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[[folder:Real Life]]
* As companies grow larger and labor becomes more divided and bureaucratized, new positions and titles begin to emerge that often don't seem to indicate, what, if anything, their office holders are responsible for. Examples include obtusely titled positions like "assistant deputy senior vice president of internal affairs" or, conversely, positions where titles are so short they could mean just about anything, ie, "consultant."
* "Do-nothing Congress" is a common phrase in American politics, usually used by Presidents, presidential candidates or the minority party in Congress. Often it's an empty talking point that means "This Congress has done nothing I asked them to do," but occasionally it's used accurately. When the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives is closely divided between parties (and sometimes even when it's not), it's entirely possible that very few substantial bills will get passed. Likewise, when one political party strongly dominates the presidency and one house of Congress, the remaining house will very rarely get anything done, and even that only grudgingly.
** This might not technically count, since it's actually a ''design feature'' of the U.S. system.
* Presidents often receive a similar rap, as in Michael Moore's allegation that George W. Bush spent most of his first term on vacation or Republicans' criticism of Barack Obama's golfing, vacations and parties during the Deep Horizon oil spill crisis. Dwight Eisenhower was similarly portrayed as a golfer-in-chief.
* According to {{Stephen Fry}}, rules at Oxford and Cambridge were so lax thirty years ago that students could (and many did) get away with going to almost no lectures or tutorials their entire four years there.
[[/folder]]
* As companies grow larger and labor becomes more divided and bureaucratized, new positions and titles begin to emerge that often don't seem to indicate, what, if anything, their office holders are responsible for. Examples include obtusely titled positions like "assistant deputy senior vice president of internal affairs" or, conversely, positions where titles are so short they could mean just about anything, ie, "consultant."
* "Do-nothing Congress" is a common phrase in American politics, usually used by Presidents, presidential candidates or the minority party in Congress. Often it's an empty talking point that means "This Congress has done nothing I asked them to do," but occasionally it's used accurately. When the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives is closely divided between parties (and sometimes even when it's not), it's entirely possible that very few substantial bills will get passed. Likewise, when one political party strongly dominates the presidency and one house of Congress, the remaining house will very rarely get anything done, and even that only grudgingly.
** This might not technically count, since it's actually a ''design feature'' of the U.S. system.
* Presidents often receive a similar rap, as in Michael Moore's allegation that George W. Bush spent most of his first term on vacation or Republicans' criticism of Barack Obama's golfing, vacations and parties during the Deep Horizon oil spill crisis. Dwight Eisenhower was similarly portrayed as a golfer-in-chief.
* According to {{Stephen Fry}}, rules at Oxford and Cambridge were so lax thirty years ago that students could (and many did) get away with going to almost no lectures or tutorials their entire four years there.
[[/folder]]
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[[folder:Real Life]]
* As companies grow larger and labor becomes more divided and bureaucratized, new positions and titles begin to emerge that often don't seem to indicate, what, if anything, their office holders are responsible for. Examples include obtusely titled positions like "assistant deputy senior vice president of internal affairs" or, conversely, positions where titles are so short they could mean just about anything, ie, "consultant."
* "Do-nothing Congress" is a common phrase in American politics, usually used by Presidents, presidential candidates or the minority party in Congress. Often it's an empty talking point that means "This Congress has done nothing I asked them to do," but occasionally it's used accurately. When the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives is closely divided between parties (and sometimes even when it's not), it's entirely possible that very few substantial bills will get passed. Likewise, when one political party strongly dominates the presidency and one house of Congress, the remaining house will very rarely get anything done, and even that only grudgingly.
** This might not technically count, since it's actually a ''design feature'' of the U.S. system.
* Presidents often receive a similar rap, as in Michael Moore's allegation that George W. Bush spent most of his first term on vacation or Republicans' criticism of Barack Obama's golfing, vacations and parties during the Deep Horizon oil spill crisis. Dwight Eisenhower was similarly portrayed as a golfer-in-chief.
* According to {{Stephen Fry}}, rules at Oxford and Cambridge were so lax thirty years ago that students could (and many did) get away with going to almost no lectures or tutorials their entire four years there.
[[/folder]]
* As companies grow larger and labor becomes more divided and bureaucratized, new positions and titles begin to emerge that often don't seem to indicate, what, if anything, their office holders are responsible for. Examples include obtusely titled positions like "assistant deputy senior vice president of internal affairs" or, conversely, positions where titles are so short they could mean just about anything, ie, "consultant."
* "Do-nothing Congress" is a common phrase in American politics, usually used by Presidents, presidential candidates or the minority party in Congress. Often it's an empty talking point that means "This Congress has done nothing I asked them to do," but occasionally it's used accurately. When the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives is closely divided between parties (and sometimes even when it's not), it's entirely possible that very few substantial bills will get passed. Likewise, when one political party strongly dominates the presidency and one house of Congress, the remaining house will very rarely get anything done, and even that only grudgingly.
** This might not technically count, since it's actually a ''design feature'' of the U.S. system.
* Presidents often receive a similar rap, as in Michael Moore's allegation that George W. Bush spent most of his first term on vacation or Republicans' criticism of Barack Obama's golfing, vacations and parties during the Deep Horizon oil spill crisis. Dwight Eisenhower was similarly portrayed as a golfer-in-chief.
* According to {{Stephen Fry}}, rules at Oxford and Cambridge were so lax thirty years ago that students could (and many did) get away with going to almost no lectures or tutorials their entire four years there.
[[/folder]]
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** Speaking of school, how about that Tendo dojo? 36 volumes, 0 students.
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** Speaking of school, how about that Tendo dojo? "dojo"? 36 volumes, 0 students.
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** Tatewaki Kuno, for all his "Blue Thunder" bluster, does not participate in a single kendo match or anything remotely close to it. This is especially glaring when you consider that nearly every weirdo martial art in Ranma 1/2 has had at least one major battle, but an ''actual'' martial art is unrepresented.
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** Tatewaki Kuno, for all his "Blue Thunder" bluster, does not participate in a single kendo match or anything remotely close to it. This is especially glaring when you consider that nearly every weirdo martial art in Ranma 1/2 has had at least one major battle, but battle while an ''actual'' martial art is unrepresented.
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* The instruction manual for BloodBowl mentions the Dragon Princes, a team composed entirely of high-ranking elven nobility. They were so haughty that they refused to take on any team that wasn't of equal standing. Of course, none of the other teams measured up to this ridiculous standard, and they quietly disbanded after five seasons without playing a single game.
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* The instruction manual for BloodBowl mentions the Dragon Princes, a team composed entirely of high-ranking elven nobility. They were so haughty that they refused to take on any team that wasn't of equal standing. Of course, none of the other teams measured up to this ridiculous standard, their standards, and they quietly disbanded after five seasons without playing a single game.
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--->'''Pete White:''' We actually don't do anything.
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** In the first movie we don't see that because it has a very limited time scale, and the pirates have a very clear and limited objective - get the medallion and someone related to Bootstrap to La Isla de Muerta, and lift the curse. (OK, the Turner part could have just been a happy accident.) The raid on Port Royal was in service of that objective. They obviously plan to continue being pirates once that objective is reached. The whole time that has past is maybe a week? Maybe less?
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** In the first movie we don't see that because it has a very limited time scale, and the pirates have a very clear and limited objective - get the medallion and someone related to Bootstrap to La Isla de Muerta, and lift the curse. (OK, the Turner part could have just been a happy accident.) The raid on Port Royal was in service of that objective. They obviously plan to continue being pirates once that objective is reached. The whole time that has past passed is maybe a week? Maybe less?
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->Whatever happened to "we rape, we pillage"?
-->-- '''Jason'''(RobertUrich), ''TheIcePirates''
-->-- '''Jason'''(RobertUrich), ''TheIcePirates''
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** They all have clinic hours like their boss. They just don't complain as much.
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*** Chandler had the advantage that nobody really knew him at work; while Ross also used to have a 9-5 museum job before becoming a professor.
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* Bob (an exterminator) and Amy (a nurse) Duncan of ''GoodLuckCharlie'' spend an awful lot of time sitting around the house for a couple of working stiffs who supposedly don't have enough time for their kids.
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*** House Telvanni in the same game modifies it - their outlook on things means it actually makes ''sense'' that most of the actual running or details are left to someone else once you become a Master or the Archmagister. It is, instead, the mid-level ranks where the player doesn't have to do any of the stuff that is supposed to come with the rank.
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** Slightly limited in ''Daggerfall'', in that it is established that you aren't actually ''head'' of the various guilds (not even of the regional guild, as in ''Morrowind''), just amongst the most high-ranking members.
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** In a few issues of ''Nintendo Power'' there was a tie-in comic series to ''Super Metroid''. A new character - a male bounty hunter - was added in as a sort of rival and irritant to Samus. While she continued blasting her way through the underground tunnels, he would stop to pick up the space pirates' "ears" or claws or whatever the heck they were. After he started going on about how rich he was going to be after turning these body parts in for the bounties, Samus actually expressed disgust at his mercenary ways.
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** In a few issues of ''Nintendo Power'' there was a tie-in comic series to ''Super Metroid''. A new character - a male bounty hunter - was added in as a sort of rival and irritant to Samus. While she continued blasting her way through the underground tunnels, he would stop to pick up the space pirates' "ears" or claws or whatever the heck alien body part they were. After he started going on about how rich he was going to be after turning these body parts in for the bounties, Samus actually expressed disgust at his mercenary ways.
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Added Lost Odyssey as an example
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* Seth and Sed of ''LostOdyssey'' are both pirates, but we never actually see them participating in piracy, despite Sed, having a ship (though no crew).
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*** So, [[TakeThat just like real universities then.]]
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* The player character in {{Fallout3}} never does any marriage counselling or pedicuring or whatever the [[FunWithAcronyms GOAT]] selected for them.
** And in FalloutNewVegas, the Courier can claim not to be a "delivery boy" during a quest. However, there are plenty of chances to actually courier things.
** And in FalloutNewVegas, the Courier can claim not to be a "delivery boy" during a quest. However, there are plenty of chances to actually courier things.
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* The instruction manual for BloodBowl mentions the Dragon Princes, a team composed entirely of high-ranking elven nobility. They were so haughty that they refused to take on any team that wasn't of equal standing. Of course, none of the other teams met their ridiculous requirement, and they quietly disbanded after five seasons without playing a single game.
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* The instruction manual for BloodBowl mentions the Dragon Princes, a team composed entirely of high-ranking elven nobility. They were so haughty that they refused to take on any team that wasn't of equal standing. Of course, none of the other teams met their measured up to this ridiculous requirement, standard, and they quietly disbanded after five seasons without playing a single game.
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* ''BeetleBailey'' and his fellow soldiers have been in the Army during three major foreign wars (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan/Iraq), plus numerous brief interventions (Grenada, Somalia, Panama, Lebanon, Kuwait), yet they never actually seem to deploy out of Camp Swampy.
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* ''BeetleBailey'' and his fellow soldiers have been in the Army during three major foreign wars (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan/Iraq), plus numerous brief small-scale interventions (Grenada, Somalia, Panama, Lebanon, Kuwait), yet they never actually seem to deploy out of Camp Swampy.
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* ''BeetleBailey'' and his fellow soldiers have been in the Army during three major foreign wars (Korea, Vietnam, and the War on Terror), plus numerous brief interventions (Grenada, Somalia, Panama, Lebanon, Kuwait), yet they never actually seem to deploy out of Camp Swampy.
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* ''BeetleBailey'' and his fellow soldiers have been in the Army during three major foreign wars (Korea, Vietnam, and the War on Terror), Afghanistan/Iraq), plus numerous brief interventions (Grenada, Somalia, Panama, Lebanon, Kuwait), yet they never actually seem to deploy out of Camp Swampy.
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* The instruction manual for BloodBowl mentions the Dragon Princes, a team composed entirely of high-ranking elven nobility. They were so haughty that they would only play against equally lofty teams. Of course, none of the other teams met their ridiculous standards, and they quietly disbanded after five seasons without playing a single game.
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* The instruction manual for BloodBowl mentions the Dragon Princes, a team composed entirely of high-ranking elven nobility. They were so haughty that they would only play against equally lofty teams. refused to take on any team that wasn't of equal standing. Of course, none of the other teams met their ridiculous standards, requirement, and they quietly disbanded after five seasons without playing a single game.
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* The instruction manual for Blood Bowl mentions the Dragon Princes, a team composed entirely of high-ranking elven nobility. They were so haughty that they would only play against equally lofty teams. Of course, none of the other teams met their ridiculous standards, and they quietly disbanded after five seasons without playing a single game.
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* The instruction manual for Blood Bowl BloodBowl mentions the Dragon Princes, a team composed entirely of high-ranking elven nobility. They were so haughty that they would only play against equally lofty teams. Of course, none of the other teams met their ridiculous standards, and they quietly disbanded after five seasons without playing a single game.
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* The instruction manual for Blood Bowl mentions the Dragon Princes, a team composed entirely of high-ranking elven nobility. They were so haughty that they would only play against equally lofty teams. Of course, none of the other teams met their ridiculous standards, and they quietly disbanded after five seasons without playing a single game.
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** Tatewaki Kuno, for all his "Blue Thunder" bluster, does not participate in a single kendo match or anything remotely close to it. This is especially glaring when you consider that nearly every weirdo martial art in Ranma 1/2 has had at least one major battle, but an ''actual'' martial art is unrepresented.
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They don't pillage. They don't plunder. They don't invade {{Port Town}}s, kidnap beautiful maidens, battle the Royal Navy on the high seas, [[DigitalPiracyIsEvil broadcast without a license, or swap files on the intertubes.]] [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking They've never even been to Boston in the fall]]. The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, in fact, seem to mostly just drift aimlessly on the high seas, drinking rum and possibly singing sea chanteys. If you ask them, they'll probably just tell you they [[RuleOfCool like the way it looks on their resume]]. Or maybe they'll just tell you, "We don't do anything."
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They don't pillage. They don't plunder. They don't invade {{Port Town}}s, kidnap beautiful maidens, battle the Royal Navy on the high seas, [[DigitalPiracyIsEvil broadcast without a license, or swap files on the intertubes.]] intertubes]]... [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking They've and they've never even been to Boston in the fall]]. The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, in fact, seem to mostly just drift aimlessly on the high seas, drinking rum and possibly singing sea chanteys. If you ask them, they'll probably just tell you they [[RuleOfCool like the way it looks on their resume]]. Or maybe they'll just tell you, "We don't do anything."
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*** It should also be noted that Bad Girl responds by saying that those two are basically the same thing.
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* Douglas Adams wrote a radio sketch about The Kamikaze Pilot Who Doesn't Crash Into Ships. [[spoiler: Initially it seems like the guy is coming up with excuses (couldn't find target, vertigo, got lost) because he's [[IWantToLive unwilling to die]], but he's actually [[CompletelyMissingThePoint confused about the difference]] between a kamikaze attack and seppuku, [[ICannotSelfTerminate and can't seem to fly close enough to cut out his stomach and drop it on the target ship's deck]].]]
