Basic Trope: The Woobie is driven to villainy as a result of their misfortune.
- Straight: Bob loses Alice and, in pursuit of his desire to avenge her, becomes the Big Bad Emperor Evulz as a result.
- Exaggerated:
- Who's Laughing Now?
- Bob sees Alice getting poked by a poodle and becomes an Omnicidal Maniac as a result.
- Bob has suffered viciously at the hands of the world he lives in, and can't simply kill himself. Solution: END IT ALL!
- Downplayed:
- Bob loses Alice and, despite trying to just move on with his life, becomes sufficiently twisted and embittered that if someone put him in a position to turn his grief into destruction, there's no telling what he'd do.
- Bob has been bullied so much that he becomes a bully himself.
- Jerkass Woobie
- Justified:
- Bob has suffered so much abuse, he snaps and is clinically insane.
- Bob lives in a Crapsack World, therefore he has no reason to believe that humans have any good in them.
- Inverted:
- Iron Woobie
- My God, What Have I Done?
- Evulz kills Alice as part of his plan to destroy the galaxy and a grief-striken Bob stops him, going down in story as Bob Woobie, Savior of Worlds.
- Subverted:
- Bob is actually an Axe-Crazy Blood Knight or Psycho for Hire, and is just using Alice's death as an excuse to split some heads open.
- Bob was lying.
- Bob starts muttering a Madness Mantra about getting revenge as he caresses Alice's dead body, and his friends are worried that he might snap. But after he finishes mourning, he goes back to his normal, cheerful self.
- Double Subverted:
- Turns out, Bob is crazy, except that he truly, genuinely cared about Alice and was trying to Become His Heroic Mask. After losing the only one who saw the good in him, he's hell-bent on vengeance.
- As it turns out, Bob's actual reasons are due to a frankly miserable existence; he didn't really care for Alice except as an acquaintance, but his life has taught him that since she's dead for no good reason, he must repay it in full.
- He's just hiding his revenge plot behind a disturbingly cheerful facade.
- Parodied: Someone shoots a spitball at Bob. He becomes a super villain in response.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Any Omnicidal Maniacs have no particularly good justification; Woobies don't do anything homicidal.
- Enforced: "We can't just have our Omnicidal Maniac destroy for the lulz!"
- Lampshaded: "I'LL KILL EVERYONE BECAUSE SOMEONE KILLED ALICE!"
- Invoked: Claire kills Alice to make Bob join The Dark Side.
- Defied: After Alice's death, Bob gets therapy so he won't engage in any of this type of behavior.
- Exploited: After noticing Bob's newfound angst, the Big Bad's next Monster of the Week is an Emotion Eater.
- Discussed:Alice: Bob has gone through so much; I wonder how he still didn't go crazy after this.
Charlie: Eh, I suspect that by this point he's one particularly bad day away from snapping and lashing out against the world. - Conversed: "Why do the most remembered villains always symbolize the little guy being taken advantage of?"
- Deconstructed:
- Alice was a Person of Mass Destruction killed with the support of essentially the entire world, with only Bob who looks up to her. As a result, nobody sympathizes with Bob's rebellion, and it ultimately comes across as pointless and stupid.
- The destruction and pain Bob has caused becomes disproportionate compared to their "hardships" thus negates any merit and sympathy in the process.
- Reconstructed: Bob has same set of powers, and now, the entire world, explicitly, has pissed him off by killing the one person who could sympathize with/restrain him. Because of Alice, though, he's gained quite a thick skin, so he's not normally easily enraged. This makes him all the more dangerous, because while he's upset, he won't be easily goaded into anything that could prevent him from doing something really, really nasty to the world.
- Implied: Evulz is mainly a Generic Doomsday Villain, but in one evil speech, he tearfully announces that the world deserves to die after what it has done to him.
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