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| 3 | %% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order. Thanks! |
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| 12 | * ''Series/TwentyOneJumpStreet'': After he went to jail, [[Creator/JohnnyDepp Tom Hanson]] was a lot darker of a character. |
| 13 | * ''Series/TwentyFour'': In the seventh season, Agent Renee Walker meets Jack Bauer. Within 10 hours, she is shot at, betrayed, choked to unconsciousness, wounded in the neck, buried alive, then resuscitated. Besides that, she almost suffocated a man in the hospital, held a woman hostage, threatened that woman's child, then got a different woman killed after she'd promised ''that'' woman's sister to keep her safe. Hour 10 had her point a gun at Jack, then later slap him in the face before collapsing into his arms and weeping hysterically. The cutie, she broke. |
| 14 | ** In the seven hours after ''that'', she: found out the White House was the next target, swam the Potomac, saw a fellow agent murdered in front of her eyes, barely escaped Juma's army, discovered Jack was being held hostage by the dictator of Sangala (who also happened to have nabbed the President), saw a bomb go off in the White House, was told Jack had murdered Ryan Burnett and Senator Mayer, tried to help him, got herself fired, was proved right about Jack's innocence, was reinstated, saw her boss almost die, found out Jack had been infected with a deadly bioweapon, saw him have a seizure right in front of her eyes, and witnessed him refuse the only possible treatment to save his life. Emotional rollercoaster much? |
| 15 | ** After ''that'', she also got to see her dead [[spoiler: boss after Tony Almeida betrayed everyone and killed him]]. She also got to see Jack having more seizures, the [[spoiler: Heroic Sacrifice of Bill Buchanan]], and after all that her metamorphosis into the female Jack Bauer was complete when she [[spoiler: tortured the Big Bad of Season 7, Alan Wilson]] in the season finale. |
| 16 | *** And now as of the premiere of Season 8, she has become an AntiHero, [[spoiler: chopped off someone's thumb, wants to die and was raped while she was undercover with the Russians before the events in Day 7]]. |
| 17 | ** President Allison Taylor began her run in ''24: Redemption'' as an idealistic President-Elect who won by a landslide. Since then, her son was murdered, Dubaku corrupted every department of her government, Juma landed on US soil, she was taken hostage, a bomb went off in the White House, her husband was shot and almost killed, the infrastructure of the entire United States was breached, two planes were crashed into each other just outside her window, a biochemical plant was just barely not blown up, her Chief of Staff resigned, she hired her manipulative bitch of a daughter to replace him, her Secretary of State quit, Juma's forces slaughtered most of the Secret Service, Senator Mayer and his traitorous Chief of Staff were murdered (by Jack Bauer, except not), she almost got into a civil war with Starkwood, her daughter also wound up going to Prison for having [[spoiler: Jonas Hodges (Starkwoods boss)]] killed, and her husband divorced her because of it. |
| 18 | *** In Day 8, a peace on which she had built her entire administration implodes and her own inner circle turns against her, leaving her with precisely two people she can truly trust that aren't CTU -- Secretary of Homeland Security Tim Woods and Secretary of State Ethan Kanin. Plus all the other things that go wrong. Poor, poor Allison has had some really awful days in the first 2 years of her administration... |
| 19 | [[/folder]] |
| 20 | |
| 21 | [[folder:A]] |
| 22 | * ''Series/AltaMar'': Clara is shattered by the end of Season 2. |
| 23 | * ''Series/AmericanGothic1995'': A lot of the show seems devoted to doing this to poor [[FishOutofWater Dr. Crower]], especially the episodes dealing with his alcoholism and the one where he attempts to kill Buck after learning from a woman who claims to be the sheriff's mother that Buck is the Devil Incarnate. ([[EvilPlan This is later revealed to be all part of Buck's dastardly plot to discredit him]].) The fact Dr. Matt is eventually PutOnABus, is found to have a creepy stalker shrine to Buck, and is last seen [[spoiler: locked up in an insane asylum]] clinches his status as broken. |
| 24 | * ''Series/AmericanIdol'': The critiques, especially from Randy Jackson, after Haley Reinhart's first performance in Top 4 week of Season 10. It goes downhill after the round was over and Ryan Seacrest called the four finalists out for an overall Round 1 assessment. To top it off, they ruined the surprise of what she was wearing for her second performance. Nigel Lythgoe couldn't have scripted it better...oh, wait...he admitted that he DID script it that way! |
| 25 | * ''Series/{{Angel}}'': |
| 26 | ** First Wesley and then Cordelia. |
| 27 | ** Inverted with Fred: She was introduced as a broken cutie, then was unbroken back into a confident, capable, monster-fighting, and fun-loving young woman. Then [[spoiler:her body was taken over and soul devoured by an ancient über demon. Ouch.]] |
| 28 | [[/folder]] |
| 29 | |
| 30 | [[folder:B]] |
| 31 | * ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica 2003}}'': The show likes this one: |
| 32 | ** Boomer is a naive young rookie pilot whose parents supposedly died in [[ConvenientlyUnverifiableCoverStory an accident]] when she was younger, which left her with a bad case of survivor's guilt nearly leading her to wash out, but for Adama's kindness. Her fellow crew are her [[TrueCompanions family]], Commander Adama's like a [[AFatherToHisMen father]], and Starbuck's like a big sister. She's having sex with the chief of the deck and thinking she's getting away with it, and she takes in one of the kids orphaned by the Cylon attack for a time. Then it turns out that she is [[spoiler:a [[TomatoInTheMirror Cylon sleeper agent]] implanted with hidden programming that makes her zone out and commit acts of sabotage she can't remember]], and everything goes to hell. She [[spoiler: finds herself shooting her beloved commanding officer against her will]], gets broken up with by the Chief, lied to, [[DrivenToSuicide encouraged to suicide]], confronted by [[spoiler:[[CreepyTwins creepy]] loving clones]], violently interrogated, publicly hated on, [[spoiler:shot, resurrected among the creepy loving clones,]] convinced to be a leader in a peace movement that fails miserably, and rejected by [[spoiler:her clone's daughter (whose father is her own former co-pilot)]]. Oh, and for a time her face is on the shooting range targets. Athena, her genetic twin, was the one who got the chance Boomer never had and crossed the finish line. Not only did she win acceptance from those who were aware of her true nature, but she got the guy, the kid and the life Boomer wanted. Oh, and Athena also earned [[spoiler:the respect from her model number for being the first Cylon to overcome her programming.]] No wonder Boomer is so bitter. [[spoiler:And now, she does some very, very vile things on board Galactica, possibly breaking ''Athena'' as a result. Then, in the finale, she finally returns the kid to Athena and is thanked with gut bullets.]] |
| 33 | ** Athena did break. A big part of Athena's motivation was that she didn't want to be a Cylon. By Season 4, she had convinced herself that she was human, hence her increasing animosity towards her own people. When [[spoiler: Boomer had sex with Helo while she was tied up and forced to watch from the locker]], it ''shattered'' that viewpoint into a million, tiny pieces: [[spoiler: Her own husband can't tell her apart from other individuals of her model number; She's not human and she never will be human, no matter how much she wants to be. Not only that, but Boomer kidnapped Hera, which means Athena had to go through the pain of losing her child ''a second time.'']] She breaks down completely near the end of the episode. The next one shows that she has completely closed herself off to everyone, including her husband. |
| 34 | ** Felix Gaeta was initially an earnest and contentious guy with a case of hero worship (or more) on Gaius Baltar. Then saw his expectations betrayed by New Caprica, the occupation by the Cylons, got himself ostracised, tried and nearly killed for [[LesCollaborateurs Collaboration]] despite the part he took secretly in LaResistance. Then lately he lost his leg to friendly fire and gangrene during a mutiny situation. He certainly grew more bitter and sarcastic until he finally broke in the last season. [[spoiler: Dee's suicide]] and his "efforts" on New Caprica being revealed to him as making things worse were the last straws, and he [[spoiler: went into a full-blown FaceHeelTurn, leading a mutiny on ''Galactica''. The mutiny failed, and he was executed, along with his co-conspirator.]] |
| 35 | ** Dee. Losing [[spoiler:Billy]] after turning to Apollo, marrying the latter, having their sham of a marriage wrecked by Starbuck/Apollo, and then [[spoiler: Earth's turning out to be uninhabitable]] was just too much. It didn't help that she was Adama's right-hand during the first three seasons: it's easily one of the most stressful and burdensome jobs in the fleet, and in fact she described it as getting harder, not easier, in one second season episode. |
| 36 | * ''Series/BlackMirror'': ''"Playtest"'' is all about this. Unlike most episodes where the main character is a VillainProtagonist or someone who could really do with a lesson, Cooper is an adorable NiceGuy who is put through immense psychological torture when the experimental horror game he's testing malfunctions and begins using his very deepest fears on him, like making him think he's going to see his mother hanging from the beams in the ceiling and making him think he's contracted Alzheimer's. None of his torment is even remotely deserved, [[spoiler:and in the end it is revealed that he never even survived the malfunction and that in reality he died alone and in terror, screaming out for his mother.]] |
| 37 | %% * ''Series/BlakesSeven'': [[TheWoobie Poor Vila]]. |
| 38 | * ''Series/BloodTies2007'': "Heart of Fire" is a good example of this: the ultra-handsome, charming and quirky Henry Fitzroy is physically tortured by a mad priest, who beats, drains and starves the vampire into confessing his sins so the priest can kill him. The priest also enthusiastically Breaks the Cutie by showing him videos of his ex-girlfriend betraying him, trying to get Henry to suck dry his love interest Vicki, and twisting a device that is LODGED around Henry's heart with metal spikes. As the final Break The Cutie moment, he even kills a cute little rat that Henry had spared despite his desperation for blood. |
| 39 | * ''Series/{{Blue Bloods}}'': Jamie Reagan suffers from this in Season 3. First he experiences his first kill in the line of duty that turns out to be suicide by cop. Then in the season finale [[spoiler: he and his partner Vinny are lured into a trap where Vinny is shot and dies in Jamie's arms.]] |
| 40 | * ''Series/{{Bones}}'': Zack. He was a very socially awkward kid, but overall well liked and definitely a cutie. [[spoiler:Then, we find out that he's the apprentice to a cannibalistic murderer, and he confesses to murdering somebody (although we find out later that he didn't actually kill the guy). He is then sent to a mental institution.]] Definitely qualifies as breaking the cutie. |
| 41 | * ''Series/BoyMeetsWorld'': Shawn Hunter started out as out with a fairly upbeat attitude despite his dysfunctional family and life in a trailer park. Then his mom abandons him and his dad leaves to chase after her. His dad keeps extending his absence and ends up being gone a whole year. Eventually he gets both of his parents back, but later on his mom leaves ''again'', his mentor and substitute parent Mr. Turner goes into a coma after being in a motorcycle crash, his dad kicks him out of the house (for Shawn's own good) and stays distant for a while. About a year and a half later his dad returns and promises he will stay this time, only to promptly die of a heart attack. At this point Shawn goes into a full-on HeroicBSOD, though he is able to get over it and by the end of the series he had grown into a well-adjusted young man. |
| 42 | * ''Series/BreakingBad'': Several characters, but most notable among them Jesse. While he didn't exactly start as the most idealistic person, he was getting by making sub-par meth and his worst experiences were a few arrests. Since agreeing to partner with Walt, however, he's inadvertently gotten his girlfriend hooked onto drugs again, leading to her death; seen several other people die in front of him, most of them pretty brutally; and killed a decent man in cold blood on Walt's orders to prevent Gus from killing Walt. At times it seems the writers' main goal is to come up with new ways to break Jesse even further. |
| 43 | ** ''Series/BetterCallSaul'': Jimmy [=McGill=]. Flashbacks reveal that cracks were already starting to show when he was a kid, getting put down already by ParentalSubstitute Chuck and starting to steal as he didn't trust his (very kind, very gullible) father anymore. When the series begins, he's really trying to be good, but he finds out that Chuck essentially ''wants'' him useless, and from then on, a mix of terrible choices and a growing IdentityBreakdown give him a TraumaCongaLine until all he can think to do is flatten himself out and become Clown Bastard AmoralAttorney Saul Goodman. Like Jesse, the writers outright said they spent half of the series torturing Jimmy. |
| 44 | * ''Series/TheBrittasEmpire'': Carole is introduced weeping at reception, having been recently cheated on and abandoned by her husband and left with postpartum depression and a baby to raise on her own. Then she loses her apartment and is forced to move into the leisure centre, falling pregnant to an unknown man (who is soon revealed to be Brittas, although neither discovers this until the very end of the series) and ending up having to raise three children in the drawers and cupboards behind reception. Then we find out that she wanted to be a pianist, only for her parents to crush her dreams by selling their piano so that she can take beauty courses to attract men. Several times, Carole is teased with the possibility of a better life, only for said opportunities to be taken from her in the most tragic ways possible. And Brittas calls her unattractive several times and suggests she loses weight. With this in mind, no wonder she is quite TheEeyore in Series 1 and a {{Cloudcuckoolander}} for the rest of the series. |
| 45 | * ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'': This is part of the dangers of living over a Hellmouth, and the entire purpose of The First Evil. |
| 46 | ** Buffy herself entered the series only slightly dented, and slowly bent to the breaking point, most notably during Season 6, where she spent most of her time in a depression after [[spoiler:being yanked out of heaven.]] It took a full season to put her back together. |
| 47 | ** Even Faith can be put into this camp. A street kid, pursued by the hordes of Kakistos, desperate for someone to trust, constantly betrayed by Watchers and others until she had nowhere to turn when things went wrong, and then ruined by a father figure who got her to commit murders for him. After she came out of her coma, she was in such bad shape that she tried to commit "suicide by vampire". |
