"Let me look through this stack of comics and see if I can find a situation that didn't involve her breaking the laws of nature with her mass and then crying. OK, this is the best I could do: In the history of Little Archie comics, the only positive experience the fat character had was when her impossible mass broke through a dock and knocked out a lake of fish."
It seems that whenever there's a gang of lead characters in comedies, children's media, and sitcoms, there's always one person that's fatter than the rest of the cast. Usually male, and they'll almost always be the Butt-Monkey/Chew Toy/Plucky Comic Relief - often, though not always, through their Big Eater and/or Gasshole tendencies. When the Fat Comic Relief is of the Big Eater variety, their comedic scenes often involve food; such as eating all the food meant for everyone else, and/or being Obsessed with Food even in situations where they should instead be focusing on something else at the moment. Gasshole Fat Comic Reliefs tend to be Fat Slobs. If you have both flavors of this trope together, this character is very likely to often be Too Hungry to Be Polite.
Keep in mind that just because a character is both fat and a Butt-Monkey, that does not mean they apply for this trope. Butt Monkeys can be played straight or for sympathy, in which case they are not seen as Acceptable Targets, and so do not qualify. Additionally, their status as a Plucky Comic Relief or Butt-Monkey must be related in some way to their fatness. For example, a Butt-Monkey who is picked on because he is fat would qualify (if Played for Laughs), but a Butt-Monkey who is picked on for some unrelated reason (such as for being a nerd) without consideration for their weight would not.
Sister Trope to Fat Idiot. This character is often the Fat Best Friend. You'll often find these kids gobbling up the ammo of a Food Fight. If the series takes place in school, expect them to be the most frequent target of The Bully. See also Big Fun.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Area no Kishi: Araki is a skilled football/soccer player, but his chubbiness and love of eating is frequently played for laughs.
- Getter Robo's Musashi popularised this trope within the Super Robot Genre. Initially he's so comical that his teammates have trouble taking him seriously, though after his incredible sturdiness comes to light he quickly establishes himself as a Big Fun and The Heart of the team. In addition, his wackiness sometimes lets him defeat powerful enemies through confusing or insane tactics. His successor Benkei is also fat, but treated somewhat more seriously.
- Choji from Naruto is the only overweight member of the Konoha 11, but hates being called fat. He comes from a traditionally overweight clan who have mastered using their size to amplify their attacks, and using their attacks to amplify their size.
- Kuchipatchi from Tamagotchi is a downplayed example; he's not much bigger than his friends and is generally considered a healthy character to raise on the virtual pets, but his "Big Eater who is Obsessed with Food" personality and his role in the show tend to make him into this.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Hayato/Chumley's main schtick in the dub is talking about food, particularly cheese sandwiches. This wasn't as prominent in the original, but the dub ran with it to the point he wouldn't spend one sentence without mentioning food.
Comedy
- Canadian comedian Casey Corbin expresses the same sentiment as Ralphie May, with the explanation that making fun of fat people is still acceptable because if one of them overhears you doing it and tries to kick your ass, it's easy to just run away from them.
- Ralphie May
mentions this in his routine as fat people being one of the last remaining acceptable targets left. He demonstrates by pointing out how no one could ever get away with a "Black Bastard" or "Mexican Bastard" the same way Austin Powers got away with "Fat Bastard."
You can always make fun of fat people. Watch TV, watch a movie, all fat people do on 'em is eat, shit and fart. That's all we can do.
Comic Books
- The police officer ("De Champetter") in the Flemish comic strip "De Lustige Kapoentjes" is morbidly obese and often tricked by either the children protagonists ("De Lustige Kapoentjes") or the teenage delinquent (Flurk). Partly subverted though, since he does get his comeuppance regularly.
- Asterix: Obelix and chief Vitalstatistix certainly fall into this trope. Obelix is dimwitted, naïve and often does stupid things because he underestimates his own strength. Vitalstatistix is pompous and a bit brighter than Obelix, though often gets carried away by his big mouth and as a result blunders a lot too. Though it can be argued that at least Obelix, despite his shortcomings, has a certain charm and innocence that made him very popular with readers, both young and old.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Gus Goose, Donald Duck's cousin.
- Urbanus: Dikke Herman, an obese schoolboy with glasses, buck teeth and a large quiff is a frequent Butt-Monkey.
- Nero: Agent Gaston and Papa Papoea are morbidly obese, yet depicted as the laughingstock.
- The Sprite Comic Megamanspritecomic has Uncle Proton as one. Word of God says this was meant to be a subversion of the character's usual portrayal as being the Only Sane Man.
