Otoshimono. Not only does he get hit by megaton karate chops (one time being held up against an electrical fence), but also beam weapons to the crotch, being launched through roofs, crushed by several face-palms of doom, squashed by giant fly-swatters, dragged into the open air at Mach 17, and his most notable achievement, getting hit point-blank with a beam cannon that's able to annihilate planets. There is nothing that can kill this guy.
 * Played with in Bludgeoning Angel Dokurochan. Most of Dokuro's antics actually kill Sakura, but she always resurrects him good as new on the spot, so there's never actually any lasting harm done. Except to the wallpaper.
 * Chuck from Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt dies in some grotesque manner at least once every episode.

Comic Books

 * Mortadelo Y Filemon is the god of this trope, he constantly receives horrible beatings, explosions and even gets burned and frozen several times, only for him recovering one panel later. The rest of the cast qualifies, but Filemon overshadows all of them.
 * Nodwick the henchman has it even worse. He's been beaten, decapitated, burned, frozen, digested, crushed, skewered, turned into a goldfish, disintegrated... If it's painful and/or lethal, it's probably happened to him, and every time he's always duct-taped back together by the team's cleric, Piffany. Plus, it's explicitly stated that (to the irritation of his guardian angel, who has no idea what to do with him) he's actually not allowed to stay dead, due to the rules of the Henchmen's Union (and the fact that his absence would completely screw up the universe).
 * Mr. Immortal of the Great Lakes Avengers is regularly killed in gruesome ways, much to Deadpool's chagrin, but his powers ensure that he'll resurrect shortly thereafter.
 * Deadpool himself often enters this territory due to effectively being immortal, meaning that at various points he's been shot through the head with an arrow, eaten alive by parasites, dropped out of a plane with no parachute, etc., all with no lasting effects.
 * Handwaved in that all of this, healing factor aside, is due to a curse from Thanos to keep him away from Death - with whom both men fell in love.

Eastern Animation

 * The titular wolf from Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf. He's been blasted into the sky, bitten by piranhas, hit with frying pans, blown up, beaten up, sliced, stabbed, and stomped on (to name a few things he goes through).

Film

 * Those Two Bad Guys from Home Alone should have died several times over from Kevin's traps. A movie for kids manages to go further than a Sam Peckinpah film when it comes to makeshift household protection.
 * Jeebs, from Men in Black.
 * But only if you shoot him in the face. There are other parts of him that don't grow back.
 * The Three Stooges have suffered plenty of injuries that would maim or even kill a normal human being, like having bricks fall on their heads, being shot several times in the buttocks, falling from great heights, having a stick of dynamite go off in their pants, and that's only scratching the surface.
 * Although if you've got to be shot, the buttocks are pretty much the healthiest place to do it. No organs, very few major blood vessels, lots of force-absorbing muscle.
 * Except if you get hit with shrapnel in one of the iliac arteries and bleed out within minutes. It may be the healthiest spot, but still not healthy enough.
 * Curly seemed the most resilient - a common gag was to have Moe pound him over the head with a hammer or run a saw over his scalp, and the tool would be irreparably damaged.
 * Jaws from the James Bond series goes through many things that would normally kill a person: he survived falling from a cliff while trapped inside a car, attacked by a shark (which he got out of by biting the shark), stabbed and thrown from a building, etc. Each time he experiences one of these he just gets up and dusts himself off.
 * Count the number of times Alec Trevelyan lives through something that should kill him in Goldeneye. Before the opening credits, he's already been supposedly shot in the head and caught in an explosion.
 * The Blues Brothers survive a whole mess of stuff at the hands of a crazy woman Princess Leia  Drive by with a rocket launcher, demolishing the entrance of the building they were standing in front of? They just stroll through the rubble, and go inside. Apartment building blown up? Stand up, brush themselves off, and go to work. Propane tank explodes, launching their phone booth into the air? Hey, there's at least seven dollars in change in the wreckage of the payphone!
 * The cops are probably this to a certain extent as well—they chase the Brothers through a mall, end up either submerged in a pile of cereal boxes or with their car upturned; the apartment building explodes, and they stand up, brush themselves off, continue as normal; finally catch up with the brothers, only to end up crashing into a speeding winnebago. In the final chase, they get into a pile up (and in one case, end up landing in the side of a truck). All completely unharmed (and in Mercer's case, highly amused).
 * Who Framed Roger Rabbit? lampshades this. Roger Rabbit is the Iron Buttmonkey both as character and actor in the Roger Rabbit/Baby Herman cartoons. After repeatedly "blowing his lines," Roger begs the director to drop the refrigerator on him one more time, saying he can take it. The director says he's more concerned about the refrigerator.
 * It's actually a plot point that Toons are indestructible/unkillable....almost.
 * When Eddie visits Toon Town, he becomes the Iron Buttmonkey, surviving abuse pretty much like a Toon.
 * Fridge Logic: But in the backstory, Eddie's brother was actually killed when someone dropped a piano on him.
 * Did that actually happen in Toon Town, though? If it happened in "the real world", then normal physics would have applied.
 * To elaborate: If you're in Toon Town, you'll probably get a Toon Piano dropped on you while you're standing on Toon Pavement, thus, Hilarity Ensues. If you are in Hollywood, and someone drops a Real Piano on you while you're standing on the Walk of Fame? Reality Ensues.
 * O.J. Simpson in The Naked Gun movies. Which, in light of later events, could be seen as Hilarious in Hindsight, or perhaps a reverse Karma Houdini?
 * Professor Fate in The Great Race, who survives being crushed by a falling hot air balloon, run over by a train, blasted into the ground by a rocket, blown up by a primitive grenade launcher (twice), and falling down a manhole. And that was just in the first half-hour.

