I Am a Monster

"You can give Artorius my regards. My name is Velvet Crowe, and I will devour daemon, malak and exorcist alike. I am a monster! I am a THERION!"

— Velvet Crowe, Tales of Berseria

When a character feels he is not human, perhaps due to a certain situation that occurred, he may ask What Have I Become? and declare himself as a monster or a freak. When the character is either not human or a Half-Human Hybrid, he may feel like a monster if others are scared of him or call him a freak.

This trope can also apply to non-human characters, as long as something about them makes them stick out compared to other characters who are the same race/species. If a character utters My God, What Have I Done? (if they killed or hurt someone, for example), then this will very likely be followed up by I Am A Monster and the character declaring themselves not human for doing such a sinful act. Once a character calls themselves a monster, they will most likely tell supporting characters to back off and stay away from them so that they won't be hurt or hurt further—unless they are a Card-Carrying Villain or a Fully-Embraced Fiend, in which case they will boast about how much of a monster they are.

"Be Yourself" may not be good advice here.

Compare Heel Realization. See You Monster! for when other characters consider the subject evil or an abomination. For when this trope becomes self-fufilling see Self-Perception Shapeshifting.

SPOILERS AHOY for non-human and half-human characters.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• A recurring motif in Armitage III: the titular character feels like "some kind of monstrous doll" for her robot nature, and has salt rubbed into those wounds by other characters repeatedly calling her a monster when they become aware of her non-humanity.
• In Attack on Titan, this happens more than once.
  • During his trial, Eren is repeatedly accused of being a monster. When paranoia breaks out in the court room and someone accuses Mikasa of not being human, he lashes out by stating that he might be a monster but she has nothing to do with it.
  • While unleashing a You Monster! speech against Reiner and Bertolt, Eren states that their crimes mean neither has any right to human emotions like guilt or remorse. Reiner agrees that he's a monster, and later refers to himself and his allies as short-lived mass-murderers.
  • Kenny the Ripper takes this trope to the extreme. He is an infamous mass murderer who loves killing more than anything and even refers to it as his hobby. However, he was intrigued by the apparent selflessness and goodness of his friend King Uri Reiss. After the king’s death, Kenny made it his ultimate plan to become the Founding Titan so he could inherit Uri’s memories and see what being a selfless person would feel like. He simply had no concept of what being a good person was, and part of himself hated that.
• This has occurred a few times in Black Butler. In the anime, before using his true form to fight Ashe, Sebastian tells Ciel to close his eyes and not look, so as not to damage Ciel’s impression of him. He then advances on Ashe negatively describing what he is about to become, but with a smile on his face.
• Call of the Night:
  • Before the story began, Yamori received a Love Confession from Sakura. He rejected her because he did not have a concept of what it meant to love someone, which did not sit well with Sakura's friends. When Yamori tried to explain that he did not even notice Sakura had a crush on him, her friends asked him if he had no emotions in response. This caused Yamori to wonder if he was the weird one, and eventually he started Skipping School after deciding that he didn't enjoy it anymore.
  • Akira very much thinks herself a monster in the present due to encouraging Sakura to confess in the first place, not realizing at the time that Yamori's honors student persona that Sakura developed a crush on was just a mask. Akira blamed herself for the whole mess and desperately wanted to apologize to Yamori, but because he stopped going to school she wasn't able to. It's implied that this has left her with depression and insomnia.
    "I only did it to make myself feel better, but for Kou, who ended up dumping Sakura-chan... I must be horrible."
• A variation occurs in Chrono Crusade when Joshua accuses Chrono, a demon, of being a monster. The statement makes an impact on him, which he later shows by echoing the statement, claiming that he's a monster and "all I can do is destroy."
  • Of course, his self-perception as a monster has a lot more to do with personal trauma and the fact that as part of Aion's revolutionaries he slaughtered hundreds of other demons on a battlefield in Pandemonium, then got Mary killed, and is now slowly consuming Rosette's soul, than with his race, though he's not wholly comfortable with that anymore either, especially vis-a-vis most of his friends being church-folk and the whole soul-consuming thing. But that still falls under this trope.
• In the first season finale of Code Geass, Lelouch and CC have a discussion about this. CC reveals that everyone called her a witch because of her immortality, to which Lelouch responds, "If you are a witch, then I am a warlock."
• Princess Mina Tepes from Dance in the Vampire Bund occasionally invokes this. One of the more showy examples involved her ripping another vampire's throat with her teeth then gutting him like a trout with her bare hand before the horrified eyes of a woman who had been sheltering her from a rival faction she had escaped; then telling her, "This is what you have been trying to protect with your puny human life! Now go, and forget that you ever saw me." The effect was undercut when she promptly extracted a solemn oath from the head of the retrieval squad to leave the woman and her young daughter unharmed^note The guy she mauled to death? An admitted child pornographer who made it very clear he would be back for the child no matter what. before submitting to being shackled and led back into her enemy's clutches.
• Ken screams this ver batim in the middle of his Heel Realization-driven Villainous Breakdown in the Digimon Adventure 02 dub as he abandons his Digimon Kaiser/Emperor persona.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • Van Hohenheim; this is his catchphrase for at least the first half of the manga. (Usually in the form of 'What the hell are you?!' 'A monster.') Once we get his backstory and he joins up with the rest of the main plot, he more or less stops saying this. Partly because he had to reassure one of his sons that he was human.
  • Roy Mustang, the Flame Alchemist, has a variation. It's only when he's fighting real monsters like the Homunculi that he feels human.
  • Scar describes himself at one point as "the ooze born from the open gaping wound that was Ishbal, I neither pray to god nor appeal to him. ooze deserves no forgiveness. And I will burn until I'm left dead in a ditch like the scum that I am." He really hadn't considered himself a person for the majority of the story.
• The Goblin Slayer describes himself as one while he and the Priestess are laying siege to a goblin hideout using guerilla tactics: in much the same way that goblins get stronger and more dangerous with time and experience, so too has the Goblin Slayer become a more efficient slayer of goblins with his years of experience exterminating them, making him a monster in the eyes of his prey.
  The Goblin Slayer: I am to goblins what they are to us.
• Alucard of Hellsing has been a vampire for a very, very long time, and he dearly misses being a part of humanity, so he admires Seras for being able to cling on to her human side while still embracing her new-found vampiric state. People who casually toss aside theirs tend to really get his goat. Although Played With in that sometimes, he seems to enjoy being a monster, especially when he takes pleasure in dicking with lesser vampires and monsters, running a chill down their spines and showing the wannabes what a real scary monster looks like. He also seems to think he really should be killed, but will only accept a Worthy Opponent killing him. And that only a human, never a fellow monster, can be worthy. When Alexander Anderson uses Helena's Nail and becomes the Monster of God, Alucard is heartbroken that Anderson, the most worthy opponent he's had since Abraham Van Helsing himself, has thrown away his humanity instead of killing him as a human.
• In Holyland, this is Yuu's view of himself in chapter 101 after he loses control in a friendly boxing spar.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders opens with Jotaro locking himself in jail because he believes himself to be possessed by a demon when his Stand first manifests. It takes his grandfather's appearance to sort things out.
• In Kill la Kill, Ryuko Matoi discovers that she's a life fiber hybrid, courtesy of her villainous mother Ragyo. She doesn't take the discovery well at all, and after she wakes up from trauma-induced sleep refuses to wear Senketsu, shouting aloud that she's a "Life Fiber Monster". She does find her way eventually.
• Vivio views herself this way near the end of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS when she discovers that she's nothing but a clone made for the purpose of powering a massive battleship. She even stops calling Nanoha "Nanoha-mama" and instead calls her "Nanoha-san" since she doesn't view herself worthy of having parents. Nanoha helps her the way she knows best; some kind words and copious amounts of firepower.
• Maria no Danzai: After two years of becoming hellbent on revenge against the bullies who killed her son, Maria is bitterly aware that she's become less than morally upstanding, and feels guilty when people think of her as a kind person.
  Maria: Please don't thank me. I'm not the person you think I am.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Setsuna thinks of herself as inhuman because of being an albino half-crow demon. This is somewhat fixed by Konoka telling Setsuna her white wings look good and Setsuna becoming an fairly important part of Negi's True Companions.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • This happens to Sayaka, when she realizes that becoming a Magical Girl displaces your soul into a Soul Gem, making her very much a lich by any other name. Fittingly enough, this is part of what precipitates her transformation into an actual monster.
  • Homura displays this in a more subtle manner. Whenever someone calls her out for her cold affect and callous actions she responds by pointing out her inhumanity as a magical girl, rather than consider how spending the better part of a subjective decade dealing with all manner of trauma may affect a human.
• Pumpkin Scissors: While he never outright says this trope verbatim, it's clear that Randel Oland thinks this of himself.
  Oland: When the lantern's on, I just kill everyone. But I don't know who I am without it.
• In the Shin Mazinger Zero manga, Kouji has a moment of this after a moment of unnatural Unstoppable Rage in which destroys a rogue manufacturing robot with his bare hands
  Sayaka: What? How in the world did you do...that!?
  Kouji: I... I don't know. It just happened
  Sayaka: It "just happened?" Kouji, that wasn't even humanly possible...
  Kouji: ...Does it scare you? ...I'm like a monster, huh?
  [Sayaka's response to this question is not what he was expecting◊]
• Played with in the manga Takumi Dash. Takumi plays this straight in the series proper, but in the one volume long Mirror Universe, his counterpart has a very different view on being Blessed with Suck.
  Alternate!Takumi: I am a monster, a jackass, a man slut and a demon, and it is awesome. Good God, I love my life! I'm gonna go rob a McDonald's!
• Tiger & Bunny: Kotetsu used to have this attitude towards himself when he was a child, both because of the ostracism he had to endure for being a NEXT and because of the destructive, uncontrollable nature of his powers. He's mostly over it, but he didn't emerge from it entirely unscathed. (Word of God says his childhood fear of hurting others still lives on as a reluctance of worrying people with his problems.)
• Used repeatedly in Tokyo Ghoul and its sequel, both as a negative and a positive.
  • The most iconic example comes from Kaneki's narration during the 10-days of being tortured by Yamori.
  Kaneki: My fingers and toes regrew as if they were nails and hair, over and over and over and over. They regrew every time. And I felt like I was truly a monster.
  • While fighting his sister Touka, Ayato demands to know whether she enjoys being friends with humans because it helps her forget that they're monsters. Flashbacks reveal he frequently called himself a monster while arguing against her trying to live as a human.
  • Yoshimura's Badass Boast, in which he states that he is aware that he is evil and launches into a particularly bloody Mook Horror Show.
  • In the sequel, Seidou Takizawa has become a Half-Human Hybrid and provides a counterpoint to Kaneki's angst from the original series. He explains to a pair of cornered Red Shirts that if you become a monster, you don't have to be afraid of them anymore.
• Trigun:
  • Vash feels directly responsible for Knives's crimes and it is strongly hinted that he believes that independent plants are monsters who pose a direct threat to mankind. In the manga, he is terrified of their potential uses of plant power and is shown struggling with the ethical implications of his existence and Knives's. He even thinks at least twice that they shouldn't exist: at the end of the Fifth Moon incident, he thinks that Knives and him shouldn't have been born. At the end of the manga, he also tells Knives of his decision that they should both die together because they are too powerful and have no place in the future of Gunsmoke. (Ironically, though, Vash and Knives are strongly implied to be (fallen) angels come to pass judgement on mankind — which is what Wolfwood seems to believe).
  • He does do some "stay away from me," especially to the girls in the anime. Most notably, at the end of 'Diablo,' after the plot finally starts.
  • Wolfwood has a little bit of this himself, when he's feeling particularly down. Anime Wolfwood in purely moral terms; manga Wolfwood, who is a much more dyed-in-the-wool utilitarian and cynic^note and who looks about a decade older then he really is, not even out of his twenties, about the combination of moral issues and his fucked-up body. He has nightmares about going back to visit the kids at the orphanage where he grew up and drowning in the blood on his hands.
    "I'm sorry, guys... It seems I am no longer qualified to hold you...
  • And manga Wolfwood, while he may think 'angels,' is also pretty much totally in agreement with Vash about the monster plant thing, and for a while intermixes heartwarming defense of Vash to outside parties with moments where he thinks things like "he's got his back to me, and I could probably put a bullet in his skull right now and get one of them out of the way." Vash is completely aware of this, by the way. Vash is very fucked up.
• Vermeil in Gold: After the incident with Obsidian forcing her to transform into her full demon form, along with briefly killing Alto, Vermeil starts to believe herself nothing but an ugly, evil demon of a woman who shouldn't be around Alto more than she already has to be. Then her Dark and Troubled Past is revealed, and turns out she's felt this way for a very long time, following the destructive aftermath of her killing the ones who murdered her family. It eventually led to her voluntarily having herself sealed in the book for the next 300 years before it found its way to Alto.

