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The Bully

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"Every skool hav a resident buly who is fat and roll about the place clouting everybode."

—NigelMolesworth

TheSuper-Trope ofJerk Jock,Alpha Bitch, and other bully characters. This is theSchoolyard Bully All Grown Up in his heyday. The guy who gave you wedgies and tied you to a flag-pole. The girl who humiliated you in front of the entire school and broke your self-confidence on your first day in. InWestern Animation, it is required by law for the bully to refer to his victims bylast name only, because, well....you're not exactly their friend.

A bully is simply defined onwiktionary as "A person who is cruel to others, especially those who are weaker or have less power." This sums this character up in a nutshell. They will target anyone who is less popular than they are, those who are unable to fight back, oranyone who won't fight back. Comes in different flavours as listed below.

BecauseAdults Are Useless, frequently students have to take matters into their own hands to deal with these characters, leading to aBully Hunter. Alternatively, the bully may not get his comeuppance from his victims or their protectors, instead falling foul of a realVillain and having to berescued by the very people he used to torment. Can lead toa reformed bully,if the bully is willing to admit to it. Otherwise thestatus quo returns to normal despitepast events.

Particularly thick bullieswill often try picking on the (currently)pacifist superpowered or extremely strong kidwho simply isn't very sociable. This is calledBullying a Dragon, and italways ends badly, unless the dragon ends upsaving the bullies and thus shutting the bully right up.This doesn't always happen.

It should be noted that a lot of social stereotypes that are not necessarily true inReal Life are commonly associated with fictional bullies: the bully, as a stock evildoer, is typically aDirty Coward in the face of real danger, always dumb, and comes from anunhappy and problem ridden family background. (Real life will tell you that often the opposite of these is true.) Also, in real life,school bullying is not aRite of Passage. Lastly, while many movies and television shows portray bullies as being enormous in size and physical strength (probably so that we feel more sympathy for their victims), bullies in real life come in all shapes and sizes. So the giant football player who sits to your left in homeroom probably isn't much more likely to be a bully than the scrawny nerd that sits to your right. Also, this is a Trope that has changed in fiction asSociety Marches On; while bullies in older works usually received their comeuppance, it was oftennot at the hands of actual authority figures. In recent years, that has changed as actual recognition of the problem has grown.

Related character tropes

Related concepts

Examples of The Bully include:

Anime and Manga

  • The kids at the orphanage who torment a young Lucy inElfen Lied.It endsbadly.Verybadly.
  • Narutaru hasAki Honda and herGirl Posse, who torment the main character's friend in horrifying ways.When she snaps and releases herBond Creature, they die in evenmore horrifying ways.
  • Doi fromWandering Son, and Oka to a more mild extent.
  • Takeshi "Gian" Goda fromDoraemon is probably the most well-known bully character in Japanese anime society. His victims are every boy in his neighborhood, though he picks on Nobita the most.
  • InDaily Lives of High School Boys,Habara, known as theArchdemon, was the menace of all boys eight years before the current events. She neededtenBully Hunters to barely make a draw with her, which forced her intoretirement.
  • InSaint Beast, Kira acts as one to Rey, possibly because he always gets a reaction.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh:
    • In the original both Honda and Jonouchi acted this way towards Yugi. What finally made them stop is when they were antagonized by Ushio, a worse bully, and Yugi tried - very ineffectively - to defend them. Not coincidentally, this altercation happened right before Yugi completed the Millennium Puzzle, and Yami emerged for the first time, Ushio being the first target of his vindictive Shadow Duels. Also, Jonouchi admits he was trying to toughen Yugi up.
      • An older Ushio appeared in the later seriesYu-Gi-Oh! 5D's as an officer in Sector Security; he hadn't changed one bit.
    • And there werelots more jerks like this in the early manga, such as the upper classman Goro Inogashira from the infamous "Griddle Ice Hockey" story and theHollywood Tone Deaf singer Sozoji. There were plenty ofEvil Teachers too; Domino High does seems like a pretty terrible place to go to school back then when the stories are all grouped together...

