Daria sometimes falls into this category. The beginning of the episode, Monster, as well as Boxing Daria give a bit of a glimpse as to why she acts the way she does.
Arcee as well. Her past involves her witnessing the death of her first partner, then things get progressively worse from there.
The biggest example is Optimus Prime himself. Despite seeing so much war and destruction in his lifetime, he maintains his optimistic hope for a better future for his people and allies.
Kaeloo: Stumpy. He has constant bad luck for no apparent reason, but he is able to survive being struck by lightning, getting hit by a flying car and being left on an exploding planet which gets hit by a meteor.
Hei and Yin from Darker than Black are rather woobieish once their backstories come out. Heiwas dragged into a war as a child while trying to protect his little sister, who he had to watch turn into a sociopathic killing machine. He was then (apparently) betrayed by the only other person he trusted, leaving him the sole survivor of his team, lost and alone with his sister's powers, no idea what happened to her, and the Syndicate holding a gun to his head to make sure he stays working as their assassin. Yin is an Emotionless Girl due to Mind Rape, is blind, and lost both her parents in tragic circumstances. Her father died in a plane crash, and shortly afterward, she realized her mother and piano tutor were in love and tried to run away; her mother had to sacrifice herself to save her from an oncoming truck after Little Yin ran into the road, and Yin holds herself responsible for this. No wonder Hei's a shell-shockedstoic.
Any sympathetic character, particularly Ichise in Texhnolyze. These characters show less emotion on average than a two-by-four, but damn are they ever hurting.
Rin Sohma has been through LOTS of shit in her life, but once she meets the sweet and gentle Tohru, she despises herself for even wanting to cry on her shoulder.
An earlier example would be Hatori. Under that sand-dry demeanor is a deeply scarred heart.
Alucard for that matter when you take a look at his childhood.
Tekkaman Blade D-boy. Other than for convenience, there IS a reason why he pretend to be amnesiac.
Both Ritsuka and Soubi from Loveless could qualify when you look at their backgrounds, though Soubi is arguably more of a Stepford Smiler than legitimately stoic.
Batman. First his parents are killed before his eyes, and then his sidekick and ward, Jason Todd, is brutally killed by none other than the Joker. But Batman never complains- If he did, he wouldn't be Batman.
Hit Girl from Kick-Ass. She was trained by her father to be a weapon since she was a child and kills hundreds of people for him without question, never once experiencing a normal childhood. However, not so much after her father died.
Hulk: No! For years... forever... Hulk has listened to Banner, and Banner's friends, talking about how Hulk ruined Banner's life! Hulk made Banner's life! Banner was nothing before Hulk... nothing! Banner: It'll be different, Hulk! You'll have peace... friends... Hulk: Hulk doesn't want friends, because friends will hurt him. Everyone hurts him. Everyone hurts Hulk.
Ramon from Alligator counts as this to an extent. Flushed down the toilet and abandoned in a sewer all his life before he grows into a big friggin' gator with an appetite for humans.
List of cut WDOW entries:
Assault on Wall Street: The whole reason Jim eventually goes on a killing spree in the NYC financial district is because his life savings were wiped out by crooked financial advisors, causing him to lose his job, his home, and even his wife Rosie after she kills herself.
Asami in Audition. She endured a horrific childhood.
Gurdy the Clown / Luther Edward Baxter from 100 Tears.
Candyman: Candyman became an undead monster after he was murdered by a lynch mob because he was a cultured black man who fell in love with a white woman in the 19th century.
The eponymous character of Carrie (1976) is certainly a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, even if she doesn't quite want to destroy worlds... just most of her high school. Her rampage luckily ends before she gets the chance to do anything more.
But only in the 1976 film. In the book and the remakes, she wants to kill everyone at her school, everyone in her town, and everybody else. Fortunately, she dies before she can commit anything more than demolishing her school, giving her mom a heart attack that kills her, killing two horrible bullies in a car crash, electrocuting several people, and setting her town on fire.
Spoofed in the zany teen comedy Zapped!, in which science nerd Barney Springboro is similarly degraded at a prom when the Alpha Bitch throws a watermelon at his head, almost knocking him out and causing almost everyone in attendance to laugh at him. Barney avenges himself by using his telekinetic powers to blow open the gymnasium doors and summon a hurricane-like wind that strips everyone except Barney's prom date and his best friend down to their underwear. Woobie, Nudifier of Worlds, perhaps?
In Chronicle, Andrew is bullied and made fun of constantly through the movie, in addition to a sick mother and an abusive father. After he gets his superpowers, he begins to snap, and starts to get involved in crime to save his mother's life, stealing money for her medicine and such. By the end of the movie, during the climax, he nearly destroys the city.
Bartleby in Dogma: he eventually snaps, realizing that God always favored man above angels like himself, gives up hope that "He" will never forgive him and Loki for their menial transgressions, and so decides to kill everything.
