Tragic Monster

"In the future, our wounded often turned to Risen just as we were tryin' to heal 'em. It really stinks havin' to kill the very people you've been fightin' to save... Ya just gotta remember these folk ain't turnin' back, no matter what."

— Brady, Fire Emblem: Awakening

When a villain becomes a monster, you generally don't care. You just watch someone wipe the floor with them like they're nothing. But what happens when it's a character that the Main Characters have come to love and care about over the course of the work, or an Ineffectual Sympathetic Tragic Villain?

Nothing can wrench the gut of any character like being forced to fight a loved one or ally (especially if said loved one is weeping uncontrollably and begging for death as they try to kill you). This isn't Brainwashed and Crazy, this is forcing the unlucky character to become a terrible beast or other nasty critter with no means of changing them back. Not that it stops the heroes from trying. In any case, the hero will do everything they can to avoid Staking the Loved One. Even if it means keeping them contained for their own safety while they hunt for a cure. To twist the knife even further, killing them might be the only way to grant them peace.

In many works, this can amount to a form of Player Punch. It's par for the course for any Zombie Apocalypse, since doubtlessly somebody important is going to get turned into a zombie.

May bring Dying as Yourself or Alas, Poor Villain into play.

If a loved one must kill the monster, see Staking the Loved One. For cases when it's only a monster imitating a loved one to benefit from the hero's emotions, that's Shape Shifter Guilt Trip. If the loved one was abducted by the Big Bad and turned into a monster, see Kidnapped for Experimentation.

Sub-Trope of Face–Monster Turn.

Compare Interrupted Cooldown Hug and "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight.

Not to be confused with a Tortured Monster, although they can overlap.

See also The Virus, Came Back Wrong, Was Once a Man, And Then John Was a Zombie, Resist the Beast, Tragic Villain, and What Happened to Mommy? . Defying this fate will likely take either being able to Find the Cure! in time or a lot of Heroic Willpower. Contrast Complete Monster, which is a monster with no decency to begin with and throughout.

Unmarked spoilers possible. Proceed with caution.

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Sub-pages

• Video Games
  • Final Fantasy

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• AKIRA, when the main character Kaneda must battle his super-powered and tormented friend Tetsuo, who goes on a destructive rampage after his sanity is nearly split from the disturbing mental images that plague his mind after acquiring said super-powers. Eventually, Tetsuo loses control of his powers and transforms into a truly horrific amoeba-like blob of flesh and organs that consumes everything in its path. This is an unusual example in that while Kaneda and Tetsuo are best friends, they actually relish fighting each other (mainly because they're friends).
• Attack on Titan uses this to deliver a shocking punch to Eren and the audience: Titans are humans turned into monsters against their will, and many of the recognizable ones throughout the series were comrades of his father. The Smiling Titan that killed Carla Yeager and Hannes turns out to have been Grisha Yeager's first wife, the ill-fated Dina Fritz. Even worse, her relentless stalking of the Yeager family was because her final moments as a human were spent promising to find Grisha again. The tragedy of it all brings Eren to tears.
• Baldr Force EXE Resolution: Ren, who happens to be the dead little sister Tohru forgot he had. And while she's physically dead, her mind and spirit continue to exist, sans body, in the Wired, where her subconscious exhibits itself as a Planet Eater. This results in a major Tearjerker of a finale...
• Kaien Shiba and his wife in Bleach. Infested by a parasitic Hollow, they have no control over their bodies and can only watch as the Hollow slaughters their friends and subordinates. In the end, Rukia had to impale her beloved mentor to kill the Hollow and him at the same time. It took years for the resulting trauma to fade.
  • Sora Inoue, Orihime's older brother. Consumed by loneliness and regrets as years passed, he transformed into a Hollow that sought to destroy everything that caused those feelings of sorrow, namely Orihime and her friends. Even when he temporarily regained control and apologized, he had to die.
    • A definite Player Punch for Ichigo. He had never realized until that point that Hollows were once people, and when he finds out it's while trying to stop a spirit who died at his family's clinic.
  • By the same ticket, many Hollows can fall under this category. Driven mad by sorrow and loneliness, they destroy everything they valued in life and (usually) only through the purifying blade of a Shinigami can they find release from that cycle. The only other options are to keep devouring souls (human or Hollow) until one becomes a Vasto Lorde (a feat very few ever live long enough or even have the potential to reach) or an Arrancar and having their human reasoning return.
• Priscilla in Claymore. She is affected by Horror Hunger and remembers her parents getting eaten every time she eats someone. More recently, Cassandra.
• Code Geass has Euphemia li Britannia, whose brainwashing by Lelouch drives her to order the systematic genocide of every Japanese come peacefully to the Special Administrative Zone of Japan, thus single-handedly destroying any hope of reconciliation between the Britannians and the Japanese. This all leads to her getting shot by Lelouch, and dying before Suzaku's eyes while fighting the Geass. It may all have just been a dumb mistake, but still.
• Cyborg 009 has three of them: 0011 (a man who wanted to see his family), 0012 (a woman whose house and memories were manipulated by Black Ghost), and 0013 (who helps the innocent bystanders, punishes criminals, is a Worthy Opponent to Joe and is Driven to Suicide).
• Similarly to Bleach, the human souls of Akuma in D.Gray-Man are invisible to everyone but Allen, and they can't stop themselves from killing dozens of people unless someone destroys them. Level 2 demons are intelligent, and they all have a tragic backstory attached. And worse, the more evolved an Akuma is, the more tortured and broken the soul gets. The first time he sees a soul attached to a Level 4 (which the audience never sees), Allen instantly becomes violently ill.
• Shirley, as seen in the flashbacks to Kiritsugu's past in Fate/Zero. She grew very fond of both preteen Kiritsugu and his father while assisting the latter with his magic experiments, while Kiritsugu developed a Precocious Crush on her. However, curiosity gets the better of her and she takes some of Kiritsugu's father's experimental potion, which turns her into a Dead Apostle. She begs Kiritsugu to kill her before she hurts anyone, but he can't bring himself to, and their entire village is destroyed as a result.
• Nina Tucker from Fullmetal Alchemist is transformed into a chimera by her father. The Elric Brothers are deeply troubled by this, their inability to help Nina becoming one of Edward's greatest failures. Scar gives Nina a Mercy Kill soon after, praying to God to watch over her in the afterlife.
• The manga version of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has Volvagia, who underwent a great deal of Adaptational Heroism compared to his video game counterpart. He was an ordinary baby dragon that Link bought and befriended, who was corrupted by Ganondorf and forced to fight Link. The corruption only wears off once Volvagia is reduced to a head, and Link's failure to save him ends up being a massive chip on his shoulder.
• Oboro Shirakumo getting turned into Kurogiri in My Hero Academia. He was Aizawa and Present Mic’s best friend who was killed in a building collapse that was actually meant to kill Aizawa and secure Erasure. Oboro’s death devastated the two and they’re horrified, outraged and heartbroken to learn what was done to him. They want badly to find out if anything of Oboro still exists in Kurogiri to ever reach but their first efforts seem to fail. Fighting him is painful for both.
• In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Sayaka Miki becomes a Witch in the main storyline, as does Madoka Kaname herself during one of the alternate timelines. Given the nature of magic and magical girls in the Puella Magi universe, every Witch counts as this. As of Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion, Homura willingly becomes this.
• Hans, the last of the Flamethrower Troopers in Pumpkin Scissors. He was told that the liquid in his armored suit would prevent the flames from hurting him — as it turns out, it just prevented him from feeling the pain. When the war ended, the other troopers took off their suits, and their bodies literally fell into pieces. Physically and mentally numb, he continues to kill on the orders of the Silver Wheel because starting fires is the only thing that still makes him feel warm, reminding him of the life he once had and the friends he watched die.
• All of the zombies in School-Live!. We keep getting little reminders of their humanity. The zombie with the cell phone has pictures of her and her boyfriend on it, all zombies seem to have a vague sense of the timetable they used to keep (the mall is less dangerous during the week when people were less likely to be there, and the school has fewer zombies at night), and, worst of all, Megumi's thoughts are never far from the girls — even as a zombie. She somehow manages to keep herself away from them until they come blundering into the basement.
• Soul Eater's Crona, an (if not the) audience favorite, is the Big Bad as of chapter 104. He/She gets reabsorbed by Asura not too long after, and ultimately saves the day by sealing Asura in him/her self.
• Seidou Takizawa becomes one in the sequel to Tokyo Ghoul. Originally the Plucky Comic Relief of the CCG side of the story, he's seemingly killed off during the finale. In :Re, it's revealed that he was captured by Aogiri and experimented on, becoming a deranged Half-Human Hybrid utterly consumed by his Horror Hunger. His ramblings suggest he was forced to eat his parents, and he clearly suffers from Stockholm Syndrome after being subjected to extensive experimentation, torture, and abuse. When confronted by his old rival, he flees in shame rather than deal with her. Nearly a year later, he betrays Aogiri to save Akira and Houji... but his past crimes result in a Heel–Face Door-Slam. Rejected by his loved ones, he loses his last bit of remaining hope and snaps violently.
• Witchblade has a very Tear Jerker version of this. Most of the show's monsters are Ex Cons, creatures made with Human Resources. It gets heartbreaking when you realize at least one of them not only retained its own mind but actually is horrified at what it had become and begs The Hero to take them down before anyone else died.
• The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village has the Aburatori, a Youkai that represents the secret murder of children by their own parents. He is compelled by his very nature to hunt children and tear out their organs but he hates himself for it. Thanks to Shinobu he was able to transform into a Kaeshigami, becoming a minor deity who protects children.

