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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!
So the writers have a villain, and they want to give that character some depth. The obvious solution is to Pet The Dog. Unfortunately, that tends to make the character less scary, causing Badass Decay and Villain Decay.
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 Freudian Excuse: the villain had a crappy childhood, and that's why they go around insulting everyone or blowing buildings up. (Or, if they're still in High School, they have a crappy home life). Sometimes, this is done for deliberate Badass Decay, 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 Pet The Dog moment, the Freudian Excuse often doesn't give a villain any depth at all. If the villain is particularly evil, 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 Freudian Excuse 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 Character Development, 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 Cry For The Devil.
The excuse however is often subverted. One way is to use it to show how pathetic a villain is — after the villain gives a Hannibal Lecture, 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 Double Subversion, 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 Draco In Leather Pants.
Takes the "It's Nurture" position of the "Nature vs. Nurture" argument. For the Nature position, see In The Blood.
Mommy Issues is a subtrope. See also Parental Abandonment, Well Done Son Guy, Single Issue Psychology, and Who's Laughing Now. Not to be confused with Freud Was Right.
Examples
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Anime/Manga
- Fist Of The North Star has loads of these, Souther probably being the most accurate, based on his childhood-crappitude-to-adult-bastardry ratio.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion 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 The End Of The World As We Know It. Going further, some of the Applied Phlebotinum 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 Elaborate Underground Base, 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.
- 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 makes it explicit, comparing them to abuse victims.
- Fushigi Yuugi, 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...
- Get Backers 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 not really dying after all.
- In Nobuta Wo Produce, 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 Raped 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 minor act of vandalism very early on, that is.
- Spoofed in Naruto The Abridged Series, 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 Well Intentioned Extremist. 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 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 most despicable acts in the eyes of the fanbase (killing Jiraiya, destroying Konoha and almost killing Hinata) occurred after his Freudian Excuse 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 absolute bitch, was 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, 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 his hatred of humans - 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 baby seal) moments after she became Empress.
- In Black Lagoon, the Creepy Twins/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 Chrono Crusade 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 Princess Tutu's second season, it's revealed that Rue's reason for becoming Princess Kraehe is that 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.
- Blood Plus 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 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 steals his face.
- It's stated in Hana Yori Dango 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 reason he was able to get away with his gratuitous exploits). He's not all bad, however...
- Rolo Lamperouge from Code Geass...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 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 Rescued From The Scrappy Heap by 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 Tear Jerker music and Alas Poor Scrappy effects.
- He's not the only one, either. The absolutely vile Psycho For Hire Luciano Bradley, according to the light novels, 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 were witnesses of all the backstabbing, hatred and death surrounding the Britannian Imperial Family ever since they were young children, which culminated when they saw their mother 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 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 Code Geass characters are done exceptionally well. Enough that most of them become Woobies to at least some portion of the fandom.
- In the manga version of Rosario to Vampire, Hokuto has one of these. 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 Yu Yu Hakusho. 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 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 Takano Miyo. 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 Miyo's big game of 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 being tortured by his guardian, who he had trusted, for two hundred years.
- The Funimation dub of Dragon Ball Z 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 Dilandau Albatou is crazy due to 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 destruction of his Dragon Slayer force by Van only exacerbate his issues.
- Luxus, one of the biggest Jerkasses in Fairy Tail prior to his defeat and Heel Face Turn 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 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 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 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, so yeah...
- In Glass Fleet, Vetti's horrific actions (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 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.
- Mahou Sensei Negima 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) Dark And Troubled Past may have influenced her actions a little. Asuna points this out, noting that Eva 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 Sailor Moon uses Chibi Usa'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.
- Medaka, who only thinks the best of everyone (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 heavily disillusioned team when in fact they really are just thugs who happened to find a large empty building. 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 What Do You Mean Hes Not Likeable kind....
- Why is Tetsuo from Akira not on the list yet?! After enduring years of kids bullying him and trying to make him 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. And... cue his Roaring Rampage Of Revenge.
- '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, 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.
- Pokemon Special. Lance's excuse for wanting to Kill All Humans? 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 Humans Are Bastards, and that must've been pretty damn traumatic for him as well as the Dratini.
