History Main / PsychopathicManchild

* [[MultiethnicName Marlowe Viccellio]] from ''{{Psych}}''. Apparently a normal woman when we first meet her, she is arrested for stealing blood [[JustLikeRobinHood (it was to save her brother's life)]] and sent to a California women's prison, where she quite abruptly turned into this. Given the nature of the show, this is PlayedForLaughs, with a scene of Marlowe acting cute and flirty with her boyfriend [[StarCrossedLovers (ironically, a police detective)]] when he comes to visit her and then, ''seconds later'', joining the rest of the inmates in a violent attack on the guards when they start a riot during a prison variety show. This could just be Marlowe trying to fit in and/or survive, since as a mere thief she's not as intimidating as the other women; however, this is never explicitly stated.

** In ''Film/BatmanReturns'', the Penguin spends a good deal of screentime wearing only a onesie-like garment stained with his own spittle and slobber. Furthermore, he rides around in a giant toy rubber-duck vehicle and amuses himself with an umbrella (among his collection of genuinely deadly ones) hung with little plastic animals reminiscent of a mobile found in a baby's crib. ("Shit! Picked the cute one!") This actually proves to be a subversion, since the Penguin is actually a quite sane and intelligent (though, again, extremely evil) man who simply has not been able to grow up because of his DaddyIssues.

** In the side materials, it's strongly implied that there's a pretty good reason for this: [[spoiler: seventeen-year-old Nena was kept in stasis almost from birth... and only woke up around ''seven'' years before the series starts. She's basically [[spoiler: a little girl in the body of a teenager]]; such stuff does a LOT in the mental/emotional maturity of '''anyone'''.

A: Be big DumbMuscle, frequently mentally-challenged, that operates under someone else's direction. This type may be the most famous, and also the most likely to [[JerkassWoobie play to the audience's sympathy]]. Expect him/her to try to PetTheDog, often with [[AndCallHimGeorge disastrous results]]. Could be a subversion of DumbIsGood.

B: Seem superficially powerful and cruel, but have very childish or simplistic goals or motivations. May overlap with OneOfTheKids--''if'' the cruelty part isn't played up to horrifying levels.

C: Actually possess a lot of power, intelligence, and/or prestige, but also have some childish qualities or behaviors, to fit in with a certain aspect of the story being told, or else advertise that there is something seriously wrong with him/her, to make him/her [[NightmareFuel creepier]]. These are most likely to be a story's BigBad.

D: This one is a literal example: Appear [[MoeMoe cute and harmless]] on the surface, but actually [[CuteAndPsycho be this trope]]. Especially common with female examples, because of [[TheIngenue the stereotype]].

E: Be subject to a personal variation of ValuesDissonance where violent, savage actions are viewed by the character in question in the same light as regular play is viewed by most real children. This variant is often an especially strong source of NightmareFuel due to the uncanny dissonance between his/her childish demeanor and the viciousness of his/her actions.

F: Be completely or largely inexplicable, and the discrepancy between the different parts of their personality PlayedForLaughs.

* Amygdala, a minor {{Batman}} villain.
** It's a bit of a stretch, but technically you can call most of {{Batman}}'s RoguesGallery this. Two-Face, Riddler, Calendar Man, Scarecrow (kinda), Firefly, Maxie Zeus... seeing as how psychology-driven {{Batman}} is, it makes sense that all of his villains would be so simply motivated. Most of them are just trying to prove something to Bats, making them the "Childish Motivations" breed.

* Most of the villains in the [[TimBurton Burton]] / [[JoelSchumacher Schumacher]] ''{{Batman}}'' series.
** It's almost obligatory to depict TheJoker this way, but the 1989 film takes it a step further by showing him as the apparently sane (but still very, ''very'' evil) Jack Napier prior to his transformation. In between the vicious murders he committed as Napier and then continues to commit as the clown he becomes, the Joker "punches out" two television sets with a gag boxing glove, blows into a birthday-party noisemaker (possibly the film's single funniest scene), obsessively cuts up photographs to make collages of them, hosts a parade with giant cartoon-character balloons, makes funny sound effects with his mouth, and sends the woman he's stalking a note written in crayon.
** In ''BatmanReturns'', the Penguin spends a good deal of screentime wearing only a onesie-like garment stained with his own spittle and slobber. Furthermore, he rides around in a giant toy rubber-duck vehicle and amuses himself with an umbrella (among his collection of genuinely deadly ones) hung with little plastic animals reminiscent of a mobile found in a baby's crib. ("Shit! Picked the cute one!") This actually proves to be a subversion, since the Penguin is actually a quite sane and intelligent (though, again, extremely evil) man who simply has not been able to grow up because of his DaddyIssues.

** Near the climax of ''BatmanForever'', the Riddler and Two-Face play a game of ''Battleship'' that uses ''real'' torpedoes - and the Batboat (piloted by Robin) is their target.

* ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'': The Ice King has shades of Type B and E, though he's a mostly [[PlayedForLaughs lighthearted]] example, [[HarmlessVillain mostly harmless]] despite his habit of [[AndNowYouMustMarryMe kidnapping princesses]]. [[spoiler: Then the story takes a [[FunnyAneurysmMoment much darker twist]] when [[WasOnceAMan his]] [[TorturedAbomination origins]] [[WhamEpisode are revealed]], and [[FallenHero how far he's fallen]] from [[HappyFlashback the man he once was]].]]

