History Main / TroubledToybreaker

* A symbolic example occurs in the ''Fanfic/PonyPOVSeries''. When Fluttershy goes inside her own mind with Fluttercruel, she enters a part of her mind that looks like a Cloudsdale nursery. Its floor is covered in abused toys, including a shredded plush of Discord (Fluttercruel's ArchnemesisDad) and a stuffed Rainbow Dash with its head torn off. This room is the prison for Flutterrage, a repressed part of Fluttershy's personality that represents her bottled-up anger from various incidents, including her anger at the animals who ran away from her at the Grand Galloping Gala, and at Rainbow Dash for knocking her off a cloud during the race at flight camp and never asking if she was okay afterwards.

[[quoteright:350:[[ComicBook/{{Klaus}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rco017_1466066153.jpeg]]]]

* Jonas from ''ComicBook/{{Klaus}}'' is the SpoiledBrat son of [[AristocratsAreEvil Baron Magnus]]. Under Magnus's rule, all toys are confiscated and given to Jonas, only for the boy to bore easily and destroy them in his tantrums. [[spoiler:Later his mother teaches him how to play with the toys less destructively, showing that he's just a LonelyRichKid who behaves badly because his tyrannical father is the only role model he has.]]

* In the {{creepypasta}} ''[[https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1u94ez/betsy_the_doll/ Betsy the Doll]]'' by Creator/CKWalker, Laura is a little girl with an opiate-addicted single mother. Her only friend is her doll, Betsy, and they do everything together. One day, Laura asks her mother if she can have a party for her 6th birthday, and is coldly rebuffed. Laura gets so upset that when she sees Betsy smiling and lying on her bed, she beats Betsy to a pulp to vent her frustration and then shoves her into the toy trunk. Decades later, when Laura is an adult, she gets a call from her mother apologizing for being a bad parent...and for Betsy disappearing. Laura is confused and tells her mother that Betsy is in the trunk. Her mother asks, [[spoiler:"What do you mean your sister's in the trunk?"]]

* A symbolic example occurs in the ''Fanfic/PonyPOVSeries''. When Fluttershy goes inside her own mind with Fluttercruel, she enters a part of her mind that looks like a Cloudsdale nursery. Its floor is covered in abused toys, including a shredded plush of Discord and a stuffed Rainbow Dash with its head torn off. This room is the prison for Flutterrage, a repressed part of Fluttershy's personality that represents her bottled-up anger from various incidents, including her anger at the animals who ran away from her at the Grand Galloping Gala, and at Rainbow Dash for knocking her off a cloud during the race at flight camp and never asking if she was okay afterwards.

* ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/30413268/chapters/74982468#workskin Teen Idle]]'': Fugo is a troubled teenager with anger issues due to abuse from his parents and sexual abuse from his college professor. After he joins Passione and moves in with Bruno, the older mafioso gives him a stuffed hippopotamus as a welcome home gift. At some point Fugo destroys it during one of his rages, and is devastated when he realizes what he's done. Bruno secretly spends a month stitching it back together and then gives it back to him as a Christmas present, and Fugo is so overjoyed to have his plush back, [[TearsOfJoy it makes him cry]].

* ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/30413268/chapters/74982468#workskin Teen Idle]]'': After Fugo joins Passione and moves in with Bruno, the older mafioso gives him a stuffed hippopotamus as a welcome home gift. At some point Fugo destroys it during one of his rages, and is devastated when he realizes what he's done. Bruno secretly spends a month stitching it back together and then gives it back to him as a Christmas present, and Fugo is so overjoyed to have his plush back, [[TearsOfJoy it makes him cry]].

* In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kbkgj2YDNlU this anti-child abuse ad]] by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, a young girl treats her doll the same way her abusive mother treats her.

