Lazy Bum - TV Tropes
- ️Thu Sep 03 2009
Eh, we can put off writing a caption for this image until tomorrow, right?
Joe: I could do a lot of things if it was necessary.
Queenie: Then why don't you?
Joe: It ain't necessary.
A Lazy Bum is very rare. Just ask anybody if they're lazy. They may be Brilliant, but Lazy, or Book Dumb, or shrewdly saving their energy, but they're not just plain lazy. They work hard, really, or at least they could if it was worth the effort to do it, but they're not lazy. The only people who think they aren't working are their fascist bosses. Got it? In fact, if you asked these hard-working people about their co-workers, you'd realize that they're the only ones who do any work around here.
Of course, every now and then you get a Lazy Bum who is more self-aware. These tend to be Smug Snakes who think it's hilarious that other people bother to do work instead of just leeching. Then there are the ones who are really self-aware, and almost philosophically devoted to being lazy. They scheme so hard at getting out of work that it's actually harder work than just doing the work. Usually their boss is a humorless Control Freak who is so annoying that we root for the worthless slacker instead.
A more metaphorical example of this trope would be moral laziness. Usually seen in villains, anti-heroes and anti-villains this type of laziness applies to those who "take the easy way out" in a psychological sense. Usually, this includes murder, being an Extreme Doormat, allowing oneself to be easily manipulated, lacking empathy toward others or just lacking the drive and willpower to say "no".
Then there are the ones who are supposed to be sympathetic, because they're just like you. These may be the most common type of all, and there's probably others, but it's too much work to write about them. No doubt Wiki Magic will take care of it.
Being a Lazy Bum — whether in the traditional sense or the metaphorical one of moral laziness — is also known as Sloth, which is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Not to be confused with the South American mammal, which is named "sloth" because it sleeps a lot and moves very slowly even when it's awake. For the trope about lazy sloths, see Sluggish Sloths. Also compare The Slacker.
Subtropes include Ambitious, but Lazy, Beauty Breeds Laziness, Cats Are Lazy, Do-Nothing Housewife, Laid-Back Koala, Lazy Dragon, and Sluggish Seal. If someone's laziness gets someone harmed or killed, it is a case a Lethal Negligence. They may own a Ludicrously Unwashed Object.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You: Tama Nekonari would love nothing more than to be a cat, and laze around without working, but she has just enough scruples that she doesn't want to be a burden on anybody. Even as Rentarou becomes her boyfriend-slash-owner, she's prepared to get a part-time job to not overburden him, and when she accepts Hahari's offer to live in the Hanazono manor as exactly the kind of lazy cat she's always wanted to be, she's wracked with guilt at being a Lazy Bum when the rest of the Rentarou Family are busily working towards their goals. A push by Hahari lands her a job that accepts her despite her lack of desire to actually work.
- Europa the Lazy from Claymore. In her Claymore days, she was a single digit who might have been #1 if she tried harder and her special technique (all single digits at least were apparently expected to come up with a unique fighting style) was Playing Possum. In her current Eldritch Abomination form, she initially struggles against a being of similar power but vastly less experience, skill, and intelligence before she bothers to get serious.
- A defining trait for En Yufuin of Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!, who prefers to hang out in the hot spring rather than get anything done.
- Doraemon: Nobita is a very lazy person who normally wakes up late for school, often dozes off in class, and naps almost every day after school, making him unable to sleep at night and wakes up late the next morning. This creates an endless cycle of laziness.
- Shizuo Heiwajima from Durarara!!, of all people, appears to be this. In his official character profile his only hobby is listed as "basking in the sun", and he tells Celty in his "Special Voice" on the character CD that he likes days where there's "just nothing to do".
- Ebisu-san and Hotei-san: Played for Drama with Ebisu's sister. Her constant slacking off and neglect of her daughter is a heavy burden on Ebisu, and other characters call her out for her Jerkass behavior.
- Fullmetal Alchemist:
- The Homunculus Sloth. It's in his name, but if you get him going, he becomes a Lightning Bruiser. He represents wasted potential; he has immense physical strength and moves like lightning, yet is too lazy to develop the skill necessary and reach his full potential.
- Interestingly, Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) double subverts this. Sloth is portrayed as a beautiful woman who can turn herself into water. In her human disguise as King Bradley's secretary she's a very hard worker, but when in combat, she appears to be rather lazy, as it's been shown at least once that she can actually turn her entire body into water and drown anyone and everyone around her, but she usually just uses a small amount of her power (usually in her arms) and kind of just stands there in one spot while trying to hit her target.
- Both Sloths are also morally lazy. Manga Sloth tends to use his Super-Strength to go through objects rather than around them and commits crimes because he simply lacks the willpower and drive to say no. In his case, it's justified as he's the literal embodiment of the sin he's named for. The 2003 anime's Sloth, in a similar vein, tries to take the easy way out, killing the Elric brothers rather than psychologically coming to terms with the fact that she is the reincarnation of their mother.
- Gakuen Babysitters: Outside of the occasional moments where he shows insight or rare signs of actually being responsible, Usaida Yoshihito is like this almost all the time while on the job, sleeping whenever he gets the chance.
- Lazy-Sensei from Haré+Guu, who enforces "siesta" time in his class purely to get himself more shut-eye. Never mind that his students range in age from 9 to late teens, and are all past the need for naptimes.
- Himouto! Umaru-chan: The titular Umaru is this in her Umaru-chan/UMR form; a lazy, selfish video game addict who only does chores when forced to. She hides this side of her from her friends and classmates, instead being the pretty, polite, good-at-everything Umaru.
- K-On!: Before she joined the Light Music Club, Yui was part of the Going Home Club (AKA, she always went home after class). Her time was spent reading manga, eating snacks, and just lazing around while Ui took care of the house. She's gotten better since joining the club; she spends a lot of time practicing with Giita, but her laziness still shows from time to time.