Comic Books

  • Spider-Man:
    • Flash Thompson. (He mellowed later.) The Ultimate version of Flash is even worse. He has none of the depth as his mainstream counterpart. And takes far more pleasure in seeing Peter humiliated and picks on him for no reason.
    • Another example is Tombstone. He was one as a teenager, and only got worse as an adult, becoming a hitman by trade, where his tendency to bully people weaker than himself is still obvious.
  • Cruncher Kerr a character in Roger the Dodger which is a strip in the BritshAnthology ComicThe Beano.
  • TheRed Skull. Worse, he thinks thateveryone is a target.

Film

  • The unseen antagonists discussed inBully, the critically acclaimed 2012 documentary film that became a rare box office hit of the genre. The five subjects of the film – including those who had revealed themselves as homosexuals, or had Asperger's – were all severely tormented by bullies. (The alleged bullies were not interviewed for this film.)
  • Biff Tannen ofBack to The Future. Also aJerk Jock.
  • Conny ofLet the Right One In.
  • Bullies fight Goku in the movie version ofDragon Ball. AlsoBullying a Dragon.
  • Scut Farkus inA Christmas Story - with yellow eyes, so help me God!
  • Butch, in theThe Little Rascals shorts.
  • InKey Largo, there is a grown-up example. Rocco is this way to everyone, even to his ownmooks and alcoholic girlfriend Gaye.
  • Buddy Revell fromThree O'Clock High.
  • Vanessa ofThe Grudge, who doubles as theAlpha Bitch.
  • Napoleon Dynamite features a somewhat-odd bully who always starts out by offering to trade something to other kids in exchange for letting him have or use something of theirs that he wants. Whenever they refuse, he switches into full-on bully mode andmakes them comply.

Jokes

  • This one captures the essence of bullying, so to speak.

Fox: "Bear, I'm bored."
Bear: "Yeah, me too."
Fox: "I've got an idea! We beat up the hare!"
Bear: "Yeah, great idea!"
Fox: "But we can't beat him up for nothing, we need a reason... I've got it: If he wears a cap, we tell him 'You have a stupid cap', and if he has no cap, we tell him 'Why don't you wear a cap, you want to get a cold?'"
Bear: "Yeah, great idea!"
(They go, meet the hare, he has no cap, they beat him up. Continue next day:)
Fox: "Bear, I'm bored."
Bear: "Yeah, me too... can we beat up the hare again?"
Fox: "Yeah, but we need a reason... I've got it: We ask him fora cigarette. If he offers us one with filter, we tell him 'Don't you know the filter kills the taste?', and if he offers us one without, we tell him 'Do you want to poison us?'"
(They go, meet the hare.)
Fox: "Hey, do you have a cigarette for us?"
Hare: "With or without filter?"
Fox: "Bear, have you noticed he still doesn't wear a cap?"


Literature

  • Dudley and Malfoy ofHarry Potter.
    • To some extentJames was one.
    • Sirius, definitely, at least during his school days.
    • And on that note, Snape as a teacher definitely qualifies.
  • Edmund Pevensie, in the first book ofChronicles of Narnia, liked to bully and torment his younger sister, Lucy.
  • Bugs Meany ofEncyclopedia Brown.
  • The cyberpunk novelOtherland could be interpreted as something of aFantastic Aesop about bullying. The antagonists are all bullies of one sort or another; the most developed of whom,Corrupt Corporate Executive Felix Jongleur, describes a upbringing in aBoarding School of Horrors where he was the victim of the residentGang of Bullies. In revenge, he became a bully himself, meting out vicious summary punishment to anyone who dares offend him. His use of pain to control his subordinates comes full circle whenPsycho for Hire Dread pulls anEviler Than Thou on him and the Other, hisquasi-AI computer system, finally snaps under the constant torture and tries to kill him.
  • Ralon inthe Song of the Lioness enjoyed picking on and beating up Alanna and other smaller boys in his classes, even breaking Alanna's arm at one point while getting away with it. Of course, Alanna managed to put up a good fight andeventually beat him at his own game.
  • Sonny Singer and Heck Bast inThe Talisman.
  • Henry Bowers ofIT. Later becomes aSchoolyard Bully All Grown Up, and aComplete Monster to boot.
  • Officer Felix ofOutsourced is very much bullying of Isaac Fisher. His introduction to the reader is him absently aiming his gun at Isaac, before asking him some questions.
  • As seen in the page quote, NigelMolesworth is more than happy to share his "grate thorts" on the subject with his readers. He goes on to explain that bullies come in two varieties: fat bullies who can run, who are trouble, and fat bullies who "can't run for tofee", who may safely be taunted from a distance. SadlyGrabber ofst. custards is of the former type.
  • InRobert Westall'sThe Machine Gunners this role is filled by Boddser Brown, the Garmouth Grammar School bully and Chas McGill's most avid rival in the great game of collecting war souvenirs.
  • InSinfest,bullies come to harrass Crimney


