Woobie / Disney

If only the world wouldn't get in the way
If only people would just let you play...

"Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind. But, if you wanna leave, you can. I'll remember you, though. ...I remember everyone that leaves."

— Lilo Pelekai, Lilo & Stitch

Even the happiest place on Earth can hide some very troubled characters.

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Disney movies

• Aladdin is a peasant who just happens to be skilled in petty thievery, although he only steals food to survive. He finds himself tricked into entering the death trap that is the Cave of Wonders and is hunted by Jafar once he learns that Aladdin still has the magic lamp.
  • Jasmine is cooped up in the palace, forcing her to sneak out to have any fun. Her mother died when she was young, her father is unwittingly brainwashed by Jafar, and over the course of the movie, is set up in an arranged marriage with him. Dang...
• The title character of Bambi quite infamously lost his mother to a hunter when he was a young fawn. The Interquel Bambi II charts his somewhat contentious upbringing by his father, the Great Prince, as well as his rivalry with Ronno, who bullied him and his girlfriend Faline up to their adulthood. The young prince has also survived two injuries from encounters with hunters; one where he fell off a cliff and another where he was shot at.
• Beauty and the Beast: The Beast. At first, he's hot-tempered, nasty and really unkind, but then you start to take pity on him, especially when he starts to like Belle. He is even more of a woobie in the musical adaptation of the Disney film, particularly during his "woobie song" "If I Can't Love Her". Plus, being that fuzzy, he's probably not all that terrible to hug. Adding to that is the fact that he willingly lets Belle leave and expects her to never come back, even though it means he'll never turn back to normal and never see the only woman he ever loved again. This is a step up from the fairy tale when the Beast just gives Belle a three-day limit.
• Big Hero 6: Hiro Hamada. He loses his older brother — the only family member he looked up to — in a fiery explosion that happened in front of his eyes, is nearly consumed by vengeance and grief when he discovers the truth of Tadashi's death, not to mention his breakdown when Baymax pulls a Heroic Sacrifice. You'd need a personal healthcare companion too if this stuff happened to you.
• Brother Bear:
  • You'll definitely feel sorry for Koda when you find out that his mother was the bear that Kenai killed.
  • Rutt. In the first movie, he gets his antler broken after his brother Tuke "totals" a mammoth and after a brief argument, he doesn't want to be Tuke's brother anymore, but Tuke reminds Rutt of why he's there for him. In the second movie, Rutt gets his heart broken when Tuke woos both Anda and Kata, but his Woobie-ness gets Anda and Kata's attention away from Tuke.
• Chicken Little is scorned and mocked by almost his entire hometown (with the exception of his best friends), all because he warned everyone that the sky was falling (because he was hit by an acorn). His dad never even stands up for him and is really embarrassed from the incident. You can’t help but wishing to hug the little guy.
• The titular character from Cinderella. She lost her father at a young age and is forced to put up with her two evil step-sisters while her step-mother, Lady Tremaine, abuses her on a daily basis. When she comes down the stairs, wearing her new dress for the ball, the first thing Anastasia and Drizella do is tear up her dress while Tremaine just watches with an Evil Grin on her face. While her step-mother and step-sisters go to the ball, Cinderella is left in tears. Oh and she has to do hard chores every day with little-to-no breaks at all. If The Fairy Godmother hadn't come, God knows what Cinderella's future might've been.
• Dumbo is scorned and mocked by pretty much everyone other than Timothy and his mother, whom she gets separated from after she tries to stick up for him.
• Encanto: Several members of the Family Madrigal are victims of the pressure and expectations set up by Abuela Alma, making it easy to feel bad for them
  • The Protagonist Mirabel Madrigal. It's hard not to feel bad for her, being the only child of her family born without a magical gift, which is not helped at all by the villagers and even members of her own family constantly bringing it up in front of her. As the ceremony that gives family members their Gift takes place when they are five as a big public event, a little girl barely out of toddlerhood is publicly humiliated and declared "un-special". As seen in the individual character posters reveal, she doesn't even have her own golden door and thus, doesn't have her own room and is stuck in the nursery even in her mid-teens. And Alma's harsh treatment on Mirabel for not having a gift (something she had no control over) makes it especially easy to empathize with the protagonist.
  • Poor Tío Bruno. His own family believes his gift is an omen of bad luck, his community shunned him thanks to a well-intentioned but badly worded joke, and he had internalised all these judgments to the point of taking himself out of the family to protect his youngest niece. But he loves his family so much he couldn't actually leave, preferring to hide inside Casita in order to try to mend every new crack and to be able to at least see his family together and happy without him.
