Cool Motive, Still A Crime

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Perp: "It was a crime of love!" Jake Peralta: "Cool motive, still murder." —Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Here you have it. A villain or a hero in a Jerkass moment claims they are like this because of something that happened in their past. A Freudian Excuse can justify their actions and make them sympathetic. Surely that means they have the high moral ground.

"Not so fast!" Another character says. "Just because you had a crappy moment in your life doesn't mean you get to act like a big jerk!"

There is a moment, a Beat. Sometimes the villain or hero will realize this is true. Or they engage in an Ignored Epiphany. Regardless, the emperor has no clothes.

Cool Motive, Still A Crime is when the work acknowledges that someone's tragic past, present trauma or so forth does not justify their actions. They're called out and told they still have to take responsibility for their actions.

This trope still applies if the character in question gives this speech to themselves. It can be a sign of Character Development or a Jerkass Realization. If the trauma happened when the character was a teen or an adult, it still counts.

Compare with Shut UP, Hannibal.

Examples of Cool Motive, Still A Crime include:

Advertising

• Many driving PSAs show that you may have many reasons for dangerous behavior -- dealing with a breakup via text, having a bad day at work-- but you as the driver still need to be careful. One ad shows a cop ticketing a teen driver for texting, and we see that if he hadn't, she would have accidentally caused a pileup.
• A really heartbreaking inversion from a MetLife ad. A girl gives her dad, a single parent, an essay that she wrote in school about why he is her hero, her "Superman". Every other dad at the school has a business suit, a cellphone and a white collar job; her dad goes to work a number of odd jobs, all the while facing rejections from placement agencies and running around town to make his shifts. All the while he lies to her that he is fine, making sure to dress up nicely and comb his hair when dropping her off or picking her up from school, and helping her with homework or playtime. She says in her essay that she notices when her dad goes hungry so she can get a meal, hides that he is tired from doing manual labor, and worries that he's not happy. Yet she also writes that she knows he's working hard to ensure she has a good life and feels that it's her fault; the essay ends with, "Daddy wants me to work hard in school to get a better life. I love Daddy." As he finishes reading, she stands nervously about the fact that she told him he didn't have to hide his pain from her. He sweeps her in a huge hug while crying.

Anime and Manga

• Fullmetal Alchemist and the Brotherhood anime
  • Edward Elric has this opinion of Scar, the Ishvalan anti-alchemist. Scar didn't make a good first impression on him by chasing him and his brother down trying to kill them, shortly after he killed Nina. Ed is used to people hating him, but the ones trying to kill him usually have a clear reason to hate Ed Elric. Roy is more sympathetic after rescuing the brothers, explaining that Scar was a survivor of genocide and hates the alchemists which inflicted it on the Ishvalans. Ed asserts that Scar is using senseless violence as an excuse to mask his pain. He may have a point, given that Ed and Al were too young to have participated in the Ishvalan genocide. There's also the fact that he killed Winry's parents after they saved his life, albeit in this case it was a Freak-Out and Scar himself says he had no reason to do it, with visible regret. A group of survivor Ishvalans say the same thing to Scar, that he is adding more pain to the world and using their deaths to justifying it.
  • Hoheinheim and Ed both call each other out for this. Ed is furious when his father returns and seems more concerned about his house, the Elric household, being burned down than the fact that his older son has a metal arm and leg respectively. Turns out that Hohenheim went Walking the Earth after his wife Trisha died, leaving Winry's grandmother to raise the boys. Ed calls out his dad for leaving when his sons needed him. Hohenheim in turn asked Ed if it was necessary to burn down the house, and asks if he was trying to run away from committing the taboo. When the Promised Day comes, Ed forgives Hohenheim on learning that the latter was fearing that Father would repeat history and wipe out all of Amestris, just as he did millennia ago in Xerxes. The first time it happened, Father put a thousand souls each into himself and Hohenheim, thinking he was doing a favor to his "friend" by giving the latter immortality. Hoheinheim was trying to find a counterspell by traveling, so that he would not be a witness to genocide again. Helping is that Hohenheim asked Ed to help sacrifice his immortality when Al sends his soul to the Truth's gates, saying that he needs to be a father and protect his sons for once. Ed refusing shows he has truly forgiven Hohenheim, finding another way to save Al.
  • Riza reveals to Ed that Roy intends to ensure that they both pay for their crimes against the Ishvalans and their part in the war. Ed protests that from what she told him, the homunculi and Fuhrer manipulated them into starting the war, and dethroning the Fuhrer would surely be atonement enough. Riza says that's not an excuse; she cites how Alex Armstrong refused to hurt the Ishvalans and tried to secretly evacuate them during the war. He failed, but that he made the attempt showed he was the better man than either Riza or Roy.
  • A case of a virtue causing this; Ling has Undying Loyalty and Nice to the Waiter to anyone under his employ; servants and subjects need his protection, not the other way around. It's because he grew up with a Dysfunctional Family having to survive assassination attempts from relatives that don't want him to become the next Emperor; people on his team are the only people that he can trust. He has seen too many royals throw away their subjects like trash, and he doesn't want to be that person. It means, as a result, that Ling underestimates his own worth and has a habit of risking his life for his servants, to the point of Senseless Sacrifice. This was fine when he refused to abandon an injured Lan Fan while Bradley hunted them down, but he nearly ends up dying when trying to save Greed from Father, using his bare hands and Heroic Willpower. Greed tells "the brat" to let go of him. If they both die, Ling can't be the Emperor and enact the reforms in Xing that he desires. Ling gives a Big No; he says that he needs Greed to become Emperor, that Greed has to stay alive so they both get what they want. They both know it's a lie, that it's not about his claim to throne anymore. Realizing he doesn't have a choice, Greed suckerpunches Ling to make the latter release him and goes to his death smiling that he saved his friends.
• Inverted in One Piece regarding Nami's backstory. She hates pirates, and reveals that she only joined Luffy's crew to steal from them. Her sister Nojiko tells the crew why: a pirate named Arlong invaded their city, killed their foster mother when she gave up the money she had to save them and not herself, and blackmailed Nami into working for him. He put a high ransom on the town, and Nami has spent years stealing from pirates to secure the funds. Nojiko and Nami herself insist that she doesn't need pity or help, there is no excuse for her actions and she would rather own what she is rather than endanger another person. Sanji and the crew immediately disagree; they say that this is not a situation that Nami can handle alone and strive to help free her. Luffy doesn't hear this tragic backstory; when Nami tearfully begs him for help after the villagers march on Arlong, when he uses a corrupt Marine to steal the ransom money from her, he goes to challenge Arlong without hesitation.
• Pet Shop of Horrors has this both in some stories and the climax:
  • Julia's mother Monica is revealed to be the one either maiming the family pets or freeing them because she was suffering from the trauma of killing her abusive mother in self-defense, and burying the body. D pities her but says that he cannot have someone hurting his pets; he convinces her via some magic flashback to confess to the police what happened, and they commit her so she can get the mental help that she needs. It's revealed that she is still the same little girl that her mother tried to kill, and needs time after confessing to process. They mention she's a clear danger to her daughter Julia, even if she spoiled her daughter rotten and refused to hurt her.
  • A show rather than tell version. Detective Leon Orcot is struck with survivor's guilt when he sees a former friend become a criminal and die by suicide in front of him. He says to D aloud that he wishes he had been the one to die instead because he must have failed his friend. D uses a butterfly to show Leon that scenario, where he became the criminal and his friend became the cop. It means that his little brother Chris never existed, let alone came to move with him. Leon, however, retains his memories of his previous life and keeps trying to hunt down D for answers, refusing to conform to this destiny. He wakes up after shooting himself in the head during a mirrored confrontation where his friend recognizes him at a standoff; while shaken if relieved to see that his little brother Chris is still in his apartment, he thinks about the fact that there was nothing he could have done to dissuade his friend from making a different choice.
  • It's revealed that D's father hates humanity and is willing to wipe them out, while his grandfather and D himself are more willing to test humanity with magical creatures. His reasons are that humans wiped out their family after one of their women turned down a member of the royal family, and the prince didn't take the rejection well. D, however, doesn't think that humanity deserves his father's genocidal weapon and says as much. When Leon uses his last bullet to kill D's father, he expects D to either kill him or let him die in revenge and says he won't fight. D saves him instead, and transports him to a hospital while Leon is unconscious.
• Precia Testarossa in the original Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: wracked by guilt over accidentally killing her own daughter Alicia, she tried to resurrect her via a clone, but instead of getting Alicia back got Fate -- another, different, girl with her daughter's face and voice who calls her "mother" but isn't her daughter. The constant presence of the imposter trying to usurp the place of her true daughter is slowly driving her into madness. Of course, she was insane to start with, and is completely unable to see that her second daughter is a beautiful, loving girl who is utterly loyal to her despite the horrific physical and emotional abuse Precia subjects her to for the crime of not being Alicia. No one watching the end of this series would argue that Precia didn't deserve some sympathy for the crap her life devolved into but at the same time nothing excuses what she did after.

