10 Deeply Depressing Origin Stories Of Horror Villains

The king of sympathetic horror antagonists, Tony Todd's titular Candyman was borne of racist violence, the artist son of slave.

After falling in love with a white woman and fathering her child (never a good idea in 19th Century America), Daniel Robitaille is attacked by a lynch mob - hired by his father-in-law, no less - smeared with honey and stung to death by bees. His body is burned upon a pyre, his ashes to disperse on the wind like the swarms of bees which destroyed his body so.

All of which gave the murdered painter motivation to return from beyond the grave as the hook-handed Candyman, urban legend and slasher icon. The surprising lack of sequels has kept Robitaille on the right side of sympathetic too, his relatively low body count and fairly foolish victims allowing us to side with the monster over the (wo)men he haunts.

But while we can certainly feel for this tragic, wronged figure, there's no way you'd ever catch us in front of a mirror with the man's name on our lips.