Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas / Live-Action TV

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• The Affair: John Gunther, the sadistic prison guard stalking Noah throughout Season 3, gets incredibly pissed off after Noah visits his mother in his parents' hunting store.
• Non-human example: On All Creatures Great And Small, two vets are chased up a tree by an enraged bull, which the farmer doesn't dare approach for fear of being gored. To rescue them, he brings an elderly cow to the paddock, and the bull immediately calms down and became tractable in her presence. She's the bull's mother.
• Altered Carbon: Subverted with Reilein initially claiming to honor her late mother's memory by keeping her necklace along with a picture of her, despite having become an immoral immortal over the centuries. She later admits that she actually hates her for not fighting back, and keeps it as a reminder never to let herself become like her mother.
• The Americans: Elizabeth, a ruthless Soviet spy, loves her mother, to the point where she listens to tapes that her mother sends her. When he finds out her mother is dying, Philip arranges for Elizabeth to visit her, and the two share a joyful (if bittersweet) reunion.
  • Also, in the season 6 episode "Harvest", Merton, another spy, gets mortally wounded by the FBI when Elizabeth and Philip try to rescue him. As he's dying, Merton asks Philip to tell his mother he loved her and hoped he made her proud.
• Gender Flip on Angel with Lilah, an Amoral Attorney employed by the forces of Hell. Her mother has Alzheimer's and Lilah pays for her to stay in a nursing home in another city. In one episode, the two have a phone conversation, during which the mother apparently starts crying when Lilah tries to explain that she can't visit her that day.
• Even though he is not a "bad" man (just a scary black one), B.A. Baracus from the The A-Team loves his mother so much, he temporarily gives up his fear of flying to quickly get to his mother when she needs help.
• The "bad" part is very much downplayed on Bar Rescue: the three brothers that own Jack's Ale House / Jack's Fire Department (named for their late father) are all former firefighters. Their constant clashing has gotten so bad that Jon Taffer brings their mother into the act. The letter she reads them aloud is the catalyst for getting the infighting to stop, for the sake of their father's legacy. (Bonus: the unedited letter is the back of the menu.)
• Batman (1966): At the end of "Ma Parker," the heroes suspiciously inspect a package that Ma Parker's children ordered for her after the family took over the prison. It turns out to be flowers for Mother's Day.
• Battlestar Galactica has a zigzag.
  • Cavil refuses to acknowledge that he loves Ellen as his mother but is implied to have loved her all along and sought her approval, only to believe that Ellen never loved him back. Ellen insists she always cared for Cavil but she can't convince him because she never shared his more morally-grey beliefs and philosophies. The result of those differences make their relationship a supremely messed up one.
  • The whole Cylon race counts really. They persistently refer to humanity as their parents, yet have gleefully justified their genocide at the same breath.
• Tuco Salamanca Better Call Saul. Though portrayed as a violent and psychopathic killer elsewhere in Better Call Saul and in Breaking Bad (and to some extent in this episode) he is surprisingly calm and collected around his abuelita (grandmother). Somewhat like his namesake, actually.
• Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory is incredibly stubborn, but he listens to his mother, who Leonard refers to as [Sheldon's] Kryptonite. Sheldon is even more devoted to his grandmother, whom he calls Mee-maw. This comes to the forefront when Raj and Howard try to upset Sheldon with Your Mom jokes. When that doesn't work, they start talking about his Mee-maw, which pisses Sheldon off pretty much immediately.
• Rather magnificently averted in Blackadder:
  Blackadder: If I don't make it back, please write to my mother and tell her that I've been alive all the time; it's just that I couldn't be bothered to get in touch with the old bat.
  • And again:
    A man may fight for his principles... his country... the glistening tear on the cheek of a golden child. Me, I'd mud-wrestle my own mother for a bag of cash, an amusing clock, and a stack of French porn.
• Beautifully inverted by Bernard in Black Books. Whilst filling out his tax form: "Mother's maiden name… Christ, what's her first name? I just knew her as ma! That'll have to do. Ma. [Beat] Possibly deceased." Later in the same episode, while procrastinating on his taxes, he actually calls his mother, cue 11 seconds later.
