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{{trope}}
[[File:1018_12_40061018 12 4006.gif|link=Chick Tracts|frame|[[Sarcasm Mode|What a]] [[Contrived Coincidence|coincidence]].]]
 
 
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** Some can argue that the entire story is nothing but this.
* ''[[Gunbuster]]'': Well known for its proper depiction of time dilation, this series also seems to only display such well-researched science when it can make the main characters angst. Prime example? Jung making a careless comment to Noriko regarding the loss of her father because it's been months from her perspective but only hours from Noriko's.
** New [[Mauve Shirt|Mauve Shirts]]s are usually introduced just so they can die and make Noriko emo.
* Subverted: Hayate in ''[[Hayate the Combat Butler]]'' can never seem to get a break. He's got deadbeat parents who steal his money and are willing to sell him to <s>the [[Yakuza]]</s> some 'very nice people' to clear their gambling debts, and after becoming Nagi's butler, he keeps getting into situations where [[Everything Trying to Kill You|everybody wants him dead]]. Hell, he's the greatest, most gentle kid in the world, and ''Santa'' won't even give him presents! The only thing that keeps this series from becoming a tragedy is that Hayate is used to crap like this happening and that some twist of fate usually occurs to make it so that things aren't quite as bad as they seemed at first.
** ...And, of course, that most of these events are ''[[Refuge in Audacity|played for comedy]]''. And ''succeed''.
** This probably works because the protagonist in question has the mental fortitude to match his physical constitution (getting hit by a speeding car, falling off a clocktower without so much as a bruise etc.).
*** Which means that instead of being all [[Wangst|wangstywangst]]y about his troubles, he usually mentions them offhandedly and cheerfully, as if they were something minor. Other characters, however, are visibly disturbed when they learn of them and Hayate once had his grade school class and the teacher in tears when he cheerfully and obliviously read a report showcasing his crapshack of a home life.
** And just to add to the problems, in the manga he's been forced to decide between Constant Love and Constant Protection by {{spoiler|Santa-Mikado}}. He finally breaks down and angsts for a while, {{spoiler|until the issue is solved for him.}}
* Shirakawa Naoya in ''[[Love Mode]]''. I mean, how much misery can one person have in a short time?
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** There was also Nagato, who [[Cosmic Plaything|the universe itself]] seemed to love in a [[Domestic Abuse]] kind of way. Sure, it gave him the Rinnegan and, in the process, pretty much turned him into a [[Physical God]], and his life did have its glimpses of brightness, (like when he found [[True Companions|two friends to start a new family with]], or when Jiraiya took him and his friends in and taught them the ninja arts so that they could protect themselves and each other, and the time he decided his reason in life would be to protect his friends and bring about a lasting peace,) but for the most part his life was a trip down hell's own gutter from the moment his parents, the only family he had ever known, were ''accidentally'' killed before his own eyes by two ninjas... He was eventually broken when forced to make a [[Sadistic Choice]] which ended in the death of one of the friends he had sworn to protect.
* D-Boy/Takaya Aiba of ''[[Tekkaman Blade]]''. Gosh, his life is ''[[It Got Worse|really]]'' sucks. {{spoiler|Fortunately, the sequel show him completely recovered from his loss so it all ends well, but the sheer crap he gone through is so nasty, its a wonder why he doesn't snap from all of it}}.
* The life of [[Cosmic Plaything|Guts]] from ''[[Berserk]]'' sucks to such a major degree that it puts the [[Trauma Conga Line|Trauma Conga Lines]]s of Griffith and Casca to shame, especially since [[Go Mad From the Revelation|the trauma factor of the latter]] coincides with [[My Greatest Failure|the trauma of the former.]] His life sucks so much that the universe was literally out to get him ''before the dude was born.'' He refuses to let [[Screw Destiny|the universe control his destiny]], but even Guts has his [[Freak-Out|breaking point.]]
