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Iron Butt Monkey: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
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 [[Comedic Sociopathy|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, [[Nigh Invulnerable|practically immune]] [[Made of Iron|to harm]]... purely for the purpose of having hilarious injuries happen to him. [[Anvil on Head|Drop an anvil on him?]] [[Cranial Eruption|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. [[No One Could Survive That|Incinerate him?]] He'll reform from the ashes, or [[They Killed Kenny|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]].
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* ''[[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 the Combat Butler|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 {{spoiler|they didn't want it to end.}}
** 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.
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* 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? [[It Got Worse|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 ''[[Three By Three Eyes]]''. It's ''really'' [[Good Thing You Can Heal|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).
* [[Stalker with a Crush|Mitsurugi]] [[Camp Gay|Hana]][[Alpha Bitch|gata]] 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 [[Robot Girl|Marionettes]].
* Excel in ''[[Excel Saga (manga)|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. [[Lampshade Hanging|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.
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== 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.
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== 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 [[Straw Dogs|Sam Peckinpah film]] when it comes to makeshift household protection.
* Jeebs, from ''[[Men in Black (film)|Men in Black]]''.
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* 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 [[Made of Iron|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 [[It Makes Sense in Context|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 [[WWE|World Wrestling Entertainment]] Superstar Colin Delaney, who repeatedly got [[Curb Stomp Battle|squashed by wrestlers a great deal bigger than he was]], only to [[The Determinator|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) {{spoiler|almost}} 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, {{spoiler|considering he's immortal.}} Plus, in more mundane terms, he's virtually impossible to insult or embarrass.
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== 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/[[Me's a Crowd|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.
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* Hong Meiling is perhaps the best known [[Iron Butt Monkey]] of the ''[[Touhou]]'' series, as she is often caught by [[Ninja Maid|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 [[Person of Mass Destruction|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.
* [[Hook Hand|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 [[Overly Long Gag|stairs]]....
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== 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 ''[[8-Bit Theater
* 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, [http://www.hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2005-09-26 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. {{spoiler|It's because he accidentally used a cheat code on himself before the beginning of the comic.}}
* Ensign Shirt (first name [[Red Shirt|Red]]) of ''[[Legostar Galactica]]''. It is eventually explained that he gets his superhuman resiliency from being the descendant of the Claire of a ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' parody.
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== Western Animation ==
* Jeebs, from ''[[Men in Black (animation)|Men in Black: The Animated Series]]''
* [[Baby Huey]] of [[Famous Studios|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 [[Hoist by His Own Petard|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 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmNObROcBOo 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.
* [[Looney Tunes|Wile. E. Coyote.]] He's been crushed, blown up, fallen hundreds of feet, been [[Digging to China|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 [[Status Quo Is God|is right back at the same thing again.]]
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* ''[[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 "[[Once an Episode|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.
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** 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 [[Chibi Avatar|the chibi shorts]], particularly "Bending Battle." He gets used as a ''human pinball''.
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