Abusive Parents / Video Games

Action RPG

• Borderlands 2 has Handsome Jack, who hooked his Siren daughter Angel up to a machine that pumps her full of Eridium so that he can use her as both a living supercomputer and a catalyst to charge the Vault Key. The sad thing is that despite all of this, Jack does seem to genuinely love Angel in his demented way, but is too insane to see that he's put her in a hellish state of living from which death is the only release. Her death (which she begs for) at the hands of the Vault Hunters drives him into a massive Villainous Breakdown.
• Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! reveals that Nisha, the Sheriff of Lynchwood in 2 grew up with a physically abusive mother who terrorized both her and her father. When her dog eventually went rabid due to a bite from a Frenzyclutch and attacked her, Nisha remembered seeing her mother standing above her and laughing.
• Cyberpunk 2077: Jackie Welles' dad used to beat him and his mom with a belt back when Jackie was young. When he grew up, he chased his father away with the same belt he used on his family. Jackie still holds onto it, in case his father ever comes back.
• Dark Souls: The Big Bad Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight, was a great king but a terrible father. Out of his five children, Gwynevere was the only one he didn't mistreat in some way (...as far as we know). His eldest son, the Nameless King, was disowned and erased from history for siding with the dragons in the first war. His second son, Gwyndolin, was forced to live as a woman, even made to wear a ring that forced him to move and act feminine, for being born with the power of the moon instead of the sun. He ignored his second daughter, Yorshka, to the point he didn't even give her a name (she was raised and named by Gwyndolin). And then there's his fifth child, Fillianore, who was handed over to the Pygmy Lords and placed in an enchanted sleep to preserve the Ringed City; given that everyone believed Gwyn only had four children, it would seem he never even mentioned her to anyone.
  • The Hearthfire DLC adds Lucia, one of the potential orphans the Dovahkiin can adopt. Her parents weren't abusive, but after they died, she was taken in by her aunt and uncle... who decided she wasn't worth the hassle and threw her out. If she's not adopted by the player, she lives on the streets of Whiterun, where only the local beggar is nice to her.
  • The Tamrielic king of this trope is Lord Harkon, leader of the Volkihar vampires, in the Dawnguard expansion. Centuries before the game, he forced his only child to become a devotee of the daedric prince Molag Bal; it's heavily implied that the ritual to become such involved her being raped by the entity. Later, he learned of a prophecy which could create endless night and thus allow vampires to rule the world. He had no qualms at all with the fact that bringing this about required his daughter's blood. Less horrifically, both he and his wife Valerica tended to use Serana as a pawn in their constant battles against each other; Valerica, at least, eventually apologizes when Serana calls her out on it.
• Ominus Gaunt in Hogwarts Legacy was a relative of Voldemort himself, and their entire family is made up of Evil Sorcerers that torture muggles for fun. Ominus' parents hated him for being the White Sheep to the point that they used the Agony Beam Cruciatus Curse on him, a spell that's only possible if you genuinely want to see its victim suffer. As a result, Ominus cut ties with them and became a Defector from Decadence.
• Horizon Zero Dawn: A non-malicious version. The first new generation of humans after Zero Dawn were Raised by Robots; a doctor personality (Healer), a nurturing personality (Mother), and a disciplinarian personality (Father). The robots were never designed to be the primary caretakers after kindergarten age, but due to a glitch the children were kept indefinitely. By teenage years the children hated Father and attacked him, so he defended himself — with minimal force, but that's hardly a comfort to a child. They understandably hated him. They also hated Healer, because all she did was show up after Father neutralized them and offered to help with their bruises. They were left with a much better impression of Mother, and when they left to become the Nora, the role of a mother became central to their society.
• Rengoku: AI Deucalion treats ADAMs like children and as her actual children, and is both angered and proud by the thought of a unit having a rebellious attitude.

Action-Adventure

• Beyond: Two Souls depicts the protagonist Jodie Holmes' father being verbally abusive to her; he even calls her a monster to her face.
• Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls:
  • The Warriors of Hope all had parents so horribly abusive, it's no wonder they killed them and then made plans to genocide all adults to create a utopia for kids.
    • Masaru: Beaten and forced to go buy alcohol and tobacco for his father, which of course stores wouldn't sell him because he was a child, so he stole them, and was beaten even harder for it. Not for stealing, mind you, but for embarrassing his father by getting caught by the police. His father also thought he was a Creepy Child because he tried to smile through his suffering.
    • Kotoko: Her mother was a Stage Mom who frequently made use of the Casting Couch to get Kotoko acting roles, and didn't care one bit whether the couch owner was looking to sleep with her, Kotoko, or both of them together. Her father was a dental surgeon who was cheating on his wife with his assistant, and planned to sell Kotoko into the sex trafficking industry when she hit puberty.
    • Jatarou: Emotionally abused and neglected, with his mother wishing he would die so she could live a free life and forcing him to wear a mask because she hated looking at him. Jatarou came to believe it was because he was terribly ugly, but it was actually because he was so beautiful that his mother felt like she had to put more effort into taking care of him.
    • Nagisa: Treated as if raising him was a video game for his parents. He was forced to study nonstop for several days in a row in order to "level up," and was put on an IV drip of stimulants that would "restore his HP" when he got tired. They also used "items" (implied to be things like knives) to keep him in line. His father was also a teacher at Hope's Peak who used Nagisa as a test subject to see how much progress a child could make before they reached their breaking point. He didn't seem to be meeting expectations either as it seemed his father wanted to look for a different test subject due to him being less exceptional than desired.
    • Monaca: Abandoned by her mother but taken in by her father (who still had thoughts about sending her to an orphanage), she was treated very coldly by her family due to being an illegitimate offspring. Her father and half-brother physically abused her to the point where they ended up confining her to a wheelchair. Although she later reveals that her legs were merely broken and have since healed, she just kept Obfuscating Disability when she saw that it made them actually feel bad about their actions for once. They were neglectful and emotionally abusive towards her as well. They didn't keep track of what she was doing at all as long as she left them alone and kept making the family's company money with her genius inventions, and her brother regarded her more like an alien or a parasite living in his house than an actual family member.
  • More on the Hilariously Abusive side of things, Toko finally elaborates on a comment she made back in DR1 about how she lives with her dad and her two moms. Her dad slept with and impregnated both women, and they both gave birth at the same time in the same hospital. One of the babies died shortly after being born, but they didn't know which woman it belonged to. Both women refused to get a DNA test because they both wanted their baby to be the dead one, so in the end they were both stuck taking care of Toko together.
• Ares, as revealed in God of War: Ascension. While not actively abusive, he conceived Orkos with Alecto with the sole intent of creating a perfect warrior to support his Evil Plan to overthrow Olympus, only to disown him when Orkos turned out to be a disappointment. Likewise, the Furies manipulated Orkos into aiding their work in punishing traitors and oathbreakers, only to imprison and presumably torture him when he turned on them to help Kratos.
  • In God of War (PS4):
    • Kratos himself is a downplayed example. He does genuinely love his son Atreus, but it's clear that he has absolutely no idea how to show it, considering that he was raised in a barracks since he was 7 and he's utterly terrified of repeating what happened with his last family. He never physically hurts Atreus, but his stoicism, refusal to explain himself, and focus on discipline have led Atreus to believe that Kratos is disappointed in him for being weak. It's later revealed that Kratos has actually caused Atreus to become ill by refusing to tell Atreus that he (and Atreus by extension) is a god, though this was entirely unintentional on Kratos's part and he immediately rectifies this once he learns about it. The main conflict of the game (aside from Baldur randomly showing up to cause trouble and get thrown off cliffs) is Kratos learning how to open up and actually parent Atreus.
    • After Modi fled from Kratos, Thor assumed that the former abandoned their brother and proceeded to beat the former within an inch of his life.
    • Freya took away Baldur's ability to feel anything in a misguided attempt to protect her son without asking him and refused to remove the spell even when he begged her to, even though she could have any time. Unlike Kratos, who eventually realized he was wrong and changed, Freya believed that the only way to make things right was to allow Baldur to kill her, leading to a falling out with Kratos and Atreus when they break her spell on him, and kill him in defense of her; as Kratos notes in a journal entry in the sequel, Baldur killing her wouldn't have mattered because her treatment of him had already driven him to insanity and if they hadn't killed him, he would have just kept coming after them until he forced Kratos's hand. It takes three years and a brutal verbal asskicking by the Norns themselves before she finally acknowledges her own culpability and forgives Kratos for killing Baldur.
  • In God of War Ragnarök:
    • Odin becomes the series' new posterboy for Abusive Dad; he neglects the well-being of his children while hiding behind a mask of jovality and civility that drops at the first sign of disobedience. It is implied that he used Baldur like an insane attack dog, and his treatment of Thor isn't much better; Odin verbally browbeats Thor into following orders, mocks him for attempting to curb his alcoholism and eventually kills him in the climax of the game when Thor finally tries to stand up for himself.
• Becomes a recurring theme in Grand Theft Auto IV, as the main character, Niko Bellic, and his cousin, Roman's, fathers were violent alcoholics who would regularly beat both their children and their wives. Dwayne Forge and Packie McReary had similar childhoods, and while the first comments how he felt "nothing" when his father was murdered, the second will at one point open up to Niko and tell that his violent father at one point even attempted to molest him - and would have succeeded if his older brother, Gerry, had not intervened at the last minute.
• Trevor of Grand Theft Auto V was physically abused by his father and emotionally abused by his mother, which resulted in his mental instability and psychopathic tendencies.
• Adam Malkovich's treatment of Samus Aran in Metroid: Other M has been construed by some reviewers as romanticizing an abusive relationship between an otherwise capable bounty hunter and her surrogate father figure.
• [PROTOTYPE]: Alex Mercer's mother was in jail for the first nine years of his life, and when he was returned to her care at age ten, he actually preferred the various foster homes he was shipped around to over being with her.

