History Main / GenerationalTrauma

** This gets brought up in [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS23E9HolidaysOfFuturePassed Holidays of Future Passed]] where Bart is now a 30 year-old jobless deadbeat who's two sons loathe him for his incompetence. Homer, who's now OlderAndWiser after giving up alcohol, takes them to meet a cryogenically frozen Abe who's still bitter and emotionally abusive. His reason being that he wanted to encourage his grandsons to give their dad a chance which leads to Bart promising to do better for them.

* ''VideoGame/DotsHome'' explores how racism affects Black people through generations by shedding light on the housing inequality they suffered in history. It also shows how seemingly inconsequential decisions made by family members impact those who come after them many years later. As Dot learns by time traveling through her family's history, her grandparents had to make a difficult decision to buy or rent what would become her home when settling in Detroit after leaving South Carolina. Their children then had to move out to a public apartment due to the redlining[[note]]being refused a loan or insurance due to one's home being considered financially at risk[[/note]] imposed on their race. Then after having Dot's older sister Georgia, they had to make another difficult decision: to move to a new town for their daughter' sake, or stay and fight the VillainousGentrification in their neighborhood. This then comes to a head in modern times, when Georgia and Alma argue over whether to sell their old house to Home Equity, even if they're a PredatoryBusiness, so they can live better off than Georgia's parents in their new one, or let an immigrant family rent the house so they'll feel welcomed in the community. [[spoiler:All of this explains why Dot's Grandma Mavis is struggling with having to sell her ancestral home to pay the bills -- she believes that everything her family has worked for for generations will be destroyed, and she will have nowhere to go due to the rising housing and retirement costs. Mavis tells Dot everything that led the family here and reveals that she saved the house deed for her for when she's ready to make the decision: to either stay home with Grandma despite it being run-down due to the high maintenance costs, or move out and start a new life for herself and her future family.]]

* In ''ComicBook/WesleyDoddsTheSandman'', Wesley Dodds' famous nightmares and obsession with the combat applications of various gases began when his father came home from World War I. Edward Dodds had fought in the war and developed severe PTSD after seeing his fellow soldiers die from exposure from mustard gas, and his stories about witnessing these horrors gave young Wesley nightmares, which he tried to conquer by learning everything he could about gases so that he'd know exactly what they do to the human body.

* ''Art/MarriageALaMode'': The {{paintings}} criticize the then tendency of the upper class to marry out of financial interest and not out of love, and how this negatively impacts everyone involved. The Earl of Squanderfield has been unwise with his family fortune, so he betroths his son to the daughter of a rich, corrupt merchant. It's implied that the son looks down on his fiancée, which combined with the hedonistic lifestyle he learned from his father -- hence, the bankruptcy -- leads to him having frequenting brothels and contracting syphilis. Likewise, the merchant's daughter shares her father's lack of scruples. Seeing the sorry state her husband is in, she decides to engage in a more sexually rewarding extramarital affair with an AmoralAttorney. Consequently, both spouses neglect their daughter, leaving her to be raised by their servants. In the end, it all ends in tragedy, as their mutual unfaithfulness causes them to orphan the little girl, who herself inherited her father's syphilis, implying that the cycle will continue again in a more destructive form.

* Myth/ClassicalMythology has its roots in generational trauma, as the cruel Ouranos was deposed and castrated by his son Cronus, who took to ruling the Earth, sea, and sky as an equally cruel ruler. When Cronus was told of a prophecy that one of his own children would depose him in the same way, he swallowed every baby Rhea had except Zeus, who was safely hidden and would return to overthrow him. Zeus himself later heard of a similar prophecy and was seemingly able to avoid it, but between the Titanomachy, the Gigantomachy, and Gaia sending monsters to attack the Olympians, the entire Greek Pantheon has some form of generational trauma and a FreudianExcuse for their [[JerkassGods petty infighting]] and other behavior.

* ''Fanfic/ChildOfTheStorm'': The House of Odin is discussed by a somewhat narked Harry with [[spoiler:Buri]]. The source of it (or at least, the circumstances) is somewhat unexpected and rightly on the nightmare fuel page. [[spoiler:Bor Used to Be a Sweet Kid, but took the brunt of Malekith's Reality Stone fuelled the corruption of Asgard, and decided he liked it.]]
* ''Fanfic/TheOwlAndTheFrog'': It may be subtle, but it holds a great influence on one's home life. Anne and Luz want to live up to their Immigrant Parents' expectations due to how hard they have earned their life in the US. Sasha develops controlling behaviors due to her neglectful home life. Amara also realizes her past actions stemmed from her classist parents. Its one of the fic's {{Central Theme}}s.

** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS9E6BartStar Bart Star]]", Homer is initially critical of Bart's peewee football abilities, until he realises how Abe was similarly critical of his gymnastics talent, which ended up sabotaging one of his routines. He therefore resolves to be more supportive and encouraging towards Bart. Not only does this sudden change of behaviour ''immediately'' [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness cause Bart to panic, assuming it's a "trap"]], but Homer takes it too far in the other direction, ignoring Bart's obvious lack of talent (and his own protests about said lack of talent) in favour of making the team's new quarterback. All things told, things go worse for Bart than they would have if Homer had remained his usual {{Jerkass}} self.

* ''[[VideoGame/DotsHome Dot's Home]]'' explores how racism affects Black people through generations by shedding light on the housing inequality they suffered in history. It also shows how seemingly inconsequential decisions made by family members impact those who come after them many years later. As Dot learns by time traveling through her family's history, her grandparents had to make a difficult decision to buy or rent what would become her home when settling in Detroit after leaving South Carolina. Their children then had to move out to a public apartment due to the redlining[[note]]being refused a loan or insurance due to one's home being considered financially at risk[[/note]] imposed on their race. Then after having Dot's older sister Georgia, they had to make another difficult decision: to move to a new town for their daughter' sake, or stay and fight the VillainousGentrification in their neighborhood. This then comes to a head in modern times, when Georgia and Alma argue over whether to sell their old house to Home Equity, even if they're a PredatoryBusiness, so they can live better off than Georgia's parents in their new one, or let an immigrant family rent the house so they'll feel welcomed in the community. [[spoiler:All of this explains why Dot's Grandma Mavis is struggling with having to sell her ancestral home to pay the bills -- she believes that everything her family has worked for for generations will be destroyed, and she will have nowhere to go due to the rising housing and retirement costs. Mavis tells Dot everything that led the family here and reveals that she saved the house deed for her for when she's ready to make the decision: to either stay home with Grandma despite it being run-down due to the high maintenance costs, or move out and start a new life for herself and her future family.]]

->''"The Devil is real, but he doesn't turn up in a red suit with hooves. You have to imagine him as like a disease that you get — you pass it on and you don't even know it. Educated people don't call it the devil; they call it "trauma". It rewires your brain and tries to spread itself down to the next generation and the one after that, the pain rolling down through time... But if you want to fight him, the way you do it is by making sure you don't pass on the trauma. That's how you kill the devil. The only way."''

** Pearl, Rose, and Garnet adopted the wandering Gem Amethyst but were prone to speak poorly about the past Gem war on Earth which they fought in. This causes Amethyst to form a guilty complex from learning that she was created to be a soldier in said war, as it feels as though the others are saying she should've never been born.

* ''[[VideoGame/DotsHome Dot's Home]]'' explores how racism affects Black people through generations by shedding light on the housing inequality they suffered in history. It also shows how seemingly inconsequential decisions made by family members impact those who come after them many years later. As Dot learns by time traveling through her family's history, her grandparents had to make difficult decisions when settling in Detroit after leaving South Carolina. Their children then had to move out to a public apartment due to the redlining[[note]]being refused a loan or insurance due to one's home being considered financially at risk[[/note]] imposed on their race. Then after having Dot's older sister Georgia, they had to move to Florida before they could get evicted due to the VillainousGentrification in their neighborhood. This then comes to a head in modern times, when Georgia and Alma argue over whether to sell their old house to Home Equity, even if they're a PredatoryBusiness, so they can live their dream in their new one, or let an immigrant family rent it so they'll feel welcomed in the community. [[spoiler:All of this explains why Dot's Grandma Mavis is struggling with having to sell her ancestral home to pay the bills -- she believes that everything her family has worked for for generations will be destroyed, and she will have nowhere to go due to the rising housing and retirement costs. Mavis tells Dot everything that led the family here and reveals that she saved the house deed for her for when she's ready to make the decision: to either stay home with Grandma despite it being run-down due to the high maintenance costs, or move out and start a new life for herself and her future family.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'': While not as bad as others, The Mcduck/Duck clan has its share of generational trauma. It originates with "Dirty Dingus" Mcduck who was an impossible to please father who couldn't hold the family wealth together. Then his son Fergus decided he needed to give his son Scrooge a sense of Self Reliance in order to survive with their diminished finances, but Scrooge LearnedTooWell and decided to get EVERYTHING in life only on his own terms. Leaving home and causing a rift to form between himself and his family. While Scrooge did improve once his sister Hortense entrusted guardianship of his nephew and niece to him, then everything went sideways when Della got lost [[spoiler: on the moon]]. Blaming Scrooge for building the Rocket that caused it, Donald then became an overprotective uncle for Della's kids, which they all inevitably rebelled against, creating even more problems once they had to come back into Scrooge's life. Thankfully, as the family begins to reunite, they begin to properly address these issues one episode at a time.

