History Main / DrivenToVillainy

* ''Manga/MariaNoDanzai'': Mari Nagare crosses the DespairEventHorizon after helpplessly [[OutlivingOnesOffspring watching her son Kiritaka die]] in front of her eyes [[ABirthdayNotABreak the night of his birthday]] and later learning that apparently [[DrivenToSuicide he committed suicide]] due to AbusiveParents, which makes Mari [[ItsAllMyFault blame herself for his death]]. ''Then'' she finds [[DeadManWriting Kiri's diary]] and learns from reading it that in truth he was [[BullyBrutality horrifically bullied]] at school by [[BigBad Okaya]] and [[GangOfBullies his gang]]; Mari puts two and two together and realizes that Okaya's gang sent Kiri to his death before covering their tracks to [[NeverSuicide make it look like a suicide]]. This serves as the last straw in Mari's TraumaCongaLine, after which she decides to personally [[BullyHunter hunt down and murder Kiri's bullies]] in [[CruelAndUnusualDeath the most painful way possible]]. Two years later, once she's completed her [[BestServedCold preparations]] and finally gets around to doing it, [[ThatWomanIsDead Maria Akeboshi]] is all too aware of how she's become far from a good person, [[IHaveComeTooFar but is determined to see her revenge through to the bitter end]].

* ''ComicBook/XMen'': Perhaps the best example of this trope is Max Eisenhardt aka ComicBook/{{Magneto}}. His origin story is enough to drive anyone to villainy, and yet, throughout the comics (and the movies) he is shown as not fueled by revenge, blind hate against humanity, or the desire to do evil. His ultimate motivation is to fight for his own kind - the Mutants - which he sees as persecuted by the common humans for being different and perceived as dangerous.

* ComicBook/{{Magneto}} from the ''Film/XMenFilmSeries''. See Comic Books entry above.

* Just like in [[ComicBook/TheWalkingDead the comics]] and [[Series/TheWalkingDead tv series]], this pops up as a recurring theme in ''VideoGame/TheWalkingDead'' as well. William Carver is remarked on as "probably being a decent guy once" by a character warning Clementine of someone ''else's'' slip into villainy, and David García is defended as being a good guy by his brother until Clementine coldly says "people change".

It's rare to find a villain who is ''truly'' blameless in their origin, though it does happen. Even origins that lament the cruelty of fate, like The Joker's in ''The Killing Joke'', eventually reveal that the origin is still largely due to the character's ''choices''. Indeed, a villain who is fed up with [[ButtMonkey abuse by others]] or out for revenge is ''still'' making the active choice to be villainous, and if it is still clear that the villain made the choice to be evil themselves rather than have it made for them, then they're not exactly broken, just enraged to the point of vengeance.

* Perhaps the best example of this trope is Max Eisenhardt aka ComicBook/{{Magneto}} from the ComicBook/XMen. His origin story is enough to drive anyone to villainy, and yet, throughout the comics (and the movies) he is shown as not fueled by revenge, blind hate against humanity, or the desire to do evil. His ultimate motivation is to fight for his own kind - the Mutants - which he sees as persecuted by the common humans for being different and perceived as dangerous.
* Franchise/SpiderMan 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 [[FanonDisContinuity 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 ''Spider-Man'' comics, the Hobgoblin from the year 2211 is revealed to be this. She's the daughter of that years' time traveling Spider-Man, 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 affects 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.
* Before it was retconned that he had actually been possessed the whole time, [[ComicBook/GreenLantern Hal Jordan's]] FaceHeelTurn into the KnightTemplar supervillain Parallax was portrayed as this, having gone insane with grief over the annihilation of his hometown of Coast City.
* The Homelander in ''ComicBook/TheBoys'' was never a saint, but he was driven to become a monster because he believed he was already hopelessly murderously insane when he saw images of himself committing horrible crimes (like baby-eating) that he didn't remember. [[spoiler:His clone Black Noir dressed up as him and framed him for his crimes to drive Homelander crazy so he could fulfill his purpose: to kill Homelander.]]
* King Sombra from ''ComicBook/MyLittlePonyFiendshipIsMagic'' sways between being this and a TragicMonster. [[spoiler:Although actually an [[HumanoidAbomination Umbrum]] that is inherently evil, he was born an innocent with a good heart and mainly driven to evil due to the inaction of Princess Amore who secretly knew the truth about him but did nothing, and ultimately was driven right into the clutches of the red crystal that awakened the evil within him and sent him after the Crystal Empire. Even at his worst, though, he ''still'' couldn't bring himself to harm his one friend Radiant Hope.]]

