This Loser Is You / Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball: Gumball Watterson is lazy, irresponsible, unathletic, and Book Dumb to a sometimes dangerous degree, and this is made even worse by the fact that, unlike his father, he's not enough of a deadbeat loser to make it so that things somehow work around to his advantage anyway.
• American Dragon: Jake Long had its share of This Loser Is You moments. Jake's annoying Jive Turkey talk didn't help either. Many episodes actually featured problems that were a direct result of (or related to) Jake (or on occasion Spud or Trixie) being sucky teenagers.
• The Beatles episode "I'm a Loser" (song of the same name) put Ringo as a movie stunt man where every scene he's in results on him being on the losing end. To put a fork in it, he's hospitalized and the studio chief gives him a check for $1.29 while the movie's actual star, who was never in any of the scenes, gets a check for $1 million.
• Beavis and Butt-Head. Mike Judge's seminal series was a particularly ruthless deconstruction of the lifestyle of its own target audience.
• In The Boondocks, Riley Freeman is the author's go-to example for lampooning everything he hates about "gangsta" culture. Throughout the series, Riley is shown to be a willfully ignorant, foul-mouthed, sexist troublemaker who is squandering his potential to admire brainless criminals, often making himself look incredibly stupid in the process.
• One common complaint about Captain Planet is that Wheeler, the token American on the Multinational Team, is portrayed as being hotheaded and less knowledgeable than the rest of the team, with the show acting like he's the bad guy even when he's right. However, this didn't stop him from being the most popular character (possibly a case of Misaimed Fandom), in part because he's the only character who seems flawed and grows over the course of the series. It's also worth noting that while every other Planeteer's Ring of Power had a variety of uses, Wheeler's was only good for setting things on fire or blowing them up.
• The Critic: Though film critic Jay Sherman hosts a critically acclaimed though commercially unsuccessful TV series, has won multiple prestigious awards (including two Pulitzer Prizes for criticism, a People's Choice Award, five Golden Globes, an Emmy Award, a PhD in film, and a B'nai B'rith Award), was adopted by upper-class East Coast socialites, and can afford to send his son Martin to the exclusive United Nations International School, his achievements are eventually all irrelevant as he is treated like scum by his coworkers, family, and significant others, and despite his high intelligence, is unexpectedly comparable to Homer Simpson due to his gluttony and overall slobbish mannerisms.
• Danny Phantom: Danny, in order to move the plot. Almost all the time prior to learning his Aesop at the end of an episode (only to forget it by the next), he serves to show how much teenagers suck, i.e. blowing off his homework, stuffing his face with corndogs, calling everything lame or crud, playing mindless video games, acting like a jerk, wanting to make-out with the Romantic False Lead, perpetually being a C-student, etc. He gets better though.
• Chuck Jones explained many times his interpretation of Daffy Duck defined human characteristics, especially selfishness. Many of his later shorts involved the character being placed in a "hero" role and being pitted against a villain (usually one Bugs Bunny defeated several times over without even trying) and getting the stuffing beaten out of him, largely due to the fact he was a pompous, cowardly bumbler with few redeeming aspects, at which point a much more competent true protagonist would take his place. It is worth noting in his autobiography Chuck Amuck, Jones explained the use of perspective and one person's incompetence being obscured by another even more bumbling adversary (this would certainly explain Porky's near opposite role in his pairings with Daffy to those with Sylvester during that same period or the two largely different versions of Nasty Canasta used against both Bugs and Daffy). Daffy sucked so much he made other hapless fools look extremely competent.
• The Dreamstone:
  • In a similar premise, the Urpneys are a result of giving the villains Sympathetic P.O.V. to convey them as fairly normal (but exaggeratedly luckless and incompetent) people who like so many, are just doing a dead end job that they regularly despise, leading them to come off as far more rootable characters compared to the heroes of the privileged, utopian Land Of Dreams.
  • Out of the hero squad, Rufus probably qualifies too, being the most incompetent of the team, having no defining powers and most likely to do something stupid that causes trouble or gets the stone stolen. The key reason he doesn't look too pathetic is because his enemies are designated to be even worse.
• The Fairly OddParents!: Timmy Turner. However, sucking does not prevent him from defeating multiple enemies with or without Functional Magic.
• Family Guy:
  • Peter Griffin, in the same vein as Homer Simpson, albeit dumber, fatter, and less sympathetic.
  • It sometimes looks as though post-renewal Meg is this in regards to her fanbase of actual teen girls that she got back when she was, y'know, just a normal teen girl.
• Futurama: Philip J. Fry. One of the main cornerstones of the series is for Fry to be a loser and either never succeed in anything he attempts or, if he does, for something to go horribly wrong to set things back to normal by the episode's end (or else there will be little or no mention of it ever again, Roswell excepted). Whether relationships, money (he was a billionaire for exactly one episode before he lost it all by revealing his secret PIN), or anything else, Fry will invariably screw up. He also Took a Level in Dumbass as the series went on, and absolutely will not get better permanently unless the series is ending (and will be just as quickly undone if it is renewed).