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 Back Story. 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 Crime And Punishment shows (and Darker And Edgier superhero comics) are notorious for Writer On Board stories denouncing the Freudian Excuse. At least once per storyline, there will be a slimy psychiatrist or defense attorney who declares that the 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 Batman Begins, 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 Frank Miller's 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, 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.
- Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, during which the Joker has his Freudian Excuse explained as an extended flashback. However, being an Alan Moore 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 Batman The Animated Series 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 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 Batman Beyond movie Return of the Joker, wherein Terry gets the better of the titular villain by, among other things, mercilessly mocking his past.
- 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 Jerk Ass 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 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.
- 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 Well Done Son Guy, 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 Spider Man 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.
- In Ultimate Fantastic Four #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.
- 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 Heel Face Revolving Door, always working to make the oppressed mutants safer, often 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 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 powers make him bipolar. The man has so many issues it's a wonder he's still able to function.
- 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. Your Mileage May Vary 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."
- Sistah Spooky's rather pathological hatred of blondes (like her teammate 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 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 Terror Titans 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 Umbrella Academy, 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 GI Joe. 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 Tear Jerker 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.
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. 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.
- 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.
- 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 he imagined the whole thing, and just happens to be insane.
- Turned on its head in the Korean film The Host. The hero gets a Freudian Excuse for his lethargy and occasionally carrying the Idiot Ball . He didn't get proper nutrition as a kid. A brain tissue biopsy later fixes all this. Apparently they removed his Awesome Inhibitor or something.
- Subverted in the 2008 Batman movie The Dark Knight. 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:
- Bizarrely, the Childcare Action Project didn't realise this was a subversion, to the extent of providing a long rant about this trope within the 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".
- Proving once again that right-wing art can never afford to be subtle if it wants to please a right-wing audience.
- Since when is The Dark Knight "right-wing art"?
- Subverted in Simon Birch, where despite extreme neglect by his parents, Simon appears to be the nicest person living in a town full of assholes.
- In 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 Silent Hill 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 Ip Man, Rival Turned Evil 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.
- The Grinch from How The Grinch Stole Christmas was given a lot of
Padding Exposition in The Movie, attempting to explain his Grinchiness.
- In the Tim Burton remake of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, 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. Then she learns about piano wire...
- In Raising Arizona, the brutal biker and bounty hunter who kills furry animals for fun has a tattoo reading "Momma didn't like me".
- In [[9]], the monster that kills all humanity was a depraved child. Robot. Whatever. In other words, he was made by a scientist for peace, but as the Soviet whoevers 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. And one wonders how the professor was the last man alive.
- 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 Mean Girls: 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.
- 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 Phone Booth 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.
Literature
- Marco from Animorphs is a snarky survivalist early on. While Tobias exalts about how with great power Comes Great Responsibility, Marco snaps back that Tobias can't even go a day without getting his head flushed down a toilet. Once Tobias is stuck as a hawk, Marco's barbs begin to verge on actual cruelty. Later, we find out that Marco's mother 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 Sad Clown and that he makes fun of Tobias because what happened to Tobias scares him.
- Isaac Asimov: 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 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 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.
- Jack Chalker really liked this trope.
- Averted in Dostoevsky's novel Notes from Underground to the point of being An Aesop. 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 Sherlock Holmes 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' Cold Comfort Farm, having seen "something nasty 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". Flora finds this suspiciously convenient.
- Hannibal Lecter lost much of his mystique when explanations for his actions were presented in Hannibal and Hannibal Rising during his jarring Badass Decay into a misunderstood Anti Hero. This came with some Character Derailment, since the original purpose of the character was that he had no Freudian Excuse. 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 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 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: humanity hates him because of his deformity, so he hates humanity. The Phantom adaptation gives more of a backstory to this: 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 The Catcher In The Rye, 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 David Copperfield 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 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 A Game Of Universe has a more subtle Freudian Excuse for his background. His childhood (born on a hellhole of a planet, dad killed his 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 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 Promotions.