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* Douglas Adams wrote a radio sketch about The Kamikaze Pilot Who Doesn't Crash Into Ships. [[spoiler: Initially it seems like the guy is coming up with excuses (couldn't find target, vertigo, got lost) because he's [[IWantToLive unwilling to die]], but he's actually [[CompletelyMissingThePoint [[ComicallyMissingThePoint confused about the difference]] between a kamikaze attack and seppuku, [[ICannotSelfTerminate and can't seem to fly close enough to cut out his stomach and drop it on the target ship's deck]].]]
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* Jon Arbuckle from ''{{Garfield}}'' is a cartoonist, but the only time he is actually shown working on a cartoon is in the first strip, and his job has only been mentioned very few times since. He is frequently seen working in the ''GarfieldAndFriends'' animated series, though.
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* Jon Arbuckle from ''{{Garfield}}'' is a cartoonist, but the only time he is actually shown working on a cartoon is in the first strip, and his strip. His job has only been proceeded to be mentioned very few times since. ''only two times'' later in the strip, the first being when he went away to a cartoonist's convention in 1984, then ''twenty-six years'' later in 2010, Liz informs her parents over the phone about Jon's cartoonist job. He is frequently seen working in the ''GarfieldAndFriends'' and ''TheGarfieldShow'' animated series, though.
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Forgot to remove ptitles
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-->-- '''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaWU1CmrJNc The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything]]''', ''[=~VeggieTales~=]''
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-->-- '''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaWU1CmrJNc The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything]]''', ''[=~VeggieTales~=]''
''VeggieTales''
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* Kyouko in ''[[{{ptitleqxnl7vpv}} WORKING!!]]'' never really does her job as restaurant manager other than eating, and other characters notice this.
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* Kyouko in ''[[{{ptitleqxnl7vpv}} WORKING!!]]'' ''Manga/{{Working}}'' never really does her job as restaurant manager other than eating, and other characters notice this.
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* Although the first couple of episodes showed them in high school, pretty much all the school-age characters -- especially Bobby, Donna, Audrey and James -- in ''TwinPeaks'' soon joined [=~The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything~=]. The trouble was that each episode of the show was supposed to chart the investigation a day at a time -- but the plot also required the teenagers to investigate murders, hatch plots, seduce hapless detectives, {{blackmail}}... everything except attend class on a school day. On the other hand, the adults in the show tended to have jobs that tied into the small-town community -- and therefore the plot -- much more, and were shown at work all the time.
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* Although the first couple of episodes showed them in high school, pretty much all the school-age characters -- especially Bobby, Donna, Audrey and James -- in ''TwinPeaks'' soon joined [=~The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything~=].ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything. The trouble was that each episode of the show was supposed to chart the investigation a day at a time -- but the plot also required the teenagers to investigate murders, hatch plots, seduce hapless detectives, {{blackmail}}... everything except attend class on a school day. On the other hand, the adults in the show tended to have jobs that tied into the small-town community -- and therefore the plot -- much more, and were shown at work all the time.
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** The ''[=~Baldur's Gate~=]'' series at least tries to [[JustifiedTrope justify]] the latter as much as it can manage (mostly that said adventurers have come into a situation they couldn't handle alone and need a group to help them with), but still lets in a few FridgeLogic {{NPC}}s here and there.
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** The ''[=~Baldur's Gate~=]'' ''BaldursGate'' series at least tries to [[JustifiedTrope justify]] the latter as much as it can manage (mostly that said adventurers have come into a situation they couldn't handle alone and need a group to help them with), but still lets in a few FridgeLogic {{NPC}}s here and there.
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[[redirect:{{ptitle94ctt9bsmafc}}]]
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%%Please do not change or remove without starting a new thread.
[[quoteright:325:[[VeggieTales http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lounging_pirates_8789.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:325:Their favorite hobby is [[AWorldwidePunomenon vegetating]].]]
->We are [[TropeNamer The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything]].\\
We just stay at home and lie around.\\
And if you ask us to do anything,\\
We'll just tell you,\\
[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "We don't do anything!"]]
-->-- '''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaWU1CmrJNc The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything]]''', ''[=~VeggieTales~=]''
They don't pillage. They don't plunder. They don't invade {{Port Town}}s, kidnap beautiful maidens, battle the Royal Navy on the high seas, [[DigitalPiracyIsEvil broadcast without a license, or swap files on the intertubes.]] [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking They've never even been to Boston in the fall]]. The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, in fact, seem to mostly just drift aimlessly on the high seas, drinking rum and possibly singing sea chanteys. If you ask them, they'll probably just tell you they [[RuleOfCool like the way it looks on their resume]]. Or maybe they'll just tell you, "We don't do anything."
In general, a member of The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything is any character who, despite having a certain {{canon}}ical job, is rarely seen engaging in that job. They might indeed be a pirate who rarely goes out and steals treasure and raids ships -- but they might just as easily be [[TheFamilyForTheWholeFamily mobsters who don't steal or smuggle]], [[ShouldntWeBeInSchoolRightNow students who don't go to class]], [[{{Cheers}} office workers who never seem to do more than hang out in bars]], or {{ninja}}s who just [[HighlyVisibleNinja didn't get the memo about that whole "stealthy assassin" thing]].
This may be because writers and fans are in love with the romanticism implied in a life of adventure and crime, but don't want to actually show the characters doing any of the myriad of things that makes thieves, assassins, mercenaries, {{bounty hunter}}s, and other unsavory types pariahs in RealLife. This can result in a strange dissonance where the friendly, [[TheMessiah messianic]] nature of the characters is at odds with the [[OffstageVillainy openly predatory nature of the professions]] they claim to engage in. May bring AMillionIsAStatistic into play.
It could also be a bit of an attempt to dodge the tedium of portraying someone working a day-to-day job, especially if the writer doesn't know ''how'' that job really ''works''. This wouldn't really pass in a SliceOfLife type work, however (unless, of course, the character is suffering from a long-term illness and can't go to work).
A subtrope of InformedAbility. See also OneHourWorkWeek and WhatExactlyIsHisJob. Contrast (in every possible way) RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething. Also contrast (in a different way) with TheMainCharactersDoEverything, where characters actually go implausibly far beyond what is required or indeed allowed by their job description. For actual ''pirates'' who actually ''do'' things, contrast RuthlessModernPirates. A CookieCutterFic usually turns the cast into these.
The trope name comes from one of the "Silly Songs with Larry" from ''VeggieTales'' (later covered by RelientK) which is about - [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin well, pirates who don't do anything]]. It later provided the title and theme music for a ''Veggie Tales'' movie.
----
!!Examples:
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* ''{{Naruto}}'' is full to bursting with HighlyVisibleNinja. Virtually all formidable military personnel in its universe are ninja, and so the more familiar definition of the term has fallen by the wayside. They're more like {{Super Soldier}}s-for-hire. Among named characters, [[DoubleAgent Kabuto]] and Danzo are pretty much the only ones who could fit the description "ninja" in the traditional sense. Humorously, the ANBU Black Ops ''do'' act like ninja -- performing assassinations, covering their identities, appearing and disappearing from the shadows, etc. They are ninja for ninja.
** While they're arguably not much worse about this than most fictional ninja, it is said that their main job is doing missions for clients to support the village economy, but only one non-filler arc focuses on Naruto's team doing a mission for a client.
** It's a bit of a stereotype that ninja were only spies and assassins- though it's clear that the Leaf ninja do get up to a lot of both, just not in the main story-; in reality they were indeed often employed as soldiers and in various other jobs, and did as in the story deal with matters relating to the security of their own villages and clans without payment. Ninja were all-round warriors who took on all kinds of work.
*** That guy in the black pajamas? He's the rookie, and just a distraction. The ninja actually performing the mission is dressed up as someone on your side, and has already infiltrated your base in the confusion. The true ninja was a master of the BavarianFireDrill. And yes, some of them were just mercenaries that fought with really unusual techniques that often depended on deception.
** Actually, it's quite well justified in the series: Naruto trains, goes on a mission for a client, goes through more training and an important exam, and at that point the village gets attacked. It makes sense that from that point the village's own security would be paramount, and that all normal work would get derailed. Besides, his special Jinchuuriki status means that he's too important to keep doing "escort the merchant" kind of missions when the fate of his village and maybe the world is at stake. Naruto just happens to be set in a moment where a period of quiet boring times ends at the start of the series.
* In ''{{Beyblade}}'', absolutely no one goes to school. The only ones who have legitimate explanations for this are the Blitzkrieg Boys (they're from Russia, beyblading = life) and the Majestics, who have tutors, even though they're all so obscenely rich they don't need an education anyway. A small part of season 2 shows Tyson and Kai going to school. While a case of Tyson keeping at it off-screen could be implied, Kai pretty much drops out of his private boarding school when he decides to come out of retirement.
* Despite being sent to school in the second episode, as well as numerous arcs that center around school characters or are set in the school, the students of ''[[RanmaOneHalf Ranma 1/2]]'' don't seem to be doing that much... schoolwork. Sure they are shown sitting down in class and standing outside in the hallway, but it seems they spend way more time with extracurricular activities (like sports) and martial arts than they actually do ''learning'' which is common of most stories involving schools.
** Speaking of school, how about that Tendo dojo? 36 volumes, 0 students.
* The Straw Hat Pirates from ''OnePiece'' don't pillage or plunder. The crew's illegal activities are more in the nature of battling with various corrupt governmental ruling forces. But if any other pirates try to test their crew...
** The only time they act like pirates is when they loot Skypiea's gold. However, the Skpieans don't value gold, and in gratitude would have given the Straw Hats more than they stole, so that barely counts.
** In fact, the series seems to make the point that pirates who do act like pirates are at best {{Jerkass}}es and at worst {{Complete Monster}}s.
*** So, [[TruthInTelevision just like in real life?]]
*** Interestingly, when one of the pirates (Luffy) ''did'' do something piratey (he broke a bunch of evil pirates out of jail to help save his brother), fans complained because, apparently, they forgot he was a pirate. Luffy himself makes the point that he's only looking out for his crew/friends/family.
** In the manga, it's been explained in ''Romance Dawn, Version 1'' that in ''One Piece'', there are two types of pirates: Morgania, who pillage and plunder, and Peace Main, who hunt the Morgania. Luffy resembles a Peace Main and not one who does nothing at that.
* The Vongola family from ''KatekyoHitmanReborn'' have yet to do anything terribly illegal despite being TheMafia. Even Reborn, the teeny-tiny assassin, never manages to ''kill'' anyone with his array of magic bullets. They do engage in mob wars (mostly in self-defense) later on.
** This is mainly due to [[KidHero Tsuna]] being a [[ReluctantWarrior pacifist]] and not ''wanting'' anyone to die. In the past the Vongola were known to be fiercer and much more violent. [[BloodKnight Xanxus]] and [[CareerKillers the Varia]] live up to this.
* In the ''LoveHina'' manga, Kitsune claims to be a freelance writer; there's exactly zero evidence to support this. Though it's more socially acceptable to list "writer" instead of "ConArtist" as your occupation.
* ''{{Kochikame}}'' revolves around police officers who are rarely seen doing any police work.
* The vast majority of Shinigami in ''{{Bleach}}'' never seem to do any Shinigami duties like hunting hollows or cleansing souls; instead, they hang around the Seiretei all day and pop up whenever Ichigo is in need of reluctant allies or enemies. Apparently, making officer rank means you get delegated to a desk job... much like in most real-life armies, except that these don't run on AuthorityEqualsAsskicking like the afterlife does. (But when they do do something, it counts.)
* The main cast of ''CromartieHighSchool'' are "The World's Best Behaved JapaneseDelinquents". They constantly talk about how tough they are, but the only fighting between school is [[ButtMonkey Maeda]] constantly being kidnapped. [[NoSmoking They don't smoke]] and never do anything illegal on purpose.
** Don't smoke? They smoke all the time! [[EpilepticTrees It's just that the cigarettes create a living, spiky gel which instantly coagulates from a gas the instant it comes into contact with air]].
* SpacePirate ''CaptainHarlock''. He once robbed a ship and threw the valuables into space. He has claimed that pirates who steal are dishonoring the name of pirates. {{Lampshaded}} in ''Captain Herlock: Endless Odyssey'', when Tadashi Daiba lambasts the good Captain for his reluctance to give orders and keep discipline onboard the ''Arcadia.''
** ''CosmoWarriorZero'', however, does portray him as a legitimate and somewhat bloodthirsty villain. Who is ''still'' opposing a VichyEarth.
*** In all fairness, though, CosmoWarriorZero was really the ''only'' show that portrayed Harlock as an honest-to-goodness villain. Most of the other shows, especially ''My Youth in Arcadia'' imply that ThePowersThatBe labeled him a pirate, because they were afraid that [[HeroWithBadPublicity he would inspire them to rise up against the Vichy Earth.]]
* In ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh}}'', the main characters are all supposed to be in school, but they sometimes spend days or weeks at a time out of school to participate in card tournaments - even the characters who don't duel. Even when they're at school, they are never shown doing work. Most of the time, they sit around playing Duel Monsters or developing the plot in non-school-related ways.
** It's not as bad as it looks, though, as far as the tournaments go. The Duelist Kingdom took place in the span of three days, which is basically a weekend plus one day of school-skipping. The Battle City took two days, then Noa kidnaps them on the morning of the third day, and they seem to get to Alcatraz by that evening (though how exactly Kaiba's zeppelin reached an island outside of Japan in such a short time is anyone's guess). The Memory World arc is a little harder to justify, since it involves traveling to Egypt and all, but it could've happened while they were on school break. Not counting fillers here, what with they traveling to America and all, but all in all, school could be {{handwave}}d with a "it takes place offscreen" excuse.
*** True that it's not as bad as it looks, but it's worth mentioning that many Japanese high schools are in session on Saturdays, meaning even during the two relatively short tournaments you mentioned, they most likely skipped at least 3 days of school.
** {{Lampshaded}} in the Abridged Series, several times.
* The thieves of Mount Reikaku in ''FushigiYuugi'' make a few nominal stabs at banditry when they first appear, but mostly seem to hang out, drink and squabble. Tasuki himself, despite having been appointed their leader, is almost never seen actually stealing things or even expressing a particular desire to do so. In fact, he's one of the more gullible characters in the series.
** Not to mention, they later show up as TheCavalry, even pledging their loyalty to the Emperor in the war against enemy kingdom Kutou.
* In the OVA version of ''TenchiMuyo'', Ryoko is referred to as having been a SpacePirate, but her actual duties involved raiding ancient abandoned ruins for her MadScientist master (also supposedly a space pirate; apparently anybody who steals things and has a spaceship is given that designation) and [[EarthShatteringKaboom blowing up planets]]. The TV version of Ryoko, however, is a real SpacePirate, actually raiding spaceships to steal cargo.
* The only thing ''SayonaraZetsubouSensei'''s Nozomu Itoshiki ever actually taught his class was that potato starch turns purple if you add iodine. No, rants on society don't count...