  • Mirabel's older sister Luisa Madrigal. Despite being the strongest of the family physically, she's a Bruiser with a Soft Center who wants to make her family proud. Remember, despite her size and strength, she's still only 19 years old. She feels like she has the world literally on her shoulders and she's not even out of her teens. She is also very stressed 24/7 and has a strong protective instinct towards her family that makes her think she needs to always be strong for everyone else.
  • The Baby of the Bunch Antonio Madrigal. He's a sweet, cute child who is extremely nervous and anxious on his gift giving ceremony because of everyone, especially Abuela Alma, hoping he receives a serviceable gift. He can feel the family's worry that Mirabel's lack of a gift might mean Casita no longer grants powers, and he may not have one either. He was also noted to be an introvert who is not comfortable around other people but is later thrust into the spotlight when his ceremony arrives. Plus when you think of his close relationship with Mirabel. He does not want to leave her behind but it seems like the whole family AND village want to tear them apart for the sake of having a gift. It gets better, but it's easy to feel for the little guy.
  • Mirabel's oldest sister Isabela Madrigal is a Jerkass Variant. At first she comes off as a self-centered jerk, being referred to as a "prima donna" and "señorita perfecta" by Mirabel, but it's later revealed she feels greatly pressured to be perfect, even being willing to marry a man she doesn't love to please her family. Her song is entirely about breaking free from their expectations and doing what makes her happy.
• The Fox and the Hound:
  • Tod, oh so much. His mother is killed when he's only a baby, he gets chased and shot at by Chief and Slade, respectively (twice!), Copper first disowns him and then wants him dead, Tweed drops him off in a wildlife preserve for his own safety leaving him without survival skills and a friend in the world, not to mention his neighbor is a cantankerous Bad Ol' Badger. Things get a lot better after he meets Vixey, though... then worse... then better.
  • Tweed as well; it's made very clear that Tod is her only source of companionship, and that it's just as heartbreaking for her as it is for him, if not more so, when she has to Shoo the Dog to protect him.
• Frankenweenie: Victor lost his dog, Sparky, after the latter tried to grab Victor his baseball but Sparky ended up getting run over. If the montage of Victor trying to cope with losing Sparky as well as drawing a picture of him in his notebook during school doesn't make you feel sorry for Victor, nothing will.
• Frozen gives both the sisters a really hard time:
  • Princess Anna has been isolated under the castle and being shut out for Elsa for 13 years without any explanation as to why and upon losing her parents, is left to mourn them alone without her sister to comfort her. Despite this, she continues to love her sister and never gave up hope on reconnecting with each other. Even in the present times, when she got struck in the heart to a painful death by her sister and betrayed by the man she thought was her true love, she retains her caring and optimistic attitude to the point that when given the opportunity between getting a kiss to save herself or saving Elsa from being killed by Hans, she immediate rushes in to save her sister from being killed instead. In the end in spite of all the odds against her, her selfless Act of True Love has not only saved everyone including herself but also allows her to finally reconnect with her sister after being separated for so long.
  • Elsa. She was born with powers she couldn't control and had to live in fear that her powers will spiral out of control. This led to her parents having to isolate her from the outside world in fear that her powers may hurt others or that others might hurt her. Elsa grew up with low self-esteem due to this. When she gets older and her powers get exposed, she accidentally causes an Endless Winter to hit the kingdom, and she runs away in order to protect everybody. She does get better at the end though. After Anna performs a Heroic Sacrifice to save her and the The Power of Love saves Anna at the end, Elsa finally learns to love herself and control her powers and reconnects with her sister in the process. Even more so in "Frozen Fever", when she has to deal with a cold, thanks to her illness interfering with her desperation to make up for Anna's isolated childhood. Best demonstrated when she struggles up the clock tower, edging increasingly into delirium, and then, when Anna saves her from falling off, apologizes for ruining her birthday again.
• Hercules: Despite having godly strength, the eponymous character of Hercules is one of these, especially when he's younger and gets frequently ridiculed when he just wants to help. He's regularly called a "freak" by the local townspeople for his strength and desperately wishes to know why his birth parents abandoned him, even though he has loving adopted parents. When he finally finds out he's a demi-god, he undergoes brutal training to become a hero and earn his place back in Olympus and gets betrayed by the first woman he ever loved.
