Driven to Villainy: Difference between revisions

 

== Anime & Manga ==

** Gaara comes to mind - upon birth, a demon was sealed inside him, with his mother becoming a sacrifice, so that he could become his ninja village's ultimate weapon. But said demon also makes everyone in the village terrified of him, and he grows up reviled as a monster. Finally, his own father (who arranged the whole thing in the first place), finding him growing unstable, sends assassins to kill him. The first assassin is his beloved uncle, the only one who seems to care for him, who reveals that he's actually secretly hated him all these years for killing his sister (Gaara's mom, the one who was sacrificed to make him what he was), and that his mother had died cursing the village and hoped that Gaara killed them all - his name, given by her, means "The Demon who loves only himself". Naturally, he finally snaps, and spends the next few years killing everyone he runs across as a way of proving that he exists. Oh, and the demon in question prevents him from sleeping, less it starts eating away at his mind.

** Sasuke is an even more literal example, as from a certain point of view his entire life has been orchestrated by at least two major villains for the purpose of making him evil, for their own ends, {{spoiler|namely, Orochimaru and Madara; Itachi is either an anti-hero or a third major villain, depending on your POV and to what degree Madara is telling the truth; Danzou might qualify as yet another villain guilty of this, except that he didn't really care about Sasuke and saw him as collateral damage at best for his plans}}. The massacre of his entire family and clan by his beloved older brother (who brutalized him, and told him to hate more and murder his best friend), at the age of 8, was only the beginning of that. At present, {{spoiler|the plan is working quite well indeed}}.

* Johan Liebert from ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]''. No, really. Hard as it is to imagine, he was once a frightened little boy clinging to his mother's leg before he was systematically warped by secret psychological torture {{spoiler|that actually happened to his ''sister'', and that he managed to accidentally create as a false memory for himself}} and then even more brainwashing to become the perfect little East German super-soldier. While he was already a full-on [[Enfant Terrible]] by age six or seven, he wasn't born that way, and would not have become the [[Complete Monster]] he ended up without these traumas.

** {{spoiler|It's implied that what actually broke him was, at the age of six, realizing that his mother favored one of the children more than the other when she willingly handed one over to Bonaparta. The knowledge that people were inherently different and that favouritism could drive people to do things like that}}

* Aion in the manga version of ''[[Chrono Crusade]]'' was badly psychologically damaged after discovering the [[Awful Truth]]--so badly that it even had a [[Locked Into Strangeness|marked physical effect]] on him. That event warped him into the [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] we see him as in the series.

* Ken Ichijouji from ''[[Digimon Adventure 02]]'' wished his older brother would [[Never Say "Die"|disappear]], and eventually had to cope with [[Be Careful What You Wish For|his death in a car wreck]]. A [[Compelling Voice]] brought him into [[Another Dimension]] and he finally lost it, becoming [[Complete Monster|The Digimon Emporer.]]

* Keiichi, Shmion, Rena, and, to an extent, {{spoiler|Satoko}} in ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]''. They don't choose to become villains when they do start killing people, as it's caused by a combination of {{spoiler|the [[Hate Plague]], Hinamizawa Syndrome}} and some overall bad shit that happens to them.

* {{spoiler|Bernkastel}} in ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni]].'' She's essentially an {{spoiler|incarnation of [[Fallen Hero|all of the Rikas who died]] [[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni|in Hinamizawa]] as [[Hate Plague|her friends went insane and killed each other]] and [[Doomed Hometown|the entire village was destroyed]]}}. Well, it's no wonder that the combination of all of that had some mental damage. It's the "having the [[Reality Warper|power]] to screw around with {{spoiler|[[Alternate Universe|other worlds]]}}" part that causes [[Complete Monster|the problems]].

* Isair and Madae, the [[Big Bad|Big Bads]] of ''[[Icewind Dale]] II''. While their origins -- half-demon half-elves shunned and misunderstood or manipulated by everyone, whose mother committed suicide when she first saw them -- are undeniably tragic, it's very clear they've crossed the line into choosing villainy at the point the Legion of the Chimera started burning and looting the Ten Towns.

 

 

== Webcomics ==