* Kuryugumi's Sandaime in ''TokyoCrazyParadise'' [[EvenEvilHasStandards forbids the Yakuza to take part in drug trafficking, human trafficking or underground fights]]. What they do take part in is never made clear.
** the only other options are extortion, blackmail, loansharking, money laundering, credit cards scams, arms smuggling, and robbery which all translate on paper to a small yet highly profitable vending machines company.
* All of San and Lunar's families in ''SetoNoHanayome'' are technically {{Yakuza}}, but the only "work" related thing we see any of them do is run a home shopping channel for mermaids.
* In ''{{K-On}}''!, despite all of the main characters being part of the light music club, they don't really play much and spend most of their time screwing around in the clubroom and eating cake.
* Kyouko in ''[[{{ptitleqxnl7vpv}} WORKING!!]]'' never really does her job as restaurant manager other than eating, and other characters notice this.
** This is because when they try to get Kyouko to work, she just breaks things. The only thing she's really good at is dealing with obnoxious customers.
* Three words: [[InitialD Akina. Speed. Stars.]] Koichiro...the ''leader''...has had a grand total of one battle, against a couple of pathetic loudmouths (and he lost!). Itsuki has never done anything other than haphazard practice runs, and even that's more than we've ever seen from Kenji. The other members are so meaningless, we don't even know what their ''cars'' are. One of their proudest moments was a battle that ''didn't even happen'', Kenji about to take his medicine from Keisuke only to get bailed out at the last minute. This isn't a street racing team, this is a bunch of aimless kids who happen to live in the same area.
* Though it happens occasionally, it's pretty rare to see the [[HaruhiSuzumiya SOS Brigade]] actually hunt down any supernatural entities.
** That's because there's already three there, and their job is to keep Haruhi from finding any more. They're more like the Students Who Don't Study.
* The "SpacePirate" theme is roughly {{deconstructed}} in ''EurekaSeven''. Renton, a little boy with a with for adventure and to get out of his boring town, is accepted to the famous battleship that fights against the government and has its own media franchise telling the world how cool they are and "exposing the truth". He expects all kind of cool things there, but discovered most of the crew is lazy and have no qualms in taunting and using a little boy to do all their job without thanking him, the ship is almost naked on the inside and they have little money and have to do odd jobs (usually amoral at best) to keep things going. To top it off, the captain is an AbusiveParent figure who turned slacker and scaredy-cat (to feelings at least) himself.
* For most of ''{{Tail Of The Moon}}'', Usagi falls squarely into the aforementioned category of "ninja in name only". [[spoiler: After the destruction of Iga and Hanzo's disappearance, [[TookALevelInBadass she gets better]]]].
* ''GreatTeacherOnizuka'' spends very little time doing any proper teaching, though he does go out of his way to teach his students many important life lessons not found in a typical school curriculum.
* Inverted with ''{{Golgo13}}'', who will not take a job ''not'' involving assassination (with the rare exceptions when he agrees to lead military assaults). This means that his clients have to get creative with their requests; when the Freemasons wanted to hire him to retrieve the kidnapped John Paul II, Golgo refused since he doesn't do rescues... at which point his client restated the request as, "Find the men who kidnapped the Pope and kill them, then find the men who are holding the Pope captive and kill them", a job Golgo agreed to.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Comic Books]]
* {{Tintin}} is apparently a reporter. It's clearer in the early books, as his first adventures start when he's sent to distant lands to report on them; but see OldShame. For readers who start with ''Cigars of the Pharaoh'', the last vestiges of his career are brief scenes at the start of ''The Broken Ear'' and ''Land of Black Gold''.
** TinTin's reporter credentials are sometimes used as a plot device to get an adventure moving, but always without him having to report on anything. For example, in ''The Shooting Star'', he is chosen as a member of a scientific ocean voyage as the on-board reporter. Not only does he do zero reporting during the adventure, several times other journalists report on ''his'' activities.
* ''{{Viz}}'' used to have a strip called "Captain Morgan and his Hammond Organ" about a [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin pirate who sails around playing songs on his Hammond organ]] - and not much else. This is part of the reason why the character was eventually scrapped (along with threatened legal action from the copyright holders of some of the music.)
* The Anarchists from ''{{Persepolis}}'' certainly don't act very anarchist. (Actually, often TruthInTelevision. But better than if they had started to throw random bombs like the first anarchists did.)
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Film]]
* The protagonist of the BMovie ''Film/{{Werewolf}}'' identifies himself as a news writer, but we don't see him writing at all. The ''MysteryScienceTheater3000'' crew, writers themselves, do not let him off easy for this.
* The various pirates in ''PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' are generally implied to be a bunch of murderous thieving scum, but we don't see a whole lot of "honest pirating" going on after the raid on Port Royal in the first film by the Black Pearl crew under Barbossa. And we certainly never see Jack's crew attacking any merchant vessels or raiding any settlements, which is, you know, what pirates ''do''. This is brought up in the beginning of the second movie: Gibbs tells Sparrow of the crew's annoyance that they hadn't been doing anything to get any money in the year since the first film, and were completely broke as a result. At least in the first movie, this was something of an intentional joke. Part of the writer's concept of the script was to do a pirate movie in reverse: a band of murderous rogues sailing about and [[GottaCatchEmAll collecting treasure so that it can be returned to its rightful owners]].
** By the end of the last movie the whole enterprise of pirating has become completely warped. Piracy represents freedom against the oppression of British imperialism, rather than... you know... rape, theft, and murder.
*** Considering that the pirates are at that point the ''only'' sailors, honest or otherwise, not effectively enslaved by the East India Company, they've got a point... it's a very ugly situation by the last film.
** In the first movie we don't see that because it has a very limited time scale, and the pirates have a very clear and limited objective - get the medallion and someone related to Bootstrap to La Isla de Muerta, and lift the curse. (OK, the Turner part could have just been a happy accident.) The raid on Port Royal was in service of that objective. They obviously plan to continue being pirates once that objective is reached. The whole time that has past is maybe a week? Maybe less?
** In the fourth movie, the only (non-privateer and non-Jack Sparrow) pirates we spend much time with are the crew of ''Queen Anne's Revenge'', who aren't pirating because Blackbeard is too busy looking for the Fountain of Youth to stave off his prophesied death. Considering raids where whole crews were killed are mentioned, though, Blackbeard has definitely ''been'' pirating recently, and probably intended to take it up again after securing immortality.
* The Dread Pirate Roberts in ''Film/ThePrincessBride''. Who doesn't raid and plunder other ships. Or spend much time on ships. Or seem to have any crew whatsoever. Or do anything all that dreadful. And isn't even named Roberts.
** He ''isn't'' the Dread Pirate Roberts [[LegacyCharacter by that point]] and previous ones apparently did plenty of that. He's mostly just going off their reputation.
*** He has been the Dread Pirate Roberts for the past three years, and there's no evidence that the Dread Pirate's been on holiday. Just because he's taking a short break from piracy to [[spoiler: rescue his True Love]] is no reason to assume that the seas near Florin are safe without the good ship Revenge on her shores.
*** Furthermore, the current D.P.R.'s very last line in the film is to suggest to [[spoiler: Inigo]] that he assume the title. Though it is suggested that everyone from [[spoiler: Westley]] on is living off the fear inspired by previous incarnations -- the Revenge shows up, the other ship surrenders and sends over all the treasure -- the UnfortunateImplication is that there was plenty of the pillage, plunder and even murder going on before him.
* In the ''SpyKids'' universe, the definition of the word "spy" seems to be "person who dresses sharp, has cool gadgets and kicks butt". Actual [[http://www.answers.com/espionage espionage]] never seems to be depicted. Not even the [[SpyFiction martini-flavored]] kind.
** To be fair, "Commando Kids" [[RuleOfCool doesn't have the same ring to it.]]
*** [[AddedAlliterativeAppeal Says you.]]
* The film version of ''{{Road to Perdition}}'' (not the comic) rarely shows "ruthless gangster" Tom Hanks actually kill anybody onscreen, until the last fifteen minutes of the movie.
** Possibly [[TruthInTelevision truth in film]], since when real life gangsters kill each other willy-nilly, the one's getting trigger-happy rarely are the ones who last long.
* ''FromHell'': While the rest of the [[strike:prostitutes]] "unfortunates" of Whitechapel go about the oldest profession right onscreen, Abberline's love interest Mary Kelly just seems to hang out, looking vulnerable and doomed.
** Interestingly the directors filmed a brief scene where we see Kelly plying her trade but cut it from the final edit because they didn't want the audience to think about the character "like that". Which [[UnfortunateImplications unfortunately implies]] that we're supposed to regard the prostitutes we see actually prostituting themselves as somehow more deserving of their fate. You can see this deleted scene on the special edition DVD.
* Likewise in ''Film/{{Serenity}}'', where Inara's profession is so glossed over that you wouldn't have any idea that her she's basically a courtesan/escort for hire unless you're familiar with the series. Only one easily missed line about seeing clients "in this very bed" give a hint.
* For being a movie about a man's rise to power in a mafia-like organization, there is little crime shown being done by anybody in ''JohnnyDangerously'', even by the various villains.
** Johnny is aiming for a kinder, gentler sort of criminal family, after all.
* The entire genre of Westerns is a frequent offender: many "cowboy" flicks never show so much as a token steer standing off in the distance, never mind actual scenes of cattle husbandry in action.
* Even ''CaptainBlood'', regarded as one of the greatest pirate movies of all time suffers from this. Blood is the greatest pirate in the world, but the only people he ever kills on screen are members of foreign armies and one perverted French captain. He's also never shown stealing or sinking other ships unless it's against enemies of England, and the other members of his crew are all rough, rougish, and jovial rather than a bunch of cutthroats. Even when the main villain, who abused them as slaves, is in their grasp, they happily just comically throw him overboard rather than kill him. The movie only barely glosses over his life as a pirate and thief, and it comes off as rather jarring when the love interest refuses to be with him because he's committed crimes we've never seen.
** There's one very good reason for this: Errol Flynn. An actor with good-guy appeal (and whose drawing power is based on said appeal) must ''not'' be seen doing despicable things, even if it would be entirely in character. Careers have been derailed by this carelessness. Also, pirates who restricted their activities to legitimate enemies were not uncommon. Even for the ones who weren't privateers, the advantages of having friendly ports of call, governors who didn't consider them criminals, and merchants willing to do business with them should be obvious.
** Actually, the fact that Captain Blood isn't your typical pirate is the whole point of his character. He's done his best to be a relatively decent fellow (for a pirate), which is probably why he gets all pissed off when Anabella accuses him of being a truly bad guy.
** Didn't you see the {{Montage}}?
* In ''{{Stardust}}'' RobertDeNiro portrays a pirate with a fearsome reputation... and nothing else. It is a fairly significant plot point that his reputation is really all he has, and he goes to such great length to maintain it that hilarity ensues.
** Captain Shakespeare's pirates are a counterexample in that they're simply ''misnamed''. Indeed ship and crew do plenty of ''poaching lightning'' and selling it on the black market, but ''lightning pirates'' sounds so much cooler.
* The titular bunny from ''SantaAndTheIceCreamBunny'' doesn't seem to have any ice cream with him.
* ''TheGrapesOfWrath'' does not depict any peach picking.
** [[AWorldwidePunomenon Or grape angering.]]
* Steve the Pirate from ''{{Dodgeball}}'' is a pirate without a ship or crew who doesn't take part in any pirating activities. In fact, all he really does is dress and talk like a pirate.
** He's more like a comic book geek who dresses up as a superhero, except that it's a pirate instead of a superhero.
*** [[WildMassGuessing Maybe the movie is set in the {{Watchmen}} cosmos?]]
* In ''{{Pleasantville}}'', the fire department's sole duty is getting down cats who are stuck in trees. This is justified, as there are no fires in Pleasantville.
* Justified (weakly) in ''8 Heads In A Duffel Bag''. The protagonist of the film claims that his fiancee is a race-car driver, and shows another character a photo of her sitting in a racer to prove his point. But we never see her do anything remotely connected to racing (which, yes, makes her something of a FauxActionGirl as well). We do see her in a fast-moving van toward the end of the movie, but she's not the one doing the driving (she and her family have been taken hostage by a mobster). It is easily explained by the context of the movie, since the young woman is on a vacation in Mexico almost the entire time. But if his fiancee's job wasn't going to be pertinent to the story, why did the hero bother telling us about it?
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Literature]]
* Several of the nobles and royalty of ''{{Discworld}}'' are trained as assassins (although many are not, since the assassin final exam is lethally off-putting), but that's more for the quality of the general education offered by the Assassins' Guild. They rarely kill anyone (largely because not many people can afford their services, and they ''never'' kill for free, except in self-defense). Of course, in the world of the nobility, knowledge of how assassins think is also a valuable life skill for anyone wanting to live past twenty.
** True, but most of the nobles only get educated in general topics, they don't do the course in killing.
*** Vetinari in particular has never been known to actually kill anyone by any of the characters in the books[[hottip:*:In fact he was a practicing Assassin in his younger days, as Night Watch reveals; his was even the hand that took out the mad Lord Winder, which made room for the not-yet-mad Lord Snapcase, who he would eventually succeed.]]. The fact that no one knows for sure that he hasn't killed anyone only serves to increase his mystique as a [[MagnificentBastard dangerous man to deal with,]] especially because he's rumored to have specialized in poisons at school.
**** It is a fact that there is only one specific person Vetinari is credited with killing, and that is Lord Winder. This is considered a remarkable inhumation, because it was in a crowded room, and nobody (except Lord Winder) noticed him entering the room, walking up to Lord Winder...and very quietly saying a few words to him, before Lord Winder dropped dead.
**** Vetinari's mystique is enhanced by stories that circulate about things like him getting a failing grade in Camouflage class...because the instructor NEVER saw him in class.
** Later books tend to suggest that the Guild's killings are mostly of (unnamed) venal nobles by other unnamed venal nobles, probably to skirt round the moral dissonance they'd otherwise bring to Watch books.
** The faculty at the Unseen University seem to avoid their students whenever possible, and are at one point described as running the other way or hiding behind doors whenever they see them. In fact, the only person in the entire place that seems to do any work at all is Ponder Stibbons (which has actually been {{lampshaded}} in story.)
** It is mentioned that the chief job of wizards is NOT doing magic. Not failing to turn somebody into a frog, but refraining to do so when you know how easy it is. There are monuments to places where wizards were not as smart as that, and in some of them the grass would never grow again.
*** Well, it might grow. Just not into grass.
*** It will grow and glow. Mostly the latter.
** An inversion occurs in ''Discworld/{{Pyramids}}'' with Chidder, who calls himself a merchant but is probably more of a pirate and a smuggler. His ship is designed to bait pirates into an attack they can't win.
* Most of the professors in {{Gormenghast}} are like this, PARTICULARLY the headmaster, Bellgrove. They spend most of their time in their nasty private chambers, and sleep their way through classes they're supposed to be teaching.
** Never mind that the students themselves seem to spontaneously exist... if Gormenghast is sealed off from the rest of the world, and the only "citizens" that the Groans lord over are the Bright Carvers (who they deliberately keep in MedievalStasis), ''where do the students themselves come from''?!
