Freudian Excuse/Comic Books

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Freudian Excuses in Comic Books include:

  • Subverted in the Brian Bendis run on the comic book Daredevil. Daredevil has spent his life tormented by the monstrous Bullseye. When Daredevil discovers Bullseye had a horrible childhood, the hero feels no sympathy, and says he will never fear Bullseye again. A mass murderer is scary; a mass murderer who kills because he had a crappy childhood is merely pathetic.
    • Possibly because of Daredevil's own Backstory. Maybe not everyone can spin "Blinded by toxic spill at age twelve and single father was coerced into not suing due to carelessly negligent waste handler's mob ties" into "hot-shot lawyer AND superhero", but still...
    • Of course, Bullseye has a Multiple Choice Past, so it's possible "The Crappy childhood" is a lie. In some versions of his origin, he was bad even as a kid.
  • Many of the Batman villains: Anyone born looking like Waylon "Killer Croc" Jones would have trouble leading a normal life; Bane was forced to live out his escaped father's life sentence, and so on. Some are a bit suspect -- Scarecrow was bullied as a child, yes, but so were a lot of us, and we didn't turn evil.
    • Inverted by Batman himself, who, after seeing his parents murdered by a criminal, devotes his life to fighting crime and improving the quality of life in Gotham.
    • Lampshaded in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, wherein Terry gets the better of the titular villain by, among other things, mercilessly mocking his past, although in this version it's just the chemical bath.
    • The Joker himself likes to make fun of this trope, by making up horrible child abuse stories in order to mess with people's minds. He did this most notably in Mad Love.
    • Oh, and Killer Croc once teamed up with fellow biological misfit Baby Doll, and they were quite successful--but apparently being a Jerkass at heart, he decided to ditch her, at which point she snapped on him.
    • One of the few "abusive father" backstories that really works: Harvey Dent/Two-Face's violent, sadistic alternate persona, called "Big Bad Harv" in the cartoon, emerged as Harvey's way of coping with a drunken, abusive father. In the comic in which this element of the character was introduced, it's revealed that his father would take Harvey and "play a game" with him, flipping a silver dollar and beating the child if it came up heads. The coin had two heads.
    • The nature of Two-Face's father's abuse varies slightly depending on the story. One story suggested that his dad had a split personality himself, and would violently beat Harvey when he was angry with him before realizing in horror what he was doing.
    • The Riddler is another of the "abusive father" strain. In particular, his father would savagely beat him every time he lied, so the Riddler feels the compulsion to always tell the truth... albeit in convoluted riddles.
    • Scarecrow gets an abusive grandmother and maternal abandonment, as well as vicious school bullying. In fangirl circles, this is taken as an actual excuse. If you can find a Youtube Scarecrow video posted by a female user who doesn't portray him as The Woobie or, after Cillian Murphy played him in the movie, a Draco in Leather Pants, I will give you five bucks.
    • This even extends to non-villain characters. Much of Jason Todd's problems lie from his childhood (mother died when he was young, father was a Two-Face mook who was eventually killed). When he is adopted by Batman, Jason lives for the "Well Done, Son" Guy, and his desire to see his real mother (who he has never even met) led to his death at the hands of the Joker. Since he was revived, he's been unable to fully understand why Batman got a new Robin, but still lives for his old mentor's approval. This reached a head in "Battle for the Cowl" where his inability to accept Batman's death resulted in Jason snapping completely, trying to take his Batman's place (as a murderous Batman), and even nearly killing Tim Drake.
    • A perfect example of the slimy psychiatrist appears in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, in the form of Dr. Volper, who attempts to present the Joker as being a mere victim of Batman's psychosis. In thanks, the Joker snaps his neck on live television (while gassing the studio) - although it's suggested that the psychiatrist, irritating, blinkered and naive jerk though he may be, might have a point, as the Joker had spent the period that Batman had been absent from Gotham City in a catatonic state that he only emerged from when Batman returned.
    • Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, during which the Joker has his Freudian Excuse explained as an extended flashback. Joker explains that the story might be entirely false due to his own unreliable psyche, but DC seems to be treating it as Canon, given a later story arc where Riddler says he witnessed the murder of "Jack's" wife and offers to tell Joker who did it in return for protection.
