Cry for the Devil moments in Literature.
- Several characters in American Gods, including the serial child murderer of a small god who is revealed to have started life as a child raised in darkness and isolation for five years, then was sacrificed...
- All of Nick Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel - if the viewpoint character was anyone else, it'd be a lurid psycho-killer story, and Cave has the skill to make that obvious without breaking first person. There's one utterly heartbreaking scene where Euchrid, isolated and spiraling into paranoid schizophrenia, stumbles into a group of migrant workers and sidesteps a bottle of beer thrown to him with a cry of "catch it!", assuming from experience he's being called catshit and the men mean to beat and rape him.
- David of Animorphs in his last appearance. After realizing he's been betrayed by Crayak, he accepts his death with dignity and begs Rachel to end his misery.David: It's a beautiful world. I'll miss it.
- Captain Bligh in The Bounty Trilogy. He is shown to be a complete bastard, cruel and vindictive towards his underlings. After the mutiny, he is shown in the lifeboat, taking care of the men who joined him. He prays for their safety and gives the bird they killed to the weakest man in the boat. He proves himself a masterful sailor. He and most of the crew survive and reach shore where Bligh regains command of another ship. He then becomes cruel and vindictive again, but the scenes showing him in the lifeboat gave another side that added the slightest respectability to the character.
- Truth in Television. Bligh was no worse or better than most captains of his day, and he did, in fact, manage to sail that small open boat thousands of miles to safety, saving the lives of his crew who went with him. Meanwhile, back on Pitcairn, things were... less than rosy between Fletcher Christian, his fellow mutineers, and their Tahitian companions.
- In Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the point of the Christmas Past sections is to show how Scrooge came to believe that 'if you like anybody or let yourself feel any emotion, you'll get hurt' and that not being poor/a good businessman was the only thing that mattered.
- In the Codex Alera series, we see the Vord Queen in this light in the last book, as the individual tries to understand such things as love and family. Being the Big Bad, the individual gets it very, very wrong.
- Although it is actually written more to show a character as villainous who, up to this point, seemed more of a Lovable Rogue, Gogol's novel Dead Souls ends this way. Up to this point, the reader knows that the protagonist Chichikov is some kind of Honest John or con artist who has a mysterious plan to buy the records of recently deceased serfs, and he is presented as more sinned against than sinning. Then, the Lemony Narrator discusses how he came from an upwardly mobile family and, at a young age, had all of his creativity beaten out of him by his father and schoolmasters, leading him to become a Stepford Smiler and Smug Snake and manipulate and betray people in order to rise through the bureaucracy. Periodically, he is caught engaged in corrupt action and has to bribe his even more corrupt colleagues to escape complete disgrace. Thus, by the start of the novel, Chichikov has become something of an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain.
- Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte has an in-universe example. Lieselotte plays the role of the Alpha Bitch in the Fictional Romance Game MagiKoi, but Lieselotte's route of the fan disc reveals she is just a Tsundere who is Not Evil, Just Misunderstood... Kobayashi becomes highly sympathetic with Lieselotte's plights after playing that line, and eventually invokes this on Endo by having him play the same fan disc first before playing MagiKoi proper, which does cause Endo to literally cry for the "devil." This is the motivation of the commentators when they noticed the inner Fourth Wall suddenly disappears—they want to give Lieselotte a happier ending.
- The last section of Frankenstein shows very sharply that the creature was formed by his surroundings, not created evil.
- A Frozen Heart: Hans is depicted in a more sympathetic light despite his actions.
- The Guardians of Childhood: How exactly did Kozmotis Pitchiner, esteemed war hero of the Golden Age, end up as the Pitch Black Nightmare King we now know? If you have to guard Pandora's Prison Cell of Eldritch Abominations and listen to their incessant wailing to be freed for years in your daughter's voice, you'd be compelled to throw the gates open and get violently possessed and corrupted, too. It doesn't get better when it becomes apparent that his memory and love for his daughter still has the potential to turn him back into a human, proven when Katherine showed him the locket with a picture of his daughter and it ended up de-monsterfying his right arm.