| 48 | ** Over 7 seasons, Willow loses her first lover to the curse of lycanthropy, loses her new lover to a brainwipe, gets her lover back, watches her best friend die, loses her lover to her obsession with magic, gets her lover back, and just as they've finally reconciled loses her lover to a random gunshot that wasn't even intended for her. Bad Things ensue, and the primary focus of her arc in the next season is just putting her back together. |
| 49 | ** Drusilla, who Angelus considered to be his finest work. His methods of torture included taking advantage of the fact that she was psychic by pretending to be a priest during confession, saying such things as, "It is God's plan for you to be evil, so why not give in to His desire?" Also included was killing her entire family, sending her very nasty gifts and, when she went to a convent for sanctuary, he and Darla killed every nun in the building then had sex on the altar in front of her. Finally, when Drusilla was utterly traumatized, Angelus turned her, leaving her utterly insane for the rest of her existence. |
| 50 | ** Tara is first introduced as shy and insecure with no social contact at all until she meets Willow. Then we learn that Tara's mother died when she was 17, and she needed to deal with all her family's problems while being psychologically abused by her father, who convinced her she was a demon. Just as she finds a sense of belonging and grows happy in her relationship, she is [[MindRape mentally violated]] by a hell god that steals her sanity. She is cured later on, but then further manipulated by her lover, who takes her memories. Worst of all, as she begins to reconcile [[spoiler:she gets shot and killed off for real.]] Break the cutie indeed, as well as [[BrokenBase break the fanbase]]. |
| 51 | ** When Riley is introduced, he is happy with his job at the Initiative and thinks they're doing good work, and all in all is a pretty normal guy, 'cept the whole demon-fighting thing. Then he falls in love with Buffy, who his boss and mother-figure [[spoiler:tries to kill]]; he then learns that Maggie [[spoiler:created a Frankenstein-like monster who will take over the world, and Riley is meant to become like the monster too]]. He gets discarded from the Initiative and loses his faith in what they did, and two people he cared about are turned either into zombies or [[spoiler:Adam Mk. II]] by Adam. He then goes through horrible drug withdrawal from [[spoiler:all the chemicals the Initiative pumped into him to make him into a SuperSoldier]]. After that's all over, he comes to realize that no matter how much he loves Buffy, she doesn't feel as strongly about him and never really will. All these issues, especially Buffy's lack of love for him, lead to him [[spoiler:masochistically paying female vampires to suck his blood]], and eventually he leaves town completely. |
| 52 | ** Years before Stephanie Meyer put pen to paper the show was dedicated, committed, even obsessed with breaking Dawn. It starts with Dawn finding out that she's the Key -- as one fan put it, take your average teen identity crisis, and multiply it by about 3,000. Just as she recovers from that, [[spoiler:her mom dies.]] Then Tara is attacked, injured, and driven insane by Glory because she thought Tara was the newest thing in Buffy's life and therefore the Key, which Dawn blames herself for. When she's captured by Glory, it seems that she's going to die. She's rescued seconds too late, and her sister/guardian has to sacrifice herself in order to save Dawn and the world. |
| 53 | *** In Season 6, she's dealing with all the grief, until Buffy is [[spoiler:resurrected]], only to spend the season ignoring her, finally culminating in attempted murder (while Buffy was under the effect of a demon that made her hallucinate). In the episode "Villains", Dawn comes home from school to find nobody there... [[spoiler:only Tara's body. She sits with the body for probably three hours, not willing to leave her alone.]] |
| 54 | ** Anya spends most of her time on the show as the perky and bubbly comic relief. Then [[spoiler:Xander leaves her at the altar]]. She reacts to this by [[spoiler:returning to vengeance.]] She finds herself unable to do it properly at first, but when she does get back into the swing by [[spoiler:slaughtering ten frat boys]] who humiliated a girl, she suddenly realizes what she's done and plunges into [[DeathSeeker Death Seekerdom]]. When she begs D'Hoffryn to undo it -- the price of which would be a life and soul -- he [[spoiler:instead kills her friend Halfrek]] in front of her as the payment. He follows this by saying, "Haven't I taught you anything, Anya? Never go for the kill when you can go for the pain." |
| 55 | [[/folder]] |
| 56 | |
| 57 | [[folder:C]] |
| 58 | * ''Series/{{Charite}}'': Has happened to Ida Lenze prior to and at the beginning of the series: Her parents are dead, her custodian misappropriated her heritage, the man who courted her left her, and after she could support herself by working as a governess for a time, she fell ill and lost her job because her recuperation took too long, and since her former employers didn't want to pay for her hospital stay, she ended up having to work off her debt. |
| 59 | * ''Series/{{Cheers}}'': This happens a few times to Diane Chambers. |
| 60 | ** In the very first episode, she gets dumped by Sumner. She enters so perky and prim, but is left a wreck. |
| 61 | --->'''Diane:''' ''(on Sam predicting Sumner was going to dump her for his estranged wife)'' '''''How did you KNOW?!''''' |
| 62 | ** Perhaps the biggest example is "Diane Chambers Day", where she's so broken, she doesn't come into work the next day just to cry. |
| 63 | --->'''Sam:''' ''(on phone with Diane)'' Oh, hi, Diane. Why aren't you here? Are you sick or something? Oh, well, you sound all stuffed up. Well, I hope you feel better. Bye-bye.\ |
| 64 | '''Norm:''' What's the matter with her?\ |
| 65 | '''Sam:''' She said she's got this allergy where you weep uncontrollably. |
| 66 | ** She's devastated when her cat Elizabeth dies in "Let Me Count the Ways", wondering if her cat wondered where Diane was when she passed. |
| 67 | --->'''Diane:''' Well, she was the only one in my life who was always there... When everybody else was ''mad'' at me, she always liked me...when I'd... ''hide'' when my parents argued, she'd come with me, and... whenever I was sick, she never left the bed until I was well again... And then, um...when I was...twelve years old, my parents ''separated''. It was... maybe the worst night of my ''life''... Believe it or not, [[DrivenToSuicide I actually thought about throwing myself in the lake.]] But then I... looked down at this ''cat'' in my lap, and thought, "Well... who would take care of ''Elizabeth''?" ''(cries)'' She saved my ''life'' that night! And I know it's ''crazy'', and it's ''irrational'', but... oh, Sam, I can't help thinking that last night, when her time came, ''she must have wondered where I was''... ''(bawls)'' |
| 68 | ** In "Everyone Imitates Art", after learning she got the same rejection letter for her submission as ''Woody'' from a snooty art magazine, she has ''this'' painful speech: |
| 69 | --->'''Diane:''' ''(utterly defeated)'' You win, Sam. I've struggled so hard for so long to keep my dreams alive, and I haven't fooled anyone but myself. I know all along you all considered me a pretentious, self-deluded windbag and apparently, you've all been right. I'm never going to be Diane Chambers, the great poet, the world-famous novelist, the revered artist. I've gone as high as I'm going to go. I'm a waitress in a beer hall... and not a very good one. ''(increasingly depressed)'' A waitress... ''a waitress...'' ''({{beat}})'' [-A waitress...-] |
| 70 | *** Carla is not immune either. In "Slumber Party Massacred", the reason she's devastated about becoming a grandmother is that she never had any time to enjoy being a teenager because she was pregnant. |
| 71 | ---->'''Carla:''' Why do you all keep coming over here?\ |
| 72 | '''Sam:''' We're trying to cheer you up.\ |
| 73 | '''Carla:''' '''''Well, stop it!''''' You ''can't'' cheer me up. Why do people think they always have to rush over a-and talk somebody out of it when they're feeling lousy? ''(sighs)'' Look, this grandmother thing is just something I have to work through, and I will in time. There's nothing any of you guys could do. ''({{beat}})'' Unless you can make me 15 again. ''({{beat}})'' Can any of you make me 15 again? ''({{beat}})'' Well, can you? ''(long silence)'' Look, if you really cared about me, you would just get out of my house and do what I asked you to a long time ago. Just, just leave me alone. |
| 74 | *** Naive, sweet adorable Coach reacts to the Sam-Diane ShipSinking with the [[LoveTriangle introduction]] of Frasier at the end of "Rebound" with palpable distress. |
| 75 | * ''Series/CriminalMinds'': This seems to happen to Spencer Reid a LOT. His dad abandons him and his mom when he's ten and he has to put his schizophrenic mother in the asylum when he turns 18. He gets kidnapped by a multiple-personality serial killer (Tobias Henkel) and is beaten and drugged and is forced to ''dig his own grave''. Then he is moody and irritable for most of the rest of the season, even bitching at his teammate when she legitimately is just trying to help with the case, and in "Jones", we finally figure out why: Henkel got him ''addicted to drugs''. He kicks the habit by himself, but then his new father-figure and mentor cracks under pressure and abandons his team, with the only note of explanation being addressed solely to Reid. Then Reid is held hostage in a cult with another team member (the same one he was bitchy to, just to mention) and when the cult leader threatens to shoot him for being FBI, the other team member falls on her sword and gets the crap beat out of her for it. Cue guilt. And then, if he wasn't damaged enough, he gets anthrax poisoning. |
| 76 | ** Before he put his mom in a mental institution, he had to live with her for 8 years having psychotic breaks from reality. It was so bad, one of the MANY times he was picked on in high school (he was 12), he was led to believe a pretty girl liked him only to be ganged up on by the football team, stripped naked, and tied to a goal post. If that wasn't bad enough, when he finally got home (he's by himself, in Las Vegas, at midnight), his mom was having an episode and didn't even realize he was late. It's amazing he can function as well as he does. |
| 77 | *** He also starts getting really bad migraines that last for days at a time, thinks his one of his best friends is dead for 10 weeks, and when he finally gets a girlfriend and falls in love with her, they can only communicate over the phone because of her stalker -- and after finally meeting her face-to-face for the first time, he has to tell her he doesn't love her and then watch her die right in front of him because he couldn't talk down her stalker. Then he gets shot in the neck. |
| 78 | *** Spencer Reid: three months in Federal prison on a murder charge. In general population. |
| 79 | ** The Reaper arc in Season 5 is dedicated to doing this to Hotch at warp speed. After Gideon's abandonment of the team and Hotch himself getting almost-blown up (and failing to save the life of another agent) in "Mayhem", he finds himself the target of the serial killer known as "The Reaper" (aka [[spoiler: George Foyet, [[CrazyPrepared magnificent]] [[MagnificentBastard bastard]]]]). Hotch turns down the [[DealWithTheDevil deal]] offered by the Reaper (stop hunting the Reaper, and he'll stop killing people), and every subsequent murder (and there are a ''lot'') is on Hotch's conscience. Then, in "Faceless, Nameless", the Reaper [[spoiler: attacks Hotch in his home and stabs him nine times, and possibly rapes him. He then drops Hotch off at the hospital, saving his life, only to notify Hotch that he's going after his ex-wife and son next]]. Hotch must continue to try and hunt the Reaper while [[spoiler: his family is in Witness Protection, and he cannot have contact with them]], and due to the stress, [[spoiler: he is asked to step down from his position as Unit Chief. Morgan takes over, temporarily]]. All the while, the Reaper is toying with Hotch, letting him know just how easily he's gotten to Hotch. Finally, in "100", [[spoiler: Foyet ups the ante by killing the agent assigned to Haley and Jack's detail, capturing Haley and Jack, and shooting Haley while Hotch [[ForcedToWatch listens over the phone]]. Hotch goes [[DespairEventHorizon understandably apeshit]] and [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown beats]] Foyet to [[ExtremeMeleeRevenge death with his bare hands.]]]] The rest of the season seems to be devoted to exploring if Hotch can [[FamilyVersusCareer balance]] [[spoiler: single-fatherhood]] with the BAU. |
| 80 | ** Half of the more [[AlasPoorVillain sympathetic unsubs]] are Broken Cuties, also, an excellent example being Jonny [=McHale=]. [[spoiler:If you really want to see something sweet, memorize exactly where his flashbacks of his life before his psychotic breakdown are, in which he's a successful graphic novelist in a blissful relationship with his beautiful girlfriend, who he gives an overjoyed impromptu proposal to after she tells him she's pregnant (and oh god ''the look on his face'' when he realizes what she says). Stop before the part where they're ambushed by thugs who savagely murder and presumably rape her while he's ForcedToWatch before they move on to him and leave him nearly disemboweled. No wonder he went completely off his rocker and started [[NoKillLikeOverkill hacking their ilk to pieces]] as a VigilanteMan while too deep in spells of PTSD to even realize he's doing it]]. |
| 81 | *** [[spoiler: Amber Canardo]] from the episode "The Perfect Storm" comes pre-broken. She was [[spoiler: beaten and raped by both her father and her brother throughout her childhood, and her mother covered it up for them and told the police she was lying when she went to them.]] She ends up becoming [[spoiler: a serial killer herself who does what she suffered to other women, presumably to achieve a sense of fairness.]] Then there's Samantha Malcolm from "The Uncanny Valley" who was [[spoiler: also raped by her father, who bribed her with toys to keep her quiet and tortured her with electric shocks, with Samantha finally snapping after walking in on her father, a psychiatrist, giving away her toys to a patient.]] |
| 82 | ** In "Lucky", Garcia [[spoiler:is shot]] by her new boyfriend. The following episode, "Penelope" shows the Team's efforts to track him down and stop him. |
| 83 | * ''Series/{{CSINY}}'': |
| 84 | ** Danny is involved in several fights with Mac, has been held hostage and had the crap kicked out of him by a gang of drug dealers, has been implicated in the shooting of another officer, and his brother was put into a coma while trying to save him from yet another murder rap. |
| 85 | ** Flack has gotten blown up, was beaten to a pulp on the subway, had to participate in the investigation and arrest of his mentor, had problems with his sister, and [[spoiler: his girlfriend died]]. |
| 86 | ** Adam came pre-broken [[SadClown but hides it well most of the time]], but has also been held hostage and roughed up by drug dealers (with Danny, from above), among other things. |
| 87 | [[/folder]] |
| 88 | |
| 89 | [[folder:D]] |
