Dark and Troubled Past



"And the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.""

- The Narrator, Magnolia

Stock Backstory for a character. Much like a Mysterious Past, except more tragic and troubled. Don't expect it to be revealed all at once, or sometimes at all. It usually gets revealed in small doses through a Troubled Backstory Flashback as the story progresses; possibly in a Flashback Nightmare where a happy memory transforms into a slaughter. Often used as a Freudian Excuse for an antisocial character's Jerkass tendencies or quiet stoicism. Still, it is understandable that the character wants to keep it secret because They're Called "Personal Issues" for a Reason, after all.

The root causes are usually:
 * Self hate via My Greatest Failure.
 * Outward distrust because of being betrayed.
 * Inward callousness coupled with outward hate because of a Dead Little Sister such as abandonment, trauma, or death of a loved one.

Usually involves one or more of the following:
 * A dead loved one: parents, siblings, best friend, spouse and children, or a whole Doomed Hometown.
 * Physical and, sometimes, sexual abuse by parents or lover.
 * Being abandoned by one or both parents.
 * A criminal past, usually with remorse.
 * Being caught up on the wrong side of war.
 * Being betrayed by a True Companion or Heterosexual Life Partner.
 * Having the Love Interest not dump them, but get Stuffed in The Fridge.
 * Killing any of the above, whether in self defense, recklessly, or through a Sadistic Choice.
 * Any of the above, but being experienced during childhood.

Expect to see the above overlap for extra Angst or Wangst.

This can lead to either becoming an Anti-Hero or Hurting Hero. For villains, this is a Start of Darkness.

Female characters with a Dark and Troubled Past include the Dark Magical Girl and the Broken Bird. Male characters with a Dark and Troubled Past are instant bait for the Estrogen Brigade who have bought him leather pants. Expect all nearby female characters to become afflicted with attraction to his Troubled but Cute appeal, and try to help him heal his heart. Not happening. Or maybe it will? Either way, Triphop Anthem is typically the background music that plays while the Dark and Troubled Past is explored.

The step-up of this trope is the Dysfunction Junction, where the whole cast will have one of these and suffer from it, too (and don't expect them to get better). If the afflicted character is in a law enforcement profession, see Standard Cop Backstory. When paired with a Nice Guy or gal with a happy upbringing, you can expect...interesting results.

