[[quoteright:250:[[{{Saki}} http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Saki_-_the_king_who_hated_tacos.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:250:And so, he harnessed the power of corn to wage war...]]
->''I get more and more strange, I'm going insane'''
->''I'm building it up just to break it down''
->''You get what you see, the product of a dysfunctional family.''
-->''Cinema Bizarre'' "Dysfunctional Family"

->''I'm depraved on account of I'm deprived!''
-->"Gee, Officer Krupke" in WestSideStory by Stephen Sondheim

So the writers have a villain, and they want to give that character some depth. The obvious solution is to PetTheDog. Unfortunately, that tends to make the character less scary, causing BadassDecay and VillainDecay.

Instead, writers may keep the villain just as vile as before, but reveal that they have an excuse for being that way. The most popular one is the FreudianExcuse: the villain had a [[DarkAndTroubledPast crappy childhood,]] and that's why they go around insulting everyone or blowing buildings up. (Or, if they're still in HighSchool, they have a crappy home life). Sometimes, this is done for deliberate BadassDecay, but usually it isn't. The villain is as horrible as ever, only now the audience can look at them in a new way.

Unfortunately, just like a PetTheDog moment, the FreudianExcuse often doesn't give a villain any depth at all. If the villain is particularly evil, [[WhatDoYouMeanHesNotLikeable it can come across as lame]]: "his father beat him, and that's why he's a mass murderer." Even if the villain's crimes are proportionate, the writers have to strike a hard balance. Too much emphasis on the excuse, and it looks like they're justifying the villain. Too little, and it looks like a gratuitous scene of {{Wangst}}: "Okay, we know his father beat him, now let's get back to beating the crap out of him. But we'll feel his pain. But only because this ability says so."

Most importantly, the FreudianExcuse does not involve the character growing or changing; it explains why they haven't changed, and in fact, often serves as a signal that they never will. Bad writers often think that the excuse can substitute for CharacterDevelopment, but it does the exact opposite. Good writers know the excuse has limits, and watch them. If done shrewdly enough, it may lead the audience to CryForTheDevil.

The excuse however is often subverted. One way is to use it to show how ''pathetic'' a villain is -- after the villain gives a HannibalLecture, a hero's classic rebuttal is "says the guy who became a hit man to work out his daddy issues." The second is for the villain to sneer at the hero's pity for them, even exploiting it in a fight. (In a DoubleSubversion, the villain is protesting far too much.)

One thing that is almost never done is to explain how far back the abuse goes. If the villain was beaten by his father, was the father beaten by ''his'' father? Most shows don't care.

Fandoms often have an annoying tendency to create these out of wholecloth for a DracoInLeatherPants.

Takes the "It's Nurture" position of the "Nature vs. Nurture" argument. For the Nature position, see InTheBlood.

MommyIssues is a subtrope. See also ParentalAbandonment, WellDoneSonGuy, SingleIssuePsychology, and [[WhosLaughingNow Who's Laughing Now]]. Not to be confused with FreudWasRight.

----
!Examples

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Anime/Manga ]]

