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Failure Hero: Difference between revisions
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(Import from TV Tropes TVT:Main.FailureHero 2012-07-01, editor history TVTH:Main.FailureHero, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license) |
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'''Onlooker 2:''' [[Sarcasm Mode|What a surprise.]]<br />
'''Commentator:''' [[Butterfly of Doom|Again.]]<br />
'''Copycat:''' [[Good News, Bad News|Good news, everyone!]] [[Bad Future|I stop a terrible dystopian future from ever coming to pass!]] [[Earthshattering Kaboom|...Bad news is that my actions have created a new future in which we all die.]]<br />
'''Onlooker:''' [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|Damnit! I knew you'd screw up somehow!]]|''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4860110/7/Heroes_Abridged_With_Commentary_Genesis Heroes: Abridged with Commentary]''}}
Heroes sometimes lose. It's pretty common and, with [[Invincible Hero|a few]] [[God Mode Sue|exceptions]], it's the general rule of fiction to the point of being a near [[Omnipresent Tropes|Omnipresent Trope]]. That said, [[You Can't Thwart Stage One|losing in Acts 1 and 2]] doesn't mean a hero won't beat the villain in [[Happy Ending|Act 3]]; this is a good way of establishing conflict and drama while keeping them far away from being a [[Butt Monkey]]. Expanding this, a hero may well consistently win but still learn valuable [[Aesop|lessons]] out of it, get [[Character Development]], and just sometimes lose to [[The Worf Effect|keep the villains fresh and threatening]].
And then there are heroes who never win. ''Ever''. Especially in [[Failure Is the Only Option|series-resolving situations]]. He might make some headway against a rival in the first or second round, but the rival neatly trounces them before the end credits, sometimes thanks to a [[Diabolus Ex Machina]]. Any "wins" he does pull off are ambiguous and open-ended, [[Unwitting Pawn|further the]] [[Evil Plan|villain's plan]] or blatantly make things [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|that much worse for the unwitting hero]]. This of course tends to rob a given episode or movie franchise of dramatic punch when the viewer's reaction to a hero making steps to resolving their lifelong goal is "[[Yank the
Behind this is usually the idea that the hero sucks that much. Plus he's the hero; [[Good Is Impotent|the side of good]] [[Balance Between Good and Evil|is in an eternal struggle with evil]]! This is especially common in comedies where the hero is a [[Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist|failure of some kind]] or where advancing his goals would [[Just Eat Gilligan|end the show]]. If taken to extremes - and not in the comedic sense -- leads to [[Anti Sue]].
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== Film ==
* The title character of ''[[
* The ''[[Mystery Team]]'' is implied to be this.
* [[Hugh Jackman]]'s character in ''[[The Prestige]]''. His rival always seems to be ahead of him or he fucks up by himself.
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== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[Heroes (TV)|Heroes]]'' can't seem to write a good guy who ''isn't'' one of these, with Peter and Mohinder getting the worst of it (and Hiro beginning to catch up). On the rare occasions they aren't carrying the [[Idiot Ball]] or [[Villain Ball]] or doing a [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]], they're up against opponents heavily favored by [[Diabolus Ex Machina]]. It's no coincidence that characters like Angela Petrelli, Noah Bennet and Sylar -- ranging from morally ambiguous to downright evil -- tend to be extremely popular, given that they have been shown actually succeeding at their goals on a fairly regular basis.
** It feels like the Writers constantly throw the idiot balls at Peter because, let's face it - if he actually knew how to use his powers correctly he would be a [[God Mode Sue]], while the others... the writers just don't know how to write dramatic tension.
*** Oddly enough, when Peter [[Discard and Draw|got a new power]] [[Re
* This was part of the massive [[Cerebus Syndrome]] that hit ''[[Supernatural (TV)|Supernatural]]''. In the later seasons, there was very rarely an episode where hunting was portrayed as a good thing or that they were doing it for the right reasons and more often than not, someone got a [[Break the Cutie|little bit more destroyed or slipped down the humanity scale]], [[Anyone Can Die|died]] or managed to [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|break something]].
* ''[[Torchwood (TV)|Torchwood]]''. They can't straight-up win the day ''ever'', ending up with [[Pyrrhic Victory]] at best. By the end of ''Children of Earth'', {{spoiler|three of the initial five main characters are dead, one's on effective maternity leave and one's buggered off into space}}.
** This trend continues right into ''[[Torchwood Miracle Day (TV)|Torchwood Miracle Day]]''. As of episode five {{spoiler|Jack has lost his immortality, Ester has gotten her sister separated from her children by child care services, Oswald Danes refused to fight [[Phil Corp]], Rex destroyed the throat of the one man who could give them information on the villains, Vera has been burned alive and Gwen has her father set up to go down the same route.}} [[Sarcasm Mode|Go Torchwood!]]
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== Professional Wrestling ==
* Cited as one of the main reasons why [[WCW]] went under in its later years; every single [[Face]] that tried to go up against the [[Heel]] stable NWO invariably got ruthlessly squashed, including [[Badass Longcoat|Sting]], [[Cool Old Guy|Ric Flair]], and even in one of its most infamous moments in history Goldberg, who was a [[Showy Invincible Hero]] before.
