Last week, we shared Reddit’s nominations for the saddest fictional backstory, and the BuzzFeed readership weighed in with their own tragic suggestions. Here are 15 of the characters they believe have enough emotional baggage to fill an airplane’s cargo hold.
Responses have been edited for length and/or clarity. Also, watch out for spoilers, but you knew that already.
1.
“Sirius Black from Harry Potter should be on this list. He was raised in an abusive household bad enough to drive him to run away at the age of 16. He had a bit of an escape in school, but he grew up under the stress of wartime. His younger brother was sucked in and killed by that war. The one bright spot in his life was his friends, but he inadvertently played a hand in the death of his best friend by suggesting he trust Pettigrew, who ended up betraying them. Then, at the age of 21-ish, he got sent to the most depressing, terrifying prison on earth for murders he didn’t commit. He spent 12 years rotting away there. He finally escaped, only to spend the last 2 years of his life in hiding and eating rats before being murdered by his own cousin at the ripe old age of 36.”
2.
“Marvel’s Natasha Romanoff. She was forced into what was basically human trafficking and raised to be a mindless assassin.”
3.
“Olivia Benson from Law & Order: SVU. She’s been through it.”
4.
“Bucky Barnes from the Captain America saga. Sent to war, captured and tortured, ostensibly died only to survive due to the aforementioned torture, recaptured and tortured some more, brainwashed, cryogenically frozen and only revived when being sent to commit murders, came back to himself after 70 years and had to suffer through reversing the brainwashing alone, framed for murder and recaptured AGAIN, then sent back to war just to die AGAIN, then finally gets revived just to watch his best friend go back to live in a past that doesn’t include him. Like, my man deserves a nap.”
5.
“How about Johanna Mason from The Hunger Games? After surviving The Games, her entire family is murdered for refusing to follow The Capitol’s orders, she is thrown into The Games again, captured and tortured by said Capitol, loses her hair, can’t even bathe herself properly after being traumatized by water, lost Finnick, lost her faith in Katniss, and doesn’t even have anyone to spend the last of her days with!”
6.
“Kakashi Hatake from Naruto needs to be on this list. Kakashi lost everyone he loved in his childhood and teenage years. He watched Obito (his best friend and teammate) die at 12, was forced to kill Rin (his other teammate) not long after at her request to save their village, and then his sensei Minato died from stopping the Nine-Tails. Despite everything that happened, he never turned evil, not even once. He was always loyal to the Hidden Leaf Village and to his students Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura. As a sensei he was smart, resourceful, and kind. I hope he finds the happiness and peace he deserves someday.”
7.
“I’m going to go with Mikasa from Attack on Titan. She watched her parents get slaughtered and then watched her new family get slaughtered and then watched the one guy who protected her in the world go absolutely insane and murderer 80% of the world. Then, she had to ultimately choose to finish him in the end.”
8.
“Marc Spector from Moon Knight. Episode 5 of the show still makes me choke up every time, and the end of Episode 6? Yeah. He needs to be on this list.”
9.
“Maggie Greene/Rhee of The Walking Dead. She saw her family and friends turn into Walkers, her house burned down, her friends get eaten alive repeatedly, and her father get decapitated. She was excited to see her sister, only to find her dead, and she witnessed her husband get brutally murdered before her eyes! I know I’m missing more, but I quit watching after a while!”
10.
“I’d argue that Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender had it worse than Zuko. At least Zuko had his mother and Iroh to give him love and kindness. Being a prodigy and her father’s favorite turned Azula into a psychopath and then insane. Being banished and getting away his father is literally the best thing that could have happened to Zuko.”
11.
“Klaus Hargreeves from The Umbrella Academy. He was adopted as a baby by an evil billionaire to be used as a child soldier. He was constantly surrounded by ghosts that only he can see, and which only go away when he self-medicates with drugs and alcohol. His evil billionaire father learnt he was immortal at a very young age and murdered him multiple times in horrific ways, and also frequently locked him away in a mausoleum. He grew up addicted to drugs, was brutally tortured by trained assassins, and time-traveled back in time to the Vietnam War where he met his one true love only to watch him die in battle. He grew close to a parallel universe version of his dad only to be betrayed by him by leaving him to die in an apocalyptic kugelblitz. His siblings see him as a joke and don’t take him seriously despite all he’s been through. Somehow he manages to stay relatively sweet and kind despite it all!”
12.
“Newt from The Maze Runner. Time and time again, he had his loved ones taken from him. He was forced to forget the one family member he had left, and forced into a place so awful he tried to kill himself and goes through hell to escape only to find out he’s condemned to lose his mind and die because he’s the only one of his friends not immune. He was fighting a losing battle from the start and he didn’t know until the end.”
13.
“Piper Halliwell from Charmed. She lost her mom, grandma, sister, husband (for a while). She became like eight different monsters, took care of her idiotic younger sisters, one of whom kept falling for demons; the other just would not listen. Her son was always the target of demonic attacks and was kidnapped multiple times. She took in a young witch and her sister who tried to kill her toward the end.”
14.
“Mark Greene from ER. His wife left him and took their daughter, the woman he loves moved away, that woman pretended to be a doctor and basically trapped him in a room, he was beaten up by random attackers, and he found love only to find out he had brain cancer, then he had brain surgery. His older daughter turned out to be awful and nearly killed his new baby, which caused his second wife to leave him and take the baby and then he died horribly and ruined ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ for me forever.”
15.
And finally: “Me, a professor in TV Arts: Cricket from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”
