Sandbox / Hurting Hero

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Anime and Manga

• Bleach: Ichigo Kurosaki believed for a long time he was responsible for his mother's death. As a result, he takes it hard whenever he fails to protect others or save the day. This eventually came to a head when he was manipulated by a villain who stole all his powers and left him utterly unable to protect anyone, including himself. He was reduced to tears.
• In Fist of the North Star, being a good guy SUCKS. The world is such a cruel, dark place that the only ones who truly enjoy their lot are the rotten ones, while the heroes must fight their own despair as well as the bad guys. Part of the reasons so many Manly and Tender Tears are shed in the series.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • Alphonse and Edward Elric when they see The Truth about alchemy, they got a bunch of wonderful images flash through their eyes (Yes, this is why they were screaming after it happened).
    • And it happened to Edward twice, since he used the Human Transmutation circle again to escape Gluttony's stomach. from is constantly burdened with guilt over pressuring Alphonse to help him with his efforts to bring their mother back through human transmutation, and causing the subsequent loss of Al's entire body (and the loss of his own arm and leg). He also feels anger at his father's abandonment and holds him responsible for his mother's death.
    • For that matter, Alphonse is wracked with guilt about his brother losing his arm to save Al's life.
  • Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye, and Alex Louis Armstrong are all wandering around with buckets of guilt over the parts they played in the war in Ishval, where they were ordered to massacre innocent people. On top of this, Roy and Riza have sizeable doses of Love Hurts.
  • FMA has so many of these it ends up being part of the story's Central Theme.
    A lesson without pain is meaningless. That's because no one can gain without sacrificing something. But by enduring that pain and overcoming it, he shall obtain a powerful, unmatched heart. A fullmetal heart.
• Van of GUN×SWORD exemplifies the broody Anti-Hero version: he's one of the gloomiest heroes you'll ever see. It's implied that at one point, he dealt with his pain through drinking (hence the nickname "Hangover Van"); he also seems to use violence to cope with it.
• Gundam:
  • This is somewhat the point of Mobile Suit Gundam. Amuro is a massive ball of Wangst, but he still manages to basically single-handedly win the One Year War for the Federation and proceeds to kick more evil asses in the next few following major conflicts.
  • Setsuna from Gundam 00 is also of this trope. He pretends to be The Stoic but inside, he's a huge ball of pain and self-hate for coldly killing his parents because Ali says so and later when his best friend Lockon Stratos pulls a Heroic Sacrifice and dies because Setsuna arrives to a battle too late. And if that wouldn't be enough, The Movie undoes two seasons' worth of Character Development by revealing that after Setsuna turns into an Innovator, he can no longer find his place among ordinary humans and is thus purposely distancing himself from them - even going as far as playing the ignorant at Feldt's timid approaches.
• All three Magic Knights were this at the end of the first series of "Rayearth" and the beginning of the second. They hated how they killed the very person they sought to save, and having Zagato's blood on their hands as well made them even more depressed.
• The Mazinger series:
  • Mazinger Z: Before the beginning of the show, Kouji had lost both their parents. The first episode the maid that his grandfather had hired got murdered in cold blood in their own home, and later his grandfather died in his arms. Throughout the whole series alot of people -several of them close to him- gets hurt and dies cause the war between Dr. Hell and him (Prof. Yumi gets hurt by an angry mob, making Sayaka nearly quit, Minerva dies, Prof. Morimori dies, Erika gets killed, he has to fight and kill a girl his brother had fallen in with...). Later in Great Mazinger he finds that his father has been alive all along only for losing him definitely shortly after. And in UFO Robo Grendizer, when finally it seems life will be peaceful from now on, he gets involved in a third war. The saddest part is when you realize his Annoying Younger Sibling, Shiro, has it worse than him.
  • Great Mazinger: Tetsuya lost his parents when he was a little child. On the surface he looks like a hot-tempered, arrogant Jerkass, but that is nothing but a cover to hide that he is plagued with neuroses and insecurities, and he is deadly frightened of being abandoned again.
  • UFO Robo Grendizer: Duke Fleed. Oh, my God, Where we begin? Before the beginning of the series, the Vegan The Empire Alliance killed his whole family or so he thought, murdered most of his planet's population and turned the whole planet into a radioactive wasteland, forcing him to run away. A while later he has found a new homeworld where starting a new life and his wounds are beginning to heal when the Vegan Empire strikes Earth and he gets forced to fight despite of he hates war. Throughout the series he sees dying many people, some of them by loving him and refusing harming him. Later he finds out that the Saucer Beasts that he has annihilated are powered with brains of Fleedian inhabitants, some of them friends of his. Have we mentioned that he's dying via a radiation-inflicted wound he suffered during his escape and knows his days are numbered? And at the end of the show his fiancee (and Big Bad's daughter) reappears to beg him forgivennes by her father's actions and talk him into get married with her -so they can end up with the war without further bloodshed and rebuilding his homeworld-, but after he accepts she gets killed?
• Kenzo Tenma from Monster. He saved the life of a murderer, and decided to take responsibility for it.
• Naruto Uzumaki from Naruto. Which he hides behind a smile and an upbeat cheerful attitude. In Chapter 458, Sai comments on this to Sakura: "Sasuke causes Naruto pain...But I think you do, too." Right before the Chunin Exam finals in Chapter 98, Naruto even admits to Hinata that the smile is a mask, and later on, Pain put him on the ropes by breaking him down with words, getting him to second guess his own actions. While attempting to gain complete control of the Kyuubi, it was revealed that despite finally achieving his dream of being respected and loved in Konoha, Naruto still has deep-seated issues from his childhood holding him back both from defeating the Kyuubi and embracing his new-found fame.
• Shinji Ikari of Neon Genesis Evangelion crosses the Despair Event Horizon at the end of the series and for most of The Movie... then he ends up saving humanity and undoing everything SEELE attempted to do. Probably.
• Pretty Cure: Yuri Tsukikage/Cure Moonlight of HeartCatch Pretty Cure!. On becoming a Precure, she immediately develops the mindset of "I'll shoulder all the burdens so no one has to suffer", carrying all those loneliness with a smile, which instead backfired when it cost the life of her fairy Cologne, and then she was utterly trounced by Prof. Sabaku and Dark Precure, losing her Precure powers and most of her cheeriness as a result. When she regains her power and spirit, she ends up discovering that Sabaku is her Disappeared Dad, Dark Precure is her 'sister', said dad was killed by Dune protecting her. If not for Tsubomi reminding her what's at stake, she would have given in to hatred and despair. But in the end, she prevailed without giving in to all her misfortunes.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Due to the unexpectedly brutal consequences of being a Magical Girl in this universe, this happens to most of the characters; with the possible exception of Kyouko, who had some traumatic experiences but largely avoided wallowing in angst over them (partly by becoming kind of a selfish asshole).
