Why Is Pain in the Ass Funny

"His mother [...] told him, before his little milk tusks had dropped out, that elephants who were afraid always got hurt. Kala Nag knew that that advice was good, for the first time that he saw a shell burst he backed, screaming, into a stand of piled rifles, and the bayonets pricked him in all his softest places."

Even though it hurts, pain can be funny. Butts can also be funny. So combining the two is hilarious!

This trope is pretty straight forward. A character receives some sort of trauma to their backside. As mentioned above this trope often appears in slapstick or otherwise humorous context. This is because in addition to the fact that butts, particularly large ones, are often seen as inherently humorous and because butts are naturally padded if something or someone strikes it there's less likely to be any serious injury involved.

This tends to happen to plumper characters more often since their butts are naturally bigger targets.

Subtrope of Joke of the Butt. A super trope to Rump Roast, Butt Biter, Literal Ass-Kicking, Anal Probing, Thumbtack on the Chair, Shot in the Ass, Ass Shove, Comedic Spanking, and Butt Brand. Compare Attack the Tail (where the target is even further beyond the rear end), contrast Butt Sticker and Ass Kicks You (where it's the butt that hurts someone else) and see also Flirtatious Smack on the Ass (where it's not meant to be painful so much as sexy).

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Examples:

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    Anime

• Haribo the pufferfish-boy from Doraemon: Nobita's Great Battle of the Mermaid King have a nasty habit of headbutting people who annoys him in the rump, nevermind the fact that his hair are spikes.

    Fan Works

• The Nightmare House: In Lisa Loud's nightmare, the teddy bear worries that she will fall on her "tushy-wushy"... right before spanking her.
• In Zero Context: Woolgathering, while subjecting Acutus to a rapid-fire barrage of her Quantum Cutters, Callista deals a wound to her posterior for good measure. While it took time for most of the damage to be felt due to the attack's nature, this was the only wound that got an immediate reaction from Acutus and forced her to try to heal it posthaste.
• The Firefly fic "He's Got a Secret" starts out funny when Jayne gets shot in the butt but turns serious when it's revealed taking his pants down for treatment is actually pushing a Trauma Button.

    Films — Animation

• The page image is from Disney's Hercules, where the introduction to Pain and Panic has the two bumbling henchmen tripping down a flight of stairs and Pain landing bottom first onto Panic's horns.
• Lampshaded in Disney's Moana. Maui is in the middle of a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Moana, while denying her the ability to sail the boat they are both on. Moana just takes it, but the Ocean intervenes by sticking a blowdart (from an earlier encounter) into Maui's backside, paralyzing him. Moana then takes control of the boat. (It makes way more sense in context.)

  Maui: Blowdart. In my buttcheek. You are a bad, bad person.

• In Shrek, after a fight with Robin Hood and his Merry Men, Shrek ends up with an arrow in his butt. He doesn't even notice it until Fiona points it out and removes it.
• In The Rescuers, Luke uses his pitchfork to prod Madame Medusa in the butt.
• In The Lion King (1994), "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" ends with an elephant falling on an antelope's horns butt-first, eliciting a pain-induced Wild Take.
  • When Shenzi, Banzai and Ed are chasing Simba, Banzai ends up falling in a thorny bush, and Shenzi even calls him "cactus butt".
• During the Training Montage of "I'll Make a Man Out of You" in Mulan, Yao gets his buttock pierced by a burning arrow.
• In Cinderella, Gus ties his tail to the spout of a teapot and tries to reach for the key to Cinderella's room, which Jaq is handing to him from the stepmother's pocket. However, the pot tips and a drop of piping hot tea drips onto Gus' bottom, causing both mice and the key to fall onto the villain's dress and slide safely onto the floor.
• Beauty and the Beast: LeFou comes close to melting Lumiere with a torch. Cogsworth saves him by sliding down a bannister and jabbing a pair of scissors in LeFou's butt.
• The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie: While getting a lift back to Bikini Bottom on the back of David Hasselhoff, SpongeBob and Patrick are ambushed by Dennis, the hitman Plankton hired. When SpongeBob dodged one of Dennis' knife attacks, it struck the Hoff in his right buttcheek. Fortunately, because Dennis and his knife are quite tiny in comparison to Hasselhoff, it wasn't enough to stop his swimming, or even slow him down.

  David Hasselhoff: Ooh! Take it easy back there, fellas.

    Films — Live-Action

• In the prologue of City Slickers, the three main characters are in Spain for the Running of the Bulls. The segment concludes with Billy Crystal's character Mitch getting gored in the behind.
• Moonraker: This is downplayed, as Bond tests his wrist dart gun in M's office by firing a dart into a painting of William III and his horse.
• In Smokin' Aces, Jeeves Tremor is killed when Sir Ivy forces him to sit down on his running chainsaw.
• Space Jam: During the Tune Squad's retaliation against the Monstars, Daffy Duck paints the ass of one of their members red, getting the attention of Toro the Bull, who is in the audience.
• Home Alone 2: Lost in New York: Kevin sets up a staple gun booby trap at Uncle Rob's townhouse. One of the staples punctures Marv's ass complete with a scream of "YEOW!"
• The Bold Caballero: While trying to escape over the fence during the bullfight, the Commandante gets gored in the ass by the bull.
• Transylvania 6-5000: While attempting to grab a rope in the stables, Lupi accidentally stabs the Frankenstein Monster in the butt with a pitchfork.

