Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:hilariouslyabusivechildhood 6815.jpg|link=The Simpsons|frame|'''I'LL MACE YOU GOOD!'''<ref>So why is he holding a flail?</ref>]]

 

{{quote|''It all began on the day of my actual birth. Both of my parents failed to show up. And on my fifth birthday, I had to throw myself my own surprise party.''|'''Dr. Doofenshmirtz''', ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]''}}

 

{{examples}}

* Kafuka Fuura in ''[[Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei]]''. Though she doesn't [[Beware the Nice Ones|seem]] like she notices it...

** Nozomu as well, albeit in a different way. The audience doesn't see his upbringing, but given (as part of family tradition), his family tries to force him to marry the first person he locks eyes with during a ceremony, it's unlikely to have been that normal. Whatever it involved, Nozomu turned out to be a hilariously neurotic guy. And then there's Nozumu's nephew Majiru, whose [[Parental Abandonment]] is somewhat [[Played for Laughs]], as is Nozomu's [[Hands-Off Parenting]] of him after taking him in.

* ''[[Hayate the Combat Butler]]'' is a prime example of this. Even the fact that his parents sold him to [[The Family for the Whole Family|the "very nice people"]] for organ harvesting is played for laughs. [[In-Universe]], when he talks about his childhood, most of the listeners burst into tears.

* Kogoro Mouri from ''[[Detective Conan]]'' yet often punches Conan (in front of authority, nonetheless), throws him across the room, and screams at him. Things from "getting in the way" of his work, to accidentally cutting his foot, to laughing at his stupidity. Seriously. Are there any social workers in the Beika district?

** Not to mention the flashbacks we see of Mousse being stomped all over by Shampoo when he tried to woo her as a little kid.

* Penny's abusive father in the [[Gag Dub]] of ''[[Crayon Shin-chan]]''. Her mom even hatched a plan to escape and become a BDSM prostitute. "At least they pay for ouchie-sex."

* In ''[[Keroro Gunsou]]'', Dororo was not only quite sickly as a lad, but suffered [[Amusing Injuries|all sorts of cartoony pain and abuse]] during the games he would play with Keroro and Giroro.

* Kenshin's actual childhood in ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'' isn't funny at all, and is [[Tear Jerker|rather tragic]]. But the days he spent with Seijuro Hiko consisted of him learning sword techniques... which were always learned by Kenshin being hit with the move first, and depicted in chibi form.

 

* ''[[Nextwave]]'''s Elsa Bloodstone was trained from birth to hunt monsters. "Trained" here equals "thrown into a monster's pit as a <s>toddler</s> infant armed with her feeding spoon." Then told to do it again when she emerged victorious. And then there's the flash-card training robot that uses its ''built-in iron maiden'' when she gets an answer wrong...You ''have'' to laugh.

* ''The Prehistory of [[The Far Side]]'' features a hysterical extended sequence where the author, Gary Larson, "explains" the bizarre and often extremely dark nature of his humor with a series of supposed drawings from his childhood, where it's revealed, among other things, that his mother tried to murder him by hiding his cookies in the middle of the highway, his father liked to amuse other children by holding him over an alligator pit, his brother once tied him to a tree and set it on fire, and that he was forced to ride in the trunk of the car. A substantial part of the humor comes from the fact that while the ''reader'' realizes how grotesque this is, the ''author'' himself does not, and reminisces fondly of his family life as a kid.

* From, [[Johnny the Homicidal Maniac]], Squee. When it has [[Ax Crazy|Johnny]] himself being the [[Big Brother Instinct|closest thing to a big brother]] the kid has and Squee saying [[Blatant Lies|"I am full of guilt"]] when his parents are abducted by aliens, you know it is this trope.

 

* [[Deconstructed Trope]] in ''[[Natural Born Killers]]'' with the flashbacks to Mallory's childhood. They consist of scenes of Mallory's father being deeply abusive, both physically and sexually, to his wife and daughter... on a [[Sitcom]] set, complete with a highly uncomfortable [[Laugh Track]] that pushes it into the [[Dead Baby Comedy]]/[[Dude, Not Funny]] zone. It really doesn't help that the father was played by [[Playing Against Type|Rodney Dangerfield]]. The dissonance between character and actor is ''staggering''.

* ''[[Austin Powers]]'': One of Dr. Evil's best moments is during a group therapy session, casually dismissing his deranged childhood as "typical."

* In the first [[Gremlins]] film, Phoebe Cates's character, who hates Christmas, tells the sad story of her dad dying on Christmas Day, whilst climbing down the chimney to surprise for her and her mum. In the sequel, she starts going on about some other awful thing that happened to her on Lincoln's Day, at which point her husband says something like 'Not now, honey'.

 

* The Dursleys from ''[[Harry Potter]]''. The Cupboard Under The Stairs may seem funny in concept, but it's hard to imagine actually living in one. However, a lot of the comedy from the Dursleys comes from their social climbing and shallowness and their extreme reactions to magic, not from their treatment of Harry, which is still mostly [[Played for Drama]].

** The first book has a very different tone from the sequels, and starts out as both an homage to, and a send-up, of Victorian stories of orphans raised in wealthy homes, where they were told they would be one of the family, but then ended up as the lowest of the servants, and unpaid to boot, while constantly reminded of the family's kindness for taking them off the streets. They often slept in tiny rooms, or even in the scullery, and while it's true that servants' quarters were usually barely adequate, they usually weren't inhumane. JK Rowling takes what is already an exaggeration for literary purposes, and further exaggerates it for purposes of satire. Harry can't turn around without one more slap in the face reminder than he is less than his cousin. Then the book takes a hard left when Hagrid shows up, and Harry finds out that he is rich, had loving parents who left him a legacy, he is famous among his own people—he was an ugly duckling, after all—and on top of that, can do magic. It plays out the fantasies that the poor orphans in the rich houses often entertained, before they either died in obscurity, or worked hard every day, saved each penny, and some day made good, depending on the author's message.

