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->''"Try explaining Hitler to a kid."''
-->-- '''Creator/GeorgeCarlin'''

There are events for which the SpearCarrier's "I bring ill tidings" do no justice. These are calamities so timelessly tragic, that all fiction struggles to portray their due gravity and pain. Things like: What do you tell a child when a [[ParentalAbandonment parent dies?]] Is there a right way to tell someone their spouse has been killed? How exactly do you tell the FriendToAllLivingThings she's part of a race that's [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters full of bastards]] who prove {{Rousseau|WasRight}} wrong?

This last one is especially thorny. The more sheltered, innocent, and good-natured TheCutie, the harder she will [[BreakTheCutie crash]] and [[HeroicBSOD burn]] when informed of humanity's many self-inflicted sins. It doesn't help that she's usually a LivingMacGuffin or BarrierMaiden whose good faith is central to beating the supreme evil.

Clever villains will use this as a demoralizing ploy on the heroes, surely UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans if the result is a more civilized (or ''extinct'') human race? Heroes who are especially shaken up by his StoryboardingTheApocalypse may even do a FaceHeelTurn. Inevitably, it's up to the MessianicArchetype to restore the shaken faith, usually with a hearty dose of ThePowerOfFriendship and a WhoopiEpiphanySpeech about how "The sins of the past can not be undone but for the good works we do today!".

Popular events to get traumatized with include but are by no means limited to: global environmental destruction, African poverty and genocides, the Crusades (the effect is lost somewhat, in comparison to others, if actual figures are used), UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne WWI]] and [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo WWII]]. The [[NukeEm atomic bombings]] of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust, are particularly popular episodes from the latter conflict. Note that the way (high-)school history works is usually with short summaries and a series of anecdotes, rarely explaining things in-depth or using actual (casualty, war-crime, etc) figures and statistics. Consequently, expect the "cool" events - like TheTokyoFireball or the UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki - to feature more prominently than (orders of magnitude) bloodier and gorier, but less spectacular, events like The UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar.

Obviously, this is TruthInTelevision, as this sort of thing does tend to hit young students hard, understandably enough.

