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Freudian Excuse

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Freudian Excuse (trope)

"I always wanted a fire truck when I was little. I never got one! That's why I'm evil! [chuckles]"
Zorak, Cartoon Planet

The writers have a villain, and they want to give that character some depth. The obvious solution is to Pet the Dog. Unfortunately, that tends to make the character less scary, causing Badass Decay and Villain Decay.

Instead, writers may keep the villain (especially The Sociopath) just as vile as before, but reveal that they have a reason for being that way. The most popular one is the Freudian Excuse: the villain had an abusive and particularly violent backstory (such as Abusive Parents, being bullied by peers, being raped in the past, etc.), making them insane and warping their perception on the universe, and that's why they're sociopathic Serial Killers going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, or why they want to destroy everything out of their misery, or why they're Straw Nihilists who adhere to The Social Darwinist philosophy that it's a Crapsack World where Might Makes Right. Sometimes, this is done for deliberate Badass Decay, but usually it isn't. The villain is as horrible as ever, only now the audience can look at them in a new way.

Unfortunately, just like a Pet the Dog moment, the Freudian Excuse sometimes fails to give a villain any depth at all. If the villain is particularly evil, it can come across as an illogical and lame Non Sequitur: "his father beat him, and that's why he's an Omnicidal Maniac." Even if the villain's crimes are proportionate, the writers have to strike a hard balance. Too much emphasis on the excuse, and it looks like they're attorneys justifying the villain. Too little, and it is a fallacious Appeal to Pity that looks like a ridiculously gratuitous scene of Wangst. However, this can in turn be highlighted in-story if the other characters point out that Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse. In the case of the Complete Monster, it fails to justify anything, merely explaining their origins and nothing more. It could even be used to make the character worse, since they know how awful it is to be treated horribly yet inflict pain on others anyway while rejecting the possibility of ever getting over their trauma and changing their ways, or simply highlight just how petty and unreasonable the character truly is, in which case it's questionable whether or not they are actually genuine, or if their "freudian excuse" is merely a convenient justification.

Most importantly, the Freudian Excuse does not involve the character growing or changing; it explains why they haven't changed, and in fact, often serves as a signal that they cannot and never will. Bad writers often think that the excuse can substitute for Character Development, but it does the exact opposite. Good writers know the excuse has limits, and watch them. If done well enough, it may lead the audience to Cry for the Devil or even straight-up turn a near-Complete Monster into a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. A Freudian Excuse is often invoked to explain how someone who Used to Be a Sweet Kid became such a monster instead - again, much writerly skill is generally needed to pull this off and make it poignant rather than pathetic.

The excuse can be played with in many ways. One way is to use it to show how pathetic a villain is — after the villain gives a Breaking Speech, a hero's classic rebuttal is "says the guy who became an Evil Overlord to work out his daddy issues." The second way is for the villain to sneer at the hero's pity for them, even exploiting it in a fight. (Further, the villain is protesting far too much.) A third way is to simply present it as an explanation rather than a full excuse. Sometimes the author simply shows what warped the character into what they became without expecting the audience to feel any more sympathetic toward the character — a sort of psychological How We Got Here. And a fourth way is to use the Freudian Excuse as a justification for a Heel–Face Turn; if the villain gets treatment, he no longer has any reason to be evil and may pay the heroes back out of gratitude.

Many Crime and Punishment Series (and Darker and Edgier superhero comics) are notorious for Writer on Board stories deconstructing the Freudian Excuse. At least once per storyline, there will be a slimy psychiatrist or defense attorney who declares that the Neck-Chopping Killer is merely a victim of circumstances, and it's the hero who should be locked away. These stories tend to end with said psychiatrist or defense attorney getting murdered by the killer, which is depicted as poetic Irony.

However, not all examples of Freudian Excuses have to involve evil or villainous characters. It can also be used to explain the neurotic behaviors of even heroic or otherwise neutral characters. And sometimes, the Freudian Excuse can work well in sympathizing with a character.

See Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse for deconstructions of this trope, and Freudian Excuse Denial for one particular subversion. See also Dark and Troubled Past, Start of Darkness, Jerkass Woobie, Abusive Parents, Parental Neglect, Parental Abandonment, "Well Done, Son" Guy, Single-Issue Psychology, Tragic Bigot, Being Tortured Makes You Evil, Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, You Are What You Hate, He Who Fights Monsters, Humanizing Moment, Who's Laughing Now?, Burnout by Traumatic Job, and Hanky-Panky with the Help. If the villain is gothic, see Goths Have It Hard. Takes the "It's Nurture" position of the "Nature Versus Nurture" argument; for the Nature position, see Villainous Lineage. Contrast Upbringing Makes the Hero.

Not to Be Confused with Freud Was Right, All Psychology Is Freudian (or any of the other five or so Tropes that Sigmund Freud was the Trope Namer for, actually).

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    Asian Animation 
  • In Season 7 Episode 13 of Happy Friends, after Careful S. breaks his clown mask, Clown Monster reveals why he became a villain — it's because he was born with face paralysis that makes him incapable of smiling. He was treated so unfairly over it that it inspired him to make people keep their smiles forever by freezing them into stone with his special ruby when he donned the Clown Monster alias.
  • In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, Paddi is notoriously hungry and sleepy all the time. Why? Episode 13 of Joys of Seasons shows that it's because his parents were so lazy they didn't want to play with him. Paddi is also offered a cake by his lazy mother in the flashback; both these things make him wonder if eating and sleeping are as fun as his parents seem to think they are... and, evidently, he did ultimately find them enjoyable.

