They put the "bad" in "badger".
Dr. Bobtail: Badger?
Mrs. Bobtail: No, warm. We're having carrots and celery.
Dr. Bobtail: But I mean I smell badger!
Mrs. Bobtail: No, warm. We're having carrots and celery.
Dr. Bobtail: But I mean I smell badger!
—The Tale of Mr Tod (2012 movie)
In regards to mustelids being portrayed in pop culture, badgers are often depicted as aggressive and downright vicious. While badgers have had both positive and negative portrayals, the negative ones tend to be much harsher compared to weasels and skunks. This could be due to farmers' views of them since badgers can pose a threat to small livestock. Not to mention, their appearance can be somewhat intimidating to many people.
Most of the time (but not always) villainous badgers tend to be elderly, though badgers of all ages can still be vilified. At best, they are The Cynic or a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, and at worst, they are straight-up savage and dangerous. A grumpy badger is usually territorial and will only attack if one trespasses its environment, whereas a savage badger will intentionally try to harm others, usually animals it preys on or smaller than itself. Usually, the most common adversaries for a badger villain to go up against are foxes and sometimes rabbits (though some forms of fiction have them getting along just fine, such as The Animals of Farthing Wood).
(Even the positive badger stereotype of a steadfast Determinator is actually just a riff on the above; a good badger is one that's pointed towards the bad guys.)
Honey badgers tend to be portrayed more viciously than American and European badgers due to their similarities with wolverines, and, much like raccoons, they are also said to contain rabies. In fact, while American and European badgers have their good portrayals, you'll be lucky if you find at least a few good honey badgers (if they aren't fighting snakes, anyway).
Compare with Ragin' Wolverine for another large mustelid that's given similar treatment in media, with Volatile Tasmanian Devil and Bears Are Bad News for other mammals treated similarly, and with Wicked Weasel, Rascally Raccoon, and Smelly Skunk for other evil musteloids. Contrast with Frisky Ferret, Playful Otter, and Weasel Mascot.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Honey Badger from Africa Salaryman is a hyper-aggressive Fearless Fool who keeps getting himself killed in stupid ways trying to prove how strong he is (he always turns out to have actually survived whatever killed him because he is Made of Iron). He also constantly bullies his subordinate Honeyguide, which then leads to Honeyguide taking out his anger by playing cruel pranks on everyone else.
- Anai from Aggretsuko is a Japanese badger
. While at first, he appears to be enthusiastic and eager to learn (if a little nervous since he's new to Retsuko's workplace), it turns out that he can actually be incredibly aggressive due to his insecurities about being able to work a real job and his inability to take any kind of criticism, frequently bombarding people with threatening texts and e-mails for even the smallest slight against him.
- Momoji the mujina (a Yōkai badger) from The Fox & Little Tanuki is a subversion. While he is an antagonist, he's a full-blown Dirty Coward who never gets into any fights unless forced to, not even if he's sure he could win.
- Hitomi the Ratel from Killing Bites. Her animal power is that of the Honey Badger. She's also a vicious lunatic, extremely fight-happy, and damn near impossible to kill.
Comic Books
- Averted like no one's business in Albedo: Erma Felna EDF: The CEO of the biggest MegaCorp of the setting is a badger named Amhast an Therka an Enchawah, which not only avoids this trope, he also helps Dr. Elaki Kalahahaii, which was being chased by her own country after vital information was stolen right for her brain thanks to a powerful spy with Psychic Powers.
Films — Animated
- Mr. Digger, the badger from The Fox and the Hound, who is shown to be a cantankerous grump and isn't very friendly, especially towards Tod.
- Gupta from Ice Age: Continental Drift, one of Captain Gutt's minions. He is pretty vicious fighter and he even has the traditional pirate "skull and bones" flag on his back.
- The Mandrake has an evil witch who is an anthropomorphic badger.
- Friar Tuck is depicted as a badger in Robin Hood (1973). Mostly an aversion of usual portrayals of the species, yet he has a Beware the Nice Ones moment when he fights the Sheriff of Nottingham for taking from the church's poor box.
- Zootopia: As part of its focus on avoiding animal stereotypes, the original film has a subversion with a honey badger scientist who is most certainly not violent or bloodthirsty.
- Zootopia 2: In the therapy scene, Karen, a honey badger officer, responds with violence when her partner, Joel, a deer, smiles at her.
Films — Live Action
- ABCs of Death 2: "B is for Badger" is about a wildlife documentary filmmaker named Peter) documenting the endangerment of badgers caused by a local power plant nearby, who gets literally ripped in half by a (possibly mutated) badger.
- Ernest Goes to Camp: Ernest demonstrates to his charges what one mustn't do to a family of badgers — and is immediately attacked.
