History Main / DrivenToVillainy

** Gaara comes to mind- upon birth a demon was sealed inside him, with his mother a sacrifice, so that he could become his ninja village's ultimate weapon. But said demon also makes everyone in the village terriffied of him, and he grows up reviled as a monster. Finally his own father (who arranged the whole thing in the first place), finding him growing unstable, sends assassins to kill him. The first assassin is his beloved uncle, the only one who seems to care for him, who reveals that he's actually secretly hated him all these years for killing his sister (Gaaara's mum- the one who was sacrificed to make him what he was), and that his mother had died cursing the village and hoped that Gaara killed them all- his name, given by her, means "The Demon who loves only himself". Naturally, he finally snaps, and spends the next few years killing everyone he runs across as a way of proving that he exists. Oh, and the demon in question prevents him from sleeping, less it starts eating away at his mind.
** Sasuke is an even more literal example, as from a certain point of view his entire life has been orchestrated by at least two major villains for the purpose of making him evil, for their own ends- [[spoiler: namely, Orochimaru and Madara; Itachi is either an anti-hero or a third major villain, depending on your POV and to what degree Madara is telling the truth; Danzou might qualify as yet another villain guilty of this, except that he didn't really care about Sasuke and saw him as collateral damage at best for his plans]]. The massacre of his entire family and clan by his beloved older brother (who brutalised him, and told him to hate more and murder his best friend), at the age of 8, was only the beginning of that. At present [[spoiler: the plan is working quite well indeed]].

** [[spoiler:It's implied that what actually broke him was, at the age of six, realizing that his mother favoured one of the children more than the other when she willingly handed one over to Bonaparta. The knowledge that people were inherently different and that favouritism could drive people to do things like that]]

** In the ''Spiderman'' comics, the Hobgoblin from the year 2211 is revealed to be this. She's the daughter of that years' time traveling Spiderman, who is forced to arrest her due to crimes that she would commit in the future, and placed in a virtual reality prison, which is programmed into her brain to keep her in a fantasy world. Her boyfriend tries to free her with a computer virus, which instead adversely effects the fantasy, warps her mind and drives her completely insane. True to form, her imprisonment is [[SelfFulfillingProphecy what caused her insane criminal spree in the first place]]. She uses her knowledge as an inter-dimensional researcher to create time traveling equipment and goes on a history-erasing rampage through time.

* ''{{Prototype}}'' has Alex Mercer, who [[WakingUpAtTheMorgue wakes up in a morgue]] to find out that he has EasyAmnesia and has been turned into a [[BodyHorror horrifying]] VoluntaryShapeshifter. Cue RoaringRampageOfRevenge. This is played straight, subverted, and then ''inverted'': [[spoiler:Upon waking, Alex does horrible things like [[strike:eat]] [[ImAHumanitarian consume people]] [[ItMakesSenseInContext in order to]] [[EasyAmnesia figure out what the hell is going on]]. It's hard to blame him ''too'' much for being [[AxCrazy batshit crazy]], though, considering he's been turned into a ''living virus'' and has no memory of who he is or what happened to bring him to this point and people have been trying to brutally murder him since he woke up.]] That's the played straight. It's then subverted when [[TheReveal it's revealed]] that [[spoiler:''Alex himself'' is the one who released the [[TheVirus deadly virus]], dubbed "Blacklight", that turned him into a monster and is currently ''decimating'' New York state. Flashbacks show you that Alex is a CompleteMonster who deliberately engineered an already deadly virus to become ''ten times more dangerous'', and then stole a sample and unleashed it upon the general populace when he was shot dead with the mindset of "If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me."]] That's the subversion. Now the ''inversion'' shows up in this way: [[spoiler:It turns out that Alex isn't the one who released the Blacklight Virus. Well, he ''is'', but the twist is this: The Alex you've been controlling isn't the ''real'' Alex Mercer. When he was shot dead, he was actually [[KilledOffForReal killed off for real]]. Turns out that the Alex you know isn't even human; he's ''the Blacklight Virus itself'' in a human avatar. The reason this is an inversion is because it/he goes from originally being the CompleteMonster that the real Alex was, to a HeroicSociopath, to a person who becomes empathetic enough over the course of the game to actually express disgust over who the real Alex was and risk its life to save Manhattan from being [[NukeEm nuked]]]].

