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Freudian Excuse / Anime & Manga

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Freudian Excuses in Anime and Manga.


  • Tetsuo Shima from AKIRA: 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 leader and best friend, Kaneda... he discovers he has power greater than all of them. And... cue his Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • Assassination Classroom: Nagisa's mother Hiromi was never allowed to dress up as a child, and failed to achieve the lofty goals she set for herself as an adult. This turned her into an abusive Control Freak and develop an obsession with having a daughter so she could live the life she always wanted through her. Forcing Nagisa to grow his hair long and crossdress at home so she can pretend he's a girl. She gets better and reconciles with her son and husband at the end of the series.
    • Principal Asano, surprsingly enough, gets one: He was originally a teacher like Koro-Sensei himself, but when one of his former students was Driven to Suicide by ruthless bullying, Asano blamed himself for not making his students "strong enough" to survive in the world. Thus, he created his modern, Social Darwinist style of teaching to instill "strength" in his students, at the expense of a few.
  • Aggretsuko: During one of his rare moments of civility, Director Ton tells Retsuko that back in his day, his own bosses treated him like crap and lazed off while he got stuck with the grunt work, and now that he's the boss he's ended up adopting their same tactics. He warns Retsuko that someday she may become the Mean Boss everyone hates, and while they still don't like each other it helps them find a little common ground.
  • Baccano!:
    • Czeslaw Meyer's 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 for two hundred years by his immortal guardian, who he had trusted. He actually struck back a lot sooner than that, but it was still a long period of the kind of torture where they do things no one could survive, Healing Factor activate, repeat.
    • Inverted with Ladd Russo: A tragic happening in his past (only very slightly) less of an Ax-Crazy lunatic — he's pickier about his targets now.
  • Battle Royale:
    • Mitsuko's background of her father, who loved her, having to abandon the family, then being raised by her mother who hated her husband and remarried, said stepfather beginning to sexually abuse her at a very, very young age and Mitsuko learning that Hurting Is Love and overall being very sexually experienced, and using it to her advantage to manipulate people is an explanation about why she is so okay with killing her classmates.
    • It almost sounds like Kiriyama has a similar excuse, when it's revealed that he was quite a normal, happy child but at around the age of 10, he ended up in a car accident that killed his mother and little brother but the excuse jumps out the window when it's revealed almost immediately after that he had brain surgery multiple times after the accident and is actually brain-damaged to the point that he can't tell right from wrong and just does what "might be fun" or ways to waste time.
  • Every major antagonist in Beastars has one (well, every major antagonist that has a name anyway). Special mention, however, goes to the final main antagonist Melon, because originally the whole point of his character was supposed to be that he doesn't have one. He was supposed to teach Legosi that not everyone has a valid justification for doing bad things and transition the story into darker, more action-heavy story lines. Then the author was forced to rush the end of the manga by her editors and Melon got upgraded from mid-boss to final boss so he got one of these. He was given a backstory where he had to provide for a mentally ill mother from a very young age, and also said mother ate his father. Or so she thinks anyway. He's actually fine and bailed on her and her unborn child.
  • A subtle example in Bio-Meat: Nectar. After the first timeskip. the newest member of the True Companions notices that the rest of his new friends are all vegetarians, a fact which surprises him. The reason? In the first story arc of the manga, the meat being used as a substitute for animals escapes and kills all their peers and families, and nearly kills them more than once as well.
  • Ax-Crazy Alois Trancy in the second season of Black Butler. Somehow his family was killed, after which he and his little brother had to live alone. Then his brother contracted a demon, who killed him along with everyone else in the village. This left him alone and easy prey for the old Earl Trancy, to whom he was made a sex slave, and all this before he was fourteen.
  • Black Lagoon:
    • The Creepy Twins Hansel and Gretel have a definite Freudian excuse for being so deeply, deeply broken, creepy, disturbing, sociopathic killers who are both 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 twisted characters in the show, and the most tragic.
    • In the anime, Revy grew up in an abusive household, and was apparently raped by a Dirty Cop.
  • Ax-Crazy genocidal maniac Gennai Doma from Black Lion swore to wipe out all ninjas off the face of the earth because a group killed his wife and nearly killed him.
  • Bleach:
    • Ichigo believes Aizen is the villain because he was such a powerful child he was completely isolated. In the end, because he can't make friends, he instead decides to dedicate himself to finding a Worthy Opponent who can match his power.
    • Ginjou is originally a Substitute Shinigami in service to Soul Society. Then he learns his Substitute Badge isn't an authority symbol but is in fact a surveillance device with a built-in kill-switch to monitor the Substitute for signs of them becoming a threat to Soul Society. Since the person who sells him this lie is the kindly, benevolent Ukitake, Ginjou takes the news badly, drops off the radar and begins plotting revenge against Soul Society. He thinks Ichigo will support him once he learns the truth, but instead discovers that Ichigo has figured out the truth for himself, believes that Ukitake deliberately dropped him a hint to allow him to figure out the truth for himself, and has accepted the situation as a practical precaution.
  • Blood+ 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 Ax-Crazy 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. She also steals his face.
  • It's stated in Boys over Flowers 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...
  • Claymore: Ophelia is the way she is because she saw her older brother get devoured by an Awakened Being and was driven to insanity in order to avenge him. The Awakened Being turned out to be none other than Priscilla who in turn has her own Freudian excuse for her behavior because she saw her family get eaten by a yoma who — just to add to the trauma — had killed her father and had taken possession of his body.
  • Code Geass:
    • Rolo Lamperouge starts off as a Tyke-Bomb 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 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.
    • Luciano Bradley, the show's absolutely vile Psycho for Hire, 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.
    • Emperor Charles and his brother V.V were witnesses to all the backstabbing, hatred and death surrounding the Britannian Imperial Family ever since they were young children. It culminated when they saw their mother get a carriage dropped on her, which spurred them to try create a world where people cannot lie to each other by way of Assimilation Plot.
    • Lelouch Lamperouge'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. However, it's subverted as Lelouch has sound political reasons for wanting to overthrow the empire, even if his desire to do so started from his mother's assassination... though a lot of his motivation comes from the opposite of what his father does — his father thinks that those who are weak are useless, and thus Lelouch (likely due to disgust with his father) incorporates the antithesis of his father's views into the Black Knights' slogan.
    • Suzaku Kururugi 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. Midway through the first season though, it is revealed that this is more of an excuse for him to put himself at risk in his pursuit of a so-called honorable death on the battlefield, in order to absolve himself of his guilt over going unpunished for killing his father.
