Why Did You Make Me Hit You?

"Sorry, baby! Why you make me do that?" —description of the "Double Slap" weapon from Disgaea 2 Cursed Memories

Some people just don't play fair.

Picture the scene: A mother is arguing with her teenage daughter. The cause might be trivial; maybe the kid was late coming home, or she wants to go to university in a different state when her mother would rather she stays close by. Usually, the mother wins these arguments, if only by virtue of You Are Grounded. But her daughter's not backing down this time, and she's refusing to be sent to her room. She may actually have the upper hand, and is making a reasonable, intelligent argument, justifying her actions and likely managing to get the audience on her side. The argument escalates until the mother realizes that she can't win this one, or the daughter makes a comment that hits a little too close to home.

SLAP!

Quick as a flash, the mother's hand slams across her daughter's cheek. There's a pause while the girl registers that she's been hurt.

And that's when mother plays her trump card. Before her daughter can get over the shock, before she can get angry and start fighting back... her mother bursts into tears. Normally, the person who now sports a bright red hand print across her face will begin apologizing profusely or start crying as well, usually hugging the one that just hit her. Somehow, the victim is now convinced that she was to blame... and the slapper "wins" the argument by default.

The victim of Why Did You Make Me Hit You? can be anyone, but the two most common characters who are subject to being the victim are close relative or friend, usually a child or surrogate child, or a romantic partner/spouse. Thanks to the Double Standard, if a man should employ this trope, it's a given that not only is domestic violence on the horizon, it's mixed in with Manipulative Bastard traits too. For example, the violent husband who knows how to play on his wife's soft-heartedness. These characters are almost invariably written as pure evil. In the case of a woman slapping her boyfriend, the chances are that the trope will be recognized as an emotionally manipulative ploy, but it's much less likely to be a sign of a Domestic Abuse plot; if it's a daughter or friend being slapped, the attacker will probably get away with it, they will reconcile and everything will have been forgotten two scenes later; however, as the signs and symptoms of emotional abuse are becoming more publicized (and stories of emotionally abusive women are featured more often in Real Life news stories) this portrayal is beginning to change.

Occasionally this is a one-off event that isn't indicative of an abusive relationship, just an argument gone bad, or just Played for Laughs, especially if the person hit isn't very hurt or recovers immediately. The character who does the hitting won't have done it before, and probably won't do it again. In the case of children, particularly if the child has worried the parents, it will be seen as a natural reaction toward the scare, a result of combined worry, anger, and relief.

It's also pretty much a given in any show between the Stalker with a Crush or Yandere and the object of their very twisted "affection".

Compare Sorry I Fell on Your Fist (from the victim's side) or Armor-Piercing Slap (for cases when the hitter usually does NOT burst into tears) and Get a Hold of Yourself, Man! (in which the hitter really did have no choice but to hit the hitee, due to the latter being a hysterical mess).

Examples of Why Did You Make Me Hit You? include:

General

• It's incredibly common for villains, at varying levels of desperation and hostage-have, to try and invoke this trope when they're threatening to do something really nasty. It usually doesn't work except with the Draco in Leather Pants crowd, but they're trying and that's what counts.

Anime and Manga

• This is often how Domestic Abuser Ryoki acts in regards to his slave girlfriend Hatsumi in Hot Gimmick.
• Zero no Tsukaima: In regards to Louise's and Saito's relationship Louise tends to do this to Saito a lot.
• Peach Girl: Sae tries to make people think that Momo is doing this to her and succeeds for a while, when it's really the other way around.
• Black Cat: Creed, Train's Stalker with a Crush, smashes Train into a wall and tells him the following:

"This is all your fault, Train! It's your fault for making me mad! Time and time again, I come to get your cooperation so it wouldn't come to this. But despite that... all those attempts were futile. All of them!"

