"He was always such a… little man. This was finally something that made him feel big."
— Fox Mulder, The X-Files ("Pusher")
A Sister Trope of Start of Darkness that involves a non-badass normal taking numerous levels in badass, whether instantly or over the course of a story, thus becoming essentially nothing but a giant walking, talking bucket of Nightmare Fuel.
Through a series of unlikely coincidences, or through accidental or unknowing actions on the part of the heroes themselves, or as a result of things someone who might have stayed an insignificant nothing is transformed into a nightmare that grows and grows, absorbing the power to rend civilizations to dust and bring universes to their knees.
For some reason, it seems that From Nobody To Nightmare villains are always more powerful, terrifying, deadly, and threatening than your typical Diabolical Mastermind. In scenarios where the villain rose by their own effort, this often a case of I Did What I Had to Do, Jumping Off the Slippery Slope, and maybe a few Angst Nukes thrown in for good measure. This may owe itself to the shock value of the idea that anyone and anything can become the Big Bad under the right circumstances; it's much more comforting to believe that only long years of Card Carrying Villainy could possibly breed that kind of person.
Compare the Diabolus ex Nihilo. If the character was already a bad guy previously but never a serious one, it's Not-So-Harmless Villain. Heroic versions may still find themselves wondering, "Dude, Where's My Respect?". (Or becoming He Who Fights Monsters.) Frequently, the details of this process are uncovered in the villain's Start of Darkness. Contrast From Zero to Hero. Also see Who's Laughing Now?, Malignant Plot Tumor, and Magikarp Power. When a villains power gradually escalates into a nightmare, see Snowballing Threat.
Note that being a villain is not necessarily a requirement for this trope, even though most who fit the trope are. Anyone who is feared or dreaded by someone (even if the "someone" in question is the cruel and tyrannical government that the heroes oppose) can qualify. In such a case, the inverse trope is Villain Decay.
No Real Life Examples, Please!: While it's possible to feel this way about some real people, this is far too arguable to allow any examples. A person might be a "nobody" to you while still being someone's else "nightmare" and vice-versa. Not to mention how judgemental it can get.
Example subpages:
- Anime & Manga
- Comic Books
- Fan Works
- Films — Animation
- Films — Live-Action
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Tabletop Games
- Video Games
- Western Animation
Other examples:
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Music
- Aviators: The witch in "Scarlet Vow" goes from a young girl whose curiosity is punished by the Corrupt Church to a powerful magic wielder who commands angry spirits and destroys the village she was raised in.
- Clamavi de Profundis: Oshrjad Bonebreaker began life as a stunted, abandoned orphan, but eventually grew to be a feared and powerful warlord leading a great orcish horde.
- Evillious Chronicles: Duke Venomania, otherwise known as Cherubim, as expanded in The Lunacy of Duke Venomania, the tie-in to the song of the same name. He's a deformed guy who was locked in the basement because of this, and only two people actually cared about him...and then the girl he loved rejected him. So he murdered his entire family, made a Deal with the Devil, and raped pretty much every character in that story arc. Not to mention all of the murders and brainwashing he committed to keep it quiet.
- Flobots' "Handlebars" tells the story of a kid who can ride his bike with no handlebars growing up to become a dictator who gleefully "ends the world in a Holocaust".
- Gloryhammer, as revealed in Keeper Of The Celestial Flame Of Abernethy
the Big Bad of the whole saga, evil wizard Zargothrax, was once a simple peasant, who used his magical abilities for weaving baskets. Then his home was destroyed in building Kingdom of Fife, prompting Zargothrax to forge a pact with chaos, becoming a mass murdering Evil Sorcerer and greatest threat to the world across space and time.
Mythology & Folklore
- "The Lambton Worm": The Worm starts out as a tiny, harmless fish caught by John Lambton while fishing, small enough to be handled with ease and casually tossed down a well. The Worm then spends years growing within the well, and by the time it crawls back out it's a huge, powerful, terrifying monster that can hold all of the countryside in terrified thrall.
Opera
- In Wagner's Ring Cycle, Alberich is just a lovesick dwarf until he gets hold of the Rheingold and makes a ring which makes him a threat to the gods themselves.
Podcasts
- The Hunger in The Adventure Zone: Balance started out as John, a motivational speaker in his home plane who was struck with extreme nihilism. In time, his conviction of the multiverse's meaninglessness spread to every single thing in his entire plane, down to the last straw of grass or grain of sand. Because of a depressed motivational speaker, an entire plane turned into an Eldritch Abomination out to consume the multiverse in order to force it to have meaning.
