The Eeyore

Sorry for being on this page.
"Thanks for noticing me."
—Eeyore, Winnie the Pooh
"I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed."
—Marvin the Paranoid Android's first line in every incarnation of Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy

This character exists solely to bring everybody down, but not in the Deadpan Snarker sense; they are defined entirely by their complete inability to be happy for more than a few seconds at a time, an emotional state that usually arises from their only-occasionally-justified suspicion that they are the Butt Monkey of the entire universe. They are the walking Anthropomorphic Personification of clinical depression. However, the few moments that they are happy can be a Heartwarming Moments.

Sometimes overlaps with Sour Supporter, but not often; they are generally too unhappy to be effective or active.

When upset, the Eeyore may as well become Cute and Psycho. A stereotypical Goth will probably fit under this. An Eeyore with artistic talent will use it to express his overwhelming angst.

If written a certain way, The Eeyore can easily become a Woobie.

Compare Grumpy Bear. The Pollyanna is the polar opposite of this trope.

Examples of The Eeyore include:

Anime and Manga

  • Mesousa from Pani Poni Dash!.
  • Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion, though he has the excuse of genuinely not having much to be happy about.
    • Ironically, the one time he's in a relatively good mood and tries to cheer Asuka up, this ends up being exactly the last thing Asuka needs, as her confidence and sense of superiority has been broken and having the unconfident Shinji trying to cheer her up pushes her to the brink.
      • Then there's Rei Ayanami, whose very existence is an insult against the Laws of Nature and all that is right and good in the world. She can be accurately described as Gloominess Personified.
  • Gaara from Naruto (in a virulently homicidal sort of way).
    • Sasuke as well.
  • Lucy from Elfen Lied (in a virulently homicidal sort of way but also a girl).
  • Sugata from Star Driver definitely fits this, going as far as inadvertently hurting Wako with with his downer behavior. However, considering that he can't leave Southern Cross Island due to being the bearer of Samekh (if he does, his Ninja Maids will be forced to kill him), is also the bearer of a power that can hurt or kill others and put him into a coma, and has to live in fear of Wako's seal being broken and/or her being harmed, this is pretty much Justified Trope.
  • Kohza from Samurai Champloo.
  • Nozomu Itoshiki, or, as he is better known as, "Mr. Despair".
    • Played for Laughs. It doesn't help that his name, written in a certain way, literally translates as "zetsubou-sensei", or "Mr. Despair".
  • Haruhi Suzumiya's inner workings appear to be quite this at or before the beginning and episode 6 particularly. Being fed up with the boring world, just wishing for something interesting to happen when it just doesn't seem to happen, despite her efforts. In the end (or rather in the middle), she's so frustrated she subconsciously begins to destroy the universe and create a new one. Of course, most of the time she's a genuine Genki Girl.
  • Kogepan. Because he's a burned bread roll.
  • Ryoga Hibiki of Ranma ½, who legitimately has a lot to be sad about, is nevertheless prone to such heavy depression he's able to use it to fuel a ki attack - one so powerful it leaves a massive, smoking crater and frequently demolishes his opponents in one go.
  • Enma Kozato of Katekyo Hitman Reborn.
  • Hatsumi Narita of Hot Gimmick.
  • Miranda Lotto of D.Gray-man.
  • Cardcaptor Sakura: Even after revealing their soft side, Syaoran and Yue are still rather humorless and snarky in tone. Spinel Sun also seems to count as one.
  • In a way, Chrona from Soul Eater
    • When Chrona shows off his/her poetry to the other cast members, it turns out to be so depressing that it makes everyone who reads it sit in the Corner of Woe and wish they were never born.
  • Nazuna from Hidamari Sketch
  • The Waddle Dees from Kirby: Right Back at Ya!.
  • Due to being a headstrong, individualistic Butt Monkey and Yandere with an obsessive unrequited crush, Shiva rains on most people's parades in Saint Beast.


Comic Books

  • Cassie from Hack Slash, in a virulently homicidal sort of way. The one and only time she was genuinely happy was when someone got her drunk at springbreak.
  • Sometimes, Rudi from the German comic with the same name. He also has a buddy who's always like this.
  • Bertrand Labévue from Gaston Lagaffe.
  • In All Fall Down, Pronto is this after the loss of his legs.


Literature

  • Gil Peaply from Felsic Current falls under just about every trope that involves depression, cynicism, jadedness, whining and sarcasm, but The Eeyore is perhaps the best match for him.
  • A Series of Unfortunate Events: Lemony Snicket. So much.
    • Not QUITE true, I'd argue. Whereas the defining trait of an Eeyore is the inability to ever be happy for more than a few moments, Lemony Snicket is defined by his inability to allow the READER to be anything less than clinically depressed.
  • Melinda Sordino from Speak.
  • Ann from the Gemma Doyle trilogy.
  • Eeyore, obviously, from Winnie the Pooh. Though is also The Woobie for his target audience.

