The Woobie/Video Games: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:cubonewoobie_2889.gif|link=Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire|frame|The cause of many [[Game Boy]]s hugged in public.]]

 

 

 

* [[Arc Rise Fantasia]] gives us the final boss of the game, the [[Designated Villain]], {{spoiler|Eesa}}. Unfortunately for the heroes, they either have a choice of letting most of mankind die off, or kill {{spoiler|Eesa}}, who is only in the situation she is in because mankind wanted her to {{spoiler|become God}} in the first place. The reason she even ended up as an antagonist is because the same humans who {{spoiler|made her into a God later decided they no longer needed her and decided to kill her.}} While she {{spoiler|survived their attempts to kill her}}, the aftermath is the world covered in hozone, and the only way {{spoiler|Eesa}} can save mankind while keeping herself alive is to either {{spoiler|reset the world(killing everything), or wipe out 90% of humans stuck on the ground.}} The party's solution in order to save humanity? Kill the {{spoiler|God they created who is only doing everything in her power to save humanity}} while desperately trying to preserve her own life at the same time. The cutscene after beating her only hammered down the fact that she never wanted to be like this in the first place and that she wanted to live.

** Chris Lightfellow could also count, what with the beloved dead parents, and the fact that she's trying to be even a fraction as great of member of the military as her father was at the beginning while suddenly shouldering the leadership due to the recent deaths of the previous Generals. Then there's the whole "set up to be a sacrifice to fuel the war" part which leads to her killing [[The Scrappy]]. All around just a poor, pitiable soul [[Iron Woobie|who overcomes whatever is thrown at her.]]

** Let's not forget Hugo. What looks like a simple errand for [[The Chief's Daughter|The Chief's Son]], delivering a message to the Zexen capital about the cease-fire agreement, goes astray when the Council decides to treat him like crap just because they can, delaying him for several days before having a go-between just take the letter, denying him even an audience with them. Then they decide "Hey, the Chief's kid could make a good bargaining chip!" and try to kidnap him from the inn, setting off a [[Stern Chase]]. And when he finally makes it back home, it's to find Karaya in flames. His best friend goes into an [[Unstoppable Rage]], [[Leeroy Jenkins|charges one of the soldiers]], and is promptly cut down right in front of him. And that's all just in his first chapter!

* ''[[Planescape: Torment]]'':

** Everyone to some extent: Deionarra and Dak'kon deserve special mention though.

** Wolf herself is also somewhat of a [[Woobie]] - she even confesses just before her senseless death that she's essentially spent her entire life waiting for someone to come and kill her.

** Not to mention Raiden in the fourth game, who not only suffered head breaking unreasonable torment before the game even begins, but ends up suffering and bleeding in quite literally every single appearance he makes.

** Solid Snake himself is also a great example of this trope. He's been betrayed many times by people who he felt were good friends and by the time of ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' on the original Playstation, [[Knight in Sour Armor|he's a jaded, cynical and unwilling soldier.]] When you see all the crap he goes through in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'' it's nearly impossible not to shed tears.

** And then there's The Boss, Big Boss' mentor. She is arguably the biggest [[Badass]] of the series but the lengths she goes through to protect the country that she loves is what makes her such a tragic figure. {{spoiler|While it at first appears that she betrayed the United States, she was actually set-up to by her superiors and would go down in history in America as the greatest traitor since Benedict Arnold and one of the worst war criminals in Russian history and she would have to be killed by her student And she did it with that knowledge.}}

* Latooni from the ''[[Super Robot Wars Original Generation]]'' was turned into a expert pilot by way of [[The Spartan Way|intense training]] that killed most of the participants including the rest of Latooni's entire group. She ends up finding three of her remaining school-mates, only to find they're on the ''other'' side of the war. She ends up nearly killing one, the other two were [[Brainwashed and Crazy|brainwashed to kill her]], and one of them died in a [[Heroic Sacrifice]]. Her best friend was kidnapped, and also brainwashed into killing her. Even worse she's stuck in a love triangle with Ryusei Date, and Mai Kobayashi, and she's at a disadvantage because Mai has a [[Combination Attack]], in a series where love interests always have a combination attack.

** They're all preceded by Tytti Noorbuck, actually. So when we first hear about her past, it's about {{spoiler|Her parents being killed brutally in front of her, by [[Psycho for Hire|Lubikka]] [[Complete Monster|Hakinnen]], followed with him gloating that he would take extra delights on seeing her shiver in fear and terror.}} Later on, {{spoiler|Lubikka reappears and [[Brainwashed and Crazy|brainwashed her]] into attacking her lover Ricardo Silvera, which he managed to pull her out of the brainwashing stance... only for Lubikka to shoot him dead in front of her AGAIN, then Ricardo died just after Tytti officially returned his love, and from thereafter, she became [[Allergic to Love|fearful of striking a relationship with another man.]]}} And this is just the earlier version, let's see if OG (if she ever appears there) will crank this up to an eleven.

* ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'':

** Terra is the closest thing the game has to a main character. Her first memories are being brainwashed by the empire to kill people. Feared by people both because she worked for the empire and because she knows magic, she questions her ability to feel love. She finds that she is half "esper" and that her people are being tortured to provide the empire with magic, at which point she goes crazy and flies into the sky as a flaming purple banshee.

* In ''[[Vagrant Story]]'', we have Samantha of the Crimson Blades. {{spoiler|Though technically an antagonist, she appears to be a sympathetic character who [[Tragic Dream|dreams]] of gaining immortality with her lover, [[Dark Messiah|Guildernstern]]. However, Guildenstern eventually stabs her as a sacrifice for his own 'cause'. His final words to her are "I love you, Samantha. As God is my witness." to which she responds "[[Was It All a Lie?|"I...too, once thought so..."]] before [[Tear Jerker|falling off the Grand Cathedral's rooftop]].}}

* ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'':

** And then...there's [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds|Xion.]] [[Trauma Conga Line|Poor]], [[Break the Cutie|poor,]] [[Cloning Blues|Xion]].

** Kairi in and out of game. She is first separated from the people she cares for most and eventually kidnapped, then she learns that {{spoiler|her closest friend sacrificed his heart to save her}}, then she is separated from her friends further, and later when she finally {{spoiler|receives a keyblade}}, she is still cut off from Sora and Riku by Xemnas. Oh, and the real kicker? The [[Fan Dumb|fangirls]] [[The Scrappy|hate]] [[Ron the Death Eater|her]] [[Die for Our Ship|guts]] for all this.

* [[Badass Princess|Melia]] in ''[[Xenoblade Chronicles]]''. {{spoiler|Four of her trusted friends die trying to protect her, she becomes the target of an assassination plot made by her stepmother, her father is killed, and to top that all off, the majority of her people end up being transformed into mindless Telethia by the [[Big Bad]], including her half brother, who she is then forced to fight against.}} She takes all of it surprisingly well, though.

* How come [[Siren (video game)|Siren]] isn't here yet? Harumi just makes you want to hug her on sight, and then there's [[Tear Jerker|Tomoko...]]

** Bonus points if she's the [[Unlucky Childhood Friend]] during the playthrough.

** Her woobification works to a degree. Some fans just want to give her a big hug, like Lloyd, the object of her affection, does in one of the scenes in which she's going through her first [[Painful Transformation]]; [[Internet Backdraft|others want to kill her dead]].

** Satsuki is the [[Chew Toy]]. Len and Nanako however are legitimate examples. The biggest woobie in Tsukihime is however {{spoiler|the real [[Tragic Monster|SHIKI.]]}} This will not make the slightest bit of sense until you've beaten every route of course.

* Wally, the little ginger pirate wannabe from the ''[[Monkey Island]]'' series. He actually had a scene where he is stranded on a raft and his monocle falls in the water, he then falls in trying to retrieve it; this was taken out because the developers felt so sorry for him.

** It's not that he's emotionless. He's just not very emotional. He clearly has affection for Milla, a borderline hatred for tackiness, and is obviously angry as hell when he encounters the ''[[Big Bad]]'' near the end of the game. Which may only enhance his appeal to fangirls...

** How could you put Sasha without also mentioning Milla? The {{spoiler|entire family of orphans she took care of died in a fire. By listening to her nightmares, you can tell she blames herself for not being there to save them.}}

[[Selfless Wish|I wish that Yumei could be with her parents!]]" This unfortunately has the result of ''killing'' her.]]

** Second Game: The Einherjar again, though that's [[All There in the Manual|mainly in their character bios]]. More obvious is Alicia, a princess that was disowned for something that was not her fault and later had to watch her father being executed. Minutes later, her kingdom is destroyed, and she learns her mother committed suicide.

*** Don't forget Rosea and Lieselotte. Initially students of the palace Archmage with promising futures, they were both banished when the Archmage was mysteriously murdered one night (with evidence that cast suspicion on the both of them) and left to wonder the land. {{spoiler|It was the third student of the Archmage who had killed him and framed the others. Since both girls only know that she herself is innocent, they believed the other responsible and too much of a coward to own up to it, thus driving the former friends to hate each other. No matter which of the three paths you take, at least one of the girls will die, and by the hand of the other one. And if you take the "A" path, they ''kill each other''.}}

*** Liesel, however, is far less sympathetic than Rosea and is really more of a [[Jerkass Woobie]]. she does reform in the "B" path.

