Butt Monkey/Video Games

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Enzo: Aw, c'mon!

  • Beat from The World Ends With You. He has a trail of failures behind him.
  • Eugene from Whacked! Pushed to the point of fulfilling the Who's Laughing Now?? trope. (This was actually a fantasy.)
    • Lucky is teased just as much as Eugene. Probably more as, unlike Eugene, Lucky threatens them for real, which only serves to feed the Troll.
  • The Ace Attorney series may as well be renamed Turnabout Butt Monkeys:
    • Protagonist status almost guarantees a character will be this. To wit:
      • Phoenix Wright himself. After all, everyone in the game seems to go out of their way to make his life a living hell. It's certainly more subtle, however... It's easy to not realize how far it extended until the third game came, and with it the chance to play as Edgeworth: suddenly witnesses are much more forthcoming, investigators more respectful, judges less sarcastic, and prosecutors never whip you. Phoenix notes he has some enough bad karma as a reason he won't steal something. (At least when not preparing for a trial.)

Phoenix: "Nobody loves me."

      • Maya, who gets arrested, trapped, or kidnapped at least once per game. Not to mention accused of murder at least once per game.
      • Edgeworth, who sympathizes with Phoenix a little bit when he realizes how hard it is to gather clues as a defense attorney and if you screw up during a testimony at one point, Edgeworth gets mocked and he wonders to himself if there is a kick me sign on the defense's bench. He still gets treated better than Phoenix, however...
        • While it's not so bad initially (the Judge, at least, seems to respect him regardless), it gets much worse in Ace Attorney Investigations, when he gets the spotlight to himself. In the first case, a dead body is found in his office and some files were stolen The second case, he is accused of murder by a flight attendant and gets whipped by Franziska a lot. In the third case, he's knocked out by a Proto Badger and wakes up tied to a pole. He then finds a dead body and is insulted multiple times by the agent leading the case. The fourth case (a flashback) his first trial ever is delayed because the prosecutor and the suspect are murdered. The lead detective on the case continually calls him 'kid', Little Kay Faraday knocks him down then uses his cravat as a tissue, the defense attorney he was set to face continually laughs in his face, and he gets whipped by Franziska a lot. He solves the case, but the murderer escapes. The fifth case, he meets the Steel Samurai and the Pink Princess, but they're played by Larry Butz and Wendy Oldbag. And he gets whipped by Franziska a lot. Oh, and his Steel Samurai fanboyism is lampshaded. Mercilessly.
      • Apollo Justice somehow manages to get even less respect than Pheonix ever did. Every character seems to go out of their way to mock him in some manner whever possible. Even his own mother!
        • To be fair, his mother took on a different persona (due to an accident that made her lose her memory) so she had no clue that she was talking directly to her son until she regains her memories at the end of the game.
    • The minor characters don't get spared either:
      • Detective Dick Gumshoe, especially in the second game, where he gets his pay docked several times for goofing up, and near the end of the final case gets in a car accident while trying to rush some crucial evidence to the courthouse. He is also frequently on the business end of perfectionist Franziska von Karma's whippings. He also gets accused of murder twice over in Ace Attorney Investigations.
      • His love interest, Maggey Byrde (introduced in Justice for All) has a perpetual streak of bad luck, which culminated in her being accused of murder on three separate occasions.
        • Byrde lampshades this a lot too, and considering her name is a pun on the magpie bird, known to bring bad luck, she's practically the female version of Larry. When she was six months old, she apparently fell off the balcony of her 9th floor apartment...
      • And then there's Larry Butz, Phoenix and Edgeworth's old school friend and Unlucky Everydude to the extreme, who can never seem to hold a steady job or a girlfriend throughout the course of three games. He seems to be a danger magnet, and everybody in his circle often discredits the things he says, to the point where Phoenix and friends invented their own saying about him: "When something smells, it's usually the Butz." Larry Butz is perhaps the only witness to be called an idiot in court.
