Age of Empires II: The Chinese get mocked repeatedly for being denied Hand Cannoneers, Bombard Cannons, and Block Printing, despite being rather well known for inventing all three of those in real life.
Crownslayer is a recurringmid-boss known in-universe as the Reunion Movement's finest assassin and a master of slipping behind enemy defenses to take out her targets. Out of universe however, she's best known for all the fun and creative ways the playerbase have come up with to bully her, since she has no protection against being Punched Across the Room, or worse, into a Bottomless Pit, and no way to fight back outside of a basic attack and a Flash Step that's easy to counter. It also doesn't help her case that her most noteworthy appearance in the story has her quickly incapacitated by Projekt Red, then cowering in fear when Kal'tsit summons Mon3tr. By the time Operation Pyrite came around and granted her buffs that made her a legitimate threat, it was already too late; her reputation as a literal and figurative pushover had firmly ingrained itself into the fandom and wasn't going anywhere. In fact it got even worse. While the buffs made previous methods such as being Punched Across the Room near impossible due to her increased weight and speed. Players simply swapped out the old team for a pure damage dealing team which ended up decimating her in the blink of an eye.
Passenger holds the unfortunate distinction of being the first six-star operator to be outright bad as opposed to simply being situational or Overshadowed by Awesome, using slow, weak attacks and skills that weren't worth their long charge times, despite having one of the most expensive deployment costs in the game. Naturally the fans had a field day mocking him, especially since lore-wise, he's supposed to be a fearsome black market kingpin with a massive bodycount to his name. Later updates would fix his more glaring issues via Balance Buffs and bring him up to par with other operators, but it's unlikely the fandom will forget his first impression any time soon.
Goldenglow became the butt of fandom jokes long before she made her debut, thanks to a teaser◊ at the end of the first anniversary livestream showing her in a group of upcoming operators. Since it took nearly two years from this initial tease before she was added to the game, long after all of the others had made it in, a bunch of memes cropped up in the interim joking that the developers had forgotten about her, or having her be jealous of any new operator who got in before her.
The titular villain in Batman: Arkham Knight. Ironically he was the inverse prior to the game's release. But since it was discovered that he's Jason Todd and a whiny bitch, he's now this.
Deathstroke from the same game. Unlike in Origins where he got a boss battle fitting of his canonical skill as an assassin, in Knight he's taken down in one hit after a tank battle. The fact that The Riddler, of all people, got a better boss fight than him is the subject of many jokes.
There's also Black Mask. He's supposed to be a powerful and intimidating mob boss, but here's the extent of all his significant appearances in the series: an easily missed cameo at the start of City, where he gets tasered and beaten up by guards. Getting Hijacked by The Joker in Origins and turning out to not be the game's Big Bad as was advertised, and finally getting unceremoniously killed by Red Hood in Arkham Knight's DLC.
Arkham Origins made the Electrocutioner one. When his “boss fight” starts, many players get geared up for a challenge, and then... he goes down easily in just one hit. While his boss fight was definitely intended as a joke by the game developers, many Arkham series fans will now always bring him up as the weakest/lamest Batman villain ever due to his terrible showing here.
Battletech: Dekker, one of the starting pilots, is notorious for constantly managing to get himself killed.
Poor, poor Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing CPU opponent. To call it Artificial Stupidity would be incorrect, as that implies that it has any AI at all; it simply sits at the starting line, and can't even be pushed to victory. You could install a patch that does make it move, but it still stops short of the finish line. To top it all off, there is no victory state for it! Its only purpose is to allow the player to effortlessly win. YOU'RE WINNER!
Ragna the Bloodedge. He's a badass on paper due to his powerful Azure, but due to all the timeshe gets Worfed and the fact that every character who isn't Taokaka or Celica is all too eager to snark at his expense, he's really hard to take seriously. This may be intentional, to show that his '90s Anti-Hero attitude just doesn't work, as he becomes more heroic and less of a punchline as the games go on and he grows out of that attitude.
Hyde Kido has been getting the Butt-Monkey treatment for being the lead character from the least known/recognised of the four-plus franchises represented in Cross Tag Battle, and for having a boastful hardass attitude while having the least battle experience of the four protagonists — yes, the young Perky GothRuby is actually more experienced than him, and she even snarks at him in their battle intro for it.
Yukiko got this reputation due to her status as the players' makeshift punching bag in the Cross Tag Battle beta note As she can heal damage done to her and the beta didn't have a proper Training Mode, so players used her to test combos. As a result, many pictures of Yukiko being badly bruised/beaten up surfaced.
Kaya Shiranui from Blue Archive is built up as a horrific threat that could easily end Kivotos and sell it all to the Kaiser Corporation to freely run over. But come the final chapter of Volume IV, turns out she's only as good as to take the seat from Rin and doesn't actually have the skills to initiate the coup. Not only she was completely unable to take the workload of being the GSC president, her attempt to send Kaiser corp personnel to suppress the students protesting against her was quickly foiled by the RABBIT Squad and was arrested almost after. To call this a Humiliation Conga is an understatement, and the fanbase quickly caught this to make jokes out of her.
Bubsy the Bobcat is perhaps one of the most (in)famous examples in video game history. The complete failure of his own franchise (which after the legendarily bad Bubsy 3D, laid dormant for 21 years), along with the character himself being insufferably annoying and being a One-Hit-Point Wonder that can die to rolling cheese wheels and dripping chocolate, made Bubsy a common source of mockery among gamers (and the public in general). It also doesn’t help that the attempt to branch him out into cartoons ended in failure and didn't even make it past the pilot. Even worse, his overusedCatchphrase in the episode, "What could possibly go wrong?", became a meme on its own for how badly it was Tempting Fate for the show's future.
Mike Dawson from Dark Seed II. In the first game, he was fairly competent, but the sequel turned him into a whiny, ineffective, moronic, cowardly manchild who, among other things, spends a sizable chunk of the game finding ways to cheat at carnival games he can't win. One of the last "puzzles" in the game has him figuring out how to open his closet... by just realizing that his mother only pretended to lock it when he was a child and he had never considered that it might have been unlocked at some point in the intervening decades. If you mention this to his mother she makes fun of him. This is canon.
Dark Souls: Pinwheel, a mid-game boss. In a game filled to the brim with extremely challenging boss fights and powerful, intimidating enemies, Pinwheel can often be killed within ten seconds by players who aren't even trying that hard. Granted, Pinwheel does have legitimately powerful magic attacks, and tries to mitigate his weakness by spawning clone decoys of himself, but most players are strong enough by the time they get to him that they kill him before he can do either one of those things.
Indrick Boreale's bizarre and clunky exposition speech in his stronghold mission made him a Fountain of Memes amid the game's poor reception, to the point that he was canonically made one of the losers of the Kaurava campaign in Dawn of War II (and if Cyrus is the traitor, cites Boreale's incompetence as part of the reason for his betrayal of the Chapter).
General Vance Stubbs is, oddly enough, both this and a Memetic Badass due to a misquote accusing him of losing 100 Baneblades (he's informed that a shipment of 100 Baneblades just left the planet, forcing him to rely on importing the parts via transport during his stronghold level) but surviving getting his province overrun. Fanon widely held him to be the real winner of Kaurava, until Dawn of War III revealed the canon winner was fellow fan-favorite Gorgutz 'Ead'unter.
Crota is canonically one of the most powerful and dangerous enemies you face in the whole series. Unfortunately, players have discovered that his raid is, for some reason, incredibly easy to cheese. This has led to numerous videos of him being curb-stomped with ridiculous joke weapons like Necrochasm or killed while the player has silly self-imposed handicaps like being blindfolded. It got even worse when a later lore entry insinuated that he's actually the Dumbass Teenage Son of his family, and downright hilarious when another raid has you crash his funeral and steal a chunk of his soul.