Comic Books

• In The Batman Adventures comic "Mad Love", this comes up about the Joker and Harley Quinn.
  • We learn that Dr. Harleen Quinzel, a psychiatrist intern at Arkham, fell for the Joker after he told her a sad story about trying to make his abusive father smile. She was prepared for his manipulations, but not for her to feel bad for him. Joker also said that he felt he could trust the doctor with his secrets, convincing her that his intentions were solely to make Gotham laugh. In the present day, when Harley prepares to kill Batman to settle down with her "Puddin'", Batman bursts out laughing while tied up, which causes her to freak out before he becomes solemn again. He then tells her bluntly that Joker doesn't love her, and was using her from the day she entered Arkham. Harley insists that Joker trusted her with secrets; Batman asks if it was the runaway mom story or abusive father. Joker apparently told a parole officer that his dad was happiest at the "ice show"; Harley quietly whispers that Joker told that story, only with the circus. Batman tells Harley that Joker is full of backstories and lies, but not all of them could be true; and even if they were, that doesn't excuse his murder schemes. Joker then proves Batman is right by showing up when Harley calls him, beating her up and pushing her out a window for attempting to kill Batman without him. This almost snaps Harley out of it.
  • Batman also tells Harley this about her choices in life. He has frequently asked her why she tossed her medical career on the worst criminal in Gotham, when she could have done so much more with her genius. Dr. Joan Leland says the same thing at the end of the comic, asking an injured Harley how it felt to have a man she loved nearly beat her to death.
• Maus has Art confront this about his parents. Anja is deceased, so he was able to find catharsis about her death in a one-shot comic. That comic acknowledged that he regrets his mother's passing and that he was unable to understand her, but she was still unable to hide her demons from him, and he resented the toxic codependence. Vladek Spiegelman is also a piece of work; he's a hoarder, a cheapskate and a racist, as seen with the black hitchhiker. Art asks his stepmother Mala if it's the camps that made him that way. She scoffs and reminds Art that she was also a camp survivor, and you don't see her picking up telephone wire off the street or complaining loudly about money. What's more, Mala has talked to many fellow survivors, and none of them are like Vladek.
• The Wake arc in The Sandman has Dream-Daniel confront his mother Hippolyta about this. He says that he understands that she thought he was dead and was trying to avenge him by killing the original Morpheus. Nevertheless, allowing the Furies to rampage through the Dreaming ensured that the Baby Daniel would become the next Dream. Not to mention that the murderer of the first Despair did not cause as much harm as she did, and his punishment is worse than hers. Dream-Daniel gives his mother eternal protection from Morpheus's allies and enemies, but also unofficially exiles her from the Dreaming. He hints, however, that this sentence can change. Indeed, in the sequel series Justice Society of America, Hippolyta and her resurrected husband are allowed back into the Dreaming after they both rejoin the Justice Society. Hippolyta for her part atones for the sensseless destruction.

Fan Works

• In Harry Potter and the Lack of Lamb Sauce, a real-person fic where Gordon Ramsay becomes the new Potions professor at Hogwarts during book six, Professor Ramsay believes this. He finds out from Harry and Neville how much of a bully Severus Snape is, and calmly asks Neville what his Potions experience was like. He blows up when Neville reveals that Snape nearly made him poison his toad with a botched Shrinking Solution in third year, running to confront Snape in the Great Hall. Ramsay shouts at Snape that you do not let the memory of a Gryffindor stringing you up by your ankles serve as an excuse to traumatize the next generation. Snape attacks him with spells in response; McGonagall has to separate them. Suffice to say, it works; Snape leaves Harry and Neville alone during the NEWT-level Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons.

Film

• Moana explains that the reason why Maui is so crusty to the title character, complete with trapping her on a cave while stealing her boat, is because he feels that humanity does not appreciate all the good he did for them, and he's been stranded on the island for decades. The reason why he started doing these good deeds is his parents tossed him into the ocean as a baby, something that Tamatoa reveals while thrashing both Maui and Moana during "Shiny", and Maui wanted external validation. Stealing Te Fiti's heart was one of those deeds, supposedly to help the humans. When he actually faces a restored Te Fiti, however, Maui gives a sincere apology on realizing how much she suffered from his theft. He fully admits that his desire for validation from humans was selfish and not meant to help them at all. Te Fiti accepts his apology and offers him a new fishhook since he sacrificed his old one to help Moana.
• ParaNorman:
  • Norman calls out the zombies for this when he learns exactly why the witch raised them, and he realizes that he can talk to them. They sentenced a little girl to death for talking to the dead, which Norman sees in a terrifying flashback, believing she was a witch. Agatha's execution caused a psychic backlash that killed them in turn, and she kept them conscious in their graves before releasing them as zombies in the present days. All the judge zombie can say is, "We were scared." Even he knows that's not a valid excuse, as Norman angrily tosses the fairy tale book his uncle left him to calm down the witch. He asks why are they asking him to fix their mess. The zombies make it clear that they don't expect forgiveness; they want to help the witch rest as a form of atonement, realizing what they did to her was wrong. Being conscious in your grave for four hundred years, released to a world that keeps trying to maim you, and people running away from fright will do that. Realizing they have to work together, Norman calls truce but says for the rest of the movie that they were horrible people.
  • When his attempts to calm down the witch via reading a fairy tale book doesn't work, and Norman finds out why she raised the dead and has started rampaging in the town, he realizes they need another solution. Agatha Prendergast was a little girl scapegoated as a witch and executed because she could talk to the dead, and her mother would read the fairy tales at her grave to cope with her grief. Later Prendergasts would take up the ritual because it kept Agatha's ghost placated, but unwittingly kept her on Earth with Unfinished Business. He asks his parents to drive him to the woods where the witch is, and goes to talk to Agatha's ghost. At first, Agatha isn't interested in listening, pointing out dryly that despite his claims they have a lot in common, he's a boy, and alive. Then Norman says he has a different story from the one in the fairy tale book; he says "Once upon a time, there was a little girl," who was an outsider and had to hide from everyone. Norman says it was wrong how the Puritan judges and elders killed her, but she chose to stay on Earth and torment them, rather than move onto the afterlife and find her mother, the one person she knew who loved her. The witch goes berserk and threatens to make him suffer; when he asks, "Why?", she doesn't have an answer. Yeah, because the witch only wanted to hurt her executioners; Norman is her descendant, but an innocent party who never did anything to harm Agatha and Agatha has enough of herself to recognize that. Norman asserts that she wants to make everyone feel pain, regardless if they hurt her or not, and that makes her a bully, as bad as her killers. She may have a point that the zombies suffered exactly what they put her through, only without death as a release, but not about the fact that she endangered her descendant and relatively innocent townsfolk, relatively considering they tried burning Norman alive. It starts working; while the witch tosses him around the green hellscape she created, she also straightens a fallen tree from where he's dangling, so he can pull himself to safety. Norman reaches for her hand, saying You Are Not Alone asking her to remember who she was. Agatha reverts to the innocent child she was in life, and says she wants to see her mother again. She goes to sleep on Norman's shoulder, and the magic vanishes from the town.
• Catch Me If You Can, a biopic dramatizing Frank Abegnale's con artist career, has a judge spell this out when he is extradited to the United States for trial. The judge turns down his request to be tried as a minor, citing that he may have come from a broken home but showed blatant disrespect for the law while scamming airlines, a hospital and a law firm.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe
  • You can make a drinking game for every time Heel Face Revolving Door characters Loki and Wanda Maximoff face this from protagonists and antagonists alike. Case in point:
    • The Thor series makes it clear that it was very uncool of Odin to hide Loki's true parentage from him. He's forced to reveal to Loki, after the latter's skin turns blue from touching the Cube, that he basically kidnapped him from Jotunheim and raised him as his son. His intention was that Loki could be a peacemaker between the two enemy races, but both Thor and Loki were raised to see the Jotuns as monsters, something that Loki brings up tearfully. Nevertheless, when Thor finds out, he makes it clear that he doesn't care if Loki is not related to him; they are brothers, and thus Loki has no excuse for his trauma-induced actions. The first movie has Thor call out Loki for sending a Destroyer on Earth to finish him and endanger innocents in the process, and Odin while saving Loki while falling off the Bifrost says he knows that Loki didn't enact this scheme of wiping out the Jotuns to please his adopted father. In the second movie, Odin puts Loki on trial for attempting to invade Earth while allied with Thanos and killing innocents; he says the only reason Loki is not facing the usual sentence of execution is Frigga interceded on his behalf. Thor Ragnarok has Thor point out, after tazing Loki for a betrayal attempt, that Loki chooses to be a chronic backstabber rather than the hero he was meant to be. Loki takes this to heart by helping Thor fight Hela, and later in Avengers: Infinity War sacrifices his life in a longshot attempt to assassinate Thanos before he can kill Thor. The Loki series has an alternate Loki watch his prime self's death with a tearful expression, and later apologize to a hologram of Sif for his actions.
    • Meanwhile, Wanda's backstory is tragic. She and her brother Pietro lost their parents in a bombing, and Stark missiles destroyed their apartment. When Hydra recruited them, Wanda takes the opportunity to Mind Rape Tony after he storms their compound, determined to make him suffer as much as she did. Her selfishness leads to Tony creating Ultron, and Ultron going rogue. Pietro was the more reasonable of the siblings, suggesting they just kill him while he's incapacitated and they get their revenge. She does the same to the rest of the team, which leads to Hulk rampaging in Johannesburg while mind-raped. Tony feels guilty on learning why Wanda hates him, but Bruce is not sympathetic when he revives and she tries to stop him from putting Jarvis into the Ultron body they stole from Ultron; he says he doesn't need to turn green to snap her neck and nearly acts on that threat by putting her in a chokehold. Wanda herself gets a horrible Heel Realization on learning that Ultron is going to wipe out everyone in Sokovia in his quest to make the world perfect, meaning she enabled him to cause much worse collateral damage than Tony ever did directly or indirectly. Clint has a more evenhanded approach when she freezes up during the final battle on sensing Pietro's death; he tells Wanda she has a choice to make, to either stay out of the fight to avoid being a liability or step in to make up for her past harm. In Civil War, General Ross says that he knows Wanda didn't mean to cause a fire in Lagos but still injured innocents and that is why the Avengers need accountability. Following the battle with Thanos, losing Vision and attempting to create an idyllic sitcom-style life where she has children with him and brings back Pietro backfires horribly; Agatha of all people makes Wanda review her life and ask what her excuse is for imprisoning a bunch of people who would have legitimately become her neighbors. She admires the power. Later on, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness had Strange himself call out Wanda for her rampage in an attempt to find her children.
  • In Guardians of the Galaxy, Drax the Destroyer essentially drunk-dials Ronan the Accuser in hopes of avenging his wife and daughter, who Ronan murdered in the past. Instead of getting revenge, Drax's recklessness leads to Knowhere (the Guardians' pit stop) being nearly obliterated by the fleet Ronan sends after them. When Drax explains himself to Rocket Raccoon, the latter isn't impressed and takes him to task over selfishly getting people caught in the crossfire in his quest for vengeance against the hated terrorist. His shaming definitely gets to Drax, and is the thing that kicks his Character Development into gear.
• While Velociraptors in previous Jurassic Park movies were either hungry territorial animals or glorified serial killers in dinosaur bodies, the ones in the third movie are in full-on Mama Bear/Papa Wolf mode, and menace Alan Grant's team out of a desire to protect their eggs... which his assistant Billy stupidly stole despite his clear warning against tampering with raptor nests. While Billy did it so he could secure funding for Alan's research expeditions, Alan makes it absolutely clear that good intentions or no, Billy's willingness to compromise their rescue mission and endanger the lives of everyone involved has caused him to lose all respect for his protégé. While he eventually forgives Billy, it's only after he sacrifices himself to save a young boy from a flock of vicious Pteranodons and barely survives.

