Never My Fault / The DCU

The DCU

• Batman:
  • The titular superhero has been known to act like this from time to time, whether because his general paranoia was getting the better of him, or his Manipulative Bastard tendencies were in overdrive, or because he thinks everyone else is failing to see the brilliance or tough but necessary measures of his plans.
  • The Joker himself is depicted like this in The Killing Joke. He spends the whole book claiming that society made him what he is by pushing him to have "one bad day" which drove him over the edge and forced him to become the insane Clown Prince of Crime. To prove his twisted theory, he shoots Barbara Gordon (permanently paralyzing her), kidnaps her father, then subjects him to a nightmarish carnival ride in which Gordon is forced to view images of his naked, crippled, bleeding daughter. The Joker then brags that Gordon has been driven mad just as he was, insisting that humanity overall is to blame for making him crazy... trouble is, Gordon is fine, though understandably shaken up. Batman then points out that society had nothing to do with Joker's going nuts, instead claiming that it was his own fault for making terrible choices (like agreeing to commit a robbery, then bowing to the criminal gang's intimidation after he tried to back out when his wife and unborn child died in a freak accident) rather than anyone else's: "Maybe it was you all along." The Joker refuses to accept this.
  • Two Face also tends to use his coin and the random chance it represents to justify his own evil actions and fall into disgrace.
  • Robin (1993): Dodge decides to go from wannabe hero to a Robin targeting villain after he wakes up in the hospital because the prototype he stole malfunctioned and fused to him. In his mind it's Robin's fault he got hurt, even though Robin saved his life and those of the hostages Dodge had endangered in his self-centered arrogance and the injuries came from something Dodge stole before Robin had even heard of him.
  • Nightwing became guilty of this after Justice League: Rise of Arsenal, when his only effort to help Roy Harper after Roy lost an arm, his daughter Lian, and lapsed into his drug addiction and beat up some thugs was to knock Roy out and have him strapped to a bed in a center for villains with substance abuse problems to sweat his addiction out. This turned out to be the worst possible move Dick could make, as he was not only completely oblivious to the hallucinations haunting Roy since the beginning of the arc and didn't think to question how someone could fight like that while on heroin, but he left Roy alone to be tortured by more ghastly hallucinations and left all of Roy's weapons at the center with no thought to what might happen if Roy escaped. In the follow up story by Eric Wallace in Titans, upon being told Roy's with Deathstroke's fake Titans, Dick claims he did everything he could to help Roy not give in to the darkness brought by Lian's death without a shred of irony. The rest of the series while Dick does try to convince Roy he can be a hero again, he never acknowledges the role his neglect played or apologizes for abandoning Roy when Roy needed him.
  • Several moments in All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder have Batman repeatedly blame Dick Grayson for coming into his life and becoming his sidekick, completely ignoring the fact that he's the one who abducted the boy against his will in the first place.
• The Books of Magic: Cyril Ransome never takes any responsibility for his actions and always blames his well-deserved misfortunes on his stepbrother Timothy Hunter.
• Pre-Flashpoint, Deathstroke's motivation for hating the Teen Titans and trying to kill them was that he blamed them for the loss of his family. In reality, Deathstroke himself was the one who drove them away with his life as an amoral mercenary. Averted in one storyline when he eventually realized he was a terrible father. He enacted a scheme to endear his remaining two children to the Teen Titans so they could have the family he couldn't give them. Brought up in Infinite Crisis. Batman asks Deathstroke why he's abandoned his moral code, and Nightwing says it's because his children left him. Deathstroke rages that that was because of him, and it had always been because of him. He's promptly knocked out, and told to own up to his own mistakes.
• The Flash: One of Eobard Thawne's defining traits is blaming his own failures on Barry Allen no matter how much Insane Troll Logic he needs to do it. A more objective look would show that most of his misfortunes are the result of Thawne's propensity for murder, immorality, and his large entitlement complex, but he's still dedicated his entire life to getting revenge on Barry for "ruining [his] future".
• Green Lantern:
  • In Green Lantern: Rebirth, Sinestro blames Hal for ousting him from Korugar, which Hal did because Sinestro conquered and ruled the planet with an iron fist.
  • The Guardians of the Universe became the Guardians in the first place to become a species-wide atoners in reaction to Krona, but they became this over Geoff Johns' run on the series until it came to a head in Rise of the Third Army, wherein they decide that the problems of the universe are caused by emotion itself, and thus Emotion Suppression and removal of The Evils of Free Will will remove the problems. This is in the face of the fact that the problems of the previous two armies were their own fault. The Manhunters were created by them (and replaced by the extremely similar and also eventually evil Alpha Lantern Corps), and the Green Lantern Corps were led by misinformation and factors completely beyond their control, with their last "problem" being that one of them managed to kill a rogue Guardian. To lay into this contrast, when a group of Oans who have not been in contact with the majority of the Guardians see them after millennia, they react in horror to what has become of them.
