Professional Butt-Kisser

"Looking for my husband, Nazeem? Check the Jarl's backside. That's usually where he stuffs himself these days."

— Ahlam, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

As the name says, the Professional Butt-Kisser is a career sycophant and Yes-Man. They don't care who is in charge so long as they're the right-hand man. If their current boss were to meet an untimely end (or just get fired/demoted) they will happily offer their services to their replacement, even if they just saw how the new boss killed the old one! Despite their desire to be close to the reins of power, they never harbor any ambitions of their own boss-hood, much less betraying their current boss, at least until the new one pushes them out of the job, anyway.

Just like they lack ambition, they are also devoid of all malice; both because they, at times, qualify as a Minion with an F in Evil if their master is a villain, and are in no way sad or angry their last boss is gone. Kind of like a True Neutral bureaucrat. Interestingly, they are usually at least competent at their job as personal assistant, though rarely to Hypercompetent Sidekick levels. Where they do excel is at shmoozing their new boss into accepting them, even to the point of getting an Ax-Crazy villain to not just let them live, but convincing them they're more useful alive and working for them. Despite their boss' strange, abusive or incompetent behavior, they never feel put out and seem to derive some strange satisfaction from serving someone so powerful.

A common expression for such a sycophant is "brown nose", with the verb "brown nosing". It's probably not difficult to figure out what that means without explicit explanation. It's worth mentioning that despite the utterly slimy nature of the character, they tend to get off fairly lightly in terms of divine retribution. It may be because of the Stepford Smiler-like lack of malice, or the lack of concrete evil deeds.

Often doubles as an Obstructive Bureaucrat and/or Smug Snake. See also Punch-Clock Villain, Loyal to the Position (a more positive version), and Battle Butler. Contrast Chronic Backstabbing Disorder; both have little loyalty to their allies, but the Professional Butt-Kisser never rebels. See Teacher's Pet for the Professional Butt-Kisser in training. See Dispense with the Pleasantries when the target isn't impressed by the attempt to butter them up.

Different from a Sycophantic Servant since those tend to be personally loyal to their master instead of professionally. See Servile Snarker for the inversion, where a character's usefulness allows them to make an occasional jab.

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Examples:

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• Goody-Goody of the Freakies. She constantly sucks up to BossMoss, the leader of the Freakies, purely to get the other Freakies in trouble with him. It never really works, however.

Anime & Manga

• Code Geass:
  • Diethard is one of these, a Britannian newshound who joins the Black Knights largely because he sees them as the winning party. Later, once Lelouch is betrayed by the Black Knights, Diethard gleefully switches sides and joins Schneizel in his quest to conquer the world.
  • Suzaku himself is this to Britannia in hopes of helping Japan by internal change.
• Demagawa in Death Note, to the point of being the self-appointed leader of the "Cult of Kira". Until he gets DELETED by Mikami.
• Takayama's secretary in Witchblade. When Takayama resigns as CEO of Doji Corporation and NSWF's Wado takes over, he has no problems with shifting his loyalty to the new boss. He is, however, willing to help Takayama reprogram NSWF's weapons to buy Masane a little more time to defend Tokyo from an onslaught of berserk robots.
• Transformers: Cybertron's Thunderblast is this meets My Girl Is a Slut. She doesn't want to be the most powerful, unlike most of the serious villains - she wants to have the ear (and maybe more) of the most powerful. YMMV on whether she is also a parody of Ms. Fanservice.
• One of Maho's nameless teammates in the "Little Army" prequel manga for Girls und Panzer, telling Maho she's always waited for the day in which they can serve on the same tank together, but another teammate throws a water bottle at her head and tells her "Stop using flattery, you schemer!". Ironically, she looks a lot like Emi, who has the opposite problem by being brutally honest even when it upsets others.
• The vice-principal in Futari wa Pretty Cure. His Establishing Character Moment is to change opinions on a dime when speaking to the principal, who calls him out on saying what he thinks the principal wants to hear.
• The main character in The Saga of Tanya the Evil is a little girl with the mind of a 30-something career man who is liable to say or do anything to get ahead.
• In 3×3 Eyes Mugero, a rock demon, is this to the main villain Benares. He spends his entire introduction trying to pass himself as an important servant of the great Benares and gushing about how his domain was chosen to perform the Humanization Ritual and the return of the Kaiyanwang. Becomes visibly hurt when Pai sees him as the glorified minion he actually is.
• In Trash Skill Gacha, we have Duke Bahurst who shamelessly sucks up to anyone and everyone he thinks can benefit him. Despite hating the protagonist Crest for daring to survive his mother's Death by Childbirth, the duke even sucked up to him because a prophetic dream indicated Crest would be getting an unusual skill [Gacha] never seen before and figured that would somehow personally benefit him. He immediately does a 180 when Crest couldn't use the skill on command and then sucked up to the king the very next day, only to learn, too late, that Crest was telling the truth, but now it's too late to suck up to Crest again as the boy was unjustly exiled to near-certain death...

