History FreudianExcuse / Comicbooks

** Scarecrow gets an [[MommyIssues abusive great-grandmother and maternal abandonment]], as well as vicious school bullying. In fangirl circles, this is taken as an actual excuse. If you can find a Youtube Scarecrow video posted by a female user who doesn't portray him as TheWoobie or, after Cillian Murphy played him in the movie, a DracoInLeatherPants, you can have five bucks.

* ''ComicBook/IronMan'': The Mandarin was orphaned at an early age, and raised by an aunt who hated him. Instead of raising him to be a decent human being, she raised him to be a sort of super-soldier; a savage master of martial arts, science, and deviousness. Worse, she spent every last bit of the gold he inherited doing this, robbing him to pay for twisting him. By adulthood, he was a twisted monster/Übermensch combo without enough money to even pay his property taxes.
* Subverted in the Creator/BrianMichaelBendis run on the comic book ''ComicBook/{{Daredevil}}''. Daredevil has spent his life tormented by the monstrous Bullseye. When Daredevil discovers Bullseye had a horrible childhood, the hero feels no sympathy, and says he will never fear Bullseye again. A mass murderer is scary; a mass murderer who kills because he had a crappy childhood is merely pathetic.
** Possibly because of Daredevil's ''own'' BackStory. Maybe not everyone can spin "Blinded by toxic spill at age twelve and single father was coerced into not suing due to carelessly negligent waste handler's mob ties" into "hot-shot lawyer AND superhero", but ''still''...
** Bullseye has a MultipleChoicePast, so it's possible "The Crappy childhood" is a lie. In some versions of his origin, he was bad even as a kid. And in all of them he [[SelfMadeOrphan murdered one or both of his parents.]]

** Oh, and Killer Croc once teamed up with fellow biological misfit Baby Doll, and they were quite successful--but apparently being a JerkAss at heart, he decided to ditch her, at which point she snapped on him.

** A perfect example of the slimy psychiatrist appears in Creator/FrankMiller's ''ComicBook/BatmanTheDarkKnightReturns'', in the form of Dr. Volper, who attempts to present ''the Joker'' as being a mere victim of Batman's psychosis. In thanks, the Joker snaps his neck on live television (while gassing the studio) - although it's suggested that the psychiatrist, [[StrawCharacter irritating, blinkered and naive jerk]] though he may be, might have a point, as the Joker had spent the period that Batman had been absent from Gotham City in a catatonic state that he only emerged from when Batman returned.

