Literal Ass-Kicking

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The national flag of Australia?

"A local boy kicked me in the butt last week I just smiled at him, and turned the other cheek! I really don't care, in fact I wish him well... Cuz I'll be laughing my head off when he's burning in Hell!" —"Amish Paradise", by "Weird Al" Yankovic

For some reason, Slapstick comedy often seems to involve a character injuring their butt. Possibly it's just because it's humiliating, making this essentially the rear-oriented counterpart of the Groin Attack.

Especially common in cartoons, where this often takes the form of one character sticking a long pin into another character's behind, making them jump away, or straight up in the air, with a yell.

Another form of this old slapstick trope has someone sitting on something unexpectedly hot. Then, of course, there's the old "thumbtack on the chair" gag.

Related to Ass Shove, which happens when something goes into the butt, and Shot in the Ass, the specific case of, well, Exactly What It Says on the Tin.

Contrast Ass Kicks You. Spank the Cutie is the titillating variant.

Examples of Literal Ass-Kicking include:

Anime

• If one of the Devil Bats in Eyeshield 21 does something right, Hiruma uses his foot. If they do something wrong, he uses his gun.
• Hattori Zenzo's butt in Gintama suffers from a variety of butt-related calamities.
• Rock got his ass kicked in a flashback in the first episode of Black Lagoon to show how humiliating his corporate days were.
• One episode of Dragon Ball had Yamcha defeat an enemy in the World Tourmanent by planting his foot into his opponent's behind, causing him to run out of the ring clutching his ass and screaming in pain.
• Luffy often says to his opponents that he'll kick their ass. At least once he made good on that literally, as during his fight with Gecko Moria, the first hit he lands is via kicking through a platform he was sitting on from underneath, nailing him square in the ass.
• In Slam Dunk, Rukawa often does this to Hanamichi

Comics

• In a Smurfs comic book story where Handy Smurf creates problems with a new handheld power driller by drilling through everything he can get his hands on, the Smurfs retaliate by turning his power drill into an ass-kicking machine.
• In Chapter 11 of The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, a child-aged Donald Duck gives his uncle Scrooge a well deserved kick in the ass, upon their very first meeting. Scrooge gets the chance to return the favor in Chapter 12 (in-universe years later), when he and Donald (now an adult) meet again.
• In Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, a policeman trying to arrest Tintin for prohibited swimming becomes distracted by a ruble on the ground, and Tintin takes this opportunity to "penalty kick" him into the same body of water.

Film

• If I had a nickel for every time someone gets kicked in the ass in a Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton short...
• The Three Stooges were constantly getting stabbed, shot, and dynamited in their rears.
• Shrek gets a stray arrow stuck in his butt and doesn't even notice.
• In Return Of The Jedi when a royally pissed off R2D2 cuts loose at the Ewok camp and starts zapping teddy bears with his arc welder, one bear gets it in the butt (and even does a comedy hop when it happens).
• Dash on The Incredibles uses his Super Speed to pull the tack-on-the-seat trick on his teacher.
• Ronald Colman gives James Craig a swift kick in the ass in Kismet (1944) for planning to romance his girlfriend in a small rowboat. If you blink your eyes you'll miss it, but Craig brings it up several times throughout the film.
• Happens at the near end of Ruthless People in which after getting beat up by Barbara when seeing her for the first time since the kidnapping, Sam Stone gets literally kicked in the ass by her into the ocean.
• In Undercover Brother, the title character manages to kick a henchman's ass to the point where his foot is actually in the guy's ass. An x-ray shot showing how it happens even appears.
• "If you don't move, YOUR head is going up HIS ass."
• David in Sabrina sits on the champagne glasses in his back pockets, after encouragement to sit down by his brother Linus. At the end of the movie, their father sits down on a jar of olives.
• After Kitty becomes the title character in The Invisible Woman, she goes to kick her boss's behind. Among other things.
• At the end of The Aristocats, just right after Thomas O'Malley frees Duchess and her kittens from the crate Edgar was going to use to send them to Timbuktu, the evil butler is immediately kicked in the rear by Frou-Frou the horse, causing him to fall into the crate, at which the other cats immediately slam its lid shut and push it out the door, just in time for it to be picked up and taken away.
• In This Is Spinal Tap, when the band appears in a store and nobody's buying their records, the shopkeeper orders them to literally kick his ass.
• In Captain America: The First Avenger Bucky Barnes does it to complete his non-literal asskicking of the bully that had just beaten up a pre-Super Soldier Steve.

