History Main / FMinusMinus

* ''Literature/HarryPotter'': Students taking their [=OWLs=] can receive grades of O, E, A, P, D, and T ([[TheSmartGuy Outstanding]], [[SmarterThanYouLook Exceeds Expectations]], [[SoOkayItsAverage Acceptable]], [[BookDumb Poor]], [[TheFool Dreadful]], and [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers Troll]]). When Harry first hears of the T grade, he thinks [[ThoseTwoGuys Fred and/or George]] might be pulling his leg (i.e., [[{{Pun}} trolling]] him), but there it is listed among the others on the form. Even Hermione, who normally seems to know all about such things, seems initially surprised by the existence of this grade.

* In ''VideoGame/LuigisMansion1'', the lowest grade is H (meaning the mansion is replaced with a little tent), although [[EarnYourBadEnding you have to try to do that badly]]. There are even a few Let's Plays of the game with the [[MinimalistRun goal of finishing with an H.]] The same is true of the first generation of 5-key ''VideoGame/{{Beatmania}}'' games.

* Most 3D ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'' games have the "E" rank which is basically saying [[EpicFail you did really horribly]]. It's most evident in ''VideoGame/SonicUnleashed'' where getting an E-rank causes the grade to ''go tumbling off'' and has Sonic falling down and asking to try again. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yODLkaF8F-Y Even the music knows how epically you failed!]]

* In ''Literature/MoabIsMyWashpot'', a young ''Creator/StephenFry'' find himself sitting a physics exams, which he realises that he had no desire to pass (partly due to his hatred of maths and partly as an act of defiance against his engineer father). The first question relates to the electrical power in a bicycle torch, so he spends the whole exam sketching a bike, draws an arrow pointing to the torch and calls it a day. For this he receives the mythical 'unclassified' grade, of which he seems rather proud.

* In ''Literature/MoabIsMyWashpot'', a young ''Creator/StephenFry'' find himself sitting a physics exams, which he realises that he had no desire to pass (partly due to his hatred of maths and partly as an act of defiance against his engineer father). The first question relates to the electrical power in a bicycle torch, so he spends the whole exam sketching a bike, draws an arrow pointing to the torch and calls it a day. For this he receives the mythical 'unclassified' grade, of which he seems rather proud.

JustForFun/NotToBeConfusedWith the tell-tale sign of an incoming AtomicFBomb, although this trope can often lead to that trope as a reaction when students get an F-- (or other grade covered by this trope).

** In the bug collection assignment arc, Calvin is trying to do the aforementioned project on the day it's due. He gets 4 bugs (out of the 50 he needs; also, one of them is actually a ball of lint) before he has to go to class. Susie snarks that if he labels them scientifically in the next 30 seconds, he might get an F-Plus. At the end of the arc, Calvin tells Hobbes that he got an D-Minus-Minus on the assignment (which, to Calvin's "credit", is technically not a failing grade).
* There's a [[http://www.gocomics.com/fminus?ref=comics comic strip]] by Tony Carillo named ''F Minus''. Carillo has said that he sometimes wishes he'd picked a different title, since it means that people who send him [[{{Hatedom}} hate mail]] all tend to make [[NeverHeardThatOneBefore a predictable comment]]...

* In ''The Black Book and Schwambrania'' by Lev Kassil, words at one point replace numbers in the school's five-grade system ("bad", "unsatisfactory", "satisfactory", "good", "excellent" instead of a scale from 1 to 5), but there is nothing official on how to deal with minuses and pluses this way. Eventually one of the characters gets "completely bad with two minuses" as his term grade and lampshades that it's something one can't even spot with a naked eye.

* In ''Literature/RedDwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers'', Rimmer usually gets F for Fail on the officer exam, but on two occasions he got X for Unclassifiable; the first time he just collapsed from amphetamine usage, but the second time sheer panic led to him denying his own existence so he wrote "I am a fish" five hundred times. The exam we see involves him leaving an inky handprint on the paper and then fainting, but no-one ever gets a chance to grade it.

* In the fourth ''Literature/WaysideSchool'' book, Mrs. Jewls gives Joy an F on an math quiz because she can't do her sixes or sevens. She's initially persuaded to change it to a B when Joy blames the Cloud of Doom for changing her answers, but after the class is being really annoying she changes the grade again to an F minus.