*** Rosea perhaps ends out the worst - in Path C, she {{spoiler|murders Lieselotte out of anger, but then proceeds to have a [[My God, What Have I Done?]]. Depending on who you recruited and if they're alive (Darius or Earnest and Natalia) she is surrounded by the most broken and least sympathetic characters of the game (''Especially'' if you recruited the Bloody Twins) with the exception of Duwain. She is then forced to fight Lenneth Valkyrie and then is forced into a brutal war, wandering from town to town in a demon-infested world where [[Anyone Can Die]]. The player can do even ''worse'' things to her, such as Pluming Duwain right in front of her and then forcing her to fight him in the final boss. If she's not sent to Nifelheim in aiding in attacking Lenneth, then perhaps the best thing you can do to her is plume ''her'', so that she can live on as an Einherjar.}} And she's one of the nicest characters in the game, [[Beware the Nice Ones|beware the nice one aside]]

* Polka from ''[[Eternal Sonata]]''. Because of the myth that her fatal illness is contagious, most members of society treat her like a leper. People don't even bother to thank her when she uses her magic to heal injured people because being able to use magic is possible only if you're going to die soon. In spite of it all, Polka is still a good person who wants, more than anything else in the world, to simply help everyone she can while she still has the time.

* The lack of dialogue makes this highly reliant on [[Alternate Character Interpretation]], but in ''[[Yume Nikki]]'', Madotsuki's dreams (which make the entirety of the game) are filled with [[Nightmare Dreams|nightmares]] that may or may not be indicative of a past involving isolation, gender identity disorder, neglectful or possibly abusive parents, and possibly rape. Any of which may help explain why she [[Hikikomori|refuses to leave her room when awake]].

** Within the dreams themselves, there's Masada, who plays the piano on a spaceship, and generally seems to be very lonely in space, and is completely harmless to the player, and is easily one of the least threatening looking characters in the game. He will also run from you if you equip the knife. Whilst many characters do run from you if you equip the knife, Masada is easily the most obvious in this behavior, and looks terrified when doing so, thus often being assumed to be the only one who does so.

** Maki Sonomura/Mary. A bedridden girl forced to stay in the hospital near damn everytime with her mother constantly at work, which caused her to hate her mom. {{spoiler|Then she's unwittingly used as an experiment which creates another world with herself being split to three, her ideal self joining you and seemingly are honky-dory and cheerful... and when she learns the truth, she's utterly broken and nearly lost her ideals.}}

** Kei Nanjou/Nate Trinity is the snotty pragmatic guy who even suggests most of the sadistic choices. But when it comes to it, he's a shining example of [[Lonely Rich Kid]] with his butler Yamaoka/Alfred as his constant companion (and embarrasses the hell out of him). {{spoiler|Said butler get killed VERY EARLY in the game and Nanjou witnessed his last moments tearfully, made one last promise to be the best there is and made him truly lonely. He's still a snotty jerk in the rest of the game, but [[Jerkass Woobie|a snotty jerk we can feel sorry for]], and we know him being snotty and always aiming for the top is the promise he made for his only most treasured person.}}

** Ragna the Bloodedge: Getting his beloved sister snatched away, his arm chopped off by a ghost while his little brother only watched in glee, his home burnt down and gotting turned into a half-vampire in a span of ''one frigging day''? Oh, how about when you realize he's destined to destroy the world, get destroyed and repeat the event over and over and over? And at the end of the 2nd game, how about {{spoiler|the big reveal that it's his beloved sister who's the [[Big Bad]]?}}

** Jin Kisaragi: Getting ignored by his big brother? Getting adopted to a family that alienized him and made him an outcast despite his excellent prowess? Is destined to kill his beloved brother so much it drove him crazy? {{spoiler|His 'girlfriend' turning evil even though they used to be on good terms previously?}} Well, he's more of a [[Jerkass Woobie]], though... But still a Woobie.

* The ''[[Touhou]] Project'' has several woobies among its ranks:

** Hong Meiling's popularity is mainly due to how badly she's treated by the main cast, especially [[Ninja Maid|Sakuya]]. On top of that, people keep calling her [[My Name Is Not Durwood|China]].

** Reisen Inaba's woobie-ness is often played for comedy in fanon. In canon, she's also subject to lots of Punishment Time by Eirin, and constantly gets pranked by Tewi.

** Byakuren Hijiri used to be a Youkai exterminator, but grew to love her quarry as much as the humans she was protecting, so she started covertly helping them hide away safely instead of killing them. She ended up imprisoned in Makai for more than a millenium for her troubles. Oh yeah, and [[Dead Little Sister|her little brother died too]].

