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Nice Guys Finish Last
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A trope based on a Darwinian view of the world in which a man can't compete with other men for money and status (and by extension, women) without a willingness to be ruthless. When played straight, the character is a Dogged Nice Guy who may or may not end up defying the expectations of the cynics and finishing first after all. Sometimes, however, a male character (who may not be particularly nice at all) will get frustrated with his lack of success with women and conclude it's simply that All Girls Want Bad Boys, not realizing that he may actually be just as much as a Jerkass as these ruthless alpha males he assumes get all the women, just whinier and more self-pitying. Expect much Playing the Victim Card. Others will either sympathize with him or call him out on really not being that much of a nice guy at all. Jerkasses sometimes use this line as a rationalization for being such tools, as do Jerkass nations. When used in non-romantic observations, especially by someone on the extremely sour end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, expect the phrase to be punctuated with "... if they finish at all." Incidentally, the trope name is a misquote. There are several supposed sources and original quotes (and ironically, one of the people most frequently cited as the originator of the phrase was a Jerkass baseball manager who repeatedly lost to his genuinely kind and Benevolent Boss rival), but the fact that it's a misquote is the only certain thing.note What Dodgers manager Leo Durocher actually said, to the New York Journal-American in 1946, is, "The nice guys are all over there [on the Giants], in seventh place." Years later in his memoirs Durocher claimed that on one occasion "The Giants, led by Mel Ott, began to come out of their dugout to take their warm-up. Without missing a beat, I said, 'Take a look at that Number Four there. A nicer guy never drew breath than that man there.' I called off his players’ names as they came marching up the steps behind him, 'Walker, Cooper, Mize, Marshall, Kerr, Gordon, Thomson. Take a look at them. All nice guys. They’ll finish last. Nice guys. Finish last.'" Opposite of Cheaters Never Prosper and Single Woman Seeks Good Man. Related to Loser Protagonist, Romantic Runner-Up, and The Social Darwinist. For characters who actually finish last because they're nice, see Dogged Nice Guy. Also see Then Let Me Be Evil. |
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Implied throughout The Jane Austen Book Club. Lampshaded when Grigg has this conversation with Jocelyn. | |
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A podcast in The Art of Manliness explores this, noting that the "nice guy" is not always as nice as he thinks, often believing his own good nature allows him to act passive aggressively. This is especially when it comes to the myth of All Girls Want Bad Boys. | |
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Deconstructed and ultimately subverted in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. While Andy may fail at one night stands and short-term relationships compared with his more outgoing and lecherous coworkers, guess who's the first to sustain a healthy long-term relationship and get married? | |
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iCarly: Freddie invokes this by trying to prank order a fishy pizza to his teacher's house in front of Carly. When the pizza place calls back, he panics and runs away. Actually works in "iStage an Intervention" when he pulls a prank on Sam after she pulled one on her. Carly is impressed, but Freddie lacks the confidence to follow through and try to ask her out. | |
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Being too nice is one of Cracked's 5 Innocent Things That Science Says Make People Hate You. Gender Flipped in "5 Confessions of a Female 'Nice Guy'". The writer admits that she used to think her lack of luck with men was because men were too stupid to see how great she was and wanted Brainless Beauties instead. She later came to realize that she was wrong and that maybe she was just a jerk back then. |
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Melody: During the course of the story, Sophia briefly dates a guy, Dante. He is generally nice, not pushing things sexually with Sophia in any way. Sophia eventually friendzones him. Averted with thw protagonist. He’s a decent enough guy (though not a stereotypical nice guy), and can get a great deal of success depending on player choices. |
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xkcd presented a comic featuring a nice guy going over his modus operandi. Though the "nice guy" in question is less "nice guy" and more Entitled to Have You, since his plan is to ensnare the girl in an insidious All Take and No Give relationship. | |
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The Powerpuff Girls (1998) "All Chalked Up" likewise used a variation of the "aggressively nice" option when HIM tries to use Bubbles' naivety to his advantage. | |
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An episode of the Baby Blues Animated Adaptation focused on this. When Rodney asks Darryll for advice on women, Daryll tells Rodney he was a nice guy in high school, but if he [Darryll] could do it all over again, he'd be the biggest jerkass ever because he never got the girl. Rodney takes this to heart and starts acting this way, and sure enough, girls fall all over him. At the end, Darryll finds out the bad boy who competed with him is now working as a janitor, and stops thinking this way. Subverted in that one of Rodney's co-workers, who makes more money and works less than Rodney, admits to being like the janitor. |
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Something*Positive has Mike declare this, as he whines about acting like a girl's friend, only to have her fall for some better-looking guy who actually asked her out, rather than the creepy guy who was pretending friendship so he could get something out of it. | |
