[[quoteright:311:[[Webcomic/{{Hiimdaisy}} http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tragicpast_8463.PNG]]]]
[[caption-width-right:311:''[[VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty TRAGIC]]'', we tell you!]]

-> ''And the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."''
--> -- ''The Narrator, '''Film/{{Magnolia}}'''''

Stock {{Backstory}} for a character. Much like a MysteriousPast, except more [[{{tragedy}} tragic]] and troubled. Don't expect it to be revealed all at once, or sometimes ''at all''. It usually gets revealed in small doses through a TroubledBackstoryFlashback as the story progresses; possibly in a FlashbackNightmare where a happy memory transforms into a slaughter. Often used as a FreudianExcuse for an asocial character's JerkAss tendencies or [[TheQuietOne quiet]] [[TheStoic stoicism]]. Still, it is understandable that the character wants to keep it [[DarkSecret secret]] because TheyreCalledPersonalIssuesForAReason, after all.

!!'''The root effects are usually:'''
* Self hate via MyGreatestFailure.
* Outward distrust because of being [[BetrayalTropes betrayed]].
* Inward callousness coupled with outward hate because of a FreudianExcuse such as abandonment, trauma, or death of a loved one.

!!'''Usually involves one or more of the following:'''
* A dead loved one: parents, siblings, best friend, [[CrusadingWidower spouse and children]], or a whole DoomedHometown.
* Physical and, sometimes, [[RapeAsBackstory sexual abuse]] by [[AbusiveParents parents]] or [[DomesticAbuse lover]].
* Being [[ParentalAbandonment abandoned by one or both parents]].
* Being [[ColdBloodedTorture tortured]] or [[RapeAsDrama raped]], or being ForcedToWatch it happen to a friend or loved one.
* [[TheAtoner A criminal past, usually with remorse]].
* Being caught up on the [[WarIsHell wrong side of war]].
* Being [[BetrayalTropes betrayed]] by a [[TrueCompanions True Companion]] or [[HeterosexualLifePartners Heterosexual Life Partner]].
* Having the LoveInterest not dump them, but get StuffedInTheFridge.
* Killing any of the above, whether in self defense, recklessly, or through a SadisticChoice.
* Any of the above, but being experienced [[HarmfulToMinors during childhood]].

Expect to see the above ''overlap'' for extra Angst or {{Wangst}}.

This can lead to either becoming an AntiHero or HurtingHero. For villains, this is a StartOfDarkness. Especially blatant cases of this trope will result in the character being seen as a SympatheticSue.

Female characters with a Dark and Troubled Past include the DarkMagicalGirl and the BrokenBird. Male characters with a Dark and Troubled Past are instant [[MrFanservice bait]] for the EstrogenBrigade who have [[DracoInLeatherPants bought him leather pants.]] Expect all nearby female characters to become afflicted with attraction to his TroubledButCute appeal, and try to help him heal his heart. [[DontYouDarePityMe Not happening]]. [[EpiphanyTherapy Or maybe it will?]] Either way, TriphopAnthem is typically the background music that plays while the Dark and Troubled Past is explored.

The step-up of this trope is the DysfunctionJunction, where ''the whole cast'' will have one of these and suffer from it, too (and don't expect them to get better). If the afflicted character is in a law enforcement profession, see StandardCopBackstory. When paired with a NiceGuy or gal with a [[UpbringingMakesTheHero happy upbringing]], you can expect...''[[VitriolicBestBuds interesting]]'' [[ActionDuo results]].

----
!!Examples

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]
* ''Anime/DragonBallZ'', with Vegeta having his home planet destroyed at around age 5, and being a forced underling of the creature who massacred his people for most of his life.
* Kenshin Himura from ''Manga/RurouniKenshin'' and ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samurai_X:_Trust_%26_Betrayal Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal]].'' After the death of his parents, Kenshin (a child at the time) is taken by slavers, who are later violently killed in front of him by bandits. After burying the mutilated victims alone, Kenshin is resolute to “create a peaceful world where people could live without fear”. To accomplish his ideal, Kenshin trains with the master of the “Hiten Mitsurugi-ryū” (a fighting style so deadly that, to truly master, it means death to the teacher) and, at 14, became the legendary assassin "Hitokiri Battōsai”. [[spoiler: Kenshin goes into hiding years later and marries a mysterious woman named Tomoe for appearance only, but they later fall in love. After a series of events, Kenshin kills Tomoe unintentionally in battle. As Tomoe died, she gave Kenshin half of the X shaped scar on his cheek. Kenshin later finds out, after reading Tomoe’s diaries that he had killed Tomoe’s fiancé (a man who years earlier, gave Kenshin the other half of the X shaped scar) before he met her and she only married Kenshin out of revenge, but, after living together, fell in love with him.]] Broken and filled with remorse for killing countless people, Kenshin wanders off wielding a sakabatō or reverse blade sword. He is determined to never kill again and to aid those in need, as atonement for the murders he committed.
* Hiei from ''Manga/YuYuHakusho''. [[spoiler:Being tossed away by your clan, brought up by bloodthirsty thieves who later abanndon you, and going through torture just to find your homeland only to learn that your mother committed suicide and your twin sister has been kidnapped by a sadistic psycho will make you be just a little bit dark.]]
* Vash the Stampede from ''{{Trigun}}.'' He was born as an artificial human on a space cruiser transporting most of humanity to a distant world, where the crew was paranoid of him. Thanks to his brother, he got to watch the cruiser destroyed, killing millions, including his mother figure. Years later, after the discovery of his destructive powers, he unwittingly caused the annihilation of an entire city.
* The entire main crew of ''Anime/CowboyBebop'' has this to some degree. Spike Spiegel used to be an enforcer for the Red Dragon crime syndicate, essentially Space [[TheTriadsAndTheTongs Triads]], only to fall out with them and his former best friend and fellow assassin Vicious over a girl named Julia, resulting in him [[FakingTheDead faking his death]]. Jet Black used to be a cop until his own corrupt partner and best friend set him up and tried to kill him, though he got off with merely losing his left arm and needing a cybernetic replacement -- this, after the love of his life dumped him for, basically, being too controlling. Faye Valentine lost her family, her memories, and her past after she was placed in cryogenic suspension after a space shuttle accident, and after she was revived, the one man who seemed to care for her "died"...and left her stuck with a debt reaching into the millions. Radical Edward's father was so absent minded that he was barely aware of her existence, so she spent her entire childhood wandering aimlessly in and out of orphanages and possibly over most of the planet. The only one exempt is Ein, the genetically engineered "data dog".
* The first segment of ''{{Memories}}'' "Magnetic Rose" had Heinz, a space salvage specialist who had some ''really'' weird reactions to such harmless things as a falling china doll. The [[HauntedCastle haunted space ship]], of course, uses his trauma over [[spoiler: his daughter having died after falling off the roof while wearing a toy spacesuit ''he'' gave her]] to try and convince him to stay...''forever.''
* In ''LightNovel/{{Baccano}}'', there's Czeslaw Meyer, a young boy who, when his grandfather and caretaker died, was taken in by his grandfather's alchemy student, Fermet. A few years later, they become passengers on the ship the Advene Avis. [[spoiler:Cue both of them becoming immortal]]. Fermet's true nature begins to shine through, and he starts experimenting on Czes, claiming it's for science. [[spoiler:This torture continued for the next two hundred years.]] The torture and abuse is only ended when Czes finally manages to [[spoiler: kill Fermet, in a way that causes Czes to gain all of Fermet's memories. This means that Czes now has both his own memories of being tortured and memories of sadistically enjoying torturing himself.]] Because of all this, the kid now has intense trust issues.
* ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'': Notable since this trope applies to virtually every character with any significance in the story, not simply the protagonist. Though technically speaking, every person on [[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion NGE's]] Earth who lived through and survived the post-[[ApocalypseHow Second Impact]] [[AfterTheEnd global chaos]] would qualify.
* Guts's childhood from ''{{Berserk}}'' is singularly horrific. His mother was hanged presumably as he was being born (yeah, we don't get it either), and he was adopted by a mercenary named Gambino, who trained him as a [[ChildSoldiers child soldier]]. During his time in Gambino's band, Guts had to endure some seriously HarmfulToMinors stuff of both the horrific violence and the sex varieties -- he was even raped at one point in the manga when Gambino sold him to a pederast soldier in his band as a child prostitute. It all came to a head when Gambino, his leg having been blown off by a cannonball and thus making him unfit for combat, got drunk one night and tried to kill Guts because he blamed the kid for the death of his lover from the plague. Guts had to kill Gambino in self defense and then get away from the camp to escape the wrath of the other mercenaries. And that's just peaches compared to the stuff that comes afterwards.
** Casca's past isn't much better -- she lost her village at an early age and was sold to a noble who wanted a new serving girl, only for it to transpire that he wanted her for sex. Just as he's about to rape her, though, Griffith shows up. Instead of killing her would-be rapist, however, he makes her do it instead ("If you have something you wish to protect, take up that sword."). She has a relatively easy life afterward, until the Eclipse goes down and she suffers a ''horrific'' ordeal that ends with her being driven insane.
** Griffith's past wasn't much of a walk in the park either, as revealed in the second to last episode of the anime, just before he crosses the MoralEventHorizon.
* This seems to be the case with a number of characters in ''Manga/ElfenLied'', most particularly, [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds Lucy]].
* While a majority of ''AxisPowersHetalia'' is silly and cute, the characters are still [[MoeAnthropomorphism countries]], thus, all of them have some negative points in their history. Nevertheless, [[PsychopathicManchild Russia]] takes the cake for troubled pasts; the best example would be the "Bloody Sunday" strip, in which he finally snaps and starts ''gunning down'' his own people as they're rioting in the streets ("If they hate me, they're not Russian.") before turning to [[TheWoobie Lithuania]] and stating "We don't want children who can't play nice, do we?".
** This trope is probably why certain countries, such as Isreal, will never show up in this series, as it would quickly destroy the very comedic nature of the series itself.
* Virtually every other character in ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' fits this description at least partially, including the titular character himself. Most notable, however, is Sasuke. Not only does he have a dark past, but he also has a dark present, and in the early episodes, every main female genin (except [[FanOfUnderdog Hinata]]) is attracted to him in some way.
* None of the other characters in ''TsubasaReservoirChronicle'' had a fun childhood, but Fai's was, by far, the worst. Though unlike most characters here, his childhood trauma didn't turn him into a crabby, jaded JerkWithAHeartOfGold (that's [[PerpetualFrowner Kurogane]]), he kept all of his bitterness and heart break under a [[StepfordSmiler facade of perpetual happiness]]. Or, [[CerebusSyndrome he did at first...]]
* Every character in ''FruitsBasket'', excluding a minor few.
* ''MahouSenseiNegima''. Several. Upon learning Negi's, several of the girls were actually driven to tears.
** Evangeline's is worth special mention simply because of it's ''[[WhoWantsToLiveForever sheer length]]''. [[spoiler:It is also hinted that she [[SelfMadeOrphan killed her own parents]] before regaining consciousness upon [[WhatHaveIBecome first becoming a vampire]].]]
** Then there's Asuna. We don't really know the details, but [[spoiler: she underwent LaserGuidedAmnesia so that she could forget all that she had been through. What we ''do'' know is that it includes being imprisoned in a tower and used as a human weapon, and the destruction of a FloatingContinent.]]
** Setsuna. During her fight with Evangeline, is revealed that [[spoiler:she has no parents, and because of her white white wings, she was chased out of the Crow village and picked up by Eishun.]]
* Kaoru in ''Manga/AiYoriAoshi'' (physical abuse, betrayal, abandonment), to the point of not even remembering his childhood friend when he meets her again.
* Most people in ''DeadmanWonderland''. Nagi, Minatsuki, Yoh, Shiro, Hibana, Genkaku...
* ''Anime/DigimonAdventure02'': Ken Ichijoji. Just...Ken Ichijoji. What started out as TheUnfavourite Syndrome developed into a death in the family. Then he ended up being infected with the [[ArtifactOfDoom Dark Spore]], which started playing on his huge inferiority complex and [[IWishedYouWereDead guilt over his brother's death]], which was one reason he became the Digimon Kaiser, at which point he was convinced that the Digital World was makebelieve and he was just expressing his anger in a fictional world. He was [[HeelRealization bluntly shown otherwise]] by watching his Digimon [[DeadSidekick die right in front of him]], and never mind the better part of the hell the rest of the season puts him through while he's trying to make up for his misdeeds.
* Chichiri in ''FushigiYuugi'' has a TraumaCongaLine in his past. His childhood best friend, Hikou, betrays him by stealing a kiss from his fiancee, who immediately calls off the engagement in [[HonorBeforeReason shame]]. Chichiri [[BerserkButton goes berserk]] and attacks Hikou, but as they are fighting, a massive flood sweeps through the [[DoomedHometown village]]. Chichiri's fiancee ''and'' family are killed in the flood, and although Chichiri attempts to save his former best friend's life, Hikou is lost in the flood before they can make amends. Chichiri also [[EyeScream lost his eye]] in this incident, and, in fact, it was getting hit by the driftwood that caused him to let go of Hikou's hand. [[spoiler:This all comes back to haunt him near the end of the manga and the OVA, when Hikou reappears as one of Tenkou's demon underlings...]]
** While Chichiri is the most notable example among the protagonists, lots of other characters follow this trope, particularly from the Seiryuu and [[FushigiYuugiGenbuKaiden Genbu]] sides. [[BigBad Nakago]] has a particularly nasty one as his FreudianExcuse, though the fact that he's a horribly ManipulativeBastard who infamously winds up being a KarmaHoudini means that few fans want to pity him for it.
* ''Manga/OnePiece'': every character that joins the crew (and then some) have a tragic past, as if it's a requirement to jump aboard a ship with Luffy. Most pasts, however, take a usually "boring" subject and draw them out into originality. A good example is Sanji; everyone knows being stranded on an island sucks, but this is hardly an island: it's a mushroom rock that's too far above sea water to fish and incapable of sustaining any life...because it's a ROCK. Not to mention, he realizes that the only other person on this island has a big ol' bag of, what he thinks is, food, much bigger than the one he gave to Sanji. However, it turns out that other guy just had a bunch of money and absolutely NO food, and that instead of keeping any for himself, gave ''all'' the food he recovered to Sanji and ''broke off and ate his own leg'' to survive. And on top of all ''that'', the food that Sanji got was barely enought to last 20 days (though it lasted 25 days). It took ''eight-five days'' for a ship to find them. One can only imagine how hellish the last 60 days (''two months'') must have been. No wonder Sanji considers wasting food to be a horrible offense.
