Hilariously Abusive Childhood / Live-Action TV

Nathan: He's supposed to take me out for the day, so he takes me to IKEA. He buys so much flat-pack furniture there's no room for me in the car, so he leaves me there for three hours. Then some guy with a beard sees me hanging around and buys me lunch. I spent my eighth birthday eating Swedish meatballs with a known pedophile.
Jamie: Did he...
Nathan: No, no. Dad got back when we were finishing our ice cream, but that sick pervert cared more about me than Dad ever did. He would've taken me to the zoo.

— Misfits

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• Tracy Jordan from 30 Rock could be the page quote:
  "It's all coming back to me. Oh my God! I slept on an old dog bed stuffed with wigs! I watched a prostitute stab a clown! Our basketball hoop was a rib cage — a rib cage! Why did you bring me here? I blocked all this stuff out for a reason! Oh, Lord, some guy with dreads electrocuted my fish! [Later] All my life I've tried to forget the things I've seen — a crackhead breast-feeding a rat, a homeless man licking a Hot Pocket off the third rail of the G train! [Still later] I've seen a blind guy bite a police horse! A puppy committed suicide after he saw our bathroom! I once bit into a burrito and there was a child's shoe in it! I've seen a hooker eat a tire! A pack of wild dogs took over and successfully ran a Wendy's! The sewer people stole my skateboard! The projects I lived in were named after Zachary Taylor, generally considered to be one of the worst presidents of all time! I once saw a baby give another baby a tattoo! They were very drunk!"
• It's possible that Hilariously Abusive Childhood is the backstory for every single character in (and the explanation for the title of) Arrested Development.
  • As an example, George Sr. would teach the kids lessons that involved them thinking their misbehaving led to a stranger being seriously injured. The injured man was a former Bluth Company employee who lost an arm, whom George paid to teach his kids these "lessons."
    Michael: I want the guy with the one arm and the fake blood. J. Walter Weatherman. How do I get ahold of him?
    George Sr.: He's, uh, dead. You killed him when you left the door open with the air conditioner running.
• The Big Bang Theory:
  • Leonard recounts the cold and emotionless way his mother treated him, which led him to become a shy, self-hating neurotic. As a child, he was so starved for affection that he actually built a simple hugging machine... and his father used to borrow it.
  • Sheldon is revealed to have been so traumatized by his parents' constant fighting when he was a child that he is unable to be around people arguing. He goes so far as to run away from his apartment when roommate Leonard won't stop arguing with his girlfriend. His mother turned to religion to escape and his father to alcohol, giving Sheldon an aversion to both of those too. As well, despite being a global-level child prodigy, neither parent supported his interest in science. His father especially tried to get him in sports despite a complete lack of interest and physicality.
  • Of course, much of this is now conflicted by the Young Sheldon spin-off, which shows a much milder level of sitcom dysfunction with plenty of heartwarming moments where the family does their best to support the quirky young genius and his interests even if they don't really get him.
• The Brittas Empire:
  • One of the running gags is that the homeless receptionist Carole sees fit to keep her son Ben and twin daughters Jessica and Emily in tightly shut drawers and cupboards during the day, much to some concern by the other staff members and perhaps one of the reasons why Ben is an Enfant Terrible by Series 6. This does not get into some of the other bizarre stuff that Carole has done with them over the series, such as accidentally keeping a baby in the same drawer as a lit lightbulb and almost roasting him alive. Or taking Ben around in a dog carrier and keeping him in kennels over the Christmas holidays. Or sounding too enthusiastic about having Ben catch Chickenpox from one of his friends.
  Carole: I'm a little worried about Ben.
  Laura: I think we all are at times, Carole.
  • Helen isn't much better with her own children - "The Christening" has her misplace her own twin sons on a bus and it's a Running Gag in later series that she occasionally misplaces the children and sometimes doesn't know how many she has or where exactly they are.
  Helen: You try being alluring and exciting with three children and a household to run!
  Carole: Four children, Mrs. Brittas.
  Helen: Four! Yes, you see, it's worse than I thought!
