The Klutz: Difference between revisions
Rescuing 3 sources and tagging 0 as dead. #IABot (v2.0beta9)
m (Mass update links) |
(Rescuing 3 sources and tagging 0 as dead. #IABot (v2.0beta9)) |
||
(9 intermediate revisions by 3 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
This is a character that everyone knows and loves. So long as they aren't involved in ''their'' plans, they love them anyway. The klutz bumbles and fumbles at seemingly anything they do, but they are kept around for one reason or another. The unstated reason is that they make a great [[Plucky Comic Relief]], and serve as a humanizing accessory to a hero if he is [[The Stoic]].
There are varying degrees of klutziness, of course. Some characters are fairly capable with a notable tendency to trip, drop things, forget important tasks, or [[
A broader supertrope covering those characters that cannot be fit into the narrower [[Cute Clumsy Girl]]
Often used as an excuse to inject [[The Pratfall]] and other elements of [[Slapstick]] comedy.
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Anime & Manga ==
* Osaka of ''[[
** Chiyo, often times, as well.
** Kimura's Wife displays traits of this as well as [[The Messiah]].
* ''[[Sailor Moon]]'': Usagi is as much a klutz as she is [[The Ditz]]. Yuuichirou, the guy who works with Rei at the shrine is also klutzy.
* [[Dojikko|Misuzu]] from ''[[
* Akane Tendo of ''[[
* Proud, noble and powerful Yeon from [[Tower of God]] is capable, but on two occasions she burnt up her entire team, and when their strength was measured, she slipped and barely touched the measuring plate with her knuckles while bumping her head against the machine. {{spoiler|She still got in third place and was first place at the time.}}
* [[Naruto]] starts out as a klutz in the beginning of his series.
** Tobi is one as well {{spoiler|intentionally}}.
* Louie from ''[[Rune Soldier]]'' to the point where the first volume of the US DVDs is called "Enter the Klutz".
* Amelia from ''[[The Slayers]]'' manages to be a formidable magic user, in spite of general klutziness and sometimes being [[The Ditz]].
* Mai's mother in ''[[Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash Star]]'', explained as being due to a lack of
** Yes, you read that correctly. Mrs. Mishou is an archaeologist who, seemingly unique on television, actually spends her time on research and on carefully excavating dig sites with small, precise tools.
* Taiga Aisaka from ''[[Toradora
** Taiga is an unusual case; she's not particularly clumsy in the sense of tripping over, dropping things or bumping into people (she's actually remarkably athletic), but she's capable of acts of startling carelessness. Most notably, she not only [[Love Letter Lunacy|put a love letter in the wrong boy's bag, she actually forget to put the letter in the envelope!]]
* Dr. Tearju Lunatique from ''[[Black Cat (
* Dino from ''[[Katekyo Hitman Reborn]]!'' takes this to extremes: when his fellow mafia family members are present, he's especially skilled and all-around awesome. Without them, though, he gets ''so'' clumsy that he can't even eat a simple meal without getting it on himself, or walk up or down stairs without tripping and falling (mostly onto Tsuna for added effect.) When the series shifts into action territory, however, this trait seems to be all but written out of the plot.
** He still does this in most appearance where he does more than just standing around being the [[Combat Commentator]], including falling down the stairs of the Namimori Shrine. Luckily he's [[Made of Iron]].
* Daisuke in ''[[D.N.Angel]]'' is another male example, and an odd one. Given that he's a bit of a ditz at times, he has a tendency to trip or not watch where he's going. That being said, he's been trained since he was a young child to be a [[Phantom Thief]], so he normally can perform an aerobatic
* The Loveless family maid Roberta from ''[[Black Lagoon]]'' is completely inept in any housework. She's [[Obfuscating Stupidity|using the job as a cover]], being a former FARC guerrilla fighter and international terrorist.
** Greenback Jane from her self-titled arc is another big example, though she's nowhere near the unstoppable badass Roberta is.
