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"Mind your tongue, boy! Until our journey is over, one of us must remain focused. Do not mistake my silence for lack of grief! Mourn how you wish... leave me to my own."
Kratos after his son Atreus accuses him of not caring about his late wife, God of War (PS4)

There are several variant forms of Angst. There is Wangst, the angst of whiners. There is Angst? What Angst?, which is angst that is barely felt by heroes. Then there is Mangst, the angst of stoics.

A man who feels Mangst is the kind of guy who carries around a picture of the wife and child, both of whom were killed by the villain. Every once in a while he picks up that picture..... when no one is looking... and stares at it for a couple of hours. He never talks to other people about his private pain because several things keep him closed up about it. First, he's not the kind of guy to get all weepy (unless you count the occasional bout of Manly Tears). Second, he's not the kind of person who loads his problems on other people.

Mangst usually involves a man trying to fix his problem, right the wrong, prevent his tragedy from occurring to someone else, seek revenge, etc. If he's not doing any of those things, it's because something's holding him back. He may have an inner monologue, during which the source of his Mangst gets a regular mention. However, to mitigate potential Angst Dissonance, the character's monologue often is deceptively calm or metaphorical.

One of the things that turns basic Angst into Mangst is the source of the character's pain. When That One Case involved someone dying (especially if it was an innocent kid), the hero will most likely end up Mangsting. Having one's wife or girlfriend horribly killed is the most common cause of Mangst. Guilt over some past misdeed, or from failing to stop someone else's past misdeed, can also be a cause.

You don't see many women Mangsting, though it does happen, as many female mangsters are more likely to be Broken Birds who ultimately break down crying and need to be comforted before all is said and done. Although, with more modern depictions, women are just as likely as men to suffer horrible tragedies, yet have the fortitude (or unhealthy coping mechanisms) to bear their burdens in silence.

Compare Manly Tears, which a Mangster occasionally engages in, but only in private. Often accompanied by Past Experience Nightmares or Drowning My Sorrows. Very often the fuel which powers a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Mangst is generally the cause of a Mook Horror Show. Often combined with Best Served Cold — though just as often it's combined with Best Served Steaming Hot With Lots Of Screaming.

Often derogatively referred to as "man pain" outside of this wiki, because many examples of Mangst, primarily those which use Stuffed in the Fridge as a motivation, veer into Angst Dissonance territory for female viewers.

Not to be understood as a Tropemanteau of "Manga and Angst"; the end result of that would be something like "Mangangst".


