The Woobie/Video Games



Below is a list of video game characters that everyone wants to reach through the screen and give a hug.

I wish that Yumei could be with her parents!" This unfortunately has the result of killing her.]] "Robo: All of the operations of this dome have been shut down for good. None of these machines will... will ever be reactivated."
 * Arc Rise Fantasia gives us the final boss of the game, the Designated Villain, . Unfortunately for the heroes, they either have a choice of letting most of mankind die off, or kill, who is only in the situation she is in because mankind wanted her to in the first place. The reason she even ended up as an antagonist is because the same humans who  While she , the aftermath is the world covered in hozone, and the only way  can save mankind while keeping herself alive is to either  The party's solution in order to save humanity? Kill the  while desperately trying to preserve her own life at the same time. The cutscene after beating her only hammered down the fact that she never wanted to be like this in the first place and that she wanted to live.
 * To a lesser, yet still significant extent, there's also Dynos. This experience left him especially bitter towards life and devoted himself to protecting the Olquinian Diva, who was soon assassinated. After that happens, Dynos became a Death Seeker trying to destroy all life in the world or die trying. Especially tragic once you remember Cecille describing Dynos as someone who couldn't even harm an insect when he was young.
 * Linear Cannon from Evolution Worlds. She stares out as just a very timid Cute Mute with healing powers who has to deal with the unwanted advances of Prince Eugene, but then Eugene realizes that she is the key to finding the legendary cyframe Evolutia, which his country wants in order to take over the world, and kidnaps her.  This is only compounded by the way she cringes in fear whenever an enemy in the game attacks her. She also seems to have a depressing back story, having appeared in the Launcher's doorway in the heavy snow three years before the start of the game, and for a while spent most of her time terrified until Mag taught her to play the ocarina.
 * Pilika, from Suikoden II, is probably the biggest Woobie I have seen in a video game. She is just a cute 5 year old child, but has her parents murdered by Luca Blight, is almost killed by him (which turns her into a Cute Mute for a while), is separated from her caretaker and dear friend, Jowy for an extended period of time, and in the end after being reunited with Jowy, Jowy tells her "goodbye forever" as Highland falls and sends her to be cared for by Jillia.
 * Thomas from Suikoden III, especially in the Manga Adaptation. He goes to his father after his mother died at the hands of bandits, only to be outright ejected and shuttled off to a rundown castle so no one 'important' knows that he exists. And when he starts to turn the Castle into something profitable, his father and the councilmen decided that he's more trouble then he's worth - first being disowned, and then threatened with removal from his post and arrested. All because he's trying to be the nice guy.
 * The rest of Budehuc Castle's staff counts as well, given that they're all aware that nobody in the Zexen Confederacy gives a crap about them and has just been sending their cast-offs to run them deeper into the ground. About the only one who isn't resigned to this fate is Cecile, a young woman who inherited her late father's station and desperately wants to live up to his example.
 * Chris Lightfellow could also count, what with the beloved dead parents, and the fact that she's trying to be even a fraction as great of member of the military as her father was at the beginning while suddenly shouldering the leadership due to the recent deaths of the previous Generals. Then there's the whole "set up to be a sacrifice to fuel the war" part which leads to her killing The Scrappy. All around just a poor, pitiable soul who overcomes whatever is thrown at her.
 * Let's not forget Hugo. What looks like a simple errand for The Chief's Son, delivering a message to the Zexen capital about the cease-fire agreement, goes astray when the Council decides to treat him like crap just because they can, delaying him for several days before having a go-between just take the letter, denying him even an audience with them. Then they decide "Hey, the Chief's kid could make a good bargaining chip!" and try to kidnap him from the inn, setting off a Stern Chase. And when he finally makes it back home, it's to find Karaya in flames. His best friend goes into an Unstoppable Rage, charges one of the soldiers, and is promptly cut down right in front of him. And that's all just in his first chapter!
 * Suikoden IV: Snowe Vingerhut. An Upper Class Twit who actually wants to contribute to society, but isn't the natural-born leader his manipulative father leads him to believe. Thanks to said father Blackmailing the Commander of the Knights of Gaien, Snowe gets passed through the Academy without actually earning it, something he's completely oblivious to. Stuck in a position of command he isn't qualified for, he cracks under the pressure of his first real crisis and is never allowed to forget it. Instead, he struggles on desperately trying to prove he's capable of leading, compounding previous mistakes and unable to understand why he keeps getting blamed for everything. His development arc actually mirrors The Hero's, but while Lazlo is surrounded by loyal, supportive friends and allies, Snowe labors under his worsening reputation, with every move he makes just making things worse. And of course, he's generally considered to be The Scrappy.
 * Planescape: Torment:
 * Everyone to some extent: Deionarra and Dak'kon deserve special mention though.
 * The Paranoid Incarnation is an excellent example. Throughout the greater part of the game he appears as nothing more than a suspicious, raving and hostile individual who automatically reacts with murderous force to most situations, and sets traps for your character in response to you "stealing" his existence. It is only in the final portion of the game that you discover this persona is in fact a defense mechanism created when the Paranoid Incarnation, remembering nothing, is set upon by others seeking vengeance for the crimes of his "past self". Underneath he is in fact surprisingly sane, rational, scared, and has known nothing but fear and anguish.
 * Of all characters, Morte, the wise-cracking, insult-slinging talking skull. Spending God knows how along as part of the Pillar of Skulls as a result of tricking the Nameless One into losing his mortality, he's then found and taken out him. And not just him; the Practical Incarnation, the biggest monster of all of the Nameless One's incarnations. After that, he's bound by guilt to follow him through all his incarnations, good or evil, sane or insane. One flashback shows how bad it can get when Morte is nearly smashed to pieces by the Nameless One himself in a fit of anger, in very noticable pain.
 * The Metal Gear Solid series heavily revolves around the theme of how there's nothing glorious about war and how it destroys everyone who gets involved. So it's no surprise that almost every single character has suffered unbelievable amounts of suffering and loss. But the one who probably gets it the worst is clearly Otacon, one of the few characters who isn't even a soldier. His father killed himself because Otacon let himself get seduced by his stepmother. (That's statutory rape, boys and girls!) His dearly loved stepsister almost dies as well because of this, and he doesn't see her again for more than 10 years. When he finally finds two friends in Sniper Wolf and Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid, Snake fatally kills Wolf in battle and can only stand by and watch as she bleeds to death. In Metal Gear Solid 2, he finally meets his stepsister again, but she . In Metal Gear Solid 4, he again falls in love with a woman, but  . Those are three of the four most saddest moments in the entire series, and the saddest moments of each game he appears in. And in the end, his very close best friend Snake   And he really doesn't take it well every time.
 * Wolf herself is also somewhat of a Woobie - she even confesses just before her senseless death that she's essentially spent her entire life waiting for someone to come and kill her.
 * Not to mention Raiden in the fourth game, who not only suffered head breaking unreasonable torment before the game even begins, but ends up suffering and bleeding in quite literally every single appearance he makes.
 * While he may not surpass Otacon in pure woobieness, Big Boss is by far the most tragic character in the series, Metal Gear Solid 3 and Metal Gear: Portable Ops essentially excuses to put the man through as much physical and emotional trauma as possible, the former containing one of series' greatest Tear Jerkers. With  in MGS4, Woobie status is confirmed.
 * Solid Snake himself is also a great example of this trope. He's been betrayed many times by people who he felt were good friends and by the time of Metal Gear Solid on the original Playstation, he's a jaded, cynical and unwilling soldier. When you see all the crap he goes through in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots it's nearly impossible not to shed tears.
 * And then there's The Boss, Big Boss' mentor. She is arguably the biggest Badass of the series but the lengths she goes through to protect the country that she loves is what makes her such a tragic figure.
 * Latooni from the Super Robot Wars Original Generation was turned into a expert pilot by way of intense training that killed most of the participants including the rest of Latooni's entire group. She ends up finding three of her remaining school-mates, only to find they're on the other side of the war. She ends up nearly killing one, the other two were brainwashed to kill her, and one of them died in a Heroic Sacrifice. Her best friend was kidnapped, and also brainwashed into killing her. Even worse she's stuck in a love triangle with Ryusei Date, and Mai Kobayashi, and she's at a disadvantage because Mai has a Combination Attack, in a series where love interests always have a combination attack.
 * From what it looks like, the female protagonist of Super Robot Wars Z, Setsuko Ohara, is going on this direction. On the course of a single game, she gets... . To make matters worse, Poor, poor Sexsuko...
 * They're all preceded by Tytti Noorbuck, actually. So when we first hear about her past, it's about Later on,  And this is just the earlier version, let's see if OG (if she ever appears there) will crank this up to an eleven.
 * from Live a Live. Over the course of their chapter, in no particular order, ! They are just the kind of person that you wish all of their troubles would go away, because they really did nothing to deserve any of them. Then they decide, rather understandably, that Humans Are the Real Monsters. Less understandably,
 * Final Fantasy VI:
 * Terra is the closest thing the game has to a main character. Her first memories are being brainwashed by the empire to kill people. Feared by people both because she worked for the empire and because she knows magic, she questions her ability to feel love. She finds that she is half "esper" and that her people are being tortured to provide the empire with magic, at which point she goes crazy and flies into the sky as a flaming purple banshee.
 * Celes Chere can lose "Grandfather Cid" on the Solitary Island, which then precedes to attempt to kill herself, with Sparkling Stream of Tears. She struggles with her loneliness throughout the game. But she becomes sort of the main protagonist of the World of Ruin and helps Setzer in his "Woobie moment".
 * How did Locke and Cyan not make this entry? Everything involving Rachel and Cyan's family is just pain incarnate.
 * Shadow doesn't seem like a Woobie until
 * Not quite..
 * Final Fantasy V has a more lighthearted nature, but that does not prevent it from having Woobies.
 * Gilgamesh is an unlikely Woobie, who despite being an enemy, becomes progressively more lovable and sensitive (as well as an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain) as the story progresses,
 * Final Fantasy VII: Heck, most of the main characters could probably count:
 * Vincent Valentine. His case is mostly Wangst (especially in his own game), but... want a list anyway? Here you go, with a cherry on top.
 * Cloud Strife. Lonely, alienated childhood, check., check. Watched his mother killed, best friend almost killed, and childhood crush apparently mortally wounded, check. Used as a human guinea pig by Hojo, check. Is dragged across a continent by his best friend while Shinra chases them and can't do anything when they catch up and kill said best friend, check. Resulting in Trauma-Induced Amnesia, check. . Realizing he'd promised to be his living legacy and to never forget, and then having forgotten, check.
 * Aeris. An adorable flower girl who just wants to be happy with her adopted mother, but, since she's the offspring of a forgotten race, is constantly being pursued by Shinra's top agents, is at one point captured by them and (almost) forced to 'mate' with a wolf-creature (albeit an awesome wolf creature, but still, furry and four-legged). Oh yes, and then.
 * Said awesome wolf creature, Red XIII aka Nanaki, had lots of shit happen to him too. His mom was dead, his father was Taken for Granite and he didn't know it for years, then was captured and used in experiments, and by the time we found him he was pretty much the Last of His Kind. And then we have the Tear Jerker of a scene
 * Final Fantasy IX:
 * Vivi. The way he trips and falls, how everyone is out to get him because they think he's a soulless monster when he's really just the woobiest thing on the surface of Gaia. Insecurity and adorableness all in one little package, complete with sad glowing eyes and a mispointed pointy hat. Comes to a head
 * Princess Garnet, or Dagger, had her father die when she was young, her mom go bat-shit insane and try to take over the world, is hunted down when she tried to tell her "uncle" about her mother's genocidal tenancies, had her magic ripped out of her by two freaky clown guys, is sentenced to death by her mom after she is seen as having no more use, had the stolen magic used by her mom to kill countless innocent people, and then watches her pathetic mom die at her feet. This is all before she finds out that . Eventually this gets too much for her, she has a nervous breakdown and goes mute.
 * Also Freya, who loses everything she has during the first half of the game. Everything. Come to think of it, FF9 is a very woobie-heavy game.
 * Surprised no one mentioned Zidane..
 * I'm surprised it took me this long to find something for Final Fantasy IV.
 * First, we have Rydia. Your introduction to her is amidst the destruction of her village, crying over her dying mother, whom . Then, after losing consciousness, she is taken to a desert town, and watches Cecil, who was unintentionally responsible for this, fight off the guards that are after her.   And FINALLY, upon returning   And keep in mind, most of this starts when she's barely SIX!
 * Let's not leave Edward out of the picture. First off, The fandom hates him for sucking in fights. Never mind the fact that he just had his entire castle nuked, nearly everyone, including his parents, killed, and his lover dies in his arms after protecting him from the soldiers. To rub salt in the wound, this was implied to be mere DAYS before they hoped to marry. And on top of this, the guy isn't even given time to grieve before he agrees to help Cecil acquire a sand-pearl to help Rosa. Finally, he's confronted by the spirit of his lover, watches her move on, telling him to have courage. Subsequently . Seriously, Edward eat. sleeps, breathes, wears, and practically IS this trope.
 * Final Fantasy X:
 * Yuna. Someone give the poor girl a hug.
 * Ahem... Tidus. He grew up verbally abused by his father, when all he wanted was love and acceptance. When Jecht disappeared one day, his mother died soon afterward, presumably of a broken heart. And despite hiding it all quite well, it's still easy to tell that he's deeply affected by this. And then we see Tidus' misfortune in Spira, and this goes way beyond his semi-Butt Monkey status because he's "new" to how things work there. Crucial pieces of information are witheld from Tidus, and the one that hits him the hardest is that He also discovers that . It gets better from here. Then Tidus learns that . And Tidus goes through with it, with only the ever-slightest navel gazing.
 * Thank God that Final Fantasy X-2 rectifies a metric ton of this.
 * Jecht doesn't fare much better either.
 * And then we have Auron. At first, he comes off as an aloof, stoic mentor. Then comes the Backstory.
 * Final Fantasy XII: Oh Larsa, you poor, poor thing. First, he gives a pretty trinket to a girl he seems to have a crush on, which turns out to be Then, his brother, and becomes a bloodthirsty dictator in search of power. This means Larsa to help  for the greater good. Near the end of the story, while the other character are looking towards the sky in hopeful poses, Larsa is inside in the dark
 * Whether or not Larsa remembers it is debatable, but Vayne also killed their two brothers as well.
 * Final Fantasy XIII: The entire main cast.
 * Vanille. Tear Jerker Woobie.
 * Serah. Damsel in Distress Woobie.
 * Hope. Annoying Woobie.
 * Lightning. Lightweight Woobie.
 * This is upped in the sequel,
 * Snow. Unlikely Woobie.
 * Sazh. Heavyweight Woobie.
 * Final Fantasy Tactics is loaded with woobies, the woobiest of whom is probably Ovelia.
 * Wiegraf displays some symptoms of woobiness early on in the game,.
