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Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds
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"Love is a cruel trick of life. Its bond is broken by death and unable to be fixed like my new body. By eliminating organic life, I eliminate the suffering that comes with it."
- Hank Henshaw, AKA Cyborg-Superman.
A character who wants to destroy everything because it's the only way to end his suffering; one who has become so warped by pain and misery he has long since crossed the Moral Event Horizon, and either they think they're doing everyone a favor, or just want to take the whole world down with them. Depending on how well it's done and what the intentions of the writers are, this trope can result in a woobie.
Examples
Anime
- Neon Genesis Evangelion. Shinji Ikari. The main plot point of End of Evangelion was him finally being broken to the mindset for this trope at exactly the point where the plot granted him the power to carry it out.
- Vincent from the Cowboy Bebop movie.
- Lucy from Elfen Lied. Oh, so very, very much. We even get to see in full detail how Lucy's painful childhood turned her into such a deranged Person Of Mass Destruction.
- Hayate Yagami at the end of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha's second season, though it required a massive Break The Cutie moment created by other parties to push her past the "world that hurt me must die" breaking point, and when she regained her senses, she chastised her Artifact Of Doom for thinking that that's what she really wanted and put a stop to things.
- Trigun features Legato Bluesummers, the very embodiment of this trope and to an arguably lesser extent, his boss Millions Knives.
- Hiroko "Hiro-chan" Kaizuka from Narutaru is an intelligent, modest young girl who is broken by abuse from both unbelievably sadistic bullies and overly demanding, repressive parents. Eventually, she, along with her Shadow Dragon, Oni, attempts to make everything she doesn't like disappear... by way of going on a horrific, murderous rampage.
- Elaine and Diana, the two unbelievably powerful psychic sisters, in the anime Genocyber, who both go through some truly nightmarish shit, before transforming into the titular Anthropomorphic Personification of destruction, Genocyber. Or, maybe not...
- Gaara from Naruto starts out as this, basically being the male equivalent of Lucy. He gets better though...
- Emperor Charles in Code Geass, who decides to use the Geass power to remake the world into a kinder place because he lost his mother as a child, then decades later his beloved wife Marianne - by his jealous brother's hand.
Comic Books
- The Joker, in some of his ever-shifting personas. Literally in the Emperor Joker storyline, where he almost destroys all of existence, having decided that any universe that could let a guy like him come into being and exist was too horrible to let live.
Film
- J.D. (Christian Slater) in Heathers.
- In Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Benjamin Barker was sent to a penal colony for fifteen years because corrupt Judge Turpin lusts after his wife. After he returns, he finds out that his wife was raped by Turpin and poisoned herself afterwards (though he doesn't find out that she's still alive — although horribly damaged, possibly including brain damage from the poisoning — until it's too late), and that Turpin adopted his daughter Johanna for his own. He becomes so jaded that eventually he decides to kill people and have them baked into meat pies (with his partner in crime, Mrs. Lovett). Arguably, he is an Ax Crazy Woobie.
Live Action TV
Video Games
- Although her motivations are mostly left undefined, Ultimecia in Final Fantasy VIII seems to be trying to compress time at least in part because of some past trauma which left her with a vendetta against the passage of time. Proponents of the theory that Ultimecia is the Rinoa of the future like to use the hints of this as evidence towards the theory.
- Kuja in Final Fantasy IX, after learning that his lifespan is limited and will soon run out, decides to take two worlds down with him.
- Seymour in Final Fantasy X plans to destroy the world of Spira in order to stop what he calls its cycle of suffering, believing that he's doing everyone a favor by putting them out of their misery.
- Grahf in Xenogears. Lacan if you want to be more specific.
- Sephiran/Lehran tries to call the judgment of a goddess down upon Tellius in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, all because he thought it would be the only way for him to finally be put out of his misery.
- In Fable II, Lord Lucien became obsessed with the power of Old Kingdom technology after the death of his wife and daughter, which eventually drives him to reconstruct an Old Kingdom device known as The Spire, with slave labor, and use it to reshape the world to his liking. Oh, and along the way he murders your sister, along with countless others, including your wife and kids, if you have a family, and even your canine companion.
- The main antagonist in Super Paper Mario, Count Bleck, who wanted to use the Chaos Heart to undo and redo all reality because he was heartbroken by his one true love.
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