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Exposure to Violence
- 07-Ghost: Teito Klein had his country invaded and everyone he knew, including his adoptive father, murdered while still a small child, was made a combat slave and forced to kill people daily for training for years and saw his only friend die after he was possessed by the man who killed Teito's father.
- 7 Seeds: The way the Team Summer A candidates were raised. It certainly seems very nice at first glance, although it being a bit rough on them and fearing the fact that, if they do not retain decent results in survival skills as well as grades, they would Drop Out of the school. And since most of them have no parents and know no other place, they are scared of dropping out and being sent outside. Turns out "dropped out" students end up getting mashed with animal parts into fertilizer, and Ango finds this out by swimming in a vat of blood, guts, flesh and hair. The worst part for Team Summer A was the Final Test. It started when they were 17 years old and accidents happened around the area, including people dying from carbon monoxide poisoning, someone's face and fingers getting ripped off when a bullet explodes inside the gun's barrel, a student falling a great height while climbing a mountain... and things just get even worse there, Kouri sees Mayu and Hyo's corpses, their lower bodies smashed underneath rocks from a collapsed mineshaft and Ban sees multiple students vomiting up blood, suffering from severe injuries that he cannot heal for them. Team Summer A is... not well afterward.
- Played for Laughs in The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You. Shizuka is a first year high schooler, but her smaller stature and weakness evoke a cuteness factor that makes even the girlfriends who are younger than her think of her as an innocent child, and thus mention this trope on more than one occasion.
- The child who would grow up to be Afro Samurai saw his father, at the time the Number One, get decapitated by Justice. The head landed at his feet and tried to speak. It didn't get much better for him afterwards. During his quest for revenge, Afro ends up killing a man in front of his adopted son in a manner similar to how his father was killed in front of him. After getting the Number One Headband, Afro hands the Number Two headband to the boy with a quiet "Anytime you're ready."
- As a child, Yuri of Angel Beats! witnessed her three younger siblings' murder at the hands of a gang of robbers. This is the root of her anger towards God. It was also her "fault" that they died because she couldn't find money in the house to give to the robbers. They probably would've killed them all regardless, but that doesn't really help Yuri's feelings of guilt.
- Attack on Titan does not shy away from this at all. Children are shown witnessing all manner of violence, especially when Titans attack populated areas.
- Eren Yeager and his adopted sister, Mikasa, saw their mother get devoured by a Titan when they were ten.
- Mikasa was adopted into the Yeager family at the age of nine, after witnessing the brutal murder of her parents. She was kidnapped by the killers, and forced to help Eren kill them to survive.
- Krista witnessed her mother's throat being slit when she was a child.
- Reiner and Bertolt barely survived a Titan attack when they were 12 and 11, respectively. They, along with Annie, are also Children Forced to Kill that caused the loss of Wall Maria. The full extent of their trauma is only later revealed.
- Czeslaw Meyer in Baccano!! is the target of extreme violence, because of his Healing Factor, he has been repeatedly tortured by a man he trusted for 200 years. He finally fights back and kills the man in question, but the only method by which he can do so involves absorbing all of his torturer's memories, meaning that he's stuck with the memory of gleefully torturing himself.
- Gen from Barefoot Gen witnesses the horror of the atomic bombing on Hiroshima, one of his schoolmates is killed in front of him and he finds her corpse with half her face missing, several people around him have their eyeballs hanging out of their sockets and most of their skin burnt off, some with their organs hanging out walking in the streets slowly dying, and his father, older sister, and younger brother are burned to death inside their house after it collapsed on them and caught on fire, and he and his mother aren't able to save them. In the anime he is 12, whereas in the original manga he is 6.
- Black Butler:
- Ciel Phantomhive was such a happy child until his 10th birthday when his parents, house staff, and DOG were murdered, and his house was burned to the ground. He was then captured by some insane cultists. From what's been implied he was beaten and treated as a slave while being kept in a cage with other children around his age. He had to watch other children be sacrificed... and knew he'd eventually be next. No wonder he's a cynical, bitter child now.
- Alois Trancy in the second season of the non-canon anime. When he was real young, his foster family died in front of him, from unknown supernatural means, including his adoptive brother and only friend, and its heavily implied he was raped and beaten as well.
- Black Lagoon: Hansel and Gretel's back story. Lets just say that their past is so horrific that they managed to be the most fucked up twisted characters in the series but also make you feel sorry for them. The other characters whose childhoods ae known might be better, but only marginally so:
- Revy and Fabiola were Street Urchins in the slums of New York and Caracas respectively, and Revy was the bane of the Juvenile unit and later the precinct she lived in until she kicked off to Thailand with the not so hidden threat that they would saddle her with every case thay had in stock if she got caught again.
- Garcia got involved in the whole business with the CIA's dealings with his father, and only survived because of his psychotic killer maid with whom he is in a genuine, but definitely quite unhealthy relationship.
- Even Balalaika had to deal with the loss of the family honor due to the powergames of the Soviet elite.
- The least disturbed of all is probably Rock, who simply was The Unfavorite, as his parents heaped all their love and attention on his brother.
- Bleach:
- When Ichigo was a child, his mother got killed and eaten by a Hollow in front of him.
- Ishida saw his grandfather get killed and eaten by Hollows, with the shinigami nowhere in sight, when he was a child. Also, his mother fell into a coma and died around the same time as the death of Ichigo’s mother.
- When Orihime was a baby, her abusive parents would beat her if she made a fuss. Orihime's older brother (who was fifteen at the time) would hide her away and protect her from the beatings.
- Buso Renkin has a pair of twins who initially had a happy childhood with a woman who they thought was their mother (she was a spurned lover of their actual father and had kidnapped them as revenge). One day, she died suddenly, and because of the kidnapping, she had made it so that the doors were locked from the inside. So, the children were trapped inside of an apartment with her corpse for several weeks, as their food supply gradually dwindled to nothing. During this time, they were constantly screaming and banging on the walls to be rescued, but their neighbors just shouted back for them to shut up. It's not too surprising that they were left thinking that Humans Are Bastards, and turned evil.