* According to WordOfGod, [[HarryPotter Voldemort]] is evil because he's incapable of love, and he's incapable of love because he was conceived under a LovePotion. So it's really sad, if you think about it.
** GodNeverSaidThat: Voldemort being conceived under a love potion is ''symbolic'' of his inability to love, not the actual cause.

** [[spoiler:It's implied that what actually broke him was, at the age of six, realizing that his mother favoured one of the children more than the other when she willingly handed one over to Bonaparta. The knowledge that people were inherently different and that favouritism could drive people to do things like that

* Spider-Man is loaded with these: The Lizard is another example, as long as you don't count that time where they implied that Conners was in control the whole time (neither the [[DisContinuity fandom]] or [[CanonDisContinuity writers]] do, however). Norman Osborn has gone so far as to feign that [[BlatantLies this is the cause for all his crimes]].
** In the ''Spiderman'' comics, the Hobgoblin from the year 2211 is revealed to be this. She's the daughter of that years' time traveling Spiderman, who is forced to arrest her due to crimes that she would commit in the future, and placed in a virtual reality prison, which is programmed into her brain to keep her in a fantasy world. Her boyfriend tries to free her with a computer virus, which instead adversely effects the fantasy, warps her mind and drives her completely insane. True to form, her imprisonment is [[SelfFulfillingProphecy what caused her insane criminal spree in the first place]]. She uses her knowledge as an inter-dimensional researcher to create time traveling equipment and goes on a history erasing rampage through time.

* Francis Dolarhyde out of the Hannibal Lecter novel: ''{{Manhunter}}'':

* {{MAG ISA}}: [[http://www.drunkduck.com/MAG_ISA/index.php?p=620931 Kyle]], [[http://www.drunkduck.com/MAG_ISA/index.php?p=632487 Alice]], and [[http://www.drunkduck.com/MAG_ISA/index.php?p=622393 Chu]] were pretty much forced by their tragic childhoods to join the cult known as "The Order".

* Aion in the manga version of ''ChronoCrusade'' was [[spoiler:badly psychologically damaged when he was given a vision during his coming-of-age ceremony that revealed to him the twisted history of the demons and their HiveQueen--and, given the marked physical affect it has on him, possibly altered either mentally or genetically]]. That event warped him into the WellIntentionedExtremist we see him as in the series.

* Speaking of Hannibal Lecter: ''{{Manhunter}}'':
--> '''Will Graham''': As a child, my heart bleeds for him. Someone took a little boy and turned him into a monster. But as an adult... as an adult, he's irredeemable. He butchers whole families to fulfill some sick fantasy. As an adult, I think someone should blow the sick fuck out of his socks.
** For the record, that quote refers to Francis Dolarhyde, the main villain of this story- Leter never butchered entire families. But the message is the same.

* Fou-lu in ''BreathOfFire IV'' is pretty much ''the'' very walking definition of this trope. [[spoiler: He is a PhysicalGod who is also the KingInTheMountain for the country he founded as a GodEmperor (after being summoned there by a VestigialEmpire--who buggered up the summoning leading to aforementioned PhysicalGod developing a LiteralSplitPersonality that ends up displaced 600 years in the future). Unfortunately, said empire has become TheEmpire over six hundred years of hibernation, TheEmperor doesn't want to give up his seat, one of TheEmperor's main assistants is MadScientist and CompleteMonster [[KarmaHoudini Yuna]] who convinces him he can kill a ''god'', and this ends up in increasingly more extreme methods by TheEmpire to kill Fou-lu (eventually culminating in the use of a FantasticNuke which runs on ''literal'' NightmareFuel created the the ColdBloodedTorture and HumanSacrifice of people with very close connections to the target...with Fou-lu's ''girlfriend'' used as the [[HumanResources Thermonuclear Country Girl]] because aforementioned FantasticNuke ''also'' works on the principle of LoveHurts). This cascading Pain Train BreaksTheCutie to the point Fou-lu ends up a WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds.]]

