From: Katamari Damacy series

Unlucky because: The fun, lighthearted presentation of the Katamari games hides a dark and disturbing truth: as your Katamari gets bigger and bigger, you’ll eventually start rolling living, sentient into a massive ball of junk, where they’ll be stuck, packed tightly against objects that range from other people and cuddly animals to hard, unforgiving things like bicycles, steel railings and concrete buildings. You know, the kinds of things that can hurt you if you just brush up against them. Gradually the ball will get larger, slowly crushing the people inside under suffocating layers of debris, until finally they’re hurled into the cold, airless vacuum of space.

To what end do these people suffer? What greater purpose might their deaths serve? Well, see, this man got bored and wanted to watch his son roll stuff up in a ball:

That’s it.

Above: RUN

From: Super Mario series

Unlucky because: Yes, OK, Princess Peach (nee Toadstool) isn’t a “bastard” per se, but Christ, have you ever seen anyone as luckless as her? For starters, most people - if they get kidnapped – tend to get kidnapped once, maybe twice in their lives. In Peach’s case, it’s practically all she does. She’s synonymous with being kidnapped.

Outside of the few games in which she’s been a playable character, she doesn’t really appear to ever do anything except get kidnapped, and even when she is playable, it’s usually after she’s spent part of the game being kidnapped. We don’t know what she does when she gets kidnapped; probably she just sits in a lava-tinged dungeon, staring wistfully into the middle distance. She certainly doesn’t seem to have any non-kidnap-related hobbies to occupy her time, except for maybe baking cakes. But have you ever seen one of these alleged cakes? Personally, we think the cake is a lie.

Above: OH WAIT NO IT ISN’T ha ha our bad

It’s not just the kidnapping that makes her unlucky, though; it’s the fact that her incessant kidnappings are part of a struggle for her affections between a short, fat plumber and a giant, fat turtle-dragon. She (possibly?) rules an entire kingdom, but so far these hypercompetitive sadsacks are her only visible romantic prospects:

Above: Sorry, ladies, they both think they’re taken

The more we think about it, the more dismal and suffocating Peach’s life appears. Situations like this are probably why feminism was invented.

Above: Feminism

From: Incredible Crisis

Unlucky because: A relatively obscure PSone game, Incredible Crisis follows the story of a typical Japanese family trying to make it through an atypical day. And while each family member stumbles through bizarre, life-threatening situations in turn, nobody gets hit quite as hard as Taneo, the hapless salaryman father.

Above: START PANICKING

All Taneo wants to do is finish his boring desk job and go home, but he’s on this list, so you know that shit won’t fly. Instead, he’s ordered to get up and dance as part of an office fitness program, which he obediently does. Just then, a piece of statuary breaks off from a neighboring construction site and comes crashing through his office, making a beeline for him.

Above: Of course!

Not content to simply threaten him with a good, Katamari-style crushing, the giant ball pursues him into a nearby elevator, smashing a hole in its roof, sending it plummeting down the side of the building and ultimately blasting Taneo out toward the sidewalk, at which point his only chance for survival is to balance on flagpoles.

From there it only gets weirder, as Taneo has to navigate a hospital gurney through traffic, falls in love with an attractive woman who repeatedly tries to murder him for no apparent reason, gets involved in a battle between the navy and a UFO and nearly drowns. The rest of his family, meanwhile, gets to go snowboarding, outwit bank robbers and play Simon-like games to communicate with aliens. Lucky bastards.

Above: Well, crap