      • Of course, the whole point of The Killing Joke is Joker trying to prove that all it takes is "one bad day" for even the sanest person to go off the deep end. He tries to drive Commissioner Gordon insane by shooting and brutalizing his daughter Barbara, then forcing Gordon to look at photographs of her naked, broken body. However, Gordon doesn't break and, when Batman rescues him, he tells Bats to bring Joker in by the book, to prove "our way works".
    • This is turned on its head in Batman Begins, in which the corrupt psychiatrist, when his "clients" cease to be useful to him, uses a neurotoxin to render them legitimately insane.
    • The Batman the Animated Series episode "Trial" has the villains putting Batman on trial for ruining their lives. Of course, even they end up admitting that they had problems, some self-inflicted, before Batman became involved. Being villains, they attempt to follow up the verdict of innocence with an execution, regardless.
    • Roman Sionis a.k.a. Black Mask also had an abusive childhood. Whenever he suffered an accident that should have him taken to some hospital, his parents were more concerned with their image and covered the incidents. Despite hating the Waynes and not hiding it from Roman, his parents forced him to befriend Bruce for the sake of being connected to one of Gotham's elite families. When Roman started dating a secretary from his father's company, they opposed it. That was the last drop for Roman, who burned down the family home with his parents inside it. Not being as good as a businessman as his father was, he drove the company bankrupt. His girlfriend left him, the irony being that his parents were right about opposing the relationship. Using a defective product from his company (the very same one that drove him into bankruptcy), he exacted his revenge on her. Feeling humiliated that Bruce Wayne took over the company, Sionis (now Black Mask) started kidnapping executives of Wayne Enterprises.
  • Has been used at times to explain the motives of Spider-Man villains, and to possibly contrast them with Spidey himself, who did not exactly have the best childhood. The worst example was when Venom was given a cliched tragic backstory (complete with the drunk, abusive father) as part of a bad idea to turn the character into a hero.
    • This was actually addressed in Ultimate Spider-Man, where Nick Fury reveals that the reason he had given Spidey such a hard time was because he has assumed, due to the tragedy in his life, Peter was almost certain to become a villain.
  • In Ultimate Fantastic Four #7, it is explained that on Victor Van Damme's tenth birthday he was presented with his family history dating back to Vlad Tepes Dracula and basically the blueprint for his entire villainous mindset, and from that day on at dinner he was required to recite said family history from memory, receiving beatings when he got it wrong and being forced to start over until he got it right. Not much of a Freudian Excuse, but... the last page of the flashback shows ten-year-old Victor sitting in the chair where he received the original lecture and instruction in five panels depicting it slowly getting darker. In the last one, he says "It's my birthday." If you don't feel sorry for him (at least the child version, not necessarily the one who proceeds to recite the names of his ancestors and ask if his father can hear him now while attacking the FF with a rocket launcher) after that, then you have a heart of stone.
  • Magneto of X-Men: his parents and family were okay people, but they were Jews in Nazi Germany. He was the only one who lived; some issues say that he was forced to clean their ashes out of the incinerators. Magneto is constantly going through the Heel Face Revolving Door, always working to make the oppressed mutants safer, often going too far. By some accounts, he can't make himself believe that peaceful coexistence is possible.
    • And then, once he and his soon-to-be wife Magda settled in Ukraine, a mob burnt down the inn where they were staying, and he was unable to do anything while his daughter burned to death. And then, when he lost control of the powers he didn't know he had and killed the mob, Magda ran from him, calling him a monster. Later, when he was hunting Nazis for a living, the people he worked for (heavily implied to be the CIA) killed a female friend of his because he went after the "wrong" Nazis. Oh, and his powers make him bipolar. The man has so many issues it's a wonder he's still able to function.
    • Let's not forget that on the two occasions when Magneto decided to try the more ethical path of establishing a separate nation as a sanctuary for mutants and otherwise leaving flatscans entirely alone, both times his attempted 'Mutant Israel' was almost immediately nuked off the map. With literal nukes. Magneto's subsequent urges to burn the world are most definitely understandable.
  • A Child Services worker in Transmetropolitan has a rather poetic rant on this:

"Everyone's looking for someone to blame. Society. Culture. Hollywood. Predators. Looking everywhere but the right place. Children are very simple, Mr. Jerusalem. Very easy devices to break, or assemble wrong. You want to know who did this to these kids? Only their parents. That's the thing no one wants to hear. Every time you stop thinking about how you're treating your kid, you make one of these. It really is as simple as that. It's got nothing to do with the failure of the society or any of that. It's got everything to do with the responsibility of making a human."