  Bernard: I know... I am... yeah, I know... yes, yes... yep... Yes I know, goodbye, I have to do my taxes!
• In Bones, Sweets tricks a sociopathic murderer into confessing...by telling him his mother had confessed, which caused him to panic and confess, providing details only the real killer could have known.
• Cesare Borgia of The Borgias. Domestic Abuser and Jerkass Baron Bonadeo had little to no chance of survival after calling Cesare's mother Vannozza a "Spanish whore" twice. Cesare even gave him the opportunity to apologize, but Bonadeo didn't take him up on it and gets his throat slit for his trouble.
• Doug Judy of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, an unrepentant liar, car thief, manipulator and all-around petty criminal, who, in spite of it all, seems to genuinely love his mom. And, yes, Don't Tell Mama is in play here, too.
• Brotherhood: Michael Kaffee, a vicious gangster, cares deeply for his mother, to the point where when his estranged father threatens not to help her by signing some papers, Michael tells him he will inflict bodily harm on him if he doesn't help her.
• In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Giftedly Bad poet William Pratt was such a big Momma's Boy when alive, that even after he is turned into a vampire (soon to be known as Spike) and loses his soul he still desires to save his terminally ill mother and be with her forever so he turns her into a vampire as well. However, it backfires when she cruelly taunts and attempts to sleep with him, so he's forced to stake her. He later has a surprisingly good relationship with Joyce, Buffy's mother, even before his Heel–Face Turn.
• As Michael from Burn Notice puts it, "Thirty years of karate. Combat experience on five continents. A rating with every weapon that shoots a bullet or holds an edge. Still haven't found any defense against Mom crying into my shirt."
  • In a later episode, Madeline goes to a man's apartment to get something for Fiona, but instead of giving it to her, he terrorizes her and kicks her out of the apartment. So Madeline turns to Michael for help. Michael, having obtained what he came for, breaks the guy's arm.
  Mook: What was that for?!
  Michael: That was for my mother.
• In one episode of Car 54, Where Are You?, an inspector is asking a former criminal, famous for getting into fistfights with police officers, why he has never fought with Toody and Muldoon when they took over the neighborhood beat. His response? That they were bringing his mother home from church.
• Chiefs: Sonny is a Bigot with a Badge who is a Villain Protagonist at best, but he does spend time with his mother and displays sadness at how she still loves the memory of her abusive husband.
• Seen in Chuck when John Casey (not actually evil but not the nicest guy on the show) calls his mother during a hostage situation. Subsequently subverted when it's revealed that his birth name is Alex Coburn. The call can then be interpreted as him reporting on the situation to Beckman.
  John Casey: Mom? It's Johnny Boy.
• Inverted in Criminal Minds in one episode: the killer's mother was his first victim. However, in another instance, a serial killer's entire spree was leading to the end game of being sent to the same prison as his father (who murdered his mother when he was a child by setting fire to their apartment), so that he could stab him to death.
• Clavo Cruz in CSI: Miami. He's a drug dealer, murderer, and generally appalling person, but when his father makes a threatening move towards his mother, he instantly puts himself between them.
• Daredevil (2015):
  • Wilson Fisk killed his abusive dad to defend his mother. In the present day, his love for his mother is still present, and when he finds out that Ben Ulrich from the Bulletin visited his now senile mother in her nursing home, he breaks into Ben's house and beats him to death.
  • In prison, Fisk buys the loyalty of the Valdez brothers by ensuring their mother's financial well-being.
• Dark Winds: The blond hitman shows strong devotion to his mother, while he has no hesitation about killing anyone else if he's hired or preventing himself being caught.
• Doctor Who: Played straight in "The Vampires of Venice"; Rory begins insulting Francesco in order to distract him from Amy, but it has no effect until he insults his mother.
  Francesco: Did you just say something about mummy?!
• Many suspects on Dog the Bounty Hunter, even those with myriad felony charges against them, will often become emotional when family members or loved ones are mentioned when talking to them en-route to jail. Some will even take the opportunity to call them to apologize for their actions before being taken to jail.