    Stand-Up Comedy 

    Tabletop Games 
  • In Nomine: The Archangel Dominic is infamous in Heaven as the leader of the angelic Inquisition, and for being one of the harshest, most judgmental and most intensely paranoid people in Heaven. Most of these issues are lingering effects of some rather unpleasant experiences during the original Fall and the War in Heaven. Once, long ago, Dominic was a mere word-bound angel and essentially little more than a glorified guidance counselor — since no angel back then wished to defy God's will, all transgressions were done by accident and needed nothing more than a gentle reminder to be corrected. It was a fairly simple job, and Dominic was innocent and trusting. Lucifer's rebellion shattered his world, and he lost many of his oldest and closest friends to Hell — chief among them his most trusted aide, the Cherub Asmodeus; this is one of the primary reasons why he refuses to let himself grow close to anybody, since he has come to view emotional bonds as innately dangerous. Additionally, Dominic was also left deeply shaken by the fact that he himself nearly succumbed to Lucifer's temptations; he concluded that, if even the Angel of Judgement could be nearly swayed into damnation, then nobody can truly be above temptation, and to this day remains unable to truly trust anybody.
  • Warhammer 40,000: Most of the Traitor Primarchs possess one:
    • Angron crash landed on the planet Nuceria as a child, where he was enslaved by the populace to fight as a gladiator. Part of that process involved the Nucerians shoving archaeotech called the Butcher's Nails into Angron's head, so he could feel no emotion other than rage and suffered constant pain when not killing stuff. Eventually he rebelled and amassed an army of his fellow gladiators, slaughtering their former captors until they were finally cornered. Just before the final battle, the Emperor appeared to Angron and asked him to join the Great Crusade, which Angron refused. The Emperor wouldn't take no for an answer and teleported Angron up to his flagship, leaving Angron's gladiator friends to die without his leadership. Angron never forgave the Emperor for this betrayal and was one of the first Primarch to turn traitor when the Horus Heresy broke out.
    • Lorgar Aurelian was raised by an abusive radical named Kor Phaeron, grooming him to overthrow the religious authorities of his homeworld. When the Emperor arrived, Lorgar identified Him as the Messiah he had been preaching about, something the atheistic Emperor took issue with. This finally came to a head when the Emperor ordered the destruction of Monarchia, a temple city that had been the crown jewel of Lorgar's zealotry, and then had the Word Bearers bow to the Ultramarines who carried out the destruction to humiliate Lorgar and get him to fall in line. His faith roughly shattered, Lorgar turned back to Kor Phaeron, who guided him to the Gods of Chaos as an alternate faith to worship.
    • Mortarion was raised (and abused) by an alien warlord on the planet Barbarus, which was wrapped in a poisonous fog that even the superhuman Primarch struggled with. Eventually he started a revolt, overthrowing all of Barbarus' overlords save his "father". As he climbed the mountain the warlord's fortress was built upon, a mysterious stranger approached Mortarion with an offer of help, which he spurned. Unfortunately for Mortarion the poison was too much, and just before he passed out from exhaustion he had to watch as the stranger revealed himself to be the Emperor and killed Mortarion's father with little issue. Denied his final vengeance, Mortarion gained a grudge against the Emperor that festered until the Heresy.
    • Perturabo was far too brilliant for the rest of Olympia, and thus gained rather poor social skills and a mild obsession with perfection. When he joined the Great Crusade, his Iron Warriors were quickly shoved into the thankless job of siege warfare, with thousands of Legionnaires being fed to the meat grinder so other Legions would get the glory of actually taking the planets. Peturarbo grew resentful of his brothers, especially Rogal Dorn and his Imperial Fists (who got the job Peturarbo wanted, that of building forts and palaces instead of knocking them down), and joined Horus since he seemed to be the only Primarch that gave a damn about him.
    • Konrad Kurze grew up on the planet Nostramo, a world of perpetual darkness with ridiculously high crime and corruption. This combined with his repressed psychic powers drove Konrad a little nutty, causing him to take up the name "Night Haunter" and become 40K's answer to The Punisher. His psychosis got worse after he was brought in for the Great Crusade, and by the time of the Heresy he had so much blood on his hands he felt he had no choice but to turn.
    • Alpharius was discovered near the end of the Great Crusade, and struggled with constant reminders of his brothers' conquests while he had little to show. His constant schemes and plans were an attempt to one-up the others, but only made the other Primarch's distrust of him grow. While the Alpha Legion's alliances are shrouded in mystery, a lot of their villainous acts go back to Alpharius' jealousy towards the other Legions.
    • Humanity as a whole has a few to explain its rampant xenophobia. When humanity first reached the stars, they encountered alien races... such as the Eldar and Orks. That soured them on alien relations, followed by nearly every genuine alliance they made being turned against them when their first empire fell. The Emperor remembered these betrayals during the Great Crusade, and declared that coexisting with xenos species was a betrayal of humanity. Likewise, while it's perfectly possible for psykers to live long, productive lives if properly trained, the fact that untrained psykers tend to get possessed by daemons has created a very long genetic memory against them.
  • Warhammer:
    • Archaon the Everchosen was a devoted follower of Sigmar... until he realized that he was destined to be chosen by the Chaos Gods to herald the world's destruction. Archaon begged tirelessly to Sigmar to no avail and was soon hunted by his fellow comrades until he finally gave in and turned to become the leader of the Forces of Chaos.
    • While jealousy and pride have the biggest impact in Malekith turning from an elven hero to the founder and leader of the Dark Elves of Naggaroth, another factor was the loss of two individuals close to him; the dwarf Snorri Whitebeard and his wife Allisara.
    • The Beastman known as Ungrol Four Horn has a past that is pitiable, given the very nature of the Beastmen. In addition to be cast aside by human civilization, he was also mocked and treated as a joke by fellow Beastmen, until he finally had enough and killed his clan's chieftain and shaman (a terrible sin by Beastmen standards) and began to make his own group of Beastmen.
  • Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: Most followers of Chaos didn't become so exactly willingly; after the Chaos gods defeated Sigmar's armies, Sigmar was forced to close off his realm of Azyr to save it, and anyone who didn't manage to get to a Realmgate in time was left to fend for themselves in the ensuing Age Of Chaos. For those people, swearing loyalty to one Chaos god or another was the only way to survive the post-apocalyptic hellscape the other seven Realms were turning into and more than a few were understandably angry at Sigmar for abandoning them. Now that Sigmar has started reclaiming the Realms from Chaos, he's openly acknowledged that a lot of Chaos worshippers are just desperate people trying to survive, and he's tried to save as many of them as he can.

