"No Respect" Guy

This comedic character is the only intelligent person in a group of morons, and never gets a break. If anything good happens to him in a given episode, it will be undone by episode's end.

Note that Rodney Dangerfield, in the character he always plays, is not an example of No Respect Guy, despite his Catch Phrase. He is rather an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist. Also note that the other characters have to ignore the "No Respect" Guy unfairly for him to count. If he's as stupid as everyone else he's just The Chew Toy. Subtrope of Only Sane Man.

Examples of "No Respect" Guy include:

Anime and Manga


Comic Books

  • Empowered... dear Lord, Empowered. Setting aside the fact that the general populace and criminal element all regard her as a joke, the level of emotional abuse and sexual harassment she deals with from the 'Superhomeys' reaches the point where they are the ones posting pictures of her on the internet after the villains leave her chained up humiliatingly for them to find. Not to mention the fact that her teammates forgot about her after a battle and left her trapped/embedded in the landscape more than once. At least one reader has wondered why she has not thrown her lot in with the Forces of Evil out of sheer spite.
    • Probably because the Forces of Evil also humiliate her and sell pictures of her tied up and half-nude on the internet. Who'd kill the, um, cash cow?


Film

  • Nick Schaffer (Breckin Meyer) in Rat Race. The most serious character, and the only one who doesn't jump at the opportunity of 1 million dollars, only entering the race after he gets an advantage (a helicopter pilot when the airport tower is broken). From there on, it gets worse.
  • Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo: Beast Boy. Always Beast Boy.


Literature

  • Honsou from Graham McNeill's Storm of Iron and Ultramarines series. He is at first hated by the other Iron Warrior Space Marines for being a 'half breed'. After his promotion to Warsmith, the other Warsmiths hate and disrespect him, making extreme and insane demands of him. After destroying armies worth of enemies he still gets no respect, with random human Mooks in bars telling him he's an idiot.
  • Ponder Stibbons from Discworld's Unseen University branch. At least until Unseen Academicals when he realizes he's had so many jobs foisted on him over the years, he wields enough power to make people listen to him.
    • Specifically, he holds twelve jobs at the university (not counting football coach), giving him twelve votes on the university council. This means that no matter how anyone else votes, he forms a majority all by himself.

"We didn't notice you were getting all this power..." and later on "...someone should do something about it."

    • Unfortunately, but inevitably, this someone is, in fact, Ponder.
  • Fitz Kreiner, from the Doctor Who Eighth Doctor Adventures novels. Notable in that he ends up with an alternate, evil version who's a thousand years older and basically just plain terrifying (it's a long story), and he's a bit of a "No Respect" Guy too. The other scary villainous types, who are even older, call him a "foolish child" or something of the sort.
  • Mat Cauthon in The Wheel of Time. By the middle of the series, he's one of the best fighters and generals in the world, but due to Poor Communication Kills, few of the other characters realize this, and treat him like he's a . He gets crap thrown at him, Locked Out of the Loop during an important mission, molested by a queen, etc. When his army defeats a much larger force against all odds, the enemy commander rides out to congratulate... Thom Merrilin, who he thought was the general.
  • Poor Gunner First Class Jurgen from the Ciaphas Cain series always gets overlooked by everyone—most of his fellow soldiers don't consider him a "proper" Guardsman and none of the official histories or memoirs so much as mention him. (Exception: Sulla's... "writings"... mention him as Cain's aide, but never by name.) Admittedly, he's a walking disaster area hygenically and a blank, which makes people either respond to him with revulsion or flat-out ignore him, but you'd think someone would notice the number of situations he'd personally melta-gunned into submission.


Live Action TV

  • Fargo of Eureka, and deservedly so, but his new role as head of GD has actually lent itself to making him become a more responsible, and yes, respected character. Even before then, and acknowledging he caused plenty of problems thanks to certain tendencies, he was still the assistant to the director of GD and apparently competent enough as an Omnidisciplinary Scientist himself to participate or be made responsible for whatever was needed that week, but had his position derided by other specialists at GD. Except Larry, who is always competing to take over his position that is.
  • Freddie in iCarly. He is often abused by Sam, manipulated by Carly, and oh yeah, humiliated in front of the whole school.
  • Michael Bluth in Arrested Development.
  • The character of Dick Louden on Newhart was a "No Respect" Guy.
  • Dave Nelson on News Radio, at least after the rest of the cast has been Flanderized into stupidity.
  • To some extent, McGee on NCIS.
    • I'd say so, Probie!
    • Really, McGee and Tony sort of trade this role back and forth (although, many would argue Tony partly brings it on himself). Although neither of them is surrounded by morons.
  • Drew Carrey in The Drew Carey Show. Despite being the most mild mannered and logical person in the whole cast, he doesn't get much praise from his boss, his co-worker Mimi disrespects him every chance she gets, and Drew's friends are just outright morons.
  • This became Mike Nelson's shtick in the Sci Fi seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
  • Whenever The Kids in The Hall did a skit as themselves, Kevin MacDonald inevitably took on this role.
  • Justin in Wizards of Waverly Place.


Sports

  • American football has an excellent example in Donovan McNabb. In 11 years with the Philadelphia Eagles, he took them to a Super Bowl, five NFC championship games, and set most - if not all - of their passing records; this amounted to the fans booing him at every opportunity and his name being brought up every offseason when it came trade time.
  • Tom Coughlin of the New York Giants might be the coaching answer to McNabb. He's had a fair deal of success, including a Super Bowl win in one of the wildest upsets of the decade, but if he loses so much as a single game, he's suddenly on the hot seat.