 
 
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** On the other hand, we have [[Batgirl 2009|Stephanie Brown]]. Grew up the child of a physically and emotionally abusive convict and a (now-rehabilitated) drug addict. Suffered attempted sexual molestation by her piano teacher at age 11. Almost had her face melted off by her own father with an acid capsule on her first foray as a vigilante. Set up for kidnapping and murder by her own father ''again'' several months later. Becomes pregnant by a boy who abandons her without even stopping long enough to learn that she ''was'' pregnant. Carries the child to term, then gives him/her/ up for adoption in a complete [[Tear Jerker]] of a moment, not letting herself even know her baby's sex or naming him/her because otherwise she could never force herself to let go. (And for extra angst points, almost dies of complications during the delivery.) Father (apparently) dies while trying to reform, leaving her entirely conflicted on the issue. Tortured grotesquely by Black Mask for hours. Upon returning from her faked death and one years' isolation in Africa, immediately ordered by Batman to betray her ex-boyfriend "for his own good", leading to complete alienation from him. Given the absolute minimum of support and validation in her superhero career, ''even by her own boyfriend'', throughout. Subjected to active ''discouragement'' from pursuing a superhero career by virtually ''everyone''. Depending on whether or not its [[Canon Discontinuity]] yet, possibly still carrying the guilt for setting off a destructive gang war that killed hundreds. And her response? [[Determinator|Total refusal to let any of this crap get her down.]] With arguably as much to angst about as her ex-boyfriend Tim, there is not ''one panel'' of her whining or indulging in self-pity available in the sixteen years the character has been in Bat-Comics. Steph entirely shares Commissioner Gordon's awesome immunity to PTSD or [[Wangst]].
*** Well, she gets an issue of ''Robin'' dedicated to a few of her really crappy life experiences after her dad died. That's it.
* The ''[[Spider-Man (Comic Book)|Spider-Man]]'' "[[Brand New Day]]" storyline is nothing but [[Deus Angst Machina]], mixed in with a healthy serving of non-stop [[Wangst]]. Every conceivable thing that can go wrong does. Twice. In a single issue. Just to remind us [[Executive Meddling|Spider-Man's deeper and more dramatic now!]]
** It's worth noting that "[[One More Day]]" / "Brand New Day" represents a 'back to basics' move on the part of Marvel's editorial team, as an attempt to get Peter back to his roots - the classic Spidey had lots of things go wrong for him in his early days as well. However, they seem to have forgotten about all of the good things that used to happen to him at the time as well - his life was never ''unremitting'' misery and failure.
* [http://www.misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics101.html These] British girls' comics. As the commentator puts it, "Sometimes your ballet career is cut short by a tragic car accident that kills your family and leaves you a cripple and your evil relatives are stealing your disability checks and they're sending your toddler brother out to work with the construction crew next door. I hate when that happens."
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'''Pokerface''': Appreciate it.
'''Ray''': Yeah, well you know, any time I can help. }}
* The revised ending of [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[The Mist]]'', in which the main character {{spoiler|kills all the other survivors, including his ten-year-old son, only to run out of bullets when he tries to finish it by killing himself, and tries to get a monster to kill him...just in time for the cavalry to arrive}} -- this—this in Portland, having come all the way from Bangor {{spoiler|with no sign of fellow survivors}}.
* In ''[[Van Helsing]],'' {{spoiler|Anna's death}} doesn't really have much narrative purpose other than giving Van Helsing something to scream about.
 
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* It has become pretty apparent that the writer ''[[To Live]]'''s main objective is to make the protagonist suffer as much as possible, no matter how ridiculous the manner is.
* Like the final quarter of the last book in the ''[[His Dark Materials]]'' trilogy is a ridiculously convoluted justification for why the {{spoiler|Hero and Heroine can't just get married and have a happy ending.}}
* [[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]] -- every—every single male parental figure in the title character's life - except Arthur, who was supposed to die in the middle of book five - ends up dead, one by one. (Sort of Voldemort's plan)
** Tip of the iceberg. Harry's whole life is epic Dickensian-level suck, from the ugly hand-me-downs to the ridiculously cruel relatives.
*** She does the same thing with Severus Snape, really. Poverty, emotional abuse, and appalling parental neglect. In his case, though, it's more of a [[Truth in Television]]. Lack of funds in a family can lead to all sorts of nastiness; most cases of child abuse and neglect come out of poor neighborhoods.
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{{quote|So here was Kevin, a thirteen-year-old alcoholic, pusher, and thief. His mother would never get well, his father certainly wouldn't, and sister Isobel was turning tricks on State Street. It seemed to Kevin that there wasn't a chance in the world that he would ever get his life straightened out.
