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File:Cit seto no hanayome luna happy servant (1).jpg

Making fun of black guys in whole new ways.

Cquote1

"We are the men of amusing races,

Fated to be eternal jokes.

Dialect men with amusing faces,

Never are we like other folks."
—"Ol' Man Author," song parody by Oscar Hammerstein II
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An awful relic from less enlightened times, or a sign that the attitudes from those times have not gone away completely. Comic relief characters in the Small Annoying Creature or The Scrappy mold whose strangeness in appearance and behavior is put down to their being of a different race or ethnicity to the heroes. Often highlighted by their being extreme gonks in an otherwise normal cast.

Sometimes, ironically, they were put in precisely because the creators wanted some diversity in the cast. This is definitely one case where Monochrome Casting would have been a lot less offensive.

This is a mostly Discredited Trope, fit only for Lampshading. It is, however, still sometimes used straight (see picture), and annoying Jive Turkey black characters are not uncommon. Modern remakes tend to remove the racism and comic nature of such characters. See also Uncle Tomfoolery and But Not Too Foreign. Contrast Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales.

No Real Life Examples, Please

Examples of Ethnic Scrappy include:


Anime and Manga[]

  • Chada from Niea Under 7 at first appears to be a walking, talking stereotype of an Indian convenience store owner, complete with broken English. However, he's actually an alien who adopted this stereotype as his appearance and identity.
  • Although its becoming less so over time, this is still disturbingly common in most anime (especially older animes) due to most people in Japan having little experience with people of other ethnicities.
  • Chocolove of Shaman King.
  • Many Koreans didn't respond well to the Anthropomorphic Personification of their country in Axis Powers Hetalia.
  • Lanzhu Zhong from both the Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club and the Nijiyon anime continues to have this status bestowed upon her since the character's appearance in the School Idol Festival ALL STARS game; While she said that she came from Hong Kong during her introduction, as a portion of (largely HK) fans pointed out that she frequently uses Mandarin Chinese as a secondary language compared to Cantonese (where she only used to say "No problem") compared to a how an actual Hong Konger would speak.

Comic Books[]

