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| 2 | %% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order. Thanks! |
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| 8 | ---- |
| 9 | !!Series with their own pages: |
| 10 | [[index]] |
| 11 | * AbusiveParents/TheDCU |
| 12 | * AbusiveParents/MarvelUniverse |
| 13 | [[/index]] |
| 14 | ---- |
| 15 | !!Individual examples: |
| 16 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 17 | |
| 18 | [[folder:#]] |
| 19 | * In ''Series/The100'', both Raven and Murphy had abusive, alcoholic mothers. Raven's mom regularly traded her daughter's food rations for liquor, while Murphy's mom would emotionally abuse him, blaming him for his father's death. Raven responds by devoting herself to her mechanic's training so she can get away from her mom and lead a better life, while Murphy is made bitter and cynical by his upbringing and becomes a criminal. |
| 20 | * ''Series/NineOneOne'': This show sure has quite a case of disappointing parents. |
| 21 | ** Shown multiple times on calls. Notable examples are the pilot episode, where [[spoiler:a young woman flushes her premature newborn down the toilet]], and Season 4's Suspicion, where [[spoiler:[[{{MunchausensByProxy}} a mother is revealed to be deliberately poisoning her son]]]]. |
| 22 | ** [[spoiler:After the death of Chim's mother when he was a teenager, his father left him to be raised in California by the Lees while he went back to Hong Kong, rarely communicating with him and acting cold and unkind in the few interactions they did have. While he has a good relationship with the Lees and views them as his surrogate parents, his relationship with his biological father is extremely strained]]. |
| 23 | ** Eddie's parents despise Shannon for leaving Eddie and Christopher while belittling Eddie's parenting choices (Eddie's mother even says Eddie is dragging Christopher down with him), despite [[{{Hypocrite}} Eddie's father himself being generally absent in his children's lives, even missing all three of his children's deliveries]]. [[spoiler:They also try to guilt-trip Eddie into giving them Christopher under the assumption that it's "better for him," ignoring that it was at the cost of ''taking Chris from his actual parent.'' This prompts Eddie to move with Christopher to L.A.]]. It's notable in Season 4 that, though they're on more cordial terms with each other, Eddie [[spoiler:decides to name Buck as Christopher's legal guardian if Eddie were to die]]. |
| 24 | ** It's revealed in Season 4 that Buck [[spoiler: was conceived by his parents as a savior baby in order to be a stem cell donor to cure their firstborn son Daniel's leukemia. When Daniel died of his illness anyway, they were cold and neglectful towards him to the point where he would deliberately injure himself because it was the only way he could get their attention. They also asked Maddie, who was still a child herself, to keep this a secret from Buck and refused to allow her to talk about Daniel, which caused her a significant amount of distress, on top off leaving her badly parentified at the age of nine. Their grief over their son's death, while very real and understandable, is not an excuse for the way they treated their surviving children.]] |
| 25 | * ''Series/NineteenTwo'': Throughout the English version of the series, via flashbacks and stories Ben tells, a good picture of his alcoholic father's neglect and emotional abuse is built. From driving his drunk father home at the age of eight to being left in a park for the day at the age of seven and more. |
| 26 | [[/folder]] |
| 27 | |
| 28 | [[folder:A]] |
| 29 | * ''Series/Adam12'': "Child in Danger" had a couple who kept fighting and the father is arrested after beating the child and threatening to kill the mother. |
| 30 | * In ''Series/AllAmerican'', there's Billy's father Willy who was at least verbally and emotionally abusive to him as a kid; while it was his father's coaching that propelled him to the NFL, Billy does not speak with him unless he has to. Willy also gaslights Jordan constantly into thinking that he isn't good enough at football supposedly for his own good. |
| 31 | ** Asher's father puts him out of the house once he gets [[spoiler: kicked off the team, and what's worse is that his mother doesn't want him either, leaving him temporarily homeless]]. |
| 32 | ** Coop's mother kicks her out of the house for being a lesbian. |
| 33 | * In one of the last episodes of ''Series/AllInTheFamily'' before the Stivics move to California, Mike and Archie get locked in the unheated bar's basement during a cold spell. Both drink to keep warm, and in this altered state Archie tells Mike about how his father would beat him and lock him in a closet to "teach me to do good". In another episode, Edith tells Mike that Archie was forced to drop out of school in eighth grade to help support his family. |
| 34 | * In ''Series/AmericanHorrorStory'', there are numerous examples of this trope being used. |
| 35 | ** In ''American Horror Story: Coven'', Kyle Spencer's mother -- Alicia Spencer -- is so corrupt with her abuse towards Kyle, that she even forces Kyle into an incestuous relationship. However, this eventually leads to [[spoiler: a satisfying ending, with [[RapeandRevenge Kyle murdering her after his resurrection]]]]. |
| 36 | ** Another example in Coven is Delphine La Laurie. A racist serial killer, she is also a terribly abusive mother. When her youngest daughter Marie is found to be attracted to one of the African American servants,[[spoiler: La Laurie retaliates by sealing this servant's fate as the hideous beast, the Minotaur.]]. This continuous abuse leads to her daughters plotting to kill her. After hearing her daughter, Borquita, complain that her mother is the reason she will never find love, and planning with her sisters to kill her -- Delphine reveals she heard everything.[[spoiler: Delphine forces all the daughters into cages in her torture chamber, having her slave break Borquita's legs to make her fit inside. She then reveals, that in a year's time, she will force them to eat faeces. But what is perhaps a great instance of comeuppance, La Laurie's fate ends with her in her personal hell, being caged in a similar instance to how her daughters were, having to witness Marie Lavea torture her daughters in front of her, for all of eternity. This is especially harsh as it is revealed that La Laurie, in her own conflicting way, does actually love her daughters.]] |
| 37 | * George Sr. and Lucille of ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'' are emotionally abusive to all of their children. Tobias and Lindsay are extremely neglectful toward Maeby. Michael might be on the borderline, given how demanding he is of George Michael, but it's clear that Michael cares and isn't intentionally being too demanding; it's just that in [[BigScrewedUpFamily the Bluth family]], [[TokenGoodTeammate George Michael]] is the only person Michael can actually count on to do anything right. |
| 38 | * ''Series/AshesOfLove'': All over the place. Tu Yao verbally, emotionally, and physically abuses Run Yu. Tai Wei is somewhat manipulative of both his children. Zi Fen robbed her daughter of the ability to feel love. And Su Li repeatedly removed her son's horns and scales to disguise him. |
| 39 | * The hosts of ''Series/TheAtheistExperience'' have no shortage of criticism on the topic of AbusiveParents. Matt Dillahunty has given a number of [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech "The Reason You Suck" Speeches]] on the sub-topic of parents who refuse to get their kids medical treatment and pray instead. |
| 40 | * The rich Shin family in the KoreanDrama ''Series/BadBoy''. They threw their kid out of the house during a ''thunderstorm'', for one. |
| 41 | [[/folder]] |
| 42 | |
| 43 | [[folder:B]] |
| 44 | * ''Series/TheBarrier'': Enrique's father was abusive to the point that he drove his mother to permanently leave the family home. He keeps a photo of him in his office to keep the sort of person he was in mind. |
| 45 | * Starbuck from ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}''. We learn all of her fingers were once broken at the exact same place -- due to her mother putting Kara's hand in the door frame and closing the door shut. This being a show of GreyAndGreyMorality, Kara's mother is not portrayed as pure evil despite this. She knew from oracles that Kara had a special destiny in store, and her way of trying to toughen her up and prepare her was really warped. She was also a Colonial Marine and a really bitter one for not having made officer (remember that OCS rejection letter?). |
| 46 | * ''Series/LeBureauDesLegendes'': Malotru's interactions with his father, both real and imaginary, hint at this, and Malotru tells Karlov that his father beat him when he was young. |
| 47 | * ''Series/BeverlyHills90210'' character [[spoiler:Valerie Malone]] was repeatedly raped by her father as a child and her mother blamed her for it. |
| 48 | * Beverly Hoffsteder, mother of main character Leonard Hoffsteder from ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' was this intentionally, so she could write a book about the experiment. It's so bad that Leonard has said as a child he built a robot to hug him: but his father was always using it. Or, to put it another way, she's basically Sheldon as a caregiver. |
| 49 | * ''Series/{{Bones}}'': |
| 50 | ** The title character's parents abandoned her and her brother when she was fifteen. She went into the foster care system where, at one point, she was locked in a truck for two days because she broke a plate. Sweets was physically abused as a child by his parents. He was removed from them by social services and bounced around to multiple foster homes; in the last one he was in, the foster father beat him so badly and so constantly that he still has the scars over fifteen years later. After he told the police about the abuse, he was taken away to safety and HappilyAdopted by another family when he was six. Booth and his brother, Jared, were physically abused by their father before their grandfather took them in. |
| 51 | ** Squintern Finn Abernathy, who got tired of the abuse his stepfather inflicted and threatened him with a knife in self-defense. He only refrained from killing the guy out of fear Booth and Brennan would come hunt him down. |
| 52 | ** This trope also pops up in a few of the episode plots: |
| 53 | *** One of the first episodes of season features the rape and murder of a 3-year-old boy whose mother was a foster parent. It turns out, that the victim himself was a neglected child; his "biological mother" was going to adopt him as a baby, but he was given back to his drug-dealing true biological mother; the woman found his mom dead from an overdose and (illegally) took the baby to raise as her own. The dead child's older foster brothers were beaten by their father, who also burned the younger of the two with cigarettes, and bounced around for months before their foster mom took them in. It's also eventually revealed that the man who raped and killed the victim (while one of his foster brothers was forced to watch) was the three brothers' neighbor's father, and it's heavily implied at the end that he sexually abused his own son as well. |
| 54 | *** In "The Signs in The Silence", the team arrests a deaf and mute teenage girl after she is found drenched in blood and holding a knife. They initially believe that she ran away from home and then murdered a random man. It turns out, however, that she had been violently abused by her parents ever since she was three because of her disabilities and behavior problems; she had been telling people about the abuse and attempting to run away for years but, seeing as how her parents appeared to be pillars of the community, no one ever believed her. (The man she murdered was her father's friend who abducted her and tied her up on her father's orders, and she killed him accidentally while trying to protect herself.) In the end, it turns out they weren't really her parents; they kidnapped her from a good home when she was little, and began abusing her after discovering they were stuck with a special needs kid. Luckily, the team is able to reunite her with her loving biological parents. |
| 55 | * ''Series/TheBoys2019'': |
| 56 | ** Billy and Lenny Butcher's father Sam was a temperamental sociopath who beat his sons black and blue for any mitigated slight. He always claimed it to be merely ToughLove, and actually ''rewarded'' Billy whenever he acted upon his violent tendencies. Eventually, his abuse got so bad, that [[spoiler: Lenny eventually committed suicide, something Sam shows absolutely no remorse over.]] |
| 57 | ** While [[spoiler: Homelander]] genuinely cares for [[spoiler: Ryan (his and Becca's ChildByRape),]] he's shown to treat him roughly in their first onscreen interactions with each other. Case in point: [[spoiler: he throws him off a two-story roof just to see if he has flight powers like he does.]] However, he feels remorseful over this, and makes genuine efforts to reconnect and bond with his son later on. |
| 58 | ** Madelyn Stillwell was the closest thing to a mother Homelander had growing up, and her grooming of him to be Vought's strongest human weapon is a major reason why he's a complete sociopath. There's also [[WifeHusbandry a bizarre sexual aspect to their relationship]], and the horrifying implication that she outright ''molested'' Homelander when he was young. |
| 59 | ** [[spoiler: Mindstorm giving him the knowledge that he's Homelander's father doesn't stop Soldier Boy from trying to kill him [[GruesomeGrandparent (OR his grandson, Ryan)]] in the Season 3 finale. This is ''after'' [[KickTheDog he tells Homelander that he's "a fucking disappointment" to his face]] just because he [[TearsOfJoy got emotional]] when attempting to reach out to him.]] |
| 60 | * ''Franchise/{{Buffyverse}}'': |
| 61 | ** It's revealed in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS5E6Family Family]]", Tara [=McClay=]'s father brainwashed Tara into believing that she was a half-demon. In fact, her entire ''family'' were misogynistic tyrants who told her that if she ever left them for too long, she'd turn into a monster. Her own brother explicitly threatens to beat her up if she doesn't come with them. |
| 62 | ** And then there's Xander's implied difficulties with his parents. He was so worried he might turn out to be a horrible husband and father like his dad that he ended up leaving Anya at the altar, unable to commit to marriage. |
| 63 | *** Xander would rather sleep outside on Christmas than spend it inside with his parents, even after learning about the various things that go bump in the night. |
| 64 | ** Can anyone remember seeing Willow's dad ''ever''? Was her mom ever around except when it was going to be unpleasant or dangerous for Willow? ''Great'' parents there. |
| 65 | ** This trope is so prevalent that only ''one'' major character, Fred, was shown to have a happy and loving relationship with both her parents (it came as a shock to the other characters, too). Then [[spoiler:she got her soul devoured by an EldritchAbomination from beyond who then took over her body]]. |
| 66 | *** Buffy, Dawn, and their mom had a fairly good relationship (though the moment when Joyce kicked Buffy out of the house, then blamed it on her, comes close to being this trope). The mother and father were unhappy in marriage and their father left. [[spoiler:Of course, the former dies, and the latter becomes a non-entity, so hey.]] |
| 67 | ** It's heavily suggested that Faith was a victim of parental abuse. Her mother was a neglectful alcoholic who was likely physically and mentally abusive. As well, Faith's rather twisted relationship with sex hints at possible sexual abuse. The BigBad who took her in as a [[TheDragon Dragon]] and surrogate daughter was a better parent! Even after his death, Faith still remembers him fondly while still acknowledging that he was an evil man. |
| 68 | ** In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS1E3TheWitch The Witch]]", Amy's mother told her she was useless and wasting her youth, ''[[GrandTheftMe stole her body]]'', kept her locked in the house as a prisoner (while still in the wrong body) and almost [[AndIMustScream trapped her in a small cheerleading trophy, forever]]. |
| 69 | ** In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS7E17LiesMyParentsToldMe Lies My Parents Told Me]]", Spike's mother tried to come onto him after being turned into a vampire. However, it must be noted that she wasn't abusive while she was alive, and in becoming a vampire she actually lost her soul and became host to a demonic entity, so it's at least downplayed. [[spoiler: Spike at one point comes to believe she was only saying that to force him to kill her, but that might just be a biased opinion.]] |