Comic Books

• Zipi y Zape: Peloto is built around this trope. Also Lechuzo, Peloto's crony is Peloto's very own butt-kisser.
• Kayko & Kokosh Kapral (Corporal) will go out of his way to suck up to his boss Hegemon and shower him with compliments, while personally will take every chance to overthrow his superior.
  • This trait is such a big part of the character that in the stage musical adaptation he even gets an entire musical number about the art of sucking up to one's boss.

Fan Works

• In Amazing Fantasy, Izuku's peers bullied him for years to avoid drawing the ire of Bakugou, who was the undisputed strongest, smartest, and bravest kid around. Once Izuku develops spider powers and becomes a local celebrity as the "Prowler Kid", they quickly drift over to him in hopes of riding off his fame, particularly after Izuku humiliated Bakugou twice by accident. Izuku is aware of this and doesn't intend to become friends with any of these butt-kissers.

Films — Live-Action

• In Coneheads, INS Agent Seedling's assistant Turnbull (David Spade) manages to become a confidant to the leader of the Coneheads' people after he and his boss are captured and enslaved.
• In Demolition Man, associate Bob manages to survive Doctor Cocteau's death by working with Phoenix to defrost other convicts, and after Phoenix bites it he manages to get employed by the rebel leader Edgar Friendly (who tells him to stop wearing the kimono because he thinks he looks like a couch with it, and pick a hair color).
• Gretchen Weiner, Regina's second-in-command in Mean Girls. After Regina's downfall, Gretchen attaches herself to another Queen Bee. We last see her brown-nosing in Vietnamese!
• Chad in In the Loop takes this trope and tries to turn it into an art form. Unfortunately, he combines it with being a Smug Snake with the result that the people he tries to suck up to barely pay him any attention and everyone else just thinks he's a creep.
• The B-movie Circuitry Man features a female Mook who is loyal to her "Boss", but cheerfully switches allegiance the instant her current employer gets killed; this happens two or three times in the course of the movie, and at the end, she survives to drive off into the sunset with Boss #4 or #5...
• Downfall (2004): Heinrich Himmler presents himself as Adolf Hitler's most loyal henchman, to the point that Hitler calls him "Faithful Heinrich". However, Himmler's loyalty is conditional and when it becomes clear that Hitler is going to die in Berlin soon, Himmler secretly abandons Hitler to grovel before the Western Allies for mercy and a role in post-war Germany. When Hitler finds out, he flies into a massive Villainous Breakdown since he never considers that Himmler of all people would betray him to serve for the strongest side.
• Comedian Larry Miller's sycophantic performance as the Dean in The Nutty Professor (1996) and as Charlie's boss in Suburban Commando showed that he is to Professional Butt-Kisser roles what William Atherton and Christopher McDonald are to Smug Snakes; nobody does 'em better.
• Stingray Sam. Fredward has spent his entire life surrounded by sycophants praising everything he says. As a result, he thinks his thoughts are divinely inspired.

