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There's getting back-stabbed, and then...
"The rule for finding plots of character-centered novels... is to ask, 'What's the worst thing that can possibly happen to this guy?' And then do it."
You have reached a writer's block. You've created a hero so righteous, noble, good and pure that traumatizing them just once is not convincing enough to break them. Yet you want the intended audience to still feel like they want to reach into your work and hug the character in question.
Hence the name of this trope. You sit in front of your typewriter (for all us oldies who can remember what a typewriter is) or your laptop computer (for all you young-uns) and put on a hat with the name "Murphy" written on it, and think to yourself:
"If traumatizing a hero once can earn the audience's sympathy, then what better way to earn your audience's love for the character than to lay trauma after trauma on them like a falling row of dominoes?"
Having donned the hat of "Murphy", you, the creator of this fictitious universe, are entitled, nay, obligated to make sure that whatever can go wrong for your hero will go wrong. The effect is akin to the Chinese proverb of water continuously dripping on a rock: one drop won't even dent it, but a million will crack a boulder. In other words, having your hero lose everyone he loves and/or have every dream unfulfilled and broken is the most realistic way to turn a God Amongst Men into a pathetic crying wreck.
The usual results of a Trauma Conga Line is as follows:
Result A) The hero perseveres over the trials of life, rises above it and becomes a better person for it all.
Result B) The protagonist throws off his hero mantle, tramples it, and in a cold rush of unrelenting cynicism becomes a villain just as bad, if not worse, than the antagonist.
Result C) The hero curls into a figurative or literal catatonic ball in a cold dark corner, then proceeds to give up on life and the world.
Result D) Goes out in a blaze of bloodthirsty rage realizing that the best way out is by taking it out on everyone.
Result E) The protagonist loses their sense of idealism, but not their morality. Most Anti Heroes who started out as an Ideal Hero are Type E.
Result F) Rarest one: the protagonist just shrugs their shoulders at the Deus Angst Machina. No lessons are learned nor does the character behave differently. All that's changed is that the Bunny-Ears Lawyer now sleeps in a cardboard box and eats out of dumpsters.
This trope is a particularly vicious example of Break the Cutie, and is a gamble on the part of you, the writer.
Handled correctly, it will create the ultimate Iron Woobie so endearing that the audience will cry and cheer with him/her to the bitter or uplifting end.
On the other hand, one melodramatic violin-music-laced scene too many, and you'll have the Narm of the century.
See also Humiliation Conga, where this happens to a villain who deserves what's coming to him. Deus Angst Machina is similar and there is quite a bit of overlap, but with the Trauma Conga Line more of it happens on-screen than in the backstory.
Here Be Spoilers, Ladies and Gentlemen
Examples:
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- Somewhat spoofed in the parody commercials for Rhubarb Pie on A Prairie Home Companion. They always feature some random, unfortunate fellow who happens to get caught in a series of increasingly bad situations, going from, say, locking yourself out of the car to being arrested for high treason. Good thing "nothing takes the taste of shame and humiliation out of your mouth like rhubarb pie!"
Anime and Manga
- Ian from Not Simple. Let us see here. *deep breath* First off, he is the offspring of his father and sister, is only loved by said sister, is taken away by the husband's alcoholic wife, who Ian may or may not think is his actual mother at this early point, who physically abuses him and sells him to a pimp as a child prostitute, works hard for his dream in order to see his loving sister, just to find out she died in prison, with his "mother" telling him that it would have been better if he had never been born, with his father telling him to bug off, and eventually finding the former boyfriend of his dead sister/mother, and discovering that said boyfriend is the pimp who sold him into child prostitution. And Ian has AIDS. Because of said child prostitution, in which he sometimes had intercourse with the pimp, who gave him and his sister AIDS. Eventually, he tries to find a lady he had met a while ago, for they had promised to meet again at a certain time, and this was really the only thing left in Ian's life. A couple of complications later, and Ian is killed with the knowledge that said lady had died a while ago. Of course, as he's dying with his blood all over the bathroom floor, Ian finds out that said lady is not actually dead. And... he dies.
- Berserk does this mercilessly with its three main characters.
- Guts? Raped when he was a child, forced to kill the closest thing to a father he had, lost every one of his friends except his girlfriend because his best friend made a Deal with the Devil to become a demonic god, a demonic god who then proceeded to rape said girlfriend right in front of him despite Guts chiseling off part of his own left arm to free himself from a demon's jaws. His right eye is then clawed out by a demon holding him down as he's Forced To Watch it all without being able to do a thing about it. He becomes a combination of Type D and Type E.
- Casca? Sold to a noble who wanted her as a sex slave. Rescued by Griffith and joins the Hawks. Life is good until all her friends are killed horribly by demons except her two best friends, and one goes bad, becomes a demonic god and rapes her while the other tears off his own arm in a doomed attempt to save her and ends up being held down by monsters and his eye clawed out as he's forced to watch. She becomes a Type C, minus the whole "sanity" thing.
- Griffith? He actually lives quite happily until his best friend deserts him, which brings him to the realization that he has forgotten his true ambitions and reason for living. After seemingly losing all sense of reason, he sleeps with the local princess which earns him a year of torture. He hates pretty much everything by the time he's rescued, but the torture has left him unable to properly communicate. After the Crimson Behelit is returned to him, he uses the first opportunity that comes by to activate it, summon the God Hand, sacrifices the rest of the Hawks, and pull a legendary Face Heel Turn becoming a horrifyingly straight example of Type B. Bad things happen to the rest of the cast too, but they die pretty quickly as a result.
- At first, Guts is more a mix of type B and D, until a moment of introspection reminds him of what he has become.
- Two words. Fruits Basket.
- Hellsing. Seras Victoria. As a child, saw her parents murdered in cold blood, got into a mini-Roaring Rampage of Revenge during which she shoved a fork into one of the goons' eyes, and had a first row seat as the assailants raped her mother's corpse after receiving a bullet to the stomach. She then somehow made it to young adulthood without becoming a psycho, and enrolled in the police. Soon after, her unit was dispatched to a hamlet which happened to have been infested with vampires. She died that night and was sired as a vampire herself. Horrific, but survivable. Then her master took her to a place called Badrick on a mission, and offered her his blood so she could ascend to his power level... when Knight Templar Alexander Anderson attacked her with dozens of holy bayonets, taking care not to aim for her heart so she would still fight. She began the process of entering the organization which had recruited her... and then Jan and Luke Valentine kill all Hellsing officers, and leave her to fight the resulting ghouls. For a few moments, she goes Ax Crazy, leaving her with her monstrous master, an elderly butler and the ice queen Integra Hellsing. As a replacement, they get the Wild Geese, a group of mercenaries who she manages to hit it off with. In particular, she takes a shine to the arrogant but lovable French leader, Pip Bernadotte. Then Millennium attacks, she receives the mother of all Mind Rapes, has to hold Pip as he dies and is forced to eat him to survive. In a scene combining High Octane Nightmare Fuel and Crowning Moment of Awesome, she goes berserk and grates Millennium's illusionist's face against the walls of Hellsing HQ. Like butter on toast. Then she goes to lash out against the Nazis in a brutal blaze of glory. Thus, she wobbles between Type C and D until at long last, karma leaves her alone enough for her to develop into what seems to be a Type A thirty years after Millennium's attack.
- Lelouch, the Anti-Hero of Code Geass, gets a mixture of type B and D. However, streaks of result A are shown at the end as his last act is to make himself the enemy of the world so the world becomes peaceful by his death.
- There are a few other Code Geass characters that would fall under this, too, though less obviously due to not being the main character. Shirley and Suzaku stick out the most, but there are probably more this being Code Geass.
- Lelouch actually has a lot more in common with Type E, largely because he still has a firm grasp of his own sense of right and wrong, as well as wanting to see his ultimately noble goals come to fruition, even if he comes across as quite dark. It's hard to be a Type B when your enemy is a racist Empire that has one leader willing to destroy individuality due to his own crappy childhood, and a Prime Minister who's willing to nuke the whole world from orbit to enforce peace. Shirley almost becomes type C, before Mao makes her go into Type D, then she almost lapses into type C again before some Laser-Guided Amnesia allows her to shift into type A. Suzaku aims quite valiantly for type A, but with everything that happens, he shifts into either B or D (depending on your perspective) at the end of episode 19 of R2, before joining Lelouch in type A.
- Albert Morcef from Gankutsuou. Albert first gets betrayed by the Count and Peppo, who he thought could be trusted, when Haydee exposes Albert's father as a criminal who gained nobility and power through non legal means. Then, his best friend Franz gets killed when Franz decides to go to the duel with the Count (the duel which the Count goaded Albert into making so the Count can get an excuse to kill Albert) instead of Albert. However, instead of breaking down, Albert ends up taking the route A and becomes a better person who not only saves the Count's soul from Gankutsuou but also fixes his father's wrongs by becoming an envoy of peace.
- Don't forget that Albert's father also tries to stage a coup detat after he's exposed, even going so far as to try to kill his own wife and son when they get in the way.
- Ikari Shinji of Neon Genesis Evangelion is the most well known Result C. Being forced to kill your best friends twice in a row after being an abandoned child who is walked all over by every woman in your life can sure make you useless when the world needs you to save it from an omnicidal apocalypse. And don't even think about End of Evangelion.
- Well, "save" is a bit of a stretch. There's no stopping Instrumentality once the process is going. I think he's supposed to direct it while it's undergoing the apocalypse.
- He also chose the best outcome for humanity; the route where if you want to come back there isn't a damn thing stopping you. He may have grown the beard into a Type A.
- In Rebuild of Evangelion, he's a strange variation of a Result D. He, not Unit 01, goes berserk at the end of 2.0 to save Rei, but doesn't give a damn if he kills everything else in the process. It's even displayed earlier in the movie, when he tries to destroy NERV and off Gendo with his EVA for using the dummy system on Unit 03 while Asuka was inside it.
