Trauma Conga Line / Live-Action TV

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• 24: Jack Bauer is a Type E. While he put up with a lot of crap in the first season (including the kidnapping of his wife and daughter, the police chasing him, duplicitous co-workers and obstructive bureaucrats), he arguably triumphed...until the final minutes of the season finale, when he finds his (pregnant, unbeknownst to him) wife tied up and gutshot in the CTU server room. From that point on, 24 becomes "The Tragedy of Jack Bauer"—over the course of the series, most of his friends have died (Season 5 could unofficially be called "Let's Kill Jack Bauer's Support Network"), he's been tortured multiple times, gets little respect from government agencies because he's perceived as a loose cannon and generally has to go on the run at the end of most seasons because of the circumstances leveled on him. At the end of the series, he's almost executed and forced to flee the country, beaten and battered, with his new love interest dead.
• Poor James and Abba got hit hard with this in Season 21 of The Amazing Race despite being one of the front runners for the first half of the season. In four consecutive legs: Abba hurt his knee, James’s wife called him and told him that his dad’s cancer was entering its end stages, they got their money stolen by another team, and then both of their bags and Abba’s passport got stolen which ultimately got them eliminated the next leg. When they finally got home after spending two weeks in Russia because of the passport issue, Abba found out that he’d actually broken both of his tibias.
• Arrow: Oliver. First, while on his dad's boat, it suddenly tears apart and his lover is ripped away by a current. He makes it to a life raft with his dad and the captain. Days later, with supplies dwindling and Oliver refusing to take them all for himself, his father shoots the captain and then himself. Oliver nearly dies of exposure regardless, then makes it to an island and has to bury his father's body. It goes downhill from there. Five years of hell, including watching a child he cares for die horribly and painfully, and he morphs into a cold-blooded killer. Even when he finally returns home, things only get worse: the next four years see him lose his best friend, his mother, his First Love's sister (again), and eventually said First Love herself. By the time the show has ended, he had already lost the mother of his child and his half-sister, but he ends up having to leave behind his son, his wife, his newly born daughter, his friends, his allies, and even his city when he strikes a bargain with The Monitor to save the multiverse itself, and ends up dying not once, but twice.
• Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski once observed that one of the best ways to deepen a character is to "drop him down a few wells". He used this trope a lot: Londo Mollari, G'Kar, Garibaldi, and Delenn all endured repeated traumas throughout the thirty-odd years covered by the series' main timeline. Captain John Sheridan probably got it the worst, though: First his wife was killed in the backstory. On the show, he was captured and tortured by aliens, possessed by an unknown lifeform, nearly killed multiple times, found a new love, saw his wife return from the dead, lost her again, gave his life to stop the Shadows, came back from the dead himself, went to war against Earth, fought against and killed many former friends and fellow soldiers, was betrayed by a close friend, and finally was captured and tortured into near-insanity by Earthforce interrogators.
• The Ballad of Big Al: This best summarizes Big Al's later life. First, he winds up with broken ribs and a torn claw after an attempt to mate ended with the female violently rejecting him. Later, he breaks his right middle toe after a failed hunting attempt and it gets infected. Too weak to hunt, he slowly dies from starvation and dehydration.
• Played for Laughs in a Black Books episode when Manny is mugged after having punched through the glass of a phone booth to avoid a bee. When Fran is looking for Manny, Bernard advises her to "become a terrible event and happen to him."
• Black Mirror loves putting its protagonists through this:
  • Black Mirror: Playtest: This episode is about a breezy American guy testing out an experimental horror video game that interacts with your brain to produce realistic (and crucially, safe) holographic projections of your fears. First the game starts with tame Jump Scares, but then it starts to adapt and the horror becomes too personal. It starts with Sonya stabbing him In the Back, then his Mission Control turns on him and traps him in a room, then the game starts erasing his memories (a year before the events of the episode the protagonist lost his father to Alzheimer's and it's all but stated that the world trip stems from a desire to gather as many happy memories as he could, while he still could). At this point, the game developers burst into the room and inform Cooper that the malfunctioning game has left him with his memories permanently erased and trapped in an Alzheimer's-like state. To top it all off, at this point the developers finally get him out the game and he flies home to America, and finds to his horror that his mother has contracted Alzheimer's in his absence and she doesn't remember who he is. Then we find out everything we watched so far was a Dying Dream as the game in reality malfunctioned due to his mother phoning him. The poor guy died alone in pain and terror, crying out "MOOMM! MOOOMM! MOOOOMMM!".
• Shawn Hunter in Boy Meets World, even the showrunner has mentioned how nothing good ever happens for Shawn throughout the entire 7 season run. His mom abandons him, driving away with their trailer (his home) and all his possessions and his dad abandons him trying to get her back. He's basically homeless for a bit before finally settling in with his English teacher for the year (who, of course, gets into a car accident and is never heard from again), then both parents come back only to abandon him AGAIN at some point between seasons 4 and 5 (the muddled timeline makes "when" unclear). Things finally appear to be looking up for him after he starts college; until, in quick succession, he breaks up with his long term girlfriend, his father dies and he learns that the woman he THOUGHT was his mom, wasn't and his real mom was a hooker. It's no wonder he started drinking again.
• Breaking Bad:
  • Nobody really fares too well in this series, but Jesse Pinkman seems to get the absolute worst of it starting from season 2: he has to deal with his parents giving up on him and kicking him out, leaving him homeless; the death of his girlfriend Jane to an overdose that he feels responsible for; Hank beating him into unconsciousness, leaving him hospitalized; having to go on the run after he reaches his rage breaking point and tries to kill a group of men who murdered a little kid; having to murder an unarmed person in order to save the life of an increasingly abusive surrogate father, which causes a Heroic BSoD so strong he pretty much gives up on his life for a few episodes afterwards; having to deal with a kid he's befriended being poisoned and thinking said surrogate father is the cause; seeing a kid get killed unnecessarily again and finding out that his surrogate father has killed a whole bunch of other people as well; and figuring out that he actually did poison the kid, which drives him to a self-destructive rage so intense he comes very, very close to burning Walt's house down. And just when you think things couldn't possibly get worse and Jesse gets some semblance of peace after helping Hank arrest Walt, he's forced into slavery by the same guy who killed the kid earlier and his gang while said surrogate father coldly informing him that he was behind the death of the said girlfriend above due to overdose, and when he tries to escape one time they react by murdering Andrea, the woman he loves, at which point the ringleader threatens him to continue cooking or her child will be next. And all the while dealing with continual threats to his own life and abuse from the Neo-Nazis.. It's no wonder he's so often considered a Woobie despite being an Antivillain.