Literature

• The Igors in Discworld work like this — perfectly loyal until the torch-and-pitchfork brigade comes calling, then it's out the back door to find a new master. Genre-savvy characters have taken advantage of this to ask them how to get in and out unobtrusively.
• In The Divine Comedy, Dante puts them in the 2nd bolgia of the 8th circle (which punishes fraud), where their punishment is to be put in a giant open sewer.
• In one of the Animorphs books, the gang encounters a computer with all the information they need. With every question they ask the computer, the computer responds with everything it knows, with an absolute bare minimum of four glorifications to Visser Three.
  Tobias: How exactly do you program a computer to kiss butt like that?
• Mrs. Clay in Persuasion is out to flatter a baronet into marrying her. That's why she attaches herself to Elizabeth Elliot and becomes her very deferential "friend", hoping to make Elizabeth's father, Sir Walter, enter into a second marriage. When Sir Walter's distant male heir arrives to interfere with Mrs. Clay's plan, what falls out is that Mr. Elliot seduces her—but the narrator hints that Mrs. Clay has a pretty good shot at becoming Lady Elliot anyway by persuading Mr. Elliot into a marriage himself.
• Mr. Collins of Pride and Prejudice is the Regency equivalent of this; while Lady Catherine de Bourgh is not exactly his boss, he does depend on her goodwill for future advancement and ensures this goodwill (or, given Lady Catherine's overall disagreeable character, something close to it) through shameless grovelling to the point where he's sucking up to her when she's not even in the local vicinity. He even fulfills the 'switching allegiances when necessary' part of the trope; when Elizabeth and Darcy are rumored to be engaged to marry, he writes Elizabeth's father a letter expressing Lady Catherine's condemnation of the engagement. Mr. Bennet writes back once the engagement becomes a reality and points out that, if he was to get into Darcy's good books, things would be even better for him. Mr. Collins' objections suddenly cease.
• Harry Potter:
  • Percy Weasley becomes this in the later books after he joins the Ministry of Magic, sucking up to anyone who is at all important. At one point he bows so low that his glasses fall off and shatter. In the fourth book, he keeps standing up when the Minister greets important guests it looks like he's trying to sit on a hedgehog. He does come around at the end of the final book, reconciling with his family and acknowledging he was wrong in doing this.
  • Dolores Umbridge is an even worse example. She doesn't care who is in charge of the Ministry of Magic as long as they keep her in a position of power and authority. Her Pottermore profile reveals that this is how she managed to rise through the ranks in the Ministry in the first place (with taking undeserved credit for herself thrown into the mix), rather than on real skill or merit.
• Paul Sinclair: Bill Mahris and Sam Yarrow are weaselly sycophants who never show an ounce of independent thought or initiative.
• Happens in The Quest for Karla. In Smiley's People, Sam Collins, who was a bit of a devil-may-care in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, has become this to Circus boss Saul Enderby.
• Secret Santa (2004): Erik quickly agrees with every little thing his boss and former high school crony Dave Crowley says to distract Crowley from Erik's many flaws.
• In The Tome of Bill, most vampires tend to be this. Sunset Strip actually explains this: true leaders are extremely rare, and they tend to want to lead, not follow. An entire society based around the best and the brightest would quickly devolve into civil war as they all vie for dominance, so it's the weak-minded but physically capable people who get turned more often than not.
• In Victoria the Professional US military has become this, leading the heroes to many victories, because competence is rewarded less than political correctness.
• The Witch of Knightcharm: One of the new rookies in Emily's class at her evil Wizarding School, Brynne, spends a lot of time sucking up and pointlessly complimenting another student named Lily, who appears to be rich and claims to have extremely powerful magic on account of being descended from Merlin.