* ''FistOfTheNorthStar'' has loads of these, Souther probably being the most accurate, based on his childhood-crappitude-to-adult-bastardry ratio.
* ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'' is the undisputed champion of this trope, basing at least half the plot and about ninety-three percent of the characterization on it. Shinji, Asuka, Rei, Misato, and Ritsuko are all marked by horrible childhoods, and although they're not quite the "villains", it still help lead to TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. Going further, some of the AppliedPhlebotinum in the series depends on its users having had crappy childhoods to function. To top it off, the show is stuffed with (literal) Freudian imagery. Just to include the most obvious things, the dream sequences, the ElaborateUndergroundBase, the giant robots, the invading aliens, and the alien-induced hallucinations are all quite Freudian.
** Topping it all off, Asuka's mother is played in the Japanese Version by the actress who who played a character rather like Asuka in ''{{Gunbuster}}'', named Jung Freud.
* ''[[RanmaOneHalf Ranma 1/2]]'' has many messed-up teenagers (Ranma, the Tendos, the Kunos, Shampoo...), with implications that it's because of their obnoxious parents (or great-great-grandparent in Shampoo's case). This is played for laughs, but {{Fanfic}} sometimes [[FanWank makes it explicit, comparing them to abuse victims]].
* ''FushigiYuugi'', annoyingly enough, tosses this in literally at the moment the villain is defeated, and the hero suddenly pitys the man who's been tormenting and manipulating them for 52 episodes. The villain himself chastens the hero for being so rude as to lay bare his psyche just as he was about to die a mystery.
* Where do we even start with Seto Kaiba's issues with his adopted father on ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh}}'' and Manjyome's issues with his older brothers in ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh GX}}''? Not to mention the GX ''protagonist'', Judai, is revealed to have grown up with workaholic parents who didn't have enough time for him, prompting his obsession with the game of Duel Monsters.
** Malik is suggested to have turned evil because he was forced to live in a tomb and guard the Millennium Items against all invaders, and because he was forced to undergo a painful tombkeeper initiation ritual. Granted, Dark Malik was something of an alternate persona, but he was one created from the normal Malik's resentment, and normal Malik still wants revenge against Yugi.
*** Yami Malik is the embodiment of Malik's anger and rage. Keeping it suppressed for years, along with the crap treatment he got from his father, caused him to snap and essentially manifest a split personality. Of course, this being Yu-Gi-Oh, the second personality is rather real...
* ''GetBackers'' frequently does this at the moment of a villain's defeat. Even though the readers still don't care all that much, this usually leads to them [[DisneyDeath not really dying after all]].
* In ''NobutaWoProduce'', the much-vilified bully Bando is revealed to have an abusive boyfriend. Luckily, this is quickly followed by some actual, brilliant character development for her.
* This is quite a popular backstory for ''{{Naruto}}'' villains, anti-heroes, and general douchebags. Neji was bitter and full of rage because he and his father were kept as a servant class within their clan, and his father was eventually killed so his body could be substituted for the head of the clan's. Kimimaro spent most of his childhood locked in a cage except when he was brought out to fight (only in the anime). Sasuke takes a turn down a dark path of vengeance because his older brother killed the rest of their family and {{Mind Rape}}d him, twice. And Gaara... oh, Gaara. It's hard to tell which was the worst part of his childhood: being hated by everybody in his village, being constantly targeted by his father for assassination, not being able to sleep for years on end, being betrayed by the one person he thought cared about him, who reveals he actually always hated Gaara right after trying to kill him, or being infused with a demon spirit while still in the womb. Not so surprising he ends up being a serial killer.
** What's even more surprising is that, once he gets over it, he's actually a pretty nice guy.
** And Naruto himself has an excuse- he grew up alone and friendless, shunned by everyone in the village for (to him) no apparent reason- he just doesn't use it. Except for the occasional Bart Simpsonesque [[HilarityEnsues minor act of vandalism]] very early on, that is.
*** Spoofed in ''NarutoTheAbridgedSeries'', when Sakura tells Sasuke she's not interested in Naruto because he's got such a downer background, yet isn't using it as an excuse to be emo.
** And Itachi Uchiha, the WellIntentionedExtremist. His childhood was during the great ninja war and he was traumatized by it (Quote Madara: "For a child, war is hell."), so he grew up to be a man who values peace above anything else. Above ''anything'' else. And then, you know the story.
*** Then again, unlike some of the other Freudian Excuse-inspired villains, he was forced into the situation, albeit because Danzo knew about that part of his personality, and did not turn evil because of it.
** Orochimaru has a Freudian Excuse, although it may be indirect. Orochimaru lost his parents at a young age, and possibly wanted to use forbidden jutsu to revive them or get revenge on Konoha, although Sasuke suggests Orochimaru lost sight of what he wanted to accomplish.
** There's also the current [[TheDragon Dragon]] Pain. He wants to make the ultimate weapon of mass destruction and bring suffering to the entire world because he saw his parents killed by enemy ninja and grew up orphaned in a country constantly embroiled in both civil wars and war with other countries.
*** Interestingly enough, unlike many other Freudian Excuse villains his [[MoralEventHorizon most despicable acts]] in the eyes of the fanbase (killing Jiraiya, destroying Konoha and almost killing Hinata) occurred '''after''' his FreudianExcuse was revealed, almost as though to counteract any sympathy we might feel for him.
** Let's not forget Kakuzu, started out life as Shinobi loyal enough to his village that he willingly let them experiment on him, then when chastised for failing to assassinate the First Hokage (perhaps the most powerful ninja to date), he turns on his superiors choose to only put faith in money.
*** Chastised? They locked him up in response to years of loyal service and being incapable of accomplishing an impossible goal. No wonder he snapped.
* In ''{{One Piece}}'', Boa Hancock's Freudian Excuse for acting like an [[JerkAss absolute bitch]], was [[DarkAndTroubledPast her terrible past]], in which she was kidnapped and sold into slavery, receiving unspeakable abuse by her masters, gradually eroding her will to live. Until four years later, [[BadAss a Fishman climbed the Red Line with his bare hands]], and freed every single slave - even the human ones (which included Hancock and her younger sisters), despite [[FantasticRacism his hatred of]] [[HumansAreBastards humans]] - [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized before setting fire to the entire city]]. Even after freedom, her outlook on life was jaded by her terrible experiences, so she made a supreme {{Jerkass Facade}}, complete with {{Kick the Dog}} (and the kitten, and the [[RefugeInAudacity baby seal]]) moments after she became Empress.
* In ''BlackLagoon,'' the CreepyTwins/[[PsychoForHire Psychos For Hire]] Hansel and Gretel have a definite Freudian excuse for being so deeply, deeply broken, creepy, disturbing, sociopathic and just plain wrong in the head. Born in Romania and abandoned by parents too poor to raise them, they were raised in an orphanage no better than those of 19th century London (a sadly common story during Nicolae Ceausescu's rule). Then they were sold to a producer of kiddy snuff porn, where rape, torture and murder were part of their daily routine - to the point where they can no longer grasp the concept of surviving without killing. Unlike many cases of the Freudian excuse, this one actually works, making the twins both the most evil characters in the show, and the most tragic.
* Aion from ''ChronoCrusade'' starts his plan to overthrow the demon's government and destroy the world when he discovers that Pandaemonium used to be a human woman and she was pregnant with twins when she was transformed--twins that just happened to be him and his brother, Chrono. That's just in the manga, however--in the anime, he's just evil for the sake of being evil.
* In ''PrincessTutu'''s second season, it's revealed that [[spoiler:Rue]]'s reason for becoming Princess Kraehe is that [[spoiler:she believes she's the daughter of the Raven and he's told her that only the Prince from the story could ever love her]].
* ''BloodPlus'' does this masterfully with its antagonist Diva. Her 'childhood' was so full of torment, neglect and abuse that you "almost" want to give her hugs and love and tell her it'll all be alright - almost. Then she does something completely batshit psycho and unforgivable [[spoiler:like raping and murdering the protagonist's 12-year-old little brother]] and is just as terrifying and squicky as before, only now it...kind of makes a little sense.
** Don't forget, she also [[spoiler:steals his face]].
* It's stated in ''HanaYoriDango'' that the reason Domyoji Tsukasa is prone to semi-sociopathic fits of violence (including beating the crap out of and having the rest of his high school torture a student who accidentally squirted lemon juice in his eye, and beating another student to the point that his organs ruptured) is that his parents ignored and neglected him in order to focus on running their vast corporate empire (ironically, the [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney reason he was able to get away with his gratuitous exploits]]). He's [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold not all bad, however...]]
* Rolo Lamperouge from ''CodeGeass''...whoo boy, where to begin? He starts off as a {{Tykebomb}} sent to spy on and eventually kill Lelouch, until Lulu uses the feelings of brotherly love Rolo's built up over the past year to manipulate him with the full intent of killing him once his usefulness runs out. This proves to be effective because Rolo, as a raised-from-birth assassin, has never known any form of real kindness. Unfortunately, this backfires on Lelouch when Rolo becomes so obsessive and fixated on being the only person his "brother" cares about that he [[spoiler:murders Shirley, one of the few people Lelouch was genuinely close to, and plans on killing Nunnally, who's basically Lelouch's whole reason for living]]. Amazingly, Rolo managed to be RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap by [[spoiler:saving Lelouch from the Black Knights' mutiny at the cost of his own life, declaring that though he ''knows'' Lelouch has been manipulating him the whole time, his own feelings of love were genuine, and for the first time in his life he's doing something he '''wants''' to do instead of something he's been ordered to do.]] Cue TearJerker music [[spoiler: and AlasPoorScrappy effects]].
** He's not the only one, either. The absolutely vile PsychoForHire Luciano Bradley, according to [[AllThereInTheManual the light novels]], [[spoiler: was abused by his evil father and neglected by his alcoholic mother, and killed his father (who said out loud he didn't care for his child's life) at age seven.]] Also, Emperor Charles and his brother V.V [[spoiler: were witnesses of all the backstabbing, hatred and death surrounding [[Main/RoyallyScrewedUp the Britannian Imperial Family]] ever since they were young children, which culminated when they saw their mother [[Main/DroppedABridgeOnHim get a carriage dropped on her]].]]
** Lelouch's mother is mysteriously killed and his sister Nunally is crippled, and he and Nunally become political hostages in Japan. They are assumed dead once Britannia invades anyway. Which instills in him a hatred against Britannia and a murderous intent against his own half-siblings and father.
** Suzaku has one, too, though not quite as bad. As a child, his father, Genbu, would have let the war go on until Japan was destroyed, so Suzaku killed him, resulting in almost immediate peace. His guilt over the incident and complete lack of punishment for it is why he argues that anyone who uses the wrong means to achieve freedom (in short, anyone who doesn't bow down to their conquerors and earn it through their system) is wrong. It gets a little hypocritical when he starts doing the things he speaks out against, while still calling others out for the same.
** Mao. The guy was a six year old ''orphan'' when [[spoiler: C.C. gave him his Geass]], which ruined any chance of a remotely normal life. And then she deserted him when she was the only person he had left in the world. No wonder the guy's so messed up.
** Most examples of Freudian Excuse in ''CodeGeass'' characters are done exceptionally well. Enough that most of them become [[TheWoobie Woobies]] to at least some portion of the fandom.
* In the manga version of ''{{Rosario to Vampire}}'', Hokuto has one of these. [[spoiler: My father beats me and monsters at school beat me as well, so I must destroy the world and recreate it in my image!]]
* Subverted in ''YuYuHakusho''. Sakyo says that his childhood was exactly like that of his four brothers, who went on to become civil servants, but he became twisted for an inexplicable reason and sought out brutal pleasures until he eventually joined the Black Book Club; as he says, "The depravity up here began through no one's fault but my own". Mukuro, however, plays it straight in that [[spoiler:she was adopted and sexually abused by her stepfather, and sought to take out her anger on the world by killing people, which is what led her to become one of the three strongest figures in the Demon World. However, in the manga, Hiei notes that she had a manufactured memory of her adoptive father showing her kindness, which was made to come to her mind every time she wanted to kill him, and she has "grown strong because [she's] confused, not because [she] suffered"]]. Keiko once wonders if Yusuke turned out the way he did because of how irresponsible Atsuko is.
