Guilt Complex

Josh: I'm gonna help you, 'cause you know why?
Leo: 'Cause you walk around with so much guilt about everybody you love dying that you're a compulsive fixer?

— The West Wing

On the one hand, you have The Atoner, a person who committed a terrible deed and after a Heel–Face Turn, resolves to spend their entire life trying to make up for it. On the other hand, you have the person who Apologizes a Lot, someone who apologizes out of habit, even if they know whatever happened was not their fault.

Now combine those two tropes into one, and you've got yourself a Guilt Complex.

A person with a Guilt Complex is someone who routinely puts blame on their own shoulders. It differs from The Atoner in that whatever happened cannot possibly be their fault. Their justification for blaming themselves is usually a stretch. Sometimes, a ridiculous stretch, to the point of Insane Troll Logic; the person offers such bizarre, nonsensical, and completely off-the-wall reasoning as to why it's their fault that there's either a lot of drama and angst or a lot of derisive laughter to be had from it.

The Guilt Complex differs from Apologizes a Lot in that it's not just a Verbal Tic or a way of expressing sympathy for someone else; they truly believe if they had done something different, whatever negative situation they were in would never have happened. And they feel this way all the time, in all situations, to the point where it basically becomes one of their main character traits. Often takes the form of "I should have..." or "If I hadn't..."

A Guilt Complex can be born from many different personalities:

• Extreme Doormats who are so used to being blamed for everything that they've started to believe it's really their fault.
• A Martyr Without a Cause who subconsciously tries to shield their True Companions from hurt by taking the blame themselves, like The Heart, Team Moms, Team Dads, and characters who are A Father to His Men.
• Characters with lingering, unresolved guilt stemming from their greatest failure (which is more likely to actually be their fault), when said failure hits them so hard that it pervades every aspect of their life and they begin to believe every failure around them is their fault, as well.
• On rare occasions, it may be a type of Heroic Self-Deprecation from Byronic Heroes who feel they're responsible for everything that happens around them just because they're the heroes of the story.
• "Catholic Guilt" is a stereotypical personality trait of practicing Catholics and former Catholics.
• An atoner who actually is at fault for past misdeeds, but their sense of remorse runs so deep that they fear they indirectly inspired someone to commit the same reprehensible acts that they now deplore.

Expect the True Companions to initially try and make this person see how they are not at fault until it happens again, and again, and again, and again, and in the end induces much eye-rolling, resignation, or even Lampshade Hanging from other characters.

If a character indulges in this a little too much, it's not uncommon for a supporting character to snap them out of it by accusing them of arrogance for the attitude. Expect to see something along the lines of "you think you're the only one [responsible for/saddened by/involved in] this?!"

Often instrumental to the Heroic BSoD and can overlap with Guilt-Induced Nightmare. See also It's All My Fault where the character usually says this to the point it becomes the Guilt Complex trait. Contrast with Never My Fault, the inversion of this trope.

