http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWorfEffect

Red Mage, 8-Bit Theater "He's the guy who's here to act tough so new characters can wreck him when they're introduced thus proving to the rest of us how amazing they are! Like Wolverine or Worf."

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Want a quick way to show how dangerous one of your unknown characters is? Simple, make them do well or win in a fight with a character that the audience already knows is tough. This establishes them as willing to fight and marks them as sufficiently dangerous.

For new villains, it's common for them to pick up the toughest character among the heroes (usually The Big Guy) and hurl them across the room or otherwise take them out in one blow, thus showing that they are the real deal. It's even a genuinely good strategy — take out the biggest and toughest in a group, and the rest will accept how tough you are instead of having to prove it over and over. When used sparingly and appropriately, this is a powerful way to establish said villain as a serious and credible threat, leaving the audience thinking, "Wow, they just beat up Worf! They must be bad news!" But if the same character is repeatedly used as the target of displays like these, then the character begins to look weak, and if abused, their reputation as the "biggest, toughest" etc. begins to look more like an Informed Ability than anything else.

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Worf Had the Flu is sometimes used to justify Worf's poor showing. The Worf Barrage is when an "ultimate" attack or technique is defeated this way instead of a character. If a new villain introduces themselves by beating the previous villain, that's Make Way for the New Villains (a subtrope). If this happens to a major villain following a HeelFace Turn on their part, that's a Redemption Demotion. When Worf gets beaten emotionally rather than physically, that's Break the Badass. Applied to an entire military? You may get a Red Shirt Army. If the defeated badass is a Professional Killer, that's Assassin Outclassin'.

Compare Badass in Distress and The World's Expert on Getting Killed, both of which can overlap. Killing off a Red Shirt or two is a slightly different method for achieving a similar effect. If the character beats up a whole army, Conservation of Ninjutsu is probably at work. Hopeless Boss Fight, when the Worf Effect is shown in a form of Boss Battle. Contrast Fight Dracula, in which a writer has a pre-established character (as opposed to a new one) demonstrate their awesomeness by fighting Dracula (but not necessarily winning). See also the analysis page for some side analysis of this trope.

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Named for the tendency in Star Trek: The Next Generation for hostile creatures to do that very thing to Worf. Also known in Professional Wrestling as "jobbing".

Note: Please don't use this trope whenever someone loses a fight. It only applies if serves the purpose described above.

Examples:

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Advertising

One of the cause-and-effect-chain DirecTV commercials goes thusly , with lines 5-7 exemplifying this:

When you get angry, you go blow off steam

When you go blow off steam, accidents happen

When accidents happen, you get an eye patch

When you get an

When people think youre tough, they want to see how tough

And when they want to see how tough, you wake up in a roadside ditch

Dont wake up in a roadside ditch When your cable TV company keeps you on hold, you get angryWhen you get angry, you go blow off steamWhen you go blow off steam, accidents happenWhen accidents happen, you get an eye patchWhen you get an eye patch , people think youre toughWhen people think youre tough, they want to see how toughAnd when they want to see how tough, you wake up in a roadside ditchDont wake up in a roadside ditch

Fan Works

Film

Literature

Music

The title character of "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" is set up throughout the song as "the baddest man in the whole damn town," complete with packing a gun and razor wherever he goes... but by the end of the song, a bar fight with the husband of a woman he's checking out has left him looking like "a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone".

Mythology and Folklore

Tigers in East Asian fables tend to get sacrificed to show the badassery of various characters. Oni are almost always depicted as wearing a tiger skin on some part of their body, or at least tiger-teeth jewelry. The first thing Sun Wukong does when released from his imprisonment is beat a tiger to death and fashion a kilt out of his skin. Before that, he beat up the entire army of the Celestial Court. The really powerful beings that finally subdued him weren't in the mood to interfere until personally insulted or their IOUs were tapped.

Similarly to the above example, it's common in Sub-Saharan folklore for monsters to kill pachyderms (elephants, rhinoceroses, etc.) to show how dangerous they are. This also occurs in European folklore, with the death-dealer being dragons or unicorns.