| 70 | ** Principal Wood's mother prioritized her Slayer duties over him. This is witnessed from 4-year-old Wood's point of view, which is somewhat biased. |
| 71 | ** Wesley's father is obviously incredibly emotionally abusive and used to lock him under the stairs. Any time Wesley speaks to him it's nearly possible to ''see'' his self-esteem draining away. When he finally showed up in person this continued, until Wesley actually managed to impress him. [[spoiler: Except that no, this was all a ploy to gain access to a mystical artifact to use against Wesley's friend and employer. Also the father turned out to be an illusion-clad cyborg impostor, but Wesley was perfectly willing to believe that his father would actually do this. After shooting the cyborg while still believing it to be his father, he called home to make sure the real one was alright and was promptly told off for calling at that hour.]] |
| 72 | ** Connor's relationship with Holtz started when he kidnapped him as a baby and fled to "the darkest of dark worlds". Apart from that he raised him to hate his biological father and tied him to a tree and abandoned him for weeks at a time to teach him how to track. From the age of about six. Given that this is a man who decided to teach someone else "loyalty" by ''nailing their hand to a table'' there's presumably a lot more. And when it looked like Connor might have a happy life with Angel, Holtz killed himself to set Connor against his real father, thus abandoning him in a world he knew nothing about with nothing left to live for except revenge. |
| 73 | ** "[[Recap/AngelS02E04Untouched Untouched]]" dealt with a [[MindOverMatter telekinetic]] teen named Bethany who had been sexually abused by her father. Wolfram and Hart's attempt to turn her into a killer amounted to putting her father in the same room, on the basis that she'd be unable not to kill him with her new powers. |
| 74 | * Part of Michael Westen's backstory in ''Series/BurnNotice'' is that his father physically abused Michael and his younger brother Nate. It's never mentioned if Mr. Westen beat Madeline as well (though good luck with that, considering the woman [[MamaBear carries around a shotgun]]), but 3x07 "Shot in the Dark" has Michael, Sam, and Fiona helping a mother and two boys on the run from an abusive stepfather. |
| 75 | ** It also confirms the abuse is the reason why Michael is taking such a "domestic" situation so seriously: |
| 76 | --->'''Madeline:''' For two little boys getting kicked around by their father? Michael would take on the entire Chinese army. |
| 77 | ** Michael's background with his father was used in an episode overtly when he was hired by a mother to get her son back from his father. The character's narration mentions that it's a bad idea to get involved with causes that have emotional impact since they can lead you to make bad decisions. [[spoiler:The mother who hired him turns out to be an assassin, after the father of the boy. After Michael and the target escape, the assassin tells Michael that she has been following his progress for the last decade (after he nearly managed to catch her following one of her hits, without knowing who she was), and she used the 'father kidnaps son' story specifically because he has problems with thinking clearly in such scenarios.]] |
| 78 | [[/folder]] |
| 79 | |
| 80 | [[folder:C]] |
| 81 | * In ''Series/ClubDerRotenBander'', Tonis' father used to hit him. |
| 82 | * ''Series/{{Community}}'': Rich’s mother apparently blamed him for his brother’s death, as revealed in the last few seconds of the episode "[[Recap/CommunityS1E19BeginnerPottery Beginner Pottery]]". |
| 83 | ** Also, Jeff's father. In the same episode listed above, Jeff makes a throwaway reference to his dad being an abusive drunk. |
| 84 | * ''Series/ControlZ'': Gerry's father abuses his son emotionally and is shown to be completely homophobic when he makes an off-handed comment about the drawing Luis made of him. Raúl's father is a corrupt politician and blamed his son, to the point of punching him in the face, for the exposure of his shady dealings. |
| 85 | * In ''Series/CriminalMinds'', some of the [=UnSubs=] were abused by their parents. Then there are the [=UnSubs=] who ''are'' the abusive parents. |
| 86 | ** Notable examples of abuse that helped lead to the child becoming a killer include Daniel Whitaker to his son Chase (beat him with a belt and buried him alive), Jeff Salters to his son Chris (beat him often as discipline) and Charles Hankel to his son Tobias (branded and nearly drowned him). |
| 87 | ** It's also heavily implied that Hotch was abused by his parents. Unlike some such abuse victims, however, Hotch himself averts the trope and is very loving toward his son. |
| 88 | * ''Series/CrossingLines'': In Tommy's backstory he was part of a Travelers Clan. When he joined the police, his father put a hit out on him. |
| 89 | * ''Series/TheCrowdedRoom'': |
| 90 | ** Danny's stepfather, Marlin Reid, is the one responsible for the poor kid's DID, due to molesting him. |
| 91 | ** Danny's birth father was also abusive, his mother later reveals. |
| 92 | * ''Series/{{CSI}}'' has Sara as a main character. She and her mom were beaten by her dad until her mom killed him. Also possibly Ray, plus all the [=CSIs=] have quite a few criminals with such pasts. |
| 93 | %%* It was implied that Horatio and Ray had a level of angst with their father in ''Series/{{CSI Miami}}''. |
| 94 | * ''Series/{{CSINY}}'': |
| 95 | ** Adam's father. Adam has called him a bully. He has a CallingTheOldManOut moment but his dad has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t even remember. [[AFatherToHisMen Mac]] has a heart-to-heart with him about it. |
| 96 | ** One teenage suspect is being raised by his abusive stepfather after the boy's mother dies. The villain turns out to be the abusive man, not the boy. |
| 97 | ** The set of boy-girl twins in "Rest in Peace, Marina Garrito" have an abusive stepfather as well. He accidentally killed the brother when they were 9 yrs old, and the sister eventually recovers her repressed memories of the event. |
| 98 | [[/folder]] |
| 99 | |
| 100 | [[folder:D]] |
| 101 | * ''Series/DarkAngel'': Max was fostered by a family shortly after her escape from Manticore, the father of which was a drunk, and he smacked both her and her foster sister around and molested the latter. [[spoiler:This scenario is replayed in Episode 3 of Season 1 when she is imprisoned in the Warden's house. However, it ended differently in the fact that Max ended up splattering him by ramming a jeep into the car he was hiding behind.]] Because Max was a TykeBomb, she endured plenty of abuse from the adults at Project Manticore. It's a wonder more of her group didn't go crazy like her brother Ben. |
| 102 | * On ''Series/DawsonsCreek'', Pacey's parents constantly run him down as an idiot and his dad, in particular, is downright shocking in his verbal tirades. The real shock is that Dawson (supposedly Pacey's best friend) sees this but brushes it off as "kidding around." In contrast, Dawson's father takes ''one'' look at how Pacey and his dad get along and realizes what's happening and promises to give Pacey some help. |
| 103 | * ''Series/DayBreak2006'': Miguel Dominguez, a notorious ProfessionalKiller working for the conspiracy, went to prison for [[SelfMadeOrphan murdering his own parents]]. It's originally believed that he's just a total psycho who targeted his sister afterwards and she's been in hiding ever since, but it eventually transpires that he was trying to protect her because their father slashed up her face while the mother watched. She's adored him ever since [[spoiler:and is his contact in Los Angeles]]. |
| 104 | * ''Series/DegrassiTheNextGeneration'': Oh, Lord. There are multiple examples of this trope throughout the series. |
| 105 | ** Craig, in his introductory episode, is shown to be physically abused by his father, who is later implied to have had bipolar disorder. The abuse is so bad that Craig tries to run away and then attempts suicide when it is pointed out to him that if he ran away he would end up on the streets. |
| 106 | ** Ellie's mother could be considered neglectful, as she is often passed out drunk, and even emotionally abusive. Ellie self-injures as a way of dealing. |
| 107 | ** Manny's parents kick her out because she wants to be an actress. |
| 108 | ** Alex's mother uses the money that her daughter earns stripping, which is intended to pay for rent and other necessities, to bail her deadbeat, physically abusive boyfriend out of prison. |
| 109 | ** KC is in foster care when he first comes on the show. KC's mother was an addict who locked her son in a closet so she could go out and get high. She got clean in prison and came out a functioning mother. However, when KC's father gets out of prison, KC and his mother are so afraid they leave town. |
| 110 | ** Jane's father molested her as a preschooler. |
| 111 | ** Miles' father is clearly emotionally abusive from the start but is shown to be physically abusive as well in Season 14. His mother finally leaves his father, but later tries to take him back which sends Miles into a downward spiral until he nearly overdoses and is seen crying in the hospital, telling his mother "When I'm around him I can't breathe". |
| 112 | * ''Series/{{Dexter}}'' |
| 113 | ** [[Characters/DexterDexterMorgan Dexter Morgan]] |
| 114 | *** Good motivations or no, any child psychologist would have a field day with Harry training Dexter to escape justice for his urges, rather than channeling them into legal pursuits, or to treat their sources entirely. |
| 115 | *** [[spoiler:Is himself an example after the events of ''Series/DexterNewBlood'', though unintentionally. He ropes Harrison into being an accomplice to one of his killings, traumatizing Harrison and causing him to have {{flashback}}s to Rita's murder.]] |
| 116 | * ''Series/DinosaurRevolution'': The mother ''Anhanguera'' in “Survival Tactics”. She tries to teach her babies to fly by physically tossing them out of the nest and cares very little if they get hurt or die in the process. When her youngest succeeds and proceeds to passive aggressively mock her, she responds by [[OffingTheOffspring pushing him out with implied intent to kill]]. |
| 117 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'': |
| 118 | ** In the old series, Peri has nightmares of her stepfather doing unpleasant things to her and there's an implication he's abused her in the past. |
| 119 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E7TheIdiotsLantern "The Idiot's Lantern"]] gave us Eddie Connolly, a 1950s patriarch who was a product of his time, treating his son like dirt. His wife finally decides that she's had enough of him and kicks him out of the house when [[spoiler:she finds out that he was the one ratting out several people who fell victim to [[MonsterOfTheWeek the Wire]] (including her mother and several of their neighbours) and having them locked up]]. |
| 120 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E9TheSatanPit "The Satan Pit"]]: It's hinted that Ida Scott's father was one, as the Beast taunts her by describing her as "still running from daddy". |
| 121 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E11FearHer "Fear Her"]]: Judging by the animated drawing the Isolus made of him in the closet, Chloe Webber's late father was a real terror. When the drawing is set loose, he yells that he's "coming to hurt" Chloe. |
| 122 | ** Season 4 also had a somewhat milder example in Sylvia Noble, who [[ObliviouslyEvil didn't seem to realize]] that her daughter [[spoiler:had an inferiority complex]], and that her [[DeadpanSnarker jabs]] were legitimately hurtful to Donna. The Doctor calls her out on this during the finale, and Sylvia becomes much nicer in [[CharacterDevelopment subsequent appearances]]. |
| 123 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS37E2TheGhostMonument "The Ghost Monument"]]: Epzo's mother made him climb a tall tree when he was 4 years old and then got him to jump, promising to catch him, only to step aside. Then she told him he'd learned he couldn't trust anyone. The Doctor, Yaz, Graham, and Ryan are all justifiably horrified, but Epzo seems to feel she was teaching him a valuable lesson in a harsh universe. |
| 124 | ** While not a parent by blood, [[spoiler: early Gallifreyan explorer Tecteun adopted the [[Recap/DoctorWhos38E10TheTimelessChildren Timeless Child]] having found the young Child all alone at the end of a portal. After taking her back to Gallifrey, Tecteun discovers the Child can survive mortal injury by regenerating. Tecteun then subjects the Child to years and years of experiments to try and unlock the secret of regeneration for herself and her people, seemingly 'killing' the Child over and over again in order to do so. Eventually Tecteun succeeds and becomes one of the founders of Time Lord society, having written the ability to regenerate into the DNA of her people without revealing that she discovered it by experimenting on an alien life form. Tecteun later enters the Child into The Division, a sort of black-ops branch of the Time Lords, rather than into a normal place in Time Lord society. Having completed her service, the Time Lords wipe her memory and 'reset' her as a normal Gallifreyan child. Thus began the life of The Doctor]]. |
| 125 | * ''Series/DontLookDeeper'': Sharon and Martin, who are Aisha's parents in different senses (he emotionally, plus “adopting” her basically, while she created Aisha), also manipulated and lied to her over her whole life. Neither told her she's an android, secretly monitored her, made up a fake past (including a dead mom), and showed no signs of ending this. She's naturally very hostile to both of them upon learning about her true past and nature. However, they really do love her and make up for their past treatment by doing all they can to protect Aisha from the robotics company which owns her technology, who want her shut down. |
| 126 | * ''Series/{{Dragnet}}'' had several of these, being a police procedural. One episode had a boy whipped with an electrical cord but returned to his mom, one had a baby ultimately beaten to death after his mom insisted he fell down the stairs, and a couple with JunkieParent types. |
| 127 | * ''Series/{{Due South}}'': Ray Vecchio says his dad was an abusive drunk when he hangs around as a ghost in “North”. |
| 128 | [[/folder]] |
| 129 | |
| 130 | [[folder:E]] |
| 131 | * ''Series/{{Emergency}}'' had an episode where Brackett had to figure out which parent was beating a child. He suspected the dad but it was actually the mother. She’s genuinely remorseful and tries to get help. |
| 132 | * ''Series/{{ER}}'': Doug Ross' father is revealed to have been one of these, thus explaining why child abuse is a really personal issue for him, as well as why he even became a pediatrician in the first place. |
| 133 | * ''Series/TheEternalLove'': Tan Er's stepmother beats her up for the slightest fault while her father stands by and watches. |
| 134 | [[/folder]] |
| 135 | |
| 136 | [[folder:F]] |
| 137 | * ''Series/FateTheWinxSaga'': Queen Luna is definitely very emotionally oppressive and overbearing towards Stella, having trained her daughter with verbal abuse to perfect her magic of light and fiercely punishing her for any failure. For Stella, her mother is nothing more than a constant source of pressure that forces her to maintain at all costs the façade of a feared and respected princess of the mighty kingdom of Solaria. |
| 138 | * ''Series/TheFlightAttendant'': Cassie and Davey's father, Mr. Bowden, was an AlcoholicParent who was highly verbally abusive to Davey, often referring to him with insults such as "sissy" and "fag." He was also physically abusive at times as well and was just generally mean, not even allowing the boy to enjoy a birthday party without it just being more misery for him. Meanwhile, he [[TheUnfavorite favored]] Cassie over Davey, calling her the "son I never had," while at the same time introducing her to alcohol by giving her beer. |
| 139 | * In ''Series/FleshAndBone'' Claire's father is a bitter [[AlcoholicParent alcoholic]] who verbally abuses both his children and is shown to be physically abusive to at least one. |
| 140 | * On ''Series/FreshMeat'', Vod's mom is revealed to be an abusive parent who is addicted to drugs and alcohol. Her nickname for Vod is "Millie", short for "Millstone", and she frequently says she wishes Vod were never born. At the end of the episode, she goes into a coke-fueled rage. |