Comic Books

• Asterios The Minotaur: The 2023 comic is about, take a guess, telling his life story from his perspective to Theseus in his labyrinth. Raised by Daedalus and Naucrate alongside Icarus, he was plagued with immense self-loathing as a monster and a Hair-Trigger Temper that overtook his rational mind. Knowing he could never know love of one like him, the one woman who sought him out left him feeling mortified at her interest in laying with a monster. Ultimately he died from an infected wound after a lifetime of persecution and isolation, his death celebrated by all but the very few who loved him.
• Astro City: In the story "Pastoral", brushed on. Team Carnivore overtly states that they are abducting Roustabout so their bosses can take him apart and figure out why he worked — and so fix them. They are all Beast Man using Hulk Speak.
• Batman:
  • Plenty of villains can fall into this trope, due to most of them being insane. The original Clayface, Basil Karlo, is an actor driven to insanity and eventually gaining shapeshifting powers; plenty of interpretations of the character play him as a Tragic Villain, like Batman: The Animated Series.
  • The Batman Vampire trilogy depicts Batman himself as this. During a face-off with Dracula, Batman manages to slay him, but not before Dracula bites him and turns him into a full-fledged vampire. Afterwards, he repeatedly struggles with his bloodlust, and briefly finds solace from it in his relationship with Selina Kyle... until Joker kills her. In a fit of grief and rage, Batman finally succumbs to his bloodlust and drains the Joker's blood; immediately horrified by what he has done, Batman arranges for Gordon and Alfred to stake him so he doesn't commit further murders. Sadly, Gordon and Alfred neglected to behead him after the staking, so Batman was paralyzed in a death-like state, fully conscious and aware of his body's decay and his rampant bloodlust. In the midst of a massive crime wave, Alfred becomes desperate enough to remove the stake in an effort to give Gotham a savior once more, but Batman has gone completely insane from the experience, and while he's lucid enough to be tormented by grief and guilt over the monster he has become, he's now nothing more than a slave to his vampire nature.
• Creature Commandos: Pvt. Elliot "Lucky" Taylor. He was blown to pieces by a land mine, but army intelligence decided to use him for their "Project M", sewing him back together — wrong. This left him a mute, hideous Frankenstein's Monster. He attempted suicide once out of disgust for the creature he'd become.
• The Incredible Hulk: Even at his most savage, all the Hulk wants is to be left alone.
• Marvel Zombies: The Zombie incarnation of Spider-Man fits this to a T. While he's just as ravenous and disgusting as the other zombies when hungry, he's nonetheless plagued by grief and guilt at his actions and Horror Hunger, but unable to stop himself. He's particularly tormented by the fact that he ate his Aunt May and Mary Jane, to the extent that he refuses to take off his mask so he can't look himself in the eyes again.
• Supergirl: In Supergirl (Rebirth), Supergirl fights Lar-On, a Kryptonian werewolf who suffers from lycanthropy due to Red Kryptonite poisoning. He's dangerous and uncontrollable, but has committed no crime and doesn't want to hurt anyone. Nonetheless, he's quarantined to the Phantom Zone where Kryptonians dump their worst criminals, and when he escapes that place, his family is gone and he's stranded in an alien world and attacked by hostile forces.
• Spider-Man: While a lot of Spidey's villains have sad or tragic pasts, Dr. Curt Connors takes the cake. A war veteran who lost his arm in battle, Connors spent years working on a serum that he believed that would give humans a lizard's ability to regenerate lost limbs. Unfortunately, it didn't work the way he expected. The serum turned him into the Lizard, a giant reptilian beast who hates Spider-Man and craves destruction. Many arcs in the Spider-Man comics involve the web-slinger trying to help the doctor find a cure for his lizardiness. Oh, did I mention that Connors is a husband and father, who's kept from his family every moment he's a lizard?
• Swamp Thing: The Patchwork Man and the Unmen, extremely grotesque formerly human quasi-undead horrors whose very existence is an unending nightmare, made/modified and enslaved by Mad Scientist and Evil Sorcerer Anton Arcane, one of the most depraved monsters of all fiction. That the Patchwork man was his own brother is just the tip of the iceberg.