Examples

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Fullmetal Alchemist is a prime example in the manga and second anime.
  • In Inuyasha, the title character goes experiences this. As a half-demon he has had to bear the prejudices of both humans and demons his entire life.
  • Code Geass: Lelouch, many times, but most obviously over the whole 'massacre princess' incident.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: Variably in both the anime and manga. Yami Yugi has the habit of not openly speaking about his increasing curiosity/nerves about his lost past, to the point of only telling Yugi that he wants to fight for his memories when first discovering he was a Pharaoh in a previous life, for fear of hurting Yugi, who depends on him.
  • Naruto, being a series about ninjas with plenty of Angst, is naturally ridden with this.
    • Naruto himself engaged in this for approximately one arc of the plot (Pain Invasion). Then he immediately went right back into Wangst, but then got out of the overall angst phase. For now...
    • Kakashi is a better example. He doesn't usually talk about it, but his family, all of his original team and many of his close friends are dead. He makes sure to spend time every day remembering them (usually while standing in front of the monument to fallen heroes). However, once his angst is dealt with for the day, he returns to being his snarky cheerful self (albeit an hour or two late).
  • Guts from Berserk never really opens up about his problems. He was taken in by a woman that died early in his childhood, was raised by an emotionally distant and abusive adoptive father that sold him to a pedophile for three silver coins, whom he eventually killed in self-defense and had to leave his home. While he gets better after joining the Band of Hawks and finding his place, The Eclipse occurs and has him witness the brutal massacre of all of his comrades and his lover getting raped by whom he assumed to be his best friend. When he ends up surrounded by a new set of True Companions, none of them ever learn the true depths of his problems and trauma. And even Farnese and Silke only know vague ideas because they saw a representation of The Eclipse in Casca's dream world.
  • Shiki from Tsukihime does this in Akiha's route, over Sacchin's death by Mercy Kill, a Tear Jerker in and of itself.
  • Conrad from Kyo Kara Maoh! has lots of Mangst concerning what happened to Julia and the events of the war 20 years ago.
  • Shizuo Heiwajima from Durarara!! is a very broken man. Nonetheless, any sort of angsting he does over it is restricted to occasional quiet chats he has with Celty.
  • Bleach is full of this, to the point that it's harder to find a character that doesn't have some kind of Mangst going on.
  • Zoro from One Piece carries his dead friend's sword with him always and rarely, perhaps never, talks about it with the rest of the Straw Hats.
  • Wolf's Rain: What do The Alcoholic with a vendetta against wolves, the gangster wolf Anti-Hero, The Chosen One, and the cynical leader of the pack who works the train-yard have in common? They're sure less likely to break down in front of Cheza than Darcia or Toboe...
  • Vash The Stampede of Trigun could qualify, though he acts like The Pollyanna to help cover it up.
  • Joe Asakura of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman spends the first series with serious hate for Galactor. When he was a child, his parents were murdered by a Galactor assassin — who then tried to kill him.
  • Mangst over the death of his fiance is Stig Bernard's motivation in Genesis Climber MOSPEADA. He carries a holo-locket that she gave him, and often looks at it meaningfully before going into battle. He has a monologue or two, too.
  • Yoshino from Blast of Tempest. His girlfriend Aika died a year before the plot begins, but because he was in a Secret Relationship with her, he maintains a calm and cool exterior regarding her death. He is so good at keeping this a secret that even though all the other characters know he has a girlfriend and that Aika had a boyfriend, he has managed to convince everyone that said girlfriend/boyfriend are other people. But whenever he is alone, Yoshino often looks sadly at pictures of Aika on his cell phone or old text messages she sent him before her death. Much later in the series, when Hakaze admits she's in love with him, he finally lets her in on the identity of his girlfriend. Hakaze is astonished that he could be so emotionless regarding her death, which leads to a massive emotional breakdown for Yoshino when he tries to maintain his facade but quickly breaks and ends up crying in Hakaze's arms while relating to her how he nearly went catatonic upon learning of Aika's death and his doubt that he will ever be happy in a world without her.
  • Rurouni Kenshin:

    Comic Books 
  • Batman. There is a reason his dead parents get mentioned on average every second issue.
    • Other heroes tend to either roll their eyes at this or take it way too seriously. The former think his coping mechanism is whacked and he must be dangerously close to insanity because of it, while the latter has gone through much worse (like the Martian Manhunter, whose planet was decimated and family killed, and unlike Superman, actually remembers them) yet still think that Batman's experience was so horrible that it excuses Jerkass behavior that wouldn't be tolerated from anyone else.
      • Perhaps a bit of Fridge Brilliance on the Manhunter's part, if he's aware of the fact that Batman has a total recall (which he very well could, being psychic). In that case, it's not what happened to Batman, but the fact that because he has an eidetic memory, the pain of his parents' deaths has never and will never fade.
  • The Punisher, much like Batman, is defined by this, although the deaths of his wife and kids sometimes are overshadowed by the sheer brutality he brings upon mobsters, villains, and lowlifes in general. Some characters show concern that he will become an example of He Who Fights Monsters because he's that far gone into his campaign of revenge.
    • In the MAX universe, he's become a Death Seeker: he's trying to punish himself over his last words to his wife being that he wanted a divorce by fighting an unwinnable war (he gets mighty pissed off when he's resuscitated by a couple of criminal yuppies who wanted to use him as their personal attack dog). Not that anyone else would know this in-universe, because he never says so (and the only one to figure it out was Bullseye).
  • Wolverine's Adamantium skeleton and healing factor are the result of horrific experimentation and were given to him by Weapon X to make him into a killing machine. His days as their assassin, as well as the traumatic experiences he had before then are muddled by fake memories that contribute to his status as an Amnesiac Hero and The Atoner. And then there are all the love interests who've been killed off over the years. Despite (or because) of this, he's still the gruff, Canadian badass we all know and love.