Adventure

• Implied in Bad Day on the Midway character Ted's backstory. The first things he recalls about his father are his butterfly collection and him hitting Ted.
• Detroit: Become Human has Todd Williams, the owner of Kara, one of the android player characters. He is emotionally volatile and quite abusive toward his daughter Alice when he's drunk or on Red Ice, a habit that he picked up soon after losing his jobs, and Kara has the choice to either talk him down or protect Alice, the latter of which may end up leaving the guy dead by Alice's hand.
• In The Dream Machine, Morton's grandfather felt this was the way to instill character in his grandson.
• Epiphany City strongly implies that Mischief's father abuses his son, as the latter is terrified of him and fears disappointing him in any way.
• Fishing Vacation:
  • In the story about Sedna, Sedna's father forces her to marry a stranger who turns out to be a birdlike monster. The father rescues his daughter but when the monster calls upon a sea spirit to retrieve his bride, the father throws Sedna overboard to prevent the kayak from being capsized and thus save himself. When Sedna clings to the edge of the kayak, her father chops her fingers off with an axe and she sinks into the depths, becoming a sea goddess.
  • It's revealed that the uncle drowned his young daughter in the lake as an offering to Sedna.
• The Longest Journey: April's adoptive father had been been physically abusing her for years. She eventually shoved him off the stairs before escaping to Newport.
• Masochisia drives on this. Hamilton and his brother are getting emotionally abused by their mother and physically abused by their father, with both constantly mentioning how they should have killed Hamilton when he was just born, justifying their abusive behaviour with how they lost their first son Albert. While Walter turned out to become so heavily masochistic that their father didn't even want to abuse him anymore and instead locks him into his room, dressed with a muzzle and straight jacket, Hamilton can — depending on how one plays the game — also become heavily masochistic and thus enjoy the treatment and even kill the father.
• Implied in Spirits of Anglerwood Forest. From what little we see of him, Cyrus's father berates him and yells at him whenever he's on screen. Cyrus is shown to be very nervous about telling his father he snuck out to help Edgar and all but states that he tries to spend time with his friends to avoid spending time at home.
• In To the Moon Johnny's mother turns out to be this when it is revealed that she always favored Johnny's twin brother, Joey, over him, and when Joey was accidentally killed by his mother, she made Johnny take beta blockers which caused him to forget his childhood and his dead twin brother. She then forced Johnny into becoming a copy of Joey right down to calling him "Joey", even on his wedding day.
• In The Suicide of Rachel Foster, Rachel's father Reverend Foster is described to have been a very strict parent. This might have been the reason of Rachel's attraction to Leonard.
• The Yoobiiverse has these two awful dads:
  • The Annabelle (RPG Maker) series has the main Big Bad, Jason Sunray. He forces the titular Annabelle to be his sexual plaything and forbids her from seeing her friend Melody. He also pressures her to become a doctor (presumably to make him money, given that he's later established as being Greedy) and, in Exorcism, is shown to have taken control of The Church and turned it into an Orphanage of Fear, abusing the kids under his care to keep them traumatized so the state will keep giving him money to "care" for them.
  • The Brains And The Brawn has Mayor James P. Ravena, who isn't nearly as bad as Jason but still not a good parent. As Brawn recounts, he "treated his son like a slave, making him do everything he wanted", and excused it by saying he was, in Brawn's own words, "just 'BuILDinG a HARd WoRKER'". He even goes so far as to write a book called "I Hate My Son". His abuse was so severe that it drove Gale to become the Big Bad, and when confronted he justifies it by saying he wanted to prepare his son for the hard job of running Ravena. Brawn doesn't buy it and tells him off.

Bullet Hell

• Queen Larrsa of Mushihime-sama Futari is so protective of Aki that when Aki dies, she goes completely apeshit and wants Reco dead, to the point of sending out entire armies to kill her. Palm, Aki's younger brother, believes that Reco is not a bad person despite having killed Aki. Larsa's response to this belief is to disown Palm. When Palm comes back later, she tries to kill him, using the same amount of strength she would use on Reco.

