Dark And Troubled Past / Fan Works

Dark and Troubled Pasts in Fan Works.

---

Crossovers

• To Belong: The siblings were orphaned when Anya accidentally set their house on fire playing with the chandelier. Anya still blames herself for her mother's death and can't turn into her lioness form without being triggered.
• Honey and Vinegar (Castlevania (2017) & Hellsing): Seras was orphaned after her parents were killed by common thieves, forcing her to live most of her life as a beggar on the streets of Cascaval. She was left as the only survivor of a vampire attack and would have been raped by her attacker had Dracula not killed him. This ultimately left her mortally wounded and she had to become a vampire to survive.
• Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail: Lexi was once a curious book who wished to explore the Train and all its cars, even befriending two teens to be his partners. Unfortunately those teens were Grace and Simon, who gleefully tore him apart and buried him alive for eight years until Chloe dug him out.
• Kyon: Big Damn Hero (Haruhi Suzumiya & TV Tropes; author Died During Production): Michikyuu Kanae, who, as a slider, has gone through hundreds of worlds, only to have them invaded by aliens and everyone she loved killed. Again. Hundreds of times.
• Light's Song: Luz Noceda's mother was murdered when she was two by Zachariah (with her being left alone in the house with Camila's corpse for days), her first and only time meeting John was when he found out about her existence and kidnapped her when she was seven shortly before he died, when she was nine Hell Queen tortured her to death (including impaling her through the shoulder and causing a wound that never fully healed, even with Castiel's best efforts at it), as part of a plot to hurt her brothers, she was in the time loop with Sam and remembered the loops like he did, dying at least forty times in that instance alone... Honestly, it's a miracle that Luz is still sane, or capable of happiness at all, given what she's been through, a sentiment that Amity and Willow express In-Universe after seeing the Hell Queen memory.
• Looming Darkness (Kingdom Hearts & The Legend of Zelda): Ciara's backstory. After Zelda's mother revealed there was a prophecy concerning her, she spirited Ciara away to Earth and left her with Abusive Parents while her real parents were murdered by Ganondorf. She'd been abused for her first 13 years of life until Link brought her back to Hyrule to take down Ganondorf.
• Metroid: Kamen Rider Generations (Kamen Rider & Metroid): Revisiting all of Samus Aran's past experiences ranging from her parents' deaths, and to losing her closest friends, and all is quintessential to her characterization. But, what really stand out are the backstories of the two Kamen Riders who fought alongside with her — Mitsuzane Kureshima (Kamen Rider Ryugen) and Gou Shijima (Kamen Rider Mach).
  • Mitsuzane, during his time with Team Gaim up to betraying them and subsequent alliance with his respective series' villains, out of his obsession with Mai, ends up being the Unwitting Pawn to them (Sid, Redyue, Ryoma... You name it.). Kouta and Mai dying right before his eyes left him but an apathetic shadow of his former self and slow descent into alcoholism. Ever since at the start of his road to redemption, his past would continue to haunt him. No wonder why he began making barbed sardonic jokes that land badly at anyone around him, and as an excuse to cope with his insecurities. When he reaches out to Samus, he started to get better.
    Mitsuzane: The 'Micchy' who used to be shy and friendly member of Team Gaim has been long gone when the whole Helheim situation began to get real. The Mitsuzane Kureshima who was groomed to be an heir of a powerful company and a manipulative mastermind is dead as well. But, the Mitsuzane Kureshima you see right now is a very insecure and isolated man, who can barely make fun of other people just to see the world becoming so relentlessly unkind.
  • Gou, when he learns that his father, Professor Banno, an Ax-Crazy Mad Scientist who was never a father to him, of course. And when Chase was killed at the hands of said mad scientist also counts. He got better when Chase once again returns back to life.
• My Hero Academia: Unchained Predator:
  • Miruko's vigilante past is even darker than canon, with her handling a flare gun bringing back memories of her executing a criminal with a 10 gauge shotgun and relishing in seeing the dead body of a Saber while the other heroes were distracted with the warehouse fire. Hawks is very concerned for her due to the Slayer's brutality.
  • The Slayer's past is considered horrible. Losing his wife, infant son and pet rabbit to The Legions of Hell, losing his mind fighting said Legions of Hell, kicked into another after his sanity was shattered, finding a family in the Night Sentinels, only to lose everything due to The Legions of Hell and treachery from the Maykrs and Deag Priests, gets locked into a sarcophagus after going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, only to be released and after killing the Spider Mastermind, he is kicked into the MHA world with no way to get back. The Slayer wonders if Fate truly hated him that much for this to happen to him.
• The Night Unfurls:
  • Kyril was just a guy who wanted to find a cure for his illness, only to find himself amidst a nightmarish city of bloodthirsty beasts and Ax-Crazy people. To the other P.O.V. characters, his past is shrouded in mystery. To the readers (if they had played Bloodborne before), however, they would know that he went through a cumulative ordeal of pain, loss, death, slaughter, deprivation, monstrosity, and lastly, dehumanization (metaphorically and literally; it befell not just the others, but himself as well). Being able to kill things by the thousands is all well and good, but being a shell-shocked mess with a battered psyche isn't.
  • Sanakan and Hugh were Street Urchins struggling for food, shelter, and survival. The latter, in particular, survived a Slashed Throat, leaving him mute.
  • Soren was luckier than the above two, since he was raised in an Orphanage of Love, but even then, he had a hard life. The child had to scrape up a living in the streets as a thief for the sake of supporting his home, and if he failed to make the quota, he'd get beat up by thugs (which happened on a regular basis).
  • Grace lost her home and her husband to the Rape, Pillage, and Burn of the orcs, because Olga allowed it to happen during the war she started. After being displaced by the war, she was Made a Slave by Morgan and the Leaping Lizards band. While Grace isn't callous or overtly cynical, she took Olga's betrayal very personally.
  • Chloe was born of rape, the product of a human father and a dark elf mother. Her father murdered her mother when the dark elves, Chloe included, were taken by human slavers for entertainment. Chloe's past contributed to her jerkassery and Fantastic Racism towards humans.
• Oni Ga Shiku Series:
  • Literally everything that happened to Musashi Midoriya. His was a raging Abusive Alcoholic Parent when he was a kid and his mother abandoned them both. Musashi, figuring that since he came from shit, he ought to be shitier, ran away from home at eleven years, joined an underage gang, and before long he was running errands for the local Yakuza. He ends up joining them at only fourteen, and eight years after that he takes his first assassination contract. The target? own father, who was also Yakuza. The assassination completely messed him up for life, but since he was successful, he took on even more contracts to the point that he got the title of Omi's God of War. At one point he met the love of his life and married her, but then she died by childbirth. And then one of his own lieutenants wants to use his son as a Child Soldier due to his quirk. Is it any wonder he doesn't want his son to have anything to do with the Yakuza?
  • The son in question did not quite escape all the mental trauma despite his father's best efforts. Musashi was murdered on Hisashi's birthday by the lieutenant in question, and Hisashi's last memory of his father is using his own body as a Human Shield to protect him. He has constant Flashback Nightmares about this ad absolutely refuses to talk about his father to his own son.
  • Inko ran away from the orphanage she was at when she was at middle-school age, and was picked up by a biker gang that was rather kind of her; up until they got separated during a run-in with the police, leaving Inko alone in Sotenbori (that was completely unknown to her) with no other choice than to use her quirk to pick pockets. She also picked up smoking somewhere down the line. As an adult, she justifies a lot of Izuku's behavior by thinking to herself that she did way worse at his age.
• In the Zootopia/The Flash (2014) crossover fic "Zootopia: Lightning", Chief Bogo reveals that he distrusts vigilantes because he dealt with a vigilante early in his police career that ended with several criminals and innocent people dead in the crossfire. Judy and Nick each acknowledge his point, but assure him that the dimensionally-displaced Barry is a better person than the vigilante Bogo dealt with.
• A wand for Steven (Harry Potter & Steven Universe): Despite his cheery disposition, Steven harbors much emotional turmoil over the events that happened in his world. He shows homesickness more than once, mentioning his dad and Connie on more than one occasion. He was even apart of the huge epic battle that eventually led to the Gems poisoning the planet. This is best displayed during Lupin's session with the boggart, his fears so intense that the boggart outright attacks him in the form of Jasper and Yellow Diamond instead of just harmlessly scaring him, Dumbledore reasoning that his fears are far more real and deep-rooted than the average student.
• The Weaving Force: Taylor recalls being Khepri, and controlling everyone to save the world. This is extremely traumatic for her, to the point where she actively tries to convince herself the memories are implanted and fake for years.