Anime and Manga

 * Dragon Ball, with Vegeta having his home planet destroyed at around age 5, and being a forced underling of the creature who massacred his people for most of his life.
 * Kenshin Himura from Rurouni Kenshin and Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal. After the death of his parents, Kenshin (a child at the time) is taken by slavers, who are later violently killed in front of him by bandits. After burying the mutilated victims alone, Kenshin is resolute to “create a peaceful world where people could live without fear”. To accomplish his ideal, Kenshin trains with the master of the “Hiten Mitsurugi-ryū” (a fighting style so deadly that, to truly master, it means death to the teacher) and, at 14, became the legendary assassin "Hitokiri Battōsai”.  Broken and filled with remorse for killing countless people, Kenshin wanders off wielding a sakabatō or reverse blade sword. He is determined to never kill again and to aid those in need, as atonement for the murders he committed.
 * Hiei from Yu Yu Hakusho.
 * Vash the Stampede from Trigun. He was born as an artificial human on a space cruiser transporting most of humanity to a distant world, where the crew was paranoid of him. Thanks to his brother, he got to watch the cruiser destroyed, killing millions, including his mother figure. Years later, after the discovery of his destructive powers, he unwittingly caused the annihilation of an entire city.
 * The entire main crew of Cowboy Bebop has this to some degree. Spike Spiegel used to be an enforcer for the Red Dragon crime syndicate, essentially Space Triads, only to fall out with them and his former best friend and fellow assassin Vicious over a girl named Julia, resulting in him faking his death. Jet Black used to be a cop until his own corrupt partner and best friend set him up and tried to kill him, though he got off with merely losing his left arm and needing a cybernetic replacement—this, after the love of his life dumped him for, basically, being too controlling. Faye Valentine lost her family, her memories, and her past after she was placed in cryogenic suspension after a space shuttle accident, and after she was revived, the one man who seemed to care for her "died"...and left her stuck with a debt reaching into the millions. Radical Edward's father was so absent minded that he was barely aware of her existence, so she spent her entire childhood wandering aimlessly in and out of orphanages and possibly over most of the planet. The only one exempt is Ein, the genetically engineered "data dog".
 * I don't know about the real Japanese version, but the English dub reveals that the reason Jet's lover turned on him was because he was too "together"; all she has to do is smile and do as she's told, which is a much more acceptable explanation than "boring", since a healthy relationship is about two equals, not something akin to a parent-child situation.
 * The first segment of Memories "Magnetic Rose" had Heinz, a space salvage specialist who had some really weird reactions to such harmless things as a falling china doll. The haunted space ship, of course, uses his trauma over  to try and convince him to stay...forever.
 * In Baccano!, there's Czeslaw Meyer, a young boy who, when his grandfather and caretaker died, was taken in by his grandfather's alchemy student, Fermet. A few years later, they become passengers on the ship the Advene Avis. . Fermet's true nature begins to shine through, and he starts experimenting on Czes, claiming it's for science. The torture and abuse is only ended when Czes finally manages to   Because of all this, the kid now has intense trust issues.
 * Neon Genesis Evangelion: Notable since this trope applies to virtually every character with any significance in the story, not simply the protagonist. Though technically speaking, every person on NGE's Earth who lived through and survived the post-Second Impact global chaos would qualify.
 * Guts's childhood from Berserk is singularly horrific. His mother was hanged presumably as he was being born (yeah, we don't get it either), and he was adopted by a mercenary named Gambino, who trained him as a child soldier. During his time in Gambino's band, Guts had to endure some seriously Harmful to Minors stuff of both the horrific violence and the sex varieties—he was even raped at one point in the manga when Gambino sold him to a pederast soldier in his band as a child prostitute. It all came to a head when Gambino, his leg having been blown off by a cannonball and thus making him unfit for combat, got drunk one night and tried to kill Guts because he blamed the kid for the death of his lover from the plague. Guts had to kill Gambino in self defense and then get away from the camp to escape the wrath of the other mercenaries. And that's just peaches compared to the stuff that comes afterwards.
 * Casca's past isn't much better—she lost her village at an early age and was sold to a noble who wanted a new serving girl, only for it to transpire that he wanted her for sex. Just as he's about to rape her, though, Griffith shows up. Instead of killing her would-be rapist, however, he makes her do it instead ("If you have something you wish to protect, take up that sword."). She has a relatively easy life afterward, until the Eclipse goes down and she suffers a horrific ordeal that ends with her being driven insane.
 * Griffith's past wasn't much of a walk in the park either, as revealed in the second to last episode of the anime, just before he crosses the Moral Event Horizon.
 * This seems to be the case with a number of characters in Elfen Lied, most particularly, Lucy.
 * While a majority of Axis Powers Hetalia is silly and cute, the characters are still countries, thus, all of them have some negative points in their history. Nevertheless, Russia takes the cake for troubled pasts; the best example would be the "Bloody Sunday" strip, in which he finally snaps and starts GUNNING DOWN his own people as they're rioting in the streets ("If they hate me, they're not Russian.") before turning to Lithuania and stating "We don't want children who can't play nice, do we?".
 * This trope is probably why certain countries, such as Isreal, will never show up in this series, as it would quickly destroy the very comedic nature of the series itself.
 * Virtually every other character in Naruto fits this description at least partially, including the titular character himself. Most notable, however, is Sasuke. Not only does he have a dark past, but he also has a dark present, and in the early episodes, every main female genin (except Hinata) is attracted to him in some way.
 * None of the other characters in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle had a fun childhood, but Fai's was, by far, the worst. Though unlike most characters here, his childhood trauma didn't turn him into a crabby, jaded Jerk with a Heart of Gold (that's Kurogane), he kept all of his bitterness and heart break under a facade of perpetual happiness. Or, he did at first...
 * Every character in Fruits Basket, excluding a minor few.
 * Mahou Sensei Negima. Several. Upon learning Negi's, several of the girls were actually driven to tears.
 * Evangeline's is worth special mention simply because of it's sheer length.
 * Then there's Asuna. We don't really know the details, but
 * Setsuna. During her fight with Evangeline, is revealed that
 * Kaoru in Ai Yori Aoshi (physical abuse, betrayal, abandonment), to the point of not even remembering his childhood friend when he meets her again.
 * Most people in Deadman Wonderland. Nagi, Minatsuki, Yoh, Shiro, Hibana, Genkaku...
 * Digimon Adventure 02: Ken Ichijoji. Just...Ken Ichijoji. What started out as The Unfavourite Syndrome developed into a death in the family. Then he ended up being infected with the Dark Spore, which started playing on his huge inferiority complex and guilt over his brother's death, which was one reason he became the Digimon Kaiser, at which point he was convinced that the Digital World was makebelieve and he was just expressing his anger in a fictional world. He was bluntly shown otherwise by watching his Digimon die right in front of him, and never mind the better part of the hell the rest of the season puts him through while he's trying to make up for his misdeeds.
 * Chichiri in Fushigi Yuugi has a Trauma Conga Line in his past. His childhood best friend, Hikou, betrays him by stealing a kiss from his fiancee, who immediately calls off the engagement in shame. Chichiri goes berserk and attacks Hikou, but as they are fighting, a massive flood sweeps through the village. Chichiri's fiancee and family are killed in the flood, and although Chichiri attempts to save his former best friend's life, Hikou is lost in the flood before they can make amends. Chichiri also lost his eye in this incident, and, in fact, it was getting hit by the driftwood that caused him to let go of Hikou's hand.
 * While Chichiri is the most notable example among the protagonists, lots of other characters follow this trope, particularly from the Seiryuu and Genbu sides. Nakago has a particularly nasty one as his Freudian Excuse, though the fact that he's a horribly Manipulative Bastard who infamously winds up being a Karma Houdini means that few fans want to pity him for it.
 * One Piece: every character that joins the crew (and then some) have a tragic past, as if it's a requirement to jump aboard a ship with Luffy. Most pasts, however, take a usually "boring" subject and draw them out into originality. A good example is Sanji; everyone knows being stranded on an island sucks, but this is hardly an island: it's a mushroom rock that's too far above sea water to fish and incapable of sustaining any life...because it's a ROCK. Not to mention, he realizes that the only other person on this island has a big ol' bag of, what he thinks is, food, much bigger than the one he gave to Sanji. However, it turns out that other guy just had a bunch of money and absolutely NO food, and that instead of keeping any for himself, gave all the food he recovered to Sanji and broke off and ate his own leg to survive. And on top of all that, the food that Sanji got was barely enought to last 20 days (though it lasted 25 days). It took eight-five days for a ship to find them. One can only imagine how hellish the last 60 days (two months) must have been. No wonder Sanji considers wasting food to be a horrible offense.
 * Another good example is Zoro's past, following the otherwise generic "my best friend/rival died" past but adding in the mix that his friend didn't die honorably; she died falling down the stairs. No epic sword fight, no sacrifice, she was just tired and slipped down some stairs.
 * One without a twist, but still absolutely horrible. Hancock and her sisters. Slavery is never a pretty story.
 * Though this trope is often used to arouse sympathy for villains, in One Piece, often the only character who do not get tragic pasts are villains. Conversely, almost every character with a tragic past gets befriended by Luffy.
 * In Bleach, two of the female leads have Break the Cutie pasts. Rukia blames herself for the death of her beloved mentor, Kaien. Meanwhile, not only did Orihime have Abusive Parents, but she was also bullied in school and her brother, Sora, died in a car accident. Early in the story, Sora unwillingly comes back as a Hollow, and finally commits suicide so he can move on to the Soul Society.
 * Of course, we can't forget Ichigo, who saw his mother get killed by a Hollow when he was a kid.
 * And Ishida, who saw his grandfather get killed by Hollows, with the shinigami nowhere in sight, when he was a child.
 * Since most of the cast in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha aren't technically human, most of them have these kinds of pasts before someone finally took them in and raised them as people. To give some examples, the Wolkenritter spent most of their existence being treated as little more than tools, Erio and Agito spent years in illegal labs, caged and experimented on like animals, and Ixpellia spent her long life being forced to fight in pointless wars that seemed to never end.
 * And let's not forget Fate Testarossa herself, who grew up under the "care" of an abusive and thoroughly monstrous Evil Matriarch who before Nanoha entered her life. Her reason for taking in Erio and Caro was so that they wouldn't have to grow up like her.
 * Quite a few people in Black Lagoon. Revy is the poster child since she's a main character, but several of the supporting cast have one as well. For the most part, they're rather emotionally stable about it, though. For the most part. Don't ask us about Hänsel and Gretel, though.
 * The backstory of Kagura from Ga-Rei involves her being forced to kill her own older sister. In the beginning, it doesn't bother her too much, but, later on, it comes back to hit her hard.
 * Blue (Green in the English version) and Silver from Pokémon Special.
 * . This is seen in the FRLG chapter, in the flashback of  So you gotta assume that
 * Then again,.
 * Played straight with Mitsumi in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Adventure. She was raised by Cyrus to be a Complete Monster devoid of all feelings toward Pokemon and human, her only purpose to defeat her opponents. Rowan eventually softened her up though, and made her realize that there's more to Pokemon than fighting.
 * Ciel from Black Butler was a happy, loving, carefree child before his tenth birthday. Then, his parents were murdered, the mansion set on fire, and he's kidnapped. He's locked in a cage with other children his age and eventually made a child sacrifice until he accidentally called upon a demon in his desperation to live. His past is still being pieced together so more details will probably surface. No wonder he's a bitter, driven 13-year-old.
 * The children in Noah's Circus had a pretty bad past, too. Too bad the man who helped them
 * Mist and Euphemia from Knights. The former is a knight of African heritage (in Medieval Europe) whose mother was burned at the stake by his father, who is also trying to kill him. The latter was accused of witchery and was raped in prison.
 * In Soul Eater, Crona was used as an experiment for his/her mother, and ended up becoming the host to a Living Weapon, driven insane through physical and psychological abuse, and forced to kill unknown (but probably large) numbers of people in order to harvest their souls. Crona gets a brief respite when Maka defeats them, only to be forced back into working for Medusa.
 * From what little we know, Liz and Patti's history is probably a troubled one, but this is hardly referred to.
 * The anime, thanks to its Gecko Ending, makes things a bit better for Chrona by.
 * The characters in D.Gray-man. Specifically, a whole bunch of the main Exorcists. Kanda and Lenalee, in particular, had their traumatic pasts inflicted on them by the "good guys" so they could fight the "bad guys". Allen was abandoned, beaten, and such until he met Mana, who died shortly after. Miranda was always teased for being wimpy and useless. Krory has never left the castle in his life. Lavi used to be cold and emotionless.
 * Pandora Hearts is full of characters with this trope, though it's not very obvious at first. Gilbert, Vincent, Alice, and Break are probably the best examples.
 * More recently, it's been revealed just how horrible Eliot and Leo's lives have been.
 * Both the lead heroines from Macross Frontier are examples of this.
 * Sheryl grew up as a homeless orphan in the Galaxy fleet before being "discovered" by her manager, Grace. Also, even when she does get past that and works her way to the top as an Idol Singer, she finds out that everything she's ever achieved was actually part of  plan, leading to her breakdown later in the series.
 * It doesn't help that.
 * Ranka is also an orphan who, an event so traumatic that she lost her memories and, for a time, the ability to speak before her adoptive brother got to her.
 * It's made worse for her that
 * Chrono Crusade has this trope in spades.
 * Chrono is the most obvious example, having once been part of the Sinners and.
 * In the manga, all of the Sinners are refugees from their home and only betrayed the other demons because it was that or be killed. Aion's reasons for leaving are particularly troubled (but crazy).
 * Rosette and Joshua are orphans. This would be Conveniently an Orphan if it wasn't for the fact that both of them have some flaws explained by their parents' deaths (particularly in the manga).
 * Satella watched as her home burned to the ground and her family was killed by a demon around the age of 9 or so.
 * Azmaria's parents either abandoned her or were killed (possibly during the first world war). She was then taken in by a group of traveling musicians, who were killed by a man so he could adopt her and use her powers to bring back his dead wife. Yep, he was killed too.
 * Hei, Badass Longcoat Anti-Hero of Darker than Black, falls into this bad. Start with Dead Little Sister and betrayal by his girlfriend and work up from there: Add a few years more spent working for The Syndicate as an assassin because a) they'd kill him otherwise and b) he's never done anything else, it's no wonder he's a Stoic Shell-Shocked Veteran.
 * Fullmetal Alchemist: Practically everybody. Ed and Al lost their mother when they were young, tried to resurrect her, and failed; and, as a result, Ed lost two of his limbs and Al his entire body. Roy and Hawkeye, among others, participated in the Ishbalan genocide and feel extremely guilty about it. Scar lost his brother in said genocide, Winry's parents were killed on the battlefield, Hohenheim, and Bradley (in the manga).
 * Roy especially qualifies because, in the first anime, he . He was almost Driven to Suicide because of it.
 * Everyone in My Lovely Ghost Kana. It's how they get past it that makes the story so heartwarming.
 * This is how the Plus Anima children are usually depicted gaining their animas, animal spirits of sorts which grant them the animal's abilities. It comes from the need for help to escape from a dangerous situation, such as being close to death.
 * Soubi from Loveless was orphaned at the age of six, raised by a teacher who wanted to control him completely and, and then handed off to Seimei, who   Ritsuka is a little young for this trope, but is well on his way to acquiring one.
 * For all that it's a gag series, Gintama features characters with these. Gintoki is a Shell-Shocked Veteran, Kagura comes from a lethally Dysfunctional Family, Kyuubei had an...unconventional upbringing, etc.
 * A lot of characters in Speed Grapher, but none more so than Chōji Suitengu, the Big Bad of the series. Near the end of the series, after showing how much of a bastard he is, one episode finally delves into his history and gives him a hell of a Freudian Excuse.
 * It's not revealed until about a third of the way into the series, but Kiddy Grade protagonist Eclair ended up so tortured by the things she did as an ES Agent that she had her memories sealed. The seal also served as a Power Limiter. The reveals start coming when events start to unravel the mental block.
 * Puella Magi Madoka Magica: most characters just have a Dark And Troubled Present, but Kyouko, Mami , and Homura.
 * In Wild Fangs, it turns out Syon was artificially engineered and grew up in a lab where he was constantly experimented on but had no one who remotely cared for him. Subverted in that he doesn't remember it all that well so it's not as big a deal as others think it is.
 * If anyone in Monster appears not to have a Dark and Troubled Past, just keep reading/watching and one will be revealed.
 * Ironically, the king of this trope in the series is none other than that irredeemable Complete Monster Johan Liebert. Or is he? The debate goes on and on...
 * From ARAGO, there are the four horse men. Each one of them has deeply rooted reasons why he or she despises humanity.
 * Joe Asakura of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman. His parents were murdered almost right in front of him, and then the assassin tried to kill him.
 * Clair Leonelli in Heat Guy J. His mother died giving birth to him, and his father was abusive and also neglectful, hoping to train him as a suitable successor. Eventually, he went insane and.
 * Naruto: Shinobi in general have blood on their hands before they reach chunin rank. Itachi saw the end of the 3th ninja war and the kyuubi attack before he was even a ninja and decided to do ANYTHING to pevent war. Kakashi saw his father take his own life at 5, Sasuke, at 8, saw his clan get masacred by his older brother   and killed said brother at 16, , and set himself on the Asura path
 * No mentions of Ai Enma from Hell Girl yet? That girl was made an outcast by her village, and was selected to be sacrificed to a mountain god at the age of 7. She escaped that fate, only to be faced with a worse one 6 years later, where she was betrayed by her only friend and she her family was buried alive. Then she tried to deliver vengeance on her village and was condemned to carry souls to Hell for eternity.
 * It's mentioned in Fairy Tail that everyone in the guild has some sort of hidden pain in their pasts. A lot of them are explored in each arc of the manga as it goes on.

