"Somebody call the circus... because they're missing a freak!"
Principal: Congratulations, Billy. You win most handicapped.
Handicapped Student: [with thick speech impediment] THIS IS BULLSHIT!
Handicapped Student: [with thick speech impediment] THIS IS BULLSHIT!
As Time Marches On and the media tries to insert more diversity into its casts of characters, more and more characters with disabilities or handicaps are being inserted into the cast. However, being disabled (both physically and mentally) in our current day and age is much like being black in the 19th Century or being gay in The '90s, with very little public awareness aside from people who actually understand it (e.g., having a family member or loved one who's neurodivergent or being a special education teacher).
Among the various stereotypes of disabled people, including being inspirational, woobie-like, jerky, geniuses, violent, supernatural, badass, and helpless, are when they are a certain type of type of Comedic Relief Characters you will often find handicapped or neurodivergent people, with their disability being the primary punchline. Sometimes, they could even manifest in being a Butt-Monkey. Now of course, this raises some Unfortunate Implications that a disabled person is nothing more than their disability or that they're incapable of ever being serious, despite a complex life of unique ups and downs. Before the Turn of the Millennium, most disabilities in fiction were physical, typically in the form of possessing a wheelchair or prosthetic limb, and in less common cases, deafness, blindness, or dwarfism. Then when mental disability came more into the picture, it typically manifested in the form of Hollywood Autism, Hollywood Tourette's, "L" Is for "Dyslexia", multiple personality disorder, or a Fictional Disability or even a vague, implied disorder that is only Diagnosed by the Audience.note
Common examples of gags include deaf characters using an Ear Trumpet, blind characters bumping into things or being misguided, puns on the word "Aspergers" as "Ass Burgers", characters with Down syndrome being unaware of their strength in a similar light as Lennie Smalls from Of Mice and Men, autistic characters being a Manchild or Kiddie Kid, characters with learning disabilities being Book Dumb, little people being portrayed as goofy, etc. A common archetype for mentally disabled characters back then was to be drawn physically disfigured with a helmet on their heads and speak in Hulk Speak or a similar type of dialect.
This trope is slowly on its way to becoming a Discredited Trope. The '90s and especially the 2000s, particularly during the rise of "anti-PC" and shock comedy, could be considered when comedic portrayals of the disabled community rose, especially at their expense. While these portrayals still exist in media today, there has been some change, with a few more positive and nuanced representations now available. Nowadays, directly poking a stick at a disabled person, implying they are less valuable as humans, or outright using the word "retard" is bound to raise more eyebrows than it would've 20 or 30 years ago, with this form of comedy is now considered a form of Black Comedy, something that Crosses the Line Twice at best and an odd number of times at worst.
Keep in mind, not all of these examples are of obvious disabilities or ones a person is born with. After all, more than one in five adults have an illness of some sort. This can manifest in disabilities developed later in life such as an eating disorder, addiction, personality disorder, mood disorder, dementia, amnesia, and even physical health conditions such as diabetes or morbid obesity.
In Real Life, many disabled people tend to joke about their disability from time to time, sometimes in a Self-Deprecation kind of light, though this tends to be in a similar vein as N-Word Privileges in which some firmly believe that only disabled people can joke about themselves and each other, unless others are granted special permission (such as, again, being the family member, friend, caretaker, doctor, or provider of one with a specific disability).
Compare Flat Character. Super-Trope to Hollywood Tourette's, Wheelchair Antics, Blind Without 'Em, Blind Mistake, and False Teeth Tomfoolery. Forgot the Disability. Disabled Means Helpless can be used in this regard. May or may not overlap with Bullying the Disabled, depending on the context.
No Real Life Examples, Please!
Examples:
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Comic Books
- Brand New Day: Issue 575 opens with Spider-Man coming to the rescue of Greta, a mentally disabled homeless woman who decides to take a genetically modified rat as her "pet chihuahua". The two swing through the skies of New York as Spider-Man both try to evade the supervillains chasing them and struggle not to throw up after picking up on Greta's rancid breath. After the two are safe, Greta plants a wet kiss on the hero's nose and happily walks away while thanking "Bug-Man" for saving her, innocently ignoring Spidey as he throws up behind her.
- Monica's Gang, since the comic originated in the 60's, it was originally a Black Comedy Sadist Show in which most of the characters were butt monkeys in some way, including the disabled ones:
- Doreen is a blind girl. Although most of her stories tend to be inspirational, several others have jokes at the expense of her disability, often by having a character forget about her blindness and innocently ask her "Have you seen that?", or her guide dog Radar putting her through hell while trying to protect her.