    Web Animation 
  • Chadam: Viceroy was abandoned by his parents and ostracized by the rest of the community for being born deformed and with no imagination, so he turned to studying, and thus got started on the path to being a Mad Scientist.
  • The Father Tucker short "Rest for the Wicked" has a scene where Father Tucker warmly reminisces on going camping with a priest named Father Taper when he was young. We then see a flashback of a clearly traumatized Tucker being told by Father Taper not to tell anyone what had happened, which implies that Father Tucker is a Pedophile Priest because he himself was a victim of one.
  • RWBY seems to be chock full of this, seemingly in line with the story's basis on reimagining fairy tales, with most of the major villains and some of the heroes' personal stories revolving around it:
    • Roman Torchwick gets one as Villain Protagonist of the book ''RWBY: Roman Holliday". He actually started out as a somewhat idealistic street urchin, but living in a city infested with crime, classism and even downright racism like Mistral meant he went downhill fast - with the defining moment being when he tried to save a woman from a mugging; the woman in question turned out to be a con-artist fleeing from crooks she'd cheated and, as thanks for Roman's help, she pinned her crime on him and left him to take the fall for it. Roman got so badly jaded from all this that he decided people are inherently selfish and altruism is for suckers, with only the powerful or wealthy ever getting anywhere in life.
    • Neopolitan is alluded to have one in Volume 9, both for her past and her hatred of series protagonist Ruby Rose. Illusionary portraits based on her past show she had wealthy but strict parents who didn't allow her many freedoms, but then Roman Torchwick came into her life with all the freedom she could ever want - with one portrait implying they killed Neo's parents together in order to get it - and she truly loved him for it. But then Roman got killed during a fight with Ruby (albeit indirectly) and Neo subsequently lost the only thing she ever cared about, which made her bitter enough to gladly let the whole world burn just to get back at her. That said, when she actually does succeed in driving Ruby to attempt suicide, she finds no satisfaction in it because Roman's still dead and she now has nothing left - so after Ruby pulls herself back from the edge, Neo elects to stay in magical limbo over pursuing a grudge that won't bring her happiness.
      • The book RWBY: Roman Holliday sheds more solid light on how she became Roman's partner in crime; Born Trivia Vanille, she was the daughter of a city councilman who was in deep with the mob and thus obsessed with keeping his reputation clean. Said obsession meant both her parents were ashamed of their daughter having "deformities" like muteness, heterochromia/mismatched eye-colors and a stunted height, forcing her to wear colored contacts and forbidding her from socializing to protect their image — with the constant repression making her rebellious and resentful, especially when she turned out a Child Prodigy who hit the Superpower Lottery with a Semblance that let her create illusions of Hard Light (i.e., literally bring her imagination to life), even creating an imaginary friend for herself called "Neo". After she ruined her parent's party as payback for neglecting her and was caught stealing, she got sent to a boarding school where she was bullied for things like her muteness until a fateful meeting with Roman (who was fleeing the crime syndicate her school's headmaster had ties to) showed her the world of criminals. Having chafed under rules and ridicule all her life, she felt Roman showed her what true freedom was and abandoned the name "Trivia Vanille", embracing the identity of "Neopolitan" so she could be with Roman - culminating in them stealing her family's wealth to kickstart their criminal enterprises, manipulating her mobbed-up parents into getting killed in the crossfire between warring gangs and faking her own death in the process so nobody would connect her past life to her present one.
    • What little is known of Mercury's backstory is that father, Marcus Black, was a mercenary/professional killer and implied at one point to be an alcoholicnote . Marcus wanted Mercury to follow his footsteps and was extremely abusive - both physically and emotionally - in training him, even using his Semblance to take away Mercury's (depriving him of having a special power like everyone else had the potential for). Eventually, Mercury snapped and killed his father in a fight, with Cinder taking him on soon after — all of which conditioned him to view life as a matter of destiny, being trained to kill just in time for Cinder to find him. Surprisingly, mass-murderer Tyrian of all people lampshades this in Volume 6 by suggesting Mercury really just followed Cinder because he's too scared to try finding his own path, having only ever been taught how to kill and follow orders; something Mercury doesn't take well.
