History Main / FromNobodyToNightmare

* [[CaptainAmerica The Red Skull]] started his life as a poor starving orphan named Johann Schmidt. growing up in post WWI Germany as a petty thief and murderer, he eventually landed a job as a Bellhop in a classy hotel. One day, he was performing his duties as a bellhop when he happened to be in the same room as Hitler himself. Hitler was, at the time, berating an officer, and upon seeing Schmidt said that he could make the bellhop into a better Nazi than him. [[GoneHorriblyRight He did]].

** Actually he was coming up on his release date, but when Terry outed his psychic abilities, [[nicejobbreakingithero he lost it, broke out, and started causing havoc.]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]
* No one would have imagined that [[AdolfHitler a mediocre art student]], one of millions of impoverished nobodies struggling through the economic mire of post WorldWarI Europe, would rise to become the EvilOverlord BigBad of the 20th Century and the leading candidate for most evil human being ever.
** There's also Josef Goebbels, who was a struggling playwright, Heinrich Himmler, who was a ''chicken breeder'' of all things, Reinhard Heydrich, a violin player who was bullied for his high-pitched voice and Jewish heritage, and Rudolf Hess, who as a child was pushed into Catholicism by his father. Except for Hermann Göring (who was an AcePilot in WorldWarI and chief of Prussian government), the Nazi leadership started out as a rather undistinguished bunch. Be very afraid.
* Stalin was once a quiet young boy studying to be an Orthodox priest...
* Per the page quote, Pol Pot, the Cambodian dictator who's communal farms were often called "The Killing Fields", was once a history teacher.
* And Mao was an assistant librarian in his youth.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idi_amin Idi Amin]], the assistant chef and later amateur boxer, who went on to rule Uganda with an iron fist, murdering ''thousands''.'
* Once there was a doctor from a underdeveloped country who had won international fame for his work in treating the poor. So, when he finally ran for president of his country and won, things got better, right? Wrong. That doctor's name was François Duvalier, the country was Haiti, and he made himself a ruthless and brutal dictator who imposed a reign of terror and murdered thousands.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer Marvin Heemeyer]] was described as an enjoyable person. Which made it quite surprising when he converted a bulldozer into a battletank (yes really, with armor and cameras and guns and everything) and proceeded to run over the buildings belonging to people who he felt had slighted in him in various ways.
** There was an investigation in the wake of Heemeyer's "Killdozer" rampage that found evidence of corruption in the town government. So while Mr Heemeyer's actions were hardly to be condoned, some of the people he had it in for weren't exactly innocent little angels either.
*** They never are.
** Well, there may not actually have been any guns, for one. Footage shows the police walking right up to the thing, which they wouldn't have if they were gonna get shot. Secondly, he made it out of a bulldozer, and went out of his way not to hurt anyone. Not a single person was injured or killed. Only buildings.
*** There were actually a few rifles attached to firing ports and he did aim for an occupied kindergarten which barely had time to be evacuated.
* [[SerialKiller Jeffery Dahmer]]: Chocolate factory worker.
* [[SerialKiller John Wayne Gacy]]: Performed as "[[MonsterClown Pogo The Clown]]" and was a town parade coordinator.
** This isn't quite played straight. Children routinely find clowns terrifying. So do adults.
** Gacy was also a fairly succesful small business owner and franchisee, as well as a political activist and pillar of the community. Not exactly exceptional stuff, but compared to most other serial killers he was pretty prominent.
* Once upon a time there was a lovely couple living in St Catherines, Ontario, Canada. They were active and well liked in their community. Their names were Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, and they raped, tortured and murdered at least three teenage girls in their basement in the early 90s - one of whom was Homolka's sister.
* Virtually any dictator ever- but especially non-royal ones in the modern era- came from fairly humble backgrounds in comparison to what they would achieve.
* Maximilian Robespierre started as a country lawyer who, had the revolution never happened, would most likeky have died unknown.
[[/folder]]

[[Film/{{Spider-Man}} http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/VenomFromSpiderman3_6636.jpg]]
[[caption-width:330:From [[MaliciousSlander slanderer]] to [[{{Phlegmings}} slobber]].]]

->'''Green Lantern''': Look, whatever he is he's sure not in the same league as Grundy and the others. He's a nobody.\\
'''Batman''': Ever read ''TheOdyssey''? After Odysseus was caught by the Cyclops, he told it his name was "Nobody." So when he poked its eye out and its friends asked who did it, all the cyclops could say was, "nobody."\\
'''Green Lantern''': Point taken.
--> -- ''JusticeLeague'', "Only A Dream": the animated debut of [[CompleteMonster Doctor]] [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel Destiny]].

