Freudian Excuse/Anime and Manga


 * Two of the more vicious Gundam villains, Katejina Loos of Victory Gundam and Yazan Gable of Zeta Gundam have one. The former had her Doomed Hometown and blames The Resistance for it and the latter was raised by a psycho of a mother. Despite of this, their excuses don't justify their atrocities at all.
 * 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, without any justifications at all as to why he is on Complete Monster levels of villainy.
 * Mazinger Z: Dr. Hell was a poor child 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. When he attended school he was constantly belittled by professors accussed him of cheating and beaten by his schoolmates. When he was in college, he took pride on his grades... and then 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 making some good action and he got beaten by it (such like 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, people were mediocre idiots did not deserve living and one day he would purge hit world off idiots, and everybody would kneel before him. And then Nazism happened and he... got tips about how achieving that.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * Seto Kaiba's issues with his adopted father on Yu-Gi-Oh and Manjyome's issues with his older brothers in Yu-Gi-Oh GX. The GX protagonist, 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.
 * 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. Of course, this being Yu-Gi-Oh, the second personality is rather real...
 * Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series plays with Kaiba's story... he fired his own parents.
 * Yami Bakura/Thief King Bakura takes the prize among Yu-Gi-Oh characters, though. 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.
 * GetBackers frequently does this at the moment of a villain's defeat; it usually leads to them not really dying after all.
 * Fullmetal Alchemist: In the manga, 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 and create the homunculi, becoming emotionless in the process just because he wished to have a family.
 * In the anime, claims one of these due to having been abandoned by his father . The excuse is really not intended as a redeeming factor but more of a retrospective explanation for, and its revelation is immediately followed by
 * In Nobuta wo Produce, the much-vilified bully Bando is revealed to have an abusive boyfriend. Luckily, this is quickly followed by some actual, brilliant character development for her.
 * 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.
 * And Gaara... oh, Gaara. It's hard to tell which was the worst part of his 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.
 * Spoofed in Naruto the Abridged Series, when 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.
 * 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, and did not turn evil because of it.
 * Danzo's excuse was revealed to be
 * 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 . 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.
 * Interestingly enough, unlike many other Freudian Excuse villains, his most despicable acts in the eyes of the fanbase 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.
 * Let's not forget 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 choose to only put faith in money.
 * Sasori everyone! He 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 Puppet Master 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 Complete Monster Orochimaru.
 * In Mobile Suit Gundam 00, it's probably easier to point out which characters do NOT embody this trope rather than the ones who do.

"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?"
 * In One Piece, 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 Humans Are the Real Monsters - before setting fire to the entire city. Even after freedom, her outlook on life was jaded by her terrible experiences, so she made a supreme Jerkass 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 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. . 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.
 * 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.
 * In Black Lagoon, the Creepy Twins/Psychos For Hire Hansel and Gretel have a definite Freudian excuse for being so deeply, deeply broken, creepy, disturbing, sociopathic and 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 evil characters in the show, and the most tragic.
 * 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.
 * In Princess Tutu's second season, it's revealed that 's reason for becoming Princess Kraehe is that.
 * Actually, to be more precise.
 * Blood Plus 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 and is just as terrifying and squicky as before, only now it... kind of makes a little sense.
 * Don't forget, she also.
 * It's stated in Hana Yori Dango 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...
 * Rolo Lamperouge from Code Geass... whoo boy, where to begin? He 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 . Amazingly, Rolo managed to be Rescued from the Scrappy Heap by Cue Tear Jerker music.
 * He's not the only one, either. The absolutely vile Psycho for Hire Luciano Bradley, according to the light novels,  Also, Emperor Charles and his brother V.V
 * Lelouch'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.
 * More of a subversion, considering Lelouch has sound political reasons for wanting to overthrow the empire, even if his desire to do so STARTED from his mother's assassination.
 * It's also worth noting however that 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) pretty much incorporates the antithesis of his father's views into the Black Knights' slogan.
 * Suzaku 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 in Code Geass. The guy was a six-year-old orphan when, which ruined any chance of a remotely normal life. And then she deserted him when she was the only person he loved. * sniffsniff* BOOHOOHOOHOO!!!
 * Most bad Code Geass characters have Freudian Excuses of some sort. The attention they're given in the actual show largely depends on their relevance to the characters' situations.
 * Many GOOD Code Geass characters seem to possess this trope at first as well, but escape it by either having massive amounts of character development, which contradicts the trope, or actually exploring the depth and legitimacy of the excuse.
 * In the manga version of Rosario + Vampire, Hokuto has one of these.
