Abusive Parents/Video Games

• Fire Emblem:
  • In Fire Emblem Gaiden, the Evil Sorcerer Jedah wants his three daughters (Hestia, Mara and Sonya) sacrificed to Duma and made into Witches. Only Sonya escapes.
  • Blazing Blade: King Desmond makes no bones about the fact that he loathes his son and heir Zephiel and tries to kill him twice. Is it any wonder this wise, gentle boy grows up to be such a bastard in Binding Blade and ultimately kills him? He also claims to love his illegitimate daughter Guinevere and clearly favors her, but still pits her against Zephiel and discourages every single positive interaction between the two (even ordering a servant to kill a baby fox that the boy caught alive to give it as a pet to his sister)... so is it any wonder this cheerful and cute girl grows up to be a Broken Bird and Zephiel's biggest rival in the same Binding Blade?
    • Sonia Reed raised Nino as her daughter, but neglected her emotionally and later manipulated her as her pawn. Then she tried to have the girl killed by her partner - who ironically, turned out to have far more morals than her and didn't go through it.
  • In the Tellius games, Ashnard's treatment of his son Soren is more a case of Parental Abandonment, but the fact that he used his son to lure a dragon (the boy's uncle) to his side, and the fact that he kept the boy separated from his mother even after abandoning them both, falls into the "abusive" category.
    • The aforementioned Soren had terrible caretakers until he was recruited into Greil's Mercenaries: the first one was a woman who hurled quite a bit of abuse to him for being a Branded, then a sage subjected him to Training from Hell ever since he was four.
  • In Fire Emblem Awakening, the Evil Sorcerer Validar is definitely this to his child alias the Player Character, who he wanted to breed and raise solely to make them into a Vessel for a Dark God. If not for the child's mother, he would've succeeded.... Additionally, he was this to his Dragon and adoptive daughter Aversa, whose family and friends he murdered so he'd be able to brainwash her into being his servant due to her magical powers.
    • Regarding the younger characters, while Tharja already had MANY loose screws in the present, she full blown became this and a Troubled Abuser to Noire in the Bad Future after the death of her husband. She uses the girl as target for her new curses constantly while looking for ways to avenge the husband's death, and only sorta comes to her senses when Noire is in lethal danger and chooses her daughter's life over hers. (Though if she is Morgan's mother too, she at most is Maternally Challenged regarding her).
  • In Fire Emblem Fates, King Garon was abusive to both his biological children and his adoptive kid (the Avatar). He despises the latter in particular - he kidnapped them away from their Hoshidan family, keeps them in a Gilded Cage environment like a prisoner, tries to force them execute actual prisoners and attacks them when they refuse, and sends them in missions that are borderline suicidal. It turns out he's NOT the real Garon, but a monster impersonating him for years after his death - which is implied to have taken place before the Avatar was forced into Nohr. It's known that the real Garon was a bitter bastard in his late years, but not to such an extent.
    • The Bigger Bad Anankos not only was responsible for Garon's corruption, but played this straight to his kids. Regarding his son/daughter the Avatar, he made sure Garon would treat them like crap and then sent into the aforementioned suicidal missions, including the one that almost had him/her killed - and that one failed only because of the Avatar's mother's Heroic Sacrifice. About his other kid: he created Lilith with his powers, then mentally abused her to become his agent and emotionally depend on his approval. (Though on the other hand, the living incarnation of Anankos' good feelings, his "Soul", did love the Avatar and Lilith, enough to bring three Dimensional Travelers to try help the first, and then give his life for the latter.)
  • In Fire Emblem: Warriors, King Oskar of Gristonne abandons his son and heir Prince Darius when he invades Aytolis during Darius' latest visit to Rowan and Lianna, and pretty much doesn't give a fuck about him dying in it. Unsurprisingly, Darius offs him later.
  • In Fire Emblem: Heroes, both King Surtr of Múspell and Queen Hel from the Realm of the Dead are VERY cruel to their children (Laegjarn and Laevatein, for Surtr; Eir, for Hel). In Book IV, near all the ljósálfar and dökkálfar are children (especially girls) who were abused by their parents and then taken in by Freyr (Peony and Mirabilis) or Frejya (Peony's older sister Triandra, and Plumeria).