* ''Fanfic/PonyPOVSeries'': When Fluttershy goes inside her own mind with Fluttercruel, she enters a part of her mind that looks like a Cloudsdale nursery. Its floor is covered in abused toys, including a shredded plush of Discord and a stuffed Rainbow Dash with its head torn off. This room is the prison for Flutterrage, a repressed part of Fluttershy's personality that represents her bottled-up anger from various incidents, including her anger at the animals who ran away from her at the Grand Galloping Gala, and at Rainbow Dash for letting her fall off a cloud during the race at flight camp and never asking if she was okay afterwards.

* ''Fanfic/PonyPOVSeries'': When Fluttershy goes inside her own mind with Fluttercruel, she enters a part of her mind that looks like a Cloudsdale nursery. Its floor is covered in abused toys, including a shredded plush of Discord and a stuffed Rainbow Dash with its head torn off. This room is the prison for Flutterrage, a repressed part of Fluttershy's personality that represents her bottled-up anger, including her angry feelings from when the animals at the Gala wouldn't be friends with her, and from when Rainbow Dash let her fall off a cloud during the race at flight camp.

* ''Fanfic/PonyPOVSeries'': When Fluttershy goes inside her own mind with Fluttercruel, she enters a part of her mind that looks like a Cloudsdale nursery. Its floor is covered in abused toys, including a shredded plush of Discord and a stuffed Rainbow Dash with its head torn off. This room is the prison for Flutterrage, a repressed part of Fluttershy's personality that represents her anger, including her angry feelings from when the animals at the Gala wouldn't be friends with her, and from when Rainbow Dash let her fall off a cloud during the race at flight camp.

* ''PonyPOVSeries'': When Fluttershy goes inside her own mind with Fluttercruel, she enters a part of her mind that looks like a Cloudsdale nursery. Its floor is covered in abused toys, including a shredded plush of Discord and a stuffed Rainbow Dash with its head torn off. This room is the prison for Flutterrage, a repressed part of Fluttershy's personality that represents her anger, including her angry feelings from when the animals at the Gala wouldn't be friends with her, and from when Rainbow Dash let her fall off a cloud during the race at flight camp.

* ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/30413268/chapters/74982468#workskin Teen Idle]]'': After Fugo joins Passione and moves in with Bruno, the older mafioso gives him a hippo plush as a welcome home gift. At some point Fugo destroys it during one of his rages, and is devastated when he realizes what he's done. Bruno secretly spends a month stitching it back together and then gives it back to him as a Christmas present, and Fugo is so overjoyed to have his plush back, [[TearsOfJoy it makes him cry]].

* ''Literature/WaitTillHelenComes'': Molly's younger stepsister Heather is a malicious little brat who hates her new stepfamily and is also somewhat messed up in the head because she saw her mother die in a fire at 3 years old. When Molly thinks about her rejected attempts to be nice to Heather, she thinks about the time she let Heather play with her old Barbie dolls, and came back to find out that Heather cut their hair off playing beauty parlor and tore their outfits into shreds. She also ripped up a family of paper dolls Molly made for her.

Toys are universal symbols of childhood innocence and happiness. When a scene takes place in a playroom and is filled with brightly colored blocks, smiling dollies and the laughter of children, it makes the viewer feel as if everything will be alright. Why, add a flowered china tea set on a pretty little table, some art supplies in the corner, and a box full of action figures, and it would be just perfect.

* ''Anime/GirlsUndPanzer'': Subverted with Miho. When she's first introduced, her room has a bunch of stuffed bear toys who are shown bandaged or wearing casts or slings, giving the impression that she's got some sort of issues that she takes out on her toys. She's actually a perfectly normal girl for her age (if a touch lonely), and ''Anime/GirlsUndPanzerDerFilm'' reveals that the toys are actually sold like that because the character they depict is a BoisterousWeakling who's always getting beaten up.

* ''Film/WeNeedToTalkAboutKevin'': Kevin is a sociopathic kid who has an icy relationship with his mother, Eva. When she tells him that he might get a new brother or sister, he spends the entire conversation snapping his crayons in half. There's also an incident in the book (but not the film) where his classmate in kindergarten brings a porcelain tea set for show-and-tell and passes out teacups to have a tea party; Kevin smashes his teacup and gets everyone else to do the same.