** Another good example is Zoro's past, following the otherwise generic "my best friend/rival died" past but adding in the mix that his friend didn't die honorably; she died falling down the stairs. No epic sword fight, no sacrifice, she was just tired and slipped down some stairs.
** One without a twist, but still absolutely ''horrible''. [[DefrostingIceQueen Hancock]] and her sisters. Slavery is never a pretty story.
* In ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'', two of the female leads have BreakTheCutie pasts. Rukia blames herself for the death of [[TheObiWan her beloved mentor]], Kaien. Meanwhile, not only did Orihime have AbusiveParents, but she was also bullied in school and her brother, Sora, died in a car accident. Early in the story, Sora unwillingly comes back as [[TheHeartless a Hollow]], and finally commits suicide so he can move on to the Soul Society.
** Ichigo, who saw his mother get killed by a Hollow when he was a kid.
** And Ishida, who saw his ''grandfather'' get killed by Hollows, with the shinigami nowhere in sight, when he was a child. [[spoiler: Later, it turns out that the whole incident was planned. His grandfather didn't die in the Hollow attack, but was captured by Soul Society and experimented upon by Mayuri Kurotsuchi. When Ishida fights Mayuri, he even shows Ishida a photograph of his grandfather's body whilst gloating.]]
* Since most of the cast in ''MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha'' aren't [[ArtificialHuman technically human]], most of them have [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman these kinds of pasts before someone finally took them in and raised them as people]]. To give some examples, [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots the Wolkenritter]] spent most of their existence being treated as little more than tools, [[CloningBlues Erio]] and [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots Agito]] spent years in illegal labs, caged and experimented on like animals, and [[AntiAntiChrist Ixpellia]] [[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld spent her long life]] being forced to fight in pointless wars that seemed to never end.
** Fate Testarossa herself, who grew up under the "care" of an [[AbusiveParents abusive]] and thoroughly monstrous EvilMatriarch who [[spoiler:wanted her as a ReplacementGoldfish for her daughter, Alicia, but grew to hate her for having her own personality]] before Nanoha entered her life. Her reason for taking in Erio and Caro was so that they wouldn't have to grow up like her.
* Quite a few people in ''Manga/BlackLagoon''. Revy is the poster child since she's a main character, but several of the supporting cast have one as well. For the most part, they're rather emotionally stable about it, though. For the most part. Don't ask us about [[CreepyTwins Hänsel and Gretel]], though.
* The backstory of Kagura from ''{{Ga-Rei}}'' involves her being forced to kill her own older sister. In the beginning, it doesn't bother her too much, but, later on, it comes back to hit her hard.
* Blue (Green in the English version) and Silver from ''PokemonSpecial''.
** [[spoiler: Although the Mask of Ice DID kidnap them in order to use them for his plans, you see that he's got a heart for the kids]]. This is seen in the FRLG chapter, in the flashback of [[spoiler: Silver and Blue/Green escaping Mask of Ice. Before, you see a large ice statue of all the kidnapped children and Mask of Ice, all wearing their masks and everything. After the kids run away, you see Pryce change the sculpture into one of all the kids standing around Pryce, who is in a wheelchair, all of them smiling.]] So you gotta assume that [[spoiler: Pryce loved the kids like they were his own, even if he did kidnap them.]]
*** Then again, [[spoiler: whether or not he loved the kids, there is no doubt that Pryce had absolutely no clue how to raise them. One panel actually hints that he physically hit Blue just because she wanted to nickname her Jigglypuff. Judging by that panel, it's pretty obvious that Blue and Silver had an awful childhood]].
* Played straight with Mitsumi in ''PokemonDiamondAndPearlAdventure''. She was raised by Cyrus to be devoid of all feelings toward Pokemon and human, her only purpose to defeat her opponents. Rowan eventually softened her up though, and made her realize that there's more to Pokemon than fighting.
* Ciel from ''Manga/BlackButler'' was a happy, loving, carefree child before his tenth birthday. Then, his parents were murdered, the mansion set on fire, and he's kidnapped. He's locked in a cage with other children his age and eventually made a child sacrifice until he accidentally called upon a demon in his desperation to live. His past is still being pieced together so more details will probably surface. No wonder he's a bitter, driven [[TroubledButCute 13-year-old.]]
** The children in [[CircusOfFear Noah's Circus]] had a pretty bad past, too. Too bad the man who helped them [[spoiler: turned into a crazy StalkerWithACrush and, with some [[MadScientist psycho doctor]], killed children so their bones could be used in the making of prosthetics.]]
* Mist and Euphemia from ''{{Knights}}''. The former is a [[HeroWithBadPublicity knight of African heritage (in Medieval Europe)]] whose mother was burned at the stake by his father, who is also trying to kill him. The latter was accused of witchery and was [[PrisonRape raped in prison]].
* In ''Manga/SoulEater'', Crona was used as an experiment for [[AmbiguousGender his/her]] mother, and ended up becoming the host to a Living Weapon, driven insane through physical and psychological abuse, and forced to kill unknown (but probably large) numbers of people in order to harvest their souls. Crona gets a brief respite when Maka [[DefeatMeansFriendship defeats]] them, only to be forced back into working for Medusa.
** From what little we know, Liz and Patti's history is probably a troubled one, but this is hardly referred to.
** The anime, thanks to its GeckoEnding, makes things a bit better for Chrona by [[spoiler: having him/her finally [[CallingTheOldManOut decide to stop Medusa]], end up [[TakingTheBullet dying to save Maka]] and finally [[NotQuiteDead being saved]] in time to give out a bit of {{Narm}} in the finale]].
* The characters in ''DGrayMan''. Specifically, a whole bunch of the main Exorcists. Kanda and Lenalee, in particular, had their traumatic pasts inflicted on them by the "good guys" so they could fight the "bad guys". Allen was abandoned, beaten, and such until he met Mana, who died shortly after. Miranda was always teased for being wimpy and useless. Krory has never left the castle in his life. Lavi used to be cold and emotionless.
* ''PandoraHearts'' is full of characters with this trope, though it's not very obvious at first. Gilbert, Vincent, Alice, and Break are probably the best examples. It then revealed just how horrible Eliot and Leo's lives have been.
* Both the lead heroines from ''MacrossFrontier'' are examples of this.
** [[TheOjou Sheryl]] grew up as a homeless orphan in the Galaxy fleet before being "discovered" by her manager, Grace. Also, even when she does get past that and works her way to the top as an IdolSinger, she finds out that everything she's ever achieved was actually part of [[spoiler: [[MagnificentBastard Grace]]'s ]] plan, leading to her [[HeroicBSOD breakdown]] later in the series.
*** It doesn't help that [[spoiler: Grace is the source of her [[BodyHorror v-type infection]] and is likely the reason why she's an orphan in the first place]].
** [[CuteLittleFangs Ranka]] is also an orphan who [[spoiler: lost her family during a Vajra attack on their research fleet]], an event so traumatic that she [[LaserGuidedAmnesia lost her memories]] and, for a time, the [[TheVoiceless ability to speak]] before her adoptive brother got to her.
*** It's made worse for her that [[spoiler: the cause of the attack was her singing, which, thanks to the Vajra germs she got from her mother, allowed her to unknowingly comunicate with the Vajra.]]
* ''ChronoCrusade'' has this trope in ''spades''.
** [[FailureKnight Chrono]] is the most obvious example, having once been part of the Sinners and [[spoiler:accidentally killed the woman he loved]].
** In the manga, all of the Sinners are refugees from their home and only betrayed the other demons because it was that or be killed. Aion's reasons for leaving are particularly troubled (but crazy).
** Rosette and Joshua are orphans. This would be ConvenientlyAnOrphan if it wasn't for the fact that both of them have some flaws explained by their parents' deaths (particularly in the manga).
** Satella watched as her home burned to the ground and her family was killed by a demon around the age of 9 or so. [[spoiler:Fiore is the sister she lost in the massacre, who CameBackWrong.]]
** Azmaria's parents either abandoned her or were killed (possibly during the first world war). She was then taken in by a group of traveling musicians, who were killed by a man so he could adopt her and use her powers to [[{{Necromantic}} bring back his dead wife]]. Yep, he was killed too.
* Hei, BadassLongcoat AntiHero of ''DarkerThanBlack'', falls into this ''bad''. Start with dead little sister and betrayal by his girlfriend and work up from there: [[spoiler:his little sister became a Contractor and was recruited by TheSyndicate, and he joined as a BadassNormal to [[BigBrotherInstinct try to protect her]]. [[ChildSoldiers They were both in their early teens]]. After a few years of very mixed feelings, guilt, and trauma later, his then-girlfriend Amber (apparently) betrayed him, and his sister disappeared when Heaven's Gate exploded. He basically woke up with her powers, no sign of her, and ''no clue what the hell happened''.]] Add a few years more spent working for TheSyndicate as an assassin because a) they'd kill him otherwise and b) he's never done anything else, it's no wonder he's a {{stoic}} ShellShockedVeteran.
* ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'': [[DysfunctionJunction Practically everybody]]. Ed and Al lost their mother when they were young, tried to resurrect her, and failed; and, as a result, [[FirstEpisodeSpoiler Ed lost two of his limbs and Al his entire body]]. Roy and Hawkeye, among others, participated in the Ishvalan genocide and feel extremely guilty about it. Scar lost his brother in said genocide, Winry's parents were killed on the battlefield, Hohenheim [[spoiler:unknowingly helped kill off the population of an entire country]], and Bradley [[spoiler:grew up as a test subject, was injected with the Philosopher's Stone, and does not know whether his present personality is the one he had prior to the injection]].
** Roy especially qualifies in [[Anime/FullmetalAlchemist the 2003 anime version]], because he [[spoiler:was the one who shot and killed Winry's parents under military orders]]. He was almost DrivenToSuicide because of it.
* ''Everyone'' in ''MyLovelyGhostKana''. It's how they [[AngstWhatAngst get past it]] that makes the story so heartwarming.
* This is how the ''Manga/PlusAnima'' children are usually depicted gaining their animas, animal spirits of sorts which grant them the animal's abilities. It comes from the need for help to escape from a dangerous situation, such as being close to death.
* Soubi from ''{{Loveless}}'' was orphaned at the age of six, raised by a teacher who wanted to control him completely and [[spoiler: sexually abused him]], and then handed off to Seimei, who [[spoiler: viewed him as a possession and physically and emotionally abused him before abandoning him without explanation.]] Ritsuka is a little young for this trope, but is well on his way to acquiring one.
* For all that it's a gag series, ''Manga/{{Gintama}}'' features characters with these. Gintoki is a ShellShockedVeteran, Kagura comes from a lethally DysfunctionalFamily, Kyuubei had an...unconventional upbringing, etc.
* A ''lot'' of characters in ''SpeedGrapher'', but none more so than Chōji Suitengu, the BigBad of the series. Near the end of the series, after showing how much of a [[MagnificentBastard bastard]] he is, one episode finally delves into his history and gives him a hell of a FreudianExcuse.
* It's not revealed until about a third of the way into the series, but ''KiddyGrade'' protagonist Eclair ended up so [[OutDamnedSpot tortured by the things she did as an ES Agent]] that she had her memories sealed. The seal also served as a PowerLimiter. The reveals start coming when events start to unravel the mental block.
* ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'': most characters just have a Dark And Troubled Present, but Kyouko [[spoiler:had her attempt to help her father spectacularly backfire when he finds out, causing him to go nuts and kill the family]], Mami [[spoiler:lost her family in an accident and contracted with Kyubey to save her life]], and Homura [[spoiler:has been resetting time in a futile attempt to save Madoka for months now]].
* In ''Manga/WildFangs'', it turns out Syon was [[BioAugmentation artificially engineered]] and grew up in a [[MadScientistLaboratory lab]] where he was constantly experimented on but had no one who remotely cared for him. Subverted in that he doesn't remember it all that well so it's not as big a deal as others think it is.
* If anyone in ''Anime/{{Monster}}'' appears ''not'' to have a Dark and Troubled Past, just keep reading/watching and one will be revealed.
** Ironically, the king of this trope in the series is none other than that irredeemable Johan Liebert. Or is he? The debate goes on and on...
* From ''{{Arago}}'', there are the four horse men. Each one of them has deeply rooted reasons why he or she despises humanity.
* Joe Asakura of ''Anime/ScienceNinjaTeamGatchaman''. His parents were murdered almost right in front of him, and then the assassin tried to kill him.
* [[DesignatedVillain Clair Leonelli]] in ''HeatGuyJ''. His mother died giving birth to him, and his father was abusive and also neglectful, hoping to train him as a suitable successor. Eventually, he [[DrivenToMadness went insane]] and [[spoiler: [[TheDogBitesBack killed his dad]]]].
* ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'': Shinobi in general have blood on their hands before they reach chunin rank. Also, considering they are essentially soldiers, whose relatives and friends are also soldiers, living in a warzone, nearly every character has lost someone important to them at some point.
** Itachi saw the end of the 3th ninja war and the kyuubi attack before he was even a ninja and decided to do ANYTHING to pevent war.
** Kakashi saw his father take his own life at 7, [[spoiler:then his friend Obito dies, giving him a sharingan and a new ninja way, then he is forced to kill Rin for an as of yet unknown reason, and finally, he loses Minato who was his teacher. Considering the [[ParentalSubstitute kind of bond teachers and students have]] in Naruto]], this must have hit him hard as well..]
** Sasuke, at 8, saw his clan get massacred by his older brother [[spoiler: under order of the Hokage]] and killed said brother at 16, [[spoiler: only to learn the truth after the act]], and set himself on the [[CycleOfRevenge Asura path]]
** There are many more examples to think of. Most of the villains have similar backgrounds, and quite a few good guys as well..