  • Junior from Secret Six has this turned all the way up to eleven. Her father was the original Golden Age Ragdoll, a psychopathic mass murderer and cult leader in the Charles Manson style. He beat his son because he wasn't triple jointed like he was and when it came to Junior (Real name Alex) he would repeatedly rape her, from a very young age. It doesn't excuse the horrific crimes she later commits (Junior is a sadist, rapist, mass murderer, and torturer who's crimes are so horrifying there are people in Arkham who are scared of her) but when you look at what her father was like it explains so much.
  • Sistah Spooky's rather pathological hatred of blondes (like her teammate Empowered) was summed up thusly to said teammate by an ex-lover:

"It's a messy High School (Über-Aryan Mean Girls) trauma, to oversimplify things considerably."

  • The Terror Titans miniseries by DC is based around this trope. Every issue features one member's backstory, usually involving a terrible childhood.
  • Arguably every member of the Umbrella Academy, and definitely Vanya. Hargreeves is a total dick and terrible parent, for instance his habit of sorting his children by their apparent worth.
  • Backblast from G.I. Joe. He grew up next to one of the busiest airports in the world, and whenever a plane landed or took off his whole house shook with the force of an earthquake. When he signed up for the military, the first thing he asked was "Where can I go to shoot airplanes out of the sky?"
    • Similarly, Charbroil used to have to heat the water pipes in his family's basement as a kid with a blowtorch to keep them from freezing in the winter, and as a teenager worked at a mill, feeding coal into blast furnaces. When asked by the recruiting sergeant what kind of job he was interested in, he replied, "What have you got with open flames?"
  • Subverted in the Mad parody of Touched By an Angel. The somewhat jerky boss objects to a flashback of him being abused by his father that is used to explain his behavior, saying that it isn't real, but the angel showing it tells him that they need it for Tear Jerker material.
  • Superman: Birthright gave Lex Luthor a small excuse. His father was emotionally distant and he felt alienated from everyone because of his money and intellect. However, he was also a raging sociopath with a superiority complex that dwarfed the heavens and many people point out that Luthor made his own choices.
  • While not a villain persay, Rorschach from Watchmen was raised by a prostitute who never cared for him. The Comedian is implied to have had a rough childhood as well.
    • Rorshach states his reason for becoming a crime-fighter in a deconstruction of the superhero origin story. The therapist he speaks with sees it as nothing more than a shallow excuse for his violent life.
    • Ozymandias had an (unspoken) excuse of his own in the movie, or at least from the POV of the actor who played him. Matthew Goode decided to portray Veidt as being shamed by being the son of a Nazi, and that his Well-Intentioned Extremist views arose out of a desire to shed his family guilt and save the world.
  • Defied Trope in the first strip of The Grievous Journey of Ichabod Azrael (and the Dead Left in His Wake): the Narrator says he'd like to say Ichabod became a killer because his father beat him,but in reality, his childhood wasn't any harsher than any other kid at the time. Some people are just born mean.
  • Barracuda from The Punisher MAX series. Though an Affably Evil character to the point of almost being likable, he's a Complete Monster. He turns on allies in an instant, given sufficient reason to do so, and tries to get revenge on Castle by kidnapping his infant illegitimate daughter and planning to torture her to death in front of him. However, during a scene in which the tortured Barracuda snaps completely and utterly, a dialogue in his head reveals that his father had been abusive to the point of torturing his young son. When he goes off the deep end, Barracuda screams "I never did find you, Dad! I had to take this shit out on the goddamn world, instead!"
    • Let's not forget Nicky Cavella, who was manipulated and sexually abused by his aunt. She also made him kill his parents, although the Slasher Smile on his face heavily implies that he wasn't quite normal to begin with. When he's grown up and finally suffocated his aunt with a pillow, he gleefully pisses on the remains of Frank Castle's family and murders the youngest son of one of his opponents before cooking and serving him to said opponent. Do I need to mention he's a Complete Monster?
    • Even Jake Gallows, the Punisher in 2099, runs afoul of guys with backgrounds like this. Kron Stone claims his family never loved him, leaving a robot to care for him but never bothering to program it, causing it to default to veterinarian mode. "Do you know what it's like to be fitted with a collar, live in a kennel, and be fed on dog meat?!" "No, but I know what it's like to have your family butchered by a crazy with a sob story."
