Broken Ace

"All it comes down to is this: I feel like shit but look great."

— Patrick Bateman, American Psycho

He's tall, charming, strikingly good-looking, well-spoken in five languages, and classically trained in even more instruments. He's the Big Man on Campus, former president of the Absurdly Powerful Student Council, valedictorian, and working on his doctorate in a scientific field that a peon like you can't even pronounce. He always wears a suit...until the inevitable Shirtless Scene during his (strenuous) exercise routine, that is. He has a lovely smile.

But inside, he's an ugly, writhing mass of self-hatred, Parental Issues, past tragedy and whatever unpleasentries that life brought upon him.

Expect him to have at least one bizarre trait or ability that should not be overlooked, as well as an unhealthy attitude about love, life, and humanity in general. He most likely doesn't have anyone that loves or respects him for what he really is. This may be justified.

In the most cynical works on the sliding scale, he'll be a Serial Killer, or at least a future one. In works on the more idealistic end, he'll be struggling with a mental illness, a disorder, or some other demon that makes his life miserable but isn't his fault.

This character is usually male (female characters tend to be Broken Birds instead), but not always. Also, he may just be a perfectionist crumbling under his own standards. The chief difference between the Broken Ace and the usually female Stepford Smiler is that the Stepford Smiler wants to appear normal at all costs, often to the point of hurting herself emotionally (or because she's sociopathic). This guy has the same setup but is more talented and wants to be the best, loved by all, and accepted. The debilitating personal issues which he's hiding are only getting worse because of being repressed and the stress of his efforts to excel, and these sorts of characters are prime Jerkass Woobie material.

See also The Ace, who's still better than you at everything but isn't so prone to mental disorders or emotional problems, and the Byronic Hero, who's just as awe-inspiring and brooding but lacks the charming, polished façade and is rarely presented as pathetic. For plots where a character's idol is revealed to be this, see Broken Pedestal. Anyone who has experienced The Perils of Being the Best is likely to become this. Related to "Well Done, Son" Guy if the child has accomplished much and gained much respect from other people. In case you haven't noticed, this has nothing to do with asexuality. Compare Heartbroken Badass.

In Real Life, this is common. Real people have flaws no matter how perfect and successful they seem to be at first glance. Moreover, high-performing people are often pushing themselves so hard to achieve professional goals that they are bound to either burn out physically or emotionally, or underinvest in (or even abandon) their friends and family.

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Examples:

• Anime & Manga
• Fan Works
• Literature
• Live-Action TV
• Video Games
• Visual Novels
• Western Animation