| 90 | * ''Series/DanceMoms'': Over the course of the show's run, it's highly speculated that as a result of the {{flanderization}} of Abby (the dance teacher), turning her from a loving and assertive teacher to a ruthless and almost villainous one, this has happened to Abby's students. [[spoiler:Three members of the original junior elite team, which the show is based around, leave during Season 4, unable to cope with Abby.]] The members have become more withdrawn, and one member has even come down with an anxiety disorder while another shows signs and symptoms of an impending one. |
| 91 | * ''Series/TheDarkCrystalAgeOfResistance'': |
| 92 | ** Brea became devastated after seeing her mother get murdered by the General right in front of her, Seladon blaming her for their mother's death, and being unable to attend her funeral. |
| 93 | ** After she absorbs way too much of The Darkening and becomes a Walking Wasteland, Deet is forced to leave behind her newfound friends for their safety. The look on her face as she gives one last look at Rian is simply heart-wrenching. |
| 94 | ** When we first meet Rian he's a playful, wide-eyed fledgling soldier. Seeing his girlfriend die, and being accused of murdering her by the murderers, and having every single other Gelfling, including his father think he's gone sick in the brain, really took a mental toll from him. |
| 95 | * ''Series/DegrassiTheNextGeneration'': Has done this twice. |
| 96 | ** J.T.: PluckyComicRelief for most of the series, he gets his girlfriend pregnant in Season 5. After much debate, they decide to keep the baby, but they don't have the money no matter how hard he works (and he works hard), at which point he gets convinced to sell drugs he stole from the pharmacist (one of his jobs) as it's the only way to get enough money. His girlfriend finds out, his employer is pretty obviously about to find out, the drug dealer he's selling drugs to refuses to let him go, and eventually he tries to kill himself. He fails, his girlfriend dumps him and puts the baby up for adoption against his will, he's obviously still in love with her, and just before they're reunited, [[spoiler:he's killed by a random psycho.]] |
| 97 | ** Darcy: Starts off sweet religious girl, but she's [[spoiler:drugged and raped at a party]] in the Season 7 premiere, and... she kind of loses it. |
| 98 | ** This seems to be the entire point of the character of Campbell, he is frequently referred to as a lost or sad puppy by fans. He is severely depressed, homesick and seems to have anxiety issues as well. Though he is the star of the hockey team, most of the team torments him and he has admitted to Maya that he doesn't even like hockey. He has been shown to at least be tempted to self-harm and he threw himself off of a ledge in order to injure himself enough that he wouldn't have to play hockey any more. [[spoiler:Eventually he [[DrivenToSuicide commits suicide]] ]]. |
| 99 | * ''Series/TheDevilJudge'': Ga-on doesn't take it well when he learns Young-choon escaped prison, especially since this revelation came right after Ga-on thinks Yo-han is just using him. He ends up even more broken later, when he learns he was tricked into turning against Yo-han. |
| 100 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'': |
| 101 | ** This is Victoria Waterfield's entire character arc. In her first story, the Daleks kill her father and blow up her home. Despite this, she's still reasonably adventurous and confident. By the time she calls it a day in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS5E6FuryFromTheDeep "Fury from the Deep"]], she's a nervous wreck who can't sleep for fear of the MonsterOfTheWeek. |
| 102 | ** The Fifth Doctor was the nicest, mildest, friendliest, most trusting and most pacific of all the Doctors. The death toll in his adventures was horrific and frequently claimed all the non-regular cast; Adric, a long-running companion and only a boy, was killed; Tegan ran away because she'd seen enough death. He eventually sacrificed himself to prevent yet another person dying on him. Poor soul. |
| 103 | ** Downplayed with Nyssa. She is subjected to several incidents that might potentially break her, starting with the news that her father's body has been taken over by the Master, followed shortly after by the destruction of her home planet. However, the only times she shows any sign of breaking are in the immediate aftermaths of Adric's death and the Doctor's apparent execution early in the following season. |
| 104 | ** Ace not only had a less than stellar childhood, with things like having a good childhood friend become the victim of a racially motivated arson attack, but the Doctor was forced to do this to her himself in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS26E3TheCurseOfFenric "The Curse of Fenric"]]. One of the villains has had a HeelFaceTurn and is prepared to put a stop to the BigBad, but he is repelled by faith and Ace has nothing but faith in the Doctor. The Doctor is forced to insult and berate her into breaking that faith so his new ally can finish the BigBad off. |
| 105 | ** If you think Ten and Eleven had it bad, consider Eight, the nicest, most cheerful Doctor in a couple of decades, the guy who started his life impulsively smooching the surgeon who accidentally killed his previous regeneration and dancing with giddy delight over things like how the stars look in the sky and the fact that his shoes fit ''perfectly''. Of all the Doctors this is the guy who first wound up trapped in the middle of the [[HopelessWar Last Great]] [[WarIsHell Time War]]. No one needs to actually see what happened to him or how it affected him. The FridgeHorror alone is chilling enough. |
| 106 | *** For those of you who prefer your Eight-trauma in a different medium, [[BreakTheCutie/{{Literature}} the books]] (repeated memory loss, dead companions, horrible injuries) [[BreakTheCutie/{{Audio}} and the audios]] (dead companions, memory loss, betrayal) fill the San Francisco-Time War gap. %% EU trauma is on the Literature and Audio subpages. Please add more details there. |
| 107 | *** In [[Recap/DoctorWho50thPrequelTheNightOfTheDoctor "The Night of the Doctor"]], the ''AudioPlay/{{Big Finish|Doctor Who}}'' audios were made canonical(ish), and we see their result. It turns out that the Eighth Doctor tried and failed to avoid fighting in the Time War. But after all the tragedy he goes through, with Cass refusing to let him save her as she thinks the Time Lords are Monsters, he basically commits suicide by staying on the ship. He is revived by the Sisterhood of Karn and allows himself to be regenerated into a Warrior when they tell him the Universe is being destroyed by the Time War, discarding the title of the Doctor. His DespairEventHorizon is emphasized when he mentions five of his Big Finish companions: the first he thinks he parted from on bad terms and the next three are dead. We don't know what happened to Molly... yet. |
| 108 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E13ThePartingOfTheWays "The Parting of the Ways"]]: Lynda Moss, a young woman the Doctor rescued, who watches as the Daleks invade the satellite she's on, barely slowed down by anything the defenders can throw at them, and she gets to hear them exterminating everyone on Floor 0 one by one. Then the Daleks come for her. |
| 109 | ** Pretty much the entirety of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E9TheFamilyofBlood "The Family of Blood"]] is devoted to breaking the character of John Smith (an amnesiac, human Doctor) into teeny tiny pieces after setting him up as a rather lovely bloke (besides some [[DeliberateValuesDissonance 1913 values]]) in the prior episode. It's [[TearJerker effective]]. |
| 110 | ** The Master does this a ''lot'' in the Series 3 finale. By the beginning of the [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E13LastOfTheTimeLords final episode]], by which time he's been in control for a whole year, [[spoiler:he's done heavily implied squicky things to Jack and chained him up in the basement of his airship, which is only made more disturbing by the fact that Jack's immortal; done heavily implied squicky things to Martha's family to the point that, just before the cavalry arrives, they're sitting in a circle ''fighting over who gets to kill him''; aged the Doctor's body, done heavily implied squicky things to him, aged his body again, and locked him in a birdcage; and turned his formerly happy (albeit mostly trigger-happy) wife into a battered slave.]]. Although the Doctor recovers, these effects are explicitly NOT reversed by the ResetButton at the end of the episode. |
| 111 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E10Midnight "Midnight"]]. When a mysterious unseen creature strikes his transport, the Doctor watches helplessly as his "listen to me, I'm clever and I can help" attitude not only fails miserably but starts to turn the rest of the passengers ''against'' him and leaves him open to immobilizing MindRape, resulting in one of the most intense cases of HumansAreTheRealMonsters in the whole series. If you don't find yourself wanting very desperately to [[TheWoobie give him a hug]] when it all ends and he's lying sprawled on the floor and clutching his chest gasping "It's gone... it's gone... it's gone..." then I don't know what to do with you. |
| 112 | ** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd "Journey's End"]], the Doctor has to literally wipe the mind of Donna Noble or risk having the Time Lord thoughts destroy her mind. She is not particularly pleased about this turn of events, and the Doctor is crushed by it too. |
| 113 | ** Then there's [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime "The End of Time"]]. |
| 114 | *** The Doctor is already tormented by the prophecy "[[ArcWords He will knock four times]]". But then the Master comes back, beats him to a fare-thee-well and then forces the Doctor to watch as everyone he knows and loves on Earth (with the exception of Wilf and Donna) is [[CloneByConversion turned into The Master]] (it's never said, but a foregone conclusion that Sarah, Martha, Tegan, Barbara, Ian, Ace and so on were Mastericized by the incident). Then, the Time Lords return, threatening to [[ApocalypseHow destroy all of time]] so that they can [[GodhoodSeeker gain apotheosis]] and finally gain a (pyrrhic) victory in the Time War. The Doctor has to send them -- all of them and most likely Romana, amongst others -- back to the Time War to be annihilated. And then, he gets to see just who the "he" was who would knock four times, heralding his death: [[spoiler:Wilf, who was trapped in a radiation-safety chamber that was about to fail.]] The Doctor has a HeroicBSOD of epic proportions before rescuing him, and is pretty much not the same for the last 20 minutes of screen time left in his life, nary cracking a joke or smiling, but instead paying last visits to old friends before regenerating in the most violent regeneration scene in the show's history. |
| 115 | *** During the more "serious" scenes between the Doctor and the Master, you can see the Master himself suffers this because of the drums. Suffers it horribly, in fact. Which means that ''everything the Master has ever done'' was the fault of [[spoiler: Rassilon and the Council]]; he started out as a completely normal child. Could have grown up to be more like his Professor Yana guise. Poor mad Master. |
| 116 | ** The 11th Doctor is a madcap bowtie-wearing, hat-loving [[TheWoobie perma-Woobie]]. |
| 117 | ** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E7AGoodManGoesToWar "A Good Man Goes to War"]], both Amy and the Doctor get pretty broken. First, Amy [[spoiler:gets her baby taken away, the baby she hadn't even known she was pregnant with until a month before;]] then, the Doctor saves her and Melody, only to realize that his entire plan has led them all into a massive trap. [[spoiler:Melody is not really Melody but is Flesh!Melody, who then dissolves in Amy's arms.]] Amy, understandably, freaks out. The Doctor tries to hug her, but she won't let him. [[TearJerker That broke him, hard.]] And then, just to pour salt into his open wound, River shows up and gives him an interestingly inverted version of a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech in which she tells him he's getting too good at what he does and becoming a mighty warrior, exactly the opposite of what he wanted, and because of this, it's his fault that [[spoiler:Melody was taken]]. Ouch. |
| 118 | ** There's a subversion with Rory. First his girlfriend snogs another bloke, next they get trapped in some creepy dream world where you can't tell fiction from reality, he discovers the happy home he's been building with Amy is all a big lie and dies while he's there, then he gets killed ''again'' before being erased from history, and to top it all off [[spoiler: his [[TomatoInTheMirror Plastic Auton self who he somehow remembers being]] watches over an incredibly powerful reality altering box for two thousand years because his not quite dead yet girlfriend is stuck inside and he wants to stay there and protect her]]. And yet in spite of all this, he still comes out of it fighting. |
| 119 | ** The Thirteenth Doctor was a [[GenkiGirl hyperactive, cheerful]] woman throughout her entire first season, pacifist unless she literally had no other choice, only becoming truly angry when something or someone threatened her friends. However, in her second season, she finds out the hard way that [[spoiler: Gallifrey has been [[WhereIWasBornAndRazed razed to the ground]] by the Master, revealed to us with a shot of her standing outside the TARDIS, completely horrified as she looks out over the ruins]]. While she tries to keep up her cheerful personality in front of her companions, her overall mood becomes darker, and she completely drops the cheer whenever she's alone or with an adversary. [[spoiler: When she's abducted by the Master and taken back to Gallifrey, she tries to act somewhat calm and collected, but when he pushes her a bit too hard, she ''physically attacks him'', tackling him to the ground and screaming in his face. And while she's not willing to personally kill him, she's completely willing to leave him to die on Gallifrey when Ko Sharmus offers to take her place.]] |
| 120 | * ''{{Series/Dollhouse}}'': Fresh example: Sierra. Seems a particularly sweet and cute doll, then there's the time she [[spoiler: reverts to her base personality and confronts a man who claims to have put her in the Dollhouse]]. That's left on hold for a bit, until [[spoiler:Topher finds out that he really did put her there against her will, and in a rare act of conscience, lets her base personality loose. Her tormentor gets what's coming to him, and everyone else gets a load of guilt.]] Thankfully, as Sierra, she won't remember anything. It's less clear whether they were able to purge her memories of when [[spoiler:her first handler raped her in the innocent doll state repeatedly]]. |
| 121 | ** Dr. Saunders, perhaps? [[spoiler: When the show begins, it's bad enough -- she's recently had severe facial injuries inflicted by Alpha, a deranged rogue Active. At the end of the first season's aired episodes, she finds out that she's not even 'real' -- she's actually Whiskey, an Active who Alpha hacked up because he liked Echo more. She was 'saved' by the Dollhouse (who wouldn't want to waste an asset), imprinted to replace the recently deceased house doctor. Another Active who was attacked by Alpha is granted extensive plastic surgery to repair similar facial damage, which Saunders/Whiskey isn't offered and isn't sure she wants since it's likely that her face being fixed would result in her being put back into the Active pool. She tries confronting her creator, Topher, which only serves to further break her down, resulting in her fleeing the Dollhouse entirely. If that wasn't enough, as of the future world of Epitaph One, she's clearly and definitively broken-she loses her mind, reverting to her base Active state on what appears to be a permanent basis. She is the only Active who never really escapes from the Dollhouse, ultimately committing suicide rather than returning to the world.]] |
