Barbaric Bully

To see the nerds driven before me, and to hear the lamentations of their math club.

"He's big, he's dumb, he's got the IQ of gum
He's got the brain about the size of a sourdough crumb
But he'll beat on your head like a big bass drum
His behavior is truly unruly
He's a bully!"

— Phineas and Ferb, "He's a Bully"

In fictional works involving young characters, school bullying is commonly used to create conflict and/or build sympathy for a Woobie protagonist, but it is often limited to physical bullying, with comparatively few works acknowledging or depicting psychological and social bullying. The ideal "Hollywood Bully" is invariably a physically imposing, thuggish, Obviously Evil bigot who terrorizes victims through overt, obvious physical force that can easily be recognized by anyone.

This kind of bullying easily lends itself to the visual media, since a loud, fleeting schoolyard scuffle is much more interesting to watch on the big screen than hours of more subtle psychological torment. A climactic fistfight with a bully also provides a much simpler (and easier) way for writers to resolve a conflict, whereas psychological/social bullying doesn't give viewers a loud spectacle, it is harder for adults to recognize and resolve (and harder for victims to prove), and it requires far more attention to Character Development to make it convincing (since a bully has to be believably popular to have the circle of friends needed to pull it off). At the end of the day, delving into the consequences of scrapes and bruises is a far easier job for writers than delving into the consequences of depression, self-loathing, and social isolation.

Interestingly, this represents something of a gender Double Standard as well, since thuggish bullies in fiction will almost exclusively be male, with the most common of such being the Jerk Jock, whereas the few times that psychological bullying is shown, it will exclusively be the domain of petty, giggling Alpha Bitches who torment less popular girls with verbal barbs. With female bullies, physical fights will be shown to be the incredibly rare exception to the rule, while the opposite is true of male bullies. Much like with brutish male bullies, though, dealing with a bullying Alpha Bitch will invariably be as simple as dispatching her with a cathartic series of pranks or a simple verbal smackdown.

Most of the time, the teachers never really do anything to stop the bullying, either because they're oblivious, the bully is very good at playing the Wounded Gazelle Gambit to get off scot-free and paint their victim as the bully, or they get a kick out of seeing the victim suffer, possibly even using the bully as their attack dog.

On the flipside, though, these kinds of bullies tend to be all brawn and no brain, sometimes bordering on Too Dumb to Live. In this case, their victim tends to find a way to outsmart them, maybe even humiliate them in the process.

Sub-Trope of The Bully. Compare Women Are Delicate (the reason for the above-mentioned distinction between male and female bullying), Obviously Evil, and Card-Carrying Villain.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• At the beginning of Accel World, Araya's Establishing Character Moment is to force Haruyuki Arita to buy him and his gang lunches or else he will beat the crap out of Haru. Not only that, but he uses an illegal program in his neurolinker that will let him know when the security cameras are watching so he can get off scot-free. Even Haru's friends don't bother reporting Araya's bullying to the school's staff. Eventually, Kuroyukihime pulls a Batman Gambit to get Araya and his gang arrested and expelled, which helps Haru get back his sense of self-worth.

