History Main / JadedWashout

* ''Simpatico'': Vinnie (Creator/NickNolte) made some money on a horse racing scam in his youth and thought he was going places. Cut to about twenty years later and he's unemployed and living off his friend's charity. Vinnie spends his days stumbling around town drunk, watching old tapes of himself during his glory days, and trying to impress the locals by claiming to be a private investigator.

** Penny (for the early seasons at least, until Bernadette got her a job in pharmaceutical sales). She often talks about how popular she was back in high school, getting straight A's from a P.E coach "who liked her a little too much", and moved to Los Angelis to follow a career in acting...only to fail miserably at getting any good acting jobs, stuck in a dead-end job as a waitress, has trouble keeping up with her bills and is [[TakingAdvantageOfGenerosity overly reliant on "Nerds", (the kind of people that she used to look down upon and victimise in high school) to feed her and help with her financial problems]].

** Sae Niijima from ''VideoGame/{{Persona 5}}''. While she initially possessed a strong sense of justice, she has been worn down by being PromotedToParent in the wake of her father's death and being overshadowed by her male colleagues at the prosecutor's office; by the time of the game's beginning, she's nothing but a cynical, bitter, borderline AmoralAttorney who only cares about winning cases no matter what, and resents her younger sister Makoto, viewing her [[ResentfulGuardian as a burden]] and being jealous that Makoto has the freedom to choose what to do with her life while Sae herself is stuck in a dead-end job where she's constantly overshadowed by her male colleagues. [[spoiler:She grows out of it thanks to CharacterDevelopment, rediscovering said sense of justice and deciding to become a defense attorney.]][[note]]It's worth noting that the negative traits are amplified only when Sae is under stress, and she has excellent motivations for the negative traits: she wants to win because she's trying to get ahead so she can provide a better life for Makoto; she resents that Makoto has the freedom to choose her own life, but works hard to ''give'' Makoto that freedom because she wants her sister to have the choices she didn't; while there are implications that Sae would ''consider'' fabricating evidence or a confession, she never actually does it, and in fact her methods of interrogating Joker are nothing but reasonable throughout. She only starts to lose her grip when she comes under extreme pressure to catch the Phantom Thieves. Her boss threatens her by saying that failure will result in her termination, which she can't afford. [[spoiler: She's also never actually subjected to a change of heart, which means she wasn't anywhere near the point of villainy like the other Phantom Thieves targets.]][[/note]]

* Jeeter Lester in ''Tobacco Road'' was once a respectable cotton farmer, but gradually fell into squalid, shiftless poverty, with his house rotting apart and his family on the brink of starving to death.

* TropeNamer Al Bundy, from ''Series/MarriedWithChildren''. Once Polk High's most notable player ("[[MemeticMutation ...scored four touchdowns in one game]]"), now a pathetic shoe salesman married to another Jaded Washout--former [[AlphaBitch mean girl]] and [[ReallyGetsAround high school bicycle]] Peggy Wanker--with two hell-raising children and a shiftless dog. Much of the humor and popularity of the show came from the [[StepfordSuburbia depression of suburban life]], as anyone who worked in a degrading, low-paying, miserable, [[OverlyLongGag menial]], service-industry job may find him less of an UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist than others (work a job where you are regularly [[UnsatisfiableCustomer abused by customers]] for a few years and Al Bundy will be your patron saint). Although a chauvinist, a loud mouth and a loser, Al Bundy himself isn't without his virtues. [[AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther He genuinely loves his wife and family]] though [[{{Tsundere}} he won't admit it outright]], [[AllTakeAndNoGive regularly sacrificed for his children and his wife]], [[OverprotectiveDad is quick to protect his kids]], and would never cheat on his lazy, bonbon-eating, whiny, sex-starved wife Peg (though he does go to the nudie bar and reads porno mags like ''Playboy'' and ''Big Uns'').

The Al Bundy, the guy (or [[AlwaysMale sometimes]] gal) who never made anything with their life.