* No mentions of Ai Enma from ''HellGirl'' yet? That girl was made an outcast by her village, and was selected to be sacrificed to a mountain god at the age of 7. She escaped that fate, only to be faced with a worse one 6 years later, where she was betrayed by her only friend and she her family was buried alive. Then she tried to deliver vengeance on her village and was condemned to carry souls to Hell for eternity.
* It's mentioned in ''Manga/FairyTail'' that everyone in the guild has ''some'' sort of hidden pain in their pasts. A lot of them are explored in each arc of the manga as it goes on.
* Inspector Himuro of Manga/{{Remote}} has one that is regularly hinted at but not revealed until the last few volumes
* The ''Franchise/{{Gundam}}'' franchise has quite a bit of this. From characters growing up as orphaned {{Child Soldier}}s in ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamWing Gundam Wing]]'' and ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundam00 Gundam 00]]'' to ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamUnicorn Gundam Unicorn]]'', where one character manages to have a past that includes [[CloningBlues knowing she's a clone]] and [[RapeAsDrama being used as an underage sex slave in a brothel]]. Apparently, to put across the WarIsHell message, one must use soldiers who have messed-up pasts.
* Accelerator in ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex''. Due to his [[SuperpowerLottery seemingly invincible powers]], he's been attacked ever since he was a child by people who either wanted to "prove their strength" or by people who thought [[PersonOfMassDestruction he was too dangerous to let live]]. He survived all of this without a scratch, but having that much violence directed at him all his life has left him rather messed up. And if people aren't trying to kill him, they're trying to [[TheyWouldCutYouUp use him in inhumane experiments]]. When he's introduced, he's willing to do just about anything to make sure people ''never attack him ever again''.
* Most of the main characters in {{A Cruel God Reigns}}. If they don't have one, they are well on their way to getting one.
** Jeremy is [[spoiler: physically and sexually abused for months before he snaps and kills Greg, and then has to deal with living as a murderer.]]
** Ian grew up knowing his mother [[spoiler: committed suicide]] and wondering why his family was dysfunctional. Later on in the series he has to deal with his {{Broken Pedestal}} view of his father.
** Sandra has a dead first husband and two [[spoiler: {{Bungled Suicide}}]].
** It is heavily implied that Valentine [[spoiler: was sexually abused]] resulting in her {{Dumb Struck}} status.
** Liliya [[spoiler: committed suicide at Greg's urging because she was {{Mistaken for Cheating}}.]]
** Lindon become estranged from his first wife and daughter because he was so rigid and neurotically morose.
** Nadia's mother [[spoiler: blames her for her sister's preoccupation with suicide]]. Her parents also fought bitterly and cheated on each other during her childhood.
** Natasha suffered [[spoiler: Greg's beatings and eventually had to leave Lynn Forest for her own wellbeing, as well has knowing her little sister Liliya killed herself.]]
** Cass' parents are abusive alcoholics, which is why he works so many jobs (legal and illegal), in an attempt to earn money for school and to escape his house, eventually ending in his drug addiction and {{Hooker with a Heart of Gold}}.
** Even {{Bratty Half Pint}} Matt, who grew up unwanted because [[spoiler: Greg believes that he is not his actual son.]]
* ''Manga/{{Kotoura-san}}''
** Haruka's life story, to put it bluntly, is the destruction of the lives of a born {{telepath|y}}ic girl.
** Yuriko has one too. When she was a child, her mother was a famed psychic, but DrivenToSuicide after being accused as a fake. This is why she is so eager to prove psychics exist.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comics]]
* The ''ComicBook/{{X-Men}}'''s {{Wolverine}}, who ''also'' had a MysteriousPast and, thanks to his amnesia, had it remain that way for a looong time. Further complicated by [[FakeMemories implanted memories]]; as if forgotten trauma wasn't bad enough, how about a helping of trauma that ''didn't actually happen?'' Not to mention the pain of wondering if his few happy memories [[OrWasItADream were real or not]].
* {{Magneto}}, in spades. His entire birth family was killed in the Holocaust, his daughter Anya died in a fire because he didn't know how to use his nascent powers to save her, and his wife (who was also his childhood sweetheart) called him a monster and fled after he -- literally -- exploded in rage and killed the villagers who'd prevented him from either concentrating on said powers or going after Anya by normal means. Later, he joined an American government agency to pursue Nazis, and agents killed his girlfriend because he had pursued one of the "wrong" Nazis. No wonder the guy has a deeply cynical attitude toward humanity.
* {{Gambit}} was not merely an orphan whose parents may or may not be dead--or may simply have deliberately abandoned him--but was taken in by a creepy old man/possible pedophile, then turned out onto the streets of New Orleans to fend for himself until the age of ten, then was adopted, fell in love, witnessed his younger cousin's drowning (at age 13), further witnessed the retrieval of said cousin's body(!), accidently killed his fiancee's brother in a duel, and accordingly was exiled from the only home he ever knew. To make matters worse, his powers raged out of control and in exchange for help fixing them he was tasked with--unbeknownst to him-leading a murder-squad against a group of fearful, helpless mutants, only managing to save the life of a single child. Oh, and the girl he loves he can't even kiss because she'd suck the life out of him.
* Comicbook/{{Batman}} has probably the quintessential Dark and Troubled Past, which was his parents getting murdered by an unknown mugger before his very eyes.
* And Comicbook/{{Spider-Man}} has his tying in with [[MyGreatestFailure his greatest failure]], with Peter Parker refusing to stop a bad guy who would then go on to kill his beloved Uncle Ben.
* Comicbook/IncredibleHulk: Bruce Banner and his mother were regularly abused by his father, Brian. Brian eventually killed his wife, in front of Bruce.
* V from ''ComicBook/VForVendetta'' was [[ColdBloodedTorture tortured]] and experimented on in a concentration camp, transforming him into an embodiment of anarchism.
* Ah, Thug-Boy from ''Comicbook/{{Empowered}}''. The general criminality is how he met the love of his life, and she knows the basic outline of the whole 'Witless Minion' scam (although the detail about their last employer/victim still searching for the only survivor has apparently been glossed over). But then there is San Antonio. [[spoiler: Cape-killing terrorist anyone?]]
* ''SinCity'' protagonists usually have one, even if we never get their full backstory. This comes in vague references to past events; Dwight apparerntly had a criminal past and Wallace likely had an abusive childhood, for instance. Marv was tied to a tree in the middle of the woods and left overnight once, was in prison, and once made a reference to being in a war.
* ''Grimjack'' has probably one of the worst cases of this trope. Abused and abandoned by his family, he spent his childhood fighting for his life in a gladitoral arena. He eventually escapes and finds peace in another dimension, only for everyone in the dimension, including his true love, to be slaughtered by demons. Then there was all the crap he went through during the comic.
* Starfire from ''ComicBook/RedHoodAndTheOutlaws'' has spent most of her life as a slave to the Citadel, after being sold into it by her own sister.[[spoiler: She mentions some experiments done on her too, which were all likely horrific.]]
* {{X-23}}, ho boy. A clone created by mixing Wolverine's genetic material with that of her human "mother" to be a living weapon, Laura was raised in a padded cell, beaten, abused, had her HealingFactor ''forcibly activated'' by exposing her to lethal doses of radiation as a child, had her claws surgically removed to be coated in adamantium one at a time ''with no attempt at anesthesia whatsoever'', was trained and conditioned almost from birth to be an assassin and racked up an impressive body count ''before she was a teenager'', and was made to kill the only people during this time who ever showed her any kindness by means of an olfactory trigger that she was conditioned to enter an UnstoppableRage whenever she was exposed to it. One of them was her mother, [[TearJerker right before she planned to help Laura escape]]. After ''finally'' managing to do so she was forced to cut off contact with the only other family she had to protect them from her abusive handler, and spent time on the streets as a child prostitute specializing in cutting her clients.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fanfiction]]
* This is a common trait of {{Mary Sue}}s -- to have pasts lathered in tragedy, to give them instant sympathy points, which have little to no bearing on the actual behavior of the character (unless it's to make them a JerkassSue). [[http://www.interrobangstudios.com/potluck/index.php?strip_id=1014 Ensign Sue demonstrates.]] (Parody)
* ''Fanfic/KyonBigDamnHero'' has [[spoiler:Michikyuu Kanae]], who, as a slider, has gone through hundreds of worlds, only to have them invaded by aliens and everyone she loved killed. Again. ''[[DoomMagnet Hundreds of times]]''.
* In the {{Fanfic/Uplifted}} series, Joachim Hoch has this. He was conceived as a last ditch attempt to bring happiness to a couple who had lost their children to the First World War, and was beaten by his father until he was killed during the occupation of the Ruhr. He then ran away from home and was taken in by an SS officer (a surprisingly decent man), and ultimately followed in his footsteps. He's a surprisingly balanced person in spite of all this.
* Some ''WesternAnimation/TotalDramaIsland'' fanfics give the characters tragic pasts.
* All of the main characters in the fanfic ''FanFic/{{Freefall}}'' have tragic childhoods, to a varying degree of "tragic"; not surprising, since the fic features Creator/{{CLAMP}} characters.
* In ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', there's Trixie's portrayal in some of the better [[PortmanteauCoupleName Twixie]][[note]]Twilight/Trixie[[/note]] shipping fics. At least two fanfics - ''[[http://www.equestriadaily.com/2011/03/story-out-in-cold.html Out in the Cold]]'' and ''[[http://www.equestriadaily.com/2011/06/story-of-mares-and-magic.html Of Mares and Magic]]'' - gave her a parent who inspired her to take up magic, then went and died on her and left her traumatised. This not only provides a FreudianExcuse for why she acts like such a jerk in-series, but also provides grounds for the eventual {{Shipping}}.
* In ''A New Face In Ponyville'', Joshua Rocket is revealed to have shadows of one of them in chapter 9[[note]]Counteraction[[/note]]. This could also be a case of Mysterious Past since not a lot of concrete details were given and even what WAS said could be put up for speculation considering [[spoiler:it was under heavy sedation after an attack from the Equestrian Pony Alliance]]
* Firefly in ''Fanfic/AceCombatTheEquestrianWar'' lost her home, her parents and her dreams of becoming a Wonderbolt, thanks to [[spoiler: Black Star]]. It's the reason she is sometimes cold and angsty toward others.
* In [[http://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-3655-3/Anoron+The+Key+To+Marauding.htm#storybody The Key to Marauding]], Dawn has all the emotional baggage of Series 5 of Buffy (dead mother, knowing that the first 14 years of her life aren't real encounters with Glory etc...). In the fic she is [[spoiler: chained up in the dungeon and nearly raped by Lucius Malfoy, kidnapped and tortured by Death Eaters and is torn between her own world and the Potterverse when a way of getting back appears.]]
** By the sequel she has lost [[spoiler: her adopted parents (Mr. and Mrs Potter). Then, pretty much in one night, her adopted brother (James), a woman who was like her sister (Lily), the man she loved had gone insane before her eyes (Sirius) and was imprisoned in Azkaban, where she watched him fall apart, knowing he was innocent and knew the traitor to be former TrueCompanion Peter Pettigrew, and was also aware that she was the bait for his betrayal. Then, she lost custody of her Godson (Harry) because of Blood Wards, and had to endure a year of trying to care for him, but as she said herself to Harry, 'every one thing I gave you, they took two away' before leaving, recognising that she was making it worse for him. She then had to endure Harry's anger at her until the Blood Ward thing is explained to him. Oh, and to top it all off, she miscarried her baby by Sirius]]. TraumaCongaLine doesn't even begin to describe it.
* Ciara's backstory in [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7831829/1/Looming_Darkness Looming Darkness]]. [[spoiler: After Zelda's mother revealed there was a prophecy concerning her, she spirited Ciara away to Earth and left her with AbusiveParents while her real parents were murdered by Ganondorf. She'd been abused for her first 13 years of life until Link brought her back to Hyrule to take down Ganondorf.]]
* Although never stated in the fanfiction itself, Darkheart of FanFic/TheReturnOfChaos is revealed to have a Dark and Troubled Past by the author in other works.
* Rainbow Dash, in the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' fanfic ''Fanfic/LunasPowerAndRainbowsLove'', says that she and Fluttershy do not like to talk about their time in flight school, because it "wasn't a happy part of our lives." it's implied that bullying is the reason for this.
* Eric Cartman in ''Fanfic/TheBalladOfStootAndArgyle'' (a ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' fanfic). He flat-out admits to Terrance that he killed Scott Tenorman's parents, and saw so many parallels between his life and ''Theatre/OedipusTheKing'' in junior high that, heavily disturbed, he pledged to [[TheAtoner overcome his past ways]]. Whether or not he's succeeded is still up in the air.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film]]
* Michael in ''TheBlindSide'': [[AbusiveParents crack mom]], [[ParentalAbandonment disappeared dad]], virtually no schooling, homelessness, etc.
* The eponymous ''Film/MaxPayne'' had one, his family was killed in a mysterious robbery. Made extra saccharine thanks to the {{Flash Back}}s being in a warm ember tone compared to the rest of the film's drab winter blues and grays.
** To be even more specific, in [[VideoGame/MaxPayne the game]] the movie is based upon, his family got killed by V-head junkies [[spoiler:as part of an attempt to silence Max's wife for [[HeKnowsTooMuch knowing too much]] about Project Valhalla]]. Tragically, [[spoiler:Max's wife didn't have a clue what the memo meant and wanted to talk to Max about it, but he didn't listen to her because he had to go to work for the day]].
* The emotional turmoil brought on by the childhood abuse of Tim Robbins' character is the main crux of ''MysticRiver''.
* Gabriel in ''Film/VanHelsing'' also has Wolverine Amnesia, it's implied by {{Dracula}} they both share "a history" together, and even hints at Gabriel being an immortal "tripped" angel or the like, but nothing concrete ever comes of it. SequelHook?
* In the 2009 ''Film/StarTrek'' film, Captain James T. Kirk lost his father [[BirthDeathJuxtaposition just minutes after his birth]]. He was [[AbusiveParents frequently abused]] by his stepfather while his mother was working off-planet, his brother ran away when he was still young, and he was already a repeat offender long before enlisting in Starfleet. It is also possible that he survived [[FinalSolution Tarsus IV]] (if future movies keep with [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries the original series]]).