* [[Pokémon (
** Better examples are Ash's Gligar (who mostly got more competent when it evolved) and Misty's Psyduck.
** And Ash earlier on in the series.
* A repeatedly lampshaded trait of Eto "Careless Hachibe" Hachibe from ''[[Iono the Fanatics]]''. She desperately tried to hide it using her [[Tall, Dark and Bishoujo]] side, but alas, clumsiness is just one of those things that are really to control.
* In ''[[
** Funny thing is, it is usually the [[Red Oni, Blue Oni|Red Oni]] counterpart who is prone to crash-land, as proven with the Dragon Brothers. But for the Dragon Sisters, it's the [[Red Oni, Blue Oni|Blue Oni]] who is the one to crash-land.
** However, in the actual show, KouRyu (the "red" one) never has to ''land'', but has a great deal of comical trouble maneuvering in space.
*** AnRyu crashing is from ''[[Super Robot Wars W]]''.
** Actually, in the aforementioned scene in FINAL, ''both'' of them crash-landed. AnRyu simply had a more spectacular one, more akin to EnRyu's kind of "landing" as opposed to the simple "thud" that KouRyu experienced. Given that they were both falling in from ''orbit'' and had likely been tossed away by Puranus, though...it's kind of understandable.
* Koyomi, the protagonist of ''[[Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou]]''. Her only magical skill is summoning [[Anvil
* Lilika from ''[[Burn Up]] Scramble''. Especially when [[Can't Hold His Liquor|drunk]].
* Yomiko Readman of ''[[
* Jinpei in ''[[Science Ninja Team Gatchaman
* Miranda from ''[[D
* Nyu, the innocent split personality of [[Ax Crazy]] Lucy in ''[[Elfen Lied]]''.
** Another example from ''Elfen Lied'' would be Kisaragi, Kurama's "clumsy secretary." [[Kill the Cutie|Lucy rips her head off and uses her body as a sheild in the first 6 minutes 30 seconds.]]
* Tohru Honda from [[Fruits Basket]]. I mean, the whole reason she discovers the Sohma curse is because she trips and grabs onto Kyo while trying to stop Kyo and Yuki from fighting, followed by panicking and running into Shigure and Yuki. In the manga at one point, shes tries to break a watermelon with her bare hands, just to cause herself ALOT of pain. Tohru seems prone to spacing out and/or not knowing what's going on.
** Tohru's mom Kyoko is also a good example, the best is example is a flashback, when she hits Tohru in the head with a cabinet. This could also be an example of Tohru's klutzynes and ditzyness, as she just simply giggles, Though she still sends Kyoko into a state of panic.
** Kisa Sohma would fall into this category too.
* Kiara the Amaranthine from ''[[There Beyond the Beyond]]'', despite being the most sought-after magical artefact in the world, trips over her own feet quite often.
* Kotetsu T. Kaburagi from ''[[Tiger and Bunny]]'' is not known for his grace. Even on active superhero duty. ''[[Destructive Savior|Especially]]'' on active superhero duty.
Line 56:
== Comics ==
* Male example: Archie from ''[[Archie Comics]]''.
* Awkwardman from the ''Inferior Five''. He's been known to bump his head on panel borders and knock over ''the laws of perspective'' when he falls. That's right, this man is so clumsy that the conventions of the medium and physics both topple before his fumbling.
* Wildcard from ''[[G.I. Joe]]'' literally accidentally breaks everything he touches without fail. Sooner or later, it ''will'' happen.
* [[Exactly What It Says
** Well, almost exactly. He's not a carp.
** He's also charged five times the standard admission to an antiques show in one strip.
** He has tripped over beaches. ''Beaches''.
* This is one of [[Brilliant but Lazy|the]] [[Heavy Sleeper|many]] [[The Trickster|ways]] [[The Slacker|in]] [[Rube Goldberg Device|which]] [[Gaston Lagaffe]] makes a mess of things.