    • Mao was a 6-year-old orphan when C.C. gave him a telepathic Geass, which ruined any chance of a remotely normal life. And then she deserted him when she was the only person he loved.
    • C.C. was an orphan at the time she received her geass. Her wish? To be loved. Said wish/geass becomes meaningless when Power Incontinence sets in, and with everyone fawning over her, she is not truly being loved for who she is. It only gets worse from there, as the nun who gave her the geass reveals she was just using her, as she passes on her code and dies, leaving C. C. with immortality and, feared by many to be a witch, having died quite possibly several thousands of times, an emotionless, cynical, distant shell of a human. It's little wonder why she has used other people in escaping her immortality, and in her skewed view of compassion, tried convincing them not to become too friendly, dependent, or trusting with her in order to protect them. (The Mao example, in particular; she loved him too much to allow her fate onto him, and wanted to shoo him off in order to make him more independent. Too bad it backfired spectacularly.) Ultimately, she overcomes this, if not the immortality, thanks to Lelouch's intervention.
  • 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.
  • Surprisingly the Gag Dub of Crayon Shin-chan gives one for Penny's and her mother's violent behavior by saying that her father abuses them. In the original no explanation was ever given for their violent outburst.
  • Death Note:
    • Misa Amane, a Serial Killer who generally shows no signs of sympathy for her victims nor hesitation to kill them. These people can be 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. This explains, but does not excuse, her behavior.
    • Subverted with Teru Mikami, an even crazier prosecutor turned serial killer whose victims include even the unemployed, eventually. However, when one looks at his past, we see that it was nothing more than a particularly bad case of middle school bullying that he blew way out of proportion, making it quite clear that there was something wrong with him from the beginning. To emphasize this, he's the only one to get a flashback sequence, reflecting how much he's obsessed with these events. Also, when his mother, and the bullies, died, he wasn't disturbed — simply viewed this as what was meant to happen.
    • Also in the second film, Light dies in Soichiro's (who, by the way, does not die here) arms, begging him to believe he acted as Kira to put TRUE justice, which the latter had told him about since childhood, into effect. Not much sympathy toward Light comes out of this excuse....but a LOT toward Soichiro does, as he breaks down crying once Light passes away after saying this.
    • Light also gets one in the TV drama, in which his mother died when he was young. Her death, combined with Soichiro's absence during the event, has lead to a strained relationship between them, amplified by the fact that Light is forced to act as a parental figure to Sayu due to their father's work.
  • Laios from Delicious in Dungeon hasn't spoken to his parents in ten years. It's implied that they consider him a disappointment for choosing a career as in Dungeon Crawling and so have cut ties.
  • Though merely a Jerkass, Kanda Yu of D.Gray-Man turns out to have a very good reason for being so aloof and cynical. Namely, months if not years of painful-to-lethal experiments. Additionally, he was created artificially and knows it, grew up with very little human affection, and was eventually forced to fight the closest thing to a friend he had to the death. However, other characters with incredibly traumatic backstories normally turn into The Pollyanna instead.
    • It gets worse. The Second Exorcist project, which Kanda is a product of, involved implanting the brains of dead Exorcists into new bodies, and he eventually started regaining memories of his own death. Kanda's life sucks so much that using an Exposition Beam to show someone his memories qualifies as Mind Rape.
  • In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, several tragic demons in the series have this going for them, but Gyutaro and Daki are the ones who vehemently justifies their evil ways with it; Gyutaro hates the world for dealing him such a terrible childhood where no one ever offered him any help or kindness, made worse by his own prostitute mother who hated him, often beating him; that hatred was passed on to Daki and she fully agreed with her brother, as no one helped her when she was burned alive for merely defending herself against a sleazy Samurai, nor answered Gyutaro's cry for help after finding out what happened to his sister. Turning into demons was the only help they ever got, with that both siblings say in unison what the name Gyutaro means: the debt collector, the prostitute manager who's only collecting from the world that hated them so much by killing the privileged ones who dare to have better lives than they did, and in their twisted minds their lives were so miserable that every single person out there is having it better, so killing anyone to sustain themselves is only right.
  • Dragon Ball Z:
    • The Funimation dub did this with Vegeta during his death scene on Namek, having him justify being evil by blaming Frieza for taking him as a child, saying "He made me what I am." As well as revealing that a good portion of this involved forced servitude (in other words, Frieza forced Vegeta into serving him because he threatened his father, and when he did everything for Frieza just to keep his dad alive, Frieza killed him anyway).
    • Broly technically has one as well, as apparently one of the reasons why he went Ax-Crazy was because of traumatic events relating to his birth — mostly Goku crying, although there was also the attempt on his life by King Vegeta (having one of his guards execute Broly by stabbing him in the stomach just because he feared his power level), and then being threatened with death by Freeza when he destroyed Planet Vegeta, and it is later implied in his first movie that he also destroyed several planets due to Paragus' influence (not to say he didn't destroy any planets before getting that control ring on him, but he certainly started destroying more planets than before as a result completely against his will).
  • Durarara!!:
    • Subverted where Shizuo is more than a little distraught that his anger issues aren't the result of abuse or childhood trauma.
      Shizuo: Why did I turn out like this? It wasn't my family. There was no childhood trauma I can think of. I never watched any violent anime or read violent manga. Didn't watch movies either. So that leaves only myself, doesn't it? It's gotta be me, right?
    • Played straight in Aoba's case. That guy is evil alright, but that comes from his childhood, when he was heavily abused by his elder brother. Whose room he burned down eventually.
  • Elfen Lied:
  • Eternal Sabbath: Izaku is a psychotic, serial-killing Enfant Terrible, but everyone who knows his past understands why. He was cloned from Shuro with the specific purpose of being murdered and dissected to study the ES gene. And he knew this from the moment he could understand language. It would be a shock if his mind hadn't shattered like spun sugar the moment he found this out.
  • Fairy Tail:
    • Laxus, one of the biggest Jerkasses (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 Laxus's father Ivan out of Fairy Tail for endangering his comrades. After that Laxus resented both his grandfather for valuing his True Companions more than his family and the concept of friendship that close and strong 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. He eventually got better.
    • Minerva has one too, though hers makes far more sense. Her father abused her while training, pounding into her head that Might Makes Right and all that jazz. Minerva acts the way she does because that's how she was taught, and it's greatly implied that deep down, she knew it was wrong, but didn't know how to stop.
