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"Thanks for noticing me."
"I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed."
This character exists solely to bring everybody down, but not in the Deadpan Snarker sense; they are defined entirely by their complete inability to be happy for more than a few seconds at a time, an emotional state that usually arises from their only- occasionally- justified suspicion that they are the Butt Monkey of the entire universe. They are the walking Anthropomorphic Personification of clinical depression.
Note, though, that this does not mean they can't be manic-depressive. Some Eeyores can be quite angry at the world for their situation, becoming a rebel without a cause or a loner in the Loners Are Freaks sense.
Sometimes overlaps with Sour Supporter, but not often; they are generally too unhappy to be effective or active.
When upset, the Eeyore may as well become the Yandere. A stereotypical Goth will probably fit under this.
The exact opposite of the Eeyore is The Pollyanna.
Compare Grumpy Bear.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Mesousa from Pani Poni Dash.
- Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion, though he has the excuse of genuinely not having much to be happy about.
- Gaara from Naruto (in a virulently homicidal sort of way).
- Lucy from Elfen Lied (in a virulently homicidal sort of way).
- Kohza from Samurai Champloo.
- Nozomu Itoshiki, or, as he is better known as, "Mr. Despair".
- Haruhi Suzumiya's inner workings appear to be quite this at or before the beginning and episode 6 particularly. Being fed up with the boring world, just wishing for something interesting to happen when it just doesn't seem to happen, despite her efforts. In the end (or rather in the middle), she's so frustrated she subconsciously begins to destroy the universe and create a new one. Of course, most of the time she's a genuine Genki Girl.
- Kogepan
. Because he's a burned bread roll.
- Ryoga Hibiki of Ranma 1/2, who legitimately has a lot to be sad about, is nevertheless prone to such heavy depression he's able to use it to fuel a ki attack - one so powerful it leaves a massive, smoking crater and frequently demolishes his opponents in one go.
Comic Books
- Cassie from Hack/Slash, in a virulently homicidal sort of way. The one and only time she was genuinely happy was when someone got her drunk at springbreak.
Literature
- Eeyore, obviously, from the Winnie The Pooh books - which makes this Older Than Radio. Though is also The Woobie for his target audience.
- Puddleglum the Marshwiggle from CS Lewis's Narnia book The Silver Chair - referenced in More Than Mind Control. Puddleglum says at one point that his fellow Marshwiggles consider him to be a hopeless starry-eyed optimist.
- Dolorous Edd from A Song Of Ice And Fire. Of course, he may just be the only character in the books who realizes what a World Half Empty they really do live in.
- Denethor of The Lord Of The Rings certainly has real sorrows to contend with - losing his son and watching civilisation apparently crumble around him. But he's defintely a fatalistic old bugger on top of it. In both the book and the film he's summed up in the splendidly morose line: "Go now and die in what way seems best to you."
- Marvin the Paranoid Android from Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy is perhaps the Eeyore-iest Eeyore in existence. He's very depressed, he feels under-utilized ("Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and..."), and due to a series of circumstances involving time travel he eventually gets to be thirty-seven times as old as the universe itself and throughout his entire existence he's had this terrible pain in all the diodes down his left side. His outlook on the universe is so depressing that he drives a computer to suicide when he tries to share it with the poor thing. He later does the same thing with a bridge.
- One interpretation of the title character in Hamlet. That is, when he's not being the Deadpan Snarker.
Live Action TV
New Media
- Hope from the internet comedy podcast Hope Is Emo is an example.
- There's a color dedicated to this trope in Neo Pets, and it's gray. The Gray Faerie usually is portrayed with a cloud over her head, and never, ever says anything cheerful. Fandom has determined that both the faerie, pets and items are just all emo, as there's no reason to do so in such utopic setting.
Radio
Video Games
- Xan, the morbidly depressed elven enchanter from the first Baldurs Gate game. A typical line is "Our Quest is in Vaaaain" and "Oh what is the point". He is later referenced in the first Iceland Dale game when finding a diary of an elf, who feared he "Had become as miserable as my cousin Xan".
- Vincent Valentine from Final Fantasy VII could be seen as one. Though he may be more of a brooding Deadpan Snarker.
- Nearly non-player elf character in the ad-on Dungeon Siege 2: Broken World is morbidly depressed, especially Amren, who whines about the loss of his clairvoyant powers every time you talk to him, no matter what topic you wanted to discuss. Considering what crappy state the world is in due to the cataclysm after the end of the second game, they may have a point, but it quickly gets annoying.
- The dryads... well, most of the dryads have just gone nuts, but they have to cope with the loss of their forest and most of their population, so their destructive mood is at least justified.
- In Star Control 2 the Utwig, after losing the Ultron, their source of motivation, are an entire species of Eeyores, to the point that they ponder whether to commit mass suicide with a giant bomb, but decide not to because they deserve to suffer. They get better once you fix the thing. In the mythical third game, they go Eeyore again when they lose the Ultron; one of the few good ideas the game has is that when you return it to them, they become audibly happier.
Ugh. I suppose, as a courtesy, I should extend an appropriate greeting. On behalf of the Utwig Proctors I truly hope, for your sake, that your day has been better than ours, although this really isn't saying that much.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- Droopy Dog always seemed to be in a really sad and gloomy state. When he was happy, he would just say "I'm so happy..." in his usual morose tone. When sufficiently provoked, he would just say "You know what? You made me mad" and beat the other guy to a pulp.
- Subverted when he won a million bazillion dollars. He smiled ear to ear, and leaped across the screen.
- Toot from Drawn Together is an example, though she is so bitter and repulsive that she really garners no sympathy whatsoever.
- Twinkle the Marvel Horse in Dave The Barbarian.
- Happy Time Harry in the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "Dumber Dolls" takes this to comically dark extremes. He's a children’s action figure who is depressed, addicted to pain pills, has a pile of unpaid “Action Bills” as his main accessory and routinely threatens to commit suicide. In later appearances, he mentions he’s on probation too. .
- Stork in Storm Hawks.
- Mentioned or at least implied to be a cultural trait common to all Merbians. Terra Merb is so riddled with dangerous creatures, dangerous terrain, dangerous weather, and dangerous combinations of all three that Merbians have simply come to expect the worst out of everything, since it usually happens to them. It's so bad that when something nice happens to the Hawks, Stork can't enjoy it because he's too busy waiting for the punchline. Unfortunately, since Merbians developed their pessimism as a survival mechanism, he has a distressing habit of being right.
- TV viewers of a certain age may (vaguely) remember Hanna-Barbera's Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har; the latter was a "laughing" hyena who never smiled, much less laughed.
- Another Hanna-Barbera property the same era was a reworking of Gullivers Travels. One of the Lilliputians who hung out with the hero was a hard-core Eeyore named Glum; for many, including this troper, he was by far the most memorable thing about the show.
- Misery from Ruby Gloom.
- Meg from Family Guy.
Web Animation
- Strong Sad from Homestar Runner; notable in so far as he really is the Butt Monkey of the entire universe... or at least his brothers' most readily available Chew Toy. His 1936 counterpart, Sickly Sam, is like this trope times two. Or more.
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