Comic Books

• Ant-Man: The original Ant-Man, Hank Pym, had it bad. Despite being the fifth smartest human in the universe, due to his bipolar disorder that went undiagnosed for years he had a crippling inferiority complex that spiraled into several mental breakdowns. He struggled for years to make up for what he did when he was Not Himself, but unfortunately he could Never Live It Down.
• Batman. Wealthy enough to do whatever he wants to do, can have beautiful ladies by the score, highly educated, is as strong and smart as a non-metahuman can get, can outthink pretty much every other superhero (including Mr. Terrific and J'onn J'onzz), and can flatten Lex Luthor at his own games. Permanently scarred by the blood and death of his parents, driven to protect as many as possible to keep others from feeling that horror, finds it incredibly difficult to completely trust himself, and has had terrible romantic relationships due to the second identity, which eventually became his first.
• Fantastic Four: This is largely the point of Doctor Doom. He's a scientific genius to rival Reed Richards, a magical prodigy who approaches Doctor Strange in power, and physically fit enough that he can kill lions bare-handed; he rules a nation as semi-benevolent dictator, adheres to a code of always repaying his debts, has enough willpower to stare down the Purple Man without flinching, and wears a suit of armour on par with that sported by Iron Man. He could, in theory, be one of the Marvel Universe's greatest forces for good, because in power level you can pick almost any three superheroes and he's the equal of all of them. Unfortunately for the Marvel Universe, his egomania will never stop clouding his judgment. When Reed Richards pointed out a mistake in Doom's calculations, he spat in Reed's face, and when his experiment went wrong and scarred him, he blamed Reed rather than admit, even to himself, that he screwed up, and dedicated the rest of his life to a needless revenge for a nonexistent crime. His hideous scarring is his own fault because believing his good looks to already be ruined by the thin scar he had received, he donned the iron mask to his first suit of armour without waiting for it to cool first. His people fear him more than love him; he has no friends; most of his intellectual equals are superheroes who would be suspicious at an invitation to discuss something; he's a pariah on the international stage. All because of his swollen ego.
• The alternate Superman from Injustice, as presented in the comic prequel. It's explained that despite being the world's greatest superhero, Kal/Clark has harbored Survivor Guilt over losing his original family and homeworld. Things got worse when he lost Lois, his unborn baby, and the city of Metropolis thanks to the Joker. This sent Clark off the deep end, leading him to gradually turn the world into a dictatorship under his "protection".
• Iron Man: Did you see the image at the top of this very page? Tony Stark is one of the smartest, richest, and most popular people on Earth, witty, a ladykiller who had everything anybody could ever want in their life. However, deep inside he suffers from self-hatred (which has even developed into suicidal tendencies), alcoholism, control issues, and the scars left by his abusive father. He has even stated he feels he doesn't deserve the friends and good things in life he has. Following the Civil War, Tony's guilt over Captain America's death and the actions he took would make him occasionally break down.
• The Plutonian of Irredeemable is slowly revealed by flashbacks to have formerly been this. Underneath his standard smiling, selfless persona, he was actually resentful of his life as a superhero, stuck saving people he felt were ungrateful, being totally unable to cope with any critics, and needing to be compulsively loved and adored by everyone in the world. When he realized that wasn't going to happen he wound up even more broken.
• The Mighty Thor: Thor certainly becomes this post-Original Sin. He loses his worthiness to wield Mjölnir and becomes way more cynical and melancholic. He admits that he's come to believe that Gorr was right about the gods, and that they don't deserve the praise and worship mortals heap on them. Far into the future, he has this even worse. He becomes the All-Father and lord of Asgard and inherits the Odin-Force (which he renames the "Thor-Force"), but his brother permanently turning to evil, the death of all life on Earth at Loki's hands, and Gorr's slaughter and enslavement of his people has reduced him to a near shell of himself who can barely muster the will to fight anymore. Thankfully, both the past and future versions of Thor eventually get better, though they still carry much baggage regarding their past failings and self-worth.
• The new Phantom Lady is a Ph.D. multimillionaire who has been trained since birth to be a super spy superhero. Also canonically one of the most beautiful women in the DC universe. Yet she's constantly worried that people don't take her seriously and that being a superhero is eating her soul.
• Spider-Man: Peter Parker is strong, smart, witty, and has a list of accomplishment that most other heroes with ten times his strength would be envious of. But a lot of people in his city are suspicious of him due to an unflattering press, his personal life is a wreck because he often has to abandon social events to respond to emergencies, and underneath that all is the crushing guilt over his failure to save his father figure when he first got his powers, and later, when his girlfriend died from the whiplash.
• Rick Flag from Suicide Squad initially seems like a roundly masterful military officer and one of the most competent members of the team, but as time goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that he is massively insecure, riddled with trauma, unable to handle the job, and eventually becomes a Death Seeker.
• The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers:
  • Rotorstorm. On the surface he's perpetually cheerful and snarky, constantly making jokes and in general having fun. However this is revealed to be a cover persona of sorts; he's actually still deeply traumatized from his experiences in the Simanzi Massacre, a massive battle where he witnessed (and possibly participated in) numerous war crimes and atrocities. As if that wasn't enough, he's filled with self-loathing and preps for missions by insulting himself, thanks to the horrifically abusive teaching he received from his drill sergeant and "mentor" Jetstream. Additionally, while he does pull off a near-impossible piloting feat and lands ready with a quick joke, he becomes the first of his team to die only seconds later.
  • To a lesser degree Pyro as well. His Optimus Prime-esque demeanor is mostly a facade, covering up the fact that he's secretly terrified of dying in the sort of pointless, forgotten death soldiers usually get during wars. He spends his life constantly trying to set up a big and dramatic Dying Moment of Awesome, believing that dying in such a manner is the only way he'll be truly remembered.
• The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye:
  • Skids is a smart, likeable superspy with the Outlier power to master any skill in no time. He also has some really awful repressed memories. His memory of having been tricked into helping the Decepticons murder 500 prisoners at Grindcore is so traumatic that when it's fully restored, he undergoes Death by Despair.
  • Getaway is a charming, funny, quirky escape artist who joins the team as a Sixth Ranger, immediately gets them out of a prison cell, and gets some funny snark about Rodimus. Once you get underneath that, though, he's driven by an all-consuming inferiority complex and obsession with being recognised as "special", especially since his name comes from him panicking in his first battle. He ends up self-destructing by inches, alternately driving away and betraying anyone who actually liked him, until eventually he's left with nothing but the desire to kill Rodimus...and when he thinks he's about to, his death arrives, cloaked in his dream of God anointing him a worthy Prime.
  • Fortress Maximus was a strong, noble warrior prior to The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers. Now he's a traumatised, rage-driven wreck who takes the ship's psychiatrist hostage because his need to beat Prowl into a metallic smear as payback for abandoning him to Overlord's tender mercies for three years is just that all-consuming. When he takes over from Ultra Magnus as the enforcer of the Tyrest Accord, he totally lacks Magnus's By-the-Book Cop traits, instead defaulting to a much more brutal approach to the Decepticons (at least until the Scavengers show him the potential for something better).
• Ozymandias from Watchmen AKA Adrian Veidt, a seemingly-forever-young (he's 46 and looks about 25) blond supergenius who is insanely rich, pretty much has America in his hands, and defeats Rorschach, Silk Spectre, and Nite Owl at the end...he's also persuasive enough to talk Dr. Manhattan around at least to the point of not turning him into a rapidly expanding cloud of superheated plasma. He is also the antagonist and portrayed as deludedly-idealistic to believe that his plan will work. He even has a slight Villainous BSoD after enacting his plan, although the film version ramps his emotional broken-ness up several levels. He shows approximately three times the guilt, self-loathing and painful isolation of his comic book counterpart, even saying he "often [feels] stupid at being unable to relate to anybody". He spends his last few minutes of screentime in a Villainous BSOD, staring into space and looking about ready to fall over as the camera zooms out on him.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: Diana is incredibly powerful, skilled, kind and respected but when Steve Trevor is killed by her villain Dr. Cyber she questions and even temporarily leaves her role as the Amazon's champion. Her mother, in a not well thought out plan, kidnaps an injured version of Steve from the multiverse, overwrites what is left of his memories with ones that won't contradict Diana's and then erases her own daughter's memories of Steve's death.
• X-Men:
  • Cyclops. He's the leader of the X-Men and the leader of the mutant race, but oh boy, has Scott ever endured so much pain, chaos, and tragedy throughout the course of his life. Underneath that stoic facade is most definitely an emotionally broken and fragile man. Even before Cerebus Syndrome hit, Cyclops was this. A strong, versatile power came with a crippling inability to control it, and fear that someday he would hurt those he loved with it. Then there's the fact that he literally cannot make eye contact with anyone, a privilege everyone else takes for granted. Good strategizing skills coupled with terrible social skills isolated him from his teammates and made him a repressed, disliked, Sugar-and-Ice Personality who had barely any close relationships.
  • Scott's fellow X-Man Wolverine is also one of these. He's got over a century's worth of accumulated skills, accomplishments, bedmates, friends, and is the poster-boy of "mutant cool". He's also got over a century's worth of painful memories, dirty business, lost loves, enemies, and is full of self-loathing.
  • And Logan's own daughter/Opposite-Sex Clone, Laura Kinney a.k.a. X-23, who may pack even more angst into her seventeen short years than Logan has his entire 150 or more. She's without question one of the best fighters and most experienced members of whatever team she's assigned to thanks to being raised as a Living Weapon by the ones who created her. She was also horrifically physically and emotionally abused by her creators, forced to kill her own mother via a chemically-induced berserker rage which will make her turn on anyone no matter how much she cares for them, had to give up the relatively normal and happy life she was creating with her only other family when the ones who made her came looking for her in order to protect them, and spent an unknown period of time as a prostitute under a violently possessive and abusive pimp. Laura has been left a mess of confused emotions and finds establishing true friendships incredibly difficult as a result, and it's been very strongly implied she's prone to bouts of severe, if not outright suicidal, depression. And her solo series reveals she was left with so little sense of self during her captivity and days as a prostitute she never realized the horrible things done to her were even wrong!

