Misuzu from AIR, since a lot of time and effort is put into presenting her as a sweet, lovable, although somewhat peculiar girl — only to have her suffer enormous pain in the last few episodes and die in the arms of her adoptive mother, her aunt Haruko. Her final moments are still gruesomely beautiful, though.
Alan Wake: Rose. Poor, poor, Rose. She gets to meet her hero, and then she gets mind raped by the Big Bad.
Arcaea: It's a SOUND VOLTEX - like freemium Rhythm Game with cute and colorful anime girls! What can possibly go wrong? If you can hit a Downer Ending where one of the main characters goes catatonic because she overdosed herself with happiness early on, you know it's going to be bad news. And it only goes worse from here.
Ezio Auditore watched helplessly as his father and two brothers were executed as part of a conspiracy, and spent the next twenty years hunting down those responsible. It's painful to watch his transformation from the carefree, wise-cracking son of a banker into a revenge-driven assassin, and he only barely manages to avoid becoming just like his enemies. The execution scene is especially heartrending, because as soon as Ezio shouts "I'll kill you!", you know there is no going back to the way things were before. Ezio's girlfriend Cristina was shown to be killed in Assassins Creed Brotherhood in one of the flash-back missions.
Connor (or Ratonhnhaké:ton, if you'd prefer) of Assassin's Creed III. We first play him as an adorable 9-year-old kid, who then gets attacked by armed colonists and has to watch his mother slowly die trapped in a burning building. Like Ezio, he spends most of the game trying to track down those responsible and get revenge. The fact that he's just so cute and such a genuinely good person only makes it worse.
In Athena: Awakening from the Ordinary Life, Athena Asamiya of Psycho Soldier/The King of Fighters fame becomes the Player Character... and is brutally put through the grinder. In this particular continuity, she's a quiet Cute Bookworm who's just starting to discover her powers — and from then on she has to fight dinosaurs, keep her friends from finding out who she is, pick up the pieces of her self-worth, fight against a massive Government Conspiracy, watching one of said friends being shot down by soldiers, being unable to save another friend's life at the end, etc.
Imoen from Baldur's Gate. She starts off as a chipper and upbeat girl until she, along with the protagonist and a handful of other characters, are captured by Irenicus in the second game and tortured mercilessly. Then, when she finally escapes to the city of Amn, she makes the mistake of using magic against Irenicus, who comes to stop your group (using magic in Amn is strictly forbidden without special permission.) She and Irenicus are arrested and sentenced to Spellhold, a nuthouse for crazy wizards, where Irenicus takes over the building, and then tortures Imoen even more, eventually violently tearing out her soul, leaving her a broken, babbling mess by the time you catch up to her. She eventually heals...
But then she finds out she's one of the Bhaalspawn, and then has to deal with her newfound murderous impulses (she tells the protagonist at one point that during the last battle she suddenly had the urge to tear out the bad guy's throat with her bare hands.) Needless to say, she's not so chipper or upbeat anymore. Although given that it's Imoen, that's relative to herself, not anyone else. As one character notes well after she's found all this out, she "reminds [him] considerably of a squirrel on a sugar high with a death wish." It is implied at several points that Imoen's continued cheer is partly an act meant to cheer the PC (who suffered less than she did) up. Which just emphasizes how absurdly nice Imoen is — it is noted at one point that not even having a fragment of the God of Murder in her could stop her from being a nice person. Essentially, the plot tries very hard to break Imoen, but never fully succeeds — even though she is badly traumatized (which she only admits in a few, often hard-to-trigger dialogues), her desire to help others and cheer people up never wavers.
In the middle of the "Throne of Bhaal", your party will encounter a wraith that impersonates Gorion and chews your main character out. While your character can take it, they will target the NPC your character is romancing and will proceed to break them down, hard. For example, if your character is romancing Aerie, the wraith conjured an image of her Avariel mother, and then said image told her how she tried looking for her daughter, then was captured with much more brutal slavers and killed, then pinned the blame on Aerie, who caused her to fly down to the ground and get caught in the first place. It's a lie, but that was enough to break her down into tears and sobbing.
Aerie's background story in the first place: A sweet, innocent little winged girl is living happily with her parents in a wondrous city. She loves to fly, but one time she sees a group of humans being attacked by slavers on the ground. Her taught fear of earthborne creatures overcome by her empathy, she swoops down to rescue a fleeing child. However, she is shot down, captured, caged, sold into a circus, kept on display, and held in such a small space she has no room to move. Her precious wings become infected and are crudely chopped off to save her life, leaving her crippled both emotionally and physically, having lost her home, sense of identity, and ability to fly.
There's some Fridge Logic here though when you realize that she eventually learns the incredibly powerful Wish spell, and has a high enough Wisdom score to word her wish correctly. Restoring her wings would count as a very simple use of the spell.
Lyude from Baten Kaitos is a cutie with a somewhat naive view of the world, who gets put through the wringer over the course of the game:
After he gets hypnotized by one of the Big Bad's men, causing the group to lose a valuable Plot Coupon, he gets pretty depressed. To paraphrase his words "What should I do? I can't return to my homeland...but they used me. Manipulated my thoughts as a tool for their plans. Why would I even want to go back?". And his little bouts of depression don't stop there.
When we finally reach said big bad empire, we meet his foster nurse Almarde, and his brother and sister...only to see, in a span of not even five minutes, Lyude unable to return to his brother and sister's side (who were threatening him at gunpoint), and Almarde get fatally shot and die in Lyude's arms. And this is someone who supposedly is his ACTUAL mother! That's another blow to his confidence.
Finally, much later on into the game, we learn of a phantom ship with ghosts calling out to Lyude. When the group goes to visit said phantom ship, it's filled with the ghosts of Lyude's old friends and fellow Imperial soldiers. They constantly put the blame on Lyude, accusing him of betraying Alfard and leaving his former family and friends to die. The ghost of his former commander terribly chews him out. The ghosts of his older brother and sister very much start the breaking of Lyude, saying he was always hated by them and unworthy of their attention.
...And finally, the fake ghost of Almarde shows up herself, saying terrible things to him. Then she teams up with the former commander, his brother and sister, and tell Lyude that he is a coward and has no right to love or be loved by anyone. Poor kid breaks down and actually cries, asking through tears what he should do. The fake Almarde ghost nearly pulls Lyude into the dark side...until the ghost of the real Almarde shows up, saving Lyude from any more breakage just in the nick of time. Cue a huge monster showing up, a monster that is a manifestation of Lyude's self-doubt, self-hate, low-confidence, and broken status.
In BioShock Infinite, Elizabeth starts off as an incredibly adorable, cute, sweet and good-hearted girl, who sees wonder in everything. As the game progresses, she starts to see how cruel the world really is, and her personality changes radically after she kills Daisy Fitzroy. In Comstock House, after going through months of torture (or in the Bad Future you briefly visit, decades of torture), she is nothing like the girl she was before, and is now a cold person.
In BlazBlue, if you're female, expect to get broken, reassembled by Hazama/Terumi to his wishes and then possibly broken againfor his own amusement, with the only exception being Taokaka who gets physically broken, unlike the others who were subject to Mind Rape.
On the male end of the spectrum, there is Carl Clover, who witnessed his sister being turned into a machine by his father and was scarred for life.
Ragna went through this in his backstory. He loses his home, his foster mother, his sister, his brother to insanity, and his arm — all within about five minutes, ten tops. He only survives the last one by unconsciously merging with the remnants of the Black Beast that become his new arm, and that causes even more problems for him.
Litchi went for two tiers. The reveal that the corruption was getting to her in a quick succession that she could effortlessly beat down Tager shocks her, but on the reveal that Kokonoe just plain refused to help her drove her further to the deep end, now knowing that the only one she could think of to help just plain refused her and left her to slowly wither and die. And then, the rest is taken care of by Hazama. Her rant towards Rachel after signing up to NOL shows just how broken she is and is trying the best to keep herself together with just no one to help... and Rachel's response and reprimanding, practically saying what the detractors perceive about her that she's just plain obsessed and selfish, did not help at all...
To top it off, in the Chronophantasma Arcade End, she found out from Rachel, that in her insistence to save Arakune has finally tipped off Kokonoe completely that she went from 'refuse to help', into 'declare her an enemy that needs to die', yep her mentor finally considered her a complete lost cause... oh and her involvement in NOL was instead ushering a doomsday scenario planned by Relius himself, and possibly, Lotte Carmine, the subject she's trying to save, was trying to further that plan instead. Said involvement includes confronting Bang Shishigami, a friend of hers, who ends up having his prized possession taken away by Relius, and it turns out to be the doomsday device he's looking for. On that multitude of realization that she screwed up so badly, being manipulated to destroy many that she loved, is it any wonder that this woman broke down crying?
The story mode gives her a triple breakage. First, in Sector Seven story, just when she gathered enough information and trying to be an Observer and left Relius because he reneged his deal by letting Arakune loose in Ikaruga, she finally decided to call it quits and give all the information she got to Kokonoe. But the first thing that greets her is that Kokonoe wants to drag her back to Sector Seven and put her on trial for siding with NOL, without care about her ordeals. This one was so bad that it's the first time Litchi is reduced into ranting incoherently about how Kokonoe never cared about her until Tager calms her down. Kokonoe finally agreed to receive her information, but then still tells her that her efforts to save is, again, futile, against her hopes that Kokonoe would help her. Then in the next encounter, Relius stated that Litchi booted too early, if he continued with his original plan, there would be a chance to undo her mistake but she slandered the chance away. But maybe you'd think she'd be content with her new friends... The timeline got reset and brought her back to Relius' services, and with the information of the reset timeline, Litchi is forced to stay at Relius' services and look like a woman selfishly supporting genocide, breaking the heart of Bang, but even as she does so, she's too broken to gloat about anything and says nearly nothing except necessary ones.
And then in the final game, timeline got reset again and here comes the proofs that the world just simply enjoys grinding Litchi. First, after a few fights and encounter with Hades Izanami, she ends up learning that she's The Unchosen One, she would have been turned into a lifeless goo if it wasn't for her panda pet that contained a portion of the soul of Lotte Carmine, who was actually chosen. In other words, the world itself, not Hades Izanami, just flat out said "You're a worthless waste of space. Fuck you." on her. Then in the actual story mode, she finally manages to confront a lucid Lotte after avoiding all the other pit traps of Terumi/Relius evil and now with a cure ready and... Lotte says he doesn't need it, he's there on his own accord and it's better this way. So Litchi went through all those breakage... for nothing. She breaks one last time and was ready to finish the act of killing her beloved one by killing the form of Arakune, if she had to carry that burden, she no longer gives a crap, all tearing up while ready to fight. Thankfully, Bang has completely forgotten/forgiven her transgressions on him and decided to do the task himself to spare her from the burden, just shortly after everyone turned to goo. The silver lining is that thanks to the efforts of Ragna to ensure that the world just doesn't reset willy nilly like that (long story), Litchi finally gets an actual break (the actual good thing) by having her life sorted out and gets a daughter figure. But it was a long way full of suffering to get there.