- It is implied that his father is a type B or a type E
- On the other hand, Ayasaki Hayate of Hayate the Combat Butler is a most admirable example of Result A. You would think that being raised by two pathologically-unemployed con-artists of parents as a cash-cow only to be abandoned to some very nice people to pay off debt money with your organs would turn the boy Joker-Crazy. Wouldn't you know it, he is still a kindhearted fella who would give his life for a total stranger.
- If you think about it, Hayate is kinda Joker-crazy. His childhood was crap, his parents were complete monsters, and the entire universe occasionally punts him around like an old football ("Watch out for this paint that will permanently stain a cashmere coat!" and "We will attack you with swords that cut cashmere really well!" come to mind). And yet...he keeps smiling.
- Tokiha Mai of Mai-Hime was a kind and emotionally strong girl who looked after her constantly ill little brother with a weak heart by giving up her own childhood to work for his medical bills after losing both her parents. Having both that little brother and the boy she came to love die in rapid succession, as well as seeing that the one to blame is, supposedly, her best friend and sworn sister, can even break a saint like her into a nihilistic Result C.
- Zero's past was really horrible.
- Shiina Tamai from Narutaru is a brave, kind-hearted, upbeat Action Girl... who, as per the Deconstructionist nature of the series, is put through a lot of crap. Between watching friends and loved ones die, and seeing that humans are a truly terrible lot, there's only so much trauma she can take before she turns into an example of Result C. The anime version doesn't get anywhere near that far, mind you.
- Most of the kids connected to the Dragon Children. If they don’t have issues they will quickly get them. Akira is sexually abused by her father, forcibly dragged into a conflict with teenage psychos, mind-rapped at least twice to make her join, locked away for almost a year for killing said father and confronted with dozens of violent deaths. There is also Hirako, who has no-one beside Shiina, is heavily bullied in school and her demanding parents don’t give a damn as long as she has good grades. When her father tries to cut her ties with Shiina she slips.
- Vash the Stampede from Trigun. As we learn more and more about him two important facts come to mind. 1. He is the unluckiest person who's ever lived. 2. There is someone out there directly responsible for that and he's far from finished. However, Vash takes the route A because he is just that badass.
- Nana from Nana's Everyday Life.
- To a lesser extent in Elfen Lied too. Several times she thinks she's finally put her old hellish life behind. Not so. Until the very end of the manga... maybe.
- Kagura from Ga-Rei -Zero-. She kills a teacher from her school who was possessed by a demon, gets disowned by her friends, watches as people around her get massacred, sees her best friend and surrogate sister Yomi get turned evil, watches Yomi kill her father, then finally kills Yomi with a knife to the chest, at which point Yomi tells her she loves her.
- Amazingly, the result is eventually type A, even though it's obvious that nothing can fill that spot for Yomi in Kagura's heart (the current arc of the manga is dealing with this, as someone who looks exactly like Yomi appears.).
- Mind you, in the arc before the current one Kagura had even worse things happening to her. The turn of events destroyed what little resolve she still possess in order to live, and thus her spiritual beast went absolutely out of control. Life is a lot unfair for Kagura.
- Forget Kagura, Yomi had it even worse. Yomi's adoptive father his killed by her Seishouseki-mind-controlled adoptive cousin, the cousin takes what was supposed to be her place as the family head and her inheritance, then lures her to a fight. When the cousin admits killing Yomi's father, she goes berserk and kills her. Then Mitogawa attacks Yomi, rendering her quadraplegic and mute, and she is accused of murdering her cousin. Her fiancee Noriyuki is too busy trying to prove her innocence to visit her in the hospital, his father breaks off their Perfectly Arranged Marriage because of her physical condition, and her best friend Kagura abandons her after she admits to killing her cousin. Then Mitogawa gives her the same Seishouseki, which heals her but its mind-control powers provide the extra push to send her Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and killing her former friends. Her Despair Event Horizon is such a Tearjerker that even after becoming a Type B she is still sympathetic.
- Almost every major character in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. One good example is Fay, who has a backstory so mindbendingly dramatic it's verging on ridiculous, and during the course of the story manages to be used by the BigBad, be killed (in a virtual world, but still), have an eye gouged out and eaten by his surrogate son, after which he tries to let himself die but is forced to become a vampire by his partner, a curse obliges him to stab his surrogate daughter, his father figure tries to make him kill him right after he finds out the magical creature he made in semblance of his mother has been erased from existence, and then gives up his remaining magic power to get a prosthetic arm for his partner, who had to rip it off to save him once again. And this all happens in around 100 chapters.
- Houjou Satoko, of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, is pretty much the ultimate Woobie. Not only did she lose both of her parents by accidentally pushing them off a cliff in a fit of Hinamizawa Syndrome-induced madness, have her brother vanish without warning, and become hated by almost the entire town for supposedly being "cursed," but depending on the scenario, also goes through several other traumatic events:
- In Watanagashi-hen and Meakashi-hen, she is tortured to death by Sonozaki Shion, after finding out that Shion has also killed both leaders of the village, Satoko's best friend, and is going to torture Satoko's other friends to death (including Shion's twin sister).
- In Tatarigoroshi-hen, she is brutally abused by her uncle, and is too scared of the very-real threat of him killing her to call child services. She also sees her best friend's bloody, mutilated corpse being eaten by crows and finally cracks, pushing Keiichi off a bridge.
- In Minagoroshi-hen, she is again abused by her uncle, but is also shot in the face by the Big Bad after nearly overcoming all the hardships in her life. The same Big Bad makes sure she watches the murder all her friends in quick succession, with the knowledge that Rika will be tortured to death afterwards.
- In Yoigoshi-hen, the Alternate Universe plotline, she is killed along with the rest of her classmates when Rena goes insane and blows up the school.
- In Yakusamashi-hen and Tsumihoroboshi-hen, she is killed along with the rest of the town when the Big Bad sets off the gas and murders the entire village.
- It is revealed in her backstory that she was also beaten an inch from death by Shion disguised as Mion. Since this happened before the main plot, it means this applies to every arc. In Saikoroshi-hen, another Alternate Universe, the one who beats her is Rika, her best friend in the normal universe.
- It is no surprise that most of the Tear Jerker moments in the series come from Satoko.
- In the sequel, Battler gets all of the garbage that both the real world and the meta-world can possibly heap on him. From the real world, we have entire family murdered (with his father and stepmom, depending on the arc, having faces torn off, or intestines stuffed with candy), watching younger cousin turn from a cute little girl into a Cute and Psycho Creepy Child overnight, shot by his own aunt in one arc, figuring out that three people banished under suspicion of being the murderer were sent to their own deaths by having THEIR faces torn off, and that's just the beginning. The meta-world does everything to him from melting his cousins into unrecognizable piles of flesh to feeding him alive to goat-headed butlers.
- And then he finds out his late mother wasn't his real mom, putting him in such a bad Heroic BSOD that his brain shuts down and he physically vanishes for awhile. Only to be brought back by his sister! Yay! ...Who he finds out is his sister only as the universe is turning her into a delicious hamburger. Then EP6 he is one of the first six victims of the FIRST TWILIGHT. Sure he survived but how LONG was he STUCK in that room is horrifying. And the crazy part about it? HE PLANNED IT!
- In Bleach, there are quite a few characters who fall victim to this. Kuchiki Rukia, Hinamori Momo, and Inoue Orihime are the worst off, and the last two might not be out of the woods yet.
- Almost definitely not, assuming that Hinamori isn't dead after the way that the captain who brainwashed her tricked her childhood friend (along with half of the Gotei Thirteen, but him especially) into impaling her. Although between Orihime and Hacchi, even if she was killed it won't be the end of her suffering.
- Most recently, Ichigo himself has been getting the worst conga yet, by a long shot. First, after having gone through hell to get his powers back, Ichigo learns the new villain in town Tsukishima has rewritten the memories of (almost) everyone he knows, including his sisters, into believeing this guy has been with them the whole time, is Ichigo's cousin, and was a major player in saving Rukia and Orihime. Let that sink in a moment; Everyone else Ichigo knows and loves suddenly has fake memories of this known villain, and Ichigo's the only one who knows it. So second, To everyone else, Tsukishima is just defending himself when Ichigo, understandably enraged Tsukishima would bring his family into this, attacks with killing intent. This becomes outright horrific for Ichigo when every single one of his friends, loved ones and family members turns on him at once. And as far as he knows so far? There's not a damn thing he can do to change them back. Lastly, the very last ally he had left in the human world takes the rewriting process for Ichigo... before revealing this awakened his true self. As a villain out to kill Ichigo. So far, Ichigo's been only able to handle this with a Type D response, but between his friends becoming enemies and no one left by him, this is turning out very badly.
- This happens to Mai Kujaku/Valentine. She was Mind Raped during the Battle City Finals and her subsequent inadvertent Face Heel Turn that gets her in arguably even worse danger during the Doma saga in Yu-Gi-Oh!!.
- This happens on much a higher, much more heartbreaking scale to Judai Yuki in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX , and could very well pass as the best example of this trope next to Naruto down below in Shonen anime history.
- Mahou Sensei Negima! has Negi. Lets see, he's never known his parents, saw his entire hometown get destroyed at about age 6 or so, gets attacked by a vampire with a grudge against his father, inadvertently causes several of his students to get sold into slavery in the Magic World, gets framed for a terrorist attack (along with his other students), starts to lose control of his Black Magic, and when he finally discovered who his mother is, it turns out that most of the Magic World hates her because they think she's a genocidal maniac. And yet, he still manages to hold a positive outlook on life, making him a case of type A.
- He does occasionally show a few Type D traits. He's been shown to have some really severe hatred for those who destroyed his hometown, and it is suggested that, unconsciously, his real reason for learning how to fight so well was to exact revenge on those responsible. The fact that he specifically learned a spell designed to outright kill demons is telling...
- Almost everyone in Monster, but Nina should get a special mention.
- Naruto and Sasuke definitely qualify. The former was a life long outcast who never knew his parents at the beginning, before being told exactly why in a very brutal manner. All his peers treat him like trash, and he has to fight for every bit of respect he can. Not too much later, the closest thing to a grandfather and only family member he has dies, swiftly followed by his best friend's betrayal and attempt to kill him. He then spends 3 years away from his friends for the sole purpose of bringing back said best friend, and when he gets back, one of them dies for a little while. Thankfully, he got better. Then he once again meets traitorous friend, and he once again attempts to kill him. Some time later, a third retrieval fails. Now then, here's where it really starts. In rapid succession, his teacher and father(?) figure dies, his village is destroyed and he watches someone declare their love for him and then immediately get stabbed. Then he his hopes of bringing his best friend back are shattered by revelation after revelation.