• Hey Arnold!: Helga G. Pataki is ugly, scrawny, socially inept, rude, sarcastic and violent-tempered. But there's a reason why she's the most popular character on the show. She lives with two emotionally abusive parents and a Stepford Smiler sister, possesses near-genius level intelligence and a knack for poetry and literature and has a secret crush on Arnold that she keeps to herself out of fear of rejection, making her easily relatable to anyone who has ever had Abusive Parents, an unrequited crush or been too afraid to be true to themselves (the latter two apply to almost everyone in the world at some point).
• Kim Possible: Ron Stoppable is pretty much this in various actions including fighting, picking up girly signals from girls who actually like him, his schoolwork, his parents. The times he isn't sucky usually ends up with him having to give up whatever he doesn't suck at (e.g. his job at Bueno Nacho). The titular Miss Possible is occasionally this, usually in relation to boys, and dating.
• King of the Hill largely subverts this. Hank has his flaws, but is a decent, hard-working human being and the Only Sane Man. However, there was an episode where Peggy, Mihn, and Dale decided to play the stock market, and who did they research to find out what the American public wanted? Bill. Fat, bald, ugly, lonely, unlovable Bill, with the overall implication that the things that Bill likes are the things the American populace overall would want. It's an... interesting choice on their part.
• Loopy de Loop, an obscure Hanna-Barbera character made for theatrical shorts, was a French-speaking wolf who always sought to buck the trend of wolves being evil by doing good deeds. Nobody took his intentions seriously and therefore had quite a losing streak throughout his short subject tenure.
• Megas XLR:
  • Although he has a giant robot car and kicks butt with it, Coop lives in his mom's basement watching wrestling and playing video games.
  • And if Coop is not This Loser Is You enough for you, you have Jamie, who is the ultimate slacker, lacking even the limited ambition and drive Coop is shown to have, he is shown to have no talent at anything and to be nothing but an opportunistic waste of space.
• Metalocalypse: Dethklok's "Fan Song" is a massive, scathing criticism directed to their very fans. Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly, considering how hardcore their fans are), they loved it.
  • GWAR had a similar song, "Bohab". In fact, 'bohab' is an insult the band invented to describe stereotypical basement dwelling, unhygienic metal fans. (The word comes from a guy named Bob who allegedly pronounced his name that way).
• My Gym Partner's a Monkey: Adam Lyon. An ordinary kid hopelessly trapped in an insane school and never to get what he desires without some terrible consequence.
• The Powerpuff Girls: The episode "Collect Her" had a fat, bald nerd obsessed with the Powerpuff girls as the villain, who captures the girls because he's obsessed with his collection. He is defeated when the citizens of Townsville start getting all his toys out of the packages.
• Robot Chicken: In the Season 9 finale, the nerd volunteers to perform a death-defying stunt to save the show from cancellation since he best represents their target demographic.
  Nerd (to the camera): It's true. You should- you should stop lying to yourself.
• The Simpsons:
  • Pictured in the page image is Homer Simpson. And while he is fat, ugly, lazy and stupid, there's enough of a good human being in there for him to get some successes over time, and for him to be sympathetic and identifiable.
  • Frank Grimes was intended to be an 'ordinary person' in order to demonstrate that an ordinary person would be unable to survive in The Simpsons universe and befriend the likes of Homer Simpson without going crazy. It's also a subtle satire and "screw you" to fans who complain about the show's general lack of realism.
  • Comic Book Guy represents the hyper-critical fan that obsesses about continuity or whines about when shows jumped the shark. He’s also Matt Groening's Author Avatar.
• South Park: Randy Marsh, the main adult character, is a merciless evisceration of its older Periphery Demographic of middle-aged, white collar males.
• Static Shock: Given how amazingly prevalent it is in children's entertainment, it's worth noting that this is averted. Virgil was generally portrayed as intelligent and a good student — one relatively early episode involved him getting into a program for gifted students, and it wasn't in the "Main Character is the Dark Horse" way — while his friend Richie eventually gains super-intelligence as a superpower. Even despite still being an open comic book geek, Virgil almost virtually never acted the way a stereotypical geek would, instead expressing an impressive amount of street smarts on a regular basis. In one episode he was mocked by Sharon because a speech he had prepared was too tedious and morose. In the comic book predecessor, Richie's even more of a subversion — he's not only all of the above, he's also bitterly either in a Transparent Closet or in denial about being gay. Sure, the bad guys got Anvilicious, but Richie acts like any high schooler with an obvious "secret" he's uncomfortable about, without the attendant Aesop.
• The titular Tom from the Tom and Jerry cartoons. Not everyone has rooted for Jerry anyway.
• Total Drama: Sierra largely exists to be a Take That! at the fanbase, Cody fangirls in particular. The Action special established her as being an obsessive Straw Fan, while the entirety of World Tour generally has her as a crazed Stalker with a Crush to Cody.
• W.I.T.C.H.: Will Vandom is often shown getting terrible grades. To make matters worse, the first season of the television series actually had her lack the energy powers she had in the comics, just to add to her insecurity and self-esteem issues.