Broken Ace / Western Animation

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• Billy in Adventure Time. He is ahem "~THE GREATEST WARRIOR EVER / A HERO OF RENOWN! / WHO SLAYED AN EVIL OCEAN / WHO CAST THE LICH KING DOWN! / [...] / ALSO, HE FOUGHT A BEEEEEAAAAAR!~". However, since doing all sorts of similar heroic deeds in the past, and becoming a role model for Finn and Jake, he's holed up in his secret crack and stopped fighting evil with violence, because he's seen that doing so in the Land Of Ooo is useless. He tries to convince Finn and Jake that fighting evil in that way is "as pointless as a dog chasing his own tail."
• An episode of Alvin and the Chipmunks has a one-episode character who is good at everything, which pushes all of Alvin's competitive buttons. But the episode also shows that the case full of trophies and his working spaceship built as a science project don't keep his parents from leaving him with the butler and travelling around the world, sometimes remembering to drop him a postcard, maybe. The boy deeply envies Alvin and his brothers for their loving father. Admitting this and his loneliness allowed him and Alvin to become friends.
• An American Dad! episode was about Stan creating a clone of his son Steve he named Steverino, which he transformed into a model of masculinity. Steverino disappeared and in Stan's search, found out it was Steve who was missing and Steverino had taken his place. He resented being molded into the perfect son and just wanted to be a lazy sack like Steve.
• Archer. Sterling Archer is known around the globe as the world's most dangerous spy, and displays almost absurd levels of strength, durability and fighting skill. Also an alcoholic Jerkass manwhore, is totally incompetent at everything but combat, has a plethora of mommy issues to the point that in the first episode he gets an erection at the thought of his mother dying, has been sexually abused and raped both as a child and as an adult, was bounced around boarding schools growing up since his mother couldn't be bothered to care for him herself and was subsequently bullied so hard that his tormentors put him in the hospital and seeing one of them years later reduces him to terrified stuttering, and openly admits that he dicks around whenever he's on missions due to his crippling fear of his own mortality.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Though she doesn't really bother with the good publicity part of Villain with Good Publicity, Princess Azula still fits. She's a beautiful, extraordinarily talented and extremely intelligent young woman, even if she is Daddy's Little Villain, but most of her exterior aloofness and obsession with power stems from being desperate to ignore how Ax-Crazy she is thanks to her thinking that her mother hated her. She has some serious issues with perfectionism, thanks to her desperation to win her father's favor and not turn out like her brother. Same inside, same overcompensation, different shell. In Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Search, she starts hallucinating visions of her mother regularly, and her only goal at this point (and the reason she went along with Zuko in the first place) is to find and kill Ursa. By the end of Part 3, she might potentially be on the road to recovery. She had an easy chance to kill Ursa (who didn't know she was Ursa at the time...It Makes Sense in Context) but Zuko was able to talk her down and she left on her own accord. Now, if she finds out what Ursa actually did to lead them to that point...she might snap again, potentially justified in doing so.
  • Every villain in each season of the sequel series, The Legend of Korra, is this trope in one way or another. However, the most apparent on them all is Book 4's villain Kuvira. She was discovered and taken in by Suyin as a little girl to be her personal protege. Is foreshadowed all during Book 3 as being the best out of all her soldiers in Zaofu. She's highly intelligent, charismatic, and a badass warrior who created her own version of metal bending. She also suffers some deep depression and self-loathing, because of her parents abandoning her as a little girl, making her feel like she is worthless, regardless of what she accomplishes. The series finale showed that this was the reason she became a conquering tyrant. Because in her mind, saving the Earth Kingdom was the only thing she had left to hold on to.
  • Most importantly, the Avatars, in general, seem to be this from what we've seen of them over the course of both series. The crux of each show concerns the current Avatar learning from the mistakes of their past lives, helping them rise above their flaws and issues and allowing their personal strengths to shine.