• On The Drew Carey Show, Drew's Bad Boss Mr. Wick does not take it lightly when Mimi insults his mother over the phone:
  Mr. Wick: Mimi, I may be power-mad, I may be a corporate weasel, I may even be a sleaze-bag, but I am first and foremost a mama's boy, and you NEVER EVER insult the mama of a mama's boy!
• On an episode of ER, the normally Jerkass surgeon Dr. Robert "Rocket" Romano is gleefully describing the elaborate plans he has for his mother to celebrate Mother's Day. At the stunned reaction from the rest of the ER staff, he quips, "I bet you didn't even think I had a mother, did you?". To which one of the nurses muttered, "Can't imagine what she's like."
• Scorpius from Farscape genuinely loves his mother, in spite of having never met her for obvious reasons, and flies into a furious rage when he discovers that he was produced when his mother was raped as part of a Scarren breeding program, and it is this, as well as his own abusive childhood at the hands of the Scarrens, that fuels his deep hatred for them. Later, he is seen cracking a genuine smile as he caresses a flower that reminds him of his mother.
• In the British comedy sketch show The Fast Show, the incredibly posh-accented Cockneys go up north, and immediately prior to meeting incredibly-posh-accented Geordies and an incredibly-posh-accented Yardie from Kingston (near Richmond-upon-Thames), they announced themselves as "tough as old boots, but we love our old mums". This is likely in reference to one or more of several real-life East End gangsters who were known to be in thrall to their mothers.
• FBI: Most Wanted: In "Caesar", Jess persuades a member of Cleo's gang to inform on her in exchange for getting his brother moved to a prison closer to their invalid mother. When Cleo discovers this, she coldly puts a bullet in the back of his head. The final scene of the episode shows Jess making good on his promise.
• Jayne Cobb, the Token Evil Teammate of Firefly, is seen in "The Message" to have a close relationship with his mother, judging by the letter (and the "cunning" knit hat) he receives from her. The other crewmembers are clearly amused by this discovery, but it also served as evidence that Jayne has some Hidden Depths. In the comic "Better Days", his fantasy ship is called the "Radiant Cobb". When everyone finds this amusing, he protests, "That's my mama's name!" He settles down to live with her for a while in another comic though eventually he does rejoin the crew.
• Referenced in Friends when Monica and Chandler find out that their surrogate slept with two men — one of whom killed his own father with a shovel. Chandler is worried that if the criminal is the biological father, the baby will grow up to be violent. Monica is less concerned.
  Chandler: That's easy for you to say, you're the mother! That guy probably loved his mother! He probably has a tattoo that says 'MOM' on his shovel-wielding arm!
• Game of Thrones:
  • Unlike in the books, Cersei genuinely loved her mother and was saddened by her Death by Childbirth, blaming her brother Tyrion for it.
  • A far more famous example would be the biggest of Daenerys' dragons, Drogon. He is easily the most aggressive dragon compared to his brothers, and Daenerys sometimes has trouble controlling him. Despite that, there is no doubt that Drogon loves his mother and is incredibly protective of her. Because of this, he does not take kindly to anyone who gets between him and his mother or threatens her life. Jaime nearly learns this the hard way when he charges at Daenerys, only to see Drogon, still injured from a ballista bolt, ready to burn him alive.
• Gotham:
  • Carmine Falcone loved his mother, and connects with Liza, a young woman, over listening his mother's favorite aria. Liza's a Honey Trap set by Fish Mooney. Using his mother against him is also a Berserk Button, as he kills Liza when he learns the truth and plans to have Fish tortured.
  • Oswald "Penguin" Cobblepott is utterly devoted to his mother, to the point that he lies to her about what he does for a living so that she won't be disappointed in him. In Season 2, this is used against him, as new Big Bad Theo Galavan kidnaps his mother in order to force Penguin to do his bidding. And when Galavan ultimately kills her, Penguin has a terrifying Villainous Breakdown and swears revenge. Even though alliances come and go, and feuds are quickly put aside over the course of the series, Penguin never forgives anyone responsible for his mother's murder.