- Legion of Super-Heroes In The 31st Century:
- Subverted with Bouncing Boy, who is treated as Plucky Comic Relief but rarely is his weight ever used for jokes.
- Played straight with Lightning Lad in the third issue when he switches powers with Bouncing Boy. Bouncing Boy finds it hilarious that "fathead's fat" and Saturn Girl (who gains Superman's Kryptonian powers and strength) acknowledges her new muscles with "I'm ripped! And so is Lightning Lad's underwear." The issue ends with him unhappily learning he'll be stuck this way longer than the other Legionnaires because the virus which swapped their powers lasts longer on "beings with greater weight and mass."
Comic Strips
- The Billy Bunter comic strips series feature a fat student who is always ridiculed by his fellow students and the headmasters. There was even a Distaff Counterpart series around a female clone of Billy called Bessy Bunter.
Films — Animation
- Lilo & Stitch: The Ice Cream Man in this film, its sequel and the television series. Standing or sitting around with a low degree of response to stimuli and nigh-invariably losing his ice-cream one way or another is pretty much the purpose of his existence.
- Pumbaa from The Lion King, being a Gasshole of sorts.
- Tom and Jerry: The Movie: Ferdinand, a dog so fat that he needs a skateboard to be mobile.
- In-universe with Stinky Pete from Toy Story 2. His Woody's Roundup characterization brings his toy self to shame upon seeing him.
Films — Live-Action
- Fat Bastard from the Austin Powers movies mixes this with a heavy dose of Squick.
- The first child to find his golden ticket in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film adaptations is Augustus Gloop, a gluttonous and fat German chocolate-eating boy. He's eliminated by drowning in a chocolate river, just like in the novel.
- Stan, the female protagonist's brother-in-law in the Rhys Darby/Sasha Alexander romcom Coming And Going, is first seen wearing a whale costume (having come from an audition for new TV kid's show) while being told that he has an abnormally low sperm count. It gets worse from there (the director on the TV show calls him "Buttcheeks").
Sue: Stan has big dreams.
Alex: And a big ass. - Godzilla vs. Kong: Bernie Hayes is a pretty broad-figured guy, and he's a Conspiracy Theorist Bunny-Ears Lawyer and the goofiest member of Team Godzilla and probably in the film overall.
- Chunk from The Goonies, who has to do his "Truffle Shuffle" to be allowed into the gang's house.
- In The Grizzlies, Vinny is an Inuit student initially reluctant to join the school's newly formed lacrosse team.
Vinny: I told you, I don't run.
Russ: There's a polar bear after you!Vinny: He can have me! - Alan, the Fat Idiot Unwitting Instigator of Doom in The Hangover series. As put by Mr. Chow, "It's funny because he's fat!"
- Laurel and Hardy: Oliver Hardy (the fat one) is the eternal Butt-Monkey and Straight Man.
- Any role played by Otis Harlan in his films of the '20s and '30s.
- The premise of the movie Heavyweights is more or less to feature a whole camp of these guys, although the main character Gerry Gardner is the most iconic.
- Horace from The Monster Squad, who gets bullied by E.J. in the beginning of the film.
- Thomas "House" Conklin in the Police Academy series (as the series runs around the joke of misfit cops).
- A stock character in Larry Semon movies, usually played by Frank Alexander. Alexander also had his own film series (Ton of Fun) which paired him with two other huge actors, and mostly saw them get stuff dumped on them or fall into vats piles etc of stuff.
- Tommy Boy: "Fat man in a little coat...." The movie put the title character in some hilarious situations (such as struggling to use an airliner restroom) due to his extreme corpulence.
- Lil and Mickey in Walking on Sunshine provide all the jokes and comedic moments, but are never mocked for their size.
- Tropic Thunder has Jack Black (an actor who is known for playing these types of character) as Jeff Portnoy, an actor largely typecast in crude comedies about fat people farting reminiscent of The Nutty Professor (1996) (complete with playing multiple characters in Fat Suits). He stars in the titular war movie as a way to boost his credibility.
Literature
- Billy Bunter embodies this trope. The entire popularity of this children's book series revolves around the fact that plump Billy is always trying to steal food and gets mocked by his fellow students or punished by the headmaster.
- Augustus Gloop from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - even the narrative itself outright berates him over this.
- Rowley Jefferson from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series generally fills this role. The fact that Greg Heffley is more-or-less stuck with him as a best friend is a constant indicator of Greg's unpopularity.
- Embraced at first by Zane in Dinoverse. Really he's Brilliant, but Lazy and thinks that, thanks to his weight, he'll be better accepted if he's the Class Clown. So he applies himself to thinking up pranks, often at his own expense, and feigns clumsiness.