Literature

• A Crowning Moment of Awesome in Cain's Last Stand. Cain is losing the fight badly with a mutated Chaos Warmaster until he reverses the situation with a solid boot to the fundament--that sends the villain right over a several-hundred-foot drop. Bonus point for fulfilling one of his students' last wish in doing so.

Cain: Commissar Donal sends his regards.

• Camden Benares' Zen Without Zen Masters, a collection of very short stories which illustrate Zen principles, includes an episode about a woman who constantly kicked herself in the ass in the metaphorical sense, so a friend built her an ass-kicking machine operated by a string on a pulley. The complete design was provided so you could build one for yourself or a friend.
• One of Isaac Asimov's short stories ended with the two main characters discovering that they'd gone through a very unpleasant experience solely because they didn't read the manual for a new piece of equipment and learn how to adjust it -- they'd thought it couldn't be adjusted. The last paragraph has them taking turns kicking each other in the backside.
• L Sprague De Camp's The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate has a scene in which the hero, realizing that he nearly jeopardized their mission (and his mother's life) by drunken, arrogant stupidity, asks his closest friend to give him a good swift kick in the arse. When the friend obliges, the hero sighs and says he feels better now.
• One of the first Don Camillo short stories has Peppone admit in confession that he ambushed the priest and hit him over the head some time before. Don Camillo wants to hit him back, but Christ forbids it, saying, "Your hands were made for blessing." He assigns Peppone some prayers in penance, but then, as the mayor kneels in prayer, Don Camillo thinks his rump would be a perfect target.

"Lord," groaned Don Camillo, clasping his hands and looking up at the crucifix, "my hands were made for blessing, but not my feet." "There's something in that," replied Christ, "but, I warn you, just one." The kick landed like a thunderbolt. Peppone didn't bat an eye. After a minute he got up and sighed. "I've been expecting that for the past ten minutes," he remarked casually. "I feel better now."

• When Bond finds Krebs rummaging through his suitcase in Moonraker, he kicks him so hard in the ass he flies over it.

Live Action TV

• Obligatory Buffy example: in the episode "Family", Buffy's backside is smarting from the recent fight she had with the Big Bad of the season.

Buffy: Nothing like gettin' your ass kicked to...make your ass hurt.

• Robert on Everybody Loves Raymond was gored by a bull in the backside (although he insists it was in the "upper thigh").
  • Later episides show that the injury was in the upper thigh.
• In an episode of Get Smart, Max was wounded in action, leading to this bit of dialogue

Max: What happens when you jump into a shallow pool? 99: You hit bottom. Max: And that's what K.A.O.S. did.

• Father Ted: "Kicking Bishop Brennan Up The Arse".
• There was an episode of Family Matters where Carl Winslow gets shot in the butt and ends up in the hospital next to Steve Urkel who'd just had his appendix removed, unfortunately for him.
• Rodney McKay took an arrow to the arse in one episode of Stargate Atlantis. Naturally, he whined about it the rest of the episode, and most of the next one.
• In an episode of The Parent Hood, the father gets shot during an attempted mugging. After the prerequisite drama is wrung out of his subconscious watching his family crying over him in a hospital bed, the angel that comes to take him to heaven stops when he learns he was shot in the ass, and it was non-fatal.
• Colonel Hogan once set the spiked helmet from Colonel Klink's desk down on the commandant's chair just before leaving the office. He'd almost made it to the outer door when Klink sat down and screamed.
• Similar to the Everybody Hates Chris example above, there's an episode of Married... with Children where Kelly and Bud run into Jefferson in the hospital. This leads to a flash back showing how he got really drunk and decided to get an "I Love Marcy" tattoo for his anniversary... only for it to read "I Love Mary." Marcy eventually finds it, and then we find out why Jefferson's in the hospital as an X-ray reveals a boot literally up his ass.
• In Deadwood Charlie Utter literally kicks the arse of Hearst's geologist after said geologist murders some prostitutes.
• Referred to but not seen in an episode of Two and A Half Men, when a younger Jake fractured his ass doing a cannonball dive into a bathtub.

Music

• Used on the cover of Swift Kick's Long Live Rock EP.
• A line from Weird Al's "Amish Paradise":

A local boy kicked me in the butt last week I just smiled at him, and I turned the other cheek.