And he was right. So we [[Dropped a Bridge on Him|hit him over the head and fed him to the pigs]]. }}
* Voltaire's ''[[Candide]]'' is an entire book of this. Despite his assertions that we live in the best of all possible worlds, Candide is kicked out of his idyllic home for kissing a girl who is apparently his cousin (although this is never brought up by any of the characters), is tricked into joining the Bulgarian army, is flogged until he has no skin on his back and begs for death, sees horrific death and destruction caused by the war, has a chamber-pot emptied on him, finds out that his beloved teacher has become a beggar hideously disfigured by syphilis, learns that his childhood home was utterly destroyed and his love interest and her family have been murdered (after brutal mass rape), and the ship he's on is beset by a storm... in the first four chapters. In fact, every character in Candide suffers from this trope--ittrope—it's hard to find a character who hasn't been enslaved, raped, flogged, or lost all their worldly possessions.
** Interesting in that it was all [[Crosses the Line Twice|played for laughs]]
* In [[Tom Clancy]]'s ''[[Jack Ryan]]'' Universe, where Arab terrorists destroy a big chunk of Denver with a nuclear weapon and almost succeed in provoking a global nuclear exchange between the US and Russia, Japan threatens the U.S. with nuclear weapons, a madman pilot does a kamikaze attack with a Boeing 747 into the Capitol and kills the President and most of Congress, and Iran then attacks the US with biological warfare (see following entry)... and after all this, Clancy decides to ''still'' include the events of September 11, 2001 in this world. What already happened was bad enough; the last one was truly unnecessary piling on.
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** {{spoiler|Not to mention he put his daughter in a safe house at the very end... and he said it was better he didn't know where she lived. And his daughter was scared of his face when she first saw him. And then he was so depressed he got his apprentice to kill him. And his best friend lost her job.}}
** {{spoiler|It wasn't depression, and his apprentice didn't kill him. He had his apprentice erase his memory of ordering his own assassination so he could renege on a deal he made with the Winter Court essentially selling his soul to repair his recently received paralysis to save his kidnapped daughter.}}
* ''Life in the Fat Lane'', by Cherie Bennett is almost nothing ''but'' [[Deus Angst Machina]]. [[Spoiled Sweet|Lara Ardeche]], [[Lovable Alpha Bitch|homecoming queen and teen beauty contestant]], develops a chemical imbalance that causes her weight to double within months. Her [[Girl Posse]] [[Backstabbing the Alpha Bitch|brush her off]] as a result; the school [[Fat Girl]], whom she'd inadvertently insulted, makes a point of gloating; and her relationship with her parents deteriorates. Later, {{spoiler|her father cheats on her mother, her mother attempts suicide, and}} the whole family moves to another town...where Lara is treated like a [[Butt Monkey]] at school for [[Acceptable Targets|being fat]]. (And there's also her break-up with Jett...but that was [[It's Not You, It's Me|kind of]] [[Wangst|her own]] [[Insecure Love Interest|damn fault]].)
* This is one of the more common complaints about [[The Hunger Games|Mockingjay]] that the amount of angst was cranked [[Up to Eleven]]. {{spoiler|For example Prim and Finnick's deaths are often called uneccessary, Gale changes overnight, most of the district dies. Peeta's arc is particularly glaring, the book starts with his entire family being killed, follows with his torture to the point of insanity, and concludes with him nearly burning to death in battle.}}
 
 
== Live-Action TV ==
* Goren from ''[[Law and Order: Criminal Intent]]'' qualifies, if any one does. Let's see.... his schizophrenic mother hates him, even though he's the only one who takes care of her, his drug-addicted brother gets all the love from their mother, his father -- whofather—who treated him like shit anyway -- turnedanyway—turned out not to be his real father, and his biological father turned out to be a serial killer who's executed in another state. He gets persecuted by the FBI, ends up in a mental hospital, gets fired, not to mention that his health and good looks go to shit, too. This is only a partial list of all the shit that goes down. If anyone can be accused of provoking the wrath of the writer-deities, this character would be definitely be it. The unrelenting, unceasing suffering that occurs was enough to make many fans stop watching the show, out of sheer disgust. If anyone earned a happy ending they never got, it's Goren. [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]], already.
