Basic Trope: The character that everyone loves to see suffer.
- Straight: Jason constantly slips into puddles of water...
- Exaggerated:
- ...and constantly falls into the floor, table, bookshelf, and out the windows.
- Cosmic Plaything
- They Killed Kenny Again
- Downplayed: Butt-Monkey
- Justified:
- Inverted:
- Subverted:
- Jason might seem to be having a stroke of perpetual bad luck, but other than this unlucky day bad luck usually stay out of his way.
- It goes too far once, and he starts becoming rather sympathetic.
- Double-Subverted:
- ...but it turns out he's cursed to have this kind of bad luck for the rest of his life. And it's funny.
- ...but later it turns out he actually deserved what he got, and so it's back to the usual.
- Parodied:
- Cosmic Plaything.
- They Killed Kenny Again.
- The series goes meta and the writer berates the viewers for taking amusement in a person's suffering. And then the writers admit it amuses them too.
- Zig Zagged: Jason can run the gamut from Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist Cosmic Plaything to the show's biggest woobie...and back, all at the drop of a hat. He may or may not be a Jerkass Woobie on average.
- Averted: Jason isn't any more or less lucky than the rest of the main cast.
- Enforced: "Hmm...We need a character for people to purge their sadistic tendencies! That'll keep the ratings up!"
- Lampshaded:
- "I seem to spend most of the time getting the shit kicked out of me... and everyone likes it!"
- "Could you stop laughing long enough to call an ambulance, or is that too much to ask?"
- Invoked:
- Jason is masochistic, and, consciously or otherwise, self-sabotages his life to indulge in this pleasure.
- The deity of luck spends a lot of time in his schedule getting Jason hurt in order to entertain himself.
- Exploited: Jason step up to suicide missions regularly, knowing that he'd often get forced into them anyway, and would survive in order to suffer longer.
- Defied: Jason refuses to play the fall-guy any longer, and in addition to wising up, he also recruits a group of fall-guys to take the hit for him.
- Discussed: "I'm not sure whether to feel bad for Jason or laugh at him." "Can't we do both?"
- Conversed: "Why should all of the characters poke fun at Jason!?"
- Deconstructed:
- The character gets depressed and is Driven to Suicide. Oh well, so much for that.
- The character is a victim of the Universe itself, who frames him up against the Cosmic Plaything, who wants revenge on him. However, the Cosmic Plaything only triumphs when he is disciplined, and always fails when he is emotional. Revenge is an emotional activity, so he only could torment The Chew Toy, but never really kill him. In other words, he complies with the Rule of Drama: All the things that happen to The Chew Toy are bad enough to advance the plot, but never bad enough to kill him.
- Reconstructed:
Back to The Chew Toy