• In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Quasimodo himself loses his mother and is almost thrown in a well as a baby, is raised in isolation by Judge Claude Frollo and taught that he's a monster and the world hates him. Then, when he finally gets the courage to leave Notre Dame and thinks the world loves him, he's suddenly humiliated by the whole town until Esmeralda intervenes, and has to face Frollo's rage, crying as he promises never to leave the cathedral again. After that, he realizes Esmeralda actually loves Phoebus instead of him, briefly breaking his heart, Frollo blames him for the destruction he inflicted on Paris, is chained to the belltower after attempting to warn the Gypsies, briefly thinks Esmeralda died after saving her, and is nearly killed by Frollo. All this makes it very hard not to feel sympathy for him, and cheer when he finally gets a happy ending.
• Lady from Lady and the Tramp goes through a number of unfortunate situations:
  • She gets ignored a lot during the time her owners are focusing on their son (Well if you were an expectant mother you would probably want to take care of yourself, however, it was exaggerated).
  • She nearly gets muzzled by Aunt Sarah just because she believed that she messed up the house (When it was actually her Siamese Cats). Any Aunt Sarah moments with her is basically a Woobie Moment.
  • She also gets sent to the pound.
• Lilo & Stitch:
  • Lilo is barely older than 5, yet she's lost both her parents, has no friends, her "dog" runs away, and she's about to be taken from her sister. By far the Woobiest moment is right before Stitch leaves and she so matter-of-factly says "It's ok if you leave. But I'll remember you. I remember everyone who leaves". And at the point, you just wanna grab the girl and hug her and cry over the injustice of it all.
  • Nani. She too seems rather isolated (David's the only guy her own age she really interacts with) and struggles with a part-time job and deals with a number of social workers, all to prove that she's fit to be her sister's legal guardian. And then she loses her job and tries like crazy to get a new one because otherwise, she doesn't have a chance of keeping Lilo. Towards the end, when Cobra Bubbles tells her he's sorry but he's going to have to take Lilo, Nani's expression is just so sad!
• The Lion King:
  • Mufasa. The poor guy got betrayed by his own brother and then brutally murdered.
  • Simba may be an annoying little kid, but he loses his father, Mufasa, and is convinced for years that he caused his death. His Woobie-ness increases in the sequel, when he has a nightmare where he can't save his father. Even as an adult, knowing that Mufasa's death was never his fault, he is still haunted by it and he still feels guilty.
  • Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed may be helping out the villain, but they're only doing so because of the way they've been treated. They're basically considered monsters by everyone just because they eat to survive.
  • Nala, who had to grow up under Scar's rule, and perhaps the biggest victim was Sarabi, who lost her husband and son in one day, had to live through Scar's reign, and got slapped into near unconsciousness by him.
  • A rare evil example, Nuka ends up being this for the sequel, the unpopular son of Zira, who is scolded and ignored constantly when he just wants a chance. He goes so far to please his mother it ends up killing him. This eventually leads Zira to finally notice him and is reflected upon in a deleted scene.
    Nuka: Well, I finally got your attention, didn't I?
• The Little Mermaid: Ariel could be this when King Triton goes into an Unstoppable Rage and destroys her collection of human knick-knacks just because she doesn't agree with him that Humans Are the Real Monsters. Then when she trades her voice for legs to win Eric's love, Ursula sabotages it by hypnotising him while posing as Vanessa and poor Ariel has to watch the love of her life announce his engagement to a total stranger. (Flounder, being an in-universe woobie, probably qualifies, too)
• The title heroine of Mulan would initially seem out of place in this trope, seeing as she's got a fantastic reputation of being the strongest Disney female character and an Action Girl to boot. And yet, she gets an entire song about how much she doesn't belong and how afraid she is of disappointing her family. She's also bullied relentlessly by the other soldiers after a bad first impression before they warm up to her and then she's shot by an arrow and kicked out of the army in the middle of a freezing cold mountain when she's exposed as a girl (which is mild compared to the standard — Shang would have had to behead her if she hadn't saved his life!)
• Oliver & Company:
  • Oliver the cat. The only one of his litter who wasn't adopted, he gets left out in the rain, getting chased by big, vicious dogs, ending up trying to get food from a hot dog vendor and kicked into the wall, and then when he gets help from a dog named Dodger to steal them, Dodger keeps them all for himself and goes back home. Oliver follows Dodger, despite being put through a variety of pranks along the way, and when he gets to Dodger's home, he is surrounded by a gang of dogs who hate him and want him dead. And all this is just early on.
  • Jenny, to a lesser extent, being a Lonely Rich Kid who gets a cat only for him to be taken away pretty quickly, then getting kidnapped herself.
