History PsychopathicManchild / LiveActionTV

** Downplayed with the Host, rather revealed to be [[spoiler:Oh Il-nam]]. Although he's undoubtedly more intelligent and mature than the [=VIPs=], [[spoiler:he still takes an inordinate amount of joy in playing children's games, and admits that his biggest motivation for making himself a contestant was to recapture the happiness he felt playing those games as a child]].

----

** Tuco Salamanca, by contrast, is a deranged thug, who oscillates wildly between fits of exuberant glee, pouting tantrums, and outbursts of horrific violence. In his trademark moment, he beats a mook to an inch of his life for speaking out of line and then screams at Heisenberg to "fix him" a moment later. It's telling that his only whatsoever humanizing moment comes from standing up for his elderly grandmother. With horrific violence, of course.

[[folder:A-D]]

[[folder:F-M]]
* ''Series/{{Fringe}}'''s Walter Bishop is a seemingly harmless MadScientist and is pretty likeable until you remember he experimented on children in order to communicate with other dimensions and has created horrible monsters and oodles of other universe-smashing stuff.

[[folder:F-L]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder:M-Z]]

* ''Series/{{Dollhouse}}'' has Terry Karens, a wealthy serial killer who loved to "play house" by paralyzing and posing his victims like dolls.

* ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' gets one in its tenth season with [=CSU=] Tech Dale Stuckey; in the season finale, Stuckey kills several innocent people to try and frame a psychotic man who'd killed before, kills his [=CSU=] boss before he can tell the police he was the actual killer and starts assaulting Stabler with the intent to kill him before Benson makes the save.

* In ''Series/AbsolutelyFabulous'' both Edina and Patsy are [[{{Manchild}} womanchildren]] - alcoholic, irresponsible, drug-addicted {{Cloudcuckoolander}}s - to the extent that the relation of Edina and her daughter Saffy can be at best described as inverted parenthood, but Patsy is also unpredictable, full of spite, violent and has a tendency to conniptions, and she is especially toxic towards Saffy.

* Villanelle/Oksana from ''Series/KillingEve'' is definitely one of these. It's best seen in episode 8 wherein she kidnaps her mentor's pre-teen daughter Irina. She and Irina spend the whole episode bickering back with Villanelle acting like she's Irina's peer. She also gets mad at Irina for being better at speaking Mandarin.

** The [[spoiler:Gods of Ragnarok]] in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS25E4TheGreatestShowInTheGalaxy "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy"]] are extremely powerful beings who have been completely consumed by the desire to be entertained 24/7 (or whatever Segonax's day is). One of them even manifests as a child.

** [[spoiler:Melody Pond]] was raised as an assassin by a cult, and in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E8LetsKillHitler "Let's Kill Hitler"]] treats attempting to kill her target as a kind of game. She gets better.
** [[spoiler:The Master (Dhawan edition)]], introduced in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS38E1E2Spyfall "Spyfall"]], reacts to the Doctor realizing his identity by skipping around the plane and clapping like a delighted toddler. He also [[spoiler:pulls out the shrunken corpse of the real "O"]] and, giggling, declares "I have had a ''lot'' of fun!"

* ''Series/{{Fringe}}'''s Walter Bishop is a seemingly harmless MadScientist and pretty likeable until you remember he experimented on children in order to communicate with other dimensions, has created horrible monsters and oodles of other universe-smashing stuff.

