Break the Cutie/Video Games

"Isaac: Why are you doing this? Why can't everyone just leave me alone?!"
 * There's Atoli of .hack//G.U. She's already depressed and suicidal in real life due to being bullied and rejected by her "friends" and parents, despite her happy and perky online facade, and then  Of course, it did her good in the long haul, but still.
 * Marona of Phantom Brave gets broken, put together, then broken again throughout the game due to her ability to manifest ghosts, which everyone hates her for. Poor Marona...
 * For instance, in Episode 2,  Yeah, people don't like her.
 * Isaac Clarke, the protagonist of Dead Space. Granted, he is not a cute anime girl with big eyes and bright hair, but still, he is your average 40 years old guy trying to earn his salary and get some news about her former girlfriend on a supposedly routine repair job,
 * You can find even more breaking events in her bio, it seems his father abandoned him when he was young and his mother preferred to spend the money which could have been for his education in to buy a good position in the Church of Unitology.
 * In Dead Space 2, it obviously gets worse, and Isaac pretty much confirms the above example in a short speech early on:


 * Reversed (not averted) with Leliana from Dragon Age, although YMMV on this one. Introduced as a chirrupy religious type who's a wee bit bonkers but handy with a blade - then if you speak to her enough to raise her approval she eventually reveals that  In the DLC (only-just-canon), this breaks Leliana so thoroughly that she can barely summon the will to escape her cell, even   By the time you reach her in DA:O, she's had two years to start pulling her life together; and even that hasn't healed everything.
 * As if that isn't bad enough, her comes after her again in an effort to cut off all loose ends, absolutely certain (and absolutely wrong) that Leliana is working towards revenge. This little side quest is all it takes to completely shatter the life that Leliana had pieced together for herself and send her back into her old ways, unless you convince her not to.
 * There's also a good chance (and outright implication) that she was gangraped as part of the torture she went through. Break the cutie indeed....
 * There's also Alistair, an insufferably wise-cracking smartass who, overall, is a pretty decent and purehearted guy. At some point he learned that he has an older sister and asks the Warden if they can visit her.
 * Latooni Subota from Super Robot Wars Original Generation is a pre-broken cutie who was traumatized in the School, a Federation institute that turns children into pilots. . Over the course of the game she gets better, and starts making a full recovery. After the Divine Crusaders are defeated she becomes The Woobie.
 * In term of being broken, it looks like Latooni has been topped by Setsuko Ohara of Z, it starts off with her mentor and boyfried as a team at first but as soon as Asakim the evil alternative Masaki shows up. Things go downhill for her, her team gets killed, evil Masaki takes a special moment to physically abuse her a bit and presumably traumatize her with showing her dead comrades remains and she is only subjected to more abuse later on, even having to fight her seiyu's idol Kira Yamato a few times. To make things worse, she can't get back at Not-Masaki by killing him, because that's exactly what he wanted, killing him will give him satisfaction and ends her in defeat, so she either has to admit defeat by killing him, or let him live... and break her even further.
 * And her endings aren't exactly happy either
 * In Halo, the third installation, Cortana is captured by the Gravemind, and it tries to force her to give up information.
 * A computer program in ? That can't be good... I mean, she (it?) is a freaking computer program. Maybe Gravemind messed with her (it?) core programs, AKA  ?
 * Despite being a borderline Villain Protagonist, Kane from Kane and Lynch goes through this after  or  . By the time the sequel rolls around, he is a shell of himself, growing a Beard of Sorrow and generally looking glum. Not that Shanghai gave him anything to smile about.
 * In F.E.A.R., the cute and innocent one,
 * Imoen from Baldur's Gate. She starts off as a chipper and upbeat girl until
 * Needless to say, she's not so chipper or upbeat anymore. Although given that it's Imoen, that's relative to herself, not anyone else. As one character notes well after she's found all this out, she "reminds [him] considerably of a squirrel on a sugar high with a death wish."