  • Fagin himself is nearly a Jerkass Woobie for his shadier actions. For one thing, he has his dogs commit crimes on his behalf, and for another, he writes a letter to a wealthy cat owner saying to bring ransom or never see the cat again. But when you consider what a vicious loan shark is putting him through, you inevitably realize that he's the lesser of evils.
• Pinocchio:
  • Geppetto. He first desperately looks for his kid, then he get swallowed along Figaro and Cleo in the belly of a whale where he risks to die starving. Then Pinocchio dies saving his life leading Geppetto to mourn his son's loss until the Blue Fairy revives him as a real boy.
  • Pinocchio. The poor kid's naïveté leads him to some really awful situations.
  • All those poor kids who got turned into donkeys. Especially the one named Alexander.
• The Princess and the Frog:
  • Tiana has devoted her entire life to buying a mill to set up her planned restaurant in. The very day she gets enough money for it, the Jerkass owners tell that she was outbid, too bad for her. And when she pleads with them to take pity on her, as she worked so hard to get what she had, what do they say? "A woman in your...position, well you're better off staying where you're at". Ouch. Add in the theory that they themselves lied about or orchestrated the outbidding and it's very hard not to feel sorry for the poor girl.
  • Despite being a Handsome Lech and kind of a Spoiled Brat, it's easy to feel bad for Naveen when he admits that without his money, he doesn't know how to do anything for himself, which he only discovered when his parents cut him off. Plus he gets turned into a frog by Dr. Facilier and his identity stolen from him by someone he trusted and trapped in a box, with the intent for Lawrence to keep stealing his blood to keep up the charade.
• The king and queen from Sleeping Beauty, who tried for years to have a baby, and then once they had her, had to send her to live with the Fairies and didn't see her again until she was 16.
• The Sword in the Stone: The squirrel who falls for Wart may have been an Abhorrent Admirer to him, but it's hard not to feel for her when her heart is broken by Wart turning back into a human and she tearfully watches him leave. Even Arthur, who tried to avoid her the whole time, feels sad for her.
  • Wart (Arthur) has his moments, too, especially when Kay disparages him and Sir Ector punishes him unfairly.
• Rapunzel and Flynn from Tangled, especially at the end, when Rapunzel finds out that the woman she called mother actually kidnapped her in infancy and Flynn is stabbed and literally dies so Rapunzel can be freed.
• Tarzan:
  • Tarzan's parents are killed by a leopard when he's just a baby, and though he gets adopted by Kala, Kerchak makes it clear he doesn't think of Tarzan as true family because he's a human. He's an outcast among the other gorilla as a kid, then when humans arrive on the island, he's shocked to find there are other creatures like him and Clayton then manipulates Tarzan into revealing where his gorilla family are hiding so he can capture them and sell them, leading Kerchek to blame Tarzan and outright state they never should have taken him in.
  • Kala too, who loses her biological son to the same leopard who killed Tarzan's parents and has to watch a young Tarzan constantly being pushed away by the other gorillas, as well as dealing with Kerchak's cold attitude, then she ends up losing him too.
• Wreck-It Ralph:
  • The titular character. In the story of the game he's in, he was forced to live in the dump when his original home was bulldozed to make way for apartment buildings. He goes on to destroy said buildings but has to be stopped by Fix-It Felix Jr. When the player wins, Ralph gets thrown off the building. Outside the game? He doesn't get any sort of respect from the other residents of the game and really does live in the dump. In fact, he isn't even invited to his game's 30th-anniversary party, despite being integral to the game's plot. The movie's plot begins when he decides he wants to be the hero for once.
  • Fix-It Felix Jr. himself. He has a much better life than any of his three comrades, but he's a Nice Guy who tries to be friendly to Ralph (and is the only character in their world who even attempts to treat Ralph with respect), but his kindness is manipulated by the other citizens of the game into excluding Ralph when he's clearly not comfortable with it (note the bewildered look on his face when the Nicelanders demand that Felix gets rid of Ralph when he shows up at the game's 30th-anniversary party). In general, the guy's life is fine, and he's certainly not treated badly like Ralph is, but the people who supposedly adore him manipulate him into excluding someone who is just as much a part of the game as he is, and even if he never before realized just how badly Ralph was being treated, it still has to hurt to know that he's so nice that he's being forced to not be nice to someone he'd consider a friend!
