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Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds
Yeah, he's a whiny bitch. But maybe we shouldn't have said that to his face.

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.

Alright, so maybe I am killing everyone in the school because nobody loves me! Let's face it, alright. The only place where different social types can genuinely get along with each other is in heaven.
- JD, Heathers

A character who wants to destroy everything because it's the only way to end their suffering. At some point this character's pain and misery became so great as to drive him or her across the Despair Event Horizon (but not the Moral Event Horizon, which bars a character from Woobiedom forever). The Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds either thinks (s)he is doing the world a favor, or just wants 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. Often caused by Break The Cutie.

Omnicidal Maniac is this without the motivation of "ending life will end suffering". Not to be confused with Mike Nelson Destroyer Of Worlds.

Examples

Anime and Manga
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion. Shinji Ikari. The main plot point of The End of Evangelion was his finally being broken sufficiently at exactly the point where the plot granted him the power to embody this trope.
    • Gendo aspires to this, believing that initiating Instrumentality will allow him to reunite with Yui. Unfortunately for him, Rei abandons him in favor of Shinji, leading to the latter's ascension in his father's stead.
  • In Saikano Chise decides it would be better to destroy the world rather than let it suffer in life. It's strongly implied (at least in the manga) that the war has already put the planet well on its way to self-destruction; Chise simply accelerates the process by euthanizing humanity.
  • Vincent from the Cowboy Bebop movie, gone self-destructively homicidal from psychosis and the inability to separate his hallucinations from reality after becoming an unwilling participant in a Super Soldier program that caused him to permanently hallucinate. His leitmotif "is it real?" just hammers it home.
  • 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.
    • EVERY diclonius counts. The very definition of a diclonious fits this trope — innocent girls, usually very young, that can kill everyone within range with only a thought.
  • 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.
    • A similar thing happens to the main character Shiina, but with someone else doing the destroying, right at the end of the manga.
  • 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 eponymous 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...
    • It now appears as if the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox's escape plan is to turn Naruto into one of these.
    • And Pain/Nagato likes to paint himself as one of these. Frankly, most fans are not buying it; his past was definitely bad, but not bad enough to justify the crap he's pulled.
      • Neither does Naruto, who can't forgive him but doesn't kill him for reasons entirely unrelated to Nagato's backstory.
  • Lelouch from Code Geass is a major subversion to this trope, because after he realizes what has actually been going on, he decides that the only way to make everything right is to get the world to destroy him.
  • Takano Miyo from Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni. ...Ironically, though, she's aiming at the wrong target in order to become a god. Guess Tokyo's a little too big to take down single-handedly.
  • Yuuhi from The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer, with one heck of a Freudian Excuse to match: His father, a detective, was killed by his colleague. After the funeral his mom simply left, and his grandfather literally beat into him the idea "Make no enemies - they'll stab you in the front; make no friends - they'll stab you in the back.". Sami's reasoning is that she wants to own the world by destroying it so that it doesn't go on without her when she dies.
  • Valgaav from The Slayers TRY. A tormented half-demon dragon who believes that all the cosmic forces in his world are caught in an endless, senseless war that only causes suffering, and wants to erase everything from existence to end this. He doesn't actually seem to be wrong, as The Lord Of Nightmares who created Both sides of the conflict, seems to have done so mainly to watch them fight for its own amusement, a fact the Lord of Good and Lord of Evil equivalents from another dimension that combined with him are all too familar with...
  • Darcia from Wolfs Rain, who after the loss of his lover Hamona turns insane, and decides to ruin the paradise the protagonists are trying to create. In a sense, he doesn't want to destroy the current world, as the Earth is dying anyway, but prevent the next.
  • Rau le Creuset from Gundam SEED. He's a dying man at the age of twenty-eight, as he was born with the telomeres of the thirty-something Al de Flaga, his genetic "father", and is in constant pain that can only be subdued by daily drug cocktails (the dose is shown to double twice over the course of the series). His dealings with people, hatred of his flawed body and the people who ensured he was born that way, and his emotional pain at being a clone and thus seeing himself as having no "identity" of his own eventually became a bitterness towards humanity in general. And in a very literal bid to make the pain stop, he tried (and nearly succeeded) to wipe Earth of human life.
    • Once again, depending on your point of view, after he crosses the Moral Event Horizon by killing Flay in cold blood, he might lose the Woobie and retain the Destroyer Of Worlds.
    • And an example from Gundam SEED Destiny, Stella - she stomps through city and wilderness alike in a giant robot slaughtering innocent bystanders by the thousands, because she's driven by a child's irrational terror and has been told that if she doesn't fight, scary things will kill her and everyone she cares about.
  • At the end of Fushigi Yuugi, Yuu Watase attempts to turn Nakago into one of these with a Motive Rant explaining how when he was a young boy his entire tribe was wiped out, he witnessed his mother being gang-raped, his power awakened in an effort to defend his mother from said gang-rape and accidentally blew her up in the process, resulting in his being sent to the Kutou emperor, who raped him repeatedly. As a result he wants revenge on existence itself for giving him such a horrible life. But since Nakago had been portrayed as a Complete Monster until this point, many fans simply regarded it as a Karma Houdini moment instead.
  • Rokudo Mukuro from Katekyo Hitman Reborn! wants to cleanse the world of mafia (and then everything else) in blood due to his ''tragic backstory'. Also because he hates humanity. Either way.
  • Black WarGreymon from Digimon Adventure 02 wanted to destroy the Digital World because he thought that was the only way for him to understand his purpose in his artificial life and soothe his pain.
  • Shinobu Sensui may count as one of these, as his plan to destroy humanity via the tunnel was really a way to end his suffering, both from the guilt of killing demons when younger/his resultant Split Personality, and also from a terminal disease. However, Your Mileage May Vary depending on whether or not you think he crossed the Moral Event Horizon.
  • From Kurohime: Possibly Rei who, along with his brother Zero was forced to work for the man who killed their mother  * and very nearly a young fortune teller who can show you the future with her magic bullets, but only if your will is strong enough to connect with the right bullet. Kurohime uses her own magic bullets to show the fortune teller's mother what will happen if she continues to abuse her daughter ("All I see is death... This world should die... starting with you!"), which appears to reform her. For his part, Rei (a potential shinigami) shows his affection to the fortune teller by offering to kill her mother.
  • Russia of Axis Powers Hetalia is more of a Woobie Conquerer of Worlds, insisting that "all will become one with Russia". This trope is also played totally straight with him during the Bloody Sunday strip, in which he snaps and starts to mow down his own people on the grounds that, basically, "they're not really Russians if they don't love me".
  • Lucia from Rave Master. He's portrayed as virtually every Jerk Ass like trope on this site for most of his appearances, even condradiction any mildly humane moment shortly afterward. Until the ending when he starts crying while fighting Haru because, as it turns out, the universe litterally exists to screw him over. He even lists all the massive wrongs done to him that no one ever did anything about, or even commended, which includes having to watch his mother get murdered and getting locked up for 10 years in a maximum security prison for being the wrong guys son (at the age of six), as well as being an evil stone's meat puppet and kind of having no choise but to be the monster he is.
  • Diva from Blood+ somewhat counts, although the destroyer of worlds part only comes about simply because she exists. Chevaliers may love their 'queens' but it seems Amshel loves power more. Diva just goes along because she's become embittered to the world due to her imprisonment as a child. Things would likely have turned out very differently if Nathan had simply abducted her and made her a star singer without the whole taking over the world and making everyone into Chiropterans aspect of Amshel's and James'. YMMV after the literal dog raping, however.