- Hummer's sole trait is being incapable of saying anything except for "hum". The humour in his stories usually comes from others thinking he is trying to say something completely different from what he is actually thinking, often causing the problem they are currently facing to escalate.
- Luca is bound to a wheelchair and in his first appearances was constantly the target of slapstick, usually at the hands of Monica, who has an unhealthy crush on him and does everything for impress him, with disastrous results. There was also a comic in which he has his chair stolen by Maggy's cat Vanilla and has to retrieve it, with both parties not hesitating to hurt one another to get their way. Now that's disability gag AND Black Comedy Animal Cruelty.
- Plop!: One of the cartoons in the ninth issue has a doctor remark to a patient with two peg legs that they can safely rule out athlete's foot.
- Tintin: Prof. Calculus is hard of hearing, and so a Running Gag is him asking people to repeat what they said or mishearing things.
Films — Animated
- How to Train Your Dragon (2010): Gobber has one leg and one arm torn off by dragons, which is often played for laughs — he mentions that his left socks get stolen not realising he only has one leg and he uses various different tools as "hands" on his missing arm.
- Luca: Giulia's father has only one arm. When asked why, he claims his arm was ripped off, then explains he was kidding and was actually born with the missing arm.
Films — Live-Action
- Amélie: Lucien, the young man working for the grocer Collignon. While Lucien is not very bright and is very subtly shown to have only one arm, Collignon constantly bullies him, and calls him insulting names, implying he is mentally disabled. Wanting to make Lucien's world nicer, Amélie takes revenge on Collignon for this.
- Mr. Magoo (1997) with Leslie Nielsen played the character's nearsightedness for so many laughs that Disney felt the need to add a disclaimer that the character wasn't meant to be an accurate portrayal of visual impairment.
- Mean Girls: One of the background students at the high school seen throughout the movie is a girl in a wheelchair. Her only role in the film is during the trust-fall scene, where she is seen falling into the other girls' arms while crushing them with her wheelchair.
- One minor character in Not Another Teen Movie is a cheerleader with Hollywood Tourette's named Sandy Sue, who humorously bursts into cussing in the middle of her chants. She first does this while auditioning for the cheer team, immediately apologizing afterwards. Later, she does this at an actual football game, with the whole crowd pausing for a second and then repeating the exact phrase.
Sandy Sue: Give me an H! Give me a U! Give me a GIANT PUSSY FUCKER ASS LICKING COCK SHIT!
- Vacation: One scene features the Griswald family stopping at a college sorority party which is said to be a fundraiser for "Ass-burgers Awareness".
Live-Action TV
- The Brittas Empire: Boilerman Barnes in "Opening Day" is a veteran of the Korean War who was brain damaged by shrapnel. The main comedy of his character is how his brain injury has made him incapable of being an actual stoker, being so convinced that he's still in the war that he will stare blankly ahead in confusion when given a command unless told that it's for the duty of the war and who will constantly stoke the heater even when the room is clearly full of water.
- Everything's Gonna Be Okay was originally intended to subvert this, with "normal" Nicholas being the childish, irresponsible comic relief compared to his autistic half-sister Matilda. This plan went slightly awry, as creator and co-lead Josh Thomas (who plays Nicholas) realized that he was on the autism spectrum, too, and so season 2 moves the comic relief role to Suze and Tobe, the quirky parents of Matilda's girlfriend (played by Maria Bamford and Richard Kind), with comedy being derived from the fact that their autistic daughter Drea is the most level-headed character in the cast.
- Mr. Bean: In the "Bus Stop" sketch, Mr Bean is determined to be at the front of the queue for a bus. First, Mr Bean shortens a blind man's extending white stick, and when the man tries to use it he stumbles around. When the man takes Mr Bean's position at the front of the queue, Mr Bean walks along the road and imitates the sound of a bus approaching and the door opening, causing the blind man to walk straight into the road, in front of an actual bus. Another passenger grabs him.
- The BBC sitcom series You Might Regret This centres on a tetraplegic artist/model called Freya, and her attempts to be taken seriously both as a creative artist and as an equal in her romantic relationships. Her frustrations with people who cannot see past the disability are portrayed with sympathy and humor.