    Fan Works 
  • Harry indulges in this a couple of times towards the end of the first book, after the deaths of Luna Lovegood and temporarily, himself initially cause him to break down, then his father being put into a coma and his uncle being dismembered (but still alive) finally makes him shut down his emotions, leaving a cold, efficient, and merciless Broken Ace. It then reappears at points in the sequel after Forever Red. However, it is made clear that a) it's only a thin shell for the emotional turmoil beneath, b) it's extremely unhealthy and makes him veer far too close to He Who Fights Monsters territory, c) his friends and family won't put up with it, getting him therapy (and in Carol's case in the sequel, having a two-way psychic connection that means that he can't totally shut himself off from her, and a willingness to comfort him/give him a kick up the arse, situation depending).
  • Doing It Right This Time: Gendo apparently has a bit of a penchant for, as he himself puts it, sequestering himself in his office for brooding and manly angst purposes. He also attempts to use this as an excuse to sequester himself in his office out of embarrassment after getting drunk and making a fool of himself in public, not that Fuyutsuki is remotely fooled.
  • The Dragon and the Butterfly: Zig-zagged with Stoick after Hiccup (who's been labeled a traitor for befriending a dragon) leaves Berk on Toothless. He goes through the Five Stages of Grief, but he never actually cries or talks about how he feels on the situation. Mostly he does his duties to the best of his ability or screams in Angrish should anyone bring up his son. The only time that he actually breaks down and opens up about his pain is when he talks to Gobber.