Greek Mythology: Ares is recognized as the god of war and embodiment of physical power, but tends to lose or get humiliated in nearly every story about him. He gets trapped and humiliated by Hephaestus when Ares and Aphrodite (Hephaestus' consort) are caught in an illicit love affair, is terrified into retreating from the monster Typhon, loses a boxing match to Apollo, ends up wounded by the hero Diomedes with the aid of Athena forcing him to flee the battle, gets defeated by Hercules twice and stripped of his armor in one instance, is locked in a bronze jar by the Aloadae requiring Hermes to free him, and is defeated in battle with Athena by a rock to the head. Athena had a habit of humiliating him and Zeus generally said he was worthless. His humiliations are usually attributed to the fact that the best preserved and recorded myths came from Athens the city of the other major deity of war. This extends to the other good record keeping Greeks preferring the more intellectual Athena and Ares being hated for embodying the chaotic and destructive nature of warfare. Oh, and Nike (Victory) usually sided against him. (In fact, the only gods who liked him were probably Eris, Aphrodite, and maybe Hades, seeing as deaths caused by war gave him more subjects.) Aphrodite was the goddess of beauty and love, and the most beautiful goddess of them all, yet a lot of really beautiful women or demigoddesses were frequently compared to her and proclaimed to either equal to her or even surpass her. For instance, there is Psyche who charmed Eros, Aphrodite's son, or Helen, Zeus's illegitimate daughter, whose beauty exacerbated, if not caused, the Trojan war.

Indra from Hindu Mythology started off as the supreme god, lord of heaven, and ultimate warrior. He rose to power by saving the world from an endless drought through slaying the demon snake Vrtra after breaking through the demons 99 fortresses with his Vajra or thunderbolt. Nowadays it's hard to find a story where he does not lose his throne, is completely ineffective in battle, or in some way humiliated. Even his one claim to fame has been retold with either Vishnu having to save him or practically handing him his victory.

In Russian Mythology and Tales, the Firebird is a magical creature that is supposedly nigh-impossible to catch. Some stories about hunting the Firebird do portray the hunt as just such an impressive quest, but almost as often the hero catches the avian almost as an afterthought.

This happens in virtually every text in Arthurian Legend. Every time a new knight is introduced, they prove how great he is by having him defeat a line-up of more established knights. Gawain gets this a lot, as does Percival.

Nearly every Robin Hood Child Ballad is a variation on the plot of a stranger defeating Robin in combat and thus earning his respect and being invited to join his merry band of outlaws. Read or listened to all at once, they become one long catalog of failure, the great Hood getting his ass handed to him over and over and over. He even loses to Maid Marian.

Throughout the early Bible stories (those also in the Torah) the big, powerful empire around is Egypt. Several times the Israelites prove the superiority of their God over this greatest early empire, either by saving it from future famine (Joseph) or freeing an entire subjugated ethnicity despite all of Egypt's might (Moses).

Professional Wrestling

Roleplay

Yu-Gi-Oh! East Academy: Skull Knight seems to have been introduced solely for Sigmund to get his official badass license. Marcus has been subjected to this no less than three times, being curbstomped by Peter, Yikzhekel and Haine. And Denero gets his ass handed to him by David in the latters first duel in the show.



Sports

In combat sports such as boxing and Mixed Martial Arts, contenders on the rise are often matched up with "gatekeepers," who are veterans of the sport who can be described as "good" but will not be challenging for the title any time soon. Defeating a gatekeeper gives fighters experience and allows them to ascend the championship ladder without sacrificing the careers of fellow contenders. In boxing, gatekeepers will usually swim around the bottom of the top ten ranking or just below, and may even get a title shot, but they'll almost never win and mainly serve as reasonably good names on someone else's resume. Prime examples of boxing gatekeepers include Earnie Shavers, Chris Arreola, and Dereck Chisora.

Journeymen serve largely the same role, except less so. Journeymen are supposed to be reasonably tough and experienced, above local fighters and 'bums', but not high enough to be ranked. Beating up a few decent journeymen generally gets you into contender status, when your next challenge will be a gatekeeper. Career journeymen pride themselves on the ability to *lose* convincingly, so their opponent looks impressive instead of the journeyman just looking like a bum.

In boxing, aging former champions in their late 30s or to mid 40s (being too past their prime to win but still tough enough that beating them is beyond the ability of most) are often fed to a new contender on the rise in order to give them a credible name on their resume with relatively little risk. Former IBF heavyweight champion Tony Tucker was a perfect example, losing to John Ruiz, Herbie Hide, and Orlin Norris in rapid succession while aged 38-39 (he beat on journeymen in between these fights to prove he wasn't completely shot), each of whom later became a world champion. Or former WBA and IBF champion Tim Witherspoon, who aged 39-43 went on a losing spree against the likes of Ray Mercer, Larry Donald, Jimmy Thunder, Andrew Golota, and Monte Barrett (against, he racked up a bunch of victories in between these fights against journeymen). This doesn't happen as much in MMA due to old fighters being considered more viable there.