* ComicBook/TheJoker is a special case in Batman's rogue gallery — the thing about his MultipleChoicePast is that it's unknown who he was before falling into a vat of acid and whether he was nuts even before taking the dunk. It's an eternal RiddleForTheAges. He sometimes even [[BelievingTheirOwnLies believes his origins]], DependingOnTheWriter of course. As such, Joker was literally a nobody… who turned into the DC Universe's scariest villain. Ultimately, Joker is the prime example of FromNobodyToNightmare. But still, most of his sob stories do imply something happened that drove him to villainy.
** He did this most notably in ''Mad Love'' by inducing StockholmSyndrome in Harley Quinn's mind. [[Recap/TheNewBatmanAdventuresE21MadLove It was later adapted into an episode in the animated series]].
** Lampshaded in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyondReturnOfTheJoker'', where Terry gets the better of the titular clown by, among other things, mercilessly mocking his past, although in this version it's just the chemical bath.
** Creator/AlanMoore's ''ComicBook/TheKillingJoke'', during which the Joker has his FreudianExcuse explained as an extended flashback. Joker explains that the story might be entirely false due to his own unreliable psyche, but DC seems to be treating it as {{canon}}, given a later story arc where Riddler says he witnessed the murder of "Jack's" wife and offers to tell Joker who did it in return for protection.
*** The whole point of ''The Killing Joke'' is Joker trying to prove that all it takes is "one bad day" for even the sanest person to go off the deep end. He tries to drive Commissioner Gordon insane by shooting and brutalizing his daughter Barbara, then forcing Gordon to look at photographs of her naked, broken body. However, Gordon doesn't break and, when Batman rescues him, he tells Bats to bring Joker in by the book, to prove "our way works".
*** Why he went by the name the Red Hood has changed over the years: ''The Killing Joke'' claims he was a failed comedian driven to crime to support his pregnant wife. The trauma of his disfigurement from jumping in the acid and his wife's earlier accidental death drove him insane. However, even ''this'' backstory is questionable, as the Joker himself calls it "multiple choice".
** In ''VideoGame/Injustice2'', he is legitimately surprised when Atrocitus wondered what drove the clown to nihilism.
** While he mocks about his backstory in ''Film/TheDarkKnight'', the "I believe whatever doesn't kill you, simply makes you stranger" line he gives when unmasking himself to the bank manager and the cheek scars imply that something traumatic happened that drove him to insanity.
** One issue of ''ComicBook/Robin1993'' had him talking about having AbusiveParents, only for a psychiatrist to tell him it's the ''seventh'' story he's told now.
* Has been used at times to explain the motives of ''Franchise/SpiderMan'' villains, and to possibly contrast them with Spidey himself, who did not exactly have the best childhood. The worst example was when ComicBook/{{Venom}} was given a cliched tragic backstory (complete with the drunk, abusive father) as part of a bad idea to turn the character into a hero. Some other examples:
** ComicBook/DoctorOctopus: Bullied as a child, with an overprotective mother who forbade him from pursuing a relationship with the woman he loved, but selfishly tried to pursue one of her own, then died of a heart attack when he confronted her about it. In many ways, his guilt from this caused his carelessness that created the accident that made him a villain.
*** It's also established in ''Comicbook/SuperiorSpiderMan'' that he had an abusive father who used to regularly beat the shit out of him. It's one of the reasons Ock WouldntHurtAChild.
** Electro: Abusive father who left him and his mother, followed by his mother being overprotective and discouraging him from pursuing his goals. To make this worse, after she died, a marriage that went sour and ended in divorce only made him more bitter.
** Tombstone was an albino born to black parents in Harlem, making him a black kid in a white kid's body; as one might expect, his childhood wasn't very pleasant, abused by both his family and his peers. To cope, he [[TheBully bullied the other students in school]], and only got worse as an adult, becoming a hitman by trade.
** [[ComicBook/GreenGoblin The Green Goblin]]: While some say Norman had very little of an excuse, he didn't become evil on his own. His father was an abusive alcoholic, which made Norman resolve to become a breadwinner for his family. Then things got worse. His wife died shortly after Harry was born, driving him to work harder and neglect his son. Eventually, he framed his business partner Mendel Stromm for embezzlement, used Stromm's research equipment to develop a new line of chemicals, and it all led to the Goblin Formula, and the birth of a nightmare.
** Flash Thompson wasn't truly a villain, but this was the reason he was such a jerk in high school. His dad was an angry alcoholic who abused both him ''and'' his mom. Indeed, a story arc in the 90's involved Flash succumbing to alcoholism himself.
** This was actually addressed in ''ComicBook/UltimateSpiderMan'', where ComicBook/NickFury reveals that the reason he had given Spidey such a hard time was because he has assumed, due to the tragedy in his life, Peter was almost certain to become a villain.
** As a child, J. Jonah Jameson's father (later retconned to be his stepfather) was a celebrated war hero--but in private, he would routinely abuse a young Jonah and his mother. Because of this, JJJ was left soured on the very concept of heroes and frequently tears down Spider-Man (and sometimes other superheroes) in the belief that they ''must'' be hiding some darker nature.
* ''ComicBook/UltimateFantasticFour'':
** In Issue #7, it is explained that on Victor Van Damme's tenth birthday he was presented with his family history dating back to Vlad Tepes Dracula and the blueprint for his villainous mindset, and from that day on at dinner he was required to recite said family history from memory, receiving beatings when he got it wrong and being forced to start over until he got it right. Not much of a Freudian Excuse, but... the last page of the flashback shows 10-year-old Victor sitting in the chair where he received the original lecture and instruction in five panels depicting it slowly getting darker. In the last one, he says "It's my birthday."
** The Maker a.k.a [[spoiler:Reed Richards]]. Abused by his father, not respected by his peers, bullied in high school, and the world didn't change the way he wanted it to nor would anyone let him change it for the better.
* In mainstream continuity, the Fantastic Four's old enemy the Mole Man claims he was ostracized and treated cruelly by his peers as a child and even as a young man because he was so ugly, eventually choosing to abandon humanity entirely because of it. However, this is impossible to verify; seeing as all accounts of his youth have been related by him (with no proper names ever given of his tormentors), they are likely subject to his biased version of the facts.

