History Main / DamagedSoul

* ''ComicBook/{{Batman}}'': DependingOnTheWriter, this may have happened to Jason Todd. Since no one is exactly sure how he came back to begin with, it would make sense. In-universe, and even outside the universe, what exactly [[ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis Superboy Punch!]] did is unclear, but it left him [[CameBackWrong a bit of a catatonic zombie]], and then he was put into a Lazarus Pit ''on top of that'', which has the established effect of being dangerous to the sanity of those who are rejuvenated by it. However, it's always open to interpretation how much is down to crazy, and he always made his own choices. ''ComicBook/RedHoodTheLostDays'' treats him as having contracted sociopathy and violent insanity since dying, mostly from the Lazarus Pit. Particular focus is given to his calm focus in planning various murders, as opposed to killing in fits of rage. Ra's al Ghul has dire predictions about the kind of monster Talia's unleashed, but he has ulterior motives to discourage Lazarus Pit use by anyone but him and he had considered Jason's soul to be missing or irreparably damaged prior to his dip in the pit.
* In one ''ComicBook/BirdsOfPrey'' story, the Society of Villains attempts to recruit Lori Manning (a.k.a. Black Alice) by partially resurrecting her mother as a zombie and offering to complete the resurrection if she joined them. This backfires -- Black Alice is ''furious'' that they desecrated her mother this way and temporarily steals the magic of the Society mages present to complete the resurrection herself. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, her resurrected mother is a listless shadow of her former self who does nothing but make pancakes and say "I love you" to Lori day after day. Her father starts hitting the bottle pretty hard, unable to cope with the double whammy of his daughter's powers and his wife coming back from the dead as a mental zombie.

* One ''ComicBook/{{Deadpool}}'' arc has Deadpool trying to kill 39 US Presidents who came back insane and ready to destroy the entire country to save it.
* In ''ComicBook/TheGoodNeighbors'', people are stabbed in the heart with ritual daggers to turn them into trees. This is reversible, but the one example shown came back as a wood-hearted sociopath.

* ''ComicBook/ShadeTheChangingMan'' came back deranged, not due to the death, the resurrection, or even the hell of fighting in the Land of the Dead, but because the Angels took a part of his psyche in order to have a hook into him. Far from the worst example of the trope, as this was Shade's most entertaining incarnation.
* In ''ComicBook/XFactor2006'', bringing people back from the dead but with damaged souls is revealed to be Layla Miller's real power. The "knowing stuff" power turns out to be as a result of a StableTimeLoop.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Ninjago}}: Season 8 "The Sons of Garmadon", sees the titular faction resurrect Lord Garmadon after his death with the Preeminent's destruction in Season 5, but they use a special ritual in order to return him in his evil identity and with his empathy and capacity for good removed by force. This results in a Garmadon devoid of most if not all his good qualities who doesn't hesitate to try and kill Lloyd to become stronger and take over Ninjago and despite their loyalty has no compulsions with threatening the Sons of Garmadon with death for their failures, despite [[spoiler:Seasons 9-15 eventually showing he still had some good left and he began to work on it after seeing the errors of his ways so he could make amends to the people he hurt]], the "Garmadon" comics do acknowledge his soul was damaged in the process of returning back to life and it's why [[spoiler:he has a hard time trying to be good or not being an unlikeable jerk.]]

!!'''As a DeathTrope, all spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.'''

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Ninjago}}: Season 8 ''The Sons of Garmadon'' sees the titular faction resurrect Lord Garmadon after his death with the Preeminent's destruction in Season 5, but they use a special ritual in order to return him in his evil identity and with his empathy and capacity for good removed by force. This results in a Garmadon devoid of most if not all his good qualities who doesn't hesitate to try and kill Lloyd to become stronger and take over Ninjago and despite their loyalty has no compulsions with threatening the Sons of Garmadon with death for their failures, despite [[spoiler:Seasons 9-15 eventually showing he still had some good left and he began to work on it after seeing the errors of his ways so he could make amends to the people he hurt]], the ''Garmadon'' comics do acknowledge his soul was damaged in the process of returning back to life and it's why [[spoiler:he has a hard time trying to be good or not being an unlikeable jerk.]]

* In part 2 of ''Fanfic/{{Austraeoh}}'', Rainbow Dash [[spoiler:is brought back to life by Bellesmith after having spent month as a mutated chaos beast]]. The experience leaves her somewhat unhinged, and she proceeds to slaughter her way through a small army of guards, all the while laughing and joking. The other ponies are so terrified that when she tells them to put on the berets of the guards she just killed, they do so and don't dare remove them even after she's left.

* ''ComicBook/DCInfiniteFrontierSpecial'': PlayedForLaughs in the story "[[ComicBook/TheDarkKnightReturns The Light Kday Returns]]", in which [[ComicBook/{{Bizarro}} Batzarro]], resurrected from his death in the pages of ''ComicBook/SupermanBatman'', claims that the experience made him DarkerAndEdgier.

* In ''Fanfic/ImmortalitySyndrome'', in which several characters are brought back from the dead as mass-murdering psychopaths.

* In ''Manga/{{Inuyasha}}'', once the resurrected Kikyou regains part of her soul, she goes from an EmptyShell to consumed by the rage and bitterness with which she'd died. Her first act is to blast Urasue, who'd resurrected her, into oblivion, and she spends quite a while afterwards trying to kill Inuyasha, Kagome, or both together. While she might have gained balance with her full soul, most of it reverted to her reincarnation, Kagome. Which was why in all her later appearances Kikyou had to take the souls of recently deceased women to survive. Whether she destroyed those souls in the process, or merely borrowed them temporarily before letting them pass on, is never made clear, but aside from the soul-eating bit she ''eventually'' focuses her attention on destroying the BigBad, who should have been the target of her anger in the first place.
* ''Manga/TheKurosagiCorpseDeliveryService'': A story arc revolves around a girl with the power to bring people back from the dead. The problem is, those who are brought back from the dead are overcome with a feeling of "wrongness" about their continued existence and eventually go AxeCrazy.
* ''Manga/MermaidSaga'': Nae, who was brought back to life with mermaid ashes, can't remember anything about her past life except for her promise to Yuuta and has a tendency to kill people.

