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DysfunctionJunction / Western Animation

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/DysfunctionJunction/WesternAnimation

• Adventure Time, despite being a show high in comedy, is very much this. Finn is a human who is secretly depressed about being the Last of His Kind (and may have issues with being sexually aroused by violence), Jake's parents are dead (and may have kleptomania issues), Princess Bubblegum has the stress of ruling a kingdom and never being able to be a kid, Marceline has daddy issues, the snail is possessed, the Tart Toter is insane, the Ice King suffers from severe dementia, Cinnamon Bun is brain-damaged, Peppermint Butler is borderline satanic, Lemongrab is a lemon in every sense of the word, LSP is Surrounded by Idiots, in addition to being a bratty teenager (or possibly an adult with a bratty teenager personality), the list goes on.
• Archer:
  • The cast are all terrible people in their own ways, their issues and indiscretions including, but not limited to: substance abuse, infidelity, assault, sexual assault, murder, arson, alcoholism, trust issues, childhood trauma, binge eating, piracy, torture, drug trafficking, and more.
  • Archer himself has PTSD, compulsively sleeps with almost any attractive woman who will have him, has extremely poor impulse control, harbors a deep-seated dependence on his mother as a result of her simultaneously neglecting and abusing him throughout his childhood, constantly self-medicates with copious amounts of alcohol, and admits that he's largely never emotionally matured past an adolescent level.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: The point of the Beach Episode was to get the four dysfunctional teenaged villains together and spill their guts about their personal issues a la The Breakfast Club. Or maybe that was just an excuse to provide us with Fanservice. The teenaged heroes aren't much better off, but being main characters, they handle it with more grace. Although Azula takes her issues perfectly in stride until The Boiling Rock, which shakes her and starts a downward spiral that ends in the finale, at which point she has a psychotic breakdown, turning into The Caligula and hallucinating that her Missing Mom is talking to her- and violently attacking the hallucination upon being told "I love you".
• BoJack Horseman:
  • The heavy focus on Hollywoo mental complexes results in this. The title character is a deeply depressed and unpleasant man who is discovering that having Abusive Parents, substance abuse issues and fundamentally good intentions doesn't justify his unlikeable behaviour - and that's just the beginning of his problems.
  • Princess Carolyn's career makes her miserable and lonely, but she can't leave it due to her addiction to pulling other people out of crises. She also suffers from an inability to have kittens, which has ruined several of her relationships.
  • Diane's high intelligence and great potential as a writer contrasts with her job ghostwriting celebrity memoirs and tweets, and even her relatively stable love-life is full of bad communication. Her family treated her awfully when growing up, and her inability to be let go and "just be happy" in her marriage takes a continual mental toll on her. She also suffers Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after moving to a warzone for a job, and witnessing young children being killed. Upon her return, her failure to do something that matters also weighs heavily on her mind.
  • Todd and Mr Peanutbutter are the more well-adjusted members of the main cast, but Todd's a directionless millennial whose achievements are systematically sabotaged by BoJack out of terror Todd will ever leave him, and Mr Peanutbutter is able to thrive in Hollywoo simply because it's as shallow, superficial, attention-deficit and cynical as he is.
• Centaurworld is this to a T - absolutely everyone has some sort of tragic backstory, with clues dropped here and there as to what happened in their pasts and how they try to mask their traumas underneath their silly, fun-loving demeanors.
  • Horse comes from a ravaged, war-torn wasteland and struggles with expressing her emotions and healing from the horrors she's endured with her rider during the war.
  • Wammawink loves her friends but is almost exceedingly overbearing, going out of her way to ensure her friends remain safe from even the slightest danger. This is because when she was just a child, her entire tribe was killed in the Great Offscreen War that ravaged Centaurworld a long time ago along with her family, leaving her an orphan. Suffice to say, her overprotective nature stems from a fear of losing everything she knows again.
  • Durpleton is a kind-hearted people-pleaser who seeks validation from others whenever he can. However, it's implied this is because he grew up with a verbally abusive father and constantly struggles with it. In fact, some of his behavior is a textbook case of someone who's been abused; he hears his father's voice in his own flatulence to the point of cowering and sometimes even apologizing to his own farts - only with the help of the Tree Shamans does he find a way to alleviate the lasting pains of his childhood by making the voice of his father much kinder to him.
