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“	"Cacofonix, the bard. Opinion is divided as to his musical gifts. Cacofonix thinks he's a genius. Everyone else thinks he's unspeakable."	”
—--'Asterix'

A character with a comically over-inflated image of himself. He thinks he's smarter than everyone else, thinks he's a real lady's man, thinks he's cool, it's all about him, but both his fellow characters and the audience know that this coolness is all in his mind.

This is a slightly different phenomenon from shows (like Seinfeld) where essentially all the characters are like this and there are no "good" characters with which to contrast them.

Often occurs in conjunction with a Show Within A Show. If the TV Series runs long enough, the writers usually devote one episode to a Big Ego Hidden Depths examination of the character.

Expect this guy to be a victim of Pride.

If the character is a nerd and unaware of it, he's an Extraverted Nerd. If he makes a big deal of how heroic and Badass he is, but runs at the first sign of real danger, he's a Miles Gloriosus. If he claims to be a genius, but is incredibly dim or just misinformed, he's the Know Nothing Know It All. If he thinks he's a brilliant artist but is actually dire, he's Giftedly Bad. If he claims to kick ass only to get his own ass constantly kicked, he's a Boisterous Weakling. Contrast Insufferable Genius (where he actually has the skill to back himself up) or Almighty Janitor. Many a Narcissist and Pointy Haired Boss is afflicted with this condition. Every Year They Fizzle Out and Fake Ultimate Hero, meanwhile, are when everyone else are the ones with a high opinion about the person in question. Often a Large Ham. In more serious works, he will often be the victim of Break The Haughty. The Smug Snake could be considered a villainous variation. Might be a Paper Tiger.

If (s)he is the main character on a show, we're dealing with a species of Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist. If the writers, not the character (though he can fit this trope, underscoring his unpopularity) think the character is amazing, we have the Creators Pet.

Contrast with the Jaded Washout, who knows only too well how pathetic he is. Not to be confused with the other kind of ego.

Hibiki is a putz 8380 — The *Streetest* Fighter... in his head.
Added by Anime Addict

Examples Edit

Anime & Manga Edit

Main article: Big Ego/Anime & Manga

Books Edit

Main article: Big Ego/Books

Cartoons Edit

Main article: Big Ego/Cartoons

Comics Edit

Main article: Big Ego/Comics

Fan Fic Edit

Aside from Calvin himself, this is downplayed with Hobbes in Calvin And Hobbes The Series:
"Hello, my name's Hobbes. I'm a tiger."

"Yes, I know, You're just dazzled that the legendary tiger is actually speaking to you."

If a story has in its summary that its bashing then 90% of the time Sasuke fall under this trope in a Naruto fic.
"I'm an UCHIHA Elite, no ONE is batter than ME!"

"How can a clanless loser ,Naruto, beat me, an ELITE UCHIHA!"

Movies Edit

Main article: Big Ego/Cartoons

Music Edit

The theme of Ben Folds song "There's Always Someone Cooler Than You":
...and you won't
Even know
that they're not sizing you up
They know your mom fucked you up
Or maybe let you watch too much TV
There's a song called "I'm Awesome" by Spose. It's completely counterpoint to the title because the guy is describing how much of a loser he is and yet still thinks he's the greatest human being alive.
"Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)" by The Offspring describes a classic example of this phenomenon.
The lyrics to "O.M.G." by Jenna Rose give off this feel (the fact that she dons an "All About Me!" shirt around the 52-second mark in the music video does not help). Sample lyrics:
Just take a picture, baby
Look at what I'm wearing
Just take a picture, baby
No need for staring
[...]
Oh my god, she looks good
Oh my god, you know you wish you could
Oh my god, she looks good
Oh my god, you know you wish you could
But you can't be like this
Blondie's "Rip Her To Shreds" describes someone like this, and, well, rips her to shreds.

