Some characters are well-rounded. Some are flat. Some rarely ever appear in works except to be picked apart and made fun of.
This is a list of characters frequently used for comedy.
Tropes:
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- Abhorrent Admirer: Someone who has a repulsive crush on another.
- Absent-Minded Professor: Scientist who is lost in thought and out of touch with reality.
- Accidental Athlete: Someone exhibiting athletic qualities unintentionally.
- Acquainted with Emergency Services: Emergency services are on certain terms with you.
- Adam Westing: An actor plays a parody of themselves.
- Adolf Hitlarious: Adolf Hitler and Those Wacky Nazis, Played for Laughs.
- The Ahnold: Affectionate parodies of 80s action stars.
- Allegedly Dateless: Lots of Love Interests, complains about being dateless.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Parents who embarrass their children.
- Amusing Alien: Extraterrestrials who are funny.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: A character's younger sibling is a pain in the ass.
- Anti-Climactic Parent: A variant of The Reveal in which a character spends the episode getting the cast in an uproar about a parental visit.
- Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better: Character who is on your tail whenever you make a statement, prepared to respond with something they've done twice as better.
- Bad Liar: Someone who is terrible at telling lies.
- Basement Dweller: A nerdy Manchild who is unemployed and still lives with their parents.
- Beary Funny: Jolly, friendly, rambunctious bears.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Character who acts silly but is also quite dangerous.
- Big Eater: Character consumes an abundance of food.
- Blind Without 'Em: Character gets blind without their glasses.
- Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Stupid and straight comedy.
- Boogie Knights: Dancing while wearing knightly armor.
- Boomerang Bigot: Character hates one of their own kind.
- Born Unlucky: Bad things happen to this character on a daily basis.
- Brainless Beauty: Unintelligent person is notably attractive.
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Teenage girls in fiction are angsty and argumentative.
- Bumbling Dad: Fathers in fiction are slow on the uptake.
- Bumbling Henchmen Duo: The villain has a pair of dumb sidekicks.
- Bumbling Sidekick: The villain's sidekick is stupid.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: A cloudcuckoolander who performs their job competently.
- Butt Biter: Animal bites a character's butt.
- Butter Face: A female or male with an attractive body but an ugly face.
- Butt-Monkey: Does anything ever go right for this character?
- Cannot Convey Sarcasm: A character who tries and fails to be snarky.
- Cannot Keep a Secret: A gossipy person who really can't be trusted to keep their big mouths shut about anything confidential.
- Cannot Tell a Joke: Someone who tells really lame and unfunny jokes.
- The Casanova: A perverted womanizer who is constantly seeking out new sexual partners.
- Casanova Wannabe: A would-be womanizer who thinks they're great with the ladies, but are anything but.
- Cheerful A.I.: Artificial Intelligence that is friendly to a comedic effect.
- Class Clown: That one student in the classroom who enjoys goofing off and joking around.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: A girl who is insanely possessive of a certain guy.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Character who is incredibly insane.
- Comedic Hero: A goofy heroic character.
- Comedic Sociopath: An extreme Jerkass whose frequent abuse of other people is played for humor.
- Comically Invincible Hero: Invincible Hero Played for Laughs.
- The Comically Serious: A rational character is brought into goofy situations to their discomfort.
- Cordon Bleugh Chef: Good at cooking, but often makes disgusting experiments.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: A guy who is insanely possessive of a certain girl.
- Cuckoosnarker: An eccentric character delivers sarcasm.
- Cute, but Cacophonic: A cute character with an obnoxious vocal delivery.
- Date Peepers: Couple tries to make their date low-key when it is anything but.
- Deadpan Snarker: Character who responds to eccentricity with sarcasm.
- Demoted to Comic Relief: When a character becomes downgraded to a more minor role as comic relief.
- Depraved Dentist: A dentist who is evil.
- Dirty Coward: Character who selfishly flees at the first sight of danger, often leaving the others doomed.
- Dirty Old Man: An old geezer who is rather perverted.
- Dirty Old Woman: The Distaff Counterpart of the above.
- Disguised in Drag: When men decide to crossdress like women, it's often used as a joke.
- The Ditz: This character is so incredibly stupid and nonfunctional it's amazing how they're able to look after themselves.