      • It should be noted that this is all without even knowing how Mercury lost his legs and got prosthetic replacements, or where his mom was in all this.
    • Emerald was an orphaned street-urchin who stole to survive, with the only person to ever show her kindness being Cinder - and only conditionally so, which her hard life in turned conditioned Emerald to accept. That being said, despite her cynicism and spite for seeing people happier than herself, she still shows more of a conscience than Cinder or Mercury in being unsettled when watching Vale be sacked by Grimm in Volume 3, implying she knows what she's doing is wrong but is too scared of being alone to do anything else. She finally finds the courage to do so in Volume 8, when Hazel and Oscar show her unconditional kindness and she has a Heel Realization that Cinder never actually cared for her well-being.
    • Hazel's beloved younger sister Gretchen died fighting the Creatures of Grimm, which he blamed Ozpin for due to the latter hiding the full extent of the Grimm threat from the public - including Salem's existence and immortal nature, which Hazel saw for himself when he first tired to kill her himself. He therefore fights on the belief Salem will create a new world order where nobody's lied to and can fight for what they choose. He has a Heel Realization in Volume 8 though, after learning Salem plans to end the whole world instead of just the kingdoms.
    • James Ironwood shifts from Byronic Hero to Tragic Villain in Volume 7 & Volume 8 due to this. Already suffering a mix of PTSD from being tricked and losing control of his automated army in Volume 3 (which was his worst nightmare as a Control Freak), Volume 7 had him learn the heroes were lying to him since the day they arrived on how much they knew about Salem (in part from being jaded on trust themselves over Ozpin's lying to them), atop learning the Big Good Ozpin was lying to him for years beforehand in hiding how Salem had Complete Immortality. Then the heroes go behind his back to leak secret info in order to get people on their side right when Cinder - the woman responsible for his disgrace in Volume 3 - reveals she's alive and in town, finally breaking the camel's back and driving him to eschew anyone else's judgement but his own. The video game "RWBY: Arrowfell" further implies he had issues with trust even well before joining Oz's inner circle, with how his predecessor actively stiffed him on anything having to do with Fort Arrowfell (what was done there, who had the keys to it, why it was even decommissioned in the first place, etc).
    • Ozpin, the arguable Big Good of the series, has this for why he lies to everyone. Salem, his wife and the mother of his children, started out as a woman who only ever wanted to live her life freely - but when Oz came back from death itself as the Brother Gods' emissary and elected to be with her, he was repaid with seeing her degenerate into a Social Darwinist who wanted to rule the restored humanity as mere subjects and build a dynasty through their daughters; when he tried to take their children away from that fate, Salem attacked him and destroyed their children in the crossfire. This alone would have already hurt his ability to trust others, but coupled with his implication that people had betrayed him out of despair upon learning Salem was immortal (including Haven Headmaster Lionheart in Volumes 4 and 5) and it's little wonder he grew so afraid to tell anyone the full truth.
    • Lead protagonist Ruby Rose is revealed to be this from Volume 8 into Volume 9, as her Chronic Hero Syndrome starts veering into a case of Samaritan Syndrome. Near the start of the series, Ruby tells her friend Jaune Arc that a leader is "not allowed to be a failure" - that they must solve their issues themselves because they're the ones who need to be there for their team, not the other way around - because that's how she remembered her Missing Mom and how she remembered the heroes in her childhood stories. But after repeated betrayals, deceptions from or just being let down by people their group thought they could trust, Ruby's mentality puts an enormous amount of pressure on her not to let down her friends and family's faith in her even as the burdens the team faces grow increasingly large, especially when the rest of them turn their backs on Ozpin over his past lies in favor of following Ruby. Because of this ingrained belief that she's not allowed to falter, Ruby becomes increasingly cynical, jaded and critical of herself the more things go wrong, with her team unwittingly worsening it by mistaking her mood for a slump instead of an impending breakdown (ironically in part because they had too much faith in her willpower to think she'd need them to pry). Suffering a decisive loss at Atlas - with Penny dying, the kingdom falling, the Big Bad getting half of the magic relics and learning her mom's fate was a Senseless Sacrifice - finally causes her to snap so badly that she ends up Driven to Suicide by Neopolitan, with the only reason it didn't stick being that they ended up in a realm where you're left Not Quite Dead when your life "ends" and have a chance to reconsider (which Ruby does, after accepting her mother's imperfections and subsequently her own).
