Basic Trope: A villain or jerk denies having a Freudian Excuse or doesn't justify his actions through it.
- Straight: Hiro asks Emperor Evulz if he's bent on world domination due to being abused by his parents. Evulz is overtly offended the suggestion, tersely denies that he cares about anything like that, and claims he just wants to take over the world because he feels like it.
- Exaggerated: Hiro asks Emperor Evulz if his reason for wanting to kill the entire human race is due to other's cruel treatment of him. Evulz angrily denies it, and then rants for several minutes about how it has absolutely nothing to do with him just want to kill everyone, dropping several Suspiciously Specific Denials along the way.
- Downplayed: Alice asks Bob if his family abusing him the reason for his rude, callous, and anti-social behavior. Bob denies this and states he's always been like this.
- Justified:
- Emperor Evulz has always been an immoral, sadistic individual.
- Emperor Evulz's upbringing did lead him to a path of darkness, but feels that it would be shameful to use his past trauma or upbringing as an justification for his evil deeds.
- Alternatively, Emperor Evulz is oblivious to or in denial about the traumas his dysfunctional upbringing inflicted on him, and believes that his childhood was "completely normal", and he is more offended at the implication that it wasn't (if mostly — or even only — because pretending it was "normal" is somewhat of a coping mechanism for him).
- Emperor Evulz believes that the harsh treatment his parents gave him was an acceptable form of parenting from the culture he grew up in.
- Emperor Evulz thinks Hiro may sympathize him for his childhood traumas, which he doesn't want.
- Emperor Evulz thinks his suffering was a case of Misery Builds Character.
- Emperor Evulz's parents, while they wanted him to become an Evil Overlord just like them, they still raised him surprisingly well for villains. It's a common Berserk Button for him if his opponents assume the way he is is because of some stupid "suffered awful parenting" backstory. In fact, Evulz' whole lineage was built on nothing but evil!
- Inverted:
- Hiro thinks that Emperor Evulz is evil because he had been handed a lot of things in life. Evulz denies this, and claims he's always an evil individual.
- Evulz points to a Freudian Excuse to justify his actions, but Hiro refuses to accept this.
- Subverted: Evulz's Freudian Excuse gets questioned. He tried to deny it, but is forced to accept it.
- Double Subverted: Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse
- Parodied: Emperor Evulz lists off all sorts of things that previously happened in his Hilariously Abusive Childhood, but claims they just made him give up on an excuse for being too confusing.
- Zig-Zagged: Evulz has a Multiple-Choice Past and actually seems to change his mind about what caused him to be evil on several occasions.
- Averted: Emperor Evulz admits that the cruel treatment of his parents growing up was the reason he had gone to a start of darkness.
- Enforced: The writers wanted to be subversive.
- Lampshaded: "Maybe there's a reason, maybe not. Would it have stopped me anyway?"
- Invoked: Knowing he won't get any sympathy from others for his dark childhood, Evulz denies it as the reason for his evil.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- Evulz's therapist makes clear that while there is no big "stressor" that made him jump off the slope and become evil, there are still a million little inconveniences that subconsciously moulded his want to get even with the world.
- "If the reason you killed my entire family was because my dad stiffed you five cents on the price for a carton of eggs, that still counts as a Freudian Excuse, you son of a bitch."
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Played for Laughs:
- Evulz's denial that there was no reason for him to be evil other than maybe "I just felt like it" causes the grand encounter between heroes and villain to be punctured by a Failed Attempt at Drama ("Really? Not even being a bit annoyed at getting a 'B' in Algebra some time?" "No." "You son of a-!")
- Evulz says that he has no Freudian Excuse at all, only for everybody else in the room (from his Arch-Enemy to the programmer of the social media application Evulz likes to use) to point out the many ways that his life has been influenced in minute, interrelated ways. Evulz reacts to the fact that he does has a Freudian Excuse with the same gravitas (or lack of one) as being told his greatest enemy is secretly his father.
Evulz: (gets on his knees, howls to the heavens) NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!- When Hiro tries to invoke Evulz's backstory, Evulz melodramatically mocks the whole idea in a faux-tragic speech.
- Implied: When Hiro discovers Evulz's tragic backstory and tries to appeal to him, Evulz wordlessly attacks him.
- Played For Drama: Hiro refuses to kill anyone and hopes to reform Evulz by addressing his past trauma. He's very upset when Evulz refuses his pleas, meaning Hiro must kill him.
Back to Freudian Excuse Denial