* ComicBook/{{Magneto}} of ''ComicBook/XMen'': his parents and family were okay people, but they were Jews in Nazi Germany. He was the only one who lived; some issues say that he was forced to clean their ashes out of the incinerators. Magneto is constantly going through the HeelFaceRevolvingDoor, [[WellIntentionedExtremist always working to make the]] [[FantasticRacism oppressed mutants]] safer, often [[KnightTemplar going too far]]. By some accounts, he can't make himself believe that peaceful coexistence is possible.
** And then, once he and his soon-to-be wife Magda settled in Ukraine, a mob burnt down the inn where they were staying, and he was unable to do anything while his daughter burned to death. And ''then,'' when he lost control of the powers he didn't know he had and killed the mob, Magda ran from him, calling him a monster. Later, when he was hunting [[ThoseWackyNazis Nazis]] for a living, the people he worked for (heavily implied to be the CIA) killed a female friend of his because he went after the "wrong" Nazis. Oh, and his [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity powers make him]] [[StealthPun bipolar]]. The man has so many issues it's a wonder he's still able to function.
** On the two occasions when Magneto decided to try the more ethical path of establishing a separate nation as a sanctuary for mutants and otherwise leaving flatscans entirely alone, both times his attempted 'Mutant Israel' was almost immediately nuked off the map. With literal nukes. We might not ''agree'' with Magneto's subsequent urges to burn the world, but we can definitely understand why he's having them.
* Another X-Men villain, the [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain mutant-hating]] Graydon Creed, was a victim of ParentalAbandonment, and his parents were both mutants (Mystique and Sabretooth) even though he is not. When he discovered this, he grew to resent mutants as a result, to the point of founding hate groups like the Friends of Humanity and the Upstarts.
** His father ''{{ComicBook/Sabretooth}}'' has it as well with AbusiveParents. Victor's father kept him chained up in the cellar and would come down to rip out his teeth & claws with pliers. They grew back due to his HealingFactor, so his father would just repeatedly rip them back out again. He was subjected to this abuse and treated like an animal for years before escaping & killing his father.
*** Recently, another story in Deadpool 2016 includes how his father verbally abused him while making young Victor beg for his food like a dog and call himself a monster. Sabretooth even openly lampshades this before the flashback-- saying that all the lives he ruined are on him, but his father showed him the ropes.
** A more recent X-Men villain, anti-mutant lobbyist Lydia Nance, came to despise all mutants because her father, a mutant, physically abused her.
* A Child Services worker in ''ComicBook/{{Transmetropolitan}}'' has a rather poetic rant on this:
--> ''"Everyone's looking for someone to blame. Society. Culture. Hollywood. Predators. Looking everywhere but the right place. Children are very simple, Mr. Jerusalem. Very easy devices to break, or assemble wrong. You want to know who did this to these kids? Only their parents. That's the thing no one wants to hear. Every time you stop thinking about how you're treating your kid, you make one of these. It really is as simple as that. It's got nothing to do with the failure of the society or any of that. It's got everything to do with the responsibility of making a human."''
* Junior from ''ComicBook/SecretSix'' has this turned all the way up to eleven. Her father was the original Golden Age Ragdoll, a psychopathic mass murderer and cult leader in the Charles Manson style. He beat his son because he wasn't triple jointed like he was and when it came to Junior (Real name Alex) he would repeatedly rape her, from a very young age. It doesn't excuse the horrific crimes she later commits (Junior is a sadist, rapist, mass murderer, and torturer whose crimes are so horrifying there are people in Arkham who are scared of her), but her father's character explains some of it.
* ''ComicBook/{{Empowered}}'': Sistah Spooky's rather pathological hatred of blondes (like her teammate [[TheWoobie Empowered]]) was summed up thusly to said teammate by an ex-lover:
--> ''"It's a messy High School (Über-Aryan Film/MeanGirls) trauma, to oversimplify things considerably."''
* The ''Terror Titans'' miniseries by DC is based around this trope. Every issue features one member's backstory, usually involving a terrible childhood.
* Arguably every member of ''ComicBook/TheUmbrellaAcademy'', and definitely Vanya. Hargreeves is a dick and terrible parent, for instance his habit of sorting his children by their apparent worth.

* Subverted in the ''Magazine/{{Mad}}'' parody of ''Series/TouchedByAnAngel''. The somewhat jerky boss objects to a flashback of him being abused by his father that is used to explain his behavior, saying that it isn't real, but the angel showing it tells him that they need it for tear-kerker material.
* ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'':
** ''ComicBook/SupermanBirthright'' gave Lex Luthor a small excuse. His father was emotionally distant and he felt alienated from everyone because of his money and intellect. However, he was also a raging sociopath with a superiority complex that dwarfed the heavens and many people point out that Luthor made his own choices.
** In the ''ComicBook/New52'', it's established that as a teenager, Lex had the chance to develop a cure that could have saved his [[IllGirl dying sister Lena]]. Instead, he sat by and did nothing because he was afraid of what would happen should he fail. When Lena died later that year, a grieving Lex vowed to never let anything stand in the way of him reaching his goals ever again. [[spoiler: This turns out to be a lie. Lex ''did'' try to find a cure, but it failed and left her an invalid. However, unlike his fictionalized account, Lex claims this failure made him stronger]].
** In ''ComicBook/TheDeathOfClarkKent'', Conduit's father's emotional abuse of him (disparaging him for always coming in second to Clark Kent) partially made him the unstable person he became.
** In ''ComicBook/Supergirl2005'', Catherine Grant spends one whole year smearing ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}'s reputation and endeavouring to drive her out of Metropolis through her slandering pieces. In the ''Day of the Dollmaker'' arc, Lana explains Cat Grant is a very unpleasant woman because her son's murder changed her.
--->'''Lana Lang''': You've got to understand, Kara, Cat's been to '''Hell''' and back with Toyman. You didn't know Cat before her son was killed. She was a '''different''' woman back then. Heck, we all were. [...] Her son Adam was killed rescuing a group of children who were kidnapped by one of Toyman's malfunctioning robots. The robot cut his throat. Cat '''changed''' after that. She didn't '''grieve'''. Instead, she turned '''hard'''. She moved to L.A. and started writing for '''tabloids''', tearing down anyone she could. The more teen stars and starlets she saw parading around town, the angrier and angrier her writing became. [...] Clark thinks Cat became angry that those teens were still alive to make messes of their lives... and her son '''wasn't'''.
** In ''ComicBook/SupergirlRebirth'' story ''The Girl of No Tomorrow'', Supergirl confronts the [[ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes Emerald Empress]], a woman who was sold into slavery by her own family and was abused and mistreated by the powerful and rich until she bumped into the Emerald Eye of Ekron. Now she uses her Eye's power to pillage and loot and questions why Supergirl never helped her when she craved for justice, instead opposing her when she seeks revenge.
--->'''Emerald Empress''': I have a '''complicated''' relationship with Justice. Slaving under the '''Duke''', knowing awaited after a short life of torment... I didn't fear Justice, I '''longed''' for it. Supergirl and her dynasty patrolled the universe, but when salvation came for '''me''', it did not wear an "'''S'''". It was an '''Eye'''. Supergirl '''ignored''' my suffering. But once I was '''free''' of it, pillaging the galaxy in service to my eye, she had no problem standing '''against''' me.
** In ''ComicBook/TheStrangeRevengeOfLenaLuthor'', Mind-Bomber claims his desire to destroy his family's lives stems from being treated with contempt and mockery when he was younger.
* While not a villain per se, Rorschach from ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' was raised by a prostitute who never cared for him. The Comedian is implied to have had a rough childhood as well.
** Rorschach states his reason for becoming a crime-fighter in a deconstruction of the superhero origin story. The therapist he speaks with sees it as nothing more than a shallow excuse for his violent life.
** Ozymandias had an (unspoken) excuse of his own in the movie, or at least from the POV of the actor who played him. Matthew Goode decided to portray Veidt as being shamed by being the son of a Nazi, and that his WellIntentionedExtremist views arose out of a desire to shed his family guilt and save the world.