| 122 | ** Topher! Topher! At first, he has few moral but is definitely the cutie. He then develops a set of morals and right and wrong only to have everything fall down around his ears! |
| 123 | *** How to crush a character in four easy steps: Step One: his first attempt to do the morally right thing results in someone [[spoiler: dying; he has to destroy the body]]. Step Two: [[spoiler: shoot his love interest in front of him, with no warning]]. Step Three: a device he created brings about [[spoiler: the apocalypse]]. Step Four: [[spoiler: every day he doesn't create a device that will destroy what little is left of society, an innocent victim is shot in front of him. In a style reminiscent of his love interest's death]]. All four (except ''maybe'' the second) have ''enormous'' amounts of guilt laced into them. |
| 124 | ** Bennett. Discovering that her [[HeterosexualLifePartners "best friend"]] Caroline was only her friend because she was infiltrating the corporation she worked for obviously hurt her, but she was [[LesYay so devoted to Caroline]] that she actually helped her infiltrate Rossum's facility. Then Caroline detonated some explosives -- explosives that left Caroline unharmed but dropped a giant hunk of masonry on Bennett's arm, crushing and paralyzing it permanently -- and then Caroline ran off, apparently abandoning her. As a result, Bennett is left bitter. |
| 125 | *** That's how the story is told from Bennett's point of view. The viewers get a very different version from Caroline. |
| 126 | ** This is a show that actually uses the word "broken". |
| 127 | * Poor Jonathan goes through a horrendous ordeal over the course of episode one of ''Series/Dracula2020''. [[spoiler:He is imprisoned in a vast, labyrinthine castle, all while Dracula is feeding on his life force to revitalize himself. He is attacked by the undead, forced to watch his own body decay, and is ultimately murdered by Dracula, in contrast with his [[Literature/{{Dracula}} book counterpart]]. Then, as an undead creature, his need for blood forces him to attack his own fiancée, and his attempt at suicide does not work, as a stake through the heart cannot be self-administered. Finally, in his attempt to end his own misery, he allows Dracula to enter the convent, wherein he slaughters the nuns inside]]. |
| 128 | [[/folder]] |
| 129 | |
| 130 | [[folder:E]] |
| 131 | * ''Series/EastEnders'': Any number of characters, although Aidan Brosnan (promising young footballer to homeless drug addict) and Zoe Slater (statuesque beauty to murdering drug-addled prostitute) spring to mind. And we won't even mention what they did to poor bloody Joe Wicks. |
| 132 | * ''Series/{{ER}}'': A number of characters probably qualify, particularly Carter and others who start work with a very naïve world view. Probably justified, given the grim/frustrating nature of emergency medical services and the hazards of hospital politics. |
| 133 | * ''Series/ExtraordinaryAttorneyWoo'': Young-woo was hurt so badly from all of the negative comments towards autism from an internet video and from the words of an evil rival attorney who looked down on neurodivergent people in general that, by the end of Episode 3, it was enough to make her resign from her position at Hanbada. Fortunately, she bounces back in Episode 4. |
| 134 | [[/folder]] |
| 135 | |
| 136 | [[folder:F]] |
| 137 | * ''Series/{{Farscape}}'': Poor John Crichton. Red-blooded American astronaut, brilliant scientist, pacifist and optimist when he leaves earth. By the end of the first season ''alone'' he's been: Flung across the galaxy and stranded far from home, forced to adapt to completely unfamiliar cultures and technology. Beaten up. Imprisoned. Threatened with dissection and pursued by the brother of a man he accidentally killed. As he later put it, has had "alien creatures in [his] face, up [his] nose, inside [his] brain, down [his] pants." Spent three months marooned on a primitive world thinking the rest of the crew deliberately abandoned him. Died once (he got better). Was tricked into thinking he's finally made it home only to discover it's all a trick to see how humans would react to actual alien visitation. Endures ''several'' {{Mind Screw}}s. Starts to fall for a girl who shares his interest in science and engineering only to be forced to leave her behind to protect her. Gets captured, tortured and brutally {{Mind Rape}}d by the Peacekeepers. Sees the girl he'd started to take an interest in gunned down helping rescue him. Embarks on a suicide mission to enable the rest of his friends to escape. And it only ''[[FromBadToWorse gets worse]]'' in Seasons 2 and 3. Crichton's grip on his sanity is questionable at best. |
| 138 | * ''Series/{{Firefly}}'': Obvious examples come from Creator/MutantEnemy: River came conveniently pre-broken, but we got to see the earlier cutie in a very few flashbacks. Or, if you watch the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKYFNsnO-tc R. Tam Sessions]], you get to [[SanitySlippage see the whole process,]] including a rather jarring look into what River was like ''before'' she got [[MindRape broken in the brainpan.]] |
| 139 | ** Jubal Early's threat to Kaylee in "Objects in Space". Poor, poor Kaylee... |
| 140 | ** The first thing the series did was break the cutie. Joss did it to Mal in the very first scene. |
| 141 | * ''Series/{{Flashpoint}}'': OK, arguably most of the characters get broken, and are various levels of cute, but Spike seems to fit the trope best. The goofiest, most happy-go-lucky of the team has had to deal with the deaths of his best friend Lew, his father, and his mentor, has been held hostage twice himself (including once with his kind of girlfriend), and has been hit with an incendiary device and a smoke bomb. Poor guy. |
| 142 | ** He's pretty resilient, though; only Lew's death subdued him past the end of an episode, and even then, he's back to his old self relatively soon. The one who comes the closest to a major breakdown is actually [[TheStoic Ed]]. |
| 143 | * ''Series/{{Frasier}}'': Niles Crane, in stark contrast to his (and Frasier's) frequent, minor, PlayedForLaughs BreakTheHaughty moments, get ''several'' of these. Ignoring his TraumaCongaLine of [[TheWoobie smaller bouts of torture]]: he seems to already be broken by his mother's death, Frasier's long absence, and a stifling, emotionally-abusive marriage at the series' beginning and gets ground into progressively smaller pieces by the latter during the first two seasons. Then his marriage falls apart and he manages to build himself up again, but Daphne, with whom he is smitten, is utterly oblivious to his feelings and unknowingly shatters his heart over and over. Devastated by this, he eventually gives up and then naively returns to his unstable, JerkAss wife after she "promises" that she'll treat him better this time, only for her to turn around and cheat on him with their marriage counselor weeks later. He eventually pulls himself up by the bootstraps, but then, after he rejects his wife's offer to reconcile again, she tears up their unsigned divorce settlement and proceeds to slowly torture and financially ruin him over several months. Then, when he finally gets rescued from Maris by a savvy divorce lawyer and is about to put his life back together, said lawyer immediately starts dating Daphne, and ''then'' broken once more, he flees into the arms of a manipulative carbon-copy of his ex-wife...etc., etc., etc...Thankfully though, this all turns out to be an EarnYourHappyEnding, as Daphne eventually falls in love with him. |
| 144 | * ''Series/{{Friends}}'': Phoebe, Chandler and Monica's backstories all qualify as this, albeit PlayedForLaughs. They're all implied to have started out as normal, happy kids. As adults they're a CloudCuckooLander, SadClown and ControlFreak as a result of what they've gone through. |
| 145 | ** Phoebe's dad ran off after she was born, her stepfather when to prison, her Mom killed herself, her EvilTwin sold her birth certificate and at 14 she ended up on the streets. |
| 146 | ** Chandler's parents fought constantly and ignored him, his dad slept with the house boy, his Mom announced their divorce at Thanksgiving dinner, his dad ran off to Vegas to become a drag queen, he was shipped off to boarding school and his Mom contacted him through humiliation national television. |
| 147 | ** Meanwhile Monica's parents blatantly favoured her brother purely for being first-born, her mother emotionally abused her, her Dad was obliviously hurtful at best, she was obese as a teenager and badly bullied as a result. |
| 148 | ** As it's a usually optimistic show, much of the series is about reversing their backstories and becoming happier in themselves. Phoebe by the beginning of the show is off the streets and eventually finds a nice, normal guy to settle down with. Chandler and Monica, although they have a [[LoveHurts tougher time]] in early seasons fall in love with each other, overcome their shared insecurities and start a family vastly different from the ones they grew up in. |
| 149 | [[/folder]] |
| 150 | |
| 151 | [[folder:G]] |
| 152 | * ''Series/GameOfThrones'': |
| 153 | ** After their family is separated, the Stark children have had it rough. They begin as a good, innocent and loving family who grew up with a sheltered upbringing and had a good life -- but then, the family is separated and scattered. Their home is destroyed and eventually taken over by people who betrayed them, half their family is murdered, and the members who ''haven't'' been horrifically killed, have been traumatized beyond belief, with some turning darker and/or more jaded. The fact that most of the Starks who remain are still in their teens, with the oldest being barely in his twenties, makes this all so much worse. |
| 154 | *** Sansa starts out blindly loyal to her fiance, but having her daddy's head chopped off cures her of that. Then her fiancé abuses her, she's used as a hostage, nearly gang-raped and has to continue smiling and pretending everything is fine to survive. |
| 155 | *** Arya's PluckyGirl nature initially obscures the effects of the massive amount of grief, trauma, and anger she undergoes just like Sansa but has to take all in her stride to survive, but as time goes on she grows much colder and more ruthless. |
| 156 | *** Rickon begins the series as the baby of the family happily laughing with his brothers when Bran fails at archery, but becomes a confused, depressed, bored and sullen child who wanders the crypts with his enormous direwolf and insists no one will come back. |
| 157 | ** Ros in Season 2. First she sees a baby murdered and receives AnOfferYouCantRefuse to stop sobbing about it, then she's forced to torture another girl into an AmbiguousSituation, then she's beaten and held hostage to Tyrion's good behaviour. By the end, she's willing to become an informer for Varys. [[spoiler: Then Littlefinger finds out and sells her to Joffrey...]] |
| 158 | ** Poor Tommen in "Sons of the Harpy" is torn between the controlling women in his life and his attempts to restore harmony are rewarded with an enraged wife and being called a bastard and an abomination. |
| 159 | ** Samwell Tarly is horribly treated by his father, who sends him off to the Wall so his younger brother can inherit as he thinks Sam is "unfit" to carry on the family name. Then he's bullied by the Night's Watch until [[BigGood Jon]] steps in and takes him under his wing. |
| 160 | ** Myrcella is sent away from her whole family to Dorne for her own protection. A SubvertedTrope, as Oberyn tells Cersei that she's enjoying life in Dorne and is very happy, and Season 5 proves this. |
| 161 | * Riley of ''Series/GirlMeetsWorld'' gets hit with this ''hard'' in the episode "Girl Meets Rileytown" when she's bullied extensively for weeks and tries to handle it on her own, only to end up crumbling under the pressure. First she gets angry and snaps at Maya for a little light teasing, then when Maya tries to talk to her about it she breaks down in ''tears''. Luckily, she's on her way to being mended by the end of the episode. |
| 162 | * ''Series/{{Glee}}'': |
| 163 | ** Sam seems to be headed this way, due to [[spoiler: Quinn cheating on him with Finn]], Santana's consistent insults about his mouth and dorkyness, and just general pressure. [[spoiler: Aaaand... now he's homeless.]] |
| 164 | ** Rory |
| 165 | ** Kurt qualifies too, I think, after being presented as vulnerable and long-suffering and heavily bullied all through Season 1, when in Season 2 [[spoiler:the bullying goes to a whole new level and he spends the greater part of the season suffering fear and intimidation and violence at the hands of a closeted bully]]. |
| 166 | ** Quinn qualifies as of the first episode of the second half of Season 3. To recap, she gets pregnant as a sophomore and is kicked off the cheerleading squad that she loves (and was the captain of). Even after she gives birth, she's not allowed to return. She's kicked out of her house until her mother finally comes to her senses and leaves Quinn's father. Now, in Season 3, while driving to her friend's wedding, she gets hit by a truck and is in a wheelchair for some time (possibly a long time; it's unclear how much the therapy is helping). |
| 167 | * ''Series/GoodbyeMyPrincess'': Xiao Feng suffers this when she realises her husband betrayed and beheaded her grandfather. Things just get worse for her later. |
| 168 | * ''Series/{{Gotham}}'': Throughout the first season, Edward Nigma evolved from an innocent geek to a murderer. |
| 169 | [[/folder]] |
| 170 | |
| 171 | [[folder:H]] |
| 172 | * ''Series/TheHandmaidsTale'': On a ''systematic'' level. This happens to every single Handmaid, to varying extents. Life in Gilead could take the happiest, most well-adjusted woman alive and turn her into a half-crazed mess only focused on surviving. [[spoiler:And in the case of Janine and Emily, sometimes not even that.]] |
| 173 | * ''Series/{{Happy}}'': |
| 174 | ** The adorable but naive Happy witnesses one horror after another during his dark journey through New York City with Nick. |
| 175 | ** [[spoiler:Very Bad Santa used to have a cute, living sock puppet who served as his own NotSoImaginaryFriend as a child. Said friend abandoned him after witnessing the disturbed, traumatized child commit one atrocity too many, and is still visibly shaken by what he's seen decades later]]. |
| 176 | * Happens and is reversed in the span of one episode of ''Series/HappyEndings''-Penny, the optimistic GenkiGirl, is trying to get her even more upbeat mom to face the truth about her not-great career and yet another divorce. Eventually, her mom takes it all way too hard, and then goes around giving [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech demoralizing speeches]] to the gang, before they all work together in get herself back to normal. |
| 177 | * ''Series/{{Heroes}}'': |
| 178 | ** It has not yet broken Hiro Nakamura, but it sure is working on it. It looked like he might finally break, but his reversion to his personality when he was 10-years-old has saved him. Hiro Nakamura is Unbreakable. |