 * Final Fantasy Tactics Advance also contains one very legit Woobie. In the end, Marche, Mewt, and Ritz decide to get over their real-world problems instead of going into a fantasy world where they're a stronger person naturally, have red hair, and have a mother.  However, Doned's wish for Ivalice was simply to be able to walk again - he has to go back to being a wheelchair bound Ill Boy. Even if he gains friends in the hospital, come on, anyone can understand his wish...
 * In Vagrant Story, we have Samantha of the Crimson Blades.
 * Kingdom Hearts:
 * Both Roxas and Namine qualify. The other Nobodies are sympathetic too, though can be made out to be much moreso than they actually are, and can only be counted as Jerkass Woobies at best.
 * And then...there's Xion. Poor, poor, Xion.
 * Kairi in and out of game. She is first separated from the people she cares for most and eventually kidnapped, then she learns that, then she is separated from her friends further, and later when she finally  , she is still cut off from Sora and Riku by Xemnas. Oh, and the real kicker? The fangirls hate her guts for all this.
 * All three protagonists of Birth By Sleep count, and come in three different flavors to boot! Terra, the Jerkass Woobie, Aqua, the Iron Woobie, and Ventus, who is played painfully straight. It should be clarified that Terra is a different breed of Jerkass Woobie in that instead of being a Jerkass, he takes Skilled but Naive far past the Willing Suspension of Disbelief, to the point that you want to slap the hell out of him for trusting Obviously Evil villains. Once he finally, finally wises up, he (much like Aqua) becomes an Iron Woobie, but alas... Yeah, this game will make you bawl like a baby.
 * Lucas from Mother 3. Lucas begins the game rather quiet and shy, which already scores him a few Woobie points. We are immediately introduced to his loving family, who live in a happy, idyllic Arcadia called Tazmily, and it's clear that he is very close with all of them. The villainous Pig King, however, has other plans for all of them. His Pigmask army strikes fear into the hearts of the villagers by setting the forest on fire and reassembling the wildlife into ghastly Chimeras, one of which kills Lucas' mother. Lucas' twin brother, Claus, tries to avenge his mother's death, but disappears, and their father nearly goes insane with grief. During the three-year gap between chapters 3 and 4, Lucas pays frequent visits to his mother's grave, while his father fruitlessly searches for Claus and the Pigmask army continuously threatens' the villagers' way of life. It is later revealed that the Pigmask army  . Finally, after learning that everything he knows about Tazmily is a lie, Lucas must face  . Somebody please give this poor kid a hug.
 * And, from the same game, Salsa. In his introduction chapter, he's forced to go with Fassad, who puts a shock collar on him, proceeding to shock the poor monkey all the freaking time. Salsa is forced to deliver Happy Boxes to the villagers of Tazmily, and, no matter how quickly you did it, you'll still get punished. Oh, and the Pigmasks have his girlfriend. Luckily, Salsa is rescued by Kumatora and Wess, and by Chapter 7, he's reunited with his girlfriend, but captured by the Pigmasks, and held in the Chimera Lab.
 * Saavedro, from Myst III: Exile. Seriously - two evil guys who are your friend's sons nearly destroy your home world and you follow them only to get knocked out, tied up, and tortured by said evil sons and stranded on a world you know nothing about for twenty years while thinking your family - no, your entire world - is dead? Serious Woobie fuel. At least this editor thinks so.
 * The Relyimah in Myst: The Book of D'ni. Even the bitter psycho Ymur.
 * There's a reason he's bitter and a psycho.
 * Atrus has had to trap his father and his sons, has been partly (and inadvertently) responsible for the deaths of billions of people (admittedly an evil world, but the slaves died in droves too), has outlived the sons, and (due to the Mayfly-December Romance) has outlived his wife. He has abandoned at least one home because of the bad memories.
 * The various peoples under Gehn's thumb.
 * The eponymous character of Kana: Little Sister.
 * Luigi of Mario fame has become a woobie to a big portion of the fanbase, and some take it to ridiculous extremes by making the comical abuse he suffers in the games out to be irreparably soul-damaging. Bowser's become something of a woobie in recent years, too.
 * Luigi was left off of the original version of Mario Party 9's box art. Why? Because Nintendo forgot about him. Basically the equivalent of parents forgetting their child at the park, that's pretty woobie-material, especially considering that even after he's been added he's literally the smallest thing on the box.
 * Vivian from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is abused constantly by Beldam. The pain stops when
 * MOMO from Xenosaga deserves a mention. She started out the first game kidnapped and had to be rescued. The desire for her rescue only came from the fact that she was a Robot Girl with valuable data. Later on in the game, she  In the second game, it is revealed that   Meanwhile, people throughout the games have been calling her creator, whom she refers to as "Daddy", insane and responsible for unleashing the cosmic horror. The wife of said mad scientist only looks at MOMO as   Early on, she is hacked by   for her valuable data. Things don't end well there. She's finally cut a little slack at the end when her "mommy" decides to start viewing MOMO as her own person and   And in the third game, an encounter with her father in a rather heartwarming scene reveals that he was never the lunatic that people made him out to be.
 * Shion Uzuki. Episode 3. Full stop. To list, There's also an official flash series that seems to have her lose someone again. At least Allen loves her...
 * Melia in Xenoblade Chronicles.  She takes all of it surprisingly well, though.
 * How come Siren isn't here yet? Harumi just makes you want to hug her on sight, and then there's Tomoko...
 * Colette from Tales of Symphonia. She's a decidedly cute and kind girl raised to be a  Said "raising" meant dehumanizing her to the point where she actually did believe that she wasn't human, and would willingly carry out her duty, knowing full well that   Also, everyone in her hometown—save for a few select people (all of which being playable characters in the game (namely, Lloyd(Who happens to be her Love Interest), Genis, and Raine)) were taking part in said dehumanization (including her family). She's got everyone who's a potential enemy in the game wanting her head on a platter. (Well not literally. The main bad guys want to make her dead... without killing her.) Now add in the the fact that she's a primary target of the rage of not one, but two whole worlds of people... On top of that, she gets
 * Bonus points if she's the Unlucky Childhood Friend during the playthrough.
 * Her woobification works to a degree. Some fans just want to give her a big hug, like Lloyd, the object of her affection, does in one of the scenes in which she's going through her first Painful Transformation; others want to kill her dead.
 * And then there's Presea, especially whenever
 * Sheena is quite the woobie as well.
 * It's safe to say that almost every party member in the game is a woobie. Whether it's Genis and Raine with Genis  and Raine  Or Zelos' own messed up childhood   Even the Big Bad himself is very sympathetic once you get to know him more.
 * And in the sequel, Emil could qualify as a woobie. But really, his parents are dead because they were assumed to be killed by Lloyd, his uncle and aunt hate him and he's hated by the entire city of Luin because he doesn't worship the grounds of Lloyd.
 * With the exception of Mohs, every single recurring character in Tales of the Abyss is a Woobie to some extent. And hell, since the game tries to give Mohs an Alas, Poor Villain send-off, you could probably argue he's a Woobie too.
 * Most God Generals would count, but the one that stands out the most would be Arietta the Wild. First, her family got killed during the Hod War, and she's left to be raised by the Ligers. Then she got handpicked as a Fon Master Guardian for Ion, but quickly lost her position to Anise, not to mention Anise continuously teasing her as "Gloomietta". Then, her mother got killed.  Then, she challenged Anise for a final duel and...
 * What about Dist?
 * As said, the whole God Generals are all a squad of Woobies at heart, but Arietta definitely topped Dist (and the rest) out. After all,
 * Hilda Rhambling from Tales of Rebirth. Born in a world of Fantastic Racism as a Half means she gets the butt end of bullying and prejudice from both Huma and Gajuma. Sometimes, a Cool Big Sis like her does need a pat in the back...
 * Karol from Tales of Vesperia. He's an unlucky coward whose crush hates his guts and . He's such a coward, he was fired from every guild in the book. His hero, Don Whitehorse, . Everyone except the main characters seem to hate his guts. Even Troy Baker, Yuri's voice actor, says he's annoying. He needs some more love, people!
 * Estelle becomes this when . To the point where she outright.
 * turns out to be one, too. He lost both his unrequited love and his own life ten years before, was revived for the sole purpose of doing the Big Bad's dirty work, has an honest-to-God deathwish, has, and ends up fighting the friends he's made, where he is left to die with them by and sacrifices himself to save all of them..
 * F.E.A.R.'s Man Behind the Man (well, 'Girl'' Behind The Man in this case) is Alma, who spends most of her time making your comrades' flesh boil off or sending flaming killer ghosts after you in your dream sequences, so sympathy for her might not seem all that forthcoming...until you learn just what Armacham Technology Corporation did to her.
 * The best part about all of this?
 * The Woobification hits truly epic levels with the final hallucination, where  Damn, man. Just... damn.
 * Project Origin manages to take an already powerful Woobie and cranks the woobification past eleven. At one point, there's a hallucination showing Harlan Wade ordering a pair of massive, fully-armored ATC soldiers to haul her to the Vault, and she's shown being violently dragged away, sobbing and clutching a teddy bear.
 * And that place where they were dragging her away from? Her Happy Place, which so happens to be a withered old tree and swing set that's sandwiched in the corner of a muddy concrete ditch that seems to be part of the facility's sewage system.
 * There's also a scene in Wade Elementary where Alma attacks Beckett, and he fights her off. Immediately afterward, Alma is standing in front of him, and staring at him with this horrible mixture of sadness and fear. She starts curling up into a ball on the floor, and whispers  in this pained and saddened whisper that just breaks the heart to hear.
 * The second game is testament to her status as the woobie because she is still considered one even after, which would normally be considered a Moral Event Horizon. This is because all the trauma she's gone through has left her so utterly broken that she is incapable of normal behavior. She doesn't understand why Beckett is rejecting her when it's her actions that cause him to see her as a threat.
 * And, uh, Michael Beckett is going to need a lot of therapy after the end of Project Origin. You can't even give this man a hug because, chances are, he won't respond well to being touched for awhile.
 * F.3.A.R shows Beckett as being quite insane. As in, "DON'T TOUCH HER! I'LL RIP OUT YOUR GUS AND WEAR THEM AS A HAIR-NET IF YOU DO!" insane. Poor guy. Then it gets amplified even further when the Point Man and Fettel reach him, as Fettel  Fettel's commentary while this is happening doesn't help, as he notes that "This man is an empty shell" and "All he wants is to forget."
 * Another Type Moon example: Kohaku. Hisui, also, to a lesser extent; in fact, the "lesser" is partly Kohaku's doing, ). In fact, depending on the route and the player, this might qualify for any of the five heroines (and Satsuki)...but Kohaku most of all.
 * Satsuki is the Chew Toy. Len and Nanako however are legitimate examples. The biggest woobie in Tsukihime is however  This will not make the slightest bit of sense until you've beaten every route of course.
 * Wally, the little ginger pirate wannabe from the Monkey Island series. He actually had a scene where he is stranded on a raft and his monocle falls in the water, he then falls in trying to retrieve it; this was taken out because the developers felt so sorry for him.
 * Sasha Nein from Psychonauts is a popular target of Woobification among fangirls, primarily due to the fact that he  He's also emotionless. Some fans then assume lifelong, unhealing trauma, and run with it from there.
 * It's not that he's emotionless. He's just not very emotional. He clearly has affection for Milla, a borderline hatred for tackiness, and is obviously angry as hell when he encounters the Big Bad near the end of the game. Which may only enhance his appeal to fangirls...
 * How could you put Sasha without also mentioning Milla? The
 * Or Coach Oleander, whose father, a butcher, seemed to show him no love and even took his favorite pet bunny and butchered it in front of him.
 * Or Ford Cruller, who lost his sanity in a psychic battle and can't remain whole outside of his underground lair
 * One might think deep psychological trauma is the root of attaining psychic powers.
 * The asylum inmates - the three whose headspaces you enter after getting inside the main asylum, anyway.
 * Fred used to be an orderly who tried to cheer up a withdrawn patient by challenging him to his favorite board game... and, much to his frustration, lost repeatedly. Which was upsetting, yeah, but nothing serious. Until he was suddenly "possessed" by his ancestor, Napoleon Bonaparte, trying to whip him into shape for being a loser, knowing perfectly well that he'd developed a Split Personality and was at war with himself but unable to do anything about it. And when Dr. Loboto "takes over" the asylum, he gets the inmate who'd literally beat him at his own game mocking him from a distance, watching him argue with himself.
 * Gloria was the daughter of an actress trying to groom her little girl into a star, sending her away to a brutally strict and abusive boarding school thanks to her bastard of a boyfriend. Said bastard of a boyfriend also deliberately prevented the many letters she wrote to her daughter from reaching her, way to give Gloria intense feelings of abandonment. When she grew up, Gloria did become a famous actress, outshining her mother, and had a happy, thriving career up until learning that her mother committed suicide and going schizophrenic.
 * Edgar was a nice and respected guy in high school and star of the wrestling team with a wonderful girlfriend with whom he was madly in love. When she dumped him for a male cheerleader, he completely lost his focus and screwed up in the middle of an important match and lost his team the state semifinals, causing all his former friends to turn on him, the reason he turned into more of an obvious Sensitive Guy, avoiding everyone and taking up painting but finding himself unable to do anything but obsessive-compulsively paint bullfights, thanks to a metaphor for his own life coming from his nickname on the team being the Bull. Evidently he also developed mood control issues, that or he already had them.
 * Marona of Phantom Brave. Her parents are dead, she lives alone and the whole town fears and hates her for her ability to summon ghosts, even while hiring her to protect them from monsters. She maintains a sunny disposition in public, but when alone in her bedroom at night she cries her eyes out.
 * Carona, an Alternate Universe version of Marona has it even worse. While Marona at least has Ash to protect her from the worst of it and give her a shoulder to cry on Carona never had that. She is utterly alone, forced to become an Oxide just to survive and.
 * Ill Girl Castille's family have spent thier entire life savings on her expensive treatments. Now both her parents  are forced to spend the entire day working to make ends meet. Because of this she is forced to spend her entire time stuck in an empty house with hardly any kind of contact with the outside world.
 * While quite a few characters from Animamundi: Dark Alchemist end up with surprising and sympathetic development that gives them a touch of Woobieness, poor St. Germant fits the trope right down to the E. Despite being completely kind and sincere (and let's stop beating around this shonen-ai bush: cute) - or perhaps because of such - he's arguably the most tormented soul of the entire game, subjected to such horrors as.
 * And then there's Dashwood. Sure he starts out as a smarmy and suspicious, but try to watch his Villainous Breakdown after  with a straight face. And let's not get started with his route endings...
 * Most characters in the Harvest Moon series are too happy (or at least content) to qualify as Woobies. The exceptions include:
 * Cliff (Back To Nature, Mineral Town): Broke, jobless, and his beloved sister died while he was traveling. Reacts so strongly to any kindness, you wonder about the stuff he doesn't tell you about.
