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    Films — Animation 
  • Adventures in Zambezia has Zoe whose biological parents are never seen, but it's implied that they were killed by Budzo, leaving her in the care of Sekhuru.
  • Aladdin: The title lead is an orphan and homeless, and Princess Jasmine's mother is dead. We see Al's parents in one comic, and meet his dad in King of Thieves. Aladdin had a mother in early drafts, and Aladdin even sung a song called "Proud of Your Boy" about trying to make her proud, but the idea was ultimately scrapped, and Aladdin mentions in King of Thieves that she died when he was a kid.
  • Atlantis: The Lost Empire: Milo's parents, according to disc 2 of the two-disc DVD of the film, were both killed in a railway accident when he was still a baby, and was raised by his grandfather, who was Preston Whitmore's best friend, who apparently died much later (and according to Whitmore, as a broken man); while Kida's mother the Queen was killed trying to save the titular Atlantis from the tidal wave which then submerges her kingdom, and her father King Nedakh is killed by internal bleeding thanks to an injury he received from Rourke as an attempt to steal the Crystal and kidnap the princess, and in the case of the latter, it also caused her to become a Queen herself at the end of the film.
  • Bambi: The eponymous character's mother is shot by a hunter. His father, who is distant and mysterious, subsequently begins to take care of Bambi. (This somewhat matches the life-cycle of real deer and was part of the original book.)
  • Don Bluth is similarly in love with this trope.
    • Fievel spends An American Tail trying to locate his parents, and there is a deeply depressing scene with some orphans in an alley toward the end.
    • Edmond from Rock-A-Doodle also has both parents but they only appear in the live-action segments in the beginning and end. He asks where they are a couple of times during the animated section but never gets a response. (They're fine though.)
    • In The Land Before Time, Littlefoot has no apparent father, although one of the later movies introduces him. His mother, however, passes away less than halfway into the film. Cera has a father, but her mother disapears early on. Petrie only has his mother, and except in the original movie, neither does Ducky.
      • Spike, however, is a true case of this trope, seeing as he was apparently abandoned as an egg.
      • Their T. rex friend Chomper actually does have both parents, though he is separated from them for awhile at the beginning of his life due in part by Littlefoot and his friends (they were attempting to rescue an egg that the egg-eaters were trying to eat, but a mixup caused by a landslide resulted in Littlefoot and his friends unknowingly bringing a Sharptooth egg into the Great Valley).
    • Anne Marie from All Dogs Go to Heaven is an orphan, although it is never revealed how her parents died.
    • Anastasia (or Anya) is raised in an orphanage until she's 18 years old. Here, the Parental Abandonment is fairly central to the plot and feels a lot less tacked on than usual.
    • And certainly, it's worth bringing up Titan A.E. in this context: the destruction of Earth effectively orphans her handful of surviving species. Humans are explicitly described as an "orphaned race". The main character is also an orphan; his mission is not only to find the Titan, but to find his father, whom he finds out about halfway through the film is dead.
  • Barbie movies have a fair few examples:
    • Barbie in the Nutcracker: Clara and Tommy's parents are specified to have died when they were younger, and they live with their grandfather.
    • Barbie as Rapunzel: Rapunzel is told by Gothel that her parents abandoned her when she was a baby before Gothel adopted her. In reality, Gothel kidnapped her from her parents to get back at Rapunzel's father for rejecting her affections, and in the end Rapunzel reunites with them.
    • Barbie of Swan Lake: Odette lives with her father and older sister, but her mother is never mentioned or seen and is presumably dead.
    • Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper: Anneliese's father is briefly seen in the prologue but disappears after that, and is all but outright stated to have died. Erika's parents are deceased, and their debts from taking loans from Madame Carp are why she's forced to work for her.
    • Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses: Queen Isabella, the mother of Genevieve and her sisters, is long deceased (and unlike the above examples, is at least named).
    • Barbie as the Island Princess: Ro was found and raised by animals on a tropical island as a child when she washed up on the shore, and has no memory of her past. In the end, she reunites with her mother and finds out her true identity is Princess Rosella.
    • Barbie: Princess Charm School: Blair has an adoptive mother and little sister, having been a Doorstop Baby. She later discovers she is actually Sophia, princess of Gardenia, and her family was killed in an accident engineered by Dame Devin.
  • Cinderella:
    • Cinderella, like Snow White and as per the classic fairy-tale, is at the mercy of a wicked stepmother. Her biological mother died before the film begins and her father dies during the prologue.
    • The prince's mother is presumably deceased. His father is around, but it's indicated that there's some distance between them. (The king seems to think his son is a rebellious boy who just needs to settle down and produce some heirs already.)
  • Aladar from Dinosaur gets separated from his parents while he's still in his egg, and then gets taken in by a family of lemurs. They likely died in the meteor shower years later, if not sooner.
  • Kuzco in The Emperor's New Groove is a spoiled eighteen-year-old Emperor with no parents anywhere in sight. The only mention of this comes in this exchange between Kuzco's incredibly ancient (and recently fired) adviser Yzma and her lackey Kronk:
    Yzma: Who does that ungrateful little worm think he is? Does he... have any idea of who he's dealing with? How could he do this to me? Why, I practically raised him!
    Kronk: Yeah, you'd think he would have turned out better.
    Yzma: Yeah, go figure...