Comic Books

• Many Marvel Universe characters have fallen under this trope from time to time, particularly many of the X-Men, but the Ur-Example has to be the Thing from the Fantastic Four. He even named himself according to this trope.
  • When Deadpool got hit by the Penance Stare of the Ghost Rider, the manifestation of all of his fears, regrets, and sins all Wade saw... was himself.
  • This seems to be the near constant mindset of Morbius, which he's more than willing to monologue about.
• The FBI's trigger man from No Hero admits this is why he is so good at killing other monsters, growing up with a disgusting serial killer that taught him how to charm his victims and how monsters like him shouldn't be in charge makes him a valuable but dangerous asset. The agents are afraid of what he is gonna do once he is augmented with a Psycho Serum and gruesomely butcher his targets. Thankfully, he simply kills himself after taking out the immortal leader of the Frontline.
• Paul Moses, the protagonist of Red (2003), is a self-admitted Retired Monster, and tries to warn people away from him. They don't listen.
• Suicide Squad: Amanda Waller comes to view herself this way over the years. She does try to justify her decisions by claiming she's doing what is necessary, but it becomes apparent that she no longer really believes that to be true, especially when she reflects on times when she used her government power for personal gain and revenge. Whenever someone accuses her of being monstrous, Waller openly admits it and says there's nothing she can ever do to change her past.
• The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: This trope is revealed to be the crux of Megatron's decision to join the Autobots, as he admits to Ravage.
  Megatron: If the world thinks you're a monster, what does it matter? The world is wrong. But when you start to think of yourself as a monster... I came to hate the person I'd become. And I decided that the best way to leave that person behind — maybe the easiest way — was to become an Autobot.

