There are many ways of taking a loss. Alice, for example, will admit defeat and might even compliment the one who bested them. Bob, however... won't.
The Sore Loser is a character who takes defeat very ungraciously, no matter what kind of defeat it was. Unlike his graceful counterpart, Bob will get very snippy and bad-tempered, insult his opponent, accuse him of cheating, rant about his "superior skills" and, in some extreme cases, even try to physically assault his rival or kill him (although sometimes they end up humiliated even further). Depending on the setting, he could do things like Flipping the Table, throw away the cards he was using, angrily swipe all the remaining pieces from the chessboard, and so on. If given some sort of a prize, they're likely to refuse it. In a fighting series, Bob will usually lose his calm behavior, resort to cheap tricks in order to win, adopt a more ruthless and brutal strategy, or unleash a Dangerous Forbidden Technique just to have a chance. Storming off in a huff is also an alternative. Taken to a more stigmatizing level, this can be a truth or dare situation where Bob is the daree and has agreed to do something humiliating or risky, only to try to back out at the last second, which will usually result in him being called this and/or a chicken. When villains go through a similar "game" where they try to play God, but can't do so for whatever reason at the expense of their advantage over the heroes (not being magnificent enough, having a Magically-Binding Contract, etc), they'll often act in two-defaults as a Dirty Coward, shamelessly grovelling for their lives while simultaneously refusing to admit actual defeat.
Of course, if Bob's opponent Carol engages in Unsportsmanlike Gloating, she's basically giving Bob free license to react however he likes. The winner's reaction is a good way of telling who the sympathetic character is supposed to be in this exchange. That being said, the character engaging in Unsportsmanlike Gloating is often also the Sore Loser, ungracious in both victory and defeat.
This trope is often the launching pad for Villainous Breakdown, attempted "The Reason You Suck" Speech, and, in some extreme cases, One-Winged Angel. If I Can't Have You… could be considered the romantic version of this trope. A person nervous about possible harm from winning against this type of person may decide to Let the Bully Win.
Super-Trope to But Not Too Challenging. A Sister Trope to Second Place Is for Losers (and usually overlaps unless it's not the loser that thinks this), Rejecting the Consolation Prize (if the loser does win a prize, but they consider it unworthy/underwhelming) and Unsportsmanlike Gloating (being a sore winner).
Compare Rage Quit, Defiant to the End, Taking You with Me, Never My Fault, Post-Game Retaliation. Contrast Graceful Loser, Touché. If you were looking for a loser who frequently feels sore physically that's The Chew Toy.
Due to how prevalent this trope is in real life, No Real Life Examples, Please!
Examples:
- This commercial
has a witch doctor shrink a guy's head for beating him at Dr. Mario.
- Some Uber Eats commercials have Patrick Stewart and Mark Hamill gaming against each other. Neither one takes losing very well, nor are they particularly graceful when it comes to winning.
[playing Connect-4]
Hamill: I win again, Patrick.
Stewart: [slams his fists on the table] That's Sir Patrick.
Hamill: [mockingly] Oooooooh! Sir!
[playing air hockey]
Stewart: [scores a goal] Yes!
Hamill: I WASN'T READY!
Stewart: You want cheese to go with that ''whine''?
- Assassination Classroom: Chairman Asano. And in the worst way imaginable. As told by the man himself, in the past he attended a karate class and was soundly trounced during a spare match by the sensei. The pain and humiliation at such crushing defeat drove him insane and he spent the rest of the class analyzing every move of the teacher to device a successful retaliation. The next class, Asano delivered a decisive defeat to the teacher. This became part of the foundation of his pedagogy: to make his students think that losing is a Fate Worse than Death so they will avoid failure by any means necessary. He created Class E for this purpose: to show everybody what happens to the people who are labeled "failures" by the system.
- His son Gakushu takes after his father and unlike him, Gakushu will make very clear his dissatisfaction, best shown in the aftermath of his defeat at the School Festival where he hypocritically accuses Class E of cheating despite Gakushu bringing five Foreign students to bolster his team for the contest.
- Nanamine of Bakuman。, once his plans go wrong, has one Villainous Breakdown after another. This is especially true when he fails his second attempt to launch a series and, as part of the deal with the editors, is banned from working for Shonen Jump.
- Ben-To: Sen of all people. After losing three times in a row in Virtua Fighter, she responds by chucking the Sega Saturn out of the window.
- Yuno from Black Clover hates losing and describes himself as a really bad loser, so much so that he gains some control of Sylph's power out of frustration for being on the losing side. Yuno says that he's completely fine as he sweats excessively when Leopold heats the hot springs to melt his cool off, then cheating by cooling himself off with wind.
- Bleach:
- Grimmjow. After Ichigo finally defeats him, he still tries to attack him even after he's grievously injured and his Resurreccion is deactivated, calling him "weak" all the while. When Grimmjow meets Ichigo again in the final arc, he acts just as hostile towards him as before, showing no gratitude to him for stopping Nnoitra from killing him for losing, and stating that he's only teaming up with his group for a chance to a Duel to the Death with him, prioritizing that over the fate of Hueco Mundo and his fellow Arrancar. And that was before Neliel intervened and forced him to play along - he initially tried to kill Ichigo on the spot!
- ZigZagged with Nnoitra, who will not stop fighting until either he or his opponent lies dead. Being a Death Seeker, he is far more insulted by the idea of being spared (which he sees as a Cruel Mercy) than he is at being defeated per se.
- When it becomes clear that he is no match for Byakuya, Zommari goes on a rant about how Shinigami self-righteously hunt down Hollows and protect humans from them even though no one gave them the right to do so. Byakuya himself has to point out that he's not even going to kill him for that reason, but rather because he tried to kill Rukia.
- Subverted (or at least downplayed) with Aizen. While he does have one hell of a meltdown when Ichigo beats him so hard that Urahara is able to seal him, it's less to do with his defeat and more to do with Urahara not doing anything about the Soul King's corpse serving as the linchpin holding all the realms together even though a man of his intellect should be perfectly capable of doing something. He's later shown to be perfectly calm while he's being put on trial by Central 46, and years later he doesn't even hold a grudge against Ichigo.
- Mask De Masculine spends most of his time boasting how he's a hero of justice who will defeat any and all evil villains who cross his path, and generally keeps this attitude even after he's occasionally beaten up by stronger opponents. Renji then beats him so hard that Mask loses it, drops the charade and vows to kill him, justice and evil be damned; Renji kills him moments later.
- After Lille Barro somehow survives his defeat at the hands of Kyoraku and Nanao, falls off Wahrwelt and lands in what's left of the Seireitei, the second he notices that his halo and most of his power are gone he goes ballistic; he swears to make Kyoraku pay for this and starts attacking the city, only to be stopped by the arrival of Izuru Kira, who manages to fend him off.
- Booty Royale: Never Go Down Without a Fight!: Chompoo Shinlat throws a huge tantrum over losing to Misora in the Tournament Arc's round of 16, essentially saying the match wasn't fair because they're in significantly different weight classes.note The judges don't pay her complaints any mind: note that Maria Luisa overcame a significantly larger deficit in weight and height against Veronica Lin in the same round.
- Call of the Night: Having never lost a fight before, Susuki breaks into Inelegant Blubbering after Yamori defeats her. Once she's calmed down, however, she becomes attached to Yamori as the first man to do so, much to Nazuna's chagrin.
- Villains in Dragon Ball are particularly poor losers. While they are still on the winning hand, they are prone to Evil Gloating and other unsportsmanlike behavior. However, when they realize they can't win, they almost always suffer a Villainous Breakdown and are prone to trying to blow up the planet they're currently on, just because they can't accept defeat. Specific examples include:
- After Vegeta loses his cool after being injured twice in a row by Goku's Kaioken attack, he decides to blow the Earth up (what he came to do in the first place) with his Galick Gun.
- When Freeza/Frieza realizes he is outmatched by Super Saiyan Goku in every way, he blows up the core of planet Namek, setting off a countdown that will eventually destroy the planet itself. Also, the thought of losing to a Saiyan 'monkey' angers him so much that he attacked Goku from behind, after being bisected, right after Goku prevented him from dying by transferring some of his life energy to Frieza.
- Cell arguably takes losing even worse than Frieza; whereas Frieza deliberately held back to delay Namek's explosion so he'd have time to escape, Cell fully intended to die in his own blast as long as Gohan wouldn't win.
- This becomes downright ridiculous when it turns out that the supposed God of Destruction, Beerus, reduced King Kai's planet to its current size just because he lost to him in a video game.
- Frieza does this again in Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' and its Super adaptation when he realizes he can't win. He actually successfully destroys the Earth, but this being Dragon Ball, it gets undone pretty quickly.
- Champa does not take his team's losses well. Every time the opposing team manages to gain the upper hand and defeat his team, he quickly whines and throws a temper tantrum at it. And when his entire team loses (or in one case, forfeits), he decides to murder his entire team for the crime of "dragging his name through the mud." Fortunately, Zen'o's arrival prevents Champa from doing just that.
- Zamasu takes losing a sparring match to Goku extremely poorly and uses it as a justification to hate mortals even more. Future Zamasu even wants to kill Goku personally because he's apparently still bitter about it. His present counterpart’s Alternate Self, Goku Black, even took Goku’s body and killed him primarily because of this, then butchered his family just as a final, immature act of revenge.
- When Jiren gets overpowered by Goku's Mastered Ultra Instinct form, he attempts to murder his friends sitting on the elimination bench out of pure spite and rage (along with his own teammates, too). This makes an already uneven battle against Goku even more brutally one-sided, as he viciously beats the stuffing out of Jiren.
- Fairy Tail:
- Flare Corona from Fairy Tail. As soon as she realized that her opponent was actually beating her, she used her hair to threaten a 6-year old girl in the audience to force her opponent to step down and let herself take a beating. Granted, she was also scared shitless of what her leader Alexi would do to her if she lost too.
- Later, Orga Nanagear, who's the only participant to Pandaemonium other than Obra, who doesn't compliment Erza for her victory.
- The Sabertooth guild leader, Jiemma, is an especially notable example. He won't accept anything less than absolute victory, so when Yukino loses to Kagura, he instantly humiliates her by causing her to strip naked in front of the guild members before kicking her out. Later when Sting and Rouge single-handily lose to Natsu, he beats them senseless then tries to kill Sting's exceed friend Lector when he tries to defend him (then again, Jiemma finds it insulting that "some cat" he couldn't be arsed to remember is bearing Sabertooth's guild mark). He gets a hole in his mid-section by Sting in retaliation for his trouble. But the real kicker comes an arc later when he shows up transformed into a demon by Tartarus (which he accepted willingly unlike his daughter Minerva who had to have it forced on her) just to take revenge on Sting and Rogue for daring to change his guild from a Social Darwinist mindset to True Companions. By this point, Sting and Rogue are both sick of his crap and take him down together.
- Minerva, Jinemma's daughter, clearly gets this from him =- after losing to Erza at the Grand Magic Games, she goes off the deep end, joins a Dark Guild, and seeks to beat Erza almost no matter how she has to do it.
- Totomaru, who becomes a fire magic teacher after losing to Natsu and Phantom Lord disbands. Nothing says "sore loser" like forbidding your students from mentioning your opponent's name after a loss you suffered to him seven years ago.
- Most of the important fighters in Fist of the North Star are either incredulous at being killed by Kenshiro or graceful in death. Then there's Jagi, who goes from boasting about how he's going to murder Ken to express fear to downright having the guts to call him a coward and a sadist as he's delivering justice to him.
- Soma Yukihira, the protagonist of Food Wars!, is an interesting case, as he manages to be both this and Graceful Loser at the same time. On one hand, Soma's a good sport and not one to linger for too long on his losses. On the other hand, he openly admits he hates to lose and has a tendency to vent his frustration on his dishes, and he uses any loss as an opportunity to improve himself. The housekeeper of his dormitory at one point calls him "the ultimate sore loser".
- The usually cold and confident Ryuugo Daimaru from Gamaran goes apeshit on his brother Sakon when he's incapacitated in battle. It bites him in the ass later when an enraged and crazy Sakon tears his spine out.
- Anchovy of Anzio Academy in Girls und Panzer (only in manga) reacts to her defeat poorly, whereas even Katyusha was a Graceful Loser. After the match, Anchovy goes up to Miho, angrily protesting that she doesn't accept Miho's way of tankery, and bringing up the time when Miho abandoned the flag tank to save some of her teammates from drowning, resulting in her old school losing the championship.
- Ichijo Ranko and Close in Go! Princess Pretty Cure both go under here, for Ichijo refuses to let Kirara stop her from her dream of becoming a teen idol and Close can't stand it when the heroines defeat his monsters, which evenly led to his death.
- Gundam:
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: Clotho Bauer and Muruta Azrael. The former's a Sociopathic Soldier who views fighting as a game, and in his own words, hates to lose. The latter's a Corrupt Corporate Executive that knows real people are dying but honestly, couldn't care less, and sees the entire thing in terms of winning and losing. Azrael actually dies while ranting about how "I can still win. I always win!"
- Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: The last thing Paptimus Scirocco does as he dies is to use his powers to Mind Rape The Hero into a coma, though given that said hero just killed him in nightmarish fashion, it's a little understandable. Amusingly, in the spinoff Dynasty Warriors: Gundam games Scirocco calls out the Musha Gundam as one of these after it tries pulling the very same trick on Scirocco himself.
- Kei Karima in Gundam Build Fighters Try acts like this in the final episode when he finds out that his Rafflesia didn't win the Meijin Cup and attempted to attack everyone in the battle royale with Bugs.
- Earlier in that episode, it's Minato who acts like this when he loses the Meijin Cup Open Circuit by disqualification. Meijin Kawaguchi (the judge) blasts Minato out in front of the entire audience for building a model based on another person without getting her permission, especially since the girl in question clearly doesn't appreciate the attention and is utterly mortified. Minato really doesn't care and challenges Yuuma (his rival, who won the Meijin Cup instead) to a battle then and there.
- Episode 17 of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury features a rare heroic and entirely sympathetic example in the case of Suletta Mercury. After having demolished any competition through a mix of nigh-inhuman skills and an insanely-overpowered mobile suit, Suletta's first real loss ends in her at first denying it, then demanding a rematch, then breaking down crying. In her case, there are several reasons for this: first, the loss was manifestly not fair, as it was a result of her suit shutting down mid-combat due to sabotage in a fight she was previously dominating, second, Suletta's entire self-worth is built around her utility to others and her skill, and losing like this is a massive blow to her, third, the stakes of the match involved losing both her mech, which is for all intents and purposes her older sibling, and her bride-to-be, whom she genuinely loves deeply, and said stakes were beyond her control anyway, and fourth, the one who performed that sabotage was that same bride, who (while lying through her teeth) gives Suletta a Breaking Speech and says she never loved her back. With that in mind, it's hard to imagine anyone alive accepting the loss with a handshake and a compliment to the victor.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Phantom Blood: Dio's response to Jonathan beating him in a fistfight was to throw his dog Danny into a trash incinerator.
- Stardust Crusaders: Terence T. D'Arby becomes one when he starts losing to Jotaro in a video game baseball match, and accuses him of cheating, despite openly using his own Stand to read Jotaro's mind throughout the whole game. And Jotaro wasn't cheating... technically. Joseph was cheating FOR him.
- Stone Ocean:
- For all of her bravado, Miraschon is a sore loser. She tried to claim that Jolyne had cheated near the end of the fight, even though Jolyne outsmarted her fair and square.
- Donatello Versus takes getting consistently outsmarted by Jolyne and Ermes (and Pucci telling him to give up his pursuit of them) poorly, gradually losing his patience as the Battle of Wits starts to fall out of his favor. Near the end of the fight, he drops all pretenses of honor and forcefully throws three hospitialized children on the plane the duo are on, if the Sadistic Choice of saving the kids or themselves is what it takes for them to die in the impending crash.
- Nui Harime from Kill la Kill loves to taunt, gloat at, and generally torment her opponents, but the very microsecond things stop going her way, she absolutely loses her shit. Isshin Matoi learned this the hard way in the backstory; all he managed to do was distract Nui from his real experiment and slash her across the eye, but Nui went completely apoplectic and brutally stabbed him to death, then proceeded to harass his daughter relentlessly in the present day despite repeated warnings by her superiors to stop, all out of indignant fury that Isshin dared to not lose completely and utterly against her. Nui flips her lid yet again — yet even WORSE — when Ryuko destroys her arms and is in the perfect position to kill her for all the pain she's caused. Nui is so bent out of shape by the idea that Ryuko can actually kill her that she devolves into a Madness Mantra, her Faux Affably Evil persona crumbling completely as she refuses to accept her loss.
- Downplayed in Lyrical Nanoha. Nanoha takes losses in actual combat or if she's acting in her capacity as a combat instructor fairly well (as rare as they may be), but she hates it whenever she loses matches that are supposed to be for fun.
- March Comes in Like a Lion has two cases of this, one done for humor and the other done for drama.
- One of Rei's opponents, Matsunaga, slams his captured shogi pieces on the board in irritation after he's forced to admit defeat.
- Whenever Yasui loses a shogi match, he gets himself drunk and gambles.
- My Hero Academia: Katsuki Bakugo is prone to reacting very badly when he loses - or if he wins in a way he dislikes (after winning the Sports Festival tournament, he has to be tied up for the medal ceremony because Todoroki didn't use his fire during the final match).
- My Monster Secret: The future version of Mikan seems to be like this, encouraging her past self to be more proactive in trying to win the heart of the protagonist that he picks her instead of one of the other girls. It's subverted and becomes Heartwarming in Hindsight when it's revealed that future Mikan is actually trying to avert a Bad Future where Asahi ends up living his life alone and heartbroken.
- Naruto:
- Gaara in the first part starts as cool and stern in battle, as virtually nothing can harm him. As Lee (and later Sasuke) start breaking through his defense, he reacts badly (namely, he ends up crushing Lee's legs and in the second battle starts turning into [[Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can Shukaku).
