Woobie / Criminal Case

Being a Crapsack World, many people live unpleasant lives in Criminal Case, but these people take the cake for how miserable theirs are.

General

• The player character's journey with the six police forces hasn't been an easy one. Not only are they always at the crime scene when tragedy strikes, but half of the time the victim is someone who they've met and even befriended beforehand. And that's not even noting how many times someone has been trying to hurt or kill them on the spot, the betrayals of three very close friends in the Pacific Bay PD, the Bureau, and T.I.M.E., the deaths of people the player has worked with, like Frank, Michelle, Dupont, Nathan, Rupert, Mia, or Rita and having to leave their good friends when they're done restoring peace to a region. Despite all this, the other characters' dialogue implies that they always manage to pull themselves together and not give up on their morals.
• David Jones, the player's partner during Grimsborough and The Conspiracy, is constantly hit with wave after wave of misfortune, especially in the latter series. In the first season, he gets the short end of the stick with many of the suspects he and the player interrogate (with one of the few suspects who liked him trying to poison him to keep from getting arrested), and is always the one who gets scolded by Chief King. He also gets splattered with blood during Chief King's suicide, which clearly traumatizes him for the remainder of the season. He is seemingly more well-adjusted and calm when the player returns to Grimsborough for The Conspiracy, but the season forces a far worse Trauma Conga Line than anything the first season had to throw at him. His girlfriend goes missing for several months, then she suddenly returns with no memory of him. When she does remember him, she also regains horrible memories of what happened to her when she went missing, which causes her to unwillingly murder a scientist and sent to a psychiatric hospital, causing Jones's mental health to deteriorate. It gets bad enough that Tony Marconi, his rival, notices and tries to get him help, but Jones still doesn't trust him which leads to him being suspected of Tony's murder later on, and the shame from that makes him nearly leave the police force. After that, Zoe's murder drives him to try and commit suicide, and after he survives that, he is put on the brink of death again when he's caught in an explosion in the finale and loses an eye. After what he had to go through, Jones deserves more than a few cookies...

Grimsborough

• James Savage, a hunter from the Historical Center, is a loner who does not get along with many residents of the district. His tendency to be around in the wrong place and the wrong time made him an easy prime suspect in no less than four murder cases and his constant refusal to cooperate with the police had gotten him detained during one of the investigations. During the last one of the four cases he got involved in, his husky, who is his only friend, got killed. Even Jones admits that he's probably the unluckiest guy around.
• Chad Baker in the University Arc goes through an awful lot. He starts out as a Jerk Jock, but crushes on queen bee Madison Springer adorably, even when she doesn't appear to love him back, and he mellows out. He's always helpful in every case he's a suspect in, fixes up the patrol car after Jones gets a flat tire, and finally gets his dream girl when they are crowned Prom King and Queen. Then, Madison's tiara explodes, drenching Chad in blood. He also realized that Madison did in fact, care for him, but due to her Amish upbringing and Secret Identity, couldn't let him get close.
• The Hersberger siblings from "The Devil's Playground" (Case #36). The case victim was Hannah's lover, who was killed by her father for not being an Amish, and his death turned her into a suicidal mess until the player helped her snap out of it in the Additional Investigation. The murder was witnessed by her younger brother Isaac, and the shock traumatized the young boy so much that he began to see the killer as a monster, and refused to speak to anyone aside from Grace. Then he's told that the "monster" is actually his father, and Grace and the PC have to help him cope afterwards.
• There's Adam Bentley from Maple Heights. He is first introduced as an Upper-Class Twit with a disturbing hobby of "copying" the richest and most influential people in the district, who conveniently gets killed off once he had a falling out with them. Not only is he innocent of all the crimes he was a suspect of, he's actually a rather pathetic character who is desperate to fit in the glamorous crowd, even changing his name and identity, but no one else took him seriously because he lacks an affluent background. Case #50 then reveals that he's a former Foster Kid (which hints at a Dark and Troubled Past and probably explains why he's so desperate to make it big in the high society), and the case victim was his foster brother. Adam is visibly saddened by his brother's death, especially since he turned Roland away when the latter moved into Grimsborough, just so that he can hide his background.
• Sabrina Kingston from "Good Girls Don't Die" (Case #48) is another example. Pressured to attend Harvard to avoid disownment by her parents, she bought drugs from Mayor Johnson's niece Veronica to boost her study performance. Because top colleges enforce drug tests on applicants, Sabrina asked her best friend Abigail Price to borrow her urine sample so she could pass. When Abigail refused, she tried again by creeping into the treatment room during Abigail's facial and threatening her with a laser gun. Unfortunately, she lost control of the gun and accidentally killed Abigail. When told that the drugs she took were actually duds, she was horrified at what she had done and broke down crying and begging Abigail for forgiveness. Even Grace admitted that meeting Sabrina was heartbreaking.
• The Aloki tribe from the last district of Grimsborough. They've been discriminated by other Grimsborough citizens for centuries, and the city was actually built on a mass murdering of their people during the Pilgrim ages, all for a gold mine that rightfully belonged to them. In the present day, they're confined to what's left of their native lands and are constantly paranoid that the city would take even more of it away, or that they'll be sent far away.

