Survivor Guilt: Difference between revisions

[[File:deadfriends_gg_1964.jpg|link=Girl Genius|frame|[[Defied Trope|Some people just cannot appreciate good drama.]]]]

 

''Now my friends are dead and gone...''|'''Marius''', '''''[[Les Misérables]]'''''}}

 

* In [[Yu-Gi-Oh!]], season 4, {{spoiler|BIG SPOILER Yami after the duel with Raphael-[[More Than Mind Control|you ]] [[Not So Different|know ]] [[Heroic Sacrifice|the ]] [[Heroic BSOD|one.]] }}

* ''[[Ranma ½]]'': One of the reasons why Ranma angsts about Akane [[Disney Death|dying]]. She dies twice, right after saving Ranma's life each time.

* Cloud in ''[[Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children]]''. His depression and antisocial tendencies returning is strongly implied to be due not to Aerith or Zack's deaths, but him surviving.

* Yuya, a [[Wholesome Crossdresser]] in the hentai manga ''Secret Plot Deep'', suffers from this along with being [[The Unfavorite]], as his twin sister had died in a car crash and his parents went into deep depression as a result. Then one day, as his back-story reveals, his mother mistook him for his sister when he was coming out of the shower (his having long hair didn't help), and when he came home from school the next day, all his stuff was thrown out and his sister's stuff put back in place instead; he decided to [[Wholesome Crossdresser|go along with the charade]] in order to keep his parents happy. When he reveals this to his love interest, he's clearly unhappy with the situation, declaring that it should have been ''him'' that died instead of his sister. [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|Said love interest disagrees]].

* [[Superman]] has been accused of constantly doing good works partly because he feels guilty for being the last survivor of his entire planet. The extent of this varies on the character's portrayal. The [[Silver Age|Pre Crisis]] Superman left Krypton as a toddler and had total recall, so he could remember his childhood home very clearly and always felt horrible about what happened to it. The [[Post-Crisis]] John Byrne version had no memory of Krypton, and when he finally learned about it, it turned out to be a dystopia that wasn't worth missing. However, in most incarnation there ''are'' other survivors, such as Supergirl and the inhabitants of the Phantom Zone.

** Spoofed in issue #0 of ''Dr. Blink, Superhero Shrink'' by [[Dork Tower|John Kovalic]] and Christopher Jones. A therapy session with [[Superman]] [[Expy]] Captain Omnipotent ends with the realization that the Captain is a perfectionist overachiever because of his [[Survivor Guilt]], striving for the approval of his dead parents. A jubilant Captain Omnipotent frees himself from his heroic obsession... causing him to ignore a half-dozen crimes and disasters occurring around him.

* Some versions of [[Batman]] have him as a victim of lifelong survivor's guilt from childhood for surviving his parent's murder as if he failed them in some way.

** Also Commissioner Gordon in [[Dark Victory]] after he survives an attack by the Hangman, but one of his [[By-The-Book Cop|Untouchables]] does not.

* Depending on the writer, ''[[X-Men]]'''s Emma Frost sometimes exhibits varying degrees of mild depression to full on psychotic behavior for being the sole survivor of the mutant massacre of Genosha.

* Played with in ''[[Preacher (Comic Book)]]'', when Spaceman visits the Vietnam Memorial.

* In ''[[Fantastic Four]]'''s spin-off ''FF'', The Thing and Franklin Richards are suffering from this after {{spoiler|Johnny Storm died}}, something that shocks [[Spider-Man]] when he becomes a member of the team, mostly because Ben Grimm is deathly serious..

* In ''Ultimate Fallout: {{spoiler|Spider-Man No More}}'', [[The Ultimates]] are hit with this hard over {{spoiler|death of [[Ultimate Spider-Man|Spider-Man]]}}: Tony Stark gives {{spoiler|Aunt May and Gwen Stacy}} a home in Europe to start life away from the tabloids, Nick Fury tells {{spoiler|Mary Jane}} that she has every right to publish the truth and that it was his fault that it happened and, worst of all, {{spoiler|Steve Rogers ''quits'' being Captain America because he gave him [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]] ''and he was proven horribly wrong''.}}

* Nicolas Cage's character in ''[[Windtalkers]]''.