Eastern RPG

• Absinthia: Jake's homophobic parents forced him to go through conversion therapy, and when that didn't work, they whipped him with a belt. As a result, Jake ran away and resorted to thievery to survive.
• The Caligula Effect:
  • Kotaro comes from an abusive family. His parents died when he was little, so his uncle took him in so he could get their life insurance. The uncle, as well as his cousin Yuto, treated him pretty poorly, causing him to develop Chronic Hero Syndrome.
  • Kotono was one, though she's come to regret it. She took her frustration from being a single mother out on her son, Takkun, hitting and being neglectful towards him. Plus, she inadvertently abandoned him when he was just 2-years-old after coming to Mobius, forcing her mother to raise Takkun all by herself.
• In the Japanese version of EarthBound (1994), when Porky and Picky get back home at the beginning of the game, their father chases them offscreen, and can be heard spanking them. In the American version, this is changed to the sound made when enemies in battle use "word attacks," implying that their father was only scolding them.
• Embric of Wulfhammer's Castle . He's the Duchess's uncle, not her father, and the gory details aren't given, but Bad King Greyghast was not above imprisoning, drugging, killing animals, spying on, and sexually abusing his favorite niece to control her.
• Even For Eternia:
  • Rubellum states that Lilac's mother was a Moon Dust addict who abused Lilac. It's not specified what her mother did, but it was so bad that Lilac is in denial that their relationship was toxic.
  • Amalia's mother denigrates her whenever she tries to pursue her passions in singing. This is because her mother is reminded of how her own career in singing flopped due to anti-Umbra discrimination.
  • Apple's parents were Amalthean nobles who emotionally abused her because she was born a girl, which means they can't pass on the family name. If the player visits Apple's house in the endgame, Rubellum will call them out on being pathetic excuses of parents.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Not technically her parents, but the Gestahlian Empire from Final Fantasy VI was the closest that Terra Branford could call her parents due to Gestahl murdering her birthmother and then kidnapping her child, and subjecting her father to various experiments. And, sure enough, their raising her was very much abusive in terms of emotional and possibly other forms of abuse. She was raised in a loveless environment for most of her life, Kefka placed the Slave Crown on Terra to manipulate all of her actions, including burning 50 of their finest soldiers alive, and the one person who was even relatively decent to her, General Leo Cristolph, nonetheless placed the mind control device back on her when they finish training.
  • Hojo and Lucrecia from Final Fantasy VII did genetic experiments on their son while he was still in the womb in the name of science. Lucrecia at least harbored some regret for her part in the genetic experiments, even causing her to nearly commit suicide and then willingly place herself in a Fate Worse than Death. Hojo, on the other hand, had absolutely no regret for what he did; in fact, he enjoyed every single moment of it even afterwards. The child, as an adult, did not take this well at all upon learning of this. Who was the child, you may ask? Sephiroth.
  • In Final Fantasy X, Tidus's father often insulted and berated his son for being a crybaby. After believing Jecht had died at sea, Tidus's mother also pined and eventually died. As a result, Tidus harbored bitterness towards his father and never quite forgave him for it. While it's made clear Jecht actually did love his son, the man never, at any point in his life, told him such — throughout both that game and Dissidia, Jecht only admits his love for Tidus when the younger man is either absent or unconscious (or when he himself is dying).
  • Cid of the Lufaine is revealed in Dissidia to be the father of Chaos, and later the Warrior of light. While he technically only acted according to the circumstances put upon him and his family by the state seeking to exploit his wisdom, he appears to be responsible for the creation of the cycle's of war between Chaos and Cosmos. Thankfully, he later becomes horrified by what his desire for revenge had done and tries to correct his mistakes.
• Hero King Quest: Peacemaker Prologue: Dark Lord Spidergland fears that her daughter, Spidervenom, will usurp her place as the ruler of the Dark Realm, so she locked the latter in a room for years. When the Cerulean Land kidnaps the princess, Spidergland is happy that her daughter is gone.
• Persona:
  • Persona 3: Junpei Iori grew up with an abusive drunk for a father, and one of the reasons he eagerly joined S.E.E.S. was so that he didn't have to share a roof with his dad.
  • Implied to have been the case with Tohru Adachi in Persona 4 Golden. He states on two separate occasions that he had strict parents who never let him have friends or do anything other than study growing up. His Social Link shows that his elderly neighbor mothers him because he reminds her of his own son, which he pretends to be annoyed by but it's clear that he enjoys it on some level.
  • Several members of Persona 5's cast have abusive parental figures. This likely helps in spurring the main cast's sense of justice, given what they do as the Phantom Thieves:
    • Ryuji Sakamoto's father physically abused both him and his mother. He explains in his Co-op that he became an athlete in the first place to help support his mother after she managed to leave him.
    • Instead of being Happily Adopted, Yusuke's adoptive father, an artist named Madarame, exploited him for his artistic talent since the age of three, barely furnished him, overworked and starved him, and took any profits for the pieces Yusuke made. As if that weren't enough, you learn before his boss fight that he let Yusuke's ill mother die so that he could take credit for a painting she made. His abuse of both Yusuke and his other students made him the thieves' second big target. However, at the end of Yusuke's Social Link it's revealed that Madarame wasn't completely heartless towards him, because when Yusuke got sick when he was little he was desperate enough to frantically call an acquaintance he was barely on speaking terms with for help finding the nearest hospital. It's also implied that on some level Madarame ultimately felt guilty about his Murder by Inaction, which is why he took Yusuke in as an infant despite being a Child Hater.
    • Futaba Sakura's previous guardian, her maternal uncle, made her sleep on the floor, wouldn't let her bathe, and mistreated her in various other ways (including physically). Her other relatives were even worse, as they surrounded her and screamed at her during her mother's will reading over the contents of her mother's "suicide note" despite her being 12 and refused to even take her in.
    • Haru Okumura's father had her raised to be an Extreme Doormat from a young age and is selectively oblivious to her unhappiness, which climaxes when he sets her up in an Arranged Marriage with the highly scummy son of a member of the Diet — a marriage he set up so that he could get into politics — and inside the Mental World, his Shadow essentially admits that he knows what kind of person his son-in-law is, and is willing to let her be treated as a mere plaything as long as he gets what he wants. The man himself is the president of a fast food company, and when you make him your fifth major target, you learn that he treats his employees on all levels poorly as well, seeing the company as nothing more than a stepping stone.
    • Goro Akechi had been raised in a string of abusive foster homes for most of his youth, eventually living by his lonesome when he became a teenager. His birth parents are worse: His father is the Big Bad, a power-hungry politician named Masayoshi Shido, and his mother is one of his mistresses who killed herself out of shame for conceiving Goro. To take it further, when Goro did get into contact with Shido, the latter treated him poorly and, as shown near the end of the game, was planning to kill him once he became Prime Minister of Japan, simply because Goro, as an illegitimate child, would be a threat to him (granted, Goro was planning on betraying Shido the moment his plan succeeded). Needless to say, Goro is filled with a lot of angst.
    • The Takases went into debt as a result of living beyond their means, and forced their debts onto their ward Taiki, forcing him to work himself ragged to pay them off while they continued to live the high life. All the while, they enjoyed seeing him suffer, simply because they were jealous of his birth parents. When he died in a car accident, they blamed his teacher and blackmailed her.
    • Over the course of Futaba's Confidant, you find out that her old best friend Kana Magario was taken out of school by her parents and forced to become a gravure idol in order to pay off their gambling debts.
• Radiant Historia manages the hat trick of abusive father, abusive stepmother, and abusive uncle in one Royally Screwed Up family. King Victor had his son executed on false charges for making him look bad in comparison. Queen Protea threatens, harasses, ignores, and neglects Princess Eruca, brings up her brother's death whenever Eruca tries to contradict or argue with her, and tries to kill her several times over the course of the story, even succeeding in one bad end. For bonus points, she doesn't even recognize her stepson. And then there's Heiss, who, while genuinely well-intentioned, erased his nephew's entire identity via Mind Rape, goes to great lengths to isolate and control him, keeps trying to kill his friends, never respects his beliefs and decisions, and is ultimately responsible for pretty much every terrible thing that happens to Stocke all game.
• Rave Heart:
  • Robert Jancarlo not only physically abused Klein, he sold the latter to a sex ring in order to make a quick buck.
  • Lady Marselva is willing to ruin her son Chad's wedding just to gain political power and wealth. When Chad sides with Ellemine, Marselva continues berating him and tries to kill him along with the rest of the party.
• Shining in the Darkness later on in the game Pyra's mother and father will visit in the Tavern and meet with Pyra. Pyra's mother will scold Pyra and spank her bottom until the player tells the truth.
• Many characters in Seraphic Blue have extremely abusive parents who only see them as tools at best and nuisances for being born at worst. Strangely, two of the Big Bad Duumvirate, Leona and Joshua, avert this trope by unconditionally loving their daughter even after she mutates into a Lucifer while some of the other parents turned on their children for far less.
• Tales Series:
  • Tales of Destiny: Hugo Gilchrist. Seriously. Twenty years of Tales games and he's still one of the worst parents out there. He's dismissive of Leon, beats him into a week-long coma for getting upset when he thinks Marian killed herself. And in the end, Hugo sends Leon to fight his only friends and floods the mine where they're fighting, knowing his son will most likely not survive.
  • In Tales of Symphonia, Zelos never had the nicest relationship with his mother, as she was forced into a loveless marriage, even though she "probably loved someone else". When she's killed in an attack that was intended to kill Zelos, her last words to him were "You should never have been born". It's shown in the manga that even before this, she was cold and dismissive of her son, often making the excuse that she's ill or has a headache to get out of having to see him. No wonder he's so messed up...
  • In Dawn of the New World, Emil lives with his uncle and aunt, who regularly abuse him both verbally and physically.
  • Tales of the Abyss has a spoiler filled example in Van Grants, the Big Bad. He acted like a good Parental Substitute, but emotionally abused and manipulated both Luke and Asch. A good chunk of their various issues can be traced back to how Van "raised" them. Who he was worst to is up for grabs; Asch was kidnapped by someone he trusted and then forced to depend on him, while in Luke's case Van made a point of making himself his Living Emotional Crutch so his entire life revolved around him. Finding out the truth of his nature hit the both of them hard. And for a bonus round, their blood parents aren't much better; Duke Fabre is harsh, strict, and never there while Lady Susanne tries but being Delicate and Sickly impedes her attempts to be a good parent.
• In The Way (RPG Maker), the parents of two characters are revealed to be abusive late in the game. They are Traziun's dad, and Slade's mom.
• Played With with Nia in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Her "father" was a noble with a frail and sickly daughter. He spent his fortune trying to find a cure for his daughter, getting every healing Blade he could get his hands on. Nia was one of those blades, but like everyone else she was unable to cure the girl. Even though she failed, Nia was treated like his daughter and raised to be a noblewoman, but she was clearly second to his actual daughter. Once he's squandered his fortune, they're forced out of their home, which his daughter can't handle and she dies shortly after. He forces Nia to eat part of his dead daughter's body, becoming a Flesh Eater Blade, at which point Nia gains the power to bring back the recently dead, but it's far too late for that. Nia is molded into a Replacement Goldfish, even taking on aspects of the girl's appearance. Her "father" dies shortly afterwards, leaving Nia without any family and discriminated against as a Flesh Eater. While what she went through was clearly traumatic, Nia doesn't hate her father, remembering him fondly for the fact that he treated her more like a person than many Blades get.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles 3, it's implied in the main story and made clear in a sidequest that Shania has an unhappy home life. Her mother shows a total disregard for nurturing her, dismissing her accomplishments for being less than the absolute best, invoking the family legacy as a standard she fails to live up to, and constantly making disparaging comparisons to her dead father and sister. She comes across as completely oblivious at best to her daughter's artistic talents. After Shania becomes Moebius and is finally killed by Ghondor, she alternates between sneering about how pathetic she was and coming across as solely concerned about the position Shania's death leaves her in. Sena is actually a bit disillusioned to see how it's possible for parents to be like that.
• Where to even start with Fei from Xenogears? After she got possessed by Miang, Fei's mother started experimenting on him, thus creating his Superpowered Evil Side Id, who then was used by his father possessed by the personality of one of Fei's former Incarnations as a Person of Mass Destruction, and that's not even all of it.