Princess Aurora from Child of Light—an adorable and sweet little girl who wakes up in a strange Magical Land—is left devastated when she finds out that her stepsister Norah was Evil All Along. The two had formed a close sisterly bond, but Norah is later revealed to be the youngest daughter of the tyrannical queen terrorizing said land, and is herself a deceitful sociopath. Following this, a heartbroken Aurora resigns herself to death in the prison tower she ends up imprisoned in, but fortunately Óengus is able to remind her of the many lives that will suffer if she gives up.
CLANNAD — EVERY NAMED PERSON. Special mentions, however, go to:
Tomoya, who is raised by a neglectful, abusive father after his mother's passing, has to give up his childhood dream of becoming a basketball player due to an injury, finds hope when he falls in love with the lovely Nagisa, and then has to watch as she dies in childbirth.Things get better for a while as he raises his daughter Ushio, but then it all comes crashing down again when, to top it all off, she dies from the very same illness that claimed her mother. Of course, the last two deaths are eventually subverted with the help of parallel universes, time travel, and some light orbs, but it's heartbreaking for the poor guy nonetheless.
Sweet little Kotomi had few friends as a child, but she was eventually left quite literally alone after her parents' deaths in a plane crash and her only friend Tomoya abandoning her out of petty embarrassment. She seems okay in the present, but then loses it in a moment of panic when it seems as though her friend Ryou has been hurt in a bus crash, triggering bad memories. The Power of Friendship eventually helps her find her feet again.
Happens multiple times to Simon Henriksson in Cry of Fear.
One type of monster, when approached, will force Simon to try and kill himself if he happens to have a gun on hand. The sobs and whimpers he makes when trying to resist is definitely heartbreaking.
Getting a bad ending in the game ends with you beating up and then choking Simon's mental projection of himself to death with your bare hands, complete with struggles and pained gagging sounds, leading to his real-life suicide.
Komaru Naegi is portrayed as a cute, bubbly girl throughout the whole game, despite the fact that everything around her is basically going to hell. However, despite her cheeriness, she has her moments where she is utterly broken. In the first chapter, she witnesses Yuuta Asahina get blown up before her very eyes trying to escape Towa City. This causes her to go into a Heroic BSoD in which Fukawa yells at her to snap out of it, and in the third chapter, she actually gets molested by a machine, and has to wait some time for Genocide Jack to come save her! That's not even the worst of it, though. There are plenty of small examples throughout the whole game, but the biggest example is the endgame, where Monaca reveals to Komaru that she killed her parents. Assuming Komaru saw the torture equipment in the room where Monaca would kill adults, she could notice worse implications than just them being dead. This causes her to fly into a rage, even screaming at Fukawa, who at that point the two considered each other to be best friends. She even almost destroys a controller that kills every single child in Towa City once broken, had it not been for Fukawa grabbing the controller from her. She then proceeds to suffer another Heroic BSoD throughout the rest of the scene, only snapping out of it when Fukawa slaps her across the face after pulling her away from the rogue Big Bang Monokuma.
Masaru Daimon was beaten by his alcoholic father, and forced to actually steal from stores just to supply for his abusive father.
Jataro Kemuri has been neglected and mentally abused to the point where, despite him being absolutely beautiful, he believes he's ugly enough to melt someone's face.
Nagisa Shingetsu was forced to partake in an experiment that would enhance his intelligence, making him smarter than the average child. This results in various types of abuse, including physical harm, as well as him having to be forced to stay up for three nights in a row. Three.
Monaca Towa has several reasons to be broken (being the bastard daughter of a rich CEO and having a disgusting lolicon brother who beat her to the extent that she was able to convincingly pretend to have to use a wheelchair) but she defies this— she practically worships Junko and her philosophy, so all of that, plus her friends' backstories and goals, are all a funny game to her. Although her diary implies that she was genuinely suicidal...
Jin from Dead Island. She starts as a Tomboy/Wrench Wench of unstated but clearly juvenile/young adult age. Her introduction as an NPC is occasioned by the revelation that her father was bitten by a zombie and has mere hours to live. She is a near-stereotype of the annoyingly naive Wide-Eyed Idealist (which has earned her no small amount of hate from online fans of the game). Then, in short order: she is forced to join the Player group by said father in a Heroic Sacrifice; she naively takes supplies to a gang, who immediately kidnap and (it is heavily implied) rape her (from which the Players must rescue her); she nearly faces the same situation from a gang of renditioned terrorists/prison inmates; she must kill her now-zombified father (and decides she must do it by herself in a Narmy cutscene); and finally, she is shot by the Big Bad just to make him more of a Jerkass, and left for dead by the Players as the game ends.
Isaac Clarke, the protagonist of Dead Space. Granted, he is not a cute anime girl with big eyes and bright hair, but still, he is your average 40-year-old guy trying to earn his salary and get some news about her former girlfriend on a supposedly routine repair job, and he gets stuck facing off against horribly mutated undead creatures, some of whom he knew, the people who try to help him stop the necromorphs being brutally murdered, he gets betrayed by one of his own teammates and at the end, it's revealed his girlfriend killed herself before he arrived and he's been driven insane by a fake Artifact of Doom. When he finally gets a break from all the massacres and bloodshed, he seems to be coming to terms with the loss of his girlfriend... then he is apparently attacked by her. Luckily for him, according to the creators of the game, he is still alive.
You can find even more breaking events in his bio, it seems his father abandoned him when he was young and his mother preferred to spend the money which could have been for his education in to buy a good position in the Church of Unitology.
In Dead Space 2, it obviously gets worse, and Isaac confirms the above example in a short speech early on:
Isaac: Why are you doing this? Why can't everyone just leave me alone?!
The real Hongo Haruna in Sky Saga, to the point of her becoming a merciless killer for hire, and then being stripped of her sanity.
Colonel Mirror in Zero Saga. To wit: as a child, Yamato wished to become an invincible hero who could beat up bullies. What that ends up doing is placing all the heroic traits Yamato had into Stryker Zero and his child self who originally made the wish ends up in the body of Colonel Mirror, who was created as a villain with a heart condition that will soon kill him. So he seeks help from the Stryker manga's original creator, but because he's a villain, his creator rejects him as a villainous monster who should die, and as soon as possible. Then his heart condition gets worse and starts interfering with what morals he does have, and he ends up killing Daniel for no particular reason. Then he meets Yamato's mother and mistakes her for his own mother, but by this point, he's become a grotesque monster. Then because the Memory Collector told the Balborans that the only way to restore everything back to normal is to kill Mirror, Yamato's mother is told to bring Mirror outside school but that lets the Balborans attack him all at once, so he thinks his mother deliberately set him up to be hurt by others and he has no loved ones in the world. That's what finally "breaks" him and he becomes a manchild who repeatedly screams about how badly he wanted to be a hero but was reduced to this instead.
Diablo III's Leah suffers this throughout the course of the game. During the course of Act I, she's proven completely wrong about the demons and is forced to watch as her beloved adoptive uncle Deckard Cain is tortured and killed by Maghda right in front of her. Things begin to look up for her in Act II when she finds out that her mother Adria is still alive. But then comes Act III, and the start of things going From Bad to Worse for her. First, she personally goes through a hellish vision from Azmodan to lure her to Arreat Crater, during which he reveals to her that he knows of her plan to trap the Great Evils in the Black Soulstone and that he's sending an army of hellspawn to get it so that Azmodan can become the Prime Evil. And then she's forced to keep the Black Soulstone together with her power throughout the course of the act so that the Evils cannot escape, which is incredibly painful and draining for her. And this is all beforeshe gets betrayed by her own mother, who uses the aforementioned soulstone to use her as a vessel for Diablo to be reborn as the Prime Evil himself. Poor girl...
Ayato was forced by Cordelia to be the best and be better than Beatrix’s children (Shuu and Reiji). She forced him to study and instead of praising his efforts she would constantly berate him. Due to this, he ended up believing that he must always be the best at everything, becoming a selfish jerkass.
Kanato was traumatized upon being forced by his mother to watch as she screwed up with Ritcher. Also, due to his mother’s Parental Abandonment and her sexual antics, he acts childish, needy and Ax-Crazy.
Laito, often having sex with his own mom, who was very broad-minded. He grew up believing she loved him and got jealous of all the men she screwed. When Karl found out the relationship between Laito and Cordelia, he locks up Laito in the basement prison and when Cordelia came to see him, she has sex with Ritcher in front of him, traumatizing Laito and becoming a sexual deviant.
Subaru, revealed to be a Child by Rape. Karl took Subaru’s mother Christa, forced her to become his bride, raped her and made her have a child, Subaru. A mentally broken Christa often asked Subaru many times to kill her and even gave him a silver knife, which can kill vampires. Subaru, however, never could bring himself to kill his own mother and watching her being frequently abused and raped by Karl. The trauma was bad enough, and he became violent as a result.
Shuu, an Extreme Doormat since childhood, one day befriended a human boy named Edgar. They became best friends, but Reiji, who disapproved of his brother being friends with a human, burned the whole village Edgar lived in, leaving Shuu traumatized and feeling useless upon not doing anything to save Edgar. The nail in the coffin was Reiji twisting his mind by constantly telling him that because of his failure, he is not apt to be the family head.
Die Anstalt has most of the patients you need to help undergoing a big enough dose of this trope before the game itself starts to leave them needing therapy, though the exact events aren't known at first. And some of them need to be broken again if you want to help them out.
Reversed (not averted) with Leliana from Dragon Age: Origins. Introduced as a chirrupy religious type who's a wee bit bonkers but handy with a blade — then if you speak to her enough to raise her approval she eventually reveals that her former mentor sold her out to save her own skin to the Orlesian guards, who tortured her mercilessly and she resigned to dying a traitor's death. Considering some of the implements seen in the Arl of Denerim's dungeons during Rescue the Queen, it's safe to assume that the execution would have been pretty agonizing as well. In the DLC (only-just-canon), this breaks Leliana so thoroughly that she can barely summon the will to escape her cell, even with a little help. It doesn't stop her going on a homicidal rampage after Raleigh though. By the time you reach her in DA:O, she's had two years to start pulling her life together; and that hasn't healed everything.