Comics

 * The X-Men's Wolverine, who also had a Mysterious Past and, thanks to his amnesia, had it remain that way for a looong time. Further complicated by implanted memories; as if forgotten trauma wasn't bad enough, how about a helping of trauma that didn't actually happen? Not to mention the pain of wondering if his few happy memories were real or not.
 * Magneto, in spades. His entire birth family was killed in the Holocaust, his daughter Anya died in a fire because he didn't know how to use his nascent powers to save her, and his wife (who was also his childhood sweetheart) called him a monster and fled after he—literally—exploded in rage and killed the villagers who'd prevented him from either concentrating on said powers or going after Anya by normal means. Later, he joined an American government agency to pursue Nazis, and agents killed his girlfriend because he had pursued one of the "wrong" Nazis. No wonder the guy has a deeply cynical attitude toward humanity.
 * Gambit was not merely an orphan whose parents may or may not be dead—or may simply have deliberately abandoned him—but was taken in by a creepy old man/possible pedophile, then turned out onto the streets of New Orleans to fend for himself until the age of ten, then was adopted, fell in love, witnessed his younger cousin's drowning (at age 13), further witnessed the retrieval of said cousin's body(!), accidently killed his fiancee's brother in a duel, and accordingly was exiled from the only home he ever knew. To make matters worse, his powers raged out of control and in exchange for help fixing them he was tasked with—unbeknownst to him-leading a murder-squad against a group of fearful, helpless mutants, only managing to save the life of a single child. Oh, and the girl he loves he can't even kiss because she'd suck the life out of him.
 * Batman has probably the quintessential Dark and Troubled Past, which was his parents getting murdered by an unknown mugger before his very eyes.
 * And Spider-Man has his tying in with his greatest failure, with Peter Parker refusing to stop a bad guy who would then go on to kill his beloved Uncle Ben.
 * Incredible Hulk: Bruce Banner and his mother were regularly abused by his father, Brian. Brian eventually killed his wife, in front of Bruce.
 * V from V for Vendetta was tortured and experimented on in a concentration camp, transforming him into an embodiment of anarchism.
 * Ah, Thug-Boy from Empowered. The general criminality is how he met the love of his life, and she knows the basic outline of the whole 'Witless Minion' scam (although the detail about their last employer/victim still searching for the only survivor has apparently been glossed over). But then there is San Antonio.
 * Sin City protagonists usually have one, even if we never get their full backstory. This comes in vague references to past events; Dwight apparerntly had a criminal past and Wallace likely had an abusive childhood, for instance. Marv was tied to a tree in the middle of the woods and left overnight once, was in prison, and once made a reference to being in a war.
 * Grimjack has probably one of the worst cases of this trope. Abused and abandoned by his family, he spent his childhood fighting for his life in a gladitoral arena. He eventually escapes and finds peace in another dimension, only for everyone in the dimension, including his true love, to be slaughtered by demons. Then there was all the crap he went through during the comic.

Fanfiction

 * This is a common trait of Mary Sues—to have pasts lathered in tragedy, to give them instant sympathy points, which have little to no bearing on the actual behavior of the character (unless it's to make them a Jerkass Sue). Ensign Sue demonstrates. (Parody)
 * Kyon: Big Damn Hero has, who, as a slider, has gone through hundreds of worlds, only to have them invaded by aliens and everyone she loved killed. Again. Hundreds of times.
 * Some Total Drama Island fanfics give the characters tragic pasts.
 * All of the main characters in the fanfic Freefall have tragic childhoods, to a varying degree of "tragic"; not surprising, since the fic features CLAMP characters.
 * In My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, there's Trixie's portrayal in some of the better Twixie shipping fics. At least two fanfics - Out in the Cold and Of Mares and Magic - gave her a parent who inspired her to take up magic, then went and died on her and left her traumatised. This not only provides a Freudian Excuse for why she acts like such a jerk in-series, but also provides grounds for the eventual Shipping.
 * In A New Face In Ponyville, Joshua Rocket is revealed to have shadows of one of them in chapter 9. This could also be a case of Mysterious Past since not a lot of concrete details were given and even what WAS said could be put up for speculation considering
 * Firefly in Ace Combat: The Equestrian War lost her home, her parents and her dreams of becoming a Wonderbolt, thanks to . It's the reason she is sometimes cold and angsty toward others.
 * In The Key to Marauding, Dawn has all the emotional baggage of Series 5 of Buffy (dead mother, knowing that the first 14 years of her life aren't real encounters with Glory etc...). In the fic she is
 * By the sequel she has lost . Trauma Conga Line doesn't even begin to describe it.

Film

 * Michael in The Blind Side: crack mom, disappeared dad, virtually no schooling, homelessness, etc.
 * The eponymous Max Payne had one, his family was killed in a mysterious robbery. Made extra saccharine thanks to the Flash Backs being in a warm ember tone compared to the rest of the film's drab winter blues and grays.
 * To be even more specific, in the game the movie is based upon, his family got killed by V-head junkies . Tragically,.
 * The emotional turmoil brought on by the childhood abuse of Tim Robbins' character is the main crux of Mystic River.
 * Gabriel in Van Helsing also has Wolverine Amnesia, it's implied by Dracula they both share "a history" together, and even hints at Gabriel being an immortal "tripped" angel or the like, but nothing concrete ever comes of it. Sequel Hook?
 * In the new Star Trek film, Captain James T. Kirk lost his father just minutes after his birth. He was frequently abused by his stepfather while his mother was working off-planet, his brother ran away when he was still young, and he was already a repeat offender long before enlisting in Starfleet. It is also possible that he survived Tarsus IV (if future movies keep with the original series).
 * O-Ren Ishii from Kill Bill is a female example, losing both of her parents to vicious Yakuza gangsters at the age of seven and then getting her revenge just four years later.
 * The main character of Hoosiers, Norman Dale, moves to the small town of Hickory, Indiana to take one last shot at redemption as a basketball coach after.
 * Subverted in The Dark Knight, where the Joker likes telling stories about his Dark and Troubled Past to explain his scars...but every story is different.
 * This is a tribute to Alan Moore's 'The Killing Joke', wherein The Joker has the following line; "Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another...if I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!"
 * Kovu from The Lion King 2 has one.
 * The first five minutes of The Descent kill off the main character's husband and young daughter, leaving her traumatized and sometimes hallucinating. A big part of what fuels her trip into, particularly if the monsters don't really exist.
 * The first five minutes of the Prom Night remake feature the protagonist coming home to find her father and brother dead, and watch her mother get killed, all because the killer was looking for her. For her character, this doesn't really come into play much for the rest of the movie, even when the killer comes back.
 * Princess Leia. She remembers her mother's death (despite being only a baby at the time), saw her adoptive homeworld destroyed as a You Said You Would Let Them Go, has seen and.
 * Considering she found out she was adopted only a few minutes before, when Luke asked her about her mother's death, she may have been referring to her adoptive mother.
 * Megara in Hercules: she sold her soul to Hades in order to save her boyfriend, and he dumped her shortly after that. Also, it's hinted that she probably had more problems to face in life besides that.
 * Given that the main characters in The Way Back are seven gulag escapees and an orphan, this is something of a given. None of the men will tell each other their stories, but they all tell the girl, who, in turn, passes them on to the others. When she asks why they don't talk to one another, she's told that, in the gulag, the less you say, the better off you are.
 * Will in Snow White a Tale of Terror still has nightmares about the events that led to his banishment and scars.
 * Sgt. Tamora Calhoun of Wreck-It Ralph is described verbatim as having "the most tragic backstory ever" -- her husband-to-be was devoured by cy-bugs on the day of their wedding, because she and her squad had let their guard down for the occasion. The depiction is so over-the-top as to be a parody of the usual tragedy afflicted upon first-person-shooter characters, but even though it's only programmed into her as part of her backstory (as opposed to being a literal event in-game or in the movie), she still has the psychological scars.
 * However, at the same time the depiction is greatly understated for what must have happened, as pointed out here. The camera stays on Calhoun, once she raises the weapon. Look at her face. She isn't terrified, she isn't furious, she freaks out more and more. No wonder, since by far the worst part of this stays off camera:.

