Dark and Troubled Past: Difference between revisions

[[File:tragicpast_8463tragicpast 8463.png|link=Peachi|frame|''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty|TRAGIC]]'', we tell you!]]

{{quote|''And the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."''|''The Narrator, '''[[Magnolia]]'''''}}

Female characters with a [['''Dark and Troubled Past]]''' include the [[Dark Magical Girl]] and the [[Broken Bird]]. Male characters with a [['''Dark and Troubled Past]]''' are instant [[Mr. Fanservice|bait]] for the [[Estrogen Brigade]] who have [[Draco in Leather Pants|bought him leather pants.]] Expect all nearby female characters to become afflicted with attraction to his [[Troubled but Cute]] appeal, and try to help him heal his heart. [[Don't You Dare Pity Me!|Not happening]]. [[Epiphany Therapy|Or maybe it will?]] Either way, [[Triphop Anthem]] is typically the background music that plays while the [['''Dark and Troubled Past]]''' is explored.

* Kenshin Himura from ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'' and ''[[wikipedia:Samurai X: Trust %26 Betrayal|Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal]].'' After the death of his parents, Kenshin (a child at the time) is taken by slavers, who are later violently killed in front of him by bandits. After burying the mutilated victims alone, Kenshin is resolute to “create a peaceful world where people could live without fear”. To accomplish his ideal, Kenshin trains with the master of the “Hiten Mitsurugi-ryū” (a fighting style so deadly that, to truly master, it means death to the teacher) and, at 14, became the legendary assassin "Hitokiri Battōsai”. {{spoiler|Kenshin goes into hiding years later and marries a mysterious woman named Tomoe for appearance only, but they later fall in love. After a series of events, Kenshin kills Tomoe unintentionally in battle. As Tomoe died, she gave Kenshin half of the X shaped scar on his cheek. Kenshin later finds out, after reading Tomoe’s diaries that he had killed Tomoe’s fiancé (a man who years earlier, gave Kenshin the other half of the X shaped scar) before he met her and she only married Kenshin out of revenge, but, after living together, fell in love with him.}} Broken and filled with remorse for killing countless people, Kenshin wanders off wielding a sakabatō or reverse blade sword. He is determined to never kill again and to aid those in need, as atonement for the murders he committed.

* Hiei from ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]''. {{spoiler|Being tossed away by your clan, brought up by bloodthirsty thieves who later abanndon you, and going through torture just to find your homeland only to learn that your mother committed suicide and your twin sister has been kidnapped by a sadistic psycho will make you be just a little bit dark.}}

* The entire main crew of ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' has this to some degree. Spike Spiegel used to be an enforcer for the Red Dragon crime syndicate, essentially Space [[The Triads and the Tongs|Triads]], only to fall out with them and his former best friend and fellow assassin Vicious over a girl named Julia, resulting in him [[Faking the Dead|faking his death]]. Jet Black used to be a cop until his own corrupt partner and best friend set him up and tried to kill him, though he got off with merely losing his left arm and needing a cybernetic replacement -- thisreplacement—this, after the love of his life dumped him for, basically, being too controlling. Faye Valentine lost her family, her memories, and her past after she was placed in cryogenic suspension after a space shuttle accident, and after she was revived, the one man who seemed to care for her "died"...and left her stuck with a debt reaching into the millions. Radical Edward's father was so absent minded that he was barely aware of her existence, so she spent her entire childhood wandering aimlessly in and out of orphanages and possibly over most of the planet. The only one exempt is Ein, the genetically engineered "data dog".

* In ''[[Baccano!]]'', there's Czeslaw Meyer, a young boy who, when his grandfather and caretaker died, was taken in by his grandfather's alchemy student, Fermet. A few years later, they become passengers on the ship the Advene Avis. {{spoiler|Cue both of them becoming immortal}}. Fermet's [[Complete Monster|true nature]] begins to shine through, and he starts experimenting on Czes, claiming it's for science. {{spoiler|This torture continued for the next two hundred years.}} The torture and abuse is only ended when Czes finally manages to {{spoiler|kill Fermet, in a way that causes Czes to gain all of Fermet's memories. This means that Czes now has both his own memories of being tortured and memories of sadistically enjoying torturing himself.}} Because of all this, the kid now has intense trust issues.