 * Griffin (DS version): If you marry Muffy, once she starts obliviously gushing to Griffin (your rival for her), you'll want to break up with her just to apologize for it.
 * Muffy (DS Cute): Perpetually loveless, and always breaking up with men, you'll often find her turning to you for comfort whenever her love life fails her. If you pursue her Love Interest, Griffin, and marry him yourself, she'll never find a permanent love interest. She'll be jumping dates forevermore...
 * She's even worse in the "Wonderful Life" series.
 * Flora/Carter (DS/Cute:) While they're two different characters, they go hand in hand because they're a rival couple. Lots of guys were excited that Flora was finally marriageable in DS, and so pursued her. What's so bad about that? What becomes of Carter, that's so bad about that. Not only is he obviously heartbroken when you and Flora break the happy news to him, but now he's all alone up there in that drafty old tent in the mountains with naught but some old statues for company. Doing the reverse in the Cute version is just as bad. Now Flora's heartbroken and alone, and even has a brief panic about loosing her job. She gets to keep it, but one gets the impression she's not enjoying it as much now that the Professor is off-limits.
 * Mist (Rune Factory): If Hannelore owned a farm in a fantasy medieval world...
 * Celia (A Wonderful Life/Special Edition): She's usually a Pollyanna, but she's engaged to someone she doesn't know, and she is in love with you from the moment she meets you. Try getting her last heart event, where she confesses to you, and say no. Or cheat on her, and not marry her.
 * Keria (DS/Cute): Unable to speak and trapped hundreds of feet down underground for hundreds of years,.
 * Leia(DS/Cute): She's a mermaid, far from home, inside a tank, too kind to leave the person who saved her. Just try to befriend her, and then not befriend/marry her.
 * Lumina (AWL/SE): A stressed, Lonely Rich Kid who doesn't want to disappoint her grandmother. She meets you, and eventually thinks of you as her big brother. She falls in love with you, but you could not marry her until Special Edition. Just try and watch her cry, and run away, when you become married, without feeling horrible.
 * Nami (AWL/SE): At first she's just a distant Kuudere Walking the Earth. Then as you become closer to her, you learn that her father is a jobless alcoholic who leeched off of her income whenever she had a job, and she's traveling the world in a desperate attempt to avoid going back to that, even while running out of money. At one point, her cold shell cracks and you actually see her cry.
 * The two girls that you didn't marry in AWL both get the woobiness cranked up even further. Celia gets forced into an Arranged Marriage she didn't want and becomes a bitter man-hater, trying desperately to smile and failing. Muffy spends the rest of her life as a single waitress, and you can find her crying on the beach at night over losing her chance at having a family, the one thing she wanted most in life. Nami runs out of money and has to go back to live with her parents, and when she comes back later she spends all her time Drowning Her Sorrows at the bar. AWL is, without a doubt, the darkest Harvest Moon game to date.
 * The main character's sister, Theresa, from Fable. Over the course of her life, she gets Ouch.
 * The second game gives us Sparrow, a Broken Bird who begins as a young orphan living on the streets with his sister Rose. After making a wish they are taken to Lucian's castle, where he kills Rose and tries to kill Sparrow, who is saved by a gypsy who had set up Rose's death in order to give Sparrow a need for revenge. Later, Sparrow is forced to work in Lucian's Spire for over two years as the people there try to Break the Cutie. A banshee might torture Sparrow over Rose's death, then near the end after Lucian kill's Sparrow's dog and tries once again to kill Sparrow, ends up a kid again in paradise with Rose, who finally was able to provide the perfect life for her sibling. In order to defeat Lucian Sparrow must abandon this life, and a traumatic Rose. God. Damn. Someone give the kid a hug.
 * While one would not think him so, Ben Finn from the third game definitely gets a Woobie-esque moment where you all just want to give him a big hug. This moment?
 * Abe from Oddworld: Abe's Oddyssey. Completely defenceless, luckless little guy. Munch from the following game too, though not so much Stranger. It helps that Oddworld Inhabitants are a big fan of Ugly Cute.
 * Stranger's had it pretty bad himself.
 * If from Professor Layton and the Curious Village doesn't count, she should.  which disturbed her for obvious reasons.  All her friends were . In the end,  Her Happily Ever After was  Less serious, though, is that  That detail makes her more hilariously and adorably pitiful instead.
 * Unfortunately, she becomes a Creator's Pet in the sequels, undergoing no character development besides actually solving a few puzzles. This troper didn't want to hug her, but instead see her become less of a stereotypical female princess character.
 * While she does get little character development in the sequels, Flora only gets to take a grand total of one plot-important puzzle, she gets in The Diabolical Box, Layton actively tries to leave her behind in her first appearance in Unwound Future, and it's implied that she's got major issues with being left alone. She does act like a "stereotypical girl" sometimes, but she's still fairly easy to feel sorry for.
 * from the sequel, Professor Layton And The Diabolical Box, is played more straight. Quite frankly, this troper finds it amazing he held on to any sanity at all.  If you can play through the last act without without at least misting up you have no soul.
 * in Unwound Future takes the cake.
 * Arianna from Last Specter. Let's see... her parents are dead, everyone hates her family, she's, everyone thinks she's a witch because of  , and she doesn't even get her inheritance because  . It Gets Better over the course of the game, but she still has to deal with.
 * You've gotta feel sorry for Mega Man X. Not only is he the progenitor of all Reploids (and therefore Mavericks), he's also the one best equipped to hunt them down and kill them, and thus feels duty-bound to do so even though he hates violence. Fate hasn't been kind to Zero either, but he's a Jerkass, so it's not so bad.
 * Zero has a Jerkass Facade because of the things that made him a Woobie in the first place. Come on,, and
 * WHAT AM I FIGHTING FOR??!! That is all.
 * Let's not forget that Zero is the originator of the maverick virus. The existence of X and Zero allowed the continuation of Wily and Lights feud for centuries. If they'd never have existed, Wilys evil would have died with him. Light, Wily, X and Zero are literally the four most important individuals in the world, and all but Wily feel responsible.
 * And as it's been mentioned X feels duty-bound to do what he's doing. Until he used his body to reinforce the Dark Elf seal and Copy X was made, Neo-Arcadia was a place of Peace for Reploids and Humans to live together, and he ruled it. For all those years he was able to stop forcing himself to be a Technical Pacifist and ruled as a peaceful leader. People complain that he was Emo in X7, but that is the end result of an Actual Pacifist forcing themselves to be a Technical Pacifist.
 * And when Zero sealed himself it's implied that he did not let himself have a break, that he would not let himself retired like he did in X7, and it hit him hard, to the point he started to adopt part of Zero's own Jerkass Facade and Blood Knight tendency, no longer caring about the enemies he fought. To see X, the one of two Mega Man that had a mental Age high enough to understand what peace truly was and what was needed to achieve it, go so against his belief is just...lip quivering inducing.
 * Although she wasn't hit as harder as X or Zero above, Ciel would also qualify. In two separate occasions, she thought that she was doing the right thing, but it only ended up giving rise to worse problems. The first one would be for creating Copy-X, and we all know how that turned out. The second time was successfully researching an energy source that she believes would put an end to the war, only for it to be a catalyst to a new conflict. Mind you, this is a person who longs for peace as much as X, and she is very young at the series' start, and also human. And, then there's the fact that, at series' end,
 * And then there's Elpizo. Lets see, sentenced to assassination for accidentally stumbling on some secret files? Check. forced to flee for his life from the city he grew up in? Check. Being appointed leader of the Resistance, but lacking the willpower and patience needed to effectively run it? Check. Getting more then half the Resistance slaughtered in a disastrous attack on the local fascist government and being wracked with guilt over the debacle? Oh god, double check. Is it any wonder he snapped?
 * Myris from Odin Sphere. I dare you to watch her cry with a straight face.
 * Gwendolyn too. Fighting battle after dangerous battle just to win the affection of your father is one thing, but then  is just unfair. To say nothing that she watches her sister die right at the start of the game.
 * Pretty much all the protagonists (except maybe Cornelius) and Ingway fall into this. Love is not kind to you in the world of Erion, regardless.
 * Except maybe Cornelius? Are you kidding? . It's "all the protagonists period".
 * Phantasy Star Universe has a class of enemies in the free mission Bladed Legacy. They are young beast women who sort of act like Magical Girls. They are known as 'Wikko' and they sound very cute. It's too bad that you have to fight them and kill them.
 * Every character in Silent Hill 2.
 * James: Went mad because he killed his terminally ill wife after their relationship collapsed due to her becoming more and more cynical as she got sicker, and was forced to watch a clone of her die. REPEATEDLY.
 * Eddie: Bullied and tormented his entire life until it finally drove him utterly psychotic. ** Angela: Physically and sexually abused by her father, told she deserved it by her mother and finally forced to kill her father to protect herself, destroying her sanity.
 * Laura: Spends her whole time searching for Mary, not knowing until the end that she's dead. ** Maria: Brought into existence solely so that she can die over and over to punish James for his sins.
 * Heather from Silent Hill 3 and Alex from Homecoming.
 * Let's elaborate on Alex:
 * Harry from the first Silent Hill. Was happily married to a wonderful wife, but said wife becomes terminally ill. They didn't have children of their own, but find an abandoned infant girl on a trip and raise her as their own, naming her "Cheryl". Harry's wife eventually dies, leaving Cheryl as the one good thing left in his life. And then Cheryl goes missing during their trip to Silent Hill, Harry goes to hell and back (literally) desperately searching for her. He runs into the crazy antique dealer Dahlia, and Cybil the police officer, who's actually a decent person, but . And Lisa....just...Lisa. . And even if you get the "Good" ending, it's a bittersweet one, as  Damn.
 * Probably Alessa, too, although she falls somewhere between this and another trope.
 * Same for Walter from Silent Hill 4. He's much further into the second part of the Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds title than Alessa, but still... Long story short, . Completing the final boss fight comes across as a relief, and if you really feel for him while you're playing even though he's been spending the entire second half hunting you, you might even crack a sad little smile in light of the story that Henry finds not long before. If you remember it at the time, it suggests he dies happy.
 * Cheryl in Shattered Memories.
 * Travis from Origins.
 * Oh my goodness, the Ace Attorney series. First, there's Miles Edgeworth who  Then there's Detective Gumshoe, a lovable kind-hearted character who is constantly getting his salary cut and often whipped by Franziska for simple mistakes, some of which are not even his fault. There's also Maya Fey, who was  and the only family she has left is her young cousin, who is herself a bit of a woobie as well. Not to forget Adrian Andrews, Ron DeLite, Vera Misham, and still others.
 * Players may feel particularly sorry for Adrian Andrews because
 * Let us not forget Franziska, who - it is implied - has become this sealed-off whip-wielding Ice Queen due entirely to, as well as some kind of complex re:Edgeworth and a fear that  . There's a reason why fics dealing with her tend to play on this angle.
 * Vera Misham seems to be the biggest Woobie of all of them.
 * Will Powers, a lovable, gentle children's entertainer who just happens to have a very intimidating look about him and has to wear a mask in all of his roles because of it. Framed for murder of a guy who had intended to frame him for a different murder. The circumstances of said murder cause the show he stars in to be cancelled.
 * Lauren Paups, desperately in love with a rich boy
 * Acro in the much-hated Case 2-3: a former acrobat and Friend to All Living Things orphaned at a young age and adopted by the circus owner, now confined to a wheelchair and unable to leave his room by himself after . And to make things worse,.
 * On that note, how about  Yes, yes, I know
 * The entire Fey clan is a big ball of misery and suffering. Especially Maya and Pearl.
 * And Betrayal, don't forget Betrayal.
 * And no list would be complete without mentioning Maggey Byrde. As she states in each appearance, she's been experiencing a string of bad luck since she was six months old, when she fell off the balcony of her ninth-story apartment. In-series, she's been (wrongfully) accused of (at least) three murders, been on trial for said murders twice (three times if you count one retrial), and even convicted of one (though that one eventually was overturned). In addition, she's lost her job three times, each time as a direct or indirect result of a murder accusation. And that's just part of the bad luck we get to see for ourselves.
 * Also, at one point in the final case,
 * Phoenix Wright himself counts. Everyone, literally, EVERYONE takes advantage of him at the end of each game by making him pay for expensive meals, cameras, and the like. . Someone give this man a hug.
 * That's not even half of it. How he is still able to be a good, determined, and unbreakable man, let alone SANE, after all this crap is nothing short of a MIRACLE! He needs A LOT of hugging!
 * It gets better!
 * So many from the Valkyrie Profile Series:
 * In the first game, many of the Einherjar. Understandable, since you only meet them when they're dying.
 * The biggest, though, is someone who survives the game. Celia is the last survivor of a mercenary group that was like a family to each other, and most of whom end up as your Einherjar. Her biggest scene is when she goes to confront the one other survivor, who she believes killed his lover. The whole scene is set up as if it's her recruitment scene, only for you to get that other survivor instead, and the last you see of poor Celia is her just utterly breaking down in despair as the very last connection to her happier times is taken away from her.
 * Yumei was considered one of the bigger Tear Jerker moments. spoiler:She was half mermaid, despised by her mother's people and was all alone after her mother died. So she decided to look for her father. Along the way she falls in love with a boy naemd Fuyuki, and they exchange a talk about what they'd wish about if they found the Lapis Lazuli, a gem that grants wishes. When they reach land. Yumei finds out that not only is her father dead but he's had many other families. This is her [[Despair Event Horizon, and she finally runs away to commit suicide, but Fuyuki sees her mermaid form before she leaves and says goodbye to him, her tear forming a Lapis Lazuli. Fuyuki picks it up and says,
 * It gets better!
 * So many from the Valkyrie Profile Series:
 * In the first game, many of the Einherjar. Understandable, since you only meet them when they're dying.
 * The biggest, though, is someone who survives the game. Celia is the last survivor of a mercenary group that was like a family to each other, and most of whom end up as your Einherjar. Her biggest scene is when she goes to confront the one other survivor, who she believes killed his lover. The whole scene is set up as if it's her recruitment scene, only for you to get that other survivor instead, and the last you see of poor Celia is her just utterly breaking down in despair as the very last connection to her happier times is taken away from her.
 * Yumei was considered one of the bigger Tear Jerker moments. spoiler:She was half mermaid, despised by her mother's people and was all alone after her mother died. So she decided to look for her father. Along the way she falls in love with a boy naemd Fuyuki, and they exchange a talk about what they'd wish about if they found the Lapis Lazuli, a gem that grants wishes. When they reach land. Yumei finds out that not only is her father dead but he's had many other families. This is her [[Despair Event Horizon, and she finally runs away to commit suicide, but Fuyuki sees her mermaid form before she leaves and says goodbye to him, her tear forming a Lapis Lazuli. Fuyuki picks it up and says,
 * Second Game: The Einherjar again, though that's mainly in their character bios. More obvious is Alicia, a princess that was disowned for something that was not her fault and later had to watch her father being executed. Minutes later, her kingdom is destroyed, and she learns her mother committed suicide.