  • Chop-Chop from Blackhawk. All the Caucasian characters are tall and good-looking. The Chinese is three feet tall, as wide as he is high with lemon-yellow skin, teeth like a radiator grille, tiny, slitted eyes behind milk-bottle glasses and a silly accent. They all wore uniforms and caps, he wears a multi-coloured Qing dynasty outfit and a ribbon in his pigtail.
    • However, the later issues, as early as the Silver Age, made him look like a normal Chinese guy, took away his stupid accent, and gave him a uniform.
    • Deconstruction: Howard Chaykin's 1988 reworking of Blackhawk, which even gave him a real name, showed him to be insulted and angered by his team-mates' use of the derogatory nick-name. In fact, the miniseries doesn't shy away from depicting any of the racism and sexism of the World War II era.
      • More modern Hawkman issues (nineties) show the character as a successful businessman. His 'past' was retconned to be a couple of pointless jokes and he was always a valued member of the team. Of course, since this was a Hawkman comic, the continuity of such is in doubt.
  • Ebony White in The Spirit. Yes, he got better lines and a more serious role as the story went on, but to have a comedy black character half the white guy's height with big, red, rubber lips and huge, wide staring eyes was not the finest idea in Will Eisner's great career as a cartoonist.
    • Eisner discusses this problem, and his reaction to it, in the introduction to Fagin the Jew, the comic he made to vindicate the character of Fagin in Oliver Twist.
    • The 2007 Darwyn Cooke version makes him into a street-smart kid, with the added precaution of excising Jive Turkey. Spirit employs him as his driver since both of them are officially "outside the law," and because of Ebony's excellent survival instincts. They also invert Ebony's role from the original strips; whereas before he was a comedy relief goon much of the time, in this version, he's the Deadpan Snarker who is always ready with some much-needed sarcasm whenever Spirit's ego is in danger of getting too big.
  • The Silver Age Green Lantern Hal Jordan had an Inuit sidekick called Pieface who served as his mechanic. Today, he is strictly called Tom Kalmaku and depicted with respect as an engineer.
    • In a recent retelling of Hal's origin, the "Pieface" nickname is used by a Jerkass rival pilot.
    • Tom gets his in Justice League: The New Frontier, Darwyn Cooke's (there he is again!) reimagining of the dawn of DC's Silver Age. Hal Jordan calls him Pieface when they first meet. Tom responds by calling Hal "whitebread" and threatening him with a wrench, and that's the last time Hal uses that nickname.
    • While the nickname was very unfortunate, as such things go, Tom was really treated pretty decently in the old Gardner Fox Silver Age GL comics. He looked like a real Eskimo and not some weird caricature, avoided a You No Take Candle-style weird accent, and he was clearly a good and intelligent man whom Hal respected. He also deserves credit for being a favorable portrayal of a minority most readers at that time would only be vaguely familiar with.
  • The Africans in Tintin in the Congo are better left unmentioned. However, the later Blue Lotus was written with input by a real Chinese, and worked hard to remove some of the Yellow Peril stereotypes. This did not, however, apply to the Japanese villains who were mostly depicted as with protruding teeth and thick glasses, reflecting the anti-Japanese colonialism theme that was a part of the storyline.
    • Herge expressed great regret later on for the racism in his early work and actually requested Tintin in the Congo not be republished. The last few Tintin adventures are still prone to Ethnic Scrappy, but tend to have fairly realistic minor characters.
  • Whitewash in the Young Allies comics? Go to superdickery.com and click on any of the pictures where the Allies are mentioned.
    • Of course in a recent comic where the new Captain America (Bucky) reunited with his old friends they fix that and don't even use the nickname. He was also shown to be highly intelligent.
    • And just a reminder that at that time, having a black kid in a relatively equal role in a mostly-white group was a step up.
  • Grant Morrison during his tenure writing X-Men created Angel Salvadore, as some sort of vaguely Latina, foul-mouthed 14 year-old who was kicked out of her house by her step-father when her mutant powers developed. Some Unfortunate Implications come into play when Angel later is impregnanted (by Beak, the Chicken-man during a field trip with Xorneto) and suddenly layshalf-a-dozen mutant children' in large eggs. Though Justified by the fact that her mutant powers make her very fly like, and her name is doubly ironic because of how unpleasant she can be and X-Men already have the more experienced Archangel.
    • Morrison also created Mother of Champions, a Chinese superheroine whose power is the ability to give birth to lots of strong kids. He seems to be fond of that theme.
    • Thunderbird plays with this. Many fans wonder what it would be like if he had not died, but he clearly would've fallen into this trope.
      • Well, he'd probably be a lot like his Backup Twin, Warpath.


Film[]