** Fujiwara no Mokou certainly counts. Her father was humiliated by Kaguya, and she wound up stealing the Hourai Elixir (and in the process, murdering someone who'd previously saved her life) and became completely incapable of dying. She's unable to exact her desired revenge because her rival is ''also'' immortal, and basically the only friend she's ever really had is a mortal half-beast... and she ''still'' gets picked on by the main characters in the Extra stage.

* Frog/Glenn from ''[[Chrono Trigger]]'' has been through a lot, with the transformation to a frog and all, yet he handles it with as much chivalry and honor as he can. Somebody give him a hug.

** Not to mention Robo. Beaten up by his "brothers", forced to kill his brainwashed girlfriend, committing final genocide on his "species"...

* Nina from ''[[Breath of Fire]] Dragon Quarter''. Whereas Nina is usually a princess in the Breath of Fire games, in this one she is a genetically altered orphan, designed to act as an air filtration unit (The poisoned air, of course, remains in her body), who had her tongue cut out. [[Crapsack World|Dragon Quarter is not a happy game.]]

** [[Earn Your Happy Ending|Not until the end, at least.]]

* Dana Mercer from ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]''. She is the ''only'' major character who is not evil or twisted (Ragland might count too). In her first scene, some Blackwatch asshole is about to blow her brains out. Alex saves her by ''punching through the guy's head right next to her''. [[It Got Worse|Things don't get any better for her]]. She finds out her brother has become a viral monster, she later finds out he ''eats people'', and then {{spoiler|she gets kidnapped by a Leader Hunter and taken to Elizabeth Greene, who does God knows what to her that renders her comatose (possibly Infected?)}}. It gets even worse after [[The Reveal]] that {{spoiler|the real Alex Mercer is dead and that he was the one who unleashed the Blacklight Virus in the first place. Not only is her brother actually dead, but the fact that he released the Virus knowing his sister was still in the city means that he didn't really care about her.}} At least {{spoiler|the Blacklight Virus itself [[Morality Pet|cares a great deal about her]].}}

* Several from ''[[Chibi-Robo!]]''. Welcome to [[Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer|the Island of Misfit Toys]].

*** The third game ups Shepard's woobie factor a thousand fold. When others are not dying\killing themselves in front of him\her, or condemning him\her for what s\he's done, they're trying to tell Shepard everything will be alright. At the end, when the Alliance still calls on Shepard, s\he is just so tired, beaten, bruised, and probably bleeding to death and this is before having to make the ultimate choice and sacrifice to determine the fate of the galaxy.

** Ashley Williams is constantly screwed by the higher ups {{spoiler|because her Grandfather was the Commander at the Shanxi defeat. She also sees her entire unit slaughtered by the [[Mecha-Mooks|Geth]]. She can also die in an atomic explosion as a result of a decision by her potential love interest, or be saved only to be dumped for an asari.}}

** The sequel really ups Tali's woobie factor. {{spoiler|She finds her father dead at the same time she finds out he was doing illegal experiments on Geth, making him a war criminal against the quarians. And unless you do some fast talking during her trial, she potentially could be exiled forever from the one home she's ever known. Not to mention that, if you pursue her romance path, several conversation options imply that she's had feelings for Shepard since the events of ''[[Mass Effect]] 1'' two years ago.}} With all this, is it any surprise that one of the Paragon interrupts is to give her a comforting hug and let her cry in your arms? (Very nice of [[BioWare]] to put this in, considering that is exactly what a person would want to do when confronted with a Woobie. Now you finally have the option to do it in-game.)

*** Some consider the entire Quarian race as Woobies, considering the treatment they get and their involuntary vagrancy.

* [[Metroid|Samus Aran]] is [[Statuesque Stunner|a 6'3"]] ([[Power Armor|in armor]]) trigger happy bounty hunter who defines [[Badass]]. Why might she be on the list? Her parents were killed when she was 3, with her dad dying in a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] and her mom being ''eaten'' by [[Extreme Omnivore|Ridley]], and was adopted by the bird-like Chozo only for them to be possibly wiped out. To make matters worse, the guy who killed her mother, [[Arch Enemy|Ridley]], [[Why Won't You Die?|just won't die]], and attacks another colony she is on, forcing her to relive the murder of her mother. When she mentally and emotionally shuts down and begs for death, you want to hug her. [[Action Girl|More than normal]], [[Hot Amazon|that is]].

** Perhaps this is more an instance of a [[Just for Pun|literal]] [[Iron Woobie]].

* And in second place in the [[Action Girl]] compartment we have [[Parasite Eve|Aya Brea]]. Just watch her crumble in [http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-2010-the-3rd/101620 the trailer] for ''The 3rd Birthday'', and join the Give-poor-Aya-a-break-already-she-has-experienced-her-share-of-[[Eldritch Abomination|Eldrich-Abominations]] movement.

