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Jerkass Woobie / Visual Novels

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  • Umineko: When They Cry:
    • Beatrice has turned into this, starting out as the Card-Carrying Villain Big Bad of the series, gloating over new ways to sadistically kill Battler’s family and screw with his head before gradually losing dignity and becoming one of the biggest Woobies in the series apart from Natsuhi. For starters, at the end of Ep4, she is impaled with several blue wedges but cannot die because Lambdadelta has shackled her to the game for all eternity. As a result, in the beginning of Ep5, she becomes an Empty Shell who can't do anything by herself — she can't eat or speak, hell, she can't even lift up a cup of tea. And to make matters worse, when Battler tries to come up with an explanation to the mysteries that denies the involvement of magic, she suffers. Bernkastel, being the charming person that she is, makes a point of saying so. And to top it all off, after having her former title stripped, she is sentenced to a rather horrible death by Lambdadelta and Bernkastel, and tries to go down laughing but ends up sounding like a human denying agony (which, sadly enough, she is), and even when Battler steps in to save her, he loses, and she begs him to not leave her alive. And who could forget her touching death scene? And then, in Ep6, after being revived with no memories of her former self or her game with Battler, she gets treated like dirt by Battler all because she doesn't act like the Beatrice he knew. It's all you can do to not want to give the poor creature a hug. Not to mention, she was actually helping Battler all along, and just wanted him to figure out the mystery and remember his promise to her. Episode 7 puts all of the above in the perspective and only ups the Woobie-ness aspect up to eleven.
    • Rosa Ushiromiya. Presented from the beginning and constantly as an Abusive Mom who neglects her 9 year old daughter half the time while in the other she does not hesitate to fill her with slaps and blows when Maria disobeys her (regardless of whether she does it on purpose or less). So it didn't take long for many readers to hate her to the point of being happy when she regularly fell victim to Cruel and Unusual Death and The Many Deaths of You, seeing it as highly deserved karma. However, as the story goes on, as her personality deepens, interesting backstories about her are revealed; starting first of all by saying that she is a Struggling Single Mother who became such after Maria's father deceived her into signing a loan to finance his business trip and leave her alone while she was still pregnant without ever returning, consequently forcing her to work very hard in the over the next few years in an attempt to raise the money needed to pay off all debts. As if that weren't enough, she was born under the black star of all those children who grew up in families with numerous siblings who were extremely talented and dedicated to pleasing the exaggerated expectations of their icy parents, without being able to distinguish themselves from the others in any way for their qualities if these qualities did not conform to ideal canons, resulting as a consequence to being abused in the same way as nowadays she abuses her daughter not only by her father Kinzo and her mother, but also by her older siblings Krauss, Eva and Rudolf to the point that even now that they are all 4 adults who they contend for the inheritance of the family, Rosa is seen and treated as the outsider and constantly belittled and derided. Not to mention that the reason why she is a Fantasy-Forbidding Mother and she reacts particularly badly when Maria talks about witches and Beatrice is because Kinzo raised her by traumatizing her with the legend of this legendary witch who lived in the forest of the island that would have punished her if Rosa went and looked for her and also because when she actually met and befriended Beatrice as an adolescent, she then innocently induced her to climb down a cliff during their escape from their sadly lives which ended with the tragic death of the witch girl.
    • Eva Ushiromiya. She treats Natsuhi, her long-suffering sister-in-law, her younger sister Rosa and Shannon, the object of her son's affections, like crap...and then we get flashbacked to her youth and find out that she pretty much got the exact same treatment from Kinzo, right down to the "borrowed womb" speech she gave to Natsuhi. She's one of the few siblings who is Happily Married and adores her son, but in half of the murders, she loses one or both of them and utterly snaps. In the Bad Future of 1998, not only is she suspected of murdering her family (being the sole survivor of Rokkenjima), but Bernkastel manipulates her relationship with her niece Ange; Eva treats Ange like crap to hide the truth about her parents, and dies by stress-induced illness with Ange and the rest of the world thinking that she's a selfish psychopath. Of course, as tragic as her life has been in the last 12 years of her life, it doesn't change the fact that she was an old stupid and spoiled bitch who dumped her childhood frustrations on other women who had nothing to do with her sexist injustice inflicted from her father, who married with Hideyoshi and conceived and raised her son severely only for the purpose of snatching the succession and position of the inheritance of her brother's daughter to the point of even wanting to plan George's future married life with her bigoted ideas about marriage.
    • A good portion of the characters in Umineko qualify as this actually, as most are abused and broken down by life while still remaining in some way awful. Rosa, Natsuhi, Eva, Krauss, even Bernkastel, Erika, and Beatrice/Yasu/Shannon are perhaps the best examples.
  • Although it's often overlooked due to inherent awesomeness, Archer in Fate/stay night is quite woobilicious and also quite the asshole. Before switching back to the good guys, his rather brutal nature is quite apparent. Even apart from any violence, his attitude and speech are also quite a bit darker and more straightforward than any of his allies. Much of this is quite Harsher in Hindsight, considering both his backstory and just who, exactly, he is.
