"Seems so unfair when there's love everywhere but there's none for me"
— "Some Guys Have All the Luck", written by Jeff Fortgang, most known version sung by Rod Stewart
You are in a relationship with the love of your life! You and said love are happy as can be and nothing can go wrong!
Now you hate the world. Especially since the world seems to be mocking you for it. As you walk through the park, everyone is paired up. You see couples on the benches, making out, couples on the lake, making out, couples under trees, making out, even the birds and frogs and plants seem to be paired up with their life-long partner, and you're not. The world is mocking you.
If this is a musical, then this scene usually involves a very sad song. In a romantic comedy, the scene may go to extreme lengths to show the pair ups, and the scene will come after the Second-Act Breakup and before the reconciliation.
This trope can be Played for Laughs or drama. Also, it doesn't have to be about romantic breakups - it can also be used when someone has died or gone missing, or some highly emotional object has been lost through no fault of their own. In these instances, expect the protagonist to mistake other people or objects for the one they lost.
Look for Lonely Piano Piece in visual examples. When Your Television Hates You, showing things that mock your loss is one of the ways it shows its hate. Mocking Music is the same idea but for songs on the radio.
The romantic version is a subtrope of Alone Among the Couples.
Somewhat Truth in Television in that those who have recently lost something will tend to notice these things a lot more than someone who hasn't suffered such a loss.
Compare Cold Turkeys Everywhere, wherein that trope is for people who are trying not to think about something (usually because they willingly gave up something), and the world is tempting them constantly. Compare/Contrast Spontaneous Choreography. See also Alone Among the Couples and Your Television Hates You. Contrast You Are Not Alone.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Midori Days does this to Seiji several times in both the anime and manga versions:
- In the first chapter of the manga, he becomes depressed after striking out with a local girl, only to find himself surrounded by lovey-dovey couples on his way to school... he doesn't take it well.
- And, in chapter 17, he ends up alone in a cafe full of happy couples.
- The anime version has him strike out with the same girl from the first example, after which, he goes to a movie theater to sulk. When he realizes he's the only one there without a date, he vents his frustration on the crowd and storms out.
- Sasuke Uchiha in Naruto definitely has this post-time skip. After learning that his brother, who he'd spent the majority of the manga on a vendetta against for murdering their entire family, was actually a martyr, he snaps and swears to burn down Konoha, despite how Itachi had given his life to protect it. All because he sees the village's ignorant happiness as mocking the Awful Truth.
Comic Books
- Gaston Lagaffe: A guy in the forest who just broke up with his girlfriend looks around to see only animals merrily frolicking in pairs, reflecting on how even they find happiness...then he sees Gaston's car bouncing along a badly-maintained road, and lightens up considerably, seeing as everything is joyous and energetic today.
- When the eponymous Groo the Wanderer thought his dog Rufferto was dead and that Groo had eaten him, he kept seeing objects that reminded him of Rufferto's coloring.
Fan Works
- Scarlet Lady: In "Catalyst", Chloé is furious over how her Nominal Heroine alter ego has fallen out of favor with the public, as well as how she lost the Ladybug Earrings to Marigold. Unfortunately for her, it's Heroes' Day, so everyone's celebrating the other protectors of Paris. At one point, she breaks her TV and storms out onto her balcony just in time to spot a massive parade balloon of Marigold passing by.
Film — Animation
- In The Lion King II: Simba's Pride has the scene after Kovu gets exiled. Kiara is constantly reminded that she is on her own now, complete with the song "Love Will Find a Way".
Film — Live Action
- In Better Off Dead, Lane is constantly reminded of his ex, Beth, because every other guy in town (and Barney Rubble) wants to date her.
- The Crowd: When a desperate John tries to get people outside to quiet down as his daughter is dying, the traffic cop at the corner tells him the world can't stop because his kid's sick. Later, a title card says that "The crowd laughs with you always...but it will cry with you for only a day." Following scenes show how the uncaring world moves on as John plunges into despair.
- The "Scotty Doesn't Know" song in Euro Trip. The song was written to brag about how Scotty's girlfriend was cheating on him with the singer. They break the news to him by performing it at his graduation party, after which the song becomes a smash hit, Running Gag, and given the name of this film, a literal example of the world mocking his loss.
- After Pat gets fired from the post office in It's Pat!, they get taunted by a little girl and her mother holding a briefcase, a magazine at a newsstand with a headline about unemployment, construction workers on break, firefighters and police officers greeting each other, and a pair of astronauts floating by.
- Used as a brief gag in the first The Naked Gun. At the start, Frank Drebin is still madly in love with a woman who abandoned him. He laments that everything he sees reminds him of her. Then he looks at the paired domes of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station
and sighs dramatically.
- After Peewee's beloved bike is stolen in Pee-wee's Big Adventure, everyone he sees as he walks around town is riding a bicycle.
