"I've just been down the gullet of an interstellar cockroach. That's one of a hundred memories I don't want."
— Kay, Men in Black (1997)
People have to work in order to earn a living. And work often lives up to its name, often taxing people physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Some jobs, however, come with a greater threat to someone's soul and mind than others. This isn't the cashier at a checkout line dealing with a few too many rude customers in the span of a day. Nor is it the office worker with the Pointy-Haired Boss who demands the impossible on a daily basis.
Some sorts of work chip away at the psyche, due to witnessing too much tragedy and misery, being exposed to extreme violence or its aftermath, or having to see firsthand the sorts of trauma that man's inhumanity to man can inflict, leaving people with emotional scars that they carry with them for life. Having to witness violence, abuse (sexual and/or physical), death, dismemberment, seeing too many innocent people have bad things happen to them for no apparent reason, and all of it on a daily basis, it stays with people.
One need not have a Bad Boss in these situations either. Sometimes there's a Reasonable Authority Figure who recognizes the stress and hardships of the job are getting to someone and tries to find ways to help them cope, in some cases even telling them to step away from the job.
In bad enough circumstances, the person may be Driven to Suicide.
Dispatchers, first responders, crime techs, police, firefighters, morticians, doctors (especially those who frequently have to deal with terminal patients), The Compassionate Executioner, and some forms of volunteer workers are very prone to this.
Some people are aware of this and have coping mechanisms to try and endure. Others find that nothing can help them cope, and in the end, they get swallowed up by the trauma.
In some media, this will be the end result. Others, however, will use it as the Origins Episode for someone's Start of Darkness, often the Freudian Excuse for a Well-Intentioned Extremist who saw or did too much and now wants to "fix" the world around them so it never happens to anyone else, with He Who Fights Monsters often the end result.
May occur to the more sympathetic kind of Punch-Clock Villain.
If the trauma comes after being promoted, then it's a Played for Horror version of Disappointing Promotion.
Super-Trope to Shell-Shocked Veteran and It Never Gets Any Easier.
Compare Workplace Horror, which is often a contributing factor to the trauma in the first place. May overlap with The Chains of Commanding, especially if having to make one too many life or death decisions ends up breaking someone, as well as Panic Attack.
Contrast Conditioned to Accept Horror.
No Real Life Examples, Please!.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Chainsaw Man: Played for Laughs with Kobeni, who was forced to work for Public Safety to clear her family's massive debts. She hates the job (despite being pretty decent at it) and is constantly terrified doing it, claiming she's going to quit over and over again to try to get mercy from the demons she does battle with. She finally does and gets a job at a burger chain instead.
- Gundam: Happens to many a character, highlighting that War Is Hell:
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Happened to Amuro Ray frequently, who suffered several Heroic BSODs as he killed more and more people in the Gundam. Since he was a Child Soldier fighting out of necessity and had no formal military training, this is unsurprising. However, Amuro also didn't want anyone else piloting the Gundam and reacted extremely poorly whenever the idea was brought up.
- Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam:
- Kamille also suffers several traumatic moments and responses to being brought into the Gryps Conflict. After Four dies he begins to suffer further and further Sanity Slippage, culminating in him opening his helmet in space, hallucinating Four in place of Rosamia Badam several times, and finally suffering Death of Personality temporarily after Paptimus Scirocco subjects him to Mind Rape.
- Reccoa Londe is in the unenviable position of being an Adrenaline Junkie who nonetheless wants to be protected and taken out of the conflict. In a combination of implied burnout from her increasingly-dangerous infiltration missions and implied Brainwashing from Scirocco, she has a mental break and fakes her death before joining the Titans at Scirocco's side. Doing this does nothing to help her sanity, and despite attempting to turn her former allies against her her final moments have her tearfully rant to her former friend Emma about how men will always use and abuse women for their own gains.