As if that isn't bad enough, her former mentor comes after her again in an effort to cut off all loose ends, absolutely certain (and absolutely wrong) that Leliana is working towards revenge. This little side quest is all it takes to completely shatter the life that Leliana had pieced together for herself and send her back into her old ways unless you convince her not to.
There's also a good chance (and outright implication) that she was gang-raped as part of the torture she went through. Break the cutie indeed...
There's also Alistair, an insufferably wise-cracking smartass who, overall, is a pretty decent and pure-hearted guy. At some point, he learned that he has an older sister and asks the Warden if they can visit her. It does not go well. And nothing you say to him eases the pain of rejection he feels. You can use the opportunity to harden his naive idealism into a more realistic view, for some changes to the ending pertaining to him.
Not to mention that this happens soon after the poor guy has lost his father figure (who rescued him from life as a Templar after he was sent away thanks to the jealous wife of his other father figure.) It's obvious that he's quite broken up about it, but tries to keep the grief to himself and apologizes for letting it get to him. Later in the game, if you allow the man whose betrayal caused these deaths to join your party, Alistair does not take it well at all, and depending on your previous choices may end up as a sad, wandering drunk.
Merrill in Dragon Age II has a lot of this in her backstory, and more in-game, especially if you take the Rivalry path.
Hawke him/herself can qualify, especially if he or she is played as a helpful diplomatic type. Dad dies early on, then his/her village gets overrun with darkspawn, then one sibling gets taken out by an ogre, then the other sibling dies or gets hauled off to the Grey Wardens, and then Mom is horrifically killed by an insane mage, and then Hawke's friend/best friend/lover blows up the Chantry and starts a massive civil war... it's a wonder Hawke isn't catatonic post-game.
By the time of Dragon Age: Inquisition, Varric is already cracking under the collective strain of having set in motions the events that led to multiple current conflicts, having dragged Hawke into all of that, what happened with his brother, and the current state of the world. The real Break-the-Cutie moment comes if Hawke sacrifices themselves in the Fade, leaving the typically-eloquent dwarf completely speechless.
Dragon Quest IV: Psaro the Manslayer is a humanoid demon with a lovely elf girlfriend named Rose, and generally a Friend to All Living Things, despite his heritage. Well, one day some enterprising merchants got a hold of Rose, based on rumors that her tears formed into valuable rubies, and being the profit-seeking humans they were, they took her into the middle of a field and brutally beat her. Needless to say, Psaro isn't very happy about this, finding himself so overcome with grief that he kills the merchants. He responds by founding Rosehill Village, which is a tiny settlement around a huge tower he builds to keep Rose safe. It's at this point that Psaro begins considering killing off all of humankind, but Rose begs him to give humanity a chance to peacefully coexist, so he resists the urge. A fellow demon, Radimvice/Aamon, has Rose captured and killed to further his own fiendish plots, namely taking control of all monsters. Radimvice/Aamon is able to prey on Psaro's trust of all monsters and claim that it was the humans that captured and killed Rose. This manipulation ends up sending Psaro so deep into despair that he usurps Estark's position as King of the Underworld, becomes the Big Bad of the game, and ultimately harnesses the very power of evolution to become a huge green version of Estark that provides the Ur-Example of the Sequential Boss, all to take revenge against the humans that had wronged him so. Even with all this, he's not quite an Omnicidal Maniac, since he still values the lives of everything else...you know, just not humans. (The DS and PS1 version adds a 6th chapter in which Psaro recovers from his defeat and does a Heel–Face Turn by saying that he can make up for his mistakes and take revenge with the party on Aamon. But only AFTER they resurrect Rose and make her calm him down.)
Dragon Quest V: Saying the Hero had it rough growing up is putting it lightly. His mother was kidnapped when he was a baby, his father was burned to ashes when he was eight, he was made a slave... and that is only the beginning. It's even shown in his artwork, where as a child he has a big grin on his face while as an adult he's always frowning.
Mercedes Marten from Dragon's Dogma. You are first introduced to her as the competent, and confident commanding officer of the Recruitment Corp, she even helps you repel a Hydra when it tries to destroy the encampment. However, it's when you get to meet the Duke that her insecurities show themselves. She's the daughter of the lord of Hearthstone, and was sent to help stop the Dragon and aid the Arisen. In reality though, it turns out he only sent her there to be rid of her, and so that one of his favourite sons wouldn't go to get killed instead. Lord Julien's speech to her during their duel completely stops her cold. If she survives she heads back to Hearthstone, to ask for a real army from her Father to help the Arisen.
There are a lot of examples in 11eyes universe. So:
Shiori when Kukuri stabbed her after her battle against Avaritia.
Lisette of course. The crusade made her mentally broken and her meeting with Michel Maximilian didn't make her better. That's one of the most harsh scenes into 11eyes.
Scholastica in the anime where Shiori killed her. In the game, there is her torture scene by tentacles.
Irene when she thought Sebastianus was alive, her body is ripped off.
Yuka somehow or other in the game. After Kakeru discovered that she created a false world, she was absorbed by Liselotte. Although he didn't love Yuka, this scene was very sad.
In Fallout: New Vegas, this is a possible fate for Veronica Santangelo. A member of the Brotherhood of Steel who wishes that the Brotherhood actually uses their technology to help others, if she's encouraged to leave them and join the Followers of the Apocalypse, she'll be told to wait a day before they sign her up. One day later, she returns to find the Followers and their patients dissolved into ash, with Brotherhood Paladins stating that they've come to kill her for spreading knowledge to outsiders. After they're dealt with, she ends up blaming herself for causing the death of innocents.
In Fallout 3, if you nuke Megaton, Moira survives, but is mutated into a Ghoul. Furthermore, you can break her psychologically by talking her out of writing the Wasteland Survival Guide with a Speech test. This causes negative karma but earns you the Dream Crusher perk.
Far Cry 3: Good God. Considering that the plot is that you and your rich friends who have likely never picked up a gun in your lives are captured by pirates and intended to be sold into slavery, you can't really expect things to be bushels of daisies at any point. The cake goes to the Player Character, Jason Brody, who goes from a sweet innocent boy with little direction in life into a monster who would kill without a second thought and torture his own brother.note Thankfully, it was all an act so that he wouldn't blow his cover, but he still found it disturbingly easy to carry out In the end, if he leaves the island with his friends, he admits to himself that he's become a monster.
As a bonus, he is frequently referred to as a Pretty Boy so he's definitely a Cutie that's getting broken hard.
Fatal Frame series take it bad, canonically giving all the female protagonists sad endings regardless of how much they had to go through. This is even part of the plot in the third game, where we see the two previous protagonists still suffering for losing their loved ones, and because of thatthey get cursed!
In F.E.A.R., the cute and innocent one, an incredibly powerful psychic girl named Alma, was broken from birth. Born with the ability to sense and react to negative emotions, she was so bat-crazy that she was able to drive other people insane from simply being in proximity to them. This is before the evil faceless corporation studying her locked her away in a forced coma at the age of 8, then years later used her teenage body as an incubator for psychic Super Soldiers. To add to the whole mess, she develops an intense attachment to her unborn children, which are then promptly taken away from her before she's sent back to the psychic vault she's being imprisoned in. Needless to say, when she gets loose with all that pent up rage, the crap really hits the fan.
Final Fantasy VI: Terra starts out the game broken. Celes tries to commit suicide after finding herself alone (Cid is dead or dying then) on a deserted island.
The Compilation of Final Fantasy VII seems to be one long telling of how they broke the character Cloud, glued him back wrong, broke him again, then fixed him for real. Sort of. Specifically, this included being blamed for an accident that injured his childhood crush Tifa, which results in him being forbidden from seeing her, failing at the only dream he ever had (joining SOLDIER), watching his mother die (oh, and knowing she was killed by his idol, aka Sephiroth), watching his other idol — Zack — get shanked by Seph, getting shanked himself, being experimented on for four years straight, and all of this culminates with watching his beloved Zack get gunned down after being dragged across the country by him for a year because the experimentation had left him nearly comatose. Then it gets worse. Unable to cope with all that has happened in the past, he recreates his memories so Zack never existed (well, he thinks he's Zack, but same thing). And then Final Fantasy VII happens (in which we see him actually break and go comatose again). After the game Cloud settles down with Tifa, only to contract the incurable disease Geo-Stigma, which leads you down a slow and painful death. Towards the end of Advent Children, his troubles are finally solved, however.
Don't forget about Zack too. Sure he was already a SOLDIER that fought and killed, but he was still an adorable one that would help other lower-ranked SOLDIERS and unimportant Shinra staff. In fact, getting recommended for first-class rank was enough to make him act sort-of-childish. Then the mission to Wutai happens where Angeal disappears, then he has to see that same person, who he idolized, kill his own mother, then he has to see Angeal's hometown get blown up. Then comes the part where He has to kill him making the tough SOLDIER, who was promoted to first rank at that point cry. It's sort of heart-breaking to see the normally cheery person turn into a strict role model in the scene that follows.
Final Fantasy VIII subverts this beautifully by having Selphie look at the graves of all her recently deceased friends at Trabia Gardens, and instead of teary mourning instead, she talks to them saying how proud they would have been of her. Turning what would be a cliche Tear Jerker into a moment where you see her spirit will not be crushed. Many tears ensue.
In Final Fantasy IX, poor Princess Garnet suffers so many traumas in a short space in time like watching her mother die, becoming the queen and never being able to see her love Zidane again, only to have her kingdom nearly destroyed by Bahamut that she goes completely mute for a good section of the game.
Vivi. Finds out he's a prototype model of mindless magical soldiers, watches his own kind get killed or sacrificed like cannon fodder, and then learns that all the black mages have a very short lifespan and his time could come any moment. No wonder he's The Woobie.
It's also heavily implied that his "Grandfather" was planning on eating him.
Zidane, too, surprisingly. His androgynous looks aside, he's The Cutie because he is relentlessly cheerful and upbeat throughout the entire game. The few times that his optimistic demeanor vanishes are usually when it's replaced with righteous anger, like upon seeing enemies slaughtering helpless civilians. Just like Vivi, though, he learns that he's actually nothing more than a weapon. A highly complex and specialized weapon, but ultimately meant to bring war and destruction to the planet that is his home. This causes him to completely lose hope and march slowly towards his death during the famous You Are Not Alone scene.
