When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, 'Why God? Why me?' and the thundering voice of God answered, 'There's just something about you that pisses me off.'
Sometimes it feels like the world hates you specifically.
Were they just Born Unlucky? Are they really that much of a klutz? Does the universe just like to see them suffer? Whatever it is, on some days it seems like everything conspires to make some characters' lives suck. It might be for a single one-off gag or it might be their defining character trait - either way, they're about to be in for a ride. Can be Played for Laughs or Played for Drama, depending on how badly someone messed up and whether the author can press the Reset Button at the end of the episode.
Not to be confused with Hatred Tropes or Does Not Like This Index, which are about when one person or group despises another rather than cosmic bad luck, or the Index of Hated Characters, which is an index of the characters that are despised. Compare This Index Has Had a Hard Life. May overlap with Luck Tropes.
Note: This index is for tropes specifically about misfortune that has no easily definable In-Universe cause besides the universe or the gods hating you or the hand of the author moving stuff around. Artifacts of Doom, Bad Luck Charms, explicit curses, or tropes like Stuffed in the Fridge that are more about the characters' reactions than the misfortune itself do not belong here.
Tropes
- Animals Hate Him: The entire wildlife kingdom deliberately attacks or ostracizes this character.
- Blessed with Suck: Your special power is humiliating, useless, ruined by side effects, or just otherwise does nothing but cause trouble and angst.
- Born Unlucky: Bad luck follows this character wherever they go.
- Butt-Monkey: This character can't catch a break and is always the butt of the joke.
- Can't Get Away with Nuthin': All your minor misdeeds are met with immediate and disproportionate punishment.
- Cartwright Curse: Being the Love Interest of the hero never ends well.
- The Chew Toy: This character can't catch a break and the audience can't get enough.
- Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere: Whatever you're trying to quit just won't stop popping up everywhere you look.
- Cosmic Plaything: The universe likes to screw with you.
- Cruel Twist Ending: The story's ending is incredibly mean and often without any Foreshadowing. Occasionally some higher power behind the scenes will say the character earned their fate, but those who hear it and see the character was compassionate, or at least not cruel may label it as Disproportionate Retribution instead.
- Designated Monkey: A YMMV page for when a Butt-Monkey is Unintentionally Sympathetic.
- Diabolus ex Machina: A sudden unforeshadowed plot development introduced solely to make the protagonists' lives more difficult.
- Disaster Dominoes: One small mess-up triggers an improbable chain reaction that ends with a large amount of destruction.
- Doom Magnet: This character unwittingly and constantly brings doom and suffering down on those around them.
- Easily Condemned: It does not matters how much or for how long the character was Loved by All, it only takes one single misunderstanding to instantly turn that love into sheer, unrelenting hatred.
- Finagle's Law: Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
- Ill-Timed Sneeze: A sneeze hits at the worst possible time.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: A character says something, then immediately something happens to contradict their statement.
- The Jinx: Accidents just always seem to happen a lot when you're around.
- Kafka Komedy: An entire Sub-Genre of comedy writing revolving around making its protagonists as miserable as possible.
- Karmic Misfire: An innocent Butt-Monkey gets hit with the cosmic retribution for the bad stuff some other character did.
- Lethal Klutz: Somehow, every small action you take results in widespread chaos.
- Mocking Music: Every song on the radio seems to mock your current situation.
- My Car Hates Me: Need to make a quick getaway? Your car won't start.
- Mystery Magnet: You can't stop running into mysterious crimes, disappearances, and murders.
- Not My Lucky Day: Your day just sucks for no reason.
- Plague of Good Fortune: You are given a streak of good luck so impressive that it seems way too good to be true. It usually is.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: The character finds out the hard way that all of their efforts were useless and are worse off than when they started (at absolute best, they did not improve their lot in life at all).
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The universe not only makes all of the character's efforts fruitless, it goes way out of its way to make damned sure that their "reward" is humiliation, death, or a Fate Worse than Death.
- Superstition Episode: A character has bad luck for an entire episode after doing something considered bad luck, such as walking under a ladder.
- Tempting Fate: A character says something that dares the universe into making things miserable for them, and the universe takes them up on the challenge.
- Unluckily Lucky: You constantly find yourself in sticky situations, but you can get out of them just as easily.
- Unlucky Everydude: You have below-average luck in basically everything.
- The Unwitting Comedian: Everyone laughs at your antics, no matter how serious you try to be or how dire the situation is.
- Villain Ball Magnet: It does not matter what the character does, the result always is being seen by everybody else as either a villain or an unreformed villain.
- Walking Disaster Area: Large amounts of destruction seem to follow you wherever you go.
- Walking Techbane: You can get a computer to catch fire by hitting the power button.
- Weirdness Magnet: The character, at absolute best, is being deeply inconvenienced by all of the supernatural complications that, through no fault of their own, are constantly appearing in their life. At absolute worst, they are constantly at ground zero of alien invasions, demonic possessions, and other supernatural events that kill many people and leave them deeply traumatized. Even the alleged "beneficial" weird events are rarely helpful without a lot of elbow grease and humiliation.
- The World Mocks Your Loss: Everyone decides to act all lovey-dovey in public the second you break up with your partner.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Something good happens to the Butt-Monkey just before it's ripped away again.
- Your Television Hates You: Everything on TV just keeps reminding you of whatever you were trying to avoid by watching it.