Fan Works

• The Bridge has several, namely the sirens and Nightmare, but Kaizer Ghidorah gets special notice. The imperial ghidorah is extremely powerful, extremely violent on his quest to kill Grand King Ghidorah, and is effectively insane. But flashbacks and unlocked memories for Monster X reveal this is because he's on a revenge quest against Grand King Ghidorah and was effectively driven mad by his singular focus on it. On the inside, he's constantly grieving.
• Chrysalis from Diaries of a Madman was originally a kind alicorn midwife who loved children. After being corrupted by Discord, she's well aware of what kind of monster she's become.
• Disney Villain Songs (Lydia the Bard): In Anna's scenario, her heart was gradually being frozen, transforming her into a cold, callous Ice Queen with powers of her own. And There Is No Cure.
• Dissy, in Divine Jealousy and The Voice of Reason. Dissy Used to Be a Sweet Kid; he was kind, caring and beloved by many of the Paradise Estate Ponies, especially Celestia and Luna — before his Awakening to his true identity as an Avatar of the Cosmic Concept Discord.
• In Equestria Girls: Friendship Souls Adagio Dazzle becomes this after she makes a Heroic Sacrifice that ends with her being turned into a Hollow, though it becomes subverted when she's able to keep her reason thanks to her innate magic and eventually acclimate to her new life. She even ends up becoming one of the most heroic people on the Arrancar's side of the conflict.
  • This happened in the backstory with Applejack's father as well, who suffered a similar fate. Still, he went on to get a new home and family in Las Noches as the Fourth Espada, so he seems to have made the best out of a bad situation. That being said it's implied he hates life as a Hollow, with his reiatsu oozing regret for his new life.
• Game of Touhou:
  • Soga no Tojiko. She was turned into a sentient wight by Seiga in order to serve her better, but after her downfall, she has no purpose until she participates the assault on Gengetsu's fortress, and encounters Futo leading to a heartbreaking moment before her death.
  • Selenion is another example, due to his violent dragon nature, and for dying following a bad order from her master, Yorihime. He was still loyal to her.
• Rin Satsuki in Imperfect Metamorphosis, she was mutated after years of Eirin's experiments, and then she absorbed and almost unleashed a Fallen Angel. In the end, she just wants to die.
• Subverted in Infinity Crisis. When Bruce breaks it to Jennifer Walters that she'll never be able to return to her human form, Jen just relates that she loves now being a green-skinned powerhouse.
• We Can Be Heroes! (Steven Universe):
  • The Corrupted Ruby is another corrupted gem, who spends most of its fight with Lapis switching between being fueled by blind, murderous fury and screaming for help, bashing its head against buildings and the ground.
  • In a Flashback, Lapis witnesses Centipeetle having an emotional meltdown as she recalls what transformed her into a monster.
• In X Com Second Contact, it's eventually revealed that the chryssalids are rachni that have been mutated and extensively modified.

Films — Animation

• Beauty and the Beast: Prince Adam was turned into the Beast as punishment by a sorceress for his arrogance and refusal to provide the sorceress (disguised as an old beggar woman) a place to stay in the middle of winter. Only an Act of True Love can lift the curse and by the start of the film the Beast has become quite feral as he's already given up hope that he will ever become human again.
• The titular Monster House is possessed by the spirit of Mr. Nebbercracker's wife Constance. She was an obese woman who used to be a sideshow freak. She was still being made fun of despite getting out of the circus. She accidentally died while driving mean children away. Her husband had no choice but to act mean to drive children away before she eats them.
• Superman: Man of Tomorrow has Rudy Jones, an average joe who winds up being caught in a battle between two aliens and gets transformed into a horrific mutant.

