From Nobody to Nightmare scenarios in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- Boldores and Boomsticks: Grendel, the most feared Grimm in Vale, was once a normal Beowolf Alpha. Over the centuries of its existence, however, it has gained enough experience to become a master strategist and one of Salem's most trusted lieutenants.
- In The Butcher Bird, Grigori Vinci goes swiftly from rookie pirate to legitimate Paradise threat to leader of a pirate alliance that gets him a Warlord position. Said organization grows yet further after his defection and becomes a world-spanning mercenary network with astonishing speed.
- Child of the Storm:
- On reflection, Bucky Barnes, originally a relatively ordinary young man... who fell into first the hands of HYDRA, before becoming one of the Howling Commandos and a legendary soldier, and then into the hands of the Red Room. The latter erased his memories, replaced his crippled arm with a cybernetic one, and stabilised his latent Super-Soldier enhancements. The result was the Winter Soldier, a One-Man Army capable of taking on Captain America, Hawkeye, and the Black Widow simultaneously and winning, and one of the most feared assassins in the Nine Realms with Physical Gods on his kill list.
- Harry becomes this to the villains and, to an extent, the heroes alike. Initially, he's a thirteen year old boy and a Squishy Wizard with a talent for improvisation, a knack for finding trouble and good friends, and an impulsive vulnerability to any canny opponent. Over the course of the first and second books, he becomes a Person of Mass Destruction with Combo Platter Powers, a master combatant, the Winter Soldier's Superior Successor, a charismatic leader with some exceptionally powerful allies, and a dangerously talented schemer and strategist who's capable of taking on Physical Gods and Eldritch Abominations and winning. The Nightmare part really kicks in, though, because he's an unwilling potential Apocalypse Maiden thanks to the whole Phoenix fragment protection thing.
- A Devil Amongst Worms: To the residents of Earth-Bet, Makima went from some woman that nobody has ever heard of to the most beloved hero of all time and Hope Bringer for defeating the Endbringer, Leviathan.
- In The Devil of Zero, Abaddon finds it hard to believe that Mundus would become one of the most powerful devils ever known, considering he wasn't very impressive six thousand years ago and was kind of a wimp based on the older demon's words.
- The Difference One Man Can Make shows us Harry Potter landing in Westeros - North of the Wall - equipped with his wand, the clothes on his back and a travel bag. Less than five years later, he managed to gain authority over tens of thousands of Free Folk, founded two cities, threw the bases for an entire civilization and is known as the Witch-King-Beyond-the-Wall in the Seven Kingdoms and Essos.
- In Dungeon Keeper Ami, the heroes view Ami in this light. She's actually more of an outside context stealth hero. However, subtle foreshadowing indicates that The Corruption might become a problem at some future point, and cause Empress Mercury to play it straight.
- Equestrylvania has the Creepy Mortician Dirt Nap. An outcast among ponies because of his special talent for burying the dead, he grows to hate the rest of Ponyville in turn. When he stumbles across Dracula's minions searching for one of his body parts, they sense the emptiness in Dirt Nap and offer him a purpose and a chance for revenge against those that scorned him. He accepts and becomes the host for the demon Aguni, before proceeding to burn down most of Ponyville.
- Fallout: Equestria:
- The Ministry of Arcane Science was seeking a way to quickly end the war with the zebras by turning normal ponies into an army of alicorn super soldiers. Unfortunately, the balefire spells hit the facility at the same moment the first test subject was lowered into the Impelled Metamorphosis Potion vat, causing a pair of telepathic twins to also fall into the vat and merge with her. The result was an Eldritch Abomination that was capable of transforming others into alicorns and absorbing their minds, starting with Twilight Sparkle, her 'creator'. Who was the test subject? A washed-up former illusionist named Trixie.