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Xander Harris had some sort of abuse happening in his home (especially in the episode "Restless"). This trope is played with in the episode "Amends", where Xander appears to make a joke about his "holiday tradition" of sleeping outside to avoid his family's drunken holiday fights — but when he is actually shown sleeping outside and being woken up by the (very rare) Christmas snowfall, it's actually quite poignant. Even more so when you consider that he would rather risk being eaten by vampires than sleep indoors with his family.
• Cheers:
  • Cliff was raised by his controlling mother, who among many things forbade puberty in her house. This is the reason Cliff is the deeply troubled individual he is as an adult, and his mother still hasn't stopped mistreating him (he refuses to leave her, and she refuses to leave him). This is all played for laughs.
  • Woody once casually and airily recounts how his parents once tried abandoning him in the same way he recalls all his stories from Hanover.
• Stewart Stardust's relationship with his father was used as a Running Gag in the Danish Christmas show Christmas on Vesterbro. Once per Episode he would wax nostalgically about something his "papa" used to say, followed by a black-and-white flashback to the father sprouting some words of wisdom, before trashing him with various blunt instruments. Watch a collection of the clips with subtitles here.
  Junior, all humans have the right to privacy. And this is a metal ruler. Bend over. *WHACK*
  Junior, there are two kinds of women: Whores and your mother, who has retired. And there are many ways to knock out your teeth, but I think it will be most fun to use this pipe wrench. Bend over. *WHACK*
  Junior, I once saw a circus artist get stomped on by an elephant. (puts a glass in a sock) He got fewer bruises than you'll get now. Bend over. *WHACK*
  Junior, it is never beneficial to run from the bill. Except in this case when you could have avoided circumcision with this pair of shears. Bend over. *ZHACK*
• Chuck has Cloudcuckoolander Jeff, who appears to have been totally unaffected by the abuse he cheerfully mentions having suffered.
  Pineapples are fun. My dad used to throw them at me.
• The Colbert Report:
  • Many jokes revolve around the character of Stephen Colbert's upbringing, which led him to be an outwardly confident, blustery man trying to ignore the frightened child inside by adhering unerringly to his own version of reality (in which, of course, there's nothing wrong with the way his parents raised him). It's summed up nicely in this line from his book I Am America (And So Can You!):
  I often think back fondly on the memories I haven't repressed.
  • This was/is often a device with his and other characters on The Daily Show, too. See, for example, this Even Stevphen.
• Coupling:
  • Jeff frequently alludes to his upbringing, which was obviously pretty bizarre and had a big influence on his personality.
  You're shaking the caravan, Jeffrey!
  • His mother also apparently started making enormous sculptures of erections and filling the house with them. She would keep the ones that went wrong in a box under Jeff's bed. She also apparently told him that if he told lies, he would be punished by some magical being sneaking into his room at night and removing a 'segment' of his penis.
• In Dans Une Galaxie Près De Chez Vous, this is a running theme for most of the male cast except Bob and Serge.
  • Flavien was an orphan who was moved from foster home to foster home. One of his foster mothers once sent him to a girls' summer camp because the boys' was full and she didn't want him around during the summer. Flavien had a closer relationship with Bob's parents than his own.
  • The Captain's father was hilarious distant and neglectful, to the point where the captain considers his father telling him "it's raining" a very intimate moment. Hilariously the Captain seems completely unaware of how odd his relationship with his father was.
  • Brad's childhood in particular is a Running Gag. Brad's parents didn't like him because they wanted a daughter (and dressed him as a girl for the first few years of his life), yet at the same time, they disapproved of his dream of becoming a ballet dancer and forced him to go into science. At some point, you just have to wonder if they weren't screwing with him on purpose. He once insults someone by saying terrible things about their childhood, culminating with "Kids at school once had a contest of whom could throw the biggest rock at you, and your teacher won," only to stop and say "No wait, that's my childhood."
• Everybody Loves Raymond:
  • Ray and his brother Robert. Their mother Marie overbearingly smothered Ray and utterly neglected Robert. One episode ended with Ray realizing his parents followed him to school when he was a child, hiding behind bushes and the like.
