Troperville
Help us survive. All donations are anonymous on the wiki and unacknowledged, as we don't wish to create a hierarchy among Tropers.
Editing
Tools
Toys
|
|
|
|
There once lived a man named Oedipus Rex
You may have heard about his odd complex
His name appears in Freud's index
Cause he loved his mother!
Tom Lehrer, "Oedipus Rex"
The Oedipal archetype deals with any conflict between father and son, particularly where the son must supplant the father or must extricate himself from his father's shadow and find his own place in the world. This archetype shares some themes with both the Messianic Archetype (rebirth and renewal) and Tricksters (out with the old, in with the new).
It's fairly difficult to use this trope explicitly, since the psychological aspects of the mother figure involved are usually lost to cruder imaginations.
See also Self Made Orphan.
Examples:
- Lee Adama on Battlestar Galactica is presented as forever looking for a way out from under his father's influence. As Lee is a fighter pilot and his father is his commanding officer, this is more than a little difficult. He gets a bit closer to actually doing so in Season Four when he resigns from the military to become a politician.
- Lost is chock-full of this. Nearly every character has some sort of paternal baggage, and Ben kills his father; Kate kills her father; Locke gets Sawyer to kill his father for him
- Jim Profit, on Profit, takes this archetype to the logical extreme — by murdering his father and having sex with his (step)mother.
- Possibly Matt McNamera on Nip/Tuck.
- Connor on Angel, paralleling Oedipus to an unusually large extent — much to the disgust of most of the viewing audience.
- This is lampshaded when a captured Angelus says "Sleeping with your mother, trying to kill your father- this story seems oddly familiar." However, this troper has always wondered- the main objection to the Connor/Cordelia pairing seems to be "But she's older than him, and that's icky." Would the objection be half as strong if he were older than her? (Remember, after Connor's time in the hell dimension he was eighteen and she was only in her early twenties, where as Angel and Spike were respectively 1 and 2 CENTURIES older than Buffy. Double standard much?
- Except that both Spike and Angel met Buffy when she already was a teenager/adult, while Cordelia changed Connor's nappies. She was the closest thing to a mother to him. That's what's the Squick factor is.
- Tywin and Tyrion Lannister from A Song Of Ice And Fire. Tywin blames Tyrion for killing his mother in childbirth only to be born as a deformed dwarf and consorting with prostitutes. Tywin refuses to recognize him as the rightful heir of House Lannister (and being as cunning and wise as him). The life-long hatred between the two leads culminates Tyrion killing his father, and possibly sending House Lannister to its downfall.
- A major theme of Final Fantasy X - Tidus hates his father, Jecht, with a passion. Not only has his entire Blitzball career played out in the shadow of his famous father, as a child he was also constantly competing with him for the mother's attention. The fact that his father was basically an insensitive bastard might also have had something to do with it, though... and of course, Tidus ends up killing his father in the semi-final boss-fight - in the very best Oedipal tradition.
- While not biologically his dad, this is pretty much textbook example of this trope between Danny Phantom and Vlad Masters/Plasmius. The fandom couldn't be happier.
- The 2000 Comic Book run of Captain Marvel has said hero destroy the universe at the behest of Entropy and Epiphany, actually Anthropomorphic Personification children of the Anthropomorphic Personification of the universe. Later he dies and beats up his own dad on the other side.
- Two Words: Shinji Ikari.
- Another Two Words: Prince Zuko.
- Luke Skywalker, who goes straight from Parental Abandonment into Oedipus Rex territory following the now famous Luke I Am Your Father moment.
- Likewise goes for Lloyd Irwing from Tales Of Symphonia (although, of course, considerably less famously).
- Devil May Cry bleeds Oedipal subtext, no shortness of thanks going to Dante's love interest who looks exactly like his mother. The new game looks poised to continue this tradition with the new main character's non-blood mother-figure.