    • The first Avatar, Wan, was able to master the art of controlling fire better than any human before him that he eventually pioneered the foundations of firebending, but ended by unknowingly releasing the most powerful dark spirit, Vaatu, from confinement, almost resulting in The End of the World as We Know It and, in the end, dies believing he failed Raava and couldn't save the world. His next lives, Avatars Kuruk and Roku are both Failure and Tragic Heroes, respectfully. The former's carefree attitude about his Avatar duties led to Koh the Face-Stealer stealing the face of the woman he loved as punishment and as revealed in the The Shadow of Kyoshi, being the one who left to clean up Avatar Yangchen's mess as a consequence of her actions favoring humans over spirits, causing the spirits to be hostile to humans that he spent his time fighting spirits until his untimely death that will continue to fester on Avatar Kyoshi's time that really forces her to double her efforts as the Avatar to fully redeem her past lives' mistakes, and the latter's inability to stop his friend Fire Lord Sozin before the start of the series led to the world being the way it is now (a fact he's all too aware of).
    • Finally, we have our two main leads, Aang and Korra. The former never wanted to be the Avatar in the first place and feels intense guilt for running away from his responsibilities, believing that doing so lead to the death of his entire nation and plunged the world into the 100-year war. The latter believes that she can't ever fully live up to the status of the former Avatars, tends to cross the Despair Event Horizon Once a Season when the bad guys get the better of her, and starts suffering from PTSD after the events of Book 3. The point of both series is to eventually evolve the leads from this trope into bona fide Aces over the course of their respective shows, a goal which, thankfully, works and sticks by the time of both shows' grand finales.
• Harvey Dent is often portrayed this way before he becomes Two-Face, particularly in Batman: The Animated Series. Fantastically successful District Attorney, beautiful fiancee, best friends with Bruce Wayne, one of Gotham's wealthiest citizens from one of its older families — but Dent's long-term mental issues of anger repression and dividing his vicious side from his lawful side catch up with him — with terrible results. Bruce never gives up on him, though.
• An episode of Beetlejuice had the Ghost with the Most going into a funk after being constantly upstaged by his insufferably cheerful, goody-two-shoes brother Donnie. When BJ goes on a "mope-about" in the Down-and-Outback, Donnie and Lydia go to rescue him. But after getting hit by a "gloom-a-rang", Donnie goes into a funk too and admits that he knows full well how much his perpetually cheery attitude annoys people. Donnie doesn't cheer up again until Beetlejuice admits that he doesn't really hate his brother.
• Ben 10: Ben 10000, Ben's Future Badass from twenty years in the future: he lost all of Ben's childish traits, he is beloved by the whole world and he is able to protect the planet on his own, reducing the Galactic Enforcer to simple cops that arrest the criminals he captures. He also completely cut himself off from his family, he is rude and condescending of other people wanting to help and hasn't transformed back to Ben in years, believing being a superhero is the only thing he should do. After a visit from his old self, he gets better, even getting married and having a son.
• Mizu from Blue Eye Samurai. She is by far and beyond one of the best sword wielders in the series, but such skill was forged in trauma and pain and came at a tremendous cost - including the loss of the man she loved, who grew to see her as a monster. There is really no way to describe Mizu other than "hollow", with revenge being seemingly the only thing that keeps her going.
• The title character of BoJack Horseman is a famous actor who has a Big Fancy House, millions of dollars, a great agent, and the distinction of having starred in one of the most beloved sitcoms of the 1990s. He also has crippling depression, serious loneliness, and numerous regrets.
• Quite a few examples from Castlevania (2017) :
  • Trevor Belmont. Like his family, Trevor is a skilled and accomplished One-Man Army Badass Normal monster hunter. And at a young age, he had to deal with losing his entire family, surviving on his own, and having many Wallachia citizens badmouth his family. Needless to say, Trevor became more cynical and surlier as a result.
