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Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds / Western Animation

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  • Adventure Time:
    • The Ice King is crazy, but mostly, he's just lonely. Just try not to feel bad for him when NEPTR chooses Finn over him. Especially after the revelation that he used to be normal until he tried an antique crown that resulted in a loss of sanity, along with gradually gaining supernatural ice powers and becoming unsightly, leading to his present self.
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    • The Earls of Lemongrab nearly became this in "All Your Fault".
    • Lemongrab himself. Sure, he's an annoying, unstable wreck, but after everything he went though, it's somewhat understandable.
  • Roger Smith from American Dad!. He is so evil because his species releases a bile that kills them if they don't "let their evilness out". Made worse when it is revealed the reason he is trapped on Earth is that the others of his species wanted to get rid of him. In addition, there are moments where he really seems to care about his adoptive family. It is implied that Roger only acts that way because he was made to be evil, and not by choice, and if you stop to think about it, it's terrible being him.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Aang isn't evil or villainous in any way, but it is scary when he gets upset and goes into the Avatar State.
  • Mr. Freeze from Batman: The Animated Series was splashed with cryogenic chemicals while fighting with his boss, who he'd been stealing resources from to find a way to cure his terminally ill wife, Nora. He was even willing to kill innocent people to get revenge. This interpretation of Freeze proved so popular that it spread into most other adaptations of Batman.
  • Charmcaster becomes a literal case of it in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, where after liberating her homeworld only for its inhabitants to promptly start killing each other in a fight for the throne, she becomes disillusioned and decides to Kill 'Em All in a ritual to resurrect her dead father. When this doesn't succeed, she becomes even more of a Broken Bird.
  • The DC Animated Universe's rendition of Ace from the Royal Flush Gang. She's a scared pre-teen girl whose massive Reality Warper and Master of Illusion powers have wrecked her life. She's first trained by the government, then joined The Joker and the Gang, and then not only do we learn that Joker wants to use her to kill/mind rape everyone, but she ends up snapping and mind-raping him. It ultimately turns out that Ace's powers are killing her and she could potentially kill everyone in the whole city she's in as she passes away; and this happens in days when she's so desperately lonely that she has warped a part of a local park into a creepy house and kidnapped people to try making friends. Amanda Waller then tells Batman to give her a Mercy Kill before she has her fatal meltdown, but when confronted by him Ace asks him to "Stay with Me Until I Die", he complies and she dies quietly by his side, which keeps her from destroying the city. Batman then carries the kid's lifeless body in his arms, visibly and genuinely saddened by this.
  • Evil Con Carne: Hector Con Carne was a Mexican billionaire playboy who wanted to rule the world until Cod Commando activated a bomb in his mansion. He was reduced to a Brain in a Jar and a stomach while attached to a circus bear. He wanted to take over the world all because he lost his body as well.
  • Family Guy:
    • Meg Griffin, specially in the episode "Dial Meg For Murder," when she returns from prison and gets revenge on everybody who bullied her by dishing two No Holds Barred Beatdowns to Peter and the popular kids at her school (by filling a bag with unopened soda cans and hitting them with it). Brian snaps her out of it by showing her an issue of Teen People Magazine and describing her as "Far sweeter and kinder than the average teenage girl."
    • Death. The poor guy is despised and treated like shit by everyone for doing his job and can't form a good human relationship. Even Peter takes pity on him.
  • World from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, who destroyed his own world in rage when the gang tried to take Frankie back home, and is still the Woobie considering his depressing back story and the fact that all he really wanted was a friend who was willing to stay with him.
  • Gargoyles has Demona. To be fair, a lot of it is her own doing, but that poor girl has suffered. Losing almost her entire family, being abandoned by everyone she loved and trusted, and being hunted for a thousand years by a family who is extremely fond of Disproportionate Retribution? That'll mess anyone up. The only thing that keeps her going is her insistence that it's Never My Fault; if she ever stopped denying the truth, she'd implode. The episode 'City of Stone' gives us a very good example of how badly Demona is broken.
    The Sisters: You must give them the code.
    Demona: (Getting agitated) The Vikings destroyed my Clan!
    The Sisters: Who betrayed the castle to the Vikings? (Note: It was Demona.)
    Demona: The Hunter hunted us down.
    The Sisters: Who created the Hunter? (Note: Demona did)
    Demona: Canmore destroyed the last of us...
    The Sisters: Who betrayed Macbeth to Canmore? (Note: Demona)
  • Ezekiel Rage in Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures, particularly in his first episode, where he is a delusionally tortured man bent on revenge for the loss of his family.
