Psychopathic Manchildren in comic books.
- Sergeant Crumb, the largest man to serve in the British armed forces, in Adventures in the Rifle Brigade. Possessing strength that is rather unnatural even for a man his size (at one point he punched a man's head clean off his shoulders), and constantly sporting a mindless, toothy smile, he seems incapable of actual speech and only ever says "Ey-oop!" The conclusion reached by his superiors in his official dossier (which mentions several events where he's implied to have killed dozens of people) is: "Mummy, I'm frightened."
- Similarly, Corporal Geezer only says "Yer aht of ordah!" and is one of the most prolific murderers in British history, being tried for over 413 murders before evidence was waived when he was assigned to the Rifle Brigade, which desperately needed a maniac like him to tie it together.
- In Aquaman (1986), Orm uses his newfound powers to bully and torment Arthur and others, and has a bevy of childish insults on hand to reinforce the fact that he hasn't really grown up.
- Gloo from Astro City is a Clone Degeneration Blob Monster. Its preferred method of combat is to subject its targets to distorted and deranged pranks and jokes, such as jamming two dozen people into a small car (like a Clown Car) or spraying acidic "seltzer" at victims.
- The G-Men in The Boys were all taken in as children by the rich Professor Godolkin, who gave them everything they ever wanted at the cost of serving as Sex Slaves for him, turning them into hedonistic deviants willing to do anything to protect their way of life. Godolkin himself acts like a petulant child when Vought refuses to bring back any more of his dead "children" or allow him to kidnap new ones.Dime-Bag: He started the first team when they were nine or ten. We were six. Sometimes I think I'll be six for the rest of my life.
- The Female of the Species is a heroic example (sort of). She's a Cute and Psycho teenager who's shown to have a Sweet Tooth while being extremely prone to Lost Food Grievances, and Hates Being Touched to the point that her own teammates (except Frenchie) have to keep her at arm's length to avoid getting maimed.
- The DCU:
- Superman:
- Superboy-Prime: An alternate Clark Kent/Kal-El from a world where he was the only superhuman, which was destroyed. After helping to save the universe he spent years in a pocket dimension, (and didn't age or mature past his early teens), which drives him Axe-Crazy. A dose of The Punishment from the Guardians of Oa gave him the power to traverse dimensions at will and destroy whole planets. To make things worse, he has the power level of the Silver Age Superman (only with a seriously warped morality), almost none of his weaknesses (only red solar energy will keep him in check), and a suit that ensures he is constantly charged with yellow sun energy. Heck, much of his behavior during Infinite Crisis includes throwing a tantrum over the heroes rightly seeing him as a villain and violently attacking Kon-El just because he sees anyone other than himself going by the codename Superboy as a serious affront.
- Supergirl adversary/ally Bizarrogirl has the intellect and personality of a scared, angry little girl and the full power of a Kryptonian.
- The '90s version of the Toyman certainly counts."You're a bad mommy, I'm glad I killed your son!"
- It's a bit of a stretch, but technically you can call most of Batman's Rogues Gallery this. Two-Face, the Riddler, Calendar Man, the Scarecrow (kinda), Firefly, Maxie Zeus... seeing as how psychology-driven Batman is, it makes sense that all of his villains would be so simply motivated. Most of them are just trying to prove something to Bats, making them the "Childish Motivations" breed.
- The Joker is arguably one of the more fitting examples in the Batman Rogues Gallery. For example, Batman: The Black Mirror contains a scene where Batman (Dick Grayson) is telling the Joker to stay away from the Gordons after he apparently hurt Gordon's wife (it was actually his son Gordon Jr. who did the deed). The Joker denies that he did anything to "the old bitch", and tells Dick that he misses the old Batman, and that he "doesn't want to go to bed yet" and "wants to play".
- The original Blockbuster, a man who gained massively enhanced musculature after drinking a Super Serum but suffered a mental regression, reducing him to Dumb Muscle. Fortunately, Blockbuster's strong loyalty to Bruce Wayne for treating him kindly allows Bruce to talk him down before he can cause too much trouble.
- Humpty Dumpty, a minor villain, is something of a subversion. He's enormously obese and strong, and clearly insane — but not in a way that makes him want to harm anyone. He was born Humphrey Dumpler and has suffered from abnormally bad luck since childhood, and has gradually become obsessed with finding out why he's jinxed by disassembling and reassembling whatever he can find in the name of "fixing" it ("All the king's horses and all the king's men / Couldn't put Humpty together again"). Since Humpty doesn't have any of the skills necessary to do this correctly, he ends up causing destruction and a few deaths instead. However, he doesn't do this maliciously: he sincerely can't tell that what he's doing is wrong and helps Batgirl when she apprehends him by putting her dislocated arms back into her sockets, proving that he's not evil in any way. Humpty's not in Arkham because he's a mass-murdering psychopath, he's in Arkham because he's actually crazy, and his doctors even view him as a model patient.
- The Mad Hatter is probably the straightest example in all of comic books. His delusional obsession with a children's book and his kidnapping and murder tendencies come to mind.
- The Goddamn Batman could easily count as one, between his sadism and his petulance when people aren't impressed by his toys.
- Validus, from the Legion of Super-Heroes. A mindless powerhouse, easily controlled by his teammates in the Fatal Five. In the original continuity, he turned to actually be the child of Legion founders Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad (time travel was involved).
