Dark And Troubled Past / Visual Novels

---

• Ace Attorney:
  • Many of the true murderers were wronged in some way and commited crimes out of revenge. They were usually manipulated by a true mastermind, who might or might not have a tragic backstory.
  • Maya Fey. Her father died early and her mother disappeared in disgrace after the DL-6 incident, and she was largely raised by her aunt, who saw her as a competitor for the title of Kurain Master. While her cheery attitude doesn't let on how much it affected her, it tends to resurface when other tragedies (like being accused of murder for the nth time) darken her mood.
  • Miles Edgeworth. When he was nine, Edgeworth along with his father and another man was trapped in an elevator for five hours due to an earthquake. In darkness and oxygen deprivation, a fight broke out between the two adults and Edgeworth's father was murdered. He was rescued and adopted by the honorable and kind Manfred von Karma, who actually murdered his father and planned to ruin his life as well, and brought up to be a cold and ruthless prosecutor with no regard for whether the defendants had actually done anything wrong. For the next 15 years Edgeworth was led to believe he killed his own father in a daze, and had frequent nightmares as well as a debilitating fear of earthquakes. It's surprising he came out as well-balanced as he did.
  • Godot. In his first appearance, he claims he's come back from Hell to challenge Phoenix, and he's not exaggerating hugely. He was poisoned by Dahlia and fell into a five-year coma, during which his beloved Mia Fey was murdered. The poison also took his sight, and is implied to have done other damage as well.
  • Apollo Justice keeps a brave face, but he had- 1) his biological father die when he was a baby, 2) his adoptive father be framed for murder and live on the run, 3) being abandoned in Japan/the USA by said adopted father for his own safety, and finally having to indict his mentor for a murder that was pinned on his legal hero, which is where the audience meets him.
  • Athena Cykes' cheery personality hides that she spent her childhood isolated because of her overly sensitive hearing, saw her mother be murdered in front of her eyes, had to witness her honorary uncle Simon Blackquill take the fall for the crime (and testify in his defense, but not be believed), then put her nose to the grindstone to become a lawyer at age 18 so she could save him before he was executed. There's a reason she's so prone to freak outs on the stand...
  • Sorin Sprocket probably gets the absolute worst deal; due to his anterograde amnesia, he wakes up with the day that ruined his life at the forefront of his memories. That was the day when he accidentally crashed his car, resulting in the amnesia and his sister Serena dying.
• ChronoBox: Many Nayuta's love interests reveal their sad backstories. All of them are revealed to be not real.
  • Fuuka was kidnapped by two women, which made her scared of people.
  • Tsutsujiko wasn't loved by her parents, so in protest she went into the forest they prohibited her to go. There she fell from a hill and badly injured herself. Parents were furious and evicted her.
  • Urana faced a death of her friend, who wanted to see the world in his last moments. This made her join basketball club he admired.
  • Otogi's dad tried to rape him, which emotionally crushed Otogi and made him kill him.
• Danganronpa hands these out like candy.
  • Sayaka Maizono grew up isolated with a Workaholic father and absent mother, turning to idol singers as her main source of entertainment. She eventually became an idol herself, only to learn the hard way that it's a very cutthroat industry, and her conversations with Makoto hint that she's somewhat traumatized under her genial girl-next-door act.
  • Byakuya Togami was forced to compete viciously against his half-siblings for the title of Togami heir.
  • Junko Enoshima makes offhand mention of several things that imply some struggle in her past, though she doesn't live long enough to elaborate.
  • Toko Fukawa probably had it the hardest of Trigger Happy Havoc's cast. Her father impregnated two women at the same time, one of whose daughters died and one lived. Neither of the women wanted to admit that they were the side chick and neither wanted to admit the living girl was theirs, so they decided to share Toko's father while each trying their level best to pawn Toko off on the other, and as the cherry on top, Toko was bullied harshly in school. This left Toko with extreme emotional issues, including a Serial Killer split personality, a major persecution complex, and her Only Friend was her pet stink bug. Toko even states at one point that the secret to her success is that she's so miserable in real life that she can write all the fantasies she wishes were true for her into her books.