    Ray: You mean, Mom was the crazy tree lady from my dreams?
    Rob: Yup.
    Ray: Then... the insane canoe guy was...
    Rob: Dad.
    Ray: My God, that gave me nightmares.
    Rob: For how long?
    Ray: I had one just last week!
    Rob: Wow, that is messed up.
  • Robert can also be a case of this, though a lot of times it's not funny. They lied to him about his own birthday rather than admit pregnancy out of wedlock.
• Daphne in Frasier has a habit of recounting traumatic or downright abusive stories from her past in a cheery, fond tone.
• Friends:
  • Chandler Bing, whose neglectful parents told him they were getting divorced over Thanksgiving dinner when he was a child, leaving him with a lifelong hatred for the holiday. When Monica finds out that he's Unable to Cry, she tries to make him cry by showing him an album of pictures of his childhood.
    Chandler: Oh, that's Parent's Day, first grade. That's me with the janitor Martin.
    Monica: Where were your parents?
    Chandler: Oh, they didn't want to come.
  • Phoebe Buffay often comes out with tales of a horrendous early life. First her father left her as a baby. Then her stepfather went to jail. Then her mother killed herself when she was thirteen. Then she spent her teenage years living on the streets. The humour comes from her blase or sunny demeanor when recounting them.
  • Not to mention Monica; her parents used the term "pulled a Monica" to mean "screwed up". Monica once points out that they promised her and her psychiatrist that they would stop.
• Game of Thrones: Joffrey saying something stupid and getting bitch slapped by Tyrion is a Running Gag for the first two seasons. The humor comes from the fact that he deserves it, and that he towers over the one slapping him (who is a dwarf). It drops off as he matures and his insanity grows more dangerous.
• Jess from Gilmore Girls had a very rough childhood, because his mother Liz was a flaky ditz with substance abuse problems and a string of terrible boyfriends, including Jess's father. However, this is played for laughs when Liz shows up in Stars Hollow to visit her brother, Luke amidst her claims to have turned over a new leaf. Yet, Jess gets blamed for being bitter about it in his fights with Luke. In his first meeting with Lorelai, she clumsily attempts to relate to him with her own past - despite some clear differences, namely that her parents smothered her while his parents neglected and abandoned him - and it only makes him even angrier and remains a source of friction between Lorelai and Jess, even as he dates Rory.
• Apparently George Lopez's childhood in The George Lopez Show. (His mother let a rat live in his bedroom, telling him it was a South American gerbil.) In real life, Lopez was raised by his grandmother, who was incredibly hard to live with. It still fits into this trope when he wound up putting his horror stories about her into his stand-up routine. One of his shows was even called "Why You Cryin'?" which was her typical response to him getting upset.
• Eleanor Shellstrop from The Good Place was severely neglected by her self-involved, bickering, deceptive, alcoholic parents, who only occasionally remembered they even had a child. Eleanor responded in an equally over-the-top manner: on her fourteenth birthday (which her parents forgot), she revealed she had been skipping school for the past year to work two full-time jobs in order to save up for an apartment. Their birthday present to her was signing her emancipation papers. Rather than being traumatized by her childhood, Eleanor is proud of it, claiming it made her the person she is today. She's not wrong.
• Every now and then Potsie of Happy Days would say something implying he had this.
• Homeland:
  • In the second episode Carrie visits her sister and remarks on how well-behaved and obedient her sister's children are; her sister nonchalantly replies "I beat them. Don't tell the neighbors."
  • That is almost certainly a joke. One might make a case, however, that we are witnessing Chris's Hilariously Abusive Childhood throughout the show, with lots and lots of parental neglect.