Literature
"Does it seem to you that anyone would take a newborn baby and row over it, until it was bruised black, cut off its hand, and leave it out in a bitter night on the steps of a charity home, to the care of strangers? That's what somebody did to me"
 * The Marquess from The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making has a very troubled past.
 * Most of the main characters in T.S.Hana's Dawn of Craven: The Alchemist fall under this trope.
 * Except Joshil.
 * The Witch Megiram's servant, Ororo, is implied to have a troubled past, as she lives with the evil woman "by choice".
 * Wang Sau-leyan in Chung Kuo. She was ugly, fat, clumsy, and treated as a poor sequel to his brothers while he grew up. This is not presented as an excuse for his behavior, but it helps explain it.
 * Severus Snape from the Harry Potter franchise, the neglected and emotionally abused child who fell to The Dark Side at school and then devoted the rest of his life to Dumbledore's cause.
 * Also Sirius Black, who had (let's count!): 1) a dead best friend, 2) a dead brother, 3) been abandoned (disowned) by parents, 4) spent 13 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, 5) been betrayed by former True Companion Peter Pettigrew!
 * And
 * Not to mention Harry himself: both parents murdered before his eyes at age one, nine years living with abusive guardians, being bullied at school by his cousin and friends, a dead godfather, a dead mentor, the most evil person in his world has a connection to him, a life and death battle every year, and sometimes his friends turn their backs on him.
 * Nevil Longbottom also deserves a mention. Lives with his grandma because his parents were tortured into insanity by Death Eaters and feels that he can never live up them and has no self confidence at all. He also thought for a long time that he was a squib and only discovered his magical ability by being dropped out of a window.
 * A Series of Unfortunate Events has this with Count Olaf, and the entire series could be said to be the dark and troubled past of Violet, Klaus, and Sunny.
 * Sandor Clegane killed an innocent peasant boy and laughed about it in A Song of Ice and Fire, however, the fandom forgave him as soon as he confided that his older brother Gregor had burnt his face as a child.
 * Most of the vampires from Twilight seem have dark and troubled last minutes of their human lives, the terrific pain of the transformative venom probably doesn't help matters.
 * Vin from Mistborn. Born the daughter of a skaa (peasant) woman and an Imperial nobleman (a death sentence from the get go), her earliest memory is of her insane mother killing her little sister, before being rescued by her older half-brother. Said half-brother genuinely cares about Vin, but he's a cynical, abusive Jerkass who hammers into her head the idea that she can't trust anyone because everybody is selfish and manipulative. They spend the next several years working as petty thieves on the lowest rung of society, until the half-brother runs out on her,  , leaving Vin without a protecter in a den of scum. Of course, from there, she gets recruited by La Résistance, finds out that she's an Extraordinarily Empowered Girl, and takes a level in badass, but still. Is it any wonder the poor girl spends most of the trilogy wrestling with crippling paranoia?
 * Francis Crawford of Lymond in Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles. He's got almost everything: rejection by his father, didn't fit in as a child, betrayed by his early—perhaps first—lover, framed as a traitor, physical and perhaps sexual abuse as a galley prisoner, self-hatred because he blames himself for his sister's death, and pretty much everyone he cares about dies as a result of knowing him.
 * Séraphine Francq (Fiancée du Vent): lost her mother at a young age, her father died from the experiment that gave her her powers, was gang-raped by schoolmates, and consequently beat them up so hard that one of them is stuck in a wheelchair for life, giving her remorse...
 * Barbie, from Stephen King's Under the Dome, has a greatest failure in the time he . He regrets this for the rest of his life, and his remorse thinking back on it is bad enough.
 * K.J Parker's Scavenger Trilogy. The story revolves around Poldarn's unknown past and worse pasts are few.
 * Niall from Wicked Lovely: 1. Cold-Blooded Torture, 2. Rape as Backstory, 3. both were orchestrated by the one he loved above all others, 4. inadvertently responsible for the deaths of several mortals. That's not even counting what happens to him during the series. He is The Woobie, indeed.
 * Harry Dresden. Never knew his mother, his dad died when he was a kid, bullied at an orphanage, adopted by an abusive Evil Mentor who tried to turn him to The Dark Side, had to kill him in self-defense, arrested by the White Council, barely escaped the death penalty for violating the Laws of Magic, and is still under the Doom of Damocles and being stalked by an Inspector Javert type at the beginning of the series.
 * Of course, taking into account the things that happen to him during the actual series, his backstory honestly isn't depressing so much as it's "a very small taste of what's to come.''
 * Burke from Andrew Vachss' books. Born to a mother (strongly implied to be a teen prostitute) who promptly abandoned him, brought up through a variety of foster and juvenile homes, and experiencing the worst that humanity has to offer is a very succinct description of his past.
 * Since all of the princesses of The Princess Series are based mostly on the Grimm Bros. version, they all have this, though some more than others.
 * Kieran Trevarde of The God Eaters has a dead mother, some degree of rape and child prostitution, as well as drug addiction in his past, and a dead lover on top of all that at the outset of the novel.
 * YMMV, but Mr. Rochester of Jane Eyre was betrayed by his greedy father and brother to marry a woman they knew was insane just to get her money, and all the man ever wanted was to find someone to love.
 * Jane had one, too. She was orphaned, put into an unloving and abusive home, and sent to an unsanitary boarding school that could barely feed its students. The first friend that she made there died shortly after she arrived, as did most of the other students in a typhoid epidemic.
 * Another Charlotte Brontë example: Lucy Snowe in Villette.
 * Everyone in The Pale King, but Toni Ware especially. She spent her childhood
 * In the Warrior Cats series, there are several.
 * Bluestar's mother died when Bluestar was only an apprentice, and her father never really paid much attention to her and her sister. Her sister died as a young mother, and Bluestar felt guilty for her death because she'd convinced Snowfur to leave the camp for a little while. She had kits with a RiverClan cat (a forbidden relationship), but had to give them up in order to become deputy instead of Thistleclaw, and one died.
 * Crookedstar sustained a disfiguring injury as a kit. Because his shallow mother couldn't stand having such an ugly kit, she neglected him, favored his brother, and renamed him Crookedkit for his injury. As he grew up, many of the cats he was close to died.
 * Yellowfang, a medicine cat, had kits with the Clan leader (another forbidden relationship). Two of them died, and the one that lived became cruel and bloodthirsty, killing his own father and taking leadership, breaking the warrior code by stealing kits from other Clans, and even murdering kits from his own Clan and framing Yellowfang.
 * In Death: Eve was abandoned by her mother, raped by her father (who ended up selling her to child molesters), killed him in self-defense, and then had to handle at least one abusive foster parent as she grew up in the system. Roarke was beaten up by his father and non-biological mother, had to steal for his father, and even though Summerset took him in, they lost Marlena, Summerset's daughter, to a group of Complete Monster rapists. Dr. Mira watched her parents divorce, her mother remarry, and was sexually abused by her stepfather to the point of being Driven to Suicide (fortunately, she survived). Boy, these three had it rough, didn't they?
 * Kvothe from The Name of the Wind had his entire troupe die, lived homeless for three years, got kicked out of the only place he felt he belonged after the death of his troupe...and that's just what we know so far.
 * In Heart's Blood, Anluan’s entire family history, all the way back to his great-grandfather, Nechtan,.
 * Caitrin’s isn’t exactly bright and cheery either. Her father’s dead, her sister married and left her, and a distant relative took over the house and allowed her son to beat Caitrin when he felt like it.
 * The members of the host are all souls from Purgatory. Some of them seem to have particularly violent pasts.
 * Animorphs Tobias. His natural father had to leave, and he was given a fake father, who then left himself. His mother was in an accident and didn't even remember him, besides being blind. He was bounced among aunts and uncles who didn't really care about him and became a bully magnet.
 * Fisk from the Knight and Rogue Series. He took up crime to support help suport his sisters after they lost both parents to disease. When his oldest sister marries someone who could take care of them, he decided Fisk alone couldn't stay, becuase he didn't want to be associated with a criminal. And that's ignoring everything involving Jack Bannister.
 * In Devon Monk's Dead Iron, Cedar's brother Wil dragged him west after the loss of his wife and children. Then they went on the wrong land and were cursed into Werewolf form. Cedar came to find himself at the end of a bloody trail, and backtracked to find his brother's wolf corpse, its throat torn out by himself.
 * In Gene Stratton Porter's Freckles, Freckles does not remember his dark and troubled past, but knows it happened:

Live Action TV
""It doesn't matter how my parents raised me, because I loved my parents. Sure, they could be a little 'strict', but I often think back fondly on the memories I haven't repressed. The truth is, I wouldn't be the man I am today if it wasn't for the way my parents raised me." Margin note: I had a happy childhood."
 * Ned from Pushing Daisies was abandoned by his father, accidentally killed both his mother and the father of his childhood sweetheart, and spent most of his childhood in a Boarding School of Horrors. This, along with being given the sometimes unfortunate gift of bringing people Back From the Dead with a touch, led him to grow into a nervous and shy adult with some trust issues.
 * And, upon trying to solve his first murder case (which was an accident) to make his father love him more, he was found with the man's body and thrown in jail. When he was 10 years old. Is there such a thing as a cosmic Moral Event Horizon?
 * The initial sequence of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine pilot episode shows Sisko being bodily dragged out of his quarters because he refuses to voluntarily leave his wife's corpse behind, despite the fact that the ship was critically damaged by the Borg and he doesn't have enough time to dig her out of the rubble before it explodes. Then we flash forward three years to his arrival at the space station.
 * Sisko's second-in-command, Kira Nerys, grew up on Bajor under the brutal Cardassian Occupation and was participating in the Bajoran resistance movement by the time she was twelve or thirteen. Her mother to obtain more comforts/ensure the survival of her family. Her lover died in her arms. The list goes on.
 * Elle Bishop of Heroes - originally introduced as a demented vixen (everyone's favourite trope), but then revealed to be ridden with several issues, including being experimented upon as a child, locked up, and pumped full of drugs, eventually leading to her being diagnosed as a sociopath and the subsequent use as an "Executioner" by her own father.
 * Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the most well mannered and uptight middle-aged English Gentlemen you will ever come across. However, one old friend from College still calls him by his old nickname, Ripper, and their conversations drop tonnes of hints that he used to be one evil, badass warlock in his youth, whose feared reputation was very rightfully earned. It's never explicitly mentioned what he and Ethan did in the past and what happened to the other people in their group, nor what made him change into the champion of good he is today.
 * The rest of them were killed by Eyghon.
 * Spike used to be ridiculed by his social peers while still alive, and this is shown to deeply affect his personality, most evidently by lowering his already not-so-good social skills, along with leaving other significant marks. After siring his mother, she abused him verbally and sexually assaulted him, to the point that he was forced to kill her for good to stop her. He admits many years later that this episode has been weighting on him. After regaining his soul, he has to come to terms with the great sense of guilt he feels towards his criminal past. Us viewers usually get to see bits of his past via flashback, and the extent to which it is dark and troubled is occasionally emphasized by Spike telling Buffy that she really doesn't want to know how far he's gone in torturing and killing people. It gets better.
 * Then there's the Angel side. There's Gunn, who ended up a street teen because vampires killed his family, and Fred, who got sent to a hell dimension, enslaved, and lived in a cave for five years.Plus Wesley, who was emotionally abused by his father and locked in a dark closet for hours. Plus Angel himself, of course. And Connor, good lord, Connor. Raised in a hell dimension to hate his real father and once tied to a tree and left behind at five years old so he could work to escape and find his foster father.
 * Several character in Babylon 5:
 * Marcus Cole, in the episode in which he was introduced, says he "doesn't believe in miracles". We later learn that he witnessed everyone he cared about, including his Ranger brother, being killed in a Shadow attack on his home colony. He can't shake the survivor's guilt.
 * It comes completely unexpected with Delenn, who, throughout the show, is well known for her compassion and kindness, as well as being a firm believer in the just cause and a wise advisor to others, cautioning against anger and hatred. However, it's not until much later that some details from her earlier life get revealed.
 * The character of Stephen Colbert is prone to Suspiciously Specific Denial of certain bad things that definitely didn't happen to him as a child. From his book I Am America (And So Can You!):

"People with happy families don't become spies. A bad childhood is the perfect background for covert ops: You don't trust anyone, you're used to getting smacked around, and you never get homesick."
 * Also a case of Truth in Television, since the real Colbert's father and two of his older brothers were killed in a plane crash when he was 10.
 * Almost everyone on House qualifies.
 * Dr. House himself figured out at age 13 that his "father" wasn't actually his biological father, and he was therefore the result of his mother's infidelity. The father who raised him was a strict military man who moved them all over the world and was fond of punishing his rebellious son with ice baths and other forms of corporal punishment. Also, there's the whole "losing part of my leg against my will thanks to a decision by Stacy, leaving me with chronic pain and a limp" thing. He didn't want his leg amputated. Later on in the series, when he has to go under for surgery again, he tells Cuddy not to let the doctors amputate it unless there's no other choice.
 * Dr. Chase's father abandoned the family, leaving Chase to care for his alcoholic mother, who eventually drank herself to death.
 * Dr. Cameron married a man she knew was dying of cancer when she was 21. Since she knew he was terminal when she married him, it's implied that her damage goes back even farther than this situation.
 * Dr. Taub is revealed to have cheated on his wife, and has had a suicide attempt in his past.
 * Even Dr. Kutner, who initially seems like the most happy and easygoing character on the show, later reveals that, when he was six years old, he witnessed the murder of his parents by an armed robber.
 * Dr. Foreman was arrested during his teenage years, and has a brother currently in jail.
 * Dr. Hadley (Thirteen) saw her mother die a painful death from Huntington's disease, which she herself has.
 * She also
 * Dr. Wilson has a homeless and a schizophrenic brother, whose fate he blames himself for. He also had three divorces and a thing about "damaged people," i.e. he cannot help but try to help them.
 * Quite a few characters on NCIS - Gibbs with his, Tony with his hints of parental abuse, and Ziva with all her siblings dying violently and her father basically being a sociopath who raised her to kill people. Even Ducky gets into the act in some episodes. The   Director Shepard also had a screwed-up childhood. Basically, the only ones with possible good pasts are cheerful Perky Goth Abby and Hollywood Nerd McGee.
 * To be fair, it's quite possible that Kate also had a lighter backstory.
 * There have recently been hints of McGee qualifying as well. Apparently, his dad - a navy admiral - is extremely hard to please. In one season nine episode, he mentions that, once, when he was a kid, he spent a whole day making a birthday card with paint, glitter, and special paper for his dad. When he gave it to him, he handed it back and said that he could do better. There have also been speculation of whether or not McGee was bullied in school.
 * NCIS:Los Angeles has this with everyone, but especially Callen, to the point where he doesn't know his FIRST NAME.
 * Special mention to Marty Deeks, who had an abusive father who he eventually shot (at age eleven) to protect himself.
 * Every character ever on Lost.
 * Walter Bishop from Fringe crossed several ethical boundaries (including experimenting on children, see below) in the name of Science, before he was admitted to St. Claire's Psychiatric Institution.
 * Walter's also directly responsible for another Dark and Troubled Past: to save the other dimension's Peter after losing his own to a fatal illness, Walter kidnapped that Peter to this dimension. The ensuing years were implicitly turbulent and unhappy: by the time Peter was 13, Walter had been committed to a mental institution, and after Peter split for Europe at 18, Elizabeth Bishop committed suicide. We *still* don't know everything that Peter did or saw before joining Fringe Division, but it was apparently not all sunshine and puppies.
 * AND let's not forget Olivia in all this. Military brat who moved around a lot, abused by her stepfather, lost her mother at a young age, and, oh yeah, experimented on in Jacksonville by none other than Walter Bishop.
 * On Bones:
 * The titular character was abandoned by her parents at the age of 15, taken away from her older brother, and placed in foster care. She finds out later that her parents were bank robbers and "Temperance Brennan" isn't her actual birth name, and that her father is still alive (and an accused murderer).
 * FBI Agent Seeley Booth was the child of an abusive, alcoholic father. He almost committed suicide as a teen.
 * He's also a distant relative of John Wilkes Booth
 * Dr. Lance Sweets, the young psychologist, was adopted at the age of six by a loving elderly couple after he had been abused as a young child (he has scars from whips on his shoulders). His adoptive parents died shortly before he came to work with Booth and Brennan.
 * Booth lampshades all this at one point: "What are we, the island of misfit toys?"
 * In the eighth season of 24, it is revealed that Renee has one of these.
 * Michael Westen of Burn Notice observes that this is very common in his line of work:


 * On Stargate SG-1, Dr. Daniel Jackson's cringe-worthy backstory explains how he can keep going in the face of the constant perils he faces on the show. He lost his parents to an accident (which he witnessed) as a kid, and his own grandpa was too busy to take him in, so he went to foster care. He was ridiculed for his (true!) archaeological theories and lost his apartment and research grants before he joined the Stargate program. There, he falls in love with a woman on another planet and stays with her, but she's kidnapped one year later and he leaves to go tramping around the galaxy trying to find her (which remains his motivation for continuing with SG1 until she dies, possesses, and almost succeeds in killing him). Add that to what happens to him during the actual run of the show, and he's still the first one to give anybody the benefit of doubt.
 * Teal'c's father was murdered horribly for losing an allegedly unwinnable battle, and he was the leader of Apophis' army for decades before he did a Heel Face Turn. During that time, he did numerous unpleasant, if not outright evil, things. It's been made clear that he feels guilty about them.
 * While usually (but not always) portrayed as more of a jaded goofball than a dark character, Colonel Jack O'Neill doesn't have the most pleasant background. He is ex-Special Ops, and his professional backstory appears to fall under 'you don't want to know' territory. It was stated that he's done some 'distasteful things', and a few allusions have been made to his 'file' and his having a 'strong stomach'. He was also left for dead by his friend and teammate, Frank Cromwell, resulting in four months in an Iraqi prison. The Iraqis were not known for being nice to their prisoners, and he carried a grudge for at least seven years, to the extent that he refused to forgive Cromwell even when the planet was about to be sucked up by a black hole. This was never mentioned again. The specifics of his early life are unknown, but when Sam Carter was trying to get him to empathise with some new Air Force Academy graduates, he retorted that '[He] was never their age.' That one has about even odds of being a joke or a hint-within-a-joke, but it's a weird thing to say if it doesn't have any basis in fact. Finally, his son Charlie accidentally killed himself with O'Neill's sidearm, and O'Neill blames himself. He was suicidal and,  All this before the show happened. At a later date, there was a little episode called Abyss.
 * It's actually pretty difficult to find a many character in any of the Stargate shows who hasn't had some horrible tragedy of varying levels heaped on them at some point or another. Mitchell, for example, is, so far, the only main character who has been confirmed to have both parents alive and well, but even he had that troubled experience where he blew up a truck of refugees, due to miscommunication.
 * Don Draper of Mad Men lives this trope. He was born to a prostitute and frequently abused as a child because of this. Oh, and she died in childbirth. His father had his head kicked in by a horse in front of him. Don then joined the Army, went to Korea, saw his CO die violently in front of him, switched identities with his CO to get discharged, got discovered by his CO's widow, divorced his CO's widow and married his current wife, only to have lots of extramarital affairs.
 * Jack Harkness gets a lot of this in Torchwood. The audience knows a bit of it due to remembering his origins in Doctor Who, but his actions over the last 100 years without the Doctor include, and there are probably a few other things we haven't been made aware of.
 * Speaking of Doctor Who, the Doctor himself has elements of this trope. At first, it wasn't that bad - sure, he stole the TARDIS from his own people and broke their laws on non-intervention. Of course, then the Time War happened off screen, and now his back-story includes a horrible war, at least two (near) genocides, and the destruction of his fellow Time Lords.
 * A lot of the characters in Carnivale have this trope:
 * Ben Hawkins being the primary example, having been raised by his partially insane mother, who drowned his pets and treated him like the devil's spawn because of his gift. When he met the Carnivale troupe, he had recently escaped from a chain gang.
 * Sofie had to deal with her mother being catatonic from birth, as well as slightly tapped in the head, and she tends to be a little cynical in her manner (although, given her circumstances, there's nothing unjustified about this).
 * Jonesy had his higher hopes of  dashed by , forcing him into a life of crime and, later, employment as a roustabout by Samson.
 * Henry Scudder's entire characterisation is built around this trope - he didn't want to be an, and to try and avoid his fate, he travelled from one place to another, causing havoc wherever he went, eventually disappearing altogether.
 * Management had  involving   in the trenches during the Great War, leaving him.
 * Justin and Iris both had messy childhoods before being adopted by Norman Balthus,.
 * Law and Order: SVU has a large number of these in the main cast.
 * Hinted at, and later proved, with several characters on ER—Luka, Sam, etc.
 * On Castle, it's stated several times that Kate Beckett joined the police force because her mother was murdered. At one point in her life, she became totally obsessed with solving her mother's murder, to the point that it almost destroyed her. Despite finding the killer in the Season 2 episode "Sucker Punch", the crime remains unsolved.
 * Guy of Gisborne of BBC's Robin Hood - turned out that, when he was a teenager,  and , and after his parents died,.
 * The origin of Dexter Morgan's "Dark Passenger" is.
 * Admiral Al Calavicci of Quantum Leap. His family was pennyless, his father was gone most of the time, and his mother ran out on him and his sister, Trudy, who happened to have Downs Syndrome. When his father eventually found another job out of country, and left Al in an orphanage and Trudy in an institution, their father came back in time to free his kids and then die of some unspecified cause. Al, ten years old by this time, went back to the orphanage and his sister back to the institution. Al spent his time running away and stirring up trouble, and, in his late teens, engaged in both boxing and theatre, but apparently, his grades were good enough to earn him entance to Annapolis. Then, when he went to spring his sister from the loony bin, he was told that she had died of pneumonia some time before. Time goes on, though, and he graduated Annapolis to become a Naval pilot. He met the woman he referred to as the love of his life, a Navy nurse named Beth, and married her. Now, just when you think things are getting better, Vietnam came along. During his second tour of duty, he was shot down over enemy territory, and, depending on the timeline, spent either six or eight years as a prisoner of war. As if that wasn't bad enough, he was listed as MIA, and when he was finally repatriated, he found out that his wife had him declared dead and was already remarried. He went on to remarry four times and gradually declined into alcoholism. Though he did get better, sort of.
 * Shepherd Book in Firefly was always implied to have one of these, having unusual knowledge of crime, combat, and other esoteric skills suited for a spy or soldier that ran counter to his nature as a Shepherd. In The Shepherd's Tale comic, this past is enumerated on;  and became the Shepherd in the series.
 * The CSI franchise is rife with this:
 * CSI
 * Sara Sidle was abused by her father and watched her mother abused, then her mother killed her father and she was in foster care for a few years.
 * Warrick Brown somehow lost his parents at a young age and was raised by his grandmother. He struggled for years with gambling problems before Grissom turned him around.
 * Nick Stokes was molested as a child by his babysitter
 * Ray indicates he was abused by his father, and he's wrestled with his own violent tendancies his entire life.
 * CSI: NY
 * Lindsay was the only survivor of the killing of her friends, and only because she was in the bathroom at the time. Her dark past was alluded to a lot before it got revealed.
 * Adam was physically abused-he says his dad was a 'bully'.
 * Stella grew up in an orphanage and foster homes
 * CSI Miami
 * Horatio and his brother Ray were both abused by their father
 * Roswell Michael had enough of his foster father's abuse and went to court to emancipate himself.
 * Who in Supernatural does not have this?
 * Community has this quite a bit. Jeff's father-abandonment and abuse, Annie's drug addiction, Shirley's alcoholism, and Troy's...Troyness.

Music
"Lord Of The Winter Snow: Back again to my tragic past Demonheart: Shocked again she opened the gates / of her tragic past and bloody images / came back to her mind Dargor; Shadowlord of the Black Mountain: For his tragic past he disowned the sunlight Legend of Steel: Break the chains of the past forever Black Dragon: Had to fight the reputation of his bloody past Dawn of Victory: Shades of a past not so far to forget... / the rise of the demons from their bloody Hell!"
 * The Patient from The Black Parade is implied to have had a violent past, in which he committed many misdeeds.
 * Pink from Pink Floyd's The Wall. His father died in the war, his mother is over-protective, he was tortured by sadistic teachers...no wonder that, when his marriage collapsed, he isolated himself from the rest of the world and became a fascist dictator in his own imaginary world...
 * Luca Turilli uses this trope whenever he can.


 * Bloody Hell! He couldn't break the chains of this reputation.
 * The protagonist from The Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash", which has him born and raised in an abusive household and abandoned at some point in his childhood. It's hinted in the chorus that he's gotten over it, albeit not in one piece, given the nature of the song.
 * A lot of great musicians have had dark and troubled pasts. John Lennon had serious issues with the way his mother (and father) treated him, which he only started dealing with after he met Yoko Ono. Neil Young similarly had a chip on his shoulder about his parents breaking up (leading him to support Ronald Reagan under the guise of his 'strengthening the family' rhetoric, although he soon became disillusioned). John Cale, due to his grandmother not allowing any language but Welsh to be spoken in the hause, never had a conversation with his Anglophonic father before he learnt English when he was nine, and he was molested by at least two older men in his youth, giving him issues that fed into his later substance abuse.
 * Dr. Light, as told by The Protomen. His father died in a mining accident, leading him to build robots to do the work instead and "take the death away". Unfortunately, things do not improve from here.