  • Charlie the cook from the original 1933 King Kong is a definitive example of the Comedy Chinaman, mandarin suit and all. Made a little bit less awful because he does show some competence in spotting the bracelet dropped by one of the islanders. In the oft-forgotten sequel, Son of Kong, he fought off a Styracosaurus with a meat cleaver.
    • Referenced in Peter Jackson's 2005 version, where the cook is also a Chinese man in a full Mandarin suit. He doesn't have much screentime or act Scrappy-ish, though.
  • There was a certain time period where any team of heroes that had reason to visit a vaguely Arabic or Asian country would be stuck with a young, pidgin-English-speaking boy. Children always tended to do marginally better in this role than their adult counterparts, as they were intended to be endearing and cute.
    • Probably the most famous was Short Round, Indy's sidekick in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. He just possibly escaped being a Scrappy by virtue of being somewhat of a son figure to Indy (though he's never referenced in any other movie), and driving Indy's car.
    • In the 1996 movie adaptation of The Phantom, the Phantom rescues a young boy who becomes his Ethnic Scrappy.
    • Oddly, cropped up in a mild form in the 2007 Transformers movie, with the Qutar kid who existed mostly as a walking Pet the Dog for the US soldier characters. Also, his dad's cellphone saved the day.
    • Could be argued that this is somewhat Truth in Television as school age children, usually boys, do sometimes act as guides for travelers in areas of the world (usually Asia). The children often have the largest English vocabulary of anyone there, by virtue of schooling, and are keen to earn some money. Though this is more "showing people around the neighbourhood" rather than being taken thousands of kilometers across the country or general region.
  • Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen's Twins, Skids and Mudflap (AKA "Herp and Derp") are this and more. With gold teeth, speaking in painful slang and playing to every black stereotype imaginable ("We don't do much readin'."), you have to wonder if Michael Bay was testing the resiliency of his career when he let Tom Kenny and Reno Wilson get away with their performance.
    • According to The Powers That Be, The Twins were supposed to be caricatures of Wiggers, white youths who act stereotypically black. Unfortunately, since they're orange and green robot cars, this concept is kind of lost in the translation.
      • It was actually so bad that they got cut out of Dark of the Moon after the public outcry.
    • Speaking of Michael Bay, go back and watch the opening scene of Armageddon. The annoying, high-voiced, jive-talking black man throwing racial slurs at a fat Hawaiian guy in a loud shirt, the dumb Asian tourist woman shouting "I want to go shopping!" in the middle of a city-destroying meteor shower... Let's just let The Nostalgia Chick talk us through it, shall we?
  • Seen most recently in Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, in which the cast has a cameraman who's a jive-talking, incompetent, wise-cracking, loudmouth black guy who spends the entire movie fearfully hiding behind his white bosses. As one reviewer put it (to paraphrase): "Weren't characters like these supposed to have died out in the 1940s?"
  • Snails from the first Dungeons and Dragons movie is a textbook Ethnic Scrappy.
  • And let's not forget Hamchunk from The Green Berets.
  • Prissy from Gone with the Wind. Oh god, Prissy...
    • Malcolm X recalled watching the movie as a kid, and said "When Butterfly McQueen went into her act, I felt like crawling under the rug".
  • Salazar (played by Nick Cannon) from the Steve Miner Day of the Dead remake takes this to ludicrous levels. Here's one of his many charming quotes:
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 Salazar: What's the matter? You see a black man with a pointed stick and it automatically gotta be a spear?

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    • And all these lines were ad-libbed by Cannon himself.
  • Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles.
  • Zambo, Lord Roxton's Indian servant in the 1925 film adaptation of The Lost World plays this trope to a T. The character in the original novel wasn't a plucky comic relief but merely a "devoted negro". In later film adaptations the character is always written out. The 2001 A&E version replaces him with a quiet, pragmatic native Brazilian chap named Samuel.
  • G Force has a black guinea pig who seems incapable of saying something without sounding like a rap star.
  • The Indian child actor Sabu made a career out of this sort of role in the 1940s, in films such as Black Narcissus.
    • Some would say: "eked out a living in Hollywood on such roles", considering that Sabu had been the star of British films like Elephant Boy, The Thief of Bagdad, and Jungle Book.
  • Mickey Rooney as a Japanese caricature is the worst thing in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
  • Stepin Fetchit.
  • The Charlie Chan film series, ironically intended to avert this in the case of Asians, unfortunately played this trope entirely straight in regards to African Americans, as in the truly cringe-worthy appearances of Black character actors Stepin Fetchit and Mantan Moreland as characters such as "Snowball" and "Birmingham Brown."
    • It also can be argued that it's favorable sentiment towards Asians is a Broken Aesop, given the man who played Charlie Chan wasn't really Chinese, either out of racism on part of the studios or the studios fearing a Chinese actor would have a thick accent that the audience wouldn't be able to understand.
  • African-American comedian Dudley Dickerson ("This house has sho' gone crazy!"), a supporting player in many Three Stooges shorts.
  • Madea.
  • Lady and the Tramp has the infamous Siamese Cat duo. On top of being, of course, villains, their Ethnic Scrappy status manifests itself in their buck teeth and the annoyingly terrible grammar during their song.
  • Another stereotypical Siamese cat from a Disney feature: the Chinese member of Scat Cat's gang from The Aristocats. He's not a villain, but he has the buck teeth and the exaggerated accent.
  • Dumbo‍'‍s crows, whom the protagonist meets after his infamous Big Lipped Alligator Moment nightmare. Though stereotypically "black," they're glad to take a fellow outcast under their wing and help him to get back at his oppressors.
    • With the exception of Cliff Edwards, the voice actors were also black singers, the Hall Johnson Choir. All of them did a fantastic job on their song.
    • Also should be noted that the "ignorant" crows in Dumbo help the title character much more than, for example, the supposedly intelligent Owl ever helps Winnie the Pooh. Definitely "fair for its day."
    • And yet, the lead crow's names is JIM, which is insensitive and inappropriate in such a momentous way that it serves to completely undermine the points made above.


