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Abusive Parents / The DCU

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The DCU

Abusive Parents in this franchise.
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    Comic Books 

Comic Books

The following have their own pages:

  • Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld: While not his biological father, the treatment Carnelian receives from Opal is nothing shy of abusive.
  • Blood Syndicate: The Jade Emperor is this to both Kwai and the Demon Fox, and not only the worst abusive parent in the Milestone universe but possibly one of the worst in all fiction. The Jade Emperor has condemned both his daughters to seventy-seven cycles—77 full lifespans—of eternal torture, death and misery for literally no other reason than to have a cheap game for him and his immortal buddies to gamble on. When Kwai manages to reach her father and beg him to break the cycle, the Jade Emperor opts to murder her instead.
  • Blue Beetle: Brenda from the Jaime Reyes run. Her father reportedly knocked her around on a regular basis at first, but then upped the ante and put her in the hospital when the police questioned her about Jaime's disappearance, causing Brenda's crime boss aunt to have him killed.
  • Deathstroke: Slade Wilson. Even putting aside how he was heavily involved in the deaths of both of his sons, you could make a case for this solely for Slade's youngest child. Rose Wilson has spent most of her life since her dad discovered her existence trying to deal with his epic-scale emotional manipulations. After rejecting her at first, he stormed back into her life by having her foster family killed and her kidnapped. Then he lured her into being his apprentice and injected her with the same super-soldier serum that gave him his meta-human fighting abilities (crossing over into Physical Abuse as such). Rose eventually had a psychotic break and carved out her own eye to prove her loyalty to him.
    • Again, crosses over into physical abuse when Deathstroke implants a chunk of kryptonite (which can still give humans cancer) in her eye socket so he could use her as a weapon against Superman.
      • It should be noted that since Rose had all of Deathstroke's abilities thanks to him giving her his serum, she was also immortal and immune to cancer. Either the writer forgot that his healing factor was that powerful or Nightwing straight up lied to her.
    • Deathstroke (Rebirth) shows he was verbally and physically abusive to (at least) his eldest son Grant. His relationship with his surviving children is also bad, with nearly every interaction he has with Rose and Joseph brimming with insults and scorn. His ally Wintergreen suggests that he does genuinely love them, he just has no capacity to express it in a healthy way. As demonstrated by putting out a hit on Rose so he could foil it and spend time with her trying to solve it, his attempts to help Joseph when he accepts a deal from the Legion of Doom, and his actions in the Lazarus Contract arc, where he risks time itself in an attempt to save Grant. He cannot express affection in any normal way.
  • Doom Patrol:
    • Dorothy Spinner's parents kept their daughter isolated on their farm because of her ape-like appearance, plus Mrs. Spinner once told her daughter after she was mocked by other children for menstruating in front of them that she should've been aborted, which became a lot worse in retrospect after John Arcudi's run retroactively established that the Spinners were Dorothy's adoptive parents.
    • Rachel Pollack's run shows that Niles Caulder's mother constantly belittled him and insulted his Geek Physique
  • Firestorm: Jason Rusch was physically abused by his father.
  • The Flash
    • Wally West didn't exactly have the best parents. His father Rudy demanded to be given the love that he never got as a child from his family and his mother was too worried about appearances than being a mother. In addition, both of them frequently told him that he'd never amount to anything, and to give up on any dreams he might have had. Rudy was also physically abusive, hitting Wally when he got angry. This continued into Wally's adulthood, with both of them only contacting Wally to guilt and manipulate him into doing what they wanted, with Rudy even striking him physically at one point. This led to Wally basically breaking off all contact with them after his mother's wedding to her second husband. This abuse was actually a retcon due to Crisis on Infinite Earths, and early comics portrayed Wally and both of his parents as rather close.
      • Rudy, along with Iris and Daniel, was also a victim of a physically abusive father in New 52.
    • Some of the Rogues had abusive parents.
      • Captain Cold and Golden Glider grew up with a physically abusive father. Years later, Cold had the chance to kill his dad, but couldn't bring himself to do it and let Heat Wave do the honors.
      • The first Captain Boomerang grew up with an abusive father and mother.
    • Eobard Thawne, on the other hand, had abusive parents who conceived him merely for research, favor his brother, and treat him with cold disdain. This is all emotional neglect, but it crosses the line to abuse when they slap him for getting angry at his younger brother's tantrums.
  • Green Arrow:
    • Lian Harper's mother Cheshire is an emotionally abusive kind. She initially had Lian for the sake of tormenting Roy Harper after he walked out on her, intending to taunt him with the fact that he wouldn't know what his child looked like, her name, or her gender. When Roy gained custody of Lian, this started a trend of Jade consistently disrupting their lives and using her position as Lian's mom to exert some control on Roy. It finally reached a point when, during her stint in the Secret Six, Jade conceived a replacement child when Lian's well-being was exploited to make her stay on the team.