Pacific Bay

• Piotr Golovanov, one of the suspects in Chapter 11 (Heartless), is perhaps one of the nicest persons the player could encounter, who unfortunately happens to be related to Ivana Golovanov, a domineering, ultra-racist politician. Ivana apparently bullies him with her pro-Russian/Anti-Chinese propaganda, and imposed the family with radical Russian lifestyle to the point that Piotr suffers hepatitis from excessive vodka consumption. To make things worse, Piotr fell in love with a Chinese woman — whom he secretly married — but Ivana found out about it and murdered the girl because she could not stand the idea of having Chinese blood mixed in her heritage. Unlike most of the examples here, we never find out how he was doing after the investigation is over.
• Andrew Kamarov. In his first appearance in Chapter 15, he loses his mother and is kidnapped shortly afterwards. His nanny, whom he cares about, is arrested for the murder. In Chapter 17, he becomes an orphan when his father is also murdered.
• The "character arcs" of Pacific Bay invariably shapes the team member they focus on into Woobies.
  • Hannah goes through a lot of stress when her past ties with an anarchist group, the Inner Chaos, was revealed. She was visibly traumatized when she was forced to kill Fredo Mancini, the group's leader, before he could blow up the court house during his trial.
  • In Jazz Town, we get to see Yann's Dark and Troubled Past as he reveals that his parents were murdered by a serial killer. When he heard of the killer's return, he becomes obsessed with hunting them down despite Chief Marquez's pleas to leave them be, to the point that he gets detained as a suspect when the killer did murder someone else in Case 24. The serial killer in question is later revealed to be Freddie Alonzo, someone he's on a friendly terms with.
  • Even Amy, who initially has nothing but good memories of her home town — White Peaks — slowly becomes disillusioned by it when her ex-boyfriend is arrested for murder and cannibalism in chapter 28, and her childhood friend gets brutally murdered in the very next case. Then comes case 30, which forced her to treat her brother, her mother, and her crush as suspects, which makes her so distraught she tries to leave the police force. At the end of the case, (in which her brother — the only member of her family who had ever loved her — is revealed to be the District Killer), she suffers a massive Heroic BSoD and has to be put on leave for almost 4 cases.
  • Frank is starting to shape up as one as he begins to open up to the Player in Ivywood. The guy is estranged from his children, and apparently hasn't been in contact with them for years. He wants to become a better father to them, but not knowing what they are like, his initial attempts to make amends to them got rejected. Even when he's revealed to be a killer and had set up his own team members, it's hard not to feel sorry when he really was doing this to keep his family together and see his daughter again. Sadly, it's revealed that one of his daughters died in a car accident that drove him to drink and eventually divorce his wife. His other daughter contracted meningitis some time between the events of Ivywood and Paradise City which was so severe that she is now in an irreversible coma with no hope of awakening. In the penultimate case, his ex-wife is killed by Alden Greene and not long after Frank kills Alden, Bobby Prince shoots Frank in the head.
  • The player's duties in Ivywood was not a very pleasant experience for Russell either. Having been raised by a group of cultists called the Utopians (which is quite obviously based on Scientology), he gets uncharacteristically emotional whenever the team encounters the group during their investigations. He also has some issues with his father, a devout member of the cult, and seems unable to think straight around him. His obsession with bringing down the cult has also got him in deep trouble when he was abducted by one of their members in one of the Additional Investigations.
  • Even Chief Marquez isn't exempt when it comes to this. We find out in her home district, Rhine Canyon, that she is seen as a liar after seeing a UFO when she was six years old. Colonel Spangler is sent by the government to deny her claims and it alienates her from everyone, leading to her having trust issues even after 39 years. She ends up being a suspect in Spangler's death though she is found innocent and doesn't get peace of mind until the final Additional Investigation of Rhine Canyon.