Literature[]

  • A painfully straight example is in Edgar Allan Poe's short story, "The Gold Bug" - Jupiter, the broken English-speaking voluntary slave whose sheer stupidity becomes a plot point.
  • The trope is frequently subverted in the work of Rudyard Kipling, where Indian characters at times will put this on as an act, e. g. Hurree Babu towards the Russian secret agents in Kim. It is also sometimes shown as a false surface impression when a character switches from broken or accented English to Hindi, which is represented as accent-free and somewhat formal English. This applies not just to Indians, but also e. g. to Muller in "In the Rukh", who speaks with a comical German accent.
  • Eradicate Sampson - the, er, "eccentric colored man" - from the Tom Swift novels.

Live-Action TV[]

  • Hop Sing, the Chinese cook on the old television show Bonanza. To be fair, the Hop Sing characterization had Values Dissonance. Bonanza was set in the 19th century and the depiction of the Chinese people on the show was not entirely inaccurate for that time period.
  • In the TV show Sliders, Rembrandt Brown started out with at least one foot in this territory, but fortunately the character displayed drastic improvement as the series progressed.
  • Julio Fuentes from Sanford and Son. The man OWNED A GOAT, for Pete's sake. Not to mention his unrelenting pleasantness in the face of Fred's unrelenting racism which may have been intended as a type of Stealth Insult ala Lionel Jefferson but it really came off...badly.
  • This was basically the reason Sam Jones III left the role of Pete Ross on Smallville.
    • It was really too bad, as 'Superman's childhood best friend' actually had tremendous potential as a character and Jones played him well. Unfortunately the writers jumped straight from 'Monster of the Week' plots to 'Soap Opera,' and couldn't find a use for him, as he was sane, normal, and not in love with Clark. Plus, despite how weird it was objectively, Lex Luthor got all the best friend jobs except helping him with his red kryptonite problem that first time.
      • It's also sad because the Pete Ross character actually has a very interesting future in the comics: entering politics, becoming Lex Luthor's Vice President (and secretly Superman's spy within the Luthor White House), and finally becoming (for a while) President of the United States after Lex is booted out of office. Honestly, they could have foreshadowed all this by say, having Pete manage Jonathan's campaign for the State Senate and subsequently become Senator Kent's chief of staff, or something like that. Honestly there was so much wasted potential there.
  • Another DC Comics-related example: Chief Screaming Chicken, from the Batman episode "An Egg Grows in Gotham"/"The Yegg Foes in Gotham", embodies the most embarrassing stereotypes of Native Americans. He's played by a white actor[1] in makeup, speaks in You No Take Candle, and lets Egghead use him to take over Gotham City. His Heel Face Turn near the end of the story--because he finally realizes he was naive to trust Egghead in the first place--just makes things even worse.


Newspaper Comics[]

  • Connie (George Webster Confucius), the Chinese comic relief character, from the Terry and the Pirates comic strip. Particularly annoying as Caniff persisted in this portrayal even as his art evolved and the other Chinese characters became more realistic.
  • In Floyd Gotfredson's 1930's comic strips, Mickey Mouse had several encounters with (usually cannibalistic) African savages.