    • Well, If Yzma's statement and implied personality meant anything, it seems we know why Kuzco was a jerk.
  • Sean, accidentally, in The First Snow of Winter.
  • Played with in The Fox and the Hound. A hunter kills a fox cub's mother at the very begining, making a woman adopt him. However it's not for long because she has to abandon him on a wildlife reserve to save his life.
  • Frozen: Anna and Elsa's parents die in a shipwreck early on, leaving them orphans by the time the film's main events happen. There is also no mention of what happened to Kristoff's human parents.
  • A Goofy Movie and its sequel An Extremely Goofy Movie gave Max Goof and PJ from Goof Troop a friend named Bobby. While Max's father Goofy was the only parent of his who was ever seen with no acknowledgement of his mother and PJ's mother was present in Goof Troop and inexplicably absent from the movies, neither Bobby's mother nor his father is so much as mentioned in either of the movies.
  • How to Train Your Dragon 2 reveals that Hiccup's Missing Mom Valka is not dead like assumed (though being carried off by a dragon made it a very good assumption), and she'd been living in the wild with dragons for the past twenty years. It was entirely possible for her to return to Berk, but she had developed a "dragons are better than people" mentality and refused to go back to a place that would fight them.
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Quasimodo's mother was kicked down a flight of stone stairs and cracked her head open while trying to save her baby from Frollo (and Frollo was shamed afterwards by the Archdeacon into raising him as penance). His father is never mentioned; fans assume that he's one of the men arrested, but it's not confirmed.
  • The Ice Age films:
    • Both played straight and inverted. Manfred is an abandoned parent - (his family was killed by hunters); Sid's family abandoned him because he was annoying; Diego abandoned his pack; the human baby was simply "misplaced". His mom is killed by a smilodon, and he is reunited with his dad at the end.
    • Ice Age: The Meltdown: Ellie was separated from her herd, and her adopted opossum mother is presumed to be deceased.
  • In Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart, Jack's birth mother decides that the midwife Madeleine would be able to take better care of Jack than she ever could, so she leaves the night after she gives birth to him. There is no mention of his father at any point in the film.
  • Mowgli's birth-parents are deceased. On top of this, the wolves that raised him appear very little. They were quite major in The Jungle Book book, according to which his biological parents were killed by the tiger Shere Khan.
  • Kung Fu Panda 2 has this as Po finally seriously tries to learn about his past. In doing so, Lord Shen sadistically claims Po's parents abandoned him out of hate, but Po eventually remembers that they did it out of desperation to help him survive, because they loved him more than their own lives.
    • The final scene reveals his birth father is alive in a hidden panda village.
  • In Lilo & Stitch, Lilo is raised by her sister Nani after their parents were killed in a car accident. Stitch is also somewhat traumatized when he learns that he has no conventional family, as he was artificially created in a lab. The Mad Scientist responsible eventually becomes a father figure, though.
  • Meet the Robinsons — Lewis' Missing Mom is the story's catalyst, sort of, as he wants to find her.
  • While the title character averts this in Moana, however, Maui's situation is a doozy. He was born human. He was tossed in the ocean shortly after birth and left to die, only surviving (and eventually gaining demigod status) because he was 'chosen' by the ocean.
  • Boo's parents are asleep and thus unavailable in Monsters, Inc..
  • Mulan averts this with Mulan herself, who has both parents and a grandmother, but plays this straight with Shang, whose father is killed offscreen. His mother is never mentioned and is presumably dead.
  • Oliver & Company was the Disneyfication of one of the most famous orphans of all time. This time he was an orphaned talking kitten. Also, the parents of the girl who adopts him are always out on business.
  • Peter Pan is a subversion, as Peter is technically a runaway, but he still tries to make Wendy fill the void of a Missing Mom. And other stuff.
    • The entire plot is about the Lost Boys, who are obviously orphans. Ironically, this is one of the few Disney movies in which the main characters' parents ARE both seen and live!
  • In the third Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf movie, it's shown that Weslie's parents abandoned him to go conduct research in space.
  • The Princess and the Frog: While Naveen's parents are alive, they refuse to financially support him because of his partying and womanizing, so he's functionally this.
  • Played for Laughs in Ralph Breaks the Internet. When Vanellope is interrogated by the other Disney Princesses, Princess Jasmine asks if she has daddy issues. When Vanellope mentions that she doesn't even have a mom, many of the aforementioned princesses above cheerfully exclaim "Neither do we!"
  • Ratatouille: Linguini's mother is recently deceased and his Disappeared Dad is actually the famous Chef.
  • In the first The Rescuers movie, Penny (the child in distress) was explicitly an orphan (though it gets better for her in the end); in the second, Cody's dad was "gone", and his mother's voice was heard twice, from offscreen. (As a matter of fact, a few fans have theorized that Cody is adopted by Marahute, the golden eagle he saves, as she's a far more interesting mother figure in the boy's life.)
  • In Rise of the Guardians, Jack's creator, the Man in the Moon, simply made him into the spirit of winter and gave him his name before leaving him to his own devices for centuries. Jack is shown trying to get his attention by speaking to the full moon, and it's entirely possible that Manny can hear him, but he never responds. Obviously, this doesn't help Jack's development, especially when Manny suddenly decides that he needs him to join the Guardians of Childhood.
  • Shrek:
    • Shrek's parents were written out of the script (originally he wanted to become a knight and they disapproved). According to the musical, his parents threw him out and, in Shrek The Third, his father tried eat him.
