Mingus McNorman was born to Mary and Michael McNorman, a modest offshoot branch of the prestigious Missouri McNorman clan. Ever since he was a young boy, Mingus was committed to bettering the world - he took language classes for all the humanitarian work he was sure he would someday do, dabbled in developing computer technologies, and spent many hours in his local library and school computer lab as his parents couldn't afford to support his various studies in the home. He was often the subject of mockery at school, both for his unusual name (which was perfectly normal for a McNorman) and for his impressively feeble constitution, but he did not let this bother him, repeating his mother's mantra that "people who choose cruelty over kindness are cruel most of all to themselves". He responded to the frequent bullying with good-spirited humor and became an unusual example of a high performing student who was also the class clown, taking on a variety of comedic acts to entertain and delight his classmates. During his junior year of high school, he attended a charity event put on by a traveling circus to raise money for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital and, while there, saw a clown whose stage name was "Doctor Ludicross Pagliaci" perform. He was captivated by the spectacle - Pagliaci was there putting all the japes and jests Mingus had practiced to use healing the world's sick children, and the experience changed his life. When he graduated, Mingus McNorman attended clown college, graduating with high honors and taking on the humble moniker of "Bartholomew Bozolicci", or Bozo for short. He quickly rose to prominence in his field; by his early twenties, traveling circuses competed to earn his title on their rosters, though he never accepted the position of ringleader as he hated performative puffery, preferring to allow his clownery to speak for itself. He dedicated his career to raising money for environmental, medical, and humanitarian causes, and by age 28, he had become a yearly staple as a speaker at the annual Clowns of America International convention, and had published his first book; "Joy for Justice: a Clown's Guide to Changing the World".

For his thirtieth birthday, Mingus McNorman decided to buy himself a birthday present: his first car. Having never driven before (he cared deeply about the planet and so always carpooled or took public transportation) he didn't really know how to use it, but the advent of electric vehicles made driving into a luxury he could allow himself to consider. He was at the time traveling with the P.T. Barnam circus - when he asked one of the accounting executives to help him learn how to drive, the executive decided to play a prank on McNorman: he wrecked his new car. McNorman tried to get the circus to pay for the damages, but all that got him was fired and blacklisted as a "liability risk" in the major circus circuit, saddling him with a car loan he now couldn't pay off. Mingus was forced to sell his house and move back into an apartment as his career dried up despite the best efforts of the Clowns of America International to fight for his case; still, he reminded himself of his mother's mantra and moved on.

While he couldn't find work on the big circuit anymore, he was able to find stable employment as a party clown, performing at children's parties, hospitals, and schools to educate and delight his new young audiences. It was in this line of work that he met the love of his life - a single mother of two named Debbie Doesley who got canceled on by another clown working for Mingus' agency. Mingus took over for the other clown at no charge, citing that he had nothing to do that afternoon anyways and it was a terrible thing to let a kid turn 7 without a proper party. He and Debbie hit it off immediately, and before Debbie's son was 8, she had become Mrs. McNorman.

The McNormans lived a modest life - Debbie brought in most of the income with her job working as a test engineer for an aeronautics company, while Mingus played the part of stay at home dad for his three children (Daniel, Delilah, and baby Maxie) when he wasn't on a gig or doing charity work for the local children's hospital. He was quite happy like this for about twelve years, watching Daniel grow into an adult, coaching Delilah through the trials of school, and preparing Maxie for what his teenage years might hold, until the fateful day he was hired by the Cedars.

The Cedars were a wealthy family made rich via real estate development (primarily buying up aging low-rent housing and converting it into profitable commercial centers) and overprotective by the still-birth of their first and third children, only the second having survived. The invitation came when Caroline and Carlyle Cedar realized they had accidentally double booked their beloved daughter Carmine's 17th birthday with an important business affair they could not miss, and needed to hire both entertainment and supervision for her and her friends. It wasn't the sort of job Mingus would normally do - he couldn't stand those sorts of people and 17 was a bit old for a birthday clown anyways - but with Daniel facing college tuition and Delilah not far behind, the Cedars' money - and what they could do for his reputation - was too good to ignore.

This, it turned out, was a mistake.

At the party, Mingus caught Carmine and her friends red handed partaking of illegal drugs; not just Marijuana, which he would have ignored, but the harder stuff too: in particular, cocaine. He didn't want to ruin the girl's life, but he also knew that the congenital heart defect that had killed her siblings in the womb hadn't skipped Carmine entirely, and he knew from his own college days that it only took one slip for stimulants to become sayonara. When the Cedars returned, he informed them privately and gently of their daughter's behavior; like any doting parents, they went to ask her side of the story and took it entirely at face value.

Carmine and her friends used Mingus as their scapegoat - they claimed he had brought the drugs, that he had been drunk on the job, that he had even made advances on the teenage girls, and they used generative AI to fabricate all the evidence they needed. When Mingus tried to defend himself to the Cedars, Carmine and her friends took the material to social media and waged a ruthless and unending campaign of humiliation and defamation against Bozo the Clown. The case never went to court, but the constant harassment made the McNormans' lives hell, until one night when Mingus came home from an appearance at the children's hospital he'd been informed was canceled upon arriving at the venue, he found the house empty, with Debbie and the kids gone, and divorce paperwork on the kitchen table.

He signed it, and tried to remember his mother's mantra, but it was too much for poor Mingus to bear, and something broke inside him that day.

Now, two years later, Bozo the Clown is a shell of a man. Having lost his career, his community, and his family, his home went soon after, surrendered to Debbie in the divorce. What little money he makes clowning on the street quickly drains in the bottom of a bottle, and the time he has outside of drinking, scraping, and sleeping he spends honing a particular set of skills for the day he finally makes all the people who ruined his life pay.