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{{trope}}
{{quote|''Only the dead have seen the end of war.''
|'''George Santayana'''|"Tipperary", ''Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies''}}
{{quote|''We stayed mad for a very long time, a madness that almost consumed your world, until finally, before it was too late, we woke up together. But you, you are alone, you have no one to awaken you from your madness. For this, and nothing else, I feel pity for you.''
|'''Delenn''', ''[[Babylon 5]], "Ceremonies of Light and Dark"''}}
The war never ended for the '''Shell-Shocked Veteran'''. They've [[War Is Hell|seen]] and [[My God, What Have I Done?|done]] things that [[There Are No Therapists|no amount of therapy]] will ever completely heal (see the [[Real Life]] section below, though), and it's left them so irrevocably scarred they have trouble [[The Stoic|feeling, emoting, and caring]] about the people around them and themselves. If they continue to feel anything at all, it's usually restricted to [[Survivor Guilt]]. Thus they're usually the first to [[I Did What I Had to Do|do what must be done]] and [[Shoot the Dog]].
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A subtrope of [[The Stoic]], also related to [[Heroic BSOD]]. They may be an [[Old Soldier]]. Expect him to have a [[Sympathetic Murder Backstory]].
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* The ex-revolutionary pirate [[Captain Harlock]] of his
▲* The ex-revolutionary pirate [[Captain Harlock]] of his own eponymous series was one of the earliest examples of this trope.
* Nemo, deposed king of destroyed Atlantis from ''[[Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water]]''.
* Kambei, the main protagonist of ''[[Samurai 7]]'', who has grown so tired of always leading the losing side that it is implied that he has become a [[Death Seeker]]. The same goes for his counterpart in the original live-action classic movie.
* Lucy from ''[[Elfen Lied]]''.
* 16-year-old Sara Werec of ''[[Soukou no Strain]]''.
* Shinji Ikari from ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' deserves a special mention, having had his mind broken at the tender age of 14 due to fighting [[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever|Skyscraper-sized Aliens]] (or something) while being forced into it by his father. Oh, and Asuka, who went through a similar process to Shinji, but also managed to have the Troper Namer of [[Mind Rape]] inflicted on her.
** The [[Super Robot Wars Alpha]] 3 version of Shinji fits this better, back in Alpha 1, along with the events of ''Evangelion'' (Including the ''[[End
* In ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'', Dr. Knox is an Ishbal veteran who was so damaged by the war that his wife and son left him. He's incredibly scarred by what he had to do in the war, and hates any mention of the war or his comrades in it (though he does help out his old war buddy Roy Mustang when pressed). Knox may be redeemable, but he's still living in the war so far.
** The ''Brotherhood''-only Isaac McDougal, AKA the Freezing Alchemist is very badly scarred by the war, and by {{spoiler|what he knows about the [[Ancient Conspiracy]]}}. He goes AWOL for a couple of years, and then shows up again one day, attempting to put all of Central City under ice. {{spoiler|Once you get further in the series, his plan doesn't seem so evil after all...}}
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** [[Mobile Suit Gundam 00|Setsuna F. Seiei]], was once a [[Child Soldier]] tricked into murdering his own parents in the name of God and fighting a fruitless war. Years later, he's still in Krugis. He gets better thanks to the best friend in his life, [[Incorruptible Pure Pureness|Marina Ismail]].
** [[Gundam AGE|Flit Asuno]] is slowly becoming one, too, joining the other Gundam protagonists as bitter war veterans. Woolf Enneacle even puts it clearly, that as he fights on, he would want to kill more and more Unknown Enemies, no longer satisfied with a peaceful life.
* A bit inverted in ''[[
** Played straighter with {{spoiler|[[My God, What Have I Done?|Noël]]}}.
* Some of the robots in ''[[Pluto]]''.
* In ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'', one of the ''villains'', specifically {{spoiler|Dynamis}}, is like this due to being one of the only members of his organization who survived the 20+ years of being hunted down by the good guys.
* Sousuke Sagara, and his [[Evil Counterpart]], [[Lack of Empathy|Zaied]] from ''[[Full Metal Panic!]]'' fit this trope perfectly. They're both ex-[[Child Soldiers]], they're both [[The Stoic]] and they both have serious mental issues. Sousuke's are normally [[No Social Skills|played for laughs]]. Zaied's [[Sociopathic Soldier|aren't]].
* Surprisingly few Shinobi suffer from this trope in ''[[Naruto]]'', however Kakashi Hatake seems to be a Shell-Shocked Veteran since his memento of war is ''permanently'' with him. He's lost everything to war, his dad (who committed suicide after failing a mission to [[Leave No Man Behind|save his comrades]]), his best friend, Obito, (who, on his untimely deathbed, gave his Sharingan to Kakashi,) and even his potential love interest, Rin, (the [[Combat Medic|medic]] of his team,) and finally his sensei, the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, after the last great ninja war. As such, when Sasuke demanded to know how Kakashi would react if he killed everyone that Kakashi cared about, his reply was to simply [[Stepford Smiler|smile]] and say that he had [[Tear Jerker|already lost everyone precious to him.]]