Line 73:
== Films -- Live Action ==
* Chunk in ''[[The Goonies]]''. Mikey even uses Chunk's clumsiness to break the [[Treasure Map]] from its frame. "What'd you break this time, Chunk?"
* ''[[
* ''[[The Pink Panther]]'': Inspector Clouseau.
* Cadet (later Officer) Fackler in the ''[[Police Academy]]'' films. Oddly, most of his mishaps inflict injury on people other than himself.
Line 80:
* Dr. Allison Reed in ''[[Evolution]]''.
* Seymour in both film versions of ''([[The Little Shop of Horrors|The]]) [[Little Shop of Horrors]]''. In the original, he's a {{spoiler|[[Lethal Klutz]]}}.
* [[
** This was all too common in the actual filming of such scenes, particularly in [[Gojira (
== Literature ==
* Bella Swann from ''[[Twilight (
** Spoofed to hell and back with the extravagant clumsiness of Belle Goose in the ''Harvard Lampoon'''s parody, ''Nightlight.''
* Prince Rhun in ''[[Prydain Chronicles|The Castle of Llyr]]''. As Fflewddur put it, "If there were a field with one stone he'd trip over it!" And get back up with a smile on his face.
* Penlan from [[Sandy Mitchell]]'s ''[[Ciaphas Cain]]'' novels.
{{quote|
"Yes." I nodded. "But she's not nearly as accident prone as she's supposed to be. I'll grant you [[Continuity Nod|she fell down an ambull tunnel once]], and there was [[Urine Trouble|that incident with the frag grenade and the latrine trench]], but things [[Cursed
** Aka "Jinxie". But the troopers ''want'' to be near her; they think she soaks up all the bad luck in the vicinity.
* Tonks from the ''[[Harry Potter]]'' books. She nearly failed her Auror's exams because of her poor stealth skills, and passed only because of her handy [[Voluntary Shapeshifting]] abilities.
* Jackie Rodowsky, a regular charge of the ''[[Babysitters Club]]'', and nicknamed "the walking disaster".
* Fitz Kreiner from the [[Doctor Who Expanded Universe]]. He's not as cartoonishly clumsy as some of these examples, but no other character in the [[Eighth Doctor Adventures]] is anywhere near as clumsy as he is. One gets the impression that if there's a possible obstacle, he finds and trips over it, and if there isn't one, he just trips over his own feet instead. He once got a [[Twisted Ankle]] climbing on a rock wall, which ended up serving as a plot device to split him up from the main group, and to make matters worse, he attempted to kick someone with his injured foot. And he's admitted himself he's rather uncoordinated. It all contributes to his [[The Woobie|Woobieness]].
Line 99:
== Live Action TV ==
* Adam Savage of ''[[
** And if Adam isn't hurting himself, chances are colleague Tory Belleci ''is''.
*** If he isn't too busy hurting Grant Imahara.
** [[Lampshade Hanging|"Let's egg him on until he hurts himself. That's always fun."]]
* Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor from ''[[Home Improvement (TV series)|Home Improvement]]''. Oh oh oh ''oh oh oh'' '''OH'''.
* Susan Mayer of ''[[Desperate Housewives]]''. Sometimes her accidents actually steer the plot.
* [[Family Matters|Steve Urkel]].
* ''The George Lopez Show'' had a [[Recurring Character]] named Accidental Amy (played by executive producer [[Sandra Bullock]]).
* Parodied in ''[[
** A [[Take That]] for the example just below?! Or maybe to Nick alumni [[The Amanda Show|Amanda Bynes]] in ''[[What a Girl Wants]]''?
* The title character of ''[[Lizzie
* Claire in ''[[My Wife and Kids]]''.