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • Barney Stinson often alludes to his "hilarious" childhood, involving being left alone by his mother for weeks at a time and being told that his father is Bob Barker, former host of ''The Price Is Right''. They did, however, get a moment of legitimate pathos out of it in the episode where the Bob Barker thing was revealed. Barney goes on The Price Is Right with the intent of telling Bob Barker that he's his son, but can't bring himself to do it. The implication is that deep down he knows Barker isn't his father but won't admit it to himself, and a later episode revealed that many of his mother's lies were due to her actually being overprotective of Barney. She did not want him to feel humiliated or unloved so she would make up outrageous stories that seemed believable to a young child. However, this seems to have caused Barney to have a massive ego and an inability to deal with disappointment as an adult. And the icing on the cake is that his mother was apparently the female version of what he is today. Or worse.
  • Then there's Lily, who at first glance seems like a sweet, motherly type. But, as Marshall says, she has some serious Crazy Eyes. Then, we get the flashbacks to Lily's deadbeat dad, taking her to the racetrack with him so he could gamble. On her birthday. Which he had forgotten. And, later telling a sick young Lily the many ways she could die from tonsil surgery, also choosing that moment to let slip that her mother was divorcing him.
  • And last, but definitely not least, Robin, who grew up with a dad who remained in denial of the fact that she wasn't a boy until she was fourteen. And, when he found her kissing a boy, sent her packing to military camp where she was forced to burn her clothes. She has some daddy issues.
  • There's also Ted, whose parents are such poor communicators they didn't tell him or his sister that they'd been divorced for over a year and that their grandmother had died, not to mention Ted and his dad aren't comfortable discussing any subject other than baseball. Post-divorce, his dad's idea of father-son bonding is inviting Ted to his Lonely Bachelor Pad and telling sex stories.
• iCarly:
  • Sam is a hilariously abusive childhood in progress. It's probably more on the Jeff from Coupling side of things, but it isn't hard to imagine how bad it could be; her father has apparently abandoned them, and her mother is most likely an alcoholic who sleeps around and is often in and out of jail, just like most of the rest of her family. All played for laughs on the show, though.
  • Mrs. Benson takes My Beloved Smother up to eleven and qualifies Freddie for this as well.
• Most of the characters from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
  • Dennis and Dee's mother Barbara tricked Frank into raising her children from Bruce as his. Frank would routinely humiliate them as children even giving them Christmas present boxes with nothing inside. He canceled their insurance when they were 9. Barbara slept around behind Frank's back and routinely lavished attention on Dennis while going out of her way to humiliate and criticize Dee. Dee's childhood was all the more traumatic due to her back brace and the nickname the Aluminum Monster.
  • Charlie's mother Bonnie tried to abort him but he survived. His mother was also implied to be a prostitute. Bonnie had extreme OCD which resulted in her fear that Charlie would die if she didn't do everything in threes (like turning on a light three times).
  • It's also been implied that Charlie may have been molested by his uncle, which makes Charlie's musical Nightman more understandable — and more disturbing.
  • Mac's mother is extremely apathetic and just sits in front of her television all day drinking and smoking. His father was sent to jail for drugs.
  • Bill Ponderosa is a Hilariously Abusive Parent, who flat-out tells his young son that he doesn't love him; and when his daughter is bullied at school and called a slut, he reassures her that she's not a slut... she's far too fat for it. Both children are less than twelve and are well within healthy weight. When Bill becomes suicidal, the entire family isn't particularly sad to see him go and even encourage it.
• On Justified this is initially invoked when Raylan's father, Arlo Givens, is introduced. When Raylan's mother Frances died, Arlo got a good deal on some tombstones so he had some premade for himself and Raylan. He then had Frances buried in a plot in front of their house and had the extra tombstones placed there as well. So whenever Raylan would leave the house he would see his mother's grave and his own grave ready next to her. However, a few episodes later we are shown what Arlo is really like and the Black Comedy stops being funny. Arlo was and still is a horrible man and Raylan lives in constant fear that he might turn out just like his father.
• The Daddy Drank sketch from The Kids in the Hall.
• Malcolm in the Middle:
  • The show borders on this for the younger boys, who simply gripe about their mom lightly, but with Francis, it's almost always averted and he has a deep-seated hatred for her, acknowledging that psychological abuse is serious and long-term. Possibly because for them, this is the norm, while Francis has already flown the nest and seen just how horrible the things Lois did really are, and how much it has messed him up (though there are also indications that Francis was disturbed in the first place, so it's not entirely certain how much of it was Lois's fault). The closest any of the younger boys has gotten to realizing how unhealthy Lois treats them is Malcolm, the genius.