- Mobile Suit Victory Gundam: In a rare example of this happening to a member of the villainous faction, Wattary Gilla is shocked to his core upon finding out the Victory's pilot is nothing more than a 13 year old. Distraught at the fact that the Zanscare Empire has driven the League Militaire to use Child Soldiers, he blows himself up with his own grenade.
- My Hero Academia: Kaina Tsutsumi, the former pro hero Lady Nagant, was conditioned as a preteen by the Hero Public Safety Commission to be their wetworks agent, which she accepted due to insecurities stemming from her Rifle quirk; as an adult this led to her serving as the HPSC's trained killing machine and killing civilians preemptively on the basis they could become villains in the future and eliminating Evil Heroes covertly to prevent the public learning of their crimes. The guilt from her assassinations wore away at her until she snapped and killed the head of the HPSC for making her kill people without due process, resulting in her being framed for killing another pro hero and imprisoned.
- Route End: Main protagonist Taji Haruno works for a small "special cleaner" company that cleans up and sterilizes homes after someone dies in them. In cases where the deceased lives alone, the dead bodies they clean up have frequently been rotting for weeks or even months before they were discovered. A minor plot point is that the majority of the company's new hires quit after only a few days, and most of the people who stick around are using the job as an outlet for some kind of personal trauma.
- Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead: Akira's Soul-Crushing Desk Job at the black company traumatized Akira so badly that the Zombie Apocalypse isn't as terrifying as his old workplace. This is why he's able to navigate the ruins of Tokyo so cheerfully, as even though he fears death, the misery he experienced at work far outstrips the threat the zombies pose to his life. Kencho lampshades this, saying that Akira looked more like a zombie than the actual zombies when they last met because of how worn down he was by work. Akira seeing his abusive boss again triggers a PTSD episode, reverting him to his pre-apocalypse survival state until Shizuka was able to snap him out of it.
Comic Books
- Beast Wars: Uprising: Scorponok begins the story as a fairly gentle, quiet bot who is quite happy to be taken under the wing of his ambitious and brilliant supervisor Gnashteeth. When Gnashteeth is betrayed and abandoned by his patron, the Decepticon Double Punch, Scorponok agrees to join him on his foray into crime, which involves skimming some of the Energon from the refinery they work at to sell illegally. Their first attempts go badly, culminating in a brutal beating by the Kospego gang. Several cycles later, after Gnashteeth has successfully framed the Kospegos for Double Punch's murder and made them public enemy number one, the Kospego boss encounters Gnashteeth and Scorponok again. He notices that unlike before, Scorponok now has a haunted, unseeing look on his face, and immediately recognises it as the look of someone who has done awful things enough times that he no longer feels anything. note
- The Transformers (Marvel): A recurring struggle suffered by Autobot medic Ratchet is how he is unable to fully repair or restore his comrades after catastrophic events. As a result, he is sometimes seized by bouts of despair or ennui, though outside events normally cause him to snap out of it. For example, after Optimus Prime dies of suicide, he is unable to restore the Autobot leader and forced to declare him beyond help, even remaining behind to mope aboard the Ark while the others depart to perform a funeral for Optimus. He snaps out of it when he's forced to contend with a human criminal who got his hands on some of their tech, even partially repairing Prowl enough to assist. He suffers another bout of despair in the aftermath of Starscream's Underbase-powered rampage, even suffering nightmares of his damaged comrades waking up and threatening to tear him apart for failing to help them.
- Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: Chief Justice Tyrest was a fair and honest sort, trusted enough that both Optimus and Megatron agreed to meet him in an attempt to de-escalate the war. Even though the attempt failed, both sides at least agreed to the Tyrest Accord note . While nominally an Autobot, he was so known for his scrupulous adherence to the law that even outside parties like the Galactic Council (who hate the Transformers for the devastation caused by their Forever War) have tremendous respect for him. However, it's eventually revealed that after years of having to handle war crimes committed by Autobots, Tyrest realised all the defendants were Constructed Cold, i.e., manufactured via having Sparks inserted into pre-fabricated bodies as opposed to Forged (how Transformers are naturally born). As he was part of the group that developed the Constructed Cold procedure, he became so consumed with guilt that he took to drilling holes into his own body as a form of penance, and after drilling into his brain by accident went completely insane.