• Leon Yamada from Hell Girl makes fun of beating up younger and weaker classmates for no reason. He also robs them and even attacks other people. When he is involved in a fatal traffic accident, nobody really wants to help him.
• Good lord, Maria no Danzai has some of the worst of these.
  • First off, Tsuyoshi Kinugawa, who's the most aggressive, volatile, and physically dominating of the bunch. Ironically, he's the only person who actually cares about another bully of the group, Kowase. Flashbacks show that he was already beating up his classmates as a kindergartner.
  • Tsubasa Kowase is a rather downplayed version of this, but he's just as cruel and brutal as the rest of the gang. One of his favorite past times is sexually extorting Yashima and basically torturing her whenever he's not bullying Kiritaka himself.
  • Mutta Ajiki is perhaps the closest to a downplayed version without becoming an outright aversion of this trope. He might look the part, being a Fat Bastard and all, but he doesn't seem to do much aside from partake in the cruelty.
  • Kumiru Shikimi is an aversion, being more of a manipulative Alpha Bitch, but her right hand bodyguard Iijima fits the bill perfectly.
  • The ringleader, Okaya, is somewhere between a standard Alpha Bastard and this trope. He has Kiritaka blackmailed into jumping off a cliff, or else his bullies will upload a falsified sex video of his mother on the internet. It doesn't end well for him. Most of the bullies balk at the fact that Kiritaka got himself killed, but only because they don't want to get arrested and try to flee the scene. However, Okaya only laments that "he let him win and escape". Then, to cover their tracks, the bullies leave behind a suicide note that matches Kiritaka's handwriting, hack his Twitter account to post several messages hinting at suicide, and overall make it look like he was Driven to Suicide due to Abusive Parents. His mother, Mari, does not take it well, both before and after learning the truth.
• Katsuki Bakugo from My Hero Academia provides his Establishing Character Moment by mentioning that he's been bullying Izuku Midoriya (The Hero) for 10 years because Izuku's Quirkless and gives him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech that ends with him telling Izuku that he should kill himself and hope that he reincarnates into someone with powers, and even when he eventually demonstrates that he has a Hidden Heart of Gold, he absolutely refuses to stop being a Jerkass and loves to use his Quirk on anything that pisses him off (usually Izuku, which is way too often)... and considering that his Quirk is the capacity to sweat nitroglycerine and set it off at will, "anything that pisses him off" usually has to run like hell.

• A Silent Voice: Shouya Ishida was one in middle school, terrorizing Shouko by constantly yanking out her hearing aids and wrestling her in detention. As a young adult, he's grown out of this and tries his absolute best to make amends with Shouko.

Comics

• Moe, from Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin has occasionally compared him to a Neanderthal. To his face. Though Moe is very much the Dumb Muscle, so sometimes Calvin's insults fly right over his head.
  Calvin: If I'm going to get beaten up, I'd at least like to deserve it.
• Robin: The brutal bullies Mark Meachum and Josh Stanzland get transferred to Tim's high school along with a bunch of other students due to school shutdowns in the wake of the devastating man-made earthquakes that lead to Batman: No Man's Land. The campus and staff are not equipped to deal with the influx of students, and after getting away with repeated cruel acts in public, they eventually drag their favorite victim to the wooded area behind the football field and beat him to death.
• The Sandman (1989):
  • The story "Charles Rowland Concludes His Education" are a particularly dark spin on this. When they were alive, their bullying involved murdering another student as part of a Satanic ritual. When they're brought back as ghosts, their bullying of the titular protagonist extends to them torturing him to death.
  • The Dead Boy Detectives explores Charles' and Edwin's trauma to being brutalized by their boarding school bullies. In the 2005 graphic novel, a trio of mean girls terrorizes them and Charles and Edwin immediately suspect the girls of murdering the Missing Child they're investigating. They are able to get their revenge on the trio of bullies in the 2014 run when they return to St. Hilarion's.
• The Bryer brothers from the New 52 reboot of Shazam! (and the 2019 movie adaptation), who attack a smaller, disabled kid two-on-one just because they can.

Fan Works

• In Daphne Greengrass and the Boy Who Lived, Daphne notes that this character trait is what most annoys her about some modern Slytherins. As she observes, attacks such as Malfoy cursing Neville are just stupid, as if Slytherin has to maintain its reputation as the 'evil' house it should commit such actions out of at least some kind of practical motivation beyond just wanting to be a jerk.
• Goenma Nakamura in Quirk: Incubus is a bully with a Super-Strength quirk that goes to Izuku and Bakugo's school who had to repeat the eight grade multiple times and has been to juvie. When Bakugo stopped bullying Izuku, Nakamura began to fill that roll, going so far as to threaten to tell the whole class about Izuku's quirk if he fights back.
• Lila's old teammates from Team LVDR were so cruel and abusive to her that when they were figured out, Ozpin had them jailed.