  • Sergeant Calhoun. She was apparently programmed with "The most tragic backstory ever": The one time she didn't do a perimeter check was her wedding day. Then a Cy-bug crashed it and devoured her soon-to-be husband Brad. There are two things that make this sort of story sadder: Cy-bugs take on the appearance and characteristics of what they eat, including other characters. This means that she was forced to gun down her lover immediately after watching him being eaten alive. Another thing is that it's heavily implied that he never existed in the first place since this is supposed to be a programmed backstory, so now she has PTSD for no real reason, despite knowing that Brad was never technically real.
  • The biggest Woobie of all is Vanellope Von Schweetz. She was apparently Dummied Out from the game she was native to and is considered a mistake and subsequently treated like dirt by the rest of its inhabitants. She's unable to do what she was supposed to be programmed for (racing) and lives alone on an unfinished track. Worse yet, her "glitching" is treated in the same way as a mental/neurological disorder, like Tourette's Syndrome. Due to being a "glitch", she's also unable to leave her game. It turns out that this was all orchestrated by a character from another game who purposely hacked her game so that he could be the main star and not her.
• Zootopia: Nick Wilde originally had a dream of becoming a cub scout. Unfortunately, his peers wrapped a muzzle around his snout because of an unwarranted fear of him snapping and eating them alive. This was among the numerous reasons why people would willingly ship Judy and Nick, because she ended up sympathizing with him and finding a bit of herself in him. Even with her screwing up her press conference and turning predators and prey against each other, and the threat of Bellwether and her night howlers, they did not allow these obstacles stand in the way of not only their hopes and dreams but also their relationship with each other, earning them both positions in the Zootopia Police Department.

Disney animated series

• Amphibia:
  • Marcy is constantly getting hurt, has trouble communicating with other people, and Hates Being Alone so much that the idea of being separated from her only friends caused her to send them to another world just so that they wouldn't have to be apart, only for them all to be separated upon arrival and her being seemingly killed shortly after she's finally reunited with Anne and Sasha. Things only get worse for her in season 3 when she gets possessed and controlled by Andrias' master, the evil hive mind of the Core. And to top it off, in "The Beginning of the End", a flashback shows that her only friends mostly ignored her and cared little for her interests, which is implied to be part of what drove her to bring them to Amphibia.
    • Marcy's Journal also shows us how strained the relationship between Marcy and her parents was, with her dad already having put a lot of pressure on her and accepting a job out of state without considering her feelings. Something that Marcy would resent him for even after being in Amphibia for the first few months. Other journal entries have also confirmed Marcy to be a social pariah on Earth as she struggled to make friends even when she was very young, likely due to her hyperactive and energetic personality. She was also looked down upon and even laughed at by her fellow peers. Which gives Marcy a low opinion on humans save for Anne and Sasha, and why she liked being in Amphibia so much.
  • Barrel The Brave was just a loveable toad who enjoyed hanging out and having fun with his friends Andrias and Leif who then suddenly found himself caught in between their conflict after Leif steals the music box, and even when Barrel had Leif cornered, he couldn't bring himself to hurt his friend which allowed her to escape. Because of this, Andrias deems Barrel as a failure to him and coldly banishes him to the outskirts to defend villages. Barrel tearfully complies to his former friends reassignment, and later sacrificed his life following through on that order.
  • Sprig; due to him having trouble making friends other than Ivy because of his eccentric personality before Anne showed up, and having lost his parents in a heron attack at a very young age to the point where he can barely remember anything about them, save for a time where they gave him his iconic hat for his birthday.
• DuckTales (1987):
  • Webby. Even though the boys allow her around and demonstrate that they really do care about her (sometimes), they often brush her off when she wants to join their project-of-the-week.
  • Fenton Crackshell was extraordinarily good at counting, and he did become the superhero Gizmoduck. But he also had a big case of bad luck and a tendency to screw things up, and he was beaten up by the Beagles four times in one episode alone. And he lived with his trailer trash mother, who would often care more about watching TV than listening to what her only son had to say. Not to mention that he was stuck with dating Gandra Dee, who often was ungrateful or cold-hearted towards him. Of course, we're still talking about a relatively light-hearted cartoon, and plenty of this was played for laughs. But the poor guy deserved all of the breaks that he could ever catch...
  • The show carefully avoids drawing attention to this, but Huey, Dewey, and Louie were already orphaned by their biological parents (the original 1930s cartoons show them abandoned on Donald's doorstep) when Donald decides to up and abandon them to his elderly, initially uncaring uncle to pursue a career in the navy. Glimpses of the future suggest that he never returns to them, and over time he stops being mentioned at all. Luckily Scrooge quickly warms to them and does his level best to be a good caregiver, but still, that's a pretty sad back story.