** What the BigBad Dante and Hohenheim do to extend their lifespans does this as well. When they transfer their souls to a new body they aren't complete and as a result their bodies begin to decay faster since their souls aren't enough to maintain their new body. The more they do this the more of their soul is left behind and they're slowing draining the time they can live in their new body. Since Hohenheim doesn't do it as often his body holds up for a lot longer than Dante's. Towards the end of the 2003 anime, Dante's new body begins decaying after only a few months.

* In ''ComicBook/XFactor'', bringing people back from the dead but with damaged souls is revealed to be Layla Miller's real power. The "knowing stuff" power turns out to be as a result of a stable time loop.
* ''ComicBook/{{Negation}}'': When Javi came back from the dead he's little more than a zombie, just barely remembering who he was and how he died. Charon had to restore his mind and body to full consciousness.

* In one ''ComicBook/BirdsOfPrey'' story, The Society of Villains attempted to recruit Lori Manning (aka Black Alice) by partially resurrecting her mother as a zombie and offering to complete the resurrection if she joined them. This backfired -- Black Alice was ''furious'' that they desecrated her mother this way and temporarily stole the magic of the Society mages present to complete the resurrection herself. Unfortunately for whatever reason, her resurrected mother was a listless shadow of her former self who did nothing but make pancakes and say "I love you" to Lori day after day. Her father started hitting the bottle pretty hard, unable to cope with the double whammy of his daughter's powers and his wife coming back from the dead as a mental zombie.
* One ''Comicbook/{{Deadpool}}'' arc had Deadpool trying to kill 39 US Presidents who came back insane and ready to destroy the entire country to save it.
* Jason Todd:
** DependingOnTheWriter, this may have happened to Jason Todd. Since no one is exactly sure how he came back to begin with, it would make sense. In-universe, and even outside the universe what exactly Superboy Punch! did is unclear, but it left him [[CameBackWrong a bit of a catatonic zombie]], and then he was put into a Lazarus Pit ''on top of that'', which has the established effect of being dangerous to the sanity of those who are rejuvenated by it. But it's always open to interpretation how much is down to crazy, and he always made his own choices.
** ''Comicbook/RedHoodTheLostDays'' treats him as having contracted sociopathy and violent insanity since dying, mostly from the Lazarus Pit. Particular focus is given to his calm focus in planning various murders, as opposed to killing in fits of rage. Ra's al Ghul has dire predictions about the kind of monster Talia's unleashed, but he has ulterior motives to discourage Lazarus Pit use by anyone but him and he had considered Jason's soul to be missing or irreparably damaged prior to his dip in the pit.
* The teenage heroine Tigress from ''[[ComicBook/AllStarSquadron The Young All-Stars]]'' went through a resurrection that was granted by Gudra the valkyrie that changed her personality, causing her to eventually become the Golden Age villain known as the Huntress.
** For the sake of clarification it needs to be said that Paula originally debuted in the Golden Age as the villainous Huntress, but was reintroduced in ''Young All-Stars'' as the hero Tigress. The plot about Paula coming back wrong was meant to explain her eventual shift into villainy.
* ''ComicBook/ScarletSpider'': In the third volume, Death explains to Ben Reilly that being killed and resurrected 27 times has corrupted his soul - hence his predilection to amoral actions -- and that if it happens again he'll degenerate into a sociopath.

* ''Fanfic/ACrownOfStars'': Played with. Kyoko was barely coherent and mentally sound when she returned from Instrumentality because her soul was still split into several pieces. After she [[spoiler:got murdered again]] Daniel promised Asuka he could bring her mother back, even if he had to fit the pieces of her soul back together. Asuka was skeptical about it being possible or her mother coming back with no nasty aftereffects, [[spoiler:but everything went well.]]
* ''Fanfic/ImmortalitySyndrome'': A ''[[Franchise/ThePowerpuffGirls Powerpuff Girls]]'' DarkFic, in which several characters are brought back from the dead as mass-murdering psychopaths.

* ''Fanfic/SlayerAcademy'': A virtual spin-off of MZP's ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' continuation. Those brought back by the Cabal's resurrection machine do so being able to feel very little emotion.

* In ''Fanfic/MegaManReawakened'', Robert is this. His human memories are fuzzy and he tends to lash out in rage until Wood man helps heal him.
* ''Fanfic/{{SAPR}}'': After being attacked by Cinder, [[spoiler:Amber's]] soul was left in tatters, and she starts acting unhinged.
* In part 2 of ''Fanfic/{{Austraeoh}}'', Rainbow Dash [[spoiler:is brougth back to life by Bellesmith after having spenth month as a mutated chaos beast]]. The experience leaves her somewhat unhinged, and she proceeds to slaughter her way through a small army of guards, all the while laughing and joking. The other ponies are so terrified that when she tells them to put on the berets of the guards she just killed, they do so and don't dare remove them even after she's left.
* Discussed in ''Fanfic/ResonanceDays''. Becoming a witch is essentially a hard reset on the soul, so even after dying and going to the afterlife, they have lost all memories of who they were before, only retaining their appearance (plus a few obviously inhuman traits like a tail or a weird hand) and basic knowledge. The witch Charlotte argues that this is for the best, because witches become that way by crossing the DespairEventHorizon, and a lot of magical girls who ''do'' remember end up going insane from the trauma. The magical girl Kyoko, on the other hand, killed herself to be TogetherInDeath with the girl she loved, and is rather pissed that said girl now has no idea who she is.