Fighting Games

• BlazBlue:
  • Relius Clover. This is the guy who experimented on his daughter, Ada, For Science!, turning her into a weaponized doll, Nirvana. However, he lost interest in the project about halfway through and happily turned to his wife instead, turning her into a much better and accomplished puppet, Ignis, after which he left his family's home and never came back. Meanwhile, his son, Carl, had been forced to finish the experiments he was conducting on Ada, leaving the poor little boy completely traumatized, having to show a lack of compassion and fend for himself as a Vigilante at such a young age. That's an abuse on mental, emotional and financial levels... and he went straight to physical (as in, attempted homicide) when Carl tried to get an explanation.
    "You've been a very naughty boy... spare the rod, spoil the child."
  • Jin Kisaragi's adoptive family wasn't nice to him in the slightest. He was treated as if he wasn't part of the family, what with many of them hating and resenting his guts and sending assassins to kill him. Little wonder he turned out to have a bunch of issues.
• In Guilty Gear Xrd REVELATOR, the Universal Will aka Ariel is a HUGE example of this towards her daughters, the Valentines. She treats them incredibly poorly, and deliberately identifies herself as their Mother when pressed by Elphelt. She programs them to make them believe that they are soulless tools, kills Ramlethal by exploiting her newfound conscience just to teach Elphelt a lesson, and has no issues with using Elphelt first as her Manchurian Agent, and then as a Barrier Maiden to power her ideal "humanity". One of her daughters/victims lampshades the trope to her face:
  Elphelt: "Mother... YOU'RE A MONSTER!"
• Mortal Kombat:
  • A few of Erron Black's character intros imply that he was abused by his parents as a child, including being beaten by his mother/female relatives, and when Cetrion expresses scorn at him for killing his father, he just says that the "sonofabitch had it coming."
  • Kano has this in his Mortal Kombat X ending, where he beats his son's weakness out of him.
• Tekken:
  • The main catalyst behind the events of the series is Heihachi throwing his son Kazuya off of a cliff as a child. Kazuya himself is an Archnemesis Dad to Jin, but never quite on the scale of his own father. Aside from preposterous hairstyles, the Mishima family overall are known for violent feuds with one another.
  • Baek Doosan's backstory in Tekken 2 involves him having to put up with a decidedly unpleasant and abusive father, a result of alcoholism after a crippling injury forced him to leave Tae Kwon Do. How bad did it get? To the point where a sparring session degenerated into a fight in which Baek killed his father by accident.
• Troublemaker have the implied backstory of Alan, one of the bosses, who comments "Your punches are nothing compared to my father's fists!" during his boss fight. And it turns out your character, Budi, has an abusive stepfather as well, who assaults you as a kid after losing a fight in class to "be a man".

Gacha Games

• Numerous characters in Twisted Wonderland have abusive parents:
  • Riddle's mother was an Education Mama to the extreme, micromanaging his life down to the second and only giving him an hour of free time each day (and later even less once she found out he was sneaking out to play rather than using that hour for studying). It's also heavily implied that she starved him with a strict diet.
  • Leona's parents — like everyone else in his kingdom — saw and treated him as Always Second Best compared to his older brother Farena, never allowing him to stand on his own merits.
  • Jamil's parents forced him to be second best to Kalim due to their differing social classes, despite the fact that Jamil was clearly more talented in several areas. This led to him resenting his "sidekick" role and Kalim in particular, kicking off the events of Chapter 4.

Hack and Slash

• Lady's father Arkham in Devil May Cry 3 became obsessed with the legend of Sparda and attempted to replicate it to gain unimaginable demonic power, to the point where he sacrifices Lady's mother. He spends most of his on-screen time assisting Vergil, but when he interacts with Lady, he emotionally manipulates and gaslights her to get her in position to open the portal to the demon world, and nearly chops her leg off as a blood sacrifice. When he's defeated at the end of the game, he seems to genuinely believe Lady will help him, even after he dismisses his wife's death as necessary, even trying to appeal to Lady's real name, Mary. It doesn't take.
• An interesting variation occurs in Devil May Cry 5 where Nero encounters and is badly beaten up by his father Vergil, including having his arm ripped off. However, neither were aware of their relationship and Vergil was not in a sane state of mind when they did the act. Similarly, his demonic side Urizen tried to kill Nero, as well as belittling and demeaning him, at every turn. Though to Vergil's credit as V, they express guilt afterwards and is genuinely caring and paternal towards Nero and later, Vergil does hold respect for Nero as a fighter and as his father.
• In a scene near the end of No More Heroes, it's revealed that Travis' father constantly molested his sister. She eventually gets revenge by killing him, his wife, and attempting to kill his son. Although, having a sexually abusive father is quite possibly the most normal thing about her story...

Massively Multiplayer Online

• Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood has Yotsuyu, the cruel Boomerang Bigot Viceroy of Doma. She was adopted by her relatives after her birth parents died and endured horrific abuse from her stepmother (who played favorites with her adopted brother, Asahi) before being married off by her stepfather to an abusive drunk who died penniless and forced Yotsuyu into prostitution to pay off his debts. Her harrowing experiences in her formative years molded her into a cruel and heartless woman who takes pleasure in inflicting misery upon her own countrymen. Later in the Stormblood MSQ, she suffers amnesia and seems to be better off for it, only for her equally assholeish brother Asahi to arrange a reunion as part of his plans to restore her memories and subvert attempts at peace between Doma and Garlemald. Immediately upon seeing her, her mother berates her before her father mentions possibly selling her back into prostitution. Having regained her memories by this point, Yotsuyu viciously murders them both.
  • The Pandaemonium raids for Endwalker reveals that Lahabrea was one towards his son, Erichthonius, but not entirely by choice. Erichthonios isn't wrong when he says Lahabrea is a horrible father, but he doesn't know the reason behind it: his wife Athena, whom Erichthonios puts on a pedestal, was actually worse than Lahabrea, seeking scientific progress at any cost to the point of wanting to use her own son as a test subject, and she tried to literally infect Lahabrea's soul with that drive. Lahabrea had to physically rip out that corrupted part of his soul, and what remained of him afterward was a duty-bound workaholic; the reason he doesn't try empathizing with Erichthonios is because he literally can't, and his keeping his son at arms length is meant to protect him from the Awful Truth about his mother.
• Lucien from Runescape was already notorious for being cruel, but the newest Fremminik Saga has confirmed rumors of him having a daughter. Specifically, a half human, half Mahjarrat daughter whom he abuses severely. Every time he speaks to her, he calls her a failure, finally declaring that when he next sees her, he will strangle her. And she just takes it.
• Darth Jadus in the Agent storyline of Star Wars: The Old Republic was this even by Sith standards. Judging by the things his daughter tells the Agent, Zhorrid's childhood with Jadus was marked by constant emotional neglect and acts of casual cruelty, such as having her learn to sing and forcing her to perform in concert for hours until her throat was damaged and she couldn't sing any more before he made her his apprentice. He even has to call the Agent to confirm his daughter is dead should they side with him and agree to kill her (as she had outlived her usefulness), because he had no emotional attachment to her and so can't tell if she's dead through the Force.
  • Valkorion, Big Bad of the Fallen Empire expansions, was no slouch in this department either. His two sons were completely ignored for their entire childhoods, until he sent them on a mission that caused one of them to lose an arm and disfigure half his face. The first time he called Arcann "son" was immediately after he had murdered his brother in rage. Valkorion also somehow treated his daughter even worse when he realized how powerful she was in the force. He had her committed to an asylum on a planet so devoid of the Force that it is physically painful to be there, and her wardens treated her so abusively she developed into a full-blown sociopath. As a final stinger, he also had the wardens give her a psychic trigger forcing her to obey his every command.
• Warframe had Greater-Scope Villain Ballas, who was Abusive Precursors and abusive parent rolled into one. He was the inventor of the Warframes and the lover of Motherly Scientist Margulis who acted as a surrogate mother to the Tenno, essentially making him their father in many ways. Unfortunately for them, he was also a narcissistic Manipulative Bastard and the final battle against him in the "New War" arc contains multiple allusions to domestic abuse. He blames Lotus and the Tenno for all that has happened, and will attack a weakened Lotus in retribution for damage dealt against him, much like how an abusive spouse will blame their victims for their abusive behavior and often target a weaker family member for something that another did.