    • The conga line doesn't even stop with the series finale and continues in El Camino: Now on the run from the police for his connection to Walt (who died in a machine-gun-turret-induced massacre on the aforementioned slavers) and haunted by memories of his captivity, he goes to take some of his now dead captor's money so he can start fresh, only for some friends of said captor to get the drop on him while disguised as crime scene investigators. While he's able to get some of the money, it's not enough to pay the local "disappearer" to help him leave (on account of the disappearer demanding payment for the last time he was called out in addition to now), forcing Jesse to confront the crooks who have the rest of the money he needs one last time, by lying to his parents one last time so that he can get the guns he hid there long ago. Then, and only then, does he finally catch a break after hightailing it to Alaska. Even then it's implied he will be haunted by the events above forever.
  • Mike Ehrmantraut doesn't fare much better. He learns that his boss has been killed while recovering from gunshot wounds in Mexico thus costing him his comfortable job as Gus's muscle. After that, the slush funds his boss left behind for hazard pay to keep his imprisoned associates silent, along with his granddaughter's inheritance, are seized by the DEA, thus forcing him to ally with Walt, whom he trusts about as far as he can throw. When the DEA puts pressure on him later, he's forced into retirement with a five million dollar buyout: a lot of money for most, but likely not much after paying off aforementioned imprisoned associates. Then the DEA gets his money again, and one of his associates flips on him, selling him out and forcing him to flee without even a chance to say goodbye to his granddaughter. Not that he gets very far, anyway: he has one final argument with Walt where he chews him out for being a prideful and selfish son of a bitch, pushing Walt's Berserk Button and driving him to shoot Mike to death. Then, as a final insult to injury, his body is placed in a barrel and dissolved in acid, so no one, much less his family, will ever know what became of him.
  • The writers for Better Call Saul confirmed that Saul Goodman wouldn't exist if they didn't constantly try to break down Jimmy McGill's brain with every horrible thing they could think of. His wife Kim Wexler leaving, not out of lack of love but hating herself and wanting to self-destruct is the final straw.
  Gould: I think as we went on we just kept piling more things onto this character, more horrible things and after each one we were like not quite enough, and we kept pushing it, and we finally got to the break up scene, it felt like this is the moment.
• The Brittas Empire:
  • In "Blind Devotion", Colin becomes temporarily blinded, and loses his aunt, pet canary, and life savings in quick succession. This is revealed to occur on his birthday no less.
  • In “Curse Of The Tiger Woman”, Gordon Brittas loses his only friend to cursed cooking, finds out that he is the father of Carole's twins, and is threatened with early retirement and a staff mutiny. Capping things off, the centre is about to explode, he is attacked by a goose, and then he finds out that the past seven series were All Just a Dream.
  • Carole in general. Firstly, her husband cheats on her with her best friend and runs off to Spain with their savings, leaving her both having to raise a baby on her own and with an unpaid mortgage on their house. Then she loses the opportunity to get back together with him after he gets the mistaken belief that she not only cheated on him, but spread untrue rumours about his impotency. Then she falls pregnant to twins, the father of which is actually her boss Gordon Brittas (not that she knows this). Then she loses her house and is forced to move her family into the leisure centre. Carole goes on to have her budding dreams of becoming a writer crushed by Brittas, is led to believe that an Old Flame had stood her up (when he had been really trapped in the vents), briefly loses her job and ends up moving into the Brittas family house, downright sees a boyfriend accidentally killed, has almost everyone forget her birthday (except for her son Ben, who instead insulted her in his birthday card to her), and seemingly finds love and a steady home with a man, only for him to ditch her for a nun. This isn't getting into her tragic childhood, where her parents crushed her dreams of becoming a pianist, and the fact that Brittas tends to call her unattractive. Fortunately, "In the Beginning..." shows that she does eventually manage to get a happy ending as an international pianist.
• Jake Peralta from Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Starting it off, in season one, it was revealed that Jake's dad abandoned him when he was 7 and his mom was a workaholic and was never there for him despite loving him dearly. In one episode, he was bankrupted and was being evicted from his apartment. Then the writers gave him no mercy in season two: He has been rejected by Amy, a woman he has a mad crush on, because she's dating someone else. He finally met another woman, Sophia, whom he really clicked with, only for her to break up with him, because Jake arrested her boss and it turns out that she wasn't all into him, despite Jake developing some serious feelings for Sophia. He was the main suspect for the mole investigation and was suspended when an Internal Affairs agent saw him in the evidence lockup, has been outed by the Pontiac Bandit twice, had a major falling out with his best friend, had his crushing debts from his friends and colleagues bite him back, lost in his Halloween bet with his captain after his friends betray him, because they just want to see Jake get humiliated. His dad came back to visit him, only for him to use his son's cop status and abandon him again. Jake also suffered from a string of bad luck in one week that ended with him getting suspended from the NYPD then kidnapped by Sophia's ex-boss. He also sustained multiple injuries (broken ribs and toes, hairline fracture) within a month, and when it looks like something is finally right in his life... Captain Holt, his father-figure and mentor, suddenly leaves the Nine-Nine. Then, he has to go into witness protection after bringing down a dangerous mafia network, and has to stay 6 months away from his friends and family. Then, he gets arrested for a crime he didn't commit and is almost murdered in prison only surviving at the last minute due to Holt taking help from The Don. Fortunately for him, things get better and better for him during the rest of the series.
• The Bridge (2011): Saga gets one of these in series 3: Saga witnesses her first partner lose a foot in an explosion and feels responsible. Then her abusive mother, who had Munchausen syndrome by proxy, shows up and starts a campaign of intimidation, including blaming Saga for her sister's suicide. Saga's father, from whom she was also estranged, dies. Then Hans, her boss and friend, who always had her back, is kidnapped and tortured. Then she's mismanaged to the extreme by her new boss, who assigns an incompetent colleague who has a grudge against Saga to investigate her. Then her mother commits suicide in a way that frames Saga for murder. Hans dies. She forgets to search a suspect for weapons, and her colleague's daughter is consequently shot. Her new partner, whom she grew close to, turns out to be a drug addict. She inadvertently provides the murderer with the means to kill himself. And finally, she's suspended while being investigated for her mother's death. All this leads her to a very bad place.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Writing everything that happened to Buffy over the series would result in several massive Walls of Text, but the major ones: briefly dying and resulting PTSD, Angel turning evil and killing Jenny, having to kill Angel, Angel leaving, her mother's death, her sister's the Key, dying again and then being dragged out of Heaven, and the attempted rape.
