Woobie / Goosebumps

• The books seem to contain an inordinate amount of woobies
  • Carly Beth Caldwell in The Haunted Mask series, especially in the TV show.
  • Chicken Chicken's Crystal and Cole, especially. While Cole sort of deserves it, Crystal doesn’t at all. Cole is humiliated at his choir solo when he starts clucking. And when he tries to tell Crystal, he gets a "The Reason You Suck" Speech. As for Crystal, she wants to be the star basketball player. But when she finally gets the chance, her transformation is going on. She turns more into a chicken with most of the school watching, much to her humiliation, and she runs home in tears. And then, just when they think their nightmare is over, they go through the whole transformation process again, this time as pigs.
  • Matt Amsterdam in Don't Go to Sleep!. His older brother and sister pick on him for no reason other than for fun, his mother is a Horrible Judge of Character and believes his brother and sister take good care of him, and even the family dog hates him for no reason at all. That's not even mentioning the fact that he gets held hostage by the Reality Police due to screwing with reality by sleeping in the guest room of his own home.
  • Gary Lutz in Why I'm Afraid of Bees, arguably the ultimate Butt-Monkey in the series. He literally has zero friends, he's picked on by bullies, his sister hates him, her cat hates him, his beekeeper neighbor is a sadist who loves tormenting him with the thing he fears most, his attempt to impress a girl ended with him crashing his back, and when he has a chance to get a better life, he turns into his aforementioned worst fear. Let's just say the point where he wants to sting someone, and thus die after isn't entirely out of nowhere.
  • Ricky Beamer in Calling All Creeps! who is constantly bullied at school, embarrassed in front of his best friend/crush, and kicked off the school newspaper for something that wasn't his fault. And then the bullies who target him the most often turn out to be alien reptiles who want to Take Over the World and will likely eat him if they discover that he's not one of them. The Face–Heel Turn he makes at the end of the book is entirely justified. Although the fact that he's sacrificing the entire human race to monsters just because he got picked on in school makes him more a Jerkass Woobie than anything.
  • Michael Webster in The Cuckoo Clock of Doom. He's The Un-Favourite to his complete brat of a younger sister, his parents make fun of him and call him a liar when he tries to tell them how she makes his life miserable, and it's all but outright said that his dad thinks he's stupid. It says something about your life when having your sister Retgoned from existence is a good thing for you.
  • Samantha Byrd in Be Careful What You Wish For. She has almost no friends, is terrible at basketball (which she didn't even want to play, but was pressured by her coach and her parents), and she's mercilessly bullied both on and off the court. She doesn't have it any better at home- her older brother makes fun of her and her parents are very emotionally distant and can't relate to her at all. And that's all before she meets Clarissa. It says a lot that she feels being turned into a bird is the happiest thing that ever happened to her, because her life as a human really was that miserable.
  • Aunt Kathryn from the first Monster Blood book, when it's revealed she's been a slave to Sarabeth for twenty years, and the reason she never learned sign language was because Sarabeth wouldn't let her. In fact, Kathryn became deaf because of Sarabeth. Kathryn spent so much time acting insane and disturbing Evan because then he'd want to avoid her as much as possible which, by extension, would mean he'd be avoiding Sarabeth. When Evan accuses her of being a witch, Kathryn bursts into tears and begs for Evan's forgiveness for all that happened. She was even willing to let the Monster Blood kill her if it meant ending Sarabeth's magic.
    • Also, the protagonist, Evan. He constantly gets abandoned to relatives who treat him like crap by his parents who don't seem too fond of him even when they're spending time with him, gets regularly bullied and beaten up by Conan despite saving his life, and is constantly reminded of the Monster Blood through nightmares and even ordinary green items like Jell-O and sweaters.
  • Julie Martin, the new owner of the Evil Camera in the Horrorland series. Unlike Greg Banks, who kept using the camera despite all the horrible things it was doing, Julie tried to get rid of it after it blinded her best friend Reena and seriously injured another girl. Unfortunately, the camera keeps appearing in Julie's home (because her rival David Blank was trying to screw with her head), Reena ends their friendship because of what happened, and when David takes ownership of the camera Julie still gets the blame for the horrible things that occur because everyone thinks it's her camera.
  • Wade Brill of Revenge R Us is a strong contender for having the worst older sibling in the entire franchise. Her old brother Micah lives to make her suffer, doing such things as reading her diary over an intercom, trying to rip her pants off in front her friends to show off her underwear, taking embarrassing photos of her in her sleep, and even pushing her into an empty bathtub and almost cracking her head open. And of course her parents and her friends do nothing to help her.
