The Pirates Who Dont Do Anything / Western Animation

• The Aqua Teen Hunger Force were originally conceived as a group of detectives solving mysteries and the like, but the premise was dropped after a handful of episodes (and supposedly only even existed in the first place because an executive thought it would be too hard to write plots for episodes if they didn't have some sort of job). It's been lampshaded at least twice: in season 2's "Kidney Car", Frylock admits to Carl after his car is totaled (and he says that he can't just call the cops to deal with it because they've long since stopped taking his calls) that they aren't detectives anymore because it didn't make them a whole lot of money; and in season 3's "Robositter", while arguing about how to get money for more food, Shake suggests just doing detective work and has to be reminded that "we haven't 'detected' anything in three years".
• Archer:
  • When the main character becomes a "Pirate King" by killing the previous captain, he quickly alienates the crew by turning them into this: not only do they stop going out and raiding people, but the one time they did, they let the fishermen go and didn't take anything because Archer didn't want to doom a working-class sailor to bankruptcy. Combined with his Jerkass personality, a mutiny quickly ensues.
  • There's also Pam, before she became a spy. Pam was supposed to be the HR manager, but the only time you ever see her doing any HR work is during the first few episodes, where Archer beats her with her dolphin puppet, and also once creating an employee evaluation questionnaire. Even though dealing with sexual harassment complaints against Archer is supposed to be the body of her work, you never actually see her confronting him, and Mallory does a lot of things that you'd expect the HR person to do. It's probably a good idea writing-wise because it would be annoying if another character (besides Lana) was constantly referencing the unprofessionalism of ISIS and also because Pam is usually doing a lot more interesting things than HR.
  • Ron Cadillac is never seen at his car dealerships. Justified by the fact that he spent several decades building up the business to the point where he has several locations with good managers to run things for him.
• Baymax in Big Hero 6 and Big Hero 6:The Series is designed to be a healthcare robot. He is only ever used to help the protagonists' superhero adventures as The Big Guy, the only times he ever tries to do healthcare are Played for Laughs, and no one even mentions him actually working in healthcare, which would have probably helped the world more than working as a superhero would, and definitely have netted the protagonists more money, but that's just not as interesting, is it?
• Bluey: The protagonist's mother, Chilli, is said to work in airport security, but she's never actually seen working there.
• Parodied on Bojack Horseman: Former child star Sara Lynn, who has spent her life in Hollywood, has no idea that jobs don't work like this:
  Sara Lynn: I've always wanted to be an architect. But, you know, the type where by night she's a high-end call girl and by day she's an international superspy.
  Bojack: So, when is she an architect?
  Sara Lynn: I dunno. Frontier times?
• Buddy Thunderstruck: Other than the first episode where Buddy and Darnell deliver a box of baby-sized adult diapers, the only revenue Thunderstruck Trucking seems to have is Buddy's racing earnings; no one is ever seen doing any actual trucking for the company.
• Eustace in Courage the Cowardly Dog is supposedly a farmer, but the entire area within visual range is completely barren of all life with no indication anything grows there except one time when a bunch of eggplants turned evil due to a drought. Even then, Eustace wasn't the one who grew them. This eventually causes a harvest spirit to become angry at him and nearly kill everyone on the farm because he doesn't even try anymore.
• Defied by Oona in Disenchantment when she gets dredged up by some pirates who do nothing more than dress the part and sail around the ocean. She is pissed from recent events, wants to blow off some steam, and is not having any of that. Out of boredom and frustration she convinces them to do some plundering, much to their delight.
  Pirate: The captain never gives us any orders.
  Oona: You are pirates! There's a defenseless ship of wealthy merchants right there!
  Merchant: Ahoy there, friends!
  • Cut to them violently raiding the ship and murdering the merchants.
• Donald Duck wears two variations of a sailor outfit, but we seldom see him doing duties connected to the Navy. Even The Nostalgia Critic lampshaded this in his DuckTales (1987) review stating that Donald's been in the Army, a Boy Scout and even a Nazi but never a sailor. This gets lampshaded in Mickey Mouse (2013) revealing that Daisy bought him his sailor suit and he knows nothing about sailing ships even though Daisy seems convinced that he does for some reason.