  • Tara was brainwashed by her sexist family into believing she's a demon, had her mother die at age 17, had her mind messed with by Glory, memory-wiped by Willow (twice), and just as she reconciled with Willow, she was accidentally killed when a bullet that Warren meant for Buffy hit her instead.
  • Drusilla, though a lot of it takes place off-screen, with bits and pieces shown in flashbacks. Her mother told her her psychic ability was evil, and when goes to confessional, Angelus impersonates a priest and tells her she is the spawn of Satan and God would use her and then smite her. After stalking her for a while, he slaughters her whole family in front of her, and when she flees to a convent, kills the nuns there, driving her insane. For good measure, he has sex with Darla in front of her and then turns her into a vampire.
  • Angel: Pretty much Connor's entire life up until Season 4 was one long Trauma Conga Line. (Not that his life was great after that; there was a brief pause, but only so we could see the damage.) In fact, things get even worse in season 4. The pleasant part of his life before a total memory wipe was the time period between seasons 3 and 4, which lasted about 3 months.
  • If Connor thought he had it bad, at least he got superpowers and a Happy End in the end. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce's life from Season 3 onwards to the series' final episode became a downward spiral of losing baby Connor while trying to save Angel's son from a prophecy, having his throat cut nearly fatally, nearly being choked by an enraged Angel, losing his friends' trust, his idealism, his happiness, seeing the woman he loved die horribly, falling into despair, cynicism and alcoholism, and finally being killed by an ancient sorcerer in a magical duel he had no reasonable chance of winning.
• Cobra Kai: The end of season 2 is one for Johnny Lawrence. First, the rivalry between Cobra Kai and Miyagi-do, which he was to some extent responsible for fueling, breaks out into an outright karate war on the first day of school with multiple injuries on either side. His estranged biological son, Robby, whom he has spent the entire season reaching out to and almost succeeded in building a budding relationship with, throws his prize pupil Miguel Diaz off a balcony and leaves him in a coma with a broken spine, and is now on the run from the law. Then Johnny's girlfriend, Miguel's mother, blames him for her son's injuries and cuts him off. Then his students also blame him for Miguel's injuries, saying Johnny weakened Miguel by teaching him "honor", and abandon him in favor of his Evil Mentor, John Kreese. In one fell swoop, Johnny has lost his job, his girlfriend, his students, his son and his self-respect, everything he spent two seasons building.
  • Daniel LaRusso doesn't have it that much better. With his daughter Samantha also hospitalized for broken ribs and lacerations as a result of her fight with Tory Nichols, his wife gets it through his head that he's just as responsible for the whole conflict and should stop teaching Miyagi-Do. All he can do now is apologize to a portrait of his beloved teacher for being an Inadequate Inheritor, leaving him just about as powerless to stop Kreese.
• The entire George Foyet/Boston Reaper arc in seasons 4 and 5 of Criminal Minds is this for Hotch. The original Reaper case was his first as head profiler at the BAU, and his inability to solve it has haunted him ever since. When the Reaper returns and Hotch rejects his offer to stop killing if they make a deal, he picks him as a focal point for torment. Foyet escapes from prison and immediately comes after Hotch— who survives the assault, but Foyet also steals the contact information for his ex-wife and their toddler son. Haley and Jack go into witness protection, but Foyet still finds them, forcing Hotch to listen over the phone as he kills Haley (while Hotch is en route to their location to stop him, no less.) It’s only through Hotch’s quick thinking that Foyet doesn’t kill Jack. The icing on the cake? An internal investigation into Hotch’s behavior led by his superiors at the FBI, since, in a blind rage, Hotch beat Foyet to death with his bare hands. Hotch (and the rest of the BAU) argue that it was to stop Foyet from killing Jack, and eventually Strauss comes to agree.
  • Hotch gets another one of these with Peter Lewis, aka Mr. Scratch, which eventually forces him and Jack into witness protection themselves. Outside of the show, this was a way to write Hotch off the show when his actor, Thomas Gibson, was fired after an onset altercation with a writer.
• In The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Rian's girlfriend dies, he's framed for her death, his father turns on him, then dies trying to save him, only for Rian to be captured immediately afterwards. All of that was within the first four episodes.
• The Doctor from Doctor Who. Before the series even begins he's on the run from his own people, who never regard him as anything more than a madman and a renegade (and that's before he becomes the Last of His Kind). Every single person he loves or is close to in any way dies or leaves, though not before being inflicted with the horrors of the universe thanks to their association with him, and he always ends up alone. No matter where he goes he frequently lands in the middle of wars and invasions and general misery, enduring every pain and torture imaginable, including dying again and again in horrible ways, and witnessing the deaths of uncountable people. And no matter how much good he does or how many people he saves, his worst enemies always survive and half the universe either hates him or fears him. It's nothing short of a miracle he hasn't just given up.
  • The Tenth Doctor attracted both extensive praise and criticism for suffering everything that could possibly go wrong at every possible opportunity. By "The End of Time", everyone close to him had moved on, voluntarily or otherwise, the closest thing he had to a friend was one old man who still believed in him (who he dies to save), and his almost maniacal desire to Screw Destiny and avoid his "song" ending was less about self-preservation and more desperately trying to keep hold of the last thing that hadn't been taken from him.
  • Amy Pond is the trope's poster girl for the series, going through severe emotional trauma every two episodes on average. Every possible kind of hardship seems to find its way into her life, and her husband Rory is forced to live with every bit of it as well. The Doctor eventually realizes this, dropping her and her husband Rory off home before he gets them killed, but they're confirmed as returning in the following season and Amy's having severe My God, What Have I Done? feelings over killing Madam Kovarian.
  • River Song has been through her share of this. Or will be. Or both.
  • Clara gets one during Series 8. First, the Doctor she had come to know and be mildly attracted to disappears and is replaced by someone with a much different personality and appearance, then she has a violent fallout with the Doctor (they reconcile later), then is helpless as the man she loves dies a stupid death, returns as a Cybermen zombie, and sacrifices himself twice afterward. Finally, the Doctor leaves her to return home...and both have actually lied to each other to facilitate this. Things get better, though.
