History Main / BornLucky

* ''{{Naruto}}'' FanFic's have a tendency of taking Naruto's good luck and flanderizing it to ridiculous degrees. Take, for example, the ''{{Naruto}}'' FanFic ''FanFic/YetAgain with a little extra help''. One such occurrence is when Naruto has to bet on either Sasuke and Tenten for a swordsmen's tournament, having (correctly) predicted that they would be the two finalists. To help him decide, he flipped a coin. [[spoiler:It landed on its side]]. You can guess how the match ended. In fact, Naruto was so lucky during that tournament that he ended up winning ''thirty million ryo''.

[[quoteright:230:[[DonRosa http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/oolated-vert-2_9235.jpg]]]]

** Inverted in a DonRosa comic. Due to being struck by lightning on his birthday while in front of a magic symbol in his youth, Gladstone is always phenomenally ''unlucky'' on his birthdays. He spends the entire comic trying to get away from attending, but circumstances bring him to his own party, where he admits the truth. When a lightning storm suddenly shows up he manages to undo the curse, and prevent Donald from gaining luck powers of his own.

* Teela Brown, in Larry Niven's novel ''{{Ringworld}}'', was the result of a project to try to breed a person with supernatural luck: she, and her ancestors for seven generations, were all born because of lucky draws in Earth's Birthright Lottery. The Puppeteers figure that humanity exists primarily due to luck anyhow (since humans are just PunyEarthlings), so breeding for luck will make humans extremely lucky. There is much debate about whether she is extremely lucky, and, for that matter, what it means to be extremely lucky.

*** Canon indicates that the luck is real. Niven has a later story in this universe, ''Safe At Any Speed,'' showing a future world populated by people even luckier than Teela. The protagonist [[spoiler: gets swallowed by a giant pterodactyl]] and comes out perfectly unhurt.

* Ways, from the Terry Pratchett science fiction novel ''TheDarkSideOfTheSun'' is a robot built with an intrinsic ability with p-math, meaning he can manipulate probability to make himself lucky. In one scene he's forced to roll 3 sixes twice in a row at gunpoint to prove his identity.
** Rincewind, another of Pratchett's creations from the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'', has the most amazing luck (Thanks to being the pawn of ''the Lady'' herself), and has leapfrogged in, out, around, and through so many sticky situations relatively unscathed that even Death doesn't know when he'll die. Bear in mind, however, that in this case [[WeirdnessMagnet amazing luck doesn't necessarily mean amazingly ''good'' luck]].

* Subverted in the Alfred Bester story ''Oddy and Id''. Oddy has the ability (unknown to himself) to have everything go in his favor. The subversion is that [[spoiler:what he gets is what his id wants, not what his ego does. So while he really wishes for peace, his id really wants him to be galactic dictator and a war soon enables this]].

* In Creator/AEVanVogt's novel, ''The Weapon Shops of Isher'', the character of Cayle Clark is a "callidetic giant", which makes him crazy lucky to the point that being forced into sex slavery comes out to his advantage.
* Creator/RobertAHeinlein's recurring AuthorAvatar / MartyStu Lazarus Long had "a feeling for what makes the frog jump", which his descendants put down to latent PsychicPowers, but which he saw as a learnable skill. That he just happened to be born with.

* Played with in ''ASongOfIceAndFire'':

* Clever Jack from ''PlayingForKeeps'' has the superpower of being incredibly lucky.
* From the StarTrekNovelVerse, Auger in [[StarTrekHollowMen ''Hollow Men'']]. He's a wide-eyed innocent youth serving under Captain Steyn (a freighter captain and sometimes smuggler). She has him on the crew entirely because he's BornLucky (well, that and she's quite fond of him). He has a natural affinity for gambling, and seems to somehow “tap into”...something...other beings can't, so as to always win. Note that this is consistent with the TV show, which occasionally suggested luck was governed by an unknown force that could be sensed or even controlled. Quite why this boy has the talent remains unexplained. Steyn apparently doesn't care, she's just happy it makes her money.
* In the world of the aleators from ''Riddle of the Seven Realms'' by LyndonHardy, luck is a literal commodity which powerful individuals have managed to hoard for themselves. It's also a finite natural resource, so the hoarding of vast quantities of luck by such people means that everyone else in that world is BornUnlucky by default, and must exercise extreme caution just to make it though a day alive.

