From Nobody To Nightmare / Literature

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• Gretchen Richter in 1632. She was first a printer's daughter, then she was reduced to the concubine of a mercenary captain. As of now, she's the leader of a powerful, well-armed political movement spanning half of Europe, and is said to figure prominently in the nightmares of most of Europe's nobility. During the civil war in 1636: The Saxon Uprising, she took over Dresden, and held it for weeks against the Swedish General Baner, until the Third Division (including her husband) showed up and smashed Baner's army.
• The Acts of Caine
  • Ma'elKoth used to be Hannto the Scythe, a wimpy necromancer.
  • Ignoring concepts of predetermination, Hari/Caine himself. Hari was just some street urchin with a crazy father who became the greatest actor Earth ever knew. And Caine was just some assassin who became the scariest bastard Home ever knew (who directly started at least four wars).
• In the Age of Fire series, the Copper was ostracized from his family at early age and was considered a cripple and misfit by the Lavadome Dragons. By the end of his book, he's their leader, and has his sights set on conquering the world.
• Keiji Kiriya from All You Need Is Kill. A "Groundhog Day" Loop allows him to develop from a mediocre soldier to a hardened killer via Save Scumming. One of the major themes of the book is an exploration of exactly what that process will do to a person.
• Animorphs:
  • There's David. He is introduced as an ordinary kid with a BB gun and a pet cobra. Over the course of three books he goes from that to reluctant Sixth Ranger to vengeful Sixth Ranger Traitor who defeats the leader of the Animorphs in single combat and comes closer to wiping out the team than the entirety of an alien empire.
  • The Animorphs themselves Jake, Rachel, David, Cassie and Tobias were just a bunch of suburban kids and mall rats prior to being Touched by Vorlons and becoming champions of the human race who take down an empire of alien bodysnatchers.
• Hajime Nagumo from Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest goes from a scrawny nerd who was bullied viciously by most of his class, to a One-Man Army who rarely faced an actual challenge since his forced foray through the entirety of the first dungeon. Granted, he kinda had to if he wanted to survive it, and everything that came after.
• Benny Rose, the Cannibal King: The implied true origin of Benny Rose is that of a normal morgue worker who, after a hospital caught on fire, ended up trapped in the hospital basement with five children. Benny consumed them to keep himself alive and became a supernatural entity who is feared throughout the town of Blackwoods as the bogeyman of children.
• Pat Buckman in Caliphate came out of nowhere in the aftermath of an nuclear attack on American soil by Middle Eastern Terrorists. He founds his own political party "Wake Up America" and beats both the Republican and Democrat establishment on the promise to "make those motherfuckers pay". Buckman declares an all-out war on Islam and its followers, nuking Mecca and Medina, most of the Middle-East (with the exception of Israel) and also Malaysia and Indonesia (for supposedly funding the Islamic rebels in the Philippines) — he also nukes North Korea for good measure. He pressures the rest of the world to evict its surviving Muslim population, clamps down on civil rights, repeals the American constitution and turns the country into a straight-up Empire. One has to wonder where he would have been if those nuclear attacks did not happen.
• Carrie. She goes from a quiet girl to a killer of many, all thanks to a mean-spirited prank. All together now: "They're all gonna laugh at you!"
• The Chronicles of Narnia:
  • The Telmarines were initially just a bunch of lowly pirates who found their way to Naria through a Mystical Cave. Soon after arriving they grew in number and eventually became The Empire driving the talking animals and other magical creatures away from their lands and into hiding. It takes the return of the old kings and queens of Naria (Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy) as well as Lion Jesus Aslan to stop their reign of terror.
  • Speaking of which the Pevensie siblings count as this, before entering Narnia they were just a bunch middle-class children sent away from London bombings to stay at a wealthy professor’s house. After stepping through the wardrobe they would defeat the Jadis White Witch and become the kings and queens of all of Narnia. Though considering The Magician's Nephew the prequel book, this seems all par for the course to wit the very first king of Narnia was Frank... a cabby from London! Who just so happened to be dragged into the plot along with his equally low-class wife Helen whom got transported to Narnia by Aslan for the sake of there being a queen.
• Arawn Death-lord from The Chronicles of Prydain began as nothing more then an ordinary mortal man. That is until the previous Death Lord Achren made him her consort and taught him Dark Magic. Arawn then betrayed Achren and seized the title of Death-Lord for himself.
• Kierkan Rufo from The Cleric Quintet series set in the Forgotten Realms. In the first four books he's a pathetic fellow cleric of Deneir who goes through the Heel–Face Revolving Door before settling on 'Heel' and condemned to a magically enforced exile by Cadderly. In the final novel, thanks to a meddling imp that was a Sidekick Creature Nuisance working for the previous Big Bad, Rufo becomes a hideously powerful vampiric embodiment of Chaos and the final Big Bad of the series.
• In Conan the Barbarian the titular Barbarian Hero is a case of this. He starts off with extremely humble origins being the son of a village blacksmith but soon becomes a formidable warrior through training and his badassery climbs higher and higher as he goes from famous adventurer and swordsman to famous pirate to freaking king of all Aquilonia who’s killed wizards and even eldritch demons and gods.
• The Count of Monte Cristo: Dantes leaves the city a prisoner and returns as the rich, cunning and ruthless Count of Monte Cristo, who is willing to use all the powers at his disposal to get revenge.
• Akar Kessel from The Crystal Shard: A wimp who finds the eponymous Artifact of Doom and becomes a pawn to its desire for conquest. Still undone by his incompetence.
• Geder Palliako from The Dagger and the Coin is introduced as the nerdy, overweight son of a minor nobleman and isn't taken seriously by anyone, even himself. Then he gets put in charge of an occupying force thanks to political wrangling and proves himself to have a disturbingly sociopathic streak that manifests when he both has power and feels threatened. Then he meets Basrahip, the leader of a Path of Inspiration who decides Geder is The Chosen One — and has a Compelling Voice that lets him make other people believe it to. Things end up with Geder as Evil Overlord of half the continent, and still rather stunned at the chain of improbable events that got him there.
• Darth Bane. From two-bit nobody miner on an Outer Rim world to one of the most powerful and evil Sith Lords of all time.
• The Demon Princes: Viole Falushe and Howard Alan Treesong both started out as disliked, bullied kids before ending up as the titular Demon Princes.
• The Big Bad of Robin Jarvis' Deptford Mice trilogy is a terrifying and powerful being known as Jupiter. The prequel book The Alchymist's Cat reveals his beginnings. He was an ugly, runty kitten named Leech who was jealous of his strong and handsome brother, especially when he became a sorcerer's familiar. In the end, Leech killed his brother and took his power and identity. He crawled into a dark portal in the sewers and became a living god to the rats who dwelled there. They only ever saw his glowing red eyes and had no idea he was a cat.
• Deltora Quest:
  • Malverlain aka the Shadow Lord was once just the son of a chieftain in the minor island of Dorne. Being bookish and introverted he took a liking to The Dark Arts and by the time he was a young adult had become a Evil Sorcerer who found his way to Land of Dragons aka Deltora and decided he wanted it all for himself. From then he grew and grew in power becoming a Eldritch Abomination and God of Evil.