      • How much Jade truly cares about Lian and Roy is Depending on the Writer. She did try to resurrect Lian after her death and has asked Nightwing to take care of Lian. She also did leave Lian with Roy to genuinely protect her.
    • Stanley and His Monster's appearance in the story arc Quiver sees Stanley's grandfather and namesake as this as he was a Satanist who wanted to sacrifice his first born infant to a demon to gain immortality, and wasn't any better to his grandson, starving and torturing Stanley. This culminated in Spot, the "Monster" of the duo, giving Stanley Sr. a well-deserved death and mindwiping Stanley to save his sanity.
  • Hawkman: The villainess Hummingbird had one of these in the form of a super-fanatical Granola Girl. The most well-known thing about Hummingbird's mom is that she stabbed Hummingbird's father 47 times, killing him in the process, for the "crime" of cooking pancakes for himself and Hummingbird. Hummingbird's eventual response was to tie mom up in bed and then burn her to death. It's unclear if she was awake or not at the time, though.
  • Jonah Hex: Jonah's father Woodson Hex abused his son both emotionally and physically and ultimately sold him as a slave to the Apaches.
  • Justice League of America: Felix Faust manages to be the worst father in comics with one act: selling his infant son's soul to a demon for power. Luckily (well, sorta), the demon Nebiros decided to screw over Felix and gave the kid the power instead — after taking the soul. Turning your own son into a soulless abomination of the universe in a selfish bid for more power takes abuse to a whole new level.
  • Justice Society of America:
    • Obsidian's adoptive father was physically abusive when he was drunk. Unfortunately, he was drunk all the time. During his time as a villain, Obsidian killed said adoptive father.
    • Damage has something of an emotional breakdown in Titans (1999) when he reveals to Roy and Lian that he was sexually abused by his foster dad (alongside physical and emotional abuse).
  • New Gods: Darksied is all over this trope. He has 3 known sons, all of whom he treats badly to various degrees. He feels nothing but contempt for Kalibak, ignoring, mocking, and blasting him with Omega Beams whenever it suits him. His other son Grayven is an outcast. He treats his daughter Grail almost as poorly, abusing her in order to use her as a weapon. Oddly enough, the son Darkseid favors most is Orion, the one he sent away to be raised by his enemies. This didn't stop Darkseid from killing Orion in the opening of Final Crisis.
    • Darkseid’s own parents were somehow worse than him, with his mother poisoning the only woman he ever loved, and his father…well, let’s just say there’s a reason Darkseid is as evil as he is.
  • Shazam!: In Shazam!: The New Beginning, Dr. Thaddeus Sivana is this toward his two children Beautia and Magnificus, and also to his nephew Billy Batson, whom he was given custody of so that he could inherit the boy's life insurance from his parents in order to fund his research.
  • Watchmen
    • Rorschach is subjected to this to quite some degree. In a flashback, we see his mother openly providing her services (she's a prostitute) in front of him, and when he wanders in by mistake, driving off her client, she slaps him across the face and says she should have had an abortion. Scarring stuff, indeed.
      • What he ended up seeing as a kid returns throughout the comic as a pattern on walls, in his childhood drawings, in various shapes (including the shape of his mask at times), and actually is echoed at the very end when Dan and Laurie make the same shadow in a far more peaceful situation. Additionally, Ozymandias ends up alone, casting a singular shadow on the wall in contrast to the double ones shown throughout the book.
    • Speaking of Laurie, her parents — all three of them — are... not very good at it either. That said, at least two biological ones try. Sally Jupiter does regret their relationship and hopes Laurie will look past the more selfish aspects of her being a superhero stage mom, and the comic ends with her coming to grips with her bizarre parentage, and happily discussing wearing a costume like her father's.
  • Wonder Woman Vol. 3: Astarte put her daughter, Theana, through Training from Hell—forcing her to murder one hundred other children or starve—then kept her caged like an animal. When Diana starts getting through to Theana with her message of love Astarte orders her daughter executed.
  • Teen Titans: In Titans (1999), Wally is the only character whose relationship with his parents in the Lotus-Eater Machine isn’t relatively positive.
  • Teen Titans Go!: In the tie-in comics of the show, his daughter, Rose, appears. Questioned why does she have to follow her father's footsteps, she implies Slade had been anything but a kind father, raising her to become Deathstroke the Junior. And knowing already how Slade treats his apprentices, he probably didn't bother to spare her at least.
    Rose about Slade: I was groomed to be like him... trained to grow up to be just like him. This is who I am.
    Jinx: No, you have a choice... It doesn't have to be this way. You can choose to fight the Titans or fight on the same side.
    Rose: Choice? What choice? Even since I was a child, I was taught to hurt, to destroy... To fulfill my father's legacy...
  • Young Justice: Arrowette's mother is a former superheroine-turned-Stage Mom who tries to force Cissie into taking up her old mantle so that she can vicariously relive her "glory days". While Cissie eventually forgives her, she also makes a point of not living under her mother's roof.