- Cute swamp monster Theodora, from roleplaying podcast Dice Funk, goes from a bit character in the previous season to a main character in the next one...a main character in Faustian service to a God of Abominations. By the time the other characters realize that she's Not So Harmless and sweet, Dora has become the living avatar of a dark god and sacrificed everything she's cared about on that god's altar. Worse yet, she accomplishes exactly what she'd set out to do, killing dozens and trapping thousands of innocent people in a Fate Worse than Death inside of ironic hells that they can no longer escape. Ever.
Professional Wrestling
- Triple H started off in WCW as just another long-haired meathead (who wasn't even that meaty) with a silly Wrestling Doesn't Pay gimmick during a time when these gimmicks were a dime a dozen. He got squashed by The Ultimate Warrior during his first WrestleMania match, then the curtain call happened... But by 1997, he was randomlynote paired up with fellow long-haired Kliq member Shawn Michaels to form D-Generation X. From there, he would go on to marry the boss's daughter both in storyline and in Real Life, win both world championships over a dozen times, and become one of Professional Wrestling's nastiest tyrants, earning himself monikers such as 'The King of Kings' and 'The Cerebral Assassin'.
- Jimmy Jacobs started his career off in Ring of Honor as a jobber in fuzzy boots, then as a lovesick emo-teen. Then he snapped, formed the viscous Age of the Fall stable. Since then he was a major player in the S.C.U.M faction and became the Big Bad in Chikara as the leader of the Flood (he was later revealed to be The Dragon).
- The Miz. When he first appeared on television in the summer of 2006, it was merely as the obnoxious emcee for that year's Diva Search (which Layla El won, by the way). He eventually started wrestling, but almost everyone (except for Michael Cole, which Cole himself would Lampshade years later) thought of him as a joke who had only been offered a contract with WWE because he'd been on so many reality shows. (Outside of Kayfabe, of course, he'd been the second-place contestant on Tough Enough, which did him no favors with the fans since the fan-voted contest winner was unceremoniously booted from the WWE) He remained essentially a "curtain-jerker" for his entire first year on TV, even getting eliminated from his first Royal Rumble Match after only seven seconds! It was only after he was drafted to ECW on SciFi in the summer of 2007 and paired with John Morrison in a heel tag team that he started to emerge as something resembling a threat. Fast-forward three years and several titles later, and suddenly Miz is "Mister Money in the Bank" and eventually "the most must-see WWE Champion in history!" And, of course, "Awesome."
- The WWE NXT season one rookies were just some wet-behind-the-ears, fresh-out-of-training nobodies — maybe something someday, but for now not worth much. Then they banded together to form The Nexus and completely tore apart Monday Night Raw. For a few months after that, they were "the biggest threat WWE has ever faced" — bigger than The Alliance, bigger than the nWo, bigger than the McMahon-Helmsley Regime, you name it. Ironically, their undoing came when Daniel Bryan, the only rookie who actually had a good amount of experience before coming on NXT, and who had been expelled from the group for showing remorse, joined the WWE wrestlers in the fight against The Nexus.
- Mark Henry spent the better part of 15 years as a midcarder, best known for his angle with Mae Young, and was considered an oft-injured bust who the WWE only hung onto to justify the untold millions they (over)paid him. When the company was short on monster heels, they turned to Mark Henry to see if he could fill that role finally. With strong booking that had him decimating upper midcarders and main eventers alike, coupled with a rejuvenated Henry in the ring and on the mic, he was able to finally be convincing as one of the most dangerous men in the company, if not THE most dangerous.
- Cody Rhodes made his WWE debut back in July of 2007 as a generic babyface who teamed up with veteran Hardcore Holly to win the World Tag Team Championships later that year. But Rhodes would turn on Holly at Night of Champions in June of 2008 by revealing himself to be Ted DiBiase Jr.'s mystery partner. Both DiBiase and Rhodes would spend the rest of 2008 to early 2010 as Randy Orton's Legacy henchmen who did all of Orton's dirty work. By spring of 2010 when Legacy disbanded, many experts predicted that DiBiase would be the breakout star of Legacy while Rhodes would be stuck in WWE Superstars-land. But it would be Rhodes who would become one of the WWE's top heels as well as one of the longest-reigning Intercontinental Champions while DiBiase faded to obscurity.