• Although initially cruel to her adoptive mother—ditching her to go in search of her birth mother—General Hospital's Carly eventually reconciles with her and is devastated when she does. And after a rough start with her birth mother—seducing her husband in order to get revenge for having been given up—they eventually develop a very close relationship as well.
• Gabriel Gray (or Sylar) from Heroes is revealed to be a mama's boy in his Season 1 Back Story episode. His whole obsession to be special came from his mother constantly telling him that he was and he needed to prove it to himself. Too bad she got shocked at what he became, tried to attack him with scissors, which he stopped, but accidentally stabbed her in the chest. To top it off after her death he finger-paints a vision of the destruction of N.Y. city with her blood. He even loves the mama he never knew so much that he tracks down his biological father so that he can kill him.
• House: Gregory House loves his mother; it's his father he hates.
• House of Saddam: Saddam with his own mother at first, before telling her that she "gave him nothing" on her deathbed. Played straight with Qusay and Uday concerning their relationship with Sajida. Uday brutalizes a confidante for setting up his father with a new mistress to protect his mother's honour.
• While he isn't evil per se, Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother is a manipulative Casanova and an overall Jerkass, but he deeply loves his mother, Loretta. Barney repeatedly describes his mother as the coolest person in the world so much that he didn't mind the similarities between her and his girlfriend Nora, proudly declaring he would be lucky if any girl was like his mom.
• Danny from Hustle is very close to his grandmother despite being something of a Jerkass on occasion.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): Based on his dinner conversation with Florence de Pointe du Lac in "In Throes of Increasing Wonder...", the evil vampire Lestat de Lioncourt adores his mother and fondly talks about her ("...she gave me every advantage in life as a young man: my first mastiff, first flintlock rifle, the means to make my way to Paris").
• Bound to show up eventually in Justified given the nature of the setting, and it did with Tanner Dodd, a thug and fugitive from Season 3.
• Kamen Rider Ghost:
  • Adel is revealed to be this in Episode #45 when he was still a child. After his mother dies, this motivated his father to create a perfect world until Adel himself dethroned and killed him. When his sister brings up their mother in said episode, he snaps.
  • His brother, Alain, is an example of Even Bad Men Love Their Daddies. His sister Alia admits that Alain is a brat, but still firmly believes that he would never do this.
• Garthe Knight from Knight Rider: When the mother is a sociopathic Doting Parent and the son is The Sociopath, things can get ugly. It should be noted that despite his setting into motion a plan to kill him, Garthe flies into a rage and attacks Michael after Michael off-handedly insults his Momma's Boy status.
• Kyūkyū Sentai GoGoV:
  • As a family-centered season of Super Sentai, the villains, the Psyma Family, is a family consisting of three sons (Zylpheeza, the oldest; Cobolda the middle child and Drop, the youngest) and one daughter (Denus, younger than Cobolda but oldr than Drop) who wants to please their literal demon of a mother, Grand Witch Grandienne, and bring her back to Earth for her goals. The tragic thing is while they love their mother, she never truly returns the favor, seeing them as pawns to be either discarded and/or controlled.
  • There is one aversion. The team-up movie reveals that there was another son who was born before them, and the minute he was born, he tried overthrowing her, which did not end well for him. That child is Darkness King Gill, the Big Bad of Kyuukyuu Sentai GoGo Five vs. Gingaman.
• Law & Order:
  • When a convicted mass murderer escapes from prison, he visits his dying mom at the hospital and asks her to forgive him for his crimes. She refuses, and he goes to shoot a bunch of kids for no reason.
  • In "Jeopardy," a triple murderer accepts a plea deal for the maximum if McCoy doesn't prosecute his mother for bribing a judge to get his first case thrown out.
  • In "Bitter Fruit", even as she denounces his actions, the criminal's mother testifies that he always took care of her.
  • In "Narcosis", the detectives investigate the murder of a greedy sex worker who was involved in blackmail and sex trafficking. It's mentioned that even though her parents disinherited her over her behavior, she still paid for a lavish funeral when her mother died.
