Ridiculously Average Guy: Difference between revisions

** Even apart from that, it does help that [[Shrouded in Myth|his reputation is much better than truly warranted]] before too long.

* Most of the guys in ''[[Mai-HiME]]'' are just sort of background noise, unless (or until) they're plot-relevant. And yet they have some of the prettiest and most popular (and superpowered) girls in school longing for them, and in the manga one of them became the main character and had Mai and Natsuki actively fighting over him. (At least there they came up with the excuse that he could unleash their full powers.)

** In addition to that, she was supposed to be the main character when the comic was first forming. Later it became the teacher, but being surrounded by weird classmates still fits the trope.

* In ''[[Bubblegum Crisis 2040]]'', Linna's mother sets her up on an omiai date with a nice, normal, unexceptional guy. Linna is actually tempted into giving up her life of independence and excitement in the city (and moonlighting as a Knight Saber) to settle down and marry the guy.

* [[Kongoh Bancho|Hikyou Banchou]] looks like this when not in his ''banchou'' getup, which he often uses to get close to his enemies and sabotage them.

* Keita of ''[[Gakuen Heaven]]'' is an ordinary boy who sticks out like a sore thumb in a school full of handsome, talented males. Said males find his lack of extraordinariness the very attribute that makes him so interesting to them.

** Kyon is essentially [[Tropes Are Not Bad|the exception that proves the rule]] on this trope being an annoyance. He's a very average guy... but he's a ''realistic'' average guy, instead of the bland doormat other uses of this trope usually are. He actually hits that range of being easy to relate to because he completely avoids the pitfall of [[This Loser Is You]].

* Just about ''any'' male character in a [[Harem Genre]] manga/anime or [[Bishoujo Game]] or any manga/anime with a large female cast will be average and easy for the audience to project onto as possible and will still end coming out on top, saving the world and getting all the girls to love him without really even trying.

** The manga (possibly unintentionally) lampshades just how fully this trope is in effect. Ryoko has memories of a Tenchi-like boy she met and embraced tightly long before coming to Earth, and begins to fear that what she feels for Tenchi is actually just a shadow of what she felt for him, her true love. When they finally meet this character, he pretty much has all of Tenchi's good qualities, but even moreso; he's handsome, extremely brave, kind to a fault, [[Jumped At the Call|heroic without being pushed into it]], and outspoken in his love for Ryoko. Eventually Ryoko finds out that because of a [[Timey-Wimey Ball]], what she felt when she embraced this guy all those years ago was actually an echo of her affection for ''Tenchi'' instead, and she happily bids him goodbye forever to go back to squabbling with the others for the chance to marry Tenchi and settle down to farm carrots.

* Kyohei was basically invented to be this and tacked on to ''[[Burst Angel]]'' simply because it's such a prevalent anime trope. He doesn't appear in the original manga, he's in absolutely ''zero'' of the promotional materials, and his contribution to the story is usually literally to show up, make some food, and then go home for the day while the actual plot happens somewhere far away from him. And yet the series is still billed as if it were about him, and his involvement with the others.

{{quote| This is the protagonist of our story. His grades are lower middle. Athletic ability is nonexistent. No special skills. No motivation.}}

* Shiraishi from ''Zero In'' is a completely and totally average high school boy, who is constantly beaten up by bullies and lets them push him around endlessly. This continues even after he joins the supposedly elite private police force Minkei (whose other agents are capable of near-superhuman feats)... he still lets bullies beat him up, and he usually stumbles through missions like an unlucky civilian who just happened to be dragged along.

 

 

== Comics ==

* ''[[Normalman]]'' himself is so unremarkable that ''his name is never capitalized''. In fact, you may know that in comics, ''every'' letter in ''every'' word is usually capitalized, but ''none'' of the letters in norm's name ever are. ''Damn''. Of course, that's mainly because he's the only guy without powers on the planet Levram, where being completely mundane makes him incredibly important to several key figures, from the Ultra-Conservative, who wants to give him powers so he won't disrupt the status quo to Sophisticated Lady, who finds his scrawny figure and utter helplessness maddeningly attractive.

** Joe's spiritual counterpart Guy Jones, "Just A Joe Named Guy", as well.

* ''[[For Better or For Worse]]''- [[Creator's Pet|Anthony friggin Caine]]. Absolutely average, yet everyone in the cast is convinced he's the best man on earth, and of course the lovely Elizabeth gives up her exciting life teaching in a native village to move back to her home town to settle down and live a nice, respectable life with him.

* ''Dreams of Yoghurt'' by Neil T Stacey features Average Man, whose characteristics at any given time reflect the average of the planet's makeup. At most times, he is an Asian woman named Mohammed Smith. He gets kidnapped by the CIA, who intend to interrogate him instead of collecting census data.

* ''[[The Mysterious Benedict Society]]'': Reynie Muldoon. "He was of average size, of an average pale complexion, his brown hair of average length, and he wore average clothes."

** Varvara Ardalionovna Ptitsyn, her husband Ivan Petrovich Ptitsyn, and her brother Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin are all described as completely ordinary people. Ivan Ptitsyn is stated to be blissfully unaware of how ordinary he is, and Varvara knows she's ordinary and has more or less made peace with that fact, while Gavrila knows that he's ordinary and is constantly striving to distinguish himself but lacks the ability to do so.

** In addition, the author launches into an aside describing how the vast majority of people in [[Real Life]] are "ordinary", and wondering how an author, interested in realism, is supposed to accurately portray these ordinary people.

* Ted Moseby from ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]''. His worst faults are that he corrects people and he wants to find true love. Plus he doesn't go all the way with his crazy friends. Oh wow, he's so daring.

** He's a borderline example, due to Flanderization making him more distinct as time goes on. He's more of the Ego to Barney's Id and Marshall's Superego. His desire to have a family and his single status as a thirty-something-year-old male living in New York City still sticks him with this trope, however.

* Todd Dempsey on ''[[Outsourced]]''. One of the main reasons the show received claims of being racist was because there was so much focus on him when the Indian characters had better personalities.

* On ''[[The Colbert Report]]'' and ''[[The Daily Show]]'', there is a [[Running Gag]] that Mitt Romney is an extremely bland guy. For example, a joke on ''The Colbert Report'' was that he got indigestion from a "particularly spicy Wheat Thin".

 

* Adlai Atkins from the ''[[Futurama]]'' episode "The Cyber House Rules". He's probably above average when it comes to qualities that attract women ('''Leela:''' "A tall doctor you say?"), but in everything else, he strives to be average. This includes having his Hawaiian shirts "toned down" (by taking out the colors and replacing them with greys), wearing ties with square bottoms, and generally wearing grey and beige tones around the clock. He gives Leela surgery to make her look like a normal human and then starts dating her. His desire to be average cause him to give Leela some humorous "compliments":

{{quote| '''Adlai:''' Leela, you're 999,999 in a million.}}