- Despite optimistic predictions, Cody never really made it out of the midcard marsh in WWE, leading him to eventually leave the company to seek his fortunes on the indies and in smaller promotions like ROH and NJPW. It was during his time in NJPW that he ended up joining Bullet Club and eventually ousted the famous Kenny Omega to become leader of the hottest stable in the wrestling world. Eventually Cody and his friends in The Elite (Omega and The Young Bucks) had amassed enough clout to hold their own indie PPV, All In, where Cody won the esteemed NWA World Championship, the same title his legendary father Dusty had once held, and they parleyed this success into founding their own promotion, All Elite Wrestling, which has quickly managed to become one of the hottest wrestling promotions in the world, with Cody as its top massively-over babyface. To call his post-WWE career "prolific" would be an understatement of the highest order and he's the unquestioned poster boy for a wrestler leaving WWE to become a bigger star outside of it than they were allowed to become within it. He's probably the biggest arch-enemy Vince McMahon has had since Eric Bischoff (even more so than Jeff Jarrett); how appropriate that he's called the American Nightmare.
- And then he returned to the WWE and ended up becoming champion in Wrestlemania 40, and has cemented himself as one of the top faces of the wrestling world. Just about the only thing he had going for him besides his drive was an in to the industry thanks to his dad. He took that one chance, and ran with it to the top.
- AJ Lee started off as the adorable, nerdy Geek Goddess who won the crowd by being tiny, cute, and easy to relate to. Once she hooked up with Daniel Bryan, her popularity grew... and then he dumped her and she lost her mind, turning her into the crazy Wild Card who brutally abused her former best friend, won the Divas Championship and held on to it for longer than anyone before her, running right over the top of the other Divas in the process.
- Kenny Omega was a Fun Personified kid best known for pretending to Hadoken people during matches. Then he joined the Bullet Club and reemerged as "The Cleaner" a Psycho for Hire brought in to take out all of the wrestlers in New Japan's junior heavyweight division. He then ascended even further up the ranks after AJ Styles left at Wrestle Kingdom 10, now the new leader of the Bullet Club, he has become one of the strongest wrestlers in the world, being the first gaijin to win the G1 Climax and is now the US Champion of NJPW as well as gaining mass amounts of media coverage for his matches against Kazuchika Okada at Wrestle Kingdom 11 and Dominion 6.11.
- Bray Wyatt. Originally Husky Harris, filler for CM Punk's iteration of the Nexus, he later on became "possessed", now the Ax-Crazy leader of a backwoods cult, who may or may not be the vessel for the devil himself. He got worse after becoming a Depraved Kids' Show Host.
- As an unusual heroic example (or straight example, depending on how you feel about his career), the big man himself, John Cena. Cena's first appearance as a pro wrestler was on a Discovery Channel show called Inside Pro Wrestling School, which caught on camera his first day as a wrestler-to-benote . He eventually evolved a rather corny gimmick called "The Prototype" (basically a Terminator-pastiche that derided everyone on their physique, building on Cena's past as a bodybuilder), which he kept up until he made his WWE main roster debut against Kurt Angle in 2002 (at which point he began using his real name). Anyone watching back then would have brushed this guy off as another face in the crowd, not expecting him to become the biggest thing the industry has ever seen since the days of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin.
- Initially on NXT, and to an extent even going back to her indie days as Davina Rose, Bayley was a character that lived on the intersection of "hopeful and positive role model" and "naive fangirl", who often got beat up whenever she approached a heel or anti-hero and more often than not would get beaten decisively in matches. However, through her time in NXT, she developed and adapted to the treachery of her peers, becoming a competent and even dangerous foe who would go on to capture every available women's championship in the company, all while maintaining her optimistic approach. However, as the drama of competition on the main roster threatened to throw her back into the shadows, 2019 saw her take on an increasingly edgier attitude, first declaring that she was done hugging, then allowing her morals to be distorted to help her best friend, before finally completely breaking into a self-justified loner.
- Tropes Are Tools: This was part of the reason Jinder Mahal failed as a WWE Champion. Throughout his career, he had been portrayed as a jobber who never won at anything. Then, within a month, he has managed to get his hands on a pair of flunkies who propelled him to a shot at the title and won- but being a jobber throughout his career made it impossible for people to take him seriously as a champion.
Roleplay
- Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
- Simon in the present is a regular boy with an evil personality that's satisfied with cruel but petty crime. Flashforwards have shown that Simon becomes the head of an FBI division dedicated to capturing and persecuting superheroes, while the Dark Dragon moniker is formed into an evil organisation that kidnaps and tortures the superpowered kids.
- Barbra, a perfectly average girl in the present, is implied in flashforwards to have mutated into a horrifying monster as a result of her Adaptive Ability.
- Two minor examples are Eddie, a chill workman-cum-drug-dealer, and Esther, a kindly investigate journalist. Both are shown in the future to work as lackeys for the Post-Human Division and are set on detaining the superpowered characters.
- Frequently used in The Gungan Council for villains. Better examples would be characters that managed to fly under the radar for a year or two before everyone realized how nightmarishly involved they were in all of the galaxy's problems.