* From ''{{Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni}}'', we have [[spoiler: Takano Miyo]]. [[TheScrappy It doesn't help this character's popularity.]]
** Of course, after having four episodes wasted giving said backstory in a series where we'd all rather have seen more of the main characters, it's not surprising.
*** Even more so because these wasted episodes come directly after [[spoiler: Miyo's]] ''big'' game of [[MoralEventHorizon horizon-jumping]], so it's more likely to invoke eye-rolls than tears from the audience who are frankly too busy hating her guts to feel sorry for her.
* Czeslaw Meyer from ''{{Baccano}}'', whose reason for wanting to kill all the passengers in the dining car of a train in order to root out any other immortals who might be a threat to him stems from [[spoiler: being tortured for two hundred years by his guardian, who he had trusted.]]
* The Funimation dub of ''DragonBallZ'' did this with Vegeta during his death scene on Namek, having him justify being evil by blaming Freeza for taking him as a child, saying, "He made me what I am."
* ''{{Vision of Escaflowne}}'''s [[EvilAlbino Dilandau Albatou]] is crazy due to [[spoiler: horrific government experiments being performed on him, changing him from a sweet little girl to a psychotic pyro killer]]. The ruining of his face and [[spoiler: destruction of his Dragon Slayer force]] by Van only exacerbate his issues.
* Luxus, one of the biggest Jerkasses in ''FairyTail'' [[spoiler: prior to his defeat and HeelFaceTurn anyway]] used to be a cheerful kid who loved his grandpa Markarov. That changed when Markarov kicked Luxus' father Ivan out of Fairy Tail for endangering his comrades. After that Luxus resented both his grandfather for valuing Nakama more than family and the concept of Nakama in general. Since, as mentioned earlier, he's one of the ''biggest assholes in the series'', who even went so far as to [[spoiler: threaten to destroy the guild's hometown if Makarov didn't hand it over to him because he wanted to make Fairy Tail stronger]], it's not a very good excuse.
* From ''Death Note'', we have Misa Amane, a [[SerialKiller serial killer]] who generally shows no signs of sympathy for her victims, nor hesitation to kill them. These people can be just about anyone who gets in her way. Her excuse is that [[spoiler: her parents were murdered before her eyes in a robbery. This makes her support the original Kira, Light Yagami, who punished her parents' killer after he escaped conventional justice]]. As such, her behaviour is more explainable.
** We've also got Teru Mikami, an even crazier serial killer whose victims include even the unemployed, eventually. However, as a child his mother died, and he was endured horrific and near-constant bullying at school, simply for defending his classmates' honor.
*** But, then again, he stated that he was ''happy'' about his mother's death, [[SoYeah so yeah...]]
*In ''GlassFleet'', Vetti's horrific actions [[spoiler: (including raping the main character, Michel)]] are all forgiven in the end and he gets a pass. The reason? He was sexually and emotionally abused as a child.
* Each volume of ''{{Saki}}'' begins and ends with a page from an omake story about Yuki, who travels to the Land of [[TrademarkFavoriteFood Tacos]] to find that some unnamed king from a neighboring territory has... um... harnessed the power of corn to wage war--leaving behind none to make new tacos with--because his parents divorced when he was young over how bad tacos tasted.
* MahouSenseiNegima toys with the whole idea in regards to Evangeline. Evangline was turned into a vampire at age ''ten'', inadvertently killed her parents during the transformation, and was essentially considered an undead abomination for the next 600 years or so, causing hundreds of people to try to hunt her down and kill her. Despite this, she claims that she's totally and utterly evil, refusing to acknowledge the fact that her (very long) DarkAndTroubledPast may have influenced her actions a little. Asuna [[LampshadeHanging points this out]], noting that Eva [[NobleDemon isn't really as evil as she thinks she is]], and that she's just acting that way in response to all the crap she's been through.
* Scarlett from ''Steam Boy'' is an utterly spoilt snotty brat, treating Ray with haughty distain and ''punching'' her little dog in the head when it tried to run away from her. Then later on she tells Ray that she has five 'mothers' - one that cooks her food, another that takes her shopping, another that helps her get dressed, another that reads her stories at night and another that teaches her, and angrily tells him that she doesn't run off to ''them'' if she's in trouble (unlike Ray, who was worried about his). It's obvious at this point that Scarlett is so bratty because she's never had anything close to a parent, just servants who did everything they were told. She does get better by the end of the movie, though.
* Wiseman from SailorMoon uses ChibiUsa's feelings of inadequacy and abandonment to turn her evil.
**He also twists Demand to his purposes by preying on the prince's feelings of rejection and bitterness at the moon kingdom.
***Really, Wiseman is the king of using people's traumatic backgrounds to turn them ax-crazy.
* [[MedakaBox Medaka]], who only thinks the best of everyone ([[BerserkButton up to a point]]), belives this ''must'' be the reasoning with all the delinquints in her school. For instance, she thinks the thugs using the kendo hall must be a [[DispairEventHorizon heavily disillusioned]] team when in fact they really are just thugs who happened to find a large empty building. [[spoiler: Nonetheless, her sheer force of will combined with the thrashing she and her partner give them causes them to become a real kendo team.]]
* In ''Romeo X Juliet'' Lord Montague gets one of these dumped on him in Episode 17. The WhatDoYouMeanHesNotLikeable kind....
* Why is Tetsuo from ''{{Akira}}'' not on the list yet?! After enduring years of [[KidsAreCruel kids bullying him]] and trying to make him [[TheWoobie cry]], and being the youngest member of a biker gang who is looked down on by everyone, including his best friend... he discovers he has power greater than all of them. [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity And]]... cue his RoaringRampageOfRevenge.
*[[UminekoNoNakuKoroNi 'My childhood was a painful and truamatic experience, so I'll be DAMNED if my child is going to get away with whining about a rose!']] Rosa Ushiromiya, '''[[MemeticMutation BEST MOM EVER]]'''.
* All of the members of Team Rocket have Fruedian Excuses. Jessie was raised poor and her mother was killed in an avalanche, owing to her {{Tsundere}} personality. James was raised by neglectful parents who wanted him to marry a {{Yandere}} named Jessiebelle, owing to his timid and repressive demeanor. Meowth never had any family and learned to talk just to impress a female Meowth who ''still' rejected him, owing to his conniving features.
** PokemonSpecial. Lance's excuse for wanting to KillAllHumans? As a little boy, he sees a Dratini dying in a pool of industrial sludge. As he hugs it to his body, ''he can feel its pain, see its thoughts''. He sees through the its eye that HumansAreBastards, and that must've been pretty damn traumatic for him as well as the Dratini.
*** Doesn't his [[InTheBlood Blackthorn heritage]] come into it somewhere, too? Clair's just as off-the-handle as Lance, just less...ambitious.
* During {{Bleach}}'s Soul Society arc, most of the Soul Reapers who defended Rukia's attempted execution [[spoiler:that weren't part of Aizen's plot]] had one of these. Soifon was hellbent on ensuring the laws were upheld [[spoiler:due to her pain of being left behind by Yoruichi]], Yamamoto was firmly dedicated to enforcing the laws of Soul Society despite his personal feelings, Komamura felt he had a [[IOweYouMyLife life debt to Yamamoto]] and followed him, and Byakuya had sworn an oath on his parents' grave never to break a law of Soul Society. Byakuya is an interesting case, as he had ''also'' sworn [[spoiler:to his dying wife, Rukia's sister, that he would always protect Rukia.]] This made Byakuya, who seemed to be the coldest of the antagonist Captains, to actually be the most conflicted.
* Rurouni Kenshin IS this trope. Essentially every character with a combat role has some sort of melodramatic horrific past. To name a few:
**Kenshin was orphaned, briefly enslaved, made into a murderer by a government he later came to resent, [[spoiler: and wound up accidentally killing his own wife]].
**[[SpellMyNameWithAnS So(u)jiro(u)]] was an illegitimate son who suffered constant abuse and decided to turn into an emotionless serial killer. [[spoiler: [[IGotBetter He gets better.]] ]]
**Yukishiro Enishi, [[spoiler: the brother of the wife kenshin accidentally killed.]], and was so traumatized by witnessing the event that [[YouFailBiologyForever his hair and eyes changed colors to being white and torquoise respectively]] [[SoYeah So yeah]]. And consequently spends the next ten years plotting revenge.
* Surprisingly the GagDub of ShinChan gives one for Penny’s and her mother’s violent behavior by saying that her father abuses them in the original no explanation was ever given for there violent outburst.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Comic Books ]]
* Subverted in the Brian Michael Bendis run on the comic book ''{{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''...
* Many CrimeAndPunishment shows (and DarkerAndEdgier {{superhero}} comics) are notorious for WriterOnBoard stories denouncing the FreudianExcuse. At least once per storyline, there will be a slimy psychiatrist or defense attorney who declares that the [[AxCrazy Neck-Chopping Killer]] is merely a victim of circumstances, and it's the hero who should be locked away. These stories tend to end with said psychiatrist or defense attorney getting murdered by the killer, which is depicted as poetic justice.
** This is turned on its head in ''BatmanBegins'', in which the corrupt psychiatrist, when his "clients" cease to be useful to him, uses a neurotoxin to render them ''legitimately'' insane.
** A perfect example of this appears in FrankMiller's ''[[{{Batman}} The Dark Knight Returns]]'', 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, [[StrawmanPolitical 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.
** [[AlanMoore Alan Moore's]] ''The Killing Joke'', during which the Joker has his FreudianExcuse explained as an extended flashback. However, being an AlanMoore story, it is subverted at the end when the Joker explains that the story might be entirely false due to his own unreliable psyche.
** The ''BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' episode "Trial" has the ''villains'' putting Batman on trial for ruining their lives. Of course, even they end up admitting that they had problems, some self-inflicted, before Batman became involved. Being villains, they attempt to follow up the verdict of innocence with an execution, regardless.
* Many of the Comicbook/{{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 we didn't turn evil.
** Lampshaded in the ''BatmanBeyond'' movie ''Return of the Joker'', 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.
** The Joker 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''.
** 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.
** One of the few "abusive father" backstories that really works: Harvey Dent/Two-Face's violent, sadistic alternate persona, called "Big Bad Harv" in [[BatmanTheAnimatedSeries the cartoon]], emerged as Harvey's way of coping with a drunken, abusive father. In the comic in which this element of the character was introduced, it's revealed that his father would take Harvey and "play a game" with him, flipping a silver dollar and beating the child if it came up heads. The coin had two heads.
** The nature of Two-Face's father's abuse varies slightly depending on the story. One story suggested that his dad had a split personality himself, and would violently beat Harvey when he was angry with him before realizing in horror what he was doing.
** The Riddler is another of the "abusive father" strain. In particular, his father would savagely beat him every time he lied, so the Riddler feels the compulsion to always tell the truth... albeit in convoluted riddles.
** Scarecrow gets an abusive grandmother and maternal abandoment, 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 the Woobie]] or, after Cillian Murphy played him in the movie, a [[DracoInLeatherPants Draco in Leather Pants]], I will give you five bucks.
** This even extends to non-villain characters. Much of Jason Todd's problems lie from his childhood (mother died when he was young, father was a Two-Face mook who was eventually killed). When he is adopted by Batman, Jason lives for the WellDoneSonGuy, and his desire to see his real mother (who he has never even met) led to his death at the hands of the Joker. Since he was revived, he's been unable to fully understand why Batman got a new Robin, but still lives for his old mentor's approval. This reached a head in "Battle for the Cowl" where his inability to accept Batman's death resulted in Jason snapping completely, trying to take his Batman's place (as a murderous Batman), and even nearly killing Tim Drake.
* Has been used at times to explain the motives of ''SpiderMan'' villains, and to possibly contrast them with Spidey himself, who did not exactly have the best childhood. The worst example was when Venom was given a cliched tragic backstory as part of a bad idea to turn the character into a hero.