Please note: When you add examples, try to give as much detail as possible. Remember this trope is about a behavioral pattern.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Code Geass: Lelouch Lamperouge. To explain how deep and massive his guilt complex is would spoil the entire show. To say the least, Lelouch does many horrible things that directly or indirectly affect the people he loves that by the end he goes to extremes to atone. Deuteragonist Suzaku Kururugi also has a rather large and justified guilt complex.
• D.Gray-Man: Miranda Lotto has a massive inferiority complex from being bullied by everyone in her hometown and constantly being told she's useless. She goes out of her way to be helpful but feels she can't do anything right and relentlessly blames herself for pretty much everything that goes wrong. "I'm sorry" and "I should have..." are the things you hear her say the most. Also, she's the team's Barrier Warrior, and often thinks she doesn't do a good enough job of protecting her True Companions. Her powers allow her to heal even the most fatal wounds...but only temporarily, any injuries that she heals returning after she deactivates her Innocence. Thus, you can expect her to try and leave it on for as long as possible, even when it's obviously taking a toll on her, and then apologize profusely when she's finally forced to shut it off.
• Anna Yamada from The Dangers in My Heart. She's very anxious about bothering people in any way, and is quick to apologize for any inconvenience she thinks she's caused someone else, even if it's indirect, her not doing anything but being at the center of it, or even if they were doing something on her behalf. She tearfully apologizes to her mother after getting a nose injury during basketball practice, forcing a modeling shoot that Yamada had scheduled to be canceled. She later blames herself for Ichikawa breaking his arm while he was taking photos for her on a family trip to Akita, something he purposed to do in the first place when she expressed her wish to go there. After sharing with him how her parents consoled her throughout her childhood every time she quit an activity from feeling she wasn't good enough, she confesses to a fear of her loved ones eventually hating her for too many screw-ups.
• Soichiro Yagami from Death Note, who blamed himself as well as Kira for the deaths of certain task force members, his daughter's comatose state after being kidnapped and held hostage by Mello, and not being able to kill Mello when given the opportunity. He also blames himself for losing the Death Note to terrorists, although this one was technically his fault.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Yoriichi Tsugikuni failing to kill Muzan for good almost 400 years prior to the story absolutely destroyed his spirit, despite the fact both Yoriichi and Muzan knew he was ridiculously stronger than the demon king, but Muzan had a surprise escape maneuver Yoriichi couldn’t fully overcome, and he was slightly distracted by Tamayo, a demon who didn’t seem as malicious as all others, looking somewhat tragic even. That encounter was immediately followed by Yoriichi’s own twin brother Michikatsu betraying the demon slayer corps to become a demon himself, joining Muzan; all led to Yoriichi’s completely disgraced image by association, being expelled from the Corps as a result. Yoriichi summarized all of what happened to him being personally responsible for all deaths enacted by demons thereafter due to Muzan escaping his grasp, the man just gave up on a normal life altogether since, dedicating the rest of his life to exterminate any number of demons he can find if Muzan just keeps hiding till Yoriichi dies of old age.
• Fairy Tail: Jellal lets people pretty much beat the crap out of him without complaint out of guilt for his past actions. It holds when he learns he behaved that way due to brainwashing. Despite knowing he wasn't totally in control of himself he still offers to die to make up for what he did. After his offer to kill himself to make up for killing Simon is turned down he then tries his hardest to sink his ship (one of the most teased in the series) so that he won't get to be happy.
• Fruits Basket:
  • Kyo blames himself for almost everything bad that happens to himself and those around him (and a lot of bad stuff happens around him). His mother is Driven to Suicide (which his father and many other people blame him for), he wasted an opportunity to save Kyoko Honda from her untimely death, and the Sohmas in general just treat him like dirt because he's the Cat. Eventually, he comes to the conclusion that he "wasn't meant to interact with people", and that being locked up in some corner of the Sohma estate and removed from the lives of his loved ones would be better for them.
  • Kyo's cousin Ritsu. The poor man got so used to hearing his parents apologizing on his behalf that he started blaming himself for "everything," from imposing on his cousin Shigure to drinking the last bottle of milk in the house. When he goes shopping to atone, he ends up apologizing to a stray cat trying to steal his squid: clearly Ritsu didn't buy "enough" squid for everyone. His nonsensical apologies are actually what clues Tohru in on Ritsu's identity as the Monkey because he takes after his mother.
• Miaka from Fushigi Yuugi has this. She attributes it to seeing her mother sad after she and Miaka's father divorced when Miaka was very young. It only gets worse when she sees just how much her Seishi are willing to do for her.
• Inuyasha: Sango blames herself for her undead little brother being Brainwashed and Crazy, for all the deaths he causes and for not being able to hate him and therefore kill him to stop him. She also blames herself every time Miroku is poisoned or injured.
• Because of her past, even now Haruka from Kotoura-san still blames herself for everything bad that is related to her—or to be exact, her telepathy causing herself a Doom Magnet (even clearly it has nothing to do with her). Manabe calls her out for that in episode 10.
• Quatre Raberba Winner of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing. Believing that peace is possible without fighting, he nonetheless pilots one of the few Gundam suits in the galaxy, forcing him into wars. He's an Apologetic Attacker who constantly tries to get his enemies to surrender without fighting, which always fails, and carries around the deaths of the people he kills heavy on his mind. Teammate Duo Maxwell once said that if someone were to ask Quatre why there's no air in space, "Quatre would say it's because he didn't work on it hard enough."
• Kenzo Tenma from Monster. First, he blames himself for the death of a construction worker because he mistakenly followed orders from a corrupt director to operate on a famous opera singer who arrived shortly afterward. When the same circumstances occurred again, he opted to operate on the patient that arrived first (a child with a gunshot wound to the head) out of guilt. Said patient would become one of the worst serial killers in fiction. Tenma feels obligated to stop him to atone, even if it means killing him. Never mind that there was no way he could have possibly known that the kid was evil.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: Shinji Ikari suffers from this, mostly born out of an Extreme Doormat personality clouded with Parental Abandonment from both his parents. Though Shinji doesn't say it loud, it is obvious that he (at least, subconsciously) blames himself for being abandoned by his both parents (though it never was his fault, his mother did it as part of a hidden agenda to turn him into a Tyke Bomb and his father feared being a bad influence and cut himself out of Shinji's life under the misguided belief that he was doing his son a favor by staying away from him), and it really just gets worse from there. It's his fault Touji's sister got hurt because he should've been more careful when fighting the angel that almost killed him, it's his fault Asuka is screwed because he is unable to help her, it's his fault he had to kill Kaworu because he could've chosen to Take a Third Option... He becomes so wracked with guilt that at End of Evangelion he refuses to do anything for fear of screwing it up... and as a result everything (Misato's death, Asuka's extremely bloody and painful death, The End of the World as We Know It...) becomes HIS fault.
• The Quintessential Quintuplets: Yotsuba Nakano is first introduced as a Genki Girl, but the later chapters reveal she drags a lot of issues from her past. For starters, she's deeply ashamed of how she wanted to stand out from her sisters, leading her to be selfish and competitive. When she focused too much on sports and her grades dropped, she was going to be expelled from her school, so her sisters pretended to have cheated in their own exams to transfer with her so she wouldn't be left alone, and this sacrifice made her decide to put her sisters' happiness over her own to atone, and over the course of the story we get to see she feels her sisters are only falling behind because of her. To top it off, she meets the boy she had fallen in love with many years later, but doesn't feel worthy to pursue him because 1) She couldn't live up to the promise they made of becoming top grade students like he did, and 2) several of her sisters have also developed feelings for him, and she wants to step aside to give them a fair chance. Add to this that she will also often blame herself for things others do, even when her own role is at best minimal (such as telling Ichika to be more selfish in her pursue of Fuutarou, unaware that Ichika would take this to try and sabotage Miku's confession by disguising as her).
• Parodied in Ramen Fighter Miki with Megumi, who claims that she is contented with being a Combat Pragmatist trying anything, no matter how low, to defeat Miki. She lies. She has enough self-hatred that she thinks of herself as a Card-Carrying Villain and being an Hypocrite is so hard for her and pervades every aspect of her life that she believes that Kayahara Sensei is an avenging spirit trying to torment her.
• Rurouni Kenshin: Himura Kenshin's Guilt Complex started from when he was a very young boy never quite got over the idea that he doesn't deserve to live— not only is he The Atoner for the numerous people he killed, but he has a ton of Survivor's Guilt over being the only one who lived through the bandit attack in which he met his mentor— and it took a long, long time for him to break out of his Death Seeker ways. His fame as the Hitokiri Battousai means that many of his old enemies come looking for him and many people get hurt in the process. Hence Kenshin blames himself every time someone he cares about gets hurt in these altercations, even if they willingly put themselves on the line. Eventually this prompts him to leave Tokyo, leaving all of his friends and Kaoru) because It's Not You, It's My Enemies. Kenshin also blames himself for the death of his first wife, Tomoe. Granted, she did die by his sword, but as she threw herself in between him and his enemy in a Heroic Sacrifice, it was never Kenshin's intention, and since he was by that point blinded by pain and blood from previous battles, there was no way he could've seen her until it was too late. Tomoe herself certainly did not blame him at all. Tomoe's little brother went insane as a product of seeing his sister die. Therefore Kenshin also blames himself for this, and indirectly for every horrible deed Enishi brings about in his quest for revenge— effectively everything that happens in the last eleven volumes of the manga. It isn't until the very end of the series that Kenshin began to forgive himself, and believe himself worthy of finding happiness.
• Ai Kaga from Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei is an extreme case, apologizing and taking the blame for anything and everything (including being born,) and constantly worrying about inconveniencing others. In the anime, she even hides Behind the Black until the final episode of the first season because she doesn't want to ruin the show. Her name sounds like "Perpetrate".
• It's not always clear, but Kazuto Kirigaya (AKA Kirito) from Sword Art Online suffers this. The most notable example of this would be the deaths of the Moonlit Black Cats, which, to this day, he blames himself for. Typically in one of three ways: Not being strong enough to save the Moonlit Black Cats from the trap that did them in, not being smart enough to prevent said trap from triggering to begin with, or the biggest leap, believing that had he not met them to begin with or not hid his level, they wouldn't have wandered into the trap that did them in. In Alicization, it's revealed that he actually dislikes the Black Swordsman moniker, as he associates the title with somebody who failed to save those that died in SAO. Alicization also adds Eugeo's death to the list of things he blames himself for.
• In Trigun Vash the Stampede is a Technical Pacifist who believes that "there are plenty of ways to save everyone"; i.e. no matter how bad the situation looks, there's always a way to resolve it without anyone having to die. So, naturally, whenever anyone does die a violent death, he blames himself for not finding a Third Option in time.
  • Trigun Stampede makes it even clearer that Vash holds himself responsible for all the suffering on the planet since the human race crashed there, and demonstrates just how he came to believe he could have done anything about it: everything his Evil Twin does, he personally blames on Vash as necessary to "protect" him, even targeting people Vash cares about to prove they cannot co-exist.
• Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-: Syaoran blames himself for pretty much everything that happened, because of his decision to rewind time when he was seven. This includes Sakura being taken away by Fei Wong Reed, Fai's being born a twin and therefore being a cause of misfortune, Kurogane's mother's death, and Watanuki, most of which happened before he was born. Probably. He blames himself because the Big Bad implies that his rewinding time gave him free rein, but in reality it was his only option; he was pretty much manipulated by Fei Wong Reed and had no control over what Fei Wong did making use of the altered timeline, and there is no way the poor kid could've known all the ramifications that were possible from his one wish, anyway. Heck, even the readers don't quite understand all the ramifications.