- Ditzy Secretary: A bumbling secretary not competent enough for their job.
- Doctor Whomage
- Dodgy Toupee
- Donut Mess with a Cop: Police officers love doughnuts.
- Doofy Dodo: Dodos are stupid and/or silly.
- Dumbass Teenage Son: Teenage boys in fiction are rarely ever intelligent.
- Dumb Blonde: Blonde-haired people are idiots.
- Dumb Jock: Athletes are idiots.
- Dumb Muscle: Strong characters whose muscle mass can only make up for their lack of brains.
- Elvish Presley
- Equal-Opportunity Offender: Character loves insulting people, no specific preference.
- The Family for the Whole Family: Comedically incompetent thugs and gangsters.
- Fantastic Anthropologist
- Fat Comic Relief: Overweight characters are used for comedic effect.
- Fat Idiot: Fat characters in fiction are rarely ever intelligent.
- Fat Slob: Fat characters are lazy, slovenly, and unpleasant.
- The Fool: An idiot who is so irritatingly lucky it's amazing karma hasn't hit them.
- The Freelance Shame Squad: Something embarrassing happens and the rest of the characters laugh at it.
- Frisky Ferret: Energetic and ditzy ferrets.
- From the Mouths of Babes: Malice comes from innocent children's mouths.
- Funny Foreigner: A foreign character and their cultural differences are played for comedy.
- Funny Robot: A robot that is funny.
- Gasshole: Someone who has the tendency to burp and/or fart.
- Genki Girl: A female character who is incredibly hyperactive.
- Girlfriend in Canada: Character falsely claims to have a distant partner.
- Girl Scouts Are Evil: Girl scouts are portrayed as spiteful.
- Goldfish Poop Gang: Incredibly persistent recurring antagonists who never pose any real threat.
- Gonk: A character who is very ridiculously ugly.
- Good Angel, Bad Angel: A character's conscience takes the separate forms of an angel and a devil.
- Grumpy Old Man: A senior man with temperamental issues.
- Half-Witted Hillbilly: A person from the country is amusingly backwards or dumb.
- Ham and Deadpan Duo: A Large Ham is paired with a Deadpan Snarker.
- Harmless Villain: A villain who poses no actual danger.
- Heroic Comedic Sociopath: An otherwise amoral character fighting for a good cause, whose more sinister deeds are usually played for laughs.
- Historical Hilarity: Dead famous people are funny.
- Humorous Hyena: Funny hyenas, often with the tendency to laugh a lot.
- Idiot Hero: A heroic character who is a complete moron.
- I'm Mr. [Future Pop Culture Reference]: Time traveler uses the name of a present-day fictional character or popular figure as an alias.
- Immune to Drugs: Someone has a rejective reaction to drugs.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: A villain who fails so often you feel sorry for them.
- Inspector Oblivious
- Insufferable Imbecile: Someone who's both mean and stupid.
- Iron Butt-Monkey: A character illogically maintains the ability to withstand all sorts of extreme physical abuse.
- Jackass Genie: A genie (or another magical being) grants someone's wish, but maliciously twists it into the worst interpretation possible, leading to humorous trouble for the wisher.
- Jive Turkey: A character speaks in supposedly funny slang.
- Kavorka Man: A homely womanizer who's quite successful at getting laid, despite lacking The Casanova's good looks.
- Keet: A hyperactive male character.
- Kent Brockman News: A Show Within a Show parodies news reports.
- Kiddie Kid: A child character behaves younger than their stated age.
- Kung-Fu Jesus: Jesus is reimagined as a badass.
- Large Ham: A character who's utterly rambunctious and prone to exaggerating everything they say or do.
- Laughably Evil: The villain's antics are hilarious to watch.
- Lethal Chef: Someone who's terrible at cooking. Eat whatever "food" they serve at your own risk.
- Lethally Stupid: Someone who's so dumb that they're a threat to everyone else around them.
- Lilliputian Warriors: Lilliputians who are violent.
- Literal Genie: A genie (or another magical being) who doesn't understand the true meaning of someone's wish, decides to grant it by the most literal interpretation possible, thus resulting in humorous trouble for the wisher.
- Literal-Minded: Someone literally interprets figurative or metaphorical speech.
- Little Girls Kick Shins: A little girl who kicks bigger people in their chins.