* [[spoiler:[[SexVampire Morinth]] ]]from MassEffect2. You spend some time tracking her down, an when Samara finally confronts her, she screams that she never had a choice [[spoiler: because of the genetic defect that Samara passed on to her.]] [[ManipulativeBastard Although]], she may have just been trying to get to her for a chance to escape.

* [[spoiler:[[SexVampire Morinth]] ]]from MassEffect2. You spend some time tracking her down, an when Samara finally confronts her, she screams that she never had a choice [[because of the genetic defect that Samara passed on to her.]] [[ManipulativeBastard Although]], she may have just been trying to get to her for a chance to escape.

* Johan Liebert from ''{{Monster}}''. No, really. Hard as it is to imagine, he was once a frightened little boy clinging to his mother's leg before he was systematically warped by secret psychological torture [[spoiler:that actually happened to his ''sister'', and that he managed to accidentally create as a false memory for himself]] and then even more brainwashing to become the perfect little East German super-soldier. While he was already a full-on EnfantTerrible by age six or seven, he wasn't born that way, and would not have become the CompleteMonster he ended up without these traumas.
* Mao, from CodeGeass. A male Yandere who shoots C.C. and proposes taking a chainsaw to her in order to make her 'compact' for a trip to Australia, as well as attempting to blow up Nunnally. Also adept at HannibalLecture-slash-MindRape, which he uses twice. However, he is also completely barmy because he cannot shut off the thoughts of others, thus mitigating his moral culpability for his above acts, as C.C. hints at before blowing his brains out.

* A character in an early episode of ''{{Smallville}}'' was mutated by a combination of Kryptonite and hypothermia. In order to prevent freezing to death, he had to drain people of their body heat (which, if he waited too long to do it, would result in their deaths) in order to survive, and a case could be made that he wasn't truly villainous, and was forced to kill people in order to survive. However the guy was made such a self-centered, vindictive JerkAss that [[HandWave the point became moot]].

* ''TheDarkKnight'''s Harvey Dent/Two-Face. Given that he got his new worldview from The Joker while lying medicated in a hospital bed recovering from both a disfiguring injury and a horrible tragedy, you almost feel sorry for the guy as he performs his horrible acts throughout the rest of the film.
** Though arguably, at first, he's perfectly sympathetic, until he crosses the MoralEventHorizon by targeting Gordon and his family. Targeting Gordon would have been, while not OKAY, at least understandable given his skewed perspective on things. But going after his wife and kids was just too far.

* In the prequels to ''TheBelgariad'', it is revealed that Zedar's FaceHeelTurn was not a voluntary action of joining Torak, but rather a case of Torak incurably [[MindRape mind raping]] him.