  • Thaegan similarly came from a minor village in Deltora, being the beautiful but cruel daughter of the wise woman and sorceress of the village. Finding that Good Is Boring and being intoxicated with the magic she inherited from her mother Thaegan fought against the pacifism the former tried to instil and when her mother could control or contain her she escaped the Shadowlands and became a part of the Shadow Lord’s forces.
  • Adin on the heroic side is a example of this. In the beginning he was literally just a lowly blacksmith in Del whom had a strange dream involving a great belt decorated with seven gems of each tribe. Deciding to act on this vision, Adin created this belt and journeyed across the land winning each gem from their respective tribes. By the time the Shadow Lord invaded Deltora proper in the Darkest Hour, Adin had united all the tribes and gotten all the gems on the belt whose completed magic rendered the enemy from the land. He became the king soon after, which all in all ain’t half bad for a smithy.
  • Jarred counts as this too, he had no nobility being the son of a servant who was picked out as a playmate for Endon the future King. So the fact he became so vital for the kingdom’s survival and went on to become the Rebel Leader Doom after getting some amnesia thanks to the horror of the Shadow Lands is pretty incredible.
  • Jasmine was just an wild girl Lief and Barda met in the Forest of Silence, pretty crazy to think that she would become a pivotal companion and future queen of Deltora in the span of a few years. Though given she is the daughter of the aforementioned Jarred It Runs in the Family.
  • Lief is himself is seemingly a case of this for the first book series, being a street kid and son of a blacksmith who becomes wearer of the belt and saviour of the land. Though it’s subverted after the Really Royalty Reveal.
• The Devil is a Part-Timer!: Sadao Maou began life at the very bottom of the demonic pecking order until his life was saved by an angel — Emi's mother, Laylah. While he was recuperating, she tutored him in various things to pass the time, mainly politics, diplomacy and the proper use of military power, which he used to rise up through the ranks and become the Demon King, nearly conquering Ente Isla until he was defeated by Emi and forced to retreat to Earth. Now, he plans to work his way up through the ranks at MgRonald's to eventually conquer the Earth.
• Discworld:
  • There's Mr. Teatime from Hogfather, a quiet, generally soft-spoken scholarship boy who is contracted to assassinate (the scholarship was to the Assassin's Guild school) a mythological creature, the Discworld's equivalent of Santa Claus. And damn near succeeds.
  • On the good side is Samuel Vimes, once a gutter drunk and laughing stock and now feared by every criminal in Ankh-Morpork as well as most of the old money aristocracy.
• In The Dog Stars, Bangley has fought off countless bandit invasions After the End over the course of nine years. He keeps his backstory mysterious, but eventually Higs learns that he was just some farmer who was abused as a kid. He's been itching for a time when he could do nothing but kill people, and it turns out he's incredibly good at it.
• Dragaera:
  • The Khaavren Romances have an ongoing pattern in which a secondary villain in one book will become a much more competent Big Bad in the next. In The Phoenix Guards, Lord Garland is an Evil Chancellor who is the pawn of other, more competent villains. In the next book, Five Hundred Years After, Garland is reduced to hanging out in a Bad Guy Bar, but is behind machinations which successfully destroy the Dragaeran Empire, albeit not in exactly the way he planned. In that book, he is assisted by his daughter Grita, whom he mistreats and it's implied prostitutes. By the next book, The Paths of the Dead, Grita has reinvented herself as a powerful sorceress and is The Man Behind the Man during the rest of the series.
  • In Jhegaala, it's mentioned that Easterners who became Teckla or Jhereg in the Dragaeran Empire, thereby gaining access to sorcery, and then returned to their homeland, often become this trope as soon as they realize they can still use a type of magic none of their countrymen have any defense against. It usually becomes necessary for the local rulers to intervene and put such upstarts down.
• Raistlin the Wizard from the Dragonlance series barely survived the test to become a wizard (you fail, you die), and even then only because he was allowed out of pity to have his warrior brother help him. He went from almost being killed from touching a Dragon Orb to being able to wield an Orb's considerable power without even looking at it, and eventually his power rivaled that of the Dark Queen, the Dragonlance universe's equivalent of Satan. In keeping with this trope, he lost his humanity as his power increased.
• The Draka are pointedly this, and on a national scale. Their ancestors principally consist of American Loyalists, Hessians from the American Revolution, Icelanders who fled the volcanic eruptions of the 1780s, French aristocrats, white Haitians, and American Confederates. Once they've become powerful enough to declare independence from Britain, they seek the most horrifying revenge that they can. They started out as a British colony in what is now South Africa in the late 18th century. By World War II, they've all but taken over Africa and Eurasia, and the series ends with them having completely overrun the world.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Gentleman Johnny Marcone began his criminal career as a two-bit nobody. When a little girl ended up comatose from a bullet meant for him, he took it upon himself to "clean up" Chicago's criminal underground. By the time of the books, he is established as one of, if not the most powerful (mortal) man in the city, and can even go toe to toe with most supernatural threats. He later signed on with the Unseelie Accords, a sort of supernatural UN, making him the first mortal to do so in it's long, long history. The worst of it is, Harry can't bring himself to do anything about him, because they actually end up on the same side more often than not, and even Harry has to admit that Marcone's highly organized crime is preferable to the alternative of various groups vying for superiority, plus Marcone has very strict rules against hurting kids and innocent bystanders which others might not share.
  • Polonius Lartessa, one of the Denarian leaders is another example; when she started out she was just an underaged hooker in the temple of Isis. Then Nicodemus gave her the Denarian piece containing a Fallen Angel; since then she has ascended to a position where has not only become one of the most powerful mages on the planet, but has also caused numerous wars and ethnic cleansings (most notably the Rwanda Genocides and the Killing Fields of Cambodia). From nobody hooker to one of the biggest bastards in Literature.
  • The Archive. She's the magical receptacle for everything ever written down. Most Archives inherit this knowledge, the memories of past Archives at around age 30 or so, making them a straight example of this trope. The current Archive, though, has been the Archive since she was a few minutes old. She inherited it when her mother committed suicide, which Ivy remembers. In the Dresdenverse, knowledge is power. She can tango with the better part of two thirds of the strongest soldiers for Hell in the setting at one time, inside a trap made for her, with no preparation. Without the trap she almost certainly would have won as well.
  • The current Summer Lady and Summer Knight. They were originally both changelings (one mortal parent, one Fae parent), who were a source of entertainment for the Winter Court (it's as unfortunate as it sounds). However, when Harry killed Aurora and freed the trapped Summer Knight (Lily), Lily became Lady Summer and appointed Fix as the Summer Knight.
  • Molly is this from the perspective of the White Council. A recovering warlock under the tutelage of another recovering warlock and one of the baddest Wardens of the White Council suddenly becomes a sovereign of the Winter Court who might have a significant grudge against the White Council. Oh and her mentor? Now ostensibly her Knight.
