"Guys, I don't suppose this is some kind of contrived paint-by-numbers adventure that's designed to force an emotional bond between me and my emotionally-stunted father, is it?"
— Hank, Community, "Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons"
Maybe he wants to make up for being away from home so often. Maybe he wants to understand what is in this kid's mind. Or maybe he just wants to prevent him from turning gay. Whichever reason he may have, one day Dad decides that he and Son should go out of the house and do something together! It will be fun, Dad says. And they will get to know each other better, won't that be great, old chap?
The problem is, Son is right now in an age where he isn't exactly very keen on doing uncool activities with uncool adults (or worse, being seen doing so). And Dad is of course the uncoolest adult there is! Since Son does not really have a say in the matter, he accompanies Dad of course. But don't expect him to just enjoy the day! He will instead react some combination of a few ways:
- Passive-aggressiveness. Perhaps he won't outright revolt, but instead of being in a good mood, he is constantly snarking, and acts generally rather uncooperative.
- He will just find this incredibly dull and boring.
- Son actually enjoys the activity (with or without initial complaint), but Dad's efforts to force the bonding part and/or show him how to experience the activity "properly" lead to friction.
Popular bonding activities are:
- Playing Catch with the Old Man: Often omits the Son-Doesn't-Like-It bit. For some reason, American media tend to depict this as iconic stock image of Dad and Son genuinely having a splendid time together. Might have something to do with baseball being more popular in the US than in many other parts of the world. Plus, if it's in the backyard, the son won't fear being seen with his old man. For that matter, Dad and Son throwing a(n American) football to and fro might convey the same associations.
- Fishing. This specific activity involving most of the time not much, well, activity, Son will most likely show reaction #2: "This is so booooooring."
- Hunting. Here, Dad tries to make a MAN out of Son, often with the ulterior motive to cure him of (either imagined or really existing) homosexuality. Which doesn't make much sense, if you think a bit about it: there is no logical reason why being gay and being a passionate sports hunter should be mutually exclusive. Will inevitably end in the hunters becoming the hunted or eating cold beans, showing that Dad himself isn't as MANLY as he likes to consider himself.
- Taking the son to their job. Usually ends with the child either causing trouble at the workplace or being extremely bored the whole time.
- Hands-on projects, especially the sort involving tools like fixing a car or building a treehouse. Expect this to involve at least one of them getting stitches.
- Other "nature" activities, like hiking or camping, and can of course overlap with fishing and hunting. These almost universally become a Macho Disaster Expedition and/or Horrible Camping Trip, but also tend to be among the most effective at actually creating a closer bond between the two once things reach rock bottom.
- Team sports. While typically the stuff of Jock Dad, Nerd Son disasters, in the rare case that Son displays any interest or aptitude, expect Dad to unexpectedly find himself as the one holding them back.
- An attempt to participate in the Son's interests. This can have wildly ranging outcomes, depending on how well Dad knows what their kid is into, and how much effort Dad is willing to put into not replicating the Son's usual role in the trope.
- Anything else you might need at least two persons for.
Examples
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Baseball
Comic Strips
- Calvin and Hobbes: When Calvin signs up to play baseball at recess, his dad decides to teach him how to play. This goes about as well as you'd expect.
Film — Animated
- Not quite baseball, but this imagery is clearly invoked when Buzz plays with Zurg after the Luke, I Am Your Father moment in Toy Story 2.
Film — Live-Action
- A major part of Field of Dreams is Ray's rough relationship with his dad, who loved baseball. At the end of the movie, his father's ghost comes to the baseball field to play with him.
- Ray attempts to bond with his son by tossing a baseball back and forth in War of the Worlds (2005). Thanks to divorce-induced estrangement and raging teenage contempt, it goes disastrously when barbed comments from his son incite Ray to put a lot of heat on his throws and hurt his son's hand, who then "accidentally" busts a window of Rays house.
Literature
- It's not playing baseball, but in Ragtime, when things are really starting to fall apart for the family, Father (who has been mostly neglectful) decides to take the Little Boy to see a baseball game whether he wants to go or not. In the end, Father is the one who has a miserable time (the game has more swearing, spitting, and immigrants than he remembered), while the Little Boy finds it all quite interesting.