- The Trope Namer, the Greek Tragedy "Oedipus Rex", was written in 429 BC by Sophocles. It's actually not a real example, as Oedipus never knew who his mother and father were until it was too late.
- Baki from Baki The Grappler starts off wanting to beat his father to make his mother happy, then because he figures out his father is out of his damn mind after he does crap like getting one step from killing a important governmental figure just to prove he can and killing his mother.
- This is the entirety of the backstory we get for William Will Wo in Gun X Sword. We didn't need what we got, either.
- Laharl wanting to step out of his old man's shadow in Disgaea. Let's just say it gets much weirder from there.
- Although Ed and Al both have crushes on mother figures, Ed is the one who seems afflicted with the full Oedipal syndrome complete with a love-hate relationship with his father, whom he emulated to become an alchemist (originally to please his mom) but also repeatedly insults and beats up (the fact that he also suffers from a bad case of parental abandonment only makes matters worse for him... and for Hohenheim).
- In the anime, the homunculus Envy's goal in life is killing Hohenheim. At the same time, he's immensely jealous of Edward because he is Hohenheim's real son -and, presumably, because he is the most similar to Hohenheim and Hoju in appearance and personality. In the movie, he even succeeds not only in killing Hohenheim before Ed's very shocked eyes, but also in not crying "Daddy, why don't you love me?". Interestingly, Ed looks absolutely shell-shocked for about two minutes and he later doesn't seem to care much, which might or might not mean a lot about how he really feels towards his old man. Then again, he doesn't seem to care much about Alfons's death either and maybe the movie never happened.
- In the manga, Greed also has issues with his dad and seems complacent about his role as 'daddy's rebellious son', even going as far as to tell him something along the lines of "Father should be the one who understands best, ain't I the manifestation of his greed?". To be honest, though, Father is one hell of a tyrannical father.
- Seishiro Sakurazuka of X 1999 had an... interesting relationship with his mother, Setsuka, who was one disturbed woman. Setsuka implies that her soulmate was her own son. The relationship, however, was one-sided, as Seishiro's soulmate was very obviously (and reciprocally) Subaru. The non-reciprocated soulmate theme also appears with Tomoyo and Sakura in Cardcaptor Sakura. Oh, and he killed her. At her request.
- Dr. Black Jack has some issues to work out concerning his parents. For example: when his estranged father contacts and hires him to conduct reconstructive plastic surgery on his second wife to make her the "most beautiful woman in the world," Black Jack decides to makes her look exactly like his mother — Half because he wanted to constantly torment his father with the face of the woman he ran out on, and half because he actually did think his mother was most beautiful woman in the world.
- In Harry Potter, Voldemort killed his Disappeared Muggle Dad. Barty Crouch was also killed by his son, although you'd never figure it by watching the ''Goblet of Fire'' movie.
- "Syaoran" of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle has been recently revealed to have this, being in love with what appears to be an alternate universe clone of his mother. Played with a bit in that instead of wanting to kill his father, he wants to be him. To the point that he's been going by his father's name since he was seven (we still don't know the real one), and for several years (until it was revealed that he was the son of Syaoran) he was thought to be his father by most of the fandom, as he looks exactly like him, acts similarly, has identical abilities, etc.
- The Lancer of Digimon Savers, Touma, is very cool to his father, Franz Norstein, but is endlessly devoted to Relena, his younger half-sister, and clearly adores his deceased mother. This is both made obvious and foreshadowed by his almost instant "crush" on Masaru's mother and younger sister. While it's never stated outright, it is heavily implied that Touma was born out of wedlock, and his mother was a foreign exchange student who had an affair with his father. Touma's hatred of his father stems from Franz's weakness of character: his inability to defend his son from his judgmental mother, and to do what is right to save his daughter, rather than what is there and easy.
