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Liz: There's no need to be sarcastic. Dagless: Maybe if everyone who'd ever been close to you had died, you'd be sarcastic, too. Liz: Yes, that makes sense.
"Did you kill your father?
Idolize your sister, were you jealous of your brother?
Were you really abused, were you fakin' all that?
Too tense!"
Overkill, "Birth of Tension"
Stock Backstory for a character. Much like a Mysterious Past, except more tragic and troubled. Don't expect it to be revealed all at once, or sometimes at all. It usually gets revealed in small doses through Flash Back as the story progresses; possibly in a Flashback Nightmare. Often used as a Freudian Excuse for an antisocial character's Jerk Ass tendencies or quiet stoicism.
The root causes are usually:
Usually involves one or more of the following:
- A dead loved one: parents, siblings, spouses, best friends, or a whole Doomed Hometown.
- Physical and sometimes sexual abuse by parents or a lover.
- Being abandoned by one or both parents.
- A criminal past, usually with remorse.
- Being betrayed by a Nakama or a Heterosexual Life Partner.
- Having the Love Interest not just dump them, but get Stuffed In The Fridge.
- Killing any of the above, whether in self defense, recklessly, or through a Sadistic Choice.
- Any of the above, but being experienced during childhood.
Expect to see the above overlap for extra Angst or Wangst.
This can lead to either being an Anti Hero or a Hurting Hero.
Female characters with a Dark And Troubled Past include the Dark Magical Girl and the Broken Bird. Male characters with a Dark And Troubled Past are instant bait for the Estrogen Brigade who have bought him leather pants. Expect all nearby female characters to become afflicted with attraction to his Troubled But Cute appeal, and try to help him heal his heart. Not happening. Or maybe it will?
The step-up of this trope is the Dysfunction Junction, in which the whole cast will have one of these and suffer from it on top of it (and don't expect them to get better).
Examples
Anime and Manga
- The entire main crew of Cowboy Bebop has this to some degree. Spike Spiegel used to be an assassin of the Red Dragon crime syndicate, essentially Space Yakuza, only to fall out with them and his former best friend and fellow assassin Vicious over a girl named Julia, resulting in him faking his death. Jet Black used to be a cop, until his own corrupt partner and best friend set him up and tried to kill him, though he got off with merely losing his left arm and needing a cybernetic replacement instead — this after the love of his life dumped him for, basically, being too boring for her. Faye Valentine actually has a double version of this trope; in her "first life," her entire family were killed and she was forced to be placed in cryogenic suspension when their space shuttle collapsed in outer space. When she woke up, she was a complete amnesiac, all of her records had been lost, and the one man who seemed to care for her "died"... and left her stuck with a debt reaching into the millions. Radical Edward's father was so absent minded that he was barely aware of her existence, so she spent her entire childhood wandering aimlessly into and out of orphanages and possibly over most of the planet. The only one exempt is Ein, the genetically engineered "data dog."
- The first segment of Memories "Magnetic Rose" had Heinz, a space salvage specialist who had some really weird reactions to such harmless things as a falling china doll. The haunted space ship of course uses his trauma over his daughter having died after falling off the roof while wearing a toy spacesuit he gave her to try and convince him to stay... forever.
- Czeslaw Meyer. He lives with his guardian, who "experimented" on him by torturing him. He claimed it was scientific experiments, and really it was just torture. Czes manages to "eat" him, thus ending up with memories of brutally torturing himself. Dark And Troubled Past indeed.
- Neon. Genesis. Evangelion. Need I say more?
- Notable since this trope applies to virtually every character with any significance in the story, not simply the protagonist.
- Guts's childhood from Berserk is singularly horrific. His mother was hanged presumably as he was being born (yeah, we don't get it either), and he was adopted by a mercenary named Gambino, who trained him as a child soldier. During his time in Gambino's band, Guts had to endure some seriously Harmful To Minors stuff of both the horrific violence and the sex varieties — he was even raped at one point in the manga when Gambino sold him to a pederast soldier in his band as a child prostitute. It all came to a head when Gambino, his leg having been blown off by a cannonball and thus making him unfit for combat, got drunk one night and tried to kill Guts because he blamed the kid for the death of his lover from the plague. Guts had to kill Gambino in self defense and then get away from the camp to escape the wrath of the other mercenaries. And that's just peaches compared to the stuff that comes afterwards.