Live-Action TV
- A daydream of J.D. from Scrubs involves him playing baseball with his "father figure" Dr. Cox.
Western Animation
- The Simpsons: When Homer finds out that Abe may not really be his biological father, he imagines himself playing baseball with the mystery guy who actually sired him. (He even has a question mark instead of a face!)
American Football
Comic Books
- Robin (1993): Jack Drake seems to think he shares a love of football with Tim, though when Tim is with the Waynes he asks Alfred to change the channel when football is on since he doesn't care for it. Jack even expects Tim to try out for the high school team, and ends up furiously dismantling Tim's room after speaking to the coach and learning the coach doesn't remember Tim showing up for try-outs.
Film — Live-Action
- In Silver Linings Playbook, Pat Sr. tries to make watching the Eagles his bonding activity with his son, who has open contempt for his father's superstitions. They make it work eventually.
Live-Action TV
- The Big Bang Theory:
- Everyone is shocked that Sheldon is an expert on football, due to his father's insistence on teaching him against his will.
- In a later episode, this actually enables Sheldon to bond with Mike, Bernadette's father. This is upsetting Howard, because being Mike's son-in-law, he is the one who was supposed to bond with him.
- In the pilot of No Ordinary Family, Jim tries to get the other members of the family interested in family bonding, including throwing the football around. Nobody cares to do so. The trip that they take where they have a plane crash and get their powers was another family bonding attempt.
Western Animation
- In The Venture Brothers, Hank seems to wish he could "throw the old pigskin around" with his dad, as evidenced by Rusty's Lotus-Eater Machine.
Fishing
Comic Books
- Robin (1993): Jack Drake makes a plan to go fishing with Tim after Jack promises to do better about spending time with him upon waking from his couple month long coma and discovering his wife is dead and his health is such that he can't go gallivanting off to the other side of the globe so easily. Jack ends up going on a date with his physical therapist instead and never tries to make any further plans with his son despite bringing it up on occasion so it's averted in the end.
Comic Strips
Fan Works
- The Calvin & Hobbes: The Series episode "Dad" shows Calvin and his father going fishing.
Film — Animated
- Bart goes fishing with Flanders (not really Bart's father, but in this specific instance clearly acts as father figure) in The Simpsons Movie — here, however, this is very much appreciated by the boy. Earlier in the movie, Homer does take Bart fishing, just with a bug zapper.
Live-Action TV
- In one episode of Family Matters, Carl realizes he hasn't been spending as much time with Eddie as he used to and decides to taking him on a fishing trip the latter wanted to do. The problem is it's the middle of winter so it becomes an ice fishing trip and not the warm weather activity that Eddie was hoping for. The combination of freezing conditions as well as Steve tagging along and catching all the fish makes Eddie miserable and he and Carl start arguing, only to be interrupted by the ice on the lake beginning to crack.
- Frasier: One episode has the Crane men going ice fishing as an attempt at bonding. It goes about as well as anything the Crane men put their minds to, but it does result in them talking about their problems with bonding, and how Marty has severe difficulty opening up to his sons, and his own discomfort with that.
Frasier: You say "I love you" to Duke all the time!
Marty: Ya. I say, "I love ya".
Frasier: We'd take "ya".
Niles: Ya. - At the end of an episode of How I Met Your Mother, we see Barney's dad taking Barney and his half-brother to a fishing-trip. Barney quickly proclaims that this is boring. However, it can be seen as an improvement of their father-son relationship that Barney has agreed to go with them in the first place. Before that, he either forced his father to join him during his own usual activities (which are partying and hitting on chicks), or completely ignored him. Also, it has to be pointed out that, contrary to most other examples here, Barney is already an adult. His father went away early in his childhood, and therefore they have a lot to make up for.
- In Malcolm in the Middle, Hal guilt trips Malcolm into fishing during a family boat holiday with Stevie's family when he knows that Reece and Stevie are at a cheerleader camp. Malcolm later abandons his father on a rock in the middle of the lake to join his brother
- One episode of NCIS starts with a father taking his son fishing. The son does not enjoy it — until his dad fishes up a dead body. Suddenly it's the most badass fishing trip ever.