** To be fair, Aya is pretty strong to cope up with her woobie-ness. But then, we have {{spoiler|Eve}}. Created as a {{spoiler|clone of Aya and kept in a facility at a very young age to control mitochondria creatures against her will.}} Check. And in [[The 3rd Birthday]], {{spoiler|poor Eve witnessed Aya got killed in the middle of her supposedly happy wedding, wished only to save her, but instead put her soul into Aya's body and resulting the birth of two kinds of [[Eldritch Abomination]].}} Check. Lost her memories because of the incident and manipulated by the [[Big Bad]] with it. Check. People who help her during the game had to die {{spoiler|because one of the Abominations habituating in their bodies}}. Check. Finally {{spoiler|by help with [[Time Travel]] she is forced to kill Aya to prevent all the incident from happening.}} And most of the gameplay you are forced to hear her wail or cry, or seeing her looking confused and lonely. Girl needs a terrible big hug.

*** It gained Woobie status ''because'' [[Base Breaker|some people]] [[The Scrappy|despised it]]. Fandom is weird, oy.

*** That and a comic that portrayed Oshawott as the poor, neglected starter who just wanted to see the world but was neglected and never chosen until [[The Hero|Hilbert]] came along.

** The fifth generation also gives us Yamask, a Pokémon who [[Was Once a Man|used to be human thousands of years ago]]. The mask on its stomach [[Nightmare Fuel|is its human face]] and [[Tear Jerker|it cries whever it sees it]]. Yamask's plight is exemplified by [http://pettyartist.deviantart.com/art/Yamask-201182029 this picture].

*** It becomes [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds]] upon evolving into Cofagrigus, at least.

** In story, [[Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire|Wally]] and [[Pokémon Diamond and Pearl|Barry (Damion)]] count. Wally is a [[Ill Girl|sickly boy]] who wants to go on a journey but is too ill and must move to Verdanturf, the only town with clean enough air for him. Barry is a [[Keet]] who suffers [[Heroic BSOD]] when {{spoiler|[[My Greatest Failure|he fails to stop Galactic Commander Jupiter from kidnapping the legendary Pokémon Uxie]].}}

** Another ''[[Pokémon Diamond and Pearl]]'' character that falls under this is Volkner. Due to a lack of challengers to his Gym in Sunyshore City, Volkner leaves for the lighthouse out of depression. But once you talk to him, he'll go back to the Gym, and when you battle him and win, he'll be in high spirits again.

*** To make things worse, {{spoiler|it's revealed at the end that several members of Team Plasma knew about Ghetsis' real plans all along and were playing charades with N to garner support from him and make the plan work. This is hinted at several times in the game, from the Grunts [[Kick the Dog|kicking a young girl's Munna]] [[Hypocrite|that they claim was "liberated"]] to the Sages referring to Ghetsis as their Leader. How does this make things worse? It implies that '''very few human beings in the world supported his ideals or could confide with him, from the very day that he was born.'''}} ''[[Tear Jerker|Damn.]]''

*** Though not quite on {{spoiler|an N}} level, it's hard not to feel sorry for [[The Rival|Bi]][[Genki Girl|an]][[Wide-Eyed Idealist|ca]] at times - heck, the game makes you [[Break the Cutie|break her]] yourself ''multiple'' times. She went on a [[To Be a Master|Pokemon journey]] despite his father's opposition, but she couldn't become a strong trainer and defeat you or Cheren no matter how hard she tried.

** ''Radiant Dawn'': Pelleas

* Kaori Yae of ''[[Tokimeki Memorial|Tokimeki Memorial 2]]'', very much so. The girl is so [[Heroic BSOD|deeply hurt, depressed]] and [[Broken Bird|completely closed to others]] after the cruel [[Break the Cutie]] moment she endured before the protagonist meets her, [[Fridge Logic|it's incredible]] that her parents [[There Are No Therapists|haven't took her to a psychiatrist]] already. Seeing her gradually [[He's Back|coming back]] to her former self through [[The Power of Love|patient affection and care]] from the protagonist, thus turning her into a walking factory of [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|Crowning Moments Of Heartwarming]] (and conversely, [[Lost Forever|a powerful source of]] [[Player Punch]] if you fail to put her out of her [[Heroic BSOD]]), is what made her, with good reason, the absolute [[Ensemble Darkhorse]] of this game.

** her father, a former Holy Knight, {{spoiler|got kicked out of the army after a failed battle, in which he also became handicapped on a leg}}, and because of this [[Drowning My Sorrows|fell into alcoholism]] (and since [[Daddy's Girl|she loves her father very much]], she's terribly saddened by his decheance) ;

** because of this and also because Sophia's mother and brother are [[Ill Boy|Ill Persons]], the family is very poor and only holds on because Sophia works on [[Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?|a lot of hard-labour part-time jobs]] ;

*** Bonus points since, in the ''Warcraft III'' campaign, [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|the player controls Arthas as he kills and raises her]].

