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Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Difference between revisions
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In the [[Real Life|real world]], abuse is a traumatic evil that can warp a child's psyche, causing them extensive physical and psychological problems as they develop into adults. Sometimes, abused children will go on to abuse children themselves. It's a horror that takes years of intensive therapy and anger management to recover from, if it is ever actually recovered from.
In the media, on the other hand, a fair amount of [[Black Comedy]] (or, in the worst cases, [[Dead Baby Comedy]]) can come from a character's horrible childhood. Notably, such comedy seldom includes sexual abuse, [[Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil|which tends to take things into]] [[Dude, Not Funny]] territory. It's usually [[Parental Neglect]] or seriously bizarre methods of parenting [[Crosses the Line Twice|exaggerated to the point of comedy]].
This can be played for laughs and seriousness alternately, especially the characters are [[Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist|comically screwed up]] already and their parents are shown to be equally or (often) more messed up.
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Related to [[Dysfunction Junction]], [[Babysitter From Hell]].
{{examples
== Anime And Manga ==
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* In the case of Anime and Manga, there's VERY heavy [[Values Dissonance]] in these regards. A smack to the head does not get the same reaction in Japanese culture as it would in American.
* 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
* Monkey D. Luffy's childhood in ''[[One Piece]]'' is clearly this.
{{quote| '''Luffy''': Yeah! So don't attack him!!! He'll ''kill'' you...!!! Grandpa's nearly killed ''me'', often enough!<br />
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* Penny's abusive father in the [[Gag Dub]] of ''[[Shin Chan|Crayon Shin-chan]]''. Her mom even hatched a plan to escape and become a BDSM prostitute. "At least they pay for ouchie-sex."
* A scene cut from the English dub of ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' had Usagi have an [[Imagine Spot]] where her mother strangled her for having bad grades.
* Allen Walker's childhood from ''[[D Gray Man]]''. His abuse and psychological trauma at the hands of his [[Trickster Mentor|master]] General Cross is [[Comedic Sociopathy|played entirely for laughs]]. Whenever he hears the word "debt," it's shown as a thousand-pound rock is crushing his chest, and he gets ''very'' depressed. This was caused by Cross being an alcoholic gambler that left young Allen with all his debt... along with hitting Allen, all done in a funny (Or sometimes [[Dude, Not Funny]]) light, of course. The other parts of his horribly traumatizing childhood [[Deconstruction|are played brutally straight]].
* Played with: Ed and Al's training with [[Badass Teacher|Izumi]] in ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' is shown like this, to the point that hearing her name is enough to turn them into pathetic wrecks. But then they ''asked'' her to train them. They even ''insisted'', because they were desperate for power, and Izumi actually ''went easy on them'' and what they were put through was child's play compared to the training Izumi went through herself. Of course, her idea of going easy on them during their training was to strand them on a deserted island, then get her store assistant to dress up as a monster, beat the ever loving crap out of the boys every day and steal their food. At least he was around to make sure they didn't die, which was more than she got.
* 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.
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== Film ==
* [[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 [[Sit Com]] 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."
{{quote| '''Dr. Evil:''' The details of my life are quite inconsequential. Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with a low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen-year-old French prostitute named Chloë with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds--pretty standard really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Wilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum. It's breathtaking--I suggest you try it."}}
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== Live Action TV ==
* Tracy Jordan from ''[[
{{quote| "It's all coming back to me. Oh my God! I slept on an old dog bed stuffed with wigs! I watched a prostitute stab a clown! Our basketball hoop was a rib cage – a rib cage! Why did you bring me here? I blocked all this stuff out for a reason! Oh, Lord, some guy with dreads electrocuted my fish! [Later] All my life I've tried to forget the things I've seen — a crackhead breastfeeding a rat, a homeless man licking a Hot Pocket off the third rail of the G train! [Still later] I've seen a blind guy bite a police horse! A puppy committed suicide after he saw our bathroom! I once bit into a burrito and there was a child's shoe in it! I've seen a hooker eat a tire! A pack of wild dogs took over and successfully ran a Wendy's! The sewer people stole my skateboard! [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|The projects I lived in were named after Zachary Taylor, generally considered to be one of the worst presidents of all time!]] I once saw a baby give another baby a tattoo! They were very drunk!"}}
* 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!}}
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{{quote| Rimmer: "Every morning he'd measure us to see if we had grown, if not it was back on the rack."}}
* ''[[Titus]]'': Christopher Titus's father actually thinks emotionally damaging kids is better for them than physical violence (which Erin's dad, Merritt, does to her brother, Michael, which Ken thinks makes him a "drunken Irish loser.")