| 141 | * ''Series/FreaksAndGeeks'': In the fourth episode, we see that [[{{TheBully}} Kim Kelly]]'s parents are nightmares, verbally abusing her all through dinner and escalating into a physical fight that was unsettling enough to make NBC [[{{ScrewedByTheNetwork}} refuse to air the episode]]. |
| 142 | * ''Series/AFrenchVillage'': As a result of her paranoia after World War II, Hortense starts to believe that Tequiero (her adopted son) has been trying to kill her, and thus locks him in a closet to protect herself. |
| 143 | * ''Series/{{Friends}}'': Although PlayedForLaughs, [[{{TheUnfavourite}} Monica]] suffers a lot of emotional abuse from her mother, who either ignores or criticizes her. Chandler's childhood was also pretty [[{{ParentalNeglect}} horrible]]; his parents skipped his first parents' day, announced their divorce on Thanksgiving, [[PrimalScene had orgies with the pool boys in front of him]], and used him as a pawn in their fights. Both characters are clearly screwed up as a result, [[{{CompetitionFreak}} Mon]][[{{ControlFreak}} ica]] striving to be perfect at everything because she never feels good enough, and [[{{StepfordSnarker}} Chandler]] [[SadClown using humor as a defense to hide his crippling insecurity]]. It's not until they fall in love and build a loving relationship together that their self-esteem improves. When in the process of adopting children of their own, they both vow to give their children the kind of parental love neither of them received. |
| 144 | [[/folder]] |
| 145 | |
| 146 | [[folder:G]] |
| 147 | * ''Series/GameOfThrones'': Several: |
| 148 | ** Tywin Lannister is not physically abusive but dominates and demeans each of his children to horrific levels. There's no positive reinforcement and constant DisappointedInYou speeches all around. He's especially vindictive to [[MaternalDeathBlameTheChild Tyrion]], going out of his way to make his life a living hell, despite Tyrion being well into his adulthood. It's safe to say that his poor parenting is his most prominent negative quality, especially since fucking his cousin was indirectly responsible for Tyrion's birth defects. |
| 149 | ** Craster, who rapes his daughters and sacrifices his sons to the White Walkers. |
| 150 | ** Samwell Tarly joined the Night's Watch when his father threatened to arrange a HuntingAccident. |
| 151 | ** Balon Greyjoy who greeted his only surviving son with scorn and in "Mhysa" refused to even consider ransoming him when he was captured by the Boltons because Theon disobeyed him by attacking Winterfell and because Theon is -- according to Balon -- "no longer a man". Yara didn't have it much better. While he doesn't abuse her like he does Theon, he's still a {{Jerkass}} to her and only sees her as an heir he could replace if he needed to. Even then, Yara implies that Balon treated them like dirt more or less equally when they were children. |
| 152 | --->'''Yara:''' We both loved our mother. We both... ''endured'' our father... |
| 153 | ** Daenerys was raised by her borderline-psychotic brother Viserys, whose sanity was not helped at all by the death of their parents, the constant threat of assassination, and the general stress of being a NobleFugitive. It's safe to say, he was not the most felicitous of guardians, abusing her emotionally and it is also implied sexually. |
| 154 | ** Selyse views her daughter Shireen with contempt bordering on violent hatred, neglecting her at best and proposing beating her for being 'sinful' at worst. |
| 155 | ** Tyrion predicts that Bronn was beaten by his father. Bronn concedes this, but adds that his mother hit harder and once broke his nose swinging a poker at his brother, according to a story he tells in "Blackwater". And the first person he killed was a woman who swung an axe at him... Make of that what you will. |
| 156 | ** Shae is very touchy on the subject of her parents but does reveal to Varys that her mother made sure she "stopped being a child" at age nine. |
| 157 | * In ''Series/TheGeorgeLopezShow'', Benny Lopez was pretty bad to George as a kid, but it was more due to George's dad walking out on her and not having the money herself to afford it. The ''real'' abusive parents are hers, who make her look like a decent mother compared to them. |
| 158 | * ''Series/GilmoreGirls'': |
| 159 | ** Paris's parents decide to evade their tax responsibilities and leave the country, leaving her high and dry when the IRS moved in, and she was forced to take work and move into a skeevy apartment featuring a "doo-wop group" on the front steps in order to get through the last two years of Yale. |
| 160 | ** It's also implied Jess suffered physical/emotional abuse at the hands of some of Liz's boyfriends, with numerous comments about her 'choice in men'. |
| 161 | * ''Series/{{Glee}}'': |
| 162 | ** [[TokenEvilTeammate Santana]] [[ArmoredClosetGay Lopez]] had an abusive grandmother who tried to sell her once, threatened to beat her with a chair, and apparently insulted and demeaned her grandchild so much she forgot her real name. When she told her she was lesbian, she kicked her out of her house, leaving Santana homeless and has refused to have any more contact with her. |
| 163 | ** From the same show, we also have [[DefrostingIceQueen Quinn]] [[TeenPregnancy Fabray]], whose father ''also'' throws her out of his house with no place to go, because Quinn has become pregnant. Three years later and Quinn still hasn't [[ParentalAbandonment seen her father since]]. Her mother on the other hand constantly ignores her emotional problems and is never around when Quinn is pregnant, depressed, behind at school, smoking, having sex with men four times her age, getting underage tattoos, or trying to steal back her biological daughter. Her mother is however there for her daughter when she is the "perfect model student". |
| 164 | ** As it turns out, Sue herself. During an interview with Geraldo Rivera (who picks apart Sue's lifelong list of lies), Sue defends herself on her parents being too busy hunting Nazis. Cue an interview with her mom who makes it clear they lied about being Nazi hunters as they just couldn't stand being around such a horrible daughter. Sue is rocked to realize that her parents basically gave up on her and abused her by leaving her alone, which helped turn Sue into such an abusive mess herself. |
| 165 | * ''Series/GoodbyeMyPrincess'': The emperor and empress of Li Dynasty. The emperor whips Cheng Ji because he wore mourning for murdered students. The empress beats Cheng Yin -- [[WouldHurtAChild who was a child at the time]] -- because he said he wanted to play with his brothers instead of plotting against them. |
| 166 | * In ''Series/TheGoodDoctor'', Shaun's father physically and emotionally abused him, causing Shaun and his brother to run away from home. |
| 167 | * In the 1970s situation comedy ''Series/GoodTimes'', the Evans family (the main protagonists), Willona Woods (their neighbor), and building superintendent Bookman intervene when they learn that Penny, a little girl living in their building, is being physically abused by her mother. The show features one particularly nightmarish scene of the mother punishing her daughter by burning her arm with an iron. The story arc plays out over four episodes to open the 1977-1978 season. Penny (played by a very young Janet Jackson) is eventually adopted by Willona and becomes a regular character in the series. |
| 168 | * Practically every single parent in ''Series/GossipGirl'', but especially Bart Bass. To the point that telling his son, Chuck, "Bart would/wouldn’t be proud", will immediately make him do anything to get back where his father would want him to be. [[spoiler:He (Bart) also tries to ''kill'' the guy in a later season.]] |
| 169 | * ''Series/GothamKnights2023'': |
| 170 | ** Harper and Cullen ran away from home to escape their abusive father, an alcoholic who beat them. |
| 171 | ** Harvey Dent it turns out also had an abusive father with mental illness giving him totally different personalities, with one beating him for even the slightest thing and the other a perfect, loving man who'd been totally unaware of this. |
| 172 | ** As per canon, Stephanie Brown's father, and to a somewhat lesser extent her mother, are emotionally abusive. Later her mother slaps her as well. |
| 173 | * In ''Series/GreysAnatomy'', Alex Karev's father was physically abusive to his mother and perhaps to Alex and his siblings as well, until Alex grew strong enough to beat him up and kick him out of the house. Because of this, Alex is extremely emotionally involved with cases involving abuse. |
| 174 | * In ''Series/{{Greenleaf}}'', this is generational. The Greenleaf parents, James and Mae are never physically abusive, but they tend to emotionally abuse and pin the siblings against each other by showing favoritism depending on the situation. |
| 175 | ** The oldest, Grace, is the favorite of James, but Mae tends to ostracize her, blame Grace for things that aren’t her fault, and endorse other family members to gang up on her verbally. Mae also tends to push her own problems onto Grace rather than taking responsibility. James is better, but also seems to push Grace to do things she’s not interested in and puts a lot of pressure on her to follow in his footsteps. |
| 176 | ** Jacob, as the only son, gets a lot of the pressure from James that he gives to Grace with none of the favoritism, and he’s essentially her replacement while she’s gone, unable to live for himself. When he wants to branch out, both his parents take it as a personal attack. Interestingly, he is the favorite of Mae, though she tends to baby him, and reacts theatrically when he goes against her wishes. |
| 177 | ** Charity does not receive the ludicrous expectations of her siblings, nor is she explicitly TheUnFavorite, but seems emotionally neglected by both parents, since they each favor her older siblings. She tends to have any good news in her life overshadowed by her siblings' problems. |
| 178 | ** While it's not known exactly how her relationship with her parents was, Faith, before her death, had her [[spoiler: sexual assault by Uncle Mac]] overlooked by her parents with no investigation. |
| 179 | ** [[spoiler: As it turns out,Mae and her siblings, Mavis and Mac, suffered from this as well; their father was sexually abusing Mae, and physically abusive to Mavis.]] |
| 180 | [[/folder]] |
| 181 | |
| 182 | [[folder:H]] |
| 183 | * In ''Series/TheHandmaidsTale'' episode "The Last Ceremony", June meets up with her daughter Hannah and finds out that, according to Hannah, her new set of "parents" use physical punishment when she misbehaves. |
| 184 | * ''Series/{{Hanna}}'': |
| 185 | ** The Utrax girls are raised without parents, with their closest equivalent (the Utrax trainers) drugging and indoctrinating them as trained assassins. |
| 186 | ** Though we don't get many details, Melissa's father as she grew up was highly abusive, physically and psychologically, claiming this was to make her tough. |
| 187 | * In ''Series/{{Helix}}'', The Farragut brothers had an angry, violent drunk for a father, which, according to Alan, lies at the root of some of Peter's behavioral tics. In one of his video logs, Peter uses a hand signal that used to mean their father was home and angry to communicate his distress at working for Arctic Biosystems, either as a deliberate warning or reflexively. When infected with TheVirus, Peter holes up in {{Air Vent Passageway}}s, which Alan points out mirrors Peter's tendency to hide from their father in the attic. |
| 188 | * Both Niki Sanders and Elle Bishop in ''Series/{{Heroes}}'' were abused by their fathers, though neither actually remembers it. In Niki's case, her alter ego due to SplitPersonality does remember and also suggests that her father killed her deceased sister. Elle's father is alleged to have performed invasive experiments on her when she was very young, with the memories of this being removed through the use of another character's ability, and is shown to be generally cold and manipulative toward her. |
| 189 | * ''Series/HigherGround'': Many of the characters had these. |
| 190 | ** Juliette's mother constantly pushed for her to look perfect, so much she developed bulimia and cut herself. |
| 191 | ** Daisy's mother was verbally abusive to her. |
| 192 | ** Scott's stepmother raped him. |
| 193 | ** Shelby's stepfather [[spoiler:raped both her and her younger sister]]. |
| 194 | * ''Series/HomicideLifeOnTheStreet'': |
| 195 | ** Bayliss's father was emotionally abusive and by Bayliss's admission only saw him as an inconvenience. |
| 196 | ** One episode had the VictimOfTheWeek's father be disturbingly apathetic after being informed that he was dead, and admit he didn't care about his son's well-being. |
| 197 | ** In "Hate Crimes", a HeteronormativeCrusader (Creator/TerryOQuinn) declares he's happy his son is dead when Pembleton and Bayliss inform him he was gay. When their investigation proves that the son was simply friends with several gay people, the man celebrates that his son was straight after all, much to their disgust. |
| 198 | * ''Series/{{House}}'': |
| 199 | ** Dr. House's father started out as just a harsh bastard who didn't see eye to eye with his son, but then, as is so often the case, more than a few nasty things popped up about him. He doesn't believe in unconditional love; he apparently never told his son that he was right or did the right thing; he [[DeniedFoodAsPunishment forbade Greg to eat if he was even a minute late for a meal]]; he made him sleep outside and take ice baths when he was a child (trust the writers to go for things that are considered torture in some places); and after a 12-year-old Greg told him (truthfully, though on an educated guess) that he wasn't his real father, he refused to speak to Greg for two months. But, even after all this and in the last fifteen minutes of "Birthmarks", House (in his own guarded way) admits that his father's death has affected him more than he would care to admit. Greg House hated his dad so much, he convinced himself that he wasn't his biological son. Not only [[spoiler:was he right, but he made the deduction based on red flags spotted when he was fourteen]], something that impresses even Wilson. He even [[spoiler:deduced his actual father, or so we're led to believe until Season 8]]. |
| 200 | ** Chase was abandoned by his father -- a brilliant but seriously unstable rheumatologist -- at age 15 and left to take care of his sister and alcoholic mother for the next few years. Flash forward to Season 2, when [[spoiler:his father dies of lung cancer without even mentioning he was sick and cuts Chase out of his will.]] He became a doctor because he had frequently read the medical texts in his father's study... where his mother would lock him for hours on end whenever she couldn't deal with him. |
| 201 | * In ''Series/HouseOfAnubis'', there's Victor's father, who was at least emotionally abusive. In flashbacks, his father was shown yelling at him and demanding he get information out of his friend Sarah about the treasure her parents hid. When Victor argued, he threatened that he would throw him in the orphanage, and called him a 'useless piece of nothing'. In Season 2, the ghost of his father originally, when talking to Nina, continued insulting Victor. However, in the end, just before he faded, he left a gift for his son and gave Nina a message to pass on: "Tell him I'm sorry, and that I was the worthless one after all." |
| 202 | ** Mr. Sweet, Eddie's father, also had a bit of this going on in the third season. He started putting his mission before Eddie, which caused problems when they ended up on opposing sides. He showed no problems with manipulating and betraying Eddie to get what he wanted. Unlike the above example, it is unknown if he ever reconciled with Eddie; but in ''[[TheMovie Touchstone Of Ra]]'', he clearly cared for Eddie when his life was at risk, implying they were on good terms once again. |
| 203 | ** Joy's father kidnapped her and kept her locked up with no ability to contact the outside world, all just because she was supposedly TheChosenOne who was needed to help the society, of which he was a member, gain immortality. |
| 204 | ** Amber's father wasn't the nicest either. She seems fine with talking to him over the phone when asking for money but got nervous when she found out he was going to be coming to the boarding school. When the audience meets him, he comes off as cold and judgmental, and was harsh to Amber after she supposedly ended up in the gatehouse through sleepwalking (really getting trapped there after a Sibuna mission). However, he did want what was best for her and agreed to send her to the fashion school so she could follow her dreams...if she agreed to never go back to Anubis House again. |
