From Nobody To Nightmare / Anime & Manga

Oh my God! He learned to use silverware!

Examples of From Nobody to Nightmare in Anime & Manga.

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• General Esdeath from Akame ga Kill!, who started out as a normal, if slightly maladjusted, little girl living in an Arctic tribe with her single father. Fifteen years, the death of her father, and a few mass slaughters later, she's the most feared woman in the entire Empire, a One-Man Army that can create glaciers out of thin air, freeze space and time, defeat entire armies of men twenty thousand strong, and knows a lot more about torture than any normal person should. Oh, and did we mention that somewhere along the way she got a demon in her head that (figuratively) tells her to burn things? When Najenda said she was the scariest person in the Empire, she wasn't lying.
• Tetsuo from AKIRA. Originally a bike gang member — an incompetent one who's only there because his best friend is the leader of said gang — through a series of bizarre events he becomes an ultra-powerful telekinetic who morphs into a monstrosity worthy of the Cthulhu Mythos.
• Hirose from Alive: The Final Evolution. Originally just The Hero's often ignored childhood friend, even after he gains super powers and does a Face–Heel Turn he doesn't seem to be much more than the Big Bad's mind controlled pawn. Then he gets his hands on The Heart of Akuro, which frees him from the mind control and gives him godlike power, and he promptly decides to use it to kill everyone on Earth.
• Attack on Titan:
  • Ymir Fritz. As a child, she was a mere slave to a tribe of barbarian warriors. After being blamed for a pig escaping, she was hunted for sport, and accidentally encountered a spine-like creature that attached to her and transformed her into the first titan. Ymir was granted such extraordinary power that the Eldians were able to turn their tiny warrior tribe into an empire that ruled most of the world for almost 2000 years. Subverted in that she was still a meek slave to the King, who used her to Take Over the World.
  • The protagonist, Eren Yeager himself. He started the series as a nobody, standing out only due to his rash Bully Hunter nature and an extreme desire to travel outside the Walls he deemed as 'cages'. He is currently the single-most threat to the entire world, commanding thousands of Wall Titans to destroy life outside Paradis, and has a plethora of powers to ensure he goes unopposed.
  • Floch Forster starts off as an inexperienced, naive, enthusiastic, and yet cowardly Red Shirt. During the Battle of Shighanshina, he is caught in the bombardment by the Beast Titan and breaks down in Tears of Fear when he realizes he's going to die. He miraculously ends up as the Sole Survivor of Erwin Smith's suicide charge, develops a bitter hatred against the outside world after the Time Skip, and becomes a ruthless and sociopathic military leader. He deliberately attacks civilians in Liberio, starts a Renegade Splinter Faction (The "Yeagerists") to support Eren's scheme, murders General Zachly, breaks Eren from prison, executes a coup d'etat against the military junta, gleefully executes foreigners, commits mass purges against political opponents and mass poisons them with the Titan Spinal Fluid to turn them into Titans, and rallies his troops to prevent the rest of the Survey Corps from stopping Eren's plan to destroy the outside world.
• Griffith of Berserk began as nothing more than a simple commoner who had big dreams of becoming king. Over the years, he put together a band of thieves, which later became a mercenary army, and then became the highest-ranking general in Midland's army. He then suffered a tragic fall from grace that left him disfigured and physically incapable of realizing his dream... until the Eclipse passed, where he became one of the five demon kings of the Godhand and one of the singlemost powerful individuals in the world.
  • This is partially subverted as Griffith was always predestined by fate and The Idea of Evil, essentially God of the Berserkverse to be more than a "no-name" in the grand scheme of events. But his grandiose narcissistic personality meant that few expected him to become more than a figurehead or an overly-idealistic Fake Ultimate Hero. And now he's a demon lord.
  • Guts, too: he Used to Be a Sweet Kid, until his adoptive father sold him to a fellow merc as a sex slave, then tried to kill him in a drunken rage. In the time since then, he went on to become one of the most dangerous mercenaries in the land, and after the Eclipse, developed a reputation as the Black Swordsman, the bane of apostles and the one foe the God Hand respects.
• The very first villain to appear in The Big O, and one of the few to make a repeat appearance without being an outright Big Bad, is Beck — a no-name low-level crook who wound up working as a go-between and muscle for a secret conspiracy between a Mad Scientist and a Corrupt Corporate Executive. That is, until he betrayed them both and stole the Humongous Mecha they'd been developing in secret, and then proceeded to stomp through downtown in order to rob the Mint like an avaricious Godzilla. Between all the Humongous Mecha and Kaiju that the title robot has fought throughout the series, Beck's record remains the best, returning to challenge Roger four times — arguably five if you count using his abilities to make the Big Bad and The Dragon's Bigs operational in time for the Grand Finale. And on top of that, he's responsible for releasing the most destructive weapon in the series when he tells Dorothy how to activate Big O's Final Stage . He's very hard to take seriously at ANY point, but really, you probably SHOULD...
  • And in the manga, he manages to get his hands on a "Gigadeus", completely trashing the Big O and nearly winning in one of the trippiest sequences in the series.
  • A perhaps more conventional example is Schwarzvald — once upon a time, he was just an Intrepid Reporter, driven to discover the truth about the City of Amnesia while working on his great manuscript in a tiny, run-down apartment. Then his search for the truth drove him to explore the vast network of underground tunnels beneath the city, and what he found made him Go Mad from the Revelation. Next thing you know, he's reappeared covered in bandages, trying to teach people the 'meaning of fear', and generally acting like a combination of The Joker, Scarecrow, and a mummy. With a Humongous Mecha. Which can fly.