• In Elfen Lied Mayu's stepfather sexually abuses her whenever Mayu's mother is not home. When Mayu tries to tell her mother what's been happening to her, she immediately gets a slap across the face. Her mother yells at her "It's you who isn't wanted! As long as you're here that person...", which implies that her mother hit Mayu because she is jealous of her, and that she is trying to convince Mayu that she is the one who is in the wrong.
• Fruits Basket has a particularly vicious example in the form of Akito, who attacks Hatori with what looks like a vase, blinding him in one eye, and immediately starts asking the maimed doctor "Hatori, what's wrong?" before accusing Kana, Hatori's innocent would-be fiancee, of being responsible for Hatori's pain. Kana ends up agreeing, and the whole situation goes downhill from there. This is only the most dramatic example — there are other instances where various Zodiac members are hurt by Akito and reprimanded for "forcing" it to happen. She has an excuse for her behavior, but it's pretty vile all the same.
• In The End of Evangelion the violence between Shinji and Asuka reaches a crescendo as Shinji eventually strangles her. This happens shortly after Asuka kicks him, gives him a nasty "The Reason You Suck" Speech which includes her rejecting him after he confesses his feelings to her, and shoves him to the ground causing a pot of painfully hot coffee to spill on him.
  • Which, in turn, came after he masturbated over her comatose body. Who's more at fault is very debated...
• Outlaw Star: Harry hits Melfina quite a few times, angry at her for refusing to leave with him when he "came all this way just to pick you up."

Harry: "I didn't mean to do that, Melfina! I'm sorry, I promise I'm not going to hurt you!" *backhands her to the floor about a few minutes later*

• In Paprika, the titular character's Stalker with a Crush slaps her across the face when she says something that offends him.

Osanai: "Didn't I tell you, not to say anything that would make me get rough with you?"

• Peacemaker Kurogane: In episode 19, Susumu wraps his hands around Tetsunosuke's throat and makes an attempt to strangle him while saying, "Did you come to piss me off again? Do you think I like being pissed off? I wouldn't be feeling this way if you weren't here!" All this coupled with the fact that Tetsunosuke is crying and staring at him sadly, makes for a very Foe Yay/ Ho Yay-tastic scene between the two.
• In Ranma ½ , during the first Ryoga Hibiki story, Ranma has to save Akane from running blindly into danger, as Ryoga blithely hurls razor projectile bandannas at both girls indiscriminately (this is before Character Development turned him into the closest thing Ranma 1/2 has to a Dogged Nice Guy). This causes Akane to start arguing vehemently with Ranma over having to be saved, even as Ryoga continues to attack them both and Ranma is forced to keep protecting Akane even as she berates the Gender Bender. The whole thing culminates in her slapping Ranma across the face when Ranma gets particularly exasperated and snarks back at her (due to Akane trying to fight the pigtailed girl off in the middle of freefall), and storming off, forcing Ranma to try and apologize for what happened. And then Akane got her hair accidentally chopped off by Ryoga's razor bandanna.
• In Axis Powers Hetalia, Bulgaria uses this as his reason to beat up and bully North Italy despite being allies.

Bulgaria: I... I just got the sudden urge to hit him when I looked at his face.

• In the manga version of Fushigi Yuugi, Mrs. Yuuki reads Miaka's diary and therefore learns of her crush on Tamahome. Miaka feels hurt and upset that, aside from her mother reading her diary, she is being forbidden from even thinking about him when Mrs. Yuuki is dating someone after having a divorce two years ago... and SLAP!
• Psyren: Kyotada Inui reacts like this whenever he beats up his brother, Saburou.
• Hayate the Combat Butler played with this in the 'End of the World Arc'. Hayate wants Athena to join his family outside the RG and she can't bring herself to ask him to risk himself to allow her to, they fight (lethally), and then Hayate unknowingly triggers her Berserk Button of her not having parents, to which she then 'slaps' him by ordering him to leave (so she doesn't kill him?), before she's able to break down, he does so, thinking he's failed her. Afterward she breaks down crying for having to resort to ordering him away to protect him. He does try to return to apologise, but finds he's unable to.
• In Bitter Virgin when Hinako is discovered to have miscarriage, her mother demands to know the name of the man she has been sleeping with. Hinako immediately replies it is her stepfather (as he has been repeatedly raping her), to which the mother slaps her across the face as she believes Hinako is lying to protect the real man. It isn't until Hinako is pregnant again and the doctor suggests from the bruises all over Hinako that she isn't a willing participant, does her mother believe her.
• Shaman King: Jeanne takes it Up to Eleven. If you don't accept her Last Second Chance, she WILL kill you, then weep Tender Tears for your sad fate.