        • On the flipside, those girlfriends? Supermodels, each and every single one of them. Then again, the series is more or less overflowing with gorgeous women....
      • Not even inanimate objects are completely safe. The Kurain Sacred Urn, most valued object of Kurain Village (Maya's hometown), gets broken a lot. Pearl accidentally hits it with a ball in the second game, and scrambles the writing on its front as she glues it back together (from "AMI" to "I AM"). Adrian Andrews drops it on the floor and spills paint on the pieces in the third game, though she at least gets the writing back into proper order. And at the very end of the third game, we see a picture showing a very young Mia and Maya Fey... reassembling the pot, revealing it's been broken quite a bit before.
      • Winston Payne, despite having spent seven years undefeated, also seems to get the short end of the stick too often - he's so meek and inarticulate that he's always the default Warmup Boss - once being defeated in court by a lawyer who was suffering from amnesia after being struck in the head. Ouch. After losing to Mia Fey, he pretty much lost all his dignity. He's usually seen as "that other prosecutor" in side-cases. When about to get a guilty verdict? Phoenix barges in and says he needs the defendant for another case. When he finally does get a guilty verdict? The judge rules that the defense was so lousy that they need a retrial, in which the prosecution fails, though at least it wasn't Payne this time. And not only does Edgeworth not recognize him, upon hearing the name believes that he's part of the custodial staff.
  • The Ship Captain in God of War, who has, as far as this editor has gotten in the series, been eaten alive by the hydra for captaining the ship Kratos was on; dropped into the hydra's gullet by Kratos, who only wanted the key he was wearing; been stabbed, used as a human ladder, and flung into the River Styx by Kratos; and resurrected as a spirit warrior promptly killed by Kratos. As he's trivial to the plot, reappears frequently, and all his misfortunes are caused by Kratos, he's also a borderline Recurring Extra.
    • In a nice shout-out, his appearance in God of War II was solely to have him scream, "Oh no, not you again!"
  • Zelos Wilder of Tales of Symphonia. Although handsome, he is almost always shown to fail frequently at flirting with women, including his party members. He is light-hearted and tends to keep his worries in check, although he does become more important to the game's plot later on. Conversely, he is also "The Chosen One" of his planet, and his unique ability is charming female NPCs to receive gifts.

Mithos: "But I'm glad the professor's okay."
Zelos: "What, so I don't matter? *sob, sob*"

  • Metal Gear Solid has Johnny Sasaki, whose Grandfather was also a Butt Monkey. In the first MGS he had diarrhea, and in MGS4 he joins the new Foxhound to fight Liquid Ocelot. When Snake sees him, he is astounded that Johnny's been able to survive for 10 years (Snake confused him for a rookie). The 2007 TGS video has him farting and trying to take a crap in a barrel, when a guy sees him and starts chasing him while his pants are down. Butt Monkey indeed.
    • He also has a hidden cameo in MGS2. You can listen to him talking to himself in the bathroom, complaining about how getting knocked out and left lying in the prison floor gave him an even worse diarrhea. Poor guy.
    • Let's not forget Raiden in MGS2 and MGS4. He's double-crossed by his colonel (actually an AI designed to control the world), beaten up by Snake and Olga to use as bait for Ocelot and Solidus, groped by the President of the United States (who is then shocked to discover he is a man), subjected to torture and having to run around nude until Snake brings him his gear, and subjected to an experiment by the Patriots where they cut his head off and attach it to a robotic body. He's frequently mocked in MGS3, despite the game taking place years before he was born, with a Russian officer named Raikov who looks like Raiden, is gay for Colonel Volgin, and gets his clothes stolen by Naked Snake (later to be known as Big Boss) to use as a disguise, revealing that he wears a thong. Colonel Volgin himself later gropes Naked Snake, who is disguised as Raikov -- and he is caught because, unlike Raikov, he doesn't get an erection from it! The fact that American and European audiences were not very receptive to the idea of an effete Bishonen protagonist is probably the root of much of Raiden's (and his Russian body double's) suffering.