• Black Clover: The Zogratis siblings originally were members of a common family in the Spade Kingdom. After their respective Deal With The Devils, they managed to usurp the royalty, ally with the Diamond Kingdom and plotted to release Devils onto the world to destroy humanity.
  • Special emphasis goes to Lucius Zogratis. Just like his siblings, it's heavily implied that he used to be a no-name. Now he is practically The Antichrist of Black Clover.
• Bleach: Done in the Gotei 13 Invasion Arc. Ouko Yushima began as a very weak and pathetic shinigami who didn't have the strength to fight in battle or master his Zanpakuto. He therefore decided to split himself and his Zanpakuto apart into two mod-souls that could master his powers, the first mod-soul was the apparent Arc Villain Kageroza Inaba and the second mod-soul was the apparent heroine Nozomi Kujo. Kageroza could manipulate space-time, bring the dead back to life and was so powerful he could defeat Ichigo and Yamamoto at the same time. Nozomi could absorb reiatsu, steal the powers of others, combine them with her own power and use it as super-powerful attack, and heal better than even Orihime, and she was so powerful she could fight Kageroza even when Yamamoto himself could not. The origins of the powers of both mod-souls were never explained as none of them were abilities of the original Zanpakuto, but when the two were recombined back into Yushima, he was able to combine all these powers to become a threat to the very existence of Soul Society itself. Being an Ineffectual Loner, he was defeated by both The Power of Friendship and The Power of Love.
• Claymore gives us [Roxanne of Love and Hate]. She started her Yoma-slaying career with a low inherent power rating, leaving her at the low Rank 35, so she copied the fighting style of her partner to compensate. Then she realized she had the talent to fully replicate and surpass other warriors' fighting styles in a matter of weeks. She decided to backstab her former partner so she could get reassigned to someone stronger. She also discarded the fighting style of her former partner when she deemed it weak and disgusting in comparison to her new obsession's fighting style. She repeated this process over and over, informally allowed to do so by the corrupt organization that wanted test subjects rather than warriors, until she managed to reach the very top. ^note She refused to copy the fighting style of her Rank 1 partner because it involved literally eating dirt through inhuman, distended dodging. So she just killed her outright. She's so powerful that after her death, the organization preserves her body (ranking her 1-8, as the eighth most powerful warrior to achieve rank 1) so they can resurrect her when they need a cleaner to decimate any rebellions.
• Code Geass has the two leads Lelouch vi Britannia and Suzaku Kururugi. Lelouch starts as an Ordinary High-School Student (minus Dark and Troubled Past) and Suzaku as just another Mook in the Britannian Army. They quickly rise up, Lelouch becoming the masked rebellion leader and hero "Zero", and Suzaku becoming the Ace Pilot of the Lancelot. By the end of the series Lelouch has conquered the whole world and Suzaku is The Dragon to his Big Bad.
  • The stand-out example, however, is likely Nina. Starting out as the quiet, geeky member of the student council, this young Teen Genius only has the fact she has a very unsubtle crush on Princess Euphemia who she also worships due to her crippling self-esteem. However, when Euphemia dies, Nina has an epic Freak Out that leads to her turning into an insane Yandere Mad Scientist that successfully creates an atomic bomb called the FLEIJA that ends up killing 30 million people on the first proper use of it and goes on to be the obstacle to deal with in the final battle. The good news is that the first time it was used snapped Nina back to sanity and she pulled a Heel–Face Turn to try to make up for what she's done, successfully creating the means for Lelouch and Suzaku to nullify the FLEIJA.
• Tongpu a.k.a. Mad Pierrot from the Cowboy Bebop episode "Pierrot le Fou" was originally an average man who had volunteered for an experiment to become the ultimate superhuman, the resulting experiments drove him completely insane and he became a bulletproof, psychotic Serial Killer with the mind of a child.
• Death Note: Brilliant, yet disaffected high school student Light Yagami; incompetent, unpopular corporate drone Kyosuke Higuchi; and a Crusading Lawyer, Teru Mikami each come across a simple notebook leading each of them to become notorious mass murderers and, in the case of one of them — Light — GOD OF THE NEW WORLD.
• Denjin N: Tadahiro goes from a high school dropout and a lowly convenience store clerk to a nearly-unstoppable supernatural being with the power over electricity after his death and holds the world in fear.
• In Devil May Cry: The Animated Series, Sid is a low level demon grunt whom nobody takes seriously and Dante considers Not Worth Killing. Then he manages to acquire artifacts and conduct a ritual that grants him the power of the demon lord Abigail, becoming powerful enough to beat the shit out of Dante. Dante manages to defeat him by using Devil Trigger, then comments that no matter how much power Sid gets, a loser is still a loser, before killing him.
• The Noah from D.Gray-Man. All of them regular humans until their cursed lineage makes them spontaneously reincarnate into supernatural Omnicidal Maniacs.
  • And then it turns out that since the Noah's souls are those of the original survivors of the biblical Flood (notice the name?), everyone on the planet shares their lineage, meaning that absolutely anyone could potentially turn out to be their host. Can you smell the Paranoia Fuel?
• Digimon Adventure 02:
  • Ken started out as a lonely child who was always in the shadow of his older brother; however, after his brother's death a series of events lead to him becoming the evil Digimon Emperor.
  • Yukio Oikawa started out almost the same way, having Iori's father, Hiroki, as his only friend. But after Hiroki was killed in line of duty, Oikawa promised himself that he'd make their dream of visiting the Digital World one day real no matter what. With the help of Vamdemon, he becomes a ruthless and manipulative chessmaster who almost brought both worlds — and potentially the entire universe — to ruins in chasing his mad dream.