[[folder:Manga and Anime]]
* Quite a few examples in ''{{Naruto}}'', whose author Kishimoto has turned traumatic childhoods into a fine art.
** Gaara comes to mind- upon birth a demon was sealed inside him, with his mother a sacrifice, so that he could become his ninja village's ultimate weapon. But said demon also makes everyone in the village terriffied of him, and he grows up reviled as a monster. Finally his own father (who arranged the whole thing in the first place), finding him growing unstable, sends assassins to kill him. The first assassin is his beloved uncle, the only one who seems to care for him, who reveals that he's actually secretly hated him all these years for killing his sister (Gaaara's mum- the one who was sacrificed to make him what he was), and that his mother had died cursing the village and hoped that Gaara killed them all- his name, given by her, means "The Demon who loves only himself". Naturally, he finally snaps, and spends the next few years killing everyone he runs across as a way of proving that he exists. Oh, and the demon in question prevents him from sleeping, less it starts eating away at his mind.
** Sasuke is an even more literal example, as from a certain point of view his entire life has been orchestrated by at least two major villains for the purpose of making him evil, for their own ends- [[spoiler: namely, Orochimaru and Madara; Itachi is either an anti-hero or a third major villain, depending on your POV and to what degree Madara is telling the truth; Danzou might qualify as yet another villain guilty of this, except that he didn't really care about Sasuke and saw him as collateral damage at best for his plans]]. The massacre of his entire family and clan by his beloved older brother (who brutalised him, and told him to hate more and murder his best friend), at the age of 8, was only the beginning of that. At present [[spoiler: the plan is working quite well indeed]].
* Hayate Yagami from ''MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha A's''? She is ''de jure'' the BigBad, since all the fighting takes place for her sake but ''de facto'' she doesn't even know that her servants (whom she considers her family) are committing crimes for her and joins Team Nanoha immediately after TheReveal. Also, very much an example of WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds.
* Johan Liebert from ''{{Monster}}''. No, really. Hard as it is to imagine, he was once a frightened little boy clinging to his mother's leg before he was systematically warped by secret psychological torture [[spoiler:that actually happened to his ''sister'', and that he managed to accidentally create as a false memory for himself]] and then even more brainwashing to become the perfect little East German super-soldier. While he was already a full-on EnfantTerrible by age six or seven, he wasn't born that way, and would not have become the CompleteMonster he ended up without these traumas.
* Mao, from CodeGeass. A male Yandere who shoots C.C. and proposes taking a chainsaw to her in order to make her 'compact' for a trip to Australia, as well as attempting to blow up Nunnally. Also adept at HannibalLecture-slash-MindRape, which he uses twice. However, he is also completely barmy because he cannot shut off the thoughts of others, thus mitigating his moral culpability for his above acts, as C.C. hints at before blowing his brains out.
* Aion in the manga version of ''ChronoCrusade'' was [[spoiler:badly psychologically damaged when he was given a vision during his coming-of-age ceremony that revealed to him the twisted history of the demons and their HiveQueen--and, given the marked physical affect it has on him, possibly altered either mentally or genetically]]. That event warped him into the WellIntentionedExtremist we see him as in the series.
[[/folder]]

* ''TheMask'' AnimatedAdaptation had an ordinary guy become a TV-themed villain after his favorite TV show was cancelled.

** Though arguably, at first, he's perfectly sympathetic, until he crosses the MoralEventHorizon by targeting Gordon and his family.