    Film — Animation 
  • Epic (2013): Ronin's facial expressions show that he's visibly upset over Tara's death well, but he takes it in stride.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The Arnold Schwarzenegger film Collateral Damage, where Ahnold's dead wife and son are the motivation for his Roaring Rampage of Revenge. The first ten minutes or so are him wallowing in angst (while occasionally beating things up); the rest of the movie is him beating things up (while occasionally wallowing in angst).
  • You'd think someone as tough as Conan the Barbarian (1982) would suffer from no Angst at all, but you'd be wrong. His comrade states that he cries for Conan since Conan cannot cry.
  • The Covenant (2023): Ahmed drags the half-dead, practically unconscious John on a sled for a few days, smuggles him in a truck, has two (very) close encounters with Taliban, then pushes him in a wagon for days on end through a burning village and over brutal mountain terrain. Obviously struggling with the weight, he hits a pothole that he can't quite get the wheels through. Letting the wagon down, he sits on the edge of the path looking out over the wilderness and sniffles back tears for several minutes. Then he goes back to pushing the wagon.
  • Col. Mortimer from For a Few Dollars More is made of this trope so much that it's not until the Dénouement that Manco figures out that he has any Mangst at all.
  • Ross Rhea from Goon (2011). After a teammate takes a vicious elbow to the face, Rhea smacks the offender in the head with his stick and is suspended and sent down to the minors. He winds up at St. Johns where he grew up and got his start playing hockey. When on TV, he is glad to be back home, but throughout the movie is shown sitting alone night after night in an all-hours dirty spoon by himself with no friends, no fans, constantly keeping tabs on an up-and-coming player who has been labeled by the sports media as the "next great enforcer." Turned Up to Eleven when he faces the younger version of himself when his normal level of thuggery on the ice turns brutal as he doesn't want to be remembered as going down as a "Nancy-Boy Fuck."
  • The character of Drax the Destroyer from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is portrayed as a Proud Warrior Race guy waging a Roaring Rampage of Revenge on Thanos for the murder of his family. However, in one scene he speaks about when his wife and daughter were alive, and stares thoughtfully into the distance. When the psychically empathic character Mantis places her hand on his shoulder, she bursts into tears.
  • Deconstructed in Manchester by the Sea, about a man whose Mangst has rendered him totally emotionally closed off and unable to get over the tragedies in his past.
  • Leonard Shelby from Memento. The guy's in a pretty shitty situation (his wife violently raped and killed in front of him, literally not being able to remember anything that just happened a few minutes after the fact), but is so revenge-minded that it comes off more badass than woobie.
  • MonsterVerse:
    • Dr. Serizawa is subtle about it, but he has his moments in Godzilla (2014) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). In the first movie, there's his feelings about the Hiroshima bombing in relation to the military's plan to try using nukes against the Kaiju. In the second film, he's genuinely upset when Dr. Graham is murdered by Ghidorah in front of him and he's afterwards shown solemnly mourning her aboard the Argo.
    • Ford Brody in the 2014 movie for the most part appears to have moved on from his mother's death and is quite stoic, but it's still implied that he's not wholly over it. It's hinted that Joe has a point when he accuses Ford of running away from his mom's death all this time, and the novelization supports the film's hints that Ford became an EOD due to his mom's death in a nuclear meltdown. The novel also reveals that Ford is worried for the remainder of the story following his father's death that he'll never see Elle and Sam alive again.
  • Parodied in The Naked Gun where after defeating the worst people on earth in the intro, Frank gives a speech to a crowd he thinks were waiting for him at the airport cause his wife just left him.
    "Don't you know how much a man can hurt on the inside?"
  • Rambo: First Blood. John Rambo is a tough-as-nails former Green Beret haunted by the deaths of his brothers-in-arms and his torture at the hands of the Vietcong, and how he was treated when he returned home. He learns that the one other surviving squad mate died of cancer recently and he is stricken with grief. He does not show his feelings, apart from a speech over radio to his old Colonel when the National Guard are tracking him through the woods, and a final speech at the end of the film where he completely breaks down into anguished tears.
  • Star Gate brings us Colonel Jack O'Neil, who has become secluded with grief over the death of his son (the result of his son finding and playing with O'Neil's pistol.) As it happens, the Air Force recruits him for the mission because of this, giving him the secret objective of staying behind to set off a nuke if Abydos turns out to be a threat to Earth.
  • Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: Sweeney Todd. Otherwise known as the God of this trope and its surrounding territories. In the Tim Burton version he literally has pictures of Lucy and baby Johanna in his attic, and we can safely assume he takes them out and mangsts the hell out of them whenever nobody's looking. In fact, the only time he isn't Mangst personified is when he's killing people, or thinking about killing them.