Literature

• A Christmas Carol goes into this more sympathetically: Jacob Marley sends three ghosts of Christmas to save his former partner and protegee Ebenezer Scrooge from eternal damnation. The Ghost of Christmas Past reveals that the reason why Scrooge is so cold-hearted is not just that he lost his love Belle; he had a neglectful father that shunted him off to boarding school, and his sister Fanny, the only family member we see treating him well, died. Ebenezer acknowledges his faults; the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows that unless he changes, Scrooge will die alone, and London will be happier for it. By this point, however, Ebenezer is not just worried about his own soul; he frets that his employee Bob Cratchit will lose his son Tiny Tim. The first thing he does on waking up during Christmas morning is to ask a boy to buy a giant turkey for the Cratchits, and to surprise them with the food for Christmas.
• Happens in Harry Potter from time to time.
  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
    • Dumbledore and Harry discuss this about Merope Gaunt slipping a love potion to her crush Tom Riddle and drugging him for months. When she stopped drugging him, he ran for his life, leaving her destitute just as she was about to have their child. She died, and Tom Riddle Jr. aka Lord Voldemort was sent to a Muggle orphanage. They both acknowledge that she was in a bad situation, with her father and brother being abusive while treating her as unpaid labor and hexing any Muggle that so much as breathed on their property. Dumbledore asserts, however, that using a love potion on Tom Sr. was rape regardless of Merope's desperation. Tom Sr. had every right to leave her; if it had been a Muggle roofie, it would be just as horrific.
    • Harry eventually comes to this conclusion about Severus Snape after the latter's actions in this book. He did feel bad for him after learning that his father was exactly the arrogant bully that Snape kept describing and humiliated Snape just for being in the way. Then he finds out that Snape was the one who overheard part of Trelawney's prophecy, which led to Voldemort deciding to kill the Potters. Harry is righteously furious and calls out Dumbledore for not telling him, screaming at him for defending Snape's assholery at every turn. Dumbledore says that Snape also came to warn the Order, surrendering to Dumbledore personally, because he didn't want a family with a baby to die, even if it was the family of his sworn rival. Harry can sense that Dumbledore's lying, but the point still stands when he relates this to the Order after Snape kills Dumbledore, and no one knows it was pre-planned between the men; Lupin is incredulous and says, "And Dumbledore believed him? Snape hated James.". Sure, Harry eventually forgives the man in Deathly Hallows after seeing that he was flawed but eventually well-intentioned in the end, but the rest of the Wizarding World debates if he was just selfish or misguided.
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Lily Evans before she was Lily Potter called out Severus Snape for this when she hit her Rage Breaking Point. She knew he had a hard life, because they were neighbors and he confided in her about his Muggle father being abusive. Severus couldn't figure out why his mother, a brilliant witch, married a lout like him. In fact, Lily and Snape remained friends for a while despite being Sorted into different houses, and tried to steer him away from Slytherin's pureblood sentiment, as well as the gangs of bullies that emerged. It didn't work; Snape fell deeper into his interest with the Dark Arts, leading to "arrogant toe-rag" James Potter bullying him in turn since James's family had people killed by Dark Art users, and they became bitter rivals. Then Lily attempted to rescue Snape from James's latest humiliating spell after they took their OWLs, and Snape returned the favor by calling her a Mudblood. Everyone was shocked at this, including Snape himself, and Lily for the first time ever used his Embarrassing Nickname "Snivellus" before turning her back on him. Later when he camped out in front of the Fat Lady in an attempt to apologize, Lily said she knows it wasn't an accident and he can't explain it as such; he's been warped by the pureblood sentiment so much that he's going to join Voldemort's genocidal campaign when he graduates Hogwarts. She also reveals that she spent years justifying Snape's bad behavior to her other friends, who thought she deserved better, and now is asking herself why she didn't see what he was becoming. Lily also reminds Snape that she's no different from any Muggleborn witch, as he just established by calling her a Mudblood, so what makes him think the Death Eaters will spare her? And she's right; thanks to Snape informing Voldemort about half the prophecy that he was able to overhear, Voldemort makes plans to go after the Potters. Notably, while Snape goes Never My Fault about how unlike him, James eventually made amends for his assholery and married Lily, he refuses to use or tolerate the term "Mudblood" ever again, as shown when he admonishes Phineas Nigellus for calling Hermione that, and he never forgives himself for indirectly targeting Lily with the hatred that governed most of his life.
• Percy Jackson & the Olympians also has this in the last book regarding Luke and the half-bloods that sided with him. When he and Nico visit his mother to obtain her blessing, Percy certainly pities Luke on realizing that his mother lost her mind trying to be the Oracle and wasn't able to be a parent. Hermes was also no help, as is typical for the Greek gods. At the same time, Percy commits to stopping Luke because the latter has Kronos possessing him. Sure, Luke ends up making the decision to pull a Heroic Suicide when he hurts Annabeth in battle, but he himself acknowledges that he'd rather reincarnate and live a better life than face the judgement of Hades for his actions, since Hades doesn't give second chances.
• The sequel series Heroes of Olympus has a few:
  • Aphrodite camp counselor Drew Tanaka feels this way about Silena Beauregard. Silena herself was a sympathetic traitor, confessing while she died that Luke charmed her about the camp secrets and then blackmailed her so she wouldn't have the chance to warn Percy or Mr. D about this security breach. She also redeemed himself by posing as Claire and leading the Ares cabin into battle, something that makes the real Claire burst into tears when she sees Silena dying. Drew, however, maintains that treason is still treason, and countless half-bloods died because of Silena's actions. No one in the Aphrodite cabin can contest this truth.
  • Pluto truly loved Marie Levesque and their daughter Hazel. Marie summoned him because in Roman mythos, Pluto is the god of wealth and death, and she wanted jewels that would help her break the cycle of poverty. Pluto tried to warn her, however, that his gifts come at a price, and such a living situation isn't healthy for Hazel. She didn't listen, selling the jewels that Hazel could summon and pretending things were fine when they started cursing the buyers. Hazel found out belatedly that Marie struck a deal with Gaea for more power, using Hazel to awaken a giant. Marie learns too late that Gaea planned to double-cross mother and daughter, and Hazel has to pull a Heroic Suicide Taking You With Me ploy to stop Alcyoneus from rising. The Underworld judges are not impressed when Hazel begs them to spare her mother's soul from the Fields of Punishment; they tell Hazel that even if her mother truly loved her, she still robbed Hazel of her future and aided Gaea. Hazel's excuse was that she wasn't fully aware of the situation, and died to stop Alcyoneus. To accentuate this, they show Hazel that her destiny was to eventually marry Sammy and have a long life with him. When Hazel trades in her chance for Elysium to save her mother, they decide to put them both in the Fields of Asphodel. Pluto eventually looks the other way so Nico can bring Hazel back to the world of the living; Marie is not offered that same privilege.
• In The Princess Diaries, some characters suffer this.
  • Subverted when Mia is outed as a princess, days after she got into detention for ruining Lana's sweater with an ice-cream cone after the latter insults her new friend Tina. Principal Gupta had actually asked her if things were okay at home and was she stressed, before giving her detention for refusing to apologize for Lana. When Grandmere reveals to the press that her granddaughter is a princess, the principal is actually amused when asking Mia later if this was the stress she was dealing with over the past week. She cancels future detentions, determining that the press barrage is punishment enough.
  • This is how characters treat Lilly when she crosses the line, which is a lot. She's very aware that she has No Social Skills, exacerbated by her genius, and that she was a terrible girlfriend to Boris by cheating on him during Mia's fifteenth birthday party. Michael knows that Lilly is oblivious to how cruel she can be, but will still call her out on her bullshit. During Party Princess, Mia feels bad for Lilly, who grabs the Jerkass Ball more so than usual, on learning that her parents are separating, affecting her and Michael badly. Tina of all people still notes that Lilly is sabotaging Mia's budding friendship with J.P. out of spite after Grandmere casts Mia as the lead in her play Braid! while casting Lilly as the Big Bad's spurned mistress. Lilly develops a crush on J.P. but sensed he was pining after her best friend, who is not interested because she is dating Michael. Principal Gupta also finds out towards the end of the book about why Lilly is acting this way...after busting Lilly for selling NC-17 stories in the new school literary magazine she self-published and not getting any teacher permission. She calls Lilly's parents, and Lilly comes out of the meeting pale and shaken. Forever Princess has Lilly finally admit why she was an asshole to Mia during Princess Mia, complete with making a hate site of her: when J.P broke up with her, he openly said he was pursuing Mia after she had broken up with Michael. He then manipulated a kiss from Mia in front of Lilly and kept pursuing her until she agreed to date him seriously. With that said, Lilly fully admits that she had no excuse to go "psycho" in her words; Michael found out about the hate site, probably from Boris, and ripped her a new one as well as for humiliating Mia in the cafeteria. It's also why she didn't tell Mia the full story, because she said after what she did, she didn't know how to apologize. Mia feels bad for Lilly, and they renew their friendship but Royal Wedding confirms they are no longer close. Their friend group also shuns Lilly during those books, with Shameeka outright saying she "used to be" cool and Tina has few nice things to say about her.
  • J.P. fells for Mia because she was the first person nice to him in the three years he was attending their snooty prep school by inviting him to sit with her friend group at lunch. Mia notes dryly, however, that he was probably blinded by her princess status when pursuing her, thinking that it was love and not obsession. She knows that his loneliness doesn't excuse what he did to Lilly after Lilly finally tells her the truth, or that he manipulated the girls into severing ties for nearly two years. Mia says as much to herself when breaking up with him.