- Case Closed:
- The murders are always drawn realistically, and it becomes pretty shocking when the victim was once a happy-go-lucky guy, now seen with blood covering his face, having shown to have struggled to survive, and his eyes wide-open from the surprise.
- There's an episode where Ayumi hides in the trunk of a car, ends up being "kidnapped" and finds the decapitated head of a young girl who is assumed to have been killed by two serial killers who kill young girls. But it was just props for a play.
- While averted with Conan and Haibara, The Detective Kids and Ran Mouri manage to scream and look at murder in pure shock despite the Body of the Week premise.
- In Chrono Crusade, Satella and her butler are the only survivors of a demon attack that killed her family. Her older sister's badly injured body was carried off by the demon and may or may not be still alive — she's dedicated her life to avenging her family by being a demon-hunter-for-hire, while searching for the demon responsible for the attacks and the fate of her sister.
- In Code Geass, Nunnally and Lelouch see their mother gunned down in front of them. Nunnally is left crippled from injuries and blind from emotional trauma. For Lelouch, finding out who was responsible for the assassination and getting revenge on them is a major motivation. His father, Emperor Charles, also watched a carriage get dropped on their mother with his brother V.V..
- Most of L's successors from Death Note would probably fit this trope, as they are all orphans who may have witnessed the deaths of their families, and are ruthlessly groomed from a young age to succeed L, with seemingly little regard to their mental health.
- Dogs: Bullets & Carnage:
- When Naoto was a child, she and her parents were attacked by someone with a sword. Her parents put her behind them to protect her from the killer, who in two strokes, quartered them and left Naoto with amnesia and a huge X-shaped scar on her chest. Later, she finds out that the people she remembered as being her parents in fact weren't at all, but simply two scientists that betrayed a facility that performed ruthless, and often deadly experiments on children.
- Heine, Giovanni, Lilly (and other children) were experimented on and were forced to kill or be killed to test their new abilities. They watched fellow children get ripped apart by monsters until they realized they could fight back and tore apart the monsters (and sometimes, by accident, each other) with their bare hands.
- Dragon Ball:
- In Dragon Ball, Upa witnesses Mercenary Tao murdering his father, and apparently shooting Goku through the heart.
- In Dragon Ball Z, Son Gohan is kidnapped by his long-lost uncle at the age of four, beaten about, forced to watch his father die, kidnapped again by the devil, beaten about some more and left to look after himself in the wilderness for six months. And this is all in the first 5 episodes. No wonder the original dub bumped his age up to 5 and a half.
- Also in Z, Son Goten had to watch his mother get murdered by Super Buu.
- Durarara!!:
- Anri Sonohara's past. Watching your mother kill your father (who's busy trying to kill you) and subsequently slit her own throat with a smile on her face can not be good for the psyche.
- It's hardly better for Shizuo Heiwajima. It's implied in volume 5 that some of the stuff he had to deal with during his school days extended quite a bit beyond comically one-sided scuffles.It had been quite awhile since he'd seen dead bodies.
- Taken to the extreme in the Fate/stay night prequel novels (and anime adaptation) Fate/Zero. Not only do we finally get to see some of the horrors Sakura underwent at the hands of the Matou family, but we also get treated to the sight of Uryuu Ryunosuke offering up a small child to Bluebeard, who then cruelly treats that child to a Hope Spot before having him get dragged offscreen by a tentacled abomination to be messily slaughtered an a manner that we can hear all too well.
- Kiritsugu's childhood involved having his hometown be consumed by Dead Apostle when a friend of his was turned into one. After the entire island was burned by the Mages' Association and the Church to cover up the outbreak, he killed his own father whose research caused the outbreak.
- Lin of Fist of the North Star bore witness to her family being murdered by bandits right before her eyes. The sheer trauma of the experience rendered the poor girl unable to speak until Kenshiro came to her village and used his Hokuto Shinken powers to restore her speech.
- Fruits Basket:
- Yuki was tortured, physically and mentally, when he was younger by Akito.
- Almost every Sohma Family member has experienced some sort of mental or physical violence in their past. Mostly by Akito — who admittedly is a special case, too. And she was a victim of mental and physical violence as well, which completely broke her mind and drove her to, well, do lots of shit.
- Fullmetal Alchemist:
- Brothers Ed and Al try to resurrect their dead mother using alchemy. Al loses his body and Ed loses his left leg. Ed then loses his right arm in a (successful) attempt to seal Al in a suit of armor. To make things even worse, the resurrection attempt fails miserably and Al (now sealed in a suit of armor) has to carry his bleeding and half dead brother over to their friend's house to keep him from dying. Ed and Al were 11 and 10 years old, respectively.
- Ed discovers later that the thing they created wasn't actually Trisha. While they both agonize over the fact that they went through so much pain for nothing, they're also immensely relieved that they didn't end up killing their mother a second time.
- Shou Tucker's ultimate crossing the moral event horizon moment: He turned his own 4-year-old daughter into a Chimera by fusing her with his dog, creating a horrible abomination whose life consisted of pain that being mercy-killed by Scar was the best thing anybody could to for her at that point.
- Fullmetal Alchemist (2003):
- Al is forced to kill the abominable mess of organs and flesh they created in place of their mother, which mostly had her face. Talk about trauma. It doesn't actually die (because it's not that easy to kill a homunculus) and eventually becomes Sloth.
- 12-year-old Ed sees the mangled body of a woman killed by a serial killer. Despite already being a state alchemist, it reminds him too much of the failed transmutation and causes him to faint.
- Sagara Sousuke from Full Metal Panic!. Even earlier than when he became a Child Soldier, he witnessed his beautiful mother dying for him, before his eyes. Her last words to him were for him to live, never give up, and fight. This most definitely contributed to his Crazy Survivalist ways in the future. Though, seeing how violent and filled with death his childhood was, he's actually remarkably well adjusted.