      • And then there's the short comedy series in MGS3 where Raiden tried to take the spot of Main Character from Snake by killing Big Boss... only to continuously fail so horribly, from beating up by Volgin (mistaking him for Raikov), raping by Volgin, slapping by The Boss, and getting a slight respect to Big Boss, only to be run over by Russian soldiers and the Metal Gear-like machine.
    • Don't forget Hal "Otacon" Emmerich. While he becomes much less of a butt monkey as the series progresses, he had to put up with a lot of crap in the original MGS, from pissing himself in fear of the Cyborg Ninja to having Sniper Wolf die. All that on top of the fact that his father commited suicide after his stepmom seduced him, causing his sister (with whom he was close with) to bear a grudge against him for a long time...
  • The Prinnies are a species of Butt Monkey penguins in Disgaea. They get forced to do every last bit of the gruntwork for their masters, they explode if you throw them (and this is often a valid combat tactic), and their masters often torment them for amusement; the opening of Disgaea 2 shows a character throwing a knife at one. And no matter how much damage they take, they're valued so poorly that healing (or resurrecting) them only costs one Hell.
    • Somewhat justified, seeing as Prinnies are the souls of murderers, thieves, etc.; doing the grunt work is how they atone for their sins. The Celestia Prinnies seem to have it a bit easier, as well. But still, Etna and company could go a little easier...
    • Even when they get their own spinoff game, the Prinnies are still Butt Monkeys. In "Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?" Etna thinks nothing of sacrificing the lives of 1,000 Prinnies toward the task of bringing her a rare dessert.
    • In addition, there's Tink, the "Dirty Frog". Originally a handsome servant, he was cursed and turned into a lecherous frog. The Dark Court issued a subpoena against him, with his very existence being an unpardonable crime.
      • Not really sure that counts, since Felonies are actually a good thing to have in the game. Tink, however, is most definitely a Butt Monkey anyway; one of the endings has him mobbed by a crowd, and his best attack has him going suicidal... only no one cares.
  • Luigi of Super Mario Bros.. is occasionally a butt-monkey, when he's not a Recolor of Mario. He is often the butt of cross-dressing jokes, self-delusional about his own abilities if he's not being depicted as an outright coward. He is always being kidnapped by ghosts, as some kind of backlash to his own game Luigi's Mansion.
    • Nintendo seems to take a practically unholy glee in always ramping it up, too. In Luigi's latest appearance (Super Smash Bros.. Brawl), he seems to have gone quite mad from the stress.
    • Wario and Waluigi are usually this in the intro to the Mario sports games.
    • Both Mario and Luigi play the butt-monkeys in PETA's Super Chick Sisters.
    • And of course, Princess Peach, who basically can't keep herself out of Bowser's clutches.
    • Except, of course, in Super Princess Peach.
  • Kazooie, one-half of the eponymous duo from Banjo-Kazooie series, is Butt Monkey in avian form -- especially in the first game, but still so in the second. Not only is she subject to quite a bit of slapstick, but she always seems to learn her moves in the most humiliating fashion. To be fair, she does give the universe plenty of grief in return.
    • There's also Roysten, Banjo's long-suffering goldfish. He was tossed on the barbeque at the fake ending of the first game. Then in Banjo-Tooie, he was blasted along with Banjo's house and poor Bottles in the opening cinema, subsequently buried under a huge rock, and found himself as part of Bottles' charcoaled dinner at the end of the same game.
    • They also gave us Gobi the Camel, whom you first meet in his eponymous level. You have to Ground Pound his back several times, forcing him to cough up his precious water. After several rounds of this abuse, he runs away to another level... where you have to seek him out and do the exact same thing. After suffering much abuse at the hands of Kazooie's beak, he gets annoyed and vows to go to the "lava world." There's no lava world in Banjo-Kazooie. But he shows up in the sequel, trapped in a cage. You have to set him free, for once helping him. After he finally makes it to Hailfire Peaks, his "lava world," you get to abuse him with the Bill Drill again. Fun times!