Live Action TV

  • The brother onStrangers with Candy. To be fair, he bullies his sister, who at times can be something of a bully herself.
  • Harley Keiner ofBoy Meets World.
  • Whitney Fordman in the first season ofSmallville. Slowly gained someCharacter Development over the season, and when he left to join the army, he andClark had a grudging respect for each other, and he even asks Clark to keep Lana safe for him.Then he is pretty quickly revealed to have beenKIA.
  • Eddie McDowd
  • Sam oniCarly. Also Jocelyn from "iMake Sam Girlier".
  • Bulk and Skull from the early seasons ofPower Rangers, though asLinkara points out, they "weren't particularly good bullies since it was obvious any ONE of the rangers was capable ofkicking their asses."


Newspaper Comics

  • Moe ofCalvin and Hobbes. Watterson claimed he knew alot of kids like Moe from his own childhood, saying in a retrospective that "I think they spawn on gym room floors".

Theater

  • Cyrano De Bergerac: This play is not placed in High School, but uses - and even deconstructs this trope:
    • Played straight with De Guiche, who is aJerk Jock using his power to bully Roxane into beingThe Mistress and makes aDare to Be Badass to De Valvert to punish Cyrano.
    • Deconstructed with Cyrano: He is very cruel to others, (Montfleury, The Bore, De Guiche and everyone who Cyrano doesn’t like) subverted because De Guiche has a lot more power than Cyrano. Given his enormous nose and living in a shallow society that firmly believesBeauty Equals Goodness, he obviously has being bullied all his life… and now Cyrano is the mostBadass swashbuckler, a realOne-Man Army…who can bully everyone becausehe is the most powerful warrior there is. Lampshaded by Roxane at Act V scene II, after Le Bret comments Cyrano still is making new enemies:

Roxane: Ah! but his sword still holds them all in check;
None get the better of him.

  • InStreet Scene, Vincent Jones harasses Rose on the street. When Sam tries to intervene, Vincent calls him a "little kike bastard" and hits him, then protests that he has a weak heart. Rose tries to tell Sam that "he's nothing but a loafer... ten years from now, he'll still be driving a taxi," but Sam is in his usual despair.


Video Games

  • Bully has an entire social clique of bullies. They're the first clique that the main character has to fight and take over, ironically making them not a threat for most of the game.
  • Butch at the beginning ofFallout 3.
  • You meet bullies inFable 1 and 2and beat the crap out of them for the greater good.
  • Bobby Zilch ofPsychonauts. Not a very effective one though.
  • Spider fromThe Adventures of Willy Beamish. Want to make it past him unscathed?Give Him Your Inventory Item.
  • In Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the Dragonborn meets Braith in Whiterun, a bratty child who doesn't hesitate to mouth off to anyone, including you or her parents. She's also bullying Lars, a child younger than her. There's no option to let you give her a good spanking (something you'll want to do after a few interactions) but she'll back off Lars quickly (and admit she has a crush on him) if you threaten her on his behalf.

Web Comics


Web Original

  • Cardin Winchester (along with the rest of his team) in Volume 1 ofRWBY is an unmitigated ass toJaune,Velvet and anyone else they think they can get away with abusing. When Jaunetakes a level in badass, he appears to shock Cardin into better behavior, but it may just be that we don't see him bullying other targets once he moves out of the focus of the show.


Western Animation

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/The_Bully?oldid=2005725"
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