* O-Ren Ishii from ''KillBill'' is a female example, losing both of her parents to vicious {{Yakuza}} gangsters at the age of seven and then getting her revenge just four years later.
* The main character of ''Film/{{Hoosiers}}'', Norman Dale, moves to the small town of Hickory, Indiana to take one last shot at redemption as a basketball coach after [[spoiler:ruining his coaching career many years earlier when he lost his temper and punched one of his own players]].
* Subverted in ''Film/TheDarkKnight'', where the Joker likes telling stories about his Dark and Troubled Past to explain his scars...but every story is different.
** This is a tribute to AlanMoore's 'The Killing Joke', wherein The Joker has the following line; "Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another...if I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be [[MultipleChoicePast multiple choice!]]"
* Kovu from ''Disney/TheLionKing 2'' has one.
* The first five minutes of ''Film/TheDescent'' kill off the main character's husband and young daughter, leaving her traumatized and sometimes hallucinating. A big part of what fuels her trip into [[spoiler:AxCrazy]], particularly if the [[AllJustADream monsters don't really exist.]]
* The first five minutes of the ''Film/PromNight2008'' remake feature the protagonist coming home to find her father and brother dead, and watch her mother get killed, all because the killer was looking for her. For her character, this doesn't really come into play much for the rest of the movie, even when the killer comes back.
* Princess Leia. She remembers her mother's death (despite being only a baby at the time), saw her adoptive homeworld destroyed as a YouSaidYouWouldLetThemGo, has seen [[spoiler:one son KIA]] and [[spoiler:the other do a FaceHeelTurn -- his twin sister was forced to kill him]].
** Considering she found out she was adopted only a few minutes before, when Luke asked her about her mother's death, she may have been referring to her adoptive mother.
* Megara in ''Disney/{{Hercules}}'': she sold her soul to Hades in order to save her boyfriend, and he dumped her shortly after that. Also, it's hinted that she probably had more problems to face in life besides that.
* Given that the main characters in ''TheWayBack'' are seven [[TheGulag gulag]] escapees and an orphan, this is something of a given. None of the men will tell each other their stories, but they all tell the girl, who, in turn, passes them on to the others. When she asks why they don't talk to one another, she's told that, in the gulag, the less you say, the better off you are.
* Will in ''Film/SnowWhiteATaleofTerror'' still has nightmares about the events that led to his banishment and scars.
* In the 2011 film ''Film/{{Warrior}}'': Why Tommy left Iraq. %% This entry was added automatically by FELH2. In case the wording doesn't make sense, rewrite it as you like, remove this comment and tell this troper.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* The Marquess from ''The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making'' has a very troubled past. [[spoiler: She stumbled into Fairyland when she was 12, lived there for many years, fell in love, became a heroine and queen, and became pregnant. Then she was snatched back into the human world, stuck in a 12 year old's body and with her alcoholic and abusive father, no husband, no child, and no Fairyland.]]
* Most of the main characters in T.S.Hana's ''Dawn of Craven: The Alchemist'' fall under this trope.
** Except Joshil.
** The Witch Megiram's servant, Ororo, is implied to have a troubled past, as she lives with the evil woman "by choice". [[spoiler: She chose to live with Megiram as a servant for life over staying with the possibly rich Axel who loved her quite a bit (to the point where he still blushes at seeing her). There had to have been something up.]]
* Wang Sau-leyan in ''ChungKuo''. He was ugly, fat, clumsy, and treated as a poor sequel to his brothers while he grew up. This is not presented as an excuse for his behavior, but it helps explain it.
* Severus Snape from the ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' franchise, the neglected and emotionally abused child who fell to TheDarkSide at school and [[TheAtoner then devoted]] [[LoveRedeems the rest of his life]] to [[EccentricMentor Dumbledore's]] cause.
** Also Sirius Black, who had (let's count!): 1) a dead best friend, 2) a dead brother, 3) abandoned (disowned) by parents, 4) spent 13 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, 5) been betrayed by former [[TrueCompanions True Companion]] Peter Pettigrew!
** [[spoiler: Dumbledore, who went through the following events in his lifetime: 1) his sister was rendered [[PowerIncontinence magically unstable]] due to being attacked by [[BullyingADragon three ]] {{Muggles}}, 2) [[ParentalAbandonment his father was sent to prison for attacking said Muggles,]] 3) his mother was accidentally killed by his unstable sister, 4) he then neglected said sister and spent all his time planning a takeover of the Muggle world [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans ‘for the greater good’]] with his [[HoYay crush Gellert Grindelwald,]] and 5) he might have accidentally killed his sister in a three-way duel with his brother and Gellert Grindelwald. ([[WordOfGod Rowling says]] [[TheFirstCutIsTheDeepest that what he did while infatuated with Grindelwald turned him asexual]]).]]
** Harry himself: both parents murdered before his eyes at age one, nine years living with abusive guardians, being bullied at school by his cousin and his cousin's friends, a dead godfather, a dead mentor, the most evil person in his world has a connection to him, a life and death battle every year, and sometimes his friends turn their backs on him.
** Neville Longbottom also deserves a mention. Lives with his grandma because his parents were tortured into insanity by Death Eaters and feels that he can never live up to them and has no self confidence at all. He also thought for a long time that he was a squib and only discovered his magical ability by being dropped out of a window.
* ''ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents'' has this with Count Olaf, and the entire series could be said to be the dark and troubled past of Violet, Klaus, and Sunny.
* A lot of characters from ASongOfIceAndFire because Westeros truly is a CrapsackWorld.
** Sandor Clegane killed an innocent peasant boy and laughed about it, however the fandom forgave him as soon as he confided that his older brother Gregor had burnt his face as a child.
** To be fair, this is a series that opens with the closest thing it has to an actual protagonist executing a soldier for suffering from PTSD, and whose first act revolves around another point of view character intentionally tossing an eight-year-old from a tall tower. So, in context, one murder isn't really that bad, and in fact Clegane may be the most moral character in the series simply because he has some ''awareness'' that the things he's doing are terrible, where the other protagonists, who are all bloody-handed murderers at this point, are firmly convinced they're the hero.
* Most of the vampires from ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' seem have dark and troubled last minutes of their '''''human''''' lives; the terrific pain of the transformative venom doesn't help matters.
* Vin from ''{{Mistborn}}.'' Born the daughter of a skaa (peasant) woman and an Imperial nobleman (a death sentence from the get go), her earliest memory is of her insane mother killing her little sister [[spoiler: and performing Hemalurgy to transfer some of her soul to Vin]], before being rescued by her older half-brother. Said half-brother genuinely cares about Vin, but he's a cynical, abusive {{Jerkass}} who hammers into her head the idea that she can't trust anyone because everybody is selfish and manipulative. They spend the next several years working as petty thieves on the lowest rung of society, until the half-brother runs out on her, [[spoiler: though it turns out that he was actually captured and executed]], leaving Vin without a protecter in a den of scum. Of course, from there, she gets recruited by LaResistance, finds out that she's an ExtraordinarilyEmpoweredGirl, and [[TookALevelInBadass takes a level in badass]], but still. Is it any wonder the poor girl spends most of the trilogy wrestling with crippling paranoia?
* Francis Crawford of Lymond in Dorothy Dunnett's ''Lymond Chronicles''. He's got almost everything: rejection by his father, didn't fit in as a child, betrayed by his early--perhaps first--lover, framed as a traitor, physical and perhaps sexual abuse as a galley prisoner, self-hatred because he blames himself for his sister's death, and pretty much everyone he cares about dies as a result of knowing him.
* Séraphine Francq (Fiancée du Vent): lost her mother at a young age, her father died from the experiment that gave her her powers, was gang-raped by schoolmates, and consequently beat them up so hard that one of them is stuck in a wheelchair for life, giving her remorse...
* Barbie, from Creator/StephenKing's ''UnderTheDome'', has a [[MyGreatestFailure greatest failure]] in the time he [[spoiler: allowed his military unit in Iraq to torture and kill a prisoner for no reason]]. He regrets this for the rest of his life, and his remorse thinking back on it is bad enough [[spoiler: to get an EnergyBeing who sees him as an ant to show pity on him]].
* K.J Parker's ''Literature/TheScavengerTrilogy''. The story revolves around Poldarn's unknown past and worse pasts are few.
* Niall from ''WickedLovely'': 1. ColdBloodedTorture, 2. RapeAsBackstory, 3. both were orchestrated by the one he loved above all others, 4. inadvertently responsible for the deaths of several mortals. That's not even counting what happens to him ''during'' the series. He is TheWoobie, indeed.
* Harry in ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles''. [[DeathByChildbirth Never knew his mother]], his dad died when he was a kid, bullied at an orphanage, adopted by an abusive EvilMentor who tried to turn him to TheDarkSide, had to kill him in self-defense, arrested by the White Council, barely escaped the death penalty for violating the Laws of Magic, and is still under the Doom of Damocles and being stalked by an InspectorJavert at the beginning of the series. None of this is what makes him a {{woobie}}; he is one because, taking into account the things that happen to him during the actual ''series'', his backstory isn't depressing so much as it's "a ''very small'' taste of what's to come.''
* Burke from AndrewVachss' books. Born to a mother (strongly implied to be a teen prostitute) who promptly abandoned him, brought up through a variety of foster and juvenile homes, and experiencing the worst that humanity has to offer is a very succinct description of his past.
* Since all of the princesses of ''Literature/ThePrincessSeries'' are based mostly on the Grimm Bros. version, they all have this, though some more than others.
* Kieran Trevarde of ''TheGodEaters'' has a dead mother, some degree of rape and child prostitution, as well as drug addiction in his past, and a dead lover on top of all that at the outset of the novel.
* YMMV, but Mr. Rochester of ''Literature/JaneEyre'' was betrayed by his greedy father and brother to marry a woman they knew was insane just to get her money, and all the man ever wanted was to find someone to love.
** Jane had one, too. She was orphaned, put into an unloving and abusive home, and sent to an unsanitary boarding school that could barely feed its students. The first friend that she made there died shortly after she arrived, as did most of the other students in a typhoid epidemic.
* Another Charlotte Brontë example: Lucy Snowe in Literature/{{Villette}}.
* Everyone in ''ThePaleKing'', but Toni Ware especially. She spent her childhood [[spoiler: in perpetual poverty as she and her sometimes-crazy mother drifted around the country. She also saw her mother murdered right in front of her.]]
* In the ''Literature/WarriorCats'' series, there are several.
** Bluestar's mother died when Bluestar was only an apprentice, and [[WellDoneSonGuy her father never really paid much attention to her and her sister]]. Her sister died as a young mother, and Bluestar felt guilty for her death because she'd convinced Snowfur to leave the camp for a little while. She had kits with a [=RiverClan=] cat (a forbidden relationship), but had to give them up in order to become deputy instead of Thistleclaw, and one died.
** Crookedstar sustained a disfiguring injury as a kit. Because his shallow mother couldn't stand having such an ugly kit, she [[TheUnfavorite neglected him, favored his brother]], and renamed him Crookedkit for his injury. As he grew up, many of the cats he was close to died.
** Yellowfang, a medicine cat, had kits with the Clan leader (another forbidden relationship). Two of them died, and the one that lived became cruel and bloodthirsty, killing his own father and taking leadership, breaking the warrior code by [[InvasionOfTheBabySnatchers stealing kits from other Clans]], and even murdering kits from his own Clan and framing Yellowfang.
* The Literature/InDeath series: Eve was abandoned by her mother, raped by her father (who impregnated her mother with the sole intention of selling her to child molesters), killed him in self-defense, and then had to handle at least one abusive foster parent as she grew up in the system. Roarke was regularly beaten up by his father and non-biological mother, had to steal for his father, and even though Summerset took him in, they lost Marlena, Summerset's daughter, to a group of rapists. Dr. Mira watched her parents divorce, her mother remarry, and was sexually abused by her stepfather to the point of being DrivenToSuicide (fortunately, she survived). Boy, these three had it rough, didn't they?
* Kvothe from ''Literature/TheNameOfTheWind'' had his entire troupe die, lived homeless for three years, got kicked out of the only place he felt he belonged after the death of his troupe...and that's just what we know so far.
* In ''Literature/HeartsBlood'', Anluan’s entire family history, all the way back to his great-grandfather, Nechtan, [[spoiler:who had an evil summoning spell go VERY wrong]].
** Caitrin’s isn’t exactly bright and cheery either. Her father’s dead, her sister married and left her, and a distant relative took over the house and allowed her son to beat Caitrin when he felt like it.
** The members of the host are all souls from Purgatory. Some of them seem to have particularly violent pasts.
* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' Tobias. His natural father had to leave, and he was given a fake father, who then left himself. His mother was in an accident and didn't even remember him, besides being blind. He was bounced among aunts and uncles who didn't really care about him and became a bully magnet.
** Marco. The disappearance of his mother and the subsequent split of his family caused him to become more cynical and, in effect, more ruthless and pragmatic and less attached to romantic, idealistic principles.
* Fisk from the ''KnightAndRogueSeries''. He took up crime to support help suport his sisters after they lost both parents to disease. When his oldest sister marries someone who could take care of them, he decided Fisk alone couldn't stay, becuase he didn't want to be associated with a criminal. And that's ignoring everything involving Jack Bannister.
* In DevonMonk's ''[[Literature/AgeOfSteam Dead Iron]]'', Cedar's brother Wil dragged him west after the loss of his wife and children. Then they went on the wrong land and were {{curse}}d into {{werewolf}} form. Cedar came to find himself at the end of a bloody trail, and backtracked to find his brother's wolf corpse, its throat torn out by himself.
* In Creator/GeneStrattonPorter's ''Literature/{{Freckles}}'', Freckles does not remember his dark and troubled past, but knows it happened:
-->''Does it seem to you that anyone would take a newborn baby and row over it, until it was bruised black, cut off its hand, and [[DoorStopBaby leave it out in a bitter night on the steps of a charity home]], to the care of strangers? That's what somebody did to me.''
* While the ''AuntDimity'' series is generally upbeat, many characters have had brushes with insanity, tragic accidents, serious diseases, major injuries, even war and murder. In some cases, coping with the fallout occurs over an extended period (often carrying over from one book to the next). The fates of other, more minor characters are addressed in the epilogue that closes each novel; they typically go about rebuilding their lives, and are usually better off after all is revealed.