- A kind of subversion, based on going into more details. In Artemis Fowl 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 Kirk's tendency to Find A Third Option is explained in various Star Trek novels as being a result of surviving the mass executions on Tarsus IV (from the TOS episode "Conscience of the King") as a boy. It also probably explains his not believing in the Kobayashi Maru and the No-Win Scenario.
- Pretty much every single villain from Warrior Cats, 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 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 Disappeared Dad, while his obsession with dominating death came from his witch mother's Death By Childbirth.
Live Action TV
- Every single Libby — no exceptions. It just may be the most common Warped/Broken Aesop in children's programming.
- The original Libby on Sabrina The Teenage Witch: In the Chained Heat episode, Sabrina learns Libby's mother is a distracted snob who doesn't pay any attention to her.
- Kim Possible: In the Chained Heat episode "Bonding," Kim discovers that Bonnie is a jerk because she's constantly being bullied by her even more obnoxious older sisters. Bonnie remains as much of a jerk as ever afterward.
- For the male version, this was done to Flash Thompson in Spider Man, 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 mole in Hamas. 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 Girl Talk - the only sympathetic character in Stacey The Great's clique was shown to be The Unfavorite 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 Camp Rock, Tess' almost-instantaneous Heel Face Turn 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 Broken Aesop 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):
- Ben later killed him. He didn't seem too bothered by it.
- Sawyer is a perhaps more artful execution of Freudian Excuse. 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 Freudian Excuse backstories...who, amazingly, become if anything more badass afterwards.
- Veronica Mars 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, Logan's father—a murderer himself—claims that it was his father's abuse which made him who he is.
- Even more blatantly, Cassidy Casablancas is a psychotic mass-murdering teenager due largely to the physical and emotional abuse of his father and older brother.
- I thought it was because he was raped by his Little League coach.
- The show also has a Lampshade Hanging. 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 Pet The Dog moment.
- Degrassi Junior High 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 Degrassi High.
- Stephanie (The Libby) has an overprotective, very conservative mother, which makes Stephanie want to be the glamorous, all-powerful vixen at school.
- Joey, the Ted Baxter, has clueless, weak parents.
- Liz, a non-protagonist 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 Parent Ex Machina. (This was a conscious decision by the show's creators, who wanted parents to appear as little as possible.)
- Degrassi The Next Generation uses the Freudian Excuse almost as much:
- Liberty, the resident Control Freak, has pushy parents who had impossibly high expectations for her, and no expectations at all for her pesky little brother.
- Alex in Degrassi The Next Generation 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 Law And Order Special Victims Unit, which never holds back on the Lampshade Hanging:
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 Law And Order Criminal Intent, most famously with Goren's ex-FBI profiler mentor '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 dad's torture tapes to test potential boyfriends right before making out also had something to do with it... Another example is Stephen Colbert's master forger 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 Doctor Who, 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 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 for 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 Red Dwarf; he has numerous elements in his back-story that could be used to excuse his actions as an adult - his 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 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 (what a guy!), a brave hero that causes women (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 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? "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.
- As mentioned above under Literature, Dexter plays this trope straight with the title character.
- Supernatural's Bela 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 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, 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 Criminal Minds. 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. 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 Freudian Excuse 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]
- 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.
- Stephen Colbert's Freudian Excuses 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.
- 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 Murphy Brown'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 in the fourth season, he's not exactly incorrect.
- Parodied in Third Rock From The Sun — 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 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 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.
- Law And Order: 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.
Music
- In West Side Story 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 They Might Be Giants 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."
Table Top RPG
- It's a long story, but the story behind the githzerai and githyanki in Dungeons And Dragons 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 the Imperium of Man down into the nightmare that it is today is the result of one very long, very brutal series of FreudianExcuses.
Theatre
Video Games
- Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII 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 Cosmic Horror couldn't have helped, either.
- Just about everything regarding Squall's screwed-up mental state in Final Fantasy VIII can be traced back to separation issues at a very young age when Ellone was taken away from him at the orphanage. Compounded by an apparent complete lack of emotional support following 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 Final Fantasy IV gives this to Golbez. His fater was killed by the town for teaching magic, his mother died giving birth to 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 Final Fantasy X, Maester Seymour Guado. In a nutshell, 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 looks like this◊. 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
very mildly understandable reason for his desire to conquer Hyrule and claim the Triforce: 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 Fire Emblem 7, but his father Desmond hated him. This hatred, 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.
