History Main / TraumaCongaLine

* Xion in ''KingdomHearts358DaysOver2''. Apparently a Mary-Sue type character, it turns out Xion [[spoiler: is an [[ArtificialHuman artificial]] [[CloningBlues clone]] of Sora made to eventually [[FightingYourFriend kill Roxas]] and absorb his power, and if she's not up to the task then the Organization plans for Roxas to kill and absorb her instead. Furthermore, because she's a clone constructed out of stray fragments of Sora's memory, her existence is even more tenuous than that of a normal Nobody. As a result, when she dies everyone she ever knew forgets she ever existed.]] There's also the problem you go into the game knowing she's DoomedByCanon. Certainly the pinnacle of this comes [[spoiler:at the end of the game, where she battles Roxas, the guy she's heavily implied to be in love with by this point, and dies in his arms while he's struggling to remember her name, his memories of her fading already.]]

* Xion in ''KingdomHearts358DaysOver2''. Apparently a Mary-Sue type character, Xion fulfills the following: [[spoiler:CloningBlues, ArtificialHuman, FightingYourFriend, BetaTestBaddie, BreakTheCutie, NightmareSequence]] and more. There's also the problem you go into the game knowing she's DoomedByCanon. Certainly the pinnacle of this comes [[spoiler:at the end of the game, where she battles Roxas, the guy she's heavily implied to be in love with by this point, and dies in his arms knowing soon he won't even remember she ever existed.]]
** Roxas too, for a lot of the same reasons as above actually, and more. The poor guy has no memories, all he knows is that he can use a Keyblade and it's important he kill Heartless. When he asks questions of his allies to try and figure out the things he ought to know but doesn't, they treat him like an idiot for that reason. At least Xion eventually figured out that the Organization was using both of them, Roxas doesn't clue in until practically the end of the game and thus spends most of his 365 day long existance either being manipulated by people who plan to eventually off him, the Organization first, and then for his last 6 days, DiZ. He spends these last days with fake memories and desperately searching for his place in life. [[spoiler: Too bad he's a Nobody]]

[[folder:VideoGames]]

* Almost ''every'' major character in ''TsubasaReservoirChronicle''. One good example is Fay, who has a backstory so mindbendingly dramatic [[DeusAngstMachina it's verging on ridiculous]], and during the course of the story manages to [[spoiler: [[XanatosSucker be used by the BigBad]], be killed (in a virtual world, but still), have an eye gouged out and ''eaten'' by his surrogate son, after which he tries to let himself die but is ''forced'' to become a vampire by his [[HoYay partner]], a curse obliges him to stab his surrogate daughter, his father figure [[SuicideByCop tries to make him kill him]] right after he finds out the magical creature he made in semblance of his mother has been erased from existence, and then gives up his remaining magic power to get a prosthetic arm for [[HoYay his partner]], who had to rip it off to save him once again]]. And this all happens in around 100 chapters.

* Tolkien specialized in these: the plot of TheSilmarillion is basically driven by a series of [[HeroicBSOD HeroicBSODs]] brought on by excessive disaster. Probably the best example is T�rin, who[[spoiler:se favourite sister died when he was three, whose father was captured by a Dark Lord who cursed their entire family, was sent away from home to be raised by Elves, which wasn't so bad except that he grew up to sort-of-accidentally kill one and ran away, joined a band of outlaws, was betrayed to the Dark Lord and captured by Orcs, accidentally killed his best friend who came to rescue him, found a new home and got it attacked by a dragon, failed to rescue his sort-of girlfriend from a horrible death and in the process failed to meet his other sister before she was mind-wiped by the same dragon and ran away into the forest, which sucked because shortly afterwards he met a crazy amnesiac girl in the woods and married her; actually managed to kill the dragon eventually, which cured his wife's amnesia but also made her commit suicide because hey, incest; killed the man who told him this because it was obviously a lie, and then killed himself when informed that it actually wasn't]]. Others include Fingolfin (result D), H�rin (possibly B, then C), the Sons of F�anor (all over the spectrum, excluding A) F�anor himself (D), and Tuor (a rare A).
* Captain Lawrence in the {{Temeraire}} book, ''Victory Of Eagles''. He starts the book off [[spoiler: under a death sentence for treason and ends it sailing off in exile to Australia, on the books as a prisoner. In between, he has to put up with half the Aerial Corps despising him as a traitor (the other half thinks he did the right thing), his commanding officer/lover [[WhatTheHellHero chewing him out]] for his {{Lawful Stupid}}ity that gained him tratior tag, the husband of a former love interest he'd treated badly getting killed helping him on a a covert mission, and his personal fortune getting wiped out by a lawsuit.]] And did we mention Napoleon has invaded England while all this is going on?

** Lelouch actually has a lot more in common with Type E, largely because he still has a firm grasp of his own sense of right and wrong, as well as wanting to see his ultimately noble goals come to fruition, even if he comes across as quite dark. It's hard to be a Type B when your enemy is a racist [[TheEmpire Empire]] that has one leader [[spoiler:willing to destroy individuality due to his own crappy childhood, and a Prime Minister who's willing to nuke the whole world from orbit to enforce peace]]. Shirley almost becomes type C, before Mao makes her go into Type D, then she almost lapses into type C again before some LaserGuidedAmnesia allows her to shift into type A. Suzaku ''aims'' quite valiantly for type A, but with everything that happens, he shifts into either B or D (depending on your perspective) at the end of episode 19 of R2, before joining lelouch in type A.