| 179 | ** They're definitely hammering on Claire, too. Season 3 has delivered at least one blow per episode so far. [[spoiler:1) Attacked by Sylar. 2) Lost ability to feel pain. 3) Her "lesson" with Meredith. 4) Being forced into a game of Russian roulette with her birth and adoptive mothers.]] |
| 180 | ** It has the interesting distinction of having shown both Claire and Peter as broken cuties in some of its flash-forward episodes, though because of the nature of time travel in the show, it's impossible to say if those fates are actually going to happen or not. |
| 181 | ** Elle was the one character that was successfully broken. |
| 182 | * In ''Heroes''[='=] sequel series, ''Series/HeroesReborn'', Molly Walker and Phoebe Frady became two more casualties in the show's universe. |
| 183 | ** Molly witnessed her parents' murder, was kidnapped by Sylar, and spent most of her adolescence on the run and in hiding from the Company's various iterations until she was captured by Renautas Corporation and forcibly plugged into their EPIC system, culminating in her suicide to prevent Erica Kravid from discovering important information. |
| 184 | ** Phoebe was initially excited to discover she had the ability to control shadows, which brought her on Renautas' radar. She was subsequently framed alongside Mohinder Suresh for bombing a peace event, when in actually she had already been kidnapped by the corporation and tortured into submission, and set off the solar eclipse that would signal the real bomber to set off his bomb. She would then be subjected to more experimentation and torture until she was utterly broken and remolded into a pale shell only taught to kill. Her brother Quentin was ultimately forced to kill her when he realized that she was longer his sister and was going to kill the ones who were standing in the way of Kravid's plans. |
| 185 | * ''Series/TheHexer'': The Old Witcher escorting young Geralt bluntly explains him what will be his Fate - that he will be turned into witcher and fighting monsters until one of them will finally kill him. This is enough to stop young Geralt from another escape attempt. |
| 186 | * ''Series/HomicideLifeOnTheStreet'': |
| 187 | ** Detective Tim Bayliss is a naive, shy rookie who's eager to please and [[JumpedAtTheCall practically ecstatic to be a part of Homicide.]] He's broken almost immediately when his first case is the high profile rape and murder of a young girl, which dredges up his memories of his own abusive childhood, and the case continues to haunt him throughout the series since he's unable to solve it. He proceeds to get even ''more'' broken from there, which all culminates in him snapping and [[spoiler:executing a serial killer who had got off on a technicality]] in the series finale. |
| 188 | ** Officer Chris Thormann is a kindhearted, polite patrolman who hero-worships his mentor Steve Crosetti, has a loving wife, and is well-liked by the entire squad. Monday through the first season, he's shot in the head and blinded as a result. The event and the grueling recovery emotionally destroys him and he becomes suicidal as a result. |
| 189 | * ''Series/HoratioHornblower'' series: |
| 190 | ** Midshipmen Archie Kennedy, a [[PrettyBoy pretty teenage boy]] with InnocentBlueEyes who looks very upbeat and cheerful, and who [[MotorMouth talks Horatio ears off]] in their introductory scenes. In his case, the breaking took place mostly off-screen, at the hands of sadistic bully Jack Simpson. When this nasty character appears, Archie starts having fits and he looks absolutely terrified of him. Then he gets imprisoned for an indeterminate amount of time, including being tortured for a month in an oubliette. Archie seems to have recovered from most of his torments by the second series. |
| 191 | ** Simpson tries to break Horatio in "The Even Chance". However, Horatio doesn't go down that easily and tries to fight him. Much suffering ensues, including horrible beatings, interrogation, psychological torture and getting him punished by their superiors. Horatio even contemplates suicide, but when Simpson cheats in cards and accuses ''Horatio'' of cheating, Horatio takes an even chance and challenges him to a duel, thinking that a death of either of them would free him. |
| 192 | ** PluckyMiddie Wellard takes the baton of suffering in the second instalment ("Mutiny" and "Retribution"). He's as cute as a button with his dark hair, dark eyes and eyelashes but pale skin, laughing and joking with his lieutenants. Unfortunately, their crazy captain takes into his head that he conspires against him and orders him beaten up repeatedly. Later when the captain [[AmbiguousSituation either had an accident and fell, or was pushed]], he's troubled. Especially when Gunner Hobbs suggests it was him who pushed the captain, and because he was drugged with Dr Clive's laudanum, his memory is shaken. He's not sure about his innocence or innocence of his heroes. |
| 193 | * ''Series/{{House}}'': House spends the majority of Season 7 trying to do this to med student Martha Masters, but fails. What does finally break her? Discovering the Episode 17 PatientOfTheWeek, whose life she just personally saved, is [[spoiler: a cannibalistic serial killer wanted for a string of thirteen murders, and she just inadvertently enabled him to escape the FBI]]. Cue HeroicBSOD. |
| 194 | [[/folder]] |
| 195 | |
| 196 | [[folder:K]] |
| 197 | * ''Franchise/KamenRider'': |
| 198 | ** ''Series/KamenRiderRyuki'': Shinji Kido is [[AllLovingHero All loving]] IdiotHero in ThereCanBeOnlyOne plot. Pretty much everyone else participating in Rider War is a jerk, an ass or some combination thereof. The events start wearing him out through the time to the point where he abandons his original goal for a while. He recovers and resumes fighting mirror monsters to protect people. |
| 199 | ** ''Series/KamenRiderOOO'': Eiji Hino was a well-meaning kid, albeit spoiled. He wanted to help a poor village by giving the locals money, but only caused a civil war to break out. Ultimately, a girl he befriended died in front of him. The present time Eiji is a hollow shell of a person with an IdiotHero persona draped over. |
| 200 | ** ''Series/KamenRiderGaim'' has quite a couple instances. |
| 201 | *** It was mostly rounds of breaking and recovering for Kouta Kazuraba, initially a WideEyedIdealist teen. He even had several characters working on breaking him or at least waiting around to see his idealism fade. |
| 202 | *** Mitsuzane Kureshima has it similar, just without the recovering part. He falls over DespairEventHorizon early into the story and just keeps on going. His ImageSong sums it up nicely just by being called ''Point Of No Return''. |
| 203 | ** ''Series/KamenRiderExAid'': Emu Hojo is well meaning doctor who wants everyone to be happy. The CrapsackWorld he lives in and his jerkish fellow riders usually ruin his efforts. The breaking never fully works, but his later attitude is rightfully described as ''[[AllLovingHero Do no]] harm. [[GoodIsNotDumb Take no]] crap.'' |
| 204 | ** ''Series/KamenRiderBuild'': Misora Isurugi has found and lost her family, had to live through a civil war, watch people die and felt responsible for everything. All too much for the kind, caring girl she is. |
| 205 | ** ''Series/KamenRiderZiO'': Sougo Tokiwa has an ego and an attitude, but is a sweet kid all around. When he finds out he is going to become a cruel overlord in the future, he takes it in stride, because he believes it's not going to happen. All his dreams of becoming a good king are shattered when he sees the true extent of what [[FutureMeScaresMe his future self]] [[TheCaligula has done]]. |
| 206 | * ''Series/{{Kyle XY}}'' Achieved this in record breaking time. The main heroine is literally born in an underground fire, afterwards a drunken redneck tries to rape her, which forces her to kill him and soon enough she is attacked yet again and brainwashed by the big bad. All this in the first two hours of her life. Amazingly enough this doesn't break her. Therefore things get much worse for her as the time progresses including abusive fathers, malfunctioning brain and body, attempted suicides, neglectful friends, evil conspiracies, guilt ridden flashbacks and so on. The writers really went all the way and then some in breaking her. |
| 207 | [[/folder]] |
| 208 | |
| 209 | [[folder:L]] |
| 210 | * ''Series/TheLeagueOfGentlemen'' tended to do this to quite a few minor and major characters but did it much more to poor Mr. Chinnery the village vet. He is perhaps the kindest, most well-meaning character in the series, but, due to badly timed events, really bad luck and a unmentioned curse which plagues him so that he kills pretty much every animal he goes near. This includes an exploding tortoise, electrocuted fish and a dog which, due a flatulence problem, burns alive and explodes in his owners fireplace. These events slowly break Mr. Chinnery who is obviously just a well-meaning individual. |
| 211 | * ''Series/TheLibrarians2007'': Young Frances who did not deserve [[TraumaCongaLine what happened to her.]] She gradually turned into [[{{Jerkass}} someone who did.]] |
| 212 | * ''Series/LincolnHeights'': Every single child living in Lincoln Heights without ONE single exception. Most of the adults were broken when they were young as well. |
| 213 | * ''Series/LittleHouseOnThePrairie'': The episode "Sylvia", a special two-part episode, starred Olivia Barash as the title character, a mature-for-her-age 14-year-old girl who is relentlessly sexually harassed at school by the boys, viciously raped by an masked man, impregnated, emotionally abused by her distant father (he later calls her –- his own flesh and blood –- a whore!) ... and then scandalized by Mrs. Olesen when she claims that Albert Ingalls is her baby's father. In fact, Albert (and Laura and the rest of the Ingalls family, and Doc Baker by extension) are seemingly the only ones on Sylvia's side, but it's no match for the hellacious life she endures. In the end, the trope switches to KillTheCutie when, after another confrontation with the same rapist who assaulted her before (it was the town's blacksmith, with whom Albert was employed) she tries to escape but falls to her death from a rickety ladder. |
| 214 | * ''Series/{{LOST}}'': Throughout the first four seasons, Hurley was the series' comic relief and all-around nice guy, even though he believes he is cursed and still struggles with his food addiction on the island. Once he [[spoiler: gets off the island]], however, he starts to become haunted by the ghosts of people from the island, and by the end of Season 4, he's far from the happy-go-lucky Hurley of earlier seasons. He gets better [[spoiler: once he returns to the island]], however. |
| 215 | ** Now we have Juliet, reduced to a sobbing severely wounded wreck by the end of Season 5. |
| 216 | *** [[StoicWoobie Who was already severely broken before those events]]. |
| 217 | ** Even [[spoiler:Ben]], of all people, was a sweet, albeit sad, little kid who seemed like he might turn out alright despite being abused by his alcoholic father... [[spoiler:until he was shot by a time-traveling enemy when he was only 14, and then "cured" by a mysterious entity that "took his innocence".]] |
| 218 | ** Season 6 [[spoiler:Claire]], who's become a bit insane after being alone in the jungle for three years. Granted, it all happens off screen, but still. |
| 219 | *** And poor Richard, who's been steadily beat down for [[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld over a hundred years]]. |
| 220 | ** Really [[DysfunctionJunction every single character was already broken at the beginning]], and it doesn't get any better. |
| 221 | [[/folder]] |
| 222 | |
| 223 | [[folder:M]] |
| 224 | * ''Series/MadMen'': |
| 225 | ** Happens in a completely mundane, underplayed, and painful way to Peggy Olsen. In the pilot, she's tiny, wide-eyed, hopeful, and naive; since then, she's had a disastrous affair with a {{Jerkass}} coworker (which he initiated just days before his wedding), been mocked and sexually harassed on an hourly basis, and [[spoiler: gotten pregnant, denied it ''until she went into labor'', been declared an unfit mother, and been forced to hand the kid over. Then her boss came and told her to just go on pretending it'd never happened. Yeah, that'll work.]] Granted, she's made some great strides on the career front, and become miles more confident than she was in the pilot, but... to sum it up in one heartbreaking word? Playgrounds. |
| 226 | *** [[DaddysGirl Her dad]] [[DarkAndTroubledPast died right in front of her]], her mother and sister will never think she's good enough, and then there's the pesky priest who won't stop bugging her to confess her sins and feel guilty like a proper [[SexIsEvil Catholic]]. |
| 227 | ** [[RapeAsDrama What happened to Joan]] in Don's office with her fiance is half this trope, half BreakTheHaughty. |
| 228 | ** Sally Draper gets a lot of this in Season 3, most notably when [[spoiler:Grandpa Gene, the only adult who really gives her the time of day, dies. Neither Don nor Betty initially take Sally's reaction into consideration and she's left to quietly grieve by herself, followed by an angry outburst at them when she overhears them laughing and thinks they're not taking his death seriously. They, in turn, send her back out to the living room, where she quietly watches news footage of a Tibetan monk ''setting himself on fire.'']] It probably doesn't come as a shock to most viewers that in the following episode she displays some antisocial tendencies at school. It only gets worse when [[spoiler:Betty decides to name her new son, born soon after Grandpa Gene dying, Eugene, which only serves to further traumatize Sally.]] |
| 229 | * ''Mara Clara'': Happens to the two protagonists, as well as a few other characters, in the 2011 remake of the Filipino soap opera. |
| 230 | ** Clara's (the second half of the titular characters) breaking point comes in the middle of the series, after it was revealed that she and Mara (the first half of the titular characters) were in fact switched at birth and that she was born of a poor family, this would mark her transition into a more antiheroine type character (Clara in the original series is more of a villain). Clara didn't actually start as a ''cutie'' but more of an AlphaBitch. She only becomes one when she became friends with Mara. |
| 231 | ** Mara's breaking point, on the other hand, comes after being kidnapped and nearly blown to bits, courtesy of her foster father (and Clara's real dad) Gary. In a later episode, Clara actually takes note of Mara's change of attitude by remarking "It seems that you have become cynical, Mara", to which the latter retorts, "I've already learned my lesson, Clara." |
| 232 | ** Interestingly, series BigBad Gary (Mara's adoptive, and Clara's real, father) is also revealed (through a flashback to his early teens) to have gone through this when he accidentally killed his own father after seeing him beat up his mother. |
| 233 | * ''{{Series/Merlin|2008}}'': |
| 234 | ** Guinevere finally gets proposed to by Arthur. Then [[spoiler: Morgana raises Lancelot, her old love, from the dead. Gwen manages to resist whatever feelings she still has for him, so Morgana enchants a bracelet to force her old feelings back to the surface. Then Lancelot ensures they are caught kissing by Arthur, who attempts to kill him. Gwen breaks up the fight, and Arthur believes she has betrayed him. He banishes her from Camelot on pain of death.]] She is utterly convinced all of this is her fault, and even though [[spoiler: Arthur has forgiven her]], she still hasn't forgiven herself. |