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== Comic Books ==
* Suicida, leader of Gang Green in ''[[Marshal Law]],'' is a Zone veteran who never got the chip off his shoulder. He runs with a gang of equally crazy superhero vets fighting other crazy superhero vets and anyone else who so much as meets his eye. He wears a necklace of human ears. The front of his jacket reads ''Nuke me slowly''. In his own words, "You can't turn me on an' off like a tap, man!" and "I just wanna punch the whole world in the mouth!"
** Of course, Marshal Law himself and virtually every "hero" he fights are also traumatized Zone veterans.
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* Jackie acts this way in ''[[Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters]]'' when pretending to be a Red Baron, a [[Shout-Out]] to [[Peanuts|Charlie Brown]].
== Fan
* [[Harry Potter]] is already one of these, but many fanfics exaggerate this aspect of him.
* Darkfic tends to turn Max from ''[[Across the Universe (film)|Across the Universe]]'' into one of these. Arguably, he's a bit of one in canon-- "everything below the neck works fine," and all.
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* ''[[Forward]]'': It seems to come and go with River. On the one hand, she's (rightfully) traumatized by everything that's happened to her. On the other hand, when she's in control, she has a razor-sharp focus that lets her bury that sort of detail far below conscious thought. And on the third hand she's still a little bit crazy.
** Just about everyone else features shades of it, too. Mal and Zoe, of course, inherit theirs from canon, while Kaylee is still messed up over the [[Near-Rape Experience]] in "Objects In Space" and Book's past (whatever that may be) is clearly still in the back of his mind.
* Uchiha Sasuke in [[White Rain]] - the man has '''issues.''' [[Fight Club (film)|Multiple personal issues, for which he needs professional help.]]
== Film ==
* [[Rambo]] was a POW in Nam and was tortured thoroughly. In a scene in First Blood, cops have him locked down in the cell block and torture him with a firehose before restraining him to try and shave him. Rambo has a flashback to getting partially flayed in Nam and freaks out, beating his tormentors and escaping.
* Nick and Michael in [[Deerhunter|The Deer Hunter]].
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== Literature ==
* All the characters in ''[[All Quiet on the Western Front]]'' become Shell Shocked Veterans to one extent or another. Remarque wrote a sequel of shorts, ''The Road Back'', which describes the survivors trying to integrate back into society.
* In ''[[Horatio Hornblower|Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies]]'' short story ''The Guns of Carabobo'' Charles Ramsbottom, a British millionaire [[Eagle Squadron|recruits navy veterans to help him capture, and smuggle artillery for Simon Bolivar]]. While on neutrality patrol, Hornblower drops into port to get a chance at giving the first intelligence report on the [[Decisive Battle|Battle of Carabobo]] for the British government. When Hornblower last sees him he is missing a left hand and being carted in a combined stretcher-mobile command post. He is half-insane, and [[Determinator|desperately holding on]] while he finishes the job of providing backup firepower for the army entering the newly captured city.
* Marshal Teddy Daniels of ''[[Shutter Island]]'' has a lot of bad dreams and a drinking problem because of the things he saw at the liberation of Dachau.
* [[Lord Peter Wimsey]], especially in the earlier books in the series. He suffered a nervous breakdown right after the war, and has two more [[Heroic BSOD]]s during the series.
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* Pat Barker's WWI trilogy (''Regeneration,'' ''The Eye in the Door,'' ''The Ghost Road'') deals extensively with shell shock, among other war-induced psychiatric disorders.
* Charles Todd's Inspector Ian Rutledge suffers from an unusual form of shell shock: he constantly hallucinates the presence of another soldier whom he was forced to execute during the war.
* [[Tad Williams]]' ''[[Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn]]'' series has two of these characters, although neither of them got that way via war ''per se''. Cadrach was a powerful sorcerer who [[Go Mad
* Several of the Wraiths from the ''[[X Wing Series]]''. They're all rather young—in their thirties at the most—but they've [[Career-Building Blunder|all screwed up somewhere, which is why they're in the Wraiths at all]]. [[Cold Sniper|Donos]] was near the edge for most of the first book and [[Heroic BSOD|went over it for a time]] until his friends dragged him back, only to relapse temporarily two books later. Dia Passik has [[Broken Bird|issues]], too, as does Ton Phanan, everybody's favorite [[Deadly Doctor|homicidal]] [[Cybernetics Eat Your Soul|cybernetic]] [[Combat Medic|doctor]].
** There's also Castin Donn, whose problems stem from witnessing firsthand the Empire's brutal crackdown post-Endor. He seems pretty normal on the surface, but underneath he has a very low-key but exceptionally powerful hatred for the Empire and its successors. And then there was Lara Notsil, who had a bit of a mental problem as a result of her intelligence mission and her failure to save seventeen thousand crew aboard the ''Implacable'' from their own captain, although she had more of an identity crisis than anything else. (It's suggested that, ironically, her Intelligence training helped her here—since she was so used to totally assuming, and then totally discarding identities, she was more easily able to bury her past as Gara.)