• In Infinite Crisis, The Spectre, free from any human host, is fooled by Eclipso into believing that Magic Is Evil, and as such brutally kills the Lords of Chaos and Order. Unfortunately, that proved way beyond what God could stomach, and immediately corralled the Spectre and shoved him back into a new host to remind him again of why he needs human perspective. Even as he is being dragged into his new home, the Spectre screams it's all Eclipso's fault and that he should not be punished.
• In Legends, the Star City police officer who shot another police officer trying to stop him from firing at Black Canary decides to blame her for the death instead of taking responsibility himself, most likely since he was under the mental influence of G. Gordon Godfrey.
• Legion of Super-Heroes:
  • One day as Dirk Morgna and another worker delivered supplies to Regulus Regulus looked away from an unauthorized experiment to snap at them, whereupon it exploded, injuring Dirk and killing the worker. Upon being fired, Regulus blamed Dirk and used robots to attack him, shoving Dirk's unconscious body into a reactor, which is how Sun Boy gained his powers.
  • The Earthwar Saga: When one team of Legionnaires take off for the Weber's World, Wildfire gets in the path of a Science Police aircar, almost causing it to crash into the ground. When Mon-El calls him out on it, Wildfire replies it was their fault for failing to keep their aircrafts in top condition.
  • Legion of Super-Heroes/Bugs Bunny Special: Played with. Computo 2's first reaction when he is rightfully blamed for sabotaging the plan to save Supergirl's life is to blame Brainiac 5, since he became jealous of Supergirl because he fell in love with Brainiac because Brainiac programmed him to love. However, Computo feels guilty anyway for hurting Brainiac, so he self-terminates.
• Superman:
  • This is a major part of Lex Luthor's character. Whenever he does something horribly immoral, he always finds a way to blame Superman or anyone else around him, refusing to believe he could ever make a mistake. He is unshakably convinced that he is always in the right.
    • In Superman: Up, Up and Away!, Clark calls Luthor out during their battle; after all his talk about how he could save the world if Superman wasn't around, he did nothing whatsoever in the whole year Superman was out of the action. Luthor, naturally, insists this is STILL all Superman's fault.
    • In The Black Ring, Death asks Luthor if he would like to ask God's forgiveness, if that were an option. Luthor visibly squirms at the very idea that he has done something he should ask forgiveness for, and somewhat feebly offers that he might like a chance to explain his motivations.
    • In How Luthor Met Superboy, a teenager Lex Luthor accidentally burns down his lab and convinces himself that Superboy started the fire out of jealousy. Later, he talks the Mayor into funding the building of innovative public works to improve Smallville -and fuel his ego-, but when his inventions malfunction, prompting Superboy to shut them down, Lex convinces himself that Superboy ruined them with the purpose of humiliating him, which begins Luthor's lifelong hatred of the boy who would eventually become Superman.
    • The Super-Revenge of Lex Luthor: When Ardora discovers her husband Lex Luthor is a criminal, Luthor blames Superman for accidentally revealing it instead of himself for committing crimes or lying to his then-fiancée about his past life.
  • Worldkiller-1 (essentially an alien, body-surfing abomination) who Supergirl fought with during the storyline Red Daughter of Krypton blames Supergirl for everything he does. He flies in a city, destroys buildings and kills innocent people? It's all Supergirl's fault because she doesn't let him take over her body and erase her mind.
  • In The Supergirl from Krypton (2004), Darkseid appears to disintegrate Supergirl, and blames Superman for it. What did Superman do? Having the gall to rescue his cousin when Darkseid kidnapped her and brainwashed her.
  • In Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade, Belinda Zee steals Supergirl's quasi-space communicator—right after hearing she should never get her hands on it—activates it, overloads it by throwing a tantrum, and gets turned into a sentient crystal statue. All of it was her doing. And she blames Supergirl.
  • In Who is Superwoman?, Lucy Lane donned an experimental suit, took up the Superwoman identity and engaged Supergirl in combat per her father's orders and wishes. Yet still, when Lucy apparently dies because of her malfunctioning suit, which gets torn apart in a battle caused by Lucy herself, Sam Lane blames Supergirl.
  • In Infinite Crisis, Superboy-Prime kills a multitude of people, but refuses to take responsibility. Coming from a world where he was the only superhero, and being parented by a Golden Age Superman, he thinks the DC universe is full of degenerates. In his mind, it's their fault that he's driven to kill. No one agrees with him.
  • In A Mind-Switch in Time, one Corrupt Corporate Executive blames Superman for going bankrupt. How did he go bankrupt? His garment business was failing so he tried to burn his own company's headquarters down to commit insurance fraud, but Superman came along and extinguished the fire.