*** Watch out though, cause come ''[[World of Warcraft]] Cataclysm'', she's [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope|jumped down the slippery slope]] through the [[Moral Event Horizon]] straight to [[Complete Monster]]-dom for little to no reason other than [[He Who Fights Monsters|the fact that she's Undead]]. It doesn't take much to see that, as even the well hated warmonger Garrosh Hellscream states the obvious that she is [[Not So Different|No Different]] from [[Big Bad|the Lich King]].

** Several quests in the game involve other Woobie characters. The tortoise Tooga, in the Tanaris desert, is one example. Sent out by his wife Torta to get dinner, he gets lost, and needs you to lead him home, while he says pathetic things like "I'm thirsty" and "Torta must be so worried!" When you do get him back to his wife, she simply scolds him for being late and sends him to catch dinner again.

** [[All Trolls Are Different|The Darkspear Trolls]] up until now deserve a mention as a whole. Their entire tribal history is essentially a list of places they used to live and who drove them out until they were relegated to sleeping on Orgrimmar's couch. Come Cataclysm, however, they're [[Status Quo Is God|officially done taking this crap]].

** ''Just'' Fenris? [[Dysfunction Junction|Dude, have you seen the party?]] There's the main character, Hawke, who is forced to flee his home to one of the most [[Wretched Hive|despicable cities in the world]] and loses {{spoiler|almost his entire family}} over the course of the storyline; Merrill, the adorable, scatterbrained Elvish blood-mage who is demonized by her own clan for her experiments and bullied viciously by Fenris and Anders; Aveline, the hard-as-nails guardswoman who's forced to perform a mercy-kill on her own husband; Anders, the renegade mage who's driven mad by the corrupted spirit possessing him... in fact, the only people who manage to keep relatively light-hearted are Varric and Isabella, and they spend most of the game playing [[Team Dad]] and [[Cool Big Sis]] to the others.

*** Even Isabela's past is rather depressing and Varric {{spoiler|ends up betrayed by his own brother and left in the Deep Roads to die, either forced to mercy-kill him later or spending years trying to nurse him back to sanity (probably in vain).}} There's also [[Former Teen Rebel|Sebastian]]... {{spoiler|Pretty much everyone the man could call family by the end of the game has been murdered.}}

* I guarantee you [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoYdSzsd5So will not look at a chicken Mc Nugget the same way again]. Also a [[Tear Jerker]].

* ''[[Katawa Shoujo]]'' has quite a few examples. Hanako is the most noticeable, but most of the main cast gets Woobie moments at one point or another.

** Even {{spoiler|Misha}} turns out to be one. [[spoiler:She is in love with Shizune and confessed to her; she was rejected, but Shizune continued to seek her out for friendship, which only caused her pain. Things got worse when Hisao started becoming closer to Shizune,

* The [[Companion Cube]] from ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]''. Poor little cube, it was more than happy to help you and be an unquestioning friend through good and bad. It saved your life, had little hearts and was then forced into an incinerator. /tears

** WHEATLEY. In the post-credits scene {{spoiler|he apologizes for the things he's done, in abject remorse and depression, and it's blatantly evident that he's ''really sorry'' and ''truly'' feels remorse.}} The worst part? {{spoiler|He will likely ''never'' get to properly apologize to Chell, because he's in SPACE.}} Valve cruelly {{spoiler|makes this scene the default menu background. When next you start the game, all you see is Wheatley aimlessly floating along, dejectedly flitting his photoreceptor around.}} D'aww, Wheatley, you need a hug? C'mere...

** Doug Rattmann. The man has dealt with being trapped in the facility, constantly evading the [[Paranoia Fuel|watchful eye of GLaDOS,]] and yet, the whole time, he manages to leave behind hints for Chell. He may have {{spoiler|sacrificed his life for Chell, being shot by a sentry turret in the ''Lab Rat'' comic.}} But according to the drawings on the walls in Portal 2, {{spoiler|he may still be alive.}} The only friend he has is the [[Companion Cube|Weighted Companion Cube.]] He is alone.

** ''[[Cute Machines|"I'm different."]]''

** The frankencubes in ''2'', which are made from two turrets and a cube, are creepy, but you can't help but feel bad for them.

* [[I Wanna Be the Guy|The Kid]]. I mean, come on. He's only [[Kid Hero|15 years old]], and he has to fight his way through spikes, fruit, giant monsters, and all manner of deathtraps in order to become the Guy. It takes a monster not to feel bad for the dozens of times [[Ludicrous Gibs|he explodes into little bitty pieces]].