Comic Books

• Batman:
  • Batman suffers from this. Dick gets shot? Blames himself, fires Dick to protect him. Babs gets shot? Blames himself, doesn't show his face to her. Jason gets killed? Blames himself, becomes violent and careless. It doesn't help he constantly keeps Jason's memorial case around to constantly remind him of his perceived failure to save him. When Dick took over as Batman, he decides to move the case, and finds out that Bruce put files of the murder of Dick's parents into it. Dick even wonders to himself just how deep Bruce's self-flagellation goes. Bruce has been like this since he was eight. Parents get shot? Blames himself, dedicates the rest of his life to crimefighting and sabotages his own relationships because he genuinely believes he doesn't deserve to be happy.
  • Bruce's adopted daughter, Cassandra Cain, has this to a perhaps even greater degree. She basically considers her life utterly worthless because her abusive father forced her to kill a man at the age of eight, and routinely blames herself for any life, even those of villains, that she fails to save. Her Parental Substitute Barbara Gordon tries her best to convince her that the bad things happening around her are not her fault, but her success is limited.
• Daredevil is the epitome of Catholic Guilt.
  • Matt often blames himself for the death of several love interests, including Karen Page and Elektra. In regards to that, he says there's been three dead and one's insane.
  • He was so distraught over breaking his no-kill rule that he voluntarily served as much of his prison sentence as possible while everyone else tried to convince him to leave prison as soon as possible.
  • In one issue, Matt Murdock's friend, Foggy Nelson, was beating himself up for something, and Matt told him, "Foggy, you would blame yourself for the Battle of Bull Run if you could find a way to do it."
• Iron Man: Jim Rhodes donned the armor when Tony Stark was driven to the bottle by the manipulations of Obidiah Stane. After Tony regained his sobriety and joined Rhodey and friends in a new venture in California, Rhodey began experiencing debilitating headaches and fits of rage toward Stark while in the armor. When nobody could come up with a medical or scientific explanation for the headaches, Henry Pym referred Rhodey to Shaman, who sent Rhodey on an Interdimensional Vision Quest. Here, Rhodey confronted his own soul and came to realize that the headaches were caused by his own guilt; he had enjoyed being Iron Man and didn't want to lose it, but deep down he believed he'd stolen the identity from Tony, and this conflicted with his loyalty to his friend. Only by being willing to give up the armor was he freed from the headaches.
• Spider-Man: Spider-Man lives and breathes this trope:
  • Usually of the type "If only I had gotten there sooner" or "I should've known this would happen" when there was no way he could've gotten there any sooner and there was no way he could've known this would happen. The fact that the media blames him for everything doesn't help matters either; it's a Running Gag in the series that whenever something bad happens, Spidey immediately starts remarking that somehow he'll wind up being blamed for it by the media. His Guilt Complex is also lampshaded many, many times.
  • Uncle Ben's death? His fault, he could have stopped the thief earlier. Gwen Stacy's death? His fault, he killed her when he fired a webline to stop her plunging off a bridge. J. Jonah Jameson has a heart attack? His fault, he never should have asked for the back pay the Bugle owed him... You get the point. Sometimes, his guilt is justified (Aunt May getting shot by a sniper, for example), and of course this only adds to the complex as is.
  • It gets to the point that in an early issue of New Avengers when he finds out that Electro caused a supervillain prison break, he starts blaming himself for the riot since Electro is one of "his" villains. Luke Cage immediately points out how ridiculous that is because if Electro refused, someone else would've been hired to do the job.
  • Parodied in I'm a Marvel... And I'm a DC:
    Batman: Don't you know, [Spider-Man] blames himself for Marvel losing the Transformers?
    Hulk: But why?
    Batman: I don't know, he blames himself for everything!
  • One particularly ludicrous example comes from the 90s cartoon series, where villain Morbius changed into a vampire due to an accident experimenting with Peter's blood, which he obtained by breaking into Peter's locker. Peter considers this his fault. Okay, yes, a school locker isn't the best place to keep radioactive blood, but seriously Peter, grow a damn spine.
  • One I'm a Marvel... And I'm a DC example: Peter manifests two personae, one for the Spider-man Trilogy movies, and the other for the Amazing reboot. They fight with each other, insulting their respective movies, which threatens to harm Peter's consciousness. Batman convinces Professor X to force both personae to blame themselves for their movies' failures. After they take terms comforting each other, they realize their movies' mistakes aren't their fault, they reconcile, saving Peter's consciousness.
  • The "No One Dies" arc in The Amazing Spider-Man (Dan Slott) heavily examined this trait of Spider-Man. After Martha Jameson is killed by the Spider-Slayer, Spidey experiences a nightmare where he's tormented by visions of everyone who's ever died on his watch, from famous deaths like Gwen Stacy and Ben Reily to single issue and background characters like the kid from "The Boy Who Collects Spider-Man". Spider-Man blames himself for every death that occurs around him, even if he couldn't possibly have helped and the result is some who is strongly implied to be a borderline mental wreck, wracked with PTSD and self-loathing. Afterwards, he promises that nobody will ever die when he's around again; this ends up making his guilt complex even worse, culminating in a near breakdown in "Ends Of The Earth" after the suicidal Rhino deliberately kills himself and Silver Sable just to spite Spidey by breaking his promise for him.