* ''{{Prototype}}'' is the embodiment of this trope.

* This is pretty the whole point of the {{Superfriends}} story ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4602078/1/Challenge_of_the_Super_Friends_The_End The End]]', where the Legion of Doom become far, far more tormented and horrific beings than their previous incompetent selves.

* ''DoctorWho'', "Planet of Spiders": Lupton was a former salesman and manager for 25 years who was embittered when his company fired him. So he volunteered to do the bidding of giant spiders, who gave him great powers. (Better than it sounds.)

Compare the {{Diabolus Ex Vacuus}}. If the character was already a bad guy previously but [[HarmlessVillain never a serious one]], it's NotSoHarmless. Heroic versions may still find themselves wondering "[=~Dude, Where's My Respect?~=]" Frequently, the details of this process are uncovered in the villain's StartOfDarkness.

* [[ElfenLied Lucy]] was resigned to getting bullied by [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer the other children]] at the orphanage for being a [[YouGottaHaveBlueHair freak]] [[RedEyesTakeWarning of]] [[UnusualEars nature]]. Then she got the power to turn a perfectly ordinary living room into a blender.

* The Noah from DGrayMan.

[[folder:Fan Fic]]
* This is pretty the whole point of the {{Superfriends}} story ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4602078/1/Challenge_of_the_Super_Friends_The_End The End]]', where the Legion of Doom become far far more tormented and horrific beings than their previous incompetent selves.

* The titular heroine of ''{{May}}'', played by Angela Bettis. Debatable, surely, but you've got to admit that the last stretch of the movie pretty much does away with any vestiges of both May's sanity and self-doubt.

* [[BuffyTheVampireSlayer Liam]] was just a cheap and fun loving young man, just one of many in the world who would have lead an unremarkable life -- until he met a beautiful vampire. Reborn as Angelus, he immediately distinguished himself from other vampires by his sheer cruelty and inhumanity. Even the Master, one of the oldest and most powerful vampires seen in the series, called him "the most savage creature I have ever known". Despite being not much stronger than the average vampire, Angelus always inspires fear and dread whenever he reasserts himself. During his stint as BigBad he came closer to destroying humanity than anyone else in the series, even the First Evil itself.
** Willow when Buffy first says Hello to her: "Hello. Did you want me to move?". Willow six years later: "Oh Buffy, you really need to have every square inch of your ass kicked. ''(casts spell)'' Now I'm pretty sure I'm strong enough to beat you to death".

* Billy Miles in {{X-Files}} is one of these. In the pilot episode, Billy is only a poor young man abducted by aliens. And this is the last we think we see of him. Seven years later, he is abducted again, is returned with an alien virus, and turns into an indestructible killing machine, bent on murdering Scully and her unborn child. I bet Mulder really regretted not taking that shot in the pilot.

* Akar Kessel from ''[[TheIcewindDaleTrilogy The Crystal Shard]]'': A wimp who finds the titular ArtifactOfDoom and becomes a pawn to its desire for conquest. [[spoiler: Still undone by his incompetence.]]

* General Woundwart from {{WatershipDown}} was originally just an average ordinary rabbit who lost his parents from a young age who joined a gang of rabbit revolutionaries, then he became a power hungry dictator who enslaves rabbits and makes them work themselves to death and has his higher ranking officers do what they like to them including beating and occasionally raping them.
* Claudandus aka [[spoiler:Pascal]] from {{Felidae}} was an ordinary cat who was picked up off the streets for experimenting by scientists who tampered with his brain and being the only test subject to survive, this eventually drove him insane and killed the head scientist and became a serial killer of cats deeming them unworthy of resurrecting an ancient breed.
* In-universe example: Katniss Everdeen from TheHungerGames. She was just another player, facing a one in twenty-four chance of staying alive longer than everyone else, but by the end of the series, she was the [[spoiler: face of the revolution and played a role in the deaths of two corrupt Presidents of Panem.]]
* In {{Wicked}}, there is the wizard who started as con artist and ended as an evil dictator of OZ, destroying everyone who opposed him.

* Stag Preston of SpiderKiss went from a shady bellhop to a sociopathic superstar.

* In ''{{Warhammer 40K}}'', ANYONE who gets possessed by a daemon becomes a nightmare. If it's properly bound...
** The Tau. When the mighty Imperium of Mankind first discovered them, they were no more than a simple plains-dwelling race that had barely mastered fire. Fast-forward six thousand years and they've assembled a multi-species empire capable of standing against the might of an Imperial crusade and defeating a Tyranid splinter fleet without a single lost vessel. Note that this could also apply to the Necrons in their own time, who went from an insignificant, short-lived race orbiting a dying sun to an endless army of immortal killing machines possessing the most advanced starships in the setting.