  • In Series 9, the final stretch of the season features this for the Twelfth Doctor: In "Face the Raven" it's not only that Ashildr betrays him to an enemy and Clara dies for good when her heroics go awry, but also that he's sent away to another world with his TARDIS left behind on Earth afterward. "Heaven Sent" picks up where that leaves off: He is trapped and alone — save for a Monster of the Week — in a Mobile Maze, with his enemies trying to drive him insane if he won't give them what they want. As a result of all this torment, the season finale "Hell Bent" reveals he is insane as he becomes a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds ready to defy his own people and give up the homeworld he wanted so badly to return to and risk the destruction of the universe if it will allow him to save Clara, and only a Heel Realization convinces him to recross the Despair Event Horizon and be his best self again — and to do that, he must lose both Clara and key memories of her — the ones that made him love her — to lose the burden of his anguish and restore his sanity.
  • After a Breather Episode in Season 11, Season 12 brings this for the Thirteenth Doctor. After spending much of Season 11 not telling her companions much about her past or identity, things rear their ugly head when the Master returns, and worse, it turns out that he has destroyed Gallifrey and she is once again among the last of her kind. Then another version of the Doctor appears from a timeline Thirteen doesn't even remember, leaving her questioning her identity. And THEN she has to give a Cyberman a dangerous weapon to avoid the destruction of Earth in the past... but must travel to the future if she has any hope of stopping humanity being wiped out then. And all of this is going on when the Doctor hasn't told any of her companions about the destruction of Gallifrey, is desperate to keep them safe because of her trauma over the loss of Bill last season and with the implication that there is an awful secret at the heart of Time Lord society that caused the Master to destroy their planet in the first place. Thirteen even misses out on good things, like reuniting with her old friend Captain Jack Harkness.
• While not technically the hero, Dollhouse's Topher seems to be the definition of this trope. Nothing seems to go well for the poor bloke.
• EastEnders: Ronnie Mitchell. Her time on the show is best described currently as God taking one giant crap on her life. All she wants is a child but if she has one, it ends up dead...and then there is the fact she was raped as a child, her husband shot in the head (although he survived albeit crippled a while), family dysfunction that the former matriarch wants her to look after, and she was recently seen banging on the door of her mother's flat screaming "Mummy!" like a scared child after her latest baby died in cot death. Her story ended with her getting married and living happily ever after... for the few hours before she and her sister both drowned.
  • Lampshaded in a dialogue between Mark and his sister Michelle. Mark has recently been diagnosed as HIV positive, and tells Michelle she just doesn't understand. She replies, “I’ve been divorced, had an abortion, had an affair with a married man and had a kid when I was 16 with my best mate’s dad. What don’t I understand?”
• John Crichton of Farscape. To list all the things the writers put him through would take waaay too long, but the highlights include brutal torture both physical and mental, being controlled by a neural clone and forced to kill the love of his life, being cloned only to have his resurrected lover fall in love with the OTHER John and take off with her, having the other John die and Aeryn (said lover) abandon him, having her come back with his worst enemy, the man responsible for the torture and the neural clone, and being raped. And that's not even touching on all the things he's been forced to do in order to survive all of the above. Really, this trope could be NAMED for John Crichton.
• Forever: Henry has lost almost everyone he's ever loved, and knows that anyone left, he'll lose eventually. His first wife begged him to trust her with his secret, then when he told her about his Resurrective Immortality she had him committed to an asylum. His wife Abigail left him with a letter promising she only needed a little time to think, then he never heard from her again, leaving him not knowing if she's alive or dead, still cares or has forgotten him. Various tortures that have resulted from his secret being discovered leave him almost pathologically unable to confide in anyone. At the start of the series, Henry is trying hard to wall himself off and not to allow anyone new to get close to him emotionally, but he's too good a person to stand by and let evil go unchallenged, so he ends up getting involved and becoming vulnerable again. The Older Immortal Adam engineers the extra-traumatic events of "Skinny Dipper" which leave Henry hurting even worse, at times seeming to no longer care if he dies in front of someone, exposing his secret. By the end of the season, Adam's manipulations have Henry so afraid of others getting hurt, yet so unable to confide in them, that his trying to deal with Adam on his own nearly destroys his relationship with Jo.
• Game of Thrones:
  • In "Fire and Blood", Joffrey shows Sansa the castle wall adorned with the heads of her family's household, most importantly her septa and her father, and he forces her to look.
  • Ned is arrested, stripped of his lands and titles, forced to falsely confess treason and conspiracy to take the Iron Throne for himself, sentenced to death after being promised he would be spared if he confessed and finally beheaded with his own sword — the same he used himself to kill criminals, no less — in front of the mob, with his head put and left to rot on a pike.
  • Over the course of three seasons, Arya's best friend is murdered for a crime he didn't commit, her father is unjustly executed, her rescuer is murdered right before she is taken captive, she witnesses murder and torture on a daily basis while living in filth at Harrenhal, her other best friend is sold out to a witch by people she thought she could trust, she learns firsthand that the "Lord of Light" doesn't give a shit about her murdered friend, and when she's finally about to be reunited with her brother and mother, they're murdered horrifically and she witnesses the profaning of her brother's corpse. To top it all off, the only ally (or the closest thing to an ally) she has left is the man who murdered her aforementioned best friend.
  • Davos outlives Matthos, Shireen, Stannis, and Jon Snow. Jon comes Back from the Dead, but the others don't.
  • Meera in Season 4. She has to deal with Jojen's increasingly bad health, getting captured by the Night's Watch mutineers and almost gang-raped, and then she's forced to kill her beloved younger brother, who's been mortally wounded. "The Door" keeps on carrying the torch, as Meera is forced to watch as the Children of the Forest, Summer, the Three-Eyed Raven, and finally Hodor are all slain by the White Walkers. To twist the knife just a bit further, Meera turns out to be unwittingly complicit in Bran's accidental Mind Rape of young Hodor. Unsurprisingly, the weight finally gets to be too much to bear in the next episode: when it looks like all hope is finally lost and the wight horde is about to be the end of the two of them despite Hodor's sacrifice, Meera pulls Bran into a shielding hug and just sobs. Fortunately, they are rescued.
  • Episodes 2 and 3 of Season 4 are nothing but this for Cersei. First, Joffrey is assassinated using a horribly painful poison, and then her father totally ignores her when she asks him not to lecture Tommen about how bad a king Joffrey was before taking Tommen away, and then she has a...rather uncomfortable sexual encounter with Jaime next to her son's corpse while she's mourning.
