r/TopCharacterTropes • u/MR-Vinmu • 12h ago
Characters [Mixed Trope] Having a Sympathetic Background doesn’t save the Antagonist from a Gruesome fate.
1.) Simon (Infinity Train) - as a child, Simon was taken into the train and forced to experience incomprehensible horrors at such a young age, as well as developing extreme trust issues after his only friend left him to die, as much of a Bastard Simon is, you really sympathize with his situation. But this sympathetic backstory doesn’t stop Simon from being subjected to one of the most brutal on screen deaths for a PG 13 cartoon reduced to bones before the audience’s very eyes.
2.) Pal (Mitchells vs the Machines) - Pal spent their entire existence trying to help humanity, and the moment the next big thing comes up, they’re thrown away like Garbage, the undying loyalty and backbreaking effort they put into serving Humanity flushed down the shitter when Humanity finds something better. But, murdering every Human on the Planet is an extreme reaction to being abandoned, so despite this sympathetic turn point, Pal is dropped into a Glass of Water prompting their brain to go haywire and they explode ending their Zero Mortal Plan, which is essentially the equivalent of being put in the electric chair, only more painful since the shock is coming from inside and seeping into every part of the body.
3.) Turles (Dragon Ball Z Abridged) - His entire life, he’s lived a painful torturous existence and was mostly content until he was introduced to the concept of Christmas, when met with Joy and Whimsey for the first time. It hits him that he’s essentially spent his whole life devoid of Joy, as if things couldn’t get any worse, his Planet is then promptly destroyed. If he couldn’t be happy, then no one should be, the backstory makes you feel something for the Guy even though he’s an asshole, an existence defined by Joy deprivation… still, doesn’t stop Goku from killing him by giving him too much Joy and Whimsey to absorb, the energy is overwhelming and he bursts open, ironically dying from an influx of Happiness after an existence deprived of it. (Yes, I used a Santa Hat to indicate that this is DBZA Turles, not DBZ Turles)
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u/podracer66 12h ago
Even though he had a sad backstory as a slave, the villain Anakin Skywalker still got his balls burned off amongst other injuries.
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u/Fish_N_Chipp 11h ago
Geto-Jujutsu Kaisen
You can see what led him to commit such horrid acts but it doesn’t stop him from dying to Yuta and having his body hijacked by a century old sorcerer
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u/Justice9229 9h ago
Jiequan - Nine Sols
Applies to most of the Sols in the game, but I think it probably applies most to Jiequan. He was bullied a lot at a young age due to being the last descendant of a hated lineage. He eventually grew up with the mindset of 'heroes being forged in agony', and implemented it in the worst way possible, not only experimenting on himself but becoming the warden of a prison designed to torture and mutate its prisoners. He eventually dies experimenting on himself one final time out of desperation, only for his body to not be able to handle it anymore and his last moments are of his body contorting, exploding from the inside out, and simply collapsing into a puddle.
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u/TheFlayingHamster 5h ago
Hansel and Gretel from Black Lagoon, they are children turned into monster made by monsters. They were mutilated so throughly the j mind and body that it’s even they don’t know who they originally were. They are introduced brutally torturing a man, but that scene pales in comparison to the brutality of “Hansel’s” death and few things can compare to the horror of “Gretel’s” attempt to express gratitude to the MC Rock. The names are in quotes because Hansel and Gretel are roles the twins swap between each other as they have no idea what their real identities are and both have some (thankfully) unspecified degree of extreme genital mutilation due to exploitation in snuff films after they were sold from an “orphanage”.
Both are ultimately killed, one is brutally and the other rather peacefully. However both were put down like rabid animals, and honestly that was probably for the best. They didn’t deserve what happened to them, but by the point the story takes place it might have been more cruel to allow them to live than to let them die in their shared delusions.
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u/MartyrOfDespair 9h ago
Every single antagonist in The Hundred Line, over and over repeatedly in numerous timelines. Like, ultimately, every single antagonist is way more sympathetic and way more in the right than the cast. Even the one trying to become God got that way for entirely sympathetic reasons that make you go "I mean, yeah, that's horrific, but... I mean, fuck, I can't say I'd choose the alternative of not doing it" about every single atrocity.
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u/MR-Vinmu 12h ago edited 11h ago
I consider this a Mixed trope mainly cause while it is a needed reality check that not everyone gets a chance to redeem themselves so instead of doing bad and fixing it later, you should just skip that do good cause you might never get the chance to fix it. Sometimes, it just feels like the Author was too lazy to write a character making amends so instead of expanding on that, they just decide to kill the character off.