* Sunny McCreary from ''My Godawful Life'', a parody of [[Misery Lit]]. He was kept in a pigeon coop, bullied by the pigeons, had to spend his days moving his paraplegic mother's limbs for the benefit of her "clients" (she was a prostitute), all the family's money was spent on nails for his stepfather to hammer into Sunny's flesh, and he was then pimped out to truckers when it cost too much for his mother and stepfather to keep him.

 

* Tracy Jordan from ''[[30 Rock]]'' could be the page quote:

* In ''[[Coupling]]'', Jeff frequently alludes to his upbringing, which was obviously pretty bizarre and had a big influence on his personality.

{{quote|You're shaking the caravan, Jeffrey!}}

* In the second episode of ''[[Homeland]]'', Carrie visits her sister and remarks on how well-behaved and obedient her sister's children are; her sister nonchalantly replies "I beat them. Don't tell the neighbors."

 

* [["Weird Al" Yankovic]] has a song called "When I Was Your Age" which features horrible incidents from the narrator's childhood. However, given how outrageously over the top (i.e. physically impossible) all of them are, it's not likely there's any truth in them: "Then he'd chop me into pieces and play Frisbee with my brain/ And let me tell you, Junior, you never heard me complain!"

** Or the lines before that "Our dad would whup us every night 'til a quarter after twelve/ When he'd get too tired, then he'd make us whup ourselves."

* The narrator of [[Johnny Cash]]'s "A Boy Named Sue".

 

* Dave, a guy you meet during ''[[Fallout|Fallout 2]]'', had a fun childhood.

{{quote|"When I was one, I was dropped on the porch. When I was two, I had pneumonia. When I was three, I got the chicken pox. When I was four, I fell down the stairs and broke six ribs. When I was five, my uncle was decapitated by a watermelon. When I was six, my parents hit me in the head with a shovel. When I was seven, I lost my index finger to me pet rat. When I was eight, my dog Spike got hit by a tractor. When I was nine, my mother lost her arm to a rabid Brahmin. When I was ten, my sister was torn to bits by a pack of dogs. When I was eleven, my grandfather killed himself because I was ugly. When I was twelve, my grandmother killed herself because I was ugly. When I was thirteen, my father poked out his eyes with a pitchfork in a drunken stupor. When I was fourteen, my brother lost his hand to a wallaby. When I was fifteen, my aunt choked to death on a chicken bone. When I was sixteen, I lost my cousin to a badger. When I was seventeen, I cut off my left big toe with a hoe. When I was eighteen, my father lost his right leg to the same tractor that killed my dog. When I was nineteen..."}}

* Ernie Eaglebeak is still enduring his at the beginning of ''[[The Spellcasting Series]]'', although he escapes soon after.

 

* Onion Kid in ''[[8-Bit Theater]]''

** Subverted in that he grows up to become {{spoiler|[[Physical God|Sarda]]. His whole raison d'etre is to screw over the Light Warriors that made his life horrible, by cutting them down in their most awesome state to signify their insignificance to what he's become, instead of just killing them all before they could repeatedly destroy his parents, his foster parents and the orphanages that have adopted him. When you take a good look past his creativity, omnipotence and amazing capacity for spite, you see a godlike entity whose only purpose is to horribly abuse a handful of people and will screw over countless innocents to do so}}.

* The central theme of the ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' alternate universe fancomic [http://zarla.deviantart.com/gallery/#Les-Enfants-Terribles "Les Enfants Terribles"] is Big Boss's absolutely dreadful parenting of his clone children, and of [[The Unfavorite|Liquid Snake]] in particular.

{{quote|[http://zarla.deviantart.com/art/Les-Enfants-Terribles-38063076 "I'm BUSY, Liquid. GOD, why do you have to be so inferior?"]}}

** Inverted with Ollie, whose implied history of sexually servicing his psychopathic uncle [[Complete Monster|Avogadro]] was apparently an ''improvement'' over life with his own violent, two-faced father.

* ''[[Achewood]]'''s Roast Beef, who "comes from circumstances".

* Dave Strider from ''[[Homestuck]]'' was raised by his brother, generally referred to solely as "Bro," who decorates their apartment with puppet porn and kicks Dave's ass regularly (''[[Marionette Master|with a puppet]]'') for no particular reason. If there was any question of how much this has messed up Dave, {{spoiler|Bro's favorite puppet, [[Demonic Dummy|Lil' Cal]], is, through a [[Stable Time Loop]], a ''manifestation of Dave's nightmares from living with Lil' Cal''}}.

 

* [[The Nostalgia Critic]] once showed a drawing he drew as a kid, featuring his parents as two dinosaurs ripping him apart, played for [[Black Comedy]]. What makes it more tangible, however, is that the character has become something of a [[Papa Wolf]] who can't stand it when non-bratty children get abused.

{{quote|[[Understatement|"I had issues"]]}}

* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series]]'' has turned Kaiba's childhood into an example of this.

{{quote|"Whip him until his name is Toby!"}}

 

* ''[[American Dad]]'': To some degree, Stan (mostly over-the-top [[Booby Trap]]s to shut up Haylee's protests). Stan's father Jack was neglectful to a similar extreme.

{{quote|'''Jeff:''' Were you close to your dad?