- Madara Uchiha. Just Madara. His fighting style is based on making up an incredibly broken defense or attack system against his opponents and when they manage to overcome it due to hard work and strategy, he pulls out an even more broken technique. A big part of the series is due to Madara not being able to cope with Hashirama beating him in everything, combined with his inability to entrust the future to anyone but himself. On the other hand, Black Zetsu actively encouraged these traits for his own ends.
- One Piece:
- Several villains react badly to being defeated, but Don Krieg takes the cake: being pummeled several times in a row and slammed head-first in a ship doesn't stop him from throwing a fierce rant about how he's supposed to be the strongest... then Gin stops him by knocking him out.
- Roronoa Zoro was like this when he was a kid, getting very annoyed when Kuina would beat him every time. Actually, he's still technically a sore loser as an adult (of sorts), given the only time we see him cry is when he loses to Mihawk and tearfully vows he'll never lose again (a declaration he couldn't keep as Arlong kicked his ass in the next arc). Of course, it's justified as he swore to the memory of Kuina he would beat Mihawk and become the greatest swordsman, and would naturally be upset that he fell short as well as believing he had disappointed Luffy by losing (which isn't true).
- Zoro still doesn't take defeat well at all; he was extremely embarrassed that the Mooks of Thriller Bark were able to capture him and he absolutely cannot stand Sanji doing better than him or receiving more credit than he does. A good example is in Little Garden where Zoro had a hunting competition with Sanji who killed a T. rex bigger than the Triceratops Zoro had caught causing Zoro to demand they go hunting again saying the hunt was about weight, not size.
- Sanji has his moments: he sulks when Zoro gets a bounty before him, when Usopp ends up in Luffy's picture, and when Jinbe gets a higher bounty than him. Sanji also especially hates it when other men have better luck with women than he does — e.g. Luffy going to Amazon Lily, Momonosuke getting special treatment despite being a Dirty Kid, and Momonosuke's sister Hiyori's apparent Ship Tease with Zoro.
- After Luffy wins the final round, Foxy goes to shake his hand in a moment of good sportsmanship. The second Luffy takes it, he tries to do an overhead throw. It fails due to Luffy's rubber body and Foxy ends up falling flat on his face.
- Law has this reaction when he fails to kill Doflamingo and Luffy has to step up to the plate. Considering how Doflamingo killed Corazon who was basically the closest thing Law had to a loved one after his parents, little sister, and entire homeland were genocided... it's no wonder he'd be upset over being unable to kill Doffy himself.
- Vinsmoke Yonji always had the luxury of being genetically superior to his brother Sanji who he beat on regularly as a child, so it came as a shock to Yonji after meeting his brother years later that Sanji was much stronger and promptly handed his ass to him. Needless to say, Yonji didn't take it well.
- When it boils down to it, Rob Lucci's motivation to capture Nico Robin during the war in Onigashima stems from him being one. It's not because he believes it's his sworn duty or that she's a high-priority target (she's only one among many heavy-hitters this time around), it's because he's still bitter about his loss against Luffy back at Enies Lobby, and wants to personally hurt him as payback. This comes up again the following arc when he attacks Luffy against orders, gets completely wrecked, then decides to attack him again anyway, all while insisting he "doesn't acknowledge Straw Hat as an emperor".
- Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: Scanty and Kneesocks in "If the Angels Wore Swimsuits". Not only do they refuse to follow through on their end of the bet when they're beaten in a volleyball game (stripping naked in front of the crowd), but they sic a horde of monsters on Panty, Stocking, and the beachgoers and swiftly drive off.
- Pokémon: The Series:
- Ash Ketchum acts like this in the episode "Brave the Wave." He was acting all high and mighty and got too carried away until he challenged Brawly in a gym battle and lost. When Brock tries to advise Ash about how wrong he was to force Treecko to fight, Ash angrily tells Brock to shut up. He does eventually feel guilty about forcing Treecko to battle, accepts his loss, and ends up beating Brawly in a rematch.
- It's downplayed in his first major League loss after he lost his top 16 match to Ritchie. He wasn't upset that Ritchie beat him so much as he was that he got eliminated after coming so far (Team Rocket kidnapping him and forcing him to fight under a handicap didn't help matters). His friends called him out on this attitude, noting he had mostly been scooting by on just pure luck alone, and his attempts to battle with his particularly stubborn and disobedient Charizard as a last-ditch effort showed how little time he took in trying to get the big lug back to helping him. Later Leagues show him as getting visibly crushed upon defeat, but he doesn't take the losses nearly as hard and is respectful enough to congratulate those who defeated him. This wasn't the case in Alola at all, since he WON that League!
- While Max isn't a direct example, he acts like one when his dad Norman lost the Petalburg Gym battle with Ash. He got so upset with his father losing that he angrily snatches Ash's badge away and locks himself in a greenhouse. It takes a stern talking to about accepting loss before he opens the door and apologizes, giving the Balance Badge to Ash.
- Paul from the Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl blames his Pokémon for being weak whenever he loses a battle. This is despite him saying that it’s usually the trainer’s fault for being weak. He gets over this when he's defeated by Ash at the Sinnoh League.
- Georgia the Dragon Buster from Pokémon the Series: Black & White is very good at coming up with excuses as to why one of her Pokémon lost a battle. Usually, it's along the lines of: The Battle Didn't Count if she wasn't beaten by a Dragon-type Pokémon. Iris calls her a kid as a result. Although at least once she had a point: in one battle she went up against and lost to Iris's Dragonite, which Iris hadn't trained yet and spent the battle pointedly ignoring every order she gave it; Georgia informs Iris that the match didn't count because she was beaten by Dragonite, not Iris.
- Dragonite is little better. It's notable that in a species known for being peaceful by nature, Iris' Dragonite is a raging berserker even when he's not losing. Put on the ropes by Ash's Krookodile, Dragonite throws a violent tantrum and starts demolishing the arena, screaming at the top of his lungs.
- It's not uncommon for a member of Team Rocket (usually Jessie) to interrupt the competition of the day and steal the main prize, winner, and/or Pikachu if they lose or are disqualified. If any of the other members (often James) are shown to be fair play Graceful Losers, expect Guilt by Association to apply.
- Misty acts like this at times. Notably in Who Gets To Keep Togepi, where she and Ash battle for custody of the newly hatched Togepi. Psyduck comes out to battle and Ash's Bulbasaur manages to defeat it, resulting Misty throwing a tantrum and banging on the floor.
- Ash Ketchum acts like this in the episode "Brave the Wave." He was acting all high and mighty and got too carried away until he challenged Brawly in a gym battle and lost. When Brock tries to advise Ash about how wrong he was to force Treecko to fight, Ash angrily tells Brock to shut up. He does eventually feel guilty about forcing Treecko to battle, accepts his loss, and ends up beating Brawly in a rematch.
- Rooster Fighter: In the past, Tatsuo has lost a fight with Keiju several times, then takes his sister Sarah hostage to ensure he'd win, which he still doesn't. Even a year later, he's still seeking "revenge" against him.
- In Saki, most of the mahjong players take their defeat relatively gracefully, even if, in the company of their friends and teammates, they indicate that they're quite disappointed or upset. Two of Kiyosumi's rivals from the first round of the prefectural tournament, however, steal Nodoka's penguin Etopen in revenge for their defeat but are caught, and accidentally leave the penguin behind. They end up seeing the error of their ways, and while their attempt to rectify their mistake ends up doing more harm than good, they end up rooting for Kiyosumi. Momo is a variation, as she's not that upset about her failure to secure first place for her school, but bears a grudge against Saki for defeating her friend and senpai, Yumi.
- This is a core part of Saki's own backstory. Her family were major Mahjong players but were both sore winners and sore losers. Saki's defense against this was to develop an ability to always break even in her score, losing on purpose.
- Whenever The Big Cheese of Samurai Pizza Cats loses (which is virtually every episode), he literally explodes in anger.
The Big Cheese: I hate to lose!
- School Rumble: Asou was one of the few students to not be intimidated by Mikoto's height and athleticism and even dated her, but he broke up with her a short time afterward. When her friend, Eri, asked her about it, Mikoto said she didn't know the reason herself. All she knew was, Asou stopped talking to her after she beat him at a couple of arcade games.
- Love Machine from Summer Wars is a real Jerkass and an in-universe example of The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard. It plots to direct a falling satellite onto a nuclear reactor until the Jinnochis beat it at a hanafuda game, then it decides to drop the satellite on her house.
- Toriko: Livebearer. Even more so because he was actually cheating all the time. Earlier there was Bei, who got childishly angry over Toriko destroying his battle robot.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!:
- Seto Kaiba's rivalry with Yugi all comes down to one loss from a guy who really hates to lose. Originally, he tore Solomon Mouto's copy of Blue Eyes in half just to spite Yugi into a rematch (there were only four copies of that card in the anime world, and at most three at a time are allowed in a deck). It was worse in the manga, where he actually spent a billion yen to build Death-T, an amusement park deathtrap that he hoped would cumulate into a rematch where he disposed of Yugi personally. He lost again and gets a Mind Crush for all of his troubles. By the time of the movie Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, he's so obsessed with getting just one more rematch after several times he's lost that he creates a machine that allows him to chase the Pharaoh Atem to the afterlife just to challenge him yet again.
- A duelist who uses a great deal of intimidation, Panik's reaction to losing was to attack Yugi with a flamethrower. Fortunately, his Puzzle protected him.
- Bandit Keith too. "No one beats Bandit Keith." (In fact, he's such a sore loser that, in his anger, he slips up and says too much, letting everyone know he stole Jonouchi's tournament card. And this is before he threatens Pegasus with a gun unless he gives up his prize money.)
- And of course, Gozaburo Kaiba, the Big Bad of the Virtual Nightmare Arc. After being beaten by Seto at the finale of the arc, he refuses to accept defeat and tries to renege on their agreement.
- In the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX manga, there are a few cases.
- Seika becomes very upset when she ties with Asuka in the Miss Duel Academy pageant because Judai didn't cast his vote. After a fair amount of negotiation, Judai decides to duel Asuka, and while she loses, which would result in Seika's victory, Seika realizes that the entire school is on Asuka's side and reluctantly withdraws. She decides to rededicate herself to dueling after that and faces Judai in the quarterfinals of the school tournament, but loses. When he tells her dueling is supposed to be fun, she scoffs at it and storms off.
- Amon Garam also takes his loss against Asuka and Misawa in his tag duel alongside Johan, as well as his subsequent loss against Judai poorly. In his case, however, he and the other American students were offered the chance to become pros if they won against the Japanese students, and given that he wants to pay for his brother's healthcare, his frustration is understandable.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s:
- And there was Takasu. Sadly, this was far from the worst thing about him. (You have to be a pretty big scumbag for the Big Bad to side with the hero and fire you, but that's what happened to Takasu.)
- Ushio was so upset about the first two times he lost to Yusei, that the third time they dueled when it became obvious he was about to lose again, he resorted to the most obvious of cheating methods to take his opponent out — ramming him with his D-Wheel. Fortunately, this time Yusei had Saiga to help him, and he was able to finish him off again. (Ushio still wouldn't accept defeat and tried to challenge him a fourth time later, only to be stopped by a direct order from Rex Godwin's henchman Jeagar, who had different plans.
- Shinji Weber of Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V. He was using his duels in the Tournament Arc to provoke the Commons into rebelling against the Tops, with him as their hope. When Yuya beats him, Shinji realizes his revolution has died before even getting started, he snaps and is shown to be pretty bitter over it. When the Tops-aligned Roget comes to congratulate Yuya, he continually calls Yuya a traitor to the Commons. He even tries to have the match overruled by claiming the duel was rigged, despite the fact that, if the duel was rigged, he'd have to be in on it for the plan to work. His last interaction with Yuya before he's pulled away is a declaration that he will get revenge.
- Lightning in Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS. Combined with his Inferiority Superiority Complex, he believes he's above humanity and refuses to accept an outright defeat from Revolver, instead opting to take his opponent down with him and at the same time barely hang on with 1 LP since he converted part of Jin's consciousness data into extra LP to keep himself in the game.
- Pleasant Goat Fun Class: In Sports are Fun, Wolffy doesn't take it well when he's not the winner of the sports events. He gets especially upset in Episode 6 of that season; when he discovers he lost the tennis match with Weslie, he angrily pushes his teammate into the air, kicks the tennis ball and his tennis racket, and summons a giant eraser to erase the lines on the tennis court before being carried away to clean the classrooms as punishment for his vandalization of public property.
- Archie Comics:
- Reggie inverts this in one issue after Veronica accuses him of being a sore loser. To prove her wrong, he challenges Archie to a tennis match and plans to lose on purpose so that he can prove that he can take losses well. However, Archie bungles his performance so badly that Reggie ends up winning anyway, causing him to throw a tantrum. Veronica remarks that she's never seen a sore winner before.
- In an issue of Betty and Veronica, Veronica double subverts this by wanting to show what a good loser she is in the Beauty Contest but then shoves the trophy in Betty's face.
- The Avengers: During Steve Englehart's run, some of the team get a glimpse of the start of the Forever War between the Kree and Skrulls. Millions of years ago, early Skrulls found the planet Hala and offered the two species that lived there, the aggressive Kree and the peaceful Cotati, a chance to join their empire, provided they proved worthy enough. Representatives from both species were taken to the baren moon of some distant blue-green planet and left there for a year to see what would happen. The Kree labored ceaselessly to make a magnificent city, the Cotati a sprawling garden. The Skrulls decided the Cotati had won. The Kree... were pretty pissed off, and murdered the Skrulls to a man, stole their tech, and once they got it working went and found the Skrull homeworld and attacked them.
- Most The DCU and Marvel Universe supervillains don't take defeat well at all, Spider-Man and Batman's villains are particularly bad with foes like The Joker and Green Goblin likely to Rage Quit if they fail to destroy/convert their respective Arch-Enemy. Subverted in the fact there are a few honorable foes such as Thanos or Dr. Doom who considered the heroes Worthy Opponent(s) and even subconsciously give the heroes a chance to win. Though there still rather frequently appearing Jerkass like Lex Luthor who absolutely refuses to accept defeat or give in to the hero's benevolence often leading to Villainous Breakdown.
- Invincible: Thragg takes losing his Grand Regent title to Nolan extremely poorly, to the point where he tries to murder him on the spot.
- Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman: In "Wonder World" the bully says he'll give Diana the shirt off his back if she beats him in addition to letting Riley and her friends play "Dance Dance Retribution" which the bully has been monopolizing for the evening. After he gets distracted and falls, and angrily gives her his shirt as per their accord, he goes and finds a cop and tells the officer that Diana attacked him and stole his shirt.
- Sleepless: Lord Helder loses his temper and throws a screaming fit when Cyrenic defeats him in the final round of the Tournament.
Lord Helder: Don't you know what you've done? I'm Helder, Lord of Nestlet. I'm the Queen's nephew. I'm cousin to the heir to the throne. Defeating me was the worst mistake you ever made.
- The Smurfs: Smurfstorm is used to dominating the SmurfTree Games, to the point that they haven't reached the last event in years. When Hefty proves able to keep up with her in The Betrayal of Smurfblossom, she's furious — all the more so when Blossom suggests she accept a tie so that they can focus on the whole issue of the river mysteriously drying up.
- In Tintin album "The Broken Ear", General Alcazar, upon receiving a Surprise Checkmate from Tintin, thunders, "¡Mil millón bombas! You dare to beat me, your general?" and fires his pistol several times in Tintin's direction. However, this causes no harm because, as he proceeds to explain, "my gun's always loaded with blanks."
- Ultimate X Men: In the first arc, the X-Men foil Magneto's plot to have Sentinels level Washington, D.C. His response? Use his powers to set off all the US's nukes, preferring to burn the world to the ground rather than let mankind keep living.
- X-Men Red (2022): Isca the Unbeaten's power to always win means she's never learned how to lose, and as a consequence when Sunspot tricks her into winning something she didn't want, she flips out and kills him.
- In Blondie (1930), Dagwood has been known to be angry at Herb for weeks after losing badly to him at bowling, golf, pool, or anything else; Herb is no better.
- Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes provides the page image. When Hobbes tells him that it's just a game, he cheerfully responds "I know. You should see me when I lose in real life!" And he was right. When the traffic safety poster he designed for a school contest (which everyone but him knew would lose, given that it was a gory picture with the slogan "Be Careful or be Roadkill") lost to Susie, he claimed the contest was rigged.
- FoxTrot:
- Jason is this whenever he is outmatched by Eileen (which tends to be all the time, seeing as he often goes to ridiculous lengths to outdo her and sabotages his own efforts).
- Also, Roger is one every time Andy beats him at chess or golf, which is all the time because he stinks at both. Ironically, Andy hates playing him at both (partially because he's a Sore Loser, but also because he's obsessed). Even more ironic, Andy was a Sore Loser at chess in the very first strip, telling Roger he was sleeping on the couch after he checkmated her. (Although, future strips would show he's a sore winner too.)
- Garfield: Jon reading this letter from his brother
: "Maddie Ferguson's pie took first place at the fair so Mom burned her barn down".
- Peanuts:
- In one Sunday strip, after Lucy strikes out while playing baseball, she says she deserves four strikes because she's a girl. They give her one, but she misses again. Then she says she should get five because she was sick yesterday. Again, they give her one, but she misses again. Then she smarmily says she should get six because she's so cute. But they don't give her one. She storms off saying, "What kind of stupid game is this where you only get five strikes?" In another strip, her reaction to losing a croquet game to Linus is to pin him to the ground with each arm under a wicket.
- Snoopy doesn't mind losing when he plays shortstop, but in one arc where Charlie Brown let him be manager, he threw a fit after losing, taking his anger out — physically that is — on the team and the equipment, then stormed off roaring I hate losing!! (Which is likely why, in the last strip of the arc, he was very eager to relinquish the job back to Charlie Brown.)