World's Edition

• Elliot is revealed to be a Jerkass Woobie in one of the Sahara cases. He turns out to have suffered severe parental neglect for a while, with parents who sent him away just for the sake of going on vacations and forget to call their son when he works at the Bureau. All this prompts Elliot to call out Benjamin Scott for running away from a family that really loves him. It all culminates in Case 32 where Elliot is taken hostage and badly beaten by the criminal. Only a Big Damn Heroes from Jonah prevents a messy ending. And even worse, Elliot tries to pretend he's fine for Carmen's sake; she doesn't buy it for a second and wraps him in a tight hug. The look in his eyes the entire time proves that he's anything but fine. This memory comes back to haunt him in Case 42, where the woman who defended his kidnapper is suspicious that he's a SOMBRA mole, and the player can't do anything to defend him. Elliot is so hurt and shocked at this that he locks himself up in Dupont's library, refusing to talk.
• Andrew Stern, the Ambassador's son from the Sahara Region. He's an innocent little boy who just so happens to be in a war zone at the wrong time, and ends up kidnapped as part of the Sword's plan to trap the Bureau. After the team rescues him, he's traumatized until Lars helps him feel better.
• Marina Romanova, the profiler of the Bureau, discovered a corruption scandal of the Russian president in her youth, which nearly cost her her life. Luckily, the hitman, Jonah Karam missed due to reasons revealed later in the season. It doesn't help that she starts to distrust Russian officials, including her mother, Natasha. Her conflict with Natasha is so bad that Chief Ripley threatens her with suspension if another case will involve her mother. Even worse is that she turns out to be right, but no one believes her until Natasha reveals herself to be on SOMBRA's side.
• Yelena Tereshkova. Yes, it was wrong of her to murder the Senator at Natasha's behest, but when it was clear that the man was the only thing standing between Yelena and her dream of going into space, as in he was the one who rejected her applications, the fans felt for her. In addition, the character is always helpful to the player character in the missions, and even helps the player find Nikolai and stop SOMBRA's satellite. Her unusually harsh sentence struck many as cruel.
• Angela and Lars during Case 21. There's an epidemic sweeping through an Indian city, and the two worked for weeks to help research and find a cure, sacrificing their health and sleep in the process. At the beginning of the case, Jack laments that he can't do anything to help them despite the research taking a huge toll on their well-being. It gets worse as the case progresses, with Lars starting to become delirious and eventually, he's revealed to have been infected as well, and spends the rest of the case on the brink of death. Angela is forced to witness all this, and her reaction to the fact that her husband has just a few hours to live is extremely heartbreaking. In spite of how dangerous the circumstances are, the two refuse to give up and try their best to stay strong and helpful toward the player.
• Sanjay Korrapati, a street kid that the player encounters in India. While he isn't above stealing and annoying the Bureau, his life on the Indian streets is implied to be pretty harsh, to the point where he carries a knife to defend himself. In the first case he appears, the victim had tried to call animal services to take away his elephant, who seems to be his only friend. In the second, he travels to Bollywood hoping to draw inspiration from the stars there, only to be crushed when one of them called him a street rat and tore up a photo he bought with his pocket money. The latter incident was enough to drive him to tears when the player talks to him about it. In the last case of the region, his elephant dies, and he runs away to Tibet where he struggles even harder to survive. Later, he nearly dies in an avalanche. He does reappear in East Asia looking much better, but in reality, SOMBRA's influence had made him a Stepford Smiler. In the last two cases, he gets brainwashed into cutting off his own finger and participating in a game where children kill each other for someone else's benefit. His life takes a real turn for the better since being adopted by Carmen, but it's clear that his time with SOMBRA is still haunting him.
  • He becomes one again in Case 42, when Carmen is accused of being the SOMBRA mole. He runs up to the player tearfully begging them to not take her away from him again.
• The Tsukada siblings from the East Asia arc. Both were orphaned at a young age, and joined a gang to survive. However, while Chieko quits gang life to make an honest living, her brother Hiroshi chases after a promise of a better life which turns out to be SOMBRA. The two argue over it and Hiroshi runs away, leaving Chieko to regret what she said and spend four years searching for him. In the last case of the district, Hiroshi is revealed to have refused to kill other children on SOMBRA's orders, and is promptly murdered as an example. To make things worse, Chieko is the one who finds his body and is utterly devastated by his death.
• Baxter Fraser from the Oceania arc. At first, he seems like a simple boxing champ, but then it's revealed that he was experimented on without his consent. His only close friend, Riaja, was killed when she tried to escape. By the time he's encountered, he's a panicky wreck Properly Paranoid that someone is out to get him. When Elliott attempts to have him overcome his rage, it instead makes Baxter worse, and he runs away. He returns in the finale, working as a bodyguard for the US President, only to have the Vice President, a SOMBRA lieutenant, use his SOMBRA programming to force Baxter to kidnap the President. Frightened over what he had done and what others could make him do, he's found having a nervous breakdown in the middle of Times Square.
• After the end of the Africa arc, Lars. He's already been nearly killed by a plague, but now, his beloved wife Angela is revealed to have been a mole for SOMBRA, since even before he knew her. He confronts her in prison about this, and she is fairly aloof. He remarks coldly that she doesn't even care about their children because of what SOMBRA does to kids. Her fac¸ade cracks later, when she reveals she's always loved Lars, and even took great pains to keep the good things like her charity out of SOMBRA's clutches.
  • When he reappears in "Murder, He Wrote", Lars has transformed into a drunken mess and is threatening suicide by the end of Chapter 2.
• Edson Caetano from "Cheaters Never Win". His jealousy towards the victim (who was his rival in the Olympics) and resentment towards his steroid use led to him being easily manipulated by SOMBRA, who tricked him into giving the victim a lethal drug dose. While it had been wrong of him to do so, he wasn't even aware that SOMBRA existed or gave him a murder weapon until the deed was done, and after he's arrested, he cries over what he's done and is cooperative when the player interrogates him in prison.