* In the KurtVonnegut short story "Report on the Barnhouse Effect," the titular effect is devised by Prof. Arthur Barnhouse, which allows him to manipulate luck. At first, it merely lets him ensure that dice will come up as whatever he wants to roll. He eventually develops it to the point where he starts to border on RealityWarper powers, and hides so as to go on a quest to destroy weapons to prevent future wars. [[spoiler: The narrator, a former student of Barnhouse, is taught how to do it by the end and decides to [[TakeUpMySword continue the work of the likely ailing Barnhouse]].]]

* Seven in WearingTheCape got this as his power. He describes it as like a guardian angel who keeps him safe and indulges his whims, but doesn't work for stuff like picking lottery numbers.

* This trope is the basis of the Spanish thriller ''{{Intacto}}''. Certain people are BornLucky; Samuel Berg (Max von Sydow) is luckier than most, and has the ability to [[BroughtDownToNormal take the gift from others]].

** His annoying lucky streak [[UptoEleven extends to]] ''[[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou beyond the pages.]]'' When the Italian branch of Disney (it actually happened) got the idea to playfully point out which crimes the Disney characters would have committed if they were real-life characters, guess who was the ''only'' one who got away with a clean criminal record?

* ''Anime/ToAruMajutsuNoIndex''
** Touma has the opposite problem. His special power destroys his own luck so he's born unlucky, if you don't count his ''UnwantedHarem''.
** Played straight when he finds out that [[spoiler:[[CoolBigSis Kaori]]]] has this and [[EverybodysDeadDave rightfully]] angsts over it.

* Ways, from the Terry Pratchett science fiction novel ''TheDarkSideOfTheSun'' is a robot built with an intrinsic ability with p-math, meaning he can manipulate probability to make himself lucky. In one scene he's forced to roll 5 sixes twice in a row at gunpoint to prove his identity.

* Kyosuke Nanbu of ''SuperRobotWarsCompact2'', and the OG series has this. His backstory has him surviving a space shuttle crash, with minor injuries. In OG 1 a traitor sabotages a prototype HumongousMecha and Kyosuke once again crash lands and escapes unscathed. It's also a reason given for surviving the beating that he got from [[TheRival Axel Almer]]. For some reason this inhuman luck does not actually include the Lucky skill. (Tasuku has this.)

* Princess Azula of ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' has been called "born lucky" explicitly: she’s firebending prodigy and everything comes naturally to her, earning her her father's "love" and a place as heir apparent to the throne. Shame about the family history of mental instability...

* While you hardly call the circumstances of his birth and life lucky, Rau Le Cruset from GundamSeed mentions often that fortune is on his side, and indeed his plan to kill everyone by playing both sides nearly goes off without a hitch. He manages to become a high ranking officer on Zaft (a military of genetically engineered supermen) despite not being a superman himself but being such a skilled pilot that they never ever question him, and serves for years and is never exposed. He leaks info to their enemy, and is never ever caught, or not believed. And during the finale he in short order 1. Manages to survive fighting his rival because said rival just happened to have poor mech to mech battle equipment that day as he was on fire support. 2. Manages to fight the one guy with superior power that won't kill anybody, allowing him to escape. 3. Launches a pod with data critical to his plan at 2 warring armies and the army that he needed to retrieve it is able to get it because the hero on the other side has a nervous breakdown in battle. 4. The people with the data (the data enables nuclear power) opt to use all of it on nuclear missiles rather than solve their more immediately energy crisis, and nuke their enemy. 5. His own army has a superweapon of their own that they are now willing to use and both sides are now posed to wipe out each other (and thus humanity) to total extinction. His luck finally runs out on the last day, when he's unable to break the hero, who kills him, and his plan is foiled when the hero's sidekick is able to stop the superweapons.

* [[CarlBarks Gladstone Gander]], DonaldDuck's cousin. His luck goes to absolutely ''ridiculous'' extremes, much to Donald's dislike. Much of the character's humor comes from watching the RubeGoldbergDevice of DeusExMachina events that make everything go his way. Worst of all, he ''revelled'' in his luck, knew everything was coming to him without any effort, and thought working was beneath him, which made the character [[SmugSnake all the more obnoxious]]. At one point it's implied he's lucky because the Goddess of Luck fell in love with him. It would certainly explain why his luck doesn't work when it comes to gain Daisy Duck's love. In the Don Rosa canon ItRunsInTheFamily - Gladstone's mother Daphne is/was ridiculously lucky, as well. This was in turn based on a lucky hex symbol a traveling painter had placed on the family barn as a gift for the new child.