* ''[[Law and Order Special Victims Unit]]'' often falls into this. Granted, a [[Cop Show]] about victims of rape and other sex crimes isn't exactly going to be all smiles, sunshine and cartoon bluebirds, and there's going to be fair bit of angst at times, but they really do tend to lay it on a bit thick. Often occurs whenever one of the characters gets into an [[It's Personal]] moment, which is roughly every episode.
* Anyone in ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined]]''. Anyone. Cylons included. Heck, they exterminated 99.99% of the human race - and ''it was just the beginning''!
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** It's a similar story on ''[[Angel]]''. And ''[[Firefly]]''. And ''[[Dollhouse]]''. In fact [[Joss Whedon]] is so in love with this the trope could almost be renamed after him.
* A ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' sketch featured Mike Myers as a British WWII soldier recovering in a hospital, who goes through one of the worst cases of this ever but refuses to lose his cool. Turns out the nurse he is engaged to is already married and only pretended to be in love with him to keep his hopes up. And the mission he just flew ''didn't'' result in the death of Hitler as he had been told. In fact, he blew up an orphanage. And he can't go back and play football for his favorite team because the doctors had to amputate his leg. And his team lost anyway. Because their opponents' team had the nurse's husband kick the winning goals. And when he comments that such a great player must have three legs, it turns out that he does. Because that's what they did with the leg they took from ''him''. And then the husband shows up and ''it's Hitler''! [[Tempting Fate|Myers comments that at least nobody has hit him over the head with a pipe today.]] Guess what Hitler does.
* ''[[Eastenders]]''. Just... ''[[Eastenders]]''. Most soaps have a bit of inherent angst involved, but in that one, whatever can go wrong is ''guaranteed'' to go wrong -- andwrong—and then, whatever ''can't'' go wrong will also go wrong, just for good measure.
** Likewise, ''[[Days of Our Lives]]'' seems to hate its characters. If you're not simultaneously [[Your Cheating Heart|worrying about your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse sleeping with someone else]], [[Hypocrite|sleeping with someone else yourself]] [[My God, What Have I Done?|and then feeling guilty]], keeping secrets of who slept with whom for your friends, keeping secrets of who slept with whom for your ''enemies'' because of the collateral damage to your friends, wondering [[Who's Your Daddy?|who the father of the new pregnancy of the week is]] thanks to [[Everybody Has Lots of Sex|all that sleeping around]], angsting over the [[Law of Inverse Fertility]] and worrying about [[But We Used a Condom|being pregnant despite birth control]] [[But I Can't Be Pregnant|or lack of fertility]] (bonus points for doing both at once!), getting harassed by a psychopath, or having any number of other [[Rule of Drama|sources of drama]] heaped on you...just wait. [[It Got Worse|Just you wait.]]
* Oh, lord, ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]''. With its numerous [[Break the Cutie|break the cuties]], [[Abusive Parents]] of all kinds, a [[Kill'Em All]] fetish, characters that can jump from a [[Jerkass]] to a [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]], applies [[Rule 34]] and [[Mood Whiplash]] in spades, [[Death Seeker|numerous death wishes]], [[Deal with the Devil|deals with the devil]] that twist and break the other characters, episodes where incest would actually be ''more'' acceptable, a penchant for [[Downer Ending|Downer Endings]]s and festering issues, you have to wonder how anyone on the show hasn't checked into therapy yet or put a bullet in their brain (although Dean was close in Season Two). This might seem like the rest of the shows on here but you have to remember; this was supposed to be a show with no chick-flick moments and the basic premise of two pretty-boys brothers hunting down demons with rock salt.