- Parodied in Superhero Movie. Rick breaks up with Jill, and his subsequent walk through town has literally everyone around him either making out or having sex, much to his chagrin.
Literature
- Confessions: The death of a childhood friend made Augustine unable to see anything but death. He describes any reminder of his friend as torture, including his father's house, his hometown, everything his friend had touched, and "everything that did not have him." Even light could do nothing but remind him of the darkness that his friend would be experiencing.
- In The Ship Who... Sang, Sapient Ship Helva loses her first crewmate, Jennan only three years after taking him on. Almost immediately she's pushed into transporting a passenger to an emergency situation. While inspecting her passenger's hands and wondering that she seems to be familiar with manual labor which is unusual in The Future, Helva suddenly thinks that Jennan had used his hands too and has to look away.
- Thursday Next: In Lost In a Good Book, Thursday starts seeing infants everywhere en route to her physician's office; she fears she's lost her pregnancy when she realizes Landen has been eradicated.
Live-Action TV
- In an episode of Lizzie Mcguire, all of the protagonists are single, but that doesn't stop them noticing that all of their classmates aren't.
Gordo: Everybody's paired up...it's like Noah's ark.
- Played for extremely cruel comedy on Mad Men. In the first season's finale it was revealed that Peggy had gotten pregnant out of wedlock with a married co-worker's baby. During the interval, she's apparently been legally declared unfit to raise the child, who's been put up for adoption (The '50s were really a wonderful decade to be a woman). If you were to take a drink for every time babies, pregnancy, or abortion were mentioned in her presence over the following three episodes, you'd end up needing your stomach pumped.
Video Games
- A large source of angst for Ragna the Bloodedge from Blazblue: he can't go far without coming across clones of his kidnapped and missing sister.
- Played for Laughs in the DJ Max series, where realizing The World Mocks Their Losses is the Start of Darkness for the NB Rangers. A group of single, unlucky average joes transform into a Jerkass Super Sentai parody once they get fed up seeing other happy couples in the park and proceed to attempt to ruin them or just plain beat them up.
- Inverted in Pokémon False Red: All of Kanto is mourning Red's mysterious disapperance, and regard Fire as somebody who's mocking their loss by trying to go on his own Pokémon journey.
Western Animation
- More of the opposite happening in an episode of CatDog. Catdog end up with a serious case of fleas after coming in contact with a rat on the beach and end up needing to wear a flea belt.note While heading home, everyone's talking about how lame belts are and how they've gone out of style. Even on television, there are scenes of male runway models walking around with their pants down to show just how popular it is to not be seen wearing belts right now, which irritates Cat enough to keep blaming Dog for their predicament.
Cat You had to go near that beach rat!!!
- These are more "The World Mocks Your Discomfort", but in Family Guy:
- In "The Son Also Draws", Peter's bowels are acting up during a long road trip. Every billboard and sign remind him of it (examples include "Furniture Store: All stools must go!", "I Love My Shih-Tzu"; "Bob's House of Feces, Next Exit" [to which Peter responds "Oh come on, that one's not even real!"]).
- In one episode, Peter gets a prostate exam and thinks he was violated. He tries to watch TV. He sees Freddy Got Fingered, changes the channel to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, showing E.T.'s healing finger, then changes the channel to a Yellow Pages ad: "Let your fingers do the walking!" Peter then runs away and meets Chris wearing a foam finger, and the Evil Monkey who always points at people.
- Parodied in the Futurama DVD Movie "The Beast with a Billion Backs"; right after Colleen and Fry break up, Fry sees increasingly comically unlikely coupling scenarios.
- In Regular Show, after the group is in danger of losing their souls to Death over a bowling match, they repeatedly drive past ads for things like life insurance to remind them of their impending demise.
- The Simpsons:
- After Ned loses his wife, he sees couples dancing and having fun at the Jellyfish Festival.
Marge: Poor Ned. This is his first Jellyfish Festival alone.
Homer: I know. And it doesn't get any easier from here. There's the Tongue-Kissing Festival, Cinco de Ocho, the Hobo Oscars, days just made for lovers. Not widowers...lovers. - In the episode with Homer buying a handgun, he is dismayed when he learns that the registration process will take a few days. He spends those days moping on his lawn. A montage of tempting targets pass by during those days: a line of ducks, a Target truck, Patty and Selma (his hated sisters-in-law) on a bike...
- After Ned loses his wife, he sees couples dancing and having fun at the Jellyfish Festival.
- In Transformers: Prime, at one point Bumblebee loses his T-cog and loses the ability to transform into vehicle mode. Cue a bunch of car ads and the like to essentially mock him for no longer having the movement speed he had in car form.
Raf: Speed isn't everything.
(Jack and Arcee return to base in a needlessly elaborate display of motorcycling)
Jack: Personal best, Arcee! You hit 120 easily!
Bumblebee: (furious buzzing)