| 205 | * ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'': |
| 206 | ** Robin's father [[WhyCouldntYouBeDifferent not only wished she was a boy but actively pretended she was for pretty much her whole life]]. And even if Robin had been male, that still doesn't excuse his parental techniques, such as, say, abandoning her in the woods for a week on her fourteenth birthday. |
| 207 | ** Lily and Barney's fathers abandoned them when they were fairly young. Lily has clear trust issues with her father, and Barney has a breakdown upon finding that [[spoiler: his father has settled down and raised a happy suburban family.]] |
| 208 | [[/folder]] |
| 209 | |
| 210 | [[folder:I]] |
| 211 | * In ''Series/ICarly'' we have Marissa Benson who is always abusive to her son as well as a huge MamaBear. |
| 212 | * In ''Series/IClaudius'', Claudius' mother Antonia complains early on that her child is very difficult to love thanks to his stammer, limp, and palsy (Ancient Rome have a very brutal attitude towards most disability). She berates him throughout his life for being an embarrassment. Even when he hallucinates her ghost as an old man, she's scolding him for a runny nose. She has no sympathy for his sadness when she announces her plans for suicide, and although she asks him to perform the final rites on her body, she backtracks and has her personal slave do it without telling him. |
| 213 | * ''Series/InFromTheCold'': |
| 214 | ** [[spoiler:Anya/Jenny's mother Svetlana. She forces her daughter into dangerous work as a spy, physically manhandles her when she protests, and ultimately tries to kill her.]] |
| 215 | ** Downplayed with Jenny: she seizes Becca by the throat and then slams her up against a wall in a rage after the latter insults her over thinking she's sleeping with Chauncey. She's distraught and apologetic for it later on. |
| 216 | * ''Series/{{Intergalactic}}'': Tula does love Genevieve in her way, but she also tries to control her and has made her into a living weapon with a cybernetic enhancement. |
| 217 | * ''Series/InterviewWithTheVampire2022'': |
| 218 | ** In "[[Recap/InterviewWithTheVampire2022S1E1InThroesOfIncreasingWonder In Throes of Increasing Wonder...]]", Lestat de Lioncourt recounts how his father had beaten and starved him simply because he had studied religion at a monastery and wanted to become a priest. |
| 219 | ** Claudia mentions in her journal that her "mean old auntie" (who was her [[{{Nephewism}} legal guardian]] because Claudia's mother had [[DeathByChildbirth died in childbirth]] and her father had [[DisappearedDad abandoned her]]) had beaten her. |
| 220 | ** Although Lestat seems fond of his vampire daughter Claudia at first, it becomes clear that he mainly sees her as [[BabiesMakeEverythingBetter a means to an end to keep his boyfriend Louis de Pointe du Lac by his side]], and when she no longer fulfills this purpose, he doesn't feel much responsibility towards her. After the incident with Charlie in "[[Recap/InterviewWithTheVampire2022S1E4TheRuthlessPursuitOfBloodWithAllA ...The Ruthless Pursuit of Blood with All a Child's Demanding]]", he's through playing "Uncle Les" and doesn't hide his disdain for her, being physically rough with her and outright calling her "[[AMistakeIsBorn a mistake]]" in "[[Recap/InterviewWithTheVampire2022S1E5AVileHungerForYourHammeringHeart A Vile Hunger for Your Hammering Heart]]". In "[[Recap/InterviewWithTheVampire2022S1E6LikeAngelsPutInHellByGod Like Angels Put in Hell by God]]", he threatens to kill her if she runs away from home again, and in "[[Recap/InterviewWithTheVampire2022S1E7TheThingLayStill The Thing Lay Still]]", he plans to [[OffingTheOffspring murder her]] so that [[JealousParent Lestat has no more competition for Louis' affection]]. |
| 221 | ** Louis doesn't harm Claudia for the most part, but there is one notable exception: in [[Recap/InterviewWithTheVampire2022S1E7TheThingLayStill the Season 1 finale]], he slams her against the armoire while tightly grasping her neck -- which is identical to what Lestat did to her in [[Recap/InterviewWithTheVampire2022S1E5AVileHungerForYourHammeringHeart the fifth episode]]. |
| 222 | * ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'': |
| 223 | ** Barbara Reynolds was a [[GoldDigger gold-digging]] {{sociopath}} who emotionally abused Dee and treated her as TheUnFavorite her entire life, calling her an accident in her will and leaving her nothing despite the fact that she and Dennis were twins. On the flip-side, she smothered Dennis with unearned praise resulting in him becoming a {{narcissist}} [[DelayedDiagnosis with Borderline Personality Disorder]]. |
| 224 | ** Frank Reynolds on the other hand emotionally tortured them both, getting their hopes up every Christmas and filming their disappointment when it was just an empty box "to teach them a lesson". He continues in the series, vastly preferring Charlie, assuming the twins were just born evil, waterboarding Dee and humiliating her when she's suicidal, and breaking Dennis's brain when he pimps him out to old women. |
| 225 | ** While Bonnie Kelly truly does love Charlie, she's both smothering and neglectful, constantly guilting him with her anxiety but also inviting his Uncle Jack around, who everyone else can tell sexually abused Charlie. |
| 226 | ** Mrs Mac mostly dialogues solely in grunts, which Mac kids himself is her form of affection, doesn't think anything of her son, and will burn him with a cigarette lighter if he talks too much. Charlie is incredulous that Mac would rather chase after her affections and ignore his NiceGuy uncle who wants to connect with him. |
| 227 | [[/folder]] |
| 228 | |
| 229 | [[folder:K-L]] |
| 230 | * ''Franchise/KamenRider'' is filled to the brink with this trope. |
| 231 | ** ''Series/KamenRiderRyuki'': The whole reason why the Rider War came to be was that Yui and Shiro's parents locked them up in their attic for extended periods of time to the point where Yui got sick and eventually died. |
| 232 | ** ''Series/KamenRider555'': Yuka's parents treated her horribly and preferred her older sister Michiko, which she dismisses her of not being her sister. When she told the [[CryingWolf lie about]] [[DisproportionateRetribution Yuka pushing her of the hill]], her parents [[IHaveNoSon disowned]] and [[KicktheDog kicked Yuka out.]] |
| 233 | ** ''Series/KamenRiderKiva'': King attempted to kill his infant son in the 1986 timeline. Taiga was insurance so that Maya would be loyal to him and was perfectly willing to kill them both in the end. |
| 234 | ** ''Series/KamenRiderDouble'': Ryubee was a caring parent, but his ambition led to Saeko being seen as TheUnFavorite and eventually treating Wakana as a tool and sacrifice. He comes to regret this by his death. |
| 235 | ** In ''Series/KamenRiderGaim'', it's implied that Takatora and Michhy's father was emotionally abusive and his darkness was passed onto the latter. |
| 236 | ** ''Series/KamenRiderDrive'' started this trend for '''four years in a row''. For Drive, [[spoiler: Tenjuro Banno turned out to be the true BigBad and the father of Kiriko and Gou. He uses the former in a bait trap without worry about her surviving and calls Gou a failed experiment and nearly kills him several times. Thankfully, Chase's sacrifice gave Gou the drive and the form necessary to end his father.]] |
| 237 | ** ''Series/KamenRiderGhost'': Its subverted with [[spoiler: The Fukami's father who makes a proper debut in the movie. He cares about his kids but abandoned them to stop Argos. However, he brushes off Makoto at the time, which leads to their fight since he never told the kids about him leaving, he just did it out of the blue in their perspective. Their real father, Danton is worse, and nearly killed his son in the Specter V-Cinema]] |
| 238 | ** ''Series/KamenRiderExAid'' takes things even worse...[[spoiler: At first, it seems like Masamune Dan is the good parent who was manipulated by Kuroto Dan, but as it turns out, Masamune has been manipulating his son for years: taking the fall for Zero Day on purpose to keep his hidden agenda, and stealing Kamen Rider Chronicle from his own son. And while Kuroto also had a hidden goal to save his mother's data, Masamune wants to use it to control everyone as data, not even caring about his own wife ([[EvenEvilHasLovedOnes at least until he confirmed otherwise]]). He even lies to Kuroto about loving him and going to prison for his sake which his son calls him out on. In one episode, he even kills Kuroto without any hesitation, although that doesn't work since he has 94 lives left. This is taken to the point where he viewed his own son's talents as merely a product of the Genm Corporation. Given how many of Genm's shown games were Kuroto's ideas it goes to show how little he values his son, and why Kuroto ended up the way he did.]] |
| 239 | * ''Series/KeepBreathing'': Liv's mom was pretty cold to her as a girl, treating her as a nuisance usually. It really messed up Liv, leaving her fearing intimacy and thus pushing away Danny although he's a good man who's loving toward her while desiring a relationship. It's also indicated to be why she's leery of being a mother herself after she's gotten pregnant by Danny, afraid she'll be bad at it given her experience. |
| 240 | * ''Series/LAsFinest'': Nancy and Nico's mom physically abused them both, including hitting or burning them using cigarettes. |
| 241 | * It also shows up many times in the original ''Series/LawAndOrder'': |
| 242 | ** Mike Logan's mother was a rather nasty piece of work -- an alcoholic and a devout Catholic who had no trouble "beating him with one hand while holding her Rosary in the other". The additional trauma of being abused by his parish priest (something his mother refused to believe) left him with a deep, almost pathological, anger that drove a lot of his CowboyCop tendencies. |
| 243 | ** Victims and some of the defendants were often shown to have been subjected to this. One episode had the police find a teenage boy chained to a radiator, while another had a girl whose mother and grandmother wanted to do "traditional" vaginal mutilation. The worst has to be a female cult leader, whose children talk about how they were made to perform all kinds of sex acts while she ''watched'' |
| 244 | * Also happened a few times in ''Series/LawAndOrderCriminalIntent''. In the episode "Crazy", the team found out that the victim had molested his young daughter. [[spoiler: Except he didn't. His ex-wife was becoming desperate and accused her husband of the crime, despite knowing what really happened.]] |
| 245 | ** Goren himself, on ''Criminal Intent'', had a verbally abusive (as well as severely mentally ill) mother who favored his drug-abusing brother even though Goren was the one who took care of her. It was later revealed that his deceased father, who had also treated Goren poorly, [[spoiler:wasn't actually his father and that his real father had betrayed her trust and hurt her a few years after Goren was born, which contributed to the way his mother treated him]]. |
| 246 | * Child abuse of all flavors is one of the specialties of ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'', but since rape is the other, sexual abuse against minors is one of their most frequent case types. Female circumcision is one plot that shows up more than it in all likelihood would. |
| 247 | ** One episode had a set of white parents arrange for their black adopted child to be killed by white supremacists so they could collect the insurance money. |
| 248 | ** Another episode had a grandmother who was poisoning her granddaughter in a way to make it look like she had cancer, so she could collect insurance money [[MunchausenSyndrome and sympathy.]] |
| 249 | ** Actually, a fair number of the main characters have been victims of parents who were either physically or emotionally abusive. (In fact, those who ''weren't'' would probably be a shorter list.) |
| 250 | *** Benson's mother was a drunk because she had been raped, resulting in Benson's birth; she emotionally abused her, neglected her, and once tried to kill her with a piece of glass during a drunken rampage. |
| 251 | *** Stabler's father was physically and emotionally abusive; he once destroyed a school project of Stabler's because Stabler didn't do it exactly the way he told him to and then beat him when he cried about it. His mother, meanwhile, meant well but had untreated bipolar disorder that caused her to behave erratically toward him. |
| 252 | *** Amaro's father beat him and his mother horribly. Amaro's mother eventually kicked him out and initially they were happy about it, but some years down the road, she and Amaro's younger sister reconciled with him and gaslighted all of the abuse, blaming Amaro for hating his father and blowing things out of proportion. |
| 253 | *** While never explicitly stated, during a conversation with Amaro, Barba hints that his father was also abusive like Amaro's. |
| 254 | *** While Fin never mentions being abused, his ex-wife was -- she was raped by her own father as a child, resulting in her becoming pregnant, and then her mother didn't even allow her to give the child up for adoption. As a result, she began to resent him, seeing him as a symbol of her abuse, and was even physically violent with him on occasion; while Fin doesn't necessarily endorse everything she did, he understands why she did it after he finds out about the rape. Fin himself was on the very mild end of the spectrum for neglect as he was largely an [[WhenYouComingHomeDad absent parent]], due to his work with Vice often taking him away from his family for long periods of time, and he eventually became estranged from his son after he and his wife divorced; however, they do eventually reconcile and are able to form a strong positive relationship. |
| 255 | *** Rollins' mother neglected her and her younger sister, and their dad was a dead-beat gambler. Her sister eventually becomes manipulative, wanting to ruin Rollins for being able to escape their family and become a cop, and tries to ruin her life by framing her for her own crime sprees. Despite knowing fully well that her youngest daughter was on the run (and that her crimes included rape, murder, drugging men, robbery, and fraud), Rollins' mother fully supports her crimes and blames Rollins for ruining their lives and being a failure. |
| 256 | * ''Series/LawAndOrderUK'': Strongly implied with Logan's {{Expy}}, DS Matt Devlin; his contempt for a child abuser ("I know people like you"), the fact that victimizing children makes him really angry, his empathy with an abused kid ("I've been that kid, Ronnie"), and with a young woman who refers to her father as a "bastard" ("Are we related then, do you think?"), but neither the extent nor specific perpetrator was ever made clear. |
| 257 | * In one episode of ''Literature/LessonsForAPerfectDetectiveStory'', the murder victim was physically abusing his daughter which started causing her sleep problems. [[spoiler:Subverted when it's revealed that it wasn't "him" but his second personality that did it.]] |
| 258 | * ''Series/{{Lost}}'': All the characters have family issues, but Ben's father in particular is so nasty to him (blaming him for his mother's death in childbirth) that the viewer almost cheers when [[spoiler:Ben kills him.]] |
| 259 | ** Ben's case really includes 3 types -- emotional abuse, neglect, and physical abuse. Roger blames him for his mother's death, hits and manhandles him (breaking his glasses at one point), and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking always forgets his birthday]]. The only time he cares about his son is when [[spoiler:Sayid shoots little Ben]]. |
| 260 | ** Locke's father, Anthony Cooper, not only [[spoiler:stole Locke's kidney and pushed him out of an 8-story window]], but [[spoiler:was also the original Sawyer -- you know, the man who ruined James Ford's father's life so badly that he murdered his wife and killed himself]]. |
| 261 | * Kenzi's stepfather from ''Series/LostGirl'' used to lock her in a closet for laughing too loud, and it's implied that he was sexually abusive. |
| 262 | * ''Series/LostLoveInTimes'': The emperor is very cruel towards his children. In the first episode, he frames Yuan Ling for theft because Yuan Ling is too skilled and the emperor thinks he's a threat. Noble Consort Yin goes a step further and ''[[OffingTheOffspring sends an assassin to kill]]'' her son. |
| 263 | [[/folder]] |
| 264 | |
| 265 | [[folder:M]] |
| 266 | * ''Series/MadMen'' |
| 267 | ** Don Draper's father abused him physically (partially explaining how he got so messed up). |
| 268 | *** Given how he was born, Don was probably also emotionally abused by [[InsistentTerminology his father's wife]]. [[spoiler:"I'm a whoreson, didn't you know?"]] |