    • Fiona's parents placed her in a lonely tower "for her own good"
    • Arthur's parents are presumed dead if he's Fiona's only other relative. As we find out later in Shrek the Third, his father abandoned him, through we don't know what happened to his mother.
    • Donkey is sold by his "grandmotherly" owner and we never find out what happened to his parents.
  • Snow White: The titular girl was raised by a wicked stepmother. Some versions of the fairy-tale have her father still alive, but in the Disney film he's nowhere in sight.
  • Surf's Up: Cody and Chicken Joe's fathers were eaten by a whale and fried for dinner, respectively, and Lani was apparently raised by her uncle, the Geek/ Big Z.
  • In The Swan Princess, Prince Derek has a mother but no father, and Princess Odette has a father but no mother. This is a particularly mind-boggling example, as Odette has just been born at the start of the movie, but there's not even a single mention of her mother — just "happily, a daughter was born," as if the stork paid an unexpected housecall.
    • It's probably safe to assume that she died in childbirth. But then it's odd that the moment is entirely treated as the happiest of days, when it reality there would also be sorrow over the death of the queen. Of course, death by childbirth isn't always immediate – she could have died a few days or weeks later.
    • And then later in the movie, Odette's dad is killed, leaving the poor girl with no parents.
  • Inverted in Tangled where Rapunzel was kidnapped as a baby and raised by Gothel, thinking that she was her mother. Her real parents never gave up hope trying to find their missing daughter and they were happily reunited with her at the end of the movie. However, it was played straight with Flynn/Eugene, who is an orphan.
  • Tarzan: the titular character is an orphan; his parents were killed by a savage leopard named Sabor.
    • He gets a loving mom in Kala, though her mate, troop leader Kerchak doesn't accept Tarzan as his son until the former is on his death bed.
  • Treasure Planet plays the "abandonment" part literally: Jim Hawkins lives with his mother, but when he was a child, his father left them and never returned. This factors into his relationship with John Silver, who becomes a surrogate father to him. (This is also a deviation from the book, where Jim's father merely died.)
  • In The Wild, Samson confesses that he is not actually from the wild, but instead a circus, where as a cub, he was shunned by his authoritarian father because he, like his son Ryan, was unable to roar. One day, when Samson was pushed to roar at a mechanical wildebeest to entertain the audience, he failed, no matter how hard he tried, and his ashamed father coldly deemed him a misfit, before allowing him to be shipped to the zoo, where he kept his true past obscure to avoid embarrassment.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Ana: Ana's mother is in prison. Rafa takes her to her father, who claims she isn't his daughter because he has a wife and other kids who don't know about her. By the end, Rafa is basically her father though.
  • In Angel (1984), both of Molly's parents abandoned her. Her father disappeared when she was 6, and her mother ran away to New York with her new boyfriend when Molly was 12; leaving behind a note and $100. From the way Molly talks about him, Lt. Andrews initially assumes her father is dead, and it is only when she says she is waiting for him to come back that he realizes that the father also abandoned her.
  • Angel and the Badman: Quirt Evans was adopted and named by a rancher named Walt Ennis after his birth parents were killed in an Indian attack. Ennis himself was later murdered.
  • Angels in the Outfield:
    • In the original film, we are never told what happened to Bridget's parents, only that she's lived at the orphanage her entire life.
    • In the remake, Roger, JP, and Miguel are all being fostered by Maggie at the beginning of the story though not all the reasons for the boys being in foster care are revealed:
      • What happened to Miguel's parents isn't stated and he later leaves Maggie's care to stay in a different foster home.
      • Roger's mother is dead and his father gave up custody of him to the state.
      • JP's father is dead while his mother's current whereabouts are unknown (though he mentions that he lived in a car with her for a time); he bonds with Roger over their similar experiences.
  • How Annie ended up a foster kid. And the other foster kids as well.
  • Are We There Yet?: Lindsay and Kevin think their divorced father is going to come back any day now and try to reconcile with their mother, so they scare away all her dates while waiting for his return. Then they find out not only has their father been lying to get out of spending time with them, he’s remarried and had a new baby without them even knowing.
  • At First Sight: Virgil and Jennie were abandoned by their father during their late teenage years. Much later in the movie, Virgil meets his father, who reveals to him that the reason why he went away was due to his perceived failure to make him and Jennie happy due to not having found someone who could restore his son's eyesight.
  • Delayed version: In Away We Go the lead characters are forced to find another place to live when the man's "heroically self-absorbed" parents leave the country and rent their (the parents') house to strangers. Apparently their son's girlfriend being pregnant and effectively homeless wasn't a good enough reason to delay a refreshing move.
  • A Bad Moms Christmas: Apparently, Carla hadn't seen Isis for years by the time this movie rolls around and, after Carla lends her money, she disappears yet again. From what Carla says, she's had a history of just vanishing. Her father meanwhile is not mentioned once.
  • The version of The Penguin in Batman Returns suffers this trope in the worst way possible. Born horribly disfigured, his parents, the rich and ritzy Cobblepots saw him as a shame to their family. As such, they took him to the park and actually threw his stroller into the river which took him into the sewer where he was found and raised by the zoo penguins. It's no wonder he hated surface-dwellers and attempted to destroy Gotham.