->''"Got no friends :(. How much sex didn't I hate today?"''
--> -- '''Eddie "no mates"'''

* Walter Sullivan from ''SilentHill 4''. He [[spoiler: kills people because he believes that he can resurrect his "mom" that way.]]
** Eddie from ''SilentHill2'' also works.

** In the side materials, it's strongly implied that there's a pretty good reason for this: [[spoiler: sseventeen-year-old Nena was kept in stasis almost from birth... and only woke up around ''seven'' years before the series starts.]] Obviously, such stuff does a LOT in the mental/emotional maturity of '''anyone'''.

* We have The Beloved in ''{{Bayonetta}}''. Big and stupid with cherubic masks on their hideous heads. There are no pretty angels in this game.

* Baby Firefly from the ''Houseof1000Corpses'' films. She cuts the heads off of dolls and nails them to the wall, has a childish high pitched voice and giggle, and recited the Rabbit Hutch rhyme while murdering a woman that she put in a rabbit suit.

* Prince Charming in ''{{Shrek}} the Third''.
* Butterfinger, the DumbMuscle of the group of rogue CIA agents in ''HudsonHawk''. At one point, when the other agents are complaining about how long Hawk is taking with his LoveInterest, Butterfinger asks, "You want me to rape 'em?" There's a long, uncomfortable silence, and then one of the other agents hands Butterfinger a book to distract him. It's DrSeuss's ''GreenEggsAndHam'', which Butterfinger seems to struggle with.
* Creator/CharlieChaplin's ''TheGreatDictator'''s depiction of Hitler is of this trope, as evidenced by how he interacted with his "globe."
* Stuntman Mike in ''DeathProof''. He puts on a suave act, but at his core he's a vindictive juvenile who gets off on doing cruel things to people. His demeanor in the last act, when he comes across some women who fight back, is that of a kid whose prank has backfired on him.

* The backwoods rapists in ''{{Deliverance}}'' might qualify as an example of Type E. They're so deformed due to inbreeding that it's easy to imagine they're mentally retarded as well, and don't understand that sodomy is wrong or cruel. After one of them forces one of the campers to strip down to his underpants (or "pannies", as the hick creepily refers to them) and then mounts the victim, he pretends he's riding on the back of a pig, playing rather than committing a horrible crime. This would lend an AlternateCharacterInterpretation to the hicks when they turn even more violent after the campers kill the rapist in self-defense: in their simple minds, they're acting out of righteous anger (or perhaps even self-defense themselves) that these city-slickers would murder one of their own for no reason when they were just trying to have some fun.

* TheAngryVideoGameNerd showcases a bit of a Type F personality in his early-mid episodes.

* Ni Jianyi's pupil who is only known as Kami-sama in ''{{Saiyuki}}'' is a sadist who loves to toy with people while pleasantly torturing them (evident by "helping" Goku get rid of a pendant ball embedded in his leg). When the Sanzo group stormed his castle, he played games with them as if they were in an amusement park. They eventually found him in his room surrounded by stuffed animals [[spoiler: which were actually the souls of people he had stolen]]. And once he started to lose, he threw a temper tantrum.

* Russia in ''AxisPowersHetalia'' deftly combines this trope with StepfordSmiler and {{Yandere}}. He even has the same voice actor as [[Manga/FullmetalAlchemist Gluttony]].

*** His [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII successor]], although it's not quite as in-your-face, unless he's talking about his "mother."

** [[spoiler:Wheatley, anyone? By the end, at least?]]

* Given [[Characters/StarWars Palpatine's]] views in ''DarthPlagueis'', its strongly implied that Palpatine grew up to become a high functioning version of a PsychopathicManchild.

* The Warden from ''WesternAnimation/{{Superjail}}'' puts the ManChild in PsychopathicManchild. He acts his shoe size and is barely sane enough to even keep his emotions together. For example, in the pilot as the Warden sings and pets a dead rabbit, he ''rips its skin off'' in a moment of unprovoked aggression, then promptly puts the bloody skin on his head and orders Jared to get bunny suits for the inmates.

* The gimmick of Abyss in ''{{TNA}}'' is this trope. When he's a face, the sympathy is milked for all it's worth.
* Poor, poor AJ Lee. The AmbiguouslyBrown cutie was never the same after DanielBryan publicly dumped her [[FridgeBrilliance (although that blow to the skull she took from BigShow when he nearly broke her neck during a title match with Bryan might also have been a factor)]], and she quickly descended into a morass of self-pity and highly erratic behavior that eventually turned dangerous. Among her frightening deeds are [[AnythingThatMoves making sexual advances]] toward ''every'' man she comes across, wearing a red leather mask similar to {{Kane}}'s, putting both Bryan and CMPunk through a table for no apparent reason, and...[[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking skipping around girlishly in short shorts and a bikini top]].

* Gates from ''Lightnovel/FullMetalPanic'' is an over-emotional CloudCuckoolander who acts rather like a child throwing temper-tamtrums, and whose completely random actions would be [[LaughablyEvil hilarious]] if they didn't involve [[AxCrazy killing so many people]].

* Lennie Small in the Steinbeck novel ''Literature/OfMiceAndMen''. While he never means to hurt anyone, his mental handicap and brute strength lead him to [[AndCallHimGeorge accidentally commit manslaughter]].
** While all that is true he's not really the best example and may tend to subvert the trope on some levels, since unlike most of the examples on this page he ''never'' tries to do anything bad at all (most of the others do bad things on purpose and may or may not know that what they're doing is wrong).

* DanielTosh's [[{{Tosh0}} television]] and {{stand-up|Comedy}} personas are very much Type C.