Live-Action TV

• Hogan's Heroes:
  • Colonel Wilhelm Klink tries to be this, but his efforts to butter up General Burkhalter and other superior officers tend to have the opposite effect.
  • Sergeant Schultz is only a little better at this, usually to pacify Klink when he accidentally annoys him.
• Game of Thrones: Harald seems to play this role to Ramsay, supporting his actions even when they go against the wishes of Roose.
• Dr. Jeffrey Steadman from Scrubs.
• Dwight Schrute in The Office (US). Aside from the few episodes, he's fired (and promptly rehired) or trying to usurp Michael's job.
  • Andy manages to outdo even Dwight, if temporarily. When he's first transferred to Scranton, he mimics Michael so well that he basically completely takes over Dwight's position as his right-hand man, only to take it so far that even Michael finds him kind of annoying. Once that arc finishes, however, this proactive ambition is dropped, and he becomes more of an obliviously eccentric people-pleaser.
• Phil Smith on The Thick of It.
• An offscreen example from 3rd Rock from the Sun: the family all know that their distant superior, The Big Giant Head, only got his position "by kissing The Big Giant Butt."
• Played for Laughs and subverted with Evaristo Espina, from the "La Oficina ("The Office") segment in the old-school Chilean humor show Jappening con Ja. Personality-wise, he has almost all the markings of the trope... but also is fiercely and genuinely loyal to his boss, Mr. Zañartu, and this is actually the reason why he is a buttlicker. He's such an iconic character that, in Spanish Chilean slang, the word "espinita" is actually used to define the trope itself.
  • Lampshaded in the opening sequence for the skit: when Espina is shown, the background voices start chanting "chupa medias!" ("boot licker") all over. Espina's exact reactions change depending on the episode: in this one, he swats his hand at the audience while trying to protectively shield a picture of Zañartu.
• Weyoun on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine literally worships the Founders, the rulers of the Dominion. In fact, this trope is the hat of the entire Vorta race.
  • Same for Liquidator Brunt (Who, coincidentally, is also played by Jeffrey Combs) of the Ferengi Empire. In his own words when Rom is made the Grand Nagus:
    Brunt: It's never too late to suck up to the boss!
  • This is a paraphrasing of Rule of Acquisition #33: "It never hurts to suck up to the boss." Since the Ferengi treat the Rules as their version of The Bible, it can be said that this trope is part of their religion.
• Hodges on CSI. He's always out to kiss up to the boss and doesn't really have any ambition, he wants to stay in the lab where he's happy. Grissom used to get terribly annoyed at him sometimes.
• Lieutenant Loren Singer on JAG.
• Milburn Drysdale, president of the Commerce Bank of Beverly Hills, in The Beverly Hillbillies.
• Advertising executive Larry Tate (at least toward his clients), in Bewitched.
• Bill McNeil on Newsradio, chiefly towards Jimmy.
• Dr. Lawrence Bingham in Doctor at Large and Doctor in Charge is a shameless brown-noser, always grovelling to his superior, Professor of Surgery Sir Geoffrey Loftus, in an attempt to get ahead in his profession. However, he is not above switching his allegiance to other doctors or even other hospitals if he thinks it will help him further his career as a surgeon.
• This exchange in Dinosaurs;
  Mr. Ashland: This is a disaster!
  B.P. Richfield: But nothing a chief executive of your power and authority can't handle, right sir?
  Mr. Ashland: Quit being a butt-kisser, Richfield.
  Richfield: Yes, sir.
  Mr. Ashland: You know what I do to butt-kissers, Richfield?
  Richfield: No, sir.
  (Ashland points to a head mounted on a wall)
• Carlton Banks from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
  • His father Philip's one-time assistant, one-shot character Edward Haskell from the episode "Robbing the Banks", also fits — he's so eager to stay in Philip's good graces he does such exhausting tasks as transcribing Philip's law notes to audiotape, a process that by Haskell's own admission takes three days, but one he says is "extremely satisfying, not to mention rewarding." Will lampshades this in one instance:
  Edward Haskell: Oh! I almost forgot one thing!
  Will: If it's your nose, I think I know where you left it. [indicates Uncle Phil's butt]
• Paulie from The Sopranos is a servile brown noser who shows his true allegiance the minute his boss Tony gets indisposed.
• Major Houlihan and Major Burns from M*A*S*H are often this whenever someone from the upper brass shows up at camp.
• Two nights before his finale on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart took Fox News to the woodshed accusing them of more than this when that outlet accused Stewart of sucking up to then-President Obama:
  I'd be willing to believe that this program has been harsher on this president and the Obama administration per capita than you guys ever were in your eight years of Bush finger-banging.
• Some time back, Saturday Night Live did a sketch of a game show called "Whose Ass Should I Kiss?" Points were deducted for plain brown-nosing.
• In the first episode of Rush (1974), Corporal Colvin tries to be this to Commissioner Fitzalan, who initially appreciates it due to his issues with Sergeant McKeller but quickly grows tired of it. "There's a difference between loyalty and sycophancy. I do wish you'd learn it."
• Herman's Head. A movie star invites Herman to enjoy the services of his staff. This includes a beautiful mistress who flatters Herman shamelessly.
  Angel: The woman's a sycophantic asskisser!
  Animal: Yeah? So when are we going to start doing this sicko ass-kissing thing?
• Monty Python's Flying Circus: David O. Selzer, head of 20th Century-Vole, expects unconditional approval of his ideas yet he can't stand yes-men.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Amy Santiago is this to Chief Holt.
• Cheers: Rebecca Howe, especially if her boss is a rich man she thinks she's in with a chance of marrying. There's probably a reason when we first see her she's wound up assigned to run Cheers on her own.
• Friends: Chandler reluctantly becomes this to his boss Doug. He develops a "work laugh" that he uses for his boss' terrible, unfunny jokes and deliberately loses when they play tennis together. Monica tries to encourage him to stand up for himself, but it backfires as Doug just starts badgering Chandler over why he didn't laugh at a joke. The Hard Truth Aesop being that keeping a corporate job like Chandler's unfortunately does require making nice to your boss even if he's a massive Jerkass.