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Bernadetta von Varley's father Grégoire was so obsessed with making her a perfectly doll-like and submissive daughter that he'd be able easily pawn off in an Arranged Marriage, he was this through and through via subjecting her to exhausting lessons, tying her up to a chair, not letting her have friends, apparently beating her, etc. Eventually, he views Bernadetta as a failure and "switches" to Parental Neglect.
    • There's also Baron von Bartels, Jeritza/Emile's father and Mercedes' stepfather. When Emile was a very young child and Mercedes was a pre-teen, he threw Mercedes and her/Emile's mom out of their household, since he only cared about a child with a Crest and he had it with Emile. But years later, he decided to try kidnapping Mercedes back into the clan to forcibly marry her and then have her pop more Crest children. But then Emile found out. . ..
    • Downplayed with Claude, who tells Hilda that his parents (Lady Tiana and the unnamed King of Almyra) used to punish him very harshly in the past - but he admits he used to be a Bratty Half-Pint, and it's implied that they were more of the Tough Love kind of parents rather than straight-up abusers.
  • Fire Emblem: Engage has Panette and Pandreo's parents: their father was an abusive alcoholic, their mother was a con-woman priestess, both treated their kids horribly, and some time after Panette ran off from home, both of them abandoned a young Pandreo, who had to take over his mother's church to lead it.
    • Marni was the only girl in her family, but her mother only wanted sons so she paid next to no attention to her only daughter, no matter how hard she trained to be strong and thus help her as much as she could. And then her mom once took her out for a walk - but it was just a ruse to abandon her in a temple dedicated to the Fell Dragon Sombron. Her strength soon was noticed by the Fell Dragon Sect, and then she was recruited into the Four Hounds who would become her Chosen Family.
    • The worst case, however... Is Sombron, himself. He had many, many children - and he made them all fight for his sake, killing them without any question if they ever failed or displeased him. And as time passed, only two of his kids were left: his youngest daughter, the local Dark Magical Girl Veyle... and Alear, the Player Character themself.
• House of Rules: Pam's father. He sold all of her sisters into what was likely sexual slavery: he slapped Pam when she asked him what had happened to her eldest sister, told her that he would make the most money off of selling her because she had the prettiest face, slapped her again when she begged him not to sell her, and threatened to cut her open and sell her organs if she did not behave. He was apparently fond of saying that money is good, showing that he valued money more than his own children. It is no wonder that Pam had him killed as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
• It's heavily implied in the Ace Attorney series that Manfred von Karma was, at the very least, emotionally abusive toward his adoptive son and biological daughter. Both had breakdowns in adulthood as a result of the pressure he put on them growing up, and let's just say he was famous for having... very stiff penalties for people who would accept anything less than complete perfection. That's not even getting into what the guy is shown actually doing in-game to said adoptive son: making Miles believe for several years that he killed his Disappeared Dad Gregory (who by all accounts was a very good dad) as a kid, when von Karma himself was the killer...
  • Pearl's mother, Morgan Fey, also screwed up the little girl horribly. To make a long story short, she essentially tried to use Pearl as a receptacle for the spirit of Morgan's other daughter, a sociopath named Dahlia, who was supposed to kill Morgan's niece Maya as a way of catering to a childish, spiteful sibling rivalry. Standard procedure for the Fey clan.
  • And that's not even discussing how Dahlia and Iris were raised. Let's go through it. Born to greedy, unloving parents who only got together for their own selfish ends? Check. Being dragged to their father's marriage with another equally unloving woman who already had a daughter (Valerie, one of Dahlia's victims)? Check. Separated? check. Is it any wonder Dahlia became an utter sociopath, and even years later and post mortem despises her mom?
  • And in Miles Edgeworth Investigations 2 there is Yumihiko's father Bansai who throws down the mental abuse on him. Now it's subverted at first in which Yumihiko is unaffected by the words because he's use to it, but then later double subverted when his father outright tells him that everything he worked for from his grades to his awards was because his father had made personal connections to allow his son to make it to the top. His father later orders his subordinates to kidnap him (to be fair, they were aiming for someone else) and eventually announces that Yumihiko is no longer his son.