  • Doofus Drake. While he's typically used as comic relief, what the show reveals about his life isn't very positive. On top of being saddled with a cruel name, he's bullied at school by the Beagle Boys' younger brother and out of it by the Junior Woodchucks. Even Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Webby aren't above taking digs at him, and don't seem to really like him, despite letting him hang around; only Launchpad seems genuinely attached to the poor kid.
  • Launchpad. While some of Scrooge's vitriol comes from his more destructive aspects, he also sometimes treats him harshly due to being in a bad mood, even though Launchpad might have done nothing to justify the behavior. Furthermore, despite his apparently confident manner, the pilot has a severe insecurity complex regarding being good enough. This led to him running away from home in his teens and freaking out the first time he saw his parents again because all he could focus on was how ashamed he believed they were. It also gives a sadder undertone to occasions in the series when he feels in danger of being replaced^note like "Armstrong" and "Where No Duck Has Gone Before".
• DuckTales (2017)
  • Donald Duck, even more than usual. He's back into the main cast and gives him a role similar to his comic book counterpart, being a very caring father yet still has to deal with that awful luck of his. He ends up finding himself in a lot of trouble, and humiliated constantly, especially compared to his cousin who gets everything he wants. It really doesn't help that the main reason he quit adventuring was that he lost his sister on an adventure, causing Donald and his Uncle Scrooge to split. It's miraculous he's shockingly skilled and has an absurd amount of determination or else nothing would go right for this guy.
  • Webby. She spent her whole life cooped up in the mansion without anyone to hang out with. Even when the triplets arrive, she's afraid they'll eventually ditch her because she's not normal like them.
  • Dewey. After seeing just how much learning about Della's disappearance has started getting to him. When he discovers that she could have betrayed Scrooge and Donald it ends up leaving him reluctant to continue finding out the truth, out of fear that she may not be who he thought she was.
  • Lena is revealed to be this at the end of "Jaw$!", being enslaved to do her evil aunt's bidding, with Magica not giving a damn about her wellbeing. It gets even worse in subsequent episodes, as it becomes clear that Magica is an abusive psychopath, and when Lena tries to resist her and tell Scrooge the truth, Magica stops her by hijacking her body.
  • As it turns out, Scrooge himself. He was responsible for building the Spear of Selene and not talking down Della when the latter stole it to go up in space. He nearly bankrupt himself and sent many men to their doom trying to save her only to fail. To rub salt in the wound, when the triplets find out about the situation they think he didn't care to search for her because of his greed and didn't talk her down because of his adventure lust. The bitter old man we saw at the beginning was all because Scrooge never moved on.
• Gargoyles:
  • There's something about the way Goliath carries the weight of the world on his shoulders (even without considering his tragic backstory) that just makes you feel sorry for the poor guy, for all that he is an epic badass. The main villain from the same series, Demona, alternates back and forth between Woobie and Omnicidal Maniac with disturbing ease, particularly in the episode "City of Stone", which revealed her tragic backstory.
• PJ from Goof Troop is so hard not to feel sorry for that "poor PJ" might as well be his Fan Nickname. His father Pete belittles, browbeats, and takes advantage of him on a regular basis, which instills in him crippling anxiety, a self-defeating inability to decline unreasonable requests/orders, and horrible self-esteem. He has no friends other than Max, who despite often supporting him, is also often selfish and unreliable, and Bobby in the movies, who barely counts. He is both The Cassandra and an easy target for antagonists other than his father. External circumstances cause him anguish as the standard conflict of his episodes, as well as a fairly major part of most of Max's and his main role in focus-shared episodes. He also mentions that he was even worse off before he met Max. And despite all of this, he's consistently sweet to and/or honest with everyone. Thankfully, he does get thrown a bone every now and then, and gets a well-deserved and much-needed happy ending in the second movie.
• Ron Stoppable from Kim Possible in the first three seasons. He's always made fun of, seems to never fit in with the other students, is ridiculed by Kim herself, never is shown any importance, the list goes on. Just watch him in "A Sitch in Time" when his family ends up having to move to Norway when he's away from Kim, and him throughout a lot of "So the Drama", especially during the "Why Don't you Kiss her?" montage with Kim and Eric.
• Phineas and Ferb: Poor Carl; he works hard as an unpaid intern for a boss who blames him for everything. The thirds season seems to play up his Woobie status by having him get captured while in a squirrel suit, having his relationship with Monogram (his boss), strained in "Minor Monogram", and even having him turn horribly evil in the season finale cliffhanger episode "Where's Perry?". Throw in the fact that he's an adorable geek, you cannot POSSIBLY get any more Woobie than Carl.
