Broken Ace / Live-Action TV

• Jack Bauer from 24 is lauded by his colleagues for his service to his country, but his penchant for justice has made him do terrible things.
• Raven Reyes from The 100 had, by age 18, become quite possibly the best mechanic on the Ark, a master at operating in Zero-G, and a certified badass, who traveled down to Earth solo in a space shuttle she rebuilt herself. Yet almost everything in her life not related to those skills is a complete mess. She was abandoned by her mother, loses her boyfriend to another girl after just two weeks of separation, becomes paralyzed in her left leg and resists others' attempts to help with her condition, acts distant towards the men she sleeps with so she won't become attached, and tends to put all other moral concerns on the backburner when her (former) boyfriend's safety is at stake.
• Grant Ward from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. starts off as the perfect spy, The Big Guy for Coulson's team of specialists. He wasn't the most sociable, but even that gave him a James Bond-like quality, forgoing a social life for king and country. Still, he becomes friends with the rest of Team Coulson and has a budding romance with Skye. Then it later turns out that he's The Mole working for HYDRA, and he betrays SHIELD and his friends. Then we learn the circumstances of his recruitment and just how screwed up his life was up to that point. At the end of the season, Ward's mentor is killed and he's arrested for his crimes and attempts suicide in jail. In the second season, Coulson and his crew make it very clear that they do not trust or forgive him for his actions. When circumstances require them to work together again, pretty much everyone wants to kill him. Even when he gives some Freudian Excuse, he's shut down by Agent May, whose PTSD is often a plot point ("We all have our traumas, Ward, didn't turn any of us into psychopaths.") He escapes at the end of that mission and became a recurring villain until his death in the third season.
• Kara "Starbuck" Thrace from Battlestar Galactica (2003). Top notch pilot, expert markswoman, fine brawler—but suffering from memories of an abusive childhood, a morass of self-esteem and self-loathing issues, and unsure of how to have a life beyond being The Ace. And of course it just gets worse halfway through the fourth season when she finds out she's been Dead All Along.
• Canada's Drag Race: Tynomi Banks is one of the most famous drag queens in Canada after making a name for herself in the crowded Toronto scene, and she was long considered a shoo-in for the inevitable Canadian remake of RuPaul's Drag Race. When she made her entrance in the Season 1 premier, all the other queens shat themselves because Tynomi's reputation preceded her. But once the season was underway, it became clear that while Tynomi is a skilled performer, competition is not her strong suit. She only lasted four episodes and performed poorly enough to land in the bottom for three of them, and you could see her resolve crumble each episode until her elimination.
• Roan Montgomery from Chuck is a Chick Magnet despite his age but beneath it, he's a Jaded Washout.
• Jeff Winger from Community is good-looking, has a gift for gab, and is liked by everyone — but his masculinity hides his issues with his estranged father and his fear that no one will like his vulnerable side. He calls himself "broken" in Season 4.
  • Even more so Rich from pottery class, who has a load of mother issues after his brother died. On the outside, he comes over as the allegedly most charismatic and cool character on the show.
• Rebecca Bunch from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a fantastic lawyer who has graduated from both Harvard and Yale. She is also filled with self-doubt, self-hatred, massive anxiety, and depression. When she screws things up with Josh Chan (the guy who she moved to West Covina for), she sings to herself, "You Stupid Bitch," which is all about her self-loathing:
  You ruined everything, you stupid bitch.
  You ruined everything, you stupid, stupid bitch.
  You’re just a lying little bitch who ruins things
  And wants the world to burn.
  Bitch. You’re a stupid bitch.
  And lose some weight.
• Dear White People: Troy. He's very much the Big Man on Campus, beloved by the majority of the Student Body. It quickly becomes apparent during his spotlight episode that his father puts an insane amount of pressure on him to be the model black student, to the point that Troy resorts to drugs to help cope with the stress.
• Doctor Who:
  • Some incarnations of the Doctor from fall under this trope, especially in the revived series, which starts with the premise of the Doctor being forced to kill his own species offscreen.