    Literature 
  • The Belgariad:
    • Belgarath has a reputation for complete and utter implacability, to the point where it's usually assumed that he's utterly indifferent to human feelings - and certainly immune to them in his own right. This is a reputation he likes to exploit, and he's a master actor, so the facade rarely cracks (and when it does, he asks whoever notices to keep it quiet for the sake of his rep). It takes a while for even his rather perceptive relatives, Garion and Polgara, to figure out that he does care and is, in fact, closer to an All-Loving Hero (if a frequently irascible one). In Garion's case, it was a steady revelation over time. In Polgara's, it was when she took her mother's preferred form of a snowy owl and he broke down in front of her, completely shattering her perception of him as a borderline sociopath. Oh, and that grief for his dead wife? It hasn't faded. Not in the least bit. Even though she died over three thousand years ago.
    • Polgara has elements of this herself, to the point where Garion, in a fit of anger, accuses her of being so old that she's lost the ability to feel like a human. As it happens, everyone can see that he's wrong (as does he, once his temper simmers down), but she usually locks down her grief over her twin sister's death (also roughly three thousand years ago), and most other signs of pain, to the point where only those who know her over a long period realise that she's got settings other than 'unruffled calm', 'regal/imperious', and 'Tranquil Fury' (verging on Unstoppable Rage when she's really angry).
  • The readers know that Harry Dresden from The Dresden Files carries around a lot of angst, but he rarely expresses it outside his inner monologue, only admitting it to a few very trusted friends. This is suggested to have a lot to do with the brutal, but effective, methods of emotional control his first master, Justin Du Morne, taught him, which he notes when seeing his former fellow apprentice (and first love) Elaine get herself under control.
  • Older Than Dirt: In The Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero demigod king Gilgamesh has a fight with the Beast Man Enkidu and then after the dust settles the two become inseparable brothers, travelling the land and slaying monsters together for fun and glory like Dungeons & Dragons players. After they slight the gods with their arrogance, Enkidu falls ill and dies. Gilgamesh is utterly crushed - he refuses to let Enkidu's body be buried for seven days hoping that the weight of his grief might bring Enkidu back to life, and only when the body is visibly rotting does he allow the burial, and then he wanders off into the steppe alone to cry for his friend, leaving his kingdom behind.
  • Neville Longbottom from Harry Potter. He's usually down on himself for his lack of skill or talent with magic, and shy and quiet, but otherwise quite friendly and sympathetic to the pain of others. Harry is horrified to learn that while his own parents died, Neville's suffered a Fate Worse than Death for the exact same reason. Reading between the lines, Neville has basically suffered unintentional emotional abuse at the hands of his grandmother all his life, constantly being compared to his father, on top of being one of the biggest victims of bullying in the school, and it is established in the series that emotions affect magic, and a lack of confidence can be crippling. At no point during the series does anyone learn this from Neville himself.
  • Seregil in the Nightrunner series has a massive case of this. He basically feels guilty about, well, pretty much everything and studiously resists the efforts of those closest to him to get him to talk about any of it. He just undertakes a variety of efforts to correct any harm he has caused (including some instances that were not his fault). But often he needs to be manhandled by his family, friends, and partner when he gets too melancholy and/or does something stupid. Seregil later has a Not So Stoic moment when his confidants in the Cockerel get killed and Alec gets abducted. He basically just waits until his best friend arrives a few hours later to have a good, hard, completely unashamed crying fit on the man's shoulder to release the shock, if not the guilt. And he has no problem crying in front of Alec either, in the end of the second book, when his months-long depressionnote  finally eases enough to let him feel some of his grief over Nysander's death. Though he had been trying to run away and deal with it all alone just earlier that day.
  • Eddard Stark from A Song of Ice and Fire is a loving father and husband, a firm and just ruler, a decent warrior, and an honest and down-to-earth advisor to his friend King Robert. However, chapters from his point of view show that he is forever plagued with grief over the loss of his father, brother, and most of all his sister Lyanna in the civil war some fifteen years ago. He often recalls a promise he made at her deathbed, but the books have yet to reveal what that promise was. Being a stoic, he never shows any of his inner torment to others.
  • Odo in Star Trek: The Fall. He was always a stoic character, given to keeping his identity issues bottled up and rarely showing his feelings to others, but after the only person who really, truly matters to him is left missing-presumed-dead, and he no longer believes his home nation would benefit more from his direct manipulation than his absence, he spends his time mangsting away.