 * Spin-off: Aside from the main character (who lost his father and his sister, while his mother went insane. Later he kills his best friend by accident), there are some, but probably the woobiest is Darius: Given up for adoption, came back to his 'real' family and was not accepted, and later either kills.
 * Don't forget Rosea and Lieselotte. Initially students of the palace Archmage with promising futures, they were both banished when the Archmage was mysteriously murdered one night (with evidence that cast suspicion on the both of them) and left to wonder the land.
 * Liesel, however, is far less sympathetic than Rosea and is really more of a Jerkass Woobie. she does reform in the "B" path.
 * Rosea perhaps ends out the worst - in Path C, she And she's one of the nicest characters in the game, beware the nice one aside
 * Polka from Eternal Sonata. Because of the myth that her fatal illness is contagious, most members of society treat her like a leper. People don't even bother to thank her when she uses her magic to heal injured people because being able to use magic is possible only if you're going to die soon. In spite of it all, Polka is still a good person who wants, more than anything else in the world, to simply help everyone she can while she still has the time.
 * You know Grave is gonna have it hard when he's the lead character...and he's also "dead". He's lost pretty much everyone he ever knew and loved, as well as almost all of his emotions and memories, and was forced to kill the man who was once his closest friend. The one bright spot left in his "life" is Mika, the daughter of the woman Grave (when he was Brandon) loved but could never be with, and said daughter . And the time he spends with Mika is always short—since he's already dead there's next to no chance of him "living" a normal life with her. Sure he's known as "The Killer Without A Soul"....this troper still wants to hug him. The anime series really makes you just feel sorry for the dual-wielding zombie killing machine.
 * The lack of dialogue makes this highly reliant on Alternate Character Interpretation, but in Yume Nikki, Madotsuki's dreams (which make the entirety of the game) are filled with nightmares that may or may not be indicative of a past involving isolation, gender identity disorder, neglectful or possibly abusive parents, and possibly rape. Any of which may help explain why she refuses to leave her room when awake.
 * Within the dreams themselves, there's Masada, who plays the piano on a spaceship, and generally seems to be very lonely in space, and is completely harmless to the player, and is easily one of the least threatening looking characters in the game. He will also run from you if you equip the knife. Whilst many characters do run from you if you equip the knife, Masada is easily the most obvious in this behavior, and looks terrified when doing so, thus often being assumed to be the only one who does so.
 * Akinari Kamiki from Persona 3 AKA the Dying Young Man social link. Suffering from a terminal illness, poor Akinari just has the strength to wait for you at the bench by the shrine every Sunday. He is so jaded from living in a world where he is destined to die that he suffers from depression, and uses reading and writing as an outlet. He writes a story about a bird and an alligator that starts out happy, then gets sadder and sadder.
 * And among the main characters, there's Mitsuru, the ostensible Tall, Dark and Bishoujo leader of SEES. At first she seems to border on an Emotionless Girl, but once you learn about her tragic childhood, her underlying vulnerability and concern for everyone else, and as her current woes continue to pile up, she becomes more and more of a woobie character. Just try not to wish you could hug her whenever she strikes her sideways glancing, clutching one elbow and about to cry pose. Oh, and
 * Plus there's an offhand comment about her being "forced" into the whole situation with the Shadows and SEES, which doesn't help matters.
 * Fuuka and Ken as well. Fuuka is small, sickly, and frequently bullied. Her low self-esteem and obsession with pleasing people are implied to be the result of emotional abuse by her parents. Ken's mother was killed when Shinjiro lost control of his persona. Ken then dedicated his life to killing Shinjiro, with the intention to commit suicide afterwards. Junpei, who grew up with an alcoholic abusive father, falls in love with a girl . Akihiko, an orphan who lost his sister in a fire years ago, causing him to become obsessed with power, thinking that he could protect anyone if he were strong enough..
 * Most of SEES are woobies. Then the PSP remake comes out, and the female route woobifies the last guy you'd expect to be a woobie. Shinjiro Aragaki. While he puts strong front, he's a sentimental and tender guy who worries for others like a distant brother, and is willing to give up his life to fix his mistakes. In the social link he warms up to the heroine (whom he's hinted to have fallen for), and entrust her with protecting SEES. Now that's sweet and all but maxing it out leads to a not so happy conclusion. He also has the distant sideways glance, and when you examine it closely, you realize he's crying. Ouch.
 * Ken also becomes Woobie-er in the female path. Going on dates with him reveals that she's the only reason why he has a reason to keep living, and he seems to be aware of  It wouldn't be surprising if he went back to being suicidal.
 * Ryoji Mochizuki. Befriends SEES and is a happy-go-lucky Handsome Lech.
 * Ai Ebihara from Persona 4 goes through a remarkable transformation from Rich Bitch into this should you develop her Social Link far enough.
 * After getting through a large percentage of the game this editor just wanted to give Naoto a BIG HUG. Every play through I always make.
 * Hello? Naoki is this game's true woobie. As the brother of the first victim, Saki, as if his sister's death was not enough, his neighbors now shower him with unwanted pity, his friends are too sorry for him now to be as close to him, and people in general just treat him differently. Towards the end off the social link, Naoki even considers dropping out of school. It makes it worth maxing out the social link when he thanks the protagonist for hearing him out, and taking the time to hang out with him.
 * Really, a good percentage of the S.Links are good Woobie material. Hisano Kuroda, for example,
 * Yumi Ozawa, one of the two possible Sun Links. Her story starts out relatively light, then hits a Drama Bomb when her Disappeared Dad comes back into her life via hospitalization. As her mother drops everything to care for the man who abandoned them for another woman, Yumi is left to pull their household together and cope with her massive amounts of resentment at having to seemingly sacrifice everything for somebody who never seemed to give them a second thought before now. Then.
 * Yosuke is essentially Junpei with a bit more likability and Wobbie material. a guy who is bored with life in a small town. He is often picked on by other girls and is always on the Disproportionate Retribution side of Chie's rage as a result (from physical violence to humiliation). On a more serious side, he often viewed himself as inferior to the main character (Something Junpei never got a chance to voice to Minato in his lack of Social Links) and is the one most heavily hit by the murders as Saki's death gets to him the most when he finds Namatame and Adachi.
 * Hell, how about
 * NANAKO DOJIMA. Her mother died when she was very little, and her father has slowly grown more and more distant. She's forced to be very independant, and is very, very lonely. Later, she gets a "big bro" in the form of the protagonist, but The fact that she's The Cutie does not help.
 * Naoto Shirogane's a gifted and famous detective brought in to help solve the murders in Inaba. The problem? Nobody on the force will take Naoto seriously, seeing Naoto as Just a Kid and getting in their way, something that Naoto is very much aware of and frustrated by to the point of desperation.
 * And Persona 3 and Persona 4 are both a flower-filled meadow in comparison to some of the stuff the Persona 2 cast goes through. That in itself is a pretty sad statement, but given the nature of Atlus's Mega Ten games... The biggest Woobie label goes to But that's not even going into some of the crap the other characters go through.
 * Also in Eternal Punishment,
 * And did you think the first game are all happy and sunny? Think... again...
 * Maki Sonomura/Mary. A bedridden girl forced to stay in the hospital near damn everytime with her mother constantly at work, which caused her to hate her mom.
 * Kei Nanjou/Nate Trinity is the snotty pragmatic guy who even suggests most of the sadistic choices. But when it comes to it, he's a shining example of Lonely Rich Kid with his butler Yamaoka/Alfred as his constant companion (and embarrasses the hell out of him).
 * Name anyone in BlazBlue who's not a Complete Monster and you probably can count most of them as somewhat of a Woobie. Let's see:
 * Ragna the Bloodedge: Getting his beloved sister snatched away, his arm chopped off by a ghost while his little brother only watched in glee, his home burnt down and gotting turned into a half-vampire in a span of one frigging day? Oh, how about when you realize he's destined to destroy the world, get destroyed and repeat the event over and over and over? And at the end of the 2nd game, how about
 * Jin Kisaragi: Getting ignored by his big brother? Getting adopted to a family that alienized him and made him an outcast despite his excellent prowess? Is destined to kill his beloved brother so much it drove him crazy? Well, he's more of a Jerkass Woobie, though... But still a Woobie.
 * Noel Vermillion: Hoo boy. Let's start with how she's ridiculed for having nearly non-existent breasts. Then, she gets picked on a lot by her superior Jin, because he doesn't like her face... Then she realized that she's a clone of Ragna's sister, thus her memories wasn't hers. As if things couldn't get worse, her best friend Tsubaki gets assigned to kill her, . Worse of all? She got Mind Raped by the resident Complete Monster and turned into a weapon of mass-destruction that wants to destroy the world...
 * Rachel Alucard: While she does act like a stuck-up bitch, it was quite depressing that she is forced to watch countless of depressing time loops, unable to do anything directly but to observe, encouraging several people to do the job for her. And when they get out of the loop, there's your Complete Monster trying the damndest to stop her from achieving her goal to set things straight, no matter what...
 * Taokaka: and, in her Continnum Shift ending in Story Mode,
 * Iron Tager: Man died during the war of Ikaruga, got rebuilt as a cyborg by a cranky cat lady (Kokonoe) and must swear loyalty to her and put up with her crazy antics. He also had to watch his friend (Arakune) go crazy, and his other friend (Litchi) go off to save him, but he can't do anything as a friend since he's too duty-bound on his master.
 * Litchi Faye-Ling: Failed to prevent his friend to become a monster all thanks to experiment, and saw nobody even trying to help him to the point of having to corrupt herself with the thing that turned him into a monster to find a cure, only to find out that she couldn't make progress. Geez!
 * Arakune: Normally a decent man with inferiority complex... which led him to seek the impossible... and driven mad with it, turned into something really freaky thanks to some tinkering from the resident Complete Monster, and worse of all, he wanted to warn his lover to stop pursuing her and he couldn't get his point straight.
 * Bang Shishigami: Had to watch his homeland burn, his master killed and spending his time as an eternal Butt Monkey or The Chew Toy, never to be taken seriously. There's also the fact that he just cannot succeed in earning Litchi's love despite his well-meaning, and
 * Carl Clover: Being the son of the worst father of the universe will do that for ya. Is forced to live as a vigilante at such a young age since his father killed his sister and turned her into Carl's 'imperfect' doll and became devoid of emotions at that time. While he did find some 'consolation' in form of Litchi,  And who did that? His father. Again.
 * Tsubaki Yayoi: Starts with getting assigned to assassinate her best friend Noel and her beloved 'brother' Jin. It just got worse when she was told that
 * Lambda-11: How would YOU feel if These things are also some of the BETTER experiences in Lambda's life. Yeah... It isn't easy being a Murakumo unit, is it?
 * No it is not. See Nu, the emotionless robot girl who was doomed to guard the gate to cauldron in CT. When she meets Ragna, she gains the irratic emotions of a clingy love stricken girl with yandere tendencies, and is one half of the Black Beast, while Ragna is the other half. She wants to love him, but her programming wants to become the Black Beast by fusing with him and becoming complete. After she dies, her parts are used by Kokonoe to rebuild Lambda-11. Oh and there are still more woobies to come.
 * And do we have to mention her too? Oichi in her Sengoku Basara incarnation is the personification of Woobiedom. She is the little sister of Oda Nobunaga, here being a completely demonic Evil Overlord who cares nothing about her and whenever possible, uses her to his own advantage. Marrying justice loving Azai Nagamasa doesn't get her condition better (unless it's his story you're playing) as in her story,, all in front of her, then Nobunaga forces her to fight his battles, killing his enemies and not even listening to her begging to stop, eventually resulting her falling to her dark powers and enters a murderous rampage on Nobunaga and his allies, and when that's over, she regained her sanity a few moments before the burning temple where she's at fell on and killed her. And in the anime? It's just 5 episodes, and then right in front of her eyes. Ouch, ouch, and ouch.
 * It's not exactly better for her in the third game, where she's a Humanoid Abomination that's barely aware of her surroundings and is treated with fear and contempt by almost every other character save for a few. While she does get a Throw the Dog a Bone moment if she ends up following Ieyasu (who decides to be her caretaker), the storyline where she ends up becoming Yoshitsugu's attack dog is not all that different from the above. The path where she defeats her brother and drags him to hell could be seen as better in that it's the ending where they both find some sort of peace.
 * Sakura of Fate/stay night. She also happens to turn into a more vindictive state out of insecurity and jealousy of her sister. There are several other somewhat less drastic cases like Ilya as well.
 * Alex Roivas from Eternal Darkness. She spends the entire game thrown into a battle she never expected and reliving the nightmarish horrors of her ancestors, up to and including her grandfather's brutal murder. And this was after losing her parents in a car accident, a fact Pious uses against her during select bouts of insanity.
 * And she doesn't even hold a candle to some of the other decent, normal people thrust into a living nightmare by the Ancients. What about Ellia, who only wanted some excitement in her life  Or better yet Anthony, whose only goal was to serve his king and got a vital chance to do that after   Brr.
 * Alex & Ellia, & Anthony. In fact, with one exception, . That one exception is the biggest (literally) woobie in the game, Max Roivas,
 * Schiele from Romancing SaGa
 * The Touhou Project has several woobies among its ranks:
 * Hong Meiling's popularity is mainly due to how badly she's treated by the main cast, especially Sakuya. On top of that, people keep calling her China.
 * Cirno is a bit cocky in the earlier games, but is often mistreated and ridiculed, partly because she's a fairy. A particular example occurs in Unthinkable Natural Law, in which Cirno is significantly less cocky and more intelligent than in previous games. While looking for the Daidarabotchi, Cirno asks Marisa is she's seen anything, and Marisa tells her she's seen what she's looking for, but won't tell her because she's a fairy. This results in a fight between the two, which Cirno wins. Afterward, Cirno rightfully demands Marisa tell her where the Daidarabotchi, to which Marisa purposefully misleads her into a boiler that nearly gets her killed.
 * Reisen Inaba's woobie-ness is often played for comedy in fanon. In canon, she's also subject to lots of Punishment Time by Eirin, and constantly gets pranked by Tewi.
 * Kogasa Tatara is an unwanted umbrella who can't even use her powers to surprise people properly, to the point of wondering if her life has any meaning, and is often subject to bullying by Sanae. She tries her hardest to put on a cheerful facade but it shatters very easily. The most notable injustice she suffers is in the Wild and Horned Hermit comic, when she repairs Reimu's badly damaged weapons and, instead of paying her for her services, Reimu uses her newly fixed weapons against Kogasa and gets away with it.
 * In their own way, the Aki Sisters are also woobies in a few ways - to wit, they don't have as much faith as they used to have in the old days, so their powers are diminished; due to their comparatively smaller fanbase in proportion to the more popular characters, they're often forgotten; and then there's S Complex, which plays up Shizuha's woobieness to a heart-breaking degree.