 * In the middle of the "Throne of Bhaal", your party will encounter a wraith that impersonates Gorion and chews your main character out. While your character can take it, they will target the NPC your character is romancing and will proceed to break them down, hard. For example, if your character is romancing Aerie, the wraith
 * Aerie's background story in the first place: A sweet, innocent little winged girl is living happily with her parents in a wondrous city. She loves to fly, but one time she sees a group of humans being attacked by slavers on the ground. Her taught fear of earthborne creatures overcome by her empathy, she swoops down to rescue a fleeing child. However, she is shot down, captured, caged, sold into a circus, kept on display, and held in such a small space she has no room to move. Her precious wings become infected and are crudely chopped off to save her life, leaving her crippled both emotionally and physically, having lost her home, sense of identity and ability to fly.
 * Ah Planescape: Torment, where to start?
 * How about
 * An odd example is the Night Hag Ravel, somehow proving that even someone so incredibly creepy can be a Woobie.
 * Fire Emblem 4 has Tiltyu, a young thunder mage originally portrayed as a Tsundere-ish genki Rebellious Princess. But things start to go downhill for her when
 * Averted with Cheerful Child Nino from Fire Emblem 7. Having a manipulative, evil woman like Sonia as a mother would be enough to drive a little girl over the edge, but It Got Worse. Yet in spite of it all, Nino presses on and, despite having her small breakdowns, never fully gives into despair.
 * Ninian and Nils, also from Fire Emblem 7, are no slouches in this either.
 * Also averted with Lucius. Being orphaned at a young age, teased all his life for his feminine appearance, and mistreated by a teacher shaped him into... one of the most faithful and reverent characters in the entire game.
 * Pelleas. Holy SHIT, Pelleas.  It takes a LOT   to even get the chance to try rebuilding this cutie's heart.
 * Oichi in Sengoku Basara, in her story mode (she didn't break in other stories). Starting out as an introverted woman with casual dark powers, she got a very sadistic son of a bitch for a brother that is Oda Nobunaga, who tried to kill her, and then her husband Azai Nagamasa takes a deadly shot from Nobunaga meant for her. And then he forcefully drafts her into his army and makes her do many killings in his name, careless if she feels really guilty on the mass murdering. And she finally snaps, taken over with her evil side and kills her brother and his subordinates, all with a twisted Evil Laugh. She finally returns to her gentle self and cries over her atrocity, but even fate wants to break her. So, the ceiling in the temple where she killed her brother finally falls on her and the whole temple is completely consumed with fire, killing her.
 * This happens to Sera, the cute and innocent Mysterious Waif of Digital Devil Saga., her resulting emotional backlash causes The End of the World as We Know It.
 * This is basically what your character does, over and over again, to the remaining cast of Soul Nomad and The World Eaters if you choose the evil path. Usually with hilariously morbid results. The exception to this is Tricia, whose breaking (or pre-breaking, as it is in the evil path) is not particularly hilarious in either storyline.
 * Yukari Takeba and Mitsuru Kirijo in Persona 3. Mitsuru falls into Heroic BSOD after.
 * Lisa Trevor of the Resident Evil remake. Her mother is murdered with a virus and her father is killed by Umbrella after building the Mansion. Then Umbrella discovers that she is nearly immortal, and begins injecting her with insane viruses just to see what would happen.
 * She was broken even before that point, as Lisa was also experimented on with the Progenitor virus, breaking her mind to the point that she killed her own mother by tearing off her face, believing she was an 'imposter'. Thirty years later when she finds her mother's remains, she moans 'mother' before grabbing her skull and leaping into a bottomless pit.
 * From Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia, In the end, though, he seems to be just fine.
 * from Fate/stay night, as revealed in the game's final route, Heaven's Feel.
 * Iji does this to the titular character, who somehow, despite an increasing guilt complex, hallucinations, and one of the only two humans she knows isn't dead, remains sane... . Thankfully, this event isn't set in stone, in which case she remains sane. Ish.
 * Neverwinter Nights:   causes her to go from patriotic, god-loving Paladin to god-forswearing general of the Exclusively Evil Old Ones.
 * The above, while certainly not a high point for the said character, is only the beginning. So much for the Paladin's high will save...
 * And all of that doesn't even include all of the torments she underwent trying to rebel against Mephistopheles while in hell...