    Live-Action TV 
  • A female (sorta) example of this is Cameron, who shows the closest thing to emotionless angst over the various problems she has, including a private but deep-down fear that she will "go bad" again and try to kill John. In fact, this fear and the conflict in her programming is a defining element of her character. It is mostly internalized and she doesn't talk about it, except very occasionally when she contemplates issues about suicide, or when she asks Sarah if she's like a bomb waiting to go off.
  • Buffy:
    • Giles tends to do this quite a bit. Notably, he did this when Joyce Summers died. He sat in his house, drinking scotch and listening to Tales of Brave Ulysses, a song that both he and Joyce had enjoyed.
    • Buffy pulls this in season five, and it's part of Riley's own angst. When her mom is sick, she waits until she's alone to cry about it, and turns the music up real loud, to boot.
    • Faith in season 4 of Angel: after being defeated by Angelus, and just narrowly escaping, she cries while taking a shower of mangst and takes her frustrations out of the tiles.
  • The Doctor, especially in the new series. They've lost their home and family, as well as many companions. They rarely talk about them and never cries about it, but whenever they do, they're very clearly hurting from the loss.
    • Well, the Ninth Doctor does shed a silent tear about it when a stranger tries to express her condolences in the second episode, but it's very blink-and-you-miss-it. The Ninth Doctor. in general, is noticeably more raw and Not So Stoic compared to the other New Who Doctors, though it mainly shows in him getting overly defensive, loudly angry, or getting a complete Heroic BSoD when new grief is piled on top of what he already carries.
  • The Mentalist: Patrick Jane suffered through intense tragedy about which he generally will not speak, is revenge-seeking, and a single bout of Manly Tears - all wrapped up and hidden behind a mask when he acts aloof or like a jerk with a side helping of The Atoner.
  • NCIS: Leroy Jethro Gibbs; for the first three seasons neither the audience nor the other characters are aware of the fact that his first wife and child were murdered by a Mexican thug after witnessing a crime. Gibbs being Gibbs, the drug lord has been more than dealt with. The emotional issues, though...that's another story.
  • In The Wire Omar Little, the ultimate badass, does this quite a bit. When his boyfriend is brutally tortured and murdered, he channels his pain into a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. He does the same thing in the fifth season when his friend Butchie is murdered to get to him. It doesn't go well.
  • Most of the major male characters on Spartacus: Blood and Sand, especially Spartacus himself. Although the death of his wife has made him a Crusading Widower leading a Gladiator Revolt, he does not use it as a rallying cry and indeed generally only speaks of her to the people he is closest to. It does interfere with his subsequent romances though, as he cannot get past it, nor does he even seem to want to try.
  • Supernatural:
    • The Winchester brothers can be like this, though most of the time it's just Wangst.
    • Bobby, however, fits this trope to a tee. He secretly mangsts about the death of his wife and her zombification, which he mainly deals with via alcoholism and gruffness. One good thing about the Bobby character is that he tends to get the Winchesters to man up and not be so wangsty. And Meg seems to mangsts a little about Lucifer's death, although of course, she might just be acting.
    • When John dies to save Dean's life, Sam keeps asking Dean if he's all right and tries to get him to express himself, but Dean just refuses to talk about it. When he's alone, however, he smashes his beloved car.
  • Cain from Tin Man. Considering he's a Darker and Edgier counterpart to Nick Chopper from the original Oz books, this makes sense. Eight years in a metal coffin with the holographic recording of his family's torture on an endless loop...Yeah, he's got some of this to burn off.
  • Vince of The Cape, who started out as a devoted and loving father but is framed and supposedly killed. The only things he can do for his family now is to protect them as a costumed vigilante and occasionally give his son "messages from his father".
  • Vorenus from Rome. His total stoicism is ironically the cause of much of his angst since he has trouble adjusting to civilian life with his family after years of fighting in the army.
  • Person of Interest: Harold Finch had to fake his own death because the government is after him to kill him and anyone connected to him because of the wildly powerful computer system he built for them, letting his fiancee believe him dead so she will be safe and can occasionally be seen gazing at a photo of her or very occasionally watching her from a distance.
  • Jessica Jones (2015) provides a female example, in which Jessica deals with her multitude of problems using alcohol and isolation.
  • Lexa of The 100 has had several people she's cared about die, one of whom she had to execute herself. She claims that, while these losses initially devastated her, she's taught herself to no longer feel anything for anyone, and has instead devoted herself entirely towards serving as her people's Commander. However, when receiving a memento from her dead mentor, or recounting the circumstances of a past love's murder, she betrays subtle signs that she's not as unaffected by their deaths as she'd like to be, something that Clarke calls her on.

    Music 
  • Oblivion, the opening song of Crack the Skye by Mastodon absolutely drips with this trope.
    • The entire album pretty much falls under this trope.
  • The Rolling Stones: "Paint It Black". Classic.
  • Sludge Metal band Crowbar is pretty much the musical embodiment of this trope.