Films — Live-Action

• Jimmy Bones from Bones (2001) was a Friendly Neighborhood Gangster in the 1970's who was betrayed and murdered. He is resurrected to take vengeance on his killers. He is sad that the neighborhood was ruined by drugs and his loved ones are being driven out of their homes.
• Just about every Universal Horror movie monster ever. Except, and ironically given later portrayals, Dracula. Bela Lugosi's Count acted purely For the Evulz. Though even he has a wistful moment in the first film when he says: "To die.. to be truly dead... That must be glorious."
• The depiction of Two-Face in The Dark Knight is particularly heartbreaking.
• In Dust Devil, Joe tries to paint the Dust Devil as such, with little actual success. He claims that he only wants to go back to the spirit realm, but the sheer enjoyment that he derives from its basic human pleasures, coupled with the fact that he puts many innocents in harm’s way and persuades others to want to die, and the time he takes to seduce his female victims strongly suggest otherwise.
• Jeff Goldblum's portrayal of the doomed Dr Seth Brundle in The Fly (1986). Much as he tries to hold onto his humanity, the cruel and heartless insect takes over and his desperation to stay human — just a little human, even — overrides his need to protect Veronica, the love of his life and the mother of his unborn child. The ending where he holds the gun to his head and silently begs Geena Davis to pull the trigger really drives this home, to the point that none of the four different hopeful epilogues for the other characters worked with test audiences because they were too saddened by Seth's death to care.
• The monster from Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell. Professor Durendel was admitted to the asylum after a nervous breakdown but he found out that the asylum director has been raping the female patients including his own daughter Sarah. Durendel has been confined and drugged against his will. He is tricked by Frankenstein into killing himself so his brain can be used on the next monster. When he fails as the monster, Frankenstein decides to use him as breeding stock and have him mate with Sarah. This causes the monster to break away from captivity and kill the director. He, in turn, is killed by the other inmates because they that he was trying to attacj Sarah.
• Most versions of Santanico Pandemonium of From Dusk Till Dawn fall under this. In the third movie, her backstory reveals she had the misfortune of being born the daughter of the queen of the vampires, to a human father who ultimately viewed her as an aberration and tried to kill her several times. Even with all of this, she seems like a decent and kind-hearted person, and it's generally fate and bad luck, as opposed to any malevolent desire on her part, that forces her to become Satanico. The series takes this one step further (assuming the character is not an Unreliable Narrator): in this version, Satanaico's only sin is being born pretty on a certain day. As a result, she gets the job of revered temple priestess who receives various sacrifices and offerings for the gods, something she was actually OK with until she started getting human sacrifices. When she tried to leave, the temple followers cursed her into becoming Satanaico.
• Godzilla:
  • Godzilla in general is incredibly tragic. Depending on the continuity, he is either a scared, confused animal (usually the Last of His Kind) just trying to survive, a once-peaceful being seeking revenge on humanity for destroying his home and mutating his body, or even the vengeful souls of those who died in World War II.
  • In Godzilla (1954), Godzilla completely decimates Tokyo, reducing it to smoldering rubble and killing thousands of people. However, his wrath becomes understandable when considering that he once was a normal dinosaur simply minding his own business before H-Bomb tests destroyed his habitat and mutated him into a radioactive behemoth. Godzilla's as much of a victim as the humans he terrorizes, and the point is driven home in the film's final sequence: As the Japanese prepare to deploy the Oxygen Destroyer, a super-weapon potentially even worse than the H-Bomb that created him, Godzilla is seen resting in Tokyo Bay, looking less like a terrible monster and more like a creature that just wants to be left alone. His final roar of agony as the Oxygen Destroyer dissolves him tops it off.
  • Biollante from Godzilla vs. Biollante is a fusion between human DNA, Godzilla DNA, and a rosebush with a human soul (her creator's daughter, who died in a bombing incident) who is most likely aware as she slowly degrades into a horrific abomination.
  • In a rare example for a Godzilla antagonist monster, the MUTO pair from Godzilla (2014) are subject to this. They indeed pose a threat to humanity and even more so if they reproduce, but the Pet the Dog moments they get make you feel bad for them. They care about each other and the well-being of their offspring, and it becomes clear that though destructive, they aren't evil or malicious at all, but merely giant animals, victims of circumstance, trying to raise a family in a hostile new world they no longer belong in.
  • Shin Godzilla: Godzilla is less of a giant dinosaur, and more like a twisted mass of cancerous flesh with a mouth that opens wider than should be possible, and his mannerisms imply that he is in constant, unbearable agony just from existing. The fact that he can regenerate and is functionally immortal makes it even worse, as his tormented existence is doomed to be a living hell for eternity.
    • His second form has a bloodlike fluid gushing from his gills and clearly has trouble walking, being barely able to move on land. In a deleted scene, his third form vomited a literal river of blood.
    • If that wasn't enough, then there's Who Will Know, a Tear Jerker of a song that relays what is like to live as this version of Godzilla.
      A downward slope is all I see / A shaft of light is all I need to cease the darkness killing me
• The Incredible Melting Man: Dr. Steve West seemed to be a nice-enough guy before his mutation, especially given Nelson's positive statements about his friend. But his space voyage to Saturn caused his skin to start melting and forced West to hunt down and eat people to stave off the pain.
• Lord Humungus of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. The gun case◊ he carries contains a photo of who are most likely his parents or grandparents, which reminds you he was once a normal child before society collapsed, and shows he still fondly remembers his family. Originally this would have been hammered home even harder: in an earlier version of the script, he was actually Jim Goose!
• In Night of the Living Dead (1990), Ben dies and turns into a zombie.
• Resident Evil Film Series:
  • In Resident Evil (2002), Rain Ocampo turns into a zombie.
  • Also Nemesis/Matt in Resident Evil: Apocalypse. This doubles as a tear-jerker since it isn't until she's impaled him through the chest that Alice realises it's him.
• The zombies from The Return of the Living Dead are revealed to be still sentient. Consuming human flesh is the only way to relieve the pain of living decay.
• RoboCop (1987) of course has the titular hero. He used to be Alex Murphy until he was murdered and then brought back to life as a cyborg cop. He has been stripped of his humanity and treated as just a property of OCP.
• Savageland: Salazar is painted by the racist white media as a madman who somehow massacred the town of Sangre De Cristo by himself. He is seen as an Inspirational Martyr after his execution but his corpse rises from its grave and joins the horde of monsters which killed the town.
• Shaun of the Dead: When his best friend is turned into a zombie and can't be turned back, Shaun, instead of killing him, locks him up in the storage shed and plays Playstation with him. It's toyed with in this case: the implication is that Ed (the aforementioned best friend) is really no worse off than when the movie started.
• Darth Vader of Star Wars counts in a physical sense. He became a bad guy before that, but his massive injuries and horrific reconstruction made him a monster that could never be fully whole again.
• Ultraman R/B The Movie: Select! The Crystal of Bond: Toi, formerly Katsumi's best friend in his Elementary School days, was a harmless nerd and Hikikomori who became disillusioned with life after failing his dreams as a video game designer. He ends up being corrupted by the villain of the film, Ultraman Tregear, into becoming the rampaging monster Snake Darkness, which he designed himself as concept art for a failed video game. What ultimately snaps Toi back to sanity is his mother pleading with Toi (in monster form) to regain his senses.
• Pooh from Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey vows revenge on Christopher Robin for abandoning him. He is haunted by beautiful childhood memories he shares with Christopher but his murderous resentment keeps dragging him into a rage.
• This is the eventual result of the Zombie Apocalypse tape "A Ride in the Park" from VHS2. The protagonist has become a zombie and attacked a birthday party with the others, getting fended off at the last moment. When he falls to the ground, however, he accidentally butt-dials his girlfriend, who laughs it off and, believing that he's still just riding his bike, tells him she loves him, triggering a My God, What Have I Done? moment and causing him to commit suicide to keep from harming more people.
• This happens near the beginning of Zombieland. Not someone the main character knew well but still played for drama, and a demonstration of the importance of Rule #2 (Double Tap).

