Iron Butt Monkey / Western Animation

• Comic relief jerkass Earl of Lemongrab of Adventure Time. Thanks to his super-hard lemon candy skin, he has supercandyperson strength. He falls head-first out of the window of a castle and smashes his head into the ground hard enough to leave a big indentation in the earth, but he was fine. (Pissed-off, though.) Then, he fell from a tree and had a pretty nasty fall right on his back. Again, he was fine — just angry.
• Iago the parrot took a lot of damage in Aladdin. The only time it was not played for laughs was near the end of the sequel, when he's just destroyed Jafar's lamp and Aladdin is mystified because he seems to be dead, but Genies can't kill anyone. You'd be surprised what you can live through.
• American Dad!:
  • Steve is always getting attacked by animals and bullies or suffering other injuries. He often injures himself horribly but always comes back in the next episode as if nothing has happened. Interestingly, he very rarely breaks his glasses, unlike what would probably happen in real life.
  • The entire family isn't exactly exempt. Stan, Francine, Hayley, Klaus, and yes, even Roger have all been shown to get horribly injured on a regular basis, some are even worse than Steve's (Francine for instance, has been shown to suffer brain injury) and all would show up next episode relatively not phased at all.
• Archer:
  • Deconstructed: Every single stray bullet that gets fired in or around ISIS headquarters hits Brett. However he's shown to have serious injuries in later episodes, bad enough to qualify for a disabled parking space. Outright subverted in the fifth season, where he finally takes one in the head and immediately dies.
  • Played straight with Archer himself.
    Since I started working at ISIS, I've been shot, stabbed, set on fire, poisoned, shot, sexually assaulted, partially chewed, shot, and declared legally dead. Twice on the same day!
  • Unusually, he later deconstructs this, pointing out that logically, all of this would be likely to leave marks on his body that would get worse with age, and he claims that he hopes he has dementia before the effects really happen.
  • Downplayed but otherwise played strait for Pam and Cheryl who are regularly subjected to low-grade physical abuse that never seems to really bother them. Mostly because Pam is legitimately tough enough to endure it while Cheryl is a raging masochist.
• This trope was used occasionally in Avatar: The Last Airbender when earthbending gets involved, then subverted in one of the few deaths in the series.
  • Sokka is the king of this in the chibi shorts, particularly "Bending Battle." He gets used as a human pinball.
  • Prince Zuko is right behind Sokka. Despite being beaten and slammed into something almost every time he goes up against the Gaang, he always gets back up again, chasing Aang from one end of the world to the other.
• Baby Huey of Harveytoons is built on this trope. He's invulnerable to the point where many of the gags of his shorts are centered around his enemies attempts to kill him backfiring horribly on them.
• Beavis And Butthead.
  • Beavis and Butt-Head themselves. Tornados, huge car crashes, lightning, and former drill sergeants are barely enough to stun them for more than a few seconds. In the 2011 revival, they even managed to bounce back after being bitten by a hobo and receiving multiple incurable diseases.
  • Van Driessen has survived getting mauled by a bear, hurled down a cliff, run over by Beavis in a large car tire, and attacked by wasps.
• XR from Buzz Lightyear of Star Command exemplifies this trope. The name's short for "X-pendable Ranger," and he was designed to be easily repaired after massive damage, so Once an Episode he meets a brutal fate, complaining all the while.
• In Care Bears: Adventures in Care-a-Lot, Oopsy Bear was noted for his ability to "fall over and over and over and over without hurting himself."
• Shnitzel in Chowder is one of the more logical examples, since he's made of stone and thus can take a great amount of punishment even if he still feels pain.
• The title character from Courage the Cowardly Dog has taken many injuries and is shown to still be fine in the next scenes, even letting out a dazed laughter as if it was nothing. Eustace, however, has him rivaled for this trope, for he has suffered far worse injuries than Courage and is still alive in the next episode.
• Cracked (2016): The protagonist Ed puts himself through all sorts of pain and suffering as he protects his eggs from whatever threat they're under in the episode, frequently putting himself through Amusing Injuries as a result.
• Chris in Dan Vs.. The guy survived eating poisoned meatloaf for crying out loud!
• Dave the Barbarian has Dave. While everyone takes a bit of punishment, Dave is the most often in line to be beaten up, set on fire, blasted with magic or pummelled with heavy objects, but given that he is the size of a house and recovers almost instantly, it never seems to have any effect other than aggravating his usual cowardice.