** Just to demonstrate, here's a list of some of the crap they go through (deep breath):<br />Let's see... Dead mother, emotionally abusive father, fucked up childhood; Sam's attempt at a normal life ends with his girlfriend's death; their father makes a [[Deal with the Devil]] for Dean's life, leaving Dean to deal with the guilt and anger of knowing his dad's in Hell because of him; he also tells Dean he'll have to either save Sam or kill him, leaving Sam terrified he'll go [[The Dark Side|Dark Side]]. Sam dies, prompting Dean to make his own deal. Dean goes to Hell for forty years; Sam allies himself with a demon; Dean gets raised from Hell by Castiel, an angel... Only to find out that the angels ''want to start the Apocalypse''. And Dean inadvertently broke the first seal and kick-started the whole thing. Dean persuades Castiel to help him, only to get there too late to stop Sam from accidentally freeing Lucifer and ''[[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|starting the Apocalypse]]''. Dean and Sam find out they're vessels for Michael and Lucifer, and if Dean says yes Michael will torch half the planet in 'saving the world'; they try to kill Lucifer themselves, but fail (and lose two close friends in the process); Castiel tries to find God, only to be told that God doesn't give a damn. Dean comes very close to saying yes to Michael out of sheer despair. They eventually manage to find a way of beating Lucifer that involves ''Sam'' going to Hell, and Cas pisses off back to Heaven, leaving Dean pretty much broken. At least he has love interest Lisa and her kid Ben to comfort him, though... Then Sam comes back - except {{spoiler|without a soul}}. He {{spoiler|gets his soul back}}, they get sold out by {{spoiler|their grandfather}}, and then the [[Big Bad]] turns out to be {{spoiler|Castiel, who they regard as family}}. Dean's relationship with Lisa and Ben also deteriorates to the point where he gets Cas to ''erase their memories of him''. And Sam gets back his memories of his time in Hell, which had been blocked to stop them from driving him insane causing him to have hallucinations of Lucifer, so now he's not sure what's real and what's not. Cas absorbs all the souls from Purgatory ''and'' Leviathans which eventually take control of his body and kill him,<ref>Though Misha Collins is coming back, he might not play Cas</ref>, Dean's ready to quit hunting, and Bobby, the character who {{spoiler|has survived for an incredibly long time considering the show's track record, get's a bullet to the brain and dies, leaving Sam and Dean alone in their fight.}}
** So, to summarize: between the deaths, trauma, abandonment issues, crippling guilt, unhealthy co-dependency, betrayals and lies, 'fucked up' is an accurate description. Bobby, at one point, comes out and ''says'' that the only reason he doesn't put a bullet in his brain is Dean and Sam.<ref>Though admittedly, this is at a time when it looks like he'll be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life and ''the world is about to end''</ref>. [[Sarcasm Mode|How's that for cheerful?]] (And this isn't even the worst of it; Dean gets to time travel to a potential future for one episode, which is [[Up to Eleven|much]], [[Crapsack World|much]] [[Dystopia|worse]]. If you haven't seen it, read the above, and try to imagine what, if this is business as normal, the crappy future was like. Try.)
* Pretty much everyone in ''[[Xena: Warrior Princess]]'', but Callisto in particular: {{spoiler|Her sociopathic/homicidal tendencies stem from witnessing her parents' deaths. Upon attaining Goddess-hood she has the chance to save them via time travel... and ''kills them in front of her younger self to ensure she becomes the person she is''.}}
* The modern ''[[Doctor Who]]'' veers hard into this country, to the point that [[Wangst]] has replaced gratuitous kidnapping of a companion as a source of cheap drama. See the endings of ''Journey's End'' and, depending on your interpretation, ''Forest of the Dead'' for some particularly gratuitous examples.
** A more egregious example would be the Doctor, a [[Technical Pacifist|pacifist]] being forced to fight in the biggest war ever, The Time War, having to destroy his planet and kill his entire species in order to end it. But the Daleks still manage to survive, again and again. He finds love in Rose Tyler, but she is sucked into a parallel universe, never to be seen again. He discovers another of his kind still alive - but it's The Master, who takes over the entire Earth and subjects the Doctor to ritual torture humiliation for over a year, and showing the Doctor that his precious humans are capable of cannabalising themselves, turning themselves into mutants strapped into cold metal shells, and coming back in time to murder their ancestors "because it's fun". And then when shot, the Master chooses to die rather than regenerate purely to spite the Doctor and make him suffer. In the series four finale, he is reunited with all his past companions, even Rose, but one by one they all leave him, and he even has to [[Mind Rape|wipe Donna's mind]] of all her memories of him, right after she saved the world and gained self-confidence for the first time in her life. For a fluffy children's program, the show ain't half depressing sometimes; it sometimes seems that the writers of the new series take some sort of sadistic pleasure in emotionally torturing the Doctor and are determined to break him into little pieces. {{spoiler|No wonder he almost went [[A God Am I|completely mad]] over the course of the 2009 specials.