* ''Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome'': Spock has a very mild case of this. His intelligence and memories are intact, but there's just ''something'' missing at the start of the film. Fortunately he's back to normal at the end of the film.

* ''Film/AlienResurrection'': Ripley is brought back from [[Film/Alien3 a bad case of falling-into-molten-lead]], but as Alien DNA gets into the mix she's now a jerk with violent urges.
* ''Film/WakeWood'': Alice. When she's first brought back, she seems like the normal bright child she was in life, but quickly picks up a habit of mutilating animals and later shows no compunction in killing anyone who gets in her way. Normally, the town's resurrection ritual doesn't have such complications - the reason she came back this way has to do with her having been buried a bit too long.
* In ''Film/ReAnimator'' (based on the Creator/HPLovecraft story ''Literature/HerbertWestReanimator''), Dr. West actually does manage a couple successful resurrections where the resurrectees come back pretty much the same as they were in life. Unfortunately, in both cases the resurrectees were utterly evil bastards in life, and continued to be so after being revived.

* ''Literature/TheMemoryWars'': This can happen, and is one of the primary motivators for people to avoid violent or painful deaths. When someone dies, the circumstances of their death can leave a mark on their soul, like a scar, and this can lead them to have unresolved issues and emotional problems in their next life. In ''Silent Oath'', it's revealed that [[spoiler: Nathan made a deal with Morrigan, and wound up ritually killing Athamar in a previous life to try and stop him remembering his previous incarnations ever again. He let Elena kill him to get out of his side of the bargain, robbing her of a human host. This left Nathan and Elena so damaged that they weren't reborn for over a hundred years, and when they were, they were born on opposites of the world. The memory of the event drives a wedge between the two, just when they were about to get back together. As revenge for Nathan betraying her, Morrigan found Athamar and released all of his past-life memories, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero driving him insane and ensuring he would want nothing but to make Nathan and Elena suffer]].]]
* In the Grimm fairy tale "[[http://www.classicreader.com/book/2191/33/ The Three Snake Leaves]]", a young queen comes back, thanks to snake leaves (i.e., resurrection-producing leaves obtained from snakes in her crypt). However, she has no love for the husband who was willing to be buried alive with her and who raised her from the dead, and instead plots to kill him. She succeeds...[[FirstLawOfResurrection temporarily]]. It's never explained why the queen comes back with a Damaged Soul and and the king doesn't; it's implied, however, that he was always the more loving and more generous of the two.
* The main point of the {{wendigo}}-tainted IndianBurialGround beyond the titular ''Literature/PetSematary''. Animals buried there will come back to life, but they'll be dumb and often mean. ''Humans'' buried there? The main character's son, an ordinary toddler who was still learning to talk when he died, comes back speaking like a rather erudite adult -- and a highly murderous one at that.

* In ''Literature/HerbertWestReanimator'', Dr. Herbert West's attempts to bring people back from the dead at first result in either the subject coming back to life for a few seconds, letting out a terrifying scream and dying again, or in the Damaged Soul, becoming insane cannibalistic zombies. Dr. West believes this to be because the brain gets damaged even during brief periods of death (or, as he explains after one of his test subjects breaks loose, "Damn it! It was not ''quite'' fresh enough!"). In the end he succeeds in perfecting his methods, resulting in a SoullessShell as well as some actually intelligent zombies that eventually lead a horde of mindless ones to kill him.

* An odd form of Damaged Soul resurrection occurs with Bubba (Elvis) in the ''[[Literature/TheSookieStackhouseMysteries Sookie Stackhouse]]'' novels. Elvis was turned into a vampire and is explicitly described as having 'come back wrong' - due to the combination of drugs and embalming chemicals. However, the outcome isn't nearly as bad as most Damaged Soul resurrections - Bubba isn't much more dangerous than any other vampire, but acts kind of mentally disabled. (Though reminding him of who he was constitutes a big fat BerserkButton for him).
* In the Creator/GeneWolfe story "The Other Dead Man" some of the crew of a badly damaged spaceship are turned into highly motivated zombies when the captain orders the medical pods to resuscitate crew no matter how far gone they are. Ends with an example of TomatoInTheMirror.
* In a rare non-supernatural example, a boy ironically nicknamed Fish is narrowly rescued from drowning in Australian novel ''Literature/{{Cloudstreet}}''. But, as you'd expect... Not all of Fish came back.
* In Creator/HollyBlack's ''ComicBook/TheGoodNeighbors'', people are stabbed in the heart with ritual daggers to turn them into trees. This is reversible, but the one example shown came back as a wood-hearted sociopath.

** Although souls explicitly regenerate over time, as long as you are the original owner. So when Tandy sold half of hers to Mare Imbrium, it started to grow back for Tandy, but Imbri stayed stuck with 50%. When Imbri is temporarily destroyed in a later book, the half-soul reverts to Tandy, leaving her with ''more'' than a full soul (an experience she doesn't seem to enjoy). Fortunately, she is able to expel the extra half-soul once more, which resurrects Imbrium.
** As a curious inversion, in ''A Swell Foop'' the demons E(A/R)th and Fornax are temporarily given souls (demons are normally soulless) and find the experience highly disturbing, especially the feeling of caring and altruism, and are desperate to rid themselves of it.