Manhua

• In Goddess Creation System Xiaxi leaps ahead in the hierarchy of the Wang Pu household servants by flattering and indirectly flirting with the Wang Pu brothers. They never really catch on to what she's doing, but the other servants and their sister Yixin certainly do; a servant Xiaxi snubbed and Yixin publicly reveal what she's been doing at one point, forcing her to start getting along with the other servants and be less obvious about her ass-kissing.

Music

• The Venezuelan folkloric song "El Jalabolas" is sung from the perspective of one of these. He proclaims to be the perfect Yes-Man and willing to do everything his patron wants of him and then going the extra mile, even claiming that he would betray his parents and let his boss have his wife, as long as it helps to keep him employed.

Pro-Wrestling

• Michael Cole on Monday Night RAW and Friday Night Smackdown usually kisses the butts of just about every heel, except for Daniel Bryan.
  • After his Heel–Face Turn, though, he finally stops being this. But JBL takes over as this, supporting every decision post-Face–Heel Turn Triple H makes even if it's bullying someone. The odd thing is that back in 2004-2005 when JBL was an active wrestler and both he and Triple H were heels, they still badmouthed each other.
  • Paul Heyman openly admitted to being this while on the announce team at Wrestlemania X-Seven when Jim Ross called him out on supporting Vince a little too much during his match with Shane McMahon.
• Vince McMahon's "Kiss My Ass" club is a literal version of this.

Sports

• The University of Kansas is one of these to the Big 12 Conference, especially during the recent departures of four charter members (possibly due to the fact that they lose teams that they easily beat in basketball).

Theatre

• Cyrano de Bergerac: This is a more realistic, non-villainous example: In Act II Scene VII, Cyrano discusses this trope with Le Bret, claiming that he will defy it. It should be said that in The Cavalier Years and now, this is Truth in Television: An artist is always dependent on patronage.
  Cyrano: What would you have me do?
  Seek for the patronage of some great man,
  And like a creeping vine on a tall tree
  Crawl upward, where I cannot stand alone?
  No thank you! Dedicate, as others do,
  Poems to pawnbrokers? Be a buffoon
  In the vile hope of teasing out a smile
  On some cold face ? No thank you ! Eat a toad
  For breakfast every morning? Make my knees
  Callous, and cultivate a supple spine,
  Wear out my belly grovelling In the dust?
  No thank you ! Scratch the back of any swine
  That roots up gold for me? Tickle the horns
  Of Mammon with my left hand, while my right
  Too proud to know his partner's business,
  Takes in the fee? No thank you! Use the fire
  God gave me to burn incense all day long
  Under the nose of wood and stone? No thank you!
  Shall I go leaping into ladies' laps
  And licking fingers? or to change the form
  Navigating with madrigals for oars,
  My sails full of the sighs of dowagers?
  No thank you !
• The Beadle in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Even to the point of helping his boss rape a totally innocent woman. Sadly cut (to a large extent anyway) in the most recent film, "Ladies and their Sensitivities" shows Bamford blatantly grovelling and ass-kissing the Judge.

