The Generic Guy: Difference between revisions

 

{{quote|'''Henry''': ''She's just a little... [[The Nondescript|nondescript]].''

 

The member of an ensemble cast with no distinctive personality traits. They may be smart, but not as smart as [[The Smart Guy]]. They may be strong, but not as strong as [[The Big Guy]]. In short, there is pretty much nothing remarkable or distinctive about them. They would be [[The Everyman]] or [[Standardized Leader]] ... if they were the main character.

 

{{examples}}

* Jou (Joe) from ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'' ''thought'' he was this character later on in the series, once he realised that he wasn't particularly smart, brave, strong or willful. He wasn't the most popular character, either, probably because he wasn't [[Bishonen|pretty and]] [[Yaoi Fangirl|easily slashable]] never mind that they're all eight to twelve years old, it's the [[Nostalgia Filter]] talking since we were that age back then). In ''[[Digimon Adventure 02]]'', having outlived his usefulness, he becomes something of a [[Chuck Cunningham Syndrome|Brother Chuck]].

** Joe may have ''thought'' he was The Generic Guy but he definitely wasn't. He was by far the closest the original crew had to comic relief. And that unslashable is actually quite not true as pairing with him DOES exist.

** In ''[[Justice League International]]'', he's the [[Only Sane Man]]

* In [[The Golden Age of Comic Books]], [[Jack Kirby]] did several series about various "kid gangs", including the Newsboy Legion and the Boy Commandos. All of them had their own generic guy, usually as [[Standardized Leader]]—including the Forever People, his team of "space hippies" from [[The Seventies]].

* In ''[[New Mutants|New X-Men]]'', poor Tag became the Hellion team generic guy. He didn't have Hellion's ego (or power), Wither's angst, Mercury's one sided love (and emo), Dust's nationalism, or Santo's lovable big guy status. Of course this was a bad time to be Generic Guy. The kids are expendable.

** By the end of the series when the students had only one team, Prodigy became the generic guy (he was the only average human). And while he did know every fighting style of every X-Men to ever teach him... he got almost entirely cut out of the final storyarc. Hellion, Dust, Mercury, and Santo stayed the same as above, Elixir took over Wither's angst spot, Surge was leader, Pixie became [[The Chick]], Anole became the [[Badass Normal]] (and [[Invisible to Gaydar]]), [[X-23]] is well, like her brother-father, and poor Prodigy fell through the cracks in the plot. Being [[The Smart Guy]] does not pay off apparently.

* Young Neil from ''[[Scott Pilgrim]]'' doesn't really do anything. He just hangs out with the main characters and [[Only Six Faces|looks a lot like Scott]].

* The Dalton Cousins from ''[[Lucky Luke]]'' included two such characters: there was hot-headed leader [[Hair-Trigger Temper|Joe]], tall and ditzy [[The Ditz|Averell]], and then there were [[Those Two Guys|William and Jack]], who were rather bland and basically interchangable.

** Well, at least everyone knows who Balder is. The REAL Generic Guy in that family would be Vidar. Who, I hear you ask? Exactly.

 

 

 

 

* ''[[Dilbert]]'' features a dark haired, personality-free character that Scott Adams refers to in books as "Ted the Generic Guy". If someone is going to be fired, it's usually him. Ditto if someone's going to be killed. It may not even be the same Ted every time. Adams has admitted that he came into being just because he can't draw many types of characters, so he just draws Ted whenever he needs someone generic. As you can see, the above screenshot from [[Dilbert (animation)|the TV series]] is a profile of Ted which [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] all this.

** Early on in the comic, before he became an actual character, Wally (or at least someone who looked exactly like him) filled this role.

* [[Punny Name|Jenn Erica]] of ''[[Ink Pen]]'' is a walking [[Lampshade Hanging]] of this trope.