* In ''Literature/HarryPotter'', one of the central rules of magic is you can never truly bring a person back from the dead--there are, however, forms of magic that try to mimic this. Inferi are just reanimated corpses, basically controlled zombies. Horcruxes keep your soul tethered from something other than your body, effectively bringing you back from the dead upon bodily death, although producing a Horcrux horribly mutilates your soul. The Resurrection Stone only produces pale shadows of those who have died, as though there's a veil separating them from life.
* The ''Literature/{{Sten}}'' series has the Eternal Emperor, who has earned his title by always coming back to the dead shortly after his assassination. However, when he comes back from the dead in ''Return of the Emperor'', something goes a bit wrong with the process, changing him from a ReasonableAuthorityFigure to TheCaligula.
* When he was a baby, Warlock of ''Literature/{{Spellbent}}'' was murdered and then resurrected. As a result, he is missing a part of his soul, the main consequences of which are [[DreamingOfThingsToCome prophetic nightmares]] and an inability to use WhiteMagic.
* In ''Cold Kiss'', Wren's FirstLove Danny dies in a car crash. Wren uses her PsychicPowers along with BlackMagic to bring Danny back. He starts out as a child-like being who wishes that Wren would stay with him forever. However, he becomes more and more curious (and violent) as to the circumstances of his death. The story ends with Wren re-killing him, so to speak.
* ''Literature/TheCosmere'', by Creator/BrandonSanderson:
** The Returned of ''Literature/{{Warbreaker}}'' could certainly count as this. The process of Returning [[LossOfIdentity erases their memory]] (though not their skills, which is a plot point), and they must consume one Breath (part of the human AnatomyOfTheSoul) per week or die. In ''Literature/RhythmOfWar'', Zahel theorizes that [[spoiler:the Returned are [[OurGhostsAreDifferent Cognitive Shadows]], which are copies of the soul of the original person, and the lack of memories is an intentional limitation so that they don't linger long enough to end up going mad like the Fused or Heralds (see below).]]
** ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive'':
*** Szeth spends too much time dead before his resurrection, so the process doesn't properly reattach his soul to his body. It trails behind him as a glowing afterimage when he walks.
*** The Fused are a variant of this. Each Fused is [[OurLichesAreDifferent an immortal soul]] which is allowed by Odium to be take over the body of [[OurOrcsAreDifferent a willing Parshman]] to continue prosecuting their ForeverWar for control over the planet Roshar. But seven thousand years of fighting, dying, and being reborn has damaged many of the Fused and driven them insane.
*** The Heralds are also suffering from the same issue as the Fused. They have been alive for so long, and have died and been reborn so many times, that their souls have been warped and each of them is going mad from their extended existence.
* Ma'ar, more or less the BigBad of the ''Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar'' series, managed to survive for two thousand years as a FamilialBodySnatcher, spending the time between bodies in a SoulJar in the void. Appearing as himself in ''The Black Gryphon'', he also pops up as Leareth in the ''Literature/LastHeraldMageTrilogy'' and as Mornelithe Falconsbane in the ''Mage Winds'', which is also the only time when he has POV and in which he's markedly less competent than in previous incarnations. Another character looking into his memories notes that as Ma'ar he was terrible but capable of much more subtlety and of inspiring genuine loyalty, and had to justify his own actions to himself sometimes. He was also far more powerful. He's still dangerous to the heroes but overall a simpler, more vicious, predictable creature by the time he's Falconsbane, his capabilities deteriorating over all those cheated deaths.

* In ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', vampirism can act like the '''Damaged Soul''' version on the few occasions when it was used in an attempt to save someone who was terminally ill. In reality, a vampire doesn't have a soul at all (unless magic is used to restore the soul). But the effect is something similar; the average newly-turned vampire is something akin to a sociopathic version of the human it was turned from. And when the human was ''already'' a sociopath, the vampire will tend to be even worse.

** This is also played with in season 5, following Joyce's death; it's implied that she would've returned as something quite different after Dawn's resurrection spell succeeded, but the spell is undone before Joyce makes it home. This is the {{Trope Namer|s}}.
* ''Series/GameOfThrones'': Beric Dondarrion mentions that every time he comes back he feels "a bit less."
* Sayid from ''Series/{{Lost}}'' has a rough go of it in season six thanks to this trope. He dies in the season premiere and returns to life as a sociopath. Bummer. But he got better. He soon died again, but this time [[KilledOffForReal for real]], and went out with a {{Heroic Sacrifice}}.