- Sasuke isn't exactly happy either. First his family is killed, and he is forced to watch it over and over again. All of this at the hands of his beloved brother. Just as he was beginning to open up more, he is humiliated time and again by the supposed dead last as he beats enemies even he couldn't. Then, he finally meets his brother again, where he gets beaten and Mind Raped again. This drives him into a Face Heel Turn that Word Of God says was quite painful for him, but that doesn't count. All is good for a time, until he achieves his goal. He is then told about how that was all a lie, his recently dead brother really was a good guy who loved him, and how his idolised family were actually traitors. He then suffers a series of defeats, one after another as he tries to get his revenge. Though once again, the most recent doesn't count due to working for the Big Bad.
- Naruto is lucky to be as well adjusted as he is, and Sasuke... well it doesn't excuse his actions, but it does make it easier to see why he is doing what he is.
- Don't forget some of the other characters. Gaara, Kimimaro and Pain are stand outs. Notably a lot of them end up going the antagonist route (until Naruto shows them the error of their ways).
- FYI, that makes Naruto a type a, Sasuke a mixture of B and D, Gaara a B -> A and Pain a type B.
- Luffy finally had a Heroic BSOD after he was forcibly separated from his crew after being unable to defend them from very powerful enemies, found out his brother was on death row and made the difficult decision to delay looking for his crew in order to rescue his brother, breaks into the world's most secure prison and suffers an extremely lethal poisoning that should have for all intents and purposes killed him, undergoes a painful healing procedure that took ten years off his life and forced him to suffer unbearable agony for 18 hours, arrives too late to rescue his older brother from prison and so decides to travel to Marine HQ to save him from his execution, forced to leave behind a good friend to almost certain death (for the second time!) in order to escape prison, finally rescues his brother only for his brother to die soon after defending him from an Admiral! For once, it seems very appropriate!
- For once? This whole Trauma Conga Line started way back in Shabondy, try when he fails to save even one of his crew from being utterly annihilated in the most brutal Curb-Stomp Battle in the history of the series. The most recent line of events is just twisting in the knife. In fact, the flashback just seems to be retroactively increasing the length of said conga line.
- Himura Kenshin from Rurouni Kenshin is a mix between a Type A and a Type E. First off, when he's a little kid and still named Shinta, his parents die of cholera, then he gets sold into slavery. Then the slave caravan gets attacked by bandits, and Shinta sees three girls beg for his life before they're brutally murdered in front of him. Hiko does not help ease this trauma when he comes and kills all the bandits, then leaves the little kid in a field of corpses. Shinta buries all the dead bodies without a shovel in a week. Hiko comes back and renames Shinta (now Kenshin) and takes him to be his apprentice. Then thirteen-year-old Kenshin runs off to join the Ishin Shishi and becomes an assassin, rather THE assassin, Hitokiri Battousai. At age 15, he meets a lovely woman named Tomoe and falls in love with her. After a few incidents, he's exiled to Otsu. There he lives with Tomoe (his new wife), pretends to be a medicine man, plays with children, and is happy for about 6 months. Then it turns out that Kenshin had killed Tomoe's fiancée a while back, and she had been secretly spying on him for the Shogunate to get him killed. She goes up to the mountain to tell the Shogunate ninjas the deal is off, because she had fallen in love with Kenshin. Things do not go as planned. Long story short, Kenshin accidentally kills Tomoe. Cue Heroic BSOD. He goes back to being an assassin on his boss' urging, but swears to never kill again after the Bakumatsu. After the war starts, Kenshin disappears, wandering around Japan for ten years. Then the series starts. Then every single mistake he's made comes back to bite him in the back with a vengeance. Like his replacement hitokiri Shishio and his plan to take over Japan. Or maybe Enishi, Tomoe's younger brother who gets his revenge by attacking everyone Kenshin's ever associated with during his time in Tokyo. Then things get really bad when Enishi kills Kaoru. Cue other Heroic BSOD. (Don't worry. Turns out the corpse was actually a doll made out of body parts.) But at the end of the series, everything turns out for the best. Thank GOD.
- Simon from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. He sees his parents die in an earthquake when he's seven; later, after going on the surface, he sees Kamina and Yoko kissing, loses his cold mind and therefore the ability to drive his mecha; when Kamina goes to him to punch him back to reason, he's taken by surprise and wounded to death by the Beastmen. Feeling the only responsable for his friend's death, he falls into a state of total depression for some time. And when years later he finally seems to have a more quiet life becoming Chief Commander of the government of the new world on the surface, not only it turns out that his beloved Nia is the messenger of the Antispiral, who is about to destroy the universe, but he's also used as a scapegoat by Rossiu to calm the population afraid of the imminent end of the world and thrown in prison. And in the end, after he and the Dai-Gurren brigade save the universe from Antispiral (at the price of the lives of some of their friends), he has just the time to celebrate his marriage with Nia, only to see her disappear a few moments later. It's a quite impressive chain of events, and is just a small consolation to know that at least he gets out of this as a stronger man.
- Elfen Lied. The anime traumatizes the characters enough already, and let's just not get into the manga...
- Allen Walker, from DGrayMan. Even before the series starts, he's abandoned by his parents at birth because of his apparently deformed arm. As a very young child he works at a circus where he's beaten by the clowns. He's finally adopted by Mana at the age of seven, only to lose him three years later. The Millennium Earl promptly manipulates a griefstricken Allen into making a contract to bring his foster father back, only to have Mana come back horribly wrong and curse him. Allen is forced by his own anti-Akuma weapon arm to kill his now-Akuma father and the trauma turns his hair white. Allen then goes through Training from Hell with his Jerkass mentor General Cross for four years, which leads to him becoming an exorcist and the start of the series.
- After the series starts, the hits keep coming, including having his Innocence seemingly destroyed and getting a hole torn out of his heart thanks to Tyki; having his friends disappear one by one as the Ark disintegrates around him; and having the only place that he could ever call home, the Order, almost be destroyed by a Level Four Akuma attack. Think he deserves a break? Not a chance. After nearly killing himself to fight off the Level 4 Akuma, he is told that he is the host of the mysterious Fourteenth Noah who's going to take over his body, and in the process of doing so, will destroy Allen's personality and force him to kill someone who he loves dearly. His mentor General Cross suddenly disappears under highly suspicious circumstances. Now Allen's being treated by almost everyone in the Order as a potential threat that needs to be ruthlessly eliminated at the smallest sign of stepping out of line. And in the most recent chapters, the Fourteenth is not only awakening inside Allen, but is capable of taking control of Allen's body without any warning in his quest to become the next Millennium Earl. Iron Woobie, indeed.
- Madoka Magica more or less is this trope. Much of the plot is about Sayaka going nuts because of everything that happens to her, which further traumatizes Madoka. Homura's past is one long string of things going horribly wrong no matter how hard she tries to prevent it.
- Fullmetal Alchemist- Another one that most would answer with "Everyone", however this is especially true for Roy, Riza, and everyone who had to live through both Ishval and the Promised Day storylines.
- In Umineko no Naku Koro ni, Natsuhi seems to have a day from hell in the 5th game. First, her own daughter is killed. Then, she's slowly framed for 7 other murders as a man who claims to be her son from 19 years ago repeatedly taunts her for supposedly shoving him off a cliff (this is later proven false). The man takes her husband hostage, so she can't interject in any of the murders but it turns out that he's dead anyways. Then, she's accused to be the killer and has to go to court even though she's already been proven that she isn't the killer. The only person that did disprove this though, was just impaled. To top it all off, her sister-in-law Eva, who regularly verbally abused her, loses it and believes that she killed her husband and son, beats the ever-loving crap out of her. And she hardly gets a break in any other games. She gets of lightly by being killed first in the other games.
- Alice from Nemurihime. In the space of eight chapters she has lost her father, was stricken with a disease that will kill her in a year, was frozen for fifty years, learned that her doctor was in love with her but married another woman to have a family. His wife became so desparate for his affection that she figured they could only be together in death, which caused the doctor's son to hate Alice so much he unfroze her just to torture her for the rest of her life — which will be one year because there's still no cure for her disease. According to those who read the whole thing it gets worse. Poor Alice.
- Tomoya Okazaki. Oooohhhhhh, boy... Let's see... First, his mother died in a traffic accident. His father responded to this by heavy drinking, gambling, and distancing himself from his son; to give him credit, though, he still did his darndest to be a good father in spite of that. However, Tomoya didn't take well to it and, thus, developed a delinquent/trickster persona. At one point, he and his father even got into a big fight that resulted in Tomoya's right shoulder becoming badly damaged, forever barring him from full repair and lifting his arm, which led him to say, "Bye-bye!" to the basketball team, perhaps the only productive outlet he had at that point. And this is all before the beginning of the series! Later, he did befriend and fall in love with Nagisa, to whom he became married later. They even settled down, and they both ended up getting jobs to support each other. Sounds like things are smoothing out now, right? WRONG! Nagisa later died from giving birth to their daughter Ushio (she was known for having a horrible constitution from the get-go), putting Tomoya into a bad five-year-long Heroic BSOD where his life more-or-less went to pot and treated her exactly how his father treated him. Fortunately, though, the two eventually reconcile, but THEN IT GOT WORSE AGAIN! Not long after, Ushio died of the exact same illness that claimed Nagisa's life. How could he possibly live with this sorrow, you ask? ...He didn't. He did get better toward the end, fortunately, but it took the work of crazy timeline jumping and resetting in order to fix it all.