- Before the war, Diamond Dogs were little more than annoying pests who most ponies ignored. Littlepip even references the event from the show where Rarity defeated a large group by whining at them. But after exposure to the Taint, they transformed into the Hellhounds. Not only do Hellhounds breed true (unlike the other super-species of the Wasteland, the Alicorns), they have Super-Toughness, Super-Strength, claws that can cut through anything, can dig through the ground as fast as they can walk, and they were smart enough to reverse-engineer guns. They're the most dangerous thing in a Wasteland that includes military robots and insane pseudo-goddesses.
- Fallout: Equestria: Starlight
has the Sins, seven ponies (well four ponies, one zebra, one donkey ghoul, and one minotaur) who were transformed and given great power through dark magic. All of them qualify, but none more so then Sloth... ...Better known as Cranky Doodle Donkey. - The Night Unfurls features several:
- Vault, the Big Bad, started out as a mercenary. From the beginning of the story, he has become The Leader and The Ace of the most renowned mercenary group in Eostia, the Black Dogs, but still a mercenary nonetheless. Dissatisfied with his current predicament, he usurps Olga's position as Evil Overlord after storming her castle, in hopes of achieving his dream of a Sex Slave Empire, an ambition that he has been planning for quite some time. To realise said ambition, Vault relights the flames of war by instigating a Military Coup that leads to much Rape, Pillage, and Burn thanks to various fantasy monsters and the Black Dogs.
- Shamuhaza was once an ordinary acolyte, but has since conditioned to accept the horror of Black Magic. Now, he is an Evil Sorceror who not only works for the Black Dogs, but also delves into the Eldritch Truth, the very same knowledge that Byrgenwerth scholars and the Healing Church once sought for. His pursuit has led to countless Innocent Bystanders experimented on, mutated into horrific husks of their former selves, and impregnated by... whatever that causes them to give birth to monstrosities. With the fortress of Rad twisted into an Eldritch Location, the rest of Eostia is under threat of an Apocalypse How should Shamuhaza continue to live for another minute.
- Last but not least, Kyril Sutherland. The Good Hunter. Chronologically, he manages to zig-zag this trope. At the beginning of it all, he was a son of a poor farmer. The remastered version describes this as "a dirty existence eked out on a potato farm". Then Bloodborne happened, and then Kyril was a squid. To keep this concise and more understandable, he went to a town named Yharnam in search for a cure for his illness, as an unarmed outsider. It is how he became a One-Man Army Hunter of Monsters, slaying beasts and other hunters by the dozens and hundreds, even to the point of punching out at least three great ones. After that, he was somehow transformed into a great one himself, but he managed to avert the Blue-and-Orange Morality that comes with his ascension. Taking a human form, he wandered around the world until his arrival to Eostia, again as a foreign outsider. There, he started out as a regular sellsword, only to kick tons of ass and be knighted as Sir Kyril (the Bloody). He even gets promoted to Lord Executioner, equivalent to the ruler's left-hand man. The kicker is that the people In-Universe believed that this trope is Played Straight for him once (because Kyril's true nature has yet to be common knowledge), but the readers who have played Bloodborne before will understand that it actually applies to him twice.
- Oni Ga Shiku Series:
- Mikumo Akatani, Knight of Cerebus, Manipulative Bastard, and a fearsome Yakuza Patriarch, started down his life of crime after he failed to get into UA because the physical exam was geared to exclude quirkless people and his mom died. He just a random quirkless bullied teen before that.
- Musashi Midoriya was once just yet another kid who ran away from an abusive home. Then he became known as an infamous assassin complete with a Red Baron title, a Yakuza Patriarch, and so secretive he might as well not be present in the town he runs.
- A Song of Ice and Fires That Weren't All My fault: In the eyes of the locals, Harry goes from a local detective claiming to have magical powers to a dragon-slaying, master sorceror who commands his own hidden island, feared across a whole hemisphere.
- A Subtle Knife: Discussed; Batman uses this as the crux of his argument that the League should support Edge's efforts to become a hero. As he points out, Edge's powers make him a potentially excellent assassin, and the fact he wants nothing more than to be a good person should be encouraged in order to avoid him falling headlong into this.