Riven is pretty much the second game's equivalent of Crota; canonically, she's easily the most powerful enemy fought so far, and is the Final Boss of a major Wham Episode raid and the Forsaken storyline. Unfortunately, her raid is one of the most popular and often replayed, which has gradually led to more and more people discovering ways to completely cheese it, turning Riven into a laughable joke who tends to get utterly obliterated in the first phase her fight by Fireteams that aren't even especially well-equipped.
Disco Elysium: The player character, who won a Twitter poll for being a Pathetic Loserman. Considering he's an extreme Defective Detective still hung up on his ex-girlfriend who can die from things like sitting on an uncomfortable chair, one can't say it's unwarranted.
Donkey Kong Country: Kiddy Kong is such an infamous and unpopular character, that there are a few memes of him getting insulted or maimed horriby.
The Templars of Dragon Age are meant to be a brutally efficient police force that ensures that the Circles of Magi remain free of Blood Magic and Demonic Possession, often through extremely harsh methods. However, quite a few players - including SF Debris and Materwelonz - like to characterize the Templars as incompetent cowards at best, and at worst, dimwitted Rabid Cops who enjoy terrorizing innocent mages but fold like cheap suits when up against legitimate Evil Sorcerers. Supporters of this perspective draw attention to the mage origin of Dragon Age: Origins, which features the Templars being easily defeated by an otherwise-incompetent blood mage, and "Broken Circle", in which the Templars spend the mission hiding in the entrance hall while the player and their companions clear out the entire tower single-handedly - meaning that an army of knights with Anti-Magic skills are somehow less effective at putting down blood mages and Abominations than four random yahoos of varying abilities. Another popular point against Templar competence is Knight Commander Meredith of Dragon Age II, who casually terrorizes the mages in her care and the citizens she claims to protect, all while remaining completely oblivious to blood mage Serial Killers and Tevinter slavemasters running free under her nose.
Dragon Quest II: The Prince of Cannock tends to be characterized as The Load in fan works due to his low damage output compared to the other two (never mind that his primary function in battle is for support), tendency to die quickly, and limited equipment options. In Japan, mentioning that "the Prince of Sumaltria's strongest weapon is the Iron Spear" is often used to reference this. It reaches a point where Tonnura, a particularly lame-sounding one of his randomly-generated names in the Japanese version, has become shorthand for describing useless and incompetent people across all Japanese media.
Dragon Quest VI: Terry's legendary Overrated and Underleveled status has been a longstanding meme within the Dragon Quest community, with the Japanese playerbase even nicknaming him "voucher" due to him being required to recruit the vastly more useful Lizzie. It reached a point where 2Chan had to amend its "What's the most useless thing in the Dragon Quest series" poll to include "(other than Terry)" due to the overwhelming number of votes for him.
Sir Gideon Ofnir, the All-Knowing. Despite being prominent character and one of the most powerful Tarnished in the setting, he has the unfortunate distinctions of a) being the last NPC fight in the game and thus competing with other endgame bosses, b) sandwiched between the extremely well-regarded Godfrey and Maliketh fights, and c) having a long speech right before his fight that gives the Tarnished an opportunity to get the first shot in.
Godrick the Grafted. He's a fairly challenging boss for the area you fight him in... but that area is Limgrave, and he's probably the first Shardbearer you fight. And unlike Gideon, basically everyone in-game treats him with disdain; Enia calls him "the runt of the litter," Gostoc kicks his corpse after you kill him, Kenneth Haight disparages him as a "country bumpkin", and there's even a Sword Memorial dedicated to the time he insulted Malenia and she soundly beat his ass.
Tidus is a big source of mockery in the fanbase. Mostly because his personality before his Character Development was that of a Dumb Jock with daddy issues, plus his infamous fake laugh scene. This ignores how much he matured over the course of the game, and while he never reaches Auron levels of cool, he is a respectable person and fighter by the end.
Vaan and Penelo are simultaneously the Tagalong Kid duo while also technically being the main characters of their game, leading to fans hating them and considering them The Load despite them never actually being a hindrance to the party’s efforts, and to the contrary quite helpful. This is because they are seen as having taken the “main character” position away from the much more interesting possibilities of Ashe, Basch, or Balthier, who are instead treated as supporting characters to Vaan despite having more interesting personalities and, in the case of the former two, more importance to the politics of their world. Vaan gets it a little worse than Penelo for also having weird-looking abs and looking like a buffoon during the “I’m Captain Basch from Dalmasca!” quest early on in the game. Despite this hate, they are both competent characters with surprisingly good fighting skills in spite of being ordinary teens in a plot far beyond their scope.
Cloud and Squall either have this status or Memetic Badass status depending on the fan. The fans that consider them losers are the ones who love to hone in on their "emo" personalities and act as if these two are too mopey to ever do anything useful. In Squall's case, he was genuinely a downer at the start of the game, and an overarching theme of his character arc is that he's an immature teenager trying to act like a mature adult, but then he went through Character Development and got better as the story went on. In Cloud’s case, one could blame the spin-offs for flanderizing him into being overtly sulky. The original game only had him get severely depressed after Sephiroth completely destroyed his mind, making the situation very understandable. In reality, both characters are genuinely competent people who are far more than the "mopey" stereotype they get saddled with. Cloud's status as this has also been decreasing over time, with Dissidia Final Fantasy (2015), and the Final Fantasy VII Remake, bringing his cockier and more confident aspects of his personality to the forefront.
In spite of the attempts of Final Fantasy XIV to portray the Ascians as intimidating, machiavellian schemers and powerful sorcerers manipulating the affairs of the world from the shadows, many of their prominement players have... less than flattering depictions by the fanbase for one reason or another.
Despite being one of the main antagonists for A Realm Reborn and being an acknowledged leader of the Ascians, Lahabrea gets treated as the biggest loser in the game by the fandom due to the fact that his boss fight at the end of the main ARR content is an absolute joke, his rather stock and one-note Smug Snake characterization, as well the fact that even his fellow Ascians show him no respect whatsoever. Has become something of an Ascended Meme, as even after his death, whenever he gets brought up by one of his colleagues it's usually just to point out how incompetent he was. To add some meta salt in the wound, he doesn't even have a unique boss theme, unlike his other unsundered brethren! It's to the point that not even Yoshi-P and translator/lore developer Michael Christopher Koji Fox can remember his name during the announcement of his return in the 6.x 8-Man Raid Series Pandæmonium!
Elidibus has begun to attain this status around the end of Stormblood, due to having multiple plans blow up in his face and getting beaten down by two separate characters in rapid succession, one of them offscreen. At the end of Shadowbringers, he even acknowledges that his status as a manipulative schemer has fallen to pieces and that he's basically winging it now. Fortunately, he rebounded hard with patches 5.2 and 5.3, turning around into being a very popular villain through his very sympathetic background and rather awesome final battle.
Fandaniel became one of these in his debut cutscene. His claim to "fame" is giving a hammy evil monologue... to an utterly bored-looking Zenos who doesn't even remember his name. Even his green-lighting of Fandaniel's plan sounds more like he just wants the guy to shut up and leave already. It also doesn't help that he possesses Asahi, one of the most punchable characters in the story.
While not an Ascian; Gaius, specifically in his appearance in the Praetorium, is very memed on in the community. On top of his very hammy dialogue, some very impatient players managed to find exploits that allowed them to kill Gaius while he's monologuing during an unskippable cutscene, causing players to joke that by his lengthy monologue ends, the dungeon is already over.
In the Japanese fandom, Snipers tend to be mocked for their Crippling Overspecialization. Common targets tend to be pre-promoted units such as Jeorge and Innes, with the former being made fun for his "Greatest Sniper on the continent" title due to being Overrated and Underleveled in the remake. An example of this can be seen in this fan art where Innes is shocked his country's legendary bow being given to a unit who isn't bowlocked instead of him.