Literature

• Diran's best friend from his acolyte days comes back as a werewolf (anathema to members of their church) in The Blade of the Flame books.
• Vrasta the "Wrong One" Fammin in Chronicles of the Emerged World has feelings, dreams, and a conscience, but when his name is spelled he's compelled to obey orders and eventually kills his new-found friend Laio.
• The novel for Coraline has The Other Father, who was created to love and care, and was mutated by the Other Mother to fight Coraline. This gets even worse in the movie since it's implied that all of the Other counterparts have been with the Other Mother since she started the eat-children's-souls thing, and have just been modified to fit their roles. They don't want to hurt anyone, just to fill their parts as people to care and love the children. Other Father gets mutated and forced to fight Coraline, Spink and Forcible are turned into taffy-like beasts, and it's implied that Other Old Man (Mr.Bobo/Bobinsky in the movie) was EATEN by his rats.
• Many in the Deltora Quest series, the most prominent of which was the fate given to Doran the Dragonlover. He was forced to become the Guardian of a Sister — the very thing he set out to destroy many, many years ago.
• The Dresden Files:
  • In Changes, Harry Dresden must kill Susan, the mother of his child, who started to turn into a Red Court vampire. Counts as an invoked trope, since Martin intentionally arranged circumstances to provoke the turn, as part of a long-term plan to destroy every Red Court vampire in existence.
  • In the following book, we find out Harry regarded himself as a monster for taking Mab's deal to be the Winter Knight, so he'd arranged for his own assassination.
• Applies to all three main characters in Eden Green as they lose their bodies and minds to an alien needle symbiote.
• It doesn't get more tragic than the Creature from Frankenstein. Created and immediately abandoned by its creator for being ugly, before it even really wakes up. Made innocent, his nature is soon twisted by circumstance into something horrible and evil, alone, wretched and violent. The worst part, however, is that he knows exactly how wicked he has become but knows he cannot change. After he has succeeded in destroying his creator during a hunt in the frozen wastes of the Arctic, he mourns Frankenstein's death. The Creature decides to end his own existence by building a funeral pyre for himself and climb on top of it.
• Werewolf Remus Lupin in Harry Potter, although he's only like this once a month. The rest of the time he's safe, good, and in his right mind. Even then, it's only if he doesn't have any Wolfsbane potion that the wolf takes over. Too bad said Wolfsbane potion is a relatively recent invention that wasn't available when he was first bitten as a child.
• In the H.I.V.E. Series, Raven has several flashbacks in Aftershock involving her being forced to kill her best friend, Tolya, who had lost his mind, watching her best friend Dimitri die, and being forced to become an assassin for the Russians at the tender age of eight.
• Horus Heresy: This occurs in Galaxy in Flames, when Loken meets Kharn after the latter fell to chaos. Kharn had been previously established as a noble and loyal warrior, acting equerry to his Primarch Angron and tempering his rages. Now he's just a snarling, hate-filled... monster — for lack of a better word. When Loken asks what has been done to him, Kharn regains his sanity for a moment and expresses regret, but "there is no going back". Then he goes under again and attacks and Loken has no choice but to try and kill him (of course it doesn't take).
• The Hound of the Baskervilles: The titular hound is a terrifying ill-omen that hunts people in Grimpen Mire, but it's a normal dog that the human villain is using in his schemes; the only reason it's aggressive at all is because it's abused and starving.
• Feral humans in Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse are Technically Living Zombies, the descendents of humans who lost their minds and became flesh-eating wild animals. The Krakau came and after a rocky start started to cure individual adults. Monroe describes having to kill ferals with sorrow, unhappy about how they never got their chance to become people.
  • Extra poignant for Mops in the first book, after a bioweapon reverts most of the rest of the humans on her ship into ferals. They are her crew. She knows every one she encounters and is horrified for them, and reacts strongly to anyone, including a tech who was nearly eaten by them, saying they should be killed.
• Journey to Chaos: Eric sees a vision of a possible future where Nolien losses himself to his inner monster. He kills his family, savages his fiancé, and is finally put down like a rapid animal by city guards.
• Håkan from Let the Right One In is a paedophile who serves as Eli's acolyte. He kills people and takes their blood to feed Eli. He is torn between his lust for Eli and his own conscience. He disfigures himself after getting caught and Eli feeds on him. He tries to kill himself but he is reanimated as a monster driven only by lust. He wanted to die with dignity but he becomes the monster he truly is and is killed by another child.
• The Moomins has the Groke, who, particularly in her animated form, terrifies both the readers/viewers and the inhabitants of Moominvalley. However, as "Moominland Midwinter" proves, she's really not a bad person; she's just terribly cold and lonely, and all she wants is a friend, as Moomintroll himself realises. Unfortunately, she's apparently some kind of embodiment of winter, meaning she's freezing cold to the touch and can't ever be allowed to hug someone, or she'll probably freeze them to death entirely by accident. So she just roams silently through the valley, hoping to be warm but doomed to always be cold.
• The Perfect Run: Psychos are those who took two elixirs, and were driven insane as a result. Quite a few of the Psychos, it turns out, just got dealt a really bad hand.
  • Sarin and Bloodstream both drank two elixirs very early on, before the horrific side effects were known. Sarin mostly kept her sanity, but spent six months as a dispersed gas cloud before she found something that could contain herself. Bloodstream was reduced to an immortal mass of blood that could only barely remember to keep his children safe. The only reason he wasn't even stronger was because deep down, he hated himself, which prevented him from fully exploiting his own abilities or making too many clones.
  • Mosquito drank a Green elixir that gave him a powerful but monstrous form. He then drank a knock-off Green in the hopes that it would somehow wash away the original. It didn't.
  • Mongrel drank a White elixir. It seemed to have no effect, so he saw nothing wrong with drinking a knock-off. Actually, his White power gave him the ability to use multiple powers at once... without actually protecting him from the side effects. He eventually gained half a dozen elemental powers at once, but he was little better than a feral animal.
  • Acid Rain found a second elixir, a Violet, and planned to find someone to give it to in the hopes that they'd gain time travel to help her. Adam forced her to drink it herself, driving her completely insane in the process.
• Season Of Migration To The North Mustafa Sa'eed is a heavily allegorical version of this, being a heartless monster towards women and a murderer but also deeply a product of colonialism.
• Steel Crow Saga: The Splintersoul is a terrifying, implacable One-Man Army who uses the setting's most feared Black Magic... because he's desperate to regain the missing piece of his Damaged Soul, which causes him unbearable pain ever since Tala stole it from him.
• The Stormlight Archive: In Words of Radiance, we are introduced to Eshonai, the heroic Parshendi Shardbearer from the past book. We spend a couple of chapters seeing her desperately trying to find a way to keep her people alive and seeing her love for her mother and her friends. Then she gets tricked into trying to assume stormform, which leaves her under the domination of the God of Hatred.
• Uprooted: The Wood Queen, the Genius Loci of the malevolent Wood that's been murdering or corrupting humans for centuries, is revealed to be this at the climax. She's the last of her kind, betrayed by humanity, unable to join her kin in eternal slumber and not knowing how to die; the corruption of the Wood is nothing more than her ancient rage and pain. When Agnieszka offers her the chance to transform into a tree and join her kin in dreams, she immediately accepts.
• Dimitri from Vampire Academy fits the bill once he becomes Strigoi. He fights his own former-lover Rose and abuses her.