  • Homura, who was never particularly happy to begin with, repeatedly and consistently fails to save Madoka, even as somehow succeeding gradually becomes the only thing that matters to her. This really takes its toll on her, though she tries to hide it. In The Movie, seemingly through the powers of love and angst, she takes over the entire universe using the powers she accidentally gave Madoka, in a questionable attempt to "save" Madoka and make her happy. Despite accomplishing her goal at last, Homura becomes more depressed and emotionally closed-off, because she feels like she's turned herself into Madoka's immortal enemy.
  • Mami and Sayaka too. Mami regrets not saving her family with her wish, and Sayaka has a complete breakdown over her own weaknesses and some of the unpleasant details of the magical girl contract.
  • Madoka herself subverts the trope by wishing to save all magical girls from becoming destructive hate-monsters, making herself happy and lessening the tragedy for everyone else.
• Sailor Venus / Minako Aino from any version of Sailor Moon is the only senshi whose Dark and Troubled Past are a direct result of having her mission to save the world and protect the princess given to her, and she doesn't even get a set of True Companions to help her along, unlike Sailors Moon, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter, until a year after her awakening. Even after getting integrated into the team, she still has emotional issues that stem from having to put her hopes and dreams in the backburner to aid Sailor Moon, only to watch her get all the glory. An episode in the SuperS season of the first anime has Venus confront a shadow version of herself, who tries to convince her to throw off the mantle by reminding her of how much she suffers in the name of the greater good, only to receive no appreciation for it.
• Science Ninja Team Gatchaman: Ken "G1 The Eagle" Washio (or Mark) lost his father when he was a little child. Later he finds out that his father is alive only to see how he was Killed Off for Real shortly after. At the ending of the series, Joe commits a Heroic Sacrifice to save them. At the next series his mentor and surrogate father gets killed. All of that trauma slowly wore his sanity off, and though he started as the prototypical The Hero and The Leader with Nerves of Steel, by the final series he had become violent, uncontrollable and impulsive like The Lancer.
• Ken Kaneki from Tokyo Ghoul warns the audience in the first chapter that his story will be a tragedy. He has a pathological need to shoulder all the burdens and responsibility himself, hiding his worries behind a smile, and pushing away those that attempt to help him. Much of the series is spent on his struggle with his powers and nature as a Half-Human Hybrid, shifting from one extreme to another and pretty much unable to find balance in his life. In the end, he becomes suicidal and makes a failed attempt at Suicide by Cop. In the sequel, Haise Sasaki is an Amnesiac Hero as a result of repressed memories and suffers from a heaping dose of Chronic Hero Syndrome. He's even more of a Stepford Smiler than before, and struggles with feelings of self-doubt and constant fear of his past coming back to haunt him.
• Vash The Stampede of Trigun, especially later in the series. And let's not even get started on the manga, where he's a Stepford Smiler of epic proportion and has a few Heroic BSODs and fits of Unstoppable Rage (not to mention the scenes of epic alcoholism). Meryl is shocked when she gets engulfed in his memories during one of his most spectacular Heroic BSODs and realizes he's just a ball of pain.

Comic Books

• Batman is one in the comics and most adaptations, especially from the 80s onwards. The pain comes from seeing his parents murdered right in front of him when he was merely a boy, because the family decided to cut through an alley at young Bruce's insistence and ran into mugger Joe Chill. From Batman: Year One:
  Batman: You can never escape me. Nothing harms me. But I know pain. I know pain. Sometimes I share it with someone like you.
• Spider-Man is infamous for the sheer amount of angstworthy drama dumped on Peter Parker. Some writers seem to think that the biggest appeal of Spider-Man is that things constantly go wrong for him. As a result, we get countless stories of Peter suffering humiliation, lack of money, sickly aunt, girl trouble, and just all-around unpleasantness, to the point that reading the stories can actually get a little depressing. Note that after John Romita Sr started working on the title with Stan Lee, the book became much Lighter and Softer than it had been recently, a move which led most fans to label it as the golden age of Spider-Man.
• Superman: Growing up feeling different only to learn that he's the last of a once-powerful and glorious species has given Clark Kent a lot of emotional baggage. He handles it the best he can, but it does weigh on him that he can't let what happened to Krypton happen to Earth.
• Supergirl. Being one of the most powerful beings in the planet will not protect you from emotional pain, heartache or will bring your loved ones back:
  • Pre-Crisis Supergirl's parents sent her to Earth because Argo City was dying. She loses her parents and her home, and she is dumped by her cousin into an orphanage that she hated. Her heroic duties interfere with her personal life to the point that she cannot keep a steady boyfriend and has to quit a job. Often she feels torn because she wants to live like a normal woman but her vast powers entail great responsibilities. Late in her career she meets an Old Flame and realizes what she still feels something for him two weeks before his demise. And then she fights a dimension-eating Eldritch Abomination to save her beloved cousin and the whole Multiverse, and gets killed and forgotten.
  • Post-Crisis Supergirl was fifteen when her planet exploded. Shortly after, her surviving hometown Argo City was destroyed by Brainiac's robots. Her parents apparently give their lives to send her to Earth, but she spends thirty-five years in suspended animation until she at last lands on a baffling, alien land. Yet still, she tries to adapt to her strange new home and become a hero, even though the people whom she protects do not trust her and look down on her. Eventually, her parents and the last remains of her people are blown up by humans, and even so she keeps determined to save and help people.
  • Post-Flashpoint Supergirl loses her planet and her parents and she becomes stranded in a strange, alien world. She is hounded and harassed by villains, and she almost gets killed because she would rather die than let innocent people die. She is manipulated by a man who breaks her heart when he proves to be evil, loses her only friend and joins a group of questionable anti-heroes only because she is desperate for friends. Still she never stops being a hero, even when she gets -further- hurt, traumatized, abused or depowered.
• Daredevil:
  • A couple of writers (Bendis and Brubaker) have seemingly competed to see just how much pain they can put Matt Murdock through. Just in two runs, he's gone though a mental breakdown over the death of his longtime girlfriend Karen Page, his secret identity was blown and he was sent to a high security prison (filled mostly with crims he'd put away) for obstruction of justice, his wife was driven insane by a supervillain and committed to a mental hospital and his best friend was stabbed and assumed to be killed.
  • Mark Waid himself deconstructed this trope during his run, when Daredevil encounters Rachel Cole, a former Marine who became a protege of The Punisher after her family was murdered.
    Rachel: You know what gives me the strength? My loss. We're alike that way, I imagine. Admit it, nobody who's a stranger to that particular pain could ever be as driven as us.