Poetry
- In a poem about people who are very miserable about having to wait a long time for a train at Lime Street station, Liverpool, they are entertained by the "Mongol child,"note who wanders around smiling and laughing at the waiting passengers, making everybody happier.
Puppet Shows
- Crank Yankers: Special Ed is a mentally handicapped teenage boy who speaks in Hulk Speak and has the mind of a two-year-old. His archetype, which was comedic at the time of the show first airing, is now seen as ableist, which is probably the reason he is absent in the Revival.
Web Animation
- Happy Tree Friends:
- The Mole's blindness commonly leads to the accidental death of himself or the other animals.
- Handy's arms have been amputated. His humour comes from him both somehow performing impressive feats off-screen (such as single-handedly building a treehouse) and being unable to perform even the most basic tasks onscreen (such as opening a door).
- Homestar Runner; In the SB Email "crying", Strong Bad claims that he can make any character cry, but mostly Homestar, by showing them a drawing of a one-legged pup called "Lil Brudder". Furthermore, he makes them cry even more by making Lil Brudder say "I can make it on my own" or any inspirational line. He couples that with a drawing of a two-legged elephant named Tenderfoot.
- Zero Punctuation: Yahtzee frequently used the word "retard" for laughs until the late 2010s, where even he realised that the slur had fallen out of favor. For example, one episode had him compare the level of Artificial Stupidity in one game to "a bucket of retarded pies".
Web Video
- Retarded Policeman revolves around this, with most of the humor revolving around Officer Ponce's erratic behavior stemming from an exaggerated mental disability. Falls squarely into N-Word Privileges, as the show is co-written by lead actor Josh "Ponceman" Perry, who has Down Syndrome.
- SuperMarioLogan: One of the main characters, Jeffy, was first introduced in 2016 by being dropped off on Mario's porch. He is a walking stereotype of a mentally disabled person, having a helmet on his head, a pencil in his nose, crossed eyes, a unibrow, a diaper on the outside of his pants, and behaving like an idiotic 2-year-old. However, his character would start to slowly shift away from being a mentally disabled teenager, into a completely reckless, crazy monster who is a menace to society, and would no longer be portrayed as unintelligent or slow.
- The official TikTok account for the Paralympic Games sparked a controversy on the platform in the mid-2020s due to posting content that was perceived as ableist. The content in question being several clips of the athletes with goofy meme music and sound effects playing over the clips, which was not once done on any of the clips from the Olympic Games. This led to the Unfortunate Implications that the Paralympics is perceived as a joke, and that the handicapped athletes are somehow less valuable than the able-bodied ones. Needless to say, the TikTok manager was called out for it.
Western Animation
- American Dad!:
- In "Stan & Frannie & Connie & Ted", Roger goes blind after staring into a solar eclipse. His disability has a much bigger effect on his mental state, as he becomes unable to do things that he wouldn't even need his eyesight for, such as identifying the Smiths from voice alone. Later in the episode, Klaus tricks him into believing his other senses were enhanced as a result of the blindness, so Roger decides to become a vigilante. He turns off the lights in a drug house and apparently beats up everyone inside... but then the lights turn back on and it's revealed the only thing he has accomplished was to somehow cut his own belly open.
- In "Shallow Vows", Francine becomes hideous after giving up on her strict diet and exercise routine. Unable to look at her, Stan agrees to have his own retinae removed, becoming completely blind. During their vow renewal ceremony, Francine abandons Stan at the altar, and the attendees leave without bothering to tell him what's happened. He remains there for hours until Roger finally takes note of his absence and goes back to retrieve him.
- Played with in "Tearjerker". The titular antagonist produces a film called "Oscar Gold", which is about, in his own words, a "Jewish, mentally retarded, alcoholic boy with a dead puppy" during World War II. In-universe, the picture is considered so sad it can literally cause the viewer to cry to death. Out of universe, it's a deliberately offensive skit that derives its humour from crossing as many lines as it can.
- In "Seasons Beatings", Stan and Hayley are running from an Angry Guard Dog before Stan eventually shoots it. However, a blind man suddenly walks by calling out for his service dog, and both Smiths stay quiet. He knows there's people there because he can hear breathing but walks away nonetheless and gets injured as a result.
- Subverted with Barry, a mentally handicapped teenager whose low intellect is the punchline of many jokes. His disability is the result of the drugs he takes, which dampen his psychopathic impulses to make him dim-witted and docile. As soon as the meds stop working and his dark side manifests, all the comic relief revolving around him is thrown out of the window and he becomes The Dreaded.
