Broken Bird / Western Animation

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• Adventure Time has Marceline.
  • No sign of her mother ever appears, her biological father ranges from "neglectful" to "abusive", her father figure has magical curse Alzheimers and doesn't remember her (but still sticks around, just to twist the knife), her boyfriend sold her most cherished possession, and she's had a millennium of other miscellaneous such events. Is it any wonder she plays up her vampirism to drive people away for their own good?
  • Marceline's traumatic start is shown in more detail in the Obsidian episode of the sequel series. Her mother was shown to have a lethal but unspecified illness that she was close to succumbing to. She was desperate to reproduce a map that would lead them to an old fallout shelter in the event she succumbed before she and Marceline could complete the journey, which ended up becoming a reality. On the route, they encountered mutated wolves that Marceline's demon soul-sucking powers disposed of and shortly thereafter her mother had to send her on ahead due to her death becoming more imminent. Without a proper explanation as to why she was sent off alone nor closure for what happened this lead the young Marceline to believe she scared her mother off with her half-demon qualities and adopts her "if I scare them off intentionally they cannot hurt me" attitude that we see her struggle with throughout the original series.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender,
  • Mai. Her parents neglected her and forced her to be a "perfect child", causing her to be cynical and apathetic. Unsurprisingly, she ends up with the resident Troubled, but Cute.
  • Azula as well:
    "My own mother thought I was a monster. *Beat* She was right, of course, but it still hurt."
  • Zuko could definitely be considered a Rare Male Example. His father burned half his face and banished him, sending him on a Snipe Hunt to find the Avatar, all when he was only thirteen. And that's only the beginning. Luckily, he gets better.
  • In the sequel series The Legend of Korra, three seasons of various kinds of trauma have made Korra herself into one. After a three-year timeskip, she's gone into hiding as an earthbender, getting beat up in fight clubs for cash. None of her friends know where she is, and even her parents thought she was in Republic City. Thankfully with some help, Korra is eventually able to recover from her past traumas and retake her position as being the Avatar. By the end of the series, she is hopeful for the future again and begins a romantic relationship with her friend Asami.
  • Averted with Asami Sato despite losing her mother to murder and her father being a terrorist, but she hints that losing Korra would have most likely pushed her over the edge.
• Charmcaster in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien. Being used by Darkstar was a huge part in making it worse.
• Bojack Horseman qualifies, as he'd grown up with a Stage Mom who withheld affection unless he acted, which pretty succinctly explains why he's at best a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• In "Sad About You" on Care Bears: Welcome to Care-a-Lot, the human girl Joy was a broken bird who had sworn off friendship and happy feelings after her best friend moved away, but the Care Bears managed to fix it, in large part thanks to Grumpy Bear, who helped them to see that they need to empathize with and acknowledge her feelings rather than simply try to cheer her up.
• Kitty from Courage the Cowardly Dog lost her girlfriend to their abusive pimp and walks around wearing a creepy mask to shield herself from the cruelty of reality. Courage does everything he can to appease her and succeeds when he reunites the two.
  • Courage himself fits this trope very nicely in the episode Remembrance of Courage Past, especially when suddenly remembering his real family who was sent to space years before the show — he didn't even respond to Eustace's trademark "Ooga booga booga!" scare, which always did the trick.
• Enrique on Dragon Tales. According to his bio that was posted on the parents section of the show's official website, much of his general mopiness at times as well as his wariness of making new friends and trying new things came from the fact that he and his family had moved several times in his young life.
• Meg of Family Guy. Although it's Played for Laughs and she's a pretty big Butt-Monkey, some episodes depict her being both emotionally fragile and disturbed, derived from a desperation for love and attention.
• Helga Pataki from Hey Arnold! is the badass variety. She mentions in one episode that she would probably go crazy if it weren't for Arnold. Given what see of her home life, it's not surprising.
• The widow Kelly Deegan in Holly Hobbie and Friends Christmas Wishes, until Holly manages to help restore her happiness by contriving to give her the solo at the Christmas pageant.
• Molly of Denali: Grandpa Nat, in spades. As revealed in "Grandpa's Drum", as a child, he was separated from his family and friends and forced to attend a boarding school for indigenous kids, where he was subjected to extreme racism and was only allowed to sing English songs. Because of this, he decided to give away his drum to his childhood friend and to not sing anymore. Layla mentions that talking about it makes him very sad. Luckily, Molly and Tooey recover his drum and he starts singing again.
• Helena from Neo Yokio. After she was saved from a demonic possession, she became cynical and emotionally withdrawn.