- In The Wizard of Id, the king really hates to lose
at Monopoly or anything else...
- Franz Xaver von Schönwerth's "Follow Me, Jodel!": Since Michael does not agree with his father leaving the farm to his little brother, the old farmer proposes a contest. When Michael loses, he asks his father to propose another task. When he loses again, Michael insists on another new bet.
- The Brothers Grimm's "The Nix in the Mill-Pond": The Nixie sends a flood to separate the couple after the heroine has already paid for her husband's freedom three times over.
- "Rumpelstiltskin": The title character tears himself in two when the miller's daughter-turned-queen triumphs over him.
- Alexander Afanasyev's "The Soldier And Death": A soldier plays cards with a band of demons and wins every round, fleecing them out of their gold and silver. Enraged, the devils decide to tear him to pieces and eat him whole, but the Soldier uses his magic sack to imprison them.
- Discussed in Ambience: A Fleet Symphony chapter 270. When an American asks Kikuzuki why she can't let go of her hatred of Americans, she retorts that it's easy for Americans to be magnanimous in victory, but they probably wouldn't feel the same way if they had somehow lost the war. Considering works like Red Dawn (1984) that glorify La Résistance fighting on in the face of Invaded States of America, it's hardly an unfounded complaint.
- Ash and Serena's Atomic Odyssey: One of Serena's rivals in Pokémon Contests is a girl named Sayaka who's very arrogant and loves to rub her superiority at every possible chance. She ends up losing in a contest aboard a cruise to an Alolan girl who uses a Z-Move and starts throwing a tantrum and call out that she cheated, and by the time she reappears on the next contest, she's still bitter about this as she planned to do a perfect undefeated run.
- Adam Taurus promptly loses it after he gets his ass kicked by Terumi/Hazama in Chapter 54 of BlazBlue Alternative: Remnant. He breaks down in tears and punches the floor until he's almost out of strength, and then kills a grunt who walks in on him to vent out his frustrations.
- In Code Geass: The Prepared Rebellion, Suzaku is one of these in spades.
- Bakugo in Cursed Blood. After Izuku defeats him in a fight during the Heroes vs Villains class (basically glorified sparring), Bakugo is so enraged that he attempts to murder Izuku.
- Pong Krell from The Desert Storm series. He fell to the Dark Side and tried to murder Ben because he was angry that Ben kept defeating him in their sparring matches. Ben was supposedly exploiting this to lure out any Dark tendencies and get them dealt with, but it's transparent both to him and everyone else that It's Personal and he was enjoying it far too much.
- When Karla manages to beat Jack in a race (both with and without her gift) in The Dragon and the Butterfly: Whiteout, he injures himself and lies to Fishlegs that she pushed him.
- In Fantasy of Utter Ridiculousness, Yuuka was sorely tempted to rampage after losing to Coop, never mind the fact that doing so would mean an "extermination" of the permanent variety courtesy of Reimu. It's only after receiving some sunflower seeds and learning the truth about the fight's trigger that she calms down enough to leave quietly.
- In Haigha, Bakugo takes losing against Shinso so badly that he attacks him after the match - on live TV. He's expelled from the Hero Course and forced to undergo therapy.
- Played for Drama in Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail. After Sara and the rest of Chloe's bullying classmates have been publicly exposed as such and are dealing with their various punishments, Sara continues grousing and blaming Chloe for everything. This spurs her to casually insult Chloe while Ash, Serena, and his friends are trying to calm down a vengeful Parker who's on the verge of awakening the Unown, with her snippy comment pushing him over the edge.
- In Kara of Rokyn, heel wrestler Jara is defeated by Kara during a no-stakes preliminary match, and spends months hating Kara as well as waiting for another chance to beat her to the ground.
- Zig-Zagged in Leave for Mendeleiev. Aurore has some valid reasons to be upset over losing the Weather Girl competition — Chloe bragged about buying votes to ensure she'd lose, but she has no way of proving whether her rigging was enough to skew the results. At the same time, however, she can't help feeling bitter towards Mirielle, having a lot of deeply uncharitable thoughts about how unsuited she is for the position. Aurore recognizes that she's being unfair, and resolves to keep those thoughts to herself... but then notes that if they wind up having to replace the Weather Girl, she fully intends to rub it in Alec's face.
- Metal Gear: Green: Bakugou is extremely pissed after losing to Akatani because he never saw the teen. When he tries to confront and attack him the next day, Akatani beats him, zip ties him up in a way he can't get out of and leaves him there before snarking he hasn't gotten out of the restraints when he is supposedly so strong he can do it by himself, causing most of Class 1A to laugh.
- When Bakugou loses in a virtual and tactical strategy against Akatani when the latter swarms all the heavy hitters with Cannon Fodder while he has the real villains strike at the weaker heroes and steal the humanitarian aid trucks while the heavy hitters were bogged down, Bakugou argues that they Nerfed All Might. Snake points out that this is made to be as realistic as possible, which Bakugou dismisses and calls Snake a villain to his face while in the MSF Command Post.
- Lampshaded in Mia Fey: Ace Attorney – The Fool's Turnabout. When Prosecutor Sae Niijima loses her airtight case against Mia Fey's client, Sae's response is... somewhat overblown. After looking Limp and Livid, she releases an Atomic F-Bomb and slams the prosecution bench repeatedly while grumbling about her setback. Yes, her setback. She hasn't even lost yet and she's already throwing a tantrum since it wasn't the easy win she wanted. This prompts Mia to point this out in her narration. Sae does compose herself at the end of the first trial day, but it's clear that she's miffed about it. When Mia comes across her later that day, she's still taking it personally. She thankfully outgrows this by the time she actually loses the case at the end of the story.
- In A New Chance For Adventure after being thoroughly and soundly defeated by Ash and his Pokemon, and facing arrest for his poaching activities, Rico tries to knife attack Ash. But with Pikachu nearby that works about as well as one could expect.
- Pokémon Reset Bloodlines has many examples, most of which overlap with Cheaters Never Prosper:
- The Sensational Sisters, due to the fact they'll be ousted as Gym Leaders if they lose one more battle, attempt to rig the odds in their favor when Ash comes to challenge them, and they grow increasingly angry when Ash manages to beat them despite using their (allegedly) strongest team against him. Even after they get arrested they continue to rage and yell at him as they're taken away.
- Dario in the sidestories goes to great lengths to cheat to try and win the Big P Pokémon race, and fails two consecutive years. After losing, he has the gall to accuse his opponents of cheating, even though he was the one who played dirty.
- Joshua Martin causes a Rhyhorn Racing accident in the Oak's Summer Camp Gaiden that results in Serena being expelled from the camp, all because he was beaten by Ash in a baseball game. In the Indigo League, he tries to cheat by having his Fearow fly close to Ash so he can't give orders to his Pokémon. Ash is forced to punch Fearow out when he flies too close for comfort, and Joshua is not only disqualified but also banned from Pokémon League competitions for a year, and he still continues to blame Ash for it afterwards.
- Paul is a downplayed example, as he doesn't openly voice his anger at losing to opponents he perceives as inferior, but he does feel it. In the Indigo League, while he grudgingly acknowledges that Gary Oak has grown as a trainer, he chalks up his loss to luck, due to Gary getting a terrain advantage with the field change in the second half of the match.
- Pound the Table: Noa Schaefer's first major case as an attorney involves a tennis superstar named Jacques Canter being accused of being a mutant and getting all of his wins through his mutant powers, an accusation tossed his way by the man who lost to Canter in the US Open. Because 1) Noa is a mutant herself and knows what kind of doom awaits Canter over such accusations in the Marvel Universe and 2) almost every athlete in America is withdrawing from competitions because they do not want to become targets to a new weapon to be wielded against them for being too good if the case is won by Carter's rival and thus makes precedent, Noa takes the case in earnest. She manages to win the case by proving that Canter's physical abilities (and the crux of said demand) are no different from a top-notch professional tennis player, with plenty of video proof. Said rival almost gets a conniption when the judge declares the lawsuit frivolous.
- In Saki: After Story, Teru is assumed in-universe to be a particularly extreme case of this when she, after losing to her younger sister Saki in the tournament, attacks her (as well as Nodoka when she tries to help Saki) with a pipe, a box cutter, and a chair, sending both of them to the hospital. The actual reason, however, seems to be that Saki's mere presence and claiming to be her sister sent her into a rage.
Eri: I honestly don't know how this incident came to pass. To think that someone could be such a poor sport at losing a simple game of Mahjong and snap like that just astounds and angers me.
- The Second Try: When she was again defeated by Bardiel, Asuka was sore, moody, and irritable for several days.
"I still can't believe I lost again!" the redhead mumbled out of the blue.
Again...
"Asuka, we're alone." Shinji yawned. "Misato left while you were taking a shower."
"So what?"
He gave her a curious look. It had been a while since he had seen her grumpy like this, at least without just acting it. "You're not saying that you still take something like that so personally, are you?"
"And what if I do?" she grumbled and rolled on her side, turning away from him.
"Oh, Asuka..." He chuckled at her behavior. For someone who had always thought of herself as mature, she sure had kept some childish attitudes even after actually going through adulthood. At least that's what he hoped it was... - Shadowchasers: Conspiracy: When Tranello defeats B.B. Hood in what had seemed to be a friendly game of Duel Monsters with no strings attached, Hood responds by drawing her machine gun and killing him.
- Sharing Thoughts
has Shampoo accidentally remove herself from the "fiancee wars" after getting some of her potions mixed up. Since Cologne can no longer bring Ranma into her tribe through her, she isn't happy when she goes to inform Ranma and Akane of the situation:
Cologne: Please try not to gloat, or I just may kill you myself. - In the crossover Fan Fic Soul Chess, Lelouch accuses Aizen of being one after he is defeated during their final confrontation and about to be sent back to the ninth circle of Hell when he reveals that he rigged his floating palace so it would blow up in the event of his defeat and take out the Soul King anyway.
- Supporting a Hero: Bakugou attempts to use his Quirk on Izuku with the intent to kill as retribution for losing to him in the Sports Festival. It fails due to Bakugou being drained, and since all of this was Caught on Tape, UA officially expels him and every hero school across the world has him blacklisted. As such, he joins Daika University and becomes one of the MLA's newest members.
- In Torque (Jak and Daxter), after losing the race to her Erol went to confront Keira over it, able to get into her garage given that he made a copy of her key months ago. It's unclear what his original plan was as he happens to overhear a conversation that implicates her with the Underground, giving him a different reason to let his frustration out on her.
- Drew from Total Drama Legacy. In "No Business Like Show Business", after getting only 15 points in the talent show (the lowest score anyone had gotten thus far), Drew throws a fit and has to be physically restrained to prevent him from attacking the judges. He throws another fit when he gets eliminated in "Campfire Emblem Awake-ening", demanding a recount, proclaiming he will sue his way back on, and having to be pushed off the Dive of Shame by the interns. He comes back for the merge due to legal pressure from Drew's mother Courtney, and for the most part, manages to keep his temper under control… until "Virtual Royale-ity", when he loses the battle royale and is informed that he'll be going home that day, causing him to go ballistic, smash his VR headset and controller, and lunge towards Chris, resulting in him getting restrained in a straightjacket by interns and pushed off the Dive of Shame once again.
- In 101 Dalmatians, Cruella de Vil takes the constant resistance to claiming the Dalmatian puppies for her fur coat very badly.
- Xibalba from The Book of Life, who would rather kill an innocent human than lose a wager. He seems to have ultimately gotten better.
- Hades in Hercules is prone to these, going off like a volcano when he can't take it:
- First, when Hercules manages to emerge victorious over all his monsters, he takes it badly, getting more upset when he sees his minions Pain and Panic sporting Hercules merchandise.
- Later on, he throws a tirade when Hercules defeats the Titans and ruins his plans to conquer Mount Olympus, holding Megara accountable for it, due to rallying Herc's comrades to help him and causing his deal which depowered Herc to be nullified. As such, he sees taking her soul as a Consolation Prize.
"WE WERE SO CLOSE! So close! But we trip at the finish line! And why? Because that little nut Meg had to go all noh-bul!"- Finally, Hades becomes even more sore when he realizes, too late, that Herc's Heroic Sacrifice to save Meg makes him immortal again.
- The Lion King: As a cub, Simba and his best friend Nala get into an argument over who deserves credit for their plan on losing Zazu, and he tries to pounce on her after she counters all his arguments and force her to admit he deserves credit, but she easily beats him by flipping him and pinning him down. When she chuckles and playfully teases him over this, he just tells her to get off him, showing annoyance that she beat him in a fight that he started. After he pushes her off him he glares at her in embarrassment, then tries pouncing her again while she's distracted to get revenge out of spite, essentially resorting to cheating against her. But, they accidentally roll down a hill together with Simba struggling to stay on top, only for Nala to pin him once again anyway and smugly rub it in his face, with him only able to glare up at her in defeat.
- Metegol: El Grosso never got over the fact he lost a football game back when he was a kid.
- My Little Pony: Equestria Girls:
- The Equestria Girls version of Rainbow Dash has yet to tone down her sore loser tendencies, rage-quitting a video game she is losing before Applejack can beat her in Rainbow Rocks.
- In Friendship Games, Abacus Cinch, the principal of Crystal Prep (the rivals to Canterlot High), is so used to winning that she'll take nothing less than a flawless victory. So when her students lose a baking contest in the first act of events, she's more than a little frustrated. Later when Canterlot High wins the second events, she accuses them of cheating because of human world's Twilight's magical amulet going haywire and opening portals to Equestria during the race which she assumed were Canterlot's doing. While she's not wrong to be skeptical, it was clear the protagonists weren't using their powers to cheat and were even trying to save the competitors. What's more, she was more than willing to use said magic power to ensure her students won when she found out Twilight had collected some of it. When all is said and done and the games are declared a tie, Cinch is practically trying to decry that it shouldn't have counted. By this point even her own students are tired of her whining and refuse to support this claim, forcing her to accept the outcome and break her spotless winning streak.
- In The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Donkey Kong does not take his loss to Mario well. As soon as he recovers, he chucks a barrel at Mario while saying he let Mario win. When they're preparing to drive across the Rainbow Road, DK takes a moment to tell Mario he hates him with no provocation.
- In Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Austin finally catches Dr. Evil, who was trying to escape his Underground Lair with Mr. Bigglesworth as the lair was overrun by Austin, Vanessa, and their soldiers, along with Project Vulcan aborted by Austin. In retaliation for thwarting his escape, Dr. Evil then attempts to demoralize Austin by lecturing him on how all the things Austin fought for in the 1960s were now "evil" in the 1990s, and that freedom failed. It doesn't work, and things look hopeless for Dr. Evil. However, Alotta Fagina manages to turn the tables by showing up holding Vanessa as a hostage, which sabotages Austin's chance of bringing Dr. Evil to justice and leads to Dr. Evil's escape following a failed attempt at betrayal by Number Two.
- Death from Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, who keeps demanding rematches every time he loses.
- In Get Out (2017), the Greater-Scope Villain of the story is the deceased patriarch of the Armitage family, who came to hate black people for their "physical superiority" after he lost a race against Jesse Owens in 1936, so he developed a way to Body Surf and concocted a family scheme to steal the bodies of black people, because he doesn't believe they deserve to be so physically fit. He occupies of the body of the black groundskeeper, Walter, and he dies when the groundskeeper temporarily regains control and shoots himself.
- In Girls Just Want to Have Fun, Natalie Sands is not happy when she loses at the end. Her father quickly tells her to shut up though.
- In Happy Gilmore, after Happy wins the final tournament, his opponent Shooter McGavin breaks down into a rant about how "impossible" Happy's win is, then steals Happy's Gold Jacket as it's being presented to him. He gets chased down and brutally beaten by Happy's fans for this.
- After Frank wins the first race in Hidalgo, an upper-class snob he raced against whined in a subtler way, by claiming Frank's horse shouldn't be a racehorse because he wasn't a thoroughbred (which turned out not to be a good idea with Frank).
- In In China They Eat Dogs, a poker player is seen throughout the film's Framing Device playing against a bartender. The bartender loses every round, much to his chagrin. At the end of the film, the bartender turns out to be a Devil in Disguise. Angry over having repeatedly lost, the devil accuses him of having cheated during the poker game, and based on that, he sentences him to go to Hell. The poker player confusedly protests his innocence as he is dragged off.
- I.Q. (1994): When Catherine realizes that she's fallen in love with Ed, she calls off her engagement to James who doesn't take it well. Instead of moving on with his life James only doubles down in his endeavor to prove that Ed isn't the wunderkind everyone else believes him to be.
- James Bond:
- Thunderball: Big Bad Emilio Largo tries to kill Bond once his plan to hold NATO with a ransom is foiled. This is made even more notable in that his henchmen actually surrender after the climatic final battle.
- The titular villain in Goldfinger is a cheater who hates losing, especially during a golf match. When Bond and his caddy note that Goldfinger's henchman Oddjob drop a new ball from an easy-to-play lie, Bond deliberately swipes Goldfinger's Slazenger 1 for a Slazenger 7 in his hand. Under the strict rules that he stubbornly insisted on, Goldfinger huffs out in anger that he lost the last hole and the match for playing the wrong ball. Bond and the caddy barely contain their glee.
- Moonraker: Due to his inferiority complex that he's been carrying since childhood, Hugo Drax is another cheater who likes to dominate his opponents, only this time in card games. Bond outwits him by sneaking in a stacked deck, causing him to lose 15,000 pounds in the final game.
- Die Another Day: Miranda Frost got a silver medal in fencing, but felt Second Place Is for Losers. So what did she do? Have the gold winner OD on steroids, which was planted by Gustav Graves's people, effectively buying her loyalty.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe
- Obadiah Stain from Iron Man had this reaction upon discovering he couldn't copy Tony's arc reactor, leading to him to rip the reactor out of Tony's chest nearly killing but not before this lovely exchange.