- "Introducing The Naughty Stewardesses" has Steve get with a girl who was pregnant from her ex-boyfriend. He goes to meet her parents, unaware that she was trying to baby-trap him by lying to her parents that Steve is the father. Her father is in a wheelchair and upstairs, and threatens to kick Steve's ass once he gets down the stairs... via a stair lift chair. Cue an Overly Long Gag of Steve and his girlfriend waiting for her father to descend to the first floor.
Steve: Oh God! It's all happening so slowly!
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Toph's blindness leads to many humorous moments throughout the series, sometimes from herself. It helps that she has a Disability Superpower that eventually lets her "see", though she still can't read.
- In "The Serpent's Pass", Suki saves Toph from drowning, and the latter plants a kiss on the former's cheek due to mistaking her for Sokka. After Suki speaks, Toph is mortified and sarcastically requests to be let go so she can drown.
- When looking for a legendary lost library, Toph yells "there it is!", then clarifies that's what it'll sound like once they find it, and waves her hand in front of her eyes for good measure.
- When putting up wanted posters for Appa, Toph takes offense at not being allowed to come along, puts up a poster and glues it... back-to-front.
- Being Ian:
- "Dummy Up'' featured a scene Ian making fun of freaky kid who has an arm growing out of his head and five fingers (in comparison to the shows Four Fingered Hand designs) via stand-up comedy with his ventriloquist dummy. The kid didn't mind the joke however and laughed along.
- "Animal House" has Ian open up an animal shelter in his home for disabled animals, inspired by his dog with three legs. Most of these animals have fictional disabilities and are Played for Laughs, including a cross-eyed cat, a stuttering parrot, an ostrich who behaves like a monkey, and a dog with A Head at Each End. His mother becomes too attached to the animals, who are driving the Kelley men crazy, so they end up abandoning them on an island in the end.
- Bob's Burgers:
- In the pilot episode, an autism joke is made, as Louise and Gene play a game where they test Tina for autism by dropping toothpicks on the floor and having her count them. When there are three, she guesses 100, and when there are four, she guesses three. However, the show never went anywhere near this type of humor again.
- Pocket-Sized Rudy is a minor character and a Pint-Sized Kid who is mostly used for short jokes. It's implied that he's a little person, as he is so small he can't be seen on screen and thus is presumably smaller than toddler characters despite being in grade school. Some jokes at his expense include him being so small that other people don't hear him sneaking up on them, his lunchbox getting stolen by two bullies who then play monkey in the middle with it, and him switching lockers with Tina only to result in having to use a top locker which he cannot reach.
- Brickleberry: A one-off joke features a boy named Billy with a broken leg being awarded "most handicapped" by his principal, followed by a physically and mentally handicapped character expressing his frustration at losing to someone who's not even disabled in the first place.
- Clone High: The Special Ed students are relegated to a joke building surrounded by a moat to keep them away from everyone.
- Drawn Together: For a show that is known to be an equal opportunity offender, their portrayal of individuals with disabilities was definitely one of the most extreme examples. In particular, Clara's mentally handicapped cousin Bleh, who wears a football helmet, is prone to making unusual noises when excited, exhibits traits of cerebral palsy, shows an uncanny ability to count cards, and, if that's not blatant enough, her dialogue is almost entirely snippets of critical reviews of i am sam.
- Family Guy:
- Joe, a paraplegic recurring character, has been flanderized in later seasons by making all of his jokes being about how his legs don't work or how he's in a wheelchair, with the prominent use of "cripple". For example, in one episode, when Peter bans handicapped people from his restaurant, Joe and his friends form a "Cripple-Tron", which is all of them combining to form a giant robot made out of handicapped people.
- Peter is diagnosed with "mental retardation" in the episode "Petarded". The jokes play up Peter's disability by having him suddenly become unable to perform basic daily actions, such as eating from a soup bowl without drowning.
- Occurs In-Universe during a scene featuring domestic violence between a married dwarf couple, complete with goofy music playing and a puppet getting knocked with a mallet. Joe intervenes in the dispute with Peter and Quagmire watching in the back, laughing at how hilarious the situation is while Joe is urging them that it's just as serious as it is with normal-sized people.
- Seamus Levine is a background joke character with wooden pegs for arms and legs, and all of his screentime is related to jokes about his physical handicap.