* TropeNamer Al Bundy, from ''Series/MarriedWithChildren''. Once Polk High's most notable player ("[[MemeticMutation ...scored four touchdowns in one game]]"), now a pathetic shoe salesman married to another Jaded Washout--a former [[AlphaBitch mean girl]] and [[ReallyGetsAround high school bicycle]] Peggy Wanker--with two hell-raising children and a shiftless dog. Much of the humor of the show, and it's popularity, came from the [[StepfordSuburbia depression of suburban life]], as anyone who worked in a degrading, low-paying, miserable, [[OverlyLongGag menial]], service-industry job may find him less of an UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist than others (work a job where you are regularly [[UnsatisfiableCustomer abused by customers]] for a few years and Al Bundy will be your patron saint). Although a chauvinist, a loud mouth and a loser, Al Bundy himself isn't without his virtues. [[AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther He genuinely loves his wife and family]] though [[{{Tsundere}} he won't admit it outright]], [[AllTakeAndNoGive regularly sacrificed for his children and his wife]], [[OverprotectiveDad quick to protect his kids]] and would never cheat on his lazy, bonbon-eating, whiny, sex-starved wife Peg (though he does go to the nudie bar and reads porno mags like ''Playboy'' and ''Big Uns'').

* "Pistol" Pete Disellio from ''Series/ParksAndRecreation'' is an inversion. He's a former high school basketball star who won the BigGame with a last-second dunk, and the entire town adores him for it decades later. However, he is the only person who doesn't care anymore and is sick of being considered a hero for something he did when he was seventeen and just wants to move on with his life. In every appearance he apropos of nothing brings up the mundane details of his adult life the way a stereotypical former high school athlete will constantly talk about his GloryDays.

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** From ''VideoGame/{{Persona}}'', [[AllGirlsWantBadBoys Reiji Kidou]] and [[GyaruGirl Yuka Ayase]] are less successful in their life after the event of the game. Reiji is seen in ''VideoGame/Persona2'' as a door-to-door knife salesman who scares away his customers because his Persona that previously made him a major badass still exudes an intimidating aura. Yuka in her high school was known to be a heartbreaker, lost her love rivalry against Maki for the Protagonist's heart, went on to marry a salaryman as a GoldDigger and never to be seen again despite the other characters appearing in their school reunion.

* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsResistance'': Tam Ryvora was working her way up the racing circuit when she had to bet on her ship's value in the next race to pay for repairs, and then lost the race, leading to her working as a mechanic for Yeager to try and earn enough to either fix up the ''[[TheAllegedCar Fireball]]'' or buy a new ship. She has a ''very'' cynical attitude as a result, which informs a huge amount of her personality.

->'''Mr. Barber:''' Homecomming King in '91. They still got my picture hanging in the auditorium. \\

%%* Tsukushi's father on ''Manga/HanaYoriDango''.

** Funnily enough, Daniel has shades of this too. In spite of having dragged himself up by his bootstraps and owning a chain of car dealerships and auto repair shops, and having a loving wife and daughter as well as a comfortable upper-class life, he still seems to consider his victories in two consecutive All-Valley karate tournaments to be his life's high point. He still prominently displays the trophies in home, plays up his karate champion status in his adverts, and from dialogue implications still discusses the tournaments in the breakroom at work.

* "Pistol" Pete Disellio from ''Series/ParksAndRecreation'' is an inversion. He's a former high school basketball star who won the BigGame with a last-second dunk, and the entire town adores him for it decades later. However, he is the only person who doesn't care anymore and is sick of being considered a hero for something he did when he was seventeen and just wants to move on with his life.

* ''Series/CobraKai'': A SequelSeries to ''Film/TheKarateKid'', set 34 years later, the series follows Johnny Lawrence, who has fallen hard from his position as the leading JerkJock and star of John Kreese's dojo to a tired, vaguely alcoholic odd-jobs man.

* Robert Baratheon from ''Series/GameOfThrones''. He is stuck in a job he hates, trapped in a loveless marriage to a woman who wants him dead, still hasn't gotten over his high-school (or whatever the quasi-medieval equivalent is) sweetheart, is nostalgic for the GloryDays (considering that his glory days were ''in the middle of a civil war'', he takes a lot of flak for this), and contemplates faking his death and abandoning his responsibilities. The only part of his character that doesn't quite fit is the fact that he rules the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.

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