Films — Live-Action

• In The Amazing Spider-Man, Flash Thompson's Establishing Character Moment involves him dangling a kid upside down over a picnic table in the middle of a crowded high school quad while dozens of other kids cheer him on. And a few seconds later, he beats the snot out of Peter Parker in full view of said kids, and somehow manages to get away without any consequences. Even Gwen Stacy doesn't bother to help Peter beyond telling him to see the school nurse (because, as per this trope, the damage inflicted by bullies can always be solved with a trip to the nurse and a few bandaids). Eventually, though, he sympathizes with Peter after Uncle Ben is killed, and ends up becoming a friend.
• Scut Farkus in A Christmas Story, full-stop. He's about twice as tall as Ralphie and his friends, he has a near-constant maniacal laugh (which is about the only thing that ever comes out of his mouth), and he allegedly has yellow eyes. And, of course, a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown late in the movie ends up solving all of Ralphie's bullying problems forever.
• Fear Street: In "Part Two: 1978", stringing someone up from a tree and burning them with a lighter, as Sheila does with Ziggy, goes right past bullying and straight into actual torture.
• The Karate Kid is a major offender on a casual level, since it ends with a bullied kid solving his problems by besting his tormentors in a karate tournament. It operates under the belief that victory in a fight always stops bullying, which is a big contributor to this trope. A closer look, however, will reveal that Mr. Miyagi actually solves the bully problem more indirectly well beforehand: when he and Daniel agree to compete in the tournament at all, he forces the bullies' karate instructor to make them leave Daniel alone during his training period. Furthermore, Daniel earns the respect of most of the bullies not by beating them up, but by showing his determination and good sportsmanship. The one who (reluctantly and under the instruction of his corrupt sensei) cripples Daniel's leg is bawling in apology immediately afterwards, having realized that his actions crossed the line.
  
  The Karate Kid's bullies are referenced in The Social Network, where the Winklevoss twins worry that attempting legal action against Zuckerberg might make them look like thuggish bullies.

Literature

• The Bad Unicorn Trilogy: Ricky "the Kraken" Reynolds. In one of his first appearances, he provokes a fight with a girl ^note Good thing she completely whoops his butt. Taken further when he is turned into a monster.
• Discworld: In Hogfather, the student wizard Mr. Sideney, having fallen in with a criminal gang, finds that one of them strongly reminds him of Ronnie Jenks, the bully at his old dame-school (quasi-medieval primary or elementary). This is foreshadowing, since when the gang members are forced to confront their greatest childhood fears, Sideney realises that he's back at the dame school.
  Adult memory and understanding said that Ronnie was just an unintelligent bullet-headed seven-year-old bully with muscles where his brain should have been. The eye of childhood, rather more accurately, dreaded him as a force like a personalized earthquake with one nostril bunged up with bogies, both knees scabbed, both fists balled and all five brain cells concentrated in a kind of cerebral grunt.

• Harry Potter:
  • Dudley Dursley and his gang are introduced as a bunch of big, muscular bullies whose animosity towards Harry (complete with Dudley's game of "Harry Hunting") is matched only by their dimwittedness.
  • Averted with Draco Malfoy, who is a far more complex, conniving portrayal of the high school bully and leaves the physical stuff to Crabbe and Goyle, who do very much fit this trope. Both Dudley and Malfoy eventually get a dose of reality and grow up.
  • Harry's dad is eventually revealed to have been a bully like Draco in his early years, with young Sirius fitting this trope the way Crabbe and Goyle did as his more physical enforcer type. He grew out of it.
• From the Shivers (M. D. Spenser) entry, The Spider Kingdom, where one of the characters, Lumpy, is a bully who repeatedly picks on the class' skinny, bespectacled dweeb, Tommy, ranging from punching to throwing Tommy's books around some woods, and laughing gleefully when Tommy starts to cry. Taken to the extreme in a Noodle Incident where Lumpy once pranked Tommy with firecrackers.
• Stephen King has a very, very long list of examples, like Chris Hargensen from Carrie, but his crowning example is without a doubt Henry Bowers from It, the poster boy of this trope. Some of his misdeeds include trying to carve his name into Ben's belly with a knife, killing Mike's dog by feeding it poisoned meat, and smearing snow in Stan's face until he bleeds. And this was way before Pennywise took over his mind.