** This was actually addressed in ''Ultimate Spider-Man'', where Nick Fury 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.
*** [[JerkAss And thus, his "master plan" was to make things worse for the "budding super-villain".]] [[BullyingADragon What a miserable douchebag.]] [[TooDumbToLive How the hell did he make it to General???]]
*** [[MemeticBadass By]] [[BadassNormal being]] [[EyepatchOfPower Nick]] [[SamuelLJackson Fury]].
*** Being a JerkAss did bite him in the ass for while when he was exiled to another dimension.
* In ''Ultimate FantasticFour'' #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 basically the blueprint for his entire 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 ten-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." If you don't feel sorry for him (at least the child version, not necessarily the one who proceeds to recite the names of his ancestors and ask if his father can hear him now while attacking the FF with a rocket launcher) after that, then you have a heart of stone.
* [[XMen Magneto]]'s 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, 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 bipolar]]. The man has so many issues it's a wonder he's still able to function.
*** [[IncrediblyLamePun Of course the magnet guy is bi-"polar"...]]
** Let's not forget that 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. YourMileageMayVary on whether Magneto's subsequent urges to burn the world are justifiable, but they are most definitely ''understandable''.
* A Child Services worker in ''{{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."''
* [[{{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 (�ber-Aryan Mean Girls) trauma, to oversimplfy things considerably."''
** In this case, Spooky comes across as being very much in need of serious couch time, and a lot of growing up. It doesn't make her any more sympathetic (save possibly to said ex, who is still in love with her [[spoiler: and, ironically, herself an attractive blonde]]), just comprehensible. Emp herself isn't particularly inclined to be ''very'' forgiving about the treatment Spooky puts her through because of it.
* The ''TerrorTitans'' miniseries by DC is based around this trope. Evey issue features one member's backstory, usually involving a terrible childhood.
* Arguably every member of the ''UmbrellaAcademy'', and definitely Vanya. Hargreeves is a total dick and terrible parent, for instance his habit of sorting his children by their apparent worth.
* Backblast from ''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 bya recruiting sergeant what kind of job he as interested in, he replied, "What have you got with open flames?"
* Subverted in the Mad Magazine parody of Touched By an Angel. 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.
* ''{{Superman}}: Birthright'' 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.
* While not a villian, Rorschach from {{Watchmen}} was raised by a prostitute who never cared for him. The Comedian is implied to have had a rough childhood as well.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Film ]]
* Inverted in a scene on the couch in {{Funny Games}} in which the two villains "Peter and Paul" come up with various reasons why they're doing what they are to the family. [[spoiler: Of course seeing as how you should never trust a villain, they were all lies. It's most probable that they're doing it for fun.]]
* [[StarWars Anakin Skywalker]] was raised as a slave on a hellish backwater planet, as Yoda pointed out in the very beginning. Then his mother gets killed by Tusken Raiders.
* ''8MM'' has a character who goes out of his way to subvert the trope, blatantly declaring, "Mommy didn't beat me. Daddy didn't rape me. I'm this way ''because I am''." The idea that some people are just twisted is a core idea of the film.
* This is subverted in the made for TV film ''{{Intensity}}'', where the sadistic, sociopathic spree killer Edgler Vess, after being accused of abuse causing his current state of mind, proudly proclaims that his parents were extremely loving and that he was truly a sadistic person from the start (in fact he murdered his loving parents).
* The new remake of ''{{Halloween}}'' attempts this with Michael Myers.
* [[TheRing Sadako Yamamura]].
** Also her American counterpart, Samara Morgan, for related reasons.
* There's a David Cronenberg movie called ''{{Spider}}'', with Ralph Fiennes, in which a variety of flashbacks start to illustrate just what has turned Fiennes into a demonic version of Mr. Bean. It turns out that [[spoiler: he imagined the whole thing, and just happens to be insane]].
* Turned on its head in the Korean film ''TheHost''. The hero gets a FreudianExcuse for his lethargy and occasionally carrying the IdiotBall . He didn't get proper nutrition as a kid. [[spoiler: A brain tissue biopsy later fixes all this. Apparently they removed his [[TookALevelInBadAss Awesome Inhibitor]] or something.]]
* Subverted in the 2008 {{Batman}} movie ''TheDarkKnight''. The Joker explains what seems to be the source of his insanity when he reveals the origin of his smile-scars, involving an abusive alcoholic father who wanted to know why he was "so serious"--after killing his mother right in front of him. But later in the movie, he eagerly reveals the origins of his scars again, totally changing his story to one involving a wife who wanted him to smile more, who was disfigured to pay for her gambling debts, and taking to self-mutilation to make her feel better. Chances of both stories being outright lies suddenly look pretty good.
** At the end, Batman himself demonstrates the proper response to this:
--->'''The Joker''': Do you know how I got these scars?\\
'''Batman:''' [[spoiler:No. But I know how you got these. ([[ShutUpHannibal Stabs Joker with the spikes on his gauntlets.]])]]
*** Bizarrely, the [[MoralGuardians Childcare Action Project]] didn't realise this was a subversion, to the extent of providing [[PetPeeveTrope a long rant about this trope]] within the [[http://www.capalert.com/capreports/darkknight-the.htm review.]] Apparently Carder thinks the Joker's ''mutually exclusive'' stories were intended to say "nothing the Joker does is his own fault because "daddy didn't love him".
*** All things considered, it's reasonable to conclude that ''something'' in the Joker's past (he does mention his father twice) played a major role in turning him into what he is now. As to exactly what... good luck with that.
* Subverted in ''SimonBirch'', where despite extreme neglect by his parents, Simon appears to be the nicest person living in a town full of assholes.
* In ''{{Film/Gladiator}}'', Commodus explains, prior to killing his dad, that all he wanted was a little love and a warm hug...and what he would have done to get it.
* In the ''SilentHill'' [[TheMovie film]], Sharon/Alessa Gillespie is revealed to have had a very troubled past, involving her being ostracized by her classmates, sexually assaulted by a janitor, and eventually burned alive. Whether this makes it okay for her to rape people with barbed wire or not is debatable.
** In fairness, Alessa didn't rape ''everyone''... just, you know, the evil crazy religious cult-woman. Who had burned her alive. And drove her mother insane. And who, apparently, ''knew'' about Alessa being raped, but didn't care because hey, it's just that little witch-girl whose mother is a whore. Hell, Christabella was probably responsible for Alessa having no friends, if the cult was as far-reaching as it seemed to be.
* In ''IpMan'', RivalTurnedEvil Jin defends his actions, which include beating on all of Foshan's kung fu masters and robbing the factory of Ip Man's friend, by saying that he experienced poverty at a child and never wanted to starve again.
* TheGrinch from ''HowTheGrinchStoleChristmas'' was given a lot of [[strike:{{Padding}}]] {{Exposition}} in TheMovie, attempting to explain his Grinchiness.
* In the TimBurton remake of ''CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'', Willy Wonka's dentist father forbade him from eating sweets, and his obsession with candy was borne of rebellion.
* In the backstory of ''{{Audition}}'', Asami was physically and sexually abused as a child. [[spoiler: Then she learns about piano wire...]]
* In ''Raising Arizona'', the [[AllBikersAreHellsAngels brutal biker]] and bounty hunter who [[KickTheDog kills furry animals for fun]] has a tattoo reading "Momma didn't like me".
* In ''[[{{Film/Nine}} 9]]'', the robot that kills all living things on the planet was made by a scientist for peace, but as the military of the country were he was made (is not clear in what country the story of the movie happen) tear him away from his master, he seems to reach out as a child being torn from his mother. He then goes mad and tries to kill his opressors. After being forced to make machines of mass destruction, he is sickened by humanity and orders the robots to slay everything that lives.
* In the 1995 version of ''A Little Princess'', Sara realizes that Miss Minchin's father didn't tell her that "all girls are princesses," which we are led to believe is the reason for Miss Minchin's loveless, horrible personality.
* Regina of ''MeanGirls'': slightly different in that rather than a bully, her mother is a mindless drunk who is so desperate to seen as be young, hip and her teenage daughter's best friend that she has become a willing slave that Regina treats with total contempt - the suggestion being that her total ineffectiveness and lack of parenting is what created her daughter.
* [[XMen Magneto]]. This troper cries every time she watches the start of that movie, with the little boy being torn away from his parents, and accidentally tearing apart the gate in the process.
* Subverted in ''PhoneBooth'' when the villain, while on the phone with Stu, starts sobbing and tells him that he had an unhappy childhood... then when Stu starts to believe him, he laughs and tells Stu that he actually had a very happy childhood.
* Everybody in TheBreakfastClub, villain or not... Bender's parents despise him (and they burnt his arm with a cigar for spilling paint in the garage), Claire's parents pamper her to get back at each other, Allison's parents ignore her, Andrew's dad is a StageMom who is obsessed with his winning, and Brian's parents are obsessed with him getting good marks to the point that he tries to commit suicide because he got an F.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Literature ]]
* Marco from ''{{Animorphs}}'' is a [[DeadpanSnarker snarky]] survivalist early on. While Tobias exalts about how with great power ComesGreatResponsibility, Marco snaps back that Tobias can't even go a day without getting his head flushed down a toilet. Once Tobias is [[ModeLock stuck as a hawk]], Marco's barbs begin to verge on actual cruelty. Later, we find out that Marco's mother [[FakingTheDead supposedly drowned]], and his father suffered a nervous breakdown; Marco is terrified of dying because he's afraid of what will happen to his father if he does. He fully admits to being a SadClown and that he makes fun of Tobias because what happened to Tobias scares him.
* IsaacAsimov: [[{{Foundation}} The Mule]] is driven to conquer the galaxy by a childhood of ostracism and abuse. He isn't actually evil, but insecure and ambitious, which qualifies him as a villain because he disrupt the [[OmniscientMoralityLicense Seldon Plan]]. Appropriately, he is stopped by a master psychologist administering instant therapy. He spends the rest of his life happy -- and out of the way.
* Subverted in ''[[EndersGame Children of the Mind]]'': In a backwards attempt to explain why she is so contrary, Quara reveals to Wang-mu that she was sexually abused at a young age by Quim, her soon-to-be sainted brother. When Wang-mu immediately believes her, she reveals it wasn't true, but points out the hypocrisy of people who would more easily believe the worst in a saint of a man like her brother than believe that some people are inherently, for no real reason, jerks.
** Though this is somewhat [[JustifiedTrope justified]] in that all of the good and bad personality quirks of the Ribeira children are due to the [[AbusiveParents abusive nature of their father]], [[spoiler: who wasn't really their father.]]
* JackChalker really liked this trope.
** Subverted in one of the ''DancingGods'' books, wherein a) the character discussing his tragic early life is on the side of good, and b) it transpires that this tale of a sad past is complete and utter nonsense designed to throw the villain off his game. It works.
** Played straight in ''DowntimingTheNightSide'': TheDragon joins the BigBad because he blames the good guys for the loss of his father. Naturally [[StableTimeLoop it's more complicated then that]]
** Still later we have Coydt Van Haaz, the BigBad of ''EmpiresOfFluxAndAnchor'', who wants to turn a LadyLand into a NoWomansLand to get back at the priestesses who [[DisproportionateRetribution castrated him]] for a relatively minor offense.
* Averted in Dostoevsky's novel ''Notes from Underground'' to the point of being AnAesop. Dostoevsky was concerned with the far-reaching consequences of certain ideas being batted around in his day - essentially, that despite humankind appearing to be fundamentally irrational and uncontrollable, using psychology and whatnot they'd one day be able to figure out exactly what makes people act the way they do, and could correct anti-social behavior easy as solving a math problem. (And then they could fix all their woes and achieve a socialist utopia, hooray). So he wrote a book featuring a maladjusted hero who's a miserable prick for no reason and will no doubt continue to be a miserable prick no matter what happens to him. Needless to say, it was not popular with Soviet critics.
* In the SherlockHolmes series, there is some evidence that Professor James Moriarty suffers from an inferiority complex because he has several other brothers, ''all'' of whom are named James, thus stifling his sense of individuality.