* In the ''Film/SpiderManTrilogy'', both the Green Goblin and Doc Ock had elements of this. The former was driven insane by an untested SuperSerum and the other by [[AIIsACrapshoot an AI]] and a FailSafeFailure.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Theodore Kaczynski was a mathematics prodigy who attended [[IvyLeagueForEveryone Harvard University]] in 1958, where he was subjected to hundreds of hours of a [[MadScientist psychologically damaging social experiment led by Dr. Henry Murray]]. After finishing at Harvard and getting his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, he attempted to retire to the wilderness but ended up becoming an EcoTerrorist MadBomber, starting an elaborate bombing campaign to fight industrialization that earned him the name of The Unabomber. After his arrest, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, which was likely exacerbated by Murray.
[[/folder]]

* In the ''Film/SpiderManTrilogy'', both the Green Goblin and Doc Ock had elements of this. The former was driven insane by gas and the other by [[AIIsACrapshoot an AI]] and a FailSafeFailure.

** Cinder is ultimately revealed to be this as well. [[spoiler: As a child, she was an orphan who was trafficked to [[MadeASlave Atlas as a slave]], tormented via electrocution if she failed to please her abusive stepmother and stepsisters for nearly all of her formative years. While she did have a glimmer of hope when the Huntsman Rhodes gave her some help via training her to be a Huntress, the abuse she suffered in part due to his inaction against her slavers [[RageBreakingPoint eventually caused her to snap and murder them in desperation]]. What truly drove her over the edge was Rhodes then choosing to try to arrest her instead of recognizing how bad things had gotten, forcing her to kill him in order to stay free. The consequences of this failure to save her from a vile and broken system led her to view Atlas (and by proxy, the world order that Ozpin had created as a result) as little more than a rotting husk that would always fail people like her, and to view power and freedom as fundamentally the same. This drives her to seek power by any means necessary to stay free, ''and'' to destroy Ozpin's world order in revenge.]]

Sometimes your villain isn't the MadScientist who wants to poison the city, or the CorruptCorporateExecutive who wants to control the world, or the greedy bank robber who's on a crime spree. Sometimes, your villain's just an average guy who's brought into villainy against their own will or control. This isn't MindControl or possession, it's because they've been warped by events around them, and forced into villainy by forces outside their control. A broken shell of a human being, the only thing left is villainy.

* Happens midway through ''Anime/CrossAnge'' with [[spoiler:Chris]], who had been [[spoiler:resurrected by Embryo after being shot in the head by a Misurugi soldier and left for dead.]] [[TheCorrupter Embryo]], on top of [[IOweYouMyLife saving her life]], had fed her issues of resentment and fear of abandonment regarding Hilda and Rosalie, making her hate and desire to kill them, and gave her the attention she desired for so long. All of this, combined with the Ragna-mail he grants her to help destroy the people she felt abandoned her, earns him her allegiance.

* In ''Literature/FixedDamage'', the protagonist Chrome, and later a female knight named Sena, are forced into villainy in order to survive. Chrome is betrayed by his "hero" companions and cursed with [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "The Chains of Despair"]] which not only steal away his strength, stamina, and magic talent, but ''force him'' to live on ThePowerOfHate, his only hope of getting the curse broken is delivering graphic vengeance on the ones who inflicted it on him, especially the "hero" Yuno who stole his fiance, in addition to his very life. Sena, the knight, had her elder sister raped and murdered by Yuno's party member, The warrior, Riot, and his male knight subordinates, for the "crime" of refusing to let herself be sexually exploited, and when introduced, said male knight subordinates had her cornered, planning to do the same to her. Sena had no choice but to deliver graphic vengeance if she didn't want to wind up sexually tortured to death too.