Films — Animation

• Manolo in The Book of Life. After refusing to kill the bull, the whole town (sans Maria, the Rodriguez brothers, and Joaquin) ridicule him. His own father practically disinherits him. If it couldn't get worse, Manolo thought that Maria, the only woman he's ever loved, died by protecting him from a snake bite. Leading to her father, Joaquin, and himself to mourn her "death" and blame himself for it. Manolo then indirectly asks Xibalba (who concocted the whole thing) to kill him so he could be with her. Poor guy...
• Encanto: Isabela Madrigal is praised for her beauty, her grace, and her magical talent for growing beautiful flowers. Mirabel is shown to be rather envious of her status as the family's "golden child", but it turns out Isabela is tired of having to live up to everyone's expectations of her and longs to be someone else, to be her true self, and to be free to even find out who she really is.
• Frozen:
  • Elsa. As shown in supplementary material, her little sister Anna views her as The Ace, and with good reason. Elsa is intelligent, elegant, graceful, beautiful...and constantly living in fear of hurting people with her ice powers, having to keep up a facade of perfection and stoicism to protect people, only to have it all completely backfire, meaning her life spent in silent misery was for nothing. Needless to say, Elsa finally gets pushed over the edge, though her intentions are always good.
    • Word of God confirms that she has depression and anxiety issues.
  • Prince Hans is outwardly handsome, charming, honourable and a prince. However, desperate hunger for recognition corrupted him and led to him becoming cruel and willing to kill to fulfill his desire for such. He spent much of his life ignored and overshadowed by his older brothers, and it's been confirmed by Word of God that he indeed grew up without love, sparking his desire to take the Arendelle throne in the first place. His actions are still inexcusable, but taking his depressing backstory into account, you can't help but feel sorry for the guy anyway.
• Vitaly from Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted. Outwardly brash, confident, coldly competent, intelligent, sophisticated, cynical, and extremely strong...but inside a lonely, insecure, broken tiger who is secretly afraid of both fire and failure thanks to having gone too far with his ring jump and ruining both act and circus. Luckily other than being a bit too talented and threatening with knives, he isn't a sociopath nor a villain. And unlike most examples of this trope, he actually gets healed and unbroken once Alex gives him a Rousing Speech to restore his confidence and inspire him with a new and safer way he can reinvigorate his act.
• The rooster Chanticleer from Don Bluth's Rock-A-Doodle starts out as the Big Bird of the Barnyard with his power to raise the sun each morning. However, after a battle with one of the villain's mooks, Chanticleer was too weary to crow, and the sun came up nonetheless. His farmyard peers laughed and jeered at Chanticleer, so he ambled away to the big city. There, he became a singing sensation, though still morose about losing his "sun-raiser" status.
• Prince Charming in the Shrek movies is a parody of this type that acts like and actually thinks he is a standard heroic Ace, but really is a vain, juvenile Mama's boy once you scratch the surface.
• Mei in Turning Red is shown to be quite academically skilled and talented, getting straight-A's, being musically talented, and fluent in French. However, all the perfectionism gets to her after her transformation, as she gets tired of being "perfect little Mei-Mei" all the time. She eventually admits that she'd actually been feeling the pressure long before she started transforming.
• Big Z in Surf's Up, who threw a race and pretended to be dead when he found he was getting too competitive (and someone was actually capable of beating him).