* [=~Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog~=] goes this route with the main character. In the prequel comic released, he was merely a geeky kid who was inspired by a MadScientist's moment of triumph to be a Supervillain (albeit one with [[WellIntentionedExtremist good aspirations]]). He consistently remains unsuccessful at impressing his superiors and is eventually shoehorned into a situation where he must commit a murder or [[YouHaveFailedMe be executed for incompetence]]. Eventually [[spoiler:with the accidental murder of Penny, the girl he loved]], he becomes a true supervillain in both position and personality.

* BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold: [[UnluckyEverydude Bullies used to pick on him because he sang in choir,]] [[CompellingVoice but something very strange occurred when he kept singing higher!]] The ruffians around him quickly fell into a trance, [[WhosLaughingNow and it was then, with wicked glee, he made those puppets dance!]] He's the '''Music Meister!'''

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* Once ''{{Earthbound}}'''s Porky Minch gets his grubby little hands on some of Giygas's technology, he changes from a mere rotten brat to TheDragon. [[spoiler:Then by the time of ''{{Mother 3}}'', he's time-traveled so much that he's [[AGodAmI become immortal]] & [[OmnicidalManiac wants to destroy the world just for a laugh]].]]
* ''{{Kirby}}'': At first, Marx appears to just be another harmless, [[RidiculouslyCuteCritter cutesy]] resident of Dream Land, but in fact he [[spoiler:tricks the sun and moon into fighting, gets Kirby to summon Nova to stop the fight and then uses Nova's power to take over the galaxy.]] Then, in Kirby Super Star Ultra, [[spoiler:he is resurrected in a demonic form as the final boss]].
* ''ShadowHearts''' Seiji Kato started off as a lovable goof with a kind heart, an eagerness to please, a crush on his superior officer, and next to no knowledge of magic, instead having studied ''geography''. He summoned the ancient gods of Japan in an attempt to completely rewrite history and erase an entire timeline. Because his "girlfriend" died twice on him.
* [[{{FinalFantasy}} Kefka]] from ''FinalFantasyVI'' counts as this. He starts as a seemingly annoying recurring mini boss character, but slowly grows in power and sinisterness before his sudden transformation into a PhysicalGod [[strike:by the end of]] halfway through the game, ruling over the ruins of Earth with his powers.
* ''FateStayNight'''s Sakura Matou goes from the cute girl with a jerk brother who gets kicked out of all the routes early, never does anything important, {{cannot spit it out}} and more {{shrinking violet}} traits to [[spoiler:an all powerful dark mage with the ''exact'' magic traits needed not only to be able to be the host of the (sort of) devil, but also express its power. And also to keep her mind (to a certain extent). Oh, and she can eat Servants or corrupt them as she pleases, have an immense {{healing factor}} and a bunch of other nifty moves. The one thing it ''doesn't'' do for her is improve her self image, causing her to believe that Rin (her sister) doesn't care about her (Rin's [[IdiotBall rather cold statements]] don't exactly help matters...), and to worry that Shirou might abandon her for Rin]].
** Avenger/ Angra Mainyu too. [[spoiler: Started off as just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill Mesopotamian villager. After being randomly picked to be a scapegoat for 'all evils of the world' he ended up being summonable for the Holy Grail War, but even there he was still pathetic, being one of the weakest Servants imaginable. However his spirit then went inside the Grail where he made a wish to truly become the manifestation of evil for revenge on humanity, and that's the reason the Grail has been corrupted ever since.]]
* ''CityOfHeroes''' Lord Nemesis started out as a toymaker around the time of the Civil War. Now? He's a MadScientist master of SteamPunk, TheChessmaster above all others in the game's universe, and was Emperor of the United States for a brief time.
* ''SoulCalibur''s Siegfried was the leader of a rag-tag bunch of thieves; not much to write home about. After robbing a convoy [[spoiler:where he mistakenly decapitates his own father and quickly loses his mind over it, convincing himself that someone else did it]], he takes it upon himself to locate Soul Edge, thinking that his father's murderer deserves no less than death by that blade. He finds it, alright...
