Young Justice (2010)
Whether hero or villain, there are plenty of characters got feel bad for.Jerkass Woobie
- Superboy is a jerk but you gotta feel for him being rejected by a potential father figure and not knowing anything about the world and having no family or (at least initially) friends.
- Brion may be a hot-headed jerk at times, especially at the start of the season. But it's pretty understandable considering the Trauma Conga Line he had gone through. He loses his parents, gets forcibly transformed into a metahuman, his Evil Uncle turns him into The Scapegoat and he's exiled from his former home. Even after his Start of Darkness in the season finale, you can't help but still feel bad for him given the constant lies and betrayals he had to deal with, and even more so when he ends up alienating himself from his sister and Halo. Even when he becomes king and possibly even descend to a dictator, his body language makes it clear that he feels some remorse and has doubts on whether or not this is what he truly wanted and wants to become.
- Continues in season 4: He isn't responding to texts, and throughout the season we get hints that he's refusing to parlay with Queen Perdita and refugees fleeing his reign to Vlatava. But when we check in on him again, he's an Unwitting Pawn who genuinely is trying to do the right thing, but is constantly being manipulated, gaslighted, and lied to with his better judgement constantly being altered or undercut by Baazovi's psychic powers.
- Miss Martian in "Welcome to Happy Harbor" and even more so in "Failsafe", as she does initially find struggles with her powers and finding a way to fit in on Earth, and her struggles make her feel more human.
- Artemis in "Homefront" shows that she had a rough family legacy, given that Cheshire is her older sister, and she struggles with her new friends being attacked by the androids.
- Recovering from the malfunctioned simulation program that all of the members were caught up in, "Disordered" gives nearly all the kids Woobie moments during their therapy sessions, coping in one way or another.
- Zatanna in the end of "Misplaced" had just watched her father suffer a Fate Worse than Death and become Doctor Fate, all because she wore the helmet and he wouldn't let her go. She sobs for the last few seconds before the episode ends.
- Robin in "Performance" for some reason or another, as he reminisces over his past with Haly's Circus during his undercover mission, remembering how his family had died.
- Icicle Jr. is surprisingly sympathetic in "Terrors". Despite being a Card-Carrying Villain, he clearly has severe daddy issues, and strikes up a camaraderie with a disguised Superboy, trusting him enough to be easily manipulated into thwarting the main plot of the villains.
- As of season 2, Aqualad. His Face–Heel Turn makes him this. He may have betrayed the team, but it was only after his first love was killed after joining and the king he believed in and trusted turned out to be lying to him about his father's true identity... which is then turned on its head in "Depths," because he's a double agent whose friends all hate him now. Woobie for entirely different reasons.
- As of the final two episodes of season one, Red Arrow. First he finds out he's the mole, then it's revealed that he's actually a clone of the original Roy Harper who was captured years earlier by The Light. The real Roy? He's currently in a hibernation pod and missing most of his right arm.
- Aqualad's friend Topo in the tie-in comics, who was branded "impure" by the Purists.
- Beast Boy, when you discover that Queen Bee killed his mother.
- When you think about it, Kid Flash as of season 2. Something clearly must have happened between the time skip to drive him into retiring from heroics. A decision in which it is implied that not everyone was happy with (Particularly Red Arrow, who seems to outright resent him for it. note ) The Tie-In comics revealed that he fears that he's not fast enough to be the Flash's sidekick, let alone be the Flash one day. Fears that were more or less enforced in "Bloodlines" with Impulse's arrival. things get even worse in "Endgame" where he dies while saving the world with Flash and Impulse. The worst part about it is that the reason he died was because he wasn't fast enough.
- Also, Green Arrow. The poor man gets a sidekick, and he turns on him and starts resenting him. And this is only the beginning (warning, massive spoiler ahead):It turns out that Red Arrow is not the original Speedy, but was replaced by a clone months after he became Green Arrow's sidekick. And then that clone descends into depression. And then Artemis, his other sidekick, dies. And then, less than a week later, the real Speedy turns up again, and hates Ollie for giving up on him. He needed that You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech from Red Arrow, badly.
- One could say that of the Season 2 Finale Artemis has gained this status after Wally's death. Not only does she burst into tears upon being told of his death, but later on she throws away her identity as "Artemis" to more permanently don the mask of "Tigress," the identity she had resented for much of the season, because "Artemis was Wally's partner" and she "needed some distance." Some fans are also expressing concern that she may or may not be leaning towards becoming something of an anti-hero if not an outright villain due to her talk with Bart.Artemis: Let's see how Tigress does.Bart: As a hero?Artemis: As a blonde.
- And on the villain's side, we have Black Manta a.k.a. Aqualad's father. Early on we see him as a tough but fair albeit evil parent and mentor who wants to make sure his son is a worthy heir to the throne, even going so far to engineer missions to test his son's honesty (ironically) and integrity. When M'gann placed a Mind Rape on Aqualad and Black Manta is feeling upset since his son has been attacked by that "Martian witch". In "The Fix", once M'gann slowly starts repairing Aqualad's mind, the first word Aqualad actually says is "Father"; Black Manta is immediately at his son's side to reassure him. You almost forget that Black Manta's part of The Light when seeing it.
- Black Manta is seriously in the contending and who most people consider the best father on the show due to stuff like this happening constantly. Every time he interacts with Kaldur you can see how much he cares for his son... and then his son betrays him, revealing he was a spy for the heroes all along. Even though Black Manta was a villain you can't help feeling a little sorry for him. One can only imagine what the repercussions of this would have been in season 3 had season 3 not been abandoned.