Mon Games

• Pokémon:
  • Cyrus, the Big Bad of the Pokémon Diamond and Pearl games, is revealed in the postgame to have been under severe parental pressure as a child. Specifics are never given, but it was apparently bad enough to make his grandfather consider taking him away from his parents. And, you know, bad enough to make him snap and want to take control the only way he could think of...
  • Cyrus' parents were horrid perfectionists, true, but they were consistent. In Pokémon Black and White Ghetsis taught N values that directly opposed what he (Ghetsis, that is) believed in and exploiting N for his own personal gain. The revelation at the end that the boy was merely a tool to those ends is the icing on the cake, the capper to his Garchomp flight across the Moral Event Horizon. You won't find anyone in the know who isn't ready to accept Ghetsis as possibly being the prime exemplar of this trope.
  • Pokémon Ranger gives us Gordor, who forced his four kids to join his criminal gang and brainwash Pokémon. When they finally wise up and leave to embark on their music careers, he just scoffs and goes about his merry evil way. He doesn't give two craps about them and saw them as just more goons.
  • The Big Bad of Pokémon Sun and Moon, Lusamine, was such a terrible, domineering bitch that both of her children, your companion Lillie and your rival Gladion, ran away from her. It is implied that Nihilego's neurotoxins made her like this, as Lillie occasionally reminisces about the good times they once had. On a lesser note, the initially presumed Big Bad Guzma was implied to have an abusive father who drove him to leave, while his mother is presented as a kindhearted soul who doesn't believe the rumors about his criminal behavior. Several broken and bent golf clubs can be seen in the corner of Guzma's house on Route 2, and his father says he used to try to "set Guzma straight" until he fought back one day.
    • Although in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, Lusamine is a watered down version of this mixed with Parental Neglect. She isn't as much as a terrible, domineering bitch as she's actually more of a prideful, selfish, self-righteous bitch who always believed that what she did was for the best of all Pokémon, no matter how dangerous it was. The most prominent example is using Cosmog's power to open an Ultra Wormhole to confront the actual Big Bad of the games, Necrozma, while still micromanaging Lillie and Gladion's lives in order to make sure they don't turn away from her and leave her ever since her husband Mohn disappeared in an Ultra Wormhole. Fortunately, she ends up realizing how abusive and neglectful she was and vows to be a better parent when the incident with Necrozma is dealt with.

Platforming Games

• Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams — Owltimate Edition reveals that Giana and Maria have an abusive father who yells a lot. One cutscene shows Maria protecting her twin from him.
• Psychonauts:
  • Razputin's father, who puts him through tough, acrobatic circus training rather than allow him the use of his Psychic Powers, actively discouraging the use of the latter. While we don't see any of it, it apparently got so bad that Raz actually started questioning if he was simply trying to get him killed while making it look like an accident. At least, that's what Raz thinks. At the end of the game, we learn that his father is a kind and loving man who just wanted to make sure Raz didn't become overly reliant on his psychic abilities... and he's a powerful psychic himself. Raz simply misunderstood his intentions.
  • It's hard to say for sure, given the symbolic nature of the level he is in, but there's definitely a possibility that this is the case with Oleander's father, a.k.a. The Butcher. Very little is factually known about him, other than the fact that he killed and butchered his son's favorite pet bunny right in front of his eyes, apparently in an attempt to teach him the family business.
  • Gloria Von Gouten's backstory heavily involves her mother, who abandoned her at a young age in order to pursue an acting career. The boarding house she left her in was not only very harsh, but it forced Gloria to pursue acting herself, which was something she was never even interested in in the first place. Once Gloria finally got out, however, she ended up becoming an even more successful actress than her mother, who soon committed suicide out of jealousy. Its implied that her mother knew full-well that doing this would be emotionally traumatic to her, and it was her death that finally made Gloria go insane.
  • Clem's father is implied to be emotionally abusive. One of his Campster discussions states "My dad says I'm a total idiot when it comes to canoeing. And most other things. He said he'd rather ride a seal into a pool of sharks than ride in a canoe into the lake with me. Sometimes I wonder if he's right — if I am too stupid for this world."
  • Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin reveals that Dr. Loboto's parents had him lobotomized to "cure" him of his psychic powers, and called him a "devil child" and "a little monster".
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Pachacamac from Sonic Adventure was this to Tikal.
  • Played for Laughs in Sonic Lost World. Zomom, one of the Deadly Six, is a fat guy obsessed with food. However, a few lines of his dialogue imply that he has low self-esteem, wondering if it's possible to make him look worse than he already does, and telling Sonic not to make fun of his size because it's hurtful. The kicker, though, is his final quote upon being defeated in the last level.
    Zomom: Mom was right, I'm a failure!

Puzzle Games

• In Catherine, both Todd and Archie have issues with women that stem from abusive parents: Todd's dad was a successful businessman, but also a shameless womanizer who constantly belittled Todd, and even attacked him with an axe at one point. Archie, on the other hand, spent most of his childhood locked naked in a basement and was regularly sexually abused by his mother until the day he managed to escape and run away from home.
• In Love & Pies, Sebastian Corps, CEO of Global Megacorp and by extension, Clean Bean Café, raised Edwina with "hard discipline", and demoted her from her position at his company to force her to claw her way back up.

Racing Games

• Crash Tag Team Racing, along with some quotes that imply a really messed up childhood, implies Doctor N. Gin has some serious daddy issues with some of his race quotes:
  It's like my father always said to me... SHUT UP, N. GIN, YOU FREAK!
  Take that, father! What? Did I say father?

Rhythm Games

• Nekomew's Potty Trouble / Nekomew's Nightmares: The one thing that scares the titular character the most is his former mother, who was very abusive towards her own children after her husband died in a car crash. Lots of liquor bottles are present in most of Nekomew's memories revolving around her, implying that she didn't take his dad's death well and started to drink to cope with her late husband's loss.
• Project SEKAI: Mafuyu's mother is an Education Mama who engages in horrific levels of emotional manipulation to force Mafuyu to fit into a perfect little mold of her own design, which has rendered her daughter an emotionally stunted Empty Shell who buries her negative thoughts and emotions behind a mask. It takes a lot of impromptu therapy by being with friends undergoing similar levels of grief and talking to the Vocaloids who populate her Pocket Dimension Mental World to undo a fragment of the hurt that she endures at her mother's hands, culminating in Mafuyu finally mustering the courage to tell her mother how she feels and running away from home by the end of the game's second season.