- Grave of the Fireflies has this is spades, and is a stark reminder that children have no business trying to make it on their own, especially not with WWII Japan as the backdrop.
- In GATE, Youji Itami has had it quite rough as a kid. Similarly to Sonohara from Durarara!!, first he had to deal with an alcoholic abusive father, and then his mother went mad from the situation and after killing the bastard tried to self-immolate. Though saved, she's still institutionalized. Fortunately, Itami managed to find a Parental Substitute in an up-and-rising governmental bureaucrat by the name of Taro Kano, with whom he bonded over their mutual hobby.
- Hana To Ryuu: As a child, Kasama Ryuuji watched his parents get murdered before his eyes by a rival Yakuza gang.
- One chapter of Hell Teacher Nube dealt with adults in town becoming suddenly very harsh and secretive toward the kids, including the usually nice titular character. After Miki is kidnapped by a mysterious cloaked man, Nube is forced to tell Kyoko and Hiroshi the reason: a famous and prolific serial-killer that exclusively targets children was in town, and the adults' vigilance was predicated on protecting the kids from this knowledge.
- Half the cast of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service lived through some seriously harmful things as children: Makino's mother stepped onto the path of a high-speed train in front of her daughter's eyes (Makino got splattered by her blood), Yata barely survived the Murder-Suicide of his parents (carbon monoxide poisoning) and was trapped inside a car with their corpses (as well as that of his beloved sister) for several hours, and Sasaki came home from school one day to find her father, mother and older sister dead in the hallway, all partially dissected by their killer. Needless to say, they're all a little odd in the head as a result.
- Lord El-Melloi II Case Files: Olga Marie Arsimilat Animusphere stumbled upon her tutor's headless body, followed shortly after by her missing head, and she was 11-years-old at the time.
- Hayate ends up seeing half of her adoptive family get slaughtered (after finding out that the other two were already dead) in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's. The ones responsible had deliberately shown her so she would undergo a Traumatic Superpower Awakening. Fortunately for all involved, Hayate doesn't suffer any long term mental trauma and is able to resurrect her family.
- Mobile Suit Gundam 00: Setsuna, who was most likely "inspired" by Sagara Sousuke of Full Metal Panic!. This also happens in the film Blood Diamond, when Solomon's son is kidnapped by rebel troops and turned into a kid soldier.
- Monster: Even disregarding the Backstory, at one point, Johan very nearly gets a 10-year-old to kill himself by, when he finds out the kid is looking for his mother, sending him into a red light district with the kind, gentle assurance that if no one claims him as their child, he's unwanted and has no reason to live.
- Naruto:
- A seven-year-old Sasuke Uchiha returns home to find his clan dead, and his older brother Itachi standing over the corpses of his mother and father. When a terrified and bewildered Sasuke asks Itachi what has happened, Itachi kindly uses his Mangekyou Sharingan to force his little brother to relive the massacre of the Uchiha clan for 72 hours. No wonder Sasuke does a Face–Heel Turn after Itachi turns up in Konoha and mindrapes him again.
- Itachi in turn was motivated to massacre his clan by the fact that they were planning to try to take over the village, thus starting a civil war (and a world war, due to other nations seizing advantage). This prospect was unrelentingly flashing him back to his own childhood, when in the words of Tobi (Obito), "During the Third Ninja World War, Itachi, barely four years old, witnessed countless people slaughtered in cold blood. A four year-old is still too immature to turn war into experience for a child, war is hell. The trauma turned Itachi into a boy who loathed war and strife, and only desired peace."
- Kakashi saw his father committing suicide, saw Obito die at 13, was forced to kill his remaining team-mate Rin soon after, and a month before he hit 14 lost his sensei to the Kyuubi's attack. And this is without mentioning he's a child soldier who fought in the Third Ninja World War. If Naruto and his friends were involved in life-death fights as 12 year olds during peace time, imagine how it feels to be a 6 year old chunin in war time.
- Meanwhile in Wind Country, Gaara's father had the tanuki-like One-Tailed Shukaku, a tailed beast, sealed into his body while Gaara was still in his mother's womb, giving him the power to manipulate sand. The Fourth Kazekage, Gaara's father and the leader of the village of Sunagakure, intended to use Gaara as the village's personal weapon. Gaara was trained by his father throughout his childhood to help gain control over the abilities granted to him by Shukaku. Despite this, Gaara was ostracized by the Sunagakure villagers, who viewed him as a monster for being the host of a tailed beast. Gaara would occasionally snap from the villagers' stares and harm/kill them. These attacks on the villagers convinced Gaara's father that he was a failed experiment, and he ordered Gaara's assassination. All of the attempts on Gaara's life failed, as Shukaku would always protect Gaara from harm and kill the assassin. Realizing that he had been abandoned by his family, Gaara adopted the belief that he could only rely upon himself and Shukaku, and that he had to kill others in order to confirm the value of his own existence.
- Haku's childhood. Haku's father and mother were simple farmers, and they lived a peaceful life. They loved each other, and were kind to their child. Unfortunately, this all changed one day. Haku's mother was a carrier of a kekkei genkai: Ice Release. She hid this fact from her husband, hoping that the love and peace that was shared in their small family would last forever. One day, Haku discovered the ability to manipulate water. Amazed by this, Haku proudly showed this to his mother, who was horrified by what she saw, and harshly scolded Haku for displaying his ability. Unbeknownst to his mother, Haku's father had seen everything. When Haku's father discovered that his wife and child possessed a kekkei genkai, he assembled a small mob of villagers, and killed his wife. He would have done the same to Haku, but before he could, Haku killed them. Orphaned, Haku became a child who was wanted by no-one and was forced to take to the cold streets and rummage through trash bins for scraps of food, even sometimes having to fight off the wild dogs that roamed the streets. In time, he was found by Zabuza Momochi, who asked Haku to become his "weapon," which meant to become a dedicated kekkei genkai shinobi for Zabuza. Haku readily accepted this role, due to the purpose it gave him, devoting his life to becoming Zabuza's ultimate weapon.