* Guts's childhood from ''[[Berserk]]'' is singularly horrific. His mother was hanged presumably as he was being born (yeah, we don't get it either), and he was adopted by a mercenary named Gambino, who trained him as a [[Child Soldiers|child soldier]]. During his time in Gambino's band, Guts had to endure some seriously [[Harmful to Minors]] stuff of both the horrific violence and the sex varieties -- hevarieties—he was even raped at one point in the manga when Gambino sold him to a pederast soldier in his band as a child prostitute. It all came to a head when Gambino, his leg having been blown off by a cannonball and thus making him unfit for combat, got drunk one night and tried to kill Guts because he blamed the kid for the death of his lover from the plague. Guts had to kill Gambino in self defense and then get away from the camp to escape the wrath of the other mercenaries. And that's just peaches compared to the stuff that comes afterwards.

** Casca's past isn't much better -- shebetter—she lost her village at an early age and was sold to a noble who wanted a new serving girl, only for it to transpire that he wanted her for sex. Just as he's about to rape her, though, Griffith shows up. Instead of killing her would-be rapist, however, he makes her do it instead ("If you have something you wish to protect, take up that sword."). She has a relatively easy life afterward, until the Eclipse goes down and she suffers a ''horrific'' ordeal that ends with her being driven insane.

** And Ishida, who saw his ''grandfather'' get killed by Hollows, with the shinigami nowhere in sight, when he was a child. {{spoiler|Later, it turns out that the whole incident was planned. His grandfather didn't die in the Hollow attack, but was captured by Soul Society and experimented upon by [[Complete Monster|Mayuri Kurotsuchi]]. When Ishida fights Mayuri, he even shows Ishida a photograph of his grandfather's body whilst gloating.}}

* Played straight with Mitsumi in ''[[Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Adventure]]''. She was raised by Cyrus to be a [[Complete Monster]] devoid of all feelings toward Pokemon and human, her only purpose to defeat her opponents. Rowan eventually softened her up though, and made her realize that there's more to Pokemon than fighting.

* Hei, [[Badass Longcoat]] [[Anti-Hero]] of ''[[Darker Thanthan Black]]'', falls into this ''bad''. Start with [[Dead Little Sister]] and betrayal by his girlfriend and work up from there: {{spoiler|his little sister became a Contractor and was recruited by [[The Syndicate]], and he joined as a [[Badass Normal]] to [[Big Brother Instinct|try to protect her]]. [[Child Soldiers|They were both in their early teens]]. After a few years of very mixed feelings, guilt, and trauma later, his then-girlfriend Amber (apparently) betrayed him, and his sister disappeared when Heaven's Gate exploded. He basically woke up with her powers, no sign of her, and ''no clue what the hell happened''.}} Add a few years more spent working for [[The Syndicate]] as an assassin because a) they'd kill him otherwise and b) he's never done anything else, it's no wonder he's a [[Stoic]] [[Shell-Shocked Veteran]].

* This is how the ''[[Plus +Anima]]'' children are usually depicted gaining their animas, animal spirits of sorts which grant them the animal's abilities. It comes from the need for help to escape from a dangerous situation, such as being close to death.

* If anyone in ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]'' appears ''not'' to have a [[Dark and Troubled Past]], just keep reading/watching and one will be revealed.

* It's mentioned in ''[[Fairy Tail]]'' that everyone in the guild has ''some'' sort of hidden pain in their pasts. A lot of them are explored in each arc of the manga as it goes on.

** [[Magneto]], in spades. His entire birth family was killed in the Holocaust, his daughter Anya died in a fire because he didn't know how to use his nascent powers to save her, and his wife (who was also his childhood sweetheart) called him a monster and fled after he -- literally -- explodedhe—literally—exploded in rage and killed the villagers who'd prevented him from either concentrating on said powers or going after Anya by normal means. Later, he joined an American government agency to pursue Nazis, and agents killed his girlfriend because he had pursued one of the "wrong" Nazis. No wonder the guy has a deeply cynical attitude toward humanity.