Examples:
* {{MAG ISA}}: [[http://www.drunkduck.com/MAG_ISA/index.php?p=620931 Kyle]], [[http://www.drunkduck.com/MAG_ISA/index.php?p=632487 Alice]], and [[http://www.drunkduck.com/MAG_ISA/index.php?p=622393 Chu]] were pretty much forced by their tragic childhoods to join the cult known as "The Order".
* Quite a few examples in ''{{Naruto}}'', whose author Kishimoto has turned traumatic childhoods into a fine art.
** Gaara comes to mind- upon birth a demon was sealed inside him, with his mother a sacrifice, so that he could become his ninja village's ultimate weapon. But said demon also makes everyone in the village terriffied of him, and he grows up reviled as a monster. Finally his own father (who arranged the whole thing in the first place), finding him growing unstable, sends assassins to kill him. The first assassin is his beloved uncle, the only one who seems to care for him, who reveals that he's actually secretly hated him all these years for killing his sister (Gaaara's mum- the one who was sacrificed to make him what he was), and that his mother had died cursing the village and hoped that Gaara killed them all- his name, given by her, means "The Demon who loves only himself". Naturally, he finally snaps, and spends the next few years killing everyone he runs across as a way of proving that he exists. Oh, and the demon in question prevents him from sleeping, less it starts eating away at his mind.
** Sasuke is an even more literal example, as from a certain point of view his entire life has been orchestrated by at least two major villains for the purpose of making him evil, for their own ends- [[spoiler: namely, Orochimaru and Madara; Itachi is either an anti-hero or a third major villain, depending on your POV and to what degree Madara is telling the truth; Danzou might qualify as yet another villain guilty of this, except that he didn't really care about Sasuke and saw him as collateral damage at best for his plans]]. The massacre of his entire family and clan by his beloved older brother (who brutalised him, and told him to hate more and murder his best friend), at the age of 8, was only the beginning of that. At present [[spoiler: the plan is working quite well indeed]].
* [[PsychoElectro Electro]] is done this way in ''TheSpectacularSpiderman''. While working in Curt Connors' lab, he falls victim to an accident that leaves him charged with electric energy, unable to live safely without a suit covering him at all times. Over the course of the episode, his mentality degrades more an more as he fails to deal with the loss of his humanity and is repeatedly attacked by Spiderman (who doesn't realize the situation), and the cops (who do, but deal with it too harshly). His first criminal act is merely to try to hold Connors hostage until he can come up with a cure, but he eventually goes completely insane and detaches himself completely from [[ThatManIsDead himself]] and his sanity.
** An even better example is John Jameson from the same. After piloting his spaceship safely back to Earth, he is exposed to alien spores, which infect his body and increase his size and strength. His father convinces him to become a superhero, but the spores eventually effect his mind, making him more aggressive and filled with rage, eventually causing an extreme personality change . After Venom, acting as Spiderman, attacks him, he flies into a rage and goes on a rampage to kill Spidey. Though he is ultimately cured, the experience took its toll; the spores had him enough that, with them gone, he is obsessively addicted to them. He's last seen in an insane asylum, with a cell next to Electro, who echoes his position. If he appears again as a villain, the cycle will be complete. This is somewhat more evident as this than Electro, as, in this case, Jameson was one of the more heroic supporting characters in the series.
** Spider-Man is loaded with these: The Lizard is another example, as long as you don't count that time where they implied that Conners was in control the whole time (neither the [[DisContinuity fandom]] or [[CanonDisContinuity writers]] do, however). Norman Osborn has gone so far as to feign that [[BlatantLies this is the cause for all his crimes]].

* A character in an early episode of ''{{Smallville}}'' was mutated by a combination of Kryptonite and hypothermia. In order to prevent freezing to death, he had to drain people of their body heat (which, if he waited too long to do it, would result in their deaths) in order to survive, and a case could be made that he wasn't truly villainous, and was forced to kill people in order to survive. However the guy was made such a self-centered, vindictive JerkAss that [[HandWave the point became moot]].
** Another episode had a girl who had to regularly ''[[IAmAHumanitarian eat human flesh]]'' to prevent from starving to death (regular food didn't work). She never actually killed anyone, just left them near death from the damage to their bodies. This was clearly a case of HorrorHunger, and in at least one instance, she urged a potential victim to run away.
* Hayate Yagami from ''MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha A's''? She is ''de jure'' the BigBad, since all the fighting takes place for her sake but ''de facto'' she doesn't even know that her servants (whom she considers her family) are committing crimes for her and joins Team Nanoha immediately after TheReveal. Also, very much an example of WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds.
* Most who have a JekyllAndHyde dynamic going are this half of the time - except those who so to speak, swallowed the potion fully knowing what it does.

* According to WordOfGod, [[HarryPotter Voldemort]] is evil because he's incapable of love, and he's incapable of love because he was conceived under a LovePotion. So it's really sad, if you think about it.

* Aion in the manga version of ''ChronoCrusade'' was [[spoiler:badly psychologically damaged when he was given a vision during his coming-of-age ceremony that revealed to him the twisted history of the demons and their HiveQueen--and, given the marked physical affect it has on him, possibly altered either mentally or genetically]]. That event warped him into the WellIntentionedExtremist we see him as in the series.