- The Gods Must Be Crazy II: Stephen Marshall ends up running afoul of an African honey badger soon after he and Ann Taylor crash their plane. It's notably the most persistent of the hostile animals in the film, angrily chasing Marshall over multiple scenes, and he's just as scared of it as he is of the larger predators like the big cats. Though the two eventually form a brief water truce after a particularly long chase over a stretch of desert leaves them both exhausted and dehydrated.
- In Mary Poppins Returns, a badger is one of the three malevolent animals that threaten the Banks children and serve as animated counterparts to the bankers threatening to foreclose the family's property.
- In Peter Rabbit has a notable aversion in Tommy Brock, who is a Nice Guy, due to the Adaptational Heroism that Tommy Brock has in the film. He is on good terms with Peter and his family.
Literature
- In the Roger McGough poem Badgers and Goodgers, badgers are described as nocturnal thugs, vandals and child-eaters, and are Always Chaotic Evil counterparts to an Always Lawful Good species called the goodgers, who are charitable hippies with pure white fur. When a string of disasters hits the forest, the goodgers starve themselves to extinction as they try to care for the other animals that have suffered, and the nature spirit Pan anoints the black fur of the badgers with a white stripe in memory of their cousins.
- Billy the Cowboy Hamster: Bretzel is portrayed as this. He is a tough badger bandit who likes to rob the poor.
- Foxwood Tales: Mr. [McGruffy] is an elderly badger who runs the village store, and can get angry at absolutely anything.
- Harry Potter: Double subverted with Hufflepuff House. Hufflepuff's Animal Motif is a badger and the house itself values hard work and strong bonds (although there was a time when it was demoted to "miscellaneous" but fortunately that didn't last), so you'd assume that badgers were chosen because they're cute. But Word of God reveals that the real reason is that badgers, though genuinely cute and unassuming, will also get downright vicious when those they care about are placed in harm's way. It fits the house like a glove.
- Averted in Prince Caspian: One of the first Old Narnians that Caspian encounters is Trufflehunter the Badger, a gruff but good-natured Talking Beast who is fiercely loyal to to the centuries-old memory of Aslan and quickly becomes one of Caspian's followers. He's still a badger at heart, though.
Trufflehunter: I'm a beast, I am, and we don't change. I'm a Badger, what's more, and we hold on.
- Downplayed with Boomer Badger from the Ranger Rick stories in the magazine of the same name. Though arrogant, ignorant, and carefree, he is ultimately a Cowardly Lion who'll usually try to hide at the first hint of danger. However, he will sometimes get aggressive if something threatens his friends.
- Redwall:
- Plays this both ways. Badgers have a longer lifespan than most other woodland creatures so they can become much older and wiser, and they're larger and stronger so they also make some of the greatest warriors. Because of this, a badger is always the Big Good of Salamandastron. That said, they also are the creatures most likely to suffer from Bloodwrath, a disease that turns fighters into mindless berserkers in battle, and are habitually violent and ruthless, making them the most dangerous of the "good guy" species.
- Averted by the good-natured and motherly Constance the Badger. However, she is also a major example of Beware the Nice Ones and Good Is Not Soft, as evidenced by the time she responded to Cluny the Scourge's ultimatum by lifting a table and threatening to flatten him with it.
- The eponymous Badger of Skunk and Badger is a subversion - he's far from a bad person and, being a scientist, behaves very professionally, but can be rather stuffy and antisocial, which puts him at odds with the more outgoing oddball Skunk. After a bit of Character Development he lightens up and fully averts the trope.
- Tommy Brock from The Tale of Mr Tod, who is the arch-enemy of the protagonist and kidnaps rabbit children to eat them.
- Warrior Cats:
- Cats are the top predators of the forest. Aside from kits being taken by foxes and eagles or humans invading their territory, the only real threats they have are other cats or natural things beyond their control. Badgers are an exception to the rule. They rarely appear but are dangerous to even the most skilled warriors.
- One of the climactic events of Warrior Cats: The New Prophecy is the badgers who were displaced when the eponymous cats moved to 'their' lake forming into an army and attacking them.
- Subverted with one badger named Midnight. She has learned to speak the language of cats and is generally a neutral character.
- Played With in Watership Down. Badgers, or lendri in Lapine, are classified as one of the elil, the thousand enemies of rabbits. Bigwig describes them as being unpredictable - they won't attack healthy adult rabbits, but will dig up babies and kill any injured rabbit they find, so living near them isn't exactly wise. The one lendri the heroes encounter doesn't attack them, but it had just eaten beforehand, which might have been the one thing that saved them.
- Badger from The Wind in the Willows is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, gruff in manner but noble and loyal to his friends. He is, however, vilified in-universe, with the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue revealing that woodland mothers threatened their children with him, quite unjustly.