- A Lazy Guy Woke Up as a Girl One Morning naturally has the title character, Yasuda. He's not all that bothered by inexplicably turning into a girl one morning, since he thinks it would be too much work to find a way to turn back, but hates all the work he has to do to adjust. For example, he insists on continuing to stay with his roommate Hayasaka in the boys' dorms and use the boys' bathrooms, claiming that because he's a boy at heart. His actual reason is that it'd be a hassle to move, and he probably couldn't mooch off his new roommate as much as he does off Hayasaka.
- My Hero Academia: Downplayed with Shota Aizawa. He can be a force to be reckoned with in battle and is competent, if extremely stern. However, he is also well known for handing off his class to another teacher and going to sleep in his sleeping bag instead of spending time on subjects he thinks are irrelevant.
- One Piece: The very first thing we learn about Admiral Ryokugyu is that he's such a fundamentally lazy man he finds eating to be too much effort and doesn't bother. The fact he's still an admiral despite that and it's been three years since he had a meal speaks volumes.
- PandoraHearts: Played with. Vincent Nightray. Often found asleep in hallways, rarely seems more than half awake, will never do for himself anything his servant Echo could possibly do instead, including getting to a chair or bed before going to sleep, lacks the slightest empathy for anyone other than his brother Gilbert, and simply sits there waiting when death is coming for him, rather than even try to find a way out.
- The Quintessential Quintuplets: Ichika Nakano often sleeps late, avoids studying, and shirks her academic responsibilities, as she prefers to focus on her acting career. She often depends on her sisters or Futaro to motivate her with her schoolwork.
- Ranma ½: Genma Saotome is downplayed. In the series itself, he almost never bothers to do anything besides loafing around, eating, and playing shogi, leaving his son to handle any problem that pops up. Even if Genma caused that problem in the first place. However, prior to the series, Genma willingly left his Supreme Chef wife and the comfort of his home to travel the highways and byways of Japan and China for over a decade, in order to help his son become a powerful martial artist, and in fact designed two schools of techniques (the Yamasenken and Umisenken) that are amongst the most powerfull in the series, with near-perfect invisibility, vacuum blades that can cut through steel like runny butter, spine-snapping bearhugs, and more. He has also displayed mental sloth in regards teaching Ranma- for example, failing to read the Nekoken training scroll all the way through, or taking his son to Jusenkyo simply on the virtue that it sounded impressive, without bothering to find out why it was called "The Valley of Cursed Springs".
- Sailor Moon: Usagi Tsukino would rather play video games and eat than study for tests. She even lampshades this when she's bewitched by Ramua in the 9th episode of Season 1.
Usagi: I have a lot of things to accomplish today. First off, I have to get home. Then, eat a pork bun. After that, finish playing my video game, take a bath, and then — OHNO, LOOKWHATTIMEITISALREADY!
- Servamp: Kuro is the living embodiment of this trope — unsurprisingly, as he's the vampire that represents Sloth. He'd rather spend his days eating ramen and potato chips and playing video games, but the world won't let him.
- The titular character's shtick in Tanaka-kun is Always Listless. He's worse than a sloth most days, as imagining him doing something as strenuous as clinging to a tree is almost impossible. His close friend Ohta seems the main reason he seems to live a manageable every day life — it's to the point Ohta will sling him over his shoulder to make him go to the dentist when he needs to.
Comic Books
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
- Gladstone Gander. His perpetual good luck has given him a very warped set of morals, including such a disdain for work that he sees the one coin he made on one unlucky day where he had to work as My Greatest Failure and hides it in a safe out of shame. A few stories, such as Nobody's Business, reveals that it's the main reason Scrooge refuses to make Gladstone one of his heirs because unlike Donald (who's also lazy, but can work hard when he wants to, he's just really bad with money) Gladstone not only relies on his luck to provide him with everything, the only reason he's not a spendthrift when he does have money is because he's too lazy to do even that.
- There's also Gus Goose, another cousin of Donald, who works at Grandma Duck's farm - or better: is supposed to work their, as he is haddly seen to do any work and is instead sleeping most of the time, except Grandma had cooked or baked. However, Gus is mostly shown in a more positive light than Gladstone as Gus is generally a nice person.
- Lupo from Minimonsters, a narcoleptic werewolf and also a Big Eater.
- Lazy Smurf from The Smurfs, both in the comic books and the cartoon show.
- The titular character of Franco-Belgian Comic Philémon spends his days idly wandering the countryside with his donkey Anatole, dodging his chores and dad.
- Maya from Emilka Sza is a lazy, spoiled girl who mooches of her blind roomate and is to busy sleeping or chasing boys to pay her part of the rent.
Comic Strips
- Beetle Bailey's primary characteristic is his laziness; if you see him work hard at anything, it's usually a scheme for shirking work.
- Wally from Dilbert is also an example of Dismotivation, and one of the ones who puts more work into avoiding work than it would ever take to do the work itself. He was based off of a co-worker of Scott Adams's who was trying to get fired in a Springtime for Hitler situation.
- Garfield, pictured above, embodies both sloth and gluttony. Case in point, in one strip he mounted a television to the ceiling so he could sleep and watch TV at the same time.
Jon: Have you ever seen someone work so hard at being so lazy?
Garfield: And you say I never do anything around here.
Fan Works
- A Sit Down with a Therapist: As a result of being married to someone with a lot of money, Peter barely goes to work and spends most of his time watching TV and eating. And despite Lois divorcing him and cutting him (alongside Brian) from the family bank account, Peter still doesn't get a job and Brian's forced to get one to support both of them, which quickly goes south.
- In the Avantasia Protag AU series, the demon Acedia is a recurring character. He is literally the embodiment of sloth and never manages to get anything truly evil done because he deems it too much work. He's only effective when manipulating his victims into harming themselves.