  • Season 5's Stannis arc becomes almost a Black Comedy for how much successive misfortune it piles on the man. After he spent the previous two seasons sulking on Dragonstone following his defeat at Blackwater Bay, Stannis and his forces heroically come to the rescue of the Night's Watch at the end of season 4 to defeat the Wildlings. Then in season 5, Stannis: tries to convince Jon Snow to join him when he takes back Winterfell from the Boltons, but fails; tries to convince Mance Rayder to bend the knee so he can recruit his men, who refuses; tries to execute Mance to make an example of him, only to be interrupted by Jon Snow killing him prematurely; marches on Winterfell, but gets stuck in a snowstorm; finds his supplies destroyed by Ramsay Bolton and his twenty men; executes his own daughter as part of a human sacrifice at Melisandre's urging; wants to march on Winterfell after the snows melt but half his men have abandoned him and taken ALL the horses; is told that his wife committed suicide and Melisandre has fled; is crushed with his remnant army in a spectacularly one-sided battle; is finally hunted down by Brienne of Tarth, who kills him for his previous murder of Renly. Yeesh.
  • Selyse Baratheon. First, there's the high number of stillborns she's produced. Then the one child she does produce ends up being a girl who gets afflicted with dragonscale. Unable to believe in the old gods, she devotes herself to the Lord of Light instead, only to find out that his priestess had an affair with Stannis. Although she claimed that it wasn't a problem, it's strongly suggested that she's hurt deep down. Then finally, the people she had Undying Loyalty to (her husband and the aforementioned priestess) burn her daughter alive, who she had always previously scorned but tried to save at the last moment. All of the guilt and trauma are too much to bear for her and she commits suicide.
• Kurt Hummel from Glee comes to mind, incidents including but not limited to: His mother dying at a young age, being bullied by his peers, his dad almost dying, getting sexually harassed and threatened with death, getting humiliated at prom, getting sexually assaulted by his boyfriend, not being accepted into his dream school while his friend/rival is, said boyfriend cheating on him, his dad almost dying again, the death of his step-brother and most recently getting gay bashed and hit over the head with a brick. Despite all this, he is more often than not a kind and compassionate person.
• Izzie Stevens in Grey's Anatomy, who can fall into categories A, C and E at times. She started off being sexually harassed at work by her peers for being beautiful and minor hazing stuff from other doctors including a rather cruel learning experiment from a doctor she looked up to by giving her a patient she knew was going to die and making her responsible for seeing the patient through the night. Later on in the season, Izzie lost the love of her life a heart patient at the hospital. She quit her job and became catatonic for days. She also went through a very realistic process of grief. A few seasons later they gave her cancer, killed off her best friend, fired her from her job, dissolved her marriage and then put her on a bus to never been seen again.
• The Handmaid's Tale: This is naturally a part of the series. June is fired, stripped of rights, has to flee along with her family, separated from her husband, then her daughter, ritually raped each month, escapes, gets captured again etc. Of course this also goes for other characters as well, like Luke and her fellow Handmaids.
• In The Haunting of Bly Manor, Dani Clayton was raised by a neglectful single mother. The one light in her early life was her best friend and neighbor Eddie, but the relationship is complicated when she cannot reciprocate his feelings for her due to being a Lipstick Lesbian. When she eventually comes out to him, he dies in a freak hit-and-run accident. She goes abroad to work in England as an au pair to escape her troubles, but ends up working with two creepy children in a Haunted House with a murderous ghost. Dani allows the ghost to possess her to save her charges, but is eventually compelled by the spirit to become the new ghost "Lady of the Lake".
• House doesn’t exactly make it easy on himself, even admitting in the last season that he’s self destructed most of his chances to be happy, but his life really genuinely sucks. First, throughout his childhood he was abused by his military father. Then, as an adult, he had a serious medical incident that deteriorated because the doctors took him for a drug seeker, and the initial procedure left him in agony, at which point his girlfriend Stacy decided to Take a Third Option without his consent, and the combination of the procedure and the damage done by the original incident leaves him crippled and in pain. Across the series, he tries several techniques to get rid of his pain, but they never quite work out; he tries ketamine which briefly seems to be working, but the pain comes back after a few months, and methadone, the one thing that seems to have long-term potential, ends up not being feasible due to the side-effects dulling his abilities in a way he feels is unacceptable, and an attempt to try out an experimental treatment for his leg ends up causing tumors, leading him to attempt Self-Surgery to get them out. Meanwhile, he becomes the target of a vindictive policeman in Season 3 who tries to twist his Vicodin addiction into grounds to send him to prison and twists the knife further by briefly offering him a Hope Spot before snatching it away on Christmas Day, leading House to intentionally overdose out of despair; then in Season 4 he gets into a bus crash that ends up killing Wilson's girlfriend Amber, leaving him with intense Survivor's Guilt (since Amber was only on the bus because of him) and causing a rift in his friendship with Wilson; then Kutner dies which pushes him over the edge, leading to a psychotic break and hallucinations, and he's forced to check himself into a mental hospital. A season later, a case that he'd become emotionally involved with (due to the patient having to make a choice regarding amputation of a leg, which forced House to reflect on his own decisions regarding his leg) goes badly wrong resulting in the patient's death, which devastates him. He briefly gets into a relationship with Cuddy but this fails after only a few months, after which he starts using Vicodin again and much of his progress from the past year is seemingly undone overnight. Then he really screws things up by crashing his car through Cuddy's house, injuring Wilson in the process. For this he spends a year in prison, which he's revealed to have accepted without a fight as he rightfully feels like he deserves to be punished, and while most of his stay happens offscreen between seasons, we learn that at the very least he was bullied by the other inmates who forced him to give them some of his pain pills, meaning he was likely in agony the entire time, as well as that he spent at least a month in solitary (he also makes a reference to Prison Rape but it's not entirely clear if he's serious or joking). He finds a chance at happiness with Dominika only to end up sabotaging when his desperation not to lose her backfires. Then he finds out that Wilson — the one person who's been a constant in his life and probably the person he loves most in the world — is dying of cancer, and just as he's finally starting to accept it (after almost a full episode of trying to convince Wilson to undergo life-prolonging treatment) and simply set his mind to getting the most out of what little time Wilson has left, he learns that he's set to be sent back to prison for a parole violation, for a term that exceeds Wilson's life expectancy, and decides his only choice is to fake his own death and give up everything else he's ever had for the chance to be with Wilson in his final months. And if you believe Hugh Laurie, he ultimately dies not long after Wilson does.
• The Killing: Bullet, over the course of Season 3. She begins the season as a homeless teen, and it goes down from there. Her only friend is abducted (and presumably killed), the girl she has a crush on rejects her after using her for brief comfort and shelter, she is beaten and raped by a pimp at knifepoint (while she was searching for her missing friend no less), and after inadvertently driving away the only cop that gave a damn about her with bad info, her final fate is to be brutally murdered by the same serial killer that took her friend, with her body left in a car trunk for the police to discover.