- Chet Morton from The Hardy Boys books is regularly described as fat and is a comic relief character. He's a clumsy Big Eater and his Fleeting Passionate Hobbies serve as a Running Gag.
- To a lesser extent, Bess Marvin, Chet’s Distaff Counterpart in the Nancy Drew series, is Nancy’s pudgy best friend who is often distracted because she Thinks Like a Romance Novel (although there are also gags about her being hungry and having Fleeting Passionate Hobbies.)
- The Hobbit has Bombur, the practically circular dwarf. He is the subject of much fun-poking, particularly when he falls into an enchanted sleep and the company has to carry his enormous girth for an extended period. But though Tolkien made Bombur's rotundity the subject of fun, he didn't make Bombur stupid or inept. He is as bold and skilled a warrior as his fellow dwarves.
- In The Fellowship of the Ring we find out he's gotten even larger and could only move with the help of six younger dwarves.
Live-Action TV
- Bosom Buddies: Amy, the protagonist's best friend/Henry's Abhorrent Admirer.
- Ñoño in El Chavo del ocho and to a lesser extend Señor Barriga, both played by same actor Edgar Vivar. But in general any character played by Vivar in any of Chespirito's shows and films. Botija —the only other character for which he's most remembered— is more like the Straight Man in Los Caquitos.
- Norm on Cheers was the only plus-size main character and was also a Butt-Monkey and a hopeless alcoholic, all Played for Laughs.
- Among the show's supporting characters there's also loney Butt-Monkey Paul.
- Doctor Who: In the TV movie, Pete the morgue worker is a bit overweight. He also talks to the Seventh Doctor's corpse as if he's a spa attendee, faints slapstick-style when he witnesses the Eighth Doctor breaking out of the morgue at night, and has other comedic antics including but not limited to the following conversation with Grace:
Pete: (standing in front of the open freezer after the Doctor regenerated and walked out) It wasn't the same guy.
Grace: Sounds like you saw the guy stole the body.
Pete: He was wearing a shroud and a J.D. tag on his toe.
Grace: Somehow, I don't think the Second Coming happens here.
Pete: Right. You think he's gonna go to a BETTER HOSPITAL? You know what? I'm going home.
Grace: Hey, Pete. Stop by psychiatric and pick up some more mind-altering drugs.
Pete: Okay, sure. - Drake & Josh: Josh in the earlier seasons was overweight and has always been the, uh, wackier and hammier of the two protagonists, although he loses weight alongside his actor over the course of the series.
- The Drew Carey Show: Mimi constantly made fun of Drew's weight, but it was subverted by the fact that Mimi herself was obese.
- Gimme a Break!: The show was not afraid to indulge in weight humor. For instance, when an elevator stalls with Nell's Overeaters Anonymous group, she checks the elevator's weight limit (1200 points), counts how many of the group are in it, and says, "Oh, we're a few hundred pounds past that!" The show, however, made sure the humor was laughing with Nell and others, and not at them.
- Gilligan's Island: In one episode Gilligan got into a Shotgun Wedding situation with a portly island girl.
- Head of the Class: Dennis Blunden, a scheming cynic who was played by Dan Schneider. As of the season four premiere, he had lost a lot of weight over the summer, but eventually it all came back.
- Power Rangers: This trope usually appears in villainous groups. Whenever there is a fat villain, or at least chunky, you can expect him to be the comic relief of the season.
- Farkas "Bulk" Bulkmeier from the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers is the fat one of the Fat and Skinny comic relief duo, with the skinny one being Eugene "Skull" Skullovitch. They were a duo of selfish, but ineffectual bullies, with Bulk being the one coming up with most of their schemes.
- One the villains in Power Rangers Time Force is Gluto. Gluto is a fat humanoid whale creature, who's only purpose is to provide comic relief on the villains' side. A fun thing to note is that his Japanese counterpart in Mirai Sentai Timeranger was a fairly serious crime boss.
- Schmidt of New Girl was Formerly Fat, and his morbidly overweight, slobby, nerdy past self is often used for physical comedy and jokes.
- Newman on Seinfeld gets a lot of jokes about his ample weight and his gluttonous habits.
Music
- In The Rutles Music Video "Ouch" a chubby native goes after the guys.
- "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Fat" is basically a string of fat jokes at the singer's expense. The music video pairs him (in an inflatable fat suit) with some large backup dancers who provide Funny Background Events.
Puppet Shows
- Miss Piggy on The Muppets sometimes became this, for example a Pigs in Space sketch on Muppets Tonight in which the artificial gravity is deactivated and she's so heavy she ''still'' doesn't float.
Pro Wrestling
- WWE had Big Dick Johnson, a large, oily, dancing fat man. In a thong.