 * Lili from Senko No Ronde is such a case. Apparently having been given to a laboratory by her family prior to the events of the game she still acts rather cute at first. She's shy, very insecure and easily scared... until she battles Ernula and it triggers something within her, causing a 180° turn in her personality and transforming her into an insane, blood-thirsty killing machine obsessed with beautifully destroying everything she can. As she gains an utterly evil look and an insane laughter she first starts by just beating up foes until she eventually resorts to even attacking her own comrades to satisfy her urge to destroy. She returns back to normal though when.
 * Fatal Frame series take it bad, canonically giving all the female protagonists regardless of how much they had to go through. This is even part of the plot in the third game, , and because of that
 * Suikoden V. While the Godwins fail to break Lymsleia, the same can't be said of Miakis, given that  And we all cry with Miakis.
 * Final Fantasy VI: Terra starts out the game pretty much broken. Celes tries to commit suicide after finding herself alone (Cid is dead or dying then) on a deserted island.
 * The Final Fantasy VII Compilation seems to be one long telling of how they broke the character Cloud, glued him back wrong, broke him again, then fixed him for real. Sort of. Specifically, Towards the end of Advent Children his troubles are finally solved, however.
 * Final Fantasy VIII subverts this beautifully by having Selphie look at the graves of all her recently deceased friends at Trabia Gardens, and instead of teary mourning instead she talks to them saying how proud they would have been of her. Turning what would be a cliche Tear Jerker into a moment where you see her spirit will not be crushed. Many tears ensue.
 * In Final Fantasy IX, poor Princess Garnet suffers so many traumas in a short space in time that she goes completely mute for a good section of the game.
 * And let's not even start with Vivi. Finds out he's a prototype model of mindless magical soldiers, watches his own kind get killed or sacrificed like cannon fodder, and then learns that . No wonder he's The Woobie.
 * It's also heavily implied that his "Grandfather" was planning on eating him.
 * Zidane, too, surprisingly. His androgynous looks aside, he's The Cutie because he is relentlessly cheerful and upbeat throughout the entire game. The few times that his optimistic demeanor vanishes are usually when it's replaced with righteous anger, like upon seeing enemies slaughtering helpless civilians.
 * The above is subverted, actually. When he discovered the truth, Zidane
 * Silent Hill: Alessa. And Lisa Garland.
 * As it turns out, Walter Sullivan, though at the time of Silent Hill 4 his time as the Cutie is already way gone by.
 * Gwen from Guild Wars, you first meet her at the beginning of the first campaign Prophecies as a cute, cheerful and lovely little girl, soon after her (and yours too) hometown is destroyed by the Charr and Gwen's fate is unknown, until years pass and you meet her again as a young woman in the expansion pack Eye of the North, it is revealed that she was brutally tortured and enslaved by the Charr and she bitterly harbors hate and desire of revenge against them.
 * Tales of Rebirth had this done to Hilda Rhambling. First off, she's been branded as an impure because she's a Half-Human Hybrid, so she went out of her way to hide that fact, with Nice Hat and tearing up her horn. However, after a failure in her job, Tohma blew her cover away and gleefully boasted on how dirty she is. If that wasn't enough, later in the game, just when Hilda could have come to terms with her estranged mother, she made a Heroic Sacrifice in front of her, killed by Tohma, and after she realized she never once called her "mother" and she's now dead, she literally broke down crying. Truly one of Tales (series)' biggest woobies.
 * Not to mention Genis Sage from Tales of Symphonia. Where to even start? Perhaps with the Fantastic Racism against his entire race everywhere you go, including people wishing all half-elves would die... in the starting village, in the first couple hours of the game, to his face (if you have him set as the display character) or to the face of one of his few friends. It only gets worse from there:  all of which contributes to him getting more and more bitter about humans as the game progresses. And even with racism aside,   and the first half-elf friend he makes is actually   Someone really, really hated this poor kid.
 * from Chrono Trigger fits a sufficient portion of this bill, what with
 * Knights of the Old Republic subjects Bastila and Mission to this treatment. Most of Bastila's occurred off-screen, while Mission's experiences having her home planet glassed and her brother, the only family she had left, revealed as a lying scumbag give her a much nastier temper than she had at the beginning.