* Both main characters of ''Literature/GivesLight''. Skylar had his mother murdered in front of him when he was five. Her murderer realized he was in the room and slashed his throat. Skylar didn't die, but now he's irreversibly mute. To top this all off, his one dream in life is to be a singer. And then you have Rafael, son of said serial killer. Everyone equates him with his father and he has no friends. Until he meets Skylar.
* Vulpie in ''AFoxTail'' has a particularly dark one, almost to the point of parody, beaten and shot by his birth father at 5, raped by a priest at 12, beaten by another foster parent for being gay... A psychologist strongly believes that it's his reason for hacking the known universe, but Polar helps him grow out of it.
* In Creator/SarahAHoyt's ''Literature/DarkshipThieves'', Kit's wife died, and it looks like he murdered her, and he refuses to clear his name [[spoiler:out of, it turns out, fear that other dark elements of his past will turn up]].
* ''LegacyOfTheDragokin'': All of Kthonian Knights have one; the three girls were kidnapped and raped by truly evil men and the guy had his hands cut off and left for dead for deserting the Leondian army. All of them function as a FreudianExcuse except for the last one. The only thing ''his'' past does is make him angst about how he can no longer truly embrace his precious little sister.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]
* Ned from ''PushingDaisies'' was abandoned by his father, accidentally killed both his mother and the father of his childhood sweetheart, and spent most of his childhood in a BoardingSchoolOfHorrors. This, along with being given the sometimes unfortunate gift of bringing people BackFromTheDead with a touch, led him to grow into a nervous and shy adult with some trust issues.
** And, upon trying to solve his first murder case (which was an accident) to make his father love him more, he was found with the man's body and ''thrown in jail. When he was 10 years old.'' Is there such a thing as a cosmic MoralEventHorizon?
* The initial sequence of the ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' pilot episode shows Sisko being bodily dragged out of his quarters because he refuses to voluntarily leave his wife's corpse behind, despite the fact that the ship was critically damaged by the Borg and he doesn't have enough time to dig her out of the rubble before it explodes. Then we flash forward three years to his arrival at the space station.
** Sisko's second-in-command, Kira Nerys, grew up on Bajor under the ''brutal'' Cardassian Occupation and was [[ChildSoldier participating in the Bajoran resistance movement by the time she was twelve or thirteen]]. Her mother [[spoiler:slept with the Cardassian BigBad]] to obtain more comforts/ensure the survival of her family. Her lover died in her arms. The list goes on.
* Elle Bishop of ''Series/{{Heroes}}'' - originally introduced as a demented vixen (everyone's favourite trope), but then revealed to be ridden with several issues, including being experimented upon as a child, locked up, and pumped full of drugs, eventually leading to her being diagnosed as a sociopath and the subsequent use as an "Executioner" by her own father.
* Giles in ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' is one of the most well mannered and uptight middle-aged English Gentlemen you will ever come across. However, one old friend from College still calls him by his old nickname, [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Ripper]], and their conversations drop tonnes of hints that he used to be one [[EvilSorcerer evil, badass warlock]] in his youth, whose feared reputation was very rightfully earned. It's never explicitly mentioned what he and Ethan did in the past and what [[YouDoNOTWantToKnow happened to the other people in their group]], nor what made him change into the champion of good he is today.
** The rest of them were killed by Eyghon.
** Spike used to be ridiculed by his social peers while still alive, and this is shown to deeply affect his personality, most evidently by lowering his already not-so-good social skills, along with leaving other significant marks. After siring his mother, she abused him verbally and [[ParentalIncest sexually assaulted]] him, to the point that he was forced to kill her for good to stop her. He admits many years later that this episode has been weighting on him. After regaining his soul, he has to [[TheAtoner come to terms]] with the great sense of guilt he feels towards his criminal past. Us viewers usually get to [[TroubledBackstoryFlashback see bits of his past via flashback]], and the extent to which it is dark and troubled is occasionally emphasized by Spike telling Buffy that she [[YouDoNOTWantToKnow really doesn't want to know]] how far he's gone in torturing and killing people. [[DynamicCharacter It gets better]].
* Then there's the ''Series/{{Angel}}'' side. There's Gunn, who ended up a street teen because vampires killed his family, and Fred, who got sent to a hell dimension, enslaved, and lived in a cave for five years.Plus Wesley, who was emotionally abused by his father and locked in a dark closet for hours. Plus Angel himself, of course. And Connor, good lord, Connor. Raised in a hell dimension to hate his real father and once tied to a tree and left behind at five years old so he could work to escape and find his foster father.
* Several character in ''[[Series/BabylonFive Babylon 5]]'':
** Marcus Cole , in the episode in which he was introduced, says he "doesn't believe in miracles". We later learn that he witnessed everyone he cared about, including his Ranger brother, being killed in a Shadow attack on his home colony. He can't shake the survivor's guilt.
** It comes completely unexpected with Delenn, who, throughout the show, is well known for her compassion and kindness, as well as being a firm believer in the just cause and a wise advisor to others, cautioning against anger and hatred. However, it's not until much later that some details from her earlier life get revealed. [[spoiler:She was aboard the ship that encountered the first human vessel and whose salute to the strangers scared the humans so much that they opened fire. When the initial salvo killed the most important religious leader of the minbari, she became the highest ranking person on the ship, and still holding the dead body of her teacher, immediately ordered a holy crusade by the whole minbari people [[KillAllHumans to completely annihilate the entire human race]]. When the destruction of earth was stopped at the very last moment, it was not because she regreted her order.]]
* The character of StephenColbert is prone to SuspiciouslySpecificDenial of certain bad things that definitely didn't happen to him as a child. From his book ''I Am America (And So Can You!)'':
-->''"It doesn't matter how my parents raised me, because I loved my parents. Sure, they could be a little 'strict', but I often think back fondly on the memories I haven't repressed. The truth is, I wouldn't be the man I am today if it wasn't for the way my parents raised me."''
-->''[[FootnoteFever Margin note]]:'' '''''I had a happy childhood.'''''
** Also a case of TruthInTelevision, since the real Colbert's father and two of his older brothers were killed in a plane crash when he was 10.
* Almost everyone on ''Series/{{House}}'' qualifies.
** Dr. House himself [[TeenGenius figured out at age 13]] that his "father" wasn't actually his biological father, and he was therefore the result of his mother's infidelity. The father who raised him was a strict military man who moved them all over the world and was fond of punishing his rebellious son with ice baths and other forms of corporal punishment. Also, there's the whole "losing part of my leg against my will thanks to a decision by [[LoveInterest Stacy]], leaving me with chronic pain and a limp" thing. He didn't want his leg amputated. Later on in the series, when he has to go under for surgery again, he tells Cuddy not to let the doctors amputate it unless there's no other choice.
** Dr. Chase's father [[ParentalAbandonment abandoned the family]], leaving Chase to care for his alcoholic mother, who eventually drank herself to death.
** Dr. Cameron married a man she knew was dying of cancer when she was 21. Since she knew he was terminal when she married him, it's implied that her damage goes back even farther than this situation.
** Dr. Taub is revealed to have cheated on his wife, and has had a [[DrivenToSuicide suicide attempt]] in his past.
** Even Dr. Kutner, who initially [[BewareTheNiceOnes seems like the most happy and easygoing character on the show]], later reveals that, when he was six years old, he witnessed the [[ParentalAbandonment murder of his parents]] by an armed robber. [[spoiler:He is sufficiently dark and troubled that he eventually [[DrivenToSuicide kills himself]].]]
** Dr. Foreman [[FormerTeenRebel was arrested during his teenage years]], and has a brother currently in jail.
** Dr. Hadley (Thirteen) saw her mother die a painful death from Huntington's disease, which she herself has.
*** She also [[spoiler:killed her brother (upon his request) when his Huntington's got too advanced.]]
** Dr. Wilson has a homeless and a schizophrenic brother, whose fate he blames himself for. He also had three divorces and a thing about "damaged people," i.e. he cannot help but try to help them.
* Quite a few characters on ''Series/{{NCIS}}'', though namely Gibbs, Ziva, and Tony.
** Gibbs lost his [[MyGreatestFailure wife and daughter]] twelve years before the series began.
** Tony lost his mother at the age of eight and was subsequently neglected by his father, who remarried again and again and sent him to live in various boarding schools for the majority of his childhood.
** Ziva's mother died when she was young, and her father was basically a sociopath who raised her to kill people. Her younger sister was killed in a Hamas suicide bombing, and she was forced to [[KillTheOnesYouLove kill her brother]] after he became a terrorist. She has also lost several friends while working with Mossad, one of whom was captured while undercover and beheaded.
** Even Ducky gets into the act in some episodes. The [[spoiler: late]] Director Shepard also had a screwed-up childhood. Basically, the only ones with possible good pasts are cheerful PerkyGoth Abby and HollywoodNerd [=McGee=].
* NCIS:UsefulNotes/LosAngeles has this with everyone, but especially Callen, to the point where he doesn't know his FIRST NAME.
** Special mention to Marty Deeks, who had an abusive father who he eventually shot (at age eleven) to protect himself.
* Every character ever on ''Series/{{Lost}}''.
* [[MadScientist Walter Bishop]] from ''Series/{{Fringe}}'' crossed several ethical boundaries (including experimenting on children, see below) in the name of Science, before he was admitted to St. Claire's Psychiatric Institution.
** Walter's also directly responsible for another Dark and Troubled Past: to save the other dimension's Peter after losing his own to a fatal illness, Walter kidnapped that Peter to this dimension. The ensuing years were implicitly turbulent and unhappy: by the time Peter was 13, Walter had been committed to a mental institution, and after Peter split for Europe at 18, Elizabeth Bishop committed suicide. We *still* don't know everything that Peter did or saw before joining Fringe Division, but it was apparently not all sunshine and puppies.
** AND let's not forget Olivia in all this. Military brat who moved around a lot, abused by her stepfather, lost her mother at a young age, and, oh yeah, experimented on in Jacksonville by none other than Walter Bishop.
* On ''Series/{{Bones}}'':
** The titular character was [[ParentalAbandonment abandoned by her parents]] at the age of 15, taken away from her older brother, and placed in foster care. She finds out later that her parents were bank robbers and "Temperance Brennan" isn't her actual birth name, and that her father is still alive (and an accused murderer).
** FBI Agent Seeley Booth would be a parody if he wasn't so expertly written; He was the child of an abusive, alcoholic father who came within inches of killing him and his brother. He almost committed suicide as a teen. He was a top-rated US Army sniper, and feels deeply guilty about it because he came to believe his kills never really accomplished anything. And on top of that, he's a ''direct descendant of John Wilkes Booth.''
** Dr. Lance Sweets, the young psychologist, was adopted at the age of six by a loving elderly couple after he had been abused as a young child (he has scars from whips on his shoulders). His adoptive parents died shortly before he came to work with Booth and Brennan.
** Booth lampshades all this at one point: "What are we, the island of misfit toys?"
* In the eighth season of ''[[Series/TwentyFour 24]]'', it is revealed that Renee has one of these.
* Michael Westen of ''Series/BurnNotice'' observes that this is very common in his line of work:
--> ''People with happy families don't become spies. A bad childhood is the perfect background for covert ops: You don't trust anyone, you're used to getting smacked around, and you never get homesick.''
* On ''Series/StargateSG1'', Dr. Daniel Jackson's cringe-worthy backstory explains how he can keep going in the face of the constant perils he faces on the show. He lost his parents to an accident (which he witnessed) as a kid, and his own grandpa was too busy to take him in, so he went to foster care. He was ridiculed for his (true!) archaeological theories and lost his apartment and research grants before he joined the Stargate program. There, he falls in love with a woman on another planet and stays with her, but she's kidnapped one year later and he leaves to go tramping around the galaxy trying to find her (which remains his motivation for continuing with [=SG1=] until she dies, possesses, and almost succeeds in killing him). Add that to what happens to him during the actual run of the show, and he's still the first one to give anybody the benefit of doubt.
** Teal'c's father was murdered horribly for losing an allegedly unwinnable battle, and he was the [[TheDragon leader]] of [[BigBad Apophis']] army for decades before he did a HeelFaceTurn. During that time, he did numerous unpleasant, if not outright evil, things. [[TheAtoner It's been made clear that he feels guilty about them.]]
** While usually ([[HiddenDepths but not always]]) portrayed as more of a [[KnightInSourArmor jaded]] [[DeadpanSnarker goofball]] than a dark character, Colonel Jack O'Neill doesn't have the most pleasant background. He is ex-[[ElitesAreMoreGlamorous Special Ops]], and his professional backstory appears to fall under 'you don't want to know' territory. It was stated that he's done some 'distasteful things', and a few allusions have been made to his 'file' and his having a 'strong stomach'. He was also left for dead by his friend and teammate, Frank Cromwell, resulting in four months [[FateWorseThanDeath in an Iraqi prison]]. The Iraqis were not known for being nice to their prisoners, and he carried a grudge for at least seven years, to the extent that he refused to forgive Cromwell even when the planet was about to be sucked up by a black hole. [[TheyreCalledPersonalIssuesForAReason This was never mentioned again]]. The specifics of his early life are unknown, but when Sam Carter was trying to get him to empathise with some new Air Force Academy graduates, he retorted that '[He] was never their age.' That one has about even odds of being a joke or a hint-within-a-joke, but it's a weird thing to say if it doesn't have any basis in fact. Finally, his son Charlie accidentally killed himself with O'Neill's sidearm, and O'Neill blames himself. He was suicidal and, [[spoiler: were it not for the intervention of Daniel Jackson, he would have killed himself with a nuclear bomb and [[MoralEventHorizon knowingly taken five-thousand people]] with him.]] All this before the show happened. At a later date, there was a little episode called [[ColdBloodedTorture Abyss.]]
** It's actually pretty difficult to find a many character in any of the Stargate shows who hasn't had some horrible tragedy of varying levels heaped on them at some point or another. Mitchell, for example, is, so far, the only main character who has been confirmed to have both parents alive and well, but even ''he'' had that troubled experience where he blew up a truck of refugees, due to miscommunication.