Male Manaketes are also mocked for their tendency to be evil villains or redshirts as opposed to the playable females of the race.
Dorcas from Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade gets mocked a lot for getting killed in the English trailer via eating some poisoned mutton. In an odd example, the sheer number of jokes surrounding him wrapped around and made Dorcas an Ensemble Dark Horseas well as this trope, and one of his Heroes quotes even references the mutton jokes.
Glade became notorious after ending up in the last place in Choose Your Legends 2017, the franchise-wide popularity contest of Fire Emblem Heroes. That is, in a series with about 800 characters. Subverted in Choose Your Legends 2018, which saw him gain 30 times as many votes as the previous contest and rise to the 352nd place, while giving the same dubious honour to Bloom.
Gromell, a minor boss from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, is notorious in the Japanese fandom, and to a lesser extent in the Western fandom, for his bizarre and terrible choice of weaponnote because his Bolt Axe is a magical weapon, it doesn't suit his class even with his unusually decent Magic, which is still slightly lower than his Strength, and can't take advantage of Resolve's Strength boost and for potentially being killed by his own troops' boulders if he cantos to the wrong place with low enough HP. He ended up with a Cipher card despite being a one-time minor boss because of his infamy, and it's one big reference to how much of a meme he is — his artwork shows him oblivious to the fact a boulder is about to squish him and his poor wyvern, his Bolt Axe skill reduces his attack by 60%, and his Falling Boulder skill tells you to discard him at the end of the turn if he's in the front lines.
Seazas, a minor boss in Fire Emblem Gaiden, got thrown into this trope once the remake, Echoes: Shadows of Valentia was released, due to being the only boss who got Adapted Out. "Remember Seazas?" became something of a fandom-wide meme once this was revealed.
Unlike in Super Smash Bros., Roy, the game's protagonist, is seen by most fans as this, either statwise, characterization-wise, or both. And despite landing second place in the male's division of the first Choose Your Legends round, he's been having miserable luck in Heroes, as all (but one) of his variants are deemed mediocre due to the meta changing consistently overtime, and therefore without extensive elite tweaks, none of them would be able to catch up.
Good lord, Wolt. Despite him being Roy's milk-brother and showing up very prominently on the packaging, due to his really poor base stats and merely OK growths, Wolt is a character who usually becomes really irrelevant really quickly, especially compared to other archers, and he has zero presence in the story outside of a single line of dialogue in the first chapter. He is almost always considered the worst character of the Gordin archetype.
Gwendolyn tends to receive mockery along these lines, with a lot of jokes about her laughably bad performance on her joining chapters, her lack of payoff for the effort you need to put into her, her incredibly generic supports and personality, and her Heroes redesign being seen as one of the worst. Her oddly fervent defenders in the early days of the fandom only spiced things up. It's not uncommon to claim that the javelin in her inventory contributes more to the war effort than she does.
Sophia is seen as one of the worst, if not THE worst unit in the game for having terribly low base stats upon joining that make leveling her up or just using her in general a major pain. She also debuts in a map with Fog of War, meaning it's very possible for an enemy to suddenly one-round (or even one-shot) her in enemy phase. It also doesn't help that she is a level 1 shaman that appears two chapters after the debut of a recruitable level 12 shaman with better stats and viability.
For a villainous example, there's Jahn, the Pre-Final Boss. He's frequently mocked for being almost as easy as the True Final Boss of the game, especially after attempting a Badass Boast that he completely fails to back up, and Roy can easily kill him while wielding the Binding Blade. The True Final Boss arguably has a good reason for being so weak, as she never actually wanted to fight, but Jahn has no excuse.
Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem has Astram—a reputation that mostly originates from his appearance in New Mystery. Astram's intended role in the story is to be a Noble Top Enforcer who pursues you for a chunk of the game but ultimately switches sides, and provide a decent unit to help you out in the mid-to-lategame. This is a role he filled with aplomb... in the original game, where enemy stats were generally low and playable characters who started out stronger than him were rare. In New Mystery, enemy stats are significantly increased on every difficulty higher than Normal and plenty of other characters on Astram's level or above were added, while Astram's stats were only slightly buffed. This means that when he shows up, rather than being a deadly foe you try to avoid, he's instead liable to be the weakest enemy unit on the map, and when he gets recruited, he's downright pathetic next to the rest of your units. This is despite the game continuing to talk about him as if he's a major threat, with one particularly memetic line declaring him "one of the strongest men on the continent." Add in the fact that intervening games introduced characters like Galzus and Harken that took clear inspiration from Astram but came out far more powerful, and that his backstory involves him being manipulated into serving an Evil Overlord multiple times, and you have a character who's all too easy to mock.
Kratos of God of War fame is, by any standards, one of the most dangerous men in his entire setting, having wiped out entire pantheons of powerful deities. Unfortunately for him, this also means he has a lot of fanboys, who have a tendency to start a Who Would Win Debate while declaring that Kratos's god-killing makes him naturally able to kill anything or relying on ambiguous wording to claim that Kratos is capable of destroying multiverses. In defiance of this, it's become a joke in versus communities to refer to Kratos as "Kratonks" and declare him the weakest being in existence, who could lose to a regular person, an ant, or a gust of wind.
The typical Gradius "final boss" just sits there doing nothing. It's easier to count the final bosses that are actually difficultnote Venom from Nemesis 2, Doom from Salamander 2, Mother Computer Z from Nemesis (Game Boy), Guardian Core and Escape Ship from Gradius: The Interstellar Assault, and Central Server from Gradius NEO.
Ryuujou is one of the more powerful light carriers after her second remodel. However, when the fandom isn't portraying her as jealous of the more well-endowed fleet girls or being mistaken for a destroyer, they're highlighting her questionable historical record, like her role in the "Akutan Zero" incident (in short, while she was attacking the Aleutian islands, one of her Zero fighters, piloted by Tadayoshi Koga, was hit by small arms fire and crashed. His friends couldn't bring themselves to strafe the plane on the chance that Koga was still alive- sadly, they were wrong and he'd died in the crash- and it was captured largely intact by the Allies).
Due to his awful AI, tendency to go down in two hits, and horrible judgment in healing the player (often right after they heal themselves), Donald gets quite a few jokes thrown his way about his general uselessness. Until one little spell called Zettaflare catapults him straight to Memetic Badass territory.
Kairi due to getting shoved out of the spotlight and Demoted to Extra more and more with each passing game. She even went through Yank the Dog's Chain with this when Dream Drop Distance’s ending hyped up that she was getting trained in battle to presumably join you in Kingdom Hearts III. She does... for only the INTRO to a boss fight. Then Xemnas shows up to kidnap her, followed by Master Xehanort outright killing her to motivate Sora. She gets revived in the end of course, but still. No matter where her character goes from here, she will Never Live It Down that she has completely failed to do anything useful for so long.
Somewhat alleviated after she Took a Level in Badass for the Kingdom Hearts III Re:Mind DLC and, after adding in a cutscene where she fought Xemnas to a standstill before he was able to capture her, she also canonically took down Armored Xehanort, THE FINAL BOSS OF THE WHOLE XEHANORT SAGA, in her first playable battle. While in the DLC specifically she has inverted this trope and become a Memetic Badass after this fight (because, while the fight is easier as Sora due to his better abilities, Kairi being able to take him down without the five games of buildup that Sora needed is extremely impressive), she still holds Memetic Loser status for everything else outside of this DLC.
In the next game, Melody of Memory, Status Quo Is God prevailed and Kairi got kicked out of the final boss fight of her own game. She ended up becoming a Damsel in Distress at the last moment, leading to Sora fighting the final boss for her. Meaning that the turnaround in the Re:Mind did not stick, and she has returned to Memetic Loser status. She is now supposed to begin training with Aqua, since her training with Merlin apparently failed, and it remains to be seen if she will finally be done with the damsel in distress role after this.