* [[Gambit]] was not merely an orphan whose parents may or may not be dead--ordead—or may simply have deliberately abandoned him--buthim—but was taken in by a creepy old man/possible pedophile, then turned out onto the streets of New Orleans to fend for himself until the age of ten, then was adopted, fell in love, witnessed his younger cousin's drowning (at age 13), further witnessed the retrieval of said cousin's body(!), accidently killed his fiancee's brother in a duel, and accordingly was exiled from the only home he ever knew. To make matters worse, his powers raged out of control and in exchange for help fixing them he was tasked with--unbeknownstwith—unbeknownst to him-leading a murder-squad against a group of fearful, helpless mutants, only managing to save the life of a single child. Oh, and the girl he loves he can't even kiss because she'd suck the life out of him.

* [[Batman]] has probably the quintessential [[Dark and Troubled Past]], which was his parents getting murdered by an unknown mugger before his very eyes.

* In the ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' fandom, there's Trixie's portrayal in some of the better [[Portmanteau Couple Name|Twixie]]<ref>Twilight/Trixie</ref> shipping fics. At least two fanfics - ''[http://www.equestriadaily.com/2011/03/story-out-in-cold.html Out in the Cold]'' and ''[http://www.equestriadaily.com/2011/06/story-of-mares-and-magic.html Of Mares and Magic]'' - gave her a parent who inspired her to take up magic, then went and died on her and left her traumatised. This not only provides a [[Freudian Excuse]] for why she acts like such a jerk in-series, but also provides grounds for the eventual [[Shipping]].

* In ''A New Face In Ponyville'', Joshua Rocket is revealed to have shadows of one of them in chapter 9.<ref>Counteraction</ref>. This could also be a case of Mysterious Past since not a lot of concrete details were given and even what WAS''was'' said could be put up for speculation considering {{spoiler|it was under heavy sedation after an attack from the Equestrian Pony Alliance}}

* In ''[http://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-3655-3/Anoron+The+Key+To+Marauding.htm#storybody The Key to Marauding]'', Dawn has all the emotional baggage of Series 5 of Buffy (dead mother, knowing that the first 14 years of her life aren't real encounters with Glory, etc...). In the fic she is {{spoiler|chained up in the dungeon and nearly raped by Lucius Malfoy, kidnapped and tortured by Death Eaters and is torn between her own world and the Potterverse when a way of getting back appears.}}

** By the sequel she has lost {{spoiler|her adopted parents (Mr. and Mrs Potter). Then, pretty much in one night, her adopted brother (James), a woman who was like her sister (Lily), the man she loved had gone insane before her eyes (Sirius) and was imprisoned in Azkaban, where she watched him fall apart, knowing he was innocent and knew the traitor to be former [[True Companion]] Peter Pettigrew, and was also aware that she was the bait for his betrayal. Then, she lost custody of her Godson (Harry) because of Blood Wards, and had to endure a year of trying to care for him, but as she said herself to Harry, '"every one thing I gave you, they took two away'" before leaving, recognising that she was making it worse for him. She then had to endure Harry's anger at her until the Blood Ward thing is explained to him. Oh, and to top it all off, she miscarried her baby by Sirius}}. [[Trauma Conga Line]] doesn't even begin to describe it.

* The eponymous ''[[Max Payne (film)|Max Payne]]'' had one, his family was killed in a mysterious robbery. Made extra saccharine thanks to the [[Flash Back|Flash Backs]]s being in a warm ember tone compared to the rest of the film's drab winter blues and grays.

* Subverted in ''[[The Dark Knight]]'', where the Joker likes telling stories about his [[Dark and Troubled Past]] to explain his scars...but every story is different.

** Considering she found out she was adopted only a few minutes before, when Luke asked her about her mother's death, she may have been referring to her adoptive mother.

* Megara in ''[[Hercules (Disney1997 film)||Hercules]]'': she sold her soul to Hades in order to save her boyfriend, and he dumped her shortly after that. Also, it's hinted that she probably had more problems to face in life besides that.