Comic Books

• Some readers interpreted Iron Man's attitude towards the anti-registration side in Marvel Civil War as this. In this case, it's more "Why did you make me lock you in an extradimensional hell prison without trial?"
• Superboy-Prime uses this trope in Infinite Crisis in the most horrifying way imaginable.
• Given that Deadpool is a professional assassin who has killed hundreds, it's interesting that no one is really outraged up until #13 of his solo series where he beats his best friend unconscious and throws his hostage/mother figure Blind Al into a room full of sharp objects, asking her "Why did you have to make me do this? why?"
• Empowered does this while beating up a wannabe supervillain in a recent story. ("Please, oh, please stop hitting yourself!")
• Supergirl was given a beat down by her boyfriend Powerboy out of nowhere, who kept ordering her to calm down, and begging her to let him help her. It was clear that the bastard was nuts. Or was he?

Fan Fiction

• Combined with My God, What Have I Done? in the Hooker Verse, where Nella bursts into hysterical tears after hitting The Nostalgia Chick.
• Axis Powers Hetalia fanfic Mistakes portrays the relationship of Imperial Japan and Korea this way; Kiku beats Yong-Soo for misdemeanours such as speaking in Korean or questioning the Emperor, and then makes him thank him for the "lesson". Kiku genuinely believes this is the right thing to do, but of course that doesn't help.
• Cori Falls's fic "Blood on the Moon" has James in a grumpy mood and Jessie totally overreacting, at one point slapping him and telling him to go to hell, blaming him for her anger as she runs off to cry her eyes out. This alone is bad enough, but Jessie is the fic's narrator. This is her point of view, and we're supposed to sympathize with what basically amounts to domestic abuse.
  • This is the basic mindset of how Jessie, James, and Meowth treat Ash and his friends. Anytime the former group snaps and gives the latter a hell of a reason you suck speech or physical beatdown? Those damn twerps drove poor Team Rocket to anger and violence by standing up for themselves when Team Rocket tried to rob them!

Films — Live-Action

• The title character of Chopper yells "look what you made me do!" after beating his girlfriend.
• The Addams Family: Fester's "mother" slaps him and blames him for her own actions.
  • Actually, she blames the title characters: "See what they made me do? Hit my own son."
• Empire Records: After a fair amount of provocation from his foster son Lucas, Joe drags him into the office and beats him up, then brings him an icepack and says, "You know you deserved that, right?"
• The Night of the Hunter: "Oh, look, you made me lose my temper." Then again, by this point in the film, the audience already knows that Pearl did not deserve to be slapped, and that Harry is one of the most Ax Crazy psychopaths in anything ever.
• Caledon Hockley in Titanic does this on occasion to his fiance Rose throughout the movie as he becomes increasingly possessive over her and jealous of her relationship with Jack.
• House of Flying Daggers has a variant, this one from a jilted lover in a Love Triangle: "You made me kill you!"
• Nathan Wallace in Repo! The Genetic Opera does this to Shilo after she sings about how he can't control her — after he slaps her, she sits there stunned for a second, rubbing her face. Horrified, he says he's sorry and the camera blacks out.
• Women Talking Dirty almost plays this for laughs. In the heat of an argument a man slaps his girlfriend in the face and then says, "Oh, look what you made me do." She then slaps him in the face, repeats the same line, and storms off.
• Misery (see the entry in Literature).
• In A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, the husband/boyfriend of a client that Gigolo Joe has been sleeping with murders his lover when he finds out, and sets Joe up for the crime. His reasoning is that "she killed me first".
• In the film version of Dolores Claiborne (not sure about the novel by Stephen King), the protagonist's husband hits her across the kidneys with a piece of firewood, then says "Why did you make me do it?" It doesn't end well.