 * And yet, despite all of this, Mission is still one of the most pure hearted characters in the game, as is obvious in the scenes where and her attempt to bring you back to the Light if you go Dark near the end. She gets broken, but inevitably bounces back to her feet.
 * Unless you do go Dark Side, in which case.
 * Visas in the sequel, and arguably Kriea (assuming she was ever cute to begin with) are revealed as having this trope as a prime ingredient in their Dark and Troubled Past. Watching as her two "sons" fall into darkness and while one could probably get better, the other completely falls into the darkness. She tries to make things right by raising a "daughter" in the form of the Exile who could "fix" her by living up to her expectations and not make the mistakes her sons did.
 * I'd say Lyude from Baten Kaitos is a good candidate. Let's see... yes, he's real cute, he's got red hair, and a somewhat naive and/or innocent view on the world, claiming he stands for justice and all. I will try to explain best I can on the "Break the Cutie".
 * It always appeared to me that he had shaky confidence, but after he gets hypnotized by one of the Big Bad's men (not sure when it happened, but it happened), causing the group to lose a valuable Plot Coupon, he gets pretty depressed. To paraphrase his words "What should I do? I can't return to my homeland...but they used me. Manipulated my thoughts as a tool for their plans. Why would I even want to go back?". And his little bouts of depression don't stop there.
 * When we finally reach said big bad empire, we meet his foster nurse Almarde, and his brother and sister...only to see, in a span of not even five minutes, Lyude unable to return to his brother and sister's side (who were threatening him at gunpoint), and Almarde get fatally shot and die in Lyude's arms. And this is someone who supposedly is his ACTUAL mother! That's another blow to his confidence.
 * Finally, much later on into the game, we learn of a phantom ship with ghosts calling out to Lyude. When the group goes to visit said phantom ship, it's filled with the ghosts of Lyude's old friends and fellow Imperial solders. They constantly put the blame on Lyude, accusing him of betraying Alfard and leaving his former family and friends to die. The ghost of his former commander terribly chews him out. The ghosts of his older brother and sister very much start the breaking of Lyude, saying he was always hated by them and unworthy of their attention.
 * ... And finally... the  ghost of Almarde shows up herself, saying terrible things to him. Then she teams up with the former commander, his brother and sister, and tell Lyude that he is a coward and has no right to love or be loved by anyone. Poor kid breaks down and actually cries, asking through tears what he should do. The   Almarde ghost nearly pulls Lyude into the dark side...until   Cue a huge monster showing up, a monster that is a manifestation of Lyude's self-doubt, self-hate, low-confidence, and broken status.
 * In the Galactic Civilizations backstory, the Drengin do this to the Torians.
 * Kingdom Hearts does this to several characters, most notably Roxas and Xion. Roxas is a curious case in that he's broken and only to the player's point of view. He's established as a normal kid not unlike Sora who just has fun hanging out with his friends during summer until the Keyblade enters his life. Then 358/2 Days came out, and it turns out
 * Ventus starts as an Adorkable, cheerful little boy who "views every day as a new discovery".
 * Ienzo is introduced in Birth By Sleep shortly after his breaking, an adorable little boy lost and confused, not speaking out of depression and fear. To say he doesn't quite recover would be something of an understatement.
 * Unbelievable as it may seem, Big Boss of Metal Gear Solid 3 counts as a broken cutie. He starts the game with an adorable, almost geeky personality (he's afraid of cheesy horror films), and the events of the game put him through the wringer. By the end he's angry enough to turn his back on his country and plunge the world into chaos.
 * Oh, Otacon. Otacon, Otacon, Otacon. He's an Adorkable nerd-boy who loves all things nerdy and Japanese, is enthusiastic about his work, and genuinely believes in people.  This series might as well be called Metal Gear Horrible Things Happen to Hal Emmerich. It's to the point where the ten years of happiness he gets   between Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots feels almost like a slap in the face--"We're giving you a break from your horrible life. Enjoy it while it lasts, 'cause it's not going to last long!"