Pooh: Have a nice day, Eeyore!
Eeyore: *Glares at Pooh*
Pooh: I'm so sorry! It just slipped out!

  • Puddleglum the Marshwiggle from CS Lewis's Narnia book The Silver Chair - referenced in More Than Mind Control. Puddleglum says at one point that his fellow Marshwiggles consider him to be a hopeless starry-eyed optimist.
  • Dolorous Edd from A Song of Ice and Fire pretends to be this way, but he's really just a Deadpan Snarker.
  • Denethor of The Lord of the Rings certainly has real sorrows to contend with - losing his son and watching civilisation apparently crumble around him. But he's definitely a fatalistic old bugger on top of it. In both the book and the film he's summed up in the splendidly morose line: "Go now and die in what way seems best to you."
  • Marvin the Paranoid Android from Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy is perhaps the Eeyore-iest Eeyore in existence. He's very depressed, he feels under-utilized ("Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and..."), and due to a series of circumstances involving time travel he eventually gets to be thirty-seven times as old as the universe itself and throughout his entire existence he's had this terrible pain in all the diodes down his left side. His outlook on the universe is so depressing that he drives a computer to suicide when he tries to share it with the poor thing. He later does the same thing with a bridge.
  • Worvil in Jennifer Trafton's novel The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic. At one point, "Worvil's upside-down stomach turned inside out, split into a dozen pieces, and started a civil war."
  • Billy Jack, Dusty's sergeant major in the Civil War novels of J. T. Edson. He believes every mission is doomed before it starts. A sample of his dialogue from Under the Stars and Bars:

"Damned if I wasn't certain sure we'd all get blowed up, being so close," Billy Jack wailed and, in expression of his delight, continued, "I dropped on to a rock 'n' must've caved my ribs in. Likely I'll be dead from my hurts come morning."


Live Action TV

You're enjoying your day
 Everything's going your way
Then along comes Debbie Downer
Always there to tell you 'bout a new disease
A car accident or killer bees
You'll beg her to spare you
"Debbie, please!"
But you can't stop Debbie Downer!

  • Bova from Space Cases.
    • In one episode it's shown that his father is the same way so it might be a racial trait.
  • Seaman "Doom & Gloom" Broom from Operation Petticoat.
  • Private James Frazer from Dads Army.
  • Detective Ronnie Gardocki
  • Ted, the completely unsuccessful, miserable, and suicidal (in a humorous way) lawyer from Scrubs, who serves as the show's Butt Monkey. Even The Woobie Elliot casually acknowledges that she is nowhere near as miserable as Ted.
  • Neil, the depressive hippy in The Young Ones, who has made it his life's mission to inform everyone about how depressed he is.
  • Fraggle Rock has Boober Fraggle; who is not only depressive and fearful, but is also an obsessive expert on diseases, superstitions, and laundry. This actually proves very useful to the other Fraggles, as Boober is always the first to sense impending disaster.
  • Howard Moon from The Mighty Boosh. He's self-described as "dark, fractured, broken, paranoid" and has always been the Stop Having Fun Guy in all of the show's incarnations. Somewhat justified as the The Eeyore, as he really is the Butt Monkey of his entire universe. In The Power of The Crimp, usually cheerful Vince is depressed and starts rattling off bleak imagery, to which Howard responds, "Have you got my script?"
  • Fisher, one of the interns on Bones. Most of his lines involve death, misery, and dying and he states that he is jealous of the corpses they work with. After the timeskip between seasons 5 and 6 it is revealed that he spent a year in a mental hospital for being too depressed to do anything but sleep 20 hours a day. Even Cam goes out of her way to try to get him to smile.
  • The Reverand Giles Shawcross in the Midsomer Murders episode "The Sword of Guillaume".

New Media

  • Hope from the internet comedy podcast Hope Is Emo is an example.
  • There's a color dedicated to this trope in Neopets, and it's gray. The Gray Faerie usually is portrayed with a cloud over her head, and never, ever says anything cheerful. Fandom has determined that both the faerie, pets and items are just all emo, as there's no reason to do so in such utopic setting.
  • Despair from Descendant of a Demon Lord. Despair isn't just mopey in her day to day behavior. She also captures it in depressing poetry, play scripts, ect...

Newspaper Comics

  • Porky Pine from Pogo. His most famous line is probably "Don't take life so serious, son. It ain't nohow permanent."


Radio

"Life! Don't talk to me about life!"