Amphibia

• Living in a Frog World: Frank Ramirez's life turned upside-down when he was accused of stealing a pair of shoes that somebody had dropped over a bridge on top of him. The assistant of the store manager knew right away that he was innocent; however, her boss didn't believe either of them, and forced her to testify against Frank or else lose her job. Even worse, his parents refused to believe in his innocence. He spent ten months in juvenile hall, while Anne and her friends learned what happened when gossip spread around the school. Finanical troubles forced his parents to sell their house, moving into a rented apartment. When he got out, Principal Murphy was barred from letting him back into school by the superintendent (Maggie's father), who insisted that Frank was dangerous and shouldn't be around normal kids. Not wanting to burden his parents any further, Frank moved in with his grandmother after her husband passed away. The 23rd chapter reveals that the real shoe thief was none other than Sasha.

Arrowverse

• To Hell and Back:
  • Barry and Kara, on top of their canon backstories, land on Lian Yu alongside Oliver and suffer some of his canon backstories, including torture and the deaths of Shado and Yao-Fei, and the assumed death of their adoptive father, Slade. And if that weren't enough, they are press-ganged into the League of Assassins after the later saved them from drowning after the sinking of the Amazo, suffering Training from Hell to become Ra's' three top enforcers.
  • Slade's past is arguably even worse. On top of losing Shado, he's separated from his adoptive children, captured by Amanda Waller and experimented on in an attempt to replicate and perfect the Mirakuru, and suffers through all of Oliver's post-island pre-series adventures (only one of which ended better than they did in canon). Then, just when it seems he can have a Bittersweet Ending by reuniting with his biological children, Waller returns, takes out his eye, and blackmails him into Task Force X by threatening Joe's life.
  • Iris' past wasn't a walk in the park either, though it wasn't as tragic as the above examples; she lost her best friend Barry for ten years thanks to her father's Parting-Words Regret, tried to emulate said best friend in order to cope with his presumed death, suffering ridicule from all her peers along the way, and then learned that her biological mother was alive and that she had a little brother, all of which her father hid from her. One can't really blame her for being cold and slightly bitter as an adult.