  • Adrian "Alucard" Tepes. While Sypha is a Glass Cannon Squishy Wizard and Trevor is a Badass Normal Hunter of Monsters, Alucard stands out as being a super strong and fast Lightning Bruiser with all of the vampiric strengths and none of the weaknesses. In addition, he also has supernatural abilities like teleportation, flight, telekinesis, shapeshifting, and presumably other abilities. Out of the trio, he gives Dracula the hardest fight and lasts the longest. In a year, he had to deal with his mother's senseless murder AND his father going mad with grief (to the point of attacking his own son); little surprise this ends with him breaking down in tears after being forced to kill said father.
    • And then in Season 3, it gets worse. After Trevor and Sypha leave, he spends so much time alone in his castle he doesn't know how long it's been. When two new young people come into his life, he ends up teaching them and forming an almost-familial bond with them. Then the pair get dissatisfied with their teachings and lure him into a threesome in an attempt to kill him, and he has to kill them in self-defense, leaving him just as alone as he was at the start of the season but in a much darker place now.
  • Vlad "Dracula" Tepes, himself. He's the top of all vampire-kind and his intelligence could've changed the world. But he went mad with grief.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: Chad Dickson, f.k.a. Numbuh 274, Soopreme Leader of the KND, was considered to be the best KND operative on the planet. He was skilled, talented, handsome, involved in nearly every extracurricular activity you could think of — and was outright idolized by all of his subordinates, including resident workaholic and Sector V's ace and leader, Numbuh One. The guy even had trading cards and action figures. But after he defected to become a teen spy, it turned out that he had a lot of negative qualities. Chad was obsessed with being the best, and that led to him coveting the honor of being Earth's representative for the Galactic Kids Next Door. However, Nigel is chosen instead despite all the sacrifices Chad made, and his jealousy consumes him to the point that he tries to kill Nigel during his last appearance on the show.
• Vlad Masters in Danny Phantom. Despite being the Big Bad, to the public's eye, he is a well-known and well-respected billionaire celebrity and later mayor. He's handsome, debonair, intelligent, and in his ghost form, clearly a better fighter then the hero is. And yet, his big ego prevents him from gaining the love of his life and Danny as a surrogate son because he is too deep in denial to realize he's getting love in all the wrong ways. This bites him in the ass hard in the Grand Finale.
• Chalky Studebaker from Doug is a mild example. Exposed in an episode where Doug is accused of cheating off of Chalky. Doug and Chalky's papers for a test are near identical, and since Chalky is The Ace, everyone assumes Doug was the one who cheated. (Despite the test being a mere "B"). Doug has to chase down Chalky to confront him about it, and ends up being exposed to Chalky's trophy case, which is not as big or filled as his older brother's. Chalky's dad gives obvious encouragement towards getting all the trophies, showing the "Well Done, Son" Guy side of Chalky. After Doug flat tells Chalky's father that he cheated, Chalky proceeds to break down and say that he just wasn't able to keep up with all of the different trophy earning activities AND keep up his grades and finally admitted to cheating.
• DuckTales (1987): Scrooge is the richest duck in the world and has more adventures in a year than most do in a lifetime — despite the fact that he's getting on in years. However, he's also quite insecure about his relationships with his friends and family, secretly fearing for at least part of the series that they're really interested in his money, not him.
• Ever After High. Apple is a Princess Classic who in any other series would be a Purity Sue — in every way, academically, socially, and philosophically, she is Ever After's ideal woman. Unfortunately, she lives in a time when Ever After is undergoing drastic social change and revolution by the lower classes is threatening to split society down the middle. Apple simply cannot deal with it, because in all her life she never expected such a thing to happen. She lampshades the trope, stating that if not for Raven's defiance of tradition, her life would probably have been perfect. (Apple's life, that is — not Raven's. Raven got what could be generously termed 'the short end of the stick'.)