- Cutie Mark Crusaders 10k: As a side effect of taking a dip in the Chaos pit, Rainbow Dash can't be bothered to do so much as lift a finger to help anyone unless they offer something of interest to her. She's content to just lie around, take naps, and eat snacks, though she's still capable of using Super-Speed to avoid people.
- Miraculous: The Phoenix Rises gives readers Maximillian, the father of Max and Haley who spends most of his time in bed watching a childish sitcom, even when at threat of being evicted.
Films — Animation
- Baloo in Disney's adaptations of The Jungle Book (1967). His song "The Bare Necessities" is all about taking whatever life brings his way rather than working for it. Although there is wisdom in being content with what you have, he definitely takes it to the point of outright laziness. Bagheera even calls him a "shiftless, stupid jungle bum". In the live-action version he's somewhat manipulative as well, getting Mowgli to work for him.
- The Lion King:
- The Lion King (1994): The hyenas followed Scar supposedly because they wanted food. What that meant in practice was 'forcing other carnivores to hunt food for them and having Scar beat them up if they object'. At no point do they do anything but sit around and wait for others to enable their survival. In a wilderness. How they're not already dead boggles the mind.
Banzai: It's dinner time, and we ain't got no stinkin' entrees!
- The Lion Guard spinoff confirms that the Outlands are perfectly capable of sustaining a hyena population- in fact, most hyenas feel very fond of the place. Shenzi and her gang were just lazy.
- Scar had the opposite problem in the live-action remake. He and the hyenas hunt too much, driving the prey, to near-extinction and the lions to nearly starve.
- The Lion King (1994): The hyenas followed Scar supposedly because they wanted food. What that meant in practice was 'forcing other carnivores to hunt food for them and having Scar beat them up if they object'. At no point do they do anything but sit around and wait for others to enable their survival. In a wilderness. How they're not already dead boggles the mind.
- Spirited Away: As part of her spoiled nature, Chihiro is indolent at first—even though she's a child, it's clear that she hasn't done chores or anything resembling labor before. After Chihiro stumbles through her first shift in the bathhouse, Lin correctly guesses that she's never worked a single day in her life. Her time in the spirit world helps her grow out of it, and she ends the film unafraid of hard work if it means helping others.
Films — Live-Action
- The Big Lebowski. The Dude. He is even referred to as such by the Big Lebowski and the Malibu chief of police. The Dude has no job, very little money, and even less ambition to do anything with his life besides slack off. It's exemplified at the end of the movie: in spite of everything that's happened to him, The Dude doesn't really mind it that much, choosing to go on just as before, since "The Dude abides".
The Cowboy: Even if he was a lazy man— and The Dude was most certainly that. Quite possibly the laziest man in all of Los Angeles, which'd place him high in the runnin' for laziest worldwide.
- The Comedy of Terrors: Trumbull would frequently have Gillie do all of the dirty work for him while he sits back and waits (usually in his bottle). This is illustrated when they try to break into Mr. Black's home to kill him, Trumbull verbally abusing Gillie for his lack of climbing skills despite almost being twice as tall as him. Trumbull could have easily scaled the wall himself, but couldn't not be bothered.
- The Disappointments Room: David. At one point, he says that he plays Xbox and takes naps while he watches his wife Dana work, when he's asked what he does for a living.
- Doctor in the House: Grimsdyke is content to stay as a medical student for as long as possible as he continues to receive an allowance of £1,000 a year as long as he remains studying at St. Swithin's. Unluckily for him, Stella is having none of this and wants to marry a proper doctor:
Grimsdyke: But do you realise what this means? I shall have to qualify.
Stella: Yes.
Grimsdyke: Well, if I qualify, my grandmother's allowance will stop.
Stella: Yes.
Grimsdyke: Well, if Granny's allowance stops, we won't have... Good heavens, woman. I shall have to work!
Stella: Yes!
Grimsdyke: And you say you're in love with me? - Santa Claus Conquers the Martians: The annoying comic relief character Dropo is referred to as "the laziest man on Mars". His problem isn't really that he's lazy so much as it is that he hasn't found the right job for him.
- Shoes: Eva is supporting a family of six from her meager salary as a shopgirl, and she is so broke that she has to use cardboard to repair her crumbling shoes—and then the shoes and the cardboard get soaked in the rain. Her perfectly able-bodied father sits around the house all day reading books.
- Step Brothers: Dale and Brennan have absolutely no interest in getting jobs or contributing to household chores, preferring to lounge around the house and watch TV all day.
- Wedding Crashers: Chazz is over 40 years old, lives in his mother's basement, and demands her to wait on him hand and foot. And yet, he has the most success with women.
- Wild River: Hamilton and Cal Garth (and possibly Joe John, although he's absent during that conversation) are old enough to be great-uncles but openly admit that they don't do any work on the Garth farm and just mildly supervise the black farmhands, and have been that way since childhood. Knowing that the relocation would force them to get jobs causes them to resist for a while.
Literature
- Axtara: Edwarn Vern, the head courier of Elnacier, is a very lazy guy who often takes his sweet time getting around to actually delivering people's mail and other packages. Part of this is due to his age, but he's said to have always been like this. It gets to the point that Axtara has to directly pay his young apprentices with dims to encourage them to deliver her own mail on a quicker and more regular basis.
- Victor Tugelbend is the hero of the Discworld novel Moving Pictures, who puts an extraordinary amount of thought and effort into being lazy. He finds the student life at Unseen University very cushy so he studies extra extra hard to get exactly 84% on all his exams. 88% is the minimum passing grade for UU, and he has to get at least 80% to keep his trust fund. He's also in very good shape, so he doesn't have to waste energy hauling around excess body mass.