** While a tad more sympathetic than her book counterpart, Cersei Lannister is still at heart a very immature person prone to cruel and petty behavior, who never really outgrew being the little girl who had a servant girl severely beaten for stealing a necklace. She has even thrown honest to goodness ''tantrums'' like a petulant child when things don't go her way. Lena Headey says that she plays Cersei as if she was a wayward 15-year-old who never had any real parenting.
** Dany's older brother Viserys was a more sympathetic and complex variation of this trope. On one hand, he is childish, abusive, cruel, petulant, vindictive, and entitled and retreats into childlike fantasy and tantrums rather than dealing with his problems. On the other hand, he's also a bit of [[TheWoobie a woobie]] (or at least, a DracoInLeatherPants) because it's easy to understand why he'd behave like this because (as a child) he experienced no guidance and have had every whim catered for by adults who were just using him for his name, had a pronounced genetic predisposition to mental illness and a tragic and traumatic personal history. Fans who feel sad that the character was killed off so soon do so because he didn't seem condemned to spend his entire life as a psychopathic manchild: he comes across more as a troubled youth than a complete sociopath, and there's this sense that he could have [[CharacterDevelopment matured into a decent adult]].
** Lysa Arryn had murderous tendencies whenever she threw a tantrum because things didn't go her way and did not think or act all that much like a grown woman, hiding in the Eeyrie in the hopes that the world would forget her. Her son seems to be following in her footsteps, although it's hard to blame him all that much, given his childhood.

** After The Reveal that Barbara Kean actually killed her parents, she acts like this a lot of the time, prone to childish temper tantrums that often end in someone's death. She grows out of it in Season 4 thanks to [[spoiler:the influence of Ra's Al Ghul]].

* The [[Series/TheTwilightZone1959 first incarnation]] of ''The Twilight Zone'' plays this trope for drama in "A Piano in the House". Main character Fitzgerald Fortune, a prime {{Jerkass}} and [[CausticCritic extremely rude theatre critic]], gets his hands on the titular object, a magical player piano which can [[MagicMusic make a person reveal their innermost secrets]] when the right piece of music is placed inside of it. He spends the majority of the episode using the piano like a child with a toy, forcing people to show their true colors at his wife's birthday party and laughing at them as they embarrass themselves. But when Fortune's wife, a victim of the instrument herself, places a copy of "Brahms' Lullaby" in the piano, [[HoistByHisOwnPetard it's Fitzgerald himself]] who ends up affected. He confesses to the gathered crowd that deep down, he's a scared, frightened, lonely little boy who has no idea how to show kindness or love to anyone, and so lashes out at those more talented or compassionate than him with petty cruelty and insults. When the other guests realize just how pathetic Fortune really is, they abandon him, and he throws a full-blown temper tantrum ("IF YOU LEAVE ME, I'M GOING TO BE VERY NAUGHTY!"), destroying the room and screaming.

** The [[Series/TheTwilightZone2019 2019 series]] has Marc Wheeler from "Try, Try". Having been stuck in a GroundhogDayLoop for over three years, he believes that there's nothing stopping him from doing whatever he wants regardless of consequences, since any harm he causes is erased when the loop resets. His attempts to get Claudia to love him can be likened to a spoiled child trying to get their way.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episodes:
** "Charlie X," full-stop. A human child raised by omnipotent aliens and given the ability to warp reality. Though 18-years-old, he has the social skills of a spoiled 5-year-old. Having committed mass murder before being picked up by the Enterprise, he causes so much carnage upon the crew (which the aliens ultimately undo) that he is handed back to the aliens at the end of the episode.
** "Whom Gods Destroy" involves one of Kirk's heroes gone insane from a head injury during a starship crash. Imprisoned in an institution for the criminally insane, he starts screaming at the top of his lungs and banging his fist on the floor when he can't impersonate Captain Kirk well enough to be allowed onto the ''Enterprise''. Most other patients exhibit this trope. They exhibit "entertainment" to Kirk in the form of wheelbarrow racing in a circle. One patient defends accusations she plagiarized a poem from A.E. Houseman by saying she "wrote it again this morning" and craves attention from all the other inmates.
** Trelane of ''The Squire of Gothos'' starts out merely childish, becomes villainous (but still childish) when crossed... [[PlayingWithATrope and ultimately turns out to]] ''be'' a child. Not a human child (his species is apparently far beyond humanity), and he appears as an adult human, but still a child whose parents come to pick him up, apologize for his misdeeds and punish him when he's been naughty.
** Another ''Franchise/StarTrek'' example, this time from ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': The ''Q race'' at times comes across as this. Omnipotent and godlike in power, while gleefully using their power to manipulate, bully and otherwise annoy "less evolved" species, while reacting with indignation when these species actually call them out on their behavior. The Q played by John [=DeLancie=], with whom the crew most frequently interacts, has a particular reputation for this sort of behavior even among ''his own'' people and is very much TheTrickster. Except when he runs into [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Ben Sisko]], who unlike Picard is not about to put up with his crap and outright decks him when pushed too far. His [[Series/StarTrekVoyager son]] takes it to extremes.
*** Fittingly, most ExpandedUniverse literature and WordOfDante implies that Trelane himself was an infant Q.
*** And then there's Kivas Fajo from "The Most Toys". Despite portraying himself as a ManOfWealthAndTaste (as demonstrated by his collection of unique artwork and treasures), he's extremely unstable and prone to losing his temper when he doesn't get his way, and he has no compunctions about using an illegal DeathRay on those who piss him off.