    Daredevil: Never...(throws his billy club into the wall behind her) Don't you ever say that to me ever again. That is a repellent statement. It's a vomitous insult to every cop, every fireman, every soldier who steps up to fight for those who can't! I am sorry for your loss, but if you genuinely believe that only the death of a loved one can motivate a human being to take up a cause, then get your pathetic, cynical ass out of my way so I can do my job!
• Empowered. Let's see, constant mockery and humiliation (much of which comes from her own teammates), a somewhat embarrassing track record that it seems she'll never live down down though she's getting better, an inability to hold a steady job... That's the small stuff. The big stuff includes a fellow superheroine and one of Emp's few friends sacrificing herself to save Emp (survivor's guilt, ahoy!) and watching her father die right in front of her on the kitchen floor when she was a little girl.
• Doctor Strange, sometimes. He may enjoy the perks of being Sorcerer Supreme, but he is also responsible for every innocent life in the universe — expect a good wallow in guilt after a major disaster, even if it's something he never could have foreseen or prevented.
• Tim Drake may have started out as the most "normal" Robin with a still living family but after becoming a crimefighter things went downhill for him in a hurry. First his mother was murdered and his father paralyzed, then his girlfriend was tortured and murdered, his father was murdered, both of his best friends died, his step-mother was presumably killed when the city she was in was destroyed, his adoptive father was supposedly killed, and then he was nearly killed by one of his adoptive brothers (though this wasn't the first or last time one of them tried to kill him), and the only one of his new siblings who never tried to kill him fired him as Robin and dismissed his (correct) theory about Bruce's survival as Tim losing his mind.
• The Transformers (IDW): Optimus Prime. During the Stormbringer arc, his internal monologue notes that millions of years of war have started to get to him, and he's worried that the Autobots have become as bad as the Decepticons. During All Hail Megatron, Sideswipe gives a speech about this, which inspires Prime to declare the Autobots will no longer follow this darker path and resolves to become the idealised leader he is supposed to be.
  Megatron: I once told Optimus I killed for the sake of killing. I wanted him to hurt me, you see - because when he hurts others, he hurts himself.

Fan Works

• A Crown of Stars: After the canon events where Shinji and Asuka endured parental abandonment and abuse since they were four, were forced to combat alien monsters, got constantly beaten and mind raped, actually died and outlived the end of the world... they had to survive in a devastated world ruled by warlords kept them alive because they had an use for them. While they worked for two wannabe dictators Asuka was sexually harassed every day, both got more wounds and scars... when the story begins they have overthrown a dictator, and they are helping to topple another and rebuild their world.
  Shinji: Asuka, both of our parents practically dumped us by the side of the road before we were four. Both of us have actually died in combat with alien monsters before we were fifteen. We outlived the end of the world, and then some. Why should anything in our lives be easy, even the good things?
• Advice and Trust: In chapter 1 Asuka and Shinji have a long conversation where they talk about how they were abandoned by their fathers after their mothers' deaths when they were three -and never got an explanation or apology-, they spent their whole childhood feeling lonely with no friends, nobody understood their pain or cared about it, they still have constant nightmares about it... after reaching each other out and bonding they feel more confident about winning the war against a bunch of giant alien monsters, but they still see their family and friends getting hurt constantly.
• The Child of Love: In case losing their mothers, being ditched by their fathers before the age of four, and fighting giant otherworldly monsters was not traumatic enough, Asuka has sex with Shinji and gets pregnant. Now they have to patch up their relationship up (even if they are barely capable of having a civil conversation) and learn to be parents (even if they are mind-broken teenagers). And even if they get together, Asuka still may die when she delivers Teri because Gendo is using her to create a new life-form, and giving birth that life-form may kill Asuka.
• Children of an Elder God: Shinji, Asuka and their fellow pilots saved mankind. In order to achieve that goal they risked their lives, their souls and their sanity every time they got into their giant robots, and gradually stopped being humans. And they had already endured their mothers' loss and their fathers' abandonment, but in the process of saving their world they saw many people dying, including their families and most their friends.
• Child of the Storm: While none of the younger cast are exempt from this, Harry has it by far the worst, with the list of his traumas beggaring belief. Being murdered is actually one of the milder ones. After the Forever Red arc in the sequel, he spends a significant period of time one frayed nerve away from snapping completely and when he's trapped in the Triwizard Tournament, he breaks down entirely, coming off as profoundly embittered by the tendency of the Call to batter down his door. However, a lot of therapy and support, plus a few personal revelations during a very extended Mental Health Recovery Arc leave him as a more thoughtful and philosophical Knight of Faith. However, the narrative makes it painfully clear that he is still horribly traumatised, and that his horrifying PTSD is not going away any time soon.
• Hoshi Fujioka in Cinders and Ashes: the Chronicles of Kamen Rider Dante gets put into this trope on day one of being a superhero, since gaining his powers from his own Original Character and fighting someone who seeks to destroy the multiverse means revisiting the pain of losing his friend, Setsuna, to a bullycide who happened to be the creator of said multiversal threat. He then goes through having to fight someone who had been his hero, finding out that a friend of his had a hand in Setsuna's suicide, nearly losing his sister twice, and finding out that he had used his rage towards the bullies to write his fanfic that eventually gave him those very powers. By the beginning of the second arc, Hoshi had endured a lot of pain to the point where even his friends are concerned for his continued battling.
• Evangelion 303: Let's see:
  • The Hero Shinji lost his mother when he was a little kid, his father never was around and their relationship is barely existent, he did not really care for his own life until he met Asuka, and the woman that he loves is constantly hurt, falling apart and self-destructing.
  • Kaworu tries to help everyone but he never is sure of being doing it right.
• Frayed Edges: Michael Afton. Throughout his childhood, he was abused relentlessly by his father William with the barest of provocations, resulting in him suffering panic attacks that William dismissed as "overreactions" and only further punished him for. While still a child, he accidentally killed his brother Evan during an attempted prank while lashing out, resulting in William's abuse increasing and the rest of his family fully turning against him. Add into that having spent years hunting after and being terrorized by killer animatronics, and having been viciously disemboweled by Ennard so that he could merge with Michael, transforming him into an Undead Abomination. Unsurprisingly, by the time of the story Michael is a barely functioning wreck of a human being suffering from depression, anxiety, and severe PTSD.
• Ghosts of Evangelion: Shinji and Asuka saved the world, but they got hurt physically, emotionally and psychologically, and their scars never fade. Even in their forties they still have nightmares and suffer from PTSD.
• Last Child of Krypton: Shinji's mother died when he was four and his father abandoned him. As he grew up he found out he had powers he could use to help other people. Throughout the history he fights Eldritch Abominations to protect his new family. He gets punched, burnt, blasted to the Moon… he sees his family and friends getting hurt…
• Once More with Feeling: During an argument with Asuka related to a school trip, Misato ponders how badly Asuka was betrayed and hurt in the past by everyone and even so she still fights giant aliens that threaten mankind.