Fan Works
- The Feralnette AU sees Marinette suffering this, particularly after Bunnyx forced her to deal with her akumatized partner in a Bad Future where she witnessed her counterpart and countless others turned into ashen statues. Bunnyx insisting this was entirely Marinette's fault only added to her trauma, fueling her decision to stop caring about trying to maintain some semblance of a normal life and resign herself to always being blamed for everything that goes wrong.
- Invaders of Irk: Most of the Invaders are suffering this due to how many civilizations they've destroyed and how many people they've had to kill and betray in order to conquer or vassalize their assigned planets. It doesn't help that the majority of them were only sixteen when they were first assigned to their planets.
- Stargate Etheria: Following his "reeducation" and possession by Horde Prime, Hordak wants nothing more to do with any kind of position that involves being in command. He rejects an offer to lead the remnants of the Horde First Fleet claiming that he'd find it "tedious", preferring to focus entirely upon his relationship with Entrapta.
- What You Knead (Naruto): Kakashi was suffering from this when he first picked up The Art and Science of Bread by accident; he was in a daze following a bad mission and wasn't paying attention to the books he was grabbing. He winds up getting into cooking as a hobby, and eventually retires after Sparrow blames him for Itachi's betrayal and calls him 'Friend-Killer', forcing Kakashi to realize just how little anyone respects him, having taken his service completely for granted. While the Sandaime reserves the right to call him back into service if a serious threat arises, and eventually assigns him to lead Team Seven, the time off and running his new bakery does Kakashi a world of good.
Films — Animation
- The Brave Little Toaster: During the "Worthless" song, one of the cars that goes into the crusher is a hearse, who seems to have been traumatized by his job of transporting dead people:
"I took a man to a graveyard
I beg your pardon, it's quite hard enough
Just living with the stuff I have learned."
Films — Live-Action
- The Scorsese film Bringing Out the Dead is about a sleep-deprived paramedic whose job is hell, compounded by the fact that he's not saved a single person in months, and about the toll that having to respond to call after call is taking upon him—at one point, he actually begs to be fired, only to have his boss tell him "I'll fire you tomorrah!"
- Men in Black (1997): Kay chooses to have his memories wiped and leave the agency because he's seen and done far too much.
Kay: I've just been down the gullet of an interstellar cockroach. That's one of a hundred memories I don't want.
- Star Wars: Captain Piett commands Darth Vader's flagship the Executor, and early in The Empire Strikes Back he is promoted to admiral after Vader tires of Admirel Ozzel's incompetence and treats him in his usual manner. By the time of Return of the Jedi, he looks physically aged, which fans chalk up to the stresses of having to work under an infamously Bad Boss like Darth Vader. Piett himself seems confident enough in his role to question Vader in Return, which ancillary material reveals is something Vader permits those who have earned his respect with their sheer competence.
- The X-Files: I Want to Believe: One of the main sources of tension between Mulder and Scully in the film is that Mulder, six years removed from working on the X-Files, jumps at the opportunity to be involved in solving a paranormal case, while Scully is glad to have left that life behind and wants nothing to do with it.
Scully: I'm a doctor, Mulder. That's not my life any more.
Mulder: I know that.
Scully: You're not understanding me. I can't look into the darkness with you any more, Mulder. I cannot stand what it does to you or to me.
Mulder: I'm fine with it, Scully. I'm actually okay. I'm good.
Scully: Yeah, that's what scares me.
Literature
- The Screwtape Letters: The "patient" (the human that Wormwood is trying to damn) volunteers as an air raid warden. Screwtape advises Wormwood to use this to separate the man from his faith, pressing on him when he sees the victim of a German bombing with their entrails plastered on a wall that this is what the world is "really" like, driving him to despair.