• Played for Drama in The Dragon Prince by Rayla, who is part of the Moonshadow Elf assassin team which takes an oath to kill King Harrow and Prince Ezran of the human country of Katolis. She certainly possesses all the skills of an assassin and is considered a teenage prodigy, but she has never killed a person before and falters when it’s actually time to do it. What sets the whole plot in motion is when she spares the life of a human sentry after seeing the terror on his face, and his report enables their enemies to get defenses ready, which results in all the assassins except Rayla getting killed or captured. Rayla ends up teaming up with Prince Ezran and his stepbrother Prince Callum after they discover that the egg of the Dragon Prince was not destroyed after all, and they can stop the war by bringing it back to the Dragon Queen, but Rayla still identifies as an assassin and struggles with the shame of having failed and deserted her teammates.
• In the Ed, Edd n Eddy episode "They Call Him Mr. Ed", Eddy becomes interested in big business and creates an ambiguous organization called Ed Co.. He employs every member of the cul-de-sac to do various jobs, but as the organization has no goals or purpose, it cannot make a profit, meaning he cannot pay his employees (who instantly quit when this information becomes clear).
• The Emperor's New School: Yzma is Kuzco's advisor but doesn't give him any advice through the series because she's under the impression that, since Kuzco must graduate in order to become Emperor, she doesn't have to do her job until then. She's told otherwise by a board of people in charge of reviewing her work in "Take My Advice".
• Family Guy:
  • Glenn Quagmire was said to be a pilot in early episodes. It wasn't until "Dammit Janet!" that we see him in his uniform, and in "Airport '07" that we actually got to see him do his job (although he was seen returning from a flight in "The Thin White Line").
  • On that note, just how often did you see Cleveland at the deli that he owned? This was lampshaded by Lois in the pilot episode of The Cleveland Show, when the characters learn that Cleveland is leaving Quahog, she asks him who will run "that deli you never work at".
  • Peter zigzags with this trope. His first job was part of an assembly line in a toy factory, which averted this trope, as he was shown at that job all the time. After getting fired, he became a fisherman, and since then he has worked for the Pawtucket Patriot beer brewery, neither of which he was ever seen doing much of.
  • When was the last time we saw Lois give piano lessons?
  • A deliberate example from Mayor West:
  "Alright, listen to me, you long-neck bastard. You give me the scroll and I'll make you head of sanitation services for the entire city. It's a do-nothing job, sweet cake."
• Variation with occasional cameo The Huntsman in Freakazoid!, a superhero (complete with rousing intro) who genuinely wants to act the part. Problem is, for some reason there's never a problem that requires his abilities, and he's invariably reduced to stomping off in a huff and cursing "Darn the luck!". He's more accurately described as a Pirate Who Doesn't Get To Do Anything.
• Futurama:
  • The Whalers of the Moon, who freely admit there aren't any whales on the moon, and even have a song about it.
  • Professor Farnsworth, who is only seen teaching in one episode (he intentionally makes his course titles sound difficult so no one will sign up).
    Professor Farnsworth: I don't know how to teach. I'm a professor.
  • Likewise, this episode is the only one in which Amy, ostensibly an engineering student, is shown attending class. She's also an intern at Planet Express, but never seen to do actual work there. It's outright stated in the second episode that Professor Farnsworth keeps her around because she has the same blood type as him.
  • Planet Express itself never seems to do deliveries anymore. Lampshaded in an episode by Hermes:
    Hermes: Didn't we used to be a delivery company?
  • Lampshaded and serves as a plot point in "Future Stock" when the company is taken over by the 80s guy Steve Castle. Leela points out that, despite all his peacocking and gloating, the company hasn't made one delivery since he took over. Of course, his only motivation is to make the company look like a rival to Mom's Friendly Delivery Company to raise their stock and sell the company to make a fortune. He doesn't actually need to make deliveries to do that. The same episode has this exchange:
    Leela: (after seeing Planet Express's newest ad): That was terrible! People won't even know what we do!