  • Becky: Becky's mother died from cancer before the events of the film. Her father is tortured and murdered later, which leaves her an orphan all alone by the end.
  • Belle (2013): Dido's mother dies of unknown causes in her childhood. Then her father, who she'd never seen before, delivers Dido to his family in England. He never appears again; she is raised solely by them.
  • In Blade Runner, Rachel is a Replicant: a biological android without parents who has false memories of having a family implanted to give her emotional stability.
  • BloodRayne:
    • Rayne's mother was murdered long ago in her childhood. In the finale, she kills her birth father Kagen, who committed the murder and had conceived Rayne to begin with by raping her.
    • Sebastian's parents both became vampires. He was going to be slaughtered when Vladimir arrived, killing them both and saving him.
  • Bloodthirsty: Grey was given up for adoption early on. It turns out that her birth mother is dead, and she later kills her birth father.
  • One particularly loathsome father in Blossoms in the Dust drops off his newborn son at Edna's orphanage (the mother died in childbirth) because he just doesn't want to be bothered with taking care of the baby. When said father finds out the baby was adopted by a rich family, he comes back, looking for a payoff.
  • Bones & All: Maren is abandoned by her father in the film, while her mother had left long ago, with her going to find her. In the book, it was the opposite.
  • Patrick "Kitten" Braden from Breakfast on Pluto is the product of an illicit affair between the local Catholic Priest and his beautiful young housekeeper. As such, he is promptly given up for adoption and raised by an uncaring foster mother. The film revolves around Patrick's search for the mother who abandoned him.
  • Breaking the Girls: Sara's father abandoned her as a child. Then her mother died, so she lived with her aunt.
  • Amanda from Change of Habit lives with her aunt after her mother, who never wanted her to begin with, abandoned her a few years ago, while her father is never mentioned. Her autism is explained as her hiding behind a "wall of rage" to cope with this.
  • In Cinderella (2015), Ella's mother dies while her daughter is a young girl. Her father later leaves for a long trip, and dies shortly after.
  • Closet Land: The Author's mother is dead, and her father simply isn't mentioned at all but he appears to have been absent from her life for whatever reason at a very early age.
  • Cher in Clueless is a half orphan; her mom died due to a freak accident during a routine liposuction, although she still likes to pretend she's watching over her. Josh even ribs her about her desire to makeover Tai being a manifestation of her having no mother and treating her as a Barbie doll. Later (in one of the few played straight scenes), when she is insecure that she isn't enough of a 'do-gooder', her father tells her that he hasn't seen such good-doing since her mother.
    • Subverted with Josh, however; despite having divorced his mother and having no blood-relation to Josh, Cher's father makes a point of being a devoted father figure to him. ("You divorce wives, not children.")
  • Colombiana: Both of Cataleya's parents were killed in front of her by a drug baron's gunmen.
  • Contact: Ellie's mother isn't shown or mentioned. Her father died of a heart attack in her childhood.
  • Likewise, the French film La Fracture du Myocarde (known in English-speaking countries as Cross My Heart) deals with a boy's attempts to keep the authorities from learning that his mother has died and he's living on his own.
  • In The Dark Crystal, Jen's parents were killed by the Skeksis.
  • All 3 main characters in Darkness Falls. The lead's mother was killed by the Tooth Fairy when he was ten, and since he became a ward of the state, Parental Abandonment must apply to his father too. Then later the other little kid is in the hospital, and his twenty-two-year-old sister Emma Caulfield is making the medical decisions. The parents are simply never mentioned, although under the circumstances they're probably dead.
  • Don't Look Up: Janie ups and leaves Jason at Bash mission control, only remembering that he's still there once it's too late to turn back. During the film his father is never seen or mentioned.
  • In Doomsday, Eden's mother managed to get an army helicopter to take her out of a plague-infected Scotland when she was four years old. She had an envelope with her mother's address, so she would know where to go when she's older. A grown up Eden does eventually get to go to that address, and her mother's dead. The Disappeared Dad is never mentioned.
  • In The Drummer and the Keeper, autistic teen Christopher has been living in an institution since he was twelve. His mother and stepfather have told him that he can move back in with them when he's eighteen, when his behaviours will be more manageable. In fact, they don't want him at all, and plan to transfer him to another institution for adults. They don't bother to tell Christopher about their plans, leaving him wondering why he's still institutionalized weeks after his eighteenth birthday.
  • Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: Doric's human parents abandoned her in a forest rather than let their neighbors know they had a tiefling child.
  • Elf: Buddy's birth mother Susan Wells put him up for adoption shortly after giving birth to him because she was not intending to have him. She also never told his birth father Walter, who never knew Buddy even existed until his arrival years later.
  • Elvira, Mistress of the Dark: Elvira was left at a convent by her mother as a baby so she could have a normal life, unlike her (it didn't work). What became of her isn't said. Elvira's father meanwhile is not mentioned at all.
  • Empire Records: Lucas' mother turned him over to the state when he was twelve "for being a bad seed", Berko appears to be living alone in a cabin behind the store, Gina, AJ, Eddie and Mark's parents are never mentioned, nor is Corey's mother, and when Deb is asked about her mother, she says something along the lines of "If you find her, let me know — I'd like to talk to her too".
  • In the Disney Affectionate Parody Enchanted:
    • Prince Edward has no mentioned father, just Queen Nerissa, his Wicked Stepmother, although she's initially not too wicked towards him.