Video Games

  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Despite all the cases he won and how he solved cases most people thought were lost causes, no one ever respects him; the judge is always quick to scold Phoenix and rarely does so for the prosecution, all the witnesses berate Phoenix and treat him like an idiot, all the prosecutors denounce Phoenix as some newbie lawyer who don't know jack about how trials work, and Maya is a complete idiot when it comes to even the most basic logic and she even busts Phoenix's chops a few times, yet Phoenix swore to Mia to look after Maya so he can't just ditch her. The only other person who has it slightly worse than Phoenix is Detective Gumshoe.
    • Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice arguably has it worse than his predecessor/mentor/employer Pheonix. Absolutely everybody he meets will take time out of their usual shenanigans just to make fun of him in some manner. Even his own mother and little sister along with Phoenix himself mess with him. On the plus side, he doesn't get quite as much hostility from the prosecution, yet.
      • Also, Apollo hasn't come to physical harm yet, which is something when you consider the sheer amount of trouble Phoenix used to attract.
    • In one case Edgeworth fills in for Phoenix as a defense attorney and, accordingly, becomes one of these as well. He comes away with a new respect for his friendly foe (by which I mean suddenly he has some); after all, Edgeworth knows that after this case he can go back to his cushy, effortless, everyone-loves-me job of being a prosecutor, but Phoenix puts up with this bullshit every day, on purpose, because of his dedication to truth and justice.
  • Luigi from Super Mario Bros. could be this. Mario rushes head-first into extremely dangerous situations that no normal person would be able to survive. Yoshi will blindly follow whatever Mario does. Luigi's the one who thinks of the possibility of them actually getting hurt. Oh yes, and he's generally the best of the three to play as.
    • Luigi isn't given much respect in the RPG spin off games. In Superstar Saga, most people don't know who Luigi is and refer to him as the guy in green or some other variant. In The Thousand Year Door, the game hints that Luigi's successes in his own adventure is exaggerated since most of Luigi's allies always complains about how he screwed up a lot.
      • However, in The Thousand Year Door, there is one Toad child who thinks Luigi is cooler than Mario (with apologies to Mario). There's also Pennington the detective, who takes one look at your outfit and deduces that you can only be the famous Luigi, and nothing can convince him otherwise. So Luigi gets respect sometimes.


Webcomics

  • Webcomic example: Rudasor in Elijah and Azuu. "Even from myself I get no respect."
  • She isn't one anymore, but in her original few appearances, Zoe from Sluggy Freelance had shades of this. In particular, in her first appearance, she was locked out of her car, trampled twice by a mob of people, and then beaten up twice by Bun-Bun. While is was never as pronounced as her first appearance, nor is it still in effect, but random unfortunate stuff (such as failing her midterms due to changes to history that she had a hand in being on the test) happening to Zoe was a bit of a running gag for a few years after the strip started. Eventually, she got past it, but she's still a Weirdness Magnet, so it's not all gone.
  • White Mage from Eight Bit Theater. She sometimes appears to be the only person in the world with both a fully developed moral compass and an IQ above room temperature.


Web Original

  • Church from Red vs. Blue. He even gets repeatedly killed by his own teammates.
  • In The Randomverse, Superman is a mild example of the trope, though he somewhat grew out of it as the series went on. He one of the most mild-mannered and idealistic members of the cast, but is looked down upon by most of his fellow superheroes (particularly Batman and Wolverine) because his series isn't nearly as successful as it once was, and many people see him as an outdated character with no relevance to the 21st century.


Western Animation

  • Cat in CatDog. Arguably, Dog is the one with the better moral compass, but Cat never gets respect, no.
  • Edd from Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy.
  • Stan and Kyle from South Park, and It Got Worse in later seasons. Stan would usually get no respect from his father at the very least, while Kyle would get that treatment from not just Cartman, but sometimes, EVERYONE ELSE.
  • Danny Fenton (aka Danny Phantom), although he isn't the smartest in the trio consisting of himself, Sam, and Tucker. And then came Reign Storm, where from there, Danny steadily loses that status.
    • Tucker is a much more proper example. In one episode, a ghost frames him for the bad things happening to other people. However, once Tucker became the mayor of Amity Park in the Series Finale, it's safe to say he got a good bit of respect.
  • Frylock of Aqua Teen Hunger Force usually manages to avoid being injured by his roommates' stupidity, but he usually receives little to no gratitude for cleaning up their messes.
  • Dexter of Dexter's Laboratory.
  • Jerry and Mary from Code Monkeys. Jerry's chops are busted either through his association with his best friend Dave or pointing out a critical flaw in his plans, and Mary gets the brunt of Mr. Larrity's bad attitude because he's unapologetically sexist.
  • Henry from KaBlam!!, though sometimes he gets respect from June, who apparently, has a crush on him.
    • This also works for Meltman of Action League Now!.
  • Squidward Tentacles from SpongeBob SquarePants is either this or a straight Jerkass Butt Monkey, Depending on the Writer (albeit more often the latter than the former since The Movie).
    • It's less he varies between the two as he's always both.
  • Dib from Invader Zim.
  • Jabberjaw the shark. His catchphrase is "No Reshpect"
  • Shifty Dingo from Blinky Bill ESPECIALLY in season 2. Marcia treats him like a piece of trash and he's one of the nicest characters on the show.
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