Radio Edit

Phil Harris played this type on both The Jack Benny Program and his own program The Phil Harris Alice Faye Show. (Jack Benny himself, of course, displayed many of these traits as an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist.)
Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve on Fibber McGee And Molly was a pompous gasbag, although once the character moved to his own spinoff show these tendencies were downplayed.
- Then there was Mrs. Uppington, a rich society matron who Fibber frequently traded barbs with.
Denis King on Hello Cheeky, although subverted in that he was genuinely competent as a pianist. However, he gets the fewest acting parts and is the worst actor, yet keeps insisting that he's the real star of the show.
- In one episode, he complains about the others picking on him, and goes to see a psychiatrist. His philosophy is more or less summed up in their dialogue:
Denis: Doctor, I'm worried! I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't play the piano...
Psychiatrist: Well, why don't you quit showbusiness?
Denis: I can't, I'm a star!

Real Life Edit

For Troper Tales, use Troper Tales/Small Name, Big Ego.

Daryl McBride claimed that his company The SCO Group had a copyright on Linux, filed lawsuits against multiple companies (including IBM, Redhat and Novell), and insisted that Linux users start paying him license fees because he might win the lawsuits.
Kenneth Eng is a self-proclaimed Asian supremacist who claimed credit for inciting the Virginia Tech massacre (insisting that it was a good thing) and used the byline "Kenneth Eng: God of the Universe." His hubris-filled resume and book proposal have to be seen to be believed.
- He eventually got in hot water, and apparently he lost his newspaper column. It wasn't for his ego, or rather not just his ego - he wrote an article called "Why I Hate Blacks", and the backlash undid him. (That was not an ironic title, incidentally.)
- Impishidea has devoted an entire section to mocking his self published book.
L. Ron Hubbard. Biographies of him that are written and published by Scientology often read like the memoirs of a God Mode Stu. According to them, amongst other things, Hubbard was a descendant of several distinguished naval officers and a French count; grew up on his wealthy grandfather's ranch which took up 1/4th of the state of Montana; was a protegé and blood brother of the Blackfoot tribe at the age of four; was the youngest Eagle Scout ever at age 13; was a decorated Naval officer during World War II; and was an accomplished and celebrated aviator, film maker, photographer, engineer, mariner, nuclear physicist, explorer, philosopher, songwriter, musician, singer, artist, and author. Not to mention that he was the first and only person to discover the way to save the universe from the evil grip of psychiatry and the legacy of Lord Xenu. But what do you expect from the "friend of all mankind"? The fact that his wife's name was Mary Sue is probably just a coincidence - either that or Hubbard is a time-traveling troll (at this point, it'd be less crazy).
- Of course, there's the matter of all of them not being true.
This charming fellow, speaking on behalf of all journalists, wants you to know it's okay to date them, as long as you understand a few basic things - such as that they're soooooo much smarter than you, better informed, the bestest writers in the whole wide world, and blessed with a magic bullshit detector that apparently works on everybody but themselves. (He also generously commits the classic mistake of sneering at other people's bad grammar and offering as an example something that's not wrong at all. Of course "towards" is a word, for Christ's sake.)
If you have ever dealt with small-town politics, this page will punch you in the face and laugh.
Celebrity chef Bobby Flay is, to be honest and fair about it, a creative genius when it comes to his cooking. The man cannot be criticized for his ability to cook. His ability to interact with other people, on the other hand, is a whole 'nother matter. When working with other people, Flay is arrogant, condescending, domineering, and absolutely must be acknowledged as being the "top dog" in any kitchen he's in, even if that kitchen belongs to another big-name chef.
- In a memoir, legendary chef Harold Hillard said this about Bobby Flay: "The man's an utter tool. I mean he's a fucking narcissistic jerkwad."
Some of our critics may think it petty that we list Fast Eddie from the original TV Tropes wiki as an example of this trope. Not that being a petty and controlling with a website is anything remotely new or rare, but the original TV Tropes site isn't some obscure forum or bad fansite. It's a massive source of information on tropes and works in all forms of media, and the fact that someone this controlling, petty, and flat-out egotistical runs it is disturbing. You could defend Eddie's policy of mandatory positivity and increasingly tight grip by saying he's trying to protect the site from the overwhelming negativity and bile of internet culture, but you would have to ignore the fact that he basically makes the site his bitch. He will lock and delete pages because he doesn't like the edits (90% of locked pages), he doesn't think it's funny (LOLCats, Memento), to appease advertisors (just about anything that sounds pervy), or for reasons he's not even entirely sure of (Something Awful, which he later wrote off as a "troll target", because sure, why the hell not?). And as if that wasn't bad enough, look up "TV Tropes 403". FastEddie really does deny all access to the site if he preceives an infraction (or, as he would probably put it, "being a troll"). As bad as the staff of many sites can be, not even the most egotistical of manchildren usually go this far.
- And remember he does all this on a wiki that is supposedly run by "consensus building" and "the will of the tropers.", which just makes the hypocrisy of it all that much worse.
  - Perhaps the best example is his purging of any mention of Encyclopedia Dramatica from the original TV Tropes wiki in response to them posting an ever-growing list of his endless, domineering crap. Sure, Encyclopedia Dramatica can be caustic and crude sometimes, but Eddie deleted all mention of them from his own wiki for no other reason other than that they called him on all his domineering crap. Look up "TV Tropes" on Encyclopedia Dramatica for more on Fast Eddie.
    - And then, as if looking up dictators throughout history and thinking to himself "What would they do?", the link to "Locked Pages" has been removed. He seriously is sweeping his ever-growing list of locked pages under the rug for what one can only assume is to keep the people from rising up against him! The page is still there, it's long, and he no longer pretends to be nice about it, but you probably wouldn't know of it's existence unless you stumbled across a locked page.
Jack Butler, who started the Tropes Mirror Wikia (under the uninspiring name of "The Unofficial TV Tropes Mirror Wiki". He thinks he's better than Fast Eddie, but he's Not So Different. One of the first things he did? Made a category named "Category:Trope Pages Originally Written by Jack Butler. It's less populated because some other admins removed it from any article they saw it on, and was made invisible to regular readers because, well, it's obvious. He was too good for Wikia and said Screw This, I'm Outta Here! and made his own wiki, which is now blocked from others making accounts, abandoned and mostly edited by bots that made an account before he locked editing on a wiki. His catchphrase is "follow the rules/why didn't you follow the rules?", although he doesn't follow them himself.

