10 DC Superheroes With Tortured Pasts

The character who the term tortured past might as well have been coined for, Batman's past has haunted him for eighty years now, and it doesn't look like letting up anytime soon.

This all came about when his parents, Thomas and Martha, took him out to the cinema to watch a Zorro film. On their way back, they decided to take a short cut down an alleyway, which ended with both of them shot dead by a mysterious assailant.

Obviously distraught by this, a grown-up Bruce would look to help ease his pain by dressing up as a giant bat and punching the criminal elements of Gotham in the face, every single night. Which is what he's been doing for the past eighty years.

No matter what version of his story you read, no matter how many times he has been on the end of a re-imagining, the core element always stays the same. Dead Parents + Tortured Soul = World's Greatest Detective.