- This seems to be the case with a number of characters in Elfen Lied, most particularly Lucy.
- Every character in Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni starts out seeming normal, but ends up having one of these - even Keiichi.
- Virtually every other character in Naruto fits this description at least partially, including the title character himself. Most notable, however, is Sasuke. Not only does he have the dark past, but he also has a dark present, and in the early episodes every main female genin (except Hinata) is attracted to him in some way.
- Fay, Fay, Fay. Where to begin? None of the other characters in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle had a fun childhood, but Fay's was by far the worst. Though unlike most characters here, his childhood trauma didn't turn him into a crabby, jaded Jerk With A Heart Of Gold (That's Kurogane), he kept all of his bitterness and heart break under a facade of perpetual happiness. Or, he did at first...
- How about every single major character in Fruits Basket?
- Mahou Sensei Negima. Several. Upon learning Negi's, several of the girls were actually driven to tears.
- Kaoru in Ai Yori Aoshi (physical abuse, betrayal, abandonment), to the point of not even remembering his childhood friend when he meets her again.
- Most people in Deadman Wonderland. Nagi, Minatsuki, Yoh, Shiro, Hibana, Genkaku...
- Digimon Adventure 02: Ken Ichijoji. Just... Ken Ichijoji. What started out as The Unfavourite Syndrome developed into a a death in the family. Then he ended up being infected with the Dark Spore which started playing on his huge inferiority complex and guilt over his brother's death which built into him becoming the Digimon Kaiser, at which point he was convinced that the Digital World was makebelieve and he was just expressing his anger in a fictional world, was bluntly shown otherwise by watching his Digimon die right in front of him, and never mind the better part of the hell the rest of the season puts him through while he's trying to make up for his misdeeds.
- Chichiri in Fushigi Yuugi has a Trauma Conga Line in his past. His childhood best friend Hikou betrays him by stealing a kiss from his fiancee, who immediately calls off the engagement in shame. Chichiri goes berserk and attacks Hikou, but as they are fighting, a massive flood sweeps through the village. Chichiri's fiancee and family are killed in the flood, and although Chichiri attempts to save his former best friend's life, Hikou is lost in the flood before they can make amends. Chichiri also lost his eye in this incident, and in fact, it was getting hit by the driftwood that caused him to let go of Hikou's hand.
- How we came this far without a One Piece mention is beyond this troper. Every character that joins the crew (and then some) have a tragic past, as if it's a requirement to jump aboard a ship with Luffy. Most pasts, however, take a usually "boring" subject and draw them out into originality. A good example is Sanji; everyone knows being stranded on an island sucks, but this is hardly an island: it's a mushroom rock that's too far above sea water to fish and incapable of planting anything... because it's a ROCK. Not to mention he realizes that the only other person on this island has a big ol' bag of, what he thinks is, food, much bigger than the one he gave to Sanji. However, it turns out that other guy just had a bunch of money and absolutely NO food, and that instead of keeping any for himself, gave all the food he recovered to Sanji and instead broke off and ate his own leg to survive. And on top of all that, the food that Sanji got was bareley enought that it should've lasted 20 days (though it lasted 25 days). It took eight-five days for a ship to find them. One can only imagine how hellish the last 60 days (two months) must have been. No wonder Sanji considers wasting food to be a horrible offense.
- Another good example is Zoro's past, following the otherwise generic "my best friend/rival died" past but adding in the mix that his friend didn't die honorably; she died falling down the stairs. No epic sword fight, no sacrifice, she was just tired and slipped down some stairs.
- One without a twist, but still absolutely horrible. The Hancock sisters. Slavery is never a pretty story.
- In Bleach, two of the female leads have Break The Cutie pasts. Rukia blames herself for the death of her beloved mentor Kaien. Meanwhile, not only did Orihime have Abusive Parents, but her brother Sora died in a car accident. Early in the story, Sora unwillingly comes back as a Hollow, and finally commits suicide so he can move on to the Soul Society as a spirit.
- Let's not forget that Sora die the one day he and Orihime had a fight, and the same day, the only day, that she didn't wish him a good day.
- And of course, we can't forget Ichigo who saw his mother get killed and eaten by a Hollow when he was a kid.