Avatar: The Last Airbender / The Legend of Korra

• The Saga of Avatar Korra: The Red Lotus are successful in kidnapping Korra and put her through a Training from Hell regiment for fourteen years. During that time, Korra believes her parents are dead, and while the Red Lotus promised to be her Parental Substitute, they generally abuse her. Only Ghazan and P'li treat Korra even remotely well. She is even more of a Fish out of Water than she is in canon, and she does not even know when her birthday is or her age.

Back to the Future

• Back to the Future Prequel: Doc accidentally crippled a girl when his flying machine went awry. This accounts for some of his bad reputation.

Danganronpa

• Forest of Despair has a lot of characters with one due to living in a Crapsack World Afterthe End. One of the most notable examples is Akita Yamazaki, the protagonist, who has been tortured to the point of having a scar and experienced friends dying before the Killing Game actually starts.

Death Note

• The Human Whose Name Is Written In This Fanfiction: Parodied in Chapter 7 "In which everyone is very tragic":
  Don't you just love to read pointless and poorly written garbage about fictional people's problems?
  Well if you do you're a complete sadist but that's okay, you've come to the right place. This is the land where we step over the borderline from "tragic past" to "Loaded up with so many problems it's kind of sick". Sounds like fun huh?
  Take a glance around the room and you will see our first victim. His name is L Lawliet. Although he possesses legions of adoring fans they all seem to be obsessed with torturing him. Let's take a closer look.
  L sat sadly in task force headquarters. He felt his imminent doom hanging over his head as well as the pain of his unrequited love for unnamed love interest/dead love interest. This reminded him of all the tragic things that had happened to him, the things that kept him awake every night for fear of terrible nightmares (because this explanation of L's insomnia isn't complete rubbish at all).
  He thought back to his childhood as a poor orphan boy. He thought about that flashback he was going to have later in the series when he died and how it showed how tragic a character he was.
  It had all started when the young boy had to watch his family be brutally murdered. They were shot/burned/eaten/poisoned/exploded/forced to watch the Pokémon movies. It was a horrifying memory that would haunt the detective all his life.
  After many heart-breaking scenes of carnage Watari brought the young L to Wammy's house. He was very emotionally scarred and had no friends. Then one day Watari brought two new children to the house, A and B.
  L immediately fell in love with A/B/random other chick. Unfortunately they died. All of them. Violently. While still carrying his child. Right in front of him. Other wretched stuff.
• Sing To Me by Pyreneese is explicitly about L having one hell of a tragic past. A short list of the things that happen to Child!L: no father, abused by his mother, his mother dies and he's homeless, is taken in by a Hooker with a Heart of Gold, watches said hooker be murdered, is taken into foster care, is nearly killed by his foster mother, is nearly adopted by Light's parents, runs away in an ill-advised attempt to avenge the deaths of both his mother and the hooker, which leads to him being forced to become an accomplice in organized crime, is nearly killed after disobeying, is sold as a prostitute... all by the age of eight. Jesus Christ. L's odd mannerisms, willfull social isolation, and seeming emotional numbness are implied to be at least in part because he's just seen so much trauma that he can't really function like a normal human being anymore. Break the Cutie indeed.

Dragon Ball

• Dragon Ball Z Elsewhere: Why Yamcha was living as a bandit all alone? Why he did know about Son Gohan? How did he learn his signature move? Who was still strong enough to scar his face after he trained under Karin? Well, he trained under the master of the Martial Arts Wolf School, who got killed by the master of the Snake School during a treacherous attack. He then was overpowered by one of the latter's minions and offered a chance to run away. He does so out of self-preservation but lives in shame for the rest of his life.

Five Nights at Freddy's

• Five Nights At Freddy's: Lost Souls
  • The animatronics' attraction burned down under mysterious circumstances, leaving them in pieces and forced to hide when the park's owner came to sell what was left of the place for parts. Prior to this there was apparently an incident were several children under their watch went missing and died, followed by them killing a man for as of yet unknown reasons.
  • It's implied that something unpleasant happened to Cody when he was still visiting private school. When Bridget attempts to talk about it, he gets angry and yells at her.

Free!

• Eyes Wide Open All the Time: Pretty much everyone. Haru's the chronically ill child of two abusive drug addicts, Rin's mother was physically and verbally abusive and knew Gou was being raped and didn't do anything about it, Sosuke and Makoto have severe PTSD as a result of their deployments in Afghanistan, and Miho lost her husband, job, and children after becoming addicted to morphine, you can honestly take your pick from amongst the cast.

