Entitled Bastard

Giles: Remind me -- why should I help you?

Spike: Because. You're the goody-good guys. You're the freaking cavalry.
—"The I in Team", Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Heroes have to deal with a lot of obstacles on their quest, or even everyday life. Not just from the Big Bad, but also fellow citizens. One of the most annoying is the Ungrateful Bastard, who won't thank the heroes over being rescued, or worse, complains! Of course, there are worse bad habits out there. Chief among them is acting like an Entitled Bastard.

Despite being a Jerkass who bad mouths the heroes, obstructs their efforts or is an outright villain, they feel entitled to the heroes' unwavering loyalty and aid in a time of crisis. Once a threat[1] comes around that can't be slimed out of by selling out an ally, he asks for and expects to be saved, possibly even before more deserving Innocent Bystanders!

The Entitled Bastards usually think it's all about them; they don't feel at all sheepish about asking the people whose lives they've made hell for help, and they see no reason to thank them for it afterwards. What happens to them depends on just how annoying or harmful they've been, and how nice or naughty the heroes are. If they've just been bad-mouthing a generally Good Samaritan of a hero, they'll be saved no matter what. If the hero has a sense of humor, they might leave them in a safe place... hanging by their underpants. On the other hand, outright murderous villains will likely die with a look of bewilderment as the Anti-Hero refuses to help... or even speeds their death along.

Despite the usual connotations of a bastard (in the sense used here) being Always Male, this character is just as likely to be female -- an Entitled Bitch -- as male.

Examples of Entitled Bastard include:

Anime & Manga

  • Vegeta from Dragonball Z often acts like this.
  • The Politicians in charge of the Free Planets Alliance in Legend of Galactic Heroes come across as this for the large part. The biggest example comes when they beg Yang Wen-li to go out and save their asses from an invasion by The Empire...while in the middle of trying to hold him under inquiry of questionable legality officially for his previous actions in saving their asses from a military coup not too long before. It gets worse. They don't learn a damn thing, do something similar to him later, and those actions end up forcing the Alliance to surrender to the Galactic Empire. The worst part is that they try to make it appear that they are afraid that Yang would commit a coup d'état of his own, which does not seems at first to be an unreasonable fear considering that the Free Planets Alliance arch-enemy was founded by a successful general turned totalitarian tyrant; but it becomes extremely clear as the series goes that they know that Yang has no dictatorial ambitions and are just terrified by the idea that he might go into politics and win elections legitimately.
  • The young Priestess Shion from Naruto: Shippūden the Movie acted like this, a lot. Turns out she just did that to keep people from wanting to be around her, cause people who get close to her often end up dead.
  • In Ranma ½ many of Ranma and Akane's old enemies/rivals/unwanted fiance' will often come to the Tendo dojo pleading their help with some problem. Notably Sentaro, from the Martial Arts Tea Ceremony episodes, who's antics include kidnapping girl type Ranma off the street in order to marry her. When he does get Ranma and Akane to help him, he takes advantage of the situation by trying to run off with Akane.


Comics -- Books

  • Spider-Man's greatest and best hidden foe does this quite often. Who is he? J. Jonah Jameson. He manages to publicly badmouth and ridicule him on a daily basis, has created two supervillains (the infamous Scorpion as well as C-lister The Human Fly) and a few evil robots in his quest to kill Spidey, gets into all sorts of fights and kidnappings by Spidey's other foes (who are jealous of him), and Spider-Man always, always pulls his bacon out of the fire... though he does put him in his place with purposely embarrassing rescues.
    • He even gets to become the Mayor of New York, despite how often he's printed complete garbage about Spider-Man that he's later had to retract when it turned out that, yes, it really was Mysterio or Chameleon, and despite the fact he's known to have sponsored the creation of Scorpion, the Human Fly and the Spider-Slayers.
  • In various continuities, this is Lex Luthor's attitude towards Superman.
  • The Dark Knight Returns: Jerkass bystander Byron Brassballs.
  • The Kingpin from Daredevil has a lot of this in his character and will pull Disproportionate Retribution on people who deny him his way. The Ultimate version was arguably worse, ordering Spider-Man's school blown up while class was in session after Daredevil threatened to kill his wife. And during the threat, he kept pleading with Daredevil that he had done nothing wrong because it "Wasn't personal" despite the fact that in the continuity, Kingpin was the one who killed Daredevil's father.