* Barracuda from ''Comicbook/ThePunisherMAX'' series. Though an AffablyEvil character to the point of almost being likable, he turns on allies in an instant, given sufficient reason to do so, and tries to get revenge on Castle by [[spoiler: kidnapping his infant illegitimate daughter and planning to torture her to death in front of him]]. However, during a scene in which the tortured Barracuda snaps completely and utterly, a dialogue in his head reveals that his father had been abusive to the point of torturing his young son. When he goes off the deep end, Barracuda screams "Never found him! Never fuckin' found him! Hadda take that shit out onna muthafuckin' world!"
** Nicky Cavella was [[spoiler:manipulated and sexually abused by his aunt. She also made him kill his parents, although the SlasherSmile on his face heavily implies that he wasn't quite normal to begin with]]. When he's grown up [[spoiler:and finally suffocated his aunt with a pillow]], he gleefully pisses on the remains of Frank Castle's family and murders the youngest son of one of his opponents before cooking and serving him to said opponent.
** One KingOfTheHomeless, while not abused, did ''not'' have a normal childhood. His mother was beyond morbidly obese and he was bullied for it, and while hugging him one day she fell over and couldn't get up. He had to ''eat his way out of her corpse'', which explains why in adulthood he only finds confort when swimming [[Franchise/DuckTales Scrooge McDuck]]-style through the corpses brought to him by his mooks.
** One future Mafia boss had a little brother with dwarfism who he humiliated in a variety of ways. When both are adults, the dwarf recruits other short criminals to form his own empire, proposing that Wolverine and the Punisher join them. It ends badly for the criminals and Wolverine (who gets his face and ballsack shot off before being run over by a steamroller).
** The Tiny Ugly World arc has a [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Ned Flanders-looking]] creep whose mother had severe issues, slept with her son, and cut off his penis (he keeps it in a jar) and killed herself. He's even worse.
** Even Jake Gallows, [[Comicbook/ThePunisher2099 the Punisher in 2099]], runs afoul of guys with backgrounds like this. Kron Stone claims his family never loved him, leaving a robot to care for him but never bothering to program it, causing it to default to veterinarian mode. "Do you know what it's like to be fitted with a collar, live in a kennel, and be fed on dog meat?!" "No, but I know what it's like to have your family butchered by a crazy with a sob story."