Fan Works

• Haruo Sakaki in The Bridge Halloween special comes to the realization his reckless pride and craving for revenge against Godzilla Earth has caused nothing but death and suffering for innocent lives. Remorseful, when he lists off the monsters that plagued humanity and threatened their survival, he adds his name to the list and begs the Leviathan to not be like him.
• In The Butcher Bird, Yoshimura Kaneki considers himself this due to being a ghoul. However, he considers himself someone who can Pay Evil unto Evil, and in the world of One Piece, there's a lot of evil to be paid unto.
• In Dragon Ball Z Abridged, Cell says this when Goku explains how he got his Instant Transmission, and Goku says to Cell that he "eats people all the time" and gets told in return "and I’m a monster".
• Gunslinger Girl fanfics
  • In Palermo Round-up by Professor Voodoo, cyborg Henrietta loses some fingers during an operation so gets a replacement hand sent to her in the field. Unfortunately after it's surgically attached, she discovers they've mistakenly sent her a spare hand meant for Rico. Henrietta starts to freak out, saying she's like Frankenstein, and when another cyborg points out it was Frankenstein's monster she starts to carry on that she's a monster. Everyone else finds it Actually Pretty Funny, but they have trouble getting her to calm down.
  • In A Triumph of the Heart, Year 3 Volume 1 by taerkitty, a policeman has a You Monster! reaction to seeing cyborg Dino pull a knife from her target's eye, wipe it off and hold it in her teeth. Dino angsts about this afterwards with Priscilla, saying she doesn't want to be a monster. Priscilla can't help blurting out that she's not the real monster, they are.
• The Good Hunter:
  • A variant of this happens when Cyril, hearing from Sasha that people have been talking about him, asks, "So what are people saying? Am I a monster yet?" Sasha responds that's one of them, while others see him as some sort of blessed individual (hero). Cyril thinks it's some sick joke.
  • Sensing The Wandering Scholar's discomfort during his meeting with Cyril after hearing of the latter's deeds, Cyril wraps up the meeting by saying another variant of this. However, instead of declaring "I suck" like most instances of this trope, this one is filled with conviction, resignation, and a chunk of Cold Ham.
    Cyril: You must think me a monstrous man. And you would be correct. I do not ask to be remembered for my triumphs, only for the bloodshed I leave behind. Someday I will pay for what I have done, or perhaps this is my purgatory. Either way, you seem to be disturbed. Perhaps we shall speak again.
• Into Unknown Waters has Lelouch receiving cybernetic implants embedded in his back. The teenager is horrified when he realizes he cannot take them away and almost calls himself a deformed freak.
• Jack, one of the half-human protagonists of Morphic, considers suicide because of this trope. He's talked out of it by Gabriel, a former Nice Guy who just set a villain on fire and discovered that he liked it. The way Gabriel sees it, if Jack's a monster, Gabriel's far worse—so he won't let Jack die for his supposed evil.
• Kyril from The Night Unfurls downplays this — he considers himself a monster, but he has yet to reach a Despair Event Horizon because of this (or at least, the story doesn't show it). Given that he emerged from his Dark and Troubled Past in Yharnam as a sentient killing machine and an Eldritch Abomination who manages to retain his sense of reason and change into a human form, this attitude is justified. With that being said, he doesn't mind or blame anyone seeing him as a monster (the more people fear him, the better), and he strives to be mindful not to devolve into the very beasts he slew.
• The Woe Wyrm visions of her younger self in Chapter 5 of Raisin' Some Hell show that Eda sees herself as a monster due to her curse. This especially shows when it comes to how she sees her relationship with her sister, as she fears the (likely) possibility that her curse scared Lilith away and led to her joining the Emperor's Coven.
  Young Eda: She hates us. That's why she abandoned us. We're monsters.

Films — Animated

• The Beast from Beauty and the Beast believed this about himself as the reason he could never earn the love of a woman as per his Curse Escape Clause, especially with the fact that his mind became more beastly over time. It wasn't so much his appearance than his anger and selfishness that initially made Belle despise him. Upon getting Character Development, Belle started seeing him in a different light.
• In Brother Bear, Kenai spent a great deal of the movie believing that bears were savage beasts due in part to a bear being involved in his brother Sitka's death, until after being transformed into a bear he started learning more about them. Upon learning that the bear he had killed in vengeance for Sitka's death was Koda's mother, he realized that he was the real monster.
• In Frozen (2013), Elsa thinks this of herself after she almost killed her little sister, or at the very least, she thinks that she's too dangerous to be around other people.
• In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Quasimodo says he's a monster without actually having done anything wrong, because Frollo raised him to believe he was. Overcoming this is most of his Character Development.
  Frollo: [singing] Out there, they'll revile you as a monster
  Quasimodo: [also singing] I am a monster
  Frollo: Out there, they will hate and scorn and jeer
  Quasimodo: Only a monster
• In Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, this is a reformed Stitch's fear, believing that he's still a dangerous destructive creature, to the point that he chose to go into self imposed exile so not to harm anyone. What he didn't know was that he was actually going through seizure episodes that caused him to freak out.
  • Stitch also calls himself a monster after being shown what horrible creatures were used to make him and also being reminded of his original purpose in The Origin of Stitch short.
• Alex in Madagascar says this once his lion instincts start kicking in out of hunger, and his friends start turning into Meat-O-Vision steaks.
• Turning Red:
  • Mei becomes ashamed of her Panda form and calls herself a monster after she nearly maims Tyler in a fit of rage.
  • Her mother Ming had it much worse. She had trouble controlling her anger when she had a Panda spirit, and never forgave herself for scarring her mother during one of her rampages.