Fan Works

• Ahsoka: A NZRE Star Wars Story: Ahsoka blames herself for Anakin turning to the Dark Side, Ezra and Sabine being captured, the Ghost almost crashing to Lira San, and everyone else's refusal to follow her plan.
• Becoming more than what I am.: Max believes that she was on some level responsible for Lucifer's rebellion.
• Blackbird (Arrow):
  • Oliver blames himself for Laurel's fate, being traded to the League of Assassins by her mother in exchange for her sister's freedom. While he does share some of the blame, it's tangential at best, and the ones really at fault are Dinah and, to a lesser extent, Sara. Arguably even Quentin holds more responsibility because he failed to actually keep an eye on Laurel due to his own grief and thus failed to realize she was kidnapped for years until Oliver pointed out how out-of-character her departure was. Even Laurel acknowledges this in the flashback where she finds out he's alive, though part of her is understandably still angry at him. In the present when Oliver tries to blame himself again, she firmly cuts him off, telling him that he shouldn't take responsibility for the wrongs of other people.
  • Sara also blames herself for what happened, even more than Oliver does. The fact that no one except Thea, who she barely saw, bothered to call her out on her choices just made the complex worse, and led to her deteriorating health. When Oliver meets her again, it doesn't take him long to see what a complete wreck she is. The thing is, while Sara does share more of the blame than Oliver, and Laurel is right to be angry at her, in the end the person really to blame is their mother Dinah for making the actual choice and then forcing it on a traumatized Sara to assuage her guilt.
• A Boy, a Girl and a Dog: The Leithian Script, a retelling of the story of Beren and Lúthien, shows Beren as suffering from this. Lampshade Hanging abounds, as well as True Companions with a sense of humor:
  "They're trying to cheer me up by proving that I'm responsible for everything that's ever gone wrong in the universe."
• Usagi has developed this in A Brief History of Histories after years of Parental Neglect. Having completely convinced herself that the reason her father's so distant is that she's not good enough to have earned his love, she tends to blame herself for just about everything that goes wrong, assuming that everyone finds her disappointing.
• In Broken Heroes, Ventus is extremely regretful of letting Vanitas possess him and destroy the Destiny Islands. From the moment he wakes up, he asks Riku to kill him, takes a massive dose of hatred and abuse from Sora multiple times, and he STILL thinks that everything that happened was his fault and he apologizes frequently for it. His death in chapter 18 could almost be a mercy kill with the shit he goes through. Sadly, even some of his last words are "I'm sorry"!
• Cat-Ra: Catra, having taken Adora's place as She-Ra in this continuity, suffers from this similar to Adora in canon, only somehow it is even worse if you can believe it. It gets so bad that Catra believes every single thing that goes wrong is entirely her fault to the point it is a crippling fear. Case in point, the first time Light Hope offers Catra training she rejects it outright and temporally elects to spend the rest of her life in the crystal castle alone so she won't make anyone else's life worse.
• In Distance Wakes The Heart Up, Isabela suffers from repressed guilt for the way she treats Mirabel. With Mirabel gone, she starts having nightmares from the underlying thought that she was responsible for her sister leaving. When she sees Luisa have her breakdown, she realizes that she had also been neglectful to Luisa too.
• Evangelion 303: After a short-lived time period in which she blames everyone else, Asuka starts to blame herself for everything in the second arc. Unit 04 blew up due to circumstances completely out of her control? Her fault because she was responsible for carrying out the mission successfully, even if she hadn't made any mistakes. Her best friend died in the crash? Her fault because she was responsible for carrying out the mission successfully, even if it was not her fault and her friend's ghost personally absolved her. The NF-14 disaster? Her fault even though her superiors knew that she was very unstable and should not have been put in that warplane and some of them even hoped that she crashed it down. The program is facing hardships? Her fault for existing.
• In the sixth story of marcus00721's Fairy Tail series, Final Chapters, Lucy is suffering from a severe misplaced case of this. Believing everything that happened in the final arc of the previous story, Dawn of Darkness, was her fault she suffers from bouts of depression. It doesn't matter that others point out that she was a victim and nothing was her fault, the victim-blaming placed on her has taken root and it got worse as the story went on. Finally, a good deal of the guilt was lifted when she sees that no one blamed her for the disbandment of Fairy Tail, nor was that her fault to begin with. She is still dealing with guilt over other things (that weren't her fault) but is doing loads better. By chapter 74 she has finally let go of the guilt.
• HERZ: Even after twelve years Shinji feels guilty about most bad things that happened during the Angel War, including events where he had no control or no choice.
• Ash Ketchum in Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail starts gaining one after learning that Chloe ran away from home and Trip revealing that Chloe's now on the Infinity Train, and she's going to be stuck there until she works out all her personal problems... problems, Trip believes, that could've been solved if Ash did more — as in, more than asking to go search for Pokémon with Goh, actually ask someone else than Goh what was wrong with her, or just simply trying to be there for her like he did with his other friends — when Trip points out his inaction. Then, when he learns that Goh knows about the Infinity Train — as Trip mentioned that if Goh learns it, that could lead to the boy entering it — the guilt starts creeping in as he starts really blaming himself for everything going wrong. It's later deconstructed as while Ash did make mistakes with Chloe, there were a lot of factors into Chloe's departure that weren't his fault, but people seem convinced that as someone personally connected to Chloe, he deserves a huge chunk of the blame. Once Trip gets the full story, he realizes that he unfairly blamed Ash and dumped more responsibilities on the kid than he deserves, and apologizes to Ash for how he treated him.
• Maria Campbell of the Astral Clocktower: In her previous life, Maria went from a noble hunter to a sad researcher trying to find solutions to impossible problems and killed quite a few innocent people in the process. So in her new life, she never, ever thinks she is doing enough. When she finds out that most of her wards have been having nightmares for months, she is horrified at her failure and runs herself ragged trying to fix it. Her wards, on the other hand, cannot understand how she would ever see herself as a failure after she rescued them from slavery, put them all up in her home at her own expense, and helped get them educations in a foreign land.
  Chiharu: Why do you do this? You have welcomed us to your home and treat us as if we were your own. Shower us with gifts and learning and wonderful food and ask nothing in return. We know Sadako had to beg to become your maid, as if you considered her a favored daughter too good for drudgery. Even we sworn to serve you are treated like pampered ladies, not... what we are. And now you trouble yourself because our dreams haunt us. As if you wish to free our Dark Souls from the misty valleys of memory. I do not understand, my lady. You have done enough. You have done more than enough. And we are not worthy. We are not worthy...
• Mr and Mrs Gold: Belle/Rose feels particularly responsible for Gaston/Gaspard losing his legs (something he insists she shouldn't do).
• In Origins, Samantha Shepard wears the loss of her galaxy around her neck like an albatross. This despite it coming from a borderline Physical God and the Flood, neither of which she could have possibly prepared for. Her therapist even discusses this, but at least for a while Shepard won't hear it, insisting I Should Have Been Better.
• Scar Tissue: Shinji blamed himself for absolutely everything in this fic. The MP-Evas murdered Asuka? His fault because she needed him and he left her to die. The End of the World as We Know It? His fault because he set it off, even if he was a mere pawn into other people's schemes. Asuka is physically scarred and emotionally wrecked? His fault because he allowed it or contributed to her mental state. She got so scared, confused, traumatized, paranoid, unstable, and unable to control her anger that she abused him for eight months straight before getting her act together? His fault because he was the one got her so screwed, and not even think of blaming her or judge her because he will go berserker on you. The only times where he is not blaming himself is why he is blaming his father, his mother, or Ritsuko.
• A Triangle in the Stars: Bill. It stems from his past, especially his growing empathy, which causes him to draw negative attention to all his wrongdoings, and especially the meaning of his true name. Alongside his depression, he hides it extremely well and represses it, only letting off hints every once in a while. Until it explodes.
• In Walking in Circles, Solas isn't a stranger to guilt considering his past, but he still holds an enormous one toward Evelyn, considering himself to be the sources of most of her problems instead of saving her as he promised, and that she could have a simpler life without him. Even when she repeatedly tells him to stop doing so and explains that it's her choice to remain with him, he still lapses into this trope here and there. Solas's guilt complex actually causes Evelyn to suspect that he's with her out of guilt, not love.
• Weight Off Your Shoulder: Thanks to constantly being blamed for everything that goes wrong, Marinette has developed one of these. Case in point: after Alya and her Girl Posse decide they're entitled to know all of Marinette's secrets, barge into her room and invade her privacy, Marinette blames herself for having to hide anything in the first place, spurring her to give up her Guardianship and all her Miraculous-related memories, passing the Earrings on to a successor. After said successor manages to take down Shadow Moth, Marinette wonders if that's just more proof that she failed as a hero, since she was unable to accomplish that herself.

Films — Animation

• Queen Elsa of Frozen (2013) suffers from this. Almost killing Anna when they were kids hit Elsa hard, and even though it was an accident, she sees herself as a monster because of it and seems to blame herself for all the grief it caused her family. In the shorts, Elsa blames herself for things out of her control, like catching a cold and therefore "ruining" Anna's birthday or lacking a family tradition.
• In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, after Sunset Shimmer's Heel–Face Turn, her guilty conscience over bringing magic to the human world and her past as an Alpha Bitch becomes a plot point multiple times. Sunset says that the magical goings-on around the Rainbooms are her fault, because she brought magic to the human world in the first place. This is in spite of multiple characters either forgiving Sunset or confiding in her that they don't find her at fault anymore.
  • Rainbow Rocks sees Sunset refrain from speaking up about what she knows of the Dazzlings because Sunset feels like it isn't her place to say anything after what happened in the first movie. This allows the Dazzlings to manipulate Sunset with her guilt in order to keep her quiet.
  • In Friendship Games, Sunset confesses that she sees all of the magic incidents around Canterlot High as being her fault. Sunset brought magic to the human world in the first movie, which lead the Dazzlings to Canterlot High in the second movie, which in turn lead into Human Twilight's magic research and the events of the third movie. Sunset even apologizes to Principal Celestia for the magic incident at the motocross event, even though the portals came from Twilight's amulet.
  • Spring Breakdown has Sunset going after Rainbow Dash during a major lightning storm because Rainbow claimed to see evil magic around the boat. Sunset says (once again) that her friends wouldn't even be in this mess if she hadn't brought magic to the human world.

Films — Live-Action

• Tony Stark in Captain America: Civil War suffers from this, leading him to give his full support to the Sokovia Accords to increase superhero accountability to the government. He also tries to convince the other Avengers to do the same thing, brushing off their valid concerns. Of all the known events in support of the Accords, only one can be blamed on the Avengers and even then, the Avengers tried to stop them and minimize collateral damage to the best of their abilities. Tony's inability to see that because of his own guilt, eventually fractures the Avengers, the very thing Tony was trying to prevent in the first place.
• Flatliners: After undergoing the titular procedure (Going into a near-death state and then coming out of it), the characters gain heightened senses, only to suddenly get disturbed by visions of grisly scenes and seeing apparitions. The movie gives the first impression that they're being haunted by vengeful ghosts, only to reveal that its their guilt over their past sins that is driving them to see hallucinations. The "hauntings" stop when the characters finally own up to their past misdeeds.
• The Other Woman (2009): Emilia blames herself for the death of her daughter and it sabotages her marriage to Jack and her relationship with her stepson, William.