  • Zulius takes great pride in his looks and is highly flamboyant in nature, though it's revealed that this is because he was apparently disqualified from a talent show for being too old, and the humiliation and defeat he endured still affects him to this day.
  • The Nervous Wreck Glendale is prone to experiencing anxiety attacks so severe she can't even speak, on top of having kleptomaniacal tendencies, habitually hoarding things in her pocket universe.
  • Ched hates Horse and horses in general for no good reason, but he hints that when he was younger, his mother had an affair with a horse centaur that would go on whenever his father was out of town. Because of his parents' completely destroyed marriage, he's developed a resentment towards horse centaurs and anything similar to them.
• Every character in Daria can be defined by various neuroses. (or just being plain stupid).
• Ed, Edd n Eddy, despite being a straight comedy, has this in spades:
  • Ed is a Lethally Stupid Cloud Cuckoo Lander who's The Un-Favorite to his emotionally-abusive mother and apathetic father.
  • Edd, the Only Sane Man, is a Obsessively Organized Drama Queen who only goes along with his two friend's poorly-planned schemes because they're his only friends and he's too meek to stop them. His parents are almost never home and communicate with him through a mass amount of sticky notes. Although they are implied to be very caring when they're actually there.
  • Sarah is an ill-tempered, Spoiled Bratty Half-Pint who seems to hate her older brother for merely existing. Her only redeeming quality is her friendship with Jimmy, and is frequently shown to, if not hate, then to be angered with nearly everyone else in the Cul-De-Sac as well, particularly Jonny, who she treats almost as bad as the Eds, with the other kids being exasperated at her violent behavior and rotten attitude.
  • Jimmy started off as a Prone to Tears kid who couldn't go two steps without getting horribly injured. Characterization Marches On to make him a Manipulative Bastard who gave disproportionate and misplaced retribution.
  • Kevin is a classic Jerk Jock who belittles everyone except Rolf and Nazz.
  • Nazz is one of the more levelheaded one of the kids, but always proves herself to be Not So Above It All, along with some Dumb Blonde attributes.
  • Rolf is a Funny Foreigner who is without a doubt the nicest kid to the Eds and everyone else. Unless they (normally without knowing it) mock his old country's customs, in which case mercy is forgotten.
  • Johnny would be a harmless Cloud Cuckoo Lander, if not for the influence of his Companion Cube Plank, who manages to commit quite a few violent acts despite being a hunk of wood.
  • The Kankers are stalkers with crushes on the three Eds, as well as generally Ax-Crazy to anyone who has the misfortune to cross their paths, with all the kids running away from them in sheer terror, as even Sarah and Kevin are terrified of them. It's implied to be caused by their neglectful mother who Really Gets Around (they may or may not each have different fathers).
  • Last, but most certainly not least, is Eddy. Eddy is a Con Artist with an ego bordering on narcissism, a love for money, a short temper and a Napoleon Complex) and wrapped up into a Snark Knight look on the world. All of which would make him utterly irredeemable, except he truly cares for his true friends and all the effort to get rich and popular is for them, too. The Movie shed light on why Eddy acts like this: he was physically tormented by his sadistic older brother (previously said to be The Ace, which Eddy admits was all a lie, up to the point where he started believing it), making Eddy grow up to believe that acting like his brother would help him make friends.
• Futurama: Every member of Planet Express has some kind of issue.
  • Fry - the series's Unfazed Everyman — isn't the sharpest knife in the kitchen because of a Time Paradox that makes him his own grandfather, and he lost his whole family when he accidentally froze himself.
  • Leela is a cyclops orphan with some serious anger issues.
  • Bender is a suicidal, criminal, alcoholic smoker who has barely a bit of conscience.
  • Professor Farnsworth is the Mad Scientist who is so senile one keeps wondering how he keeps the company up and running.
  • Zoidberg is the resident Butt-Monkey and a really incompetent doctor whose dreams of being a comedian were crushed by his mother.
  • When he isn't available, the role passes to Amy, Asian Airhead who comes from a rich family but has mean and greedy parents, her father being the worst one.
  • The one worker who is relatively sane and happy is Hermes, and he takes strange delight from his job as an Obstructive Bureaucrat right into the point that he is Workaholic and borderline OCD-patient. Also, his wife is constantly cheating on him with his former athletic rival Barbados Slim.
  • Lampshaded when Fry tries to convince Leela that getting phaser eye surgery (to split her one eye into two) is a bad idea: Fry