    • Robert and his daughter were abandoned by their wife/mother, respectively, and to top that off he's a divorce lawyer.
    • Giselle has no parents to speak of, and it's not made clear why she's living alone in a cottage in the woods, if one could call having a forest full of animal friends "alone". The sequel explains that when she was a baby the animals found her left in the woods without any parents and raised her.
  • Enola Holmes: The Holmes' siblings father died years ago, and Enola was young enough to not remember him much, while their mother disappeared and now Enola's out to find her.
  • Entre Nous (2021): Elodie's mother is dead, and her birth father's not mentioned (but clearly isn't in the picture).
  • Ever After: Danielle is an orphan. Being based off of "Cinderella", this is pretty expected.
  • Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore: Credence was an orphan, adopted in New York City. It's revealed he'd been born out of wedlock to Aberforth Dumbledore and an unnamed woman. He was sent off with her by his family. As a baby, he and his aunt were traveling on a ship to the US, a baby swap and shipwreck ensued, and he was believed to have drowned with her so no one knew to go looking for him.
  • Fast Color: Ruth admits to Lila that because of her drug-addicted youth she's got no clue who Lila's father is. She left Lila with her mother Bo, feeling unable to care for her as a result of her unstable abilities and drug addiction, the former of which nearly killed Lila. Lila doesn't remember Ruth at all, since this was when she had been an infant.
  • Fear Street: In Part One: 1994'' Deena and Josh's dad is always off somewhere else, while their mom's not mentioned.
  • The Final Girls: Max's father is not around it seems as he's never seen or mentioned. Whether he died, was just never involved or what is not explained. Amanda dies in a car accident early on, which Max also has a hard time dealing with. It's especially tough going to one of her movies on the anniversary. Then, once Max is sucked into that movie, she meets the character her mother played come to life. This is also clearly painful for Max. Then the character is killed while saving Max, which is like losing her all over again.
  • Mike's Dark and Troubled Past in Five Nights at Freddy's (2023) is partially due to this: after William Afton kidnapped and murdered Garrett, his parents both went off the deep end, leaving Mike to raise his baby sister on his own.
  • In the Disney movie Flora and Ulysses William's backstory turns out to be that his Mom sent him away after his dad died and, disliking his new stepfather, William destroyed his car.
  • In Georgy Girl the protagonist deals with her roommate's Shotgun Wedding to a handsome rake, roommate's pregnancy, all before the roommate leaves her husband, Georgy, and the baby for a wealthy man; By the time the rake (who was Georgy's lover for a while) leaves them, Georgy has been caring for their baby like she was her own.
  • Gifted: Mary's mother killed herself after dropping her off with her uncle Frank, who raised her after this. Her birth father had left her mother quickly. Later he never even tried to really find her and clumsily lies by claiming that he had, when it's shown if this was true she would have been located with ease.
  • Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla: Akane lost her parents at a young age and grew up believing herself to be a mistake that should not exist.
  • Gone (2012): Jill and Molly's parents are both dead. The trauma of their loss resulted in Jill having attempted or at least being viewed as a risk for suicide, which meant she spent a bit of time in a mental institution.
  • Happiest Season: Abby lost both her parents when she was 19. She plays up being an orphan while visiting Harper's family cheerfully, but later quietly cries over her loss, which still affects her.
  • Hawk the Slayer: Voltan kills his and Hawk's father. Their mother is not mentioned.
  • Heatwave (2022): Claire lost both of her parents and her sister in a fire while she was a teenager.
  • Johnny Case in Holiday lost both his parents in childhood, and was forced to make his own way in the world.
  • The Japanese film The Homeless Student delivers a one-two punch: first the mother dies, then the children come home from school to find all their belongings outside the apartment. The shiftless, frigid father rides up on his bicycle to explain he has gambled away all the family's money and hasn't paid the rent. Then he rides off again, leaving his three children to fend for themselves. What.
  • In The Hunger Games teenage girl Katniss has to take care of the family because her mother fell into a severe depression after the father died. Later, a second stroke of fate forces the mother to assume motherly obligations.
  • Dom's children in Inception. Their mother, Mal, is dead, and Dom has been framed for her death and can't enter the U.S. or any country that has an extradition treaty with it. He agrees to get involved in the film's plot because it will let him see his kids again.
  • The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love: Randy's mother left her to join an anti-abortion activist group. Her father left before she was even born. Thankfully though she's got two loving lesbian aunts who raise her which Randy's happy with.
  • Ingrid Goes West: Ingrid's mother died of a heart attack a few months before the movie started. Ingrid describes her mother as her best friend and gradually admits that she doesn't know how to cope without her. Conversely, her father is never seen or mentioned.
  • Instant Family: Lizzie, Juan, and Lita come to stay with the Wagners because their mother is a recovering drug addict who doesn't actively participate in her kids' lives. She later plays this trope straight when she refuses to retake custody of her kids, not even showing up to tell them to their faces and having their social workers do it instead.
  • Into the Forest:
    • Nell and Eva's dad dies early on due to an accident with the chainsaw.
    • Nell and Eva's mother apparently died sometime prior to the events of the film. She's only seen in home videos from years before (though the last don't seem that long ago). It's possibly implied in the last film that she's sick, and if so this probably wasn't too long prior to her death.