Godzilla

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): San, the former left head of Ghidorah. Ghidorah as a whole is just as violent, depraved and sadistic in this story as it's ever been, but it has a pretty compelling Freudian Excuse which also applies to San: San and his brothers were originally just wild animals on some long-gone alien world fighting for survival, until they were captured by the Makers, systematically tortured into evil, and transformed into a Bioweapon Beast. Ghidorah turned against and exterminated the Makers in revenge, but the Old Noise which the Makers had programmed into Ghidorah's heads as a "standing order" continued tormenting the three heads ceaselessly, constantly and insatiably demanding endless bloodshed and destruction, until any trace of goodness in Ichi/Eldest Brother and Ni/Elder Brother was irreversibly "torn apart and forgotten" and Ghidorah's three minds were moulded into the Ax-Crazy interstellar Omnicidal Maniac we all know it as. What's more, before and after the three heads' corruption, San was and always remained the least actively malicious and hateful of the three, and the most curious about humanity and the other "little" lifeforms his brothers so hated, for which Ichi and Ni were very physically, verbally and emotionally abusive towards San, treating him like little more than dirt.

Hamilton

• Time Out of Mind at one point features an in-universe (non-alcoholic) drinking game of the characters' varieties of dark and trouble pasts. (Among other things, leads to one character being distressed at not having one).

Harry Potter

• My Immortal gives this to Hermione, renamed B'loody Mary Smith, whose real parents were vampires who dies in a car crash.
  • "I'm Not Okay" and "Ghost of You", other works by Tara and Raven also do this
• Parodied in The Parselmouth of Gryffindor, wherein, in Chapter 44, Snape and Dumbledore argue about whose backstory is more tragic.

Hetalia: Axis Powers

• Gankona, Unnachgiebig, Unità: Let's see...Rome dying, being abused for hundreds of years—physically and verbally—by Austria, Holy Rome dying during the Thirty Years' War...those events definitely contributed to some issues Italy has.

Invader Zim

• Karma Circle: Judgement: Daan Yel was at some point prior to the story captured, tortured and mutilated by an Irken soldier, to the point where one of his horns is broken off and his right hand and foot have both been replaced with metal prosthetics.

The Loud House

• Tomboy Blues: Stella had a lot of problems in her old school because of her tomboyishness; she couldn't relate to the other girls and wasn't accepted by the boys because she was a girl. She was alone and bullied as a result, and people questioned whether she was even a girl. This is part of the reason her family moved to Royal Woods.

Mega Man

• Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race: Captain Tallarcio had a shady past with Governor Deacon.

Monsters vs. Aliens

• God Help the Outcasts: While the backstories of the monsters are mildly addressed in the movie, here, they're given slightly more focus...and more detail: Insectosaurus (though he didn't mean to) killed thousands when he attacked Tokyo, Dr. Cockroach was a mad scientist who tried to take over the world after his transformation, B.O.B. ate a dozen men, and Link killed dozens of people during and after his capture (although he regrets that). Monger explains to Susan that she's the only "innocent" monster he's ever caught, as she hasn't killed anyone.

My Hero Academia

• Juxtapose: A few:
  • Katsura Kensei was raised by the villain Tsuchigumo and taught to be a criminal; it was only later that he was rescued and re-adopted by Detective Tsukauchi.
  • On account of being bullied as a kid, Monoma Neito was obsessed with getting the Quirks of powerful heroes (via their hair) so that he'd always have some form of power on hand, which only got worse after he accidentally copied a villain's Anger Point Quirk and went berserk, culminating in a full-on Never Be Hurt Again mentality. It comes to a head when he obsessively searches for Izuku after seeing his Quirk take down a Zero Pointer robot - only to enter a Heroic BSoD when he finds out what it is.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• Rainbow Dash, in Luna's Power and Rainbow's Love, says that she and Fluttershy do not like to talk about their time in flight school, because it "wasn't a happy part of our lives." it's implied that bullying is the reason for this.
• A New Face In Ponyville: Joshua Rocket is revealed to have shadows of one of them in chapter 9^note Counteraction. This could also be a case of Mysterious Past since not a lot of concrete details were given and even what WAS said could be put up for speculation considering it was under heavy sedation after an attack from the Equestrian Pony Alliance.
• In Our True Colors, Pinkie Pie's "hugginess" and tendency to inhale food both derive from her time as a homeless orphan.
• Principal Celestia Hunts the Undead: Celestia and Luna both. Their introduction to the supernatural came when Luna fell for a vampire who tricked her, then killed their parents and bit Luna, nearly resulting in her death because Celestia thought she'd been turned and shot her.
• Songs Uncle Sings: Alluded to but nothing more.
• Stallions Of Harmony Verse has Prince Blueblood, who lost his parents as a colt, was blamed for it by his entire family and later was betrayed by his so called best friend, who used him to steal treasures from the castle. It took Nightmare Moon and other Elements of Harmony for him to start trusting others again.
• To Try For The Sun: This oneshot gives princesses Celestia and Luna tragic backstories. They grew up in times of war and were orphaned as foals. They were always at risk of starvation and the elder sister Celestia worked as a gravedigger at only twelve. One day, Celestia somehow rose the sun herself and this feat is what lead to her ascension.
• Why Am I Crying?: Diamond Tiara is revealed to have had a really shitty life. She moved away from Ponyville to Manehattan when she was four, separating her from her best friend Apple Bloom. Three years later, her mother was killed in a train accident — while she was pregnant — and her father wouldn't even want to look at her she looked so much like her and couldn't stand it. Eventually, she was sent to a summer camp near Fillydelphia, where she was relentlessly and sadistically tortured by a group of colts who hated rich ponies (including with Silver Spoon, whom she met there), causing her to develop a persecution complex against lower classes. After her father found out what was happening to her and had the camp shut down, she moved back to Ponyville, and found that none of her old friends remembered her. The last straw came when she defended Silver Spoon from some foals who were making fun of her glasses; they just so happened to be friends of Apple Bloom, who had also forgotten about her, and twisted around the events so she could accuse her of bullying them. Feeling betrayed by her best friend, Diamond was driven to become the rich brat she was often perceived as and became devoted to making Apple Bloom's life a living hell.

