The Friend Nobody Likes: Difference between revisions

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#Politeness—The group is simply too nice to kick this person to the curb.

#Audience Popularity—Sometimes a [[Jerkass]] [[Ensemble Darkhorse]] will start hanging around the group, based on some flimsy pretext, just so that the writers have an excuse to feature him more.

#Supervision—The disliked character is too dangerous or irresponsible to be left to their own devices.

#Caring—Deep down, the group does care (or the disliked character cares about them), and it seems to be otherwise simply for a matter of very difficult behaviour.

It's not even that their friends aren't aware of their behavior, either. They're perfectly well aware the person is a jerk, or a geek, or a ditz, and will frequently treat them as such based on their behavior. They still get included in the group nonetheless.

In some cases, it's discovered that the group really does care about this friend and vice versa. In other words, "They may be a pain in the butt, but they're ''our'' pain in the butt." Often uttered right before such lines as "You mess with them, you mess with all of us!" or "We're not leaving anyone behind!" The character may have a breakout episode that explains the reason for their attitude or reveals a human side that never showed before (such as a cute hobby).

Compare [[Vitriolic Best Buds]] and [[With Friends Like These...]], where this kind of attitude is usually limited to one or two select members of the group as opposed to being the opinion of the group as a whole. Can be the group's [[Butt Monkey]]. If The Friend Nobody Likes is a protagonist or otherwise portrayed sympathetically, he may instead become [[The Woobie]]. The Friend may also be [[The Gadfly]] if they aren't an up-and-out [[Jerkass]]. See also [[My Friends and Zoidberg]], where Zoidberg is usually '''The Friend Nobody Likes''', [[No Accounting for Taste]], when the "Why are they together" question is asked of a romantic couple and [[Token Evil Teammate]], which is this trope with the Jerkass taken up to outright evil.