  • In one episode, Dewey begins to stop taking part in his brothers' antics and begins acting more responsible and mature, being pleasant to his mother and no longer causing trouble, which causes Lois to stop harassing him. Malcolm and Reese corner him to find out why she isn't harassing him anymore like she does them, but when he tries to explain — that the only reason she acts that way towards them is that they keep misbehaving — they either don't understand or refuse to accept it, and vow to find out how he does it.
  • In the episode "Reese's Apartment", this trope is possibly lampshaded when Lois and Hal kick Reese out of the house, and he finds a way to get his own apartment. Francis attempts to convince the family that kicking out a teenager is abuse, but none of them believe him.
  • Lois herself had a genuinely abusive childhood, which may have affected how she treats her kids; her mother is a cruel, racist, domineering, Ax-Crazy lunatic from the "old country." Even Francis, who loves nothing more than tormenting his mother, fully acknowledges that his grandmother is completely insane, especially when Francis finds out that she has been buying Christmas presents for the family each year — exactly what they wanted — but refusing to send them because of inconsequential slights. Her episodes usually result in a truce within the family who will band together to get rid of her.
  • Hal can also be like this. He tends to ignore the well-being of the family for his own happiness and comfort, such as not working Fridays for years while his wife sacrificed a lot. He also forbids Malcolm from going to an exclusive, all expenses paid prep school because Hal relies on Malcolm to solve his problems (even though Malcolm said that him not being a major factor of the finances would benefit the family). Hal also had a bad childhood of his own, albeit of a totally different sort. His father is an eccentric millionaire but was too wrapped up in his own fantasies and games to do any actual parenting. Not that he didn't care about Hal, of course; but he barely noticed how miserable he was.
  • This also ties in to the Series Finale, where Lois refuses Malcolm a high-paying job out of high school since their plan for him is to work his way up from the bottom of society to become President of the United States, and in fact had been planning his whole life.
• The entire show Married... with Children is pretty much built around this trope.
  • From the episode And Baby Makes Money:
    Peg: You know, I wouldn't have another baby if gold dust dripped out of its nose. I mean, sure, the money would be nice, but all that trouble. The screaming and the crying and changing those diapers three or four times a week.
    Marcy: Well, at least that left your weekends free.
    Peg: You'd think! I mean, you go away for the weekend, and when you come home they are never where you left them.
  • And later when she complains because she thinks she's pregnant:
    Peg: Ooh, diapers and doody. Feed me! Wash me! Unlock my door!
• Misfits:
  • Nathan borders on this. Although part of it to used to show why Nathan is the way he is, the fact that the stories are delivered in typical Nathan style makes them hard not to laugh at.
  • The story of Nathan's first sexual experience involves a family camping holiday... and his mother's friend molesting him.
  • Even later, when confronting Jesus with the rest of the group:
    Nathan: When I was growing up in Ireland, if the priests weren't fiddling with ya, you were one of the ugly kids.
• Mom: Is it any wonder that Christy became an alcoholic junkie while being raised by Bonnie? We get references to Bonnie's past illegal activities or neglect of Christy at least once an episode.
• Monk has a fair number of references to his childhood, which was also highly dysfunctional. Although it's played a bit more seriously than usual for this trope, there is an explanation for his off-putting behavior. His mother is controlling which is a factor in his OCD, and his father left him because he took advice from a fortune cookie.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus:
  • Episode 13 features a letter from Mrs. Ken Frankenstein, who writes "When I was at school, I was beaten regularly every 30 minutes and it never did me any harm — except for psychological maladjustment and blurred vision."
  • The Four Yorkshiremen: Right! I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work 29 hours a day down t'mill and pay t'mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves, singin' Hallelujah!
    • And a small variant on that.