    Films 

Films

  • One of The Joker's "scar stories" in The Dark Knight has Joker claiming that he got at least one of the Glasgow Grin scars from his drunken father as a child, after said father stabbed his mother to death right in front of him. He later implies that this particular story is his actual origin ("You know, you remind me of my father. I hated my father!")
  • DC Extended Universe:
  • Joker (2019): In a flashback, it is shown that Penny Fleck's boyfriend used to severely beat her son Arthur, all the while she did nothing about it. Realizing this brings Arthur further into madness and it becomes a key factor of him becoming The Joker.
  • In the Superman: Doomsday movie, an adaptation of the Death Of Superman arc, Lex Luthor makes a clone of Superman that quickly gets into Beware the Superman territory. However, he keeps doing whatever Lex tells him, as he was programmed to do—including, in one of his early scenes, just standing there and taking it when Luthor has him walk into a red-sun chamber and then whales on him mercilessly with kryptonite-knuckled gauntlets while screaming out his frustration with Superman for dying and leaving him. Later he has the classic Abusive Parents line "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it."
    • This is all especially chilling because it's presumably what would have happened to the comics character Kon-El, Conner Kent, Post-Crisis Superboy, if Luthor's experiments had run a little more smoothly.
    Lex: WHO'S YOUR DADDY?
    • The clone is all Knight Templar, so he goes rogue from Lex after that, and the first thing he does is dig the kryptonite bomb out of his skull with laser vision (incidentally, apparently the hemispheres of his brain aren't linked?), and then he saves Lois and Jimmy from Lex...and then rather horribly slaughters Lex's incipient clone army, ranging from oversized fetuses to nearly-mature specimens, with the ironic comment "Evil Supermen? Not on my watch!" The line of clones at the stage of development Conner was when he entered the scene were especially nasty to see die, although it was obvious as soon as they were introduced that they'd all have to be massacred somehow.
  • Wonder Woman: Bloodlines: In a rather direct contrast to the source material "Mothers are Bad" appears to be a consistent motif in the film. Hippolyta banished Diana after she decided to help Steve Trevor, Julia was immensely strict and negligent with Vanessa to the point that watching her treat Diana differently drove her mad with jealousy, Pasiphae made her own son the Minotaur into an eternal brainwashed guardian of her shrine, and Veronica Cale describes her own mother as an alcoholic with an "icy glare".