- The Harry Potter series really loves to play around with this one. Snape is a complete bastard, but is hinted to be a good guy throughout the series. In the end, the reader can't be certain of what side he's on until Harry gets to see his memories and Snape is explained to be a good guy. Voldemort is explained to have had a bad childhood throughout the series, but Rowling says he's the only really bad person in the books note . Thus, he was bad from the start and his experiences in life are no excuse for who he is. On the completely opposite side of that is Harry, who had a bad childhood too, and yet is a very surprisingly selfless person.
- When Harry does feel a twinge of pity for Voldemort after hearing his backstory, Dumbledore tells him to ignore it and to save that pity for Voldemort's many victims. Even after that, in their final confrontation, Harry tries to convince Voldemort to feel some remorse for his deeds to help him restore his soul. Harry knows that Voldemort is doomed to suffer a horrific afterlife otherwise, and it is not a fate he would wish on anyone, not even Voldemort.
- Chapter 9: Storm Clouds, from Hell's Children, by Andrew Boland.
- In the Horus Heresy all of the Traitor Primarchs, except Alpharius Omegon, have this to one degree or another.
- Horus Lupecal. The Warmaster. The Arch-Traitor. And in Horus Rising we see the man before he was corrupted by Chaos; a Primarch who truly loved his sons and enjoyed spending time with them in the Warrior Lodge of which he wasn't even in charge, he just liked to attend and be around his sons in a place where rank was unimportant, and a warrior who was willing to negotiate with other civilisations rather than conquer them outright and in his dealings with the Interex actually seemed desperate to, for once, make peace with someone rather than just crush them. And then on Davin he is wounded by the Athame and tricked by the Chaos Gods into accepting darkness into his heart. And by Erebus who takes the form of Hastur Sejanus, who was essentially Horus' best friend and was murdered prior to the start of the book, and uses Horus' love of Sejanus to nudge him into accepting the Gods offer. Horus became a monster, but before that it's easy to see why he was among the greatest of the Primarchs.
- Angron. The Red Angel. One of the most insane of the Primarchs and one damaged from the start, obsessed with killing and slaughter and barely even functional at the best of times. But he was once a little boy whose first contact with humanity was to be enslaved and forced to be a slave-gladiator for arrogant and cruel nobles. They cracked open his head and gave him the Butcher's Nails, an antique technology that causes him constant cripping agony and puts him into uncontrollable rages. And after years of degradation Angron finally leads a rebellion that is doomed to fail, and at the moment of his final battle the Emperor arrives and offers to take him to birthright. Angron says no, wishing to die with his brothers and sisters. So does the Emperor help him or respect his wishes? He abducts him and Angron watches everyone he knew and cared about be slaughtered.
- Mortarion. The Death Lord. Raised on a poisonous world ruled by Eldritch Abominations known only as the Warlords, taken in by the most powerful of them and raised as a weapon rather than a son, he eventually escapes and leads his people to freedom. But his final moment of triumph is stolen by the Emperor who cuts down his foster father in front of him, and it's implied that Mortarion had conflicted feelings about him, and he must bend his knee in servitude. He joins Horus for selfish reasons but comes to the attention of Nurgle, and when his Legion is decimated by plague and he must make a choice between horrific deaths and pain or serving Nurgle, he chooses to serve Nurgle from fear of dying. And why did he have to make that choice? Because his treacherous First Captain Calas Typhon put them in that situation so that it would happen.