    Literature

• The Parasol Protectorate: Although details are somewhat lacking, the first meeting between Alexia Tarabotti and Lord Conall Maccon involved the latter accidentally sitting on a hedgehog, which Alexia insists she didn't deliberately leave on a chair.
• The Back Story of Bit Character Merrett Frey from A Song of Ice and Fire includes being captured by an infamous outlaw band, (think a major deconstruction/Darker and Edgier version of Robin Hood and his Merry Men) and a female member of the outlaws branded him on the ass during his captivity.
• In Toomai of the Elephants, a young Indian elephant jabs himself in the rear when he backs into a pile of bayonets.
• Roys Bedoys: In "What Does Mommy Want for Mother's Day, Roys Bedoys?", Roys accidentally sits on a lego piece, hurting himself.

    Live-Action TV

• A mini-arc in Everybody Loves Raymond featured Robert's injury in the line of duty when he was gored in the Upper Thigh Region by a bull that escaped from an illegal rodeo. Certainly made for a memorable arc because of the nature of how a police officer was downed and partially the embarrassment Robert faced when it was revealed that the by-standard footage went viral.
• Shakespeare & Hathaway - Private Investigators: In "Exit, Pursued by a Bear", Frank is interviewing a suspect when he sits down heavily on a pin cushion and jumps immediately to his feet. The pincushion later turns out to be a vital clue in solving the mystery.
• Ultraman Z's first episode features Captain Shota Hebikura/Jugglus Juggler crushing our hero Haruki's ass with a tight grip to make him look tearful and apologetic to Directer Kuriyama after Haruki's insistence of saving a dog from a Gomess attack resulted in massive collateral damage STORAGE had to pay for.

    Music

• The German "Stimmungslied" "Da sprach der alte Häuptling der Indianer" ("Thus Spake the Old Indian Chief") by Gus Backus. His squaw pokes him in the butt with an arrow to hinder him going on war path against the new railway. He gets better. And a job as train conductor.
• "It's Still Billy Joel to Me", an early "Weird Al" Yankovic parody, has this stanza:

  Maybe he should dye his hair bright pink and stick a safety pin through his cheeks
  Then he'll really fit the new wave image but he couldn't sit down for weeks

    Professional Wrestling

• During an intergender match pitting Edge and Lita against John Cena and Maria, Lita was being portrayed as more experienced than Maria, as a way to mock Maria Lita would target Maria's butt throughout the time they were in the ring together. This included doing things like slapping it over and over again, kicking and even stomping on her ass.
• The Atomic Drop is this to the unfortunate opponent.
• As described by Jim Cornette, a common way for a face male to get revenge on a heel valet or other female assuming he doesn't have a face woman who would stand up for him would be a "butt bump". Usually this would be the face doing something that targets said female's butt such as the aforementioned Atomic Drop or other methods such as spanking. As the butt is a rather sensitive area and very little risk of injury of hitting the area (though the atomic drop notably targets the lower tailbone of the victim) it usually bypasses the audience sense of men shouldn't hit women and can be both satisfying and funny to the people watching.
  • Two of the most notable examples of this was Hulk Hogan who gave a well deserved Atomic Drop to Sensational Sherri after she has been a thorn on his and many of his allies side for years. The audience ate it up, later when Miss Elizabeth in WCW turned evil herself her formally innocent butt wasn't safe from Hogan's knee either.

    Video Games

• In Deadpool, DP ends up finishing the clone of Mister Sinister with a sword into his anus.
• It is safe to say that Mario Party loves this, when considering the sheer frequency in which even someone like Rosalina, can get her butt burned, stung or otherwise comically injured.
• There are several butt related injuries that Crash Bandicoot (and later Coco) can suffer from in the series, such as burning their butts from falling in lava, having them stung by bees, poked by spikes, or an explosive blast from a land mine.
• In Tatsunoko vs. Capcom every character can suffer a little butt pain at the hands of Roll thanks to Roll setting said butt on fire. Fortunately for them Roll also puts it out by sending a giant tidal wave of water to them.
• In the arcade game of Sailor Moon some of the mooks do a kick attack that if it hits either Moon or Venus from behind both are shown tending to their sailor butts momentarily before being controllable again. Though in this case all senshi flinch but only said two tend to said area.
• Bass from the Dead or Alive fighting games has access to an atomic drop where his opponents after landing on his muscular knee his opponent jumps up off his knee tending to their aching backsides. Bonus points to Marie Rose as seeing a hulking 6'5 346 monster drop a pint sized 4'10 86 girl with such force on her tailbone is quite amusing.
• Going into Street Fighter V, Zangief lost his brutal looking forward throw for an even more brutal looking atomic drop. When the victim falls seated into his knee a loud "crunch" is heard. Seeing Zangief do this to the barely over 100 pound Ibuki makes one wonder how her spine didn't split in two upon impact.
• Due to being a fanservice game with (mostly) female characters, Rumble Roses features many girls attacking each other in ways that hurt their butts, such as getting roughly thrown down onto the ring. Some damage animations have the victimized girl rubbing her behind in pain.
• Should Raffina get hit with a particularly powerful attack in Puyo Puyo, an animation will play of her getting struck in the backside with a Garbage Puyo. How humiliating...
• Super Mario Galaxy 2: Defeating Peewee Pirahna requires smashing open his egg diaper and then jumping onto his large exposed rump.
• Super Smash Bros.
• Spyro in Ripto's Rage and Year of the Dragon as well as the reignited trilogy versions of them, whenever he is hit by fire attacks or lands in lava, the little purple dragon jumps up into the air holding his painfully burnt butt with his front paws.