** ''Series/KamenRiderRevice'': Aguilera was raised in a cult to be an ApocalypseMaiden, so despite being capable of a major charisma and manipulation, she mostly sticks to acting like an AlphaBitch with AttentionDeficitOohShiny outside of her monomaniacal obssesion with the cult's elder god.

* ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'' has the Gang of main characters. ''None'' of them has matured past their teen years (at most). While sometimes it does seem like there's an endearing aspect to this (usually in the case of Charlie's good-natured love for some things), it's shown as a horrible thing all around -- the Gang are demanding, selfish, uppity monsters with no self-control who can barely take care of themselves. Special mentions include:

* Many of the serial killers in ''Series/CriminalMinds'' are emotionally stunted, but special mention goes to the killer in the two-part "To Hell ... And Back", [[spoiler:an emotionally and mentally disabled middle-aged man whose quadriplegic brother directed him to pick up transients so he could use them in the smarter brother's experiments.]]
** There's also the (wo)manchild in "Uncanny Valley", who [[AndIMustScream paralyzes women and plays house with them]], but she's [[FreudianExcuse very sympathetic]]: [[spoiler:her psychiatrist dad repeatedly gave her shock treatments to make her forget his sexual abuse and kept her dolls as trophies, along with all his other trophies]]. Give her some [[AccidentalInnuendo real]] -- er, ''actual'' dolls and she's perfectly safe.
** Joe, the mentally disabled MonsterClown from "Damaged". Despite being in at least his thirties, he's extremely childlike, when he's finally caught he weeps like a child and screams for his daddy. But don't feel too sorry for him; [[spoiler:he stalked a little girl through a carnival, then broke into her home and murdered her parents with an axe. For twenty years he was ThatOneCase to Rossi.]]
** There is also Cy in "Proof", who, despite being born with brain damage, is unsympathetic. The reason for this is that, unlike the examples above, there is no indication that Cy's mental handicap is the ''cause'' of his behaviour; for all his childishness, he is not incapable of knowing right from wrong, and says that he learned when he was a child that [[KickTheDog kicking his dog]] was fun, and [[ForTheEvulz he kills for the same reason]]. He also has the same misogyny as many other killers, takes trophies of his victims, and plans to avenge perceived wrongs by making his brother watch the tape of Cy mutilating his daughter, and by the end of the episode, it's clear that, even without his handicap, he would still be a SerialKiller (and a particularly sadistic one at that, he rapes and takes away his victims' senses with sulphuric acid to kill them).
** Another female variant is Margaret Hallman in "I Love You, Tommy Brown" -- a 40-year-old woman who acts like a bratty, lovestruck teenager even as she shoots innocent people, abducts a child, and molests her former student. The final showdown has her throw a tantrum at the agents, stomping and yelling at them to be quiet.
** Adam Rain from "The Lesson" transforms his victims into actual PeoplePuppets, it turns out that a serious brain injury caused his personality to revert back to like he was as a child, when [[spoiler:his puppeteer father was murdered by a robber; he was young enough that he thought the puppets were real and didn't understand why they didn't help when they were hanging right behind the robber]].
* ''Series/{{Delete}}'': The AI comes off as this since it's essentially a young child lashing out at those it views as a threat.