 * Subverted in Yu Yu Hakusho. 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". Mukuro, however, plays it straight in that . Keiko once wonders if Yusuke turned out the way he did because of how irresponsible Atsuko is.
 * 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.
 * From Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, we have.
 * Czeslaw Meyer from Baccano!, whose 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
 * He 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.
 * The Funimation dub of Dragon Ball Z 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 even 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 nearly being threatened with death by Frieza 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).
 * Vision of Escaflowne's Dilandau Albatou is crazy due to . The ruining of his face and   by Van only exacerbate his issues.
 * Luxus, one of the biggest Jerkasses in Fairy Tail  used to be a cheerful kid who loved his grandpa Markarov. That changed when Markarov kicked Luxus's father Ivan out of Fairy Tail for endangering his comrades. After that Luxus 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 , it's not a very good excuse.
 * Hiro Mashima came up with a much better excuse for his villains in Rave Master. The more notable ones are King causing all that mayhem to draw  out of hiding so he could make him suffer for causing the death of his wife and kid, and Lucia, King's not actually dead kid, who forces him to witness his mother's death, attempts to cause his, and robs him of his childhood by locking him in the basement of a maximum security desert prison
 * From Death Note, we have Misa Amane, a Serial Killer who generally shows no signs of sympathy for her victims, nor hesitation to kill them. These people can be just about anyone who gets in her way. Her excuse is that . As such, her behaviour is more explainable, though not entirely excusable.
 * We've also got Teru Mikami, an even crazier prosecutor turned serial killer whose victims include even the unemployed, eventually. However, as a child his mother died, and he endured horrific and near-constant bullying at school, simply for defending his classmates' honor.
 * To elaborate, he was beaten up and disillusioned about justice in middle school. Then, four bullies ran over his slightly unsupportive mother and all five died, prompting him to believe that justice was real. He wasn't sad that so many died, just relieved, and he decided that when he was older, he would work to extend the arm of justice to protect people everywhere. Somehow, that led to him becoming a prosecuting attorney, and then a vigilante. Pretty screwed up, huh?
 * He also believed he had psychic powers to wish the unworthy dead (he thought so similarly to Light, that the people Light killed often ended up being people Mikami thought should die), even before he got a Death Note and actually had them.
 * Also in the second film,.
 * In Glass Fleet, Vetti's horrific actions  are all forgiven in the end and he gets a pass. The reason? He was sexually and emotionally abused as a child.
 * Each volume of Saki 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.
 * Which
 * Mahou Sensei Negima 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 totally and 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.
 * Scarlett from Steamboy 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.
 * Wiseman from Sailor Moon 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.
 * Medaka Box, 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.
 * In Romeo X Juliet Lord Montague gets one of these dumped on him in Episode 17. "The What Do You Mean, He's Not Likable?" kind....
 * Why is Tetsuo from Akira not on the list yet?! 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 best friend... he discovers he has power greater than all of them. And... cue his Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
 * All of the members of the Team Rocket trio 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 a Yandere named Jessiebelle, accounting for his timid and repressive demeanor. Meowth never had any family and learned to talk just to impress a female Meowth who still rejected him, accounting for his conniving features.
 * Pokémon Special. 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 the its eye that Humans Are the Real Monsters, and that must've been pretty damn traumatic for him as well as the Dratini.
 * Doesn't his Blackthorn heritage come into it somewhere, too? Clair's just as off-the-handle as Lance, just less...ambitious.
 * During Bleach's Soul Society arc, most of the Soul Reapers who defended Rukia's attempted execution had one of these. Soifon was hellbent on ensuring the laws were upheld, Yamamoto was firmly dedicated to enforcing the laws of Soul Society despite his personal feelings, Komamura felt he had a life debt to Yamamoto and followed him, and Byakuya had sworn an oath on his parents' grave never to break a law of Soul Society. Byakuya is an interesting case, as he had also sworn  This made Byakuya, who seemed to be the coldest of the antagonist Captains, to actually be the most conflicted.
 * Rurouni Kenshin IS this trope. 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, . 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,, 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.
 * Surprisingly the Gag Dub of 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 there violent outburst.
 * Not a villain, just a Jerkass, but Kanda Yu of D Gray Man turns out to have a very good reason for being so aloof and cynical. However, other characters with incredibly traumatic backstories normally turn into The Pollyanna instead.
 * It gets worse. Kanda's life sucks so much that using an Exposition Beam to show someone his memories qualifies as Mind Rape.
 * In Elfen Lied we have Lucy and Mariko. Lucy is harassed by her peers at what appears to be an orphanage because of her horns. They even kill her dog. Mariko, on the other hand, is nearly killed by her father at birth. His wife convinces him not to before she dies. Even then, Mariko is forced to live in a solitary confinement chamber where she can't even move. And she ends up killing the one person that ever talked to her.