- Both generations of the Herk and Bare lines in Welkin Weasels are thugs and criminals. Mawk once gets told off for the painful pun when he calls the first set "Very bad gers."
Live-Action TV
- On The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon once mentioned that an uncle of his was killed by a badger.
- Drop the Dead Donkey: In "The Newsmakers", George speaks of having been bitten by a badger, who mistook his hedgehog slippers as the live animal, and having to get several injections as a result. Surprisingly, this doesn't stop him from donating to their cause when he gets £60,000 in the lottery.
Tabletop Games
- Bunnies & Burrows, as per its inspiration, has badgers as very formidable enemies. It's noted that exploring a badger set is not unlike venturing into a dragon's lair.
- The dwarfs of Kings of War have cavalry of berserkers riding oversized badgers.
- In Magic: The Gathering, Badgers are creature type heavily associated with Green and Red...though more so the former than the latter.
- Subverted in the Bloomburrow set, wherein we get Hugs, Grisly Guardian, the Big Guy of Mabel's party; off the clock, he's a Gentle Giant and likes to hang out with his Lizardfolk friend Gev...but heaven help you if you set him off.
- Subverted in the Bloomburrow set, wherein we get Hugs, Grisly Guardian
- There is a third-party Starfinder species called the ruanoch, who are basically irascible, gun-toting, CigarChomping anthropomorphic badgers with Unstoppable Rage and a talent for pissing people off.
For the most part, ruanoch care little about personal grooming or appearance; if you don’t like the way they look, you can go [expletive deleted] yourself.
- Toon: In the ''Dungeons and Toons" setting, the Badger race is basically the Toon version of dwarves, tough and irascible.
Theater
- The opera The Cunning Little Vixen by Leo Janáek had a badger who was rather snobby and did not allow the vixen to share his den with her during harsh winter weather forcing the vixen to drive him out and take the den for herself.
Video Games
- The villainous implications are averted by Horace of Armello; Horace is a former knight who is trying to kill the rot-maddened king as a Mercy Kill. However, his play style is still very fitting for a badger: he chooses a destination, he makes his way there, and he doesn't care what tries to stop him.
- Dwarf Fortress: Badgers (and honey badgers) have a habit of flying into rages and attempting to maul anything nearby to death. Thankfully, they're not large so they tend not to cause issues. Giant badgers, on the other hand, are the size of an elk and just as angry.
- Far Cry 4 has a mission that requires you to kill and skin a unique honey badger. The mission repeatedly asks you to confirm that you are insane enough to attempt it. When you get to the mission site you'll see a man fleeing in terror and numerous dead animals that were presumably killed by the honey badger, including a rhino. In another mission, a fur trader reveals that his wife was eaten by rabid badgers- and Ajay, presumably not believing him, laughs. In Far Cry Primal, a tamed badger will scare off all other animals (except snakes). Badgers are also the only animal that will bite Takkar if he attempts to pet one.
- The Plucky Squire: Jot and Pip encounter a big honey badger feasting on Benny the Bee's honey, and attacks them for interrupting its meal.
- Pokémon:
- Pokémon Gold and Silver: Typhlosion, the final evolution of the Cyndaquil line, is a ferocious, angry badger-like creature that can manipulate fire.
- Pokémon Sword and Shield: Zigzagoon and Linoone in other regions are Normal-type Pokemon with dull brown coats. Those found in Galar are Normal/Dark types with a badger-style colour scheme, and a smirking face which includes red eyes and a Maniac Tongue (along with Facial Markings that are a Shout-Out to KISS). They are also capable of further evolving into the humanoid Obstagoon, which resembles a punk in a leather jacket.
- RuneScape: The honey badger Summoning familiar. Its special move is called Insane Ferocity. If you tried to talk to it, it only returns lines like "*A lambasting of biologically questionable obscenities.*" or "*An outpouring of sanity-straining crudities.*", prompting the player to reply "Why do I talk to you again?"
- Tavern Talk: According to the Extended Lorebook, wildfire badgers are four-eyed carnivorous badgers with flaming fur that are often found in disaster zones, scavenging for scraps, consumable flames, and a good fight.
- The video game version of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit has enemies that include Were-Badgers, which are the strongest and toughest enemies in the game. Though they were simply normal badgers supposedly taken by Victor who turns them into Were-Badgers using Wallace's Mind-O-Matic along with other animals.
Webcomics
- Averted in Grrl Power by Clover. She's a were-honey badger and The Stoic to the point that she doesn't even change expression when stabbed in the side with a poisoned blade (as it turns out, were-honey badgers are immune to poisons, including silver).