Theatre

 * Florence in Chess.
 * The Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera was used as a circus sideshow freak until he escaped.
 * Mary in Vanities has an alcoholic mother and runaway father; she sings about her desire to get away from it all in "Fly Into the Future".

Video Games
"Director: Your father was a counter-revolutionary. When he was killed, you, your mother, and your sisters were transported to a North Siberian gulag. Paint me the picture. Heavy: No. This is my gun. I like to shoot this gun. Is all you need to know. Director: Your family only lived in that gulag for three months. In December 1941 it burned to the ground. All of the prisoners had escaped. All of the guards had been killed. Tortured to death. Heavy: I. Like. To shoot. This gun. Is all you need to know."
 * In The King of Fighters series, one or two fighters crop up with these kinds of pasts, but extra points go to Rock Howard, who has this through virtually no fault of his own. He's the son of the notoriously death-retardant Geese Howard, who barely took any interest in the boy's well being. Rock was rendered an orphan by one of Geese's nemeses, Terry Bogart (who tried to keep him from falling to his death, only for Geese to yank his hand out of Terry's grip and Go Out with a Smile as he fell), who took it upon himself to raise and train Rock himself...possibly out of penance. Rock is surprisingly well-adjusted, but it constantly at war with himself internally, given he has "evil blood".
 * The Tales (series) practically needs its own folder for this trope: heroes, villains, teammates of questionable morality, and the NPC who shows up for five minutes and is never seen again.
 * In Silent Hill, a dark and troubled past guarantees you a season ticket to the titular town.
 * The Final Fantasy series loves this trope. Seriously, we could be here all day.
 * Visas Marr in Knights of the Old Republic 2. Carth Onasi in the first game has one too.
 * Your character in both stories has a pretty nasty one.
 * You don't get much more dark and troubled than Atton Rand.
 * By the time you meet Aribeth in Neverwinter Nights Hordes of the Underdark, she has a very troubled past (including being executed for something that wasn't technically her fault). The character you play in that one technically doesn't know about it, even though you almost certainly played the first campaign beforehand.
 * Casavir in the sequel has a stormy history with Neverwinter.
 * The module creating community has brought up several examples as well. Anera in the Shadowlords arc took a lot of crap from her family (the celestial side) for being too mortal, and eventually entered into a relationship with a necromancer. It did not end well. Alex in the Bastard of Kosigan series has a very troubled one, dealing with the complications involved with being in love with the severely disfavored bastard, and her . Pia in A Dance With Rogues has many regrets about her time as one of Vico's playthings.
 * Every recruitable NPC in Dragon Age: Origins. In the order you usually meet them, they are: a royal bastard left at the local church to become a mage-hunting Knight Templar; mother is a legendary witch that intends to steal her body some time in the future; used to be an assassin-bard whose favoured method was the Honey Trap; killed all the inhabitants of a farmhouse after experiencing a big cultural no-no; turned into a golem some time ago and lost memories due to a very extensive And I Must Scream experience; old lady who's really dead but kept alive by an inhabiting spirit; another assassin whose past may suck just as bad, if not worse, than the first one's; drunk whose wife left him to become a Complete Monster. Only the dog is free from trauma. Sometimes, you think your party should form a Country & Western band.
 * Well...the dog's original master ended up dying, and it reached you only by managing to escape the mass slaughter at Ostagar. Looks like it may indeed qualify after all...
 * Not if you play Human Noble (who is, incidentally, one of only two PCs without a significantly dark and troubled past as well. Being orphaned as an adult sucks, but it beats out being branded as worthless from birth and forced into crime or prostitution to survive).
 * Considering the entire story takes place in the past, let's add Dragon Age II companions to the list: a healer who's possessed by a demon due to his own anger; an ex-slave who's hunted by his previous master; an Elven mage whose own clan views her as a walking liability; a prince whose family was murdered; and the story teller who witnesses it all. All of this is not including the main character, Hawke, who  The only one without a troubled past is Isabela, who seems to make light of even the worst situations.
 * Actually, Isabela was sold into marriage at an implied young age by her mother for a few silvers and a goat. Then Zevran was hired to kill him, and she inherited his ship and decided to become a pirate. Her stories about her past are the most fragmented of the party, and generally Noodle Incidents. Also, that relic she's looking for? This actually comes back to bite the party in a serious way in Act II.
 * Just about every single major character in Mass Effect has some sort of tragic backstory. Even Commander Shepard can be customised to have one—the Colonist background involves everyone in Shepard's home colony being massacred or taken by slavers, while the Earthborn background gives him or her a criminal history, and the Sole Survivor psychological profile involves Shepard losing everyone in his or her unit to a thresher maw attack.
 * By Mass Effect 2, the only characters who don't have such a background are Ashley and (maybe) Jacob.
 * Kla in Warbears is implied to have one.
 * Jennifer from Rule of Rose. There's a reason why the narrator never fails to refer to her as the "poor, unlucky girl".
 * Many of the characters in the Metal Gear Solid series have them. Raiden, The Boss (kind of), Psycho Mantis, and Fortune, to name a few.
 * The Heavy from Team Fortress 2 subverts this to hell and back.


 * Devlin McCormack in The Orion Conspiracy definitely has this. Let us see. He fought as a soldier in the Corporation War, which apparently left him with issues. He admits that he was not a good father to his son, Danny, and that he, in fact, drove him away. Interestingly enough, Danny's death and the investigation of it is what drives Devlin for a portion of the game. Also, the local Jerkass claims that Devlin drove his wife to suicide, which would indicate that Devlin may not have been a good husband. Of course, it is hard to say that really is the case, or if there is more to that story than that.
 * Shadow the Hedgehog probably has the darkest past of all the Sonic characters. He was created as the Ultimate Lifeform in an attempt to cure a terminally ill twelve-year-old girl, had his home ambushed and said ill child die in front of him from a gunshot wound, was thrown into stasis and had his memories tampered by his creator to turn him into a ruthless killing machine. And all it took to turn his character around was a Rousing Speech by a different twelve year old girl, a Heroic Sacrifice which resulted in himgetting amnesia, spending not one, not two, but three games trying to remember things properly again, and the near planetary takeover of an alien race to snap him out of his amnesia for good and to put his past behind him. Yikes.

Visual Novels

 * Every character in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni starts out seeming normal, but ends up having one of these - even Keiichi.
 * And in "Bad Boy's Love", the Higurashi pastiche plotline in Hatoful Boyfriend, the exact same thing happens in reference to this. The cast of mostly normal Otome Game archetypes (with one cartoon villain) all turn out to have dark and troubled pasts, with at least one seemingly nice character actually being outright psychotic.
 * Archer's dark and troubled past in Fate/stay night inspires him to.
 * Miles Edgeworth in Ace Attorney. His father was murdered when he was ten  He was adopted by the honorable and kindly Manfred von Karma, , and brought up to be a cold and ruthless prosecutor with no regard for whether the people he prosecuted had actually done anything wrong.   It's surprising he came out as well-balanced as he did.
 * Godot. In his first appearance, he claims he's come back from Hell to challenge Phoenix, and he's not exaggerating hugely.

Web Animation

 * Arguably, every character in Card Players. Nuff said.
 * All four main characters in Broken Saints, despite coming from vastly different backgrounds, all have less than pleasant life stories:
 * Shandala was orphaned at infancy, and although her life among the Fijian Islanders is peaceful,
 * Oran's father.
 * Kamimura was taken from his home at a very young age to become a monk,.
 * Raimi has arguably the most mundane, but no less heartbreaking. After his father left,
 * Arguably, Church from Red vs. Blue.