- In The Wizard in the Shadows, Harry is technically already a nightmare - to the bad guys. He proceeds to become an even bigger nightmare. First, he's an eleven year old muggle raised kid. Then he becomes The Chosen One and a general badass. After his unwilling long term stay in Middle-Earth, he's an expert knife-fighter, a Master Swordsman and the terror of every bad guy short of Sauron himself - who is noted as being wary, though not in a personal sense, of what Harry is capable of - and has people speaking his name in tones of awe/fear from the tip of Northern Middle Earth to Far Harad.
- In the fic itself, he proceeds to ramp it up even further, wielding Physical God level powers (though he was being powered up for those incidents) and is revealed to be a low level Reality Warper he disregards the basic laws of magic. And yes, only his finite power levels and lack of comprehension of exactly how powerful this makes him stops him being a total Game-Breaker.
- Y'all Are Stupid: Under Taylor's guidance, Team Skull goes from five teenagers hanging out in a warehouse learning how to breakdance to the largest gang in the US Northeast, controlling all of Brockton Bay with its heavy concentration of Parahuman members.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh! The Thousand Year Door: Redux, the Shadow Queen was originally a starving, penniless, malnourished beggar until a Deal with the Devil made her a cruel tyrant and powerful dark sorceress with goals of world domination.
- The same could be said for Lyrius, who was simply a teenage boy and a resident of a city in the path of her demonic army, who would have been slaughtered just like everyone else had he not had the courage to stand up to her, thinking he had nothing to lose. She was in no danger, but the display impressed her enough to offer him a place by her side which he accepted. He later became one of the most dreaded warriors of the Emperor of Shadow, and feared by the Queen's subjects almost as much as they feared her.
- Toph is this to the Fire Nation in Flames of Regicide. From a nobleman's blind daughter to a powerful earthbender to quite possibly a worse threat than the Avatar, all because of her invention of metalbending. All of the Fire Nation's machinery, weapons, and armor are made out of metal, so if Toph can teach her metalbending to others, a relatively small force of earthbenders could devastate the Fire Nation's armies with ease.
Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars!
- The Bucky O'Hare Web Series applies this to Bucky himself. Bucky used to be The Unfavorite of his family, due to being an aspiring artist whose dreams clashed with those of his military-minded father and brothers. Then the Toads massacred his family, deliberately leaving him alive to have him spread the word of their cruelty. Suffice to say, they severely underestimated his capacity to get revenge.
- Suzaku Kururugi of My Mirror, Sword and Shield was a Ordinary High-School Student Happily Adopted by Britannian scientists, Cecile and Lloyd and accidentally Time Travels too far back in his attempt to prevent his adoptive father's death and ends up in the War of Ascension. Suzaku ends being hired as eye candy for Emperor Lelouch and ends up being Emperor Lelouch's loyal and feared Dragon, the White Death who can take down the Black Knights and the Knights of Round single-handedly. All to in sure the proper timeline and a peaceful future.
- let's go out with a bang!: While the various killing games are all simulations run by Team Danganronpa in this universe, they still run on this principle, illustrating that anyone can be pushed to murder in the right circumstances. Naturally, when a Danganronpa convention is unexpectedly locked down, this fuels the fears of everyone trapped inside.
- The Fall of Lord Frieza: General Kanchapp was once a tournament fighter. While watching one of his matches, King Cold took note of his impressive strength, which led to him becoming one of the highest-ranked generals working on the planet trade.
- What If Gine Went With Goku to Earth?: Gine was considered to be a weakling by Saiyan standards. By the time of the Namek Saga, she's grown strong enough to go toe-to-toe with the Ginyu Force, and achieves Super Saiyan while fighting Freeza's final form.