• The D-Reaper from Digimon Tamers. It began as an extremely simple computer program, designed to delete any other program that grew beyond its purpose. Then the Digital World came into being, and the Reaper decided that not only did the Digimon qualify, so did we. It also had an increase in power over its lifespan, going from ridiculously simple computer program to nigh-unstoppable, city-devouring Eldritch Abomination.
  • Impmon went from a not particularly powerful jerkass to the very powerful and Drunk on the Dark Side Beelzemon, going so far as to kill Leomon before his later Heel–Face Turn.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Goku from Dragon Ball was this to the Red Ribbon Army. They first dismissed him as Just a Kid, before hiring a top-notch assassin to kill him, to full blown nightmare when he came knocking at their door. He continued to maintain this impression to Frieza as well. Frieza didn't even know that Goku existed until he flew right in his face.
    • It bears noting that Goku's power level as a baby was rather weak by Saiyan standards, which makes him becoming the greatest warrior on Earth all the more impressive.
  • Like his father before him, Gohan was dismissed as Just a Kid to the point that when Goku claimed that Gohan could defeat Cell everyone, including Gohan, was doubtful to say the least. Then Gohan went Super Saiyan 2 and put the fear of god in Cell.
  • Dragon Ball: Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return!! deals with Abo and Kado, members of Freeza's Planet Trade Organization who were originally ranked below the Ginyu Force, and both became as strong as Freeza himself in the fourteen years following his death. And they can perform a fusion technique to become even stronger!
  • During the Tournament of Power arc, Kale became this. While Caulifla considers Kale to be special enough to be her personal protegee, most people barely acknowledge the seemingly weak gang lapdog unless her mentor's around. After getting tortured and ignored by her enthralled boss during the tournament, Kale finally cracked into her Super Saiyan Berserker and made a fearfully destructive presence that literally reshaped the arena. This is enough to attract even the Pride Troopers, causing Jiren to quickly force her out of her rampage, while Kahseral's squad specifically called her out as a motive for payback against Goku, Caulifla, and Kale.
  • Jiren is Goku's Evil Counterpart when it comes to this. He was just some little grey alien on a backwater planet whose parents were killed by a demon and he even found (and lost) an adoptive father like Goku; but unlike Goku, who was discovered by Bulma, Jiren's life didn't improve and he developed a Might Makes Right philosophy that soon fashioned him into The Dreaded strongest fighter in the multiverse.
• Lucy in Elfen Lied was resigned to getting bullied by the other children at the orphanage for being a freak of nature. Then she got the power to turn a perfectly ordinary living room into a blender.
• In Eto Rangers, Chocolat, the Cat Spirit was just an ordinary, carefree (albeit a bit bratty) citizen of Mugen who looked up to Princess Aura. And then she was cheated and humiliated when she was promised a chance to work under her service only to have it stripped away from her. In a fit of blind rage, she made a Deal with the Devil, becoming the fearsome Jyarei King Nyanma.
• Jellal Fernandez in Fairy Tail started out as a slave working under the oppression of a Religion of Evil. Watching his best friend and love interest be brutally tortured and being even more brutally tortured himself, along with subtle brainwashing by a false god, turned him into an incredibly powerful mage whose powers come directly from celestial objects (such as meteors, among other things). He also managed to pull off a perfect Evil Plan, and it was only by devouring Etherion that Natsu was able to summon the power to defeat him. He is later healed by Wendy and becomes a good guy, although he is still one of the most powerful characters in the series.
  • The members of the Oracion Seis (sans the leader Brain) started out as child slaves to the same Religion of Evil as Jellal. After Jellal went Brainwashed and Crazy, the five were chosen by Jellal's Evil Mentor Brain for having the highest Magical potential of the slaves and trained by him. Fast-forward to the present day and these five are the spearheads to one of the three most powerful Dark Guilds in Ishgar and so dangerous that Fairy Tail had to enter an alliance with three other guilds to bring them down and stop them from activating a Doomsday Device. Later on, four of the five said members would escape from prison and, together with a Starter Villain from a minor dark guild and a doll brought to life, reformed the guild and took control of another Doomsday Device, with Fairy Tail having to join forces with a formerly Corrupt Church (corrupted through the Oracion Seis' own actions at that) to bring them down again.
  • Zeref, the person Jellal was supposedly working to resurrect, was a case of this as well. Originally an otherwise normal, if absolutely brilliant, student at the Mildian Magic Academy he researched all manner of taboo subjects in an effort to bring his brother Natsu back to life after his untimely demise. Fast forward 400 years, and he's the most feared and powerful wizard in history with numerous dark guilds being formed in dedication to things they believe he would have wanted.
  • Once, there was a simple healer who lived amongst humans and dragons who bemoaned the fact that the most he could do with his magic was stop blood loss, not heal wounds, regenerate limbs, or even ease the pain of his patients. That man then witnessed a horrible tragedy that pushed him down the path of revenge no matter the cost. That is the origin story of Acnologia, the Dragon Slayer who slaughtered so many dragons that he turned into one himself, went completely insane, crowned himself the Dragon King, and for the next 400 years was the undisputed World's Strongest Man surpassing even the immortal Zeref and ultimately desired nothing less than the destruction of the world and everything in it to sate both his bloodlust and unresolved grief.
• Sun in Fire Punch over time goes from The Pollyanna child, to a captain of La Résistance, to a delusional cult leader. His Blessing powers got incredibly strong during a Time Skip as well, to the point where Agni has to take him down.