Obadiah Stane: Here is the technology. I've asked you to simply make it smaller.
Scientist: All right, sir, that's what we're trying to do, but... honestly, it's impossible.
Obadiah Stane: TONY STARK WAS ABLE TO BUILD THIS IN A CAVE!! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!! - Ivan Vanko aka Whiplash has an interesting variation where despite Iron Man beating his ass, he shouts gleefully as the authorities drag "you lose". What he means by this is, is by successfully attacking Tony he shows that the eponymous Iron Man is Not So Invincible After All. Whiplash is still a sore loser though, as when Tony and Rhodey beat him in the climax he rigged all his drones to explode and whispering "you lose" echoing back to his line earlier.
- Obadiah Stain from Iron Man had this reaction upon discovering he couldn't copy Tony's arc reactor, leading to him to rip the reactor out of Tony's chest nearly killing but not before this lovely exchange.
- Marcus Valorium in Once Upon a Spy. An Evil Genius, he still bears a grudge against Jack Chenault for winning a scientific award they were both nominated for 12 years earlier. According to Valorium, this was the only time he ever lost. After capturing Chenault, he forces Jack's partner Paige Tannehill to run through a Death Course as a way of evening the score.
- In Predator, the Predator himself in the first two films. Upon being defeated, both individuals activate a wrist-mounted nuke and try to take their opponents down with them, the first one giving an Evil Laugh and the second one giving a sarcastic "Shit happens!"
- Tak Mashido from Real Steel manages the impressive task of being this even when he won. Tak's robot Zeus technically wins against Atom in the finale, but only because he was saved by the bell, and Charlie and Max are content with losing the match if it meant going the distance. But apparently even this is too much of a blow to Tak's massive ego, because he proceeds to throw a massive temper tantrum over the fact that he almost lost, smashing his control console to bits and storming out of the arena in a rage.
- In Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, after Holmes both figuratively and literally checkmated Moriarty, he responded by threatening to kill Sherlock and Watson and his wife.
- In Shortcut to Happiness, the Devil throws an epic hissy fit when the jury finds in Stone's favour and nullifies her contract.
- In Star Wars: A New Hope, Han mentions Wookies tear arms out of sockets when they lose.
- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: The titular character is shot after drawing a Dead Man's Hand against someone in a game of poker.
- The Thing (1982): MacCready's Establishing Character Moment has him playing a chess game against a computer, only to declare said computer a "cheating bitch" when he starts losing and spitefully pour his drink into the console, showing he'd rather destroy the game than lose it. Which foreshadows the climax, in which he burns the base down to deny the Thing it's victory.
- After losing at bingo in Up Pompeii, Nero complains and calls it a stupid game.
- Tally from Can You See Me? deals badly with losing at games because it makes her feel like she must be useless at everything. She once once ripped down the curtains after losing at Monopoly.
- One of the stories from Classic Singapore Horror Stories, "Checkmate", revolves around a chess-obsessed university professor who treats chess as Serious Business, being proud of his position as the chess club president and champion of every annual chess tournament... until a new transfer teacher proves to be a far better player than him. After losing a few times too many, the professor then plots to murder his rival in a last-ditch attempt.
- A Court of Thorns and Roses: When Feyre succeeds in passing Amarantha's trials, Amarantha refuses to honor her end of the bargain (or at least not right away, which as she points out she didn't specify), then begins beating Feyre to death with her bare hands, screaming for Feyre to confess she doesn't really love Tamlin.
- Conall Haldane loses an informal archery match to Dhugal McArdry early in The King's Justice and "all but slammed down his bow, though he did manage a stiff little bow of acknowledgment before stalking off sullenly toward the stables". This is noticed and commented upon; Kelson says his cousin "hasn't yet learned the graceful art of losing."
- Asuka, of Girls Kingdom, does not take losing well, at least when it comes to Salon Struggles. When we next see her after she loses in her attempt to take over the Sky Salon, she's still fuming about having been tricked and how her Seraph wasn't defeated. Technically the latter is true, but the former was less a trick, more rules that Asuka wasn't aware of regarding dues. Specifically, to take over a Salon, you must first defeat every due paying member, from lowest payment to highest, and while most salons have only a single payer, the Sky Salon had multiple. Kagura was the lowest payer, and the one Asuka defeated in a battle of table manners, with the Kokonoe twins being the second lowest payers, and the ones who defeated her in fencing and horseback riding.
- The Great Greene Heist: Prior to the first book, Keith and Katie lost a basketball game to Jackson and Gaby by fifteen points. A sore Keith accused Katie of incompetence (she dumped him in response) and the referees of corruption.
- In Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, Draco Malfoy reacts to his Quidditch team losing by insulting Mrs. Weasley and the late Lily Potter in front of Harry and the Weasley twins, Fred and George. He ends up getting thrashed by Harry (who tries not to get involved until Draco insults Lily) and George for this.
- After Prof. St. John-Finnes invites James Bond to play a war game simulation with him in Role of Honour, he is warned that the man is a poor loser. Sure enough, he ends up having a childish tantrum at the end of the game. This trait helps partially in saving the day at the climax, where the professor, enraged by the fact that his plan didn't go as expected, attacks the novel's real Big Bad.
- Planet Earth Is Blue: When Nova beats Mallory at Chutes and Ladders, Mallory swears, throws her piece, and knocks the board on the floor.
- Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Justified with Joseph Albright in volume 2: the last time he lost, to a serving girl at chess, his father tortured him for most of a day and had her entire family killed. Therefore, after losing to Oliver in a duel, he summons a swarm of stinger bees to threaten the other characters present into letting him wipe the memories so he can say he won. The Sword Roses are having none of that and defeat enough of the bees for Nanao to finish him off in single combat.
- Roys Bedoys: Roys is known for getting a bit grumpy whenever he loses at games, particularly if he thought he was going to win.
- In A Song of Ice and Fire and its TV adaptation, when Ser Gregor Clegane is unhorsed in a tourney, he calls for his sword and proceeds to decapitate his steed and attempt to murder his victorious opponent in full view of the King and his court.
- When Don Poiteau from The Speed of Dark lost his first fencing tournament, he drank a six-pack, threw up behind a tree, cried, and said it was the worst day of his life.
- In the Star Trek Expanded Universe The Q Continuum trilogy, Q reveals a former acquaintance of his named 0 who is a mass-murdering example of this trope. With powers comparable to the Q, 0 is the one who teaches young Q the value of testing younger races. However, as Q finds out, 0 does not like to have the younger races beat his tests. The first example is when 0 and Q infiltrate the Calamarain society but are discovered and expelled. 0, angry at this, freezes the Calamarain for centuries (if not millennia). This is the reason why they're later pissed off at Q. The second example involves 0 testing the ancient Tkon Empire whose homeworld's star is reaching the end of its life and will go nova within a century or two. Using their advanced technology, the Tkon are building a giant transporter around their star and around a faraway younger star with similar mass. The goal is to swap them. 0 invites three other omnipotent beings (Gorgan, (*), and The One) to help him "test" the Tkon. They end up starting a civil war between the inner and outer planets, but the Tkon manage to come together in the end and complete the project. In a final act of defiance, 0 reaches into the star and turns its fusion up a notch, resulting in a supernova that consumes the system and the surrounding systems, leaving barely anything of the Tkon Empire. The Q Continuum shows up too late to save the Tkon, but they manage to defeat 0 and his cronies.
- To the Nietzscheans of Andromeda this is a racial trait. However, as Gaheris explains to Dylan, this is because to the Nietzscheans, life is a constant contest, and every instance is far more important than mere life or death. Nietzschean existence is all about proving your genetic superiority so that you will be selected to procreate and perpetuate your genes. Any loss could be the one that makes a potential mate think your genes aren't worthwhile, and any victory could be the one that impresses the person you want to mate with. Therefore, losing is more important than mere life and death.
- Babylon 5: When it's clear that he's about to be overthrown by Captain Sheridan's rebellion, Earth Alliance President Clark puts a PPG to his head rather than face up to his atrocities, and programs Earth's defense satellites to fire on the planet itself in the hopes of cleansing it of all life.
- The Big Bang Theory:
- Sheldon Cooper is established as a rather sore loser. Of course, he's also a rather unpleasant winner.
- Bernadette has proven herself a sore loser when she loses and a smug prick when she wins, as Raj, Howard, and Penny can attest when they watch her play Fortnite.
- In Cheers, Cliff Clavin appears on Jeopardy! and winds up with a score more than six times that of his trailing opponent at the end of Double Jeopardy!, guaranteeing him a win as long as he doesn't wager too much. Unable to think of the correct answer to Final Jeopardy!, he tries to keep Alex from reading his response. Then Cliff wagers everything on the question being "who are three people who've never been in my kitchen", dropping his score to $0. Immediately following are efforts by Cliff to convince the staff and audience that he was the real winner, including yelling at a camera.
- Frasier also has some spectacular blow-ups when Woody and his dad beat him at chess.
- CSI had a player in a word game tournament take his loss (to an opponent whose move was dastardly but technically allowable) so badly, he decided to shove letter tiles from the game in his opponent's mouth, choking him to death.
- Woe betide he who beats Hank from Corner Gas at golf. He will follow the victor around endlessly while constantly making an obnoxious whining noise.
- Frasier: Frasier himself when he loses something, often obsessing and sulking for days afterwards. Of course, he's insufferable when he wins as well.
- Friends: When Joey gets nominated for a "Soapy" award Rachel tells him he should practice his "Gracious Loser Face", where he looks disappointed but accepts the other guy deserved the award more. At the ceremony, Joey loses and instead of acting gracious, he starts ranting to Rachel all while the camera is pointed directly at him. He then has to go on stage to present a different award and is still visibly mad about losing in his own category.
- Game of Thrones:
- Ser Gregor Clegane, upon losing a joust to Ser Loras, decapitates his own horse and then proceeds to attack the now-unarmed Loras. Right in front of the king and all the joust spectators.
- Although Loras doesn't do or say anything negative to Brienne after she wins their melee competition, he's shown to be bitter about his defeat when he speaks to Renly in private.
- Balon bitches and moans incessantly about his losses, even though his belief in the Iron Price means everything he lost was taken fairly because he wasn't strong enough to keep it. He's also fond of referring to northerners as a bunch of soft girly weaklings, even though they've repeatedly whooped his ass and taken his stuff, which should, according to his own fucked up belief system, prove that they're stronger than him.
- Gladiators (2024): The show's resident Heels take losing badly.
- Viper destroys Bradley's microphone whilst being interviewed about his poor performance. There's also a glimpse of him getting very close and personal, glowering at the referee, after he's disqualified from "Collision".
- Legend blames one loss on "The Wall" on the bad lighting of the arena. He also refuses handshakes — and tackles Barney to the mat when Barney's more interested in talking about a contender's success than Legend's own performance.
- Goosebumps (1995): In the episode "The Haunted House Game", the two final ghosts refuse to let the two protagonists leave the house even after they won the game fair and square.
- The InBESTigators: Kyle after losing the 100-meter race to another student in "The Case of the Spoiled Sports Day", which sets off an investigation that leads to a cheating conspiracy.
- Interview with the Vampire (2022): In "Like Angels Put in Hell by God", when Lestat de Lioncourt loses his first chess game against Claudia, he throws a temper tantrum with a Foreign-Language Tirade and a Desk Sweep of Rage, which sends the chess pieces flying across the room.
- Bruno from Intimate is an up-and-coming actor with a rather inflated ego. When his co-star Oskar sends his twin brother Emil to work in his stead he plays along until Emil outacts him, upon which he reveals their Twin Switch, throwing both of them under the bus; when he gets turned down at an audition, he can't accept that he genuinely wasn't good enough and blames it on being "too straight and white" for the, in his mind, diversity-obsessed casting directors.
- Little Lunch:
- Atticus in "The Beep Test", who desperately tries to avoid the test purely so Tamara can't beat him. Once she sprains her ankle, he's totally enthusiastic about it.
- Debra Jo's also a pretty bad loser, as seen when she calls her mother to get her out of school when Mrs. Goncha holds a spelling test on words she doesn't know.
- Master Vile from Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. How many other Evil Overlords actually throw a childish temper-tantrum after losing? (Berating minions doesn't count?) (Even Prince Sproket — an actual child — never did so.)
- In The Office (UK), Finch has an outright Villainous Breakdown after losing a pub trivia night, invents a "double-or-nothing" kettle-tossing competition, and starts insulting the trivia night's winners after "winning" the kettle-toss.
- Oz: After losing a boxing match fair and square to Khan, Wangler immediately starts whining about having been screwed over and has Poet humiliate Said, the leader of Khan's gang, as "revenge".
- Inverted in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode, "The Squire of Gothos" Trelane is a poor loser when his parents step in to end the "game" when he was "winning". (He was actually winning, but acted as if he lost when he was not able to complete the victory.)
- One episode of Taxi starts with Alex telling everyone he won $1,300 from Louie in a bet, and Louie is very, very angry about it. After Louie threatens to fire anyone who laughs at him (they all do anyway) he convinces Alex to go double or nothing on a football game, but later, when Louie gloats about how his team only has to make an easy field goal to win, they botch it, and he now owes Alex $2,600. Later, Louie convinces Alex to go double or nothing again, betting that Tony’s protégé will lose his first match, bringing $5,200 in cash to the stadium to prove he can cover it. Alex accepts after telling Louie off in front of Tony and the protégé in a short "The Reason You Suck" Speech; this proves prophetic because Tony’s student wins via spectacular knockout, humiliating Louie (and adding insult to injury, receives a sweet deal from a boxing syndicate which also gains Tony five grand). In the final scene, Louie storms into the locker room, stuffs the cash into Alex’s pocket, and curses, "Take it and DIE! Die, die, DIE!" before storming off.
- Young Sheldon: Sheldon shows to perhaps be an even bigger one as a kid. When he lost the science fair, he makes a scene complaining over the result, ignores his parents' attempts to cheer him up, causes disruptions at school due to believing there is no point if he won't be rewarded for his effort, and temporarily decides to give up on science altogether.
- He flips the chessboard when Paige beats him at chess.
- Tartarus, Lord of Destruction, of Doom Breaker reacted poorly to the fact that he lost his hand to Zephyr.
- Old Master Q have a comic strip where Master Q and Mr. Chiu - depicted here as Q's boss - are playing chess, with Master Q repeatedly winning. The strip's last page? Chiu deciding to unload a three-foot stack of documents on Master Q's desk and forcing Master Q to work overtime. In all fairness, Master Q did gleefully laugh aloud after his third or so victory.
- The Tom Chapin song "Sore Loser" is, as you might expect, about one, who takes it poorly when he loses at checkers and struck out in baseball.
It was the checkers championship of the whole known galaxy
My brother still had all his pieces, I was down to my last three
When he triple jumped me I got angry and my temperature soared!
Then he said, "King me!" So I crowned him... with the board! - Suicidal Tendencies has "A Small Victory", the lyrics discussing the Sore Loser verbatim — as well as his sister trope, the Sore Winner.
- Classical Mythology
- In the story of Arachne, a girl who claimed to be a better weaver than Athena and ended up in a contest with the Goddess of Wisdom herself, which ends with Arachne dying and Athena turning her into a spider in order to acknowledge and preserve her exceptional skills. There are many different tellings of the story, but they tend to fall into one of two categories, both of which fit this trope:
- In versions where Athena wins, Arachne hangs herself in shame, and Athena turns her into a spider out of pity (the noose becoming her web).
- In versions where Arachne wins, Athena tries to/actually does kill her in a fit of rage but feels remorse and/or shame for her actions and turns her into a spider. It should be noted though that in some of these stories, Athena's rage is arguably well deserved not because she had lost specifically but because Arachne was a poor winner, gloating smugly over her triumph over a Greek deity, any of which tend to be especially famous for responding to any sign of mortal disrespect with immediate and excessive retribution.
- The Sphinx was an example. After Oedipus solved her riddle, she was so upset that she committed suicide by throwing herself off the cliff she perched on, rather than live with the shame.
- In The Thebaid, Poseidon causes an earthquake that rocks all of Nemea just so that his son can win a horse race.
- In some versions (depending on which adaptation you're reading), the Sirens did the same thing after Odysseus' crew escaped from them. This may be an exaggeration of the original story, however, because their success record wasn't perfect. (Jason and the Argonauts escaped from them as well, though Odysseus was the only one who heard them and lived. Jason and crew survived because Orpheus drowned out their music. Butes, who had really good hearing, also heard them, despite Orpheus' effort, and lived, but he only survived due to literal divine intervention, so it might not have counted.)
- In the story of Arachne, a girl who claimed to be a better weaver than Athena and ended up in a contest with the Goddess of Wisdom herself, which ends with Arachne dying and Athena turning her into a spider in order to acknowledge and preserve her exceptional skills. There are many different tellings of the story, but they tend to fall into one of two categories, both of which fit this trope:
- Athena and Hera supported the Greeks during the Trojan War because they resented prince Paris for choosing Aphrodite over them in the infamous beauty contest.
- Apollo got into a music contest with a satyr named Marsyas. Apollo played the lute, while Marsyas played the reed pipes. In one version of the myth, Marsyas actually won the first round. Apollo responded by turning his lute upside down and challenging Marsyas to play his instrument upside down as well. Marsyas obviously couldn't do that and thus lost the second round. Apollo then flayed Marsyas alive as payback for daring to challenge him.
- Thor from Norse Mythology. In one myth he, Loki, and another guy are invited to Utgard (the capital of the giants) and are humiliated in a series of challenges (the giants were cheating by means of concealing the reality and thus sheer difficulty of these challenges). When Thor fails his task (drinking from an apparently bottomless jug) he furiously demands two more chances to prove his power. Their host complies (lifting a cat's tail, wrestling an old woman), delaying the realization the giants are in fact extremely impressed by their guests' feats (in reality, Thor was trying to drink the sea dry, lift up the world-serpent, and wrestling with the personification of old age; the other two challenges involved consuming things faster than fire and outrunning thought) and the whole thing was just a kind of hazing.
