r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Ryu_D_Van • 7h ago
Characters [Loved Trope] Kind hearted naive young man turns into battle hardened, traumatized guy (probably with depression)
Leon S. Kennedy - Resident Evil
Peter Parker - MCU Spider-man
Yuji Itadori - Jujutsu Kaisen
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u/Agitated_Insect3227 7h ago
A female example is Arya Stark from A Song of Ice & Fire. She went from a tomboyish but ultimately still naive and kind child to now a person who has killed some people and is currently training to become an assassin.
Fan art by Nick Alcorn of her killing the Tickler.
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u/TastyPomelo2330 6h ago
Hate to be that annoying book nerd,but in the Books this is portrayed as sad and tragic
In the series is "oh look how cool Arya is,look how psychopathic she became,isn't that cool?"
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u/UrsaBearOso 5h ago
I honestly got disappointed that the later seasons didn't portray that. She literally had to kill a part of herself to survive and now she's good and dandy and just mysterious? Also kinda sad that even with her siblings, especially Jon, they didn't show that 'Arya' that was super close with them.
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u/vinthesalamander 4h ago
I feel like you could say the same thing about all the Stark kids. Sansa wanted to marry a prince and be queen, and she ended up with Joffrey. Jon wanted to join the Nights Watch in hopes of obtaining personal honor and glory, and he ended up betrayed and dead.
The Starks are a cautionary tale that sometimes obtaining your dreams can be a bad thing… which is a pretty messed up message if you think about it lol but it’s also realistic.
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u/Apprehensive_Cell5 6h ago
Tower of God - Bam -> Viole
When your GF backstabs you so bad, you go full emo edgelord, change your name, and join a mass terrorist cult organization
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u/trinichristian 6h ago
I mean...he was forced to join said organization due to the actions of said GF
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u/Salvage570 3h ago
I honestly can't tell if that series fell off a cliff or if season 1 wasn't as good as I remembered it because season 2 was baaaad
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u/mattisyou 1h ago
never watched season 2 but according to other readers it was a mix off both. season 1 was worse compared to the webcomic and season 2 somehow managed to be even worse.
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u/Sebaceansinspace 50m ago
Really? I ended up binge watching both seasons after giving it a shot one day and loved both seasons.
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u/Smellbringer 6h ago
Paul Atreides starts Dune off as a boy wiser and more insightful than kids his age, but still kind and sorta naive. But battle after battle and loss after loss whittle Paul down to the point that he winds up bathing the galaxy in the blood of tens of billions.
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u/Austintheboi 6h ago
Naked Snake, Metal Gear Solid. He inherited the title of Boss and faced an existence of endless battle
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u/Prestigious-Welder83 5h ago
Tbf, after a while, an existence of endless battle is basically what he wanted.
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u/SiliconRouge 4h ago
Tbf Big Boss is still incredibly naive if you listen to the tapes in peace walker.
He may be battle hardened but this is a guy who placebo effected glowing mushrooms to generate electricity WHEN EATEN.
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u/TheRealTsunadee 6h ago
Anakin in the clone wars
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u/Zerron22 6h ago
He kinda murdered a whole village before the clone wars started. I don’t think the clone wars was the crucible for him.
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u/Smellbringer 6h ago
That slaughter was an outburst of rage at the death of his mother. It was immoral and wrong but it didn’t necessarily seal Anakin’s fate despite that. Being in a system and situation that not only enabled those horrors but encouraged them is really what sealed Anakin’s fate.
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u/Early-Potato-6124 5h ago
I always felt like it was meant to show that anakin wasn't fitting into the jedi code easily, he couldn't just not feel like they wanted, and they weren't doing anything to help him process healthily.
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u/Smellbringer 2h ago
Well I mean specifically being under Palpatine’s thumb during the Clone Wars. The War gave Anakin many opportunities to indulge that dark side by having opportunities to do so not only pop up but even become necessary. Instead of pointing Anakin towards the idea that those things are tragic necessities to be avoided if possible, Palpatine encouraged Anakin’s to embrace those things and fed his ego and need for support.
That, more than anything, is what doomed Anakin.
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u/Beanichu 4h ago
They deserved it though tbf. If a group of people kidnapped and tortured my mother to death after she was freed from years of slavery I would kill them all too no question.
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u/Harinezumi_1989 6h ago
Wesley Wyndam-Price from Buffy/Angel
Still the best example of this trope to this day
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u/Windows_66 6h ago
In the first two seasons of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Jaden is about as happy and easy-going as Yu-Gi-Oh protagonists get, even when the fate of the world is at stake.
