Before Rock arrived, Benny was the fresh meat of the Black Lagoon crew. Not too much is known about Benny, but what we do know is that he was at a University in Florida. During his sojourn there, he was a computer engineering major and he must have shown some promise. Why? Because he managed somehow to piss off not only the Mafia but the FBI as well which means that he was in really hot water.

Thankfully, Revy came and swooped him up right before he was supposed to be killed. His past influences his current actions as he is very hardened to what he has to do and he turns a blind eye to the bloodshed that Revy and Dutch cause. He also is quite the realist which means that he can shock even some of the core members of Black Lagoon when he speaks.

Ginji is the bodyguard for Yukio and the Washimine group. He is the acting underboss of this Yakuza organization. He prefers to fight with a Katana which is all good however, it does seem a bit outdated for an era where guns are everywhere. However, that does not stop him from being deadly as he slices through bullets and even guns. In his past, Ginji was nicknamed “Manslayer Ginji”. The reason why is that he was a murderer when it came to combat.

Ginji had, however, a soft spot for Yukio which did, unfortunately, leave him wide open. While he did try to atone for his past sins by protecting Yukio, ultimately it lead to his downfall in a battle with Revy. To further prove how him atoning was paradoxical, yes he did fight to keep Yukio alive and safe, but she was also the head of a crime syndicate.

Spielberger was a German SS officer aboard boat U-1324 which was transporting him to the country of Batavia in secret during the World War II. With him was a painting named “The Twelve Knights led by Brunhilda”. Do we even really need to say it? He was SS. That alone gives him a dark past. However expounding upon him and his character, we see that he is truly sinister.

After the American destroyer launched depth charges and threw the boat he was on to the bottom of the ocean, he shut himself in his quarters with the painting. All crew members, knowing that they would never see the surface again began to choose a method of death. When Ahbe, the captain, attempted to tell Spielberger this, Spielberger demanded that they reach the surface and go for Batavia.

As Ahbe explained that it was not possible and that he should spend his last minutes thinking of his family, Spielberger exclaimed that family and children and a spouse were nothing because the SS party’s ideologies were everything that he needed. Ahbe finally lost it telling him that perhaps it was God’s plan that they all were going to die. Freaking out, Spielberger shot him and was eventually gunned down by other crew members. SS or not, throwing away your family for some idiotic ideologies at the last moment is just plain horrible. It is clear to see that he was influenced by his dark past.

Technically you could throw the whole Rip-off Church under this one. Sister Yolanda, Eda, and Rico are all people who in one way or another allow their dark pasts to rule their current lives. We do know though that Eda is CIA so there is something that is slightly redeeming about her and makes us question if her past and actions are truth. Yolanda on the other hand is all evil.

Sister Yolanda does not fight. She makes Eda and Rico do it for her, but she does keep a firearm on her just in case. In the Rip-off Church, they pose as a neutral organization among all of the crime syndicates however that could not be further from the truth. They, of course, rip off others, but they also do steal from who are most likely the poor to line their own pockets. Smuggling drugs and arms into other areas, they use the front of the church to murder and get rich. Sister Yolanda also pays off Eda in exchange for information. They are a shady bunch.

Dutch is the leader of the Lagoon Company and actually probably the only character not to be a walking stereotype throughout the series. Dutch is a very tall, muscular black man who supposedly was a Marine in the Vietnam War. Now while this is not expounded upon, one just needs to know a little bit of history to know that that war, in particular, was excruciatingly dark. His story, post the war or perhaps during, is that he went AWOL and ran away to Thailand to become a mercenary.

This however is challenged in a part of the manga where it is suggested that he could have been lying the whole time and just has a past dripped in darkness and mystery. That does not let him get down though as he takes no names and is ready to drop a round of bullets into someone to get the job done. Perhaps due to his dark past, either war or mystery, Dutch never really seems to freak out. He’s always calm and that is probably because he has seen and done more gruesome things in his past.

What is unique about Rock is that we get to see him go from a terrified Japanese salaryman to a hardened criminal throughout the series. Not only that but we also get to enjoy the transformation. What makes Rock dark is how much he is broken down in the series. Rock, or Rokuro Okajima, is introduced to us as a man on a business trip. He just happened to be on the ship that was invaded by the Lagoon Company which wanted the disk he was carrying. They take him as a hostage only to have him be abandoned by his own department Chief in an attempt to cover up what the contents of the disk are.