  • Wizards in general, but Harry especially. He starts out an orphan, the son of a poor, kindly stage magician. and Margaret LeFay McCoy, but hush. Now? He's taken on literal gods Winter and Summer Knights, Ladies, and Queens as well as several of their retainers, Greek godlings, ancient Native American nightmares, and so on, is on speaking terms with some such as Odin, plus some Angels, though they aren't technically gods, they're at the same unimaginable level of power, has killed at least a dozen of those gods: Lady Summer Aurora as well as the entire Red Court, he's currently the Winter Knight, has beaten to a standstill a creature that stops for nothing less than a nuke, and killed one of the heirs of Kemmler twice =- Kemmler being a Warlock that the entire White Council and then some had to deal with, and who was responsible for WWI. One of those times, Harry was dead. He's ousted the White King, has killed uncountable vampires (Red, White, and Black), ghouls, and Fae, to the point of wiping out the entire Red Court, lead an assault on Arctis Tor, the center of the Winter Queen's power, resisted and converted the imprint of a Fallen Angel, established dominance over a creature so ancient it has achieved localized omniscience, works for Uriel, discovered the Black Council and killed at least several of its members], [[spoiler: used a loophole of the Laws of Magic to raise a ZOMBIE Tyrannosaurus Rex which won him a (temporary) reprieve after insulting the Erlking (the Summer King) by imprisoning him in a binding circle. He's also nearly killed 2000+ year-old Nicodemus Archleon, leader of the Knights of the Blackened Denarius TWICE with his bare hands, to the point that said villain is now terrified of Harry. Suffice to say, there is a reason Harry gets/needs reminded from time to time about why, despite doing heroic things, some of his acquaintances question how close he is to picking up the black hat, and why some of the "good guys" wonder if he hasn't already.
• The Elemental Trilogy:
  • The Inquisitor used to be a simple assistant girl before the Bane chose her to act as his acolyte, recognizing her abilities as a mind mage, essentially making her the most powerful person in the Domain.
  • The Bane used to be a simple mage named Pyrrhos Plouton living in a poor country on the brink of collapse. That is, until he became afflicted by a deadly illness and, in desperation, resorted to using sacrificial magic to save himself, sacrificing his best friend in the process. Then he changed his name to Palaemon Zephyrus, started the Zephyrus clan, and ultimately gathered an army of followers with whom he led into conquering the mage world.
• Otha from The Elenium. Originally a shepherd boy with a penchant for hurting animals, he stumbles across an idol in a field and eventually becomes a 1,900 year old emperor with vast magical powers and one of the most powerful armies in the world at this disposal.
  • A bit of a subversion, however, because he was, and is, as stupid as a stump and incapable of movement without assistance. It's only his Azash-given powers and Azash's cult that actually make him any threat.
• Norman Arminger of the Emberverse was an unknown professor of history whose hobby was mock-swordfighting in the SCA. When the Change put paid to guns and most modern technology, he swiftly rose to become "Lord Protector" of the Portland Protective Association; that is, a brutal despot running what amounted to a protection racket.
• In Everybody Loves Large Chests, a low-level mimic (i.e. monster pretending to be a treasure chest, just waiting to gobble up any curious adventurer) learns to pick up a sword, and things snowball from there. The nightmare part is reinforced by the mimic retaining its insatiable Horror Hunger, as well as getting better and smarter with every success, as well as learning skills that no one would ever expect a mimic to get, such as spellcasting. The reason this works is because this world operates on standard RPG rules, and everybody is aware of that, able to learn about new skills and abilities by saying "status", which calls up a mental stat window.
• Both Ian Covey and David Tirado spend Everyman changing from normal men into literal monsters.
• Claudandus aka Pascal from Felidae was an ordinary cat who was picked up off the streets for experimenting by scientists who vivisected him, along with many other cats, and being the only test subject to survive, this eventually drove him insane and killed the head scientist and became a serial killer of cats deeming them unworthy of resurrecting an ancient breed.
• The alternate history novel For Want of a Nail gives us Bernard Kramer, a German immigrant in the United States of Mexico. Spending years trying to scrape out a living as a miner, he eventually puts together enough capital to found future MegaCorp Kramer Associates. Through this company, he would then go on to gain enough political power to do things like fund a pro-Mexican revolution in Guatemala for the sake of his business interests, and gain enough influence to effectively control the Mexican government up to and including installing a dictator.
  • Kramer Associates as a whole probably counts. Starting as a 26 member shipping and dry goods company, it would, as mentioned above, go on to become a MegaCorp of such influence that it practically controls politics in the Western hemisphere, becoming a nation unto itself, even developing nuclear weapons before any of the world's actual nations.
• Frankenstein: The monster created by Frankenstein goes from a caring and curious creature to a vengeful and rancorous beast capable of murder after he is rejected and routed by all the people he meets.
• The Garden of Sinners: Lio Shirazumi used to be a timid high school kid with a crush. He wanted to impress his crush by getting in a fight, but things got out of hand and he needed to find a way to dispose of a body. Then he eventually grew to become a cannibal with a crush...
• Gentleman Bastard:
  • Vencarlo Barsavi arrived in Camorr as a former scholar of rhetoric. Within two years, he had defeated 30 rival garristas and become capa, assuming control of the entire city's underworld.
  • The Grey King was just a refugee a few years ago, until he arrives in Camorr and wrests the city's underworld out from under Capa Barsavi.
• In The Godfather:
  • Vito Corleone progresses by stages from a mild-mannered grocery clerk with no interest in anyone else's affairs to the head of the most powerful crime family in New York.
  • His son Michael Corleone goes from being a U.S. Marine with no interest or experience in the mafia, to assassinating the leaders of all four rival families, plus the ringleader of Las Vegas and his brother-in-law.
• Goosebumps:
  • The people of Dark Falls in Welcome to Dead House were a relatively humble community until toxic gas escaped from the local plastics factory. This mutated every man, woman, and child into an undead monster, and now they expand their numbers every year by feeding on visitors.
  • Della Raver from The Curse of Camp Cold Lake was an average girl who hated her life at camp. She was killed trying to escape, and her spirit became the skeletal nightmare we see on the cover.
  • The main villain of The Horror at Camp Jellyjam was once a snail whose underground cavern was polluted by jello from the above camp, and mysterious radiation. Contacting both substances, he was mutated, growing in both size and intelligence. Fearing that his stench would destroy him,the creature found he could telepathically influence others when councillors answered his cries and tended to him. Eventually, the beast came to relish the power he had over human lives, and crowned himself King Jellyjam, one of the most bloodthirsty and horrifying monsters in the Goosebumps canon.
• In the Gormenghast cycle, Steerpike was just a put-upon kitchen helper before discovering his Manipulative Bastard side.
• Harry Potter:
  • Lord Voldemort went from living in a Muggle orphanage as a child to being the Big Bad as an adult. And got defeated by a boy who spent most of his early years living in a closet under the stairs of people who don't like him.
