History ParentalAbandonment / Film

* Creator/DonBluth is similarly in love with this trope. Fievel spends ''AnAmericanTail'' trying to locate his parents, and there is a deeply depressing scene with some orphans in an alley toward the end.

** 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.

* DonBluth is similarly in love with this trope. Fievel spends ''AnAmericanTail'' trying to locate his parents, and there is a deeply depressing scene with some orphans in an alley toward the end.

* This is a running theme in the ''ANightmareOnElmStreet'' series.

* ''{{Up}}'': [[spoiler: Russell's dad ''is'' alive, but more interested in his new wife/mistress Phyllis.]]

* ''{{Oliver and Company}}'' was the {{Disneyfication}} of one of [[OliverTwist the most famous orphans of all time]]. This time he was an orphaned [[TalkingAnimal talking kitten]]. Also, the parents of the girl who adopts him are always out on business.
* {{Disney/Aladdin}} is an orphan and homeless, and Princess Jasmine's mother is dead. [[spoiler: We see Al's parents in one comic, and meet his dad in ''King of Thieves''.]]

* In ''{{Lilo and Stitch}}'', Lilo is [[PromotionToParent 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 MadScientist responsible eventually becomes a father figure, though.

* ''{{Wall-E}}'' and the rest of his kind are abandoned on Earth by space-bound humans.

* Anne Marie from ''{{All Dogs Go to Heaven}}'' was an orphan. She was voiced by the same actress who was Ducky, and, sadly, her life definitely would have been ''better'' if she had no father.

** 2: Ellie was separated from her herd, and her adopted opossum mother is presumed to be deceased. [[spoiler: There doesn't appear to be any relationship between Ellie and Manny and the mammoth herd that shows up at the end of the film, other than they are no longer {{The Last of Their Kind}}.]]

* ''[[RepoTheGeneticOpera 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.

* ''{{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.

* This is a running theme in the ''{{A Nightmare on Elm Street}}'' series.

* 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.
* Patrick "Kitten" Braden from ''{{Breakfast on Pluto}}'' is the product of an illicit affair between [[spoiler: the local Catholic Priest and his beautiful young housekeeper]]. As such, he is promptly given up for adoption and raised by an [[WickedStepMother uncaring foster mother]]. The film revolves around Patrick's search for the mother who abandoned him.

* Played straight in DavidLynch's ''The Elephant Man'', and, indeed, in Mr. Merrick's real life.

* Played brutally straight in DavidLynch's ''The Elephant Man'', and, indeed, in Mr. Merrick's real life.

* DonBluth is similarly in love with this trope. Fievel spends ''AnAmericanTail'' trying to locate his parents (note the plural), and there is a deeply depressing scene with some orphans in an alley toward the end.

** 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 attempting to eat, but a mixup caused by a landslide resulted in Littlefoot and his friends unknowingly bringing a Sharptooth egg into the Great Valley).

* ''Film/EverAfter'': Danielle is an orphan. Of course, being based off of "Literature/{{Cinderella}}", this is pretty expected.

* The live-action Japanese film ''[[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408664/ Nobody Knows]]'' is a heart-breakingly realistic treatment of this trope: four children are abandoned by their feckless mother and do their best to cope in her absence.

* Cher in ''{{Clueless}}'' is a half orphan; her mom died during 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 totally 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.

* All three main characters in the SoBadItsGood ''Film/DarknessFalls''. The lead's mother was killed by the Tooth Fairy when he was ten, and since he became a ward of the state, ParentalAbandonment 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.
* In ''{{Doomsday}}'', Eden's mother managed to get an army helicopter to take her out of a [[ThePlague 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 of course, her mother's dead. The DisappearedDad is never mentioned.

* In ''BladeRunner'', Rachel is a Replicant: a biological android without parents who has false memories of having a family implanted to give her emotional stability.

* ''{{Kick-Ass}}'': The hero's mother dies of a brain aneurysm at the breakfast table.

* All three main characters in the SoBadItsGood ''DarknessFalls''. The lead's mother was killed by the Tooth Fairy when he was ten, and since he became a ward of the state, ParentalAbandonment 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.

* [[LeonardoDiCaprio 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.

* Where to begin with [[DisneyAnimatedCanon Disney?]]

** Aladdin had a mom in early drafts, and she even had her own song, but the idea was ultimately scrapped.

** He gets a [[HappilyAdopted loving mom]] in Kala. Though his adoptive dad Kerchak doesn't accept Tarzan as his son until he (Kerchak) is on his death bed.

