Those who have been Conditioned to Accept Horror in Comic Books.
- Batman:
- The hitman Cain has raised his daughter Cassandra from an early age to be nothing but a killing machine. In fact, it was his intention that violence and martial arts be the only language in which she is fluent, and she is, for all intents and purposes, mute. While successful at making her into a nigh-unstoppable fighting machine, Cain's regimen actually backfired massively when it came to conditioning Cass psychologically. The first time she killed someone her abilities meant she could "read" all the target's emotions as he died, making the experience even more traumatizing than it would be for a regular six-year-old. She converted to Thou Shalt Not Kill on the spot.
- Batman's own son Damian, who was raised by the League of Assassins and conditioned to not only kill but to enjoy killing.
- Batman himself is a milder example. While he does fight for a better world and never embraces its ugly side, his parents' death spurs him to understand how that ugly side operates so he can face it without fear.
- The Joker apparently has a clinical version of this. In Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, one of the doctors discusses how the Joker is wired to accept the harshness of reality better than most normal people can. Since he lives in a hellholle like Gotham, this "super sanity" as they call it manifests as laughing at death, pain and fear.
- During her Batwoman training, Kate Kane lived for two weeks in a room covered in grisly crime scene photos and spent a majority of that time watching torture and murder videos to help completely desensitize her to the sorts of horrors she'd likely see as a vigilante. Prior to this, her military training at West Point would have had a similar, though less extreme, effect.
- Sameal of Birthright uses magic to invoke Primal Fear in a police SWAT team (reassuring his allies that it cost no more than five years of the victims' lives). The same magic is useless against anyone from Terrenos because the constant, bloody warfare has raised the threshold for horror across the population.
- Eat the Rich (2021): Everybody in Crestfall Bluffs has accepted that the staff members are brutally murdered and eaten as a quaint "community tradition". Joey is horrified that she appears to be the only person who sees something wrong with it.
- Huntress is a peculiar example, because while she witnessed the murder of her family when she was eight years old, and was then raised by assassins who trained her to fight and kill, those same assassins also loved and cared for her and showed her real affection. They certainly did condition her to accept horror, but not out of cruelty.
- The Incredible Hulk: Bruce Banner, better known as the Hulk, forces himself not to react to the dangerous situations he finds himself in out of fear of Hulking Out, justified since as the Hulk he's Nigh-Invulnerable so the only thing he's really worried about is what's gonna happen to the enemy. This trait is carried over to his TV and film counterparts.
- Hit-Girl from Kick-Ass, has no qualms about vigilante murder and even killing mooks for money. She has been trained by her father to be a killing machine because he wanted a more exciting life.
- Mega Man (Archie Comics): Rock grows increasingly disturbed by how most of the Robot Masters are totally accepting of their place in society as basically slaves, as well as the fact that they'll eventually be forcibly decommissioned. They were programmed to not see themselves as being alive, only lifelike, so they're all totally conditioned to the idea that they have no say in anything. However, hints are dropped that many Masters are starting to Grow Beyond Their Programming and defy this.
- Frank Castle, AKA The Punisher; a dark vigilante who derives a macabre thrill from gunning down scores of criminals. During his military service in the Vietnam War, Frank came to thrive in the bloodshed and chaos surrounding him; he craved combat. While the war was a traumatic nightmare for many who fought in it, Frank actually misses his time in Vietnam, and part of the reason he kills criminals is to continue waging a war that he should've ended long ago.
- Raven of the Teen Titans is an Apocalypse Maiden who, since birth, was trained to seal away her emotions, despite the fact that she was an empath who thrived off other people's emotions.
- The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: It's in issue 6 that it's explicitly brought up there are Cybertronians, Autobot and Decepticon alike, who were born during the war, and thus it's all they've ever known. When one such Autobot undergoes a breakdown, no-one raises the possibility that this might be a factor (though it isn't). It isn't until some issues later when Skids expresses explicit disgust at the education process used for the Made To Orders. For both sides, this was just a fact of life.
- Carl Grimes from The Walking Dead has been forced into this in order to cope with death in the comics, though more in the form of Safety in Indifference then being cheerful about it. A good example is his reaction to Tyreese's death. It eventually causes Troubling Unchildlike Behavior.
- In X-Men, Bella Donna Boudreaux was raised to be a professional hitwoman, from at least the time she was eight years old, and possibly younger. As a result she has no qualms about committing murder.