• In the German children's book series Der Schlunz, we meet the bullies Knut and Brutus, a. k. a. the "Barefoot Giants". They are large and brawnish, prone to starting physical fights with weaker students, call Schlunz a "Waldschrat" (German for "woodsprite") for having been found in the forest and have questionable hygiene, best expressed by being nearly always seen barefoot.

Live-Action TV

• Daybreak (2019) shows Jayden Hoyles. He brutally beats up other classmates and also robs them. He is so brutal in the fights that even other bullies are disgusted with him. To do this, he repeatedly urges a young girl to have sex (it's just a step below a rape). After the apocalypse, he is mauled and raped to death by a mutant, giant dog.
• The Jerk Jock clique that appears on the Criminal Minds episode "Elephant's Memory" is a spectacular case — both because of the bad things they have done to the Unsub of the Week (and made him an "injustice collector"), and because of how the bullied kid takes them out. In the same episode, it's revealed that both Reid, as a "ten-year-old in a Las Vegas public high school", and Morgan were physically bullied at school to various degrees. The "highlight" of Reid's experience was being lured to the football field by a pretty girl, ambushed, stripped, and tied naked to a goal post in front of half the school.
• Family Matters is this trope. In fact, here's a fun challenge: Watch the entire series from start to finish and name one under-20 male character (besides, of course, Urkel and Eddie) who isn't a thuggish bully or complete jerk. Even Waldo, before being rewritten as a Kindhearted Simpleton, was originally a bully in his earliest appearances.
• Subverted with Alan on Freaks and Geeks, who's neither athletic nor popular. He tends to use psychological torment more often than physical torment, only really resorting to physical torment when it's convenient (ie. after school).
• Averted for laughs in one episode of Modern Family, where Manny and Luke try to retrieve a lost model airplane, and find it being held hostage by a gang of skinny, bespectacled nerds who immediately start taunting them and pushing them around. A confused Luke says, "I can't tell if they're bullies or nerds," and the leader of the gang indignantly responds, "Don't pigeonhole us! We can be both!"
• 'In "Tomkinsons' Schooldays", the first episode of Ripping Yarns, "School Bully" is an actual title. Tomkinson is bullied by the School Bully, and actually earns the job by the end of the episode.
• The very first episode of Smallville involves a Jerk Jock and his buddies dragging Clark Kent out to a cornfield and leaving him chained to a post in his boxers like a scarecrow. Despite the stunt being grounds for arrest, this is said to be an annual tradition of the Smallville High football team.
  Lex Luthor (after getting Clark down): You were tied to a stake in the middle of a field. Even the Romans saved that for special occasions.
• Stranger Things:
  • Troy from the first season starts off as just a typical schoolyard bully. The worst he does is trip Mike, making him bang his chin against a rock. But then, during the wake for Will at the school, Mike sees Troy and his friend James actually laughing while the principal is giving a eulogy. And when Mike calls them out on it, Troy has the nerve to make a cruel joke about Will. Eleven gets back at him by using her powers to make Troy wet his pants in front of the whole school. At this point, Troy is more psychotic, as the next time we see him, he chases Mike and Dustin to the cliff where Will's body was found, points a switchblade at Dustin's mouth, and threatens to cut out his teeth unless Mike jumps off the cliff. Even Troy's friend James thinks he's gone too far.
  • In Season 2, we are introduced to Max's older brother, Billy, who is ten times worse. He is always putting Max down and even tries to run over Mike, Dustin, and Lucas with his car just because Max talked back to him.