- Survival of the Fittest provides plenty of opportunities for (mostly) normal high school students to become multiple murderers. J. R. Rizzolo, in particular, went from being a regular guy who liked playing Guitar Hero to a sadistic, deceptive loony who offed his former classmates without a trace of guilt.
Theatre
- In The Devil's Disciple, Rev. Anthony Anderson goes from being an anonymous provincial priest to the man who almost singlehandedly destroyed General Burgoyne's American campaign.
- Heather Duke from Heathers: The Musical starts out as a Beta Bitch consistently silenced by Alpha Bitch Heather Chandler, and appeared rather meek compared to the person protagonist Veronica refers to as a "mythic bitch." When describing Heather Duke, Veronica even comments about how she seems to have no discernible personality in comparison to the other Heathers. However, after Heather Chandler's death, Heather Duke takes over as the new Big Bad of the school and is arguably even worse despite lacking the charisma to strike other students with the same feeling of fear that Heather Chandler did. She goes so far as to spread false rumors in order to completely smear Veronica's virtuous reputation, where as Heather Chandler had merely threatened her with social isolation.
Visual Novels
- Ace Attorney:
- Joe Darke was an ordinary office worker, until he killed someone with his car. This led to a chain of events that made him an infamous Serial Killer.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: The beginning has Miles Edgeworth. He's known as the Demon Prosecutor who is said to do whatever it takes to get his guilty verdict, including forging evidence (though Case 1-5 verifies that particular rumor was untrue) and who never lost a case before going up against Phoenix. It's later revealed though that Edgeworth used to be a perfectly normal kid, albeit one very interested in being a famous defense attorney. Character Development in later games makes him less of a nightmare, though.
- In Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit, Simeon Saint was really just an unlucky boy orphaned by his parents, and his dad only used him as a taste tester. He ended up orchestrating many, many events in the game, to the point that his meekness (at that point, pretended) really did fool Edgeworth into thinking he was innocent at first. To put it in context: the person we are talking about was working as an animal trainer in the circus.
- A heroic example to any of his opponents is Phoenix Wright. Phoenix was actually an art major in college when he decided to change careers and start studying law. By the time of the fourth and fifth games, he is known as a Living Legend and a respected figure in his field (though he still has his moments of being a Butt-Monkey).
- Boyfriend to Death: Ren starts off as a helpless and defenseless whelp completely at Strade's mercy. Years later, by the time of the sequel, Ren himself has become an highly unstable individual perfectly willing to kill. And decades later, as The Price of Flesh shows, Ren grows up to be an influential Human Trafficker in his own right, a far cry from his early days as a slave.
- Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair:
- The students of Hope's Peak Academy's 77th class (excluding Chiaki) were all fairly normal, if somewhat messed up, high school students before they became members of Ultimate Despair. Afterward, they were responsible for the murders of their families and friends, terrorism, coup d'etats, wars, the massacre of countless innocents, and even destroying their own bodies through self-inflicted mutilation. The finale anime describes them as million-class murderers.
- Hajime Hinata takes the cake among the cast, starting off from someone with no talent being selected by Hope's Peak for an experiment. Said experiment erased his memories and personality to make him multi-talented for the sake of creating Ultimate Hope... but the aftereffects made him a prime target to become the Ultimate Despair, triggering The End of the World as We Know It.
- Discussed with Dennis in Double Homework. According to Marco, Dennis used to be a quiet kid who fixed everyone’s computers for free. However, this might be a subversion considering some of his hobbies....
- Fate/stay night:
- Sakura Matou goes from the cute girl with a jerk brother who gets kicked out of all the routes early, never does anything important, Cannot Spit It Out and more Shrinking Violet traits to an all-powerful dark mage with the exact magic traits needed not only to be able to be the host of the (sort of) devil but also express its power. And also to keep her mind (to a certain extent). Oh, and she can eat Servants or corrupt them as she pleases, has an immense Healing Factor, and a bunch of other nifty moves. The one thing it doesn't do for her is improve her self image, causing her to believe that Rin (her sister) doesn't care about her (Rin's rather cold statements don't exactly help matters...), and to worry that Shirou might abandon her for Rin.
- Avenger/Angra Mainyu started off as just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill Mesopotamian villager. After being randomly picked to be a scapegoat for "all evils of the world", he ended up being summonable for the Holy Grail War, but even there he was still pathetic, being one of the weakest Servants imaginable. However his spirit then went inside the Grail where he made a wish to truly become the manifestation of evil for revenge on humanity, and that's the reason the Grail has been corrupted ever since.