Roguelikes

• The Binding of Isaac: Poor, poor Isaac. Not only is his childhood incredibly grim as a result of the kids in his school and the divorce of his parents, but the plot is kicked after his fundamentalist mother hears a voice calling her from above (who she mistakes to be God) to save him from his sins, to cut him off from the evils in the world, and to eventually sacrifice his son's life. Of course, the religiously deranged mother complies, taking away his clothes and toys, locking him on his room, and then attempting to murder her son; Isaac barely manages to escape her through a hatch in the basement. Eventually, you confront Isaac's mom for the boss of Chapter 3's second floor.
  • Many of the game's items imply a lot as well, with many of the HP upgrades being either rotten food or stuff not fit for human consumption, Speed upgrades being a belt and a wooden spoon (which changes Isaac's appearance to being beaten), a Tears upgrade being a photo with Isaac's dad torn off of it (which makes him look miserable), and so on, so forth.
  • As of the recent expansions from the Rebirth remake (Afterbirth† and Repentance) and of the spin-off game The Legend of Bum-bo, there are several Wham Shots in the endings that explain more about her before she decided to murder her son. In order: defeating Bygone in Bum-bo reveals (in both endings) that the setting the games take place in are as a result of his dad, who enrichened his imagination with it and similar-looking toys hoping he would escape the stresses of reality, but after they divorced, his mom throws away such toys and tries to brainwash Isaac into thinking his dad never loved them. Beating Mother in Repentance also shows that, one day, after he (rather understandingly) drew her as a monster, she grounds Isaac by locking him in a closet and telling him he is just like his father. Beating Delirium in Afterhbirth† , however, reveals that despite being pretty abusive, Mom's murderous streak was never a thing, it was All Just a Dream... and a Dying Dream that Isaac had before asphixiating in the chest in his room. And then she finds the skeleton of Isaac long after his death... which the final ending from Repentance confirms she mourned deeply. Make no mistake though — even if she was never a murderous monster and she did love her son Isaac, she also did take her anger on Isaac without him having any fault for it, all because he reminded her of her ex-husband.
• Hades: Hades is emotionally abusive to his son Zagreus, constantly putting him down with barbs and snarks and belittling his worth. In addition, he attempts to keep his son locked in the House of Hades while forcing him to take part in Hades' duties, as well as kept the secret of his mother from him, and will frequently mock Zagreus' escape attempts whenever he respawns in the House of Hades. Should Zagreus actually succeed at reaching the surface, Hades will appear and attempt to kill him, serving as the game's Final Boss. He only begins to grow out of this and start to patch things up with his son once Zagreus brings his true mother, Persephone, back home, and we learn that much of Hades's assholery stemmed from both the circumstances of Persephone's leaving the Underworld (which had to do with how Zagreus was born), as well as not wanting his Olympian relatives (who are infamous for Disproportionate Retribution) to know about either Persephone's location or the fact that Zagreus is their son — especially Persephone's mom, Demeter.
• Zettai Hero Project eventually reveals that the Main Character's parents constantly insulted and belittled him ever since he let himself and his sister get kidnapped 8 years ago. However, soon after this is learned, it is revealed that the kidnapping was not Main Character's fault (he actually tried to stop it, but his sister was unable to vouch for him due to Trauma-Induced Amnesia). Once this is learned, the parents quickly clean up their act. The trauma of the incident caused the mother and father to constantly argue with each other when they're not busy insulting the Main Character, while his sister lashed out at everyone else because, due to her amnesia, she has no idea why everyone in her family was mad at each other.

Simulation Games

• Growing Up:
  • Charles' father pressures him into campaigning for student council to make him follow in his footsteps as a politician and also forces Charles' sister Anne to go to boarding school to "fix" her behavior. He's also homophobic and kicks Charles out of the family after the latter comes out to him, even in his good ending.
  • Felicity's mother, Cathy, is out of the country hosting her talk show and doesn't bother taking care of Felicity, and she manipulates her into believing that she's lucky to have a "celebrity" mom. Cathy also exploits her son (Felicity's brother), Humphrey's illness for views. Cathy and her husband don't bother to visit Humphrey on his deathbed, leaving Felicity distressed.
• Harvest Moon 64 implies that Karen's father is abusive. The two both have tempers and rarely get along anymore due to arguments over their failing vineyard. Karen's become aloof while Gotz is an Alcoholic Parent. No abuse is shown besides one flashback where he locks a child Karen in the wine cellar as a punishment.

Stealth-Based Games

• In Assassin's Creed III (and partially alluded to in Revelations), it's revealed that Desmond's father was physically abusive to him from a young age, ostensibly as part of his Training from Hell, and that this probably played a part (though wasn't the whole reason) in why he ran away from home at 16. In the present day, Desmond hates his dad but is still desperate for his approval. William himself admits that he "did a shitty job" raising Desmond and apologizes for it.
• Metal Gear:
  • In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Emma was stated to have been sexually assaulted by her second stepfather, for which she injured him in self-defense shortly before graduating from High School. The game itself doesn't specify what kind of assault it was, but the script included in the Document of Metal Gear Solid 2 had the word "sexual" in brackets right before the word "assault." Not to mention that her first stepfather tried to drown her as he drowned himself in the family pool.
  • Otacon was used as a guinea pig for a nuclear-armed Humongous Mecha at the age of three by his father, who murdered his mother for disagreeing. In spite of this, he led a fairly normal life until he was seduced by his stepmother when he was 17, leading to the aforementioned pool incident for which he blamed himself.
  • In Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Paz Ortega Andrade, real name Pacifica Ocean, according to her diary tapes, was an orphan, and was apparently adopted by Cipher (in other words, the Patriots faction run by Zero after the split), and she intends to obey Cipher's command, not simply due to her loyalty to the organization, but because she feels as though she has to obey them even if she doesn't agree with their goals because she'll otherwise suffer a fate worse than death if she doesn't.
  • There's also the fact that they created the clones of Big Boss. The fact that they were created without Big Boss's consent would make this a form of sexual abuse. Oh, and the project that created them also had six of their brothers essentially murdered during development so they could gain strong fetal growth. Then there is the fact that they kidnapped Olga's child, Sunny, after birth, and put her life on the line by having her life connected to Raiden's vital nanomachines - meaning that if he dies, they kill her. It is heavily implied that even after Raiden defeated Solidus Snake, they still are placing her life on the line as a threat to Raiden, and she grew up completely withdrawn from people until the Patriots finally bit the dust. As a silver lining, Otacon (and to a lesser extent, Snake) do care about her and finally Otacon officially adopts her in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
  • Raiden had it rough too. The only parental figure he ever had was Solidus and he raised him as a soldier and twisted him in every possible way; on top of that, Solidus was the one who killed his birth parents. It takes a LONG time for Raiden to overcome his trauma, thanks to Rose and his son, John.
• Zigzagged in Yandere Simulator: Ryoba definitely does love her daughter Ayano, but at the same time is raising her to be a Yandere like her and sees nothing wrong with that. It's been implied through Word of God that every mother in the Aishi line is like that.