** And {{spoiler|Dumbledore, who went through the following events in his lifetime: 1) his sister was rendered [[Power Incontinence|magically unstable]] due to being attacked by [[Bullying the Dragon|three ]] [[Muggles]], 2) [[Parental Abandonment|his father was sent to prison for attacking said Muggles,]] 3) his mother was accidentally killed by his unstable sister, 4) he then neglected said sister and spent all his time planning a takeover of the Muggle world [[Utopia Justifies the Means|‘for the greater good’]] with his [[Ho Yay|crush]], [[Love Makes You Evil|Gellert Grindelwald,]] and 5) he possibly accidentally killed his sister in a three-way duel with his brother and Gellert Grindelwald. ([[Word of God|Rowling even says]] [[The First Cut Is the Deepest|that what he did while infatuated Grindelwald turned him asexual]]).}}

** Not to mention Harry himself: bothBoth parents murdered before his eyes at age one,? nineCheck. Nine years living with abusive guardians,? Check. beingBeing bullied at school by his cousin and friends,? aCheck. A dead godfather,? aCheck. A dead mentor,? theCheck. The most evil person in his world has a connection to him,? aCheck. A life and death battle every year,? andCheck. sometimes hisHis friends sometimes turn their backs on him? Totally major. And the fact that he’s the title character he’s the one that takes the cake the most.

** Nevil Longbottom also deserves a mention. Lives with his grandma because his parents were tortured into insanity by Death Eaters and feels that he can never live up them and has no self confidence at all. He also thought for a long time that he was a squib and only discovered his magical ability by being dropped out of a window.

* Vin from ''[[Mistborn]].'' Born the daughter of a skaa (peasant) woman and an Imperial nobleman (a death sentence from the get go), her earliest memory is of her insane mother killing her little sister {{spoiler|and performing Hemalurgy to transfer some of her soul to Vin}}, before being rescued by her older half-brother. Said half-brother genuinely cares about Vin, but he's a cynical, abusive [[Jerkass]] who hammers into her head the idea that she can't trust anyone because everybody is selfish and manipulative. They spend the next several years working as petty thieves on the lowest rung of society, until the half-brother runs out on her, {{spoiler|though it turns out that he was actually captured and executed}}, leaving Vin without a protecter in a den of scum. Of course, from there, she gets recruited by [[La Résistance]], finds out that she's an [[Extraordinarily Empowered Girl]], and [[Took a Level Inin Badass|takes a level in badass]], but still. Is it any wonder the poor girl spends most of the trilogy wrestling with crippling paranoia?

* Francis Crawford of Lymond in Dorothy Dunnett's ''Lymond Chronicles''. He's got almost everything: rejection by his father, didn't fit in as a child, betrayed by his early--perhapsearly—perhaps first--loverfirst—lover, framed as a traitor, physical and perhaps sexual abuse as a galley prisoner, self-hatred because he blames himself for his sister's death, and pretty much everyone he cares about dies as a result of knowing him.

* In the ''[[Warrior Cats]]'' series, there are several.

* Kvothe from ''[[The Name of the Wind]]'' had his entire troupe die, lived homeless for three years, got kicked out of the only place he felt he belonged after the death of his troupe...and that's just what we know so far.

* In [[Devon Monk]]'s ''[[Age of Steam|Dead Iron]]'', Cedar's brother Wil dragged him west after the loss of his wife and children. Then they went on the wrong land and were [[Curse|cursedcurse]]d into [[Werewolf]] form. Cedar came to find himself at the end of a bloody trail, and backtracked to find his brother's wolf corpse, its throat torn out by himself.

* Ned from ''[[Pushing Daisies]]'' was abandoned by his father, accidentally killed both his mother and the father of his childhood sweetheart, and spent most of his childhood in a [[Boarding School of Horrors]]. This, along with being given the sometimes unfortunate gift of bringing people [[Back Fromfrom the Dead]] with a touch, led him to grow into a nervous and shy adult with some trust issues.

