Here's a quick quiz: It's your birthday, and you have told your boyfriend/girlfriend/other Loved One exactly what you would like as a present to mark the occasion. You walk into the living room and find your gift...which has been [[BrokenTreasure broken/ripped into a million little pieces]], although someone has clearly been making a valiant effort to repair it. Moreover, it's the wrong colour. As you're staring at it, your Loved One stumbles in from the kitchen. They have their arm in a sling, their jeans have been ripped by something that clearly has sharp teeth, and they don't seem to have noticed that their hair is on fire. Seeing you, they offer a lopsided smile, and a tired if hopeful "Happy birthday."

Do you:
-->a) Ask "what the heck happened to you?" as you reach for the fire extinguisher?
-->b) Tearfully hug them in an attempt to soothe their distress (trying to avoid being set alight yourself)?
-->c) Throw a hissy fit at their failure to secure the correct colour of gift, rant and rave at their clumsiness in breaking it, then toss them out of the house when they set off the sprinklers?

Most of us of (relatively) sound mind would choose (a) -- the softer hearted (or fireproof) among us would choose (b). For some reason, though, an awful lot of characters in fiction prefer (c), throwing a tantrum or launching into a lecture when there really weren't any grounds for one.

It's as if they've suffered a complete empathy failure. Anyone can tell that TheHero has had a hard time. They've got the scars to prove it. At the very least, any onlooker's sense of curiosity should wake up for long enough to ask "Why is there a piranha attached to your thigh?" Moreover, basic human decency would dictate that we cut them some slack when they're clearly in pain, at least for long enough to figure out [[OneSideOfTheStory the whole story.]]

More bewildering is when the friend/onlooker knows ''exactly'' what the hero's been through, because ''they were there too.'' They ''know'' that DiabolusExMachina has been rather busy in the hero's social circle, and that his buddy DeusAngstMachina covered a couple of Diabolus' shifts for him when he had the cold. Yet still they show absolutely no mercy, demanding that the hero "pull himself together" or "get over it!" [[WithFriendsLikeThese So much for friendship.]]

A variant of this trope is a character type who is blind to the suffering of others. Not in the active, thoughtlessly cruel way of ComedicSociopathy, but just completely unable to appreciate the pain or distress of other people. If anyone "fails" them, [[YouHaveFailedMe there will be hell to pay]], no matter how much effort went into fulfilling their orders. Generally, this is a personality trait of more cynical characters, such as TheStoic. Some {{Tsundere}} types sport it as well, although in this case they'll probably be [[WhatTheHellHero called on it]]. In both cases, the writer usually makes it clear that the "problem" is on the side of the character with NoSympathy, not on the side of whoever is unfortunate enough to cross them.

This is an odd trope; it's often seen in comedies, but many viewers' reactions are basically DudeNotFunny. If the viewer is expected to side with character giving the hero such a hard time, the audience may feel that the writers are [[ViewersAreMorons insulting their intelligence (and morality)]]. Tolerance varies from "I get annoyed if it's overused" to "[[PetPeeveTrope I will hunt down the writers and eat them if I see this trope one more time]]." It's not always comedic though, and can be a real sucker punch if the protagonist undergoes tremendous hardship only to have his friends [[EtTuBrute berate him]].

The scary thing is that [[TruthInTelevision most of us have suffered from getting no sympathy]] at some point in our lives. The ''really'' scary thing is that we've probably ''shown'' someone No Sympathy as well, if only by failing to ask "Well, ''why'' did it happen?" How do you think we ended up having AcceptableTargets?

A KafkaKomedy often invokes this trope. ComedicSociopathy is its demented sibling. NoSympathy is a leading cause of CantGetAwayWithNuthin and AdultsAreUseless. Some character types, such as ThePesci, show No Sympathy as a matter of course -- it's part of their screwy psychology. Sometimes No Sympathy can be [[JustifiedTrope justified]] if the characters are young, since younger people are expected to be more self-centred and less empathic than adults...although, having said that, this may be extremely unfair to young people.