    • Also arguably Clanker, a mechanical whale (who looks more like a giant shark with a blowhole). In the first game, he appears in his level, "Clanker's Cavern," a sewer where he serves as a garbage grinder for the villain, Gruntilda. He also has a terrible toothache. Later, in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, he appears in the nostalgic wonderland, Banjoland. Now torn to pieces, his torso, head, and jaw are all located in different places...but he's still alive. His eyes also end up the target of some baddies in one of the missions in Banjoland.
  • In the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, main character Cloud fits this to a T. Wanted to join SOLDIER? Nope, stuck in the Shin-Ra regulars. Captured and tortured by Hojo for years after his hometown is destroyed by his former idol and his mother burns to death in front of him. Upon escaping, witnesses his best friend Zack getting set upon and killed by the aforementioned Shin-Ra regulars. All of them. His mind then shatters and he constructs a persona based on Zack and other SOLDIER members to cope. Is convinced to dress up like a woman to infiltrate the home of a pimp to save his childhood crush, and is the one picked to entertain the pimp for the night. Oh, not to mention the fact that the potential love interest gets skewered like a mini hot dog on a toothpick in front of our hapless hero by the former idol, the original One-Winged-Angel himself. Once he recovers from that, he tries to stop Sephiroth, but insteads gets totally Mind-Raped by Sephiroth into handing over the Black Materia, the key to the destruction of the world, then gets chucked into the Lifestream. Once he recovers from that, he does okay... until Advent Children, where it's revealed that he's contracted the lethal disease Geostigma, is suffering from a combination of depression and PTSD, and one of the children he's taking care of with the aforementioned childhood crush has the disease as well, causing him to question his ability to get anything right and leave to, well, in all probability to die alone somewhere. At this point he just can't fathom anything going his way. You can see it in the relieved look he has in the movie's happy ending that he's really, really amazed that everything turned out okay. In short, the poor bastard is a walking Diabolus Ex Machina magnet. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong for Cloud.
  • Roman Bellic of Grand Theft Auto 4, protagonist Niko Bellic's hapless cousin. A loser through and through, at one point he gets kidnapped, shot in the stomach when he can't stop screaming, healed in a filthy basement, and has to ask Niko to buy him some adult diapers.
    • Also Lazlo from the radio. All the time, he'll reminisce about his (not so glorious, in fact, really crappy) Glory Days.
      • Maurice Chavez, the ex-clown speech radio host from Vice City counts too. He can't seem to get a single sane guest on his show, and his life is regularly threatened by the guests he does get.
  • Soul Nomad and The World Eaters is chock full of Butt Monkeys. Gig, the evil force possessing the protagonist, takes glee in tormenting virtually every single party member the player meets. At first, the Hero's slightly ditzy friend Danette is his sole target, as Gig calls her by "stupid cow" instead of her name for literally the entire game, but the prospects open up as more of the less-serious story characters join... until the player meets Odie, who serves as Butt Monkey to not only Gig but virtually everyone else as well. He's so pathetic that he's a member of the Dio family, a lineage of the most powerful mages in recorded history... who flunked out of magic training.
  • Salsa from Mother 3 is a Butt Monkey in the figurative and literal sense -- he's constantly administered electric shocks from Yokuba, the Pig Masks kick him around, and he generally goes through all sorts of abuse all in the name of saving his girlfriend. It's rather satisfying when Kumatora and Wess help him bust out of his situation.
  • About half the cast in Psychonauts are Butt Monkeys of some variety, but the standout is probably Raz's friend Dogen. Bullied by seemingly everyone at the camp (with the possible exception of Lili, though even she makes jokes at his expense), he's even menaced by the squirrels, and everything seems to terrify him. He gets constantly blown up in Coach Oleander's training course, and he's the first child at the camp to get Brainwashed - after being held hostage, of course, and tortured by a deranged dentist. Other, lesser Butt Monkeys of note include Elton, a shy, sweet kid who makes friends with the fish in the camp's lake - prompting the bullies to go fishing. He's generally the first to get kicked out of any mental world. The long-suffering Comically Serious Sasha also gets his fair share of abuse.