    : The rest of us aren't normal and that's what makes us great! Like Dr. Zoidberg, he's a weird monster who smells like he eats garbage and does.

    
    Zoidberg

    : Damn right!

    
    Fry

    : And the Professor's a senile, amoral crackpot.

    
    Professor

    : *babbles nonsensically*

    
    Fry

    : Hermes is a Rastafarian accountant...

    
    Hermes

    : Tally me banana!

    
    Fry

    : Amy's a klutz from Mars...

    
    Amy

    : *Drops drinking glass* Sploops!

    
    Professor

    : And Fry, you've got that brain thing.

    
    Fry

    :

    I already did!

    So Leela, do you wanna be like us? Or do you wanna be like Adlai, with no severe mental or social problems whatsoever?

• The characters of Gravity Falls have gradually been revealed to be this throughout season two.
  • Dipper is a borderline Nightmare Fetishist with some major self esteem and trust issues. He tries to hide his insecurities by being The Smart Guy.
  • Mabel is an energetic Stepford Smiler who is secretly afraid of growing up and growing apart from her brother, so much so that she was willing to freeze time so that he couldn't leave her. She can also get extremely emotional, showing severe depression in "The Time Travelers Pig" after losing Waddles.
  • Stan is a shyster and conman who has done some very shady things in the past, including being in prison on more than one occasion. "A Tale of Two Stans" reveals he was kicked out of his house as a teenager, and accidentally caused the disappearance of his twin brother, and that those questionable things he did were all done either to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, because his father's parting words about not being allowed to come back until he earned a fortune instilled an obsession with money in him, or both.
  • Soos spent years waiting for a father that wanted nothing to do with him.
  • Wendy has a calm demeanor, but reveals that she is actually stressed 24/7 due to her family and just tries to hide it.
  • The author of the journals, Ford Pines, held a petty grudge against his brother for many years and only bothered contacting him when he needed his help. He originally went to Gravity Falls to study the paranormal, but his search for answers got him more than he bargained for, and events regarding the portal and Bill Cipher eventually drove him to near insanity, to the point that when his brother did show up at his doorstep, said brother was greeted by him wielding a crossbow and screaming "HAVE YOU COME TO STEAL MY EYES?!"
  • Old Man McGucket was once a highly intelligent, if slightly eccentric, inventor with a family and a fairly normal life... That is until he was exposed to the portal. This lead him to create the Society of the Blind Eye and erase his own memories, which in turn drove him more insane and left him as the infamous town kook who lives in the dump.
  • Pacifica Northwest was trained like a dog by her parents and conditioned to obey them every time she heard her father ring a bell, leaving her TERRIFIED at the thought of disobeying them. It's entirely as messed up as it sounds.
• Hey Arnold!: For a children's show, a lot of characters have issues that seem so much more messed up when thinking about it as an adult:
  • The titular protagonist is a Cosmic Plaything who constantly gets dealt a raw deal, his parents vanished years ago while exploring South America, causing him to live in a rundown boarding house with his grandparents.
  • His grandmother is a delusional Cloud Cuckoolander, and his grandfather is the Only Sane Man who is constantly driven up the wall by the antics of his wife and his kooky tenants, which considering how eccentric he can get, says a lot about them.
  • Said tenants include a Vietnamese immigrant who suffers from chronic depression due to severe family issues, a short tempered construction worker who is obsessed with breaking things and is a closet fanboy of the town's local jazz singer, a greedy deadbeat who constantly blows his money on gambling, much to his wife's chagrin, and a secretive man who is heavily implied to be a government agent.
  • Among Arnold's friends, Gerald is mostly normal, but his father is an overbearing penny pincher, his younger sister's a Spoiled Brat, and his older brother's a Jerk Jock.
  • Helga acts like the resident bully, but this ends up being an act as she is in fact in love with Arnold, but acts like a bully towards him out of both fear and as a result of having lived in a broken home. Her mother's a jobless, chronically depressed drunkard, her father's a greedy, emotionally distant Manipulative Bastard who is obsessed with advancing his beeper company, and her older sister is a hugely successful business woman whose constant success has given Helga a massive inferiority complex, which was made even worse by the fact that their parents were always giving her attention 24/7, which led them to neglect Helga in turn.
  • Said older sister also has severe problems of her own, thanks to her dad always pushing her to strive for the top, and had a breakdown when she thought she had a B+ on her report card due to Helga tampering with it.
  • Harold, like Helga, acts like a bully to mask his own insecurities, primarily his weight.
  • Eugene is quite possibly the unluckiest person on the planet.
  • Sid is mostly normal, but tends to have severe overreactions whenever something bad happens to him (see the germ episode and "Sid's Revenge" for examples).
  • Rhonda is the resident Rich Bitch whose arrogance is kept in check only by her best friend.
  • Stinky is a dirt poor hillbilly.
  • Curly is a maniacal schemer who constantly gets in trouble due to his zany schemes. And that's just the main characters.
  • Lila looks perfect at first glance but comes from an improvised family with a single father. Word of God is that she has a hidden darker side but it's never completely shown.
• Invader Zim: Zim is a delusional megalomaniac with sociopathic tendencies; Dib is an obsessive,vicious Anti-Hero with no friends; Gaz will cause you immense pain for the sake of video games and pizza; and GIR.... is just bat-shit crazy.
• Invincible: At one point, Bulletproof voices to Black Sampson his lack of faith in the new Guardians of the Globe due to how messed up they are, though Sampson still has faith in their team despite their flaws, even if they're not the best team.
  • Robot is willing to disregard ethnics by breaking the Mauler Twins out of prison and having them create a younger clone of Rex, so he can use it as a new body for himself.