    Live-Action TV 

Live-Action TV

  • Arrowverse: Lewis Snart in The Flash (2014) and Legends of Tomorrow, a former corrupt cop and a thief. After going to jail for attempting to steal an emerald (or attempting to sell it to an undercover cop in the altered timeline), he comes out bitter and abusive to his kids. He starts to use his son Leo in jobs, beginning Leonard's own criminal career. Lewis clearly has no particular love for his children, perfectly willing to implant a bomb in his daughter's head in order to force his son to participate in his latest job. As soon as Cisco extracts the bomb from Lisa's head, Leo pays his father back by (literally) icing him with his cold gun. Later, when Leonard travels back to his childhood, he only holds back from shooting his old man because his sister hasn't been conceived yet.
  • Gotham Knights (2023)
    • Harper and Cullen ran away from home to escape their abusive father, an alcoholic who beat them.
    • Harvey Dent it turns out also had an abusive father with mental illness giving him totally different personalities, with one beating him for even the slightest thing and the other a perfect, loving man who'd been totally unaware of this.
    • As per canon, Stephanie Brown's father, and to a somewhat lesser extent her mother, are emotionally abusive. Later her mother slaps her as well.
  • Peacemaker (2022): Auggie Smith, the father of Christopher Smith / Peacemaker, raised his son as an assassin and constantly abuses him both emotionally and verbally, and it's implied he may have been physical with him as a child. This reaches a point where he takes the mantle of the White Dragon and tries to kill his son. Even worse is that he forced his two sons to fight for entertainment when they were kids, and blamed Peacemaker for accidentally killing his brother, something he held over him for years.
  • Smallville
    • Lex's dad, Lionel, withholds affection and approval from his son in the warped belief that it will make him stronger. Their tortured relationship is one of the keystones of the series, and ends very badly when Lex kills his dad. It is revealed in Season 3 that Lionel himself suffered physical abuse from his drunken, alcoholic parents, who sought to keep him down in the gutter with them, and prevent him from succeeding at anything; this is one of the reasons he's so oblivious to his abuse of Lex, as he thinks he has a firm grasp of what abuse looks like. And then there's Tess Mercer, whose real parents abandoned her and whose foster father broke her eardrums and arm through physical violence.
    • In Season 4, we meet Jason Teague, who's parents were also less than loving. His father, Edward, subjects him to Financial Abuse, disinheriting him when he sets off on his own. His mother, Evil Matriarch Genevieve is even worse, being more or less Lionel's Distaff Counterpart. She's emotionally manipulative of Jason and his girlfriend, whom she plans to murder in order to fulfill a prophecy; her control of Jason is so extreme that by the end of the season he's unwilling to do anything without seeking her permission first.
    • Then in Season 10, we meet Earth-2 Lionel, who is far worse than his Earth-1 counterpart, encouraging his kids to plot against one another for the privilege of being his Bastard Understudy, and eventually tries to have them all killed off at one point or another. Archnemesis Dad indeed.
  • Titans (2018):
    • Trigon and Slade, probably DC's most infamous examples, though none of them touch the epic-scale manipulations of their comic counterparts.
    • Angela Azarath manipulated her daughter and her friends into freeing Trigon.
    • Lionel Luthor is no slouch in this department, he was shown being physically abusive toward Lex Luthor, in his younger years.