* ''[[Scrubs]]'' had Julie, one of J.D.'s [[Girl of the Week|girlfriends of the week]] (played by Zach Braff's [[Real Life Relative|girlfriend-at-the-time]] [[Mandy Moore]]). It comes as a bit of a surprise when Elliot predicts ''J.D.'' to be the one who eventually screws up their relationship. (Surely enough, he does.)
** J.D. and Elliot do have this as well, though Julie just takes it to the extremes.
* Male example: Jack Tripper from ''[[
** Chrissy's cousin Cindy is even more of one.
* Sam and CJ in ''[[The West Wing]]''.
* The title character of ''[[Ugly Betty]]''.
* [[Chuck]] Bartowsky. He gets the team into as many scrapes as he gets them out of. Whether this trait will be overcome by the neo-Intersect remains to be seen.
* [[Dick Van Dyke]]. [[The Dick Van Dyke Show|Sometimes.]]
* Kramer in ''[[Seinfeld]]''.
* Captain Parmenter in ''[[F Troop]]'', who pratfalls on a regular basis.
* Kelly Bundy occasionally drifted into this trope on ''[[Married...
Line 129:
== Tabletop Games ==
* Extremely obscure ''[[
== Video Games ==
* ''[[
** Another wall that Colette leaves a Colette-shaped hole in is ''still'' there in the second game and used as the town's tourist attraction (an NPC suggested it be used for such a thing in the first game). This place is one place that IS reasonable to trip, as it is at the end of a steep downward slope.
** At one point, in Welgaia, she trips ''into a deactivated machine, turning it on.'' Not only that, but later in the game she manages to trip and fall over despite ''[[Winged Humanoid|being able to fly]]''. That's an achievement in itself.
Line 140:
* Yuffie, from ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'', is... interesting. During the Bahamut Sin fight in ''Advent Children'', she leaped from building to building, effortlessly catching the her shuriken no matter what happened to it in flight, and even doing crazy acrobatics. In ''Dirge of Cerberus'', she set off a flash bomb, darted in and dragged away someone who should be much heavier than her in the space of a few seconds, and virtually disappeared. After that, she spent most of her appearances in said game falling over and hurting herself. She seemed to vary from ditzy to deadly competent in the original game, too. Maybe she just doesn't use her ninja agility until [[Let's Get Dangerous|it's needed]]? Or perhaps she's just [[Obfuscating Stupidity]]?
** Selphie in ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'' plays it straight with an obligatory [[Crash Into Hello]].
* Rikku in ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' falls on her rear end so many times it becomes a plot point in an ''X-2'' sidequest.
* As a male example, Mario's brother Luigi tends to display this feature, especially in the RPGs and to some degree in the ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]'' series which actually has this present in gameplay: one of his special moves has a chance of misfiring and another ends with him turning upside down in midair and landing on his head (Mario's version of the attack lands him on his feet).
** One of Lucas's taunts has him tripping backwards.
* Shurelia from ''[[Ar
* [[Gameplay and Story Segregation|In gameplay]], [[Neverwinter Nights|Linu]] would be a competent cleric if her A.I. weren't problematic. However, every conversation you have with her mentions some bit of chaos that she caused through clumsiness, usually by way of [[Disaster Dominoes]] (e.g. spilling a drink in a bar and causing a [[Bar Brawl]] that destroyed most of the building.)
* Anthony the pageboy, one of ''[[Eternal Darkness]]'''s Chosen, is a protagonist example. Let's see, he [[Curiosity Killed the Cast|reads a cursed scroll he was meant to take straight to the king]], knocks open a coffin containing the body of a priest who was killed by [[Body Horror|Bonethieves]], drops a vase (which turned out to contain a component for [[Magick]], so no problem there), potentially ''stabs himself''... yeah, it's hard to think of a hindering flaw as cute rather than worrisome in a Lovecraft [[Expy]] work. The only thing that would keep him from getting himself killed is that thanks to the curse he spends his chapter gradually turning into a zombie and therefore unable to die normally or significantly injure himself.