Naruto

• Kitsune no Ken: Fist of the Fox: Naruto has, as his dark and troubled past, the fact that he was part of the Kyuushingai, a group of nine people who were instrumental in 365 days' worth of death and destruction across the continent. It still haunts him to this day.

Odd Squad

• Ships Ahoy!: It's revealed in Part One that Oprah was a runaway from the American South (possibly as a runaway slave) and was found by whom would become her Auntie May and Uncle Chester at just two years old, with no memory of anything before then outside of her own name. However, her adoptive aunt and uncle, as well as her adoptive cousins Lunette and Molly, weren't very kind to her — Uncle Chester and Auntie May never cared for her properly, while Lunette and Molly would frequently bully her and disregard her ideas because she was a child who didn't know any better. Her past doesn't affect her much, though, as she has the common sense and know-how to make it by on her own.

Ouran High School Host Club

• Awkward Silence: Riko Shibata was raped by her uncle when she was younger, her mother who was having an affair with said uncle just slapped her for telling her, and her father left out of anger and never came back. This leads to some very realistic emotional effects on Riko.

Pokémon

• Pokémon Reset Bloodlines has its fair share of these:
  • Red is shown to have Past Experience Nightmares, of suffering a lot of bullying as a kid, and it's heavily implied that he lost his mother when their house burned down, with all hints pointing that he was the one who accidentally set it on fire.
  • The resident Knight of Cerebus, Belladonna Tyrian, and her three girlfriends also have this, all of them suffering of Parental Abandonment or otherwise losing their families to varying degrees, and they only have each other. Belladonna especially is so desperate for a real family that she quickly accepts the possibility of Ash being her half-brother without much question.
• Zorua Trainer: in contrast to canon Ash, Zorua Ash did not have a very happy start to life. He was abandoned in a Unovan City alleyway as an egg, and spent the first half year of his life (the pokemon equivalent of a infant to a 4 year old) completely alone; except for a friendly Trubbish who let Ash eat trash from the can he inhabited. Ash doesn't like to think or talk about that time in his life.

Rainbow Brite

• Lost Storms: Stormy's Forgotten Past: Stormy lived a happy life with her mother until age six, when she was taken by Human Traffickers and sold to Murky. Murky planned on using Stormy to defeat Rainbow Brite and raised her for years as a servant. To make Stormy complacent, Murky would often make her drink a potion to keep her under his control.

Resident Evil

• Darkness Arises Reborn: Has main protagonist Jake Cavanaugh fit to a T, a Hitman, whose entire backstory seems to involve any good thing being taken from him, to list: His father was an abusive drunk, who preyed on his family, culminating in the elder Cavanaugh shooting Jake's mother dead, before attempting to kill Jake, who accidentally killed him in turn. Out of Jakes friends, only the one who moved away, wasn't killed or in jail. The love of his life, killed herself, when her father beat the crap out of her for getting pregnant, and blamed Jake, who then beat him into a pulp. After killing his father, he ran away and joined his criminal brother Ryan, who was then killed by a rival gang in front of Jake, not much later Jake became best friends with a man called Viper, who, in a fit of pure greed, betrayed Jake and his gang, killing them and leaving Jake for dead, only for Jake to hunt him down and kill him. For a hitman, Jake has had such as horrific life you want to give him a hug.

RWBY

• Burning Coals: Neo was orphaned as a young age and spent several years on the streets by herself. She made her first kills as self-defense. Eventually, she was taken in by Roman.
• Children of Remnant: The Claimed were tortured extensively by their "Mother" Salem, which included being starved, denied clothing, and, in Jaune's case, being locked in solitary confinement for several days.

Scooby-Doo

• Shaggy the Handler: Shaggy has a past as a soldier during the Vietnam War. He doesn't like talking about it and averts questions on it, but what's implied to have occured in his past isn't pretty.

The Sims

• The Racket-Rotter Chronicles: In Arc 5, Sinbad reveals that he was used in dogfighting matches for a good portion of his life.

Star Wars

• In the Star Wars: The Clone Wars Transplanted Character Fic By the Sea, Obi-Wan Kenobi grew up in an orphanage from infancy where he suffered severe bullying, he watched his only friend, Anakin, die brutally in a war, came away from that war with debilitating PTSD, and holds decades-long internalized homophobia at his own bisexuality on top of all of that.
• The Desert Storm: From the point of view of everyone but himself, the incredibly badass yet even more incredibly traumatised Jedi Master "Ben Naasade" is very obviously an example, which he refuses to discuss in any detail. Of course, "past" is not quite the word...