    Bender: I don't even know what we do! Nah, just kiddin'. Heh. What are we, like a bus or somethin'?
  • The reason is given over several episodes that Professor partially founded Planet Express just to send delivery crews to their deaths, and fund his attempts to create atomic monsters.
  • Speaking of Bender, his own position at Planet Express is pretty unclear. For most of the first season, he doesn't even have any actual job. Then he becomes the chef, and is dangerously terrible at it. By the time of the revival, he's been bumped up to "assistant manager of sales".
    Farnsworth: (talking to a busty young woman, a vacant-looking young man and a robot) You'll be the captain, you'll be the delivery boy, and you'll be the alcoholic, foul-mouthed—(Leela, Fry and Bender enter.) Oh God, you're alive!
    • In "Law and Oracle", Bender refers to his role as the company chef when Leela tries to get him to make the actual delivery, "delivery boy" Fry having recently quit his job. When Leela responds by asking for something to eat, he stalks out of the room, returns with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and throws it at her.
  • Lampshaded yet again in the 100th episode, where the crew celebrate their 100th delivery.
    Hermes: That's almost 10 per year!
  • Scruffy (the janitor) is never seen doing any actual janitorial work, and almost always just reading dirty magazines, right from the minute we see him.
    Bender: Who the hell are you?
    Scruffy: I'm Scruffy. The Janitor.
    Bender: Well, why aren't you fixing the boiler?
    Scruffy: Schedule conflict. (turns page of his magazine)
  • Zoidberg is very rarely seen doing any actual medical work. Of course, given he's Zoidberg, this is pretty justified. He states in one episode how the only reason the crew even tolerates him there is because he can cut things. Although, another episode also said he and Farnsworth had a secret deal that Zoidberg would kill him when the symptoms of hypermalaria surfaced so he wouldn't die a gruesome death from it.
• In Hoze Houndz, our titular anthro dogs barely do any fire fighting activites at all despite the title.
• Jake and the Never Land Pirates. They call themselves pirates, but they're just kids who want to have a good time. However, while they may be the page image, this was heavily changed for the program's fourth season, Captain Jake and the Neverland Pirates, which has a much greater focus on action-adventure, including elements such as Jake engaging in actual swordplay and facing off against real dangerous villains. The program's specials also tended to be much more action-adventure oriented, even before the revamp. They still don't engage in any piracy, which the dictionary says is what makes one a pirate, but "Neverland Swashbucklers" admittedly doesn't have the same ring to it.
• In the Justice League episode "Legends", one of the things that convinces the Justice League that something is wrong about Seaboard City is the way the ice cream man drives around town for hours, waving at everyone he passes, but never once stops his truck to sell any ice cream.
• In King Rollo, the eponymous monarch is never required to perform any royal duties, instead preferring to spend his time climbing trees and playing with his toys.
• In Leapfrog: Numbers Ahoy, the villain is a pirate. What makes him a villain, though, isn't anything resembling or labeled as piracy, but what he does on the side: kidnapping fish and keeping them in the hold of his ship. He's not shown to do anything else, and it's revealed that his fish-napping is part of a hobby separate from his "job" as a pirate.
• If one watches the intro of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, they will get the impression that K'nuckles is the adventurous type who gets Flapjack involved into all sorts of trips and quest, with Bubbie being the voice of caution and believing that the docks are safer. In truth, they spend most of their time there scavenging for candy and he seems to actively avoid doing anything that involves leaving the harbor or performing and when they do go on an adventure, it's usually because of either Flapjack dragging him along or the promise of the sweet paradise of Candied Island tempting him into it.
• Moral Orel: Throughout the series, Clay refers to his "stinking dead-end job" but he is never seen doing it. In fact the audience, and even his own son, doesn't even know what it is until the penultimate episode of the series when Orel goes to talk to the mayor and finds out that it's his dad.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Pinkie works at a local bakery but is only seen baking a handful of times over the course of the series, and more often than not it's for personal reasons rather than business. It might be that she gets all her work done in the fairly early morning, as a bakery well might, before the adventures. It's actually more likely that she works as a party planner, which she is seen doing quite a bit in the show.