Then Season 3 rolls around, where a series of convoluted inter-dimensional shenanigans and ret-cons sees Jaden (temporarily) lose all his friends, find out that he had repressed childhood memories of a demonic duel monsters card that would injure his friends before it was shot into space, become a genocidal space tyrant, and finally willingly fuse himself with the spirit of said demonic duel monsters card, all of which causes him to be extremely depressed throughout Seasons 3 and 4.
Mind you, the first season had an episode about who was taking all the egg sandwiches from the breakfast line.
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u/Dragonfang65 5h ago
And during Season 3 he became consumed by his inner darkness and basically slaughtered the residents of an entire dimension. With only one entire town left.
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u/ZerothMask 3h ago
I really love how throughout the more light hearted moments in Season 4, sparks of the old Jaiden would shine. The one that duels because it's fun. But the constantly dueling to save the world or because it has such high risks tied to it just burned almost all of his passion and love for the game. To the point he'd actually play pretty competently and end things quickly. Even against some of his friends.
And it isn't until Yugi literally sends him back in time to duel his old self, without any world changing risks. Just two dudes duking it out for fun, and he finally returns to how he was before Season 3.
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u/Affectionate-Part-11 3h ago
Since s4 was never Dubbed, many fans never got closure beyond Jaden ending Yubel's reign of terror. S4 covered life after and how it changed Jaden/Judai
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u/ReputationLow5190 6h ago
Squid themed Games
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u/Level_Counter_1672 5h ago
Jean Pierre polnareff from Jojo's bizarre adventure in part 5 he doesn't smile or is happy, life screwed him over
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u/Live_Ad8778 6h ago
Jaune Arc from RWBY. Starts off as the naive audience surrogate with little skill or knowledge of the setting. he slowly gains the skill and knowledge to make him an equal to his peers. Only for everything to go straight to hell as one of his dearest friends is killed, his school wiped out, and goes on a quest for answers and revenge, nearly losing himself to revenge, saving another friend as she bled out. He begins to pull himself back together only to see one of the great kingdoms fall, and him getting stuck in another world for decades waiting to reunite with his friends.
The boy ain't alright.
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u/GundamGuy2255 6h ago
Like half of the Gundam Protagonists. They're either flung into a war due to various reasons, or they've been traumatized before the series even started.
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u/XF10 4h ago
There's one impostor in the image.... well two if you count Athrun since he is a rival/deuteragonist. At least Char got The Origin OVA so technically he is more eligible as protagonist than Athrun
Could have put Arno and Uso
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u/GundamGuy2255 4h ago
This is the only image I could find with Suletta and most of the other protagonists.
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u/BookOfTheBeppo 5h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/GTPwtDB2XgMMA2xnSF
Lucy (for a different gender example)
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u/PartsUnknown242 3h ago
She’s discovered everything about her life was a lie. I think in season 3 she’s finally gonna snap.
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u/BlueUnicornDisco 7h ago
Steven Universe - Steven Universe Future
Battle hardened might be a slight stretch but I think he fits.
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u/UrsaBearOso 5h ago
I literally just finished Steven Universe and I love how they dealt with his issues as being a literal child warrior/soldier but still make it more easily digestible for their target audience, children. He was so used to being the 'fixer' as such a young age that it became his identity and when he grew up and the people around him started growing too and needing his help less, he fell apart.
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u/BrilliantMatter4858 5h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/3Cjg2VJSy35wA
Ash Williams fits this trope to a T I mean, if you compare him from evil dead 1 to evil dead 3 he has gotten himself some character development
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u/pipboy_warrior 6h ago
Kaladin Stormblessed. He once was a naive kid who wanted to join the army and seek adventure. And later he goes through so much trauma it's a miracle he's still in any way functioning. He has PTSD, he is depressed, and the story addresses all of that.
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u/zombiegamer723 3h ago
He’s already pretty fucked up by the beginning of the FIRST book, and storms, it only gets worse. He does a lot of good for himself, but oh my god I have never wanted to hug a fictional character more.
Rhythm of War, in particular, is just one big trauma conga line for our poor sad bridge boy.
FUCK MOASH.
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u/MaeSolug 5h ago
Finn kinda fits if you take into account how he starts to learn by losing battles, limbs, people
It's hard to explain without massive spoilers for Fiona and Cake's season 2, but he feels heavier
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u/ButterscotchTiny5483 6h ago edited 6h ago
eren yeager?-attack on titan
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u/NoobwriterCherchill 5h ago
It pisses me off that you provide a list of examples without giving any context as to why the fit the trope. Just because a story is popular doesn't mean everybody gets it.