* Don Draper of ''MadMen'' lives this trope. He was born to a prostitute and frequently abused as a child because of this. Oh, and she died in childbirth. His father had his head kicked in by a horse in front of him. Don then joined the Army, went to Korea, saw his CO die violently in front of him, switched identities with his CO to get discharged, got discovered by his CO's widow, divorced his CO's widow and married his current wife, only to have lots of extramarital affairs.
* Jack Harkness gets a lot of this in ''Series/{{Torchwood}}''. The audience knows a bit of it due to remembering his origins in ''Series/DoctorWho'', but his actions over the last 100 years without the Doctor include [[spoiler: giving up twelve children to aliens who wanted to use them for substance abuse in exchange for a cure to a deadly virus, being a member of a less than morally outstanding Time Agency earlier, having his blood drained as part of an immortality plot]], and there are probably a few other things we haven't been made aware of.
* Speaking of ''Series/DoctorWho'', the Doctor himself has elements of this trope. At first, it wasn't that bad - sure, he stole the TARDIS from his own people and broke their laws on non-intervention. Of course, then the Time War happened off screen, and now his back-story includes a horrible war, at least two (near) genocides, and the destruction of his fellow Time Lords.
* A lot of the characters in ''{{Carnivale}}'' have this trope:
** Ben Hawkins being the primary example, having been raised by his partially insane mother [[spoiler: (who was driven insane by virtue of having given birth to him)]], who drowned his pets and treated him like the devil's spawn because of his gift. When he met the Carnivale troupe, he had recently escaped from a chain gang.
** Sofie had to deal with her mother being catatonic from birth, as well as slightly tapped in the head, and she tends to be a little cynical in her manner (although, given her circumstances, there's nothing unjustified about this).
** Jonesy had his higher hopes of [[spoiler: becoming a well-paid professional baseball player]] dashed by [[spoiler: the Mob mutilating one of his legs after not throwing a game for them]], forcing him into a life of crime and, later, employment as a roustabout by Samson.
** Henry Scudder's entire characterisation is built around this trope - he didn't want to be an [[spoiler: avatar of darkness]], and to try and avoid his fate, he travelled from one place to another, causing havoc wherever he went, eventually disappearing altogether.
** Management had [[spoiler: an accident]] involving [[spoiler: a bear]] in the trenches during the Great War, leaving him [[spoiler: horribly scarred and mutilated]].
** Justin and Iris both had messy childhoods before being adopted by Norman Balthus, [[spoiler: both having to deal with Justin's inner demons, as well as their insane mother, who dragged them halfway across the world because she was convinced their father was evil and trying to kill them]].
* ''{{Law and Order SVU}}'' has a large number of these in the main cast.
* Hinted at, and later proved, with several characters on ''{{ER}}'' -- Luka, Sam, etc.
* On ''Series/{{Castle}}'', it's stated several times that Kate Beckett joined the police force because her mother was murdered. At one point in her life, she became totally obsessed with solving her mother's murder, to the point that it almost destroyed her. Despite finding the killer in the Season 2 episode "Sucker Punch", the crime remains unsolved.
* Guy of Gisborne of the BBC's ''Series/RobinHood'' - turned out that, when he was a teenager, [[spoiler: his dad was a leper]] and [[spoiler: his mother was having it off with Robin Hood's father]], and after his parents died, [[spoiler: he sold his sister to an older man]].
* The origin of Series/{{Dexter}} Morgan's "Dark Passenger" is [[spoiler: from his early childhood, watching his mother being brutally murdered]].
* Admiral Al Calavicci of ''Series/QuantumLeap''. His family was penniless, his father was [[AbsentFather gone]] most of the time, and his mother ran out on him and his sister, Trudy, who happened to have Down's Syndrome. His father eventually found another job out of country, and left Al in an orphanage and Trudy in an institution, but came back in time to free his kids and then die of some unspecified cause. Al, ten years old by this time, went back to the orphanage and his sister back to the institution. Al spent his time running away and stirring up trouble, and, in his late teens, engaged in both boxing and theatre, but apparently, his grades were good enough to earn him entrance to Annapolis. Then, when he went to spring his sister from the loony bin, he was told that she had died of pneumonia some time before. Time goes on, though, and he graduated Annapolis to become a Naval pilot. He met the woman he referred to as the love of his life, a Navy nurse named Beth, and married her. Now, just when you think things are getting better, Vietnam came along. During his second tour of duty, he was shot down over enemy territory, and, depending on the timeline, spent either six or eight years as a prisoner of war. As if that wasn't bad enough, he was listed as MIA, and when he was finally repatriated, he found out that his wife had him declared dead and was already remarried. He went on to remarry four times and gradually declined into alcoholism. Though he did get better, sort of.
* Shepherd Book in ''{{Firefly}}'' was always implied to have one of these, having unusual knowledge of crime, combat, and other esoteric skills suited for a spy or soldier that ran counter to his nature as a Shepherd. In ''The Shepherd's Tale'' comic, this past is enumerated on; [[spoiler: his original name was Henry Evans, and he ran away from home to escape an abusive father, becoming a street criminal. He joined the Browncoat resistance to escape arrest and imprisonment, and became a spy that infiltrated the Alliance military and joined the Alliance command staff, first as an interrogator and then as a high-level officer. He was eventually disgraced when he planned an operation during the Unification War that got hundreds of Alliance soldiers killed, and was thrown out of the military to become a drunk drifter until, finally, he found and joined a monastery]] and became the Shepherd in the series.
* Derek from ''Series/TeenWolf'', via Dead Family, and eventually, ripped-in-half older sister.
* Stefan Salvatore from TheVampireDiaries. He has a dark past and was a vampire living on and off in the shadows. Stefan has a darker alter ego known as the Ripper.
* The ''Series/{{CSI}}'' franchise is rife with this:
** Series/{{CSI}}
** Sara Sidle was abused by her father and watched her mother abused, then her mother killed her father and she was in foster care for a few years.
** Warrick Brown somehow lost his parents at a young age and was raised by his grandmother. He struggled for years with gambling problems before Grissom turned him around.
** Nick Stokes was molested as a child by his babysitter
** Ray indicates he was abused by his father, and he's wrestled with his own violent tendancies his entire life.
** ''{{CSI NY}}''
** Lindsay was the only survivor of the killing of her friends, and only because she was in the bathroom at the time. Her dark past was alluded to a lot before it got revealed.
** Adam was physically abused-he says his dad was a 'bully'.
** Stella grew up in an orphanage and foster homes
** ''{{CSI Miami}}''
** Horatio and his brother Ray were both abused by their father
* ''{{Roswell}}'' Michael had enough of his foster father's abuse and went to court to emancipate himself.
* Who in ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' does ''not'' have this?
* ''Series/{{Community}}'' has this quite a bit. Jeff's father-abandonment and abuse, Annie's drug addiction, Shirley's alcoholism, and Troy's...Troyness.
* ''Series/{{JAG}}'' has both Sarah MacKenzie (parental abandonment) and Jennifer Coates (criminal past).
* Every single damn transgenic in Series/DarkAngel, but particularly Alec, who spent twenty-two years as a Manticore soldier. In addition to the normal horrible Manticore torture and indoctrination, Alec spent at least two long-term stays in the [[MindRape Psy-Ops re-indoctrination unit]]. The longer of the two stays bought Alex six months of ColdBloodedTorture just because his twin brother [[spoiler: turned out to be psychotic, and his handlers were curious whether he would snap, too]]. Alec's flashbacks in the show are...unpleasant.
* Exaggerated in RetroGameMaster episodes such as the ParappaTheRapper episode, when Arino's comments on his past are referred by the narrator as this trope.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Music]]
* The Patient from ''TheBlackParade'' is implied to have had a violent past, in which he committed many misdeeds.
* Pink from Pink Floyd's ''Music/TheWall''. His father died in the war, his mother is over-protective, he was tortured by sadistic teachers...no wonder that, when his marriage collapsed, he isolated himself from the rest of the world and became a fascist dictator in his own imaginary world...
* Luca Turilli uses this trope whenever he can.
--> ''Lord Of The Winter Snow'': Back again to my tragic past
--> ''Demonheart'': Shocked again she opened the gates / of her tragic past and bloody images / came back to her mind
--> ''Dargor; Shadowlord of the Black Mountain'': For his tragic past he disowned the sunlight
--> ''Legend of Steel'': Break the chains of the past forever
--> ''Black Dragon'': Had to fight the reputation of his bloody past
--> ''Dawn of Victory'': Shades of a past not so far to forget... / the rise of the demons from their bloody Hell!
** ''[[{{Narm}} Bloody Hell!]]'' He couldn't break the chains of this reputation.
* The protagonist from Music/TheRollingStones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash", which has him born and raised in an abusive household and abandoned at some point in his childhood. It's hinted in the chorus that he's gotten over it, albeit not in one piece, given the nature of the song.
* A lot of great musicians have had dark and troubled pasts. John Lennon had serious issues with the way his mother (and father) treated him, which he only started dealing with after he met Yoko Ono. Neil Young similarly had a chip on his shoulder about his parents breaking up (leading him to support Ronald Reagan under the guise of his 'strengthening the family' rhetoric, although he soon became disillusioned). John Cale, due to his grandmother not allowing any language but Welsh to be spoken in the hause, never had a conversation with his Anglophonic father before he learnt English when he was nine, and he was molested by at least two older men in his youth, giving him issues that fed into his later substance abuse.
* [[VideoGame/MegaMan Dr. Light]], as told by Music/TheProtomen. His father died in a mining accident, leading him to build robots to do the work instead and "take the death away". Unfortunately, [[FromBadToWorse things do not improve from here]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Theatre]]
* Florence in ''Theatre/{{Chess}}''.
* The Phantom in ''ThePhantomOfTheOpera'' was used as a circus sideshow freak until he escaped.
* Mary in ''Vanities'' has an [[LadyDrunk alcoholic mother]] and [[DisappearedDad runaway father]]; she sings about [[IWantSong her desire to get away from it all]] in [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlWsHuukhdE "Fly Into the Future"]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]
* In ''TheKingOfFighters'' series, one or two fighters crop up with these kinds of pasts, but extra points go to Rock Howard, who has this through virtually no fault of his own. He's the son of the notoriously death-retardant Geese Howard, who barely took any interest in the boy's well being. Rock was rendered an orphan by one of Geese's nemeses, Terry Bogart (who tried to keep him from falling to his death, only for Geese to yank his hand out of Terry's grip and GoOutWithASmile as he fell), who took it upon himself to raise and train Rock himself...possibly out of penance. Rock is surprisingly well-adjusted, but it constantly [[InTheBlood at war with himself internally, given he has "evil blood"]].
* In ''Franchise/SilentHill'', a dark and troubled past guarantees you a season ticket to the titular town.
* The ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' series ''loves'' this trope. Seriously, we could be here all day.
* The ''TalesSeries'' practically needs its own folder for this trope: heroes, villains, teammates of questionable morality, ''and'' the NPC who shows up for five minutes and is never seen again. Thanks to the series' equally constant use of WhamEpisode-caliber plot twists, almost every bit of backstory is also plot-relevant and spoilertastic. Similar to ''Franchise/FinalFantasy,'' if you get us started, we will never escape. [[SchmuckBait Here we go anyway!]]
** ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia:'' Raine and Genis were [[spoiler: abandoned as children.]] Sheena [[spoiler: accidentally murdered a good chunk of her tribe by failing to make a pact with a summon spirit.]] Zelos [[spoiler: watched his mom [[TakingTheBullet die in front of him,]] during an assassination attempt meant for him. Her last words were "you should never have been born." He grew up ''believing'' that. Depending on [[MultipleEndings how you handle his relationship values,]] he's also a practicing DeathSeeker.]] Regal was [[spoiler: forced to murder his love Alicia when she turned into a monster, was subsequently arrested, and has fallen from a company president to a prisoner and hitman.]] Presea [[spoiler: is a 28-year-old girl trapped in the body of a 12-year-old. Alicia, the one murdered by Regal was her sister. She is also the result of a scientific experiment and spends a good chunk of the game without emotions.]] The champion of tragic backstory, however, is Kratos. [[spoiler: He's [[Really700YearsOld Really 4000 Years Old.]] In all that time he's been serving under Mithos, who has essentially gone insane trying to resurrect his sister Martel. He was forced to kill his own wife after she mutated into a monster, and believed his only son to be dead as a result of the fight. As a result of this he's also DeathSeeker.]] ''And those are just your party members.'' Worth noting that the BigBad, [[spoiler: Mithos Yggdrasill,]] is also pretty much a WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds for this reason.
** ''VideoGame/TalesOfGraces:'' This game delivers in a special way - you are forced to ''play through'' the tragic backstories of a good portion of the main characters, although all the details do not become clear until later. You watch Cheria grow up as an IllGirl. You witness Hubert's enforced adoption by the Oswell family (yes, his biological parents are ''both'' still alive at this point, making him believe he was TheUnfavorite). You play through a scenario in which a child prince, Richard, is nearly assassinated by his tutor. And, of course, the cherry on top is when [[spoiler: Sophie supposedly sacrifices herself to save Asbel, Cheria, Hubert and Richard from an OmnicidalManiac, Lambda.]] Then, there's a time skip which shows the impact of all this trauma, as well as some other details we didn't know. Turns out [[spoiler: Richard had been lethally poisoned after the encounter with Lambda. His father the King was already dead. In order to save his own life, he made a DealWithTheDevil and allowed Lambda to possess him.]] Even Malik, one of the new party members, whose backstory is not related to this event, [[spoiler: was a member of LaResistance whose political activism got the love of his life killed. It's also pretty well implied he grew up in abject poverty and was forced to carry a gun from a very young age, just for his own survival.]] And, on top of ''that,'' the only reason why [[spoiler: Lambda ''is'' an OmnicidalManiac is because he was a science experiment on Fodra, where he was treated as subhuman, constantly abused, and then expelled from the planet. When he landed on Ephinea he wasn't treated that much better...for around a thousand years.]] Luckily, unlike Symphonia, nearly everyone in Graces heals over time thanks to ThePowerOfFriendship. [[spoiler: Even Lambda. The BigBad.]]
* Playing a BioWare (or Obsidian) game? Yeah. This trope will apply to your party.