* Leia is this in ''[[Splinter of the Minds Eye]]''. Vader's [[Mind Rape|torture of her]] in [[A New Hope]] left invisible scars. All the same, Luke admires her for holding up as well as she does most of the time.
* In ''[[Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor]]'', Luke is subjected to a form of torture that amounts to mentally experiencing [[And I Must Scream|thousands of years alone in space watching the stars go out]]; it doesn't break him, but he's affected for the rest of the book with a kind of nihilism and creeping despair. He tells a companion that it's like he's been infected, that "All I know is that it makes me want to die. No. Not die. Just... ''stop''." Being [[The Hero|Luke]] [[The Messiah|Skywalker]], though, he pushes on and tries to act like he would have before that happened in the hopes of [[Becoming the Mask]].
* The ''entire cast'' of the ''[[Warhammer
** ''Any'' veteran of the Imperial Guard, who has undoubtedly had his or her nerves shredded by facing some of the [[Cosmic Horror|worst horrors imaginable]] with nothing more than a flak jacket and a lasgun, as seen in ''Eisenhorn''.
*** Not mention they'll have watched lots of living things in general get shredded.
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* ''[[The Silmarillion]]'': Beren is described as being like this in various ways in different versions of the story, at least when he arrives in Doriath - unsurprisingly, given that [[J. R. R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]] was a WWI veteran. Fortunately, Beren has a half-elf, half-goddess lover to help him heal.
* [[The Lord of the Rings]]: How many there are...almost all the Elves lefts in Middle Earth (most of whom are thousands of years old, have fought in countless wars which all turned out to be pointless in the end, and have seen or are about to see everything they care about in Middle Earth pass away). Gimli, who's never the same after Galadriel (it isn't just BAD things that can leave you with stress injuries). Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam, who all have scars from carrying the Ring. (Note: All the listed characters ultimately sail to Aman, the approximate equivalent of Heaven, where it is said anyone can heal from anything. The story really ends when Sam goes, on the very last ship, having lived a long, happy, full life, but never having entirely healed from the Ring.)
* Rustam in the poem ''Sohrab and Rustam'' by Matthew Arnold. He is a great and heroic warrior but he is tired of killing people and tired of being someone young fools think they can get a reputation by killing. Especially when one of those young fools was his son...
* Septimus of ''Mrs. Dalloway.'' He watched his friend die in an explosion. As a result, he lost his humanity, he can't feel anything, he has hallucinations of the aforementioned friend, he's possibly schizophrenic, and he eventually kills himself.
* The protagonist of "For Esmé, With Love and Squalor" (in J.D. Salinger's ''Nine Stories''). The viewpoint switches from first- to third-person during the time the WWII soldier is at his lowest ebb, emotionally. However, it's not difficult to guess "Sergeant X" is the narrator. In the paragraph preceding the POV shift, he writes, "I've [[Lampshade Hanging|disguised myself so cunningly]] that even the cleverest reader will fail to recognize me." (Unlike X, the other characters in this passage have names.)
* [[Meaningful Name|GSV Lasting Damage]] {{spoiler|later the Masaq' Hub mind}} from Iain M. Bank's [[The Culture|Culture novels]] is a rather [[Driven to Suicide|depressed]] veteran of the Culture-Idirian War.
** GSV ''Sleeper Service'' claimed this as the reason it went Eccentric. Although [[Obfuscating Insanity|we all know how]] ''[[
* All of the [[Animorphs]] become this by the end of the series. Also, Loren describes her father as a shell of his former self ever since he came home from Vietnam.
** Rachel ''doesn't'' feel anything like this, though—which gravely concerns her (and just about everybody) thanks to [[Blood Knight|what it says about her]].
* Depending on which reality variant or which character iteration you're looking at, practically ALL the main characters in Hal Duncan's ''[[The
*
* Severus Snape from the ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' series [[Alternative Character Interpretation|could be interpreted this way.]] Given the things he must have seen - and how it all must have hit him after a person near to him was affected - and his reaction(s), it's quite plausible that he might have been a Shell-Shocked Veteran.
** The main character, Harry Potter, himself is obviously suffering from PTSD, that gets worse by the time of the fifth book.
*
** Note that Katniss already had this problem, as her father was killed in a mine explosion years ago.
** The third novel in the trilogy, ''Mockingjay'', shows a Katniss which is the full-blown embodiment of this trope. A good chunk of the novel could even be considered a psychological breakdown of the effects of war and PTSD, including Katniss' addiction to 'morphling' and frequent panic attacks. It all culminates in her eventual {{spoiler|attempted suicide by nightlock.}} Pretty dark for a YA novel.
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* "Captain America" of ''[[Generation Kill]]'' was apparently a decent officer before this set in and was part of why his real name was never given in the book.
== Live
* The quote above comes from ''[[Babylon 5]]'' and is Delenn's response to a veteran of the Earth-Minbari war who kidnapped her; decidedly one of the scarier foes she would face.