Terra in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is basically the poster boy for Horrible Judge of Character. To the extent that he is that trope’s page image! He idiotically trusts the Obviously Evil villain at almost every single turn, from Master Xehanort to Maleficent to Dr. Jumba Jookiba to Captain Hook. However, Master Xehanort aside, this can mostly be attributed to his bad luck. Protagonists Sora, Ventus, and Aqua typically do the exact same thing as Terra does when showing up to a world: immediately trusting the first person they meet. (Hence the “Okay I believe you!” meme). Terra simply has the misfortune of always meeting the villain first while the other three typically meet the heroes first. Despite his competence otherwise, the amount of times his blind trust epically backfired on him and him never seeming to learn and overcome this flaw makes the fandom treat him like he’s the biggest idiot in the entire series, despite the existence of clearly stupider characters like Pete.
Demyx is an odd example of being this trope In-Universe but a Memetic Badass to the fanbase. No other character treats him with any respect or takes him seriously as a fighter, even though many players consider him to be one of the most difficult boss fights in the entire series. Demyx basically admits to keeping up this facade in order to get out of doing work, and considering how little respect he gets it actually works for the most part.
Kingdom Hearts III has the trend of turning the series’ previously badass villains into this. In fact, the true Organization as a whole could be considered this especially when compared to the old one. This is mainly because of the Memetic Loser moments of several individual members (listed below) plus the members needing to gang up on Sora in teams rather than the old Organization’s members being able to take him on individually. It also doesn’t help that the original Organization were all new characters who Sora had never fought before, making them unpredictable challenges, while the true Organization are all returning characters and thus the exact opposite.
Young Xehanort got this status after getting completely roasted by Woody of all people. In summary, Woody told Young Xehanort that no one has probably ever loved him before and that he’s hollower than any toy. His Lame Comeback that Woody only helped his Evil Plan by revealing that puppets can grow hearts did not help, especially because the Organization presumably already knew that anyway.
Vanitas got this status once he got "yeeted" (picked up and thrown out of the room) by Sully halfway into his Evil Gloating to Sora. This has earned him the unflattering Fan Nickname "Yeetus Vanitas" ever since. The worst part is that he doesn't even return to the Monsters Inc. world after that. Sully literally just tossed him out of his world and Vanitas was apparently too humiliated to ever return.
Ansem gets pranked by PENCE of all people, and Pence actually succeeds at throwing him off of his game! Hayner also attempts to drop-kick him, although that turns out to be less successful. Still, getting hassled by these random teenagers with barely any combat ability at all is a huge fall from grace compared to how threatening he used to be in Kingdom Hearts I. Most fans compare how he came across in this scene to an old man yelling at kids to get off of his lawn.
Luxord’s defeat is slightly less remembered but no less funny. Captain Jack Sparrow gets fed up with his monologuing and breathes in his face, causing Luxord to actually fall overboard while recoiling from his bad breath. To be clear, this was no Breath Weapon, just a normal human breath. Like Vanitas, this concludes his role in the world, because he was apparently too humiliated to return after that.
The original Organization XIII only had this kind of moment with Xaldin, who lost the Beast’s rose when Belle elbowed him in the gut, thwarting his attempt to force the Beast into a Sadistic Choice between Belle and the rose. Getting owned by a Disney Princess, especially one not trained in any sort of combat, was definitely a Never Live It Down moment for him.
Dark Taranza from Team Kirby Clash Deluxe has been largely treated as a joke by fans after his sole appearance in the series ended with him summoning King D-Mind to fight for him, who immediately turned on him and shattered him in a single hammer strike as he begged for his life. It doesn't help that he's the only boss in the game to lack a second phase to his battle, giving him little to differentiate him from the original Taranza, nor that he was Adapted Out of Super Kirby Clash in favor of Parallel Nightmare.
Knights of the Old Republic: In stark contrast to his former master/archenemy Revan, Darth Malak does not have an especially good reputation amongst fans. Despite being the Big Bad of the first game and a legitimately powerful Sith Lord, he's also a bit of a General Failure who relies on minions a lot, and fans tend to exaggerate both those qualities and feel he wouldn't even be a threat if he didn't have access to the Star Forge. The constant reminders that he is Revan's inferior really don't help this; they were probably just meant to give some insight on his motivations, but ended up painting him as a jealous, petty Manchild in the eyes of players.
Rochelle from Left 4 Dead 2 is the main (and sometimes current) sufferer of this thanks to her supposedly nondescript personality, even after "The Passing" update. Fans often use her as a Butt-Monkey for almost every Garry's Mod video she appears in.
In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV, Arianrhod, better known as the legendary Lianne Sandlot, is one of the most powerful characters of the Trails Series who uses an impressive lance that she can use one handed, a 24-Hour Armor, a Super Robot, and is a One Woman Army who can take on pretty much everybody. Then Cold Steel IV came out and it shows that Lianne Sandlot had terrible luck when it came to romance as she died and came Back from the Dead but her First Love moved on and married someone else, she found his Reincarnation in Osborne who married Kasia and had a son named Rean, then Osborne's life gets destroyed in an instant with Osborne making a Deal with the Devil while she wasn't looking, and when Rean gave her a chance to live with them in order to stop the war that was about to brew, Rufus swoops in and back stabs her when she's weakened after fighting both Rean and Crow in their Divine Knights. All of a sudden, she ended up becoming the butt of many jokes and most of her dignity as one of the most powerful characters in the setting is treated as an afterthought.
Tingle is a 35 year-old man who dresses in a green onesie and wishes to become a fairy. He's meant to be a Manchild and is loved by the Japanese fanbase... But the Western fanbase loathes him. When you have a trope called "Americans Hate Tingle" named after you, you know you're this.
The Hylian Captain from Hyrule Warriors is perceived by many fans of the game as being completely useless; fans claim that all he ever does is ask for help or get killed, and some sites like GameFAQs have come up with incredibly lame movesets for him to use if he were a playable character. That said, his Raid counterpart is considered to be an utter badass who can take on Ganon by himself and win.
In the early 2010s, (and even now to some extent, though much less so), a popular meme was taking Groose’s theme and playing it over various scenes from other media, witnessing how much dopier it made the scenes look. For example, Batman looks much more pathetic while fighting Bane, Gaston’s proposal looks even more embarrassing than it already did, even drunk people in real life look more oafish, etc. The meme was called “Groose’s theme goes with everything”, and was seen as the loser-counterpoint to the “Guile’s theme goes with everything” meme, in which Guile’s theme seemed to make everything look more awesome while Groose’s theme seemed to make everything look more cringeworthy and embarrassing. Although Groose was a comic relief character anyway, the popularity of his theme and the meme that came out of it has made his loser status escalate to amazing levels, despite him actually having Character Development and getting better within the game itself.
Lester the Unlikely gets this for running in fear from sea turtles alone. While he does get better as the game progresses and fights off threats that would terrify normal people such as giant spiders and pirates, players usually never get that far and will always view him as a stereotypical, easily frightened nerd. Even some of those who did make it or at least know about his Character Development view him this way too.
Daigo Dojima of Like a Dragon is actually a popular and well-liked character amongst fans, but nevertheless tends to be viewed this way due to him constantly getting kidnapped, beaten up, shot, or otherwise endangered in nearly every game, as well as frequently proving incapable of controlling the Tojo Clan.
Kai Leng's character is one of the most heavily mocked aspects of Mass Effect 3 that doesn't involve the infamous ending, owing to his remarkably poor performance for somebody the game tries to build up as one of Cerberus's top operatives, along with the many traits he has in common with a stereotypical edgy fan-character. Common points brought up against him are Thane managing to get the drop on him while dying from a terminal illness, his own mooks being more of a threat in combat than he is, the comically overdramatic email he sends Shepard to gloat after their battle on Thessia, a passage from Mass Effect: Deception in which he steals Anderson's cereal in the middle of an infiltration mission because he's "something of an adrenaline junkie", and him ultimately being so ineffectual that players routinely forget he exists until someone brings him up to make fun of him again.