Live-Action TV

• In Season 2 of The 100, Lincoln is abducted by the Mountain Men and turned into one of the cannibalistic Reapers. Octavia and the others work hard to try and turn him back to normal, even though the Fantastic Drug used to transform him has lethal withdrawal symptoms.
• Mitchell from Being Human post Season 2 after killing the Box Tunnel 20 and slowly spirals out of control till his suicide at the end of Season 3.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • Daryl from "Some Assembly Required" died before his time but he was resurrected by his brother. It turns into a Bride of Frankenstein scenario.
  • Ampata from "Inca Mummy Girl" was sacrificed by her tribe. She was trapped within her own body. She was resurrected but she must consume other people to stay alive.
  • Drusilla was a pious but frail girl before Angelus and Darla killed her whole family and turned her into a vampire.
  • April from "I Was Made To Love You" was built by Warren as his robot girlfriend but she was abandoned when he got back together with his actual girlfriend. She never understood that he never loved her and that her emotions are not real.
• Community parodies this with Troy and Abed's movie creation "Kickpuncher". Right down to giving him a sense of phony pathos.
  Kickpuncher: "The only thing beyond the reach of my fists is humanity."
• Creepshow:
  • “Gray Matter”: Timmy’s father Richie didn't intend to turn himself into a ravenous, blood-thirsty blob. He was just a broken man struggling with the loss of his wife. His Men Don't Cry mindset rendered him unable to open up about the heartbreak he was undergoing, and he turned to Harrow's Supreme as a means to numb the pain.
  • “Drug Traffic”: Mai only transforms into a vampiric penanggalan and goes on a killing spree when she is denied her appetite-suppressing pills. Before she transforms, she's depicted as a deathly ill teenage girl.
• Doctor Who:
  • "Aliens of London" has a pig that was modified by a group of aliens to serve as a decoy, and forced to crash the aliens' spaceship in the heart of London. Poor thing ends up shot dead by a spooked soldier. The Doctor is not impressed by what was done to it.
  • "Arachnids in the UK": The mother spider lands in this territory by the end, since it is only acting out of a mixture of natural instinct, fear, pain and confusion, since its own overgrown body is suffocating it, and it can't understand why or alleviate its suffering. And unfortunately, before the Doctor can do anything to really help it, it's shot dead by Robertson.
• One Grimm episode deals with random vicious Wesen attacks on young women at night. It's eventually turned out that the culprit is a normally peaceful old man with a cane. Unfortunately, he's also suffering from dementia and tends to wander off at night to look for his wife (since he doesn't recognize the old woman at their house). The dementia also results in fits of anger, causing him to woge and lash out at the women. It's also discovered that the Wesen community has a protocol in place for just such an event. A special kind of Wesen is called, who injects an enzyme into the dementia-suffering Wesen, allowing them to die peacefully. Nick is initially reluctant to allow the killing until he realizes that it's better for everyone.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: The orcs burn in the sunlight, are shunned by the free races and treated like dirt by their masters. One gets the impression that with Sauron out of the picture, they'd have no ambition outside of terraforming the Southlands into a place for them to thrive. Unfortunately, sooner or later Sauron will enslave them again and lead them to ruin.
  • What it is even worse is that they were once beautiful Elves from Beleriand, enslaved by Morgoth and tortured entire centuries.
• Once Upon a Time in Wonderland: The Grendel. His wife died and he stole the Forget-Me-Knot from the Red Queen so he could see her through it; she punished him by turning him into a gruesome cannibal.
• Season 8 of Smallville introduces us to Davis Bloome a likeable paramedic, and possible Love Interest for Clark's best friend Chloe Sullivan. Unfortunately, Davis has alien Serial Killer and Person of Mass Destruction Doomsday trapped inside of him. Davis shifts into Doomsday more and more frequently as the show progresses, all while trying to repress his Superpowered Evil Side while committing murders (of criminals) in his human form. Ultimately, it destroys his sanity and he has to be put down for his own good and everyone else's; Davis is killed and Doomsday is separated from him and buried alive.
• In Star Trek, it's routinely brought up that the drones of the Borg are essentially slaves, having been forcibly assimilated into the Collective. Former drones likes Seven of Nine and Jean-Luc Picard constantly ruminate on the horrible things they were forced to do at the bidding of the Borg Queen.
• In the Supernatural episode "Heart" (S02, Ep17), Sam falls for a woman who works in a law firm, only to find she was transformed into a werewolf. They first try to save her by testing a hypothesis that killing the werewolf who turned her would cure her. This seems to work until she nearly kills Sam the next morning.
• Sweet Home (2020): Myeong-ja reveals she's infected after The Beefcake nearly kills her. As if her backstory isn't sad enough, the first thing she does just twists the knife: she asks Ji-su, who's ready to kill her if she fully becomes a monster, about the children she almost died trying to protect.
• The Ultra Series is not above doing this for their kaiju. Ethical questions are often raised in these situations, and the monster will often die in the end to add to the Tear Jerker power. Some good examples are:
  • The original Ultraman had Jamila. He was originally an astronaut whose spaceship crashed on an alien planet and was left to die as the world's politicians didn't want people to know a man had become a victim of scientific progress. When Science Patrol learns this, they refuse to kill Jamila but are forced into it anyways. However, none of them are very happy once the deed is done.
  • In Ultraseven, the monster Starbem Gyeron was a peaceful alien that got mutated into a giant monster when Ultra Garrison used its homeworld as the test site for a planet-destroying nuclear missile. Dan is very reluctant to fight it, as he feels the creature should not be killed for what happened to it. He does eventually turn into Ultraseven, but only because the lives of innocent civilians and his friends soon came on the line during Gyeron's rampage.
  • Muruchi from Return of Ultraman was the pet kaiju of the benevolent alien Mates, going on a rampage when its master was killed by an angry mob that believed him to be yet another evil invader. Even MAT feels bad for the monster, and Goh refuses to become Ultraman Jack so as to let the villagers all be destroyed by the monster.
  • Muruchi II in Ultraman Ace also fits this trope; appearing suddenly during the battle between Ace, Alien Metron Jr., and Doragory, Muruchi sought to team up with the alien and his Choju subordinate and managed to land a few hits on Ace, before suddenly bumping into Doragory, who in a rage tore Muruchi to pieces. All he wanted to do was try to help them!
• Happens to many characters over the course of The Walking Dead (2010). Given how often this happens in the show, it's still no less heartbreaking. Notable mentions include Shane, Amy (Andrea's sister), Penny (the Governor's daughter), Sophia (Carol's daughter), and most recently, Merle and Andrea. In Season 5, Dawn falls into this when she accidentally kills Beth.