Films — Live-Action

• Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now was earmarked for command but he snapped after witnessing a massacre by the Viet Cong. At first he was horrified then he became fascinated. He thought the US army must embrace "The Horror" he had seen in order to make them into efficient killing machines.
• This is how Bruce Wayne is portrayed in Batman Forever. The most well-known man in Gotham but still wrestling with his childhood demons.
• John Nash in A Beautiful Mind is a brilliant and successful graduate student and later mathematics professor but is a socially-clumsy loner with schizophrenia.
• Nina from Black Swan. She's a young ballet prodigy who is a natural for the lead role of Swan Lake, is very sweet and incredibly beautiful...who's also incredibly socially awkward, emotionally stunted, self-loathing, is implied to have an eating disorder, and is completely batshit insane.
• Blades of Glory:
  • Chazz's image as the lone wolf of the skating world is a product of his abandonment issues.
  • Jimmy is a world class athlete and humanitarian but he is awkward in real life. He is also bad with children, unlike what the media says.
• Ginger from Casino is Vegas' top casino hustler. She's beautiful and smart. She marries Ace and becomes respected among Vegas' elite. But she also has a troubled relationship with her pimp Lester and as the years pass she succumbs to substance abuse.
• Under all his wealth and prestige, Charles Foster Kane is a broken man who can't hold down a relationship with anyone and desperately longs for his stolen childhood.
• Eddie Felson is this at the start of The Color of Money, after the events of The Hustler (1961). He ekes out a living selling liquor, and no longer plays pool or hustles people for money.
• Kathryn from Cruel Intentions falls between this and Stepford Smiler. She must be considered a lady (smiler) and that requires being a role model who's the best at everything (this).
• In The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent is quickly established as The Ace, though with a problem with his temper. He's crippled organized crime in the city and is close to finishing the job. Then he loses the woman he loves, has half his face burned off, succumbs to The Joker's More than Mind Control and crosses the Despair Event Horizon becoming Two-Face.
• In The Dead Center, Dr. Forrester is excellent at what he does, and he has a kind heart. But he has trouble expressing emotions, is a loner, and will resort to illegal methods to get patients the care he thinks they need.
• Dead Poets Society: Neil Perry is bright, popular, sporty, in numerous clubs, Harvard-bound, and clearly the leader in his group of friends, yet he is trapped in a troubled relationship with his overbearing and controlling father and sees no way out except suicide.
• Huxley sees Spartan from Demolition Man as what a cop ought to be; strong, brave and a believer of justice. Spartan is however aware that his violent ways have hurt innocents and if the world were perfect, he wouldn't exist.
• Die Another Day villain Gustav Graves is charming, talented, and insanely rich (from blood diamonds). However, he is really a North Korean with plastic surgery building a Kill Sat to help his faction finally win the war. He has daddy issues too, and really really hates anything Western. He admits to having based the Graves persona partly on Bond.
  • Speaking of James Bond, while he's known to be a suave agent known to use cutting Bond One Liners to enemies and his status as The Casanova, he's sometimes portrayed like this, especially in the rebooted films. In Spectre, it's sad to see Bond's virtually character-less apartment, as it reveals how little of a life he has beyond MI6, and what a lonely and broken man he is. Moneypenny's sarcastic remark about Bond's life in Spectre when he hears her boyfriend over the phone almost sounds like a much harsher jab. Even the rejected song by Radiohead is depressing as hell. It pretty much is a summation of Bond's character and all of the tragedies he suffered over the years. Just read here.
• Apt Pupil has an A student get fascinated with the local hidden Nazi's old war stories. This eventually causes him (and the Nazi) to snap.
• Gellert Grindlewald from Fantastic Beasts. He's a brilliant and charismatic man and one of the most naturally powerful and gifted wizards in the setting, but besides his ideological extremism and disastrous temper, he also never recovered from Dumbledore rejecting him, which contributed to his callousness.
• Tyler Durden from Fight Club, being The narrator's subconscious conception of his ideal self, which he manifests as an alternate personality.
• Forrest Gump is a sports star, war hero and entrepreneur but he's also just a confused simpleton who had to do all of those because other people told him to. He never knew what he wanted.
• (The real) Jerome Morrow in Gattaca. Once a champion swimmer on top of the world, he lost the use of his legs in an accident and was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He's still a brilliant and remarkably gifted individual (with an ego to match), but he's also internalized a lot of their culture's demands for absolute perfection. As a result, he's got a lot of anger with himself and everyone else.
  • Anton Jr. (Vincent's younger brother) turns out to be something like this as well. The audience doesn't get to know him very well, but he's definitely the Ace in their father's eyes, and seems at least a little Broken considering his issues with the fact that his non-engineered brother beat him in a swimming race once after years and years of beating him every time since they were little kids.
• The Godfather Don Vito Corleone is a fearsome, wise and respected crime lord but in his final days expresses his regret to his son Michael that he couldn't turn the family legit.
• High School Musical:
  • Gabriella. She's portrayed a very attractive Teen Genius, but underneath is extremely lonely from constantly moving schools, insecure about everything outside of studying and hides her intelligence to avoid being labelled the 'freaky math girl'. She does become more comfortable with herself after the first film.
  • Troy has it even worse. Big Man on Campus and super-talented basketball captain, but also increasingly uncomfortable with the expectations of his parents, friends and the rest of the school. In the third film, after a song which screams self-loathing (to the point of him ripping down posters of himself), he decides to go to a different college than expected, thousands of miles away from his hometown, partly to get away from the spotlight and pressure. In fact, a huge part of his and Gabriella's initial attraction is that they accept each other as themselves and not the hyped up perfect people everyone sees.
• Sgt. Angel from Hot Fuzz is the best cop in London but his perfection gets him Reassigned to Antarctica. He can't hold down a relationship because he's Married to the Job.
• Interstellar brings us Dr. Mann. Everyone speaks of him as if he was a hero, the best scientist and most driven member of the Lazarus Project. Unfortunately, by the time the main characters reach him, the isolation, fear, and frustration over the planet he was assigned to survey being completely uninhabitable have driven him mad.
• Jerry Maguire was the best sports agent in the game until the son of one of his clients called him out for his lack of concern for his injured father. It gave him a crisis of conscience which led to his Heel–Face Turn.
• Mission to Mars: Jim McConnell is one of the best astronauts of the space program and wrote books on Mars, which he and his wife Maggie were meant to visit through the first human mission to the red planet. But then she died from an illness turning Jim into a heartbroken and psychologically unfit widower, ending up being washed out of the program. He gets a second chance when he participates to a rescue mission, and in the end he decides to leave towards the new homeworld of the Martians to honor his late wife.
• Molly's Game: Harlan Eustice, unlike every other person who plays poker at the games Molly sets up, is a good and careful poker player, playing the cards rather than trying to bluff and challenge the other players. On the eve of a surprise birthday party he's planning for his wife, Harlan is playing with Bad Brad (nicknamed as such because he's an awful poker player), among others. Because Harlan isn't used to playing with Brad, when Brad goes all in on a bet, Harlan assumes he has a good hand, and being a Graceful Loser, bows out. It isn't until he gets a look at Brad's cards that Harlan realizes Brad was bluffing. As Molly tells us, from this point, it's as if a circuit shorted inside Harlan's brain, and for the rest of the night, he forgot every rule when it came to playing good poker, instead making bets indiscriminately and losing all of his money (even the money Molly ends up lending him). He never makes it to his wife's birthday party, and she ends up divorcing him, leading him to be totally dependent on Player X.
• MonsterVerse: Emma Russell, who features prominently in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), is seen In-Universe as this by some of her colleagues, such as Dr. Brooks in the Godzilla: Aftershock graphic novel. She's looked up to and considered one of the best in Monarch, despite the death of her son in 2014 which turned her into a Workaholic and clearly still haunts her at the start of King of the Monsters. Then her Face–Heel Turn is revealed.
• Anna Scott from Notting Hill is the most successful actress in Hollywood but she is aware that her fame hinges on her looks.
• Chuck Hansen in Pacific Rim. He's one of the youngest Jaeger pilots and has the highest Kaiju kill count in history. However, he's also a Child Soldier who has a Hair-Trigger Temper, terrible communication skills, and a double dose of Daddy Issues and Survivor's Guilt with regards to his father choosing to save him over his mother. It's also heavily implied that he believes his only purpose in life is to live and die fighting the Kaiju, which comes true by the end of the film.
  Chuck: After Mum died, I spent more time with these machines than I ever did with you.
• Star Wars:
  • Anakin Skywalker is believed to be The Chosen One who, according to an ancient Jedi Prophecy, will destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force. Since he was (implied to be) born to a virgin woman, has the highest midi-chlorian count on record, and can do things most humans can't (such as podracing), there was a lot of evidence to back this up. However, Anakin was born into slavery on a planet outside the realm of the Galactic Republic, which stopped him from being discovered by the Jedi until Anakin was nine, far beyond the age that Jedi normally begin training. Because of this, Anakin struggles to separate from his mother, with that attachment only growing as he gets older. Then his Jedi mentor Qui-Gon Jinn is slain and Anakin is apprenticed to Qui-Gon's Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi who, although a wise, kind, and powerful Jedi, is inexperienced as a teacher and somewhat jealous of Anakin's potential, causing him to be a bit tougher on Anakin than he should have been. Anakin then forms another strong attachment with his childhood crush Padmé Amidala and secretly marries her even though it's a violation of the Jedi Code. His mother's death combined with the distrust the Jedi Council has in him, the Clone Wars, visions of Padmé dying in childbirth, and manipulation by Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious leads him to turn to the Dark Side and become the Sith Lord Darth Vader. Destroying the Jedi Order, choking his wife to death in anger, then being horribly maimed in a duel with Obi-Wan, Vader has lost everything and has nothing left but to serve his Sith master.
  • Obi-Wan probably qualifies as well. Helplessly watching Qui-Gon die at the hands of Darth Maul, Obi-Wan promises his dying master that he will train Anakin. As skilled as Obi-Wan was, he was rushed into becoming a Jedi Knight before he was ready and was thus unequipped to take on a Padawan, especially The Chosen One. Constant reminders that his student is destined to be more powerful than he was likely stirred up some insecurities inside Obi-Wan, and Anakin's arrogance only made it worse. Then Qui-Gon's old master Count Dooku becomes a Sith Lord and starts the conflict that leads to the Clone Wars. Then Anakin betrays and murders the remaining Jedi, enslaves their loyal clone troopers through pre-implanted inhibitor chips, and Obi-Wan is forced to fight him on Mustafar: severing Anakin's limbs and watching him burn alive next to a lava river. It's a miracle that Obi-Wan was able to keep it together and not embrace the Dark Side himself.
• The title character from The Stepfather film franchise. He's very good with this hands, able to create works of art with just a couple pieces of wood and an hour's worth of time. He's also very intelligent and charismatic. Unfortunately, he's also an Ax-Crazy sociopath and psychopath who's obsessed with creating the perfect family seen in the television sitcoms of the 50s and 60s.
• The stars of Tropic Thunder.
  • Alpa Chino is a successful rapper/entrepreneur but he is also homosexual and has to hide behind an ultra-masculine facade.
  • Jeff Portnoy is a successful comedian but he thinks no one respects him as a person because of his persona. This leads him to drug addiction.
  • Kirk Lazarus is one of the most talented and award winning actors in the world but he is afraid he has no real personality.
  • Tugg Speedman is an actor/philanthropist who is desperate for the movie to succeed not just to save his flagging career but also to prove to the world that he is a real actor.
• This is apparently how Robert Pattinson plays Edward Cullen in the Twilight films. It's an Alternative Character Interpretation that Stephenie Meyer wouldn't endorse, but arguably it makes a lot more sense.
• Zohan from You Don't Mess with the Zohan. He's a superhuman Badass Israeli who can get any girl he wants. But the film establishes that he has grown disillusioned with the Forever War that is the Arab–Israeli Conflict, and that he would rather follow his dream of being a hair stylist. He fakes his own death just so he doesn't have to fight people.
• The eponymous protagonist the Biopic Yves Saint Laurent. Being a wunderkind has come at the price of his mental stability and he indulges in excessive drinking, drugs and promiscuity. Being true to history, the same dynamic is portrayed in the rival film Saint Laurent.