- Since most of the cast in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha aren't technically human, most of them have these kinds of pasts before someone finally took them in and raised them as people. To give some examples, the Wolkenritter spent most of their existance being treated as little more than tools, Erio and Agito spent years in illegal labs being caged and experimented on like animals, and Ixpellia spent her long life being forced to fight in pointless wars that seem to never end.
- Quite a few people in Black Lagoon. Revy is the main poster child since she's a main character, but several of the supporting cast have one as well. For the most part, they're rather emotionally stable about it, though. For the most part. Don't ask us about Hänsel and Gretel, though.
- The backstory of Kagura from Ga-Rei involves her being forced to kill her own older sister. In the beginning, it doesn't bother her too much, but later on it comes back to hit her hard.
- Lelouch, Suzaku and Nunnally of Code Geass. I rest my case.
- Blue (Green in the English version) and Silver from Pokemon Special.
- Ciel from Kuroshitsuji was a happy, loving, carefree child before his tenth birthday. Then his parents are murdered, the mansion set on fire, and he's kidnapped. He's locked in a cage with other children his age and eventually was to be a child sacrifice until he accidentally called upon a demon in his desperation to live. His past is still being pieced together so more details will probably surface. No wonder he's a bitter, driven 13-year-old.
- The children in Noah's Circus had a pretty bad past, too. Too bad the man who helped them turned into a crazy Stalker With A Crush and with some psycho doctor killed children so their bones could be used in the making of prosthetics.
- Mist and Euphemia from Knights. The former is a knight of African heritage (in Medieval Europe) whose mother was burned at the stake by his father, who is also trying to kill him. The latter was accused of witchery and was raped in prison.
Comics
- The X Men's Wolverine, who also had a Mysterious Past and thanks to his amnesia had it remain that way for a looong time. Further complicated by implanted memories; as if forgotten trauma wasn't bad enough, how about a helping of trauma that didn't actually happen? Not to mention the pain of wondering if his few happy memories were real or not.
- Batman has probably the quintessential Dark And Troubled Past which was his parents getting murdered by an unknown mugger.
- And Spider-Man has his tying in with his greatest failure, with Peter Parker refusing to stop a bad guy who would then go on to kill his beloved Uncle Ben.
- Incredible Hulk: Bruce Banner and his mother were regularly abused by his father, Brian. Brian eventually killed his wife, in front of Bruce.
- V from V For Vendetta was tortured and experimented on in a concentration camp, transforming him into an embodiment of anarchism.
- Ah, Thug-Boy from 'Empowered''. The general criminality is how he met the love of his life, and she knows the basic outline of the whole 'Witless Minion' scam (although the detail about thier last employer/victim still searching for the only survivor has apparently been glossed over). But then there is San Antonio. Cape-killing terrorist anyone?
Fan Fiction
- This troper always Parodies this with his Original Characters. One time when a Character took off his shirt and was covered in scars, all the characters asked him if he did have one. His response? "(Sarcasm Mode) Yes.. My father was a drinker...and a fiend...One night he took a broken bottle to me and left all these scars, then He proceeded to pimp out my still bleeding form to some Drunken sailors who used me for three days. Then when I dragged my self home by my tongue he killed me and dances on my grave...... I just scar easily dumbass."
Film
- The eponymous Max Payne had one, his family was killed in a mysterious robbery. Made extra saccharine thanks to the Flash Backs being in a warm ember tone compared to the rest of the film's drab winter blues and grays.
- To be even more specific, in the game the movie is based upon, his family got killed by V-head junkies as part of an attempt to silence Max's wife for knowing too much about Project Valhalla. Tragically, Max's wife didn't have a clue what the memo meant and wanted to talk to Max about it, but he didn't listen to her because he had to go to work for the day.
- Gabriel in Van Helsing also has Wolverine Amnesia, it's implied by Dracula they both share "a history" together, and even hints at Gabriel being an immortal "tripped" angel or the like, but nothing concrete ever comes of it. Sequel Hook?
- Of course, this is nothing like the Van Helsing in the book, who is a middle-aged, slightly eccentric Dutchman.
- O-Ren Ishii from Kill Bill is a female example, losing both of her parents to vicious Yakuza gangsters at the age of seven and then getting her revenge just four years later.
- The main character of Hoosiers, Norman Dale, moves to the small town of Hickory, Indiana to take one last shot at redemption as a basketball coach after previously ruining his coaching career many years earlier when he'd lost his temper and punched one of his own players.