** "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things": The resurrected girl looks just like she used to, but she's gone AxCrazy and started murdering the people she blames for her death. Also possibly subverted. The Yellow-Eyed-Demon ''implies'' this when Sam was resurrected, but so far there isn't any evidence of the sort.
** In Season 3, it was revealed that Demons are human souls that have been tortured and mutilated from their time in Hell, leaving them nothing but evil, twisted spirits.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' episode "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" has the titular young man (played by a very young [[Series/TheDukesOfHazzard James Best]]) wake up at his own funeral. He can't explain it, but counts himself lucky to be alive, and some of the townspeople are scared that he's actually a demon possessing the man's body. Eventually, after he gives a speech, his family and fiance put aside their doubts and trust that it's a miracle and he's the same man they've always known. And then he lights a match without striking it on anything so he can light his pipe. When his fiance points this out, he says she must be imagining things. As they walk off, the gate to their house closes behind them of its own accord.
* ''Series/GhostWhisperer'' has the phenomenon of "Step-Ins", [[OurGhostsAreDifferent ghosts]] who take over freshly [[GoIntoTheLight abandoned]] bodies in a desperate effort to return to life. Unfortunately the rules of {{reincarnation}} state that you can't expect to remember your previous life perfectly, which leaves them with an unfortunate case of ''double LaserGuidedAmnesia'' since in addition to their previous life they've also got contend with the life of their ''body''. The Step-In can be very confused, depressed, and possibly violent, depending on why they wanted to stay -- not knowing why, for instance, you're stalking someone you can't remember and have no connection with while experiencing intense feelings that you can't explain can be one heck of a MindScrew.
** Fortunately the two Step-Ins we meet eventually get help, and one of them even regains their old memories.
** One should note that they also make the distinction between a "step-in" and a "walk-in", which is basically the same thing except the inhabiting ghost retains all of their own memories...and the only reason the particular walk-in of the episode of the same name was disoriented was because he needed time to get used to walking because he died of muscular dystrophy 10 years ago.
* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'':
** Neelix was resurrected with Seven's nanites in an episode ([[TheScrappy to the dismay of many fans]]). He was extremely depressed through the whole episode, contemplating suicide, because he didn't see the Talaxian afterlife while dead. If he had, chances are he would've been even more depressed for being ripped from it.
** The original script was much, much darker. Ensign Wildman would die and then be brought back, but in the spirit of this trope, not brought back right - becoming what the scriptwriters termed "zombie mom". Connected more with death than life, she would find it hard to re-integrate with the crew, and struggling with her new identity would decide to kill her own daughter to bring her back the same way, so she would have someone who could relate to her. The writers were initially thrilled with the prospect of a dark, macabre and humbling episode - but upon reading their own script realised they could not film it; it was far too dark and entered territory nobody was comfortable with. The final product was arguably close to the latter point.
** In "Ashes To Ashes", Lyndsay Ballard dies and is brought back to life as a member of another species that procreates by reanimating the dead and transforming it into their species. Unfortunately, Lyndsay found it hard to let go of the life that she lived as a human on ''Voyager'' and later found it difficult to regain that past life as her new life continued to assert itself.
* In "Je Souhaite" of ''Series/TheXFiles'', a man encounters a genie and wishes his brother back to life after said brother was hit by a truck. He then makes the mistake of wishing that his reanimated brother could talk again... this leads to quite a bit of screaming.
* In ''Series/{{Cleverman}}'' one of the titular Cleverman's powers is the ability to strip a soul of its essence, leaving nothing to be passed on after death. When Koen accidentally hits [[spoiler:Aunty Linda]] with it, he has to go to some lengths to get it back, and [[spoiler:Slade]] has his own soul erased due to tampering with the Dreaming.

* Arguable example from the WWE, but at one Pay-Per View, the Undertaker (then portrayed as a BadassBiker) fought a buried alive match against Vince [=McMahon=]. Kane interfered and the Undertaker lost (and was "buried alive"). The Undertaker then disappeared for a while, though occasionally his older entrance music (when he was portrayed as a Zombie Gravedigger) would play and [[MindScrew screw with Kane's head]]. Eventually, The Undertaker, again in his Zombie Gravedigger persona, showed up and beat Kane at Wrestlemania.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'':
** The Necrons, a faction of [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot undead robots]], have nigh-indestructible metal bodies that can eventually regenerate/be repaired from just about any harm...but the process damages the Necron "soul" within. The Necron Lords who avoid death are in fairly good (if ghastly) condition, but those who have been smashed up a few times become increasingly unhinged and suffer from delusions of grandeur. Meanwhile, the average Necron Warrior has been regenerated so often it's landed in the SoullessShell category, a mindless automaton.
** Mad Dok Grotsnik. In this case, the problem wasn't so much "spiritual disruption" as it was "brain damage from the circular saw cutting his head open; gretchin vomit; several deaths on the operating table cured by enthusiastic misuse of a cattle prod; and a spider taking up residence in his skull". On the other hand, he ''was'' a member of a race who are best described as a CultureChopSuey of HornyVikings and [[FootballHooligans Milwall fans]] who dabbled in MadScience on top, so it's not like he was terribly sane beforehand.
* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'':
** ''TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}'': When Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead, is coterminous with the physical world, resurrection spells have a chance to go awry and either summon a batch of ghosts, have the wrong soul inhabit the body (the original comes back as a ghost), or a demon either [[DemonicPossession possessing]] or animating the body.
** ''Heroes of Horror'' features an optional table on which to roll in order to give PC death a slightly scarier aspect. The side effects range from a smell of grave dirt to extreme recklessness to gaining a random amount of taint (which is basically TheVirus, since if you accumulate too much taint you turn into a psychopath or a monster). The book even [[InvokedTrope invokes the trope]], specifically calling this phenomenon "Coming Back Wrong."
* ''TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness'':

** This is the basic premise behind ''TabletopGame/DeviantTheRenegades''; the Remade were normal people who were [[PlayingWithSyringes experimented on]] until their very souls broke from the trauma. As a result, they don't even have Virtues or Vices anymore; they can only define themselves by external things, like a cause, a loved one, or [[PhlebotinumRebel getting back at the bastards who did this to them.]]
* ''TabletopGame/MageTheAscension'': In one gamebook, a fiction section dealing with the Hollow Ones (think renegade goth mages) included a Technocracy mole failing to infiltrate a Hollower group. They kill him, but catch his soul before it gets away. One body-reassembly and a soul-reinsertion spell later, and the mole's back among the living. But now, he's bound to the service of the Hollow mage who brought him back. It's implied that he's now a mole in the Technocracy, working to protect the Hollowers.

** Similarly, Primordials recover automatically from fetich death, but come back fundamentally ''wrong'' -- Adrian, the River of All Torments, was reborn as an insane [[ComicBook/TheJoker Joker]]/Buddha hybrid known as Adorjan, the Silent Wind, and is one of the few individuals to scare even her fellow [[DemonLordsAndArchdevils Yozis]].
* In ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'', being reanimated with the Resurrection spell dings the subject's SanityMeter by 1d20 points - as much as facing a major Mythos entity, and enough to give most characters some form of psychosis.