- In Pokémon Special, White goes through one over the span of what couldn't have been more than an hour. She finds herself trapped in one of the cars of the Nimbasa Ferris Wheel with N, the guy who had on a previously attacked her and Black out of the blue. While she is understandably freaked out, N interrogates her, asking about what exactly she has been working for, which culminates in him having his Servine attack her star Pokemon actress, her Tepig Gigi. When Gigi fights back and looks proud of her new-found ability, White realizes in horror that the Pokemon may have never shared her dreams alongside of her. White then tries to escape the still-moving car, calling out to Gigi to come with her. Gigi then ditches her for N, and the shock of this act causes her to slip and fall out. White is then left on the ground, barely conscious and her eyes filled with tears as she calls out Gigi's name. To make things worse, all this happens immediately after the highest moment of her life something she achieved alongside of Gigi.
- Though it takes a little while, she resolves to become a Type A, deciding for the sake of both Gigi's future and Unova's, she has to learn how to fight.
- InuYasha has so much of this. Let's review: He is born the son of the great dog general and a human noble. After his father is killed, every demon in the area decides to start hunting him down, so he flees into the forest and keeps away from society for several years, getting stronger. He falls in love with Kikyo, a priestess sworn to defend the Mineral MacGuffin he's after. After they finally decide to hook up, Naraku turns them against each other, mortally wounding Kikyou. Kikyou in retribution pins Inuyasha to a tree for fifty years, dying right after she shoots the arrow. When Inuyasha is finally revived, the jewel he was searching for is accidentally shattered into a thousand pieces by Kagome, the reincarnation of Kikyo. Then his brother tears his pupil out to get to an alternate dimension. The first time he turns human after the series begins, he gets near-fatally poisoned by a spider demon and deliriously confesses a certain affection for Kagome. His sword breaks, his demon blood takes him over and starts eating his soul, his sword becomes obscenely heavy, etcetera etcetera.
Comic Books
Fanfiction
- Used for a few chapters in Myah Lyah's The Princess and the Frog fic, A Son for a King [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6160652/10/A_Son_For_A_King]]. Charlotte's banker husband demands sex from Tiana in exchange for giving her a loan and for not asking for the money back, and when she refuses, he tells Charlotte that Tiana tried to bribe him with sex so as not to have to pay back the loan. Charlotte then goes to Tiana's house and yells at her, and breaks off their friendship. Tiana's mother then persuades her to go on a date with a man she has no attraction to, and on the date, he is stabbed by racists and has to be taken to the hospital by Tiana where it turns out he has lied about his name, as well as the fact that he is married to a woman who then arrives at the hospital and chases Tiana around the hospital room, calling her a tramp and screaming at her for sleeping with her husband (which she didn't do). Once she gets back to her mother's house, it's revealed that her house and restaurant have been set on fire by the Ku Klux Klan. She then collapses on the floor, yelling, "I've been a good person my entire life. I followed all the rules. Why do these things keep happening to me?" It's all quite hilarious.
- The Firefly fanfic Forward does this to most of the crew, especially for River. Aside from being kidnapped and tortured by Niska, she's also undergone multiple mental breakdowns due to her insanity, she's been nearly eaten by Reavers, and has been repeatedly Mind Raped by another psychic escapee from the Academy. Not a single "episode" in the story passes without River being repeatedly punched in the gut.
- The Death Note postseries fanfic arc Redeemer by CocoaCoveredGods lays this on Light like woah. Being stripped of his identity as Kira was only the beginning- so far, he's been killed multiple times, buried alive, tortured, raped (again, multiple times), suffered two mental breakdowns and been attacked by an axe-wielding psychopath in a scene that even L found difficult to look at the aftermath of. And some of this at the hands of people he loves. It's no wonder he's a gibbering wreck by the start of the fourth fic.
- This is Deadlock's intention in "The Legend Of Spyro: A New Dawn". She intends to inflict one on Spyro and Cynder because she suffered one that she blaims them for. Her own included having her mate and unborn children killed in front of her and apparently having her adult children killed by Dark Cynder.
- The Team Fortress 2 Zombie Apocalypse fanfiction Respawn of the Dead tortures just about every member of the team, but a special mention has to be given to The Medic. Over the course of the fic, he gets the crap beaten out of him by The Soldier, has to leave The Heavy behind to be devoured by zombies, and after recovering from the Heroic BSOD caused by that, he has to Mercy Kill his Morality Pet, the Pyro. Yeah.
Film
- Poor Harvey Dent, the White Knight of Gotham, was a prime candidate for vicious brainwashing by the disgustingly hateful Joker after losing Rachel, the love of his life, and half his face in a gas explosion. His transformation into the cynical monster Two-Face only took a the slightest of nudge on the evil bastard's part.
- Abusing this trope is literally the entire point of the Coen brothers' new movie, A Serious Man.
- The film version of 1408 is essentially the story of one man getting repeatedly kicked in the balls, by an "evil, fucking room."
- Precious, anyone?
- Serenity sees fit to kick Mal in the balls over and over again. Also, the only reason it doesn't kick River in the balls is because she's already been hammered plenty of times prior to the movie, and, well, she doesn't even have a set to be kicked in anyway.
- Excuse me, I think River has bigger balls than anyone else on the crew of Serenity. Perhaps not literally...
- The Human Centipede is an unusually literal use of the trope. Do I really need to spell it out?
- Present in a good number of Don Bluth films. For example, Fievel just never gets a break in An American Tale, and Littlefoot sees his mother die; his herd separated; and his home destroyed; with only his few friends as support. Good thing Don Bluth believes in happy endings; too bad you have to earn the hell out of them.
- In the Thor movie, Loki goes through one heck of a trauma roller coaster as his Start of Darkness (How much is self-inflicted depends on how much of a Magnificent Bastard you think he is).
- 1) It's implied that Loki has been the unfavorite all his life.
- 2) Thor was about to be crowned King when it was obvious he wasn't ready.
- 3) Due to either Thor's recklessness or an unexpected twist in Loki's plan to prove Thor unready to rule, Loki gets The Reveal that he is adopted and a Frost Giant aka the acknowledged enemy race.
- 4) Thor is banished and Odin is under extreme stress. Odin falls into the Odinsleep before Loki resolves his issues.
- 5) Loki goes insane and puts on his Chessmaster hat. He manipulates events so his biological father Laufey, the Frost Giant King, is killed while trying to assassinate Odin. Then he tries to destroy the entire world of the Frost Giants in his madness (and to prove himself as good a son as Thor).
- 6) Two words: "No, Loki." And Loki is Driven to Suicide.
Literature
- This is a most popular plot device for sentimental 19th-century novels such as Dog of Flanders, Uncle Tom's Cabin and A Little Princess, as well as their anime adaptations in the World Masterpiece Theater.
- Older Than Feudalism: The Book of Job (from The Bible) springs to mind.
- And it's pretty Narmful when Job's messengers come in one after the other to tell the bad news, and each starts talking before the previous one has finished. You can practically see Job Face Faulting and sporting a big Sweat Drop by the end of it.
- Robert A. Heinlein wrote a deliberate parody/deconstruction of Job in Job: A Comedy of Justice, in which the protagonist is subjected to a set of mind-twisting disasters and reality twists apparently being engineered by Satan. The twist comes after he's whisked away to Heaven in the Rapture, when it turns out that God was the one behind it all.
- Candide is the lord and master of this trope. Almost every single character falls victim to this.
- In Fahrenheit451, Guy Montag by the end has had his secret work for La Résistance discovered and smashed, his wife killed, his friend and mentor "disappeared", and been forced to burn down his own house, all the while his Magnificent Bastard of an opponent laughs about how they're Not so Different. It's a relief to see Beatty meet his Karmic Death and Montag eventually get at least a Bittersweet Ending; the play makes it a Happy Ending.
- Except, that Bradbury wrote the story for the text-adventure sequel, and he cheerfully gives Montag and Clarisse a Bolivian Army Ending.
- Lois McMaster Bujold has explicitly stated that she generates her plots by asking herself what the worst possible thing she can do to the hero is. For example, in her Miles Vorkosigan novel Memory she begins by having interstellar superagent Miles notice he is suffering from seizures from injuries sustained in the last book. Next he makes the bad decision to personally lead a prisoner rescue mission anyway and ends up having a seizure in mid mission. While have the seizure he accidentally saws off the legs of the prisoner he was rescuing with a plasma gun. Then he lies about the seizures on his After Action Report because he is afraid of getting a desk job. This gets him cashiered. And this is just the plot setup in the first few chapters! Miles, fortunately, always manages to achieve Result A.
- Later on she refined her philosophy to "the worst possible thing that the hero can still learn a useful lesson from." For example, despite the political trouble the circumstances of Tien Vorsoisson's death caused Miles in A Civil Campaign, a far more thorough and protracted torture could have been produced for Miles simply by not killing Tien off in Komarr and letting Miles suffer for years knowing that the woman he loves is married to someone else and thus condemning them both to suffer nobly, unrequited, for years. (That Ekaterin was going to leave Tien anyway cuts no ice — both Miles' and Ekaterin's honor would never have allowed them to remotely act on any mutual attraction so long as her husband was still alive). However, since going this route would have been dramatically pointless, Bujold didn't. So very occasionally, her characters do actually get cut a break.
- Tolkien specialized in these: the plot of The Silmarillion is basically driven by a series of HeroicBSODs brought on by excessive disaster. Probably the best example is Túrin, whose favourite sister died when he was three, whose father was captured by a Dark Lord who cursed their entire family, was sent away from home to be raised by Elves, which wasn't so bad except that he grew up to sort-of-accidentally kill one and ran away, joined a band of outlaws, was betrayed to the Dark Lord and captured by Orcs, accidentally killed his best friend who came to rescue him, found a new home and got it attacked by a dragon, failed to rescue his sort-of girlfriend from a horrible death and in the process failed to meet his other sister before she was mind-wiped by the same dragon and ran away into the forest, which sucked because shortly afterwards he met a crazy amnesiac girl in the woods and married her; actually managed to kill the dragon eventually, which cured his wife's amnesia but also made her commit suicide because hey, incest; killed the man who told him this because it was obviously a lie, and then killed himself when informed that it actually wasn't. Others include Fingolfin (result D), Húrin (possibly B, then C), the Sons of Fëanor (all over the spectrum, excluding A) Fëanor himself (D), and Tuor (a rare A).