** Given the eventual revelations about Delenn's past, in some ways she herself could be considered a Shell-Shocked Veteran who turned her pain inwards. Many of her personality traits could be explained as a result of unresolved and deeply internalized grief over {{spoiler|what she started.}} It's unclear if this is how JMS designed the character but this is how Mira Furlan said she played the role.
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* Captain Jack falls into this mode now and then in ''[[Doctor Who]]'' and ''[[Torchwood]]'', having lived through ''at least'' two Dalek wars (In "Bad Wolf", he recounts a fleet of ships being destroyed), [[World War I]], and [[World War II]] ''twice''. The Doctor himself also occasionally falls into this mode when he thinks about the Time War that [[Last of His Kind|killed the rest of the Time Lords]]; his role in the war outside of its final act hasn't yet been made explicit, but it's been made clear that he was directly responsible for the (more or less) complete genocide of both species as some kind of last resort to end the war since the Daleks were winning and {{spoiler|both sides would have wiped out ''every'' other species in the universe}}.
{{quote|'''Tenth Doctor:''' I'm so old now. I used to have so much mercy.}}
* Name a ''[[Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV series)|Battlestar Galactica]]'' character. '''Any''' ''Battlestar Galactica'' character, in no way limited to the ones currently in uniform. (The ''Razor'' movie is especially notable in allowing viewers to witness the events leading up to all three of its central characters becoming prime examples of the trope: one winds up as [[General Ripper]], the other two ''both'' {{spoiler|become suicide bombers. For opposite sides.}})
* Played straight in ''[[Blue Heelers]]'' with There Last Night, The Cull and a few others. For several years around Anzac Day or Rememberance Day there would be an episode where they invoked this trope.
* Mal Reynolds from ''[[Firefly (TV series)|Firefly]]'', as a result of the Unification War in general and Serenity Valley in particular.
** A deleted scene from the ''[[Firefly (TV series)|Firefly]]'' pilot episode ''Serenity'' makes it clear that this applies to both Mal ''and'' Zoe.
{{quote|'''Simon:''' If that battle was so horrible, why'd he name the ship after it?
'''Zoe:''' Once you've been in Serenity, you never leave. You just learn to live there. }}
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* [[Played for Laughs]] on the last sketch of ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'''s 34th season where a man (played by host and former cast member Will Ferrell) who vacationed in Vietnam acts like a Shell-Shocked Veteran and sings Billy Joel's "Good Night Saigon" (joined by all of the then-current cast members, celebrity guest stars Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Tom Hanks, Maya Rudolph, Anne Hathaway, Norm McDonald, and Artie Lange [from [[Mad TV]], which at the time, was airing its final episode], and the musical guest for the episode [Green Day])
* Rick Simon on ''Simon & Simon'' experienced PTSD in the "I Thought The War Was Over" episode.
*
* ''[[The Drew Carey Show]]:''
{{quote|'''Lewis:''' I think Santa doesn't want to kill us anymore. We didn't get any death threats, recently. And, when we threw Kate to him and left her for dead he didn't touch her.
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'''Dee:''' You went to Vietnam in ''1993'' to open up a ''sweatshop!''
'''Frank:''' And a lot of good men died in that sweatshop! }}
* In ''[[Life
** Gene Hunt could be seen in this light, given the big reveal in the final episode: {{spoiler|Gene is in a policemen's limbo/purgatory, unable to come to terms with having been killed as a young man in the line of duty, and thus condemning himself to fight an endless war against imaginary criminals.}}
* Subverted with Dr. Watson in ''[[Sherlock]]''. His psychosomatic injuries and therapy indicate that he's haunted by the war, but he actually ''[[In Harm's Way|misses it]]''. This leads to him helping Sherlock Holmes.
* Largely averted in [[Magnum, P.I.]]. Although the main characters served in Vietnam and still bear the scars from it, they seemed to re-integrate back into civilian life.
** The recurring character Mac might be this, or he might just be using it as part of his ongoing cons. As part of the character's backstory is having had a serious brain injury in Vietnam, AND being a conman, it's hard to tell.
* Jimmy Darmody and [[Cold Sniper|Richard Harrow]] of ''[[Boardwalk Empire]]'' both served in [[World War
* Anthony/Victor from ''[[Dollhouse]]'' became a Doll after returning home from Afghanistan with severe PTSD.
* [[Alternate Character Interpretation|According to]] [[Atop the Fourth Wall|Linkara]], [[Power Rangers]]' Tommy becomes this by the time of [[Power Rangers Dino Thunder]] due to years of fighting evil, where the current evil ''all used to be his friends''.
* Leonard on ''[[Community]]'' claims to have participated in several wars, and this trope may be an explanation for his current wild and course nature.
* ''[[Homeland]]'' has Brody, returning home after several years of torture as prisoner-of-war. He blanks out, has mood swings, nightmares, sleeps on the floor so as not to hurt his wife and may well have undergone a [[Face Heel Turn]].