Video Games

• In The World Ends with You, the third GM, Konishi, is outwardly the most polite and respectful toward Kitaniji, the Conductor, since she seems to be his assistant. It's ultimately a subversion since she's actually The Starscream and is plotting to overthrow him.
• Pious Augustus in Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem if he's working for Ulyaoth.
• Imperial Japanese engineers in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 constantly kiss the commander's ass with overly sycophantic interactions, in an attempt to gain favor and move up in the Imperial hierarchy. In short, the stereotype of a Salaryman suck-up Played for Comedy, like just about everything else in the game.

Visual Novels

• In The Great Ace Attorney, Inspector Gregson becomes a giggling mess around Iris Wilson, the author of "The Adventures of Herlock Sholmes" where he was indirectly able to gain popularity and a raise at Scotland Yard for being a character in it, so he does his best to stay on her good side...because he realized that she can make his life a living hell if she were ever to make his character in the hit series unlikable. With the sequel revealing that he was actually a key figure in the Reaper conspiracy, he was likely less concerned about his personal pride and more about the freedom to operate that his public image provided.

Web Animation

• Manga Soprano:
  • Junko plays up her cuteness on her male bosses to get out of work and Haru has to cover for her. Narita refuses to fall for her advances and is the first person to speak sternly to her.
  • Yuka acts all cutesy around her boss Takeuchi despite her unappealing looks to replace Haru for being prettier than her.
  • Shiho acts cutesy to make her coworkers cover for her numerous mistakes. This is even more evident after Kinoshita-kun dumped her, as she kissed up to and even outright flirted with Chief Kairi, only for him to sternly tell her off.
• Simmons from Red vs. Blue, commonly referred to by Grif as a "kiss-ass". And not just Grif: pretty much anyone who's ever met Simmons is aware of his sycophancy. On one occasion, Sarge decided to forego commanding them to do something useful and just commanded them to do what they were going to do anyway (except for Grif, who made sarcastic remarks instead). Simmons' order was "kiss ass at will," which he did, with gusto.
  Simmons: You're both an excellent leader and a handsome man, sir.
  Sarge: Excellent work, Simmons.
  • When Simmons got possessed by the Omega AI, he promptly declared that "From now on, everyone will kiss my ass!" suggesting that to some extent Simmons views the world in terms of suck-ups and people to suck up to.

Webcomics

• I Love Yoo: The students surrounding Yeong-Gi at school. Of course, the minute he leaves the classroom, they start insulting him.
• Qarr The Imp from The Order of the Stick has this as his personal motto. As he phrased it—
  Qarr: See, the first lesson of being 18 inches tall is: Find someone more powerful than you are, and glue your lips to their ass.
• Weak Hero:
  • Tired of being Jimmy's underling, Helmet rats his defeat out to Donald and then switches over to Hyeongshin High, where he takes on any task they set him so that they don't kick him out again.
  • Though Hugo normally acts like a stuck-up braggart, he's quick to pull a 180 and become a simpering sycophant to get into Helmet's good books.
• Lovely People: Praising the World Council on social media is a known way to get social credit points, but there is an algorithm that can pick out posts that are too obviously made just for the points. Because of that, those who are serious about using that avenue for "easy" points need to put real work into their posts. Peony, the member of her group of friends who has the highest score, doesn't necessarily like the World Council; she's just best at saying what they want to hear.

Web Original

• This is Colts QB Andrew Luck's character in NFL Quarterbacks On Facebook; he gives thanks and is nice towards other quarterbacks, whether he wins or loses games.