Newspaper Comics

• A running gag in Blondie--not as much seen in recent years--involves Dagwood angering Mr. Dithers over some matter or another, followed by a panel of Dithers kicking Dagwood's Bumstead clear across the room.
• This is always a running gag in comics for someone being "booted out" of a place.
• These are frequently administered to Beetle Bailey by Sarge.
• Garfield kicking Odie, usually off a table.
• In Brazilian comic Monica's Gang, Bidu/Blu does to it to Bugu/Blu, a Glory Hound fame-seeking hound (literally, both are dogs) who likes to invade his stories.
• Bill Mauldin drew a cartoon during World War II showing a sergeant who'd found a way to train recruits that they needed to keep their butts down, too, when low-crawling: he'd swat an upthrust rump with a piece of plank ... with a nail in it.
• Li'l Abner had a story where the title character introduced a species called Kigmies to Western society. They were creatures specifically bred to be kicked by humans as an outlet for their aggression. They quickly become very popular and fully integrated in society with their intended role. However, the story ends with the Kigmies having enough of this and go on a rampage kicking humans in retaliation until they have to be all deported overseas.

Professional Wrestling

• Since his return to the WWE in 2011, The Rock has adopted "Boots To Asses" as one of his new slogans.

Theater

• This is a trope that is Older Than Steam at the very least. The very word "slapstick," in fact, comes from Italian Commedia Dell'Arte, where it was the name of a paddle used by mischievous characters to loudly spank exposed rear ends.

Video Games

• The Uga Buga boss fight in Conkers Bad Fur Day takes this to the extreme--you do damage by biting chunks of flesh out of this huge caveman's ass, leaving gaping red wounds behind.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Link must defeat a baboon mini-boss by targeting his oversized bright-red ass.
  • There is an Easter Egg in The Legend of Zelda: The WindWaker, in which Moblins hop in pain crying when you stab them in the butt.
• Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 features the Butt Battle, which is exactly what it sounds like.
  • The Crystal Bearers has a similar minigame, with the same name and principle.
• When characters in Mario Kart: Double Dash are on the receiving end of an incendiary attack, they hop around yelping with smoke emanating from their posteriors.
  • This is probably influenced by Super Mario 64: when Mario lands on the magma of the Lethal Lava Land, he immediately does as huge jump similar to this one and yelling (and despite hurting, it's a very effective way of locomotion).
• Peewee Piranha from Super Mario Galaxy 2 is apparantly defeated this way, as with Rollodillo.
• There's a bit in Max Payne 2 where you sneak up behind a guard at a window and shoot him to knock him off to his death; you don't have to shoot him in the arse, but most players do.
• Happens at the end of the Awesome Possum Kicks Doctor Machino's Butt. Well, the title already spoiled it.
• Doronjo's throw in Tatsunokovs Capcom involves yanking the opponent off-balance, then kicking them in the ass with a high-heeled boot.
• In Cargo the Quest For Gravity, one way to get Fun (the game's currency) is to go around kicking the Buddies in the butt.
• In the console/PC versions of Sonic Generations, this is how Classic Sonic deals damage to the Death Egg Robot in the first phase of the battle.

Web Comics

• Justified in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja. After analyzing Franz Rayner's movements, Dan McNinja's son decides he actually has a Nerve Cluster in his Left Buttock, striking this point is the key to winning the fight for leadership of the Ninja clan.
  • Later subverted when the kid (now grown up into the titular doctor) tries to hit the same cluster. It doesn't work - Rayner had moved it.
• There are a couple of examples in the Dreamwalk Journal spinoff Nigthshade the Merry Widow. Although Cyeatea's arthropod-hybrid inhabitants generally abhor violence, the occasional disciplinary kicking is occasionally carried out. It helps that Cyeateans all have very large abdomens with prominent rear ends, and don't wear clothes. On the other hand (or rather, foot), those doing the kicking don't wear shoes, and anyhow nobody bears a grudge for long.
  • In the "Beewolf Raid" arc, Damiana the honeybee kicks her former assistant Peppers the fly for screwing up. Later Peppers atones by offering herself as a test subject for a (hopefully) non-lethal weapon.
  • In the "Bahoogie and Beans" arc, Ant Queen Vulgia gives her beloved partner King Pewbosis a spectacular kicking for his peristent idiocy.

Western Animation

• This happened all the time to Josie and the Pussy Cats favorite Butt Monkey Alexandra Cabot. Whether she was being struck by a large drill penetrating the hole of a ship or her falling from a great height onto a cactus her ass seemed to be a magnet for slapstick misfortune
• It happened a lot in old Disney cartoons, especially to Donald Duck, as one YouTuber of questionable sanity pointed out.
  • I like to think that's Truman Capote narrating...
• And frequently in Looney Tunes as well.
• Tom and Jerry had at least one such event per episode.
• Tex Avery's "George and Junior" series featured an Of Mice and Men pair - whenever the big dumb guy did something wrong (several times per cartoon) he'd get a butt-kicking.

George: Okay, Junior... bend over...

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: described in haiku form no less.