  • In Dual Destinies, the trope is discussed at the very end. Athena's mother Metis was murdered when she was a little girl, and it turns out her apparent killer Simon Blackquill was Taking the Heat for the other potential culprit - Athena herself. It's revealed that Metis used Athena in some of her experiments, therefore people believe that young Athena couldn't take it any longer and snapped on her mom, whereas Simon claims that he killed Metis when he found out about the abuse and tried to run away with Athena to protect her from Metis. . . And later. . . it's proved that not only neither of them did it (it was the Phantom), but Metis did NOT abuse Athena either - the experiments were her way to help her daughter with her Power Incontinence instead, and Simon lied about her being abusive so he'd make sure Athena would stay free.
• Matsuri, Aoba and Jun's parents in Family Project. Jun's are probably the worst. Her father molested her and her sister since they were small children for years until a neighbor noticed and they got taken away. Their mother? Envious. So she starved them for days on end and then would feed them horrible things. Like flat out poison to Jun, which nearly killed her and prevents her from eating anything but snack bars and drinks.
• In Final Fantasy X, Tidus's father often insulted and berated his son for being a crybaby. After believing Jecht had died at sea, Tidus's mother also pined and eventually died. As a result, Tidus harbored bitterness towards his father and never quite forgave him for it. While it's made clear Jecht actually did love his son, the man never, at any point in his life, tell him such - throughout both that game and Dissidia, Jecht only admits his love for Tidus when the younger man is either absent or unconscious (or when he himself is dying).
• Cyrus, the Big Bad of the Pokémon Diamond and Pearl games, is revealed in the postgame to have been under severe parental pressure as a child. Specifics are never given, but it was apparently bad enough to make his grandfather consider taking him away from his parents. And, you know, bad enough to make him snap and want to take control the only way he could think of...
  • And the cycle continued. In one of the spin-off series, Cyrus is, for all intents and purposes, father figure to an orphan girl. Who he raised as a war machine, constantly telling her that everyone is alone in the world. It's implied later that she didn't realize that kindness existed, because he didn't either. Fortunately for her, she got better, and later, so did he.
  • Cyrus' parents were horrid perfectionists, true, but they were consistent. In Pokémon Black and White Ghetsis goes Up to Eleven in the manner with which he raised N, teaching the boy values that directly opposed what he (Ghetsis, that is) believed in and exploiting N for his own personal gain. The revelation at the end that the boy was merely a tool to those ends is the icing on the cake, the capper to his Garchomp flight across the Moral Event Horizon. You won't find anyone in the know who isn't ready to accept Ghetsis as possibly being the prime exemplar of this trope.
    • Even moreso if you take a cold eye to Ghetsis's Pokemon lineup when he battles you. It's blatantly designed to counter everything N has, including Zoroark (by baiting for uncharacteristic Dark attacks with Cofagrigus) and his legendary Dragon (via his hacked Hydreigon). N wasn't just a tool, he was a disposable tool.
  • Pokémon Ranger gives us Gordor, who forced his four kids into joining his criminal gang and brainwashing Pokémon. When they finally wise up and leave to embark on their music careers, he just scoffs and goes about his merry evil way. He doesn't give two craps about them and saw them as just more goons.
  • And then there's the Big Bad from Sun and Moon, Lusamine, who is plainly horrible to her son Gladion and daughter Lillie. She's Brainwashed and Crazy, actually - at most, the real Lusamine was neglectful.
• ZHP. It's eventually revealed that the Main Character's parents constantly insulted and belittled him ever since he let himself and his sister get kidnapped 8 years ago. However, soon after this is learned it is revealed that the kidnapping was not Main Character's fault (he actually tried to stop it, but his sister was unable to vouch for him due to Trauma-Induced Amnesia). Once this is learned, the parents quickly clean up their act. The trauma of the incident caused the mother and father to constantly argue with each other when they're not busy insulting the Main Character, while his sister lashed out all everyone else because, due to her amnesia, she has no idea why everyone in her family was made at each other.
• In Tales of Symphonia, Zelos never had the nicest relationship with his mother Mylene, as she was forced into a loveless Arranged Marriage, even though she "probably loved someone else". When she's killed in an attack that was intended to kill Zelos, her last words to him were "You should never have been born". It's shown in the manga that even before this, Mylene was cold and dismissive of her son, often making the excuse that she's ill or has a headache to get out of having to see him. No wonder he's so messed up...
