History Main / UnluckilyLucky

* Harry Dresden of ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles''. While it's implied that he gets up to some relatively easy work ''offscreen'', in the actual books, the man can barely accept a commission to find someone's lost dog without running into three angry vampires, a warlock, two {{Eldritch Abomination}}s and a school of zombie piranha. And sure, he usually ''wins'', but usually with a cost. At one point, one of the most powerful wizards in the world, the Gatekeeper, wonders whether Harry is a masterful trickster and manipulator or just really unlucky, and Harry points out that the Gatekeeper found him dangling from a tree and his entire head is swathed in bandages, which ''works'', making a rare case where being so unlucky is actually lucky for him.

** ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaTriggerHappyHavoc'': Makoto Naegi's luck seems terrible on the surface, even to him, but much of his supposedly bad luck is actually good luck in disguise, because it lets him avoid something even ''worse''. He's the only student with a poorly-fitting bathroom door that sticks closed, but that same door clears him of suspicion of murder, because he knew how to open it while the murderer did not and had to force their way in. He gets roped into being the unwilling referee for a sauna endurance contest, which ends up giving him a crucial piece of knowledge that lets him solve another murder. In ''Anime/Danganronpa3TheEndOfHopesPeakHighSchool'', he slips and falls on his ass like an idiot, [[CoincidentalDodge narrowly dodging a wrench thrown at his head]]. And, of course, he got put into the killing game in the first place, but goes on to defeat the mastermind and be hailed as a hero.

* In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'', the player character's ability to get into life-threatening situations and then survive is the main reason people think they're TheChosenOne. It starts with them being the SoleSurvivor of a mountain-shattering explosion (by physically entering and escaping the world of dreams) and goes from there. Lampshaded more than once, especially if the Inquisitor tries to downplay the messiah-hood thing.

** Some enemies have area of effect explosive attacks which deal small direct damage but totally destroy the environment. If they use them while on a roof, trying to kill your soldiers through the fall (and they will do), but happen to be on the roof with your soldiers, they might end killing themselves too. Also a case of AIIsACrapshoot.

* In ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'', Mat Cauthon is BornLucky and uses it to get through battle after battle safely. However, the same luck (or [[YouCantFightFate fate]]) keeps getting him in battle after battle...

* Manga/OnePiece: [[TheFool Monkey D. Luffy]] is really this instead of BornLucky. It’s just that he's so optimistic and thrill-seeking that the bad situations he gets into are exciting rather than horrifying for him.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Uncharted}}'' series has Nathan Drake. A WalkingDisasterArea, his adventures always attract some nastiness along the way; falling architecture, stupidly uneven firefights, exploding vehicles, or the occasional supernatural threat to name a few. While this makes him severely question his luck, his uncanny ability to dodge everything thrown at him (including the bullets), have stuff fall in just the right place, or, in the worst cases, survive and fight with injuries that would kill any other man in seconds, has given him fame amongst his friends as a lucky bastard. In fact, while he keeps getting into firefights, his "health" meter is stated by WordOfGod to be actually a "luck" meter, meaning until a player dies, he ''isn't'' shot, but is narrowly missed instead.

* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemFates'' has Arthur, who's partially this and BornUnlucky. Cursed with god-awful luck from mild (never once winning at the lottery) to the downright absurd and life-threatening (lightning strikes, poisoned food and being mistaken for a bandit), you'd think that the stuff he survives will land him in an eleven-foot hole, but he brushes off ''falling off cliffs'' like it's a small cold. He certainly has bad luck due to his tendency to get into these situations, but his ability to survive situations that would kill most people cements him in this territory.
* In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'', the player character's ability to get into life-threatening situations and then survive is the main reason people think they're TheChosenOne. It starts with them being the SoleSurvivor of a mountain-shattering explosion (by physically entering and escaping the world of dreams) and goes from there. Lampshaded more than once, especially if the Inquisitor tries to downplay the messiah-hood thing.
-->'''Cassandra:''' A strange kind of luck. I'm not sure if we need more or less.
* ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsZ'' gives the second game's protagonist Crowe Broust this kind of luck as the reason he's a candidate to pilot his HumongousMecha at all. Not that a bout of good/bad luck got him into the pilot's seat, that the artifact powering the robot ''actively seeks'' a pilot whose life will continuously swing between extremes of good and ill fortune. It manifests most strongly in Crowe's PerpetualPoverty, as he constantly finds himself forced by circumstances beyond his control into acquiring some kind of massive debt, which is always followed by a lucky break that allows him to pay it all off [[HereWeGoAgain just in time to acquire a new one]].
* The backstory of ''VideoGame/Drakengard3'' explains that Zero was this [[spoiler:before she died]]. Truly awful things constantly happened to her, ever since she was born, but somehow the universe always contorted itself so that she survived those things. She was [[AbusiveMom beaten]], but not so badly that she couldn't steal the food she needed to survive. She was betrayed, but slavemasters showed up at just the right time to distract the person attempting to murder her. She was caught by bandits, but they decided to sell her instead of killing her. She caught the plague, and then was betrayed '''again''', but her sickness was still in its early stages, so she was able to kill the guy in self-defense. And then she was caught by guards and sentenced to be lashed for every person she'd murdered, but somehow they got the count wrong, so her death came a lot slower than it 'should' have. And then she actually died for real, but an EldritchAbomination conscripted her into helping it destroy the world. So now she's a zombie WalkingTheEarth, trying to figure out how to die permanently. Which, after all the crap she's been though, she [[DeathSeeker really wants to do]].
* Lady Luck seems to give ''VideoGame/SaintsRow'''s Donnie some weird smiles. The man's repeatedly found himself in bad situations in ''VideoGame/SaintsRow1'' and ''VideoGame/SaintsRow2'', yet he always lives to see another day (the same cannot be said about his colleagues or friends, however). He also survived the downfall of the two gangs he rolled with and is among the people who were abducted by the Zin Empire in ''VideoGame/SaintsRowIV''[[spoiler:, which saves him from being a casualty of Earth's destruction]].
* Taking the Jinxed trait in ''VideoGame/Fallout1'' or ''VideoGame/Fallout2'' can have this effect on the PlayerCharacter. It causes half your misses to become critical misses, which means you could suffer any number of negative effects like shooting yourself, dropping your weapon, losing your ammo, breaking a limb, or having your gun blow up in your face. However, it affects your enemies too, meaning they're just as likely to kill or cripple themselves just by being in your vicinity. For added effect, you can give yourself a high or maxed-out LuckStat, making this trope even more statistically true.

* Exaggerated with the ''Anime/DirtyPair'': every assignment they have, [[MimorCrimeRevealsMayorPlot no matter how normal, always ends with encountering absurdly powerful criminal conspiracies]] and massive gunfights. They always survive and [[AlwaysGetsHisMan get the people responsible]], but [[WalkingDisasterArea what is left behind once the assignment ends tends to be very little]], and by that we mean [[ApocalypseHow they are occasionally responsible of extinction-level events]].

* Exaggerated with the ''Anime/DirtyPair'': every assignment they have, [[MimorCrimesRevealsMajorPlot no matter how normal, always ends with encountering absurdly powerful criminal conspiracies]] and massive gunfights. They always survive and [[AlwaysGetsHisMan get the people responsible]], but [[WalkingDisasterArea what is left behind once the assignment ends tends to be very little]], and by that we mean [[ApocalypseHow they are occasionally responsible of extinction-level events]].

* Exaggerated with the ''Anime/DirtyPair'': every assignment they have, [[MimorCrimeRevealsMajorPlot no matter how normal, always ends with encountering absurdly powerful criminal conspiracies]] and massive gunfights. They always survive and [[AlwaysGetsHisMan get the people responsible]], but [[WalkingDisasterArea what is left behind once the assignment ends tends to be very little]], and by that we mean [[ApocalypseHow they are occasionally responsible of extinction-level events]].

* ''LightNovel/TheGeniusPrincesGuideToRaisingANationOutOfDebtHeyHowAboutTreason'''s Wein is essentially anime version of Literature/CiaphasCain (see below). His various attempts to sell out his nation in order to retire comfortably or at least trying to avoid trouble in order to stop his country's cashflow problem or getting dragged into international conflicts always spiral out of control due to uncontrollable external factors, but the combination of his skill and sheer luck, he manages to not only comes out alive, but his nation benefits and his reputation is enhanced...which makes fulfilling his goal of selling his country even harder.

* Touma Kamijou of ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex'' is extremely unlucky, thanks to the [[AntiMagic Imagine Breaker]] power in his right arm cancelling out the good fortune he would otherwise receive. However, it also negates the powers of both [[MagicVersusScience magicians and espers]]. He has the bad luck of getting dragged into battle against powerful members of both factions, but also the good luck of having the power to defeat them.