Sokka: I am so sorry! Something struck me in the rear! I just wound up... here?

• In an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, Spongebob broke his butt. The doctor tells him he's lucky and warns him that if he's not careful, he could end up "like that poor creature there, in the iron butt.". Aforementioned iron butt takes up half of the screen while shown, and doesn't appear to be completely shown.

Guy in iron butt: Oh, man. It itches.

• When The Simpsons go to Australia, "Booting" (administered by an angry-looking man wearing an over-sized boot) is a form of corporal punishment. It's even on the country's flag (shown atop this page). Also, disparaging the boot is a bootable offense.
  • "Lisa's Date with Density" has this:

Lisa: Why do you have to be such a pain all the time? Don't you realize you're getting a bad reputation? Nelson: Don't you realize your butt sticks out? Lisa: It does not! [Nelson kicks Lisa in the butt] Lisa: Hey! Nelson: Ha ha!

• In the animated Transformers movie, the Dinobots attack Unicron and for some reason decide to begin their offensive by biting him in the ass. "Me Grimlock kick butt!" After that doesn't work and they're chased away, he quickly realizes: "Me Grimlock need new strategy."
  • It was still a Crowning Moment of Awesome for the Dinobots. Another example would be in Transformers Cybertron when Scourge lights Thundercracker's aft on fire.

Thundercracker: Ow! What was that for? OW! Holy campfire! Mah biscuits are burnin'! Hot hot hot! Put me out!

• King of the Hill, to the point where it has become a minor Catch Phrase for the main character:

Hank Hill: I'm gonna KICK YOUR ASS!

• Presented in an... interesting way in Teen Titans. Johnny Rancid says "My Dog's gonna kick your-" and is cut off by Beast Boy (in donkey form) kicking him with his hind legs. Well, it's an "Ass Kicking", what do you want?!
• It happened quite often in Popeye. In the episode "Clean Shaven Man," Popeye and Bluto spend the entire episode fighting to get a shave and a haircut, to impress Olive Oyl-- only to see her walking off with Geezil, who has a waist-length beard; so they proceed to take turns kicking each other in the rear.
  • In the episode "A Job for a Gob", Bluto has to endure a lot of trouser torment! First he gets knocked into a cactus and gets a butt full of needles. Then he is bucked off the bronco out of his pants. Then he accidently brands his own ass with x's and o's which Popeye turns into tic-tac-toe. Finally Popeye eats his spinach and punches him into a windmill which keeps spanking him. The whole cartoon seems to revolve around Bluto's butt!
• At the end of a military-themed I Am Weasel short, Weasel and Baboon are demoted, due to Baboon's incompetence, to "boot camp". In this case, "boot camp" consisted of the Red Guy and the kitten that they were trying to save wearing boots and repeatedly kicking them in the butt.
• In the Re Boot episode, 'The Showdown' Megabyte almost ass kicks Matrix off of the Principal Office.
• There is one episode of Ben 10 where Gwen takes a seat on a cactus.
  • In another episode, Ben and Gwen are on a switch-body situation, in which they are captured. The only way to get out is with an object in Gwen's rear pocket, so Gwen in Ben's body has to kick it out. At first he protests, but takes it rather calmly after Gwen notes that "at least [he's] kicking [her] butt".
• An episode of The Smurfs involved a spot that appeared on someone's face and (apparently magically) made them unhappy. It could only be removed by kicking them in the butt, but this transferred it to the kicker. Cue an episode of the Smurfs unusually full of ass-kicking. Handy even devised a machine to do the kicking, only to find the machine's operator was considered the kicker. It turned out that kissing the spotted person made the spot vanish without a transfer.
• It happened quite a lot in Flip the Frog cartoons.
• In the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog episode "Super Robotnik", Coconuts creates a brew that results in Robotnik becoming a superhero. Sonic has a lot of trouble dealing with this new Robotnik until Tails learns that because it never touched the chemical, Robotnik has an Achilles' Heel: his butt. When in the middle of a competition of strength and speed, Sonic and Robotnik fight over a pool of yuck and Sonic winds up getting behind Dr. Robotnik and wins by... kicking his butt. Robotnik falls into the yuck and loses his powers, causing him to say "I think the jig is up".
• Beavis and Butthead: "I'm kicking your ass, Beavis. Huh huh huh."

Real Life

• Yes, someone has patented a machine to kick someone in the butt. Yes, Cracked.com knows about it. No, you are not going to see a certain pothole.
  • There is yet another patent for another device for the same purpose.
• In stage combat, a Groin Attack may result in an incidental Literal Ass-Kicking with combatants who practice the old school version of producing the sound of foot hitting the delicates.