Manhua

• Sun Ce from Ravages of Time — a warrior with few peers who can and has single-handedly torn his way through armies, a Magnificent Bastard even to the point of outdoing his oath-brother Zhou Yu (one of the Eight Geniuses), leader of an army at age twenty and military hegemon of southeastern China under his family banner by his mid-20s...but underneath it all, a boy still lashing out at a cruel world that got his beloved father Sun Jian killed right after finally showing his son some affection. Moreover, it's a father whose public reputation for loyalty to the Han Dynasty and righteousness is at odds with Sun Ce's own beliefs and public persona^note and both Gan Ning and Cao Cao use this against Sun Ce in decrying him to his face. It doesn't help that in the side-novel Bofu, he's got a case of the Green-Eyed Monster regarding his younger brother Sun Quan.

Music

• There's a definite trend of portraying Superman as this in popular music, too
  • Five for Fighting's "Superman": Superman has still won the Superpower Lottery (of course) but is portrayed as lamenting being considered as the people's hero to the exclusion of anything else about him and thoroughly depressed by the loss of his home planet, but being unable to take any time out for grieving.
• The above-mentioned "Richard Cory" example was expanded on in a song of the same title by Simon & Garfunkel, contrasting Cory's facade of happiness with the poverty of one of his envious employees. The song ends the same as the poem. The narrator still envies him.
  • Is the chorus repeated (even after The Reveal) merely to be consistent with standard song structure? Seems unlikely, as Simon — self-described in "Homeward Bound" as "a poet and a one-man band" — was a careful wordsmith. And because a final chorus would be anti-climactic, its inclusion requires an important reason. Even so, it's not clear whether this was simply for the sake of Irony, or if the narrator's envy was allowed to persist so his crushing poverty would be underscored.
• Ziltoid of Devin Townsend's Ziltoid The Omnicient seems like your ordinary fourth-dimensional evil overlord, spreading terror and destruction across the known universes, fraternising with the fifth-dimensional planet smasher and the omnidimensional creator, and of course raiding the earth for our finest coffee to use for time-bending. But in the end, Captain Spectacular of Earth has seen Ziltoid's true self; a nerd.
• The list of "troubled musicians" in Real Life and fiction is probably plentiful enough for it to be its own trope.
• Marina Diamandis:
  • "Oh No" is a Broken Ace anthem of sorts, and is very popular for Fan Vids about this kind of character.
  Maybe this is all a test
  'Cause I feel like I'm the worst, so I always act like I'm the best
  • "Are You Satisfied?" leans into this, with the singer even pondering if life would be easier for them if they were average.
• "We" by Christian singer-songwriter Joy Williams describes two people wanting to really be known as they truly are.
  "She's independent and beautiful
  Wish I could be like her
  She's got the girls and the boys so wrapped around her finger
  Rumor is, she's some kind of dream
  Nobody knows, she cries herself to sleep."
  ...
  "He's on the top of the social scene
  He's stylish, cool, and clever
  He's got a cool attitude that screams 'He's got it all together'
  You'd think he's addicted to himself
  But he wishes he could be someone else."
• "Where Do You Go To My Lovely?" by Peter Sarstedt is about a woman (Marie-Claire) who is beautiful and witty ("You talk like Marlene Dietrich and you dance like Zizi Jeanmaire..."), intelligent and with excellent taste (she's a graduate of the Sorbonne, owns a Picasso, dresses in Balmaine, listens to the Rolling Stones and drinks Napoleonic brandy) has famous friends and is famous in her own right. However, the narrator, who is a childhood friend, recalls their shared origins as beggar children in Naples and suggests that beneath her incredibly glamorous life Marie-Claire still bears the scars of life on the streets.
• Rush (Band)'s song "Mission" is about being inspired by people who have made an impact on history, but ends with the singer reflecting that their achievements came through personal sacrifice:
  "If their lives were exotic and strange
  They would likely have gladly exchanged them
  For something a little more plain
  Maybe something a little more sane
  We each pay a fabulous price
  For our visions of paradise."
• The Megas' take on Mega Man. After Get Equipped, he sinks into a deep depression, becoming distant from his father, and even though he's still winning his fights, he's definitely not in good shape, emotionally. It's most visible in "Lamentations of a War Machine", which is entirely about how much he regrets his actions in Get Equipped, "History Repeating, Part 1", where he actively describes himself as "broken and bleeding", and "Fly on a Dog", where he's barely holding it together at all. Averted after his He's Back! moment in "I Refuse (To Believe)", though; he seems pretty functional after that.