  • The Invitation (2022): Evie's lost both her parents (her mom recently), which is why she's initially pleased to learn of English relatives that she didn't know about, as otherwise she'd be alone.
  • It's a Wonderful Knife (2023): Bernie tells Winnie her dad left when she was two, while her mom is negligent and more interested in her string of boyfriends than her, as just one more hardship Bernie's faced.
  • Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey: After the death of his wife, Jeronicus emotionally abandoned his daughter Jessica, becoming too consumed with grief and self-hatred to act like a parent, and continually pushing her away when she tried to reach out. He was convinced he'd just screw everything up and make her life worse, urging her to leave him and live her own life. So eventually, she did just that, because there was no other way for her to move forward. By the time of the main story, they haven't seen each other in some twenty years. Both have been ready to make up for quite some time, but she was still too hurt and angry to make the first move, and he was convinced she wouldn't want to hear from him. It takes the intervention of Jessica's daughter Journey for them to be able to patch things up and move on.
  • Kick-Ass: The hero's mother dies of a brain aneurysm at the breakfast table.
  • The Kid (1921): Played very sympathetically, as the mother is unwed (which, back when this movie was made, was considered shocking, especially if you were white) and doesn't have the money to care for the child herself. Note also that she leaves him in a fancy car before a fancy mansion, hoping that he'd be raised by rich people and be well-off.
  • The Kid with a Bike: 12-year-old Cyril is stuck living in an orphanage because his shiftless father simply refuses to care for him. After enrolling Cyril in the home, his dad moved without leaving a forwarding address, and even sold Cyril's bike.
  • The Last Starfighter: Maggie's parents are absent without explanation and the only family member she seems to have is her grandmother.
  • Lilya 4-ever:
    • Volodya's abusive dad threw him out of the house when he was 11 and we get no mention of his parents.
    • Lilya's mother just ups and leaves her, later on terminates her parentage of her.
  • Lost Girls and Love Hotels: Margaret lost both her parents. Her dad left, then her mom died of cancer.
  • Low Tide: Alan and Peter's father leaves them to live on their own and only occasionally comes by.
  • Lycan: Isabella lost both her parents to the killer, who brutally slaughtered them. Later it turns out that the killer adopted Isabella too and, it's implied, raised her to kill. She ends up killing her own adopted mother, along with herself, to stop her.
  • Not traditionally in Madame Web (2024), but Cassie's anger at her mother for prioritising her work over her unborn child, getting herself killed and condemning her to a life in foster care is one of the reasons she has so many issues relating to taking care of the girls. It takes a spirit quest to Peru to show her her mom was working so hard to find a cure for Cassie's genetic disorder - one which the spider venom she sought did eliminate. Once she gets this out her system, she becomes a much more caring person.
  • Marathon (2005): When Cho-won was a child, his mother tried to lose him at the zoo because she thought she couldn't properly raise an autistic child. He was soon returned to her, and she came to regret her attempt at abandonment. She thinks the reason he pushes himself too hard in running, to the point of passing out from exhaustion, is because he's afraid she'll abandon him again.
  • Martyrs: Protagonists Anna and Lucie became friends in an orphanage.
    • A brief telephone conversation in the present establishes that Anna is estranged from her mother, but we never learn why she was put into the orphanage.
    • Lucie escaped from being kidnapped as a child. We never learn why she was put into the orphanage, instead of being reclaimed by her parents.
  • In Midwinter Night's Dream, Jovana's father walked out on her and her mother when she turned out to be disabled.
  • In MirrorMask, Valentine briefly mentions that his mother abandoned him, although "She wasn't really me mother, anyway. She bought me from a man..." We never learn what became of his real parents.
  • Mirror, Mirror: Snow White's mother died when she was little. Her father disappeared in the woods when she was a child. It turns out he was transformed into the Beast. The curse is later broken, and he's reunited with her.
  • Miss Meadows: There's no mention of Miss Meadows' father. Her mother, meanwhile, is dead.
  • MonsterVerse:
    • Kong's parents died when he was a baby, killed by the Skullcrawlers which threatened to wipe out Skull Island's other denizens, and this is a major reason why Kong hates the Skullcrawlers so much.
    • Godzilla vs. Kong: Dr. Andrews mentions that both Jia's parents died with the rest of the Iwi when the Perpetual Storm overtook Skull Island, leading to Andrews becoming Jia's guardian and Kong in his own way doing likewise.
  • Jordy's parents MOVED without telling him in Mystery Team.
  • Mythica:
    • Dagen has no idea who his father was, as his mother was a sex slave. Later she hung herself when he was a little boy to escape this life.
    • Marek's father never gets revealed, since her mother died giving birth to her with no one else knowing.
  • The New Mutants: Dani and Sam both lost their dads, accidentally killing them due to power incontinence. Meanwhile, neither one's mother is even mentioned.
  • A New York Christmas Wedding: The film revolves around Jenni's and Gabby's romance (including marriage) which occurs across different timelines. It's unclear if he's alive in the final timeline, making it all zigzagged.
  • This is a recurring subject in the A Nightmare on Elm Street series from part three onwards.
  • The live-action Japanese film Nobody Knows is a heart-breakingly realistic treatment of this trope: 4 children are abandoned by their feckless mother and do their best to cope in her absence. Making it more heartbreaking is the fact it's based on a real case.