}}
* To say that ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'''s life has been unbelievably crappy so far would be a huge understatement. This is a ''long'' list, so bear with us.<br /><br />He was abused as a child by a man who turned out to be his non-biological father and the events leading up to how he got his limp were horribly unfair (as if having a blood-clot in your leg wasn't painful enough). But, in the show itself, it's Stacy who starts the real downward spiral; after a long bout of [[The Masochism Tango]], he gets her to leave because her crippled husband is willing to do anything to keep her around and he isn't, her leaving brings him more psychosomatic pain and a [[Tear Jerker|heartbreaking]], [[Fan Disservice|disturbing]] scene involves him being reduced to begging Cuddy for some morphine and in the [[Season Finale]], he gets shot twice and [[Hannibal Lecture|Hannibal Lectured]]d by his shooter/conscience throughout the whole episode. When he gets the ketamine which magically regenerates his thigh muscle, he seems to be changing for the better (no drugs, running everywhere, getting upset when a patient's wife thanks him and he can't even feel pleased) but this obviously cannot last so the pain comes back in full force, he's back on the drugs and Wilson and Cuddy have just decided that this would be a brilliant time to teach the poor bastard some humility. Then there's the legally and ethically insane Tritter arc, the depression of trying to find ways to relieve the pain, and the Ducklings leaving (and Wilson mindfucking him into thinking he's hallucinating them). This is followed by House's guilt over his involvement in the events that led to Amber's death at the end of the fourth season. He nearly got brain damage in trying to save her too. Wilson subsequently dumped him even though he didn't blame House for what happened to his late girlfriend, and it wouldn't help anything in any case. He followed Wilson around for months, trying to get him back. Then again, Season Five too is one big angst fest. Not long after Kutner did himself in for no particular reason<ref>[[Real Life Writes the Plot|In real life]], because the actor took up a job in the White House and thus his character had to be written off the show</ref> he started having hallucinations and went through rehab, only to find that the woman he's in love with, Cuddy, won't date him. Ever so briefly averted at the end of season six, when House went an entire season without Vicodin, started acting like kind of a human being, and even magically got Cuddy to dump her fiance for him. Then Season 7 has it ''all'' go downhill again. He's together with Cuddy but they secretly make each other miserable, Cuddy later dumps him, he's back on Vicodin, and to top it all off he's a wanted criminal when he flees the country for months after ramming a car into her home out of revenge. In season 8 he has to serve jailtime although he has no priors, simply because he ended up with a lousy lawyer. Cuddy quits, but House gets out on parole because Foreman (the new Dean of Medicine) needs his expertise, and because with the hospital's resources stretched thin re-employing House is a good bargain given his situation. After that things started to look slightly up as he eventually refunds his department, gets his staff back, and amends things with Wilson. Except then Dominica (the Russian immigrant he married to get her a green card) dumps him once she gets her citizenship. House had withheld the news from her that she'd gotten her citizenship because he realized he actually did like her, and wanted her to stick around. The irony being she also had feelings for him and probably would have stayed with him if he hadn't lied to her. And right after that happens, Wilson tells House that he (Wilson) has stage 2 thymoma. With three episodes left to go, Wilson is still alive so there's still hope.<br /><br />Suffice to say, all of this has been mostly accepted because he still remains a snarky, funny [[Jerkass]] and because Hugh Laurie's sad blue eyes and his mad acting skills can make anything work but most fans probably wouldn't be too surprised if he just broke one day and curled up into an angst-ridden ball on his office floor.
 
Suffice to say, all of this has been mostly accepted because he still remains a snarky, funny [[Jerkass]] and because Hugh Laurie's sad blue eyes and his mad acting skills can make anything work but most fans probably wouldn't be too surprised if he just broke one day and curled up into an angst-ridden ball on his office floor.
* A stellar example: the all but forgotten [[Disney Channel]] original movie ''[[One Magic Christmas]]''. It is a... ''loose'' reimagining of ''[[It's a Wonderful Life|Its a Wonderful Life]]'', sort of. And it sits uncomfortably between this trope, [[Narm]], [[Tastes Like Diabetes]], [[Clueless Aesop]], [[Glurge]], and [[Nightmare Fuel]] (the latter especially due to the violent [[Mood Whiplash]]). Bonus points for having many of the same [[Unfortunate Implications]] as ''[[The Christmas Shoes]]'', as pointed out by [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ysMpr8mNRM Patton Oswalt]: {{spoiler|"[[God Is Evil|What a horrible]] [[Precision F-Strike|fucking]] [[God Is Evil|God!!!]]"}}. The whole things seems like it was ''designed'' to scar children for life.