Literature

• Harry Dresden from The Dresden Files suffers from this in spades. He has a deep Chronic Hero Syndrome and as the only practicing Wizard in the Chicago area, he feels responsible for taking care of any supernatural situations that arise in town, and feels guilty whenever he's not able to do so, especially if people he cares about get hurt. This behavior goes all the way back when he killed his adoptive father and mentor, something which has plagued him since, even though he knows he did it in self-defense, and it was his only choice. Harry often stretches things very far in order to blame himself for things. In book 3, Grave Peril, Harry feels responsible for taking the Nightmare down, and guilty for whatever other attacks it commits, just because it's his power the creature is using for these attacks, regardless of the fact that it took that power by force and in a setting where Harry had absolutely no control: a dream. (He's started to get better about it - it took working with years working with Murphy, leading the Alphas periodically, and teaching Molly for him to finally start to comprehend that other people make their own choices too.) Bob lampshades his Guilt Complex:
  Bob: (Scoffs). Harry, that's irrational.
  Harry: (Snaps at him). That doesn't make it any less true.
  Bob: (Meek). Okay. We now have left Reason and Sanity Junction. Next stop, Looneyville.
• Harry Potter: The title character blames himself a lot, usually born from his Chronic Hero Syndrome. He blames himself for Cedric's death because it was his idea for them both to grab the portkey that led them to Voldemort at the same time, even if neither could have known that object was a portkey. He blames himself for Voldemort coming back to life because it was his blood that was used in the spell, never mind that it was taken by force. He blames himself for Sirius' death because he should've known he was being tricked even though he had never been properly trained. He blames himself for putting his friends in danger because he should've been strong enough to choose the It's Not You, It's My Enemies way out. He blames himself for every life Voldemort takes because he feels Voldemort only wants him, regardless of the fact that Voldemort is a psychopath who would've killed even more people if Harry hadn't been around. Boy, that's one massive Guilt Complex.
• Daine in The Immortals quartet feels massive amounts of guilt; because of her presence, animals are becoming more human-like, and, in times of conflict, ready to die for human war. At various points in the later books, she claims to have gotten over it, but by the Protector of the Small quartet, she feels guilty again when Tortall is back in a full-scale war.
• Interpreter of Maladies has the story "A Temporary Matter". A married couple, Shoba and Shukumar, face extreme guilt after the miscarriage of their baby and sever all real communication with each other. Then, they play a game where as the lights go out in their house, they would reveal their darkest secrets to each other. It seems as though they are getting closer... until it is revealed that the entire time, Shoba was preparing to be separated from him. No amount of petty revelation could hide their personal discontent and guilt from their relationship.
• In the Malazan Book of the Fallen, Mappo Runt develops a guilt complex after he and his friend Icarium get attacked and separated, which with Icarium's Trauma-Induced Amnesia means he forgets Mappo. Mappo crosses half the world to find Icarium, all the while descending into blaming himself for the attack, the subsequent separation, for being such a shoddy guardian that the Nameless Ones had to replace him, for lying to Icarium about his true purpose for centuries, for believing the Nameless Ones in the first place, for loving his friend too much to leave him for eternal imprisonment despite his Tyke-Bomb status, for looking noble despite being selfish, and eventually for every unrelated little thing that happens along the way, like several of the caravan guards he paid to accompany him dying of occupational hazards.
• Lauchlan from Mix Beer With Liquor And You Will Get Sicker has an extreme guilt complex, his most common phrase being "I'm sorry" and him spending a great deal of time fretting over having perhaps hurt or offended someone with pretty much anything he did. He manages to get hit over the head and think that's his fault, too.
• This is Thomas' greatest flaw in The Maze Runner Trilogy. Everything that happens to his friends, even when he couldn't do anything about it, is his fault as far as he's concerned.
• Angel, the main heroine of Redeeming Love, blames her mother's breakup with her father and her mother's subsequent death on herself. Then, she blames herself for being sold into prostitution when she was eight and for everything done to her ever since.
• Bella of The Twilight Saga takes the entirety of available guilt for any mistake she's partly responsible for. In one case, she's on different sides of the issue in different books (a vampire struggling not to bite someone who's been injured), and she blames herself both times.
• Robert from The Way You Are suffers from extreme guilt over his weight, especially when his parents bring it up. Sadly, this is one of the reasons why he has an eating disorder.