    • The First Doctor begins to develop into one of these once Ian and Barbara leave the crew and the Doctor begins to come to terms with the massive predicament he's in, while simultaneously suffering a string of adventures with major Downer Endings. After Steven says Screw This, I'm Out of Here! at the end of "The Massacre", he has a full-blown Heroic BSoD and is far more delicate and fearful afterward.
    • The revived series has gone on to show he was broken before he became an ace, growing up he spent his nights in a barn crying himself to sleep, his Only Friend eventually went insane and became his Arch-Enemy and he eventually admitted the real reason he left Gallifrey was that he was scared.
    • The Tenth Doctor is confident and cavalier on the outside, but he suffers from survivor's guilt and verges on self-loathing on the inside.
    • The Eleventh Doctor is a charming, charismatic, moral, slightly eccentric, Chaste Hero on the outside. At first, his confidence seems genuine, but as time passes it quickly becomes apparent that Eleven is just as riddled with grief, rage and self-loathing as Ten.
    • The War Doctor is the only doctor who is openly this.
    • The ultimate Nice Guy Fifth Doctor had become this by the end of his run resulting in him becoming the Darker and Edgier 6th and 7th Doctors. The same thing then happened when the Eighth Doctor transitioned to the War and 9th Doctors.
  • "The Daleks' Master Plan": Sara Kingdom is Mavic Chen's best agent, a hero in her organisation, said in awed tones to have "The Strength of Ten Men". She shoots Bret Vyon (a "traitor" allied to the Doctor) and was sent to murder the Doctor and his companion too, and would have done it if they hadn't been accidentally teleported to the planet Mira. While on Mira, the Doctor confronts her, clearly in a disturbed psychological state, and she eventually admits Bret was her brother. She joins the Doctor's side soon afterward.
  • Captain Jack Harkness, later of Torchwood. Dashingly handsome, brave, cocky and nigh-immortal...but after being abandoned by the Doctor for being "wrong", suffering trauma after his repeated deaths, seeing everyone he loves die in battle or of old age, and now having being forced to allow his own grandson to be killed he's definitely a Broken Ace. He also has a Dark and Troubled Past. He still feels guilt over getting his brother captured by a vicious alien race. Even during his time as a temporal agent, it wasn't all gallivanting through history and screwing anyone and everything (although there was a fair bit of that too). He has a chunk of memory the size of 2 years missing, although he completely forgets about it after meeting the Doctor.
• Euphoria: On the field, Nate Jacobs is a star quarterback for his high school football team. Off the field, he's a mess of neuroses.
• Game of Thrones:
  • It is shown that Jaime is incredibly bitter about his reputation as the 'Kingslayer' and that no matter what he does, he'll always be remembered as someone who will change sides at the drop of a hat.
  • Oberyn Martell is by most measures one of the biggest Aces seen in the series, being charismatic, an extremely adept politician, an incredibly skilled fighter, and a big hit with ladies and men alike (and yes, the feeling is mutual). However, the brutal death of his sister at the hands of a Lannister-hired assassin is shown to be eating away at him from the inside. And it ends up manifesting itself in a case of Revenge Before Reason that sees him being killed in a manner every bit as horrific as his sister, by the same man nonetheless, all because he refused to kill an injured but still very combat-capable warrior until he'd admitted that Tywin Lannister ordered the death of Oberyn's sister.
• The Crane brothers in Frasier. For all their success as psychiatrists, it doesn't spare them from the fact that both of them suffer from deep-seated parental issues and are both hapless with women, even though, oddly, they never seem for want of one.
• James Gordon of Gotham. Gordon might be a rookie detective, but he's a former soldier and a very good hand-to-hand combatant, effortlessly disarming and taking down a large heavily-armed man and then later delivering a beatdown to two mob enforcers among other badass moments. He's also good looking with a laundry list of admirers who will always strive to do what is right and clean up Gotham. However, most of his admirers are Ax-Crazy and he's constantly fighting with his own dark side which others take note of. Also, there are frequent hits on his life (by two of his admirers even) and the lives of those close to him. In addition, Galavan worming in his way out of justice, combined with Gordon netting a 40-year sentence for his vigilante execution, seems to have stripped Gordon of any notion that the law can work in Gotham which is what he firmly believed separated the villains from the heroes.