 * All human villains in Rave Master 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.
 * Subverted in Durarara!!, where Shizuo is more than a little distraught that his anger issues aren't the result of abuse or childhood trauma.


 * Ginias Sahalin from Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team apparently went nuts and was driven to create super-advanced weapon systems because his mother left him at an early age. His sister even compares the prototype mobile armor he obsesses over to a womb.
 * Referred to in Soul Eater, 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 . Who wouldn't be messed up after being raised by somebody who  ?
 * Ax Crazy Alois Trancy in the second season of Kuroshitsuji.
 * 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.
 * Oskar von Reuentahl from Legend of Galactic Heroes is not a villain but one of the "good guys" (. 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.
 * Odin of Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple has a pretty stupid one (but that's the point): . 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.
 * 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.
 * Just about all of the Diclonii in Elfen Lied hate humans and turn psychopathic, but they arguably have a good reason for this. They're almost invariably hated by their peers for their horns, if they're even allowed to live outside at all. Most of them are, from birth, used as experiment subjects. However, it's also noteworthy that many of them have a very strong instinct to kill humans. Nonetheless, Nana proves that not all of them are as Exclusively Evil as people make them out to be.
 * Madoka Magica: Kyouko acts like a self-centered Jerkass because . So now she avoids helping others so avoid hurting them or getting hurt.
 * It should be noted that Kyouko, unlike many characters on this page, does actually undergo some fairly significant Character Development.
 * A large number of the mysteries in Monster involved the elaborate traumatic backstory of Johan prior to his becoming a serial killer.
 * Claymore: Ophelia is the way she is because  The Awakened Being turned out to be none other than   who in turn has her own Freudian excuse for her behavior because
 * In Fruits Basket, pretty much every character that's constantly in the strip has a Freudian Excuse. Tohru, the main character, had her mother killed in a traffic accident  Kyo,   Yuki has a rather extreme version:   It goes on and on, even extending to minor characters like Kakeru and Machi  . 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.
 * In Revolutionary Girl Utena, even Akio has one.
 * In Life 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.  was bullied when she was younger, so now she bullies anyone she feel deserves to be bullied.
 * Gundam Seed's Muruta Azrael was slapped around by a couple of Coordinators as a kid. He now seeks to exterminate the entire species. Needless to say, it's portrayed as incredibly petty. Big Bad has a better excuse—a dying clone, raised by a man who denied him anything approaching an identity, he seeks to annihilate all life because he believes that, on a fundamental level, existence is worthless.
 * In Pokémon, Ash Ketchum should really consider himself lucky to have a loving family, as many of the foes he encountered in his long journey weren't as well off:
 * Assuming you can even call them villains, the Team Rocket trio all had tragic pasts. James and Meowth's backstories are well-known; James being the son of rich snobs who never appreciated his love of Pokemon and wanted him to marry a sociopath (who strangely, looks just like Jesse) leading to him running away. Meowth, on the other hand, was an alley cat who painstakingly taught himself how to talk in order to impress a female of his species, only for her to reject him for a Persian. Jesse's backstory is far less well-known but undoubtably the worst. Revealed in the radio drama series "The Birth of Mewtwo", Jesse mother Miamoto (the protagonist of the first part of series) was a senior member of Team Rocket tasked by Giovanni to find and capture Mew. She almost succeeded, meeting up with the Legendary in the Andes mountains. She tried at first to befriend the Pokemon, showing it a picture of her daughter, but then a fierce blizzard struck, leading to an avalanche, and the last that is seen of Miamoto are her screams. (Presumably, she perished in the avalanche, but her fate is never officially revealed.) As a result, poor Jesse grew up without parents in an orphanage, eventually following in her mother's footsteps as a member of Team Rocket. Jesse even claims in one episode that her fondness for snowcones comes from memories of having eaten snow to fill her stomach when food was scarce. Poor kid.
 * Then we have Mewtwo itself, featured in the second part of the radio drama. Mewtwo was not the first clone experiment done by Giovanni's scientists, who also experimented with Squirtly, Charmander, and Bulbasaur cloning, which were unsuccessful (Mewtwo would later use the scientists' blueprints to create clones of their evolved forms, as seen in Pokémon: The First Movie.) But they also made human clones, and Mewtwo's closest friend while still in the artificial womb were he was "born" was AmberTwo, a clone of Dr. Fuji's daughter. But AmberTwo was also a failed clone, dying before her "birth", and it is heavily implied that the sadness of losing its friend is what fueled Mewtwo's hatred of humans turning it into the angry, vindicive monster that revolted against its creators.