Playing With / Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse

Basic Trope: A character is told their Dark and Troubled Past doesn't justify their current actions.

• Straight:
  • Dracone is on a killing spree of murdering a number of people. When confronted by the heroes, Dracone tells them that his horrible upbringing is what drove him into a life of crime. The heroes tell him that he is not excused for his actions.
  • Alex meets his father Bob for the first time in years. He explains to him that the reason he was abusive to him is because his father abused him. Alex tells Bob that that doesn't excuse his harsh treatment of him.
• Exaggerated: Dracone has very justifiable reasons for what he does and is even at the cusp of a Heel–Face Turn out of remorse, but the heroes show No Sympathy and execute him all the same.
• Downplayed:
  • Dracone tells the heroes that the reason he's a Jerkass is because of his parents abusing him. While understanding, the heroes tell him that he must hold himself accountable for his actions.
  • The heroes find whatever story Dracone tells them understandable and are sympathetic to his pain, but still make it a point that his actions are not made right or justified by it.
  • Dracone pleads the judge for mercy, bringing up his tough life. The judge agrees to reduce his sentence from 50 to 45 years.
• Justified:
  • The heroes admit that even though Dracone's past was painful, all the murder, robbery, and property damage he's done are still crimes, and he must still pay for them by the law.
  • The heroes can not comprehend how he could be evil despite his upbringing. As a result, they show no pity for him.
    • The same thing but with a variation of the Misery Poker: Yes, Dracone has a Dark and Troubled Past but the hero lived the same thing, or sometimes even worse. Dracone loses all his family? The hero is the sole survivor of a genocide and he didn't become a bad guy; he protects and helps people. For him, using this as an excuse is just really lame.
  • The heroes don't buy Dracone's Freudian Excuse because he did even worse than what's happened in his past.
  • Even with the Freudian Excuse, what Dracone is doing is still horribly wrong and needs to be punished for his crimes against other people.
  • Dracone is still fully aware of the pain and hurt he causes to innocents and may even relish in it.
  • Dracone's excuse sounds good, in theory, but his response is not; yes, his family was killed and his town was incinerated, but, instead of using his power to protect others from that same fate, such as the heroes had (or hunted down and killed the bastards who did the deed and then called it quits, as more cynical members of the team point out), he repeatedly and unrelentingly razed and depopulated city after city, country after country, with little remorse for the thousands of innocents that have suffered a fate equal to- or worse- than his own, in his quest for 'justice'.
• Inverted:
  • The villain doesn't care about the reasons why the heroes try to defeat him or do good to the world.
  • When defeated, the villain says that what he did cannot be excused by his terrible past. The heroes, having heard of his past, consoles him and tells him that what he went through is so horrific that it actually does excuse his actions.
  • The heroes declare that whatever horrible actions the villain has committed now neither justify nor invalidate the Trauma Conga Line he went through in his past, and swear to ensure it never happens again.
  • Dracone was raised from infancy to serve a despot, but he doesn't accept that his upbringing taught him cruelty. He's convinced himself that becoming a tool of oppression was his idea.
• Subverted:
  • Upon being told what Dracone has been through, the heroes start criticizing him, but soon realize that he was in the right and decide to support him for a variety of reasons; for example, the killing spree was a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against people who would do even worse than what he is doing.
  • The heroes initially mock Dracone's claims, but only because they thought he was lying. When they find out he was telling the truth, they feel sorry for him for real.
  • The heroes point out to Dracone that some of them have had tough childhoods too and didn't turn out that bad, only Dracone to contest the claim, pointing out some of the ruthless actions the heroes have done.
• Double Subverted:
  • After considering that Dracone is in the right, the heroes change opinion again when they realize that Dracone isn't a Good All Along Anti-Hero, just someone with a lot of hate looking for people to put that hate out on and tell him his sad story won't work a second time.
  • The heroes realize while they may have been to quick to judge Dracone's claims, his actions go to far to be justified regardless.
  • However, even the heroes' worst actions don't compare to any of the evil deeds Dracone has done, and so in response, they tell Dracone that he's not one to talk?
  • Dracone tries a What the Hell, Hero? but the heroes never do something wrong. in fact they are Ideal Hero and The Paragon so, yes the point of "having tough childhoods too and didn't turn out that bad" is still right.
• Parodied:
  • Dracone has a rather flimsy excuse (e.g.: He didn't got the gift he wanted one Christmas), but everyone except the Straight Man thinks he is in the right and criticize their friend for trying to call him out on it.
  • Dracone was actually not in control of his actions, when he tries to explain to the heroes that he was brainwashed to do horrible things after it wears off, the heroes still tell him that it doesn't excuse him for his actions.
• Zig Zagged:
  • Dracone himself alternates between believing his tough childhood justifies his actions and admitting that it is no excuse. At other times he flat-out praises his parents, saying they "toughened him up".
  • The heroes' responses to Dracone's tough childhood range from complete understanding and believing that it does justify his actions to a complete and utter lack of sympathy and almost every possible viewpoint in between.
• Averted: The heroes don't hold Dracone accountable for his actions.
• Enforced:
  • The writer feels that villains get away with their crimes because of their Freudian Excuses and wants to deconstruct the trope.
  • The writers address fan complaints about Dracone's inadequate excuses by having the heroes express the same sentiment.
• Lampshaded: "And I thought you so-called heroes would understand."
  • "To Freudian excuse or not to Freudian Excuse... that is the question."
• Invoked: (Continued from Lampshaded) "Of course we do, we've been through that kind of stuff ourselves, but you don't see us doing what you're doing!"
  • Dracone meant for his upbringing to be an explanation for his actions, not a justification for them. But there's only one way to make him stop.
  • Dracone admits he can't really tell from where he is now if his upbringing is even relevant anymore.
• Exploited:
  • The heroes calling out Dracone for trying to justify his actions was all part of the Dark Lord's plan. Dracone's pain and misery is what makes him so powerful, and realizing that he has no one to blame but himself will drive him further to the dark side and decide to embrace it now that he understands he is truly nothing but evil, making him much more susceptible to the Lord's will.
  • The heroes do actually see that Dracone is justified but they really need to stop his killing spree. So they trip him up by pointing out that his actions have no excuse and briefly make him question his own life choices.
• Defied:
  • Dracone rebukes the heroes' statements and explains how his tragic past does excuse his actions.
  • The heroes, as much as they despise Dracone and would like to call him out on his Freudian Excuse, begrudgingly accept that what happened to him heavily explains, or even justifies, his actions.
  • After the heroes accuse Dracone of trying to absolve responsibility for his actions, Dracone tells the heroes that he didn't ask for their sympathy.
  • Dracone makes clear, before he explains his Freudian Excuse, that people arguing about his motive is a death-worthy Berserk Button. After he provides it, nobody says anything.
  • The heroes make perfectly clear that they accept Dracone's Freudian Excuse. It's probably a lousy explanation, but it still is an explanation.
• Discussed: The heroes wonder what sort of thing Dracone must have been put through to decide to go to a killing spree. They decide that, no matter what he's been through or what sort of story they'll be told by Dracone about his past, he is killing people and must be stopped.
• Conversed: "The bad guy is giving his sob story, let's hope the heroes shut him up."
• Implied: The heroes are in no position to call out Dracone for his claims, but they glare at him in disgust and contempt.
• Plot Foundation: Billy Finnigan is a wanderer who hunts villains down. He's a force to be reckoned with, but garnered a reputation for executing villains all the same, even if they have a really, REALLY terrible background. This is his motto:

"Crimes are crimes."

• Deconstructed:
  • The narrative that people are not excused for their villainy driven by past traumas causes Dracone to believe that he lives in an unsympathetic and uncaring world and is hell-bent on destroying everyone, including himself.
  • Max, who seems to be sympathetic towards Dracone's plight, tells the heroes they were unfair in their dismissive attitude towards Dracone. The heroes accuse Max of condoning Dracone's evil and accuses him of not caring about the people Dracone has killed. After an intense argument, Max quits the group out of frustration, or worse, submits to Dracone.
  • When the heroes reject Dracone's backstory as having any influence on his current actions, Dracone retorts by accusing the heroes of absolving the people who turned him into what he is today of any guilt.
    • Which in turn, causing the heroes to go a Heroic BSoD of what they did, indirectly or directly.
    • invoked Or in a more twisted way, Dracone believes that truly the WHOLE world is against him, not believing anything out from him no matter how hard he tries. He's thus Driven to Suicide, or goes off the deep end. Cue Too Dumb to Live reaction from the hero's allies.
  • While Dracone's past does not excuse his actions now, that doesn't mean the whole event wasn't, and even still is, traumatic to him to this day, and the heroes rejecting any action to help him get over or cope with it in a healthy way just ends up causing more bloodshed in the long run. Ultimately, Dracone very well could have been willing to give up his rampage if a single person was willing to listen to him and help him work through his problems.
    • Furthermore, since Dracone's cause is still justifiable, if not agreeable, when the heroes end Dracone's campaign for good, Dracone becomes an Inspirational Martyr that encourages other unfortunate victims similar to Dracone to continue his cause, with greater strength, cunning, and cruelty. Treating Dracone's successors the same way will only repeat history.
  • Dracone is utterly convinced that the heroes are simply saying this just so they could remain Apathetic Citizens and maintain the society that gave him a Dark and Troubled Past. In other words - they aren't interested in doing good things, just making sure that they aren't bothered by what Dracone is actually trying to say or do.
    • Alternatively, Dracone is convinced that the heroes are naive about his situation and have no actual idea about what actually happened.
    • The problem is not in the heroes believing this, it's in their delivery. Telling Dracone that he killed people who did not deserved to die alongside the people who may (and it's a big "may") have because of their involvement in his Freudian Excuse is constructive. "Oh, really, your bullies deafened and blinded your five-year-old sister when they gave her a swirlie? Boo-hoo, wah-wah, suck it up, you pussy" isn't.
  • Dracone accuses the heroes using it as an excuse to be callous when they try to call him out, as if they are actually ignoring legitimate social issues that he points out.
  • (Of Plot Foundation) Billy doesn't seem to have as much morals as the villains he executes on an episodic basis. He Who Fights Monsters... will become no lesser than the monsters he slays.
  • The heroes are revealed to believe, in one way or another (and hopefully misguided), in Victim-Blaming. Or they are just plain assholes without a sense of empathy. Maybe they have a point, because Dracone has become too vile, but there are members within the cast that wonder whether or not they are someone else's Freudian Excuse waiting to be exposed (and/or whether or not to toss them at Dracone as a sacrifice, if they turn out to be Dracone's Excuse)…
• Reconstructed:
  • The heroes tells Dracone that destroying the world, as uncaring as it may be, will not improve it and will only makes him even worse than the world itself and a reason why the world is the way it is, and that he should have used what he went through as a reason to try and improve this world to make sure no one suffers like he did, instead of lashing out at everything. Ultimately, destroying everyone, instead of attracting sympathy towards Dracone, will only make him even more loathed and despised by anyone who's still alive after his onslaught. To top it off, it won't make him feel any better: Dracone's behavior is pointlessly self-destructive and no one wins at the end.
  • In Max's absence or defection, Dracone comes close to almost killing the other heroes, but Max saves them at the last minute to clarify something; As much as he's willing to forgive, that doesn't mean he's just gonna let him keep doing evil things. Max then proceeds to overpower Dracone until he's at his mercy, and for going as far as to almost kill his friends... Max knocks him out and has him sent to jail, to show everyone there are better ways to handle excuses than doing something morally wrong.
    • Alternatively, in the best case scenario, Max only joined Dracone in the hopes he can help him change his ways, which ultimately works because of how Dracone formed a genuine bond with him. Even defending Max to the other heroes by admitting they were all right; He had a choice in his own actions, but that included being able to stop himself and change for the better.
  • The heroes tell Dracone that he's got the wrong idea. As horrible as his upbringing might be, what he's doing is just wrong in general, isn't the kind of appropriate response that most people would have, and if anything, this just makes him as bad, if not worse than, those responsible for his terrible past. Really, he could have just chosen not to become a bad guy in order to prove that he wasn't.
  • Dracone relents and took heed to the heroes' words, and embraces what he has done, making it impossible for him to turn back.
  • The heroes do try to help Dracone come up with alternatives to deal with his Dark and Troubled Past in a much more constructive and healthy way, but when it becomes clear that Dracone still refuses to change and cling onto his path in such a dangerous and destructive manner, the heroes have no choice but to put him down regardless.
    • The heroes use said alternative methods to fix their world and the source of Dracone's miserable past to both show that Dracone's methods were completely wrong, and to ensure no one has to go through what Dracone did, so no one will attempt to repeat Dracone's extreme measures.
    • They use "Oh, really, your bullies deafened and blinded your five-year-old sister when they gave her a swirlie? Boo-hoo, wah-wah, suck it up, you pussy" when Dracone has jumped far, far beyond the Moral Event Horizon, and in fact, does so with the utmost glee. At that point, you might as well just mock them for being too far gone for any sort of constructive criticism to work.
  • The heroes instead phrase this trope as an intervention to Dracone precisely because they know exactly how bad he's going through. They say that Dracone's actions in the long run are counterproductive and only serve to bring him further pain.
  • Billy's in an awful, awful world. It's only Black-and-Grey Morality, and Billy's technically the only hero in there, even if he himself has gotten through his fair share of awfulness (and even caused some). The villains, as bad as their lives were, still ruined everyone else's lives. It's only fair that Billy stops all of them, because at least he only takes the lives of evil people.
  • The jerks who believe Dracone's excuse is no excuse and are victim-blaming jerks are the Decoy Protagonist. The real hero is the member of the cast who is more empathic about Dracone and the things he has lived… and has decided that the assholes have a smidge of a point, and that is Dracone has earned himself some direly needed face-stomping.
  • In a fashion, at least: Dracone's motive is one inch higher in the heroes' sympathy scale than "I woke up today and decided humanity wasn't dead enough". But that is it. After facing off against both types of monsters, the heroes cannot decide who is worse.
• Played For Laughs: Dracone is shown to be an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight who commits crimes For the Lulz and For the Evulz. When caught, he begins simpering and begging for his life to be spared, citing that his Hilariously Abusive Childhood was the reason why he's the way he is now. Cue Aside Glance from one of the heroes.

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Did you seriously had to do that because your life is miserable after getting into this website? Don't be silly. Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse, and you brought all of this upon yourself.

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