Music

• The song "With Her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm," first sung by Stanley Holloway, contains a lot of Black Comedy, but still shows a lot of sympathy towards its subject, the ghost of Anne Boleyn. The song is all about how Boleyn is cursed to haunt the London Tower because she was cruelly executed by her husband, Henry VIII. Boleyn tries to scare King Henry and tell him off for what he did to her, but King Henry simply doesn't care, even forgetting who she is. There's also a verse that describes Boleyn shivering in the cold, and calls her a "poor thing."

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Most monsters are just plain rotters, but the ones you find in Ravenloft always have dreadful backstories. Strahd Von Zarovich just wanted the love of a young woman, and became a vampire to get it. Victor von Mordenheim just wants to restore his dead wife to life, and his creation Adam just wants to be loved and accepted (and make Mordenheim's life hell). And as for Lord Soth, well... more on him below.
  • In Dragonlance we have Lord Soth, the Knight of the Black Rose. An undead monster who can kill by word or touch, lord of a castle of horrors, murderer of his first and second wife and at least two of his children, as well as uncounted billions of innocents when he refused his sole chance at forgiveness offered by the gods themselves just to demand his second wife prove her fidelity to him... and yet, somehow through all of this there is something wretchedly sad about him.
• Warhammer:
  • The Strigoi vampires. The early Strigoi were vampires who only fed on the blood of criminals and lived peacefully on their own. But an Orc Waaagh! destroyed their city and the survivors fled across the Old World. Hunted by both humans and other Vampires alike, the remaining Strigoi survive by hiding in the night feasting on corpses and slowly degenerated into muscular ghoul-like monsters.
  • Another Vampire bloodline, the Blood Dragons, trace their origins to Abhorash, a noble champion of Lahmia who had to be tricked into vampirism. Like the Strigoi, Abhorash chose to feed on the blood of criminals and, in spite of what the Queen of Lahmia had done to him, continued to defend his kingdom until its destruction, at which point, he took only his bloodline, weapons, and armour, and resolved himself to only feed on powerful monsters and foes, instructing his bloodline to do so as well.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Oh boy. As large and horrible as the galaxy is, there's actually dozens of ways to end up like this. Demonic possession, plants that stick to your face and take control of your body, literal zombie plagues, psykers who can efforlessly mind-control people, alien monsters that implant a parasite that modifies your DNA and forces you to find a mate so both of you can get mind-raped by the unholy abomination growing inside her belly... the list just goes on.
    • For an example, let's consider the Unfleshed. Long and unspeakably horrific story short, they were rejects of an experimental process used to create Chaos Space Marines quicker than the traditional gene-seed method. These hulking humanoids with no skin were found unfit to become full-fledged CSMs and thrown into the wastelands of a daemon world to die. A few survived and formed a clan of a sort. However, aside from their enforced dietary habits, they, (relatively speaking), were not evil — they had child-like minds and since they had already been imbued with the basic genetic trappings of a Space Marine, they instinctively got to worshipping The God Emperor of Mankind. When loyal Space Marines invaded, the Unfleshed helped them destroy the Chaos facility that spawned them, and in gratitude, the Space Marine leader promised to find a new home for them. Unfortunately, the next planet they came to, a rogue psyker took advantage of their enhanced Warp sensitivity, drove them insane, and turned them against their erstwhile comrades, forcing the Space Marines to slaughter them.
  • Dark Heresy deserves special mention with the Schistmaticals of the Deep Infotombs. It's essentially a supernatural computer virus that takes control of people's bionics and seeks to extend itself by infecting anyone else with bionics and tries to kill anyone without. While terrifying enough for someone with a cybernetic arm or leg, for the Adeptus Mechanicus, who are 75% mechanical MINIMUM it's one the most horrifying nightmares imaginable since infected tech-adepts are forced by their possessed bionics to infect or kill others while still completely aware and trying to futilely stop themselves with what few remaining organic limbs they have left.

Visual Novels

• Fate/stay night:
  • Heaven Feel's Saber Alter. Made much worse after knowing her past and having played the Fate route, in which she is the Love Interest.
  • Also Dark Sakura and her case is much, much worse.
  • The entire line of Avengers — from Angra Mainyu to Alcides in Fate/strange Fake — are Servants who have been twisted into deranged psychopathic parodies of the people they once were, turning to mindless hate for the sake of hate. None of them want to be what they are, but they were all broken into what they are by circumstances beyond their control. Fate/Grand Order brings several more Avengers into the mix, Edmond Dantes, an evil version of Jeanne D'Arc borne of Gilles de Rais' hatred for humanity, a version of Medusa who has nearly become a Gorgon and Antonio Salieri (as a result of his legacy being irreversibly tarnished by rumors of him poisoning Mozart).
• Tsukihime: Satsuki definitely counts as a tragic monster after she's converted into a vampire by Roa/SHIKI.

Web Animation

• Hunter: The Parenting: One of the eyecatches points out that most Sabbat vampires, people-eating monsters that they are, were once normal people who were kidnapped and forced to be cannon fodder for a war they barely understood. And while Pyotr was a collaborator as a human and he and Apeboy are fully embraced vampires, Shitbeard and Kevin both despise their undead state and were both forced into it against their will- Shitbeard was kidnapped from a blood drive, and Kevin was forcibly embraced by the Camarilla to be their accountant, only to then be kicked to the curb when he told them things they didn't want to hear.

