You’d think that being the hero of your favorite video game universe would be the ultimate in cool things to happen to any avid gamer, right? Well, sometimes being the hero is far less of a good time, and far more of a nightmarish one. Here are five examples of such ill-fated heroes who you wouldn’t want to be:

5. Luigi (Super Mario Bros)

Mario could easily fit this bill. He’s spent years saving Princess Peach and foiling the generally less-than-devious schemes of his arch-nemesis Bowser, only to have to repeat the exact same process each and every game. He never really gets much reward for his feats of goomba stomping monotony. I’m pretty sure he gets a cake at one point for all his hard work, but most of the time Mario kind of gets the short end of the stick, I mean, “We’re sorry but our princess is another castle?” It doesn’t get much lower then that. Except it does. You see, Luigi has been tagging along for the majority of Mario’s adventures and what has he gotten out of it? Even less than Mario. Where Mario is considered by and large to be the hero, Luigi, over time, has been made into a second string coward. An even bigger slap in the face is that when the Princess is in trouble she calls big M. Luigi only ever really gets to rescue Mario. Lame with a capital L. 

4. Link (The Legend of Zelda)

Suffering from many of the same problems as the Mario brothers, Link’s frustrations are worse in that he occasionally does get the girl, only to be cock-blocked at the very last second. Let us consider the eventual fates of Link’s various rendezvous with the titular princess Zelda. The NES days were of course poon free. In A Link to the Past and The Wind Waker, Zelda and Link are both children, making the prospect of post-game coupling both creepy and illegal depending on your country of residence. As I recall, the most Link has ever seemed to get out of this relationship was a brief hand hold at the end of Ocarina of Time, and before that could go any further, Zelda, being the prude princess she is insisted Link deserved a chance at a “real” childhood and zapped him back to the past. As if the poor fellow could ever live a normal life after having singlehandedly saving the world.