- In Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star, The King was once a depressed quail whose otherwise-uninteresting life ended so horribly that he became a Well-Intentioned Extremist Eldritch Abomination in the afterlife; he refuses to let himself be reincarnated and creates a fake fairytale kingdom where he steals the souls of all visitors, forcing them to become part of his hive mind so that nobody in the kingdom disagrees or is reincarnated, and they "happily" stay in his false paradise forever.
- Higurashi: When They Cry: All the secondary antagonists/ironic members of the main set of True Companions.
- In Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, Akane goes from being a sweet little girl to masterminding a second Nonary Game to get revenge on the four men that caused her death, as well as to get Junpei to show her the solution to saving her life.
Web Animations
- Animator vs. Animation: The villain of the episode 6 saga, who owns a powerful megacorporation and has the means to torture the most powerful characters in the series to a standstill? That would be Alan's first victim, who was made solely to be tortured and presumed deleted after the first episode.
- Madness Combat: Tricky the Clown starts out as a random Mook in the Sheriff's employ, but then assimilates reality-warping technology and becomes the setting's most enduring villain. As of Expurgation, he's reached Humanoid Abomination status as "The Thorn in Reality's Side".
- Red vs. Blue
- The Big Bad of The Chorus Trilogy and the series' overall Greater-Scope Villain, Malcolm Hargrove, was originally the PA to the chairman of the UNSC Oversight Subcommittee. He proceeded to become the actual chairman of the subcommittee, and would later become the CEO of Charon Industries, using his new power to try to wipe out an entire planet's population and then claim ownership of the planet's invaluable alien artifacts afterwards.
- The Big Bads of Season 15, the Blues and Reds are this, especially their leader, Temple. Similar to the Reds and Blues, the group started as lowly Simulation Troopers designed as living training dummies for the Freelancers, only to end up Taking a Level in Badass and becoming competent soldiers in their own right. However, whereas the Reds and Blues ended up becoming war heroes, the Blues and Reds became revenge-driven murderers out to personally kill all the remaining Freelancers as well as the entire UNSC.
- RWBY:
- Cinder wants to be strong, powerful and feared because she came from nothing, and has clawed her way into the position she now holds as The Heavy to the Big Bad. An orphan who was bullied by older, bigger children, she was bought by a wealthy Atlesian hotelier to function as a slave. A sympathetic Huntsman, Rhodes, secretly trained her to become a Huntress so that she could escape when she came of age; however, years of abuse took their toll on Cinder, who snapped and murdered her step-family. When Rhodes tried to arrest her, she killed him, too. Now she's obsessed with gaining power at all costs, and treats others as abusively as her step-mother once treated her.
- Neopolitan started life as a child imprisoned in her own home by parents who pretended she didn't exist. Attempts to use her Semblance to teach herself how to escape and steal resulted in her banishment to a boarding school that secretly trained her in combat and espionage until she encountered Roman Torchwick, the first person to ever allow her to become her true self. She comes to the heroes' attention once she starts helping Torchwick's crimes, proving a far stronger fighter than her boss. After Torchwick's death, she becomes hellbent on killing Ruby in revenge. Once the Ever After powers up her Semblance to Reality Warper levels, she becomes unstoppable, easily overpowering the realm's most terrifying threatnote and successfully driving Ruby to such despair that she attempts to take her own life.
Webcomics
- In 8-Bit Theater, as it turns out The Onion Kid becomes Sarda, Reality Warper extraordinaire.
- Darths & Droids takes this a step up from the source material: the planet Tatooine and Anakin himself were made up on the fly by the GM, with Anakin not even having had a name until Sally (playing Jar-Jar) asks what his name is. Then he gets a blood transfusion from Obi-Wan, and Annie starts playing him... Long story short, he gains incredibly powerful Force abilities, becomes unstable frighteningly quickly, manipulates Senator Palpatine (who was originally a genuinely good person in this continuity) into wiping out the Jedi and becoming a dictator, later driving him insane by haunting him as a Force ghost - sorry, midichlorian cloud, pushes Padme over the slippery slope into becoming Darth Vader, and is still out there somewhere as a midichlorian cloud, just as evil as ever.
- Karnak from Dominic Deegan was a human orphan raised by orcs. Through a Heroic Sacrifice to save Miranda Deegan, he was transformed into a semi-demon and gradually slaughtered his way up the ranks to become the only Demon Lord in Hell.
- Most Infernomancers in the series fit this trope as well. And Necromancers. And maybe Siegfried. Yeah, Mookie sort of loves this trope.