* The Nameless One from ''VideoGame/PlanescapeTorment''. He had an evil hag strip his mortality from him and thus render him immortal – he could resurrect from the dead and even completely heal all but the most severe wounds. But because of some unaccounted flaws in the process, each time he resurrected, he would lose his memory.

* ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'''s recurring DarkMagicalGirl, [[AliceAllusion Alice]], once was a happy, normal girl. Following a terribly traumatic transformation involving her death and revival, she still was. Prob is, she remained as such for ever and ever, which along with the massive magical upgrade she got ''really'' wasn't good [[OneHitKO for her]] [[CastingAShadow ability to]] [[CreepyChild understand there's]] [[CameBackWrong a reason]] [[MadnessTropes it's frowned upon]] [[ImAHumanitarian to kill and eat your friends]].
* This is a key plot point in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheSacredStones''. The emperor of Grado died and was resurrected by his son, Lyon. The [[BigBad Demon King]] restored his body and used it as a puppet to wage a massive war. Plus, Lyon had to tamper with a SealedEvilInACan to do it, which allowed the Demon King to drive him insane and posses him. Of note is that that the same method produces "Orson's wife", an example of an EmptyShell.
* ''Roleplay/RubyQuest'' features an interesting take on this: All the characters have been resurrected quite possibly countless times over the course of a year, but only the first time went wrong, and even that only temporarily. Afterwards, they've been quite fine. At least mentally.
* The Lucasarts AdventureGame ''VideoGame/{{The Dig|1995}}'' revealed that the {{Precursors}} had created AppliedPhlebotinum crystals that had this effect (among others). The human character who is revived with one rapidly grows obsessed, paranoid, and addicted to them. Another character deliberately makes the player character promise not to revive her that way; if you do after her death, she immediately commits suicide and you get the [[MultipleEndings BAD END]].
** A member of the ''{{Precursors}}'' can be found in a state somewhere between death and suspended animation-reviving him with these crystals is necessary to proceed, whereupon (with the linguist's help) he reveals that they had the same effect on his people, ultimately leading to their downfall, and that one builds up a resistance to their effects with repeated use, stating that this is the last time using the crystals will work on him. Further attempts to revive him prove fruitless.
* In the ''VideoGame/{{Avernum}}'' series, the souls of exceptionally revered vahnatai are brought back as Crystal Souls to advise the rest of their tribe. Unfortunately, the odds of the soul going mad in the process seems to be rather high. It is not so much in the process of becoming a Crystal Soul as the thousands of years of being one - particularly the hundreds where the entire Vahnatai race is sleeping to let the environment recover... except for the immobile crystal souls, which just stay there, awake and alone.
* In ''[[VideoGame/OgreBattle Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis]]'', the summoner Elrik tries to resurrect his dead wife, but her soul comes back corrupted and possesses his daughter Euphaire. The protagonist must both free Euphaire and stop Elrik from killing her in an attempt to undo his mistake.
* ''VideoGame/ShadowHeartsFromTheNewWorld'' has this happen, rather than the soulless monsters of ''VideoGame/{{Koudelka}}'' and the original ''VideoGame/ShadowHearts''. Both Johnny Garland, and his sister were brought back by their father. Johnny gets away with the occasional BSOD mode... his sister comes back emotion-less and conscience-less, and turns out to be Lady, the mysterious woman you're chasing down. It turns out that originally ''Grace'' was the successful resurrection, but she sacrificed her Will and absorbed the Malice into herself to save her brother.
* [[ComicBook/UltimateMarvel Ultimate Deadpool]] was originally a [[FantasticRacism mutant-hunter]] killed off in the comics. In ''VideoGame/SpiderManShatteredDimensions'' he's back from the dead, now a TV Show Host. ItMakesSenseInContext...kinda.

* A short story on Sylvanas from ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' seems to indicate this is the case for the majority, if not all, of the Forsaken. On death, Sylvanas experienced the afterlife for a brief time but was torn from it by Arthas; "the pain [was] so intense it [left] her soul forever torn." WordOfGod also explained that an undead's soul is imperfectly held to their bodies with a form of dark magic that often leaves corruptive influences on the soul, drawing out their more negative traits.
* The teleporters in ''VideoGame/Doom3'' are basically gateways to, from and through Hell itself, and everybody who uses them suffers from depression, anxiety and hallucinations. Even more so than the rest of the Marines and scientists, who are being driven crazy more slowly as Hell slowly permeates Mars.
* The Undead in ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' are cursed with a flawed form of ResurrectiveImmortality; they can resurrect from the total destruction of their body and can maintain a mostly-normal appearance by consuming humanity, but each death rots their body and soul a little further, eventually turning them into "Hollows" (AKA zombies).

* One of the ''VideoGame/{{Destiny}}'' codex entries describe Pujari, a [[RevenantZombie Guardian]] who died and experienced a vision of the Black Garden before his [[DeathIsCheap resurrection]]. In it, he met a flower in the shape of a ghost, who accused him of being [[YouMonster a dead thing made by a dead power who's only purpose is killing]]. While Pujari denied its accusations, it filled him with doubt, and when he arose, he had a wound from a thorn on his hand, which hasn't healed since.
* In ''VideoGame/TotalWarWarhammer'', this is part of Skarbrand The Exiled's backstory. Once the Blood God Khorne's mightiest Bloodthirster, eventually pride went to his head and he was convinced by [[ManipulativeBastard Tzeentch]] to try and [[TheStarscream overthrow]] Khorne. The Blood God reacted by throttling him, body and soul, and throwing him out of his realm so violently it left permanent scars on his once favourite servant. Physically, Skarbrand is permanently flightless and is missing two of his horns. Metaphysically, the damage done to his soul has left him incapable of feeling any emotion other than UnstoppableRage, which is so potent that, along with his terrifyingly high combat stats, all Order factions and even most ''daemons'' give him a wide berth.