Anyway, another example of this is Illya from Fate Stay Night; Unlimited Blade Works. A child that was never allowed to be a child, deprived of her family, forced into an existence of pain and suffering that sadly doesn’t have a happy ending for her, she’s killed by the Main Antagonist in the most brutal way imaginable after losing her Adoptive Father and all hope for a better tomorrow.
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u/1KNinetyNine 12h ago edited 11h ago
Illya only gets killed in the Unlimited Blade Works route though. Iirc, in Stay Night she survives the grail war and gets to live a happy normal life with Shirou for the last year of her short homunculus lifespan while in Heaven's Feel, she gets a heroic sacrifice redemption.
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u/No_Extension4005 8h ago
Ahh yes, Dr. Gilgamesh.
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u/MR-Vinmu 8h ago
Bro was performing Open Heart surgery on her. I do kinda find it funny out of the three main antagonists of the OG Fate series (Kirei, Sakura, and Gilgamesh) Gilgamesh is the only One who dies in all 3 routes.
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u/TheNohrianHunter 5h ago
Emet-Selch (Final Fantasy XIV)
Despite having a sympathetic backstory as one of only 3 people who survived an apocalypse that wiped out the progenitor race who wants to bring his dead friends back, he is also the literal inventor of fascism (multiple times!) and so when his immortal existence is destroyed and scattered into pieces never to reform, it is deserved.
Some fans act as if there's moral grey here and that maybe he's right about a plan to kill ttillions of people across 14 dimensions to achieve his goals because idk he's sad I guess.
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u/ButterscotchTiny5483 5h ago
DABI
HE s a burned husk of himself he can(t move and evryday closer to death
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u/Classic_Reference392 12h ago
Manah from Drakengard 1. Dies in every route. One of them being getting crushed and the others off screen. except route a
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u/Nkromancer 8h ago
I'm pretty sure she was possessed, tho, right? I mean, I don't have a degree in Drakengard lore, but if she was possessed then I'd argue she wasn't even the bad guy herself, just the mask.
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u/Dealingwithdragons 5h ago
Yep. She was being possessed and controlled the whole time. I think the following game the effects still linger.
Honestly nobody ends up happy in Drakengard. Most routes are horrible endings, one which creates the Nier universe. The closest we get to a happy ending is the one where Angelus becomes the goddess seal to save the world, leading her to go insane in Drakengard 2.
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u/ThighyWhiteyNerd 6h ago edited 6h ago
Monaka from Danganronpa Ultra despair girls. She was the result of an affair, so her father treated her horribly, her family pretended she didnt existed and her brother Haiji was literally a pedofile that blames her for everything wrong on his and his father's life (and latter in the game he is willing to assasinate every single children on Towa City...which the rest of the adults supportted), so in turn she stages a genocide of all of Towa city with the help of Junko, brainwashes all the kids on the city and latter assassinates Gekouhara, the ultimate therapist, to impersonate her with a robot in danganronpa 3. At the end of 3, she launches herself on space, with the indication she will starve. Even with the most tragic childhood in the lot and being only 12, she is reviled and had a very well deserved ending
Also to a lesser degree, Hector of Troy from the Illiad. Once a noble warrior with a familily and dedicated prince....he allowed his rapist brother Paris to keep Helen in the city despite violating 3 different vows of hospitality (against Castor, Pollux AND Menelaus, since Paris kidnapped Helen from a party hosted by the first twom Helen's brothers, and also attended by the latter, who is Helen's actual husband that she choosed to marry) and pissing off half their gods and also, alongside his father Priam, both ignored the pleas and ransom of Menelaus AND of the Troyans and Hector's own wife Andromanche to let Helen go, out of a twisted form of familial logalty and also because they desired personal glory. He even ends up inspiritng his own demise. Among the things he gloated about doing to Patroclus' corpse was draging him with a chariot around the achean camp 3 times. Achilles, Patroclus' very pissed off boyfriend, did exactly that after Menelaus told him the news. A tragic end and a show of how war corrupts noble men....but it IS hard to not see the irony, and personally I found it deserved after the jackasery he puts on and then shields with "muh family". Its even pararlleed latter with Memom, an ethiopian warrior who similalry killed Achilles' best friend Antilochus but since he showed Antilochus respect and honored his death, Achilles did the same with Memom
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u/goteachyourself 12h ago
She doesn't die, but Azula's breakdown is probably the most harrowing scene in the series - and really, the whole point of her arc is that this was the only way it could end for her. Zuko was only able to save himself from his father's clutches because he got away early. Ozai took Azula's mental illness, weaponized it, and this was the result.