• Joe Swanson of Family Guy used to be a highly respected cop with multiple awards, who was in peak physical condition, Happily Married and implied to be at least something of a Casanova but since losing the use of his legs he now spends all his time being abused by his friends, his wife is completely apathetic to him, his penis doesn't work and he needs a poop-bag and those are just two of the many physical issues that make Peter claim he makes everything depressing. He does still manage to be a Handicapped Badass though.
• Gravity Falls:
  • Local teenager Wendy Corduroy is hot, is incredibly strong due to her lumberjack skills, and is very popular. It turns out she is very stressed due to her family.
  • Dipper is a down-to-earth, Wise Beyond His Years twelve-year-old who has managed along with his twin sister Mabel to uncover many of the mysteries of Gravity Falls. He also has a major crush on Wendy, and his common sense can be overridden by said crush and secretly fears that he may not be very smart. Not to mention the many times he has tried to discover the secrets of Gravity Falls has endangered both him and Mabel...
  • Before Dipper there was the author Stanford Pines who is implied to have been exactly like Dipper before he fell out with Stan, was driven crazy with paranoia and spent 30 years trapped in an Eldritch Location.
  • Alpha Bitch Pacifica Northwest is the talented, popular daughter of the founding family of Gravity Falls, and she holds much sway in the community. Then in Golf War, we are shown her parents are neglectful and push her to be competitive, and she also lacks basic social etiquette, not even understanding the concept (or pronunciation) of sharing. Then in "Northwest Mansion Mystery'' we learn the Northwest family has been crooked to the very core for 150 years. Pacifica's own father has conditioned her to respond to his command with a bell so he can force her to his level of treachery and classism.
• Hey Arnold!:
  • Olga Pataki looks perfect on first glance, excelling in academics, music, society, and being quite pretty. However, with enough pressure, this facade of perfection can crack... revealing a young woman who's horribly neurotic, unstable and melodramatic due to having to live up to her parents' constant attention and enormously high standards, as well as dangerously out of reality. In Olga's own words to her little sister Helga: "You're lucky [our parents] don't even notice you."
  • Lila Sawyer is another example. She's pretty, smart, funny, always polite and courteous, and all of the girls in Mr. Simmons class hate her for it. After pulling some mean-spirited pranks on her that send her home in tears, the girls are surprised to discover that Lila's life apparently isn't as perfect as they initially thought — Lila and her father (who's presumably a widower) live in a rather shabby place, and through eavesdropping on Lila and her father's conversation, they discover that they have a limited food supply until Mr. Sawyer can find a steady, well-paying job. Series creator Craig Bartlett has stated that Lila has a repressed dark side and several episodes hint that she may be a Stepford Smiler like Olga.
• Kaeloo:
  • Quack Quack the duck is smart and good at absolutely everything, but he is also addicted to yogurt, his parents died while he was still unhatched from his egg and he was experimented on by a group of mad scientists.
  • Mr. Cat is almost just as good at everything as Quack Quack, but he comes from an abusive Dysfunctional Family and he suffers from severe psychological and self-esteem issues.
• King of the Hill: Bill Dauterive has tragic shades of this. From what we see of his past, young Bill basically ruined his life by idolizing Hank, undervaluing himself, and falling into endless cycles of toxic relationships and behaviors, when he was and still is an extremely talented, loving, and capable individual.
• The Loud House: It's possible Lynn Loud Junior could be this. Lynn has exceptional athletic ability and is good at pretty much every sport known to man. Plus, her excelling at math in "Future Tense" indicates the intellectual capacity is there, it's just that she has no real interest in academia so she doesn't make an effort to develop her knowledge beyond anything sports-related. Despite her talents and abilities, Lynn's experiences as a victim of bullying in middle school have turned her into a highly aggressive, hot-headed Competition Freak, with a whole laundry list of character flaws that come with such a personality. For all her athleticism and potential cleverness, Lynn is a very violent and damaged individual.