• The One I Love Is...: Shinji, Asuka and Rei's went through the traumatic experiences they endured in canon, but their traumas got worse because they became a Love Triangle, and Shinji could not stand that Asuka and Rei got hurt. Still they fought to save the world and made their best.
• Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: When she was a child Asuka's mother got crazy, stopped recognizing her daughter and hang herself together with the doll she thought was her daughter. Her husband never loved Asuka and after his wife's death he got married to his lover and refused taking care of Asuka. Asuka spent the next ten years training to be the best at everything, thinking would nobody give a damn about her otherwise. When she discovered she had incredible powers she got thrilled but soon she found out they were a burden. She had to fight criminals and super-powerful beings besides the giant alien monsters she was trained to beat, she was often hurt and even mind-raped, her family and friends were constantly targeted by crazies and loonies, and everybody looked up to her and expected her being a pinnacle of morality and heroism.
• In Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race, Mega Man is this from episode 6 to episode 12, as his doubts over himself and his abilities grow.
• In Kitsune no Ken: Fist of the Fox, Naruto goes through some very deep self-hatred because of his past as a member of the Kyuushingai and the death and destruction the group caused for 365 days, two years earlier.
• In Thousand Shinji, during their bonding talks, Shinji tells Asuka how he fell apart after his father abandoned him in the wake of his mother's death, and even though he's tried to get over it, he's still full of pain... and so Rei and Misato are, and he knows she's also in pain. And even so, they're trying to save mankind.
• In Hellsister Trilogy, take a child who is barely fifteen when she gets sent to another world as her parents and her whole civilization die. Then put her through a decade and a half of fighting the scum of the universe as failing to form any kind of long-lasting relationship or find her place in an alien culture. Then have her battle an Eldritch Abomination and barely survive after getting nearly ripped apart. The end result is Kara being depressed, worn out, and sick of risking her life on a daily basis; but even so, she always answers the call every time she gets dragged into another cosmic battle.
• In The Flower Princess and the Alchemist, Edward is a temperamental jerk with good intentions plagued by his guilt over his and Al's conditions.
• The Temeraire fanfic Black Wings, Black Sails has the separation of William Laurence and his dragon Temeraire as its premise. Temeraire is deeply unhappy without Laurence as his captain, dreaming most nights about flying with and generally being with him. He gains a stronger friendship with Levitas, united in their beloved captains having abandoned them, and is so enraged at Rankin upon Levitas's death that he very nearly kills the man outright. Dayes proves to be a paltry substitute for Laurence, as he doesn't read to Temeraire or spend much time with him - despite the man's initial pride at Temeraire's talents - and is generally sullen. Despite this neglect, Temeraire is intensely protective of Dayes, as he is his captain, and he can't bear to lose another one after losing Laurence.

Literature

• Mercedes Lackey seeks to instill this in a lot of her protagonists. She lampshades it once, saying her formula is to make the readers like the hero, then dump a mountain on them.
• Harry Potter: Harry, who at seventeen years old has bested the Dark Lord at least eight times. And survives, unlike most of the people he loves.
  Hermione: Harry, don't go picking a row with Malfoy, don't forget, he's a prefect now, he could make life difficult for you...
  Harry: Wow, I wonder what it'd be like to have a difficult life?
• The Licanius Trilogy: Caeden is devastated at each step of the plan he must fulfill. First, he discovers that he used to be Aarkein Devaed, ostensibly the series Big Bad and later discovers that only way he can save the world is by tracking down his best friends that he's known for millenia and killing them one by one.
• The Wheel of Time: Rand Al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn is the patron saint of this trope. To start out, he has access to the tainted male half of magic, everyone else with access to male magic in the last 3000 years went mad, rotted alive, and killed everyone in his vicinity. He's fated to destroy the world in saving it. He's responsible for taking the fight to Satan Himself, whose elite followers consider the current crop of Aes Sedai (wizards and witches) to be children at best. Then he discovers that his predecessor was literally reborn as a backseat driver in his mind. That predecessor is himself only somewhat sane, can't be revealed because it would be assumed that the current Dragon is going insane, has suicidal tendencies, tries to grab the magic out of the current Dragon's hands with regularity, and was well known for killing his entire family as he went insane, realizing for a single moment what he'd done, and committing suicide so dramatically that it made a volcano. The current Dragon is barely more than a teenager from a tiny farm village in the middle of nowhere. He seems fated to be a martyr for humanity. Everyone and their mother works against him — and most aren't even evil, merely selfish, superstitious, foolish, set in their ways, and determined to control this kid who is clearly not in charge of saving the world. His ancestral people have pledged to him - and some of their warrioresses act as his bodyguards, and he's lived his entire life expecting to protect women with his strength. That in particular scars him so much that he keeps a list of all of the women who have died where you could even hypothetically lay the blame at his feet. He was captured by Aes Sedai and tortured ruthlessly. Alanna once connected her mind to his, and spent the next month crying in the pain of it. Nynaeve, the limit-breaking healer, once looked at his mind and realized that there was nothing she could have done for him if not for Lews Therin's heroic sacrifice. To top it all off, nobody believes him, everyone thinks they know better than him, and as he's trying to save the world, the world is trying its hardest not be saved. He once quipped that the pressure of that alone should be enough to drive him insane, never mind Saidin.
• Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor: Luke. Even before the villain puts him through Mind Rape, he shows signs of depression and strain, and after all he is the one active Jedi in the entire galaxy and trying to negotiate what that means, what he should do. But he keeps going. After that, he seems to be suffering PTSD, with constant flashbacks, heavy depressive nihilism, loss of faith... but he still keeps going, and his compassion and empathy never run dry.
• The Mental State: Zack State becomes cold and ruthless after he fails to prevent his girlfriend from being raped and ends up scaring her away. Still, he occasionally opens up to prisoners he has learned to trust and has control over. Once they understand how much his actions have actually benefited others, they start to see him as this trope.
• Emberverse: The Last Eagle Scout has survived all of his former leaders and his peers, suffered serious injuries from a fire, and is crippled and bedridden by the time series protagonists meet him. He has still succeeded in forging a group of child and teen plane crash survivors into a viable settlement, protecting them from both natural and human-made threats. Most, if not all, of the Morrowlanders see him as a Parental Substitute. And he was only a teen when the group's plane crashed because of the Change. He's a minor character, but a major Determinator.