    • Zigzagged when the Big Bad Salem gets hers shown in Volume 6. When she was still human, her controlling father locked her away in a tower all her life until her eventual lover Ozma set her free - only for him to die of illness some time later. Grief-stricken at finally having someone to love just to lose them, she besought the Gods to bring him back and later tricked one into doing it when the other refused. When they realized the deception, the Gods undid the resurrection and cursed Salem with immortality for it, forbidding her to rejoin Ozma in death until she accepted her mistake of clinging to the past. More jaded than ever, Salem vengefully manipulated the rest of humanity to rise up against the Gods and they wiped out all life on Remnant in retaliation by shattering the moon, leaving Salem as the sole survivor (though Ozma's spirit convinced the Gods to give mankind a second chance and remake them). In despair, Salem threw herself into a pit of dark essence to try and end her immortality, but it mutated her into a hybrid of human and Grimm-creature. After all that, she finally gets a Hope Spot by reuniting with a reincarnated Ozma and having kids... and then loses it all when the Social Darwinist mentality born of her experiences horrifies Ozma to the point he tries to flee with their daughters, sparking a battle in which their kingdom burns down and their children die in the crossfire. Losing her offspring and being "betrayed" by the man she sacrificed everything to have back becomes the last straw for her and she spends every century afterword seeking to end the world herself in hopes it will force the Gods to punish her with the death she's long been denied. All that said, while it is understandable why she's so bitter and angry at the world, she's also called out by many from Oz and Yang to the Brother Gods themselves that she's gone well out of her way to make everyone else suffer, using her past as an excuse.
    • Invoked, discussed and defied with Cinder. Volume 8 reveals why she (whose source of inspiration is Cinderella) became power-hungry and determined to be feared; She was an orphan from Atlas, which which was infamous in-universe for classism issues between Atlas City and Mantle (where Cinder was born). She got taken in by an abusive hostess and her family who bullied her daily, with even her name itself stemming from a diss about chimney-sweeping for them, while the only person to ever show her pity was a Huntsman who taught her how to fight in secret with the hope she could join a combat school to find a better life. Unfortunately, her adoptive family found out and tried to take the weapons she made, which caused her to snap and kill them all - and when her horrified teacher refused to keep quiet about it, she ended up killing him too. All of this convinced her that Humans Are Bastards and thus only way to be free in life is to be strong and powerful - but it also made her feel like she was entitled to have power dropped into her lap, with Arthur Watts ultimately calling her out for acting like life itself owes her something for all the abuse she suffered as a child.
      Cinder: You Atlas elites are all the same! You think hoarding power means you'll have it forever, but it just makes the rest of us hungrier! And I refuse to starve!
    • Invoked by Blake towards Adam, but ultimately defied. All we ever learn of his past is that he was enslaved by the Schnee Dust Corporation like many other Faunus, and that the ordeal left him with a bad scar-brand over one of his eyes. The show intentionally doesn't go into further detail about it because a Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse - especially since Adam himself even says as much, confessing to Blake in Volume 3 that he never cared about Faunus rights and later in Volume 6 that he considered Blake abandoning him to be far worse than anything humans ever did to him.
  • SNARLED: In "The Tokoloshe", the old lady cursed our protagonist with the tokoloshe, but it was not out of simple spite alone. She's also driven by the fact that the house the protagonist moved into was formerly her home, before she was forced to sell it to the girl's family after her husband passed. Still, as sorry as the protagonist feels for her, it's rather mean-spirited of her to take it out on the family's daughter.
  • Spooky Month: The leader of the Hatzgang, Roy, sends Skid and Pump to the spooky abandoned mansion and nonchalantly remarks "That's where my uncle takes me". Ross and Robert can only awkwardly shift away from him after thinking about it, and the next scene with the trio has Roy angrily ask "What do you mean it's wrong?!", indicating Ross and Robert tried to tell him what his uncle was doing wasn't okay. Considering what dwells under that manor and what kinds of people visit it, the implications beyond that are all the more concerning.