* The ''[[Murdoch Mysteries]]'' episode "Kommando" basically runs the "drug-addicted Vietnam vet can't cope with civilian life, or [[My God, What Have I Done?|the memory of what he's done]]" storyline, only in the [[Second Boer War]]. There's the added twist that {{spoiler|his former comrades are hunting him, lest he tell the world ''exactly'' what they did}}.
* ''[[Bomb Girls]]'': Lorna's husband Bob.
* Various characters show signs of this on [[Covert Affairs]].
**Auggie when he wants to buy a ring for his girlfriend buys pearl instead of diamond. As a CIA officer he knows that diamonds are criminal money and doesn't want a reminder of that world on her finger.
* At the end of the miniseries ''[[The Winds of War and War and Remembrance]]'', American submarine officer, Byron Henry was combing orphanages to find his lost son who had been trapped in Europe during the war. At one of them the women running it advises him to wear civilian clothes next time he visits an orphanage. Because the children are so emotionally scarred that they automatically think [[Nightmare Fuel|anyone with a uniform is a Nazi.]] [[Up to Eleven|Even if he is their father.]]
== Music ==
* [[Sonata Arctica]]'s song ''Replica'' is about this.
* Mac Singleton from the music video for the Travis Tritt song [[wikipedia:Anymore|Anymore]].
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== Stand-up Comedy ==
* In one of his stand-up routines, [[Bill Bailey]] discusses a conversation he had with someone about the traditional "things to do before you die" life-ambition of swimming with dolphins; apparently, the dolphins this person had swam with had previously been used for military service and consequently had "a glazed, far-away look in their eyes".
== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Dungeons
▲* ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' adventure OA6 ''Ronin Challenge''. The [[PC]]'s can meet Nozumi Takahosho, an ex-cavalryman in the service of General Goyat. The terrible things he experienced during the pursuit of Governor Kawabi plus a dose of jungle diseases permanently addled his mind.
{{quote|"We went to the jungle," he says excitedly, pointing in the direction of the Shao Mountains. His eyes then glaze over as he struggles to remember the details. "The jungle..." he stammers, "The devil-men...they had teeth like snakes...they killed everyone...everyone..." [he collapses to the ground, sobbing and shaking]}}
== Theatre ==
* [[The Zeroth Law of Trope Examples]] applies here. ''[[Henry IV Part 1]]'', [[Henry IV Part 1/Source#Scene III. Warkworth. A Room in the Castle.|Act 2, Scene 3]] describes the symptoms:
{{quote|Tell me, sweet lord, what is't that takes from thee
Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep?
Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth,
And start so often when thou sitt'st alone?
Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks;
And given my treasures and my rights of thee
To thick-eyed musing and curst melancholy?
In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watch'd,
And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars;
Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed;
Cry Courage! to the field! And thou hast talk'd
Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents,
Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets,
Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin,
Of prisoners ransomed, and of soldiers slain,
And all the 'currents of a heady fight.
Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war,
And thus hath so bestirr'd thee in thy sleep,
That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow,
Like bubbles in a late-disturbed stream;
And in thy face strange motions have appear'd,
Such as we see when men restrain their breath
On some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these?}}
== Video Games ==
* Auron in ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'', he's even [[Good Scars, Evil Scars|got the scars]] to prove it.
** Forget scars, Auron takes this trope to whole new level: {{spoiler|he didn't even ''survive'' his own pilgrimage, yet through ''sheer force of will'' he maintained his corporeal form in order to assist the present-day heroes on ''their'' pilgrimage.}}
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'''Otacon''': ''Why?''
'''Snake:''' ''I don't have any more tears to shed.'' }}
* Kratos from ''[[God of War (series)|God of War]]'' displays traits of a Shell-Shocked Veteran. This may be one of the reasons why he is such a ruthless [[
* Kratos from ''[[Tales of Symphonia]]'' exhibits tendencies of this trope from the very beginning. As you get further out in the game, the party learns that he has a very, ''very'' long and rocky history to explain it.
* Most of the main cast of ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]'', one way or another, though it seems to be played straightest with Basch.
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* The ''[[Warcraft]]'' universe has several. [[Memetic Badass|Varok Saurfang]] and [[Iron Woobie|Farseer Nobundo]] come to mind. (Those two even qualified by being on opposite sides of the same conflict.)
** Drek'Thar feels remorse for the atrocities he committed as part of the Old Horde, and because the Forsaken commit similar deeds without feeling anything, he refuses to help them.
* Bao-Dur from [[Star Wars]]: [[Knights of the Old Republic (video game)|Knights of the Old Republic]] II.
** It's heavily implied that the Exile has this even worse then Bao-Dur; the game doesn't even allow (canonically) her to recount her experiences in the war, or any other part of her life. Other characters remark on this in her absence.
{{quote|'''Kreia:''' Do you speak of all your battles? Or are there some you wish to forget?}}
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* In [[Quake III Arena]], this trope applies to many of the characters from previous Id games, especially from the Slipgate and Stroggos wars. Wrack, Grunt and Major are [[All There in the Manual|said to be this]].