- In Drowtales, Quain'tana would be this from the perspective of the Blue Blood Sharen clan. She started out as a lowly orphaned Street Urchin, forced to steal food in order to survive and nearly dying at the hands of a Sharen dragon knight over it. But in time, she was able to build up enough power to become their bitterest foe for authority and survived all of their attempts to crush her. By the end of the Time Skip, she overthrows their reign over the city-state of Chel and completely topples their sense of reality.
- In El Goonish Shive, this is why the government puts so much effort into maintaining The Masquerade that keeps regular people from realizing magic exists (and, more importantly, how easy it is). Ordinary jerks with just a taste of magic can turn into psychotic monsters.
- Girl Genius has Baron Wulfenbach. While not quite nobody, Baron is one of the lowest ranks possible in Europe, and his family historically ruled a single town without much invasion of anyone else. His greatest personal claim to fame was essentially as a recurring sidekick for the two legendary heroes of the era. He disappeared for a few years, during which time the heroes disappeared (maybe killed), attacks from their arch-enemy the Other had left Europa in ruins. By the time he came back, all the good he accomplished with his heroic friends was in shambles and every Mad Scientist on the continent was running around trying to kill or conquer each other again. He dealt with this by rolling up his sleeves and conquering the entire continent in a matter of years. Then he held it all together for well over a decade with a delicate balance of soft-touch and iron-fist policies summed up as "Don't make me come over there".
- Guilded Age has Penk, who starts out as a drummer and herald with strong ideals but not much else, and then becomes an avatar of his god, gaining increased strength, resilience, and senses, and takes on leadership of the World's Rebellion's response to the Gastonian Peacemakers.
- Coyote of Gunnerkrigg Court believes that etheric beings like himself only exist because of human belief. Assuming his theory is true, he was once an ordinary coyote until a delirious dying human saw him as a deity.
- Jack Noir of Homestuck starts out as just an unwilling Obstructive Bureaucrat in the kingdom of Derse, but ends up becoming the comic's Disc-One Final Boss after killing the Black Queen and takes the prototyping rings for his own use.Takes a whole another level when he successfully kills an entire universe
- Eridan Ampora is a competitor for fastest jump from Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain to a serious threat with his plan to join Jack, the murders of his love interest and best friend, and causing the extinction of his species. Right after pathetically thanking said best friend for being the only person to show faith in him.
- For straight-up old-school shiver-inducing terror try Gamzee's about face. He starts the comic as an unimportant Flat Character based on a parodic Deconstruction of a Insane Clown Posse video - an attempt to imagine what a character holding the beliefs implied in the video would actually be like (a Monster Clown with a tough upbringing, but also a sweet-natured, totally chill, Stoner Love Freak who is probably the nicest person in the comic). The fanbase loved him and produced gag fanworks based on him, which made it all the more hilarious when he was described as "the most important character in Homestuck", and then flipped out and started murdering all the other trolls due to a religious crisis.
- ...and now we have Aranea Serket, whose whiplash-inducing Face–Heel Turn is enough to break one's neck. Making it worse? The action that put her over the Moral Event Horizon was "healing" Jake's emotional trauma, allowing him to use his powers against everyone else in the session on her behalf—against his will. The fallout? Considering he's a Page of Hope, explicitly stated on several occasions to be one of the most powerful classes, not exactly pretty. Her actions end up causing the failure of the entire original timeline, needing a large scale multiversal retcon to fix.
- And finally, in an exceptionally spectacular example: Caliborn. He was little more than a brat on trapped on a room, but ended up turning into the ultimate omniversal terror, ruler of paradox space, and unquestionable master of time; the all-mighty Lord English.
- Kill Six Billion Demons: Each of the Seven Black Emperors started out as powerless slaves who usurped the powers of the God Emperors waging war across the multiverse, and then forged an alliance that ended up victorious over the other gods.
- Mottom was a peasant girl whose only defining feature was her beauty. Her god took notice of her and took her in as his sex slave. When she had enough, she murdered him and stole his key, living a life of cosmic decadence and arcane sorcery ever since.
- Mammon was a beast of burden who was born to a slave caste. He killed his brothers for coin, and forged a corporation so massive that he bought his god powers. His vault is larger than any of the primordial gods. He also invented a way to grow food from gold itself, meaning he really could bargain with the multiverse itself.
- Solomon David was a farmer and volunteer guardsman who lost his family to a god's pillaging. He spent decades training in the forbidden martial arts of Ki Rata, then slew his masters and eventually the god who destroyed his planet. He became the God-Emperor of a massive interdimensional autocratic empire.
- Jagganoth was once the son of a dirt farmer, and was enslaved to a dehumanizing legion of disposable soldiers ruled by a god of warfare. After becoming their god by sheer force of personality, he has become the strongest human being in the entire multiverse.