- One story from Chinese Mythology mentions how once the proud demon Gonggong went around the Heavens, challenging the other gods because he wanted to have a nice fight. Unfortunately he met his match in the god of fire and was beaten up pretty bad. Rather than accept defeat, he went to Mount Buzhou and committed suicide by smashing his head against the mountain, causing the collapse of part of the heavenly vault and a near flood of the mortal world, which was averted by the Goddess Nu Wa.
- A hallmark trope among heels, or the mark of a Face–Heel Turn, is taking a loss very badly. This is especially true if it's a title match.
- Hulk Hogan refused to leave ringside after being eliminated in the 1987 Survivor Series until referees threatened to strip him of the title. He went into histrionics
after losing the WWF Championship in 1988, and he illegally eliminated the men who threw him out of the 1989 and 1992 Royal Rumbles, including his then-best friend Sid Justice. In WCW, he spoiled Randy Savage's 1995 World War 3 victory celebration. None of it kept him from portraying an All-American Face.
- When Bob Backlund returned to the WWF in 1993, he brought up how he never submitted when he lost the WWE World Heavyweight Title
in 1983. In 1994, Bret Hart gave him a title shot and defeated him. Afterwards, Bob snapped and locked Bret in a Crossface Chickenwing submission hold. This marked the beginning of the psycho "Mr. Backlund" character.
- The 1995 Survivor Series. Bret Hart challenged Diesel for the WWE World Heavyweight Title
. Bret caught Diesel in a surprise pinning combo for the win. Afterwards, Diesel gave him three powerbombs.
- It's also the most likely reason why WWE squandered valuable time and money making the Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior DVD. Warrior returned to WWE at WrestleMania XII in 1996 and squashed Triple H in around 90 seconds, and HHH never got a return match.
- In 2005, Chris Hero lost in The Ted Petty Invitational to Arik Cannon and went on the warpath against all things IWA Mid-South, disowning his students, attacking one of his instructors in Ian Rotten, and destroying the Mid-South Heavyweight Championship belt. Also counts as misplaced retribution.
- Even after Ring of Honor finally got CZW to give up its active campaign against it, Chris Hero continued the attack on the promotion with Claudio Castagnoli. As a result, he was praised by CZW owner John Zandig and eventually awarded a full-time spot on the ROH roster.
- Presumably why CM Punk attacked Kane with The Undertaker's urn and mocked the Undertaker after he fled.
- The Shield has shown this after Undertaker defeated Dean Ambrose in a one-on-one match. As soon as Undertaker won, they began beating him up, yelling at him that they still remained undefeated.
- The Bella Twins after their match against The Funkadactyls. They pulled their switching trick, but the referee saw this and reversed his decision for the winners. But the twins were not happy and gave the Funkadactyls a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown as a result.
- The Premier Athlete Brand didn't take their losses too well, except Mr. A's because they began to view him as a failure and purposefully set him up to lose against Moose at EVOLVE 30. But when Trent Baretta lost to Uhaa Nation later on in the same show (appropriately titled Baretta vs Nation) they all ran out to attack the victor.
- Ivelisse Vélez wasn't just sore about losing the SHINE Championship belt to Mia Yim at WWN's China tour, but also threw a temper tantrum about Yim getting what she expected to be her rematch with Nevaeh, who made Ivelisse look bad even though Vélez won the last time they wrestled.
- Scott Hall is notorious for retaliation on any victor who defeats him by a surprise pin. For instance, while busy taunting the referee has his opponent take advantage of the distraction by coming from behind and making a successful pin. To no surprise, Hall, with the aid of his comrade, repays by attacking both the winning opponent and the referee.
- Fraggle Rock: In one episode, Wembley beats Gobo in the Rockbeetle Race. Gobo doesn't take it well, claiming Wembley got lucky. He accepts Red's offer of a rematch, much to Wembley's dismay.
- In the Buddy Rich episode of The Muppet Show, the last act was a drum battle between Rich and Animal. After losing to Rich, Animal threw one of his drums at Buddy in a rage. Lampshaded earlier when Rich met Animal backstage.
Buddy Rich: He looks like a sore loser.
Floyd: If that chain breaks, you'll be a sore winner! - Sesame Street:
- This is Big Bird's issue for the "Staring Contest" episode, not wanting to stop having so many staring contests against Snuffy unless he wins just one. He learns his lesson in the end that it doesn't matter whether he wins or loses and what's more important is they had fun playing.
- The Big Bad Wolf suffers this in Episode 4082. Whenever he loses a game against someone else, he gets furious and huffs and puffs them away. In the end, Big Bad Wolf learns he can't win everything all the time and it shouldn't matter if he does, and with that, he learns to control himself when losing again before he finally wins.
- American Football
- Bruce Irvin of the Seattle Seahawks has the dubious honor of being the only player ejected from the Super Bowl after throwing punches during the closing seconds of Super Bowl XLIX. What puts him into Sore Loser territory was that the Seahawks had no chance to win at the point Irvin instigated the brawl.
- Tom Brady is widely regarded as one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time in American Football, but he's said to take losing very badly. After all of Brady's Super Bowl losses,note Brady went straight to the locker room after the game without shaking the hands of anyone from the opposing team.
- It's not just limited to football. Pro golfer Jordan Spieth recalls playing a match with Brady at Augusta National
. After Spieth, who plays golf for a living, beat Brady on the 18th hole, Brady refused to speak with him afterwards.
- It's not just limited to football. Pro golfer Jordan Spieth recalls playing a match with Brady at Augusta National
- After losing to the Atlanta Falcons in the 2015 season, Carolina Panthers QB Cam Newton wouldn't even address the press in the post-game interview. Also, after losing Super Bowl 50 to the Denver Broncos, Newton only gave a very short interview before he just walked away from the press.
- In the 2018 NFC Championship game between the New Orleans Saints and Los Angeles Rams, Saints QB Drew Brees' pass to Tommylee Lewis was ruled incomplete after Rams' Nickell Robey-Coleman made contact, resulting in what should have been a pass interference call. No call was made, regulation ended in a 23-23 tie, and the Saints eventually lost in overtime, 26-23. Several Saints fans took out billboard space in Atlanta (where the Super Bowl was played) to complain, and others sought to file a lawsuit to annul the game at the point of the penalty and have it replayed. There were even rumors that some Saints fans tried to find which hotels the officials were staying at in order to assault them.
- Chess Grand Master Garry Kasparov was in a foul mood after finally being defeated by the computer, Deep Blue
. He claimed that IBM had a team of Chess Masters aiding the computer. IBM declined Kasparov a rematch due to the insinuations.
- Alexander Alekhine was reported to have resigned in a 1922 game by throwing his king across the room. On another occasion, he accepted his loss graciously, before returning to his hotel room and smashing every piece of furniture in the room.
- When Aaron Nimzovitch lost a match to Friedrich Saemisch, he stood on the table and shouted across the tournament hall, "Why must I lose to this idiot?"
- A Danish player lost in a tournament due to a poor move involving his queen. To get even, he reportedly broke into the tournament hall that night, went from one board to the next, and cut the heads off all the queens.
- The infamous Nuclear Tesuji
in Go, aptly described as "Tossing the board at the wall, denting it and the wall prior to uppercutting your opponent." As demonstrated above, tantrums like that can happen in any board game.
- Skating:
- Nancy Kerrigan's infamous declarations against Oksana Baiul in the Lillehammer Olympic Games of 1994 came after Kerrigan's loss to Baiul for the Gold. Upon the delay of the medal ceremony, Kerrigan began echoing the rumors about Baiul taking too much time to fix her make-up (in reality, there wasn't a Ukrainian flag handy so Baiul simply couldn't get onto the platform)... near a still working microphone.
- After being edged out by Yuka Sato in the 1994 World Championships, Surya Bonaly initially refused to come out for the medal ceremony, then refused to get onto the platform, then yanked off her silver medal, feeling that Sato, who was Japanese, had won solely because the competition was being held in Japan. Four years later at the Olympics, she performed a backflip — a move illegal in amateur competition — and ended her program with her back to the judges, essentially telling them "fuck you" for what she felt was years of unfair scoring due to her not being a typical figure skater — aside from being black, she chose loud, garish costumes and music, in sharp contrast to the ballet-like choices of her competitors.
- During the Montreal Olympic Games of 1976, American swimmer Shirley Babaschoff made a rather bad joke about the gold-winning East German swimming team and their members' records, commenting on their almost manly voices. She was accused of being this and of baselessly saying they were taking steroids, alongside getting the derisive nickname "Sour Shirley". For worse, she couldn't know it... but she wasn't that far off.
- Belarussian gymnast Svetlana Boginskaya developed a rivalry with American Kim Zmeskal after the latter defeated her at the 1991 World Championships, outright stating that the only reason Zmeskal won is that the competition was held in America and that she would have won had it been held in Europe and refused to shake Zmeskal's hand during the medal ceremony.
- Judoka Masahiko Kimura hated losing a match, to the extent that he considered quitting judo after a string of losses. When he was convinced by his friends to stay, he devoted his life to never losing again.
- The fans of the Vancouver Canucks are notorious for this kind of behavior whenever their favorite team loses the Stanley Cup Final against the other team in a nail-biter. And by behavior, we mean rioting: both of the Canucks' Game 7 losses in the 1994
and 2011
Finals were marked with millions of dollars in damages. Conversely, their getting swept in the 1982 Finals at the hands of the juggernaut and massively-favored New York Islanders had no such disturbances.
- Swedish ice hockey forward Lias Andersson threw his silver medal at the crowd after his team lost the 2018 World Junior Ice Hockey Championship Final to Canada.
- After losing Game 6 of the 1985 World Series on a blown call by Don Denkinger, the St. Louis Cardinals imploded even further by being routed in Game 7 by the Kansas City Royals. Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog and pitcher Joaquín Andújar were ejected for arguing balls and strikes by Denkinger; the former went as far as to say, "We wouldn't even be here if you hadn't missed the fucking call last night!" and the latter charged Denkinger after being tossed. Another Cardinals pitcher, John Tudor, broke his hand punching an electric fan.
- After cleanly losing the "Fight of the Century" to Joe Frazier in 1971, Muhammad Ali refused to give Frazier any props, accused the judges of rigging the results (even though Frazier clearly outlanded him by over a hundred punches and knocked him down twice), and continued to fling racialized insults at Frazier for months after the fight was over. He also refused to honor his previous boast that if Frazier won, he'd "crawl across the ring" if he lost. By contrast, Ali was a textbook Graceful Loser against Ken Norton and Leon Spinks.
- After Russia recorded its worst medal tally in modern history at the 2020 Olympics, politicians and news commentators irrationally ranted that the West cheated at the Games and accused them of promoting "Russophobia." That the Russian government hid a massive doping scandal is also another source of contention, which led to complaints about alleged Western bias when Russian athletes were forced to play under a neutral title. The state-sponsored doping campaign would make what East Germany did with its athletes look like child's play.
- When Israel's Linoy Ashram won the gold medal instead of Dina Averina in individual rhythmic gymnastics, Averina stated that the judges were unfair and she considers herself the rightful champion. The Russian Olympic Committee's attempts to challenge this failed, causing state-controlled media to rant that a vast Western "conspiracy" was out there to undermine them. Similar tirades were made when Bulgaria upended Russia's long winning streak at the team level.
- In a combination of this and Second Place Is for Losers, China blatantly tried to fudge its 2020 Olympic medal count by including those won by Taiwan, Macao, and Hong Kong in the tally as a way to put themselves ahead of Team USA, who bagged 39 gold medals. People mocked them for such silliness.
- Infamously, Cuban Taekwondo practitioner Angel Matos
attacked the referee of his match in the 2008 Olympics when he was disqualified for not returning to the mat after requesting a kyeshi (effectively a medical time out) for a foot injury. By World Taekowndo Federation rules used in the Olympics, kyeshi lasts one minute — after one minute the requester must return to the ring, request a further extension of the kyeshi, or cede the match. Matos did not return to the mat after being given a 20-second-remaining time warning, nor did he request additional kyeshi. As a result, the referee ruled that he had chosen to retire since that was the only remaining ruling. Matos objected to this, then kicked the referee unconscious and spat on the mat. In light of the staggering lack of sportsmanship on display, he was banned from all Federation events, and his 2008 records were wiped. Furthermore, his coach made rather wildly unfounded accusations that the referee was taking bribes from Kazakhstan, and even Fidel Castro got in on the debate, accusing the Olympic judges of "stealing fights" from Cuban participants.
- After losing to Chinese amateur Si Jiahui in the opening round of the 2021 UK Snooker Championship, veteran professional snooker player Shaun Murphy provoked controversy by ranting that novices should not be allowed to play snooker tournaments. This led to rounds of mockery on social media.
- In the 2016 Olympics, pole vaulter Renaud Lavillenie was defeated by local athlete Thiago Braz. He could just accept that Braz had the night of his life, clearing the higher jumps that Lavillenie also attempted, but he went on to declare that the rowdy Rio de Janeiro crowd supporting his own made him feel like Jesse Owens in 1936. As expected by anyone being compared to Nazi Germany, the Brazilians didn't take it well and booed Lavillenie as he received his silver medal, bringing him to tears. Lavillenie went on to issue an apology, saying he regretted such a sore statement made in the heat of the moment, while the Olympic organization asked the crowd in the stadium to show more respect in other medal ceremonies.
- In the 1992 Olympics, Russian weightlifter Ibragim Samadov (representing the so-called "Unified Team", (all of the former USSR countries except the Baltic States) received the bronze medal for light-heavyweight weightlifting and promptly threw it down on the podium and stomped off. He was promptly banned from the Olympic site and had his medal stripped from him.
- Nick Kyrgios
, an Australian professional tennis player, has been known more for his short fuse and Trash Talk than his actual tennis results. So when he lost the 2022 U.S. Open quarterfinal to Daniil Medvedev, Kyrgios said his efforts counted for nothing and smashed his rackets in his usual manner.
- Atmosfear:
- Khufu is quite upset at the player who defeats him, either claiming credit for their win by claiming to have set them up, throwing a fit, accusing them of cheating, or calling it beginner's luck.
- Same applies to the 2007 and 2019 iterations of the Gatekeeper, who will never take losing well and try to come up with any excuse as to why he lost.
- Monopoly: Per its slogan, the For Sore Losers edition encourages—and celebrates—losing, by allowing collection of Sore Loser coins every time you encounter a bad event, such as paying money or going to Jail. Trading in four coins at the start of any turn of yours converts your token to Mr. Monopoly and causes most of the rules to turn upside down for you only—you can now take money instead of giving it, send any other player to go to Jail in your place, and so on.
- Sentinels of the Multiverse: Wager Master is a cosmic being who likes to play bizarre and silly games with superheroes. However, he does not take it well when the game goes against him. His Turns Red side, Increased Stakes, is him becoming outraged at the heroes getting ahead of him and going on a rampage. (All this said, he never cheats, and when he does lose, he accepts it, as much as he may sulk.)
- Warhammer 40,000: The backstory depicts the God-Emperor as this; he re-connected with some of his sons by challenging them incognito - and almost lost twice. This isn't so much his desire to win as his desire to prove himself superior; he was willing to let Vulkan take the wheel of the entire empire (temporarily or not) by sacrificing his (larger) hunting trophy in a contest to save his son, but when his other son beat him in an eating contest with the appetite of a Tyrannid, he completely lost it and resorted to whooping his son's ass in full combat.
- Ace Attorney:
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Manfred von Karma is possibly one of the sorest losers in all of fiction. He was so obsessed with his perfect record of court victories that he murdered the one defense attorney ever to mar it (even though Gregory Edgeworth only managed to get him a penalty and still lost the trial), then when that didn't satisfy his need for revenge, spent fifteen years setting up an elaborate plot to destroy said defense attorney's son, including systematically building him up for the sake of the farthest possible fall.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All: Manfred's daughter Franziska has also picked up his tendencies. She is so infuriated at losing to Phoenix in her American court debut that she whips him unconscious before calling the court a sham. In her second trial against Phoenix, she has a more subdued but still angry reaction after Phoenix finds out where Acro hid the murder weapon when her investigators failed to do so. It doesn't help that her investigation forced Acro to hide the weapon in the only safe place he had — under his wheelchair — and backed him into a corner, enabling Phoenix to make his final deduction.
- ANNO: Mutationem: After Ann takes down T.R's mechanical defense system, he hastily throws a temperamental hassle. He quickly regains his composure when Ann arrives to retrieve the stolen ROM.
- In Baldur's Gate III, when asked about his opinions on the rest of the party Cloud Cuckoolander Minsc will initially pretend to not know who The Big Guy Halsin is, and then express a mild distaste for him when pressed. He then begins shouting at his familiar Boo that it has absolutely nothing to do with losing to him in arm-wrestling, and that Halsin cheated by Voluntary Shapeshifting into an owlbear.
- Batman: Arkham Series:
- In Batman: Arkham Asylum, the Riddler constantly mocks and insults Batman's intelligence as he solves his hidden riddles. However, once Batman completes over half of them, Riddler starts to get angry and accuses him of cheating and looking up the answers online.
- In Batman: Arkham Knight, Harley is even worse than the Riddler, taking being arrested by Batman with all the dignity of a kindergartner. He has to carry her as she futilely kicks, hits him, and cries like a baby.
- In Litchi's Gag Reel from BlazBlue: Continuum Shift, a group of characters is playing a board game (including Litchi herself). The usually cool and collected Rachel Alucard ragequits in her first turn after getting a one in the dice, despite Taokaka's warning that quitting the game will cause something really bad to all the participants. It results in everyone getting a permanent itch, and when Rachel came back to her mansion, the itch got to her as well.