Live-Action TV

• Angel occasionally discusses this, for either characters or their antagonists:
  • Angel himself fears his Super-Powered Evil Side Angelus, who is essentially a soulless monster with a brain. His low point in season 2 is when his sire Darla revived as a human but Wolfram & Hart used Drusilla to make Darla a vampire again, against her will; Angel, to bring Angelus back, let the two rampage on the Wolfram & Hart employees, locking the doors, and then fired his friends when they told him it was not the right or mature action. On top of that, Cordelia is enraged on learning he gave away her clothes, a wardrobe she struggled to maintain as an unemployed actress. Angel tries to use Darla to lose his soul, only to learn that sex won't do it anymore. He has a Heel Realization when learning that Cordelia kept monster hunting to deal with the visions she received, being kidnapped by eye monsters, and she calls him out while barely conscious for firing them. It takes a few episodes for the team to forgive him; they say that they know he suffered, but that was not an excuse for trying to dive into evil and treat them like garbage. As punishment he has to work at a kiddie desk while being the lowest-paid Angel Investigations employee, which he admits fair enough, but he feels guiltiest about nearly letting Cordelia get killed. Cordelia forgives him after he buys new stylish clothes for her wardrobe, making up for his earlier "charity"; Wesley takes longer, glaring at Angel for buying back Cordelia's goodwill.
  • Happens in the season 4 finale. After Connor kills Jasmine on seeing her true form, and realizing that she used him and Cordelia to come into being, he has a breakdown. Angel sees him holding a store hostage. Connor rants about the fact that Angel let Holtz take him as a baby, condemning him to a torturous existence as Holtz's pawn. Angel tries to point out that's between them, not these people. They end up coming to blows as Connor attempts Suicide by Cop and it seems to work as Angel slits his throat... only for it to be part of a condition for a reality-warping spell that would give Connor a life with a normal human family.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • One of Buffy's childhood crushes Billy Fordham comes to Sunnydale. He's entranced by how Buffy fights vampires and finds reasons to hang with her, while Angel investigates because instinct and jealousy tell him the guy is bad news. Buffy learns that Billy was going to sell her and several innocent teens called vampire worshippers out to Spike, in exchange for becoming a vampire. Billy explains he has terminal cancer, and becoming undead is the only way he can live. Buffy expresses pity for Billy, but knocks him out and rescues the worshippers from Spike's gang. She says that she can't abide by a guy that would sacrifice innocent lives for his gain.
  • Buffy attempts to do this with Willow in the season 6 finale, along with If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him. She is grateful that Willow saved her life, and understands that Warren needs to pay for shooting Tara as well. But she tells Willow that Warren is human, and he needs human justice. That is, the police. If Willow kills him in revenge, Buffy will have to treat her like a criminal. Her pleas don't work.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine has a few opinions on the tragic excuse for characters being a jerk:
  • During the first Thanksgiving episode, Jake does all he can to extend a case on the night of Amy's Thanksgiving dinner so he doesn't have to spend time celebrating the holiday. He tells Holt that because his mom had to work two jobs as a waitress and a teacher, he was left to spend the day alone watching TV. Holt chides him because this event is important to Amy and he's dwelling on a past that no longer controls him. Jake has a change of heart, comes to Amy's celebration after Boyle saves it, and makes a sincere toast to the Nine Nine, his new family.
  • Jake tracks down a perp that committed murder. The man says, "It was a crime of love." Jake responds, "Cool motive, still murder." This has since become a meme in the fandom.
  • A softer example; after Jake gets badly injured chasing a perp, he defies Terry's orders to take a sick day and tries to track down the guy in Atlantic City. This leads to him needing hospitalization, and Terry demands answers. Jake admits that the last time he took vacation, a drug dealer he was chasing shot two civilians, and he never forgave himself for that. Terry takes a deep breath. He tells Jake that crooks get away all the time, and it wasn't his fault that taking time for himself led to people getting injured.
  • Turns out that Jake's dad was a lousy excuse for a father because his father was also the same, and Peralta garbage gets passed down to the next generation. The senior Peralta, however, admits when talking to Jake at a family reunion that it is no excuse for how he treated his son or daughter, Jake's half-sister. He hopes that Jake can break the Peralta garbage cycle with his newborn Mac.
• The Good Place: Season one has Eleanor confront this about herself. She's antisocial, rude and selfish because her parents treated her as an afterthought or a weapon when arguing with each other. Eleanor got herself emancipated on her birthday and celebrated in her new apartment, alone. Jason is horrified when Eleanor relates this to him. She tells him that she justified all her horrible actions on Earth because of how her parents treated her. But now they can't when the Judge is holding Chidi and Tahani hostage unless Jason and Eleanor turn themselves into him. Sure, Chidi and Tahani aren't perfect, but they stepped up to the plate when Jason and Eleanor needed them.
• In The Sandman, Dream notes this about Alex Burgess. He sees when the Magus's son is still an innocent child, who grows into an empathetic teenager, and Alex is even tempted to free Dream when showing pity towards him as a teenager. Alex's father Rodrick is abusive to him, outright saying that his dead child Randall is the only heir that he recognizes and Alex is a poor replacement. However, Alex also kills Jessamy the Raven on his father's orders, and refuses to free Dream out of fear that he will be punished for his father's crimes. He ends up being right, but safe to say that the sentence would have been lighter if Dream had been freed as soon as Alex had the authority.
• Scrubs
  • Dr. Cox got this from his therapist, who then fired him as a patient. The therapist says that Dr. Cox had a hard life with an abusive father, but Cox himself refuses to put in the work or change. If Dr. Cox listened to one person, then it would show he was actually putting in the work to undo the emotional damage that makes him an ass. Dr. Cox gets a Jerkass Realization when he yells at J.D. after taking his advice to do an honest physical on Dr. Kelso, and J.D. says that he's asking Doug to replace him on rounds.
  • One new intern named Katie steals credit from Elliott and tries to manipulate her way to being seen as the best newbie. Carla sits her down for coffee and tells her off, saying the nurses see everything. Katie attempts to cry that she has emotionally abusive parents, and an alcoholic father to boot. Carla says, "Oh you poor thing," followed by "Heard it!" She says nearly everyone at the hospital has a tragic backstory, including herself and Dr. Cox. Unless Katie shapes up, the doctors and nurses will eat her alive.
• In Victor Larue's last appearance in Walker, Texas Ranger, his lawyer attempts a sob story about Victor being a victim of child abuse which drove him insane so Victor wouldn't have to go to trial. A criminal psychologist points out that while Victor was insane, he knew right from wrong and was deemed fit to stand trial.
• A funny example of this trope happens with the villain of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Most Toys": when Kivas Fajo tries to justify kidnapping and enslaving Data he mentions that he grew up poor and homeless, only for Data to politely, but firmly call him out for trying to make excuses for his crimes. Fajo immediately drops the act and smugly admits that he lived a privileged life as the son of a successful thief.

Music

• Discussed in Amanda Palmer's song "Runs in the Family" from her album Who Killed Amanda Palmer. She sings with a Motor Mouth about if you can blame your genetic mental illnesses on your family, especially if they don't talk about the Generational Trauma that came with the anxieties or phobias. Doctors make these scary diagnoses, many that are incurable, and it's luck of the draw if you inherit the genes that make you sick. Amanda asks if she has permission to blame her genetics for this bad luck. There is no answer, and the music video ends with her crying about how hard it is to function with inherited traumas or genetics.