Teen Titans

• In quite a few works of the 2003 Teen Titans cartoon, Starfire has a troubled past as a slave. For example, the oneshot Deceptive Protection revolves around Robin learning of Starfire's past as a Sex Slave after the episode "Troq". There is some basis in canon to Starfire being enslaved in canon, as she was a Gordanian prisoner and she was a slave in her original comic backstory, but the cartoon implies she escaped before she became anyone's "servant".
• The End of Ends: Beast Boy explains his past to Terra to justify just why he felt depressed after she dumped him.

Total Drama

• Total Drama All-Stars Rewrite: The second aftermath reveals that Gwen's dad was a miner who died after a cave in. Her mother mentions it's where her fear of being buried alive came from, and for the first few nights after his death, Gwen had pretty bad nightmares.

Turning Red

• In Turning Red: The Panda Conspiracy, Sarah Vaugn saw her mother being killed by a member of the Lee family, forcing her to live with her abusive father. She was then kicked out onto the streets and forced to fend for herself.

Unsorted

• Bird takes place in an insane asylum for troubled parahumans and elaborates on many canon backstories that were only hinted at in Worm proper. Special mention to Burnscar and Labyrinth.
• Broken Bird initiates with a somewhat graphic depiction of Kakashi's reactions to his repeated childhood trauma growing up.
• In My Immortal almost all of the characters were stated to have gone through "horrible problems", although it is not clear exactly what these are.
• In the parody Xtremly Scray, even the freaking Sorting Hat has a tragic backstory.
• In Transformers Meta Grimlock has this, which theoretically warrants his aggressive personality. Jazz also seems to have it, but does a better job at hiding it.
• In the Uplifted series, Joachim Hoch has this. He was conceived as a last ditch attempt to bring happiness to a couple who had lost their children to the First World War, and was beaten by his father until he was killed during the occupation of the Ruhr. He then ran away from home and was taken in by an SS officer (a surprisingly decent man), and ultimately followed in his footsteps. He's a surprisingly balanced person in spite of all this.
• All of the main characters in the fanfic Freefall have tragic childhoods, to a varying degree of "tragic"; not surprising, since the fic features CLAMP characters.
• In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, there's Trixie's portrayal in some of the better Twixie^note Twilight/Trixie shipping fics. At least two fanfics - Out in the Cold and Of Mares and Magic - gave her a parent who inspired her to take up magic, then went and died on her and left her traumatised. This not only provides a Freudian Excuse for why she acts like such a jerk in-series, but also provides grounds for the eventual Shipping.
• Firefly in Ace Combat: The Equestrian War lost her home, her parents and her dreams of becoming a Wonderbolt, thanks to Black Star. It's the reason she is sometimes cold and angsty toward others.
• In The Key to Marauding, Dawn has all the emotional baggage of Series 5 of Buffy (dead mother, knowing that the first 14 years of her life aren't real encounters with Glory etc...). In the fic she is chained up in the dungeon and nearly raped by Lucius Malfoy, kidnapped and tortured by Death Eaters and is torn between her own world and the Potterverse when a way of getting back appears.
  • By the sequel she has lost her adopted parents (Mr. and Mrs Potter). Then, pretty much in one night, her adopted brother (James), a woman who was like her sister (Lily), the man she loved had gone insane before her eyes (Sirius) and was imprisoned in Azkaban, where she watched him fall apart, knowing he was innocent and knew the traitor to be former True Companion Peter Pettigrew, and was also aware that she was the bait for his betrayal. Then, she lost custody of her Godson (Harry) because of Blood Wards, and had to endure a year of trying to care for him, but as she said herself to Harry, 'every one thing I gave you, they took two away' before leaving, recognising that she was making it worse for him. She then had to endure Harry's anger at her until the Blood Ward thing is explained to him. Oh, and to top it all off, she miscarried her baby by Sirius. Trauma Conga Line doesn't even begin to describe it.
• There are quite a few characters from What Lies Beyond the Walls (particularly the vermin) who have had either a really horrible childhood or experienced something traumatic early on as an adult. Benrath Brugo, however, gets the prize for having the worst DATP of them all: his parents were murdered by Log-a-Log when he was a child, he's abducted by him soon afterwards, and then his surrogate father proceeded to rape and abuse him for several years.
• Eric Cartman in The Ballad Of Stoot And Argyle (a South Park fanfic). He flat-out admits to Terrance that he killed Scott Tenorman's parents, and saw so many parallels between his life and Oedipus the King in junior high that, heavily disturbed, he pledged to overcome his past ways. Whether or not he's succeeded is still up in the air.
• At least one character of Racer and the Geek has this. The degrees to which they cope vary.
• Cooler Rising. This seems to be true for both Cooler and Zither, or at least as far as they're concerned.
• From Kill la Kill AU, we have Ragyou's childhood, in which she struck by a car when she six (on her birthday) and the best bid to save her life was to perform a forbidden and experimental surgery on her, which said surgery is implied to employ life fibers.
• Nui Harime in the Kill la Kill fanfiction Maim de Maim has a very grim childhood in which she was a Creepy Child that went too far and created a flesh bound kamui made with the flesh of a ten year old girl she met in public. She eventually got out of the lifestyle and improved, but unfortunately in Chapter 15, the past came back to haunt her in such a hard way, it undid all of her improvements made since in a very depressing fashion.
• Alluded to in regards to Mai-Lin from Kyoshi Rising; she seems to have some bad memories of her family, and a distaste for nobility, but other than a few glimpses her full past has yet to be revealed.