- In The Sage's Disciple, Crow is this to the rest of the 4th Holy Grail War participants as he literally appeared out of nowhere, leaving them with nothing to work with aside from what he lets them see. He and his Servant Caster have really lived up to the nightmare part by disarming Gilgamesh of all of his weapons, a feat that left the King of Heroes catatonic for several hours.
- Daughters Of The Wicked Witch: Mordred and Arturia are both rather confused by the fact that a Baobhan Sidhe - a type of minor fairy that even modern Clocktower mages can normally handle - has somehow risen to the position of heir to Morgan, queen of an alternate timeline Britain and one of the most dangerous mages in history.
- Shinra High SOLDIER has Julia Nakahamou, who starts her life as the daughter of a very poor family and spends years of her teenagehood being completely terrified of her parents and allowing them to abuse her in spite of her tremendous powers. Once she is drafted into the Shinra army however, she almost immediately becomes its amoral and arrogant Commander, with genocide and arbitrary executions (through torture) as her favorite solutions to problems.
- In Something Always Remains, The Smiling Man turns out to be a man who responded to being jilted by a woman by setting out to systematically destroy everything she ever loved.
Godzilla / King Kong / MonsterVerse
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Ghidorah. The spacefaring, omnicidal Draconic Abomination and Arch-Enemy of Godzilla which has a trail of dead planets and extinct civilizations behind it used to be nothing more than three wild little critters in a distant alien world's ecosystem, fighting daily for survival against predators. Then the Makers nabbed those critters...
- A Thing of Vikings: Henry of Brittany's first appearance sees him as one of a horde of low-level nobles flocking to Berk to try to secure a dragon. His impatience, arrogance, and poor behaviour gets him tossed out of Stoick's hut in disgrace by Spitelout and sent packing. A few years later he is now Sir Henry the Sinister, leading a religious crusade across France, massacring the Jewish population, and posing a serious threat to Duke William's control of Normandy. And then he and his army kill Spitelout.
- In Ambience: A Fleet Symphony, Franklin Roosevelt Kevinson, the former admiral of the first-generation Shiratsuyu-class, was originally just some two-bit lieutenant who got chosen to play the role he got. In chapter 293, Sanford says that both he and Big made the mistake of thinking that Franklin would be just an indignant but ultimately powerless nobody once his part came to an end. Little did they expect that he would make his return as a superhuman cyborg, admiral to the first American shipgirls and a major player in the coup against President Blackwood.
- Pagan Vengeance: Juvage was the son of a minor chieftain in Lithuania. By the end of the story he's leading a bloodthirsty Army of Thieves and Whores, killed Genghis Khan in personal combat, defeated the Mongols, the Russians and the Teutonic Knights.
- The Wolves in the Woods applies this to the majority of Marinette's former classmates. Thanks to Ms. Bustier's questionable policies effectively rewarding bullying, along with Lila painting Marinette as a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, Alya and most of the class drove her out of Francoise Dupont. Their success in doing so has emboldened them to the point that they freely threaten the New Transfer Students to get in line or else. Lila herself is horrified by what she's unintentionally created, mostly because she recognizes they expect HER to become their new Marinette and do whatever they demand of her.
Mistborn: The Original Trilogy
- Life Ore Death mixes this with Mook Horror Show for Ferris, as the villains know almost nothing about her. She has no history, being from another dimension, but after she signed up with the Justice League she trounced the Light's top enforcer and wrecked several plots, to the point that they make a new plan just to learn about her.
- Apotheosis: Izuku Midoriya went from a bullied quirkless kid to the worst supervillain Japan has seen since All for One in little over a year, all thanks to the Infinity Gauntlet.
- In Mastermind: Strategist for Hire, Izuku goes from a bullied Quirkless kid to a widely-feared criminal mastermind and one of the greatest threats to Pro Heroes in all of Japan.
