"I'm sorry, X... But, I think I have to die to restore peace... But now, everything will come to an end... Goodbye... X..."
— Zero, Mega Man X5
The world of humans, robots, Reploids, Carbons, and NetNavis may try to fight for everlasting peace, but with how many of them have suffered for it, one has to wonder if they'll ever truly experience it.
Mega Man (Classic)
- Dr. Light, as of Mega Man 11. The poor man just wanted to create truly intelligent robots, but thanks to a single moment of callousness towards Wily's Double Gear system, he's now the series' ultimate Unwitting Instigator of Doom, and every single bad thing that happens throughout the franchise (ultimately culminating in the extinction of mankind at some point before Mega Man Legends) can be traced back to him.
- Many of the Robot Masters who are reprogrammed into villains by Wily. The Robot Masters from Mega Man 9 stand out, since they were about to be scrapped for parts when Wily enslaved them.
- Bubble Man, who can't walk well due to his design and has the worst weapon ever. Wily could fix his walking problems, but doesn't because he thinks it's funny.
- Dynamo Man from Mega Man & Bass used to have a job giving school children tours of a power plant. After King replaced his power generator to convert him into a Walking Wasteland (its energy output made him lethal to be around), he resented humanity for avoiding him and leaving him in isolation.
- Also from Mega Man & Bass is Burner Man, whom King motivated to burn a forest to the ground daily by making him believe that if he didn't, a non-existent bomb inside him would blow up, destroying him.
- Dr. Cossack, a nice guy who Wily sets up as the Red Herring for his latest scheme by kidnapping the man's daughter. That's just low.
Mega Man X
- X and Zero (especially the latter) go through a lot of undeserved suffering in their fights to save the world. Their friends are betraying them or dropping dead left and right, until the two are forced to face each other too. Even then, after the Maverick Wars, they're going to deal with the chaos of the Zero series, too...
- Some of the Maverick bosses, most notably virus-infected innocents such as Blizzard Buffalo, or members of the wrongly-accused Repliforce such as Web Spider and Spiral Pegasus (regardless of the irresponsibility of its leaders).
- The humans are a Woobie Species. Despite the fact that very few humans appear on-screen, they are mentioned whenever they get their lives turned upside down by Reploid unrest. At the beginning, not only are Reploids quickly starting to out-populate humans, but then Sigma goes ahead and declares war to genocide them. The resulting Maverick Wars rage for years — Repliforce stages a military coup to get away from them, then Sigma and Dynamo initiate a Colony Drop that decimates the Earth and forces humanity underground. Once the Reploids finally clean up the mess years later, it's no surprise that they want to build the Jakob Elevator to live on the moon! But they can't even have that, as the New Generation Reploids hijack the project for their own purposes. If you wanna include Command Mission, the humans also help build Giga City only to be banished by the Rebellion Army. Then the humans get a day in the shade for the Zero series, where the Reploids are the ones who are discriminated against, until Dr. Weil starts killing humans off too! It's only when humans and Reploids are made indistinguishable in the ZX series that the humans get off okay.
Mega Man Zero
- Almost all the tragedies in the X series are inflicted on Zero, and even more are piled on here. Like the fact that he wakes up seeing the current state of the world, and freshly awoken, he has to continue fighting, again, and he was able to finally return the world to a peaceful state, which was what he and X have been fighting for a long time, only for him not to see it come to fruition, seeing as he's dead...
- Ciel. On two separate occasions, she thought that she was doing the right thing, but it only ended up giving rise to worse problems. The first one would be for creating Copy X, who went insane and started a genocide against the Reploids. The Resistance is partly her effort to make amends for what she's done. The second time was successfully researching an energy source that she believes would put an end to the war, only for it to be a catalyst to a new conflict. Mind you, this is a person who longs for peace as much as X, and she is very young at the series' start, and also human. And then there's the fact that, at series' end, she is waiting faithfully for Zero to come back, when it was completely impossible.
- Reploids, who are subjugated and oppressed by Copy X's forces, have become a Woobie Species. By the start of the first game, countless Reploids have been unjustly branded as Mavericks and killed to preserve power for humans.
- After looking at Harpuia's motives, personality and the situation he's in, it's pretty easy to feel sorry for him. First introduced as a loyal right-hand man within the Neo Arcadian power structure, he quickly establishes himself as a Noble Top Enforcer and the closest to the original X in temperament and ideals. Come Zero 2, he's now in command of a moderately more benign Neo Arcadia, willing to spare enemies like Zero and Elpizo, and expressing doubts about the administration he's dutifully served since birth... just in time for Dr. Weil to swoop in during the third game, reinstate an even more flawed incarnation of Copy X as a Puppet King, and pretty much wipe the slate clean — including destroying an entire city full of innocent lives — when all Harpuia truly desires is peaceful coexistence between human and Reploidkind. At this point, Harpuia defects in the name of protecting civilians and ultimately dies so that Zero can live on to finish the job. All in all, a Tragic Hero who spends most of his screen time fighting for the wrong side.
- X. The only cure for the virus that they had worked tirelessly in looking for for well over a century is weaponized into a living Maverick-maker. His best friend's body is stolen and converted into a mindless weapon that wipes out most of the planet's already perilous population, with Zero going into an intended eternal stasis, leaving X with basically no shoulder to lean on for moral support. He's forced to manage the virtual entirety of the world's remaining population and all Maverick activity by himself and effectively kill his body in order to seal the aforementioned corrupted cure which not only leaves him off, but leads to his soul then being split into fifths. X is forced to watch as the copy made to take his place ruins the haven that he had so desperately fought to create and preserve and his "offspring" are then tricked into being assassins and strongarms for the sociopathic copy. Finally, X is murdered in his comatose state by a villain who just wanted the Dark Elf in a screwed-up and misguided attempt to save all Reploids from further retirement and destruction. X did not even get a chance to fight back against his assassin. He finally spends the rest of the following game slowly, slowly dying and using every precious ounce of power for the sake of others.
- Alouette is implied to have gone through a Break the Cutie livelihood, and might have suffered even worse, if Ciel hadn't found her.
Mega Man Battle Network
- Poor, poor, poor Lan, losing MegaMan nearly all the time. MegaMan, too, obviously, especially considering his past as Hub Hikari.
- Mamoru, especially when it's revealed the poor kid suffers from HBD, the same thing MegaMan (as Hub) suffered.
- Sean, due to his background leaving him with no family or friends to rely on. Lan is his first-ever real-life friend.