  • Monster Girl isn't bothered by the fact she de-ages every time she uses her powers.
  • Immortal is "so old, he shits dust", and has become more aggressive and depressed to due being betrayed and killed twice by Omni-Man and recently losing his girlfriend, the one person who he thought genuinely understood him, while he was away.
  • Cecil is a morally dubious man, willing to exploit others for as long as its benefical to his goal of protecting the world and demanding absolute control over the Guardians.
  • Shrinking Rae almost died ("fucked up") when she attempted to kill Komodo Dragon by bursting out of him.
  • Although he doesn't exactly articulate his issues like how he did with the others, Shapesmith is a runaway Martian, who nearly doomed Earth and Mars by knocking out a human astronaut and assuming his identity, indirectly getting him possessed by Sequids as a result, so he can explore Earth.
  • Rex is a loud-mouthed baggart, who tries to somewhat overcompensate for the brutal confrontation he, Rae and Dupli-Kate had with the Lizard League by throwing himself into more danger, despite just recently getting out of hospital.
  • Also, Bulletproof criticizes Sampson for naming himself after someone, who's famous for their hair, despite being bald, only for the latter to point out he had hair when he chose the name.
• In Justice League, we have an orphan who saw his parents shot in front of him when he was eight, The Exile who was forced to leave her home, two aliens who are the Last of Their Kind, The Mole, Hawkgirl, who first betrayed Earth then did a Heel–Face Turn on her home planet and was subsequently banished from there, and a man who's serious about his duty most of the time. In fact, Flash is the only one from the Original Seven who doesn't quite fit here... which could tie into the strong implication that without Flash, the entire team would go off the deep end.
• Kaeloo: Everyone on the show is seriously messed up in some way.
  • Kaeloo is obsessed with perfection.
  • Stumpy is an idiot who has no sense of reality, who has even gotten himself killed on more than one occasion by doing stupid things.
  • Quack Quack is addicted to yogurt, and is still traumatized by the death of his parents.
  • Mr. Cat, the worst of the lot, is an Ax-Crazy preteen sadomasochist who murders people for fun and has been arrested at least once.
  • Pretty is a shallow, superficial Alpha Bitch. Her narcissism causes her to endanger herself by doing things like buying a dress that was several sizes too small and forcing herself to lose enough weight to make it fit her, and she screams at, abuses, and manipulates anyone who dares to stand against her.
  • Eugly is a shy Extreme Doormat who spends her time being abused and ridiculed by the other characters.
  • Olaf is a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur who wants to Take Over the World. One episode even has him build a giant statue of himself and force the citizens of Smileyland to worship it.
• Moral Orel: Every character in the series, with the exception of Orel and a few other characters, is seriously messed up. And considering everything that happens to him, the fact he's not seriously messed up is a testament to Orel's emotional and psychological fortitude.
• The cast of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic are a more downplayed example; while they can go crazy, they’ll help one another out. With that being said...
  • Twilight Sparkle is a neurotic perfectionist Neat Freak who must always do everything by the book and according to plan — and she will be sick if something deviates from them — which are clear signs of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. She also displays an obvious Inferiority Superiority Complex, her outwardly confident and (occasionally) know-it-all attitude belying a pony with serious self-esteem issues underneath. She tends to doubt herself, belittle her own achievements and suffer from crippling fear of disappointing her mentor or failing her friends. On several occasions, this drove her into full-fledged mental breakdown. Also — particularly at the beginning of the series — she often fails to grasp basic social rules, having spent most of her life as a loner.
  • Pinkie Pie is hyperactive to the point where she’s nearly incapable of censoring herself or communicating her thought patterns to others, and occasionally has displayed a profoundly paranoid side that once resulted in a fully psychotic breakdown (complete with full on hallucinations).
  • Fluttershy was bullied as a child and as a result, she is very withdrawn and avoids interacting with others out of fear of being ridiculed or rejected. At the beginning of the series, she was unable to speak to a pony she didn’t know (Twilight, when they first met, couldn't even get her to introduce herself properly). Even seemingly innocuous things — like two ponies nearby laughing for reasons totally unrelated to her — may cause her to relive traumating experiences from the past and turn her into sobbing wreck. She later admits to living her entire life in a state of nervous anxiety. Paradoxically, she may also display a disturbing Hair-Trigger Temper when pushed, and has physically assaulted other ponies on a few occasions.
  • Applejack displays obvious signs of workaholism, spending her very first Day in the Limelight episode working herself to the bone (and suffering from severe sleep deprivation) simply because she wouldn't accept other ponies' help in a chore that's obviously too much for one person, turning what was meant to be noncommittal competition on a family meeting into a marathon of olympic proportions and wasting her free time she's supposed to spend relaxing in the spa because of course she had to fix the plumbing at the place.
  • Rainbow Dash, despite being a showoff, ultimately suffers from performance anxiety that at one point left her shuddering in the Troubled Fetal Position — but she ultimately got over it and hasn't had problems in that area since, leaving only comparatively mild issues such as narcissism.