- Each of the villains in the Keys to the Kingdom series represents a deadly sin, with Mister Monday representing sloth. He has servants carry him around at all time and the waiting line for people seeking his approval to do something stretches into the hundreds of thousands. Seeing as he keeps an important part of the Celestial Bureaucracy running... Let's just say that in the ten thousand years of his reign, even some people remain unaccounted for.
- Older Than Feudalism: The Grasshopper in The Ant And The Grasshopper, one of Aesop's Fables.
- Mrs Ablewhite in The Moonstone.
My Aunt Ablewhite is a large, silent, fair-complexioned woman, with one noteworthy point in her character. From the hour of her birth she has never been known to do anything for herself. She has gone through life, accepting everybody's help, and adopting everybody's opinions.
- The protagonist in the Heinlein story The Man Who Was Too Lazy To Fail.
- In Tobacco Road, Jeeter Lester believes himself to be a hard-working farmer who's not to blame if other people won't give him credit to buy seed cotton and fertilizer. His actions, or rather his inactivity, suggests otherwise.
- Bertie from Jeeves and Wooster, who has more than enough money to support his lazy lifestyle and dreads nothing more than losing his valet, who runs his life and sees to it that he doesn't have to do a thing himself. While Bertie loves travel, sports, and helping out his friends, he also loves lounging around with a cigarette and a cheap mystery novel.
- Sol in the Warrior Cats series. He's charismatic enough to convince other cats to do what he wants, but somehow always ends up letting them fight in his place, or having them bring him food. Barley's brothers are also freeloaders that insist they need Ravenpaw to "show" them how to hunt and prepare sleeping areas.
- In John Milton's Paradise Lost, Belial urges lying low and not provoking more wrath — they are already better off than they were in the act of falling:
Thus BELIAL with words cloath'd in reasons garb
Counsel'd ignoble ease, and peaceful sloath, - The Hobbit has a rare example of an antagonist who is extremely slothful yet legitimately dangerous. Smaug "the chiefest and greatest calamity of our age" spends decades just sleeping on his Dragon Hoard, and doesn't bother anyone unless his Greed needs sating or his Pride needs salving. If anyone does provoke him, however...
- The film makes him a more active threat by factoring in Sauron's return, and Gandalf's thoughts about how much trouble they'd all be in if Sauron were able to shake Smaug out of his sloth and persuade him to take an active role in Middle Earth's destruction. This concern was also present in some of Tolkien's (posthumously published) writings, although for various reasons the film had to separately reason it out based purely on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (including appendices).
- Ryner Lute from The Legend of the Legendary Heroes, who much prefers taking afternoon naps to fight evil.
- In Metaltown Otto Hampton spends his time drinking and being with women instead of doing his job, which is at least partially responsible for the deplorable conditions in Metaltown.
- The fireflies from The Underland Chronicles. Mareth describes how he once saw two fireflies try to fight to the death over a piece of cake, only to accuse the other of cheating and resort to sulking.
- Ratburger: Zoe's mean stepmother Sheila is so lazy that it takes effort for her to use the TV remote.
- The Bogeys from Fungus the Bogeyman are a whole species of Lazy Bums. Their posters advertise past events so no one has to bother going to the events, they try their best to be slow, and they often fall asleep while sailing.
- In Clark Ashton Smith's fantasy stories, the jerkass god known as Tsathoggua is basically this on a divine scale. He's described as moving with "divine slothfulness", and pretty much only wakes up when it's time for a Human Sacrifice to be fed to him, or to deliver a snarky bon mot.
- Terminate the Other World!: Lilussees, the spider dungeon master, just wants to nap. Constantly. She is genuinely knowledgeable, and certainly more loyal than Rattingtale, but everything she does is based on reducing her own expenditure of energy and increasing the amount of time she can spend asleep.
- The Twelve Idle Servants: The title characters barely do any work, most of them sleep most of the time while others ask others to do their jobs instead. Some even injured themselves due to their slothfulness.
Live-Action TV
- Mike in the "Falling Down on the Job" segment of 1000 Ways to Die was a construction worker who only got the job by virtue of being the boss' son. He uses a counterweight to bring himself to the upper levels of the building. After enough misuse, the rope of the counterweight breaks and Mike falls to his death.
- In an episode of The Addams Family, Morticia and Uncle Fester mistakenly overhear Gomez say the family is broke. Fester turns to Morticia: "What will we do for money? I'm too proud to beg and too lazy to work!"
- Basi from the Nigerian TV show Basi And Company is a man whose goal in life is to become a millionaire without ever doing work. In the pilot episode, he tells an unemployed friend to try throwing himself off a bridge instead of job hunting... because some good Samaritan will save him and get him a job, just like happened to one of the current cabinet ministers.
- Drake & Josh: Drake prefers playing the guitar, charming girls, and lounging around rather than doing his chores. He also takes frequent naps.
- Fort Boyard: Pr. Kevin challenges the candidates' knowledge in the Boyard Academy... while doing the absolute minimum of effort himself. And usually taking a little nap right afterward. Or before. Or both. When outside the watchtower, he moves around on a motorized bed.
- Frasier: Daphne's brother Simon is a massive slob who won't do anything for himself if there's a possibility he can get someone else to do it for him. A large part of the reason Daphne doesn't like him is because he expects her to wait on him hand and foot.
- Lui from Studio 100's Kabouter Plop series is constantly drowsy, and is always seen sleeping. His catchphrase is "Ik Word Daar Zoe Moe Van" and a song about his sleeping habit.
- Law & Order: McCoy says of an opposing lawyer, "Dean's not a bad sort, just morally opposed to hard work."
- Subverted in LazyTown with Robbie Rotten, whose efforts to get everyone else to stop doing things (or just ruin their day) actually take a lot of work; this is lampshaded at least once.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Malva Meadowgrass is a lazy Harfoot woman who would order other people around than do the job herself.