* The Filipino drama ''[[Eva Fonda]]'' is a quite horrific example. The show starts off its first episode with the main character {{spoiler|being raped by one of the richest men in town}}. Then she goes home after {{spoiler|the rape}} to find out that {{spoiler|the love of her life ''was sleeping with her best friend while she was being raped''}}! The show then continues with her trying to {{spoiler|confront her rapist's father, only for him to try and rape her too}}! After she {{spoiler|stabs him in self-defense and is taken to jail, one of the police officers tries to rape her during her interrogation}}! During her {{spoiler|time in jail, she finds out that her sister died, and later on finds out she's pregnant with her rapist's child (which, by the way, she decides to keep and miscarries)}}. She ends up {{spoiler|escaping jail and living on the lam from the police and her now even-more-obsessed rapist}}, and the show isn't even over yet... Deus Angst Machina indeed.
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** Not to mention everything Jack goes through in series 3 alone: {{spoiler|First we learn he has a daughter who doesn't really want him anywhere near her or her son. Then he gets blown up and feels it, comes back to life screaming with all of his skin still burned off, gets drowned and trapped in concrete, is thrown off a cliff while in the concrete, has his daughter and grandson taken hostage, and learns that he is partially responsible for the latest alien threat. Then, just when it looks like he might be able to stand up to the alien threat, Ianto (the man he is in a relationship with and almost certainly loves) is killed and dies in his arms, something Jack blames himself for. Then, to finally save the world from the alien threat, he has to ''kill his grandson in front of his daughter''. Understandably, he doesn't stick around on Earth too long after that.}}
* ''[[Little House on the Prairie (TV series)|Little House On the Prairie]]'' is fairly notorious for this. If anything good is happening to anyone in the Ingalls family and / or great plans are being made, [[Yank the Dog's Chain|expect something to go]] '''[[Yank the Dog's Chain|horribly]]''' [[Yank the Dog's Chain|wrong soon]]. The absolute ''worst'' case was with Albert, who found out he was terminally ill just as he received a full scholarship for medical school. To make matters worse, this was not long after he overcame a morphine addiction.
* Hawkeye -- HawkeyeHawkeye—Hawkeye, Hawkeye, Hawkeye from ''[[M*A*S*H (television)|Mash]]''. The writers seemed absolutely determined to do anything they could to break his spirit (going so far, in one episode, as to instill an army point system -- whichsystem—which in real life, hadn't actually been in effect since WWII -- soWWII—so that Colonel Potter could tell Hawkeye the army had raised the number of points needed to get out of the military), until he's finally nearly beaten in the show's finale {{spoiler|when he unintentionally causes a mother to suffocate her own child}}. I mean, c'mon...
* ''[[Veronica Mars]]'' - what did this girl ''do'' in a previous life? Not only does her best friend die, her boyfriend dumps her for no reason, her whole school hates her, her father loses his job, her mom walks out (after having been an alcoholic {{spoiler|and cheater}}), and she's drugged, raped, and laughed off when she tries to report it. [[It Got Worse|Then the actual series starts...]]
* John Crichton in ''[[Farscape]]''. First, he gets lost untold light-years away from Earth. Then, he gets tortured, mind-raped, and raped. Then he gets mind-raped and tortured some more, {{spoiler|kills his girlfriend, gets cloned, loses his girlfriend to his clone, dies repeatedly, and also has basically the secret to the ultimate weapon of the universe implanted in his head, ensuring that the weight of the universe falls on his shoulders and that he's going to be pursued by pretty much everyone, all of whom are eager to torture, mind-rape, and rape him some more}}.