  • In the Sequel Series The Legend of Korra Tarrlok and his brother Noatak, better known as Amon turn out to be examples of this flavor of Anti-Villain. Their father was Yakone, the infamous crime lord that Aang had defeated and Depowered decades before the start of the series. Yakone proved to be a Horrible Father, perhaps almost as bad as Ozai. He forced Tarrlok and Noatak to learn bloodbending so that he could use them to exact his promised vengeance against Republic City; Tarrlok grew up into a corrupt and power-hungry politician, while Noatak turned on Yakone and ran away from home, with a festering hatred of bending that would one day lead to him starting the Equalist revolution under the guise of Amon. Ultimately, Tarrlok has a Heel Realization and kills himself and Amon by igniting the fuel tank of Amon's escape boat using an Equalist shock gauntlet.
    • In the final season, Kuvira. Like Amon, she too was a Well-Intentioned Extremist, but also driven by severe abandonment issues, oweing to her own parents kicking her out when she was 8 years old, and seeing her nation being abandoned in the same way when it needed help most.
  • Weathervane/Paula Haze from Loonatics Unleashed. She was treated like crap by Misty Breeze. No wonder the poor girl snapped.
  • The Powerpuff Girls:
    • Elmer Sglue is a textbook example. He started out as a boy who liked eating glue. Other kids picked on him for it, and he was pushed so hard that he became a glue-monster, and became a destructive threat towards Townsville. In the end, he just wanted Buttercup to apologise to him, and he pulls a Heel–Face Turn afterwards.
    • The Sandman. He hardly ever gets any sleep, because people are making so much noise at night, and he has lived like that in years. This has caused him to attempt to make the whole town sleep forever, so that he can finally sleep himself.
  • The Real Ghostbusters - One of the more character-driven episodes "Ragnarok and Roll" deals with Jeremy, a man angry at the world over breaking up with his girlfriend, Cindy, and vowing to bring about the end of the world. He nearly succeeded as he brought Ragnarok into full swing and the Ghostbusters were unable to stop him. Had Cindy and Jeremy's companion, DyTillio, not talked sense into him, the Ghostbusters were ready to detonate their proton packs in an attempt to stop Jeremy and the end of the world.
  • South Park:
    • Trent Boyett. The reason he wants revenge on the main characters is that he was put in juvenile hall due to doing something they asked him to do, and when it had terrible consequences he got all the blame. They convinced him to light a fire in the classroom (so they could play "fireman" and put the fire out by urinating on it), but it quickly burned out of control and their teacher was horrifically burned; Trent was sent to juvy and the main four weren't punished at all. Butters also saw what actually happened but he wouldn't speak in Trent's defense, so Trent wants revenge on him as well.
    • Kyle Broflowski becomes one in Season 21. He's always trying his best to do the right thing, but is met with suffering cruel treatment from others, being shunned by his peers, being constantly ridiculed by Cartman, or all of the above. It doesn't help that he learns that his father is the infamous Troll Skankhunt 42 who trolls women for a cheap laugh. Despite all this, he tries to keep his morals and do the right thing. It's not until a girl he likes dumps him for Cartman and becomes another version of him that he finally snaps, takes his rage Canada blaming them for the meanness of South Park, and actually got the country nuked.
  • Spider-Carnage, of Spider-Man: The Animated Series. An alternate version of Spider-Man, he watched first Uncle Ben, and then Aunt May die in rapid succession. The creation of his clone, Ben Reilly, only worsened his mental stability, and the revelation that he, and not Ben, might be the clone drove him almost completely over the edge, leading to an attempt on the latter's life. What firmly pushes him into this trope though, is what happens following his possession by the Carnage symbiote. Driven out of his mind, Spider-Carnage combines the Spot's portal technology with a disintegration bomb that will destroy not only his own world, and not only the Universe, but the totality of the multiverse. As he puts it: "I'm gonna destroy all reality". Clearly insane, and running on pain and angst, he's eventually snapped out of it by a talk with another universe's Uncle Ben, leading to a last minute Heel–Face Turn, followed by suicide.
  • Lapis Lazuli in Steven Universe. She was a Gem trapped in a mirror the Crystal Gems only used to power said mirror and for recording Gem history. It is revealed that she was a Gem civilian who got caught in a battle on Earth, poofed, and placed in the mirror by Homeworld, believing her to be a Crystal Gem and seeking information. When she is freed, she wants nothing more than to get home, but her cracked gem impaired her ability, so she uses the oceans to try to get back home. Unfortunately, she didn't intend to go down without a fight when the Crystal Gems tried to stop her.
    • In the season 2 finale, The Cluster is revealed to be this. They don't want to destroy the Earth, they just want to take a form so they can find the pieces of their missing Gems. Unfortunately, if they ever took form, it would destroy the Earth. They do get a somewhat happy ending, though.