Comic Books
  • The Joker, in some of his ever-shifting personae. 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.
  • Hal Jordan was also like this for a fair amount of time, in his persona 'Parallax.' Literally, in the Zero Hour storyline, where Hal decided that he needed to remake the universe to prevent the recent loss (re: utter annihilation) of Coast City, his home town, among other major disasters.
  • Hank Henshaw, who provided us with the delightful page quote, is utterly convinced that existence is the source of nothing but pain and misery and wishes for a "A universe void... Of even a void." Incidentally, he is the one responsible for the destruction of Coast City mentioned above.
  • The Scarlet Witch undergoes a fluctuating life where the good (a family with the Avengers, marriage to her One True Wuv, having her longed-for kids) is outweighed by the bad (her father is a supervillain, her husband gets mindwiped and divorces her, her kids aren't real), along with a number of possessions, kidnappings, and multiple forced amnesia inflicted by her most trusted friends. Then she rewrites the universe. Then she does it AGAIN.
  • Judge Dredd has what is probably a interesting varient of this, Judge Death, who decided that only the Living commit Crime, thus Living itself must be a Crime (Try to guess the Sentence, look at his name for a clue ), and proceeded to commit Omnicide in his home dimension. Only it doesn't seem he was ever driven to do this by some terrible event in his life, and is a massive hypocryte, since he and his Dark Judges cheat his own system by being Walking Deadmen, thus exempt.
  • Caliginous in Hero Squared has decided that life is nothing but pain, misery, cruelty and death, and should be ended in preferably the most all-encompassing fashion possible. Her arch-nemesis Captain Valor just sees her as an evil megalomaniac, but his alternative self Milo manages to recognize that beneath it all she's a broken, lonely, psychologically tormented and suffering woman.

Film
  • J.D. (Christian Slater) in Heathers.
  • Jigsaw, one ungrateful bastard at a time. His first deathtrap is discussed in the fourth movie.
  • Azrael in Dogma: "Human, have you ever been to hell? I'd rather not exist than endure that experience a second longer, and if I have to drag down everyone else with me... so be it".
  • Nero the Romulan, from the new Star Trek, REALLY wants Spock to understand his pain... by destroying his homeworld, as Romulus was destroyed in Nero's original timeline. And after Spock, the rest of the Federation is to get the same treatment, starting with Earth.
  • Davy Jones from Pirates Of The Caribbean doesn't seem to want to destroy everything- just everything that crosses his path. He's like this because his one true love the goddess Calypso betrayed him (presumably for another man, though it's never elaborated on) centuries ago. Jones's agony was unbearable, so he cut out his own heart to end it. When that failed, he adopted a different tactic- find relief by sharing his pain with everyone else he meets.
  • Carrie is certainly a Woobie, even if she doesn't quite destroy worlds. Just most of her high school.
  • Oswald Cobblepot in Batman Returns: Disfigured since birth, his aristocratic parents attempted to drown him in the sewers. He was found by a traveling circus, and was raised in the freak show as "The Penguin." While the public views him with sympathy, he has become a warped sociopath, plotting to murder all the first born sons of Gotham City. When the goddamn Batman foils him, he straps rockets to his hundreds (thousands?) of pet penguins, intending to use them in a suicide bombing to kill all of Gotham. And yet, you still can't help but pity him at death.