    Video Games 
  • Squall from Final Fantasy VIII deconstructs this one pretty brutally. So he never met his parents, never really got along with the other orphans, and was abandoned by his "sister". Sure there's the traditional manliness where he's always there for his True Companions, no matter what, even if he won't say that he cares for them, but the solution to his personal problem? Never have close relationships again. He gets better because Love Redeems.
  • Auron of Final Fantasy X has a laundry list of reasons to cry himself to sleep every night, were he so inclined. But the only way you'll hear about them is from comments by others, recordings by Jecht, the echoing visions of Zanarkand (which he seems to resent), and direct questioning by other characters. Only ONCE in the entire game does he ever volunteer any hint of his pain... then he walks away like a badass, ending the conversation before anybody can dump their pity on him.
    "Legendary guardian? I was just a boy. A boy about your age, actually. I wanted to change the world, too. But I changed nothing. That is my story."
  • Snow is definitely in this territory as of Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII after Serah died in the previous game. He drowns out the pain by simply focusing on managing the city of Yusnaan, and working on absorbing the ungodly amount of Chaos that threatens to engulf the city.
  • The King of Fighters: Heidern fits the article description word for word. Yet he is currently commanding a top-rate mercenary squad and raised an adopted daughter with a Superpowered Evil Side. And he kicks ass.
  • The World Ends with You has Beat. He beaks out into Manly Tears on Beat Day 4, but all and all he's doing it to save his dead little sister.
  • Betrayal at Krondor has Gorath, whose entire life has been tough decisions upon tough decisions (with the occasional sprinkling of disaster and tragedy), but - as befits a badass 260-year-old dark elf chieftain - keeps a tight lid on it, because he's wise and tough enough to draw whatever conclusions need drawing, take it like a man, and move on the next objective already.
  • Female example, (well, sort of...) Samara from Mass Effect 2. She gave up her retirement and half her life to go hunt down and kill her daughter, a Depraved Bisexual who kills people by having sex with them. If you try to console her, she gets slightly pissy.
    • Garrus Vakarian as well. Has had his life fall apart and by the time Shepard finds him he's held up and being assaulted by mercenaries. What does he do? He channels it all into being Space Batman and turns his disappointment in having his former Band of Brothers killed into unrelenting hatred for the one who betrayed him and even then Shepard can teach him to forgive.
    • Many of the characters are dealing with this in Mass Effect 3, most particularly Shepard, who by the end of the game is visibly starting to fall apart with the strain of carrying the fate of the galaxy on his/her shoulders.
    • BioWare shoots for this pretty often, especially with their Mr. Fanservice characters. Sky is hunting Gao the Greater's slavers (and tends to extend the vendetta to any slaver). Carth Onasi is hunting his Smug Snake of a former commander who turned his planet into ash, killed his wife, and turned his son to the Dark Side.
  • Max Payne deals with the death of his wife and child by shooting up entire armies of mobsters and thinking in metaphors.
  • John Marston of Red Dead Redemption displays shades of this trope. He tells people that his wife and child are being kept by the government (and he does it in copious amounts), but channels it into anger against the government.
  • Gears of War, or more exactly, Marcus, Dom, and Cole. Marcus does it because of a shitty childhood. Dom's kids were killed, his brother, and he had to euthanize his wife. Cole never got to say a lot of things to his Momma. Now that she's dead, he still writes her letters to tell her things so that he can vent his problems. Not too sure about Baird though; he's just an asshole hiding his problems with Deadpan Snarkery.
  • Alistair in Dragon Age: Origins, on the death of his mentor. Sten keeps him very much to himself. Oghren vacillates between this and Angst? What Angst?, though he can descend into Wangst. Loghain, if he lives to be The Atoner, though he'll more often deflect it with bitterness. Nathaniel Howe in Awakening, over the actions of his father in Origins.
    • The Warden themselves can be played like this. Notable examples being, the Human Noble having their entire family murdered by Arl Howe, the Dwarf Noble was framed for the murder of their older brother and exiled and the Dalish Elf's best friend ending up a ghoul after being infected with the Darkspawn Taint.
