Shell-Shocked Veteran: Difference between revisions

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* 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.

* 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.

* 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...}}

 

== 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.

 

== Fan Fiction ==

* [[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.

** 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]].

 

== 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.

* 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.

** 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 Book of All Hours]]'' series are this at different points. Particularly Seamus/Prometheus (who is this in EVERY reality ([[Because Destiny Says So|unfortunately its a core staple of his archetype]]) and Jack (Carter) (in the iterations where he plays [[The Captain]]). [[Determinator|Phreedom]] ''would'' have been this except she chose the [[Screw Destiny]] route and [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|went AWOL]].

* 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.

* "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.

 

* 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.

 

== Music ==

* [[Sonata Arctica]]'s song ''Replica'' is about this.

* Mac Singleton from the music video for the Travis Tritt song [[wikipedia:Anymore|Anymore]].

== 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 & Dragons]]'' adventure OA6 ''Ronin Challenge''. The [[Player Character|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]}}

 

== 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.}}

* 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.}}

 

== 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.

 

== 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.

 

== 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.

** Parodied in ''Team Homer'', where it looks like he's going into angry flashback mode, except...

 

== Real Life ==

* 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.

**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.

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[[Category:Hollywood Psych]]