The above is subverted, actually. When he discovered the truth, Zidane declared he would do what he was meant to do; by killing Garland. Garland then decides to rip Zidane's soul out of his body, causing his Heroic BSoD.
Vanille was a genuine cutie pre-game before she became a l'Cie. The trauma she experienced thereafter (guilt over forcing Fang to become Ragnarok alone, becoming a crystal statue and then waking up on Cocoon) ended that. Everything she's done since the start of the 13 days (i.e. guilt over Serah and Dajh, the Purge, Hope's mother — which wouldn't have happened if she hadn't lied to Fang) has only added to the stress of maintaining the mask, making her a rather extreme example of this. She gets better.
Hope Estheim. Over just the beginning of the game, he gets bundled up with the other people of Bodhum, where he was on vacation with his mother, and is to be sent to Pulse, a world that is basically hell to the people on Cocoon. The train gets derailed, the civilians are riled up to fight back and his mother leaves as well, only for her to die as Hope watches in horror. Now the poor guy is left alone, in a situation that he can't handle and ends up a Pulse l'Cie. Meaning he needs to fulfill a vague focus and either become a nice, crystal statue or turn into a sentientEldritch Abomination. And then he's also forced to run away from the government, who now deem him a threat to the world and will kill on sight. And that's not even getting into his conflicted feelings of having to work alongside the guy he blames for his mother's death to begin with. The events thatfollow later on further break him down; he lost just about everyone he cares for in XIII-2, and after the Time Crash of that game, he gets his sanity torn apart slowly by the God of Evil, then tortured for 169 years just so that he can be shaped as the perfect vessel. Damn, the guy really needs a break.
The Fire Emblem games are full, full of this trope:
Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War has Tailtiu, a young thunder mage originally portrayed as a Tsundere-ishgenkiRebellious Princess. But things start to go downhill for her when her leader, Sigurd, is killed. She survives the battle only to be separated from her husband (who may be either dead or alive, depending on who she married), and although she once managed to flee to Silesia with her kids Arthur and Teeny, she gets taken back to her destroyed homeland, is separated from her son by force, and she has to withstand mental and physical abuse from her power-hungry bitch of a sister-in-law Hilda, with her king and older brother Blume not interfering with the abuse since Tailtiu is seen as a traitor by her people, all while protecting her daughter from said abuses by taking them on herself. Eventually, the poor girl cannot become a genki mother as she was before, cries every day, and eventually dies in sorrow after getting sick.
Averted with Cheerful Child Nino. Having a manipulative, evil woman like Sonia as a mother would be enough to drive a little girl over the edge, but things find a way to go downhill from there. First, her mother orders her killed in order to make a scapegoat for an assassination plot. After a narrow save by her best friend (and possible love interest through supports), she later confronts Sonia, only to learn that Sonia actually murdered her birth family when she was a baby and would have killed her as well if it wasn't for orders from the Big Bad. Then, she has to witness the murder of one of her adopted brothers, one which she tried her best to prevent. After watching the Black Fang fall apart, if you keep her around for the final boss, she has to fight the animated corpses of said adopted family: not only her brothers but her father as well. Yet in spite of it all, Nino presses on and, despite having her small breakdowns, never fully gives in to despair.
Ninian and Nils are no slouches in this either. Children of a human druid and a female dragon who disappeared during the Scouring? Check. Had to pass through the Gate when Dad went missing too? Check. Missed home so much they jumped at the call when they were invoked, only to be trapped by the Black Fang whose leader is hinted to be their now-amnesiac and power-hungry father? Check. Had to run away for years, with the Black Fang on their heels? Check. Recaptured, befriended Eliwood's Disappeared Dad only to be partially guilty of his death? Check. Ninian falling for Eliwood but being unable to tell him because of her heritage? Check. Ninian being forced by Nergal to return to her dragon form, only to be slain by Eliwood? Check... and Nils' Heroic BSoD that comes soon after.
Also averted with Lucius. Being orphaned at a young age, teased all his life for his feminine appearance, and mistreated by a teacher shaped him into... one of the most faithful and reverent characters in the entire game. When he meets the now-reformed killer of his father and he breaks down crying and begging for Lucius' forgiveness... he does.
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn: Pelleas. Shy orphan boy who made a deal to become a spirit charmer? Check. Being thought of as the lost prince of Daein? Check. Having his life suck BALLS since then, due to his Archnemesis Dad and his already broken smother of a mother? Check. Being tricked into making a blood pact to help his country, only to have things go even wronger than they were? Check. Ultimately asking Micaiah or Tauroneo to kill him so the pact will go away, only to see that it's useless? Check. It takes a LOT (re: more than one playthrough) to even get the chance to try rebuilding this cutie's heart.
All of the future children can qualify. Their parents are all dead with the possible exception of Lissa, their world's been overtaken by a dark god and his unholy minions and the present world they've time-traveled to runs the risk of the same thing happening unless they can destroy the dark god. That's not even going into the troubled relationships some of these kids have with their parents, especially Noire's with Tharja and Severa's with Cordelia. Or Laurent actually landing three years in the past before the others did, which almost drove him into insanity.. And yet they manage to press on.
The entire premise is about a Warrior Prince or Lady of War having to choose between one Royal Family or another, and the family that isn't chosen will be completely shattered through the war. If the Player Character chooses Nohr, then his/her eldest Hoshidan brother will have to commit a Heroic Suicide to save him/her; the youngest Hoshidan brother will lose himself to The Power of Hate, end up subjected to Demonic Possession, and become the path's Final Boss; the two sisters will survive, but not before they witness the horrible war and become sad and depressed, though they eventually get better. If the player chooses Hoshido, then the eldest Nohrian sister will cross the Despair Event Horizon and go Yandere until she's defeated and ultimately survives, the youngest Nohrian sister will die Taking the Bullet for the PC to protect him/her from their eldest Nohrian brother, said eldest Nohrian brother will also go through the Despair Event Horizon and then let himself get killed, and the youngest Nohrian brother will live through and become stronger as a result, but not before also fighting the armies and almost dying. (Plus, the sister of one of the Player Character's retainers will be forced to fight the group and later will commit suicide.) Basically, no matter what path the player chooses, someone will be broken. The closest thing to an exception is the Golden Path, but even then a Cool Big Sis figure will be murdered by one of the Avatar's closest friends (under Demonic Possession, to be fair) and the reunited armies will have to fight their way through some people very dear to them, who have been forcibly revived by theBig Bad.
The Heirs of Fate DLC stages are pretty much built around this trope: Alternate versions of the Second Generation children have been forcibly torn away from their once-safe Deeprealms, and their parents (especially their dads) have all died or disappeared to save them plus the Deeprealms themselves AND their original worlds have been destroyed. Then the Big Badpits groups of surviving children against each other, purely for his own amusement. The bulk of the story here is to have one of the eldest kids become the Big Good and reunite the others, to retaliate and find a way to fix this mess.
Dimitri, crown prince of the Kingdom Faerghus, seems like an honourable and kindly young man, but but in reality is extremely broken. Having been the sole survivor of the Tragedy of Duscur at age 10, in which he saw everyone he knew and loved brutally murdered, causing him to be haunted by the voices of the dead demanding justice. Eventually he seemingly finds the mastermind, who is his step sister Edelgard, who's mother was killed in the massacre. Consumed by hatred, he spends years killing anyone from Adrestia and desperately tries to kill Edelgard to please the voices, not caring a single iota about his own life. In every route except his own, this ultimately kills him, and even in the Azure Moon path he's never fully healed. Even worse is the fact that Edelgard was the same age as Dimitri when his downward spiral began, and that the mastermind behind Duscur was Edelgard's mother.
Edelgard herself suffered plenty. Initially one of the younger of about a dozen siblings, after a coup against her father, every child of the Emperor were kidnapped and subjected to inhuman experimentation in order to transplant the Crest of Flames into their body, with Edelgard being the only one that wasn't killed or driven insane. While she successfully gained a second crest, the process greatly reducing her lifespan. Manipulated into developing a hatred of the Church of Serios, believing it was manipulating Fodlan in order to suit its agenda, and resolving to destroy it, with her only allies being the Agarthans that experimented on her and killed her siblings despite hating them, she resorts to more and more evil actions in order to ensure that it wasn't All for Nothing, abandoning her friendships despite how much it hurts her. Like Dimitri, only her route can save her, and when she does die in the other routes she seems relieved.
The Phone Guy. In the second game, set before the events of the first, he sounds so adorable and happy when he's talking about his admiration for the animatronics. He honestly just wants Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria to be a fun place for everyone. Some time later, he witnesses the Bite of '87, the murder of five children (or is framed for the murder), and the scrapping of his beloved characters. By the time of the first game, he sounds emotionally broken, just trying to survive the nights while teaching the new guy how to do the same, and he ends up getting killed by the animatronics on the fourth night.
In the base game, this happens to Glamrock Freddy. Originally a caring, friendly, and oblivious child-friendly performer, the cruel events of the night make him more and more cynical and uncaring about committing violence if that's what it takes to save Gregory, even (albeit reluctantly) getting upgraded with parts from his bandmates that Gregory partially destroys. He also gets progressively more dingy-looking, covered in grime, and some of his bright paint fading and wearing off.
In the Ruin DLC, this happens to player character Cassie, a little girl who is trying to rescue Gregory. Venturing into the Pizzaplex alone, she's forced to deal with rogue Killer Robots, a deadly security AI, and the dangers of the dilapidated building. Her initially snarky, dismissive attitude wears down to fear and paranoia over the course of the story, but it's being forced to deactivate Roxanne Wolf, her favorite animatronic in the final chapter is what finally gets to her, leaving her a broken, sobbing mess.
Gwen from Guild Wars, you first meet her at the beginning of the first campaign Prophecies as a cute, cheerful, and lovely little girl, soon after her (and yours too) hometown is destroyed by the Charr and Gwen's fate is unknown until years pass and you meet her again as a young woman in the expansion pack Eye of the North, it is revealed that she was brutally tortured and enslaved by the Charr and she bitterly harbors hatred and the desire for revenge against them.
Atoli of .hack//G.U. She's already depressed and suicidal in real life due to being bullied and rejected by her "friends" and parents, despite her happy and perky online facade, and then Sakaki mind rapes her with false guilt and infects her with AIDA, causing her to snap, and forcing Haseo to beat the crap out of her to save her. Then, he has to slap her and give her a harsh wake-up call back to reality. It did her good in the long haul, but still.