Live-Action TV
- Castle: One episode opens with Ryan, bloody, walking up to a restroom mirror staring into it for a moment, then punching it. It is revealed that he was moonlighting with his brother-in-law's security firm to earn extra money for his daughter, and a rising politician's wife was shot and killed right in front of him, which he failed to prevent, and he also failed to catch the shooter, despite giving chase. Worse, as he investigates the incident as part of his police duties, he learns his brother-in-law had a habit of selling access to papparazzi, which afforded the killer their opportunity, and he has to be the one to take his brother-in-law in for it.
- Criminal Minds:
- The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit is in charge of profiling and catching the worst criminals such as serial killers, pedophiles, rapists etc. There are instances that they failed to save the victim in the last minute, when they get captured by the UnSub, or when the UnSub escapes from the authorities, which would haunt them for the rest of their lives. It's no surprise that there's usually a High Turnover Rate where several of the members left due to the trauma they experienced or chose a normal life instead. It doesn't help that some of the cases end up affecting their loved ones, which sometimes leads to their deaths (e.g., Gideon's girlfriend and Hotch's wife).
- Elle Greenway got shot in her own home and suffered from PSTD which nearly cost her job during an undercover mission where she shot a rapist. Then, she doesn't attend her psychological evaluation and grows distant from the team, blaming them for not being with her when she was shot. The trauma and distrust led her to resign from the BAU.
- Before the series, Jason Gideon was said to have suffered from a nervous breakdown when six agents and a hostage were all killed during a case in Boston. At the start of Season 3, he eventually ends up leaving the bureau because of the trauma of losing his girlfriend, who was murdered in the hands of his Arch-Enemy, Frank, and the mishandling of his last case, which got Hotch suspended.
- In the two-part Season 8 finale, Dr. Alex Blake was traumatized after Reid was shot in the neck when he took the bullet meant for her. Though Reid survived, Blake feels guilty that she should have been the one who got shot and tells Reid that he reminded her of her deceased son. In the end, Reid finds her FBI badge in his bag, confirming that Blake resigned from the BAU.
- CSI: Crime Scene Investigation:
- Grissom discovers after a disciplinary incident involving Sara and Eckley that Sara was burning herself out because after work she would go home and listen to the police scanner instead of relaxing or finding something separate from work. He informs Eckley that Sara's lashing out was a result of his own failures and points out that Eckley can't afford to fire him, as his success makes the rest of the department look good.
- In "Turn, Turn, Turn", Nick is nearly broken by a case where a teen girl whom he'd met on several cases at her family's motel ends up dead. He's tormented that if he'd solved another case sooner, the girl would still be alive. Dr. Langston says he knew Nick was a fellow masochist and told him he did all sorts of things to silence the voices.
Nick: Tonight, there's only one voice. And she keeps asking me what happened. What happened?Langston: What happened is a young girl died because of events that were set in motion long before she was ever born.
- Sara Sidle's backstory is that she was placed in foster care after witnessing her abusive father being stabbed to death by her mother. As a result, cases involving battered women are particularly disturbing to her. After dealing with multiple cases involving abusers, Sara begins a downward spiral of drinking, losing her temper with suspects, and being insubordinate to her bosses. She finally snaps when, while dealing with yet another case of spousal abuse, an old nemesis resurfaces. A sociopathic 12-year-old girl's actions result in the suicide of her older brother, whom she'd manipulated into going to prison for a murder that she'd committed two seasons earlier, and Sara literally walks off the job.
- Law & Order: SVU:
- In "Friending Emily" the detectives meet an FBI tech in charge of tracking child pornography on the internet. He informs them that his predecessor blew his own brains out in the very office they were in. He appears again in "Downloaded Child", after the SVU team determine that a troubled woman was the subject of child porn when she was younger, he tells them that they'd been trying to track down the girl's identity from the pictures shared on the internet for some time, and the material was so severe he had always assumed that she had been killed ages ago.