Strategy RPG

• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade:
    • King Desmond makes no bones about the fact that he loathes his son Zephiel and tries to kill him at least twice. Is it any wonder this wise, gentle boy grows up to be such a bastard in The Binding Blade?
    • Sonia raised Nino as her daughter, but only to use her as a pawn in her evil plans. Then she ordered her assassinated, but thankfully the assassin cared too much about Nino to go through with it.
  • In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Soren's two foster homes treated him like dirt: the woman he stayed with shot constant verbal abuse at him while the sage who raised him afterwards subjected him to intense Training from Hell (and he was only four at the time). Ironically, his biological father was less abusive despite Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn revealing he was Mad King Ashnard of Daein (though he did use the kid as a hostage to lure out his uncle). Given his lack of a stable family it's no wonder he became as snarky and merciless as he is.
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening:
    • Tharja zigzags the trope around to a dizzying point. In her own supports with Noire, she's mostly aloof towards her outside intensively training her dark magic potential until their A support, where she admits she loves her. She's also very protective of Noire during their talk in the Future Past DLC, and it's said that Tharja mainly took to cursing Noire in her insane grief after her husband's death. However, Noire's supports with her father claim that the Tharja from the Future was always using her as a guinea pig for her hexes without a second thought and if her father tried to stop it she'd take it out on him; Tharja only sorta came back to her senses when Noire was directly threatened, and saved her in exchange for her own life. Thus one of Noire's desires is to explain this to Tharja and prevent her from falling in such traps.
    • If the Female Avatar marries him, Walhart can become an abusive father towards Morgan, threatening to bash his head into a wall for crying about his missing memory. This is only in the English version; the original Japanese had Walhart as more indifferent.
    • Henry's parents are all but stated outright to have been this. They neglected him so badly that he spent all his time in the nearby forest, where he was friends with a wolf... until a group of villagers killed the wolf when she came in to visit him. Henry's Black Mage powers came to the surface right there and the subsequent Roaring Rampage of Revenge prompted his real parents to send him to an Orphanage of Fear (Japanese version)/a Boarding School of Horrors (English version). He came out pretty unhinged for it.
  • In Fire Emblem Fates, King Garon of Nohr kidnapped the Avatar from their Hoshidan family as a little kid and raised them as his own child, but kept them isolated and treated them basically like dirt, even making several attempts on their life during the game. He even implies he'd kill his own blood children at one point! It turns out that Garon used to be a good person and a decent parent to his kids, but not only he became a bitter bastard after the Deadly Court of Nohr got to him and his second wife Arete died... but when he kicked it at some point, Anankos had Garon's remains eaten by a Blob Monster that absorbed his memories and posed as him for several years.
    • Anankos is a horrible father as well. After Garon Came Back Wrong as said above, he had him treat the Avatar as a disposable tool (plus Garon treated his own kids terribly as a side effect), and later had them sent on a suicide mission because they betrayed him by surviving. He didn't treat his daughter Lilith well either and used her as a tool, which caused the poor dragon girl to be devoted to him solely to gain his approval. Though it's also shown that Anankos's Soul, aka the incarnation of his remaining good emotions and the Avatar's actual birth father, did care for the Avatar and Lilith.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses
    • Bernadetta's father is a real piece of work. He raised her with the expectation of her marrying into money, and the way he went about training her for this deeply unnerving to say the least, including tying her to a chair to teach her to be quiet and demure, as well as violently beating one of her childhood friends because he was lowborn. As a result of this abuse, Bernadetta has become a Shrinking Violet to a T: she Apologizes a Lot, keeps herself shut up in her room unless her presence is direly needed, and has a very low opinion of herself. Post-Time Skip, she graduates to Cowardly Lion territory, and in one of her endings, she marries her classmate Ferdinand, to whom her father planned an Arranged Marriage because of his family's prestige, after cutting ties with her own family to get last laughs on her father.
    • Sylvain's father always treated him well, but the same cannot be said for his elder brother Miklan. The Gautier family placed a great deal of importance on the possession of Crests, and when Sylvain was born bearing a Crest, Miklan, who had the misfortune of being born without a Crest, was summarily disinherited and disowned, though the waters here are muddied a bit since Miklan grew into such a Big Brother Bully he outright tried to kill Sylvain (Sylvain mentioning Miklan once shoved him down a well, and another time left him stranded in the mountains in the middle of winter). This contributed to Sylvain becoming a Stepford Smiler, playing the role of the carefree playboy while dealing with self-loathing over the fact that, as far as his family was concerned, his Crest was the only thing that gave his life meaning.
    • Claude mentions in his support with Hilda that, as a child, when he misbehaved, his father would drag him around behind a horse while his mother laughed until he'd learned his lesson. When Hilda is rightfully horrified by this, Claude changes the subject. It's also confirmed that Claude was bullied and treated like an outcast for being biracial, including by his half-brothers, and survived multiple assassination attempts and his parents never intervened on the grounds that he "wouldn't learn to fight his own battles" if they did, leading to Claude having massive trust issues and his obsession with scheming, since he has learned he cannot rely on anyone but himself.
    • Mercedes's stepfather outright tossed her and her mother aside after her younger brother was born with a Crest and ignored their existence, until he was apparently considering marrying Mercedes, as her mother had become too old to bear any more children and Mercedes had come of age. This led her and her mother to flee the Adrestian Empire to get away from him.
  • Fire Emblem Engage: Perhaps the worst parent in the entire franchise has to be Lord Sombron. He had children purely so that he could have an heir, and once they proved to be unworthy of that title, he quickly killed them. Even though his children try to bond with Sombron, he despises them for it, and will even force them to become an evil heir even if they don't want to, as he did with Veyle in the main timeline, and Rafal in the Xenolouge timeline.

Survival Horror

• In Among the Sleep, it's implied the main character's mother is fairly abusive.
• Dead by Daylight makes note in its manual that the Hillbilly was walled in his room by his parents for his childhood because he was deformed. In fact, they didn't even bother to name him. Guess who his first victims are.
• Silent Hill. Let's count: Dahlia Gillespie, Leonard Wolf, Thomas Orosco, the unnamed Mrs. Orosco, Walter's parents, Helen Grady, and many others.
  • At least Harry Mason, the protagonist of the first game, is a Papa Wolf to the max.
    • In Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, depending on what ending you get, Cheryl will recall that Harry was an alcoholic abusive father, an unfaithful philandering father, or a genuinely loving father.
    • Additionally, one of the endings reveals Cheryl's mother Dahlia to be a spouse abuser. It's debatable whether she physically abuses her daughter as well, but the fact that she degrades and beats Harry in front of Cheryl at least stands as emotional abuse.
  • In Silent Hill: Homecoming, the entire adult population of Shepherd's Hill are abusers of the worst kind. All of them made at least one of their children into a torturous Human Sacrifice, a ritual that has been carried out by every generation since the town's founding, in order to keep the malign occult forces of neighboring Silent Hill at bay. When you arrive during the events of the game, the ritual has failed and the most recent crop of murdered children have come back as monsters to seek revenge. Zigzagged with the protagonist's parents, who did emotionally abuse him, but failed to sacrifice him the way their fellows did with their firstborn. And it's implied that they only hesitated because his younger brother had accidentally drowned, meaning they'd have no "replacement" child after the protagonist's death.
• Dr. Luis of South of Real uses his adopted children as nothing more than fodder for his experiments to stop the end of the world. By the time the game proper rolls around, his own actions have left him a broken wreck of a human being. Even choosing to have the one survivor of the experiments kill him seems to be exactly what Luis wants.

Third-Person Shooters

• Sunset Overdrive: Max's parents, from the quest of the same name. The Player Character is sent to their high rise to find out what happened to them. They left behind a voice recording in their panic room (which is wired with an explosive, incidentally) informing Max that they decided to spend his trust fund and take off for the Bahamas. They end by suggesting that he try the new OverCharge drink. Not surprisingly, when Max hears that they abandoned him, he's actually overjoyed.

Turn-Based Strategy

• We learn very early into Blaze Union that Gulcasa's father beat and neglected him when he was a young child; his father blamed him for his mother's disappearance. We later learn that said mother is also neglectful and emotionally abusive; the last thing she ever did to her child was Mind Rape him into believing himself to be human while sealing his demon blood without his consent. While her reasons for doing so were arguably well-intentioned, it still left Gulcasa with residual brain damage that prevents him from being able to realize that Emilia is his sister when they first meet. And if that isn't enough, she also reveals that she was aware that Gulcasa's father was abusing him, but chose not to come back and do something about it. All of this started from Fantastic Racism, which was also the reason that no one tried to do anything about the abuse. Luckily for Gulcasa, his childhood friends were willing to become parental surrogates, and lovingly helped him grow up mostly undamaged by all this.

Visual Novels

• Date's 12-year-old adoptive niece Mizuki in AI: The Somnium Files is the daughter of his best friend Renju and his wife Shoko. Renju was a workaholic CEO who was more interested in managing his company than his family and left the childrearing to Shoko, whose own mother was distant with her and made her an unloving narcissist. As a result, Mizuki craved her mother's love and clung to her while Shoko didn't know how to act and would emotionally and physically abuse her in response, blaming her for it all the while. Eventually, the two divorced with Renju gaining custody, but as he knew he was unfit to be a parent he had her live with Date while taking care of official matters like interacting with teachers. By the time the game starts, four years have passed with Mizuki becoming a Sour Outside, Sad Inside Affection-Hating Kid who saw her father sparingly and her first encounter with her mother after all that time being the discovery of her corpse.
• Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus and Butterfly: As a child, Baileys used to see his parents fighting all the time, and he mentions that elven high society isn't good with keeping up appearances when they're around family. His late great-great-aunt was the only family member who truly cared for him, and he even if he wants to leave his family, he still misses her dearly.