* Nancy Farmer's ''The {{House of the Scorpion}}'': El Patron's ruthlessness arises mainly from the fact that he lived a dirt poor childhood, and was the only surviving child of a large family. The man was forced to live by his wits.
* In Stella Gibbons' ''ColdComfortFarm'', having seen "something [[HarmfulToMinors nasty]] [[NoodleIncident in the woodshed]]" isn't just Aunt Ada's ''excuse'' for being a domestic tyrant who never leaves her room, it's also how she does the tyrannizing: anytime anyone tries to leave, or do anything else she disapproves of, it "brings on her trouble". [[BlitheSpirit Flora]] finds this suspiciously convenient.
* [[TheSilenceOfTheLambs Hannibal Lecter]] lost much of his mystique when explanations for his actions were presented in ''Hannibal'' and ''Hannibal Rising'' during his jarring BadassDecay into a misunderstood AntiHero. This came with some CharacterDerailment, since the original purpose of the character was that he had ''no'' FreudianExcuse. As he put it, "Nothing happened, Agent Starling. I happened. I can't be reduced to a set of influences."
** In the context of the scene, why would Hannibal even bother to tell Clarice when at that point in time he had nothing but contempt for her? On a related note, Hannibal still had a warped sense of nobility in ''Silence'' as well.
** The author was all but [[ExecutiveMeddling forced to write]] ''Hannibal Rising'', having been told that if he didn't provide a backstory for Dr. Lecter, some other writer would.
** Both Jame Gumb and Francis Dolarhyde are given very detailed backstories in the novels, which works well to humanize them. Gumb was born to an alcoholic prostitute and lived in foster homes until moving in with his abusive Grandparents at the age of 10. Dolarhyde was born with a severe disfigurement to his face and was abused by his Grandmother, after being ditched by his stepfather's family [[spoiler: which had the same structure as the families he killed]]. There is only one reference to Gumb's Freudian Excuse is given in the movie, however, which is "Billy was not born a criminal, but made one by years of systematic abuse." It works rather effectively.
* Gaston Leroux's ''The Phantom of the Opera'' gives a excuse for Erik's cold bloodedness: [[spoiler: humanity hates him because of his deformity, so he hates humanity]]. The ''Phantom'' adaptation gives more of a {{backstory}} to this: [[spoiler: in addition to the deformity, his mother shows him no love and keeps him shut inside where he can't fully use his genius.]] Still a creepy guy for a protagonist.
* Notably averted by ''TheCatcherInTheRye'', as the opening quote reveals:
-->"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that DavidCopperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
** And then played straight, as you realise that Caulfield's deceased younger brother is a large part of the reason he's so unhinged.
* Deconstructed in ''{{Lolita}}''- Humbert's reason for being a pedophile is literally very Freudian (at age sixteen he was interrupted having sex with his childhood sweetheart who died shortly afterward) and he [[GenreSavvy thinks about it in these terms]]. However, the author's point was that this is a poor excuse for his terrible actions.
* The mostly sane (he hears voices in his head, but that's alright, one of them is his psychiatrist!) protagonist of Eric Nylund's ''AGameOfUniverse'' has a more subtle FreudianExcuse for his background. His childhood (born on a hellhole of a planet, dad killed his [[MissingMom mom]] when he was born, dad whored out his brother to miners (a fate he only avoided by being too young at the time), then accidentally killed his brother '''while his brother was trying to rape him''') doesn't mess him up that badly, it's only when this background leads him to panic over a misunderstanding and murder [[TheObiWan his mentor]] does he really start to lose it. (He spends the next few months hiding in a sewer, and then the next few years in a school based on {{Klingon Promotion}}s.
* A kind of subversion, based on going into more details. In ''ArtemisFowl and the Lost Colony'' we are introduced to Billy Kong (previously called Jonah Lee), and told that his teenage brother was killed when he was quite young. Later, we learn that when Jonah was young, his brother claimed that he was part of a secret group that fought child-eating demons, in an attempt to keep Jonah off the Miami streets while their mother was working, due to trouble his brother had been having with a gang at the time. When his brother was murdered, Jonah was convinced that demons did it, and he and his mother moved to Taiwan (where she was from) shortly after. Jonah is said to have later decided his brother had deceived him, causing him to become inherantly distrustful and making it easier to hurt people, which combined with the environment he grew up in, turned him into a violent criminal. Shortly before the book begins, he is hired to help capture a fairy demon, causing Kong to start wondering if his brother had been honest after all. When Holly is captured while trying to save the a captive demon and is being interrogated, she uses her knowledge of Kong's past to try and psych him out, and unknowingly feeds into his delusions by "confirming" the abilities that Billy's brother said demons had. This leads to Kong having a rather tragic nervous breakdown, and starts an obsession with destroying all demons, and killing anyone who gets in his way.
* Though not a villain, James T. Kirk's tendency to TakeAThirdOption is explained in various ''StarTrek'' novels as being a result of surviving the mass executions on Tarsus IV (from the TOS episode "The Conscience of the King") as a boy. It also probably explains why he doesn't believe in the TheKobayashiMaru and the No-Win Scenario.
* Pretty much ''every single villain'' from ''WarriorCats'', except for probably Sol (although his "evil deeds" are dwarfed by the other villains).
** Tigerstar: His father abandonned him at a young age to be come a kittypet, causing his irrational hatred towards kittypets, and he was mentored by an incredibly agressive warrior whose personatlity traits seemed to rub off on him. Apparantly, father issues, an agressive personality, racism, and ambition combine to create [[ANaziByAnyOtherName the feline version of Hitler]].
** Scourge: He was constantly teased and excluded by his brother and sister until he eventually ran away from home, where he was attacked and almost killed by Tigerstar. He spent the rest of his life trying to prove that he was strong, and to get revenge on Tigerstar, which eventually lead him to being a mass-murdering psychopathic dictator.
** Hawkfrost: Not mentioned often, but Hawkfrost was essentially an orphan and had to grow up living in his father's shadow until he eventually decided to follow in his footsteps. Also, his brother died, that might have something to do some of it... kinda...
* The villain from {{Harry Potter}}, Voldemort. At least ''three books'' in the series are devoted to show his backstory as poor boy Tom Riddle, and Dumbledore always felt sorry for him.
**Subverted in that he is also consistently shown as a vicious child-sociopath.
** But also subverted because Harry's childhood was just as nasty and he becomes a far better person.
*** Living in an Orphanage could be pretty depressing, sure, but there's no evidence that Tom necessarily had a bad childhood.
**** It was certainly a bad childhood from Tom/Voldemort's perspective. In any event, it was his parents' backstory that resulted in his most obvious issues, not the orphanage- his hatred of muggles grew out of resentment for his muggle DisappearedDad, while his obsession with dominating death came from his witch mother's DeathByChildbirth.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]
* Every single [[TheLibby Libby]] -- no exceptions. It just may be the most common [[FamilyUnfriendlyAesop Warped]]/BrokenAesop in children's programming.
** The original [[TheLibby Libby]] on ''SabrinaTheTeenageWitch'': In the ChainedHeat episode, Sabrina learns Libby's mother is a distracted snob who doesn't pay any attention to her.
** ''KimPossible'': In the ChainedHeat episode "Bonding," Kim discovers that Bonnie is a jerk because she's constantly being bullied by her even more obnoxious older sisters. [[AesopAmnesia Bonnie remains as much of a jerk as ever afterward]].
** For [[JerkJock the male version]], this was done to Flash Thompson in Comicbook/SpiderMan, when it was revealed (many years after his introduction) that he bullied Peter Parker because of abuse by his father. In this case, Peter helps Flash eventually redeem or heal himself; in the end, Flash demonstrates genuine regret for his past mistreatement of Peter.
* In {{NCIS}}, Ari Haswari tells Gibbs his reason for being a {{Complete Monster}} is that his father impregnated his mother, raised him badly, and killed his mother just so he could have a [[{{TheMole}} mole]] in Hamas. [[spoiler: He gets shot straight after, by his own sister, in what ends up being her Freudian Excuse for having severe trust issues - which really isn't so much an excuse as a valid reason.]]
* In ''GirlTalk'' - the only sympathetic character in [[RichBitch Stacey The Great's]] clique was shown to be TheUnfavorite of her mother, who doted on the girl's other sister to the point of forgetting the very important ice skating even despite being reminded about it six times.
* In the Disney Channel movie ''CampRock'', Tess' almost-instantaneous HeelFaceTurn comes as a result of her mother taking a cell phone call during her performance at Final Jam. To Tess' credit, she owns up to being a bitch despite the fact that the girls she's bullied don't actually show her any sympathy or even bring this up, making the application of this surprisingly somewhat less of a BrokenAesop than the previous examples.
* ''{{Lost}}'': The extent of the pain Ben's father heaped on him isn't quite clear yet, but we do know that he was horrifically verbally abusive. To whit (this is on tenth or so birthday):
--> "It's hard to celebrate [[DeathbyChildbirth the day you killed your mother]]."
**Ben later killed him. He didn't seem too bothered by it.
**Sawyer is a perhaps more artful execution of FreudianExcuse. That his father killed his mother, then himself, in front of young James stirs our sympathy. However, it was used more to explain his self-loathing after becoming a con man like the one who destroyed his family.
*** Lost is full of characters with FreudianExcuse backstories...who, amazingly, become if anything ''more'' badass afterwards.
* ''VeronicaMars'' does this with several characters:
** Logan isn't ''exactly'' a villain, but he does have a home life worthy of one: his famous father sleeps around and is physically abusive, his mother commits suicide, and his sister is an emotionally void, aspiring (and failing) actress whose primary motivation in life is to improve her career without working at all.
*** For that matter, [[spoiler:Logan's father--a murderer himself--claims that it was ''his'' father's abuse which made him who he is]].
** Even more blatantly, [[spoiler:Cassidy Casablancas is a psychotic mass-murdering ''teenager'']] due largely to the physical and emotional abuse of [[spoiler:his father and older brother]].
*** I thought it was because [[spoiler:he was raped by his Little League coach]].
** The show also has a LampshadeHanging. In the first-season episode "Drinking the Kool-Aid," a boy joins a cult, and his rich parents ask Mr. Mars why he'd go when he was provided for. Mr. Mars says that it's often rich kids who leave, and the boy's father sighs (paraphrasing): "Yes, I know what you're thinking. Spoiled rich kid, no material need denied, no spiritual need fulfilled. That's not us."
** Subverted by Meg, whose parents are crazy fundies, but is still a very nice person.
*** In the same episodes where we find out about Meg's parents, Sheriff Lamb also indicates his dad abused him, and combines it with a PetTheDog moment.
* ''DegrassiJuniorHigh'' is fond of this. To take just some examples:
** Kathleen becomes a bigger {{Jerkass}} every episode. Eventually we see that she has an alcoholic mother and chronically absent father. She remains a {{Jerkass}} for the rest of the show, although she does change in the sequel series ''DegrassiHigh''.
** Stephanie (TheLibby) has an overprotective, very conservative mother, which makes Stephanie want to be the glamorous, all-powerful vixen at school.
** Joey, the TedBaxter, has clueless, weak parents.
** Liz, a non-protagonist [[TheDaria Daria]] who is eternally negative and repeatedly harassed (but indirectly, via vandalism) a girl who had an abortion, was almost aborted at the insistence of her father against her mother's will. We later learn she was sexually abused for approximately 4 or 5 years before she came to the series by her mother's then-boyfriend.
** There are decent parents on the show, but they are all subject to strict ParentExMachina. (This was a conscious decision by the show's creators, who wanted parents to appear as little as possible.)
* ''DegrassiTheNextGeneration'' uses the FreudianExcuse almost as much:
** Liberty, the resident ControlFreak, has pushy parents who had impossibly high expectations for her, and no expectations at all for her pesky little brother.
** Alex in ''DegrassiTheNextGeneration'' started as an utterly evil gang member, until she was revealed to have no father and a drunken mother who was beaten by her revolving door of boyfriends. Alex eventually went through {{BadassDecay}}, but unusually, that wasn't until many episodes later. In the episode where we learn about her parents, it's just an excuse she uses to beat Rick up.
* Every other perp on ''LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'', which never holds back on the LampshadeHanging:
-->'''Dr. Huang''': What did your mother do to you?