Webcomics
- The Order of the Stick: Discussed when Roy and his grandfather Horace get to know each other
on a fishing trip. They have a good time, unlike when Horace took Roy's father — the activity didn't help the clash of personalities between them.
Horace: This is nice, though. The fishing, I mean. This is how men are supposed to relate to their offspring.
Roy: By participating in a vaguely sports-related activity in which they can have conversations without looking directly at one another?
Horace: Yeah. - In this page of a Star Trek: The Animated Series fancomic, George Kirk goes fishing with his son James Tiberius, but Kirk Junior considers it far more interesting to analyze the fish with his tricorder.
Western Animation
- Codename: Kids Next Door: Numbuh One / Nigel and his father go fishing and playing the tuba (sousaphone). Nigel reacts with passive aggressiveness. That bites him in the ass when later another kid kidnaps (fishes!) Nigel’s dad to be his own and challenges Nigel to a tuba competition with Nigel's dad as the prize. It Makes Sense in Context.
- The Dexter's Laboratory episode "Catch of the Day" is about Dexter's father taking him fishing, though the focus of the episode seems to be about getting to the pond before dawn.
- Gravity Falls: In "Legend of the Gobblewonker", Grunkle Stan drags Dipper and Mabel off on a fishing trip in a poorly built dinghy for Family Bonding Day. Considering how the last Bonding Day got the family arrested for counterfeiting ("The county jail was so cold..." says Mabel), the twins are more than happy to escape for a monster hunt. After Dipper and Mable discover the lake monster was a fake built by Old Man McGucket, a lonely old man desperate for attention, they feel guilty about ditching Stan and go back and fish with him.
Hunting
Film — Live-Action
- In The Pest, Gustav Shank brings his son, Himmel, along with him to hunt down the titular protagonist
Literature
- Hurog: In Dragon Bones, Ward remembers a hunting trip on which his dad got so drunk that he told Ward that he had murdered his own father to inherit the castle and title earlier. Very awkward. Ward pretended to not have understood his father's drunk talking.
Live-Action TV
- Subverted in Angry Boys — apparently, Daniel's mum's partner offered him to go hunting with him, but Daniel declined because "We don't fuckin' go hunting, mate."
- In Dinosaurs, Earl goes hunting with his son Robbie, in order to lure him away from herbivorism and to turn him back into a carnivore. While herbivorism is obviously a stand in for homosexuality here, in this specific context it would actually make sense for this kind of "therapy" to work. In Robbie's case, though, it doesn't. Instead, he and Earl get eaten by an even larger predator. They get better.
- In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Birthright", Worf takes a Klingon teenager who lives in a remotely located colony (technically a Romulan prison, but not really prison-like, due to negligence by the Romulans) to a hunt, because Worf can't accept that he, and the other teenagers born there, know next to nothing about the Klingon Proud Warrior Culture. In contrast to the other examples, this actually works! The teenager even infects all the other Klingons with his post-hunt excitement. Cue a dozen Klingons breaking into a wild drinking song, and their Romulan comrades (their "guards") just sitting there and making uneasy facial expressions.
- In That '70s Show, Kitty once convinced Red to take Eric (along with the other males from the main cast) hunting in an attempt to get them to bond. They wind up spending the day in a tree with Red berating Eric for missing a shot at a deer. At the end of the trip, Eric demonstrates that he's a good shot by hitting a can off a fence and explains that he consciously decided not to kill the deer, which gains him some respect from Red, who would rather his son be a pacifist than a lousy shot. He then spoils any actual bonding by shooting a deer himself in utter disregard to Eric.
Video Games
- In Growing Up, you can join Jake Fletcher and his father to watch a law movie at the cinema as part of his father's effort to steer him away from his gangster life. Jake is less than appreciative at first, but he'll thank you at the end of his route for helping him realize that he's being reckless with "fighting crime" by being a gangster.
- What Remains of Edith Finch features a father-daughter variant. After his harsh parenting has caused him and his daughter to drift apart, Sam Finch takes his daughter Dawn (mother of Edith) on a camping and hunting trip. Despite a begrudging and awkward start, Dawn does start to have fun. When Dawn shoots a buck on a cliff, Sam decides to set his antique camera on a timer to take a commemorative photo with her. Unfortunately, he doesn't check to make sure the deer is dead, and the camera captures him being bucked off the cliff to his death right in front of Dawn.