*** Possibly the children of the various other servants? Along with the Carvers, there's an considerable number of people involved in keeping the whole castle running.
*** Gormenghast is not sealed off from the outside world. It's stated during Steerpike's first appearance near the beginning of the first book that he had only recently come to Gormenghast.
** This trope is somewhat {{lampshaded}} by the idiot sisters, Cora and Clarice, who are the highest ranking Groans after Sepulchrave, who do absolutely nothing at all except spend their time plotting revenge for losing "power" that they never actually had. When they are essentially kidnapped by Steerpike, ''nobody notices''.
** The Countess Gertrude starts the story as an indolent weirdo who does nothing but tend her pets (she doesn't even talk to her own children except for a once-a-year ceremonial visit). She eventually becomes a force to be reckoned with, but not after an entire decade of plot has gone by.
* The ThievesGuild in Jennifer Fallon's ''DemonChild'' and ''Hythrun Chronicles'' series is practically an official branch of the government, with high-ranking officials -- even sympathetic ones -- constantly looking the other way regarding their activities and frequently enlisting their help. Mostly justified, as the God of Thieves, Dacendaren, is a recurring character who enjoys taking an active hand in human affairs, and the Hythrun people quite reasonably want to avoid annoying him.
* Tom and Joe decide to become this type of pirate in ''{{The Adventures of Tom Sawyer}}'', because stealing is a sin. Huck isn't troubled, since he calls it "borrowing".
* Many of the officers in ''{{Catch-22}}'' don't actually perform their jobs. Major Major Major Major (not a typo) actually structured his entire day around avoiding people.
** Yossarian is trying very hard to be The Bombardier Who Doesn't Do Anything.
* The pirates in Gideon Defoe's ''The Pirates!'' series are a perfect example. In ''An Adventure With Whaling'', they actually realize this -- one of the [[BrokeEpisode money-making activities]] they try is "actual pirating". Alas, they find it's just not in character for them.
* The characters of ''TheThreeMusketeers'' by AlexandreDumas are rarely, if ever, actually depicted as using muskets. Though they do use muskets on the one occasion at which it would be appropriate to, when there's a war on. Using muskets when they're just wandering around Paris causing trouble would be unsporting. Plus the novels are set in the mid-1600s. At that point, muskets were still fairly clumsy, unreliable, inaccurate weapons that were painfully slow to reload; for close combat a sword and/or a brace of pistols were just ''better'' than long guns.
* RobertAHeinlein's ''TimeEnoughForLove'' features SingleMindedTwins [[ThemeTwinNaming Lapis Lazuli Long and Lorelei Lee Long]], who are {{Opposite Sex Clone}}s of the story's protagonist Lazarus Long. As they are unrepentant hellions and true inheritors of their brother's roguish nature, they decide at one point to grow up to become SpacePirates. In the quasi-sequel ''TheNumberOfTheBeast'', they are introduced in that capacity and share a rotating captaincy of their vessel, with summary authority over "mutineers". However, at no point are they shown to perform any actual piracy, and happily defer to Lazarus in matters of his authority. Toward the end of that novel and into ''TheCatWhoWalksThroughWalls'', they meet up with a second set of redheaded twins, male, who join them and reputedly ''do'' inspire them to embark on actual piracy, but again, this takes place entirely offpage and Lazarus appears more or less resigned to whatever fate they bestow upon themselves.
** RAH was often guilty of a form of this, in theory he approved of the wild ruthless outlaw streak in his characters, the 'natural born survivors', he wrote approvingly of Darwinian competition and the way the universe winnors ths stupid in his fiction...but he shrank from actually ''showing'' this, and his protagonists are actually highly duty-driven. Lazarus Long is theoretically a crook, a liar, a schemer and a con man...but he almost never ever does any of those things where we can actually ''see'' it, or the consequences of those actions for his victims.
* OlderThanSteam: in pastoral poetry and romances from antiquity to the Renaissance, shepherds and shepherdesses tend to just sit around looking pretty and having {{Love Dodecahedron}}s, mysteriously free from all the hard work (and variable weather conditions) attendant on outdoor animal husbandry. The genre was parodied and criticized for this at least as early as the 17th century.
* The pirates in ''PeterPan'' don't get up to any actual piracy within the story, they just seem to spend all their time trying to kill the Lost Boys and the Indians.
** Hilariously, this is the ''exact'' opposite of the trope namer example.
** In the Disney animated adaption, Hook's crew spend their first minutes on screen complaining on how Hook's feud with Peter Pan keeps them from normal pirating.
* {{Lampshaded}} in the mystery novel ''Grizzly'', where the Japanese investors who visit a dude ranch are noted as being the only cowboy-obsessed "dudes" it'd ever hosted, who actually expressed an interest in cattle. And that's only because beef sells for a fortune in Tokyo.
* In Joan Hess's Maggody mysteries, the ladies' Missionary Society claim to be a charitable organization working to promote Christian values by sending Bibles abroad. In practice, their most typical achievements are to hold local potlucks and stroke [[HolierThanThou Mrs. Jim Bob]]'s ego.
* In Markus Zusak's ''TheBookThief'', the narrator (Death) seems to mention the fact that Liesel is a 'book thief' every page or so. She picks up one discarded book. Then, she takes a couple of books from an elderly woman (who was in on it anyway.) For a 600 or so-page book, WHY is this a major plot point?
* This is PlayedForDrama in the ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' novel ''On Basilisk Station'', where the previous representative of the RMN to Basilisk, [[spoiler: Pavel Young]], was not doing his duty. Honor and crew have to fix that.
* The title character of ''Sebastian'' by Anne Bishop is an incubus. Apparently. He does have [[InformedAttribute incubus powers]], apparently, and is called a demon multiple times, but the way he's written, he's a normal guy.
* Cameron "Buck" Williams from ''LeftBehind'' is [[InformedAbility apparently]] a highly skilled, award-winning journalist, but does very little writing or report filing.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* The friends in ''{{Friends}}'', despite most of them having full-time jobs, always seem to be able to find time to get together for coffee - ''every single day.''
** Since the show is a LongRunner, it eventually gets {{Lampshaded}} when the Friends wonder why their bosses don't like them, and Joey ([[HiddenDepths astutely]]) observes that maybe it's because they're all sitting around in a coffee house at 11.30am on a Wednesday.
** For all the outrage this generated, when you actually think about it, there was nothing unusual about this. Joey was a struggling actor who was lucky to get ''any'' work. Phoebe's employment status was at best unsteady; her most frequently seen paying job, masseuse, was strictly on-call. Monica was a chef, so she'd have done most of her work in the evening, as would college professor Ross (with maybe the occasional early morning class). Rachel was a high-ranking fashion executive and presumably had a flexible schedule. The only real 9-to-5er was Chandler, and it's easy to see him taking nice, long coffee breaks just to get away from his crazy boss.
* Daphne on {{Frasier}} is ostensibly Martin's full-time, live-in physical therapist, but at most her only real duties seem to entail leading Martin through brief exercise sessions once in a while. As the series progresses, she begins to perform some maid-like duties for the Cranes as well, though is often shown resenting this, weirdly, since she was hardly over-worked with her "real" job.
* See the ''MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'' sketch [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7fsxnzZF9w Non-Illegal Robbery]].
* Although the first couple of episodes showed them in high school, pretty much all the school-age characters -- especially Bobby, Donna, Audrey and James -- in ''TwinPeaks'' soon joined [=~The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything~=]. The trouble was that each episode of the show was supposed to chart the investigation a day at a time -- but the plot also required the teenagers to investigate murders, hatch plots, seduce hapless detectives, {{blackmail}}... everything except attend class on a school day. On the other hand, the adults in the show tended to have jobs that tied into the small-town community -- and therefore the plot -- much more, and were shown at work all the time.
* Many {{Soap Opera}}s include business executives who spend most of their time on the job planning man-hunting schemes or ways to character-assassinate their boss and take his place, and rarely do any actual work. This also applies to police officer characters on soaps who seem able to drop everything and take three-month tropical vacations once a year. Conversely, medical doctors on soaps are frequently seen doing their jobs, perhaps even being overworked, as the main doctor characters will be involved in any sickness or injury whether the patient is a child, gunshot victim, cancer patient, or heart attack patient.
* {{House}} although house's team work pretty hard during cases it's easy to forget those are weeks apart sometimes, his team are presumably doing what exactly in the mean time?
* ''GreenWing'' deliberately uses this: though set in a hospital, there are no medical storylines. Guy, Caroline and Mac do perform surgery from time to time but, naturally, the whole thing is played for laughs. On one occasion Dr. Statham burst in, had an argument with Mac about a parking space and attempted to eat the patient's gall bladder.
* In {{The IT crowd}} besides the "Have You Tried Turning It Off And On Again?" {{Running Gag}} moss and Roy seem to do very little else
* In ''{{Roots}}'', slaves seem to have an awful lot of free time. Much is made of major outrages (rape, children being sold away, mutilation of runaways) but little emphasis on the horror of performing agricultural work 70 hours a week for no pay from age six till death.
* In ''{{Edgemont}}'', a show based around teenagers in high school, the students are never shown actually in class (and rarely studying or doing homework). Of course, showing a scene in class would clash with the fact that ThereAreNoAdults.
** If ''{{Peanuts}}'' managed to do it...
* Once on ''TheWestWing'', the president is bedridden and watches a daytime soap opera. He asks, "[[LampshadeHanging Do any of these people have jobs?]]" His bodyman answers, "One of them's a surgeon... I... think."
** The show itself is guilty of a partial version of this. While the main cast always looks very busy and we see them do all sorts of important stuff (like advising the President and negotiating with other politicians), it can be a little vague and unclear what each individual character's job title and responsibilities actually ''are''. For example, one can watch several episodes in a row without realizing that Toby Ziegler is ''supposed'' to be a ''speechwriter''. He seems more like the show's paid pessimist. The two biggest exceptions are President Bartlett ([[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin obvious]]) and Press Secretary CJ Cregg who is regularly seen addressing reporters in press conferences.
*** No, as his job title says he is in charge (Director) of communications. While this includes script-writing it also involves media handling and work on the 'message'. There are numerous real world analogues of people with somewhat vague titles but wide remits; Alastair Campbell in the UK was a 'Director of Communications and Strategy' who famously expanded his role to include issuing instructions on what to say and think to MPs via pager; George Stephanopoulos advised Clinton on practically everything but never got a more specific title than 'political advisor' (though he was de facto 'replaced' by Gergen in 1994 whose job title was 'Communications Director'). 'Communications' in conventionally a more expansive role than mere speech writing and the West Wing reflects this.
* Captain Feathersword, SixthRanger of ''TheWiggles'', sings pirate songs and causes mischief with his crew but doesn't actually do anything very piratey. Which is just as well, what with his... feather sword.
* The Royal Family on ''{{The Kingdom of Paramithi}}'' do little other than reward citizens, read stories and watch plays.
* The title character of ''{{Angel}}'' claims to be a private detective/in private security. When actual detective work is required, he has at least once ''hired a real private detective to do it for him''. It's not like he has any interest in being a detective, he just tells people that because it's easier to explain than "I go around protecting people from monsters", which he does quite successfully.
* On that note, Giles from ''BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' often fell into this - he was the school librarian and in charge of a very large and nice-looking library that nobody ever seemed to use for non-occult reasons.
** {{Lampshaded}} when the occasional clueless kid wanders in looking for something decidedly library-related, and the Scooby gang stares in shock and confusion.
** ''No-one'' is the series seems to actually do what they were supposed to be doing. Student characters were constantly missing classes and were never studying or completing homework, even when attending university. Employed characters, with the significant exception of the Magic Box, should have been fired a long time ago (at the very least Xander's construction worker buddies should have wondered where he went all the time). None of them even appeared to ''sleep'', with repeated nightly excapades (Buffy especially patrolled almost every night) and not a single instance of sleeping during the day.
* Susan Meyer from ''DesperateHousewives'' is meant to be a children's book illustrator. Five seasons in, the episodes actually featuring her on the job are still in the single digits.
* In ''FatherTed'', Fathers Dougal and Jack are, respectively, an idiotic {{manchild}} and a lazy, violent alcoholic, both of whom are completely incapable of doing any work that might reasonably be expected of a priest. Ted himself seems to have a OneHourWorkWeek. Justified in the case of Jack, who seems to be retired and being [[strike: nursed]] supplied with alcohol by the other two priests. As for Dougal, the one time he attempts to perform his priestly duties at a funeral, they somehow end up with more corpses than they started with. ''You'd'' make sure he didn't do anything either. Additional justification may be that the Craggy Island parish [[ReassignedToAntarctica is something of a dumping ground for the church's immoral and incompetent priests]].
** [[TakeThat One wonders why it only has three priests in residence, then.]]
* Rick, Vyvyan, Mike and Neil in ''TheYoungOnes'' are nominally students, yet are never seen in university (outside the opening credits) or doing any studying.(Though they did compete in the University Challenge in one episode.)
** Of course this is constantly {{lampshaded}}, from Vyvyan in the first episode noting that he was supposed to write a paper on the human leg he has, but "I think instead, I might put it on the hood of my car," right through to the final episode, where Rick tells Mike he needs to come in at least once. Mike bribes and blackmails the professors, noting "I might ask for one of those [=PhDs=] next year." Finally it is completely justified when they are told they have got the four worst sets of results in the history of higher education.
** Not forgetting the time, in the episode Bored (when the cast are very, very bored, obviously) after one of the characters suggests they actually go into university Rick replies with "We're not ''that'' desperate! Pull yourself together!"
* Pirate Percy, from ''CandleCove'', is too [[LovableCoward cowardly]] to do much of anything.
* Eldin Bernicky was ''MurphyBrown's'' painter and was around for nearly the entire series. I don't remember a single episode where he so much as ''held'' a brush, roller, or sprayer.
** No, Eldin definitely painted a mural and probably other parts of the house; even if the painting itself was never shown, the results were commented on, and Eldin was shown wearing a paint-covered smock.
* In ''MissionImpossible'', Cinnamon Carter was supposedly a famous cover model for various magazines, but only one episode ("The Photographer," where the villain was a fashion photographer-cum-spy) ever made use of her modeling expertise or reputation. True, she was implicitly a few years past her glory days, yet aside from that episode, no one ever recognized her as a famous model even on occasions when she used her real name on missions within the United States.
* In theory, ''Series/TheATeam'' are a band of mercenaries who lease their skills out for cash so they can stay on the run. However, they never seem to ever participate in a job that's even slightly shady and they rarely seem to get paid for whatever they do.
** The reason they never have any shady jobs is because they always spend a good deal of time researching and testing their potential clients before even meeting them. As for being paid, it's not that they don't get paid. They're usually paid upfront. However often times they're able to take a portion of the criminals money to cover their costs.
* [[AlmightyJanitor The Janitor]] in ''{{Scrubs}}'' rarely, if ever, does his job. Normally, he only cleans if he really doesn't have anything better to do. This is an acknowledged fact in-universe.