** ''KnightsOfTheOldRepublic.'' Carth Onasi? NiceGuy, but has a truckload of paranoia issues. Not surprising when you find out that his EvilMentor decided to defect to the Sith, and laid waste to Carth's homeworld. Carth was widowed in the attack, and he finds out later that while his son survived, the Sith are training him in the ways of the Force. Bastila? Well, it's a mild case, but the Jedi policy of child conscription and forcing them to cut all ties with their family and loved ones isn't pleasant. Mission may not [[SatisfiedStreetRat consider her past all that troubled]], but she is a teenager pretty much living on the streets of a WretchedHive. Zaalbar? Exiled from his homeworld for flying into a rage and attacking his brother. Said brother was colluding with slavers to sell his fellow Wookiees into slavery. In his anger, Zaalbar broke the taboo about not using claws in a fight, which makes you less than an animal in Wookiee society. Juhani? [[BrokenBird Oh, where to begin?]] Her people were subject to genocide by the Mandalorians. Her parents fled, but ended up on a WretchedHive that hated "aliens" and openly discriminated against them. Her father became a drug addict and died in a BarBrawl. Her mother starved to death because she was trying to feed her cub at the expense of herself, but was in debt to a loan shark, meaning Juhani was MadeASlave to pay it off. The Jedi freed her from slavery, and Juhani latched onto their Code and ideals hard. She dedicated herself to training and the Jedi way...until her master decides a good idea of a final test is to goad her into rage and trick the poor girl into thinking she killed her own master! Canderous and HK-47 certainly have dark and troubled pasts, but they're actually proud of the carnage trail they've left. And then, there's what TheReveal has to say about your PlayerCharacter.
** The second game (by Obsidian) gets an even nastier bunch of people. Kreia? Well, she's been a Jedi Master and a Sith Lord. She was probably TheManBehindTheMan for Revan. As much as she protests that she's neutral, it's obvious she hasn't given up the "Sith" part, aside from trying to setter it more towards ManipulativeBastard than StupidEvil. You don't get much more dark and troubled than [[TheAtoner Atton Rand]], either. Former Republic deserter, Jedi hunter, Sith torturer, Sith deserter, turned to smuggling, and was likely the guy trying to sell your PlayerCharacter to the Exchange. Visas is of a rare species who can see through the Force, and Darth Nihilus ''ate'' her homeworld and all life on it, sparing only her. She became his "apprentice," but in practice is more his slave and punching bag. Handmaiden is the shunned, HeroicBastard daughter of a Echani general and a Jedi. Because her daddy cheated on his wife to produce her, her sisters treat her with contempt at best. Disciple? Well, under that naive persona, he's actually a spy for the Republic, enlisting in the Republic Navy because the Jedi shrugged and threw him away after the Mandalorian Wars didn't leave enough Jedi to train apprentices. Bao-Dur? Whew. [[ShellShockedVeteran Massive]] PTSD issues from [[ShootTheDog creating and using the Mass Shadow Generator]] at Malachor. He literally threw a switch and killed thousands of ally and enemy alike. Hanharr? Well, we're dealing with Wookiees and slavery, but Hanharr was insane to begin with and slaughtered his whole village to keep them out of slaver hands. Mira? Well, her family was killed by Mandalorians, and the Mandos took her as a slave. She doesn't speak of her captors with too much rancor as they taught her how to fight and handle explosives (in ExpandedUniverse material, it explains that Mandalorians tend to "adopt" children of fallen foes that have potential to join their ranks). And your PlayerCharacter? Well, s/he left the Order to fight the Mandalorians, was the teacher that abandoned Disciple, fought in two of the nastiest battles in the War, ordered the use of the Mass Shadow Generator that made Bao-Dur's issues, was the only one of Revan's followers to walk away and try to go back to the Order, only to get slapped in the face and a sentence of Exile, left with absolutely nothing to show for all the sacrifice.
** VideoGame/NeverwinterNights: By the time you meet Aribeth in ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights Hordes of the Underdark'', she has a very troubled past (including being executed for something that wasn't technically her fault). The character you play in that one technically doesn't know about it, even though ''you'' almost certainly played the first campaign beforehand. Casavir in the sequel has a stormy history with Neverwinter. The module creating community has brought up several examples as well. Anera in the Shadowlords arc took a lot of crap from her family (the celestial side) for being too mortal, and eventually entered into a relationship with a necromancer. It did not end well. Alex in the Bastard of Kosigan series has a very troubled one, dealing with the complications involved with being in love with the severely disfavored bastard, and her [[spoiler: abortive relationship with Vlad]]. Pia in ''ADanceWithRogues'' has many regrets about her time as one of Vico's playthings.
** Every recruitable NPC in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins''. In the order you usually meet them, they are: a royal bastard left at the local church to become a mage-hunting KnightTemplar; mother is a legendary witch that intends to [[GrandTheftMe steal her body some time in the future]]; used to be [[ProfessionalKiller an assassin-bard]] whose favoured method was the HoneyTrap; killed all the inhabitants of a farmhouse [[ValuesDissonance after experiencing]] [[YouCantGoHomeAgain a big cultural no-no]]; turned into a golem some time ago and lost memories due to a very extensive AndIMustScream experience; old lady who's really dead but kept alive by an inhabiting spirit; another assassin whose past may suck just as bad, if not worse, than the first one's; drunk whose wife left him to become a monster. Even the ''dog'' has a troubled past; the dog's original master ended up dying, and it reached you only by managing to escape the mass slaughter at Ostagar. Sometimes, you think your party should form a Country & Western band.
*** Not if you play Human Noble (who is, incidentally, one of only two [=PCs=] without a significantly dark and troubled past as well. Being orphaned as an adult sucks, but it beats out being [[FantasticCasteSystem branded as worthless from birth]] and forced into crime or prostitution to survive).
** Considering the entire story takes place in the past, let's add ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'' companions to the list: a healer who's possessed by a demon due to his own anger; an ex-slave who's hunted by his previous master; an Elven mage whose own clan views her as a walking liability; a prince whose family was murdered; and the story teller who witnesses it all. All of this is not including the main character, Hawke, who [[spoiler: witnesses their siblings and mother die, and is forced into war.]] The only one without a troubled past is Isabela, who seems to make light of even the worst situations.
*** Actually, Isabela was sold into marriage at an implied young age by her mother for a few silvers and a goat. Then Zevran was hired to kill him, and she inherited his ship and decided to become a pirate. Her stories about her past are the most fragmented of the party, and generally [[NoodleIncident Noodle Incidents]]. Also, that relic she's looking for? [[spoiler:She stole it from the ''Qunari''.]] This actually [[NiceJobBreakingItHero comes back to bite the party]] in a serious way in Act II.
** Just about every single major character in ''MassEffect'' has some sort of tragic backstory. Even [[PlayerCharacter Commander Shepard]] can be customised to have one -- the Colonist background involves everyone in Shepard's [[DoomedHometown home colony]] being massacred or taken by slavers, while the Earthborn background gives him or her a criminal history, and the Sole Survivor psychological profile involves Shepard losing everyone in his or her unit to a thresher maw attack.
** By ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'', the only characters who ''don't'' have such a background are Ashley and (maybe) Jacob.
* Kla in ''{{Warbears}}'' is implied to have one.
* Jennifer from ''RuleOfRose''. There's a reason why the narrator never fails to refer to her as the "poor, unlucky girl".
* Many of the characters in the ''Franchise/MetalGear'' series series have them. [[AudienceSurrogate Raiden]], [[TheParagon The Boss]] (kind of), [[AxCrazy Psycho]] [[TragicVillain Mantis]], and [[HeartbrokenBadass Fortune]] (spoofed by {{Hiimdaisy}} above), to name a few. In fact, it's easier to mention the ones who didn't have it: [[MissionControl Mei]] [[TheCavalry Ling]], and.... Okay, maybe just Mei Ling.
* The Heavy from ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' subverts this to hell and back.
-->'''Director''': Your father was a counter-revolutionary. When he was killed, you, your mother, and your sisters were transported to a North Siberian gulag. Paint me the picture.
-->'''Heavy''': No. This is my gun. I like to shoot this gun. Is all you need to know.
-->'''Director''': Your family only lived in that gulag for three months. In December 1941 it burned to the ground. All of the prisoners had escaped. All of the guards had been killed. Tortured to death.
-->'''Heavy''': I. Like. To shoot. This gun. Is all you need to know.
* Devlin [=McCormack=] in ''The Orion Conspiracy'' definitely has this. Let us see. He fought as a soldier in the Corporation War, which apparently left him with issues. He admits that he was not a good father to his son, Danny, and that he, in fact, drove him away. Interestingly enough, Danny's death and the investigation of it is what drives Devlin for a portion of the game. Also, the local {{Jerkass}} claims that Devlin drove his wife to suicide, which would indicate that Devlin may not have been a good husband. Of course, it is hard to say that really is the case, or if there is more to that story than that.
* [[SonicTheHedgehog Shadow the Hedgehog]] probably has the darkest past of all the Sonic characters. He was created as the UltimateLifeform in an attempt to cure a [[LittlestCancerPatient terminally ill twelve-year-old girl]], had his home ambushed and said ill child die in front of him from a gunshot wound, was thrown into stasis and had his memories [[LaserGuidedAmnesia tampered by his creator]] to turn him into [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge a ruthless killing machine]]. And all it took to turn his character around was a RousingSpeech by a ''different'' twelve year old girl, a HeroicSacrifice which resulted in him''getting amnesia'', spending [[VideoGame/SonicHeroes not one]], [[ShadowTheHedgehog not two]], but ''[[SonicBattle three]]'' games trying to remember things properly again, and [[ToServeMan the near planetary takeover of an alien race]] to snap him out of his amnesia for good and to put his past behind him. ''Yikes.''
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Visual Novels ]]
* Every character in ''VisualNovel/HigurashiNoNakuKoroNi'' starts out seeming normal, but ends up having one of these - even Keiichi.
** And in "Bad Boy's Love", the ''Higurashi'' pastiche plotline in ''VisualNovel/HatofulBoyfriend'', the exact same thing happens in reference to this. The cast of mostly normal OtomeGame archetypes (with one [[ObviouslyEvil cartoon villain]]) ''all'' turn out to have dark and troubled pasts, with at least one seemingly nice character [[{{Yandere}} actually being outright psychotic]].
* Archer's dark and troubled past in ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'' inspires him to [[spoiler:prevent it from occurring by murdering Shirou, his pre-JadeColoredGlasses self, and thus possibly prevent himself from [[TimeParadox existing as well]]]].
* Miles Edgeworth in ''VisualNovel/AceAttorney''. His father was murdered when he was ten [[spoiler: and Edgeworth spent 15 years believing he was responsible for his death.]] He was adopted by the [[AmoralAttorney honorable and kindly]] Manfred von Karma, [[spoiler: the one who really murdered his father]], and brought up to be a cold and ruthless prosecutor with no regard for whether the people he prosecuted had actually done anything wrong. [[spoiler: Just like von Karma planned.]] It's surprising he came out as well-balanced as he did.
** Godot. In his first appearance, he claims he's come back from Hell to challenge Phoenix, and he's not exaggerating hugely. [[spoiler: He was poisoned by Dahlia and fell into a five-year-coma, during which his beloved Mia Fey was murdered. The poison also took his sight, and is implied to have done other damage as well.]]
* A significant plot point in ''VisualNovel/NineHoursNinePersonsNineDoors'' is figuring out what exactly happened to Akane after she was separated from Junpei. [[spoiler: Turns out she was kidnapped, locked in an incinerator, and ''burned to death.'']]
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Animation ]]
* Arguably, every character in ''Card Players''. Nuff said.
* All four main characters in ''BrokenSaints'', despite coming from vastly different backgrounds, all have less than pleasant life stories:
** Shandala was [[HeartwarmingOrphan orphaned at infancy]], and although her life among the Fijian Islanders is peaceful, [[spoiler: when she was a young girl, her adopted mother was horrifically mutilated and murdered by white men under the direction of--and possibly including--her biological father.]]
** Oran's father [[spoiler: was killed during a bombing assault on Bahgdad during the first Gulf War]].
** Kamimura was taken from his home at a very young age to become a monk, [[spoiler: leaving his family behind to be killed in the bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki in WorldWarII]].
** Raimi has arguably the most mundane, but no less heartbreaking. After his father left, [[spoiler: his mother died from what is implied to be cancer.]]
* Arguably, Church from ''Machinima/RedVsBlue.'' [[spoiler:While he doesn't remember it for the most part, the original Church is what you get when you brutally torture an AI into splitting into pieces, even to the point of using parts of its own mind against it (Gamma and Omega). The result is a constantly angry person who doesn't even understand why he's so angry all the time. Epsilon!Church probably remembers more about the torture, but chooses to suppress it to keep from going crazy.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Comics ]]
* It eventually turns out that Zig Zag, the perky, [[AnythingThatMoves perpetually randy]] and playful Serbian tiger/skunk crossbreed from Webcomic/SabrinaOnline has one of these. She gets [[BerserkButton livid]] if anyone tries to suggest it's her FreudianExcuse for being a notorious pornography star and director, though.
* In ''Webcomic/NoRestForTheWicked'', Claire. [[http://www.forthewicked.net/archive/03-15.html Introduced, she muses about how easily a woman could become a witch without realizing it and implies something about her own child.]] Later she [[http://www.forthewicked.net/archive/04-44.html refuses to explain]] why she no longer has her baby with her. And she comments that she had hated her parents -- and now she knows she's no better.
* Lexx's past in ''AlienDice'' takes this up to eleven. Lexx's [[ParentalAbandonment father died young of an illness and his mother, a fighter for the space station they lived on, was killed defending their home]]. He was then raised in an [[OrphanageOfFear orphanage from hell]] where he was forcibly turned into a {{mon}}-like thing (the titular Dice). He [[ICannotSelfTerminate attempted suicide several times, but failed]], and has faced numerous other tragedies, including rape, slavery (or, the threat of it, actually), and [[spoiler: being forced to kill his fellow Dice, Riane, who then decides [[OurSoulsAreDifferent to haunt his mind]].]] That's only hitting the highlights. Lexx is better at remembering happy moments than he is at remembering truly tragic ones, though [[BadDreams nightmares say otherwise]].
