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Dark and Troubled Past: Difference between revisions
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[[File:tragicpast 8463.png|link=Peachi|frame|''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty|TRAGIC]]'', we tell you!]]
{{quote|''And the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."''
Stock [[Backstory]] for a character. Much like a [[Mysterious Past]], except more [[Tragedy|tragic]] and troubled. Don't expect it to be revealed all at once, or sometimes ''at all''. It usually gets revealed in small doses through a [[Troubled Backstory Flashback]] as the story progresses; possibly in a [[Flashback Nightmare]] where [[Too Happy to Live|a happy memory transforms into a slaughter]]. Often used as a [[Freudian Excuse]] for an antisocial character's [[Jerkass]] tendencies or [[The Quiet One|quiet]] [[The Stoic|stoicism]]. Still, it is understandable that the character wants to keep it [[Dark Secret|secret]] because [[They're Called "Personal Issues" for a Reason]], after all.
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The step-up of this trope is the [[Dysfunction Junction]], where ''the whole cast'' will have one of these and suffer from it, too (and don't expect them to get better). If the afflicted character is in a law enforcement profession, see [[Standard Cop Backstory]]. When paired with a [[Nice Guy]] or gal with a [[Upbringing Makes the Hero|happy upbringing]], you can expect...''[[Vitriolic Best Buds|interesting]]'' [[Action Duo|results.]]
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* Dragon Ball, with Vegeta having his home planet destroyed at around age 5, and being a forced underling of the creature who massacred his people for most of his life.
* Kenshin Himura from ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'' and ''[[
* Hiei from ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]''. {{spoiler|Being tossed away by your clan, brought up by bloodthirsty thieves who later abanndon you, and going through torture just to find your homeland only to learn that your mother committed suicide and your twin sister has been kidnapped by a sadistic psycho will make you be just a little bit dark.}}
* Vash the Stampede from ''[[Trigun]].'' He was born as an artificial human on a space cruiser transporting most of humanity to a distant world, where the crew was paranoid of him. Thanks to his brother, he got to watch the cruiser destroyed, killing millions, including his mother figure. Years later, after the discovery of his destructive powers, he unwittingly caused the annihilation of an entire city.
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**Aoi was just 6 and Akira was 16 when they both lost their parents in a car accident.After their parents died both of them had their as well as their parents inheritance stolen by their relatives making both Aoi and Akira homeless and this also causes Akira to use his skills for Shady business in order to provide shelter for him and Aoi to live
**Spectre was just a baby when his parents abounded him at tree.The tree protected him as parent and afterwards he was taken to orphanage and didn't have the ability to mingule with others all of his life has been bored until he faced the Hanoi Project.Like Jin and Yusaku he was one of the six that got kidnap but unlike both of them he enjoyed the incident and had fun even if he get electrode for losing a duel.It makes you wonder that he lacks proper human emotions
** Dr Kogami was a researcher for SOL and mastermind of Hanoi Project after SOL find out they imprisoend him and put him in coma and later killed him years later his son revived him in the network world
**Takeru just like Jin, Spectre and Yusaku he was also one of the 6 kids that got kidnap and tortured during the Hanoi Project and after being rescued he learned that his parents died during an accident while they were looking for him
*
* ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'': [[Dysfunction Junction|Practically everybody]]. Ed and Al lost their mother when they were young, tried to resurrect her, and failed; and, as a result, [[First Episode Spoiler|Ed lost two of his limbs and Al his entire body]]. Roy and Hawkeye, among others, participated in the Ishbalan genocide and feel extremely guilty about it. Scar lost his brother in said genocide, Winry's parents were killed on the battlefield, Hohenheim {{spoiler|unknowingly helped kill off the population of an entire country}}, and Bradley (in the manga) {{spoiler|grew up as a test subject, was injected with the Philosopher's Stone, and does not know whether his present personality is the one he had prior to the injection}}.
** Roy especially qualifies because, in the first anime, he {{spoiler|was the one who shot and killed Winry's parents under military orders}}. He was almost [[Driven to Suicide]] because of it.
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* It's mentioned in ''[[Fairy Tail]]'' that everyone in the guild has ''some'' sort of hidden pain in their pasts. A lot of them are explored in each arc of the manga as it goes on.
==
* The ''[[X-Men]]'s'' [[Wolverine]], who ''also'' had a [[Mysterious Past]] and, thanks to his amnesia, had it remain that way for a looong time. Further complicated by [[Fake Memories|implanted memories]]; as if forgotten trauma wasn't bad enough, how about a helping of trauma that ''didn't actually happen?'' Not to mention the pain of wondering if his few happy memories [[Or Was It a Dream?|were real or not]].
** [[Magneto]], in spades. His entire birth family was killed in the Holocaust, his daughter Anya died in a fire because he didn't know how to use his nascent powers to save her, and his wife (who was also his childhood sweetheart) called him a monster and fled after he—literally—exploded in rage and killed the villagers who'd prevented him from either concentrating on said powers or going after Anya by normal means. Later, he joined an American government agency to pursue Nazis, and agents killed his girlfriend because he had pursued one of the "wrong" Nazis. No wonder the guy has a deeply cynical attitude toward humanity.
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* ''Grimjack'' has probably one of the worst cases of this trope. Abused and abandoned by his family, he spent his childhood fighting for his life in a gladitoral arena. He eventually escapes and finds peace in another dimension, only for everyone in the dimension, including his true love, to be slaughtered by demons. Then there was all the crap he went through during the comic.
▲== Fanfiction ==
* This is a common trait of [[Mary Sue]]s—to have pasts lathered in tragedy, to give them instant sympathy points, which have little to no bearing on the actual behavior of the character (unless it's to make them a [[Jerkass Sue]]). [http://www.interrobangstudios.com/potluck/index.php?strip_id=1014 Ensign Sue demonstrates.] (Parody)
* ''[[Kyon: Big Damn Hero]]'' has {{spoiler|Michikyuu Kanae}}, who, as a slider, has gone through hundreds of worlds, only to have them invaded by aliens and everyone she loved killed. Again and again. ''[[Doom Magnet|Hundreds of times]]''.
* Some ''[[Total Drama Island]]'' fanfics give the characters tragic pasts.
* All of the main characters in the fanfic ''[[Freefall (fanfic)|Freefall]]'' have tragic childhoods, to a varying degree of "tragic"; not surprising, since the fic features [[CLAMP]] characters.
* In the ''[[My Little Pony:
* In ''A New Face In Ponyville'', Joshua Rocket is revealed to have shadows of one of them in chapter 9.<ref>Counteraction</ref> This could also be a case of Mysterious Past since not a lot of concrete details were given and even what
* Firefly in ''[[Ace Combat: The Equestrian War]]'' lost her home, her parents and her dreams of becoming a Wonderbolt, thanks to {{spoiler|Black Star}}. It's the reason she is sometimes cold and angsty toward others.
* In ''[http://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-3655-3/Anoron+The+Key+To+Marauding.htm#storybody The Key to Marauding]'', Dawn has all the emotional baggage of Series 5 of Buffy (dead mother, knowing that the first 14 years of her life aren't real encounters with Glory, etc...). In the fic she is {{spoiler|chained up in the dungeon and nearly raped by Lucius Malfoy, kidnapped and tortured by Death Eaters and is torn between her own world and the Potterverse when a way of getting back appears.}}
** By the sequel she has lost
== Film ==
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