• In Miraculous Ladybug, Adrien Agreste is a kind, intelligent teenage model, speaks multiple languages, is great at fencing...and is also a Lonely Rich Kid whose mom mysteriously disappeared and whose father turned cold as a result. He's also hopelessly in love with a girl who doesn't reciprocate (as far as he knows), and worst of all, his Only Friend growing up was Chloé. (Thankfully, he has more now.)
• Muppet Babies (2018):
  • In the series' first episode, "Sir Kermit the Brave", Kermit is shown to be this. Since he's the leader of the babies, everyone thinks that he is really brave. In reality, he is scared of the dark, and initially hid the fact from his friends because he didn't want them to think less of him.
  • In his debut episode, "The Best, Best Friend", Rowlf is shown to be good at many different things, including playing the piano, juggling, and he even managed to beat Fozzie in a game of Tri-Soccer Flying Baseball. In "Sparkly Star Switcheroo", he goes into a deep depression when he is unable to write a song about a shooting star he saw the night before the episode's events. Fortunately, Summer is able to get him out of it with a painting of a sparkly star she made for him.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has Starlight Glimmer. Magical prodigy comparable to Twilight Sparkle? Check. Good leader? Check (The Cutie Map isn't the best example of this, but To Where and Back Again certainly is). Sound communication skills? Check. This intelligent, highly skilled mare would be The Ace if it weren't for the fact that losing her childhood friend shifted her down a villainous pathway, and years of her controlling a village with an iron hoof didn't make her any better. The result was an unstable, bitter and vengeful pony who goes to illogical extremes to deal with an obstacle in her way. Fortunately, post-redemption, as she learns more about friendship and goodness from the Mane Six and supporting cast, the 'broken' part of this trope is gradually being fixed. By Season 9, she's probably among the most level-headed and collected of the cast.
• The Owl House:
  • Eda Clawthorne is a very powerful and skilled witch—but she suffers from a whole host of personal flaws, many of which stem from her being cursed as a teen. Plus, her refusal to go along with the oppressive Coven System has reduced her to an outcast living on the fringes of witch society. In the season one finale, she admits to Luz that she had been wasting her life before meeting the human.
  • Lilith Clawthorne, Eda's sister, is the famous head of the prestigious Emperor's Coven and one of the most powerful witches on the Boiling Isles....but it doesn't take much to break her composure, revealing a very flawed, troubled woman with a lot of issues stemming from both her deep-seated jealousy of her much more talented outlaw sister (whom she's more alike than she'd care to admit) and her immense guilt over cursing said sister when the two of them were teens.
  • Hunter/The Golden Guard is introduced as a Teen Genius who's gifted in magic and combat, having become Emperor Belos' right hand man. It turns out he's a horribly abused kid raised to believe he has to constantly prove he's worthy of love and terrified of ever disappointing his uncle, to the point of even trying to dig his own grave rather than coming back empty-handed.
  • Boscha is gradually revealed to be this. Sure, she's a star athlete and bully who practically runs Hexside, but episodes like "Once Upon a Swap" and "Wing It Like Witches" hint that she has self-esteem issues and a desperate need for validation. In "For the Future" Boscha has taken over New Hexside in the wake of the Collector's reign, but it's quickly revealed that she's severely out of her depth and is left feeling lonely and isolated after all her friends have either cut ties with her (Amity and Skara) or have been captured by the Collector (Amelia and Cat). She desperately begs Amity to be friends with her again—both because she genuinely misses their friendship and because she can't handle the pressures of being a leader like Amity could.
• In Recess a one-shot character arrives at the school who is better than everyone in everything ever. But he's desperately lonely because his talent makes everyone he meets resent him. As long as he remains true to himself, he can't make friends.
• Rick Sanchez of Rick and Morty is a genius scientist and inventor who builds robots for fun and invented inter-dimensional travel. He's also addicted to alcohol and an extensive list of Fantastic Drugs while being neglectful (if not abusive) to his family. His catchphrase "Wubba Lubba Dub Dub" translates to "I am in great pain, please help me" which is why he tries to numb his emotions with substances. Nevertheless, he almost always is able to save the day (even if whatever puts the world in danger is mostly his fault to begin with).