• In an episode of Life, a scammer got murdered, because he scammed a biker guy's mom.
• Midnight Caller: When a statue of the baby Jesus goes missing in "Do You Believe In Miracles?" goes missing, the mobster Nick Clemente is desperate to find it because his mother sees it as a symbol of her dead husband's salvation and would be devastated if she found out it was gone.
• On Monk, Monk's Arch-Enemy Dale "the Whale" Biederbeck is a monstrously powerful financier and Diabolical Mastermind who has no empathy for anyone or anything besides himself. However, he did genuinely love his mother, the only person in the world who he ever cared about. After she died, he fell into a deep depression and began eating constantly, which eventually ballooned his weight to 920 pounds and rendered him virtually immobile.
• An interesting example in Mystery Science Theater 3000. It's clear that Dr. Forrester blames his violent, cruel mother Pearl for making him the hate-filled sociopath that he is. That said, in the episode where she is introduced, Forrester desperately attempts to gain his mother's approval, and in later seasons where Pearl was a recurring character, he was almost HER lackey. Sadly, it's also made painfully clear that Pearl's feelings towards her son are significantly less than favorable. However, when he dies during the course of the series (due to the actor leaving the show), she responds with remarkably powerful grief and rage.
• New York Undercover. A recently paroled rapist is absolutely devastated when his mother is killed when a vigilante takes a shot at him.
• Gender Flip on Once Upon a Time which gives us “Even Bad Women Love Their Daddy” though not to the extent that it saves him from being sacrificed for revenge, against Snow White.
• Only Fools and Horses: Bad is perhaps pushing it, but Lovable Rogue Del Boy Trotter is absolutely devoted to the memory of his now-deceased mother Joannie. He sees her as truly Too Good for This Sinful Earth, never allowing a single bad word to be said about her in earshot and completely obliviously ignoring several details suggesting she really wasn't all he cracks her up to be — like the fact she was the first woman on the estate to smoke menthol cigs, and that she was often seen in the pub hanging with shady looking men. And in the spin-off Rock and Chips where Joan is the main character, you find out she was every bit as devious and cunning as Del is now, though also Closer to Earth and quite a bit more kindhearted. She has an affair with Reg (though Reg's neglectful, crude, lazy, and at times abusive attitude allows Joan to be painted sympathetically for it) and uses the resulting pregnancy (Rodney) to secure the family a better home at Nelson Mandela House.
• In an episode of The Outer Limits (1963), a group of Earth soldiers are captured by an alien race. They are tortured and subjected to hallucinations. A young Martin Sheen plays a loud, bigoted soldier who is reduced to tears (and possibly treason) by a visit from his mother (visible only to him).
• Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue: Prince Olympius is genuinely devoted to his mother despite Bansheera's lack of care for him.
• Prison Break:
  • The Company implicitly threatens Bagwell's mother. This leads to him threatening dire vengeance should they follow through.
  • When T-Bag returns on Breakout Kings, he demonstrates just how far he's willing to go to deal with the two former orderlies who sexually assaulted his mother in a nursing home.
• Subverted in The Punisher (2017). Billy Russo is spending lots of money to have his mother taken care of in a nice care facility as a Cruel Mercy, since she was a drug-addicted prostitute who abandoned him as an infant, and he wants to exert power over her now as an adult.
• At the end of the first episode of Sherlock, Mycroft and Holmes bicker over who upset their mother more. Given that they're a pair of High-Functioning Sociopaths, this may not be entirely based in fact, but Watson appears to believe it.
• Badass biker Jax Teller does not hesitate to kill people when needed through the run of Sons of Anarchy However, he still shows a great deal of deference and respect towards his mother, Gemma. His devotion towards her does not allow him to see how toxic her influence really is. When her manipulations lead to the death of several club members and club law demands that she die, tough guy Jax breaks down crying.