• The sixth and seventh seasons of Law & Order: Criminal Intent become this for Bobby Goren. His partner is kidnapped and nearly killed (by someone he knows, no less), his mother is diagnosed with cancer, causing him to lose his temper (and very nearly his job) in the middle of a case. His drug-addict brother takes advantage of him (again, or so it's implied), and then he finds out that he may be the product of an affair between his mother and a notorious serial killer — in the same episode in which his mother dies. Then, shortly thereafter, his brother reemerges and tells Bobby he has a son who is in prison and afraid for his life; Bobby goes undercover to rescue his nephew and nearly dies, an act which gets him put on indefinate suspension and ending with him being forced to take part in a dangerous undercover in order to get his job back, which leaves Eames steaming at him well into the next episode. And then, as if that weren't enough, his brother is murdered and he finds out that his mentor is responsible. It's a wonder he was still sane by Season 8.
• In M*A*S*H, this happens to every main character at least once. Hawkeye and Margaret, in particular, get it the most, partly because they've been there the longest.
• The Mick: Played for laughs, but Ben goes through mental trauma at seven years old that war vets might have trouble handling. He is constantly killing his pets by accident as he doesn't understand the concept of mortality. He sees his aunt getting shot, parents getting arrested, Jimmy getting his teeth removed with pliers by his brother, getting a large tattoo on his back at the prison, pushed to act like a girl as Mick does not want to commute, watching 18+ movies days in a row and regularly is witness to extreme violence. He doesn't seem to be affected (and is especially okay with presenting as a girl) but it might well mess him up later.
• The title character in Monk has been a textbook Type C for years by the time the show begins, having dealt with phobias and OCD his whole life and finally breaking down and leaving the police force to lock himself in his house after the murder of his beloved wife. He does slowly recover throughout the series, however.
• Mr. Robot:
  • Elliot Alderson. He lost his father to leukemia. He suffers from depression, anxiety, drug addiction and possibly PTSD after suffering years of abuse at the hands of his mother. As the series progresses, he also loses his best friend/girlfriend at the hands of a psychopathic serial killer, he finds out that Mr. Robot, the man who recruited him into fsociety is actually a figment of his imagination and his split personality that manipulated him into starting 5/9 hack. And while he is prison, he gets emotionally and mentally tortured by Mr. Robot, gets beaten to a pulp, almost gets raped, etc. But as he gets out, it doesn't end there. He gets shot in the belly by his stalker for trying to stop a terror attack from happening, gets psychologically and later emotionally abused by his only best friend/crush, tries to work hard to stop the said terror attack only to find out that it was successful in 71 other buildings, almost tried to kill himself and almost got killed along with his sister by the terrorists. People watching this show wonder how is he able to survive the hell he is put through.
  • Dominique "Dom" Dipierro. She's dealt with crippling social anxiety and depression all her life and has a history of sabotaging her relationships with others due to a fear of commitment. As her investigation into fsociety delves deeper, she survives two separate mass shootings that were at least indirectly intended to kill her, forcing her to cope with witnessing firsthand the deaths of her coworkers and few friends. She finally manages to forge a genuine connection with someone, only for the object of her affection to betray her and reveal that the only reason she ever feigned interest in her was to steal her FBI credentials. Dom is then kidnapped, subjected to psychological torture, and forced to work as an informant for the Dark Army (the same group that organized the hits on her and is behind the terrorism she's been investigating for the entirety of the show) under threat of them tracking down and murdering her family - made all the more dire by the Dark Army dismembering her boss with an axe right in front of her. It's safe to say that she really isn't having a great year.
• Once Upon a Time inflicts this on a lot of characters, but most notably Rumplestiltskin. After receiving a prophecy that his actions in the war would "leave his son fatherless", he injured himself to get sent home to protect his son, only to be emotionally abused for his cowardice by his wife and the entire town. After his wife leaves him, his son is forcibly conscripted, and he takes on the Dark One's powers to end the war, but the powers constantly push his son away from him, culminating in his son disappearing through a magic portal without him (a Prophecy Twist he goes back and complains to the Seer about). His second love Belle is captured by the Evil Queen, who tells him she killed herself and he believed it. And this was all before the curse was cast. After it was cast and then broken, he's captured and tortured by a wicked witch, loses Belle again several times, and sees his son killed in front of him.
• The Outpost: Poor Talon. As a young girl, her father disappeared, but at least she had a loving mother and brother. Then they were murdered, along with her entire village. However, she's then adopted by a kind human family.... until they were all murdered too. Then her mentor Wolf is also murdered. Years later, it turns out that her father is alive, but she's only briefly able to see him before he dies too. No wonder she's aloof, cynical and leery of making connections at first.
• Princess Agents:
  • In the space of mere days Yan Xun is arrested, thrown in prison, accused of treason, learns his family have been murdered, is confronted with their decapitated heads, witnesses his mother's suicide, thrown back in prison, forced to cut off his own finger, and learns Yuwen Yue — someone he considered his best friend — knew about the plot against him and didn't warn him. Any one of those events would be deeply traumatic. All of them, one after another... No wonder Yan Xun snaps.
  • Yuan Chun learns her fiancé is rebelling right before the wedding. She begs Yan Xun to stop it, but he coldly tells her he never loved her and rides away. Shortly afterwards her brother tries to kill Yan Xun. In retaliation Yan Xun's men beat him up and rape Yuan Chun. Like Yan Xun, it's no wonder she snaps.
• Ned's backstory is this in Pushing Daisies. His dog Digby gets run over by a truck, but luckily Ned realizes he has the power to bring Digby Back from the Dead by touching him. Once back home, his mother dies from an aneurysm, and Ned also brings her back to life, but accidentally kills his friend and neighbor Chuck's dad in the process as another being has to take the previous dead being's place. That night, his mother dies all over again after kissing him goodnight, and Ned learns that his waking the dead powers only work the first time, and that if he touches the awakened, they'll die again. Talk about Blessed with Suck. Chuck has to move away to live with her aunts, and Ned gets shipped off to boarding school by his absent father. When he finally escapes his Boarding School of Horrors, he finds out his dad has moved away and started a whole new family without him. By the pilot episode, he finds out his old friend Chuck was murdered on a cruise. He reawakens her, and they start a Childhood Friend Romance, but the fact that they can never touch each other or let Chuck's aunts know she's alive again complicates the relationship a lot.