* {{Defied|Trope}} in ''ComicBook/XMen Noir''; [[spoiler:Comicbook/JeanGrey]]'s MotiveRant includes lamenting that Professor Xavier never truly accepted that she was ''always'' extremely immoral and manipulative. "Nobody touched me, nobody corrupted me. ''This is me.''"
* Parodied in a ''ComicBook/FunWithMilkAndCheese'' story called "Society is to Blame!", where the titular dairy-products-gone-bad commit their usual horrific fit of violence, but this time decide to do so all the while spouting cliched Freudian excuses as to why they're doing it.
* An early [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] ComicBook/CaptainAmerica story had Cap the prisoner of the ComicBook/RedSkull where he told of his tough early life as a homeless child, exploited by street criminals and who could only find work in menial labor until he met ''UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler''. However, Cap tells him to QuitYourWhining, noting that he himself struggled with poverty in his youth (although he had a loving mother) and is in no mood for sob stories.
** Which would make this one rare example of Cap being a [[JerkAss hypocritical douche]], since he himself did well enough to study art at college before he joined up. The Skull is his ArchEnemy and a [[{{Understatement}} thoroughly unpleasant individual]] besides, so he might probably be forgiven for this lapse.
*** Although it could simply reinforce Cap's arguments. Both Cap and the Skull went through hard times but Cap might have been able to work hard enough in school and out to go to college, possibly on a scholarship.
** Cap himself is sometimes an inversion: Some versions of his family history portray his father as an abusive alcoholic.
* In the [[ComicBook/TheTransformersIDW IDW Transformers]] continuity, Megatron forms the Decepticons because he is oppressed by the corrupt Autobot Government, with his band originally formed as ''freedom fighters''. In a sense, most of the Decepticons fall under this trope.
** Drift definitely falls into this category, though his excuse is a pretty limp manner to justify his faction switch.
** Whirl used to be a successful watchmaker until the Senate took away his hands to press-gang him into their service, thus ruining his life. He uses this as an excuse to justify his sociopathic actions and essentially ignore his conscience.
** [[spoiler:Shockwave went through the same procedure as Whirl and had a lobotomy on top of that. There is nothing left of the compassionate senator that once saved Orion Pax.]]
* In ''Franchise/{{Star Wars|Expanded Universe}}: ComicBook/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'', both of the {{big bad}}s (Chantique and Haazen) have the excuses; Haazen's is that he failed to make the grade as a Jedi, and was treated indifferently by a well-meaning but somewhat classist employer, while Chantique was sold into slavery by her own father, sold when she failed to be ruthless enough to survive, and was raped by her owners. In Haazen's case it's subverted, since a large part of it was his failure to grow and learn from experience. Chantique's excuse is why she has a VillainousBreakdown when Zayne returns to save Jarael.
* From ''Comicbook/TheMightyThor'':
** Marvel's Comicbook/{{Loki}} would probably count. First, there is the fact that he is a midget giant who was abused by his real father for being weak and small. After he helps kill said father, he is adopted by Odin, who does so only because he is convinced that it is the only way to appease the spirit of his own dead father. After he is adopted, it is implied that [[TheUnfavourite Odin neglected him wholly in favor of his real son, Thor.]] Thor, in return, is implied to be one of maybe a hand full of people who like Loki, as well as maybe being one the only people who actually love him. For Loki, this boils down to a seething self-hatred, which he in turn projects onto Thor, which he only does because he knows that his brother will never completely turn him away. Lampshaded by Valeria Richards and Loki in issue #7 of ''Comicbook/LokiAgentOfAsgard'':
-->'''Verity''': What makes hate easy?
-->'''Valeria''': Mommy and daddy.
-->'''Loki''': Harsh! But yes.
** Gorr from Jason Aaron's run was born on a deeply religious desert planet that was in the midst of a horrible drought. At a young age, he witnessed his mother being violently killed and eaten by a pack of wild animals shortly after she had expressed her faith in a higher power. Then, as a young man, he watched his pregnant wife fall to her death while she screamed for their gods to save her. [[TraumaCongaLine After that]], his children all starved to death, with the last one dying in his arms. The final humiliation came when the other members of his tribe attacked him and kicked him out after he tried to bury his son's body, which went against their religious customs. All of this inspired a deep, seething hatred of gods within Gorr, and when two injured deities fell from the sky one day, he killed them both and took their enchanted weapons. Adopting the name '''Gor the God Butcher''', he set off across the cosmos to kill any gods he stumbled upon, with the ultimate goal of creating a universe free of religious tyranny.

* ''ComicBook/TheFlash'' has a pile of unhappy backstories subverted (and not) to varying degrees, including --
** Captain Cold and Golden Glider's father was an abusive alcoholic.
** The second Mirror Master was left at an orphanage as a baby. One of the other boys there tried to rape him; he fought back and ended up drowning his attacker.
** Cobalt Blue was Barry Allen's twin brother, [[SwitchedAtBirth but at birth he was given to the abusive Thawnes]] and used as a living prop in their scams because the doctor who was overseeing both deliveries accidentally killed the Thawnes' baby and figured the Allens had one more kid than they needed.
** The first Trickster came from a family of aerialists and his father mocked him for his fear of heights--never mind that this fear came about partly because Dad was constantly DistractedByTheSexy and often came close to dropping his son from a height during their trapeze routines.
** Magenta developed her ExtraOreDinary powers at a very young age, but the emergence of her power caused her father and brother's deaths in a car accident. Her mother believed she was demon-possessed and abused her constantly out of resentment, never forgiving her for the aforementioned deaths [[spoiler:even after it was revealed that it was Dr. Polaris' interference that caused the girl's powers to emerge in the first place]]. Consequently, Magenta would grow up with a seriously-creepy SplitPersonality.
** The second Zoom/Reverse-Flash, ComicBook/HunterZolomon, had a father who was a SerialKiller and who would eventually kill his mother when she finally got brave enough to call the cops, then the dad got gunned down by the cops--both deaths happening the same day Hunter was to leave for college. While this incident wasn't what led him to later become a super-villain, it did set the foundation for his belief that [[KnightTemplar tragedy makes better heroes]], which in turn led to him wanting to "improve" Wally West, who he felt didn't appreciate that a hero should be willing to do whatever it takes to prevent tragedy from repeating.
** The first Reverse-Flash, ComicBook/EobardThawne, was born in the 25th century to emotionally abusive parents who treated him as an obligation. He grew up to be obsessed with Barry Allen, the second Flash, seeing him as a source of the kindness and love that was lacking in his own life. In his adulthood, Thawne became a scientist who studied the Speed Force, and eventually managed to endow himself with super-speed. With no crimes to solve in his time, he begins causing accidents so that he can come to the "rescue" and look like a hero. When Barry Allen arrives in the 25th century, he puts a stop to Thawne and turns him in to the police for the "accidents". Thawne repents and tries to better himself, but feels betrayed when he realizes that Barry Allen has taken Wally West as a sidekick and not him. This causes Thawne to descend into villainy.
* In the ComicBook/{{New 52}}, ComicBook/{{Nightwing}}'s foe Saiko (which appropriately enough sounds a lot like "psycho") [[spoiler:is really his former friend and fellow former circus boy Raymond. The circus was a front for the Court of Owls who would repeatedly take children from the circus and put them through TrainingFromHell to make them into new Talons. The Owls kidnapped Raymond and put him through that training before deciding he was a failure and left him to die in the woods with his [[EyeScream eyes pecked out by birds]].]] His entire murderous grudge against Dick is that [[spoiler:it should have been Dick instead of Raymond. The Owls originally wanted to make Dick into a Talon, but they had to "settle" for Raymond after the Flying Graysons died and Bruce Wayne adopted Dick in the wake of the tragedy.]] Saiko then engages Dick in a fight during a reunion show at Haly's Circus while threatening the lives of everyone present with a bunch of bombs. Dick rightfully calls Saiko out on his bs, stating that his suffering is no excuse for endangering so many innocent lives.
* In Creator/ECComics' "...So Shall Ye Reap!" (''Shock [=SuspenStories=]'' #10), a 20-year-old boy about to be executed reflects on the sad course of his life, as do his parents. The son's recollections, juxtaposed with those of his parents, show them to have been jealously overprotective and morally hypocritical, yet in the final panel he only blames himself for not having listened to them.
* ''ComicBook/KickAss'' and Hit-Girl's GoodIsNotNice personalities stem from the fact that their mothers had died.