- As Pain is stabbing Hinata almost to death he tells Naruto, "It was just like this for me too. When I was young my parents were killed before my very eyes by ninja from the Hidden Leaf."
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
- Before becoming the shounen lead, Negi saw his village turned to stone by demons; and Asuna, at the age of four or so, she was the focal point of a war, and saw/partially caused a Floating Continent to be destroyed by accident, presumably killing everyone therenote . She then ends up as a prisoner, forcing Nagi to bust her out. By the end of it when she's finally out of the mess, she's a semi suicidal Broken Bird before the age of ten. Yay! Luckily she got better, sort of. And now the amnesia is in the process of being undone.
- Negi's is more complicated, in a bad way. His cousin explained death (specifically, Negi's father's) as "going far away, where you can never see them again." This not five minutes after she told him that his father was a superhero, who would always appear to save anyone in trouble. So Negi spent the next year or so doing increasingly dangerous things to try and get his father to appear, which ended the day the demons attacked his village. At which point his father did appear. So for the rest of his life, there was always a little voice in his head whispering that the whole thing was his fault. Then it's revealed that the people who ordered the attack on the village were specifically trying to kill Negi, due to him being the son of Arika. So in a way, it was his fault.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion:
- Misato saw (and miraculously lived through) Second Impact when she was 14.
- Shinji witnessed his mother's "death" in Unit 01 when he was a toddler.
- Asuka saw her mother in her deranged state after the contact experiment with Unit 02, and also found her after she'd hanged herself. In the manga version, her mother also tried to kill her.
- As a young child, Mireille Bouquet of Noir saw her parents and brother murdered in their home, which led to her and her uncle fleeing their native Corsica and her becoming an internationally renowned assassin. She had never managed to identify the killers, but swore vengeance against them if and when she ever did track them down. Problem is, the shooter was none other than her partner Kirika, which is played for a major Heroic BSoD in the last five episodes.
- One Piece is not kind to children.
- When he was about seven, Luffy watched his beloved idol Shanks get his arm ripped off by a sea king while being rescued by the former. And before that he got to see one of Shanks' crewmen gun down a guy at point-blank (though in that case it was technically defense of another, i.e. Shanks).
- Nami watched her surrogate mother get shot in the head and killed. When you consider this and everything else she's been through, it's amazing she's sane.
- After she fell down the stairs and broke her neck, Zoro saw Kuina's dead body. And some in the audience keep thinking "For the love of God, don't leave the body where the cute 12 year old can see it!" (Certain other things only made it more traumatic for the poor guy.) Understandably, the people at Toei found this disturbing enough to omit from the anime adaptation. (by not showing the body directly, that is.) In the English dub, Zoro had to hear that several of the boys he knew who had also been beaten by Kuina had all ganged up on her and beat her (to death). Which is arguably a much worse death.
- Robin saw her entire civilization wiped out in an orgy of violence and explosions, with the three people in the world who were remotely kind to her (including her estranged mother, who had just returned with hell following behind her) murdered in front of her.
- Sanji, as a kid, was left stranded on a rock in the middle of the ocean. The most traumatic one was when he realized that the other castaway gave away all his food for him, and was forced TO EAT HIS OWN LEG to survive. Talk about traumatizing minors. No wonder that both of them swore that they'll never say no to anyone who asked for food, whoever he is. And that above incident happens after going through horrendous child abuse by his own father and brothers for being kind-hearted and weak, even being Left for Dead...
- In his childhood, Trafalgar Law saw things no one, let alone kids, should ever see. His hometown wiped out by soldiers, his parents killed by gunfire, the nun who was taking care of him, all of his friends were tricked into being shot dead, and his home being burned to a crisp with his ill little sister still inside. He escaped by hiding in a pile of corpses to leave the city. No wonder he was so fucked up as a kid. Law got better though, after watching his mentor and only friend die in front of him, by his former boss.
- Slaves are forced to keep smiling and appear happy in every circumstance, and anyone who fails to do so is cruelly killed. Koala was so used to seeing that happen when she was a slave herself that her Stepford Smiler facade remained strong even after she was freed, only breaking when Fisher Tiger vowed to not kill anyone and to return her home. She was only eight when she was saved from slavery, and eleven when Tiger helped her recover. It's a miracle she's a genuine Perpetual Smiler in the present time.
- Played for laughs in Only the Ring Finger Knows as Wataru is rather disturbed by the fact that Yuichi has no compunction about kissing him before children. Shohei is certainly not happy to hear from his daughter that his brother kisses a male lover in front of her, but no harm ever seems to befall her from it.
- Peacemaker Kurogane: Poor Tetsunosuke saw his parents get murdered right in front of his eyes, years later he continues to see people get murdered, and the killer who murdered his parents tries to come after him later on too. Is it any wonder that he spends about four episodes in Heroic BSoD mode?
- In Penguindrum episode 15 we see that the "antagonist", Yuri Tokikago, is a thoroughly broken person, thanks to her own father, a famous Mad Artist who carved his daughter's body with a chisel to make her "look beautiful" and be worthy of his love, while telling her that no one would ever love her because of how "ugly" she was. This happens in a flashback and, in these scenes, Yuri is no older than 8 years old.
- Gintama has a few instances:
- Gintoki was an orphan wandering among the battlefields, searching corpses for food. No one knew where did he come from and what his life was like before that, only that it was not nice. At the age of 16, he became a soldier and fought a losing battle, where he was forced to kill and saw his many comrades die.
- Kagura was born a Yato, a notoriously bloodthirsty warrior race, which is already a hard start for someone who wants to have a normal life. It didn't help that she grew up in the slums with an absent father, a dying mother, and an emotionally closed off older brother who became increasingly violent as he grew up.