New Media

• The "Am I The Asshole" AITA Reddit operates on this for some of the entries.
  • In the saga of Jorts the Cat -- for context, in a government office where a subordinate named Pam was trying to train office cat Jorts and said that the manager, Pam's boss, was ethnically discriminating about Jorts by saying that you can't expect him to be as smart as his furry tortoiseshell coworker Jean -- the update reveals that Pam may have been feeling insecure as a recent transition from volunteer to paid employee, projecting her insecurities on Jorts. The manager maintains, however, that "training" Jorts is a futile effort and only would stress the cat further, so Pam didn't have Jorts's best interests at heart. Plus, Pam confessed that she was buttering Jorts in margarine in an attempt to encourage him to groom himself better. (As one commenter put it, "I can't believe she fucking buttered Jorts.")
• (The Customer is) Not Always Right has a few of these moments:
  • "It's Way Too Early For This" had a kid call out his parents for this. Both parents are heavy snorers. One day, while blocking access to the coffee machine and the fridge, they each accused the other of waking them up with loud snores. The OP, their teenage child, was having none of it; they shouted, "“YOU WERE BOTH SNORING SO LOUDLY LAST NIGHT THAT IT WOKE ME UP AT 2:00 AM! YOU WOKE ME UP, AND THEN YOU WOKE YOURSELVES UP WITH IT!” that ended the fight, and they were able to get breakfast.

Newspaper Comics

• In Calvin and Hobbes, this trope is played for laughs. Calvin likes finding any excuse to avoid responsibility for his actions and justify being an asshole. In one case, he told his dad that he felt he wasn't being supported enough and should be given more; his dad sends him outside to shovel snow and build "character". In another, Calvin quotes psychobabble that he is part of a dysfunctional family with parents who never empower him, meaning nothing he ever does is his fault. Hobbes snarks, "One of us needs to dunk our heads in ice water."
• For Better or For Worse has this with Kortney, a shop employee. She has Elly wrapped around her thumb by crying about how she needs this job, and apologizing when she has a major screwup like letting model trains be stolen right under her nose. As a result, Elly gives her more leeway than she gives to April, her own daughter, who helps out in the shop part-time when not doing schoolwork. When April catches Kortney on sexy chatrooms during work hours, Kortney threatens to knock her teeth out if she tells her mother; April tells Grandpa Jim, who insists that Elly needs to do something because threats are not acceptable. Even John agrees with this, asserting to Elly that she can't employe someone that physically threatened their daughter. Kortney gets a second chance by apologizing to Elly but not to April, and saying that she doesn't have any role models in her life. Elly buys this, but her assistant Moira doesn't. She warns Kortney that any further funny behavior, and she's out of time. Sure enough, Moira and April find out later that Kortney was stealing inventory and covering it up with forgery checks and phony donation letters to churches; she stole the checks from a neighbor. Moira takes the initiative to fire her while Elly is on vacation with John. The train theft was also not an accident; the thief was actually Kortney's boyfriend at the time. Kortney deliberately left the display case unlocked so he could steal it. Elly starts sobbing Tears of Remorse as Moira and April gently say I Told You So, that Kortney used excuses to get away with bad behavior. To prove their point, Kortney tries filing a suit of wrongful termination, but she loses because the cops link her to the train theft.

Puppet Shows

• The Muppet Christmas Carol keeps this for Scrooge, in line with the source material. Scrooge is a bitter moneylender that hates Christmas, and people in general. Then the ghosts of Jacob and Robert Marley come to him, starting to heckle him for saying they seem to have "more of grave than gravy" about them; he says that they always criticized him and never treated him well. They agree, but point out they never treated anyone well; regardless, unless Scrooge changes his ways, the same afterlife chains that torture them will do the same to him after he dies. The Ghost of Christmas Past is kind but firm with Scrooge as she takes him through various Christmas memories, including the one where his love Belle ended their engagement. Belle calls out Scrooge because he keeps putting off their wedding to make more money; because he waited too long, the spark has gone out of their relationship and she leaves him. She understands he wants to provide for her as a husband supports a wife, but he has forgotten the reason in his ambition. To prove her point, the younger Scrooge lets her go, while the older Scrooge joins her in song and bursts out crying.

Theatre

• Comes up in Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier, a role-reversal parody musical of Aladdin where Aladdin is the villain and Jafar is the hero. After Aladdin "rescues" the Princess from the marketplace, he tries to seduce her by singing that he lost his parents at 30 and it was so hard. The guards storm in before it gets further than a song and check that the Princess aren't hurt, while arresting Aladdin for killing a retinue of guards with his "One Jump Ahead" antics the previous day. When the Princess protests that Aladdin needs mercy because he lost his parents, the Captain bluntly says that is not an excuse. He points out that one guard lost his brother thanks to Aladdin indirectly killing him, and they both have parents mourning the son they lost.

Video Games

• In Omori, Kel confronts Aubrey about this on the Main Route. She's become a giant jerk in the real world and a bully. Aubrey says she has every right to go after Basil after what he did, and that the friend group abandoned her after Mari died. Kel calls bullshit; he points out that she's not the only one who lost Mari. They all did, including Basil.
• This is the entire Investigation Team's response to Adachi's excuse for why he committed his crimes in Persona 4. To the credit of the latter, he does wind up accepting he was full of crap in the followup spinoff titles.

Web Comics

• The PvP (webcomic) has a few instances:
  • When their college roommate Max Powers reenters their lives, and their rental building, Cole and Brent start an Escalating War of pranks out of pettiness. Jade tries to stop it because it's not professional and could get the pair in serious trouble. After Cole gets himself stung with bees during a prank gone wrong and needs to see a doctor for anaphylactic shock, he finally admits to Jade that he's jealous that Max is young, handsome, and more successful with the dream job of running a gaming magazine than he is. Cole knows that his employees don't respect him, and the PVP magazine is a financial drain. Jade has to point out that it's not an excuse for being such an ass to Max, who has been perfectly nice to the whole crew. Cole later says the same thing to Max a few years later, when he and Brent let the workplace drama spill into a fight about who should invite Max to their Thanksgiving dinner. Cole apologizes for his jealousy, saying it was really never about Max.
  • Also happens between an argument Brent and Jade have after Skull accidentally totals Brent's car and the latter has to drive with his girlfriend. Brent's micromanaging makes him a backseat driver, complete with him trying to take the wheel while in the passenger seat. Jade is fed up and smacks him. They arrive to work sullen, with Brent being shaken. Brent has a legitimate point when talking with a therapist and Cole about it, the fact that Jade thought it was okay to hit him and people at the office mocked him for being upset: if it had been the other way around, he'd look like a domestic abuser. Jade in the meantime does apologize but also points out that Brent could have gotten them in another bad accident.
• Downplayed in this League Of Super Redundant Heroes.