* Grace, Susan, and Tedd in ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'', though Grace appears to have been the only one who suffered physical abuse. "Lord Tedd" from the alternate universe seems to have a dark and troubled past of truly epic proportions.
* Many of the characters from [[http://www.goldcoincomics.com Gold Coin Comics]], such as Lance, whose entire village was burned to the ground.
* Galatea in ''TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob,'' who spent her one-month childhood being treated literally as a lab animal in a pen. She didn't [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds take it well.]]
* Parodied in ''TheNoob'' [[http://www.thenoobcomic.com/index.php?pos=248 here]].
* Played straight in ''BittersweetCandyBowl''. Abbey has such a distressing past that the author actually felt unable to finish a [[http://www.bittersweetcandybowl.com/art/graveyard/unfinishedabbeychapter.png planned chapter about it]].
** From the hints we've been given, we can assume: [[spoiler:Abbey's mother, Charlotte, was [[DomesticAbuse beaten on a regular basis by their father,]] [[AffablyEvil Abraham;]] [[AbusiveParents Abraham once tried to beat Abbey,]] [[HeroicSacrifice though Charlotte, already in an awful condition,]] intervened by begging Abraham not to touch him, and when Charlotte [[YourCheatingHeart found out Abraham was cheating,]] he beat her near-to-death, and left with his mistress.]] Is it any wonder Abbey's turned into the WellIntentionedExtremist he is?
* Secret in ''KeychainOfCreation.'' Ye Gods, that girl has been through some deeply troubling shit. Backstory starts [[http://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0298.html here]].
* Alexander Hamilton in ''TheDreamer'', man, oh man. Let's break it down: when he was a teenager, in the span of a few years, 1) his mother died, 2) his father vanished, 3) his aunt, uncle, and grandfather also died, 4) his cousin committed suicide, and 5) Alexander and his brother were disinherited and left penniless orphans. Let us not forget that his father, James Hamilton, may not even have been his father at all (the honor may go to a gentleman by the name of Thomas Stevens).
* Vriska Serket of ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}.'' Being raised by a giant spider who forced her to kill hundreds or even thousands of other children to feed left her pretty damaged.
** Also, WV. A simple farmer willing for peace has his home and crops destroyed by war. [[spoiler: He [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome unites the Prospitian and Dersite pawns]] and leads a rebellion against the Black King. Then [[OmnicidalManiac Jackspers Noirlecrow]] shows up. Noir slaughters the King and all the rebellion, save for WV, dooming him to lead a life of SurvivorsGuilt.]]
* Tekno in ''SonicTheComic''. While we never see her past, it's implied that she's done some pretty bad things since she worked with [[EvilOverlord Dr]] [[PsychoForHire Robotnik]]. Her [[spoiler:murdering someone in the fan continuation seems to better support this, though that's related to her going through a mental breakdown]]
* In ''ImpureBlood'', Roan has been subjected to FantasticRacism, was MadeASlave as a child, and has had to fight for years in GladiatorGames (as "The Abomination", to put the icing on the cake).
* Faye from ''QuestionableContent'' moved to the same town as the other characters to escape her small Southern town after her father shot himself in front of her and she either tried to kill herself or got into a car accident. It's ambiguous. She's also an alcoholic.
** Hannelore's parents' response to her crippling OCD seems to be mostly "throw money at it and hope it goes away".
* ''ElfBlood:'' For such a cheery, optimistic, and caring person, the fact that TKO was designed, born, and raised to be a long-range assassin is quite surprising, if not downright shocking.
** It's implied that, as children, when assassination became too emotional for TKO, SKO ''voluntarily'' did the killing for her.
* ''Webcomic/{{Dissonance}}'': both of the main characters have one.
** When James' mother died, his father kept telling him that god had a plan for those he allowed to pass. But then his father developed Alzheimer's Disease. He was mostly normal at first, and when he eventually needed to go to a nursing home, James would visit him and take him to the church there every Sunday. But in the end, he was just a shadow of the man James once admired.
-->'''James''': When my mother died, my father always told me that god had a plan for those he allowed to pass. But god took my father years before he finally allowed him to pass.
** Sarah has wanted to be a mother for years, and one day got herself inseminated. But in a 1/20,000 chance, she developed ovarian cancer. It's implied she nearly didn't recover, and now she isn't sure fate wants her to be a mother.
-->'''Sarah''': I think if I were meant to mother, there would be at least one positive sign.
* In ''BlueYonder'' this is brought up against a cape: [[http://www.blueyondercomic.net/comics/1404300/blue-yonder-chapter-1-page-47/ he used to be a cop, and was thrown off the force for stealing evidence.]]
* In ''OurLittleAdventure'', [[http://danielscreations.com/ola/comics/ep0255.html Angelika warns Norbert not to go there when he asks if something bad happened in her past.]]
* In ''Webcomic/MonsieurCharlatan'', [[http://monsieur-charlatan.com/archive/page-2/ Charlatan's first appearance has him musing over a photograph, ready to commit suicide.]]
* In ''Webcomic/{{Glorianna}}'', the title character sometimes alludes to unspecified traumas from her childhood, and also carries heavy guilt for [[spoiler:abandoning her daughter]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Original ]]
* ''{{Tasakeru}}'''s primary characters, the Outcasts, are shining examples of this trope, it's pretty much a prerequisite for being one. [[spoiler: One is a runaway {{Samurai}} suffering from SurvivorGuilt, one was thrown out on the streets with her mother as an infant and grew up in poverty, and one was disowned by her family for [[MagicIsEvil being a mage]].]] And that's just the ones we know about...
* When you put them all together, even though they're played for [[BlackComedy dark laughs]], a lot of bad things have happened ([[JerkassWoobie that weren't actually his fault]]) to WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic. AbusiveParents, hiding in the cupboard when he got scared, breaking up with someone three times and getting stalked for it, pitied by his classmates for acting like a brat, date-raped on his prom night, and that's just what we know so far. No wonder he's a weepy PsychopathicManchild with issues.
* WebVideo/TheNostalgiaChick had a judging mother and an emotionally distant father who both were alcoholics and yelled at each other constantly, had an uncle that molested her, got bullied at school for being the awkward dork, became an alcoholic herself and somehow got fixated on guys she could fix and control to do whatever she asked of them.
* A common problem among the characters in ''{{Theatrica}}''
* [[ProtectorsOfThePlotContinuum Ithalond]]. An Elf from Imladris, he was pulled into the infamous fic ''Celebrian''. Need I say more?
* ''Roleplay/TouhouAGlimmerOfAnOutsideWorld'' has many, many indications that Yuuka wasn't quite as mentally stable as she is in the roleplay in the past. Like a basement with a room full of torture equipment.
* ''TheGunganCouncil'' has this as a staple trait for characters. As the saying goes, "[[SarcasmMode Slavery is a totally original backstory!]]"
* In ''[[GutsandSass Guts and Sass: An Anti-Epic]]'', Efeddre was captured and tortured for nine years, and ended up a JerkassWoobie.
* any of the Organization's Agents in ''{{LIS_DEAD}}'' count, considering what we've learned of the Organization so far.
* The OpeningNarration of ''WebVideo/DoomHouse'' explains how the wife of the main character, Reginald P. Linux, had died long ago and that this had left a severe depression weighed heavy on his soul.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]
* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' ''lives'' on this trope. Let's look it over;
** [[AntiHero Zuko]]: [[AbusiveParents father]] always favoured Azula over [[TheUnFavorite him]], and then planned to murder him to get the throne. His loving [[MissingMom mother]] sacrificed her life/freedom to prevent this. He, one day, speaks out against a horrible plan, and his own father burns his face for insolence. He then gets banished and put on a SnipeHunt for the Avatar. Needless to say, he's the MrFanservice of the series.
** [[TheHero Aang]]: [[spoiler: while he had a happy childhood with the Air Nomads, he made the fatal mistake of freaking out and running away from his responsibilities, ending up being frozen in ice for a century, and finally paying dearly for it when he discovers the corpse of his beloved mentor]].
** Katara and Sokka: mother killed in a Fire Nation raid when they were little, and their father and all the men of the tribe left three years prior to the show's start. This left Katara with abandonment issues, and Sokka feeling that he wasn't good enough as a warrior. They may not show the effects as much as Zuko does, but it catches up to them later on (Sokka risks his ass breaking into a Fire Nation prison, Katara has her dark night of the soul tracking down her mother's killer).
** [[BadAssGrandpa Iroh]]: was once a very powerful warrior and general in the Fire Nation army, leading a siege on Ba Sing Se. Then, his son died, he went into a HeroicBSOD, and 'betrayed his nation'.
** All this isn't even counting the pasts of more minor characters such as Jeong-Jeong, Pakku, Hama, Jet, and, even [[MagnificentBastard Azula]], who has MommyIssues.
** The episode "The Beach" was essentially a show-and-tell around the campfire of each of the villain's version of this trope, complete with showcases of ParentalNeglect, NotSoStoic and TheUnfavorite.
* The SequelSeries ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'' has given two of its main characters a Dark and Troubled Past: Mako and Bolin were street kids growing up, and Mako had to take care of his little brother.
** [[spoiler:The BigBad Amon and his [[SleazyPolitician brother Tarrlok]] are revealed to have an exceedingly tragic backstory in the SeasonFinale.]]
* Kevin E. Levin from ''WesternAnimation/{{Ben 10}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/{{Ben 10}}: Alien Force'': probably abandoned as a young child because of his power, became a criminal to survive, then, for kicks, became a literal monster by the age of eleven, and got sent to a hellish prison dimension. [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope Turns out, he wasn't really abandoned; it was just his powers playing with his mind.]]]]
* Denzel Crocker on ''TheFairlyOddparents''. At first, he had a life [[NotSoDifferent similar to Timmy's]]: he had a neglectful mother who left him with an abusive babysitter. He also had fairy godparents [[spoiler: (Cosmo and Wanda, in fact)]], which he used to do good things for people. The end came when he lost his godparents: he forgot all his happy memories, the town shunned him because they forgot all the good things he did, he became obsessed with proving fairies exist thanks to a note he left himself, causing him to lose his sanity, he was laughed out of his college for promoting fairies, and he lost [[UnluckyChildhoodFriend Waxelplax because of his obsession]]. Yeah, not very fun.
* Casey Jones was given one of these for his ''[[TMNT2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' 2003 incarnation, in order to explain his vigilantism: when he was a kid, the Purple Dragon gang, led by a teenage Hun, burned his father's store before his very eyes. Afterwards, when Arnold Casey Jones Sr. tried to extract retribution, he was killed. Eventually, writers for the [[ComicBook/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesMirage Mirage comic book]] integrated a modified and considerably less sanitized version of the story into the original canon.
* Artemis from WesternAnimation/YoungJustice, though it took a long time to figure out the nature of it. Turns out [[spoiler: she was raised by criminals, who trained Arty and her sister to be expert assassins. Then her mom broke her spine and was sent to jail. Her sister, not wanting to be left with their abusive father, ran-away, leaving Artemis alone for ''years'', until her now reformed mom came back, kicked her father out, and Artemis decided to become a hero.]]
* Just about everybody in ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'', but special mention to Marceline, who has a thousand years that can all be summed up with this trope, and an honorable mention to [[spoiler: the Ice King]], whose troubles are of such a nature that he's incapable of understanding them or remembering their existence anymore.
* Zap Monogan from Dex Hamilton: Alien Entomologist, He's a human/insect hybrid that was created by an evil scientist as a weapon for the military. He never talks about his past life, and struggles to remember anything about it.
* Mike Chilton of the Burners on ''{{WesternAnimation/Motorcity}}''. He used to work for Abraham Kane and was proud of it, until he realized [[spoiler:Kane was willing to harm innocent civilians, which made Mike realize that [=KaneCo=] was doing more bad than good. He did manage to save several tenants from going down with their homes though]]. It's revealed in "Mayhem Night" that [[spoiler:Mike's greatest fear is his own past]].
* Lance in ''{{Sym-Bionic Titan}}'' was seemingly orphaned by his father's disappearance, presumed dead. He was sent to a military school [[KidsAreCruel where he was constantly picked on]]. It's possible his past goes further than what we've seen in flashbacks.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* ''Anyone'' who has suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The stress is brought on by being haunted by a traumatic incident in one's past.
* Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man", never told Treves a single detail about his family, even that his mother was dead, because the whole family situation was a Dark And Troubled Mess. Dead mother, a classic case of SurvivorGuilt over his dead four-year-old brother, crippled sister, abusive father, WickedStepmother, and step-siblings who were, as he put it, "more handsome". This may actually have been the source of the misnomer "John" -- His father was also named Joseph, and he may have wanted to separate himself as far from that as he could, possibly out of paranoia of having to go back home.
** All this merely cements his status as the biggest {{woobie}} in the history of ever. [[TearJerker Sniff.]]
* {{Eminem}}. The man's life has been ''hell''.
* Any Holocaust survivor.
** Any survivor of any genocide for that matter.
* RussellBrand. Dear god, Russell Brand. Childhood Bulimia? Check. Traumatic incidents involving a tutor, and then a babysitter? Check. Self Mutilation? Check. Mother with Cancer that reappeared four times? Check. Evil Stepfather? Check. Bipolar Disorder? Check. Misguided attempt by his father at bonding, involving a trip to Thailand and prostitutes? CHECK.
* [[Music/GunsNRoses Axl Rose]], read the biography "Guns And Roses: The Band That Time Forgot" for the full details, needless to say, it's no wonder he's such a JerkAss sometimes.
* Anyone who has been abused in any way, especially sexually. That leaves a good few of the victims suffering for a long time.
* Anyone who has survived school bullying.
* Richard O'Brien. Born abnormally small, bullied at school, and then growing up genderqueer in what amounted to a conservative country town in the 1950s/60s...ouch. And then [[RockyHorrorPictureShow his baby flopped in cinemas]].
* Janice Dickinson, one of the world's first supermodels. She was thoroughly traumatized and damaged not just by her father's emotional and physical abuse of her, but also his sexual abuse of one of her sisters.
* Creator/CharlesBukowski, a German-American novelist and poet. His childhood was a long episode of school fights, child abuse and social rejection. This depression later bolstered his rage as he grew, and gave him much of his voice and material for his writings.
* JamesEllroy
[[/folder]]

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