  • Rarity is a textbook example of a Drama Queen (to the point of serving as a page image) and therefore seems to be suffering from histrionic personality disorder. While reasons behind her Freak Outs are sometimes understandable — like being humiliated in front of the person she needed to impress to advance her career — most of the time she will go into meltdown over even tiniest, most inconsequential things, like the fact that she lost a ribbon she planned to adorn her new dress with or that she forgot to pack the plates for a picnic. What is the most jarring is that she can instantly switch between over-the-top freakout and being totally calm (not to mention, act completely unfazed when facing an actual danger, like a giant monster attacking her), further indicating that while she could easily recover from a failure, she apparently just has an inner need to make a drama out of it every time.
  • Spike is plagued with an inferiority complex, given that at times he's seemly being ignored/harassed/outperformed by ponies or even being replaced by a better pet sidekick. At most times, he just mopes about; at his worst, he disintegrates into a Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain.
• Rick and Morty:
  • Rick is often drunk and almost completely detached from what you and I would call morality due to his Super-Intelligence and experience with things far beyond humanity, as well as an inability to find meaningful happiness to the point of attempting suicide at least once. There's a commercial starring Rick and Morty for Alien: Covenant in which Rick is attacked by a facehugger, which dies within seconds of attaching to Rick. Rick explains that this is due to all the drugs and alcohol in his system.
  • Morty is a whiny, horny, teenager who likely has a learning disability and has no experience with the nature and Blue-and-Orange Morality of the bizarre things Rick works with and the repercussions thereof.
  • Jerry is an incredibly pathetic man in a failing marriage whose insecurity leads him to believe things that aren't real. As much as he wants to be a decent family man, just about every meaningful or validating moment turn out to be some sort of alien fake.
  • Beth, while not as pathetic as Jerry, has similar difficulties swallowing her pride. She is deeply affected by Rick walking out on her when she was little, and as a result tries to gloss over the craziness Rick beings upon the family.
  • Summer somehow manages to be least dysfunctional of the family, even though she's a typical teenage girl. Even then, weirdness of Rick's dealings does cause her a fair bit of ache. As did the revelation that her parents were going to have an abortion, but didn't go through with it because they got a flat tyre on the way to the clinic.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: One meme: My Baby needs Advanced Therapy. Most of the major characters are kind of messed up.
  • Catra is the most obvious example: her abusive upbringing has left her with an envious streak a mile wide, symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder, and enough self-destructive tendencies to blow up the world. Literally - in the throes of a Villainous Breakdown, she decides to end the world because Adora wants to save it, and she refuses to let Adora have even that much of a victory.
  • Adora's own abusive upbringing was more subtle in its damage, but it left her with PTSD symptoms, an obsessive fear of failure, a guilt complex that takes three seasons to even begin to recover, and an overall tendency to view herself less as a person and more as a tool for realising the greater good, no matter the cost to herself. This causes her a lot of trouble; both her relationship with Catra in the early seasons and her relationship with Glimmer in season 4 are severely damaged by her tendency to claim responsibility in all situations and fence others in to protect them, which Catra takes as attempts to once again claim the spotlight and put Catra in Adora's shadow, and Glimmer takes as challenges to her own authority.
  • Glimmer has insecurities relating to her difficulties with her seemingly perfect mother. While the relationship begins to heal when Angella admits to her own faults and starts encouraging Glimmer to follow her own path rather than insisting she model herself on Angella, Angella's subsequent death and Glimmer's ascent to the throne cause those insecurities to start exploding out of control, which combines with other stressors to split Glimmer up from her True Companions and start making some really bad decisions.
  • Scorpia's education in the Horde, which insisted that the Horde was the only place she would ever be accepted, left her bordering on Extreme Doormat, putting up with Catra's worst abuses for three and a half seasons while endlessly pining for her, and rationalising her entire messed-up situation as being for the best (she goes so far as to insist that her grandfather surrendered her to the Horde because he knew, when she barely possessed object permanence, that she would have been happier as a soldier). Her realisation that she deserves better than putting up with Catra's shit, combined with her decision to rescue her closest real friend, leads to her Heel–Face Turn.
  • Angella's pose of perfection is a mask for her consuming regret over her husband's death in a battle she ordered, and a lot of her issues with Glimmer come about because she's trying to sculpt Glimmer into someone more like her and less like Micah in order to keep her safe. Just before she makes her Heroic Sacrifice, she admits that she kind of hates herself for being a coward, and views her sacrifice as a chance to make up for it - that today, she chooses to be brave.
  • On the surface, Entrapta seems cheerful and free of angst. However, she secretly feels insecure about the perceived failures of all her friendships. During a moment of despair triggered by the signal on Beast Island, she blames herself, concluding that she isn't meant for friendship.
  • Even Hordak, the Big Bad for four seasons, is eventually shown to be essentially a lonely child striving for the approval of a father figure who will never give it. His prior life as a clone soldier under Horde Prime has seriously damaged his sense of self-worth, and his attempted conquest of Etheria is an effort to prove his worth to Horde Prime. The apparent "betrayal" by Entrapta, the only person he's ever truly cared for, does not help his mental state. He spends a decent whack of season 4 in a deep depression, barely able to function without Entrapta.
• The Simpsons were, in the early years, considered the epitome of dysfunction on television. George H. W. Bush famously gave an address during which he stated that Americans needed to be 'less like The Simpsons, and more like The Waltons' ^note The show responded with Bart claiming that they were just like the Waltons, waiting for an end to the depression, too. Today, they are one of the more stable examples of a family on TV, which says a lot when you consider that...
