If You Thought That Was Bad

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Alice tells a sad story. Bob tells an even sadder story to cheer Alice up. If You Thought That Was Bad is the phrase people often use before they tell an even sadder story than the previous. Surprisingly, it usually cheers up the first person by making them realize their situation isn't that bad. Sometimes it makes things worse.

Compare From Bad to Worse for when things actually got worse.

"If you think that story about the child molester was bad, let me tell you about..."

Examples of If You Thought That Was Bad include:

Film

  • Used in the last story in Night on Earth. Several guys in a cab discuss how one of them has been laid off from his job, and then his wife divorced him. Then the cab driver tells them his even more depressing story, which makes them feel like the laid-off-and-divorced guy is just whining about nothing.

Live-Action TV

  • Sue Sylvester from Glee says things like "You think this is hard? Try living with hepatitis! That's hard!" or "You think this is hard? Try being told by Baywatch that they want to go in another direction, that's hard!"
  • Supernatural: when Chuck is told that he's a prophet and understandably wigs out, Castiel just says "You should've seen Luke."
  • One of the That '70s Show's episodes, has Eric accidentally walks in on his parents having sex, after that, he has difficulty concentrating on Donna, his girlfriend, when they are alone. When he confess this, she attempted to cheer him up with her story of how she walked OUT on her parents...In a hammock...In broad daylight. Eric is cheered up, which has to do with Donna's mother being very attractive, but this is shortlived since Donna was traumatized by retelling the story she is no longer in the mood.
  • In Sesame Street were in one episode, Oscar the Grouch was trying to make everyone miserable, but it backfired, resulting with this trope. Nice Job Fixing It, Villain is basically inevitable with him.

Tabletop Games

  • Played with in Warhammer 40,000, where it usually goes "If you think that was bad..." and the something worse is in fact about to attack.

Web Original

Linkara: If you thought Twilight was the worst disservice to vampires the world has ever known...it is, but this one's pretty bad too.

Western Animation

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