Professional Wrestling

• Sadly, this trope is very common for professional wrestlers. Many great talents have been plagued with severe personal issues that have ruined their careers.
  • Scott Hall had been wrestling with alcoholism for quite some times, yo-yoing back and forth for almost two decades. WCW even made his drunken behavior into a character trait. He was fortunately able to get his act together on his final years.
  • Jake "The Snake" Roberts has struggled with alcoholism as well. Several times during his career he's shown up to an arena fully drunk. He was one of the first wrestlers to take advantage of WWE's drug rehab program for current and former wrestlers in the wake of the Chris Benoit situation.
  • Jeff Hardy and his battles with drug addictions will very likely land him in jail in the near future. Not to mention, his already terrible reign as TNA World Champion was capped off with one of the worst title matches in history (see the So Bad It's Horrible TNA page for more details).
  • Hulk Hogan has gone through a very messy, very public divorce, not helped by his son Nick getting involved in a car crash that left the other driver in a vegetative state. Hulk at one point said he gets why OJ Simpson did what he did.
  • Ric Flair has a litany of broken marriages, money problems, and substance abuse demons.
  • "Stone Cold" Steve Austin has several times been detained on domestic violence charges.
  • "Mr. Perfect" Curt Hennig could do just about anything, except put down the bottle which led to his death.
  • Shawn Michaels, considered to be one of the most talented performers to have ever stepped into a ring, had a terrible pain killer addiction on top of being a colossal jackass backstage who used his considerable pull to screw over several of his coworkers. After his four-year retirement and conversion to Christianity, he has since gotten rid of all his vices, became The Atoner, and all around committed to subverting this trope.
  • Kayfabe-wise, Randy Orton portrays this with some Reality Subtext. Orton was the talented athlete that most of WWE's higher-ups envisioned at the top of the company back around 2003-2005, but never surpassed John Cena's status mostly because of his inability to stay out of his own way. In kayfabe, especially, most of his heel turns are marked with bouts of insecurity and paranoia, and his recent bout as a face portrays him as a skilled athlete, but a stoic Sociopathic Hero. And, both in and out of kayfabe, Orton still occasionally dips into anger and behavioral issues.
  • "Macho Man" Randy Savage: Considered to be the second most famous pro wrestler after Hulk Hogan, and had almost as many personal problems. Crippling perfectionism, being over-possessive of his first wife Miss Elizabeth, to the point where she left him over it, a love-hate relationship with Hogan in both Kayfabe and real life, insecurities about aging (which WWF and critics were happy to exploit) and a string of injuries and steroid abuse, which contributed to his premature death at the age of only 58. ^note And that's not even going into the Urban Legend about him having sex with a barely-legal Stephanie McMahon
  • Sting is a subversion: In the mid-1990s he struggled with substance abuse and his family life, but like Shawn Michaels above, became a Born-Again Christian and turned his life around. Even before that, he stopped using steroids in 1990, which he credits with having allowed him to perform well into his sixties without being Dented Iron.
  • Bret Hart for a long, long time following the Montreal Screwjob fit the bill. Widely considered by most as the most skilled technical wrestler to ever lace up a pair of boots, (his nickname as “The best there is, there best there was, and the best there ever will be was well earned), one need only read his autobiography to see the man was at a point a walking, talking ball of pent up bitterness and resentment. Despite his decorated wrestling career, significant points of Bret’s life are marred by family and marriage problems with ex-wife Julie and the other Harts, getting screwed out of multiple title runs by the likes of Hogan or Michaels and capping off the late 90s into the mid 2000’s with his concussion and forced retirement, the tragic death of his youngest brother Owen Hart, a stroke, and the deaths of several other close friends and family. It’s no wonder the Hitman was left embittered for so long.

Tabletop Games

• Exalted: The Unconquered Sun himself. Created by the Primordials to be the embodiment of absolute perfection, he turned out to be perfect in four different ways that didn't always get along. Combined with his addiction to the Games of Divinity and the Great Curse driving his Exalts into depravity, he essentially suffered a nervous breakdown and locked himself up in the Jade Pleasure Dome.
• The Primarchs of Warhammer 40,000 are gods among men and strong charismatic leaders of their adopted planets but many harbor serious issues like insecurity (Fulgrim), inferiority complex (Perturabo) or a need for revenge (Angron) which led half of them to commit rebellion.
  • Their father/creator the Emperor of Mankind. The most powerful psyker to ever live, a brilliant scientist, a ruler who united humanity in a golden age, practically a living god...but his inability to be the father his sons needed dooms himself and the Imperium to a slow wasting death. All that is left of the once-mighty Emperor is a decaying husk trapped between life and death that can only watch as the Imperium falls apart over ten thousand years.
  • This is practically mandatory for anyone competent of high rank in the Imperial Guard and to a lesser degree the Imperail Navy.

Theater

• William Shakespeare's tragedies frequently star broken aces. In many cases the breaking itself constitutes the plot:
  • Hamlet is a brilliant young scholar-prince who’s good with a sword and has a girlfriend who loves him. He’s also wracked with grief and paranoia in the wake of his father’s murder, obsessed with the idea of revenge but too indecisive to make it happen, and (at least by the end of the play) more than a little bit insane.
    • Laertes would also qualify, for many of the same reasons.
  • Macbeth is an honorable and valiant general who receives the king’s favor for his loyalty and prowess in battle. He’s also power-hungry, easily swayed by his even more ambitious wife, and eventually so guilt-ridden by his many murders and so paranoid about losing power than he can’t even appreciate his kingship.
  • Othello is a successful and highly-respected general with a wife he loves and subordinates who would do anything for him. As it turns out, he is also totally taken in by a complete sociopath, and susceptible enough to jealousy and rage that he kills his wife in the mistaken belief she is cheating on him.
• Freddie Trumper in Chess, though his ace reputation is also notoriously short-tempered and cocky. Still, he drove himself to be a chess champion due to his rather hellish childhood and doesn't want anyone seeing his weakness. The audience only finds out during "Pity the Child".
  • Anatoly Sergeievski counts too if the lyrics of "Where I Want To Be" are any indication. Figures that in a show where the two female leads are broken birds, the men would be broken aces.
• Cyrano de Bergerac: Cyrano, Reinassance man, (legendary poet, duelist, soldier, philosopher, physicist, musician, playwright, novelist and excellent actor) who also is an ugly, writhing pile of mommy issues, who systematically throws away every chance of success he has, prefers to help a fair guy get the girl he loves instead of confessing to her, abuses everyone who is not his friend and an assiduous killer of Asshole Victims because his enormous Gag Nose.
• Hamilton: Applies to both Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.
• Ultimate heroic example, without even a trace of Jerkass: Jesus Christ himself in Jesus Christ Superstar is deeply conflicted by his own messiah role and increasingly uncomfortable with his followers and fanbase, particularly because he doubts that anything he's done will even make an impact.
• Love Never Dies, the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, expects us to believe Raoul de Chagny was one of these all along. Anything for a ship.
• Stacee Jaxxx from Rock of Ages is a famous rock star but his solo career is stalling thanks to writer's block.
• Tybalt in Gerard Presgurvic's musical Romeo et Juliette: De La Haine a l'Amour , especially in the Hungarian production, where he's an epileptic pyromaniac on top of being obsessed by family honor and in love with Juliet.
• Graf von Krolock from Tanz Der Vampire. Suave, unflappable vampire, seducer of the young and beautiful, dominating and powerful...and then, come The Eleven O'Clock Number, we see him practically writhing in the dirt of the castle graveyard as he castigates himself for being driven to destroy what he loves and never rising to the true pinnacle he always wanted to achieve.

