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The opposite of the usual sitcom plot of everything going wrong, the plague of good fortune is when a character has an amazing series of good things happen to them, despite the fact that they don't want it to. There are several reasons for them to fear their good luck:
- They have something riding on failure (See Springtime For Hitler for examples of this).
- The good fortune is only coming to them because of mistakes and misunderstandings, and the character doesn't want to just let it keep happening.
- The character fears that if good things keep happening, then eventually something awful will happen to restore the karmic balance.
- All this good luck damages the character's philosophy of the world being a miserable place. Yes, some characters value that philosophy more than the results of the good fortune.
- The character feels cheated of his honor. He should have earned what he's lucking into. Or he harbors dark suspicions about why he's getting so lucky... This one is often played straight. If it's played straight but badly or accidentally, then it's likely to be a case of Cursed With Awesome.
A common way for one of these plots to end is for the good luck to end in a parade of bad luck, which has the ironic effect of making the character much happier unless the bad luck happens too late to matter.
The polar opposite of Kafka Komedy.
Compare and contrast to Unwanted Harem.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- The Paranoia Agent episode "Happy Family Planning" has an odd version of this; its central characters repeatedly attempt suicide, only to fail every time. They eventually discover they actually did die in one of their attempts and just didn't realize it.
- The protagonist of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (or Goodbye, Mister Despair) keeps trying to kill himself, only to have circumstances — often a student in the class he teaches — save him. His gut-response to the usually violent method is "What if I had died?" His attempts to help students also go awry, with a Hikikomori settling into the school and a stalker-girl following him.
- Whenever Tsunade in Naruto gets lucky at gambling, it's a bad omen. And she's quite aware of this.
- Needless to say, the ONE time she tries to use this to her advantage, by betting everything she had that one of her allies would die...She wins.
- One of the ghosts in the anime Ghost Hunt attempted to commit suicide by various means after being jilted by a man. None of them succeeded due to sheer dumb luck. Despondent, she gave up and walked home only to slip, fall and crack her skull....
Comic Books
- This was supposedly Mephisto's "curse" on Doctor Doom in Earth X, and Doom's rationale for hating Reed Richards. (Ironically, Doom's mother sold her soul to obtain this blessing.) Subverted in that Mephisto was (surprise!) lying, and Doom was just that good.
- Gladstone Gander's luck sometimes turns against him like this. He doesn't want it in some stories simply because it's boring. Don Rosa also once gave this the bizarre and not all that logical reversing twist that Dewey, Huey and Louie made him lose a lottery by making it extremely likely that he win (since his luck makes him win when it's extremely unlikely).
Fairy Tale
- Forgot the name, but in one story, a man gets a ring that says whoever has it will have great luck. Without even trying he becomes a king...just for the kingdom to suddenly fall apart all around him. It is only due to the ring's luck that he barely manages to escape with his life. Whole thing was so traumitizing he'd rather have died, and he throws the ring away.
Film
- Although somewhat helped by his friends, Brewster's Millions star Richard Pryor has serious trouble getting rid of his money. Every time he turns around, he either is getting helped by his friends who think his bad decisions are the result of a gambling and drinking habit, or he's winning at the failed stocks he throws his money behind.
Folk Lore
- A real life story of this portion of the trope concerns a man who attempted to commit suicide by jumping off of a cliff, hanging himself from a rock that would fall on top of him at the cliff's bottom, setting himself on fire and shooting himself in the head after swallowing poison. He proceeded to jump, only to fire the bullet which severed the rope around his neck as he landed in the ocean off the side of the relatively small cliff, with the water putting out the flames and the shock of hitting the water causing him to vomit the poison out of his body. He was picked up by a local fisherman and taken to a hospital, where he died several days later of pneumonia from the extended period of time he spent in the cold water.
Literature
- The O. Henry story The Cop and the Anthem is about a bum who tries to get arrested so he can spend the upcoming winter comfortable in jail instead of on the street where he might freeze to death. Various circumstances keep him a free man despite his best efforts.
- And then there's Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen. Poor Stuffy Pete. You should know better than to wander into Greenwich Village in late November and expect not to be force-fed by the deranged inheritors of old money!
- Literary example: Rincewind in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, who "knows" that this applies to him (and it often does).