- Fulgrim. The Phoenician. Fulgrim's very first contact with his Legion was learning that they had been decimated by gene-seed problems and that only 200 lived, whereas most Legions had 100,000 marines and more. Not daunted he gave such a Rousing Speech that the Emperor himself was impressed and gave them the right to bear his personal symbol, the Aquila. But that was clearly the start of Fulgrim's obsession with perfection, living up to his father's pride and proving that there was nothing wrong with his Legion. Eventually he finds the Blade of Laer and it slowly begins corrupting him, twisting his love of art and culture into something depraved, turning him against the sons who truly love him and his closest brother Ferrus Manus, and eventually pushes him into murdering Manus. Fulgrim immediately sees the horror of what he has become and begs for oblivion, which the Daemon inside the blade grants him by possessing him. Fulgrim does eventually break free but had to sell his soul to achieve it. Like Horus Fulgrim became a monster, perhaps the worst of them all, but he was one of the friendliest and nicest Primarchs before that.
- Magnus the Red. The Cyclops. The most knowledgeable about the Primarchs, who made a faustian bargain with the Warp to save his sons from mutation. He builds a great civilisation of psykers and then is forced to watch as his brothers call him an unclean warlock and madman for dabbling with what he does not understand, and the Emperor demands that his Legion cease their psyker practices and pursuits into sorcery. Magnus is truly hurt but still tries to warn the Emperor of Horus' treachery, but picked the worst way and time to do it. Cue the Burning of Prospero where the Space Wolves raze Prospero, butcher its people and cut down the Thousand Sons as they fight to defend their home. Magnus is so despondent over everything that he can't even muster the will to fight, until he sees Leman Russ murdering his sons, whereupon he joins the fight and is forced to pledge his soul to Tzeentch to save what remains of his Legion. If the Emperor had just levelled with Magnus about Chaos, perhaps Magnus could have had a much different future...
- Lorgar Aurelian. The Golden. Lorgar was the most corrupt of all the Primarchs and the most tragic. Before becoming the Arch-Priest of Chaos he was perhaps the Primarch most interested in improving humanity's lot and genuinely cared about people; he wanted to please the Emperor and his brother Primarchs, and preached a religion based on love of your fellow man and standing together in unity. The Emperor is not pleased and after destroying a city on one of Lorgar's worlds to make his point, point-blank tells Lorgar and the Word Bearers that they are the only ones that have truly disappointed and failed him, that Lorgar's childhood conquering his homeworld in the Emperor's name was a waste of time and life, and that everything they have achieved is worthless. Even Guilliman and Malcador, who were there at the time, feel bad for Lorgar and Malcador even claims that if he could have saved any of the Traitor Primarchs it would have been Lorgar, even though Lorgar nearly crippled him at said incident. Lorgar just wanted to give humanity faith, he really believed that it would make humanity happier and better for it. And when he finally does find the Gods he always believed in, they aren't quite what he expected...
- Konrad Curze. The Night Haunter. One of the most pitiable of the Primarchs. Raised on a world where the most common cause of death was suicide, he was not taken in by a family or a mentor, he raised himself and brought his world to compliance through fear. Cursed all his life with seeing the future he knew from an early age how he would die, and when the Emperor did come for him Curze took the Emperor's compliments on Nostramo as proof that his methods were correct. Eventually he could not be tolerated any more and the Emperor chastised him, and then Curze saw what was to come. A vision of the Heresy, and as the only Primarch who he considered a friend Fulgrim was the first person he told, and Fulgrim's first act was to tell the others. Rogal Dorn called Curze out for his slander and in a fit of madness Curze nearly beat him to death, and was condemned for it. Escaping he returns home and finds that Nostramo has reverted to what it once was, and he decides that only destruction will end the cycle of sin. Eventually he allows himself to be assassinated to end his miserable life and to prove that the Emperor is little different from him.