- Maynard G. Krebbs from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. The mere mention of work was enough to scare him.
- Peg Bundy, female lead of Married... with Children. Early on, she was portrayed as a jaded but competent homemaker, but exaggeration set in until Peg is so lazy that basic tasks like grocery shopping and feeding her children are foreign (and repulsive) to her.
- Nathan from Misfits. Not quite smart enough to be Brilliant, but Lazy, not nearly dumb enough to qualify as The Ditz. He's capable, but oh so lazy.
- Harvey Micklethwaite from On the House was a long-haired layabout, a character similar to the one that Robin Askwith would later play in the Confessions of a... Series.
- Lister from Red Dwarf is one of the ones we root for. He never does any work whatsoever, but it's not like a giant empty spaceship with no crew needs a lot of work, and he's more fun than his Control Freak nemesis. He's also self-aware of it. When asked to state his "occupation" under formal oath, he outright says that it's "bum".
- The Sopranos: Tony Soprano has the hardest time getting his spoiled son A.J. to do any work whatsoever, and almost never without a ton of whining beforehand.
- Almost every season of Survivor has at least one contestant who makes a show of not doing work, gloats about how funny it is that other people do work instead of them, and then has no clue why the other contestants (and the audience) hate them.
Music
- Evillious Chronicles: "Gift from the Princess Who Brought Sleep
" represents Sloth, sung by Hatsune Miku. Unlike most examples, this one is rather metaphorical. Margarita (who is a very Broken Bird) grows discontent with everyone's unhappiness, and starting with her unfaithful husband, gives everyone her "gift" ("poison" in German). The metaphor is: life is a struggle to gain happiness, Margarita is too "lazy" to work for her and everyone else's happiness, so she took the "lazy way out" by granting everyone eternal sleep.
- And then there's Bruno Mars' The Lazy Song. "Today I don't feel like doing anything..."
- Mandatory Fun has a parody called "Inactive" that has someone who epitomizes sloth.
My muscle's gone, I'm atrophied
Always lose my fight with gravity
I rest my bones, and just chillax
My NordicTrack's collecting dust
And my Stair-Master's a pile of rust
This is it, The Inertia - The Tin Pan Alley standard "Lazybones", with lyrics by Johnny Mercer and music by Hoagy Carmichael, is all about this. Mercer's lyrics were written to tease Carmichael.
- The narrator of Lene Alexandra's satirical "My Boobs Are OK" is a Dumb Blonde who freely admits that she's too lazy to work, and gets away with it because of her looks, especially her boobs.
Myths & Religion
- The Book of Proverbs from The Bible contains several warnings against slothfulness, such as the following verse about a guy who is so lazy that he won't even eat food.
The sluggard buries his hand in the dish; he is too lazy to bring it back to his mouth (26:15).
Pro Wrestling
- Kevin Nash developed this reputation in WCW, specifically of getting paid a lot to do comparatively little work. In TNA it became his gimmick outright, with very little motivating him to move anything other than his lips for a paycheck. (Attacking Scott Hall, as Jeff Jarrett did accidentally or Samoa Joe did verbally was one thing, pursuit of pretty women such as The Beautiful People was another).
- This is how Jimmy Jacobs treated Milo Beasley in The Age Of The Fall's Full Impact Pro branch. On an Ring of Honor show Jacobs refused to admit Beasley was even an Age Of The Fall Member, insisting he was a "homeless man" whom he had bought a ticket for.
Theatre
- La Nona: Chicho contributes exactly nothing to the household. He doesn't help with the chores, spends all day lazing around in his bed composing tangos, and is allergic to the idea of seeking a job. When the family's finances start tightening due to the crisis, he still makes excuse after excuse and plans harebrained schemes to avoid working. It's Played for Drama because his reluctance forces his relatives to make great sacrifices, which ultimately leads to their demise.
Radio
- Our Miss Brooks: The hobo calling himself "The Earl of Peoria" in "Miss Brooks Writes About a Hobo".
Video Games
- Atelier Annie's protagonist Annie Eilenberg puts much more effort into sleeping than she does in her alchemy.
- Merak from Azure Striker Gunvolt complains once you enter his boss room because you didn't have the decency to die on the way there and spare him from having to fight you. When you do fight him, he spends the entire battle in his flying throne, and his ultimate attack is called "Lazy Laser". Once he dies and is resurrected, he complains that he has to keep fighting instead of relaxing.
- Bendy and the Ink Machine: In the joint recording between Thomas Connor and Wally Franks in Chapter 3, Wally is implied to be one. Thomas keeps explaining how the pipes and valves work asks Wally to keep an eye on a valve, but Wally seems annoyed that Thomas seems to be trying to get him to do his job.
- Crescent Prism: Although Lunita is expected to succeed her mother as the Oracle of Merryday Village, she'd rather sleep in on the weekends and skip on festival duties.
- Subverted with Python in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. Forsyth seems to think that Python is this trope. However, Python's definitely capable of getting stuff done; it's just that, as he points out to Clive, Python is very aware of classism issues going on, even in The Deliverance, and is convinced that Hard Work Hardly Works since he (Python) is a commoner, while the commanders are pretty much exclusively nobility.
- Hilda in Fire Emblem: Three Houses is Brilliant, but Lazy with an emphasis on the latter, often trying to push responsibilities she doesn't like onto someone else, or coming up with excuses to avoid activities she doesn't want to do. In truth, she is quite smart and capable in many areas and often steps up to perform a task well if the person she tried to push it onto isn't doing a good job. She admits to Byleth that she doesn't like doing most work because she's scared of disappointing others, reasoning that if nobody expects anything of her, she can't fall short of those expectations.
- Kingdom Hearts:
- Sora is a bit like this in the beginning (Kairi actually calls him one after he wakes up), but he's slowly growing out of it. Saving the universe does that to a guy.
