"...it wouldn't feel right poundin' a four-eyed runt in a wheelchair."
— Muggshot:, Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves
Generally speaking, people consider hurting those who are weaker than you to be abhorrent, with hurting disabled people being an extension of this idea. Even people who are willing to use violence might refuse to or at least be reluctant to harm disabled people. Said reasoning is usually because hurting disabled people is seen as cowardly because it's essentially hurting someone who (usually) can't fight back.
Common examples of characters who have this standard include good people who are uncomfortable with harming the disabled, bullies who draw the line at hurting disabled people, and evil characters who consider hurting disabled people too evil for their tastes. Said disabled people are often relieved when others hold to this standard, with some being all too happy to exploit it, and some non-disabled people will even fake being disabled to manipulate people who hold this standard. However, there are some cases where disabled people consider it insulting for one reason or another, such as a disabled fighter who feels their opponent's reluctance to harm them is patronizing.
This standard typically only applies to physically disabled people. When it comes to the cognitively disabled, this standard might manifest itself by having someone refuse to insult or take advantage of someone with a mental impairment.
Compare Wouldn't Hit a Girl and Wouldn't Hurt a Child. See also Disability Immunity and Organ Dodge. Closely related to Never Hurt an Innocent and Would Not Shoot a Civilian. Contrast Bullying the Disabled. Also contrast Bury Your Disabled and You Wouldn't Hit a Guy with Glasses. Sometimes a subtrope of Politically Correct Villain.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable: Yuya Fungami, while in the hospital due to a motorcycle accident, attempts to exploit this trope against Josuke. While in the hospital, Yuya used his Stand, Highway Star to suck the nutrients out of people to heal himself faster. After Josuke punches him, Yuya and his girlfriends call Josuke a bully for harming an injured person, which Josuke agrees with. Josuke then uses his Stand, Crazy Diamond, to completely heal Yuya, reasoning that healing Yuya then beating the crap out of him wouldn't be bullying.
- One Piece: Played with when Luffy briefly fights Admiral Fujitora, who is blind. While he's still willing to fight him, Luffy lets Fujitora know exactly what attacks he plans on using and where he'll hit out of pity, which pisses Fujitora off.
Comic Books
- Batman: The Joker goes both ways on this. Over the course of his career, his bombings, poisonings, and other killing sprees have surely included handicapped/disabled people among the victims. However, it's established that he won't specifically target handicapped or disabled people, as there's simply nothing funny about taking advantage of or hurting people who are already struggling to get by. He will, however, deal with people who indulge in Stealing the Handicapped Spot by doing things to them that ensure they won't have to steal the handicapped spot anymore...
Fan Works
- Infinity Train: Seeker of Crocus: Beta Bitch Patricia will bully Chloe and laugh when her little brother gets hit with a paint can. She will not extend this to her grandfather, who is in a wheelchair. Unfortunately, her grandfather no longer believes her; after all, if she can get away with bullying her classmate and a kindergartner, what's stopping her from attacking him next? To make it even more damning and hypocritical, she draws the line on hurting someone physically disabled, but she picks on Chloe who is implied to have undiagnosed ADHD.
- TMDDF: After The Many Date With Danny and Penny Even when Cupid uses his arrows to make several boys fight over Penny, they refuse to fight a kid in a wheelchair.
Films — Live-Action
- Baby Driver: Bats (played by Jamie Foxx) is a violent, sociopathic criminal with a Hair-Trigger Temper and a massive mean streak. However, when confronting Baby's wheelchair-bound best friend Joseph, he leaves him unharmed after getting the information he wanted. However, he does cement his reputation as a Jerkass by stealing his wheelchair.
- Final Destination 1: An invoked discussion. Tod tries to ease Alex's anxiety about boarding the plane by claiming that it would take a "real fucked-up god" to take down the plane after seeing a passenger with Lou Gehrig's disease on board.
- Hellbound: Hellraiser II: The Psycho Psychologist Channard manipulates a severely traumatized patient into opening the Lament Configuration and summoning the Cenobites, assuming that the patient will be Dragged Off to Hell in his place. The Cenobites take exception to this and leave the patient unharmed when they go on the hunt for Channard.