Compare BadlyBatteredBabysitter. Contrast UngratefulBastard.
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!!Examples of plot-related No Sympathy

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[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]

* Deconstructed in ''FruitsBasket'', where failure to acknowledge the distress of others is a major character flaw, especially in brothers Yuki and Ayame.
* Anime boyfriends seem prone to this, accusing their girlfriends of being "stupid" or "reckless" when it's clear that said girlfriend was trying to help them out. Bikky does this to Carol in {{FAKE}}, Rei does it to Kira in ''MARS,'' and the whole [[OuranHighSchoolHostClub Host Club]] do it to Haruhi when she tries to rescue someone from bullies. Often, this ties in with the advice to StayInTheKitchen, and can result in ValuesDissonance.
* ''Rurouni Kenshin'': Kenshin gets wounded in battle, and Kaoru yells at him for getting blood on her favorite scarf, which he happened to be wearing (never mind that the reason he was fighting in the first place was to ''keep his opponent from killing her'', and [[{{Wallbanger}} she forced him to take it even though he didn't want to]]).
** For further clarification, during battles she worries very much about Kenshin, even at the risk of her own life. It's only after the battles are over and the dust has begun to settle that [[{{Tsundere}} she fulfills this trope]].
* In ''SoraWoKakeruShoujo'', Nami's depressed state of mind is not helped by her family's complete lack of love and sympathy. Her sisters practically kick her around as some scurvy dog and don't even once wonder why she acts the way she does. {{This troper}} was not too surprised when [[spoiler:Nami decided to turn on them]].
**[[spoiler:Turned by her brainwashed mother, no less, who actually does care about her. Said mother proceeds to [[IGotBetter get better]], beat the crap out of Nami and leave her to die. None of her family seem particularly concerned about what happened to her afterward.]]


[[/folder]]

[[folder: Comics ]]

* Poor Donald Duck. This trope is a big factor in making him TheChewToy. Girlfriend Daisy is particularly prone to empathy failure. No matter what catastrophe befalls her beau, Daisy won't bother to staunch the bleeding before she sets in with a vicious rant-a-thon.
**It must run in the family:After Scrooge was accidentally pulled through a clothes shop by a hoverbike-thing gone mad, screaming in fear, he was arrested by the police because he got a few pieces of clothes stuck to him and people assumed he stole them.
*Surprising aversion: In the second season of ''{{WITCH}}'', Taranee (the straight-A honor student) begins to fall apart from stress. Instead of unfairly throwing the book at Taranee, the principal decides to cut her favorite student some slack and ignore the girl's tantrums. Taranee actually has to ''beg'' for a detention.
* [[Comicbook/SpiderMan Peter Parker]] is often recipient of this kind of attitude. Of course, from the perspective of the characters who usually demonstrate this attitude towards him, Peter is flaky, unreliable and possesses almost no sense of responsibility; the audience, of course, are more than aware of the [[SecretIdentity real reasons]] why Peter acts this way, thus making it particularly painful and unfair for him to be condemned for his behaviour when he can't actually reveal the real reasons for it in his own defence.
** To make matters worse, he also gets it as Spider-Man as well; his motivations and actions are often genuinely noble, but the prevailing AllOfTheOtherReindeer mood of the Marvel Universe (helped, of course, by J. Jonah Jameson's obsessive vendetta against him - and since Jonah owns and publishes a newspaper, it's not exactly difficult for him to get his viewpoint wide distribution) means that he's constantly subject to widespread public criticism, condemnation and fear, and even blatant acts of heroism on his part will usually trigger a loud public outcry accusing him of being a public menace. They get him coming and going.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Film ]]

* Stories about the in-laws-from-hell usually feature the bride's parents (and many of her other associates, and in some cases ''the bride herself'') having No Sympathy for her husband. The OverprotectiveDad in particular is ill-inclined to give his son-in-law an inch. ''MeetTheParents'' and ''TheWorstWeekOfMyLife'' are two examples.
** Of course, in ''TheWorstWeekOfMyLife'', absolutely ''everyone'' has NoSympathy for Howard Steele.
*Any villain who says "YouHaveFailedMe" likely has this... and any villain who suffers those failures to live can be argued to have a bit of [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation empathy]] (or at least pragmatism at the effects of killing off his own troops). Darth Vader has done this at least once and nearly twice on-screen.
* In the Disney movie, GoFigure, the heroine is chewed out as a failure by her skating coach for not showing up to practice. The coach never gave her a chance to explain that TheLibby locked her in a supply closet, despite the fact that she was covered in purple paint and had apparently been through something.
* In ''{{Because I said so}}'', the girl accidentally broke a glass that {{The Paolo}}-figure owned (and was his grandmother's he related after the fact), who immediately insulted her, and gave her a cold shoulder despite her extremely sincere and distressed apologies, including offers to buy a replacement.