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Played straight in Doraemon. In the future, Shizuka ends up choosing Nobita over Dekisugi (although Nobita is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold). They get engaged during university and they eventually marry while the rest are still bachelors. | |
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Subverted on Girl Code. While the first part of the "Bad Boys" segment says that All Girls Want Bad Boys, by the end of the segment the cast agrees that Nice Guys usually wind up better off in life so they're the ones that girls SHOULD be going for. | |
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Defied by Kathy in Daughter for Dessert. She will only do anything with the protagonist if he is nice to her. This is established if he tries to get Kathy to sext him early in the game. He gets what he wants if he’s nice about it, but if he’s forceful, well... | |
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The song "Mr. Cellophane" from Chicago. Though in this character's case, he was actually married...to a fame seeking woman with low standards who dumped him after she was done using him. | |
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An episode on Kim Possible had Ron trying to invoke this trope, and failing miserably. Which is ironic since when Ron became evil, he was actually very competent. | |
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Nevertheless: Na-bi chooses the heartbreaker with commitment issues Jae-eon over her nicer childhood friend Do-hyeok. | |
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In The Stalking Zuko Series, the author, dissatisfied with how Aang got together with Katara in Avatar: The Last Airbender complains about the pairing being a way to reward Aang for being a "Nice Guy". Unsurprisingly, Katara ends up getting together with Zuko. | |
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Subverted in an Archie comic book back in the 70s, where the school participating in a citywide athletic marathon, and Riverdale High's star athlete Reggie is felled by a sprained ankle. Archie has to take his place and in every event, he eats the other participants' dust coming in second and third. But Dilton Doiley has been crunching the numbers, noting that on total points alone, Archie has put Riverdale High in the lead and he winds up winning the marathon. | |
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In Bedazzled, the protagonist, Elliot, starts out as one. Definitely Played for Laughs when he asks to be "the most sensitive man in the world." | |
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There's an episode of The IT Crowd that plays with this in all kinds of weird ways. Roy tries to prove that "all women want bastards" by making a fake profile on a matchmaking Web site for a mean alter ego (it starts with "Shut up!"), and when he gets a response from a woman he actually quite fancies, he goes on a real date with her but has to pretend to be the bastard his profile made him out to be. The Aesop, if there is one, seems to be about self-fulfilling prophecies: women who want bastards will find them, and men who try to make themselves into bastards to attract women will attract only damaged goods who confirm their dim view of the opposite sex. | |
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Stanley Ipkiss from The Mask. He grows out of it by the end of the film, where he learns how to still be a nice guy without being a pushover. It even gets name-dropped in the film. | |
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SpongeBob SquarePants: Plankton said this to SpongeBob. | |
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Astro City: Subverted. MPH tries to pull this when Quarrel decides to dump him for her old boyfriend Crackerjack. Quarrel isn't having it, though; she rightly points out that she isn't "all women", and that her commitment to being a Badass Normal superhero means she simply can't commit to the kind of relationship he wants. She also points out that Crackerjack's assholery is a major reason why their relationship works so well; he is simply too self-absorbed to care if she spends most of her waking time training, foils bank robberies on date nights, or is too preoccupied with superheroing to remember birthdays and anniversaries. | |
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Xander spends season 1 in love with Buffy. Buffy sees Xander as one of her best friends. When Xander asks Buffy out in the series one finale "Prophecy Girl", Buffy rejects his offer. She is currently in love with Angel, a vampire with a soul. Xander, admittedly unable to handle rejection, says to her: "I mean, I guess a guy's gotta be undead to make time with you." | |
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An episode of Hey Arnold! dealt with this trope, in which a school play takes on this trope as part of a Downer Ending (a change made by the director of it). In fact the trope quote comes from the Villain Song sung by Arnold's character, who was the Big Bad of the play. | |
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Girls with Slingshots: Jim goes on a tirade that "nice guys never get laid" to four perfectly normal guys who are getting laid. They are not amused. Unfortunately this would have worked better if the normal guys had not been actually bragging about getting laid in front of Jim. | |
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Friends: Chandler — probably the nicest character on the show and the one who gets the least action dating-wise - lampshades on this, quipping that someone saying he's a nice guy means "I'm going to be dating a chain smoking alcoholic and complaining about them to you." Averted later on though, when his extremely attractive best friend Monica (whose its hinted he's had feeling for, for years) falls in love with him and they're Happily Married long before the rest of the gang. |
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Object Oblivion has Snakey the first contestant eliminated to Prism. | |
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