Backstory - Television Tropes & Idioms

Backstory is what happened to a character before they arrived on the present scene. May exist for just one character, the entire cast, or the entire setting in which everything is taking place.

A good actor or writer has a strong sense of each character's Back Story, as it gives the character texture and shadings and keeps them from being two-dimensional. It makes an excellent source for The Reveal, and bits often are handled out: why The Rival resents The Hero so much; how the Fake Ultimate Hero got his reputation; why The Captain suffers from Bad Dreams. Hopefully, this is when the information is both plot relevant and likely to come up.

In fact, it can be so interesting and important that it's a wonder it's just a back story, and indeed, a particularly good Back Story can form the basis of a prequel.

A good Ret Con may go back and explore a character's Backstory. A Belated Backstory occurs when the Ret Con radically and permanently changes a new character's personality. Some characters are given a Mysterious or Dark And Troubled Past as a backstory, these tend to be whatever the author wants, often retroactively growing, or changing.

Many Fanfics exist to explore Backstory (like, how Spock's parents got together).

Unlike many American cartoons, which seem to make things up as needed by the plot, anime series often have quite detailed backstories for their main characters, even if they are never mentioned in the series itself.

See also Prequel, and Start Of Darkness.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

Fullmetal Alchemist had quite a few chapters explaining Mustang and Hawkeye's backstories.
The Summer arc in AIR, which shows the beginning of the curse in the Jidai Geki.
Almost all of the characters of One Piece, especially the members of the Strawhat Crew.
- In fact, a flashback featuring a character's (tragic) past is nearly always a dead giveaway that he/she will join the Strawhats by the end of the arc.
  - Oda used this to make use think two people might have joi the crew, Vivi and Wiper
In the Getbackers manga, almost all the major characters, including villains, have complicated backstories peppered with angst and feuds. In every arc (except the minor filler types) there will be one or more flashbacks to explain new plot developments: Kazuki and Jyuubei as childhood friends, the story behind Ban's jagan, Makubex's abandonment, just to name a few
The Gundam Wing manga Episode Zero deals with the backstories of all the main characters that were originally meant to be in the anime. These stories explain many of the mysteries in the series - Duo's priest collar and Quatre's goggles being two examples - that are near essential to understanding the story as a whole.
Shonen anime such as Naruto or Bleach will often spend entire episodes - occasionally right in the middle of a major battle - delving into the backstory of a character as they gather their energy for a 'second wind' to get back into the fight. It most often takes place while they are (apparently) critically wounded... perhaps a nod to the old cliche of one's life passing before one's eyes.
Cowboy Bebop is interesting in that everyone has elaborate backstories, but only Faye's given any sort of complete explanation or chronology. You learn broad ideas, but never the whole picture: Spike was part of the Red Dragon Mafia, Jet was a police officer, Ein is a data dog (whatever that means) and Ed was in an orphanage after being abandoned by her father. The movie supposedly was intended to be a grand backstory for Spike, but the creators decided against it because it would probably never live up to the hype from the fans.
Berserk has such a long and complex backstory that it takes up twelve volumes of the manga and nearly the whole animated series. The backstory focuses mainly on Guts, but Griffith and Casca have their own pasts and motivations revealed as well. Serpico and Farnese also received their own backstory arc in the manga.
In Chrono Crusade, most of the important characters have backstories that connect them to the pasts of the other characters, especially in the manga. Chrono's is particularly important in driving the plot forward—so, of course, he avoids telling the other characters about it until late in the series.
Fakir's backstory in Princess Tutu is a key plot point, partly because he turns out to be the descendant of the Big Bad and has inherited his powers.
Most characters in Yu-Gi-Oh, even a lot of minor ones, get detailed backstories. This is especially true for the villains, and of course the main character, whose search for his unknown backstory forms the main plot.
Mahou Sensei Negima has a few chapters that go into Negi's backstory, explaining his motivations and where he got his goals.
- Later on it goes into Asuna's backstory, which happens to be massively important to the current plot, even moreso than Negi's backstory. Remeber that massive war that Negi's father was the hero of? Turns out Asuna was at the center of it.
An entire chapter of Death Note was devoted to Mikami's history, explaining why he embraced Kira so easily.
Yusuke, Kuwabara and Keiko are about the only ones on Yu Yu Hakusho who don't get backstories...
The second Sound Stage of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha's first season revolved around Fate's life before the series began.
Detective Conan have most of its backstories concentrated to the Red Herring Shirt Akemi. Although she's been killed off very early in the series, she was first written as Ai Haibara's Dead Older Sister, and then our former mole CIA agent is revealed to be her boyfriend when he's still in The Syndicate.
Not strictly a manga (it's actually a manhwa) Rebirth has a colossal backstory that spans a full seven volumes. The author started and planned on it only being two volumes, maximum of three... then he got carried away and it grew to seven. Apparently the fans nearly revolted.