Western Animation
- In Moral Orel, Orel and his dad go hunting. "Awkward" would be a bit of an understatement. His dad ends up shooting Orel accidentally and then denies any responsibility or guilt for it because he was drunk at the time. As a result, Orel realizes that he actually hates his dad.
- The Simpsons: In the episode "Homer's Phobia", Homer tries de-gaying Bart by taking him to a deer hunt. (Bart's reaction: "A bunch of guys alone together in the woods? Seems kinda gay.") After being attacked by reindeer, the hunting party gets rescued by the Camp and Gay (but not Camp Gay) man that Homer feared to have "contaminated" Bart in the first place.
Hiking and Camping
Comic Strips
- In Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin's father frequently takes his entire household camping in the woods. Calvin's dad seems to be the only one who enjoys it, and only some of the time at that. Nevertheless, he typically forgets the bad experiences the following year.
Live-Action TV
- Frasier: A episode late in the series has Frasier take his dad and son on a camping trip, much to both their irritation. Accordingly, everyone's miserable, until Freddie finds a cute girl on the camping site.
- In Married... with Children, Bud rented out Al as an overnight camping guide. Al forced Bud to go also. Fun was had by none.
Video Games
- The plot of Another Code R is kicked off by Richard inviting Ashley to a weekend camping trip to try and salvage their father-daughter relationship. It flounders thanks to Richard being unsure how to talk to his daughter, since he barely knows anything about her, on top of Ashley already having years of built-up Abandonment-Induced Animosity and his job continuing to get in the way of bonding time (since he works at the lab in the resort town where they're staying). Thankfully, by the end of the game, the two are on the path to begin patching things up after a parent-child Relationship-Salvaging Disaster.
- Silent Hill: Shattered Memories: It is never seen on screen, but you can hear a voice message of a disastrous father-son hunting trip. (Depending on your PI, it plays out differently.)
Web Original
- Part two of this satirical Cracked article on specialized hiking trails: Miners Gulch Campgrounds: A Guide for Fathers Reconnecting With Their Teenage Sons.
The campground is divided up into five campsites, each distant enough from the next that, should you and your son have a real breakthrough together, no one else will hear you cry. You are allowed to collect your own wood and tinder, giving you the chance to show your son how to build a fire, just as every father has done throughout the history of civilization. And when you fail, there are also Duraflame logs and newspaper available at the ranger station.
Western Animation
- Eddie and his dad, Morty, go camping in an episode of Birdz. It starts out as one of these but in the end, Eddie admits it was fun.
- In The Simpsons, the episode "Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood" sees Homer accompanying Bart's scout troop on a father-son river rafting trip that Bart doesn't want Homer around for and that Homer really doesn't want to be around for, simply because neither wanted to be the bad guy in the situation so each was counting on the other one to do the rejecting when the subject came up. They do get some bonding in, but not before Homer has managed to get himself, Bart, Ned Flanders and his son Rod lost at sea with little hope of rescue.
Other (Team) Sports
Film — Live-Action
- In Hoop Dreams, Bo Agee leaves the family for a while due to a severe cocaine problem. He eventually makes it back into his son Arthur's life, and they play a one-on-one basketball game in the park. It gets edgy and ill-tempered.
- In an attempt to masculine his son, Ludovic's father in Ma Vie En Rose enrolls him in a soccer team. Ludo fails miserably at it though.
Live-Action TV
- In Life on Mars (2006), Sam Tyler plays soccer with his dad — the twist being that because he's travelled back in time, his dad doesn't know this!
Western Animation
- In Aqua Teen Hunger Force Master Shake and his son Ezekiel play tennis and basketball, though for Shake this is less about bonding and more about finding out what his son is good at so that he can exploit him financially. Ultimately, he discovers that Zeke is both good at chess and not really his son.
- Dexter's Laboratory:
- The episode "Sports a Poppin'" has Dexter's father try to teach Dexter a sport — any sport. Dexter winds up either misinterpreting the rules or fails miserably at it, and his father is forced to give up and retreat to the TV, thus missing Dexter using all the sports gears in an attempt to contain the monster that escaped the lab.
