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* Ippolit Kuragin in ''[[War and Peace]]''. A minor character compared to his siblings [[Casanova|Anatole]] and [[Hello, Nurse!|Helene]], whose one moment in the sun is during a soirée in which he has a [[Cloudcuckoolander]] moment:
{{quote|"The road to Warsaw, perhaps," Prince Ippolit said loudly and unexpectedly. Everyone turned to him, not understanding what he meant to say by that. Prince Ippolit also looked around with merry surprise. Like everyone else, he did not understand the meaning of the words he had spoken. In the course of his diplomatic career, he had noticed more than once that words spoken suddenly like that turned out to be very witty, and, just in case, he had spoken these words, the first that came to his tongue.}}
* ''[[Discworld]]'':
** The aristocrats in the ''[[Discworld]]'' novel ''[[Discworld/Jingo|Jingo]]!''. The city-state of Ankh-Morpork is facing a war with Klatch ([[Fantasy Counterpart Culture]] to the Middle East). The Klatchian generals have lots of experience with war, while the Morporkian aristocrats have none, but the aristocrats wave that aside with the claim that the ability to lead war is ''hereditary'', and their ancestors were great generals. The Morporkian soldiers have neither training nor experience, while the Klatchian soldiers have plenty of both (and outnumber the Morporkians to boot), but the aristocrats wave that aside with the claim that the Klatchians are savages and won't stand against the superior Morporkians.
*** Take note, this IS''is'' coming from a group of people who believe that the best strategy is a full frontal assault, that if, after the battle, you subtract your fatalities from your enemies and get a positive number it was a great victory, that rudeness is the same as straight-talking, and that if you talk LOUD AND SLLLOOOWW enough anyone can understand you, even if they don't speak the same language.
*** Also from ''Discworld'' there's Lieutenant Blouse in ''[[Discworld/Monstrous Regiment|Monstrous Regiment]]'', initially a hopeless pen-pusher who desperately wants to be [[Sharpe]]. He later turns out to be something of a [[Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass]].
* The standard protagonist of Decadent fiction, as well as the standard author. You have to wonder if they'd be so filled with existentialist ennui if they quit moping around the house all day long and got jobs. The pinnacle of the Decadent novel (and this trope) was ''A[[À rebours]]'' by Joris-Karl Huysmans, so recognized it was alluded to in ''[[The Picture of Dorian Gray]]'' as simply "the little yellow book." The entire novel is about a rich guy moving to his country house and then thinking of expensive and strange things to put in it, up to and including a tortoise with jewels embedded in its shell. Which dies because it has heavy jewels embedded in its shell.
* Many of [[Sharpe]]'s enemies fit this trope. They tend to end up dead.
* Lots of people in ''[[The Great Gatsby]]'', but the Buchanans get singled out:
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