Buckaress: I know at least one supervillain who uses that as an excuse too. It's not a great one.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender has this from time to time.
  • Heroes and Fire Nation individuals frequently acknowledges that Zuko is a tragic Anti-Villain. Anyone whose father burned their face and exiled them for refusing to face them in an Agni Kai would have issues. Zuko becomes very conflicted when helping Azula take over Ba Sing Se and letting her kill Aang leads to his exile behind rescinded. He shouts during "The Beach" that he should be happy because he got what he wanted. Instead, he spends most of the vacation grumping and getting jealous over guys talking to Mai. She calls him out for this during the campfire scene, and he tries to justify it by saying his life was hard. Mai and Ty Lee respond that it's no excuse for being a jerk during their vacation time.
  • Quite ironically, Azula says that she resents that her mother thought she was a monster. "She was right, but it still hurts!" Azula responds cheerfully. Azula pretends that by being aware of her issues, it means that she has complete control over her actions. Azula's hallucination of Ursa in the series finale says she loved Azula, always, as Azula's sanity frays following Ty Le and Mai's betrayals. The Search would confirm that Ursa loved Azula when she begged to take both Azula and Zuko into exile after helping Ozai kill Azulon.
  • Later when Zuko attempts to switch sides and join Team Avatar, most of them say no. Toph is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because she sensed he was telling the truth from her lie detector abilities. She also sympathizes with the fact that living as part of a rich elite family means conforming to arbitrary rules, having been in that situation. Katara says sarcastically let's give him an award for not being as big of a jerk. She reminds Zuko at the end of the episode, when he's accepted on probation as part of the Gaang, that she's watching him for any backsliding
• Batman: The Animated Series
  • In "Trial," DA Janet van Dorn comes to this conclusion when the Arkham inmates kidnap her and Batman, putting the Bat on trial and "volunteering" her as the defense lawyer. Despite the fact that she doesn't want Batman in Gotham City, Batman tells her put personal feelings aside and play their game, stall for time. She cross-examines the Mad Hatter about the fact that Batman didn't get involved in his case until he brainwashed his coworker Alice, kidnapping her and several people. Jarvis keeps saying that Batman was going to take Alice from him, and he had to stop the Bat. Janet asks why didn't he respect Alice's wishes since she rejected him. Jarvis blurts out that he would have killed her, only to realize what he said. He meekly asks the Joker to strike that from the record, much to Joker's confusion as there is no record. Rinse and repeat with both Harley Quinn, who attacks the Judge on finding out Joker ratted her out last time she escaped without him, and Poison Ivy who attacks Janet for plucking a flower in front of her. Janet concludes that while Batman "helped" with their outfit choices, they would have become villains without him.
  • The animated adaptation of "Mad Love" has this for the Joker. Much as in the comic, he tells Harley a sob story about his abusive father only being happy at the circus. Harley buys it hook, line and sinker because the Joker said that she was the only one in Arkham that he could trust with his secrets. Batman tells Harley later that Joker has a "million" of these stories and she was just another pawn for him. Harley briefly comes to this conclusion after Joker pushes her out of a window and leaves her to bleed out before trying to kill Batman, swearing to herself that she will never let the Joker fool her again. That is, until she sees a flower and Get-Well card from him in her Arkham cell, restarting the cycle.
• BoJack Horseman has a running motif for most of the characters that try to lean on their tragic backstories:
  • BoJack himself has a few moments. He hopes that by opening up to Diane about his traumatic childhood, after she encourages him to give a real story for his ghostwritten biography, that it means they have become closer. Instead, it makes Diane realize he is a big jerk, and she puts that in her book One Trick Pony. Later, Todd after suffering two seasons of abuse from BoJack hits his Rage Breaking Point in "It's You" after learning that BoJack slept with his crush Emily. BoJack blames it on the drugs and Oscar stress while apologizing. Todd spells it out: BoJack can't keep blaming his actions on his addictions or bad childhood. In the end, it's him. He has to take responsibility for his actions. "Fuck man, what else is there to say?".
  • Goes both ways with Todd and his family. Todd at first resents his mother and stepfather for kicking him out; the reason they did is a videogame sucked him in to the point where he dropped out of high school and shut out everything in the real world. Kicking him out was a last resort as they both tried to reason with him to unplug. In season six, Todd admits that his mother may have had a point in forcing him to grow up with some Tough Love while talking with his stepfather, but also points out they didn't talk to him for ten years. His stepfather apologizes for that, after Todd saves his mother's life by tracking down the kidney he sold. They all reconcile by the series finale, with Todd admitting that they all made mistakes but are growing past them.
  • BoJack at his mother's funeral acknowledges that Beatrice Horseman had a hard life. She had him when she was too young to know better, and didn't have the resources that his generation did to talk about independence, mental health, divorce, or self-actualization. As he discusses while popping pills, that his mother suffered does not excuse the way that she treated him as a kid, or how she poisoned Hollyhock with diet pills to "help" her lose weight.
  • Part of the reason that Diane has intense self-loathing and righteousness about how the world should be is that her family treated her as The Unfavorite, with her brothers keeping a video of a cruel prank they pulled on her at prom. It means, however, that she can make selfish decisions with these quests. BoJack called her out for leaking chapters of One Trick Pony and never considering how it would make him feel when she's being harassed for trying to expose a celebrity named Hank Hippopopalous for abusing his secretaries and wants BoJack to support her. Mr. Peanutbutter, who is no saint, tells Diane that it may make her feel like she's doing the right thing by flying to Cordovia to cover the war there, but she could die and it's not worth risking her life for a moral crusade. Diane finds out that he's right when a child's death traumatizes her so much that she flies home early. Her GirlCroosh boss Stefani bluntly says that Diane's desire for perfection makes everyone miserable, including Diane. Guy, her new boyfriend, says that he knows that Diane hates lavish gifts after Mr. Peanutbutter refused to stop his Grand Romantic Gesture habit, but he is offering her a coat as a gift, and she needs it in Chicago rather than borrowing his all the time.
  • When Biscuits Braxby goes off-script during her second interview with BoJack, her conclusions ultimately boil down to this regarding BoJack. She just found out that BoJack waited seventeen minutes to call 911 after Sarah Lynn passed out in the planetarium from heroin overdose, and her reaction is pure Tranquil Fury. Yes, Sarah Lynn was a druggie and a ticking time bomb to anyone that bothered to look beyond her Stepford Smiler Jerkass exterior, but she was a kid when BoJack started inadvertently corrupting her. He was the one who accidentally gave her alcohol as a child and made his hairdresser Sharona take the fall for it when Sarah Lynn got sick. BoJack also gave her the terrifying speech to never stop performing and that no one would ever love her except her fans, when she was a preschooler. Sarah Lynn has less moral culpability for her own actions now that she's dead, and that the living are trying to change her image either out of guilt-- like Dr. Hu who gets clean of drugs on realizing it was dumb luck that he didn't kill Sarah Lynn as her supplier-- or profit -- like her parents who commercialize her death. BoJack doesn't help his case by blurting out that he "didn't sleep with Sarah-Lynn until she was thirty!" and she played his TV daughter on Horsin' Around. Biscuits points out with that revelation, it sounds like BoJack groomed Sarah Lynn into the lifestyle that led to her overdose; he gave her alcohol as a child, slept with her as an adult, convinced her to break her nine months of sobriety to go on a bender, and left her to die. Even worse, paramedics have a Don't Ask policy so he never would have gotten in trouble anyway! BoJack tries to justify that he never meant to do any of this; addicts are stupid owing to their addictions. Biscuits shuts that down by pointing out that BoJack consciously chose not to save Sarah Lynn, purely to cover his ass.
• Gargoyles: This is essentially Demona's deal, something that both Goliath and the Weird Sisters note. She reveals that she was part of the plan to betray the castle in the pilot, believing that the invaders would treat the gargoyles better. When the invaders smashed most of them instead, making her think they killed Goliath, she went Never My Fault and went off to find another clan. She scarred a boy while stealing food, who would become one of her nemeses the Hunter. Her betrayal of Macbeth led to them both becoming immortal, and she refuses to acknowledge that Macbeth wouldn't be hunting her down to finally die if she hadn't sold him out. In the modern day, she blames Elisa Maza for coming between her and Goliath, not the fact that she revealed to Goliath that she betrayed their brethren and sold them out to David Xanatos after they revived. The Weird Sisters point out that she betrayed everyone who trusted her, including the gargoyle who nearly went on a rampage all those years ago fearing she was shattered. Puck of all people has to point out that since she imprisoned him, he could give her what her heart desires: Goliath, and the love they once shared. Demona shoots herself in the foot by asking Puck to get rid of Eliza instead, and Puck twists her request since she forgot he was a trickster.
• Infinity Train has heroes and villains which discuss this trope. Facing it allows their numbers to go down.
  • Tulip is a jerk, who resents her parents for divorcing. She blames them for ruining her life. Then a tape in the Cat's Car gives her the courage to see what really happened, without her Nostalgia Filter or catastrophizing; her parents were actually fighting all the time, she just blocked it out and ignored the red flags. During the actual scene where they break the news, they also were as broken up over the separation as she was, and it wasn't their intent to ruin her life. Tulip leaves the tape with a Jerkass Realization that she needs to go easier on her parents when she gets home.
  • When Tulip sees Amelia's tape, she acknowledges that it is traumatic to lose the love of your life. Amelia had a breakdown after Alrick died, planning to jump off the roof of their complex if not for the Train. Tulip, however, also calls out Amelia for turning Atticus into a Ghom for the crime of helping Tulip achieve her quest and protecting One-One. She says that change is possible, but it has to come with facing the future and making a conscious choice.
  • Season 3 brings us Grace, the leader of the cultist children the Apex. Simon traps her in a loop of her worst memories when believing that Grace betrayed him by lying about Hazel's origins. Hazel left with a reformed Amelia because she felt the worst Amelia would do is experiment on her, while Simon clearly had murderous intentions towards the "null" Hazel. Grace had neglectful parents that gave her everything they wanted but refused to see her was she was; she shoplifted to get their attention. They didn't even notice when the Train entered indoors and she boarded it. A Hazel hallucination calls out Grace for how she used her fear of neglect to gain power over the other kids, and let Simon kill Tuba, Hazel's protector. She says Grace's past was no excuse for the pain she caused in the present.
  • We also have Grace's Number Two, Simon. They met as children on the train after the Cat accidentally left Simon behind as Ghom fodder, and Grace lied that she knew how the train worked. The more denizens or "nulls" they killed, the higher their numbers would go and they're winning. Simon has bad abandonment issues and becomes an Apex fanatic, wiping out train denizens mercilessly. As a result, he and Grace start to grow apart after she meets Hazel, as they mistake her for a human, and he defies orders by killing Hazel's guardian Tuba. Then the three of them meet Amelia; she laughs in their faces about the Apex's teachings, and informs them the truth of the situation. Rather than One-One the false conductor usurping the train, Amelia was the one who usurped One-One in a selfish quest to get her husband back. Grace gets a Heel Realization on learning she had construed the train all wrong; Simon doubles down and insists that Amelia is lying. The season three finale features the two friends fighting, where Grace apologizes to Simon for all those lies but also points out he denied the truth of the situation. Simon proves her point by trying to kill Grace after she saves him, something that horrifies the Apex followers watching, and she's too far away to rescue him from a Ghom. Given Simon dies while Cry Laughing, he may have realized it towards the end.
• The Legend of Korra would continue this trend with some of the heroes and villains:
  • When we learn Amon's real backstory, that his father abused him and his brother Tarlok by training them to become weapons against the Avatar, Korra says she has never heard such a sad story. Mako and she resolve nevertheless to use this information to stop Amon and save Republic City, because he's trying to wipe out all the benders.
  • Asami calls out her father Hiroshi Sato for falling victim to this. They lost his wife, Asami's mother, to a Firebending gang. As a result, Hiroshi has been supplying the Equalists with the mechas and tech they need to take over Republic City. When they fight in the climax in season one, Asami calls out her father for becoming the exact kind of monster that her mother hated, because Mrs. Sato wouldn't have advocated for genocide. It takes a few years, and a stint in jail, but Hiroshi belatedly realizes the grave error that he made. He reaches out to Asami as she takes over the family company and saves it from ruin, apologizing for his crimes. She takes time to mend their bond, but the new Gaang remains suspicious of him. Korra even ponders if he's feigning remorse to manipulate Asami. Asami asks Korra to trust her, genuinely hurt about the possibility, and Korra apologizes for voicing that thought.
  • Lin and Suyin are on opposite sides of the spectrum, but they agree on one thing: that their mother hated her rigid life as a Beifong was no excuse for how she treated them. They wanted a mom; instead, they got an absent parental figure that let them do what they wanted. Suyin tells Korra that she rebelled out of a need for Toph to actually step up and be a mom, to get her approval or any sign of attention. (Lin herself says that this was no excuse for Suyin's delinquent behavior and holds a grudge against her for the scar on her cheek.) While Suyin and Toph talked this out offscreen and reconciled, Lin is much brusquer when confronting her mother in season 4; Toph reverts to her irreverent behavior, and Lin tells her that bullshit is why they never talked for several decades. Toph herself is forced to acknowledge she was not a good parent, though she is proud of both her girls.
  • Sweet Opal in a flashback said this about Kuvira according to the graphic novel Ruins of the Empire. When they were kids, Suyin took in Kuvira after the latter's parents dropped her off at Zaofu. Kuvira and Opal were taking turns with a dollhouse, and Kuvira destroyed it out of spite when Opal said it was still her turn. Opal told Suyin, who asked Kuvira for an explanation. Kuvira had none and stalked away. Suyin said they should stay patient with Kuvira because of her parents not wanting her, and she's now a sister to Opal. Opal scoffs and says lots of people at Zaofu are orphans, and they aren't jerks like Kuvira. She goes on to say Kuvira's parents probably gave her up because of her behavior. It was true, but Kuvira overheard and felt devastated.
• Phineas and Ferb had this Played for Laughs with Dr. Doofenshmirtz, who had many tragic details in his backstory:
  • Parodied in one instance. In Across The 2nd Dimension, Dr. D meets his successful counterpart who has taken over the tri-state area. This Alternate Dr. D reveals that he became evil because he lost his toy train as a child. After a Beat, Prime Dr. D goes, "That's it?!" He rants about how he suffered so much more, and none of that helped him take over the tri-state area. He also ends up saving Phineas, Ferb and Perry by finding his train, which he never lost, and giving it to Alternate Dr. D. This leads to Alternate Dr. D stopping his robot invasion and buying time for the resistance to arrest him.
  • Perry the Platypus delivers a silent version in "This Is Your Backstory". Dr. D's latest inator causes him to become a monster with every piece of trauma he remembers. He prepares to rip apart Perry. Perry grabs his wallet and shows that he's kept pictures of himself and Dr. D, showing that he cares about the scientist and that he has plenty of good memories to go with the bad. This depowers Dr. Doofenshmirtz, allowing Perry to defeat him. Vanessa also visits, telling her dad You Are Not Alone.