-->'''Serial Killer''': Please... with you people, it's always the mother.
-->... ...
-->'''Detective Tutuola''': I don't want to hear how you didn't do it, it wasn't you, you were abused as a child.
-->... ...
-->'''Female Serial Killer''': I was ''raped'', more times than I can remember...
-->'''Detective Benson''': Right, and your mother died, and your dad beat ya.
* Naturally this shows up in ''LawAndOrderCriminalIntent'', most famously with Goren's [[BrokenPedestal ex-FBI profiler mentor]] [[spoiler: 's daughter who, having washed out of the FBI several times decided the next best thing was to become one of his subjects. The constant "shop talk" at home and using [[NauseaFuel dad's torture tapes]] to test potential boyfriends [[{{Squick}} right before making out]] also had something to do with it...]] Another example is StephenColbert's master forger [[spoiler: who was doing his best to discredit a soon-to-be canonized priest because his mom used the guy's charity to literally steal his childhood.]]
* The Slitheen from ''DoctorWho'', in particular Margaret Blaine. Also, the Master, as the new series has revealed that at the age of eight, as part of a Time Lord initiation ceremony, he looked into the [[TheLifestream time vortex]], which drove him insane. Of course, that episode also revealed that every other Time Lord saw the same vortex, and he was still the only one we know who went supervillainy as a result.
** Of course, the Master may simply have been the only case of Vortex Madness (which would make a great trope name) that we saw. The Doctor said that everyone who looked into the vortex was changed. They were inspired, or frightened or, in a few cases, driven mad.
** The Master is far from the only Time Lord supervillain. What about the Rani? A mad scientist set on taking over the universe. And the Meddling Monk, who, while apparently a comedic villain, was messing with the course of history for his own fun. President Borusa, who at the end of his regenerative cycle went mad and tried to steal Rassilon's immortality. The War Chief, attempting to take over the War Lord people. Chancellor Goth, scheming with the Master to make himself president. Morbius, set on conquering the universe. As for the Doctor, well, he's no supervillain, but he's certainly killed enough people that you could say maybe 'he' hears a call to war himself, and simply puts it to better use.
*** The Doctor says he himself ran and never looked back.
* Subverted by Arnold Rimmer in ''RedDwarf''; he has numerous elements in his back-story that ''could'' be used to excuse his actions as an adult - his [[TheUnFavorite mother and father despised him]], his brothers and schoolmates relentlessly bullied him to the point of homicidal sadism, no one liked and encouraged him and he eventually died a horrible death as a useless, unfulfilled failure - but whilst these elements are sometimes used to promote sympathy for him, they are never used to justify his snide, cowardly and hypocritical actions or utter stupidity and incompetence, much as he would like them to. Despite his [[{{Wangst}} constant whining about the subject]], no one excuses him because of it, and in fact it's clear to everyone around him that he himself merely uses his past as an excuse not to deal with his failings, even those that can't be brushed away so easily.
** Not to mention his alternate-universe double, Ace Rimmer ([[CatchPhrase what a guy!]]), a brave hero that causes women ([[EvenTheGuysWantHim and a good few men]]) to crush on him simply by being himself, had an equally poor childhood and is only different in that he was held back a year, letting him realise that life wasn't fair and he had to work with what he had.
** Losing his Freudian Excuse actually appears to be one of Rimmer's greatest fears, as demonstrated in ''Back to Reality'', in which he believes his lack of success can be blamed on his negligent parents, only to discover that Lister (believed to be his half-brother at this point) shared his upbringing -- implied to be much better here -- and became a rich, successful and famous member of the government. The realization that, in this reality, he no longer had this crutch to fall back upon was enough to drive him to attempted suicide.
* The pilot of ''{{Medium}}'' does go unusually far back in the cycle of abuse, thanks to Allison's ability to talk to ghosts. When questioning an imprisoned pedophile, she's accompanied by the spirit of the man who molested him as a child, and the spirit of the man who molested ''him'' as a child, and the spirit of the man who in turn molested ''him'' as a child, and so on.
* It was revealed in ''{{Smallville}}'' that this was the main reason Lex Luthor turned evil - he was abused by his father, and his father never in his life said that he loved him. It was also revealed in the recent episode "Fracture" that his mother wasn't all that loving and adoring, either. Of course, it also doesn't help that, eventually, ''every other freaking character'' in the show started treating him like crap as well. Geez, people, offer a hug every once in a while - you might save a man from villainy.
** Father Issues were also a reason some of the [[MonsterOfTheWeek Freaks of the Week]] turned bad when most other teenagers just would've been like "Wicked cool, I got super powers!" In particular, the kid from "Leech."
* Parodied and subverted in an episode of ''{{Scrubs}}'' where Jordan declared several times that "My parents were mean to me" when she was bugged for the hateful things she did, and eventually admitted that they were actually very nice and supportive.
** But played straighter with Dr. Cox's family, as his father was a violent, abusive alcoholic while he mother just didn't do anything to stop his father.
** Later subverted again with the manipulative intern (can't remember her name) who justifies her actions to Carla with "My dad died when I was a baby, and my mother was a heavy drinker. I've had to do everything myself my entire life." Carla's response? [[spoiler: "Awww...HEARD IT! Me? Dead mom. JD? Dead dad. Elliot? Emotionally abusive parents. Dr Cox? Emotionally ''and'' physically abusive ''dead'' parents who he may have killed. No ones really sure."]]
* Lindsey Weir on ''{{Freaks and Geeks}}'' can't stand obnoxious Kim Kelly, until she is invited over to her house for dinner and sees how awful Kim's family life is.
* ''{{Supernatural}}'''s Bela [[spoiler:was sexually abused by her father and this gave her the motivation to make her {{deal with the devil}}. But as she tried to make the boys' life a misery instead of going to them for help like she should have done (which she realises now), she gets torn apart by the hellhounds instead of being redeemed.]] Which has the oddly powerful effect of [[spoiler:[[AlasPoorScrappy making viewers who hated her before feel sorry for her instead]].]]
** Subverted in that when Dean finds out about the deal and calls her on it, [[spoiler:she just smirks and says that her parents were nice, loving people, and she killed them anyway.]] Evidently, Bela wasn't one for sympathy.
* This made for a particularly intense piece of characterization in an episode of ''CriminalMinds''. The profilers bust the murderer of the week through their understanding of his crappy childhood, and Agent Hotchner, while interviewing him, says that with an intensely violent, abusive childhood like that, it's not surprising that some people grow up to be killers. As they're dragging him away, the murderer asks what Hotch, meant, that ''some'' people grow up to be killers. In his crazy-intense voice, (CSI's Horatio Caine without the sunglasses) Hotchner replies that ''some'' people grow up to catch them.
** A slightly humourous example comes from an episode where Hotch and Reid go to interview a serial killer, Chester, on death row. [[spoiler:After a series of events that leave them locked in the room with the killer, Reid saves them both by profiling the shit out of him for thirteen straight minutes, linking all of his violence back to his childhood and saying that Chester "never really had a chance" to be anything but. Cue chuckles when Chester asks if it's true that he never had a chance to escape his sociopathic tendencies, and Reid replies with an offhand, "I dunno, maybe," as he flees the room. It kind of speaks to his genius, that he's able to cook up an elaborate FreudianExcuse in seconds, spiel it for thirteen minutes, and then carelessly discard it.]]
* Parodied in ''{{Blackadder}}'', in which Blackadder discovers and exploits a super-villain's Freudian excuse with deadly accuracy:
-->'''Blackadder''':Just one thing, Ludwig - were you bullied at school?
-->'''Ludwig''': ''[Tense]'' What do you mean?
-->'''Blackadder''': Well, all this ranting and raving about power. There must be ''some'' reason for it.
-->'''Ludwig''': Nonsense, no - at my school, having dirty hair and spots was a sign of maturity.
-->'''Blackadder''': I thought so. And I bet your mother made you wear shorts right up till your final year.
-->'''Ludwig''': ''[Losing it]'' Shut up! Shut up! When I am King of England, ''no one'' will ''ever'' call me 'shorty greasy spot-spot' again! ''[Storms out]''
-->'''Blackadder''': [[DeadpanSnarker Think we touched a nerve there.]]
* Spoofed in the episode of ''{{Frasier}}'', "Fool Me Once, Shame on You, Fool Me Twice...":
-->'''Frasier''': Let me guess. Daddy didn't love me, Mommy didn't pay attention to me, the bully next door took my toys.\\
'''Nathan Lane''': No, no, you got it all backwards. Dad loved me. Mom spoiled me. I ''was'' the bully next door.
* StephenColbert's {{Freudian Excuse}}s are frequently hinted at, and were made explicit during the "Superegomaniac" segment celebrating Freud's 150th birthday.
--> '''Stephen:''' Yeah, maybe a library shelf fell on me when I was three, but that's not why I hate books.
--> '''[[FootnoteFever Bullet Point]]:''' It's Why He ''Burns'' Books
** His book, ''I Am America and So Can You'', is pretty explicit about most of his freudian excuses.
* Although they're not villains, it's clear that at least three of ''MurphyBrown'''s characters' traits come as a direct result of lousy parental relationships:
** Murphy's competitive nature stems from her relationship with her father. In a flashback, we see him tell her point-blank that her B+ paper "should've been an A". On top of that, he worked constantly, and as such it was often very difficult for her to get his full attention. On top of THAT, Murphy reveals in one episode that her father wanted a boy. And as if all of that wasn't enough, her parents had a messy divorce plagued by frequent verbal battles which still continued whenever they encountered each other in the present.
** Frank's constant need to validate himself stems from his parents, who never really ''hear'' the words that come out of his mouth. He's also one of seven children, so he constantly felt lost in the shuffle when he was young.
** Jim's stuffy exterior can be attributed to his father, who told him that real men don't show their emotions. He was 10 years old at the time.
* Scorpius of ''{{Farscape}}'' was revealed to have been engineered and brutally raised by the Scarrans, spawning an intense hatred of that species for his treatment as well as for the rape and death of his Sebacean mother. For this reason, he's prepared to do just about anything he can to take revenge- including the acts committed against John Crichton. However when Scorpius actually brings up these details close to the end of the third season, he does so not to make Crichton pity him, but to try and convince him that the Scarrans must be stopped before any more innocent people suffer- and given their actions [[MoralEventHorizon in the fourth season]], he's not exactly incorrect.
* Parodied in ''ThirdRockFromTheSun'' -- when Sally decides to have a childhood and takes up a child's ballet class, Dick doesn't come to her performance. Harry and Tommy congratulate her on experiencing the neglect and rejection of a normal childhood, and Harry informs her that "if you ever flip out and kill a guy, you can blame it on Dick".
* This was lampshaded in [[BuffyTheVampireSlayer Buffy]] when a psychotic vampire captured and tortured Buffy's mother and complained to her about his mother "stealing his self respect", before adding "I have mother issues. I'm aware of that."
** Don't forget [[DarkMagicalGirl Faith]], who's said to be who Buffy would be if she was never loved.
* Subverted by ''{{House}}''. While House's Daddy Issues make up a large part who he is, only one person knows about the real abuse (the ice baths and being made to sleep outside) and even that had to be dragged out of him.
** This was one of his {{Pet The Dog}} moments too. He was trying to offer comfort to a rape victim. He was the first to figure out she'd been raped, and maybe this was because he'd been abused (Though not sexually as far as we know) in the past.
** He also called that the teenage supermodel in "Skin Deep" had been raped by her father.
*** Is it really being raped if she gets him drunk first and is all part of her plan to get him to let her do whatever she wants?
**** The courts say it is.
** Lampshaded by Amber in a Season 4 episode. "Why are you afraid to lose?" "Mommy didn't love me! Daddy expected too much of me! ...Something! What is it you want me to say?"
* Sylar from ''Heroes''.
* ''{{Monk}}'''s mother was very uptight and neurotic, which is probably part of why he is. To overcome OCD, it's necessary to resist the compulsions, so Monk being raised by the kind of person who ''encourages'' excessive order may have allowed the condition to develop a stranglehold on him in a way it otherwise wouldn't.
* ''LawAndOrder'': Mike Logan's temper is attributed to the beatings he received as a kid from his alcoholic mother. Lennie Briscoe's meth-addicted daughter blames all her problems on her former alcoholic dad's absence during her childhood.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Radio]]