* [[spoiler:Bernkastel]] in ''UminekoNoNakuKoroNi.'' She's essentially an [[spoiler:incarnation of [[FallenHero all of the Rikas who died]] [[HigurashiNoNakuKoroNi in Hinamizawa]] as [[HatePlague her friends went insane and killed each other]] and [[DoomedHometown the entire village was destroyed]]]]. Well, it's no wonder that the combination of all of that had some mental damage. It's the "having the [[RealityWarper power]] to screw around with [[spoiler:[[AlternateUniverse other worlds]]]]" part that causes [[CompleteMonster the problems]].
* Keiichi, Shmion, Rena, and, to an extent, [[spoiler: Satoko]] in ''HigurashiNoNakuKoroNi''. They don't choose to become villains when they do start killing people, as it's caused by a combination of [[spoiler:the HatePlague, Hinamizawa Syndrome]] and some overall bad shit that happens to them.

* ''TheMask'' AnimatedAdaptation had an ordinary guy become a TV-themed villain after his favorite TV show was cancelled.
* ''{{Prototype}}'' has Alex Mercer, who [[WakingUpAtTheMorgue wakes up in a morgue]] to find out that he has EasyAmnesia and has been turned into a [[BodyHorror horrifying]] VoluntaryShapeshifter. Cue RoaringRampageOfRevenge. This is played straight, subverted, and then ''inverted'': [[spoiler:Upon waking, Alex does horrible things like [[strike:eat]] [[ImAHumanitarian consume people]] [[ItMakesSenseInContext in order to]] [[EasyAmnesia figure out what the hell is going on]]. It's hard to blame him ''too'' much for being [[AxCrazy batshit crazy]], though, considering he's been turned into a ''living virus'' and has no memory of who he is or what happened to bring him to this point and people have been trying to brutally murder him since he woke up.]] That's the played straight. It's then subverted when [[TheReveal it's revealed]] that [[spoiler:''Alex himself'' is the one who released the [[TheVirus deadly virus]], dubbed "Blacklight", that turned him into a monster and is currently ''decimating'' New York state. Flashbacks show you that Alex is a CompleteMonster who deliberately engineered an already deadly virus to become ''ten times more dangerous'', and then stole a sample and unleashed it upon the general populace when he was shot dead with the mindset of "If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me."]] That's the subversion. Now the ''inversion'' shows up in this way: [[spoiler:It turns out that Alex isn't the one who released the Blacklight Virus. Well, he ''is'', but the twist is this: The Alex you've been controlling isn't the ''real'' Alex Mercer. When he was shot dead, he was actually [[KilledOffForReal killed off for real]]. Turns out that the Alex you know isn't even human; he's ''the Blacklight Virus itself'' in a human avatar. The reason this is an inversion is because it/he goes from originally being the CompleteMonster that the real Alex was, to a HeroicSociopath, to a person who becomes empathetic enough over the course of the game to actually express disgust over who the real Alex was and risk its life to save Manhattan from being [[NukeEm nuked]]]]. Yes, this game is a MindScrew.

* Johan Liebert from ''{{Monster}}''. No, really. Hard as it is to imagine, he was once a frightened little boy clinging to his mother's leg before he was systematically warped by secret psychological torture [[spoiler:that actually happened to his ''sister'', and that he managed to accidentally create as a false memory for himself]] and then even more brainwashing to become the perfect little East German super-soldier. While he was already a full-on EnfantTerrible by age six or seven, he wasn't born that way, and would not have become the CompleteMonster he ended up without these traumas.

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<<|{{Villains}}|>>

However, the trend seems to be that, the more arbitrary their fall into villainy seems to be, the more psychotic they become, as those screwed by the world become angry at the world, and seek to inflict their new madness on everyone. The end result of a BrokenBad '''is not''' a good person forced to do evil, but a legitimately evil villain, tragically warped by things they never had any control over.

* [[{{Myst}} Myst III: Exile]] has Saveedro, who's entire homeworld was apparently destroyed and who now wants to force the man he blames to see what happened, so he steals a book from him. If he finds out the player isn't the person he's looking for, he kills you.