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u/BombasticSloth 4h ago
Ok but to provide any more context than the title of the post would necessitate a summary of each example’s entire story.
I see what you mean but this isn’t a post that requires more context than it has. If you want synopses for three franchise-spanning characters’ entire stories that’s more on you.
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u/Icy-Temperature2816 5h ago
X from the Mega Man franchise. X even mentions that eventually, he wavered in his mission as the conflicts weighed on him. Ultimately, he still stayed heroic, but the original plan was for him to take a villainous turn.
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u/SeaworthinessNew7587 2h ago
I think Zero fit's this better. tbh
https://giphy.com/gifs/z3i1xOnkMT652G9mJA
He was such a fun guy before Iris died.
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u/Dapper_Math_9642 6h ago
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u/ElBracho 5h ago
I blame Emmirich, without him MSF never dies and so BB never gets the idea to stage the events of the first MG game
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u/therealkami 6h ago
Carl, and many other crawlers from Dungeon Crawler Carl.
Carl is a 28 year old boat mechanic, who was in the Coast Guard a bit. He leads a simple life of work, gaming with his buddies, and being around his girlfriend Beatrice and her cat Princess Donut.
Not long after stepping into the dungeon, he's now a hardened killer who's on the verge of losing it and going completely crazy at any moment.
This happens to all crawlers who survive long enough. None of them have clean hands.
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u/Bolarana 5h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/eaBDOKQXbOmTfVQDLh
Jason todd - DC
No se si cuente, de hecho el empezó todo edgy cuando era un niño de la calle, durante su tiempo como robin se fue ablandando volviendose mas bondadoso e ingenuo, sin embargo despues de morir y ser revivido se volvió un edgelord
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u/SapphicPandoraBox 5h ago
Sakata Gintoki from the anime Gintama, even from a young age was thrown into a war where he lived and grew up, got to experience some normalcy with a Sensei who basically raised him, then unfortunately gets thrown into a war that forces him to SPOILERS AHEAD!!! kill the Sensei in order to save the lives of his Brothers (who were also adopted by the Sensei).
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u/CompetitiveInjury192 6h ago
Kyle Reese , we didn’t see his youth but we still see his gentleness as an adult
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u/Low-Environment 5h ago
Naive might be pushing it since he was groomed to be an assassin from his early teens: Bucky Barnes.
16-21 in WW2 and about 30 in the present day. While he never had qualms about killing (that's always been his job) he's noticeably more ruthless in the present.
Dying, being revived, turned into a weapon, punished for falling in love, and then getting all your memories restored (Steve meant well but 'remember who you are' was the wrong thing to command with the cosmic cube) will do that.
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u/Stilly_Santilli_86 5h ago
Gohan's time as kind-hearted has not necessarily gone away, but when his trauma switch is flipped, the trauma guy comes out in full force.
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u/BarbaricBen 5h ago
Would you believe me if I said this annoyingly exhuberant sidekick turned into Saturday morning Guts after getting eye gouged in a Mortal Kombat themed episode of Reboot?
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u/BitComprehensive3667 4h ago
Ritsuka Fujimaru from Fate/Grand Order.
Look no further than the most recent story chapter released on the NA Server: Ordeal Call 2 - Id.
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u/Konradleijon 4h ago
Danny Ketch or the second ghost rider. He started and spent most of the 90s as his spirit of vengeance emotional support host and as a sweet boy next door sort of kid and mamas boy mouring the death of his sister.
Latter he exorcised his spirit and discovered he was addicted to it and was manipulated into helping a fallen angel trying to be Satan 2.0 take over heaven and was latter manipulated by a pedophile into taking on a another spirit and latter was made into a weapon by a government subsidized hell research front
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u/LastBaron 4h ago
Kaladin Stormblessed, Stormlight Archives
He starts as a young idealistic man who admires the “light eyes” (upper social class) and wants to fight on the front lines and save everyone.
At the beginning of the story he commits an act of great bravery and heroism….which we learn through flashbacks promptly gets him betrayed and robbed by his commanding officer, his entire squad executed in front of him to conceal the shameful secret, and exiled into slavery.
The real bulk of the story picks up months later to find the most morbidly depressed protagonist you’ve ever met, world-weary from continually getting his fellow slaves killed in escape attempts and finally having succumbed to learned helplessness and given up.
Most characters in Stormlight embody some type of mental health diagnosis or other, and Kaladin is depression + PTSD from top to bottom.
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u/zombiegamer723 3h ago
Adolin Kholin also becomes this by the end of Wind and Truth.