| 235 | ** Morgana as well, throughout all of Series 2. |
| 236 | ** They try pretty hard on Merlin too, but he's an IronWoobie, so he refuses to break. Although with how much they put him through to prove that he's not going to break, that might be even worse. |
| 237 | *** As of Series 5, he's acquired extremely thick JadeColoredGlasses, lost his ChronicHeroSyndrome, and despite the fact that [[StepfordSmiler he's been putting it on for a while now]], Arthur notices that he hasn't smiled in days. When Gaius asks what happened to the boy who stumbled into his chambers all those years ago, this is his response: |
| 238 | ---->'''Merlin:''' [[SillyRabbitIdealismIsForKids He grew up]]. |
| 239 | ** Aithusa too. Remember that RidiculouslyCuteCritter from series 4 who cheerfully healed an injured Morgana? Three years later, someone has locked her in a lightless cell for two years, and she's now emaciated, unable to speak, can't recognize Merlin when he first meets her, and is malformed and flightless. |
| 240 | * ''Series/MonarchLegacyOfMonsters'': Young [[Characters/MonsterVerseSkullIslandExpedition Bill Randa]] is portrayed throughout the 1950s flashbacks as a wide-eyed, idealistic, mellow, boyishly handsome and kind-natured person. Everything that his [[ManipulativeBastard older self]] seen in ''Film/KongSkullIsland'' during the 1970s wasn't, so we know something is going to happen to change young Bill for the worse. [[spoiler:At the end of the series, we discover that Bill thinking his wife had died partly because of him in the Kazakhstan power plant, him thinking that Lee had also died a few years later (and dying in ''Kong: Skull Island'' before he could discover otherwise), and him watching the Monarch organization that the three of them built together drove Bill to bitterness and all-consuming obsession with keeping Monarch alive, leading to his heinous actions, general cynicism and ultimately tragic death in ''Kong: Skull Island'']]. |
| 241 | * ''Series/MoonLovers'': Goryeo is a [[CrapsackWorld pretty horrible place]], especially for anyone who isn't ambitious for power. Ha-jin learns this the hard way as she watches Wang So become increasingly paranoid and violent. By the end of the series she's forced to marry Wang Jeong, never gets to tell Wang So about his daughter, and dies thinking Wang So hates her so much he won't even visit her. |
| 242 | * ''Series/MrLucky'': Andamo is the series' PluckyComicRelief {{Sidekick}} whose typical response to traumatic situations is to make jokes. However, in one episode Mr. Lucky's semi-steady girlfriend, Maggie, witnesses a murder and is forced into hiding for her own protection. When Andamo is tricked into revealing her location and she disappears, he suffers a mild HeroicBSOD. |
| 243 | [[/folder]] |
| 244 | |
| 245 | [[folder:N]] |
| 246 | * ''Series/NovolandEagleFlag'': All three protagonists go through hell. |
| 247 | ** Asule sees his adoptive family murdered in front of him, is forced to marry Yu Ran, and [[spoiler: is betrayed and murdered by a man he thought was his friend]]. Then he's resurrected... [[CameBackWrong badly]]. |
| 248 | ** Ji Ye is abused by his family, sent off to a HellholePrison, believes his true love and best friend have betrayed him, and is repeatedly tortured. |
| 249 | ** Yu Ran is forced to marry Asule, which means she can't marry her true love Ji Ye. Then Asule is [[spoiler: killed]] and resurrected. Then Yu Ran and her friends are nearly killed when the city's destroyed. She ''finally'' manages to get some peace after this... and then she's drugged and given to bandits to be raped. ''Then'' she's rescued, but her rescuer has an agenda and takes her away from her friends. |
| 250 | [[/folder]] |
| 251 | |
| 252 | [[folder:O]] |
| 253 | * ''Series/{{The Office|US}}'': Erin Hannon has a complete ''mental breakdown'' in Secretary's Day after being told that Andy has dated Angela. [[{{Yandere}} She]] '''really''' [[BewareTheNiceOnes didn't]] [[ComedicSociopathy take it]] [[PsychoExGirlfriend well]]. |
| 254 | * ''Series/OnceUponATime'': |
| 255 | ** Belle. Though the Queen's claim that she [[DrivenToSuicide killed herself]] is [[BlatantLies a complete lie]], it's obvious in the Season 1 finale and in the Season 2 premiere that she not quite the same after being imprisoned by Regina, first in the Enchanted Forest and again during the whole twenty-eight-year span of the Dark Curse. |
| 256 | *** The commentary on the S1 finale confirms that Belle's unnamed Storybrooke counterpart was deliberately played as broken by Emilie de Ravin. The way the real Belle reacts to Gold's (Rumplestiltskin's) questions about her imprisonment suggests that she retained that break. (Probably due to the fact that she has most likely realized that the only reason she's not dead is because the Queen was keeping her alive until she no longer needed a secret trump card against Gold.) |
| 257 | *** [[FromBadToWorse It got worse]] for Belle in Season 2: In 2.9, [[spoiler: we learn that Regina kept her prisoner for three or four years ''before'' the curse. Hook at one point arrived and claimed he was going to rescue her, but when she wouldn't betray Rumpelstiltskin to him, he backhanded her into unconsciousness and was going to gut her before Regina stopped him.]] In 2.11 [[spoiler: Hook shoots Belle, causing her to fall over the town line and lose all memory of her fairytale self and be reduced to a terrified girl who has no memories of ''anything'' other than twenty-eight years trapped in a cold cell in the asylum.]] |
| 258 | *** Just when you think [[TemptingFate it couldn't get]] any worse, Season 3 has Belle [[spoiler: temporarily losing Gold in the middle of Season 3, and she and his son Neal attempt to bring him back, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero only to find out that it meant Neal had to die for it to happen]]. In order to save him, Gold temporarily shared his body with him, but then he was taken by Zelena (The current BigBad) and forced to work for her. Eventually, Neal ended up dying]], but thankfully, Gold didn't blame Belle for it and they got married... |
| 259 | *** ...Then in Season 4, Belle finds out that Gold [[spoiler: has been using a hat that belonged to a Sorcerer to free him from the restraints of the dagger, which involves trapping other magic users, and taking the heart of someone who knew him before he was the Dark One, which would kill them.]] Belle is disappointed that Gold [[spoiler: does not seem to want to become a better person and has been keeping too many secrets from her, and she banishes him from the town]]. At the end of Season 4, [[spoiler: he returns, only to fall into a coma after the others try to save him from dying from a blackened heart]]. |
| 260 | *** Belle just can't catch a break, can she? In Season 5, [[spoiler: when Gold is about to wake up, Belle goes to see him...but he's gone, having been kidnapped by Emma]]. Much later in the season, she finds out that [[spoiler: he became the Dark One once again... at the same time as finding out that she's pregnant with their child. Even worse, it turns out that years ago, Gold had made a deal to save his son from an illness -- to give away his second child]]. She is horrified at this news. |
| 261 | *** In Season 6, she's had enough of Gold being unable to fulfill his promises to her, and tries to stay away from him. She even [[spoiler: gives up her newborn son to try to protect him from becoming like his father, by his own warnings through her dreams]]. But then [[spoiler: he gets taken by the Black Fairy, and comes back to Storybrooke as an adult who wants to kill the Savior, Emma]]. Belle has to [[EnemyMine work with]] Gold again to [[spoiler: try to make him good, as he is not yet completely evil]]. |
| 262 | ** Mary Margaret (Snow White's Storybrooke counterpart) is broken when Regina frames her for the murder of David (Prince Charming's counterpart)'s wife. [[spoiler: (The only reason Mary wasn't completely broken by a conviction was because Gold used his [[ExactWords habit]] -- Kathryn was found completely alive, and all of the evidence pointed towards a frameup of Mary by Regina.)]] |
| 263 | ** [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds Regina]] herself goes through this in the Fairytale Land flashbacks. Firstly, being raised by her emotionally abusive mother, then losing her true love at the hands of said mother, being manipulated by Rumpelstiltskin into believing that there's no way of getting him back, being trapped in a loveless marriage for many years and slowly succumbing to the dark addictive effects of magic. |
| 264 | ** Rumplestiltskin, as well, especially as of 'Manhattan.' Raised in the shadow of his own father's cowardice, he's eager to head off to the Ogre Wars to prove he is [[IAmNotMyFather not his father]]. Then it all goes downhill. He's warned that [[SelfFulfillingProphecy his actions will]] [[ExactWords leave his son fatherless]], cripples himself to avoid battle, and is branded a coward. His wife runs off with some pirates, leaving him and Bae. By the time we see him in 'Desperate Souls,' he's utterly broken: poor, lame, and friendless, all he has left is his son, and even that is about to be taken away from him. And [[StartOfDarkness we know]] [[FaceHeelTurn the rest...]] |
| 265 | * ''Series/OnceUponATimeInWonderland'': Surprisingly, [[spoiler:The Red Queen, who is initially promoted as the big bad for the series, not only quickly becomes the lesser evil (as in pretty much by the end of the first episode), but by the second half of the first season transforms into TheWoobie and ultimately performs a full HeelFaceTurn. Just in time for "Dirty Little Secrets" to ramp things up from Break the Cutie to "Utterly Destroy the Cutie".]] |
| 266 | * ''Series/OneLifeToLive'': Every time they want to bring Bo and Nora together, something bad happens to Matthew. Lucky for him, this ''is'' a SoapOpera, and they're generous with the [[SoapOperaDisease miracle cures]]... |
| 267 | * The Japanese TV series ''Series/{{Oshin}}'' ''thrives'' on trying to break its protagonist, a once innocent CountryMouse named Shin "Oshin" Tanekura, and comes ''incredibly'' close to succeeding several times. [[SilkHidingSteel She pulls through every time]]. |
| 268 | * ''Series/{{Oz}}'': Tobias Beecher. '''Shinji Ikari''' can't even compete with all the shit that he goes through. |
| 269 | ** Miguel Alvarez, anyone? [[spoiler: "I’m so tired. I’m tired of trying. I’m tired of the walls. The lies. The fear. The death. I’m so tired."]] |
| 270 | ** Actually, practically anyone on ''Series/{{Oz}}'' is fair game for this trope. |
| 271 | [[/folder]] |
| 272 | |
| 273 | [[folder:P]] |
| 274 | * ''Series/{{Parenthood}}'': Has several. |
| 275 | ** Haddie is normal, well-behaved, and comparatively innocent when the series began. She experienced severe culture shock once her world-wise cousins re-entered her life (in the pilot, Amber exposes her sheltered relative to cigarettes and illegal drugs almost as soon as they met). Within short order, [[spoiler: Amber sleeps with her boyfriend, causing them to break up; younger brother Max is revealed to have Asperger's syndrome,]] forcing her to adopt more adult responsibilities at home; [[spoiler: she dates an alcoholic from the slums; learns her mother has breast cancer -- and is trapped in an airport for days trying to get home during a particularly rough spell.]] |
| 276 | ** Kristina was a fairly run-of-the-mill soccer mom at the beginning of the series, but is forced to come to terms with her unwelcome limitations [[spoiler: when diagnosed with breast cancer]]. Plus, dealing with a [[spoiler: new baby]] "and" a preteen son [[spoiler: with Asperger's]] while simultaneously undergoing [[spoiler: treatment for her cancer]] is never easy. |
| 277 | ** Ryan is [[spoiler: a veteran of the war in Afghanistan suffering from pretty severe PTSD and carrying an enormous amount of guilt.]] As if that weren't enough, [[spoiler: one of his buddies from his old unit commits suicide.]] |
| 278 | * ''Series/PartyOfFive'': Sarah (played by Jennifer Love Hewitt) started as a nice, cheerful girl and within 1-2 seasons was as morbid and whiny and angst-ridden as everyone else in the show... |
| 279 | * ''Series/PowerRangersRPM'': Dr. K comes pre-broken, having been kidnapped as a young child by the government and kept in a research facility doing military work for them under the pretense of a "sunlight allergy". When they break her, [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds she accidentally causes the apocalypse in trying to escape]]. |
| 280 | * ''Series/PrincessAgents'': Yan Xun and Yuan Chun. Yan Xun loses his entire family; Yuan Chun knows about the plot against them beforehand, but is caught and locked in the palace before she can warn him. Both of them end up well and truly broken after that. And [[RapeAsDrama even worse]] is in store for poor Yuan Chun. |
| 281 | * Series/PunkyBrewster went through this a time or two, notably when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded and when she had appendicitis. Her friend Cherie had a big instance when she was persuaded to visit her parents' graves. |
| 282 | * ''Series/{{Psych}}'': Serial killers Mr. Yang and Mr. Yin attempt to break Shawn. In the Season 3 finale Yang kidnaps a waitress, and sends Shawn a series of taunting clues warning that is Shawn does not solve them the girl will be killed. Yang then abducts Shawn's mother and straps her with explosives. Shawn realizes that Yang was watching him the entire time and was even in his office, which scares him. In the Season 4 finale, Yang's partner Mr. Yin emerges and sets his sights on Shawn as well. Yin kills two people before kidnapping Shawn's longtime crush Detective Juliet O'Hara and his childhood sweetheart Abigail. Yin arranges for both girls to be killed, and calls Shawn with the information that he has time to save only one girl and that he must choose who means more to him. Shawn chooses to save Abigail; Juliet is saved by Detective Lassiter. When Shawn arrives to rescue Abigail, he finds himself face to face with Yin -- he must let Yin go in order to get to Abigail in time. Losing Yin clearly shakes Shawn, as does his guilt at nearly sacrificing Juliet. It's hard to say if this will have any lasting effect, given the nature of the show, but since Yin is still at large Shawn will likely face him again in the future. |
| 283 | ** Shawn is also shot, kidnapped, and held in a trunk in the episode "Shawn Takes a Shot in the Dark". |
| 284 | [[/folder]] |
| 285 | |
| 286 | [[folder:Q]] |
| 287 | * ''Series/QueerAsFolkUS'': Played with in a Season 2 episode, when they have some sort of annual "fun for the whole family" day at Michael's job, and the newest employee have to stand all day, dressed up as a clown, handing out balloons to the children. |
| 288 | -->'''Michael:''' So who's the victim this year?\ |
| 289 | '''Tracy:''' Sally, the new cashier.\ |
| 290 | '''Michael:''' She's sweet. At least she was until today. Today we drain her of her soul. |
| 291 | [[/folder]] |
| 292 | |
| 293 | [[folder:R]] |