- It's often said that SVU detectives rarely last more than two years because of the stress of dealing with the worst examples of humanity and the trauma that they inflict on their victims. Cassidy didn't last an entire season before he transferred out of sex crimes because he couldn't handle the depravity. Jeffries was forced to leave because she became self-destructive. Stabler, Benson, Amaro, Rollins, Cabot, Novak, Barba, and Peter Stone, all lost their sense of perspective over the years, became angry, cynical, and prone to Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!.
- In "Parole Violations" the Villain of the Week blamed the stresses of her job (parole officer) for her becoming a rapist.
- In "Institutional Fail", Whoopi Goldberg's character, a social worker supervisor, had a complete mental breakdown on the witness stand due to years of doing her job with impossibly low resources.
- M*A*S*H: The series combines the horrors of war with the trauma of being a doctor with numerous badly injured patients.
- While most of the patients fall into the Shell-Shocked Veteran status, not every soldier visiting the 4077th M*A*S*H was traumatized by war. In one instance, Hawkeye meets a pilot who'd had to bail out of his plane. Hawk listens to the guy talk about how, for him, the war has been something that lasts about 45 minutes a day. He has the guy help out in O.R., where he sees a young girl wounded by a bomb from a plane.
Pilot: Who did it.Hawkeye: He just dropped it, he didn't autograph it.Pilot: No, I mean, was it one of theirs or one of ours?Hawkeye: What's it matter?Pilot: A lot, it matters a lot.Col. Potter: Not to her.
- Hawkeye has a series of nightmares about people in his hometown of Crabapple Cove being blown to bits. Sidney Freedman is called in (a recurring therapist who often has to help patients keep their minds together, quite often Hawkeye himself). Sidney tells Hawkeye that he's making it all the way back to his childhood in Crabapple Cove, but that the war is intruding. He suggests that when the "big nightmare" (the war) is over, most of the little ones should go away.
- In "Dreams", the entire camp is exhausted from overwork. Each one takes their turn to get a little downtime, but when each of them starts to dream, their beautiful dreams are turned into nightmares. Klinger dreams of seeing himself being operated on, with the implication that he won't make it. Margaret dreams of being married, only for her husband to turn into a wounded soldier and her pure white dress to be stained red with blood. Winchester dreams of being a skilled magician whose tricks can't stop people from dying in war (an allegory for his medical skills). And Hawkeye is confronted by a professor asking him how to give a wounded soldier back the limbs he's lost, only to demand Hawkeye's limbs, leaving Hawkeye afloat alone in a boat surrounded by detached limbs unable to help anyone.
- In "Heal Thyself", when Potter and Winchester are sidelined with the mumps, a fill-in doctor named Steve Newsome is sent to the unit. He is a veteran of the Pusan Perimeter, of which Hawkeye and BJ have heard horror stories. Newsome demonstrates the same irreverent humor as Hawkeye ("I see you're here on the American plan.") but when the load of patients gets too much, old memories come back to Newsome, and he cracks, sitting in the tent with Winchester and Potter, not even having removed his bloody gloves, just nervously talking to himself. Potter gets them to call Sidney Freedman, and BJ says that Newsome was as strong as any of them.
Hawkeye: That's what scares me.
- In the series finale "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen", Hawkeye is dealt perhaps the cruelest blow of all by the war. On a bus, Hawk tells a woman to silence her squawking chicken as they are trying to hide from a Chinese patrol. Only, it wasn't a chicken, but Hawk's mind wouldn't let him remember it properly at first because of his own guilt. It was the woman's baby, and she accidentally smothered the child trying to keep it quiet after Hawkeye snapped at her to keep the infant quiet. Hawkeye, who was a firm believer in Thou Shall Not Kill, and wouldn't even carry a gun, was responsible for the death of a child, however indirectly one might argue his actions were. Hawkeye is noted to have done such things after, such as driving a jeep into Rosie's Bar (as in through the wall) and accusing an anesthesiologist of trying to smother a patient, at which point he got sent back to see Sidney Freedman.