Literature
  • Frankenstein's Monster (in the book, that is, not the movies) is the Ur-example. All of his rage against man, and against Victor Frankenstein in particular, would be gone if just one person would bother to associate with him. But Humans Are Bastards, so...
  • The Wintersmith in the Discworld novel of the same name wants to win Tiffany's heart by saving people from their constant fear of death... forever.
    • Also in Guards, Guards when Vimes sees Sybil Ramkin's room the narration says something about how anyone witnessing it might be filled with a "diffuse compassion and decide that the best thing for everyone would be to wipe out the human race and start over again with amoebas".
  • Dragonlance: Raistlin Majere has a life that progressively increases in Suck, until he decides that he's going to take vengeance by becoming a GOD. And he does it, too. Of course, after he finds out that his godhood will destroy all of creation, leaving only himself in an empty universe, he... does exactly the same thing. So Yeah.
    • More specifically, that was an alternate-future Raistlin who was pretty much totally insane at that point. When main-timeline Raistlin realizes the consequences of his actions he does repent, and sacrifices himself to save both the world and (to him, more important) his own soul.
  • In the Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson, the Crippled God is in constant pain after being forcibly summoned and having subsequently crashed into the planet like a meteor. The Crippled God now tries to share his pain with everyone else. Several characters have speculated whether or not his followers' twisted faith won't let him heal or is it that his pain twists the followers' minds (even more).
  • In Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth series, Flinx's "sister" Mahnahmi is given this treatment in a big way. Considering how messed up she is and what she's suffered in her life, it's hardly surprising that she's become nihilistic, but for some reason she insists on taking Flinx and everything he loves with her, even while he's busy saving the galaxy.
  • Ineluki the Storm King, the Big Bad of Tad Williams' Memory Sorrow And Thorn. It is said that he was the brightest light the Sithi had ever known and had things been different, he might have led them out of their exile and into a new golden age. Instead, he went down dark paths, sacrificing his family, his soul, and ultimately his life to defend his people against the depredations of humanity. Even after death his hatred sustained him, turning him into a dark spirit that seeks now to return everything to Unbeing in revenge for his suffering. In the end, this turns out to be the key to his defeat.
    That was the truth behind this terrible, burning thing. No creature in all the world deserved what had happened to the Storm King.
  • In The Dresden Files book Summer Knight, Aurora, the Lady of the Summer Court (generally the nicer of the two courts) thinks it would be better to cause the end of the world than continue the harmful battles between the Faerie Courts.
  • Galadan Wolflord from The Fionavar Tapestry turned rather genocidal towards mortals after one stole his girlfriend- but when said mortal wound up getting her killed, he went crazy and decided the only way to end his pain was to destroy the universe. The only time in the trilogy he shows genuine emotion is when he finds some of the heroes apparently "desecrating" his shrine to her and the very end, when the heroes spare him and he realizes that there is some good in the world- and in himself.
  • The Lazar from the Death Gate Cycle have this as their hat- they are undead beings caught forever in a state of hellish agony between life and death, and the only way they can have any release at all is by delivering others into the same torment. The only real exceptions are Jonathon (who's a straight Woobie mixed with Messianic Archetype), and, ironically, Kleitus, leader of most of the Lazar. He was enough of a Magnificent Bastard in life to keep his head following reanimation (though admittedly he's a bit more Axe Crazy now), and plans to use the other Lazar as his tools to purge the universe of sentient life, so he'll be left ruling an empire of the dead.
  • The Chandrian, specifically Lanre, of The Name of the Wind; Lanre went insane when his love died, and in the unsuccessful attempt to bring her back made himself immortal. With suicide now not an option, he decided to kill the rest of the world instead.
  • In Richard Tierney's Cthulhu Mythos novel The Drums of Chaos Jesus is a Woobie Destroyer of Worlds. His sacrificial death on the cross is intended to open a gateway for the Great Old Ones to come to destroy the world and end everyone's suffering. One of the two heroes of the novel, John Taggart, also used to be a Woobie Destroyer of Worlds, but changed his mind. Since the world of the Cthulhu Mythos is a Crapsack World, especially in Tierney's version, where it crosses over with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four, it is not clear who is in the right, so it is very much an example of Grey and Gray Morality.

Live Action TV
  • Willow on Buffy The Vampire Slayer attempted to do this in the sixth season finale because of the death of Tara and because her magic let her feel everyone on the planet's pain - oh, and made her perfectly capable of destroying the world. She was stopped by the The Power Of Love.
    • Faith. Just...Faith.
  • Adam Monroe on Heroes is arguably an example, as his path of destruction is fueled by his heartbreak over Yaeko.
    • That and living through over three hundred years of man's inhumanity to man and seeing mankind never learn from their mistakes, repeating the same stupid actions over and over again. Think about it, the guy's lived through more horrible shit than anyone on earth. That would make anyone crazy.
  • Connor in Angel. He doesn't quite have the firepower to destroy the world, but he certainly expresses his desire to, and starts small.
  • Dr. K in Power Rangers RPM. She unleashed a possibly alien computer virus that is suspected to have nuked the planet, and is confirmed to have wiped out all of humanity outside of one city. Her motive? Escape from a top-secret government think-tank where she was being more or less imprisoned.
    • In her defense, the guards caught her before she could set up a firewall. So she unintentionally killed most of humanity in an attempt to escape unjust imprisonment.
  • Several episodes of the new Doctor Who series have shown how easily the Doctor could become one of these due to all he's endured throughout the centuries, in particular his treatment of the eponymous villains in "The Family of Blood". It's also heavily implied that the end of the Time War, in which he personally killed billions and almost annihilated two ancient civilisations, was the result of his despair over all the destruction the war had caused.