  • The reason Celestia Ludenberg is so over-the-top with her Elegant Gothic Lolita persona is because she was actually Taeko Yasuhiro, a girl so plain and boring that she never had anyone really care for her. When she discovered one thing that made her special, her luck at gambling, she reinvented herself as the Queen of Liars and never looked back.
  • Chihiro Fujisaki was bullied so badly for being kind and shy that he decided to crossdress as a girl so no one would mock him for being unmanly, only for the crossdressing to become his own problem as he hated himself for not having the strength to own his masculinity.
  • Mondo Oowada was raised by his older brother Daiya and always felt in his shadow, which culminated in Mondo's reckless biking getting Daiya killed saving him.
  • Kiyotaka Ishimaru has always felt overshadowed by his grandfather's scandals, and in his attempts to prove himself and redeem the family name through the power of hard work he devoted himself so much to his studies he never learned how to make friends. The first friend he ever really made was Mondo, only for that to end horribly when Mondo kills Chihiro and is executed for it.
  • Hajime Hinata was a normal person who idolized Hope's Peak academy so much that he enrolled in their Reserve Course due to having no talent of his own... and was still bullied so much he decided to participate in a program to artificially implant talents... which was instead used to erase his identity to build a "perfectly talented" human.
  • Nagito Komaeda, ye gods. His Ultimate Good Luck manifests in wild swings between extreme good and bad fortune... which, on a whole, tends to leave him badly traumatized. For example, he was nearly hit by a truck when he was young, but saved at the cost of his pet dog's life. He was held hostage in a plane, but it was struck by a meteor, killing both the hijackers and his parents. He was kidnapped and held for ransom because of his inheritance, but found a winning lottery ticket in the bag his kidnapper stuffed him in. He was accepted to Hope's Peak... and diagnosed with two terminal diseases. He's lived long past the average life expectancy for a sufferer of dementia and cancer, but that still doesn't change the fact that he has dementia and cancer. He desperately wants friends, but he distances himself from others because his luck cycle makes him a Doom Magnet, and his disturbed mentality makes it hard for him to connect with his fellows.
  • Kazuichi Soda is one of the more normal students, but he still came from a poor background and an abusive household; his delinquent image is a defense mechanism against the bullying he experienced.
  • Akane Owari grew up in poverty and uncertainty, having to work to support her 7 younger siblings and unemployed father. The reason she's such a Shameless Fanservice Girl? She's Conditioned to Accept Horror because she's been treated as a sex object her whole life.
  • Mikan Tsumiki takes the girls' crown for shitty life circumstances in Goodbye Despair. Her entire clumsy Reluctant Fanservice Girl persona is because the only human interaction she really knows is bullying and she thinks the only way to get attention is to be laughed at, to the point where she freaks out during her Free Time events when Hajime treats her with genuine friendship.
  • Hiyoko Saionji bullies others because her own home life was full of people backstabbing each other to get ahead and resenting her for her talent in Japanese dancing.
  • Sonia Nevermind is a downplayed case. She's mostly had a normal life with loving parents... but as Crown Princess of Novoselic, she's occasionally been targeted for political reasons.
  • Peko Pekoyama and Fuyuhiko Kuzuruyu share a tragic backstory, having been brought up with each other since they were young babies. Fuyuhiko was the heir to a yakuza clan, and he remembers violence being a daily occurrence to the point where Peko occasionally had to step in and save his life. Peko herself was adopted as essentially Fuyuhiko's slave and conditioned to think of herself as his tool- which gave Fuyuhiko his own distress at being unable to stop the person he considered his best friend from hurting herself.
  • The Ultimate Impostor has no name or life of their own; they only gain one when they steal it from others. They love fast food so much because it's the only real constant in their life.