  • Gellert Grindelwald never properly finished his magical education, as he was expelled from Durmstrang. He ended up conquering and subjecting most of Europe into a reign of terror, before Albus Dumbledore (who, on the contrary, was a recognized genius from the beginning) stopped him.
  • Peter Pettigrew was just a loser weakling who attached himself to the cool kids (James, Sirus and Lupin) nobody in Hogwarts or any of the teachers would of dreamed he would be the one who brought about the resurrection of Voldemort.
  • Severus Snape was a talented, but somewhat awkward halfblood and bookworm who was constantly bullied by his peers. However, his interest in dark magic and is mastery in creating poitons made him a loyal and close member of the Death Eaters Lord Voldemort himself apreciated. Even after his Heel–Face Turn before the books even started he still acts as a Sadistic Teacher most of his students are really afraid of and some, like Harry and his friends, outright hate him.
  • Harry himself was a unwanted boy who as per mentioned slept under the stairs but went onto to being the Messianic Archetype Wizard who killed Voldemort and became one of the great Aurors to ever live. Subverted if you look Harry’s ancestry as whole though and see he’s descended from the Peverells (the creators of the Deathly Hallows), so he was always predestined for some greatness.
  • Hermione Granger fits this better than Harry, very few could have of guessed a daughter of Muggle dentists would grow up to be Minister of Magic. Especially since most Muggle-born children are understandably a Fish out of Water when introduced to the magical world, Hermione was simply a ridiculously competent Instant Expert from the beginning.
• In Holes, Kissin' Kate Barlow, one of the most feared outlaws in the Old West was once a small-town schoolteacher. Then she fell in love with black onion seller Sam, and the townspeople burned down her school and lynched him.
• Honor Harrington starts out as a gifted but otherwise rather unimportant Commander in the Royal Manticoran Navy. Then she's sent to Basilisk Station. Twenty years later, she is known as "The Salamander" for always being where the fires are hottest, is considered her generation's answer to the military legends Edward Saganami and Ellen D'Orville, is on first-name terms with the rulers of three separate star nations plus a good chunk of their governments, and has played a critical role in forging an alliance between her star nation and the one she's spent most of her career fighting. Not to mention collected a couple of noble titles and a knighthood.
• House of the Scorpion: El Patron. He was born into a impoverished Mexican family, but at the time of the novel, he is one of the most powerful drug lords on the planet. Even after his death, his influence is still profound on the world.
• How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom:
  • The Kingdom of Friedonia^note not to be confused with the kingdom of Freedonia on a national stage. Elfrieden as a nation suffered from a devastating Succession Crisis two decades ago and, under the care of a kind but passive king, hadn't recovered much. Corruption ate away at the kingdom due to the lack of royal oversight, with several nearby nations ready to take advantage and invade. Then they summoned Souma Kazuya, a Japanese university student aspiring to be a civil servant, and made him their king. He changed the course of the kingdom leading it to absorb its hostile neighbor Amidonia. The combined nations declared themselves the Kingdom of Friedonia and became a technological, economic, and military powerhouse in a few short years, nearly able to stand up to the Empire and having forged alliances with the most powerful nations on the continent.
  • Starting with Volume 9, an important subplot deals with Souma's efforts to prevent this with Fuuga Haan, a charismatic warlord of plains nomads in the Union of Eastern Nations whom Souma thinks has the potential to conquer the entire continent if left unchecked. By volume 14, he's become the Union's leader.
• Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games. She was just another player, facing a one in twenty-four chance of staying alive longer than everyone else, but by the end of the series, she was the face of the revolution and played a role in the deaths of two corrupt Presidents of Panem.
  • Surprisingly, Coriolanus Snow as seen in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Snow starts off as the son of a Capitol family which had fallen into poverty but eventually becomes the dictator of an entire oppressive regime and the mastermind of the events of the entire trilogy.
• I'm Not A Regression: Gwon Ohjin, the Sky Devil, the Stigma Eater, the destroyer of the world, started out as a mere swindler who used his incredible lying skills to trick the newly awakened and give him a cut of the profit.
• The eight Incarnations of Immortality generally count. Granted, one started off as a prince (albeit not well regarded by his family due to a stutter), but generally, they're reasonably ordinary people going about reasonably ordinary lives. Then six become Anthropomorphic Personifications of Death, Time, Fate, War, Nature, and Night. The other two become Satan and God.
• James Bond's Arch-Enemy and the head of SPECTRE Ernst Stavro Blofeld started out as a low-level clerk for the Polish postal service, but used his position to sell top-secret wires to Nazi Germany. Anticipating WWII, he destroyed all records of his existence after moving to Turkey, where he set up the blueprint for SPECTRE by selling info to both the Axis and the Allies, but eventually backed the Allied cause. He temporarily moved to South America, before establishing a criminal empire that rivals the superpowers in terms of resources, but fronts as a charitable organization whose HQ is in Paris.
• Johannes Cabal: The demon Ratuth Slabuth rose from his initial life as the insignificant imp Ragtag Slyboots to a general of Hell, The Dragon to Satan, and Satan's successor. Exploited in the first book by Johannes to Blackmail him with his ignominious past.
• Just Another Judgement Day, the ninth book of the Nightside series, introduces The Walking Man. He was just an ordinary human being, until he was given a mission from God to purge all the evil in the Nightside—and enough Power to do so with extreme prejudice. The Walking Man shrugs off any and all attempts to hurt or kill him, or otherwise stop his mission. No one and nothing in the Nightside is effective against him. John Taylor is only able to "defeat" him by finding the vanilla mortal he used to be and separating him from his power.
• In the Left Behind novels, before becoming The Antichrist/The Beast, Nicolae Carpathia got his start as a businessman, followed by a political career. The False Prophet, Leonardo Fortunado, started out as a kingmaker and business partner of Carpathia's before ascending to the role of Most High Reverend Father of Carpathianism.
• Les Misérables:
  • The original Inspector Javert was just the child of a fortune teller and a thief before he grew up into the most formidable policeman in France.
  • Monsieur Thenardier went from a crooked innkeeper and a petty criminal to the leader of a feared crime gang. By the end of the book he's a rich slave driver in America.
  • Jean Valjean the protagonist is a good guy example of this. He started as a lowly tree-pruner who stole some bread to try and feed his sister’s children and ended up imprisoned for decades. He would have gone on just being a lowly thug and thief if not for a chance encounter with a kindly bishop, whom instigated Valjean’s long journey into a good man, a heroic and wealthy mayor, brave revolutionary and borderline saint.
• The first book of The Lightbringer Series has the Color Prince acting as the second in command of a rebellion in the poorest of the Seven Satrapies. By the fourth book—only a year or two later—he represents an existential threat to the Chromeria and its centuries-long rule.
• Malazan Book of the Fallen:
  • Seerdomin manages this twice: Once the son of a fisherman, he became a high ranking officer in an army full of religious fanatics and cannibals. Then, after that career path has endet, he does it again in Toll the Hounds, when he goes from gloomy but generally decent citizen to stalking and murdering people at night because they were planning to get rid of their new lord, whom he secretly approves of.