- The Flash villain (and later member of the Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains and Terrible Trio Injustice League) Big Sir is extremely large and powerful, but mentally deficient and easily exploited. He was eventually killed by a bio-engineered bomb designed to look like a small child while he was trying to hug it.
- Larfleeze from Green Lantern has been living alone in a cave for billions of years with everything he's ever wanted being brought to him by his mindless constructs. This has given him the temperament of a spoiled 3-year-old. And, as seen in his Christmas Special, he believes in Santa Claus.
- The Question villain Baby Gun. He looked like a giant toddler and used an air gun at close range to kill people.Baby Gun: Got'nee cake? Got'nee candy? Got'nee ice cream? Ahm'na kill yew!
- The Sandman (1989):
- Funland is a Serial Killer who preys on children at an amusement park, wears Mickey Mouse ears and a Big Bad Wolf T-Shirt, and likes "playing" with other kids. When Dream causes him to fall into a magical slumber, he kindly lets him go having a dream that all the (dead) children come back and forgive him, and don't laugh at "the funny big giant," and they all play together forever and ever.
"Not 'fun', Funland."- Dr. Destiny's mind has been reduced to a childlike state by being deprived of his dreams for decades. This makes him even more dangerous, as he wanders into a diner full of perfectly ordinary people, and spends twenty-four hours slowly torturing them to death, just because he can.
- Swamp Thing has the napalm specialist Paulie Skinner, one of the D.D.I. goons who shot the Swamp Thing with a bioelectrical pattern-jamming device and then napalmed his body in an attempt to permanently kill the group's longtime enemy. The middle-aged Skinner is shown still living with his mom in a boyishly decorated bedroom, with his mom tucking him into bed and bringing him hot cocoa. His happy dream in that scene shows him as a 2-year-old (with his balding, mustached, wrinkled head on the dream's toddler body) contentedly waving a rattle on his mother's lap — though the dream suddenly turns into a nightmare of his mother smothering him as the Swamp Thing, newly returned from space and seeking vengeance for being separated for months from his home and wife, suffocates Skinner under a massive pile of peach blossoms.
- Superman:
- Bobby in the opening "Euthanized" story of Hack/Slash. A lot of people think Vlad is a rare good example because he talks funny, but he's much more clever than he likes people to think.
- The title character from Johnny the Homicidal Maniac (pictured in the trope's main page) fits the trope perfectly, mostly due to unfathomable mental instability.
- And coming to Squee for a band-aide after cutting his hand on a "Skettie-Os" can probably clinches it.
- Marvel Universe:
- Deadpool treats murder and destruction like a fun game.
- Loki, in nearly all of his incarnations, is an ages-old Physical God with incredible intellect, cunning, magical might... and the emotional maturity of a spoiled toddler. His entire motivation for everything he has ever done can be summed up as "Waah, waah, Daddy likes my big brother Thor more than me!" and lashing out in response. In a conversation between his child incarnation and a copy of his former self, the child Loki actually comes across as the wiser and more mature of the two. Teen Loki also has a bit more maturity due to his guilt over replacing child Loki. It's sort of inevitable that a self-proclaimed God of Mischief isn't a paragon of maturity.
- The Ultimate version of Reed Richards becomes this after his turn to villainy. Beneath his talk of creating a perfect world, his goal is basically to get the respect and adoration that his father never gave him.
- Spider-Man: The Thousand, formerly a brutal bully of Peter Parker's from high school named Carl King. For all his power, King is nothing more than a Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up, utterly fixated on Peter and insanely jealous of his fame and glory as Spider-Man. During their fight, he rants about how he believes he should have become Spider-Man and how he deserves Peter's "perfect life." Spidey even lampshades it, comparing him to "a 2-year-old who's just finished potty training" after listening to his monologue and remarking that Carl hasn't changed at all from the pathetic bully he was when they were kids.
- Alfie O'Meagan from Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja is stuck at a mental age of ten. He's also a powerful Reality Warper who casually neutralized the world's nuclear arsenal and thinks nothing of turning into Godzilla or Galactus when he rampages against the armies sent to stop him.
- God is portrayed this way in Preacher. Having been completely alone for an eternity before creating the universe, He has an overwhelming desire for love and veneration, and doesn't care if humanity doesn't like the way He made the world.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): Dr. Eggman, though that's par for the course for any incarnation of him. For all his smarts and viciousness, he's also a childish, immature brat in a grown man's body, throwing temper tantrums when he loses or things don't go his way. Best shown in issue 177, where he attacks New Mobotropolis with everything he has, screaming and ranting over the Freedom Fighters taking away his victory and demanding they fight him. Sonic even mocks him over his "little tantrum." That's not even getting into the fact that he's well aware of how much most of his subordinates hate him, and openly admits he views their attempts at betraying and overthrowing him as a game.
- Billy Kincaid of Spawn. While the comic version is more Freddy Krueger-ish, the version portrayed in the HBO animated series definitely had the mind of a child. A child that liked to kill things. Mainly real children. With a pedophilia subtext.
- The Ten-Seconders: Damage is a super-strong super-durable rampaging beast, but he's actually very childlike. When he confronts The Scientist, he simply slaps Damage, puts him into time-out, then has him march into the sea on a fool's errand.
- Dirty Ron from the Warren Ellis series Two-Step. Just a simple, giant lad that likes to shag stuff — till it goes boom. He prefers cars to people, but when he wears his VR rig, everything looks like a purdy, purdy minicooper to him.