In NCAA Football, the University of Michigan Wolverines, the team with the most wins in college football history, has fallen into this role in recent times. The Wolverines have lost almost every game against a top-10 ranked opponent in the since 2012 (a current 1-14 record). Sportscasters will note the teams storied history, but their opponents and rivals will use their eventual victory as proof of their programs strength. This has increased with the hiring of Jim Harbaugh as head coach; a Michigan graduate and former quarterback who was brought in to bring the team back to its glory days and secure marquee wins.

In sports leagues with promotion and relegation systems any club that has spent a long time in one league without moving up or winning a championship is a good example of this, as they have been good enough to avoid relegation but not good enough to actually move on. Any team from a lower flight that wants to avoid being sent back will have to be able to contend with them and any team going for a championship will have to be able to consistently beat teams of this class. Everton in the English Premier League is a good example of this, having spent more time in the top flight than any other club but has yet to win the Premier League. Its less common in leagues with fixed membership where taking a couple losing seasons is considered to be far less of an issue and there is no real need to cling to a middle position in order to keep your spot in the league. This is considered either a bug or a feature depending on what side of the Relegation vs franchise debate you fall on.

Tabletop Games

Visual Novels

Fate/stay night Happens especially with Servant Berserker. His Master makes no secret of his true identity as Hercules. He's called The Strongest Servant, he's top-tier in all the main factors that determine a Servant's strength (age, fame, and mana stores of his Master), with his Class enhancing his already insane power, attacks below 'A'-rank barely scratch him, and he revives 12 times before he can be Killed Off for Real the Grail War. However, he is always eliminated half-way through any scenario, all to show how impressive some other character is or has become. Taking from a modified text above..."If those things took down Berserker in less than two minutes, what chance do we have?" Isn't it sad, Bahsahkah? To be completely fair, in the Fate arc, he took out Archer and nearly killed Shirou and Rin and he went out in a blaze of glory in Unlimited Blade Works tanking Gate of Babylon after Gate of Babylon to shield Ilya cementing how badass he actually is. Hercules is actually a strange case of Worf Had the Flu. The Berserker class is generally regarded as a trap option, as while it greatly strengthens servants summoned under it, it ALSO tends to remove their capacity for critical thought, and disables most of their strongest abilities. The only real exceptions to this rule are people like Beowulf, who aren't truly insane but are "berserkers" in combat, or people like Kiyohime, SF!Jack, and Spartacus, who are inherently insane and must be summoned under Berserker to show their strength. Archer Hercules in Fate/strange fake demonstrates perfectly how much more powerful he is when he's allowed thought. Early in UBW, Servant Rider is hit by this trope. Although being regarded as one of the strongest Servant, she is killed off-screen with "Just one blow" by Caster's Master Kuzuki Souchirou, who is a mere human with his strength enhanced by Servant Caster's magic. A similar fate will almost fall upon Servant Saber, regarded as the strongest servant. The true master of this trope is Lancer; he is established early on as being a badass while fighting Archer and almost kills Shiro and delivers a badass one-liner immediately following, but it's all downhill from there. In the Fate route he is killed by Gilgamesh to establish how powerful he is . In Unlimited Blade Works he is forced to kill himself by Kotomine ordering him to do so with a Command Spell , though he does have his chance to shine immediately following this. Finally in Heaven's Feel he dies to establish True Assassin's cred. Although, his death in Heaven's Feel is because Dark Sakura cornered him, meaning he would've died by either True Assassin or Dark Sakura. If Dark Sakura weren't there, True Assassin would've been gone as fast as he arrived. His Gag in the Spin-Off Carnival Phantasm is essentially The Worf Effect taken Up to Eleven to Butt-Monkey proportions. Ultimate example: Even motherfucking GILGAMESH, the strongest day guy in the whole series, has suffered from this in Heavens Feel Dark Sakura kills him while seriously wounded, confused, and scared. Then EATS him, taking his power.

Starting in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney  Dual Destinies, when there were multiple playable characters, Apollo becomes a downplayed version of this, being the first of the main lawyers to have to face the game's main prosecutor and demonstrate how good a prosecutor they are. Downplayed in that he does end up beating them in the end, but it is still a very close victory in both cases.

Web Comics

Web Original