• In Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator SIGN, the most straight-up example is Ariels aka the Pope aka the Universal Will, who uses her daughters the Valentines as pawns in her plans and treats them like shit, to the point of (almost) killing one of them (Ramlethal) to "teach" another (Elphelt) a lesson (she only survives due to Raven's intervention), then forcing the other girl (who had already been a a Manchurian Agent) to be the Barrier Maiden, something one of her agents found truly horrible.. As Elphelt puts it:

"Mother... You're a monster!"

• Tekken:
  • Baek Doosan's backstory in Tekken 2 involves him having to put up with a decidedly unpleasant and abusive father, a result of alcoholism after a crippling injury forced him to leave Tae Kwon Do. How bad did it get? To the point where a sparring session degenerated into a fight in which Baek killed his father by accident.
  • Near all the shit that has happened in the story comes from Heihachi Mishima being this to his son Kazuya, his adoptive son Lee Chaolan, and to a smaller degree his Heroic Bastard younger son Lars. One of the "best" proofs is the infamous ravine incident, where he tossed the 5-year-old Kazuya off a cliff as a way to test his strength and whether he had the Devil Gene or not.
  • Kazuya himself not only grew into a heartless asshole, but became this to his Heroic Bastard son Jin Kazama. Since the boy inherited the Devil Gene Kazuya has been trying to take said Devil Gene for himself and is not above killing him if it's needed to do so. Unsurprisingly, Jin loathes the fuck out of him.
  • Related to the Mishimas, it seems that the long-standing animosity between Heihachi and Kazuya has been thoroughly justified, and comes in its climax in Tekken 7. The campaign mode reveals that Kazumi Mishima, Heihachi's spouse and Kazuya's mother was sent by the Hachijo clan to kill Heihachi (and eventually, Kazuya} in the event they descent into a hegemonic path and even go as far as to hire Akuma to deal with either of them; even when she did love both of them, her duty to vanquish thm if they fell into evil came first. The revelation not only served as a gut-punch to her once-kind but now irremediably-psychopathic son Kazuya, it further irreparably damaged his love for his mother, and killing Heihachi in the end did not gave him any closure.
• Becomes a recurring theme in Grand Theft Auto IV, as the main character, Niko Bellic, and his cousin, Roman's, fathers were violent alcoholics who would regularly beat up both their children and their wifes. Dwayne Forge and Packie McReary had similar childhoods, and while the first comments how he felt "nothing" when his father was murdered, the second will at one point open up to Niko and tell that his violent father at one point even attempted and would have succeeded at molesting him, if his older brother, Gerry, had not intervened at the last minute.
• Batman: The Telltale Series: John and Patricia Vale are this trope personified. They seemed to believe that they could do whatever they want to children just because they were adopting them and they weren’t their biological parents. And they do horrible things to the orphansn, treating them in ways that even hardened Gotham criminals would be afraid of. Unfortunately for them, Lady Arkham was not going to sit back and watch the abuse, not did she intend to continue to experience it firsthand. If she didn’t bring them to justice for herself (not just herself, but it can easily be considered personal vengeance), she brought them to justice for the children.
• In the Japanese version of Earthbound, when Porky and Picky get back home at the beginning of the game, their father chases them offscreen, and can be heard spanking them. In the American version, this is changed to the sound made when enemies in battle use "word attacks," implying that their father was only scolding them. Then again though; this happens so early in the game people can easily assume it's not supposed to be a "word attack".
• Pachacamac from Sonic Adventure was this to Tikal.
• In a scene near the end of No More Heroes, it's revealed that Travis' father constantly molested his sister. She eventually gets revenge by killing him, his wife, and attempting to kill his son. Although, having a sexually abusive father is quite possibly the most normal thing about her story...
• In Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty, Emma was stated to have been sexually assaulted by her second stepfather, to which she injured him in self defense shortly before graduating from High School. The game itself doesn't specify what kind of assault it was, but the script included in the Document of Metal Gear Solid 2 had in brackets "sexual" right before "assault."
  • Otacon underwent this with his stepmom in the same game. He claimed she "seduced" him, since sexual abuse victims tend to be so fucked up by the experience that many tend to rationalize it by claiming they wanted it or that it was a relationship. Plus, the reveal of what she did to him caused Otacon's dad to kill himself and greatly traumatised Emma as well.