-->'''Janitor:''' I'm sorry Carla, I can't help you, I have work to do.
-->''(entire room bursts out laughing)''
-->'''Janitor:''' Ah, that one always kills.
* In ''TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir'', Vivian averts this for the first season because she is a teacher and is signed on to teach Will and Carlton's black history class, however her job is at best almost never mentioned after the first season.
* Derek, Burger and Ash from ''ImInTheBand'' are in Iron Weasel. But in most episodes, they usually slack off in Tripp's apartment and don't do much, despite Tripp suggesting them do some rehearsing. Tripp puts emphasis on this in the season 2 opener "I'm Out of the Band".
* The Disciples, a [[AllBikersAreHellsAngels biker gang]] featured on ''{{Intelligence}}'', are the only biker gang in history that prefer four-door sedans to, you know, bikes.
* 75% aversion on the American version of ''TheOffice'': We see people doing their jobs (particularly the sales and warehouse staff) in almost every episode. It's not a complete aversion because Michael's antics often eat up a large part of his day, and they often drag at least a couple of the other characters along. Jim and Pam's pranks seem to take up a significant amount of time also.
** This being said, Creed fits this trope to a T. He can't even remember what his job title is (it's Quality Assurance, in case you were wondering).
* Karen and Davis from ''Series/CornerGas'' are cops who rarely do police work unless either [[GrumpyOldMan Oscar]] or the Mayor tell them to, and they're usually reluctant to. In one episode, Karen ends up getting a week off from work. When she goes back, they both immediately take a nap in the police cruiser.
* While the students in ''NedsDeclassifiedSchoolSurvivalGuide'' do in fact go to class, Gordy TheJanitor never seems to do any janitor-related. Like everything in this show, this get's lampshaded by "I'll get the night guy to do it!"
* Henry, ''{{Eureka}}'''s auto mechanic (and resident OmnidisciplinaryScientist), never seems to work on an actual ''car'', after the first episode. Carter lampshades this at one point; Henry says he does, occasionally, "when it gets slow".
* Ralph Kramden in ''TheHoneymooners'' is a bus driver, but never actually shown driving.
** We never got to see Morton working either, but then, he works in the sewer, so who'd want to?
* Played intentionally in ''UnhappilyEverAfter'' - Jack is firmly established as a used car salesman who frequently skips work and rarely sells a car when he does come in. In the finale, he finally starts taking the job seriously and makes enough commission in a week to fund Tiffany's entire Harvard tuition - then he goes back to being a slacker to [[spoiler: save Mr. Floppy's life.]]
* Sarah Jane Smith of {{The Sarah Jane Adventures}} is supposedly a reporter, but we never see her doing any actual reporting. She spends most of her time battling evil aliens, something she has explicitly vowed to ''not'' report on.
** Lampshaded in that Sarah's standard excuse when she dashes off somewhere is "I have to go file a story!" This is ''never'' what she's actually going to do.
* Nathan Petrelli of ''{{Series/Heroes}}'' is appointed to the U.S. Senate in Season 3. He is never shown voting on any motions, amendments, or bills, attending any committee meetings, meeting with any constituents, or doing anything else that a U.S. Senator's job entails. He is instead able to focus all his time and efforts on running his own personal GovernmentConspiracy.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Mythology]]
* OlderThanFeudalism: In a lot of ancient Greek plays, the GreekChorus usually was supposed to represent the townspeople or the household help or whatever a crowd in the play's given setting would naturally tend to be. While these people do help the audience understand what's going on with their songs (thus doing their job as a chorus), there's nothing in the script to suggest that they actually do anything related to the trades of the bit characters they supposedly represent. Moreover, they are generally notoriously useless for any situation at hand that calls for physical assistance of any kind. In the first play of the Oresteia trilogy, for instance, while Agamemnon is screaming about how he's being murdered, the chorus of townspeople can't do anything but wander around the stage saying things like "What do we do? What do we do!?" Nobody there actually dares to go check it out for himself or even to report a domestic disturbance to the local law enforcement.
** This is slightly justified in that domestic disturbances would not have been handled by outsiders. Family affairs stay in the family, and so whatever local law enforcement there may have been actually did not have any right to interfere in family matters at all.
** It's also possible that the Greeks understood about diffusion of responsibility what we didn't know until a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese few decades ago]].
* In GreekMythology, Artemis, daughter of Zeus and Leto, elder sister of Apollon, is a ''hunter'' godess that never actually kills animals.
** Perhaps she works on the principle of catch & release?
* One of the key beliefs in [[FlyingSpaghettiMonster Pastafarianism]] is that Pirates are chosen people not unlike saints, and their main activity in the Golden Age of Piracy was peaceful exploration and delivering candy to children. Later they were slandered by rival faiths until their public image became as we know it today. So in a way, their position is that ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything is what ''actually'' happened...
[[/folder]]
[[folder:NewspaperComics]]
* Chip Dunham's ''[[http://www.gocomics.com/overboard/ Overboard]]'' is quite literally about a group of these.
* Wally from ''{{Dilbert}}'' does absolutely nothing at his office, to the point of being referred to as "the Wally" by those outside the organization. He claims he only comes to work because he doesn't know how to make coffee (and doesn't want to pay for Internet access, according to the animated series).
** The character of Wally started out as a plot (BasedOnATrueStory) about a competent worker who was deliberately trying to get himself fired by acting lazy and abusive because the severance package was so good. However, he's long since been {{Flanderized}} into being lazy and incompetent. A few strips have shown that he has made so much money by investing in the competition whenever the company enters a new market that his net worth is higher than that of the company itself.
* Der Inspektor from ''TheKatzenjammerKids'', arguably the world's first comic strip. Although he was [[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep known only by his title]] as School Inspector, he never really did that job. This might by partly due to the fact that he was initially representing [[{{Prussia}} Imperial Prussia]], a power which no longer exists, and partly because he realized that getting Hans and Fritz (i.e. the Katzenjammer kids) to stay in school is [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption next to impossible]].
* ''BeetleBailey'' and his fellow soldiers have been in the Army during three major foreign wars (Korea, Vietnam, and the War on Terror), plus numerous brief interventions (Grenada, Somalia, Panama, Lebanon, Kuwait), yet they never actually seem to deploy out of Camp Swampy.
** As [[http://wondermark.com/the-comic-strip-doctor-beetle-bailey/ The Comic Strip Doctor]] put it, "He is a soldier who never kills, in an army which never fights, for a country which never calls on him."
** The general consensus seems to be that Camp Swampy is one of the Army's dumping grounds for its failures. Given the general level of competence displayed up and down the chain of command, that theory appears to be very sound.
** This also might explain why they're still wearing and using 1950s-era equipment.
* Jon Arbuckle from ''{{Garfield}}'' is a cartoonist, but the only time he is actually shown working on a cartoon is in the first strip, and his job has only been mentioned very few times since. He is frequently seen working in the ''GarfieldAndFriends'' animated series, though.
** [[http://www.mezzacotta.net/garfield/?comic=476 Parodied]] in ''[[{{Mezzacotta}} Square Root of Minus Garfield]]''.
* Andy from ''{{Foxtrot}}'' is employed as a newspaper writer, but she's not seen as doing much actual ''writing'' - granted this is mostly in the [[ReverseCerebusSyndrome mid-recent years]] of the comic strip. In the early years, she's seen writing columns and a couple stories have been centered around her writing a column or tryign to get around to writing columns.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Professional Wrestling]]
* Many wrestlers are accompanied at all times by colorful, charismatic "managers" - but we hardly ever see these so-called managers negotiating contracts, and we ''never'' see them handling their clients' financial assets.
* Anytime a wrestler takes a {{Gimmick}} from the WrestlingDoesntPay playbook, as it is unlikely that they have ever worked in their {{Kayfabe}} vocation.
** Note that there are some inversions, such as Paul Bearer actually working in a funeral home.
* Melina Perez, Johnny Nitro, and Joey Mercury ("MNM") entered WWE in 2005 claiming to be Hollywood stars, but even in {{Kayfabe}} none of the movies or TV shows they'd supposedly appeared in were ever mentioned. (It was later explained that MNM weren't actors themselves, but hobnobbed with actors in their quest to become "famous.")
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Real Life]]
* As companies grow larger and labor becomes more divided and bureaucratized, new positions and titles begin to emerge that often don't seem to indicate, what, if anything, their office holders are responsible for. Examples include obtusely titled positions like "assistant deputy senior vice president of internal affairs" or, conversely, positions where titles are so short they could mean just about anything, ie, "consultant."
* "Do-nothing Congress" is a common phrase in American politics, usually used by Presidents, presidential candidates or the minority party in Congress. Often it's an empty talking point that means "This Congress has done nothing I asked them to do," but occasionally it's used accurately. When the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives is closely divided between parties (and sometimes even when it's not), it's entirely possible that very few substantial bills will get passed. Likewise, when one political party strongly dominates the presidency and one house of Congress, the remaining house will very rarely get anything done, and even that only grudgingly.
** This might not technically count, since it's actually a ''design feature'' of the U.S. system.
* Presidents often receive a similar rap, as in Michael Moore's allegation that George W. Bush spent most of his first term on vacation or Republicans' criticism of Barack Obama's golfing, vacations and parties during the Deep Horizon oil spill crisis. Dwight Eisenhower was similarly portrayed as a golfer-in-chief.
* According to {{Stephen Fry}}, rules at Oxford and Cambridge were so lax thirty years ago that students could (and many did) get away with going to almost no lectures or tutorials their entire four years there.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Theater]]
* ''{{The Pirates of Penzance}}''. At best, it's mentioned that they attack other ships, but they have rules about only attacking bigger ships than themselves, and to let orphans go unharmed, with obvious results. What we actually get to see them do is drink, sing about poetry, attempt burglary, and try to get married! When they [[AbductionIsLove capture the General's daughters]] to force the last, they succeed in overcoming the still more ineffectual police, but instantly surrender in face of an appeal to their loyalty to Queen Victoria.
* The bandits in ''{{Two Gentlemen of Verona}}'' don't ever actually succeed at banditry. The closest they come is on their meet main character Valentine, when it takes about a minute for them to go from "Give us all your money!" to "We like the look of your face. Be our leader!"
* ''CyranoDeBergerac'': Invoked by Cyrano's improvised poem ''The bold Cadets of Gascony'' at Act II Scene VII. Cyrano describes the life of a Gascon Cadet as nothing more than [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy brawling, swaggering]], [[ImpoverishedPatrician hiding they are poor]], getting [[RedBaron badass sobriquets]], [[YourCheatingHeart chasing married women]] and [[HeroicSociopath intimidating their husband’s]]. Of course, there comes Act IV and this trope is deadly averted because the cadets starve, kill and confront a LastStand.
* Antonio in ''TwelfthNight'' is supposedly a pirate, and gets in trouble for crimes he's committed in the past, but onstage we don't see him do anything but be nice to Sebastian. A non-pirate example is Viola, who got her job with Orsino with the intention of becoming part of his musical entertainment (she can sing); lots of music gets played for Orsino, and ''Feste'' (who doesn't even work for Orsino) sings for him, but Viola seems to prefer sitting by Orsino's side while they both comment on how pretty the music is.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Video Games]]
* The MMORPG ''{{EverQuest}}'' features gnome pirates who have to constantly remind each other to talk "piratey." They're bad at following through on the details, but they like the [[RuleOfCool idea of being pirates]].
* Although Samus Aran from ''{{Metroid}}'' is described as being a BountyHunter, she's usually never seen hunting bounties. She seems more like a kind of mercenary than anything. It's possible the definition has changed in the future, though; all of her jobs are given to her by the government.
** Not to mention her nemeses the {{Space Pirate}}s, who seemingly exist only to antagonize her; then again, Samus keeps breaking into their bases. The ''[[MetroidPrime Prime]]'' subseries manages to deal with this in a decent way - the Pirate Logs throughout the games establish that the Space Pirates ''do'' have a life outside of trying to kill "the Hunter" (their little nickname for her gives you a guess what Samus does during her down time).
** In a few issues of ''Nintendo Power'' there was a tie-in comic series to ''Super Metroid''. A new character - a male bounty hunter - was added in as a sort of rival and irritant to Samus. While she continued blasting her way through the underground tunnels, he would stop to pick up the space pirates' "ears" or claws or whatever the heck they were. After he started going on about how rich he was going to be after turning these body parts in for the bounties, Samus actually expressed disgust at his mercenary ways.
** The reason for this is that in Japan, she never has been a bounty hunter. Although she has been officially called a bounty hunter since her first appearance in the English version, no one at Nintendo of Japan had any idea! When Retro Studios tried to work actual bounty hunting into the ''Prime'' series, the Japanese execs were immensely confused, because, in their view, bounty hunting is outside her code of ethics. Between Japan and English speaking countries, Samus is an almost completely different character!
*** So what ''do'' the Japanese think her job is?
**** Federation [[MassEffect Spectre]], basically.
*** Samus becomes a Bounty Hunter at the end of Chapter 13 of the 2002 Manga, which is recognized as canon.
*** Considering the manga (like the series) was made in Japan, but the majority of the fanbase [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff is American]], this is arguably AuthorsSavingThrow or even CanonWelding.
* Captain Falcon from ''{{F-Zero}}'' falls into a similar rut, although the focus of his series is mainly on his side-business, racing. All of his Bounty Hunting is literally AllThereInTheManual.
* The ''SuperMarioBros.'' are allegedly plumbers. However, the only thing they ever seem to do involving plumbing is their habit of traveling via pipe -- [[http://www.pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF213-Mario_Too.jpg which real plumbers are not noted to do either]], but never mind...
** In the [[Film/SuperMarioBros live-action movie]] and ''[[VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiSuperstarSaga Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga]]'', they ''do'' use their plumbing skills to stop an attempted sabotage/flooding at a dig site and then in a castle basement. Likewise, the animated series would occasionally show them using their plumbing skills and equipment, either for actual plumbing or for dire situations.
** Referenced in ''[[{{Banjo-Kazooie}} Banjo-Tooie]]'', when Loggo the toilet complains of being clogged:
--->'''Kazooie''': Then call a plumber. I think Mario's free at the moment.\\
'''Loggo''': I don't think he actually does that kind of work anymore...
** Also referenced in ''ThereWillBeBrawl'', where Mario claims to have done a lot of things, but denies being a plumber.
** Then again, in the original ''Donkey Kong'' he was working on a skyscraper...
*** He was a carpenter in that one.
** The "plumber" thing is from the original ''Mario Bros.'' thing was, his business wasn't just plumbing even then, but rather unusual sewer pest control (both the pests and the method of control). Which is really not much different from what he's done ever since. Personally, I'm perfectly fine with the fact that his skills are a lot more specialized than your average drain unclogger. You wouldn't hire the Ghostbusters to rescue a stray dog, would you?