    Web Comics

• A Downplayed Trope in this comic from Milk And Mocha features Mocha drumming on Milk's butt.

    Web Original

• This comedy mechanism has been discussed in the Big Cartoon Forum, here: [1]. Granted, it's all Western Animation stuff, but posteriors get poked nonetheless.

    Western Animation

• Futurama: In "The Deep South", when the Planet Express crew goes on a fishing expedition, Leela brings out a harpoon. Bender scoffs:

  Bender: Harpoon, my ass! Heh heh heh heh...
  Leela: Okay. (and she does)

• Ren & Stimpy has featured a couple of examples in their time usually happening to Stimpy (one of the perils of having a big butt). One unique one is from the Christmas special when Stimpy tries to fart for Ren. Stimpy's butt cheeks strain so hard they actually wind up deflating like a couple of balloons. Then Ren kicks at the deflated remains.
• Loonatics Unleashed: Lexi Bunny has on three separate occasions delivered a low-level psionic zap to Danger Duck's tail, each time in response to some calumny uttered by Duck. It's a superpowered equivalent of a spank upon rude youngster. "Hey! Easy on the tail feathers!"
• When the villain captures the dune buggy of Josie and the Pussycats with a claw lowered from a helicopter, Alan, Josie and Alexandra fall out of the vehicle onto the ground. Alan and Josie are fine, but Alexandra, as the Token Evil Teammate and Butt-Monkey of the group, finds herself sitting on a cactus. The Team Pet Sebastian amuses himself by extracting the needles from Alexandra's tender tissues.
  • In fact, throughout the series, whether it's getting poked in the rear by a drill, landing ass-first on a cactus, or getting her butt cheeks pinched by a crab's claw, Alexandra tends to receive a lot of rump-targeted pain.
• This happens to Dick Dastardly as well in Wacky Races when one of his plans to stop the other racers ends up with him in a bushel of cacti. Muttley uses a wrench to pluck the needles from Dastardly's keister.

  Dastardly: And remember...you're not plucking a chicken!

• Disney's theatrical short cartoons seemed unusually interested in Walt's cartoon animals' rear ends—and in particular, administering physical punishment to them when their owner is incapable of escape:
  • In The Band Concert (1935), a passing tornado leaves Donald Duck trapped between two intertwined trees, his arms, legs, and head facing one direction and his butt prominently pointed in the other. The tornado sends the band members, their instruments and assorted debris spinning in the air, and a particularly obese pig's butt sliding along a picket fence, breaking off their pointed tops as he goes.
  • In The Practical Pig (1939), the titular character catches his brothers lying. His elaborate mechanical lie detector scoops them up, firmly straps them in butt-upwards and paddles their exposed fannies glowing red. Earlier in the cartoon, the camera (viewing from a low angle that suggests it's eavesdropping on them) lingers on their butts as they squeeze into tight bathing trunks. (The shot is particularly curious in the fact they normally run about bare-assed to begin with.)
  • Donald Duck seemed particularly prone to wind up in this sort of situation. In Modern Inventions (1937) an automated barber's chair turns Donald upside-down, ties a towel around his feathery fanny and tries to give his tail feathers an unwanted trim.
  • In Window Cleaners (1940), while being hoisted upwards on a scaffold, Donald's tail feathers are clipped clean off by someone trimming their window plants, leaving the tip of his tail pink and featherless. (His feathers replenish themselves by the following shot.) The entire last half of the eight-minute cartoon is devoted to Donald's battle with a bumble bee that he pisses off by trying to drown him in a tulip, which culminates with the duck completely tangled in the scaffold's ropes, his butt fully exposed to the vengeful bee. The bee, himself exhausted by the battle, slowly summons his remaining energy to attack the helpless duck, allowing Donald plenty of time to fearfully await his impending punishment.
• In "Goldringer" from Special Agent Oso, Oso finds a boomerang and is told by a girl that "If you throw it, it comes back to you." He throws it and comes back... and bonks him on the butt.

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PainToTheAss

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