* Dex-Starr is a homicidal ''kitty cat'' in the ComicBook/GreenLantern books (he's also a Red Lantern, which helps a lot with the "homicidal" part ... helps him actually ''be'' homicidal, that is). One story shows how he got that way, and it's pretty heartbreaking. He used to be an ordinary house pet until one night his owner was murdered right in front of him. The next morning, the police kicked him out of the crime scene, and as if that wasn't bad enough, a pair of teenagers captured him, put him in a burlap sack, and threw him off a bridge. At that moment, Dex-Starr was so filled with rage from the loss and mistreatment he'd suffered that he was chosen to be a Red Lantern.
* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'':
** ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': Villain Zara of the Crimson Flame turned homicidal and vengeful against all men after being sold into slavery by her father as a child.
** Hypnota turned to a life of crime after she was shot in the face and believed her sister Serva had legitimately tried to kill her.
* In an issue of Marvel's ''Hanna-Barbera TV Stars,'' [[WesternAnimation/CBBears Undercover Elephant]] went after a criminal who was also a psychiatrist, Pretty Boy Freud. The shrink tricks U.E. into getting treatment, and U.E. tells how his mother used to spank him with a tennis racket ("The kids all used to call me ''ol' waffle britches''!")

** Scarecrow gets an [[MommyIssues abusive grandmother and maternal abandonment]], as well as vicious school bullying. In fangirl circles, this is taken as an actual excuse. If you can find a Youtube Scarecrow video posted by a female user who doesn't portray him as TheWoobie or, after Cillian Murphy played him in the movie, a DracoInLeatherPants, you can have five bucks.

* ComicBook/TheJoker is a special case in Batman's rogue gallery -- the thing about his MultipleChoicePast is that it's unknown who he was before falling into a vat of acid and whether he was nuts even before taking the dunk. It's an eternal RiddleForTheAges. He sometimes even [[BelievingTheirOwnLies believes his origins]], DependingOnTheWriter of course. As such, Joker was literally a nobody… who turned into the DC Universe's scariest villain. Ultimately, Joker is the prime example of FromNobodyToNightmare.

** In ''VideoGame/Injustice2'', an intro with Atrocitus has the Red Lantern wondering what drove the Joker to nihilism. Joker sounds legitimately surprised when Atrocitus mentioned it.

* ComicBook/TheJoker is a special case in Batman's rogue gallery -- the key thing about his MultipleChoicePast is that nobody really knows who he was before falling into a vat of acid. It's an eternal RiddleForTheAges. He sometimes even [[BelievingTheirOwnLies believes his origins]], DependingOnTheWriter of course. As such, Joker was literally a nobody… who turned into the DC Universe's scariest villain. Ultimately, Joker is the prime example of FromNobodyToNightmare.

** One issue of the ''ComicBook/RobinSeries'' had him talking about having AbusiveParents, only for a psychiatrist to tell him it's the ''seventh'' story he's told now.

* [[Comicbook/{{Empowered}} Sistah Spooky's]] rather pathological hatred of blondes (like her teammate [[TheWoobie Empowered]]) was summed up thusly to said teammate by an ex-lover:

* Backblast from ''Franchise/GIJoe''. He grew up next to one of the busiest airports in the world, and whenever a plane landed or took off his whole house shook with the force of an earthquake. When he signed up for the military, the first thing he asked was "Where can I go to shoot airplanes out of the sky?"
** Similarly, Charbroil used to have to heat the water pipes in his family's basement as a kid with a blowtorch to keep them from freezing in the winter, and as a teenager worked at a mill, feeding coal into blast furnaces. When asked by the recruiting sergeant what kind of job he was interested in, he replied, "What have you got with open flames?"
* Subverted in the ''Magazine/{{Mad}}'' parody of ''Series/TouchedByAnAngel''. The somewhat jerky boss objects to a flashback of him being abused by his father that is used to explain his behavior, saying that it isn't real, but the angel showing it tells him that they need it for TearJerker material.