** In contrast to most of the ''Mario'' universe, the Nintendo Comics System's ''Super Mario Bros.'' comics from the early 1990s feature a surprising amount of plumber-related content. The brothers built an impromptu network of water pipes to cool down a volcano, and saved the day when Bowser's poorly-thought-out plan to destroy the sewer resulted in a flood. There was also a running gag about Mario's obsession with a comic book series about a plunger-wielding plumber superhero. The shorter comic strips in between the stories included Luigi taking the reader on a tour of a plumbing museum, and Mario and Luigi's childhood trip to plumbing camp.
** Princess Peach for that matter doesn't do many royal duties either despite being the ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom. She usually just stands around and look pretty whenever she isn't kidnapped or playing games with her friends (and enemies). Sure, Peach does go on adventures herself and protect her kingdom in ''SuperPrincessPeach'' and the various RPG games, but she never does anything involving ruling her kingdom. The royal guards never do their job either, practically handing Peach over to the villains with next to no resistance. Bowser, on the other hand, [[RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething actively rules his kingdom in many of the games]]. He commands his army and orders the construction of new settlements, among other things. Considering how much respect Bowser's minions have toward him despite his evil deeds (as seen in ''[[VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiBowsersInsideStory Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story]]'', where they serve him out of admiration instead of fear), Bowser might very well be a better ruler than Peach.
* [[MsFanservice Isabela]] in ''DragonAge2'' stands around in a bar for a decade, drinking. Bonus points for her [[InformedAbility claiming]] to be a pirate, too.
** Pretty hard to be a pirate captain without a ship or a crew.
* Blue Rogues in ''VideoGame/SkiesOfArcadia'' are more in the nature of random do-gooders and adventurers, and look down on pirates who actually engage in, y'know, ''piracy''. Some exposition reveals that Blue Rogues are in it for the challenge; any ship that can defend itself is technically a valid target. Vyse's little group still [[KleptomaniacHero kill people and take their stuff]], as per the genre standard... they're just very selective of who they do the "killing" part to. As they do spend a lot of time messing up the navy of the [[FantasyCounterpartCulture not-Spanish-really]] [[TheEmpire Empire]], one could think of them as English privateers without an actual England to endorse them, at least until the end of the game [[ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem when they essentially]] [[StartMyOwn start their own England]].
** Similarly, early on in the game, you might find you're getting less money than you could be for discoveries because a treasure hunter is discovering them first. You'll eventually meet him, in a restaurant run by a pirate you trounced earlier. He'll join you if you've discovered thirty discoveries, but if not he'll just hang around in the restaurant, not hunting much of anything, until you have.
* In ''PokemonMysteryDungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness'', there's an exploration team composed of a Slakoth and a Slowpoke who call themselves "Team Slackers, the zero-motivation exploration team". Each time they appear, they point out the fact that they don't really do anything besides just laying around, and they wonder why they even formed an exploration team in the first place.
* In ''MonkeyIsland'', pirates who actually ''do'' anything pirate-related are about as frequent as chicken's teeth. Even the protagonist, self-proclaimed "mighty pirate" that he is, never does anything more nefarious than your average KleptomaniacHero. The first game lampoons the idea with Guybrush's crew (who he has travelled all over Melee Island to find) flat out refusing to help him and instead sunbathing on the deck, treating the journey to Monkey Island like it's a cruise holiday. He does get the opportunity to sink the ship later in the game, instead travelling back with the Island's hermit, Herman Toothrot, who has his own ship. It turns out in the fourth game that this is canon and his former crew are pissed off with him because they had to find their way back to Melee without a ship (ie, had to make some effort).
** Justified in [[SecretOfMonkeyIsland the first game]] because the pirates are afraid to sail because there's an evil ghost ship on the loose, and in [[MonkeyIsland2 the second game]] because the Largo Embargo does not ''allow'' them to sail (and Largo's enough of a BadAss to enforce it). Also lampshaded all the time by the responses Guybrush gets when he claims he's a mighty pirate ("you look more like a flooring inspector!").
** Let's look at the list. The murder of G.P. [=LeChuck=] (and several hench ghosts). The use of witchcraft on the person of Largo [=LaGrande=]. Graverobbing. Trespassing. Larceny without a permit. Premature entombment of a non-dead individual. Use of falsefied-identification for the purchase of alcohol. Mixing drinks without a license. Two counts of unauthorized exiting from a penal institution. Impersonating a female to escape the law. Impersonating a federal mail boat. Re-animation within city limits. Necromancy. About a zillion counts of theft.
*** Also wanted for questioning regarding the disappearance of prescription eye wear.
** And then all that gets tossed out the window in [[TheCurseOfMonkeyIsland the third game]]. You even get defenseless tourists to prey on if you want. And listen to them beg and plead for mercy. I made a save point there called 'Piracy at last!'.
*** In the same game, Guybrush [[LampshadeHanging calls his crew out on this trope]] when it seems they'd rather sing than sail. (See the quotes section.)
** [[EscapeFromMonkeyIsland The fourth game]] ramps this trope up to 11, to the extent that it lessens the blow of the pirates getting overrun by tourists. For instance, compare the SCUMM Bar from the first game, where pirates are downing grog, swinging on chandeliers and passing out on tables, to the one in the fourth game, which has about two or three people sitting around and playing darts. And we're supposed to care that this place [[spoiler:gets turned into a sushi restaurant]]?
** The rather dynamic opening of the ''TalesOfMonkeyIsland'''s first episode is one large callback to series traditions. Guybrush faces [=LeChuck=] once more, complete with mystical voodoo artifact - assembled through yet another long-winded quest - a ship, lots of alleged treasure and a lazy crew sleeping in the hold.
** Then you ''finally'' see some proper pirates besides [=LeChuck=] in The Seige of Spinner Cay (the second chapter of the [[strike:fifth]] ''sixth'' game). You ''do not'' fuck with [=McGillicutty=].
** In the fourth episode of the ''TalesOfMonkeyIsland'' series, it's revealed that the Pox of [=LeChuck=] that's been driving the conflict only affects ''real'' pirates, proving that while Guybrush may not be much of a pirate, he ''is'' a pirate.
* Though the "pirates" from ''TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker'' love to boast about being the terror of the seas, they mostly just act as roughneck ferrymen for Link and the many people he rescues or works with over the course of the game. They're even ruled by a little girl whose mother was the previous pirate leader. They do eventually engage in about one and a half acts of actual piracy, but they don't seem particularly cutthroat in either case.
** They hold the hostages they just saved for a ransom (though they did let at least one go for free because their father couldn't pay), steal an entire shop of bombs and don't seem very upset over the total destruction of Greatfish Isle. Pirate may not be exactly accurate, but they do do some fairly unpleasant things for money.
*** However, Tetra does express her feelings toward Greatfish Isle's destruction, and worries about what might happen to [[spoiler: Outset Island, since this is where Jabun fled to.]] Naturally, the other pirates are confused by this.
** It gets worse in ''PhantomHourglass'', where Tetra seems to have gone ''crusader of the seas'' and wants to scold the owners of the "Ghost Ship" for kidnapping people. - Which should be common business for pirates.
*** Of course by then, she'd found out [[spoiler:that she was Princess Zelda]], so one could forgive her softening a bit. Also, wasn't their mission after ''Wind Waker'' to find a new land to restart Hyrule in or something? If so, then that would also explain the lack of piracy.
** In ''OracleOfSeasons'', the skeletal pirates eventually stop being stranded and set sail on the open seas, only to immediately become seasick, dock their ship and proceed to stand around on a beach for the rest of the game.
*** Although, to be fair, they have been shipwrecked for a couple hundred years, and they do eventually go out to sea again if ''Oracle of Seasons'' is chained into ''OracleOfAges''.
* For all the effort that Kay Faraday puts into building her entire identity around being a "[[PhantomThief Great Thief]]" and a "modern day Robin Hood" in ''AceAttorneyInvestigations'' (going so far as to give herself a motto), she never steals anything more valuable than people's catchphrases, Gumshoe's role as sidekick, and the contents of Edgeworth's pockets, even when it would be very useful for her to do so. Partly justified because she is a 'Thief of Truth' whose main goal is to steal and expose evidence of corrupt doings, but she never makes any efforts towards ''that'' end either. Even more egregious as ''Investigations'' does ''not'' use KleptomaniacHero, with Edgeworth relying on notes/pictures/ect.
* ''DungeonsAndDragons''-based video games (such as ''NeverwinterNights'' or ''Stormreach'') tend to feature an inordinate number of career adventurers sitting around in taverns or campsites, practically ''begging'' you to delve into loot-filled dungeons in their stead, as well as a bunch of adventurers who are just waiting for someone with actual work ethic to turn up and talk them into seeking fortune and glory (i.e. the main character).
** Particularly glaring in ''NWN''', because the Pirate Who Doesn't Do Anything is a ''paladin''. After the first day or so of "pay that [[VideogameCrueltyPotential malevolent]], ChaoticEvil [[Webcomic/EightBitTheater Black Mage]] [[CaptainErsatz wannabe]] to hunt reagents for me"... well, Aribeth, there's this thing called "falling". It happens to paladins who act like you do. [[spoiler:Yes, it happened eventually, but that was an actual choice motivated by vengeance and grief, rather than a logical conclusion to using hired sociopaths as guided missiles]].
*** Note that the Neverwinter Nights series likes to assume that the Player Character is LawfulGood, male, human, and a fighter (at least in the earlier incarnations). They didn't write much in for NPC reactions to evil characters.
*** In ''NeverwinterNights2'', you become a squire... which explicitly, as your knight tells you, doesn't require you to clean his stables and polish his armor, or really do anything at all expected of a squire. You don't even see him again are are perfectly free to continue adventuring with your own RagtagBunchOfMisfits. This is justified, though, in that the sole reason for your promotion to squire was a legal technicality to let you face your court trial in Neverwinter rather than the KangarooCourt of Luskan.
** The ''[=~Baldur's Gate~=]'' series at least tries to [[JustifiedTrope justify]] the latter as much as it can manage (mostly that said adventurers have come into a situation they couldn't handle alone and need a group to help them with), but still lets in a few FridgeLogic {{NPC}}s here and there.
** Subverted in the expansion, Throne Of Baal. You find some adventurers in a dungeon, and they ARE actually on an adventure. They start pestering you to give them a quest, but you are so far above their level that you give them busywork to get them out of your hair.
* The town of Rogueport in ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'' is a parody of the ''GrandTheftAuto'' ViceCity-style setting, and as such has several examples of rogues, bandits, and roughnecks who are rarely, if ever, seen stealing or doing other unsavory things. Goombella even remarks of one character: "At least he's supposed to be a thief, but I've never seen him steal anything."
** The explorer in Flipside in ''VideoGame/SuperPaperMario'' never actually goes out and explores anything, but he might say a few things about places Mario and company have already been to as the game progresses.
*** The explorer is seen leaving hurriedly from Sammer's Kingdom the first time you visit, having apparently failed the challenge. And aside from this, the point of his character is that he ''doesn't'' do exploring [[RetiredBadass anymore]].
* The "great adventurer" Toma in ''ChronoTrigger'' spends pretty much the entire game drinking in a bar and talking big. In the game's present day, you learn that he ''did'' find what he was looking for, at least.
* Gordon Freeman of the ''HalfLife'' series is a scientist who is never really seen doing any science. Even in the beginning of the first game, briefly depicting him working with the other Anomalous Materials Team members, his entire contribution to the experiment is pressing a button and pushing a cart. General consensus is that all the other scientists were ''better'' qualified (at least had seniority), given they all had access past biometric scanners where Freeman did not. On the other hand, Barney's comment ''Looks like you're in the barrel today'' indicates Gordon just drew the short straw for this particular anomalous materials assignment, and would otherwise be reading gauges and writing equations on chalkboards with the other labcoats.
** {{Lampshaded}} in the sequel, after Gordon has thrown a switch as part of a lab experiment:
--->'''Barney''': Good job Gordon, throwing that switch and all. I can see your MIT education really pays for itself.
** Perhaps also referenced in Gordon's meetings with the [=GMan=], who alternately refers to Gordon as "Mister Freeman" and "Doctor Freeman", with audible sarcasm quotes around the latter.
** Less obvious is that he is a ''theoretical'' physicist, in reality theoretical physicist don't really conduct many experiments, they basically sit around think about really complicated math problems, then again having Freeman ride the tram to work, put on a big hazmat suit... and then [[AntiClimax sit down at a table with a pen and paper]] [[RuleOfCool wouldn't be very exciting]].
* In the MMORPG ''{{City of Villains}}'', you play a supervillain. Strangely, most of your missions seem to be either hits against other villains, or battling [[EvilVersusEvil even worse villains]]. Occasionally, you actually rob a bank or battle The Statesman.
** To be fair, you spend a lot of time fighting the heroic Longbow and Legacy Chain, and a good chunk fighting dockworkers on strike. And if you were a super-villain living in an essentially lawless country, you'd want to be doing PragmaticVillainy rather than doing it ForTheEvulz.
** The [[CompleteMonster Westin Phipps]] missions are a good example of why it's like this: A game where one plays 50 levels of making sure poor children don't get school books would most likely have dismal sales.
* In ''FinalFantasyXII'' Vaan wants to escape the poverty and oppression of Archadian occupation to become a sky pirate. Fran and Balthier are notorious sky pirates. And Reddas is a former sky pirate who runs a whole smuggler's port full of sky pirates. Don't expect to see any actual piracy in the skies though (or on the high seas or anywhere else for that matter), or even an explanation of what sky pirates actually do with the massive amount of free time they seem to have.
** It's mentioned in-game that the moniker "sky pirate" has drifted from "person who robs airships" to a generalized sort of adventurer-type who probably spends more time hunting monsters and raiding ruins.
** We do get to see plenty of sky pirates in action in ''Revenant Wings''. Aside from the player characters it seems to involve theft, murder, slavery, and the odd bit of genocide. The player characters prefer to beat up other sky pirates and take their money, which is only somewhat less reprehensible.
*** Vaan makes an appearance in ''FinalFantasyTacticsA2'', and actually does steal things. When a pair of people impersonating him and Penelo steal a jewel form a noble he comments that he wouldn't steal from that kind of person--and then just takes the jewel and leaves. "Sky Pirate" is also his default job class, and it centers mostly of ways to gain/steal loot and gil (like an ability that turns traps into loot).
** ''[[DissidiaFinalFantasy Duodecim]]'' lampshades this, as the name for the mannikin version of Vaan is "Idle Sky Pirate."
** ''FinalFantasyV'' has a band of pirates stuck in an inland sea where there is little to no sea travel due to the Torna Canal being closed. Pillaging seems to be beyond their understanding; if you do sail into town, they'll just head for the inn and get drunk, forcing you to actually pay the undefended townsfolk for any goods you need.
*** Averted by their leader [[SamusIsAGirl Faris]], who's first reaction to find out she has a princess in her custody is to hold her for ransom.
* ''{{Mother 3}}'' has Wess and Duster, practitioners of the Thief Arts. One of the conversations with the townsfolk involves a girl calling you "a thief that doesn't steal anything." They do sneaky things, yes, but not in a criminal way. They are considered to be somewhat odd by the other villagers, though.
