History Main / BornUnlucky

%%* Raymond Jardine from Creator/GordonKorman's ''A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag''.

** Stumpy's little sister Violasse has luck that is somehow even worse than Stumpy's and ''constantly'' places her in danger, to the point where it's her defining character trait in-universe.

[[caption-width-right:349:Who gets stuck with all the bad luck?\\
No one -- but WesternAnimation/DonaldDuck!]]

* Courier Six from the "VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas" and "WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}" crossover "Fanfiction/DustInTheWind". It'd be easier to list the times his luck holds out than doesn't.

* Charlie Brown in ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'' is an intersection of this and TheDeterminator.

* On ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender,'' [[AbusiveParents Ozai]] often says that his daughter Azula was BornLucky, while his son [[Characters/AvatarTheLastAirbenderZuko Zuko]] was [[KickTheDog lucky to be born]]. Zuko isn't quite like a lot of these other examples, but he ''does'' have a lot of crud to deal with as the series goes on. This winds up being a {{reconstruction}}, since the struggles that Zuko has to deal with ever since his exile alongside his [[TheDeterminator determined]] attitude in life enables him to cope up with failure and being away from Ozai's abhorrent influence unlike Azula, who ends up becoming a {{deconstruction}} of this trope's opposite.

-->-- ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'', "The Fortuneteller"

* A European fairy tale told the story of a man whose attempts to become wealthy never worked, while his brother's always did. While traveling, the man found the castle where [[AnthropomorphicPersonification Destiny himself]] lived. Destiny explains to the man that he was born on an unlucky day and that will be his luck forever. When the man asked what he could do about it, Destiny told him to tell everyone that all his properties actually belong to his niece, who was born on a lucky day. It worked- soon he was a prosperous man. But when at one point he couldn't help boasting about his riches, all of them disappeared instantly! (until he retracted and admitted they were his niece's.) Talk about CosmicPlaything...
* Raymond Jardine from Creator/GordonKorman's ''A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag''.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'': Harold, a recurring character, is practically the definition of this trope. He witnessed the world being destroyed by nuclear war when he was only five years old, and was then separated from his parents when he was placed into a vault inhabited exclusively by children. When the vault opened he went west and became a trader, but his caravans kept getting attacked by mutated monsters. To remedy this he traveled to the source of the mutants to put a stop to them, only to then get mutated himself when things went wrong. Harold can tell the player this story in ''VideoGame/Fallout1'', where he's found begging for spare change in the slums of the Hub. And that's only his appearance in the first game...

* ''Fanfic/TheBoltChronicles'': Mittens has her share of bad luck in these stories and lampshades this in “The Mall” upon hearing the Music/{{Cream}} cover of “Born Under a Bad Sign” by Music/AlbertKing. Not surprising given that she is a black tuxedo cat.

** Sokka is a bit of this too. See the quote above (and note how many times he gets sick, rained on, etcetera).

* On ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender,'' [[AbusiveParents Ozai]] often says that his daughter Azula was BornLucky, while his son Zuko was [[KickTheDog lucky to be born]]. Zuko isn't quite like a lot of these other examples, but he ''does'' have a lot of crud to deal with as the series goes on. This winds up being a {{reconstruction}}, since the struggles that Zuko has to deal with ever since his exile alongside his [[TheDeterminator determined]] attitude in life enables him to cope up with failure and being away from Ozai's abhorrent influence unlike Azula, who ends up becoming a {{deconstruction}} of this trope's opposite.

** Butters is often grounded for no reason. His birthday is even on September 11.
** Kenny, [[TheyKilledKennyAgain whose repeated, traumatic deaths]] are almost always PlayedForLaughs.
* Squidward from ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'', who has the unfortunate luck of living between two idiot neighbors (one of whom works aside him at the Krusty Krab, meaning Squidward can't catch a break from him even at work), having a boss who pays him little to nothing, and of course, being injured and humiliated sporadically, even when he has done nothing to attract karma.

* ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'': Poor Peter Parker, he tends to see himself as being very unlucky, so much so that he would complain that it's taken this long for him to be mentioned. He's even mumbled the page quote more than a few times. It should be noted his poor luck has been both played for laughs and done seriously. A good deal of the ol' Parker luck is self-inflicted due to his secret identity as Spider-Man, whose duties often interfere with his civilian life, and despite his bad luck he has a loving family, a circle of friends, and as a few supervillains have enviously noted, a love-life entirely filled with gorgeous women.

* ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'': Qrow mostly focusses on the bad luck his Misfortune Semblance [[TheJinx brings to other people]], but it affects him, too. When he puts his feet up on a table, it breaks; his presence bursts a trailer's tyre at Brunswick Farms; and when travelling through a Dust mine with Clover, he randomly slips on the ice and almost lands flat on his face (Clover catches him in time thanks to his own Good Luck Semblance).

* Detective Soap from ''ComicBook/ThePunisher''. By the end, he gets desperate enough to attempt [[BullyingADragon suicide by Frank]].

* Poor [[Franchise/SpiderMan Peter Parker]], he tends to see himself as being very unlucky, so much so that he would complain that it's taken this long for him to be mentioned. He's even mumbled the page quote more than a few times. It should be noted his poor luck has been both played for laughs and done seriously. A good deal of the ol' Parker luck is self-inflicted due to his secret identity as Spider-Man, whose duties often interfere with his civilian life, and despite his bad luck he has a loving family, a circle of friends, and as a few supervillains have enviously noted, a love-life entirely filled with gorgeous women.

** Eizen in ''VideoGame/TalesOfBerseria'' is afflicted with the "Reaper's Curse", inflicting him with supernatural bad luck. His vessel is a coin he often flips, which turns up tails every single time. When Rokurou tries to cheat his luck with a double-headed coin, the first one is eaten by a crow. The second is eaten by a hawk. The third one ''explodes''. [[NoodleIncident Somehow.]]

* In ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureStardustCrusaders'', Oingo is a [[{{Humanshifter}} flawless shapeshifter]] and a man of many talents (necessary to convincingly impersonate people). Unfortunately for him, any time he's assigned to assassinate someone, he's constantly put into situations in which his shapeshifting won't help, such as being forced to swallow lit cigarettes, attempting to poison someone's drink and finding out it's an unopened can of cola, or, the act that ultimately convinces him to retire from assassination, encountering his own concealed bomb and accidentally setting it off.

* Tsunade from ''Manga/{{Naruto}}''. Her luck is so bad that, she's get the nickname "The Legendary Sucker" for never being able to win at gambling. When she ''does'' win, something worse usually happens to balance it out.

* ''VideoGame/DragonQuestV'': The Hero, who [[TheWoobie suffers]] TraumaCongaLine throughout the game (to wit:[[spoiler:his mother gets kidnapped by the BigBad shortly after his birth, his father gets burned to ashes, he is made a slave for ten years, his wife gets kidnapped by TheDragon and is turned to stone together him when he is about to rescue her...]]), is notable for having the worst Luck stat.

* Shine from ''Webcomic/NextSoundOfTheFuture'' tends to attract misfortune. The first thing that happens in the story is her and all of her equipment being accidently knocked off a bridge into the water below. It turns out that this bad luck has been following her since her [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots creation]], as she was [[spoiler: "born" with a faulty vocal chip (a near-crippling issue for an android designed primarily to sing and perform) and was effectively barred from her original purpose as a result]].

* In the ''VisualNovel/TokimekiMemorial'' series, [[PluckyGirl Kyoko Izumi]] from ''Pocket'' and [[CuteClumsyGirl Miyuki Kotobuki]] from ''2'' (the latter even having as a CatchPhrase: "Tsuitenai no ka na...", "I really have bad luck..."): if anything bad happens, you can be sure it'll happen to them. Of course, this being ''Tokimeki Memorial'', it's always PlayedForLaughs.

Contrast BornLucky and UnluckilyLucky. Compare TheKlutz, TheJinx. See also CosmicPlaything (destiny has fun messing with them), ButtMonkey (the butt of everyone's jokes), TheChewToy (someone whose constant pain is intended to amuse), or the WeirdnessMagnet (when weird things always seem to happen to someone in particular). If the bad luck is meant to be funny, it's because of ComedicSociopathy.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Kaeloo}}'': Stumpy the squirrel.

* ''Manga/UruseiYatsura'': The lot of poor Ataru Moroboshi is to deal with all of the crazy (but fortunately attractive) aliens of the galaxy, but that's what you'd expect from someone whose [[MeaningfulName name means]] "hit by a falling star". The AllThereInTheManual additional material (stated outright in the 2022 remake) twists the knife further, stating that he was born on Friday the 13th, in the middle of an earthquake, on [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_calendar#Rokuy.C5.8D Butsumetsu]] (the day Buddha died), considered the unluckiest day in the Japanese calendar.