    • According to the biography of Douglas Adams written by Neil Gaiman, Marvin was originally based on a friend of his, a manic-depressive named Marshall who could only ever be cheered up by his long-suffering wife; he changed the name from "Marshall" to "Marvin" out of kindness.
      • However, after talking about this in an interview, Adams was called by his mother, who claimed that he was totally wrong - Marvin was Eeyore. Adams went to look at some older copies of Winnie the Pooh, "...and blow me down, so he was!"
      • Adams also said that the story he based Marvin on Andrew Marshall was one he'd told so often he no longer remembered if it was true or not. Marshall, he claimed, really was like that, but this proved nothing because all comedy writers are Eeyores.
  • Red Symons, former guitarist for the Skyhooks, cultivated this persona for his radio and television career.
  • Wartime Sitcom ITMA had Mona Lott, whose Catch Phrase was "It's being so cheerful that keeps me going".
  • The Happy Postman, played by Mel Blanc on The George Burns And Gracie Allen Show. His Catch Phrase, always done in a sobbing voice of deep despair: "Well, good-bye, Mrs. Burns. And remember: Keep smiling!"


Theatre

  • Older Than Steam: Jacques in As You Like It. The Zeroth Law of Trope Examples strikes again!
  • Henrik in A Little Night Music.
  • Sam in Street Scene is almost constantly brooding. His girlfriend, fortunately, doesn't agree with him when he says that life isn't worth living.
  • George Washington in 1776. He never actually appears on stage, but his dispatches from the field (read to the Congress) are gloomy to the point of despair. As delegate Thomas McKean puts it, "Och! The man would depress a hyena!"
  • This is one interpretation of the title character in Hamlet. That is, when he's not being the Deadpan Snarker.


Video Games

  • Xan, the morbidly depressed elven enchanter from the first Baldur's Gate game. A typical line is "Our Quest is in Vaaaain" and "Oh what is the point". He is later referenced in the first Icewind Dale game when finding a diary of an elf, who feared he "Had become as miserable as my cousin Xan".
  • Vincent Valentine from Final Fantasy VII could be seen as one. Though he may be more of a brooding Deadpan Snarker.
  • Nearly every non-player elf character in the add-on Dungeon Siege 2: Broken World is morbidly depressed, especially Amren, who whines about the loss of his clairvoyant powers every time you talk to him, no matter what topic you wanted to discuss. Considering what crappy state the world is in due to the cataclysm after the end of the second game, they may have a point, but it quickly gets annoying.
    • The dryads... well, most of the dryads have just gone nuts, but they have to cope with the loss of their forest and most of their population, so their destructive mood is at least justified.
  • Kingdom Hearts not only has the original Trope Namer, but also has Namine in Chain of Memories, though she is considerably happier in Kingdom Hearts II. Xion slipped into this in the later parts of 358/2 days
  • In Star Control 2 the Utwig, after losing the Ultron, their source of motivation, are an entire species of Eeyores, to the point that they ponder whether to commit mass suicide with a giant bomb, but decide not to because they deserve to suffer. They get better once you fix the thing. In the mythical third game, they go Eeyore again when they lose the Ultron; one of the few good ideas the game has is that when you return it to them, they become audibly happier.

Ugh. I suppose, as a courtesy, I should extend an appropriate greeting. On behalf of the Utwig Proctors I truly hope, for your sake, that your day has been better than ours, although this really isn't saying that much.

  • In Wing Commander II, Lieutenant Etienne "Doomsday" Montclair. Almost every comm message he ever sends you is about his impending death. ("I just bagged a Cat. I bet I'm going to die now.") Ironically, as of Wing Commander Arena he's still alive, and still actively flying as per the manual, Star*Soldier.
    • Also played straight in the Wing Commander Expanded Universe. Notably, he survives the entire war, including several campaigns that had single digit survival rates for everybody involved.
  • Despite the fact that he's the main villain in the Mario Series, Bowser sometimes makes a good example of this trope.
  • Clive Handforth from Little Big Planet 2.
  • Negative Man from Mother 3.
  • Schwer-Muta Casasola Merkle [1] of Rosenkreuzstilette fits this trope. Basically, she always carries a depressed look on her face, she's reclusive and distrusts everyone she meets, and not to mention she's also very shy. She thinks her only friend is her pet squid, Zeppy.
  • The Waddle Dees from the Kirby series.
  • The Crestfallen Warrior of Dark Souls is content to rest at Firelink Shrine and regale you with his pessimism.
    • He eventually gets over it after you ring both bells of Awakening, being inspired and trying to make something of himself. He promptly goes Hollow in the ruins of New Londo.
  • Fenris from Dragon Age II is this to Gronkh.


Web Animation

  • Strong Sad from Homestar Runner; notable in so far as he really is the Butt Monkey of the entire universe... or at least his brothers' most readily available Chew Toy. His 1936 counterpart, Sickly Sam, is like this trope times two. Or more.