• This seemed to be a central theme in the NBC series Heroes. Having superpowers didn't cure the characters of their painful pasts, past mental issues, or dark secrets.
• Applies to roughly half the cast on Homicide: Life on the Street, with the other half simply being broken.
  • Frank Pembleton is a brilliant detective whose analytical mind is unparalleled. He's also an arrogant, snobby moral absolutist who is hated by everyone except for his immediate family and his partner Bayliss.
  • Kay Howard is one of the best detectives in the department. However, having spent a lifetime of having to be One of the Guys to get respect from her male colleagues has left her out-of-touch with her own feminity and unable to relate to other women.
  • Al Giardello and Stanley Bolander are the most wizened and experienced out of the cast and pretty much universally beloved by the squad. They're also self-loathing wrecks of human beings, and working Homicide for decades has left their personal lives entirely destroyed.
• Dr. Gregory House from House. Not only is he the greatest diagnostician, but he has also mastered all the manipulative aspects of human sociology and psychology. In addition, he speaks several languages, plays a mean guitar, and has the expertise needed to turn his own apartment into an ICU. Despite all this, he still manages to have no social skills, has no friends, and is an unapologetic, drug-addicted criminal.
• Barney Stinson of How I Met Your Mother tries very hard not to be this trope, but he isn't nearly as good as hiding this fact as he thinks he is. His over-the-top, self-aggrandizing "awesomeness" is his way of overshadowing all his emotional issues.
• Kamen Rider Ex-Aid:
  • Hiiro Kagami/Kamen Rider Brave, genius surgeon with a stellar career at an age where most other doctors are starting out as interns (like his colleague Emu Hojo). His coldly perfect exterior covers a mass of issues from being unable to relate to people on a personal level, defending against the pressure of his job and having no life outside of it as a result to blaming himself for his girlfriend's death.
  • Taiga Hanaya/Kamen Rider Snipe, genius radiologist and CR's first Kamen Rider, able to spot an early phase of Game Disease with ordinary technology of his field. Fast forward five years, he is a broken shell of a once-kind man fighting for revenge — the only thing he can do after he lost everything.
• Limitless: a former government investigator who Rebecca remembers as an intelligent peer and who went into the private sector for a seven figure salary. After going on the run from Morra and losing her access to the NZT pills he gave her, she's a physical and mental wreck with a string of arrests for petty crimes and is living in a trailer in the woods.
• Jack Shephard of Lost — brilliant, handsome, athletic, charismatic doctor on the outside. Angry, emotionally-abused, masochistic, repeatedly-relapsing addict with a messiah complex on the inside.
• Don Draper of Mad Men. Creative director/shaman of both the older Sterling Cooper and the new Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Incredibly handsome and charismatic. Able to bed any woman pretty much just by looking at her. Has won multiple advertising awards and manages to accept them while cutting a dapper figure. He achieved this by stealing another man's identity to get away from his dirt poor abusive upbringing. His marriage to Betty showed the consequences of a Broken Ace marrying a Stepford Smiler. A major part of Season 4 was about surveying the wreckage of that union.
• M*A*S*H:
  • In the haunting episode "Heal Thyself," the camp's talented and charismatic new surgeon, a veteran of a front line aid station, has a complete mental breakdown during a particularly long and gruesome O.R. session that stretches across a couple of days. They find him crouched down in the Col. Potter's tent, doing the Thousand-Yard Stare, and compulsively scrubbing his hands to wipe off the imaginary blood that he is convinced they are still coated in.
  • Hawkeye has signs of this through the mid and late seasons from the stress of saving the lives of soldiers that are just going to get killed later anyway. But the final episode is when he really is broken because he inadvertently caused a mother to kill her own child.