- First Encounter Assault Recon's entire storyline is one giant Freudian Excuse in which the main villain, Paxton Fettel, sets out to 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 Alma's own father, Harlan Wade.
- Prince Luca Blight from Suikoden II is one of the nastiest, evilest, and most badass villains ever conceived. He makes some pretty good attempts at subverting Infant Immortality, 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 Sealed Evil In A Can to depopulate a large city completely. However... 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.
- 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 Star Control II, the Ur-Quan reveal that their entire race has a Freudian Excuse: 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 Anti Villain. The Big Bad black Ur-Quan, on the other hand, just want to kill everyone.
- Word Of God 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 Sam And Max 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, Mephistopheles asked Dr. Glening why he was so insistant on wanting a 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 magic-based homeland was invaded, and he was forced to eat his own parents 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 Complete Monster.
- Basically the entire point of Psychonauts is Raz going into various people's minds and fighting their FreudianExcuses. In addition, you can break open vaults and see film-strips that detail important parts of that character's childhood, often revealing their Freudian Excuse.
- 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-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 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 Raz's and Oleander's Freudian Excuses combined, essentially a grotesque combination of their fathers.
- It's a fairly common theme in the Metal Gear 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 Ghost Babel, 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 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 all that entails, but this has never actually been outright confirmed or disproven.
- In Silent Hill 4, we have Walter Sullivan. He's a Serial Killer who was (a) thrown out by his spousally abusive father, (b) raised by the Order, and all that that implies, (c) watched his friend being forced to eat leeches by a Complete Monster, (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 having malicious drivers splash him with mud puddles. It's at this point one starts to wonder if his behavior really is excusable.
- Tactics Ogre: the Knight of Lodis is an entire game of [1] 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 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). Most recently, his Voodoo Pox also seems to be a possible source of his evil.
Web Comic
- In The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob, Galatea had a horrible childhood. Even if it did only last a month.
- In El Goonish Shive, 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 rare disease, was, beneath her Perky Goth 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 already 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.
Web Original
- Mariavel Varella, the primary villain of Survival Of The Fittest v2, has something of a Freudian Excuse 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 Tales Of MU: "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 Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series, 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?!"
- Stalker With A Crush Zaboo from The Guild. Dead father, Mother From Hell, it's amazing he isn't more messed up than he is. Although he's pretty damn messed up.
Western Animation
- Avatar The Last Airbender 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 mother killed his grandfather the night she disappeared in order to keep her husband from killing Zuko, and his father not only publicly ridiculed him when giving him his trademark scar and banishment from home, but is voiced by Mark Hamill. Let the Star Wars parallels begin! (Even his voice actor couldn't deny it.)
Azula: "My own mother... thought I was a monster." [perks up] "She was right, of course, but it still hurt!"
- In 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, 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 Phineas And Ferb 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 Danny Phantom, pretty much all of Vlad's evil tendencies were blamed on the pivotal portal experiment in college. This worked well until the writers stopped caring about his character.
- The eponymous Dr. Thaddeus S. 'Rusty' Venture of The Venture Brothers 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!"
- Drawn Together lampshades this in the song "Who's Afraid of a Bully" from the episode "Requiem for a Reality Show".
- In Transformers Animated, 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 jerks who went as far as unscrewing his legs then locking him inside a locker. It didn't help that his Drill Sergeant was 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 (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 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 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 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 Ignored Epiphany. This trope is outright averted with the other main villain, Xanatos, who by all accounts had an idyllic childhood but wound up a wealthy Diabolical Mastermind anyway. He's still not entirely unsympathetic.
- Most, if not all, of Batman's rogues gallery, as well as 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 Jerk Jock 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 Meet The Robinsons 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 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.
Real Life
- The Freudian Excuse 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 The Other Wiki, "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.
- 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 actions, Adolf Hitler had an abusive father.
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