** ''ComicBook/SupermanBirthright'' gave ComicBook/LexLuthor a small excuse. His father was emotionally distant and he felt alienated from everyone because of his money and intellect. However, he was also a raging sociopath with a superiority complex that dwarfed the heavens and many people point out that Luthor made his own choices.
** In the ComicBook/{{New 52}}, it's established that as a teenager, Lex had the chance to develop a cure that could have saved his [[IllGirl dying sister Lena]]. Instead, he sat by and did nothing because he was afraid of what would happen should he fail. When Lena died later that year, a grieving Lex vowed to never let anything stand in the way of him reaching his goals ever again. [[spoiler: This turns out to be a lie. Lex ''did'' try to find a cure, but it failed and left her an invalid. However, unlike his fictionalized account, Lex claims this failure made him stronger]].

* ''ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}'':
** In ''[[ComicBook/Supergirl2005 Supergirl Vol. 5]]'', Catherine Grant spends one whole year smearing Supergirl's reputation and endeavouring to drive her out of Metropolis through her slandering pieces. In the ''Day of the Dollmaker'' arc, Lana explains Cat Grant is a very unpleasant woman because her son's murder changed her.
--->'''ComicBook/LanaLang''': You've got to understand, Kara, Cat's been to '''Hell''' and back with Toyman. You didn't know Cat before her son was killed. She was a '''different''' woman back then. Heck, we all were. [...] Her son Adam was killed rescuing a group of children who were kidnapped by one of Toyman's malfunctioning robots. The robot cut his throat. Cat '''changed''' after that. She didn't '''grieve'''. Instead, she turned '''hard'''. She moved to L.A. and started writing for '''tabloids''', tearing down anyone she could. The more teen stars and starlets she saw parading around town, the angrier and angrier her writing became. [...] Clark thinks Cat became angry that those teens were still alive to make messes of their lives... and her son '''wasn't'''.

** In ''ComicBook/SupergirlRebirth'' story ''The Girl of No Tomorrow'', Supergirl confronts the [[ComicBook/{{Legion Of Super-Heroes}} Emerald Empress]], a woman who was sold into slavery by her own family and was abused and mistreated by the powerful and rich until she bumped into the Emerald Eye of Ekron. Now she uses her Eye's power to pillage and loot and questions why Supergirl never helped her when she craved for justice, instead opposing her when she seeks revenge.

** One KingOfTheHomeless, while not abused, did ''not'' have a normal childhood. His mother was beyond morbidly obese and he was bullied for it, and while hugging him one day she fell over and couldn't get up. He had to ''eat his way out of her corpse'', which explains why in adulthood he only finds confort when swimming [[WesternAnimation/DuckTales Scrooge McDuck]]-style through the corpses brought to him by his mooks.

* ComicBook/TheJoker is a special case in Batman's rogue gallery -- he's the poster child of MultipleChoicePast and uses it frequently in order to trick people and bail out from Arkham. The most accepted version is that he was a thug named the Red Hood who gets disfigured falling into a vat while trying to escape Batman. In fact, the Joker's backstory is a mystery, but most versions he tells are consistent in two things: he was a nobody, and possibly someone poor.

** Lampshaded in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyondReturnOfTheJoker'', wherein Terry gets the better of the titular villain by, among other things, mercilessly mocking his past, although in this version it's just the chemical bath.
** ComicBook/TheJoker himself likes to make fun of this trope, by making up horrible child abuse stories in order to mess with people's minds. He did this most notably in ''Mad Love''.

** Creator/AlanMoore's ''ComicBook/TheKillingJoke'', during which the Joker has his FreudianExcuse explained as an extended flashback. Joker explains that the story might be entirely false due to his own unreliable psyche, but DC seems to be treating it as {{canon}}, given a later story arc where Riddler says he witnessed the murder of "Jack's" wife and offers to tell Joker who did it in return for protection.
*** The whole point of ''ComicBook/TheKillingJoke'' is Joker trying to prove that all it takes is "one bad day" for even the sanest person to go off the deep end. He tries to drive Commissioner Gordon insane by shooting and brutalizing his daughter Barbara, then forcing Gordon to look at photographs of her naked, broken body. However, Gordon doesn't break and, when Batman rescues him, he tells Bats to bring Joker in by the book, to prove "our way works".

* Dex-Starr is a homicidal ''kitty cat'' in the ComicBook/GreenLantern books (he's also a Red Lantern, which helps a lot with the "homicidal" part ... helps him actually ''be'' homicidal, that is). One story shows how he got that way, and it's pretty heartbreaking.

** The second Zoom/Reverse-Flash, Hunter Zolomon, had a father who was a SerialKiller and who would eventually kill his mother when she finally got brave enough to call the cops, then the dad got gunned down by the cops--both deaths happening the same day Hunter was to leave for college. While this incident wasn't what led him to later become a super-villain, it did set the foundation for his belief that [[KnightTemplar tragedy makes better heroes]], which in turn led to him wanting to "improve" Wally West, who he felt didn't appreciate that a hero should be willing to do whatever it takes to prevent tragedy from repeating.