Live Action Television

 * In Father Ted, every time Ted calls Father Larry Duff's mobile phone, the distraction always causes Larry to suffer a horrible misfortune, often taking the form of an accident that would kill a normal person.
 * Richard Hammond on Top Gear, especially in the earlier series, always seems to get the physically unpleasant challenges (sitting in a car filling with water, running to the North Pole with a dogsled, etc.) When he actually did bounce back from a No One Could Survive That accident, his co-presenters were courteously solemn about it for at least half a series—but now it's open joke fodder.
 * Poor, poor Super Dave Osborne. Whether it's jumping off the CN Tower without a parachute, being crushed by a giant tanker truck, being pulverized by a massive piledriver, getting hit in the crotch with a golf club or a baseball, falling out a window to fall two stories and crash-land on the pavement, being eaten by Mr. T, or having a piano dropped on him, Super Dave was made of this trope.
 * It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has Charlie, especially when Mac and Dennis attempt to train him to box by breaking things (chairs, bottles) over his head.
 * Bill on The Red Green Show is Canada's standout example. Red himself is a lesser example, considering how often Bill injures him by accident during the Adventure segments.
 * Professional Wrestling is crammed with such characters. One need only mention World Wrestling Entertainment Superstar Colin Delaney, who repeatedly got squashed by wrestlers a great deal bigger than he was, only to be back to wrestle the next week with increasingly more bandages covering his body. Perhaps the most notorious example is former United States Women's Champion Mae Young, especially at the start of her WWE career in the late 1990s. Already well into her seventies by that point (she's 87 as of this writing), Mae's initial gimmick was that she was an Iron Buttmonkey senior citizen who constantly took bumps on behalf of her best friend, The Fabulous Moolah. (She once even was smashed through a conference table by the Dudley Boys!) As if that weren't demeaning enough, Mae was also made into an Abhorrent Admirer / Christmas Cake stereotype who (among other exploits)  gave birth to Mark Henry's baby, French-kissed Vince McMahon, and was revealed as the object of Jerry Springer's (reluctant) lust on an unforgettable episode of Monday Night Raw. The sad thing, really, is that Mae was actually an accomplished wrestler back in the day (starting her career during World War Two when many male wrestlers went off to Europe or Japan), but that younger viewers watching WWE programming are likely to think she's just some repellent old lady that's kept around backstage purely for comedy purposes.
 * Freddie on iCarly.
 * Nathan from Misfits is a pretty literal example of this,  Plus, in more mundane terms, he's virtually impossible to insult or embarrass.
 * The Muppets: Beaker recently died. Still doesn't get any respect.
 * Given the accidents Tory Belleci has suffered in the course of the show (especially that bike accident), it's a wonder he's so rarely had to be treated for serious injury.