Literature

• Children's and teenage literature often see quite a bit of this trope.
  • Occurs in the first book in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events in which the Baudelaires are forced to cook dinner for their horrible guardian Count Olaf and his entire theater troupe. Once they finish, Count Olaf yells at them for forgetting to cook roast beef, and out of spite he and his troupe don't eat the food that the children worked hard to prepare. He then tells them to clean up the kitchen and go to bed. At this, Klaus yells, "You have only provided us with one bed!" which, in turn, rouses Count Olaf's temper and he says they should buy another bed. Klaus tells him that the only money they have is the Baudelaire fortune, which is not to be used until Violet is of age. In response, Count Olaf grows red with anger and he suddenly strikes Klaus across the face. His theater troupe applauds and laughs at Klaus as they leave with Count Olaf, which firmly implies that they are proud of Count Olaf for hitting Klaus and that Count Olaf felt like Klaus definitely deserved it.
    • His actions towards the Baudelaires throughout the course of the rest of the book and the rest of the series plays out in a very similar and cruel fashion.
  • Jacqueline Wilson's Lola Rose: Lola's mother is due to go to the hospital for an operation. The night before, she drinks heavily while her daughter tries to stop her. After being ignored, Lola accidentally-on-purpose drops the bottle of alcohol. Her mother belts her across the face, then they both burst out crying. May well be justified in this case, since the operation is for breast cancer, putting everyone in the family under extreme stress.
  • Jacqueline Wilson's The Suitcase Kid: Andy is extremely late coming home from school after she decides that she can't stand her dysfunctional family life. Her mother slaps her when she finally does come home, bursts into tears, and lays an enormous guilt trip on Andy, despite the fact that her mother's emotional manipulation, Parental Favoritism towards her new boyfriend's children and general lack of concern over Andy's best interests go a long way towards explaining why Andy didn't want to come home in the first place.
• Occurs in the movie/book Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix, where Harry is in detention with Umbridge and she makes him write "I must not tell lies" over and over again with an enchanted quill which carves the phrase into the back of Harry's hand as he writes, simultaneously using his own blood as ink. Harry stares at this in disbelief and is about to yell at Umbridge for it when she asks him with a warning tone, "Yes?". He backs down and says, "Nothing." to which she replies, "That's right, because you know that deep down, you deserve to be punished, don't you, Mr. Potter?" Jeez, not one for subtlety, is she?
  • Oddly, she's sort of correct--he knows damn well she doesn't have any right to punish him, especially not for the reasons she cites, and doesn't particularly think this is correct or that just plain suffering is a good idea, but between his abusive childhood and his experiences being expected to be The Hero, he only seems to have positive self-esteem when he's going through something hellish for day-saving reasons. Which is probably why he doesn't try harder to get some other authority figure to intervene--that and his justified conviction that no one ever comes to save him from abuse.
• In the Stephen King book Misery, Annie Wilkes pulls this on protagonist Paul Sheldon. Just replace "hit" with "chop off foot with axe and cauterize the wound with a blowtorch".
• In the S.E. Hinton book The Outsiders After Ponyboy yells "YOU DON'T YELL AT HIM!" at Darry for yelling at Soda, Darry inadvertly slaps Pony against the door. Darry looks at his hand, then looks at Ponyboy. All three brothers are shocked. Darry then says, "Ponyboy!" And as Pony is charging out the door, Darry yells in a desperate attempt to get him back inside the house, "Ponyboy, I didn't mean to--" and the youngest one disappears.
• In The Twilight Saga Emily refuses to return Sam's affection. He eventually loses his temper, becomes a wolf, and claws half her face off. He then feels so bad about what he did that she decides to accept his love. Christ, those books are messed up...
  • And let's not go into all the emotional abuse between Edward and Bella. "Do you want to start a war" indeed.

• Lorraine Jensen's mother in The Pigman does this when a police officer brings Lorraine home from a party at the eponymous man's home. The party was perfectly innocent until the school psycho burst in and started breaking things (that's why the cops came), but Lorraine's mother immediately assumes the worst and slaps her. Then she bursts into tears and starts wailing about how much this hurts her, guilting Lorraine into apologizing for daring to have a good time. The worst part is, the woman never apologizes for her bullshit or any of the other mental abuse she's hurled at Lorraine throughout the story.
• Alec D'Urberville is not above playing this card. Except he plays it as "Why did you make me lust after you?"