• In Fist of the North Star, Han, one of the Rasho, warlords of the Land of Asura, qualifies, since only an Asura who has proven himself by killing hundreds of other warriors is worthy of having a name, let alone rising to the level of Rasho. What makes Han special is that he's the only one of the three Rasho who wasn't raised from childhood as a student of the incredibly powerful martial art Hokuto Ryuken. He is a Hokuto Ryuken master, but it appears that he only became one after impressing the other Rasho enough for them to personally train him — and getting a couple of Ax-Crazy Social Darwinists to care about you enough to teach you is no easy feat.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Father, the Big Bad and leader of the Homunculi, began life as a small Xerxian alchemy experiment who could think and act like a human. Eventually, he tricked a slave (Van Hohenheim) into helping him absorb the souls of half the people of Xerxes, gaining a humanoid form. Soon, he introduced Alchemy to the rest of the world and became the founder of the entire country of Amestris, kickstarting the manga's plot.
• Ginga Densetsu Weed: The reason why Hougen and Genba were the way they are is because of a bad owner. Locked up in a small kennel with other dogs, the Great Dane brothers had to fight, kill, and even eat dead and dying dogs. When their owner comes back for them, Hougen and Genba (the only survivors) jump on him, kill him, and eat him.
• In GTO: The Early Years, Yoshio Tamaru was a weak, timid Bully Magnet who needed Eikichi to save him from bullies. After hearing his grandfather's dying wish to "become strong", he completely changed his personality, becoming an Ax-Crazy delinquent. He ends up leading his own gang and trying to kill Ryuji and get Eikichi to join him.
• The Gundam series:
  • Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam brings us Paptimus Scirocco, a minor official from Jupiter recruited by the Titans. Over the course of the series he slowly gathers followers and influence, culminating in him supplanting Jamitov and Bosque and seizing control of the Titans. And did we mention he slowly reveals himself to be an amazingly skilled pilot, genius mobile suit designer and extremely powerful Newtype?
  • Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ has Glemmy Toto. Originally introduced as a minor, bumbling Neo-Zeon officer, he slowly becomes more and more ruthless and competent until, in the endgame, he's sending out mind-controlled Cyber-Newtype clones in psychically-controlled superweapons, and slaughtering Haman Kahn's top lieutenants left and right. It helps that, somewhere in there, he was revealed to be either a clone or the Bastard Bastard of Gihren Zabi, the Big Bad of the original Gundam.
  • In Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, Buch Concern, the salvage firm Banagher Links works a part-time job at, is run by the business-oriented Ronah family. The only real notable thing about them at that point in the UC timeline is that they had taken (and bought) their last name from an impoverished line of European nobles. In less than 30 years, that same family would have enough manpower, resources and influence to forge their own realm almost overnight: Cosmo Babylonia from Mobile Suit Gundam F91.
• Ippo from Hajime no Ippo certainly counts as this. At first he comes across as a small, meek high school student who gets pushed around by bullies, and even the man who would become his coach and trainer initially didn't see anything in him; it doesn't take long before he quickly rises through the Featherweight ranks and builds a reputation for being a powerful infighter with a vicious left jab and a destructive right straight. His contemporaries are routinely awed either by how ridiculously powerful his punches are, or how determined he is to keep fighting even when he's exhausted and damaged. That said, this really only applies to when he's in the ring- outside of it, even people who adore him will overlook him in public, given his non-confrontational personality and politeness.
  • One of Ippo's juniors and former fellow boxers, Yamada Naomichi, eventually becomes this. When first introduced to the manga he was the temporary Butt-Monkey of the gym, and wasn't expected to make it very far as a boxer- when he's reintroduced later in the series under the ring name Hammer Nao, his appearance has changed massively and he's gained a reputation for being a powerful underdog who rose through the ranks despite all odds. Even Ippo is astounded by how far Nao has come.
• From Hellsing, Alucard, of all characters, has a brief scene towards the end of the series, where its briefly implied his childhood was horrific. It indirectly implies his worldview is a combination of passing the Despair Event Horizon and Jumping Off the Slippery Slope. To call his in-story character arc plus his implied offscreen character arc was a case of From Nobody to Nightmare would be an extreme understatement.
• In Hetalia: Axis Powers, Russia went from being a tiny, weak country under the control of the Mongols and constantly picked on by bigger nations, to being much larger and stronger. This would not be so bad, except that years of revolution and bloodshed mean have left him a Psychopathic Manchild who terrifies pretty much all of the other nations he runs into. Exactly how bad he actually is is uncertain. He's shown snapping and firing on a crowd of protestors in the Bloody Sunday comic and it's implied that he whipped Lithuania when the Baltics were under his control.
  • From England's perspective, America could be seen as this. He went from a young child of a colony to declaring independence as a strong country to being a global superpower.
• Shion, and, well, every character from Higurashi: When They Cry becomes this at one point or another. Special points go to Shion becasue she is introduced as a minor side-character rather than a main one. What makes this one so horrifying is that the first portrayal of her is RADICALLY different from the portrayal of her as pure evil in Meagashi-hen.
• Hunter × Hunter has the Chimera Ants, initially a species of small insects that take on traits of the animals they eat; other than that, they're garden variety bugs. They're even first mentioned by a character as a dining delicacy. That's until a rare six-foot tall specimen starts eating literally everything from animals to Nen users, creating an army of animal hybrids capable of fighting and overpowering the elite officials of the Hunter Organization. And her heir offspring eventually gets so strong, that he's the closest thing to a Physical God before the strongest human nukes him to kill him off in order to prevent him from destroying humanity, and even then the blast didn't kill him, only the radiation sickness that followed it.
• Inuyasha's Naraku. A bandit fails in his attempt to take over his band and ends up a crippled, burnt wreck of a man destined to live out the rest of his life in constant agony. But his Perverse Sexual Lust for Kikyo grows so strong he makes a contract with demons and is transformed into the Big Bad.