** Zack Perlman, a rich slacker they're trying to recruit in [[Recap/CommunityS4E07EconomicsOfMarineBiology "Economics of Marine Biology"]], has an SAT score of 0. The lowest possible SAT score is 200 (for some reason), and even that is only possible by getting every single question wrong on a multiple choice test. While it's possible to get 200 points minimum, the first section of the SAT will deduct 200 points if you get all 800 questions wrong. Alternatively, [[EpicFail he didn't even sign his name on the paper, let alone attempt it.]]

* ''VideoGame/CrossEdge'' has [[GameplayGrading battle rank evaluations]] that go in descending order from S, to A, B, C, D, E and F, and [[RankInflation keep going]] to G, H, ''I''...

* In the flash game ''VideoGame/{{N}}'', your score for each episode of 5 levels is how much [[TimedMission time]] you had left at the end. You start at 90 seconds and can gain more time by collecting gold. The game also records your best individual level scores, which are the times you'd have left at the end of them if you'd started at 90 seconds - and allows you to play back your best runs. So if you have more than 90 seconds to start a level, you can get a negative score for the level. If this happens, your score shows up as "[=---.---=]" and you won't be able to replay yourself completing that level. (You still can for the whole episode.)

* In ''VideoGame/WorldOfFinalFantasy,'' Tama discovers an easy way to travel back and forth between the world of the Lilikins and the Jiants (where Lann and Reynn come from), which Lann decides to call the "Super Port-a-Party". Tama hates the name, and gives him an "F" for effort. Lann thinks the name is so bad that it deserves an even lower grade, so she gives him an "H".

** In the episode "Sheen's Brain", Sheen gets FOUR minuses on a test. One of the things he wrote down was that Ultra Lord (a [[ShowWithinAShow fictional]] superhero that Sheen is fanatically obsessed with) [[ArtisticLicenseHistory was the first president of the United States]].

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Beetlejuice}}'': The episode "Back to School Ghoul" has Beetlejuice get a G in History, a Q in Sci-Fi and a Z- in both Math and Behavior when he's forced to go back to school.
* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'', Numbuh One receives a double F minus for a report. In a later episode, Numbuh Five gets a double F minus for claiming a dog ate her homework (which actually happened), and is then warned by the teacher that it is possible to get a '''triple''' F minus in her class.

** In "Kamp Krusty," Bart getting a full hand of F- grades on his final report card [[FiveSecondForeshadowing is actually our first hint]] that the episode started with a DreamIntro. In reality he [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome more realistically]] gets all Ds.

* ''WesternAnimation/WeBareBears'': In the episode "Panda's Art" when Panda messes the Charlie's painting with mud of his paw while Miss Chriss plains stealing Panda's painting, she gives him an F-.

** In post-USSR UsefulNotes/{{Russia}}, 5 is the highest and ''2'' is the lowest while still being a failing grade. You can unofficially get a 1, but that requires something ''beyond'' just not even trying. There's also "Not Graded", commonly used to give the students a LastSecondChance. It's a relic of the system from UsefulNotes/TsaristRussia, when that was basically what teachers officially used "1" for -- but they were also known to give a 0 if you ''really'' pissed them off.

** UsefulNotes/LatinAmerica typically goes from 1 to 5 or from 1 to 10, but teachers have been known not only to give 0 for really bad students, but also to subtract from the grade as extra punishment for cheating or misbehaviour. That means you can indeed end up with a ''negative'' grade. There's one legend in Venezuela of a notoriously tough professor who "graded" an exam with weird curves on the corners of the page -- because the page wasn't big enough to fit the zero the exam deserved.

* In UsefulNotes/TheNetherlands, once there's nothing more to learn of Dutch spelling and grammar, teachers will start docking points for [[RougeAnglesOfSatin spelling and grammar errors]]. The more often you do it, the more points get docked, leading to theoretical possibilities of -16/10 on an exam, which is considered the absolute limit of what is achievable without just failing out of school for being so bad at Dutch.

* ''WebVideo/CGPGrey'': In [[https://youtu.be/l4w6808wJcU Grey Grades The State Flags]], Grey lays down a few basic rules of vexillology as guidelines, including that any state flag which including the name of the state itself within it is an automatic fail since, as he puts it, "flags are ''not'' nametags". However, because this rule is broken by roughly ''two thirds'' of the union's states, he ends up having to create an entire second sub-tier list within F-tier just to keep it orderly.