 * And then there's the poor girl who Yuyuko Saigyouji was when she was alive, whose powers over death were too much for her to take, and were enough to drive her to suicide.
 * The fan manga Touhou Tonari cranks her woobie-ness up a lot.
 * Alice Margatroid is a very lonely girl with no one but her dolls to keep her company (not that it bothers her that much). Little wonder she's often paired with Marisa.
 * Being with Marisa is probably worse, though.
 * From the PC-98 Era you have Kana Anaberal, a poltergeist created from the mind of an insane human and was forgotten by her creator.
 * Byakuren Hijiri used to be a Youkai exterminator, but grew to love her quarry as much as the humans she was protecting, so she started covertly helping them hide away safely instead of killing them. She ended up imprisoned in Makai for more than a millenium for her troubles. Oh yeah, and her little brother died too.
 * Fujiwara no Mokou certainly counts. Her father was humiliated by Kaguya, and she wound up stealing the Hourai Elixir (and in the process, murdering someone who'd previously saved her life) and became completely incapable of dying. She's unable to exact her desired revenge because her rival is also immortal, and basically the only friend she's ever really had is a mortal half-beast... and she still gets picked on by the main characters in the Extra stage.
 * And of course, there is the Absolute Grand Champion of Touhou Woobies, Flandre Scarlet, a little girl with immense destructive powers she can't control in the slightest, so her older sister Remilia, whom Flandre loves with all her heart, locks her in the basement. For five hundred years (and counting). Expectedly, she not only still has the mind of a child but her grip on reality has been completely shattered, only wanting to play but barely even recognising that those she plays with tend to break rather easily. And she doesn't even get to do that, as no-one aside from Remilia wants anything to do with her, with even Marisa, who has fought gods and demons with irreverence, avoiding her entirely. She is the ultimate Woobie, as any attempt by anyone to give her a hug will most probably result in their death.
 * Frog/Glenn from Chrono Trigger has been through a lot, with the transformation to a frog and all, yet he handles it with as much chivalry and honor as he can. Somebody give him a hug.
 * Not to mention Robo. Beaten up by his "brothers", forced to kill his brainwashed girlfriend, committing final genocide on his "species"...
 * Not to mention Robo. Beaten up by his "brothers", forced to kill his brainwashed girlfriend, committing final genocide on his "species"...

"Legion: "There was a hole.""
 * Saria from Ocarina of Time tends to get the woobie treatment quite handily from the fandom, what with being an Unlucky Childhood Friend who "really liked" Link but couldn't grow up along with him due to being a Kokiri, as well as having to spend the seven years that Link spent in the Sacred Realm having to deal with a Jerkass who hated his guts and blamed him for what happened to the Great Deku Tree. And that's not even mentioning the fan speculation that.
 * It's possible the sheer popularity and fangirl following that Byrne gets in Spirit Tracks is down to this trope - he's easily the game's resident badass, but after he's well on the way to being considered an all-out woobie.
 * Zelda in Twilight Princess, for various reasons.
 * Let's not forget about Midna.
 * Lulu - along with the Deku Kid, one half of the personified proof that the worst part of the already in-many-ways unsettling Majora's Mask is everything they don't actually tell you.
 * Heck even Link can qualify at times. OoT/MM most definitely. To wit, as a kid he witnessed his mentor figure die and sets off on adventure to save Hyrule. It's all fun and games until he has to go into a Time Skip and find that Hyrule is under control of Ganon. Saves the day but thanks to Zelda, gets sent back in time to live as a kid again but thanks to what he's seen, how could he? Majora's Mask sends him through a mental torture session all for trying to find a friend he lost. And if he IS the Hero's Spirit in Twilight Princess...
 * Wind Waker. Link is about twelve. The game starts with his little sister getting kidnapped and just gets worse from there. And at the end,  Fuck you, King Daphnes.
 * And also when you think about what he's actually doing. Most of the time, he's got the burden of saving the whole world by himself. Once you start to think about that... it's a lonely job! You have to feel sorry for him!
 * Link is sisteen. Stated ingame.
 * Prince Tolten from Lost Odyssey.
 * Everyone from Lost Odyssey.
 * Specificly, everyone not named Gongora.
 * April Ryan from The Longest Journey. She grew up in a broken home, ran away as soon as she legally could, and is accepted to a prestigious art school... only to find out that Only to then find out that  It's no wonder she's so messed up in the sequel.
 * Nina from Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter. Whereas Nina is usually a princess in the Breath of Fire games, in this one she is a genetically altered orphan, designed to act as an air filtration unit (The poisoned air, of course, remains in her body), who had her tongue cut out. Dragon Quarter is not a happy game.
 * Not until the end, at least.
 * Trauma Center is essentially a medical drama, so characters of this type are to be expected to an extent, but Emilio Juarez is the biggest Woobie of them all - he was orphaned as a child, then kidnapped and used as a lab rat by a bio-terrorist organization developing Body Horrors until Derek came to said organization's base and surgically wiping out the ones that he was basically being used as a living habitat for when he was fourteen. Three years later, probably in a delicate physical state after all that to begin with, he gets sick from the aftermath of his Body Horror infection and needs two more surgeries, one of which is an organ transplant. And, wouldn't you know it, while he's convalescing in the hospital for what looks like finally the last time,  Oh, and did I mention that he's really rather adorable, in a waif-y sort of way?
 * Dana Mercer from Prototype. She is the only major character who is not evil or twisted (Ragland might count too). In her first scene, some Blackwatch asshole is about to blow her brains out. Alex saves her by punching through the guy's head right next to her. Things don't get any better for her. She finds out her brother has become a viral monster, she later finds out he eats people, and then . It gets even worse after The Reveal that At least
 * Several from Chibi-Robo!. Welcome to the Island of Misfit Toys.
 * Sophie is a Chew Toy, literally (for Tao, the family dog) and figuratively, whose subplot revolves around her obsession with Drake Redcrest. Long story short,.
 * Mort might be the biggest Woobie of the game. He's a perpetually melancholy mummy action figure who is in love with a princess doll. The object of his affections, sadly, scares easily, and so he's afraid of introducing himself to her on account of his grotesque appearance, and the flowers he picks to anonymously offer her wilt as soon as he touches them..
 * Sunshine the teddy bear has a very Does This Remind You of Anything? addiction to flower nectar and massive, uncontrollable withdrawal fits that turn him from perfectly cuddly to a Killer Rabbit.
 * The pleasantly bubbleheaded, lives-to-dance Funky Phil averts this. His admirer Dinah and not exactly acknowledged son Freaky Phil... not so much. To say the least, something always seems to come up to disturb the former's peace of mind, usually related to Phil, and as for the latter, he's the odd one out of his siblings, seems to be a little stupid, is somewhat implied to start off as not much of a dancer, and.
 * Giga-Robo and the aliens... don't get me started.
 * Aeka of Yume Miru Kusuri is the least popular girl at her school. The Alpha Bitch and her friends torment her constantly, humiliating her and attacking her with tasers. Her classmates refuse to get involved, the teacher ignores everything, and the main character's love for her is the only thing keeping her from committing suicide.
 * Aribeth de Tylmarande in Neverwinter Nights after the end of the first chapter, as her faith in her ideals and her trust in almost everyone is shaken or destroyed by . Possibly even more so in Hordes of the Underdark, after being executed for trying to pursue justice, and then being imprisoned as an icicle after attempting to lead a revolt against the archdevil in charge of the level of hell she was trapped in.
 * In the realm of fan-created modules, Alexandra de Velan of the Bastard of Kosigan series. Her lover was exiled, and she entered into a relationship with another man afterwards who had her beated until she miscarried once he discovered she was pregnant. Also an example of Beware the Nice Ones.
 * The player character in A Dance With Rogues, also known as "How much more screwed up can this girl's life get?"
 * Evanine and Persey of Tales of Arterra, the first a whose family was killed and who was forced onto the run by a stereotypical evil uncle, the second a succubus sold to a mortal who used her as the star attraction in a brothel and possessed of little or no concept of self-worth.
 * Persey's owner prior to that was even worse, an archmage who fell madly in "love" with her at first sight. He would alternate between madly worshipping her as the most precious thing in the world, and beating her severely for making him feel that way. The best thing he ever did to her was selling her to the aforementioned brothel owner, so she could get away from him finally.
 * Robin in Sanctum of the Archmage is something of an Iron Woobie, who has had to watch his/her entire family destroyed and his/her country taken over and oppressed, and who states more than once that if he/she lets go of his/her anger he/she won't have the strength to carry on. Also the player character, whose entire town was destroyed by demons in the prologue and whose surrogate father figure was killed by demons at the start of the opening chapter.
 * Knights of the Old Republic has Carth Onasi, who watched his wife and son die in an orbital bombardment ordered by a man who he had once counted a friend, and who he could have stopped earlier if he had believed that his old commander would actually turn traitor.
 * Actually, Carth's son Dustil is alive, but it gets worse because Dustil not only hates Carth and blames him for his mother's death, but he has joined the freaking Sith (you know, the people who actually killed his mother) and blindly defends them! You can help Carth and Dustil reconcile, but still...
 * Bastila becomes one during the endgame, after her shell is completely stripped away.
 * Mass Effect has a couple of potential woobies, or at least, as close as you can get to a woobie in Mass Effect:
 * Shepard, depending on his/her background, could have watched his/her parents die in a slaver raid, been an orphan raised on the streets, and/or the sole survivor of his/her previous squad. And the side-quests related to them are suitably traumatic. This doesn't list all the less then desirable outcomes of quests.  S/he's also treated as if she's nuts or lying by his/her superiors and in the second game, no matter how noble his/her intentions are, they AND some of his/her closet friends want nothing to do with him/her after s/he was forced to reluctantly work for a terrorist organization for the greater good.
 * Recently Shepard was forced to make a decision that
 * The third game ups Shepard's woobie factor a thousand fold. When others are not dying\killing themselves in front of him\her, or condemning him\her for what s\he's done, they're trying to tell Shepard everything will be alright. At the end, when the Alliance still calls on Shepard, s\he is just so tired, beaten, bruised, and probably bleeding to death and this is before having to make the ultimate choice and sacrifice to determine the fate of the galaxy.
 * Ashley Williams is constantly screwed by the higher ups
 * Kaidan Alenko.  He also has the L2 biotic implant, which gives him severe migraines, and it can potentially give him the crazy, and the game regularly reminds us that L2s and biotics in general are mistreated.  . Oddly, despite this, he's one of the more level headed squad members.
 * The sequel really ups Tali's woobie factor.  With all this, is it any surprise that one of the Paragon interrupts is to give her a comforting hug and let her cry in your arms? (Very nice of BioWare to put this in, considering that is exactly what a person would want to do when confronted with a Woobie. Now you finally have the option to do it in-game.)
 * Some consider the entire Quarian race as Woobies, considering the treatment they get and their involuntary vagrancy.
 * Quarian woobieness is subverted to some extent by their treatment of the Geth, explained by Legion. The actions of the Admiralty subvert it further and Tali loses a little of her own during her confrontation with Legion, depending on the outcome. Ironically, Legion gains a certain amount of woobieness because of seeming feelings of hero-worship for Shepard.


 * Jack in the sequel proves to be this in her personal mission, where
 * Where the hell is Thane? I mean, yes he's a Badass, but You can fix the last part, but still.
 * Liara. Let's see - she was born as a result of two asari mating, a major social no-no to her species and therefore ostracised and exposed to racism. She is very shy and asocial and became an archaeologist, spending half of her life alone on dig sites. She was always distant from her mother, even before Benezia joined up with Saren, and it's possible for Liara to witness In the second game, when reuniting with her, she seems to have gone through a major Break the Cutie event and has an almost obsessive vendetta against the Shadow Broker. However, if she is a love interest from the first game and through the comic series "Redemption", it is revealed that  The lengths she went to in order to help the man/woman she loves, cares about and misses are quite touching.
 * What about Garrus? In the sequel,  Even the yeoman Kelly says she'd just like to hold him and say everything's alright.
 * Don't forget
 * Aw hell, just go read the cast page, it'll be quicker. I don't know what the original poster was on: 'close as you can get to a woobie'? It's more accurate to describe a few (rare) characters as being 'as close as you can get to well-adjusted'.
 * About 90% of these characters, such as Shepard, Garrus, etc. could also be listed under Iron Woobie, as their Woobieness does not make them any less Badass.
 * Even minor, secondary characters get this. Take the nameless tank-bred krogan on Korlus. He's been alive for seven days. All he knows is how to fight, and his entire life consists of one thing: stand where you meet him, kill anyone who attacks him, and wait. That's it. He talks like a child and expresses his thoughts with complete innocence, but he's devoted entirely to the "purpose" he's been given - which was given to him by an insane krogan warlord who has discarded him as a failure. He refuses to move, instead just standing there until he either starves or the Blue Suns kill him. And the worst part is that you never get to see the poor guy's face, probably because if you did it would make the scene even more heartrending.
 * Minor character Talitha is composed of pure elemental Woobie. She was kidnapped at the age of six in the same raid that killed Shepard's parents (after witnessing her parents being incinerated), and then spent the last 13 years as a slave. To top it all off, she's one of the few Woobies in video games you actually get to comfort - do the "I Remember Me" assignment right, and you end up holding her, telling her that everything will be all right as a sedative takes effect. And you aren't lying.
 * If you helped her in the first game,
 * The volus you meet on Noveria that suffers from Survivor Guilt - the second game doesn't make it any better, as
 * Remarkably, the Collector General at the end of the second game comes across as one, as Harbinger releases his mental control and the bug-alien looks around with an air of quiet resignation as the base explodes around him.
 * David Archer in the Overlord DLC for Mass Effect 2. He was born with autism and
 * Reese Worthington of Backyard Sports. Tortured just for being a massive nerd.
 * In Baten Kaitos, it's only the power of love that stops Kalas from becoming a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. I mean, yikes, murdered little brother and grandfather, I'd have snapped too. Also Lyude, especially at the Phantom Goldoba, where all his past insecurities come back to break him down HARD. And then, to an extent, there's Xelha.
 * The schoolteacher Westin Phipps assigns you to torture in City of Heroes.
 * from Ar tonelico.
 * Quite frankly, almost all the girls from the Ar Tonelico series have MAJOR issues. There's a reason their suppressed consciousness reacts hostilely (aka, trying to kill) to any signs of attachment or affection. Ar Tonelico 3, however, gives Finnel special mention. The voice acting for her level 9 Dive is just....potent enough to punch a whole through the heart.
 * In the Quest for Glory series of games, theres Julanar in the second game, a woman who, because she wanted to be a healer, a profession forbidden to women, was exploited and captured and abused by brigands, who she escaped from by running through the desert and pleading to a djinn for help, who did so by turning her into a tree. The hero can help her remember her humanity, but it is said that she will not be able to turn back into a human until someone comes along who can love her enough, and that someone is not you. Although later in the series this subplot becomes a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, as after telling someone about her in the third game, you later meet him again in the fifth game, alongside the restored Julanar, who is now his wife.