- Bug Fables:
- Any time Mothiva loses a fight to Team Snakemouth, she acts like a spoiled toddler by screaming at and insulting them before storming off in a huff.
- Ritchee, a white bee who serves as one of the opponents in Spy Cards Tournament, gets furious when she loses, screaming at Leif for sullying her record and calling him a fluke when spoken afterwards.
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: After the Allies destroy the Psychic Amplifier in Chicago that was about to mind control the entire country, the Soviet commander Vladimir interrupts the transmission to announce that he is wiping the city off the map with a nuclear bomb.
- Cuphead: Some bosses cry and throw tantrums when they're defeated like Ribby and Croaks, Baroness Von Bon, and Willy Warbles (Wally's son).
- In Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, the culprit of the second case spitefully votes for you as the culprit after you prove them guilty, and is the only culprit in the entire series to do so. Every other culprit, no matter how crazy or pissed-off they get during their Villainous Breakdown, eventually accepts defeat and votes for themselves, except for one instance of the culprit not voting at all (which is typically punished with death, but since they're getting punished with death anyway it hardly matters). Even though the previous two games didn't display the voting results, Monokuma implies the votes are always unanimous, except for the second trial of the first game in which Ishimaru votes incorrectly because he refuses to accept that his "bro" Owada committed murder.
- Devil May Cry:
- In Devil May Cry, after his retreat from your first boss fight with him, Phantom will chase Dante down some incredibly narrow corridors. Even Dante found this to be dickish.
- In Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, Beowulf is the only defeated Devil Arm (except for Leviathan) that won't bow to Dante, and he'd rather flee, swearing revenge.
- Laharl, the protagonist of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, shows up as a Hopeless Boss Fight in Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories. If you do manage to beat him, he's so upset he destroys the world. This isn't just limited to Laharl. There's a reason Nippon Ichi games, Disgaea especially, are the poster children for Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum.
- In Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!, Brash Bear is an athlete who prides himself on his Riverside Race record of 1 minute and 15 seconds. If you beat his record and talk to him, he flies off the goddamned handle and slams on his desk repeatedly, causing a tree stump nearby to fall into a river and create a bridge to a cave that is required for 103% Completion.
- Dragon Age:
- In the "Mark of the Assassin" DLC for Dragon Age II, Baron Arlange throws a comically childish temper tantrum after Hawke's party beats him in a hunt, stating that he paid good money to win. He then attacks Hawke and gets handily defeated, after which you can choose to either finish him or let him go (after which he'll try to kill you later).
- In Dragon Age: Inquisition, after the Inquisitor foils most of his plans to conquer Thedas, Corypheus re-opens the Breach, a massive tear in the Veil that will consume the entire world. The ploy is meant to draw the Inquisitor into a final confrontation, but Solas implies that Corypheus is also upsetting the game board so that no one will win.
- In Duck Season, if the player manages to hold off the dog's assault in the game fair and square, they will instead come into the real world, holding a knife, and trying to kill you instead.
- In Elden Ring, there's Margit, the Fell Omen (AKA Morgott, the Omen King), the guardian of the Erdtree, who shows up to battle you in Stormveil Castle, viewing you as a pillager and opportunist who's unworthy of being the next Elden Lord. If you lose the battle (which is bound to happen more than once), he tells you to "put [your] foolish ambitions to rest", but once you do manage to beat him, he disappears, swearing revenge. Sure enough, you fight him again in Leyndell Royal Capital as Morgott, and his attacks are far more fast-paced and aggressive this time around. Even as he lies dying after his second defeat, Morgott still refuses to acknowledge your strength, calling you a fool whose journey is destined to end in failure with his last breath.
- In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, if you complete the Civil War Questline in favor of the Legion before the final mission of the main quest, you can meet Ulfric Stormcloak and Galmar Stone-Fist in Sovngarde. While the former is simply horrified that his war has simply given Alduin more souls to feed on, the latter thinks you're here to haunt him and curses your name for all eternity. However, after defeating Alduin he'll tell you that eternity is too long to hold a grudge.
- At various points in the Fallout series, it's very heavily implied that China shot first during The Great War as an act of desperation after losing the Sino-American War and being on the verge of collapse, dooming the entire world out of spite.
- Fate Series:
- Fate/stay night: For all of her knightly aspects Saber's hatred of losing is probably second only to her hatred of bad food. This is shown most prominently during her day out with Shirou and Rin in the Unlimited Blade Works route where the three of them try their hand at a batting cage with the caveat of not using magical energy. It becomes apparent that without it Saber is, in fact, the weakest of the three and spends time afterwards rather grumpy.
- It also pops up in the sequel, Fate/hollow ataraxia, during Shirou and Saber's date at the water park. It turns out that Saber can't swim (due to being able to Walk on Water thanks to the blessing of the Lady of the Lake), so Shirou easily beats her in a swim race. He regrets it afterward.
- This quality is present in all incarnations of her character. At the end of Camelot in Fate/Grand Order, the Holy Lance Rhongomyniad is broken and Bedivere has returned Excalibur to the Lion King (a version of Artoria that has transcended her humanity and become a Divine Spirit). As the Singularity is collapsing and the Chaldea team is Rayshifting away, she tells them that they do not truly stand triumphant until they defeat her again, with her having Excalibur this time. She prepares for battle even though it should be obvious that no fight can happen at all since the Singularity is seconds away from disappearing, and she knows it, meaning that her final declaration was just bluster meant to let claim victory and run.
- Fate/Grand Order makes use of Saber in a rather amazing fashion. At the end of the Camelot chapter, Bedivere finally manages to fulfill his goal and return Excalibur to his king. By this point, though, Altria has become Goddess Rhongomyniad thanks to the holy spear's influence and has had her personality warped dramatically from what it once was. However, this one facet remains unchanged as, once she's been defeated by the protagonist, she challenges them to yet another fight (for the record, the protagonist has already beaten her TWICE), this time with her wielding Excalibur. The protagonist's dialogue choice gives them the option of lampshading this, resulting in one of the few genuinely funny moments in the otherwise dead-serious Singularity.
- Senpai in Friday Night Funkin' starts out gracious, but after losing the first song to Boyfriend he snaps, making vulgar threats and cheating in the second song. Since he's a dating sim player character, it's just not possible for him to be defeated by a rival, or rejected by a girl, so he can't process it happening.
- God of War:
- Lakhesis in God of War II is at first polite and even flirty towards Kratos. Then the "petulant mortal they were controlling" kick her curvaceous ass, prompting her to become suddenly far harsher.
- In God of War III, Hermes too is quite bratty. While he spends most of his time taunting and mocking Kratos before running off, once the Ghost of Sparta corners him Hermes acts like a school bully complaining how unfair it is that he's suddenly at a disadvantage and that he's no longer having fun.
- If you beat a Slytherin at anything in one of the Harry Potter games, expect one of two responses; A) they declare that you cheated, or B) they declare that they didn't really try anyway. The one exception would be Token Evil Teammate Sebastian Sallow in Hogwarts Legacy, who graciously accepts defeat after potentially losing a duel to the Player Character at the start of the game, as the Slytherins in the setting are Adaptational Nice Guys as opposed to their Always Chaotic Evil portrayal in the original books.
- In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Ron responds to one such Slytherin by saying, "Why are Slytherins such bad losers?"
- Highway Blossoms has Mariah, who, being a foul-tempered jerkass, naturally fits this trope. She, her sister Tess, and their friend Joe are main duo Amber and Marina's main competition on the treasure hunt, so she doesn't take it well when Amber and Marina find the first of the buried treasures. Later on, Mariah gets similarly angry after losing to Amber in a game to win back Marina's share of the treasure from Mariah.
- In I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, Vace doesn't take losing the Kombucha Cup well and accuses your team of cheating if you beat his team in sportsball. Beating him in almost any competition deducts 2 points from his heart meter, especially if you rub it in.
- When a batter strikes out in Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball, two of the three reactions—which are pre-set for each batter—will have him either break the bat over his knee, or turn towards the player and yell "Oh, come on!"
- The King of Fighters: Rugal Bernstein. Nothing says "Waaah, I can't handle defeat!" like a Villainous Breakdown followed by blowing up your own aircraft carrier with everyone else still on it. One would think that a Blood Knight would enjoy having a strong opponent to face again at a later date...
- Not to mention that, in most of his later re-appearances in the non-canon games, he does this again every time the player beats him...
- His son Adelheid takes his own defeats in grace and stride. His daughter Rose, however, is very much an utter sore loser.
- The "Loveable" Igniz in KOF 2001 won't accept anything less than godhood. Once you beat him, his response is to send the meteor base you're fighting on (long story) crashing into the Earth.
- Kirby:
- King Dedede, Kirby's perennial Friendly Rival, is given a personality similar to his anime counterpart in Kirby Battle Royale. When Kirby defeats him at the end of the game, he becomes enraged and demands a rematch. When he loses that, he demands a third battle while piloting his new Humongous Mecha, the Dededestroyer Z.
- Kirby: Planet Robobot has President Haltmann. He initially acts under a veneer of corporate politeness, but he becomes increasingly unhinged as his boss battle goes on. When he's knocked out of his Executive Suit and defeated, his reaction is to throw a violent temper tantrum, ranting that Kirby and the rest of Popstar are "all wild savages" who need to be "taught their place".
- Zan Partizanne from Kirby Star Allies is a more pragmatic example. When Kirby and friends take her down, she is shocked to discover how tough they really are, and decides it is best to cut her losses and destroy the Jambastion. That said, the maniacal laugh she lets out as she does so implies a more personal stake in the fight.
- The Final Boss of Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Fecto Elfilis, is far and away the sorest loser in the franchise. After Kirby uses his Mouthful Mode to free Elfilin from Fecto Elfilis's body, it flies into a rage and creates a massive dimensional rift in the air. Then it sends Planet Popstar hurtling through the portal. What makes this extra petty is that Fecto Elfilis doesn't even need a physical body to survive. It's throwing a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum purely out of spite. All of this is justified; according to the Kirby and the Forgotten Land Perfect Support Guide, Elfilin represents Elfilis' compassion, intelligence, and conscience. Without all of those, the other half, Fecto Forgo, has the mind of a child, and everyone knows how a child can't take losses well.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time:
- Ingo gets so mad that he loses both horse races against Link that he initially demands a rematch with Epona being offered as the reward and then later traps Link in the ranch.
- Upon being defeated, Ganondorf uses his magic to collapse his own castle in an attempt to kill Link and Zelda. When they survive that, he uses the Triforce of Power to transform into his Ganon form, becoming a monstrous, feral berserker hellbent on crushing his enemies. And when he's defeated again and the Sages seal him in the Evil Realm, Ganondorf curses Link, Zelda and the Sages while sporting an unhinged look on his face, swearing to one day escape and exterminate their descendants.
- The Final Boss of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Demon King Demise, is such a terrible loser that not only does he condemn Link and Zelda's descendants to fight evil for eternity, The Power of Hate allows him to reincarnate into Ganondorf, who personally torments the heroes in the centuries following Skyward Sword. You know someone's got problems accepting defeat when he spends his dying breath speaking one of the most notorious villains in video game history into existence.
- Ganondorf himself becomes this in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, thanks to this version of him turning out even nastier than previous incarnations of the character. Although he loves a challenge and lives for the thrill of battle, Ganondorf's ego is so fragile that he would rather swallow his Secret Stone and transform into a dragon, sacrificing his body and his mind in the process, than face the possibility of defeat. Considering everything he gives up for this transformation, it's not hard to interpret this as Ganondorf choosing to die and take all of Hyrule with him.
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time:
- In LEGO Stunt Rally, the boss racers (with the exception of Snake and Mr. X) make their frustration over losing their solo races very clear. Radium whines while pounding the steering wheel of his vehicle, Baron Flambo throws a tantrum in the middle of the road, and Glacia cries into one of the wheels of her vehicle.
- Manafinder: Sol and Mar are upset when Lambda beats their challenges since they wanted the challenges to be intentionally unfair in order to scam her out of her money. They always refuse to pay the full reward to Lambda and start blatantly cheating from the second challenge onwards.
- Metal Wolf Chaos has Richard Hawk, who, after finally losing to Michael, tries to blow up the entire Earth out of spite.
"Never, never, never! I will never lose to you, Michael!!!"
- Minecraft: Story Mode:
- When your build seems like it's gonna win the competition, Aiden decides to unleash some lava on your contraption.
- Petra will call your team out on this if you were to say "losing sucks" while they're talking about how they lost the Build-Off.
- Aiden and his crew are this when Jesse's new Order of The Stone keep finding treasure. What's more, Aiden wanted to be the hero of the Wither Storm crisis instead of Jesse, because he doesn't feel Jesse truly earned it.
- Goro from Mortal Kombat is a moderate example; his pre-fight dialogue between him and Liu Kang in X shows that he really doesn't like being reminded of the first time they fought.
- In Muppet Race Mania, some characters (like Kermit, Gonzo, and Robin) are Graceful Losers; others are... considerably less so (though their discontent never gets beyond dialogue).
Miss Piggy: We lost? Ha ha, no. There must be some mistake.
Rowlf: Losing is worse than a bad case of fleas.
Bean Bunny: I hate losing. Let's try again!- Print ads for this game as well as Muppet Monster Adventure definitely hint at Miss Piggy being a bit more volatile in regard to this. One shows Kermit tied up with a PlayStation controller and the text: "Here's a tip. Let Miss Piggy win."
- Rothschild in Musashi Samurai Legend: As he pulls a Load-Bearing Boss on Musashi after his defeat.
- Razor in 2005's Need for Speed: Most Wanted. It's bad enough that the guy's a cheating bastard who gyps you out of your precious ride at the start of the game by cutting the gas line. Once you rise through the ranks and beat him in a fair race (while he's in your prized ride, no less), the guy tries to sic his cronies on you after you win. Luckily, your female partner who also happens to be an undercover cop is there to prevent this from happening.
- Several fighters in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl flip when they lose fights. Examples include SpongeBob and Jenny spewing Ocular Gushers, Garfield throwing a tantrum complete with a text bubble saying "WAAAAAAH!", Cat throttling Dog, and Ren crying his buggy little eyes.
- Two gym leaders pull this trope on you when you beat them in Pokémon Gold and Silver. Whitney cries and doesn't hand you over her badge, but she does calm down and gives it to you after a little bit. Clair on the other hand flat out refuses to admit that you have beaten her and says you still have "lazy ideals," and won't hand over the badge until the player passes a test in the Dragon's Den. In Crystal, HeartGold and SoulSilver, not only does Clair believe you failed the test presented by the Dragon Clan Master, but she once again refuses to believe that you actually passed the test and won't give the badge over to you. It's only until the Master threatens to tell Lance (Clair's cousin and the local Pokémon Champion) about Clair's bad behavior that Clair finally decides to hand the badge over, but she still acts sore about it. There's also The Rival, Silver, who continually bad-mouths about how weak you are even after you've wiped the floor with him several times.
- Ghetsis was always a Sore Loser, but he takes this trope an extra mile in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon; after losing to the player character, he threatens to kill Lillie if the player doesn't drop their Poké Balls immediately. All the other bosses, even Giovanni, take their defeats in stride; Ghetsis is the only one among them who refuses to admit defeat.
"Myah-ha-ha! No, no, no, no, no! You don't get it, do you? I can't be defeated! I won't be! IT. CANNOT. BE. ALLOWED!"
- Guzma openly self-harms in the face of defeat, screaming insults at himself while ripping his hair out.
- Downplayed with Leon from Sword and Shield, but he's clearly upset after he's defeated by the protagonist. During the Championship finals, he gives a grimace before becoming the epitome of a Graceful Loser, but when the cameras aren't rolling, like during his defeat at the Battle Tower, he takes much longer to recover — blatantly obscuring his face while he regathers his composure while clenching his fists all the while. Justified since he's been completely undefeated since he became the Champion when he was at least ten years old, so he's not used to handling losing.
- Sword version exclusive Gym Leader Gordie is described in his League Card as having the tendency to shut himself away in the locker room when he loses, making interviewing him after a loss very rare. But apparently, his fans find this endearing.
- Pokémon Scarlet and Violet has Rika and Poppy of the Elite Four. The former applauds you for defeating her but her pout and response of "Not Bad" comes off as mildly passive-aggressive. The latter, being a child roughly half the age of the protagonist, bursts into tears but recovers quickly enough. Also downplayed with Gym Leader Brassius, who pulls an over-dramatic bitter pose and expression upon being defeated, but gets himself together afterwards and praises the protagonist for their win.
- Nascour from Pokémon Colosseum pulls a This Cannot Be! upon defeat and immediately demands a rematch from Wes. He only stands down because his superior Evice arrives and demands he stop further embarrassing himself. Not that Evice takes HIS loss any better, mind you - he tries to flee via helicopter and swears revenge on Wes, but Ho-Oh arrives on the scene and blasts it down, ensuring he and Nascour get arrested.
- Ghetsis was always a Sore Loser, but he takes this trope an extra mile in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon; after losing to the player character, he threatens to kill Lillie if the player doesn't drop their Poké Balls immediately. All the other bosses, even Giovanni, take their defeats in stride; Ghetsis is the only one among them who refuses to admit defeat.
- In the Wii version of Punch-Out!!, Mr. Sandman acts like this after being defeated in Contender Mode. Visiting the opponent selection screen will show him shaking with rage, plus his Title Defense cutscene has him leveling a building just because a poster of Little Mac was on it.
- Happens a lot during random competitive encounters in Red Dead Redemption 2. From horse racing to target shooting, if you end up winning, your opponent will most likely take the loss pretty negatively as they storm away claiming you just got lucky. One horse racing encounter in particular has your opponent shoot their own horse in the head just because they lost the race.