Live Action TV

• Ray pulls this on Daisy in the second season of Dead Like Me.
• Somewhat subverted in Desperate Housewives: in season four, Katherine slaps her daughter Dylan for asking about her father, but is not played for sympathy as Katherine is made out, at least in the first few episodes, to be an unsympathetic character.
  • Occurs again near the end of season 4, with Lynnet slapping her adopted daughter Kayla after she makes an indirect threat to her own daughter.
    • Does that really count? Threatening someone's children seems like a legitimate reason to retaliate.
• In the season 2 finale of Heroes, Sylar "accidentally" shoots Maya in a struggle and quips, "Now look what you made me do!" half-sarcastically.
  • When Peter absorbs Sylar's primordial ability, he beats the latter up and blames it on him.
  • Later, Sylar traps HRG, Claire, Angela and Meredith in Primatech and forces them into a Saw-like deadly game. All the while he angsts about how they made him evil.
    • Both might actually qualify as subversions. In both cases, it is to a very great extent the "fault" of the victim. In the former, Peter is only beating the crap out of Sylar because of the ability he (Peter) unwittingly took from him (Sylar). In the latter, Primatech DEFINITELY had a hand in making Sylar the bastard he was.
• Happens numerous times in the TV movie No One Would Tell. In one scene, Bobby throws his girlfriend Stacy against a wall when she says something that annoys him and stares at her indifferently saying, "Great. You happy now?"
• Occurs between Beecher and Keller in Oz on a few separate occasions. In one scene Keller knocks Beecher out when he tries to go against his wishes. In another scene Beecher annoys Keller when he continually asks what he did to make him angry with him, and he shoves Beecher so hard he falls and slides a few feet across the floor.
  • A bit of context for both incidents: the first was a case of Percussive Prevention, since Keller was about to confess to arranging the murder of the son of Complete Monster Vern Schillinger, when said murder was actually arranged by Beecher. (Since Schillinger previously had his son kidnap both of Beecher's kids and kill one of them, it's difficult to blame him.) Beecher wanted to take responsibility for what he'd done rather than having Keller turn himself into a target to save him, and Keller decided to knock him out before he could confess to the crime himself. Then Keller ran off and took the rap for it. The second case mentioned here happened earlier in the series, before Keller's Heel Face Turn. (Or perhaps, considering all that Keller would go on to do later, while he was still on the Heel side of the Heel Face Revolving Door.) At that time, Keller was working for Schillinger and was under orders to gain Beecher's trust, get Beecher to fall in love with him, and then torment him emotionally as part of Schillinger's revenge scheme. Suddenly switching gears--going from acting like he loved Beecher more than anything to acting like he hated Beecher more than anything--was part of the plan.
• Rescue Me: Sheila's lesbian lover pulls this on her in Season 2. After beating the shit out of her in a fit of jealousy, she is seen tenderly dabbing at Sheila's wounds, saying, "I'm sorry I was so rough with you, but sometimes you just make me so angry."
• Parodied in Friends, where a scene from a Soap Opera has a character slap her daughter and tearfully hug her immediately after, giving the daughter no time to react.
• Often happened on Robin Hood between Guy and Marian. Marian would infuriate Guy. Guy would lash out. Marian would get blamed. Eventually, he stabs her to death. Naturally it was the most popular ship on the show.
• Lucifer spent a season of Supernatural tooling around waiting for the big finale, and pulled this a couple of times, because he likes to claim he's the good guy. Most notably, right before he killed Gabriel:

Lucifer: Brother, don't make me do this... Gabriel: No one makes us do anything. Lucifer: I know you think you're doing the right thing, Gabriel, but I know where your heart truly lies... [Stab.] Here.