 * And in the fourth game you learn what happened to Erana, the powerful mage and Friend to All Living Things whose work you have seen throughout the series. She ended up attempting to seal an Eldritch Abomination by trapping herself with it, damning herself to eternal suffering. The hero dreams about her pain if he rests near her staff in the town or in her garden at night. In the fifth game, you can choose to bring her back from the land of the dead.
 * Also in the fourth game is Tanya, a little vampire girl who just misses her parents and doesn't seem to realize why she can't come back to them as "they would be afraid of her now."
 * Left 4 Dead: The Witch just wants a hug... Or she's just a wangsty psychopath who tears peoples' faces off.
 * Most of the splicers in BioShock (series), particularly Rosebud, whose daughter was taken away to become a Little Sister; Pigskin, who is deathly afraid of what will happen to him if Mr. Ryan isn't pleased; and Toasty, who is loved by no one.
 * Eleanor Lamb in the sequel. An innocent girl raised to become the socialist Messiah by her mother Sofia Lamb, the first cutscene witnesses her seeing mummy forcing Delta, her Big Daddy to shoot himself at around the age of eight. Subject to multiple Plasmid experiments since she's immune to the side-effects of splicing. To say Sofia cares little about her as a person is something of an understatement as she's.
 * Samus Aran is a 6'3" (in armor) trigger happy bounty hunter who defines Badass. Why might she be on the list? Her parents were killed when she was 3, with her dad dying in a Heroic Sacrifice and her mom being eaten by Ridley, and was adopted by the bird-like Chozo only for them to be possibly wiped out. To make matters worse, the guy who killed her mother, Ridley, just won't die, and attacks another colony she is on, forcing her to relive the murder of her mother. When she mentally and emotionally shuts down and begs for death, you want to hug her. More than normal, that is.
 * Perhaps this is more an instance of a literal Iron Woobie.
 * Let's not forget about Metroid Prime 3, where Samus quickly strikes up a kinship with three fellow bounty hunters only for them to go missing by the time she's out in the field, having been overloaded with Phazon and controlled by Dark Samus, forcing Samus to Mercy Kill all three of them as Dark Samus escapes (all the while mocking Sammy's pain with an Evil Laugh). Or the baby Metroid that formed a bond with Samus in Super, designating Samus as its mother and then sacrificing itself to save Samus at the climax of the game, inducing a Mama Bear Tranquil Fury asskicking of Mother Brain from Samus. Or, her In fact, if you do some analysis on the events of Super, Other M (regardless of your feelings on the matter), and Fusion, it's not hard to view Samus as a Knight in Sour Armor afflicted with PTSD who is trying to recover from a string of Heroic BSODs and is this close to becoming a Death Seeker.
 * And in second place in the Action Girl compartment we have Aya Brea. Just watch her crumble in the trailer for The 3rd Birthday, and join the Give-poor-Aya-a-break-already-she-has-experienced-her-share-of-Eldrich-Abominations movement.
 * To be fair, Aya is pretty strong to cope up with her woobie-ness. But then, we have . Created as a Check. And in The 3rd Birthday,  Check. Lost her memories because of the incident and manipulated by the Big Bad with it. Check. People who help her during the game had to die . Check. Finally  And most of the gameplay you are forced to hear her wail or cry, or seeing her looking confused and lonely. Girl needs a terrible big hug.
 * Klonoa. So very much. A sweet, innocent young boy, he gets dragged into a desperate struggle to save the world through no fault of his own, is hunted relentlessly by the villains. watches his grandfather die in his arms after having his house blown up by The Dragon (the original "Phantomile" voice acting makes Klonoa sound really traumatized), discovers . It isn't even so much the game itself so much as the extremely depressing Fridge Logic when you realize that he is doomed to a life of eternal suffering and loneliness, and is powerless to do anything about it.
 * Cubone is pretty much the Woobie Pokémon. When a Cubone is born, the mother dies, and a Cubone then takes her skull and wears it. (Okay that's creepy at the same time, but still.) Cubone never shows its face to anyone, cries any time there's a moon at night, and the skull is stained with its tears. Poor little guy.
 * Except for captive-bred Cubone, we're at a bit of a loss of how to explain where they get their skull helmets from...
 * However, it is generally accepted that Cubone took up its mother's skull IN THE NAME OF VENGEANCE!, earning instant Badass credentials.
 * There's also Absol, who is known as "The Disaster Pokémon" for the wrong reasons. It can predict disasters and tries to warn people that they're coming, but instead the humans take it the wrong way and think that it brings disasters.
 * There's Feebas. Due to its hopelessly ugly appearance, not many people want to raise it.
 * Lyra of Pokémon Heart Gold and Soul Silver might count, if you consider how many people dislike her simply for having a substantially different character design than Kris. It's hard not to want to hug the girl after seeing all of the fanart involving killing or otherwise severely maiming her.
 * In the few days since it was revealed, the Generation V Water starter, Oshawott, has gained Woobie-dom across the fanbase. Those who don't despise it, anyway.
 * It gained Woobie status because some people despised it. Fandom is weird, oy.
 * That and a comic that portrayed Oshawott as the poor, neglected starter who just wanted to see the world but was neglected and never chosen until Hilbert came along.
 * However, it is redeemed a bit as its final evoltuion is a giant samurai sea lion thing with a Badass Mustache that can wields a BFS.
 * The fifth generation also gives us Yamask, a Pokémon who used to be human thousands of years ago. The mask on its stomach is its human face and it cries whever it sees it. Yamask's plight is exemplified by this picture.
 * It becomes Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds upon evolving into Cofagrigus, at least.
 * And Audino, a cute-looking Normal-type Pokémon that only appears in shaking grass, but provides a metric buttload of Experience Points. This means pretty much every trainer will go Audino-hunting sometime or another just for the Experience Points. To make things worse, a high-level Audino sometimes heals your Pokémon while you're beating it up. The recruitment office for Team Plasma is thataway.
 * In story, Wally and Barry (Damion) count. Wally is a sickly boy who wants to go on a journey but is too ill and must move to Verdanturf, the only town with clean enough air for him. Barry is a Keet who suffers Heroic BSOD when
 * Another Pokémon Diamond and Pearl character that falls under this is Volkner. Due to a lack of challengers to his Gym in Sunyshore City, Volkner leaves for the lighthouse out of depression. But once you talk to him, he'll go back to the Gym, and when you battle him and win, he'll be in high spirits again.
 * Pokémon Black and White gives us
 * To make things worse, Damn.
 * Though not quite on  level, it's hard not to feel sorry for Bianca at times - heck, the game makes you break her yourself multiple times. She went on a Pokemon journey despite his father's opposition, but she couldn't become a strong trainer and defeat you or Cheren no matter how hard she tried.
 * Heavy Rain. Oh man, where do you start? Half the cast deserves to get a hug after the crap they put up with in this game:
 * Ethan Mars. Goddamn, this game puts the poor guy through the wringer. The idyllic life portrayed in the prologue is shattered when his son, Jason, is . Then, depending on the decisions you make, Ethan can either be run over by a truck, caught by the police (during which he has to escape), get into a car accident, break two ribs and have his ex-wife accuse him of being the Origami Killer. This is aside from all the character's mandatory plot missions, which include crawling through glass, jumping through electrical transformers, running from the law and cutting off his own finger. Is it any wonder that the ultra-happy endings for his character involve him reunited with his family (and, if you save Madison, a better wife)?
 * Madison Paige. It really says something about a character when her first scene (albeit ) has her getting attacked and murdered by four knife-wielding assailants...and it only goes downhill from there, as (depending on the choices you make) you'll become a part of a fugitive's escape plan, get caught by a doctor who plans on using you for practice surgery, and are forced to strip at gunpoint in order to beat up a pimp. If you (and not ) survive, you'll find out that Madison's delusions have gotten worse, and it's only a matter of time before she goes insane...
 * Lauren, the mother who decides to help PI Shelby. If she, she'll eventually learn that was the Origami Killer, and either spits on his grave or shoots him dead in the street after he thinks he's gotten away scot-free.
 * Norman Jayden may have it easy compared to Ethan, but still, he's the cast Chew Toy - he's a stessed-out profiler stuck working to get to the bottom of a case in time to save a kid's life on a force that doesn't respect him and has him partnered with Lieutenant Carter Blake under mutual hatred, and very regularly ends up getting the crap beaten out of him or put in life-threatening situations by the leads he finds to he point that he lampshades it at Blue Lagoon if you stop to read his thoughts. If . On top of all of that, all the while.
 * Everyone in the Fatal Frame series.
 * Yes, even the hostile ghosts. One notable example is Chitose Tachibana from the second game. After one of her brothers is killed as a sacrifice, she watches the remaining brother fall into depression. Then the Darkness comes, and she's alone, terrified, and screaming for her brothers to help her. She spends most of the game running away from you and hiding in closets and the like, and when you finally catch up to her, she whimpers and sobs in terror throughout the ensuing fight. Poor girl...
 * Several characters from .hack series.
 * Elk from R1 games. . Ouch.
 * Atoli from R2, whose entire life has her gets kicked by (almost) everyone, including her own parents. And then Volume 2 happens...
 * Bo, also from R2. . The kid has his life rough.
 * Angela of Altena from Seiken Densetsu III. Yeah she acts like a brat but you also realize that she was neglected by her mother for years and most of those were because . Plus the beginning of the game  tries to kill her in order to obtain more power, though . Plus right after that she wakes up in a house and almost cries when she sees a loving mother with her daughter. Someone give this woman a hug!
 * Fire Emblem has at least one Woobie per game.
 * The Dark Dragon and The Sword of Light/Monshou no Nazo/Shadow Dragon: Chiki, Kashim, Maria, Nina, Yumina, Yubello.
 * Seisen no Keifu: Azel, Midayle, Tinny. Tiltyu after the events between the first and second halves.
 * Fuuin no Tsurugi: Wolt, Lugh, Rei, Sophia, Fa and post-game!Idoun
 * Rekka no Ken has a LOT: Lucius, Nino, Erk, Ninian, Nils, Eliwood, Florina, Guy, Kishuna.
 * The Sacred Stones: Myrrh, Artur, Neimi, Amelia.
 * You forgot Selena Fluorspar, a general madly in love with the when your party faces her she only follows orders because even though she knows he's different ((Myrrh even goes to her to explain it and Selena lets her go despite her probably making a good hostage which any of the other head generals would've done)) she's still loyal to him. When your main character tries to talk her down and get her to surrender she blatently refuses, being so loyal to her emporer that even though she know he's not himself she fights for him anyways. All due to the fact that her village was starving and hungry and was considering theft in order to survive before the emporer sent supplies to the village as aide.
 * Path of Radiance: Soren, Ilyana, Mist, Elincia, Reyson
 * Radiant Dawn: Pelleas
 * Kaori Yae of Tokimeki Memorial 2, very much so. The girl is so deeply hurt, depressed and completely closed to others after the cruel Break the Cutie moment she endured before the protagonist meets her, it's incredible that her parents haven't took her to a psychiatrist already. Seeing her gradually coming back to her former self through patient affection and care from the protagonist, thus turning her into a walking factory of Crowning Moments Of Heartwarming (and conversely, a powerful source of Player Punch if you fail to put her out of her Heroic BSOD), is what made her, with good reason, the absolute Ensemble Darkhorse of this game.
 * Think that Kaori Yae had it bad? That's nothing compared to the crap endured by Sophia Robelingue, the gentle and sweet heroine of Mitsumete Knight, one of the Spiritual Successors of the Tokimeki Memorial series. Let's see :
 * her father, a former Holy Knight,, and because of this fell into alcoholism (and since she loves her father very much, she's terribly saddened by his decheance) ;
 * because of this and also because Sophia's mother and brother are Ill Persons, the family is very poor and only holds on because Sophia works on a lot of hard-labour part-time jobs ;
 * she's estranged with her mother because her mother only thinks about her son's well being ;
 * she's forcefully fianced to an obnoxious noble she's not in love with in the slightest ;
 * the local punks seem to love picking on her ;
 * near the end of her storyline, by being at the wrong place at the wrong time, she  ;
 * and if you manage to get her Happy Ending,  Ouch.
 * Alyx Vance of Half-Life 2 has had it rough. When she was about three, aliens invaded Earth and killed her mother. She's spent all her life in the Resistance, fighting an Orwellian regime. In Half-Life 2, she has had her father captured, almost freed him only for a traitor to grab him, then get captured again when she tries to free him again. She is forced to reenter the Citadel to delay its impending explosion, had a train derail on her and dump her into a zombie-infested underground complex, then had to fight through a war-torn city to reach a train station. Then she is mortally wounded, revived and used to deliver a cryptic message to her father, then forced to watch him die horribly. Depending on events in Episode Three, that last one might have been a case of Break the Cutie.
 * And of course, she is clearly smitten with Gordon Freeman, who won't talk to her.
 * Hey it's not his fault.
 * The fact that Alyx Vance is still a functioning human being after all this is a wonder.
 * This song increases Gordon Freeman's Woobieness hundredfold.
 * Awwww, come on, Gordon's a Woobie! Look at him, the poor guy. He's just going to work like any other theoretical physicist when his entire workplace explodes, all of his coworkers die, and he's forced to battle his way up to the surface, where he has to face down trained soldiers, finally teleporting to another world so he can kill more stuff. And at the end of the day, does this hardworking scientist get a break? Nooo, he gets put into stasis for, like, twenty years, and then rewoken purely to defeat a new regime. He meets a girl that I insist he falls in love with and can't even tell her, has to fight for a resistance that he was never part of and has no reason to actually help, and basically finds out in the end he was just being manipulated by a mysterious entity that won't even reveal what on earth is going on. Oh, and after he escapes the mysterious entity's control, he still isn't his own man, because now the Vortigaunts control him. For someone with the last name "free man", he spends most of it under someone else's control. The poor guy's life completely sucks.
 * Warcraft's Jaina Proudmoore deserves a mention here. From her first appearance in Warcraft 3 her life has been a litany of tragic events, starting with the corruption of her former lover Arthas into evil, then the destruction of her home, and then finally, after learning that the Horde had reformed from its former monstrous incarnation, being forced to fight against her own warmongering father to preserve peace. And her other old friend, Prince Kael'thas, then turns up as leader of the Blood Elves. Despite her heroism at the Battle Of Mount Hyjal, helping to literally save the world, the Alliance continues to treat her as a junior partner and increasingly ignores her pleas for peace and diplomacy with the Horde. As a result, the detente she had fought for is in shambles, and she can only watch as hotheads on both sides reignite a pointless, genocidal war.