Films — Live-Action

• Count Yorga: In the first movie, Erica is bitten by Yorga who partially feeds on her. The following day, she's stoic and listless. Her boyfriend Paul gives her some space, but when he goes to check up on her, she doesn't respond to her phone and going to her place personally, find her eating her pet kitten. Her personality switches from aggressive to seductive when he tries calm her down before she regains her senses and sees what she's done, breaking down and sobbing into Paul's arms. Later, when they do a blood transfer to refill the blood she lost, she mutters incoherently in her delerium, asking Paul to forgive her and to "not let it happen", but never elaborating. Implying she can feel the vampire change in her growing stronger and is scared of what she's becoming.
• The Dark Knight: Denied by the Joker. "You see, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve."
• The titular character in Ghost Rider (2007) calls himself this when faced with his love interest.
• Juncture: The pedophile priest who Anna targets appears to believe this about himself. Before she can even shoot him, he jumps to his death, expressing the hope that God will forgive them both.
• Lycan: Isabella basically claims this to Blake at the end, hating herself for being a murderer but admitting she's addicted and indicating she was raised to kill.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Loki from Thor, when he discovers that he is adopted and a Jotun (the Jotuns are Asgard's arch enemies):
    Loki: What, because I... I... I am the monster parents tell their children about at night?
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron: This idea is played with throughout the film with the Avengers, emphasized by Ultron outright stating that they are.
    Tony: [to Bruce] We're mad scientists. We're monsters, buddy.
    • Natasha Romanoff is shown to have repressed guilt over being sterilized.
    Natasha: It's efficient. One less thing to worry about. The one thing that might matter more than a mission. It makes everything easier. Even killing. [beat] You still think you're the only monster on the team?
  • Guardians of the Galaxy (2014): During a particularly emotional moment for Rocket.
    Rocket: Well, I didn't ask to get made! I didn't ask to be torn apart and put back together over and over and turned into some little monster!
• Nathan Wallace in Repo! The Genetic Opera calls himself this in "Legal Assassin," taking it one step further by saying he is the villain.
• Serenity (2005):
  • When the Operative says the exact words of the trope title to Mal, that is not an example of the trope. But when River tells Simon after the brawl on Beaumonde that she should just put a bullet in her brainpan, that is.
  • Also implied in this exchange:
    Mal: [to River, who has him at gunpoint] I've staked my crew's life on the theory you're a person. Actual and whole. And if I'm wrong, you'd best shoot me now.
    [River cocks her gun]
    Mal: [quickly] OR we could talk more.
• Star Wars:
  • It is implied in Return of the Jedi that Darth Vader knows that his actions were wrong and he hates himself for it, but refuses to consider the possibility of redemption. He even tells his son, Luke, that it is too late for him now and he has grown to accept his position as The Dragon to the Emperor. In the end though, Vader does change his mind when his son's faith in him proves to be unbreakable and he himself realize he can do some good left despite his belief of being an irredeemable monster.
  • Rey calls Kylo Ren a monster in The Last Jedi, since on top of all the other evil he's done, he killed his father right in front of her. To her surprise, Kylo agrees with her.
• Said by Lawrence Talbot in The Wolfman (2010): "I am what they say I am... I'm a monster."
• X-Men Film Series:
  • In one of the TV spots for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Sabretooth utters this chilling line.
    "I'm not your friend... I'm an animal who dreamed he was a man. But the dream is over... and the beast is awake. And I will come for you, because it's my nature."
    • This is either a Shout-Out or a ripoff of Seth Brundle's "insect politics" speech, which itself is an homage to Zhuangzi's poem, "I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?"
  • X-Men: First Class: Erik Lehnsherr calls himself Frankenstein's Monster, believing that it was Sebastian Shaw's (whom he views as his "creator") experiments which turned him into a freak of nature.
  • Deadpool (2016): Wade says this after he gets his scars, but it's implied that he believed this of himself before it happened.
  Wade: I'm a monster inside and out. I belong in the fucking circus.
• Wolves: After seemingly killing his parents, Cayden becomes a fugitive, isolating himself from others to protect them while he tries to find a solution. It takes some time, and support from John, Clara and Angel, before he accepts himself. Finding out he didn't really kill his parents certainly helps.
• The Quiet: aul confesses to Dot early on that he's sick and hates what he's done. It turns out he's molesting Nina, his daughter. His self-hatred doesn't stop him from doing it more though.

Literature

• Both Shizuo and Anri from Durarara!! have issues concerning this — Shizuo because of his combination of Super-Strength and Unstoppable Rage and Anri because she's the host for the Evil Weapon Saika.
• Sousuke from Full Metal Panic!, especially in the novels, has instances where he thinks that others must think he's a monster for killing so many people and not feeling anything. In the novels, Kaname actually starts thinking he is, reacting by flinching away from him and telling him he scares her.
• After he accidentally injured his half-brothers with magic when protecting some baby birds, Keith in My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! was called a monster and feared by his family until the Claes family took him in. He came to believe it himself, which came to a head when he accidentally injured his new sister Katarina after she made him show off his earth magic. He went and hid himself in his room until she chopped through his door with an axe to apologize, convincing him she really wasn't afraid of him and allowing him to relax.
• Kerovan from The Crystal Gryphon: his mother intended him to be the Witch World's equivalent of Damien Thorn, and while it didn't work out that way, he still has Supernatural Gold Eyes and cloven hooves for feet. He tells his fiancee Joisan, "No fit mate for any human woman am I." She thinks, "He has been named monster until he believes it—but if he could only look upon himself through my eyes—"
• Dracula: Lucy as she slowly dies on her deathbed. When Arthur comes to see her, the vamprisim in her makes her act wild and seductive for a brief moment, begging Arthur to kiss her. Van Helsing stops her and she manages to regain her sense of self. While she never says it outright, it's implied she knows she's becoming a monster and requests Van Helsing to protect Arthur from her vampire self.
• The Empirium Trilogy: Eliana sees herself as a heartless monster due to her work as a bounty hunter for the very empire that took over her home kingdom (and much of the world in general). This view of herself gets worse after unleashing her powers in catastrophic ways and finding out that her birth mother was the traitorous Blood Queen herself. After some soul searching, she comes to terms with her powers and her heritage, which helps her self-image improve a bit.
• Remus Lupin from Harry Potter has frequent bouts of this, on account of being a werewolf. It gets worse when his wife, Nymphadora Tonks, is pregnant, and he worries about how their child will turn out.
• In John Dies at the End, Dave discovers that he is actually an "evil" clone that killed and replaced the real Dave, and has been this way for quite a while. After this revelation, his friends don't let him be alone for fear that he might try to kill himself. Again. His friends are aware that he's only done good deeds up to that point (aside from killing the real Dave, which he has no memory of), and eventually convince him to live. In the end, it turns out to not really matter, and his true nature only comes up occasionally when John jokingly refers to him as Monster Dave.
• Michael develops shades of this at the end of The Last Knight in the Knight and Rogue Series when he develops magic. Fisk eventually manages to pull him out of it, mostly. Whenever the issue comes up Michael is still incredibly fearful of it.
• In The Locked Tomb, Harrowhark regards herself as such due to the circumstances of her birth - her parents arranged for the systematic murder of the two hundred-odd other infants in their House's custody in order to ensure that she would receive necromantic powers in utero.
  Harrow: I'm an abomination. The whole universe ought to scream whenever my feet touch the ground. ... I am a war crime.
• John Taylor is constantly asked why he returned to the Nightside and stayed there after living in the normal world for five years. His answer? "I belong here—with all of the other monsters."
• The One Who Eats Monsters: A ancient deity of revenge and darkness, Erynis is categorized as a monster rather than a goddess because her fangs and Black Eyes of Crazy prevent her from fully masquerading as a human. But when she's brought to the United States and falls in love with the human girl Naomi Bradford, she slowly discovers that Humanity Is Infectious. However, "Ryn" accidentally tramuatized Naomi by using her true form to save her from a would-be-rapist possessed by an evil spirit, and when Ryn realizes this she is overwhelmed by self-loathing and sabotages their friendship by revealing she's a Serial-Killer Killer and Humanoid Abomination to Naomi, lamenting that she was a fool for ever thinking she could be anything other than a monster.
• The Scholomance
  • Galadriel 'El' Higgins grew up having firmly internalized The Prophecy that she will Shatter the Enclaves, Slay Thousands, and so forth (not helped by her strong affinity for Black Magic and difficulty using benign spells); to the point where she is constantly bracing herself for the saintly healer that raised her to tell her that she is beyond saving. It is only after the great seer Deepthi Sharma confessed to her face that she deliberately misspoke her omen to insure the girl would come of age out of reach of the malificer who would otherwise corrupt El into the threat so many thought she defaulted to that the young woman begins to truly shake this.
  • Orion Lake falls into this mindset once realizes his long-standing hunger for the mana he draws from mals is due to his being engineered from bastocyst-hood into a maw-mouth in human form as a Strategic Living Weapon {by the same malificer El was being hidden from, no less). At the climax of The Golden Enclaves he releases control of himself for the express purpose of obliging El to put him down.
• In Scythe, Rowan Damisch has this complex after starting his training with Scythe Goddard, when he finds himself starting to enjoy the terrible things Goddard’s having him do. In a disposed journal entry, he says that Goddard is a monster and someone has to stop him, but he might not be able to do it himself, as he fears he is becoming a monster as well.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, Tyrion Lannister, the much despised dwarf (as in a human with dwarfism rather than the more traditional fantasy race), says this a few times. Normally he says it to manipulate people in some way and doesn't actually believe it himself, but the nature of the Crapsack World he's in keeps pushing him more and more, so he skirts very close to truly thinking this of himself.
• Sylvester in Twig openly and happily embraces his role as a monster, taking comfort in his disconnection with the rest of humanity. Much of his character arc instead revolves around his dismayed discovery that at his heart, and against his best efforts, he's actually a pretty decent person.
• Twilight: Edward is very firmly in this camp, telling Bella that "THIS IS THE SKIN OF A KILLER!" when she calls him beautiful.
• Gets plain ridiculous in Victoria with Gunny Matthews proclaiming himself unfit to speak to real people after saying the shahada once.
• In The Witchlands, Aeduan believes his Void-bound magic makes him a monster; it's an idea his father doesn't try to dissuade.
• By the end of Worm, Taylor is convinced she is this, haunting her even as she is given the chance to live a normal life-though whether it's due to looking back on her Moral Myopia or because of how much she became in sync with the Eldritch Abomination that gave her her powers is debatable.
  But the young precog said something, and stepped forward as they parted to give her room.
  She spoke, one word. My name. I was pretty sure. What was my name? Did it start with a ‘T’ sound? An ‘S’?^note Her villain code name, Skitter A ‘W’?^note Her hero code name, Weaver
  An ‘M’?