** It does bear mentioning that, pre-TimeSkip, Tazmily was an idealistic paradise that didn't have or need any form of currency, and everyone was happy to help one another out; there WAS nothing to steal (the [[MacGuffin Hummingbird Egg]] aside, but Wess was the one who'd put it where it was, anyway).
* ''NoMoreHeroes'' falls under the category of "not false, but not accurate" with its "assassins." Though Travis does have the option to kill people for money, this seems to be more of a means to an end for him, and completely irrelevant to the other assassins. Hell, most the supposed assassins amount to psychopaths with weapons, but that doesn't stop Travis and everyone else from insisting on using the term assassin at every possible moment.
** At one point, though, Travis is [[EvenEvilHasStandards so disgusted]] with Bad Girl that he points out that she's "no assassin, just a perverted killing maniac," which indicates that they have standards, or at least some sense of self-respect.
** They are actually literal ''assassins''. They don't sneak around and stab people in the throat or stuf like that which assassins are shown to be, they are simply hitmen. Death for hire. Give me money, and I'll kill.
** It should be pointed out that Travis actually has to ''pay for the privilege'' of fighting and killing the other assassins, in direct contradiction to the usual definition of the term. Travis does call bullshit on this at least once.
** Maybe he's hiring himself to kill the rival assassin, and AA trims off 100%? I mean, given the increasing difficulty, the cost to kill the target will go up, which correlates with the increase of entry fees...
*** Actually, [[spoiler:Sylvia was just ripping off Travis.]] In the second game, Travis doesn't have to pay to challenge others.
* Similar to other Pirate examples; the pirate crew in ''FireEmblem Rekka No Ken'' doesn't seem to be, well, that piratey. They seem to be more Mercenaries/hirable ferry. However; they are a bit of an aversion of the pirate tropes - Lyn is very distrustful of them merely because pirates actually ''do'' pillage and plunder because [[FreudianExcuse her parents and the rest of her tribesmates WERE killed by bandits]]...
* Remember all those mighty heroes of the first three ''{{Warcraft}}'' games? Well those who survived long enough to appear in ''WorldOfWarcraft'' apparently earned the privilege of sitting around getting [[PlayerCharacters other people]] to do all the heroing for them.
** Even lowly {{NPC}}s will order you around while doing nothing. They typically won't even do anything with the quest items you bring them (blacksmiths don't make weapons to defend the settlement, etc). ''Wrath of the Lich King'' has taken steps to advert this. For instance one quest requires you to retrieve some weapons for peasants who are being attacked by the Undead. Turning in the quest causes them to run and use the weapons for a short time.
*** Other {{NPC}}s require you to do things like gather Berries before they'll open their shop for your use, where they sell items related to what you got for them. Others will sometimes have tasks you have to do to access the flight path and the Phasing system sometimes requires a chain of quests to be done before an area is filled with friendly [=NPCs=] (or have them leave instead).
** This is sometimes averted, as your NPC quest givers may fight alongside you in a quest, or justified in that the [=NPCs'=] hands are tied (Drakuru is stuck in a cage after the player captures him, so while he knows what to do, he needs the player to do the legwork). Or even more if they maintain the base camp or ask you as a recon/private assassination team as they hold the fort outside.
** Largely changed in the Cataclysm patch, now each zone has a story and goal you're working towards (and generally a theme, like a murder mystery or an extended Rambo parody).
* In ''TheElderScrolls'' series, the player can become the head of several guilds and factions. Fortunately, nobody expects you to do things like ''run'' the organizations, participate in politics, debate religious doctrine, etc. After all, that would interfere with your ''actual'' job of delving into caves and fighting bandits and monsters.
** It's not like the heads of said guilds do much ''running'' of organizations themselves. At most, they give a few quests to the player...then just ''stand there'' or live in their schedules.
*** Generally, these quests involve the player doing something to increase the size of their ego. Doing things that would be useful for the organization? Nope. Go get me that artifact instead.
** Averted with the Imperial Cult in ''{{Morrowind}}'' and that one faction alone. You can only advance so far due to not being a full time priest, even after the local leadership has noticed you have ''met'' all of their gods.
* Dr Z in ''DinosaurKing'' (the DS version) wants to realise his dream of riding on the backs of dinosaurs. He does nothing (aside from his initial act of acquiring a Dinoshot to summon dinosaurs) towards that aim during the entire game, instead getting his minions to go around, menace the local populations, and infest areas with robots.
* Faith of ''MirrorsEdge'' is a Runner, carrying important data across one of the few remaining unmonitored channels left in [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield the City]]. Or at least, that's what we're told. She only actually gets one message to deliver, and passes it off to Celeste before the end of the first chapter. Later events reveal it probably never got there. There are some KentBrockmanNews reports paranoid about those employing the Runners suggesting a good portion of the population has hired one before, but there isn't much reason to actually believe them. [[spoiler:Most of the other Runners seem to be more interested in political assassination or selling out friends.]]
** This is also a case of WhatCouldHaveBeen: Unlockable content reveals that the bags played a larger role in early drafts of the plot.
** Justified, since Faith spends the rest of the game [[spoiler:being hunted by the government after they interrupted her first delivery of the game]].
* The nominally "mercenary" ''VideoGame/StarFox'' team aren't very mercenary-ish in their business plans. Despite turning General Pepper's offer to join the army down cold in ''VideoGame/StarFox 64'', Peppy replaces him and leads the army in ''VideoGame/StarFoxCommand''. The ending to ''VideoGame/StarFox64'' shows that Pepper paid the team quite a bit (depending on the score), but the aparoid thing was apparently a freebie. ''VideoGame/StarFoxAdventures'' actually begins with the team in a financial crisis from their lack of mercenary activity.
** The (non-canonical) comics and a good deal of fanfiction on the other hand deal with the mercenary aspect of the team a bit more.
** For that matter, the rival Star Wolf team seem to get it wrong too, since they are considered criminals. Granted, realistically mercenaries are always a bit shady, but just living out the "whoever pays"-style doesn't warrant bounties.
* For bandits, we really don't see much banditing from Moses Sandor and his band in ''TalesOfLegendia'' Even when they move their base into town after being forced to leave their former base, the townspeople come to consider them to be pretty friendly people. Though their former does appear to show that they may have done plenty in past based on Moses room and all the gold they had.
* Reimu from the ''{{Touhou}}'' series is a {{miko}} in charge of maintaining the Great Hakurei barrier. From what everyone's seen, that consists of drinking tea, sweeping, and more tea.
** Reimu doesn't do anything because there ''isn't'' anything for her to do if there isn't a crisis: [[BarrierMaiden maintaining the Barrier]] is (at least for her) really only concerned with maintaining the shrine, and ''no-one'' visits it. Well, no-one ''human'', anyway, and they tend to mooch off of her, annoy her and/or scare away any humans that would have otherwise visited, so it isn't as if she has a lot of options.
** Averted in ''Silent Sinner in Blue''. Not only does Reimu spend the early part of the manga practicing to call upon the powers of Sumiyoshi, her opening battle with Yukari Yakumo involves her calling upon Ama no Iwata Wake no Mikoto. So she isn't so lazy that she never practiced channeling deities.
*** Except that Yukari was explicitly training Reimu to do just that, so it wasn't as if Reimu did it by her own initiative.
** Reimu's counterpart and rival Marisa pretty much averts this. She's not evil, but with many of her adventures being centered around her stealing magical artifacts just for the kicks of it, beating up people in the process, and her stealing of Patchouli's books, she is really somewhat of a Wicked Witch. Also, she's an earnest hard worker unlike Reimu.
*** Not quite. Did you know that Marisa runs a shop out of her house? Neither do many people in-universe, as it's been stated she almost never does anything related to it.
** The official title of [[BadassBookworm Patchouli Knowledge]] is librarian and tutor of the Scarlet Mansion, however no-one but her actually uses her library (with the exception of Marisa's regular bouts of kleptomania) and it seems unlikely Remilia values a good education. Granted, researching new magics might be what Remilia hired her for, this being an instance of "do what you love doing".
* Magi in ''{{Tsukihime}}'' are described as people who research and study magic intently far away from other people all by themselves their entire lives. Then they made the next game, ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'' and based it on magi. And what do you know, not a single character is like that, and the [[FateZero prequel]] and supplementary materials illustrate quite clearly that it's actually kinda rare for a magus to actually do this, and not always voluntary. May simply be a retcon, though.
** You would seem to be overlooking that ''[[Anime/KaraNoKyoukai Kara no Kyoukai]]'' was written before ''Tsukihime'' and it involves magi actually doing things. [[spoiler:Such as killing and enslaving the residents of entire apartment buildings for the sake of magic experiments.]]
*** Also overlooking another detail. While [[Anime/KaraNoKyoukai Kara no Kyoukai]], {{Tsukihime}} and ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'' might be connected, alternate realities within the Nasuverse, they are 3 seperate settings. Definition of Magi/Magus doesn't need to be consistent.
* Dupre in ''{{Ultima}}'' was apparently the mayor of Trinsic in ''UltimaIV''. He joins the Avatar's party in the local tavern, where he's mostly busy drinking. And nobody ever brought his job up in the following parts of the series. But being a mayor was easy in ''UltimaIV'', when characters didn't have daily schedules implemented yet, anyway!
* Most of the pirates in ''VideoGame/{{Alundra 2}}'', only time we see proper pirates is in the protagonist's flashback.
** Protagonist himself, a pirate hunter, doesn't really do any pirate hunting.
* ''{{MapleStory}}'' assassins. Need I say more? None of that 'professional murder' business in this child-friendly MMO. Even if they are supposed to be ninjas instead (orange ''{{Naruto}}'' gear ahoy), they don't fare terribly well at this either, being in no way stealth-driven and generally picked by the most look-at-me showoffish players in the game. Pirates fare no better, since any running away from these so-called ravening hordes is generally down to the reputation pirate players tend to have on MapleStory forums, rather than any notion of actual piracy.
** Eh, depends on your view. Technically Assassins (and every other class in the game) are slaughtering monsters (of which human types aren't exempt) by the thousands. In fact, there really isn't a story at all. It's more of a "Murder things, get points" game.
* ''VideoGame/AdventureQuest'': There's vampires who never drink blood, rogues who never do anything particularly rogue-like, a treasure hunter that's almost never seen hunting treasure, a water elf who spends disturbing amounts of time on dry land well away from water, and a farmer who'd rather be a dread necromancer... among other things.
* Johnny from ''GuiltyGear'' is ostensibly a pirate captain, but all we really see him doing is flying around on his airship and [[ChivalrousPervert hitting on the various female cast members.]] He also seems to be friends with Ky, who is ''head of the world police force.''
* Lampshaded/Spoofed in ''{{Nehrim}}'' if you listen to the drunken ramblings of a "pirate" captain (who even wears a Jolly Rodger eye patch) you pay for passage during the main quest, he will admit he isn't really a pirate, just a looter (He finds things on an abandoned island that you need to get to) but "pirate" sounds cooler.
* ''DeusExHumanRevolution'': Adam Jensen is supposed to be the chief of security to Sarif Industries, but after the opening scenes he doesn't spend two minutes doing his actual job, instead being turned into a spy/hitman/all around problem solver for his boss. The job description of a security chief should rarely involve crawling around ventilation ducts and disposing terrorists personally.
** Technically most of said "problems" involve investigating who was behind the horrific attack on Sarif Industries and eventually [[spoiler:rescuing their scientists]] which technically falls within the "security" umbrella. Nevertheless there is the implication that Sarif took advantage of Adam's injuries to turn him into his personal Terminator.
** Somewhat lampshaded if your gaming instincts take over and you start [[KleptomaniacHero looting your coworkers' offices]]: eventually you'll get emails asking Jensen to investigate a series of petty thefts in his capacity as chief of security.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Webcomics]]
* Dechs, aka Shadehawk, of ''AntiheroForHire'', functions more like a BountyHunter than an antihero "for hire". It's mentioned that he advertises his services, but almost all of his hero activity is random patrolling. We only see him actually hired for something once, and that job gets broken up by a LetsYouAndHimFight between him and Crossroad.
** This is apparently due to a confusion of terminology: Dechs captures and turns in individuals for payment, but he isn't specifically ''hired'' for this, rather paid for each individual separately. ''Antihero for Commission'' would perhaps be a more accurate title, though that doesn't have AddedAlliterativeAppeal.
* ''TerrorIsland'' has Ned Q. Sorcerer, DDS, who was bathed with "rays of pure dentistry" in his {{backstory}}, but has never been seen to perform the functions of a dentist, preferring instead to give long tedious speeches about "moonitaurs."
** That's because he's not. His superpower is that everyone knows he's a dentist, but he isn't actually a dentist.
* Seem to crop up a lot in ''SinsVenials''. Everyone wants to be a pirate, [[http://www.sincomics.com/index.php?487 no one really knows what they do]].
* Vincent from ''[[http://www.shd-wk.com Spiky-Haired Dragon, Worthless Knight]]'' don't take arms and fight, even though he's a knight. Justified by that he has a curse that rendered him unable to take up weapons.
* ''Webcomic/GunnerkriggCourt:'' Sir James Eglamore is a Dragon Slayer. The closest he's come to slaying a dragon is when he beats a [[OurDragonsAreDifferent dragon-ish]] Rogat Orjak into submission in chapter 3. The discrepancy is [[http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=481 eventually explained]]:
-->'''Sir Eglamore:''' Well, that's just an official title. Dragons don't really need slaying so much these days.
** That said, he ''is'' seen to carry out the actual duties of the Dragon Slayer, namely protecting the Court from etheric threats.
* [[http://www.meninhats.com/d/20031105.html This]] is Beriah's most convincing attempt at being a pirate in ''MenInHats''.
* The title character of ''Webcomic/TheAdventuresOfDrMcNinja'' has had his job as a physician slowly become like this (To the point where is has been lampshaded - twice.)
* Schwartz in ''[[http://spacethecomic.com Space: The Comic]]'' may or may not be one. If the sole purpose of a "spaceman" is to live in space, he succeeds with flying colors. Otherwise, not so much.
** However, most of the characters in Space: The Comic are like this.
* Zii from ''Ménageà3'' is becoming one too.
* Lampshaded and averted in ''IrregularWebcomic'' [[http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2898.html here]]. Even with a link to the page in the annotation!
** In the spirit of being contrary, it is worth specifically pointing out that Captain Short, Wendy, and Dirque avert the trope, and therefore actually do something.
* Despite being described as "hardboiled detectives", Pickle Inspector, Ace Dick and the titular character of ''ProblemSleuth'' never actually do any detective work. They do solve lots of [[SolveTheSoupCans Weird Puzzle Shit]] and defeat a demonic manifestation of a local mob boss in an epic boss fight though.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Web Original]]
* ''HomestarRunner'' doesn't seem to be much of a "terrific athlete" anymore...
** A more obvious example would be Coach Z. The earliest character page said that he wasn't even a coach and he goes by Coach Z because it sound cooler than just "Z". This fact was later scrapped. he still does just as much janitorial work and rapping as coaching these days, though.