• Dio Brando of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure began life as the very intelligent, but frustrated and nigh psychotically ambitious son of a petty thief in England, 1800s. From there, he quickly became a vampire, a Hero Killer, attempted to raise a zombie army to take over the world, gained the psychic power to freeze time, and even after his death, continues to weigh heavily on the setting. It gets to the point that Dio mentored a From Nobody to Nightmare villain of his own, Father Enrico Pucci, who through him, succeeded in rewriting the entire universe!
• Kekkaishi: Kuroda was once an Unskilled, but Strong samurai with a streak for killing. He then makes a deal with the Ayakashi and becomes the series' most memorable villain Kaguro.
• Dr. Hell from Mazinger Z started like an unwanted son born in a pauper, ordinary family was -psychologically and physically- abused by his mother, berated by his teachers and bullied by his classmates. Thirty years later he was designing Doomsday Devices for Adolf Hitler and experimenting with human beings in Auschwitz. Forty years later he was trying to Take Over the World and enslaving humankind with an army of Humongous Mecha. And in Great Mazinger he was handed over the command of the entire army of the Mykene Empire.
• My Hero Academia:
  • The man who would become All For One was one of the first people to develop a Quirk. In his youth, he loved reading manga about Demon Kings, but was always annoyed at how the heroes would triumph in the end. So, with his limitless potential from his newfound Quirk, he decided to become a villain of the Evil Overlord variety and show the world how it would really turn out, using his power to steal, manipulate, and amass an army of followers. By the time of the story (which takes place about a century later), he has ruled the criminal underworld with an iron fist that entire time, and even after being defeated doesn't see a need to change. When All Might asks why, he just shrugs and says he wanted to.
    All For One: Just as you dreamed of being a hero, I dreamed of becoming a villain. It's as simple as that.
  • All Might himself is the heroic equivalent—he started out an emaciated weakling with no Quirk, but after receiving "One for All," he quickly became a virtually unstoppable force of justice and the most feared enemy of all villains, in addition to the only hero to ever defeat All for One (twice!). His own successor, the series protagonist, was also born powerless and is on track to eventually become even more powerful than All Might.
  • Said successor, Izuku Midoriya, does indeed grow to match All Might's level of strength at just half of his maximum output with 45% of One For All's power safely accessible to him. He then becomes the new Big Good and, while having a rocky transition after trying to take on too many responsibilities, is able to unify the heroes in defiance of All For One's bid to conquer the world by inspiring everybody to help each other and believe things can get better for hero society.
  • Once upon a time, there was a young boy who dreamed of becoming a hero but his father rejected the notion because his own mother gave him up for adoption to protect him from her enemies. The boy would never know the truth about his grandmother at that time. The boy would suffer his father's wrath sunrise to sunset. The mother and her family would do nothing lest they suffer too. The stress of this lifestyle would cause the boy's skin to itch. All it took was one really bad day for the boy to finally snap and kill his father. Unfortunately the rest of the family had the misfortune to get caught in the crossfire. Then the world's greatest villain of took the boy under his wing. The boy thought "what's the point of saving this damaged world so I might as well destroy it completely". The boy's name? Tomura Shigaraki.
• Naruto:
  • The title character started out as a Boisterous Weakling who graduated dead-last in his year, but has grown into a super-powerful badass.
    • However, as he was also the Kyuubi jinchuuriki and the Fourth Hokage's son long before he was badass, you could argue he was never a normal or nobody to start with. He was, however, presented as one as he was unaware of both of these things at the start of the manga, but the adults around him all knew.
  • Nagato started out as a Cheerful Child in a small village called the Hidden Rain Village, who soon was subjected to a Break the Cutie moment as he watched his parents being killed by Konoha forces, leading to the awakening of his Rinnegan. Then Jiraiya taught him Ninjutsu alongside his friends Yahiko and Konan. Then he joins Yahiko's revolution, becoming his right hand. Soon after that, Hanzo the Salamander, growing fearful of the revolution gaining power, had Yahiko commit suicide after subjecting Nagato to a Sadistic Choice, which enraged him so much he summoned the Gedo Mazo and instantly massacred Hanzo's army, later crushing the government so thoroughly Hanzo's legacy was literally wiped out by Nagato, now calling himself Pain, which is more impressive as Hanzo the Salamander was the guy who defeated the Legendary Sannin at their prime. Soon he turns the Hidden Rain Village into a Akatsuki-favoring dictatorship for his ultimate plan of periodically nuking the world in regular intervals, handed Jiraiya his ass and killed him soon after. He then invades Konoha to capture Naruto, which leads to the total destruction of the village with countless lives lost — even named characters like Shizune, Fukasaku and Kakashi himself, and almost won his war against the Nine-Tails singlehandedly. Only a major Deus ex Machina (partly from him, ironically) saved it from ending as a case of The Bad Guy Wins, and months after his passing, his repute was so feared Kabuto kept him as an ace in the hole during the Fourth Great Ninja War.
  • Kabuto Yakushi starts out as an experienced Genin who's actually a high-level spy for Orochimaru, but he eventually surpasses his already legendary leader in power and ends up co-leading an evil army of resurrected legendary ninja and Venus Flytrap monsters created from the DNA of one of the most powerful ninja ever.
  • Big Bad Tobi, who turns out to be none other than Obito Uchiha. That's right folks, the same kid that spent his childhood failing at everything, pining for Rin, feeling jealous of Kakashi, and pretty much being the Naruto of his day, is now the guy who indirectly killed Naruto's parents (one of which was his own sensei) by taking control of Kurama and unleashing him on Konoha, took part in the Uchiha massacre, corrupted Nagato and later Sasuke, co-led the aforementioned evil army against the five great powers of the Naruto universe, worked to unleash the universe's resident Satanic Archetype (albeit depowered somewhat) and became the World's Strongest Man as the first Jinchuriki of the Ten-Tails since the Sage of Six Paths, to say nothing of a whole laundry list of additional heinous acts he committed between his "death" and the current story. Basically he's Naruto on Evil. In fact, the only reason he was defeated was he was convinced by Naruto that there was still hope for the world, and was struggling with himself about the path he took.