* Ted Smith from ''[[Dead Rising 2]]''. He's an overweight animal trainer with an obvious mental disability, who has been mocked by people so often that he now considers his only friend to be a Bengal tiger named Snowflake. {{spoiler|And you're forced to hug him with a pair of Knife Gloves, because he intends to feed you to Snowflake as "fresh meat". And to top it off, his death scene is a real [[Tear Jerker]].}}

* The titular character in [[Iji]], though it can veer into [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds]] at times...

* How has Toroko from ''[[Cave Story]]'' not been mentioned yet? When the game starts, she's being aggressively harassed by the leader of the village for not turning over [[Friendless Background|her only friend]] to basically be sacrificed, {{spoiler|and Sue really seems to only be interested in just getting off the island anyway,}} and [[It Got Worse|it only gets worse]] from there.

* ''[[Dragon Quest]]'' series, even though is swarmed with [[Heroic Mime]] issue, have some:

** ''[[Dragon Quest IV]]'' has Maya and Meena, a twin who wanders around finding their former master for the sake of [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]], and fails messibly at the end of their chapter with their friend doing a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] so they can survive the battle with the boss.

*** Even {{spoiler|''the Godbird Empyrea and her child'' are turned into these. A demonic griffon named Gemon kidnaps Empyrea's egg (at the behest of [[Complete Monster]] [[Big Bad|Rhapthrone]]), forcing the party to hound him. In retaliation, he ''[[Moral Event Horizon|destroys the egg, killing Empyrea's child before he was even born]]'', and driving Empyrea into a hefty state of grief and anguish. In spite of this, spirit of the Godbird's son ''implores'' to his mother that he should help out the heroes regardless of what happened.}}

* Believe it or not, ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'', [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|the series where it's your goal to see how many ways you can viciously maim, dismember, and mutilate your foe]], is not without characters that are in need of a big hug.

*** And to make things worse, everyone save for Shao Kahn, Shinnok, Taven, and Liu Kang's spirit ''dies'' in ''[[Mortal Kombat Armageddon|Armageddon]]'', with [[The Bad Guy Wins|Shao Kahn gaining complete control over all of the realms]].

** [[World of Woobie|Then came]] ''[[Mortal Kombat 9]]'' [[World of Woobie|with its]] [[Fun with Acronyms|WMW]] ([[Up to Eleven|weapons of mass Woobiefication]]). [[Darker and Edgier]] [[Dark Messiah|Raiden]] (the [[Came Back Wrong]] [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] version of Earthrealm's protector god) initiates a [[Continuity Reboot]] and [[Fling a Light Into the Future|sends a message to his past self]] [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong|with the hopes of preventing]] [[The End of the World as We Know It|Armageddon]], but things go horribly, ''[[It Got Worse|horribly]]'' [[Beyond the Impossible|wrong]]. Even excluding the specific examples below, {{spoiler|a [[Brainwashed and Crazy]] Sindel [[Super Empowering|empowered by Shang Tsung's soul]] [[Hero-Killer|kills]] '''eight''' of the heroes (Nightwolf, Kitana, Jade, Sub-Zero, Smoke, Jax, Stryker, and Kabal), with those guys, Sindel herself (who Nightwolf [[Mutual Kill|fells in a]] [[Taking You with Me]] [[Heroic Sacrifice]]), and Kung Lao (who was killed earlier by Shao Kahn [[Knight of Cerebus|to show that]] [[Anyone Can Die]]) [[And I Must Scream|having their souls controlled by Quan Chi in the Netherrealm by the story's close.]] [[Kill'Em All|Only Raiden, Johnny Cage, and Sonya Blade are left to defend Earthrealm.]] It's telling of how much of a [[Tear Jerker]] an event is when [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold|Ca]][[Deadpan Snarker|ge]], the comic relief of the series, goes ''completely somber'' and the rough-and-tumble army girl Sonya is on the verge of letting a floodgate of tears run down her face. It's ''that'' bad.}}

** Well, if it's any consolation at all, {{spoiler|she did push that [[Complete Monster]] calling himself her therapist right in front of a speeding train and killed him}}. All things considered, that was probably as much justice as she was ever going to get.

* [[Fear Effect]]. Rain is very much this. Why? {{spoiler|Her father is the first emperor of China, made immortal and forever rooted to one spot like a statue. Her mother is a scientist who engaged in experiments that transformed her into a literal monster and eventually an [[Eldritch Abomination]]. Her twin sister Mist is trying to help her father get out of his statue pose. Unfortunately, Mist's method of achieving this involves merging herself and Rain to their mother, and pretty much destroy the entire world. Rain ran away from this, and ended up with amnesia, as well as memories, dreams and nightmares that made no sense to her. Rain ends up having to kill off both her mother and twin sister}}. Hana is an [[Iron Woobie]] and Glas is a [[Stoic Woobie]].