In Halo 3, she is captured by the Gravemind, and it tries to force her to give up information. It then starts pushing her into insanity, with Human Weakness revealing that the Gravemind Mind Rapes Cortana to the point of making her actually somehow feel pain, despite her being an AI, all while taunting her about her inadequacies. The degree to which she's been tortured and, to some degree, violated is made obvious by her fetal-position posture when the Master Chief finally rescues her.
In Halo 4, Cortana is near the end of her life due to her becoming increasingly rampant and becomes increasingly melancholy about it. All the while, her sanity and self-control are visibly slipping, and she's clearly distraught about the fact that she's having trouble doing what used to be relatively simple tasks for her. Making it worse, she clearly doesn't want the Chief to worry about her, having realized that he might not be able to keep his promise to keep her safe this time around.
Rena and Satoko from Higurashi: When They Cry both qualify, though Rena tends to snap, while Satoko breaks. Rika also tends to get it pretty hard. In fact, it's hard to argue that any of the cuties of Hinamizawa aren't broken at some point.
Jisei: When Naoki and Aki's father started drinking, he would beat Naoki and blame him for their mother's death. This is especially horrific considering Naoki's kansei allows (and forces) him to remember everything he's ever experienced in perfect detail. When Aki is able to control her kansei, she uses it to manipulate their father's mind and redirect his anger toward herself.
Despite being a borderline Villain Protagonist, Kane from Kane & Lynch goes through this after his wife is shot in the eye right in front of him, not to say of either of the endings or his son's death before the game even starts. By the time the sequel rolls around, he is a shell of himself, growing a Beard of Sorrow and generally looking glum. Not that Shanghai gave him anything to smile about.
Pit from Kid Icarus: Uprising goes through hell during chapter 18. Pit's entire faith in Angel Land and fighting for justice is destroyed in a blink of an eye, the people that considered him Captain are now attacking him, and the Brainwashed and Crazy Palutena calls him a "puppet" and says she doesn't want to deal with him anymore. He gets over it (for the most part) in the next chapter, but it doesn't change the fact that those words will probably stick with him for a long time.
It gets worse. Chapter 19, Hades and Viridi constantly lay the smack down of insults on him and without Palutena to support him, Pit progressively gets quieter with the chapter (but he does get louder when he's asking Viridi if he's at the top of the tower yet). And then comes Chapter 20, where some of his insecurities are let lose as Palutena continues to berate him for being useless and naive. When he finally saves her from Chaos Kin though, he has to watch as her soul is ripped out of her and she turns to stone. And when he spends chapter 21 trying to get it back and succeeds with the help of Dark Pit, Chaos Kin wanted to make sure Pit suffered and tried to take Dark Pit down with him. Pit's response is to dive in and save him causing his wings to burn up in the process. though chapter 23 treats Pit's Sanity Slippage moment lightly, given what happened in the previous chapters, it's not hard to think he actually lost it.
Kingdom Hearts does this to several characters, most notably Roxas. Roxas is a curious case in that he's broken multiple times in a relatively short timespan. He's established as a normal kid who just has fun hanging out with his friends during summer until the Keyblade enters his life. But soon he starts realizing that everything around him, including the people and his friends were actually fake illusions created by a computer and this virtual city was actually a prison to keep him imprisoned for the time being till his death. From there, things go south further even more till it revealed that he was the fake one who was never supposed to exist. By this time, he was a broken wreck. In the final day of the week, he gets disposed of in a Fate Worse than Death as his supposed best friend comes to finish him off. Later on, it gets worse as it turns out that his so-called friends chose somebody else's well-being above his revival resulting in his chance to escape his fate to be lost. Then 358/2 Days came out showing his past, and it turns out Roxas spent his entire life as the Organization's Unwitting Pawn, and among the very few people that seemed to care about him, Xion was tasked to kill him and was actually slow-poisoning him and finally Axel, his only other friend realized that only one among Roxas and Xion could survive, and Xion being the more likely candidate, chose her over Roxas after failing to save both. By the end of the year, after realizing the truth about the organization as well as Xion and how they were using him as a disposable tool only to betray him at the end, breaks whatever was left of him by that point. He eventually faces both of his best friends individually in battle as they try to kill him. Eventually, he gets captured and beaten into a coma, after which he is placed in a machine that puts his consciousness in the fake city for a week, which is already known about. In fact, the first few days of this blissfully ignorant week where he had his memories erased and replaced with fake memories from Namine was the probably happiest time in his life, in which he finally gets to experience a normal life.
Xion herself counts as well. She's an artificial construct made of Sora's memories, an unnatural existence even by nobody's standards, was never seen as true member of Organisation XIII, and most notably, her original purpose is to sap energy from Roxas, meaning only her or her best friend can live. To say she doesn't take this well when she learns about all of that is an understatement. Oh, and the reason she attacked Roxas? She hoped he will killher, so Sora's memories can be reconstructed. Which he does, with her being forgotten by everyone, though by KH3D, there are some memories of her inside Sora's heart. Then Kingdom Hearts III brings her back, but now being used as a vessel for Master Xehanort's real Organization XIII.
Ventus starts as an adorable cheerful little boy who "views every day as a new discovery". By the end of Birth by Sleep, he's nothing but an Empty Shell, and he was a Death Seeker for a brief period of time before that.
In Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], Sora winds up in a coma following the destruction of his heart after a lengthy torture by Young Xehanort. While he does get saved by Riku, the trailers for the next game imply that he may have lost his cutie status.
The King of Fighters gives us Kula Diamond. A little girl raised as a test subject for a good part of her life by the NESTS cartel, in KOF 2000 she realises how terrible the group is, and decides to fight back and destroy the Zero Cannon, saving the Earth. After that, she plummets to Earth and is saved by Robot Girl Candy... who is destroyed so Kula can live. Her end has her cradling Candy's robot head, which murmurs "friend... my friend..." KOF 2001 doubles down, as there, she's partnered up with one of her mother figures and two strangers... and Foxy, said mother figure, gets stabbed in the back by one of said strangers, with both K9999 and Ángel laughing about the fact that they just attempted murder right in front of her. From then on, however, she starts getting better.
Leona Heidern once was a quiet young girl living in a small village. Then, a man named Goenitz arrived there to talk to her father, the village leader. Then the man turned and spoke to her. And then she blacked out... and woke up splattered with the blood of her parents and everyone in her village. And she was the one who killed them, under Goenitz's More than Mind Control. She completely shuts down from then on, and while she somewhat recovers after being taken in by Heidern and trained as a Child Soldier, it takes her years to even start smiling again...
This happens to Klonoa is Klonoa: Door to Phantomile. First his grandfather is killed right in front of him, then he learns that his entire life was a lie orchestrated by his supposed best friend.
Knights of the Old Republic subjects Bastila and Mission to this treatment. Most of Bastila's occurred off-screen, while Mission's experiences having her home planet glassed and her brother, the only family she had left, revealed as a lying scumbag give her a much nastier temper than she had at the beginning.
And yet, despite all of this, Mission is still one of the most pure-hearted characters in the game, as is obvious in the scenes where the player reveals that they are Revan and her attempt to bring you back to the Light if you go Dark near the end. She gets broken, but inevitably bounces back to her feet. Unless you do go Dark Side, in which case the only option is to kill her.
Visas in the sequel, and Kriea (assuming she was ever cute to begin with) are revealed as having this trope as a prime ingredient in their Dark and Troubled Past. Watching as her two "sons" fall into darkness and while one could probably get better, the other completely falls into the darkness. She tries to make things right by raising a "child" in the form of the Exile who could "fix" her by living up to her expectations and not make the mistakes her sons did.
A variation of this in Ocarina of Time involves breaking a large group of lovable characters called the Gorons. A peaceful, friendly group, they just want to live in peace and harvest their crops, but are content to welcome outsiders as well. However, when Ganondorf shows up and demands they turn over their spiritual stone, they refuse to do it and he punishes them by sealing off their primary food source. Later in the game, when Ganondorf takes over, he has several Gorons locked up in cages in the Fire Temple and is going to feed them to a dragon as a warning to those who might oppose him. Once you get to the Fire Temple, you see the Gorons trembling in their cells, evidently terrified, begging for mercy, and not being given any. And then you get to march in there, save each and every one of them, and smash the dragon's head in with a shiny new hammer.
Breath of the Wild has Princess Zelda. Her encouraging mother's death and her father's stern demands that she unlock her Royalty Super Power for the upcoming fight against Calamity Ganon means that she is not allowed to be the scholar she really wants to be. Then, when Ganon returns, he possesses the mechanisms originally designed to defeat him and devastates the kingdom, all of which Zelda was unable to prevent due to the lack of said power. Cue Cry into Chest scene with Link. A less extreme example is Paya, a shy Shrinking VioletIngenue with a crush on Link that she doesn't fully understand, who is devastated when the important Sheikah heirloom she and her ancestors have been guarding for 10,000 years for Link's eventual use gets stolen under her watch; once Link retrieves it and uses it for its intended purpose, though, she gets over it quickly.
Akira Nishikiyama, now that he's been much more developed by the prequel and the first game's remake. Despite trying so hard to be noticed by the higher-ups and advance through the ranks of the yakuza, he's continually overshadowed by his best friend, Kiryu. Their childhood crush also favors Kiryu. Despite this, he and Kiryu are extremely close, and he's devastated when Kiryu takes the blame for Nishiki's own murder of their boss and goes to prison for a decade in his place. Ironically, though Kiryu's absence allows him to advance, everyone respects Kiryu more for his supposed 'crime' and view Nishiki as a spineless nobody, to the point where his own men out and out bully him. Then his sister dies after he's taken advantage of financially by a doctor who promised he could save her. By that point, it's no wonder he snaps.
Subverted by Haruka. Over the series and before the age of 18, Haruka has been orphaned, kidnapped, beaten, and seen pretty much every single aspect of the dark side of the human psyche in some form. While she has taken some damage, she has never let her traumas break her, but remains genuinely kind, cheerful, and relentlessly optimistic.
This is the major plot point of Luigi's Mansion. Luigi was just going to visit the mansion with his brother but was actually a set-up by King Boo to get rid of Mario forever. With the help of Elvin Gadd, Luigi has to save Mario equipped with a ghost-sucking vacuum cleaner, while dealing with ghosts he's scared to wits over all over the mansion.