Live-Action TV

• Bellamy Blake of The 100 declares this about himself after realizing that the actions he took to disrupt communications with The Ark caused 300 people to be killed. Clarke convinces him otherwise.
• Arrested Development
  • Buster screams this every time he accidentally hurts somebody with his hook hand.
  • And once after his mother caught him having sex with her non-humanoid robot maid.
• Arrow. During the flashbacks it is gradually revealed that Oliver Queen did not spend the five years he was missing marooned on the island of Lian Yu; he could have returned home a couple of years earlier, but refused because he was convinced his experiences had turned him into a monster. Eventually he creates his Secret Identity as a hooded vigilante to cope with this. Sara Lance, who also went missing with Oliver, struggles with the same issues after she's recruited into the League of Assassins, and never quite gets over them despite going on to be the main hero of Legends of Tomorrow.
• Buffyverse:
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • "I know you'll never love me. I know that I'm a monster. But you treat me like a man and that's..." Though Spike's breakdown towards the end of "Never Leave Me" is a bit closer to the trope.
    • Played for Laughs in "Intervention":
      Spike: If [Buffy] turns to me for comfort, well, I'm not gonna deny it to her. I'm not a monster.
      Xander: Yes. You are a monster. Vampires are monsters. They make monster movies about them.
      Spike: Well, yeah... you got me there.
    • In "Conversations With Dead People", Buffy describes herself as a monster re: her sexually abusive relationship with Spike in Season 6.
    • Demon cyborg Adam escapes from the lab where he was created in "Goodbye Iowa". He meets a young boy playing with his toys and asks "Who am I?" When the boy tells him that he's a monster, Adam replies calmly, "I thought so" then kills the boy.
  • Angel: Lampshaded but averted in "Five by Five" — a flashback scene shows a starving and ensouled Angelus who beats up a woman's protectors and tries to feed on her, all the time shouting "I am a monster!" He is unable to go through with killing her. Likewise Faith after a rampage of violence and torture is reduced to flailing ineffectually at Angel's chest while shouting "I'm evil! I'm bad! I'm evil! Do you hear me? I'm bad!" and begging Angel to kill her. She's more accepting of it after a spell in prison. When Angel becomes Angelus Wesley breaks Faith out to capture him. Angel's son however wants to kill him. Faith makes him back down by claiming she is a murderer (true) and she will kill him if she had to choose between him and Angel\us.
• Daredevil (2015). Inverted in "Shadows in the Glass" when Wilson Fisk confesses to Vanessa that he murdered his abusive father, and that he wears his father's cufflinks to remind himself that he's not a monster like him.
  Vanessa: It wasn't your fault. You were protecting your mother.
  Fisk: I didn't do it for her. I did it for me. That's why I still wear these. To remind myself that I'm not cruel for the sake of cruelty! That I'm not my father! That I'm not a monster! [pauses, genuinely uncertain] Am I?
• Dexter has become so comfortable with the notion that he's a monster that he usually just mentions it in passing, cracking Inner Monologue jokes about it. The most dramatic it ever gets is when it occurs to him that he may not be as monstrous as he previously thought.
• Doctor Who The Doctor's line "Every lonely monster needs a companion" seems like throwaway dialogue at first... until you think about it.
• The Handmaid's Tale: Lawrence admits to June that he's done unforgivable things as the architect of Gilead and later enforcing its policies, stating that he's entirely aware about it all. He said it was the only way he'd seen to save humanity though, with brutal measures to take birth rates up again. Lawrence wants to reform Gilead as something better and save all he can.
• Sylar from Heroes, among other characters.
• iZombie: After Liv's boyfriend Lowell realizes the brains he's been eating come from murdered teens, he went to a graveyard, watched a funeral, and then dug up the corpse himself to force himself to confront what he is.
  Lowell: We're monsters, Liv. We eat people.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): Louis wrestles with this due to his Horror Hunger for blood upon becoming a vampire, especially after he nearly feeds on his infant nephew.
• Let the Right One In: Mark admits when speaking to his dead wife while visiting her grave that he's become a monster, no longer expecting redemption for murdering so many people.
• Lucifer
  • Inverted in "St. Lucifer" when Lucifer Morningstar is suspected of being the Serial Killer killing Satanists.
  Lucifer: These kids were pretending to be bad, but they were innocent so I would never hurt them! I'm not a monster!
  • But played straight in "Monster" during Lucifer's therapy session after killing his brother Uriel. His psychiatrist's reaction to seeing his Nightmare Face only reinforces his belief.
• Once Upon a Time: In the fairy tale world Rumplestiltskin becomes a monster and eventually comes to terms with the fact that it's true. In Storybrooke, after the curse is broken, he realizes that, while now returned to his human form, he's still a monster at heart, which is why he tells Belle to leave. She replies that that's exactly why she should stay.
• The Punisher (2017). Frank Castle says this after being fooled into thinking he killed two innocent women by accident.
• Roswell, New Mexico: Because of how his powers work, his ongoing anger issues, and some disquieting childhood memories, Human Alien Max Evans starts to believe this about himself.
• In the Sanctuary episodes "Nubbins", a young woman who has just found out that both she and her grandfather have extrasensory perception due to an unusual brain formation reacts this way. At one point she says she feels like a freak who belongs in a sideshow.
• Sense8: Wolfgang says, “My father was a monster. And so are you. And so am I.”
• In the first episode of Sliders, Quinn meets a wisecracking alternate dimension version of himself who tells him that this is his eighth slide and gives him the remainder of the formula he needs to complete his own sliding machine. Many many episodes later, Quinn meets the same double, but he has long grey hair and speaks in a monotone. His sliding adventures have turned him into a monster; he knows this and wants "our" Quinn to kill him.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In "Dr. Bashir, I Presume", Bashir describes himself as this when he reveals the truth of his genetic enhancements to O'Brien:
  "The word you're looking for is 'unnatural', meaning 'Not from nature'. 'Freak' or 'Monster' would also be acceptable.
• Supernatural:
  • Said by the Monster of the Week in the episode "Heart" while pleading with Sam to kill her.
  • In "Fresh Blood" Gordon declares himself a monster after being turned into a vampire. He fully intends to kill himself, but is determined to kill Sam first.
• Two Sentence Horror Stories: In "Teeth" after Cara calls her a monster for being a vampire, Olivia agrees she is and forlornly tries to kill herself by stepping into the sunlight.