- Perturabo. The Iron Lord. Perturabo is one of the most tragic of the Primarchs, for his treachery was entirely preventable if only somebody had taken an interest in him as a human being. Raised by a cold and tyrannical ruler who thought of Perturabo more as an heir than a son, eventually Perturabo met the Emperor and had a chance to really come into his own. It was not to be. He legion was saddled with garrison and siege duties all across the galaxy in small numbers guarding massive populations in hellhole conditions once the Emperor realised how talented he and the Iron Warriors were at such styles of warfare, and his only dream of creating wondrous and beautiful buildings, cities and works of architecture solely for the joy of it, and not for glory or rulership, was never realised as nobody ever cared enough to ask him what his dreams were. His dedication was put to the test when he had to reign in his own rebelling homeworld. He and his legion massacred the rebelling population and realized there was no possibility of atonement. He sided with Horus for that, and for one reason, Horus was the only one who had never lied to him or betrayed him.
- In I, Lucifer, the reader may feel a little swell of tears depending on how sympathetically they see old Luce's story, but an in story example has Raphael shed tears over Lucifer himself, when fighting a losing battle to convince him to redeem himself rather than face eternity in the void.
- In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Sméagol/Gollum is a slimy little git—but he wasn't always that bad...the Ring drove him to insanity. Frodo hates Gollum at first, but eventually pities and tries to help him—in fact, we can see some of Gollum in Frodo himself.Frodo: But do you remember Gandalf's words: Even Gollum may have something yet to do? But for him, Sam, I could not have destroyed the Ring. The Quest would have been in vain, even at the bitter end. So let us forgive him! For the Quest is achieved, and now all is over.
- The Silmarillion shows this may have been intended for Orcs. It is revealed Middle-Earth's equivalent of Satan, Morgoth, captured many of the Elves after they awoke, and with torture used them to create Orcs. Tolkien even writes the Orcs really hate Morgoth and serve him out of fear.
- This happens with a lot of the supposed evil characters. When Sam sees one of the Haradrim, men from the South who are fighting for Sauron, die, he wonders whether he was really evil, what made him leave home and whether he would have preferred to stay there.
- Michael Henchard from Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge does some very reprehensible things, including selling his wife and child for the price of a pint (more or less), manipulating his 'daughter' and telling her real father (it's complicated) that she has died because he wants to keep her to himself, and also ruining the life and reputation of another young woman. Yet by the end of the novel, when he dies alone and unloved it is possible to feel immense sympathy for him.
- Colin Smith in Blessed from the Tales of the Firebirds anthology in the Out of Position series. Colin is a grade-A Jerkass, but Blessed shows him to be incredibly repressed and unhappy - and so in denial about his sexuality that he seems genuinely incapable of connecting it to his unhappiness - both in life and in his marriage and his conversations with "Jesus", rather than being expressions of his faith, almost seem like full on dissociation. All in all it's hard not to feel a little sorry for him.
- Perfume: Grenouille ends numerous innocent lives to sate his quest for the ultimate scent, but his whole existence is portrayed as completely miserable and pointless: almost murdered as an infant by his mother, walking around humans like an alien, living in total isolation for years, and when he finally achieves his goal and could basically become a living god, he decides he doesn't want that anyway and kills himself by being Eaten Alive by a mob of peasants.
- The Priory of the Orange Tree:
- Niclays Roos, who is almost a Villain Protagonist. He is selfish and resentful, his lies result in the death of Tané's childhood friend, he attempts to blackmail her into injuring her dragon so he can have a new ingredient for his alchemical experiments, he deceives his two honest doctor friends, and he persuades himself into doing all these things because it will spite the queen who exiled him for using her research grant to fund his addictions. But it's hard not to pity him a little over all the awful things he gets put through (even though a lot of them are his own fault) and he dove into his addictions because the love of his life, whom he couldn't marry for status reasons, died unexpectedly at the same time as Niclays was commisioned to make an elixir of life, and being barred from anywhere in Virtudom was an excessive punishment.