• Cheon Song-Yi from My Love From Another Star is one of the most famous actresses in Asia but her money is being squandered by her mother and her father was driven out due a misunderstanding, and she misses him terribly. She is also worried about her appearance to the point where she has to be camera ready even when she is going to the hospital.
• Nikita is the best covert operative Division created but she hates them for turning her into a killer who is unable to live a normal life.
• Once Upon a Time: Zelena is an incredibly talented witch, one of the most powerful magic users in the series, and is smart enough to create a spell powerful enough to overwrite one of the Laws of Magic. She is also incredibly bitter due to being abandoned by anyone who could love her and is desperate to find anyone who could unconditionally love her.
  • Dr. Frankenstein goes through this in Season Two. In his cursed identity as Dr. Wael, he's a stereotypical arrogant hypercompetent surgeon, but when the curse is lifted he goes through a mini Trauma Conga Line and loses all confidence in himself and medicine in general, descending into alcoholism and depression. Which is a problem when an out-of-towner crashes his car and Wael is the only one who can save his life. Ruby helps him get over it and he resumes work as the town doctor, with some much needed perspective and humility.
• Nathan Ingram from Person of Interest was a world-renowned software engineer and CEO, but he's actually covering for the real genius, his friend Harold Finch. Nathan was actually The Alcoholic and his family life was in shambles.
• Political Animals: Douglas Hammond appears to be the responsible and successful twin. He was his mother's campaign manager for her presidential run, is her right-hand man while she is Secretary of State, and is about to marry his beautiful and accomplished fiancee. However, he also displays serious self-doubt and anxiety and seems compelled to take on responsibility for his dysfunctional family's well-being. An argument with his father revealed that he feels responsible for the failure of his mother's presidential campaign and he later reveals to Susan Berg that he's even having cold feet about his engagement.
• Tommy Oliver has shades of this by the time of Power Rangers: Dino Thunder. Age 26, he's spent about a quarter of his life as a soldier in an ancient fight against evil, and the series implies that he might have difficulty knowing where Tommy the Power Ranger ends and Dr. Thomas Oliver begins.
• Spencer Hastings from Pretty Little Liars. A perfectionist, beautiful Academic Athlete. She also comes from a wildly dysfunctional family (made entirely of other Broken Aces), suffers from a semi-dormant mental disorder as well as substance abuse, is in a very toxic Alpha Bitch vs. Starscream "friendship" with another Broken Ace, Allison, from whom she borrowed some disturbing Fille Fatale tendencies. As Hanna puts it, no one should have been surprised when Spencer was admitted to Bedlam House.
  • All of the aforementioned Hastings family fit this category, as they unquestionably fit The Ace part in achievements, status and even looks, they also each carry a can of worms — Melissa with her secret pregnancy, Veronica with her secret illness, and Peter with his secret affair with the Dilaurentis twins, Jessica and Mary, with whom he had given birth to no less than three children out of wedlock — Jason, Alex, and Spencer herself.
    • Even the two men who planned to marry into the Hastings family, the equally creepy Ian and Wren, could fit the trope, though Wren gets the prize for Foreshadowing his psycho Hidden Depths as early as Season 2, while the depths of his sketchiness are only revealed five seasons later.
  • The Only family that can hold a candle to the Hastings are the Dilaurentis family, so chock-full of secrets and craziness each of them get Walking Spoiler status, even though they are — or used to be, the most beloved, respectable families in Rosewood. That applies even for the ones who didn't know they were part of the Dilaurentis family, like Spencer herself.
• Rake has a few:
  • Misty Partridge goes from being a highly respected ex-prostitute / lawyer who returns from America addicted to drugs and even makes a drunken pass at Barney in an attempt to get drugs.
  • Cleaver Green, himself to a much lesser extent as he is more able to bounce back, despite being a drunken, drug-addicted Jaded Washout.
  • David Potter becomes a tragic version in Season 4. After Scarlet's sudden death, he goes to trial for murder, is accused of being a domestic abuser, and loses his reputation.