* Several character in ''[[Series/Babylon Five|Babylon 5]]'':

** Dr. House himself [[Teen Genius|figured out at age 13]] that his "father" wasn't actually his biological father, and he was therefore the result of his mother's infidelity. The father who raised him was a strict military man who moved them all over the world and was fond of punishing his rebellious son with ice baths and other forms of corporal punishment. Also, there's the whole "losing part of my leg against my will thanks to a decision by [[Love Interest|Stacy]], leaving me with chronic pain and a limp" thing. He didn't want his leg amputated. Later on in the series, when he has to go under for surgery again, he tells Cuddy not to let the doctors amputate it unless there's no other choice.

*** She also {{spoiler|killed her brother (upon his request) when his Huntington's got too advanced.}}

** Walter's also directly responsible for another [[Dark and Troubled Past]]: to save the other dimension's Peter after losing his own to a fatal illness, Walter kidnapped that Peter to this dimension. The ensuing years were implicitly turbulent and unhappy: by the time Peter was 13, Walter had been committed to a mental institution, and after Peter split for Europe at 18, Elizabeth Bishop committed suicide. We *still* don't know everything that Peter did or saw before joining Fringe Division, but it was apparently not all sunshine and puppies.

* Speaking of ''[[Doctor Who]]'', the Doctor himself has elements of this trope. At first, it wasn't that bad - sure, he stole the TARDIS from his own people and broke their laws on non-intervention. Of course, then the Time War happened off screen, and now his back-story includes a horrible war, at least two (near) genocides, and the destruction of his fellow Time Lords.

* Hinted at, and later proved, with several characters on ''[[ER]]'' -- Luka—Luka, Sam, etc.

* Admiral Al Calavicci of ''[[Quantum Leap]]''. His family was pennyless, his father was [[Absent Father|gone]] most of the time, and his mother ran out on him and his sister, Trudy, who happened to have Downs Syndrome. When his father eventually found another job out of country, and left Al in an orphanage and Trudy in an institution, their father came back in time to free his kids and then die of some unspecified cause. Al, ten years old by this time, went back to the orphanage and his sister back to the institution. Al spent his time running away and stirring up trouble, and, in his late teens, engaged in both boxing and theatre, but apparently, his grades were good enough to earn him entance to Annapolis. Then, when he went to spring his sister from the loony bin, he was told that she had [[Dead Little Sister|died]] of pneumonia some time before. Time goes on, though, and he graduated Annapolis to become a Naval pilot. He met the woman he referred to as the love of his life, a Navy nurse named Beth, and married her. Now, just when you think things are getting better, Vietnam came along. During his second tour of duty, he was shot down over enemy territory, and, depending on the timeline, spent either six or eight years as a prisoner of war. As if that wasn't bad enough, he was listed as MIA, and when he was finally repatriated, he found out that his wife had him declared dead and was already remarried. He went on to remarry four times and gradually declined into alcoholism. Though he did get better, sort of.

** ''{{ [[CSI Miami}]]''

* The Phantom in ''[[The Phantom of the Opera]]'' was used as a circus sideshow freak until he escaped.

*** Actually, Isabela was sold into marriage at an implied young age by her mother for a few silvers and a goat. Then Zevran was hired to kill him, and she inherited his ship and decided to become a pirate. Her stories about her past are the most fragmented of the party, and generally [[Noodle Incident|Noodle Incidents]]s. Also, that relic she's looking for? {{spoiler|She stole it from the ''Qunari''.}} This actually [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|comes back to bite the party]] in a serious way in Act II.

* Just about every single major character in ''[[Mass Effect]]'' has some sort of tragic backstory. Even [[Player Character|Commander Shepard]] can be customised to have one -- theone—the Colonist background involves everyone in Shepard's [[Doomed Hometown|home colony]] being massacred or taken by slavers, while the Earthborn background gives him or her a criminal history, and the Sole Survivor psychological profile involves Shepard losing everyone in his or her unit to a thresher maw attack.

* Kla in ''[[Warbears]]'' is implied to have one.

* Jennifer from ''[[Rule of Rose]]''. There's a reason why the narrator never fails to refer to her as the "poor, unlucky girl".