- Michiru from Plastic Memories saw her Giftia father gunned down at age thirteen. He had become a Wanderer and was aggressive towards everyone, even her.
- In a flashback during the RS arc of Pokémon Adventures, this is all but confirmed when a five year old Ruby gets his head slashed at by a Salamance. Little Sapphire was all but mentally scarred by seeing little Ruby smiling at her with blood running down his face.
- There's also Koya from Pokémon: Diamond and Pearl Adventure!. Up until now, he and his Growlithe had been extremely close, having been partners for a rather long time. And then Growlithe got violently whooped by a Gyarados (a Water-type Pokémon, super effective against Growlithe, and who seemed absolutely elated at its condition), so much so that it had to go to the Pokémon Center equivalent of the ER. And just to top it all off, when Growlithe finally awoke, it was so traumatized by the experience that it shrunk into a corner when Koya tried to touch it. No wonder he's a bitter half-pint in the International Police.
- In Princess Tutu, it's revealed that Fakir's parents were viciously attacked and killed right in front of him by crows as a child. It's made even worse in that the crows were actually trying to attack him because of him misusing his Rewriting Reality powers, and his parents died protecting him. And now you know why he's obsessed with protecting other people.
- Ranma ½: Genma Saotome has a funny idea of raising his son. Genma took his trusting young son at the age of six/ten (depends on version) and proceeded to put him through Training from Hell considered foolhardy and excessive even by others in the series (in which legitimate training techniques include trying to grab chestnuts from an open flame and being suspended in midair by a rope while having a huge boulder swung at the trainee). Said "training" consisted of wrapping Ranma up in jakuwa (dried sausages made from fish meat) and then throwing him into a pit filled with starving cats, over and over again, until Ranma developed a permanent phobia of cats as well as a fear-inducable Berserk Mode in which Ranma's conscious mind switches off and a split personality that believes itself to be a housecat takes over, due to the human personality being unable to handle the terror any more. The kicker is that the training manual noted that this technique had been discontinued for ages because it was functionally useless and invariably killed or permanently traumatized the trainees... it just so happened that the warning was on the next page of the manual, so Genma didn't see it until after he'd finished "teaching" it to Ranma, as he'd been too lazy to bother reading that far beforehand. There are reasons why Genma Saotome will never win "Father of the Year".
- In The Red Ranger Becomes an Adventurer in Another World, Red was orphaned in a accident at the tender age of 7. At his parents' wake, none of his family's friends offered to take care of him, citing the expenses of raising a child, while saying that it'd have been easier for everyone if he'd just died with his parents. This incident scarred him for life, leaving him obsessed with forming bonds with others both to honor his parents' wishes for him and to patch the gaping hole in his heart.
- Rurouni Kenshin:
- Himura Kenshin. Besides losing his parents to illness, being sold into slavery, and seeing the people who took care of him killed by bandits, he was out killing people at 15!
- Soujiro was an unwanted bastard and resented by his father's family who felt inconvenienced in having to raise him and only did it because of appearances. Up until the incident with Shishio, they were horribly abusive and considered him a slave. Shishio just gives Soujiro, who is approximately 8 at the time, the means to make himself a Self-Made Orphan out of self preservation. This does not have a good effect on his mental health.
- The main characters in Sailor Moon range from six (ChibiUsa before she gains her senshi form) to fifteen or so, excluding Mamoru and Setsuna. All of them die or watch a loved one die (usually after being beaten senseless), ChibiUsa watches her city blown up and her mother knocked into a coma, their job is fighting Eldritch Abominations, Usagi routinely has to watch her team die horrifically to save her, etc. There's even ChibiChibi who is two but she's a different case as she's actually an adult woman in disguise (manga) or the personification of someone's purity (anime) so she's probably got a good handle on the whole death-and-destruction thing. In particular, Minako has a backstory that, depending on the medium, includes being involved into gun crimes in London and having a hand grenade thrown at her (anime) or killing the man she loves in Codename: Sailor V.
- Saiyuki Gaiden:
- Goku watches his first and only friend in his own age group attempt suicide right in front of him rather than obey his father's order to kill Goku. This is the first time that Goku's power limiter breaks in response to his emotions running out of control, and while some of Nataku's blood does get on him, most of the blood seen immediately afterward is spilled by Goku himself in his rage.
- For that matter, Nataku himself. Although ages are hard to guess in Heaven, he looks about twelve or so, and since he is an "unclean being", Heaven's laws against killing don't apply to him, and Heaven's Army - encouraged by Nataku's father, who likes the power it gives him and in fact created Nataku for this purpose - uses him as a "killing doll", sending him out to slaughter their enemies. He frequently comes back with severe injuries, and he's the only one of the fighting force with even a scratch.
- Satou Kashi no Dangan wa Uchinukenai:
- Umino and Nagisa are both thirteen year old girls. When Umino said her father killed her dog and dumped his dismembered body in the mountains, Nagisa didn't believe her. To prove she's not lying Umino took her up to where her dog's remains were.
- Nagisa and a classmate come to school to find all the rabbits have been brutally beaten to death and one is missing its head. The boy accuses Umino of doing it and brutally beats her up. Nagisa finds the rabbit's head in Umino's backpack.
- At the end, Nagisa and her older brother go into the mountains to see if Nagisa's suspicions that Umino's father murdered her is correct. Sadly it is. Nagisa's brother tries to stop her from seeing her best friend's dismembered body, but Nagisa runs past him.
- School-Live! takes place in a Zombie Apocalypse so this is expected. For example, in the anime Kurumi bashed in a zombie classmate in front of Yuuri and Yuki.
- Shion no Ou: When Shion Yasuoka was a very young child, she witnessed the brutal murder of her parents. The trauma of the event rendered her mute.
- In one episode of Sonic X Amy, Tails, and Chris watch Gerald Robotnik being executed on tape. It was shown worldwide so other kids likely saw it too (including 6-year old Cream). None of them seem too horrified at seeing it. This isn't the case in the original Sonic Adventure 2 scene, which rewound before the guns fired.