  • Homer has been in a downward spiral ever since his mother left to protest evil and his father kept bringing him down when he was little, leaving him a gluttonous, lazy, stupid oaf addicted to TV and beer. The only time he's not doing a half-assed job at home or work, he's going on some crazy, poorly thought-out adventure.
  • Marge is a housewife constantly frustrated by Homer's boorishness, Bart's hell-raising, and her older sisters' belittling. She often goes on crusades to make everything around her as wholesome as possible, and has made several attempts at realizing her talents beyond the home only for them to fall through by way of Status Quo Is God.
  • Bart constantly raises hell to cope with the fact that he knows he'll never achieve well academically due to genetic predisposition and a lack of focus that not even his best effort can counter. Both parents and teachers offer him little to no faith or support, and often drop everything to be there for Lisa.
  • Lisa routinely grapples with depression and social anxiety due to her above-average intellect. Her preachy attitude and inability to accept the less than perfect grades that come from a genuine challenge stem from desperation for as much emotional gratification as possible.
  • Maggie seems to be a clean slate, but the fact that she can effectively handle weapons before she's fully learned to walk or talk casts a lot of suspect about her upbringing.
  • Really, almost everybody in Springfield, from Ned Flanders being a Bible-thumping double widower, Police Chief Wiggum being a lazy, corrupt, incompetent boob, Krusty the Clown being a drug-addled sellout, and many more, is messed up in some way.
• In South Park, some of the characters had issues involving their families. Cartman's mother is a prostitute and he killed his own biological father. Stan has a father who, despite being a geologist, is a complete idiot who constantly takes up crazy activities and careers for the sake of being happy. Kyle has an overprotective mother and a strict father, later revealed to be an infamous internet troll responsible for someone killing herself. Kenny and his family are poor, and his dad is sometimes battered by his mom. It could be worse, because... Butters is raised by Abusive Parents, end of story. And Craig's tendency to flip the bird runs in the family.
• Basically everyone in Steven Universe is varying degrees of traumatized by the series' dark Backstory:
  • While Garnet is the most strong and stable, she admits that she masks her own weaknesses to bear The Chains of Commanding, made worse by the void Rose Quartz has left due to her Death by Childbirth.
  • Amethyst has an inferiority complex regarding the circumstances of her creation.
  • Pearl was in love with Rose and tries to get over it by transferring her suicidally obsessive desire to protect from Rose to her son Steven.
  • Steven has shown issues with never having had a chance to know Rose and with the stress of being at the epicenter of all this and its consequences. It even goes so far that he eventually gets diagnosed with what amounts to post-traumatic stress disorder.
  • Lapis Lazuli is a victim of a spectacular Trauma Conga Line: severely traumatized by her years being used by the protagonists as an inanimate object and subsequent being used not much better by the villains, she made a vaguely suicidal attempt at stopping Jasper by fusing with her and trapping them both at the bottom of the ocean. Their time spent fused is treated like an abusive relationship, where the way they treated each other was extremely toxic and Lapis admits that she took out thousands of years of frustration on Jasper, but she also admits to missing Japser despite how wrong it all was. The incident also caused Lapis to want to "take a break from water" despite her powers revolving around it. As Earth continued to be under more and more threat, she eventually fled to the moon in panic when she heard the Diamonds themselves were getting involved, not wanting to deal with any more terrible things, although she eventually came back.
  • Onion might have abandonment issues from his father being at sea most of the time, but it's hard to tell.
  • Peridot is neurotic and has No Social Skills, and is also, to a point, a de-powered Gem due to having been created during a resource shortage on Homeworld. Before discovering her ferrokinesis, she had a massive inferiority complex compared to other Gems, and most of her character arc is about dealing with the baggage of Fantastic Racism instilled in her on Homeworld.
  • Jasper is arguably even worse. She belonged to Pink Diamond, but now Pink is gone, leaving Jasper to serve a Diamond she wasn't made for and thus doesn't care about. Her personal hangups were damaging enough to lead to her fusing with a corrupted Gem and becoming corrupted herself.
  • Even Rose isn't safe from this. While initially being presented as an ethereal goddess-like leader and the ultimate Big Good, she was over time revealed to have poofed and bubbled Bismuth for wanting to shatter the Diamonds, and then she was said to have shattered Pink Diamond sometime after. It eventually turned out that she was Pink Diamond and faked her own death.
  • Bismuth turned into a Well-Intentioned Extremist who was willing to go against the Crystal Gems' ideology to assassinate the Diamond Authority out of sheer hatred and resentment.
• Teen Titans (2003):
  • Most of it in the manual (and by manual, we mean original comic book and occasionally the Teen Titans Go! (2003) comic). Raven's Dark and Troubled Past is the only one which gets any detail, though. Cyborg's, Beast Boy's, and Robin's are only implied through dialogue and visual cues. Starfire seems to be the only one with a normal past until the episode "Go" which retcons it into her tragic comic book origin.
  • Robin has a pretty obvious traumatic past as he was raised by Batman after his biological parents were killed.
  • Beast Boy was infected with a deadly virus in a jungle, then his parents found him a cure that had side effects which turned him green and made him unstable for a very long time, then his entire family was murdered in front of him, all this when he was just a kid. While he did get taken in by the Doom Patrol, the leader Mento cut him no slack for being a kid who wasn't ready to make tough decisions. At least Robin had the chance to live with Bruce Wayne, who was like a parent figure to him. Raven, too, who lived in a peaceful place like Azarath during her childhood. And let's not talk about Cyborg, whose case is worse than Beast Boy's.