Compound this by his chief going a step further to hire mercenaries to kill him, and Rock, even though he may put on a good front, becomes broken. He breaks away in the second episode of the first season and is ready to move in with his previous captors in the Lagoon Company. Throughout the series, his psyche is further darkened by him getting used to becoming a pirate. Rock expressed relief when Hansel and Gretel are killed. He even terrifies Revy in Roberta’s Blood Trail to the point that she freaks out and beats him up. Growing darker and darker in the final arc of the series, even Dutch begins to worry about him. Rock would have been much lower on this list were it not for how corrupted and dark his soul became.

Hansel and Gretel are not those cute fairytale characters that you probably know of from when you were a child. Rather, these two orphans hail from Romania. They were deposited into an orphanage by their parents who could not afford to keep them as children. Tragically they have one of the darkest pasts on this list. In the orphanage that they resided in, they were forced to not only watch other children be beaten repeatedly which helped form their dark personalities, but they also were in pedophilia films where they usually had to murder other children. While in the orphanage, they learned very quickly that if they killed other children, they would not get beat. This formed them into the killing machines that they were in the series.

The twins readily swap identities via a wig that they both can wear which allows them to just need to swap their clothing. Readily able to use this to their advantage, they would also use their appearances too to deceive foes so that they could kill them. Hansel is shot and then tortured by Balalaika and a sniper as she chooses to watch him die by her own two eyes. Gretel is gunned down by Elroy after running with the Lagoon Company. The darkest part of this is that when Rock decides to help Hansel, she drops her panties to reveal her lower body as a way of saying thank you. This is due to the abuse that she suffered from a young, impressionable age.

Balalaika’s real name is Sofiya Pavlovna. Her grandfather was previously high up in the Soviet Union army before it all went under. Before Balalaika joined the Magia, she was in the Soviet Union army as well as she helped in the Soviet War in Afghanistan. She was horribly burned during this war and you can see scars over her face, neck, and body. Balalaika and the unit that she commanded in the war in Afghanistan saved a child and essentially this forced both her and her men out of the Soviet Union army. With nowhere to go, they drifted to Roanupur eventually and set up shop in a land run by Chang and the Triads.

Cynical and dark, Balalaika holds no punches. She considers not only herself but also the men who serve under her as people who should have died in Afghanistan. Running Hotel Moscow, they have set up shop against and eventually taking over part of the Triad’s territory. Hotel Moscow is made up of the men who were in her unit. While running illegal trade over the world under the guise of legal trade in Thailand, they smuggle everything. Balalaika does not hesitate to kill as well when it comes to things like the Chinese informant in the beginning of the first season, and the way that instead of torturing Gretel, she mercilessly watches him die in front of her while smoking a cigar.

Roberta came to us in the latter half of season one. Looking wildly out of place as a maid in the crime-ridden Roanupur, she was searching for the young master Garcia of the Lovelace household. When people start messing with her and not telling her what she needs, she starts to take them all out one by one. Starting with the bar, she gives chase as the Lagoon Company tries to keep Garcia safe.

What you actually find out later is her dark and twisted past. Previously she was an F.A.R.C. Special ops guerilla fighter. She trained as an assassin in Cuba and as a result of some of her actions, she became an internationally wanted terrorist. Balalaika does not like messing with her even. She is nicknamed “Bloodhound of Florencia” because no matter what happens, she will always murder her target. During her time as an assassin, she murdered countless men, women, and children while working for the drug cartels. She is in fact so violent that not only does Balalaika want nothing to do with her, Hotel Moscow, The Triad, and the Colombian Cartels are terrified of her. When she locks on, hope and pray it’s not on you.

That’s right! The trigger happy, foul-mouthed, violent Revy is #1 on this list. Revy grew up in NYC in a very poor off neighborhood with an alcoholic father who would hit her. She couldn’t take it anymore and ran out, but only to run into some police officers who subsequently beat and raped her. She came home eventually and her father, without even flinching, asked his daughter for another drink. Losing it, she shot him. Angry, competitive, dark, a flirt and more, Revy is a machine.

She kills without a second thought and most times is willing to just let her gun do the sorting. She feels nothing when she kills and sometimes even tells male victims that they should be happy that she is the one doing them a favor. Bloodlust is what powers her rage and killing sprees and that is no surprise. This is all a mask for the pain that she suffered as a child due to the abuse of her neglectful father and the police. As such, she cannot relate well to others and detests even getting close to anyone.

Further supported by her dark past is her combat ability. Feeling that she has nothing to lose, she takes all possible risks when fighting. She tends to shoot everything in sight with her Cutlass. She cannot stand Eda, who usually questions her about her feelings towards others and will always push her to pull out her guns and let her do the talking. Sad and broken, Revy is the darkest character on this list.