• Red Dwarf's Arnold J. Rimmer is a literal example of the trope. Sucked dry of his negativity and neuroses (themselves powerful enough to destroy a Lotus-Eater Machine) by an Emotion Eater, he immediately turns into Ace Rimmer (what a guy!). Eventually, he becomes the next Ace Rimmer — as each one dies, he recruits the next, and so on, until it finally reaches Arnie himself. It is mostly his neuroses that hold him back — but, luckily for him, the Red Dwarf universe has it set that pretty much every Rimmer gets redeemed. Before then, he makes an awesome Last Stand at the end of Series 6.
• Scrubs:
  • An early episode had J.D. competing (purely in his own mind) with another intern named Nick to see who was the best between them and who should be the unofficial leader of their group of interns. Eventually, J.D. has to concede defeat, as Nick can match JD's medical knowledge while also being more handsome, less socially awkward, more charismatic, less of a suck-up and even has the girl J.D. likes interested in him. Hints are dropped throughout the episode, however, that Nick is a Stepford Smiler who is barely repressing all his insecurities and inner turmoil. At the end of the episode Nick realizes he's not going to be able to save the life a 7-year-old kid, (who likely couldn't have been saved because sometimes that's the reality of medicine and health care) and Nick completely breaks down as a result and quits working at Sacred Heart.
    Nick: That kid is eventually gonna die. Whether it's today, or tomorrow, or a month from now. There's nothing I can do. Nothing works. Now his parents want to talk to me, what am I supposed to tell them?! "Peter lived a good long seven years"? Seven years, man! ... [whispers] It's not fair. I hate this place, I hate this job. I can't do it anymore. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. [starts crying]
    J.D.: [internal monologue] The scariest thing is I thought he was stronger than all of us.
  • A little later in the series, they brought in Doctor Kevin Casey. He was played by Michael J. Fox, and they gave the character severe OCD to help explain the tics caused by Fox's Parkinson's Disease. His OCD made him an incredible doctor and surgeon, as his compulsive need to study meant that he had read every book he could get his hands on multiple times and perfected his physical dexterity, performing complex operations in a fraction of the time a normal surgeon would require. He's also incredibly nice and wise, giving helpful advice to everyone in the hospital, helping them fix their lives. So, having humiliated Turk in the OR, Cox in front of his interns, and JD by destroying his ego with an off-hand comment, all three seek him out to confront him. And they find him trapped in the scrub room outside the OR, unable to leave because he's been compulsively washing his hands for hours. He's on the verge of tears but he just can't leave.
  • Dr. Cox himself could be seen as this. He's intelligent, witty, well respected, perhaps the best Doctor at Sacred Heart and keeps in fantastic shape for a man his age. However, he's also bitterly lonely, broken shell of a man who hasn't had a meaningful relationship in years. He gets somewhat better as the show goes on, after his ex-wife returns, and he becomes a father.
• Sherlock is, as always the world's greatest detective, he's both one of the smartest people you'll ever meet and a very capable fighter and regularly enjoys making the police look like idiots. But at the same time he's a self-destructive drug addict who can't measure up to his Aloof Big Brother, seems to have something of an Inferiority Superiority Complex and has a very co-dependent on his best/only friend John Watson (who is himself a bit of a broken ace) and that's not even mentioning his sister.
• Several examples on Smallville:
  • Lionel Luthor: Of the Villain with Good Publicity variety, Lionel is the Big Bad of Seasons 1-3. He's a Magnificent Bastard, Corrupt Corporate Executive, and Cultured Badass with more money than God, and the ears of kings, sultans, and presidents. He's respected by those who don't know how evil he is, feared by those who do and has the entire world at his beck and call. He's also a damaged, empty man who has immense difficulty identifying with other people and is trapped in a mutually self-destructive relationship with his son, a relationship he is unable to salvage even after a Heel–Face Turn. He's burned every bridge he's got to get where he is and is revealed to be a Self-Made Orphan who's still running away from his abusive, drunken parents.
  • Lex Luthor: Lionel's son. On the surface, he's got it all: wealth, power, women, immunity from prosecution. Underneath, he's self-loathing, caught up in a desire for parental approval that he'll never get, before or post-Face–Heel Turn, haunted by the deaths of his mother and brother, and consumed by his need to control the people around him. He blows up every friendship he ever has in his drive for success and his eventual slide into cackling supervillainy is as tragic as it is inevitable.