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[[folder: Literature ]]

*Bella Swan is incapable of feeling sympathy for anyone's problems if they don't sparkle. Case in point: Everyone but her in school is upset that the snow is gone and they can't finish their game; her reaction is to gloat about it.
* JacquelineWilson's heroines usually have friends prone to this (and occasionally do it themselves). A blatant example is the ''Girls'' series heroine, Ellie. Throughout the series, Ellie has to bail out best friends Nadine and Magda when they pick up the IdiotBall and run with it...and in gratitude, they're quick to abandon Ellie in favour of whichever boy they're pursuing at the time. However, when Ellie tells them she's thinking about going to her boyfriend's dance rather than to a concert with Nadine and Magda, they get ''very'' catty and accuse her of abandoning them, despite the fact that Ellie shows far more regard for their feelings when they do for hers. Occasionally, this can verge on (non-)ComedicSociopathy, as when they accuse Ellie of overreacting when [[spoiler: she finds a drunken Magda lip-locked with Russell, Ellie's boyfriend, at a party]].
* Wolfram in ''KyouKaraMaou'' is always on Yuri's case, accusing Yuri of cheating on him in situations where Yuri was just being polite/trying to avoid death. However, a case could be made that Yuri (among others) is equally insensitive to Wolfram's feelings; Wolfram is often accused of being a brat in scenarios where he was genuinely trying to do something positive.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* ''{{House}}'' seems to go out of his way to invoke this in other people, just so he can protect his ego. For example, take the Tritter thing; Being tripped was humiliating, sure, but the other characters might have had more sympathy for him if he had actually told them about that, instead of keeping it to himself.
**This does happen a lot to him. He's addicted to vicodin BECAUSE he's in chronic pain. But nobody seems to think of that when they criticise his addiction, and tell him what a jerk he is.
**In season four finale, he had been in an accident and had a head injury, but still his best friend asked him to do a potentially fatal test on himself to save his (the friend's) girlfriend's life.
** Not that House himself isn't guilty of showing other people No Sympathy. [[NewOldFlame Stacy]]’s husband and the patient from the episode ''Who's Your Daddy?'' would have something to say about it.
*** It's been said that the reason House told Stacy to leave him when she wanted to stay, was because he felt sorry for her husband, who was a better partner for her than House himself could ever be, and who loved her a lot more, and in "Who's your Daddy", he's sympathetic enough not to reveal the girl's lie about her paternity.
*** Basically, he's a colossal dick who occasionally gets a PetTheDog moment.
* JD and Turk both seem to be frequent victims of this on {{Scrubs}}. Carla, and most of the girls JD dates, seem ready to pounce on any perceived failure or flaw, regardless of the circumstances.
** The instance that struck this troper as the most {{egregious}} was one where both Elliot and ''the writers'' displayed a complete lack of empathy for J.D., deeming his anger and jealousy over the fact that Elliot broke up with him for her old boyfriend mere minutes after they slept together as wrong and irrational. Elliot even has the gall to tell him to "Remember that you're supposed to be my friend." Which could much more easily be applied to her behavior than J.D.'s.
** There was another rather bizarre instance of this in season six, where J.D's friends were getting frustrated at his apparent whininess (although they didn't say this to his face). This felt a little odd given that what they viewed as {{Wangst}} was caused by the apparent death of his unborn child, his losing his girlfriend, his lack of an apartment and having to sleep on a deck, his developing an odd medical condition which caused fainting spells, and his getting a DUI (admittedly, the last two took place a bit later). Granted, a lot of his complaints took place offscreen, so it's hard to judge how annoying it would be in real life, and it's possible that a lot of time had passed within the show since what happened with Kim, but considering that Elliot never provoked any hostile reactions from her friends when she was going through similar problems in the earlier seasons, it still seems [[DoubleStandard a tad unfair]].
* In the ''XFiles'' episode "Bad Blood," Mulder comes in late at night, exhausted and covered in dust. Scully shows a reasonable amount of curiosity and sympathy in [[TheRashomon her version of events]], but in Mulder's version she whines about being hungry and tells him not to sit on her bed.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Webcomics ]]