Mega Man Legends: Teisel Bonne, who is bound to lose whenever he has to fight against Mega Man, a highly advanced precursor combat android. He gets captured early in the prequel The Misadventures of Tron Bonne, to the point that some parts of the fandom think of him as only being capable of this while forgetting all his raiding schemes before Bon Bonne and Tron came onto the scene, where he was generally successful up until encountering Mega Man.
Mega Man 2 brings us Metal Man, who is notoriously weak to his own weapon (which is, admittedly, a massive Game-Breaker). By "weak", we mean he dies in two hitsnote Or in the NA version on Normal, ONE.
Bubble Man is one both in and out of universe. Not only is his theme bubbles, but he's saddled with Bubble Lead, the most useless weapon in the franchise. Supplementary materials made it even worse by revealing that not only is he a pathetic No-Respect Guy who's desperately trying to get acknowledged, but he can't even walk properly when he's out of water due to a design flaw. Dr. Wily and the other Robot Masters laugh at him for that design flaw instead of fixing it. And this is just what's in canon; fanon is even more unforgiving to the poor guy...
From the same game again, Wood Man. He is a combat robot made almost entirely of wood that attacks by firing leaves at the opponent. If that sounds completely stupid to you, you're probably a better robot designer than Dr. Wily. Needless to say, there are a ton of parodies out there depicting Wood Man being exactly as incompetent as he sounds like he should be.
Top Man due to having a similarly ridiculous theme and having one of the hardest weapons to use in the series.
Gamma, the final boss of Mega Man 3, tends to be a target of mockery for two reasons: it's an extremely easy final boss even by the standards of 3'sunderwhelming finale, and it dies in one hit from Top Spin, the weapon of the aforementioned Top Man.
Toad Man, for his goofy design, theme (a frog-themed Robot Master?), and animations, as well as having not one, but two AI exploits that turn his fight into a complete joke.
Sheep Man was considered this when he was first revealed due to his odd, rather silly pun-based theme (sheep and electricity) and design. Then the game came out and opinion went the completeopposite way...
Spring Man is usually the go to example for Robot Masters that are considered "Wily scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas". Not only is his design ridiculous and non-threatening, he's featured in a game that also has a literal Junk Man as one of the other Robot Masters, and yet it's Spring Man that's remembered as the joke of Mega Man 7. Making it even worse is a Good Bad Bug that allows you to One-Hit Kill him in the middle of his intro animation (Turbo Man suffers from the same glitch, but his cool design means his reputation doesn't suffer for it like with Spring Man).
Spark Mandrill in Mega Man X is infamous for being an absolute joke if you have his weakness on hand, since it' possible to stunlock him with Shotgun Ice, which freezes him when it hits and can be reapplied immediately after it breaks. Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X apparently decided to pile on the disrespect even more by making him the Dumb Muscle of the group.
Johnny Sasaki, formerly known as “the constipated guard”, got this reputation in the first Metal Gear Solid when Meryl stole his clothes and then he failed to prevent Snake’s prison escape due to, er, bowel problems. It’s not so much that the fandom views him worse than he was portrayed, because clearly Kojima already portrayed him as a Joke Character, but more that he became a popular Ensemble Dark Horse specifically because of how much of a loser he was. This even led to Breakout Character status, where he first became a Recurring Character throughout every game (technically it’s his grandfather in the prequel games, but he serves the same role) and culminates when he goes so far as to join Snake’s team and Took a Level in Badass in Metal Gear Solid 4, marrying Meryl at the end too! Still a Joke Character and classic loser, but he came a long way.
Solidus Snake gets joked on for being the one member of Snake’s family who most people forget about. Solid Snake and Big Boss (and Venom Snake) are incredibly memorable heroes in the gaming community, and Liquid is an incredibly memorable villain to it. Solidus? He was a Big Bad for one game, Metal Gear Solid 2, (although he was also the Greater-Scope Villain of Metal Gear Solid 1, and arguably Metal Gear Rising as well due to his legacy inspiring the villains of that game), but he ultimately got nowhere close to the notoriety of the other Snakes. Unlike the entire rest of the Snake family, you hardly ever see him on “greatest video game characters/villains/etc.” lists, most likely due to his extreme similarities with the already-established Big Boss causing him to stand out less. It doesn’t help that he clearly tried extremely hard to be memorable, being a former president and ripping off Doc Ock’s powers for a more unique fighting style in this series. Especially more funny is remembering that his Motive Rant was all about how he wants history to remember him.
Kraid is often remembered by fans as one of the earliest bosses of Metroid, sharing status with Ridley and Mother Brain, and being The Un-Favourite of the three. For the longest time, he only appeared in three Metroid games, with one being a Video Game Remake of the first game, and has barely any characterization.note This isn't helped by the fact that he was cut from Metroid Prime due to time constraint In contrast, Mother Brain is characterized as the Big Bad with a memorable boss fight in Super Metroid and Ridley gets promoted as a Recurring Boss with a personal rivalry towards Samus. There are many fan comics depicting Kraid literally begging for a boss role in a new Metroid game, only to be shafted in favor of Ridley. By the time he finally comes back as a chained-up boss in Metroid Dread, fans joked that Nintendo themselves imprisoned Kraid on ZDR the whole time, explaining why he never appeared in a Metroid game for over 17 years. The fact that Samus seems unimpressed with Kraid's attempt to scare her — a stark contrast to how she reacts to Ridley in Other M — ensures that Kraid will be remembered as the Butt-Monkey of the Space Pirates, reduced as a mere pet on a leash for the Big Bad by the end of the MetroidMyth Arc. To add insult to injury, he's rendered unceremoniously Deader than Dead through his remains being consumed by an X-Parasite offscreen, with said X-Parasite being atomized by Samus at the end of the game. The cherry on top is that she only did so because the X-Parasite had also consumed Raven Beak's DNA— that is how ultimately inconsequential Kraid is.
With the many delays, growing pains, and the infamous launch for Mighty No. 9, Beck changed from the face of successful Kickstarter games, to the face of everything that can go wrong with a Kickstarter game. Not helping matters was that this game was meant to be a Spiritual Successor to Mega Man without Capcom's involvement, only for Capcom to promptly make the very well-received Mega Man 11 in-house and only a fairly short time later, making Mighty No. 9 look like nothing more than a pale imitation.
Milon's Secret Castle: Milon gets this for wearing what may be pajamas and using bubbles as weapons.
The Jaggi are notorious for being Too Dumb to Live; they'll happily bully the nearest large monster in hopes of keeping control of their territory, only to wish they had not done that a few seconds later.
The Great Jaggi, the first large monster that the player faces in the third- and fourth-generation games. In 3 Ultimate, the first victim of the nomadic Extreme Omnivore Deviljho is a poor Great Jaggi. The "R.I.P. Great Jaggi ;_;" video shows a Great Jaggi falling into a Pitfall Trap and then getting destroyed by four Gunlance users and Barrel Bomb L+'s in less than 10 seconds. In Monster Hunter 4 and 4 Ultimate, the Great Jaggi serves as cannon fodder for the training quests.
In games up until the fourth generation, the Plesioth was treated as a Memetic Badass, boasting an infamous disjointed-hitbox hipcheck that can hit you if you so much as stand within a few meters of it. But in 4 and 4 Ultimate, the Plesioth becomes little more than a catchable fish in the Fishing Machine Mini-Game, where catching it causes it to die landing on the wharf.
As of Monster Hunter: Rise Sunbreak, Gammoth has become this. Of the Fated Four of Monster Hunter Generations, she is the only one to not make an appearance in the mainline series outside of Generations and Generations Ultimatenote Glavenus appeared in Monster Hunter: World Iceborne, Mizutsune appeared in Rise, and Astalos appeared in Sunbreak.