| 294 | * ''Series/{{Revenge}}'': The flashbacks of young Amanda. As a young girl, Amanda is carefree, loving, happy and adoring of her father. However -- her dad is then framed for terrorism by his wealthy neighbors, the Graysons, Amanda is institutionalized (under orders of the Graysons), psychologically abused into believing her father was guilty, physically abused by her malicious foster mother, sent to juvie for a fire set by her foster brother, released from juvie only to learn of her father's death 6 weeks prior, and finally learns of her father's innocence by witnessing the murder of his best friend. Who wouldn't be hellbent on revenge after that? |
| 295 | ** Jack as well. When Emily first arrives in the Hamptons at the beginning of the series, Jack is a cheerful, optimistic, principled and blissfully unaware of the dangers around him. But after the deaths of his [[spoiler: father, dog, wife and brother]] ''within the space of roughly a year'', he morphs into a vengeful and brooding man with a major vendetta. |
| 296 | * ''Series/{{Revolution}}'': |
| 297 | ** Charlie, big-time. By the end of "Soul Train", she could beat Miles in an angsty-brooding-stare-off. |
| 298 | ** The same episode reveals [[spoiler: Neville's]] origins as a kindly, mild-mannered family man who would go the extra mile for one of his clients. Then the blackout happens... |
| 299 | %%** Rachel also, to an extent. |
| 300 | [[/folder]] |
| 301 | |
| 302 | [[folder:S]] |
| 303 | * ''{{Series/Salem}}'': Rose, one of the witch leaders, claims to have orchestrated Mary's path to becoming a witch with this trope in mind. |
| 304 | * ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'': [[DrJerk Dr.]] [[JerkAss Kelso]] does this with Elliot. [[DrJerk Dr.]] [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold Cox]] punches him out of it. |
| 305 | ** Even before that, the script writers decided to pile the abuse on Elliot, [[DeusAngstMachina culminating with her being sued by a]] JerkAss [[DeusAngstMachina patient, causing her to get kicked out of her house and live in her moving van,]] ''[[DeusAngstMachina which then gets stolen with all of her stuff.]]'' And none of her friends seem to care. |
| 306 | ** In Season 1's "My Own Personal Jesus", this happens to Turk when he's on-call during Christmas Eve, and is inundated with a string of horrors from the emergency room that leave him utterly broken and hopeless by morning. [[GallowsHumor His breaking is even set to a cheerful Christmas melody!]] |
| 307 | --->On the first day of Christmas\ |
| 308 | My true love gave to me\ |
| 309 | A drunk who drove into a tree\ |
| 310 | On the second day of Christmas\ |
| 311 | My true love gave to me\ |
| 312 | Two shattered skulls\ |
| 313 | And a drunk who drove into a tree...\ |
| 314 | \ |
| 315 | Twelve beaten children\ |
| 316 | Eleven drive-by shootings\ |
| 317 | Ten frozen homeless\ |
| 318 | Nine amputations\ |
| 319 | Eight burn victims\ |
| 320 | Seven strangled shoppers\ |
| 321 | Six random knifings\ |
| 322 | Five suicides\ |
| 323 | Four beaten wives\ |
| 324 | Three O.D.'s\ |
| 325 | Two shattered skulls\ |
| 326 | And a drunk who drove into a tree. |
| 327 | * ''Series/TheSecretCircle'': In the past few episodes, Diana found out the man who raised her wasn't her father, her mother cheated on him, and, worst of all, he murdered Cassie's mother. Cassie has suffered just as much, though, what with being manipulated into making Adam forget his love for her and then losing her grandmother, her only blood family aside from her half-sister and their father. |
| 328 | * ''Series/ShokojoSeira'': [[TheWoobie Seira]]. This is a Japanese drama based on ''Literature/ALittlePrincess''. She had always been [[NiceToTheWaiter kind]] to everyone around her, whether they are poor or rich. But when her father [[ParentalAbandonment dies]], nearly everyone at the school set the wolves on her. From making her into a servant and taking every opportunity to announce her displeasure of Seira ([[SadistTeacher Mimura Chieko]] the school director) to treating Seira like crap and [[KickTheDog shooting down]] every attempt Seira tries to please them (the chef and his wife) to making snide remarks every time Seira was in the same room as her, even going as far as to [[MoralEventHorizon throw tomatoes]] at Seira when she was practically on the floor, admitting defeat (RichBitch Maria). |
| 329 | * ''Series/StargateSG1'' did this with a lot of its characters, but particularly Daniel Jackson and Colonel Sam Carter. However, it resulted in them becoming Cool Badasses. |
| 330 | ** O'Neill losing his son really takes the cake, though. |
| 331 | * ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' breaks Ezri in her third episode. |
| 332 | ** She's an assistant counselor in training on leave to try and deal with [[spoiler:her unprepared joining to the Dax symbiont]], and has no business being asked to counsel anyone. Her patient easily figures out all of her fears and anxieties and tells her they're well-founded and true, before telling her she should leave "before I say something unkind". |
| 333 | * ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' does this with Data, one of the male examples. |
| 334 | ** His "older brother" turned out to be a [[EvilTwin murdering psycho]], he found his long-lost father not long before already said father was murdered by psychotic brother. He saw the woman to whom he "lost his virginity" murdered before his eyes for no reason but malice. He had to go to court over his right not to be dismantled, created a daughter who died after they tried to take her away from him and she couldn't deal with the shock. Was kidnapped by some rich guy who drove him to attempted murder (possibly Data's defining BreakTheCutie moment), went through the whole LongLostRelative plot, tried to kill his best friend under mental coercion (psycho brother's fault again), was possessed a couple of times... Have to say, if he [[TinMan actually ''had'' emotions]], they would have screwed him by the end of Season 7. |
| 335 | ** And then he ''gets'' emotions in [[TheMovie Generations]]... Frankly, it's surprising how he dealt with that with only one or two guilt trips. The amount of crap he went through wouldn't have been attempted with any other character, specifically because Data ''couldn't'' actually be broken. You could kick him around like a football and you're not likely to permanently psychologically wreck him. |
| 336 | *** Unless you count ''Descent''. |
| 337 | *** Data's "Breaking moment" is confirmed when Riker tells Data the transporter noticed the weapon discharge, after which Data LIES to Riker by claiming it was a malfunction. Data never lies; especially to a higher-ranking officer. |
| 338 | *** Alternatively, he was trying to rationalize his breaking moment as a malfunction on ''his'' part. |
| 339 | * ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' does this with Kes. |
| 340 | * ''Series/StrangersFromHell'': Jong-woo starts out a normal young man. Then he moves into a building full of serial killers, has to put up with his rude co-workers, and is stalked everywhere by [[AxeCrazy Moon-jo]]. By the end he's gone completely insane and has ([[UnreliableNarrator possibly]]) killed four people. |
| 341 | * ''Series/StrangerThings'': Sweet, strong Max is thoroughly destroyed by the end of Season 4. Terrorized by the monstrous Vecna, given a HopeSpot when she learns how to resist his MindRape tactics... and then when he finally captures her, he leaves her with arms and legs broken, blind, possibly crippled, and her consciousness wiped from her mind completely. |
| 342 | * ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'': The show is [[CrapsackWorld made]] of [[DeusAngstMachina this trope]]. |
| 343 | ** At the start, Dean is pretty happy with his life, comic relief to Sam's big ball of angst, and loves the hunt. Sam starts out as TheHeart to Dean's cynicism. They each end up with a hefty GuiltComplex. |
| 344 | ** Its various methods of bending Dean to the breaking point have included: getting tortured by his possessed father and possessed brother at two different times, making him feel [[ItsAllMyFault guilty]] because someone died to save him in the first season and ramping that suicidal guilt up to 100 when his father dies for him in the second season, having [[{{Protectorate}} his]] [[BigBrotherInstinct brother]] [[DespairEventHorizon die in his arms]], sending him to hell at the end of Season 3, and having enemies taunt him and allies accost him with how worthless he is. |
| 345 | *** What happens to Dean in Season 4: clawing his way out of his own grave, being an (albeit extremely pretty) angel's bitch, getting guilt-tripped from victims he couldn't save, [[SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong going back in time]] and apparently causing [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast the events]] leading to his mother's death; getting infected with a ghost sickness that makes him even more of TheChewToy, remembering all his forty years of hell, breaking after thirty and enjoying torturing other victims for ten, having suddenly to remember the events of "In My Time Of Dying", having to torture Alistair for information and learning that he was the first seal and that his Dad spent a century on the rack but never broke. And most of all, finding out he's the only one who can stop "it", and then discovering ''this isn't referring to the Apocalypse''. Instead, he's meant to let the [[LightIsNotGood angels]] engineer the [[GodzillaThreshold Apocalypse]] and then end it by [[SummonBiggerFish having Michael possess Dean]] and [[DestructiveSaviour destroy]] most of the world fighting and [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans killing Lucifer]]. |
| 346 | *** And then it goes FromBadToWorse. At the end of Season 5, Dean has to let his brother [[spoiler:[[HeroicSacrifice throw himself]] into hell to stop Lucifer]], in Season 6, he [[spoiler:has to deal with [[CameBackWrong soulless Sam]], loses the family he'd always wanted, and Cas betrays them, endangers the world again, and breaks the wall in Sam's head]], ''and then'' in Season 7 Dean has to deal with Sam going crazy and [[EldritchAbomination monsters]] they can't kill trying to eat the world [[spoiler:because his like-a-brother buddy Cas [[JumpedOffTheSlipperySlope betrayed them all]] [[KnightTemplar trying to save the world]], [[MoralEventHorizon killed his angelic allies]], and [[KickTheDog broke Sam's mind]] before taking in [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity dangerous power]] that [[AGodAmI pushed him over the edge]] and released those monsters.]] Just when it seems like Dean has lost nearly everything and everyone, [[spoiler:with Bobby dead, Cas apparently dead, and Sam dying because of his memories of hell, Cas returns only to sacrifice his mind to save Sam's]]. |
| 347 | ** Sam Winchester got broken down courtesy of having a demon infect him with its blood, his mother die because of him, having a crappy childhood/life, his father disown him, his girlfriend die just to set him on the path to evil, having demonic powers, having his father die, and having to watch his brother break down before his eyes and then commit suicide for him ''and then'' be killed in a hundred different ways '''''and then''''' get ripped apart by hellhounds. Over half of that was a CorruptTheCutie plot aimed ''directly at Sam'', which ''worked'' -- at least to the extent that they managed to [[DespairEventHorizon manipulate]] [[UnwittingPawn him]] into alienating his resurrected brother and doing [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt exactly what]] [[NiceJobBreakingItHero the bad guys wanted]]. Then he began a RedemptionQuest to [[MustMakeAmends prevent Lucifer from razing the world]] by taking him back to hell, and his brother didn't believe in him. [[BeAllMySinsRemembered Not that Sam believed in himself either]]. |
| 348 | *** [[FateWorseThanDeath It got much worse]]. At the end of Season 5, [[spoiler:Sam [[SelfSacrificeScheme had to let Lucifer possess him]] [[FightingFromTheInside to take]] Lucifer [[HeroicWillPower back into hell's solitary confinement]].]] In Season 6, [[spoiler:when Sam finally got his soul back after being brought back to life, Castiel broke his mind to let the memories of probably 180 years [[FateWorseThanDeath being tormented by Lucifer]] overwhelm him.]] In Season 7, Sam has been losing his grip on reality at a time when they're facing a threat they can't kill, to the point where he [[spoiler:almost dies because a hallucination of Lucifer won't let him sleep. And then has to deal with knowing Castiel sacrificed his mind for Sam's]]. |
| 349 | ** John. Once upon a time, he was a naive, innocent, sweet little himbo and look what happened to him. But unlike his sons, who have been broken slowly and horribly over the past few seasons due to numerous events, he just snapped from the one event (his wife dying) and became the borderline abusive, jerkass parent who was so at the end of his rope that he committed suicide for Dean in the most self-righteous way possible. |
| 350 | ** Castiel. Oh, how cute, a good little soldier angel that loves his daddy (God), gets nervous around whores, thinks humans are God's works of art, and he just made some new friends (Sam & Dean)! Here's what we'll do: Have his brother murder and corrupt his garrison, then turn on him too; rip him out of his vessel so he can be ''taught a lesson'' (No, you may ''not'' be friends with Dean!); force him to choose between Heaven and mankind; have his brother smite him to death; resurrect him with most of his powers gone (not particularly helpful in the middle of the apocalypse); then he spends nearly a season searching for God (for help, for guidance), only to find out that his daddy doesn't care about him and won't help. [[spoiler:Cue Cas drinking an entire liquor store...understandably]]; then we have Dean surrender to the angels, essentially throwing all of Castiel's efforts and friendship back in his face. [[spoiler:Cue Cas beating the living crap out of Dean in a back alley...again, understandably]]. Castiel goes on to consume all of the souls in purgatory possess him and do horrible things that will haunt him forever after. Then he absorbs Sam's hell trauma and goes catatonic for a while, only to wake up insane. Then he gets sent and hunted in purgatory (with Dean) and refuses to leave because he thinks he deserves to rot in there. Instead, he gets "rescued" by another angel who then mind rapes him and tries to make him kill his best friend. Oh, then he is tricked by another fellow angel who removes his grace and turns him human. He's alone, homeless and uncertain how to live as a human, gets killed (he gets better), only to have his friends evict him from their home without giving him a reason. He's then tortured, becomes an angel again but is slowly wasting away. His friend turns into a demon, he nearly dies from his grace issues solves but his friend beats the crap out of him. Later, when a witch casts a horrific spell that makes him go into killing rages and is killing him, he asks his angelic brethren for help, only to have them brutally torture him. He suffers symptoms of PTSD and depression and is later possessed by Lucifer. |
| 351 | *** In an averted future from Season 5, Castiel is a drug-addicted slut with no powers and no glory, but in Season 7, Castiel [[spoiler:seemed to die after [[MoralEventHorizon betraying absolutely everyone]] in a bid to [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity gain the power]] to become [[GodhoodSeeker a new God]] and save the Earth from Raphael's attempts to restart the averted Apocalypse. This unleashed a plague of very smart body-snatching unkillable shapeshifters with excellent organizational structure on humanity.]] He gave everything he was to the cause Dean promised him was worth it, until [[WellIntentionedExtremist there was nothing left of him]]; and while he did technically save the world twice, it got [[KnightTemplar pretty compromised]] and [[PyrrhicVictory pyrrhic]]. |