• In Second Wind, Luffy and Zoro were the sole survivors of a battle in the past that claimed the lives of all of their friends. Understandably, even though they've come back to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, they've yet to fully get over that trauma.
• In Four Deadly Secrets, RWBY and more than a few of the supporting cast. It's the premise of the story, after all.
• TorontoBatFan's Let Me In series reveals various details about Abby’s past before she met Owen, including that she was turned by her uncle and was shot by her own father when she tried to go home after the attack (which also marked the moment she learned that she was now immortal). Abby also discusses her history with her past guardians, including how and why she chose them and how they died.
• Lady In White:
  • Elsa reveals that she witnessed the deaths of most of her family during the French Revolution, and isolated herself even further from humanity after learning about the destruction of Hiroshima.
  • Anna recalls at least one foster home where her foster father would hit his wife when he was drunk; when he was sent to prison after Anna had been with them for a couple of years, the man admitted that he probably would have killed his wife eventually (although he never did anything to Anna herself).
  • Kristoff’s mother died of an unspecified illness when he was very young, and he has always felt guilty for not having the courage to see her when she was in hospital.
• In We Are What We Are each Dazzling has one. It's so bad it's no wonder Sunset tried to send them home after Adagio told her them.
  • Adagio Dazzle had the happiest life. ...Until she got married. Her husband cared little for her, yet still tried to kill her and her lover when she had an affair. She was forced to flee, leaving her happy rich lifestyle for a homeless life constantly on the run.
  • Sonata Dusk was abused by her parents and was only ever shown kindness once in her entire pre-Siren life. She didn't even want to go with Adagio and Aria, but was forced to when soldiers destroyed her home.
  • Aria Blaze arguably had it the worst. She never even knew her parents and was raised in a horrible Orphanage of Fear where she was abused constantly for her beauty and singing voice. It's made worse when it's revealed that she would never get to leave because she was adopted by the worst of her abusers. She tried to escape several times only to be stopped every time (she was even nearly killed once)except her final time. Is it any wonder why they're so hateful?
• A Gem in the Rough: Petrea (Miss Valentine) and Damian (Mr. 5) both have tragic backstories. To subvert this trope, Genevieve (Miss Goldenweek) does not appear have one. In fact, she is the only one who has not lost a parent of the bunch...possibly even the entire crew.
• Pikachu from Rocket Member watched her pregnant mother get mortally wounded by Team Rocket, resulting in her dying before her twin brothers were even born. Her father ran off afterwards, leaving her and her older brother to raise twins by themselves.
• Team Rocket Roots turns Jessie's Hilariously Abusive Childhood into this. After her mother left on a mission when she was five, she was supposed to be taken care of by someone. Alas, Jessie almost starved to death because the person failed to do this. Afterwards Jessie ended up in foster care and her canon backstory occured. It all resulted in Jessie having serious abandonment issues.
• In Danny Phantom fanfic Resurrected Memories As shown from flashbacks, Ember McLain had a very difficult human life. Originally called Amberline McLain, she was an unpopular girl with big dreams of rock stardom, she got frequently bullied and was subjected to pranks from the popular kids, had been raised by Control Freak parents who didn't understand and neglected her and suffered from an unrequited love towards David Parker, the most popular guy at her school. One day David asked her out to the movies and she waited for him all night, thinking that he was just late. However she eventually went home after realizing she was stood up and cried herself to sleep, unaware that her home had mysteriously caught on fire. She died in the flames and out of anger for her untimely death and horrible life, renamed herself Ember McLain and became the vengeful Evil Diva seen in cannon. In fact the only good thing about Ember’s human life appears to have been her little sister.
• Life with Fumi: A Yo-kai Watch AU: Sailornyan was a normal cat owned by a rich girl named Lucille Sanshiro. Her owner eventually fell in with the wrong crowd and became a criminal. When Lucille was arrested, Sailornyan tried to take Lucille her favorite manga Sailor Piers but was killed on the way there. Since turning into a yokai, Sailornyan began visiting the room's of delinquent girls in order turn their rooms girly and help change their view on life. She'd also inspirit their mother's so that the mom's would enforce stricter rulers to curb their child's delinquency.
• A Tale of Two Rulers:
  • Ganondorf's mother died when he was very young. He was raised in a brothel and it's also mentioned that he worked there too. Eventually he recovered his Past-Life Memories as a teen and ran off. Ganondorf has very clear memories of the tragedies and violence of his past lives, which also effects him.
  • Zelda had an abusive relationship with a tutor at thirteen. That's how she ended up pregnant with Rinku. Zelda's father also disappeared years ago, leaving her the princess regent.
• Unbreakable Red Silken Thread: First Heather finds out she was an 'oops baby' that her mother used to blackmail her father into marrying her. That is on top of the emotional and mental abuse her mother heaped on her due to blaming her mere EXISTENCE ruining her career. Gwen has spent the last several years in an extremely abusive relationship with Duncan, which has resulted in quite a bit of problems with herself and her family, including her mother kicking her out of their house once she became an adult; it's also revealed that her father abandoned his family when she was still a child, her mother's second boyfriend (and Gwen's brother's father) ran away too, and her mother's third boyfriend was a pedophile who secretly filmed Gwen's private moments. Sammy spent a LIFE TIME suffering at the hands of her demented sister Amy before Jasmine finally got the push she needed to save her from the situation. Even Cody didn't exactly have a happy home life, though lacking abuse he did grow up fairly neglected.