- Sora and Sunao of Sukisho were subjugated to immoral experiments by Aizawa when they were children, which included psychological torture and starvation.
- Asada Shino (Sinon) of Sword Art Online was a victim of an armed post office robbery at age 11. She killed the robber with his own gun in the process to protect herself. She became a player of Gun Gale Online to overcome her trauma concerning guns. And before that, when Sinon was a baby, she was involved in a car accident that killed her father. This caused her mother to become weakened in the trauma resulting in Sinon having to take care of her.
- Quite a lot of examples in Talentless Nana. For one, the eponymous protagonist was about 6 years old when she discovered that her house had been broken into and her parents brutally murdered and beheaded for her to find. There are several panels of her panicking and carrying her father's decapitated and still bloodied head into a police station, screaming for help.
- Texhnolyze: When Ichise was a child, his father, Ikuse, was killed for what Ichise believes was betraying his friends and Ichise discovered his fathers mutilated body hanging from the ceiling. A short time after, his mother also died. All he was left with was a vial that contained some of his mother's cells. Soon after, he began his life as a fighter in an underground arena. His life after that was just one extreme Break the Cutie moment after another.
- In Tiger & Bunny, Barnaby witnessed his parents' murder when he was just 4 years old. As a result, he's developed a bad case of post-traumatic stress disorder and a single-minded obsession with getting revenge on the offending party.
- Subaru, in Tokyo Babylon, is shown in a Flashback early on making a mysterious bet with Seishirou under a sakura tree. Only later do we see that Seishirou was standing over the corpse of his latest victim at the time.
- Tokyo Ghoul is littered with children being exposed to horrific violence.
- Amon's Freudian Excuse centers on having walked in on his beloved foster father eating his friend, and realizing this is what happened to all the other children supposedly adopted from the orphanage.
- Hinami witnesses her mother being executed by Investigators, and later gets lured into a trap by the scent of her mother's severed arm in a bag. The Investigator follows this up with using weapons made from her parents to try to kill her and her caretaker.
- As children, Touka and Ayato were betrayed by a neighbor and nearly killed by Investigators. Touka was roughly eight at the time, but managed to manifest her kagune for the first time to possibly kill one of the Investigators and allow their escape. They spent the next several years on the streets, becoming an infamously violent pair.
- Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- has Fai, who watched his twin brother die, and believed he caused it and Kurogane, who saw his mother stabbed to death in front of his eyes. Their ages are never given, but they are children at that time.
- Kiba from Wolf's Rain tears out a mans throat in front of a boy.
- Despite being created to market the card game, all the other members of the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise show varying amounts of this.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! being set in a world where children's card games rule doesn't save the young Ishtar clan members from being exposed to horrific violence at the hands of their father. The Tomb Keeper initiation in the anime is shown through a Shadow Discretion Shot, but the manga shows just how ten-year-old Malik/Marik got his scars in bloody detail.
- Perhaps the most extreme is Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL. Taking place in a beautiful, colorful, carnival-like city called Heartland during a period when the duel monsters game is used as a Mundane Utility, you are led to think that it will be a cute, child friendly show; it's not (even in the English dub). The main character, Yuma, and his best friends being 11-13 years old (depending on the medium) doesn't save them from being pulled into the intergalactic numbers war and experiencing severe pain and torture at the hands of the villains. The Arklight siblings are verbally and mentally abused by their father, Tron, so that they will help him carry out his revenge which includes torturing a young child in front of his big brother before stealing his powers and nearly killing him, and attempting to kill another duelist's sister in a fire. The numbers duelist's working for Dr. Faker and Mr.Heartland were recruited as young children and put through brutal, almost fatal, dueling exercises to train them to steal peoples souls. The youngest member of the reoccurring cast Haruto/Hart, is a small Creepy Child who is manipulated into using his physic powers to attack innocent people in another dimension. The poor kid is also used as a pawn; He is actually possessed and it has caused him to develop a sickness that will eventually become fatal, and this is used to convince the kid's brother to become a soul-steeling number hunter to cure him.
- The second part of the series, Zexal II, is made EVEN WORSE, if that's even possible, by introducing the seven Barian Emperors; seven teenagers/young adults who are the reincarnations of the original seven Emperors. Originally, the seven were young kids who had short, brutal lives before they died filled with rage. Their reincarnations are convince to reprise their original forms to help their world; by destroying earth. The main characters, who, again, are all young kids, are forced to watch the destruction of their home and the deaths of thousands of innocents, before each of them are forced into death duels or outright killed as sacrifices. The seven Barians realize their mistakes, but are all killed as well. By the end of the series, Everyone but Yuma has been killed off,[spoiler: although they are resurrected by the end]]. Poor Yuma has a near mental breakdown and sinks into a Heroic BSoD again and again, but he ends up better in the end..
- The manga makes it even worse, if possible, by portraying the villains and their actions completely differently. The seemingly stupid, useless Mr. Heartland is actually an extremely sick psychopath who swindled 689 terminally-ill people. The anime's 1st Big Bad, who underwent a Heel–Face Turn, is never given that chance in the books; Dr. Faker was revealed to be a dead body turned into a puppet all along. Imagine Kaito's face upon discovering his father's - the last hope for Haruto's survival - rotten corpse The Disc-One Final Boss is a once loving brother turned into a Straw Nihilist Omnicidal Maniac after strangling to death a child who looked like his beloved sibling (said child even killed and replaced said sibling). The True Final Boss is a torture loving Eldritch Abomination calling herself the Goddess of Darkness/Pain. Needless to say, the characters mental states are even worse in the manga.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V has recently surpassed Zexal as being the worst for the young protagonists. It features inter-dimensional wars, genocide, and child soldiers, all portrayed in a relatively realistic way.