    • Don't forget Maloof. Not only is he bullied, but if you go to his MySpace page you discover that even the people comforting him ultimately decide he's a crybaby not worth consoling. However, in this case, The Dog Bites Back. By becoming a seven-year-old mob boss.
  • Beyond Good and Evil has poor, poor Double H, who seems to be picked on by the universe itself. When you first meet him, within the span of about five minutes, he gets tortured, Easy Amnesia, and thrown off a cliff. In the grand scope of things, he's stricken with an evil alien disease, scolded by Jade for trying to kiss her, made fun of by children (this editor recalls one kid derisively calling him "canned food"), and used as a Meat Shield in the Final Boss by both sides. This is to say nothing of his apparent unrequited Bodyguard Crush on Jade, though that depends on who in the fandom you ask. In comparison, the other main sidekick, Pey'j, really only has to play James Bondage.
  • Izuna Legend of the Unemployed Ninja and its sequel have Mitsumoto, and to a lesser degree Shino.
  • The Touhou series can be said to practically run on Butt Monkeys. First off, there's Cirno, even abused in the manual. Then there's Reisen Udongein Inaba, abused by her mistress with punishment times, forced to be a guinea pig and even her fellow rabbit Tewi plays pranks to frame her for it (not to mention being considered by a lot of fans to be "useless, only good for her sex appeal"). And then there's Hong Meiling AKA China, whose name is so hard to remember (due to the different ways the Kanji can be read in Japanese and Chinese), they turn it into her Fan Nickname, and even the residents of the Scarlet Devil Mansion (especially Sakuya, who regularly knifes her for sleeping on the job and allowing Marisa into the mansion to steal Patchy's books) treat her poorly.
    • That's only in fanon, though. Official works, such as Touhou Hisoutensoku (aka Touhou 12.3 aka Unthinkable Natural Law) seem to treat Meiling with a bit more dignity, even if her story mode involves her fighting a giant catfish.
    • Fanworks, however, show that even Sakuya could become a Butt Monkey for both Remilia and Flandre, and the same can be said for the other master-Battle Butler relationship (E.g: Yuyuko/Youmu). Likewise, there's also Alice Margatroid, who is turned into some sort of Moe character in the fanworks, practically Butt Monkey bait for her partner Marisa.
    • One of Cirno's shining moments of Butt Monkeyness is in the fangame Touhou Soccer 2. While bosses below her on the power/intelligence scale, (including stage 1 bosses) like Wriggle, or Rumia[1] get fairly awesome, powerful special kicks, Cirno's combo with Letty Whiterock has her utterly failing to hit the ball with her infamous Icicle Fall -Easy- (which is mocked for having a safe spot directly in front of her), resulting in her getting horribly pummeled in the face by the ball and then dying.
  • Galen "Starkiller" Marek of The Force Unleashed. Father dies before his eyes as a child, taken by his father's murderer and raised to be a Jedi killer, enduring an abusive upbringing. Receives no kind words from his surrogate father whatsoever and after one of his greatest achievements, said surrogate father literally stabs him in the back for one little slip up, beats him up and almost kills him, saving him only that he might continue his work. After finally turning against him, Starkiller's ultimate fate is either Heroic Sacrifice or being horribly disfigured and enslaved for the rest of his life as punishment for one moment of weakness where he tried to get revenge.
    • Apparently, the trailer for the sequel shows that Starkiller's still alive, unmangled, and can dual-wield blue lightsabers. Redemption Equals Death has been apparently averted.
      • Played straight. Starkiller's still dead (and still the Butt Monkey); he's just been cloned.