Films -- Live-Action

  • The princess in Spaceballs start out this way. She gets over it pretty quickly, however... She kinda lost the attitude along with the matching luggage.
  • There's an inversion in Batman Begins. Ras Al Ghul is trapped on a train bound to crash, but rather than expect to be saved he taunts Batman on whether he's learned the necessity of killing for the greater good. Since his mercy earlier at the monastery allowed Rhas to torment him, he was implying Batman needs to kill him. Batman notes (pretty much shirking the issue):

Batman: I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you.

    • In fairness to Batman Ra's al Ghul is his equal in skill and presumably capable of escaping the train on his own. Ra's deliberately chooses not to.
  • Happens in Titanic. The fiancé actually uses a small child (just grabs her off the deck, and given that the boat tipped over and dumps most of its passengers, chances are good that said girl got dumped too) to get a seat on a lifeboat, seeming like a Karma Houdini, but then we learn he kills himself because of the 1929 Wall Street crash.
  • In Transformers, Obstructive Bureaucrat Galloway, after repeatedly insulting Lennox, Epps, his troops and the Autobots (even calling the dead Optimus Prime a pile of junk, expected that Lennox would help him get to safety when there was a problem (actually rigged by the heroes to go help Sam) with the airplane. Of course, Lennox does us all a favour and shoves Galloway off the plane with only his parachute.

Literature

  • Star Wars Expanded Universe: Borsk Fey'lya and much of his administration, particularly during the Yuuzhan Vong war. Even worse, since it's generally the military he's talking to, they actually are required to save him, no matter how much he's damaged the situation.
  • Senna Wales, the witch of the Everworld series. She believes that the other four main characters are magicless fools who should shut up and do exactly as she says and be grateful for it, and is herself totally ungrateful to anything that they do for her. She's a bit different in that she isn't an antagonist originally, and even helps the main four characters as often as she troubles them, at least until the very end.
  • Honor Harrington. Manticore's High Ridge Government could be the collective poster children for this trope (not least because they're all highborn idiots. They put the Haven-Manticore War on pause just when their side has the decisive upper hand, spend years chopping their political opponents (who happen to be the statesmen and military officers who made that war winnable) off at the knees out of spite, antagonize their allies to the point where some start siding with Haven, and drag out peace negotiations because so long as the war is still officially ongoing they do not have to call for a new Parliamentary election they will almost certainly lose (and said treatment eventually pushes the Havenites to reignite the war). Sure, at the end of War of Honor they're given the boot and made political persona non grata, but considering the mess they've created (or made worse), it still feels like they're getting off light.
    • Later on we find out that two of the main conspirators are in prison, one was killed by Mesa after she outlived her usefulness, and one killed himself rather than live with the shame -- and it still feels like they got off light.
    • Reginald Houseman from The Honor of the Queen is another one - demanding that Honor sacrifice the planet they're trying to open up diplomatic relations with out of pure hysteria at the thought of being in the same star system as an upcoming battle. She reacted by punching his lights out.
      • In a subversion, Honor's loss of temper here goes on to politically plague her for years to come, as it not only makes her an implacable enemy but is repeatedly used by her political opponents as a Never Live It Down moment.
  • The Dresden Files. Rudolph is both this and one hell of an Obstructive Bureaucrat. Despite the fact that he would have died long ago if not for Harry and Murphy, Rudolph takes every opportunity to give Internal Affairs information on Murphy and try to get Harry arrested. In Changes, he is at his worst. Rudolph gets the FBI to bring Harry in for questioning after his office is blown up, and has the FBI break down Harry's door. Oh, and he gets Murphy fired... after she helped to save him from Red Court Vampires. Rudolph is saved from imminent death at least twice in the book, in fact, which only seems to make him more rabid in his hatred for the heroes.