* Lampshaded in an otherwise weak episode of ''AdventuresInOdyssey'', which takes an [[FamilyUnfriendlyAesop oddly]] [[BrokenAesop indecisive]] stance on the subject. When pressed, chronic troublemaker Rodney Rathbone ad-libs a story about being locked in the basement by his parents, then promptly admits that no, it was just something he heard on TV. That said, outright abuse aside, a lot of his behavior can almost certainly be attributed to his upbringing.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Music ]]

* In ''WestSideStory'' The Jets playfully make a song, "Gee, Officer Krupke" out of this.
-->My daddy beats my mommy\\
My mommy clobbers me\\
My grandpa is a commie\\
My grandma pushes tea\\
My sister wears a moustache\\
My brother wears a dress\\
Goodness gracious, that's why I'm a mess!
** Or, in the alternate lyric from the stage play:
-->My father is a bastard\\
My ma's an SOB\\
My grandpa's always plastered\\
My grandma pushes tea\\
My sister wears a moustache\\
My brother wears a dress\\
Goodness gracious, that's why I'm a mess!
* As quoted above, John Flansburgh (of TheyMightBeGiants fame) has recorded a song called "It Never Fails", about cops manipulating the psychological problems of criminals in order to keep their arrest quotas up.
* Anna Russell's song "Jolly Old Sigmund Freud."
-->At three I had a feeling of ambivalence towards my brothers,\\
And so it follows naturally I've poisoned all my lovers,\\
But I am happy now I've learned the lesson this has taught,\\
That everything I do that's wrong is someone else's fault!
* A particularly {{Anvilicious}} case is Harry Chapin's "Sniper," about a boy whose mother never makes time for him, so he grows up to be a deranged mass murderer who explicitly voices his hatred for her at the climax. Can be considered a darker version of Chapin's "Cats in the Cradle."
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Table Top RPG ]]
* It's a long story, but the story behind the githzerai and githyanki in ''DungeonsAndDragons'' is effectively thus: the Gith were slaves. They rebelled. One faction wanted to conquer the universe so they would never be enslaved again. The other wanted to train all their race to overcome both literal and metaphorical enslavement. On that day they split; one to found monasteries of order in a plane of chaos, and the other to maraud the planes. This example both uses and subverts the trope.
* When it gets down to the basics, the entire galaxy-shattering civil war that brought [[{{Warhammer 40000}} the Imperium of Man]] down into the nightmare that it is today is the result of one very long, very brutal series of {{FreudianExcuse}}s.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Theatre]]
* Joseph Pitt from ''AngelsInAmerica'' had a rough relationship with his now-gone father. During a phone conversation with his mother, he asks if his father ever loved him. She dodges the question. When he tells her that he's gay, she snaps that he knows damn well his father never loved him, and that's no excuse for him to be acting up like this.
* Freddie's song "Pity the Child" in ''Theatre/{{Chess}}'':
-->Pity the child who has ambition\\
Knows what he wants to do\\
Knows that he'll never fit the system\\
Others expect him to\\
Pity the child who knew his parents\\
Saw their faults, saw their love die before his eyes\\
Pity a child that wise
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]
* Sephiroth from ''FinalFantasyVII'' was raised by his father the evil mad scientist Hojo who regarded him as little more than a human lab rat, and was trying to turn him in to the perfect super soldier. Obviously, Hojo mostly succeeded.
**Being told his mother died giving birth to him and then finding out that his "mother" is a CosmicHorror couldn't have helped, either.
* Just about ''everything'' regarding Squall's screwed-up mental state in ''FinalFantasyVIII'' can be traced back to [[spoiler:separation issues at a very young age when Ellone was taken away from him at the orphanage.]] Compounded by an apparent [[ThereAreNoTherapists complete lack of emotional support]] following [[spoiler:their separation, and by the fact that junctioning Guardian Forces during his training caused him to forget his childhood, making it impossible for him to re-evaluate his childhood trauma from a more mature perspective.]]
* The Nintendo DS remake of ''FinalFantasyIV'' gives this to Golbez. [[spoiler: His fater was killed by the town for teaching magic, his mother died giving birth to [[TheHero his younger brother, Cecil.]] The hate he generated was enough for Zemus to manipulate him into stealing the crystals.]]
* One was given to the recurring villain of ''FinalFantasyX'', [[spoiler: Maester Seymour Guado]]. In a nutshell, [[spoiler: Non-human Dad marries Human Mom, but his species' xenophobic civilization doesn't like that their leader married a human, so she and Seymour are exiled to a long-abandoned temple. Mom decides that for Seymour will need to be powerful to be accepted, so she undergoes a procedure that will allow him to call her as a powerful summon beast but will also turn her into a statue while young Seymour is crying for her not to, effectively meaning he's been abandoned by both parents. Not to mention that Summon Beast Mommy [[http://ui19.gamespot.com/1682/finalfantasyxanima_2.jpg looks like this]].]] [[YouSuck Whiny protagonist Tidus]] also has significant father issues.
* For all the evil that he did afterwards, Ganondorf from ''{{The Legend of Zelda}}'' series had a [[strike: very]] [[YourMileageMayVary mildly]] understandable reason for his desire to conquer Hyrule and claim the Triforce: [[spoiler: His people were trapped in a lifeless desert, forced to steal from others just to eke out a life. Seeing his people in such despair, and then seeing a land in spitting distance that was rich, prosperous, and inhabited by people who didn't even realize their good fortune, made Ganondorf understandably VERY angry. Supplimental material like the official Nintendo Comics, and brief mentions in Ocarina of Time, hint that Ganondorf actually tried to invade Hyrule the old-fashioned way. When that fails and he is forced to swear fealty to the Hyrulian king, he turns to searching for the Triforce as a second option.]]
* Zephiel was a kind and loving boy in [[FireEmblem Fire Emblem 7]], but his father Desmond hated him. This hatred, [[spoiler: ultimately resulting in Desmond attempting to kill Zephiel,]] was the only reason why Zephiel turned out to be a misanthropic tyrant in Fire Emblem 6.
* ''FirstEncounterAssaultRecon's'' entire storyline is one giant Freudian Excuse in which the main villain, Paxton Fettel, sets out to [[spoiler:free his mother, Alma, who was a powerful psychic who was used as a living incubator for psychic supersoldiers since she was eight years old, and had her children stolen from her in front of her eyes]]. Incidentally, the project lead who was behind this whole round of depravity turns out to be [[spoiler:Alma's own father, Harlan Wade]].
* Prince Luca Blight from ''SuikodenII'' is one of the nastiest, evilest, and most badass villains ever conceived. He makes some pretty good attempts at subverting InfantImmortality, even. He also kills an entire unit of his own country's soldiers (The 'Youth Brigade', even - kinda' like heavily armed boyscouts), kills his father, usurps the throne, starts a war, and unleashes some SealedEvilInACan to depopulate a large city completely. However... [[spoiler: When he was 6, he watched his mother being raped and killed by soldiers from the country he's invading, while his father ran to hide in the capital. He was basically seeking revenge on both his father, and the country he blames for the events]].
** [[spoiler: Actually, Luca's mother wasn't killed; she died later. Nine months later. Which was when his little sister was born. His little sister who grew up to strongly remember her mother and thus serve as a living reminder of the horror that he'd witnessed all those years ago.]]
* In ''StarControl II'', the Ur-Quan reveal that their entire ''race'' has a FreudianExcuse: They were psychically enslaved until they discovered that their masters could not command beings that were in excruciating pain. After earning their freedom they vowed to protect themselves from ever suffering such a fate again. This in combination that the fact that the green Ur-Quan, who enslave other races, are relatively benevolent when their orders are obeyed, makes them more of an AntiVillain. The BigBad black Ur-Quan, on the other hand, just want to kill everyone.
** WordOfGod has it that the Ur-Quan were in fact based upon real-life acquaintances of the creators who were abused as children and the effects it had on them.
* Subverted in ''SamAndMax Hit the Road''. When asked, villain Conroy Bumpus initially attributes his quest to capture, kill, and stuff a sasquatch as due to his parents being killed by sasquatches when he was a kid. When pressed, however, Conroy admits that this story is really just a load of bull, and he's just a really sick puppy.
* In ''Animamundi: Dark Alchemist'', [[{{Satan}} Mephistopheles]] asked Dr. Glening why he was so insistant on wanting a [[DealWithTheDevil a deal with him]] (note that this is the kind of guy that even the fucking devil didn't want to put up with). The man went on to explain he was seeking revenge when his [[CrystalSpiresAndTogas magic-based homeland]] was invaded, and he was forced to eat ''his own'' parents [[ImAHumanatarian corpses]] in order to survive. The devil just remarked that his persistence is remarkable, but he's still pathetic. The Player still wouldn't feel sympathetic Dr. Glening, considering he's a CompleteMonster.
* Basically the entire point of ''{{Psychonauts}}'' is Raz [[BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind going into various people's minds]] and ''fighting'' their {{FreudianExcuse}}s. In addition, you can break open vaults and see film-strips that detail important parts of that character's childhood, often revealing their FreudianExcuse.
** On the other hand, some of them are handled well enough that they actually make sense-Sasha's obsession with keeping one's mind under control stems from the incident that prompted him to leave home-[[spoiler:an amateurish psychic foray into his father's mind to learn more about his dead mother ended up dredging up some contexts he wasn't quite ready to see his mother in. Like the context that culminated in Sasha.]] And Milla is [[spoiler:haunted by the deaths of the children she used to be a nanny to,]] but she doesn't let it get in the way of things. And then there's Ed Teglee's, which even he admits is a little pathetic, once he gets over it.
** The final boss is [[spoiler:Raz's and Oleander's FreudianExcuses combined, essentially a [[NightmareFuel grotesque combination of their fathers]]. ]]
* It's a fairly common theme in the ''MetalGear'' series, but especially in [=MGS4=]'s "Beauty and the Beast Corps." Their crippling post-traumatic stress disorder is apparently the key ingredient to being cybernetically enhanced elite troopers.
** A nice example is from the non-canon ''GhostBabel'', wherein serial-killer-turned-special-agent Marionette Owl reveals the beginning of his gruesome murder spree stemmed from finding the love of his life disemboweled and dismembered, and realizing the beauty of death.
** Kojima seemed to be so set on giving Psycho Mantis one of these in [=MGS1=] that he ended up giving him two. In codec discussions early in the game, Mantis is said to have worked for the FBI is a psychic profiler until he dove too deep into the mind of a mass-murderer and took on his personality. When he's defeated in battle, Mantis says his murderous ways are caused by accidenatlly having killed his father as a child and being forced to witness that [[FreudWasRight all human beings only exist to procreate]], with no mention of the FBI.
* Xenogears; Fei/Id/Grahf and maybe even Ramsus and Krelian. Anyone who's completed the game will know what I'm talking about, its pretty heavily implemented into the plot and the development of the protagonist. They do a damn fine job of using this trope though.
* Bulleta/B.B. Hood in ''{{Darkstalkers}}''... maybe. It's implied that she really ''is'' Little Red Riding Hood, with [[BreakTheCutie all that entails]], but this has never actually been outright confirmed or disproven.
*In SilentHill4, we have Walter Sullivan. He's a SerialKiller who was (a) [[ParentalAbandonment thrown out by his spousally abusive father]], (b) raised by the [[{{Cult}} Order]], [[OrphanageOfFear and all that that implies]], (c) watched his friend being forced to eat ''[[{{Squick}} leeches]]'' by a CompleteMonster, (d) being fooled by the Order into believing the apartment room where he was born ''was'' his mom, (e) being spat on by the inhabitants of the aparment building, and (f), probably [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking having malicious drivers splash him with mud puddles]]. [[TheWoobie It's at this point one starts to wonder if his behavior really is excusable]].
* [[OgreBattle Tactics Ogre: the Knight of Lodis]] is an entire game of [[FreudianExcuse]] for a villain that the player has to play through.
* Depending on your interpretation (and which games you consider to be cannon), one possible explanation for [[{{Monkey Island}} LeChuck's]] evil aggression is his unrequited love for Elaine. However, later games indicate he was evil before meeting Elaine (he IS a pirate, after all). [[{{Telltale Games}} Most recently]], his Voodoo Pox also seems to be a possible source of his evil.