- Captain Lawrence in the Temeraire book, Victory Of Eagles. He starts the book off under a death sentence for treason and ends it sailing off in exile to Australia, on the books as a prisoner. In between, he has to put up with half the Aerial Corps despising him as a traitor (the other half thinks he did the right thing), his commanding officer/lover chewing him out for his Lawful Stupidity that gained him traitor tag, the husband of a former love interest he'd treated badly getting killed helping him on a a covert mission, and his personal fortune getting wiped out by a lawsuit. And did we mention Napoleon has invaded England while all this is going on?
- Harry Potter. Nearly every adult authority figure either despises Harry and tortures him, or is killed protecting him. He also is the witness to several of his friends and loved ones being murdered. If your family was murdered while you were a baby and you bear a scar from that event the rest of your life, and it WASN'T the worst thing to ever happen to you, you have a seriously messed-up life.
- Vanyel Ashkevron of the Heralds of Valdemar series. He starts out life hated and abused by his father and brothers for the sin of being gay, which they deliberately try to keep him from figuring out. When he finally gets a Love Interest, he's Driven to Suicide. The earthshattering magical powers Vanyel gets as a result only serve to make him the go-to guy for every problem Valdemar has, to the point where he can't take a break for five minutes without the kingdom falling apart. Then, just when he makes up with his family, someone starts picking off his friends one by one. This nearly causes him to break his oath as a Herald as he storms off on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, only to walk into a trap in which he's serially raped into a Heroic BSOD. After recovering from that, he's forced to give up his new Love Interest in order to deliver a final Heroic Sacrifice to save the kingdom. To top it all off, the Aesop appears to be Comes Great Responsibility.
- Mercedes Lackey has a basic formula to give her characters Angst: Drop a mountain on them. Let them recover slightly. Drop another mountain on them. Repeat.
- The titular character from the Dresden Files. His mother died in childbirth, his father died when he was a child, he had to kill his adoptive father when the latter tried to mentally enslave him along with his first girlfriend, he spent the next decade or so living under a "one-strike-you're-out" death penalty by his fellow wizards, his next girlfriend got turned into a half-vampire, terrible things keep happening to his friends, he can barely make rent, and there isn't a single book in which he isn't beaten, shot, burned, knifed, and/or just plain tortured.
- And then came Changes. Harry discovers that he has a previously unknown child, who's been kidnapped by some of his worst enemies. Then his office is blown up. Then his car is finally wrecked beyond repair. Then his apartment building is firebombed. Then his back is broken, leading to him accepting a Deal Withthe Devil he's been avoiding for years. Then at the climax of the final battle, he's able to save his child only by ritually sacrificing her mother. Then he gives up his child (because it's too dangerous for him to raise her). Somehow he manages to fight through these things, and is ready to resume what's left of his life... and then he's shot by a sniper and dies in the waters of Lake Michigan. In his last seconds of consciousness, he sees a light at the end of a tunnel and begins heading toward it. Then he hears a train whistle. After everything he's been through, Harry's only reaction is mild annoyance: "Typical. Even when you're dead, it doesn't get any easier."
- And he was right. After all he's gone through in Changes, Ghost Story cranks it up beyond eleven. At least in the moment of his death he was certain that the war ended and his loved ones where safe, but no, the Red Court left a power vacuum which a ruthless organization tries to fill. His loved ones are all screwed up one way or another trying to deal with these unforeseen consequences, the worst being Molly, who's having some severe emotional issues after all this death and now lives as an outcast, not even trusted by Murphy and company. As a ghost, Harry can't use his magic, while there's some nasty things out there that want to eat him alive, in a sense. At the end he finds out that he actually arranged his death to escape his bargain with Mab... and just when he's ready to move on to the afterlife, he gets brought back to life, and Mab is waiting. Yes, Harry Dresden's the guy to whom coming back from the dead was an Oh Crap moment.
- This is where we get to mention Henry again. He'd be a C. all the way — were it not for the titular character.
- Murtagh from The Inheritance Cycle. The main article describes his life as a series of people kicking him in the balls. As of the ending of the 2nd book, he's well on his way to becoming Type B.
- This happens to most of the characters in Sometimes A Great Notion, but the one who gets it worst has to be Hank. He loses his father, who dies of blood loss after losing his arm in a logging accident; he fails to save his cousin Joby from drowning while trapped under a log from the same logging accident; his half-brother Leland tells him he was having an affair with Hank's wife Vivian and then blames him for driving Leland's mother to suicide by having sex with her, even though she was several years older and it would count as statutory rape - and says all this immediately after leaving their father's deathbed; his wife Vivian leaves him; and the whole town gangs up on him for refusing to join their logging strike. All in the same day.
- What is it with people named some variation of "Henry"? In The Time Traveler's Wife, Henry has no control over what he can and cannot time-travel to. Want proof that someone has it in for him? He time-travelled to his mother's death more times than we can count. And hasn't been able to do a damn thing to stop to.
- Chinese Cinderella, full stop. The main character is blamed for her mother's Death by Childbirth and mistreated by her birth siblings and Wicked Stepmother. Her father disregards her to the point he can't remember her birthday or name. She adopts a duckling that her family feeds to the guard dog. Her friends at school throw her a surprise party, earning her a vicious beating from her stepmother. She's separated from her beloved aunt and grandpa, then sent to a boarding school in the path of Communist uprisings. After her family moves, she's sent to a different school, but still neglected and then bullied by her peers. She wins a writing contest, but her grandfather dies immediately after. The closest the book comes to a happy ending is that her father notices her grades and sends her to college. And this was all based on the author's real life.
- Zsadist has this in spades. He was abducted from his family as an infant, sold into slavery, and then the moment he became an adult his mistress began raping him. Often she'd let her other male slaves watch, or even have them join in. He was sometimes kept bound to a pallet on the floor, flat on his back, for days at a time—y'know, so he'd be in the right position when the mood struck her. She'd often neglect to feed him or give him the blood he needed, and liked to beat him when he offered any form of resistance. (His back is a mass of scars because of this.) It took more than a century for his twin to track him down and rescue him, and in the attempt his mistress' enraged husband scarred Z's face with a sword. Oh, and later on his girlfriend is kidnapped and tortured by vampire-slayers.
- Seyonne in the Rai-Kirah books. He's been a slave for sixteen years by the time we're introduced to him, and is basically just waiting to die. Then things get worse. He spends a good chunk of the second book in hell being arbitrarily tortured, and the third book ends with him stripped of his powers and about half his memory...and those are just a couple of the highlights.
- Alex Rider's parents are killed when he's an infant, he's raised by his housekeeper as his guardian is either away or training him to be a spy, his uncle dies and he is recruited into taking his place, he witnesses enormous horrors and is scarred for life. And then there's Jack's death, which destroys Alex.
- The Hunger Games: Peeta Mellark falls in love with Katniss, is thrown into an arena to fight to the death with her, goes back into the arena to fight her to the death again, has a heart attack, gets left behind when Katniss leaves, is tortured to the point of seemingly irreparable insanity, and never stops having insane outbursts. Ouch.
- Don't forget Katniss. Her father is killed in a mining accident, she goes to The Hunger Games, she is forced to fake love to someone who really loves her during and after the games, she goes back into the games, she accidentally becomes the face of a rebellion, she goes into a battlezone and watches her sister explode. Not to mention her breakdown after she shoots Coin.
- They both saw a lot of people die.
- Invoked by Capital for all victorius tributes. As children they are put through Deadly Games, where they are forced to kill, or be killed not only by other tributes but also by most of the things on the arena. These experiences are enough to make most of them Shell Shocked Veterans, but Capital doesn’t leave kids alone and puts them through even more suffering for the rest of their lives, making sure There Are No Therapists to help. They can’t even fight back with lives of their loved ones on line and are Forced To Watch as people they know participate in the same Deadly Games. Taken Up to Eleven when victors are faced with a possibility of coming back on the arena and having to kill people they’ve became friends with. At the end only seven victorious tributes remain (out of 50), because both Capital and rebels target them to make sure they can’t support the opposite side.
- For someone whose books are geared towards women, Danielle Steel tends to employ this with disturbing frequency. One of her books starts off with the protagonist's mother dying from cancer, then killing her father after years of him sexually abusing her (which her mother has told her that she must submit to, as she can no longer fulfill his sexual needs). Then she's sent to jail for murder, where she's nearly beaten by her fellow inmates. After her release, she starts to rebuild her life—and then she's viciously attacked and beaten on her way home from work and left unable to have children. Then after she's married a wonderful man and built a life with him, revelations about her past come out and nearly destroy her marriage, etc. The only redeeming factor is that ending is always Scenario A.
- Sidney Sheldon was awfully fond of this trope too. What's worse is that he often likes to cap it off with a Scenario B or C ending.
- A Song of Ice and Fire is one big conga line for several characters, but the ones inflicted on Arya and Sansa Stark, starting with their father's death, are especially brutal.
- Michael get's dragged through one in the first two books of the Knight And Rogue Series, consisting of multiple abductions, use as a test subject, and ostracization. He spends the second book a little broken but manages to come out in almost as good of shape as he was in the beginning, by means lots of distractions and help from Fisk.
- Stoneheart has Edie, whose backstory is horrifying (especially for a children's book) and whose role in the actual story isn't much better. To elaborate, Edie's mother, a recovering alcoholic, was driven completely off the deep end when her heart stone was stolen by the Walker in a scene that just screams attempted rape. Her sanity then proceeds to gradually unravel until, finally, she tries to kill Edie's stepfather with a kitchen appliance. This results in her being committed to an insane asylum where she spends the rest of her life, leaving Edie alone with her alcoholic stepfather. The next Edie hears of her is when her stepfather informs Edie that her mother has committed suicide (in actuality, she jumped off the roof to keep the Walker from finding Edie). It is then that Edie glints the aforementioned attempted rape scene, and, horrified that her stepfather simply sat back and smiled throughout the entire thing, runs away. This prompts her stepfather to run after her with a knife, smiling and talking about how they ought to head back to the house together. When he finally catches up to her, Edie hits him over the head with a rock, knocking him into a quary and killing him. She then runs away to London, where she spends the period before the story hopping between youth hostels and believing she's insane. Before she meets George, a Londoner who can also see the moving statues, and he promptly tells her to bugger off. And then she dies. And that's on top of her inherant power that shows her horrible flashbacks of the past whenever she touches a rock. Because most of this happens in backstory, it's unclear what Eddie would have been like without it, but she seems to become more generally badass as the series goes on, though not without a touch of woobie thrown in. What makes all this even worse is that she's only twelve.
