History Main / TheDevilIsALoser

* [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin The Red Guy With No Pants]] from ''CowAndChicken'' and ''I Am Weasel''.

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** A squeal balled: "The Devil Comes Back To Georgia" also made by the Charlie Daniels band [[HereWeGoAgain tells of how ten years after the Fiddle Duel, the Devil challenges Fiddle Player Johnny, now a family man and father, to a rematch.]] Seething from his defeat years before, the devil tells Johnny that his pride will be his downfall and takes the Golden Fiddle away as Johnny is tuning it, though the Fiddle player still his old fiddle in his woodshed. After getting warmed up on his old fiddle due to having not been playing since the birth of his son, Johnny and the Devil duel once again. Its not exactly clear at the end, but from the sounds of things, Johnny kicked the Devils ass...again.

* Lewis also creates a different loser devil in ''TheScrewtapeLetters''. Screwtape is a grumpy old demon with no sense of humor, whose list of things he can't stand about Heaven includes God's disgusting, hedonistic ''love'' for His physical creations, not to mention His habit of playing music at all hours of the night. Silence is no improvement, as Screwtape prefers some good, loud, decently ugly ''noise''.

** And yet, he can still pull off one heck of a BatmanGambit. Good musician, too. (It should be noted that the fiddle he was hit with was made of gold and [[LampshadeHanging thus weight hundreds of pounds]].)

** And yet, he can still pull off one heck of a BatmanGambit.

* The song "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" by The Charlie Daniels Band portrays Satan as "way behind" on his quota for souls. In desperation, he makes a bet with Johnny, a local Georgia fiddle player, to a fiddling contest. Though Satan is portrayed as a pretty badass dude, he's no match for a good ole Georgia boy and gets beaten handily. Johnny freely gloats and insults the devil throughout the song and ultimately snags his shiny golden fiddle.

This is the other side of the infernal coin. Satan as a stylish, seductive badass is actually pretty recent -- [[FairyTale medieval portrayals]] have him a thug, dangerous but also easy to fool and really only waiting for someone stupid enough to sin. And, of course, he's no match at all for the forces of heaven -- heck, even a mortal guy with a cross could drive him back. Trope named for a Lordi song.

-->'''God:'' 'You got kicked out of here for being a headstrong rebel. [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech And now you're a whiny little bitch]].

* Irish folklore, in contrast with most traditions where a DealWithTheDevil will end up with the person who made it being the fool, thinking they could trick the devil, tends to portray the Devil as a total sucker who will buy just about anything. In most stories, the protagonists will get away with swindling the devil without consequences and souls intact, and in the few where they do suffer some consequences, they tend to result either from character flaws on the part of the protagonists or the devil being a sore loser. For instance, the tale of Jack O'Lantern, where he ensured that he would be taken to hell but neglected to make sure that he could get into heaven, and for this oversight will eternally wander the earth, carrying a lantern to keep evil spirits away. Not very surprising for a culture that evolved wordplay to an art form and considered that if someone was swindled it was the victim's fault for being an idiot. St. Patrick may have changed that (driving the snakes/liars from Ireland), but early Irish Christians, reading the bible, seem to have been very unimpressed with the devil's intelligence by comparison. Swindling the devil is still acceptable, apparently, with the ordinary human protagonists playing KarmicTrickster.

* Satan in the ''DivineComedy''. A bit scary, yes... but his immobility and the fact that he doesn't even talk renders the end of ''Inferno'' one of the most infamous anti-climaxes in literature.
** To be fair, his mouths were eternally busy. All three of them.
** He gets [[DeadpanSnarker cooler]] in Niven and Pournelle's version.
** An anti-climax, or, you know, the embodiment of Dante's view of sin.

* [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation Depends on one's viewpoint]] on ''ParadiseLost''. Some find him heroic. Others, including Lewis, find him pathetic. At the end of unjust rebellion, all Satan can do is talk a big game, commit incest, roll around in prurience on seeing Eve, then resolve to ruin two people, and all their offspring, who've done nothing to him. This is a means of getting back at their creator, when other fallen angels had already spoken in favor of bravely making of Hell such wonders as they could. He does this knowing that his decision to seek petty revenge would also make even more unbearable the suffering and pain of his own and his followers' Hell.

** The devil is like Chris Crocker?? (The "Leave Britney alone!" boy.)
*** It would explain an awful lot.

*** ...''holy shit'', just when I thought ''NeonGenesisEvangeleon'' had enough [[WildMassGuessing insane theories]].

* How has someone NOT mentioned "The Satan Song" (is that the exact title?) by Stephen Lynch? If you want lulz, look it up on youtube. If you want to die laughing, search "Ruyk is Beelz".

* The Robot Devil from Futurama. The guy is [[IdiotHero outsmarted by Fry]] and in one episode is seen in jail.

* In God, The Devil, and Bob, The Devil is shown more as an incompetent in-feminine weirdo then a power master of temptation, sometimes even is self0distructive in his own evil schemes.

** In ''{{Guitar Hero}} 3'', the finale is a heavy metal cover of this song, which is so intensely difficult that it's become the ScrappyLevel. This actually angered the Charlie Daniels Band, because it undermined the point of the song. Spawn manages a grand playing of the song, when all Satan can do is scratch out a painful note. Because the audience are his minions, however, he still gets called the winner.

** Robot Chicken naturally parodies this, with Spawn challenging Satan to a fiddling contest.

** In ''{{Guitar Hero}} 3'', the finale is a heavy metal cover of this song, which is so intensely difficult that it's become the ScrappyLevel. This actually angered the Charlie Daniels Band, because it undermined the point of the song.ntest. Spawn manages a grand playing of the song, when all Satan can do is scratch out a painful note. Because the audience are his minions, however, he still gets called the winner.

** Robot Chicken naturally parodies this, with Spawn challenging Satan to a fiddling co

* In UsefulNotes/UsefulNotes/{{Islam}} (as opposed to the religion of Islam) the devil (called Iblis, who was never an angel) is not only stupid but ugly as well which makes a [[{{Fanon}} folk theory]][=/=]AlternativeCharacterInterpretation that ''he and God were once lovers'' kind of odd. Then again, LoveMakesYouCrazy, [[LoveMakesYouDumb Dumb]], and [[LoveMakesYouEvil Evil]], SoYeah.

* The Robot Devil from Futurama. The guy is [[IdiotHero outsmarted by Fry]] and in one episode is seen in jail.

**Does that mean the Devil's plan was instrumentality?