Basic Trope: A reason in the childhood backstory of a villain (or otherwise unsympathetic character) that doesn't excuse their actions, but does explain why they act the way they do and gives them motivation for their actions.
- Straight:
- Alice, a Serial Killer, kills people because she was abused by her parents and bullied by classmates as a child.
- Alice is a Jerkass, because she lost her parents at age 10 and was bullied until she learned she would be left alone/respected by being a jerk, which has since then become her primary mode of interaction.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice, an Evil Overlord Straw Nihilist Omnicidal Maniac, destroys planets and enslaves galaxies because her father was a sadistic pedophile who tortured and Mind Raped (and raped) her repeatedly since birth.
- Alice, an Omnicidal Maniac, wipes out galaxies because she lost her mother immediately after she was born, had suffered from an abusive father who abandoned her on the streets when she was only five, became homeless for her entire childhood, got sent to prison for a crime she didn’t commit or even witness as a teenager, was raped repeatedly during her time in prison, and had her entire home planet destroyed with her as the only survivor.
- Alice turns into a villain hell-bent into annihilating mankind because her goldfish died when Alice was 2.
- Kids who cry instantly become sociopaths.
- Alice has a specific backstory related to every evil act she does. she punts puppies because she nearly got mauled to death by some years ago. She's robbing the restaurant because one of the waiters bullied her in high school. She's destroying the universe because she got raped by God.
- Downplayed:
- While nothing downright traumatizing ever happened to Alice, she grew up in an environment that didn't encourage positive growth. This indirectly affected her attitude growing up.
- Alice is a Jerkass, because her parents were as well.
- Cynicism Catalyst.
- Justified:
- Revenge that went She Who Fights Monsters. During her childhood, Alice saw that Adults Are Useless and the law is too incompetent, giving her a desire to finally take justice into her own hands.
- After all, experiences, especially past traumas, can be groundwork on how we develop our ideas and philosophy in life.
- Alice lived in a Crapsack World, Wretched Hive, or other such hellish Might Makes Right environment where No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, and came to a reasonable and logical conclusion that ruthlessness, vengeance and Social Darwinism are necessary for survival and self-improvement.
- Alice used to be punished for good behaviour, conditioning her that good behaviour is bad.
- In social learning, children learn by imitation and they have the neurons
to do so. Therefore, exposure to an abusive/violent caretaker will make them more likely to imitate abusive/violent behavior. - Suprisingly enough, traumatic experiences can have a large impact on people's lives.
- Inverted:
- Alice has no excuse; she kills people simply For the Evulz.
- Alice has a tragic past, but used it as a motivation to help others as opposed to harming them.
- Alice's life has been easy and she knows nothing of suffering. In an effort to understand it, she inflicts it on others.
- Alice learnt to love bullying others, so as an adult she's a really unpleasant individual.
- Alice spends her life helping elderly people, because an old guy saved her from drowning when Alice was a child.
- Alice has a tragic past, but instead of making her seem more sympathetic, it makes her current actions seem worse.
- Alice would have grown up to be a horrible, loathsome person, except she suffered a loss, humiliation or something else that got her to change direction onto a virtuous path.
- Upbringing Makes the Hero.
- Privilege Makes You Evil
- Subverted:
- Despite having a past that would qualify as a Freudian Excuse, Alice turned out to be a well-adjusted and functioning human being.
- Alice's story about her Freudian Excuse regularly changes, because she's the goddamn Joker.
- Alice laughs at the idea that she kills people because of her parents or that people should feel sorry for her because of it.
- Alice's reaction to the past event is (sometimes hugely) Disproportionate Retribution, indicating that she was never all that right in the head.
- Faye reveals that, in all possible timelines she can see, Alice would've grown up a villain, Freudian Excuse or not.
- Doubly Subverted:
- Despite appearing well adjusted, her excuse eventually leads her to commit murder.
- She's a Villain with Good Publicity.
- One of her many excuses is revealed to be the truth.
- Alice's laughter is unconvincing, and she doth protest too much on the subject; even if she chooses not to acknowledge it, she still has issues with her past that inform her actions.
- Except later revelations make it not-so-disproportionate after all.
- The writers still try to play up the past event for sympathy.
- Parodied:
- Alice routinely engages in mass murder and world conquest as an adult, because the expensive bike she got for her sixth birthday was blue and not red as she wanted (or some other similarly trivial, pathetic, and laughable excuse).
- Alice has to constantly shoo away fanboys and fangirls trying to comfort her and help her come to terms with a Dark and Troubled Past she never said she had in the first place.
- Alice has an absurdly long list of past traumas, to the point that even her arch-enemy admits that she does have some valid reasons for her villainy.