- Little Jimmy: A young character whose only distinguishable trait is their lack of understanding of the subject at hand.
- Lovable Coward: A cowardly character whom one still wants to root for.
- Mall Santa: A man dressed up in a Santa Claus suit at a shopping mall.
- Manchild: An immature adult who behaves like a kid.
- Man in a Bikini: A man wears a bikini for comedic effect.
- Mischief-Making Monkey: Monkeys like to play pranks and mess with others.
- Mister Seahorse: A man gets pregnant.
- Moose Are Idiots: These goofy-looking deer are often portrayed as rather unintelligent.
- Naked People Are Funny: Nudity is played for laughs.
- Naked People Trapped Outside: Nude people are embarrassingly stuck outside.
- Nerd Nanny: Non-nerd girl who puts up with nerd guys.
- The Nicknamer: Character comes up with nicknames for characters they frequently encounter but never directly interact with.
- Number Two for Brains: The second-in-command of the bad guys is a laughable numbskull.
- Nuns Are Funny: Nuns are portrayed according to Rule of Funny.
- Odd Couple: A couple whose traits are incompatible.
- Only Sane Man: The only rational person in a setting full of crazy and/or stupid people.
- Overreacting Airport Security: Airport security resort to excessive methods to screen their passengers.
- Packed Hero: A hero mistakenly gets trapped inside a package.
- Panicky Expectant Father: A man panics while his wife is in labor with their child.
- Pet Heir: Deceased relative leaves fortune to their pet.
- Plucky Comic Relief: A character whose main purpose is to be funny, particularly in stories which are not (completely) comedic.
- Powerful, but Incompetent: A character that has great power or ability, but is too dumb to actually accomplish anything with it.
- The Prankster: Someone who plays practical jokes on others for their own amusement.
- Pretty Fly for a White Guy: A white character who's fond of African-American culture, often taken to stereotypically cringe-worthy extremes.
- Psychopathic Manchild: An evil Manchild whose extreme immaturity can make them humorous.
- Queer People Are Funny: Stereotypical gay guys who are portrayed as comic relief.
- Quirky Doctor: A doctor who is weird in a comedic way.
- Replacement Flat Character: A Flat Character becomes well rounded, so another flat character is added to the cast.
- Rubber Face: Stretching another character's face.
- Sarcasm-Blind: A character who is oblivious to sarcastic remarks.
- Sassy Black Woman: A black lady who is very snarky.
- Sassy Secretary: A secretary who snarks at her coworkers.
- Silly Sovereign: A royal who behaves in a silly manner.
- Spanner in the Works: An idiotic character accidentally ruins a plan.
- Stoners Are Funny: Cannabis smokers (and other psychoactive drug users) are eccentric weirdos.
- Straight Man: The mature character who is paired up with a not-so-mature character.
- Straight Man and Wise Guy: A duo consisting of a Straight Man and Plucky Comic Relief.
- Stupid Crooks: Idiot felons who can't even commit crimes properly.
- Sue Donym: A fake alias that's very similar to the character's real name.
- Super Zeroes: Incredibly lame superheroes.
- Territorial Comic Relief: An established comic relief character tries to resist a newcomer.
- Too Dumb to Live: Someone gets themself in deep trouble due to their extreme obliviousness to danger.
- Troublemaking New Pet: New pet is up to no good, blames the older for their own actions.
- Troublesome Pet: The pet's penchant for destruction and/or mischief are usually played as a source of comedy.
- Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: A married couple consisting of an ugly husband and attractive wife.
- Uncle Tomfoolery: A goofy black guy who is incompetent and portrays a few negative stereotypical traits for comedic purposes.
- Unintentionally Karmic: Their accidental torment of bad guys and Jerkasses are satisfying and comedic.
- Unsatisfiable Customer: A picky customer.
- Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: A comedy protagonist who's a complete jerk, but is rooted for anyways because of their amusing personality.
- Vile Villain, Laughable Lackey: One or more bad-guy underlings are Played for Laughs, albeit with superiors who aren't.
- White Bread and Black Brotha: An Odd Couple consisting of a straight-laced white guy and a streetwise black guy.
- White Dude, Black Dude: Jokes about the differences between white and black people.
- Yes-Man: The obedience to shenanigans or villainous plots.