- A Villian is the Hero of Their Own Story: All For One used to be a boy named Hisashi who was kicked out of his home along with his brother Kazuki after developing a Quirk. When courting Inko, he mentions that some of his last truly happy memories are of he and Kazuki digging through Dagobah beach for scraps to survive off of. This is the same man who'd not only go on to become the top villain in Japan, but also admits he's probably killed a relative or ancestor of the vast majority of people in Japan.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- The Apprentice, the Student, and the Charlatan: Envy's origins are shrouded in mystery; not even Celestia and Luna know who she was before she became the eternal nemesis of the Night Apprentice and Faithful Student. As it turns out, she was once one of Nova's friends, who grew jealous over Clover 'beating' her and attempted to murder her percieved rival, only to be transformed by the Elements of Harmony.
- Escape from the Moon: Doa/Spliced Genome was just an independent biochemist researcher consultant before she became a war criminal with a death count in the billions.
- Friendship Is Magical Girls: Snails starts as one of Sunset Shimmer's minions in the Magic Arc, until she sacrifices him to Chrysalis to appease her. This leads to Snails being transformed into the Royal Drone Eskarrg, who acts as Chrysalis' Dragon in the Loyalty Arc.
- Five hundred years before the events of My Little Alicorn, Kuchen was originally the eccentric son of a pair of bakers. Then one day he literally landed on Celestia's back, and impressed her enough with his knowledge that she made him her student. Over the years, he proved himself to be an excellent researcher, so the Princess had him research Alicorns so she could find a way to bring Nightmare Moon back earlier and expel her from Luna without the Elements. And then a combination of a very bad judgment call on Celestia's part, and him discovering Luna's journal, eventually drives Kuchen to try and better the pony race by turning everypony into Alicorns. By the time Celestia finally stopped and killed him, he had slaughtered entire villages, created the Seapony race, killed his best friend and used his skin as a blanket for his Tome of Eldritch Lore, and to top it off, possessed his wife and children so that someday, he would be able to possess them and get revenge on Celestia.
- The Killer Rarityverse has Rarity go from an innocent filly who accidentally killed a schoolyard bully to a mass-murderer.
- The Pony POV Series has Princess Gaia, a Reality Warping Mad Goddess who seeks to make the world a utopia by brainwashing everypony into a state of perpetual happiness and turning everypony into foals (because they are happier that way, of course!) Just who did this powerful enemy use to be? Fluttershy! The shy, timid little mare who wouldn't hurt a flea and is literally terrified of her own shadow!
- In the grand scheme of things, this is also what happened with Discord. Twice, actually! He was always a reality warping spirit, but of his entire race he was the weakest, and was slightly nicer than later in life. Then, in the Alicorn/Draconnequi war he both discovered his love of sadism and increased his power by eating his brother. Then he was reborn on Equestria, with no memory of his past existence, and became an odd but ultimately kindhearted being. Then his original personality resurfaced, and he became the Big Bad from canon.
- Film Critique (aka the Pegasus Despot) from "Gaiden: 7 Dreams/Nightmares". Before the collapse of G2 society, he was just some fat nerd. Afterwards, he got his hooves on the Blue Shard of the Rainbow of Light (Laughter), which not only gave him the ability to control ponies, but also to restore power to his city, which allowed him to become its Evil Overlord. Then Patch shows up and steals the Shard back from him, leaving him to his Karmic Death at the hooves of his previously-brainwashed harem, begging like the pathetic little nobody he was.
- Dark World has another example similar to the first: The Nameless Passenger, the mysterious entity manipulating Twilight and her friends, turns out to be her Nightmare self, Nightmare Paradox. Twilight was never a nobody, but she was just an ordinary unicorn; the version of her that became Paradox is a Knight Templar Mad Goddess who's become Eviler than Thou to Discord, trapping him in a "Groundhog Day" Loop as an eternal torment and not caring at all for the billions of beings she manipulates and condemns to non-existence in order to continue said loop.