- Subverted in The Dark Knight, where the Joker likes telling stories about his Dark And Troubled Past to explain his scars....but every story is different.
- This is a tribute to Alan Moore's 'The Killing Joke' wherein The Joker has the following line; "Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another...if I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!"
- The first five minutes of The Descent kill off the main character's husband and young daughter, leaving her traumatized and sometimes hallucinating. A big part of what fuels her trip into Ax Crazy, particularly if the monsters don't really exist.
- The first five minutes of the Prom Night remake feature the protagonist coming home to find her father and brother dead, and watch her mother get killed, all because the killer was looking for her. For her character, this doesn't really come into play much for the rest of the movie, even when the killer comes back.
- Princess Leia. She remembers her mother's death (despite being only a baby at the time), saw her adoptive homeworld destroyed as a You Said You Would Let Them Go, has seen one son KIA, and the other do a Face Heel Turn — his twin sister was forced to kill him.
Literature
- Severus Snape from the Harry Potter franchise, who fell to The Dark Side at school and then devoted the rest of his life to Dumbledore's cause.
- Also Sirius Black, who had (let's count!): 1) dead best friend, 2) dead brother, 3) likely some level of parental abuse (though the specifics are undisclosed), 4) abandoned (disowned) by parents, 5) 13 years in prison (though undeserved), 6) being betrayed by Nakama Peter Pettigrew!
- And Dumbledore, who had 1) a literal dead little sister, 2) parental death/abandonment via prison, 3) sibling abandonment after death of sister, 4) criminal history with remorse involving planning the enslavement of all muggles, 5) betrayed by Nakama Gellert Grindelwald, who was also the love interest, 6) also, his fault on some level that sister died, and had to be the one to defeat Grindelwald and condemn him to a life in prison. Nom nom.
- A Series Of Unfortunate Events has these, with Count Olaf, and the entire series could be said to be the dark and troubled past of Violet, Klaus and Sunny.
- Sandor Clegane killed an innocent peasant boy and laughed about it in A Song Of Ice And Fire however the fandom forgave him as soon as he confided that his older brother had burnt his face as child.
- Most of the vampires from Twilight seem have dark and troubled last minutes of their human lives, the terrific pain of the transformative venom probably doesn't help matters.
- Vin from Mistborn. Born the daughter of a skaa (peasant) woman and an Imperial nobleman (a death sentence from the get go), her earliest memory is of her insane mother killing her little sister and performing Hemalurgy to transfer some of her soul to Vin, before being rescued by her older half-brother. Said half-brother genuinely cares about Vin, but he's a cynical, abusive Jerkass who hammers into her head the idea that she can't trust anyone because everybody is selfish and manipulative. They spend the next several years working as petty thieves on the lowest rung of society, until the half-brother runs out on her though it turns out he was actually captured and executed, leaving Vin without a protecter in a den of scum. Of course from there she gets recruited by La Resistance, finds out that she's an Extraordinarily Empowered Girl, and takes a level in badass, but still. Is it any wonder the poor girl spends most of the trilogy wrestling with crippling paranoia?
- Francis Crawford of Lymond in Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles. He's got almost everything: rejection by his father, didn't fit in as a child, betrayed by his early—perhaps first—lover, framed as a traitor, physical and perhaps sexual abuse as a galley prisoner, self-hatred because he blames himself for his sister's death, and pretty much everyone he cares about dies as a result of knowing him.
- Séraphine Francq (Fiancée du Vent): lost her mother at a young age, her father died from the experiment that gave her her powers, was gang-raped by schoolmates and consequently beat them up so hard that one of them is stuck in a wheelchair for life, giving her remorse...
Live Action TV
- Ned from Pushing Daisies was abandoned by his father, accidentally killed both his mother and the father of his childhood sweetheart, and spent most of his childhood in a Boarding School Of Horrors. This, along with being given the sometimes unfortunate gift of bringing people Back From The Dead with a touch, led him to grow into a nervous and shy adult with some trust issues.
- And, upon trying to solve his first murder case (which was an accident) to make his father love him more, he is found with the man's body and thrown in jail. When he was 10 years old. Is there such a thing as a cosmic Moral Event Horizon?
- Elle Bishop of Heroes - originally introduced as a demented vixen (everyone's favourite trope) but then revealed to be ridden with several issues including being experimented upon as a child, locked up and pumped full of drugs, eventually leading to her being diagnosed as a sociopath and the subsequent use as an "Executioner" by her own father.