- While most of the patients fall into the Shell-Shocked Veteran status, not every soldier visiting the 4077th M*A*S*H was traumatized by war. In one instance, Hawkeye meets a pilot who'd had to bail out of his plane. Hawk listens to the guy talk about how, for him, the war has been something that lasts about 45 minutes a day. He has the guy help out in O.R., where he sees a young girl wounded by a bomb from a plane.
- Miami Vice spends its entire run tracing this arc for Crockett. He begins the series already existentially fearful of losing his identity the longer he spends undercover. As the series progresses, both he and his partner Tubbs endure a series of losses, with the violence of their jobs claiming love interests and even a child. Most bitterly of all, Crockett and Tubbs increasingly realize how much of the drug trade is tied up in systemic corruption that they have no hope of making a dent in, and that the sacrifices they've made are for nothing. This drives Crockett into a complete mental break in season 4, and eventually leads both men to resign from the police force in disgust at the end of the series.
- NCIS: This is part of the motivation behind Gibbs's 10-Minute Retirement at the end of Season 3: he gets a ton of workplace trauma all at once when he loses ten years of memories after a severe on-the-job injury, then recovers all those memories - including his memories of living through the 9/11 attacks and the War on Terror - in the space of a couple of days. It's also implied that burnout is one reason for his real retirement, years later: he's exhausted after years of putting all his energy into fighting crime and catching bad guys, and now he's being considered one of the bad guys.
- The Pitt (2025): Being set in a very busy, perpetually understaffed Emergency Department in Pittsburgh, several characters have been traumatized by their experiences working there.
- The main character of the series, Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch, had to watch his mentor, Dr. Adamson, die of COVID; the first season takes place on the fourth anniversary of his mentor's death, and he's triggered several times over the course of the day, having to put a patient in the same room where Dr. Adamson died and put them on a ventilator. He ends up suffering a full-on breakdown during "7:00 P.M."
- Dr. Heather Collins, a Year 4 Resident, suffers a miscarriage as a result of the stress of the shift, and has to be sent home by Robbie once it becomes clear she cannot cope.
- Dana Evans, Charge Nurse on the shift, gets assaulted by a patient during "3:00 PM", suffers a Heroic BSoD, and eventually decides to quit as a result of the abuse she's endured in her career.
- Torchwood: Working for Torchwood tends not to be a pleasant experience, as it involves fighting violent aliens and a high death toll. In particular, Gwen starts out somewhat naive, but becomes a Broken Bird as the series progresses, at one point engaging in an affair with Owen in an effort to cope with the things she sees as part of her job. By Torchwood: Miracle Day, she has lost three of her friends in the line of duty, has had her faith in humanity shattered, and is living a Properly Paranoid life in hiding. By the audios, she chooses to quit the job altogether after she ends up possessed by an alien entity who killed her own mother, arguing that the time she has had to think made her realise that she's better than the traumatising job she has.
Podcasts
- The Magnus Archives: The Magnus Institute is an Extranormal Institute which documents supernatural phenomena; as the series goes on, it becomes clear that the Institute is under the control of something that is at least partially responsible for the phenomena they research, and the characters are unable to quit their jobs there. In Season 4, Jon discovers there's a method to quit the Institute: The Eye, the Dread Power that is responsible for the Institute, cannot affect individuals who are blind. While most of the cast can't go through with gouging out their eyes as a form of resignation, Melanie King, who has been thoroughly traumatized by the whole affair, decides to take an awl to her eyes, and actually seems happier for it.
Toys
- Transformers:
- Punch has the unique ability to adopt a second robot mode, which he uses to infiltrate the Decepticons as his own Evil Twin Counterpunch. A recurring theme in his bios is how being so deep in the Decepticon ranks (Counterpunch actually achieves a high rank in Decepticon Intelligence) has wreaked havoc on his nerves, and his greatest fear is that there's a Decepticon agent mingling among the Autobots as easily as he does among the Decepticons. Some bios even suggest that the stress has caused a split personality, with Punch suffering blackouts while disguised as Counterpunch.
