History Main / BadLuckCharm

[[folder: Real Life ]]

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[[AC: {{Literature}}]]
* The children's book ''TheBadLuckPenny''. Leads to misfortunes like getting concussed by a baseball while sitting in the stands, and choking on your food.

[[AC: LiveActionTV]]

[[AC: {{Music}}]]
* The PhilHarris song [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcj16EGYYrs "The Thing"]]. A man finds the eponymous Thing on the beach and has bad luck ever after.

[[AC: {{Mythology}} and {{Religion}}]]

[[AC: {{Newspaper Comics}}]]

[[AC: {{Tabletop Games}}]]

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[[AC: WebComics]]

[[AC: WesternAnimation]]

[[AC: RealLife]]

* Literature/TheBible: Whenever the [[MacGuffin Ark of the Covenant]] ended up in the hands of rival nations, bad things happened to them. Then when they try to give it back, [[DisproportionateRetribution more even worse bad things happen to them.]]

* The Romanov Emerald in ''VideoGame/TheRiddleOfMasterLu'' is said to be unlucky, and bad things do keep happening to people who carry it. (''Don't'' send it as an oddity to your museum back home. [[CaptainObvious It won't help your business to prosper.]]) In the end, [[spoiler: you give it to a minor villain, who promptly cuts off some of his toes with a misaimed spade and then suffers a DisneyVillainDeath when trying to cross a chasm.]]

* The Romanov Emerald in ''VideoGame/TheRiddleOfMasterLu'' is said to be unlucky, and bad things do keep happening to people who carry it. (''Don't'' send it as an oddity to your museum back home.) In the end, [[spoiler: you give it to a minor villain, who promptly cuts off some of his toes with a misaimed spade and then suffers a DisneyVillainDeath when trying to cross a chasm.]]

There are items that are believed to give you good luck, then there's this, an item that is deemed to be unlucky, the complete opposite of a lucky charm. When this item is in the possession of one character, expect very bad things to happen, like slipping on a {{Banana Peel}}, getting stuck in a puddle of glue that's been spilled on the sidewalk, or a plane suddenly runs out of gas and plummets to the ground right behind or in front of you.

* A manga chapter of ''NagasareteAirantou'' featured a cursed broom that brought misfortune to all who tried to use it... until it wound up in possession of [[ButtMonkey Ayane]], who has such horrible luck ''anyway'' that she completely failed to notice its effects.

* Literature/StarshipTroopers: When going on his first deployment after the first half of OCS, the main character is offered a set of rank insignia that were used by a number of cadets who later flunked out for pure bad luck reasons. He grudgingly accepts them, which pleases the Commandant, who was the first to wear them and wants the "curse" broken.

* In RudyardKipling's story "The King's Ankus" the eponymous jeweled artifact looks like this to Mowgli, who doesn't understand that the reason men keep killing each other for it is simply greed.

* ''TheBradyBunch'' episodes "Hawaii Bound", "Pass the Tabu" and "The Tiki Caves". Bobby finds an ancient tiki idol which appears to bring the family bad luck. The curse can only be lifted by leaving the idol in an old burial ground.

* In ''{{Generation Kill}}'' the ironically-named candy, Charms, are seen as bad luck and are not allowed to be eaten within Team 1 Alpha's humvee.

* "The Clover", in ''TheMiddle'''s third season, inverts the trope by having a four-leaf clover, usually considered to be a good luck charm, bring Brick nothing but bad luck.

* [[KingArthur Sir Balyn]] removes a sword from a lady's scabbard. This sword ends up causing all kinds of horrible things to happen, eventually causing Balyn to [[spoiler: kill his brother Balan in battle]].

* In one ''HagarTheHorrible'' strip, Hagar asks Lucky Eddie how he bought the lucky penny he is carrying so cheaply. "It has a curse on it," he replies.

* An episode of ''GarfieldAndFriends'' had Garfield receive the Klopman diamond from Jon's deceased cousin. Said diamond was said to be cursed, but Garfield doesn't believe it, despite all of the unusual disasters that befell him, until the end when he finally gives it to the lawyer who wanted the diamond in the first place.
* ''[[LittleLulu The Little Lulu Show]]'' episode, "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin The Curse Of The Thingamajig]]" had Lulu and Tubby find a mysterious object that they called a "Thingamajig". The Thingamajig gave them a lot of bad luck throughout the episode, until it was discovered that it was actually the hood ornament on a guy's car.

* An episode of ''WhatsNewScoobyDoo'' had the gang in Greece, where Shaggy bought what he thought was a lucky amulet that keeps monsters away [[spoiler: when in actuality, it was an emerald that attracted the Centaur that kept chasing the gang]].

* ''HappyTreeFriends'' has the cursed idol that causes certain death to anybody near it.

* A short with ThePinkPanther had Big Nose as a bank robber who finds a horseshoe, but it brings him bad luck. Every time he tries to get rid of it, the Panther returns it to him.

* Some people feel that volcanic rocks stolen from Hawaii turn into these. More information from {{Snopes}} [[http://www.snopes.com/luck/pele.asp here]].