- Jadis was a forgotten daughter of an arrogant noble who abused and brainwashed her. She literally learned everything in the entire multiverse.
- Gog-Agog was an abomination created when a colony of parasitic worms somehow absorbed the corpse of the peasant girl they were eating. She became one of the largest infestations in the multiverse.
- Maya was the daughter of a noodle vendor. Rather than remain one, she became apprenticed to Meti-ten-Ryo, the greatest Master Swordsman ever to live, and became a master of Sword Law. She was the original holder of much of Incubus' Key of Kings, and conquered 20,000 worlds during the Universal War, though she's since retired.
- Incubus was an orphaned War Refugee who ensured the Seven's destiny and became the god of all drug dealers.
- All Devilsnote begin their lifecycle as Pale Devils and work their way up the hierarchy of devilry by making deals, obtaining new names and discarding old and unusable ones until they find their one true name and become Ebon Devils. This means every Ebon Devil has at one point been a mute servitor, The Imp, The Brute, and so on. It's believed Himself was a Pale Devil as well once, but went from a many-named non-respected Nobody to an absolute Nightmare in one fell swoop: He broke the fundamental rules of the setting, shed all his names at once, and became the God of Devils.
- Nearly all of the Demans in Lessa are this. Most of them started as nobodies, and now they're the ones terrorizing Hexagon Island.
- Ares was a child slave in Ancient Egypt. By present-day, he's the leader of a race of genocidal monsters.
- Among the Second Generation — Demans who Ares personally converted — Bach was also a former slave, while Belle was an ordinary villager who crossed the Despair Event Horizon after her daughter was murdered under suspicion of being a witch. There's also Ryan, who was a sickly author before Ares rescued him.
- To a lesser extent, the Third Generation — White and Mindy-Mindy — are mostly composed of abandoned children who thrive as Demans through survival of the fittest.
- Queen Obscuria, the Backstory villain in Magick Chicks, started off as a girl who wanted to become more popular in school. She tried to do this by banishing the popular girls to the Shadow Kingdom, but the spell banished her instead. She ended up leading a coup against the demon king, setting herself up as the new Shadow Queen, and set her sights on conquering Earth.
- Ragnar from Nixvir is implied to have gone through something like this. According to the prequel comic, he actually used to be a very nice snowman, and was actually far down in the snowmen's Fantastic Caste System, something which his former friend Erik also was. He eventually saw how horrible his society truly was and left. However, something happened and turned him into the deranged genocidal warlord we all love to hate.
- The Order of the Stick
- On the prequel book Start of Darkness, Redcloak goes from a cleric initiate to vessel of his god's will and earthly power simply by donning his mentor's Crimson Mantle.
- His master, the Dark One, started off as a regular purple-skin goblin before becoming a powerful warlord, and eventually a god.
- Xykon goes from being an unfocused thug with no real long-term goal other than just wanton murder and destruction to an undead monstrosity that threatens the entire world.
- Tarquin was once a small-time adventurer who tried to set up his own nation on the Western Continent. However, he joined together with his old friends and engineered a conspiracy which controls most of the Western Continent. He is now the de facto ruler of the Empire of Blood, as well as the other two Western Continent superpowers
- The Snarl started out as a tiny piece of creation that embodied the pantheons' disagreements over how the universe should work. It was so insignificant that the gods either didn't notice or didn't care about its existence. Then it got bigger and meaner to the point that it could curbstomp entire pantheons. It is now supposedly the greatest threat to all existence, with the entire series revolving around efforts to control or seal it.
- (Mostly) heroic example in Schlock Mercenary:
- Petey, near the beginning of the comic, was merely the AI of one of many of the Ob'enn warships, and thus just an assistant to a race of Omnicidal Maniac koala-like bears. But he proved to have both unparalleled tactical genius, a fondness for baryonic life as a whole and a bit of a god complex. All of this together led to some complex trickery on his part to take over his own ship, and later employing our protagonists in a variety of missions to spread his influence further, along with making some tactical advancements of his own. By the latter chapters, he's become the closest thing to a god the setting has, the commander of the greatest known fleet in existence, and the Milky Way's self-appointed protector.
- A similar example, including the (mostly) heroic part, is LOTA. LOTA was initially built as a longshoreman, albeit an overengineered one, built with off-the-shelf tank parts and LOTA's AI built by one of the greater experts in the matter. But still, a longshoreman. Some skillful maneuvering, journalist call-outs, and colony-saving later, LOTA ended up in charge of the entirety of the Credomar station, with millions of (now happy) humans to rule over and one of the galaxy's most dangerous weapons at LOTA's disposal.