• The Owl House: The events of season two, from finding out that she gave Belos the light spell and enabled him to get the Collector, to the events of the Day of Unity, along with her and her friends getting trapped in the human realm for months with no way back to the Boiling Isles, have left Luz a shell of her former self who thinks that she has only made things worse for everyone. Coupled with Camila advising her to learn from her mistakes, Luz decides that it would be best for her to stay in the human realm. Even worse, it's implied from her speech in class that she is developing suicidal tendencies.
• Pantheon: Maddie. Poor, poor Maddie. Maddie lost her father at a young age, has no friends, and is an outcast at her school, where her bullies e-mail messages telling her to kill herself. In the first episode, it’s clear that Maddie is depressed.
• Mrs. Krabappel from The Simpsons is The Snark Knight variety. In her case, it's Played for Laughs.
  • Eleanor Abernathy aka the Crazy Cat Lady. At age 8, she was already aspiring to become both a doctor and a lawyer, and accomplished it by age 24. However, the stresses in being both left her burned out by age 32, and she started drinking and acquired her first cat. By age 40, she'd turned unintelligible and disheveled, with cats as her only companions.
• Heidi Turner becomes one in the 21st Season of South Park. She is stuck in an emotionally abusive relationship with Eric Cartman, receives No Sympathy from her female peers who instead constantly mocks her for the choices she made, and tries to cope with all of this stress by turning into a female version of her boyfriend. This way of thinking has caused her to physically and mentally degenerate, a fact that she realizes in the season finale before breaking up with Cartman for good.
• Lapis Lazuli of Steven Universe, especially in the episode "Jail Break." Steven is completely capable of getting her free, and alongside the Crystal Gems they'd be more than a match for Jasper and Peridot. But Lapis refuses to leave her cell because she believes that resisting would only make things worse and that the only way she can help them is by taking the reins of a fusion with Jasper and dragging them both down to the bottom of the sea forever. Lapis was also trapped inside a mirror for 6,000 years and interrogated by Homeworld soldiers who mistook her, a civilian, for a Crystal Gem. Even after everyone fled, she was stuck on the Galaxy Warp for ages until Pearl found her. In addition, her fusion with Jasper did her absolutely no good, genuinely missing Malachite, the most toxic fusion we've seen thus far. Finally, Jesse Zuke confirmed Lapis Lazuli has PTSD, as was hinted at in 'Same Old World.'
  • Pearl has been suffering from PTSD since Rose died and hasn't been the same since.
  • Despite her faux Fun Personified demeanor, Amethyst has had a really harsh life. She said she never asked to be made. What doesn't help is that not only was she made to be a "bad" gem, but after her creation was left alone in a dark abandoned canyon for millennia without any friends. On top of that, she watched her mother figure die before her very eyes, and she was the one person she thought actually liked her. And chose to ran away from home, she even pushed Steven away, who is the LAST person to reject her for who she is. Poor Girl.
  • Spinel in Steven Universe: The Movie was told to stay on Pink Diamond's garden, and she did. For several millennia. Once she learns what happened while they were apart, she very understandably snaps.
  • Steven himself has developed PTSD as a young adult due to all of his near-death experiences, and it is the main conflict of Steven Universe: Future. It gets so bad that he labels himself a monster and corrupts himself in the climax.
• Teen Titans:
  • Raven, though she does gradually open up in the last two seasons.
  • Terra, though she tries to hide it behind a Fun Personified façade. Stick around her long enough, though, and it becomes obvious the girl has serious issues with people.
• Karai from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles becomes one of these during the show's fourth and fifth seasons, after the turtles and Utroms exile her father to an icy asteroid.
• Arcee from Transformers: Prime. First she lost Tailgate to Airachnid and then Cliffjumper to Starscream. This makes Arcee the most aggressive out of all the Autobots, concerning Optimus that Arcee's anger and desire for revenge has clouded her judgment.
• Artemis from Young Justice (2010) comes from a broken home, with her mother having spent years in prison, her father being a supervillain, and her older sister, Jade, being the notorious assassin Cheshire. This has understandably made Artemis very cynical and abrasive.
• Both Rogue and Wanda from X-Men: Evolution.
  • Rogue was purposefully raised as an outsider by Mystique and Destiny to manipulate her into becoming Mystique's tool, cannot touch anyone without draining them due to her mutant ability, and to top it all off suffers from a bad case of unrequited love for Scott and consequentially is bitterly jealous of Scott's official Love Interest Jean.
  • Wanda on the other hand was raised in an abusive asylum after her father left her there as a child for undisclosed reasons. Her brother is utterly terrified of her as her entire life's goal seems to be to murder her father. Sadly, she only improves after her father has a telepath rewrite her memories to make her love him. The sad part is that while Rogue at least got to be be redeemed by the X-Men and made some friends, Wanda never really had anyone help her without selfish motives.

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