* [[Disney/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame Quasimodo's]] mom was [[DeathByFallingOver kicked down a flight of stone stairs and cracked her head open]] while trying to save her baby from Frollo. His dad was arrested with the other gypsies, and is presumably dead.

** One of the later movies introduced Littlefoot's father, who apparently left sometime before Littlefoot hatched and returned later on only to find out that his wife died and is lead to believe Littlefoot suffered the same fate. Near the end, Littlefoot had a chance to join him and his herd of Longnecks, but Littlefoot turned down the offer to stay in the Great Valley.

** It's probably safe to assume that she [[DeathByChildbirth 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.

* ''KungFuPanda2'' 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 [[spoiler: Po eventually remembers that they did it out of desperation to help him survive, [[HeroicSacrifice because they loved him more than their own lives]].]]

* ''Film/EverAfter'': Danielle is an orphan. Of course, being based off of "Literature/{{Cinderella}}", this is pretty expected.

* ''WintersBone'' has Ree looking for her father Jessup, who has abandoned is family and left them in the lurch financially to boot.

* Played with in ''{{Disney/TheFoxAndTheHound}}''. His dad isn't mentioned and a hunter kills Tod's mother at the very begining, making Widow Tweed adopt the fox cub. However it's not for long because she has to abandon Tod on a wildlife reserve to save his life in one of the [[TearJerker most gut-wrenching scenes]] of Disney canon.

* ''{{The Princess and the Frog}}'': While Naveen's parents are alive, they refuse to financially support him because of his partying and womanizing. Tiana's father dies in between the events of the prologue and the main film.

* Pixar: No father for Andy's family in the ''ToyStory'' films.

* Boo's parents are asleep and thus unavailable in ''MonstersInc.''
* ''FindingNemo'': Mom Coral is seen briefly before [[spoiler: she gets eaten by a barracuda along with the rest of Nemo's siblings]].
* Remy's mother was written out of the script in ''{{Ratatouille}}''; Linguini's mother is recently deceased and [[spoiler: his DisappearedDad is actually the famous Chef]].

* No King Ant in ''ABugsLife'' even though the other ant "families" are implied to be nuclear.

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* The version of ThePenguin in ''BatmanReturns'' 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.

* Mowgli's birth-parents are dead, and the [[RaisedByWolves wolves that raised]] him appear very little. They were quite major in ''TheJungleBook'' book, according to which his biological parents were killed by the tiger Shere Khan.

* ''Disney/AtlantisTheLostEmpire'': ____'s parents, [[AllThereInTheManual 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 apparantly died much later (and according to Whitmore, as a broken man); while ____'s mother the Queen was killed trying to save the titular Atlantis from the tidal wave which then submerges her kingdom, and her father [[LeonardNimoy King Nedakh]] is killed by internal bleeding thanks to an injury he received from ______ as an attempt to steal the Crystal and kidnap the princess, and in the case of the latter, it also caused her to become [[TheHighQueen a Queen]] herself at the end of the film.

* ''Film/EverAfter'': Danielle is an orphan. Of course, being based off of {{Cinderella}}, this is pretty expected.

** SnowWhite was raised by a wicked stepmother. (This was not Disney's invention, however.)
** {{Cinderella}} was, too. (Nor was this.)

* Disney/{{Bambi}}'s mother is shot by a hunter and his father is ridiculously distant and mysterious until the mom dies and he begins to take care of Bambi. (This somewhat matches the life-cycle of real deer and was part of the original book.)
* PeterPan is a subversion, as he's technically a runaway, but he still tried to make Wendy fill the void of a MissingMom. [[{{Squick}} And other stuff]].

* 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 [[spoiler: they were happily reunited with her at the end of the movie.]] However, it was played straight with [[spoiler: Flynn/Eugene]], who is an orphan.

* In the Disney AffectionateParody ''{{Enchanted}}:''

* Sam Flynn in ''TRONLegacy''. His mother was killed in a car accident shortly after he was born. His father disappeared without a trace. Fortunately, he did have a ParentalSubstitute in his father's friend Alan.

* {{Bambi}}'s mother is shot by a hunter and his father is ridiculously distant and mysterious until the mom dies and he begins to take care of Bambi. (This somewhat matches the life-cycle of real deer and was part of the original book.)

* ''MeetTheRobinsons'' -- Lewis' MissingMom is the story's catalyst, sort of.

* Kuzco in ''TheEmperorsNewGroove'' 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:

* ''{{Tangled}}'' averts this with Rapunzel, who was kidnapped from her parents by Mother Gothel when she was still a baby, but plays this straight with her love interest Eugene "Flynn Rider" Fitzhbert, who is an orphan.