* In ''LightNovel/CookingWithWildGame'', this is one reason why Ai Fa's tribe consider her weird. For one thing, she's a female hunter in a society that discourages that sort of thing. But she was born into like the one family that would accept her ambitions and nurture them. Then her ''entire'' family died out through various causes, which would normally be a death sentence (the setting is very primitive), but she managed to survive and thrive on her own for three years. Then a cute boy who was perfectly compatible with her beliefs and skillset [[TrappedInAnotherWorld dropped out of the sky]] and became her friend, but then he got kidnapped by the local tyrants, but ''then'' that gave the tribe legal justification to depose the tyrants once and for all. Because of this pattern, Ai Fa is a very confident yet emotionally guarded person, because she ''never'' knows when the next shoe is about to drop.

* In the ''Series/BabylonFive'' episode "Grail", the character Thomas Jordan (aka "[[TheJinx Jinxo]]") believes he's at the center of a curse on the Babylon stations; he was one of the people who constructed them, but the first three blew up while he was on leave, and the fourth disappeared after being completed (that time he didn't take leave at all until the task was finished), so he deliberately stayed on Babylon 5 after it was completed so it ''wouldn't'' suffer a fatal catastrophe, despite his long-term ability to sustain himself there being questionable at best. The character of Aldous Gajic has a different perspective; perhaps Jinxo was BornLucky, having escaped catastrophe four times. Either way, it fits; good fortune for Jinxo to escape, and bad luck for the first four stations he helped build.

-->'''Mushu''' ([[ItMakesSenseInContext rescuing Cri-kee from an avalanche Mulan caused]]): You are one lucky bug.
-->'''[[SilentSnarker Cri-kee]]''': *Resigned expression*

* Force Sensitivity in the ''Franchise/StarWars'' universe may work like this. On the upside, you get some pretty awesome powers, up to being a borderline RealityWarper and can shape galactic history. On the downside, you're now conscripted into a ceaseless religious war between two schools of equally powerful sorcerers (a war that's already lasted for [[ForeverWar over 25,000 years]], so don't expect to avoid it) and spending your life lurching from one crazy situation to the next. Zayne (see the comics section) is an Exaggerated case.

--->'''Cain:''' She's not nearly as accident-prone as she's supposed to be. I'll grant you she fell down an ambull tunnel once, and there was that incident with the frag grenade and the latrine trench, but things tend to work out for her. The orks on Kastafore was as surprised as she was when the floor in the factory collapsed, and we'd have walked into right into that hrud ambush on Skweki if she hadn't triggered the mine by chucking an empty food tin away... ''(trails off as he realizes what he's saying)''
* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'': Rincewind is The Lady's favorite... which is a very bad position to be in, as she is Lady Luck. He stumbles into so many disasters while running ''away'' from more disasters that only the TheoryOfNarrativeCausality has kept him alive for so long. In fact, in one story he accepts to join a MagnificentBastard scheme by someone who called him the (un)luckiest bastard he's ever met before even being told what it is; this is because he's GenreSavvy enough by now to know that if he declined and walked (and then ran) as far away from the scheme as he could, the scheme and its potential collateral damage would ''still'' find him. Part of the problem is that, as he is the favorite of the Lady, ''Fate'' (the literal god of such) absolutely ''hates'' him. His ''TabletopGame/DiscworldRolePlayingGame'' write-up literally gives him Extraordinary Luck ''and'' Unluckiness. These don't cancel out, they just ensure that ''whatever'' happens to him, it's going to be... interesting. Rincewind's luck is so uncannily unpredictable that even Death finds him baffling. Every being in the multiverse (even gods) has an [[DeathsHourglass hourglass]] that runs out of sand when their time is up. Rincewind's hourglass looks like something made by a glassblower on LSD who had the hiccups, full of interconnecting tubes, and features sand occasionally flowing ''upwards''; all of this makes it totally unclear if he's close to dying. Death keeps it on his desk as a curiosity.

* Blake Thorburn, in ''Literature/{{Pact}}'', inherited seven lifetimes worth of terrible {{Karma}} from his (very evil) forebears to the family name, and as a result people tend to dislike him, animals hate him, twists of fortune don't go his way, and he's often caught up in events that force him to fight various supernatural creatures. However, he's usually able to pull through thanks to his own luck-it's theorized in-story that, as Blake is, unlike his predecessors, actually trying to do good and improve the world, the universe is giving him just enough rope to hang himself instead of just crushing him.

** A common house rule to give this Disadvantage mechanical weight, was that any ability that allowed the character to negate damage instead transferred said damage to other player characters or friendly [=NPCs=]

* ''VideoGame/HenryStickminSeries'' has the titular protagonist, whose luck can zigzag ''phenomenonally'' over the course of a game depending on what's funnier. This is a guy who can smash a teleporter and have the resultant malfunction end up sending him where he wants to go, or have a guard accidentally knock a tranquilizer dart back in his face by yawning at the wrong time. His questionable levels of common sense don't help matters.