  • Jason Teague: He's a good-looking football coach, secretly dating one of the hottest girls in the school. His family is rich, he's a former star player himself, and he's able to lie and cheat at Lex's level. Unfortunately, he's pretty eaten up by his mommy issues, has no self-esteem, and is nearly incapable of taking any action his mother (Season 4 Big Bad Genevieve Teague) doesn't approve of.
  • Green Arrow/Oliver Queen: A heroic example. In one life Oliver is the heir to an immense fortune, a oligarch playboy with more women than he can handle and a life most people only dream of. In his other life, he moonlights as a Badass Normal Superhero saving more lives before nine A.M. than most people do before lunch. And yet neither of these is the real Oliver Queen. Inside he's hollow, convinced that his life is a sham, and manifests numerous self-destructive tendencies including alcoholism, the inability to commit to anything, and a total disregard for his own safety that's both impressive and frightening. His commitment to saving the world overshadows everything else he does, leading to bouts of drinking, a temporary drug addiction, and culminating in his Interrupted Suicide in Season 9.
  • Tess Mercer: A female variant. Much like Lionel and Lex, whom she succeeds as leader of LuthorCorp, Tess is an incredibly rich young woman, who has successfully escaped an abusive home life. She speaks two or three different languages, is extremely attractive, and has the money and power to do whatever she wants. She also has horribly low self-esteem, no faith in humanity, and a fatalistic need for a Messiah, all stemming from having given up on her former idealism and desire to change the world in favour of moving up in the world. As the show progresses, her ace facade disintegrates more and more, and the Broken Bird underneath is increasingly exposed. Alliances with Checkmate and Major Zod, and an eventual Heel–Face Turn have all failed to give her the sense of self-worth she's seeking.
• In The Sopranos, Tony Soprano is the mob boss of all New Jersey; charismatic, powerful, ruthless, and has keen business acumen. Underneath it all, he suffers from some serious Parental Issues and other mental problems, which cause him to have panic attacks.
• Sang-woo Cho in Squid Game, Gi-hun's childhood friend was a Child Prodigy who received a business degree from Seoul National University, the most prestigious university in Korea. He became a successful businessman but by the start of the series he's a fugitive wanted for embezzling large sums of money from his clients which he then lost in bad investments, putting him in even deeper debt than Gi-hun who's a gambling addict that relies on loan sharks to get by.
• John Sheppard on Stargate Atlantis is undeniably a Colonel Badass and Ace Pilot who's not afraid to kick some ass in order to defend the city of Atlantis. He also has severe self-loathing, intimacy, trust, and abandonment issues which come into play when people under his command or close to him die because of the inherent danger of his job.
• Dr. Bashir, CMO of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: brilliant, charming, funny, athletic, genuinely caring enough to make ex-torturers Heel–Face Turn out of love... and needy as hell, ignorant of his own privilege, and convinced that he's a fraud and that everything he's achieved is fake due to his extremely illegal genetic enhancements, which were given to him by his parents without his consent and if discovered will lead to him losing everything.
• In Supergirl (2015), Lena Luthor is the CEO of a large successful business who's able to develop technological advances beyond what most of humanity can conceive. But an abusive family, several painful betrayals, and the world's judgment of her based on her last name has left her full of self-hatred. It first comes out prominently in a season 2 episode when Lena drunkenly reveals that deep down, she believes all the bad things people have said about her.
• Supernatural:
  • Dean Winchester is handsome, charming ladies' man and badass hunter on the outside, self-loathing bundle of PTSD and daddy issues on the inside. His brother Sam is the brains of the operation (but no less badass) and tends to be much more empathetic towards people in need, but is a nest of hatred, anger, and self-loathing and is driven primarily by revenge for much of the show.