- Marcus Cole of Babylon5, in the episode in which he was introduced, says he "doesn't believe in miracles". We later learn that he witnessed everyone he cared about, including his Ranger brother, being killed in a Shadow attack on his home colony. He can't shake the survivor's guilt.
- The character of Stephen Colbert is prone to Suspiciously Specific Denial of certain bad things that definitely didn't happen to him as a child. From his book I Am America (And So Can You!):
"It doesn't matter how my parents raised me, because I loved my parents. Sure, they could be a little 'strict', but I often think back fondly on the memories I haven't repressed. The truth is, I wouldn't be the man I am today if it wasn't for the way my parents raised me."
- Also a case of Truth In Television, since the real Colbert's father & two of his older brothers were killed in a plane crash when he was 10.
- Almost everyone on House qualifies.
- Dr. House himself figured out at age 13 that his "father" wasn't actually his biological father, and he was therefore the result of his mother's infidelity. The father who raised him was a strict military man who moved them all over the world and was fond of punishing his rebellious son with ice baths and other forms of corporal punishment.
- Also, there's the whole "losing part of my leg against my will thanks to a decision by Stacy, leaving me with chronic pain and a limp" thing.
- Dr. Chase's father abandoned the family, leaving Chase to care for his alcoholic mother, who eventually drank herself to death.
- Dr. Cameron married a man she knew was dying of cancer when she was 21. Since she knew he was terminal when she married him, it's implied that her damage goes back even farther than this situation.
- Dr. Taub is revealed to have cheated on his wife, and has a suicide attempt in his past.
- Even Dr. Kutner, who initially seems like the most happy and easygoing character on the show, later reveals that when he was six years old he witnessed the murder of his parents by an armed robber. He is sufficiently dark and troubled that he eventually kills himself.
- Dr. Foreman was arrested during his teenage years, and has a brother currently in jail.
- Dr. Hadley (Thirteen) saw her mother die a painful death froem Huntington's disease, which she herself has.
- Dr. Wilson has a homeless and a schizophrenic brother, for whose fate he blames himself. He alse had three divorces.
- Quite a few characters on NCIS - Gibbs with his dead daughter and wife (You Should Know This Already), Tony with his hints of parental abuse, and Ziva with all her siblings dying violently ( one by her own hand) and her father basically a sociopath who raised her to kill people. Even Ducky gets into the act in some episodes. The late Director Shepard also had a screwed-up childhood. Basically the only ones with possible good pasts are cheerful Perky Goth Abby and Hollywood Nerd McGee.
- Every character ever on Lost.
- Walter Bishop from Fringe crossed several ethical boundaries in the name of Science before he was admitted St. Claire's Psychiatric Institution, including experimenting on children.
- Angel was the most savage vampire to walk the Earth before being cursed with a soul. This explains his desire to do good and atone for his deeds.
- On Bones:
- The titular character was was abandoned by her parents at the age of 15, taken away from her older brother and placed in foster care. She finds out later that her parents were bank robbers and "Temperance Brennan" isn't her actual birth name, and that her father is still alive (and an accused murderer).
- FBI Agent Seeley Booth was the child of an abusive, alcoholic father. He almost committed suicide as a teen.
- Dr. Lance Sweets, the young psychologist, was adopted at the age of six by a loving elderly couple after he had been abused as a young child (he has scars from whips on his shoulders). His adoptive parents died shortly before he came to work with Booth and Brennan.
Music
- The Patient from The Black Parade is implied to have had a violent past, in which he committed many misdeeds.
- Pink from Pink Floyd's The Wall. His father died in the war, his mother is over-protective, he was tortured by sadistic teachers... no wonder that when his marriage collapsed he isolated himself from the rest of the world and became a fascist dictator in his own imaginary world...
- Luca Turilli uses this trope whenever he can.
Lord Of The Winter Snow: Back again to my tragic past
Demonheart: Shocked again she opened the gates / of her tragic past and bloody images / came back to her mind
Dargor; Shadowlord of the Black Mountain: For his tragic past he disowned the sunlight
Legend of Steel: Break the chains of the past forever
Black Dragon: Had to fight the reputation of his bloody past
Dawn of Victory: Shades of a past not so far to forget... / the rise of the demons from their bloody Hell!