    • Blue Diamond, member of the Big Bad Duumvirate of the Great Diamond Authority. The first time we hear about her is in one of Garnet's flashbacks, telling about how she was about to shatter Ruby and Sapphire for accidentaly fusing when attacked by the rebellion... but when we finally meet her in person, she spends all episode crying, musing how much she misses Pink Diamond (who was apparently shattered by Rose Quartz) and how she's trying to preserve her human zoo and she also refuses to shatter the whole species of Rose Quartz, despite Yellow Diamond saying she should because it was one of them who shattered Pink Diamond, to which she simply answers "But they were hers". Yes, she's still an imposing giant figure and yes, she still commands an army of Homeworld Gems, but one can't help feeling sorry for someone who has been pining the death of a loved one for about five thousand years.
  • Toyman from Superman: The Animated Series. When he was a boy, his father was a toymaker conned into opening up a toy factory funded by mob boss, Bruno Mannheim, who then used the factory for his own means, playing the boy's father for a patsy, and getting him arrested. The guy died in prison before getting a chance to make parole, and his son was bounced from various foster homes. Now an adult, he adopted a persona with a giant doll head with an eerie smile for a mask, using toys as weapons (powerful enough to take even Superman by surprise) to take his revenge on Mannheim, and later Superman for interfering. After learning his backstory, Lois Lane summed it up best.
    Lois: He was a sicko, Kent... but I can't help feeling sorry for him.
  • Frank Welker personally thinks that his character Megatron from Transformers might be one of these, mentioning several times in his interviews that he asks himself why Megatron is so angry all the time, and it might be because there's "a lot of hurt" inside him. It's somewhat played with in the IDW comic adaptation of Transformers Generation 1 and in Transformers Prime; there Megatron was a miner turned gladiator who suffered the harsh life of the Cybertronian working class, living under the corruption of the Autobot/Cybertronian high society, until he decided to change the system to a more equal variation in peaceful, non-violent ways, only to meet bloody supression. This forced the idealist to change his tactics to more violent ones, but the war slowly turned the idealistic rebel into a bitter and angry warmongering tyrant.
    • Wasp is another example. He was falsely accused of being a Decepticon spy, sent to Autobot prison, driven insane by his time there, and forcibly transformed into a Techno-organic by Blackarachnia. However, he is a homicidal maniac, a Decepticon, and wants revenge on Bumblebee, who didn't know that Wasp was framed. When he found out, he eventually apologized. The newly-dubbed Waspinator's response?
    Waspinator: Wasp...forgive...Bumblebot...but Waspinator NEVER FORGIVE!
  • Predaking, of Transformers Prime, is earth-shakingly powerful... And very, very alone. His Decepticon handlers regard him as a mindless beast, and treat him as one until he discovers and reveals his true nature, at which point he is rewarded with mistrust, deceit, and betrayal by those he swears his loyalty to. It should come as no surprise that when he finds out about Megatron's involvement in the slaughter of his developing Predcon brethren, whose future was Predaking's foremost concern, this is the breaking point, and he tears a path through the Decepticon army, hellbent on finding Megatron and settling the score.
  • Teen Titans features Terra, whose backstory starts bad and gets worse during the events of the show. She suffers from such a high level of Power Incontinence that she's been consistently turned on and attacked by people she's sought to help in the past, due to her powers going haywire afterwards. Thanks to some paranoia-inducing claims by Slade, she believes Beast Boy has betrayed her to the other Titans, and desperately goes to Slade because she believes he will be able to help her get control. This just leads to more misfortune, naturally.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
    • Baxter Stockman. His character tends to go through massive changes with each version, but in both versions he starts off as a promising and well-meaning inventor who falls under the evil shadow of the Shredder. After going through an insane amount of abuse from everyone, including the Turtles, he grows more hateful, devious, and cruel. Finally, a freak accident transforms him into an insane monster (Fly-mutant in the 1987 & 2012 series, Cybernetic brain in the 2003 one), and he sets out to destroy all those who wronged him, especially Shredder and the Turtles.
  • Carl the Evil Cockroach Wizard from Yin Yang Yo!. It is implied on numerous occasions that his failed attempts at being a villain efficient and physical abuse of his older brother, is resentment that motivates him to try to defeat Yin and Yang to impress his mother.
  • The superheroine Ms Marvel in X-Men had her life destroyed by the mutant Rogue (a villain, at that point), who somehow sucked out her soul and buried it in a hellish prison deep in her own mind. She became increasingly obsessed with punishing Rogue for this, even after she reformed, as well as somehow obtaining an end to her own suffering.


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