- Lagoon Boy later in season 2. He gets kidnapped by the Light, held prisoner by his idol Kaldur'am, and was presumably tortured/experimented on. After that his girlfriend becomes distant and he's afraid of losing her to her ex. Then she gets kidnapped and there's nothing he can do about it. And then he learns that his hatred towards Aqualad and his mourning of Artemis were misplaced due to both being moles. Not to mention the tie-in comic reveal that he was a victim of racism in Atlantis and is insecure about his looks.
- And then when he reunites with his girlfriend, she informs him that she wants to "talk." His reaction says it all.
- Blue Beetle. Jaime is one of the kindest and empathetic person on the Team, but that doesn't exclude him from being free from all the pain. In fact, Jaime really did nothing wrong, but arguably has one of the worst things happen to him, especially since he only had been active in the team for less than a year (and had a relatively normal life beforehand).
- From his out of control and painful empowerment via Scarab (which had painfully fused to his spine by the way), to being told that he, in a Bad Future, is responsible for the end of the world thanks to things out of his control. Jaime then decides that in order to protect the world he’s willing to die if it came to that in order to extract the Scarab and save the those he cares about. When that doesn’t work Green Beetle takes advantage of Jaime’s desire to stop this Bad Future and fools Jaime into believing he’s helping him seal the Scarab while instead he places Jaime “On Mode” , which allows them to control Jaime. “Intervention” puts even more Woobie points on him when its revealed that while “ In Mode” Jaime was conscious and aware of everything the Reach Ambassador did with his controlled body including trying to kill his friends more than once, and he could do nothing to stop it (aside snarking, which is implied to be his coping method). More so, Jaime was trapped like this for months and nobody realized what had happened and probable suffering (aside from his friend, Tye, who was the only one to realize Jaime was 'different'). Its no wonder the first thing Jaime did when he was finally released from the Reach control was hug Zatanna in gratitude. The boy needed that hug.
- As if this Scarab nonsense wasn't already enough for Jaime, in a small side plot in Beneath, Jaime's childhood and best friend, Tye, runs away and Jaime is unable to find him. Suspicious that his friend's mother's boyfriend was the cause of it, Jaime does his best to find Tye; however, despite Jaime's desperate attempts to find his friend led to nothing and is visibly disheartened when he realizes that he had no leads to find his friend.
- Plasma and Plasmus were two Markovian twins who were told they had a heart disease and allowed themselves to be experimented on by Bedlam, who was truly after their metagenes, becoming horrific lava mutants enslaved by control chips. Plasma in particular gets the further "benefit" of being the POV character in part of the very first episode of the third season, allowing to see her being deployed by Apokolips and desperately trying to warn the Justice League as she fights against her will, only for Black Lightning to accidently fry her heart, the only remaining human organ in her body. This understandably traumatises Black Lightning once he learns the truth.
- Black Lightning in Season 3 becomes one, having to deal with the trauma of accidentally killing a fourteen year old girl forcibly turned into a metahuman. He's so guilt-ridden that he resigned from the Justice League on his own accord and stepped down from being Static's mentor. Afterwards, he watches as the girl's own brother who too was turned into a metahuman get shot dead by an oblivious bystander. Last but not least, he discovers that his love interest, Helga Jace, was a madwoman working for the Light who was just using him all along.
- The whole Flash family can qualify as this at this point. Usually one of the most upbeat parts of the DC Universe (at least originally), they seem to be second to the Batfamily in terms of sad events in this continuity. Wally's sudden death, despite his retirement, which the Flash and Kid Flash II had to witness, and now Joan Garrick's death from Surprisingly Realistic Outcome means they've had it rough in recent years.
- Prince Gregor. Before Season 3 starts, his younger sister Tara is kidnapped by human traffickers. Then, his parents are murdered by his power-mad uncle. His brother Brion becomes a metahuman to save the country, but because the political climate in Markovia has turned against metas, Gregor is forced to exile his own brother. And then as soon as he reunited with both Brion and Tara, and is almost ready to welcome them both home again, his uncle makes another grab at power. Brion kills his uncle and betrays Gregor to take Markovia for himself. Now Gregor's an exile, and Tara's all he has left.
- Tara herself is no slouch in this department. She was abducted from her home and family by her own uncle, and sold off to the Shadows to serve as a Tyke Bomb assassin for The Light. She was forced to undergo brutal Training from Hell under Slate’s tutelage, while he repeatedly drilled the idea into her head that the reason she’s in this situation is because she was weak, that her family never truly cared for her enough to rescue her, and that anyone who shows her kindness is deceiving her, and he is the only one who cares for her. It’s really no wonder she’s so reserved and slow to interact with others when the Outsiders find her. It understandably takes a while for her to actually open up and feel at home with the team. And even then she does so knowing she’ll have to betray them later under Slade’s orders, despite clearly being reluctant to do so. Fortunately, the others are pretty understanding of her situation, and manage to talk her down before she can go through with her mission. Unfortunately, Brion doesn’t take it nearly as well, and pulls his Face–Heel Turn shortly after. She may be better off than her comics counterpart, but the poor girl’s been through the wringer.
- Clone Orm in Season 4. Created to be an Expendable Clone with Fake Memories that made him think he was the real Ocean-Master, acting out the vengeful motives of an evil man whose agenda of rage and envy wasn't actually his at all, and destined to be either killed or captured and tossed aside like yesterday's lunch, not to mention the burden of memories of years of hard jail time that didn't really happen to him.
- This iteration of Danny Chase is Take That, Scrappy! to insanely cruel degrees. Unlike the comics he's a metahuman who has been trafficked then ended up on Apocalypse. Desaad cut out his brain and put it into a machine servant, the Kaizer-Thrall. Just as he tries to help the heroes Ma'alefa'ak assaults his mind, and it takes a lot of effort for him to eventually overcome his tormentor by the finale.