Music

• From "Re: Your Brains" by Jonathan Coulton:
  I'm not a monster, Tom
  Well, technically I am
  I guess I am...
  • Somewhat played with, as he treats it as more of an office joke, and then continues with his requests for delicious brains.
• In Lemon Demon's song "Eighth Wonder", Gef calls himself a freak and a monster repeatedly, and says that if you ever saw him you'd turn into a pillar of salt or be mummified from fright. All of this is paraphrased from alleged quotes from the "real" Gef the Mongoose.

Professional Wrestling

• Kane reminded us of this many times after he removed his mask on WWE Monday Night Raw. "Look at me JR! I AM A MONSTER..." (he said something else then lit JR on fire)
  • Kane also cited the title of this trope page (word-for-word) as the reason he betrayed his half-brother The Undertaker in the early 2000s.

Tabletop Games

• The Arc Words in Vampire: The Masquerade: "A Beast I am, lest a Beast I become". Since you're now a vampire, you're going to have to assault people for blood. You can do it secretly as part of seduction, or you can do it in a flat-out ambush, but odds are, they never asked for it. But if you don't drink blood, you'll find the choice taken out of your hands as your instincts take over, and doing that a lot will throw you off the slippery slope very quickly. It's one part this trope, one part I Did What I Had to Do.

Theatre

• Bat Boy: The Musical: the title character, in the Despair Event Horizon song 'Apology to a Cow'.
• Wicked: Nessarose, after casting a spell on Boq, that goes horribly, horribly wrong mournfully declares herself as "The Wicked Witch of the East."
  Nessarose: Save him please just save him,
  My poor Boq, my sweet, my brave him,
  Don't leave me til my sorry life has ceased,
  
  Alone and loveless here,
  With the girl in the mirror,
  Just her and me,
  The Wicked Witch of the East!
  We deserve each other...