  • Shepard from Mass Effect can be one of these, if you give him (or her)both the Colonist and Sole Survivor backstory. One results in their entire colony, and then every one of their fellow soldiers die on Shepards first backstory mission!
  • One of the selling points of You Don't Know Jack: The Ride was the return of all five hosts from the series so far. They get competitive about it. In particular, everyone repeatedly screws Buzz (the host of YDKJ2) out of his hosting duties. By the time you've played every round of the game, he has only asked one trivia question.
  • Pierce in Saints Row 2, in the first instance you see him, he involves a plan to break in to a casino down to the second. Cue Gat, "Hey, I really like the dream house ya built here, but why don't we just walk into the casino and shoot all the motherfuckers between us and the money?" After the mission cue News Reporter, "The leader of the 3rd Street Saints, Notorious criminal Johnny Gat, and an unknown accomplice (Pierce)" Butt Monkey thru and thru.
  • The Black Baron (stop starin') of MadWorld. He introduces the various violent Minigames, and the introduction inevitably ends in his death, only for him to come back unscathed to introduce the next one. Although he is the Final Boss, so it could just be he's a lot tougher than he looks.
  • Team Fortress 2 turns the BLU team into this through the Meet The Team videos. Every single episode revolves around the exploits of a single class on the RED team, and always ends with the BLU team receiving horrible beatdowns from the starring character. In particular is the BLU Heavy, who is always the one who gets the most pathetic or humiliating deaths (usually). To date, BLU Heavy has been headshot, gibbed by a single rocket (twice in the same video), splattered by running blindly into over a dozen sticky bombs, killed with two shots by a level 1 Sentry, stabbed to death, and batted in the balls by the Scout in a fight over a sandwich.
    • Less obvious is the BLU Soldier, who has usually been right next to BLU Heavy in all his worst deaths. BLU Soldier has died in every single video. He was ventilated by RED Heavy, headshot by Sniper, blown down by a Level 2 Sentry, decapitated by the RED Soldier, gibbed by the aforementioned sticky trap, stabbed by RED Spy, and flattened by a train while chasing RED Scout. In fact, BLU Soldier's deaths are sometimes more spectacular (but not always as funny) than BLU Heavy's. Apparently they're being set up as a Butt Monkey tag team.
    • Let's not forget the BLU Spy. RED Engineer's turret mows him down, RED Sniper impales him with his knife, RED Soldier smacks him with his shovel, he runs into the same sticky-bomb trap that RED Demoman set up, and BLU soldier, mistaking him for RED Spy, shoots him in the head.
    • Somewhat subverted in the Spy update, in which the RED Sniper gets stabbed by the BLU Spy.
    • In a game play example, we have the Pyro and Engineer, more specifically the players of said classes. The Pyro gets next to no screen time in any of the "meet the X" vids or even the trailer, is constantly whacked with the nerf bat whenever the class starts to become something better than mediocre, suffers from its after burn mechanic being on other classes but better (bleed does more damage AND is harder to treat), and is labeled with a W+M1 label that is very untrue (the class is ambush based) yet no one calls out classes in which W+M1 is more accurate (Heavy, Soldier). The Engineer suffers from being The Unfavourite from a development standpoint, and thus is grossly neglected when it comes to class updates. To date, Engineer is the only class to only have one Class Set update, while other classes like Soldier have three.
    • In the official comics, Scout consistently makes an embarassment of himself and is never taken seriously by his colleagues, although he brings most of it to himself with his cocky and insufferable attitude. Miss Pauling is also noteworthy, although respected and treated as an authority figure by the mercenary team (even the most batshit insane among them), she is treated like trash by pretty much every other important character, and during the events of Old Wounds and The Naked and the Dead, she's taken prisoner by the Classic Mercs with the rest of the team, gets punched in the face so hard she nearly dies, gets her entire blood drained out of her body by leech-robots, gets her blood put back in by Medic in very questionable sanitary conditions, gets buried under the remains of more robots and sees Soldier and Sniper naked. The mini-comics show Merasmus getting evicted from his home by Soldier's extreme stupidity, getting in serious debt by building his Carnival of Carnage he fails to get up and running and getting on the Russian Mafia's bad side by borrowing money he couldn't pay back to them.
