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== Subpages ==
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== ''[[Harry Potter]]'' ==
* Neville Longbottom was very much the Butt Monkey for the first four ''[[Harry Potter]]'' books, being there mainly just as a source of comic relief. However he [[Took a Level in Badass]] in the fifth book and if you're laughing at him by the seventh book, you have a very weird sense of humour.▼
== ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' ==
* Born as a deformed dwarf, having his own mother die bringing him into the world, growing up being reviled and hated by his father, having his first wife gang-raped by his father's garrison, becoming the laughing stock of Westeros despite being wise and kind ([[Black and Gray Morality|or at least not cruel]]), falsely accused of murder and imprisoned {{spoiler|twice}}, protecting a city with his life only gaining more scorn, getting half his nose cut off, denied of his birthright, forced into a second marriage with a woman who finds him repulsive, {{spoiler|finding his lover in his father's bed and becoming an exile wanted by the whole of Westeros after [[Oedipus Rex|killing both]]}}, {{spoiler|becoming a broken down drunk in exile, and getting captured, sold into slavery and nearly fed to lions for a momentary laugh from the audience of the Meerenese arena}}. Tyrion Lannister
* Cersei Lannister
== Other Examples ==
* [[Franz Kafka]]: every protagonist of his ever written, every one, and he often put his characters out of their misery in the end.
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** Also, Marvin, as he seems to get himself stuck in many horrifyingly awful situations, including having his leg stolen for some universe-destroying ritual, having constant pain in half of his body, and being left behind on a deserted planet to literally ''wait until the end of the universe'' for his friends to arrive. It doesn't help either that he is programmed to be permanently depressed. And the worst part is, nobody else seems to care.
* Rincewind, from Terry Pratchett's ''[[Discworld]]''. He doesn't just want to be left alone, he actually wants his life to be ''boring''. But due partly to being the [[Cosmic Plaything|pawn of Luck]], and partly to his own self-defeating cowardice, he always ends up in the middle of some gigantic disaster surrounded by people who want him dead.
** Lampshaded (hilariously) in ''[[
{{quote|'''Rincewind:''' I do not wish to volunteer for this mission.
'''Lord Vetinari:''' I beg your pardon?
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'''Lord Vetinari:''' I think you've left out a logical step somewhere...
'''Rincewind:''' No, sir. It's very simple. I'm volunteering. I just don't wish to. But, after all, when did that ever have anything to do with anything? }}
***
** Also from the ''[[Discworld]]'' novels, the Bursar. He went insane, and accidents are constantly happening to him; if someone throws
▲* Born as a deformed dwarf, having his own mother die bringing him into the world, growing up being reviled and hated by his father, having his first wife gang-raped by his father's garrison, becoming the laughing stock of Westeros despite being wise and kind ([[Black and Gray Morality|or at least not cruel]]), falsely accused of murder and imprisoned {{spoiler|twice}}, protecting a city with his life only gaining more scorn, getting half his nose cut off, denied of his birthright, forced into a second marriage with a woman who finds him repulsive, {{spoiler|finding his lover in his father's bed and becoming an exile wanted by the whole of Westeros after [[Oedipus Rex|killing both]]}}, {{spoiler|becoming a broken down drunk in exile, and getting captured, sold into slavery and nearly fed to lions for a momentary laugh from the audience of the Meerenese arena}}. Tyrion Lannister from ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' is, without a doubt, one of the best examples of a dramatic [[Butt Monkey]].
▲** Another character from the same series that also could definitely be considered a Butt Monkey would be Brienne of Tarth. She's an ugly woman warrior in an incredibly sexist world who has had to deal with one of her masters dying, another one mistakenly believing she betrayed them, being a suspect in a murder she didn't commit, attempted rape, getting put in a bear pit for [[Psycho for Hire|someone's]] sick amusement, and being constantly mocked. Not to mention her issues with [[Ship Tease|unrequited love]].
▲** Sam. Nothing good happens to Sam. It's never played comically, but you never want to hit the people who do it, because Sam deserves it.
▲*** The entire Stark Family seems to be the Butt Monkey clan of Westeros.
▲**** Every time you ask "When will the next book come out?", George R. R. Martin kills a Stark. Please, won't you think of the Starks?
▲** Theon Greyjoy. He gets ''no'' respect, not even from his own kinsmen. the universe just seems to twist itself into knots in a deliberate effort to ruin Theon's life.
* Everyone other than the Bastard or the PFY in Simon Travaglia's [[Bastard Operator From Hell]] series of short stories.
* The whole point of ''[[Candide]]''. Everyone is a Butt Monkey.
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** A critic once remarked that De Sade's novels have a kind of inverted karma: ''good'' acts end up hurting the actor. For instance, Justine's [[Complete Monster|sister]] Juliette has no scruples whatsoever, and the one time she refuses to commit a crime it is because she is afraid of the consequences, not from any moral considerations. Nevertheless, by refusing to commit the crime she loses her favored place at court and spends much of the rest of the novel in poverty and misery, until by a long series of evil acts she finally regains her power and luxury. (What really clinches it is betraying her sister Justine, of course.)
* Many a Thomas Hardy protagonist, particularly Jude of ''Jude the Obscure'' and Tess in ''[[Tess of the D'Urbervilles]]''. Jude and Tess both begin as wholesome, virtuous innocents until about the fourth page of their respective books, in which a endless series of escalating tragedies designed to rob them of all hope begin because [[God Is Evil]] and [[Inherent in the System|Victorian morality stifles any hope of a freethinking life]]. When things do improve in some minor fashion, it is only to make the next tragedy all the more poignant. Thomas Hardy biographers have tried and failed to come up with a reason for his unrelenting grimness; perhaps a contemporary review of ''Jude the Obscure'' sums the case up best by saying that, "He is depressing because he himself is somewhat depressed."