    • Zeref lost the two most important people in his life, and their deaths shaped him into becoming the dreaded Black Wizard the world fears so much. His younger brother, Natsu, died alongside their parents in a dragon attack. Zeref loved him so much that he studied taboo magic in order to find a way to revive him, and was cursed by a god in the process. Constantly surrounded by death, he was ostracized by society and labeled "evil" as a result. Then there was Mavis. Mavis was one of the few to ever show him empathy and kindness. Eventually, she was cursed like he was, and became the only person who would ever be able understand him. They fell in love, and kissed — which killed her. Or rather, killed her body, leaving her a spirit only visible to members of Fairy Tail. Zeref, having been denied a chance at happiness with the person who brought light back into his world, knowing that she was still among the living but could not be a part of his life, continued his downward spiral and resolved himself to annihilate humanity.
  • Fist of the North Star has loads of these, Souther probably being the most accurate, based on his childhood-crappitude-to-adult-bastardry ratio. Sadly enough, this excuse gets completely omitted in the movies, in which he turns into a one-dimensional villain solely in it For the Evulz.
  • In Flame of Recca, Kurei hates Recca for just being born. Kurei was the Hokage heir, until his younger brother Recca was born. Two children of fire in the same generation is thought to be a bad omen, and Kurei was sentenced to death, and very nearly murdered for supposedly having an evil flame. Very incorrect, as it turns out Kurei has the most sacred flame that can be produced. He was fully innocent. Recca was the cursed flame holder. He was however spared at the last moment. But, he and his mother were forced to live on the village outskirts where they were ostracized. Oh yeah, and Kurei lost his entire clan and mother in a war in a single night. Even worse, when he arrived in the future and was taken in by a kind woman, he was abused, mentally and physically by her corrupt husband and conditioned into becoming an emotionless weapon.
  • The Fox & Little Tanuki: Senzou was abandoned by his parents and ostracized for being born with his powers, hunted constantly by wolves who wanted to kill him since they saw him only as a menace, and rejected from being given any form of protection even from other kitsune due to black foxes being considered evil and because he had to use his powers to defend himself. It's hard not to at least understand why he is the way he is, when nobody wanted to help him when he needed it and he has no choice but to provide for Manpachi the upbringing he never got to have.
  • In Fruits Basket, every character that's constantly in the strip has a Freudian Excuse, including minor characters.
    • Tohru, the main character, father unexpectedly died when she was only three, which caused her mother to ignore her completely for a period of time. At the start of the series, her mother was killed in a traffic accident.
    • Kyo, Tohru's boyfriend and later husband, had his mother commit suicide, with his father blaming Kyo not only for that but for all his misfortunes. Kyo believed that it was his fault for most of his life.
    • Yuki has a rather extreme version: His mother essentially sold him off to be Akito's playmate who was very temperamental, but worsened suddenly and began torturing him in various ways; such as locking him in a dark, windowless room for days, telling him how he was despised amongst the Zodiac, and how disgusted people would be of his Zodiac form. When a young Yuki sought out help from his family, he was ignored by both his brother and his mother, who at one point slapped him and told him to return to Akito.
    • Akito, the head of the Sohma clan, probably has the greatest Freudian Excuse of all of the characters. Akito was born a girl, and was horribly abused by her spiteful and jealous mother Ren. Ren threatened to abort the pregnancy if it was a girl unless her late husband agreed to raise them as a boy, ​since a daughter meant there was another woman Akira loved. Resentful over how much Akira loved being a father, upon his death, Ren began tormenting Akito, constantly saying that no one actually loved her and everyone would eventually abandon her. ​Thus the reason why Akito acts and dresses like ​boy, and why Akito became horribly abusive herself.
    • Subverted by Kimi, who had been bullied by some girls when she was younger. They told her that she should just use her looks to get boys to do what she wants. She follows their advice.
  • Fushigi Yuugi tosses this in at the moment the villain is defeated, and the heroes suddenly pity 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.
    • Also, in the 3rd OVA, Mayo Sakaki's excuse is that her parents are in the midst of (or recently had) a messy divorce, where they were always fighting, and then got involved with other people and never seemed to have time for Mayo. note  On top of that, she had unrequited feelings for her basketball coach. So, when given the opportunity to be considered important (the Priestess of Suzaku) and to get a fairy-tale ending with Tamahome as his wife and the mother of his child, she jumped at the chance Especially when a demon posing as Suzaku told her that Tamahome was gathering the other Seishi to kill her via Traumatic C-Section, but that this could be prevented, and Mayo would get the ending she wanted, if she would pray for the destruction of Konan.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist: A few villains have motivations for why they are the way they are.
    • Father began his existence trapped inside a flask and used as a resource of alchemic knowledge. His desire to be free and to never again be bound by anyone or anything is what drove him to create the Philosopher's Stone and try to obtain the power of God and create the homunculi, becoming emotionless in the process just because he wished to have a family.
    • Fullmetal Alchemist (2003): Envy claims one of these due to having been abandoned by his father Hohenheim. The excuse is really not intended as a redeeming factor but more of a retrospective explanation for why he's so obsessed with Hohenheim and the Elric brothers, and its revelation is immediately followed by Envy stabbing and killing Ed.
    • Scar's turn to evil started after the Amestrian military launched a war of extermination against his people, the Ishvalans. The soldiers who caused the most casualties in the war were the State Alchemists. Scar himself was mortally wounded by the State Alchemist Kimblee, and his brother was only able to save Scar's life by sacrificing his own. Following this, Scar became a Serial Killer of State Alchemists, particularly targeting those who participated in the Ishvalan War of Extermination, in an attempt to avenge his brother and his people.
  • Get Backers frequently does this at the moment of a villain's defeat; it usually leads to them not really dying after all.
  • 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.
  • Gundam:
  • From Higurashi: When They Cry, we have Miyo Takano. The reason she’s so adamant about opposing Oyashiro-sama? After losing her parents, she had to live in a hellish Orphanage of Fear. She was rescued from the orphanage and raised by a loving, kindly old man and now wants to prove his research, no matter what. Unfortunately, the trauma she already had from the orphanage led to her taking a few things that her grandfather said the wrong way, which, combined with people treating her grandfather's thesis as garbage, as well as her underlying selfishness and 'us-vs-them' mentality, led to her becoming a heartless monster.
  • In Jackals, minor antagonist Daryl the Mincer is afforded one of these; the local crime syndicate's information broker attributes Daryl's homicidal tendencies to being sexually abused by his stepfather as a boy.