- In another episode, Dad is trying to watch a golf game on television. Dexter takes this as an opportunity to bond with him and learn about sports. Dad is initially ok with this, but Dexter's lack of knowledge about golf, and his excessive curiosity causes him to talk constantly and asks questions, and get terminologies incorrect, resulting with Dad missing every play when trying to explain things to him.
- In Quack Pack, Donald convinces his nephews to play ice hockey with him. They are bored by this, and just try to win the game really fast in order to end this as soon as possible.
- In Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race, one of the teams is a Bumbling Dad named Dwayne and his far savvier thirteen-year-old son Junior. Dwayne mentions that he spends most of his time at the office and is happy for this bonding time, even though Junior doesn't seem to share the feeling.
Other
Advertising
- An ad for Royal Caribbean Cruise Line is narrated by a mom, talking about her daughter not smiling. It seems to be Banned from YouTube, but here's a description.
- There was a commercial which featured a clearly nerdy dad who was sporting facial piercings, talking about bonding with his son at Burning Man. The son just sat there looking utterly mortified.
Anime & Manga
- In Birdy the Mighty, Tsutomu's father abruptly declares that he's going to join his son in the bath for some "father-son naked bonding time" (which makes his wife say "Wait, what?!") Of course, the potential awkwardness is really cranked up since his son is Sharing a Body with an attractive female alien...and she's in the body when Dad walks in.
Comic Strips
- In Big Nate, the title character's dad tends to leap at the chance for some sports bonding, despite being hopelessly un-athletic. Baseball is the most frequent culprit, but football and golf have also made appearances.
- Happens many, many times in FoxTrot.
- An example:
Peter: Well, I guess things could be worse.
Jason: Oh?
Peter: At least Dad hasn't suggest we sit around the campfire naked and beat drums in some stupid "Iron John" male-bonding ceremony.
[Beat Panel]
Jason: Say it louder, I don't think he heard you.
Peter: Well, I guess things could be worse.
[cut to Roger peeking out of a tent holding a drum]
Roger: Who's up for some bonding?!note - Later in that same trip, he wakes the boys up to get them to go fishing. When both refuse, he says some of them will be eating fish that evening. Cut to dinner, where Peter and Jason are eating canned tuna on crackers (Roger angrily saying he doesn't want any).
- Note that Roger is in no way trying to cure his sons, he is merely doing what he thinks is fun for every male regardless of age (hence his mastery of the Horrible Camping Trip and Macho Disaster Expedition).
- Roger gets his sons to play football in waist-deep snow, citing it as a tradition of the Fox family.
Jason: Ever worry that our bloodline contains a bunch of idiots?
- An example:
- Subverted in PS238: In the intro, the father-son bonding between Bernard (who is permanently in Hulk form) and his father isn't seen as boring by either party, but involves breaking stuff.
Fan Works
- In a non-related example in Shatterheart, Fai attempts to bond with R!Syaoran after he ostracized and ignored the latter for months by having cooking lessons with him and going book-shopping. R!Syaoran hates it the entire time because it comes across as extremely forced and Fai overcompensates too much. It ends in tears when Syaoran gets kidnapped in the bookstore.
Film — Animated
- A Goofy Movie: Goofy drags his son Max to a cross-country trip like the ones he took with his dad (which he remembers very fondly, in a subversion of this trope). Along the way, there's a stop at a dilapidated theme park and a short fishing lesson interrupted by Bigfoot. They never actually finish the trip, because Max directs them to Los Angeles to try and get to a concert. They end up bonding anyway after Max saves Goofy from an Inevitable Waterfall with the Perfect Cast, which Goofy taught Max earlier in the film.
Film — Live-Action
- Inverted in Boiler Room. Seth attempts to have coffee with Marty, but it's Marty (the father) who quickly gets annoyed and leaves.
- Inverted in Getting Even with Dad as it is Timmy (the son), who wants to improve his relationship with his reluctant father by doing fun activities together.
- Played for laughs in World's Greatest Dad, where the kid suggests to his dad they could build a rocket, only to add that the idea was retarded.