 * Speaking of MGS4, this is revealed to be in the backstories of all the Beauty and the Beast unit girls after they are defeated.
 * The traitor in Wing Commander II tries to do this to Spirit. She retaliates by blowing up the space station her fiance's life was threatened over, in an interesting way.
 * Poor Lucas from Mother 3.
 * Depending on the events of Half-Life 2: Episode 3,
 * The plot of Klonoa is basically one long, horrific Break the Cutie, with Klonoa himself as the unfortunate cutie.
 * Merrill in Dragon Age II has a lot of this in her backstory, and even more in-game, especially if you take the Rivalry path.
 * Mass Effect isn't nice on anyone and nobody makes it through the series without marks (literally with Garrus, who loses half his face in his case), but following the themes of the series, they all learn to cope with it. Because there really is no coice. Some have it worse than others, though:
 * While Liara takes the death of her estranged mother reasonably well, she is barely recognizable after Shepards return from the dead two years later. From a hopeful and socially akward scientists, she turns into a ruthless and occasionally mean leader of her very own spy ring with several added levels of baddass.
 * Kelly is probably the minor character for which Cutie is the most appropriate. In the third game you can find her again and she refuses to set foot on the Normandy due to PTSD, but she still manages helping refugees who had it as bad as her.
 * And then there's Talitha, one of the few minor characters that you can comfort, and given the utter hell she's gone through -- —she definitely needs it.
 * City of Heroes Mission Architect Arch ID: 266877....title: The Most Important Thing.
 * Pretty much ALL of the assistants in the Ace Attorney games. From Maya,, to Ema, Pearl and Trucy (forgive this troper, remembering just all of these deeds is a bit beyond her). It's just cruel.
 * The trope is actually invoked, by  (of all people!) in regards to
 * This may sound like a rather odd example, given his role and the system, but  of Dragon Quest IV surely qualifies, right? He's a humanoid demon with a lovely elf girlfriend named Rose, and generally a Friend to All Living Things, despite his heritage. Well, one day some enterprising merchants got a hold of Rose, based on rumors that her tears formed into valuable rubies, and being the profit-seeking humans they were, they took her into the middle of a field and brutally beat her. Needless to say,  isn't very happy about this, finding himself so overcome with grief that he kills the merchants. He responds by founding Rosehill Village, which is basically a tiny settlement around a huge tower he builds to keep Rose safe. It's at this point that   begins considering killing off all of humankind, but Rose begs him to give humanity a change to peacefully coexist, so he resists the urge. A fellow demon, Radimvice/Aamon, has Rose captured and killed to further his own fiendish plots, namely taking control of all monsters. Radimvice/Aamon is able to prey on  's trust of all monsters and claim that it was the humans that captured and killed Rose. This manipulation ends up sending   so deep into despair that , all to take revenge against the humans that had wronged him so. Even with all this, he's not quite an Omnicidal Maniac, since he still values the lives of just about everything else...you know, just not humans. (The DS and PS1 version adds a sixth chapter in which )
 * The asylum area in Psychonauts presents three long-broken cuties Raz has to fix from the inside to proceed. As follows:
 * Gloria.
 * Fred.
 * Edgar . Conscious anger management issues possibly unrelated or part of the package.
 * in Metroid: Other M. O boy, was she broken. Hint:.
 * A variation of this in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time involves breaking a large group of lovable characters called the Gorons. A peaceful, friendly group, they just want to live in peace and harvest their crops, but are content to welcome outsiders as well. However, when Ganondorf shows up and demands they turn over their spiritual stone, they refuse to do it and he punishes them by sealing off their primary food source. Later in the game, when Ganondorf takes over, he has several Gorons locked up in cages in the Fire Temple, and is going to feed them to a dragon as a warning to those who might oppose him. Once you get to the Fire Temple, you see the Gorons trembling in their cells, evidently terrified, begging for mercy, and not being given any. This is arguably the most likely candidate for Moral Event Horizon on Ganondorf's part in the entire game.
 * And then you get to march in there, save each and every one of them, and literally smash the dragon's head in with a shiny new hammer.