- In the Predator franchise, it's established that the titular aliens are a Proud Hunter Race who only seek the strongest and most dangerous prey. Thus, they don't target the disabled or the sick/injured (an exception is also made for a pregnant woman), going so far as to refuse to kill them should they wind up crossing paths regardless. That said, if the other party chooses to initiate hostilities even after being spared, they're fair game; a Predator spared the terminally ill Weyland in Alien vs. Predator because it detected his cancer, but promptly murdered him when Weyland spurned that charity by turning his inhaler into an Aerosol Flamethrower when the Predator's back was turned.
- Spy Kids: All the Time in the World: When the Timekeeper learns that one of the children he just captured is deaf and that one of his mooks took the kid's hearing aids, he tells him to give them back.
Literature
- In Apathy and Other Small Victories, one of Shane's very few redeeming qualities is that he's nice to disabled people, or at least refuses to make fun of them for being disabled. He's not above making fun of his Deaf friend Marlene for being bad at karaoke, though.
- Different Seasons: In "The Body", Ace's thugs catch up with Teddy towards the end and start beating him up, breaking his glasses in the process. When they realize he's stumbling around almost totally blind (though still trying to fight back), they let up on him and leave.
- The Famous Five: A downplayed example in Five Go To Smuggler's Top. When the Five first meet the servant Block and learn that he is deaf, George comments that it would be beastly to say things in front of him that you would not say if he were not deaf; and the narrative adds that she has very strict ideas of things of that sort. This is in contrast to her feelings about Block later, when he proves to be cruel and sinister, and becomes an enemy of the children. It is revealed later that he is not deaf at all, and is a spy for the enemy.
- The Three Musketeers: d'Artagnan's introduction to Athos consists of running into Athos' broken arm, the latter demanding a duel. The Hot-Blooded d'Artagnan accepts at first, but on thinking it over resolves to make full apologies instead. He doesn't get the chance to; as he had three duels with the titular three musketeers, they're interrupted by and fight with the Cardinal's guards, and is fast friends with them afterwards.
He feared what always happens in this kind of situation when a vigorous young man fights against a wounded and weakened opponent: vanquished, his antagonist's triumph is doubled; the victor, he is accused of cowardice and easy courage.
- In Unwind, those with disabilities are legally protected from unwinding, and even parts pirates who unwind people illegally won't usually touch them. It's why Risa, who becomes a paraplegic at the end of the first book, decides she's Keeping the Handicap, because she knows that she is protected from unwinding as a result.
Live-Action TV
- Malcolm in the Middle:
- While Reese is a bully, he not only refuses to harm disabled people such as Stevie, who is in a wheelchair, he actually declared Stevie "off-limits" for the other bullies, which they follow due to Reese being the "alpha jerk".note When Reese becomes a pacifist, what convinces him to go back to being the "alpha jerk" was seeing the other bullies torment Stevie because they no longer fear Reese's retributions.
- Exploited; in season 1, Malcolm and Stevie are bullied by a kid named Dave Spath. As retribution, Malcolm throws pudding at Dave and ducks out of the way, causing Dave to miss and punch Stevie accidentally. Although he barely touched him (the sound effect for the "punch" sounds like glass being lightly tapped), Stevie plays it up and throws himself on the ground so Dave will get in more trouble. Afterward, everyone hates Dave, and Dave is horrified with himself and insists it was an accident.
"Dude! You hit a cripple."
- "Cold Revenge", the fifth episode of the Australian Twisted Tales series, has a hitman hired by a woman to kill her brother. Once he sees the brother is in a wheelchair, he refuses to do the job and hands her the gun. She then hands the gun to the brother. Turns out that 1) he is actually recovering pretty well and 2) the whole thing was a plot to get revenge on the hitman, who might have issues with shooting a man in a wheelchair, but not with putting him into one.
Video Games
- Mortal Kombat 1: A pre-fight intro between Peacemaker and Kenshi has the former apprehensive about fighting the latter due to his blindness.
- Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves: In "Flight of Fancy", Bentley and Sly orchestrate a fight between Muggshot and Carmelita, knowing that Carmelita would arrest him on sight and leave Muggshot's team without their leader. Bentley tries goading Muggshot into a fight in the square, but he has to be convinced because 1) Muggshot's earlier attempt at sabotaging the Cooper Gang made it back to the Black Baron and he has to play nice, and 2) it "wouldn't feel right" to pound Bentley, who is wheelchair-bound.