| 352 | *** Season 7, finds an AmnesiacsAreInnocent Castiel living as a faith healer named Emmanuel, whom Dean recruits to help heal Sam's hell-memory madness. Emmanuel has no memory of being Castiel and is a kind and patient man who won't even take the Lord's name in vain but does show great empathy and sensitivity to Dean despite sensing Dean is a violent and unhappy man. By the end of the episode, he remembers he is Castiel, smites a parking lot full of demons, becomes tormented by guilt, absorbs Sam's hell memories and goes insane. |
| 353 | ** Even Badass Bobby! He is forced to kill his own wife when she becomes possessed, is trapped in a dream-state pursued by a vision of his alternately evil/crying-for-help wife, descended into alcoholism after someone he loves like a son [[spoiler: is killed by hell-hounds]], is kidnapped and almost killed by the ghosts of children he was unable to save, is possessed by a demon, left paralyzed from the waist down, and artificially aged 25 years, is forced to kill his wife ''again'' after she returns zombified (guess we know what Bobby's vulnerable point is), and finally forced to allow the ''other'' person he loves like a son (Sam) [[spoiler: allow himself to be satanically possessed on the unlikely chance that Sam will be able to overcome said possession enough to commit suicide. Good plan.]] |
| 354 | *** Also, he'd refused to have kids ever just a few days before his wife got possessed, and didn't explain it was because of deep issues going back to when he shot his abusive dad in the head as a kid in the kitchen of the same house he lived in until the Leviathans burned it down a few episodes before he died. This led to a huge fight between Bobby and Karen that they hadn't worked past when she died. |
| 355 | ** Jimmy Novak, Castiel's vessel begins as a devout, loving family man looking for a purpose and, after becoming Castiel's vessel, is dragged all over the Earth and traumatized in various ways. Once freed, he's told he's a danger to his family, defends his family against demons, tries to leave them for their safety only to have a demon possess his wife and threaten his daughter. He's shot trying to rescue them and offers to be Castiel's permanent vessel in order to spare his daughter that fate. His daughter, Claire, counts as well. She starts as a loving daughter and sweet child only to wind up a bitter, abandoned teenager who resents Castiel, rightly so, for ruining her life. |
| 356 | ** Kevin Tran. Starts as a sixteen-year-old high school student trying to get into Princeton and be the first Asian-American president. Then it turns out he's a prophet. Cue getting kidnapped by Leviathans, being on the run from Crowley for a year with no help, having his girlfriend get possessed and die right in front of him, spending most of his time on a houseboat with almost no visitors overworking himself until he gets a ''stroke'' trying to translate the demon tablet so the Winchesters can close the Gates of Hell and he can't go home, getting kidnapped again, being told that his mom was dead, and then only learning that she was alive by [[spoiler:hearing from other ghosts via ghostly Telephone after he dies]]. He only didn't break completely because [[spoiler:Gadreel killed him on Metatron's orders]] before it could happen. |
| 357 | ** In summary, all Winchesters and any longtime associates either come pre-broken or get broken over the series. The customary dying seems to be easier. Unless you're Dean or Sam; then Hell ''and Heaven'' are all about this trope. |
| 358 | ** The fact that Sam and Dean can still get out of bed in the morning after being completely screwed over by Heaven, Hell, their father, most of their human associates (who just happened to find out who started the Apocalypse...), [[spoiler:and Castiel, who was like a brother to Dean]] makes this extremely impressive. I mean, really, why not re-name the series "''How to Break the Cutie (Fanservice and Fetish Fuel Included)''"? |
| 359 | * ''Series/SwitchedAtBirth'': Most of the characters, but ''especially'' Daphne. Before the start of the show, she was a well-adjusted and happy deaf teenager. After finding out about being switched at birth (which is a shock on its own), she reconnects with her biological family, though her eager-to-please nature causes some conflicts and tension. Then, she [[spoiler:finds out the woman who raised her knew about the switch when she was three, turning her world even MORE upside down. ''Then'', when Daphne realizes that she loves her best friend who's always been there for her, she discovers that the guy is already in love with the girl Daphne was switched with]]. |
| 360 | ** Being told by the man thought to be her father [[spoiler:that part of the reason for him leaving him was her deafness. Especially after being by Regina told that was the reason him leaving your entire life. Only for Regina to change her views about that to Daphne when Angelo came back]]. |
| 361 | [[/folder]] |
| 362 | |
| 363 | [[folder:T]] |
| 364 | * ''{{Series/TeenWolf}}'': |
| 365 | ** Derek Hale is introduced as a tough, badass werewolf, an unshakable survivor. Then the show systematically destroys his life until he's the personification of a human disaster. Brace yourself: |
| 366 | *** Season 1 -- His whole family dies in a fire except his sister, who is then murdered; he's unjustly framed for it when her grave is dug up; shot with wolfsbane and almost has to cut his arm off; attacked and tazed by his ex-lover/rapist Kate Argent who set the fire that slaughtered his family; finds out his supposedly comatose uncle Peter, now his last remaining family member, is the person who murdered his sister to be Alpha; captured by Kate who tortures him, sexually assaults him, and mocks the fact that she seduced a naive teenager to get to his werewolf family; is hunted like an animal several times; is shot with arrows by Allison Argent; kills his psychotic uncle Peter to stop him from murdering people and to become the Alpha, which he was never supposed to be. |
| 367 | *** Season 2 -- Derek finds out that the first thing he tried to do as an Alpha, turning a fucking teenager because he needs a pack, is going horribly wrong and Jackson is rejecting the bite; the first person he actually manages to turn is arrested for murder on the full moon; is paralyzed and almost drowns; finds out his first beta turned into an evil lizard monster instead of a werewolf; is almost killed trying to save Scott from Victoria Argent and bites her in the fight; his body is used against his will for a second time when he's attacked and his blood used to resurrect Peter; almost killed by the girlfriend of the 16-year-old boy he tried to save (Scott) because of misinformation; abandoned by 2/3 of his pack; his body is used against his will for a third time, by Scott to give Gerard the bite; finds out Scott lied to and manipulated him and never intended to join Derek's pack. |
| 368 | *** Season 3 it just starts getting ridiculous -- He finds one of his beta wolves is dead; finds out that his little sister, Cora, is alive except she is completely feral and tries to kill him; barely survives all night nearly being torn apart by two feral werewolves; spends the episode with a pipe shoved through his torso while his sister is forced to watch; falls several stories onto an escalator and drags his broken body across town while everyone thinks he's dead; his body is used AGAIN as an unwilling instrument [[spoiler:to kill one of his last remaining pack members]]; ten years ago Peter manipulated him into getting his first girlfriend bitten, and he has to kill her to end her suffering marking him forever with murderer's eyes; finds out his current girlfriend and the only source of happiness in his miserable existence is [[spoiler: an evil druid who's been doing human sacrifice]]. |
| 369 | ** In Season 3B Derek (so far) catches a break. Unfortunately, this is because the cutie now getting broken is Stiles. He starts off the season suffering from hallucinations, nightmares and general insanity thanks to the aftereffects of the 3A season finale leaving his mind 'ajar'. Then at some point he gets possessed by the Nogitsune, and proceeds to kill lots of people under its influence. The possession (from is point of view) is depicted as him being trapped in a basement with a bear trap round his leg, being tormented by the Nogistune. Also, he discovers that he is suffering from frontotemporal dementia, the same disease that killed his mother. |
| 370 | * ''Series/TerminatorTheSarahConnorChronicles'': Absolutely ''loves'' torturing the cuties. [[AlasPoorScrappy Riley]], [[RobotGirl Cameron]], [[TheWoobie Allison Young]], Cameron while ''[[BecomingTheMask being]]'' Allison Young, and [[ManipulativeBastard Jesse]] all get thoroughly and brutally broken over the course of Season 2. |
| 371 | * ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'': Happens in the episode "Adam", [[spoiler:the titular memory-changing alien breaks the handsome, soft-spoken, and likeable DeadpanSnarker Ianto by implanting in him false memories of murdering women]], but due to the use of Retcon pills none of the characters remember the events of the episode and thus any breakage is temporary. |
| 372 | ** Gwen definitely falls into this category as she is indoctrinated into Torchwood during the first season (and she is thoroughly broken by the time of ''[[Series/TorchwoodMiracleDay Miracle Day]]''). |
| 373 | ** They like doing this: Ianto gets broken in "Cyberwoman". "Greeks Bearing Gifts" does the same to Tosh. "Fragments" breaks both Tosh and Owen. And in "End of Days," Gwen loses it completely [[spoiler: when Rhys gets killed. He gets better]]. |
| 374 | ** Esther gets it too, over the first half of ''Miracle Day''. |
| 375 | ** Jack. Series 2, 3 and 4 have been one long TraumaCongaLine. Not to mention the time gap between losing the Doctor and the start of the series. |
| 376 | [[/folder]] |
| 377 | |
| 378 | [[folder:V]] |
| 379 | * ''Series/TheVampireDiaries'': |
| 380 | ** Caroline. Her character's shown as insecure within the first two episodes. And most of the first season is spent with her being abused by Damon under compulsion. Later on, in Season 2, she's caged by a werewolf and tortured just because she's a vampire. And to top it off, now in Season 3, she was kidnapped by her own dad, who tortures her in order to get her to stop feeding on blood (remember: she's a vampire!) |
| 381 | ** The series does a real work on Elena, which makes us wonder how she got so far without snapping. So far, they've killed Grayson and Miranda, her adoptive parents, John Gilbert and Isobel Flemming, her real parents, Jenna Sommers, her adoptive aunt, and Alaric, her history teacher. The straw that broke the cutie's back? Jeremy, her adoptive brother and the only family she had left was killed, and when she realized he was gone for real, she shattered, to the point that they had to turn off her humanity to keep her going. |
| 382 | ** Stefan. He was a normal guy until 1864 when he caught the attentions of villainous vampire Katherine, which became a love triangle with him and his brother, Damon, tearing them apart. This ended in them becoming a vampires and Katherine (seemingly) being killed. Damon vowed to make his life a misery since then, as well as the fact that he has to fight a blood addiction that will turn him into a killer. Eventually, he meets Elena, and everything seems to be going well, until Damon falls for her as well. Then, Damon gets a fatal werewolf bite, and the BigBad is the only one with the cure. The result? Stefan has to become minion of the BigBad in exchange for the cure to save his brother's life. When he finally gets free of this and returns, he finds that Elena now has feelings for Damon as well. After half a season, she finally picks Stefan, when she gets turned into a vampire and then decides she has stronger feelings for Damon because of this. As of now, her humanity is off and she doesn't seem to care about either of them. Oh, and Damon killed his uncle, the only family they had left, and his best friend, Lexi. |
| 383 | ** Bonnie. When she found out she was a witch she wanted to help the vampires but could not do it alone. When her grandmother refused to help her, she begged her, until she gave in. The end result? Her grandmother was killed from overuse of magic. Since then, her mother was turned into a vampire to save her best friend's life, nearly every guy she dated either turned out to be a psycho or was killed off, and her mentor was revealed to be using her for his own nefarious purposes. |
| 384 | * ''Series/VeronicaMars'': The title character is shown to have already been broken before the first series begins -- the flashbacks show an almost painfully-innocent girl lose her best friend and then all the others, her mother, her home, any social standing and any shred of dignity she might have otherwise held on to, and all in the space of a year. Shortly after the loss of all that, she got drugged and raped at a party, and when she tried to report it, the sheriff laughed at her and ''mocked her for crying.'' |
| 385 | %%* ''Series/{{Vikings}}'': Athelstan. |
| 386 | [[/folder]] |
| 387 | |
| 388 | [[folder:W]] |
| 389 | * ''Series/TheWire'': |
| 390 | ** Randy Wagstaff. Starts out as a sweet, likable kid trying to make the best of life in his surroundings [[spoiler: but gets wrongfully branded a snitch because of Herc's reckless actions. His house is burned down and his foster mother badly burned such that he has to go back to the group home, where he takes numerous beatings from the other kids. By the next time he's seen, he's become mean and violent just to survive.]] |
| 391 | ** Bubbles, the homeless addict and lovable police informant. After failing to clean himself up, he's targeted by a street addict who robs and beats him constantly. The police fail to help him out of the mess, [[spoiler: so he takes matters into his own hands and plans to use potassium cyanide to kill the man, but Sherrod, another addict who's like a son to Bubbles, falls for the trap instead, mistaking the cyanide for heroine. Bubbles turns himself in for murder, and tries to hang himself with a belt in the interrogation room.]] |
| 392 | * ''Series/WynonnaEarp'': |
| 393 | ** Waverly Earp is known to be the lovable optimist of the group. She's so good, in fact, that demon was born at the same time as her to balance out how good she was. The demon, Jolene, magics her way into Waverly's life and slowly dismantles her happiness by planting seeds of doubt in her that her friends, sister, and girlfriend actually don't love her at all. In the end, she believes this so deeply that she considers taking her own life. |
| 394 | [[/folder]] |
| 395 | |
| 396 | [[folder:X]] |
| 397 | * ''Series/XenaWarriorPrincess'': Gabrielle. The loss of blood innocence (killing someone), non-consensual impregnation by an immortal, having to kill her own daughter, domestic violence, killing her daughter (again) and grandson, crucifixion, killing an innocent teenager, and the death of her partner. |
| 398 | [[/folder]] |
| 399 |
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