Web Comics
refuses to explain why she no longer has her baby with her. And she comments that she had hated her parents—and now she knows she's no better. "James: When my mother died, my father always told me that god had a plan for those he allowed to pass. But god took my father years before he finally allowed him to pass."
 * It eventually turns out that Zig Zag, the perky, perpetually randy and playful Serbian tiger/skunk crossbreed from Sabrina Online has one of these. She gets livid if anyone tries to suggest it's her Freudian Excuse for being a notorious pornography star and director, though.
 * In No Rest for The Wicked, Claire. Introduced, she muses about how easily a woman could become a witch without realizing it and implies something about her own child. Later she
 * Lexx's past in Alien Dice takes this up to eleven. Lexx's father died young of an illness and his mother, a fighter for the space station they lived on, was killed defending their home. He was then raised in an orphanage from hell where he was forcibly turned into a Mon-like thing (the titular Dice). He attempted suicide several times, but failed, and has faced numerous other tragedies, including rape, slavery (or, the threat of it, actually), and  That's only hitting the highlights. Lexx is better at remembering happy moments than he is at remembering truly tragic ones, though nightmares say otherwise.
 * Grace, Susan, and Tedd in El Goonish Shive, though Grace appears to have been the only one who suffered physical abuse. "Lord Tedd" from the alternate universe seems to have a dark and troubled past of truly epic proportions.
 * Many of the characters from Gold Coin Comics, such as Lance, whose entire village was burned to the ground.
 * Galatea in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob, who spent her one-month childhood being treated literally as a lab animal in a pen. She didn't take it well.
 * Parodied in The Noob here (continued here).
 * Played straight in Bittersweet Candy Bowl. Abbey has such a distressing past that the author actually felt unable to finish a planned chapter about it.
 * From the hints we've been given, we can assume: Is it any wonder Abbey's turned into the Well-Intentioned Extremist he is?
 * Secret in Keychain of Creation. Ye Gods, that girl has been through some deeply troubling shit. Backstory starts here.
 * Alexander Hamilton in The Dreamer, man, oh man. Let's break it down: when he was a teenager, in the span of a few years, 1) his mother died, 2) his father vanished, 3) his aunt, uncle, and grandfather also died, 4) his cousin committed suicide, and 5) Alexander and his brother were disinherited and left penniless orphans. Let us not forget that his father, James Hamilton, may not even have been his father at all (the honor may go to a gentleman by the name of Thomas Stevens).
 * Vriska Serket of Homestuck. Being raised by a giant spider who forced her to kill hundreds or even thousands of other children to feed left her pretty damaged.
 * Also, WV. A simple farmer willing for peace has his home and crops destroyed by war.
 * Tekno in Sonic the Comic. While we never see her past, it's implied that she's done some pretty bad things since she worked with Dr Robotnik. Her
 * In Impure Blood, Roan has been subjected to Fantastic Racism, was Made a Slave as a child, and has had to fight for years in Gladiator Games (as "The Abomination", to put the icing on the cake).
 * Faye from Questionable Content moved to the same town as the other characters to escape her small Southern town after her father shot himself in front of her and she either tried to kill herself or got into a car accident. It's ambiguous. She's also an alcoholic.
 * Hannelore's parents' response to her crippling OCD seems to be mostly "throw money at it and hope it goes away".
 * Elf Blood: For such a cheery, optimistic, and caring person, the fact that TKO was designed, born, and raised to be a long-range assassin is quite surprising, if not downright shocking.
 * It's implied that, as children, when assassination became too emotional for TKO, SKO voluntarily did the killing for her.
 * Dissonance: both of the main characters have one.
 * When James' mother died, his father kept telling him that god had a plan for those he allowed to pass. But then his father developed Alzheimer's Disease. He was mostly normal at first, and when he eventually needed to go to a nursing home, James would visit him and take him to the church there every Sunday. But in the end, he was just a shadow of the man James once admired.

"Sarah: I think if I were meant to mother, there would be at least one positive sign."
 * Sarah has wanted to be a mother for years, and one day got herself inseminated. But in a 1/20,000 chance, she developed ovarian cancer. It's implied she nearly didn't recover, and now she isn't sure fate wants her to be a mother.


 * In Blue Yonder this is brought up against a cape: he used to be a cop, and was thrown off the force for stealing evidence.
 * In Our Little Adventure, Angelika warns Norbert not to go there when he asks if something bad happened in her past.

Web Original

 * Tasakeru's primary characters, the Outcasts, are shining examples of this trope, it's pretty much a prerequisite for being one.  And that's just the ones we know about...
 * When you put them all together, even though they're played for dark laughs, a lot of bad things have happened (that weren't actually his fault) to The Nostalgia Critic. Abusive Parents, hiding in the cupboard when he got scared, breaking up with someone three times and getting stalked for it, pitied by his classmates for acting like a brat, date-raped on his prom night, and that's just what we know so far. No wonder he's a weepy Psychopathic Manchild with issues.
 * The Nostalgia Chick had a judging mother and an emotionally distant father who both were alcoholics and yelled at each other constantly, had an uncle that molested her, got bullied at school for being the awkward dork, became an alcoholic herself and somehow got fixated on guys she could fix and control to do whatever she asked of them.
 * A common problem among the characters in Theatrica
 * Ithalond. An Elf from Imladris, he was pulled into Celebrian. Need I say more?
 * The Gungan Council has this as a staple trait for characters. As the saying goes, "Slavery is a totally original backstory!"
 * In Guts and Sass: An Anti-Epic, Efeddre was captured and tortured for nine years, and ended up a Jerkass Woobie.
 * any of the Organization's Agents in LIS DEAD count, considering what we've learned of the Organization so far.

Western Animation

 * Avatar: The Last Airbender lives on this trope. Let's look it over;
 * Zuko: father always favoured Azula over him, and then planned to murder him to get the throne. His loving mother sacrificed her life/freedom to prevent this. He, one day, speaks out against a horrible plan, and his own father burns his face for insolence. He then gets banished and put on a Snipe Hunt for the Avatar. Needless to say, he's the Mr. Fanservice of the series.
 * Aang:.
 * Though this actually proved crucial to the series in the end, as he would have if he hadn't run away..
 * Katara and Sokka: mother killed in a Fire Nation raid when they were little, and their father and all the men of the tribe left three years prior to the show's start. This left Katara with abandonment issues, and Sokka feeling that he wasn't good enough as a warrior. They may not show the effects as much as Zuko does, but it catches up to them later on (Sokka risks his ass breaking into a Fire Nation prison, Katara has her dark night of the soul tracking down her mother's killer).
 * Iroh: was once a very powerful warrior and general in the Fire Nation army, leading a siege on Ba Sing Se. Then, his son died, he went into a Heroic BSOD, and 'betrayed his nation'.
 * All this isn't even counting the pasts of more minor characters such as Jeong-Jeong, Pakku, Hama, Jet, and, hell, even Azula.
 * The episode "The Beach" was essentially a show-and-tell around the campfire of each of the villain's version of this trope, complete with showcases of Parental Neglect, Not So Stoic and The Unfavorite.
 * The Sequel Series The Legend of Korra has given two of its main characters a Dark and Troubled Past: Mako and Bolin were street kids growing up, and Mako had to take care of his little brother.
 * Kevin E. Levin from Ben 10 and Ben 10: Alien Force: probably abandoned as a young child because of his power, became a criminal to survive, then, for kicks, became a literal monster by the age of eleven, and got sent to a hellish prison dimension.
 * Denzel Crocker on The Fairly Odd Parents. At first, he had a life similar to Timmy's: he had a neglectful mother who left him with an abusive babysitter. He also had fairy godparents, which he used to do good things for people. The end came when he lost his godparents: he forgot all his happy memories, the town shunned him because they forgot all the good things he did, he became obsessed with proving fairies exist thanks to a note he left himself, causing him to lose his sanity, he was laughed out of his college for promoting fairies, and he lost Waxelplax because of his obsession. Yeah, not very fun.
 * Casey Jones was given one of these for his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003 incarnation, in order to explain his vigilantism: when he was a kid, the Purple Dragon gang, led by a teenage Hun, burned his father's store before his very eyes. Afterwards, when Arnold Casey Jones Sr. tried to extract retribution, he was killed. Eventually, writers for the Mirage comic book integrated a modified a considerably less sanitized version of the story into the original canon.

Real Life

 * Anyone who has suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The stress is brought on by being haunted by a traumatic past.
 * Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man", never told Treves a single detail about his family, even that his mother was dead, because the whole family situation was a Dark And Troubled Mess. Dead mother, a classic case of Survivor Guilt over his dead four-year-old brother, crippled sister, abusive father, Wicked Stepmother, and step-siblings who were, as he put it, "more handsome". This may actually have been the source of the misnomer "John"—His father was also named Joseph, and he may have wanted to separate himself as far from that as he could, possibly out of paranoia of having to go back home.
 * All this merely cements his status as the biggest Woobie in the history of ever. Sniff.
 * Eminem. The man's life has been hell.
 * Any Holocaust survivor.
 * Russell Brand. Dear god, Russell Brand. Childhood Bulimia? Check. Traumatic incidents involving a tutor, and then a babysitter? Check. Self Mutilation? Check. Mother with Cancer that reappeared four times? Check. Evil Stepfather? Check. Bipolar Disorder? Check. Misguided attempt by his father at bonding, involving a trip to Thailand and prostitutes? CHECK.
 * Axl Rose, read the biography "Guns And Roses: The Band That Time Forgot" for the full details, needless to say, it's no wonder he's such a Jerkass sometimes.
 * Anyone who has been abused in any way, especially sexually. That leaves a good few of the victims suffering for a long time.
 * Richard O'Brien. Born abnormally small, bullied at school, and then growing up genderqueer in what amounted to a conservative country town in the 1950s/60s...ouch. And then his baby flopped in cinemas.
 * Janice Dickinson, one of the world's first supermodels. She was thoroughly traumatized and damaged not just by her father's emotional and physical abuse of her, but also his sexual abuse of one of her sisters.