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* Every single one of the Beauty And The Beast unit in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]''. Laughing Octopus {{spoiler|had her entire village's population killed by octopus-eater-hating cult members while she was a child. That is, they killed all but her own family and friends, whom she had to torture and kill herself.}} Raging Raven {{spoiler|grew up in a war-torn country, and was captured as a child by soldiers, who beat her and the other kids regularly. Eventually, she and the other children were left by the soldiers, and the rest of the children were eaten by birds.}} Crying Wolf {{spoiler|also had her village slaughtered, but escaped along with her baby brother. Whom she smothered to death in order to escape notice from soldiers. And then carried the rotting corpse around to a refugee camp, where she went mad from the crying of children, and killed all the children there.}} Screaming Mantis {{spoiler|guess what? That's right, her village was burned to the ground. When escaping, she wound up hiding in a the corpse-pit beneath a torture chamber, and was locked in there, while villagers were tortured above. She stayed there for weeks, surviving by drinking bloody water and eating off of the corpses. Being utterly insane by then, she was taken in by Liquid Ocelot, who eventually brainwashed her own psyche out of her brain, and put in Psycho Mantis' instead.}}
* Kratos from ''[[God of War (series)|God of War]]'' finds his own, murdering his wife and daughter in blind rage, then having their ashes permanently fixed to his body. {{spoiler|When asking the gods to make him forget his crimes, he is forced to live through it again at the hands of Ares. When he has killed Ares, and the gods tell him they lied to him to get him to do their dirty work for them, he tries to kill himself - and is instead given immortality, an eternity with his memories. No wonder he made a beast of himself to get rid of the pains of being a man (lot deeper than you thought, eh?)}}
* Oersted, one of the heroes from the SNES game ''[[Live a Live]]''. As his chapter starts, he wins the tournament which names him the greatest hero in the land, as well as the hand of the beautiful princess in marriage. As the two make wedding plans, a monstrous demon sent by the Demon King appears and kidnaps the princess. No matter, this happens in video games all the time. Oersted and his best friend Straybow the magician, as well as two older heroes who defeated the Demon King years earlier, set off on a quest to get her back. And then... {{spoiler|The group is barely able to reach the Demon King's palace before one of the heroes is killed. And then the palace collapses, and they are forced to leave Straybow behind. And then, when Oersted returns to the palace, he finds the Demon King there and slays him... oops, that was actually an illusion, and his would-be father-in-law is now dead. Oersted is arrested for murdering the King, and the other elder hero is tortured to death as an accessory, barely able to summon enough strength to help Oersted escape. Oersted flees the kingdom, every citizen in it who once cheered him now calling him a traitor and murderer, and makes a heroic solo effort to take the Demon King down. When he finally reaches the villain... it turns out it was his old friend Straybow all along. Oersted is forced to kill his best friend, and the princess appears. A bittersweet ending? Nope. The princess tells Oersted that she believed Oersted would save her, but it was ''Straybow'' who saved her,<ref> and after all that Oersted went through to try and save her, no less</ref>, declares that she loves Straybow, not him, and commits suicide. Poor Oersted. Is it any surprise to find that the Demon King that the other heroes battled was Oersted himself, embracing the darkness?}}
* Acro (aka Ken Dingling) from ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' fits this trope to a T. {{spoiler|First, his parents abandoned him and his brother, forcing them to join the circus (lessened by the fact that the ringmaster is the nicest guy you'll meet. Acro dedicates himself to repaying his kindness). Some time later, the ringmaster's daughter Regina gave Bat a scarf covered in pepper, to get him back for all the times he teased ''her'' with it. He then proceeded to go "If I can put my head in the lion's mouth you have to take me to the movies!" The lion sneezed with his head inside, putting him in a coma. Acro tried to save him, but that just put him in a wheelchair. Shame she's so innocent and naive that she believes Bat is just a star in the sky, making Acro think she's making fun of the whole thing. He plans on murdering her, but after a series of events, he ends up accidentaly murdering the ringmaster, the man that has been his father figure all these years}}.
* ''[[Dragon Age II]]'' - Arguably an example the maincharacter(and again, arguably his/her entire party to an extent) suffers this in that over a ten year span you lose your father, your home, [[Schrodinger's Gun|'one' of your siblings]] is killed brutally on screen, you're forced into a year of servitude, your other sibling can [[Schrodinger's Gun|die or otherwise be forced, or by their own choice, into ditching you]], your mother dies after finally getting back her childhood home and in a particularly heartwrenching fashion too and finally at the end of it all a partymember and possible love interest sets off a series of events where you are forced to make a gristly decision involving either massacring a series of mostly innocent mages and supporting the [[Knights Templar]] or becoming an outlaw and possibly losing friends because they just weren't quite loyal enough. Damnit, Hawke just cannot catch a bloody break...or maybe that's the issue, [[Incredibly Lame Pun|he can.]]
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