  • In Midnight Tides, Rhulad Sengar. He's introduced as POV character Trull Sengar's kid brother and his most remarkable feature is being something of a glory hound. After inadvertently acquiring an Artifact of Doom, dying and coming Back from the Dead, and making a bargain with the Crippled God, Rhulad finds himself well on the way to becoming the Emperor of a Thousand Deaths, ruler of the second most powerful empire in the world. Of course, the Crippled God's gifts always come tainted, as Rhulad soon learns...
  • Before Shadowthrone ascended to be the new Lord of Shadow, he started off as a bar owner and middling criminal. Then he took some levels in badass when he planned the conception of the the continent-spanning Malazan Empire as Emperor Kellanved. Well, and then there is the whole 'new god' thing.
• A rare semi-heroic protagonist example happens in The Mental State. Zack starts off his stint in prison as a first-time offender with no friends and hardly anyone on the outside to talk to. By the end, he has secretly taken over the running of the prison, reformed the entire prison system itself, been elected the prisoner representative with a landslide majority and achieved a so much infamy that he is occasionally referred to as the 'Wellington of Crime'.
• Rattila, the Ratislavan villain from Myth-Taken Identity, was a janitor at a magical research lab until he stole an experimental artifact that vastly increased his power.
• The Neverending Story: Bastian starts out as an overweight, ugly, unathletic scared little boy who tells stories to himself. He reads the Neverending Story and gives the childlike empress a new name, propelling him into the world of Fantastica. He is granted the power to make wishes using Auryn, the symbol of the empress, and his first wish is to be strong, handsome, athletic and brave. This first wish also robs him of the memory of ever being that overweight, ugly, unathletic, scared little boy. Each subsequent wish removes his memory of something vitally important to Bastian's character that made him a good person, and so he slowly transforms from the savior of Fantastica to a bloodthirsty conqueror who seeks to depose the empress and sit on her throne.
• The Origin of Laughing Jack: Isaac Grossman was a poor child with very few belongings and a Friendless Background, but when he returns 13 years after being sent to boarding school, he's grown to be a cruel man (not unlike his father, but) with a growing interest in Cold-Blooded Torture and murder. This behaviour could have been influenced by his Abusive Parents or the boarding school, but even as a child, he laughs hysterically when his friend gets a cat killed, likely hinting at an early personality sign.
• Rob in An Outcast in Another World starts out at Level 1 and almost dies to the first enemy he encounters. From them on, he gains strength at an alarming rate and is well on his way to becoming this for his enemies.
• Overlord (2012):
  • The main character was just a salary man with no friends, lovers or family, obsessed with a video game his guildmates had all long since quit. Then he gets pulled into a world that operates on that game's rules, in the body of his character, a Level 100 Elder Lich Evil Sorcerer, with all his guild's NPC's (Including demons, dark elves, vampires, and more) becoming his fanatically loyal army. The New World never knew what hit it.
  • In a more benevolent example, Enri Emmott. From a helpless girl almost slaughtered with her sister by the enemy kingdom's evil knights, after Momonga gave her 2 goblin horns, she ascended rapidly to the Chief of Carne Village, with her second horn outright giving her the reigns of the top Goblin Clan fully loyal to her, which helps in her army mercilessly defeating Prince Barbro's army without taking much losses. You know you are this when even Momonga appreciates your current power status.
• In the original The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, Erik had a relatively harmless life before becoming a Torture Technician and then the titular Phantom:
  Erik was born in a small town not far from Rouen. He was the son of a master-mason. He ran away at an early age from his father's house, where his ugliness was a subject of horror and terror to his parents. For a time, he frequented the fairs, where a showman exhibited him as the "living corpse." He seems to have crossed the whole of Europe, from fair to fair, and to have completed his strange education as an artist and magician at the very fountain-head of art and magic, among the Gipsies. A period of Erik's life remained quite obscure. He was seen at the fair of Nijni-Novgorod, where he displayed himself in all his hideous glory. He already sang as nobody on this earth had ever sung before; he practised ventriloquism and gave displays of legerdemain so extraordinary that the caravans returning to Asia talked about it during the whole length of their journey. In this way, his reputation penetrated the walls of the palace at Mazenderan, where the little sultana, the favorite of the Shah-in-Shah, was boring herself to death. A dealer in furs, returning to Samarkand from Nijni-Novgorod, told of the marvels which he had seen performed in Erik's tent. The trader was summoned to the palace and the daroga of Mazenderan was told to question him. Next the daroga was instructed to go and find Erik. He brought him to Persia, where for some months Erik's will was law. He was guilty of not a few horrors, for he seemed not to know the difference between good and evil. He took part calmly in a number of political assassinations; and he turned his diabolical inventive powers against the Emir of Afghanistan, who was at war with the Persian empire. The Shah took a liking to him.
  • Christine is a more heroic example, coming from poverty in Sweden she had no prosperity and just so happened to be taken in along with her violinist father by a rich family (her classless social status was the reason Raoul a Viscount was unable to marry her when they were teenagers). Despite this Christine manages to become The Diva of the Opera House and famous across Paris for her vocal talent (aided by Erik’s teachings).
• A Place of Greater Safety: Maximilien Robespierre is an idealistic young, provincial lawyer, who had at one time harbored a love for the King and Queen. He hates the site of blood.
• The Poppy War: Rin starts out as a war orphan working as a shopgirl for her foster family in a humble town, then she gets accepted into an elite military academy against all odds, discovers the lost powers of shamanism, and progresses to a genocidal warlord and commander of an elite troop of mystical assassins who destroys an entire country as retaliation for what was done to her people, and later leads a plot to overthrow and kill the Empress of her own country.
• The Postman: One of the robbers at the beginning introduces himself as a former stockbroker. Later on, Colonel Bezoar says he was once a lawyer and Republican county commissioner.
• The Power: In a world where the vast bulk of cisgender girls around the world from puberty downward develop Shock and Awe abilities and can easily grant it to their elders a degree of this is fairly common. However the Platonic Ideal is how an orphan passed through increasingly abusive foster homes in Alabama becomes Mother Eve; a cult leader with a worldwide following, a massive income stream, and a deeply laid plan to smash an already rapidly mutating society to bits for the sake of growing something pure from the ashes.
• A Practical Guide to Evil: due to the narrative laws the Guide-Verse follows, anyone who has a strong conviction and whose actions fit into the mould of a story can become a Named, standing head-and-shoulders above others, there are a lot of examples. Some especially noteworthy ones:
  • Alaya, Dread Empress Malicia I of Praes. Born as the daughter of a tavernkeep in the breadbasket of the empire, she later became Empress of the country, and the most sucessful one for centuries (cutting the nobility's power, giving rights to the different species that live in Praes, covertly destabilizing the biggest rival country, providing for a flourishing economy, and, above all, conquering the neighbouring Kingdom of Callow, something nearly every Tyrant before her tried and failed).