  • Gaara's somewhat of a lesser example. As a child, Gaara made many attempts to connect with the people of Sunagakure, all of whom feared him because of his connection with Shukaku. Then his uncle, the only person shown to have ever loved and cared for him at all attempted to murder him under the orders of Gaara's father, the Fourth Kazekage. All of that was enough to turn Gaara into a sociopath by the age of six, and a serial killer by the age of twelve. Naruto's intervention was what would finally set him straight and help reverse some of the damage.
• One Piece:
  • Luffy went from being a no-name rookie pirate (sure, his family is kind of important, but it isn't initially common knowledge, only revealed to the world after Luffy has made a large name for himself) from the weakest sea in the world, to having a 3 Billion beli bounty, declaring war on the World Government, and slapping down their elite privateers, The Warlords of the Sea, left and right (as well as being in good terms with some of them). Hell, a former Warlord -one of the aforementioned pals- ends up joining his crew! He's even the leader of his own fleet, with 7 sizable pirate crews serving him after he and his crew rescued them in Dressrosa. After butting heads with one of the Four Emperors just to save a crewmate, his achievements (both real and coincidental) had him labeled as the Fifth Emperor, and then after defeating another Emperor, he becomes one of the Four Emperors! What makes Luffy such a notable example is that his pirate career was only a few months prior to the 2-year Time Skip (a period of time where he went through Training from Hell and Took a Level in Badass), then a couple months more after that. Meanwhile, other infamous pirates gained their status after many years! And yet, Luffy (along with his crew) was able to accomplish so much in such a short time that the World Government makes it their top priority to capture him like the other big names.
  • Among Luffy's crew, Nami, Chopper and Franky are definite examples of this. Unlike the rest of the crew (even Brook served a kingdom in the past) they come from absolute nothing, having no great birthright nor relation to anyone important (e.g Luffy, Sanji and Usopp have famous fathers and Robin's mother was an radical archaeologist hunted by the government) with Nami being an orphan of people killed by pirates and Chopper and Franky being abandoned by their families, with Chopper's bloodline just being a herd of reindeer. Yet, they have both still managed to become famous pirates and members of a Yonko crew despite starting off as virtually nobodies in the grand scheme of the world. Also worth noting Zoro, like Nami, Chopper and Franky used to count too, being some rural kid from East Blue who Took a Level in Badass upon joining the sword dojo; but Word of God and the Wano arc revealed he's connected to the famous Shimotsuki Family.
  • Teach was just a Giant Mook in Whitebeard's crew. Even when we first meet him in the story, he's just a random guy who nearly gets in a fight with Luffy over pie. Then we find out he acquired a "special" Devil Fruit... suddenly he joins the Seven Warlords of the Sea, kills the strongest man in the world and steals his earthquake powers, and declares war on the entire planet. Fast forward two years, and he's one of the Four Emperors, the most powerful pirates in existence.
  • Buggy the Clown is an interesting example. On his first appearance, he's the arc's Big Bad. Shortly afterwards, he comes back to take revenge on Luffy, and the only thing that keeps him from succeeding is being struck by lightning. He doesn't appear again until a few hundred chapters later, when the Sorting Algorithm of Evil has left him in the dust. But one thing leads to another, resulting in him amassing a powerful crew from Impel Down and becoming a Warlord after the time-skip and later joining the Four Emperors during the Wano arc. Yeah, he's a nightmare in the eyes of the general public, but the Straw Hats and everyone beyond the fourth wall knows that he's just a Fake Ultimate Villain. On the other hand, Word of God confirmed once that Buggy falls under the Brilliant, but Lazy category; it is fully possible that he Took a Level in Badass during the time skip to become worthy of his position… but that's yet to be seen.
  • Another example is Eustass Kid, who was originally a gang boss who ruled an unaffilated island in the South Blue, until he alongside three of his would-be crewmates avenged the death of his girlfriend together, and set to sea out of sickness of living in such a narrow world. This rookie managed to get his 470,000,000 Beli bounty by sheer quantity of criminal activities, rather than being regarded as a significant threat to the World Government. Even more, his bounty jumped to 3 Billion as well for being able (alongside Trafalgar Law) to bring down Big Mom. Unlike Luffy and Law, who have the will of D on their side, Kid doesn't have any special lineage.
  • Hody Jones, captain of the New Fishman Pirates, is an interesting example in that he's basically Arlong without any of his redeeming qualities or even a tragic backstory to justify why he's such a racist dick. He simply went from being a normal fishman kid growing up in the racially-charged Fishman District to eventually becoming a fanatical anti-human, steroid-doped monster strong enough to nearly destroy all of Fishman Island.
  • Charlotte Linlin was just an innocent child who had the misfortune of being born abnormally large, with innate destructive power and an uncontrollable eating disorder, all of which eventually forced her parents to abandon her. She then fell into the care of a undercover child slaver, Mother Carmel, who pretended to care for her but also enabled her destructive habits as a selling point to a potential buyer. After Carmel "disappeared", she fell into another enabler, her future head chef Streusen, who encouraged those same habits for kicks. Linlin, devastated by Carmel's disappearance, sought to fulfill her caretaker's false ideals, and took her fake dream and made it her own: a world where all races could live together peacefully and see each other "eye-to-eye" — by any means necessary. Thus, the future pirate Emperor "Big Mom" was born, and she continues to terrorize the seas to this very day.