TV Edit

Main article: Big Ego/TV

Tabletop Games Edit

A surprising number of player characters.
Excessively Righteous Blossom in Exalted. Because awesomeness is required to be an Exalt, he actually isn't too bad -- it's just that he thinks his most impressive gifts are in areas that he isn't actually any good at, while neglecting his very real skills.
- Another example would be the stunningly inept Lunar known as Ten Stripes, whose total lack of talent in social manipulation is matched only by her pride in the social manipulation skills she does not in fact have.

Theatre Edit

Older Than Steam with William Shakespeare:
- Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing.
- Polonius from Hamlet.

Video Games Edit

Main article: Big Ego/Video Games

Webcomics Edit

Main article: Big Ego/Webcomics

Web Original Edit

Main article: Big Ego/Web Original

Web Animation Edit

While Strong Bad from Homestar Runner is actually one of the more rational and intelligent ones in the cast, this doesn't say much - he falls squarely into this trope. He is convinced he is cool, handsome and painfully seductive, although his actual track record makes it fairly clear he is somewhat chubby and not very attractive.
Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series has Hank Ishtar, who thinks he is "the finest human being in the world".

Wrestling Edit

Main article: Big Ego/Wrestling

Notes Edit

This page uses content from TV Tropes.org. The list of authors can be seen in the page history.
The text of this article is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.

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