* Jack Krauser is strongly implied to be this in ''[[Resident Evil Darkside Chronicles]]''. To put it simply, he held a long, extensive, and extinguished service in the military as a SOCOM operative, and also underwent mercenary business whenever he had any days off from SOCOM, he has spent enough time on the battlefield to sense something is terribly wrong in an area due to it "smelling like a battlefield," and lastly is unable to function in regular society and thus needs the battlefield to function. This last part is ultimately what drives his [[Face Heel Turn]] by the time of ''[[Resident Evil 4]]'', as {{spoiler|a serious injury to his arm that he received during his fight against Hilda Hidalgo essentially resulted in SOCOM firing him due to it never recovering.}}
* Reisen Udongein Inaba In ''[[Touhou]]'' has a background as a former slave and soldier in the Lunarian Military and is notorious for her anxiety issues, leading most of the fanbase to assume she suffers from PTSD.
== Web Comics ==
* Thaco the monk, from the webcomic ''[http://goblinscomic.com Goblins]'', is the oldest of the main cast; in fact, the barbarian is his son. He was held captive and tortured some years ago. It took him long enough to get over it that his eventual recovery—[[Not Worth Killing|by ignominiously beating down]] the person responsible—was a major character development point.
* Spoofed in ''[[Penny Arcade]]'' with Frank, a Vietnam vet turned EB Games store manager.
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== Web Original ==
* Shoutan Himei from ''[[Sailor Nothing]]'' begins the story like a classic example of this trope. And just when you think things couldn't get worse for her, [[It Got Worse|they inevitably do]].
* Miss Henderson, the librarian at Whateley Academy in the ''[[Whateley Universe]]''. She's the only survivor of a [[Cosmic Horror]] experience. And probably Phase's mother, whose horrific trauma was when she was only six, and she's never really recovered from it.
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* The character Flippy from the ''[[Happy Tree Friends]]'' flash animations is a parody of this trope.
* [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ptsd-clarinet-boy PTSD Clarinet Boy] is this trope [[Played for Laughs]].
* Its hinted that [[Sonic the Hedgehog|Sonic]] is this in ''[[Super Mario Bros Z]]''.
* Yang Xiao Long from ''[[RWBY]]'' spends what appears to be a year or so in profound depression after losing her arm in the events at the end of Volume 3. She eventually recovers enough to be functional and go back out into the world looking for her sister Ruby, but even then still shows the occasional subtle symptom indicating her recovery isn't ''complete'' (at least through the end of V5).
== Western Animation ==
* A parody of this trope is Principal Skinner on ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'', with his occasional 'Nam flashbacks, like the one on "I Love Lisa" where he saw his best friend (who was writing a love letter to his girlfriend) get shot in Da Nang in 1969 on Valentine's Day or the one on "Team Homer" where Skinner was put in a POW camp by Viet Cong after being distracted by a racy T-shirt slogan ("Up With Mini-Skirts") worn by one of his men.▼
▲* A parody of this trope is Principal Skinner on ''[[The Simpsons]]'', with his occasional 'Nam flashbacks, like the one on "I Love Lisa" where he saw his best friend (who was writing a love letter to his girlfriend) get shot in Da Nang in 1969 on Valentine's Day or the one on "Team Homer" where Skinner was put in a POW camp by Viet Cong after being distracted by a racy T-shirt slogan ("Up With Mini-Skirts") worn by one of his men.
** Parodied in ''Team Homer'', where it looks like he's going into angry flashback mode, except...
{{quote|''I spent the next three years in a POW camp, forced to subsist on a thin stew made of fish, vegetables, prawns, coconut milk and four kinds of rice. I came close to madness trying to find it here in the States, but they just can't get the spices right!''}}
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** He also displays a pathological hatred of upgrades after being tortured at the hands of an upgrade addict. Problematic when they become necessary over the course of the series- he practically has a [[Freak-Out]] over Optimus getting a Jetpack.
** In ''[[Transformers Prime]]'', Arcee has a slight form of PTSD, that didn't get showed until the twelfth episode, there she meet Airachnid again, the same Decepticon who captured her, tortured her and killed her partner in front of her eyes during the [[Transformers: War for Cybertron|war]]. She almost has a [[Heroic BSOD]] when she meets her again.
* Matrix from ''[[
* Referenced in an an episode of ''[[Aqua Teen Hunger Force]]''.
{{quote|'''Err:''' Is he alright man?
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* In [[Family Guy]], Stewie ended up becoming severely traumatized with being in the car after an incident where Lois was forced to crash the car due to Peter pooping on it from a highway bridge as part of one of his reality shows.
==
* At once more and less prevalent than it used to be. War is no longer so much about hacking apart other people at arm's length or closer, and more advanced weapons tend to make for less in-your-face combat, which takes some of the edge off. But those weapons are also far more lethal, more diverse and more easily made or obtained than ever before. The last century in particular has seen the advent of 'total war' and the rise of guerrilla warfare, which has redefined the relationship of civilians to warfare in a way that just asks for atrocities to happen.