  • Twilight Sparkle gets promoted to princess at the end of the third season. The first episode of the next season briefly makes the point that this means she's in charge and has responsibility — ponies come to her for orders in the absence of the higher-ranking princesses — but she spends the rest of the season doing almost no princessy duties. The matter is discussed in "Twilight's Kingdom Part 1", Twilight spending much of the episode lamenting that her role as a princess is largely ceremonial.
    Rainbow Dash: So what are you supposed to do in the meantime?
    Princess Twilight: Nothing. Unless, of course, one of you needs me to smile and wave.
  • Even prior to this, she lived in a library and was presumably Ponyville's librarian. The few times anyone actually asked for a book, they asked her less as a librarian and more as a friend. In "Read it and Weep", she does give Rainbow a book... but it's from the hospital's collection, not the library's. When Rainbow wants to read the rest of the series, she borrows from Twilight's personal collection, rather than the library's.
  • Part 2 ends with her getting the title "Princess of Friendship", which seems to consist of doing about the same kinds of things she was doing before becoming royalty, except with a palace instead of a library and occasionally going out on specific quests. At least she's doing something — you could say she doesn't do what princesses do, except that it's not like they're actually expected to do anything much. She still doesn't seem to do any ruling.
  • This is actually addressed in the Season 8 premiere when Twilight Sparkle decides on a whim to start a school staffed by herself and her friends. Chancellor Neighsay raises the salient point that teaching is a full-time job and asks how Twilight can possibly expect to do it and her royal duties, and Twilight simply shrugs the concern off without even thinking it will be an issue. It becomes exactly that in the finale where she's forced to leave her school practically unguarded to do her royal duties, allowing Cozy Glow to usurp control and come so close to victory that it takes a literal Deus ex Machina to stop her.
• The hero of the cartoon Night Hood. It's ostensibly a 1930s version of Arsène Lupin. He's hunted by police in every country in the world. Other criminals try to pin their crimes on him. Does he ever actually steal anything or commit a crime more serious than lightly taunting police forces? No.
• The so-called "ninjas" in Ninjago don't do much in the way of acting as spies (as ninjas are meant to do), instead taming powerful dragons and battling undead enemies in Humongous Mecha. All while wearing extremely bright clothing.
• Kwazii Cat of The Octonauts constantly talks up his history as a pirate, but while he did spend time sailing on the ocean, the other activities he engaged in appear to consist mostly of telling sea stories and a little bit of treasure hunting.
• In PAW Patrol, when Adventure Bay's Mayor Goodway is seen, she is never in her office, mainly doing official ceremonies for new statues or squares, but at least it's implied she conducted some public services. The real offender here is Mayor Humdinger from neighbouring Foggy Bottom: he seems never to be in his home town, devoting his efforts solely to sabotage Goodway's administration or steal Adventure Bay's attractions.
• The Ant Hill Mob in The Perils of Penelope Pitstop don't seem to be involved in any mob-like activities at all. When they first appeared in Wacky Races they did things that seemed to suggest it, like throwing away their loot from an off-screen heist, but apparently did a complete Heel–Face Turn after that.
• Played with in Peter Pan & the Pirates. All of Hook's Pirates are very eager to do some plundering and often talk about heading towards the Spanish main, but Captain Hook refuses to leave Neverland until he has dealt with Peter Pan, resulting in some very eager real Pirates that have nothing to do but act like stereotypical pirates who don't do anything.
• The Pirates of Dark Water: The protagonists aboard the Wraith (Prince Ren, Tula, Ioz, and Niddler the monkeybird) never steal anything, just look for the thirteen magical treasures that'll re-seal the Dark Dweller and save the planet Mer from the ever-encroaching threat of Dark Water. Ioz, at least, used to be an actual pirate before joining up and complains about the lack of piracy. Their antagonists, Captain Bloth and the rest of his crew aboard the Maelstrom, fit the pirate archetype more, but we don't get to see them doing their thing much at all since they're always focused on getting to the treasures before the heroes do.
