Memetic Loser / Web Original

• 4chan's /co/ Weekend Hunger Games feature an entire category of characters referred to as NEVER EVERS, named as such due to having never won a game despite competing in numerous games across several seasons. Some of the most infamous examples include Godzilla, Cadpig, Lou!, Spud, Count Dooku and Aresko. The only way to escape this reputation is to actually win a game. Unless you're Dooku or Aresko, whose losing reputations have been so ingrained into the threads that they're still considered losers despite both having actually won different games in the past.
• Bad Luck Brian was among the most popular "advice animal" internet meme characters of the early 2010s. His whole shtick was that he had the worst luck imaginable and failed at absolutely everything. For example, finding water in the desert and drowning in it, or getting a letter from his crush on Valentine's Day only for it to be a restraining order. The person behind the awkward high school photo that became the meme template, Kyle Craven, has embraced the meme and plays along, such as playing his Bad Luck Brian character in a skit with the Overly Attached Girlfriend.
• DEATH BATTLE!:
  • The Power Rangers are many viewers' childhood heroes. For years, they were also considered a laughingstock in the Death Battle fandom due to losing three battles in a row: Tigerzord VS Gundam Epyon, Power Rangers VS Voltron, and Dragonzord VS Mechagodzilla. It wasn't until Jason managed to defeat Leonardo in Season 7 that they managed to shake off this reputation. Even then, many watchers were dubious about his chances before the episode's release.
  • Shadow the Hedgehog has it rough even compared to other Sonic the Hedgehog characters. His first two appearances, which pit him against Vegeta and Mewtwo, ended with him losing. Although his third showing against Ryūko had him dish out a Curb-Stomp Battle to her, this didn't do much to rescue his reputation. People saw the fight as a "pity win" with an easily-predicted outcome, and Shadow had to kill his waifu to get it.
  • Of the Holy Shonen Trinity (Naruto, One Piece and Bleach), Bleach has always had the short end of the stick, as not only did the franchise's characters lose twice in a row but both of the matches the characters engaged in ended up being humiliating Curb-Stomp Battles with them on the receiving end.
  • Son Goku. This is the first combatant to lose four times including his Goku Black variant with only a single win to his name. Not helping that said win was basically a Mirror Match between two of his most iconic fusions (Gogeta VS Vegito) so he was going to lose that match no matter who won.
• In Funhaus's playthrough of the Grand Theft Auto V gamemode "The Condemned", it didn't take long for the entire team to declare the eponymous character an absolute joke. Because the Condemned loses health until he can kill another player and transfer the curse to them, the character will always have less health than the people he's supposed to be hunting down. Also, he's absolutely pathetic in melee combat, at one point hitting an enemy player six times with a rifle butt to no avail - an attack that normally ranges from devastating to One-Hit Kill. By the second video, the Funhaus crew have been able to turn the tables on the Condemned by ganging together and hunting him down instead... and they steal money from his corpse, too. As a result, everyone on the team makes jokes about the serial killer's clumsiness and poor health, to the point that he sometimes appears to die from tripping over a gravestone (it's actually because he ran out of health). And they call him Spookums, too. In fact, the only reason the Condemned manages to occasionally score a kill is because the rest of the crew are laughing too hard to concentrate.
• The Irate Gamer is often treated this way by the online community due to being seen as a cheap imitation of The Angry Video Game Nerd. Most parody videos of him showcase him getting beat up or looking ridiculous. The best example of this is Smash Bros. Lawl, which makes him a Joke Character and best friends with an even worse Joke Character. The series' creator Chincherrinas doesn't let him off easy in his other videos either.
• Minecraft Championship:
  • Despite appearing in every main MCC, CaptainSparklez had yet to win a single one for the first season and a half, and had a bad habit of narrowly missing out on the final game of Dodgebolt. Even worse, whoever he's teamed with almost always ended up winning the next MCC, to the point that Sparklez had referred to it as a curse. And when the streak of constantly getting third place was finally broken in MCC15, his team lost Dodgebolt to the Red Rabbits in a complete 3-0 sweep. And as it turns out, the curse still technically wasn't broken — Seapeekay, who was on Sparklez's team for MCC15, proceeded to win MCC16. The curse was finally broken in MCC22, which saw his team make it to Dodgebolt and beat the Red Rabbits in a close match.
