Actually, that reminds me. For as much shit as people give the various Earthlings for being weak, or to characters like Vegeta for being Jobber Supreme, I don't think there's a single character in all of DBZ that embodies the
Worf Effect more than Future Trunks.
He gets that mindblowingly cool debut where he slices
Frieza of all characters to shreds like it was nothing!... Only to hold L after L in every battle for the rest of the arc. He loses harder to the present androids than the ones from his own timeline. He gets completely outclassed and humiliated by Cell after his transformation. Barring Goku's sacrifice, he's the
only character in the climax of the arc that Cell actually kills!
And it's made even worse by the fact that he tries harder to make a difference than most of the other main characters. He doesn't get cocky and tempt fate like Goku or Vegeta. He isn't a scared little chickenshit who backs down from a fight like kid Gohan. He's literally the only character I can remember who doesn't just sit there slack-jawed when the villain powers up; he actually tried to make a last-ditch effort to take out Cell during his final transformation. But not a single one of those things made a difference.
His character arc in Z was basically "look cool and tough for 2 episodes, then stay losing forever," and it's underscored by just how drastic the drop-off was from his debut to his other fights. People in this thread love to give Krillin or Tien or whoever shit for some reason, but either one of those guys has more W's to his name. At least the arc closed with him finally regaining his dignity in his own timeline.