  • Played with in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Dio Brando was raised in poverty by an alcoholic father who treated him like dirt and worked his mother to death. He left for the Joestar manor to take their money as his father requested on his deathbed. Dio, however, did so for himself, not because his father (whom he despised) asked him to. Even Speedwagon didn't buy into his Freudian Excuse; he was raised in similar circumstances to Dio, and he could tell Dio was a bad apple just by his smell.
  • Odin of Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple has a pretty stupid one (but that's the point): He fought Kenichi for a yin-yang pin when they were kids, and lost, but Kenichi felt sorry for him and tried to give it to him anyway. At first it looked like it was the influence of the Great Sage Fist that made him crazy, but we see in a flashback that, if anything, the Fist stabilized him for a time.
  • Kyō, Koi o Hajimemasu: Kyota's distrust and manipulation towards women who accept his advances stem from childhood trauma. When he was still a child, his mother left their family with a man she had an affair with. His father, being quite violent, began physically abusing him after that. His only way out was a nurse he liked talking to as a substitute parental figure...until the day he caught her cheating on her husband in the infirmary. This made him believe women would only seek to use and betray him.
  • Oskar von Reuentahl from Legend of the Galactic Heroes is not a villain but one of the "good guys" (although he does a sort of Face–Heel Turn eventually, but even then he remains unfailingly loyal to Reinhard whom he admires and respects). However, behind his calm and composed facade he's a bitter misogynist, an increasingly broken and self-destructive man. He was born with heterochromia, and his mother took his brown eye as an omen about her illicit relationship with her brown-eyed lover so she tried to gouge it out when he was still a baby. After this, she went insane and eventually committed suicide. This drove Reuentahl's father to alcoholism and emotional abuse, often telling his son that it would have been better if he had never been born.
  • In Life (2002) Katsumi is a manipulative Jerkass Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who Crosses the Line Twice.. But he has abusive parents who forced him to date a girl due to her father being a CEO. Manami was bullied when she was younger, so now she bullies anyone she feel deserves to be bullied.
  • Mazinger Z: Dr. Hell was a poor child who was physically and psychologically abused by his mother, who constantly declared he was an unwanted son and her life would be much better if he did not exist. During his school days he was constantly belittled by his teachers, who accused him of cheating, as well as beaten by his schoolmates. When he was in college, he took pride in his grades... until a foreign student (Juzo Kabuto, Kouji's Grandfather) surpassed him easily before wooing the woman he was in love with. After some incidents where he tried doing something good only to have it come back to bite him (such as saving the life of a little girl and being beaten by her father because the man believed he was molesting her), he fully snapped out, and he declared he was sick of it all. In Hell's mind, people were mediocre idiots who did not deserve to live, and one day he would purge the world of these idiots, and everybody would kneel before him. And then Nazism happened and he... got tips about how to achieve this.
  • In Medaka Box, Medaka, who only thinks the best of everyone (up to a point), believes this must be the reasoning with all the delinquents 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.
  • A large number of the mysteries in Monster involved the elaborate traumatic backstory of Johan prior to his becoming a serial killer.
  • 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.
    • It's hard to tell which was the worst part of Gaara 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.
    • Similarly, Kakashi basically has the perfect villain background story — losing his family in a traumatic way, losing his friends in even more traumatic ways, and then spending years on his own — except Obito of all people convinced him not to use it as an excuse. Oh, the irony.
    • 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.
    • Danzo's excuse was revealed to be not being picked as the Third Hokage when he was a rival with Sarutobi in their youth. The exact situation is that the Second Hokage named Sarutobi when the latter volunteered to be a decoy for 20 enemy ninja when a mission went bad. Danzo volunteered so as not to seem weak, stating his grandfather and father died in battle (saying that it's the way of shinobi life), but the Second recognized that Sarutobi was the best pick for successor and left them to himself be the decoy.
    • Orochimaru has an indirect excuse. His parents died when he was young and over the years his desire to see them again led him to study forbidden jutsus, whether to directly revive them or gain immortality to wait until they were reincarnated. Sasuke mocks him for having forgotten the very purpose for all of his crimes.
    • There's also the former Dragon Pain real name Nagato. 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. When he, Konan, and Yahiko lead a peaceful organization, they're attacked by Hanzo, backed by Danzo, both of which have brought a small army with them thinking the group are revolutionaries. When Nagato is left with the choice of killing Yahiko, the leader, or watching Konan be killed, Yahiko grabs Nagato's knife and kills himself with it.
      • Interestingly enough, unlike many other Freudian Excuse villains, his most despicable acts in the eyes of the fanbase (killing Jiraiya and Kakashi, destroying Konoha, and then almost killing Hinata right in front of Naruto) occurred after his Freudian Excuse was revealed, almost as though to counteract any sympathy we might feel for him when he expands upon it afterwards. As some fans believe, while Pain has a tragic backstory, it isn't enough to justify the extent of his plans and actions.
    • 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 and chooses to only put faith in money.
    • The Tailed Beasts, the original Demons of the series. Turns out they were created by Hagoromo, the Sage of the Six Paths, who treated them like his children. Upon his death, he released them to the world, and of course, people treated them as malevolent, mindless natural disasters who are only worth capturing for their immense power. Sure enough, that's what became of them over the centuries, and they greatly despised humanity as a result. Kurama took it the hardest, even to the point of calling himself the embodiment of hatred, due to being the closest to the Sage. The only shred of hope Kurama and the others held was a prophecy that Hagoromo had about a ninja who would guide them into showing what true strength is...
    • Sasori grew up without parents; grandmother Chiyo never broke it to him that they were really dead, instead claiming they were away on mission after mission after mission. So he fills the gap by creating two puppets to replace them, but quickly realizes that wooden dolls can't take the place of real parental love. His emotional growth is stunted to that of a young teenager, which makes sense because he preserved his body to look that of his 15-year-old-self. And so begins the journey of a cold, heartless, stoic puppetmaster who cares little of kidnapping ninjas and turning their bodies into his personal puppets and weapons. There seems to be a trend of broken children in the Sand Village...
    • Kabuto's excuse is that Danzo brainwashed his mother (the person who'd helped him develop his identity after amnesia and who he emotionally relied on) into not recognizing and trying to assassinate him, and the only person who then comforted him after that and offered to help him find himself after that was Orochimaru.