Video Games

• In an evil way, Atlas describes himself as one in the Birth storyline of Astro Boy: Omega Factor. The full quote can be found at the Quotes page.
  Atlas: Just look at me! I'm neither fully human nor fully robot! I'm a monster.
• From Borderlands 2, We have Krieg. His mostly-impotent sane half loathes the destruction he causes and only just manages to keep his insane half pointed at even worse people. His insane half, meanwhile, says the trope name with relish.
• In the extended ending of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, Soma becomes so upset about being Dracula's reincarnation that he starts trying to distance himself from everyone, for fear of hurting them. It's most visible with Mina — after starting a cryptic conversation about the possibility that he might "become someone else," Soma becomes distressed and runs away mid-sentence, and can't even interact with her after that.
• Ellie in Conception 2: Children Of The Seven Stars considers herself one due to being a Stillblood, which is a being just above the level of a thinking zombie. However, in exchange for being a Stillblood, all of them are forced to carry out secret assassinations for the church to ensure everyone in the world isn't brainwashed or killed.
• If you pursue a Rivalry with Anders in Dragon Age II, he will come to believe this after destroying the Chantry and sparking the Mage-Templar war. He explains that his hatred and resentment corrupted Justice into a demon, and Anders/Justice is just another murderous abomination that needs to be put down. If you do go through with killing him he will only say that "you should have done this years ago."
• Paladin Danse in Fallout 4 is a faithful soldier in Elder Maxson's chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel, and as such, believes that synths (artificial humans created by The Institute) are insidious weapons of espionage and destruction who need to be wiped out—until the quest Blind Betrayal, when you, the Brotherhood, and Danse himself all learn that he himself is a synth. He assumedly escaped the Institute like many other synths seeking freedom and had his memory wiped with The Railroad, a group advocating for the rights of synths, and went on to join the Brotherhood none the wiser, believing himself to be a former junk merchant and orphan. He does not take the news well, and believes he's an abomination who deserves to be killed immediately and be the example rather than the exception. When Maxson sends you to track him down and execute him, Danse asks you to put him out of his misery. If you help Danse realize that he deserves to live and also convince Maxson to let him go free, Danse will be exiled from the Brotherhood and begin to make peace with his identity.
• In the Final Fantasy VII prequel Crisis Core, Angeal displays his degeneration-wing and announces that he's become a monster. Zack, the protagonist, replies that it is the wing of an angel. Not that it's *that* reassuring...
  Angeal: Don't monsters usually want either world domination or revenge?
  • He later invokes the 'makes it easier to kill 'em' facet of One-Winged Angel in order to make his protegee deliver him an honorable Suicide By SOLDIER.
    • This is rather cruel of him, but compared to the other two he's practically a saint.
  • Zack himself falls into this for a while after learning more about SOLDIER and Shinra. He explicitly calls SOLDIER a "den of monsters" and warns Cloud to stay away from it.
• Final Fantasy XVI
  • After realizing that he is the Dominant of Ifrit responsible for the death of Joshua (supposedly), Clive Rosfield calls himself a monster and, while imprisoned in the Hideaway, begs Cid to kill him.
  • Jill Warrick, the Dominant of Shiva, had been abducted by the Iron Kingdom after the fall of the Duchy of Rosaria. The Iron Kingdom holds that the use of magic was a sin, but were not above enslaving a Dominant and using them as a weapon as they did for Jill, forcing her compliance by threatening her fellow captives. After Clive Rosfield rescues her, she confides in him before they return to the Iron Kingdom that she had come to view herself as a monster because she allowed her captives to force her to use her magical abilities to kill in their name, and returning to the Iron Kingdom to exact her revenge upon her slavers would be how she would make things right for the things she had done.
• Fire Emblem:
  • A slight variation appears in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, said by Myrrh to Saleh in their A support:
    Myrrh: It's because I'm a dragon. My father explained it to me. We are both human and monster. And because we are both, we are also neither. [...] We have the power of dragons; therefore, we cannot live together with humans... We have the hearts of humans; therefore, we do not belong with monsters. We are outcasts in this world, never a part of either community. And so we live our lives alone, never to be understood by anyone.
  • One of the three main protagonists of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, crown prince of Faerghus Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, is, on the surface, a kind, noble and princely young man, whose distaste for killing is one of his primary character traits. Under the surface, the trauma stemming from the young prince witnessing his father behaded and knights slain during the Tragedy of Duscur turns him into a bloodthirsty, brutal Blood Knight seeking to murder his enemies in vengeance. In his support with his teacher Byleth, available pre-timeskip, Dimitri reveals a deep-seated sense of self disparity from his frequent killing, while post-timeskip, Dimitri stops trying to hide the depths of his trauma and turns into a Reluctant Psycho, fully aware of his monstrous nature and not happy about it, but determined to seek justice on those he considers wicked. In the Blue Lions route, after Randolph, a soldier of the invading Adrestian Empire, declares him a monster, Dimitri agrees, and coldly reasons that they both, as killers, aren't that different.
    Dimitri: After all is said and done, we are both murderers. Both stained. Both monsters.
• In God of War (PS4), when Kratos returns to his home to retrieve the Blades of Chaos because they are the only weapons that will work in Helheim he is taunted by Athena or at least a vision of her who claims that no matter how hard he tries to be a teacher, a husband, or a father, he will never be anything but a monster. Kratos agrees, but adds that he is not her monster anymore.
  Athena: You cannot change. You will always be... a monster.
  Kratos: (lowly) I know... ...But I am your monster no longer.
• In God of War Ragnarök, during the Valhalla DLC, Kratos reminisces about killing the Boat Captain in the first game. He recalls that the captain was just a man scared for his life and facing a monster he couldn't defeat... but the hydra was just an animal, and Kratos was the real monster.
• Sol Badguy in Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-, who calls himself a monster with both meanings. He has vowed to hunt down and slay every Gear in existence because he's ashamed of having a hand in their creation and the destruction they have brought to the world, even though he's a Gear himself. When Ky Kiske asks him why he cares about Dizzy and Sin (Ky's wife and son, who are both half-Gears), he can't give a straight answer, prompting a little Character Development.
  • Strangely, his sour demeanor throughout the first half of -SIGN- indicates that he's backslid in the Stages of Monster Grief; the preceding game, GG2: Overture (set a year before -SIGN-), had Sol generally acceptant of his monstrous nature. Sol's mood does improve as -SIGN- goes on, which continues into -REVELATOR-, though this is largely owed to Sol finally learning why he was converted into a Gear against his will by his former Gear Project colleague and getting the chance to revive his dead girlfriend as opposed to coping with his existence as a Gear.
• Raziel in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 has this exchange with his past self, after said past self killed Janos Audron.
  Sarafan Raziel: You're a righteous fiend, aren't you?
  Raziel: Apparently, I am.
  • Also turned on its head in one encounter in Defiance:
    Demon Hunter 1: [pointing] Monster!
    Demon Hunter 2: Where?!
    Raziel: [sliding into frame] Here!
• Venom Snake in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain embodies this trope. His infamous line "I'm already a demon" is him acknowledging that the Diamond Dogs are already on their way to hell, and might as well use their destructive ways for the greater good without hope of redeeming themselves. The horn sticking out of Venom's head and the belt hanging from his waist are supposed to make him look like a devil, and there are several parts of the game where Venom is seen completely covered in blood (implied to be a manifestation of his self-image). If you kill enough people in the game, this look becomes permanent.
• At the end of day 2 in Parasite Eve Aya starts to grow afraid that because of her powers being similar to Eve (Aya is a human while Eve is a mutated human whose mitochondria have changed her), she may become a monster like her.
  Aya: I... I think I may be a monster... like her!
  Daniel: What?! What are you saying, Aya?!
  Aya: I don't know. What if... What if I end up by killing you?! Please, Daniel! I don't know! I just don't know anymore! Please go away from me!
  A few moments later.
  Aya: Even if I am a monster, I don't ever want to kill you, Daniel... please...! I... I could never forgive myself if I killed... you...
• The intro of [PROTOTYPE]:
  Alex Mercer: My name is Alex Mercer. I'm the reason for all of this. They call me a killer, a monster, a terrorist. I'm all of these things.
• Slash'EM Extended has hostile demons randomly utter "I AM... I AM A MONSTER! ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... coach," an obvious Shout-Out to DeliciousCinnamon's playthrough of Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal.
• A rather nasty subversion can be found in Smite. Scylla, the Horror of the Deep, is a Creepy Child per excellence who is also a sadistic monster to boot, her Ultimate skill is this trope name, but she said the words with glee, not angst. This can only mean that Scylla is bonafide evil and she's proud of being herself, a monster.
• Velvet from Tales of Berseria says this word for word after devouring a dragon and before burning Oscar. Although her saying this is more like embracing what she has become on her road for revenge.
  • She repeats it much later in the game although this time is more in line with the trope after realizing that her brother Laphicet is still alive as Innominat and he tells her that everything she had done was for nothing. She doesn't take this reveal very well having a minor breakdown.
• In World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth, Varok Saurfang comes to feel this way about himself and the old Horde. He admits that the old Horde was born from corruption and slaughter and that the greatest lie they ever told themselves was that anything they did was honorable. He claims that he has never truly known honor.

Visual Novels

• In Code:Realize, Cardia's earliest memory is of her father telling her that she must never leave the isolated mansion where she lives and must remain alone because she is a monster. Given that contact with her skin will melt just about anything, including living flesh, she believes it without question.
• Higurashi: When They Cry:
  • Once she's in the throes of full-blown Ax-Craziness, Shion has a My God, What Have I Done? moment after a particularly barbaric act, then promptly declares this as an excuse to go slaughter some more innocents.
  • In Someutsushi-hen, Natsumi decides the exact same thing in a similar state, after having tried to strangle her boyfriend. It ends about as well as the other case.
• Jumin Han from Mystic Messenger tells you deep into his route that he sees himself as a mutant because he has such a hard time showing emotion and relating to others due to the social issues he's suffered throughout his life.

Web Animation

• Baby Cakes suffers from this when his barbarian goes too far.
• Red vs. Blue: According to Washington, Locus is deliberately avoiding this realization by molding himself into a "true soldier". Eventually, he finds the strength to admit how monstrous he really is, ditches his poisonous partner Felix, and tries to atone in his own way.
  Locus: (To Felix) I'm not a soldier, I'm a monster... Like you.