* ''Literature/CityOfThieves1983'': One of the places you can visit in Port Blacksand is the local BedlamHouse, where upon entering first thing you see is a pair of mentally unstable, elderly women dressed as little girls in a room full of destroyed toys, and quarreling over which one of them gets to carve up a wooden duck. They're harmless and doesn't attack you, but you can offer them a random item to destroy and explore the asylum while they're distracted.

* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'': After Arya Stark [[spoiler:witnesses the betrayal and murder of her mother, older brother and their House's soldiers at the Red Wedding]], she comes very close to falling into the DespairEventHorizon. While she and Sandor Clegane are staying at a nameless Riverlands village, the village elder's daughter takes to following her around, no matter how many times Arya tells her to go away. When the girl shows Arya her soldier doll and boasts that it will protect her, she tears out its stuffing, throws it in the river, and snaps, "Now he looks like a real soldier!"

* ''Literature/WaitTillHelenComes'': Molly's younger stepsister, Heather, is a malicious little brat who hates her new stepfamily, and is also somewhat messed up in the head because she saw her mother die in a fire at 3 years old. When Molly thinks about her rejected attempts to be nice to Heather, she thinks about the time she let Heather play with her old Barbie dolls, and came back to find out that Heather cut their hair off playing beauty parlor and tore their outfits into shreds. She also ripped up a family of paper dolls Molly made for her.

* ''Series/CriminalMinds'': When the BAU is called in over the abduction of a girl at a local mall, they do a search of her home. They discover severely disfigured dolls, which clue them in that the girl was being sexually abused by her paternal uncle, and that the girl's aunt blamed her for the troubles in her marriage and left her to suffocate and die. The girl is found in time to save her life, but is implied to be severely injured from the murder attempt, on top of the abuse she's already suffered.

* ''VideoGame/RedAlert3'': The PsychopathicManchild piloting the Grinder (a road-roller that grinds vehicles, buildings and ''people'' to pieces) will sometimes say "I break all my toys!" and sounds quite proud of it.

* In the {{creepypasta}} ''[[https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1u94ez/betsy_the_doll/ Betsy the Doll]]'' by Creator/CKWalker, Laura is a little girl with an opiate-addicted single mother. Her only friend is her doll, Betsy, and they do everything together. One day, Laura asks her mother if she can have a party for her 6th birthday, and is coldly rebuffed. Laura gets so upset that when she sees Betsy smiling and lying on her bed, she beats Betsy to a pulp to vent her frustration and then shoves her in the toy trunk. Decades later, when Laura is an adult, she gets a call from her mother apologizing for being a bad parent...and for Betsy disappearing. Laura is confused, and tells her mother that Betsy is in the trunk. Her mother asks, [[spoiler:"What do you mean your sister's in the trunk?"]]

* ''WesternAnimation/Rugrats1991'': Angelica Pickles has a reputation for being a bully to Tommy, her baby cousin, and his friends. One of the ways she asserts her dominance over the babies is by breaking their toys, one notable example being "[[Recap/RugratsS6E25TheBigShowdownDoctorSusie Doctor Susie]]", where she breaks the babies' toys when they aren't looking to make Susie look bad, since she was able to fix them after Dil, her other baby cousin broke them. Karma catches up to her, as [[LaserGuidedKarma Dil breaks Cynthia]], [[CompanionCube her favorite doll]], and she needs Susie's help to fix her. She admits to the babies that she broke their toys to make Susie look bad out of jealousy since the babies liked Susie more than her, and [[DidntThinkThisThrough didn't expect Dil to break Cynthia or think she'd need Susie to help fix her]]. Angelica also has to spend much of her time around Tommy and his friends in general because her parents spend a lot of their time at work and leave her Aunt Didi and Uncle Stu to look after her. Stu and Didi have a lot of time to spend with Tommy due in part to the former being the owner and founder of his own toy company.
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* In ''Literature/TheBerenstainBears And Baby Makes Three'', Sister goes through some InfantSiblingJealousy when her sister Honey is born. In addition to becoming moody and withdrawn, she takes out her anger on her dolls, which remind her of the new baby.

