Characters being The Unfavorite in Fan Works.
- Advice and Trust: Shinji initially sees himself as this compared to Rei, but eventually comes to realise that being Gendo Ikari's favourite is a very low bar indeed.
- Child of the Storm implies that Hermione feels this way after finding out that a) she's adopted and b) her birth-mother is Wanda Maximoff, because Wanda went out of her way to avoid Hermione, but came back into the life of Harry (her godson) as soon as she could, and adores him as her own. It's worth noting that giving them up explicitly broke Wanda's heart and was done to protect them, but it was worse with Harry as she at least ensured that Hermione was Happily Adopted. She avoided Hermione because she wanted a clean break and to keep her daughter from being noticed. As for Harry, there was absolutely no way he wasn't going to be noticed and by the time of the story, has attracted enough trouble that she can't really add to it. However, when this is discussed, it is uneasily noted that while Wanda probably does love them equally, she finds Harry easier to love, owing to the pain associated with Hermione and her Strong Family Resemblance to her mother as a girl during her intensely traumatic superpower emergence.
- In Ghosts of Evangelion Asuka was this to Misato. Since she worked hard to earn other people's praise and she had low self-esteem, she resented it.Misato: Whaaaat? Can't I buy lunch for my favorite girl?
Asuka: (growling) You're buying me swordfish, and we both know I'm not your favorite. Spill it already. - It is not uncommon in fanfics to have the titular Harry Potter and Naruto be this, even when they have their dead parents from canon alive. This is generally done in relation to a sibling who is believed to be the 'realy' Boy Who Lived/Jinchuriki, and rarely make much sense, generally existing just to have more people look down on them and make them miserable than what exist already in canon.
- More specifically to Naruto, some fanfics such as Team 8 take this up to eleven with regards to Hinata.
- Scar's Samsara has Nuka, who Scar will calmly point out is inferior to Simba in every conceivable way, saying that Nuka should not even try to compete with Simba. Subverted in the sense that Scar is doing this on purpose to try and prevent an ugly rivalry (it fails).
- Star Trek (2009) has some interesting cases with Jim being the unfavorite compared to his dead father. His mother couldn't stand the resemblance between them and would often do nothing to stop his stepfather from beating him, neglecting him and traveling far away just so she wouldn't have to look at Jim.
- In one story, after becoming captain, to get back at his mother from neglecting and allowing the abuse to happen, Jim donated a huge sum of money towards charities where children had been abused, naming it her, "for all the things she did when he was a kid". Afterwards, people went up to her, asking her "how does it feel?" for raising such a nice kid and how proud she must be.
- For the record, there is little to no evidence for this in canon.
- There is a very good Sailor Moon fanfiction called Misconception
, in which time changes and another child (Chibi-Naru) is born in Chibiusa's place. Despite being (technically) an only child, the poor girl can never live up to her "sister's" memory. She spends over nine hundred years either ignored (with her parents desperately trying to conceive the daughter they really wanted) or treated as a terribly inferior replacement for Chibiusa, to the point that the senshi often forget that she isn't Chibiusa herself. When you find out that your (favorite) aunt is trying to undo time itself so that you're never even born just to bring back some other kid (and everyone else you know is completely on board with the plan, including your own parents) you know you've got problems. Luckily, there's a happy ending. When Chibi-Naru accidentally inherits Sailor Moon's powers, everyone forgets Chibiusa ever existed. The only ones that do remember her are Pluto, who exists outside time, and Chibi-Naru herself, since she only knew of Chibiusa through stories.- A sequel written by another author expands on this, on how even though the relationship between Chibi-Naru and her parents is much better, she still holds some bitter memories of when they neglected her, and on how she meets various other children of Serenity and/or Endymion from different dimensions, including Chibiusa... and finds out in one dimension she was the beloved child that never existed and her brother was the Unfavorite that suffered neglect to the point that they denied him even his last name, not helped by the fact that he can't inherit the Silver Crystal.
- A sequel
- In Equestria: A History Revealed, Princess Luna was incredibly unpopular with the populace due to her shy and aloof nature, along with the fact that her sister's cult of personality was currently at an all-time high. This all comes to a head at the Luna Trials, in which the populace hates Luna even more, and Luna thinks she had lost the love of her sister, paving the road to the Civil War, and her fall to become Nightmare Moon.
- The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction, Racer and the Geek, features a particularly tear-jerking example of this trope in its never chapters.
- Fanfiction often has Megatron jealous of his brother Optimus. Whether they are actually biological brothers or simply brothers by name depends on the author. For example, The Ties That Bind Us shows a young Optimus being injured by an ambush and his caretaker Ironhide had to carry him while telling Megatron to follow him. While understanding that Optimus was more serious condition, Megatron began to grow envious that he was always placed second place after Optimus.
- April is implied to be the unfavorite in For Better or for Worse, but it's taken up to eleven in The New Retcons, in which Elly goes insane and denies that April was ever her daughter, throwing her out of the house. It didn't help that John eventually gave up on convincing Elly April was their daughter, forcing her to spend her final years in Millborough with her brother's family before she leaves for college. Also, only Michael and her uncle Phil attended her graduation. While Liz had a good reason for missing it cause she was dealing with her own family crisis, and Grandpa Jim couldn't go because he was on his deathbed, that doesn't really excuse her still nuts mother or her father.
- Not one you'd think about unless you read the comments for the fics and entered Word of God territory, but Lawrence is this to Connie. See, she had had a Teen Pregnancy and was able to give the baby to relatives. When she got pregnant with Lawrence, and it failed to keep Paolo with her, she banked on being able to leave this baby with her relatives too, but they refused because Lawrence was mixed race. So Connie was stuck with him and resented him for it. That he later admitted to being gay just made it worse.