Mysteries of the Past

• Harriet Patrick is a 16-year-old Irish immigrant who came to the USA to find a better life for herself and her cow. Instead, she had to deal with difficult immigration officers who refused to allow her cow in, harassment from a fellow passenger, fed only potatoes by her cousin who felt that taking care of her was too expensive, being exploited by her rich employer, and to top it off, murdered the case right after the one she was introduced in.
• Jordan Wilson, a friendly banker who attended a party to meet a woman he had been exchanging correspondence with. Only to discover that she had duped him. The woman, Lucrezia, had sent Jordan a picture of her sister instead of her. When Jordan was angered by the deception, he tried to leave, only for Lucrezia to grab him and, in an accident, she fell to her death from the lighthouse while he tried to free himself. While one could argue his reason for disliking her was shallow, it remains that Lucrezia did deceive him, and the death was a complete accident.
• Seamus O'Neill is another Irish immigrant who tries his best to make a decent living in Concordia but is constantly screwed out of luck. He was first "sold off" to an abusive employer by someone he trusted. Then, when he finally escaped the immigrant exploitation scheme, he got involved in the Irish gang, and was made to do much of their dirty work, such as helping convicted serial killer Fiona Flanagan escape from custody. Then, he fell in love with the heiress of the Italian gang, but he is later arrested for murder when he is forced to kill her enraged father in self-defense for trying to get her elope with him. He is then set free by the Irish gang members and is made to be their leader, while still being a fugitive. But he is eventually killed by a subordinate who discovered that he was still romantically involved with Giuletta.
• Giulietta Capecchi, big time. After the end of the Crimson Banks arc, her father, little sister, and her love Seamus are dead, and her mother tries to kill her with a bomb for having fallen in love with Seamus. She even tries to commit suicide but is thankfully stopped by the Player Character. Right after deciding to go on vacation and take a break from all the tragedy, she returns a few cases later as the leader of the resistance against Justin Lawson, only to murder Inspector Jaubert of The Justice Corps by accident and to go on the run with Enzo Jonas. Will someone please get the girl a cookie?
• Bernadine Rochester is pressured by her family to use her relationship with Chief Wright to spy on the Flying Squad. When she refuses to do such a thing, the patriarch threatens to lock her up in an Asylum. She's also experienced a lot of grief due to the death of her uncle Leopold, which she felt partly responsible for and almost overdosed on antidepressants because of the stress. The last arc was particularly hard for her. When Justin Lawson becomes Mayor, he cracks down on the Rochesters, whom he regards as the main source of corruption in the city. The Justice Corps confiscates most, if not all, of her assets, forcing her to flee her home and hide in the forest to avoid arrest and possible execution.
• Adelia Baldwin, the late Commissioner Baldwin's daughter, is forced to go to an institution for fallen women for being pregnant out of wedlock, only being so because her fiancé was murdered. When we see her in Capitol Peak, she is destitute as a result of being evicted from her home and forced into prostitution.
• The Woodford sisters, Faith and Hope. The eldest was wrongfully brought to an asylum by her parents just because she wanted to be a writer, escaped, got a job as a circus bearded lady under a false name, and then killed a lesbian knife thrower who found out her true identity. This all makes it heartbreaking when Judge Lawson sentences her back to the asylum. Then there's the youngest, Hope, who spent two cases desperately searching for her sister. These two girls have clearly been through a lot.
• The victim of Case 43, Aubrey Miller. A married herbalist and midwife, she was falsely accused of being a witch by a woman who spread the rumor to hide the fact that she had an affair with Aubrey's husband. And was drowned by a woman she was helping, who believed in the rumor and thought she was causing her pregnancies to constantly end in miscarriage.