** Gaara comes to mind - upon birth, a demon was sealed inside him, with his mother becoming a sacrifice, so that he could become his ninja village's ultimate weapon. But said demon also makes everyone in the village terrified 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 (Gaara's mom, 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.
** [[spoiler:[[BigBad Tobi]] aka [[FallenHero Obito Uchiha]] is an even more literal example. As in the previous example he endured a [[StreetUrchin bad childhood]], but he all the same remained a kind and responsive child. But after his entire right side was crushed by a boulder while saving Kakashi, he took to himself Kakashi's promise to protect Rin at any cost. Later he was rescued by Madara, which decides to put him through DespairEventHorizon in order to made him the perfect accomplice for his plan, so he took various shinobi under his control, including [[MoralityChain Rin]], to create a situation where Obito would witness the death of the one person who made his life worth living. Ultimately, Obito witnessed how the love of his life was killed by his best friend who promised to protect her at any cost (though Madara himself admitted that it was only a happy coincidence), and despite easily being the most decent of all the Uchihas in the series, not even Obito was immune to the clan's most fatal flaw: their ability to love more deeply than anyone else. If anything, it was worse for him, seeing as he was the most idealistic and emotional of all the Uchihas, and thus his sense of love was far deeper than the norm for his clan. And also, if we take into account that Madara placed a seal on Obito's heart which would have prevented him from killing himself, should he had abandoned the Moon's Eye Plan and opted for an easier way to end his suffering... you really can't blame the guy for going insane.]]
* The main character, Kearu of ''Anime/RedoOfHealer'' was left no choice but to become a SerialRapist VillainProtagonist because not only was he so broken and tortured, with his entire home-village the victim of RapePillageAndBurn, but his tormentors would hunt him down, without respite, if he didn't enact horrific vengeance upon them, especially Flare, who can somehow sense where a "Hero" is, and if he didn't subject her to HeelFaceBrainwashing, any hope of escape would have been tragically short-lived.

** In the ''Spider-Man'' comics, the Hobgoblin from the year 2211 is revealed to be this. She's the daughter of that years' time traveling Spider-Man, 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.

* The Homelander in ''ComicBook/TheBoys'' was never a saint, but he was driven to become a monster because he believed he was already hopelessly murderously insane when he saw images of himself committing horrible crimes (like baby eating) that he didn't remember. [[spoiler:His clone Black Noir dressed up as him and framed him for his crimes to drive Homelander crazy so he could fulfill his purpose: to kill Homelander.]]

--> '''Will Graham''': As a child, my heart bleeds for him. Someone took a [[FreudianExcuse 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.

* PlayedWith in ''Film/Joker2019''. Arthur Fleck repeatedly frames [[ProtagonistJourneyToVillain his transformation into the Joker]] as this, but the reality is more like a ''potential'' monster slowly becoming more comfortable about actually being one. While there are multiple reasons as to why Arthur falls into villainy, it should never be forgotten that Arthur is [[FreudianExcuseIsNoExcuse personally responsible]] for a number of choices that compel him to further give in to his darker traits. He pursues the last Wayne employee on the subway and brutally guns him down when he ''should'' have let him go. He indulges his ego when protestors use his clown schtick as a symbol of rebellion against the upper class. The atrocities he commits in the latter half of the film are under the influence of ''no one'' and he revels in the damage he causes because it just feels so ''good'' to get back at the society that hurt him.

** This could apply to Prima and Terceira because despite the fact that they were both serial killers, Christopher wasn't their typical target and [[spoiler: hey were trying to kill him to stop the cycle from repeating, even though it would have been ineffective anyway]].

** A character in an early episode 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 psychopathic JerkAss that [[HandWave the point became moot]].

** For real tragedy, see Davis Bloome in Season 8. A NiceGuy paramedic, Davis suffers from constant black outs and discovers that he has alien SerialKiller and PersonOfMassDestruction Doomsday trapped inside him, and that the only way to keep the monster from taking over and slaughtering dozens of people is to kill individual victims. He thus becomes a PayEvilUntoEvil-type AntiHero, murdering those he considers to be deserving of it in order to keep his inner monster trapped. This eventually drives him completely insane, and results in his descent into true villainy.
* In the ''Series/CriminalMinds'' episode "True Night", we see a comic book artist become a serial killer after he survived an attack which killed his (pregnant) fiancee, with his inability to protect her being the root of his villainy.

** Rumplestiltskin was one of the main villains of the series. He committed many terrible crimes and screwed people over, but the reason he became the Dark One in the first place was to save his son. His son would have been forcefully recruited to fight a losing war against ogres on his fourteenth birthday (the reason kids were fighting is because so many people were killed that they were running low on troops). He was manipulated into becoming the Dark One by the previous one, who was tired of doing the job himself. The power was implied to be corrupting Rumplestiltskin. Never mind the fact that Baelfire left Rumplestiltskin ''because'' he became the Dark One (or more accurately, because he grew too fond of the power given to him by the Dark One's Dagger).

* ''VideoGame/{{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 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 sociopath 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 TakingYouWithMe."]] 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 MadScientist that the real Alex was, to a SociopathicHero, 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]]]].