  • Ryoma Hoshi's girlfriend was killed when he refused to lose a tennis match the mafia wanted to rig. He then went on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the mob responsible, which resulted in him getting a life sentence in his teens.
  • Korekiyo Shinguji's past is mostly implied, but it's heavily implied that his beloved sister was actually abusive to him, and he only sees her with rose-tinted glasses because she died.
  • Maki Harukawa grew up in an orphanage and had to take care of the younger kids. She then had to volunteer as an assassin to protect a fellow child who wasn't cut out for it and to ensure her orphanage was funded, and then went through Training from Hell to become a killer. She really doesn't like the job, but doesn't really see any other choice.
  • In the Ultra Despair Girls spin-off, all the Warriors of Hope have one; it's why they hate adults and were vulnerable to Junko's manipulation. Masaru Daimon lived with an abusive father, Jataro Kumuri's mother didn't want him and emotionally abused him to the point of making him wear a mask 24/7 because his face was too ugly to be seen ( he's actually beautiful, but his mom didn't like that because it made her feel like she had to care for him), Kotoko Utsugi was prostituted for her acting career (remember, she's a preteen girl), Nagisa Shingetsu was used as a science experiment to see how much a child could possibly achieve before snapping from the strain, and the only way Monaca Towa could get anyone in her family to pay attention to her was to pretend to be a cripple (and may have also been sexually harassed by a pedophile older brother).
• The protagonist of Daughter for Dessert lost his girlfriend, Lainie, in childbirth, leaving him to raise their daughter, Amanda, on his own. Not to mention, the two of them committed a technical crime shortly before she died. He still thinks and dreams a great deal about Lainie.
• Demonheart: All of the player's love interests.
  • Raze did not have a pleasant childhood.
  • Brash is a demonheart experiment.
  • Ari's been trapped in an emotionally abusive relationship for years.
• Double Homework:
  • The protagonist, and to a lesser extent, Tamara, suffered from their role in the Barbarossa incident. 12 people died, including their parents, and the protagonist in particular was vilified in the press for it. The impact on them is profound: the protagonist refuses to leave his room for months, and he gets flashbacks about the incident long after he does come out, and Tamara speaks and acts more caustically toward everyone in ways that were more meant to tear others down than to challenge them to build themselves up.
  • Downplayed with Morgan, who used to be a gang leader and spent a year behind bars. She seems to have just philosophically accepted the fact that things are different since she got locked up.
  • Implied with Dennis. His father seems like the tough love type who always demanded that his son be the best. However, Dennis was always the socially inept type who tended to get bullied.
• Archer's dark and troubled past in Fate/stay night inspires him to prevent it from occurring by murdering Shirou, his pre-Jade-Colored Glasses self, and thus possibly prevent himself from existing as well.
  • In the same game Rin and Sakura have their own painful stories as well:
  • Rin: Lost her father at an early age, had to take care of her brain-damaged mother until she died as well, was unknowingly raised by the man who murdered her father, and was separated from her little sister, while subconsciously aware she was suffering and conditioned to project an air of unconcern.
  • Sakura WAS the little sister taken from Rin by their father. She was raised by Zouken, who used his horrible Crest Worms to physically and psychologically violate her,had her adoptive brother Shinji rape her, and did everything in his power to torment her in order to mold her into the black Grail.
• The Fruit of Grisaia: Everyone has this at Mihama Academy.
  • Yuuji: He was not loved by his parents, in fact his father actively despised him. The only person who valued him, her sister, died in accident that caused his family to collapse ending with both of his parents dead. He was taken by a friend of his father who was "a bit of a bad guy" (terrorist, murderer and pedophile). After being rescued from there he was trained as a child soldier, to become a piece of disposable defense equipment, for a secret government organization.