  • Rufus the Gargoyle in A Vampyre Story. A significant amount of progress is made just by ruining his day. Over the course of the game you threaten him with a mace, get a bird to crap over his head, reduce him to a disembodied head (mocking him once you've reached this point is optional but entertaining), plug his nose, and turn him into a golem. This last one annoys him on multiple levels, because he's forced to do your bidding, and the body you use is rather portly. It's not as though he wasn't asking for it, though-he's kind of a jerk and refuses to help out voluntarily. He doesn't make the greatest impression on Mona and Froderick, so the constant torment starts out as "if he won't help willingly we'll take what we need by force", but by the time you're finished with him it's become "Hey, we have another problem. Let's see if we can solve it by pissing off Rufus."
  • Reese Worthington of Backyard Sports. He is constantly insulted by the other kids (like Dmitri, Kimmy, Ronny, and Barry Bonds) because they think he is a big nerd. This never changes throughout the series.
  • Quaver of the Overlord series. It gets particularly blatant in the early levels Overlord II, when he manages to lose an eye merely by inspecting the block of ice the Overlad arrived in. Also in the early levels, he gets knocked down a chasm when he tries to sing a ballad in the newly-crowned Overlord's honour.
  • Link from The Legend of Zelda is a Butt Monkey to Midna for the first half of Twilight Princess, a Butt Monkey to Linebeck and Oshus (and occasionally Tetra) in the first half of Phantom Hourglass and a Butt Monkey to everyone in the first half of The Wind Waker. After that, he always gets so Badass, that nobody even dares anymore to put him down in the slightest possible way.
  • That Dalton.
  • Aribeth in Neverwinter Nights runs through a pretty horrific Trauma Conga Line over the course of the story. To date: lover unjustly executed, driven suicidally insane, redeemed only to face execution and the knowledge that her Second Love has utterly destroyed his position in the city trying to defend her, faced a pretty nasty Hannibal Lecture from Mephistopheles that induced another bout of suicidal depression, redeemed again only to face yet another Hannibal Lecture and bout of suicidal depression, and finally getting to get a new body and retire somewhere.
  • Oh, Alistair. Even Wynne enjoys teasing the poor guy.
    • Partially because he's a doll statuette loving Adult Child, but also because he's the only party member you can't kick out, and is often referenced by other characters; it's hard for Leliana to pick on Sten for being a softie when you both left them to die at Lothering. You bastard.
  • Raven of Tales of Vesperia throws "respect your elders" out the window, and gets the blunt end of many jokes, although many of the jokes are either made by, or played along with, himself.
  • Gary from Modnation Racers is usually heard/seen being picked on by his co-worker Biff, and let's not even start on his butterfly-sticker collection!
  • After being shoved out of the spotlight for two games by the Rabbids, Rayman became a good example in Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party. No matter what he did, he couldn't get rid of his bunny-infested television, and his change into a sniveling wimp didn't help a thing. He was eventually run out of his own home by the Rabbids after suffering a Heroic BSOD.
  • "Glasses Guy" in most of Live Powerful Pro Baseball (MLB Power Pro) games gets this treatment from everyone, including the player. The player himself is also a Butt Monkey, sometimes so much that it's played to death.
  • Guybrush Threepwood is always a bit of a Butt Monkey, but in Secret and Curse this is overshadowed by his good nature and occasional heroism. In Escape, on the other hand, he is constant running joke, either with his efforts falling flat and being made fun of for it, or being mocked by every other character in the game (a great deal of which seems to go over his head). And let's not even get started on his treatment in LeChuck's Revenge, which seemed determined to make him an unlikeable Jerkass as well as an (Iron) Butt Monkey.