** In ''Soul Calibur III'' [[spoiler: Siegfried and Nightmare become separated. So Siegfried is no longer a Nightmare. He's just responsible for unleashing a CompleteMonster that lacks any semblance of a conscience or humanity whatsoever. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Oopsie.]]]] Then in ''Soul Calibur IV'' in his ending [[spoiler: he allows Soul Calibur to bring "peace" to the world by covering it with crystals to trap it in stasis forever]].
** On the other hand, his father was a brave knight that was seen as a champion of the peasants, and went on a crusade. He arguably wasn't a complete nobody...
* In ''DarkCloud 2'', [[spoiler:Sirus was a peaceful, shy Moon Person ([[PettingZooPeople anthropomorphic rabbits]]) who liked flowers, and, after sneaking into the Palace to admire the gardens, was invited by Queen Alexandra to become their keeper]]. When war broke out over the three [[CosmicKeystone Atlamillia Stones]], devastating the country and [[spoiler:killing Alexandra]], he obtained the Sun Atlamillia and swore eternal vengeance upon mankind. Ten thousand years later, the [[BigBad Dark Emperor Griffon]] has all but destroyed the world by manipulating the timestream, and sending out his armies to devastate the few resistance forces that he hasn't erased from existence.
* In the ''AceCombat'' games, your characters always start as unknowns, but quickly become the reason for much OhCrap from the enemies.
* Aldo Trapani, the real player character of ''Game/TheGodfather: The Game'', was originally just the son of a Corleone-aligned baker. Ten years after his dad gets gunned down by Barzini goons, though, he gets taken under the wing of Luca Brasi and quickly becomes the top Corleone hatchetman, effectively crushing the other four families and becoming the new Don of NYC.
* Rare heroic example: an unassuming young theoretical physicist goes into work, an experiment goes wrong, he picks up [[HalfLife a crowbar...]]
* It's mentioned in the ''MassEffect'' lore that The Illusive Man, VisionaryVillain and leader of human extremist group Cerberus was once a normal man with a family.
** [[spoiler:The Shadow Broker turns out to be a member of a primitive species who was enslaved and trained to be the original Shadow Broker's [[TheDragon chief enforcer]]. He killed the original Shadow Broker and took his place.]]
* Throughout the ''BaldursGate'' series, the PlayerCharacter goes from being just some kid [[spoiler: with a tiny fragment of the God of Murder in them]] to a being of incredible power. The bad guys in the third game don't send assassins after you - they send an ''army''. You can also [[spoiler: become a God, if you choose]].
* In ''DragonAge'', two of the available origins really are nobodies - you can't get more 'nobody' than an elf living in an [[FantasticRacism elf ghetto]] or a Casteless dwarf. You then go on to command the armies of an entire country, whose combined power is more or less equal to [[OneManArmy your own]]. You can become [[spoiler: the first person ever to slay an Archdemon without dying]].
** Though that last part is not due to the character's sheer badassitude.
* In ''CaveStory'', the Doctor was, well, a doctor.
* In the last case of ''Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth'', [[spoiler:The ambassador of Allabhast goes from an old, decrepit man who you only have to talk to every so often to the murderer of two people and the head of the smuggling operation which makes up the entirety of the game's villains.]]
* Happens three times in ''ChzoMythos'' the first is [[spoiler: John [=DeFoe=] by the way of being beaten to death with an enchanted idol]] then in the prestory [[spoiler: Cabadath becoming the Prince]], then [[spoiler: Theo Dacabe becoming the New Prince.]]
* Arguably, the Boss from ''SaintsRow''. At the beginning of the first game, he was just some guy on the street. By the end of the second, though...hoo, boy. Just ask the Stilwater Police Department.
* Kel'Thuzad, a second rate mage, discredited and harassed by the mages ruling council for a bit too much interest in certain taboo fields of study * cough* necromancy* cough* . Takes one little trip to that planet's version of the Arctic, comes back as leader of a DeathCult, spreading a plague of Undeath through the human kingdoms, bringing most of them to their knees before finally getting killed; only to come BackFromTheDead and become TheDragon for one of the most powerful forces of Evil in the [[WorldOfWarcraft World.]]
** Although according to [[http://www.wowwiki.com/Kel%27thuzad#Biography WoWWiki]], he was a member of the Kirin Tor's Council Of Six. They might have expelled him from the order, but it doesn't seem as though he was a nobody before that.
** It's a wiki. And the claims that he was a member of the six, in particular, have no citations. It might as well be baseless speculation.
*** It's stated by Jaina Proudmoore in ''Arthas: Rise of the Lich King'' that Kel'Thuzad's a member of the Council. SoYeah...
* BigBad [[MadScientist Demichev]] of ''{{Singularity}}'' - ForWantOfANail [[spoiler: YOUR saving him from an inferno that should have killed him]]- rises to power in the USSR and leads it to world conquest. [[spoiler: And in one of the endings, [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure ''Barisov'']].]]
* Everyone with a COMP in ''DevilSurvivor'', provided they survive making a demon contract. Special mention goes to the MC who can [[spoiler: become the next Demon King or Messiah.]]