- Bloody Hell! He couldn't break the chains of this reputation.
Theatre
Video Games
- The King Of Fighters series crops up one or two fighters with these kinds of pasts, but extra points go to Rock Howard, who has this through virtually no fault of his own. He's the son of the notoriously death-retardant Geese Howard, who barely took any interest in the boy's well being. Rock was rendered an orphan by one of Geese's nemeses, Terry Bogart (who tried to keep him from falling to his death, only for Geese to yank his hand out of Terry's grip and Go Out With A Smile as he fell), who took it upon himself to raise and train Rock himself...possibly out of penance. Rock is surprisingly well-adjusted, but it constantly at war with himself internally given he has "evil blood".
- The Tales Series practically needs its own folder for this trope: heroes, villains, teammates of questionable morality, and the NPC who shows up for five minutes and is never seen again.
- In Silent Hill, a dark and troubled past guarantees you a season ticket to the titular town.
Web Animation
- All four main characters in Broken Saints, despite coming from vastly different backgrounds, all have less than pleasant life stories:
- Shandala was orphaned at infancy and although her life among the Fijian Islanders is peaceful, when she was a young girl, her adopted mother was horrifically mutilated and murdered by white men under the direction of—and possibly including—her biological father.
- Oran's father was killed during a bombing assault on Bahgdad during the first Gulf War.
- Kamimura was taken from his home at a very young age to become a monk, leaving his family behind to be killed in the bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki in World War II.
- Raimi has arguably the most mundane, but no less heartbreaking. After his father left, his mother died from what is implied to be cancer.
Web Comics
- In No Rest For The Wicked, Clare refuses even to explain
 why she no longer has her baby with her.
- Lexx's past in Alien Dice takes this up to eleven. Lexx's father died young of an illness and his mother, a fighter for the space station they lived on, was killed defending their home. He's then raised in the orphanage from hell where he was forcibly turned into a mon-like thing (the titular Dice). He attempted suicide several times, but failed, and has faced numerous other tragedies, including rape, slavery (or, the threat of it, actually), and being forced to kill his fellow Dice, Riane, who then decides to haunt his mind. That's only hitting the highlights. Lexx is better at remembering happy moments than he is at remembering truly tragic ones, though nightmares say otherwise.
- Protagonists in El Goonish Shive hover between this and Mysterious Past.
- Many of the characters from Shape Quest, such as Lance, whose entire village was burned to the ground.
- Galatea in The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob, who spent her one-month childhood being treated literally as a lab animal in a pen. She didn't take it well.
Western Animation
- Prince Zuko of Avatar The Last Airbender has parental issues. His past, revealed via Whole Episode Flashbacks, involves a Missing Mom, being The Un Favourite, and an abusive father. Needless to say, he's the Estrogen Brigade Bait of the series.
- On a lesser scale, Katara and Sokka's peaceful and happy life was destroyed when the Fire Nation raided their village, killed their mother and later led their father to go away to fight in the war. They may not show the effects as much as Zuko does, but it catches up to them later on (Sokka risks his ass breaking into a Fire Nation prison, Katara has her dark night of the soul tracking down her mother's killer). Aang also has a variant of this; while he had a happy childhood with the Air Nomads he made the fatal mistake of freaking out and running away from his responsibilities, being frozen in ice for a century, and finally paying dearly for it when he discovers the corpse of his beloved mentor.
- Dark and Troubled Past? Oooh that means Kevin E. Levin from Ben 10 and Ben 10: Alien Force! Let's see he was 1)was probably abandoned as a young child because of his power 2)Became a criminal probably at first just to survive then because he got addicted to the thrill of it 3)Became a literal monster by the age of eleven and 4) got sent to a hellish prison dimension, thus becoming a felon.
Real Life
- Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man", never told Treves a single detail about his family, even that his mother was dead, because the whole family situation was a Dark And Troubled Mess. Dead mother, a classic case of Survivor Guilt over his dead four-year-old brother, crippled sister, abusive father, Wicked Stepmother, and step-siblings who were, as he put it, "more handsome". This may actually have been the source of the misnomer "John" — His father was also named Joseph, and he may have wanted to separate himself as far from that as he could, possibly out of paranoia of having to go back home.
- All this merely cements his status as the biggest woobie in the history of ever. Sniff.
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