* Kael'Thas Sunstrider in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''. His homeland was wrecked, his people's allies in the Alliance turned on them, and long term exposure to the Sunwell followed by its' removal had given his people addictions to magic. The only way to escape the Alliance general hunting him was to flee to Outland, and the only place to get large amounts of magic in Outland is to absorb it from demons. Tragically, Fel energy is even more addictive than normal magic and makes one DrunkOnTheDarkSide, to the point where Kael is willing to align with the same Demon Lord who ordered his homeland destroyed in the first place to get more power.
** Kael's boss Illidan a debatable example. His entire life consists of WellIntentionedExtremist actions and being punished for them until he finally flees Azeroth altogether and bulids an empire in Outland in an attempt to escape the Burning Legion's ire. Like Kael, the [[DrunkOnTheDarkSide influence of Fel magic]] made him more and more willing to enslave and slaughter anyone who didn't fall in line.

* Many of the demon hordes from ''VideoGame/NexusClash'' were mortals who were hunted by KnightTemplar angels for nor being sufficiently Good, who in turn said ThenLetMeBeEvil and made [[DealWithTheDevil bargains]] with the Dark Powers to gain the power to fight back.

** 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.

* Theodore Kaczynski was a mathematics prodigy who attended [[IvyLeagueForEveryone Harvard University]] in 1958, where he was subjected to hundreds of hours of a [[MadScientist psychologically damaging social experiment led by Dr. Henry Murray]]. After finishing at Harvard and getting his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, he attempted to retire to the wilderness but ended up becoming an EcoTerrorist, starting an elaborate bombing campaign to fight industrialization that earned him the name of The Unabomber. After his arrest he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, which was likely exacerbated by Murray.

** [[spoiler:[[BigBad Tobi]] aka [[FallenHero Obito Uchiha]] is an even more literal example. As in the previous example he endured a [[StreetUrchin bad]] [[BlackSheep childhood]], but he all the same remained a kind and responsive child. But after his entire right side was crushed by a boulder while saving Kakashi, he took to himself Kakashi's promise to protect Rin at any cost. Later he was rescued by Madara, which decides to put him through DespairEventHorizon in order to made him the perfect accomplice for his plan, so he took various shinobi under his control, including [[MoralityChain Rin]], to create a situation where Obito would witness the death of the one person who made his life worth living. Ultimately, Obito witnessed how the love of his life was killed by his best friend who promised to protect her at any cost (though Madara himself admitted that it was only a happy coincidence), and despite easily being the most decent of all the Uchihas in the series, not even Obito was immune to the clan's most fatal flaw: their ability to love more deeply than anyone else. If anything, it was worse for him, seeing as he was the most idealistic and emotional of all the Uchihas, and thus his sense of love was far deeper than the norm for his clan. And also, if we take into account that Madara placed a seal on Obito's heart which would have prevented him from killing himself, should he had abandoned the Moon's Eye Plan and opted for an easier way to end his suffering... you really can't blame the guy for going insane.]]

** Cinder is ultimately revealed to be this as well. [[spoiler: As a child, she was an orphan who was trafficked to [[MadeASlave Atlas as a slave]], tormented via electrocution if she failed to please her abusive stepmother and stepsisters for nearly all of her formative years. While she did have a glimmer of hope when the Huntsman Rhodes gave her some help via training her to be a Huntress, the abuse she suffered in part due to his inaction against her slavers [[RageBreakingPoint eventually caused her to snap and murder them in desperation]]. What truly drove her over the edge was Rhodes then choosing to try to arrest her instead of recognizing how bad things had gotten, forcing her to kill him in order to stay free. The consequences of this failure to save her from a vile and broken system led her to view Atlas (and by proxy, the world order that Ozpin had created as a result) as little more than a rotting husk that would always fail people like her, and to view power and freedom as fundamentally the same, driving her to seek power by any means necessary to stay free, ''and'' to destroy Ozpin's world order in revenge.]]

** Cinder is ultimately revealed to be this as well. [[spoiler: As a child, she was an orphan who was trafficked to [[MadeASlave Atlas as a slave]], tormented via electrocution if she failed to please her abusive stepmother and stepsisters for nearly all of her formative years. While she did have a glimmer of hope when the Huntsman Rhodes gave her some help via training her to be a Huntress, the abuse she suffered in part due to his inaction against her slavers [[RageBreakingPoint eventually caused her to snap and murder them in desperation]]. What truly drove her over the edge was Rhodes then choosing to try to arrest her instead of recognizing how bad things had gotten, forcing her to kill him in order to stay free. The consequences of this failure to save her from a vile and broken system led her to view Atlas (and by proxy,the world order that Ozpin had created as a result) as little more than a rotting husk that would always fail people like her, and to view power and freedom as fundamentally the same, driving her to seek power by any means necessary to stay free, ''and'' to destroy Ozpin's world order in revenge.]]