  • The titular character in Norbit was abandoned at the orphanage when he was just a baby, by means of tossing him out of a moving car, that they didn't even bother to slow down, and laughing as they did so.
  • In An Officer and a Gentleman, Zack moves in with his father after his mother commits suicide. Dad ignores his upbringing and leaves Zack to be raised above a Philippine brothel.
  • Two of each in Okuribito (Departures): Daigo's father had been a Disappeared Dad for so long Daigo can't remember his face, while the encoffiner's secretary reveals she abandoned her young son over a fling. Both parents were from small towns; it's implied that they still care(d) about their children but shame prevents them from returning.
  • Painkiller Jane: Jane's parents are mentioned to have both died in her teens.
  • Zak from The Peanut Butter Falcon lives in a retirement home despite being a 22-year-old with Down syndrome because his family abandoned him and he had nowhere else to go.
  • In The Phantom of the Opera (1998), the Phantom was abandoned by his mother into the sewers. We never learn the reason why, as he was not his hideously disfigured like his book counterpart.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean:
    • As a child, Will Turner is found floating on a piece of wood. He told Jack his mother raised him, but she's dead now; his father spent a considerable amount of time tied to a cannon at the bottom of the ocean before making a deal with Davy Jones.
    • Elizabeth's mother apparently passed away when she was quite young as well.
  • Prometheus: The Central Theme.
    • The "Engineers" left the human race to fend for itself, and then attempts to exterminate it. Peter Weyland built the most powerful corporation on Earth, and his daughter Vickers worked hard to be worthy of inheriting it, only for Weyland to seek immortality via the Engineers instead. Shaw discovers that she's pregnant with an alien fetus, and immediately has the autodoc cut it out of her and attempts to kill it.
      Shaw: Why do you hate us?
    • Invoked by David. "Don't we all wish for our parents to be dead?" Weyland programs him, serving as sort of adoptive father, and without him, David would consider himself to be free.
  • The Burns Gang of The Proposition. Arthur, Charlie, and Mikey are brothers, but there is no reference to their parents and Arthur is implied to have raised the younger two. According to an interview on the DVD, Sam Stoat, another gang member, killed his parents.
  • Prospect: Cee's mom is apparently dead, since she and her dad discuss her early on in the past tense while only the two of them live aboard their ship. Her dad is soon killed too.
  • The Quiet: Dot's mom died of cancer when she was seven. After that, her dad died from being hit by a truck. She's sent off to be with her godparents after this, to the annoyance of their daughter Nina.
  • Reign of Fire: Quinn, Jared, and likely most of the kids in the post-apocalypse community have lost their parents.
  • Repo! The Genetic Opera has Shilo, whose mother Marni died just after she was born. This is only a borderline case, as her father is still present and taking care of her — unfortunately Marni's death affected him too, making him desperate to hold onto Shilo and thus ridiculously overprotective.
    • And then there are the Largo siblings. All three of them were bailed on by their mothers (whether Rotti had them killed or they simply left is unclear) and, combined with their distant father, they're all rather screwed up. The Expanded Universe canon material found on Myspace implies that Pavi and Amber would have been okay if their mums had survived their childhoods, but Luigi was born the way he is.
  • In Season of Miracles, Rafer's mother, Felicia, left when she realized his "difference" wasn't going to go away.
  • In Secondhand Lions, Walter's father is dead and his mother Mae sends him to live with his two great-uncles Garth and Hub for the summer while going to court reporting school. Walter ends up staying with said great-uncles permanently after convincing Mae to think about what's best for him for a change.
  • In The Secret Garden (1993), main character Mary's wealthy parents both die in an earthquake in India in the beginning of the movie. Mary does not initially feel bad about it, however, as her parents were neglectful and uncaring towards her while they were alive. It is even mentioned by a background character that Mary did not cry when her parents died.
  • In SHAZAM!, Billy Batson escaped from over a dozen foster homes because he had been trying to find his mother that he lost in a county fair when he was four years old. When he finally tracks her down, she reveals that her parents kicked her out of the house when she got pregnant at 17, and her husband, likely a kid like her, ran out soon after. When she lost him at the fair, she realized that she could barely take care of herself, much less her young son, so she walked away when she saw how well he was being tended by the cops that found him, and decided he was better off in foster care.
  • In The Silence of Adultery, Michael's ex-wife Yvonne essentially abandoned their autistic son Steven after the divorce, apparently finding him too difficult to deal with. Now her only interaction with him consists of sending postcards of animals. Michael is struggling now because Yvonne was better at communicating nonverbally with Steven than he is.
  • Son of the Stars: At an amusement park, Zhengzheng lets go of the rope that keeps her autistic son Xinxin from running away, feeling like he's her greatest obstacle to happiness. Later, she comes to greatly regret it. She files a police report and is told that she could spend three years in jail for willful abandonment. She also prints Missing Child posters. The police eventually find Xinxin, and she is reunited with him at the police station.
  • Star Trek (2009)
    • Amanda Grayson is a Disposable Woman who dies on Vulcan just seconds before everyone is beamed to safety, and Spock is standing two feet away and is just too late from grabbing her. Because Spock's day wasn't going horribly enough.
    • George Kirk dies just seconds after the birth of his son, James T. Kirk. Oh, and Winona Kirk is 'off-planet' when her young son decides to save George Kirk's old car from being sold by his creep of a step-father by driving it (and nearly himself) over a cliff into a huge deep valley — in Iowa.