* ValkyriaChronicles has Maximilian, who tries to conquer the world [[spoiler:because his mom was unpopular amongst the nobility, and then was killed.]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Comic ]]
* In ''TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob,'' [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds Galatea]] had a ''horrible'' childhood. Even if it did [[YoungerThanTheyLook only last a month.]]
* In ''ElGoonishShive'', Lord Tedd may or may not have one. Consider the facts that he is the most powerful known being in the comic and that the creator admitted that people wouldn't like his backstory because it is just that sad.
* In ''{{Fans}}'', Alisin Oberf, during her dark days when she was dying of a [[IncurableCoughOfDeath rare disease]], was, beneath her PerkyGoth [[StepfordSmiler exterior]], a self-loathing mess, who took pleasure in heavy bondage and sadism. Years later, after she was cured of the disease, but not her negative self-image, one of her "partners", Keith Feddyg, emerged as Alisin's greatest nemesis, using her own self-loathing to force her to become his sex slave and blaming her for his having become a psycho. Subsequent evidence indicates that he was [[{{Wangst}} already]] [[DepravedBisexual there]] before Aly ever showed up.
* Joel from {{Concession}} has about three Freudian Excuses: his father left their company to his older brother, his sister was killed by his brother when they were young, and their parents blamed Joel for the murder and put him in an asylum where he was sexually abused by a doctor. If there was a trope for Freudian Sue, Joel would probably be the posterboy.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Original ]]
* Mariavel Varella, the primary villain of ''SurvivalOfTheFittest v2'', has something of a FreudianExcuse to justify her actions. She was raped by her father as a child (although this may have since been the subject of a {{Retcon}}). However, what does remain Canon is the other abuse she suffered at the hands of her father - as well as him killing her brother.
* Steff in ''TalesOfMU'': "Don't you think I've earned a chance to be the one at the top of the shitheap for a while? Three more years and then nobody's going to fuck with me, ever again."
* In YuGiOhTheAbridgedSeries, Tristan asks Bakura why he is so evil, to which Bakura replies "Well, I guess my mummy didn't love me enough. Did you know she wanted to name me Florence? Who names a boy Florence?!"
** Also, Marik was forced to undergo having markings burned into his backside as a child... [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking as well as having to watch Beverly Hills Chihuahua]]. He was a bit of a dick before then, though.
* StalkerWithACrush Zaboo from The Guild. Dead father, [[EvilMatriarch Mother From Hell]], it's amazing he isn't more messed up than he is. Although he's pretty damn messed up.
* FanFic/{{Stray}} discusses this - it's set in the MetalGear universe, land of villains with unhappy childhoods, and at least two characters (including one of the protagonists) are former {{Tykebomb}}s. However, Adamska (one of the tykebombs in question) eventually rejects the idea that a person's essential nature can be changed by the actions of other people.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* ''AvatarTheLastAirbender'' shows that the villainous Prince Zuko was raised in a nightmarish, back-stabbing court where his sister was always more successful and favored, his once-renowned war hero uncle breaks down after losing his son in battle only to later lose his place on the throne, his [[MysteriousParent mother]] [[GettingCrappastTheRadar killed his grandfather the night she disappeared]] in order to keep her husband from killing Zuko, and his [[WellDoneSonGuy father]] not only publicly ridiculed him when giving him his trademark [[GoodScarsEvilScars scar]] and banishment from home, but is voiced by Mark Hamill. Let the ''StarWars'' parallels begin! (Even his voice actor couldn't deny it.)
**I'd be pretty messed up too if my father was voiced by Mark Hamill.
** The series finale gives Azula her freudian excuse (due to Ozai's [[TykeBomb raising of her]], her mother was distant from her throughout her childhood, leading Azula to believe she hated her). This comes out after years of repression and is a contributor in Azula's VillainousBreakdown. Thankfully, this gave an element of tragedy to Azula's character ''without'' letting it justify her many sins. [[BrokenBase It also gave us some flame wars for the ages.]]
*** She even [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] it in the BeachEpisode, when ''all'' the [[QuirkyMinibossSquad teen villains']] Freudian excuses come out.
--> '''Azula''': "My own mother... thought I was a monster." [perks up] "She was right, of course, but it still hurt!"
* In ''[[http://www.questforaheart.com Quest for a Heart]]'', when Millie remarks on Footman's disagreeable personality, the other Rollis tell her that he had a hard childhood. She asks for more details, and they say he had to grow up in a Rolli village in the midst of Rollis.
* Parodied in a Buttons & Mindy short on ''{{Animaniacs}}''. Mindy, a curious little toddler, accidentally walks in on a bank robbery...
--> '''Mindy:''' (to one of the robbers) Whatcha doing, Mr. Man?
--> '''Robber:''' What's it look like? We're robbin' the bank!
--> '''Mindy:''' Why?
--> '''Robber:''' 'Cause we're bank robbers!
--> '''Mindy:''' Why?
--> '''Robber:''' 'Cause that's what bad guys do!
--> '''Mindy:''' Why?
--> '''Robber:''' 'Cause maybe our mothers didn't hug us when we was kids!
* Subverted in Ruby-Spears' ''[[{{MegaMan}} Megaman]]'', in the first episode: Wily mentions having a less than perfect childhood--then goes right on to working on Protoman, expounding on a different subject. The show never brings it up again, implying that Wily's bid to take over the world is simply due to his villainous nature, not this trope.
* Dr. Doofenshmirtz from ''PhineasAndFerb'' sometimes has these, played for laughs -- as part of his speech, he'll refer to some unpleasant past event that motivated his current act of villainy. Possibly the most outlandish was his deciding to steal all the lawn gnomes in the Tri-State Area because as a child, he had been forced to take the place of his family's lawn gnome after it was repossessed.
** Another, he hates brithdays because ''his parents didn't show up the day he was born'' somehow
* In ''DannyPhantom'', pretty much all of Vlad's evil tendencies were blamed on the pivotal portal experiment in college. This worked well until [[CharacterDerailment the writers stopped caring about his character]].
* The eponymous Dr. Thaddeus S. 'Rusty' Venture of TheVentureBrothers has his horrific upbringing by his father to blame for his {{Jerkass}} tendencies, something that the 3rd season goes out of its way several times to point out. Several times, it's hinted that Rusty was forced to murder several people in his childhood by his father. That would screw up anyone.
** "That's nothing. My father made me kill a man with a house key once. I was ten!"
* ''DrawnTogether'' lampshades this in the song "Who's Afraid of a Bully" from the episode "Requiem for a Reality Show".
* In ''TransformersAnimated'', why Bumblebee would rather work on his own than to learn the value of teamwork could be attributed to what happened in "Autoboot Camp." His first team was consisted of [[JerkJock jerks]] who went as far as unscrewing his legs then locking him inside a locker. It didn't help that his Drill Sergeant was [[{{Jerkass}} Sentinel Prime]], who took every opportunity to humiliate him. The only ones who didn't treat him like crap were Bulkhead and Longarm, who didn't really like him that much ([[TheMole And we all know what happened to him]]). And when he stuck up for another bot, he ended up being demoted to Space Bridge Repair duty (Resulting in his Stingers being downgraded to be useless in combat).
* In a original story board of Disney's {{Disney/Aladdin}} they wanted to have Jafar, the villain, have a Freudian Excuse themed song explaining why he was angry and evil. It was later dropped and was replaced with a reprise of Prince Ali to satisfy the staffs wishes to have the voice actor sing, to the delight of most of the audience. Of course, when you think about it, why would Jafar need a freudian excuse? We already know he's unhappy in his current position (which is sometimes all you need), thinks the sultan is an idiot, is greedy, and has a case of megalomania (thus the last genie wish).
* Played with by [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds Demona]], one of the two main villains on {{Gargoyles}}. She has certainly endured more than her fair share of misery over the centuries, and a lot of it seems to be the fault of the humans (thereby setting up her [[FantasticRacism motivation]] nicely. Closer inspection, though, reveals that ''Demona herself'' directly or indirectly caused all of her own suffering, with the humans sometimes large players, but sometimes just scapegoats. It's implied that Demona is aware of this (and of her own evil) on some level... pity she's the queen of the IgnoredEpiphany. This trope is outright averted with the other main villain, [[MagnificentBastard Xanatos]], who by all accounts had an idyllic childhood but wound up a wealthy DiabolicalMastermind anyway. [[AffablyEvil He's still not entirely unsympathetic]].
* Most, if not all, of [[BatmanTheAnimatedSeries Bat]][[TheBatman man]]'s rogues gallery, as well as [[BatmanBeyond Terry's]]. The only two of Terry's that spring to mind is the "skeleton Joker Gang" guy who attacked Sam because she scored higher then him on an SAT, making his ice-queen mom very disappointed in him. There's also the geeky technopath student who's JerkJock dad didn't care either way about him, even after he stole his construction equipment and later buffed up in prison, although his ''particular'' hang-up was over a girl who naturally didn't care about him either.
* Hilariously inadequate to the point that it was most certainly intentional, the villain of ''MeetTheRobinsons'' became villainnous and lost his mind due to a minor mishap as a child in which he lost his baseball team the game because he fell asleep partway through. It fits in with the moral of the story of moving on, because while his team was upset for a while, they got over it and forgave him, but he focused only on that minor mistake and it ruined his entire life.
* In [[SouthPark South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut]], Saddam Hussein tries to justify his evil ways in a song about his Freudian Excuse.
--> '''Saddam Hussein:''' (singing) It's not my fault that I'm so evil, it's society, society. You see, my parents were sometimes abusive, and it made a prick of me.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* The FreudianExcuse has been used by defendants in real-life court cases, although nowhere near as often (or as successfully) as fiction and TV make it out to be.
* Psychologist Philip Zimbardo spends most of his book, ''The Lucifer Effect'', talking about what causes good people to turn evil, but punctuates it with reminders that understanding the evil doesn't make the people any less responsible. He then goes on to describe his defence of one of the Abu Ghraib guards and how he tried to use his understanding of what makes people do bad things to reduce the man's sentence? "Do what I say, not what I do," Phil?
** I can't say what was going on inside Zimbardo's head, but he was doing ground-breaking work. I wouldn't say it's hypocrisy to change your mind a few times over in those circumstances. His Stanford prison experiment dose raise a lot of questions about the correct sentencing of prison guards, not to mention damages one's faith in humanity.
** According to TheOtherWiki, "he argued that Frederick's sentence should be lessened due to mitigating circumstances, explaining that few individuals can resist the powerful situational pressures of a prison, particularly without proper training and supervision".
* Joseph Fritzl. Turns out he hid his daughter and three of her children in his basement in Austria for twenty-four years because his mother abused him.
**Mind you, they were [[ParentalIncest also HIS children]]. Go ahead and [[{{Squick}} think about that]].
* In ''The Salmon of Doubt'', Douglas Adams recounts the horrific tale of how he had to wear shorts for the first four weeks of sixth form (having been forced by school regulations to wear them all through prep school, despite having already grown taller than most of the teachers). He says that if he ever "[came] across as a maladjusted, socially isolated, sad, hunched emotional cripple...then it's those four weeks that are to blame".
* "It is my personal opinion that lyrics cannot harm anyone. There is no sound you can make with your mouth or word that will come out of your mouth that is so powerful that it will make you go to hell. It's also not going to turn anyone into a 'social liability.' 'Disturbed' people can be set on a 'disturbed' course of action by ''any'' kind of stimulus. If they are prone to being antisocial or schizophrenic or whatever, they can be set off by anything, including my tie or your hair or that chair over there." -- ''Frank Zappa''
* Unfortunately in real life, while it is not always true, people are actually more likely to do bad things if their parents did them. For example, if someone was abused by their parents, they will be more likely to abuse their own children.
* While it's certainly no excuse for his [[CompleteMonster actions]], [[AdolfHitler Adolf Hitler]] had an abusive father.


[[/folder]]
----
<<|CharacterizationTropes|>>
<<|HollywoodPsych|>>
<<|ParentalIssues|>>
<<|TheParentTrope|>>
<<|StockAesops|>>
<<|TruthInTelevision|>>