- Ennesby, by the end of the series. He started out as an AI controlling a holographic boys' band, moved down to ship's mascot, up to pilot of a small mercenary ship, and has been bouncing up and down since. Until the end of the series when he gains control of the Andromeda galactic power core. Schlock turned a copy of himself into a Pan'uuri, seized the Milky Way galactic power core, and started out life as the unholy and unwanted love child of a slaver's daughter and a sociopathic killer.
- In There's Something About Tails, Tails gets possessed by a soldier from another universe and turns into a badass.
- Tower of God:
- Several centuries before the start of the story, Hoaqin was originally just an ordinary Regular from the 10 Great Families. After fusing with his siblings to become more powerful and taking on the guise of White, he climbed up the Tower, became a Ranker, and eventually became one of the most infamous and feared FUG Slayers in the history of the Tower. To power himself further, he indirectly murdered a billion people and ate their souls. His crimes and actions were so severe that it took the efforts of the Jahad Princesses to put him down. Then he crawled out of a Hell (Train).
- Hell Joe was a sort of magical sewer repairman before he gained the power of the Red Thryssa — the spawn of the dead Administrator of his floor — and, after progressing from frustrated idealist to villain, became the undefeatable Evil Overlord of half the floor.
- Unholy Blood: The Starter Villain Byeongsu starts off as a lazy and dickish bully but nothing worse than that, but upon becoming a vampire he's become one of their most psychotic, with even his sires finding him extreme.
- unOrdinary: As Isen finds out, John used to be classified as a measly 1.2, until at some point in middle school his power level skyrocketed mysteriously and he became violent and uncontrollable.
- Pretty much the main story arch of Zebra Girl. the series began when a random magical accident transformed an ordinary tech support specialist into a demon with a soul. From those humble beginnings, she has gradually lost her humanity by inches, and has spent the past several months of the comic gleefully and unrepentantly terrorizing the inhabitants of her hometown as the living embodiment of fear. Basically, she has become a better-looking version of Freddy Krueger with longer claws.
Websites
- After two online users, ghettofinger and GirlVinyl were kept from creating a Wikipedia article about a certain LiveJournal user, they went on and created their own wiki so they could get away with it. The result: The infamously offensive (and Nigh-Invulnerable) Encyclopedia Dramatica.
- The Queen of Pain from Orion's Arm, an Eldritch Abomination that was once a perfectly normal cat.
Web Originals
- Lightning Sentai Blitzenger: Mimi Kuroda was once just another no-name slovenly Internet user before she was recruited into the Underworld Society. Now, as Doctor Waruko, she is one of their biggest assets, heavily contributing to their goal of destroying humanity by regularly providing them with Underworld Specters.
- The Count of Years, the in-universe mythology for the Constructed World of Almea, has the Satan-figure not be the creator of evil Ecaîas, greatest of Iáinos’s creatures, but instead another spirit who witnessed his deed, called Amnās. Amnās starts out as such a minor spirit that he isn’t included in the roll call of all the spirits and their tasks, even though a pre-fallen Ecaîas is, and instead is one of the countless spirits of the night sky who would be hardly known to the Thinking Kinds if not for him resenting his first, minor scolding so much that he dedicates the rest of his existence to ruining Iáinos’s creation, going farther than Ecaîas in that he focused solely on making the Thinking Kinds suffer, not animals, and creating Slave Races to serve as his Evil Minions and corrupting Iáinos’s own Thinking Kinds to his service. For that last one, and for causing nine world wars (and one additional, minor war) he is reviled as the Arch-Enemy of life itself.
Web Videos
- Channel Awesome:
- Ma-Ti goes from the Butt-Monkey of the group in the TGWTG Year One Brawl to the Big Damn Hero in Suburban Knights to the Big Bad in To Boldly Flee.
- Atop the Fourth Wall has The Entity, a terrifying, universe-devouring Eldritch Abomination that motivated Lord Vyce to become The Dreaded across the multiverse just to stop it. The identity of the Entity? Missingno, a relatively harmless video game glitch which only becomes creepy when Fridge Logic is applied to it. Also counts as Adaptational Badass.
- Coyle Command found its origins as a laundromat. Its leader, Coyle Commander, had the job of opening and closing it every day.
- Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog goes this route with the main character. In the prequel comic released, he was merely a geeky kid who was inspired by a Mad Scientist's moment of triumph to be a Supervillain (albeit one with good aspirations). He consistently remains unsuccessful at impressing his superiors and is eventually shoehorned into a situation where he must commit a murder or be executed for incompetence. Eventually, with the accidental murder of Penny, the girl he loved, he becomes a true supervillain in both position and personality.