Professional Wrestling[]

  • Any pro-wrestler not from the USA or Canada. Continues to this day - see Umaga, for example. The Japanese are particularly susceptible - Tajiri, Mr. Fuji, and Kenzo/Hiroko Suzuki in the WWE/WWF stick out in this regard.
    • Subverted or averted by Ring of Honor and other independent promotions that have working relationships (often strong) Japanese pro wrestlers and their home promotions. ROH does play it straight with Grizzly Redwood.
    • Despite some occasional slips on this mark, TNA's Samoa Joe actually exists to subvert this trope, being a perfectly normal, in fact exceptionally skilled, wrestler. The aforementioned Umaga seems to have been created as a Take That for Joe, as though to say, "This is how Samoans act in wrestling." And then Samoa Joe embraced being a 'wrestling Samoan' in that he has his face all painted in Maori tattoos and threatens opponents with a tribal knife.
    • Manu, a recently debuted Samoan wrestler in WWE, speaks plain English and does not appear to have any "native" leanings. Then again, they also recently debuted R-Truth, a black ex-con who now raps and dances his way to the ring.
    • The Uso brothers (Jimmy and Jey) have averted this trope, although the possibilities of them undergoing some sort of makeover like Samoa Joe did for a while (before thankfully changing back), or getting released, always exist.
    • Booker T was an ex-con who does spinnaroonies would have fit this trope long before R-Truth. Rikishi being a Samoan who spoke plain English and acted pretty normal was in the WWE before Umaga or the fact Samoa IS part of the USA. Most people don't acknowledge Samoa Joe started out in UPW, a former WWE development league and current talent scout for the company.
    • Even if in some people's eyes Yoshiro Tajiri fits the "ethnic stereotype" it was justified in that he came straight from Japan and spoke little English for a long time. Tajiri can just as easily get the fans on his side as he is regarded by most to be an exceptional wrestler-- not someone to compare to Mr. Fuji. Many also consider Umaga a good wrestler as he can pull off impressive maneuvers for his size.
    • WWE isn't the only place to use ethnic scrappies either. TNA's new American hating Sheik comes to mind, but in wrestling its to be expected, as many wrestlers make their whole careers off of being hated.
    • There are a few inversions of this too such as Olympic Gold Medalist Kurt Angle and "The All American American" Jack Swagger.
  • Navajo Warrior and Tatanka come to mind (portrayed relatively positively, though).
  • Even as a face, Santino Marella is a stereotypical tongue-tied Italian whose speech consists of malapropisms and Buffy-Speak. (In actuality, he is of Italian heritage, but was born in Canada and can speak without an accent.) Just imagine an Italian Borat, since he came in shortly after the film's release and used a lot of the same schtick.
  • WWE paired Swiss Antonio Cesaro up with Lithuanian Aksana shortly after the former's debut, no doubt purely because both are European and to play to the ethnic stereotype. Aksana also qualifies herself in general.


Tabletop Games[]

  • The unspeakably awful Tabletop Games FATAL had actual, equippable items which literally turned the wearer into Ethnic Scrappies - of Jews, black people, Asians and Greeks. The RPG was not played for laughs, and would probably have been even more offensive if it had been. Particularly offensive sample:
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 50. Nigrous Nincompoopery, of: Whosoever dons this armor experiences a loss of 1d100 points from each sub-ability of Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. The ass of the wearer will grow by 50% and be abnormally high. If the wearer is male, then those around him are 80% likely to believe that his manhood has increased, though it has not. The skin of the wearer becomes cursed and dark as night. Disposition turns to Unethical Immoral. Temperament becomes phlegmatic. The eyes of the wearer are visible 3 miles away at night. The wearer will have a body odor for 1d10 feet. On the bright side, the Physical Fitness of the wearer increases by 10%. The armor may be removed at will.

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Theater[]

  • The song "Spanish Rose" in Bye Bye Birdie shows in a single musical number how to make an Ethnic Scrappy out of a character who isn't even supposed to be Spanish aside from her last name. This song might not have been written if Chita Rivera hadn't been the victim of typecasting.
    • This is also a rare case of a character deliberately invoking this trope. Having endured a litany of racist remarks from her prospective mother-in-law for most of the play, Rosie declares her intention to get revenge by acting "so Spanish eet will make you seeck."
  • The moor Monostatos working for Sarastro in The Magic Flute, usually played as a villain and/or buffoon.