  • Cyborg. Victor Stone was the athletically inclined son of a pair of genius scientists, and his relationship with his father was...not great as a result. It got worse when he visited his parents' lab and arrived just in time to see his mother eaten alive by an Eldritch Abomination that was accidentally brought to Earth by his parents' interdimensional portal invention. Then said Abomination got its tentacles on him. After his father managed to teleport the thing away, he rebuilt Victor using cyborg prosthetics he had invented. Victor did not take being turned into a cyborg very well, to put it lightly. Then his long-time girlfriend dumped him because she couldn't handle the changes. He's only able to reconcile with his father after finding out his dad is dying of radiation poisoning because of the monster that destroyed their family — and they can only spend a few days together before the inevitable. And all of this still pales in comparison to what the rest of the series puts him through.
  • Starfire didn't know what the word "nice" was until she came to Earth, and the closest word she had on her planet was "weak", she had a Cain and Abel relationship with her sister, and she was sold into slavery by people who experimented on her before attempting to bring her to live out her days as a servant on another planet!
  • Raven is half demon. Her father at his nicest just wants her to join the family business of destroying the universes. Her Dangerous 16th Birthday involved her father trying to destroy the universe, using her to open a magic portal. Oh, and her mother didn't give consent.
• Total Drama: Many of the contestants have gone through a traumatic experience, have a disorder, aren't in a good mental place, and/or have parents who do/can not act in the best interest of their child.
  • Unpleasant bits and pieces of Chef's past are brought up every now and again. In "Alien Resurr-eggtion", it's suggested he's still haunted by having accidentally killed someone. In "Masters of Disasters", he brings up his manifesto, which has gone unpublished because his life story was deemed too much. And "Basic Straining" all but confirms he's fought in a war, which his World Tour biography backs up with the mention that he is not to be asked about the war.
  • By the looks of it, Amy has been bullying and dominating Samey since birth, breaking her confidence one cruelty at a time. It's important to Amy that Samey is the lesser twin, but the reason for this is not given. Interestingly, in "A Blast From the Past", Samey imagines telling Amy that their mother hates her, but because Samey is pretending to be Amy, there's ambiguity as to who their mother hates.
  • Cody's parents are implied to not spend any time with him and compensate by buying him stuff. In "Awwwwww, Drumheller", Cody mentions that they forgot his birthday last year and it's such a neglected day in his yearly routine that he forgets it himself this year.
  • Courtney goes through life needing to be the best in whatever she undertakes. Her primary tactic is to flawlessly play by the social rules, but when push comes to shove, nothing is sacred in her pursuit for success and any semblance of peace of mind. "2008: A Space Owen" opens the possibility she has this behavior from her mother and she also mentions she's been studying meditation for years, meaning her perfectionism has been affecting her for at least as long.
  • Duncan is a troublemaker who in "African Lying Safari" admits that dying in the gutter is within his expectations. In "Video Message From Home to Duncan", his father openly questions if he and Duncan's mother love their son. His mother only says that's a horrible thing to say, not that she disagrees. As well, in "One Flu Over the Cuckoos", Duncan's "very best friend" is revealed to not be any family (as is the case with everyone else), but his parole officer.
  • According to her Island biography, Eva moved from Europe to Canada at age seven and immediately became a target for bullying. Just as quickly, her rage and superior strength put an end to that, only for her to become a bully herself. Her anger issues continue to this day.
  • As per his Island biography, for most of his youth, Ezekiel has been effectively cut off from anyone but his family. He is homeschooled because his parents want to give him the best education possible and to prevent him from associating with anyone deemed beneath them. Competitions are among the few times he is allowed to speak with peers. This is the reason Ezekiel is severely socially inept, unable to accept defeat, and for the longest time under the impression that subways aren't real.
  • Gwen's Island biography suggests that her family unit struggles financially. She and her brother are raised by a single mother and Gwen plans to use the prize money to help her out.
  • As mentioned in her biographies, Heather used to be a "fat, brace-faced, pimply, style-challenged" child that was brutally bullied until one day she decided she was going to become popular. Everything Heather does these days is calculated to prevent her from slipping back into being a target, from the care she puts into her looks to bullying others. In "Video Message From Home to Heather", it's suggested her behavior is so appalling even to her parents that they throw a party when she's away for the show.
  • Izzy is functional but mentally unstable. She experiences extreme happiness and rarely other emotions, she dabbles in alternative personas and constantly shares odd life stories that may or may not be true, and her consideration for the physical and mental wellbeing of others is diminished. Of the tales she tells, at least her history with the RCMP and the army has truth to it, as evidenced by "Up the Creek", "Celebrity Manhunt's TDA Reunion Show", and "Jamaica Me Sweat". They're keeping an eye on her.
  • When confronted with a possible serial killer in "Hook, Line, and Screamer", rather than run, Leshawna tells him that she's "got 16 years in the projects" and isn't afraid.
  • Rodney's mother is for unrevealed reasons not part of the family unit anymore. Rodney has therefore stepped in as parental figure to his five or seven younger brothers and also takes care of their father. His biography suggests a connection between his home situation and his serial romance delusions.