• Fluffy and Uranus of Duckman are effectively living teddy bears, and routinely get eviscerated in elaborate ways by the title character.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy. Ed has dropped houses on Edd and Eddy, the Kankers' trailer fell on the Eds, a pile of garage sale junk fell on Ed, all three suffered spontaneous combustion after eating some jalapeno hot sauce, Ed zapped Edd with a static electricity bolt powerful enough to blow up the latter's house. If all that's not enough, all three once smashed into the sky, shattering into pieces.
  • Special mention goes to Eddy, seeing as he's the biggest butt monkey of the three; he's been beaten up more than anyone else on the show, had his arm smashed against a filing cabinet repeatedly, run through a thorn bush naked, been attacked by a psychotic rooster, trampled by hippos, been struck by lightning, shattered into bits like glass, had his hair used as a violin, had his head sucked into a vacuum, used as the ball in a giant set of Newton Balls, had his head smashed into a tree God knows how many times, been smashed on against a metal trailer like a super ball, had his head pecked by a chicken for twenty-four hours then shrunk, run over by a truck and a train, but for the most part walks it off.
• Family Guy. The entire family. Peter falls down stairs (repeatedly), Brian (being a dog) gets hit by cars, Stewie's had large pieces of glass stuck in his head, Lois has fallen off the roof and been drenched in scalding-hot french fry oil... and yet its Meg who's the series Buttmonkey. Ironic, huh?
  • Not to mention that Meg's suffered such indignities as having her hair set on fire, having a piano fall on her (something that also befell Peter) and been shot full of poison darts.
• Mentioned by Billy West in a commentary, Fry from Futurama: getting slammed into a wall at full speed by those transport tubes, surviving a fall from a helicopter without deploying his parachute, eating a big heaping bowl of salt, three cola induced heart attacks in high school. And those are the ones that don't involve super-advanced medicine or symbiotic worms.
• Gawayn: Sir Roderick is a literal example, actually being encased in armour.
• Goofy, especially in the How to... shorts.
• Stumpy the squirrel from Kaeloo. He even survived being left on an exploding planet!
• Looney Tunes:
  • Wile E. Coyote is practically the Patron Saint of this trope. He's been crushed, blown up, fallen hundreds of feet, been knocked all the way through earth and back, and that's just the tip of a long list of abuses. He not only survives, but is right back at the same thing again.
    • In fact, in the sort of spin-off series Loonatics Unleashed, being an Iron Butt Monkey is Tech. E. Coyote's superpower.
  • Daffy Duck's been shot enough times, his face (or at least his beak) should no longer be recognized. Sylvester's gone through many of the abuses that Tom has suffered over the years, being beaten, smashed, electrified, and so much else. Still other villains like Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Marvin the Martian and the Tasmanian Devil have also survived incredible injuries.
    • Likewise Plucky Duck, Daffy's counterpart in Tiny Toons. Glorious, hysterical case in point.
    • Lampshaded in a Cartoon Network commercial that asked a bunch of questions people wondered about cartoons. They ask "How come you guys never get hurt?" and Sylvester, Daffy, and Elmer answer, respectively, "A good diet." "Exercise." "Fwexibility, weally."
• Jeebs, from Men in Black: The Series.
• Spike in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has armored scales, and has been literally used as a pincushion without ill effect. Twilight can take a surprising amount of punishment as well, though this has yet to be lampshaded.
  • All ponies seem capable of taking pretty big punishment: Rainbow Dash breaks her wing in one episode and walks it off within a matter of days, Pinkie Pie is run ragged by the Cake twins, Applejack almost works herself to death in "Applebuck Season". The only ponies out of the Mane Six who haven't had a lot of physical punishment yet are Rarity and Fluttershy.
• Thirteen from Numberblocks is Born Unlucky, but none of the bad things that happen do any lasting damage. It’s apparent at the end of his episode, when a gigantic piano falls on him, but he lives.
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • Doofenshmirtz. Every day, Perry ends up foiling his plans in some way, leading to the destruction of one of his many -Inators in a massive explosion or something that will bring some harmful treatment to Doofenshmirtz. In spite of this, he rarely ever seems hurt or displays any kind of bodily damage. So far he's survived fiery explosions, being hit by a giant ball of aluminum, the eruption of a volcano, the sinking of his lair while perched over a crocodile's mouth, crashing headlong into his own building several times, and multiple other situations.