- While Sam Vimes thinks in one novel that the string of good luck he's had come his way the last few years (marriage to a good woman, massive wealth, a revitalized City Watch, a son) can't possibly last, and sooner or later the bill's gonna come due. It hasn't. Yet.
- Of course, he had forty years or so of bad luck to make up for by the time things started to go his way.
- This is Older Than Feudalism: Herodotus tells the story of a Greek king who had such good luck that he threw a cherished ring in the ocean to try and balance things out, hoping to dodge whatever doom the gods had in store for him. The ring was eaten by a fish, the fish captured by a fisherman, and the ring returned to the king. This sealed his fate—he lost everything.
- This actually does happen to ''The Deptford Histories'' star Thomas Stubbs a.k.a. Thomas Triton. In the words of the fortune teller Simoon;
"Fortune may indeed be shining upon you, yet so bright does her glory gleam that those about you are lost in shadow and she is blind to them. Though you may survive great peril it does not mean your companions shall. Almost, the charm you bask in is the very beacon that leads them to disaster."
- Ciaphas Cain may qualify too. He frequently tries to keep himself safe and sound above all else, but this usually through good (or, on his part, bad) luck makes him look even more heroic and boosts his reputation even further, putting him in even more dangerous situations. Needless to say, that is the absolute opposite of what he is stiving for.
- Every time Honor Harrington gets a new satchel of medals, promotions, and fabulous cash prizes heaped on her, her first reaction is deep embarrassment at her own perceived unworthiness for them. Her second is darkly ruminating upon the possible political motives behind them.
- Steven Black manages to gain the attention of the Gentleman with the Thistle Down Hair in Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell, who gifts him with all manner of treasures in increasingly bizarre ways because he believes Steven to be some sort of king. Needless to say, the Gentleman is not the sort of person you want interested in your affairs.
Live Action TV
- Maxwell Smart needs to lose big at gambling in order to infiltrate a KAOS cell, but he ends up staggering home with twice as much money as he started out with.
- The episode of Friends where Phoebe's bank accidentally credits her account five hundred dollars, and her attempts to rectify the situation eventually land her with seven grand.
- Or the near-identical events which happened to Martin in Frasier.
- Cody trying to shake his near-mystical lucky streak in Step by Step.
- A more literal example occurred in The X-Files, with a character who had unstoppable good luck, which had the unfortunate side effect of causing horrible misfortune to those around him.
- Hurley on Lost wins the lottery and gets richer and richer, but one calamity after another afflicts those around him.
- Wild coincidences rule the life of Chance Harper of Strange Luck.
- Al Bundy, on Married With Children, talked at length about the Bundy Curse, which assured that any good luck would be matched with an equal amount of bad luck as soon as he admitted he was getting lucky.
- This curse is put on its head in one episode where Al gets a whole slew of luck, and he fears he's going to die.
- Though this never happened in Charmed, Piper had a perpetual fear that, whenever she felt contented, something (generally a Monster Of The Week) would come along and ruin it.
- John Becker's wonderful
day Christmas in Becker.
- (Un?)fortunately, his good day is completely undone in the last minute of the episode, making this also an example of the previous category.
- Chance In A Million was British Sit Com about Tom Chance, a man whose life was a neverending series of unlikley coincidences. It eventually reached the stage where the local police were ordered to never arrest him for anything, no matter how suspicious the circumstances.
Music
- The Bob Ricci general parody song "Depressing Rock Song" is about a person who has all sorts of good things happen to him but wants bad things to so that he could have material for a song.
- Similarly, the Arrogant Worms have a song called "Shipwreck Balladeer". It's about the singer lamenting that "they're building ships too good today" and, since there aren't any more shipwrecks, he has nothing to sing about.
Tabletop Games
- In the Legend of the Five Rings fiction, Bayushi Tangen, lived his life in shame because of what he viewed as a curse. What was the curse you ask... he was so lucky, the Gods would smile on him and allow even the most poorly thought out, suicidal plan to work perfectly. At one point, he defeated an entire enemy army because a tower fell on their archers, and a bolt of lightning struck their general just as he was about to kill Tangen. There is a drawback - nothing he ever does will be "his accomplishment", because his luck does everything for him.
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