    • And it was pretty much inevitable Tobi aka Obito would get one too. He was an orphan from little up, despised in his own clan and he had only one single person who acknowledged him. Then, after Obito had pulled a heroic sacrifice to save both her AND his rival teammate, he worked himself to the bone to recover and return only to find her committing suicide (to foil an enemy plot) at the hand of said rival who'd promised to protect her in Obito's place. This incident convinced Obito of how brutal the world is, making him believe that the reality he lives in cannot be real and only his Assimilation Plot can save humanity and repair the emptiness left by deceased ones. And the fact that he's fell under the manipulation evil ancestor aged in 13 years of age certainly didn't help matter.
      • It's worth noting that Tobi marks the point in the manga where the fanbase considered Masashi Kishimoto to have milked this trope too many times (and in this case executed it too weakly), making him Unintentionally Unsympathetic. And amazingly, it still got worse with the following entry.
    • Madara Uchiha gets one as well. He lost all of his brothers in war against the Senju Clan. Even after all of this, he eventually agrees to a truce, only for his clan to later turn around and choose Hashirama as leader of the village over him, then hear from Tobirama a lingering distrust for the Uchiha despite the alleged "truce". This convinced him that a true end to the clans' fued is unattainable. He was still working alongside them though...Then he reads a secret tablet about the history of the world, revealing that the war-torn world they lived in had always been that way and that even someone's successful attempt to steal and use a godlike power to end war didn't work. At this point he decides that the current world isn't worth caring about and pursues an Assimilation Plot. If only to add insult to injury, it was revealed that the contents of the tablet were all a lie, forged by someone who also actively deceived him—with his lingering grief over his brother's death, whom he supposedly loved as much as Itachi loved Sasuke, making him more susceptible to that manipulation.
    • In general, the Uchiha clan as a whole. For one, it's theorized In-Universe that Uchihas experience grief over the loss of their loved ones more severely than any other person due to the nature of the Sharingan. For another, it was revealed that the entire clan down to its progenitor was picked by a foreign alien to be its primary pawns for its Evil Plan, and twisted various events throughout shinobi history at the expense of the clan.
  • Negima! Magister Negi Magi toys with the whole idea in regards to Evangeline. Evangeline 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 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.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion: Shinji, Asuka, Rei, Misato and Ritsuko all marked by horrible childhoods, and although they're not quite the "villains", it still helps 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. On a grander scale, in End of Evangelion, pretty much everyone’s collective Freudian Excuse of struggling to manage interpersonal relationships is the reason so few people hit their own Reset Button and leave the Sea of LCL to become a distinct, separate human being again.
  • No Longer Allowed in Another World:
    • Zuk was originally a repeat victim of bullying back in Japan. After he was summoned with a Mind Control ability at his disposal, the sudden lack of helplessness went to his head and he became a tyrant.
    • Kashiwahara was originally a Lonely Rich Kid that became violently abusive to those around him (a maid and a himeless man just being two examples) in his attempts at filling the void, his wealthy parents shielding him from any consequences. When he came to Zauberberg, that void manifested in his Gluttony-themed divine gifts.
    • Yuriko spent most of her life taking care of her ailing younger sister andfelt resentment that she couldn't have a life outside of that. When she was summoned, she dedicated herself into being Bishop Wolf's apprentice until her sister appeared as another otherworlder. Feeling betrayed, her divine gift "Cruel Avarice" blossomed and she tried to kill her.
      Yuriko: Consumed by Greed... murdering an innocent girl... I'm already... no longer human. All that's left is... to continue my descent into depravity until I can fall no further.
  • During Noir Altena, the series Big Bad, is portrayed as an Evil Mentor who doesn't care about anyone or anything except her goal of bringing the blood soaked days of Sodat's past back again. This goes in direct conflict with the modern Sodat society whom are more like politicians. During the final episode when the usually calm Altena is going through her Villainous Breakdown, a flashback is shown of Altena as a little girl in a war torn town. Her parents are dead and an enemy soldier finds her. It's implied that the soldier kidnapped her and used her as a sex slave.
  • One Piece: Considering the Crapsack World they live in, many villains (and heroes) end up with tragic backstories that shape them into the people they are in the present.
    • 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 humansbefore setting fire to the entire city. Even after freedom, her outlook on life was jaded by her terrible experiences, so she made a supreme facade, complete with Kick the Dog (and the kitten, and the baby seal) moments after she became Empress.
    • Arlong first appeared as a racist who terrorized innocent people for money. But as it turns out, him and fishmen in general have a pretty good reason for hating humans for what they did to them (which includes a long history of slavery, oppression and discrimination).
      • It's not just Arlong being a fishman, it also turns out he was raised in the Fishman District, which was an orphanage meant to house the enormous amount of children orphaned by the slave trade and the chaos caused by the Great Pirate Age on Fishman Island. Said Fishman District quickly deteriorated into a lawless ghetto, not the best place to grow up in. On top of that, the only person Arlong ever looked up to — Fisher Tiger, was a former slave who was killed by the marines for the crime of freeing slaves and who was betrayed by the humans he helped. He also spent some time in Impel Down, which "cruel and unusual punishment" doesn't begin to describe. It kind of messes with the viewer; Arlong is one of the few villains in One Piece that successfully and directly kills a character onscreen, yet he also is the only villain that is actually shown crying of sadness. To top it off, he's crying over the death of a mentor, something usually reserved for the Straw Hats themselves. Adding more fuel to this trope, Arlong Park was modeled after Sabaody Park — a place fishmen and merfolk were unable to attend because of the high risk of being kidnapped — and that Arlong, Hachi, Kuroobi and Chew longed to go to as children. Hachi even says that what they truly wanted was to be part of the human world, even if they took it too far.
    • Played with with Hody Jones, who's even more of an anti-human extremist than Arlong, with none of his redeeming qualities such as treating his fellow fishmen with respect (he's perfectly willing to use his own crew as human shields, plans to commit genocide on any fishman even considering friendly relations with humans including assassinating the queen of Fishman Island, who was the biggest advocate of peace, and ultimately tries to destroy all of Fishman Island, including his entire crew.) When he's finally asked what the hell humans did to him to make him this way, his response is nothing. Humans never did anything personally to him. He's just the product of growing up in an environment with fierce anti-human sentiments.
    • Nami subverts this trope. One would expect her to hate Fishmen after 8 years of involuntary servitude to Arlong and the Fishman Pirates. Keep in mind that Arlong is the guy who killed her mother Bell-mère in cold blood right in front of her when she was 10-years-old. It was never touched upon whether or not she harbored any hatred for Fishmen during those 8 years, but hundreds of chapters later in the manga (specifically Chapter 627), Nami states that she never hated Fishmen, at all. She only hated Arlong, because as an individual, he was so insufferable and vile. She was also very distrustful of Hachi when they met up again, but after seeing how remorseful he was about the things he had done as a former member of Arlong's crew, she forgave him. Nami was also visibly disturbed by all of the racist comments the slave auctioneers were making about Hachi in Chapter 502.