* ''Literature/FriedGreenTomatoesAtTheWhistleStopCafe'': Buddy "Stump" Threadgoode, who lost one arm in an accident, throws a tantrum just after Christmas when he can't keep up with the other kids in a cap pistol shootout. He goes home and stomps an Erector set he'd been given flat. Stump is said to be a generally happy kid, and it may be inferred that part of the reason for his frustration is that he's been shamed in front of a girl he has a crush on.

* ''Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar'': In ''Arrows of the Queen'', six-year-old Princess Elspeth is prone to wrecking her nursery during her periodic temper tantrums. At first it looks like there's no deep reason for it - she's just a spoiled brat who gets away with it because her mother the Queen is too busy (and young and inexperienced as a mother) to take care of her properly, and no one else dares to discipline the Queen's daughter. Well, no one dares until Talia, the new Queen's Own Herald, gets involved. It isn't until later that Talia (and the reader) discovers that Elspeth was being carefully manipulated into becoming a brat by her nursemaid, a woman in the pay of a traitorous noble who wanted to make sure Elspeth could never inherit the throne.

* ''Literature/WaitTillHelenComes'': Molly's younger stepsister, Heather, is a malicious little brat who hates her new stepfamily, and is also somewhat messed up in the head because she saw her mother die in a fire at three years old. When Molly thinks about her rejected attempts to be nice to Heather, she thinks about the time she let Heather play with her old Barbie dolls, and came back to find out that Heather cut their hair off playing beauty parlor and tore their outfits into shreds. She also ripped up a family of paper dolls Molly made for her.

* In the {{creepypasta}} ''[[https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1u94ez/betsy_the_doll/ Betsy the Doll]]'' by Creator/CKWalker, Laura is a little girl with an opiate-addicted single mother. Her only friend is her doll, Betsy, and they do everything together. One day, Laura asks her mother if she can have a party for her sixth birthday, and is coldly rebuffed. Laura gets so upset that when she sees Betsy smiling and lying on her bed, she beats Betsy to a pulp to vent her frustration and then shoves her in the toy trunk. Decades later, when Laura is an adult, she gets a call from her mother apologizing for being a bad parent...and for Betsy disappearing. Laura is confused, and tells her mother that Betsy is in the trunk. Her mother asks, [[spoiler:"What do you mean your sister's in the trunk?"]]

* Jonas from ''ComicBook/{{Klaus}}'' is the SpoiledBrat son of [[AristocratsAreEvil Baron Magnus]]. Under Magnus's rule, all toys are confiscated and given to Jonas, only for the boy to bore easily and destroy them in his tantrums. [[spoiler:Later his mother teaches him how to play with the toys less destructively, showing that he's just a LonelyRichKid who's destructive behavior is because his tyrannical father is the only role model he has]].

* ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'': Asuka has massive issues with adults, as a result of seeing her mother hang herself at 4, and before that, hearing her father cheat on her with his mistress, who he later married. When she is MindRaped by Arael, she has a vision of tearing a stuffed monkey that was a gift from her new stepmother. When her father asks her why she doesn't like it, her teenage self steps on the monkey and declares, "Because I'm not a child! I grew up faster than other people, I don't need a stupid stuffed toy!" This is immediately followed by a voice-only memory of young Asuka begging her mother not to stop being her mother, and then not to kill her.

'''Indices''': ToyTropes, {{Youngsters}}, SubvertedInnocence, BreakingAndDestructionTropes, AbuseTropes, ChildAbuseTropes, AlliterativeName/TropesSToZ