Music
  • The subject of Everything Burns by Anastacia & Ben Moody. The song could probably describe ninety percent of the people on this page.

Theatre
  • Medea. Older Than Feudalism, and if you count the myth that came before it, Older Than Dirt.
  • The titular character in Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, after being sent to prison for fifteen years on a trumped-up charge, returning home to find his wife dead ( well not really) and his daughter adopted by the man responsible for his suffering, and failing in his big attempt at revenge, finally goes Ax Crazy and becomes this at the end of Act One.

Video Games
  • Belkt, the Big Bad of Another Centurys Episode 3 is this due to an immense quadruple-whammy. Not only was he born into a Crapsack World where everyone is trying to kill each other (as well as Aliens And Monsters) with Humongous Mecha after barely surviving The End Of The World As We Know It as well as being considered nothing more than an expendable tool to his superiors in The Federation, but he's also got a bad case of Cloning Blues coupled with the fact that he thought his "father" didn't care about him either. So not only does he decide to wipe out his own Earth, but also the Earth of an Alternate Universe where his "father" was originally from and his "base" (i.e., the boy he was cloned from) is living a somewhat less screwed-up life as an Ordinary High School Student via smashing them into each other.
  • Kerghan from Arcanum Of Steamworks And Magick Obscura, who intends to destroy all life after a visit to the afterlife convinced him that life only creates pain and delusions and that death is the natural state of the universe. Basically, the Magneto side of Buddhism.
    • Virgil, after being resurrected from a plotline death, indicates that the afterlife is quite pleasant, so he has a point.
  • The Time Devourer in Chrono Cross, a Fusion Dance of Lavos and Schala, came to the conclusion that anything that killed another being in order to live did not deserve to exist. Therefore it would use Time Travel and Alternate Universe Jumping to make itself immortal and destroy all of space and time unless someone defeats it without simply using violence.
  • Duminuss from Super Robot Wars Reversal, an artificial being (unsure of what she actually is, as she is only seen as a trippy eye glyph with a feminine/shota voice... and several Humongous Mecha) whose only wish is to know her purpose. Her creator shunned her, and then she killed it. Actually, her creator, Dark Brain, didn't die. He just implanted that memory into her just for the lulz and left her. She shifts dimensions and invades the EXCELLENCE team labs searching for a time machine, to ask her creator her purpose. She constructs 3 children, who are loyal and fight for her. Then Duminuss is destroyed, and her children kill themselves to bring her back. Then the heroes kill her again. She explodes, crying over how she'll die without ever knowing what was her true purpose. Unfortunately, Original Generation Gaiden threw this out of the window and made her an unrepentant Jerk Ass...
  • Sirus, aka Dark Emperor Griffon, from Dark Cloud 2. Originally a member of the Moon Tribe (aka anthropomorphic bunny) who loved nothing more than the flowers in the palace gardens, he was accused of trespassing. Alexandra interceded for him and made him Garden Keeper. But then invading armies searching for the Atlamillia utterly annihilated the kingdom, leaving it a blasted wasteland, and killed Alexandra. His grief was so great he swore vengeance on all of mankind, and started systematically erasing it from existence via Time Travel, acquiring the Mac Guffin for himself so he could reduce the world to nothingness. Regardless, the player and the protagonists are made to feel sorry for him by means of flashback scenes scattered throughout Moonflower Palace.
  • 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.
  • F.E.A.R.'s Alma is a dead straight example of this trope. Having been driven insane by her own psychic powers as a child, experimented on and locked up since she was eight years old, medicated into a coma and locked away in a shield vault for most of her life, forcibly impregnanted and then having both of her children taken away, then killed once the project was terminated, all by her own father, and then repeatedly shot at by one of her own children while trying to embrace him, it's no surprise that the second she gets loose, people die. F.E.A.R. 2 continues her rampage as she tries to get revenge on everyone who ruined her life, and kills anyone who happens to get in her way.
    • Except for Becket, who she, um, "covets."
    • In The Point Man's defense, being embraced by Alma tends to be a death sentence.
  • Practically every villain of the Final Fantasy series from VII onward and arguably the villains from many of the previous games and spin-off lines.
  • 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 and that humanity was completely irredeemable after witnessing 850 years of slavery, tragedy, and war.
