While much usually depends on execution, certain kinds of characters have a much higher probability of being hated:
- The Ace, when used for the wrong situation.
- An Annoying Younger Sibling, a Bratty Half-Pint, a Bratty Teenage Daughter, an Alpha Bitch, a Spoiled Brat or a Royal Brat, especially if they don't grow out of it.
- A Cousin Oliver is very likely to irritate the fans by upsetting the standard character dynamic. Even worse if it is also a Kid Appeal Character inserted in a work not initially directed towards younger viewers.
- A Complete Monster, though that character may be designed to be hated.
- A Dirty Coward and especially if it makes them an Action Survivor.
- An Entitled Bastard that causes harm to the heroes but expects to be rescued by them.
- An Exposition Fairy that tries to be helpful but winds up being annoying.
- Someone who performed a Face Heel Turn may earn ire to the fans who really dislikes the term 'traitor', unless they are forced into it or are not very happy about it.
- A Deadpan Snarker that's too abrasive and insufficiently charismatic.
- A Manipulative Bastard but not a Magnificent Bastard.
- A Karma Houdini, depending on how horrible they were.
- The Load, who needs the heroes to take care of them without contributing anything useful in return. Including a personality.
- A Spoony Bard, a gaming equivalent of The Load.
- The Millstone, one step worse than the The Load, who is an active liability to the heroes and still doesn't contribute anything useful.
- A Mary Sue or Marty Stu, including common official varieties such as Invincible Hero and Spotlight-Stealing Squad. Note that Marty Stus have a tendency to get away scot-free.
- A Pointy-Haired Boss who isn't sufficiently funny.
- A Smug Snake, especially if he/she does something so heinous they stop being "cool", though most are made this way on purpose.
- The Suspiciously Similar Substitute will undoubtedly be hated by fans of the beloved character they replace.
- An overly recurring villain.
- An Unwitting Instigator of Doom. You can practically touch the markedly-better alternate universe that could have been, if they hadn't been doing that thing in that place at that exact moment.
- This Loser Is You. Sometimes an attempt to make an incompetent main character that the audience can relate to ends up in a character that the audience wishes was anyone but the main character.
- Any character that is rife with Unfortunate Implications.
- An Ungrateful Bastard.
- A Nice Guy / Nice Girl when not given any interesting personality traits other than being nice to everyone.
- In video games, That One Boss when it's especially frustrating.
- A character with too much Angst Dissonance.
- A Soapbox Sadie.
- An Insufferable Genius.
- Someone who torments The Woobie willingly.
- A Villain Protagonist, especially if heinous, as well as that most are Karma Houdinis.
- A poorly-written Only Sane Man or Straight Man, especially in situations that don't call for one.
- A Straw Loser, especially if the person they're the straw loser to isn't much better.
- Any character that reeks of Positive Discrimination.
- The Generic Guy in a cast of unique characters.
- A Generic Doomsday Villain, especially if used in a serious genre.
- Someone who likes another character who is either a disliked character or just shows that he/she doesn't care for the former, will often be lauded with ridicules and dislikes, with some camp calling the first character stupid, or even consider them as another Scrappy.
- Note that in order for a character to qualify, the audience have to feel that the character detracts from the work. If they simply hate the character, then chances are this character is a Hate Sink, though there's nothing stopping a Hate Sink from becoming a Scrappy if they're written badly.
- In addition, if the writers begin relying too heavily on an already-present character with some potentially annoying quirks (like The Unintelligible or the Non-Human Sidekick), the viewers may begin to find him/her very annoying indeed. Sometimes even a very popular character is at risk of becoming a Scrappy when he or she wears out his or her welcome by being overexposed.
- Occasionally, a character intended as a Butt Monkey will backfire and become a Scrappy, too. This usually happens when a writer attempts to make his mishaps even funnier by making him an unlikeable person to whom it's very satisfying to see horrible things befall. A great idea, but sometimes it backfires when the Butt Monkey becomes so annoying that whatever happens to him in the story, audiences are haunted by the feeling that it will never be enough. An especial risk when the Butt Monkey gags are prolonged, after which even a character who's not inherently unlikeable can stop being funny and become a Damsel Scrappy. It also comes full-circle in a way; note also that many Scrappies can easily become Butt Monkeys when touched upon in fan discussions and literary parodies. In any given Hate Fic, and even in the occasional straight-up Fanfic, the author may very likely go a step further than making The Scrappy into the Butt Monkey, killing him or her off (often brutally), or giving a "hero" Scrappy a Face Heel Turn so he becomes the villain; after which he again will likely be killed off.
- Strangely, at the other end of the spectrum lies another common scrappy, the Author Avatar. Unlike a Butt Monkey, they lack any sort of shame on principle; instead serving as the voice of reason, or whatever contrived argument the writer thinks is reason. If bad things happen to this character, it will be to prove that everyone else is allegedly stupider.
- Some people conflate Hate Sink characters with The Scrappy, on the fact that both types are hated by fans; but the difference is that in a high percentage of cases the Hate Sink is intentionally written that way -- usually to give fans a character on whom project their irritation if the nominal villain is inactive or relateable. As the trope namer proves, a Scrappy could have been written with the initial intention of being relatable and sympathetic (and maybe was, at the beginning), but their gimmick overstayed its welcome and the fans become increasingly irritated by its existence instead.
