Most beautifully fucked up character you've seen

[AsurasEyes]

If there's one thing I like, it's a fucked up character that has a good arc. Lelouche Vi Britannia wouldn't be the amazing character he is if he wasn't a sociopath, Samara from The Ring wouldn't be so terrifying if she wasn't so twisted, and what would Batman be but a rich guy with too much time on his hands if he hadn't seen his parents murdered in front of him as a child? I play D&D with my friends, running a campaign that's essentially a horror-fantasy, and I especially like the mad surgeon/necromancer my group's been going up against recently. And since the new game "They Bleed Pixels", I've suddenly become far more interested in fucked up characters.

Escapists, what is a nice and psychologically scarring character you think the world needs more of?

(Off-note, please don't say Jack from Mass Effect. She was a waste of pixels)

 

[Melon Hunter]

Granny Rags from Dishonored got my hackles up recently. The first time you see her, she seems to be little more than a blind, crazy old lady who gets antagonised by the local gangs. Until you find the Outsider shrine in her back garden... and the fact she gives you runes... and asks you to contaminate a still making bootleg potions to combat the plague with plague. Each encounter with her makes her more and more freaky, and the final encounter with her is incredibly unsettling. I liked her as a character, but ye gods is she dark.

 

[A Satanic Panda]

Marcus (Shamrock) from Ace Combat 6. He has a pretty interesting identity crisis when he thinks him and the player make a great team. Excuse me, I make a great team. He can crash into a pylon for all I care.

For real: inb4 GLaDOS. The first Portal game had a perfect balance of making her seem ominous and psychotic.

 

[aba1]

I would say Guts from Berserk is likely one of the most interesting characters I have ever read about easily without a doubt.

He was born in the mid-evil ages from the corpse of his mother who was hung by her intestines and nails from a tree along with the rest of her kin crying in a puddle of all their blood by a band of mercenaries. Despite being a bad omen the leader of the bands wife takes him as her son only to die of a horrible deforming disease a few years later (he was about 6 or 7) which only furthered the distaste for him among the band especially his already distant father who blamed him for the murder of his wife (Guts mother). Guts was quickly forced to earn his keep participating in full on wars even as a young child. A while later his father secretly sold him for a night to a fellow mercenary who raped him which would scar him for the remainder of his life. He never sleeps without his sword in his arms from that moment forward often hugging it in some attempt of affection. Then a few years later Guts father loses his leg in a accident and it becomes Guts job to support the two of them. One night in a drunken fit his father lashes out at Guts revealing that he had in fact sold him to be raped blaming him for his mothers death guts tries to defend himself and accidentally kills his father slicing him through the neck. Immediately after members of the band find out what happened and attempt to kills guts chasing him out of camp and off a cliff. Guts barely survives the fall and manages to limp on forward only to be attacked by a pack of wolves with nothing but him and his sword. He manages to fight of the wolves but only within a inch of his life.

Skip ahead a few years he is about 18 at this point all he knows is war and he works as a mercenary moving from war to war avoiding everyone and everything. Eventually he meets a band of mercenaries who ambush him. He overwhelms them and their leader takes notice and challenges him to a dual for his freedom. He loses his freedom but finds home. It takes him a whiles but he finally starts to open up to them. He makes friends and their group works their way up the ranks all the way to knighthood and then to the rank of noble and even to the countries top army he becomes second in command and even gets a girlfriend. After all this he finds out that his best friend (the leader of the army) doesn't respect him because he is to much off a follower. So in a attempt to carve his own destiny he leaves only to find out in his absence his best friend was arrested and tortured for 2 years. He manages to rescue his friend only to find out he can never walk talk or really even move ever again.

This is where things get a little crazy.

From here he is running away with the remnants of the army after the rescue of his friend, only to have his friend in all his depression summon the demon lords and sacrifice everyone Guts has
ever known or loved to being eaten by gruesome monsters in order become a demon lord himself. After his friend becomes a demon lord he proceeds to rape Guts girlfriend in front of him while Guts arm gets eaten off his body by demons and his eye gets pieced close with this being his final sight (at least in that eye). Guts manages to escape all this with his girlfriend but just barely with his girlfriend now having lost her mind and him missing his arm and a eye and that is the first half of the series not even the whole damn thing.

I have never seen a character go through more than guts the man is insanely complex and interesting and the story is soooooooooooooooooo well written you really empathize with all the characters and the situations. The lore is deep and complex all the while being interesting to under stand while still having more to learn with each re-read.

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

Hmmm, not sure who to pick, not sure who to pick... It's a tricky question, I'll give you that. Oh! Thanks for reminding me OP!

I'm going to say Jack from Mass Effect.

 

[Queen Michael]

Asparagus from Confidential Confessions vol. one. (It's a pretty obscure manga series.) The way she glorified suicide was amazing.

 

[Vault101]

(Off-note, please don't say Jack from Mass Effect. She was a waste of pixels)

I'm gonna say jack from mass effect

mainly because her arc felt incomplete at the end of ME2...but to see her finally have a purpose was kind of heartwarming

 

[iwinatlife]

Durzo Blint From The Night angel Trilogy badass who went from Honorable Knight all the way down the alignment scale to unscrupulous master Wetboy (super-magic-assassin)

 

[capper42]

Walt from breaking bad. His character is developed so well over the series, and he becomes pretty fucked up I guess.