• Inferno (Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle): None of the characters have a good time in Hell, but Carpenter's tribulations get an especial first-person focus. Over the course of the novel, he breaks most of his bones on a number of occasions, is pelted with fire from the sky, has to wade through boiling blood, has his belly sliced open, burns off his own hands, and has his eyes frozen shut and then open. Every time, the Healing Factor of the damned in Hell fixes him back up so that he can be hurt again. The narration is very graphic about this, describing his sensations, such as the all-pervasive agony of immersion in boiling liquid or the feeling of smelling your own burning flesh, in some detail.

Live-Action TV

• This is a trait of many a primary Kamen Rider give the abuse typically heaped on them through the story. It also happens with secondary and tertiary riders too, but that's where the hero part gets ambiguous. This trope is the reason why many Riders' helmet designs have lines under their eyes that make them look like they're crying.
  • Shiro Kazami/Kamen Rider V3 had his family killed by Destron and was forcibly remodeled by the Double Riders into a Cyborg after being fatally wounded whilst saving them. Then the Double Riders performed a Heroic Sacrifice, leaving him to fight Destron alone.
  • Kotaro Minami/Kamen Rider BLACK/RX was kidnapped by a cult alongside his step-brother Nobuhiko escaped only for said brother to become Shadow Moon had to separate from two of his surrogate families. And still keeps on going.
  • Shinji Kido/Kamen Rider Ryuki was tricked, beaten half to death, and shown the worst of humanity more times than he can count. His story is basically a repeated cycle of shock, Heroic BSoD, and recovery. Yet, he would keep on fighting for others.
  • Kazuma Kenzaki/Kamen Rider Blade lost his parents in an accident and started out as an Ineffectual Loner. While he does eventually reach out to people close to him, Kenzaki eventually starts to doubt himself later on, especially by the time he gets King Form, his high compatibility eventually causes him to go berserk and mutate into a Joker, which he ultimately does at the end of his series to prevent the end of the world and give Hajime a happy life at the cost of staying away from the latter and all his friends.
  • Emu Hojo/Kamen Rider Ex-Aid was mistreated by his supposed colleague, manipulated, nearly killed, and had his view of the world turned against him more than once. He soldiers on believing for better tomorrows anyway, having the advantage over Kido or Kouta by actually getting people to understand (or at least) tolerate him.
  • Sento Kiryu/Kamen Rider Build starts out without any memory of his past aside from being experimented on by a terrorist group and has been living in a constant fear of losing his identity/mind again. He has fought and killed in a civil war and never fully recovered from the state it left him in. His solution to an Eldritch Abomination trying to eat the world was a suicidal attack that led to him being mindraped by said abomination. He always got up again with the help of his family. He is the idealistic, silly rabbit after all.
  • Sougo Tokiwa/Kamen Rider Zi-O lost his parents in a bus accident, had a surprisingly deep Friendless Background, and was believed to be the younger self of the demon king that enslaved the world in the future. For how upbeat he is, Sougo spent a few episodes with his friends from the future against him, had experienced an alternate timeline where everyone he knew was against him, and at the final battle, lost said friends to the Big Bad, leading him to be the demon king and eventually give up all his Rider powers to reset the timeline to undo the damages his corrupter had done.
• 'Buffy:
  • Um, Buffy, anyone? Her life sucks beyond all reasonable measure, she goes through multiple Heroic BSoD, outright depression at points, yet she always manages to keep fighting demons.
  • Angel as well. He constantly fights against his vampiric side, can never be perfectly happy for fear of losing his soul, and must deal with over a century of the most vile sins conceivable he committed while soulless.
• Jack Harkness from Torchwood. Just... In Children of Earth alone, first we learn he has a daughter and a grandson; while the grandson thinks Jack is his uncle, the daughter just really doesn't want anything to do with Jack. Then he gets blown up and feels it, comes back to life screaming with all of his skin still burned off, gets drowned and trapped in concrete, is thrown off a cliff while in the concrete, has his daughter and grandson taken hostage, and learns that he is partially responsible for the latest alien threat because he once surrendered 12 children to them. Then, just when it looks like he might be able to stand up to the alien threat, Ianto (his lover) is killed because of his very bad plan and dies in his arms, something Jack blames himself for. Then, to finally save the world from the alien threat, he has to kill his grandson in front of his screaming daughter. In one season, the main villain is Jack's brother, who was captured because of Jack and forced to watch torture until he went insane. He ends up killing Tosh and Owen and burying Jack alive for almost 2000 years.
• In Doctor Who, most of the Doctor's incarnations have something to be sad about, but in particular from Nine onwards, after the Last Great Time War in which he basically got the entire race of Daleks and Time Lords killed.
  • The Twelfth Doctor would seem to have less reason to hurt, as by the time he's "born" Gallifrey has been saved, not destroyed so that burden of guilt has been lifted from his shoulders. But his days in the Last Great Time War still hang heavy on his hearts, to the point that he has a more pronounced aversion to the military than usual in Series 8 and a heartwrenching monologue on the topic of war in "The Zygon Inversion". And loss? Loss? A key theme in Series 9 is his struggle to move on from losing people, especially loved ones, which feeds into his Chronic Hero Syndrome to sometimes bitter ends. As he is a Creepy Good fellow with No Social Skills, he has only one companion in his first two series, and when they are separated by her death, a Senseless Sacrifice inspired by wanting to be a hero like him, the final stretch of the season follows his temporary transformation into a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds because he can't take the pain anymore. It's so bad that the only thing that fully brings him back to his best self is Mind Rape.
• Sam and Dean Winchester, anyone? They always keep fighting (if sometimes for selfish reasons), even when they would rather just give up or rest:
  • Sam suffers so much due to his life as a hunter that he never seems to catch a break. Although Sam constantly risks his life for others and saves lives almost on a daily basis, it is far from easy for Sam. In fact, Sam's life has been nothing but one giant tragedy.
  • Dean always goes through so much pain, tragedy, and chaos. The man just can't catch a break. Even though he constantly saves people, nothing ever good happens to Dean in return. In fact, the bad stuff just keep piling on for Dean. From losing family, friends, and allies to having to stop his own younger brother going Dark Side and becoming evil, there is just no happy times for Dean. And even when he does get some happiness or normalcy, it is taken away from him sooner than later.
• Merlin:
  • Poor Merlin. Not only is he stuck looking after Prince Arthur (and never receiving any kind of recognition for his service), but he also has to actively hide the fact that he's magic, even when it costs him his friends, his love, and even his long-lost father.
  • Arthur also qualifies. He's under extreme pressure from his father to live up to his duty as the next king of Camelot, he's in love with a girl who is just a servant (and who still carries a torch for one of his knights) and now his newly discovered half-sister is trying to kill him.
• In Leverage, at least three members of the Five-Man Band qualify.
  • Team leader Nathan Ford's son died because of his greedy boss. This led to divorce, alcoholism, job loss—and, eventually, his bringing together a group of Con Artists to help the helpless. However, Nate is still haunted by his demons, even after bringing his boss to justice.