** His father ''{{ComicBook/Sabretooth}}'' has it as well with AbusiveParents. Victor's father kept him chained up in the cellar and would come down to rip out his teeth & claws with pliers. They grew back due to his HealingFactor, so his father would just repeatedly rip them back out again. He was kept locked up, torched, and treated like an animal for years before escaping & killing his father.

** Also in Franchise/{{Star Wars|Expanded Universe}}: Vianna D'Pow, Zeltron bounty hunter is revealed to have been bullied as a child because of her albinism - Her fun-loving species mistreated her and "taught her how to hate" so she consideres holier-than-thou characters to be hypocritical. His opponent Obi-Wan was unimpressed and remarked the problems in her excuse; she was angry at him "psychoanalyzing" her (story "One of a Kind" in Clone Wars Adventures #8).

** Villain Zara of the Crimson Flame turned homicidal and vengeful against all men after being sold into slavery by her father as a child.

* Many of the ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' villains: Anyone born looking like Waylon "Killer Croc" Jones would have trouble leading a normal life; Bane was forced to live out his escaped father's life sentence, and so on. Some are a bit suspect -- Scarecrow was bullied as a child, yes, but so were a lot of us, and yet we didn't turn evil.

** [[EvilAlbino Tombstone]] was an albino born to black parents in Harlem, making him a black kid in a white kid's body; as one might expect, his childhood wasn't very pleasant, abused by both his family and his peers. To cope, he [[TheBully bullied the other students in school]], and only got worse as an adult, becoming a hitman by trade.

* 616 ComicBook/DoctorDoom has traces of this as well. His mother sold her [[DealWithTheDevil soul]] to [[BigRedDevil Mephisto]] in order to acquire greater magical powers, and she got killed when he was still a babe. His father tried to use science for the good of mankind, only to be oppressed by an [[AristocratsAreEvil local baron]] forcing him and Victor to run. Depending on the book you're reading, either Victor saw his father freeze to death or they were saved just in time.. only for his father to die of an illness... And then when he is about to save his mother, his most magnificent machine blows up... [[NeverMyFault Because of that Richards]].....

*** Recently, another story in Deadpool 2016 includes how his father verbally abused him while making young Victor beg for his food like a dog and call himself a monster. Sabretooth even openly lampshades this before the flashback -saying that all the lives he ruined are on him, but his father showed him the ropes.

** In the ComicBook/{{New 52}}, it's established that as a teenager, Lex had the chance to develop a cure that could have saved his [[IllGirl dying sister Lena]]. Instead, he sat by and did nothing because he was afraid of what would happen should he fail. When Lena died later that year, a grieving Lex vowed to never let anything stand in the way of him reaching his goals ever again. [[spoiler: This turns out to be a lie. Lex DID try to find a cure, but it failed and left her an invalid. However, unlike his fictionalized account, Lex claims this failure made him stronger]].

** In ''ComicBook/SupergirlRebirth'' story ''The Girl of No Tomorrow'', Supergirl confronts the [[ComicBook/{{Legion Of Super-Heroes}} Emerald Empress]]'', a woman who was sold into slavery by her own family and was abused and mistreated by the powerful and rich until she bumped into the Emerald Eye of Ekron. Now she uses her Eye's power to pillage and loot and questions why Supergirl never helped her when she craved for justice, instead opposing her when she seeks revenge.

* {{Defied|Trope}} in the first strip of ''[[Comicbook/TheGrievousJourneyOfIchabodAzrael The Grievous Journey of Ichabod Azrael (and the Dead Left in His Wake)]]'': the {{narrator}} says he'd like to say Ichabod became a killer because his father beat him,but in reality, his childhood wasn't any harsher than any other kid at the time. Some people are just born mean.

* In ''Franchise/{{Star Wars|Expanded Universe}}: ComicBook/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'', both of the big bads (Chantique and Haazen) have the excuses; Haazens is that he failed to make the grade as a jedi, and was treated indifferently by a well meaning but somewhat classist employer, while Chantique was sold into slavery by her own father, sold when she failed to be ruthless enough to survive, and was raped by her owners. In Haazen's case it's subverted, since a large part of it was his failure to grow and learn from experience. Chantique's excuse is why she has a VillainousBreakdown when Zayne returns to save Jarael.

* The Mandarin from ''ComicBook/IronMan'' was orphaned at an early age, and raised by an aunt who hated him. Instead of raising him to be a decent human being, she raised him to be a sort of super-soldier; a savage master of martial arts, science, and deviousness. Worse, she spent every last bit of the gold he inherited doing this, robbing him to pay for twisting him. By adulthood, he was a twisted monster/Übermensch combo without enough money to even pay his property taxes.

* In an issue of Marvel's ''Hanna-Barbera TV Stars,'' [[WesternAnimation/CBBears Undercover Elephant]] went after a criminal who was also a psychiatrist, Pretty Boy Freud. The shrink tricks U,E. into getting treatment, and U.E. tells how his mother used to spank him with a tennis racket ("The kids all called me ''ol' waffle britches''!")

** Possibly because of Daredevil's ''own'' BackStory. Maybe not everyone can spin "Blinded by toxic spill at age twelve and single father was coerced into not suing due to carelessly negligent waste handler's mob ties"ff into "hot-shot lawyer AND superhero", but ''still''...

* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' villain Zara of the Crimson Flame turned homicidal and vengeful after being sold into slavery as a child.