Mass Effect isn't nice on anyone and nobody makes it through the series without marks (literally with Garrus, who loses half his face), but following the themes of the series, they all learn to cope with it. Because there really is no choice. Some have it worse than others, though:
While Liara T'Soni takes the death of her estranged mother, Matriarch Benezia, reasonably well, she is barely recognizable after Shepard's return from the dead two years later. From a hopeful and socially awkward scientist, she has become a hardened and occasionally ruthless information broker and the head of her own spy ring, taking several levels in badass. And in the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC, she upgrades to one of the most powerful people in the known galaxy after taking the place of the Shadow Broker.
Yeoman Kelly Chambers is probably the minor character for which Cutie is the most appropriate. In the third game, you can find her again and she refuses to set foot on the Normandy due to PTSD following her ordeal at the hands of the Collectors from the second game in which she comes this close to being liquified alive, but she still manages helping refugees who had it as bad as her. And in this case, you can proceed to Break the Cutie further, leading to her killing herself.
Talitha, one of the few minor characters that you can comfort, and given what she's gone through — being captured from Shepard's village by Batarian slavers at the age of 6 after watching her parents burned alive and spending 13 years as a slave during which she was abused severely — she definitely needs it.
Tali, the cute quarian squadmate who tags along with you through the entire series, goes through this if you side with the geth over the quarians or peace between the races. It doesn't last long.
Metal Gear Solid: Oh, Otacon. Otacon, Otacon, Otacon. He's an adorable nerd-boy who loves all things nerdy and Japanese, is enthusiastic about his work, and genuinely believes in people. Also, he's a statutory rape victim, his father committed suicide, he's inadvertently responsible for the creation of one of the deadliest weapons mankind has ever known, his crush was shot, his long-lost sister was killed, his other crush was killed, and his Heterosexual Life-Partner, the only person who's ever stuck by him, is doomed to die of old age at forty-five. This series might as well be called Metal Gear Horrible Things Happen to Hal Emmerich. It's to the point where the ten years of happiness he gets with Snake between Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots feels almost like a slap in the face—"We're giving you a break from your horrible life. Enjoy it while it lasts, 'cause it's not going to last long!"
Speaking of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, this is revealed to be in the backstories of all the Beauty and the Beast unit girls after they are defeated. One girl was forced to kill off her neighbors and family while laughing. One accidentally smothered her own brother to keep him from crying after escaping a raid, and then killed a refugee camp's worth of kids while hallucinating that a wolf did it. One found herself among kids that were kidnapped, abused, then abandoned to be eaten by ravens, was lucky enough that the ravens accidentally broke her ropes before they pecked her to death, and hunted down the soldiers responsible, innocents be damned. And the leader was the only one who didn't kill anybody before being turned into her B&B self, but it's not like she got off any better. She was forced to run for her life after her village got burned to the ground, eventually got herself locked in a torture chamber, and only survived through the horrible conditions and the screams of villagers by drinking dirty water and hallucinating about a mantis teaching her to block out sound and feed on the corpses in the chamber for ten days (the mantis is implied to be Psycho Mantis (who broke a long time ago) during one of his missions in Africa, sometime during the events of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain — after all, HE becomes her spirit mentor / slave master in MGS4). Combine all that with their gratuitous good looks, it's enough to make someone side with Liquid Ocelot's "get revenge on the world that did this by blowing 'civilization' to hell" plan.
And of course the biggest example in the whole series is Naked Snake aka. Big Boss. Started out as a rather naive rookie soldier and a Nice Guy in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, then losing his eye for a woman who ended up betraying him and being forced to kill his old mentor who was never a traitor all along but ended up being used and discarded by the US Government turned him into a bitter, angry shell of a man who despises politicians and set in his mind a dream of a nation that was constantly at war and would never discard or use soldiers in the way his old country used The Boss.
Poor Lucas from Mother 3. His mother dies, his twin brother Claus disappears and believed to be dead, and his father suffers from Deus Angst Machina going off every day to look for his missing son ignoring the one he has left in the process. All of this within a few days game time.
After the three-year time skip, things don't improve for the poor kid. If anything, it gets worse. His father still goes out searching, the beloved village slowly changes into a more modern town before being abandoned completely, it is revealed that everything he knows has been an elaborate lie to prevent another Armageddon and that game's final Big Bad? His missing twin brother, now a Brainwashed and Crazy cyborg.
Neverwinter Nights: Aribeth. Fenthick's death causes her to go from patriotic, god-loving Paladin to god-forswearing general of the Always Chaotic Evil Old Ones.
The above, while certainly not a high point for the said character, is only the beginning. Dread Queen Morag's sending false visions of her god abandoning her and the ensuing self-doubt/loathing is likely much more damaging to her already weakened psyche. So much for the Paladin's high will save...
And all of that doesn't even include all of the torments she underwent trying to rebel against Mephistopheles while in hell...
Gideon from the Junk Heap is broken badly during the Time Skip by the death of his brother that he unwittingly caused. In the same game, Emil very nearly breaks after he is transformed into a skeletal robot after his Fusion Dance with his sister but Nier, Kainé, and Weiss' unwavering friendship keeps him aloft.
NieR: Automata is surprisingly tame to characters during the main path for a Yoko Taro game, but makes their life and demise living and dying hell once you start to dwell into the territory of alternative endings. Pascal, the friendly robot whose machine village is wiped out by Logic Virus and the children commit mass suicide because they cannot bear the fear he taught them to, and who commits suicide should you ignore his pleas to reset his memory or kill him, and 9S which is basically so much under the onslaught of bad things since the last two chapters of Route B until the end he basically turns into a variant of Caim by then really stand out.
Nintendo Wars: Penny, from Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. At first, she looks like some sort of insane child in command of an army. Her insanity actually comes from the fact that her father kept experimenting on her brain, leaving a lot of damage. She's aware of how ravaged her mind is, without even being able to reason beyond it.
Odin Sphere does this to Mercedes. Initially by the end of her book, she's overcome her initial hesitance and weakness, fought against and defeated Odin, and is now considered a true queen with every right to be proud of her accomplishments. During the Armageddon, Ringford is easily burnt down by King Onyx's march and, shortly before their battle that results in her and Onyx killing each other, the Inferno King taunts her for the destruction of her country. More so, as Mercedes dies, she doesn't refer to Ringford as her kingdom — she refers to it as her mother's, apologizes for having failed to save it, and proceeds to call herself useless. Struggling to live up to her mother's name only to have all of her achievements stripped away in a instant does not make for an even bittersweet death.
Yukari Takeba and Mitsuru Kirijo in Persona 3. Mitsuru falls into Heroic BSoD after Chairman Ikutsuki murders her father right before her eyes. Yukari herself falls into deep depression when she learns that her much-adored Disappeared Dad had a hand in creating the Shadows... and that's before she loses it upon the death of the MC and almost has a Face–Heel Turn in The Answer.
Nanako in Persona 4. First, her mother died, badly affecting her and Dojima. She was later kidnapped by Namatame, because he wanted to save her from the killer, therefore going into the TV world and being involved with the case. Then, because she’s a young girl in such a dangerous world, her health, where she was hinted to have a stomach illness, deteriorated, before dying in December 3. Lastly, depending on the players choice on how to handle Namatame, she could either die for good or be in a coma, perhaps in perpetuity.
Marona of Phantom Brave gets broken, put together, then broken again throughout the game due to her ability to manifest ghosts, which everyone hates her for. Poor Marona...
For instance, in Episode 2, she is refused a reward for her monster-hunting job because someone who openly admitted to being a professional job thief (who didn't really DO anything) pointed out to the client that she was possessed. Without proof. Yeah, people don't like her.
How about The sweet little girl who loved The Nameless One? Who was willing to do anything, anything at all for him? Even become a ghost inside a horrible, horrible place... Only, damn, the guy she loved had intended for her to die and become a ghost * as a way of spying on his adversary* and that was the reason he talked to her in the first place. When you meet Deionarra she's understandably very bitter about it. Gets even more heartbreaking if you are evil though.
An odd example is the Night Hag Ravel, somehow proving that even someone so incredibly creepy can be a Woobie.
From Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia, Isaac is a surprisingly good example. He was tricked by Kincaid, his teacher from Ranger school, into working for Team Dim Sun, thinking that they were the good guys. During his time there, he made the Miniremo units you have to fight against throughout the game, as well as working on most of the Altru Tower's design. (It turned out that Kincaid was only teaching at the school to find the kind of genius that could do those things.) He was understandably hit hard when he found this out. To make matters worse, it was Kincaid who broke it to him, and not too kindly, either. A short Heroic BSoD ensues. It gets worse, though—afterwards, his little sister Melody is kidnapped by Team Dim Sun and used as bait to get him to finish the machine. In the end, though, he seems to be just fine.
The asylum area in Psychonauts presents three long-broken cuties Raz has to fix from the inside to proceed. As follows:
Gloriadeveloped an abandonment complex after her mother sent her to a Boarding School of Horrors to turn her into a star — her mother's Domestic Abuser had promised to deliver letters between the two of them. Guess how that turned out. She could have gotten past that, since she did grow into a famous actress, but her mother became depressed, implied largely due to their estrangement, and killed herself, causing Gloria to snap and sending her to the asylum for severe bipolar disorder.
Edgar was his school's liked and respected wrestling team captain in his teens until he fell in love with a girl. They were boyfriend and girlfriend for a while until she very abruptly dumped him for a Prince Charmless male cheerleader, which caused him to completely lose focus and cost him an important match. The whole school turned on him for it, and he made a shift in attitude from apparent Manly Man to obvious Sensitive Guy, became isolated, and switched hobbies to painting, also ruined when at some point he became obsessive-compulsive and couldn't make himself paint anything but bullfights as a metaphor for his high school blues. Conscious anger management issues possibly unrelated or part of the package.
Dehl's Dark and Troubled Past in The Reconstruction has this, in spades. Possibly subverted, though, as it's part of the Back Story that is only revealed near the end of the game; most of what we see of him is after the fact.
Happens to Xopi as well, who, as another Sikohlon child, is quite identical to how Dehl used to be.
Lisa Trevor of the Resident Evil remake. Her mother is murdered with a virus and her father is killed by Umbrella after building the Mansion. Then Umbrella discovers that she is nearly immortal, and begins injecting her with insane viruses just to see what would happen.
She was broken even before that point, as Lisa was also experimented on with the Progenitor virus, breaking her mind to the point that she killed a woman impersonating her own mother by tearing off her face. Thirty years later when she finds her mother's remains, she moans 'mother' before grabbing her skull and leaping into a bottomless pit.
Robotics;Notes: Kimijima Kou's Virtual Ghost continued to haunt Misaki even after his death and threatened her to expose her murder of him, which eventually drove her into this.