The Conspiracy

• In the first case, Nathan. He's one of the very few non-Asshole Victims in the entire series, yet most of the suspects in that case had still treated him like crap before he was murdered. His girlfriend, Harper Stone, had fallen out of love with him and broke off their relationship, even though Nathan still loves her. A teacher at Fairview High had tried to get him fired from the zoo he worked at since she felt like he had violated safety rules; one of his coworkers began campaigning against him because he had to euthanize some animals as part of his job; and found himself unable to stop his boss from trafficking baby pandas. And the reason he was murdered? He had refused to doctor evidence for a former colleague of his during their coroner years, leading the latter's son to go to prison.
• Every suspect in Case 4. The victim, Brad Price hurt each one in a different way. First he tried to get Ace Boome's balloon kiosk kicked out to improve his own business. Then he ran over the psychiatric service dog of his childhood friend, Tristan Collins, and never apologized for doing it. He cheated on his fiancee Brooke and flower vendor Javier Morales with each other, when both truly and genuinely loved him. And worst of all, he bullied his massage therapist, Megan Lucas, in high school, including a prank where he dared her to dive into a pool during a party, not telling her that the pool was draining, letting her land on hard concrete, which resulted in her stuck in the hospital and ruining her dream of becoming a doctor. The last one is what gets him killed.
• Julian Ramis when he reappears in Case 5. He suffered from untreated depression because the Accidental Murder he committed five years ago made him an outcast. When he encounters the Player Character, he initially showed hostility towards them, believing that their investigation will ruin his life once more. Soon after Jones and Gabriel reassured him that he is a bright young man, his father is murdered in the next case. He is later seen again at Grimsborough University, where the victim of Case 38 had told him that there was no future for a "criminal" like him, pushing him to tears. Throughout the case, it's implied that he's almost never had any good days in his life and that not many people were willing to give him a chance until the player came along.
• Richard Harding, a friendly plumber fixing all of the earthquake's destruction. He's a Jerkass Woobie because he murdered Doctor Gibbs, but his reason is more than justified: Richard was infected with HIV because Doctor Gibbs used a contaminated needle, then told his wife about it, causing her to divorce Richard. No wonder the guy was infuriated.
• Robyn Ash, a bubbly (if not a bit vain) party girl. She hired popular DJ Kalua Kaboom to DJ at her 21st birthday party, asking her not to use strobe lighting so as to not upset her younger sister Piper's epilepsy. However, Kalua ignored her and used strobe lighting anyways, resulting in Piper suffering an ultimately fatal seizure. Heartbroken at her sister's death and the fact that Kalua could use her wealth to evade justice, Robyn attacked and killed Kalua, taking a photo of her body afterwards. Not only was her motivation tragic and went against her Valley Girl persona, she also revealed upon being caught that taking a picture of her crime only made her feel worse about her sister's death.
• Zoe Kusama. She is introduced as a missing person, later revealed to be Jones's girlfriend, and when she is found, she has no memory of who she was or of Jones. When she does start regaining her memories, they were all of the horrible things that happened to her underneath the DreamLife dome, which culminates in Case 34 where she finally remembers everything that happened, and when she confronts the head scientist who experimented on her, she ends up killing him, unable to hold back her rage. She gets arrested and sent to a psychiatric hospital, where in spite of Jones's support towards her, she is treated badly by the staff and other patients despite her having done nothing to them. On top of everything, she gains unwanted powers from the Brezelium she was injected with during the experiments, which attracts the attention of Louis Leroux and gets her murdered by him.
• Wendy Stokes, a botanist under the DreamLife dome. She's one of the few people under the dome who knew that Dreamlife was up to no good, but she had gotten in too deep with the organization right before her girlfriend was murdered. In addition, she genuinely loved Barb and was only angry at her for the fact she was about to leave the dome without her. Eventually, she manages to quit her job, only to be taken to a laboratory and frozen to death in seconds. And she was murdered by her intern, who had no ill will towards her and was forced into killing her as part of an experiment, to boot.
• Tony Marconi becomes one posthumously at the end of the Misty Grove arc. His attempt to leave his life of crime behind him was cut short when Rozetta forced him to dispose of bodies for Dreamlife or risk having his estranged scientist son, Emilio, end up being one of them. When Tony finally gets the opportunity to reunite with his son, he ends up being murdered by him for trying to crush DreamLife.
• Isabella Narcisse, the wife of the Asshole Victim René in Case 38. The victim wanted complete control over their finances, even raging at her for going grocery shopping without him knowing. When she turns out to be his killer, she reveals that René caused them to go bankrupt by investing in the wrong stocks. When Isabella confronts him over this, he laughs it off and tells her to be more understanding, she stabs him to death with a fork, only to regret it moments after. She gets a very lenient sentence, but it's telling that she had nothing to waste going to prison.
  "I guess I can say goodbye to my retirement by the sea."
• Mia Loukas for the entire Spring Fields district. Her visit back to her home district starts with her father acting aloof towards her and then arguing with her multiple times. Although they manage to reconcile, shortly afterwards Sheriff Loukas is found murdered, and Mia has to hear his killer talk about how much he deserved it in court. This drives Mia into a Heroic BSoD, and she never quite gets over her father's death. Somewhere in between, she crashes the player's car by accident and panics over it, and gets harassed by the CEO of Grim Foods who holds her responsible for his son's incarceration. Then at the end of the district, she is killed in a car bomb made by her own boyfriend. And to make things worse, Mia wasn't even the intended target. The bomb was supposed to kill the player, but Mia happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, resulting in her brutal, undeserved death.