Religion And Mythology

 * Baldur of Norse Mythology makes this Older Than Print. He was practically immune to everything since his mother made all things in the world swear not to harm him (except mistletoe, because it's so harmless). Being the archetypal Norse, the rest of the gods immediately came up with a hilarious game where everybody throws rocks and blades at him because they know nothing would happen anyway. And the rest is history. (Yeah, Loki was kind of a dick about that. )

Video Games

 * This is about half of the gimmick with Wario's transformations in the second and third Wario Land games, as well as I heard with at least one (non Nintendo published) Gamecube era game. Simply put, the characters are nigh invulnerable, so the only way to proceed is to do things like set them on fire and have them smashed to a pulp to bypass obstacles.
 * This is how the Mummy's powers work in Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy. He's dead, so being set on fire/electrocuted/smashed flat/cut into three different copies doesn't affect him at all. Granted, he's still not a fan of it...
 * Phoenix in the Ace Attorney series has been whipped into unconsciousness, been hit in the face by scalding hot coffee mugs, and had birds peck at his face, and yet none of this ever leaves so much as a mark on him. At one point, he's even hit by a car and gets out of it with nothing more serious than a sprained ankle.
 * More notably, he once ran across a burning bridge, and fell off halfway across because the bridge fell apart, into a raging river noted that anything that falls in there goes missing forever in the middle of an enormous storm. He caught a cold.
 * You think Phoenix got an extended hospital stay (including an IV) for a cold? What sort of colds do YOU get?
 * During the course of Tales of the Abyss, Dist survives near-drowning, almost freezing to death, falling from an extremely tall tower while also being caught in an explosion (!), and a blast to the face from the most powerful magic user in the game, and is also hinted to have suffered years of abuse at Jade's hands in his childhood. Yet he never seems the worse for the wear; not only does he not die, he has no scars and we never even see him injured. No wonder Jade says he's as tenacious as a cockroach.
 * Daxter, of Jak and Daxter, has this status sometimes. The example that comes to mind is the cutscene where Daxter narrowly avoids getting blown up after Riding the Bomb. He gets up and walks away unscathed... only to be flattened underneath a piece of debris.
 * Hong Meiling is perhaps the best known Iron Butt Monkey of the Touhou series, as she is often caught by Sakuya slacking off during her job of guarding Scarlet Devil Mansion's gate. Fanon depicts that Meiling becomes a cushion for Sakuya's knives on a daily basis, but since Meiling is youkai, she doesn't die.
 * She's also fanonly depicted as a chew toy for Flandre.
 * Sandbag from Super Smash Bros. Melee and Brawl feels no pain at all, and apparently likes to see how far it can get hit.
 * Vice Admiral Arthur Norbank in Nexus the Jupiter Incident has a really hard time dying, despite his numerous failures as a commander and despite the players' sincerest wishes. His ships have been blown up so many times (due to his own incompetence), it's always an unpleasant suprise whenever he shows up safe and sound. In a later mission, the player has a chance to leave Norbank to die. This troper imagines most players did just that.
 * Fritz from Brain Dead 13. During his big hunt he's often hurt and damaged in several ways, including being stomped, locked in an iron maiden, having a Frankenstein monster fall on him, getting shot in the face by his own cannon and so on. And let's not mention the stairs....
 * Glass Joe from Punch-Out!!; with his abysmal record of 1 win and 99 loses, this guy should, by all logic, be a brain-dead vegetable from being pummeled into submission so many times, but he never seems to consider giving up his gloves.

Web Animation

 * Homestar Runner has Strong Sad. He is constantly getting beaten up or worse by other characters. He ends up doing all the dangerous stunts in the Dangeresque films. And in one email, The Cheat decides to curry favor with Strong Bad. We don't see what happens, but we hear what sounds like a power drill and Strong Sad shouting "Ow! Both my face and hands!"
 * Grif from Red vs. Blue. Seriously, this guy once took a punch to the groin hard enough to dent the metal floor beneath him. The fact that he was able to walk straight is nothing short of extraodinary. Oh, but not just punched. Hammered by a shotgun, a gas tank, and a concrete roadblock (which partly cracked upon impact around the area), all to the groin. Tex is a mean, mean girl.
 * "Why won't you just kill me?"
 * And this is all in one episode.