Theatre

• In Cesare - Il Creatore che ha distrutto, Henri, the leader of the French students' group, picks fights with everyone, especially the Spanish and Florentine student groups. During a fight, Angelo remarks that Henri is dumb like a bull, at which point Giovanni walks in wearing a bright red cape, that Cesare proceeds to pluck from his shoulders and treat Henri to his national specialty sport.

Video Games

• In Bully, there's an entire "Bully clique" that consists entirely of brawny thugs who spend all of their time beating up and extorting other kids and is led by a giant, hulking brute that speaks in pidgin. They're not the only clique in the game capable of committing the act of bullying, but their portrayal (and the fact that they're the only clique in the game explicitly called "The Bullies") shows this trope in action perfectly.
• Susie in Deltarune smashes Kris against the lockers of their school, and threatens to bite their face off in her introductory scene. She spends much of Chapter 1 trying (with variable success) to solve her problems with violence or fear, even resorting to a Face–Heel Turn over how "lame" she finds the more pacifistic Ralsei's options. She mellows out by the end.
• Buggs from Kindergarten will demand that the protagonist hand over half of his money at the start of the school day, and can even beat him to death if sufficiently provoked. He also throws slop at Nugget during lunchtime. He gets a bit nicer to the protagonist in Kindergarten 2, but he's still a troublemaker who's more than happy to start a Food Fight.
• Lost Judgment has school bullying and its fallout as a major plot point, so bullies of all sorts make their presence known:
  • Hiro Mikoshiba, the person whose death kicks off the main plot, had the appearance of a model student when he was in high school. Out of sight, however, Mikoshiba severely tormented one of his fellow students, Toshiro Ehara, beating him up and stealing his lunch money day after day. It eventually got to the point where Toshiro killed himself, but Mikoshiba got away scot-free and eventually became a student teacher, where he was seen using similar tactics to turn the basketball team against one of their newer recruits, Mami Koda. Then he got kidnapped by a Knight Templar Bully Hunter and brutally murdered by Toshiro's father.
  • A seemingly minor plot point revolves around a missing man named Shinya Kawai, a sleazy bar owner who disappeared five years prior to the story. As it turns out, he was the ringleader of a band of bullies that brutally harassed a smaller student, Mitsuru Kusumoto, beating him black and blue on a daily basis until Mitsuru attempted suicide. Kawai was scapegoated by his "friends" and had to change schools, but a chance meeting years later between him and Mitsuru's mother Reiko revealed that he was completely unremorseful about what happened, even proud to some extent. This led to Reiko accepting an offer from Kawai's former teacher Jin Kuwana (who is the aforementioned extremist Bully Hunter) to kidnap and murder Kawai for his crimes.
• Angelface in Skool Daze and its sequel Back to Skool punches fellow students pretty much constantly, even in view of the teachers.

Web Animation

• Deegan in Recess Reindeer hangs Richie from the monkey bars by his antlers and flies about, socking Richie every time he passes until Svetlana saves him.

Webcomics

• In Jupiter-Men, Rick abuses his stature to bully younger students into doing his bidding, never getting punished for his actions thanks to his influential mother. He's quick to resort to violence over minor slights and feels entitled to get whatever he wants.
• Being a webtoon about a hierarchy of bullies, Weak Hero runs the gamut when it comes to its portrayal of them. From the physically weak who depend on manipulation, like Phillip Kim and Jared Sun, to the bullies in line with this trope, hulking brutes like Colton Choi and Helmet who verbally and physically abuse their classmates in a loud, obnoxious manner. At least until Gray gets his hands on them.

Web Original

• A young Australian called Casey Heynes became an instant internet celebrity and received tens of thousands of messages of support in a matter of days after a video of him throwing a bully to the ground went viral. Fans were impressed that he had stood up to the bully in a physical way, comparing him to Zangief.
• The Nostalgia Critic finds this to be a Pet-Peeve Trope, partly because the bullies tend to be so one-dimensional, and partly because they never seem to be having fun with their bullying (just doing it because they're evil).