Live Action TV
- Eastenders. Ronnie Mitchell. Her time on the show is best described currently as God taking one giant crap on her life. All she wants is a child but if she has one, it ends up dead...and then there is the fact she was raped as a child, her husband shot in the head (although he survived albeit crippled a while), family dysfunction that the former Matriach wants her to look after, and she was recently seen banging on the door of her mother's flat screaming "Mummy!" like a scared child after her latest baby died in cot death.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Writing everything that happened to that poor girl over the series would result in Walls of Text, but the major ones: Briefly dying and resulting PTSD, Angel turning evil and killing Jenny, having to kill Angel, Angel leaving, her mother's death, her sister's the key, she dies and is dragged out of heaven, and the attempted rape. And I am not touching the other characters.
- The two-part episode "Becoming" is another conga line all crammed into a couple of days that include having a fellow slayer killed, her friends attacked (and one almost killed), being blamed for a murder and chased by the police, having her mother throw her out of the house, and being forced to kill Angel moments after he turned good again. It's really no wonder she fled to L.A. after all that.
- Stargate SG-1. Daniel Jackson. If it sucks, it's happened to him.
- Make that all of SG-1. If they were real people, their therapists would be making a fortune off of their PTSD.
- Supernatural. You would not want to be a Winchester. Or an angel on their side. Or their love interest.
- This trope is particularly true for Dean. He just keeps getting hit by more and more tragedies and still has to stumble to get up and go on. Let's recap shall we? First off, his mother dies when he's a kid, leaving him to be dragged across the country in pursuit of Revenge, then his father goes missing, so he has to team-up with his estranged brother to find him; next his father dies exchanging his soul for Dean's leaving him with horrific Survivor Guilt; his brother dies, leaving Dean to make another Deal with the Devil and 1 year to live (being constantly tormented by his upcoming damnation); next he is ripped to shreds by hell-hounds and spends 40 years equivalent in Hell; then he is resurrected, constantly being haunted by the memories of his soul-destroying torture with more guilt pertaining to the fact that he broke the first seal for the Apocalypse; next he tries to handle his brother becoming a junkie addicted to demon blood; and finally he fails to stop his brother setting off the apocalypse, resulting in him spending the 5th season hunting down the four horsemen of the apocalypse and trying to put Lucifer back in his cage, before losing his brother again. It's no wonder Famine told him that he was dead and empty inside. Also, his childhood was filled with neglect and emotional abuse. Natch.
- Not just for Dean, this could also qualify for Sam as well. his fiance-girlfriend dies at the very beginning of the series, every other woman he has ever gotten close to has died a horrible death or betrayed him, leading him to be emotionally scarred and introverted, he never lived up to the expectations of his family, was constantly denied the chance to live a normal life because of demons or his family, forced into hunting and the family life style, his dad disowned him for going to college, his father asked his brother to kill him, he is apparently an abomination of God because his mother made a deal with a demon to sell him to Lucifer when he was born, he never got to know said mother as she died when he was a baby, he is murdered but comes back to find out he is the vessel for Lucifer and that he was destined to be the Anti-Christ, spends 180 years in Hell being tortured by Archangle's Lucifer and Micheal because he averted the Apocalypse and now has some version of schizophrenia/mental illness due to the beatings of torture he endured for two centuries. Also did I mention his soul was flayed from his body and then pushed back into him after centuries of mutilation done to it? Conclusion: It's not fun to be a Winchester.
- Captain Jack Harkness. Between "Exit Wounds" and Children of Earth, it's no wonder he gave up and left to travel in space.
- Angel: Pretty much Connor's entire life up till Season 4 was one long Trauma Conga Line. (Not that his life was great after that; there was a brief pause, but only so we could see the damage.) In fact, things get even worse in season 4. The pleasant part of his life before a total memory wipe was the time period between seasons 3 and 4, which lasted about 3 months.
- Happens twice in Scrubs, first to Elliot and then later to J.D.. The difference is, while the show treats Elliot as a poor, sympathetic victim who everyone (especially J.D.) rallies around and supports, it treats J.D. as an annoying, whiny, emotionally over-needy loser who everyone only tolerates because "he's our friend". Probably because Elliot has girl parts.
- Happens to Tommy in Rescue Me nearly every episode, although some are worse than others. He's a Type F, and remains a lying, scheming, womanizing, short-tempered, alcoholic, self-centered asshole for five seasons.
- While not technically the hero, Dollhouse's Topher seems to be the definition of this trope. Nothing seems to go well for the poor bloke.
- In M*A*S*H*, this happens to every main character at least once. Hawkeye and Margaret, in particular, get it the most, partly because they've been there the longest.
- In Doctor Who, the poor Tenth Doctor gets positively abused by this trope. Fresh after killing off his entire race, he meets (and arguably falls in love with) Rose, only to have her taken away to a parallel universe where he can never go. Then he finds out that the Master is still alive, only to lose both him AND Martha at the end of series 3. Then he becomes close to Donna and is forced to wipe her mind clean of any memory of him. AND THEN, after the Time Lords return using the signal they planted in the Master's head, he is forced to wipe his own race out AGAIN.
- AND THEN after killing off the last of his race again, he has the briefest moment of hope - "I'm alive" - he hears Wilf start knocking, and realises that his death is NOW.
- Just the Doctors in general.
- One of the main complaints about Amy and Rory being the companions is that there's way too much breakage and not enough fun. The Doctor realizes this, dropping them off home before he gets them killed, but they've been confirmed as coming back in the next season and Amy's having My God, What Have I Done? feelings over killing Madam Kovarian.
- The Wire has Randy Wagstaff in Season 4 who is only 13 to 14 years old. He confesses to knowing about a murder to his school principal to avoid getting in trouble and the drug kingpin in the streets, Marlo Stanfield, finds out about it and decides to ruin his life and puts out the word that he's a snitch. Everyone avoids Randy or beats him. Then in the Wham Episode, his house is firebombed, his foster mother brutally burned, and despite all the help of a police sergeant, he is sent to a foster home where other kids, knowing he's a snitch, beat him daily.
- The backstory of Veronica Mars. A few months before the show started, Veronica's boyfriend broke up with her for no reason. Then her best friend was brutally murdered. Then her dad got fired from his job as sheriff, and the related events made her a social pariah in school. Then her mom abandoned her without warning. Then she was drugged and raped at a party, and the new sheriff refused to even investigate. The end result is a Type E, turning her from a popular, fun-loving high schooler to a jaded misanthrope Kid Detective with no respect for authority.
- Tara from True Blood. She starts out as the rational, fiesty, voice of reason but complications involving her alcoholic mother, the love of her life murdered, and being kidnapped by a psychopathic vampire reduces her to a sobbing wreck. She spends almost every episode crying or contemplating suicide.
- John Crichton of Farscape. To list all the things the writers put him through would take waaay too long, but the highlights include brutal torture both physical and mental, being controlled by a neural clone and forced to kill the love of his life, being cloned only to have his resurrected lover fall in love with the OTHER John and take off with her, having the other John die and Aeryn (said lover) abandon him, having her come back with his worst enemy, the man responsible for the torture and the neural clone, and being raped. And that's not even touching on all the things he's been forced to do in order to survive all of the above. Really, this trope could be NAMED for John Crichton.
- ER's Mark Green. Actually happens to many of the characters, but he really stands out.
- Jack Bauer is a Type E. While he put up with a lot of crap in the first season (including the kidnapping of his wife and daughter, the police chasing him, duplicitous co-workers and obstructive bureaucrats), he arguably triumphed...until the final minutes of the season finale, when he finds his (pregnant, unbeknownst to him) wife tied up and gutshot in the CTU server room. From that point on, 24 becomes "The Tragedy of Jack Bauer" - over the course of the series, most of his friends have died (Season 5 could unofficially be called "Let's Kill Jack Bauer's Support Network"), he's been tortured multiple times, gets little respect from government agencies because he's perceived as a loose cannon and generally has to go on the run at the end of most seasons because of the circumstances leveled on him. At the end of the series, he's almost executed and forced to flee the country, beaten and battered, with his new love interest dead.
- Arguably Izzie Stevens in Grey's Anatomy, who can fall into categories A, C and E at times. She started off being sexually harassed at work by her peers for being beautiful and minor hazing stuff from other doctors including a rather cruel learning experiment from a doctor she looked up to by giving her a patient she knew was going to die and making her responsible for seeing the patient through the night. Later on in the season Izzie lost the love of her life a heart patient at the hospital. She quit her job and became catatonic for days. She also went through a very realistic process of grief. A few seasons later they gave her cancer, killed off her best friend, fired her from her job, dissolved her marriage and then put her on a bus to never been seen again.
- Kurt Hummel from Glee comes to mind, even though a few of the things that happen to him is due to his own mistakes. He is constantly bullied for being gay (the bullying involving getting slushies thrown in his face, being tossed into dumpsters, getting pee balloons thrown at him, being pushed into lockers, getting his lawn furniture nailed to his roof...), and no one tries to help him even though the teachers know what's going on. He tries to make his dad proud even though he's not the son his dad imagined he would be, which leads to severe angst and envy when his dad starts hanging out with Kurt's new stepbrother Finn, who is the kind of guy Kurt think's his dad would prefer. Kurt is in love with Finn, which blows up in their faces and ends with Finn calling him a fag and Kurt's dad kicking Finn out. Then Kurt's dad has a heart attack and slips into a coma and they don't know if he's gonna wake up. If doesn't, Kurt'll be an orphan. (Oh! I didn't mention Kurt's mom is dead?) Kurt's dad does wake up, just in time to agree with Finn when he tells Kurt he probably should avoid hanging around straight guys since it'll destroy their reputation if people think they are gay too. Then the bullying gets worse until Kurt has had enough and confronts one of his main bullies, who proceeds to forcibly kiss him and then threaten to kill him if he tells anyone. Around this time, one of Kurt's teachers tells Kurt off for reacting negatively to the bullying, proving yet again that yes, he does know about it but does nothing. Finally, it gets to a point where he feels so unsafe at school that his newlywed dad and stepmom give up their honeymoon to be able to pay to send him to a private school.