Yoh goes through this is every ending but the shortest one in Saya no Uta, culminating in Kill the Cutie.
Kotonoha Katsura from School Days seems to "snap" particularly hard. Then again, she was most likely unstable from the beginning... Why, actually? She first was bullied by Otome and her friends for at least several months just for being rich and pretty, the bullying got much worse after she went out to Makoto. Then Makoto started to act like a Jerkass, she was raped by her boyfriend's best friend, and Setsuna treated her like shit so Makoto hooks up with Sekai. And people in Real Life have reacted worse for much lighter stuff.
Oichi in Sengoku Basara, in her story mode (she didn't break in other stories). Starting out as an introverted woman with casual dark powers, she got a very sadistic son of a bitch for a brother that is Oda Nobunaga, who tried to kill her, and then her husband AzaiNagamasatakes a deadly shot from Nobunaga meant for her. And then he forcefully drafts her into his army and makes her do many killings in his name, careless if she feels really guilty about the mass murdering. And she finally snaps, taken over with her evil side and kills her brother and his subordinates, all with a twisted Evil Laugh. She finally returns to her gentle self and cries over her atrocity, but even fate wants to break her. So, the ceiling in the temple where she killed her brother finally falls on her and the whole temple is completely consumed with fire, killing her.
Lili from Senko no Ronde is such a case. Apparently having been given to a laboratory by her family prior to the events of the game she still acts rather cute at first. She's shy, very insecure, and easily scared... until she battles Ernula and it triggers something within her, causing a 180° turn in her personality and transforming her into an insane, blood-thirsty killing machine obsessed with beautifully destroying everything she can. As she gains an utterly evil look and an insane laughter she first starts by just beating up foes until she eventually resorts to even attacking her own comrades to satisfy her urge to destroy. She returns back to normal though when Mika defeats her in combat and she dies.
Sharin no Kuni: The reader is told through flashbacks the events which caused Natsumi to become the reclusive girl she is in the present. After being taken into custody for allegations of sexual manipulation, she was tortured by the prison guards into "confessing" her crime. At the end of three months, she had become completely broken and mistrusting of people, which was not helped by sexual harassment by her landlord.
This happens to Sera, the cute and innocent Mysterious Waif of Digital Devil Saga. Whilst undergoing a series of experiments designed to exploit her psychic powers to talk to "God", she slowly falls in love with the lead scientist. When she simultaneously discovers that he was actually a Magnificent Bastard using her for his own ends and witnesses the murder of the only person who genuinely did care for her, her resulting emotional backlash causes The End of the World as We Know It.
Asahi from Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse goes through so much shit that it's a wonder the girl doesn't flat out refuse to be a Hunter anymore. First, she watches her superiors Nanabu and Nikkari being roasted alive by Adrammelech and also her childhood friend Nanashi (who luckily survives and Came Back Strong from the dead), later on, the truth about Nanashi not being human anymore reduces her to tears, but she's able to get it together thanks to Nozomi. And just when you think the girl is okay, in comes the death of her father who died protecting her from Quetzalcoatl at the bar, which puts her into a Heroic BSoD that she doesn't participate in story battles for a while. Eventually, she comes back with renewed interest...then she dies protecting Nanashi from a secondly resurrected Shesha during what was meant to be a celebration for finally defeating the gods. The game really drives it home shit constantly hits the fan.
Shipwrecked 64 has Bucky Beaver, a happy-go-lucky guy who just wants to help his friends, and the main protagonist of the game. While playing the game normally keeps his innocence intact, delving deeper into the game and discovering all sorts of horrifying secrets, including hostile anomalous entities resembling his friends and details of a series of murders done by someone using his likeness, will cause Bucky to crack, with him being Driven to Suicide by the end of the game.
SHUFFLE!: This happened to Kaede when her parents died. She was so hopeless that Rin made her think that he was at fault so she'd at least live to hate him since she was just fading away otherwise.
Silent Hill: Alessa was already broken before the events of the series as a result of her childhood growing up in a psychotic murder cult, but setting her on fire and keeping her alive for seven years didn't do wonders for her psyche. Lisa Garland is also revealed to have gone dramatically downhill during the course of the series, from her cheerful personality and kind-hearted nature revealed in 0rigins to her nightmarish existence as a soul tortured by Valtiel in Silent Hill 3.
This could be the reason Henry Townsend is so unemotional in Silent Hill 4. The guy was trapped in a tiny — and drab at best — apartment for at least a week before the game starts when chains appeared on the inside of his door, he has horrific nightmares about being killed by a ghost and words written in blood keep appearing everywhere. That's not even getting into what happens in the actual game. Poor guy must be traumatized.
This is what your character does, over and over again, to the remaining cast of Soul Nomad & the World Eaters if you choose the evil path. Usually with hilariously morbid results. The exception to this is Tricia, whose breaking (or pre-breaking, as it is in the evil path) is not particularly hilarious in either storyline.
Sergeant Lugo in Spec Ops: The Line. Lugo starts off as a fairly lighthearted comedic character but quickly becomes more and more disturbed as the story progresses. When the player unknowingly orders Lugo to use whitephosphorus on a refugee camp, Lugo goes through a Heroic BSoD. The player really gets a sense of how far his mind is gone when he without flinching kills an unarmed man by shooting him point blank, a few seconds after having a casual conversation with him about radio tech. His story sadly comes to an end when some of the civilians, rightfully fed up with how he and his team have been making things progressively worse, decide to lynch him.
If Lugo was alive, he would probably have PTSD. So, really, he is the lucky one.
The text logs in The Spectrum Retreat chronicle Cameron Worrall's journey from an eager new designer at the Spectrum to a jaded, pessimistic member of the management.
Star Wars: The Old Republic: A dark side Sith Warrior can do this to Jaesa Wilsaam in a very visceral application of this trope, after doing the same thing to her master who succumbs to anger so thoroughly that it leaves her quite disillusioned about the Jedi.
And of course, dark side characters in general can do this to multiple cuties throughout their stories.
The universe of Suikoden loves to make us remember that War Is Hell and that it will break people, especially the cuties:
Suikoden II: Pilika. Dear God, poor Pilika. She is only a bubbly five-year-old girl and is a gut-wrenching example of how war can destroy a young life. First, her hometown, Toto, is destroyed and her parents are killed, making her one of the few survivors. Jowy, who was previously saved by her and who deeply cares about her, decided then to take her under his wing and to become her uncle. Alas, the protagonists are attacked by Luca Blight's army at Viktor's fort, and his mercenaries are overwhelmed, prompting Luca to invade the fort himself, where he stumbles upon a very frightened Pilika. He then proceeds to effortlessly kill Polk, a young mercenary, in front of her. Riou and Jowy try to stop him, but are easily beaten by Luca, who is about to gleefully and sadistically cut Pilika in half, while a panicked Jowy is shouting desperately at him to stop. They are only saved by the timely and rather rash actions of Viktor who more or less blow up the fort. Following these events, Pilika's portrait is altered for the rest of the game, replacing her previous happy expression by a deeply sorrowful one, and the events traumatized her so much that she became mute. She is then forced to flee to Muse along Riou, Jowy and Nanami, but Muse itself became the target of Luca's armies, and, worse, Jowy decided to turn traitor by killing himself the mayor of Muse, Anabelle, and opening the gate for the enemies, in order to get close to Luca and eventually usurp him as King of Highland. Pilika is then left alone with Riou and Nanami, away from her new parental figure. She briefly meets him again at Greenhill, but they are separated. It is not until the death of Luca Blight that she is able to reunite with Jowy, during a peace treaty conference... In which Jowy was about to kill Riou and Teresa in order to force the states of Dunan to surrender. In fact, the only reason his attempt failed was that Shu, Flik, and Viktor correctly guessed what was going to happen, and organized a rescue party. Pilika was brought along only to serve as a human shield and emotional bargain against Jowy, who could not bring himself to kill his former best friends in front of her. At that point, after months of war and deep silence, she recovers her voice. However... She is once again separated from Jowy following the fall of L'Renouille, and sent to Harmonia along with Julia under new identities in order to begin a new life. It is not revealed if she meet him again in the future, and if she managed to really recover from the events of her traumatising childhood.
Suikoden V: While the Godwins fail to break Lymsleia, the same can't be said of Miakis, given that she's forced to watch as the Godwins use Lymsleia under threat of being stripped of her guardianship of her. When Lym refuses to mourn her parents' deaths (to deny the Godwins the satisfaction of seeing her cry), Miakis does so in her stead. She's eventually removed as Lym's guardian anyway, following her coronation and denied access to her; which causes Miakis to become increasingly despondent. Gizel finally orders her to aid Alenia in Doraat's defense; a calculated move to isolate Lymsleia from all support, aware Miakis would likely switch alliances and join Frey's army. But not before buying Alenia time to escape, resulting in this.And we all cry with Miakis.
Latooni Subota from Super Robot Wars Original Generation is a pre-broken cutie who was traumatized in the School, a Federation institute that turns children into pilots. Everyone in the Latooni class except for her died. She was constantly experimented on by Adler Koch and Agilla Setme. Finally, she was forced to undergo an intense experiment that caused her to suffer a kind of androphobia where she could barely talk. Over the course of the game, she gets better and starts making a full recovery. After the Divine Crusaders are defeated she becomes The Woobie.
In terms of being broken, it looks like Latooni has been topped by Setsuko Ohara of Z, it starts off with her mentor and boyfriend as a team at first but as soon as Asakim the evil alternative Masaki shows up. Things go downhill for her, her team gets killed, evil Masaki takes a special moment to physically abuse her a bit and presumably traumatize her with showing her dead comrades' remains and she is only subjected to more abuse later on, even having to fight her seiyu's idol Kira Yamato a few times. To make things worse, she can't get back at Not-Masaki by killing him, because that's exactly what he wanted, killing him will give him satisfaction and ends her in defeat, so she either has to admit defeat by killing him, or let him live... and break her even further.
And her endings aren't exactly happy either In her average ending, she is stranded alone and eventually dies due to using her mech too much when it's been revealed that it eats up her life (but at least she's happy knowing that she saved the world), worst ending places her in a world of eternal strife (and she gets to die first) and while the best ending reunites her with her team, they do not know her as Setsuko at all
Poor Guybrush Threepwood. He starts off as adorable and happy-go-lucky in Tales of Monkey Island, but then he sees his wife Elaine seemingly willing to trust a human LeChuck over Guybrush's objections. As if that wasn't bad enough, he ends up getting his hand cut off by Morgan LeFlay; breaks down in grief after failing to protect her from being fatally stabbed by LeChuck; gets stabbed in the back (and in the chest) twice (or maybe three times if you count the Voodoo Lady); and suffers a Heroic BSoD when it looks like Elaine has done a complete Face–Heel Turn to leave him for LeChuck. It all ends with one terribly brutal beatdown from LeChuck that leaves zombie Guybrush in such physical agony he can't even joke anymore. The poor dear really just needed a hug at the end.