* In ''[[No Rest for The Wicked (webcomic)|No Rest for The Wicked]]'', Claire. [http://www.forthewicked.net/archive/03-15.html Introduced, she muses about how easily a woman could become a witch without realizing it and implies something about her own child.] Later she [http://www.forthewicked.net/archive/04-44.html refuses to explain] why she no longer has her baby with her. And she comments that she had hated her parents—and now she knows she's no better.

* Many of the characters from ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20171212154432/http://www.goldcoincomics.com/ Gold Coin Comics]'', such as Lance, whose entire village was burned to the ground.

* Parodied in ''[[The Noob]]'' [http://www.thenoobcomic.com/indexcomic/245/ here] (continued [http://thenoobcomic.php?pos=com/comic/248/ here]).

* In ''[[Blue Yonder]]'' this is brought up against a cape: [https://web.archive.org/web/20130110073401/http://www.blueyondercomic.net/comics/1404300/blue-yonder-chapter-1-page-47/ he used to be a cop, and was thrown off the force for stealing evidence.]

* ''[[Tasakeru]]'''s primary characters, the Outcasts, are shining examples of this trope, it's pretty much a prerequisite for being one. {{spoiler|One is a runaway [[Samurai]] suffering from [[Survivor Guilt]], one was thrown out on the streets with her mother as an infant and grew up in poverty, and one was disowned by her family for [[Magic Is Evil|being a mage]].}} And that's just the ones we know about...

* any of the Organization's Agents in ''[[LIS_DEADLIS DEAD]]'' count, considering what we've learned of the Organization so far.

** [[The Chick|Katara]] and [[Badass Normal|Sokka]]: mother killed in a Fire Nation raid when they were little, and their father and all the men of the tribe left three years prior to the show's start. This left Katara with abandonment issues, and Sokka feeling that he wasn't good enough as a warrior. They may not show the effects as much as Zuko does, but it catches up to them later on (Sokka risks his ass breaking into a Fire Nation prison, Katara has her dark night of the soul tracking down her mother's killer).

** [[Badass Grandpa|Iroh]]: was once a very powerful warrior and general in the Fire Nation army, leading a siege on Ba Sing Se. Then, his son died, he went into a [[Heroic BSOD]], and 'betrayed his nation'.

** All this isn't even counting the pasts of more minor characters such as Jeong-Jeong, Pakku, Hama, Jet, and, hell, even [[Magnificent Bastard|Azula]].

* The [[Sequel Series]] ''[[The Legend of Korra]]'' has given two of its main characters a [[Dark and Troubled Past]]: Mako and Bolin were street kids growing up, and Mako had to take care of his little brother.

* Denzel Crocker on ''[[The Fairly Odd ParentsOddParents]]''. At first, he had a life [[Not So Different|similar to Timmy's]]: he had a neglectful mother who left him with an abusive babysitter. He also had fairy godparents {{spoiler|(Cosmo and Wanda, in fact)}}, which he used to do good things for people. The end came when he lost his godparents: he forgot all his happy memories, the town shunned him because they forgot all the good things he did, he became obsessed with proving fairies exist thanks to a note he left himself, causing him to lose his sanity, he was laughed out of his college for promoting fairies, and he lost [[Unlucky Childhood Friend|Waxelplax because of his obsession]]. Yeah, not very fun.

* Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man", never told Treves a single detail about his family, even that his mother was dead, because the whole family situation was a [[Dark and Troubled Past|Dark And Troubled Mess]]. Dead mother, a classic case of [[Survivor Guilt]] over his dead four-year-old brother, crippled sister, abusive father, [[Wicked Stepmother]], and step-siblings who were, as he put it, "more handsome". This may actually have been the source of the misnomer "John" -- His—His father was also named Joseph, and he may have wanted to separate himself as far from that as he could, possibly out of paranoia of having to go back home.

* Richard O'Brien. Born abnormally small, bullied at school, and then growing up genderqueer in what amounted to a conservative country town in the 1950s/60s...ouch. And then [[Rocky Horror Picture Show|his baby flopped in cinemas]].