      • Nami herself has an excuse. Nami's kleptomania was largely due to growing up with a poor tangerine farmer for a mother, and not having enough for things like books.
    • Moria was once like Luffy, idealistic and adventurous, but his entire crew was wiped out by Kaido, leaving him as the sole survivor.
    • Crocodile has this heavily implied when concerning his desire to kill Whitebeard, likely because he may have wiped out his crew, and caused him to become cruel and sadistic.
    • Contrary to his fellow Warlords, Donquixote Doflamingo has no such excuse. If he does have an excuse of any kind, it would result from being the son of a Celestial Dragon who chose to try and live among normal people who's every bit as pompous and arrogant as you'd expect with a background like that, but having to live in a world without the privilege it normally grants. His own brother calls him a born monster when compared to his otherwise decent family and, when confronted by people who wanted to kill the family because of their background, a child Doflamingo simply swore he'd kill each and every one last of them. Even more inexcusable considering his brother shared the same tragic past but ultimately grew up to be a good man.
    • Baby 5 is an Extreme Doormat in a maid outfit who will just about anything for anyone if she believes they need her. We learn later that her own mother abandoned her in the wilderness because she was just a useless extra mouth to feed. Worse, the people who took her in nurtured this mindset as she grew up to make her more useful.
    • Law is a distrustful, morally gray man with streaks of cruelty. This is due to his traumatizing childhood: Law's homeland was poisoned by the World Government for generations for profit, then once the symptoms showed up, the country was quarantined and massacred to silence the people. Law's friends were tricked and killed, his parents were shot, his little sister was burned alive, and 10-year-old Law ended up escaping by hiding under a pile of corpses. Having lost everything he loved and bearing a deadly poison within, Law decided he wanted to spend the last three years of his life killing as many people as possible and joined the Donquixote Pirates, where he met Corazon. Corazon took a dying Law and escaped, trying everything to cure his Amber Lead Disease and guide Law back to hope, and ended up being killed for stealing the cure for Law. While still a cynical and bitter man, it was thanks to Corazon that Law didn't end up a crazed murderer.
    • Robin started out as an omnious assassin who worked for Crocodile to take over Vivi's country. It was revealed that her life is a big middle finger and she was forced to join criminal organizations in order to survive. Robin was the sole survivor of Ohara, the island of scholars who tried to study the forbidden Poneglyphs in secret but was found and wiped out. For over twenty years, Robin was regarded as the "Devil Child" and actively pursued by the World Government. Unable to survive alone, Robin was forced to kill and join several criminal organizations to survive, all of which betrayed her at some point. Having lived a life of trauma and betrayal, Robin came close to giving up and losing the will to live, until she met Luffy and the Straw Hats.
    • Vinsmoke quadruplets Ichiji, Niji, and Yonji are utterly monstrous Royal Brats because Judge surgically removed their empathy in utero, thinking it would make them good Tykebombs. Not only did this leave them literally unable to feel or understand things like kindness and compassion, Judge's influence on them just worsened their incredibly bad behaviors. Their mother tried pulling a Mama Bear by secretly consuming a Lineage Factor experiment-reversing drug to save her sons from becoming their father's weapons, but for some reason her plan only worked on their brother, Sanji, who according to the rest of his family, was born a "dud".
  • Ouran High School Host Club:
    • Tamaki Suoh has one for why he behaves the way he does, specifically the familial dynamic he keeps projecting onto his friends: he's a very Lonely Rich Kid who's dad almost never spends time with him, his grandmother hates his guts and he's barred from seeing or contacting his mother in France, all because of his Heroic Bastard status. He's not even allowed to live in the same house as his dad or grandmother, living in a smaller manor staffed with a nanny and an army of servants. Since his home life is, emotionally, complete shit, he compensates for this by treating his friends as a surrogate family with himself as the father figure so he can lavish them with the love and attention he clearly doesn't receive at home. It's also his motivation for starting the Host Club in the first place (so that he can make others happy while being the center of attention), and it's what fuels his bottomless empathy and patience for others, even when they're directly antagonistic towards him. While in any other manga this would be the unsettling backstory of a Psychopathic Manchild villain, Tamaki is actually pretty well-adjusted and amicable, albeit obnoxiously melodramatic at times, being the biggest heartthrob in the school and arguably the single nicest character on the show.
    • Hikaru and Kaoru act the way they do after spending their entire childhoods being indistinguishable from each other by everyone, including their parents. The one person in their house they liked, their maid, even said she couldn't tell them apart after they caught her robbing their parents.
    • Kyouya is entirely preoccupied with making money from the club, and claims to not be interested in anything that doesn't have a pragmatic benefit to himself. He has three older brothers with whom his father basically forces him to compete for both control of the company and just their attention in general. Kyouya gets his revenge at the end by using the host club money he's earned to buy the entire company out from under his father, and then sell it right back to him, staunchly rejecting his father's expectations of him the best way he knew how.
  • Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World: Elletear Lou Nebulis IX was born as the first princess of the Nebulis Sovereignty with a very unimpressive ability, especially compared to her younger sisters, not to mention every other Nebulis citizen. Regardless, she worked hard in becoming her mother's successor and a candidate for Queen studying sciences, politics, warfare, and even lady etiquette so that she could give equality to all the Astral Mages with weak Astral Spirits like herself. However, because she was born with a laughably weak astral spirit, no one gave her a chance to become Queen, not even her own family. So she decided "To hell with it!" and plotted to burn the Sovereignty to the ground.
  • Pokémon:
    • All three members of the Team Rocket trio in Pokémon: The Series have Freudian Excuses. Jessie was raised poor and her mother was killed in an avalanche, accounting for her Tsundere personality. James was raised by neglectful parents who wanted him to marry an abusive Yandere named Jessiebelle, accounting for his timid and repressive demeanor. Meowth never had any family and learned to talk like a human just to impress a female Meowth who still rejected him, accounting for his conniving features.
    • Pokémon Adventures. 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 its eyes that Humans Are the Real Monsters, and that must've been pretty damn traumatic for him as well as the Dratini. His Blackthorn heritage may come into it somewhere, too. Clair's just as off-the-handle as Lance, just less...ambitious.
  • 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. But later on, it's revealed she was kidnapped as a child, brainwashed and raised as Princess Kraehe; she became Rue to forget and be happy for a while.
