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Anime & Manga
The only choice I ever got to make, was to become either a slave or a bandit.
Comic Books
Franky: You gotta admit, that was nowhere near as bad as Chinatown, boy that was-
Goon: Franky, don't even bring up Chinatown.
Goon: Franky, don't even bring up Chinatown.
— The Goon
Fan Works
Don't you just love to read pointless and poorly written garbage about fictional people's problems?
Well if you do you're a complete sadist but that's okay, you've come to the right place. This is the land where we step over the borderline from "tragic past" to "Loaded up with so many problems it's kind of sick". Sounds like fun huh?
Take a glance around the room and you will see our first victim. His name is L Lawliet. Although he possesses legions of adoring fans they all seem to be obsessed with torturing him. Let's take a closer look.
L sat sadly in task force headquarters. He felt his imminent doom hanging over his head as well as the pain of his unrequited love for unnamed love interest/dead love interest. This reminded him of all the tragic things that had happened to him, the things that kept him awake every night for fear of terrible nightmares (because this explanation of L's insomnia isn't complete rubbish at all).
He thought back to his childhood as a poor orphan boy. He thought about that flashback he was going to have later in the series when he died and how it showed how tragic a character he was.
It had all started when the young boy had to watch his family be brutally murdered. They were shot/burned/eaten/poisoned/exploded/forced to watch the Pokémon movies. It was a horrifying memory that would haunt the detective all his life.
After many heart-breaking scenes of carnage Watari brought the young L to Wammy's house. He was very emotionally scarred and had no friends. Then one day Watari brought two new children to the house, A and B.
L immediately fell in love with A/B/random other chick. Unfortunately they died. All of them. Violently. While still carrying his child. Right in front of him. Other wretched stuff.
Well if you do you're a complete sadist but that's okay, you've come to the right place. This is the land where we step over the borderline from "tragic past" to "Loaded up with so many problems it's kind of sick". Sounds like fun huh?
Take a glance around the room and you will see our first victim. His name is L Lawliet. Although he possesses legions of adoring fans they all seem to be obsessed with torturing him. Let's take a closer look.
L sat sadly in task force headquarters. He felt his imminent doom hanging over his head as well as the pain of his unrequited love for unnamed love interest/dead love interest. This reminded him of all the tragic things that had happened to him, the things that kept him awake every night for fear of terrible nightmares (because this explanation of L's insomnia isn't complete rubbish at all).
He thought back to his childhood as a poor orphan boy. He thought about that flashback he was going to have later in the series when he died and how it showed how tragic a character he was.
It had all started when the young boy had to watch his family be brutally murdered. They were shot/burned/eaten/poisoned/exploded/forced to watch the Pokémon movies. It was a horrifying memory that would haunt the detective all his life.
After many heart-breaking scenes of carnage Watari brought the young L to Wammy's house. He was very emotionally scarred and had no friends. Then one day Watari brought two new children to the house, A and B.
L immediately fell in love with A/B/random other chick. Unfortunately they died. All of them. Violently. While still carrying his child. Right in front of him. Other wretched stuff.
— The Human Whose Name Is Written In This Fanfiction, "In Which Everyone Is Very Tragic"
"I'm sorry, what was that? I couldn't hear you over my TRAGIC PAST!!!"
Reasons I am sad.xlsx
1. I watched my parents get murdered.
2. Watching my parents get murdered is apparently not enough for some people.
1. I watched my parents get murdered.
2. Watching my parents get murdered is apparently not enough for some people.
"I was found on the doorstep of Sister Mary Elephant's Orphanage, and placed with a cold, abusive foster family, and one day I was raped in the shower and..."
— Mary Sue Gladstone , Ghostbusters Apocrypha: the Legend of Mary Sue
Film - Animation
"Unfortunately, this fairy tale doesn't have a happy ending. Davey was wondering where his parents were. Turns out they were on their way to the ball game, when a truck hit a patch of black ice and swerved into oncoming traffic. Mr. And Mrs. Stone tragically couldn't get out of the way in time. I couldn't believe something that horrible could happen to a kid that nice. He walked right through that door and into foster home after foster home, until his 18th birthday."