- Demyx is this among Organization XIII. He prefers kicking back and writing songs to actual work, and isn't above bribing Roxas to do his missions for him.
- Relaxed villagers in Kitty Powers' Love Life like to relax by lounging around or watching paint dry. Also, Carefree villagers hate doing the chores and sometimes skip them to do other things, upsetting their partners.
- Link is heavily implied to be this prior to the game events and during the prolougues in many games of The Legend of Zelda. All before his heroic upgrade status, he is usually having to be forcibly woken up by a close friend or important circumstance.
- In Plantasia, flytraps are described as lazy plants that take a while to grow.
- Pokémon:
- Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire introduces Slakoth and it's final evolution, Slaking, the 2 laziest Pokémon in the game. Their ability, Truant, means they only make a move every other turn. According to their Pokédex entries, Slakoth moves so little, it only requires to eat 3 leaves a day. Meanwhile, Slaking eats grass within it's reach, and reluctantly moves to another spot when there's no more grass.
- Slakoth's first evolved form, Vigoroth, averts this, as it has to constantly move to burn off energy to sleep at night.
- Pokémon Sun and Moon brings us Tapu Bulu, who is believed to be this as opposed to its rather docile nature.
- Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire introduces Slakoth and it's final evolution, Slaking, the 2 laziest Pokémon in the game. Their ability, Truant, means they only make a move every other turn. According to their Pokédex entries, Slakoth moves so little, it only requires to eat 3 leaves a day. Meanwhile, Slaking eats grass within it's reach, and reluctantly moves to another spot when there's no more grass.
- Rengoku: In the second game's backstory Briareos was a mercenary who never did much, to not "do anything wrong". He end ends up being shot after trying to flee from Gryphus. As a boss, he uses ranged laser weapons to attack and conveyer belts to move around.
- Akashi Kuniyuki from Touken Ranbu, who considers his laziness so much a part of his character that he apologizes when he gets MVP status during a battle.
Sorry about that. My selling point is my lack of motivation, but I ended up giving it my all.
- Sans from Undertale never does anything except lounge around the house whenever his younger brother Papyrus is trying to get actual work done. Though given that Sans actually puts a lot of thought and intricacy into his pranks, the "lazy" attitude is partly just a front to make Papyrus mad. The fact that he's constantly on the borderline of utter despair might also be a contributing factor. Sans muses about this if you can survive his boss fight, wondering aloud if it's just an excuse to be lazy.
Papyrus: SANS! PLEASE PICK UP YOUR SOCK!
Sans: ok.
Papyrus: DON'T PUT IT BACK DOWN! MOVE IT!
Sans: ok.
Papyrus: YOU MOVED IT TWO INCHES! MOVE IT TO YOUR ROOM!
Sans: ok.
Papyrus: AND DON'T BRING IT BACK!
Sans: ok.
Papyrus: IT'S STILL HERE!
Sans: didn't you just say not to bring it back to my room?
Papyrus: FORGET IT! - Trillion: God of Destruction: Fegor, the older sister of Zeabolos, is the holder of the Crest of Sloth, and also proves to be quite the Sleepy Head. This is deliberate, as her powers far surpass that of her older brother, and in a prior War against Heaven, she racked up the single highest body count! She was given the crest to keep her docile during more peaceful times. When it comes time for her to fight Trillion, her Crest being released is treated as a severe Godzilla Threshold.
Visual Novels
- Henry from Double Homework is excited about the website Dennis is setting up for him and the protagonist... unless the protagonist tells him that making it succeed requires hard work. He also is happy about postponing his graduation by accident, because it will delay his entry into the working world for another year.
- Played with in Umineko: When They Cry. Belphegor represents the sin of Sloth, but is a very hard worker. It's just that if she's the only one doing the work, it advances her vice. Still, when Rudolf tricks her into a Duel to the Death in the third arc, she doesn't notice that her master, Eva-Beatrice, is in the line of fire until she only has time to take the bullet (he apologizes to her, at least). As she puts it, "I was lazy ?!"
Web Animation
- Asuka's Revenge: Kotomi's brother-in-law
keeps showing up at her house to slack off without doing anything, his brother defends him and even gives him a spare key to gain access to house.
- Dayum:
- Davis from “Types of Bad Students Portrayed by Minecraft” is too lazy to do his homework, and outright admits as such to his teacher Mr. Scott, who notes that at least he’s honest.
- The “Bossy” from “Types of Siblings Portrayed by Minecraft # 2” demands her little brother Lewis feed her, give her water, and even carry her to the toilet.
- “Types of Patients Portrayed by Minecraft” has Juliet, who also insists on being carried to the bathroom, and wants the nurse to wash her foot for her.
- Owen’s mom from “Types of Parents Portrayed by Minecraft” asks her son to do all the chores while she just lies on the couch.
- Etra chan saw it!: Akamatsu
quits his job in an attempt to become a pro gamer; however, he does nothing but lazing around at Tsutsuji's house. Annoyed by Akamatsu's behavior, Tsutsuji challenges Akamatsu in a fighting game. After winning several matches against Akamatsu, Tsutsuji calls him out for his laziness and decides to end their relationship. Several years after the breakup, Akamatsu takes Tsutsuji's advice and now works as a truck driver.
- ETU - Animated Stories: Milton's adoptive dad was extremely lazy and lounged around the house, which eventually caused his business to fail.
- Dexter Grif from Red vs. Blue is pathologically lazy, making an effort to avoid doing anything, whenever possible. He wasn't always like this, as initially when he was pushed into the military, he was generally more than willing to pull his weight...until he fell under the command of Sarge, who basically mistreated him so much that he decided it wasn't worth the effort of trying to appease a Drill Sergeant Nasty, and became the slacker he is in present day.
Webcomics
- Squid Row: Grace. Let special orders accumulate for months — and then when Randie cleared up them, Grace got more hours for it.