Music

• El-P invokes this trope at the end of the song "Stepfather Factory". There's the line towards the end of the song that says:

And in a few unsubstantiated clinical trials, this condition Has led to simulated feelings of resentment and worthlessness Manifested in the highly unlikely, but still possible, act Of physical aggression towards you and your loved ones' fleshy surfaces

• • Then via a bone-chilling robotic basso profundo voice, the stepfather-bot from the song eerily intones at the very end: "Why are you making me hurt you? I love you."
• Coheed and Cambria's character "Al the Killer" does this in the comic and the songs. Then again, he is a psychopath.

Theater

• In Henry V, Henry threatens Harfleur with a brutal sack... and tells them that if it happens it'll be all their fault for not surrendering. They surrender.

Video Games

• Happens in Samurai Warriors; Kunoichi has a cutscene where she asks Mitsuhide why he had made her fight him when the bad guy was Nobunaga all along and triggered a thought that eventually made Mitsuhide turn on Nobunaga.

Web Animation

• Played for laughs in the Homestar Runner sbemail "big white face." Strong Bad throws a cake at Strong Sad's face and says "now look what you made me do!"

Web Comics

• It even happens to video game consoles.
• Toyed with on Last Res0rt when Scout Arael slices a recently zombified Galaxy Girl Scout in half. Despite the inherent 'goodness' of the situation (saving Slick's life), she STILL says this line, probably because it's implied earlier that if the whole incident wasn't televised, she would have let the Zombie Scout live.
  • Prior to this, Arael had been looking the other way as Pre-Zombie Scout was playing the Dirty Cop role to the hilt; there's no doubt the Zombie Scout had it coming, but either way Arael had to Shoot the Dog.
• Damien from El Goonish Shive seems to like this approach.
• The discontinued Loserz featured it in one strip - but with a wholly different result than blind acceptance. (Note that no parent is involved here.)
• In Order of the Stick, during O-Chul's imprisonment in Xykon's tower, Redcloak interrogates O-Chul in front of the Sapphire Guard paladins he intends to torture if O-Chul doesn't cooperate. When O-Chul doesn't talk, he leaves, saying he's going to let them all stew in the knowledge that O-Chul didn't care enough about his comrades to talk before he comes back to do the actual torture. It backfires, though; the prisoners are instead impressed by O-Chul's resolve in not faltering in his duty even at the expense of his principles.
  • Later, when Gannji and Enor are imprisoned along with Roy and Belkar;

Gannji: You! We wouldn't be here if you hadn't- Roy: -asked you an entirely reasonable question, to which you responded with violence? Gannji: Yes! Exactly! What were you thinking?

Western Animation

• Played chillingly for drama in South Park when Jimmy takes steroids to give him an edge in the Special Olympics. His girlfriend tries to talk him out of continuing his steroid abuse, which causes him to fly into a rage and savagely beat her while screaming, "Why are you doing this? Why are you making me do this?"
  • Played for drama, or Truth in Television?
• In The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Frollo pulls this on Quasimodo after Frollo figures out that Quasi helped Esmerelda escape from Notre Dame.

Frollo: Now all of Paris is burning because of you!

• Also done in Batman: The Animated Series with the episode "Mad Love", where Harley Quinn is tossed out of a third-story window by The Joker, and whispers "My fault... I didn't get the joke.", quietly asserting Battered Spouse Syndrome.
• Attempted by a tree witch in the "To Cut a Woman's Hair" episode of Adventure Time, when she lets Jake out of her so-called "bottomless bottom" and immediately starts crying about her inner and outer ugliness, seemingly provoked by a "The Reason You Suck" Speech Finn had given her just before.
• Often done by Nelson Muntz, a bully on The Simpsons.

Nelson: Hey, butler. Stop butling yourself. (hits the butler with the butler's own fist) Butler: Would that I could, sir. (Nelson hits him some more)

• Used once by Dick Dastardly as a justification for his dirty tricks.
• An emotional equivalent is invoked by Mother Gothel in Tangled. "Great. Now I'm the bad guy."
• Played for laughs in an episode of Family Guy where Stewie gets angry and strikes his stuffed bear Rupert.

Stewie: Now why did you make me do that? Do you think I like hitting you? ...Well, as a matter of fact I do. In fact, I like it so much that I'm going to do it again!