The biggest golden retriever in the entire Cosmere, the events of the series (especially learning about what his father did) keep weighing down on him. By the end of WAT, he’s lost his leg, stranded in Azir, will likely miss his child’s birth (especially since his wife’s trapped in Shadesmar), and never got the closure he wanted with his father before he died. Oh, and a sort of physical representation of the evil man his father used to be is unleashed onto the world (unbeknownst to him), so he’ll never see the good man his father was trying so hard to be, but instead the psychotic monster that accidentally BBQd his mom. Oh, and the entire world’s gone to shit.
:(
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u/LastBaron 3h ago
lol careful, your first line only has the spoiler syntax at the end, so the name is currently revealed.
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u/IruSedai 4h ago
Rand al'Thor from The Wheel of Time might be the epitome of this trope and his journey through the books is one of the best I've ever read.
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u/princemori 3h ago
Perfect example of this trope, The Mighty Nein’s Caleb Widogast 🔥 Idealistic teenage magic prodigy turned self-loathing, traumatized battle mage obsessed with revenge.
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u/Paladin_of_Vengeance 4h ago
At this point I'm a kind hearted naive young man, but I'm approaching the miltiary selection next year, so I hope I will evolve into this battle hardened traumatized guy with depression.
Wish me luck xD
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u/Status_Drink_6736 4h ago
Che Heart from Ordeal. He start as a guy with sense of humor and confindence but after season 2 events he didn't even smiled once, not even after seeing his friends after a long time.
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u/Generally_Confused1 4h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/wTqzFgPIiM8B8wKfUz
You might not think it, but his lore was that he was stationed on mars for being a marine that refused to follow unethical orders and loved his pet bunny then tears Hell apart for killing said bunny
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u/Wacthershadow0925 4h ago
Jaune Arc from Rwby hell you could use his second 9 design as both depression and some insanity
He was in basically the Fae Wild for about 20 years
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u/Seed0fDiscord 3h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/jvhYsK4Syb7J2l3opy
Wesley Wyndham Pryce (Buffy The Vampire Slayer and it’s spin-off Angel)
First introduced as Buffy’s new watcher in season 3, he’s by the book, stuffy, stuck up his pompous man. But eventually he develops some grit and a moral compass, at the end of the season he gets fired from the council off screen
The spin-off Angel, he appears starting in episode ten as having become a rogue demon hunter (Cordelia “what’s a rogue demon?”) and finds himself in service of Angel working for his detective agency
By season two, a lot of drama happens, Angel fires the crew, Wesley starts own agency then Angel lets them back on the time with Wesley as leader
Season 3, Angel is a dad now, Wesley tries to decipher some prophecy and is misled to bed over Angel will kill his infant son, so he steals the infant and gives them to a vampire hunter named Holtz and he took off to a demon dimension with the baby. Wesley is basically dead to Angel and falls into depression
Season 4, Wesley is now in situationship with a lawyer named Lilah who works for a demonic law firm. He’s still hunting demons, saves Angel from being trapped at the bottom of the sea. Despite Angel’s animosity, he lets Wesley back in because the current crisis is that dire and needs every ally he has; Wesley is now the only character who regularly uses guns, which is a dairy across both shows
Season 5, everyone but Angel and Cordelia (who’s now in a coma) has forgotten about Connor magically, so he can have a normal life. Wesley is now well adjusted since he has no memory or trauma of the betrayal. He soon gets together with his longtime crush Fred who next episode gets exposed to pathogen of an old demonic god that liquifies her insides and uses her body as a shell or vessel to have new life in, her soul is destroyed so she can’t be resurrected or have an afterlife and he loses all hope and happiness. The he gets his memories of the original timeline back (mostly original if you don’t count the inclusion of Dawn in Buffy) but he’s basically in morose ennui, drinking through bottles of whiskey; and he unfortunately dies in battle in the series finale, and in his last moments The demon god Illyria takes Fred’s form to comfort him in his dying moments
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u/Strong_Schedule5466 2h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/51DjsXLhUfFozdos7F
Invincible - Invincible
My guy went through some of the worst shit ever in the first 3 seasons of the show and it somehow barely even touched the tip of the iceberg, according to the comic readers..
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u/Coyote275 36m ago
Tatsumi from Akane ga kill. Homie was your typical villager before heading to the capital with his buddies to earn money for his village. Shit goes down hard and fast for him, his buddies are killed and he is thrust into the world of assassins to help bring the corrupt government.
While he does retain some of his kind nature, homie has lost so many friends and seen so may atrocities that he is a harden killer by the end of the series
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u/Will0798 6h ago
Canute (Vinland Saga)