| 269 | ** On the other hand, messed-up as he is, Don never physically abuses his children; Don generally tends towards [[BumblingDad well-meaning cluelessness]]. Unfortunately, his cluelessness conspires with his [[TheStoic stoicism]] to come off as aloofness, and he forgets important events all too frequently. That said, even if you count this as emotional abuse or neglect -- and some, perhaps many, would not -- it's peanuts compared to... |
| 270 | ** Betty, who has long been icy and manipulative towards her children -- especially [[DaddysGirl her daughter Sally]]. She even begins to hit her as time goes on (for instance, after she cuts her hair). Her second husband, Henry Francis, is much more understanding but runs into a brick wall when he tries to explain to her that she might be part of Sally's problem. |
| 271 | ** [[GenerationXerox Betty's mother]]. |
| 272 | * A VerySpecialEpisode of ''Series/MajorDad'' dealt with this, with Robin's new boyfriend being beaten by his father (another USMC major). Major [=McGillis=] eventually confronts his fellow major (leading to a SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome), and the episode's [[TheStinger stinger]] featured actors Gerald [=McRaney=] and Nicole Dubuc providing a hotline number for domestic abuse victims. |
| 273 | * Francis implies that Lois in ''Series/MalcolmInTheMiddle'' was physically abusive in addition to the more well-known abuses in finance. For instance, when listing all of the punishments that they should make themselves immune to after she thinks they burned her red dress and is interrogating them as to which ones ruined it [[spoiler: (which turns out to be neither of them, as it was actually Hal, the father, who did the deed)]], he lists them as crushing their toys, making them spin around with their heads on baseball bats to make themselves dizzy, corner standing, laying under a dusty couch, single interrogations, loud children's songs, and threatening to smash the TV. In another episode, it was also shown that her punishments towards Francis actually made him incapable of being humiliated; a cult, which had been trying to haze him, eventually learn his secret and actually adopt Lois's punishments to use on new recruits as their new method of hazing. |
| 274 | ** However bad Lois was, Ida was ''even worse'', to the point where [[EvenEvilHasStandards even Lois says that she is and always will be a twisted monster of a mother]], but she at least has some love for her family as she pushed Dewey out of the way of a large truck, which cost Ida her leg. |
| 275 | ** Francis hates her so much because of psychological abuse which can be just as bad or worse as physical abuse. |
| 276 | *** Francis was probably disturbed to begin with. For starters, Francis as a toddler did several terrible things, including dousing his teddy bear with lighter fluid. After witnessing this Lois set the teddy bear on fire in the fireplace becoming the lady she is today when at first she spoiled him. |
| 277 | *** The end of that episode hinted that Francis wasn’t insane, he was hyped up on sugar due to Lois feeding him chocolate every 5 seconds. Jamie was acting up in that episode as well because Reese was feeding him energy drinks so Lois traumatized two of her children for no reason. |
| 278 | *** Actually Lois has been torturing Francis since the day she came home because in her own words, "he started it" (Lois had to stay at the hospital and Francis went home happy). The bear episode showed Francis after he could walk and talk his first year as payback for being a happy baby she dumped Francis with Ida, and Ida abused him. Shouting, hitting, cutting, enforced cross-dressing, I think maybe there was something about cigarette burns in one of the Christmas specials? Lois wasn’t any better: according to Hal, Francis’s first words were "You shut up!" And in a later episode, we see Jamie's first words: [[spoiler: Shut up, mom!]] |
| 279 | *** Her first instinct as a parent was to torture her child for being happy; she is no better a parent than Ida. |
| 280 | ** Francis technically isn't a parent (yet, anyways), but he did abuse his brothers Malcolm and Reese rather physically, such as locking them up in a closet, stealing their toys, frequently torturing them, and scarring Reese on the shoulder with a bayonet (which he says he has no idea where he got from). |
| 281 | ** In the series finale, Lois actively made sure Malcolm didn't get that high-paying job that he EARNED by sole virtue of merit. Yeah, she did it because she wanted Malcolm to become president, someone who will know how people like them live and would be able to do something about it. However, Malcolm's family's problems largely are their own fault. She's also said at one point that she'll happily throw Malcolm's future away to save Reese (the family failure). |
| 282 | *** Malcolm helped Reese cheat in school and was found out, at which point the teacher (who had been giving Reese failing grades because of personal bias) challenges that Lois wouldn't sell the 'good' son down the river for the 'bad' son. The context of the conversation makes it very clear that she isn't saying she would throw away either of their futures, but that she is aware of which one has the higher skill set. She says if she had to choose one over the other, she'd sell Malcolm down the river because 'he'll be alright no matter what', and that Reese is the one who NEEDS help. It is definitely questionable whether this mentality is fair or even if it is abusive, but the situation is not quite so black-and-white as throwing away Malcolm's future. It's more about which one she'd choose if she could only throw one life-saver: the one who could swim or the one who couldn't. |
| 283 | ** Hal kept a $10,000 grant Malcolm earned a secret from him. He also charged an expensive Christmas vacation on Malcolm's credit card; Malcolm wasn't completely innocent here, seeing as though he was responsible with it he got the card illegally, but still... |
| 284 | ** Lois takes 3/4 of Malcolm's paycheck from Lucky Aid with no reason given. |
| 285 | ** Malcolm was offered a full scholarship to a prestigious boarding school and knowing they wouldn't let him go under normal conditions, he makes a very rational argument that with him away, the family could actually afford a coming baby without being drowned in debt. Rather than let him go, Hal chastises him by telling him "you don't get to leave", with only the rationale that something will come up to keep the family afloat. |
| 286 | *** The rationale is actually that MALCOLM would be the one to come up with something. Which doesn't necessarily negate the point, but he says that Malcolm can't go to the prestigious school because they need him there to help them figure out how to stay afloat. |
| 287 | ** Reese also implied at one point that his parents' antics with their children resulted in Child Services arriving at least once, with Hal and Lois somehow managing to get them off of their backs. When Hal locks up the kids in a room and ties them down in order to keep anyone from getting injured (long story short, he forgot to renew medical insurance), Reese stated that he'll call Child Services and that "This time, they'll know!" |
| 288 | ** Dabney's mother also deserves mention as being a terrible example of MyBelovedSmother, trying to make her son be the star of the class carnival and angrily scolding him when Malcolm is the one that ended up being the center of attention. In a later episode, we learn that she always expects him outside the shower to dry her off and for his birthday she got him a hairbrush ''so he could brush HER hair''. He tells Malcolm he knows he thinks he's a momma's boy, to which Malcolm replies [[EverybodyHasStandards "No, momma's boys laugh at you with their moms"]]. [[spoiler: at the end of the episode, however, he ends up standing for himself, even making his mom gasp in amazement]]. |
| 289 | * ''Series/MarriedWithChildren'': |
| 290 | ** Al and Peg Bundy can be considered outright abusive to Kelly and Bud. Sometimes with physical threats, but mostly it was neglect, emotional anguish, and financial abuse. And if they do bother to feed, clothe, immunize, advise and care for their children, it's usually in a bizarre and ass-backwards way that's considered illegal in the real world. While Al isn't a very good father, he at least does grant the kids allowances (as shown in the opening sequence) and works hard at a shoe store to provide for them, Peg mistreats the kids simply out of [[ItsAllAboutMe selfishness]] except for occasional PetTheDog moments as shown in "A Three Job No Income Family" and "At the Zoo". |
| 291 | ** Marcy has multiple stories about how growing up was less than pleasant. One such tale involves her mother selling her beloved dog Chester for fifty cents at a yard sale, and using said money to go on vacation and leave Marcy home alone, crying and begging for Chester to come back home. |
| 292 | * A ''Series/{{MASH}}'' episode has Frank Burns telling Trapper, "I'm from a very strict family. We weren't allowed to talk at meals. We couldn't even ''hum''. Anybody who hummed got a punch in the throat." |
| 293 | * In the ''Series/MastersOfHorror'' episode "Imprint", the disfigured prostitute's father was a violent drunk who beat her mother and [[spoiler:raped his inbred daughter, prompting her to kill him.]] |
| 294 | * ''Series/MasterOfStudy'': Not physical and in some cases, unintentional. But nonetheless the parents of the special class kids sans Baekhyun's grandmother are abusive to their children one way or another. |
| 295 | ** Pulip's mother is negligent and doesn't really seem to care for her. |
| 296 | ** Chandu's parents cannot see their son other than an idiot and what they want him to be. |
| 297 | ** Bonggu's parents don't really expect much of him, unintentionally discouraging him of his future. |
| 298 | * ''Series/MelrosePlace'': [[spoiler: Alison is revealed to have been sexually abused by her father during childhood alongside her sister. When this came out, said father threatened the former's life while their mother (who knew of the abuse) blamed them and outright said that she wished that they were never born.]] |
| 299 | ** Hyeonjung's parents are revealed to [[spoiler:not care about her and have not been a part of their daughter's life since she was 13/14, having divorced and then remarrying respectively; Hyeonjung has been living alone since that age.[[note]]South Korea starts school a bit later, with the average 6th grader being either 13 or 14 years old.[[/note]]]] |
| 300 | * ''Series/TheMentalist'': |
| 301 | ** Lisbon has this as part of her backstory. Her father was an abusive [[AlcoholicParent alcoholic]] who left her to [[PromotionToParent raise her three brothers]]. [[JerkAss Jane]] is not above using this [[KickTheDog to manipulate her]], most notably in a recent Season 3 episode. |
| 302 | ** In a flashback, Jane himself was shown to have had an emotionally abusive father who brought him up to think of all other people as objects to be lied to, stolen from, and thrown away when no longer required. |
| 303 | * In ''Series/MrRobot'', Elliot's mother was a cruel, chain-smoking woman who was embittered by her husband's ignominious death and apparently took out her frustrations on her son. Elliot's dream in "m4ster-s1ave.aes" has [[spoiler: her putting out a cigarette on Darlene's arm as well as punching her out a few times, meaning that she was likely abusive to her daughter as well.]] Elliot doesn't see his father this way, though his UnreliableNarrator status, combined with the knowledge that his father once supposedly pushed him out of a window in a fit of anger, and the fact that [[spoiler: he manifests as a dangerous, manipulative [[Film/FightClub Tyler Durden]] figure in Elliot's subconscious]] may cast some doubt. [[spoiler: In 407 Proxy Authentication Required, we find out that Elliot was sexually molested by his father as a child, and repressed this memory by creating the Mr Robot persona to ‘protect him’. The window incident was actually Elliot trying to protect himself from his father, and jumping out of the window to get away.]] |
| 304 | [[/folder]] |
| 305 | |
| 306 | [[folder:N]] |
| 307 | * ''Series/{{NCIS}}'' |
| 308 | ** Ziva's father. Dear Lord, Ziva's father. Descriptions of her childhood mention that the "fun" activities she enjoyed involved being taken blindfolded into the forest and left to find her own way out. After that, he raised her to be a killer, instructed her to kill her own brother, abused his position to spy on her, sent a drunken assassin to pretend to be in love with her, left her to be tortured to death in Somalia without a pang of guilt, and finally tried to frame her for murder. She cut off all contact with him following the last incident. What a shocker. |
| 309 | ** The episode "Restless" had the foster daughter claiming that she ran away from home because her birth parents in a commune were abusive. Although her parents living in a commune wasn't true and in fact part of a scam (although the episode itself implies that [[LaserGuidedAmnesia she genuinely believed her identity and the part about her parents was true due to mental brainwashing and subsequent reprogrammings]]), the part about her having an abusive parent (more specifically, an abusive uncle, as her actual birth parents were killed in a car crash and he received custody) [[MetaphoricallyTrue was actually true]]. The uncle, who worked as a chef in the second-chance shelter, was the one who masterminded the foster child scam that she was unknowingly/unwillingly involved in; he often physically abused her (one example is a burn mark on her shoulder that was revealed to be from tongs used for handling taco shells), and had her reprogrammed at least twice beforehand. |
| 310 | ** It is implied that Tony's father is at least neglectful, if not outright abusive. He once forgot Tony at a hotel for days. |
| 311 | * ''Series/TheNightAgent'': Maddie's father was emotionally abusive, wrongly blaming her for her sister dying when she accidentally drowned. He once hit her too while the two were arguing (which she'd recorded). Later he tearfully apologizes for all this, saying he doesn't want to be that kind of dad. |
| 312 | [[/folder]] |
| 313 | |
| 314 | [[folder:O]] |
| 315 | * ''Series/OnceUponATime'': |
| 316 | ** Regina is strongly implied to be emotionally abusive towards Henry in terms of neglect and lack of involvement. She also tried to convince Henry that he was insane, forced him to stay with her when he very clearly did ''not'' want to, constantly tried to ''murder'' people he cares about (she actually succeeded once) so he would be "hers," tried to force Henry to love her, spied on him, [[ArsonMurderAndJayWalking and destroyed his playground/castle]]. The case is that Regina definitely loves Henry, but not in a healthy way. She does see the error of her ways and becomes a better parent to him as the series progresses. |
| 317 | ** Cora towards her daughter Regina, [[spoiler:when Cora kills Regina's boyfriend because she plans for Regina to marry someone else.]] Snow points out that whatever Regina may have done, her mother is ''much'' worse -- and the show wastes absolutely no time proving Snow extremely correct on this point. Between [[spoiler:killing Regina's boyfriend]], physically abusing her with magic, mentally abusing her in so many ways they can't be counted, constantly criticizing everything she does, forcing her into a loveless marriage, and generally being one hell of a manipulative bitch, it's rather a wonder that Regina has any shred of empathy left in her at all. |
| 318 | ** Bae sees his father [[BadPowersBadPeople Rumpelstiltskin]] as this. |
| 319 | *** Rumpelstiltskin ''did'' kill someone in front of Bae. |
| 320 | *** Rumpelstiltskin does genuinely love his son but his use of Dark Magic has terrified Baefire. Same with his mother Milah who left him home alone when he was six to go out drinking. Both wind up abandoning him, but at different points. |
| 321 | ** Jiminy Cricket's parents are magnificently emotionally abusive towards their son. |
| 322 | ** Belle's father attempting to strip her of her true memories just to keep her from Gold could be seen as this. |