  • Anyone Slappy picks on, you feel sorry for, because Slappy enjoys tormenting his victims and getting them in trouble with people in their lives (and in some cases, animals as well), but Shep Mooney of The Ghost of Slappy of the Goosebumps Slappy World series is someone you especially cannot help but feel sorry for. He is not that unlikable of a character, but his younger sister picks on him, acclaiming herself as the more sensible one. His parents do not ever call her on it and think she is hilarious, a former friend (whose ankle he accidentally broke during a soccer game) started bullying him even though Shep apologized profusely, his classmates shun him, and in the latest incident at school, Slappy (in ghost form) throws spaghetti on Shep, and then custard pie in his face in the cafeteria. Instead of helping him and finding out who did it, EVERYONE even the teachers laugh. Worse, Shep realizes that no one is laughing as hard as the girl he has a crush on, to the point that tears are coming out of her eyes. Later on, Shep attends his best (and pretty much only) friend's birthday party, only for Slappy to ruin it and try to kill Shep in the process. After Shep explains to his friend that it was Slappy who ruined his party - even knowing how evil Slappy is and, being one of the few who believes him - his friend still turns him away and blames him for what happened. His father still scolds him on the ride home as he ponders how he would pay for the damages, and as if that's not enough, the ghost of Annalee (another doll) does a final good deed to bring Slappy back, who in turn enslaves Shep.
    • In similar vein, Ian in the Slappy World series is regularly physically abused by his cousins and sister including being choked, being punched in the face and getting a heavy nosebleed (on his birthday), and being shoved through a glass fishtank. His parents dismiss this as kids playing around or just casually accept the excuse that Ian's the one causing trouble.
  • Margaret from Stay Out of the Basement, not only having to deal with being uprooted from her original home but her dad's increasingly sinister workaholic behavior and her mom almost always being away/out-of-town, essentially taking on the task of raising herself and her younger brother despite barely being a teenager.
  • Sarah Maas from The Curse of Camp Cold Lake. She's forced to go to water sports camp when she hates sports, swimming and socializing, all of which are required there. Once she arrives at camp, she is bullied, shunned and ostracized by the campers in ways like being tricked into thinking the boys put firecrackers in the fire and running away screaming while the entire camp laughs at her, having the campers throw a snake down her back after pretending to apologize to her, and one of the campers trying to drown her and then blaming her. It gets to the point where she has to eat breakfast alone and no one wants to be her canoeing partner, and she drowns herself by accident when staying under the lake for too long.
  • Kris from the first Night of the Living Dummy. Not only is she the victim of a very mean prank from her sister to make her think her dummy is alive, which seemed to genuinely terrify her, she later has to deal with the Mr. Wood coming to life for real.
  • Mindy from Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes. Not only does she seem to have some mental issues, one gets the impression she just wants to be left alone but is constantly being pestered by Joe and later the evil lawn gnomes themselves.
  • Hannah from The Ghost Next Door. While she occasionally exhibits some mild Jerkass traits, given her ultimate realization of the situation she's in and the intense guilt that follows easily makes her among the series most tragic heroines. It also helps that she makes up for it, by saving Danny's life from a fire that his "friends" started.
  • Heidi Davidson from Jekyll and Heidi. Her parents died in a car crash, leaving her to live with her uncle, her cousin acts very coldly towards her, and she starts becoming afraid of her uncle when she suspects he might be the beast attacking the village. Even in the end when she helps Jekyll and Marianna get away, it's implied she's going to become a beast just like Marianna.
  • Grandpa Mo in Zombie Halloween. He lost his father in World War II, and was forced to grow up fast. Then he lost his friend Ivvy to some zombies, which gave him zombie themed nightmares. In his old age, he sometimes wanders to the graveyard, which is caused by his nightmares.
• Jerkass Woobie
  • Steve Boswell in The Haunted Mask II. He has to deal with being the coach of some nasty first graders who treat him like garbage. They trick him into kicking a soccer ball made of concrete, glue feathers all over the inside of his school notebooks, and he has his new clothes ruined by mud thanks to them. He also has to deal with a haunted mask he stole, in a major case of Break the Haughty. He begins to act like an old man thanks to this, and he even mentions that he feels like crying when he is walking out of the house stiffly and his parents laugh at him, thinking it’s part of an act for his costume.
  • Well, more like Dumbass Woobie because he Took a Level in Dumbass, but Greg in Say Cheese and Die — Again! counts. He feels incredibly guilty when his attempt to get the camera back results in a boy his age getting his foot impales through a carpenter’s nail. Also, because of a picture accidentally taken of him, he ends up growing weight in an alarming way. He feels like Humpty Dumpty when he goes to school. Mr. Saul makes so many fat jokes at him to the point that the rest of the class is disgusted with him and they feel horrible for Greg, because they realize that something is seriously wrong with him.