Webcomics

• In The Beast Legion, Xeus impulsively stabs a brute to protect a kid, later finding out that the monster is the kids' older brother.
• Daniel: The title character rises from the grave as a murderous vampire who slowly loses all semblance of humanity and is driven to target his former loved ones. Nonetheless, when his former friend Christine learns about the horrifically cruel way her own Fetishized Abuser murdered him out of petty spite and jealousy, she breaks down in tears.
• Everyone that's not Ace from Ruby Quest probably counts, as the facility used to be a place where the blind received medical treatment. Thinking about this too hard is not recommended.
• Trace Legacy of TwoKinds was a pretty nice guy with incredible power. Then he lost the wife he spent so long getting... and then things got worse.
• Wonderlab: After discovering the truth about Branch O-5681's Manager (that truth being that the Manager was Dead All Along), Catt breaks upon finding that their attempt to find any salvation or meaning in the suffering of them and their fellow Agents was all for naught. This is before they proceed to undergo a Distortion.

Web Original

• One player in the first game of Destroy the Godmodder, Minor107, tried to use inFAMOUS's Karma Meter to empower him. However, it went horribly wrong, and he was forced to reluctantly fight the good guys. They had to beat him up a ton to return him to the light side.
• Noelle of Worm drank only part of a Cauldron superpower serum. Given an incomplete serum, with the other portion likely containing the moderating agent, and her psychological issues the result was a massively disfiguring power. Her lower body transformed into a constantly growing monster largely controlled by her shard and Noelle herself would lapse into berserk rages if provoked. While Trickster wanted to save her the other Travelers gradually began to feel that the real Noelle had already died, leaving only her memories and personality in the monster Echidna.
• SCP Foundation: SCP-4504 is a man capable of manipulating all types of matter Gone Mad From The Isolation of the Foundation's captivity, as the supervisors assigned to him refuse requests for socialization or just see the outside world. Thus, his mental state collapses horribly, leading him to do horrible things to his body (first he asks another SCP to sever his hands, and then employs his powers to disfigure his body), and kill two psychiatrists and many researchers and guards, because as one interview makes clear, revenge is one of the few things that still makes him happy. And once the guy finally gets a shrink who decides that her predecessors were doing the wrong thing and he instead deserves a break, as 4504 manages to get a walk outside the facility, he cries profusely.

Western Animation

• Rampage from Beast Wars is an immortal, cannibalistic Serial Killer... who's only like that because of decades of horrific genetic experimentation that turned him into a living weapon. His existence is one of constant pain, misery, and guilt, with violence being the only outlet he can find for his feelings. When he dies, he laughs madly the whole time, as if in euphoric bliss over his life finally ending.
• Windfang from Conan the Adventurer was once a noble prince who fought against Rathomon but was turned into a winged beast. Even the episode where he was cured ends with him becoming the monster again.
• Samurai Jack: In the episode "Jack and the Lava Monster", Jack is lured into a volcano by the titular creature, a massive rock warrior itching for a fight. Jack at first refuses to fight him, thinking he's just a cruel Blood Knight, but then the Lava Monster explains his backstory: he was a Viking warrior from a prosperous and happy land, but then Aku arrived and destroyed everything. The Warrior tried to fight back, but Aku encased him in stone and buried him in the mountain for eternity, denying him a chance to die a warrior's death and join his comrades in Valhalla. His rock body and the Death Course leading to him were a means to find a mighty warrior who could end his imprisonment, and Jack was the only one to make it that far. He then begs Jack to take up his sword and continue the fight; Jack obliges.
• Steven Universe: Two separate varieties:
  • The Forced-Fusion experiments. They're made of the broken shards of all the fallen Crystal Gems, buried underground for thousands of years, and left to eventually merge as one. During the episode "Keeping It Together", they finally awaken. The results are random limbs mashed together into terrifying monsters, which scream incoherently, seemingly aware of their fate. For a while, the closest thing the series has to a main antagonist, the Cluster, is stated to be a massive one of these experiments, and while the small ones had around three to five shards each, this one is made of millions of them. If it does so much as awaken, it will immediately cause The End of the World as We Know It solely because its body would be several times the size of Earth. Peridot reveals that all of these experiments only attack Gems because their shattered consciousness is desperate to become whole again, and the Cluster wants to form for the same reason — though fortunately Steven manages to calm down the Cluster which agreed to be willingly bubbled for the sake of Earth.
  • The Gem monsters. At the end of the Gem War, the Diamonds unleashed a superweapon against Earth that corrupted every active (gems in items seem to have been unaffected) gem that wasn't protected by Rose (like Garnet, Pearl, and Rose herself), transforming them into near-mindless and usually aggressive monsters. This happened to nearly every Crystal Gem, as well as at least some Homeworld-loyalist gems that didn't manage to evacuate in time.
• Steven Universe: Future: Steven's corrupted self is a pink Kaiju-like monster created from his guilt, trauma and out of control powers. While mindless and powerful in that form, he's not truly evil, as he only attacks whenever he's threatened, and after realizing his loved ones are giving him a Cooldown Hug, he stops struggling and actually starts to listen to their words of unconditional love and assurance.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man: Like in the comics, Doctor Connors was a kind, dedicated scientist who was Happily Married to his wife (also a scientist), a loving father to his son, and acted as a mentor to the three teenagers who interned at his lab (Peter Parker, Gwen Stacey, and Eddie Brock). However, he was desperate for a way to regrow his lost arm, leading to him using an untested formula on himself. It seemed to work... but, right in the middle of celebrating, Connors began undergoing further changes and fully transformed into the Lizard... while his horrified family watched.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): The Pulverizer in "Pulverizer Returns." He wanted to become a mutant so badly that he willingly subjected himself to the mutagen even after being warned repeatedly how dangerous it is, only to end up painfully transformed into a big feral blob of Hollywood Acid. The turtles manage to subdue him and bring him back to the lair, where they vow to find a cure.
• Bizarro in Superman: The Animated Series. He starts as a nigh-perfect clone of Superman, but soon after his first confrontation, his skin begins flaking off and his mind begins deteriorating, reducing him to a witless brute that only wants to be a hero, oblivious to the damage his stupidity is causing.

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