* [[TheWoobie Nobody ever has sympathy for]] [[WarbotInAccounting Warbot]]. At one point, he tries to [[DrivenToSuicide tries to commit suicide,]] fails, and ends up chastised by his colleague for skipping work.
---> Everyone pretty much thinks you're a jerk.
* [[GunnerkriggCourt Boxbot]] only wants to help, but is hampered by the fact that he's a badly programed box with arms. He is consequently terrible, a fact that the characters and author are extremely willing to share.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

*KingOfTheHill: In the GrandFinale, Bobby joins a meat grading team. (Don't ask) He is initially regarded as a prodigy. At the team's state qualifying tournament, he answers almost every question and single-handedly pulls his school into second place, thus qualifying for the state championship. He answers the last question of the tournament incorrectly, thus dropping his team into fourth place, which is still high enough to qualify for state. His teammates and coach immediately turn on him, declaring him an incompetent choke artist who will drag the school into the gutter.

!!Examples of No Sympathy as a character trait
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]

* Klaus of ''FromEroicaWithLove'' has no mercy for his alphabets...not even with regard to basic human needs like eating and sleeping. ''He'' can stay awake for two days straight, so he expects his team to do the same. Because Klaus' life is entirely based around his job, he's equally ruthless with their private lives, thinking nothing of exiling them to Alaska without taking into account the small matter that many of them have ''families...''
*It's hard to tell if Kalos of ''KaleidoStar'' is a fairly cruel example of No Sympathy as a character trait or if he just exemplifies the ethos of Kaleido Stage. Sora gets injured and becomes nervous about performing stunts? Tough luck - he'll fire her if she doesn't get over it, fast. Her confidence and self-belief are knocked after deeing the devious nature of the International Circus Festival? [[spoiler: He terminates her contract]]. Harsh.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

* Most women in Robert Jordan's ''{{Wheel of Time}}'' are afflicted with this. Main hero Rand al'Thor is their typical ButtMonkey: He has a never-healing wound that causes him pain every waking moment, he is in danger of [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity going mad from the tainted magic he uses]](and in fact may have already done so), and, oh yeah, he has the responsibility of {{Saving the World}}. But most women around him for some reason feel that the most sensible way to help him save the world is by making his life as miserable as possible, and doing such things as criticizing him for being rude (in the ballsiest hypocrisy this troper has ever seen) while trying to stop everyone else from being idiots and prepare for the last battle already. Being [[WouldntHitAGirl a total pussy]], Rand just accepts it. Possibly because practically all his male friends and allies give him shit if he does something like, for example, not kowtowing immediately to Aes Sedai demands for the very good reason that they are a bunch of manipulative Jerkasses in the midst of their own civil war, so it isn't as if he should know which ones advice to follow even were he so inclined.
** In short, the guy deserves a break even if he can be an idiot.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Webcomics ]]

* Collin Sri'Vastra and Fox Maharassa of ''FriendlyHostility'' are an odd case of both sides of No Sympathy. Fox was the sweeter natured partner, but was empathically useless, needing to have a person's problems spelled out for him before he realised there ''was'' a problem. After being made aware of a situation, he was quick to offer support - but if no-one bothered to explain things to him, he was cheerfully oblivious and steamrolllered their feelings. Collin, on the other hand, was more sensitive, but also crueller - appealing to his emotions was a lost cause if you weren't his nearest and dearest, and occasionally he [[ManipulativeBastard actively targeted]] someone's weak spot to demoralise them, as he did to Kitty in the "Pirates!" storyline. The endgame of the story is brought about when these two sides of the same problem clash - [[spoiler: Collin becomes unhappy, and Fox moves from being the one person he opens up to, to just about the only person he refuses to voice his problems to, preferring to bitch to his friend, Arath, and flirt with newcomer Leon rather than do something sensible like ''talk to Fox''. Fox carries on oblivious, until even ''he'' can't deny something has gone badly wrong.]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* Every ''{{Animaniacs}}'' "Buttons and Mindy" short ends this way. After practically killing himself to save the life of [[TooDumbToLive the world's most annoying little girl]], Buttons' reward was a verbal dressing-down for some minor fault incurred along the way. [[DudeNotFunny It didn't work as comedy]] and it was often the only thing resembling a comedy beat in the short.
** Shortly thereafter, Mindy would lavish a bit of toddlerish affection on Buttons, which seemed to comfort him at least a little.
** Luckily, in the movie he was rewarded handsomely with a big 'ol plate of steak.
*Bernard Black, the bookshop owner in ''BlackBooks'', has a deep contempt for Manny Bianco, his assistant, and responds to almost anything he does with anger.
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