Live-Action TV

Nathan: Come on, use your power, save us!
Simon: After everything you've done to me, you want me to save you?
Nathan: Yes! Get on with it you little freak!
Simon: (turns invisible)
Nathan: You're gonna save yourself? You selfish bastard! I'll remember this! I thought we were friends!

  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer
    • Vampire Spike, after his first run-in with Initiative soldiers, comes to Buffy saying "Help me." Buffy has a short, violent response.

Spike: What part of "Help me" don't you understand?
Buffy: The part where I help you.

    • After Spike explains about the chip in his brain that stops him feeding:

Buffy: So you haven't murdered anybody lately? Let's be best pals!

    • Later, when the soldiers are chasing him again, Giles asks why they should help him.

Spike: Because you do that. You're the goody-good guys. You're the bloody freaking cavalry.

    • In a subversion of this trope, the heroes consistently refuse to help Spike until he finally explains what's in it for them. (Specifically that he is the only person in the conversation who has any knowledge about the Initiative at all, and that they might want him to live long enough to finish telling it to them.)
  • Russell Hantz of Survivor considers himself among the ranks of the game's Magnificent Bastards, like Richard Hatch and "Boston" Rob Mariano. But what they understand and he doesn't is that evicted players on the jury have to like you or at least respect you enough to vote for you to win. Russell just wantonly lied and bullied his way through the game—twice—and ended by asking "Who's the man?", to which both juries shouted "NOT YOU!" And then he had the gall, after his second loss, to argue that the rules were flawed because he didn't win, or because someone who had a drastically different playstyle (Sandra) could win twice. Russell also cried and said that he respected the game too much to lose in Redemption Island, saying it was how a professional NFL player feels about playing with a bunch of "Peewee leaders" who "lost the challenge on purpose to get him out", and claimed that nobody else was there to play the game and was only there to fame. Never mind that he was doing the exact same things he did during the previous two times he played. Asking people to flip and be a third wheel, assembling the usual (Laker Girl) harem, searching for the idol recklessly,[2] even dumping out the tribe's rice while they were out fishing, without even considering that this time, he was playing with people who had the chance to see him in action. (And if you've seen those seasons, there's absolutely zero excuse for not knowing his game inside and out.)
  • Kate and her mother Rebecca, two peasants in Locksley, were this on Robin Hood. The worst moment is when Rebecca blames Robin for her son's death, and angrily asks him where he was when he died. You can almost see Robin thinking: "I was right next to him, watching as your stupid daughter kept messing up my plans to save him."
  • The Weeping Angels from Doctor Who. They spent two episodes chasing the Doctor and his friends, killing everyone in their way. At the end of the two-parter, the Angels discover that one of the cracks in the universe is threatening to absorb them and wipe them from existence—so they have the nerve to tell the Doctor to sacrifice himself to save them. True, they say they'll spare River and Amy, but considering who we're talking about, they were probably lying about that.
    • Then there's Madam Kovarian who had the nerve to ask Amy to save her - the very person whose child she kidnapped and raised into a psychotic Laser Guided Tykebomb to have the Doctor (who happens to be Amy's best friend) assasinated, while outright taunting her about how she'll still save her since that's what the Doctor (whom Kovarian was, as stated before, trying to kill) would do. Amy "kindly" reminds her that he isn't present and gives her exactly what she deserves.
  • In Big Brother US, Rachel and Brendon (But mostly Rachel) are almost like Russell Hantz in terms of this trope. They are good at winning competitions but have a poor social game and come off as this, but Rachel especially. Both of them, but mostly Rachel push their way through the game without regards for how everyone else thinks of them, hurls insults and Disproportionate Retribution around like balls at a baseball game and are somehow surprised that people can't stand them and hate their guts and that there are targets on their backs. And despite all that, she won, thanks in part to the most blatant Executive Meddling to date and other players picking up an Idiot Ball.
  • Dr. Smith from Lost in Space. Episode after episode, Smith causes and/or exacerbates threat after threat, putting other members of the cast in deadly danger. Whether he's making deals with various aliens to rescue himself (and only himself) or plotting to gain phenomenal cosmic powers or wealth, he will inevitably be betrayed by said aliens, end up hoist by his own petard, and start begging the crew to save him as they're extracting themselves from the disaster he created. And they do. Every. Single. Time.