** One could argue about which is worse. As no one has seen a mass hand to hand fight of that kind in ages one cannot tell how much stress it puts on compared to the amount of time that is found just marching which is no more stressful then what a nomad or merchant had to undergo. And the combat itself usually took no more then fifteen minutes at a turn for any man, and a soldier was supported by the ability to use bestial adrenaline to keep him going. On the other hand the world wars and some later smaller ones featured constant combat for weeks on end often being bombarded without possibility of return fire.
** Total war is not in any way a new thing. Pretty much right up until the Age of Sail, it was standard operating procedure for invading armies to kill '''everyone''', and historically the reason soldier's pay was so low is because it was assumed that the vast majority of their income would be looted from the bodies of the slain and the homes of their families. Women were included amongst the things to be looted, naturally.
*** Total war is ''not'' killing everything. While the line between civilian and combatant blurs, and thus "kill everyone" did become more frequent, total war is not simply the slaughtering and sacking of an enemy combatant. Total war is the near total mobilization of the country's population, industry, economy, and resources to fight the war. Since even noncombatants are involved in the war effort, some would argue that they become, depending on their particular role in the war effort, legitimate targets. Since everyone and everything is mobilized, complete destruction is often called for in order to render the enemy state incapable of fighting back, as simply defeating the enemy army on the field of battle no longer meant the war was lost. In order for a state to participate in total war, it has to have an advanced infrastructure and technology, which meant that states prior to the Industrial Revolution were for the most part incapable of waging total war. The decentralization of authority that prevented wholesale conscription and mobilization of the population and lack of technology to fully exploit resources as well as overcome natural obstacles (such as winter, which pretty much ended an army's ability to wage war) meant that total war had to be a relatively recent phenomenon. It was only during the tail end of the 18th century, with the French Revolutionary Wars, that total war began to take shape, finally culminating in its ultimate form of World War II.
* There's a saying among veterans and survivors of horror ordeals: There Last Night. As in a discussion between two vets where one would say they were in Vietnam in 68, and the other might reply, "Mate I was there last night." For some they can never let it go. The tragic real life trope of Shellshocked Veteran led to the forming of groups such as Legacy.
* For a contrast, illustrating that this trope is sometimes [[Truth in Television]] and sometimes not, consider the case of [https://web.archive.org/web/20090116011151/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=
** Just the normal process of recivilizing survivors could take weeks or months. The inmates were so traumatized they could often barely act human. Moreover any normal instinct for trusting even [[Reasonable Authority Figure|reasonable authority]] had been scalded away. It did not help that the processing could have a superficial resemblance and sometimes panic people into thinking they were inmates concentration camps. Quarantine is easily mistaken for imprisonment, and debriefing (necessary among other things to prepare for future trials) could make people suspect that they were going to be put under hostile interrogation. MPs were hardly SS guards but someone who had been under the charge of the later might be slow in seeing the difference. Medics required absolute trust of their charges and it did not help that the Nazis had tried to deceive them by saying gas chambers were [[Decontamination Chamber|decontamination chambers.]] Decent food and clothing were slow in coming and travel visas even slower. And perhaps worst of all they were often billeted on the very same concentration camp. In other words through a mixture of clumsiness and necessity, the reprocessing was almost as horrible for inmates as the actual camps.
** Not surprising; in real-life, people don't ever recover from or "get over" PTSD. They must learn to ''live with'' PTSD (which sucks for all concerned), because those ravages never go away. Sort of like cancer's remission. Tragically, in many cases, a [[Trigger/Analysis|Trigger]], a return to battle, a social situation requiring subtle grasp of nuance, or a random startle will instantly ratchet a sufferer right back up to their ''highest ever''—and most unbearable, undefusable, and unmitigated—levels of PTSD symptoms.
** An issue has been a perception of weakness if a veteran were to seek treatment while in service; part of the US military's efforts as a result of Iraq (and particularly of "traumatic brain injury" due to so many explosions) has been to both facilitate treatment and to encourage service members to take advantage thereof.
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* [[wikipedia:Roméo Dallaire|Roméo Dallaire]], one of the most admired people in Canada, commanded UN forces in Rwanda during the genocide there and is credited with helping to save more than thirty thousand lives. He later had problems with depression and alcohol, including a suicide attempt. He is often cited as an example of a strong and heroic person who was nevertheless vulnerable to PTSD, and has spoken about it publicly in order to destigmatize the condition.
* The term 'shell shock' originates in part from the trenches of the First World War; due to the immense and near-constant heavy bombardment that many troops were forced to live in and the vicious, near-uninhabitable living conditions, many soldiers simply snapped from the pressure and suffered mental and emotional breakdowns. Unfortunately for some of them, their superiors ([[Armchair Military|whom, it should be noted, were frequently many miles away from the front]]) were in too many cases not at all sympathetic. That is to say, they had the soldiers court-martialed, and often ''[[Kick the Dog|executed]]'', for "cowardice".