Webcomics

 * Balder of Brat Halla is immune to everything, as everything promised his mother, Frigg, they would not harm him. (Except mistletoe, of course.) Since Balder is immune to all damage, he makes an excellent club when wielded by his brother Thor. (Which is not to say he doesn't feel it...)
 * Fighter and Black Mage in Eight Bit Theater: the former is repeatedly stabbed in the head, often with no ill effects (it made him smarter once), while Black Mage more or less always survives what's thrown at him (having Australia dropped on him comes to mind) and when he does die that one time, it comes as quite a surprise, but he still gets resurrected in fairly short order so as to continue suffering.
 * Largo in Megatokyo - if we ignore the broken arm that occurred in the first dozen strips. Piro has even commented that for a long time it was Largo's job to get physically hurt and Piro's to get emotionally hurt, until their roles started blurring slightly.
 * Gordon Frohman of Concerned has been shot multiple times, tossed around by exploding barrels, had his face eaten, was set on fire, attacked by zombies, sliced, knocked around by a giant antlion, held a live grenade while standing knee-deep in radioactive sludge and setting himself on fire, had an ornate axe stuck in his head, had his midsection pierced by a pipe, and went through many other ordeals... and survived.
 * Ensign Shirt (first name Red) of Legostar Galactica. It is eventually explained that he gets his superhuman resiliency from being the descendant of the Claire of a Heroes parody.
 * Sawbuck in Homestuck takes horrendous abuse in the comic, but still survives due to his corpulence. What makes him a Butt Monkey to begin with, though, is that his time travel power only activates when he's hurt.
 * Nip of Nip and Tuck has been dropped from immense heights, blown up, set on fire, rocketed across the countryside in a homemade rocket-sled, and shot from a giant slingshot. His aptitude for this sort of thing was so bad his parents were relieved to learn he'd taken up a career as a stunt man.
 * Tiff of both Eerie Cuties and Magick Chicks is showing signs of this. Her first appearance in Cuties had her spend the day dead after accidentally impaling herself, and so far in her first arc in Chicks she's busted her nose and been knocked senseless by a misaimed spell.
 * She was implied to be not only trained, but a metahuman, however. For one, she is parody of Buffy (but since vampires and demons in Cutie-verse work differently, her augmentation probably does too). Her status as "Slayer" (whatever this means) appears to be hereditary. And she shows very good (but not absolute) resistance to mind-affecting whatevers for some reason (it's clearly not raw mental strength, in her case).
 * Phil from Yosh! is initially this, but after the series Grew the Beard, this ability got expanded to include all forms of harm, especially magic.
 * Familiars in Errant Story can quickly regenerate and take any amount of abuse (including fireballs and point-blank revolver shots)... and all too often end up abused by their masters enough that they really need this. Same applies to the fairies, except they are not inclined to take that crap from anyone and are powerful enough that the slapstick including them tend to turn against the other party right away.

Web Original

 * Linkara from Atop the Fourth Wall makes a living reviewing bad comic books where he's semi-routinely attacked by Mad Scientists, a vicious robotic doppelganger, macabre monsters and spirits and a planet-conquering Well-Intentioned Extremist in his own home. Outside of his own show, fellow That Guy With The Glasses contributors have tied him up, kidnapped him, tricked him, blamed him for things he didn't do and yes attacked him.