• Jimmy Two-Shoes the Movie: Misery Loves Company: Jimmy and Heloise are revealed to have these - connected no less. Specifically, Jimmy took up a job as an errand boy from a mob boss in order to support his hospitalized mother, with Heloise being the daughter of said mob boss and having been raised to be hateful and suspicious of all people. While Jimmy's kindness helped her learn there was good in the world and encouraged her to follow her dreams of becoming an inventor, the death of Jimmy's mother convinced Jimmy and Heloise to go on the run, where they were killed when the police pursued them and their stolen car crashed, sending them both to Miseryville.
• The Last Prayer: Samui and Atsui were part of a study by their parents that was later dubbed The Monster Study for how horrific it was. Samui was part of the group that was criticized for everything (aka the Cold Group) while Atsui was part of the Hot Group that was praised for everything. Both groups were forced to do things such as administer increasingly painful electric shocks to a prisoner, drug teenage prostitutes, and submerge their arms in disgusting substances such as feces^*The two groups were supposed to be switched after a time and the project was only supposed to go as far as criticizing/praising the orphans regardless of what they did. The project was cut short when the new Raikage learned of their actions and immediately cut funding, only not executing those running it due to their popularity. As a result, Samui is The Stoic and almost incapable of conversation while Atsui is a case of Small Name, Big Ego who literally can't comprehend being criticized.
• RWBY: Destiny of Remnant: Hoo boy...
  • Ashe Kasai: His parents were murdered by his sister Cinder in her single-minded pursuit for power (which he doesn't know), his significant other Mila was murdered by Saul Jude for saving him, and the latter died with their child still in her womb. He then spent the next few decades Walking the Earth with the Aura Crystal and looking for Cinder while believing that she was still alive and well, only to find out that she had been corrupted by Salem and given the awful truth that she actually murdered their parents.
  • Adam Taurus: He and his parents were forced into slavery by corrupt members of the Schnee Dust Company, and his father Tarvos was gunned down because he caused an insurrection within the mines, his mother Iona was killed during an escape attempt, and his younger sister Lily was heavily implied to have starved to death and her body was thrown into the ocean and fed by seagulls.
  • Blake Belladonna: Her parents, motivated by the bigotry around them, broke off from the original White Fang to join more radical groups, but a riot broke out one day and they were killed in said riot. She was then raised by her aunt Kali and uncle Ghira as well as Claudandus, the latter of which was the founder of the White Fang. When a young Adam joined the White Fang and told her about his own past she became more disillusioned with the direction the White Fang was going and the lack of chances for equality. Years later, she joined Adam in overthrowing Claudandus and helped him take over the White Fang. However, as Adam's methods got more and more extreme, Blake eventually became wary of him which resulted in the events of the show's canon, and the rest is history.
  • Sharp Strike: From what we do know in Chapter 54, it was mentioned he was also a survivor of a...certain horrifying event (not unlike Ren and Nora) that led to the death of his family and everyone he knew in the hometown of Himawari, before his recruitment into the Remnant Knights.
• Boiling Isles and Beyond
  • Luz is implied to have an abusive father who would beat her mother in front of her. She doesn’t remember this, so it’s implied she locked the bad memories away.
  • Eda, on top of what happened in canon, also suffered from Abusive Parents before hand, and was also mentored by a Con Artist who ended their final lesson by stealing all her belongings and leaving her to fend for herself.
  • Lilith, Lilith, Lilith. Suffered the same abuse as Eda did, with it being revealed her mother often called her nothing. Then canon happened when she cursed Eda only to learn she was going to throw the fight for her. Then the even worse thing happens when she meets a woman named Jade, fell in love and married her, only for her to get killed in a raid on a rebel base. The fact that Lilith now knows the rebels are the good guys only makes this cut deeper.
• Inter Nos, a My-HiME fanfic, has a dark and troubled past for a few characters.
  • Natsuki is the Last of Her Kind, a Princess of a race of people known as the Ortygians. Her family was slaughtered around her, trying to protect her, and she was found under a pile of their corpses by soldiers from Otomeia, a neighboring ally with familial ties to the Ortygians. Natsuki was placed with a Baron. But her quiet nature, and the belief that she was mute, were mistaken by the Baron's son as a sign of weakness. He attempted to force himself on her, and Natsuki was able to escape by killing him. She was then sent to live with the King, but had no stable family structure, though she was much treasured by the King. At the age of fourteen, she was sent into battle with the regular soldiers. By the time we meet her in story, five years later, she's the head of the elite Lupine Division.
  • Nao was the daughter of a town whore, but she loved her mother. She had the misfortune to witness one of her mother's clients murder her. She fled, and wound up in the home of a head of an elite spy division, who decided to train her in the craft.
• It's (Not) Your Fault: Sam tells Lincoln that she did not have a happy childhood. Her mother and father started fighting constantly, and eventually, her dad abandoned her causing her mom to become an alcoholic and her brother Simon to become super rebellious. Sam has even hurt herself.

---