  • Ellis in Left 4 Dead 2 gets the worst end of the stick just from the opening cinematic! He gets grabbed and pounded to the ground by a Charger, has a Jockey leap onto his back and winds up slamming Ellis into a car, gets ambushed by a Spitter when he is hiding with Rochelle, and gets caught by a Smoker while he's trying to run to an elevator to safety. Ellis isn't any safer in the actual game either. Compared to the other survivors, Ellis has the most painful screams when being attacked by the infected. Valve also revealed concept art of the Jockey doing, you guessed it, riding Ellis.
    • Louis in the original Left 4 Dead. In the opening, he is almost attacked by a Witch due to shining a light on her and gets tackled by a Hunter. Despite the fact he hates everything, Francis doesn't hate the fact of letting Louis die by either the zombies or special infected.
  • Allen and Miyuki from Xenosaga. Miyuki, in particular, is a rare female example that's actually Played for Laughs.
  • The refree in the Wii version of Punch-Out!! is this, never being able to catch a break. Among other things, he got beat up several times by certain boxers, such as Aran Ryan, Bald Bull, and Super Macho Man, and was greatly humiliated by Mr. Sandman for no apparent reason.
  • Helion just can't seem to maintain her dignity in Eien no Aselia. She's shy and rather ditzy, so everyone else likes to tease her.
  • From what we can see of Portal 2 from the trailers, the two robot characters in co-op mode seem suffer much humiliation at the hands of almost everything the enrichment facility has to offer.
  • In Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, Ultimate Spider-Man gets the worst treatment out of all the Spider-Men. His hazards are Electro (whose powers are his weakness), being fought by a somewhat Genre Savvy nut that just refuses to shut up, and not just Carnage, but Slayer robots designed to destroy parasitic organisms...which includes the suit that Ultimate Spidey is wearing. Then he has to outrun tsunamis and collapsing heli-carriers. And Mysterio disses him on his height.
  • Zorne Sepperin of Rosenkreuzstilette, who is also a Woobie. Constantly desperately yearning for her adoptive daddy to someday accept her as his real daughter ever since Iris was born? Check. The fact that Iris killed him to make her suffer for having always hated her and refused to get along with her? Check. Having to put up with her easy defeat courtesy of Tia who was asking her to calm down and listen to her (and Grolla who was suggesting her to follow her friend Trau's example and therefore refrain from actually helping Iris cause as much mayhem and destruction as possible for fun)? Yeah, she's one unlucky girl.
    • But, in the sequel, Freudenstachel, she really Took a Level in Badass to make up for her unluckiness in the first game.
  • Alain, a Kirkwall mage in Dragon Age II, is a pretty benign mage who always ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time. In Act I, he joins a group of runaway mages who end up resorting to blood magic to protect themselves, causing him to desert them just as Hawke and companions go in after them. In Act III, he is shown working with a group of mages and templars conspiring against Meredith, but refuses to kill their hostage when Hawke confronts the conspirators.
  • Miou in A Profile is mercilessly teased by both Masayuki and Kaine, who constantly point out how normal she is.
  • The Fantasy Quest games delight in heaping punishment on the long-suffering Indian, Runs-With-Scissors.
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2 has Mog being poked, hold, and thrown around.
  • Vincent and Toby in Catherine.
  • Yosuke Hanamaru from Persona 4. First he found out his love interest didn't love him, but he found this out AFTER she died! Also, if you follow his Social Link, he gets complains at his job from bitchy girls. And don't remind him of the countless times Chie kicked him in the groin, and the hot springs incident as well. Though its justified to some people.
  • Steven Heck's "friend" Wen Shu in Alpha Protocol. When you first meet the two of them, Heck is subjecting Wen to Cold-Blooded Torture to force him to reveal the location of Heck's car keys. Later, if Heck likes you, he will frame Wen as the one who tried to assassinate Taiwanese President Ronald Sung in order to cover your escape. The end credits reveal that the Taiwanese government eventually executed Wen for his role in the attack.
  1. ↑ (too bad about Mystia there, though)
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