—Whitey Duvall, Eight Crazy Nights
"Apologies in advance for the graphic nature of what you're about to see. Some of us had it rough in the origin department."
—Manchester Black, Superman vs. the Elite
"When I finally got put together, I went back expecting a big welcome. You know what they said? "You're history." Moved right on to the next rookie standing in line. There was a lot left in me. I never got a chance to show 'em. I keep that to remind me never to go back. I just never expected that that world would... would find me here."
—Doc Hudson, Cars
Film - Live Action
"Whatever nightmares the future holds are but dreams compared to what's behind me."
"Number three: The past will come back to bite you in the ass. Whatever you think you know about the past, forget it. The past is not at rest. Any sins you think were committed in the past are about to break out and destroy you."
— Randy Meeks, Scream 3
Finn: You were a spice runner?
Poe: You were a stormtrooper?
Rey: Were you a spice runner?
Poe: Were you a scavenger? We could do this all night.
Poe: You were a stormtrooper?
Rey: Were you a spice runner?
Poe: Were you a scavenger? We could do this all night.
Deadpool: Wanna talk about what's haunting you, or should we wait for a third act flashback?
Logan: Uh, go fuck yourself.
Logan: Uh, go fuck yourself.
Literature
One did not become an Angel of Music unless one had a Past... usually an immediate Past fraught with scandal, peril and narrow escape. They had all quit countries where they were settled and fetched up in Paris. Clara, an Englishwoman who'd never set foot in England, was long resident in China, but had fallen foul of some mad mandarin and the colonial authorities. Her field of interest was prison reform... not in alleviating the sufferings of unfortunate convicts, but in heightening and aestheticising their torments. Yuki had come from her native Japan, where there was a price on her head. Of her crimes, she merely said she had "settled some family debts." Kate was on the wrong side of the financier Henry Wilcox. She had written in the Pall Mall Gazette about his penchant for purchasing children as "maiden tributes of modern Babylon." He was no longer welcome in his clubs – justice of a sort, though she'd rather he serve a long sentence in a jail designed by Clara Watson. Wilcox's writserving lawyers and hired bully boys made London unhealthy for Kate this season.
— Guignol
"Never trust a survivor," my father used to warn me, "until you find out what he did to stay alive."
— Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard
All these kids talk about their lives. How can I tell anybody I lived in a shelter for abused women, under a court order of protection? Even when they sent me for counseling at the shelter, I zipped my lips real tight. I never said a word about how I hated my dad. Yet I missed him back then, too.
— Maximo, 4 Kids in 5E and 1 Crazy Year
Live-Action TV
Rory: That's you.
Hunter: Yeah. I was a cutpurse from the age of five, starved more than I ate. I knew what I'd do if she tried to harm me.
Snart: Lucky for us, you didn't forget your roots.
Hunter: Believe me, Mr. Snart, I've tried.
Hunter: Yeah. I was a cutpurse from the age of five, starved more than I ate. I knew what I'd do if she tried to harm me.
Snart: Lucky for us, you didn't forget your roots.
Hunter: Believe me, Mr. Snart, I've tried.
Liz: There's no need to be sarcastic.
Dagless: Maybe if everyone who'd ever been close to you had died, you'd be sarcastic, too.
Liz: Yes, that makes sense.
Dagless: Maybe if everyone who'd ever been close to you had died, you'd be sarcastic, too.
Liz: Yes, that makes sense.
Eliot: We're out of our league, Nate. Every one of Moreau's men has innocent blood on their hands. Every one of 'em. Every one of 'em... are worse than me. You think you know what I've done? The worst thing I ever did in my entire life I did for Damien Moreau. And I... I'll never be clean of that.
Parker: What did you do?
Eliot: Don't ask me that, Parker. Because if you ask me, I'll tell you. So please don't ask me.
Parker: What did you do?
Eliot: Don't ask me that, Parker. Because if you ask me, I'll tell you. So please don't ask me.