• Bioshock has Sofia Lamb. An incredible list of abuse, mostly of the mental variety-though a degree of neglect etc. Attempting to condition your child in to the 'Peoples Daughter' (an individual who knows everything, or more accurately a conduit for everything), using a serum that reduced a fellow researcher to a sentient tumour, does not a good parent make.
  • Sofia Lamb may not even be Eleanor's mother, an audio log from her alludes that she did as little to be involved in raising her as possible, possibly even using a surrogate.
• Silent Hill. Let's count: Dahlia Gillespie, Leonard Wolf, Thomas Orosco, the unnamed Mrs. Orosco, Walter's parents, Helen Grady, Adam Shepherd, and those are just off the top of my head. There's been, what, one good parent in the series?
  • At least Harry Mason, the protagonist of the first game, is a Papa Wolf to the max.
    • In Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, depending on what ending you get, Cheryl will recall that Harry was an alcoholic abusive father, an unfaithful philandering father, or a genuinely loving father.
    • Additionally, one of the endings reveals Cheryl's mother Dahlia to be a spouse abuser. It's debatable whether she physically abuses her daughter as well, but the fact that she degrades and beats Harry in front of Cheryl at least stands as emotional abuse.
• RELIUS CLOVER. This is the guy who experimented his daughter, Ada, For Science!, turning her into a weaponized doll, Nirvana. However, he lost interest in the project about halfway through and happily turned to his wife instead, turning her into a much better and accomplished puppet, Ignis, after which he left his family's home and never came back. Meanwhile, his son, Carl, had been forced to finish the experiments he was conducting on Ada, leaving the poor little boy completely traumatized, having to show a lack of compassion and fend for himself as a Vigilante at such a young age. That's an abuse on mental, emotional and financial levles... and he went straight to physical (as in, attempted homicide) when Carl tried to get an explanation.

"You've been a very naughty boy... spare the rod, spoil the child."

• We learn very early into Blaze Union that Gulcasa's father beat and neglected him when he was a young child; his father blamed him for his mother's disappearance. We later learn that said mother is also neglectful and emotionally abusive; the last thing she ever did to her child was Mind Rape him into believing himself to be human while sealing his demon blood without his consent. While her reasons for doing so were arguably well-intentioned, it still left Gulcasa with residual brain damage that prevents him from being able to realize that Emilia is his sister when they first meet. And if that isn't enough, she also reveals that she was aware that Gulcasa's father was abusing him, but chose not to come back and do something about it. All of this started from Fantastic Racism, which was also the reason that no one tried to do anything about the abuse. Luckily for Gulcasa, his childhood friends were willing to become parental surrogates, and lovingly helped him grow up mostly undamaged by all this.
• Hojo and Lucrecia from Final Fantasy VII did genetic experiments on their son while he was still in the womb in the name of science. The child, Sephiroth, did not take this well. Lucrecia came to deeply regret her part in the genetic experiments, causing her to nearly commit suicide and ultimately seal herself off the world in a Crystal Prison. Hojo, on the other hand, had absolutely no regret for what he did - in fact, he enjoyed every single moment of it even afterwards, and was heavily implied to have manipulated all of Sephiroth's actions and everything in Sephiroth's life/lives.
  • Hojo actually did come to "regret" his actions near the end of his life, but not in the way one would expect. When he confronts the party at the Sister Ray, he acknowledges that he's "even beginning to hate himself" for his actions. He also explicitly states that he's helping Sephiroth because he's his son, not to see his experiment come to fruition. In the end, he's become something of a Papa Wolf, if only because Sephiroth, in his eyes, has surpassed science.
  • Not technically her parents, but the Gestahlian Empire from Final Fantasy VI was the closest that Terra Branford could call her parents due to Gestahl murdering her birthmother and then kidnapping her child, and subjecting her father to various experiments. And, sure enough, their raising her was very much abusive in terms of emotional and possibly other forms of abuse. She was raised in a loveless environment for most of her life, Kefka placed the Slave Crown on Terra to manipulate all of her actions, including burning 50 of their finest soldiers alive, and the one person who was even relatively decent to her, General Leo Cristolph, nonetheless placed the mind control device back on her when they finish training.
