Consolation Award

"Sick Boy: All I'm trying to do, Mark, is help you understand that The Name of the Rose was merely a blip on an otherwise uninterrupted downward trajectory.

Renton: What about The Untouchables?

Sick Boy: I don't rate that at all.

Renton: Despite the Academy Award?

Sick Boy: That means fuck all! It's a sympathy vote."

- Trainspotting on the subject of Sean Connery.

What may happen as a result of someone getting one too many Award Snubs. Basically, someone in the entertainment industry has gone too long without winning a particular award, despite their work being considered some of the best in their field. Eventually, they do end up winning the award... but for something considered pretty inferior to the rest of their work.

Ironically, this ends up continuing the cycle of snubs, since, well, someone better has to lose.

Movies

 * Peter O'Toole has been nominated eight times for the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, making him the most-nominated actor never to win the award. In 2003, he instead received an Academy Honorary Award for his entire body of work and his lifelong contribution to film. Thanks a lot. Not.
 * This trope's Distaff Counterpart to O'Toole is Deborah Kerr, who earned six Academy Award nominations for Best Actress in a Leading Role over a twelve year period from 1950-1961, and lost all six, coming up short on her last try to Elizabeth Taylor's consolation Oscar for Butterfield 8 (see below). She also received four BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) nominations for Best Actress in her native Great Britain and lost all four of those too, making her the most-nominated performer never to win Best Actress in TWO countries. Both the British and American Academies finally and belatedly presented her with Honorary Awards for lifetime achievement in the 1990s, more than two decades after she had effectively retired from acting.
 * Martin Scorsese's The Departed is not widely considered to be one of his best. So, one can't help but wonder if this trope was in effect when it won Best Picture and he won Best Director, after decades of Scorsese's work never getting the honor. Arguably, though, it might alsto because it was the most successful movie out of that year's Best Picture nominees.
 * Cecil B. DeMille's 1952 film The Greatest Show On Earth is considered by many to be one of the worst films to ever win Best Picture. Some suspect the only reason it got the award was because DeMille's films had never won one yet, despite the man's career dating all the way back to the silent era. Ironically, they could have just waited a few years and given it to his last film and one of his best -- The Ten Commandments. Instead, it lost Best Picture and DeMille wasn't even nominated as Best Director.
 * John Wayne's Best Actor win in 1969 for True Grit is seen as a consolation for him not winning the award for his work in films like Red River, The Quiet Man, The Searchers, and Sands Of Iwo Jima.
 * Henry Fonda finally won a Best Actor Oscar for On Golden Pond -- the last movie he ever made.
 * By the time 2008 rolled around, Kate Winslet had been nominated six times and had yet to win an Oscar. What makes people believe that this occurred is that she won Best Actress for The Reader, even though she won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for the same role. (Interestingly, she also won Best Lead Actress at the Golden Globes that year, but for Revolutionary Road.)
 * Al Pacino got a Best Actor Oscar in 1992 for Scent of a Woman, despite the role not being nearly as critically acclaimed as The Godfather, The Godfather Part II or Dog Day Afternoon.
 * An example of the cycle continuing: In 2001, Nicole Kidman was nominated for Moulin Rouge, but lost to Halle Berry. The next year, she won for The Hours, a film that has been all but forgotten. She beat Renee Zellwegger in Chicago, who ended up winning Best Supporting Actress in 2003 for Cold Mountain. A lot of the reviews of Cold Mountain actually contained comments along the lines of "just give Renee the Oscar already" (NOTE: She had been nominated for Best Actress in 2001 as well, for Bridget Jones's Diary.
 * One of the more infamous of these was Paul Newman winning for his work in a sequel to The Hustler, The Color of Money, because he'd been snubbed decades earlier for his work in the original. Moreover, he'd just received an Honorary Oscar the previous year!
 * Possibly the most famous (or infamous) of these is that Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar as a director (though Rebecca won Best Picture). The Academy gave him a lifetime achievement award, which he deserved anyway, but it was mostly an apology for never giving him an award for Vertigo, Psycho, North by Northwest, The Birds, Rope, Strangers on a Train, The Man Who Knew Too Much, To Catch a Thief, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, Marnie...
 * The first two installments of The Lord of the Rings trilogy received nothing but technical awards. The final installment received just about every Oscar. The Academy was apparently reluctant to hand out big awards to the early installments for fear of clogging up the awards for the next three years, and decided to treat the last installment as a catch-all summation of the trilogy.
 * Denzel Washington's work in Training Day, after losing for The Hurricane and Malcolm X.
 * Elizabeth Taylor's 1960 Oscar for BUtterfield 8, a film that's pretty much forgotten, and she didn't even want to do. She was nominated in 1957 for Raintree County, in 1958 for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and in 1959 for Suddenly, Last Summer, of which the latter two are considered classics. It's widely thought that she won by a vote of sympathy, because of her recent near-fatal illness.
 * Aversion: In 1996, it was thought of as certain that legendary Golden Age of Hollywood star Lauren Bacall, who had never been nominated for an Oscar before, would win the Best Supporting Actress award for the poorly-reviewed Barbra Streisand vehicle The Mirror Has Two Faces. When she didn't win, instead losing to Juliette Binoche for The English Patient (which swept that year's awards), it was a huge shock. (Bacall would receive an honorary Oscar in 2009.)
 * On the subject of Golden Age stars, while Humphrey Bogart (Bacall's husband) gave his usual quality performance in The African Queen opposite fellow screen legend Katharine Hepburn, it is pretty much universally agreed that his Oscar for that film was actually for his work in The Maltese Falcon, for which he was nominated and lost ten years before.
 * James Baskett, the lead actor of Song of the South, was given an "Honorary Oscar" at that year's Academy Award because at the time, an African American wasn't going to be nominated for a lead role.
 * Although James Stewart gave a solid performance in The Philadelphia Story, it's commonly accepted that the Best Actor Oscar he won was really for his career-defining work in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington the year before.
 * Within minutes of her 2012 Best Actress win, the general consensus was that Meryl Streep won for The Iron Lady as compensation for... oh, pretty much everything she's ever done since Sophie's Choice (her last Oscar win, nearly 30 years and 17 nominations ago. It's been said that Meryl is simply beyond awards, and she's usually excluded simply to give the rest of the gender a chance.) Unfortunately, the fact that she won over Viola Davis (who really should have won for Doubt four years earlier) means that many people are crying racism.
 * It didn't help matters when people looked at the two movies in question. When you look at The Iron Lady, the reviews frequently said that Meryl was the best part of an otherwise lukewarm film, whereas The Help was both a critical and commercial darling.