- Truth Martini also employed a two such women for a joke on his ROH Villain Episode A Night Of Hoopla, to prank a fan who thought he'd won personal time with one of the much less fat hoopla hotties.
"Sexy sexy sexy comes in all shapes and sizes in my book!"
- Senior Ring of Honor referee Todd Sinclair, one of the few referees with the honor of getting enough attention to be booed by fans when entering the arena and the butt of many jokes, including fat jokes, from the wrestlers.
Video Games
- Barry Wheeler from Alan Wake. He's the heaviest character in the game and has the greatest tendency to do wacky things, like talk to a cardboard cutout of Alan or cover himself in Christmas lights to ward off the Taken.
- Big the Cat from Sonic the Hedgehog has been used as a Funny Background Event in some games. Although this has less to do with him being fat and more to do with him being The Scrappy and the developers enjoying trolling people by adding the much-hated character in the background of games.
- Super Mario Bros.: Mario is always described as being portly or chubby even though his current model has slimmed him down considerably from his earlier days. Wario, as an exaggerated bizarro Mario, takes the fatness and runs with it as a Gasshole and comic relief character.
Web Animation
- Homestar Runner:
- The King of Town is a Big Eater and a complete loser, all Played for Laughs.
- Show Within a Show Limozeen: But they're in space! changes the band member Mary to this specifically for the trope, as a parody of Ray Stantz's design in The Real Ghostbusters.
Mary: How come they made me fat and have red hair?
Larry: Because you're the comic relief!
- Ben of Puffin Forest depicts himself and most of the characters he plays as this way in his animated videos. His real life self actually is pretty skinny.
Western Animation
- Tummi in Adventures of the Gummi Bears due to his big appetite and naïveté.
- Harold from All Grown Up! as the only overweight character and Angelica's Butt-Monkey. He only showed up twice in the original Rugrats in one of the final seasons. He would have had a bigger role if the preschool days spinoff had been greenlit.
- George Pie from Battletoads, who is completely inept at sports. Interestingly enough, he becomes the Mighty Glacier when he transforms.
- Family Guy:
- Stewie at one point had a "job" which consisted of following fat guys around while playing a tuba. The fat guys would pay him to go away.
- The trope itself is inverted within the Griffin family - Lois is the only thin member (except for Stewie), and thus the Only Sane Man (at first, anyway). Out of all of them, Meg gets her Butt-Monkey status the most.
- Harold from Hey Arnold! outweighs the other kids and was initially shown as a bully, but is consistently portrayed as stupid, bratty, and unable to control himself from eating.
- Eugly from Kaeloo, the most overweight of the characters, was frequently used as a source of comic relief until she was Put on a Bus in season 5.
- Looney Tunes:
- While not traditionally fat like a pig (albeit somewhat chubby), Porky Pig is billed under the name Comedy Relief in the two cartoons with Daffy Duck as a Western-type hero.
- Lampshaded in the Duck Dodgers episode "The Mark of Xero", a Zorro parody: When the Sergeant Garcia counterpart correctly works out that Dodgers is the secret identity of El Xero, the Commandante says to Dodgers "Pay no attention to Sergeant Vasquez. He is fat." And then the two of them laugh at an irritated Vasquez for no reason.
- As with his film counterpart, House in Police Academy: The Animated Series.
- Slimer from The Real Ghostbusters is this trope mixed with the Team Pet.
- Mikey from Recess is the fattest kid in the bunch, and he is definitely a comic relief character, many jokes revolving around him overeating—including one in the show's opening where he belches.
- Shirley in Shaun the Sheep. She is so large she gets wedged in sheepruns and between gateposts - being a Big Eater, it's not surprising. She also makes for a useful trampoline.
- The Simpsons:
- Homer Simpson, a combination Fat Idiot Fat Slob Big Eater Bumbling Dad, who serves as the comic relief within his family and his workplace.
- Chief Wiggum and Comic Book Guy are also ridiculed countless times over for being fat.
- South Park's Eric Cartman is the butt of many jokes about his weight.
Cartman: Hey, I'm not fat, I'm big boned.
- Owen from Total Drama is both a Big Eater and a Gasshole, which are his main sources of humor, as well as being a very prominent Plucky Comic Relief character in the series.
- Willo the Wisp (1981): Mavis Cruet, the overweight fairy, ends up as the punchline to many jokes.
- Hoppopotamus from The Wuzzles was the butt of many fat jokes. Eleroo was also this, but to a lesser extent, as not many jokes were made about his weight.
- The dim-witted, happy-go-lucky Patrick Star from SpongeBob SquarePants definitely qualifies thanks to his unflinching optimism.