| 323 | ** Rumplestilskin's father, [[spoiler: Peter Pan]], [[ParentalAbandonment abandoned him twice.]] The first time, he left Rumple to go drinking at the pub when he [[ILied promised to be looking for a job.]] The second time, he [[spoiler: traded Rumple for nearly-eternal youth. He later kidnapped his grandson and later his great-grandson. He tricked Henry into sacrificing his heart, just so Peter could remain young. He also banished his son to ''PandorasBox.'' When that didn't work, Peter [[GrandTheftMe switched bodies with Henry]] to avoid being trapped in Pandora's Box. Later, after using magic to kick Rumple across the room, Peter outright admitted to him that he resented his son from birth for taking away his time and money. After putting the anti-magic cuff on Rumple, [[KickTheDog he tried to kill all the people Rumple loved, solely for their connection to Rumple.]] For everyone else in Storybrooke, Peter planned on [[LaserGuidedAmnesia using the same curse Regina did in order to steal their memories]] and make Storybrooke the new Neverland.]] |
| 324 | ** Zelena's adoptive father, who considered her wicked for having magic (despite her first use of it being to ''save her adoptive parents' lives''), never loved her, and generally treated her like crap. Her adoptive mother, however, seemed to love her greatly. |
| 325 | ** Lady Tremaine constantly abuses her daughter Drizella [[spoiler:just because the latter grew attached to her stepmother Cecelia. She was even willing to [[OffingTheOffspring kill Drizella and use her heart to revive her other daughter Anastasia]], showing how little she cared for her. However, she does end up [[HeroicSacrifice sacrificing]] herself to save Drizella.]] |
| 326 | * Where to begin with [[ArchnemesisDad Dan Scott]] of ''Series/OneTreeHill''? He alternates between pretending older son [[HeroicBastard Lucas]] doesn't exist, pitting him against his half-brother Nathan when he does bother to acknowledge his presence, or just outright telling Lucas that he was a mistake that should've been aborted, take your pick. Speaking of Nathan, Dan raised Nathan to become the NBA star that Dan never became, all the while telling Nathan that he doesn't have what it takes to be a better player than Dan. Dan also has no qualms about putting his hands on either of his boys, as seen when he '''almost strangles''' Lucas and when he pushes Nathan down in order to stop him from making the winning basket in the father/son game. |
| 327 | * In ''Series/OurFlagMeansDeath'', Stede's father was verbally abusive to him, one of the main factors in his low self-esteem throughout the series. |
| 328 | ** Meanwhile, Edward's father was physically abusive towards his mom (and likely him). [[spoiler: This resulted in Ed [[SelfMadeOrphan killing him]] as a teen]]. |
| 329 | * ''Series/OuterBanks'': |
| 330 | ** JJ's dad, who beats him bloody several times throughout the show. Their interactions suggest that this has been happening for years. This leads to JJ's reckless behavior throughout the show. |
| 331 | ** Ward Cameron also abuses his three children throughout the show |
| 332 | *** Ward enables his son Rafe's dangerous and deadly behavior, helping him cover murders and ignoring his obvious mental health concerns |
| 333 | *** Sarah is repeatedly kidnapped, locked in rooms, and even strangled by Ward, who chooses to protect his son rather than his daughter |
| 334 | *** His youngest daughter Wheezie may have it the best, but she is still ignored and living in a dangerous situation. |
| 335 | * ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': |
| 336 | ** In "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S4E4InAnotherLife In Another Life]]", the various AlternateUniverse versions of Mason Stark were beaten by their alcoholic fathers on a regular basis. |
| 337 | ** In "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S5E8BlankSlate Blank Slate]]", Hope Wilson and her sister Joanne were abused by their father. |
| 338 | ** In "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S6E20Nest Nest]]", William Grimes was abused by his father as a child. |
| 339 | [[/folder]] |
| 340 | |
| 341 | [[folder:P]] |
| 342 | * ''Series/PaperGirls'': Mac and Dylan's dad was, it's indicated, a violent man who abused the two. |
| 343 | * ''Series/Pitch2016'': Ginny's dad wanted one of his children to become a baseball player, no matter what either thought about it. When Ginny complained she was tired after practicing and wanted to stop, her dad slapped her brother, afterward implying he'd keep doing it until the started again. It's indicated to not be the only instance too. |
| 344 | * Theodore Bagwell's father from ''Series/PrisonBreak'': He [[BrotherSisterIncest raped his mentally disabled sister]], was an [[TheAlcoholic alcoholic]], and finally was revealed to be verbally, physically, and especially [[RapeAsBackstory sexually]] abusive to [[InSeriesNickname T-Bag]] in the second season, shown in a ''very'' creepy flashback Theodore has when he returns with Susan to the house he grew up in. |
| 345 | [[/folder]] |
| 346 | |
| 347 | [[folder:R]] |
| 348 | ''Series/AlRawabiSchoolForGirls'': |
| 349 | ** Rania has a volatile and physically abusive alcoholic father. He even gives her a black eye at one point, and Layan comforts her the next day at school and tries to apply makeup to hide it. |
| 350 | ** Ruqqayah. When your mom frequently calls you ugly, compares you to your sisters, tells you that you're responsible for defacing their family's honour (for not wearing a hijab) and forbids you to see your friends, your only source of support throughout this....is it any wonder she has self esteem issues? |
| 351 | * ''Series/RedDwarf'': |
| 352 | ** Arnold Rimmer and his three brothers were abused by their father in various ways; the most severe of them was the use of a ''rack'' to try to accelerate their growth. Rimmer's father had been refused entry to the Space Corps for being an inch below regulation height. Indeed, all of the abuse they suffered was to make them succeed where Rimmer Sr. had failed; unfortunately, Arnold continually tries to use this as a FreudianExcuse for his constant failures and annoying behavior, whilst his brothers each become successful in their own Space Corps specialty. |
| 353 | ** Ironically, a deleted scene from the series six episode ''Rimmerworld'' reveals that Arnold might be the best adjusted of his brothers: at some point before the accident that left ''Red Dwarf'' without a crew, Rimmer's three brothers suffered long-delayed psychotic breakdowns, each one resulting in a significant body count. |
| 354 | ** The FreudianExcuse even ''worked'' once; when asked to justify his existence to the Inquisitor, Arnold notes that yeah, he may have squandered his life and ended up with nothing, but compared to his childhood, nothing's an improvement. The Inquisitor accepts the argument. |
| 355 | ** Interestingly, in series X Mr. Rimmer Sr.'s favoritism of his other three sons over Arnold is revealed to have truly petty and spiteful roots. In a holographic message to Arnold, [[spoiler: Rimmer Sr. revealed that Arnold wasn't his son at all. Indicating his abusing Arnold in his youth was Mr. Rimmer's way of paying back his wife and Arnold's real father, "Dungo" the family gardener]]. |
| 356 | * ''Series/TheRepublicOfSarah'': When Sarah and Danny's mother, an alcoholic, would abuse Danny when they were growing up, who eventually left Greylock entirely to get away from her. To her credit, though, she clearly regrets this and is willing to publicly air her dirty laundry so that Lydon can't use it against Sarah. |
| 357 | * ''Series/RFDS2021'': In episode 8, Eliza is doing telehealth for a kid with a concussion and catches the father getting violent with the mother while Pete is out of the room, setting off a serious crisis. |
| 358 | * ''Series/TheRising'': William threw Alex, his own daughter, under the bus while acting as a [[ParentalSubstitute surrogate father]] to his nephew Joe, making her [[TakingTheHeat take the fall]] for a deadly car accident which was more Joe's fault than hers. |
| 359 | * ''Series/{{Riverdale}}'': |
| 360 | ** At this point, [[SlidingScaleOfParentShamingInFiction the only parents we see]] who ''aren't'' abusive or corrupt in some way are Fred, Mary, and Sheriff Keller. The original script also planned for Sheriff Keller to be abusive and homophobic to his son Kevin, though this was scrapped in favour of him being a ReasonableAuthorityFigure. |
| 361 | ** Both the Coopers and Blossoms in particular are nasty, the former emotionally abusing their daughters while keeping them separated so as to lie to them both, while the latter are abusive towards [[TheUnfavorite their daughter]], [[spoiler:and Jason evidently had enough issues with them that he wanted to run away with his girlfriend and their unborn child]]. Alice and Hal at least have some PetTheDog moments to balance it out. Penelope and Clifford, on the other hand, are horrible. Penelope is extremely emotionally and verbally abusive to Cheryl, and it occasionally dips into physical territory. When she's on her best behavior, she's just neglectful. Then, she [[spoiler:sent her daughter to a gay conversion program]]. How delightful! [[spoiler:And can you believe she's the better of the two? Clifford killed his own son.]] |
| 362 | ** Hiram is a straight-up criminal with a domineering and controlling side. While [[EvenEvilHasLovedOnes his genuine love for Veronica]] is one of his few redeeming qualities, his shady ways nonetheless prove to be a bad influence on her and have consequences in her day-to-day life. His behaviour finally crosses into full-on abuse in [[Recap/RiverdaleS3E01Chapter36LaborDay "Labor Day"]], when he tells Veronica that [[spoiler:framing Archie for murder]] was intended as a punishment for how she "betrayed" him. |
| 363 | * On ''Series/{{Roseanne}}'', Roseanne and Jackie both describe their father as having been physically abusive to them as children in several episodes. In the episode "Wait till Your Father Gets Home" when her father dies, Roseanne finds herself confronting memories of the past abuse she received from him as a child. In "The Driver's Seat" when DJ is caught stealing a car and going for a joyride in a desperate need for attention, Roseanne violently lashes out at him and later regrets it, having sworn off the use of physical punishment of her children due to how abusive her father was with her as a child and her fear of becoming like him. |
| 364 | * Michael on ''Series/{{Roswell}}'' has this problem with his foster dad, until he emancipates himself. |
| 365 | * The remake, ''Series/RoswellNewMexico'' Also has a lot of examples of this trope. |
| 366 | ** Sergeant Manes is outright called abusive by his own son Alex, who considers losing his leg in Iraq to be less traumatic than living under his roof. At first it just seems to be general emotional abuse, as he's very controlling of his son and very disappointed when he figures out he's gay, but when he found out that Alex and Michael had sex in the toolshed, he brandished a hammer and [[DisproportionateRetribution breaks Michael's hand with it]] when he gets in the way. Alex also says he'd tried to beat him out of being gay. |
| 367 | ** Liz and Rosa's mother was emotionally abusive, pushing Liz to be perfect by withholding affection if she wasn't, driving drunk with her daughters in the car, and enabling Rosa's addictions. She outright abandoned the family when Rosa threatened to out her affair with Jim Valenti and hasn't been in contact with the family since. She finally arrives in "Como la Flor" when Arturo asks her to transfer her half of the diner to Liz so she can sponsor his residency and acts regretful of her past actions... only to reveal she was only there to steal from the safe and refuses to admit she did anything wrong, signing the papers and then leaving once she has Arturo's mother's ring. Like many abusers, she does seem to genuinely love her children, but not enough to actually care for them. |
| 368 | ** Michael was abused by his foster father before the events of the series. |
| 369 | ** [[spoiler:The Dictator]] introduces himself to [[spoiler:Michael]] and then immediately tries to murder him. When that fails, he goes straight to torture and emotional manipulation. |
| 370 | [[/folder]] |
| 371 | |
| 372 | [[folder:S]] |
| 373 | * ''Series/SamAndCat'': Goomer's mother [[BitchInSheepsClothing shows herself to be this]] when she learns he's become an MMA fighter. She proceeds to [[KickTheDog tell him]] [[IHaveNoSon she regrets adopting him]]. |
| 374 | * ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' |
| 375 | ** Dr. Cox's father was an abusive alcoholic who showed love by throwing bottles at his head and missing on purpose while his mother simply stood by and let the abuse happen. He can't stand the sight of his own sister, because seeing her reminds him of their childhood. |
| 376 | ** Jordan tried using this as an excuse for why she's so mean once or twice, but later admits that her parents were actually both very supportive. |
| 377 | ** Elliot's parents were emotionally abusive and neglectful of her when she was little, to the point that the maid raised her and her mother still ridicules her whenever she comes to town. |
| 378 | ** The Janitor's parents kept him in a "Baby Cage" (which was actually a pet carrier). One would assume this was just another one of his many BlatantLies if he weren't so distraught that no one else had ever ''heard'' of a Baby Cage and were so horribly disturbed when he gave one as a present for a baby shower. The overheard phone conversation with his mother: "No, Mom, playpen/baby cage is not like tomayto/tomahto." The Janitor also has occasional flashbacks in the show to his mother cheerfully assigning him bizarre and rather cruel punishments when he was messy, like making him eat his dinner off the floor (with no plates) because he got crumbs everywhere. "Soup night was the worst..." |
| 379 | * Ricky Underwood in ''Series/TheSecretLifeOfTheAmericanTeenager'' was abused by his father at a young age, leading him to be placed in a foster home. This sets him up for his rebellious womanizing attitude that the high school girls are fawning over. |
| 380 | * Brenda's parents in ''Series/SixFeetUnder'' had sex in front of her during her childhood, threw orgies while she was in the house, and sent her to a psychiatrist who scrutinized her and played mind games with her for a book. When she grew up, her mother constantly put her down and laughed at any attempts she made to improve her life, telling her that she would've aborted her if her father hadn't talked her out of it. |
| 381 | * There are many abusive parents in ''Series/{{Skins}}''. Just in the first generation, we have Chris, whose mother left him without even saying goodbye and whose father rarely bothered to see him; Jal, whose mother abandoned her; Cassie, whose parents neglected her and were more concerned with their sex life than with their daughter's emotional health; and Sid, whose parents make it pretty obvious that they preferred his best friend and considered Sid a disappointment (however this is ultimately a subversion on the whole, going by how their relationship is portrayed in Sid's second episode. It's enough of a subversion that it is still the generation's first big TearJerker when [[spoiler: Mark Jenkins, Sid's dad, dies]]). The worst, though, is probably Cook (of gen 2), whose mother had loud sex with strangers while he was in the next room, drove drunk with her kids in the car, and went on drunken rages, including smashing furniture in front of them. His father also walked out on him, made a pass at his girlfriend, and finally threatened to throw him into the river. Charming family, all around. |
| 382 | ** This justifies why all the generations of friends are so close to each other. Their parents are often downright incompetent at best, plain abusive at their worst, so they form intense friendships with each other as a surrogate family. |
| 383 | * ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' |
| 384 | ** [[ManipulativeBastard Lex's]] dad, [[MagnificentBastard Lionel]], withholds affection and approval from his son in the warped belief that it will make him stronger. Their tortured relationship is one of the keystones of the series and ends very badly when [[spoiler:Lex kills his dad]]. It is revealed in Season 3 that Lionel himself suffered physical abuse from his drunken, [[TheAlcoholic alcoholic]] parents, who sought to keep him down in the gutter with them, and prevent him from succeeding at anything; this is one of the reasons he's so oblivious to his abuse of Lex, as he thinks he has a firm grasp of what abuse looks like. And then there's [[BrokenBird Tess Mercer]], whose real parents [[ParentalAbandonment abandoned her]] and whose foster father broke her eardrums and arm through physical violence. |
| 385 | ** In Season 4, we meet Jason Teague, whose parents were also less than loving. His father, Edward, subjects him to FinancialAbuse, disinheriting him when he sets off on his own. His mother, EvilMatriarch Genevieve is even worse, being more or less Lionel's DistaffCounterpart. She's emotionally manipulative of Jason and his girlfriend, whom she plans to murder in order to fulfill a prophecy; her control of Jason is so extreme that by the end of the season, he's unwilling to do ''anything'' without seeking her permission first. |