    • If having played a male Warden who pursued a romance with Morrigan, this is invoked by your companion Ariane in Witch Hunt when she notices that The Warden unconsciously fiddles with the ring that Morrigan gave him when he thinks no-one is looking.
    • It continues into Dragon Age II. Hawke has his/her younger brother/sister killed during the introduction, which deeply affects both of them and their mother in different ways. Aveline has a female version of this as her husband Wesley also dies during the intro, though a bit of Character Development through the first two acts actually let her get over it. Fenris was an elf slave of a Tevinter Magister, who underwent a ritual that grafted lyrium into his skin like tattoos, which are actually quite beautiful and grant him phenomenal melee abilities, but were so agonizing they completely wiped all memory of his life; Fenris is a very, very, VERY angry elf. Finally, there's Varric, betrayed by his brother and left to die at the end of Act I, with his Companion Quest in act II being raw revenge where you convince him to either kill Bartrand or care for him in his now-maddened state. He plays it off as Angst? What Angst? but the occasional slip shows it really does have him broken up.
  • Boone, from Fallout: New Vegas could well be the poster boy for this trope. His pregnant wife, Carla, is dead, he's not speaking to his best friend (who may have feelings for him), and he's still hurting about having been at Bittersprings and being forced to kill dozens of non-combatants, including women and children. Yikes. It takes a lot of work before he will talk about any of it.
  • Jim Raynor spends pretty much all of StarCraft II in this state over Kerrigan getting turned into the Queen of Blades
  • Aya Brea from the Parasite Eve games tend toward this. An elevator ride toward the end of the first game demonstrates it nicely: while waiting for it to stop, she briefly indulges in a private "woe is me" moment, but as soon as those doors open, her gun's ready and she says what amounts to "welp, back to work."
  • Virtually anyone who deals with angst in the Sengoku Basara series has this since even the women possess manly souls. Mitsunari might be the only exception, being extremely vocal about his feelings of despair.
  • Believe it or not, Asura from Asura's Wrath fits this perfectly. His anger and own bouts of Mangst can be attributed not just to his wife being killed and his daughter being kidnapped and being imprisoned for 12,000 years, but also at the cruelty done by his former allies that killed and kidnapped said wife and daughter, as well as regular humans and the suffering of the planet of Gaea's people. And when a little girl that looks just like his daughter get killed in a bombing raid by one of his former allies, he goes into both this and a massive rage at the same time.
  • The Interactive Fiction game Tears of a Tough Man featured the dead-girlfriend variety.
  • NieR the eponymous protagonist has a lot to angst, losing his wife of a horrible disease called the Black Scrawl, and having his daughter currently being slowly killed is not good for his psyche. So he goes through hell and back to find a cure for his daughter.
  • In Sakura Wars, Maria, though female, engages in this kind of angst over the death of a former love interest (which she feels she should have prevented). She doesn't talk about it much, but sometimes she'll sit in her room with the door closed and stare sadly at his picture, and she frequently has Flashback Nightmares about it.
  • Soul Series: Siegfried Schtauffen back in the day when he killed his father, he snapped, and tried to blame somebody else, then, when he comes in contact with Soul Edge, he accepts to gather souls so he can revive his father, however, this doesn't work, so he ends up atoning for his past deeds as Nightmare. You can see in his quotes that he has a lot of regret and is very uncomfortable with what he did. On the other hand, he's man enough to keep on fighting for the best of the world and to atone for his sins. Soulcalibur V shows that he's forgiven.
  • This trope is the reason Killia from Disgaea 5 occasionally monologues with a frozen Lieze flower every so often; it's a keepsake from his days with his adoptive sister, Liezerota, who was accidentally murdered by Void Dark (she got between them in an attempt to end the fight), and Killia deeply holds himself responsible for the event.
  • Kratos of all characters come God of War (PS4), is silently devastated by the loss of his wife, not that he makes it readily known to Atreus, who initially believes that his dad's quiet demeanour means that he doesn't really care. This causes Kratos to briefly lose his temper, as seen in the page quote.
    Kratos: Do not mistake my silence for lack of grief!


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