Tales of Legendia has pretty much every character getting broken at some point in the game. Sans Grune. Most of this was done in the past but the character quests quest shows Moses having to say goodbye to his lovely pet Giet, Will's Death by Origin Story wife and his attempts to bond with his daughter, Chloe Did Not Get the Boy... and that's just the second half. The first half details Shirley getting the worst of it. A Delicate and Sickly girl who is constantly kidnapped and has to be The Messiah for Nerifes — something she does not want nor is ready for. She watches her biological sister die right in front of her (herself having been broken way before.) and then is forced to watch Fenimore take the sword for her, and Fenimore's identical twin blames her for it. She was pretty much pushed beyond the Despair Event Horizon when Nerifes started controlling her, but is snapped out by Senel in the end. Someone really really hated Shirley.
Tales of Rebirth had this done to Hilda Rhambling. First off, she's been branded as an impure because she's a Half-Human Hybrid, so she went out of her way to hide that fact, with a hat and tearing up her horn. However, after a failure in her job, Tohma blew her cover away and gleefully boasted on how dirty she is. If that wasn't enough, later in the game, just when Hilda could have come to terms with her estranged mother, she made a Heroic Sacrifice in front of her, killed by Tohma, and after she realized she never once called her "mother" and she's now dead, she broke down crying. Truly one of Tales Series' biggest woobies.
Genis Sage from Tales of Symphonia. Where to even start? Perhaps with the Fantastic Racism against his race everywhere you go, including people wishing all half-elves would die... in the starting village, in the first couple hours of the game, to his face (if you have him set as the display character) or to the face of one of his few friends. It only gets worse from there: racism against half-elves just gets worse and worse as you proceed through the game, including Genis and his sister Raine being sentenced to death simply for being the half-elves in your party of criminals, there's a village where racism against half-elves is so bad that even the racists passing through are uncomfortable and a boy in the armor shop flat-out says they're not allowed to sell to half-elves, all of which contributes to him getting more and more bitter about humans as the game progresses. With racism aside, Genis considers himself a murderer for the death of one of his few friends, which also caused him and the main character to be banished from their home; he falls in love with a girl who clearly thinks of him as a child; and the first half-elf friend he makes is actually THE VILLAIN OF THE GAME IN DISGUISE. Someone really, really hated this poor kid.
Izebel from Tears to Tiara 2. She was a very beautiful and talented soldier and bureaucrat. Very serious, by-the-book, dorky, and kind (well at least to people not of her own generation). She loves Hadrubal, is his secretary, is guardian and a Cool Big Sis to his son Hamil. Then she betrays Hasdrubal, takes his burnt corpse to The Empire to replace him as Governor General of Hispania, becomes probably the most hated person in the province, and fights Hamil when he grows up. And the whole thing was on Hasdrubal's orders before he took his own life due to political machinations far out of both of their control. All the while she has to pretend to be loyal to The Empire while helping La Résistance behind the scenes, without even La Résistance knowing they're being helped. All for a cause that she herself didn't really believe in. But she continues to follow Hasdrubal's last orders because she loves him that much.
Akira goes through a lot of crap in the series and it officially started when Keisuke injected Line and it seemed to have ended when Keisuke went back to normal after drinking Akira's blood. However he might have officially been broken when Keisuke is killed by Shiki.
Also what mainly happens on Shiki's route, intentionally.
The whole point of the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider is to allow the player to experience Lara's evolution from dorky Everyman college grad into bad-ass Adventurer Archaeologist. She never quite loses the dorkiness with her giddy enthusiasm for the tombs and relics she uncovers, but good GOD is the poor girl put through the wringer as she struggles to survive being stranded on an island filled with psychotic and brutal cultists and an enraged immortal queen trapped in her decaying body unleashing the furious storms that are trapping everyone there. Lara spends a significant part of the game terrified out of her mind, with her ability to move crippled by a severe wound in her side that's reopened several times over the course of the story, watches three friends sacrifice themselves for her on top of all the other horrors she's forced to witness, blames herself for getting everyone trapped in the first place, has multiple Hope Spots of escape dashed only to blame herself again for the deaths of their would-be rescuers, and is forced to contend with the horrible things she has to do to survive. She manages to soldier through it all, but comes out of the game a battered and bleeding psychological wreck.
Makihara-sensei in Toshoshitsu No Neversista. Though to be honest, he's already somewhat broken due to the events before the game's intro.
What Beatrice does to Shannon in EP2. However, with how the game later implies heavily that Beatrice and Shannon are actually one and the same, it's likely a metaphor for Sayo's self-deprecation.
The second arc has Beatrice doing whatever it takes to have Kanon submit to her. Naturally, it does work. However, if you take into account that Beatrice and Kanon are actually the same person, then it's really just a metaphor for Yasu's issues.
Ange already went through this when she was younger after finding out her family died, but she continues to be broken even after she stops being a "cutie".
Sakutaro. The extra TIPS "Sakutaro, To Purgatory Mountain".
Lion. Though luckily Will is there to provide encouragement, and Lion ultimately survives Bernkastel's attempts at breaking him/her to become a stronger person.
EP7 is dedicated to breaking Yasu as it explains what happened before the murders in terms of Yasu and the hell s/he goes through.
In EP6, Lambda says that Bern was originally a piece in a game that the Game Master made Unwinnable. (Lambda did not explicitly say whether the game was of the Unintentionally Unwinnable or the Unwinnableby Design variety.) The Game Master then abandoned Bern as a piece and left her to fend for herself. Bern eventually ended up winning the game anyway and gained the title of Witch of Miracles. The manga implies that the game in question was Higurashi, which would make sense given her origins. While this explains her cruelty, it's no excuse for it.
This is the stated intention of love interests with love/hate paths in Under the Moon, but Seizh is cutie-breaker extraordinaire. The more deranged he becomes, the more blatantly he treats Ashe like a plaything. In one of his endings, he goes full-on Living Doll Collector and dresses Ashe in a frilly Creepy Doll outfit.
Clementine, who is normally Wise Beyond Her Years and seems to cope with the Zombie Apocalypse rather admirably, has a breakdown after Kenny kills Larry in the meat-locker. It can come to a head near the end of Episode 4. Whatever Lee says to her, she breaks down crying. That's the last time you see her before she's kidnapped. She also has to witness her parents as walkers, and loses Lee to a zombie bite infection. Several examples also occur over the next two seasons, such as witnessing Omid's death and whoever her guardian is at the beginning of Season 3 dying in the first episode.
Duck is normally a Motor Mouth, but he remains quiet after a close call with a zombie. The same happens again in a later episode when he is bitten by one.
Wing Commander: The Kilrathi Saga: The traitor in Vengeance of the Kilrathi tries to do this to Spirit. She retaliates by blowing up the space station her fiance's life was threatened over, in an interesting way.
Albedo attempts this on MOMO in Xenosaga. It's debatable whether or not it worked.
Elly, of Xenogears fame, just can't get a break in the last hours of the first disc. On top of her parents getting killed, shortly followed by her entire civilization getting torn apart until there's nothing left, she then finds out that her boyfriend, Fei, has a Split Personality that manifests itself as a destructive madman — the same destructive madman, moreover, that just destroyed her civilization single-handedly, and has been known to destroy entire continents because he was bored. Yeah, something tells us that Elly won't be remembering that day very fondly...
Happens to pretty much all of the cuties in X-Note:
Essi: Her mother died in a traumatic car accident when she was only four, and she still has recurring nightmares about it. In addition to that, pick an ending, good or bad. Chances are, there'll be some cutie breakage involved.
Yuon: He was separated from his beloved older brother, the only person who ever understood and truly loved him. His brother is later killed before they have a chance to reunite, and in an attempt to get closer to their father, Yuon does his best to impress him only to further increase the distance between them. Then his father is murdered, and he has to take on all the duties of an adult at only fifteen.
Oure: He was separated from his brother Yuon and, despite having quite the sweet tooth, was diagnosed with diabetes. After he was accidentally killed by X, his spirit was confined to the corridor where he died. Nobody could see or hear him until he met Essi, and he was forced to remain that way for ten years. In his good ending, it's revealed that he has actually been in a coma for ten years and unconsciously used astral projections to appear in the corridor. His situation's still not much better, though.
Anon/X/Xirr: Perhaps the worst case out of all of them, Xirr was found as a war survivor after he used his psychic abilities to protect the children of his village. He suffered from PTSD as a result of it and refused to speak most of the time. He eventually befriended Oure but was bullied by the other children of his village, who were jealous of the special treatment he received. Most of the time, he stood and took the abuse, but when Oure was hit for standing up for him, he lost control of his abilities and ended up killing everyone around him, including Oure. Oure's father Scid, unaware of Xirr's intentions and distraught over the death of his child, took revenge by using Xirr as an experiment and psychologically torturing him until his mind literally broke into fragments (the player later gets to read said fragments) and he can't recognize anyone anymore. After failing to commit suicide by jumping into a river and waking up with no memories, he was rescued and taken in by traveling merchants where he acquired a completely different personality as "Anon." He then actively tries to discover his true identity.Thankfully, his good ending is quite satisfying, but it's really no wonder his keyword in the opening animation is "insanity."
Yandere-chan/Ayano can kidnap classmates and torture them until she can program them to serve her, mainly to kill a rival. Once they complete their task, they will turn their weapon against themselves, which gets rid of two people for Yandere-chan.
Since Senpai has become the object of Yandere-chan's affections, he/she will eventually undergo this. If the rivals are handled a certain way, it will affect his/her mental state. This also includes how Osana and his/her little sister are eliminated as rivals. The worst thing that can happen is Senpai suffering from severe mental illness such as PTSD.
This has already happened to Mr. Aishi. He was the reason why Ryoba went around killing people (canonical information for 1980s Mode says she killed a total of six girls), was kidnapped, was implied to have been sexually assaulted by his captor, and eventually developed Stockholm Syndrome. When you play one of the later Basement Tapes, you can hear the empty tone in his voice, signifying that he has been broken by his wife.
And we all cry with Miakis.