• Susie Carmichael from Rugrats (1991) is shown to be wise beyond her years and to be better than Angelica at many things, despite only being three years old. In "A Rugrats Kwanzaa", Susie worries that she's not a special person because despite her wisdom and talents, she doesn't have a trophy like her parents or older siblings do. She tries to do the same talents that her older siblings have, but it doesn't work out, and her attempt to make a bust of her head is, as Phil would put it, "Really is a bust".
• The Simpsons likes to give its characters these kinds of back stories:
  • Barney Gumble, Flashbacks to his early life reveal him to have been (and still is) brilliant and talented. Homer noted that he was too serious and never had any fun so he got him to drink with him one night. If Barney wasn't broken, he never would have become The Alcoholic so easily.
  • Elanor Abernathy achieved her childhood dream of being a doctor and a lawyer at the same time, but the stress and loneliness caused her to take comfort in drinking and buy tons of cats eventually leading to her becoming the Crazy Cat Lady we all know and love.
  • Sideshow Bob has too many talents to name and could easily have been anything from a professor to mayor (which he was twice) but he ended up being Krusty's sidekick and had to suffer years of humiliation and physical abuse from him. This, followed by the Springfield prison system, broke his sanity and turned him into the Ax-Crazy sociopath he is today.
  • Ned Flanders started out as Homers Always Someone Better being Happily Married, with a nice house, well-behaved kids, a surprisingly muscular body, and generally being a Nice Guy with lots of friends and loved ones. Since then he's lost two wives, had to struggle to keep his business going and had his past revealed showing his Nice Guy / Extreme Doormat ways stem from years of repressing his anger. Ned is arguably the only one of these that isn't Played for Laughs.
• Eddie Brock, as seen in The Spectacular Spider-Man. He is introduced as Peter Parker's Big Brother Mentor who playfully teases him, puts his life on the line often in supervillain attacks, has a great job with the Connors, and is overall a nice, friendly guy. When things start to not go his way, however, his true colors are revealed: He truly hates Peter and is jealous of him because when their parents died, Pete was raised by his aunt and uncle, he was orphaned, his "teasing" of him is actually belittling him, his "self-less" flirtations with life are his Death Seeker tendencies, and considers the Connors to be his only "family", so his resentment of Peter grows when he accidentally causes him to be fired from his job.
• In the Grand Finale of Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Spider-Man teams up with a bunch of Spider-Men from alternate realities. One of them has a suit of armor similar to Iron Man. He is rich, the head of his own corporation, loved by everyone in his city, engaged to Gwen Stacy, J. Jonah Jameson is his godfather, Wilson Fisk is his lawyer, and Uncle Ben is still alive. He is in short, everything that Spider-Man isn't. He's also a cocky, egotistical Jerkass, and his Leeroy Jenkins tendencies result in both him and another member of the team being injured.
• Beckett Mariner in Star Trek: Lower Decks is an experienced veteran who is good at pretty much everything when she decides to put in the effort, daughter of a captain and an admiral, and her Academy classmates predicted that she would be the first in their year to be made Captain. But along the way she got so tired of Starfleet's Vast Bureaucracy that she willingly started to flout the rules, was court-martialed more than once, and got herself busted down to Ensign — a rank she stays at deliberately. It's later revealed that she was friends with Sito Jaxa — Yes, that Sito Jaxa — and, when she died, it broke her. Combined with the Dominion War costing her more friends, she made it her duty to stay at Ensign no matter what because she refused to send her friends off to die.