 

[roushutsu]

I loved Ladd Russo from Baccano! In a series that focuses on immortals in the early 20th century, it says something when the most interesting character is a mortal man who is just batshit insane. He's part of a mob family, hijacks a train, kills multiple people (one guy had his head smashed into pulp just by his fists), and even has a twisted view of love. He constantly promises his girlfriend that he will kill everyone else in the world before he gets to her, then he will kill her slowly, but until the day comes then she must stay alive and by his side.

Yeah, pretty fucked up, but hot damn is he fun to watch.

 

[Cheesus Crust]

Walt from breaking bad. His character is developed so well over the series, and he becomes pretty fucked up I guess.

The nice thing about his development is that its often a result of circumstances beyond his control, like his cancer for example. Eventually, you get to see him become the mask that he wears around those he works with.

Personally though, I'd like to see characters more like Sheldon Cooper. Sheldon possesses traits that many would see as being excellent. His eidetic memory for example.

True it's awesome that you can memorize a lot of things with extreme accuracy by exerting little to no effort, but as you can see in a lot of episodes he easily gets traumatized by a first time experience that it develops into a phobia. Case in point, Episode 9 Season 5 if I recall correctly shows Sheldon explaining why he has a fear of birds. Later on I realized that nearly everything he's afraid is a result of a bad experience that he faced when he was a child. His eidetic memory is as much a blessing as it is a curse. You can see just how much certain stuff that most of us would probably brush off affects his life.

 

[Zhukov]

Jack from Mass Effect.

Partly just to piss off the OP, but mostly because I think she was an awesome character in her own right. Even more so after she discovered the joys of wearing shirts.

She had some depth to her. On the surface she's nihilistic, hyper-aggressive and selfish. Then you find out what kind of life she's led and her personality starts to make a lot of sense. And under it all she's harbouring a severe case of survivor's guilt that had led her to re-imagine her childhood imprisonment and escape.

Also, development. It was satisfying to see her go from aimless and borderline psychotic to finally finding a place and a purpose.

Plus, it's just plain fun to see her telekinetically ruin some guy's day.

 

[shrekfan246]

Hm.

I'll have to go with Jack, from Mass Effect.

She's the perfect antithesis to Commander "Jesus Christ" Shepard and Miranda "Miss Perfect" Lawson, and her arc gives her a lot of depth as a relatable character.



And less "beautifully messed up" and more "just plain insane", Kratos has to get a mention. Though in the first game, and the PSP games, he was at least remotely a character that we could care about, as soon as God of War II rolled around he became a brutal, violent caricature of himself.

 

[Nouw]

Rorschach from Alan Moore's Watchmen. I'm struggling to write why so instead I will implore you to read the graphic novel and watch the film. He's insane, but you may find yourself rooting for him.

 

[VladG]

I'd say most of the characters from FarCry 3. Outstanding voice acting, good animation and good writing have shaped some awesome characters: From the perpetually stoned Dr. Earnheardt to the dangerously insane Vaas and all the island characters in between.


I swear, it's worth playing FarCry 3 just for the characters.

 

[mooncalf]

Granny Rags from Dishonored got my hackles up recently. The first time you see her, she seems to be little more than a blind, crazy old lady who gets antagonised by the local gangs. Until you find the Outsider shrine in her back garden... and the fact she gives you runes... and asks you to contaminate a still making bootleg potions to combat the plague with plague. Each encounter with her makes her more and more freaky, and the final encounter with her is incredibly unsettling. I liked her as a character, but ye gods is she dark.

"Fiddle-dee dum and fiddle-dee dee
The old gray lady is after me
She wants my shoes and she wants my skin
There's none so small that she can't fit in."
- Children's rhyme, unknown origin

Granny Rags is an even slightly less malevolent version of Thief: Deadly Shadow's Gamall. At first you think this is just flavour text to spice up loading screens, but later on in the game you realise that a story to scare children is actually a hidden foe more twisted and powerful than those you thought to be your ultimate enemy.

 

[Zetona]

The major characters in the show Justified are all fucked up in some way or other.

Spoiler: Moderate spoilers for Justified, which is a show you should really see for yourself

Raylan Givens is a US Marshal who conceals his personal issues under a ready wit and an ice-cold Wild West persona, complete with cowboy hat. Unfortunately, he has an immense temper that can compromise his morals and he absolutely despises his father. Series villain Boyd Crowder kicks off the show by vowing to shoot Raylan Givens in the next 24 hours, and after Raylan shoots him first, he has a religious awakening which leads to him blowing up meth labs with RPGs?only to see his father irreparably shatter his newfound faith and kick him back on the path to crime. Heck, there was one episode involving a guy who collected Hitler's paintings so that he could burn them to spite his Nazi father.

The best has to be Quarles, the Season 3 villain. A pasty-skinned, blond, blue-eyed mobster from Detroit, seen by the mob boss as a much better son than his actual son (see a pattern here?), scarred for life after his destitute father prostituted him as a boy?he starts out projecting a refined, suit-wearing sophistication in contrast to the Kentucky rednecks that surround him, but quickly becomes increasingly slimy, becoming addicted to Oxy, beating hookers, and then raping a dude. A really unsettling character, but also a really good, fucked-up villain.