Theater


Video Games

  • The mayor from Advance Wars: Days of Ruin.
  • Mass Effect
    • Ambassador Udina takes every opportunity to badmouth, second-guess, and otherwise undermine you that he can get, culminating in ordering the Normandy grounded simply because it's politically expedient. When you come in and save the Citadel anyway from a massive Geth attack, the Systems Alliance either gets offered a seat on the Citadel Council, or takes over the council, depending on how exactly you dealt with Sovereign and the Destiny Ascension. Either way, you're told that your recommendation will carry the most weight, and Udina seems to honestly expect you to recommend him over Captain Anderson, even after the shit he's piled on you. Of course, nothing's stopping you from doing just that, if you're the forgiving type. If.
    • Happens again in the sequel if you saved the Council. Depending on your choice of Anderson or Udina, you may get to meet them (two guesses which one will get you the audience?). But if you were hoping that proving them wrong and saving their asses the last time they ignored your warnings would get them to believe anything you say now, much less help... forget about it.
    • The entire Krogan species. The Genophage War was fought because they refused to curb their Explosive Breeder nature and instead tried to simply wipe out other races to take over their planets. The Turians and Salarians beat them back and then infected them with the genophage, a genetic virus that drastically cut down their fertility. The krogan as a race are all pissed off that they have been "sterilized" and are eager for payback against the turians and salarians because of it.
      • In Mass Effect 3, the leader of the krogan race will agree to throw the krogan into the breach and help save the galaxy from the Reapers. Provided that the Council do him a favor and cure the genophage. Oh yes, and he wants to be paid in advance. In fairness, the man has an entirely reasonable position here; his race is dying and this is the only possible chance he has to get that cured, and there's no way he can trust the Citadel with an IOU on this.
  • Prince Charmless of Dragon Quest VIII. Not only do the heroes have to drag him along on what's supposed to be his Rite of Passage, he expects them to do all the fighting and slay an Argon Lizard for its heart... and after they kill one, he immediately decides "Oh, I should have an even bigger and better Argon Heart -- You guys work on that!" He doesn't treat them with even the slightest shred of respect, expecting them to do everything for him because he's royalty—the only physical exertion he puts himself through during the entire trip is whipping Medea, then Trode, and after THAT stunt the player will likely join the heroes in cursing the fact they can't just leave him in the reserve. To top it all off, after you finally secure a Heart he deems acceptable and return to Argonia, he finds a way to even more flagrantly flout the rules by buying a Heart in the Marketplace. Yet even after all of that, he's absolutely shocked when this comes back to bite him.
  • World of Warcraft has a cycle.
    • A player type that shows up, especially using the dungeon finder that groups people from different servers who will probably never see each other again even online—the GIFT is magnified in that circumstance. Most of the time they're damage dealers who attitude is permanently "gogogogo" regardless of whether everyone's ready. They tend to overlook two things. 1. If they start blasting away at monsters before the tank is ready, it may decide that if they want the monster's attention so badly, they can have it. 2. In a fair number of encounters players will take damage greatly exceeding their total health. So calling the person you're expecting to save your life several times a noob because they like to have Mana before starting a fight works out badly.
    • It's also not just the DPS classes who do this. Tanks often tend to Leeroy Jenkins right on in, sometimes even using abilities to increase their movement and going out of the healer's range and neglecting to actually get aggro on mobs before moving on, and then when the group wipes or somebody dies, either blame the healer for neglecting them, or the DPS for not knowing how to manage aggro and taking too much damage. (Which is going to happen in a lot of fights, either simply because of the enemies or because the tank hasn't bothered to position themselves to avoid, say, giant lightning bolts hitting the entire group.)
    • That's also not to say there aren't healers who are like this; too. Some have been known to completely ignore healing DPS period even though a lot of fights summon trash mobs that must be off-tanked, inflict a debuff on a random party member that deals damage or increases damage taken by a certain percent, or worse yet, inflict unavoidable Area of Effect damage. Then act like it's the DPS's fault they died.