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Kyouko acts like a self-centered Jerkass because she believes if she only lives for herself, then she would be the only one responsible for her own actions and thus no one but her would get caught in the consequences of her actions. This is due to Kyoko's wish to get her excommunicated preacher father more followers. However it backfired when he realized no one actually believed what he said, and they were all brainwashed by the nature of her wish. He became depressed, disowned her, eventually fell into insanity and killed their entire family, leaving Kyoko the sole survivor. Her unhealthy obsession with food also stemmed from her experience of poverty and starvation. Kyouko, unlike many characters on this page, does actually undergo some fairly significant Character Development. To the point where she goes out with a Heroic Sacrifice-cum-Mercy Kill.
  • Ramen Fighter Miki: As an hilarious deconstruction of the Fighting Series, all three Arrogant Kung Fu Guys have one:
  • Ranma ½ 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.
  • Rave Master: All human villains get one of these.
    • King wants revenge on Haru's dad for getting his wife and son killed.
    • Lucia, King's actually not dead son, wants revenge on the world for killing his mom and for being locked a prison from the age of 6 to 16.
    • Doryu wants revenge on 'the light' for being condemned to darkness by the humans of a town he tried to create to dissolve racism (he failed).
    • Reina wanted revenge for her father's unjust torture and death.
    • Jegan lost it when the woman of his dreams chose someone else.
    • Shuda and Julius didn't have too good of reasons, but Shuda was more of a good guy on the wrong side anyway, and Julius was... special.
  • Rent-A-Girlfriend: Both of Chizuru's major rivals have this.
    • Mami Manami was born into a wealthy family, but her father was a Control Freak who did everything he could to shape her into whatever he wanted her to be, sparing no thought about what she wanted in life. When Mami was dating someone she loved, who somewhat resembles Kazuya, and learned she was pregnant at 15, hoping the baby would be her one true chance at freedom, she learned her father put her in an Arranged Marriage, her boyfriend was forced to break up with her (implied to be through blackmail), and her hopes and dreams died along with her baby from a miscarriage. She convinced herself that she wasn't actually in love, but simply just yearned to be free from her parents' grip. Because of this, she believes that people who talk about love are nothing but liars and it just makes her want to tear it all down whenever she sees it.
    • Ruka Sarashina was born with an irregular heartbeat, so she was constantly treated delicately out of fear that she'd collapse, leaving her without any strong emotional stimuli in her life. She became a rental girlfriend in order to find someone who could make her heart skip a beat safely to no avail. That was until she met Kazuya: flashbacks indicate that she was nearly an Empty Shell prior to meeting him, and is so convinced that he is the one that she's desperate to do anything to have him.
  • In Revolutionary Girl Utena, even Akio has one. Back when he was still Dios, he worked himself almost to death while trying to save people, so his sister hid him inside their house. When people came looking for him, she tried to stop them, and she was stabbed many times, turning her into the Rose Bride. It is implied that this event also led to Akio and Dios becoming separate people.
  • In Romeo × Juliet Lord Montague gets one of these dumped on him in Episode 17. His hatred against the Capulets was because his father was one and abandoned him and his prostitute mother to a poor life. After his mother died from sickness, Leontes swore revenge against his father and his family for not taking care of them by killing all of them.
  • In the manga version of Rosario + 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!
  • Rurouni Kenshin: Essentially every character with a combat role has some sort of melodramatic horrific past. To name a few:
    • Kenshin was orphaned, briefly enslaved, raised by a violent (if brilliant and essentially decent) jerk, made into a murderer by a government he later came to resent, and wound up accidentally killing his own wife. Though that last is more his excuse for being angsty and standoffish, since it's ultimately the reason he got through the war sane and swore the no-kill vow.
    • So(u)jiro(u) was an illegitimate son who suffered constant abuse, killed his entire stepfamily in self-defense around eight or so, and under the wing of a megalomaniac grew into a prodigy assassin with no feeling other than 'contentment.'
    • Yukishiro Enishi, the brother of the wife Kenshin accidentally killed, was so traumatized by witnessing the event that his hair and eyes turned white and turquoise respectively. And, since he'd already hated Kenshin, consequently spends the next ten years plotting revenge, becoming a blackmarket weapons kingpin, and nursing his sister complex.
    • Friendly young monk Anji turned into revolutionary death monk after the local head man had his temple burned down with all his orphans inside, to curry favor with the young Meiji government and their imperial Shinto project. (This was a real thing. Orphans optional.)
    • Aoshi's original one was he didn't get any chance to fight and win honor in the war, and now the government doesn't want to hire ninja, and while his second one "I got my men who loved me killed by my jerk employer for no good reason".
    • Kamatari wants Shishio to love him, but he's not as womanly (or awesome) as Yumi and doesn't have the combat skill to earn his respect, so he just does what he's told. Why he's a scythe-wielding crossdresser who thinks a taken, hideously scarred maniac like Shishio makes a good One True Love is never touched on.
    • Sano actually started the trend, with Kenshin outright asking him what had messed him up so bad when he was obviously a decent sort. Comes out that as a kid he became the only survivor of the Sekiho Army, a company of irregulars betrayed by the revolutionary government, and is really mad and disillusioned about it. Defeat Means Friendship for Kenshin, though, and Sano becomes his new best friend.
    • Saito is gloriously unexcused, though, as is Shishio and Jin-e.
    • Chou too, actually, who appears to be just a cheerful Kansai psycho who really likes swords.
  • Sailor Moon: Exploited by Wiseman.
    • He uses Chibiusa's feelings of inadequacy and abandonment to turn her evil.
    • He also twists Prince Diamond to his purposes by preying on the prince's feelings of rejection and bitterness at the Moon Kingdom.
  • In Saint Seiya some of the God Warriors from the Asgard saga had one in their respective backstories: For example, Alioth Epsilon Fenrir hates and mistrust humans after his parents were killed by a bear, he was abandoned, being rescued by a pack of wolves. Also, there was Benethosh Eta Mime, who had an abusive adoptive parent. Mime kills him after he told him that he was the murderer of his biological parents. However, it all turned out to be a Thanatos Gambit from his adoptive father, who wanted to both atone for the accidental killing of Mime's family and die in battle instead of his long-time illness, so he put on a facade for many years..
  • Saki:
    • Each volume 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. His backstory also provides the image for the Freudian Excuse's main page.
    • Saki initially hated Mahjong because her family would always argue during games and (although the game itself wasn't the cause) eventually broke apart.