- Chrysalis started out as a little Zebra in a small village in the middle of nowhere, then became vampiric monster, draining everypony she could get dry of their love but still remaining little more than a local menace until she became a slave to Queen Cocoon, considered so low on the pecking order she was only good for entertainment. By the end of her Origins Episode, she's killed off the Changeling Queen and taken over the hive, becoming the Big Bad level threat she's known as.
- The Rise of Darth Vulcan has the titular character: Ted was originally just a common teenage Jerkass, until he found the Alicorn Amulet and was transported to Equestria. Now, he's an Evil Sorcerer who can fight the Mane Six and the Princesses evenly, leads a vast army of Diamond Dogs, changelings, Equestrian criminals and outcasts of every stripe, and minotaur mercenaries, and has declared himself the absolute ruler of the Everfree Forest.
- Artful Dodger, Vulcan's apprentice and one of his Co-Dragons, also counts. Before he met Vulcan, he was just another street urchin criminal. Now, after some magically induced level-ups in badass, he's one of the most dangerous beings in Vulcan's army, with a fearful reputation amongst them, and even has his own minions now.
- Sunset Eclipsed: Lord Umbriel was once a scrawny Changeling prince named Embryo, before he accepted a major power-up from King Sombra to grant him a larger, stronger form.
- Because of his utter lack of backstory, there are numerous stories that make King Sombra this. One such example is The Umbra King. In it, Sombra was little more then an ordinary unicorn who lived on the outskirts of The Crystal Empire. But when arctic timberwolves killed his family (they nearly killed him, too) he, desperate to live again, found The Nightmare Gem and merged with it, leading him to become the tyrant he is now.
- In Vengeance of the Star, being Forced to Watch Spike get murdered turns Twilight from meek to merciless, as she rounds up the families of her would-be assassins and forces them to watch as their loved ones are publically executed.
- We Are What We Are has Starshot. Downplayed in that he was Starswirl's nephew, but he starts out as just another one of the Dazzlings' victims. He's now the Big Bad, and come chapter 46, and he's coming damn close to getting his revenge.
- Blackkat's Reverse: As far as the Elemental Nations know, Kurama was a mere drifter whose homeland had been wiped off the map. Then he starts tempting their jinchuuriki into joining him, one by one, until he's built up a small army of Living Weapons.
- The Oogakari from Yet again, with a little extra help. From what we've been shown through character profiles, before coming in contact with their benefactress they were just plain old run of the mill mortals, who have since chosen the names Shadow, Waltz, Crypt, Scabbard, and Ghost, but now are credited as The Second Origin, The Red Flood, The Devil's Collection, The Legacy's Prophet, and by far the worst The God of None respectively. Mainly though they are a nightmare to all who know them, but more in a hilarious way rather than a scary one, mostly.
- This Bites!: Jeremiah Cross becomes this to the World Government after he joins the Straw Hat Pirates. He is from the regular world and was a fan of the manga, meaning he knows everything up to the end of the Dressrosa arc. After getting his hands on a transceiver, a Vegapunk device that allows to connect to every single transponder Snail in the world, he begins airing the World Government's dirty laundry for all the world to see.
- Pokémon Reset Bloodlines has a sidestory centered on Twenty Gyarados Bill, who is cited as the reason for the six active Pokémon limit. It depicts how he started as a simple crewman in a fishing boat who was always mocked by everyone for being useless, even given a Magikarp as a mock gift, being called as "the Magikarp of humans". Needless to say, he took this comparison to heart and decided that he would become the Gyarados of humans to get revenge on everyone who laughed at him, becoming the terror of coastal Johto.
- The Makings of Team CRME: Cinder Fall is one of the major antagonists of RWBY and caused a massive amount of destruction with her actions. My Name Is Cinder shows that she was the little girl Cinder Autumn Stark and was continually abused by her mother. While the Stark family was rich, they were not known much outside of the elites. However, the story shows her getting on her way to becoming the diabolical Cinder Fall.