• This comes up a lot more seriously in Rick and Morty with all of the Smiths and Rick himself:
  • "Pickle Rick" has the family attending school-mandated therapy with a psychiatrist interested in their screwed-up dynamics; Rick turns himself into a pickle to avoid therapy, which leads to his Humiliation Conga throughout the episode. Beth at first tries to blame Morty and Summer for their dysfunctions that led to their teacher's concern because she resents having to be at therapy in the first place. Dr Wong is not phased; she pinpoints that Beth's underlying issues from her relationship with Rick may be passing on the stress to the kids so they act out in unhealthy ways following her divorcing Jerry and making Rick the family patriarch. Beth responds, "Fuck you, lady," much to her kids' shock. Their session ends with the family being emotionally honest with each other for the first time in ages, and season 4 confirms Beth continued to see Dr. Wong after ending the episode insulting her in the car while talking to Rick.
  • Rick is never impressed when Beth tries to blame her daddy issues on him abandoning her as a kid. "The ABCs of Beth" actually goes into this when he calls her out for leaving her best friend Tommy to die in Froopy Land, the one place that every Rick designed to prevent her from wrecking havoc on the neighbors. Tommy says in a play reenactment it's because Beth resented that Tommy's father liked him, while Beth mutters, "Fake news." Beth has a mild point in that Rick built this place to avoid spending time with her, something Rick doesn't contest, but Rick retorts he made the whole place childproof so she wouldn't get hurt, killed or drowned. Beth keeps claiming that she didn't leave Tommy stuck in a honey swamp on purpose, but a grown Tommy who has become the Froopy Land king knows better.
  • "Mort Dinner Rick Andre"
    • Nimbus, Rick's archnemesis that we never heard of prior to this episode, calls out Rick for this. He says that Diane, Rick's wife, wouldn't have liked the man that Rick became: a bitter cynic that pretends to care about nothing. Rick has no retort to this apart from saying that Nimbus shouldn't establish canonical backstory. Morty also asks why Rick has to pick a fight with everyone, why he can't just get along and be a normal human being for once.
    • The B plot has Morty also call out the Hoovians for this; he accidentally started a generational saga of Hoovians wanting him dead while getting wine to drink with Jessica from their Narnia-like dimension. For context, decades in their world pass in minutes on Morty's world, thus their society evolves every time Morty nips down to the basement portal to get another wine bottle and either gets attacked or retaliates with Rick's armory. When their latest attempt to assassinate him gets Jessica kidnapped, his rescue leads with the robots that defeated the Hoovians capturing him. Morty revives in their lab and says, "I just took some wine! I already apologized! What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Jessica was definitely an innocent party in this fiasco.
  • The season five finale reveals that the tragic backstory that Rick presented to the Citadel was real and not made-up as he claimed at the time. A rogue Rick did kill his Beth and Diane using a bomb, when his Beth was a little girl, and Rick spent months both coming up with the interdimensional formula and recovering from his injuries. He never abandoned any Beth before she was old enough to have Summer and Morty. When Morty comes out of the memory gun flashback, he apologizes to Rick for what happened. Then Evil Morty holds them at gunpoint; he says that all Ricks try to justify their actions based on tragic backstories, and Morty's Rick is no different. He may have a point; this was this same Rick that went on a rampage to kill dozens of Ricks trying to avenge his family, leading to the Citadel and Council of Ricks being formed.
  • The season six premiere has C-137 aka Prime Jerry call out Morty for this, abandoning his family. He as well as C-137 Beth and Summer respectively had reasonably assumed that Rick had kidnapped their son to find a new dimension, and were horrified when Morty was using them as a cautionary tale in the season 3 premiere, realizing Morty planned to leave them in that universe with only Cronenberged dimensions. When Morty ends up in his original dimension, he tries to apologize and say the Citadel arrested him and Summer before they could do anything when the Citadel froze Prime Jerry, Summer and Beth. C-137 Jerry says that even if Rick didn't tell Morty about hopping dimensions the first time, Morty damn well knew he could have saved them, and Jerry had to mourn and raise himself alone in this wasteland. Morty himself is repentant.
• Static Shock
  • Discussed seriously in the episode "Jimmy" regarding the title character and his bullies. Richie got shot at the community center, and Virgil is seeing a school counselor for the trauma. The story comes out, with Virgil abridging to keep his hero identity a secret: he and Richie noticed that Nick, the Jerk Jock of the school, was picking on an introverted kid named Jimmy. While Virgil tried to reach out to him, he freaked out when Jimmy revealed he had access to his father's gun -- Virgil's mother was killed by gunfire during riots while she was saving lives on the streets-- and left Jimmy's house immediately. When Nick's bullying goes too far, Jimmy misses school for a week. Virgil and his dad go to check on Jimmy; they learn that he's not home, and Virgil finds a revenge journal on Jimmy's computer. They also realize the gun is missing from his dad's drawer. Mr. Hawkins tells Virgil to stay put and they'll go find Jimmy before he can hurt Nick; Virgil waits until they're gone before changing into his Static uniform. He arrives to the community center, only to see Richie lying on the floor, bleeding and screaming, Jimmy in a Troubled Fetal Position and Nick looking terrified. Jimmy was going to fire on Nick, but Frieda and Richie told him You Are Better Than You Think You Are and that Nick wasn't worth it. He was putting the gun down, only for Nick's goons to attack him, causing him to accidentally shoot Richie. In the present, Virgil admits that he's angry at everyone involved, including himself; he knows Jimmy never meant to hurt Richie but his best friend still has a leg cast and could have died. He's mad at himself for not telling his father or a trusted adult about the gun as soon as he knew, and he's mad at Nick for causing the situation in the first place with his assholery. The counselor has an evenhanded response; she says that having anger is natural, especially after such a traumatic incident, but what matters is what you do with that emotion. Jimmy chose to use his anger to hurt others, but Virgil doesn't have to do the same thing. He finds a more productive use for his anger: sign Richie's cast and reach out to help other kids who are bullied. Turns out the law was pretty reasonable and this trope is shown rather than told: Jimmy was sentenced to a few months in juvie but is also receiving counseling, providing hope that he has guidance to fix his future. Nick and his goons get suspended and sentenced to community service, since it was indirectly their fault Richie got shot. While it seems that Nick really is sorry, as shown when he and his father come out of the principal's office, he still has to face punishment. Everyone also witnessed his cowardice when Jimmy confronted him, so his popularity has gone down the drain. The PSA at the end has Static reveal the statistics for gun violence and orders the audience that no matter which kid has a gun, whether or not they are a close friend or even a family member, tell an adult who can better handle the situation.
• Tuca & Bertie:
  • This is what leads to the season one fight between the title characters. Tuca has a phobia of hospitals because her mother died in one after suffering a car accident. She also overhears Bertie calling her "clingy" which Tuca is, and stubbornly refuses to see a doctor about a sudden pain. Her virtual sex client has to drive seven hours to save her when she collapses on a call, and he notifies Speckle about the situation when Speckle mistakes the call for a videogame and starts "playing". While Bertie is relieved that Tuca pulls through a terrifying surgery, she's annoyed that Tuca didn't come to her for help earlier because she was doing a pastry event that could boost her career and had to leave to check on her dying best friend. When a recovered Tuca notices that she's upset, Bertie says all of this, that she would have been fine with taking Tuca to a doctor before the problem became serious, rather than Tuca endangering herself the one time Bertie wasn't available to bail her out of her immaturity. Tuca goes Never My Fault, and they have a huge argument.
  • Comes up during the series finale arc, when Bertie ghosts her longstanding boyfriend of several years in favor of confronting a childhood trauma at Jelly Lakes. When she returns, she finds herself unable to explain to Speckle why she didn't his calls and blew off work at the same time, right before Molting Day, this world's version of Christmas. Speckle gets mad at her and calls her out, saying that he can't be the "rock" in their relationship all the time. While they do make up thanks to Bertie visiting the fixer-upper he bought and admiring it, Bertie herself admits that she was a bad girlfriend and seeks therapy next season to try and "fix" herself and not repeat this incident. Therapy doesn't work that way, but she does make progress. Season two shows that they finally talked about it, which was all Speckle wanted; Bertie didn't tell him in season one about being molested as a twelve-year old, or having a weird attraction to Pastry Pete after he manhandled her, because she thought that not getting over trauma or irrational feelings made her weak and morally bankrupt. Speckle reassures her that it's not her fault that the lifeguard that molested her or Pastry Pete took advantage of her, and her therapist Joanne says it's normal to have trauma recur years later.
• Steven Universe has this trope crop up from time to time:
  • Part of the reason why Pearl is occasionally insecure, jealous and catty is that she's mourning Rose, the leader of the Crystal Gems and her lover, and sees a lot of her in Steven. Rose died to have Steven, a morally questionable decision but her choice to make. Garnet calls out Pearl for getting jealous when they learn that Steven's lion belonged to Rose and contained her scabbard; she says Rose kept secrets from all of them them, and Pearl is no different. Steven is furious when Pearl during Connie's fencing lessons is turning his squishy human friend into a martyr and talks her down. When Pearl can finally reveal the full truth -- that she belonged to Pink Diamond, who became Rose Quartz-- she is able to tone this down.
  • Steven and Amethyst in season two find out that Pearl was rebuilding Peridot's distress signal tower so as to keep fusing with Garnet. They bust her before it happens again, but try to break it gently to Garnet. "Gently doesn't work"; Garnet becomes infuriated, but Amethyst says that it's because Garnet's love makes her and Pearl feel strong. Immediately, Garnet orders Amethyst, "Don't defend her!" before fusing with her to destroy the tower once and for all. It takes several episodes for Garnet to forgive Pearl, when Pearl admits that she lied to Garnet because without Rose, she feels like she's nothing.
  • Peridot has a hard time adapting to Earth life when the Gems learn they need to keep her unpoofed when she talks about an event called the Cluster that will cause an apocalypse, and she's the only one with expertise to stop it. She's still rude, bitter and condescending towards the "clods," with her warming up to Steven after he gives her prosthetic foot back. The season two finale has her explain to Steven that she stole a Diamond communicator to try and convince Yellow Diamond that this planet "is of use" to the Diamond Authority. Steven takes this to mean that Peridot is selling them out and tries to stop her, thinking that her fear of the Cluster is no excuse for this betrayal. Ends up subverted; Peridot was trying to reason with Yellow Diamond to spare the Earth and use its resources for the Diamond Authority without disturbing its natural life, and doesn't reveal that the Crystal Gems survived. When YD refuses, Peridot calls her a clod and refuses to make the Cluster go on as scheduled.
  • Steven Universe Future has Jasper stubbornly refuse to listen to either Steven or Amethyst when they try to convince her to not spend the rest of her existence on a barren piece of land training for a new war. Steven goes in the premiere to invite her to Little Homeschool but gets irritated as Jasper says that he is not her Diamond and he can't order her around. It's understandable that Jasper is hurt on learning that Pink Diamond lied and was Rose Quartz the whole time, but not-so-much that she is being a giant jerk about it to Steven, who helped undo her corruption and just wants her to be happy. Steven says as much, pointing out to Jasper that she got herself corrupted and has rebuked all offers for the Gems to help her, because she wasn't the only one that Rose deceived. Jasper only listens after he beats her in a fair sparring match, tries her best to train him to control his surging powers when he comes to her for help, and the finale has them part as friends at least.
  • Steven calls himself out for this and represses his guilt and trauma after shattering Jasper during a training bout gone wrong. It was an accident, and he quickly revives her while crying Tears of Remorse and apologizing to her, but Steven is horrified that he became even worse than his mother, because Rose only lied about shattering someone. He tries to isolate himself from his friends and go to the Diamonds for help with his spiraling, but ultimately the ensuing meltdown causes him to proclaim I Am a Monster and saying he has no reason for what he did, which leads to his corruption and turning him into Steven-zilla. To get him back, Connie realizes that Steven were handling a Corrupted Gem who couldn't be poofed, he would empathize with them. So she rallies the Gems, Diamonds, and Greg to do what Steven would do and show love for him, warts and all. Doing so allows Steven to shrink back to his human self. Even so, the finale shows that he's seeing a therapist via telecall and has to check in with them during her road trip.
• Danny Phantom:
  • Comes up frequently about Vlad Masters, and numerous characters call him out for his attitude about being Vlad Plasmius. No one denies that it was Jack's fault that he caused the accident in college that led to Vlad getting his ghost powers, as well as ghost acne, and ending up in the hospital; Jack himself acknowledges in Vlad's debut that he messed up but is confident that Vlad has forgiven him. Danny feels sorry for Vlad after learning about Plasmius, if squicked out on hearing that Vlad has the hots for his mother Maddy; Maddy has the same attitude when Vlad conspires to isolate her and Danny at his mansion in Colorado. While Vlad in the Bad Future is remorseful about what he was, an alternate timeline where Jack receives ghost powers has Danny and alternate Maddy call him out for lying to Maddy about Jack wanting revenge and forbidding her from studying ghosts as a housewife. Danny even points out that Maddy isn't happy being married to Vlad, and Vlad announces that he doesn't care, only that he got what he wanted. The Series Finale proper has Vlad reveal his ghost self to the world by using a deadly asteroid as a power play, commandeering Jack's spaceship to get close to the asteroid and make it intangible. Jack is horrified and asks how he could "hold the world hostage," and finally learns that he was responsible. He asserts that he never meant to hurt Vlad, and always considered him a friend. When Vlad realizes that the asteroid is immune to ghost powers and tries to beg for a ride back to Earth, [Jack tells him they're no longer friends] with an OOC Is Serious Business Tranquil Fury look and abandons him in space.
  • Dark Danny in the Bad Future was born from a traumatic experience, namely that thanks to one mistake of Danny holding onto career test answers and using them not knowing he was busted, his family and friends get killed in a freak accident at the Nasty Burger. When Vlad at Danny's request separated his ghost half from his human half, the ghost half killed the human boy. Yet when Prime Danny confronts him, he says that he will never become the monster that Dark Danny is. And he is right; Prime Danny fights Dark Danny with everything he has to the bitter end, which convinces Clockwork to reset the timeline, imprison Dark Danny outside the timestream, and give Prime Danny a chance to fix things. Prime Danny chooses to hand in the test answers and confess to Lancer, which prevents the freak accident.
  • "Girls' Night Out" has the lady ghosts in the series band together after fighting with their boyfriends, including Skulker, and banish all the males from Amity Park while hypnotizing the women into loving them. Jasmine, Sam and Maddy remain immune while Jack takes Danny on a fishing trip so they remain unaffected. The trio tries to take down the ghosts, with Maddy and Sam calling out Ember for thinking that all men deserve to suffer for normal couple fights.