Music

 * Metallica won a Consolation Grammy after losing Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance to (shockingly) Jethro Tull the year before. The Grammys finally realized how much Metallica had contributed to heavy metal and decided to give the award for Metallica.

Professional Wrestling

 * There's a possible analogue in Professional Wrestling - some performers can work for years, often in a jobber role, but just by ill fortune, injuries or other reasons can go largely unrecognised in terms of championships, so they get a token reign later on. Examples:
 * Hugh Morrus in WCW stands out as one - he was a classic "jobber" for years, making other people look good on the way up, and eventually got a "feel good" US title reign in 2000.
 * Mick Foley stated in his second book that he felt that his title reign in 1999 were granted more as a lifetime achievement award rather than being the "top guy" although some of the fans might have disagreed since he was the top active face at the time (Stone Cold was briefly on the shelf).
 * Another notable example of a "Thank You" rein is when long time Jobber, The Brooklyn Brawler beat (by way of a fluke) WWE golden boy Triple H for the Intercontinental championship. The Brawler is one of those guys that makes anyone look great but until that week he'd never even been a title contender.
 * Steven Richards and Funaki were jobbers for years before they both got their own consolation gimmicks related to the shows they were on, Stevie Night Heat and Smackdown's Number 1 Ring Announcer. They were kept with the company for many years longer than most other jobbers as they were well liked and loyal to the company, but none of the writing team knew what to do with them.

Science

 * Albert Einstein never won any awards for Relativity theory. His Nobel Prize was for the photoelectric effect instead (though his explanation was one of the key points leading to the development of quantum mechanics).

Television

 * It is quite common for the Gold Logie (an Australian television award) to be awarded to someone who is retiring. A good example is John Wood, who was nominated every year from 1997 until he finally won in 2006 (the year Blue Heelers was cancelled). Similarly, Kate Ritchie won the award shortly after leaving Home and Away. Subverted the following year when Ian Smith, who had just left Neighbours after more than 20 years, was beaten by Rebecca Gibney for her role in Packed to the Rafters.

Western Animation

 * Despite being one of the most beloved cartoon characters ever, a Bugs Bunny cartoon never won the Oscar until 1958's Knighty Knight Bugs. A fine cartoon, but hardly Bugs' finest moment, especially compared to the previous year's What's Opera, Doc, which wasn't even submitted for nomination. (In fact, Bugs wasn't even a nominee for the previous sixteen years.)