[[folder:Webcomics]]
* ''Webcomic/{{Muted}}'': The Severins hand down emotional damage and trauma from generation to generation like most families hand down heirlooms. Alette (Camille's grandmother) was convinced that Abrielle was perfect and that Athalie was evil and not to be trusted and encouraged their sibling rivalry, which led to [[spoiler: [[CainAndAbel Athalie murdering her sister]]]]. Abrielle tried her best to break the cycle, but ended up dead, leaving Camille at the mercy of her aunt Athalie. [[TheUnfavorite Athalie]] tried her best to get her mother to love her, but she didn't no matter what she did; even rejecting Athalie on her deathbed. Athalie is then convinced that love is pointless; only power and control are worthy of her time, and raised Camille and Avaline accordingly. Camille grew up thinking that she should have died along with her mother and sister in the fire that killed them, and is actually surprised when she is told that wanting to be happy isn't selfish at all. Athalie also [[spoiler: forcefully changes Avaline's hair color back to its natural brown and straightens it, to make her more attractive to suitors. Avaline's dyed blonde hair was the only bit of individuality she had left.]] Avaline grew up thinking that what she feels doesn't matter; she is simply a vessel for the Severins to get what they want, until she snaps and [[spoiler: smashes a vase over her mother's head]]. Luckily both Camille and Avaline break the cycle together, and after [[spoiler: Avaline becomes Matriarch, she leads the Severins in a new, less toxic direction.]]
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* The Severins hand down emotional damage and trauma from generation to generation like most families hand down heirlooms. Alette (Camille's grandmother) was convinced that Abrielle was perfect and that Athalie was evil and not to be trusted and encouraged their sibling rivalry, which led to [[spoiler: [[CainAndAbel Athalie murdering her sister]]]]. Abrielle tried her best to break the cycle, but ended up dead, leaving Camille at the mercy of her aunt Athalie. [[TheUnfavorite Athalie]] tried her best to get her mother to love her, but she didn't no matter what she did; even rejecting Athalie on her deathbed. Athalie is then convinced that love is pointless; only power and control are worthy of her time, and raised Camille and Avaline accordingly. Camille grew up thinking that she should have died along with her mother and sister in the fire that killed them, and is actually surprised when she is told that wanting to be happy isn't selfish at all. Athalie also [[spoiler: forcefully changes Avaline's hair color back to its natural brown and straightens it, to make her more attractive to suitors. Avaline's dyed blonde hair was the only bit of individuality she had left.]] Avaline grew up thinking that what she feels doesn't matter; she is simply a vessel for the Severins to get what they want, until she snaps and [[spoiler: smashes a vase over her mother's head]]. Luckily both Camille and Avaline break the cycle together, and after [[spoiler: Avaline becomes Matriarch, she leads the Severins in a new, less toxic direction.]]

* ''Series/MsMarvel2023'': Back during the Partition of India, Aisha became separated from her family in the chaos of thousands of future Pakistani citizens scrambling to find space on the trains. Her daughter Sana almost became lost as well, but was led back to her father by a mysterious "trail of stars". Sana spent the next seven decades obsessively trying to prove that the trail of stars actually existed, and consequently alienated her own daughter, Muneeba, who viewed her as a flighty and unreliable parent. Eventually, Muneeba and her husband Yusuf, seeking a better life for themselves and their newborn son Aamir, left for America, where they eventually had a second child, Kamala. In the present, Muneeba's disdain for the supernatural puts her at odds with the now-teenage Kamala, who has grown up in a world of superheroes, but her guilt about abandoning her mother has filled her with a fear that Kamala will eventually abandon ''her'', causing her to try and stop Kamala from becoming more independent.