  • Amane: Her entire basketball team were stranded in a ravine for weeks after their bus crashed there, where the situation gradually went to hell. Her classmates died one after another, until starvation drove the rest to resort to cannibalism, and when trying to escape from her crazed classmates she was forced to leave behind her best friend, making her the sole survivor of the accident. Even after being rescued, thanks to malicious media coverage, everyone suspected her only surviving by resorting to cannibalism and leaving everyone else to die, earning her the nickname: The cockroach.
  • Makina: Her family, an extremely influential and wealthy one, was completely corrupted, so when the only half-decent person, her father, the only person who ever loved her, decided to come clean and expose their corruption, they had Makina kidnapped, to bait out and assassinate her father. After witnessing the kidnappers execute him, she was left there tied up for a week, where she was forced to watch as her father's body slowly rots away. Getting her hospitalized for 6 years.
  • Michiru: She was never a bright student, so when she under-preformed with her private tutors, her father always blamed and humiliated them. Out of petty revenge, her tutors took out their frustration on her, abusing her both mentally and physically, forcing her to admit being completely useless, which left her with severe depression and cripplingly low self-esteem. Which then lead her parents growing distant with her. When she went to a normal school and finally managed to make a friend, her friend committed suicide. She had a bad hearth, which had to be replaced, however when the hearth donor girl's conscience awakened inside her even being capable of taking control of her body, she tried to commit suicide, which caused her to be locked in a psychiatry. From where she only got out by faking a different personality.
  • Sachi: She had a loving family, however once they started to get buried by work they grew distant with each other. Her best friend abruptly left her. On her birthday when her parents tried to throw a party, in a fit of anger at their previous neglecting behavior, she ran away. Just as her parents found her they were run over by a truck right in front of Sachi's eyes, something she convinced herself to be ultimately her fault. Leading to constant PTSD attacks, which she could only cope with by faking a new personality and developing a severe case of OCD. After getting back to a normal school, her OCD made her obey any and all kinds of requests, after getting an order the get rid off a school test, something she could not reasonably fulfill, she set fire to the school.
  • Yumiko: Her father never loved her or her mother, which led her both mentally and physically weak mother to be hospitalized, and her to be shipped to her mother's parents. Her grandparents only saw her as an asset, as only her extremely wealthy father kept their business afloat. It was always bemoaned for her not to be born as a boy, because then she would have been able to become a proper heir to her father. When her mother started to get better and they started to get their relationship normalized, first since her birth, her father had conceived a bastard, and planned to divorce her mother, of which the mere news of it completely broke her. Then her father took back Yumiko, acting resentful of his actions, only to turn out, that his bastard died and he needed an heir again. Even in school she had to find out that her classmate only pretended to be her friend to screw with her, which led her to attack said classmate with a box cutter.
• Every character in Higurashi: When They Cry starts out seeming normal, but ends up having one of these — even Keiichi:
  • Keiichi was a friendless boy who was overly stressed due to school. He took out his aggression and frustration by shooting at people with a BB gun. After he accidentally shot a young girl in the eye, he was transferred to Hinamizawa.
  • Rena's mother cheated on her husband with another man and later divorced him. Rena moved away from Hinamizawa, which worsened her Hinamizawa Syndrome. She began hallucinating things afterwards. Rena ended up beating up three classmates with a bat after they tried to rape her (or at least, she perceived it as such) and smashed a bunch of school windows in her rage. She later tried to kill herself due to the Hate Plague making her lose her sanity and hallucinate swarms of maggots writhing inside her skin.
  • Shion and Mion were born into a yakuza clan where if twin heirs were born, the youngest was killed. Shion was let live but was ostracized and later shipped off to boarding school. As children, Shion and Mion would often switch places. One day, they did it at the wrong time and couldn't switch back because Mion was given a tattoo. The current Mion was born Shion and vice versa. Shion fell in love with Satoshi but was later made to have her finger nails torn off as a punishment (which is also something her mother and grandmother also went through when they were younger, and which Mion volunteered for after Shion went through it).