- Housepets!: Herman Steward, formerly human The Man Behind the Man who tried to enact a harsh betrayal he felt was necessary for the good of the ECP, becomes more angry and vengeful after turning into a badger, as it comes alongside losing his well-off human life and connections. In his newfound desperation, he upgrades to being a hands-on antagonist to the cast, and The Dragon to the comic's final villain.
- Played straight in some of the strips of Sabrina Online with a mugger who is a badger. His first appearance has him trying to mug both Sabrina and RC but the couple were able to escape after Sabrina sprays him in the face. However, he would return in later strips where he almost murders Sabrina and is later physically attacked by Sabrina's boss Zig Zag and arrested.
- The Weekly Roll: Trevor was raised by a talking badger who, as her dying wish, asked him to burn down the forest she'd lived in (and also wear her skin as a hood).
Web Original
- Neocene Project: The Arctomeles is a badger descendant 25 million years in the future that grows to the size of a grizzly bear that inhabits the Japanese region as the apex predator.
- Discussed and Zigzagged in the American Vs European Badger meme, where the European Badger looks all sweet and like it would invite you for tea... while the American badger looks like it has a shiv and is going to rob you to buy meth.
Web Video
- Played straight by The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger, a dubbed-over nature video that frames the honey badger as a brazen, violent psychopath.
Western Animation
- Discussed at the beginning of The Angry Beavers episode "Salmon Sez". When a school of migrating salmon ram against the beavers' dam, Daggett assumes it's a troublesome gang of badgers throwing rocks at their house again.
- Is relayed by Visual Pun in an episode of BoJack Horseman. Diane and Courtney Portnoy find themselves sexually harassed by a stereotypical Jerk Jock, who happens to be a badger. In other words, he is badgering them.
- Subverted in the Pixar Short Burrow, where the badger initially appears as utterly terrifying, but when the bunny nervously comes to him with a problem, turns out to be a Reasonable Authority Figure who rallies all the other animals.
- In an episode of Futurama, there's a weapon designed by Benjamin Franklin called a "Franklinator". It's a badger on a stick (except for Fry's; he has a chipmunk).
- Hector MacBadger from Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks who is The Bully of the show, even appearing as an antagonist in some episodes. Though he is shown to be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, like the episode where he returned a lamb to its mother.
- The Lion Guard averts this Bunga the honey badger, who is one of the main heroes as well as one of the friendliest characters in the show. A rare example in which a honey badger is portrayed in a good light.
- The badger from The New Woody Woodpecker Show who is a recurring character. He is shown as very aggressive and vicious. His appearance should be enough to see that.
"Hiya buddy."
- Zigzagged with Badgerclops in Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart. Even though he's a bandit-turned-deputy, he still has his moments where he's a selfish, gluttonous jerk. For everything in between, he's a big softy.
- Becky and Stacy of The Penguins of Madagascar are a Double Subversion. They're initially described as vicious predators, only to be a pair of ditzy, clingy Genki Girls. But when Marlene the Otter accidentally insults their species,note they get mad enough to try to mutilate her.
- Bix Badger from The Raccoons, a rather arrogant motorcycle racer.
- In The Simpsons episode "A Tale of Two Springfields", Homer is attacked by a badger who has taken over Santa's Little Helper's doghouse. At the end of the episode, a horde of badgers descends on an unsuspecting Springfield.
- Sonic Boom:
- Averted with Sticks the Badger. Sticks is a feral badger who, despite being paranoid, loopy, and none too fond of the government, regularly helps Sonic and his friends save Hedgehog Village from Dr. Eggman.
- In the episode, "Unnamed Episode", it is revealed that the Unnamed Village used to be named Badgerville, after Sticks' great-great-grandfather, Jebediah Badger. Jebediah held ownership over Badgerville and used his influence to gain power through corruption of the system, forcing people out of their homes to develop on their land and expand his fortune. Eventually, the villagers rebelled and chased Jebediah away. Since Sticks is the great-great-granddaughter of Jebediah, the villagers shunned her despite the fact that she saves them on a regular basis. When it is revealed that Jebediah never relinquished ownership of the Unnamed Village, Sticks inherits it, uses it to stop one of Dr. Eggman's plans, and restore her reputation, renaming the Unnamed Village "Hedgehog Village" after her friend Amy.
- In the pilot for Summer Camp Island, Max is a bratty badger who bullies Oscar. In the final show, he's a bat and he's much friendlier.
- In the TaleSpin episode "The Balooest of the Bluebloods", one of the antagonists is Hans, a badger who teams up with an opossum, Helga, to murder the Von Bruinwalds so they could claim their inheritance.
- The bank guard badger from the animated version of "The Mouse and His Child" seems perfectly pleasant, as long as you're not robbing the bank. Doing that can get you eaten, as was seen with Ritchie the rat.