• Embric of Wulfhammers Castle. He's the Duchess' uncle, not her father, and the gory details aren't given, but Bad King Greyghast was not above imprisoning, drugging, killing animals, spying on, and sexually abusing his favorite niece to control her.
• All of the above happened to Alma Wade, in F.E.A.R. thanks to her father, Harlan Wade, and the Armacham Technology Corporation. (Save financial abuse, and that was because she was never old enough to have money in the first place.) Psychic Powers that made her susceptible to emotions, particularly negative ones and especially her fathers', coupled with physical and mental abuse due to being constantly experimented on, ultimately culminated in her being dragged away at her father's orders to be sealed in the Vault in an induced coma. Sexual abuse followed when Harlan Wade and Armacham used her unconscious body as a testing ground for psychic Super Soldiers, impregnating her twice and removing her from her prison only to give birth to the two prototypes. And worse still, she never got to hold her children. Needless to say, when Alma gets loose, hell follows her. So great is his abuse of her that her uber-powerful psychic ghost gets reduced into a scared, crying child whenever she feels The Creep, his psychic remnant, is around. After that, he goes and abuses his grandkids, For Science!. Swell guy.
• In Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, Paz Ortega Andrade, real name Pacifica Ocean, according to her diary tapes, was an orphan, and was apparently adopted by Cipher (in other words, the Patriots faction run by Zero after the split), and she intends to obey Cipher's command, not simply due to her loyalty to the organization, but because she feels as though she has to obey them even if she doesn't agree with their goals because she'll otherwise suffer a fate worse than death if she doesn't.
  • There's also the fact that they created the clones of Big Boss. The fact that they were created without Big Boss's consent would make this a form of sexual abuse. Oh, and the project that created them also had six of their brothers essentially murdered during development so they could gain strong fetal growth. Then there is the fact that they kidnapped Olga's child, Sunny, after birth, and put her life on the line by having her life being connected to Raiden's vital nanomachines, meaning if he dies, they kill her, and it is heavily implied that even after Raiden defeated Solidus Snake, they still are placing her life on the line as a threat to Raiden, and she grew up completely withdrawn from people. Yeah.
• Where to even start with Fei from Xenogears? After she got possessed by Miang, Fei's mother started experimenting on him, thus creating his Super-Powered Evil Side Id, who then was used by his father possesed by the personality of one of Fei's former Incarnations as a Person of Mass Destruction, and that's not even all of it.
• Adam Malkovich's treatment of Samus Aran in Metroid: Other M has been construed by some reviewers as romanticizing an abusive relationship between an otherwise capable bounty hunter and her surrogate father figure.
  • Raven Beak in Metroid Dread, being one of two Samus's genetic donors (the other being Gray Voice) has shades of one. Unlike Adam above, he only sees Samus as an extension of his ambition to cultivate Metroids, in this case, her Metroid DNA, to conquer the universe.
• Lucien from RuneScape was already notorious for being cruel, but the newest Fremminik Saga has confirmed rumors of him having a daughter. Specifically, a half human, half Mahjarrat daughter whom he abuses severely. Every time he speaks to her, he calls her a failure, finally declaring that when he next sees her, he will strangle her. And she just takes it.
• Soul Series: Cervantes de Leon is Ivy Valentine's actual father, due to Ivy possessing the same cursed blood as he when she is in fact a byproduct of Child by Rape. Cervantes only sees Ivy as a means to regain his original power, while Ivy in turn looks down on him with scorn.
• Shin Megami Tensei V: One can think of Lahmu as being a fatherly figure for Sahori, as he comes to her aid when she is being bullied. However, his methods of building up trust and obedience with her are rather shallow in nature, as he doesn't provide emotional connection. And he has no sense of personal space with Sahori either. This contrasts the relationship that Koshimizu and Abdiel have with their human partners, who also serve as parental figures for them.
• The Walking Dead:
  • Kenny increasingly comes across as one towards Clementine over the course of the second season, and he implies that he's also been on the receiving end in episode 5, since he describes his father as a "mean son of a bitch".
  • It's pretty clear that Carver would've been a horrible parent for AJ if the baby had been born under his rule. This is more-or-less confirmed when he attempted to murder Rebecca while she was pregnant with AJ.
  • In one optional dialogue, Randall talks about how his father was "a mean son of a bitch" and would lash at him with a belt.