Travel In Time

• Zosime, the kindhearted wife of Pelagios in Case 4. She is expecting her first child in her 40s, which is viewed as a miracle by both her and her husband. However, Pelagios decides to exploit her pregnancy to gain attention for himself, making people invade her personal space and causing her severe stress. She is later revealed to be his killer, and when confronted about it, she breaks down into tears and reveals that a midwife had said the baby would be a girl, and Pelagios was furious at this revelation, believing that only a son was worth Zeus's blessing and tried to force Zosime to abort the baby. Not wanting to lose her child, Zosime saw no choice but to kill her husband. Even though she has the chance to escape punishment, she accepts that what she did was wrong and is exiled from her city. Even Zara feels sympathy for her, wondering if she'll be okay.
• Noah Lowe, the first victim when the team arrives in 1969, is a complete aversion to Asshole Victim. A typical country boy attending Woodstock, he fell in love with a poet, James Henderson, and planned to move to New York City with him. Unfortunately for him, James was unwilling to commit to a full relationship and rejected the offer. When his father Alfred found out about Noah's homosexual inclination, he kicked him out of the house, which Alfred would later come to regret after his death. He then hit it off with musician Ian Devine, only to be scared off by Ian's reaction to an acid trip. And to make it worse, his entire death was an accident - his killer, Major Perkins, had a PTSD flashback while debating with Noah and accidentally hit his head too hard against a van's door while trying to protect him from what she thought was gunshot, resulting in Noah dying of blunt force trauma.
• Orlando, the team's historian, gets hit with this in the Altered Present. When the team joins forces with the resistance against the totalitarian regime, Orlando meets their historian, Sirius Atwood, and realizes that he was his husband in the original timeline, who died years before the events of Travel In Time. However, Sirius doesn't know who Orlando is, meaning that they never married in this timeline. Orlando is visibly filled with grief for the rest of the Altered Present Arc, to the point where it distracts him from his duties. He also has to deal with the fact that they must eventually fix the timeline, which means he'll have to lose Sirius again. It gets bad enough where he can't find closure and writes a letter to Sirius to tell him about their relationship and his death in their timeline, which is luckily intercepted before anyone can read it. When all is said and done, he moves onto the next district with the team without getting the chance to see Sirius again or say goodbye to him. Not helping matters is at the end of the season, while everyone else is overjoyed to be home, he is still saddened by the memories of Sirius and knows he must come to terms with them.
• Simone Severine, a former employee of Henri Pelletier from Case 25. She is very courteous and polite towards the team and mentions that the victim would be horrible to his employees, including herself. When she is revealed to be his killer, she breaks down and reveals to the team that she had actually been his slave when he was young, which subjected her to even worse cruelty than she had previously mentioned from him. Simone's family had been torn apart by the victim when he sold her parents off his tobacco plantation, and when she and her sister had tried to escape, Pelletier caught Simone's sister and whipped her to death while she watched from a distance, causing Simone to swear to get her revenge on him one day. Even Jack says that he probably would've done the same thing if he had been in her shoes.