* In ''Webcomic/DevilBear'': When Kristofer Raven and Porklet make an attempt to bring their Plush Bear friend back from the dead, he comes back AxCrazy and tries to eat his friend's [[http://www.thedevilbear.com/?p=21 stuffings]].
* Happens in the furry webcomic ''Webcomic/{{Jack|DavidHopkins}}''. After Emma Volpe is killed by a virus, her husband uses the advanced technology of the pre-genocide humans and MadScientist Kane to resurrect her. Coming back to Earth after having experienced Heaven drives her insane. She eventually kills herself in front of him to return to her Heaven, which is all the more tragic as suicide is a ticket to Hell in the comic.
* Early on in ''Webcomic/ScaryGoRound'', Shelley Winters (then still a secondary character) was strangled and later resurrected as a zombie with a brain fetish. She got better after being [[LightningCanDoAnything struck by lightning.]]
* In ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'' Oasis's personality and memories tend to get tweaked every time she comes BackFromTheDead, making her repeated resurrections more of a crapshoot. Sometimes she comes back and has a somewhat benign or even heroic personality. Other times she comes back [[AxCrazy crazier than ever before]].
* Aradia of ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' lingered as an eternally deadpan ghost long after she actually died. When she was granted a robotic body, the only emotional capacity she seemed to have regained was extreme rage, which she vented [[ExtremeMeleeRevenge exactly twice]] in a pair of rather disturbing episodes. She did display affection towards Sollux before her soulbot exploded, suggesting that her whaling on and relationship with Equius might have been inspired by blackrom feelings.

* In ''Webcomic/{{Daniel}}'', the titular character became a shadow of his former self after becoming a vampire, and it only gets worse and worse. At one point he described it as feeling like his soul was "rotting".

* ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'':

* The Lucasarts AdventureGame ''VideoGame/TheDig'' revealed that the {{Precursors}} had created AppliedPhlebotinum crystals that had this effect (among others). The human character who is revived with one rapidly grows obsessed, paranoid, and addicted to them. Another character deliberately makes the player character promise not to revive her that way; if you do after her death, she immediately commits suicide and you get the [[MultipleEndings BAD END]].

* In ''Webcomic/DevilBear'': When Kristofer Raven and Porklet make an attempt to bring their Plush Bear friend back from the dead, he comes back AxeCrazy and tries to eat his friend's [[http://www.thedevilbear.com/?p=21 stuffings]].

* The ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "Marjorine" has Butters' parents thinking they have done this in an homage to ''Film/PetSematary1989'', after burying the pig used to fake Butters' death in an old Indian burial ground.

** [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] by Doctor Orpheus during the second season premiere; he believes to have accidentally resurrected the Venture twins without being able to find their souls, turning them into horrific zombies. The reality is, the zombie-like Hank and Dean are actually clones that were released before being physically and mentally formed due to a recent power shortage in the compound.
* In ''WesternAnimation/BatmanUnderTheRedHood'', Jason Todd comes back a screaming, murdering mess after being resurrected in a Lazarus Pit, and from that moment on he's a conflicted soul edging between homicidal rage and self-destruction. Whether this is an example of this trope or [[NietzscheWannabe him deciding after coming back to life that all that came before is not worth it]] is not only left to the viewer to decide, it's actually [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded as such by Jason himself.]]
* The 2009 ''WesternAnimation/AstroBoy'' movie: The good news is that Toby/Astro came back with the memories his dad programmed into him intact; the bad news is that he came back with just "ordinary" intelligence (as opposed to the "original's" super-genius smarts), which [[ParentalAbandonment caused his dad to reject him completely]].
** Or at least, that's how his dad views it. The movie makes it more tragic by implying that Astroboy ''was'' a perfect copy of Toby and his father was just so out of touch with the kid that he genuinely didn't know the sort of person his son was.

* Discussed in ''Fanfic/ResonanceDays''. Becoming a witch is essentially a hard reset on the soul, so even after dying and going to the afterlife, they have lost all memories of who they were before, only retaining their appearance (plus a few obviously inhuman traits like a tail or a weird hand) and basic knowledge. The witch Charlotte argues that this is for the best, because witches become that way by crossing the DespairEventHorizon, and a lot of magical girls who ''do'' remember end up going insane from the trauma. The magical girl Kyoko, on the other hand, killed herself to be TogetherInDeath with the girls she loved, and is rather pissed that said girl now has no idea who she is.

* In ''[[VideoGame/TotalWarWarhammer]]'', this is part of Skarbrand The Exiled's backstory. Once the Blood God Khorne's mightiest Bloodthirster, eventually pride went to his head and he was convinced by [[ManipulativeBastard Tzeentch]] to try and [[TheStarscream overthrow]] Khorne. The Blood God reacted by throttling him, body and soul, and throwing him out of his realm so violently it left permanent scars on his once favourite servant. Physically, Skarbrand is permanently flightless and is missing two of his horns. Metaphysically, the damage done to his soul has left him incapable of feeling any emotion other than UnstoppableRage, which is so potent that, along with his terrifyingly high combat stats, all Order factions and even most ''daemons'' give him a wide berth.

* In ''[[VideoGame/TotalWarWarhammerIII]]'', this is part of Skarbrand The Exiled's backstory. Once the Blood God Khorne's mightiest Bloodthirster, eventually pride went to his head and he was convinced by [[ManipulativeBastard Tzeentch]] to try and [[TheStarscream overthrow]] Khorne. The Blood God reacted by throttling him, body and soul, and throwing him out of his realm so violently it left permanent scars on his once favourite servant. Physically, Skarbrand is permanently flightless and is missing two of his horns. Metaphysically, the damage done to his soul has left him incapable of feeling any emotion other than UnstoppableRage, which is so potent that, along with his terrifyingly high combat stats, all Order factions and even most ''daemons'' give him a wide berth.