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball makes plenty use of slapstick, bullying included, although it's never been resolved by fighting back. Notably, both prominent bullies at Elmore Junior High, Tina and Jamie, are girls, and physically torment students of both genders:
  • Tina takes the physically intimidating aspect to the utmost extreme: She is a damn Tyrannosaurus rex who has literally squashed other students under her foot, and some of the school's staff are too scared to touch her. Ironically, she's the more sympathetic, potentially nicer one: She's been shown to be rather lonely at home, she sees some of her bullying as harmless horseplay, and most of her on-screen acts of or attempts at violence are overreacting to people insulting or otherwise upsetting her, rather than unprovoked bullying. She eventually undergoes Character Development before being Demoted to Extra.
  • Jamie isn't much in the way of being physically intimidating; she's actually quite small and silly-looking (like a goose-stepping windup toy with horns and a stupid hat), and for the first two seasons her being a bully is mostly a case of Offstage Villainy. In the third season, however, a montage shows that she's committed such completely insane acts as having birds devour someone alive, dismembering one student's limb before chewing it up and spitting it back at her, and partially cannibalizing two kids. Even the staff are of no use to stop her, intimidated by her strength themselves. The only thing that can keep her well-behaved is her mom.
  • In Season 2, another Gang of Bullies is introduced, all being male. They are Julius Oppenheimer Jr. (a bomb-headed guy), Mowdown (a pink teddy bear), Scythe (a rat), Reaper (a hand), and a rotten cupcake, who gets gender-flipped to a female in the sixth season. They physically beat up several male characters, though the one time they bully a female character (Sussie), it's only verbally.
• Stelio Kontos, Stan's childhood bully from American Dad!. Stuck a bat in his pants. Enough said. He's so infamous that he's effectively a bully-for-hire who will beat up anyone for whomever pays him.
• Butch Magnus Milosevic from The Boondocks is a hulking brute who's able to get away with anything due to being both strong and vicious enough to brutalize adults, including drill sergeants.

• As with everything childhood related, Codename: Kids Next Door exaggerates this to epic proportions, depicting bullies as equivalent to dinosaurs in Homage to Jurassic Park. Named species of bully include the Noogieraptor, Spitballosaurus, Wet Willie Mammoth, and the fearsome Wedgiesaurus Rex. Though they're used sparingly throughout the series, since the protagonists are a pack of pintsized powerhouses who publicly fight adult supervillains on a daily basis.
• Dash from Danny Phantom is a Jerk Jock that fully expects his life to go downhill once he leaves high school and has decided to enjoy it (and the living hell he can inflict on other kids) while he can. In one episode, he is explicitly asked to put Danny in passable shape for PE grading purposes, and what he asks his teacher is: "Is 'broken in half' considered a shape?"
• Roger Klotz in Doug is a mild case. He has the stereotypical "tough guy" looks (chains, black leather jacket, and slime-green skin), and is usually threatening people with acts of violence, but generally confines his bullying to the occasional name-calling, as even he would never actually go through with his threats, and is terrified of people who actually want to beat him up. In the show's defense, though, the writers usually don't attempt to use bullying as a major source of drama, and Doug always manages to resolve his conflicts peacefully.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy:
  • The Kanker Sisters antagonize the kids (mostly the Eds) and each other, have Super-Strength (albeit on par with the other characters), live in a trailer, and have no sense of table manners or personal hygiene.
  • Kevin is a Jerk Jock who intimidates and terrorizes the Eds (particularly Eddy) and also has anger issues. That being said, he has his Pet the Dog moments every now and then.
  • Eddy's Brother in The Movie is the crowning example. He takes pleasure in beating and belittling his little brother, which he has been doing throughout most of his life. Given he works at an amusement park, it's heavily implied he beats other children as well. Even the other kids, who were out to get the Eds in retaliation for one scam attempt too many, are horrified; they immediately decided to cut Eddy and his friends some slack, save them, and toss Eddy's Brother at the Kankers for a little Laser-Guided Karma.
• Francis in The Fairly Oddparents. He's about twice the size of everyone else at his school (throwaway dialogue indicates he's been held back at least two years, and has a dad who's a full-on convict), he wears heavy chains on his clothes, he has grey skin, he apparently feeds first graders to his dog, and he's brought medieval weapons to school on at least one occasion. You know... just like bullies in real life.
• Wolfgang from Hey Arnold! is a fifth grader who's no stranger to using physical force on his weaker fourth-grader targets.