  • Before he joined the team, Eliot Spencer was a mercenary/assassin who did things so terrible that he can't bring himself to discuss them, even with his closest friends. He doesn't see himself as The Atoner, because he believes his sins are unforgivable.
  • Parker's foster parents (at least her father) were so abusive that she blew up their house, possibly while they were still inside. She then spent the rest of her childhood and young adulthood learning how to be the world's greatest thief. All this might explain why she's a Cloudcuckoolander with mental issues (possibly Asperger Syndrome) who has trouble relating to people, although her teammates are helping her with that.
• In 24, Jack Bauer is a tragic hero who has everything in his life taken away from him. He tries to sacrifice himself for the United States with a nuclear bomb in season 2. His life goes even more downhill from there.
• Mac Taylor in CSI: NY, who spent a lot of his series struggling with the loss of his wife on 9/11 and basically retreated into his work to forget the pain. Fortunately, things improved for him toward the end when he fell in love with an old acquaintance, Christine Whitney.
• Duncan on Highlander. He had a pattern of falling in love and either having to leave to keep his secret or reveal the truth and risk immortal enemies killing his lovers. He took the losses of Debra, his first love as a mortal, and Tessa, his One True Love, the worst. Not to mention all the friends he either lost to the Game or had to kill because they pulled a Heel–Face Turn and became evil.
• Sam from Quantum Leap. Let's see, his father lost the family farm and then died relatively young, his brother was killed in Vietnam and his sister married an abusive alcoholic. And being the kind of person he is, he feels guilty about all of it - particularly the farm and his sister. The trope is particularly evidenced in "The Leap Home, Part 1," where Sam tries to change his family's future and finds that it's not so easy to do.
• Ultraman Leo had his homeworld Planet L77 destroyed by Alien Magma, with him and his brother Astra as the only survivors. Throughout his time as Earth's protector, he's constantly put through Training from Hell by a crippled Dan Moroboshi/Ultraseven, frequently lost his comrades in MAC to kaiju attacks and had to protect Astra (later revealed to be an impostor) by shielding him from the Ultra Brothers' joint beam attacks. This all comes to a head in episode 40 when Silver Bloome's rampage annihilated MAC and killed thousands of innocents, including his love interest and friends, leaving him as the sole protector of Earth. Yet, despite all the suffering he goes through, he genuinely loves Earth and puts his life on the line to protect it from harm.

Video Games

• Good lord, everything in the world of Mother 3 tries its damn hardest to make Lucas into this. He's a sensitive, coddled mama's boy who ends up watching his mother die violently before his eyes, then bears the guilt of believing he let his brother go to his death. These events alone cause him to remain in a stagnant form of grieving for most of the game. 3 years later, his home has been industrialized and all the villagers who were once nice and friendly to him, consider him an outcast and a disgrace to his village for not giving in to the industrialism that now plagues the islands; he even lives mostly alone because his father spends all his time away from the house searching for his missing brother and neglecting Lucas. And all of this is before his adventure has even started yet. He then constantly has to fight against the Twisted, Mechanized and Bloodthirsty Wildlife that he once was friends with, as well as constantly have an army of soldiers out to get him and his friends, the same army who inadvertently killed his mother to begin with. He later has to live with the knowledge that his home was all a lie, everyone brainwashed themselves with fake memories and personalities to prevent the world from completely ending, the islands being the last habitable place on the entire planet, and now Lucas is the only one who has the power to redeem the world at this point. Then he has to fight the Masked Man for the final needle, the Masked Man turning out to be his missing brother all along, who was brainwashed and mechanized for the past 3 years and has no memory of being Lucas's brother, relentlessly trying to kill him. And in the end, Lucas's brother finally remembers who he is and then kills himself as atonement for what he's done, then dies in Lucas's arms. And yet, despite everything that happens to Lucas, he still goes on and does what's right, and makes the world a better place with the love in his heart.
  • In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Pit and Palutena discuss how Lucas likely deals with all this by fighting.
• Raiden becomes this so hard in Mortal Kombat 9. His actions slowly keep making things worse for Earthrealm, the heroes die one by one under his watch, and the Elder Gods seem to be pulling a major The Gods Must Be Lazy trip. By the end of the game, his actions narrowly prevented Armageddon from happening, but at the cost of practically all of Earthrealm's champions. Even Liu Kang, Raiden's favored champion, is dead (although unintentionally) by his own hand, after having first turned on him for the tragedies he so far caused. He carries the guilt of his actions throughout the entire game and you can tell it takes its toll. By the game's ending, he's emotionally and physically exhausted. And The Stinger at the end just makes it even worse. Seriously, the guy probably needs a hug badly when all's said and done. And his job is not going to be any easier for the next quarter-century.
• The Castlevania universe is home to several who could qualify for this trope:
  • The Belmont clan in general. Very, very good workaholics, the Belmonts may be, but that does not save them from the perils that befall each respective Belmont:
    • Leon Belmont, from Lament of Innocence. A devoted knight who renounced his title in the ongoing Crusades, all for the chance to save his beloved. Despite his efforts, he fails in that quest. And that's without going into the other things he winds up being victim to.
    • Trevor Belmont, from Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse. Living in exile due to having been excommunicated, Trevor basically had no one to turn to for much of his childhood. As a result, he's pretty rough around the edges. Thankfully, he would not finish his quest to destroy Dracula alone, a fact that he is quick to state in Curse of Darkness, the next game to chronologically take place after Dracula's Curse.
    • Christopher Belmont, from Castlevania: The Adventure and Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge. The first adventure is nothing to write home about, but having to basically whip his own son to near-death just to free him from Dracula's clutches could not have been easy.
    • Julius Belmont, from the Sorrow duology. Though he is the Belmont who was able to permanently put an end to Dracula's cycle of resurrection in 1999, a side effect of those events would be amnesia for him. As a result, Julius goes for much of his life afterwards without any memories of that fateful series of events. To his credit, though, the amnesia is lifted some time during the events of Aria of Sorrow.
  • Alucard, introduced in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, and being promoted to main star in Symphony of the Night. The son of the series' primary antagonist, Dracula. Even ignoring what drives him and Dracula into doing the respective things that they do in the series, as well as the obvious effects of immortality on Alucard's life, by the time the Sorrow duology comes around in the timeline, he's at least assisted in no less than killing his own father. THREE TIMES. All this, just in the name of keeping the promise he made to his human mother. The man may never waver in his stance against everything that goes bump in the night, but damn, does he deserve a hug after everything...
• In Creepy Castle, Moth, of all people, have issues like feeling he has to be a hero despite being unqualified for the job and trying to not let people get near him and avoiding them getting hurt. Due to this, he falls easily to Possessor's influence and ends up having to face his shadow.