| 386 | ** Then in Season 10, we meet [[AlternateUniverse Earth-2 Lionel]], who is far worse than his Earth-1 counterpart, encouraging his kids to plot against one another for the privilege of being his BastardUnderstudy, and eventually tries to have them all killed off at one point or another. ArchnemesisDad indeed. |
| 387 | * In ''Series/TheSopranos'', Tony Soprano is emotionally manipulated and terrorized by his difficult mother throughout his childhood and well into his adult life, with his psychiatrist suggesting she may have suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder. One notable incident featured his mother threatening to stick a fork in his eye when he was only 10 years old. Tony's father was outwardly friendly, yet also a manipulative sociopath who indoctrinated his son into violent crime and the mob. It's implied that the various degrees of emotional manipulation and terror Tony suffered under his parents is what turned him into the violent sociopath that heads the New Jersey crime families. Oddly enough, Tony manages to become a better father to his kids (he never struck them, although he did manhandle A. J. from time to time, and he certainly never engaged in emotional manipulation) than his parents ever were to him (despite being a manipulative violent sociopath), and his children turn out relatively nice and normal, even if they have a few issues of their own. |
| 388 | * ''Series/SpinningOut'': Carol is both physically and emotionally abusive. She blames Kat for the end of her own skating career, slaps her across the face, insults her abilities, and steals her hard-earned money, as well as dragging Serena out of bed at four in the morning and forcing her to do pushups in the snow. Before all of this, she insisted upon the change to Kat's routine that resulted in Kat falling, blamed the skating coach, and forced Serena to lie about it. |
| 389 | * In ''Franchise/StarTrek'': |
| 390 | ** ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' |
| 391 | *** Doctor Mora Pol was the scientist that was supposed to figure out what Odo was initially, subjecting him to a lot of probings and unpleasantness (though he was under pressure from the Cardassians at the time). Eventually he figured out that Odo was sentient, but didn't quite realize just how much Odo resented being subjected to the crap that he was. Even years later, Doctor Mora didn't realize how much of an ass he was to Odo, constantly interrupting him and telling him that he was responsible for Odo becoming the man that he was and educating him in interacting in society (which would make him the closest thing to a parent Odo would have), leaving out the parts where also he electrified him, subjected him to vacuum, and used a "protein decompiler" on him. Eventually, it took Odo trying to maul/kill him while under the Changeling equivalent of a mind-altering substance for him to realize that a lot of what Dr. Mora did was not appreciated, and he became somewhat less an ass to Odo in subsequent episodes. They do eventually reconcile fully. |
| 392 | *** Also, Mora Pol and the other scientists named the young Changeling Odo Ital (from ''odo'ital'', Cardassian for "unknown sample"), even after they understood that he was sentient. Understandably, this took a toll on the young Odo's self-esteem. |
| 393 | ---->'''Odo:''' I thought it was the most appropriate name anyone could give me. |
| 394 | *** A straight example with Enabran Tain, who expected full Cardassian filial piety from Garak -- yet refused to publicly acknowledge him as his son until he was on his deathbed, and even then he had to be forced. As a child, Garak was disciplined abusively for even minor transgressions. Tain exiled Garak and once even attempted to assassinate him. He was unapologetic about it and implied he'd try again if given the chance. He once saved Garak's life solely to ensure Garak would live a long, miserable life surrounded by aliens who hated him. When on his deathbed, he didn't care about Garak's loyalty in trying to rescue him, only berating him for being stupid enough to get captured. He spent years telling Garak he was a weakness he couldn't afford and that he wished he'd killed Garak's mother before he was born. When he reluctantly agreed to give Garak one genuine father/son moment before he died, he used it as an excuse to give Garak an aesop about how Garak never gives up to ensure Garak would escape captivity and avenge his death. Cardassians believe family is everything, so Tain's treatment of Garak was abusive by Cardassian standards as well as by human standards. |
| 395 | *** Even though Ziyal is largely a MoralityPet for her father [[Characters/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineGulDukat Dukat]], he has his share of moments where he makes it clear that his love is conditional; at one point, when she won't unquestioningly obey him, he decides to leave her to her fate rather than, say, explain that her life is in danger. He was also initially prepared to kill her to save his own reputation, though he ultimately couldn't go through with it. |
| 396 | ** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' |
| 397 | *** What kind of parents did Annika Hansen have? They kept her with them when they flew into the most dangerous area of the galaxy, ignoring the danger while searching for the most dangerous species known to the entire Federation. And we all know how well that turned out -- Annika Hansen is the birth name of Seven of Nine. She says herself how irresponsible this was, in conjunction with denouncing Icheb's parents for using him as a biological weapon against the Borg. |
| 398 | *** They were more neglectful than abusive, really; they had no idea what the Borg were capable of when they started researching them, only that they came from far away and nobody knew anything about them. This tracks back to the TNG argument about keeping families on board the ''Enterprise'', though. |
| 399 | *** Sure, they spoke of only knowing of the Borg through rumors - rumors that likely included things said by the el-Aurians, Guinan's species, which would include their world being destroyed. And regardless, they knowingly took their daughter across the Romulan Neutral Zone, making themselves felons in the process. While Annika would be unlikely to face those charges herself, the fact that they did so with their 8-year-old daughter on board their ship doesn't exactly speak to them being well-suited to being parents. |
| 400 | ** In ''Series/StarTrekPicard'', it's revealed that Picard has long thought this of his father Maurice. We see flashbacks of him chasing him and his mother Yvette through the chateau. [[spoiler:However, it turns out that Yvette had mental problems and would have breakdowns. The last one nearly resulted in Jean-Luc dying when she left him trapped in a dark tunnel under the chateau with the rains coming. Maurice was just trying to keep his wife and son safe. He dragged Yvette into her room and locked her in there. Unfortunately, Picard listened to his mother pleading with him to let her out, resulting in her hanging herself. All the wrong memories caused his young mind to block out the painful memories. He even admits to a memory of his father, when stuck in a coma, that he didn't really know him at all]]. |
| 401 | * ''Series/StarskyAndHutch'' |
| 402 | ** One episode deals with child abuse, where the titular characters attempt to find who hurt a young boy they see at school and initially suspect it was the father. [[spoiler:As it turns out, the mother was the abuser and she was arrested after Starsky and Hutch barged in her house to look for her son.]] |
| 403 | ** At the end of another episode, it is implied that Starsky himself was once beaten by his father during his eighth birthday. |
| 404 | * ''Series/StrangerThings'': |
| 405 | ** Stepsiblings Max and Billy deal with abusive parents. Billy's father in particular is very physically and mentally abusive towards his son, although he's never shown treating his stepdaughter the same way. The only person worse (although not a parent) is Billy himself, who attempted to choke his father, [[WouldHurtAChild tried to murder Mike, Dustin, and Lucas]] by running them over with his car, and in general is a [[TheSociopath sociopathic]] {{Jerkass}} (most likely as a result of his dad's abuse). |
| 406 | ** Prior to Season 1, Eleven was routinely abused and experimented on by a mysterious figure she refers to as "Papa" (real name Dr. Martin Brenner). She was nonverbal and evidently never learned proper social skills, forcibly had her head shaved, often showed intense pain and displeasure during the experiments and tests, and never even had a proper set of clothes until she used her powers to escape. [[spoiler: Making matters worse, Eleven (real name Jane Ives) was kidnapped from her biological mother, Terry Ives, shortly after she was born. Terry was given electroshock therapy by Eleven's kidnappers and left in a near-catatonic state so she wouldn't go searching for her.]] |
| 407 | ** Joyce had an [[DomesticAbuse extremely volatile relationship]] with her ex-husband Lonnie and it's implied he may have also been physically abusive towards Jonathan. |
| 408 | * In ''Series/StreetJustice'', the episode "Kid Stuff" has a woman fearing that her child, who she'd given up for adoption, is being abused by his adopted parents, a feeling strengthened by the fact that they've recently stopped her visitation rights and the observation by one of the child's teachers that the father inspires fear in all the kids. In the same episode, Adam recalls that he once had a case where he confronted and beat an abusive dad for hitting his son; unfortunately, while Adam was being arraigned in court on assault charges from that incident, the father killed the boy. |
| 409 | * ''Series/{{Supernanny}}'': |
| 410 | ** Jo has called a few parents out on corporal punishment or using hot sauce to keep a child from talking back. She also took one dad to task for calling his son a "little whiny brat." The worst-case was with the Davis family, where the father made a habit of [[DontMakeMeTakeMyBeltOff using his belt on his kids]] and calling his daughters "bitch", "whore", and "slut". The ''Supernanny'' wiki states that Phil, the father, has been arrested a number of times since the show aired for [[DomesticAbuse domestic violence]]. |
| 411 | ** The Fernandez parents are extremely verbally abusive before Jo finishes her work. Mom is particularly guilty. She threatens to knock her kids' teeth out or bust their lips. She also uses the police as a threat and points out random strangers on the street to her two young sons. She then tells them that the stranger (a man in the case Jo observes) "takes away little boys who don't listen to their parents...he takes them into the kitchen, chops them up, cooks and eats them." |
| 412 | ** The Mann family falls under this before Jo's intervention; Mom Melissa is especially guilty. They spank their children forcefully with wooden spoons, wooden forks, and their hands. Melissa explains their church advocates this, and constantly says, "Trust and obey" before spanking a child (while simultaneously saying "I forgive you" and spanking more). Melissa also has some disturbing things to say about Naomi in particular, such as, "I want to smack her across the mouth" and "I don't want her in my house." |
| 413 | ** In one of her SpinOff series, Jo actually called CPS on the Spivey family after the camera footage showed the father appearing to beat one of his children (who has special needs) [[DontMakeMeTakeMyBeltOff with a belt.]] The actual discipline took place off-camera, but the belt is seen beforehand and the child can be heard screaming. |
| 414 | * ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' has John Winchester, who might just own this part of the trope. Dean had an "obey or somebody gets killed" issue while Sam got completely disowned when he wanted to be normal; their tearful phone calls in both "Home" and "Faith" got ignored (even though the first saw them dealing with the emotional strain of returning to the place where their mother died and the second was when Dean was going to ''die'' after he suffered an electric shock that damaged his heart); Dean got used as an emotional punching bag when John was pissed off with Sam; and he gave them both so little affection that when he was a little softer they thought he was possessed or that there was something incredibly wrong going on. To add insult to injury, ''they were right.'' |
| 415 | ** Bobby's father is also revealed to have been complete scum, to the point where [[spoiler: Bobby actually had to kill him to stop it]]. Not that his mother seemed to be any better, as she blamed him for his father's anger and told Bobby "God's going to punish you" when Bobby had just [[spoiler:killed his father for abusing ''both'' of them]]; even years after the man's death, Bobby admitted that the reason he never had children himself is that he was ''terrified'' of becoming like his own father. |
| 416 | ** In "Nightmare," the first psychic child Sam and Dean meet is Max Miller. Max is a slightly deranged, telekinetic, abused child who was beaten by his father and uncle almost daily. He killed them both and, instead of killing his stepmother (before shooting Dean dead) as he was going to, he ends up tragically killing himself. |
| 417 | *** While Sam's childhood ''sucked ass'', he openly and gratefully acknowledged that it hadn't been nearly as bad as Max's and he has his father to thank for it. Also of interest in that scene is while Sam is obvious in his relief, his older brother's subdued and twisted-sounding agreement rings as considerably more hollow and forced. |
| 418 | *** Interestingly, even ''John Winchester'' thought he was too hard on his boys; when circumstances send Sam and Dean back to 1978 to protect their parents, John is openly disgusted hearing about the treatment Sam's father put him through (not knowing that he's talking about himself), but Sam muses that, in the end, his father was always there for his sons when it truly counted while they were growing up, doing his best to cope with an impossible situation without going crazy after losing the love of his life. |
| 419 | ** It was also heavily implied that [[spoiler:Bela Talbot]] had been [[RapeAsBackstory sexually abused]] [[ParentalIncest by her father]] by the time she was fourteen. In that case, [[spoiler:can you blame the poor woman for making a DealWithTheDevil]]? |
| 420 | ** In "The Rapture", Jimmy Novak's[[note]]Jimmy being the schlub whose body Castiel occupies[[/note]] wife smacks their daughter out of nowhere, a sure sign [[DemonicPossession something]] is up with her. |
| 421 | * ''Franchise/SuperSentai'': |
| 422 | ** ''Series/KagakuSentaiDynaman'': [[TheEmperor Emperor Aton]] is a horrible father towards his only son, Prince Megiddo, consistently humiliating him for his failures and beating him for them in public. It eventually drives Megiddo to betray and [[DragonAscendant overthrow]] him. |
| 423 | ** ''Series/ChoudenshiBioman'': Doctor Man initially treats his "son"/creation Prince very well, but once he starts showing human emotions he mind-wipes to make him a mindless enforcer before sending him on a suicide mission against the Bioman. [[spoiler:Even his biological son, Shuichi, who like Prince he initially cares for, isn't safe from being almost killed when he rejects joining his insane father in his quest for dominance.]] |
| 424 | ** ''Series/DengekiSentaiChangeman'': [[BigBad Star King Bazoo]] attempts to dispose of his adopted son/heir Prince Icarus, when he falls in love with Sayaka Nagisa/Change Mermaid and tries to make her his bride, though he initially sends his minions to do the dirty job he [[spoiler:ultimately kills Prince himself when the latter redeems himself out of love for Sayaka.]] |
| 425 | ** ''Series/KyuKyuSentaiGoGoV'': Grand Witch Grandiene is the poster woman of this trope when it comes to ''Sentai'', none of her children is anything beyond useful pawns. If one outlives their usefulness, she will arrange for their death if not kill them outright herself. Even all the devotion in the world they have to her isn't enough to make her reciprocate their love. Notably, when Denus [[spoiler:sacrifices herself to resurrect Zylpheeza]] she is ever uncaring, she had also locked Salamandes (her youngest son) in Hell with the [=GoGoV=] without caring that her son got caught up in the crossfire (an act that turns Salamandes against her) and near the finale he has [[spoiler:Cobolda (her middle son) killed by Zylpheeza (her second oldest son) when the [=GoGoV=] (except for Red) are fighting the former as means of disposing of the [=GoGoV=] without caring that her own son's on the line of fire. This act shatters Zylpheeza's faith and love for his mother in one fell swoop as he realizes just how much she does ''not'' care for him or his siblings. In the finale when she sees Zylpheeza's genuine love for Salamandes (her youngest son), she is disgusted then turns both him and the aforementioned Salamandes into mindless monsters under her control.]] |