  • Yet another 07th Expansion example, proving that Ryukishi 07 is fond of this trope: From Ookami Kakushi, we get Sakaki. While he may hold a horribly racist attitude towards the Kamibito, abandons Hiroshi or outright kills him in one end when he refuses to go along with his plans, and starts a town war to massacre the Kamibito in the story’s true end, he has also been put through his share of tragedy: He lost his fiancée to the old laws of the town, found her mutilated corpse, and has spent the past four years feeling as though he has no real reason to be alive other than for the sake of living. The only thing that gives his life any purpose at all, according to him, is the thought of avenging his fiancee’s murder. His arc, in particular, is a master with this trope, showing him at both his most despicable and most sympathetic.
  • Ace Attorney:
    • Franziska Von Karma, despite appearing to be a dominatrix figure who has complete control over everyone around her, is anything but in control. From a young age, she was taught by her father, Manfred Von Karma, that being a von Karma entails absolute perfection, that all defendants are guilty regardless of whether they did or didn't commit the crime, and that everyone will submit to her if she beats them senselessly into submission. She took all of these values to heart, being none the wiser for her age, and became a Child Prodigy of a prosecutor, but Franziska grew to have an unhealthy Inferiority Superiority Complex due to the fact that von Karma paid absolutely no attention to her, instead focusing his efforts on raising Miles Edgeworth into an equally relentless prosecutor, who she saw as better than her in every way and wanted to one-up no matter what the cost. Following von Karma's incarceration and Edgeworth's Redemption Quest masqueraded as suicide, Franziska became mentally broken and blamed Phoenix Wright for taking everything away from her, especially Edgeworth because he left before she could prove her worth to him. Following Edgeworth's eventual return and Franziska aiding in the trial for Juan Corrida's murder, she decides to go on her own Redemption Quest, with Edgeworth telling her that she's not perfect like she claims, but has the potential to become what she aims to be. Said statement reduces Franziska to tears, with her admitting that Edgeworth is better than her and that she refuses to give up her lifelong goal. Franziska is nearly as cold-hearted as her father, but she also happens to be a victim of circumstance whose life was plagued with misfortunes that took a massive toll on her self-esteem.
    • Miles Edgeworth in the first iteration qualifies as well, with the death of his father (which he, due to the circumstances, blamed himself for) and being raised by Manfred von Karma.
    • Godot/Diego Armando is one. Yes, he is quite a jerk to Phoenix and his plan of dealing with Morgan's plan to kill Maya was self-centered but he was poisoned by Dahlia and had his lover be killed while he was in a coma. He's pretty much a huge Stepford Smiler who hides so much despair and guilt that it's astounding he can even show up to court.
    • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies gives us Simon Blackquill, who spends much of the game as a standard asshole prosecutor, who also happens to be in jail for murder. Then, it's revealed that seven years ago, his mentor was killed and he walked in to apparently find out that her daughter (who he was said to get along with very well) did it. In order to protect said daughter, he framed himself for his mentor's murder, putting himself on death row in the process and turning cold, cruel, and sarcastic during his incarceration.
    • There's also Simon's sister Aura. She not only has to watch as her brother ends up on death row for a murder he didn't commit, but the victim in that case was her esteemed colleague, (whom she strongly implies that she was in love with). On the jerkass side, she's ill-tempered and confrontational, beats up the robots she and her colleague made, and holds several people, including the main character's daughter, hostage in order to try to get her brother's conviction overturned (the day before he is to be executed), although she releases the hostages and turns herself in, once he gets off.
    • From the same game, Hugh O' Connor. He starts out as your typical Jerkass insufferable Teen Genius, only to reveal later he's not a Teen or a genius. In fact, he's really 25 and failed so badly he had to repeat his final year of school for seven whole years, until his parents got fed up with him failing and started bribing the teacher who at first we think is Constance Courte, the victim, but is later revealed to be Aristotle Means. And having a teacher like that would screw anyone up.
  • Boyfriend To Death: By the second game, Ren Hana. He's really been through a lot since childhood, but that doesn't change the fact that he's incredibly mentally unstable and can kill you at the drop of a hat if you so much as provoke him the wrong way.
  • Hatoful Boyfriend's Sakuya Le Bel Shirogane. A racist, ableist Upper-Class Twit and royal snob of the highest order... who's troubled by loneliness, having been taught to push away anybody "lesser" than himself, and wants more than anything to pursue a career by his own abilities, rather than abide by and perpetuate his family's tradition of nepotism and bigotry. The woobie side shows most in his route and in the nonromantic "Bad Boys Love" route, where he learns that his birthright is a lie and then watches his brother Yuuya die of poisoned wounds sustained defending Sakuya himself, despite the bad blood between them due to Yuuya being born of their mother's (mixed) first marriage.
  • Long Live the Queen has half the cast comprised of these, a few notable ones being:
    • Brin, the Duchess of Hellas, is very manipulative, arrogant and trying to start a war purely for her own gain. She was also dumped by no less than THREE lovers. The last one, who she thought would always be with her, dropped her for being "too challenging" and then ran off with a priestess.