Reaper is a dark, threatening Hero Killer with dual shotguns, inexplicable ghostly powers, a creepy skull mask, a chilling distorted voice and his Ultimate is an area-wide mass shooting that can quickly melt anyone caught in the line of fire. All of this is legitimately nightmarish, but at the same time everything about him is so "edgy OC" that he is very easy to make fun of. It's why he has so many fans.The fact his motivations and backstory boil down to wanting the other heroes to pay attention to him makes him even more pathetic.
Hanzo is considered as such. This is because he's a sniper, so typically he's far away from the Payload/capture point; the fact that he's HARD to play does not help. As such, Hanzo is generally stereotyped as an overconfident Miles Gloriosus who contributes to absolutely nothing and blames his team for screwing up.
Reinhardt also tends to be the butt of jokes, but for different reasons; he's generally stereotyped as the long-sufferingOnly Sane Man who is constantly being driven up the wall by incompetent teammates. A joke amongst Reinhardt mains is that his shield has a glitch that renders it invisible to teammates.
Genji, the resident green cyborg ninja, may by all rights be a patented formula for "cool". He's also one of the harder heroes in the game to play well, meaning that he's instead better known for repeatedly screaming "I NEED HEALING" after losing 2 HP out of 200 or ending up on the wrong side of the enemy team, pissing healers off to no end.
Glass Joe from Punch-Out!! is a loser, no questions asked. Look at his win/loss record, though, and notice that he has a record of 99 losses... and one win. This begs the question: who the hell is enough of a loser (or is kind enough) to be beaten by Glass Joe? According to both Word of God and the leaderboards in Super Punch-Out!!, it was Nick Bruiser.
For some reason, REFLEC BEATSeries Mascot Pastel-kun has become a Butt-Monkey amongst BEMANI fans on social media, who like to tweet images and make Vines of Pastel-kun plushies undergoing all manners of abuse.
Barry Burton is an odd example in that his actual character is quite competent, and this is even acknowledged by fans, but his absolutely atrocious voice acting and dialoguein the original version of the original game makes him a complete joke to the fanbase. What makes him stand out even more is that unlike Jill, Wesker, and Rebecca, who all had infamously awful voice acting and dialogue in the original game as well, the other three went on to redeem themselves in other games released not too long after. Jill redeemed herself in Resident Evil 3, Wesker redeemed himself in Code Veronica, and Rebecca redeemed herself in Resident Evil 0. The former two even reached Breakout Character status and became beloved faces of the series. Barry, meanwhile, didn’t return until Revelations 2, released in 2015, which was way later than when the other characters got redeemed in the late 90s/early 2000s, and by that point it was too late for his reputation. Even the remake of the first game didn’t entirely save him, because despite his much better voice actor and improved lines, the cheesiness inherent in his part of the script still made him come across as a bit of a doofus. His best/worst line, “you were almost a (laughs) Jill sandwich!”, has even become an Ascended Meme and gets referenced in some Capcom games. Yes, even Barry’s own creators still make fun of him to this day.
In Resident Evil 4, Ashley is a particularly infamous Damsel Scrappy. Even people who have never played the game may be familiar with her infamous shout of “LEON! HELP!” every two seconds. Even though it’s justified because she’s a teenage girl with no combat experience stuck in areas infested with zombies, Resident Evil fans still regard her as a massive loser simply because of how infamously annoying she got. It also doesn’t help that she has the Damsel Scrappy role in a series full of super-competent women such as Jill, Claire, Rebecca, Ada, Sheva, and Helena, who have no problems taking on the zombie hordes. Even Claire started off with no combat training, making Ashley look particularly bad compared to her.
Partner characters in Shin Megami Tensei IV are infamous for attacking enemies with skills that they're immune to, triggering enemy Smirks and allowing them to easily obliterate the player's party. Walter in particular has it the worst, as he tends to spam Agi and the first major boss, the Minontaur, is immune to fire-elemental attacks and is already a hard enough challenge, meaning that if the game randomly picks Walter to be your partner for the fight, you can bet that that Walter will try to cast Agi on it and get your party splattered all over the ground of Naraku.
While Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse does improve the Partner AI and allow you to pick whoever partner you want out of the ones currently available, Gaston is infamous for randomly cutting in at the start of your turn to use your turns to attack, and unlike when he acts during his turn, he will disregard enemy resistances and potentially get his attacks blocked or miss, costing you turns. And he is the only Partner who uses your Press Turns, much less waste them, i.e. No! One! Fights like Gaston! No one interrupts like Gaston! No one steals your Press Turns like Gaston!
While your partners in the PS2 releases as a whole get shades of this for their Artificial Stupidity, Mitsuru is most infamous for this thanks to "Mitsuru, I'm dying..." "MARIN FUCKING KARIN!"ExplanationMarin Karin is a skill Mitsuru learns that has a chance to charm enemies. While this would seem rather useful, the chance is so low that it ends up being Awesome, but Impractical at best. Unfortunately, Mitsuru's AI insists on using Marin Karin, even when her ice skills, her healing spells or even her rapier attacks would be more useful.
Despite her being well-liked by a lot of fans, the Female Protagonist can be treated like this thanks to her not being canon as well as not being in Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight. Fans like to treat her as the personal Butt-Monkey of Atlus. However, her appearance in Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth caused this trope to be slightly subverted.
After the Female Protagonist from Persona 3 was confirmed in Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth, the protagonists of the first Persona game and the Persona 2 duology are now getting this treatment with jokes about them acting disappointed that they are not in this game.
Silver Surfer (1990): While the Silver Surfer is unambiguously badass in his usual appearances, his NES incarnation will forever be remembered as a weakling who falls over and Face Palms in shame if he does as little as nudge a rubber duck with his board.
The shoddy reputation of the franchise's games has led to Sonic, the character himself, becoming the butt of many jokes amongst gamers.
Shadow is both this and a Memetic Badass due to his status as a Base-Breaking Character. While his many fans adore him, he's also the poster child for much-mocked "edgy" characters. He's never escaped the stigma of his Shadow the Hedgehog-era persona, so he's often portrayed as constantly wangsting over his past and being overly violent while still attempting to be kid-friendly. Even his fans playfully poke fun at him.
Tails' portrayal in several games has led to him being seen as weaker than he is. Sonic Forces only made it worse with the infamous scene where he cowers in front of Chaos and cries for Sonic's help.
Speaking of Sonic Forces, the new villain Infinite already received a lot of jokes from fans for his "edgy" design but the Episode Shadow DLC made fans mock him even more as it was revealed his entire motivation for being evil was because he badly lost a fight against Shadow trying to avenge his teammates' failure and then threw a huge tantrum at Shadow gloating over him, making him come across as unintentionally comical, less a Tragic Villain and more a child throwing the mother of all temper tantrums.
Knuckles gets tricked by Eggman three times in the series canon and constantly loses the Master Emerald despite devoting his life to it, all while getting cheesy Boastful Rap tunes for his Image Song and stages in Sonic Adventure 2 that make him a major case of Badbutt. This has made fans treat him as an arrogant, hotheaded idiot (Sonic Shorts for instance makes him a constant Butt-Monkey). It doesn't help that SEGA themselves had him flanderized this way, being the constant butt of jokes in Sonic X and his Sonic Boom incarnation being an outright Dumb Muscle meathead without his original Master Emerald protector backstory.
After the Wally Westvs Archie SonicDEATH BATTLE!, jokes at the expense of the Sonic franchise as a whole started becoming more and more common, as watchers started realizing that the last time a Sonic character had won a battle prior to Season 8's "Shadow The Hedgehog vs Ryuko Matoi" was in "Amy Rose VS Ramona Flowers", back in Season 3. Making this worse, one of Sonic's losses was in his rematch with Mario, which means that one of his prior victories was retroactively undone. The ending of the Wally West vs Archie Sonic fight also plays a role in this, as it ends with Sonic being hit so hard that he becomes Ret-Gone, leading to Death Battle fans jokingly treating him as an Un-person. This is despite the fact that it was described as an extremely close match between two of the most powerful combatants to ever appear on the show, with Sonic simply having the bad luck of being matched up with one of the very few characters that stands a chance against him.