Comic Books

Everyone who becomes a Ghost Rider has a detailed back story, and they're ''all'' subject to change.
For being such an obscure character until his movies, Blade had some history. Marvel did a pretty good job about taking from the movies without messing up his back story or character develop in the comics he appeared in, that was until Marc Guggenheim Did Not Do The Research and then rewrote past events to cover his mistakes, but to be fair, Blade's history was complex for an obscure character and Marc didn't want to write about him, still could have done better for being paid.

Film

The Star Wars prequel films had existed in brief notes just to get things together for the original movie. George Lucas wanted the original Star Wars to have the episode 4 title to resemble the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials, but only used "Part IV" in the opening expository crawl. "A New Hope" has a lot of imagery that is intended to make you think you're seeing something familiar, such as the first appearance of Obi-Wan.

Literature

The Lord Of The Rings.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince establishes in detail a lot of the back story of Lord Voldemort, the principal villain.
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows does the same with Dumbledore, including a dead sister, a father who died in Azkaban and a school-days crypto-gay friendship with Gellert Grindelwald, a Dark Wizard only slightly less evil than Big Bad Voldemort.
Half the mystery in A Song Of Ice And Fire is the backstory of the characters and Westeros itself.
CS Lewis's The Magician's Nephew is explicitly billed, in the text, as backstory to the rest of the Narnia books.
Both implicit and explicit in the Honor Harrington series, including the titular character. Generally, implicit in the "main" novels, explicit in the anthologies.
The "Horus Heresy" novels are the Back Story to the Warhammer 40000 universe.

Live Action TV

The second season episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, "Becoming, Part I," in which the audience sees how Buffy, Angel,Spike, and Drusilla "became" who they are today.
- Buffy and Angel were both quite good at this- this (admittedly Buffy-lovin') troper can name the Buffy episodes "Amends" and "Lie to Me" and the Angel episodes "Darla," "Dear Boy," "Orpheus"... heck, a LOT of Angel is backstory contributing to various season arcs (Darla in Season 2, Holtz in season 3, etc.) as well as one or two "one-shot" backstory episodes such as "Why We Fight," the mentions of Angel's past in Vegas in "The House Always Wins," and "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been." Well, a guy does accumulate a lot of backstory in 240+ years of living...
The Firefly episode "Out of Gas" examined how the crew of Serenity came together. (It is supposed that Joss Whedon had planned much more detailed Backstories for certain enigmatic characters, but the series ended before they were revealed.)
Both Highlander and Forever Knight were full of backstory - flashbacks where the events recalled served to illustrate present events. Being veeery long-lived characters, both Duncan MacLeod and Nick Knight had plenty of backstory to film.
Much of the plot structure of Lost (for the first three seasons at least) has centered on revealing the characters' backstories while showing how these pasts inform the characters' actions on the island.
The Supernatural pilot episode starts off with the backstory of how their mother got killed. Something Wicked introduced Dean's massive guilt/martyr complex, and A Very Supernatural Christmas revealed how he got his amulet.
The House episode "Three Stories" depicted how House ended up with his limp.
- In two pieces of much happier backstory, "Birthmarks" told us that it, in a reversal of expectations, was actually House being a nice guy to Wilson (i.e bailing him out of jail because Wilson was having issues and getting divorced from his first wife) that started off their friendship and "Adverse Events" revealed that House was... a college cheerleader.
- EVERYONE on House has some sort of backstory, and the story is ALWAYS a sad one. No one is allowed to be happy on House. You can only wonder how so many doctors with tragic pasts ended up in the same hospital.
Heroes had the first season episode "Six Months Ago" mostly showing the past of Peter and Nathan Petrelli, Claire Bennet, Matt Parkman and how Sylar first used his power. Then, seven episodes later, Company Man mixed a story in present with flashbacks of the past of Noah Bennet. The first half of the second season has a story with Hiro in the past, which also serves as a back story for a present villain Adam Monroe, concluding with the episode "Four Months Ago", which also served the back story of Maya and Alejandro Herrera. And finally the season three episode "Villains" explains how Sylar became a killer and his complicated relationship with Elle, how Arthur Petrelli ended up paralyzed, and why Flint Gordon got caught by Primatech and his sister Meredith did not.
Higher Ground gradually reveals at some point or another (sometimes in the form of an Episode In The Spotlight) what got each of the Cliffhangers sent to Mt. Horizon.

