Victory and Defeat - TV Tropes

Tropes about the results of competitions, battles, and contests, plus how they are caused and how they are handled.

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Tropes

• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: After the hero is beaten, he pleads for the villain to go easy on him.
• Assumed Win: Someone assumes they've won before being informed that they actually lost.
• Award Snub: A film doesn't win an award even though many people who've seen the film wish that it did.
• The Bad Guy Wins: The villain is victorious rather than the hero.
• Best Her to Bed Her: A woman who will only marry or have sex with whoever can defeat her in combat.
• Blinking Lights of Victory
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Winning a game by spending real-world currency.
• Broken Win/Loss Streak
• Check and Mate: The victor of the battle/match/war goes to explain how the loser lost, and/or how they won.
• Consolation Award
• Continue Countdown: In losing a video game, the player has a few seconds to decide whether to continue on or not.
• Claiming Via Flag: One side gains something and another loses it when a flag is planted.
• Crack Defeat
• Dark Horse Victory
• Decapitation Strike
• Decided by One Vote
• Defeat as Backstory
• Defeat by Modesty: An opponent is forced to forfeit the fight or competition because they lost their clothes.
• Defeat by Transformation: The ideal way to win is by transforming your opponent into something else.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Defeating an enemy causes them to become your friend.
• Defeat Means Menial Labor
• Defeat Means Respect
• Defeated and Trophified: You lose against them, your opponent keeps you as a living trophy of their victory.
• Defeating the Cheating Opponent: The villains cheat, the hero plays fair, and the hero still wins.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: Defeating an enemy who had previously never lost and/or was thought to be unbeatable.
• Defiant to the End: Showing defiance towards your opponent even when it's clear that you can't win.
• Disqualification-Induced Victory: The person who actually won gets disqualified, which causes the next ranking participant to win by default.
• Doom as Test Prize: A competition where the winner's reward is getting killed.
• Doomed Moral Victor
• Double Knockout: The battle, game or match ends in a draw.
• Drench Celebration
• Dusting Off Your Hands: When a character slaps their hands past each other to represent satisfaction at disposing of an individual.
• Fireworks of Victory: For when a victory for the protagonists results in an impromptu light show.
• First Girl Wins
• Flawless Victory: Winning without taking any damage in a Fighting Game
• Foregone Victory: A video game level that is impossible to fail.
• Game Over: Running out of lives and continues in a video game results in the game ending on a screen that reads "Game Over".
• Game-Over Man: A character who appears to mock the player when they get a Game Over.
• Going Home Again: Making it to the big leagues, flunking, and returning home in shame or to clear the mind.
• The Good Guys Always Win: The Hero(ine)'s side ultimately wins.
• Graceful Loser: A person who loses, but is content with not winning.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: A Boss Battle where winning the fight results in the boss defeating you anyway.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: A Boss Battle where victory is not meant to be possible and the story can only advance when the player fails to defeat the boss.
• Hospital Epilogue
• I Let You Win
• I Surrender, Suckers!: When assuming you’re victorious because the opponent surrenders, make sure they’re not doing this.
• I Was Beaten by a Girl: A man feels butthurt about losing to a woman.
• Instant-Win Condition
• Knee Fold Fall of Defeat: Dramatically falling to your knees and hitting the ground after you're beaten.
• Last Girl Wins
• Last-Second Villain Recovery: A seemingly-defeated villainous combatant rallies just long enough to endanger the hero.
• A Lesson in Defeat: An arrogant student is set up to fail to deflate their ego.
• Loser Gets the Girl
• Loser Leaves Town
• Losing Is Worse Than Death
• Meaningless Villain Victory: The villain wins, but an occurrence or revelation at the last minute renders their victory pointless.
• Misère Game: A game where players win by losing.
• Monument of Humiliation and Defeat: After the villain wins, they celebrate their victory by building a monument with the purpose of rubbing it in that the people they've conquered have lost.
• Myopic Conqueror: When The Conqueror has no plans or interests for a place he conquers.
• Near-Villain Victory: The bad guy almost succeeds, but they're beaten at the last minute.
• Never Filled Out Official Paperwork: A character loses a competition due to not signing paperworking declaring them an official participant.
• No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: A victory isn't as satisfying when there was no challenge.
• Nonstandard Game Over: A video game has an exclusive cutscene for when the player loses at a certain point in the game or in a certain way.
• Not So Invincible After All
• One Judge to Rule Them All
• Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending
• Out-Gambitted (winner in a contest of schemes)
• Please, I Will Do Anything!
• Post-Game Retaliation
• Posthumous Villain Victory: The bad guy wins after his death.
• Post-Victory Collapse
• Pyrrhic Victory: The characters succeed, but their victory has the cost of undermining their intended goal.
• Real Award, Fictional Character
• Rejecting the Consolation Prize
• Relieved Failure: A character is actually grateful to have lost.
• The Runner-Up Takes It All: A person who didn't win the competition ended up becoming more popular than the winner in the long run.
• Second Place Is for Losers: A character sees as meaningless anything other than placing first in a competition.
• Second Place Is for Winners: Not getting first place ended up resulting in a better outcome.
• Second Prize: A character was expecting a different outcome in a competition.
• Shocking Defeat Legacy
• Smooch of Victory: The winner gets a kiss from their love interest.
• Sore Loser: A person who tends to get angry when they lose and willing to harm the people who beat them just to spite them.
  • But Not Too Challenging: A character is too proud to take an easy victory, but is also too much of a Sore Loser to accept actually losing.
• Sportsmanship Aesop: A character is obsessed with winning, but ends up learning a lesson in sportsmanship.
• Status Quo Game Show
• "Success Through Cheating" Accusation: Someone accuses the winner of only having won because they cheated.
• A Taste of Defeat
• Team Rocket Wins: Ineffectual villains manage to achieve a minor victory.
• Tears of Defeat
• Too Quirky to Lose
• Touché
• To Win Without Fighting
• Underdogs Never Lose
• Unlosable
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: The winner of a competition is pretentious enough to mock the other competitors for losing.
• Vainglorious Downfall: A villain's obsession with their own beauty leads to their defeat.
• Victor Gains Loser's Powers
• Victor Steals Insignia
• Victorious Loser
• Victorious Roar: When a character just has to let everyone know they won, they do it LOUDLY!
• Victory by Endurance: Winning simply by lasting longer than the other participants.
• Victory Fakeout
• Victory-Guided Amnesia
• Victory Is Boring: Achieving your goal has the downside that you can no longer experience the fun of trying to accomplish it.
• Victory Pose
• Victory Pose On Person: Performing a Victory Pose while having a foot on the body of the defeated to bask in your victory. Or humiliate your opponent even further.
• Victory Quote
• Victory Sex
• Victory Through Intimidation
• Villainous Underdog
• Villains Want Mercy
• We Win, Because You Didn't
• White Flag
• A Winner Is You: Beating a video game rewards the player with nothing but a message congratulating them for completing the game.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing
• Win-Win Ending
• Won the War, Lost the Peace
• Worthy Opponent: A person respects their opponent for beating them.
• You Lose at Zero Trust
• Zero-Effort Boss: A Boss Battle so easy that losing is either extremely difficult or outright impossible.

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