Live-Action TV

• The title character from Angel spends his eternal life repenting for all the people he killed when he was soulless. To unpack this, he blames himself for the acts of the demon that possessed his body after he died and until his human soul was shoved back in. The Buffy mythos is very clear that the vampire is not in any way, shape, or form the person whose body it inhabits, even though it inherits memories and personality traits from that person. He often broods, and David Boreanaz's prominent brow comes in handy. He is relieved when Cordelia lets him stay in his office and pretend to read while she goes out on a Friday night.
• Babylon 5: Delenn has some of this for the Earth-Minbari war. In this case she was much to blame but she was hardly the most to blame, and recognized her failure long before the other Minbari.
• Jesse Pinkman of Breaking Bad. While a number of the things that go wrong in the show ARE his fault and he does some terrible things, he will almost always blame himself even if they are not his fault. This stands in complete contrast to many other characters. Most importantly, it contrasts him to the protagonist and his mentor, Walter White, who almost always claims Never My Fault, no matter how horrific his actions become, until the last three episodes.
• The Brokenwood Mysteries: Thinking himself the murderer, Kindhearted Simpleton Frodo goes on a three-day bender after participating in a duck hunt that leaves a woman dead (this having been the first time he shot a gun since attending a deer-hunting stag party where the groom-to-be was murdered). It has to be explicitly explained to him why he could not have been the killer before he accepts his own innocence.
• Doctor Who:
  • The Tenth Doctor has a massive one of these, even if all the other Doctors have some form of it. He constantly blames himself for others' failures, and quite a bit of the time, he is almost right for blaming himself, even though the self-punishment goes too far. Especially when people die, even though it is the only way to save the universe. Generally Lampshaded by villain characters more than his companions, as they know that it can unbalance him. The Master and Davros are especially good at it. He blames himself for ruining the lives of all of his companions: Rose for being trapped in another universe; Martha for being left to wander for a year in a devastated Earth, while her family is held hostage by a genocidal megalomaniac, and are routinely tortured; and Donna for symbolically 'killing' her after a 'biological meta-crisis' left her part-Time Lord, and her advanced intelligence threatened to kill her, forcing him to wipe Donna's memories of him. Despite that they were caused by respectively: The Daleks breaching the dimensional walls, The Master becoming Prime Minister after stealing his TARDIS, and Donna herself touching the Doctor's severed hand during the Dalek Earth invasion of 2009. He might even blame himself for Jack's immortality, along with the burden that came with it, even though that was Rose's doing by way of the Heart of the TARDIS. His way of making up for it was to visit them at different points in time during his incarnation's last moments in The End Of Time, and to do charitable events for them.
  • This carries over to his Eleven; in "Let's Kill Hitler", his request after being poisoned was to see happy reminders of his companions to soothe him through the pain, but he still declared he held too much guilt over them. The only one he could bear to look at was a visual of Amy Pond..aged seven.
  • The Twelfth Doctor regrets his mistakes of both past and present lives and is trying to be a better man by way of atoning. Over the course of Series 9, however, this trope rears its ugly head again. When he aborts a rescue of a young boy on a Skaro battlefield upon realizing he is Davros, future creator of the Daleks, Twelve comes to believe he is directly responsible for the Daleks' existence and is willing to die to atone for it (in the end, he realizes he is the one who saves the boy after all and has nothing to be ashamed of). When the brave Viking girl Ashildr accidentally dies in helping him defeat the alien Mire waging war on her village, he is so grief-and-guilt-ridden that he revives her with alien tech that makes her functionally immortal — which only leads to more guilt as she comes to resent him for "trapping" her in a lonely existence; she becomes a Wild Card. And he believes himself to be only a negative influence on his companion Clara Oswald, which culminates in "Face the Raven": Clara attempting to save a friend from an unjust execution leads to her unjust death instead; to make matters worse, Ashildr had a hand in the plot that led to this, though she meant Clara no harm. The Doctor blames himself as well as his enemies, and between that and being imprisoned in a giant torture chamber immediately afterwards, he undergoes a Sanity Slippage and becomes a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds who will risk the universe's existence just to save Clara...whether she wants that or not. Even when he's assured that Clara's fate was the result of her choices and not his fault at all, it takes Clara herself to convince him to give up the Tragic Dream born of his anguish.
• Hurley in Lost seems to think that, because he keeps finding his winning lottery numbers everywhere as the plot moves along, it means that the numbers are cursed, and somehow that means every other bad thing that happens on the island is his fault. Before coming to the island, he blamed himself for an accidental deck collapse that killed two people (he is quite overweight). For context, there were at least twice as many people on that deck as there should have been.
• Guinevere from Merlin has one, blaming herself for things that aren't even remotely her fault (such as her brother's kidnapping and the blackmail that ensues). Most recently she extracted a promise from Lancelot to protect Arthur, little knowing that he was on a mission to heal a rift in the spirit world by offering himself up as a blood sacrifice. Naturally, Lancelot dies in his place and Gwen feels responsible.
• Harold Finch of Person of Interest feels and takes personal responsibility for all of the numbers that the Machine brought/brings up, for any trouble that has come about because of the Machine, or any bad thing he feels he should have been able to prevent.
• Red Dwarf:
  • Played for Laughs with Kryten. He's an android and it's part of his programming. He feels responsible for every failure the ship or crew encounters and he's extremely selfless. Lister tries to break the programme and make him a deceiving bastard so that he could be taking care of himself.
  • In the episode "Justice," it's revealed that Rimmer has been harboring a mean one of these; he blames himself for failing to prevent the explosion that killed the entire crew of Red Dwarf, and because of it is put to trial by an automated justice space station. He's freed when the rest of the crew convinces the station A. I. that Rimmer was far too incompetent and inconsequential to be entrusted with the sort of repair work that, done poorly, would endanger the entire crew.
• Sense8: One of the main protagonists, Riley, has a mountain of guilt issues and self-loathing due to blaming herself for the deaths of her mother, husband, and baby daughter. It stemmed from an incident in her childhood when she met another fellow Sensate named Yrsa, whom Riley mistook for a supernatural being, who told her that she was cursed and bad things would happen to her and the people she loved if she didn't get out of Iceland. Yrsa rationalizes her actions on the grounds that it was all to protect Riley from BPO.
• Captain Michael Burnham from Star Trek: Discovery spent years blaming herself for her parents' deaths in a Klingon attack, as she insisted on staying at the research outpost to watch a supernova. (It wasn't until years later that she learned that it was actually Section 31's fault — oh, and her mother actually survived.) Spock (whose family adopted her) called her out for her tendency to blame herself for everything, and President Laira Rillak would later point out that she has a borderline obsession with saving as many lives as possible.
• Supernatural:
  • Dean Winchester. If there's anything bad happening, he'll shoulder the blame whether it was related to him or not. This usually doesn't turn out well. Illustrated in "Shut Up Dr. Phil". He says:
    "Something happens, I feel responsible, all right? The Lindbergh baby — that's on me. Unemployment — my bad."
  • Sam Winchester, partially because everyone around him keeps blaming things for things that weren't his fault at all. He blamed himself for Jess's death, even though he had no way of knowing that Azazel would have her killed. He blamed himself for having demon's blood in him, even though he had been an infant when that had occurred. He blamed himself for Dean going to hell. He blamed himself for freeing Lucifer, despite the fact that it was Dean that broke the first seal, which was far more morally wrong than killing Lilith and breaking the last.
• While Torchwood's Jack Harkness is usually seen as a clever, charming, flirtatious and impulsive man who doesn't like dwelling much on the bad stuff, the third series, Children of Earth, shows us that there are many things Jack has been blaming for over the course of his life, which has been long enough to make for a massive Guilt Complex; he just had not spoken his guilt out loud. Most of these things were not his fault at all, but being in a privileged position (not only is he the leader of Torchwood Three, but he also can't die) makes him feel responsible for the lives of those around him. He blames himself for the 12 children that were sacrificed in 1965, even though that was a government decision and he was only chosen for it. He blames himself when the other members of Torchwood are targeted by the government, because they're only wanted due to their involvement with him, to cover up his involvement in 1965. He blames himself for Ianto's death (and everybody else at Thames House), even though the 456 would have likely killed everybody they could even if Jack hadn't stood up to them. He had to sacrifice his own grandson and he blames himself for it, even if it was the only way to save the world from the 456. It's also revealed that he blames himself for earlier events, like Suzie's death (which he couldn't have stopped, as she killed herself the first time, and the second time she was killing Gwen to keep herself alive), his brother's torture (even though he couldn't have done anything to save him, they were just kids) and every action Gray took because of it, such as Tosh's and Owen's death at his hands.
• Stefan Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries. If Stefan hurts someone or kills someone, he will carry a huge amount of guilt. This is especially evident during his Ripper phase.
• Josh Lyman in The West Wing, who is the subject of the page quote. While bad things do seem to disproportionately happen to the people he loves, in almost every case it is in no way his fault.^note  At the end of the fifth season Donna nearly dies from the detonation of a car bomb on an overseas assignment. Unlike the other scenarios, where his guilt was completely and totally unfounded, he blames himself for sending her there, and it is true that had he not done that she wouldn't have been injured. However, nobody saw it coming, and he could not have foreseen in any way that he was sending her into danger.
  Donna: His sister died in a fire while she was babysitting him. She tried to put it out, he ran outside. He went off campaigning, his father died. He wakes up in a hospital and discovers the President's been shot. He goes through every day worried that somebody he likes is going to die, and it's going to be his fault. What do you think makes him walk so fast?
• The X-Files: Mulder has this in spades. It starts in childhood, with the abduction of his sister while he was babysitting, which he considers My Greatest Failure. He is then hit repeatedly during the series with it; he considers the death and/or personal injury of anyone helping him in his quest to be his fault, no matter if they were helping of their own free will (Scully) or were involved in the conspiracy long before he came on the scene (Deep Throat). It doesn't help that others place blame on him, too. When a clone claiming to be Samantha appears and then is kidnapped, Mulder's father blames him explicitly. Mulder offers to tell his mother, and his father tells him the news will devastate her. Bill Scully (Dana's brother) meets Mulder while she is undergoing treatment for cancer; Bill rips into Mulder for all that has happened to his family—mainly Scully's cancer and Melissa's death, which he perceives as Mulder's fault. And proceeds to hate Mulder for the rest of the series.

Music

• Ghost: "Spillways" points an accusatory finger at how religion instills a deep-seated guilt complex that fuels the endless sin/repentance loop, calling it "the cruel beast that you feed" with "your burning, yearning need to bleed / Through the spillways of your soul" (i.e. crying from shame).
• "Clunk" by Yo La Tengo, from New Wave Hot Dogs; repeated ad infinitum:
  If there is a way, she'll admit she's wrong

Tabletop Games

• GURPS has a character disadvantage involving this trope. William Headly, sample character, suffers from the game's Guilt Complex disadvantage.

Theatre

• Henrik Ibsen:
  • Hallvard Solness in The Master Builder carries a tremendous one, after seemingly taking responsibility for the fire that burnt down the childhood home of his wife Aline. As this was midwinter, she got sick, and their two infant sons caught a fever from her milk and died.
  • In Little Eyolf, Alfred and Rita Allmers unwittingly crippled their son Eyolf when he was an infant, and later saw him drown (partly because of selfishness).
  • Brand puts the nominal character in a position that seems even worse, as he has to carry the guilt for the death of his son, and then his wife, who died on his watch.