Literature
- Aquila is full of them, or at the very least attempted bonding activities like swimming (a lot of swimming is mentioned) but perhaps the oddest one is where a father sticks wheels on the titular space-craft.
- In Are You Alone on Purpose? Rabbi Roth insists on playing Scrabble with Harry during Sabbath, and attempts to make awkward conversation about Adam and Alison until Harry gets bored and flips the board.
Live-Action TV
- Variation: the awkward father-daughter bonding between Veronica and her father in Better Off Ted. For years, the two of them have interacted mostly through corporate espionage and trying to one-up each other, but when Veronica's father develops terminal cancer, they make some awkward attempts at spending time together. They quickly decide that they prefer the corporate espionage.
- Glee:
- When Blaine correctly picks out a carburetor for Kurt's dad, Blaine explains that he and his own father rebuilt a classic Chevy together. He also explains that he thinks the activity was meant to "turn him straight."
- There was also has a small moment when Kurt sees his dad and new stepbrother bonding over watching college sports. As Kurt is more a Camp Gay character, it breaks his heart that there are some "manly" activities that he has no interest in and which will never be a way for him to bond with his own father.
- However, this trope is also inverted for the same characters in a season two episode, in which Kurt and his dad are seen sharing one of Kurt's favorite pastimes - cooking - as a bonding activity instead of the previously seen attempts at sports and working on cars. It doesn't work, but that's not because of the choice of activity.
- Gender-inverted in The Golden Girls, which is also unique in the sense that it's the daughter who wants to bond. Dorothy isn't sure how much time she has left with her elderly mother Sophia, takes her to Disney World. Sophia wants to go on the rides, but Dorothy, desperate to bond, forces her to stay in the hotel room and go through photos and letters and slides and diaries. This results in a massive blowup and then a reconciliation.
- In House of Anubis, Jerome refers to the search for the gem as a 'bonding thing' with his father.
- Halfway gender-inverted in one Midsomer Murders episode when Barnaby's daughter Cully is in town and wants to spend time with her dad. Unfortunately, there's a murder case that causes him to go back to work at the least convenient times (which happens in every episode, but his wife is used to it by now).
- Invoked in one sketch of Saturday Night Live in 2018 — Adam Driver is a man hoping to bond with his son after his ex-wife got custody of him, and the medium chosen is none other than Fortnite. He gets the whole squad killed.
Radio
- Adventures in Odyssey:
- In one episode (from the album A Date with Dad and Other Calamities), Ed Washington takes his daughter Tamika on a day of Awkward Father-Daughter Activities when he feels like he's losing touch with the teenager she's becoming. Said activities are based on her interests as a much younger child and merely wind up embarrassing her. The episode ends with Ed learning that he needs to relate to his daughter as the person she is, not the one he remembers, while Tamika realizes that her father is genuinely trying to have fun with her and that she should make an effort to appreciate that he wants to be involved in her life. They find a mutually agreeable activity and ultimately wind up averting this trope.
- A later episode from the album "More Than Meets the Eye" has David Parker bring his son Matthew and a second kid named Wyatt Perkins (whose father is serving in the military) on a camping trip as part of David's attempt to teach Matthew (and by extension, Wyatt) manly things while attempting to tie in a Bible lesson. The gambit zig-zags; as Wyatt seems more intrigued by the object lessons than Matthew, though Matthew later explains that the reason he wanted to help with fixing the car and paying with the water bill was because he wanted his parents to trust him the way Wyatt's parents trusted him to fix things and that Matthew was thinking he was just going camping with his father.note
Video Games
- In Assassin's Creed III, Connor and Haytham's hijinks from the encounter at the church until the confrontation with Washington qualify. Would also apply to Desmond and and his father William, seeing how they haven't talked to each other in years.
- A more serious example in God of War (PS4), as this is basically the entirety of the game. It all starts with Kratos's wife Faye already dead; her last wish is for her ashes to be spread on the highest peak in all of the realms. His young son Atreus is alongside him for the whole journey, but there is little comedy here. The death of Faye leaves Kratos adrift in a position he admits he's just not yet ready to return to: having to be a father figure again. Despite the fact that his hugely traumatic past life is centuries behind him at this point, Kratos is still so terrified of messing up with Atreus (as he has with so many other things) that he really doesn't know what to do or how to act, now that he and his son are forced to deal with each other. It certainly doesn't help that Kratos kept himself distant from Atreus throughout most of the boy's childhood, again likely because of his own insecurities towards being a father again. As a result, both of them have opposing personalities, mindsets, and opinions. Faye had always been the mediator between father and son, and now without her, Kratos is left grasping at straws.