Video Games

Metal Gear Solid 3 and Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops establish the Start Of Darkness of Big Boss, the Big Bad, showing his fall from a noble Badass Normal, through a quietly grieving Tragic Hero, into an Anti Villain convinced that Utopia Justifies The Means. (His Utopia happens to be eternal World War.) However, pretty much every character has a backstory more in-depth and complicated than most real people's. Even if they're only on camera for fifteen minutes and are never mentioned again.
Fate Stay Night has a backstory that is a major plot point for the story, the protagonist's entire motivation for existing (at least in the beginning), in fact. Most of the routes have his backstory as a point of major inner conflict for him over his ideals and his reality.
- This particular backstory was fleshed out in its entirety in Fate Zero.
Tsukihime freaking exists because of this. The backstory is unbelievably complex and well-written, with each route giving off a small amount of information about the past. The entire backstory can be put together (like a puzzle) only after playing all of the routes.
Dark Stalkers started out simple but the sequel Night Warriors rewrote the character origins into surprisingly interesting back stories and Vampire Savior expanded it further, giving back stories to the different worlds the game takes place in.
Wing Commander has a fairly detailed backstory, told mostly in the manuals (including official game guides, and the Confederation Handbook for the movie) and novels, both novelizations of the games and new works within the setting.

Web Original

The Whateley Universe is powered by backstory. All but one of the major characters of Team Kimba (and some of the other main characters) had a full novel or novella covering how they got to the Super Hero School Whateley Academy for their freshman year. Since then, we've seen backstory on everyone from the headmistress (who seems to have enough backstory for her own series) and the Chief of Whateley Security to side characters and even some of the villains. Word Of God has revealed that the Canon authors are working from a 400-page 'bible' of backstories and characters and stuff that hasn't even been seen yet in the published material.

Western Animation

Even though the rest of the series has been relatively disowned by the fandom, a single Star Trek The Animated Series episode ("Yesteryear"), which explains Spock's backstory, is embraced. Curious.
- No, what's embraced is how that story would've gone if adult Spock hadn't Time Travelled into it. It just happens that "Yesteryear" is the closest anyone has to that record.
- In fact, because of that single episode, the entire series is officially canon. Fascinating.
In Phineas And Ferb, Dr. Doofenshmirtz has a backstory portion or something similar (That may have happened last week) for why he builds almost everyone of his -inators. Sometimes they're even animated.
K'nuckles has bouts of this in a couple of episodes in The Marvelous Misadventures Of Flapjack. These are always brief, and rarely have anything to do with the plot.
Alvin And The Chipmunks had the first season episode "The Chipmunks Story", showing how Alvin, Simon, and Theodore were discovered by David Seville. The third season followed this up with, appropiately enough, "The Chipette Story", which explored the backstory of the Distaff Counterparts.