* In AlphaProtocol, one of the available backgrounds you can choose for your character is "Recruit", in which you are, well, a raw recruit with no field experience (and [[DifficultyLevels no starting skill points]]): in other words, a "nobody" who will make for a perfect fall guy if anything goes wrong. In one of the possible endings, you [[WeCanRuleTogether agree to work for]] the BigBad [[ICanRuleAlone but then betray him]], having made enough friends in both high and low places to run your own [[TheConspiracy Conspiracy]] and manipulate world events from the shadows.
* Prototype is the embodiment of this trope.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* No one would have imagined that [[AdolfHitler a mediocre art student]], one of millions of impoverished nobodies struggling through the economic mire of post WorldWarI Europe, would rise to become the EvilOverlord BigBad of the 20th Century and the leading candidate for most evil human being ever.
** There's also Josef Goebbels, who was a struggling playwright, Heinrich Himmler, who was a ''chicken breeder'' of all things, Reinhard Heydrich, a violin player who was bullied for his high-pitched voice and Jewish heritage, and Rudolf Hess, who as a child was pushed into Catholicism by his father. Except for Hermann Göring (who was an AcePilot in WorldWarI and chief of Prussian government), the Nazi leadership started out as a rather undistinguished bunch. Be very afraid.
* Stalin was once a quiet young boy studying to be an Orthodox priest...
* Per the page quote, Pol Pot, the Cambodian dictator who's communal farms were often called "The Killing Fields", was once a history teacher.
* And Mao was an assistant librarian in his youth.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idi_amin Idi Amin]], the assistant chef and later amateur boxer, who went on to rule Uganda with an iron fist, murdering ''thousands''.'
* Once there was a doctor from a underdeveloped country who had won international fame for his work in treating the poor. So, when he finally ran for president of his country and won, things got better, right? Wrong. That doctor's name was François Duvalier, the country was Haiti, and he made himself a ruthless and brutal dictator who imposed a reign of terror and murdered thousands.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer Marvin Heemeyer]] was described as an enjoyable person. Which made it quite surprising when he converted a bulldozer into a battletank (yes really, with armor and cameras and guns and everything) and proceeded to run over the buildings belonging to people who he felt had slighted in him in various ways.
** There was an investigation in the wake of Heemeyer's "Killdozer" rampage that found evidence of corruption in the town government. So while Mr Heemeyer's actions were hardly to be condoned, some of the people he had it in for weren't exactly innocent little angels either.
*** They never are.
** Well, there may not actually have been any guns, for one. Footage shows the police walking right up to the thing, which they wouldn't have if they were gonna get shot. Secondly, he made it out of a bulldozer, and went out of his way not to hurt anyone. Not a single person was injured or killed. Only buildings.
*** There were actually a few rifles attached to firing ports and he did aim for an occupied kindergarten which barely had time to be evacuated.
* [[SerialKiller Jeffery Dahmer]]: Chocolate factory worker.
* [[SerialKiller John Wayne Gacy]]: Performed as "[[MonsterClown Pogo The Clown]]" and was a town parade coordinator.
** This isn't quite played straight. Children routinely find clowns terrifying. So do adults.
** Gacy was also a fairly succesful small business owner and franchisee, as well as a political activist and pillar of the community. Not exactly exceptional stuff, but compared to most other serial killers he was pretty prominent.
* Once upon a time there was a lovely couple living in St Catherines, Ontario, Canada. They were active and well liked in their community. Their names were Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, and they raped, tortured and murdered at least three teenage girls in their basement in the early 90s - one of whom was Homolka's sister.
* Virtually any dictator ever- but especially non-royal ones in the modern era- came from fairly humble backgrounds in comparison to what they would achieve.
* Maximilian Robespierre started as a country lawyer who, had the revolution never happened, would most likeky have died unknown.
[[/folder]]

* [[{{FinalFantasy}} Kefka]] from ''FinalFantasyVI'' counts as this. He starts as a seemingly annoying recurring mini boss character, but slowly grows in power and sinisterness before his sudden transformation into a God [[strike:by the end of]] halfway through the game, ruling over the ruins of Earth with his powers.

** Duh? Being noticed as having a future in evil generally doesn't sit to well with people except the groups they rise in... Painting a sign over your head stating "I'm bad news" isn't a great career starter. Also why would ascensions from mediocrity to postions of relevance be any different just because it involves evil?
*** Just because it is obvious does not mean it is not worth stating.

* Everyone with a COMP in Devil Survivor, provided they survive making a demon contract. Special mention goes to the MC who can [[spoiler: become the next Demon King or Messiah.]]