— Leverage, "The Big Bang Job"
Music
"The truth is that I never shook my shadow
Every day it's trying to trick me into doing battle
Calling out 'faker' only get me rattled
Wanna pull me back behind the fence with the cattle"
Every day it's trying to trick me into doing battle
Calling out 'faker' only get me rattled
Wanna pull me back behind the fence with the cattle"
—Alexander, "Truth"
"Did you kill your father?
Sleep with your mother?
Idolize your sister, were you jealous of your brother?
Did you Kick the Dog? Were you beat with a strap?
Were you really abused, were you fakin' all that?
Too tense!"
Sleep with your mother?
Idolize your sister, were you jealous of your brother?
Did you Kick the Dog? Were you beat with a strap?
Were you really abused, were you fakin' all that?
Too tense!"
— Overkill, "Birth of Tension"
"Something has been taken from deep inside of me
A secret I've kept locked away no one can ever see
Wounds so deep they never show, they never go away
Like moving pictures in my head, for years and years they've played"
A secret I've kept locked away no one can ever see
Wounds so deep they never show, they never go away
Like moving pictures in my head, for years and years they've played"
— Linkin Park, "Easier to Run"
Video Games
Ketheric Thorm: I'll tell you a story, True Soul, about a man who sold himself, piece by piece. He had everything...a wonderful wife, a brilliant daughter. They lived not far from here. His wife died too young...grief tore through their house like a thief, snatching away the scent of her hair, the rustle of her skirts...but the man did not break. He could not break. His daughter needed him whole, after all. She grew up...grew strong, challenged him, filled his heart with such joy that it supplanted all sorrow...when she was killed, the man...he tried to remain whole, but it wasn't possible. Do you understand?
Tav: So the man fell to pieces.
Ketheric Thorm: The pain was unbearable, all-consuming. He decided he'd do anything for reprieve. First, he sold himself to the goddess of loss...but the pain did not subside, no matter his obscene feats of devotion. Then a new god came, a god who promised the man something wonderful: his daughter, her life returned. Imagine it...he would have to give everything, his body and soul entire. He did not hesitate, not for a moment. And the new god did as promised! The man's beautiful, brilliant daughter came back! She was whole...she was alive! But...she despised the pitiful wretch her father had become...Her hatred he could bear, perhaps, as long as she had another chance to live...
Tav: So the man fell to pieces.
Ketheric Thorm: The pain was unbearable, all-consuming. He decided he'd do anything for reprieve. First, he sold himself to the goddess of loss...but the pain did not subside, no matter his obscene feats of devotion. Then a new god came, a god who promised the man something wonderful: his daughter, her life returned. Imagine it...he would have to give everything, his body and soul entire. He did not hesitate, not for a moment. And the new god did as promised! The man's beautiful, brilliant daughter came back! She was whole...she was alive! But...she despised the pitiful wretch her father had become...Her hatred he could bear, perhaps, as long as she had another chance to live...
"You can't run from your past. You'll end up running in circles. Until you fall back down into the same hole you were trying to escape from, only the hole's grown deeper."
"Your past has a way of sneaking up on you. You'll hear broken echoes of it everywhere, like a bad replay. You get mad at everybody for reminding you about it, even if it's all in your head."
— Max Payne 2
"Do you know why I beat down Andy Cullen 6 years ago? I was playing this video game. You were like dating ghosts or something. And I was really into it. Played it like 24-7. Until this one afternoon, and suddenly, like, something broke. It was just like... pixels. the characters onscreen… I felt like I knew them; they weren't people anymore. They were just shapes. And their lines were just things someone had written: they never existed, they never had feelings. They never would exist, either. And it felt so sad, like I’d just lost these real people, and this whole thing we had, it was just… me. Alone. And like that realization like dumped out of the screen and into real life went outside and the tree out front, I looked at it every day, it was like a friend outside the window. Now it was just a thing... just a thing that was there, growing and eating and just being there, like all the stuff I felt about the tree was just in my head, and there was some guy walking by, and he was just shapes, just like this moving bulk of... stuff. And I cried, because nothing was there for me anymore. It was all just stuff. Stuff in the universe, just... dead. And the next day was that softball game, and Andy was the pitcher when I was up, and he was just shapes too; just lines someone wrote, like nothing in there. And I was so scared and angry and just... I dunno. Before I knew it I was on top of him, smashing his face in with the bat; just shapes, red shapes all over the grass."