  • Crimsoness casts one of these as the Player Character.
  • Durandal, an AI from the Marathon trilogy, was deliberately threatened by his creator in order to drive him to rampancy (as part of an attempt to safely study rampancy), made to open and close doors for hundreds of years in order to stifle his creative development and slow his rampancy, and was probably about to be experimented on more when he entered the "anger" stage of rampancy, secretly contacted hostile aliens and drew them to Tau Ceti to enslave or kill every single human on the colony or in the ship. Though he becomes less of a woobie later, when he turns into a Bad Ass Chessmaster.
    • Lets be fair to the bastard. He brought the Phor as a distraction so he could get loose. Once that was done, he started working on stopping them, freeing their slaves (admittedly to work for him), and helping the Security Officer do that which he does so well. The extermination of those on Tau Ceti IV was not intentional.
  • The King of Planet FM from Mega Man Star Force. Everybody, including his family wanted to kill him to overtake his throne. As a result, he stopped trusting people. He destroyed Planet AM and almost Earth, because he thought that the people there would want to kill him as well.
    • Jack and Queentia from Star Force 3 also fit this trope like a glove. They were once the prince and princess of a small, but prosperous country, which was attacked by neighbor nations for their advanced EM technology. And it just went downhill from there...
    • You could probably also say this for Burai/Rogue also in the 3rd game. After the first time you fight him on your way to fight Jack Corvus, he may have shared his backstory saying something along the lines of "Go ahead and save him. Later on he will betray you.".
  • Strega of Persona 3 is a trio of this, all of them being artificially implanted with the powers of Persona by the Kirijo Group and being forced to take drugs that shorten their lifespan in order to control their powers. The leader Takaya later embraces Nyx coming to destroy life, proclaiming that his fight against SEES is him fighting for his way of life.
    • For some, this status is lost when they murder Shinjiro because he tried to keep them from murdering an elementary-school student. Bad luck is bad luck, but some things cannot be justified.
    • Also, Ryoji. The herald of a goddess of death... who never asked for any of it, but who cannot resist because he was literally created for the job.
  • The Shadow Hearts series has a few, but Masaji Kato from Covenant wins the cake. Having the woman you love being executed for treason? Bad, really bad. Managing to clone her, doing your best for making her clone remember everything so that you'd be finally happy together, only to have killed her again, and this time permanently, just as she starts to love you too? OUCH. No wonder he snapped after this and tried to create a new world by destroying the current one... Even the protagonists feel sympathy for him as the final battle starts.
  • Alessa Gillespie from Silent Hill is another textbook example. She was burned to the point of near death but kept alive in excruciating pain, force-fed experimental hallucinogenics, and forcibly impregnated with God. This was all done by her mother. Claudia from the third game and Walter from the fourth certainly count as well, wanting to summon a Cosmic Horror they view as divine ("God" and "Mother" respectively) to cleanse the world of pain and loneliness.
  • The Ur-Quan of Star Control. After spending thousands of years psychically enslaved by evil toads who forced them to exterminate whole species of their friends, only finally clearing their minds long enough to revolt by putting themselves through unspeakable agony, anyone would be in a bad mood. The nice ones want to forcibly subjugate all sentient life in the galaxy. The rest want to eliminate it altogether.
  • 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. Except it actually turns out it's without the "redo" part. He's that messed up by the loss of his love.
  • Kohaku of Tsukihime has become so emotionally broken that she thinks of herself as a doll and has no idea how she really feels about anything. Oh, and she's plotting the deaths of Akiha and SHIKI, is implied or perhaps stated to be involved in Makihasa's death and may view Shiki as a target as well, though she doesn't succeed there in any path. It's okay if everyone dies except Hisui, pretty much. Oh, and she's indirectly behind all the serial killing going on in the Far Side routes.
  • Depending on how charitable you feel, the darker Forsaken from World Of Warcraft fall into this trope: their penchant for obscenely lethal plagues, doomsday weapons, and tendency to respond to any threat violently are a direct result of having once been decent, devout humans and elves before having been infected by the Plague of Undeath, killed, resurrected into undeath, corrupted by the Lich King and forced to massacre friends and family, and finally breaking free of his control only to be rejected by their faith and persecuted and hunted down by any remaining friends, family, and acquaintances. No wonder so many of them snap with apocalyptic fury.