Toys

• In modern takes on the Transformers character Optimus Prime, Optimus is often presented as being a great warrior, inspiring leader, brilliant commander, and so on, but also has hints of some sort of personality disorder or otherwise being neuro-atypical. Most commonly it's presented as depression (despite his reputation, someone he commands always dies) or post-traumatic stress (four million years of war can do that to you). There are also some who argue that in various elements of the Transformers Aligned Universe, including High Moon Studios' games and the Transformers: Prime series, Optimus is subtly coded as being autistic. Some critics of Michael Bay's movies even snark that the long war has unhinged that Optimus into a psychopathic monster.

Web Animation

• Among all the imps in Hell, Blitzo from Helluva Boss would undoubtedly be considered the prime specimen. He's big (by imp standards), strong (by imp standards), immensly successful (by imp standards) and an absolute Sex God (by any standard) who has bedded both the popstar succubus Verosika Mayday and Prince Stolas of the Ars Goetia... He is also very fiscally irresponsible and an absolute mess of psychological issues, ranging from a raging self-contempt which drives him to selfsabotage any relationships he gets into, to a deep-seated fear of Dying Alone which is the end his selfsabotaging ways are pushing him towards. Also, did you notice all the "by imp standards" up there? Blitzo did. He's well-aware of the fact that, in Hell's hierarchy, he is below even the sinners condemned there to suffer. This means that all relationships he's been in (and especially so his current one with Stolas) have an inherent power imbalance. The fact that he also fears that Stolas doesn't respect him but only considers him a plaything does not help. Combine all that with his evident goofiness, and few people even notice how good he is; ironically, the one time someone does, that guy (Striker) is The Ace himself, and he is just about the only one who acknowledges the fact Blitzo is just as good at himself when they compete, even though he is also so full of himself he's not likely to do that easily.
  
  Some of Blitzo's achievements in themselves embody both the "ace" and "broken" aspects: his aforementioned affairs with a pop star and a prince that were/are also really messed up, and the fact that he's able to out-drink the archdemon of gluttony (which he explicitly boasts is because he had such an awful day).
• RWBY:
  • Pyrrha Nikos is a world-renowned fighter who has kept her title as Mistral Regional Tournament Champion for a record-breaking four years. She is beautiful, talented, has been blessed with incredible opportunities and a supportive family. Everyone worships her, and that's the problem. Having been placed on such a high pedestal, it's impossible for her to make any friends at all. She's a very lonely person who just wants to be treated like a normal person. Upon meeting Jaune Arc, the fact he doesn't know who she is and therefore treats her like anyone else attracts her to him, and enables her to finally start making friends.
  • Qrow Branwen was a member of the elite Team STRQ as a student. Despite being famous and respected as one of Remnant's top Huntsmen, he's a sarcastic, pessimistic loner. An alcoholic struggling with an uncontrollable Semblance that brings misfortune to himself and those around him, he tries to avoid hanging around those he cares about to spare them the harm he can accidentally bring their way. Upon realising in Volume 6 that everything he's been fighting for might have been a lie, he descends into an alcoholic spiral that makes him a problem to the students he's supposed to be supporting. By Volume 7, he gives up alcohol and starts turning his life around, despite the uphill struggle.