** It was almost a ridiculous cycle of [[Kick the Dog|kicking the dog]] and then [[Yank the
* They're called [[Jobber|Jobbers]] for a reason -- the very few occasions when a dedicated midcarder [[Hope Spot|ever achieves anything remotely resembling success]], [[Yank the
* [[ROH]] had a case where a number of factors combined to create a team of Failure Heroes. Early in 2007, longtime tag team partners Austin Aries and Roderick Strong split, with Strong forming the No Remorse Corps alongside hot new talents Davey Richards and Rocky Romero. Aries, the [[Face]] in this feud, teamed up with the less established wrestlers Matt Cross and Erick Stevens. Unfortunately, Aries was soon forced to leave ROH for a few months due to contract obligations with [[TNA]] - leaving Cross and Stevens woefully outmatched by the No Remorse Corps. Wrestling logic dictated that the NRC get the early advantage in the feud, but without Aries around, Cross & Stevens had ''no'' credibility to begin with. By the time Aries returned, Cross and Stevens had already lost to the NRC so many times that nobody could get excited about their comeback.
* In [[TNA]] EV2.0 has been this since day one, whether if its during their feud with Fortune or Immortal. Whatever victory they manage to obtain is only short term as to this day they have lost FBI, Sabu, [[Face Heel Turn|Rhino]], and Raven.
* Ted Dibiase (The son, not ''The'' "Million Dollar Man") has slowly become a Failure ''Villain''. Lampshaded by his girlfriend Maryse, who even accuses him of causing her to lose matches by association and outright calls him a loser.
** On the 1/26/11 edition of NXT, however, he did finally managed to score a win. Who? '''''[[Bryan Danielson|Daniel Bryan]]'''''! ''Cleanly''. And Maryse actually complemented him! And his rookie Brodus Clay won the Fatal Four Way elimination match! ...[[Yank the
** As of recently Dibiase has leaned more into Face territory and started to gain more actual victories. He's still in mid card placement, but still at least he can get clean wins every once and a while.
* MVP went through a similar situation during a heel run, losing every match he had for a very long period of time (albeit for different reasons ranging from legitimate failures to outside interference and flukes). Story actually implied he was becoming backrupt as a result of this, leading him to gradually gain audience sympathy and eventually get cheered with great enthusiasm as he finally started to gain wins as a face.
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== Video Games ==
* ''[[Chrono Cross (Video Game)|Chrono Cross]]'''s [[Silent Protagonist|Serge]] unfortunately became this trope after his '''third''' [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]]. There's a reason that why that trope was named after him in the [[The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Cliches]].
* Leo of ''[[Zone of the Enders]]''. {{spoiler|Despite some victories, things still get destroyed all around him, and the end of the game is a humiliating defeat. He has better luck in the sequel, but that's when he's not using Jehuty.}}
** Debatable. You can save plenty of civilians from BAHRAM if you're good enough, you prevent Jehuty from falling BAHRAM hands, and you {{spoiler|save the colony from destruction before you're defeated by Nohman.}}
* ''[[Rameses]]'' is [[Interactive Fiction]]'s [[Ur Example]]. There are even conversation choices where you can stand up to the bully, insult the toadie, or defend [[The Woobie]], but the PC will nearly always reject them with a variation of "Why bother? [[Railroading|I couldn't do that anyway.]]"
* A problem in the [[Metal Gear]] series after [[Metal Gear Solid]], which applied via [[Retcon]]. Anything the main characters do advances the [[Ancient Conspiracy]]'s goals ''[[Gambit Roulette|somehow]]''. If the series didn't get a sequel after 3 it would have been a [[The Bad Guy Wins]] [[Downer Ending]] to the series.
* Leonard in ''[[White Knight Chronicles]]'', the actual main character of the game. Despite being possessing the power to transform into an indestructible 20 foot tall walking tank whenever he feels like it, he consistently fails to achieve his goals or [[Villains Act, Heroes React|take any action that isn't a direct response to the actions of the antagonist]]. He allows the Princess he's supposed to be saving to get kidnapped in front of his eyes multiple times, even allowing to her to get ''re''captured after rescuing her for about 15 seconds. He is consistently fooled by the bad guy's spies and infiltrators, and can't wrap his head around the fact that every time his friend Kara disappears, the evil [[The Rival|Black Knight]] appears. He suffers a ''[[Heroic BSOD]]'' and outright quits the party for half of the second game. Then, in a misguided attempt to save the day, he parachutes back into the party during a crucial battle underleveled, underdeveloped, and undergeared and usually gets the entire party killed as a result of the player being forced to field an unprepared character. And finally, he leads the charge into the final dungeon and defeats [[Big Bad Wannabe]], only to wind up [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|fulfilling the real Big Bad's]] [[Evil Plan]] and become the final boss ''himself'' via a [[Grand Theft Me]]. He's last seen limping off screen slumped over someone else's shoulder, with the Princess he spent the last game repeatedly failing to rescue having killed the [[Big Bad]] herself when everyone else wasn't looking.
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** His [[Expy]] Phantom Fink suffers the same problem; when he does win, the prize is absolutely horrible.
** No matter ''who'' wins in ''Yogi's Space Race'', something happens to make the prize undesirable. One wonders why the racers keep coming back.
* The protagonists of ''[[Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy (Animation)|Ed, Edd n Eddy]]''. Not only do [[Ambition Is Evil|Eddy]] and his crew fail at their attempts to scam kids, they also completely fail at legitimate ventures or even completely innocent goals like gaining a little respect from their friends. The constant teasing and harassing of their [[Jerkass]] neighbors only rubs salt into the wound.
** In the movie {{spoiler|this is subverted. The other kids finally accept the Eds into their group after seasons of turmoil.}}
* The title character of ''[[The Buzz On Maggie (Animation)|The Buzz On Maggie]]''. Mostly everything she tries to accomplish fails, or backfires in her face.
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