  • Hanno, the White Knight: born as the kid of a miner from the lowest caste in his hometown and his foreign, thus caste-less wife, he later gets blessed by the Angels of Justice, learns from the giants and becomes the leading Hero of his generation.
  • Catherine Foundling herself starts the series as an impoverished orphan waitress and part-time pit brawler. By the start of the final arc, she is the dreaded and admired Black Queen of Callow, ruler of two powerful nations in the Grand Alliance, high priestess (and mightiest Night-wielder) of the drow, one of the wealthiest people on Calernia, representative of all villains under the Truce and Terms, noted authority on storycrafting and Name-lore, and coming into a Name so powerful she's capable of using a Compelling Voice on the Dread Empress of Praes.
• The Princess Bride:
  • Vizzini the Sicilian is a prime case of this. From what we learn of his background he was merely a bitter hunchback, who when understanding his deformed body could not conquer nations devoted himself to training and perfecting his mind becoming a Evil Genius feared across the criminal underworld. Unfortunately for Vizzini, his arrogance over his dizzying intellect gets the better of him and results in him fatally losing a Battle of Wits.
  • Inigo and Fezzik whom Vizzini gathered to form his Terrible Trio are also cases of this albeit more sympathetic and heroic. Inigo comes from a backwater village in Spain being the son of a lowly (yet superb) sword-maker murdered by one of his own customers while Fezzik was a Turkish peasant whose parents tried to turn into a fighter despite his Gentle Giant nature. They grow up to be the World's Best Warrior and World's Strongest Man respectively being unbeatable when it came swordplay and strength... until the Man in Black aka Westley comes along.
  • Speaking of which both Westley and Buttercup count as this, starting off as lowly peasant farmers but become a legendary pirate and princess of Florin in the span of a few years. Westley lampshades it to Buttercup when they reunite and uses their amazing fortune in life as proof they will surely survive the Fire Swamp.
  Buttercup: But I’m afraid.
  Westley: It will all be happy at the end. Consider: a little over three years ago, you were a milkmaid and I was a farm boy. Now you are almost a queen and I rule uncontested on the water. Surely, such individuals were never intended to die in a Fire Swamp.
• In the Queen and Country novel A Gentleman's Game, we're introduced to William Leacock. Starts off as a harmless British kid, and ends up becoming a bloodthirsty jihadi who murders his best friend, a girl he's fallen in love with, and Tom Wallace, the love interest of series main character Tara Chace.
• The nameless protagonist of Ratman's Notebooks was a humdrum, put-upon loser, nagged by his mother and intimidated by his boss. Then he opted not to kill the family of rats living in his garden. Within months, he's robbing houses, terrorizing the neighborhood in a creepy rat mask, and siccing an attack-trained Squeaking Carpet on his personal enemies.
• The Questport Chronicles: The Fellowship never finds out who the mage who destroyed Questport is or where he came from. No one had heard of him until after the cataclysm.
• Redwall:
  • In the original novel, at first this fox is nothing but a sniveling little whelp and the son of Sela, coming to heal Cluny the Scourge. When he ends up encountering Asmodeus after his attempt at theft goes horribly wrong, the snake leaves the fox with a token of his regard. In the sequel, he is a brutal slaver who kidnaps children, gathers a bunch of vermin and promises them the sky, only to have them turn on each other so they'll kill each other off, leaving him the sole profiteer. Worse, an old rabbit heavily implies he's done this many times in the past. He becomes one of the main henchmen for Malkariss, yet he is shown able and willing to turn on Malkariss and rule over that kingdom, even stating that outright. His original name was Chickenhound, but those who have read Mattimeo know him by a different title: Slagar the Cruel.
  • In Outcast of Redwall we follow archvillain Swartt Sixclaw on his journey from leader of a small band of robbers to Warlord of a vast horde. Along the way he graduates from a psychopathic teenager to a brutal, charismatic general nicknamed "The Pitiless One."
• Sandman Slim was just a magician who found magic easier than most. Then his buddies sent him to hell.
• Second Apocalypse: Kellhus is just a wanderer who is considered notable only because he happens to hang around Cnaiur. Very quickly, however, he has set himself up as a prophet and seized control of the entire Holy War. It only goes up for him from there.
• Merrin Meredith from Septimus Heap: Started as an accidentally switched baby, ended as the Big Bad of Darke almost killing the entire Castle with a Darke spell.
• In Seven Sorcerers, Arafin Strood was originally an ordinary human, servant of a renown alchemist Gan Mafig. The the titular sorcerers tested the Deathbane on him, which gave him Complete Immortality — and tested it by repeatedly tearing him to shreds. Now he is the most horrible villain the the magical realm.
• Six of Crows: Most of the main cast qualifies as this, honestly.
  • Kaz starts out as an innocent child, then, after the death of his brother and several other traumas, he becomes the Bastard of the Barrel, eager to take his vengeance on Pekka Rollins.
  • Inej is a teenaged acrobat before being kidnapped by traffickers. Afterwards, she's the Wraith, a deadly spy who works as the right hand of the lieutenant of one of the more powerful gangs in Ketterdam.
• Skate the Thief:Hugo was a common soldier boy who tried to flee the horrors of war, but was caught and left to die as a traitor. He was found by a vampire, eventually turned, and inserted himself into the criminal underworld, clawing his way to the top of the Thieves' Guild where he rules organized crime in a major city with ruthless efficiency.
• So I'm a Spider, So What?:
  • The protagonist is an introverted loner reincarnated as a Lesser Taratect, one of the weakest monsters in her new world. Within two years of hatching she's killed dragons, decimated two armies, earned the title "Nightmare of the Labyrinth", and become a god. The fun doesn't stop there, as she goes on to become The Man in Front of the Man to the Demon King, becomes infamous for killing the Hero, orchestrates the extinction of the Elves and eventually is revealed to the entire world as a so-called God of Evil who will cause global genocide to save the world.
    
    For bonus points, the protagonist turns out to have been not a reincarnated human, but a common house spider, and the fact she was even reincarnated in the first place was because she was meant to be a practical joke played by an uncaring God who just wanted some more time to play hooky. By the time of her apotheosis, the Irony of everything hits the protagonist and said God like a ton of bricks, and while the protagonist experiences a considerable amount of angst over this, the God is so utterly fascinated by her that she is basically adopted on the spot.
  • Kyouya was a normal higschool boy, if somewhat maladjusted due to having a strong sense of justice in modern conservative Japanese society. One death later, he was reborn into a lowly, but happy and loving family of goblins. One extremely gut-wrenching tragedy later, The Power of Hate eventually lets him become Wrath, a monster regarded as a walking calamity who spreads mass terror and destruction before a literal God had to step in to stop him. After that, the now-ascended protagonist steps in, helps him restores his sanity, takes him under their wing and sets him up as one of the ten Demon Army Generals who answer directly to the Demon King.