Kratos: Faye... What do I do? Our son is not ready to carry your ashes to the top of the mountain... and neither am I. I do not know how to do this without you.
- Following the events of the main story of Hades, Zagreus initially thinks that he and Hades are going to engage in fishing. Instead, it's the two fighting to the death, and given that Death Is Cheap, it has no lasting consequences, and it basically becomes the two testing each other's strength and skill.
- The various activities to do with Shaun that Ethan comes up with in Heavy Rain are all pretty awkward, though, of course, their issues are on an entirely different level.
- Thane and Kolyat seem to be headed for this in Mass Effect 2. If Thane survives the suicide mission it's shown in the third game that they did manage to connect, perhaps even better than they had before.
Webcomics
- In Homestuck, Dad Egbert tries to connect with his son's "interest" in harlequins by filling their entire house with them and giving him a massive harlequin figure for his birthday. If only he knew the origin of John's wall graffiti that led him to the idea in the first place.
- In When Heaven Spits You Out, in order to make up with Ryan after breaking his arm, Simon takes Ryan to the park for a walk, although Ryan is initially reluctant to do so. Once there, the pair do very little interaction, mooching silently around the lake while walking their dog, Chester.
Web Original
- Jimmy Neutron Happy Family Happy Hour: Played straight (?).
Hugh Neutron: Now it is time for father-son bonding. BOND WITH ME JIMMY.
- Played around with in Noob. In the backstory, a father tried that with his teenage son after the death of his wife. Problem: the father is a "Well Done, Son" Guy and the son has Inferiority Superiority Complex, so the father tries to do his best at the activities, which puts an invisible toll on the son's self-esteem. Poor Communication Kills kicked and the two ended up drifting away even further. The son eventually started playing the MMORPG in which the story is set, hoping it would be a place where his father wouldn't follow him, but turned out to be very wrong. Long story short, things deteriorated to the point that secretly going Archnemesis Dad online ended being the only way the father could interact with his son. In Noob: Le Conseil des Trois Factions, they got themselves to a family therapist who suggested that they try board games and had to be told that the usual activities don't work on them. He ended up prescribing them playing the MMORPG with brand new avatars.
Western Animation
- A few episodes of Atomic Puppet center on Joey and his dad Phil doing activities together. For example, "Survival of the Feltest" has the two go hiking in the wild and Phil teaches Joey some survival skills.
- Inverted in the Beetlejuice episode "The Son Dad Never Had", in which the Ghost with the Most takes on the persona of cousin B.J. (taking on the size and demeanor of a 12-year-old), bonding with Lydia's dad Charles while she's busy with a project. Lydia, upon seeing this, starts thinking she's unwanted — until she sees Beetlejuice fleecing Charles for money. Lydia sends BJ. home, much to her dad's relief. As it turns out, he loves to do things with Lydia, which he describes as "us" things.
- In the Futurama episode "A Clockwork Origin", Zoidberg tries to bond with his godson Cubert by boiling a pair of baseball gloves for their lunch.
- Gender-inverted example from Hey Arnold!. Helga and her mother are going to meet up with relatives for Mother's Day weekend, and to do that, a road trip is necessary, and becomes this.
- In one episode of My Dad The Rockstar, Rock is convinced by Willy to try find something they can bond over, leading them to engage in a lot of these kind of activities. Ultimately, they find out they have nothing in common until the very end of the episode, when the pair find some common ground in stargazing.
- In The Simpsons, Homer has suddenly decided to spend time with his kids to get back at his father (somehow). He tries to teach Bart how to ride a bike (even though Bart already knows), pushes Lisa on a tire swing (made with a broken, dirty tire), and showers Maggie with potato chips as he eats them with her strapped to his chest.
Bart: No offense, Homer, but your half-assed underparenting was a lot more fun than your half-assed overparenting.
Homer: But I'm using my whole ass.