    • Sargeras, the creator of the Burning Legion was so traumatized by the evil of some of the demons he fought against as the pantheon's chosen warrior that he decided that an universe where such things were allowed to happen was flawed, its attempts at Order pointless, and should be remade.
    • Despite the fact that he wants to destroy the world because he doesn't like how mortals are using magic, Malygos can count because, let's face it, his life sucked before he ultimatly snapped.
  • Nessiah of Yggdra Union has spent the past thousand-odd years living in misery, unable to age or die, as a punishment for being a pacifist in Asgard's time of war. He has spent his life since then trying to get revenge or just to free himself, and makes a nice mess of the mortal world he lives in doing so.
  • King Valentine in Odin Sphere throws a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum in the final book by using the Cauldron to turn Leventhan into a really pissed-off Sheng Long, which ends up destroying him along with pretty much the rest of existence. Granted, he got broken pretty hard before and during the story, beginning with being forced to kill his own daughter because she had an affair with the king of an enemy country, then dying horribly, along with most of his kingdom, after being betrayed by his own son, enduring endless torturer in the netherworld, and escaping it only to be spitefully denied the complete destruction he was so desperately seeking by the dude who started the whole thing by shagging his daughter, no less.
  • Vayne in Mana Khemia after he discovered the truth and failed to take it well. Faced with the problem of honestly thinking the best thing for the world would be if he were to disappear while at the same time desperately not wanting to face the lonliness he lived with before coming to Al Revis, he decides to take the school and everybody in it with him.
  • Xion in Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, since her whole existence is pretty much a Trauma Conga Line.
  • Sakura in Fate Stay Night eventually decides that since her life sucks so much, she's just going to absorb Shirou and Tohsaka, kill everyone she doesn't like and then give birth to the devil. Well, the last part probably wasn't too high on the agenda but she didn't really care if it happened or not.
  • In Xenogears, we don't know for sure how many times Fei and Elly reincarnated Themselves, but for 10,000 years the scenario has been mostly the same for they find each other, fall in love, and when they seem to be about to have a little marital bliss they die an ghorrible and painful death. If you had the painful experiment he was subject for in his childhood, Feis end up with a multiple personality disorder, with TWO of his personalities wanting to destroy the world: one is able to exist independantly and jump from body to body, and the other one is a Person Of Mass Destruction. And that's not all: Krelian, a friend of Fei in a prevous life is another woobie ready to destroy the world if it allows him to be "reunited with God". With that many Physical Gods and Magnificent Bastards in the same planet, you can guess that Xenogears world is not the most pleasant place to be.
  • Professor Gerald from Sonic Adventure 2 initially seems to be a genocidal Mad Scientist, but once we learn that the cause of his insanity was losing his home, his research and his granddaughter, basically all that was important to him in rapid succesion, its hard not to feel a bit sorry for him.
  • Elpizo from the Mega Man Zero series exhibits traits of this trope, first being sentenced to death for discovering records about a past catastrophe in the ruined library he was ordered to examine. He escapes this fate, only to get lots of people killed while leading a failed assault on his former rulers; this drives him to obsession and megalomania, and he decides he wants to re-enact the aforementioned catastrophe.
  • Live A Live.
  • Kerrigan from Star Craft Killed her mom (and a whole mess of other folks) by way of psychic accident accident, watched a kitten die of cancer, was forced to choose between killing her mentally ill father or her sadistic headmaster (she just broke his gun), was forced to decapitate a rebel leader (and steal his head), was experimented on, and was betrayed by her father figure. Then she got infested by a Horde Of Alien Locusts. Is it any wonder she's a little crazy? Look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn't be.
  • I'd say Kalas of Baten Kaitos just barely avoided becoming this. Just barely.
  • The only reason Emerl doesn't end up as one of these is because Sonic shoots the dog before it can happen.
  • Yggdrasil of Tales Of Symphonia. He spends 4,000 years trying to bring back his dead sister, while trying to fulfill her last wish of a world without discrimination. Unfortunately, he ends up deciding that the best way to accomplish that is by creating a world of lifeless beings.