Western Animation
"Popeye: Dat's all I can stands, I can't stands no more!"
 * Jeebs, from Men in Black: The Animated Series
 * Baby Huey of Harveytoons is built on this trope. He's invulnerable to the point where many of the gags of his shorts are centered around his enemies attempts to kill him backfiring horribly on them.
 * The Simpsons: Homer Simpson is the king of this trope. He goes through everything from falling off a cliff (twice), to slamming into a tree in his car, suffering from skiing incidents, waterfall plunges, animal maulings, getting shot by a nailgun, amateur brain-surgery, amateur heart surgery, and getting hammered by a champion boxer!!! Not to mention getting shot by a cannon daily for a living as one of his many, many jobs. One has to wonder if he is truly immortal...
 * He did die once briefly of a heart attack but he went back into his body when he heard his family was getting a ham.
 * Sideshow Bob counts in Cape Feare when he manages to be unhindered by a parade trampling him. Said parade also had about six or so ELEPHANTS that trampled him. Before that he had survived hitting his head against the speeding road, scalding hot coffee ("Ugh! This coffee is too hot!" *Pours it down the side and we hear scalding noises* GAHHHH!!), a drive through a cactus patch, and rakes. Lots and Lots of rakes.
 * From the Show Within a Show "The Itchy and Scratchy Show" - Scratchy (the cat) is perhaps the best example. He's been blown up, chopped up, burned, frozen, eaten, thrown into space, drowned, and even at one point appeared as a ghost, but he's always alive again for the next episode.
 * Family Guy. The entire family. Peter falls down stairs (repeatedly), Brian (being a dog) gets hit by cars, Stewie's had large pieces of glass stuck in his head, Lois has fallen off the roof and been drenched in scalding-hot french fry oil... and yet its Meg who's the series Butt Monkey. Ironic, huh?
 * Not to mention that Meg's suffered such indignities as having her hair set on fire, having a piano fall on her (something that also befell Peter) and been shot full of poison darts. Really, the only family member who has not been an Iron Butt Monkey is Chris. Go figure.
 * American Dad has Steve who is always getting attacked by animals, bullies or suffering other injuries. He often injures himself horribly but always comes back in the next episode as if nothing has happened. Interestingly, he very rarely breaks his glasses, unlike what would probably happen in real life.
 * Wile. E. Coyote. He's been crushed, blown up, fallen hundreds of feet, been knocked all the way through earth and back, and that's just the tip of a long list of abuses. He not only survives, but is right back at the same thing again.
 * In fact, in the sort of spin-off series Loonatics Unleashed, being an Iron Butt Monkey is Tech. E. Coyote's superpower.
 * On the subject of Looney Tunes, Daffy Duck's been shot enough times, his face (or at least his beak) should no longer be recognized. Sylvester's gone through many of the abuses that Tom has suffered over the years, being beaten, smashed, electrified, and so much else. Still other villains like Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Marvin the Martian and the Tasmanian Devil have also survived incredible injuries.
 * Likewise Plucky Duck, Daffy's counterpart in Tiny Toons. Glorious, hysterical case in point.
 * Lampshaded in a Cartoon Network commercial that asked a bunch of questions people wondered about cartoons. They ask "How come you guys never get hurt" and 3 of the looney toons answer "A good diet." "Exercise." "Flexibility really."
 * Tom of Tom and Jerry. Like Wile E. Coyote, he seems to be genuinely impervious to damage, with the exception of a few episodes where he does actually die. (and it never sticks.)
 * Deconstructed and spoofed in this VG Cats comic, where Jerrys actions in the "Lost Episode" of Tom and Jerry do have lasting repercussions.
 * Pinky and The Brain regularly get smashed, beaten, exploded, so forth, as Brain's schemes fail. Of course, Pinky doesn't really mind when Brain bops him on the head, so perhaps he's okay with it. Brain, however, gets the worst of it. Naturally, they're still standing (if bruised) at the end of every episode, ready to do "the same thing we do every night".
 * Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy. Ed has dropped houses on Edd and Eddy, the Kankers' trailer fell on the Eds, a pile of garage sale junk fell on Ed, Ed zapped Edd with a static electricity bolt powerful enough to blow up the latter's house...
 * The Tick (animation) stands out here, as he is Nigh Invulnerable and The Ditz
 * I think this would be a perfect time to mention that one incident where a group of his enemies decided to get together and destroy him.Long story short, they strapped him into a chair a dropped an A-Bomb directly on his head. He walked it off.
 * Hell that's his audition act in the opening of the animated series when he's trying out for a superhero assignment.
 * South Park's Ike was like this right up until about the time he started going to school. Most of his appearances involved Kyle playing "Kick the Baby!" and punting him through windows.