Eggman's Egg Mobile-D or the drill car in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is widely regarded as the easiest boss in the series and is routinely mocked by fans in fanart and animations.
In the first game, many players used male inklings, got poked fun at due to not being as "cool" as the female ones.
Callie was this for a short period after she lost the "Callie vs Marie" Splatfest. It quickly became a Discredited Meme after it became Harsher in Hindsight when Squid Sisters Stories revealed that the Splatfest indirectly led to the Squid Sisters separating over time.
Pearl was originally hated by many Western fans for her design leaning towards Ugly Cute, what with her perpetual frown and big forehead. Over time she did manage to gain a fair amount of supporters, especially when Octo Expansion highlighted her Undying Loyalty towards Marina and gave her a critical role in defeating Commander Tartar and saving the world from destruction, but even those fans still love to fondly poke fun at her. She has the most fans in Japan, but she also loses most of her Splatfests there. This was eventually referenced in the Japanese-only "Sakura Flowers vs. Dumplings" Splatfest, where Pearl talks about how upset this makes her and Marina tries to cheer her up. Pearl, ultimately, does ends up winning that Splatfest.
Both Big Man and Frye have caught this in the third game, as both have suffered heavy losing streaks to Shiver and both have picked teams on Splatfests that have been the least popular across ALL the games. While initally the fanbase more joked about Big Man's teams winning halftime and then losing, with time the pendulum has more swung over to Frye with her teams barely winning any points at all and being viewed as having least popular options. But this is especially been highlighted by the fact she was the least popular in a Deep Cut focused Splatfest.
The Spelunker will forever be remembered as one of the most fragile video game characters of all time for his inability to survive bat guano, pits anyone else could just easily climb out of, or falls greater than a few inches.
Stardew Valley: Fat, dumpy and self-proclaimed "nice guy" Clint is Pelican Town's resident blacksmith and the punching bag of the Stardew Valley fandom.
While all of Fox's wingmen have shades of this as they are all oftentimes Annoying Video Game Helpers who need saving from bogies, Slippy Toad gets the worst of this reaction in Star Fox 64 due to needing to be rescued in the game's first few seconds along with his grating and squeaky voice.
...the same can't be said for Adventures' main villain General Scales. He's a brutal and feared warlord who terrorized all of Sauria before Krystal and Fox showed up, but any lasting fear he had on the audience evaporated during his "boss fight" in which he is unceremoniously killed without any player input. Even amongst the fanbase, he is considered one of the worst villains in video games.
Street Fighter 6 has Ken, who was depicted in leaked official artwork as having become disheveled in appearance with a depressed countenance. It didn't take long for memes to pop up about Ken suffering a massive reversal of fortune, from losing all of his money on Bored Ape NFTs to losing custody of his children, with Maximilian Dood summing up Ken's apparent downward spiral with "I used to wake-up DP, now I don't even want to wake up anymore." The memes however died down once his lore in the game revealed that his rough appearance is actually due to him going into hiding after JP's organization set him up for a frame — only to return with a vengeance when the official prequel comic revealed that Ken had canonically invested in cryptocurrency before being forced to go on the run.
Luigi is often put into this role due to being overshadowed by Mario and having a cowardly personality. However, he's also portrayed as a Memetic Badass, especially in Mario Party where he can win by doing absolutely nothing, but he's not given much credit for it by anyone. Sometimes he's just referred to as "Green Mario" as a joke. This has actually worked out in Luigi's favor, however. Fans warmed up to him a lot as time went on, and he has evolved into an Ensemble Dark Horse, one of the most-loved underdogs in the community. So much so that Nintendo had dedicated 2013 to beThe Year of Luigi.
Princess Daisy has been portrayed as this due to the fact that she only appeared in Mario spin-offs and had not been in a main platformer since her debut in Super Mario Land. This only got worse with the introduction of Rosalina, who appeared in Super Mario 3D World and Super Smash Bros. as a playable character. Like Luigi however, Daisy's newfound status as the series' biggest loser actually made her a lot more sympathetic and likable among fans instead of being a Base-Breaking Character and scrappy she used to be. She was added in Super Mario Run as an unlockable character, and her appearance in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate; while an Echo Fighter for Peach, allowed her to have her day in the sun. This status was further reduced with the announcement of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, which not only finally brought Daisy into a mainline Mario game since her debut more than 30 years ago, but she would be playable to boot!
Amongst general audiences, Peach has this reception because she gets kidnapped A LOT. Dedicated Mario fans tend to at minimum see the good qualities in her, especially in spin-offs where she's able to show her stuff, but her mainstream perception is of a Dumb Blonde who gets kidnapped every other week.
While not as bad as others, The Goombas are also given this status for being the lowliest of Bowser's forces and because they only take one jump to defeat them... that is, if you're not playing Mario & Luigi: Superstar Sagafor the 3DS, in which case they're a force to be reckoned with.
Cloud 'N' Candy from Yoshi's Story is widely mocked as not only the easiest boss in the game, but one of the easiest ones in the entire franchise, and possibly video games in general. All it does is slowly jump around to inflict Collision Damage, and every time it's licked, not only does it take damage, but your Yoshi is healed.
The fandom considers Expelled from Paradise as this when it made its debut in Super Robot Wars T. It's a solid series that can easily get in the game. However, it just so happens that it made its debut alongside Magic Knight Rayearth, Arcadia of My Youth - Endless Orbit SSX, and Cowboy Bebop, three anime series fans have been wishing for decades to show up in an SRW game. Not to mention, this particular game also included the return of Mobile Fighter G Gundam, GaoGaiGar, and GUN×SWORD. Coupled with the fact that there's no licensed soundtrack from the movie to show up in the game, its plot is heavily tied with Armored Trooper VOTOMS and that Word of God claimed that its inclusion was more Trivially Obvious and it's clear that Expelled really got the short end of the stick. Even its own enemies only show up for one map in the entire game!
Lunamaria Hawke from Gundam Seed Destiny has become one thanks mostly to her appearances in the Super Robot Wars games. While she missed a pretty big target once during the series (and the following times she opened fire during the series she had average marksmanship), the games turned it into her having outrageously bad aim (of the "wouldn't hit the moon if she was standing on it" variety) and she became a Joke Character.
Waluigi is considered one as well since he's only appeared in Mario spin-off games. Despite Daisy getting into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Waluigi is still an Assist Trophy rather than a playable character (with the dubious honor of demonstrating how certain Assist Trophies can be KO'd in the E3 reveal), with a Piranha Plant taking a roster spot instead as the last kick in the teeth. That being said, he isn't really a pure example of a memetic loser due to the fact that his loser status is actually canon. His portrayal in Brawl in the Family, especially his habit of Hostile Show Takeover also made him quite popular.
Chrom from Fire Emblem: Awakening is a very competent unit. But unfortunately he's become the butt of many jokes because of Lucina and Robin's trailer for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, where he spent the whole video down for the count. He apparently lost to CaptainFalcon, so the common joke is that Chrom got Falcon Punched so hard that he was knocked out of the roster. This got worse when the newest DLC fighter was announced... Corrin, the main character of a game that, at the time, was out for six months in Japan and not even released in the West, whereas Chrom's game had been out for three years at that point. If Falcon knocked Chrom out of the roster, Corrin stepped on him on his way into it. Though this seems to have receded just in time for him to actually make it into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as an Echo Fighter for Roy.