  • During the Wano arc, we learn that Edward "Whitebeard" Newgate, World's Strongest Man and one of the Four Emperors, started out as a poor, starving child in a half-ruined village too poor to even qualify for the World Government's protection. He never did forget his roots, however, and said village thrives today because every last coin of Whitebeard's riches was invested there.
• One-Punch Man:
  • The series in general seems to have a penchant for these, taking guys that just do something rather excessively and giving them superpowers based on it, like the guy who ate too much crab and became a giant crab monster, or the one who shadow-boxed with a light pull cord too much and became a hardy superhuman that could punch buildings into rubble.
  • Garou went from a kid who found it extremely unfair that the bad guys in his favourite cartoons never won despite their effort, and who always lost unfairly to his jerkass classmate when playing hero vs. villain, to a menace that wiped the floor with everyone that wasn't the protagonist in an effort to become the ultimate villain.
  • Saitama takes this to new heights. At the beginning of it all, he was just a recently-fired salaryman whose life felt rather meaningless. One battle against the aforementioned crab monster later, he decided he wanted to be a hero no matter what, and started training like hell to achieve it. Three years later, he's a super-bald, super-strong, super-fast, and super-durable engine of mass destruction that could punch a hole through the world on a very lazy day, and can't seem to hold back enough to make his fights last long enough for his excitement because he's so ridiculously overpowered.
• Zigzagged with the Team Rocket trio of Jessie, James, and Meowth in Pokémon: The Series, who all spent the early years of their lives as Butt Monkeys, shunned or kicked around by the world around them. They made an attempt to make a name for themselves by joining the organization, but after a short tenure as wanted criminals known for stealing rare and unique Pokemon, they became obsessed with capturing Ash's Pikachu whom they saw as unique compared to others of his kind upon first seeing him, and through their constant failures to keep a hold on Pikachu for long, devolved into a Goldfish Poop Gang who got continuously outsmarted and beat up by a gang of kids and their Pokemon. After they were promoted to a key mission in Unova however, the trio evolved into far more competent and sinister agents for Team Rocket, helping with some of their most ambitious schemes and regularly acting as a genuine adversary for Ash and his allies. When Team Rocket's business with Unova ended however, the three slowly reverted back into bumblers without a drive, though occasionally reminding Ash that they can still be a ruthless threat in the right circumstances.
• In Project ARMS, Alice was a sweet girl (albeit a genius, but no one outside of the Egrigori knew of her existence) who took care of the other experimental children and considered Keith White to be her dear "father". She gets shot while trying to see what the outside world is like, and ends up merging with an artificial alien life form, causing her to split into White Alice and Dark Alice. As Dark Alice, she first tries to get the Jabberwock to destroy all of New York, ultimately aiming to get the city blown up by a nuclear bomb. When that doesn't work, she possesses Katsumi, takes over her body, and tries again to destroy the world with her power. She only stops when Katsumi and Ryo offer her love, which was all she ever actually wanted.
• Pretty much any Puella Magi in any version of Puella Magi Madoka Magica could qualify; most of them were ordinary girls upon making their contract, and many of those were so desperate they needed the wish. Upon making the contract, they become powerful magical warriors who tend to treat the rest of humanity as livestock. When they become Witches, they almost universally qualify; particularly the apocalyptically powerful Kriemhild Gretchen, born from someone who described herself as not having any real talents. Homura Akemi is a particular example; as we learn, before the series, she was meek, flustered, Delicate and Sickly and seemed fairly weak even after contracting. By the end of The Movie, she's a God of Evil.
• In Reborn! (2004), Irie Shouichi manages, through rampant misuse of Time Travel, to accidentally make a nobody named Byakuran capable of communicating with alternate realities, bent on taking over the worlds... all of them.
• Gendo Ikari from Rebuild of Evangelion. 3.0+1.0 shows just where he came from, and compared to where he ended up, it turns out he was more pitiful than anything. He went from just a depressed and socially-withdrawn young man unsure what to do with his life to one of the world's biggest monsters, all because he wanted to bring his wife back, and rule the world as a God.
• Ringing Bell has Chirin, who starts out as a cute little lamb, grow up and become a ram who just looks demonic.
• Will from Saike Matashitemo, in fact, the reason he became such a nightmare was because he was such a nobody to begin with. So completely average in everything that gave no one anything to remember him by.
• Tomohiko Katsuragi from Sakura Gari once was a smart, ambitious and obsessive teenager who worked as the butler of a rich Tokyo family, then became the clan's personal doctor and one of the lovers of the family's heir. But not before commiting many, many crimes and abusing almost anyone who got in his way. When his much abused wife snaps and the aforementioned heir finds out what Katsuragi did to his Morality Pet, however...
• Science Ninja Team Gatchaman: Deliberately and chillingly invoked by Sosai X. By mutating Berg Katse in the womb, he assured that Katse would always be hiding, always moving, always frightened of trusting others. Then Sosai scooped them up and turned them into the leader of Galactor, a powerful terrorist organization already in control of some countries and with an eye on world domination.
• Suitengu, the Big Bad of Speed Grapher started out as a nice Japanese teenager who loved his little sister. Then, Evil Debt Collectors drove his parents to suicide, and he and his sister were taken as slaves- she was sold into prostitution and he was made into a Child Soldier immediately after some rich guy paid to rape him. After surviving a bunch of battles, he was badly injured, and some scientists decide to do a bit of Playing with Syringes and make him into a Person of Mass Destruction (he also gets a Bloodbath Villain Origin when he slaughters the soldiers who tried to cover up the experiment by killing him). After returning to Japan, within a period of about a decade, he goes from "some guy" to knowing (and knowing the dirt on) the most powerful people in Japanese society.