- Thailog of Gargoyles is an Evil Twin of Goliath, cloned by Doctor Sevarius and trained by Xanatos; his goal in life is to upstage all three fathers (or at least Goliath and Xanatos, Sevarius not so much). Taken to unsettling extremes concerning the women in Goliath's clan, as he has seduced Goliath's ex-mate Demona and made a pass at his daughter. At one point, he cloned Evil Twins of the rest of the clan; and while he was at it he cloned a concubine, Delilah, for himself, made from a combination of DNA from both Demona and Goliath's current love interest, Elisa Maza. Creepy...
- The latter was one of Thailog's major Kick the Dog moments, since Demona had no idea he would create Delilah (she was involved with the cloning of the others), and he more or less stated outright that Delilah was her replacement
- Ultron, the killer robot nemesis of the Avengers, hates his 'father' Hank Pym, and loves his 'mother' Janet Van Dyne.
- William de Worde from The Truth hates his father, but his mother is a complete nonentity.
- Harold Pinter's plays. Though, to be honest, everybody hates everybody in the Pinter verse.
- Wolfwood from Trigun has one big, big problem with his adopted dad / tyrannical father figure. Interestingly, he has a different father figure in the anime and in the manga. Also note that there are indications that unlike his manga equivalent, anime Chapel has genuine affection for his young 'charge', albeit in a completely twisted way.
- Sasha Nein of Psychonauts has no mother, as the player finds out when accessing his memories. He remembers her death, and as a child practised his unfamiliar psychic abilities on his father, who was tight-lipped about his mother. His father unknowingly supplies many of his own memories of Sasha's mother via psychic means, including one nearly-explicit memory that makes Sasha retreat like a bat out of hell.
- Raz himself also has this going on, since he states that his father has him train constantly as an acrobat and rejects his attempts to use his psychic powers, as well as psychic gypsies cursing his family with Super Drowning Powers, which leads to Raz's mental image of his father as a psychic-hating sadist. Turns out at the end that his father is actually a psychic himself and was merely trying to help train Raz to control his powers, even helping him combat his Freudian Excuse incarnate.
- Coach Oleander, as a child was traumatized by the fact that his father was a butcher who chopped up any bunnies that he kept as pets, which along with the fact that he's never been able to get into the military leads him to try and Take Over The World. Both his and Raz's mental images of their fathers end up mixing together at the end and when defeated Oleander apologizes to everyone at the camp, thanking Raz for his efforts.
- The Oedipal conflict between King Arthur and Mordred is what brings down the Round Table, making this Older Than Print.
- I can think of two of these from Pocket Monsters. In the manga Pokemon Adventures, Ruby runs away from home to escape his father Norman and prove to him that he can live his dreams. In the end, he sees that everything Norman did was really out of love for Ruby. Later, Silver finds out that his father is Giovanni. He refuses to accept this at first, but Blue talks him out of it eventually. In the games, it is also implied that Silver is Giovanni's son.
- Lelouch Lamperouge, the protagonist of Code Geass, has the ultimate goal of learning who killed his mother, and then killing his father the Emperor, whether or not he's responsible. Of course, since momma Marianne is portrayed as only two steps short of sainthood, and poppa Charles is a Darwinist Jerkass, his attitude may be justified.
- Episode 21 of R2 plays it straight: His mother Marianne, who wasn't really dead, doesn't give a damn about either Lelouch or his sister, who in turn was actually crippled by their dad Charles, all because she was Charles' co-conspirator the whole time. In fact she spins around giddily while talking about their shared plans, not even greeting Lelouch. Talk about Abusive Parents.
- Tai Lung and Shifu of Kung Fu Panda. Though never explicitly stated in the film (par for the course for this trope), both the Subtext and information revealed elsewhere imply that by naming Tai Lung "Dragon" and filling the snow leopard's head with dreams and fantasies about becoming the Dragon Warrior, Shifu was living vicariously through his son—trying to turn the foundling into what he was not and could never be. By the same token, it's fairly clear that aside from wanting to earn the panda's pride and approval, Tai Lung fully intended to prove himself Shifu's better and replace him, both at the Jade Palace and as the ultimate kung fu warrior in the valley.
|
|