- Although never specified in canon, The Lion King fans will often make Scar this in his family to provide a Freudian Excuse.
- Hetalia: Axis Powers Fanon has plenty of fanfic about Sealand's abandonment by England.
- Empath of Empath: The Luckiest Smurf believes this of himself since he sees Papa Smurf focus most of his efforts on raising a hundred of Empath's fellow Smurfs instead of getting his only biological son out of Psychelia. Interestingly, most of Empath's fellow Smurfs feel that of themselves whenever Empath comes home for a visit, particularly Hefty.
- Grouchy in "Days Of Auld Lang Smurf" also believes this of himself when he sees that his "resurrected" Papa Smurf focuses most of his attention on Handy, Hefty, and Sassette than he does on him.
- In Despair's Last Resort, Kaito reveals he is this before his execution. This also serves as part of the reason why he kills Chiyo. His work as an animator is the only way he believes his parents will see him as something.
- In the fanfic Code: Lyoko Second Generation Relapse, there's a mild case with the 3 eldest Della Robbia children with Odd preferring the older girl Jace with having a personality more like his and Sissi preferring the younger Lizzie for the same reason. This isn't shown to affect their older brother Aaron (who just REALLY wishes he wasn't the only boy in the family) or the much younger twins who are the babies of the family. It's eventually revealed that the reason Sissi isn't close to Jace is because Jace is the result of an affair that Odd had with his ex-girlfriend Sam in the aftermath of a fight he and Sissi had around the time Aaron was conceived. She prefers Lizzie for being her blood daughter. It is unknown if Lizzie is aware of this.
- In Sonic X: Dark Chaos, it's revealed that Shadow and Eric are this to Maledict; the former because he was "corrupted by human frailty", the latter because a serious accident during his birth turned him into... something else. He only regards Sonic as his true successor.
- Misty of Pokémon: The Series has this compared to her sisters in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines to such an extent, it's outright stated her parents only kept her around due to the negative publicity they'd get for abandoning or killing her. A later sidestory has her admit to herself not to miss them when they die.
- In Children of an Elder God, Rei is Gendo's favorite pilot. In chapter 19, Asuka went mad with Gendo because he always favored Rei, no matter what.
- In How the Light Gets In, both of Laurel's parents display Parental Favoritism to Sara, but her mother Dinah takes it to higher levels. She abandoned Laurel when Sara was believed dead, openly disapproves of Laurel's husband, critique's her parenting, and feels Laurel didn't become who Dinah wanted her to be. And she's implied to be completely unaware of it.
- Secret Sunshine implies this with Ryuuko's past, as, their parents (one or both) kept custody of Satsuki but not her. It's not said why or what led to them giving up custody of her but this being implied plays into the some of Ryuuko's abandonment issues. One of the things she keeps bringing up is how Satsuki was kept and she was sent away.
- In Blackbird (Arrow), both of Laurel's parents have Parental Favoritism to Sara. However when Dinah gives Laurel to the League of Assassins to secure Sara's release, it becomes apparent just how little Laurel means to to her.
- Truth and Consequences:
- Adrien realizing that Fu was severely neglecting his training in favor of Marinette - whom he was grooming to succeed him as Guardian - plays a large role in his Broken Pedestal towards the man. Fu's colleague Master He implies he actually has a history of this behavior, but never to such an extreme degree, so she picks up the slack by giving him lessons in properly wielding his Miraculous.
- In the epilogue chapter, Fu does explain his reasoning: being the Guardian is an incredibly lonely and secretive existence, and Adrien already lived a lonely, sheltered life. Fu didn't want to add to his isolation but believed that Marinette, with her loving parents and a wide circle of friends, could cope. Since the story begins with Heroic Fatigue diving Ladybug into a Face–Heel Turn, he obviously made a few miscalculations...
- Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail: Subverted. Chloe Cerise believes that everyone around her considers Pokémon to be much more important. This includes her Childhood Friend Goh, who's doggedly chasing after Mew and constantly leaving her behind, and her own father, who is so wrapped up in his research that he doesn't know anything about her along with everything he does with Goh and Ash Ketchum making it sounds like he favors them over his own daughter. In truth, she was truly loved by both of them; the former legitimately didn't realize there was any bad blood between them until she spelled it out, while the latter's actions were an attempt to give her a safe space following a particularly horrible case of bullying at school.
- Satsuki Kiryuin in Natural Selection was neglected and abused by her mother even worse than she was in Kill la Kill canon thanks to her having favoritism for both Ryuko and Nui this time around rather than just Nui. Ragyo attributed many of her accomplishments and contributions in establishing Honnouji Academy to Ryuko, and wouldn't have even bothered acknowledging her existence if Ryuko didn't have a huge case of Big Sister Worship towards her.
- Buttercup in Villain: Redux feels like this when it comes to the Professor. Downplayed in that while her rejecting his occasional attempts to bond doesn't help, and he does clearly care for her well-being, it's also made blatantly clear that he understands Buttercup far less than he does Bubbles and Blossom. He's absolutely confused at the idea that she's intellectually gifted and ignorant/forgetful about her likes and dislikes.
- Karma Circle: Judgement: Contrary to how Professor Membrane tends to treat Dib on the regular (calling him "my poor, insane son"), Daan Yel reveals to Gaz that she is the one he subconsciously dislikes, because at least Dib has shown the initiative to do something with his life even if it's something Membrane doesn't approve of, while Gaz is interested in nothing more than playing her video games, eating her pizza, and beating up people she dislikes.
- The Chaotic Masters: Tirek is incensed at how Trigon views him as just another minion while treating Raven as the key to all his plans. This resentment is what's fueling his plans to usurp his father.