• Lilo & Stitch: The Series makes Gantu and Reuben into Woobies. Both have to work with a cruel employer in order to survive, only to be berated and unappreciated for all of their efforts.
• Tangled: The Series adds Varian to the cast. During a time of crisis where his father gets encased in crystal, Rapunzel ignores him and never checks to see if he's okay. This starts his Heel–Face Turn where he attempts to save the kingdom by any means necessary, only to fail, never seeing his father safe.

Disney animated shorts

• Nessie from the Disney animated short, 'The Ballad of Nessie''. She was forced from her home pond by a land developer and constantly gets kicked out of the places she finds, all the while fighting back the urge to cry because everyone keeps telling her not to until she finally breaks down bawling like a baby. Which actually solves her problem, because her tears create a nice new pond for her to live in.
• Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, as we get to see in Epic Mickey was abandoned by his own father over a budget dispute with Charles Mintz, and when Walter Lantz took over the cartoons, Walt openly approved of Lantz using Ozzie. And it only got worse when Oswald's half-brother Mickey Mouse usurped his original popularity, which, coupled with Lantz's change of the character, as well as the gradual rise of screwball prankster characters over cute funny animals in the early 1940s (including Universal's own new character, Woody Woodpecker) sent Oswald to his grave in 1943, after limping by for the last several years. You would think that in the world for forgotten Disney characters, he would have finally gotten the happy ending he deserved. But nope, things got even WORSE for him — said half-brother just happened to accidently spill a jug of paint thinner onto Yensid's world, which would up ruining the whole place by turning it into a savage wasteland, as well as unleashing the Shadow Blot upon the place, which would lead the entire world into even more mayhem and ruin, forcing Oswald and any remaining resistance underground — the lowest point of his life would be seeing his own wife, Ortensia the Cat, frozen into stone, the experience eventually degenerating him into a distrusting, bitter Antihero. And on top of that, he's manipulated by the Blot into becoming jealous and hateful of Mickey so he can be used to its advantage. That said, he DOES finally get his happy ending when Wasteland is restored and he finally bonds with Mickey. Things are getting better for him in Real Life as well. In 2004, Japan had a gigantic craving for rabbit and toy companies began churning out Oswald plushies which were insanely popular. Not to mention in 2006, Disney literally traded a human being (sports caster Al Michaels) to NBC in exchange for Oswald, showing that they still truly care for him and that they want him to return home. And if you haven't yet cried for Oswald after hearing his story, try watching this and see if you can keep a dry eye.

Pixar films

• Brave: Queen Elinor, when she gets turned into a bear by her daughter Merida. She becomes confused and terrified while struggling for her humanity, making it painful to watch. It gets worse when she loses her humanity and starts lashing out as a permanent bear.
• Cars: Mater.
  • In the first movie, he apparently took the highway bypass of his hometown harder than anyone. In the flashback, he's an optimistic, 1950's pale baby blue color, but by the present, he's totally rusted. While everyone stares depressed at the empty closed down shops in town in the flashback, he's the first to hang his head low, back up and leave.
  • In the second movie, Mater is frequently mocked and laughed at while traveling around the world with Team McQueen, simply because he's different from most of the other vehicles present and he chooses to be himself. The racing team seemingly betrays Mater in Tokyo because they think he's no good anymore, while the evil lemons want him dead even though Mater tells them that everybody's been making fun of and abusing him his whole life, too.
• Elemental: Ember Lumen grew up in a world that feared and hated fire people, she had to sacrifice so much of herself in order to pay back what she feels she owes to her parents, despite dealing with the inane and unreasonable demands of her family's store's customers, and her own self-isolation caused her to have no friends until she met Wade.
• Finding Dory:
  • Dory starts out as an adorable little tyke, fretting that she’d eventually forget her parents. She ends up lost and alone, frantically asking other fish if they could help her. Eventually, she does forget her folks, but her memory of them is triggered after the events in Finding Nemo. Dory is later told that her parents never made it back from Quarantine, meaning that they died. This, fortunately, turned out not to be true but when she finally does find them, she is overwhelmed with guilt for losing them in the first place and feels she doesn’t deserve their forgiveness.
  • Gerald the sea lion is seen as this by some viewers since he is verbally abused by the other sea lions.
• The Good Dinosaur: Arlo, the main character, was born a runt, is bullied by his older brother Buck, loses his father to a flood, constantly fails to earn his mark, is very cowardly, and gets separated from his family when he tries to avenge his father by killing Spot. By the end of the film, you just want give the adorable dinosaur a hug and comfort him.