* ''{{Mindmistress}}'' invented a colorful design good luck charm that attaches to back. This charm really works, but she couldn't stop it from switching into bad luck mode which is colored in grays. It was stolen, and guy got rich, famous, etc, but it turned gray. He didn't know what it meant so he kept wearing it. Unfortunately he worn it for a month, increasing his bad luck to deadly levels.

* ''{{Iznogoud}}'': one story revolves around the vizier obtaining a cursed diamond that brings very bad luck (your chair collapses, the doorknob snaps off in your hand, rooftiles fall on you in the middle of the desert) to the holder as a gift to the caliph. Of course, it's a ClingyMacGuffin, and things only get worse.

* An episode from ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine''.

Opposite of GoodLuckCharm, obviously. Related to {{Artifact Of Death}}.

* In a ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'' episode, Candice finds a tiki charm which appears to give her bad luck, and keeps coming back when she tries to get rid of it. She interprets a locals advice to be "throw it into the volcano", but it turns out that there is a restaurant on top of the mountain, the "charm" is a "your table is ready" alert device.
* ''HappyTreeFriends'' had the Idol that would cause certain death to anybody near it.

* A short with ThePinkPanther had Big Nose as a bank robber who finds a horseshoe,, but it brings him bad luck. Every time he tries to get rid of it, the Panther returns it to him.

* The ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' episode "Bad Day at Black Rock" had the Winchester brothers find a {{lucky rabbit's foot talisman}} that gave the holder good luck until it left their person, at which point their luck would turn NecroNonSequitur-inducingly bad. The only way to avoid certain death was to destroy the amulet in a specific ritual.

* A short on the ''WhatACartoonShow'', "Awfully Lucky", had a sleazy guy trying to get a rare gem to a museum offering a huge reward for it. The gem was cursed to give whoever owns it alternating extremely good and extremely bad luck, so the guy ends up suffering all sorts of increasingly ludicrous calamities, and just barely living through them, trying to get the gem to the museum.

* In ''OjamajoDoremi'', when Majoruka took over the Mahou-Do, she sold bad luck charms exclusively.

* An episode of {{Lilo And Stitch The Series}} featured Experiment 113 a.k.a. "[[MeaningfulName Shoe]]", who was essentially a living bad luck charm. Subverted later on that Shoe's bad luck could be switched over to good luck by simply lifting up the horseshoe-shaped projection on his head.

* The Doomful Diamond from an episode of ''[[Anime/AdventuresOfMiniGoddess The Adventures of Mini Goddesses]]''.
* The Anime/LupinIIIRedJacket episode "[[Recap/LupinIIIS2E107 A Wedding Ring is an Accursed Trap]]" has Lupin steal the notoriously cursed Hope Diamond to give to Fujiko as an engagement ring. Among the misadventures afterward: Lupin's car is completely destroyed, Fujiko becomes an old crone, and Zenigata suddenly becomes a much better shot when firing at Lupin's gang.

* The ''Shin Manga/LupinIII'' episode "[[Recap/LupinIIIS2E107 A Wedding Ring is an Accursed Trap]]" has Lupin steal the notoriously cursed Hope Diamond to give to Fujiko as an engagement ring. Among other misadventures afterward, Lupin's car is completely destroyed, Fujiko becomes an old crone, and Zenigata suddenly becomes a much better shot when firing at Lupin's gang.

* A first season episode of ''Series/BabylonFive'' has a character nicknamed Jinxo, who is believed by many to be a walking BadLuckCharm. He worked on the construction of all five Babylon stations. The first three stations were blown up in terrorist attacks, and the fourth vanished mysteriously. He refuses to leave Babylon Five because he thinks that if he does, something bad will happen to it. Another character tells Jinxo that he's got it backwards: he should be called "Lucky" because he managed to escape unharmed from four separate dangerous incidents. Jinxo says that he never thought about it that way before, the other guy comments that no one ever does.

* Literature/TheBible: Whenever the [[MacGuffin Arc of the Covenant]] ended up in the hands of rival nations, bad things happened to them. Then when they try to give it back, [[DisproportionateRetribution more even worse bad things happen to them.]]

Related to {{Artifact Of Death}}.

* Legend has it that the Hope Diamond is a RealLife example of one of these, but for the current owner, The Smithsonian Institute, they like to remark that it's given them good luck ever since they got it; it's boosted attendance with people wanting to see it.

* ''EdEddNEddy'': one episode involved a mysterious unconnected phone that somehow rung. Eddy got his hands on it after Rolf discarded it and immediately got bad luck.

* The animated ''SpirouAndFantasio'' had an episode where an already unlucky bad guy had to transport a full cargo of these for resale. Naturally, he crash-landed.

* Creator/JackVance's ''Literature/{{Lyonesse}}: The Green Pearl'' features the eponymous item which will turn anyone who owns it to evil, until somebody else murders them to possess it. At one point the chain is broken when the owner is [[{{And I Must Scream}} rendered helpless]] by somebody who's only interested in punishing him, and the pearl is temporarily forgotten.