Cool Motive, Still A Crime: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|'''Perp''': "It was a crime of love!"
'''Jake Peralta''': "Cool motive, still murder."
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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.
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{{examples}}
== [[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.
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** 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. {{spoiler|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 (anime)|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]] ==
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* ''[[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 {{spoiler|Dream-Daniel confront his mother Hippolyta about this}}. He says that he understands that {{spoiler|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 {{spoiler|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 {{spoiler|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}}.
* Kron Stone, the Venom of [[Marvel 2099]] and enemy of both Miguel O'Hara (Spider-Man 2099) and Jake Gallows (Punisher 2099), was a serial killer who'd butcher happy families, children included, before bonding with the Symbiote. His hatred for families stems from his awful childhood, where his neglectful father allowed his robotic maid to treat him like a dog (as in, forced him to sleep in a dog house, fed him kibble, made him wear a dog collar...) and left him with the belief that loving families are a lie. He tries to play the [[Freudian Excuse]] card when Jake is preparing to stab him to death as revenge for murdering his family, but he isn't having it, and only has this to say when asked if he knows what it's like to be abused the way he was.
{{quote|No, but I know what it's like to have your family butchered by a crazy with a sob story.}}
== [[Fan Works]] ==
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** 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'' {{spoiler|sacrifices his life in a longshot attempt to assassinate Thanos before he can kill Thor}}. The ''Loki'' series has an alternate Loki watch {{spoiler|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 ''[[Captain America: Civil War (film)| 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, {{spoiler|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. [[Your Approval Fills Me with Shame|She admires the power]]}}. Later on, ''
** In ''[[Guardians of the Galaxy]]'', Drax the Destroyer essentially drunk-dials [[Big Bad|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 Killer|serial killers]] in dinosaur bodies, the ones in the [[Jurassic Park III|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. {{spoiler|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
* Happens in ''[[Harry Potter]]'' from time to time.
** ''[[Harry Potter
*** Dumbledore and Harry discuss this about {{spoiler|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 {{spoiler|Severus Snape}} after the latter's actions in this book. He did feel bad for him after learning {{spoiler|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 {{spoiler|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 {{spoiler|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 {{spoiler|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'' {{spoiler|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
* ''[[Percy Jackson & the Olympians]]'' also has this in the last book regarding {{spoiler|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:
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** 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 {{spoiler|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]]''
**
** 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 {{spoiler|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}}. [[Wham! Episode|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.
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** 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 [[Insanity Defense|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 [[Collector of the Strange|Kivas Fajo]] tries to justify kidnapping and enslaving [[Ridiculously Human Robot|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]] ==
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== [[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:
** "[https://notalwaysright.com/its-way-too-early-for-this/262803/| 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.
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* 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. {{spoiler|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, {{spoiler|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]] ==
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* 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 {{spoiler|the friend group abandoned her after Mari died}}. Kel calls bullshit; he points out that she's not the only one who {{spoiler|lost Mari. They all did, including Basil.}}
* This is the entire Investigation Team's response to {{spoiler|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]] ==
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* Downplayed in [http://superredundant.com/?comic=1190-toxic-patterns this] ''[[League Of Super Redundant Heroes]]''.
{{quote|'''Buckaress''': I know at least one supervillain who uses that as an excuse too. It's not a great one.}}
== [[Western Animation]] ==
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** ''Steven Universe Future'' has Jasper stubbornly refuse to listen to either Steven or Amethyst {{spoiler|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 {{spoiler|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 {{spoiler|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 {{spoiler|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. {{spoiler|When Vlad realizes that the asteroid is immune to ghost powers and tries to beg for a ride back to Earth, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEF2D9iofrQ 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 {{spoiler|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. {{spoiler|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]] ==
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
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[[Category:Morality Tropes]]
[[Category:Psychology Tropes]]
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