    • Much of this attitude, for all party roles, stems from expecting the party to be massively overgeared for the dungeon. As such it was particularly prevalent in the latter days of the Wrath expansion because of new incentives for players to keep running old dungeons long after they've gained all the gear they want from them. And due to heirloom gear this situation doesn't change much when leveling up a new character, causing lazy habits to become ingrained. This sort of player doesn't expect to have to pay attention, think, or try to get through an instance, and resents having to do so because, e.g. the tank doesn't have twenty thousand more health than is actually needed to complete the dungeon, or players aren't killing the enemy too fast for it to use its dangerous abilities.
  • Left 4 Dead and its sequel. Every single player is guilty of this at some point. Even the ones who try to keep the entire survivor team alive. Usually, players who rush ahead will be the ones who will get caught by a special infected and then scream at the other players to run in and save him. Most people will just laugh and let the player die for stupidly running ahead, but if the team do decide to save the player, usually no word of thanks is given and off they go running ahead once more.
  • Heroes of Newerth As it is a team game you come across many players who embody this. They will spend most of the game demanding you buy wards or even give them your health potions. They will freak out if you do not do everything possible to save them, and when you do they will completely ignore it and berate you the next time they feel you slip up. And don't EVER expect them to help you or call them out on abandoning you in a team fight or letting you get swarmed, as they'll just insult you.
  • League of Legends has this system called the Tribunal, where players vote on a report on a case to tell Riot what they think should happen. Naturally, the Tribunal forum is full of people who were complete monsters in-game who had their accounts suspended (Not banned - suspended) bitching that they were clearly trolled by players who just hit "punish" for every case and Jerkass players who reported them, as they're always the victim. Even when they show screenshots that clearly show them obviously feeding, cussing the team out, sabotaging the team by being afk or buying a bunch of wards instead of actual items...
  • For that matter, it might be easier to just rattle off a list of MOBA-games given how they are a Wretched Hive of entitled bastards who demand you never have fun than to describe specific examples like Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends. This trope goes hand-in-hand with MOBA games so much this trope could also be called "MOBA player".
  • Team Fortress 2. There are plenty of players who subscribe to the "Blame the medic" school of thought. They'll never aid the medic, ignore that he's the one healing their health. They'll often say "Medic" in morse code even when they're being healed. They'll never body block the medic or help them out, run over all the medkits so the medic can't get them, blame the medics whenever they die, ask for them to use their invulnerability even when it wouldn't help, then wonder why the medic switches to another class. In short; don't abuse the healer.
  • In one of the middle chapters of Phantom Brave, a village chieftain hires Marona to deal with Raphael, leader of the White Wolf Army, who is causing trouble on the island. You eventually find out that the troublemaker is an imposter who has taken advantage of Raphael's name repeatedly, and the real Raphael (who, unlike nearly everyone else in the setting, actually likes and respects Marona) shows up to help you take the imposter down. When you return, the chieftain stiffs you on the payment because the job instructions was, explicitly, to defeat Raphael, not an imposter (regardless of who was causing the problem). Marona is forced to accept... when the REAL Raphael, having overheard the exchange, starts up a ruckus in the village. The chieftain immediately requests Marona's aid, and is genuinely surprised when she declines and wanders off instead.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim contains a similar example in the form of Delphine and Esbern. Despite being Blades, whose role is to serve the Dragonborn (i.e. you), they are perfectly happy to give you orders, disbelieve your findings, and expect you to be obedient to their every whim. They go so far as to demand that you kill Paarthurnax for them, the dragon Master of the Greybeards who has spent the last three thousand years waiting for you, teaching the Way of the Voice, suppressing his nature to help overcome his inborn urge to dominate. The dragon who was instrumental in your defeat of Alduin the World-Eater, who willingly helps you learn a Shout that the Greybeards call the essence of pure hatred (Dragonrend). And who has been protected from harm by the Greybeards and by the Emperors that the Blades served for the last few thousand years. And they refuse to help you until you do what they tell you to do. Many players seem to enjoy making Delphine and Esbern suffer a humiliating death for such an affront.
    • One of the single most popular fan mods is one that allows you to tell them to just shut the fuck up and do what they're told. In fact, I think several modders have made one.