** Cinder is ultimately revealed to be this as well. [[spoiler: As a child, she was an orphan who was trafficked to [[MadeASlave Atlas as a slave]], tormented via electrocution if she failed to please her abusive stepmother and stepsisters for nearly all of her formative years. While she did have a glimmer of hope when the Huntsman Rhodes gave her some help via training her to be a Huntress, the abuse she suffered in part due to his inaction against her slavers [[RageBreakingPoint eventually caused her to snap and murder them in desperation]]. What truly drove her over the edge was Rhodes then choosing to try to arrest her instead of recognizing how bad things had gotten, forcing her to kill him in order to stay free. The consequences of this failure to save her from a vile and broken system led her to view power and freedom as fundamentally the same, driving her to seek power by any means necessary to stay free.]]

* Hayate Yagami from ''Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaAs'' 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 she joins Team Nanoha immediately after TheReveal. Also, very much an example of WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds.
* Johan Liebert from ''Anime/{{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 6 or 7, he wasn't born that way, and would not have become how he ended up without these traumas.
** [[spoiler:It's implied that what actually broke him was, at the age of six, realizing that his mother favored 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]]
* Mao from ''Anime/CodeGeass''. A {{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 BreakingSpeech-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 ''Manga/ChronoCrusade'' was badly psychologically damaged after discovering the AwfulTruth--so badly that it even had a [[LockedIntoStrangeness marked physical effect]] on him. That event warped him into the WellIntentionedExtremist we see him as in the series.
* Ken Ichijouji from ''Anime/DigimonAdventure02'' wished his older brother would [[NeverSayDie disappear]], and eventually had to cope with [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor his death in a car wreck]]. A CompellingVoice brought him into AnotherDimension and he finally lost it, becoming The Digimon Emperor.
* Almost all of the ''Manga/BlackLagoon'' cast not in major leadership positions. Hansel and Gretel are a particularly sad example.

* In ''Literature/FixedDamage'', the protagonist Chrome, and later a female knight named Sena, are forced into villainy in order to survive. Chrome is betrayed by his "hero" companions and cursed with [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "The Chains of Despair"]] which not only steal away his strength, stamina, and magic talent, but ''force him'' to live on ThePowerOfHate, his only hope of getting the curse broken is delivering graphic vengeance on the ones who inflicted it on him, especially the "hero" Yuno who stole his fiance, in addition to his very life. Sena, the knight, had her elder sister raped and murdered by Yuno's party member, The warrior, Riot, and his male knight subordinates, for the "crime" of refusing to let herself be sexually exploited, and when introduced, said male knight subordinates had her cornered, planning to do the same to her. Sena had no choice but to deliver graphic vengeance if she didn't want to wind up sexually tortured to death too.

* In ''Literature/TheBoyWhoSworeRevengeOnTheWorld'', the main character, Hardt, was an innocent boy in a backwater village, sent to a church to learn his god-given [Ocupation], hoping to be of use to his mother. For no explained reason, he is arrested, tortured, taken back to his home village in a cage, and his friends and neighbors are forced, at sword-point, to stab him with a dagger, to prove their "innocence". Then his mother is summarily executed for the "Crime" of giving birth to him. Since the goddess herself is after him, he now has no choice but to deliver vengeance on the world.

* In ''LightNovel/FixedDamage'', the protagonist Chrome, and later a female knight named Sena, are forced into villainy in order to survive. Chrome is betrayed by his "hero" companions and cursed with [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "The Chains of Despair"]] which not only steal away his strength, stamina, and magic talent, but ''force him'' to live on ThePowerOfHate, his only hope of getting the curse broken is delivering graphic vengeance on the ones who inflicted it on him, especially the "hero" Yuno who stole his fiance, in addition to his very life. Sena, the knight, had her elder sister raped and murdered by Yuno's party member, The warrior, Riot, and his male knight subordinates, for the "crime" of refusing to let herself be sexually exploited, and when introduced, said male knight subordinates had her cornered, planning to do the same to her. Sena had no choice but to deliver graphic vengeance if she didn't want to wind up sexually tortured to death too.