• Gilda from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is never seen physically assaulting anypony, but she fits much of the stereotypical bully: A hulking brute who terrorizes Ponyville and drives Fluttershy to tears with her roar.
• Averted in Pelswick. Since the title character is in a wheelchair, the school bully Boyd knows he can't punch him because "you can't punch a kid in a wheelchair". However, Pelswick is still his favorite target and Boyd picks on him using psychological means such as taunting on the stairs, forcing him to grovel for a rare trading card, or manipulating a popularity list.
• Buford von Stomm in Phineas and Ferb is a card-carrying bully who spends nearly every other scene pounding a weaker kid (usually Baljeet), to the point that it comes off more as a pastime than an act of violence. He also has the stature and IQ of a troll, and wears a black skull t-shirt 24/7. The musical number about him provides the page quote. However, after the first few episodes (such as the one from which the page quote originates), he does much less bullying, and hints start being dropped that he's not nearly as dumb as he acts.
• Gelman from the Recess episode "Gus' Last Stand" takes Gus as his new punching bag when the kid he used to regularly bully moves away and gives him the most brutal beatdown a Disney Saturday Morning cartoon could get away with, makes clear he's perfectly okay with beating up T.J. and the rest of Gus' friends when they try to make him back off and only stops when all of the other students in the school join in.
• The Simpsons:
  • Dolph, Kearney, and Jimbo are an Obviously Evil gang of petty criminals with intimidating looks and dress (skull t-shirts, spiked wristbands, etc.) who are identified more than once as being "from the mean streets" and get into fights every chance they get. They're also unambiguously identified as "the bullies" by everyone, and they're the only kids at Springfield Elementary who are explicitly labeled as such. Principal Skinner actually introduces Jimbo to his students as their school bully.
  • Depending on the Writer, Nelson Muntz. Not as tall as the previous three, but definitely heavier and more thuggish-looking than the other kids (and in his first appearance requiring Bart to band together an army of fellow kids and make him sign an armistice pact in order to make him stop beating up Bart daily). In later seasons, he's given Hidden Depths and his bullying is largely restricted to taunting.
  • The episode "Bye Bye Nerdie" has Francine, who is a rare female example of a physical bully. She brutalizes Lisa the instant she gets within arm's reach of her, and continues to do so every time they come into contact.
  • A flashback shows that Homer Simpson himself was this, as when he reminisced about his experiences with bullying he fondly thought about beating up a young Smithers to the song "Kung Fu Fighting" while Barney played the flute.
• South Park:
  • Eric Cartman is a Fat Bastard example. He takes pleasure in tormenting others (mainly Kyle and Butters), has anger issues, and can be rather simple-minded.
  • Trent Boyett was described as the boys as "the biggest, toughest kid in pre-school." His introduction had him whacking a classmate with a hammer even when he was crying "uncle." Years later, when he gets released from juvenile hall due to starting a fire that went out of control, he proceeds to brutally assault Butters and the sixth graders, giving them a trip to the intensive care unit.
  • Shelly Marsh is Stan's hot-headed Big Sister Bully who frequently assaults him — either with a television, a piano, or a chair — with minimal provocation. After Season 12, however, this became mitigated.
  • Grandma Stotch was revealed to be this when she repeatedly beats and intimidates Butters, both at home and at school. Despite the absurdity of it, her abuse is played completely straight.
• Flatts the Flounder, from the Spongebob Squarepants episode "The Bully", has only one known goal: kicking SpongeBob's butt for no apparent reason. He also bullies his father, who is justifiably afraid of him as well.

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