Loki: You sound like LUCIFER, man! You've fucking lost it! You're not talking about going home, Bartleby, You're talking about fucking war on God! Well fuck that! I have seen what happens to the proud when they decide to take on the throne!I'm goin' back to Wisconsin.
Bartleby: We're going home, Loki! And no one, not you, not even the Almighty himself is going to make that otherwise!
Grace in Dogville. Made all the more ambiguous by the discussion just before the ending, where it suddenly becomes very clear that she's only a child.
Eve of Destruction: EVE III is somewhat of a tragic villain in that she's mostly just confused and kills people who she thinks have either wronged or upset her while believing that she's the real Dr. Eve Simmons. It's not even clear if the robot itself is aware that the nuclear device inside it has been triggered at all.
Bill Foster in Falling Down goes on a rampage of terror after his wife left him and would not allow him to see their daughter. He is fired from his job in the defense industry due to post-Cold War budget cuts and is generally just pissed off with the state of the world and takes his anger out on every issue, whether minor (foreign shopkeepers, high prices, poor fast-food service) or major (racism, social class, unemployment). While he is overly violent, he is representative of the everyday man pushed too far by the world.
Also a Decontruction of the trope, as his police officer counterpart, Prendergast, is experiencing similar bad fortunes, with co-workers who don't respect him and can't wait to usher him off to retirement, a wife who walks all over him, and a general sense of fatigue for most of the film. However, he doesn't break, and in fact, delivers a beautiful "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Foster.
The original film shows Godzilla as a Tragic Villain, just as much a victim of nuclear weaponry as anyone else. This is especially evident in the Heisei films, where he's portrayed as more of a "force of nature" rather than an outright villain.
Oddly enough, Michael Myers is one of these in the Halloween (2007) remake. Director Rob Zombie tried to portray him in a much more sympathetic light.
Big Daddy from Kick-Ass is a rare heroic version when you find out what Frank D'Amico did to his life.
The infant(s) of It's Alive, whose homicidal rampage turns out to be birth trauma and separation anxiety, and who longs only to be reunited with his family.
Eli in Let the Right One In, a vampire who is trapped not just physically in a 12-year old body but apparently emotionally as well, forced to kill to survive, whose only friend is an equally screwed up boy.
Francis Dolarhyde from Manhunter (1986) and Red Dragon (2002): actually lampshaded by Will Graham; he says that he feels a lot of sympathy for the child he once was, but thinks someone should put a bullet in the adult Francis' brain.
May is a particularly heartbreaking-cum-vicious example.
The Moorwen!!! In Outlander, its species is destroyed for being less intelligent than man, and its only offspring is killed off brutally. You should give it a hug...if you believe you won't get torn apart.
Sadako in Ringu and her counterpart, Samara, in the US remake, The Ring, considering that both were mistreated and murdered.
As we learn more of Darryl Revok's backstory in Scanners, it becomes increasingly apparent that he became a psychic supremacist with ambitions of world conquest due to all the abuse he suffered because of his supernatural abilities. He tranformed his inferiority complex into a superiority complex to cope with being called a freak and locked up in a mental asylum for years, as pointed out by Dr. Paul Ruth:
Dr. Ruth: At the age of 22 he was extremely self-destructive; now at the age of 35 he is simply destructive.
Glen Ray from Seed of Chucky briefly fell into this when he saw his father, Chucky, murdering his mother, Tiffany. Despite being the kindest living doll that had the face of a demon, but the mind of an angel, seeing his father murdering his mother hit him hard because of his love of life. It's no wonder why he snapped and killed Chucky for doing this. He's not like his sister, Glenda (who's just like Chucky); his love for his mother broke him down and seeing his father do such a thing eventually made him turn against him. He slices off Chucky's arms and legs and as he's doing this he asks his father if he's proud of who he is and then decapitates and kills him.
In Sicario, Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro) was once a criminal prosecutor, until the murder of his wife and daughter by a drug lord pushed him into becoming a relentless, revenge-seeking assassin on the payroll of the CIA and a rival US-backed cartel.
In Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Anakin Skywalker's final transformation into Darth Vader is shown to be caused by losing everything and everyone he cares for, albeit due to his own actions.
Kim Jong Il from Team America: World Police. He's plotting the destruction of society as we know it, but deep down, he's just "a rittre ronery" (read: little lonely).
The femaleBig Bad in The World Is Not Enough. Being abandoned to be repeatedly raped by terrorists by your own father, and at the advice of the Big Good no less, certainly won't do wonders for your sanity.
Joker then decides the best way to make Batman hate him is siccing a legion of Big Bads from across the multiverse on Gotham, which nearly wipes out the whole city. By the end of the movie, Joker's fine with destroying everything in Gotham, himself included, as long as it proves he was Batman's Greatest Enemy.