• Popeye's a sailor man (toot toot), and certainly engaged in lots of high seas adventure in the comics, but famously had very few encounters with ships or even water in his animated cartoons. An average of one Popeye cartoon per year (out of ten to twelve made) showed the sailor actually doing his job. A big exception was during World War II, where quite a few cartoons portrayed him as having (re)joined the navy. But when Famous Studios took over production and the series switched to color, the "sailor" aspect was defined only by Popeye's white Navy suit. Some cartoons even had him with a totally different occupation.
• Ready Jet Go!:
  • Auntie Eggplant is said to be a travel writer, but we never see her acting as such.
  • In "Mindy's Weather Report", Mr. Peterson claims that he's the self-appointed safety officer of the neighborhood, and even in that episode, we don't really see him acting as such. He's also a scientist, even though we never see him working at the DSA.
• Thanks to limited screen time in the second Rose Petal Place special and the franchise being canceled before dolls and further stories could be released, Cherry Blossom is never seen at her job as an interior decorator, Gladiola is never seen tap-dancing, Fuchsia is never seen designing fashion, and Marigold is never seen planning parties.
• Rugrats:
  • Didi is supposedly a teacher but this rarely gets mentioned beyond the requisite "taking Tommy to work" episode, where Chuckie's imaginary friend seems to remember her grading papers, and another when Stu asks why she's home and she reminds him it's summer.
  • Drew lists his occupation as investment banker, but this comes up even less. Likewise Chaz is a bureaucrat, but this is never shown and seldom referred to.
• Samurai Jack's titular character almost never does the sort of work a samurai would do. Most pivotally, the signature trait of a samurai was their devotion to a single feudal lord, which Jack doesn't have, as he spends most of his time Walking the Earth as a lone warrior combatting the forces of the demonic overlord Aku and inspiring rebellion.
• School for Vampires: Played straight with the kids, subverted however with the adult vampires who can be, as shown in some episodes, an actual threat to humans. They are however always stopped by the interfering kids or bad luck.
• Scooby-Doo:
  • Velma seems to be the only character who actually does anything school-related, even though they're allegedly all meddling kids. And even she's more likely to have a winning display at a science fair than to actually do something as routine as, say, attend a lecture.
  • Lampshaded in the Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated by Fred's dad, the mayor of Crystal Cove, whom we never really see doing anything other than try to mess with the gang's mystery solving, up to this point:
    Fred: Dad? What are you doing here?
    Mayor Jones: My job as mayor! (Beat) Or at least what I interpret that to be.
• The Simpsons:
  • Episodes from the first few seasons often focused on Homer Simpson's job as an (incompetent) tech and safety inspector at the nuclear power plant. In later seasons, he's seldom if ever shown working there (lampshaded in several episodes where Lenny and Carl ask him if he even goes to work anymore when they run into him). Even when we do see him at the plant, it seems to consist solely of lounging around at his workstation or going on break and eating donuts. This one is, admittedly, somewhat justified: Homer is a safety inspector, in a plant riddled with health and safety violations and run by a notoriously corrupt CEO. He'd probably have been fired long ago if he tried to actually do his job (and the one time he did, he put everyone in the plant out of work).
  • Similarly Played for Laughs when Homer forms the Hell's Satans, a "motorcycle gang" (note the airquotes). They don't do anything other than just sort of hang out, wear designer jackets and merchandize, and half of their members don't even have motorcycles. Unfortunately, it turns out there's a REAL motorcycle gang also named Hell's Satans, and they aren't too happy about this...
• Sonic Boom: The marching orders of the Five-Man Band ^note Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy and Sticks at the heart of the show are to fight off evil and defend their island home, but goofing off is more their cup of tea.
• South Park: Randy Marsh is supposed to be a geologist, but rare is the time we actually see him doing any geological work. Instead, we see him trying to set the world's record for taking the biggest crap, aiming to become a TV chef, giving himself testicular cancer so he can smoke medical marijuana etc.