- Sequential Art: Pip is a chronically online geek who gets most of his income from Ebay trading (there's also mention of "investments" early on, but this is never elaborated on), and when one of his sales backfires (he sold some advanced tech as Star Trek props which ended up stranding the buyers in the Sahara), Pip actually faints at the prospect of getting a regular job until his account is unbanned. Another strip shows that his "work day" is roughly 15 minutes long.
- Biter Comics: A man contemplates getting up to answer the phone but decides instead to let it ring several more times at least to make sure that it is, or was
, important.
- In Godslave, Edith was doing pretty much nothing ever since she left school. When Alma asks her what her plans for the evening are, she points at her laptop and says "you're looking at them".
- In Kill Six Billion Demons, the Demiurge Jadis of the Seven is associated with the Sin of Sloth, being mostly immobile, completely uninvolved in the running of her empire and the least proactive of the Seven. She is currently sealed inside a coffin of glass due to having seen the universe from the outside and coming to understand everything about Creation. All of it, at once. As a result, she's become a Mad Oracle Straw Nihilist who lacks the motivation to do anything, because her perfect knowledge means she already knows what she's going to do. Furthermore, having perfect knowledge of everything means she's currently trapped in all her worst moments of trauma: She cannot 'move on' from the tortures of her abusive father, or the hell of the Multiversal War, or the moment seeing the True Shape flayed her alive, boiled her eyes and ruined her mind, because due to perfect omniscience she's constantly reliving it.
Western Animation
- The Amazing World of Gumball: Richard Watterson, Gumball's dad, who's an over grown Manchild who sits in the couch all day. "The Job" reveals that the idea of him actually getting a job is so alien that it results in a Reality-Breaking Paradox.
- American Dad!:
- Hayley only seems to work her hardest when attempting to screw over her family. For example, in "Helping Handis", she makes a video about how worthless Francine's life as a homemaker is for class, despite the fact that she keeps dropping out of college; the show openly acknowledges that she will never move out of the house. In "Less Money, Mo' Problems", it's revealed that Jeff is the only one working full time; Hayley would rather remain a community college student and blame the low minimum wage for them mooching off Stan and Francine than get a job herself to bring in more income so they can move out.
- Roger prefers to drink, eat, do drugs, or watch TV over doing anything productive unless he actually feels like it.
- Arthur: "Slink's Special Talent" gives A Day in the Limelight to Slink, who has a paper route around the neighborhood. He does a very messy job, starts an hour later than he's supposed to, and doesn't know the names of any of his neighbors. After being challenged to come up with three of his talents, he names comedy (which is immediately disproven because he Cannot Tell a Joke), watching TV, and packing for trips. When Slink tries packing an old lady's groceries and it goes wrong, he immediately gives up, making Rattles call him out on it and say that he'll never know what he's good at if he doesn't try.
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Master Shake spends all day lazing around the house, and actively refuses to get a job or do any task at all, even when said task is something he decided to do. On one of the few occasions he had a job, he refused to work and eventually liquefied his uniform and tried to steal from the register so he could go play games at the arcade.
- Beavis and Butt-Head: Both Beavis and Butt-Head would rather be rocking out to heavy metal or perving on women than doing any kind of productive activity. Their stupidity and lack of work ethic prevents them from ever graduating from high school or getting any kind of job other than flipping burgers.
- Brickleberry: Malloy slouches around munching on junk food, watching TV or porn, and playing video games all day.
- The Cleveland Show: Robert, Donna's ex-husband, spends his free-time watching TV in his filthy apartment, getting drunk and/or stoned, occasionally visiting his children — and even "occasionally" is too much of a stretch — going to strip clubs, and generally supporting himself, with only Donna's alimony.
- Courage the Cowardly Dog: Eustace is very much often seen just sitting on his own red chair, barely doing any of the housework for the Bagge family's residence.
- Danny Phantom.
- Daria: Trent spends most of his time sleeping; he is also heavily implied to be a pothead.
- The Dick Tracy animated series had the Ethnic Scrappy Go-Go-Gomez, a lazy Mexican detective who solved crimes from his hammock.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy: While usually serving as the idea guy and schemer of the Eds, Eddy will not lift a finger physically if he doesn't have to, not even if doing so will reward him with a jawbreaker (which most of his schemes revolve around getting anyway), and almost always leaves all the heavy lifting up to Ed, while Double-D works out the technical details. At most, Eddy serves as The Face, doing the talking to draw attention to their current scam, and will otherwise just hang around.
- The Fairly OddParents!: Timmy Turner; the Made-for-TV Movie movie "Fairy Idol" opened with him being so lazy he relied on Cosmo and Wanda to get dressed. By the end of it, however, he learns to stop taking advantage of them.
- Family Guy: Peter Griffin is a virtual poster boy for the Lazy Husband trope, and while he might get extremely invested in some random nonsense, actual work or parenting is a distant second to guzzling beer with his friends or watching TV on the couch. His son Chris, while always somewhat dull, was portrayed as a talented artist in early episodes, but this was dropped in favor of showing him as little more than a glutton and chronic masturbator.
- Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Bloo is very often seen lying down on the couch, eating junk food, and watching TV.
- Futurama: Fry often slacks off, takes naps, and refuses to get off the couch. He even says, in one comic, "I take my laziness seriously".
- Gravity Falls: Wendy Corduroy is technically the clerk at the Mystery Shack, but the only reason she ever does any work at all is because of Stan's strict rules and otherwise just wants to goof off and hang out with her friends. While somewhat understandable in the sense that the show actually takes place during summer vacation and she's a teenager, it's not her most endearing trait.
- Hey Arnold!: Oskar Never Learned to Read English despite having lived in America for several years until Arnold taught him how. He was so lazy he initially tried to cheat his way out of it.