* Mr Bagthorpe of ''The Bagthorpe Saga''. Yes, he brings a lot of it on himself, but fact remains he's
* ''The Duchess of Malfi''. Poor girl. All she wanted was to get married... and look at the horrors that unleashes! Imprisonment, mental torture, her eventual murder... Her hapless husband Antonio also applies. ''Malfi'' probably has the earliest instance of the hitman being something of a Butt Monkey too.
* In [[J. R. R.
▲* Neville Longbottom was very much the Butt Monkey for the first four ''[[Harry Potter]]'' books, being there mainly just as a source of comic relief. However he [[Took a Level in Badass]] in the fifth book and if you're laughing at him by the seventh book, you have a very weird sense of humour.
▲** Peter Pettigrew took away Neville's title ever since the third book was released. Mostly because of the snark delivered his way by people from his ex-friends like Lupin and Sirius, to Voldemort himself. And all verbally assaulted him and gave him crappy jobs for the mere pleasure in seeing him squirm. But then again, when you decide to do a [[Face Heel Turn]] on your best friends knowing it'll lead them to death [[Fate Worse Than Death|or worse]], then spend twelve years as ''a rat'', you kind of deserve the title of Butt Monkey.
▲*** Even Peter's {{spoiler|death was pathetic; he gets strangled to death by his own hand in a scene that's basically treated as an afterthought by Rowling, while so much other stuff is going on that you barely notice his passing. Not that he didn't deserve it, mind you.}}
▲** In an extremely minor case, the Auror John Dawlish, who, though described by Dumbledore as a very good student in his first appearance, is the subject of a [[Running Gag]] where he is constantly being beaten up, by, among others, Dumbledore himself (twice) and Neville's grandmother.
▲*** Not to mention getting constantly Confunded (a sort of hypnosis/forgetfulness/disorientation spell) by heroes and villains alike.
▲** Percy, Filch, Umbridge, Lockhart, and Draco also have their share in this trope, but they almost always deserve it.
▲** Harry himself is the [[Butt Monkey]] of the Dursley household until his 11th birthday.
▲** Life just seems to hate Severus Snape; his past isn't a cakewalk, to say the least.
▲* In [[J. R. R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]]'s ''[[The Silmarillion]]'' (and the individually published story ''The Children of Húrin''), Túrin Turambar gets cursed by [[Big Bad|Morgoth]] when he is eight. He gets sent to safety and never sees either of his parents again, he runs away from his foster father the King of Doriath after sort-of-accidentally killing someone, he kills his best friend after he shows up trying to help him, his overconfidence causes the fall of {{spoiler|Nargothrond}}, he fails to rescue the woman who loves him, (and him rescuing her was his ''other'' best friend's dying wish), and when he finally falls in love with someone else, gets married, and gets her pregnant, she turns out to be {{spoiler|his sister Nienor}}. "O master of doom by doom mastered, O happy to be dead" indeed.
** There's also Bombur from ''[[The Hobbit]]'', who is a more classic comedic example.
* Children's fantasy novel ''The Hounds of the Morrigan'' has the Sargeant, who is [[Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"|only ever known by that name.]] Almost his entire screentime in the book is devoted to having the [[Big Bad]] torment him in increasingly ridiculous, magical ways -- which he blames on drink, as he's a [[Muggle]]. They send him up the Amazon river on a rubber duck, change the cross-stitch wall hanging in his room to insult him, and do various, other cruel things to him {{spoiler|which include using him as a pawn to get close to the [[MacGuffin]]}}.
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* Tanith Low from ''[[Skulduggery Pleasant]]'' by Derek Landy. She was meant to be killed off in the first book but the publishers said it was too depressing so Landy was forced to keep her in. He wasn't pleased about that. Now as punishment for surviving, in every book she gets tortured in some way. Now she's possessed by an evil spirit and has eloped with a psychopathic hitman. She hasn't been seen since.
** Fletcher Renn is traditionally on the receiving end of insults and jibes and got dumped by his beloved girlfriend, [[Jerk Sue|Valkyrie Cain]] in book 6 though he did get a [[Big Damn Heroes]] moment at the end of the book, saving her from the clutches of a [[Yandere]] vampire.
▲* Cersei Lannister from ''[[A Song Of Fire And Ice]]''. She's beautiful, tough, resilient, brave, it's impossible not to like her. However she's sort of trying to be a [[Magnificent Bitch]] but [[Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain|failing miserably]]. She's spent her life living in fear of a prophecy that one day her life would basically fall apart and then she'd be ignominiously killed so all of her efforts are dedicated to protecting her children and escaping this prophecy through manipulative attempts at power-grabbing that ineveriably blow up in her face. As Petyr Baelish points out, while Cersei desires power, she has no idea how to wield it and while she thinks she is a player in the Game of Thrones, she usually just ends up being a pawn. However she does now have the [[Complete Monster]] Gregor Clegane on her side so things should start looking up for her.
* The protagonist in the short story "You're Another" finds out that people are coming back to his time, completely changing things and then filming it as entertainment. They even explain why he's always falling in holes, being cheated on by his girlfriend and having paint cans spill over him. {{spoiler|He's "comic relief"}}
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