* In ''LightNovel/TheBoyWhoSworeRevengeOnTheWorld'', the main character, Hardt, was an innocent boy in a backwater village, sent to a church to learn his god-given [Ocupation], hoping to be of use to his mother. For no explained reason, he is arrested, tortured, taken back to his home village in a cage, and his friends and neighbors are forced, at sword-point, to stab him with a dagger, to prove their "innocence". Then his mother is summarily executed for the "Crime" of giving birth to him. Since the goddess herself is after him, he now has no choice but to deliver vengeance on the world.

* The main character, Kearu of ''LightNovel/RedoOfHealer'' was left no choice but to become a SerialRapist VillainProtagonist because not only was he so broken and tortured, with his entire home-village the victim of RapePillageAndBurn, but his tormentors would hunt him down, without respite, if he didn't enact horrific vengeance upon them, especially Flare, who can somehow sense where a "Hero" is, and if he didn't subject her to HeelFaceBrainwashing, any hope of escape would have been tragically short-lived.

* [[PunchClockVillain Lewis]] seems to be very much this in ''{{Literature/Touch 2017}}'', stating outright that he only acts as a tracker for the various criminal organizations of New York because it is what his mother did before him, and he was never allowed the opportunity to keep his powers to himself.
* The prequel to ''ComicBook/TheWalkingDead'', ''[[Literature/TheWalkingDeadRiseOfTheGovernor The Rise of the Governor]]'' reveals the backstory of what was a monster in the comics and makes him out to be a TragicVillain.

* Creator/VCAndrews has this in the more infamous big bads in the series. The tragic past of the main villain is usually revealed in a prequel.

* In ''[[Literature/AuntDimity Aunt Dimity Goes West]]'', it is revealed that an infamous local mine disaster was due to sabotage caused by a disgruntled employee who had owned the claim originally, sold it for a pittance ($5,000.00), and later learned it contained a rich vein of gold (worth $200 million!). It also turns out that [[spoiler: his wife committed suicide, his son was sent to an orphanage, and his great-grandson later reopened the mine and set a bomb in it to destroy the house built on the site by the owner's descendants]].

* Depending on who you ask, Varian from WesternAnimation/TangledTheSeries could be considered to have been driven to villainy. At the very least, he considers himself this. After accidentally encasing his father in amber, Varian blames Rapunzel for not helping him in his time of need (she was busy with another urgent matter). He later kidnaps the queen, Rapunzel's mother, as revenge and also to use as bait to lure Rapunzel to his lair so he can force her to help him. He even references this in his VillainSong with the lines "I'm the bad guy, that's fine! It's no fault of mine!"

* [[SoapOpera Soaps]] like to pair this with DerailingLoveInterests, when it becomes obvious that reason that the love interest in question went off the deep end is that they finally snapped after months or even years of being jerked around by their lover--''Series/AsTheWorldTurns'' Julia went from MarySue to {{Yandere}} as boyfriend and later husband Jack constantly flip-flopped between her and Carly.

* PlayedWith in ''Film/Joker2019''. Arthur Fleck repeatedly frames [[ProtagonistJourneyToVillain his transformation into the Joker]] as this. While there are multiple reasons as to why Arthur falls into villainy, it should never be forgotten that Arthur is [[FreudianExcuseIsNoExcuse personally responsible]] for a number of choices that compel him to further give in to his darker traits. He pursues the last Wayne employee on the subway and brutally guns him down when he ''should'' have let him go. He indulges his ego when protestors use his clown schtick as a symbol of rebellion against the upper class. The atrocities he commits in the latter half of the film are under the influence of ''no one'' and he revels in the damage he causes because it just feels so ''good'' to get back at the society that hurt him.

* ''Webcomic/MagIsa'': [[http://mag-isa.thecomicseries.com/comics/266 Kyle]], [[http://mag-isa.thecomicseries.com/comics/276 Alice]], and [[http://mag-isa.thecomicseries.com/comics/271 Chu]] were forced by their tragic childhoods to join the cult known as "The Order".

Sometimes your villain isn't the MadScientist who wants to poison the city, or the CorruptCorporateExecutive who wants to control the world, or the greedy bank robber who's on a crime spree. Sometimes, your villain's just an average guy who's brought into villainy against their own will or control. This isn't MindControl or possession, it's because they've been warped by events around them, and forced into villainy by forces outside their control. A broken shell of a human being, the only thing left is insanity.

To alter an old saying: "Some people are born into insanity, others have insanity thrust upon them." While their villainous actions have no excuse, their cause for becoming villains was entirely (or mostly) out of their hands.