The life of a Ghost Rider is not without hardships...
- The lives of those who survived the Penance Stare are irrevocably changed, for better or worse.
- The Undersiders are the earliest on-screen example. The Penance Stare brings up some really bad memories or brings a heart-rending revelation. For Grue, he learns that an old man died during one of his previous heists prior to joining the Undersiders, and Grue originally prided himself on having no casualties in his track record. Rachel is reminded of her Trigger Event, specifically how her pet wolf didn't stop at just her bitch of a foster mother but killed the other foster children. Lisa learns some of the people she broke ended up committing suicide, which hits her harder than she'd care to admit since it reminds her of what happened with her brother. The only one who comes out mostly unscathed is Alec of all peoplenote .
- Purity and Rune are some of the biggest Nazi supporters, with the latter feeling her parents weren't supportive enough to the cause. The Penance Stare did a number on them as it had with the Undersiders. Purity learns she killed multiple families, including those in a similar situation to hers, and while the specifics of what the Penance Stare did to Rune aren't given, she's been described as looking like a husk of her former self.
- Arguably the one hurt the worst by the Penance Stare is Squealer. If the Wards' aren't exaggerating, Sherrel rarely, if ever leaves her lab and jumps at almost everything while looking over her shoulder as if she's expecting something.
- Taylor's life since becoming the Brockton Bay Ghost Rider is not the best, to put it mildly. She, her mother, and Emma are saved from the ill-fated car crash that would have killed Annette Hebert in canon, but Taylor ends up bound to Zarathos, a literal demon from hell that takes great pleasure in hurting sinners. By her own admission, she spent six months trying to get him to stop or dial back, but she stopped after he showed her the absolute worst humanity has to offer, among them being a dirty cop who raped a woman and left her to be gangbanged by anyone who happened to find her.
- Speaking of the Heberts, Brimstone Chapter 2 shows that Danny and Annette never stopped looking for their daughter and spent three years trying to find her. Imagine the shock and horror when they learn Taylor has been found...and they see her in PRT custody and in a custom-made jail cell meant to house some of the most dangerous parahumans on the planet. To top it off, they get a first-row seat to witnessing Taylor becoming the Ghost Rider, a process that Taylor herself tries to fight against since she doesn't want them to see her become a monster and begs Zarathos to stop. He refuses.
- With a Vengeance starts with Taylor killing two criminals working for Satana Hellstrom. One of the criminals she kills, Jeremy, is the POV character at the start of the beginning, with said POV showing that he wants to give his sister a good life, even if it means getting involved with scum of the earth. While Taylor barely hesitates in killing him off along with his partner, she makes it clear she didn't want to kill him, Zarathos' lingering influence for the past three years makes her act on what the Ghost Rider has been doing since she got her powers.