* In ''Manga/InuYasha'', once the resurrected Kikyou regains part of her soul, she goes from an EmptyShell to consumed by the rage and bitterness with which she'd died. Her first act is to blast Urasue, who'd resurrected her, into oblivion, and she spends quite awhile afterwards trying to kill Inuyasha, Kagome, or both together. While she might have gained balance with her full soul, most of it reverted to her reincarnation, Kagome. Which was why in all her later appearances Kikyou had to take the souls of recently deceased women to survive. Whether she destroyed those souls in the process, or merely borrowed them temporarily before letting them pass on, is never made clear, but aside from the soul-eating bit she ''eventually'' focuses her attention on destroying the BigBad, who should have been the target of her anger in the first place.

* The main point of the {{wendigo}}-tainted IndianBurialGround beyond the titular ''Literature/PetSematary''. Animals buried there will come back to life, but they'll be dumb and often mean. ''Humans'' buried there? The main character's son, an ordinary toddler who was still learning to talk when he died, comes back speaking like a rather erudite adult--and a highly murderous one at that.
* In the series ''Literature/MortalEngines'', cyborg soldiers known as "Stalkers" can be made by combining robotic life support systems and a robot brain with a dead human. Most of these are a SoullessShell, but a few [Shrike, the original Stalker Fang (and the non-Anna part of her second incarnation)] come back as damaged souls, capable of emotion but deeply troubled and in some cases, [[AxCrazy thoroughly insane]]. Shrike might develop enough by the end to be considered an InhumanHuman.
* Creator/HPLovecraft: In ''Literature/HerbertWestReanimator'', Dr. Herbert West's attempts to bring people back from the dead at first result in either the subject coming back to life for a few seconds, letting out a terrifying scream and dying again, or in the Damaged Soul, becoming insane cannibalistic zombies. Dr. West believes this to be because the brain gets damaged even during brief periods of death (or, as he explains after one of his test subjects breaks loose, "Damn it! It was not ''quite'' fresh enough!"). In the end he succeeds in perfecting his methods, resulting in a SoullessShell as well as some actually intelligent zombies that eventually lead a horde of mindless ones to kill him.

* [[ComicBook/UltimateMarvel Ultimate Deadpool]] was originally a [[FantasticRacism mutant-hunter]] killed off in the comics. In ''VideoGame/SpiderManShatteredDimensions'' he's back from the dead, now a TV Show Host) ItMakesSenseInContext...kinda.

* The teleporters in ''VideoGame/{{Doom}} 3'' are basically gateways to, from and through Hell itself, and everybody who uses them suffers from depression, anxiety and hallucinations. Even more so than the rest of the Marines and scientists, who are being driven crazy more slowly as Hell slowly permeates Mars.

* ''Anime/FullmetalAlchemist'':

* In ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', vampirism can act like the '''Damaged Soul''' version on the few occasions when it was used in an attempt to save someone who was terminally ill. In reality, a vampire doesn't have a soul at all (unless magic is used to restore the soul). But the effect is something similar; the average newly-turned vampire is something akin to a sociopathic version of the human it was turned from. And when the human was ''already'' a sociopath, the vampire will tend to be [[UpToEleven even worse]].

* ''Fanfic/ImmortalitySyndrome'': A ''[[WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls Powerpuff Girls]]'' DarkFic, in which several characters are brought back from the dead as mass-murdering psychopaths.

* Ma'ar, more or less the BigBad of the ''Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar'' series, managed to survive for two thousand years as a FamilialBodySnatcher, spending the time between bodies in a SoulJar in the void. Appearing as himself in ''The Black Gryphon'', he also pops up as Leareth in ''Literature/TheLastHeraldMageTrilogy'' and as Mornelithe Falconsbane in the ''Mage Winds'', which is also the only time when he has POV and in which he's markedly less competent than in previous incarnations. Another character looking into his memories notes that as Ma'ar he was terrible but capable of much more subtlety and of inspiring genuine loyalty, and had to justify his own actions to himself sometimes. He was also far more powerful. He's still dangerous to the heroes but overall a simpler, more vicious, predictable creature by the time he's Falconsbane, his capabilities deteriorating over all those cheated deaths.

* The main point of the {{wendigo}}-tainted IndianBurialGround beyond the titular ''Literature/PetSematary''. Animals buried there will come back to life, but they'll be dumb and often mean. ''Humans'' buried there? The main characters son, an ordinary toddler who was still learning to talk when he died, comes back speaking like a rather erudite adult--and a highly murderous one at that.

** ''Comicbook/RedHoodTheLostDays'' treats him as having contracted sociopathy and violent insanity since dying, mostly from the Lazarus Pit. Particular focus is given to his calm focus in planning various murders, as opposed to killing in fits of rage. R'as al Ghul has dire predictions about the kind of monster Talia's unleashed, but he has ulterior motives to discourage Lazarus Pit use by anyone but him and he had considered Jason's soul to be missing or irreparably damaged prior to his dip in the pit.

* Creator/StephenKing provides a couple of examples:
** The short story "[[Literature/SkeletonCrew The Jaunt]]" includes a Damaged Soul returnee, a child who spends an eternity with his mind trapped in [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace a void]] before coming back thoroughly insane.
--> "Longer than you think, dad! Longer than you think!"
** The main point of the titular "sematary" in ''Literature/PetSematary''. Pets buried there will come back to life, but they'll be profoundly off. When the main character's son is hit by a car and buried in the Semetary, you find out just how off. An ordinary toddler who was still learning to talk when he died, the revived child speaks like a rather erudite adult--and a highly murderous one at that.