** While a tad more sympathetic than her book counterpart, Cersei Lannister from ''Series/GameOfThrones'' is still at heart a very immature person prone to cruel and petty behavior, who never really outgrew being the little girl who had a servant girl severely beaten for stealing a necklace. She has even thrown honest to goodness ''tantrums'' like a petulant child when things don't go her way. Lena Headey says that she plays Cersei as if she was a wayward 15-year-old who never had any real parenting.

* [[TheCaligula Emperor Cartagia]] from ''Series/BabylonFive'' is thoroughly insane and monstrous, but his cruel antics have a distinctively petty and childish taste. He's like a dim-witted bully tormenting a cat. He would dance a merry dance with the court jester and then have him executed for mocking him, goes all sulky when despite all his [[ColdBloodedTorture efforts]], he cannot get a scream out of his victim and acts annoyed that he has to make all the decisions when asked which of the victim's eyes he would like to be put out. He sentences his planet to destruction because he was promised to be made a god if he does.

* [[BitchInSheepsClothing Kelly Kapoor]] in ''Series/TheOffice'' is a grown woman working an office job but acts as though she's the AlphaBitch in a high school, relying heavily on [[ManipulativeBitch emotional manipulation]], playing the victim, guilt-tripping and various other immature tactics when things don't go her way. She's even gone as far as to lie about being raped or pregnant to get out of trouble with [[BunnyEarsLawyer Michael]] and entrap boyfriends respectively, and she apparently sees actual children as competition as she got upset at Darryl when he [[ItsAllAboutMe chooses to spend time with his daughter over her]] or [[AbominationAccusationAttack lied to Stanley about Ryan being a pervert]] because she was jealous of his 12-year-old daughter's PrecociousCrush on him.

* Gem and Gemma from ''Series/PowerRangersRPM'' are a rare heroic example. They're intellectually geniuses, but in everything except physics and technology, they're about five.
** They are also ''really'' fond of violence in general, and explosives in particular.

** ''Series/KamenRiderGaim'': [[GreenEyedMonster Mitsuzane Kureshima]] starts out as a SpoiledSweet but as the series drags on it's become apparent that he is a SpoiledBrat ever since he becomes a Villain he makes deals with other [[BigBad Big Bads]] and when he is either called out, sees hallucinations of Takatora and asks if his plan is really going to work. He goes into a fit of rage as well as breakdowns.

** [[spoiler:God himself is revealed to be this in the Season 14 finale. He views the universe the same way a child views their favorite television show and has been putting the Winchesters through hell all this time because it makes the show more exciting for Him. When the Winchesters rebel against Him, He goes to increasingly extreme lengths to punish them, right up to [[KillEmAll killing every human on Earth]].]]

** There's also the (wo)manchild in "UncannyValley", who [[AndIMustScream paralyzes women and plays house with them]], but she's [[FreudianExcuse very sympathetic]]: [[spoiler:her psychiatrist dad repeatedly gave her shock treatments to make her forget his sexual abuse and kept her dolls as trophies, along with all his other trophies]]. Give her some [[AccidentalInnuendo real]] -- er, ''actual'' dolls and she's perfectly safe.

* [[BitchInSheepsClothing Kelly Kapoor]] in ''Series/TheOffice'' is a grown woman working an office job but acts as though she's the AlphaBitch in a high school, relying heavily on [[ManipulativeBitch emotional manipulation]], playing the victim, guilt-tripping and various other immature techniques when things don't go her way. She's even gone as far as to lie about being raped or pregnant to get out of trouble with [[BunnyEarsLawyer Michael]] and entrap boyfriends respectively, and she apparently sees actual children as competition as she got upset at Darryl when he [[ItsAllAboutMe chooses to spend time with his daughter over her]] or [[AbominationAccusationAttack lied to Stanley about Ryan being a pervert]] because she was jealous of his 12-year-old daughter's PrecociousCrush on him.