• Steven Universe:
  • Bismuth, a long-missing member of the Crystal Gems from the original rebellion against Homeworld, is funny, charming, a talented fighter and a master blacksmith who provides the other Crystal Gems with upgrades for their weapons. But it's soon revealed that the loss of her friends during the war had driven Bismuth into becoming a dangerous zealot who wanted to go against the Crystal Gem's rule against killing and start slaughtering the Homeworld elite wholesale, going so far as to build a weapon designed to shatter them in one hit. She had attacked Rose Quartz when the latter refused to approve of her plan and ended up getting bubbled up. Later after being freed, she attacked Steven for the exact same reason, forcing him to poof and bubble her back up.
  • Rose Quartz herself was this as well. As the series progresses, it becomes clear that Rose was far from the perfect hero she was initially made out to be and had a tendency to keep secrets from the other Crystal Gems, leaving them in the dark about a lot of things. For example, she lied to them about what happened to Bismuth, telling them that she had fallen in battle.
  • Amethyst is an ace, at least in combat. She manages to hold her own in combat with two far older and more experienced gems just by being scrappy and using risky tactics. She also has massive issues about having come from the Earth kindergarten, which she thought made Pearl and the others think she was a "bad gem" and a "mistake." It's also implied early and later shown outright that she has deep-seated body-image issues. This is due to being roughly half the size of a normal Amethyst, and it gives a certain subtext to her constant shape-shifting and her towering Purple Puma wrestling persona^note who's about the size of a regular Amethyst.
  • Pearl is a member of a manufactured Servant Race who reinvented herself as a warrior and fought for her love of Rose Quartz. She became a true ace at sword-fighting and possibly overcame her biology to summon a weapon, despite not being designed to fight at all, let alone have her own gem weapon. But she's also got major psychological issues due to low-self worth: she feels worthless unless she's risking her life to serve someone else, and is consequently lost without Rose Quartz. She risks her life needlessly, displays obsessively protective behavior towards Steven, and even projects her self-worth complex onto Connie, leading to an emotional crisis for the latter, as well.
  • Steven Universe: Future shows that even Steven Quartz Universe himself has become this over time due to not properly addressing the myriad physical and psychological traumas he's been subjected to since the first episode, and how his magical dest. He keeps trying to be the same Positive Friend Influence he was in the first series, but his insecurities about the changes that come with growing up and his inability to deal with stress in a healthy manner ultimately lead to him losing control of his Gem powers to the point of becoming corrupted.
  • In general, all of the other Gems view the Great Diamond Authority as godly, omnipotent figures, and do not dare to defy their orders. But...:
    • Yellow Diamond, the first member introduced, is a Lady of War who has conquered more planets than any other Gem, has lightning powers that can instantly incapacitate any rebel and is generally considered the greatest warrior in the universe. However, she's also dealt with the loss of her younger "sister" Pink Diamond by repressing all of her emotions and trying to eradicate everything that Pink ever touched, essentially refusing to grieve and therefore heal. She also suffers from extreme guilt for granting Pink a colony of her own (namely, Earth), which in turn led to the Crystal Gem uprising and Pink's (supposed) death. Later episodes also reveal that she deeply resented Pink as well, as White Diamond (the leader of the Diamond Authority) tended to favor the younger Gem even though Yellow is the most successful at bringing colonies under Homeworld's control.
    • Blue Diamond is something of the polar opposite of Yellow — she is the diplomat and ambassador of the Diamond Authority, is equally powerful and indestructible, and possesses emotion-manipulating powers that force every Gem around her to feel what she feels. Unlike Yellow, though, she's dealing with her grief for Pink by refusing to move on — she's essentially been in mourning for millennia, preserving everything Pink created and repeatedly making secret visits to Earth to weep for her. She also suffers from the same guilt complex that Yellow does, blaming herself for not listening to Pink's pleas for help and telling her to be a Stepford Smiler instead.
    • Pink Diamond was the youngest of the Authority, and had unique gifts including and healing and plant manipulation. However, she was horribly babied by Yellow, Blue, and White, with the latter essentially treating her as a child playing games instead of a serious member of their quartet. She also had to beg for a colony of her own — and when she finally got it, she realized that she actually cared about organic life and wanted to give it all back, which Blue and Yellow refused to let her do. Is it any wonder she took on the form of Rose Quartz and faked her own shattering to escape her family and live as she wanted to?