  • Every hunter is this in spades, to the point of only being good at what they do by being so horribly broken. Capable of fighting monsters, demons, and undead nightmares, hiding from (or staying on the run from) the police and FBI for the crimes they commit doing their jobs, and all of them make the hardiest survivalist look like a pansy. The only reason any of them live the life they do is that either they were raised into it, which is a whole mess of issues right there, or they experienced firsthand losing someone close to them because of the things that go bump in the night and became obsessed with revenge. John Winchester was arguably the worst we've seen, often being remarked on as a hunter of unparalleled skill but uncaring of anything that wouldn't lead him to the Yellow-Eyed Demon, to the point of being abusive and neglectful towards his sons and raising them as soldiers to fight an unending daily war (which Sam and later Dean resent him for).
• John Connor is the Messianic Archetype of the Terminator franchise who will eventually lead the human race to victory against the machines but Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles shows the hell he went through to become what he is. He's also made rather questionable decisions like trying to strike an alliance with a renegade faction of machines.
• Possibly Charlie Harper from Two and a Half Men. Despite being a rich, handsome womanizer, many episodes indicate or imply that he is riddled with mommy issues. There is the possibility that his womanizing is a means of acting out said mommy issues or is even a means of overcompensating for repressed homosexuality/bisexuality or having been more abused or neglected than Alan when they were kids.
• The Umbrella Academy (2019) has a few examples of this.
  • Allison Hargreeves. Rich and famous actress, with a handsome husband and a little daughter, beautiful and adored. But underneath that, she's a mess. And she loses both the husband and daughter pre-series. In reality, she's got issues galore, refuses to use her powers thanks to what it's done to her family, and more and more shows her cracks as an ex-child soldier from a dysfunctional family.
  • Luther Hargreeves is a superhero, has superstrength, and is incredibly isolated thanks to his siblings leaving the Academy. He's never left home, he doesn't understand the world outside, and he clings to his father and the notion of saving the world. By Season 2, he's got a better understanding of how the world works, but he's still bad at interpersonal relationships and is spiraling hard over his father's abuse.
  • Number Five seems cool, calm, and collected as he puts down anyone and everyone around him and works to prevent the apocalypse. But in reality, he's spiraling, PTSD-ridden, terrified of failure, desperate to protect his siblings, and talks to a mannequin (and thinks it talks back). Some of his scenes are heartbreaking, like the one in Season 2 where he tells his siblings, voice breaking, that he had to watch them die again.
  • Diego Hargreeves is a skilled fighter, a witty person, and determined to save people and fight crime. He's desperately clinging to the idea of being a hero so that his childhood doesn't feel wasted.
• Veronica Mars : Princely Young Man Duncan is a straight A student, student newspaper editor, student body president, handsome, popular, and the son of the wealthiest, most beloved man in town — he also has a particularly nasty type of epilepsy that causes violent fits, a pretty vicious mother, a recently murdered sister whose death caused him hallucinations, a need for antidepressants, and an ex who might be his half-sister. to further Break the Cutie, just when everything sorts itself out and it turns out he and Veronica aren't related, his other ex falls into a coma while pregnant with his baby. Sheesh.
• The Walking Dead (2010): Carol is one of the best fighters on the team; skilled, pragmatic, smart. She's a One-Woman Army with a track record of being very deadly and very sly. But despite her status as The Unfettered, she suffers from a crippling Guilt Complex that slowly eats away at her, eventually causing her to run away. After being incapacitated by a Savior, Carol has a brief Death Seeker moment when she admits that death would free her from all the horrible things she's had to do.
• NCIS: Leory Jethro Gibbs is a Memetic Badass, famed for his abilities as an investigator and looked up to as a father figure by his team; he's the best agent NCIS has, and the only reason he's not the director of the whole organization is because he doesn't want to be. He also has three broken marriages behind him, a wealth of dead friends, and never truly got over the murder of his first wife and daughter, with his career at NCIS being quite literally all he's got left in his life. He himself admits this, and tries to keep the yougner agents he takes under his wing from following in his footspets.
  Gibbs: Do I look happy to you? You do the things I've done, you get what I've got; a bottle of scotch and a boat in the basement.