 * Beavis and Butthead.
 * In the more recent season they even manage to bounce back after being bitten by a hobo and recieving multiple incurable diseases.
 * This was a plot point of all things in The Penguins of Madagascar. Mort, our resident Butt Monkey, is so dumb that he can take lethal blows without serious damage. The penguins decide to suction out their own brains so that they, too, can have this "Idiot Aura." It works until they are too stupid to carry out their mission.
 * Actually it was called a "Halo of Ignorance"
 * This trope was used occasionally in Avatar: The Last Airbender when earthbending gets involved, then subverted in one of the few deaths in the series.
 * Sokka is the king of this in the chibi shorts, particularly "Bending Battle." He gets used as a human pinball.
 * XR from Buzz Lightyear of Star Command exemplifies this trope. The name's short for "X-pendable Ranger," and he was designed to be easily repaired after massive damage, so Once an Episode he meets a brutal fate, complaining all the while.
 * He insists it stands for "X-perimental Ranger". His presence on this page begs to differ.
 * Waspinator of Transformers: Beast Wars. It helps that, being a Transformer, he's made of metal. Also, his spark is in his head, which means it's harder to get a 'kill-shot'. Once the writers saw the pattern they'd made, they kicked it Up to Eleven, having poor Waspy blown up, ripped apart, or shredded in nearly every episode ever. He always survives. In fact, he is one of the three  Yeah, it's that kinda show.
 * Kind of. Waspinator's manner of speaking frustrated the writers. Since he had to make an appearance in every episode, they took to him making those appearances in pieces. This made him a huge fan favorite.
 * Iago the parrot took a lot of damage in Aladdin. The only time it was not played for laughs was near the end of the sequel, when he's just destroyed Jafar's lamp and Aladdin is mystified because he seems to be dead, but Genies can't kill anyone. You'd be surprised what you can live through.
 * Mentioned by Billy West in a commentary, Fry from Futurama: getting slammed into a wall at full speed by those transport tubes, surviving a fall from a helicopter without deploying his parachute, eating a big heaping bowl of salt, three cola induced heart attacks in high school.
 * And those are the ones that don't involve super-advanced medicine or symbiotic worms.
 * Goofy, especially in the How to... shorts.
 * Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants: His unfortunate fates include being shot out of a cannon, run over by a giant boulder, hit in the face with a pie bomb, zapped by the Flying Dutchman, attacked by a bear, and blown up from eating too many krabby patties, as well as having his toenail ripped off and his head explode. Plankton, Mrs. Puff and sometimes even SpongeBob himself are just as unlucky.
 * Just living between Spongebob and Patrick is unfortunate enough.
 * Time Squad: All three main characters; Larry has been electrocuted, smashed by a washing machine, been shot at, several times his body has been reduced to just a head, and has had his computer system scrambled by magnets. Otto gets frequently beat up by people from history, chased by a grizzly bear, viciously attacked by an evil My Little Pony (seriously), suffers from Tuddrussel's stunts, was crushed by a bookcase (off-screen), left in a hurricane, and was practically the resident buttmonkey at the orphanage. Tuddrussel takes a good amount for himself when it comes to getting beaten up by people, like Joan of Arc for example, has been slammed into the ground after destroying a giant fly monster, attacked by a lion, took on lava from the top of a volcano and really takes an equal amount as his comrades.
 * Spike in My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic has armored scales, and has been literally used as a pincushion without ill effect. Twilight can take a surprising amount of punishment as well, though this has yet to be lampshaded.
 * In The Dreamstone the Urpneys take this trope Up to Eleven, aside from the cartoon abuse they take from Zordrak, nearly each and every new scheme involves them being transformed or horribly injured in some slapstick manner (to name a few, being shrunk, zapped with electric bolts, beaten up by Amberley, fell victim to numerous vehicle crashes and mauled by a band of vicious leaves). Out of any of these situations, only being fed to Frazznats or turned to stone has lasting effect.
 * Fluffy and Uranus of Duckman are effectively living teddy bears, and routinely get eviscerated in elaborate ways by the title character.
 * Popeye usually goes through this until he eats his spinach...


 * Many characters in Archer:
 * The title character's butler, Winston. Somwtimes you have to wonder if "punching bag" is in the poor guy's job description.
 * Brett's reputation as a magnet for stray bullets was a Running Gag on the show. Whether it was enemy fire, friendly fire, or even practice shots at a shooting range, it seemed impossible to miss him.