Video Games[]

  • After the huge success of Sony's "It Only Does Everything" marketing campaign spearheaded by Kevin Butler, Sony decided to try to replicate the same success for their PSP line of products. Sony introduced Marcus, an African American adolescent who blatantly plays heavily on the "black" stereotype. Needless to say, the fan reception to Marcus has been far less positive than Kevin Butler.
    • This came after the earlier PSP ad campaign that included stereotypically Mexican dustballs and African American squirrels. Throw in advertising slogans such as "PSP: It's like cheese you can listen to outside" and this is arguably the low point of Sony advertising.
  • Arc the Lad Somehow subverted this trope: Chongara looks like the worst caricature of a greedy Arabic merchant, and the English translation has him speaking You No Take Candle. He is also the guy who can summon Choko to the battlefield, and during the second game, we see that he has become the brain behind the good guys operation. The funny thing is that, since the translated version came out after 9/11, western players could not see the character without thinking about Osama Bin Laden (Chongara is an arabic looking guy with a beard who left a wealthy background to follow religiously motivated internationnaly wanted terrorists...)... A scaringly competent expy of Bin Laden who managed to make the world's only uncontested superpower bite the dust after a few years of carefully planed terrorists attacks. Well, at least, the real Bin Laden does not have two dozens of magic wielding overpowered warriors and summoned monsters... We hope...
    • Chongara also became the captain of the airship Silver Noah to further underline his competence and usefulness. Mind you that airship took part in an aerial terrorist attack on a city that's a direct analog of New York... and blew up a major landmark.
  • 18-Volt from Wario Ware is pretty obviously a stereotype of a black man--though not necessarily a negative one. He's more like a would-be rapper, complete with boom box and gold teeth. However, some players still dislike him, considering his only lines of dialogue are "word" (Nintendo's understanding of rap culture? Hulk Speak? Who knows?) and he seems like an arbitrary addition to 9-Volt, a more developed character.
  • Some players have a great deal of hatred for Oilman of Mega Man Powered Up. Though his design could have been accidental, it still is in effect a black face with thick, pink lips. The US version changed it to dark blue and yellow lips--which still doesn't help that much.
  • Red Dead Redemption has three characters who are so heavily defined by this trope that their ethnicity is also their name: Irish, Welsh, and French. There is a character named Dutch late in the game, but he does not display any of that ethnicity's stereotypes. For his part, French lacks an accent, and while he is a bit of a jerk, he doesn't really display any French stereotypes.
  • Rico of Killzone, who is Hispanic, foul-mouthed, and hot headed. He's one of the most hated characters, not to mention the fact that he guarantees the defeat of the ISA in Killzone 2 by killing Visari.
  • Nightwolf from Mortal Kombat. The movies in particular make him one of the most ridiculous Braids, Beads, and Buckskins stereotypes in recent memory. The cartoon, however, turns him into a Genius Bruiser with computer hacking skills who is also the only one who is immune to a virus.
  • Li Xiangfei from The King of Fighters: While her first appearance in Real Bout 2 did not prove to be worthwhile, her inclusion in KOF 99 and 2001 were glaring in that SNK placed her on the women's team, and the team's endings in both games involved her eating expensive food! When SNK needed to place her on KOF 2002 Unlimited Match, they placed her on the 'Pretty Girls Team', a B-Level joke version of the KOF Women's Team idea along with May-Lee and Hinako Shijo. She still has a bit of a hatred by some fan bases.
  • Love Live! School Idol Festival ALL-STARS: Though applied to the Hong Kong fans whose been fighting for their country's struggling cultural self-preservation, it's no surprise that a large subset of the Love Livers there actually showed resentment towards Lanzhu Zhong's questionable shared nationality, as she had shown more hallmarks of a person from the People's Republic of China than what an actual Hong Konger would actually look like, given that Cantonese is the most dominant language there. Further compounding the problem is her stereotypical Anime Chinese Girl school idol attires, and her songs being more reminiscent of Mandopop than Cantopop.

Web Original[]

  • The hatta from Neurotically Yours is seen by many fans as this. Episodes featuring him are frequently disliked by the fans.