This trope is for negative grades that go off the scale, from a simple F- all the way down to Z-. Or if grades are percentage-based, the percentage will be negative, meaning that the character got more answers wrong than actually existed. A staple of school comedies that don't take themselves particularly seriously. An inversion of RankInflation. Contrast TheBGrade and compare GradeSystemSnark. When it's a reviewer doing this, it's BrokeTheRatingScale.

* In ''VideoGame/LuigisMansion'', the lowest grade is H (meaning the mansion is replaced with a little tent), although [[EarnYourBadEnding you have to try to do that badly]]. There are even a few Let's Plays of the game with the [[MinimalistRun goal of finishing with an H.]] The same is true of the first generation of 5-key ''VideoGame/{{Beatmania}}'' games.

-->-- '''Square One TV''', ''Less Than Zero''

* The ''Ride/MenInBlackAlienAttack'' ride at Ride/UniversalStudios caps off the ride with Agent J rating your car's score. Do badly enough and he'll give you a G. And that's only because he can't give you an H. [[OverlyLongGag And if he could he'd give you a Q.]]

** The {{Trope Namer|s}} is the WebAnimation/StrongBadEmail "for kids", in which Strong Bad assigns the children in his studio audience the eponymous grade. In the same email, Strong Bad somehow gets a score of -45/150 on ''VideoGame/PeasantsQuest'' before checking the email.
** In the [=SBEmail=] "hygiene", Strong Bad as Gene gets a G-, but this is apparently okay because he's "soooo charming".

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'', Numbuh One receives a double F minus for a report. In a later episode, Numbuh Five gets a double F minus for claiming a dog ate her homework (which actually happened), and then warned by the teacher that it is possible to get a '''triple''' F minus in her class.

* In ''ConfidentialMission'', shooting civilians and using continues subtract from your score. As shown in the AttractMode tutorial, it is possible to have a negative score; if achieved, ''your score turns red.''

** While this does ''not'' literally occur in "Bart Gets a Z," the initial draft of the script had Zack, a CoolTeacher hired to replace Edna Krabappel, literally handing out Z grades to the entire class during the drunken meltdown that [[StatusQuoIsGod gets him fired]]. Although this particular moment was written out of the scene, the title (a CallBack to Season 2's "Bart Gets an F") [[ArtifactTitle stayed]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS11E3GuessWhosComingToCriticizeDinner Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner]]", Homer becomes a food critic and invokes the trope by giving Marge's pork chops his lowest rating ever, "seven thumbs up!"

JustForFun/NotToBeConfusedWith the tell-tale sign of an incoming AtomicFBomb.

* In ''Series/KenanAndKel'', In in a thousand to the future, A+ is the worst grade ever given, which Kenan got.

The judges held a note that said that, 'Stan, you stink.\\

** In "Kamp Krusty," Bart getting a full hand of F- grades on his final report card [[FiveSecondForeshadowing is actually our first hint]] that the episode started with a DreamIntro. In reality he more realistically gets all Ds.

In the United States and some of Western Europe, an F is the lowest grade possible. There are no additions to it, not a plus or minus. F simply means failure, no matter how bad. However, this is not always the case in the world of fiction. Sometimes, the only way to really show how badly the student performed is to add something special to the F and let the rest take care of itself. This also means that the trope name indicates a performance so bad, that ''[[UpToEleven not even the nonexistent grade of F-]]'' is bad enough for it.

** In the episode "Sheen's Brain", Sheen gets [[UpToEleven FOUR]] minuses on a test. One of the things he wrote down was that Ultra Lord (a [[ShowWithinAShow fictional]] superhero that Sheen is fanatically obsessed with) [[ArtisticLicenseHistory was the first president of the United States]].

* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'': When Mojo Jojo starts teaching a linguistics class, he hears everyone and tells them that based on what he's already heard he isn't impressed.

** In the bug collection assignment arc, Calvin is trying to do the aforementioned project on the day it's due. He gets 4 bugs (out of the 50 he needs; also, one of them is actually a ball of lint) before he has to go to class. Susie snarks that if he labels them scientifically in the next 30 seconds, he might get an F-Plus. At the end of the arc, Calvin tells Hobbes that he got an D-Minus-Minus on the assignment.