| 426 | * ''Series/SurgicalSpirit'' has Sheila's ''bitch'' of a mother, who maybe says a handful of lines that ''don't'' criticize anything or anyone. It's hinted that at least some of it was an act, designed to see exactly what her daughter's new boyfriend was like, but then again, this is the woman who readily admitted to driving her husband into an early grave. |
| 427 | * In ''Series/{{Switched}}'', Umine's mother physically and verbally abuses her daughter. She is shown multiple times beating Ayumi-as-Umine, and she makes fun of Umine's looks, calling her ugly. |
| 428 | [[/folder]] |
| 429 | |
| 430 | [[folder:T]] |
| 431 | * ''Series/TeenWolf'' has a couple examples of this trope. |
| 432 | ** Isaac was abused by his father before [[spoiler:Jackson as the Kanima kills him is Season 2]]. In Isaac’s first appearance on the show, he has a black eye that is implied to be the result of his father. His dad's abuse is the reason Isaac says yes when Derek offers to turn him into a werewolf. Isaac’s dad throws a pitcher at his head embedding glass in his cheek and nearly blinding him. It is revealed that Isaac would be locked in a freezer in their basement as a punishment, leading to claustrophobia, PTSD, and flashbacks. |
| 433 | ** Gerard Argent molded his daughter into a genocidal lunatic and was willing to kill his own son and granddaughter to cure his cancer by becoming a werewolf. |
| 434 | ** Both Victoria and Chris Argent. They're controlling, they lie to Allison her entire life, they discourage her interests, they disrespect her privacy, and her father has her ''kidnapped'' as a "training" exercise. That's not even getting started on the fact that they try to kill her boyfriend basically only for being her boyfriend. |
| 435 | * There was a ''Texas Runaway Hotline'' PublicServiceAnnouncement that aired for a time that had two boys discussing how badly things were at home, cutting twice from the boys to a JerkAss father from one of the boy's point of view: |
| 436 | -->'''Boy's Father:''' You live in ''my'' house, you live under '''MY''' rules!\ |
| 437 | ''(After a while...)''\ |
| 438 | '''Boy's Father:''' If you don't like living here, '''you can pack your stuff and LEAVE!! ''' .. |
| 439 | * ''Series/Titans2018'': |
| 440 | ** [[GodOfEvil Trigon]] and Slade, probably DC's most infamous examples, though none of them touch the epic-scale manipulations of their comic counterparts. |
| 441 | ** Angela Azarath manipulated her daughter and her friends into freeing Trigon. |
| 442 | ** Lionel Luthor is no slouch in this department, he was shown being physically abusive toward Lex Luthor, in his younger years. |
| 443 | * American dark-comedy sitcom TV show ''Series/{{Titus}}'' has Ken "Papa" Titus, who was emotionally abusive toward his sons. One of the quotes from the show: |
| 444 | -->''"Why abuse a child physically when emotional abuse is far more permanent?"'' |
| 445 | * ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': |
| 446 | ** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S4E4HesAlive He's Alive]]", Peter Vollmer's [[AlcoholicParent alcoholic father]] frequently slammed him against the wall when he was a child while his mother suffered from some sort of mental disease that left her emotionally absent to him. |
| 447 | ** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S5E6LivingDoll Living Doll]]", Eric Streator is cold, distant, and verbally abusive towards his stepdaughter Christie, reducing her to tears on several occasions. The FreudianExcuse for his behavior is that he is infertile. Erich later snatches Talky Tina, who repeatedly threatens to kill him, from Christie. When she calls him "Daddy" and pleads with him to return the doll, he angrily tells her that he isn't her daddy. His wife Annabelle comes to believe that Erich hates both her and Christie, but he genuinely wants to do right by them. |
| 448 | ** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S5E23QueenOfTheNile Queen of the Nile]]", Pamela Morris not only refuses to share the gift of eternal life with her elderly daughter Viola Draper but threatens to kill her at one point. |
| 449 | ** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S5E36TheBewitchinPool The Bewitchin' Pool]]", Gil and Gloria Sharewood are emotionally abusive towards their children Jeb and Sport. They continually chide them for making noise with Gloria complaining that she finds it difficult to put up with their whining 24 hours a day. When Gil and Gloria tell Jeb and Sport that they are going to get a divorce, they demand to know which of them the children want to live with. They don't give their children any time to process this unpleasant news, which shows how self-obsessed they are. |
| 450 | * ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': |
| 451 | ** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1985S1E3 Children's Zoo]]", the 4-year-old Debbie Cunningham's parents Sheila and Martin are frequently verbally and emotionally abusive towards her. Her mother yells at her without the slightest provocation, her father ignores her and the two of them spend most of their time arguing with each other with no regard for the effect that it is having on Debbie. This leads Debbie to trade her parents in for a new pair at the [[PeopleZoo Children's Zoo]]. |
| 452 | ** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1985S2E5 The Toys of Caliban]]", Miss Kemp investigates Ernest and Mary Ross because she believes that they are abusing their intellectually impaired son Toby. From interviewing relatives and neighbors, she learns that Toby is not allowed to go outside, play with other children or even watch television. She accuses Ernest of keeping him as a virtual prisoner. She learns the truth when Ernest shows her Toby's [[YourMindMakesItReal ability to manifest anything after seeing its picture]]: Toby is kept isolated in order to protect others from his powers. Miss Kemp apologizes, having realized that Toby's parents were the prisoners. |
| 453 | ** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1985S2E11 Song of the Younger World]]", Amy Hawkline's father Mordecai slaps her after finding her in a passionate embrace with Tanner Smith, one of the inmates of the House of Refuge Reformatory for Wayward Boys. He is also emotionally abusive towards her as he is a [[TheFundamentalist religious zealot]] who is determined to turn her into a proper young woman, using [[Literature/TheBible Scripture]] as a guide, no matter what the cost. |
| 454 | ** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1985S3E8 Our Selena is Dying]]", Martha Brockman [[LifeDrinker drains]] her daughter Diane's LifeEnergy in order to restore her own youth. Diane [[RapidAging ages rapidly]] as a result and Martha assumes her identity. |
| 455 | * In ''Series/TwinPeaks'', [[spoiler:murder victim Laura Palmer, repeatedly raped over several years and [[OffingtheOffspring later killed]] by her father Leland. Leland is supposedly not entirely responsible because of possession by BOB, an evil spirit who [[MoreThanMindControl has to be invited or allowed in, either through an active desire or by exploiting the fear and weakness of character of the one he possesses]] (referred to by Deputy Hawk as "imperfect courage"). In Leland's case, it's strongly hinted that he started out lusting after Laura, making him an example of the former. In Dale Cooper's case, he allowed his fear for Annie Blackburn's fate, combined with guilt over his affair with Windom Earle's wife, to push him over into the latter.]] |
| 456 | [[/folder]] |
| 457 | |
| 458 | [[folder:U]] |
| 459 | * Sir Reginald Hargreeves from ''Series/TheUmbrellaAcademy2019'', who neglected at best and mistreated at worst his sons and daughter to the extent that years later, they are still experiencing the after-effects. In order. |
| 460 | ** Luther was mentally conditioned to the point that he thought a SnipeHunt to the moon was perfectly acceptable. |
| 461 | ** Diego was, like the other children, forced to get a marking tattoo, triggering his [[AfraidOfNeedles fear of needles]]. He's still bitter about it to the point that he badmouths his father at his own funeral. |
| 462 | ** Allison was encouraged to not only abuse her CompellingVoice by Reginald but also participate in Viktor's below-mentioned abuse. |
| 463 | ** Klaus was frequently locked in a mauloseum overnight to attempt to curb his power to [[ISeeDeadPeople talk to the dead]]. This led Klaus to become an AddledAddict. |
| 464 | ** Five's disappearance due to TimeTravel was treated as a literal afterthought. |
| 465 | ** Ben was outright KIA, and Reginald refused to take any responsibility for sending his own son to his death. |
| 466 | ** Viktor (né Vanya) takes the cake though; not only did Reginald act as though he never existed, [[spoiler:he outright drugged him without his knowledge, and eventually brainwashed him into believing that he had no superpowers]]. |
| 467 | [[/folder]] |
| 468 | |
| 469 | [[folder:V]] |
| 470 | * ''Series/TheVampireDiaries'': |
| 471 | ** Richard Lockwood is this to Tyler. Mikael is this to Klaus. To a lesser extent, Giuseppe Salvatore to Damon. Caroline's father tortures her quite brutally, although he claims it's for her own good. |
| 472 | ** [[spoiler: As of Season 7, it's no longer to a lesser extent for Giuseppe. He killed a pet turkey that Damon had, then forced him to eat it. Later on, he burned him with cigarettes for stealing money, knowing that he didn't do it.]] |
| 473 | ** Esther Mikealson and Lily Salvatore aren't much better. Esther allowed all of her kids, especially Klaus, to be abused. She then turned them into vampires and turned her back on Klaus on Mikael (this led to him killing her.) She spent most of Season 3 trying to have others kill them. Meanwhile, Lily left her children with an abusive monster [[spoiler: after turning into a vampire]], rejecting them for a new, makeshift family. She and that family proceeded to steal their town, kidnap their girlfriends and endanger their friends. The worst part is that [[spoiler: she was the one who told Kai to put the coma spell on Elena and Bonnie.]] |
| 474 | * ''Series/VeronicaMars'' is full to the brim with this trope. |
| 475 | ** Aaron Echolls, father of Logan Echolls, is notably one of the worst dads in television -- among other things, he has been shown to physically abuse his son, hitting him and striking him with a belt, and [[spoiler:''having sex with his son's girlfriend and then murdering her with an ashtray.'']]. Logan's mother could be said to be neglectful, in the least, due to her drinking with the intention of ignoring her son being beaten in the next room. Interestingly, Aaron recalls how his own father was a violent drunk who beat his mother and put out a cigar on his hand. |
| 476 | ** Dick and Cassidy's parents aren't much better. Their father was emotionally distant and openly favored Dick, and the two regularly made fun of Cassidy. Dick reveals [[spoiler: they'd even have competitions to see who could make him cry faster]]. Their mother, while loving, is usually absent and only showed up once to unlock the boys' trust funds. Meanwhile their stepmother Kendall is a [[GoldDigger gold-digging]] trophy wife who is at best indifferent to the boys. She never harms them in any way but expresses disgust towards Dick, most likely due to his [[CasanovaWannabe womanizing nature]]. |
| 477 | ** Meg Manning's parents are perhaps the most egregious example other than Aaron, as religious zealots who mentally abuse their children. [[spoiler: They would routinely lock their youngest child, Grace, in a closet and make her fill out notebook after notebook with the phrase "The path of God is paved with righteousness"]]. |
| 478 | ** Even Veronica's mom Lianne crosses into this territory. First she cheats on Keith with Jake Kane, was an alcoholic, often neglected Veronica, and straight up abandons her family in the series premiere. Lianne returns wanting to fix her problems and enrolls in rehab but quickly falls back into old habits. [[spoiler: To top it off she even stole $50,000 from her daughter after being asked to leave]]. |
| 479 | * The Vegas from ''Series/{{Victorious}}'' definitely cross into this territory with their [[ParentalNeglect neglectful treatment]] of their children. One notable example is when their daughter Trina has her wisdom teeth taken out. They leave town, forcing their other daughter to take care of Trina all by herself. |
| 480 | * In the third season of the Argentinean Disney Channel show ''Violetta'' has Priscila Ferro, Ludmila's mother who always scolds her daughter and does bad things such as turning the golden disk into earrings and gifting them to Violetta and even going far as Priscila pushing Violetta out of the stairs then she blamed her daughter to the point that she sends her to Switzerland. |
| 481 | * Part of the backstory for Merle and Daryl Dixon in ''Series/TheWalkingDead'' is that they were beaten as children, leaving them CoveredWithScars. It's not brought up very often, but it clearly left a huge impact on both of them. Daryl in particular HatesBeingTouched as a result. |
| 482 | [[/folder]] |
| 483 | |
| 484 | [[folder:W]] |
| 485 | * Celia in ''Series/{{Weeds}}'', who constantly berates and belittles her HollywoodPudgy daughter, Isabelle. |
| 486 | * In ''Series/TheWestWing'', the only flashback about Jed Bartlet's past portrays his late father as an emotionally, and sometimes physically, abusive parent toward the young Jed. In a battle with his subconscious, personified by the "ghost" of Mrs. Landingham, his father is described as "a prick who could never get over the fact that he wasn't as smart as his brothers". [[WordOfGod Sorkin says]] that Bartlet's tirade against God in the episode "Two Cathedrals" is directed just as much at his own father. |
| 487 | ** Reappears in Season 3, when Toby observes that Bartlet is still trying to get his father to stop hitting him. |
| 488 | * In ''Series/WizardsOfWaverlyPlace'', there's an example to be had in almost every episode, though usually played for laughs. In the first season, Harper's parents are implied to be pretty abusive and the reason why she ends up becoming a member of the Russo family. |
| 489 | * ''Series/WolfHall'' doesn't ''start'' with Thomas Cromwell being beaten by his father like the book does. When his wife Liz reads a letter from his sister saying how much Walter's changed and pointing out that their own children have never met him, though, Thomas' response is "let's keep it that way." He visits after Liz and their daughters die only because she thought he ought to, and then we get the flashback of young Tom being kicked so viciously he [[VomitIndiscretionShot throws up]] -- during the conversation, which is not a happy reconciliation, Cromwell's gaze lingers on the spot where it happened. |
| 490 | [[/folder]] |
| 491 | |
| 492 | [[folder:Y]] |
| 493 | * On ''Series/{{Yellowjackets}}'', Natalie's father was both physically and verbally abusive towards her and her mother. When he catches her with Kevyn, he very nearly gets violent with Kevyn as well. When Natalie's mother tries to stop him from abusing her, he turns his focus on her instead. Natalie goes and gets a gun, but forgets to take the safety on and he takes it from her, saying that she's even more useless than her mother. When she shouts that he's the useless one, he turns on her and ends up shooting himself in the head, killing himself instantly. |
| 494 | * ''Series/YouMeHer'': Jack's mom copied the worst possible male role model after his dad died to bring him up, which has left him somewhat scarred to this day. They start to reconcile when she shows up again in Season 4. |
| 495 | * In ''Series/YoungDracula'', Dracula shows blatant favoritism for Vlad over his older sister Ingrid, even though Ingrid acts exactly the way he keeps pressuring Vlad to act. One could argue that he's also abusive to Vlad based on his inability to accept that Vlad isn't a younger copy of himself, but it's much less blatant than his abuse of Ingrid. |
| 496 | [[/folder]] |
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