  • Sugar's childhood participation in pageants has left its mark. She dislikes Ella because, as mentioned in "I Love You, Grease Pig!", she believes from experience that anyone that nice is faking it. Equally, she delights in the pageant-like cutthroat rivalry she and Sky could come to engage in in "Pahk'd With Talent". The episode also implies the pageant life was forced on her by her mother.
  • Trent reveals in "Brunch of Disgustingness" that his parents used to hold him down and force-feed him broccoli "for his own good". It left such an impact that when his team uses the same tactic during the gross food challenge, Trent mentally reverts to infancy. As well, his fear of mimes in "Phobia Factor" is tied to the perceived disappearance of his mother, and the loss of his grandfather at a young age has left him with stress-induced OCD centered on the number 9 as explained in "Aftermath I: Trent's Descent".
  • Alejandro has been bullied all his life by his older brother José, who disparages anything Alejandro likes, punches him constantly, pranks him in unhygienic ways, and makes it a point to be better than him at everything, from sports, to academics, to personal grooming. It's to the point where Alejandro considers José his worst fear, and being called Al (José's nickname for him) results in a near murderous reaction. Alejandro's need to one-up everyone, be adored, and unwillingness to accept defeat stem from this.
  • Sierra's mother is a Loony Fan of Chris, right down to their house's guest room being a Chris McLean museum. Sierra herself inherited this attitude, only she directs it at Cody.
  • Jo has body image issues which she covers up with extreme aggression, violence, and misogyny.
  • Mike has an exaggerated case of Dissasociative Identity Disorder, which has caused him social problems all his life. It's unknown why he created his alternate personalities, but one of them turned out to be an evil troublemaker who got him sent to juvenile hall.
  • Ella is a song-obsessed teenage girl still in her Princess Phase. She's naïve, well-meaning, and doesn't have it in her to be mean, but her commitment to being a princess annoys people and got her banned from the mall when she wouldn't stop singing. An episode of Total DramaRama reveals she used to be a "full-on monster" according to Gwen, until she was sent to Sweetie Pie Etiquette School to straighten her out. How canon this is to the main series is questionable, but the episode implies that this is the reason why the teenage Ella hasn't matured since the age of four.
  • Lightning's father sees no worth in his son if said son isn't a winner. As a result, Lightning became a Jerk Jock, and his frequent sports injuries have left him so stupid he can't identify others' genders.
  • Cameron is a genius, but also a Bubble Boy whose first time outside is a Sadistic Game Show that he's very unequipped for. He gets sick easily and can be outweighed by bugs.
  • Scott grew up poor and on a farm. He literally eats dirt and has pillows stuffed with live animals.
  • Staci is a compulsive liar who never shuts up.
  • Shawn watched so many zombie movies that he became a Crazy Survivalist convinced that the Zombie Apocalypse is just around the corner. Talking to him will inevitably redirect any conversation to zombies.
  • Priya's parents have been training her for Total Drama from the literal moment she was born. She's survived traps, wild animals, obstacle courses, and disgusting food for years, and her parents refuse to let her follow her own ambitions.
  • Ripper mentioned that his dad dropped him and his three brothers on their heads. He also says that two of them came out okay.
  • Nichelle is a teen actress who deluded herself into thinking she really was the badass she is onscreen. When the challenges prove otherwise, she has a mental breakdown on the spot.
• Transformers:
  • In Transformers: Animated, nearly every character with a backstory is tragic. Optimus lost his friend Elita-1 (now Blackarachnia) to giant monster spiders and was thrown out of the Elite Guard despite being qualified for the rank of Prime, Ratchet has PTSD from the Great War, and more specifically having to mindwipe Arcee to save her from Lockdown, Blackarachnia was turned into a half-organic freak because of said monster spiders, Bumblebee was taken out of the running for Elite Guard training because of something that wasn't his fault and also wound up getting the innocent Wasp arrested for treachery, Bulkhead was mercilessly teased for his size and clumsiness during boot camp, and Prowl saw his master die before his eyes, with his last words admonishing him for his attempts to save his life. In fact, the fates of Elita-1 and Arcee led the writers to promise that they would make at least one female character without a tragic past during the second season. Unless you count being cloned from Starscream as tragic.
  • Transformers having tragic pasts and psychological issues is a constant no matter WHAT continuity you look at; in fact, many of the minor and toy-only characters, Autobot and Decepticon alike, are defined primarily by their neuroses. It's not like you'd expect a group of aliens who've been fighting for eons on end to stay well-adjusted. Transformers: More than Meets the Eye (in the Comics section) is so popular because of how it delves into this.
  • Autobot triple-changer Broadside takes the cake, though. He easily gets seasick and is afraid of heights, so what does he turn into? An ocean-going carrier and a jet fighter!
  • The Stunticons, the second Decepticon combiner team, are a five-member Dysfunction Junction, being made up of a fatalist, a psychopath, a schizophrenic, a win-at-all-costs egomaniac, and a tyrannical bully as the leader. When they unite into Menasor, the giant's personality is so messed up that he's not a warrior to command, he's a weapon to point at the enemy and get away from as fast as possible.
• This trope is a defining feature of The Venture Bros., where every major character and most of the minor ones are profoundly damaged. Rusty Venture and his father, Jonas Venture Sr. Rusty endured kidnappings and was forced to kill people at young age (once to save his father) among other things. His dad called him ungrateful for not liking his life as a boy-adventurer. Now he's a "Seen It All" Anti-Hero/Villain Protagonist and a bit of an Attention Whore. He puts his sons through the same adventures (as a result of having his dad's old life forced upon him) and clones them after they die. He also made a Lotus-Eater Machine or "Joy Can" Powered by a Forsaken Child.

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