* [[Stoic Woobie|Although it's not obvious at first]], Ethan, the [[The Quiet One|quiet]], [[An Axe to Grind|axe-wielding]] [[Laser-Guided Amnesia|amnesiac]] from ''[[Last Scenario]]'', is badly in need of a hug. When he first joins the party, he says he doesn't remember much beyond the fact that he used to work for the Rosehart Kingdom, but was betrayed and imprisoned. This means many of the people he's fighting used to be his friends, but it's a bit worse than that. {{spoiler|He used to be the head of [[Quirky Miniboss Squad|a prestigious special-ops group]], but he started to suspect that his superior, Castor, was hiding important information from them, and began to investigate on his own. An ambitious internal affairs officer, Helio, found out, and reported Ethan- as punishment, he was locked up as a test subject in Helio's [[Mad Scientist|laboratory]] and spent the next three years [[And I Must Scream|buried alive and semiconscious]] in a magical substance called biorite, which was responsible for his memory loss.}} Even early on, he worries that maybe since the things he remembers most clearly are the ones he wanted to remember, the ones he forgot were things he wanted to forget; when a few things start coming back to him, you find out he was right. {{spoiler|Fourteen years ago, his entire hometown was razed by the Imperial army, leaving him and his older brother as the only survivors. He wound up killing a soldier in a panic to protect his brother, and only avoided being killed himself by the timely intervention of Zawu. His older brother? Castor, the guy who had him sealed in a pile of rocks for three years, and the [[Big Bad]] of the game. Naturally, he remembers this just as Castor has started going into a full-scale mental and emotional breakdown which he was indirectly complicit in. And the man he killed when he was fourteen? His name was Wolfram, and [[One Degree of Separation|his father and best friend are in the party]]. Ethan's guilt-stricken and awkward attempts to tell Randolph are simultaneously heartbreaking and adorable.}} All in all, his life kind of sucks. A lot.

* Fiona Belli from ''[[Haunting Ground]]''. {{spoiler|Not only did one of the stalkers kill her parents, but he kidnapped her as well, and is trying to impregnate her in order to be reborn with her Azoth. She is also pursued by a hulking man with the mind of a child who thinks she is a doll and just wants to [[And Call Him George|play with her]], a homunculus maid who wants to cut her Azoth out of her in order to become "complete", and an old man who helps her at first, but then turns out to be the [[Big Bad]], and is also trying to take her Azoth.}} The only companion she has is a white German Shepherd that is also a Woobie itself due to the excessive amounts of literal [[Kick the Dog]] moments.

* ''[[Rosenkreuzstilette]]'' has quite a few Woobie characters as well.

** Spiritia Rosenberg, [[The Heroine]] of the first game, is going around beating up her friends asking them to cease their part in RKS's rebellion and listen to her, and they usually don't listen until she defeats them (although some of them still refuse to listen to reason, even after their defeat, until a certain cute blond-haired girl in pink-and-white elegant clothing {{spoiler|shows her true colors, of course}}). How do you feel for her that she ends up having to fight those she respects, including the now-undead Sir Raimund Seyfarth, and {{spoiler|eventually learns that Iris was USING EVERYBODY for her own amusement}}? And then we have the part where {{spoiler|Iris herself reveals that Tia's the other reincarnation of Rosenkreuz, the "Blade of Rosenkreuz", born with his ability to tap into the strength of others'}}. [[Tomato in the Mirror]] much?

** Grolla Seyfarth becomes this in her own [[Darker and Edgier]] side-game, Grollschwert. When {{spoiler|Iris}} humiliates her and makes her look like a traitor to all of RKS, Grolla has to put up with beating up her colleagues just to get them out of her way. Then she fights her undead grandfather in order to master Grollschwert, and after that, she, both infuriated and deeply hurt, declares that she will make Graf Sepperin pay for disrupting his peaceful slumber with his life.

** According to her profile, Sichte Meister often frets about her troubled childhood that she had in the past, which leads to having trouble having faith in those older than her. Also, she becomes worried about Grolla when she leaves upon her telling her to lower her guard when she demands answers from {{spoiler|Iris}}. The reason Grolla left was out of knowledge that if she lowered her weapon, she would breathe no more.

** Sakura, who is probably the most woobie of them all, is {{spoiler|separated from her family and adopted by a family of former Magi against her will, and is "trained" to become the successor by being sent into a room full of worms every night implant themselves inside her every night since she's ''five'' years old. Her adoptive brother, who's not quite right in the head himself, physically, mentally, and sexually abuses her every day.}} This all comes back to haunt the cast in the route she is Heroine in, Heaven's Feel. Lets just say that karma is a bitch...