 * Unfortunately for her status as The Woobie, the fandom in general seems almost universally convinced that she's now shacking up with Thrall. Joke or no, it's hard to take her woobie-ism seriously as a result.
 * If she was before, Thrall's recent change of heart (and marriage as of Patch 4.2) to Aggralan pretty much puts Jaina back up there in Woobieness, anyway.
 * Hey, when you've been through what she has, you need a teddy bear. Hers just happens to be big, green, and capable of shaking a fortress down to its foundations.
 * In Dalaran, you can fish a golden coin she tossed into the wishing fountain with the tragic line: "Arthas, my love, please come back to me."
 * She spends the entirety of Wrath of the Lich King alternately trying to stop Varian Wrynn from going to war with the Horde and trying to stop Arthas from continuing down his dark path. And then at the end it turns out Arthas has remembered her all this time.
 * Speaking of whom, if you've ever read the novel Lord of the Clans, Thrall himself would've counted, if he hadn't, in the process, risen to become the abovementioned big green fort-wrecker and titular Lord of the Clans. His relationship with Jaina has a lot to do with her resemblance to the one other human who was ever nice to him, and what happened to her.
 * And just to show that Blizzard seems to love screwing Jaina, here's the news: That teddy bear of hers is going to get married to another orc. She did attend his wedding and there are some tears rolling from her eyes. Well, there goes her teddy bear leaving her alone...
 * But Wait! There's More!. So Blizzard announced a new expansion pack and the next thing that was announced was... Theramore destroyed. By the Horde under Garrosh. Way to make Jaina even more miserable than she already is, Blizzard! Hope you don't make her snap already...
 * Another female Woobie is Sylvanas Windrunner, the Banshee Queen. A heroic High Elven general, she led the futile defense of the elven kingdom of Quel'thalas. Despite great skill and heroism her forces were overwhelmed by the undead, and Sylvanas herself was tortured, defiled, and raised as a banshee, forced to massacre her own countrymen and innocent people. Despite having later won freedom for herself and a small remnant of undead rebels, she remains, at heart, deeply unhappy, loathing the monster she has become.
 * Bonus points since, in the Warcraft III campaign, the player controls Arthas as he kills and raises her.
 * Watch out though, cause come World of Warcraft Cataclysm, she's jumped down the slippery slope through the Moral Event Horizon straight to Complete Monster-dom for little to no reason other than the fact that she's Undead. It doesn't take much to see that, as even the well hated warmonger Garrosh Hellscream states the obvious that she is No Different from the Lich King.
 * Illidan also deserves a mention here. Essentially, his entire story derives from being unable to shake off the magic addiction of his people, which has driven him to betray his people multiple times, get imprisoned for ten thousand years, blind himself, consume an evil artifact, strike a bargain with a demon, flee from his home into the blasted world of Outland to escape from the consequences of that bargain, and, most importantly, lose the love of his life forever. You, as the player, hunt him down in the very last place he's managed to make his own and corner him long enough for the person who's hunted him all these millennia to find and kill him. Canonically, he's insane and totally beyond redemption, but is it any wonder he's one of the most Woobified characters in the entire series?
 * Just see this
 * Several quests in the game involve other Woobie characters. The tortoise Tooga, in the Tanaris desert, is one example. Sent out by his wife Torta to get dinner, he gets lost, and needs you to lead him home, while he says pathetic things like "I'm thirsty" and "Torta must be so worried!" When you do get him back to his wife, she simply scolds him for being late and sends him to catch dinner again.
 * The Darkspear Trolls up until now deserve a mention as a whole. Their entire tribal history is essentially a list of places they used to live and who drove them out until they were relegated to sleeping on Orgrimmar's couch. Come Cataclysm, however, they're officially done taking this crap.
 * Just about every sympathetic Broken character; and Farseer Nobundo—due, in no small part, to his sheer indomitability—in particular.
 * And for that matter, much of the Draenei race as a whole, whom the Broken devolved from. Pursued across the universe for centuries and hunted down to near-extinction by the Burning Legion and its minions, simply for daring to reject the temptation of its corrupting power.
 * The Oracles in Sholazar Basin are a race of simple fish-like creatures (think nicer Murlocs) who revere nature and only want to collect "shinies" to give the great gods, and are constantly attacked by the more aggressive Frenzyheart Tribe who are encroaching on their land and the Scourge, which wants to destroy all life. One particular quest sends you to an Oracle village that has been overtaken by the Scourge to try to rescue any survivors. The Oracles are dragged around attached to chains by these mindless zombie creatures and will give the most heart-wrenching dialogue when you talk to them:
 * And for that matter, much of the Draenei race as a whole, whom the Broken devolved from. Pursued across the universe for centuries and hunted down to near-extinction by the Burning Legion and its minions, simply for daring to reject the temptation of its corrupting power.
 * The Oracles in Sholazar Basin are a race of simple fish-like creatures (think nicer Murlocs) who revere nature and only want to collect "shinies" to give the great gods, and are constantly attacked by the more aggressive Frenzyheart Tribe who are encroaching on their land and the Scourge, which wants to destroy all life. One particular quest sends you to an Oracle village that has been overtaken by the Scourge to try to rescue any survivors. The Oracles are dragged around attached to chains by these mindless zombie creatures and will give the most heart-wrenching dialogue when you talk to them:

""In case you haven't caught on yet, everyone here seems to be some mix of the Fetish Fuel Station Attendent and The Woobie""
 * Garona Halforcen's whole life just plain sucks. She was born as an experiment by the orc leader Gul'dan to cross an orc with a draenei, implying her draenei mother was raped, and as a half-blood, was always an outcast in orc society. Gul'dan then magically aged and brainwashed her, telling her that she was half-human, and using her as a spy against the humans. Amongst the humans, she found a trusted confidant and lover with Medivh, only to be crushed when it turned out he was demonically possessed by Sargeras, and brought the orcs to Azeroth. She was manipulated by the Shadow Council to kill King Llane Wrynn, tortured by Ogrim Doomhammer to get the location of the Shadow Council, all the while pregnant to a son with Medivh, Med'an. Meanwhile, an ogre mage, Cho'gall figured out Gul'dan's brainwashing, and used it to take control of Garona, and tried to asassinate King Varian Wrynn, Prince Anduin Wrynn, and Warchief Thrall. Leaving Med'an with her draenei uncle, she is currently in hiding, waiting for a chance to kill Cho'gall.
 * Zevran and Alistair from Dragon Age: Origins.
 * Alistair can give it back to the main character in a specific scenario.
 * How about Cullen? As if that weren't enough,  Ouch.
 * The Warden his/herself.
 * A Human Noble's entire family except their brother (but including their nephew and sister-in-law) is betrayed and slaughtered by a corrupt noble.
 * If you decided to sleep with either a human male or a female elf, they will die before your eyes in the raid. The female elf has a daughter waiting for her in the alienage. She's a standard NPC who will comment that she is waiting for mother and how her mother promised she would bring back a present from Highever. Not being able to properly talk to her can be hearbreaking. Who knows how long she waited there?
 * A City Elf is living in a downtrodden ghetto when they or their bride is kidnapped for a Bann's rape party on their wedding day and in fighting to save themself/the bride have spurred the nobles to order a "purge" on their neighborhood,
 * The Dalish Elf loses their best friend while exploring and aren't allowed to look for him, being told it's hopeless as they were found horribly sick, and are drafted into the Wardens whether they like it or not to cure them (though they do find that friend eventually - he's a darkspawn who gives the Warden an Anguished Declaration of Love if it's a female before they have to kill him themselves)
 * The Casteless Dwarf's family is so low in the social heirarchy they're below the ladder with their sister forced to be essentially a prostitute and themself a Punch Clock Villain for a mob boss to support themselves
 * A Dwarf Noble ends up with nothing after their older brother ends up dead and their younger brother has them exiled for it]].
 * The Mage has it the easiest, and their life story is no walk in the park: he or she was taken away from his/her family as a kid (never to see them again), upon graduating from apprenticehood is lied to and betrayed by his/her best friend and left behind to certain death or Tranquility by said friend after everything falls apart. Once they leave, their home is destroyed and almost everyone they know killed or turned into an abomination.
 * Someone posted a comment on the character sheet page that summed it up:


 * Definitely Fenris from Dragon Age II. Though technically most of the terrible things which happen to him (such as being branded with lyrium tattoos and losing all his childhood memories) are restricted to his past and he does have a really shitty attitude at the best of times, you really have to feel sorry for him. But things get nasty when you find out that  And just to make things worse  Talk about serious family issues.
 * Just Fenris? Dude, have you seen the party? There's the main character, Hawke, who is forced to flee his home to one of the most despicable cities in the world and loses  over the course of the storyline; Merrill, the adorable, scatterbrained Elvish blood-mage who is demonized by her own clan for her experiments and bullied viciously by Fenris and Anders; Aveline, the hard-as-nails guardswoman who's forced to perform a mercy-kill on her own husband; Anders, the renegade mage who's driven mad by the corrupted spirit possessing him... in fact, the only people who manage to keep relatively light-hearted are Varric and Isabella, and they spend most of the game playing Team Dad and Cool Big Sis to the others.
 * Even Isabela's past is rather depressing and Varric There's also Sebastian...
 * Despite what he is, Giygas is this when you think about it, due to his nature as a Tragic Monster, as shown in MOTHER 1.
 * More specifically, fanon is that he was forced to fight against humankind against his will (that part might be considered Draco in Leather Pants material, Your Mileage May Vary). In canon, he had to fight Ninten, who in different circumstances, he would probably consider a son. Ultimately, he went insane from thinking about the family he used to have, and became the Giygas we know from EarthBound.
 * I guarantee you will not look at a chicken Mc Nugget the same way again. Also a Tear Jerker.
 * Katawa Shoujo has quite a few examples. Hanako is the most noticeable, but most of the main cast gets Woobie moments at one point or another.
 * Hisao Nakai, the protagonist. The game begins with him about to receive a Love Confession from the girl he's always liked, only to suffer a heart attack. He's hospitalized for four months, and after six weeks, his old friends and his love interest stop visiting. At the end, he ends up in an unfamiliar school, and his disability leaves him at risk of a heart attack if he overexerts himself or even has any strong impacts to the chest.
 * Emi Ibarazaki lost her legs below the knee in a car accident . Even though she has regained her ability to walk with prosthetics, she still suffers nightmares, and it's implied that part of the reason she runs is to banish them from her mind. Despite seeming outgoing and cheerful, she lets very few people close to her, for fear of losing them.
 * Hanako Ikezawa. Between the horrible burn scars, the dead parents, and the crippling social anxiety, you can't help but want to hug the poor girl. Even though she runs away in a panic when you first try to talk to her. Maybe because of that, actually.
 * Lilly Satou was left behind in Scotland with her sister Akira by their parents, and her relative maturity for her age is a result of having to become more independent as a result of Akira's shortcomings as a single parent (Akira admits that it's unreasonable to expect a 19-year-old to raise a blind girl alone)..
 * Rin Tezuka suffers from difficulties making herself understood in social interactions and art, causing her a great deal of pain. She also struggles with what it means to be an artist, and fears that she will change herself to someone she is not in order to succeed.
 * Shizune Hakamichi grew up with an abusive father who belittles her, has no respect for her accomplishments and refuses to learn sign language to speak with her. Despite her wishes to make people happy, she often comes off as overbearing and bossy, partly due to her Spirited Competitor personality and partly because of communication problems caused by her deafness.
 * Even turns out to be one. [[spoiler:She is in love with Shizune and confessed to her; she was rejected, but Shizune continued to seek her out for friendship, which only caused her pain. Things got worse when Hisao started becoming closer to Shizune,
 * The Companion Cube from Portal. Poor little cube, it was more than happy to help you and be an unquestioning friend through good and bad. It saved your life, had little hearts and was then forced into an incinerator. /tears
 * It is revealed in Portal 2 that
 * WHEATLEY. In the post-credits scene The worst part?  Valve cruelly  D'aww, Wheatley, you need a hug? C'mere...
 * Doug Rattmann. The man has dealt with being trapped in the facility, constantly evading the watchful eye of GLaDOS, and yet, the whole time, he manages to leave behind hints for Chell. He may have  But according to the drawings on the walls in Portal 2,   The only friend he has is the Weighted Companion Cube. He is alone.
 * "I'm different."
 * The frankencubes in 2, which are made from two turrets and a cube, are creepy, but you can't help but feel bad for them.
 * It has been recently revealed that the from StarCraft  kerrigan so now SHE wants to kill everything as well. Mental slavery followed by dying believing your one chance at redemption had failed? Thats just not fair.
 * The Kid. I mean, come on. He's only 15 years old, and he has to fight his way through spikes, fruit, giant monsters, and all manner of deathtraps in order to become the Guy. It takes a monster not to feel bad for the dozens of times he explodes into little bitty pieces.
 * Ted Smith from Dead Rising 2. He's an overweight animal trainer with an obvious mental disability, who has been mocked by people so often that he now considers his only friend to be a Bengal tiger named Snowflake.
 * Arcade Gannon from Fallout: New Vegas. Virtually every ending, including many of the "good" ones, still end with him either . He is also one of the few characters that is primarily motivated by a desire to help people.
 * Boone as well.
 * Also Veronica.
 * Lily as well. A loving grandmother before becoming a Nightkin, she treats The Courier as her own, despite the fact that the first thing you tell her is that you are not Jimmmy. Being a Nightkin, she also has schizophrenia that manifests itself in "Leo", a voice in her head that represents her Ax Crazy side as well as trying desparately to hold onto the last memories of her grandchildren.
 * Your Mileage May Vary, but this troper considers a woobie because of some of her lines. See "Will you love me if I help you hide?"
 * Muggy from Old World Blues. Oh, poor Muggy. Muggy is a miniature Securitron robot Dr O built just to channel his envy and hate for Robert House. Muggy is small, ineffectual and has no weapons, in comparison to the imposing standard Securitrons. He is programmed with a singular, all-consuming obsession with coffee mugs, and he's aware of this, too. He's in constant anguish over how he can't stop thinking about mugs. To make it even worse, the Think Tank later put their brains in floating robot contraptions that never drink coffee, meaning no more mugs for him. The other appliances mock him for his uselessness, and the biostation essentially raped him once. I tend to gather all mugs and plates I can find just so he can have a brief moment of happiness.
 * Jennifer from Rule of Rose fully earns the title of "poor, unlucky girl" that the narration pushes on her. By the time the game begins, And she's not even out of her teens yet. Many other cast members also apply, most notably Clara, but the Aristocrats all probably fit in the category of Jerkass Woobie in one way or another, as well.
 * Shin Megami Tensei has several of these:
 * Shin Megami Tensei I has your protagonist, who has his mom eaten, his friends (depending on route) die off or backstab him, the world literally ends despite his best efforts, and regardless of ending, the only compensation he really gets is walking off into the sunset with the heroine, which doesn't negate all the crap he went through.