    Western Animation 

Western Animation

  • DC Animated Universe
    • In Batman: The Animated Series, before he became Robin, Tim Drake's father worked for Two-Face and often left his son (who was under 13 years old) alone to fend for himself for long periods of time. When he double-crossed Two-Face, he abandoned his son to run away, only to be found killed outside of Gotham.
    • Batman Beyond
      • "Hidden Agenda" featured a student whose mother had unbelievably high standards for him. When he got a 2391 out of 2400 on the annual exam, 2nd best in the school, she told him flat out he was a horrendous failure ("That just makes you the winning loser") who would never get ahead in life. Any sympathy is lost, however, when he's revealed to be a rather psychotic leader of a gang of Jokerz. Then again, his mother may have caused his psychosis, as evidenced by the fact that many of his acts as gang leader are to try and get rid of the one person who is academically better than him.
      • Willie Watt consistently suffers ridicule from his father for being a "wimp" who can't physically stand up to the bullies at school. Then, Willie gets a hold of his father's construction golem, develops a psychic link to it, and uses it to trash a party after one more humiliation causes him to snap. When his father, tracking the golem's disappearance, finds Willy and berates him once again, Willy proceeds to turn the golem on him. Batman saves the day, but the end result shows that the father is still a major Jerkass.
      Mr. Watt: Well, at least he ain't a wimp no more. (Batman gives him a disgusted glare before leaving)
      • In the next episode featuring Willie, it's shown that Willie is detained in a high security juvenile center and is in fact very muscular and aggressive (what his father always wanted him to be). The guard who escorts Terry tells him that many in fact fear Willie and says that not even his father has visited him and that Terry is his first visitor.
      • The King and Queen of the Royal Flush Gang also fit the bill. They're clearly more concerned about Ten pulling her weight in the gang above everything else, with King outright berating her and Queen emotionally manipulating her into staying. In their second appearance, they faked their own kidnapping just to see how far Melanie would go to prove her loyalty. To be fair to Queen though, she at least is willing to speak to Melanie using her real name, and in their third appearance, she's still upset about Melanie leaving for good. But King isn't any better towards Jack, backhanding Jack in their debut and final appearances for a smart-alack remark and mentioning Ten respectively. Their final appearance also has him leave Jack behind and prevent Queen from rescuing Jack.
      • Derek Powers exiled his own son Paxton to do his grunt work and taught him to care about nothing but seizing power. The episode in which Paxton is introduced demonstrate the consequences of raising a son this way.
      • The computer program based on Robert Vance’s brainwaves is unconcerned with the death of Vance’s son and tries to pull a Grand Theft Me on his grandson. It’s possible that the program went rogue or failed to get Vance’s humanity, but otherwise Vance would qualify.
  • Being a show about supervillains, this trope appears throughout Harley Quinn (2019) and is played for both laughs and drama.
    • Harley Quinn's parents were emotionally abusive throughout her younger years, and try to kill her in the present day for a bounty.
    • Poison Ivy's father was emotionally and physically abusive, belittling her for not having any friends during her One-Person Birthday Party on at least one occasion and killing her "pet" ficus before beating her after she caught him sleeping with the maid.
    • Doctor Psycho's teenage son Herman angrily lists off the things he did to make his life a living hell such as locking him in the basement, murdering his friends, and naming him Herman. However, the two of them make up after Psycho explains that he did it all in order to make him a better supervillain out of love.
    • The Joker, being The Joker, keeps his past a mystery but during a group therapy session at Arkham being asked about his family was enough to make him murder the psychologist working there before Harley. When Harley questions him on this, he steals Ivy's maid story above but replaces her plant with a ferret (much to Harley's annoyance after discovering this in the present day, as she had bought him ferret paraphernalia for years).
    • Kite Man's parents resent him for not being born with superpowers like them and talk down to him at every opportunity. He put up with their verbal abuse his whole life but finally learns to stand up for himself through Ivy's encouragement.
  • Dr. Mar Londo from Legion of Super Heroes (2006) manages to be physically and emotionally abusive towards his only son Timber Wolf. For starters, he performed illegal genetic experiments on his son, transforming him into a werewolf-like monster, and in Season 2, he implants nanites into his son's brain, driving him insane and using him to kill a clone of his just so that he can get Timber Wolf to work with him again. The sad thing is, the photo Dr. Londo shows to the Legion in Timber Wolf's debut episode seems to imply that he wasn't always abusive.
  • Teen Titans (2003): Arguably, the best thing Trigon ever did for his daughter was staying out of her life for as long as he did, and while he never actually lays a finger on her, he threatens her friends instead. Thus, Raven's dad convinces her to essentially commit suicide in a ritual that will let him break out of his prison dimension and turn the planet into slag and lava, which works for a staggering three episodes.
  • Teen Titans Go!: From what we see of Robin's life prior to forming the Titans, the show's version of Batman could give ASBAR Batman a run for his money as a bad guardian. Robin's bedroom at Wayne Manor looks like a dungeon, despite being the adopted son of the one the wealthiest men in the world he lives in Perpetual Poverty, he recalls Batman forcing him to give him a foot massage and when the Titans mess up the Batcave, Robin has what looks like a PTSD episode where he acts out Batman berating and even striking him. It's all played for Black Comedy, but if the show was just a little more serious and Robin was a little more sympathetic, it would be one of the darkest takes on the character.
  • From Young Justice (2010)
    • Word of God confirms Sportsmaster was both verbally and emotionally abusive to his daughters Artemis and Cheshire. He trained them to be assassins while giving them no sort of emotional love at all, and used to pit them against each other in fights. In addition, when Artemis is supposedly killed in a story arc, he's extremely upset... because she was killed without his permission and this will damage his reputation.
    • Lex Luthor definitely qualifies against Superboy. He's never anything less than polite and considerate, but that's the same treatment he gives to everyone else, and he won't hesitate to emotionally manipulate and outright set his Mooks on him. It's never made particularly clear whether or not he even thinks of Superboy as a son and just doesn't care, or whether he just assumes the role to get his weapon back in line.

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