  • The Killers of Krypton: Harry Hookum orders his head scientist to clone Supergirl and speeding her clones' growing up, ignoring his warnings that the clones would be unstable. When the clones inevitably fall apart, Hokum blames his underling for doing exactly as he was said.
    Harry Hokum: Those clones were supposed to kill her and those damned rebels! What happened to them?!
    Scientist: Most revered one, we told you accelerating the incubation of the clones was a risk. Their cellular matrices were unstable, and like an empty shell—
    Harry Hokum: You don't get to tell me anything! You do what I command! And you failed me!
  • Escape from the Phantom Zone: When Supergirl tries to calm Psi down, the enraged young psychic remarks that Supergirl helped get to the Phantom Zone, where she was captured by Xa-Du, and accuses her from being working for the latter... clearly forgetting that she was the one who tricked Kara into helping her find the Zone, and Kara warned her against going to the Zone repeatedly.
  • Death & the Family: When he ascertains that his daughter Lucy has gained alien powers, Sam Lane complains that "the Kryptonians weren't satisfied with killing [his] daughter", so "[they] had to go and make her one of them." It never crosses Sam's mind that Lucy got killed because the Magitek suit which he talked her into wearing malfunctioned, and her cells' genetic makeup was altered by said suit malfunction.
  • The Leper from Krypton: The inmates of Metropolis Prison hate Superman and bristle at him being called a hero, since he had the gall of arresting them when they committed crimes. It does not occur to them that Superman would have left them alone if they had not murdered anybody.
    Inmate 1: "Superman...a hero? He's the rat who put me in here!"
    Inmate 2: ''"That jerk in the long johns got me a life rap for murder!"
  • The K-Metal from Krypton: When Gizzard and Buzzard tinker with their deceased business partner's Craig Matthews' will to bilk his nephew John Manners out of his inheritance, they decide to let him keep a worthless painting, figuring out that they can mock him for owning useless garbage. Later, John discovers evidence proving that Gizzard and Buzzard robbed him, but he cannot afford to sue...until Clark and Lois reveal that his uncle hid a map to a gold mine behind his "worthless" painting. When John swears to sue every single cent out of his uncle's ex-partners, Gizzard and Buzzard are quick to blame each other for letting him inherit the painting.
  • "Luthor Unleashed": Lex Luthor moves to planet Lexor, where is hailed as a science hero, and starts living a peaceful life with his wife and son. However, he cannot let his hatred and evil nature go, so he builds a warsuit and starts moonlighting as a super-villain. At the same time, Lex builds a giant tower called the Neutrarod to keep Lexor's unstable core stabilized. Finally, Lex villainous antics draw Superman's attention, who travels to Lexor and engages Lex. During the battle, Lex fires an energy lance at Superman, but the blast gets bounced off Clark and hits the Neutrarod, setting a chain reaction off which blows Lexor up. In the aftermath, Lex blames Superman for taking his family and his world away from him rather blame himself for committing senseless crimes which were showy enough to reveal his location to Superman, engaging the Kryptonian in a place which he knew to be unsafe or shooting the blast which obliterated his planet.
  • Steelworks: A flashback to John Henry Irons quitting Amertek reveals that Charles Walker III, the Big Bad of the series, was his boss, and was so desperate to hire him that he agreed to a contract where John could leave if he ever had a moral objection to what Amertek was doing, and all his designs were owned by himeslf, not the company. It then cuts to Walker in court, demanding to know what he pays his lawyers for if they can't break this contract, and them pointing out that they said the contract was a bad idea at the time, and he ignored them. He ignores this as well. The court case cost a lot of money and meant everyone learned what John Henry's problems with Amertek were, so Walker now blames him for the entire collapse of the company.
• The Sandman (1989): Lucifer grumbles to the title character that humanity has been using him as a scapegoat throughout history.
  Lucifer: "The devil made me do it." I have never forced one of them to do anything... They own themselves; they just hate to admit to it.
• Throne of Atlantis: Despite orchestrating the attack, Vulko holds Dr. Shin ultimately responsible for the invasion. He feels that his actions would not be necessary if not for Shin outing Arthur to the world and setting the events in motion that have brought them to this point.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Sensation Comics: Mona Menise cracked up her car while speeding and says it's the policeman's fault for trying to make her stop.
  • Wonder Woman Vol 1. Cheetah blames Wondy for her misfortunes, because Diana survived her first two attempts to murder her the first of which was done when Di was being friendly to her.
  • Wonder Woman Vol 2. Hera refuses to take the blame for any of the things she does that upset her fellow goddesses. For instance she doesn't see how the Amazons' patrons could possibly think it's her fault she destroyed Themyscira; obviously the blame lies with Zeus for upsetting her.

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