    • Kevan, the temperamental Earl of Io, seems to be fueled only by rage and turns into a Leeroy Jenkins whenever his family seems to be even remotely threatened. He kills people without having proof of their guilt and honestly doesn't seem to care much about their innocence. Turns out that the reason for his behaviour is that he was sexually abused by his stepfather from his early teens (possibly preteens) until the day his younger half-brother Thaddeus walked in on them, traumatising the poor kid and driving a serious wedge between the family. His mother eventually had the stepfather killed, but Kevan, suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, became estranged from her and moved in with his older sister. The two then proceeded to develope a very unhealthy incestuous affair. Elodie can interfere and possibly redirect his fanatical loyalties from his family to herself, but all she really succeeds in is becoming his Living Emotional Crutch and it is strongly suggested that he would kill himself should anything happen to her..
    • Elodie herself can become this depending on how you play. She can perform the most cruel acts; ordering numerous executions, abusing servants and burning people alive. But sometimes you can't help but wonder if she simply cracked under all the pressure of being a 14-year-old-almost-Queen with a target painted on her back. On the other hand, she can also go completely beyond the pale by either killing her father to become the Big Bad's minion, or sacrificing her adorable cousin to a kraken in order to save her own ass.
  • Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls: The Warriors of Hope are a group of 5 children that indiscriminately murder defenseless adults and teenagers as a game. Each one has also suffered prolonged, harsh parental abuse and/or neglect to the point where they had to be saved from attempting mutual suicide.
    • While Toko is antagonistic towards people and assumes the worst out of people, she was constantly bullied back at her old school causing her to have low self-esteem. Not to mention the fact that she has a Serial Killer Split Personality making it seem that she pushes people away from her just to keep them safe.
  • After the second chapter Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, Fuyuhiko becomes this after he finds out that his sister was dead and his best friend Peko gets executed for murdering his sister's killer's accomplice on what she believed to be his orders.
  • In Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, we have Miu Iruma, who is crude, obnoxious and is The Friend Nobody Likes. However, Kaede notes that Miu has No Social Skills, so she isn't actively malicious and merely blurts out whatever she's thinking without filtering herself. This personality drives people away from her, but because Miu has a Friendless Background, she has no idea how grating people find her. On top of that, beneath her Large Ham behaviour, she's actually a Shrinking Violet who adopted her personality to cover up her insecurities, but it doesn't take much to make her panic and revert back to her timid ways. She also very clearly wants people to like her, but her inability to realise that she tends to act in terrible taste inhibits this. Her death is a result of trying to kill Kokichi in the Virtual World, only for him to find out and counter it by having Gonta kill her. However, Miu's goals were actually noble as she wanted to get to the outside world to help people she believed were suffering and her paranoid tendencies had led her to become increasingly mistrustful of her fellow students. Had she more friends outside of Ki-bo, she may not have gone through with her attempt at all. Her Love Suite Event also shows some other sad characteristics about her, like how she is secretly very lonely and has major abandonment issues; her ideal is a childhood friend, someone who continues to care for her since they were kids and can see through her act and knows the real her. She then begs her childhood friend to make a baby with her because she does not want him to abandon her too.
  • Ittosai, Yo-Jin-Bo's resident Psycho for Hire who spends most of his time insulting the rest of the cast. If you follow his path through the game, you eventually learn that his father was the one who messed him up terribly as a little kid in order to turn him into a bloodthirsty killing machine, even though he hated it. By the time he becomes The Atoner, you're glad that Sayori is there to give him lots of hugs.
  • Major/Minor
    • Rook is a textbook example. Sure, he acts like a condescending smartass who often insults others using Brutal Honesty but the scene where he breaks down crying over the real reason he's so addicted to his tablet will make you wish there was a third "hug Rook" option button to click, even if he threatens to end you if the truth comes out. Later on, he's pushed even deeper into Woobie territory when he gets psychologically tortured and nearly killed by a bomb.
    • Kila AKA Eddie is an interesting case. Sure, he acts like a Nice Guy when you first meet him but he's actually, impersonating his dead brother and blaming you for his brother's suicide. As messed up as that is, keep in mind that he cried for hours over his twin's death and was deeply upset over it. That being said, Eddie's an interesting hybrid of a Jerkass Woobie and a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
    • Shock also qualifies as he lost not only Klace but Rocker as well.
  • Your Turn to Die: Sou Hiyori is the gloomy loner in the group. Through the bulk of the first two rounds, he's nothing but antagonistic to the other players, especially Sara. He uses Kanna for his own gain and lies constantly, not to mention how he's the one who gave Joe the Sacrifice card in the first Main Game. But like all of the other participants, Sou was kidnapped and placed into a deadly game and is just trying to survive. He's just as crushed as anyone when his attempt to help them all escape ends in failure. It's also revealed that during his first trial, he learned the victory rates of the other candidates and that his was 0% — from the very beginning, he knew that the group was going to inevitably vote him out and kill him. His distrust of the main group and especially Sara, who has the highest victory rate, is at least understandable.

Alternative Title(s): Visual Novel

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