Web Comics

  • Girl Genius: Duke Strinbeck on the Pink Airship. While the ship is under attack, he still demands the captain obey his orders—at gunpoint—rather than evade the assault. Then a most satisfying order comes to throw useless objects overboard....
  • In Eight Bit Theater Thief goes on a rant about this to a random villager who wants a new shovel handle about how he can't be bothered to do the most trivial tasks because they might interfere with his "schedule of vigorous masturbation", while expecting them to interrupt their work of saving the world to help him out. Except that the guy wasn't asking them to do it for him, and is rather confused at having his shopping interrupted.


Western Animation

  • In My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, Prince Blueblood pulls some of this with Rarity, expecting her to cover a puddle for him and using her as a pony-shield from flying pie.
    • He spit Applejack's strudel out in disgust after learning it wasn't made by Canterlot's top chefs, calling it "common carnival fare".
  • Young Justice did a great job with this in the episode Targets. Red Arrow is going to protect the US ambassdor at peace talks, and saves him from an assassin...and the man turns out to be Lex Luthor. Lex generously gets him out of trouble with the authorities (people thought he was with the assassin at first) and then makes comments throughout the whole episode about how glad he is that he has a superhero protecting him while Red Arrow can only grind his teeth.


Real Life

  • People working in Customer Service often deal with these; you may have been one of them.
    • Statistically, being scrupulously polite-but-firm with Customer Service is far more likely to get you what you want, when you want it.
    • Of course, given that people working in Customer Service with whom you deal generally work for companies you've either paid money to or are considering paying money to, and are often, shall we say, less than helpful - sometimes spectacularly so - this cuts both ways.
  • Fan Dumb and Hate Dumb often overlap with this trope, believing that they own the franchise and medium in its entirety and that all executive decisions should be run through them first, and are naturally finding something to complain about no matter what.
    • This often overlaps with Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things. Numerous times, people have constantly complained over and over again, demanding that the creator shape the work(s) to their desires, ignoring that this is a business and making stuff takes money (or because it's developed for free of charge to them). When the creator decides they're sick of bending over backwards for them and only receiving Nothing but Hates and decides "Well fuck you, too." and start catering to people who give them constructive criticism and positive feedback. Then the entitled bastards start complaining about being abandoned.
  • A common stereotype of the modern day, younger generations.
  • If you moderate a forum, you'll know a lot of people who complain that you were being disproportionate to punishing them...despite clear proof they were breaking the policy.


What do you mean this is the bottom of the page?! I want more examples now!

  1. ↑ (bonus points if it's their own doing)
  2. ↑ If you're idol hunting, MAKE SURE NOBODY IS WATCHING YOU first!!
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