While most of Ganondorf's portrayals are still widely respected, both In-Universe and by the fandom, his reputation as the absolute worst character in Super Smash Bros. Brawl has more or less destroyed the reputation of his Twilight Princess incarnation, due to the games sharing the same Ganondorf model and voice clips. In the Smash Bros. series, Ganondorf is a slower and stronger clone of Captain Falcon, but since Captain Falcon ironically became much slower in Brawl himself, Ganondorf's speed just became pitiful to the point that every other character can almost always interrupt his attacks before he is able to actually use them. Even the game's creator, Masahiro Sakurai, doesn't play well as him, and he's the one who created the game! Even Ganondorf's movements just look embarrassing. Due to the emphasis on him being a heavyweight fighter, his movements come across and slow and sluggish, which makes the fandom joke that he's become out of shape and just isn't suited to fighting anymore. Thankfully, due to The Legend of Zelda redesigning all of its characters with each new game (excluding the occasional direct sequel), the previous and new incarnations of Ganondorf have not had their reputations affected by what happened to the Twilight Princess incarnation.
Ridley became the butt of many jokes about his size preventing him from becoming a playable character in Super Smash Bros. after Masahiro Sakurai claimed as such in an interview. However he's finally confirmed to be playable for Ultimate to the joy of many players and one of the highlights of E3 2018.
Every person who wears a Gibus will serve as the ultimate Butt-Monkey of the game and its fan animations. Bonus points if they also wear the Pyrovision Goggles (and optionally the Mercenary badge). As these are basically the only cosmetics available without spending actual money, wearing them automatically designates you as a free-to-play and therefore a noob. This is to the point that experienced players can take enemies off guard by wearing these items, purely because Gibus-wearing players have a general reputation of incompetence.
Pyro is pretty much written off as the go-to class for noobs, brainless players, or those with poor internet connections. While the Pyro has a decent set of skills such as airblasting, the "W+M1" strategy is something that the Pyro couldn't shake off.
Sniper and Spy are this to a lesser extent as they have a reputation for being poorly utilized by new players and clogging a team with multiple Snipers/Spies when a Medic is much needed.
Terra Invicta has the Protectorate, a faction that wants to negotiate a surrender to the Hydra. They're the least popular of the factions, even compared to the other "pro-alien" factions: the Academy start out optimistic and idealistic, but are willing to fight for an equitable peace treaty, and the Servants are motivated by genuine (if warped) idealism and successfully negotiate a better surrender than the Protectorate do. The Protectorate are self-righteous and remain oblivious to the Hydra's intentions far beyond what is reasonable. They're motivated by caution bordering on (if not passing into) cowardice, which leads to them caving to every alien demand. Their victory means Earth is conquered, and its people used as cannon fodder for further Hydra expansion. Needless to say, the fandom has not forgiven them for their cowardice, foolishness, and worst of all, their lack of the cool factor that other malevolent factions have.
Heinrich Kemmler was universally ridiculed for his horrible stats and useless campaign bonuses, making him absolutely useless to many players. It took significant updates to make him actually viable in singleplayer and multiplayer, but he's still subject to jokes and mockery based on his past uselessness.
Tretch Craventail's entire story is how it's better to be lucky than good. Because of that, though, fans like to portray him as an overpromoted clanrat who is barely fit to appear in the same roster as Ikit Claw, Deathmaster Snikch, Queek Headtaker, Lord Skrolk, and Throt the Unclean. Of course, fans like him precisely because of how much of an ordinary loser he is compared to the other, more exceptional Skaven lords.
The Beastmen faction as a whole has earned this reputation over time, being the butt of many jokes due to how notoriously neglected they have been and frequently taking a backseat to many other factions in terms of Old World updates. It finally ended with their DLCThe Silence and the Fury which updated their mechanics to be a very strong race.
Alice Margatroid, canonically the cold but well-meaning girl who happens to live next to Marisa's house, is constantly portrayed as being tsundere towards Marisa. She has an unusually large hate-base and is constantly shown being abused by other characters in fan-works. The worst of this is in the Yukkuri community...
Almost no-one in the fandom treats Hong Meiling as anything other than a joke, who is either getting knifed by Sakuya for sleeping on the job or being so terrible at her job in the first place that everyone in Gensokyo can get into the mansion whenever they want. It doesn't help that the FightingGaiden Games shows her route in Hisoutensoku being All Just a Dream while she... sleeps. But even through that embarrassment, she was ashamed of having fallen asleep (Sakuya even says she probably overworked herself, likely referring to defeating Patchouli in the library) and unlike most other gatekeepers, she at least functions by taking care of the flowers.
Ran Yakumo is a nine-tailed fox (who are at Physical God levels in the relevant mythology) and EX-Boss. One of her roles in the fandom is restricted to getting teased by Yukari and squeeing over how cute Chen is. The other role is being a flasher. This is probably because her game of origin is the only one that features a Harder Than Hard "Phantasm" stage after the Extra stage, of which the boss is the aforementioned Yukari.
In canon, Kaguya Houraisan is an Immortal lunar princess with powerful time-warping abilities, and actually one of the harder bosses in higher difficulties. In fanon, she's a NEET who can't do anything but "HELP ME, EIRIN!!". Note that in the actual game, it's Kaguya who comes to Eirin's aid. However, also note that Eirin is canonically far more powerful than Kaguya.
Shou Toramaru will neverlive down losing the pagoda and having to get Nazrin to find it for her, despite it being her explicit ability to be able to find treasures. Combine this with Nazrin as her Beleaguered Assistant, and you have the perfect comedy duo.
Cirno is a bizarre example who gets both the Memetic Badass and Memetic Loser treatment. On one hand you have those who think she has the power to freeze the world, and on the other you have those who think she gets beaten up by other low-level characters (or even frogs) on a regular basis. It helps that she really is weak by Gensokyo character standards, being only a stage 2 (out of seven) boss, and that's on a good day. She is, however, abnormally strong for her species, of which most members are mooks. She's also infamous for her special attack Icicle Fall which, on Easy Mode, can be completely dodged simply by sitting in front of her, even though on all other modes it's actually a very nasty attack.
Reimu Hakurei is often portrayed as absolutely destitute and hungry for money due to the fact that her shrine never receives donations. Less wholesome artists sometimes depict her as resorting to...certain activities in order to earn coin.
The Aki Sisters managed to score at the bottom of one popularity poll. The fandom had a field day with this.
Undertale: The protagonist on a Genocide run quickly goes from hardened killer to getting "dunked on" repeatedly by the Final Boss, who counts every single time the poor child dies. A compilation of edited videos summarizing this Curb-Stomp Battle can be found here(spoilers!).
Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Consul N is generally treated as being rather pathetic after his attempt to drive the main characters over the Despair Event Horizon ended up backfiring horribly. In particular, fans never forget the fact that his wife, Consul M, willingly pulls a Thanatos Gambit to get away from him and aid the protagonists, while preferring to spend the last month of her life in a cell next to Noah, who just so happens to be a clone of Consul N minus the evil. Consul N's Villainous Breakdown in response to learning what happened led to an endless stream of jokes about how he pulled off the impressive feat of getting cuckolded by another version of himself.
the playerbase have come up with to bully her, since she has no protection against being Punched Across the Room, or worse, into a Bottomless Pit, and no way to fight back outside of a basic attack and a Flash Step that's easy to counter. It also doesn't help her case that her most noteworthy appearance in the story has her quickly incapacitated by Projekt Red, then cowering in fear when Kal'tsit summons Mon3tr. By the time Operation Pyrite came around and granted her buffs that made her a legitimate threat, it was already too late; her reputation as a literal and figurative pushover had firmly ingrained itself into the fandom and wasn't going anywhere. In fact it got even worse. While the buffs made previous methods such as being Punched Across the Room near impossible due to her increased weight and speed. Players simply swapped out the old team for a pure damage dealing team which ended up decimating her in the blink of an eye.