- Saint Galian Berethnet, founder of Virtudom. His virtues are brought into question early on with Ead's version of the dragon-slaying story and his myth is pulled further and further apart, including an extended diatribe by a non-believer that portrays Galian as a lust-driven thug who opportunistically used the dragon situation to found a new religion with himself as its godhead and lied about having killed the dragon to justify crowning himself king of all Inys. But the protagonists finally learn the truth of the two impossible-to-reconcile versions of his relationship with Cleolind—Galian truly believed he was married to Cleolind, but it was really his adopted mother, Kalyba, who kept him under a spell of hynosis until she nearly died in childbirth and the enchantment broke. He hanged himself in shame, and it's hard not to feel bad for him over that.
- Thomas Harris' Red Dragon provides a horrendous backstory for the "Tooth Fairy" Francis Dolarhyde, from his mother rejecting him at birth (illegitimate and with facial deformations), to a rough life in an orphanage, to adoption by his Evil Matriarch grandmother, to eventual adoption by his reluctant mother, whose other children reject and abuse him. After that, the Start of Darkness kicks in, and Ax-Crazy as he ends up, he still, at one point, tries, albeit unsuccessfully, to fight his evil Split Personality, even in the middle of being played for an Unwitting Pawn by Hannibal Lecter.
- Artemis Entreri is a ruthless assassin that has done his fair share of atrocities over the series progression, but seeing his upbringing in The Sellswords does a great deal in explaining how he came to be how he is. His mother was a prostitute, his supposed father abused him and his uncle molested him as a boy, before his mother sold him to a pedohile merchant. No wonder he grew up to be a cynic.
- Jaime Lannister in A Song of Ice and Fire. He was a young, dashing knight, proud member of the Kingsguard. Then he stabbed Aerys II in the back. In a Sympathetic P.O.V., we find out that he didn't do it to help his family win the war - he did it because Aerys ordered the city to be burned with wildfire. And that was after Jaime had spent about two years being traumatized by having to watch Aerys' increasingly depraved behavior and being duty-bound not to intervene. Almost everyone in the Seven Kingdoms now hates his guts and calls him Kingslayer. 14 years later, after all of the treatment and hatred he has received over the years, he has become the mask and embraced that image. When Brienne of Tarth finds out his secret and asks if he is so cowardly as to let it define him, he starts to shift into one of the more noble characters in the books.
- Stephen King does this so much that the trope could almost be named after him. Try to name one villain he's written that hasn't had a flashback to their shitty childhoods (cosmic horrors don't count). King definitely believes that evil people are made, not born.
- In the novels, yes. In the Different Seasons novellas, Ace, the Sisters and Dussander have no bad-childhood-made-me-do-it backstories, and Todd freely chooses to follow in their footsteps.
- Ineluki the Storm King from MemorySorrowand Thornis like this. To quote: "He loved his people so much he gave his soul for them". And even our hero says that "No creature in all the cosmos deserved what had happened to the Storm King".
- This is the point of Wicked; it does have Elphaba do morally ambiguous things (unlike the musical, where usually she tried to do good but it blew up in her face, book-Elphaba does some things that can't even be argued to have good intentions), but it explains where her opposition to the Wizard and her distaste for Ozian society in general come from.
- Worm tends to have this effect, partly because of the regular "interlude" chapters that show another character's perspective, often that of one of the antagonists. With a few notable exceptions, the comment sections are much more sympathetic towards characters after their interludes. Particular credit is due to Wildbow for turning Bonesaw/Riley, a Creepy Child Mad Doctor who's one of the most important members of the Slaughterhouse Nine and whose "artwork" on one of the main characters was terrible enough to cause a second trigger, into a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
- Wuthering Heights begins by showing the audience Heathcliff as an adult, nasty and abusive to everyone he's around (even sending his hunting dogs after his guest) and then quickly shows his childhood, when he had potential to be a better person. One line that stands out is when, at one point in the story, Nelly, the main narrator, consoles a crying Heathcliff by telling him that he may be a lost Asian prince out of a fairy tale, leading him to imagine regaining such status and taking revenge on everyone who has wronged him in a way that foreshadows his later Face–Heel Turn.