Western Animation[]

  • Jonny Quest has Hadji. Jonny Quest the Real Adventures greatly updated the character; however, he retained essential aspects of the Ethnic Scrappy--ridiculous accent despite years of living in the US, "ethnic" attire no modern Indian man would wear, and magical powers. They also gave him Hollywood Hacking skills to try to distance themselves from the cliched portrayal, but with the rise of outsourcing, it ended up playing into the Bollywood Nerd stereotype instead.
    • To be fair, they tried to avoid Hadji having magical powers in the first season, instead having him use tricks like controlled breathing. During the second season, demands for the show to be more like the original put in some "latent" powers like spoon bending.
    • Jonny Quest, the original series, is grindingly embarrassing at times due to this. Supposedly, the Zulus throwing spears at the Quest Jet in the closing credits were from an episode that never aired, but that image is crazy enough. The worst that DID air was "The Sea Haunt", where the team were stranded on a ship when the Monster of the Week smashed their plane. They find the only survivor of the ship's crew — a Chinese cook named Charlie who has a horrible accent, dresses stereotypically (how did they miss giving him a pigtail?), and continually references his "honorable ancestors". They are eventually spotted by DUTCH search parties from Batavia-- despite Jakarta (and Indonesia) having been independent for years already. Oy...
  • The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo had Flim-Flam. Despite being a parody of this character type, he was a worse Scrappy than Scrappy himself.
    • Eh; while he was a different ethnicity than the others characters, none of his annoying traits really stemmed from ethnic stereotypes. A better classification might be Creator's Pet--Flim-Flam wouldn't shut up, and constantly seemed written as though he was trying to upstage the rest of the cast--not a good thing when half of the old cast had already been dropped. His common use of cheap Ass Pull gags and disguises to foil villains also seems to have been inherited by Scooby and Shaggy once he left, and it isn't much funnier when they do it.
  • The Flintstones, despite being a show about a modernized Stone Age, somehow saw fit to introduce the Great Gazoo, a generic little green alien that would probably seem a lot more at home in The Jetsons. Or rather, generic except for the fact that his personality was modeled after every offensive stereotype of the British, taken Up to Eleven. Gazoo was smug, elitist, seemed to think he could get away with making fun of longtime protagonists Fred and Barney and using his powers to make them his Butt Monkeys just because he was a more articulate speaker, and on top of all of this Jerkass behavior, there were the Unfortunate Implications of England being personified by an advanced alien while America was personified as cave people. So what you have is an ethnic scrappy who offends two countries at once!
  • In Defenders of the Earth, Mandrake the Magician had an adopted Asian son named Kshin.
  • Parodied on The Venture Brothers with Kano, a member of the original Team Venture, who "despite his racial handicap" is a skilled pilot, and powerful enough to crush a boulder, yet gentle enough... to crush a butterfly. Also, he communicates with origami (until series 3).
  • The Dick Tracy Show from 1961/1962 had "Joe Jitsu", an Asian kung-fu master/detective, and "Go-Go Gomez", a lazy Mexican who solved crimes from his hammock. Both were drawn just about as stereotypically as you might imagine. Gomez could move very fast, although he did so with lots of "Arriba! Arriba! Yeeha! Yeeha!" yells that turned him into a human Speedy Gonzales.
  • Many early cartoon characters, which usually highlights interesting arguments between meme insensitivity and deliberate racism. Animation fans usually defend characters like Bosko, who was obviously a racial caricature of a sort, but isn't treated maliciously and is always the hero.
  • The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show had "bumbling Hawaiian sidekick" Hula-Hula.
    • He was a parody of Lou Costello in general appearance, speech, and actions, much like Plas' original comic book sidekick "Woozy" Winks.
    • To be fair, he's introduced as being an extremely high-strung pharmaceuticals salesman who wondered which of his own pills might apply to his own constant ills, as well as fainting at the sight of blood, so it's probably more character-based than race-based. His own family is used as a foil against him on more than one occasion.
      • Also, like Native Americans, Polynesians are often thought of as walking Costume Porn rather than "real" races of people.