    Web Original 
  • The Human Pet: The last upload reveals Sam's motivation for his kidnapping, murdering and torture is that his parents were horribly abusive to the point of driving him mad.
  • Parodied in a Rooster Teeth podcast, in which Gus mentions having a contest with Geoff Ramsay over who could say the most ridiculous thing to get out of signing a petition. Gus was approached by a man wanting to "Save the Trees", and Gus quietly responds "...my father was killed by a tree" before walking off.
  • Naruto: The Abridged Series spoofs Naruto's Freudian Excuse — Sakura tells Sasuke she's not interested in Naruto because he's got such a downer background, yet isn't using it as an excuse to be emo.
  • Screen Rant Pitch Meetings: It's implied the Screenwriter is such a depraved Cloudcuckoolander because of his horrible childhood.
    Screenwriter: Don't you remember when you were a kid and you'd say "Mother, can I please have some sweet, sweet condensed milk?"
    Producer: Uh....
    Screenwriter: And then she’d say [in a suddenly disturbed tone of voice] "Not until you've brushed Mother's hair. Not until you brushed it well."
    Producer: It sounds like you had a weird childhood.
    Screenwriter: [back to his normal cheery tone] Oh dang, that explains a lot.
  • Shorts Wars:
    • The clones don't even have a childhood to have trauma from. As soon as they were created, they were manipulated and convinced to take over the creator's channels under the idea that the world would be better without them, and under the threat of being killed if they step out of line. This becomes the reasoning for many of the clones' Heel-Face Turns, after they decide that they would rather work with the creators to make original content, instead of the soulless content The Boss forces them to make.
    • The Boss’ Dark and Troubled Past of being kidnapped at birth and raised as a test subject for a Mad Scientist, while being aware that he has a twin brother out there living a much healthier life, and his resent for said twin for this reason inform much of his actions in the present day, as his schemes are largely born from a desire for revenge against his twin brother, none other than Jonny RaZeR, who became successful through YouTube Shorts, the other thing he hates the most.
    The Boss: The two things I hate most culminated in one spot.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series:
    • Played with in Kaiba's story... he fired his own parents.
    • They also point out the flaw of logic that Dark Marik from Yu-Gi-Oh! resents the Pharaoh considering at the time all he did was be dead and remain dead when it was his abusive father who made his life miserable and forced him to be a tombkeeper. Really the Pharaoh being around at all means his job is officially complete and he's completely free.
  • Casual Geographic: The presenter admits to having a deep and searing hatred of pelicans, which stems from a time when he was attacked and nearly blinded by a pelican as a child.


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Waldwick's past

The whole riot over the laziness throughout the season reminds Waldwick of his father who disapproved of his reality show idea due to his poor grades in contrast to his relatives, claiming that "he isn't going anywhere in life" and that he should've become an astronomer.

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