• While the entire Parr Family in The Incredibles can be seen as a Woobie Family, Bob (Mr. Incredible) and Violet are hit particularly hard by the outlawing of supers. Bob struggles to adapt to civilian life and has an extremely strict boss, while Violet is extremely introverted and just wants to fit in with other kids her age. In the sequel, Bob loses a lot of sleep caring for his children while Helen (Elastigirl) is crimefighting, while Violet is emotionally wrecked from the memory wipe of Tony Rydinger, with whom she was supposed to be going on a movie date.
• Inside Out:
  • Sadness. Being the literal incarnation of sadness, there's also the fact that she's spent the first eleven years of her life being dismissed as useless and harmful by her peers, none of whom have any idea what she's even good for (nor does she) and never being allowed to do anything.
  • Bing-Bong, whose entire character-arc revolves around coming to terms with how he has no place in Riley's life anymore... culminating with him performing a Heroic Sacrifice to get Joy out of the Memory Dump and being forgotten and erased from Riley's mind forever (as well as possibly the emotions', judging by how he is never mentioned again after the fact) as a result.
• In the Pixar Short, Partly Cloudly, both the cloud and stork deserve hugs. The cloud because no one wants to pick his baby animals (which include such things as alligators and porcupines), and the stork because he has to.
• Alfredo Linguini from Ratatouille. Poor guy.
• Toy Story 2:
  • Wheezy. He was shelved after his squeaker broke and left up there, collecting dust, for who knows how long. He gets much better at the end of the movie, though.
  • Jessie. "When somebody loved me..." She's portrayed with mostly realistic anxiety issues, especially abandonment issues and claustrophobia.
• Toy Story 3:
  • ALL the main characters. The whole film is about them weighing their options about whether they want to be thrown in the trash and be compacted/killed in the garbage system, stored in the attic for God-knows-how-long until their owner's own kids play with them again (if they're lucky), OR be donated to a day-care center! All while facing the fact of how their loving owner will never see them again. And don't forget that toys DO NOT AGE. Living in a world where everyone else changes and you don't is unfair, and it just makes you wanna' keep playing with your toys and love them forever!
  • It's also not hard to feel bad for the other toys, such as Wheezy and Bo Peep, who had been sold or given away before the start of the film since they've experienced what the others fear most. Equally troubling is not knowing what actually became of them. Thankfully for Bo, she would return in the next installment.
  • Big Baby. His previous owner abandoned him, albeit unwittingly, and then he was lied to by Lotso and forced to do the bear's dirty work.
• Turning Red: Mei starts the movie as a cute, smart, confident girl who honestly believes she's in full control of herself and her life. Then in short order, she gets horribly embarrassed by her mother twice, discovers the red panda transformation (which she finds horrifying), discovers she has no control at all over the red panda transformation, has to run home across town in broad daylight in her panda form, and discovers her trusted parents knew about the red panda and didn't tell her. Finally, she finds herself facing solitary confinement for a month, living in an empty bedroom cut off from friends, school, and everything she enjoyed about life. She doesn't regain her confidence until after her friends promise they will never abandon her and she learns how to properly control her panda form.
• Up: Practically everyone in the main cast. Carl lost his wife and his spirit of adventure with her, Russel has to deal with Parental Neglect from his father and it's implied that his stepmom hates him, Dug the talking dog is ostracized by the other dogs he used to work with and abused by his owner and Kevin the bird is a mother separated from her babies and being hunted by an Egomaniac Hunter.
• WALL•E:
  • Come on... give a poor trash-compacting robot a hug. You could practically call the titular robot WOOB•E. He's like a pure, undiluted example of this trope. Besides, he's (initially) provided the image for the main Woobie page. Particularly interesting is how WALL•E develops into WOOB•E; in the first half of the movie, seeing him get hurt is usually funny, as he's the Butt-Monkey until M-O appears. By the end of the movie, however, it's not funny at all — and suddenly it never was.
  • Special mention should go to BURN-E, who suffered mishap after mishap in his own bonus-content special just trying to replace a light post on the Axiom. After experiencing a 2001-esque acid trip, getting baked in the Earth's atmosphere, and smashed into the dirt in an escape pod, he finally gets the light post turned back on... only to have it promptly smashed by the rogue door to the escape pod. Some days it just don't pay to get out of bed. Whether he's a Woobie or a Butt-Monkey is often up to the viewer; it could easily go either way depending on how sorry you feel for him.

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