Western RPG

• In Baldur's Gate the strongest contender for the title Most Abusive Parent in the Realms is Bhaal, the Lord of Murder. Bhaal, forseeing his own death, went out and fathered a countless number of children, storing a portion of his divine essence within each of them. Following his death, the priesthood of Bhaal took the children and their mothers to their temples, where he had commanded them to kill the children one by one to ensure his resurrection. To add further abuse to the equation, many if not most of the clergy doing the knifing were the mothers of the children being sacrificed.
  • Vaelag from Shadows of Amn beat his daughter until she slipped into a coma and is heavily implied to be a domestic abuser as well. Even Korgan is disgusted by him.
  • Despite your adoptive father's attempts to portray her as a tragic woman raped by Bhaal, your mother was actually one of his priestesses, who happily planned to sacrifice her own child in his name. Heck, that’s the exact reason your father had you bred.
• Deltarune: The King of the Card Kingdom is a truly awful father to his son, Lancer. He neglects him at the best of times, and when Lancer befriends the heroes, the King responds by threatening to throw Lancer off of the tower to his death, both to punish him and to screw with the heroes. Subverted in chapter 2, as it is revealed that if he had dropped lancer, he would have bounced, and been fine.
• Dragon Age has its share of these.
  • Dragon Age: Origins:
    • This is seen in the Dwarf Commoner Warden's origin story. His/her father split years before the events of the game, and the alcoholic mother is verbally and emotionally abusive to the player character and his/her sister Rica.
    • Flemeth, Morrigan's mother, also fits the trope. Morrigan's dialogue with the player character suggests that she would have liked to be able to love her mother, but Flemeth's various levels of abusive behavior made it impossible. And that's before Morrigan learns that she was conceived as part of Flemeth's ongoing Grand Theft Me method of living indefinitely.
    • Alistair was raised by Arl Eamon, his biological father's brother-in-law, in Redcliffe Castle. But he wasn't really raised in the castle; he mostly lived in the kennels with the dogs. He once had to stay in a cage there for an entire day after he accidentally locked himself inside of it. Then Eamon got married, and the new lady of the house got rid of Alistair within a month — convinced he was her husband's bastard, she made Eamon pack the 10-year-old boy off to the Chantry. He claims that Eamon was good to him, but it's hard to see it that way when you know the details. It gets worse when you meet his half-sister and you learn that she was driven away when their mother died in childbirth, after being told that the baby had died with her — therefore depriving both of them of any functional relationship. She's not actually his sister, but neither of them know that.
  • Dragon Age II:
    • Isabela's mother decided to convert to the Qun and tried to force her daughter to do likewise. When she refused, her mother sold her into a horrible marriage in exchange for a goat and a few coins. ("Bitch didn't even try to haggle.")
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition:
    • Dorian's relationship with his father was ruined when he discovered that his father, rather than accept Dorian's homosexuality, planned to use Blood Magic to re-wire his brain so he'd be straight. That there was a good chance it would have left Dorian a brain-dead vegetable didn't seem to concern him. Dorian was so hurt by this that it cemented his decision to leave Tevinter to join the Inquisition. His personal quest involves escorting him to meet with his father, who seems genuinely sorry for betraying his son's trust and is there to beg for forgiveness. The Inquisitor can encourage Dorian to forgive him or not; either way, Dorian admits that his relationship with his father will never be fully healed.
    • And near the end of the game, it's revealed that Flemeth's viewpoint wasn't that she was being cruel to Morrigan, but rather hardening her for how harsh the world can be, and that she was never in any danger of a Grand Theft Me, as it needs to be done willingly. Realizing that her own daughter thought otherwise actually hurts her, which makes sense considering she is one with Mythal, the Elven patron goddess of motherhood among other things.
• Fallout 3 gives us James Hargrave, whose father was eaten by cannibals. Because of this, his mother becomes an abusive drunk and blames him for his father's disappearance. If you kill his mother, he doesn't seem to mind too much.
• Cait, your Fighting Irish Dark Action Girl companion from Fallout 4, was actually sold into slavery by her own parents. Not as in like "they didn't want to but didn't have a choice", either - they were just bastards who were apparently raising her specifically to do so, as they captured her and dragged her back the few times she tried to run away as a teenager. She can't remember a single time they expressed any love or care for her as a daughter and they often verbally and physically abused her. It took Cait five years to get enough money to buy her freedom, and the moment she was free, guess what she did. Unsurprisingly, she considers this one of the main reasons she's such a screwed up person.
• It takes a good amount of digging to learn this, but in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords it's implied and basically confirmed by Word of God that Kreia/Darth Traya was once the Jedi Master Arren Kae, Handmaiden/Brianna's Missing Mom. Despite being fully aware of her identity Kreia shows no warmth whatsoever to her daughter, outright disliking her for her blind allegiance to Atris and seeing her as yet another pawn to be discarded for the Exile's sake, even being indirectly responsible for her death in some variants of the Dark Side ending with the Restored Content Mod. Yet strangely enough, she seemed amenable to the idea of her and The Exile getting together.
• The main characters of LISA the First and Lisa: The Painful RPG are haunted by their incredibly abusive father. The First takes Lisa through a World of Symbolism showing how she's haunted by Marty's actions, while Brad Armstrong has frequent flashbacks and hallucinations involving Marty, and he copes with these through Joy.
  • Despite his best efforts, Brad's Joy addiction leads him to become an abusive father to his own adopted daughter, Buddy, albeit in a much more indirect way than Marty. In fact, by the time Brad finds Marty near the end of the game, he's become The Atoner and actually proves to be a much better parental figure to Buddy than Brad is. Brad doesn't take this well. And this is before we learn about Brad's OTHER adopted child...
  • Then there's Buddy's actual father Dr. Yado. Yado, after Buddy was born, left her in the abandoned wasteland of Olathe, hoping to use her to start a war that would kill all remaining humans so that he could Take Over the World with his Joy Mutants. When he meets Buddy again, he rants at her that she was nothing more to him than a pawn and an insect.
• Mass Effect has Henry Lawson, the father of squad member Miranda Lawson. An extreme Narcissist, he uses his cloned DNA to create the perfect children whom he views as nothing more than his property to carry on his legacy. This means he attempts to control absolutely everything about them. If they don't live up to his near impossible expectations, he disposes of them and starts over. Miranda eventually ran away and took her baby sister, Oriana, with her, leading him to spend decades hunting the galaxy for both of them. The effects of his treatment are quite evident with Miranda, who is revealed to have a near crippling inferiority complex that she tries to desperately hide. When you finally meet him in Mass Effect 3, after seeing his other atrocities, he uses Oriana as a Human Shield and might also kill Miranda.

Wide-Open Sandbox

• In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Lemkil of Rorikstead blames his twin daughters Sissel and Britte for his wife's Death by Childbirth and abuses them while complaining to everyone in town about them. For one of the "Scare my Enemy" quests, he will even pay the Dragonborn to assault one of his daughters and pay the player 50 gold while saying "Ha! There's nothing like a few cuts and bruises to drive home a point, huh?" If you kill him, you may get a thank-you letter from Sissel.
• Red Dead Redemption II
  • Dutch is the Parental Substitute for Arthur and John whom he raised since they were young. However, due to his Ambiguously Evil actions, one cannot help but wonder if Dutch took them under his wing out of the kindness of his heart or if he wanted to manipulate them to be used as his pawns or very conditionally loved them, turning against them when Arthur and John started voicing valid concerns against Dutch. As Dutch's Sanity Slippage and paranoia worsens, he becomes hostile to John for apparently being more loyal to his wife and son, starts belittling and yelling at Arthur and John for "betraying" him, abandons John to rot and hang in prison and later, leaves Arthur to be captured or die at the oil refinery, gaslights Arthur when he confronts Dutch about it, and leaves John to die again in the final heist. All of this would lead Arthur and John to lose faith in Dutch and ultimately ends their loyalty towards him.
  • Dutch is implied to be a step up from Arthur's biological father. The only photograph of Lyle Morgan is a mugshot, and all Arthur has to say about the man is that he didn't die soon enough.

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