Trauma Conga Line - Television Tropes & Idioms

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.

—Lois Mc Master Bujold

You have reached a writer's block. You've created a hero so righteous, noble, good and pure that traumatising 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 is 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 The Cape 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 Woobie so endearing that the audience will cry and cheer with him 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:

Advertising

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

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, his best friend betrayed him and raped his girlfriend right in front of him, and he lost one eye and one arm. 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.
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 CodeGeass.
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 less than 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.
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.
- 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.
On the other hand, Ayasaki Hayate of Hayate No Gotoku 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 the ~~Yakuza~~ 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 kind hearted fella who would give his life for a total stranger.
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.
Shiina Tamai from Naru Taru 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.
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
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.
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 Yangire 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.
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.
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.
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.
Almost everyone in Monster, but Nina should get a special mention.
Naruto and Sasuke definitly qualify. The former was a life long outcast who never knew his parents at the begining, 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 to much later, the closest thing to family 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 retreval fails. Now then, heres where it really starts. In rapid successtion, 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 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 beginnig 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 beated 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 acheives his goal. He is then told about how that was all a lie, his recently dead brother really was a good guy, 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 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.

Comic Books

Quite surprisingly, even The Joker himself may not have started out as a bad person. Alan Moore's tragic graphic novel "The Killing Joke" shows how losing your pregnant wife and getting disfigured on the same darned day can turn even a decent human being into a mass-murdering maniac. Bear in mind, however, that this story was the trope namer for Multiple Choice Past, as the Joker later admits he remembers his "bad day" differently from day to day.
Tim Drake, the ~~current~~ former Robin, is going through a rather rough time lately. Over the last couple of years (in-story): Father - killed by supervillain. Stepmom - institutionalized (And possibly dead since said institution got blowed up). Adopted dad (Bruce Wayne) - gone and presumed dead. Girlfriend (Spoiler) - murdered (she got better). Best friends (Superboy and Impulse) killed in action (They got better, too. But he doesn't know that yet). Each of which happened before Tim really had a chance to deal with the previous.
- With the predictable result that Tim's mental state and judgement are starting to slip. Several innocent bystanders have already been accidentally killed due to his negligence, and he's cut himself off from any healthy emotional support to instead seek an alliance with mass murdering vigilante Jason Todd. Barring a sudden plot swerve Tim's on track to either a B or a C — or more likely both, given that he's one What Have I Done moment away from a complete Heroic BSOD.
  - And Jason just enacted his sudden yet inevitable betrayal and, after murdering a couple dozen people, stabbed Tim through the chest with a batarang when Tim attempted to register his objections. Tim's probably going to melt down any week now.
  - And, wait for it... It has begun. Now as Red Robin, he's left Gotham City in search of Bruce Wayne. He's getting to Jason Todd levels of brutality, killing criminals paticularly indiscriminately. He's also being trailed by Ra's al Ghul... Definitely not a good sign.
Weirdly enough, Tim Drake's mentor, the goddamned Batman himself is a type F. He's lost sidekicks, allies both superpowered and non-, and has had multiple efforts to try to make something out of his life crushed. But he's still pretty much the same person he was at the beginning of his Darker and Edgier remake as he is now.
Spider-Man is also a Type F. Repeatedly loses loved ones? Check. Hated by the city he's sworn to protect? Check. Makes no progress whatsoever in his life? Check. Has Spider-Man really changed for the better or worse, though? Not really.
Daredevil on the other hand is a Type E, especially after Kingpin put him through the wringer in his excellent Born Again series.
Robert Kirkman's Astonishing Wolf-Man. Hoo boy, it's impressive how crappy the title character's life got so quickly. So he was a wealthy CEO shredded by a werewolf, became one himself, lost his multi-million dollar company, got an oh-so-brief respite of awesome when he got some control over his wolf form and became a superhero, found out he still became a murderous beast during a full moon by killing a well-known superhero, became estranged from his wife and daughter, found out that his vampiric mentor killed his wife, got framed for said murder (including, worst of all, in the eyes of his daughter), became a fugitive, got another minor respite when he became friends with a prominent superhero, reluctantly got a minor alliance with someone he already knew was hugely bad news, was thrown into prison, and was stabbed in the chest by his own daughter, who'd turned to the previously mentioned vampiric mentor to avenge her mother's death (and let him drink some blood from her), not knowing she was training with the real killer! Whew! It was only in issue 17 that his life took any appreciable change for the better.
Madelyne Pryor is a full-on Type D. After her husband abandons her and her infant son for reasons unexplained, she tries to get on with her life. Then she's ambushed by a squad of superpowered assassins out to kill her and steal her baby. They only succeed in the latter. Then she goes on the run with the X-Men...no one's idea of a relaxing vacation at the best of times...and starts falling in love with her brother-in-law. After finding some semblance of equilibrium with the team, she starts working as their tech support, and just happens to find her disappeared husband on a news broadcast...standing alongside a woman who looks just like her. Cue BSOD, and Deal With The Devil. Finally to top everything off, she meets a man who claims to be responsible for cloning her from the same woman her husband ditched her for! The resulting Roaring Rampage Of Revenge comes as a surprise to no one.

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.

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.
The Book of Job (from The Bible) springs to mind. Pretty old trope, ain't it?
- 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 J.O.B.: 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 Resistance discovered and smashed, his wife killed due in part to his actions, 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 Mc Master 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 Turin, 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), Hurin (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 tratior 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.

Live Action TV

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 PSTD, 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.
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.
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.)
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.

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 Unites 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 too weak to become a SOLDIER; (3) watched his hero Sephiroth destroy his hometown and nearly murder both his childhood crush Tifa and his friend Zack; (4) suffered over four years of sadistic experimentation by a Mad Scientist which reduces him to a vegetative Type C; and finally (5) helplessly watching 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; and (3) questioning not only his memories but his very identity as a real person. 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 a deadly disease.
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.
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 (result (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 Sedic 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 her powers could be used 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!
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.

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. So Yeah.

Western Animation

Robot Chicken: The Worst Halloween

Real Life

The surviving crew of the USS Indanapolis (CA-35). You'd think things would be bad enough, with only 317 of the ship's nearly 1,200 crew surviving getting sunk by a Japanese submarine, then spending four days in shark-infested seas. Things got worse for the survivors when they found out that, at the very least, most of those who made it off the ship alive could've been saved. First, they were sent out of Guam without destroyer escort (which was standard procedure for the area). Then the ship's officers weren't informed that there were Japanese subs in the area (which had already claimed at least one Allied ship). Then when the ship sank, its distress call was dismissed by Allied command as a Japanese trap. Then when the Indianapolis failed to join the rest of the fleet in the Philippines, the ship was marked as "late" instead of "missing", so no search party was sent out. The survivors were found by a scout plane that happened to spot the oil slick from the Indianapolis' wreckage.

And just to polish things off, when people started demanding to know why the ship went missing for so long without being looked for, the Navy made a sacrificial lamb of the ship's C.O., Capt. Charles McVay; court-martialing and convicting him of putting his ship "in harm's way" via his failure to maintain a "zig-zag" sail pattern. They even went so far as to call the Japanese sub commander that sank him as a witness (Who pretty much called the "zig-zag" pattern useless). Mc Vay was the only ship's captain in the U.S. Fleet to lose a ship and be court-martialed for it. (He committed suicide in 1968).

Real Life: Haiti before and after the earthquake. Major tearjerker for those who don't know this already.