- Zetsuai (1989): When Izumi was five, his mother discovered his father was cheating on her, and murdered him in front of Izumi so that she could "possess him completely". Years after this, after getting out of prison, Izumi's mother goes to him, explains her reasons and kills herself in front of him. After this, it's easy to understand why Izumi becomes so hot-tempered and mistrustful of love.
Exposure to Sexuality
- Apollo's Song: Early in the story, the protagonist Shogo not only reveals that as a child, his mother went of with countless men to the point where he does not know his biological father, but also that when going to his mother's room to have a talk, he accidentally sees her having sex (or possibly about to) in one of her numerous affairs, whereupon she eventually proceeds to beat him with a broomstick repeatedly, but not before Shogo answers his irate mother's question about what he just saw by saying that he saw Mama and Papa "doing naughty things". Because of this, he developed an intense hatred of romance, hence why he turned out the way he did.
- Hinako from Bitter Virgin was sexually abused by her step-father for several years and had two children (though one was stillborn) by age fifteen. This is why she is a Shrinking Violet who dislikes males and infants.
- Played for Laughs in episode 3 of Blend-S. 16-year-old Maika found a forgotten doujinshi in Cafe Stile, glanced at its cover... and caused her to hide under a table with Blank White Eyes for the rest of the scene, trying to distance herself from that doujinshi during the time it's stored at the break room, and again got Color Failure when the owner mentioned its title. So what's that doujinshi about? Bondage hentai.
- As a little boy Tamura from Bokura no Hentai was dressed up in girl's clothes and sexually abused by an older boy. He repressed the memories and doesn't remember these memories until seeing the guy in a home video. Tamura did subconsciously remember it though — his dreams of being a nymphomaniac woman in a previous life are influenced by his memories.
- One of the characters in Death Parade had a teenage sister who was beaten up and raped. He vowed revenge and killed the man. The incident ultimately led to his death and is a major issue in his soul being judged correctly. It's implied he was ultimately sent to the Void.
- Full Metal Panic!: The Creepy Twins Yu Fan and Yu Lan have been repeatedly raped by Gates ever since they were young.
- One Piece: The Boa sisters were kidnapped into the slave trade and most likely molested/raped by Celestial Dragons, as implied by their (Hancock's in particular) PTSD-induced hatred for men.
- Glass Fleet: As a young child, Vetti was molested and raped by his foster father. His foster mother even knew about it and did nothing to stop it. This becomes his Freudian Excuse for much of his actions, and his redemption at the end of the series.
- Kira of Mars (1996) was raped by her stepfather when she was fourteen years old. As a result, she became averse to male touch and shy to the point of muteness. When her mother asked the stepfather back into their home, Kira did not react well.
- Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn has Marida Cruz, as Ple Twelve, has a backstory as a child prostitute, being found as a war survivor of the Neo Zeon Wars.
Exposure to Both
- On top of seeing her mother abused by her father, Kureha from After School Nightmare was raped at age five while walking home from school. The trauma and her father deeming her Defiled Forever caused her fear of males.
- Berserk:
- Guts has had it rough as a kid. Spending his life on battlefields definitely qualified him for the "horrific violence" part of this trope, but we lost all sympathy for his mentor/father figure Gambino when he sold young Guts as a sex slave for three silver coins to the pederastic soldier Donovan, who raped Guts and who Guts murdered for it afterward. Gambino met his fate not long after when he got drunk and tried to kill Guts, blaming him for the death of his lover, who had adopted the boy but died of an illness that he also had. It was probably not a good idea to mention that he sold him to Donovan, as Guts killed him immediately after. As one final backhand from Fate to Guts, he saw his adoptive mother die - from the plague - when he was three. (The universe has had it in for him from birth - his adoptive mother picked him up, umbilical still attached, from underneath a woman's corpse hanging on a tree.)
- Casca's village impoverished and starvation being a large threat, she has to work for a noble, who took her with him when he passed by one day, to take a bit of the load off her family. However, turns out he didn't want her for cleaning or cooking, but rather as a sexual slave. She is fortunately saved when Griffith shows up and tosses her a sword with the words "If you have something you wish to protect, then take up that sword." She kills the would-be rapist and becomes devoted to Griffith and his cause. Her life in the present isn't much better, however, thanks to what happened to her during the Eclipse, particularly at the hands of Griffith himself.
- Black Lagoon:
- Hansel and Gretel start off as completely unsympathetic Creepy Twins / Psychos For Hire. It turns out though that they have quite possibly the single most horrific and perverse example of a Freudian Excuse that you will ever find: when the Romanian government was overthrown and the orphanages were shut down, the two, along with other kids, were sold into the black market to be playthings for hardcore sex-freaks and ground up for hog chow in the end. Hansel and Gretel were spared this fate only because a particularly twisted sicko made them participate in Snuff Films as a special sideshow, and in their desperation, the two learned how to kill so they could entertain their twisted clientele night after night. And over time, they drew it all in, learning to love killing people in general and choosing to become trained animals working for the guy in charge of the video racket.
- Garcia has it rough in the El Baile de la muerte arc. It starts with his father being killed by a bomb and just gets worse from there. He has to witness Roberta, his family's head maid and surrogate mother figure, go insane and revert to her "Bloodhound" persona during her quest for revenge. At one point he eavesdrops on Roberta as she tricks an enemy into letting down his guard by seducing him. He has to listen to them make out and grind before Roberta brutally finishes the guy off. He's actually crying and biting his hand to block out the pain when he hears them loudly kissing. When Roberta discovers Garcia in the room, she is way past batshit insane and thinks he isn't real — and prepares to shoot him to dispel the illusion. Garcia is forever changed by this experience — and not for the better.
- Shingen from Durarara!! not only let his (then four-year-old) son Shinra witness the surgical vivisection of a naked, unanesthesized headless woman, but handed him a scalpel and let him cut her open himself. It should be no surprise that Shinra grew up kind of weird as a result. And he's far from being the only one. Actually, the fact that he's the most stable and best adjusted of all the main characters, and about the only one in a stable and healthy relationship (with the very same woman he cut up at four), speaks volumes about the Dysfunction Junction the series' characters are in.