** There are a few other ''CodeGeass'' characters that would fall under this, too, though less obviously due to not being the main character. Shirley and Suzaku stick out the most, but there are probably more [[ItGotWorse this being CodeGeass]].

* ''{{Supernatural}}''. You would not want to be a Winchester.

* This happens to Mai Kujaku/Valentine. She was MindRaped during the Battle City Finals and her subsequent inadvertent FaceHeelTurn that gets her in arguably even worse danger during the Doma saga in {{Yu-Gi-Oh}}.
** This happens on much higher, much more Heart Breakling Scale to Judai Yuki in YuGiOhGx, and could very well pass as the MostTriumphantExample of this trope next to {{Naruto}} down below in Shonen anime history.

* Poor, poor [[{{Homestuck}} Tavros.]] [[spoiler: First aG mind-controls him and forces him to jump off a cliff, paralyzing him, then his lusus dies after he accidentally crushes it under his wheelchair, and ''then'' his dream self dies, and he can't even escape his awful trauma by flying in his dreams.]]

-->'''Joker''': All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once. Am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed.
-->'''But contrary to this''': Gordon fails to break under the Joker's torments. Batman gets a CrowningMomentOfAwesome when he tells the Joker: "Gordon's fine. Maybe it was just you all along."

* ''{{Avatar The Last Airbender}}'': ''Zuko'' and how! First his mother leaves (to save him no less), then he gets challenged to an Agni Kai by his own father who burns and disowns owns him, then he gets sent on a {{snipe hunt}} after the Avatar. During said quest how much happens to our poor banished prince? And then when he finally gives up that quest he has to take a lightning bolt in the chest to save one of his friend's life. He lives through it ''barely''.

* Shandala of ''BrokenSaints'' fame, whose biography reads like something off of the ItGotWorse page. Washed ashore on a Fijian island and adopted by the tribe, her childhood was peaceful and idyllic until her adoptive mother was [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel viciously murdered and mutilated]] by white strangers [[spoiler:under the command of (and possibly personally led by) the BigBad]]. Then, as an adult, she reluctantly leaves her home and family and all that she loves to find the truth about her biological parents. Then, her adoptive brother Tui [[spoiler: is accidentally killed due to an [[BuffySpeak big scary empathic rage thing]] on her part]]. Then, she is washed off the ship in a giant storm and [[spoiler:found and brought to the lair of the Shadow Men to be tortured and sealed away in the back of a sleazy strip club]]. Then, after being [[spoiler:rescued, she ends up falling back to her SuperpoweredEvilSide briefly, deciding to go back home, and ends up confronted by TheDragon, who murders and mutilates her EmpathyPet Bula the same way her adoptive mother was, and then kidnaps her]]. ''Then'', in the GrandFinale, [[spoiler: she is turned into an instrument of mass suffering via her empathic powers by her BigBad father, only saved by her friends in time for her to commit a HeroicSacrifice and save the world]]. And yet throughout it all, she retains her purity of heart. SoYeah.

* {{Avatar The Last Airbender}}: ''Zuko'' and how! First his mother leaves (to save him no less), then he gets challenged to an Agni Kai by his own father who burns and disowns owns him, then he gets sent on a {{snipe hunt}} after the Avatar. During said quest how much happens to our poor banished prince? And then when he finally gives up that quest he has to take a lightning bolt in the chest to save one of his friend's life. He lives through it ''barely''.

* {{Avatar: The Last Airbender}}: ''Zuko'' and how! First his mother leaves (to save him no less), then he gets challenged to an Agni Kai by his own father who burns and disowns owns him, then he gets sent on a {{snipe hunt}} after the Avatar. During said quest how much happens to our poor banished prince? And then when he finally gives up that quest he has to take a lightning bolt in the chest to save one of his friend's life. He lives through it ''barely''.

* We made it this far without mentioning [[GurrenLagann Simon]]? He sees his parents die in an earthquake when he's seven; [[spoiler: later, after going on the surface, he sees Kamina and Yoko kissing, loses his cold mind and therefore the ability to drive his mecha; when Kamina goes to him to punch him back to reason, he's taken by surprise and wounded to death by the Beastmen. Feeling the only responsable for his friend's death, he falls into a state of total depression for some time]]. [[ItGotWorse And when years later he finally seems to have a more quiet life]] [[spoiler: becoming Chief Commander of the government of the new world on the surface, not only it turns out that his beloved Nia is the messenger of the Antispiral, who is about to destroy the universe, but he's also used as a scapegoat by Rossiu to calm the population afraid of the imminent end of the world and thrown in prison]]. And in the end, after [[spoiler: he and the Dai-Gurren brigade save the universe from Antispiral (at the price of the lives of some of their friends), he has just the time to celebrate his marriage with Nia, only to see her disappear a few moments later]]. It's a quite impressive chain of events, and is just a small consolation to know that at least he gets out of this as a stronger man.
*How has {{Elfen Lied}} not been mentioned yet? The anime traumatizes the characters enough already, but the manga [[ItGotWorse goes way further]]. Don't read the entire series in one day. (That's a mistke this troper will never make again)

* [[AngelTheSeries Angel:]] Pretty much Connor's entire life up till Season 4 was one long TraumaCongaLine. (Not that his life was great after that; there was a brief pause, but only so we could see the damage.)