  • Sakura no Ichiban!: Jack the Ripper's reason for killing women and his general hatred of them comes from his mother mistreating and belittling him. One day, he decides he finally had enough and murders her.
  • In Sekirei, Mikogami Hayato is revealed to be a Lonely Rich Kid who spent his life wishing for something "amazing" to happen that would "change and destroy" him. His wealthy parents ignored him unless he acted out, and his intelligence made it seem impossible to connect with his peers, leaving him feeling hopeless. He describes his childhood as being born into a "narrow world" controlled by others, and apparently spent a significant length of time living alone in the United States after angering his parents. Sending a child to live alone on the opposite side of the planet seems to have been their version of grounding, with them having the Old Retainer deliver a message warning that they intended to do it again when he got into a fight at school. Then he got his wish and found something amazing, when he met Mutsu and became part of the Sekirei Plan. He declares that he intends to use the power granted to the victor to change the boring, restricting world into something more exciting.
  • Soul Eater:
    • Referred to when Stein tells Medusa of the doctors who wanted to know what trauma in his childhood could have caused his desire to experiment/cut people up. He claims there wasn't one. Medusa herself has so far not given any excuse for her terrible actions, other than the fact she feels like it, and a world under the authority of Lord Death just isn't appealing to her. On this much, she and Stein appeared to be in agreement to some extent.
    • Crona is given one. After all, his/her mother is Medusa. Who wouldn't be messed up after being raised by somebody who experiments on you with the black blood, forces you to kill cute little bunnies, gives you an illustrated book on various methods of killing, and locks you in a closet without food for several days if you don't do what she says?
    • On a meta level, this trope initiated the series. It was originally just a one-shot, the chapter we now know as "Maka", about a girl who worried her best friend would leave her for a more attractive partner. This was due to the fact that her parents were in the process of getting a divorce because of her father's repeated cheating. The audience liked it so much they demanded more. The rest is history.
  • Scarlett from Steam Boy is an utterly spoiled snotty brat, treating Ray with haughty disdain 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.
  • Villain Protagonist Natsuo Ishido from Teppu starts off as a fairly standard example of the Jerkass Rival trope, but as the story goes on, it's eventually revealed that her cold, sadistic demeanor is at least partially due to being bullied as a child by her classmates, as well as being physically abused by her older brother.
  • Tokyo Ghoul provides these in spades, as a result of the setting being something of a Crapsack World.
    • While torturing Kaneki, Yamori takes the time to actually explain exactly how he ended up as a twisted sadist. He was once captured and sent to Cochlea, where he ended up becoming the victim of a deranged Psycho for Hire. Eventually, the extensive torture drove him insane and he began to take on the personality and behaviors of his tormentor. One day, he managed to break free and turned the tables on his torturer before escaping. Since then, he found pleasure in repeating the tortures he'd endured on others.
    • Nishiki turns out to have been such a Jerkass when first introduced, because he learned early on that Humans Are Bastards. After the death of his sister, he swore to never trust anyone again. He gets better.
    • Touka and Ayato are both fairly harsh individuals as a result of their traumatic childhood, having been orphaned at a young age. To make matters worse, after their father was caught and they were left alone in their apartment for several days, an elderly neighbor lured them out and turned them over to Investigators. The siblings escaped and spent the next few years living on the streets, fighting other Ghouls to survive. Touka eventually settled down, while Ayato comes to believe that people can only survive through becoming more powerful.
    • The One-Eyed Owl has one, naturally. A natural Half-Human Hybrid born to Star-Crossed Lovers, the shadowy organization her father served forced him to kill her mother as punishment for betraying them. In order to protect her, Yoshimura abandoned his daughter in the 24th Ward with nothing but her mother's diary to explain everything and disappeared from her life. She grew up as an outcast among outcasts, fighting constantly for survival and cannibalizing to survive until she became a Kakuja. This horrific childhood made her come to hate the world, consumed by despair and resentment.
  • In Unlimited Fafnir, Tear is extremely clingy to Yuu when she sees him at the school in episode 4. She later mentions not wanting to be separated from him because he might disappear again.
  • 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.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!:
    • Yu-Gi-Oh!:
      • Seto Kaiba's was abused by his adoptive father Gozaburo in order to mold him into becoming a ruthless CEO. The manga also further explains why Kaiba considers games to be Serious Business: when Kaiba ousted Gozaburo from the company, Gozaburo told Kaiba that he was going to show him what happened to losers and jumped out a window. Kaiba took this to heart and adopted the idea that losing is equal to dying.
      • Marik 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 Marik was something of an alternate persona, but he was one created from the normal Marik's resentment, and normal Marik still wants revenge against Yugi. Yami Marik is the embodiment of Marik'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. This being Yu-Gi-Oh, the second personality is rather real...
      • Yami Bakura/Thief King Bakura takes the prize: He wants revenge for the pharaoh (not Yami Yugi, his dad) having his whole village slaughtered in order to make the millennium items. He even watched them, while they were still (mostly) alive, be dropped into a pot of boiling gold. Gold boils at a temperature of 2807.0°C ( 5084.6 F), so no wonder they only showed silhouettes. There is a chance too, that he would have had more difficulties due to his purple eyes and white hair. Pale hair, skin and/or eyes in Egypt were often thought to be signs of demons, which is why Kisara is treated the way she is.
    • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:
      • 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.
      • Much like Seto Kaiba, Judai's rival Manjyome's issues stem from pressure from his older brothers to live up to the family name. After suffering a particulary humiliating defeat, they disown him.
    • Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V: Shun Kurosaki is violent, paranoid, and ruthless due to his past as a genocide survivor. This is also invoked by Academia, where students are forbidden from developing friendships and getting thrown into prison is one method of punishment in order to train them to be ruthless and bloodthirsty. Shinji's extremism is due to being looked down upon and tormented by Tops as a child.
    • Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS: Yusaku Fujiki was kidnapped as a child and put through horrific Training from Hell to master Duel Monsters. This is why he doesn't enjoy dueling, never duels for fun, and sees his cards as mere weapons to eliminate his enemies.
  • YuYu Hakusho:
    • Subverted with Sakyo. 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".
    • Played straight with Mukuro. 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 hypnosis-instilled 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".
    • In-Universe, Keiko once wonders if Yusuke became the angry delinquent he is now because of how irresponsible Atsuko was in raising him.
    • Younger Toguro's students were murdered by a powerful demon Kairen and he was badly beaten; in order to kill this demon he willingly gives up his humanity to become a power hungry mass murdering demon.

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