• Plankton in SpongeBob SquarePants really just exists to act as The Rival to Mr. Krabs and cause drama by trying to steal the Krabby Patty formula; he's practically never seen being a restauranteur, which is ostensibly his job. This appears to be an intentional part of his Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain schtick: he's so obsessed with upstaging the Krusty Krab that he forgets to run his own restaurant, and nobody in Bikini Bottom wants to eat at a "restaurant" that doubles as a Supervillain Lair. Post-movie episodes reveal exactly why Plankton's restaurant never has any customers: because it serves chum. Said chum has been shown to be extremely foul, making people vomit and forcing one guy to get his stomach pumped. In addition, Mr. Krabs is shown to actively sabotage Plankton's business, either out of spite, to monopolize Bikini Bottom's fast food industry, or both.
• SWAT Kats:
  • As the series progresses, there is less and less focus on Chance and Jake's job as mechanics. In season one, they can be seen repairing cars, towing people, etc. Apart from one scene of them towing a car in "A Bright and Shiny Future" (which they ditch to rush off and fight the Pastmaster), their car repair business is never mentioned again in season two. The only repairing they're shown doing after that is on the Turbokat. They even get rid of their tow truck entirely in "When Strikes Mutilor," and even it is never seen again, despite being a pretty important part of their business.
  • Although she is highly competent, supposed Deputy Mayor Briggs is almost never seen doing anything that an actual deputy mayor would do, instead being treated (both in universe and out) more like a glorified personal assistant to Manx, at one point even preparing a press release for him, something a press secretary would do, and on more than one occasion writing his speeches for him.
  • Twice it is said Burke and Murray report to Commander Feral about what Chance and Jake are up to ("We'll tell Commander Feral you sent your love!"), but this is never seen. Instead, the duo just pointlessly harass and bully them.
• The three main pirates from Turtle Island are basically good literal examples, in the sense that there are certain reasons for doing this.
• The title characters of the short-lived Undergrads are not once seen attending class, talking to instructors or even studying. Every university student on the planet wishes post-secondary school offered that much free time. This is lampshaded in the final episode when Brody remarks how it feels like he hasn't set foot in a classroom or opened a textbook even once the entire semester.
• The Trope Namers in VeggieTales are a very self-aware example. Larry's verse implies that he doesn't even know what pirates are supposed to do.
  Pa Grape: ...you just don't get it.
• The Venture Brothers:
  • Dr. Orpheus is by trade A NECROMANCER!, yet is never seen actually raising anyone from the dead (apart from an attempt at resurrecting Hank and Dean). What he actually does appears to be random magic and protecting the fabric of the universe from the forces of chaos. Lampshaded in Season 4, where 21 tries to get him to actually bring someone back from the dead, and Orpheus explains that he's really just your standard magic user, but he believes that names like "wizard" or "magician" have been tainted by pop culture, while "necromancer" still has a bit of cred left.
  • Then there's Billy and Pete. On paper, they run a scientific organization named Conjectural Technologies; in practice, their main revenue stream appears to be mooching off the Ventures. Even within the organization, Billy tends to be the one who tries to organize projects, while Pete sits on the couch and plays videogames.
    Billy Whalin: We don't need much room for what we do, and that's why we can't pay you that much. Because we don't do that much.
    Pete White: We actually don't do anything.
  • An early episode also had literal pirates who were stranded in a forest of sargassum kelp and, aside from using (fake) Ghost Pirate tactics to commandeer passing cargo ships (which there don't seem to be many of in the Bermuda Triangle) they really don't do much of anything at all. This is appended when they foolishly try to hijack Doctor Venture's X-2 hydrofoil, and Brock burns down their ship. The Pirate Captain returns as a recurring character, but as his pirating days are behind him, he now mostly works for various branches of Venture in security. Naturally, everyone still calls him "the Pirate Captain".
• Yogi's Gang: The Envy Brothers are said to be trapezists but they're never seen performing.

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