• Mr. Show features Bob and David both having one in "Operation: Hell on Earth." Bob's parents bet impossible sums of money against him over things they knew he couldn't win (not falling asleep before midnight) and David's parents accidentally(?) physically abused him as a baby. They're also putting their daughter Superstar through one as Stage Dads, despite claiming they wouldn't turn out like their parents. A fourth season episode also reveals that Bob's parents thought they could still abort Bob... when he was 4-years-old.
• It is revealed in the episodes "Cassie Come Home" and "Believe" of the series My Hero (2000) that Piers' excessive vanity stems from a crippling inferiority complex, brought on by a multitude of different traumas, particularly an ultra-fascist father. If one had listened to the entirety of his life story, it is likely one would be reduced to tears. Of course, the buried trauma does not resurface until George takes it upon himself to psychoanalyse the man, which reduces him to a blubbering wreck.
  George: We need to discover what it is that makes you cheat and scheme; some childhood trauma that you've buried, a cold unfeeling mother, were you bullied at school, a successful sibling that you can't quite compete with, a strict father who kept you locked in the cellar?
  Piers: [beat]...(in tears) IT'S AS THOUGH YOU WERE THERE!!!
  George: (shocked) WHAT, ALL OF THEM!?
• Bill McNeal from NewsRadio would often fondly recall childhood events that would charitably be described as child neglect. Good times, good times...
  • In one episode, Bill recalls one of his father's pieces of advice: "When I was a child, I spoke as a child and acted as a child. But when I grew up, I took that child out back and had him shot." Dave then asks if his father was in the Khmer Rouge.
  • Bill: Another time I was cut from the high school football team and my mother said, "Central's lost a fullback but the McNeals have gained a daughter" — and in front of the other players too... priceless! Good times... good times...
    Lisa: And this is a happy memory for you?
    Bill: Why shouldn't it be?
  • Bill: I remember one time my father came home from a night on the town which of course had turned into a week and my mother said, "John, is there anything you won't drink?" and my father shot back, "Poison... I'm saving it for you." (Laughing) And I and my brother, who is now an alcoholic himself, just about died laughing...
  • Another episode reveals that Bill loves eating stale sandwiches out of an antiquated vending machine in the office that no one else uses. The reason? They remind him of the sandwiches his mother would make for him; she'd leave a week's supply in a tin box outside the house.
• In The Office (US), sometimes Erin's difficult upbringing is brought up in a comedic way ("In the foster home, my hair was my room.").
• In Raising Hope, the main character fondly remembers being tied to a couch and left to stare at a picture of a deer while his parents went to work. He used to pretend the deer's parents had left it alone for hours to stare at a picture of a little boy.
• Arnold Rimmer from Red Dwarf, his father vented his frustration at being rejected by the space corp for being an inch too short on him and his brothers by, among other things, using a medieval torture device to make them taller, and withholding food if they couldn't answer questions about astronomy.
  Rimmer:' Every morning he'd measure us to see if we had grown, if not it was back on the rack.
  • His mother, meantime, was just incredibly cold. Or, as Rimmer tried to defend her, "She just despised idiots, no time for fools. Tragic, really, otherwise we would have got on famously." When his father died, she wrote to her son as follows:
    I hope this epistle finds you adequately healthy to discharge your duties.
• Roseanne: Roseanne and Jackie often make quips about how zany their mom Bev was. In the later seasons, it becomes apparent that she is a Lady Drunk. Their father's abuse involved a belt kept over the front door but his abuse isn't played for laughs.
• Sarah and Laura Silverman from The Sarah Silverman Program. Sarah's father screamed in her face for buying the wrong brand of cigarettes when she was 9-years-old, beat her imaginary friend with a baseball bat, and faked his death to avoid taking care of his children.
• The Saturday Night Live skits about Simon, who sat in a bathtub and showed 'drawrings' of his neglected existence.
• On Schitt's Creek, millionaires Johnny and Moira Rose made sure their children David and Alexis had all the schooling and material possessions they could want but were severely emotionally neglectful and distant. Some highlights include the kids' nursery being in a separate wing of the house, Moira devising a game in which her children throw prescription pain pills into her mouth, the time Moira took 7-year-old Alexis to the Playboy mansion, and both parents forgetting an adult David's birthday.