  • Alex Hutton, alias Hazard, has a lot of open hostility for the police. His cop father was killed by a car bomb right in front of his eyes and he was raised by his government-hating survivalist grandpa.
  • Defied Trope in X-Men Noir; Jean Grey's Motive Rant includes lamenting that Professor Xavier never truly accepted that she was always extremely immoral and manipulative. "Nobody touched me, nobody corrupted me. This is me."
  • Parodied in a Fun With Milk and Cheese story called "Society is to Blame!", where the titular dairy-products-gone-bad commit their usual horrific fit of violence, but this time decide to do so all the while spouting cliched freudian excuses as to why they're doing it.
  • An early Silver Age Captain America (comics) story had Cap the prisoner of the Red Skull where he told of his tough early life as a homeless child, exploited by street criminals and who could only find work in menial labor until he met Adolf Hitler. However, Cap tells him to Quit Your Whining, noting that he himself struggled with poverty in his youth (although he had a loving mother) and is in no mood for sob stories.
  • In the IDW Transformers continuity, Megatron forms the Decepticons because he is [[oppressed by the corrupt Autobot Government, with his band originally formed as freedom fighters. In a sense, most of the Decepticons fall under this trope. Well, most of them.
    • Drift definitely falls into this category, though his excuse is a pretty limp manner to justify his faction switch.
  • In Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, both of the big bads (Chantique and Haazen) have the excuses; Haazens is that he failed to make the grade as a jedi, and was treated indifferently by a well meaning but somewhat classist employer, while Chantique was sold into slavery by her own father, sold when she failed to be ruthless enough to survive, and was raped by her owners. In Haazen's case it's subverted, since a large part of it was his failure to grow and learn from experience. Chantique's excuse is why she has a Villainous Breakdown when Zayne returns to save Jarael.
  • I'm surprised it's not already here, but I would think Marvel's Loki would count. First, there is the fact that he is a midget giant who was abused by his real father for being a weak, midget giant. After he helps kill said father, he is adopted by Odin, who does so only because he is convinced that it is the only way to appease the spirit of his own dead father. After he is adopted, it is implied that Odin neglected him wholly in favor of his real son, Thor. Thor, in return, is implied to be one of maybe a hand full of people who like Loki, as well as maybe being the only person who probably actually loves him. For Loki, this boils down to a seething self-hatred, which he in turn projects onto Thor, which he only does because he knows that his brother will never completely turn him away.
  • Averted in Johnny the Homicidal Maniac as little/nothing is mentioned of Nny's backstory. Jhonen himself even mentioned that the reason he avoided going into Nny's backstory was to avoid this trope. He then proceeds to parody it in a hypothetical scenario... "YAAAARGH!! I have been pantsed!! I kill like the damned now!!!"
  • The Flash has a pile of unhappy backstories subverted (and not) to varying degrees, including --
    • Captain Cold and Golden Glider's father was an abusive alcoholic.
    • The second Mirror Master was left at an orphanage as a baby. One of the other boys there tried to rape him; he fought back and ended up drowning his attacker.
    • Cobalt Blue was Barry Allen's twin brother, but at birth he was given to the abusive Thawnes and used as a living prop in their scams because the doctor who was overseeing both deliveries accidentally killed the Thawnes' baby and figured the Allens had one more kid than they needed.
    • The first Trickster came from a family of aerialists and his father mocked him for his fear of heights--never mind that this fear came about partly because Dad was constantly Distracted by the Sexy and often came close to dropping his son from a height during their trapeze routines.
  • In the New 52, Nightwing's latest foe Saiko (which appropriately enough sounds a lot like "psycho") is really his former friend and fellow former circus boy Raymond. The circus was a front for the Court of Owls who would repeatedly take children from the circus and put them through Training from Hell to make them into new Talons. The Owls kidnapped Raymond and put him through that training before deciding he was a failure and left him to die in the woods with his eyes pecked out by birds. His entire murderous grudge against Dick is that it should have been Dick instead of Raymond. The Owls originally wanted to make Dick into a Talon, but they had to "settle" for Raymond after the Flying Graysons died and Bruce Wayne adopted Dick in the wake of the tragedy. Saiko then engages Dick in a fight during a reunion show at Haly's Circus while threatening the lives of everyone present with a bunch of bombs. Dick rightfully calls Saiko out on his bs, stating that his suffering is no excuse for endangering so many innocent lives.
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