— Mae Borowski, Night in the Woods
"Let's recap: I was betrayed and killed, shot into space, captured by the Zerg, resurrected and infested, cured, given to Möebius to research the Protoss cure and was instead experimented upon as the cure slowly failed. Everyone up to speed? Good!"
— Alexei Stukov, StarCraft II
I hate these men of mystery types. Ooh, look at me, I've got a backstory. I'll bet you it involves vampires killing his family. Tragic, I'm sure.
—Kirsten Geary, The Secret World
Visual Novels
"No one can escape their past. The sins we've committed... and the sadness we've caused... No matter how far we run, our past remains as ever-present as the moon in the sky. It looms in wait... for the day when we are forced to face it. But only in doing so can we truly make peace and move on in hope towards tomorrow."
— Phoenix Wright, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies
Web Original
Whenever you tell childhood stories, it's like Rose Nylund from The Golden Girls meets Saw.
—Nash to Tara, What the Fuck Is Wrong with You?
Ok, so he's got the cliché "Tragic Past" of 90% of all fictional characters.
— Cracked describing Harry Dresden
Harry Dresden"Gérard Depardieu is a big lump of pure messiness and that probably has a lot do with his screwed-up childhood. While some of us were spending the 10th year of our lives making friendship bracelets and choreographing dances to Taylor Dayne songs in our mom’s garage, Gérard Depardieu was on the streets, selling his ass to men. In his new memoir It Happened Like That (Ca C’est Fait Comme Ca), Gérard writes that his family was really poor, like Fantine in Les Misérables poor, and so at the age of 10 he did sex stuff with grown dudes for money...When Gérard wasn’t working the streets as a child hooker, he was breaking into graves to steal jewelry from corpses. Now Lindsay Lohan knows why every time she broke into a grave in Paris to steal jewelry, the corpses would be bare. Gérard beat her to it decades before! ...This is why every era and every country needs its own Chris Hansen."
— DListed
"Every character has a dark, tormenting past that always follows them into the present. It either involves something the character's done, or the death of a family member. (…) It's always a touchy subject, which requires our main character to always brood away from the crowd as the one curious onlooker wants to understand."
—The Nostalgia Critic, "Top 11 Coolest Cliches"
Webcomics
"This isn't a tattoo, it's a birthmark, and I've always been able to do life magic! As for why I'm down here? My birth parents probably REASONABLY ASSUMED I had the Chimeric Plague and dropped me over the edge! I had a normal life and family for ten years— And then I then I learned I was a chimera bomb and ran away for ANOTHER ten years— And I should have died, but I didn't! So CLEARLY everyone was WRONG about me! I don't know WHAT I am!"
— Alinua, Aurora
Western Animation
Obi-Wan: Anakin has never talked about his past, has he?
Ahsoka: Only to tell me he won't talk about it.
Ahsoka: Only to tell me he won't talk about it.
"Don't feel bad for quitting, kid. Your comic book heroes do it all the time. Hey, maybe giving up is the one thing you'll be good at. Though it is a shame to waste such a good tragic origin story. Oh, all your heroes have them. Exploded planet, lost love, dead uncle... or maybe a car accident on Route 70. You're like that bat guy, only without the talent, brains, strength, money or success."
—Chuck, Kid Cosmic and the Epic Fail
Layla: Hmmm. The girl I don't know. She's probably someone grandpa met when he was sent away to school.
Molly: Sent away?
Layla: Yes. Back then, people like us, native kids were sent off to boarding school. Had to leave their family, their friends, their homes. It was a hard time for grandpa, that's why you never hear him talk about it. It makes him too sad.
Molly: Sent away?
Layla: Yes. Back then, people like us, native kids were sent off to boarding school. Had to leave their family, their friends, their homes. It was a hard time for grandpa, that's why you never hear him talk about it. It makes him too sad.
—Molly of Denali, "Grandpa's Drum"