- Beezy on Jimmy Two-Shoes literally schedules his sloth.
- Lilo & Stitch: The Series: Experiment 625 is every bit as powerful as Stitch... but he has no interest in using his abilities, and would rather make sandwiches. He does get to work to help Lilo a few times, though, and in the Grand Finale movie, Leroy & Stitch, in addition to finally getting his own name, Reuben, he gets a Moment of Awesome when he successfully repairs Gantu's crashed ship, something that Gantu had been unable to do in the series.
- The Looney Tunes Show: Daffy Duck is Bugs Bunny's lazy roommate who mooches off his fortune and patience. Funnily enough, through his Cloud Cuckoolander shenanigans, he managed to get several jobs he couldn't hold down, including briefly being the CEO of Eccentric Millionaire Foghorn Leghorn's company. When he tries to get a normal office job after this, the astonished manager tells him he's overqualified. When he falsely believed Bugs was kicking him out, he immediately joined the Marines.
- Mr. Lazy from The Mr. Men Show.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Spike would rather sleep than do anything else, despite his job as Twilight Sparkle's assistant.
- Regular Show: Both Mordecai and Rigby fit the bill, but Rigby more so. He would rather play video games and goof around than do his chores. "First Day" reveals that he was too lazy to fill out his work application; Mordecai had to do so for him. At least up until his Character Development, this generally reaches to the point of him becoming The Millstone.
- Homer Simpson from The Simpsons.
- Bird from Skunk Fu! fits this trope rather well. He also induces this on Ox as well.
- SpongeBob SquarePants:
- Squidward Tentacles, especially when it comes to his job at the Krusty Krab. He's a sloppy employee, either reading magazines (even in front of waiting customers), outright sleeping on the job (one time, he faked an injury from that), occasionally Playing Sick, or hoisting his workload on SpongeBob. It's to the extent that in "Bubble Buddy," he only wanted to and proceeds to almost pop Bubble Buddy because he "made [him] provide excellent service."
- Patrick Star also qualifies as one too. In contrast to the hard-working SpongeBob, he tends to be unwilling and uninterested in doing any physical labour.
- While normally a hard worker, SpongeBob himself was this in "Welcome to the Chum Bucket", where he ended up going to work at the Chum Bucket after Mr. Krabs bet his contract in a poker game with Plankton and lost. Plankton believed that having SpongeBob work for him would result in his success at getting the Krabby Patty formula and putting the Krusty Krab out of business, but the scheme backfires when SpongeBob drives him crazy with his rebellious attitude and refused to do his job, even after Plankton steals his brain and implants it in the robot chef. Plankton, as a result, admitted to having cheated in the poker game, put SpongeBob's brain back in his body and allowed him to return to his original workplace. In spite of having his brain stolen by Plankton, SpongeBob's loyalty to the Krusty Krab remains tried and true.
- Thomas & Friends:
- Daisy the Diesel Railcar was brought to Sodor to substitute for Thomas on his branch line while the latter was being repaired after accidentally crashing into a stationmaster's house. Daisy prefers to do just what work she chooses and no more. In her debut episode, she refuses to pull a single milk tanker, using her "fitter's orders" as an excuse not to pull it. In the following episode, Sir Topham Hatt calls her out on her laziness, since if she had taken the milk tanker in the first place, Toby wouldn't have had to do it, and Percy wouldn't have had to take the Troublesome Trucks, who damaged him by pushing him into a brake van, forcing Sir Topham Hatt to run the branch line with only Toby and Daisy. He does, however, give her a second chance when he heard how hard she worked to clear away the wreckage. Years later in "Ryan and Daisy", Daisy tricks Ryan into doing her new jobs such as pulling the mail and working eariler in the morning and late into the evening, which results in Ryan being late with his own responsibilities. Once again, Sir Topham Hatt calls her out for her laziness and makes her take Ryan's trucks to the quarry as punishment.
- Dennis is a diesel engine who doesn't like working in general. In his debut episode, he is brought to Sodor to deliver a new set of tiles to a school to repair its roof, as Sir Topham Hatt had given Thomas the day off. Dennis tricks Thomas into doing his (Dennis') job for him and tries to get far away from his work, causing him (Dennis) to derail. After Thomas comes to Dennis' rescue, Thomas delivers the tiles to the school, where Sir Topham Hatt calls Dennis out for not doing his job like he was supposed to. Dennis feels ashamed and promises to try to be more useful from now on, since Thomas has shown him that being really useful is much better than being really lazy.
- Dodsworth the cat in a couple of Robert McKimson's Warners shorts (Kiddin' the Kitten and A Peck o' Trouble) in The '50s.
- Velma: Despite proclaiming how she has to work diligently to get anything that Fred has instantly handed to him, Velma in practice tends to pawn off work to other people and reap the rewards of it. She frequently comments how she doesn't try to do any chores around the house, mooches off of Norville for homework answers, relies on others to give her the clues to the mystery, and when she had to pretend to be Amanda's mother she often tried to pawn her off to others to take care of her.
- Crock, the nominal Big Bad of Disney's The Wuzzles, is characterised first and foremost by his laziness. He finds work offensive to the point that, in "Bulls of a Feather", despite having been reduced to ripping out pictures of food from magazines and eating them due to having nothing else, he reacts to Flizard saying he's hungry enough to look for work as if the other Wuzzle had said something profane. He literally asks where Flizard heard that "disgusting word", suggests he picked it up in the streets, and threatens to wash his mouth out with soap as if he were a kid spouting vulgarities. Meanwhile, the whole plot of "Crock Around The Clock" is kicked off by Crock's laziness (refusing to prepare for the well-predicted tropical fruit-storm until it actually happens) and further driven by it (he feigns being injured to mooch off of Butterbear's kindness until the other Wuzzles get suspicious and trick him into revealing himself).