Real Life

• The real Frank Abegnale (of Catch Me If You Can, cited in Film above), now a reformed con artist, says that sure his crimes started after his parents divorced, but that did not justify his actions with defrauding Pan-Am airlines, impersonating a doctor, and becoming a fake lawyer. (What makes the doctor impersonation, if it actually happened, egregious is he nearly got a baby killed due to not knowing medical terminology.) He was actually amused that Steven Spielberg used that point in his life as the fictional Frank's motive for stealing money: to get his parents back together. The real Frank asserts there was no emotional reason; he did it because it was fun. Plus, he points out plenty of parents divorce and their kids don't become con artists.
• Paul Dini and Bruce Timm discussed this during the director's commentary for Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker regarding Harley. After what Harley does in the movie, Bruce mandated that Harley had to die; that she was a domestic abuse victim of the Joker did not justify her helping Joker kidnap and torture Tim Drake into a Joker Jr.. Paul Dini protested this as Harley was his creation, and jokingly drew himself crying about writing the scene. They reached a compromise where Harley survived falling into a pit, but retired from crime, becoming a grumpy old lady with a cane who smacks her granddaughters for becoming Jokerz gang members. Harley didn't escape unscathed from the consequences of her actions. Bruce allowed it because he felt the moment that Harley revealed herself as alive and a grandmother was a much-needed moment of levity.