    • White Diamond is the most powerful Gem of them all — to the point that Blue and Yellow fear her — with incredible mental powers, complete control over her emotions, and the ability to make others into an extension of herself without the slightest hint of effort; in her own words, she is "perfect." Unfortunately, she spends so much time wrapped up in her own mind (a Literal Metaphor, as her chamber is inside the head of a giant statue of herself) that she's completely unaware of the problems of Homeworld, and absolutely refuses to listen to anyone or anything that clashes with her worldview. When she's eventually forced to confront the fact that she isn't perfect, she has a complete mental breakdown and loses her entire sense of identity.
• Thomas & Friends:
  • Later episodes of the series tend to give the older, more experienced engines more prominent shortcomings and insecurities, some of which they are unwilling to admit to the younger idolizing engines they usually mentor. "Edward and the Mail" is a standout example.
  • Hugo the Rail Zeppelin from the episode, "Engine of the Future" is so fast and modern that the other engines think he can replace them. However, he sees himself as too flawed to replace them, since he can't pull trucks or coaches and people think his propeller is too dangerous. Seeing an actual, flying zeppelin in the follow-up episode, "Hugo and the Airship" even convinces him he doesn't belong on the rails.
• Total Drama
  • Alejandro is handsome, intelligent, charming, has a myriad amount of skills he's learned that he can rely on if the situation calls for it, picks up new abilities very quickly, and is also a successful villain. He's also suffering from an Inferiority Superiority Complex thanks to having been inferior to his Big Brother Bully José all his life, which drives his narcissistic insecurity of needing to be the best at everything.
  • For all of her various talents, such as Courtney intelligence and athleticism, as well as her perfectionist mindset which motivates her to succeed in everything she does, Courtney's complete lack of social skills, desire to control everyone around her, ruthless ambition, and simply unpleasant (sometimes even psychotic) behavior ruin her chances of winning, and ultimately result in her having nothing and no one by the end of the series.
  • Caleb mentioned that he had a very strict upbringing where he was never really allowed to have fun. This resulted in his great strength and skills but obviously impeded his social development.
• In ThunderCats (2011), Tygra is a Happily Adopted member of the royal family of Thundera, and is better than crown prince Lion-O. At everything, as he notes loudly and often. Tygra's older, more skilled at fighting, more knowledgeable in military tactics, more popular with their people, their father's favorite, and The Dutiful Son. But to Tygra's great resentment, Lion-O, the flakey Cloudcuckoolander kid brother gets to take up the sword that Only the Chosen May Wield and be the king by dint of Royal Blood alone, even receiving attention from Praetorian Guard Cheetara, whom Tygra has pined for from afar (not knowing that Cheetara's feelings lay with him and not Lion-O). Tygra seethes at the idea that his own Hard Work Hardly Works while The Chosen One is undeserving, and struggles to reconcile his jealousy of Lion-O with his genuine Big Brother Instinct. The crux of Tygra's Character Development is that he is a perfect Thunderan, and has always lived in a world where Thunderan culture and values held prominence. After Thundera falls, Tygra is thrown into a life of survival and desperation that's nothing like what he's used to, and he can't quite deal with that — or the idea that Cats are not innately superior to all other animals. Notably, after Lion-O's death, Tygra is forced to become leader of the surviving Cats, and he's terrible at it.
• The Outrider from The Venture Bros. is like this, though what exactly is broken is not immediately obvious. He's a powerful mage and superhero who is handsome, charismatic, and manages to balance his work with his personal life in a way that his rival Dr. Orpheus (and, indeed, most of the other characters on the show) just can't. However, it's revealed that he was only able to do this by taking risky shortcuts to power that, though they paid off, left him vulnerable in ways Dr. Orpheus isn't. Also, he's a bit of a jerk.

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