- Dr. Jack "Boomer" Morrison in {{St. Elsewhere}}. Let's see. His wife dies, his son gets kidnapped (though later returned), he gets raped while volunteering in a prison infirmary, the rapist breaks out of prison and comes after him, his girlfriend aborts his baby over his objections... when does anything go right for Boomer?
Music
- The Weird Al song "One of Those Days" describes, y'know, one of those days; where everything that can possibly go wrong does, from getting to work late and getting yelled at by the boss, to getting chased by Russian spies, having a 747 crash through the den window, running out of Cheetos, and finally having the whole world explode for no reason.
- The Police have two songs about this: "On Any Other Day" is Played for Laughs, and "Synchronicity II" is Played for Drama.
- Synchronicity II is definitely Played for Laughs. If it was a serious song, there wouldn't be reference to the Loch Ness Monster and Rice Krispies, of all things.
- The Half Man Half Biscuit song "National Shite Day" may be the apotheosis of this trope. The first line is "Pulling the ice axe from my leg, I staggered on," indicating that before the story has even properly begun, the narrator has managed to get a mountaineering tool lodged in his leg. It gets worse...
- Happens to 2D in Gorillaz. Ran over by Murdoc, causing his eyeball to fracture and him to become comatose. He's then put in the care of Murdoc, who crashes the car again and fractures 2D's other eyeball as well as waking him up. Since then he's been constantly verbally and physically abused by Murdoc (including one brutal beating and chloroforming during an iTunes interview), who also had an affair with 2D's girlfriend at the time, and he's gotten addicted to painkillers because of it. Then after the band splits up he's kidnapped by, guess who, Murdoc, who then stops him leaving the island they're on by having a whale guard his room, knowing that 2D is deathly scared of them. Oh, and his his real name is "Stu-Pot". During most of the latest Plastic Beach arc he's ended up as a Type C, curled up in a fetal position in his room and freaking out about the whale just outside.
Radio
Tabletop Games
- The God-Emperor of Mankind. Even disregarding the Horus Heresy, in which he got to see his children slaughter each other and come close to undoing everything that he'd ever accomplished, for the past ten thousand years the guy has been stuck on life support watching the universe go further to hell, helpless to do anything but act as a glorified psychic lighthouse against the darkness threatening to extinguish humanity forever.
Video Games
- Setsuko Ohara of Super Robot Wars Z is constantly subjected to this. Amongst things that befell on her includes: Seeing her chief get killed, separated with her only teammate, only for him to come back and shortly after get killed, and then shortly after she herself gets physically and psychologically abused while screaming for help and nobody could save her (implied to be raped), then she sees someone impersonating her dead friend just to spite on her, then the Alternate Universe version of her dead friend and chief were manipulated that she was behind all the mess she and the world having... All done by a single person called Asakim Dowen. Depending on the player's choice, she may raise into the type A, or dwindle into type C where she ends up losing her sense of taste and slowly dying.
- Solid Snake of the Metal Gear series. Ohhh god. A few of the more memorable events that happen to him — getting PTSD from the get-go; having to bloodily murder his best friend, twice; having to murder Big Boss, his father figure and commanding officer, twice; finding out that Big Boss was his father; having the worst family in the history of ever; and then the ever-increasing spiral of horrible that starts with him suddenly being a sickly old man and gets progressively worse. And that's skimping out all the layers of detail which really add colour to the events of his life. It's dreadful enough that he goes through Type A, Type B, Type C and Type D, depending on how optimistic Kojima was feeling about life at the time (First C, then B, then A, then an attempted D, and then, finally, A again).
- And Big Boss before him. Betrayed by his mentor; captured and loses an eye during a torture session; forced to kill his not-really-rogue mentor for political reasons; betrayed by his lover EVA; betrayed by the CIA. Forms a powerful conspiracy to ensure this will never happen again, but its members begin to fight among themselves. Leaves the conspiracy in disgust, fully commits to option B and takes up arms against the United States and its true masters: The Patriots that he helped found.
- Final Fantasy VII: Before the game even starts, Cloud Strife has already: (1) endured a lonely, alienated childhood; (2) been told he's not good enough to become a SOLDIER; (3) watched his hero Sephiroth destroy his hometown and nearly murder both his childhood crush Tifa and his good friend Zack; (4) suffered over four years of sadistic experimentation from a Mad Scientist which reduces him to a vegetative Type C; and finally (5) helplessly watched Zack die in a gutwrenching heroic last stand to protect him. After all this, Cloud suffers a very understandable case of Trauma Induced Amnesia, accompanied by some Types B and E behavior. During the game itself, Cloud ends up being mentally manipulated by the Big Bad Sephiroth into: (1) nearly killing his teammate Aerith not just once, but twice; (2) handing over the Artifact of Doom to Sephiroth (again, twice); and (3) questioning not only his memories but his very identity as a real person. He's also forced to watch Sephiroth murder Aeris while being unable to do anything about it. Cue a second bout of Type C Heroic BSOD. However, after a Journey to the Center of the Mind , Cloud finally ends up a Type A.
- Advent Children throws him back into C (not vegetative this time, but still giving up) by giving him, and the orphans he was taking care of at the time, a deadly disease, time to think about the promises he'd failed to keep and the lives he failed to save and also giving Sephiroth the time to Troll him through the earlier mentioned deadly disease. He seems to have snapped out of it by the time Dirge of Cerberus roles around though.
- The tie-in-comic Back Story of Darion Mograine, from World of Warcraft. His brother murders his father, his father gets converted into a Death Knight, Darion tries to save him without knowing what's happened and is too locked up in horror and disbelief to fight effectively while everyone that came with him is killed by the Four Horsemen. After a moment of Type C, the spirit of his father guides him out of there... to the other son, for revenge, but not before the brother tries to beat Darion to death. Eventually, Darion manages to do A, B, and D all at the same time. Those who paid attention to his dialogue in the Death Knight starting chain know what I mean...
- Archer from Fate/stay night. Having once been an idealistic crusader with a credo to save everyone, Archer lost everything in the process of trying to save the people around him, while gaining nothing but scorn from his fellow humans and losing his friends, his lover and everything. In the end, after having sold his existence to Earth for a miracle that would save a few dozen people, he lost his life by being betrayed by someone he saved and ended up a Counter Guardian — one of Earth's "garbagemen", used to ruthlessly exterminate anyone who would threaten the safety of mankind by whatever means possible and no matter the collateral damage. By the time the game rolls around, Archer has become a broken, bitter person, consigned to his fate as one who saves people only at the cost of killing others.
- Kingdom Hearts:
- Xion in Kingdom Hearts 358 Days Over 2. Apparently a Mary-Sue type character, it turns out Xion is an artificial clone of Sora made to eventually kill Roxas and absorb his power, and if she's not up to the task then the Organization plans for Roxas to kill and absorb her instead. Furthermore, because she's a clone constructed out of stray fragments of Sora's memory, her existence is even more tenuous than that of a normal Nobody. As a result, when she dies everyone she ever knew forgets she ever existed. There's also the problem you go into the game knowing she's Doomed by Canon. Certainly the pinnacle of this comes at the end of the game where she battles Roxas, the guy she's heavily implied to be in love with by this point, and dies in his arms while he's struggling to remember her name, his memories of her fading already.
- Roxas too, for a lot of the same reasons as above actually, and more. The poor guy has no memories, all he knows is that he can use a Keyblade and it's important he kill Heartless. When he asks questions of his allies to try and figure out the things he ought to know but doesn't, they treat him like an idiot for that reason. At least Xion eventually figured out that the Organization was using both of them, Roxas doesn't clue in until practically the end of the game and thus spends most of his single year of life working for people who exploit his abilities and plan to kill him once they're done with him. The only really happy time in his life is the last week, when he's implanted with fake memories and is imprisoned in a virtual reality simulation - and once that week is up, he merges back with Sora.
- The protagonists of Birth by Sleep don't fare much better. Special mention goes to Terra, who is tricked by villains (going so far as being possessed and stealing somebody's heart in his very first world) and the game's big bad at every turn, manipulated into believing his friends have left him, manipulated into letting the darkness in, tricked by the villains some more, has a nice brief stop-off at Destiny Islands with a nice little Heartwarming Moment, then inadvertently causes the death of someone he loves, is smacked around a lot in the first part of the final battle and finally has his body stolen by the big bad at the end of the game, with it being implied he's been fighting for control since the end of Birth by Sleep. Ventus doesn't fare much better, having his Heart ripped in two to create Vanitas before the game even begins and ends the game with his heart being separated from his body after a Heroic Sacrifice to destroy the in-story Infinity+1 Sword, and would have died if not for Sora's intervention, his body little more than an empty shell. Aqua fares a bit better than the other two, but is still forced to fight both of her friends when they're possessed by the game's two villains and eventually falls into the Realm of Darkness after sacrificing herself to save Terra. One thing is certain about Kingdom Hearts 3: Sora has a lot of work to do.
- Aribeth gets this thrown at her in Neverwinter Nights and the expansions, leading to a Heel Face Revolving Door and at various points reactions according to Types A, B, and D.
- A small part of the plot of Xenogears goes something like this: Several hundred years ago a very honorable man is scarred by tragedy and becomes result (B). Another man scarred by the same event becomes result (D). In the present tense the protagonist is secretly some sort of Jungian catatonic ball with two personalities, one of whom tries to live out his life in peace (C) and the other who decides to wreak havoc (D again). However, the protagonist eventually overcomes his split personalities, becoming result (A). Pretty much every hero or villain in this game is a crowning example of this trope.