  • There was once a Mad Scientist who sought to live forever, and for some of his many unethical experiments to achieve it, he sired children to use as fodder. Several of the survivors would go on to become legend in the present story, but one stood out: a spider-human hybrid girl who was constantly weak and ill due to the poison produced by her own body; she was so weak she spent most of her time bedridden. This same, pathetically weak girl would go on to be known as "The Oldest Divine Beast", revered as the messenger of the Goddess, the progenitor of the Taratect species that the protagonist reincarnates into ^note A species that is feared far and wide for being capable of producing Queen Taratects, beings regarded as stronger than Dragons and then becomes Demon King Ariel, a being so powerful she could single-handedly destroy the entire world on a whim, and indisputably the most powerful living being on the planet short of the Gods themselves.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • As lords go, Petyr Baelish is an example. He was born the son of the most minor lord in the Seven Kingdoms and raised among his social betters, earning him a massive inferiority complex. He spent his early adulthood using his financial genius to steadily raise his social station until earning the position of Master of Coin for the whole Seven Kingdoms. Since the start of the series, he's revealed himself to be one of the nation's most accomplished Chess Masters, with a seemingly limitless ambition, secretly instigating a devastating civil war that destroys entire families and tears Westeros apart, and using the chaos to become one of the most powerful men in the Seven Kingdoms.
  • Varys and Illyrio Mopatis, two Chess Masters, started life as an castrated orphan mummer boy and a homeless street bravo respectively. Through their partnership, however, they create a criminal empire that puts Illyio into a magister position in Pentos and Varys into a Master of Whispers position in Westeros. They use their positions to gain amazing wealth and influence.
  • Ramsay Bolton née Snow: a bastard born of casual rape of a common woman, now heir to one of the great houses of the North holding Winterfell as well as other lands and titles gained through marriage and murder... in that order. Villain of the Ax-Crazy, Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and Faux Affably Evil school (when he remembers his manners, that is). Very quickly and justifiably gaining a reputation for being one of The Dreaded, even if he's not the sharpest blade in the Family sheath. He passes with flying colours — which are red and pink for the family hobby.
  • Daenerys Targaryen spent most of her life as a royal pretender and exile, running from court to court to beg for help. Then she gets three dragons and takes several levels of badass to seize control of an Elite Army and start some serious conquering, just like her ancestor Aegon.
  • The Targaryens as a whole. They were originally a minor noble house in Valyria, as their fame of dragon riding wasn't much of a special trait when there were hundreds of people who could do that. But they were the only dragonlord house who survived the Doom, so riding dragons suddenly went from a commonplace skill to a rarity. Three of their members, Aegon "The Conqueror" and his two sisters, Visenya and Rhaenys, invaded the massive continent of Westeros from a small volcanic island off the coast and, with the use of their three dragons, proceeded to conquer six kingdoms and establish a 300-year dynasty.
  • The Valyrians, in turn, were this as well. According to The World of Ice & Fire, the Valyrians were originally humble shepherds who resided in a backwater region of Essos (the original superpower was the Ghiscari Empire, centered in what is now the Slaver's Bay). Then they discovered dragons, which would presage thousands of years-long Valyrian dominance in the Known World.
• Soon I Will Be Invincible: Doctor Impossible. From a nebbish perpetual undergrad mocked for his outdated theories to the third most dangerous man on Earth, who nearly destroyed the world with a toy, a mirror and a trinket.
• The villain from The Moment Of The Magician was a balding, overweight loser who'd scraped by doing cheap tricks for kids' birthday parties, until he found himself in a world where his magic worked.
• Stag Preston of Spider Kiss went from a shady bellhop to a sociopathic superstar.
• Gully Foyle from Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination began as an uneducated Engineer's Mate 3rd Class aboard a freighter, and by the end he is a cybernetically enhanced unstoppable killing machine with the ability to teleport himself across the galaxy and through time.
• Steelheart: The titular Big Bad is revealed, in the second book Firefight, to have originally been a Jerk Jock who couldn't even get a college scholarship due to his record of violent bullying, and spent his days posting on conspiracy theory forums. Than he was transformed into a Superman Expy and became much, much worse.
• Story Thieves provides a case of this. Or rather, it provides a case of from nobody to Nobody. Nobody, the books Big Bad, was once just a faceless goon working for a mad scientist before discovering he could rewrite himself to be anything.
• The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy goes from a college kid who can't hold a job for more than a month to one of the most notorious serial killers in US history.
• Robert Bloch's "Sweets to the Sweet" has Irma, who was unfortunate enough to have her mother suffer Death by Childbirth. Blaming her for this, her father regularly beats and abuses her, constantly calling her a witch. Her uncle is no better; though he's fully aware of the abuse, he ignores it and goes about his own life, and gets irritated when the housekeeper begs him to intervene. So she resolves to become exactly what her father thinks she is, and studies witchcraft, creating a tiny wax Voodoo Doll of her father. And ultimately bites its head off, then slips away while her uncle rushes to her father's bedside.
• Not exactly evil, but Dr. Alexandre Manette ends up nearly being the death of his son-in-law Charles Darnay in Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. In one of those trumped-up coincidences Dickens was so famous for, Dr. Manette is imprisoned in the Bastille for many years thanks to the Darnays' influence and writes an angry journal entry condemning the whole family. His daughter Lucie later marries Charles, the young son of the family who had imprisoned him. When the French Revolution comes, a murderous people's tribunal puts Charles on trial and submits as evidence Dr. Manette's long-forgotten denunciation of his family. Charles is promptly sentenced to death and is due to be beheaded by the guillotine in 24 hours. If not for a certain Heroic Sacrifice....
• In Sukhinov's book Tales of the Magic Land: Gingema's Daughter there is Corina. She starts as an ordinary Munchkin girl who didn't want to spend her entire life collecting herbs so she ran away from home. She gets lessons from Gingema (aka The Wicked Witch of the East), and from then on she gradually gets more and more powerful. By the end of the book, she is the most powerful witch in OZ, rules the City of Oz, has The Woodsman (who rules the Violet kingdom) under Mind Control, and effectively rules the rest of Magical Land too (with the exception of Glinda's and Wiilina's kingdoms). And she has dragons on her side.
• In Tale of the Troika by Strugatsky Brothers, the Troika originally was just a group of inspectors which investigated the plumbing in the NIICHAVO. By the time we meet them, they effectively rule over a Pocket Dimension.
• Timeline-191: Jake Featherston was an artillery sergeant with a bad temper, before he ran into the Freedom Party. His rage at losing the Great War and skill as an orator has him become the thirteenth President of the Confederate States of America following the Great Depression. He than starts the Second Great War, whilst conducting a genocide of the CSA's black population. Most of his major henchmen, including Jefferson Pinkard (steel worker and veteran turned concentration camp commander) and Clarence Potter (intelligence major turned Brigadier-General, Spymaster, and all around Magnificent Bastard) also count.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • Sméagol aka Gollum is probably the most clear cut example being a lowly Stoor Hobbit and River Man who was corrupted by the Ring. Nobody could’ve guessed he’d be the one pivotal to Middle Earth and destruction of the Ring, albeit unintentionally.
