Basic Trope: A character learns that the world would have been better if they weren't born.
- Straight: Spencer has a strained relationship with his parents, a troubled dating life, and plays for a losing baseball team. He wishes he was never born. After he does, he learns that his parents would've been happier and have more money, his girlfriend is Happily Married, and his baseball team is successful.
- Exaggerated:
- If Spencer wasn't born, his parents would be millionaires, his girlfriend would marry a world-famous movie star, and his baseball team would be World Series winners.
- Everyone's life is better because Spencer wasn't born, regardless of if they knew him or not.
- Downplayed: Spencer learns that his parents would've been content (but not much happier), his girlfriend is single but generally happy, and his baseball team continues playing.
- Justified: Spencer's parents weren't ready to have him, he's a Jerkass to his girlfriend, and he's the worst baseball player on his team. No wonder everything's better without him.
- Inverted: It's a Wonderful Plot - Spencer finds out that the world would be worse if he hadn't been born.
- Subverted: Although Spencer's peers appear to be living better lives without him, they're actually just as miserable in different ways.
- Double Subverted: But then Spencer's peers improve their lives and end up happier than they were in the Spencer-is-born-timeline.
- Parodied: The "better" situations are ridiculous and unrelated to any effect Spencer could actually have had. For example, somehow Spencer stopped his friend Carlos from becoming a world-class guitarist despite Carlos never having picked up a guitar in his original life or somehow Spencer being born in 2027 prevented America from developing Martian colonies in The '60s.
- Zig-Zagged: Spencer's parents' lives are better, his girlfriend's life is worse, and his baseball team is the same as usual.
- Averted: Spencer doesn't think the world would be better without him.
- Enforced: "We need an Unexpectedly Dark Episode to appeal to the older crowd. Let's have Spencer realize that his existence has messed up the lives of his friends and family."
- Lampshaded: "Everyone's lives would've been better without me!"
- Invoked: Jones tells Spencer that she'd have been happier if she never met him.
- Exploited:
- Spencer only spreads this belief to gain sympathy and have people pay attention to him.
- The person who granted the wish is working for the antagonists, and walking Spencer through this plot is just exploiting one of their enemy's weaknesses so they have one less threat to worry about.
- Defied: Spencer's parents, his girlfriend, and his baseball team explain that the world would have been worse without him.
- Discussed: "Do you think everyone would be happier if I never existed?"
- Conversed: "Cartoon characters always seem to learn that their births were, like, natural disasters or something."
- Played for Laughs:
- Spencer is such a terrible person that the vision of how the world would be without him is somehow a Utopia of world peace, No Poverty, and parking spaces for everyone. The being that fulfilled Spencer's wish decides Spencer is better off dead, and kicks him off a bridge before walking away whistling.
- Spencer is such a tremendous Butt-Monkey that the world would be a utopia if he did not existed. The universe brings him back to life because it would get too boring or his endless misery is a necessary but in the karmic balance of the universe (either way, he won't get jack as compensation).
- Spencer decides to come back out of the spite of seeing his Sitcom Arch-Nemesis having a good life.
- The thing that makes Spencer decide the world is better off without him (or makes him decide to come back) is something Faux Horrific like Tony Danza being an EGOT winner.
- The things that have changed because of his existence (or lack of) are so out there that Spencer is forced to point it out:
Spencer: How the $&$#***, $*&*##$!!!] is my existence supposed to have led to 89 baseball players taking steroids
? Or Disney buying Star Wars? Call it the Butterfly Effect all you want, but I call it bullplop! - Played for Drama:
- Spencer decides that committing (a type of) suicide is the better thing to do now that he has proof that his existence was a complete waste.
- Spencer is horrified at the discovery that his existence has not improved the life of a single entity in the universe, and complains to the higher powers that granted him his wish that he was not that horrible a person, how the heck is this happening to him?
- Spencer decides to stay alive and continue to bring ruin to everybody around him out of sheer gleeful pettiness.
- Spencer being showcased that his life is utterly meaningless and then brought back to life because "you're not getting away that easily!" is evidence of a universal higher power full of jerks.
- Played for Horror:
- Spencer gets a complete mental breakdown at the discovery of how much of a screw-up he is.
- The being that provided Spencer with his wish decides to go full Knight Templar after exploring the better world.
- There is no way to undo this wish. Spencer, at the absolute best, will have to fight to make a living in this world where he is an Un-person. At absolute worst, it's a delayed-effect Ret-Gone.
- That angel that is showing Spencer the world is better off without him and kinda cheering him to commit suicide… that ain't no angel.
Back to "Better if Not Born" Plot.