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!!Examples
[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime]]
* In ''Manga/YuYuHakusho'', there is a videotape called Chapter Black which shows [[HumansAreBastards every evil action that humans have done]]. However, Chapter Black is meant to be seen in conjunction with Chapter White, a tape that showcases [[RousseauWasRight the best deeds of humanity]]. Watching Chapter Black on its own is enough to turn a FriendToAllLivingThings into a StrawNihilist.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fan Fiction]]
* FishOutOfTemporalWater Johanna Sinclair in the [[http://community.livejournal.com/a_slight_glitch Unexpected Results]] had one when she found out about the [[Literature/TrinityBlood Armageddon]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film]]
* ''Film/TheFifthElement,'': Leeloo's breakdown towards the end, once reading about the dreaded W for War in the encyclopedia. She sees a huge montage of images from UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne, UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo, UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar and so on.
* ''Film/GalaxyQuest'': When Jason tells Mathesar that they're actors while he's on the torture table, Mathesar is distraught. Their culture doesn't understand acting, nor did they even have a ''concept'' of lying or deceit before the BigBad started attacking them. Mathesar considers lying (and by extension acting) a huge betrayal, so Jason's admission is devastating. However, after the crew is successful, Mathesar thinks he was just kidding (though it may be that Mathesar simply learned to lie himself to protect his crew from finding all this out for themselves).
* ''Film/PlanetOfTheApes1968'' has Creator/CharltonHeston's immortal reaction to discovering that humanity annihilated itself in a nuclear war: "You maniacs! You blew it up! ''Damn you! GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!''"
* In ''Film/TheReader'' Michael and his fellow students can't remember the last war and the atrocities committed due to their young age. One of the law students lashes out at the professor about how they (their parents' generation) could have let UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust happen and do nothing about it.
-->'''Dieter:''' Everyone knew. Our parents, our teachers. That isn't the question. [[YouMonster The question is how could you let this happen]]. [[YouShouldHaveDiedInstead And better, why didn't you kill yourself when you find out]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* In ''Literature/GoodOmens'', Crowley (a demon) received a commendation from Hell for starting the Spanish Inquisition. He didn't, rather he just happened to be in the area when it started. When he finally got around to seeing what this new-fangled Inquisition was, [[INeedAFreakingDrink he ended up]] [[DrowningMySorrows spending a good deal of time drinking]] [[EvenEvilHasStandards to forget what he saw.]]
* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'': Ax having the Holocaust explained to him by Rachel. He's not totally traumatized by it, as he's well aware of human bastardy at this point, but it does shock and disgust him. Specifically, he wonders how the same race that's capable of such evil can have produced his friends. It's worth noting that Andalites are herbivorous, and developed interstellar travel before learning about the concept of war.
* In Jack Finney's ''Literature/TimeAndAgain'' a character from the 1880s who traveled to the then-present saw "WWII" on a book spine and tried to pronounce it letter by letter. After being told what it meant by the hero, she became particularly distraught upon realizing that they actually had ''two'' of those suckers.
* This trope is the whole reason that ''Literature/WarAndDemocideNeverAgain'' and its sequels even exist. The writer, R. J. Rummel, was a historian and political scientist whose specialty was totalitarian dictatorships which killed millions of innocents, and so he, in his old age, wrote a hypothetical WishFulfillment fantasy in which two time-travelers (transparently based on [[SelfInsertFic himself]] and [[WriteWhoYouKnow his wife]]) manage to prevent them all and turn the whole world peaceful and democratic. That said, since he wasn't a professional writer.
* In the backstory of ''Literature/TheBrokenEarthTrilogy'', Alabaster is badly shaken by discovering the history of Syl Anagist and how it shows that history has always been full of people like him being oppressed and there is no escape.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action Television]]
%%* The 'baby Addison' episode on ''{{Series/Moonlighting}}''.
* In ''Series/TerminatorTheSarahConnorChronicles'', Sarah goes through one of these when she gets told about 9/11 (which she missed due to TimeTravel). Like the ''{{Series/Farscape}}'' example below, she wasn't shocked by the events themselves, more by the fact that it was humans doing this ''to each other.'' She narrates that had she witnessed the WTC collapse, she would have been sure it was the beginning of the machine's revolution.
* On ''{{Series/NCIS}}'', Leroy Jethro Gibbs is shown reacting to the facts of 9/11 several years after the fact, due to [[EasyAmnesia plot-related memory loss.]]
** Gibbs' shock also has a very specific "We could have avoided all this" feeling because as a government agent (even with a faulty memory) he knows that U.S. intelligence was watching Bin Laden throughout the '90s.
* The 1999 Creator/DisneyChannel movie ''Smart House'' has the titular house's [[AIIsACrapshoot malfunctioning AI]] trap the occupants "safely" within the house, with 20th-century wars, riots, and whatnot as the rationale for doing so.
* Since they have all lived through worse, the aliens on ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' aren't traumatized to find out that HumansAreTheRealMonsters, but they don't understand who they could possibly fight and torment since they are incapable of space flight. Cue shock and confusion when they find out that humans attack each other. The implication, though, isn't that none of their species war among themselves, but that such practices are A) incredibly primitive and would prohibit advancement or even mere survival and B) become less important when faced with conflict from other species.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Meta]]
* This is the reason why HumansAreBastards no longer allows real-life examples; back when it did, tropers who read the page had a tendency to become very depressed, if not outright misanthropic, though more for the [[NotHelpingYourCase current events]] than the historical ones. It didn't help when actual misanthropes found the page and started reveling in man's inhumanity to man. Eventually, it got so bad that the page was temporarily cutlisted, and it was only restored after HumansAreTheRealMonsters became established, and is strictly monitored to prevent that kind of thing from happening again.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Music]]
* In the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil", it is implied that ''humankind'' is the Devil, for all the evil acts cataloged there were caused by humans.
--> After all, it was you and me.
* {{Music/Savatage}}'s ''Music/PoetsAndMadmen'', a ConceptAlbum about the fictitious breakdown of photographer Kevin Carter. Carter witnessed wars and famine during his career, and his most famous, Pulitzer Prize-winning photo was of a small girl dying of malnutrition while a vulture looks on. He's unable to distance himself from what he saw, the weight of mankind's evil drives him to isolation, drugs, and eventually [[DrivenToSuicide suicide]].
* The Music/{{Rammstein}} song ''Deutschland'' is about the group wanting to love Germany but they can't ignore its bloody, bloody history. The video showcases Germany's darkest historical moments in a satirical (but [[NightmareFuel nightmarish]], in true Rammstein style) fashion.
-->'''English translation''': Germany, my heart in flames// Want to love you, want to damn you.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* In ''VideoGame/RaidouKuzunohaVsTheSoullessArmy'', it's implied the {{Big Bad}} [[spoiler: the time-traveling Devil Summoner that [[GrandTheftMe possessed Kaya]]]] put his plans in action in a combination of this trope and SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong.
* In ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedI'', this happens to ''anyone'' who spends too much time in the Animus, especially once they start suffering the "bleeding effect" and begin losing their place in history. For the unfortunate Subject Sixteen, this ultimately killed him, as he was driven insane by the experiences of all of his ancestors and committed suicide.
* This turns out to be a big plot point in ''VideoGame/AmnesiaAMachineForPigs''. [[spoiler: The main character came into contact with a mystical artifact that showed him the horrors of the coming century. Everything that happens was a result of him trying to subjugate mankind to prevent that. In particular, he gets a vision of his sons dying during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI... and takes gruesome measures to ensure that never happens.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Animation]]
* Kamimura of ''WebAnimation/BrokenSaints'' lost his mother and siblings in the bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki--we are not told which.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Webcomics]]
* ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'': Grace has a HeroicBSOD after learning about UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, especially since Hitler reminded her of [[BigBad Damien]].
[[/folder]]
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