** Christopher Titus really did have a messed-up childhood in [[Real Life]], and mentions it often in his stand-up comedy routines and on the sitcom. Both of his parents were alcoholics (though his dad, Ken, was a [[Functional Addict]]), his mom, Juanita, was a violent, manic-depressive schizophrenic who murdered her second husband after he beat the shit out of her for not having dinner done and she eventually killed herself after realizing that her mental illness ruined her life, his dad married and divorced five times (with his ex-wives cleaning him out to the point that the only thing they had in their house was a rubber raft, a box, and a black-and-white TV), and Titus's extended family includes members who were either mentally ill, verbally abusive, addicted to drugs, and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|a Mormon uncle]].
* Chandler Bing from ''[[Friends]]''.
{{quote| '''Chandler:''' Come on, by age seven kids have already seen orgies. ''[Beat]'' Was it just me?}}
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{{quote| "I don't necessarily buy into all that New Age-y crap. I once saw my mom knock my dad unconscious with a frying pan. You know what I did? Kept right on going with my birthday party!"}}
* Daphne in ''[[Frasier]]'' has a habit of recounting traumatic or downright abusive stories from her past in a cheery, fond tone.
* ''[[Two and A Half Men]]'' often displays the poisonous behavior of Charlie and Alan's mother, both in the show's timeframe and in [[Backstory]] presented by "who-did-Mom-scar-more" arguments. There was also an episode where she keeps pushing Charlie to find out why he doesn't like her and why he has issues with commitment. He finally opens up [["The Reason You Suck" Speech|with a rant]]:
{{quote| '''Charlie''': I'm not saying I hate you, but if I did, it might have something to do with the fact that you're a narcissistic bloodsucker who drove my father into an early grave, after which you married a succession of men who couldn't care less about Alan and me, which was just fine with you 'cause you... looked at us like a couple of dancing monkeys you could just haul out whenever it suited you! And when it didn't, you sent us off to boarding school or camp or that kibbutz in Israel, where we got beat up 'cause we weren't even Jewish! And now... now you show up here every chance you get to lay a guilt trip on me for not appreciating my cold, lonely, loveless childhood!<br />
'''Evelyn''': [[Comically Missing the Point|Well... obviously you're not ready to talk about it]]. }}
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* ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo The Four Yorkshiremen]''. Right! I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work 29 hours a day down t'mill and pay t'mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our dad would ''kill'' us and dance about on our graves, singin' Hallelujah!
** And a small [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eDaSvRO9xA variant] on that.
* In ''[[Wizards of Waverly Place]]'', Harper always says something about her horrible life at home almost every episode and a laugh track follows. Although that makes it fall into [[Dude, Not Funny]] territory, though this explains why she has been adopted by the family. The parents even seem to [[Parental Favoritism|favor her over their biological children]], and when talking about their plans for the future say "Harper will be the one to take care of us when we are older."
* The [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSeZxjLhxV4 Daddy Drank] sketch from ''[[Kids in The Hall]]''.
* ''[[The Whitest Kids U Know]]'' did a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86SFq1DiYY similar version] involving a Christmas gift... {{spoiler|The dad wanted the kid to bury the pony because they had to clean up after it}}.
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== Web Comics ==
* Onion Kid in ''[[
** 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}}.
** Not to mention what he did to Ranger, oh, [[Kick the Dog|poor ranger and Ranger's Wife...]]
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{{quote| '''Huey''': That's, like... Academy Award-''nominated'' sad.}}
* The ''entire'' childhood of [[The Fairly Odd Parents|Timmy Turner]] can to be considered to this way. Especially as that is why children get Fairy Godparent assigned to them in the first place.
* [[Unreliable Narrator|According to Pinkie Pie]] of ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Animation)|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'', she grew up on a rock farm. A '''rock farm''', where she and her family worked all day moving rocks around for no particular reason -- some of which were about the same size as Pinkie herself at the time. Abuse didn't seem to be the intention, but the effect was about as soul-crushing as you'd expect.
** [[Sarcasm Mode|Nothing like a Puritan upbringing.]]
** They are shown fully supporting her when she sets up a party for them though. It may have just been [[Fisher Kingdom]] effect of living on a ''rock farm''.
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[[Category:Truth in Television]]
[[Category:Hilariously Abusive Childhood]]
[[Category:Trope]][[Category:Pages with comment tags]]
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