* In ''[[Repo! The Genetic Opera]]'', {{spoiler|Nathan Wallace wishes that he had died instead of his wife, Marni}}. As mentioned in the song "I Didn't Know I'd Love You So Much":

* Det. Del Spooner of ''[[I, Robot (film)|I Robot]]'' has this as a reason for hating robots. {{spoiler|During a car accident where he and a girl were trapped in cars sinking into the lake, a robot saved him but not the girl. The robot claims that Spooner had a better chance of survival than the girl (whose odds were statistically non-existent), a reasoning he hates since he believes that a true human would gladly sacrifice their life to [[Always Save the Girl|save the girl]] no matter how futile}}.

* A deleted scene from ''[[Unbreakable]]'' has Bruce Willis' character having a [[Shower of Angst]] while hearing reports of the train crash, of which, he was the lone survivor.

* In ''[[Pitch Black]]'' Riddick is briefly struck with this near the end {{spoiler|after Fry is killed when she goes back to save him}}, if his screaming protests of "Not for me! Not for ME!" are any indication.

* In "[[I Miss You I Miss You]]" there is a heartbreaking scene where Tina addresses this. She was running just one step ahead of her twin sister when her sister was hit by a car and killed. Afterward she has nightmares where her sister wants them to trade places, and sometimes hears her sister's voice in her head.

'''Tina''': (''sobbing'') I want to live too, Cilla. I want to live. Let me be. ''Let me be''. I want to live, Cilla! If I had only watched where I was going. If only I had seen the car. }}

* [[The Guardian]] has Ben Randall who is feeling this after being the only survivor of a botched rescue.

* In ''[[Doctor Who]]'', The Doctor gets darker due to his [[Last of His Kind|entire race]] (apart from The Master, but he didn't know about him at the time) being killed off.

** Guilt compounded by the apparent fact that he caused whatever destroyed the other Time Lords (along with the Daleks) in the first place, as indicated in the episode "Dalek":

'''Doctor''': I watched it happen. I ''made'' it happen! }}

*** He didn't simply cause it. In ''The End of Time'', it becomes clear that {{spoiler|he killed the Time Lords on purpose, to prevent them from destroying reality. In a case of [[Fridge Brilliance]], this is obvious in retrospect: after the Doctor ended the Time War, legions of Daleks survived, but only one other Time Lord}}.

** Shirou's [[Survivor Guilt]] is so powerful that {{spoiler|it manifests as his [[Reality Warper|Reality Marble]] [[Field of Blades|"Unlimited Blade Works"]]. A normal person could never accomplish something like that.}}

* Hanako of [[Katawa Shoujo]] ''also'' survived a fire at the cost of her family, but for a slightly more... personally traumatic reason than Shirou.

 

 

** [[Transformers Generation 1|G1]] Bluestreak is described as the only survivor of his city, and presumably developed his nervous habit of constant chatterboxing to fill the silence.

* On ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'', Aang goes through this phase in the episode "The Storm".

* The ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'' episode "Hereafter" features an interesting version. Superman is flown far into the future; where the Earth is a wasteland. The sole surviving human is the Immortal Vandal Savage, who reveals that he ended up destroying humanity in one of his plans for world domination. Guilty for what he did, he assists Supes in returning to his own time and stopping him.

** From the same episode, back in the present day, the League and Toyman think that Superman is dead. Superman got hit by shoving [[Batman]] and [[Wonder Woman]] out of the way of Toyman's ray. Wonder Woman gets homicidal over survivor's guilt, and Toyman only survives thanks to [[The Flash]].