Webcomics

• White Mage in this 8-Bit Theater strip.
  • And in a literal example, Red Mage.
• Archipelago's Tuff is a highly moral young man who happens to be a half-wereshark. Weresharks are, as far as he knows, violent monsters, and he himself has experienced Hulking Out. He's utterly terrified of this side of himself. But in the end comes to terms with it.
• Dan from Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures, who has feared this since learning his mother was a succubus and his own 'Cubi abilities emerging. This may be self-fulfilling, since Dan has been told by multiple people that not learning to control his new abilities (Dan refuses to attend the school the 'Cubi have set up for just that purpose) dramatically increasing the chance that he'll lose control and become the monster he fears.
• The Warrior Returns: Having replaced most of her body with cybernetics using technology far beyond the ken of man, Marie no longer considers herself a human being, calling herself a "monster" and a "tin can". The President of the United States disabuses her of that notion, asking her not to call herself that when her efforts to save as many lives as she can have more than proven her a hero.
• In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, Galatea firmly believes this about herself. Of course, she thinks this makes her superior to humans.
• In Latchkey Kingdom, Rose believes this until Nikol uses The Power of Friendship to convince her otherwise.
• UNS Intelligence wet-worker Kowalski in Schlock Mercenary tends to agree whenever he's called a monster. Given the number of people who die when Kowalski gets going — especially since Kowalski's basic strategy relies upon using nanotechnology to download his brain into other people's bodies, eliminating the original personality — it's hard to disagree. Culminates in this little speech, where a recorded message left by a recently-deceased mind-clone of Kowalski, downloaded into a female police officer, encourages Sorlie not to go down the same road and asks if the mercenaries could kindly kill the original Kowalski.
• Mob of Mob Psycho 100 is not only Afraid of Their Own Strength, but the Emotion Suppression he uses to keep his psychic powers in check makes it very difficult for him to socialize and relate to other people. When Dimple calls him a monster in their first encounter, Mob simply replies that he's the absolute worst before ripping him apart with a Finger Poke of Doom.

Web Videos

• Alien Abduction Role Play: Acktreal clearly believes this of herself after her first feral episode and admits that she wishes she were more human.
• In the finale of the Nerd³ Prison Architect series, Dan is confronted with the total list of people he's killed in his prison escape. It tallies up the victims, for nearly a full minute.
  "Oh God! I'm a fucking monster!"

Western Animation

• Adventure Time The episode "Go With Me" indicated Marceline occasionally feels this way about herself, likely due to her semi-demonic heritage.
  Marceline: Oh, yeah? No one would want to go to the movies with... [turns into giant tentacle monster] this!
  • This gets further explored in the special "Obsidian", thanks to a series of flashbacks that explains how Marceline came to view herself as a monster. After using her demonic soul-sucking powers to save her mother from a mutated wolf, she believed that she scared her mother away after she told her to leave (in reality, Marceline's mother tricked her to do so, so she wouldn't see her dying). During a conversation with her imaginary friends, she convinced herself that, the reason why everyone was afraid of her, was because she wanted them to.
• During the episode "The Beach" in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Azula wistfully admits that her own mother thought that she was a monster before quickly perking up and saying that "She was right, of course, but it still hurt." While this is at first played off as a Card-Carrying Villain-esque joke, it later turns out that Fire Lord Ozai's upbringing has basically turned Azula into a mental and emotional wreck of insecurities and self-loathing. Furthermore, the abuse left Azula broken after Zuko and Katara defeated her to the point where in the tie-in comic "The Search"; Azula self-identifies as a monster because she falsely believes that's what her mother saw her as. Also worth noting is that unlike other examples on this page, when Azula identifies herself as a monster, she's gone and pressed her own Berserk Button. Nobody else in the universe thinks of her as an outright monster.
• In Batman Beyond, Batman pleads with the Magma Man of the Terrific Trio to not destroy the city by continuing the experiment that gave them their powers, because he's a hero. Magma disagrees:
  Magma: No, I'm not a hero. I'm an accident. Heroes had a choice, we had none.
• Used for Deliberate Values Dissonance in Blue Eye Samurai where the protagonist regards herself as a monster having been subject to Half-Breed Discrimination all her life.
• In the Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes episode "Hard Knocks", Ben tells Bruce that, "Us monsters have to stick together." Bruce then retorts that the Thing is not a monster; the Hulk is.
• Jimmy Two-Shoes: Lucius says this, not in response to his Faux Affably Evil nature, or all the Kick the Dog moments, but because his horns have been ruined.
• Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts has her view herself as this when her jaguar powers begin to manifest, especially when her friend Wolf immediately abandons her upon learning the truth. However, by the time she learns from her father exactly why she's like this (she's essentially a living science experiment her parents made), she's gone in the complete opposite direction to love her abilities and is more frustrated about not being able to instantly master them more than anything else.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
  • "Putting Your Hoof Down": Fluttershy chides Rarity and Pinkie Pie, making both of them cry. When she discovers Iron Will's lessons made her lash out at her friends, she calls herself a monster.
  • Thorax refers to himself as "the evil changeling" in "The Times They Are A Changeling." He also is implied to dislike his natural changeling appearance, as he said nopony could trust someone who looks like it.
• Steven Universe:
  • In "Cat Fingers", Steven tests out his gem powers of shape-shifting and accidentally turns into a writhing ball of animated cat-heads. Near the end of the episode, he begs his father to run him through the car wash in a desperate attempt to get rid of the cats, lamenting "I'm an adorable cat monster!"
  • In "On the Run", Amethyst is revealed to have a good deal of self-loathing about her origins in the Gem "Kindergarten", even describing herself as an "evil-parasite".
  • In the Steven Universe: Future episode "Everything's Fine", Steven has a mental breakdown at the end of the episode, calling himself a fraud and a monster just like his mother. Unfortunately for everyone, Steven included, the belief that he is a monster, combined with his out-of-control powers, causes him to literally become one.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), after having thrashed Mikey and realized what he had done in the "Hunted" episode, Leatherhead tells the turtles and Splinter to stay away from him and states his belief that he is a dangerous monster before running away. Things calm down for him later, however, when he realizes that Mikey is indeed fine as the turtles rescue him from a crocodile hunter.
• Blackarachnia of Transformers: Animated believes herself to be a freak and a monster due to her partially organic robot form (the result of using her powers while damaged by a giant alien spider's venom — really), and subsequently joins the Decepticons and reinvents herself as a Femme Fatale. However, a lot of it seems to be in her head, as she now possesses a number of spider-related powers in addition to her original abilities, and most of the non-Decepticon Transformers she encounters seem to find her smokin' hot.
  • Then again, the Decepticons seem to regard her with tolerant disgust at best. And Sentinel Prime leaves out the "tolerant" part entirely. Given that he was one of her closest friends, she might have a point.
  • It's worse than that; Sentinel was dating her when it happened, though it's obvious that Optimus had a thing for her as well. One of the other reasons why she never returned to the Autobots is that she fear being dissected for science — considering that Perceptor, one of the Autobot council, deleted his personality in order to store more information (according to the manual, at least), this is probably an honest concern.

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