10 Disturbing Backstories Behind Your Favourite Movie Characters

6. Bruce Banner Killed His Own Father For Killing His Mother

The Hulk's formative years have never been depicted on-screen in a significant way, with his origin story typically being defined by his fateful exposure to gamma radiation, transforming Bruce Banner into the Big Green Guy.

But in the comics, Bruce has a complex and deeply unsettling backstory that even predates his own existence.

His father, Brian, initially intended not to have children out of the belief that he had a "monster gene", due to the abusive nature of his relationship with his own father.

But Brian got his wife Rebecca pregnant regardless, and in the throes of alcoholism, was physically abusive towards both his wife and son.

This led to Rebecca attempting to leave with Bruce, and Brian killing Rebecca by smashing her head against a pavement, right in front of Bruce no less.

Brian then pressured Bruce into defending him during the trial, allowing him to initially escape prosecution.

15 years later, however, Brian was released from a mental institution into Bruce's care, and on the anniversary of Rebecca's death, the two got into an altercation at the gravesite, leading to Brian's head being smashed onto his dead wife's gravestone, killing him.

Bruce then repressed the memory of killing his own father, convincing himself that Brian was murdered by muggers instead.

While Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk film did integrate some aspects of Bruce's fraught past, even casting Nick Nolte as his troubled father David, it stopped far short of delivering the full-on grimdark origin story from the comics. And understandably so.