  • Played With regarding Mairon aka Sauron, it’s impossible to say he was ever a true nobody being one of the Maia but still in the initial scheme of Ilúvatar he was technically just a servant of Aulë not much more greater than Olórin (Gandalf) Curumo (Saruman) or Aiwendil (Radagast). Mairon Took a Level in Badass though after being ensnared by Melkor aka Morgoth and by the time he became Sauron had in many ways succeeded his master becoming The Dreaded Big Bad of the second and third age of Middle Earth.
  • Bilbo is a heroic example, he was just a middle-class Hobbit from the backwater and unregarded place that is the Shire (at most his mother Belladonna Took was pretty famous). He was happy to sit comfortably and do nothing with his life but eat heartedly and smoke pipe weed — until Gandalf came along offering an adventure and Bilbo would go onto become a close companion of the Dwarves, blessed friend of the Elves, defeater of dragons, bearer of the Ring, oldest living Hobbit and someone even Galadriel and Elrond wanted to come with them to the Grey Havens. Pretty damn impressive for someone who “looked more like grocer than a burglar”. His nephew Frodo counts too given his journey, but unlike Bilbo was already a wealthy Elf friend at the beginning of his adventure.
  • Samwise is a good example, he was just a gardener and servant of Frodo. Few could have of possibly guessed he’d be the one whom the whole fate of Middle Earth depended on in the Darkest Hour. The fact he could strike fear even in the heart of a Ancient Evil Giant Spider like Shelob given who he is and where he comes from is even more impressive.
  • Bëor the Old was just a traveller who tried to reach Valar in the West with his sons and people before stumbling across the Elven King Finrod Felagund in the Ossiriand who blessed them with music. It’s crazy to think he would be progenitor of a dynasty that would last thousands of years and cement Man’s place within Middle Earth.
• Sétimo in Vampiros do Rio Douro was just a normal fisherman until one night, he and six other men (including his brother) sold their souls to the Devil to become vampires in order to survive a plague that afflicted their village. Sétimo was sacrificed and served as the Devil's slave for centuries, but in return, he emerged as the most powerful and dangerous of the Seven, with the ability to walk under daylight and transform himself into a bat-like demon. He is feared even by his fellow vampires and rightly so, since they betrayed him to gain their dark gifts and he wants revenge against them. Other members of the group also qualify such as Lobo (a mere merchant), Espelho (an African slave) and Acordador (a humble artisan), but Sétimo is the biggest example of this trope.
• Near-future thriller Victoria's economic doomsday and civil unrest scenario features several, as strange characters rise to the occasion in strange times, but the most iconic is surely General Hadji al-Malik al-Shabazz of the radical Islamic militia that takes over Boston. Before he joined their group, he was Willy Welly the moderately successful saxophonist.
• Pontius Glaw, recurring character and eventual Big Bad in the Warhammer 40,000 Eisenhorn novels. Starting off as just another bored noble with a penchant for watching gladiatorial combat, a chance encounter with a pit fighter's Chaos-tainted piece of jewelery turned him into a powerful heretic and the head of a major Chaos cult. He was then knocked back to being a Nothing by getting himself mostly killed, eventually becoming nothing more than a personality engram encoded into a hunk of quartz. He then became a nightmare again, when Eisenhorn gave him a robot body in exchange for information; Glaw used the body to escape from his confinement, destroy Eisenhorn's carefully-constructed support network, and nearly unleash a powerful daemonic superweapon before finally being killed for good.
• Scourge from Warrior Cats, from small kitten named Tiny, bullied by his siblings, he manages to become leader of BloodClan with sheer ruthlessness and one of most deadly cats in Warriors.
• General Woundwart from Watership Down was originally just an average ordinary rabbit who lost his parents from a young age who joined a gang of rabbit revolutionaries, then he became a power hungry dictator who enslaves rabbits and makes them work themselves to death and has his higher ranking officers do what they like to them including beating and occasionally raping them.
• Mister Dattam from Yulia Latynina's Wei Empire cycle started out as a somewhat asocial, awkward, yet genial boy with a somewhat unhealthy obsession with technology. The events of the prequel short novel, during which he was repeatedly and thoroughly manipulated and used by his close friends and relatives, forced to flee for his life, dragged into becoming one of the leaders of a bloody rebellion, and then betrayed and told by his close childhood friend that he was nothing but a pawn in a much bigger game from the very beginning, had changed him into a ruthless, selfish Magnificent Bastard, who then went on to become a shameless monster, a medieval equivalent of a Corrupt Corporate Executive and the real leader of the Shakunik monks.
• A host of kids in the Whateley Universe who are nothing until somewhere around the age of fourteen they manifest as mutants. Deathlist, most feared hero killer in the world, started out as an ordinary schoolboy.
• The Wheel of Time
  • Rand al'Thor went from a shepherd's son to being the single most powerful man on the face of the earth, able to destroy whole cities at will. Granted, he is The Chosen One and meant to save the world, but he is also prophesized to break the world too, and the fact he is quite rightly reputed to be a bit mad, and deteriorating, still makes a nightmare even to his allies.
  • Padan Fain started out as a rank-and-file darkfriend whose cover was that he was a peddler. Then he got recruited by Ishamael to track Rand down, given minor magical abilities in the process. Then he merged with the soul of Mordeth acquiring a whole lot more power in the process and also going nuts. Blaming both sides of the battle of good against evil for his suffering, he's got it out for everybody- but especially Rand- and is unfortunately one of the more powerful beings in the setting now.
  • The thirteen Forsaken are Shrouded in Myth in the present day as ancient, terrifyingly powerful, utterly depraved servants of the Dark One, but some have very humble roots. The Chessmaster Moghedien was an investment advisor and white collar criminal, while Mesaana was a middle-rate teacher who had her Start of Darkness when she was refused a research position.
• In Wicked, there is the wizard who started as con artist and ended as an evil dictator of OZ, destroying everyone who opposed him.
• Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall, once he begins to implement Henry's more brutal policies. He was born the son of a blacksmith in Putney (a past he tries to leave behind and which his highborn adversaries remind him of whenever he irritates them), but his job as Wolsey's lawyer leads him to become Henry VIII's right-hand man, and he readily takes advantage of his position to exact deadly revenge on those who caused Wolsey's downfall.
• There was once an ordinary woman named Jennet Humfrye. She bore a son outside of wedlock that she was unable to provide for and the pressure of her family forced her to give her child to her rich, childless sister to adopt. But she wanted her son to be hers and only hers and tried to spend more time with him. Like all mothers. Then a horrible tragedy happened and the son drowned in a accident in front of her eyes. She died not long after, in misery and bitterness, unfairly blaming her sister for the death and cursing all mothers who never had their children taken from them like she did. And then this woman became a shadow of death and one of the biggest horrors knows as The Woman in Black.
• In Worm, at the start of the story, Taylor is a bullied high school student with the weak power of controlling bugs. A few months later, she's the uncontested ruler of Brockton Bay's underworld, has fought off every hero in the city multiple times, defeated Dragon, and the heroes are terrified of facing her.

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