- Pointblank is described as a capable soldier and leader, but years of war have worn him down to the point that he is a weary and reluctant warrior. He does his duty, but the loss of so many friends and comrades (many of whom he has had to order to their deaths himself) have left him grim and aloof. His Targetmaster partner Pinpointer, being a cheerful and optimistic sort, does his best to cheer his Autobot partner up. Unbeknownst to Pinpointer, his efforts are bearing some fruit, as Pointblank realises that he's actually feeling something after all this time.
- Slog of the Pretender Monsters is a sophisticated and refined artist who signed up for the Decepticons in order to record their glorious rise to power for posterity. However, when it was realised he was equally capable at combat he was sent to the frontlines. While he does participate in combat, he only does it to survive, and his experiences have led him to create works of art out of both Autobot and Decepticon corpses, reflecting his disillusionment with the Decepticon cause and his grief at the horrific loss of life. That the Autobots were able to use his "art" (and Slogism movement inspired by it) in their propaganda makes Slog very unpopular with his higher-ups, and only the fact that he is needed to lead the Monster Pretenders (and forms the torso of their combined mode Monstructor) keeps him from being scrapped.
Video Games
- Final Fantasy XIV: Many of the people of Alexandria wear regulators that wipe their memories of the deceased shortly after someone dies. This means that there's no one to grieve or handle funerary arrangements for the deceased. Ushers are people who take up the grim task of collecting the bodies for disposal and paying them their last respects. One sidequest involves an usher who is feeling burnt out by this job, to the point that it makes him feel "empty". He only musters the strength to continue when he receives a letter from his departed father saying how proud he is of him for taking up this important work.
- In Star Wars: The Old Republic, this is the reason why Keeper disapproves of an Imperial Agent being too Light-sided, stating that ideallism has no place in spywork (especially when your superiors tend to be psychotic demigods) and that keeping up with that will be the death of you. Of course, he also disapproves of being too Dark-sided since he thinks there's a time and place for ruthlessness. It's implied that he too was once an idealistic patriot before the job got to him and he's resigned himself to being in his own words a "glorified janitor". Nonetheless, depending on your choices at the end he'll wipe your data from all existing records so that you can be a Rogue Agent and be "free to practice your idealism" on your own terms.
- In Sticky Business, Robert's stressed from his abusive work environment, especially after his coworker and friend got fired by their boss. As a result, Robert tries coping by ordering your plant stickers, which he uses to count down the days to his resignation and vacation to Scotland.
Web Animation
- MoniRobo: At the epilogue of "My wife had an affair for five years...
", after Manabu and Ms. Shiratori (née Hiiragi) divorce Megumi and Koushi, their respective cheating spouses, Koushi is last shown still working at the complaints department, having been disowned by his father for cheating and forced to work there. Ms. Hiiragi even explains that the cheating ex-husband developed a fear of phones from the constant dressing-downs he had to endure from clients.
Web Original
- SCP Foundation: The Foundation is incredibly stressful to work for; the organization is responsible for a global-scale Masquerade that is precariously maintained, and the world can end at a moment's notice, even with the containment procedures in place. While it averts All Therapists Are Muggles, mental health professionals in the Foundation range from well-meaning Bunny Ears Lawyers to amoral Psycho Psychologists that experiment on their patients. Not helping matters is that, in some interpretations of the canon, there's an entire department of the Foundation dedicated to making sure essential personnel cannot quit: the Fire Suppression Department wrecks the lives of individuals who try to leave the organization, depriving them of everything from an income to their academic credits, until they're forced back into the organization.
Western Animation
- Star Trek: Lower Decks: The penultimate episode of the entire series shows William Boimler, transporter clone of Cerritos ensign Brad Boimler, has become exhausted due to dealing with rifts in the multiverse that have been popping up throughout the season, having to take on several multiversal refugees, including a veritable army of Harry Kims. It seems to at least partially be commentary from the writers on the overuse of the multiverse as a trope in science fiction in recent years.