 * It gets worse in the Neutral path. Both of his alignment friends end up hating his guts and resorting to trying to kill him (resulting in him having to kill him), both factions turn against him for daring to believe in balance, and by the end of the game he has exactly two active allies left: the heroine and an old man.
 * Shin Megami Tensei II's protagonist isn't much better off, as he literally discovers his whole life was a lie, his friends (at least some of them) will betray him or do a Heroic Sacrifice for him, and this is a game where YHVH himself hates your protagonist, and its implied that one day, he's going to screw you over royally for killing him. Again, walking off into the sunset with the Heroine doesn't make up for a lot of this, especially in the Neutral ending. Also, speaking of the Heroine, even walking off with her is creepy
 * Astaroth from both games is also a woobie. YHVH himself turned him from Ishtar (a beautiful woman) into Astaroth (a fugly guy), and even though Astaroth winds up working for Lucifer (who is actually not nearly as much of an asshole as YHVH), he's still depressed, as all he wants is to be his original self again. Thankfully, the protagonist can finally give this poor bastard a break in the second game.
 * The titular character in Iji, though it can veer into Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds at times...
 * How has Toroko from Cave Story not been mentioned yet? When the game starts, she's being aggressively harassed by the leader of the village for not turning over her only friend to basically be sacrificed, and it only gets worse from there.
 * Emil in NieR. His entire life is nothing but a long string of horrible events, but he still tries to remain cheerfully and innocently optimistic through the entire thing. You want nothing more than to just reach through the TV screen and give the poor kid a hug.
 * Everyone in NieR is need of a big hug. Even the Shades. Especially the Shades.
 * Dragon Quest series, even though is swarmed with Heroic Mime issue, have some:
 * Dragon Quest IV has Maya and Meena, a twin who wanders around finding their former master for the sake of Roaring Rampage of Revenge, and fails messibly at the end of their chapter with their friend doing a Heroic Sacrifice so they can survive the battle with the boss.
 * Also, we have Psaro's girlfriend Rose, a Mary Sue who's abused by thugs to death due to a a speciality of her tears. Psaro, despite his girl's last wish, ends up wanting to destroy the world, and he did. Fortunately, The Remake allows him to do a Heel Face Turn. The hero/heroine isn't good either. His/Her hometown is destroyed, and everyone includes his/her best friend is killed in his/her place.
 * Dragon Quest V has full of these with almost every playable cast.
 * The Hero's father is killed, her placed into slavery for many years, his home is destroyed, and ehen he's married, he's forced to saperated with her wife for another majot period of time as a stone.
 * A part of Character Development of a brat prince Henry involves him being kidnapped and enslaved by bad guys along with The Hero. Sure, he meets his girl that way, but still...
 * The original SNES Bianca will face a hellish life if you don't pick her as a wife.
 * The Hero's twin children are left parentless for years, and they're supposed to be parentless untill their adolesent ages.
 * Sancho's feeling guilty for the his master's death and The Hero's disappearance. Do not bring him anywhere near Whealbrook. His Woobie status will be pulled Up to Eleven when you do unless you're playing the original game.
 * Dragon Quest VIII has Princess Media, who's turned into a horse for the entire game, even if not, she's supposed to marry a Prince Charmless whom before the game event she has never known or seen.
 * David, one of the Living MacGuffin, is abused as a lowing servent, and is killed off by a dog possessed by Big Bad.
 * Angelo is a mild example. Orphaned at a young age, he ends up at Maella Abbey. The first boy he meets (his half-brother Marcello) is friendly towards him... until he discovers Angelo's true identity afterward and antagonizes him because of the harsh treatment their father put Marcello and his mother through. Thus, Angelo grows up as a gambling womanizer. And then he gets to be treated to the sight of Yeah... not cool. Even so, Angelo rises up to become a decent man in his own right, even going as far as to
 * Even
 * Believe it or not, Mortal Kombat, the series where it's your goal to see how many ways you can viciously maim, dismember, and mutilate your foe, is not without characters that are in need of a big hug.
 * Reptile. The last surviving member of the long-extict Saurian race (or at least he was until Khameleon shows up in Trilogy), he's nothing more than a hapless warrior serving the villains in the misguided hope that they'll restore his race to life. There's a joke among the fandom that if you don't off Reptile, his superiors will. He gets screwed over in almost every ending of his. In 3, he finds out that Shao Kahn had no intention of upholding their deal; Reptile kills him out of anger. In 4, Reptile defeats all of the heroes for Shinnok and Quan Chi. His reward? He gets his head blown clean off of his shoulders by Shinnok, who is not a god of his word. In the only fully canon ending of Deadly Alliance, His dashed dream of the revival of his race slowly drives Reptile into insanity, to the point that he reverts into his original form by the time of Deadly Alliance: that of a mindless, reptilian beast. Said beast also starts ragging on himself when he perceives himself to have failed his new master, the Manipulative Bastard Nitara. The only consolation is that
 * Smoke. Tries to escape the Lin Kuei with his best bud Sub-Zero. He's instead captured and forcibly converted into one of their cybernetic warriors. He's then programmed to hunt down said best friend (according to 9, the two are like brothers). The younger Sub-Zero manages to reach out to the soul of his buddy, allowing Smoke to regain control of his body, but somewhere along the way, Shao Kahn's extermination squads get to him and throw his deactivated body into Kahn's dungeons. Many years later, Noob Saibot finds Smoke's body and reprograms him to be subservient to him. It takes until Armageddon for Sub-Zero to bring Smoke back to the light.
 * Sareena. A self-loathing demon in the guise of a beautiful woman, she was once a part of Quan Chi's triad of female assassins and was defeated in combat by the Elder Sub-Zero. However (unlike her allies Kia and Jataaka), Sub-Zero decides to spare her. As such, she has a change of heart and comes to his rescue during his battle with Quan Chi. She then asks Sub-Zero to take her with him to Earthrealm, but before anything else can develop, Shinnok kills her... but not really. Sareena instead is dragged down to the Netherrealm in her demon form, where she suffers for an agonizingly long period of time. Around the time of Deadly Alliance/Deception, she finally finds a portal and escapes from her hellish imprisonment, where she encounters and strikes up an alliance with Younger Sub-Zero, the brother of the man who saved her life. Then, Sub-Zero follows Noob Saibot and Smoke into the Netherrealm. Sareena—despite Sub-Zero's urging—pursues him and saves his life as well, but the intensity of the battle against Noob-Smoke and the energy of the land causes Sareena to go mad and transform into her demonic form. However, her feelings for Sub-Zero are so strong that, rather than hurt him, she flees into the depths of the Netherrealm. She's intercepted by Quan Chi, Noob, and Smoke and Quan Chi brainwashes Sareena into believing that she cannot be a being of light due to her status as a demon. Sareena undergoes a Face Heel Turn, but is luckily freed from Quan Chi's grasp thanks to Taven.
 * Kitana and (surprisingly) Scorpion are Iron Woobies. More info about them can be seen on that page.
 * And to make things worse, everyone save for Shao Kahn, Shinnok, Taven, and Liu Kang's spirit dies in Armageddon, with Shao Kahn gaining complete control over all of the realms.
 * Then came Mortal Kombat 9 with its WMW (weapons of mass Woobiefication). Darker and Edgier Raiden (the Came Back Wrong Well-Intentioned Extremist version of Earthrealm's protector god) initiates a Continuity Reboot and sends a message to his past self with the hopes of preventing Armageddon, but things go horribly, horribly wrong. Even excluding the specific examples below,
 * Smoke? And this isn't even factoring in his ending, where he
 * Sub-Zero?
 * Kabal?
 * Kitana? She wises up to Shao Kahn's treachery thanks to Raiden's warnings, but
 * Oh, it goes more than that.
 * Raiden? Trying to decipher a vague warning from his future self to no avail, Raiden seeks the aid of the Elder Gods, who are callous assholes and turn down his pleas. Even though he manages to save the day at the last second, it is a major Pyrrhic Victory. Raiden, having crossed the Despair Event Horizon, experienced at least two Heroic BSODs, and now suffering from a massive Guilt Complex, handily blames himself for everything. Someone please give this man a Friendship.
 * If there's anyone who has it worse than Raiden, it's Liu Kang. He grows increasingly intolerant of Raiden's visions. He then watches as Poor Liu.
 * Alice: Madness Returns makes the title character out to be one a lot more than the original American McGee's Alice did. To wit - when she was 8 years old, her house was burnt down, killing her entire family,. And that's not even going into what happens to her in Wonderland... And in the end,, in what is the biggest Bittersweet Ending of forever.
 * Well, if it's any consolation at all, . All things considered, that was probably as much justice as she was ever going to get.
 * Fear Effect. Rain is very much this. Why? . Hana is an Iron Woobie and Glas is a Stoic Woobie.
 * Assassin's Creed II has an interesting antagonist example in Dante Moro. The loyal bodyguard of Silvio Barbarigo, who one day decided that he wanted Dante's wife for his own. Barbarigo's goons attacked him, stabbing him three times in the chest and once in the head, but Dante survived. Unfortunately, he suffered brain damage, allowing Barbarigo to convince him to sign divorce papers and continue to use the poor guy as Dumb Muscle. Making it even more tragic, there's a letter from his wife in which she says that she still loves him and hopes that one day he'll recover enough for them to be together again—which you find on Dante's body after you've killed him.
 * Although it's not obvious at first, Ethan, the quiet, axe-wielding amnesiac from Last Scenario, is badly in need of a hug. When he first joins the party, he says he doesn't remember much beyond the fact that he used to work for the Rosehart Kingdom, but was betrayed and imprisoned. This means many of the people he's fighting used to be his friends, but it's a bit worse than that. Even early on, he worries that maybe since the things he remembers most clearly are the ones he wanted to remember, the ones he forgot were things he wanted to forget; when a few things start coming back to him, you find out he was right.  All in all, his life kind of sucks. A lot.
 * Fiona Belli from Haunting Ground. The only companion she has is a white German Shepherd that is also a Woobie itself due to the excessive amounts of literal Kick the Dog moments.
 * The entire plot is best described as "Woobification: the Game".
 * Hephaestus in God of War III. Created Pandora, an Artificial Human, to serve as the key to opening Pandora's Box, and get roundly mocked by his fellow gods when he comes to love her as a father would love his daughter. When Kratos opens the box for the first time, Zeus punishes Hephaestus by cursing him with an ugly form, and sealing him away in a tiny cave in the underworld. The cave includes a portal so that his wife, Aphrodite, can visit him at any time, but she prefers cheating on him and 'entertaining' herself with slave girls to his company. When he learns that Kratos intends to sacrifice Pandora so that the box can be opened a second time, he tries to use a Uriah Gambit to save his daughter's life, which backfires horribly when Kratos kills him by impaling him on his own anvil. His final words are a desperate, sorrowful plea for Kratos to spare the life of his daughter.
 * Rosenkreuzstilette has quite a few Woobie characters as well.
 * Spiritia Rosenberg, The Heroine of the first game, is going around beating up her friends asking them to cease their part in RKS's rebellion and listen to her, and they usually don't listen until she defeats them (although some of them still refuse to listen to reason, even after their defeat, until a certain cute blond-haired girl in pink-and-white elegant clothing ). How do you feel for her that she ends up having to fight those she respects, including the now-undead Sir Raimund Seyfarth, and ? And then we have the part where . Tomato in the Mirror much?
 * The resident Butt Monkey (until she Took a Level in Badass in Freudenstachel, of course), Zorne Sepperin, is a moody young girl with a short temper who will not put up with anybody who messes with "Father". She has quite a tough life, seeing how she ended up in a situation that Graf Sepperin saved her from, and she has trouble understanding the meaning of restraint and ends up getting humiliated both physically and emotionally a lot. And what's more, she refuses to get along with, who later . And in Tearis,.
 * Grolla Seyfarth becomes this in her own Darker and Edgier side-game, Grollschwert. When humiliates her and makes her look like a traitor to all of RKS, Grolla has to put up with beating up her colleagues just to get them out of her way. Then she fights her undead grandfather in order to master Grollschwert, and after that, she, both infuriated and deeply hurt, declares that she will make Graf Sepperin pay for disrupting his peaceful slumber with his life.
 * According to her profile, Sichte Meister often frets about her troubled childhood that she had in the past, which leads to having trouble having faith in those older than her. Also, she becomes worried about Grolla when she leaves upon her telling her to lower her guard when she demands answers from . The reason Grolla left was out of knowledge that if she lowered her weapon, she would breathe no more.
 * Liebea Palesch. Oh, poor Liebea. Her brother Karl, and worse yet, Graf Sepperin told her that the Empire had taken him captive and that there was no hope to pray for his safe return. Liebea refused to take part in his rebellion because she was against it, but the Count managed to avoid her becoming an obstacle by imprisoning her at the top of the research tower, where it is said that she breaks down and starts crying like mad when people ask her what happened and ask her about Karl, and say things to make her get upset.
 * As for Schwer-Muta Casasola Merkle: Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds much? Before being placed in RKS's care, she ACTUALLY had to put up with subsiding in a barren, bestial environment, a trauma of her upbringing that burdens her to today, making her suspicious of everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, that she meets. She feels that her only friend is her pet squid Zeppy. When confronted, Schwer will declare either that the bonds that tie people together are nothing but an illusion or that everyone should just fall apart before fighting to kill whoever breaks their word.
 * And last but not least...believe it or not,.
 * The Girl of Asura's Wrath fits this trope to a t. Upon first meeting her all she is trying to do is protect the small infant, who may or may not be a relation. She is forced to watch helplessly as Asura defends her from Gohma and the armies of the gods. When he loses his arms in the fight against she desperately tries to stop Asura from continuing fighting, only for the player to be forced to perform a quicktime event to shove her away and run off to battle. She tries to follow but is unable to keep up. Later, she re encounters Asura and attempts to help him again but ultimately   Asura, upon recovering,   and flies into such a rage that his roar of fury destroys ships in orbit!!!The player is then treated to a wonderful sequence of fuckmurdering the people who caused it.
 * Asura himself is one of these. Underneath all of that rage is an unbearable pain that the world around him just won't let cease. What happens in Episode 12 is the greatest example: it was not only rage that drove Asura into his, but absolute despair, to the extent that rage was all he had left. You can hear it in his screams of anguish. It really motivates the player to stop Asura's pain as soon as possible by completing the game...only to find that   won't let Asura's pain end...
 * There are those who find Shirou from Fate Stay Night a woobie, though it's a little odd. In the present, his life seems mostly normal but as a child In the present, this has left scars on him that even he is only marginally aware of that drive his entire life . Whether or not this is truly pitiful is a matter of opinion: The manner in which he deals with his life is much more proactive than the standard woobie.
 * And there's Saber. Girl really could use a hug.
 * Sakura, who is probably the most woobie of them all, is This all comes back to haunt the cast in the route she is Heroine in, Heaven's Feel. Lets just say that karma is a bitch...