  • Olive's life could also count. She grew up a Lonely Rich Kid with two neglectful parents. At one point as a child, she is kidnapped by two thieves, and they treat her with more care than her parents ever did. Unfortunately, her parents find out and have the men arrested. Olive's first career is as a jockey, but it goes horribly awry when a fellow jockey gets trampled to death during a race. Out of guilt, Olive quits her jockey career and ends up as a waitress at the Pie Hole. She falls in love with her boss, Ned, but it is an Unrequited Love as Ned only has eyes for Chuck. Olive then has to watch the man she loves fall deeper in love with someone else for the rest of the series. Additionally, by season two she unwillingly becomes the series Secret-Keeper, which stresses her out so much she has a Heroic BSoD and joins a convent to escape her troubles. The reprieve is not for long though as a fellow nun gets murdered while she's there, and she's saddled with even more secrets by the rest of the cast.
  • Chuck as well. Her father is accidentally killed by Ned when he conjures his own recently deceased mother Back from the Dead as a child. She has to move away from Ned and her old home to go live with her agoraphobic aunts. Tired of the Small, Secluded World of her aunts' house, she decides to take an adventure by going on a cruise... and gets murdered while on the trip. She gets revived by Ned, but this means she can't touch him (which is a difficult situation when you're in a Childhood Friend Romance together), she can't reveal her real identity to anyone outside of Ned and Emerson, and she can't be seen by her aunts, who still grieve her and keep in contact with the rest of the cast.
• Happens to Tommy in Rescue Me nearly every episode, although some are worse than others. He's a Type F and remains a lying, scheming, womanizing, short-tempered, alcoholic, self-centered asshole for seven seasons.
• In Rome, Lucius Vorenus goes through a hell of a one at the end of Season 1 and in the beginnings of Season 2. First, he finds out his by this point beloved wife cheated on him when he was away on campaign, then she kills herself to stop him from having to do it himself, in accordance with Roman law. Then he curses his own children, leading him to later believe they ran away. Then his patron, Julius Caesar, is assassinated. Then it turns out that his children did not run away, but were rather kidnapped by a gang boss Vorenus had insulted. Interrogating that gang boss, he is told that the boss raped and murdered his children in recompense for the aforementioned insults. After killing him, Vorenus simply slips into a Heroic BSoD, and can anyone blame him?
• Happens twice in Scrubs, first to Elliot and then later to JD. During Elliot's crap, she doesn't try to get help from others and closes herself off. Most of the series has her personally dealing with her issues with some venting from time to time. JD, on the other hand, had become far too dependent on his friends and his constant self-pity had been going on for seven years by that point. It's when he saw just how annoying he could be by watching others does he start to really deal with his problems on his own instead of relying on others. It's easier to help someone when they're trying to help themselves then someone who constantly annoys you instead of dealing with their own life themselves.
  • More than once, JD has wryly noted that sometimes the hospital doesn't space out tragedies and disasters so that the doctors have time to pull themselves together after each one — sometimes it just piles the suckitude on until you can't take it anymore (for example, "My Lunch").
• Dr. Jack "Boomer" Morrison in St. Elsewhere. Let's see. His wife dies, his son gets kidnapped (though later returned), he gets raped while volunteering in a prison infirmary, the rapist breaks out of prison and comes after him, his girlfriend aborts his baby over his objections... when does anything go right for Boomer?
• Throughout Stargate SG-1, the eponymous team are on the receiving end of a seemingly endless series of pain and suffering and defeat, and it's fortunate There Are No Therapists, because if they were real people someone would be making a fortune off of their PTSD. And Daniel Jackson manages to not only suffer more than the other three members combined, but each instance is even more devastating. After all, all of them have had love interests die, but Daniel is the only one who had them shot to death in front of him^note  By one of his good friends. Because she was about to kill him, losing her grip on her own actions because of a Puppeteer Parasite. After she had been lost to him since the beginning of the series and the reason he signed on to be on SG-1 in the first place, so he could look for her. Seriously, DANG.
• Stargate Atlantis, while you're at it. Lots of people, but Ronon Dex especially.
• On Supergirl, Ben Lockwood was a decent college professor who spoke for alien rights. Then he was injured by an alien while stopping a riot, his father's factory was shut down due to cheaper alien materials about, the family home was destroyed in a fight between the Martian Manhunter and a Daxamite, he was fired from his job for increasing anti-alien views and his father died in the quakes set off by the Worldkiller. It all piled up to transform the once-good Ben into the violent alien-hunting Agent Liberty.
• Star Trek: Discovery's second season, despite reinstating Michael Burnham to rank and position, winds up being a very bad time. Two different crewmates asked her for a Mercy Kill — one being Saru, her Platonic Life Partner. He ultimately survived, but poor Airiam didn't, and someone else had to do the deed to save everyone else from being killed. Her relationship with Amanda is severely strained, her reunion with Spock is an utter disaster when he retaliates for her misguided attempt to protect him by saying a number of things calculated to emotionally wound her, she learns a couple of Awful Truths about her birth parents, her birth mother comes back through time, but attempts to forcibly maintain distance and is then stranded in the future... by the finale, she could really give Miles O'Brien a run for his money.
• Supernatural: You would not want to be a Winchester. Or an angel on their side. Or their love interest.
  • Dean just keeps getting hit by more and more tragedies and still has to stumble to get up and go on. Let's recap shall we? First off, his mother dies when he's a kid, leaving him to be dragged across the country in pursuit of revenge, then his father goes missing, so he has to team-up with his estranged brother to find him; next his father dies exchanging his soul for Dean's leaving him with horrific Survivor Guilt; his brother dies, leaving Dean to make another Deal with the Devil and 1 year to live (being constantly tormented by his upcoming damnation); next he is ripped to shreds by hell-hounds and spends 40 years equivalent in Hell. Then he is resurrected by angels to serve their purpose, constantly being haunted by the memories of his soul-destroying torture with more guilt pertaining to the fact that he broke the first seal for the Apocalypse; next he tries to handle his brother becoming a junkie addicted to demon blood; and finally he fails to stop his brother setting off the apocalypse, resulting in him spending the 5th season hunting down the four horsemen of the apocalypse and trying to put Lucifer back in his cage, so far losing hope that he agrees to let Michael possess him to defeat Lucifer even though that will raze the world. His brother's faith makes him take it back, but then Dean loses his brother again. Also, his childhood was filled with neglect and emotional abuse. Natch. It's no wonder Famine told him that he was dead and empty inside. Then, he must endure knowing his beloved brother is in Hell and he can do nothing about it while he attempts to live a normal life with a woman and her son he has come to genuinely love. He finds out his brother is alive, something that prompts him to return to hunting and eventually destroys his attempt to be a family man. Then, he learns his brother's soul remains in Hell and his body is soulless. He's betrayed by his best friend Castiel, who gets Drunk on the Dark Side and destroys Sam's mind before watching him attempt to die in a failed Heroic Sacrifice. Sam eventually goes insane, until Castiel absorbs the insanity for himself. Dean and partially recovered Castiel manage to kill the head Leviathan, only to be transported to Purgatory. Dean gets out but Castiel stays behind, breaking Dean's heart. Dean eventually takes on the Mark of Cain to defeat a powerful demon but goes demon himself and must cope with very dark actions because of it. When the mark is removed, it unleashes The Darkness, who threatens to destroy the world. Dean offers to sacrifice himself to stop her, but she decides to spare him and even resurrects his The Lost Lenore mother to "thank" him. So Dean spends season 12 learning his mother is an imperfect woman, rather than the paragon of his imagination. Then he loses her and Castiel right after Lucifer's son, Jack is born. Castiel and Mary eventually return, but Jack kills Mary and causes a rift between him and Castiel. Castiel finally admits to being in love with Dean and is dragged to the Empty before Dean can even respond. Eventually, Dean helps defeat God, but he never gets his dreamed-of retirement from hunting and is instead killed and sent to heaven.