- Rondo of Swords has a type E in one of the playthroughs. After all Serdic goes through he finally breaks after a Friend or Idol decision that ends up in favor of the idol. Now while Serdic does lose a lot of his of warmth and idealism, his ethics and morals don't really change. At the end of the game he does rediscover love again and has a peaceful, prosperous reign as king.
- After half a game of staying cheerful and upbeat desipte the numerous atrocities he witnesses, main character Jude of Wild ARMs 4 gets hit with this HARD. First, a traveller he made friends with turns out to be the strongest member of the Quirky Miniboss Squad. Then, almost immediatly after finally finding his captured mother, she dies a horrible death right in front of him. Then Kresnik, a reformed member of the Quirky Member Squad, falls to his death (or does he?). And THEN, he's forced to kill his long lost father after he snaps and becomes an Omnicidal Maniac. Whew...
- Hell, him becoming a forest ranger in the Epilogue was probably his way of getting away from it all.
- In Silent Hill, the Trauma Train has pulled out of the station well before any of the player characters got there, so when it steamrolls through everybody it touches (including the bad guys!) gets affected to varying degrees, and how well the protagonists fare from the Conga Line depends on which of the Multiple Endings you get. (Here's a hint: save from the wacky, out of left field joke endings, the best Silent Hill has to offer are Bittersweet Endings.)
- In Tales of Vesperia, Estelle during Part Two. She finds out, the hard way, that her healing artes causes Entelexia to go insane, then later learns that using her powers could to destroy the world. Then she gets kidnapped by Schwann/Raven and tortured into doing the bidding of Alexei, and sent over the edge by his hand that she begs Yuri to kill her. (Fortunately, he hauls her back). And after all that, She somehow manages to come out Result A! That girl deserves to be a saint!
- Kratos.... just.... Kratos. Type D.
- Phoenix is a type F in Ace Attorney : Apollo Justice. After being tricked into using fake evidence and framed for it, thus losing his badge and his reputation, also getting his disappeared client's little girl dumped in his arms but having no idea how to take care of her and not having a source of income anymore, plus, of course, all the stuff that happened in the previous games, like losing his mentor... he just Took a Level in Badass and became a bit bitter and cynical, but he never seems to have broken down at all.
- Fou-lu in Breath of Fire IV is marched down a Type B/Type D Trauma Conga Line by the very empire he was the King in the Mountain for; the increasingly extreme efforts The Empire takes in killing what is their literal founding God Emperor eventually go to the point of the use of a Fantastic Nuke powered by Fou-lu's GIRLFRIEND (said Fantastic Nuke explicitly works on the principle of Love Hurts, the closer the bond, the higher the mega-tonnage), and — when THAT didn't work — having The Emperor run Fou-lu through with a soul-eating sword made from the botched summon of another god (which only resulted in Emperor Soniel literally losing his head). This Trauma Conga Line eventually results in Fou-lu deciding that Humans Are Bastards and the use of Mami as a tactical thermonuclear Country Mouse is arguably the event (in the MIDDLE of the Trauma Conga Line, no less!) that causes him to become a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
- Oh, and the Vestigial Empire that summoned Fou-lu in the first place buggered up the summoning, resulting in the god being split in twain and each half of the Literal Split Personality ending up on opposite sides of the world and temporally displaced 600 years. It's also outright stated that the Fou Empire and its Vestigial Empire predecessor the Muuru Empire still have not managed how to learn to summon a god in one piece and are involuntarily yanking the entities the world knows as "gods" from their own lives. (Yes, Fou-lu's Trauma Conga Line veritably began from the moment of his existence on that world.)
- Mario Kart Wii adds a lot of fairly powerful powerups to the game. Given the random awarding of items, first place is often one of the most dangerous positions in the game. Especially if several guys behind you get ahold of the global effect items all at once, and proceed to use them. Characters can get shrunk, blinded, then spun in succession, and that's not counting getting shelled in the process.
- Add the cheating AI into the mix and watch anyone who suffers all the above plus the AI crumble into a Type C.
- Tali from Mass Effect 2 has this happen in full force during her loyalty mission. First, she gets tried for treason. At her trial, she is stripped of her ship name, tantamount to exiling her without the legal black mark. Then, she finds out during the trial that her father might be killed by geth that she is accused of sending to the flotilla. After searching her father's ship, she finds out that not only is he dead, but he got killed doing illegal experiments with the geth parts she sent, making him responsible for the active geth problem. Upon finding evidence, she is forced to hide it to prevent her father from becoming a war criminal, risking exile for herself. The only thing protecting her is the charisma of Shepard...and without enough Paragon or Renegade points (or Veetor and Kal'Reegar), she will still get exiled. After all that happens, it's a wonder that Tali is even still functioning, much less sane.
- Depending on how s/he's played Shepard will have gone through a Trauma Conga Line starting years before the games even take place. Whether growing up without parents as a Street Urchin, watching his/her parents and friends get murdered by batarian slavers, and/or seeing his/her entire unit killed by thresher maws with him/her as the only survivor. And that's only the backstory, in-game it's practically canon that s/he's going to go through a Trauma Conga Line. But like the Badass s/he is, s/he sucks it up and keeps on fighting.
- Faize Sheifa Beleth from Star Ocean: The Last Hope ends up a Type B after the ruthless destruction of his planet and the annihilation of his people (the latter which happens right in front of his eyes) cause him to snap and attempt to destroy the universe so that no one has to feel pain any longer. In his defense, he was being controlled at least somewhat by the Grigori. Though, it's never revealed just how much his actions then stem from it, and he showed plenty of signs of instability beforehand...
Web Comics
- Poor, poor Tavros. First Vriska mind-controls him and forces him to jump off a cliff, paralyzing him, then his lusus dies after he accidentally crushes it under his wheelchair, and then his dream self dies, and he can't even escape his awful trauma by flying in his dreams. He then meets Jade who would have been friends with him had he not decided that "confidence" equaled "acting like Vriska" and then revealed he protected her when she was a baby from a "scavaging adult" by manipulating her godlike dog to deflect a bullet she fired at herself into the "intruder" who turned out to be her grandpa. He then goes to confront Vriska — who is now a god — alone, despite having dozens of unpickled monsters to commune with. She kills him by stabbing him with his own lance. But at least SHE feels bad about it! Oh, and his Famous Ancestor? He was one of the greatest rebel leaders in all of Alternian history and he could fly.
- It seems every almost every update from 1/24/11 onward is dedicated to crushing Karkat. So far, he's seen Eridan blind Sollux and kill Feferi and Kanaya, discovers that the nicest troll of them all has gone completely insane and wants to kill everybody, tries to contact Terezi, only to get said insane troll instead, leading him to believe she's also dead (she's not) and arriving at the conclusion that he might be responsible for the creation of Jack Noir as well as dooming the kids' entire universe due to negligence on his part while breeding the Genesis Frog. Fortunately he was able to calm down his psychotic friend, so maybe things will be looking up (HA HA NO).
- Let's just say everyone who isn't a permanant resident of the dreambubbles, Jack Noir, or LORD ENGLISH is having one really bad day/week/million-billion years.
- Great: "Lousy" doesn't even begin to describe the main character's introduction. It appears that he gets better.
Web Original
- Shandala of Broken Saints fame, whose biography reads like something off of the It Got Worse page. Washed ashore on a Fijian island and adopted by the tribe, her childhood was peaceful and idyllic until her adoptive mother was viciously murdered and mutilated by white strangers under the command of (and possibly personally led by) the Big Bad. Then, as an adult, she reluctantly leaves her home and family and all that she loves to find the truth about her biological parents. Then, her adoptive brother Tui is accidentally killed due to an big scary empathic rage thing on her part. Then, she is washed off the ship in a giant storm and found and brought to the lair of the Shadow Men to be tortured and sealed away in the back of a sleazy strip club. Then, after being rescued, she ends up falling back to her Superpowered Evil Side briefly, deciding to go back home, and ends up confronted by The Dragon, who murders and mutilates her Empathy Pet Bula the same way her adoptive mother was, and then kidnaps her. Then, in the Grand Finale, she is turned into an instrument of mass suffering via her empathic powers by her Big Bad father, only saved by her friends in time for her to commit a Heroic Sacrifice and save the world. And yet throughout it all, she retains her purity of heart.
- Ayla Goodkind (Phase) of the Whateley Universe. In a massive Break the Haughty event, Phase goes from an incredibly wealthy heir to the biggest fortune on the planet to a despised mutant intersexed freak who is turned over to a Mad Scientist by his own parents and on getting out ends up living in a basement. On going to Whateley Academy he is hated for being from the best-known mutant-hating family around. those don't even touch on highlights like getting trapped in a sewer and attacked by zombies. Or nearly being eaten by an unkillable demon. Or...
- Part of what makes The Nostalgia Critic so fun to watch is this mixed in with Misery Builds Character. The guy's life is shit, and it's sadistic fun to see how he'll react to the next horrible thing happening to him.
Western Animation
- Frank Grimes from The Simpsons.
- Robot Chicken: The Worst Halloween
- Peanuts: Depending on the episode, Charlie-you-poor-sucker-Brown.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Zuko and how! First his mother leaves (to save him no less), then he gets challenged to an Agni Kai by his own father who burns and disowns owns him, then he gets sent on a snipe hunt after the Avatar. During said quest how much happens to our poor banished prince? And then when he finally gives up that quest he has to take a lightning bolt in the chest to save one of his friend's life. He lives through it barely.
- He was even destined to take on all that trauma from birth, being a direct bloodline to both the fire lord who started the war and the Avatar who opposed him. His destiny was basically to take on all the horrible influences from his father and co. and all the positive influences from his uncle and the avatar, and come out of it with the understanding necessary to make the right decisions and have the right credentials to be the fire lord the world needed to rule the fire nation in the wake of the Avatars defeat of Ozai. In a way all this trauma molds him into a much more complex character than the Avatar and allows him to fill a role that the Aang could not, which ends up being almost as important or maybe even as important as Aangs own role in the story.
- Beast Wars: Poor Waspinator! Almost every episode, he is blown to parts, killed, or badly injured, just to come back the next one.
Real Life
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