Video Games

• BlazBlue:
  • Litchi Faye-Ling has a huge one. It's her fault that Lotte got corrupted into Arakune, it's her fault that she was the only one surviving from the corruption. It's also her fault that she can't come up with a cure fast enough. Anyone trying to tell her it's not her fault? She won't accept it. And people think she's just merely obsessed over a slime for this... Tragically for her, this trait led her into desperation and joining NOL.
  • Throw Trinity Glassfield onto the fire as well. Even though she's one of the Six Heroes, she also had a love interest in Kazuma Kval, to the point she released a potent geas on him at his request. Unfortunately, it wasn't Kazuma who asked her to do this, but Terumi Yuuki, who inhabited Kazuma's body, and he swiftly repays her by shanking her and Nine, tossing them both into the nearest cauldron and proceeding to widen the world's asshole. Predictably, she has hated herself ever since.
• In Chicory: A Colorful Tale, Chicory blames herself for color disappearing from the world and the spreading darkness that comes with it. This guilt is so bad that, in Chicory's boss fight, her negative thoughts and self-loathing manifest as sketchy red paint that screams, claws, and slices at Pizza. All the while, Chicory is telling herself that the corruption is all her fault, and that Pizza should just leave her to die. Pizza does eventually manage to get through to Chicory, managing to calm her down and end the fight. It's only when the truth about the brush is revealed, and thus proving Chicory isn't entirely responsible, that she starts getting better about hating herself.
• In Final Fantasy VII, we get Cloud Strife. This probably developed due to the fact that from a very early age, he really was blamed by everyone in his town for an accident involving Tifa that mostly wasn't his fault. However, he blamed himself for the incident and thus never told anyone the details, which probably would have helped lift a good portion of the blame from his shoulders. Later on, he blames himself for not achieving his dream and making it into SOLDIER, then blames himself for not waking up from a vegetative state (brought on by four years of experimentation and torture) fast enough to save what was at that point his only friend from being gunned down on a cliff. Skip ahead one or two Mind Rapes, and he blames himself for "lying" to them all about who/what he was (even apologising to Rufus Shinra, Scarlet, and Heidegger, of all people, who had nothing to do directly with the incident). He then takes on the guilt for handing the Black Materia to Sephiroth, and when he finishes with that, he picks up the habit again two years later in Advent Children Complete, blaming himself for not being able to find a cure for geostigma, contracting the disease himself, and for failing to save a bunch of children with the disease from a group of Remnants. He does get somewhat better, eventually.
• Princess Garnet in Final Fantasy IX has one of these as her Fatal Flaw, with her sense of responsibility as a queen-to-be causing her to blame herself for most, if not all of the bad things that happen to her and the rest of the party, even when nobody else holds her responsible, and trying to fix everything herself, which makes things worse on more than one occasion. When Alexandria is destroyed in Disc 3 and she suffers a Heroic BSoD as a result, this slides into flat-out self-loathing. Her Character Development is centered around learning to accept help from others rather than take every burden on her own shoulders, which culminates in her symbolically shedding her sorrows with an Important Haircut.
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses: In his support chain with Edelgard, Hubert admits to never having been able to forgive himself for not being able to protect her from Thales during the Insurrection of the Seven. Even though he realistically couldn’t have done anything, being only a child at the time. It’s implied that’s the reason he serves her so faithfully.
• Man-Bot from Freedom Force. His Power Incontinence killed his brother and he's stuck for all eternity inside a suit of Power Armour that keeps him doing the same to everyone else around him. He's a bit 'down' as a result.
• Depending on how you play, Commander Shepard from Mass Effect can have one. By 3, s/he has developed a pretty severe case of this, taking just about every death that s/he hears about in the war as his/her responsibility, which only serves to drive him/her closer to the Despair Event Horizon.
• Max Payne has a big-time case of this. Apart from his failure to save his wife and baby girl, he also has to deal with the deaths of most of the people around him, most of them by his hand. And judging by his situation in the third game, the Golden Ending of the previous game, the one where Mona Sax lives, has been shot out of canon. Poor guy.
• Metal Gear: Otacon. Whether it's Survivor Guilt, guilt over building REX, guilt linked to his self-esteem issues, or guilt and PTSD due to being sexually abused by his stepmother and his father committing suicide as a result, Hal's got it in spades. The man is a walking catalog of all the ways one can blame oneself.
• Tales Series:
  • Luke from Tales of the Abyss becomes susceptible to this kind of thinking after the game's first Big Twist a third of the way through the story. The rest of the party has to keep a close eye on him so he doesn't go over the edge.
  • Asbel Lhant from Tales of Graces is in the same boat. It actually gets Lampshaded, Deconstructed and Reconstruction by the end of the story. Asbel learns that while it's alright for him to take charge of things and be responsible, blaming himself for everything and trying to suffer so that others may live only ends up making people around him miserable. This lets him earn his happy ending in which Everybody Lives.
• Dangerama from Zettai Hero Project suffers from this, having failed to save someone years ago. This resulted in him creating his heavily reckless fighting style that he's known for, as it would allow him to die saving others. The main character snaps him out of it later into the story, and Dangerama gives up on it so he can fight alongside the MC.

Visual Novels

• Fate/stay night:
  • Saber suffers from severe guilt over failing to prevent her kingdom's collapse, believing that it was solely due to her own fault. Her reason for seeking the Holy Grail and making a deal with Alaya is to reverse her decision to rule in the belief that there must have been someone better suited to lead. Shirou helps her overcome this guilt so she can acknowledge that it was as much the fault of the kingdom which rejected her rule as hers.
  • Shirou has one as well, becoming a mixture of a Martyr Without a Cause and Chronic Hero Syndrome due to his guilt over being the only one who survived the massive fire caused by the results of the previous Holy Grail War.
• Iris from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations. Whenever something bad happens around her she'll find a way to blame herself. Sometimes it's fairly legit ( Failing to get the necklace from Phoenix) sometimes it's blown out of proportions ( it's true that she was lying to Phoenix during their relationship, but the only thing she really lied about was her name. Phoenix himself doesn't feel cheated at all when he finds out the truth) sometimes it's clearly not her fault but she'll feel sorry anyway ( when she wasn't present on the second day of her trial because she was locked up in a freezing cavern against her will).

Web Animation

• RWBY: Ozpin claims to have made more mistakes than anyone on the planet and to have been cursed by the gods to walk the earth for thousands of years for his failure to stop Salem. He also immediately blames himself for the Fall of Beacon when he reunites with Team RNJR and Qrow. While he's not responsible for Salem's descent into evil, he has made terrible mistakes. In his first reincarnation, Salem convinced him that the way to unite humanity in peace was to join her in masquerading as a god, but they instead turned on each other, accidentally destroying their home and children. Whereas Salem takes no responsibility for her actions, Ozpin shoulders responsibility for both his actions and hers by bearing responsibility for the fate of the world alone and refusing to share the burden with anyone else. As a result, he is ignoring the God of Light's original advice to him: his form of immortality is supposed to ensure that he never bears the burden alone.

Web Comics

• In Final Fantasy X comic Guardian, Lulu's is shown to develop when she's just twelve and blames herself for being unable to save Lady Ginnem, even though Ginnem was a full-fledged summoner and brought her Warrior Monk sister too. She also blames herself for Chappu's death since he made protecting Lulu his motive to join the Crusaders, and in between that, blames herself any time Yuna is physically or emotionally hurt.
• Dave in Homestuck likely due to his time powers practically forcing him to keep Save Scumming in order to make sure his friends don't end up in a doomed timeline,slated for failure and eventual nonexistence. In short, this means Dave has to continually watch his friends die and be erased from existence in order to manage minute details that will prevent it. Although given the nature of SBURB and how it manages time, he also has to know and accept that no matter what some of his friends may have to die simply because destiny said so. Of course, instead of believing there is nothing to do and accept it, Dave feels heavy inferiority, thinking that there should be a way to change the timeline and save everyone and that he's simply not good enough to do that. This may have been even further reinforced by John's RetCanon powers but we have yet to see his reaction.
• Mob from Mob Psycho 100 suffers from this due to his incredible psychic powers. Due to an accident in the past when he injured his younger brother Ritsu during an unconscious release of his ???% state, Mob began repressing his feelings and began to feel like he was responsible for fixing all the problems around him with his powers. When these feelings start to boil over in the infiltration of the Claw's 7th division hideout, where he's torn between using his powers to save his friends over breaking his vow of not using his psychic powers against other people. About to explode with 100% Murderous Intent, Reigen suddenly snaps him out of it, firmly telling him that acting out now will only make him suffer more, and says "When things go south, it's okay to run away!", astonishing Mob enough that his feelings quickly change to Gratitude, causing him to subconsciously transfer his powers to Reigen temporarily. As the narration put it, he had successfully "ran away" by choosing to leave things to Reigen, and was left feeling refreshed over not needing to be responsible for everything.
• The "greatest failure" type appears in the BDSM webcomic Sunstone after a traumatizing accident involving Marion, ropework, and self-bondage that Ally saved her from. Ally is determined to blame herself for what happened because she feels that she showed Marion "too much too fast" during Harper's class on shibari and that this led to Marion's later obsession with BDSM in general and 24/7 submission in particular which resulted in what ultimately happened to her. Lisa points out that Ally is fully aware she wasn't responsible, but this knowledge doesn't make her feel any better. She is still pretty shaken up about the accident and as a result she's not visited the club where her friend Alan first met Marion or used her rope skills since. Though we see that she gets over the rope aversion in time.