Web Comics

• Jack of Check, Please! is a Tall, Dark, and Handsome hockey prodigy — and also a mess of anxiety, perfectionism, and "Well Done, Son" Guy issues.
• Daily JoJo: Wan Jo successfully projects an image of being perfect, and is admired by those around him. However, he's actually petty and judgmental.
• Dreaming Freedom: Siyun is handsome, smart, and charismatic, becoming the most popular member of his idol group before they debuted. However, his parents’ abuse and later, his idol team members and classmates turning on him left him with severe abandonment issues and a tendency to become overly reliant on and desperate for others’ attention.
• In El Goonish Shive, Nanase is, in the words of her cousin, "athletic, smart, trilingual, can kick the ass of anyone who messes with her, is theoretically good looking enough that most people are nice to her by default (I wouldn't know because she's my cousin) and when she's not burned out, she's an insanely potent magic user." However, she deals with serious self-confidence and honesty issues brought on by her mother's less-than-stellar parenting, and her initial attempts at proving her self-worth and becoming independent really only succeed in pushing away and hurting the people around her (Ellen especially). After Sister II, she starts to rectify the "Broken" part, ironically as part and parcel of temporarily losing access to her magical powers.
• The Glass Scientists: Dr. Henry Jekyll is handsome, wealthy, smart and a pilar of both Victorian society and the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits scientists he protects from the law. He’s also a depressed and emotionally repressed man who created Hyde as a borderline suicide attempt.
• Homestuck's Dirk is a perfect example. At first glance, he appears to be completely flawless—he is a badass of the highest caliber, is an incredibly-skilled engineer capable of creating fully-sentient virtual clones of himself, and has his group's session of Sburb all planned out. The reality, though, is quite different: he suffers from severe psychological trauma from being born in a Bad Future, and is one of only two humans left alive on Earth. His Bro, his one guardian figure who he clearly adored, was murdered prior to his birth, leaving him forced not only to raise himself with nothing but a Demonic Dummy for company but to live up to the legacy of his heroic and Shrouded in Myth ancestor. Due to the pain, this famous ancestor inflicted upon the ruling empress, Dirk is top on her hit list. On top of all this, he has developed a crush on Jake, who was born 400 years in the past and who he may not even meet, let alone get to confess his feelings to. As The Stoic, he's unable to confide in anyone, leaving him the heroic equivalent of a ticking time bomb — though from what we've seen so far, he'll probably be okay.
  • We get to see this ace break in-story — not especially dramatically (little in Homestuck is played for drama), but, for the work, pretty hard. At least, falling into a depressive, self-loathing fit so deep that not even a magically-induced sugar high can bring him out of it certainly looks like this. Just a bit before this, we see him lamenting how his emotionlessness and manipulative bastardry have alienated him from his friends and boyfriend, and displaying some ambiguously-suicidal impulses in nearly destroying his robotic personality copy. If this wasn't enough, afterward we find out that he has a fair-sized insecurity complex about his sexuality and the fact that he'll never be able to love his dearest friend in the way she wants (and deserves) because of it. Give this kid a hug already!
  • Vriska could also count. From the outside, she's a wild, powerful, intensely-confident Pirate Girl who has her friends wrapped around her little finger. As time goes on, though, it becomes more and more clear that her desire to live up to what she believes her ancestor is has turned her insensitive to the point of a Jerkass, which has driven away all of her friends, including her crush and her moirail, something she claims to not care about but which she really does. Despite acting confident, she lapses into worrying Self-Deprecation at times. Also, as Terezi points out, she can only manipulate people through mind control, since she's too impatient and reckless to actually play people properly. Basically all of her plans fail, and the one thing that actually does go right for her — becoming God Tier — only happened when Aradia beat her up in revenge for killing her and left her to bleed to death slowly...and then it all ended up being pointless anyway, since the one time it would have actually helped, she is killed beforehand, since, even if she won, Karkat and Terezi would still have died. In the end, the one person who had ever believed in her, John, later admits that she was just some weird psychotic girl who kind of had a crush on him one day a long time ago. Ouch.
• I Don't Want This Kind of Hero: Young Jeong strove to be The Cape to the extreme—someone so utterly devoted to heroics that they discarded their personal humanity. To the extent that she had her lover (willingly) kill himself so that he could never tie her down. Unsurprisingly, she's now barely better than the villains she's supposed to be against.
• Jason "Ace of" Spades in Last Res0rt has this one all wrapped up. Celebrity soldier-turned-Second-in-Command Executioner? Check. Crack shot? Check. Looks great shirtless? Check. Always, always insists on wearing — or at least carrying around — that fur-trimmed jacket? Check. Beaten as a child by his Djinn mother? Che—wait, what was that last one again?
• Marble Gate Dungeon: Randulf is one of the most skilled and experienced delvers in Marble Gate, but these days he spends most of his time blind drunk, only delving to get more money for booze. It's hinted that something went catastrophically wrong with one of his delves, something he drinks to forget.
• Artie of Narbonic has undertones of this. He is 6+ ft tall with a perfect body, has an IQ that is literally beyond human possibility, has won several genius grants, is quite successful as a novelist, and as of Skin Horse, is seen to have an endless stream of one night stands with other gorgeous men. Hell, as of Skin Horse he is described exactly by the trope description if you add Civil Rights Leader to the list. But on the inside, he is nearly continually disappointed with himself and struggles to deal with his dual nature as a human and a gerbil and his place in the transgenic community. He isn't quite completely broken, but he is as close as you can get without becoming so.
• Purple Hyacinth: Lauren is an investigator in the country's Secret Police, and is secretly a Super. But she's also guilt-ridden at making a series of mistakes as a child that led to her parents getting murdered andh her best friend getting caught in a terrorist explosion.
  • This definitely applies to Kieran as well: During the explosion, the terrorists' secondary goal was to kidnap the child of a VIP. They couldn't identify the right boy and ended up kidnapping a bunch of surviving children - Kieran especially - and eventually decided to give the disposable children Tyke Bomb Training from Hell that got most of the kids killed, some in front of Kieran's face, until the survivors were hardened into ruthless killers. Despite his status as a legendary serial assassin and mastery over dozens of skills, Kieran depreciates himself as a psychotic monster who can't help but follow the wrong people.
• Sweet Home (2017): Hyun used to be popular, smart, athletic and an all round good guy. Then another classmate came and made everyone else in the class beat him up and cut him off, making him the sullen, cut off jerk he is at the beginning of the story.
• Played with in unOrdinary. Before Seraphina met John, she was indisputably the top student in school in abilities, academics, and reputation. However, this came with a greater deal of pressure and judgment from her peers. In the present story, Seraphina's peers in Wellston see her like this since she started hanging around with John and no longer caring too much about her grades or reputation. However, Seraphina feels a lot better about herself than she did before.
  • As it turns out, John himself is also one of these. While a skilled hand to hand fighter and owner of one of the most powerful abilities seen so far in the series, he also has serious trust issues and a vicious Hair-Trigger Temper that is in no way whatsoever Played for Laughs. There are several signs that he's suffering from PTSD. He's an interesting case in that he's perfectly aware of it, hence why he refuses to make his The Ace status public because he knows he's the worst possible person to be saddled with the social status and authority that comes with being King — worse, he knows it from experience.
  • It's implied in one conversation that this is enforced among god-tiers. As described, Seraphina used to be obsessed with perfection, while Arlo's obsessive drive to maintain social hierarchy essentially kickstarts the plot. In both stances it is much for the worse of the both of them. Some characters briefly wonder if crippling god-tiers psychologically is not a way to keep them under control.
• Unsounded: Lemuel is a very skilled warrior, able to defeat his rather skilled brother Duane in duels with no pymary involved most of the time and outperform even more experienced fighters. He is also an extremely skilled Vliegeng rider, something that his fellow soldiers assumed he would never be able to achieve due to his caste. However, he is mentally broken due to an abusive grandfather and the horrors of war he experienced as a child soldier, so he assisted Bastion in the murder and resurrection of his own brother in a mad attempt to create an undead who could breach Heaven and ask God why all of this happened to him.

Web Original

• Owen from Moonflowers is a handsome, talented mage at twenty-five. He's also gay in a rural part of Ireland, and faces a lot of homophobia for it: He was nearly killed five years pre-story, can't find work, and has a tendency to call himself homophobic slurs. Despite only remarking that the attack was his "worst birthday ever", he's clearly more affected than he claims: getting attacked in Galway ends even more badly than expected when one of the men chops off his shoulder-length hair, reveals his head-scar from the first attack, and triggers the previously-calm Owen into hurling profanity-filled death threats.
• Phase (Ayla Goodkind) of the Whateley Universe. He's Exemplar hot, he has a gorgeous girlfriend, he's made himself a fortune in the past year, he speaks multiple languages, he has superpowers that make him a threat against most mutants, he's a gourmet... and he is tortured by the fact that his family hates him because he turned into a mutant.
• Worm: Taylor Herbert, a.k.a. Skitter develops into a version of this over time. She goes from a bullied, timid, and superpowered high-school girl to a powerful supervillain, defeating foes such as Lung, the Slaughterhouse Nine, and even Alexandria. However, as she does so, she begins to worry more and more about her actions and their consequences, ending up even more of a mental wreck than she was before.

Web Videos

• Atop the Fourth Wall: Linkara has more than a few elements of this. He's a nice-looking hero with wonderful toys and True Companions around him — but he wants so badly to be a good guy and to think that he's much more than his Channel Awesome co-workers. He has a Small Name, Big Ego: his number one priority seems to be whether the fans watch him or not and his Comedic Sociopathy^note Wanting to rule the nation on his own turns into "I am the liberator of Kickassia" is far creepier than the others because whereas they embrace it, he denies it. The post-Entity storyline has people calling him out on how broken he is, and tell him that he's close to becoming an outright villain.
• Critical Role gives us Percival de Rolo. The character in the party with the best rolled stats, the first person in the world to invent a gun, an objective genius in several ways, lucky beyond belief, and lethal enough to keep up with the rest of his party despite lacking all but a few magic powers. But he's also obsessed with revenge, struggles to relate to even his best friends, shows a heavy disregard for his own life and soul, has panic attacks behind closed doors, and for much of the campaign believes redemption is impossible for both himself and his enemies.
• Dream Machine: Ryan Dresden. He was a hotshot Hollywood film producer, but eventually his drug habit got so bad he destroyed all his personal and professional relationships. He ends up working at Dream Machine because a third-rate cable network is the only place that will take him.

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