  • Looney Tunes character Speedy Gonzales avoids this trope thanks to Crazy Awesome. He's fast, he's chivalrous, he's clever, and always gets the gringo. So why do people still not like his cartoons? It's because the other mice in the show piss people off, who all have their laziness and ignorance cranked Up to Eleven until the writers are sure you know they're Mexican.
    • More borderline is Speedy's cousin, Slowpoke Rodriguez, "the slowest mouse in all of Mexico". Being slothful even by the standards of the other Mexican mice, he protects himself with either a concealed gun or mind control. Like his cousin, though, he's smart and heroic, and both characters remain extremely popular in Latin America. In 1999, Cartoon Network shelved the cartoons for the aforementioned stereotypes, until Media Watchdog group the League of United Latin American Citizens lobbied to bring them back. That's right, media watchdogs worked to unban something controversial.
    • Imperial Japan gave Looney Tunes more than its share of ethnic scrappies during World War II.
    • Then there is the classic ethnic scrappy of the series, Pepe Le Pew. Even ignoring the many Unfortunate Implications of what he is--making a skunk character French seems pretty reminiscent of the stereotype that the French ignore hygiene, and his personality recalls the other stereotype that they're chauvinists--his whole horny schtick is offensive on its own to many people.
  • Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos: Dear GOD! Where to start? When the least offensive ethnic character on the show is a stereotypical Samurai named Kemo, you know you're in trouble. Others include Lard-ass Extreme Omnivore sumo wrestler Tabe and Too-Much.
  • Some fans of Cat Dog loathe Lola the bird, although only part of it has to do with her being a latin-American stereotype, and another part is that she was sometimes a Creator's Pet.
  • Cleveland from Family Guy and The Cleveland Show falls into this trope at times. Sometimes intentionally.
    • Jasper, Brian's gay cousin, is considered by many as a "Gay Scrappy"
    • Theres also Mort Goldman, who gradually devolved into a walking Jew caricature.
    • Mr. Washee Washee. Take every negative stereotype about Asian Americans that you can think of, and a few you haven't, and roll them all into one and you have this guy.
    • Jerome didn't start out as one, merely being a Nice Guy who happened to ascribe to a few stereotypes about African Americans, but as time passed, and he became little more than those stereotypes, this trope wasn't far behind.
  • Paco from Jackie Chan Adventures. He's The Load, an annoying fanboy, and his gratingly fake accent prevents him from properly pronouncing the names of his best friends. His sole purpose was to provide a foil for El Toro (who really didn't need one), and his sole impact on the plot in the entire series was to put on a big obvious artifact of evil and nearly doom the world once. He's so bad that the fanbase prefers to ship Jade with a homicidal demonic bat.
  • The cartoon Mr. Magoo had Charlie, a Chinese character who was servant of some form to Magoo. Charlie had buck teeth and a thick accent that resulted in calling his employer "Mr. Magloo" or "Bloss." He was able to see and therefore aware of all Magoo's errors, but his subservient position made him unable to call Magoo out on them, even when they got him put in harm's way.
  • The Superfriends had four such tokens: Samurai is the least stereotypical, only because you can't recognize him as Japanese until he slips into Gratuitous Japanese with an American accent.
  • Samurai Jack has the Scotsman and his wife.
  • In American Dad! we have a Show Within a Show example with the detective show Steve and Roger like to watch. Where Tex is a American detective in a cowboy outfit and his partner is a Mexican stereotype.
  • Following "The Problem with Apu" in 2017, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon of The Simpsons started to be looked at in a much more critical light with many people of Indian descent denouncing him as a cheap caricature of their culture.
  • Jazz of Transformers seems to be slowly evolving into this following the 2007 film where he was portrayed as a walking caricature of African-American culture and resulted in a more critical look at his portrayal as such in The Transformers. While he hasn't been Exiled From Continuity outright, several other Autobots (such as Bulkhead and Grimlock) have been the main stand-ins for African-Americans on Transformers shows since then and, unlike Jazz, aren't defined by talking in street or hip-hop slang.
  1. Edward Everett Horton, Rocky and Bullwinkle's Mr. Peabody
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