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20100617044051/http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/peter_worthington/2010/06/11/14354816.html It is worth noting that there are soldiers who are not psychopaths or sociopaths yet are somehow 'immune' to PTSD, or at least able to behave normally after the end of the conflict.] While there are undoubtedly a large number of people who suffer from PTSD, there are also people who despite having been put into high-stress situations and lost friends, can still live the rest of their lives without suffering any symptoms of PTSD. They may just have more psychological resilience than most people, but the answer is still unclear.
** Other factors also greatly reduce or prevent PTSD. They include acknowledgement of the person's experience (it goes a surprisingly long way just to help the person know that they aren't flawed for feeling the way they do), having social support, and no previous history of mental illness. Also, the older a person is when the traumatic experience happens, the less likely they are to develop PTSD, possibly because they have established ways of coping with the trauma and context for what is happening to them.
** There is some evidence that certain types of activities that 'desensitize' a person to violence (such as playing some types of video games) seems to reduce the effects of combat on many people. Given how debilitating PTSD is, anything that may help to reduce the incidence and severity needs to be looked at seriously.
* William Tecumseh Sherman, second in command of the Union armies during the [[American Civil War]] had previously been relieved after having a near psychotic break. He's the [[Trope Namer]] for [[War Is Hell]] for a reason.
* [[Ulysses S. Grant]]
** They were not alone. Doctors diagnosed "soldier's heart", which we can see, with hindsight, was PTSD. This was particularly likely in the final part of the war, where unrelenting campaigns racked up a fearful death toll.
* Charles White Whittlesey was the commander of The Lost Battalion in [[World War I]]. After the war, he received the Medal of Honor, and was much in demand for speeches and parades. Three years after the war he committed suicide. We don't know why exactly, but this trope seems like a pretty good guess.
* Adolfo Scilingo, a pilot responsible for dumping bodies during Argentina's Dirty War. He's so thoroughly traumatised by his experience that he actually wants to go to prison for his crimes, doesn't sleep, can't interact with his children, and generally speaking, [[The Atoner|hates himself]].
** Apparently not uncommon among Argentine military personnel compelled to participate in the activities of the security services, presumably to [[If You're So Evil Eat This Kitten|ensure their loyalty to the regime by making them accomplices]]. Several ended up in long-term psychiatric care.
* Finland ignored many international anti-drug treaties and refused to impose such laws because of PSTD—and the drug abuse resulting from it—being so commonplace amongst veterans after WWII. Only in the late 1970s were the drug laws taken seriously as many of the veterans were now in their fifties and sixties and past their prime.
* There was a psychologist who worked with autistic war veterans who had PTSD, but didn't get it from combat as one would expect. They had it because they had been bullied as children so badly that they had lasting psychological trauma from it.
** [[Fridge Logic|That means]] that [[Fridge Horror|
* On that note, not all people with PTSD are even involved with military combat. People can be lastingly traumatized by anything that presents a threat to a person's psychological, physical, or sexual integrity or causes psychological or physical harm.
** The idea that a person could face long-term traumatization from anything besides military combat came into fruition in the psychological community initially because some psychologists noticed that some rape victims suffered psychological symptoms similar to those who had "battle fatigue."
** Ever since 9/11, it's been recognized that firefighters and paramedics who need to go into disaster areas and the aftermath of terrorist attacks are just as vulnerable to PTSD as are the police and military who go in beside them.
* Military historian James F. Dunniagan in ''Dirty Little Secrets of World War Two'' suggested that George Patton suffered from minor strains of this in the slapping incident. That is, he sort of mentally time traveled back to [[World War I]] when slapping a frightened private was [[Values Dissonance|considered acceptable]] and for reasons felt [[Less Disturbing in Context|arguable at the time]]. Among these are that fear is contagious and has to be suppressed, and even for the soldier himself it is better that his fear be sharply suppressed than that he be remembered as someone who [[Fate Worse Than Death|couldn't take it.]] The difference was that Patton was a general now, not a junior officer and the shell-shocked soldier had already been taken off the line so it was no longer a matter of rallying someone in panic mode.
* Cervantes lends at least a suspicion of this. He went off to war as a young man, fought in one of the [[Battle of Lepanto|most traumatic]] battles in history and was latter captured and held as a [[Galley Slave]] before being ransomed. One might wonder if [[Don Quixote|his book]] is the sort of thing written by someone who had just about had enough of war.
* [[Napoleon Bonaparte]], of all people, had repeated breakdowns during the later part of his career. He was almost completely impassive at Borodino and Waterloo. This was aggravated by an acutely painful and embarrassing digestive infection.
** Similarly incongruously, Alexander the Great toward his later reign was known for behaving more and more erratically. He was always [[Blood Knight|kinda odd]] anyway but it became more noticeable.
* One of the oldest "folk cures" is militaristic fol-de-rol. One of the purposes of [[Bling of War|spectacle]], [[Knighting|honors]], [[Brotherhood of Funny Hats|service clubs]] and esoteric ritual is to provide group support.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Hollywood Psych]]
▲[[Category:Madness Tropes]]
[[Category:Internal Conflict Tropes]]
[[Category:Military and Warfare Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Shell-Shocked Veteran]]
[[Category:This Index Has Had a Hard Life]]
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