Web Original

• Carmilla the Series:
  • Laura Hollis, the protagonist, for reasons yet unknown, always finds a way to blame herself for whatever havoc is going on at Silas. Lafontaine being taken by the Dean's vampire cult? Her fault, they wouldn't have been taken if Laura hadn't been snooping around. The school newspaper murders? Her fault, because she and her friends left campus at the first sign of trouble. Mattie's death and Carmilla's ensuing rampage? Her fault for telling Danny about the locket. Almost all except the last would have happened anyway with or without her involvement, and even the latter she isn't directly responsible for.
  • Perry seems to have a bit of this too, though not to the same extent. In the first two examples, she also is willing to immediately shoulder the blame along with Laura, despite them not having been able to do anything to prevent it.
• In Funny Business, thanks to a traumatic childhood event that actually was her fault, Jeannette blames herself for everything bad that ever happens to anybody, even when it is obvious to all onlookers that she is in no way responsible. Having godlike power can do that to you.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Aang running away when told he's the Avatar resulted in him being frozen in an iceberg for 100 years and unable to help the world when the Fire Nation was expanding its empire and taking over. He feels responsible for all the suffering that happened during that time.
• BoJack Horseman is this in spades. He continuously blames himself for everything wrong in people's lives. For example, Sarah Lynn is an Addled Addict? His fault, he could have been a better influence on her. Hollyhock overdosed on weight loss drugs? His fault. He thought it was a good idea to give his mom "one more chance". He also thinks he's "ruined" the lives of the people he hurt, such as Penny, when in reality, she was fine. In fact, she only showed signs of trauma again after she saw BoJack again in his abortive attempt to apologize to her. He also goes on and on about how he's a poison and how he destroys everything.
• Wildwing from Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series after his friend (and former leader) Canard, allowed himself to be trapped in dimensional limbo. Wilding carried a great deal of guilt about it for the rest of the series.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Twilight Sparkle has responsibility OCD (detailed in Real Life below) in spades, seeing any innocent action she takes that ends up hurting others as justifiable reason to hate her forever and blaming herself for allowing the Big Bad(s) to get away with their various actions. This is part of her realistic portrayal of OCD, as opposed to it simply being a harmless quirk for comedy's sake.
  • In the episode "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?" it is revealed that Luna has one over her actions as Nightmare Moon that nearly destroyed Equestria 1000 years prior. Normally this would be a completely justified example if it weren't for the fact that she went so far to be The Atoner that she created another magical entity as a punishment for herself that led to more citizens being put in danger, thus giving her even more to be guilty over until the Mane Six snapped her out of it by noting how Nightmare Moon would not be trying to save Equestria like she is now, and thus she has nothing to feel guilty over since she's proven that she is a changed mare.
• Adora in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power blames herself whenever someone she cares about is hurt or captured; this stems from her childhood, when Shadow Weaver would, while hurting Catra, chide Adora for allowing Catra to do whatever inspired this particular punishment. She does make strides in getting rid of this complex after spending time in a healthy environment, with her biggest being to call Catra out on her shit when she tries to blame her for the world's impending destruction in "The Portal", rather than wasting time blaming herself for Catra's implosion, though traces of it still remain. Meanwhile, Catra has the opposite problem until receiving a Breaking Speech a season later.
• The title character from Steven Universe regularly takes more responsibility for things than he should, blaming himself for everything from the ocean being stolen by Lapis Lazuli in the episode "Ocean Gem" ("I was the one who let Lapis out of the mirror. It's my fault the ocean's gone.") to Ruby and Sapphire having relationship issues in "Keystone Motel" ("I don't understand, is it... Is it me?"). However, this is most present regarding his belief that he has to shoulder the blame and responsibility for all of Rose Quartz's (the former leader of the Crystal Gems, and Steven's mother) many, many actions during the Gem War, with him spending several seasons believing that she gave birth to him for that precise purpose; his father eventually manages to convince him the latter isn't true in "Lion 4: Alternate Ending", while Amethyst outright states that his mother's failures aren't something he or anyone else is obligated to fix in "What's Your Problem?"

Real Life

• Responsibility OCD, also known as hyperscrupulosity, is this trope in spades applied to anxiety disorders. Basically, the individual suffering from it fears not protecting others from harm and lives with constant feelings of guilt or anxiety.
  • Moral OCD is very similar, and if it arises in a religious context is often called just "scrupulosity". The fears tend to focus on being sinful, immoral, or harming other people directly, but cause the same continuous guilt and worry.
  • In Judaism, scrupulosity is acknowledged in a ritual for a person who has taken so many vows they cannot remember—and keep—them all to be released from those vows.
• Overblown feelings of guilt are a common symptom of depression. These feelings are partly the reason that the condition is so hard to overcome, and why depressed people can have a hard time connecting with family and friends. Common behaviors include disproportionate Self-Deprecation as a reaction to minor mistakes ("I only got 99 of these right instead of 100! I'm such an idiot!"), constant inadequacy and overblown comparisons to other people ("I don't care if we work in completely different departments, I'll never be good enough!"), and frequent bouts of stress or anxiety ("The big job is due in three weeks! I don't care if I'm ninety percent done, I need to work double shifts just to be sure!"). Accepting that it's not your fault and/or your responsibility for every issue or mistake is a big first step in overcoming the condition.
• It's also a frequent result of emotional abuse. One of an emotional abuser's most common tactics is blaming their victim for everything that goes wrong in order to guilt the victim into staying and trying to atone for everything. It's infinite indentured servitude on a purely emotional level.
  • Similarly, it can be a victim's method of escaping abuse - by immediately laying the blame on yourself, you potentially escape being the abusive behaviour that would done to you this time, or at least lessen it. Which, unfortunately, often becomes this, as if you repeat something enough times, your mind will start to believe it even if you consciously know it isn't true.
• Autistic people can be like this, often due to some kind of combination of the above three points; anxiety, OCD, and depression are common co-morbid conditions and autistic people are very often victims of bullying or abuse. A fair number of autistic people end up being blamed for their poor social skills and any problems that arise from it, made worse when people assume they're doing it on purpose or should otherwise know better. Noted in the book Aspergirls (which was written by and contributed to by autistic women), which has an entire chapter called "On Blame and Internalising Guilt":
  There is always going to be some internalization of blame. Most of us, whether we care to admit it or not, have a considerable amount of embarrassment and shame to contend with - for not being able to handle the little day-to-day, ordinary experiences that other women seem to handle just fine.
• And true to the trope, all of those factors mentioned above can lead to Heroic Self-Deprecation, Apologizes a Lot, and oddly, acting like The Atoner. This is odd because the people suffering from the above normally haven't done anything all that wrong, and unless suffering from the aforementioned horrible emotional abuse, have no reason to think they have.

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