* Though all ''[[Dead Rising]]'' characters besides Frank have limited screentime, Paul does a good job of looking
* Cal-Vina in ''[[Agarest Senki Zero|Agarest: Generations of War Zero]]'' is so clumsy that Routier specifically - and very seriously - asks Eugene to make sure he never holds a knife. As she says:
{{quote|
== Web Comics ==
* Gwynn from ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' sometimes gets like this when she [[Blind Without'Em|takes off her glasses]].
* [[Bird Boy]]: Bali in the opening pages [https://web.archive.org/web/20111115104947/http://bird-boy.com/volume-1-page-5 falls flat on his face] -- [https://web.archive.org/web/20111115104638/http://bird-boy.com/volume-1-page-9 twice]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20111115104848/http://bird-boy.com/volume-1-page-14 Plus once on his butt]
* Vincent the Lucario in the [[Pokémon]] fanfic ''[[Random Doom]].''
* In ''[[Wapsi Square]]'', both [http://wapsisquare.com/comic/homeagain/ Monica] and [http://wapsisquare.com/comic/unscathed/ Tina] are a bit on the clumsy side.
== Web Original ==
* Mackenzie Blaise of ''[[Tales of MU]]'' tends to trip when startled. And she's very easily startled.
== Western Animation ==
* Young Hercules in Disney's ''[[Hercules (
* ''[[Lilo
* [[Goofy]] is well known for being the klutz.
* Eugene in ''[[Hey Arnold!]]'', who is not just extremely clumsy, but is also just [[The Chew Toy|a bad luck magnet]] in general. In one episode it was revealed that he was born on Friday the Thirteenth, which explains a lot.
* Daphne from ''[[Scooby Doo]]''. Other cast members sometimes sarcastically refer to her as [[Distress Ball|"Danger Prone Daphne."]]
* Amy Wong in ''[[Futurama]]'' is described even by the other characters as a "klutz from Mars" and gives ''precisely'' the same scream every time she falls over. In the early seasons, Amy doing a pratfall was pretty much a [[Once an Episode]] occurrence.
** In one of the DVD audio commentaries, the writers mention this trait was given to Amy to see if such slapstick humor could be funny if inflicted on a cute female character. (As opposed to ''[[The Simpsons]]'', where Bart and Homer were the primary focurs of physical gags.)
* Oopsey from ''[[Care Bears|Adventures in Care-a-Lot]]''.
* [[The Smurfs|Clumsy Smurf]].
* [[George of the Jungle|George, George, George of the Jungle... WATCH OUT FOR THAT TREE!]]
* Nancy in ''[[The Amazing Chan and The Chan Clan]]''. A psychic even pointed this out once while attempting to read the bumps on her head, most of which were obtained through Nancy's own klutziness. In another episode, Mr. Chan instinctively calls out to Nancy when he hears someone crashing into a lamp. (It was Stanley, who's also rather clumsy himself.)
* Irma from the 1987 ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987
* The title character of ''[[Doug]]'' could be this at times.
* The original Applejack from ''[[My Little Pony]]''. It's a main part of her backstory for the toys, and she got a song in the UK about how "silly" she is.
** Not so much in the cartoon, though. The one big spill she ends up in is Firefly's fault.
** In ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
Line 185:
** [[Chevy Chase]]'s [http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-us&vid=7144a23c-d9eb-450f-84ac-40e594f3fe64 parody of Ford] on ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' included this.
** In ''[[The Simpsons]]'', as he and Homer walk to his home they both trip and fall flat on their faces.
** In the ''[[
** [[Justified Trope]]: he had a balance problem due to inner ear failure.
* [[George W. Bush]] also gets stuck with a bit of this reputation, having fallen off a Segway and his bicycle, choked spectacularly on a pretzel, and been "outwitted" by a door at the end of a press conference.
Line 195:
[[Category:Archetypal Character]]
[[Category:Character Flaw Index]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Klutz, The}}
[[Category:
|