- Zig Zagged: Alice likes to give numerous excuses for her actions, obscuring which one is the true one. Does she just do it For the Evulz? Or is one of them true? Or none of them?
- Averted:
- Alice reveals nothing about her past to us; we know nothing one way or the other.
- Alice's past was basically normal, and she does what she does either to further her agenda or just because she's a sadistic bastard.
- Alice simply is oblivious or used to her own Jerkass-behavior.
- Alice's Dark and Troubled Past explains her motivations and methods, perhaps even how her personality and style of relating to others developed and solidified, but everyone (including Alice herself) agrees that it does not excuse her villainy.
- Alice does have a Dark and Troubled Past but it has nothing to do with her becoming evil.
- Generic Doomsday Villain
- Enforced:
- "We can't have our bad lady be evil just for the hell of it. Something must have happened to her to make her this way."
- "We are bored with a Flat, Designated Villain who do terrible things for no reason, let's add some depth!"
- Lampshaded:"There must be something really terrible in her past to make her capable of this..."
- Invoked: "I want to tell you in detail why I'm doing this to you... I want to make you understand..."
- Exploited:
- Alice uses her excuse to make heroes let their guards down.
- A hero mocks Alice about her excuse, causing the latter to make a mistake in anger.
- Alice brings up her excuse to gain sympathy and a claim to moral high ground in order to get heroes off her back.
- Alice brings up an event from her past to shame someone present, who was involved with that same event.
- Alice makes up a fake Freudian Excuse on the spot in a last-ditch effort to get the heroes to let her go. Some of them believe it, but Charlie isn't fooled.
- Defied:
- "I cannot be reduced to a simple, trite motivation."
- "No, Alice. Your excuse is merely a convenient way of fleeing responsibility."
- "Yeah, shit got done to my life. I guess that don't mean I should do shit to your guys' lives."
- Discussed:
- "These guys always have some excuse..."
- "Heyyyy, don't blame me! I'm only a serial killer because... I dunno, my Mommy didn't buy me candy at the checkout line once? I dunno. Whatevs."
- Conversed:
- "Do these writers think that having an awful childhood automatically makes you criminal or something?"
- "So Bob molests children because he himself was molested as a child? Are the writers under the impression that sexual deviance is sexually transmitted?"
- Deconstructed:
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse
- People with traumatizing childhoods are subjected to euthanasia on the presumption that the trauma will lead them to becoming villains.
- The other characters not only reject Alice's Freudian Excuse, but use it against her out of spite. This response causes her to keep her feelings to herself, causing her mental health to diminish over time.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice decides to look-up for psychological help to get through her flaws, and eventually learn how to move on.
- In real life, modern theories like operant conditioning and social learning can still explain the effectiveness of a "Freudian" Excuse, while it is shown that neglect does cause lasting brain damage. Who knows, from Alice's perspective she is simply doing her vile actions out of a perceived necessity that was conditioned via receiving punishment/violence for her altruistic behaviour, and is actually good in the inside.
- The leader of the euthanasia project turns out to be doing this because they suffered a tragic past at the hands of another villain with a tragic past.
- Alice was almost subjected to the euthanasia as a child and it ends up worsening her trauma.
- Alice only confides in the people she trusts, not (only) to gain an advantage but out of a sincere need for emotional catharsis.
- Implied:
- Rousseau Was Right, but Alice is definitely a villain.
- Alice is a villain with a traumatic past, but it's unknown if the latter caused the former.
- Some of Alice's comments imply she may have had a tragic past that drove her to villainy.
- Played For Laughs:
- Alice brings up her sad past in the most melodramatic way possible. Charles remarks: So that's why you're so emo!
- Charles gives Alice a very long "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how much he hates her because she killed many people. Then Alice just says "I had a bad childhood" and Charles replies "Oh sorry, I didn't know that. You're just misunderstood, then".
- Alice's backstory is so cartoonishly warped and over the top that it comes off as Mommie Dearest meets Tom and Jerry. No one - not the audience, the other characters or even Alice herself takes it seriously, and it's never mentioned again.
- Played For Drama: Alice is pushed to the edge by PTSD. She has trouble believing she could get any better and thinks she and nothing else has no hope. She's considering taking an entire universe with her as she self-terminates and our hero needs to convince her, by any means necessary, that it doesn't have to be.
- Plotted A Good Waste: The author takes this to emphasize that a Freudian Excuse is an excuse and an excuse only; they may inform Alice's actions in the present, but they in no way justify them. This is done to try to avert a Draco in Leather Pants scenario (regardless of whether it works, and it usually doesn't).
Back to Freudian Excuse.