** Despite the fact that Bubs owns several businesses, you can count on one hand the number of sales that he's made. He's ''given away items for free'' (or exchanged them for something worthless like play money or pencil shavings) far more often than he's sold them. Nor do we ever see him talking to vendors, taking inventory, counting money, setting prices, etc.
* ''UntitledPirateMovie'': the ex-pirate indeed doesn't do anything (anything pirate-related, anyhow), but so desperately wants to.
* Sean from ''{{Mega64}}'' was initially introduced as someone who delivers Rocko and Derek e-mail from the BigBad's other [=Mega64=] test subjects, but Rocko and Derek don't answer their e-mail much throughout the series, and Sean spends most of his time instead getting involved with the episode plotlines and {{Xanatos Gambit}}s.
* The titular pirates of ''LegoPirateMisadventures'' tend to get mixed up in things that don't really involve being seaborn raiders, to the point of actually getting fired from being pirates at one point. The fact that anytime they ''do'' try, [[GeneralFailure they end up bungling it]] or [[DiabolusExMachina just wind up empty handed]] doesn't help.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Western Animation]]
* The TropeNamers in ''VeggieTales''.
** The Christian/Rock band Reliant K did a rock cover of it, too.
* Didi in ''{{Rugrats}}'' is supposedly a teacher. Other than the requisite 'taking Tommy to work' episode, we have no indication of her job whatsoever.
** A few other episodes hint it---in the one with Chuckie's imaginary friend I seem to remember her grading papers, and in another Stu asks why she's home and she reminds him it's summer.
*** That and most episodes seem to take place on a weekend.
**** Drew lists his occupation as investment banker, but this comes up even less. Likewise Chaz is a beaurecrat, but this is never shown and seldom referred to.
* Lampshaded in ''TheSimpsons'':
-->'''Bart:''' Do you even ''have'' a job any more?\\
'''Homer:''' I think it's pretty obvious that I don't.
** Earlier seasons did focus a lot on Mr. Burns and the Power Plant, but after that well ran dry, they {{Brother Chuck}}ed an entire section of Springfield. This is also true of the school, although less so.
*** The latest season had several episodes focusing on the plant, Burns, and Smithers, so the trend seems to be reversing.
** Also lampshaded when Homer becomes a police officer. He lists every single one of his previous jobs.
** The most obvious example is Captain [=McAllister=]: "Arrgh! I hate the sea and everythin' in it!"
*** "Arrr. I don't know what I'm doin'."
* For a literal example of this trope, see the ''WesternAnimation/ChipNDaleRescueRangers'' episode "Piratsy Under the Sea". The Rangers encounter the Pi-Rats, rat pirates who like to go treasure hunting. However, the Pi-Rats are stuck inside a sunken pirate ship, so all they can do is hunt the same treasure over and over.
* ''{{Popeye}}'''s a sailor man (toot toot), and certainly engaged in lots of high seas adventure in the comics, but famously had very few encounters with ships or even water in his animated cartoons. An average of one Popeye cartoon per year (out of ten to twelve made) showed the sailor actually doing his job.
** A big exception was during WorldWarII, where quite a few cartoons portrayed him as having (re)joined the navy.
* Captain K'nuckles from ''TheMarvelousMisadventuresOfFlapjack'' claims to be an adventurer, yet he seems to actively avoid doing anything that involves leaving the harbor or performing manual labor. If he ever does go on an adventure, it's usually because Flapjack guilts him into it, or else by sheer accident.
* The Whalers of the Moon in ''{{Futurama}}'', who freely admit there aren't any whales on the moon, and even have a song about it. (Of course, their ''real'' job is "amusement park robot", but still...)
** Also Professor Farnsworth, who is only seen teaching in one episode. (He intentionally makes his course titles sound difficult so no one will sign up.)
--->'''Professor Farnsworth:''' I don't know how to teach. I'm a ''professor''.
*** Likewise, this episode is the only one in which Amy, ostensibly an engineering student, is shown attending class. She's also an intern at Planet Express, but never seen to do actual work there.
*** She's kept around because she has young, healthy organs and the same blood type as the professor.
**** This continued until "That Darn Katz!" in the Comedy Central season, when Amy discovers that the last six years of her internship were meaningless. Amy then (eventually) gets her Doctorate, which Farnsworth is on the committee for.
** Bender very rarely bends anything as a form of work. He only bends if it's convenient for him for some reason or another.
*** This is actually incorporated in the plot of one episode. Bender's continued bending abstention makes him start sleepbending things which were not meant to be bent, [[AmusingInjuries including Professor Farnsworth]].
*** Hey! Everything is just a primitive, degenerate form of bending.
**** One early episode actually has Hermes mention the fact that Bender hadn't done a single act of work since being hired. (Though to be fair, bending was his ''past'' job---now his official job seems to be a "delivery boy and [[TeamChef Team]] LethalChef").
** More and more in recent episodes, Planet Express itself never seems to do deliveries anymore.
*** Lampshaded in a new episode by Hermes:
--->'''Hermes:''' Didn't we used to be a delivery company?
* The Net Pirates in ''{{ReBoot}}'' originally did actual piracy, then were talked out of it by Dot to become proper businessmen. Once they quit piracy they are never seen doing any business, simply standing around and acting pirate-y.
** In between their first appearance and season 3, they were engaged in offscreen intersystem transport. When we do see them again, they're on the lam from the Guardians, who have made the net into a police state.
* In ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartakus_and_the_Sun_Beneath_the_Sea Spartakus And The Sun Beneath The Sea]]'', pirates are the primary villains of the series and do indeed rob and plunder, but are more interested in [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ublsCsq_Wzc performing snappy song and dance numbers about themselves]].
* The title characters of the short-lived ''{{Undergrads}}'' are not once seen attending class, talking to instructors or even studying. Every university student on the planet ''wishes'' post-secondary school offered that much free time.
* This is pretty much the gist of minor character ''The Huntsman'' in ''{{Freakazoid}}'', a superhero who is constantly out of a job and never actually gets around to doing the sort of heroics his intro suggests he does.
** Well, that's because his intro song is SO DAMNED LONG, the villains get away by the time he's at the scene!
* Dr. Orpheus in ''TheVentureBrothers'' is [[LargeHam by trade A NECROMANCER!]], yet is never seen actually raising anyone from the dead (apart from [[spoiler: an attempt at resurrecting Hank and Dean]]). What he actually ''does'' appears to be random magic and protecting the fabric of the universe from the forces of chaos. Lampshaded in Season 4, where he mentions that he only chose his title because, unlike terms like "wizard" or "magician", it hasn't been tainted by popular culture.
** Technically a necromancer [[{{Whatevermancy}} doesn't raise the dead, just speak to them,]] which he has done.
** Then there's Billy and Pete:
--->'''Billy Whalin:''' We don't need much room for what we do, and that's why we can't pay you that much. Because we don't do that much.
** An early episode also had literal pirates who were stranded in a forest of sargassum kelp and, aside from using ([[PeopleInRubberSuits fake]]) GhostPirate tactics to commandeer passing cargo ships (which there don't seem to be many of in the Bermuda Triangle) they really don't do much of anything at all. This is appended when they foolishly try to hijack Doctor Venture's X-2 hydrofoil, and Brock burns down their ship.
* The Amoeba Boys in ''ThePowerpuffGirls'', an ostensibly criminal gang that spent an amazing amount of time standing around trying to figure out what to do. One time they had the blueprints for a sinister trap literally fall into their hands, and ''hours'' passed before they even bothered to LOOK AT IT. They managed to pull off ''one'' crime, and via an ability they learned through pure dumb luck.
** A running joke in the series is that the Amoeba Boys ''desperately'' want to be seen as villains but are so inept that the girls don't take them seriously at all. In the aforementioned blueprint episode, the girls actually help them build the freaking thing (granted they thought it was a scavenger hunt, but still...) In one episode, the brothers actually do pose a threat by inadvertently infecting the town with the virus. They only agree to help find the cure if the girls fight them and then arrest them. [[spoiler:While the girls do put up a rather lame fight (all three were very sick), they all refuse to arrest the Amoeba Boys on the grounds that their crime was undone and there was no lasting damage. The brothers were all ''very'' disappointed.]]
* The pirates in ''SpongebobSquarepants''.
* Quagmire in ''FamilyGuy'' was said to be a pilot in early episodes. It wasn't until "Dammit Janet!" that we see him in his uniform, and in "Airport '07" that we actually got to see him do his job. (although he was seen returning from a flight in "The Thin White Line.")
** It turns out Quagmire isn't just a pilot, he's also your [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0anaCNDvGo stereotypical pilot]] too.
** On that note, just how often did you see Cleveland at the deli that he ''owned''?
*** This was [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] by Lois in the first episode of TheClevelandShow "Who will run that deli you never work at?"
* In ''HowToTrainYourDragon'', the human characters are all Vikings. No raiding of other societies is mentioned - in fact, the Vikings are [[{{Irony}} the ones getting raided]], by dragons. Presumably, these Vikings could have settled in Newfoundland or thereabouts, but...
** Also, killing dragons is a major part of their society, yet in the entire film we only see one dragon killed by a viking ([[spoiler: The Green Death]]).
* The hero of the cartoon ''NightHood.'' It's ostensibly a 1930's version ArseneLupin. He's hunted by police in every country in the world. Other criminals try to pin their crimes on him. Does he ever actually steal anything or commit a crime more serious than lightly taunting police forces? No.
** This is just one of the many reasons [[WildMassGuessing fans speculate]] that he's not actually Arsene Lupin, but Lupin II/Jr. Son of the original Lupin and father of LupinIII
* Velma seems to be the only character on ''ScoobyDoo'' who actually does anything school-related, even though they're allegedly all meddling ''kids''. And even she's more likely to have a winning display at a science fair than to actually do something as routine as, say, attend a lecture.
** YMMV on the characters' ages though - obviously they're not kids in the traditional "under 18" sense; but it's fairly easy to interpret them all as being college-age. Basically, legal adults; but still "kids" to middle-aged people.
* ''JakeAndTheNeverlandPirates''. They call themselves pirates, but they're just kids who want to have a good time.
* In ''MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', we do see everyone doing their jobs...although Pinkie Pie appears to have a ''lot'' more free time than the other characters.
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[[folder:Other]]
* Many Renaissance Festival village ensemble stock characters are like this. There's a ratcatcher who's almost never seen actually catching any rats, the highwayman who almost never robs anybody, and of course pirates and privateers who are there on shore leave and don't actually loot or plunder (though of course they may sing about such things).
** Try and get an executioner to do his civic duty during a ren-faire. And if you do, make sure you get it up on [=YouTube=] please.
** Darkly amusingly averted in [[http://www.theonion.com/audio/9-drawn-and-quartered-at-renaissance-fair,14068/ one Onion story]], about people being drawn and quartered at a Renaissance Festival.
* One Twenty-Sided blog entry parodies the ''VeggieTales'' quote at the top of the page with the [[http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1688 (Video Game) Pirates who don't buy Anything]].
* There are entire countries ruled by "revolutionary" governments who don't seem to engage in much reform.
** Likewise the words "People's" and "Democratic" in the name of a country are almost [[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny a sure sign that it will have little relation to either]]. [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial Especially if it has both]].
*** Then there's North Korea, official name Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Overkill much?
* Larry the so-called Cable Guy.
** Didn't he explain his name in one of the Comedy Central Blue Collar Comedy tours as being more marketable than "Larry the guy who sits on his couch and watching TV"?
* According to ''Sax and Violins'', the band Talking Heads are "criminals that never broke no laws".
* {{Hot Scientist}}s are usually Pirates Who Don't Do Anything; they just look hot in glasses. This is because scriptwriters don't actually have the first clue how to think like a scientist. A good example is Denise Richard's Dr. Christmas Jones, in the JamesBond movie ''The World Is Not Enough''.
** Presumably she got her PHD by submitting a photo of herself in the shorts she wears for most of the film, labelled 'Thesis'.
*** [[AWorldwidePunomenon Or maybe]] [[TheissTitillationTheory Theiss]]?
* Douglas Adams wrote a radio sketch about The Kamikaze Pilot Who Doesn't Crash Into Ships. [[spoiler: Initially it seems like the guy is coming up with excuses (couldn't find target, vertigo, got lost) because he's [[IWantToLive unwilling to die]], but he's actually [[CompletelyMissingThePoint confused about the difference]] between a kamikaze attack and seppuku, [[ICannotSelfTerminate and can't seem to fly close enough to cut out his stomach and drop it on the target ship's deck]].]]
** [[spoiler: That's in the original version Adams wrote for the stage whilst at university. In the version broadcast on radio, it's because "the war ended thirty-two years ago, sir!"]]
* So-called "famous for being famous" celebrities.
* In older fiction involving air travel, airline stewardesses are often shown panicking and/or fulfilling a DistressedDamsel role in a crisis, presumably because the writers had taken their "beaming glorified cocktail waitress" get-ups at face value. In fact, flight attendants were always trained, clear-headed professionals, who would immediately take action to maximize air passengers' safety during an emergency. Hiring pretty young ladies and having them serve coffee and flirt with businessmen was just the early airlines' way of making their presence less alarming to travelers, who might otherwise be scared off by speeches about what to do in the event of a crash.
* Sadly, the MythBusters have drifted into being Pirates Who Don't Do Anything in real life. Jamie Hyneman's actual business is ''M5 Studios'', and he and his crew worked for years as very successful special-effects artists and product modelers. Jamie has since admitted in interviews that M5's activity has been declining since MythBusters hit it big, because companies that would have hired them don't want their products taking a backseat to the show's schedule, which as the show chugs on through ever larger projects is exactly what has happened.
* In summer of 2010, 10 Russian spies were caught in America. However these aren't your badass Cold War Russians, as these spies were hanging around in Hoboken and raising families in suburbia. Though the spies were doing all sorts of James Bondian things, like bag switch offs and burying messages, there isn't any evidence that any of their information was of actual value. Most embarrassing are [[http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Suspected-Russian-Spy-Anna-Chapman/ss/events/us/062910annachapman the]] [[http://gawker.com/5575882/the-facebook-adventures-of-accused-russian-spy-mikhail-semenko photos]] of the spies. The first of these were posted of ''facebook.''
** Of course part of their duties (that we know of) was to influence think tanks on how to view Russia but that's hardly interesting to the media compared to pictures of Anna Chapman in seductive poses.
* On several video game sites, it's often joked that so many so-called "gamers" spend more time discussing and arguing about games online than actually playing them.
* The popular stereotype of the "artist" who just sits in the coffee shop "waiting for inspiration" and complains about how hard it is to be an artist. It happens sometimes, but bonus points go for wearing turtlenecks and/or berets.
* Possibly, individuals who work in the website hosting industry, but they ironically, don't get to host ''their own personal sites'' on the host...
* At the time Spain was a great empire going from the Iberic peninsula to America and Phillipines you could be a pirate if you were french, english or just not spanish aproved and went to one of the ports of New Spain to sell... shirts and scissors... you didn't have to kill, rape or steal anything, just defying spain commercial monopoly was enough. Sure there were the people that made their living raiding cargo from spanish ships, but those didn't pass everyday.
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