  • Candace. She is very durable, having remained uninjured after suffering from perilous falls and even lightning strikes.
• Pinky and the Brain regularly get smashed, beaten, exploded, so forth, as Brain's schemes fail (a memorable one being the time they are blasted from the top of the Space Needle, all from Pinky's perspective). Of course, Pinky doesn't really mind when Brain bops him on the head, so perhaps he's okay with it. Brain, however, gets the worst of it. Naturally, they're still standing (if bruised) at the end of every episode, ready to do "the same thing we do every night".
• Popeye usually goes through this until he eats his spinach...
  Popeye: Dat's all I can stands, I can't stands no more!
• Pretty much all the characters in Rocko's Modern Life have fallen to this trope at least once in an episode, Rocko being the occasional victim of this.
• Sonic Boom subjects the entire cast to some form of physical abuse (even the girls), but the most frequent victims are Eggman and Knuckles. To be fair, though, both of them tend to invite suffering upon themselves, such as when Knuckles went through a minefield of exploding baby ducks and picked up almost every single one...
• South Park's Ike was like this right up until about the time he started going to school. Most of his appearances involved Kyle playing "Kick the Baby!" and punting him through windows.
  • However, special mention goes to no one other than Kenny, who has died in more than one episode.
• Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants: His unfortunate fates include being shot out of a cannon, run over by a giant boulder, hit in the face with a pie bomb, zapped by the Flying Dutchman, attacked by a bear, and blown up from eating too many krabby patties, as well as having his toenail ripped off and his head explode. Yet he always manages to get right back to the way he was, and even managed to take a level in badass in "Spongebob, You're Fired!".
  • Plankton, Mrs. Puff and sometimes even SpongeBob himself are just as unlucky.
• Steven Universe:
  • Amethyst gets way more physical abuse than any other character. Nine times out of ten she'll walk it off no problem.
  • Peridot suffers Wile E. Coyote-level trauma in "The Kindergarten Kid".
    Steven: You don't poof easily, huh?
    Peridot: [whilst under a boulder] Us Peridots are stronger than we look!^note If "Reunited" is anything to go by, one of the few things that can poof her is a direct electrocution from Yellow Diamond
  • Though it pales in comparison, Ronaldo has brushed off a number of comical injuries, which is especially notable given he's completely human. He once got in a fight with the Crystal Gems that realistically would have broken his hand and jaw, as well as possible his skull, neck, or back, then recovers instantly. Keep Beach City Weird mentions a refrigerator falling on top of him, whereupon his only concern was being stuck under it.
• The Amazing World of Gumball:
  • Gumball suffers from Amusing Injuries in almost every episode. In "The Procrastinators" he's shattered, eaten, lit on fire, disintegrated, and blown up in just one episode.
  • Anton as well. "The Recipe" subverts this by revealing that he does die, but his parents know how to clone him using a toaster.
  • Alan (a balloon) gets popped in most of his speaking roles. He's back to normal by the next.
• The Dreamstone: The Urpneys. Aside from the cartoon abuse they take from Zordrak, nearly each and every new scheme involves them being transformed or horribly injured in some slapstick manner (to name a few, being shrunk, zapped with electric bolts, beaten up by Amberley, fell victim to numerous vehicle crashes and mauled by a band of vicious leaves). Out of any of these situations, only being fed to Frazznats or turned to stone has lasting effect.
• This was a plot point of all things in The Penguins of Madagascar. Mort, our resident Buttmonkey, is so dumb that he can take lethal blows without serious damage. The penguins decide to suction out their own brains so that they, too, can have this "Halo of Ignorance". It works until they are too stupid to carry out their mission.
• The Simpsons:
  • Homer Simpson is the king of this trope. He goes through everything from falling off a cliff (twice), to slamming into a tree in his car, suffering from skiing incidents, waterfall plunges, animal maulings, getting shot by a nailgun, amateur brain-surgery, amateur heart surgery, and getting hammered by a champion boxer!!! Not to mention getting shot by a cannon daily for a living as one of his many, many jobs. One has to wonder if he is truly immortal...
    • He did die once briefly of a heart attack but he went back into his body when he heard his family was getting a ham, which is then cancelled when Homer resurrects.