Western Animation

• Bernie from Father of the Pride tends to refer to Sarmoti as "Boss" and agrees with everything he says to satisfy him.
• The Simpsons:
  • Averted by Waylon Smithers, whose devotion to Mr. Burns is genuine and absolute (and, well, more than just professional). It's also implied in one episode to be quite literal in Smithers' case, as he asks Mr. Burns, when the latter claims during a meltdown that he has nothing left but to kiss his sorry ass goodbye, if he could kiss Mr. Burns' ass.
  • Played straight with his lawyers though, who absolutely refused to inform him he was making bad decisions even when he was losing everything. Hell, when he did, they still said he made all the right moves and when he called them out, they agreed in the exact same way.
  • Chief Wiggum has been known to act like this towards Mayor Quimby (who called him a "glorified crossing guard" in one episode). For example, if Quimby is too afraid of Fat Tony to act on him, Wiggum and the other police leave Tony alone, but if Quimby changes his mind, so does Wiggum. (As seen in "Mayored to the Mob".) Wiggum acts this way towards Mr. Burns sometimes too, in one episode complimenting him on his reckless driving.
  • Skinner tries to be this to Superintendent Chalmers oh so hard, but being a high-quality buzz-kill, way too eager to please (to the point that in trying to please Chalmers he instead ruins things hard — ex. in one episode, Chalmers and Skinner do the classic Abbott and Costello "Who's on First?" sketch for a school fundraiser... and Skinner, obviously not getting how the sketch is supposed to go, answers in a totally unambiguous fashion and kills the gag in five seconds) and with his school being such a hell-hole (and Depending on the Writer, Chalmers being in favor or against this), Chalmers utterly hates Skinner's guts (to the point that Chalmers' catchphrase is him yelling Skinner's name... and on some episodes, he can't even say similar words or talk to people like Mrs. Skinner without yelling them).
  • In a true fashion that would make Smithers proud, the family did it themselves for a special video announcing their arrival on Disney+, which was made shortly after the Disney-Fox deal was finalized. Homer practically does his best to impress his new bosses.
  Homer Simpson: (whispering) This is our one chance to make a good first impression.
• Transformers: Animated:
  • Sunstorm (Sycophant Starscream) heaps praise and compliments on everyone. He especially praises the original and most brilliant Starscream, and later Megatron. Of course, he's not nearly as awesome as you, wonderful article reader. You're so cool!
  • Lugnut too, though only for Megatron. He seems to not only worship Megatron in the most literal sense of the term, but he actually swears by him — and he doesn't hesitate to remind Megatron of this fact in person. Even the megalomaniacal leader of the Decepticons sometimes gets tired of it but keeps Lugnut around anyway because he's completely reliable.
• Wuya of Xiaolin Showdown happily offers to work for whatever villain happens to be on the top of the evil heap at that particular moment, only to come crawling back to work for Jack Spicer when said villain gets defeated, or in Catnappe's case is too fickle and lazy to work with. Justified by the fact that, while Wuya is extremely competent herself when she's trapped in "spirit form", her inability to physically interact with anything leaves her no choice but to enlist a partner in crime by pretty much any means necessary.
• Holly Blue Agate of Steven Universe. She's so much of one that even the Diamonds are annoyed with her. The Prosecuting Zircon is even worse.
• Looney Tunes: Von Hamburger, the Miracle Pictures director in "Daffy Duck in Hollywood," has a staff of underlings who are collective grinning yes-men. Von Hamburger himself is this to studio head I.M. Stupendous.
• In Family Guy, after Peter becomes president of El Dorado Cigarettes, he gets a robotic "company suck-up" who enthusiastically praises him and agrees with everything he says, quickly doing a 180 if Peter reveals that he has the opposite opinion. The suck-up ends up short-circuiting not long after Peter says he hates himself since he's programmed to agree with everything he says but also to respect the president.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Twilight Sparkle is this when it comes to pleasing Princess Celestia. Played for Laughs, of course.
• In Allen Gregory, school superintendent Stuart Rossmeyer is this to the DeLongpre family which forces the school employees to tolerate Allen Gregory.

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