  • Star Wars: Luke goddamn Skywalker. He and his sister Leia both actually end up experiencing this twice. Their mother died minutes after they were born, their father spent twenty years thinking his child was dead and was completely unaware that there was a second baby, Luke finds his aunt and uncle slaughtered by stormtroopers, and Leia is Forced to Watch her homeworld get blown up while her adoptive parents were on it.
    • Jedi in the Old Republic were generally separated from their families at a young age to avoid attachments. Attack of the Clones makes it pretty obvious why.
    • According to Star Wars Legends, Han Solo is an orphan raised in a group by a thief and con man. He has an uncle that shows up from time to time though.
    • Solo reveals that Han apparently ended up on the streets by the age of ten. It's not stated exactly what happened with his parents (only his father is mentioned) but they seemingly died somehow and left him an orphan.
    • Rey in The Force Awakens was left on the desert planet of Jakku by her parents when she was five, and is waiting for their return. For most of the film her motivation is to get back to Jakku so they don't end up missing her if they return to look for her. She eventually comes to accept that whoever left her there were actually never coming back. The Rise of Skywalker gives the full story. Rey's father was Emperor Palpatine's estranged son. Rey's parents knew about Palpatine's plan to pull a Grand Theft Me on his Force-Sensitive granddaughter, so they left her on Jakku on short notice to throw Palpatine's agents off her trail. They were murdered not long after when they refused to reveal her location.
  • Stealing Heaven:
    • There's no mention of what happened to Héloïse's parents. Apparently her uncle is the closest living male relative of hers though, as she's put into his guardianship. In real life no one knows, as most information is scant on her life.
    • Abelard and Héloïse put their son into the care of his sister after they enter monastic lives. They only see him again later when he's grown up.
  • In The Story of Luke, Luke's mother Sara (Lisa Ryder) left him at her parents' doorstep when he was four. She only visited him once, when he was six or seven. His father is absent as well; Sara never told anybody who he was.
  • Sweet Girl: By the end, it turns out Rachel has lost both her parents, as Ray was actually killed by the hitman after her mother died from cancer and she's been hallucinating that she's him.
  • Terminator:
  • Thir13en Ghosts: The Juggernaut's backstory in the supplementary materials. He was abandoned at birth by his mother and his father died years later.
  • In To the Bone, this is the reason Ellen is living with her stepmother and father. Her mother lost hope of her ever recovering from her eating disorder and left her shortly after she turned eighteen.
  • Trap For Cinderella: Micky's parents both died when she was a child, she's told. Do's have also died since they last met as kids.
  • Sam Flynn in TRON: Legacy. His mother was killed in a car accident shortly after he was born. His father disappeared without a trace. Fortunately, he did have a Parental Substitute in his father's friend Alan.
  • In What Maisie Knew, Beale meets Maisie one last time to convince his daughter to join him in London. She refuses, after which Beale is not seen again. May be implied in the case for Susanna, as while Maisie clearly favours Margo and Lincoln for spending more time and looking after her more diligently, the last shot of Susanna is when she hugs her daughter and leaves behind some gifts for Maisie to take, meaning there is a slim chance they maintain contact with one another.
  • Ben in Who Am I (2014) grew up with his grandma because his father left when he was born and his mother committed suicide when he was eight. Discussed early on:
    Ben: Every superhero needs a tragic family story: Spiderman's parents... Dead. Batman's parents... Murdered. Superman's parents... Exploded. I actually had the best requirements.
  • Victor from The Wild Child was Left for Dead in the forest by his parents at an early age. After he's found, some doctors think his parents abandoned him for being an idiot child, while Itard thinks he was born normal and was abandoned for being a bastard.
  • Willow:
    • Elora Danan's mother was murdered shortly after she's born, while her father wasn't even mentioned.
    • It's not made clear what became of Sorsha's father onscreen, though some deleted scenes and the novelization establish that he was the king of Tir Asleen, who her mother had turned to stone along with his court so she could usurp his throne. Her mother Bavmorda also dies at the end.
  • In Winter's Bone teenage girl Ree has to find her father, whose disappearence left the family in danger of losing their house to foreclosure and Ree's mother in severe depression and unable to take care of the family, a task that Ree has to take over.
  • In The Wolfman (2010), Lawrence witnessed his mother's "suicide" as a child, and if that's not traumatic enough, his father throws him into an asylum and then ships him off to live with his aunt in America afterwards.
  • X-Men Film Series
    • X-Men: Erik Lehnsherr's father was probably killed in a concentration camp, and his mother was definitely murdered before him by Sebastian Shaw to try and induce his magnetism powers.
    • X2: X-Men United: Judging by the sad and envious expression on Pyro's face when he stares at the Drake family photos, it's strongly implied that John's parents have disowned him (or they may have died when he was very young).
    • X-Men: Apocalypse: Storm/Ororo is living on her own as a street thief, and Alexandra Shipp confirms that her parents died when a plane crashed into their home when she was five years old.
    • The New Mutants: Dani's father appears in the film early but dies, while no mention is made of her mother (but if her mom was around in the beginning, she most likely died with everyone else at Dani's reservation).
  • Young Hearts: Harper relates that one reason her birth mother had sent her off to an orphanage is she couldn't handle raising her on her own as her birth father abandoned them, along with being very poor. After that, her American parents had adopted her.

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