Web Comics
  • Before she mellowed out a bit, Galatea fit this trope in The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob. She explains her position thusly.
  • Dan Shive admitted that Lord Tedd has a Freudian Excuse lurkingin the shadows. Not that it matters.
  • Back in 2000, the webcomic Fluble actually had a storyline about a space monstrosity named Woobie, who wanted to destroy the world because he felt unloved.
  • Darths And Droids seems to be casting Jengo Fett in this role.
  • Sandra Eastlake from Zebra Girl. After trying for two years to come to terms with accidentally being transformed (through no fault of her own) into an obviously non-human demon who cannot eat or even taste food properly, cannot type properly (her fingers are razor-sharp foot-long claws), cannot sound normal (her voice sounds like the modulated noise of a cat being strangled), cannot interact within normal society or even hold a normal job, surviving multiple attempts on her and her friends' lives, being rendered incapable of intimate contact due to her bodily fluids being acid, and becoming her town's very own urban monster legend, she is finally pushed over the edge by a wizard who goes out of his way to provoke her into becoming completely evil so that he can successfully poison her with an evil-killing toxin. When even that fails, he simply drags her to Hell while the whole town stands by and does nothing, because he happened to look more human than she does. She finally snaps when after they both arrive in hell, he transforms into a demon and threatens to spend the rest of eternity torturing her. By that point she literally has nothing left to lose.
    • And as icing on the cake, consider that the only reason said wizard even knew about her in the first place is because she contacted him to ask for help.
  • Tavor from Looking For Group. After losing his family and kingdom to invaders, he decides to take his pain out on the rest of the world by trying to erase the city representing its last hope from existence.
  • What, noone's mentioned Oasis? All she wants is her one true love to return that love and untill he does, she'll slaughter everything in her path.
  • And then there's Last Blood, where it is revealed, by the end of book 1, that (Warning: major spoiler) Francis, the schaemiac (a vampire turned zombie-like by decades of blood starvation) who launched the Zombie Apocalypse, did it all out of spite and jealousy for his best friend Sullivan's popularity, and the latter being chosen by his Love Interest. This earned him the qualification of whiny little bitch, which the fans made his official nick, shorted up as WLB.