  • Twyla will often casually reveal horrific details about her childhood with no sign of it having bothered her.
• Scrubs:
  • Dr. Cox falls in and out of this. Sometimes his abusive childhood is treated jokingly, and then in other episodes, they'll focus on how messed up he is as a result.
    "I don't necessarily buy into all that New Age-y crap. I once saw my mom knock my dad unconscious with a frying pan. You know what I did? Kept right on going with my birthday party!"
  • So does the Janitor. Once hinted at when he brings a cage to a baby shower (for the baby). When he gets weird looks he then plays it off like he was just joking and really brought it just in case the child gets a puppy later on. He also claims his mother made him eat off of the floor, hinting that was the reason he became a janitor. Another time, there was a flashback showing that his mother threw away his favorite doll, then claimed it was an accident because his room was too messy, leading him to be the sort of neat-freak who makes a career out of keeping things clean.
• In Seinfeld, George's parents are overbearing as it is, so naturally his childhood was less than salutary.
  George: As damaging as purely psychological and verbal abuse could be...
  Elaine: Ah, and another piece of the puzzle falls into place.
  • Some of George's worst childhood moments revolve around "Festivus", a holiday his dad Frank made up. Frank wants to revive it and plays a tape of a Festivus from George's childhood:
    Frank: (on tape) Read that passage.
    Young George: I can't, I need my glasses!
    Frank: You don't need glasses — you're just weak! You're weak!
    Estelle: Leave him alone!
    Frank: ...Okay. It's now time for the Festivus feats of strength!
    George: (in the present) NO! Not the feats of strength! I hate Festivus! (runs out screaming)
  • Jerry, George, and Elaine play an old home video of George on vacation to bore a woman to sleep, only for this to happen:
    Frank: (on tape) You step on it, and it flushes!
    Elaine: Why is your father giving a tour of a rest stop?
    George: ...Oh God, don't look. This is the part where they change me.
    Jerry: Change you? You were, like, eight years old!
    George: I was seven and a half!
• The DiMeo children in Speechless had this mainly due to the family cutting corners on things like furniture and tact in order to support eldest son J.J., who has cerebral palsy. For example, their youngest daughter used an old fish tank as a crib.
• Happens very often in Still Standing.
  • One particular instance is where Judy commented that Brian was the only one of the children who'd be successful, not knowing that Lauren and Tina had just come into the room.
  • What makes it worse was that she didn't try to put any effort into making it up to them.
• Titus:
  • Christopher Titus's father actually thinks emotionally damaging kids is better for them than physical violence (which Erin's dad, Merritt, does to her brother, Michael, which Ken thinks makes him a "drunken Irish loser.")
  • Christopher Titus really did have a messed-up childhood in Real Life and mentions it often in his stand-up comedy routines and on the sitcom. Both of his parents were alcoholics (though his dad, Ken, was a Functional Addict); his mom, Juanita, was a violent, manic-depressive schizophrenic who murdered her second husband after he beat the shit out of her for not having dinner done and she eventually killed herself after realizing that her mental illness had ruined her life; his dad married and divorced five times (with his ex-wives cleaning him out to the point that the only things they had in their house were a rubber raft, a box, and a black-and-white TV); and Titus's extended family includes members who are either mentally ill, verbally abusive, addicted to drugs, or a Mormon uncle.
• Curtis from Todd and the Book of Pure Evil seems to be in the teenage years of a Hilariously Abusive Childhood. He mentions in one episode that his parents are constantly trying to get rid of him. In another episode, when his friend Hannah questions how he learned to pick locks, he mentions that his parents lock him out of the house a lot.
• Max Black from 2 Broke Girls often randomly brings up stories from her childhood being "raised" by her drug-addicted, alcoholic mother.
  Caroline Channing: I got this; I am a brilliant event planner. My sweet 16 was off the chain. Penthouse parties, finger black theme, Alanis Morissette singed songs from "Jagged Little Pill".
  Max Black: On my 16th birthday, my Mom took too many jagged little pills, and I had to drive her to the emergency room to get her stomach pumped.