Supernatural Investigations

• Serena Kwame, the mother of werewolf Danny Kwame in Case 4. When her son became a werewolf, she dismissed it as nonsense and thought he was befriending a bad crowd. Only when Danny finally did prove to his mother that he really was a werewolf by transforming in front of her, Serena was very terrified. He gave her a book about werewolves to learn about his state, when reading that Serena learned that werewolves could be killed from being shot with silver bullets or with wolfsbane. She bought a gun and shot Danny during a full moon thinking she could cure him, only to see that she had killed her son in the progress.
• Priya Desai, the chemist for the Supernatural Hunters, is a werewolf herself and was subject to a lot of crap because of it. She had been unwillingly transformed one day after being bitten on her way home and was subject to discrimination and hatred from both her loved ones and strangers, which made her reluctant to tell the player about her status at first. Her transformations are also incredibly traumatic for her as she is forcefully confined on every full moon until she reverts back to normal. The fourth case of the season, which deals with the murder of a fellow werewolf, proves to be even more stressful for her as she must deal with the shock of seeing one of her own dead and later has a werewolf hunter threaten to kill her.
  • It's even worse in Case 11 where the victim is the aforementioned hunter who tried to kill her. Before the case even starts, Priya breaks out of the cage she locks herself in on the full moon nights she shifts. When she finally reappears, she's a mess, lost and distraught and blames herself for Ruth's death as she can't remember what happened. It's also revealed that Ruth's threat has haunted her even up to then.
  • Even more so when she joins Annette's wolf pack in order to infiltrate them in Case 12. She grows fond of Zander, making it kinda of heartbreaking when Xander finds out she only join for watching them and not really staying.
• Zander himself is one, though he's more of a Iron Woobie. Although he's usually a very nice person, his first appearance has him acting aloof towards the team, and for good reason. His pack in San Francisco had been slaughtered by hunters, leaving himself and his friend Danny as the only survivors. However, Danny gets killed shortly after, leaving Zander alone and fearful that he'll be next. He later joins Annette Strong's werewolf pack, where she withheld important information from him and ends up murdered, leaving a distraught Zander to try and keep the pack together. At around the same time, he finds out that Priya had only joined the pack to spy on them, which hurts him since he genuinely cared for her. With everything that's happened, it's a miracle that he remains kindhearted and willing to forgive and help the team.
• Chief Jacob Arrow, one of two founders of the Supernatural Hunters. 25 years prior, He and his wife Lily were on a romantic honeymoon in Saguro National Park when Lily was brutally murdered by a vampire, prompting Jacob to realize that vampires are real and create the Supernatural Hunters with Ben. During Case 6, he starts behaving very grumpy due to being in the very place where he ignored Spirtual Healer Amanda Harrison's warning that Lily was going to die and the fact that she was murdered in the same room as the case's victim. After the team helps him overcome his grief, all seems to be well until Case 25, where Lily is revealed to have been the Demon Queen all along, and Jacob can only look at her tearfully as she tries to sweet talk him. This leaves him inconsolable for most of Case 26, which only gets worse later on when he finds out that Falcon, his old mentor, had masterminded Lily's murder and taken him in as a form of damage mitigation. Jacob does not take any of the news well at all and ends up running away from the team.
• Case 9 has four out of the five suspects who suffered massively at the hands of the victim, Dr. Lucrezia Stein. Conjoined twins Charity and Mercy had been normal twin girls until Dr. Stein stole them from their mother and forcefully sewed them together. Former Officer Greg Schmidt, already insane from having seen a ghost and dismissed by his colleagues during the tarot card murders, was abused and frequently put into solitary by the victim, furthering his Sanity Slippage. Savannah Austin, the victim's own daughter, was subject to cruelty from her mother even as a child, and not only was dumped into the asylum because Dr. Stein disapproved of her boyfriend, but she would drug Savannah nonstop in order to prevent her from escaping in spite of her being completely sane. Then there's Adam Enstrom, who was supposedly cured of his mental illness by the victim and made her assistant, but she would often abuse him for petty reasons such as playing games with the asylum patients, and generally treated him as if he were subhuman. That's because Adam is actually an Artificial Human, put together with body parts from people who died under Dr. Stein's care. Unlike his creator, Adam was very empathetic and couldn't stand the way she treated the other patients, which led to him trying to "fix" her through trepanning, killing her in the process. He is so remorseful of his actions that he commits suicide shortly after the team convicts him of the murder. It's quite telling that when each of these suspects are interrogated for the second time, Gwen reacts to their stories with absolute horror.
• Sam Ellis, a ski lift operator who is secretly a werewolf of Alpha Annette Strong's pack. Years ago, his young werewolf son was murdered by wicked supernatural hunter Ruth Wu. Sam would spend years grieving his son until he saw Ruth at the slopes. Filled with grief at this point, he waited for the full moon to fully transform into his werewolf state and brutally took out Ruth in vengeance. This motive can make it sad when Annette exiles him and banishes him to the forest.
• Hannah, the Roundhead Lake monster in Montana. When we meet her after solving Case 14, we learn that despite what the locals think, she is actually a sweet and kind of adorable creature who went into hiding when the locals accused her of killing the case's victim, farmer Wyatt Ewing. We also learn that the said victim stole her pearl necklace and was even planning to kill her by draining the lake, prompting Shopkeeper Poppy Winters to kill him. It's sad thinking of what this cute monster has gone through.
• Four of the five suspects in Case 16 were treated harshly by Dan Kelly. Waitress Heather Night was already viewed as odd and different by the citizens of Parkford. Dan ridiculed her for being a Wiccan despite freedom of religion, then hypocritically blackmailed her to cast a protection spell on his house, or else he would tell everyone in town she was a witch. Moose Nylund, a big man with a love of animals, was nearly cheated by Dan for his station wagon and then was almost framed by him for insurance fraud. Pastor Stan Jensen of the town's church was humiliated by Dan when he sexistly bewildered a female pastor during her sermon. Finally, there's Dan's wife, Alice Kelly, who is merely abused and tormented by her controlling spouse, rendering her into a Stepford Smiler. It is revealed that Alice is actually a golem created by Dan with the help of witch Agnes Leek to be an always-obedient wife after he murdered the real Alice for defying him. After finding photos of Stan with the real Alice of moments she couldn't remember, she confronted him about it and he revealed to her the truth, threatening that she will meet the same fate if she ever disobeys him. Fearing for her life and knowing he will repeat the same cycle if she defies him, Alice kills him with a shovel. It all becomes heartbreaking in the Additional Information where Alice is so remorseful that she tells Luke and the player to deactivate her.
  • Heather becomes one again in Case 20. It is shown that her outcast status led her to leave Parkford to find somewhere else hoping she could be accepted. When she found the Midwest witch coven, she hoped that they would accept her by inviting her to Walpurgis Night, only to be denied by good witch Belinda. The coven's head witch Morgana Blackhawk promises her to override the vote and accept her into the coven, but it turns out that Morgana had used Heather to murder Belinda because she found out that she was behind the child kidnappings. Heather didn't even know that Morgana was kidnapping children, causing her to break down in remorse, which makes it all tearful when Jacob hands her over to the authorities for Belinda's murder.
• Danny Burnett, a young boy living in the Bellevue Towers in Chicago who witnessed his little brother being kidnapped by a goat-headed witch with glowing green eyes at night. He was so traumatized by the event that he refused to talk to anyone at all. And he's 9 years old!
• Andrew Lodge, the boyfriend of Case 18's victim Sharon Decker. On Valentine's Day, Sharon lured him to Charming Bridge and told him she wanted them to commit a Suicide Pact so they could be together for eternity. She even carved an infinity symbol on her arm and wanted him to do the same. Frightened at this sudden and forced idea, Andrew refused to go through with it, angering Sharon. She still tried to make him jump with her, which resulted in Andrew accidentally pushing her off the bridge while fighting back in self-defense. It's easy to feel bad for him after learning he went through all of that.
• Dolly Hale, a teenage runaway from Nebraska and Dorothy Gale Expy we meet in Case 19. As a little girl, she and her parents went to the theme park Aquamarine City. While there, she got horrified by entertainer Norm White's lion performance. The terrifying encounter left her traumatized and left her having nightmares about him. Her therapist suggested her to go Aquamarine City and talk to Norm about the experience, only to find him dead when she got there, unable to actually confront her fear. Mid-investigation, Dolly tried to get back home to Nebraska as her trip has been a disaster, only for Luke to tell her to stay until the investigation over. After the case is solved and she is proven innocent, her dog Tutu ends up eating Vixenglove berries, leaving him fatally unconscious. In order to save him, the Supernatural Hunters inject him with vampire blood, leaving him with vampiric traits. The poor girl could really use a hug right now.
• Gwen Harper, the player's female partner of the Supernatural Hunters. She was raised in a family of cruel Supernatural Hunters, including a very controlling mother, and was practically forced to learn how to hunt monsters and watch her parents brainwash her brother into becoming a rotten hunter just as they are. She is also prone to short-term romantic relationships, including a vampire boyfriend who, despite genuinely caring for her, tried to bite her and a girlfriend who gets possessed by the vengeful ghost of a friend murdered in a Human Sacrifice ritual. Then in the Midwest arc, Gwen begins to have recurring demonic nightmares about a Demon Queen coming towards her. It turns out that Gwen is having these because she looked at a demon in the eye. Because of the nightmares, she decides to take a break from dating for a while. It only gets worse after her mother is murdered and she's flagged as a suspect. Although Gwen didn't have a good relationship with her mom, she still grieves for her death, even more so when she discovers that Dolores had actually been trying to reconcile with her right before, and calls it one of the worst days of her life.
• Tilly Harper, Gwen's little sister, also counts. Being the baby of the Harper family, Tilly was at risk of being corrupted and brainwashed by her mother just as her brother was. When we finally meet her in Case 23, her mother Dolores is attempting to force to end her friendship with a Wiccan classmate. Then in the additional information, Tilly runs away from her family, finally having enough of them, saying would rather be with Gwen, whom she deeply loves and admires. This forces Dolores to begrudgingly allow the sisters to be together. This makes it all sad to think that a 13-year-old girl could go through all that, but she was fortunately saved before it changed her.