- Janine in Concerning Us starts out as a simple university student the Praxian Council doesn't even deem worthy of investigation. After spending a century fighting the product of their reckless experiment and taking several levels in badass she's in the secluded city, and she's coming for them.
- Ranna qualifies as well: from just one of the aspiring young politicians to Seneschal who easily manipulates people, with a hidden agenda to take down the Council. Then she does so, in spectacular fashion.
- Where Was My Hero...?: Miles "Tails" Prower, "thanks" to tripping over a rock and thus never encountering Sonic, goes from a timid bullying victim to a mass-murdering tyrant.
- Implied in In Her Memory. Zentashin rose from slavery to become a powerful Sith Lord, only to watch his lover die. It's implied that he wades through a lot of corpses to see her death avenged.
- Combined Perspectives, a fic prequel to Steven Universe, depicts Pearl as a Shrinking Violet of low rank, who was fleeing Homeworld authorities when Rose found her. Millennia later, she has become a Master Swordswoman and experienced strategist who's defeated countless gems in battle.
- This is pretty much the whole point of The End, where the Legion of Doom become far, far more tormented, horrific and powerful beings than their previous laughably incompetent selves.
- Future Devastator in The Measure of a Titan began as a chemical engineer in Gotham who barely understood how his powers worked. When The Joker murders his wife and blinds him, he begins to obsess that repeatedly throwing crazy metahumans in jail doesn't solve the problem as they easily break free. He goes up into the mountains for a few months, and when he returns he single-handedly levels Arkham Asylum and kills everyone inside. He then goes on to become the most dangerous mercenary in the world, specializing in metahumans, and becomes capable of single-handedly killing the Titans in a four-on-one-battle.
- New Tamaran:
- While Scarecrow is normally a C-list villain, here he manages to take over the mind of Raven, an overpowered half-demon, whom he almost turns into a God of Evil.
- Blackfire has gone from a two-episode villain to … well, everything about her.
- Cheshire’s story has her going from third world village girl to master assassin to leader of a terrorist organization to triggering a xenothium bomb in Dubai.
- Black Wings, Black Sails follows Will Laurence as he goes from a tolerated third son of a minor noble and ordinary ship captain in His Majesty's Navy, to a feared pirate with an ever-growing bounty on his head.
- Aftergore: Downplayed in Aftergore II with Burgerpants. In Undertale, Burgerpants worked as a cashier for the MTT Resort's fast-food restaurant despite wanting to be an actor and had to content with various misfortunes inflicted upon him since he started working there, many of them because his boss Mettaton seemingly only hated him among the rest of his workforce. Since Mettaton is the only monster who Frisk killed in Aftergore II, however, Burgerpants is able to leave his lousy job and reinvent himself. The result is him renaming himself "Boomstick" and leading a gang of Greaser Delinquents in taking over Waterfall, causing the rest of the Underground's residents to avoid the area.
- In You Just Had to Destroy that Planet, Jōshō (a Reality Warper and main character) was just a married man living in said world making weapons for villains with his wife, Jihi. Said villains (except Lord Dominator) decide to raze his planet in search of a rumored ultimate weapon killing Jihi in the process. Jōshō snapped and decided to actually bust out said weapon. With it, he slays the villains, breaks Wander with talking, and now traveling the multiverse as a villain who wants to see the world suffer. To add insult to injury, he gains Dominator as a girlfriend. And he's training her in his fighting style.
- Redaction of the Golden Witch: Walter theorizes that somebody in the Witch Hunter fandom has decided to mimic the murders. What's more, he believes that this culprit is ascending to become a witch, whom he calls the 'Witch of Adjuration'.
- The Land of What Might-Have-Been eventually reveals that the Hellion - a monster feared throughout the land and powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with Elphaba - started out as the alternate Dorothy Gale, an unassuming fifteen-year-old farm kid left in the path of a Fantastic Nuke and horribly mutated by exposure to portal radiation.