- This trope doesn't even begin to describe some of the horrific things that the diclonii and other children of Elfen Lied had to go through. Many of them have gone through the "horrific violence" part of the trope, and some (like Lucy in her Start of Darkness) actually cause it. And what the human Mayu and the diclonius Number 28 in the manga horribly fulfills the sexuality part of the trope.
- Marco from Future Diary was only in high school when he stumbled across his girlfriend Ai being viciously gang-raped. Then he ended up killing one of said rapists, traumatizing him to the point that he was prepared to kill himself.
- The titular girls of Gunslinger Girl have each had something nasty of "exposure to horrific violence," "exposure to sexuality," or more frequently both, happen to them in their past to necessitate going through the process of becoming a cyborg. Henrietta's past involves watching her family killed and then being brutally assaulted by their murderers. Angelica was run down by her father in an effort to collect on her insurance policy. But the worst by far was Triela, who was involved in snuff films and horribly abused both physically and sexually. The fact that most of the girls have their memories erased prior to becoming cyborgs is a blessing even in the Gray-and-Grey Morality of the series.
- Seras Victoria from Hellsing. Poor, sweet Seras, who seems a cheerful and upbeat girl for most of the manga, has a rather dark and disturbing backstory, which seems to have happened when she was very young. It consists of her father being murdered by burglars, her mother hiding her in a cupboard to protect her, and her mother's subsequent murder by the same burglars. Seras tries to exact revenge by stabbing one of the guys in the eye with a fork. She gets a gutshot for her trouble and one of the perpetrators proceed to rape her mother's corpse, due to it being "still warm". In full view of Seras who lies on the ground bleeding profusely watching it happen and unable to do anything to stop it.
- Soubi in Loveless had a pretty screwed up childhood. He was trained to be "Fighter" and to be subservient to his "Sacrifice," which involved being whipped to the point of not feeling the pain anymore. Natch, he also gets the second type through his teacher, Ritsu, who sexually abused Soubi in order to get revenge on Soubi's mother, who married another man. Ouch. Needless to say, as an adult Soubi is a rather screwed up individual.
- Sohryu Asuka Langley of Neon Genesis Evangelion. When she was still a child her mother went insane and at one point asked Asuka to die together with her. Asuka later discovered her mother's body after she committed suicide (in the manga, her mother actually tried to strangle her at some point before the suicide). Around the same time, her father had an affair with her mother's doctor, to the point where they even had sex in the hospital within earshot of Asuka. And just to top it all off, he ended up marrying the doctor shortly after his wife's suicide, and in the manga, Asuka ended up with a half-sister who she always felt she had to compete with just to put the icing on the cake.
- When she was a child, Altena of Noir lived in a country that had been leveled by war. A soldier finds her wandering alone, already looking utterly shell-shocked and hollow, and rapes her. This was the character's Start of Darkness.
- Now and Then, Here and There is made of this trope. Forget Earn Your Happy Ending. If you're lucky you can manage a Bittersweet Ending.
- Saiyuki:
- Gojyo's backstory. A product of his father's affair, he was raised by his father's wife, who abused and tormented him constantly since he was a reminder of her husband's infidelity. To protect him, his half-brother Jien took to calming her down the only way he could - by allowing her to seduce him, and it's shown that Gojyo could hear them in the next room over and was well aware of exactly what was happening. Eventually, the situation spiraled out of control, and she was about to kill Gojyo...so to save him, Jien cut her down with an ax right in front of his little brother's eyes.
- Sanzo watched his mentor and father figure killed right in front of his eyes at about thirteen, by the demons who stole his sacred scripture. He went after them, and while following their trail was assaulted by bandits, who he was forced to kill in self-defense. The first one he ever killed had just declared his intention to rape the pretty young boy they'd found, and was asking the other bandits to hold him down when Sanzo shot him in the head. Over the course of travels in the next few years, he racked up a nightmarish kill count.
- Souma of Sakura Gari has a very Dark and Troubled Past which, due to his gorgeous looks, consists of him getting touched constantly by people (including his mother in that way), being persuaded by his friend Katsuragi into wanting to kill his mother due to him being angry with her and when Souma couldn't go through with it Katsuragi took Souma's hand (that held a knife) and forcibly made him cut his mother's wrists while she was naked in a bathtub which causes her death, and Souma watched this happen completely horrified. And Katsuragi also involved himself with Souma when he was still a child as well.
- Touyama of Texhnolyze is quite lethal in battle with simply his fists, or with a katana. This is because he had a troubled childhood growing up in the slums of Lux. He father continually molested him and he was stuck around people who did nothing with their lives. In order to escape from that and make something of himself, he joined Organ, an organization that routinely kills members of the Alliance.
- Tokyo Ghoul reveals this to be the cause of Juuzou Suzuya's disturbing behavior. Raised by a sadistic Ghoul as a Human Pet, he was forced to alternately murder people for the amusement of upper-class Ghouls and crossdress for his Mama's sick pleasure. Besides being subjected to torture as "reward", it's implied he was being molested while dressed as a girl. Then Mama decided it would be better if he never grew up, and castrated him with a hammer to prevent puberty. When CCG rescued him, he was automatically labeled a monster and a problem child, never given any sort of therapy or support, made a Scapegoat to cover up a scandal involving an Instructor killing animals, and then sent into the field to kill Ghouls. Little surprise he was so messed up.
- In Witchblade Masane Amaha didn't want her own daughter seeing her in the battle form, which just so happens to be Stripperific Blood Knight Armor with Unstoppable Rage and Orgasmic Combat tendencies. Then it's subverted with vengeance: Anime-viewing kid very mature for her age is going to be so scared of superficial shapeshifting, especially when there was a real threat around... The only thing Rihoko (her daughter) saw when Masane finally had to transform before her eyes was Mommy in a different outfit, still the same woman she loved and respected.
