Examples of Jerkass Woobie in Until Dawn:
- Mike. Plays an incredibly nasty prank on Hannah, accidentally causing her and Beth to die in the prologue, possibly cheats on his girlfriend, goes way overboard over Jessica's death/disappearance and blames Josh for it and acts like a Jerk Jock for a good portion of the early game. Then the Wendigos attack; Mike believes his girlfriend Jessica, whom he really does care about, to be dead the rest of the game, can potentially be forced to amputate his fingers, has tons of near-brushes with death, can potentially befriend a wolf only to watch it die, and can potentially watch multiple friends die. And despite everything that might happen to him, he just keeps going until the end of the game; if Mike is the last person alive, rather than live as a Sole Survivor, he'll perform a hybrid of Heroic Sacrifice and Despair Event Horizon, choosing to remain in the cabin and die taking out the Wendigos rather than stick to his initial plan of fleeing and surviving with the others.
- Jess. Yes, it was her idea to prank Hannah, but she couldn't have possibly known all that was going to happen, though when heading to the guest cabin with Mike can show no remorse. She can also reveal that she is actually insecure about having sex with Mike, then is immediately pulled through a window by a Wendigo. She is the easiest character to accidentally let die, and can either have her jaw ripped off based on Mike's (and later, possibly Matt's) actions, or live but have to travel through the mines while heavily injured in almost nothing but her underwear. If she makes it to the end, her scene during the credits has her huddled under a blanket, clearly traumatized by what has happened.
- Josh, holy hell. He acts a little sleazy at first and turns out to have been planning on avenging his sisters from the start of the game's main events by putting his "friends" through the most twisted, psychotic, and potentially traumatizing "prank" that he could think up, which included drugging them, locking them into realistic-looking torture chambers, faking his own gruesome death, making his best friend choose between killing the girl he's always loved and suicide (the gun was loaded with blanks, but still), and punching his best friend and possibly his best friend's girlfriend too if she stabs him in the shoulder with scissors unconscious. Still, it hurts to watch it come out that over the past year, he's been going mad with guilt over not being able to find his sisters, as well as anger at his friends for either being involved in the prank, doing nothing to stop it from happening, or being too late to warn Hannah. After the reveal he's wrongly accused of murdering Jessica (something he was genuinely horrified to hear) and despite his pleas of innocence has a loaded gun pointed at him, is pistol whipped, shoved and possibly punched and smacked unconscious with a 2x4 by his best friend before him and eventually Mike (who sometimes mocks his mental illness struggle) leave him tied up and alone in a shed. This leads him to get knocked out and taken into the mines by a Wendigo (which was something he had no idea about). Near the end of the story, he completely loses his sanity and suffers from horrible hallucinations stemming from his guilt of not saving his sisters not to mention the remorse he has for everything he put his friends through. When Mike and Sam find him and snap him out of it (by Mike slapping him no less) he willingly gives them the keys to the cable car with no problem whatsoever and what does he get? He can have a horrific death by having his head crushed by his own crazed Wendigo sister Hannah all while Mike does nothing to help him or if he lives, Mike will outright abandon him to die after Hannah drags him back into the mines, making him Go Mad from the Isolation and resorting to eating bodies out of desperation, thus turning him into a Wendigo. Saying that the poor guy does not get a happy ending would be an understatement.
