10 Unluckiest Sci-Fi Movie Characters Ever

And because not all unlucky characters need to be good guys or even neutral innocents, here's a supreme example of an outright a**hole getting an improbably raw deal.

In the first of two Paul Verhoeven movies on this list where characters get dealt a dose of ultra-violent bad luck, we have RoboCop's Emil Antonowsky (Paul McCrane) - the second-in-command to ruthless gang leader Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith).

Emil meets his most contrived fate near the end of the movie, as while attempting to run RoboCop (Peter Weller) down, RoboCop fires a bullet into his windshield. This prompts Emil to duck, taking his eyes off the road and promptly crashing into a strategically placed vat of toxic waste.

The toxic waste then quickly melts through the front of the van, flooding the entire vehicle, before Emil finally emerges as a grotesque, half-melted shadow of his former self.

And because that's not bad enough, he walks into the nearby road where he's summarily run over by his own boss, Boddicker, who isn't paying attention to the road.

And when we say "run over", we mean "obliterated into a leaky, meaty mess," because Emil's compromised form practically explodes when Boddicker's car hits him at high speed.

In that moment, Verhoeven somehow made us feel sorry for murderous human garbage, so bravo.