• Hawke of Dragon Age II. Unlike the Warden and the Inquisitor, it seems that Hawke really gets the shortest end of the stick. You get a few minutes of Hawke just sitting in his/her house in a deep, crushing depression as their family is slowly being taken away from them. Politics isn't much kinder to him/her either. Even their companions and their eccentricities have starting to exhaust them trying to keep peace and stability among them. This is upped when s/he returns in Dragon Age: Inquisition, where after four years constantly on the run, the discovery of the red lyrium really intensifies the ongoing war across Thedas, his/her failure to stop the Mage-Templar War and failing to kill Corypheus, has clearly done irreparable damage to his/her self-esteem. S/he also broke off his/her relationship with his/her love interest to protect them, leaving him/her even more alone than they already were before. And if the player doesn't play their cards right, they can finally die for good.
• The Tales Series is very fond of this trope, especially in regards to The Chosen One. Both Colette, Zelos and Luke get a lot of pain from their status as Chosen Ones.
  • Colette Brunel was raised with the knowledge that she'd eventually go on a journey to regenerate Sylvarant. This has lead to her thinking of herself as expendable and nothing but The Chosen One, even though she ends up losing her senses and knows that going through with the journey will end in her death. Even later parts of the game have her keep mum about slowly crystalizing because she thinks it's her punishment for not fulfilling her duty. It takes her most of the game to grow out of the self-sacrificial mindset and opting to take a third option on saving the worlds without sacrifice.
  • Luke fon Fabre was kidnapped as a young child, although he was rescued and taken back home rather fast. But the trauma caused him to forget everything, including having to relearn how to walk, talk, and even recognize his parents' faces. And Luke has been locked up in his family's mansion since, leaving him completely foreign to how the world works and growing up to be rather spoiled, hotheaded and snobby. He's then told that part of the locking up was to ensure that his destiny written in The Score would end up fulfilled, sending him to Akzeriuth. Things don't get much better in Akzerituh because said destiny involved him destroying the town and dying there, had it not been for Van's manipulations. Luke ends up stricken with guilt over the events in Akzeriuth, although this does give him the incentive to become a better person. He learns that he is a Replica, a clone of the original Luke fon Fabre, and that his mentor and older brother figure, Van, has been using him since. Luke deals with Clone Angst and being thrown aside by the person he trusted the most. The entire game is a rollercoaster of emotions for Luke, who is trying to make up for his past deeds and improving things, only to be told during the last portion of the game that he's basically disintergrating.
  • Velvet Crowe is closer to an anti-hero version of this. Most of the game has her being driven by her personal goal of wanting revenge against Artorius for having killed her younger brother, with what happens to the world after that being none of her concern. But when she realizes that Artorius' plan would awaken the Fifth Empyrean, and what doing so involves, she begins to warm up to wanting to keep the world safe. She also gets thrown into her face that her brother was a willing sacrifice and not the cold-blooded murder she believed it to be and that everything she has been doing in the name of 'revenge' was All for Nothing. It isn't until the last third of the game that Velvet shows more of her pre-Broken Bird personality, even lamenting what horrible things she has done in her quest for revenge. She even asks her companions to please watch over the world she's done terrible things to, wanting them to help people as they have helped her before she seals herself away with the Fifth Empyrean in a cycle that will ensure that he will never awaken and threaten the world again.
• Tekken has many of these. Notably Jin Kazama and Kazuya Mishima but it could be argued that nearly all the characters are the hurting hero of their own backstory.
  • Kazuya is a notable example that could be an example of one who eventually went full-on Fallen Hero Face–Heel Turn. He's good as a kid, but once Heihachi took over his training and eventually tossed him off a cliff for being 'too weak' for his standards, that's the last straw and Kazuya turns into the vengeful, power-hungry villain/false hero that we all know these days. Being good just hurts so much when you're in a Big, Screwed-Up Family.
• Mass Effect series:
  • Garrus Vakarian as of Mass Effect 2. His career as turian Punisher really hasn't gone well for him, and to top it off, his family thinks he's a slacker and has no idea of his saving the galaxy. Especially evident if you pursue his romance, in which he eventually tells Shepard (the one person in the galaxy that he trusts and respects the most) that the reason he's been so awkward and nervous about their relationship is that he so badly wants it to be the one thing in his life that finally goes right.
  • Ashley and Kaidan, if they survive Virmire, is one of these in Mass Effect 2, despite their small role, and in the beginning of 3. Literally, too, after Dr. Eva beats the crap out of them on Mars and they nearly die. A hefty dash of Broken Pedestal for Shepard combined with Udina's betrayal will do that. Fortunately, they can overcome it.
  • Shepard can also be played as this, and is definitely this if you choose the Colonist and/or Sole Survivor background where all of his/her family and friends were brutally murdered by slavers when s/he was 16 and where s/he was the only survivor of his/her last squad as s/he saw the rest of them suffer terrible deaths from thresher maws. Choosing the Colonist background will have the Consort describe Shepard as this, an Iron Woobie, and a Knight in Sour Armor. In the sequel, Shepard's reluctant cooperation with the terrorist organization Cerberus has made his/her name dirt to the people in power and even to some of his/her closest friends, no matter how noble his/her intentions are which can be highlighted in dialogue with Liara in Lair of the Shadow Broker.
    • Taken up to eleven in Mass Effect 3, when we really start to see the cracks. Throughout the game, Shepard is having nightmares of all the people who have died to get him/her where s/he is. The squadmate who died on Virmire is brought up in conversation and you might even kill the one that lived if you haven't talked to them. Then s/he can lose either Mordin or Wrex, or even both, depending on how the genophage cure plays out. Next comes Tali or Legion, and then s/he loses the entire planet of Thessia, the asari homeworld. By the time the final battle rolls around, Shepard is a wreck and, in conversations with Liara, Kaidan, or Garrus, shows a very insecure side.
    • It's very heavily implied throughout Mass Effect 3 that Shepard has become a Death Seeker. While s/he's still willing to fight the Reapers, it's implied that s/he would consider death a great relief.
  • A spotlight comic reveals that, during his last stand on Omega, Garrus calls his father to admit he (Garrus) was wrong and as a final goodbye, knowing he will eventually be overwhelmed. His father brushes off the goodbyes and wants a tactical update on the situation (a flashback scene also reveals that Garrus learned to be a crack shot from his dad). Then Garrus sees the N7 armor in his scope and tells his dad that his odds just improved before hanging up. Given that Garrus officially joins the Turian military by ME3 and even attains a high rank, it can be assumed his father is now proud.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Link himself, more than once. In The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, he's already an orphan, immediately proceeds to lose his uncle/godfather, and is framed for the kidnapping of Zelda (arguably his only friend at that point) soon after. In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time he's already the "Boy Without A Fairy," so getting one means he's on his way, right? Yeah, on his way out of the only world he's ever known, blamed for the death of yet another father figure, while leaving behind his only remaining friend. Then he makes friends with Zelda, who needs his help to stop the evil Ganondorf. Sounds good — at first. One could argue Majora's Mask (searching for "a lost friend" — presumably Navi — that he never finds) as well. Oh Link, you happy-go-lucky elf, you.