City of Romance

• Two people out of the five suspects of Case 1 both went through harsh times thanks to French Model Elise Marx.
  • Lola du Maurier, a photographer who learned that she and Elise were actually half-sisters on their father's side. Lola wanted to bond with her half-sister, only for Elise to brush it off, humiliating her. The poor woman can use a hug.
  • Alexis Cardinot, a male model and friend of the victim. We learn that he was actually Elise's boyfriend, whom she treats as a sex toy. When Alexis announced to Elise that he no longer wanted to be her sex toy anymore, she blackmailed him by threatening to post humiliating photos of him online. Fearing for both his career and his family (especially his mother) being ruined, Alexis laced Elise's perfume with rat poison. Seeing what he was going through can make it sad when Judge Leburn sentences him to 27 years.
• Béatrice Sanchez, an apprentice seamstress at the Chior fashion company. Unlike most victims in this franchise, Béatrice was completely sympathetic. She was tormented and urged by Charles Pilnerfield to get cosmetic surgery, unauthorizedly altered her mentor Candy Wu's garments, causing Candy to get in trouble with Charles, was bullied by Supermodel Noémie Leprince, and dating aspiring actor Valentin Faure, only to learn that he is already in a relationship with someone else and was only using her to get an invite to the Chior show after-party. To top it off, her murder was because of an honest mistake, Béatrice tried on an important and special dress for the Chior fashion show, ripping apart the seams. When an overworked and stressed Candy spotted Béatrice, she killed her in a fit of blind anger.