  Caroline Channing: Was your childhood based on the novel Push by Sapphire?
  Max Black: I wish.
• Two and a Half Men:
  • The show often displays the poisonous behavior of Charlie and Alan's mother, both in the show's timeframe and in Backstory presented by "who-did-Mom-scar-more" arguments. There was also an episode where she keeps pushing Charlie to find out why he doesn't like her and why he has issues with commitment. He finally opens up with a rant:
    Charlie: I'm not saying I hate you, but if I did, it might have something to do with the fact that you're a narcissistic bloodsucker who drove my father into an early grave, after which you married a succession of men who couldn't care less about Alan and me, which was just fine with you 'cause you... looked at us like a couple of dancing monkeys you could just haul out whenever it suited you! And when it didn't, you sent us off to boarding school or camp or that kibbutz in Israel, where we got beat up 'cause we weren't even Jewish! And now... now you show up here every chance you get to lay a guilt trip on me for not appreciating my cold, lonely, loveless childhood!
    Evelyn: Well... obviously you're not ready to talk about it.
  • ... although it was probably best summed up here:
    Therapist: How's your father?
    Charlie: Dead.
    Therapist: And your mother?
    Charlie: Killed him.
• Victorious: Cat's family life is frequently implied to be rather messed up. Examples include being left beside the road at night, her mother once holding her breath for several hours when she was pregnant with Cat and Cat covering her ears and saying, "I'm under my bed!" when Beck and Jade were arguing in front of her. This is all Played for Laughs of course.
• WandaVision: A flashback in the Halloween Episode shows Wanda's childhood in Sokovia. Wanda and Pietro are given a single raw fish as a treat ("to share!") while a man is scrapping a car for parts, things are on fire, and there are distant gunshots. This is yet another meta-joke of the series about how immigrants and third-world countries are treated as a joke by sitcoms. It's almost certainly a fake flashback written by Agatha, and sharply contrasts with a real flashback in a later episode that shows Wanda's family clearly poor, but making the best of a bad situation by watching old American sitcoms, until a bomb hits their apartment.
  Wanda: That's not exactly how I remember it.
  Fake Pietro: You probably suppressed a lot of the trauma.
• The Whitest Kids U' Know did a similar version involving a Christmas gift... The dad wanted the kid to bury the pony because they had to clean up after it.
• In Wizards of Waverly Place, Harper always says something about her horrible life at home almost every episode, and a laugh track follows. Although that makes it fall into Dude, Not Funny! territory, though this explains why she has been adopted by the family. The parents even seem to favor her over their biological children, and when talking about their plans for the future say "Harper will be the one to take care of us when we are older."
• Will & Grace: The show frequently plays the characters' awful childhoods for humor.
  • Will's mother is shown to be emotionally distant from her family and once nearly let Will drown because she didn't want to get her hair wet. Will even mentions an incident when their house caught fire and her more only tried to save her favorite Lladro figurine while the rest of the family had to be alerted by a neighbor.
  • Karen's mother was a con artist who frequently used her own daughter in her schemes. In adulthood, Karen would send her mother a monthly check to stay out of her life.
  • Zig-zagged with Jack's father Daniel. Jack mentions that the man passed out when his son came out as gay and was quite unsupportive to him when Jack was growing up. While the show draws some humor out of Jack's angst, it does treat Jack's feelings of anger over it somewhat seriously in the episode where they reconcile.
  • Grace grew up with two resentful siblings and an embarrassing, overly critical mother. While these relationships get treated humorously, it is shown that Grace really takes her father's mean-spirited jokes about her to heart and her reaction is treated seriously by the show. A season 10 episode also reveals that Grace was sexually assaulted by her father's friend — this is not played for laughs either.
• Sammy from Yes, Dear. He's raised in a family where he is loved genuinely, but the many bad things befalling him are so over-the-top (the fact that they all occur by accident adds to the humor factor) make his childhood life appear like this (for instance, in one episode, he's shown in flashback to have accidentally bumped his head on some hard surface 5 times).

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