    • Ranboo was also considered by many to be the successor of this curse, due to placing 3rd a whopping 6 times and 4th 3 more times, as well as losing against Aqua Axolotls in MCC29's Dodgebolt. MCC32 saw this curse get broken as well, with Ranboo's team making it to Dodgebolt and winning in a close match. Coincidentally, Ranboo also happened to be on Red Rabbits, the very same colored team that Captain Sparklez won 10 games ago.
  • Prior to the aforementioned MCC15, the Red Rabbits were the one of the colors not to win a single MCC, and the only color to not make it to the finals. Fortunately for them, the streak was finally broken when the MCC15 Red Rabbits (Dream, Sapnap, Michaelmcchill, and Quackity) took first place in both points and Dodgebolt.
• Mike Dawson from Dark Seed II already deserved this status, but the Retsupurae videos of the game just made him look worse. The player decided to be ridiculously thorough, to the point of talking to nearly every character and visiting nearly every area after everything, making Mike look like a moron who could never work out what to do next and had a strange fixation on standing in his bathroom and staring into space. He also lost at the carnival games so many times that it became a Running Gag, to the point that when Mike was supposed to win at ring toss, slowbeef edited the footage and said that according to Retsupurae canon, he didn't win ring toss and never would.
  • Cobra also got this status. He was presented as an inconsistent cad who orders milk at bars, has an obsessive foot fetish, and is deathly afraid of caterpillars.
• RWBY:
  • Jaune Arc is often portrayed as a wimpy coward in fics, ignoring the part in episode 14 where he beheads a giant demon-bear. ^note To be fair, Jaune is wimpy compared to most of his classmates, especially team RWBY; it's just that in Remnant, even the resident Butt-Monkey is badass.) Arguably, he is more brave due to entering into combat situations without formal training. This has become lessened over time as he's become a more competent fighter, such as in Volume 4 where he goes toe-to-toe with the Nuckelavee for a moment and then in "Vault of the Spring Maiden" when he finally unlocks his Semblance and uses it to save Weiss' life.
  • Weiss has an unfortunate reputation among the FNDM as she is the only member of Team RWBY who still hasn't won a victory against a single opponent alone, six seasons in: Vernal stomped her badly, Flynt had her on the ropes through most of their fight, and even an unnamed Elite Mook. Taken further with DEATH BATTLE! where she loses quite handily to Mitsuru Kirijo. She has even been compared to a Jobber. Though for what it's worth, an analysis video suggests Weiss has by far the most assists and saves of any of Team RWBY.
  • Cinder Fall is a downplayed example due to her strong showing early on in the series, but has steadily fallen into this ever since her defeat in Volume 3. After her climactic battle with Pyrrha, Ruby shows up to One-Hit KO her, then she spends all of season 4 too injured to do anything. Then when she finally recovers in season 5, she immediately pulls a Leeroy Jenkins and starts a battle that her cohort Watts warns her is a bad idea. Surprise surprise, Watts is right and her poorly-thought-out rush to get revenge on Ruby leads to her getting almost killed again. She then shows up at the end of season 6 with an Unexplained Recovery, preparing to make a return in season 7. In season 7, almost immediately after she makes her first appearance, the entire city finds out that Salem’s associates have infiltrated. She manages to not get caught, but still loses in the season finale and has to flee AGAIN. Even worse, her ally Neo is the one who is actually responsible for the one part of Cinder’s plan that actually went right here, retrieving a MacGuffin. Cinder’s part of the plan, obtaining a new set of Maiden powers, fails once again just as it did in season 5. Overall, she’s more or less fallen into Gold Fish Poop Gang status and nothing ever really seems to go right for her since season 3. She does still have Evil Is Cool working in her favor, but many fans note that an actual look at her recent accomplishments makes her look more like The Chew Toy than anything.
• SFDebris characterizes Hawke of Dragon Age II as this: already an unlucky protagonist in canon, Chuck took issue with the fact that the game insists that Hawke is supposedly vitally important to the setting even though Hawke does nothing but bumble about for about three quarters of the game due to the plot being on rails. As a result, Chuck roleplays Hawke as a miserable, put-upon loser doomed to fail at everything she does; plus, he will never let anyone forget the time that a Desire Demon refused to make a Deal with the Devil with her, recharacterizing the incident as the demon simply not wanting to do business with someone as pathetic as Hawke.

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