  • Sam went through life fearing he was some kind of freak, and then it turned out he really was. His fiance-girlfriend dies at the very beginning of the series; every other woman he has ever gotten close to has died a horrible death or betrayed him, leading him to be emotionally scarred and introverted; he never lived up to the expectations of his family; was constantly denied the chance to live a normal life because of demons; was forced into hunting and the family lifestyle; his dad disowned him for going to college; his father told his brother to kill him; he's apparently an abomination of God because his mother made a deal to sell him to a demon when he was born; he never got to know said mother as she died when he was a baby because of him. When Sam's murdered, Dean sells his soul to bring him back (and spends 40 years in hell because of it, while Sam spends that 4-month period suicidal and becomes addicted to demon blood); he accidentally starts the apocalypse trying to stop it, and then in season five finds out he's the vessel for Lucifer and that he was destined to be the Antichrist; at the end of season five, he sacrificed himself to lock Lucifer away, knowing he'd be tortured by Archangels Lucifer and Michael for averting the Apocalypse; and as of season seven had some version of schizophrenia/mental illness due to nearly two centuries of torture in which his soul was effectively flayed and then pushed back into him after centuries of mutilation done to it. Conclusion: It's not fun to be a Winchester.
  • Not to be left out, the Winchesters' angel ally, Castiel, has been through it. He was always a rebellious angel and even before rescuing Dean from Hell, has been subject to torturous angel deprogramming. When he does meet Dean and Sam, he begins to question whether or not his superiors are in the right and when he's about to reveal their evil plans to Dean, he's captured and tortured into submission yet again. Dean eventually convinces him to betray heaven and try and stop the apocalypse, and he is gruesomely killed in the process. God brings him back, but he's cut off from Heaven, resulting in him becoming a Fallen Angel and losing much of his power. He searches for God, only to find out God has abandoned them. Then, he dies again while helping Dean and Sam put Lucifer and Michael in the cage. He's resurrected more powerful than ever, but he must fight a lonely war in Heaven, which the Winchesters are frankly dismissive of, to try and prevent Raphael from restarting the apocalypse. He succeeds but gets Drunk on the Dark Side, kills his friend Balthazar, destroys Sam's sanity, and goes power-mad. He then goes on a smiting spree, resulting in thousands of deaths and he releases the Leviathans into the world. Only a series of extreme measures of atonement, including dying yet again, being resurrected and becoming a healer, absorbing Sam's memories and going insane, killing Dick Roman, ending up in Purgatory, being brainwashed and breaking the programming and having his grace ripped out and becoming human for a time allows him to be forgiven. Finally, years later, he admits he's done all of this because he's in love with Dean, who doesn't have time to respond before watching Castiel be dragged to The Empty, which is angels' version of hell.
• Captain Jack Harkness from Torchwood. In Children of Earth alone, he loses the Hub, is subjected to a particularly brutal death and healing process from it, loses his boyfriend Ianto, is forced to kill his own grandson, and loses the relationship he had with his daughter. With this in mind, it's no wonder he gave up and left to travel in space.
• Tara from True Blood. She starts out as the rational, fiesty, voice of reason but complications involving her alcoholic mother, the love of her life murdered, and being kidnapped by a psychopathic vampire reduces her to a sobbing wreck. She spends almost every episode crying or contemplating suicide.
• The titular Kimmy of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. She has a hot mess of a mother and a Disappeared Dad. As an eighth grader, she gets kidnapped and is brainwashed to believe that the apocalypse has occurred and stays hidden in a bunker for the next fifteen years. Once she is rescued, she has to learn to make her way in the world as a functioning adult when she hasn't had the opportunity to emotionally develop properly since she was thirteen. All of this leads Kimmy to Stepford Smiler tendencies so she can cope with her trauma.
• The backstory of Veronica Mars. A few months before the show started, Veronica's boyfriend broke up with her for no reason. Then her best friend was brutally murdered. Then her dad got fired from his job as sheriff, and the related events made her a social pariah in school. Then her mom abandoned her without warning. Then she was drugged and raped at a party, and the new sheriff refused to even investigate. The end result is that she turns from a popular, fun-loving high-schooler to a jaded misanthrope Kid Detective with no respect for authority.
• The Wire:
  • Randy Wagstaff in Season 4, who is only 13 to 14-years-old. He confesses to knowing about a murder to his school principal to avoid getting in trouble and the drug kingpin in the streets, Marlo Stanfield, finds out about it and decides to ruin his life and puts out the word that he's a snitch. Everyone avoids Randy or beats him. Then in the Wham Episode, his house is firebombed, his foster mother brutally burned, and despite all the help of a police sergeant, he is sent to a foster home where other kids, knowing he's a snitch, beat him daily.
  • Bubbles, a heroin addict and a Type I Anti-Hero, is homeless, unwelcome in his family, often gets beaten up, repeatedly fails in attempts to go clean, suffers the deaths of his two best friends (one of which he indirectly causes), and tries to commit suicide due to intense feelings of guilt. In the end, his fate is Type A, in a rare The Wire example of Earn Your Happy Ending.
  • The impulsive and idiotic Ziggy Sobotka suffers blow after blow to his self-esteem—he's routinely beaten up, his precious car is stolen and torched, his pet duck dies, and finally he's cheated out of $18,000. This finally makes him snap.

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