Wants a Prize For Basic Decency

I didn't Kick the Dog, so where's my cookie?

Buffy: What are you doing?
Spike: Making this woman more comfortable. I'm not sampling, I'll have you know. Just look at all these lovely blood-covered people. I could, but not a taste for Spike, not a lick. I knew you wouldn't like it.
Buffy: You want credit for not feeding on bleeding disaster victims?
Spike: Well, yeah.

—Buffy the Vampire Slayer

A character expects special extra kudos for behaving in a situation like a decent human being instead of a Jerkass, disregarding that basic humanity is expected of others by default, rather than something above-and-beyond, to be rewarded for. Also includes other people complimenting the first character's extra special moral behavior.

Can inspire Then Let Me Be Evil if the character is treated around as negatively as actual villains despite their good nature.

Compare It's All About Me, Entitled to Have You, and Pitying Perversion. Contrast Dude, Where's My Respect?, in which a character actually does heroic things but gets no positive acknowledgement for it. Also contrast strong cases of Crapsack World, where having a shred of humanity actually is to exceed any reasonable expectations.

Examples of Wants a Prize For Basic Decency include:

Literature

  • Invoked in The Picture of Dorian Gray, when Dorian realises that his painting is reflecting all the hedonism he's committed, and thinks that not picking up this country girl he comes across will improve it. The painting develops a smug grin of hypocrisy.
  • One Dave Barry column has this insight into the male mindset: being little more than toilet-trained cavemen, they will occasionally perform an act of great heroism like doing the laundry without being asked or making spaghetti without setting the house on fire, only to be confused when other people (read: women) don't consider this an accomplishment worthy of a Nobel Prize.
  • Edward Cullen from Twilight embodies this mindset. "I'm not killing every random human in my path, I deserve a cookie!", even though he's never lifted a finger to stop anyone else from eating people, or tried to save anyone in danger of getting eaten. Come to think of it, pretty much everyone in Twilight fits this mentality.

Live-Action TV

  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spike the erstwhile evil vampire tries to impress Buffy by helping people injured in a roof collapse, and especially wants credit for not drinking their blood.
  • In the Doctor Who episode "Boom Town", Blon Slitheen has a nice chat with a young pregnant woman about family instead of eating her. The Doctor doesn't fall for it.

Blon: I spared her life.
Doctor: You let one of them go, but that's nothing new. Every now and then, a little victim's spared... because she smiled, cos he's got freckles, cos they begged. And that's how you live with yourself, that's how you slaughter millions, because once in a while, on a whim, if the wind's in the right direction, you happen to be kind.

    • It's also worth mentioning that said villain's scheme would have ended up destroying the world, making her arguments even more hollow.
  • Played with on an episode of The X-Files. Agent Mulder says something along the lines of "If I had a peg leg, everyone would applaud me just for being alive, but because I'm normal, I'm expected to exceed."[please verify]

Newspaper Comics

  • One Baby Blues strip featured Zoey excitingly telling her mom that she just saw her brother Hammie bend over in front of her, and didn't kick him! The last panel has her complaining about how hard it is to get brownie points.

Recorded and Stand Up Comedy

Everything white people don't like about black people, black people really don't like about black people, and there's two sides, there's black people and there's niggas. [...] You know the worst thing about niggas? Niggas always want credit for some shit they supposed to do. A nigga will brag about some shit a normal man just does. A nigga will say some shit like, "I take care of my kids." You're supposed to, you dumb motherfucker! What kind of ignorant shit is that? "I ain't never been to jail!" What do you want, a cookie?! You're not supposed to go to jail, you low-expectation-having motherfucker!

Video Games

Shepard: Saving my boots from burning lava is part of your job, Joker. We don't give medals to soldiers for doing their jobs.

Web Comics

  • There was a Zogonia strip that went something like:

Kev: I can't believe you don't trust me! All those times when I was on guard duty, I could have slit your throat while you slept and taken all the treasure, but I didn't! And this is the thanks I get?
Domato: I was never really asleep.
Kev: Yeah, I know.

  • Belkar in Order of the Stick prequel, On The Origin Of PCs. He thinks he deserves a reward for the restraint he showed by not killing all the barmaids in a tavern brawl, and suggests that if humans don't want him to murder people, they should put up a sign saying "Thank you for not killing more than five of us".

Prison Guard: We don't want you to kill ANY of us!
Belkar: Now you're just being unreasonable!

Western Animation

Sokka: [Sarcastically] Oh, hurray! After a lifetime of evil, at least he didn't add animal cruelty to the list!
Toph: I'm just saying that considering his messed up family and how he was raised, he could have turned out a lot worse.
Katara: You're right, Toph. Let's go find him and give him a medal. The "Not-As-Much-Of-A-Jerk-As-You-Could-Have-Been Award"!

  • In X-Men: Evolution, after Lance saves an elderly lady (out of genuine decency) from a train wreck Wanda caused and the lady richly rewards the Brotherhood, the Brotherhood begins to do "good deeds"—but only for the reward and occasionally engineering the situations in the first place. When their reputation collapses and the rewards vanish, they go back to their typical Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain routine.
  • The Simpsons had a plot similar to that, where Homer and some of his friends become firefighters and get so many thank-you gifts that they come to expect it. They steal from Mr. Burns when he refuses to reward them, then just start robbing places as a matter of course.
    • Similar to the above, Homer once saved Mr Burns' life by allowing Bart to be a donor during a blood transfusion, only to send Burns an abusive letter when the only reward the family got was a thank you note.
  • On South Park, Cartman is freaking out around Christmastime about whether or not he's been "nice" enough to merit Santa's favor. He suggests that brushing his teeth counts as a "nice" action, only for his "naughty and nice accountant" to note that that doesn't really count.

Real Life

  • Feminist cookies, a term for a specific variant of this trope in which men parrot feminist talking points and come to the defense of other women being harassed specifically with the expectation of some reward in return (including the stereotypical motive of sexual gratification).
    • This also comes up with accusations of "white knighting", which is usually leveraged at such men speaking in defense of women, though per the rule of GIFT, it is just as often flung at any genuine display of basic decency.

Notes

  1. ↑ Chris Rock would later disown the routine after noticing that it was used as justification by people to continue being racist under the pretense of only targeting the "bad ones".
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