  • The Hero of Time is a canon case since an anniversary book confirms he's the Hero's Shade in Twilight Princess. Regardless of what else he did with his life, he was never able to let go of his perceived duty as hero. He did apparently learn to talk though, so there is that...
  • Link and Zelda get it particularly bad in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Both put a great deal of effort into preparing for Calamity Ganon's return under a great deal of pressure from their families and others, only for Ganon to destroy Hyrule because of Zelda's inability to awaken her Royalty Super Power in time; Link had to spend the next century in a Healing Vat while Zelda let herself be Swallowed Whole to seal Ganon in Hyrule Castle. Other characters who have it hard include Prince Sidon, a sociable Warrior Prince who nonetheless has many moments of Heroic Self-Deprecation over what he views as pushiness and still mourns his sister Mipha a century after her death.

• Solid Snake is one of the best examples in gaming. It would take such a long time to explain all the crap this guy has gone through, you just need to play the games.
  • As a summary of Solid Snake (let alone Big Boss/Naked Snake or Raiden)
    • Metal Gear: He is forced to fight and kill his father figure who betrayed him.
    • Metal Gear 2: He is forced to fight and kill his best friend (Grey Fox) as well as his father figure who has survived. And, after the flavor added by the Solid series, both fights are very much a case of both warriors acknowledging the necessity of the battle, but without any animosity. It also doesn't help that he finds out said father figure was actually his father...
    • Metal Gear Solid: Snake is once again forced to fight and kill people who, for all intents and purposes, are pretty nice people and enemies he respects. He is also forced to fight with the knowledge that, if he succeeds, he will kill the brother he only learned about the previous morning. Oh, and one of the only men he trusts has betrayed him (and the cute doctor has poisoned him). And he once again has to fight against his best friend who has suffered immeasurably due to their previous battle. And, depending on the ending, he may have contributed to the death of his friend's daughter.
    • Metal Gear Solid 2: Snake basically has to deal with the aftermath of helping the big bad of the series, has his name dragged through the mud, and has to continue to help the big bad in the hopes of finding a way to stop them.
    • Metal Gear Solid 4: Snake finally learns the true story of his birth (and finishes off becoming an orphan) and has to live with the knowledge that he is becoming a biological WMD and that, even if he finds a cure, he will die of old age before the year is out. And he is CONSTANTLY reminded of how his body has failed him.
• Samus Aran. Metroid: Other M goes a long way towards showing just how utterly psychologically broken she is by the utter living hell that is her Doom Magnet life and quest for vengeance/justice. Post-traumatic stress disorder in spades, dependency issues developing towards authority figures like Adam, survivor's guilt...
  • Samus worked mainly alone in her missions and whatever job the Federation tasks her to do, she always does it by her own rules. She most likely repressed everything that happened in her life and working alone allows her to focus on her objectives. It isn't until she sees Adam again in Other M that her suppressed feelings start to resurface.
• Mickey freaking Mouse in Kingdom Hearts. He hides it like a pro, but his failure to save the Birth by Sleep crew continues to haunt him, over a decade later.

• B.J. Blazkowicz in Wolfenstein: The New Order. Spending 14 years in a semi-comatose state only to awaken in a world conquered by Nazis, it's perfectly understandable he won't be smiling anytime soon.
• Litchi Faye-Ling from BlazBlue is very determined to do the right thing that is curing her friend Lotte Carmine who turned to Arakune, caused by her Guilt Complex. However, in process, she ended up getting corrupted the same way as Arakune, had to keep this information to herself only, and against her preference, had to join a suspicious Troll and the worst father in the world, and left behind those other people she truly cared about as she has no other choice unless she wants the corruption catch up and ruin her forever. These facts have been hurting her so much, but even so, and despite everyone else calling her actions to be useless and lost cause, she is still determined to save him and do the right thing... while keeping a motherly smile on her face.
• And from BlazBlue's spiritual predecessor, Sol Badguy maintains his jerk demeanor to cover for this. He's torn between sheer rage at being used as a pawn by That Man, sorrow for his own part in creating the Gears, and as Overture showed us, heartbreak at having to kill his lover, Aria, twice over.
• Sam Fisher starting with Double Agent, when he is told that his daughter has been killed by a drunk driver, the only person in his life who means anything to him. He ends up willingly going to jail as part of the mission to infiltrate a terrorist organization and has to perform questionable tasks for them. At the end of the game, he is put before a Sadistic Choice whether to shoot his boss/friend/mentor or the Big Bad (the latter would break his cover). The sequel reveals that he chose to maintain his cover and is on the run from the whole US government, although he does learn that his daughter is still alive.
• StarCraft: In Koprulu Sector, you're either one of these or one of the monsters. Both Jim Raynor and Zeratul tried to do the right thing, and the universe repays them with lots and lots of hurts. Tassadar had the fortune to die in a blaze of glory rather than seeing his world fall apart around him.
• Halo: By the end of Halo 4 Master Chief has watched Cortana slowly go crazy and when he had expected to go out in a Heroic Sacrifice, she one-ups him to send him back home. Despite the helmet, he's obviously in deep pain and grief at the end of the game. Halo 5: Guardians follows that up by reopening all those wounds when he finds out Cortana Came Back Wrong and has become the main villain. He tries to withdraw emotionally but is still crushed when Cortana betrays him.
  • Even the other members of Blue Team have begun expressing concern when the Chief's way of coping is to drag them from one mission to the other in rapid succession. This is made even more painful when you realize that he is just trying to save Cortana and bring her home, which he feels he failed to do the first time. All the mission dialogue in Blue Team's mission involve Kelly urging the Chief on while Fred and Linda continually express their misgivings.
• The Secret World: Moutemouia of the Sentinels. Granted, all the Sentinels are having a tough time of it, given that they're human souls that have been bound to Living Statues for thousands of years to keep the local Sealed Evil in a Can from breaking out, but Moutemouia has it worse than any of them. Among other things, she was married prior to being imprisoned and had to give all that up to save Egypt. Millennia onward, and she has nothing to do but use her powers to keep the City of the Sun God from being discovered by the outside world... but the combination of monotony, separation from her children, and isolation from the world have begun to erode her willpower. For good measure, she's also adopted her youngest brother Houy as a as a substitute for her own long-dead children, and at this point in time, he's the only thing keeping her from just... letting go.