- Street Fighter: Gen suffers from leukemia and is slowly dying from it. He's actually a Death Seeker, but his status as the world's most lethal assassin prides him to not give up until he finds the perfect opponent to end him in combat. Akuma is a Blood Knight who seeks out strong opponents, and will end them with the Shun Goku Satsu at the first chance he can. Gen proves strong enough that he actually blocked the Shun Goku Satsu (something that isn't possible if you have even a hint of malice or darkness in your soul), but the moment Akuma learned that Gen is sick, he called off the fight because he doesn't believe it to be fair — he wants his opponents to be at peak form.
Web Animations
- Dorkly Originals: In Awkward Double Dragon
, Jimmy and Billy Lee are reluctant to hurt a Mook that's in a wheelchair, even trying to walk past him. Unfortunately, Jimmy and Billy can't walk to the next area until they defeat every enemy. Jimmy tries to compromise by hitting the mook lightly, but because horrified when he doesn't pull his punch enough.
Web Comics
- Dumbing of Age: Deconstructed; Dina and Sarah run into Raidah at the mall, with the latter's friends jeering at Dina for being neurodivergent. Though Raidah admonishes her friends and exempts Dina from being bullied alongside Sarah, she also treats Dina like a child and even kneels on the ground to speak to her. Dina ends up despising Raidah for this and notes that she probably thought she was being kind, but is oblivious to her own condescension.
- Spinnerette: Colonel Glass is a bloodthirsty psychopath in service to North Korea that doesn't bat an eye at cold-blooded torture or murdering infants, but when he discovers that Mecha Maid is paralyzed and slowly dying as a side-effect of the DPRK's inhumane human experimentation program, he offers a sincere apology and tells them to spend the rest of their dwindling lifespan with their loved ones.
Web Videos
- Joueur du Grenier: In the Fatal Fury/Streets of Rage special, the wheelchair-bound Big Bad smugly assumes that the heroes wouldn't beat up a man in a wheelchair. Cut to him lying helplessly on the ground getting his teeth kicked in by the "heroes".
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Subverted; when the Gaang first meet Toph, she's about to take part in a wrestling match against a Dwayne Johnson Expy named The Boulder. The Boulder is hesitant to fight a blind girl, but then Toph starts gleefully trash-talking him and he changes his mind.
- The Boondocks: Uncle Ruckus is a self-hating black man who's racist towards non-whites and is homophobic even towards gay white people. However, in "The New Black" it's revealed that Uncle Ruckus is opposed to bigotry directed at mentally disabled people, regardless of race.
- Pelswick: Boyd manages to combine this with Bullying the Disabled; while he's willing to bully Pelswick for being in a wheelchair, said bullying is strictly non-physical because Boyd draws the line at physically harming disabled people.
- The Simpsons: In the episode "Stealing First Base", a quick gag is a blind new student introducing himself in Bart's class. Nelson immediately tells the rest of the class that he will hit anybody who tries to bully him and he will help him get around the school for as long as he needs it.
- South Park: In the episode "Sponsored Content", PC Principal goes on the warpath when he finds out that the editor of the school newspaper had allowed an article in which the author referred to the school's lunch policy as "retarded". After threatening to break the legs of the editor, he asks who is in charge of the paper. Stan points to Jimmy, who has a cerebral palsy-like condition and requires arm crutches to walk. Upon seeing Jimmy, PC Principal does a double take and is stunned into silence. Stan immediately quips, "You gonna break his legs, PC Principal?" We then cut to the principal's office, where a clearly terrified PC Principal tries to explain that he now requires editorial oversight over the paper to Jimmy, who calmly explains his reasoning and refuses to back down. This becomes a theme throughout the episode as Jimmy uses his newfound power over PC Principal to taunt him, knowing he won't lay a finger on him.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): One of the biggest hints that Karai isn't as bad as the rest of the Foot Clan is because there are lines she won't cross, such as refusing to attack/interrogate Mr. Murakami (a blind man) despite knowing he's a friend of the Turtles.