  • Satoko and Satoshi's parents died a few years before the series. Satoko was suffering from high levels of Hinamizawa Syndrome, thought they were trying to kill her, and killed them. They were taken in by their aunt and uncle, who beat them and abused them. Satoshi later killed his aunt and ran off, which in reality is due to him being put in a coma and hid away due to his high level of Hinamizawa Syndrome. This is all on top of the siblings being ostracized by most villagers because they're parents supported a dam project that would have destroyed the village.
  • Rika's parents died prior to the series. Rika has been stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop for centuries. She must live the same month over and over again. By the end, she ends up brutally murdered by either the Big Bad (who she doesn't learn the identity of until the end of the series) or one of her friends. Rika must also watch at least one of her friends grow apart and end up killing the others in each universe.
  • Hanyuu made her daughter sacrifice her in order to try and atone for the other villagers sins. It didn't work for long, making her death in vain. She spent centuries as a lonely ghost until Rika was born. Rika could see her. Unfortunately, Hanyuu has to constantly see Rika and her friends die repeatedly while all she can do is watch and apologize, which makes their paranoia worse.
• And in "Bad Boy's Love", the Higurashi pastiche plotline in Hatoful Boyfriend, the exact same thing happens in reference to this. The cast of mostly normal Otome Game archetypes (with one cartoon villain) all turn out to have dark and troubled pasts, with at least one seemingly nice character actually being outright psychotic.
• Katawa Shoujo has several of these. Hanako lost both her parents in a house fire and was bullied through her early years and Emi lost her legs and her father in a car accident.
• The title character in Melody lost her mother to cancer as a teenager, and her stepfather, distraught over losing his wife, became more distant from her. It’s left to the protagonist, as a newcomer in her life, to help her pick up the pieces.
• Minotaur Hotel: Both minotaurs have this in spades, with Asterion being framed and thrown into a Labyrinth while he was alive before becoming a servant for all eternity, while Storm was neglected by his parents and treated as a monster in his homeland. P also had a tragic past.
• Nameless has Tei revealed to have one. His previous owner was obsessed with cleanliness and only let him out of his box for one hour a day. Despite this, Tei was happy. One day, someone else took him out of the box and dropped him, causing his legs to get scarred and his owner to freak out. Since then, his owner hasn't touched him, repeatedly talks about how dirty and disgusting Tei is and eventually sold him. This left Tei convinced he was 'dirty' and horrible, twisting his feelings into thinking he's incapable of loving someone without destroying them, turning him into a Stepford Smiler.
• A significant plot point in Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors is figuring out what exactly happened to Akane after she was separated from Junpei. Turns out she was kidnapped, locked in an incinerator, and burned to death.
• Sunrider has a few examples:
  • Icari Isidolde was orphaned at a young age when her family’s ship was boarded and destroyed by a PACT patrol, and she spent the next five days helplessly drifting through space in an escape pod before anyone found her. This tragedy drew her into a life of crime, and she became a highly-skilled assassin and bounty hunter with a burning desire for revenge.
  • Sola di Ryuvia was born the bastard child of a Ryuvian prince, who abandoned her peasant mother before Sola was born. Her mother died while Sola was still young, leaving her to fend for herself. Three years later, Sola was spirited away by agents of her father and she was acknowledged as the Sharr, a warrior-princess expected to fight and die for the Ryuvian Empire... not because her father cared about her, but because he was fighting a civil war and his legitimate daughter refused to risk her life in combat.
  • Kryska Stares grew up in poverty on a Neutral Rim planet whose corrupt government terrorized its own citizens while doing nothing to protect them from pirate raids.
  • Cosette Cosmos grew up in an overcrowded slum on the planet Ongess, where constant exposure to toxic chemicals mined from the planet’s surface stunted her growth so that she looks like an eleven-year-old. By the time she was ten she had already killed two men. Her abusive mother would also whore her out to pedophiles for a quick buck, which went on well into her teenage years until Cosette finally killed her. Small wonder that she turned out so vicious and unhinged.

---