** Zigzagged twelve ways until Sunday in one comic, where he and Donald both enter a fishing contest. Gladstone quickly catches what appears to be the largest fish in the water with no effort at all, while Donald's rod breaks. Huey, Dewey, and Louie, meanwhile, run into a fellow who knows where far bigger fish swim (he himself only didn't win the contest because he'd already won plenty of times). The nephews catch a fish larger than Gladstone's and attach it to Donald's boat, making it look like Donald will win. As everyone is heading for shore though, Donald's boat is hit by a runaway speedboat, knocking his fish into Gladstone's boat and letting Gladstone win the contest. Donald gets the last laugh though, when it turns out that the daughter of a millionaire was trapped on the speedboat and had a large reward for whoever could save her. So while Gladstone's luck got him to win the contest, Donald ended up getting a much bigger reward than the prize.

* Gladstone Gander, listed and pictured above, makes a guest starring appearance in an episode of WesternAnimation/DuckTales, where his luck is actually weaponized by Magica De Spell in order to bypass Scrooge's security system. Despite being hypnotized into stealing it he is still cursed due to using his luck for evil and is instead saddled with ''bad luck.'' Naturally, but the end of the episode he gets his luck back and refuses to learn his aesop about relying on luck for everything.

* Some characters in ''PhoenixWrightAceAttorney'' believe that Phoenix wins most of his cases by sheer luck since he always manages to turn the case around in his favor when all seems lost. Franziska von Karma even notes Phoenix's luck out loud after she finds out from Edgeworth that he fell through a broken bridge to a river 40 feet below (Said river was stated to be [[NoOneCouldSurviveThat notorious for being deadly]]) and only suffered minor bruises and a cold - In the middle of winter, while the bridge was on fire! To top it off, in ''[[ApolloJusticeAceAttorney Apollo Justice]]'', Phoenix gets run over by a car, sends him flying 30 feet in the air, smacks his head into a telephone pole, and only suffers a minor ankle sprain!
** To quote Franziska herself: "As always, hard to know if he should be called lucky or unlucky."

* CaseClosed: Ran has ''absurdly'' good fortunes playing luck-based games like Poker or Mahjong.

* ErastFandorin in Boris Akunin's detective novels always wins in gambling games, which causes him to find them boring. In ''The Turkish Gambit'' (and its movie adaptation), he exploits this to win a donkey in an inn in a game of dice to transport away Varvara Suvorova... who later discovers, to her shock, that she was his stake.
** Later in his career he uses this ability to expose a fake lottery wherein he loses his bet (meaning that there was not a single chance to win, otherwise, he would have). Even later, he plays Russian roulette in front of a suicide club president to convince the latter to accept him to the club.
** In fact, he comes from a family where luck always skips a generation: his father and only son were extremely unlucky, while his grandson (Nicholas Fandorin) was extremely lucky again.

[[quoteright:230:[[CarlBarks http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/oolated-vert-2_9235.jpg]]]]

*** In one Don Rosa story, a contest involved catching entries tied to balloons and when a balloon flies above Gladstone, he refuses to exert himself reaching for it, reasoning that if it was the winning entry, the balloon would pop and drop the entry into his hand, which actually happened. He lost the raffle because Donald's nephew persuaded him to switch the tickets (Donald had gotten the rest of them), but his consolation prize (a year's supply of oolated squiggs) included a fish that swallowed a 10 carat diamond and the main prize was a cruise ship that went icebound

** Perhaps the most spectacular example is when Gladstone gets saddled with a contract to move a house from the top of one mountain to the top of another: A hurricane comes by and moves the house from the mountain to the other with no damage whatsoever to it.

** And on top of that, his luck occasionally got him into more trouble than he would have been in without it. One story involved a treasure in the Amazon, and he decided he needed a helicopter to get to it before Donald could. He got there, but he didn't know that the tribe native to the area attached negative superstitions to helicopters. (Yes, they played with this character a ''lot''. As a general rule, Gladstone's luck works at its best when he just let it flow. When Gladstone asks for something specific, most of the time it come back to bite him. Lazing around is his most profit activity.)

** Jaden in YuGiOhGX is notorious for AssPulls. At one point, in the duel with Camula, she uses Giant Trunade and then attacks directly, which should end the duel. Why doesn't it? Because one of the cards returned gives him 500 life points upon return to the hand. Yep, [[BlatantLies not lucky at all.]]