Tropes about being a victim—or facing the social role of victimhood.
Tropes:
- Asshole Victim: A person who suffers or gets killed deserves their fate because of how unpleasant and unsympathetic they are, even though the reason they suffer/are killed has nothing to do with their unpleasant nature.
- Who Murdered the Asshole: Identifying the murderer is difficult because the victim was such an unlikable jerk in life that just about everyone who knew the person despised them to the degree that any one of them could be responsible for the person's death.
- Beautiful Sexual Assault Victim: Beautiful characters are more likely to be victims of sexual harassment or assault.
- Blaming the Victim: When something bad happens to a person, bystanders are callous enough to place the blame on the victim rather than those who chose to harm the victim.
- Blaming the Cuckold: A victim of adultery is blamed for their partner's unfaithfulness.
- Bully Magnet: A character who always finds themselves at the mercy of bullies.
- Bystander Action-Horror Dissonance: The pedestrian's suffering at a battle's ground zero is shown.
- Condescending Compassion: Claiming to feel sorry for those suffering in an insincere and self-serving way.
- Designated Victim: A character who always gets in trouble for the sake of the plot.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: A suffering person doesn't like it when others express their sympathy for their plight.
- Exposition Victim
- Fattening the Victim: A scheme that involves making the victim fat somehow, often to make them more meaty when it's time to harvest.
- Final Girl: A female character who survives while everyone else gets killed.
- Genocide Survivor: A surviving victim of large-scale massacres, who is probably very traumatized from seeing so many of their own people getting murdered.
- Good Victims, Bad Victims
- Innocent Bystander
- Internalized Categorism
- Insidious Rumor Mill: Often as part of their lies, a character will paint themselves as a victim of the person whose reputation they're trying to ruin.
- Karmic Butt-Monkey: A character is constantly subjected to injury or misfortunes, but they're such a jerk that they deserve their suffering as constant karma for their transgressions.
- Manufacturing Victims
- Missing White Woman Syndrome
- Never My Fault: Blaming others for actions that are your own fault (which in some cases may include placing blame on those who actually suffered because of your actions).
- Playing the Victim Card: Someone tries to avoid accountability by painting themselves as the one who's wronged instead of the people they harmed or screwed over.
- Sympathetic Sue
- Subterfuge Judo: When two parties know the imposing intentions of each other, but attempt to improvise in-the-moment ways of avoiding them.
- Tragic Abandoned Toy: A sentient toy grieves after being lost or forgotten.
- Unlucky Extra
- The Victim Must Be Confused
- Victim of the Week
- Victimized Bystander
- Visible Victimology: A predator has a specific, obvious tell in the victims they seek.
- Voluntary Vampire Victim: A person willingly allows a vampire to feed on their blood.
- Weakness Is Just a State of Mind: No, the (obviously unachievable) goal isn't unachievable! You just gotta work harder! So do it!
- Will Not Be a Victim
- The Woobie: A character suffers so much that the audience can't help but feel sorry for the character.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: A person manipulates others by pretending to be a harmed victim.
- Wounded Gazelle Warcry
