Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, "Why me?", then a voice answers "Nothing personal, your name just happened to come up."
Some guys have all of the luck, while some have no luck at all. Why are they doomed to fail? We'll probably never know, but we love watching them stumble through life.
Contrast Master of the Index, for characters who excel in at least one craft.
Tropes about characters that explicitly are defined as losers:
- Acceptable Hard Luck Targets: Victims of certain misfortunes that are considered okay to make fun of.
- Basement-Dweller: Many people see a grown man still living with his parents to be the epitome of a complete loser.
- Beady-Eyed Loser
- Beleaguered Assistant
- Beleaguered Boss
- Born Unlucky: This character has suffered misfortune after misfortune for their entire life.
- Bully Magnet
- Butt-Monkey: A character whose purpose is to provide comedy by constantly suffering misfortunes.
- Casanova Wannabe: A character who wants to have a lot of sex, but fails to charm every woman he comes across.
- The Chew Toy
- The Chosen Zero
- Classical Anti-Hero
- Cool Loser
- Cosmic Plaything
- Death Is a Loser: The Grim Reaper is portrayed as a pathetic and pitiful being.
- Designated Monkey: A character the creator dislikes is subjected to misfortune that the audience finds excessive or too severe.
- Deus Angst Machina
- The Devil Is a Loser: Satan is depicted as a loser.
- Doom Magnet
- Dream Sue
- Dublin Skanger
- Emasculated Cuckold
- Expectation Lowerer
- Failure Hero: A hero who seldom, if ever, succeeds in saving the day.
- First Friend
- The Friend Nobody Likes: A member of a group who is openly disliked by the rest of the group.
- Future Loser: A person is shown to become utterly pathetic in the future.
- High Hopes, Zero Talent
- High School Rejects
- Hikikomori
- Hollywood Nerd
- Inept Mage: A magic user who is very poor at casting effective spells.
- Iron Butt-Monkey: A character who constantly suffers misfortunes, but manages to go through it all unscathed.
- Jaded Washout
- Little Jimmy
- Loser Deity
- Loser Friend Puzzles Outsiders: A cool and successful character has a friend so lame that others are confused as to why the cool guy even bothers hanging with this dweeb.
- Loser Protagonist
- Loser Son of Loser Dad: A person is considered a loser just because their father was a pathetic person.
- Lower-Class Lout
- Master of None
- Memetic Loser: A character is portrayed online as a complete wimp because of one humiliating defeat.
- Neet
- No Respect Guy: A character who doesn't get any of the respect they deserve no matter what they do.
- Polka Dork
- The Poorly Chosen One
- Poor Man's Substitute (when used In-Universe)
- The Slacker: The character is a loser because of their own apathy.
- Straw Loser
- Super Loser
- This Loser Is You: An unsuccessful character is intended to represent the audience.
- Unlikely Hero
- Unlucky Everydude
- Unwanted Spouse
- Walking Disaster Area
- The Woobie: The character is so unsuccessful and unfortunate that the audience can't help but feel sorry for the character.
Tropes that are very closely related to losers and/or show up in almost every loser story:
- All of the Other Reindeer: The loser is considered an outcast and everyone looks down on them for being different.
- Apathetic Clerk: These characters will usually be portrayed as stereotypical losers.
- Atrocious Alias
- Brown Bag Mask (when used as a mark of shame)
- Cannot Talk to Women
- Circle of Shame
- Critical Failure
- Disaster Dominoes
- Disproportionate Celebration
- D.I.Y. Disaster
- Dodge Ball Is Hell
- Domestic Appliance Disaster
- Dunce Cap: A child in school gets punished for misbehavior and/or getting an answer wrong by having to sit in the corner while wearing a pointy cap.
- Eating Lunch Alone
- Eject the Loser
- Embarrassed by a Child
- Embarrassing Nickname
- Epic Fail: Someone manages to fail in a way that just isn't possible.
- Even the Dog Is Ashamed: The character has screwed up so badly that even their loyal animal companion is ashamed to be associated with them.
- F--: A character has done so poorly in school that they somehow receive a grade that goes even lower than what the education system would allow in real life.
- Failure Is the Only Option: This character will never succeed in their goals no matter what they do.
- Failure Montage
- Failures on Ice
- Fake Muscles
- Flexing Those Non-Biceps
- The Freelance Shame Squad: A bunch of characters who show up solely to point and laugh at someone's misfortune.
- Friendless Background
- From Bad to Worse
- Future Me Scares Me
- Geek Physiques
- Give Geeks a Chance: The nerd ends up getting a love interest.
- Gym Class Hell
- Hard Work Hardly Works
- Humiliation Conga: A character ends up going through a long string of humiliating misfortunes.
- I Can't Believe a Guy Like You Would Notice Me
- If I Were a Rich Man
- I Just Want to Be Badass
- I Just Want to Be Special
- I Just Want to Have Friends
- Internalized Categorism
- Kafka Comedy: A form of Black Comedy where the dark humor revolves around misery and misfortune.
- Losing Horns
- Misery Lit
- Misery Poker
- Misfortune Cookie
- Muscle Angst (type A)
- My Car Hates Me
- Nerds Are Virgins: Geeky characters tend to be portrayed as having never had sex in addition to it being unlikely that they ever will have sex.
- No Social Skills
- Not on the List
- Perpetual Poverty
- Picked Last
- Pity Sex: Having sex with someone solely out of pity towards how rough they have it.
- Plague of Good Fortune
- Plethora of Mistakes
- Poke the Poodle: The bad guy boasts about doing an "evil deed" that's really nothing more than a harmless prank.
- Power Fantasy: The loser fantasizes on what they'd do if they had the power to stand up to those picking on them.
- Revenge of the Nerd
- The Schlub Pub Seduction Deduction
- Soul-Sucking Retail Job
- Stuffed into a Locker
- Stuffed into a Trashcan: Someone has the misfortune of being shoved into a garbage can.
- Suckiness Is Painful
- Swirlie
- Teasing the Substitute Teacher
- Teeny Weenie: A character gets humiliated because he has a small penis.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: The unlucky character finally gets a chance at happiness.
- Trauma Conga Line
- Vaudeville Hook
- Vengeful Vending Machine: Someone has the misfortune of having to deal with an uncooperative vending machine.
- Viewers Are Morons (when used In-Universe)
- Wannabe Line
- What the Fu Are You Doing?
- Wimp Fight
- The World Mocks Your Loss
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Right when it looks like the unfortunate character will have things go right for them for once, their chance is ruined at the last minute.
- You Are What You Hate
- Zonk