  Jax: After everything she did, all the lies, the death and the wreckage... I still love her, you know? She's my mom. How could she do this to Tara? ^note Jax's wife, who Gemma murdered in a jealous rage How could she do this? [dissolves into sobs]
• The Penthouse: War in Life: Joo Dan Tae is the Chairman of JKING Holdings and the Bad Guy responsible for all the tragedies and deaths in the Penthouse. However, he still loves his mother, who took care of him in his poor childhood, and no matter how sad he turned into a power-hungry businessman, his love for his mother never subverted. He also tried to build a memorial for his mother in the Cheonsu district.
• The Sopranos:
  • Paulie Walnuts is so nuts about his mother that he gets violent when other wise guys insult their mothers in his presence. That is, until he finds out his "mother" was really his aunt, and his real mother was a nun who broke her vows. Then he goes crazy on both of them. He later makes up with her though.
  • Played with with Tony and his deeply troubled relationship with Livia. He goes through a lot of effort to take care of her even though she's a cold, manipulative Evil Matriarch. He eventually severs ties with her after she tries to have him killed.
• A female example in Stargate SG-1 with Season 10 Big Bad Adria. Even though Adria knows Vala was impregnated against her will, Adria maintains a fondness for her mother, going out of her way to find and protect Vala despite Vala's clear opposition to Adria's regime. Vala, on the other hand, firmly believes That Thing Is Not My Child! and eventually tells Adria this to her face once it becomes clear their relationship will not persuade Adria into a Heel–Face Turn.
• Star Trek: The Ferengi are a zigzagged trope. Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #31: "Never make fun of a Ferengi's mother." The Expanded Universe adds, "Insult something he cares about instead." However, Quark and Rom are both mama's boys. It doesn't hurt that Quark got his lobes for business from his mother. As such, once his mother's business acumen is out in the open, and Quark is willing to accept a female earning profit, she's his only family member who shares interests with him. Ishka is no saint. While she does push for equal rights for women, it's the equal right to be just as greedy as the men. The love of greed only gives her and Quark more to bond over.
  • Worf may not be a bad guy, but he is gruff and less friendly than his human comrades to the point of coming across as a jerk sometimes. He is, however, always nice to his adoptive parents.
• Supernatural:
  • The one thing guaranteed to piss off the Alpha vampire is to insult his mother Eve.
  • We learn in Season 8 that in human life Crowley's mother was a witch. He speaks of her in passing, but she did pass some of her magical knowledge on to him (which also explains how he came in contact with demons before becoming one himself), implying a close bond. Subverted in "Inside Man" where he kicks his real mother Rowena to the curb. It's clear that she doesn't care at all about him, either.
• Grinning maniac Judge Frasier of This is Wonderland. Although his own mother is probably long dead, he has a great respect for the bond between mother and child, and tends to be more lenient when moms are on trial.
• In Tyrant (2014), one of the few people that Jamal Al-Fayeed listens to is his beloved mother. Which makes it all the more tragic when she's killed off as a result of one of his paranoid machinations.
• The Walking Dead:
  • The convict Big Tiny expresses concern for his mother after learning of the walker apocalypse.
  • The twist in "Vatos" when a grandmother comes out of nowhere and manages to defuse the impending shootout between Rick's group and the Latino gang. It is revealed that the gang were actually good people all along trying to protect the residents of an elderly home.
• Omar Little of The Wire is a stick-up boy, an armed robber who targets drug dealers and other criminals for his heists. He was also raised by his grandmother, inherited a strict moral code from her, keeps her ignorant of his criminal activities, and takes her to church on Sundays. When a pair of gunmen open fire on him during one of those Sundays, their bosses are horrified. Even Evil Has Standards after all, and those standards include not shooting at a man taking his grandmother to church on Sunday, even if you have a grudge against him. What's worse is that Omar's grandma's Sunday hat (or "church crown") was hit by bullets, so they send the grandma a new crown as an apology.
• In Wizards of Waverly Place, Justin starts teaching a class full of delinquents who were expelled from Wiz-Tech. One of the students, a tough bruiser named Felix, gets offended when Justin mentions his mother.
  Justin: You tell your mother you're doing a good job.
  Felix: (offended) Don't you talk about my mother! (tears off Justin's sleeves in anger)

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