- In the Monopoly based video game franchise Richman, some of the playable characters would react like this when they bankrupt. For example, Big Gamester angrily claims his opponent cheated, Daniel cries about how it is not fair for him to lose, and Princess Sarah complains that her opponents must be cheating, cries for her dad, or being angry that she, being a princess, shouldn't have lost.
- Quiz & Dragons: Once Gordian is defeated, he refuses to accept he lost and vows to encase the world in the dark pit once he reincarnates, calling the heroes larvae as he perishes.
- After you beat Leonard Steakcharmer in Sam & Max: Freelance Police (by sabotaging his cheating method, no less) he later shows up in the office and tries to get his money back at gunpoint. It doesn't work out well (mainly because he uses an obviously fake gun) and he ends up their prisoner/pet for several following chapters.
- Masamune Date from Samurai Warriors 1 has this attitude sometimes.
- Played With regarding Admiral Vigoro in Skies of Arcadia. When you first fight him, he complains loudly about not having his equipment (never mind his trying to have his way with one of your crew). On your final battle with him, he is fully armed. Not only is he actually a much rougher fight, but when he loses he actually accepts this defeat graciously.
- In Sonic Forces Episode Shadow, it is revealed that Infinite was once the captain of a mercenary team called Squad Jackal, and Eggman hired them to protect one of his labs in the Mystic Jungle. Then Shadow came along, effortlessly defeated the team, and then curbstomped him when he tried to avenge his comrades. He was literally such a sore loser that a parting comment from Shadow drove him Ax-Crazy and he practically sold his soul for power. It has the unfortunate effect of taking away all his cool factor and making him seem absurd.
- Splatoon:
- In the first Splatoon, the losing team's Inklings can be seen throwing ridiculous temper tantrums in the results screen. The most impressive is shooter-wielders, who fall to their knees and begin angrily banging their fists against the ground. Subverted by the Roller and Brush wielders, who shrug and shake their heads as if disappointed in their teammates. Marie was also one after a Splatfest when her team lost, making remarks like Team Cats winning in Europe only because Judd was the ref, Team Art only winning because Team Science had jobs to do, and Team Pirates being a bunch of cheats.
Callie: Avast, me hearties! Sore loser off the port bow!
- Splatoon 2 continues this with a new set of poses for losing Inklings, with the Roller and Brush users trading the shrug of disappointment for a facepalm. And then there's Pearl, who is particularly pissy whenever she loses a Splatfest, like throwing a little tantrum for Ice Cream vs Cake or a cold "Whatever." for Sci-Fi vs Fantasy.
- The Octolings added in 2's Octo Expansion DLC are generally more reserved than their Inkling counterparts, but they can still be total drama queens after a loss; special notice goes to a shooter/blaster-wielding female Octoling, who will collapse to the floor before turning her head away in such a huffy manner that she's almost certainly letting out a dejected "hmph", and Splatling-wielders, who will sullenly point at their weapon as if blaming it for their loss.
- In the first Splatoon, the losing team's Inklings can be seen throwing ridiculous temper tantrums in the results screen. The most impressive is shooter-wielders, who fall to their knees and begin angrily banging their fists against the ground. Subverted by the Roller and Brush wielders, who shrug and shake their heads as if disappointed in their teammates. Marie was also one after a Splatfest when her team lost, making remarks like Team Cats winning in Europe only because Judd was the ref, Team Art only winning because Team Science had jobs to do, and Team Pirates being a bunch of cheats.
- Street Fighter: While Ryu is the archetypal Spirited Competitor and all-around nice guy... it turns out that deep down, he can't handle losing. In fact, depending on just how badly he starts losing, his desire to win has a high risk of triggering the Satsui no Hado (lit. "the Murderous Intent") that, in normal circumstances, Ryu really doesn't want to tap into. Such as when Sagat bested him and offered what was supposed to have been a friendly hand, to help Ryu back on his feet. His thanks for it? A surprise Metsu Shoryuken that left him scarred for the rest of his life and cost him what should've been his victory, and soon triggered Sagat's temporary Face–Heel Turn into Shadaloo.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins: Played for Laughs at the end of the game, when Wario is defeated. After Mario trounces him, Wario cries and then throws a shoe at Mario while sticking his tongue out before running away.
- Smithy from Super Mario RPG goes berserk upon being defeated in his first form, with his various minions giving futile attempts to calm him down. He ends up destroying the foundation.
- In Luigi's Mansion, Henry and Orville ask Luigi to play hide and seek with them, while Jarvis challenges him to a game that's sort of like "whack-a-mole". In both cases, if Luigi wins, the ghosts get angry and attack him. (However, this is the only way he can capture them, something which is required to proceed in the case of the twins.)
- Everybody is a sore loser in Mario Strikers. The captains each have rare special animations of them getting very upset, which plays sometimes when their opponents score a goal against them. Special mention goes to Petey Piranha and Princess Daisy, the former of whom decides to attack one of the opposing team's players out of rage and eat them and the latter of whom, well... And then there's Wario, who says "I give up!" before blowing himself up with a bomb. Waluigi makes faces at the opposing team while they're celebrating and another animation has him punching one of the cameras out in frustration while telling it to say cheese.
- Mario Kart: Double Dash!! has Wario exclaim that he lost to a bunch of losers should he lose a race. Likewise, Bowser Jr. will have a fit and cry his eyes out if he loses a race. Bowser Jr. is an even more outstanding case as he reacts poorly to anything that is not first place. Even Wario is content with getting anything from the fourth place onwards.
- Everyone in Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour is a sore loser when they get a double bogey or worse. For example, Bowser collapses to the ground and slams his fist in furious anger, Donkey Kong slams his fists in disappointment, Petey Piranha pukes sludge and falls over, and Bowser Jr. cries and throws a tantrum.
- Mario Party 10: If Team Mario wins in Bowser Party, the camera will move over to Bowser's current location, where he will angrily stomp his foot on the ground.
- In Super Smash Bros., most characters applaud politely, reluctantly, or enthusiastically at the winning player, up and including ruthless villains like Ganondorf and Sephiroth. However, there are some characters that are not as graceful in defeat: Bowser and Kazuya both clap sarcastically, Cloud and Ryu both look away while reluctantly clapping in disappointment, the Ice Climbers sob, Diddy Kong scratches his head dejectedly,note male Pokemon Trainer pulls his hat down to hide his face in disappointment,note Mewtwo crosses his arms indignantly, and Wario can be seen adding in a jeer (or similar effect) between clapping. It seems Inklings have become more graceful in defeat in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, where they'll happily clap for the winner.
- Test Drive Unlimited 2: Winning the A7 Championship shows Tess Wintory crying over her loss and throws the camera in a fit of rage.
- The Talos Principle: If you confound Milton with questions he can't answer, he rants that he cannot lose as it contradicts his programming. He'll then ask you the same question repeatedly until you exit from it (the dialogue option is even called "exit"!).
- In ULTRAKILL, the Archangel Gabriel becomes completely enraged when V1 defeats him in Gluttony, calling them an "insignificant fuck" before storming off. However, his second fight in Heresy inverts this by flipping him around to a Graceful Loser, as he realizes how invigorating it is for him to be fighting an opponent on equal footing.
- From Umineko: When They Cry, you have Bernkastel, the true Big Bad of the story. The reason she does everything she does past Episode 5 is because of this. Trying to destroy the heart of the story, murdering Beatrice's incarnation in another world, ruining Ange's life and turning her against her family and trying to break open the catbox and permakilling everyone involved in the story of Rokkenjima is all because Battler beat her humiliatingly in Episode 5. In Episode 8, it's revealed she quite literally only cannot understand fun, only winning. And then you have her Villainous Breakdown in Episode 8 when Battler is the first person in many centuries to penetrate her invincibility and beat her down over and again. Even the other true Big Bad Lambdadelta wasn’t so crazy about losing (though this may be because she’s already suffered crushing defeat in the past and is used to it.)
- Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys: Arem takes any moment he loses poorly. When Lefance defeated him, he was enraged over the centuries he spent in the realm of chaos. When Adol manages to best him in his second form, Arem tries to drag him down to hell with him.
- Animator vs. Animation: This is a Running Gag in the Animation VS Minecraft shorts. Green is such a good builder that he almost always wins building contests. Very frequently, at least one person throws TNT at his builds. And when part of his build is destroyed by an accidental boss summoning, no one bothers to help him, finally causing him to lose.
- DSBT InsaniT: Alex does not take falling even the slightest bit behind in a competition very well. Death threats WILL be made!
- Not as much as Alex, but Duck is still not a good sport. For example, he more-or-less implies that Snake and Duck were cheating when they beat him in the game they were all playing in VRcade
- In If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device, both the Emperor and Tzeentch, in their separate episodes, react to being defeated by Kitten in Paradox-Billiards-Vostroyan-Roulette-Fourth-Dimensional-Hypercube-Chess-Strip Poker with a mixture of this trope and Let Us Never Speak of This Again.
The Emperor: This spin-off was dumb, let us never speak of it again.Tzeentch: This never HAPPENED.
- Mani Mani People: Sho
tries to embarrass Ayato by recommending him as a participant in the handsome guy contest during the school festival. However, his plans completely backfire when Ayato turned out to be really handsome and many girls who were cheering for him turned their attention to Ayato instead. After losing the contest, Sho tries to accuse Ayato of cheating, only for the girls to call him out for being such a sore loser.
- Meta Runner: Evelyn Claythorne really doesn't take too kindly to losing, especially to Tari, the one person she hates the most.
- MoniRobo:
- "On the day of an important presentation, she tries to bring me down"
: Ayane loses the presentation contest to Nano and threw tantrums about it and accused Nano of cheating. She even hired a delinquent to steal Nano's purse storing her presentation data so she can win.
- "Bully from high school becomes my coworker"
: Kakeru went ballistic on Naoya after having lost the presentation contest to him, despite having plagiarized Naoya's incomplete essay earlier on. Moreover, the approval form he allegedly got from the executives was actually forged, and Kakeru got fired for it.
- "On the day of an important presentation, she tries to bring me down"
- Seemingly a trait of Yang in RWBY. After losing to Neptune in a board game, she angrily storms through her room and grumpily remarks that they never should've let him play. She similarly reacts negatively when she loses a match in a video game after Qrow distracts her with a perverted comment. Played for Laughs both times.
- Batman and Sons. Bruce... doesn't take losses well.
- Wallis from Gloomverse.
- In Hello Wandering Star, "Apart from hating people, Panim also greatly disliked losing."
- Homestuck
- Vriska Serket, a Killer Game Master who's convinced she's the best of the best, can play others like fiddles and is the one holding up her team. In reality, she just has a horrible attitude and psychic Mind Control powers that give her an advantage over others, so when the former comes back to bite her and the latter can't help her, she throws a fit and accuses the other of cheating, before trying to calm down and trying to make whatever she lost not seem like the Serious Business she clearly believes it to be.
- Her dancestor Aranea is even worse, if possible. Seeming kind and polite at first, Aranea is actually frustrated at not having had an adventurous life like her A2 counterpart. From paying people to listen to her, to trying to subvert the roles of the remaining players, Aranea's hubris comes back to bite her when it turns out that she's bitten off more than she can chew by trying to take over the B2 session. Upon realizing this, Aranea kills a total of three other players and tries a planet-destroying Rage Quit, before Her Imperious Condescension catches up to her and breaks her neck.
- Narbonic: Helen, according to a side story where Artie and Mell are trying to find a board game she hasn’t trashed. They settle on Boggle since her Biologist vocabulary gives her an advantage on that one.
- Kleya in Not a Villain can't stand losing. While she's doing her best to curb it, she tends to instinctively hack when she's in danger. And judging from what the people who are trying to catch her have told us, she used to be even worse.
- Scarlet Lady:
- Much like in the canon series, Max is portrayed as this in "The Gamer". Unlike the series, Max is called out for his behaviour - particularly when he only attacks Marinette, even though Adrien also defeated him.
- Chloé is prone to this, and will either try to throw someone else under the bus or attempt to use her father's connections to get away with it.
- Wylie from Undead Friend after playing video games for the first time.
- unOrdinary: The Rowden Royals challenge Blyke to a one-on-one fight, then attack him en masse without warning when it's clear he's winning. Shortly thereafter they plead for mercy from John after he defeats them, then try to attack him when he turns to walk away.
- Jeongmu from Weak Hero. He tries to beat up Gerard and gets his ass handed to him- in retaliation, he and a fellow bully gang up on Gerard again after he injures his hand. He beats them up again and Jeongmu's pride is so wounded that he drops out of school. Considering it all Gerard's fault and not his own, Jeongmu goes even further and not only beats up Gerard's bandmate but sets their band room on fire. This results in Gerard being scarred and hospitalised, and pushes him past the Despair Event Horizon.
- During the early days of Achievement Hunter's Let's Play Minecraft series, Geoff was not a particularly good sport. Still isn't, but he's really reined it in.
- Binder of Shame: Al Bruno III mentions that whenever El Disgusto died or lost in any significant way during games, he would either go on enraged rants, whine until the loss was overturned, or have his character scream "HASTUR HASTUR HASTUR" to try and ruin the game for everybody else.
- DevinWithDevin from Epic's Gameshows decided to, not only not own up to his bullying, refuse to do an interview after his elimination and chose to just leave.
- In the Google Halloween Doodle "Global Candy Cup 2015", the over-confident red witch is shown to be in a tantrum since the cat-loving yellow witch ends up winning.
- Everyone within the Mario Party TV group has their moments, particularly when fortune swung against them at the last moment, but Holms gets especially vocal. The Reverend Inferno's rants at the end of the 8-Player Neon Heights run deserves mention because he was furious at the extremely lucky Team Dolphin.
- At some point in Noob:
- Omega Zell seriously considers quitting the game over losing his first real duel against Gaea.
- Due to the combination of Inferiority Superiority Complex and a father who always wins any game they play together, Judge Dead has this problem also.
- LowTierGod is infamously controversial in the competitive fighting game scene for performing "opt outs" (Rage Quits) and for insulting his opponents at length when he loses. One of his lowest moments had him mocking a disabled playernote who beat him 2-0, calling him "half a man".
- Ultraman X has a Breather Episode that focuses on... Space Rugby (yes). With Wataru's brother and budding rugby champ, Isamu, leading three aliens from the Nebula House against the Dark Star Cluster, a quartet of aliens led by Space Rugby League Champion Babarue-seijin. Against all odds, Isamu managed to lead his team into victory, but after the match the Dark Star Cluster isn't willing to play fair and leave after losing like they promised, instead turning kaiju-sized to crush everything (of course, leading to the prerequisite Ultraman-vs-giant-monster brawl that caps every episode).
- Void Domain: The spider-demon Arachne claims to be the Arachne, a human woman who was transformed into a spider for the Blasphemous Boast that she was a better weaver than Athena. According to Arachne, however, Athena lost their weaving contest and transformed her out of spite.
- In iteachvader's YTPMV Win the Race, Robotnik loses a race to Sonic and is so upset about it that he goes to extreme lengths to win the rematch. This includes cheating in plain sight and spending a billion Mobiums on kidnapping Tails (who in this universe is his adopted son) and threatening to hurt him unless Sonic throws the race.
- Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: In "The Mystery of the Missing Hi-Tops", it is revealed that Robotnik does not take well to losing card games against his robots. When one wins, he shoots at the robot repeatedly, yelling, "I don't remember programming you to beat me!", and tosses the robot into a pile of other discarded robots who presumably won against him and suffered the same consequences.
- Jake in the Adventure Time episode "Card Wars", when Finn and he play against each other in the eponymous trading-card game and Finn gains the upper hand. BMO mentions that Jake wouldn't talk to him for a month just because he won against him, forcing Finn to take a dive to prevent the same outcome.
- American Dad!:
- Stan Smith apparently spent years of his life convincing himself that winning was all that mattered; he even cut his own son from the team. When Steve responded by forming all the kids Stan cut into a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits and actually winning, Stan's first response is to attempt suicide. He does it again after losing a carnival game (even though Steve points out that they're rigged so nobody can win). Eventually, Steve talks Stan down by making him imagine how it would feel for his own father to kick him off the football team, which results in Stan finding another way to vent his frustration: crying.
Stan: What a wonderful alternative to suicide!
- In another episode it's revealed that the family rig each game night so Stan always wins, since he's terrible at games and gets destructive and toxic if he loses. It's telling that Jeff, whom Stan loathes for being a useless pothead who dated (and later married) Hayley, is better at games and eventually blurts out how awful Stan is when Jeff gets sick of everyone babying Stan.
- Roger Smith likewise isn't good at losing either. So much so that he's willing to kill just to get his way.
- Stan Smith apparently spent years of his life convincing himself that winning was all that mattered; he even cut his own son from the team. When Steve responded by forming all the kids Stan cut into a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits and actually winning, Stan's first response is to attempt suicide. He does it again after losing a carnival game (even though Steve points out that they're rigged so nobody can win). Eventually, Steve talks Stan down by making him imagine how it would feel for his own father to kick him off the football team, which results in Stan finding another way to vent his frustration: crying.
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Whenever Shake loses something he wants to win, his first response is throwing a fit and breaking something so that it explodes.
- Arthur: In the episode "Arthur the Loser", Arthur ends up on a losing streak to his friends at a popular educational board game, and then subsequently in sports, checkers, and video games, making him furious. Eventually, he decides to just outright cheat at everything in order to win but becomes an even sorer winner who drives all his friends away.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender:
- After losing to Zuko in an Agni Kai, Admiral Zhao attempts to get a shot at him in the back as he's walking away only for Iroh to block it and berate him for it, stating that even if Zuko was in exile, he still has way more honor than Zhao. This takes a much darker turn in the season finale when Iroh tells him to give up the fish that embodies the moon spirit's physical being. After doing what Iroh says, Zhao kills it immediately after in a fit of blind rage.