• Gabriel Miller from Sword Art Online. He started out as a a typical, if privileged child. Then his father showed him a video that depicted a male preying mantis living after being decapitated post-coital, and things just escalated from there. Now, Gabriel's the CEO of a private military company, a sadistic serial killer and VR's strongest player.
• The seemingly cute and harmless Misaki actually became an Eldritch Abomination threat to the multiverse in Tenchi Muyo!. The author had foreshadowed this but everyone had assumed he was joking until it actually happened.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is the heroic version of this. It starts with a kid drilling tunnels deep underground, who unintentionally sets off a Lensman Arms Race that ends with a galaxy-destroying cosmic brawl for the fate of the universe.
• Tokyo Ghoul:
  • Kaneki slowly becomes an Anti-Hero version of this trope. He begins the story as a meek college student, but his life takes a very different turn when he's transformed into a Half-Human Hybrid. After Yamori tortures him, he decides that he will "remove all the weeds" and spends six months becoming one of the most feared Ghouls in Tokyo. Between satisfying his Horror Hunger through cannibalism and slaughtering the members of the Ghoul Restaurant, he becomes something of a mythological figure feared by Ghouls and CCG alike. Our first glimpse of him after the Time Skip is an ominous figure in shadows with one glowing eye, as imagined by a group discussing the infamous "One-Eye".
  • Yamori was a rather insignificant Ghoul until he was captured and spent time at the Ghoul Detention Center, where an insane Interrogator tortured him. Driven completely insane, he escaped and became the brutal cannibal known as Jason and eventually, one of the captains of Aogiri.
  • The sequel provides another example: former Plucky Comic Relief Seidou Takizawa, transformed into an incredibly powerful half-Ghoul and completely insane after literally YEARS of rape and torture.
  • Arima has been a prodigy ghoul investigator since the age of sixteen, but it seems some of his coworkers thought it was insane to let a child like him hunt ghouls. A little over a decade later, he's by far the strongest investigator the CCG has, with nobody being able to even keep up with him and even the monstrously powerful SSS rated ghouls acknowledging that going up against him is tantamount to suicide. The legendary One-Eyed Owl, the most powerful ghoul on record, is utterly outmatched when facing him, as is Kaneki, who finds himself in battle with the 'Reaper' of the CCG and is unceremoniously annihilated. He's shown to effortlessly slaughter vast group of predators designed to hunt human beings with an utterly bored expression on his face, and is able to anticlimactically end a pitched battle between the CCG and Aogiri Tree just by showing up, since every single ghoul there hauls ass the moment he arrives, as they otherwise face certain extermination. He's basically acknowledged in universe as being completely unbeatable.
• Midora from Toriko was a nameless baby born for the sole purpose of being fed to livestock. Now he's one of the most powerful beings on the planet who can literally eat everything around him.
  • Neo as well, big time. He was a pretty weak appetite demon (diminute, to boot) that was thought to have no power or will, mocked and deemed by its Nitro masters to be unfit to travel with them. After it experienced its first meal, he began eating any animal no matter how big it was, and then began eating planets, stars and the entire blue universe, at which point it slowly became the planet devouring demon king that even the Nitro fear, so much that their entire scheme is simply a last ditch effort to seal Neo away for keeps, and Acacia's whole plan against Neo was based on the hope that Neo might finally be straying from this trope, its insatiable appetite sated to the point when feeding it enough of something which has a flavor it loathes would make it essentially vomit back everything it consumed.
• Niki from Urotsukidouji is a teenage loser with an improbably shitty life who becomes a super-powerful demon-man after making a Deal with the Devil of sorts.
• Seto Kaiba from the original Yu-Gi-Oh! was, along with his brother, a penniless orphan until he won a bet with billionaire Gozaburo Kaiba and was adopted by him. He then proceeded to take over KaibaCorp in a hostile takeover, remake it as a totally different company, and before his eighteenth birthday, become, along with Pegasus, one of the two biggest names in Duel Monsters. Of course the "nightmare" part comes in with how ruthless and cruel he could be early on, being almost as bad a corporate tycoon as his father (and in the manga version, trying to murder Yugi and his friends in the "Death-T" complex). He toned down a little later, but was still a man to be feared.
  • In the Memory World arc, Thief King Bakura would have been a perfectly ordinary peasant living in a rural village, if it wasn't for his village being slaughtered under the orders of the previous pharaoh in order to create the Millennium Items, leaving him as the Sole Survivor who witnessed the whole thing, leading to a Roaring Rampage of Revenge that culminated in an attempt to summon Zorc Necrophades, part of his soul merging with part of Zorc, being imprisoned in the Millennium Ring, and becoming the Greater-Scope Villain for the entire series.
• Lots of examples in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds:
  • Jack Atlas was just "Satellite Scum" before Team Satisfaction folded, and Jeagar offered him a chance to escape. One act of theft and betrayal later, he was on his way to being the King of the Riding Duels, and one of the most intimidating opponents on the circuit. He mellowed a little after losing to Yusei (and a lot later on) but the past remains.
  • Kiryu was a far darker nightmare. Also a nobody from Satellite, he was the reason Team Satisfaction folded, when he turned to violent attacks on security, leading to his arrest, death after mistreatment in prison, and rebirth as a Dark Signer.
  • Every one of the android villains from the Bad Future of season two — Aporia, Paradox, Bruno/Antinomy, and Z-One himself — were nothing but four common soldiers in the ragtag army of civilians who were brave enough to try fight the horde of Meklords; they were simply the only ones lucky enough to survive. Unfortunately, their attempt to Set Right What Once Went Wrong turned them into Well Intentioned Extremists who caused Zero Reverse and almost made it worse.

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