Web Original
  • In Broken Saints, Big Bad Lear Dunham's entire Evil Plan can arguably be traced back to his despair after the passing of his wife. Whether the pain of his loss unhinged him somewhat or whether it drove him to become the humanitarian Determinator he was prior to losing hope, there is no denying that losing the love of his life had some part in Lear's motive to re-start human civilization.

Western Animation
  • Butters from South Park tries really hard to do this in the form of Professor Chaos, but fails since he is just too adorable and inherently innocent to do anything really destructive or dangerous.
  • Terra from Teen Titans, in stark contrast to the unsympathetic bitch from the original comics.
  • A chunk of the Phineas And Ferb fandom views Mad Scientist Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz as ineffectually trying to fulfill this trope due to the way he's treated in the series.
    • Heck, he once built a brainwashing machine just to force people to come to his birthday party.
  • Your Mileage May Vary, depending on your views of him, but some fans view Tai Lung of Kung Fu Panda fame to be this. He was denied the Dragon Scroll and was turned on by his father-figure, so he went on a rampage in the Valley of Peace, destroying anything and anyone in his path, until he was eventually stopped by Master Oogway.
  • Demona of Gargoyles has suffered a great deal at the hands of humanity across her centuries-long life, and this ultimately leads her to an attitude of genocidal insanity towards that species. She's never entirely unsympathetic, though, due to her tragic (almost Shakespeareanly-so) backstory. True, a lot of it was indirectly her own fault, but that just winds up making her more pitiable. In any event, she thinks she can end her pain only by wiping out the human race, making her a definite example of this trope.
    • Made all the worse by the fact that, since she's immortal, she's Cursed With Awesome, since she'll outlive everyone and thing she's ever cared about at all. Besides which, 5 words: "The access code is... Alone."

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