- Subverted in-universe in "FOXy Lady", when Peter decides to create "Handiquacks", an animated sitcom starring a group of paraplegic ducks. During the brainstorming process, Peter comes up with ridiculous ideas that completely disregard the show's premise. As Meg points out, none of the jokes he proposes even reference how the protagonists are ducks or handicapped.
- Opie is Peter's mentally challenged co-worker. Despite only being able to speak gibberish and being considered a burden of the State, he is ironically one of Pawtucket Brewery's most competent workers, winning "Employee of the Month" several times.
- The bread and butter of John Callahan's Quads!, with there being many jokes in the series that poke fun of the disabilities of the four main characters. Often, the jokes come from the disabled characters themselves.
- The Loud House: Lynn's friend Paula is a girl with a broken leg and crutch who is on Lynn's sports teams such as basketball. Despite her injury, she's still allowed to play on the teams. This leads to a lot of slapstick humor involving her getting injured or using her crutch as an advantage in games, the latter of which would actually be considered cheating in real life.
- In the original French version of Miraculous Ladybug, there is a Running Gag that Juleka Couffeine's speech impediment prevents the audience from hearing what she says, even as characters in-universe seem to understand her perfectly. This was not initially carried over to the English dub, likely because American audiences wouldn't find that funny, but the speech impediment was added to her character in later seasons of the dub, where her issues communicating with others started being treated more seriously.
- Mr. Magoo: This is a character whose entire schtick is being unable to see past the end of his nose, mistaking one thing for another, completely oblivious to the world around him. In his first cartoons, he was stubborn and cantankerous, a satire on conservative old men out of touch with the changing times; but over time the rough edges were sanded off, leaving only his nearsightedness.
- The Simpsons: Ralph Wiggum is a Cloud Cuckoolander who is Too Dumb to Live to the point where it's implied he has special needs. That being said, he is mostly a gag character used for punchlines, such as by peeing his pants, repeatedly picking up the same Easter egg thinking he found a new one, or struggling to learn preschool-level phonics. The exceptions where he is more developed as a character are episodes focused on him, such as when he had a crush on Lisa or ran for U.S. President.
- South Park:
- Subverted for the most part; the show features disabled characters such as Timmy, Jimmy, and Nurse Gollum, who are portrayed no differently than any other characters. The analogy behind their inclusion is that they are treated no differently than other people—having their funny moments and perks as well as being flawed human beings. Most of the disabled humor on the show is In-Universe and comes from Cartman, with everyone else finding the humor offensive rather than funny.
- Early episodes had one-off gag news reporters named "quadriplegic Swiss man on a pony", and "midget wearing a bikini", with the former being a limbless man in a Swiss outfit attached to a pony, and the latter being a male little person with facial and body hair wearing a pink bikini.
- At the beginning of "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig", When bus driver Ms. Crabtree won't let Kyle take his pet elephant on the bus, she asks "What the hell is THAT thing?!". Kyle replies that the elephant is the "new retarded kid", to which Ms. Crabtree replies that "she" has to take the special ed bus.
- Played with for Nathan and Mimsy, Jimmy and Timmy's rivals with the former having Down syndrome and the latter just being slow. Their designs and personalities are based on Rocky and Mugsy from Looney Tunes, and they are constantly trying to kill Jimmy or at least thwart his plans/make him look bad. Much of their jokes come from their intellectual disabilities, and they are structured in a way that Nathan is the leader and Mimsy is his bumbling sidekick, though every now and then it's subtly hinted that Mimsy is actually more intelligent than Nathan.
- Done In-Universe with Scott Malkinson, with a Running Gag being the other characters (including his own father) mocking him for his lisp and diabetes. Lampshaded in a later episode where a new student, a diabetic girl Sophie, moves to South Park and Scott falls in love with her solely because of her diabetes and nothing else. They both have a heart-to-heart conversation where Sophie explains to Scott that she is more than just her diabetes, to which Scott somberly replies he isn't.
- In "Freak Strike", The Maury Show is depicted as capitalizing off of "freaks" with humorous fictional deformities, such as a man with a foot on his head, a girl with no midsection, a man shaped like a hammer, and an incredibly black obese man. The boys send Butters on there by pretending he has a scrotum for a chin.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: Old Superhero Mermaid Man's Scatterbrained Senior tendencies are Played for Laughs, despite the fact that he is suffering from memory loss, which is very Serious Business in Real Life.