Web Comics


Western Animation

  • Droopy Dog always seemed to be in a really sad and gloomy state. When he was happy, he would just say "I'm so happy..." in his usual morose tone. When sufficiently provoked, he would just say "You know what? You made me mad" and beat the other guy to a pulp. Sometimes throwing him miles and miles away.
    • Subverted when he won a million bazillion dollars. He smiled ear to ear, and leaped across the screen.
  • Toot from Drawn Together is an example, though she is so bitter and repulsive that she really garners no sympathy whatsoever.
  • Twinkle the Marvel Horse in Dave the Barbarian.
  • Happy Time Harry in the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "Dumber Dolls" takes this to comically dark extremes. He's a children's action figure who is depressed, addicted to pain pills, has a pile of unpaid "Action Bills" as his main accessory and routinely threatens to commit suicide. In later appearances, he mentions he's on probation too. .
  • Stork in Storm Hawks.
    • Mentioned or at least implied to be a cultural trait common to all Merbians. Terra Merb is so riddled with dangerous creatures, dangerous terrain, dangerous weather, and dangerous combinations of all three that Merbians have simply come to expect the worst out of everything, since it usually happens to them. It's so bad that when something nice happens to the Hawks, Stork can't enjoy it because he's too busy waiting for the punchline. Unfortunately, since Merbians developed their pessimism as a survival mechanism, he has a distressing habit of being right.
  • TV viewers of a certain age may (vaguely) remember Hanna-Barbera's Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har; the latter was a "laughing" hyena who never smiled, much less laughed.
    • Another Hanna-Barbera property the same era was a reworking of Gulliver's Travels. One of the Lilliputians who hung out with the hero was a hard-core Eeyore named Glum; for many, he was the most memorable thing about the show.
    • "We're dooooommmmmed." (Note lack of exclamation mark. That's just the way Glum rolls.)
  • Misery from Ruby Gloom.
  • Meg from Family Guy.
    • Who veers strongly into The Woobie category, depending on how the writer treats her. There's a post cancellation episode where Peter acknowledges that she's not as bad as she deserves to be treated and promises to be nice to her... when nobody else is around. When Lois then enters, Peter proceeds to throw his drink in her face to keep in character.
      • It's worth noting that she occasionally borders on Jerkass Woobie; since everyone treats her like crap regardless, she eventually goes on a Only Sane Man rant about how she is essentially a victim of a variety of domestic abuse as everybody downright hates her for no reason. However, she reverts back to the Eeyore role again when she realizes being the Eeyore is pretty much keeping the family together.
  • Mentioned above under Literature, there's Eeyore. Not that anybody cares about ol' Eeyore.
    • Ironically, during one episode of the cartoon series, the entire cast notices Eeyore, just sitting on a hill and staring and try to cheer him up. The episode ends with Piglet asking Eeyore why he was so sad while Eeyore is still sitting on the hilltop, watching a beautiful sunset, and Eeyore simply asks "What makes you think I'm sad?"
  • Chuckles the Clown is a subversion: he acts much like Eeyore, to the point of sharing a voice actor, but then you hear his backstory.
  • A lot of Transformers have elements of the Sour Supporter or being real complainers, but Dead End of the Stunticons is known for almost never smiling (lack of a mouth aside) and constantly believing and declaring that their collective doom was at hand. The end result is a character who handily combines fatalism, vanity, and the ability to merge with four other belligerent, hardly-cooperative maniacs into one particularly large maniac.
  • Jenny's "sister" XJ-7, who has a built-in slouch and frowning expression.
  • Mr. Ten from Jimmy Two-Shoes is eternally depressed. It's eventually revealed that it's Heloise's fault.
  • Tina from Bob's Burgers always has a sad look on her face.
  • King Malbert from Igor.
  • Bad Bill from Rango.
  • Stan from South Park becomes clinically cynical on his 10th birthday, eventually repulsing his friends.
  • Mr Blossom of The Dreamstone is about the one resident of the Land Of Dreams with a hint of cynicism, so much he seems to hold the entire village's worth.
  • Bill Dauterive from King of the Hill, who fell from being a handsome star linebacker to being a fat, balding, divorced sad sack. In particular the Christmas episode "Pretty Pretty Dresses" where he's fixating on his divorce and spends the first half of the episode reminding everyone of their own failed relationships.
  • Shady from My Little Pony and Friends, not helped by the fact that she was apparently Born Unlucky.
  • Cranky Doodle Donkey from the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic episode "A Friend in Deed".
  • Fans have viewed Mr. Grumpy as this as well.
  • Karl Pilkington from The Ricky Gervais Show.


Real Life

  • There's sure to be an Eeyore amongst the more emotionally and philosophically adjusted people in the world.
  • Clinically depressed people are sometimes like this when they're riding the sliding scale of needing attention versus deserving that attention.
  1. ↑ the German word "Schwermut" means "gloom"
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