- Princess Azula is Born Lucky, but when she does lose, she takes it pretty hard. In a childhood flashback, she fails to do an acrobatic move that Ty Lee pulls off perfectly, and responds by shoving her to the ground. In the modern day, when practicing her lightning martial arts, she grows enraged upon seeing a single lock of hair came undone while doing so. Even her treatment of her friends (threatening them with bodily harm when they don't obey and trying to murder them when they betray her) can be seen as an extension of just never wanting to lose. When Katara beats her and leaves her chained up, she falls into a fit of wailing, screaming, and crying. Though for the record, she's not much better when she's winning. To elaborate, she never had to suffer as Zuko did, and hardship is what allowed Zuko to know what winning really feels like.
- Prior to Character Development, Toph Beifong wasn't exactly good with losing either and took it very poorly when Aang beat her in a bending competition (if only cause he uses air bending which, at the time, she can't counter against). It's revealed that she really takes stock of being a self-trained Earth bender as it's the only thing she gained on merit coming from a wealthy household, not wanting to be seen as this weak being because of her blindness. Heck, she only joined the group after she did a sneak attack on Aang just to make her feel better. Thankfully the journey and interactions with others mellow her out and eventually break her of this.
- The Batman:
- In the Riddler's first appearance, he is furious when Batman outwits him, purposely answering one of his questions with a lie when he inadvertently puts himself in the path of the blaster aimed at Detective Yin (set to fire at her whenever the lie detector monitoring him detects a lie) so that it zaps him instead.
- The Cluemaster. Not only was this the entire reason he spent his entire life plotting revenge against three people (because he lost a rigged game show when he was a child, for Pete's sake), when Batman appears, the Insufferable Genius says he will let his hostages go if the hero can ask him a question he cannot answer, claiming he can answer anything. When Batman makes it clear that he can, indeed, ask anything, he does indeed manage to stump the villain. The question he asks is, "What is the true identity of the Batman." The Cluemaster quickly says it wasn't a fair question and tries to go back on his promise, at which point Batman stops being nice.
- Batman: The Animated Series: The Joker loves to hear himself laugh and play sick jokes at other people's expense, but when he's upstaged by others or when people heckle at his jokes, he does go nuts.
- In Joker's Millions, King Barlowe, a rival mob boss, posthumously got the last laugh when he revealed that the Unexpected Inheritance he willed to the Monster Clown was fake, knew that Joker would binge-spend before the IRS came for the taxes, and would be forced to admit that it was a prank and end up becoming the laughingstock of Gotham's underworld. Realizing he was duped, the Joker shoots the TV playing the Spiteful Will in rage while his minions run away from him.
- In Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, Terry exploits this flaw by taunting Joker's failed attempts to break Batman and calling him an overgrown Psychopathic Manchild in an effort to break the clown mentally in a manner Batman never envisioned.
- In Beverly Hills Teens, Bianca holds a costume contest for Halloween, and after a couple Dresses the Same situations with Larke, Bianca still loses and then throws everyone out of her mansion. Her being a Sore Loser is either the ending or the entire premise of half the episodes.
- Bravestarr: "Fallen Idol" showed how the Pride of one made a Broken Pedestal: Jingles Morgan lost a fighting match and fell off a bridge into mud. People laughed at his defeat, even his victorious opponent (which seems too close to Unsportsmanlike Gloating). In a moment of Uncontrollable Rage, he grabbed his nearby disintegrator pistol and blasted the opponent with it, killing him.
- Malloy from Brickleberry. He loses an online FPS match to a kid from China, so what does he do? Flies all the way to China for the sole purpose of throwing the kid out the window to his death. Not even finding out that he's wheelchair-bound stopped Malloy from going through with the act.
Malloy: Oh, my God, I had no idea... it was gonna be this easy.
- City Island (2022): Lidia is sour about losing the softball game in "Sportsmanship," but comes to realize that having fun is more important than winning.
- Dexter's Laboratory: Dexter himself displays this whenever he's in competition with Dee Dee, freaking out when she beats him at video games and, on one occasion, going so far as to deliberately destroy his own lab to beat her at a game. That being said, this is probably fueled by Dee Dee's tendency to rub her victories in his face on both occasions.
- Dragon Tales: This is Emmy's problem throughout the episode "Tails You Lose". Emmy only wants to play games if she wins them, so when she gets called out during a game of Freeze Dance, she gets furious and doesn't want to play anymore. Fortunately, she learns from Quetzal that winning isn't the most important part of playing a game.
- DuckTales (2017): Zeus really hates losing to Scrooge. The last time he visited Ithaquack, Scrooge beat Zeus at every game he was challenged to; Zeus got so grumpy that he cast a lightning storm over the island for a whole year, driving out every other visitor to the island (which of course he blames on Scrooge). When Scrooge and his family return to the island in the present, Zeus ends up challenging them to more games, and makes it abundantly clear that they will not be allowed to leave until he's won at least once. It gets to the point that he has a siren hypnotize his son Storkules in order to force him to beat up Scrooge's family, completely uncaring that Storkules is very fond of Donald and doesn't wish to hurt them. Even when Scrooge offers him peace, Zeus refuses to take it until he's beaten him.
Scrooge: Perhaps we've been letting our pride get in the way for decades, and it's our families who suffered. (offers to shake hands with Zeus) What do you say? Peace?
(Beat)
Zeus: (slaps Scrooge's hand away)
Scrooge: Does beating me really mean that much to you?
Zeus: Yes, absolutely. - Family Guy: When Brian gets a 'king me' in checkers, Peter Griffin throws the checkerboard into his car, drives the car off a cliff into the ocean, then shoots the gas tank with a gun to make it explode!
- In "Patriot Games", Stewie Griffin wins a $50 bet against Brian on a boxing match, which the latter repeatedly stiffs the former on. While Brian keeps insisting he'll pay up, it's blatantly obvious that he had no intention of giving Stewie the money he rightfully won. It takes Stewie beating Brian within an inch of his life twice for him to finally relent and fork over the cash.
- On an episode of Garfield and Friends, "Best of Breed," Garfield is in a cat show and as the other contestants leave upon elimination he tells them "The important thing is to be a good dignified loser." Then when he is eliminated he goes into a tantrum and calls for an attorney.
- In the 1951 Goofy cartoon "Get Rich Quick," Goofy (here called George Geef) doesn't win everything he gambles at, and you can't expect him to accept his loss, especially if someone else wins in his stead such as in the "one-armed bandit" scene. In particular, he throws a tantrum on the ground after losing his bet at the racetrack. The French dub even has him sobbing uncontrollably.
- In the Grojband episode "Queen Bee", Trina Riffin did not take her defeat in the hands of Laney Penn very well.
- In Hazbin Hotel, Vox flips out and causes a nationwide blackout upon getting thoroughly roasted by Alastor during their Quarreling Song.
- None of The Misfits in Jem take losing terribly well however Pizzazz is the worst by far. She has quite a complex about coming in second, but all she does is come in second to Jem. But when you think about it, what Spoiled Brat isn't a sore loser?
- In one episode of Kablam, there's a Life With Loopy cartoon where Loopy challenges Mother Nature to a bowling match.note Loopy narrowly won (after picking up a spare on the dreaded 7-10 split, no less), which caused Mother Nature to sob uncontrollably. Of course, being Mother Nature, her crying resulted in endless rain for the rest of the summer.
Loopy: Don't be such a sore loser!
- The Little Flying Bears: The aptly-titled episode "Sore Losers" featured a yearly competition Skulk and Sammy always lose. One year, they took it so badly that they bullied the winning team into accepting a rematch.
- Looney Tunes:
- "Bonanza Bunny" featured Blacque Jacque Shellacque as Bugs Bunny's antagonist-of-the-moment and a very sore loser when Bugs beats him in a game of blackjack.
Bugs Bunny: Well, that's the way the ball bounces. Somebody's gotta lose, somebody's gotta win.
Blacque Jacque Shellacque: Oooh! Nobody wins from Blacque Jacque Shellacque!
Bugs Bunny: They don't? How come?
Blacque Jacque Shellacque: Cuz Blacque Jacque Shellacque is roughest, toughest, muklukest Canuck in ze Klondike! [fires several bullets into the ground and then points his guns at Bugs] Zat's why!- Of course, Bugs won after Jacque dealt him a 21 of Spades... You really can't blame Jacque for being upset.
- ...until you see Jacque's hand and realize he'd dealt himself two 10 of Spades'. Yeah, both of them were blatantly cheating, but Bugs was a little more creative. (But then, Bugs anticipated that the top card would be a 21 and thus froze on it.)
- In "Barbary Coast Bunny", the Con Man Nasty Canasta was a sore loser. After stealing gold from Bugs in the beginning and using it to open a casino, Bugs comes in seeking revenge and proceeds to win every game in the place, even though most of them are rigged. Finally, after Bugs beats his full house with four aces in poker, Canasta pulls out a gun and tries to rob Bugs — who spins the pistol's cylinder, causing it to shoot coins. (The last scene of this is usually edited; Canasta tries to do the same thing as Bugs leaves, only to shoot himself in the face.)
- Bugs Bunny himself actually never takes it well when he's the target of mischief for a change, as seen when he's up against Cecil Turtle, or during the rare times they Throw the Dog a Bone with Elmer Fudd.
- This usually depends on the writer though; in some shorts, he's quite a Graceful Loser too.
- His rival Daffy Duck can't stand losing to Bugs, at certain points even willing to kill the rabbit just to dispose of the competition.
- "Bonanza Bunny" featured Blacque Jacque Shellacque as Bugs Bunny's antagonist-of-the-moment and a very sore loser when Bugs beats him in a game of blackjack.
- Lynn Loud from The Loud House cannot stand losing at anything. In the first episode she shows this, "No Such Luck", she would rather believe she lost because her brother was bad luck (she does apologize at the end when he proves her wrong, but still has her brother keep her team’s mascot on for good luck), and in "Lynner Takes All" she actually starts losing it when she loses in "Settler's of Cat-land", trying to one-up all of her sisters and brother in everything to validate her gloating and hyper-competitive nature. In "Fool Me Twice", she faints in humiliation at one point when her double deliberately loses tetherball to Zach. In the episode "Driving Ambition" Lori Loud cries over being in last place on the scoreboard due to her poor skills in golf.
- Max Kanté ends up lapsing into this during a Moment of Weakness in Miraculous Ladybug. While he tries to be a Graceful Loser when Marinette and Adrien both score higher than him at the eliminations for a video game competition he's spent a year training for, he can't help but feel resentful in private, which leads to his corruption by Hawk Moth.
- One episode of the '90s Mr. Men cartoon, Mr. Men and Little Miss has Little Miss Wise beat Mr. Busy and Little Miss Somersault in a skateboarding race (Which she didn't intentionally take part in.) While Mr. Busy takes it well and even praises her for winning the race, Little Miss Somersault's response is to whine that she's "usually unbeatable." The book version takes it to an extreme by having her storm out while everyone else is celebrating.
- In the Muppet Babies (1984) episode, "Kermit Goes to Washington", Baby Piggy loses a race and then insists they need to go another lap. The other babies find this unfair.
- In the Muppet Babies (2018) episode, "Animal Loses It", Animal dislikes losing games, and is at first reluctant to play Scooter and Skeeter's Banana Whamma Jungle Jamma board game. He joins in when he is determined to win a game for once. Animal is teamed up with Piggy, and at first, they make great progress. Unfortunately, things turn south for Animal when he loses a turn and then has to go back to Start. This causes him to quit the game. He comes back when Miss Nanny teaches him that sometimes it's more fun to play with your friends than win, and he becomes a better sport as a result.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- Rainbow Dash, at least before her later Character Development, was never graceful in a loss:
Rainbow Dash: I hate losing.
- Applejack, though usually a more Graceful Loser, is embittered into one in "Fall Weather Friends" against Rainbow's unsportsmanlike competitive streak, making for a very aggressive contest. It's probably the worst Rainbow ever gets as well, as she pulls more than a few dirty tricks herself before flat-out breaking the rules they agreed to (not using her wings) and attempting to fly to the finish, with the two actively fighting each other as they reach the finish.
- Wind Rider in "Rarity Investigates", a retired Wonderbolt veteran, hated the thought of an up-and-comer like Rainbow Dash closing in on breaking his flying record so he frames her of sending Spitfire away on a bogus claim of her mother needing her attention, making it look like Dash had wanted to fly in a stunt show as her replacement. Luckily Rarity foils this attempt as Wind Rider is ultimately disgraced for his actions.
- Rainbow Dash, at least before her later Character Development, was never graceful in a loss:
- Peppa Pig:
- In "Edmond Elephant's Birthday" when one kid wins, the others cry over it meaning that they're sore losers. It became infamous for teaching children to cry non-stop and be a sore loser which is a bad moral.
- In "Garden Games" George Pig cries when he loses at Skittles and in Bat and Ball because he finds both games difficult to play.
- In The Real Ghostbusters episode "The Devil to Pay", diabolic game show host Dib Devlin is a sore loser. He tricks the heroes into an infernal game show where they risk their souls, luring them into it by offering a trip to Tahiti as a grand prize. When they manage to win, he decides to kill them, because he never said he'd spare their lives. They manage to escape, however, and Venkman forces him to give them the trip. (He includes three tons of deviled ham with the prize, likely to annoy them.)
- This is the general reaction of Otto Rocket in Rocket Power whenever he loses any game he plays, as his adamant competitiveness keeps him from accepting a single loss. One episode that does stick out more, however, is "Total Luger", in which Twister found a sport that he was better at than Otto. Unable to accept defeat, Otto took a shortcut in the final race and won because of it. His conscience caught up to him, though, and when Twister wanted a playoff race for the trophy, Otto was finally able to accept his defeat.
- One Roland and Rattfink cartoon has the two entering in a race. Rattfink, the series' Dastardly Whiplash, wins the race by accident, not even cheating in the process. We expect Roland, the series' good guy, to handle his loss with grace, but he lampshades that he's a poor loser, and proceeds to beat Rattfink up with his trophy.
- The Rugrats (1991) episode, "Susie Vs. Angelica" had Angelica challenge Susie to see who was the best older kid. Every time Susie won, Angelica kept throwing in another match (it started out as 2-out-of-3, but kept going higher and higher until they got to the last challenge).
- The Simpsons:
- "The Joy of Sect" has Homer Simpson and Bart Simpson join a crowd of Springfield residents watching the local football team return from their latest game, which they lost. The players think they're going to get a warm welcome, but instead the crowd gets angry and starts throwing things at them.
- In "Saddlesore Galactica", Lisa Simpson's school band competes in a battle of the bands competition. An opposing band from Ogdenville uses glowsticks and wins, even though visual aids were expressly forbidden. Lisa berates one of the Ogdenville musicians for their ill-gotten win, which only causes the judge to withhold a planned "Good Sportsmanship" trophy. She spends the rest of the episode appealing to higher powers until then-President Bill Clinton nullifies the verdict, declares her the winner, and delivers the Spoof Aesop "If things don't go your way, just keep complaining until your dreams come true".
- And it's best said by Moe in "Pygmoelian" when he discovers the character he plays in a soap opera is going to be killed off:
Moe: Well, if they're gonna stomp on my dreams... the least I can do is go out in a blaze of sour grapes!
- Exaggerated in "The Boys of Bummer": After Bart fumbles the ball in the Little League Championships and causes Springfield to lose to Shelbyville, everyone in town harasses, mocks and attacks Bart even after it drove him to suicidal insanity. Good thing Marge put an end to it.
- Sym-Bionic Titan: After Baron and his cronies lose to Lance in the war games, they steal several of the academy's guns and try to assassinate him for real.
- In the Teen Titans (2003) episode "Only Human", Atlas assaults Cyborg and then kidnaps the other Titans to spite him after Cyborg beats him at an online video game. (Which he clearly plays too much of as it is; a later scene shows he's a sore winner at it too.)
- In the Thomas & Friends episode, "Grudge Match", it is revealed that Raul, a Brazilian tank engine did not take well to losing to Thomas in the Shunting Competition at the Great Railway Show. Raul tries to prove that he is better than Thomas in both racing and strength competitions, but he becomes a better sport after Thomas saves him from falling into the water.
- Tiny Toon Adventures:
- Sappy Stanley from the episode "Who Bopped Bugs Bunny?". After his Oscar-nominated cartoon lost to Bugs Bunny's cartoon, Knighty Knight Bugs, Stanley scorned the American film industry, moved to Paris, and spent decades planning his revenge on Bugs.
- The Prefecto Prep students are sore losers after being beaten at football by the ACME team in "The ACME Bowl", but what can you expect from a school whose motto is, "We Never Lose"?
- Total Drama:
- When Heather is finally eliminated for everything she did in the Island episode "I Triple Dog Dare You!", she screams at the top of her lungs before being taken away from the competition, where she threatens she would sue Chris and ruin his reputation.
- Courtney sued her way onto Action of the animated reality show after being cheated out of the prize money back in Island earlier.
- Josee from Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race throws tantrums whenever she and Jacques don't come first. When they eventually get eliminated in the episode A Million Ways to Lose a Million Dollars, she starts destroying Central Park until Jacques manages to calm her down.
- Wacky Races:
- Dick Dastardly was a consummate sore loser, taking having lost only one Wacky Race well — the debut episode "See Saw to Arkansas," where he stops his car just at the finish line so he can pose for the race's photo finish. This drive to win at all costs gets so bad he has an entire trope named after him: Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat. Dick would win more often if he wasn't such a, well, dick to the other racers.
- In his own show Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines, Dastardly one-ups the captain of a ship on which the Vulture Squadron is stationed, thanks to some influence from the General, via Dastardly's phone. The captain shoves the phone into Dastardly's mouth, making him sputter "If there's one thing I hate, it's a sore loser!"
- Work It Out Wombats!: Zadie always likes to win. In "Zadie's Shell Shuffle," she wants to win at hide and seek, but JunJun keeps giving away her hiding places. She snaps at him for it.