    • One of the later episodes had Homer being forced to perform in a circus act in which he's bitten by several cobras (some of which aren't even real snakes, but robots with venomous needles fitted into their mouths) and then has his throat ripped open by a mongoose sent in to kill the cobras. Not only is all this Played for Laughs, but the entire act is shown to be more humiliating than life-threatening for Homer.
  • Sideshow Bob counts in Cape Feare when he manages to be unhindered by a parade trampling him. Said parade also had about six or so ELEPHANTS that trampled him. Before that he had survived hitting his head against the speeding road, scalding hot coffee ("Ugh! This coffee is too hot!" *Pours it down the side and we hear scalding noises* GAHHHH!!), a drive through a cactus patch, and rakes. Lots and Lots of rakes.
  • Scratchy of Itchy and Scratchy is this as well. Every episode he appears in, he dies in a variety of amusing ways, barring the one episode where he gets Itchy.
  • The Screamapillar in "The Frying Game". The poor thing gets chewed on by three other animals, slammed by a heavy book, and buried alive, with only a neck brace to show for it. By the end of the episode, its injuries have completely healed.
• Time Squad: All three main characters; Larry has been electrocuted, smashed by a washing machine, been shot at, several times his body has been reduced to just a head, and has had his computer system scrambled by magnets. Otto gets frequently beat up by people from history, chased by a grizzly bear, viciously attacked by an evil My Little Pony (seriously), suffers from Tuddrussel's stunts, was crushed by a bookcase (off-screen), left in a hurricane, and was practically the resident buttmonkey at the orphanage. Tuddrussel takes a good amount for himself when it comes to getting beaten up by people, like Joan of Arc for example, has been slammed into the ground after destroying a giant fly monster, attacked by a lion, took on lava from the top of a volcano and really takes an equal amount as his comrades.
• Tom of Tom and Jerry. Like Wile E. Coyote, he seems to be genuinely impervious to damage, with the exception of a few episodes where he does actually die. And even then, it never sticks.
  • Deconstructed and spoofed in this VG Cats comic, where Jerry's actions in the "Lost Episode" of Tom and Jerry do have lasting repercussions.
• Total Drama seems to love this trope, as many characters have held this title over the years, including Tyler, Harold, Brick, and Max.
  • Tyler specifically receives a ton of injuries whenever he competes. His first action on the show is to fall off some waterskis, hit the dock, fly through the air and crash into a pile of luggage. From there, he has hit a buoy jumping off a cliff, had a kayak thrown on him, fallen into piranha-infested waters, and stepped on a working landmine. And yet he still makes it out ready for more.
  • Harold gets it even worse. The guy has the record for most injuries out of any character in the show, and holds the record for most hits in the groin. He is *somehow* still able to compete even with the amount of daily abuse he gets.
• In Total DramaRama, Cody constantly gets injured, almost on a Once per Episode basis, and also lampshades it a couple of times.
• Waspinator of Transformers: Beast Wars. The writers found his speech pattern, which combined a buzzing emphasis on any S or Z sounds with being a Third-Person Person and The Nicknamer, annoying to work with, but they still had to include him in episodes for marketing purposes, so they opted to have him make those appearances in pieces. This shoddy treatment made him, ironically enough, very popular with the fans, and the writers eventually came around on him...at which point they started to really go to town on him, since the comically unpleasant treatment he endured was the cornerstone of his appeal. Expanded universe material would explain that his spark (basically his soul) was unusually small and located in his head, explaining why he could be shot to pieces, blown up, run over, folded, spindled, mutilated, crushed into a cube, blown up again and repeatedly decapitated without dying.
• H.E.L.P.eR. of The Venture Bros.. This household staff robot has been dismantled by rogue Monarch henchmen, had his legs ground off by acting as surrogate landing gear, been beaten to death and ejected to space by the Venture brothers, been burned up on re-entry, had his nipples electrocuted, and been detonated and lodged in the chest of Brock Samson. Upon reflection, H.E.L.P.eR. can be seen as something of a deconstruction (no pun intended) of the Iron Woobie automaton. One of the reasons he sees so much action these days is because Dr. Venture has watched him take punishment for thirty-odd years and has become desensitized to it. (There's a moment when arch-enemy The Monarch demands Venture's cooperation because he has H.E.L.P.eR as a hostage, and Venture reacts as though The Monarch is insane.) The rest of the family treat H.E.L.P.eR much more like a person. Brock Samson is probably his healthiest friend (and maybe vice-versa?).

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