 * Ezio Auditore in Assassin's Creed II watched helplessly as his father and two brothers were executed as part of a conspiracy, and spent the next twenty years hunting down those responsible. It's painful to watch his transformation from the carefree, wise-cracking son of a banker into a revenge-driven assassin, and he only barely manages to avoid becoming just like his enemies. The execution scene is especially heartrending, because as soon as Ezio shouts "I'll kill you!", you know there is no going back to the way things were before.
 * Also, was shown to be killed in Assassins Creed Brotherhood in one of the flash-back missions.
 * Almost every, single, girl in Blaz Blue gets broken, reassembled by Hazama to his wishes and then possibly broken again for fun and profit, with the only exception being Taokaka who gets physically broken, unlike the others who were subject to Mind Rape.
 * In Makoto's notoriously nightmarish Bad End, Relius does this via prolonged and precision-guided Mind Rape. Makoto apparently does not survive the experience.
 * On the male end of the spectrum, there is Carl Clover, who witnessed his sister being turned into a machine by his father, and was scarred for life.
 * Ragna went through this in his backstory. He loses his home, his foster mother, his sister, his brother to insanity, and his arm—all within about five minutes, ten tops. He only survives the last one by unconsciously merging with the remnants of the Black Beast that become his new arm, and that causes even more problems for him.
 * Litchi went for two tiers. The reveal that the corruption was getting to her in a quick succession that she could effortlessly beat down Tager shocks her, but on the reveal that Kokonoe just plain refused to help her drove her further to the deep end, now knowing that the only one she could think of to help just plain refused her and left her to slowly wither and die. And then, the rest is taken care of by Hazama.
 * Rose. Poor, poor, Rose. She gets to meet her hero, and then she gets mind raped by the Big Bad.
 * Lux-Pain has, well, just about everyone in the main cast. Atsuki, Natsuki and Hibiki were broken in their backstories. During the game, this happens to two of the female leads: Mika, who was, Yayoi who   A few other Cuties, both male and female, end up snapping, like Akira, Sayuri, Yui, Honoka, and the list goes on. Forget curing Silent, that entire town needs one big hug.
 * Poor Guybrush Threepwood. He starts off as Adorkable and happy-go-lucky in Tales of Monkey Island, but then As if that wasn't bad enough,
 * In Nie R, Gideon from the Junk Heap is broken badly during the Time Skip by the death of his brother In the same game,  very nearly breaks after  but Nier, Kaine, and Weiss' unwavering friendship keeps him aloft.
 * 's Dark and Troubled Past in The Reconstruction has this, in spades. Possibly subverted, though, as it's part of the Backstory that is only revealed near the end of the game; most of what we see of him is after the fact.
 * Happens to as well, who, as, is quite identical to how  used to be.
 * In Fallout: New Vegas, this is a possible fate for Veronica Santangelo. A member of the Brotherhood of Steel who wishes that the Brotherhood actually uses their technology to help others, if she's encouraged to leave them and join the Followers of the Apocalypse, she'll be told to wait a day before they sign her up. One day later,
 * Jin from Dead Island. She starts as a Tomboy/Wrench Wench of unstated but clearly juvenile/young adult age. Her introduction as an NPC is occasioned by the revelation that her father was bitten by a zombie and has mere hours to live. She is a near-stereotype of the annoyingly naive Wide-Eyed Idealist (which has earned her no small amount of hate from online fans of the game). Then, in short order:
 * from Kid Icarus: Uprising goes through hell during chapter 18.
 * It gets worse.
 * Mercedes Marten from Dragon's Dogma. You are first introduced to her as the competent, and confident commanding officer of the Recruitment Corp, she even helps you repel a Hydra when it tries to destroy the encampment. However, it's when you get to meet the Duke that her insecurities show themselves.
 * from Kid Icarus: Uprising goes through hell during chapter 18.
 * It gets worse.
 * Mercedes Marten from Dragon's Dogma. You are first introduced to her as the competent, and confident commanding officer of the Recruitment Corp, she even helps you repel a Hydra when it tries to destroy the encampment. However, it's when you get to meet the Duke that her insecurities show themselves.