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Knight Templar Parent

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"I will make Maggie safe. If the world burns because of that, then so be it. Me and the kid will roast some marshmallows."
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Not all parents are useless or evil. There are quite a few who actually seem interested in their children's welfare. Sure, they might be a little overprotective or annoying, but they mean well.

And then there are parents who take the noble principle of looking out for their kids and go a bit overboard. Just as a Knight Templar or a Well-Intentioned Extremist commits all sorts of illegal or immoral deeds in the name of a cause, a Knight Templar Parent does equally questionable things to ensure his or her child's safety. While a normally protective parent would have a Very Special Episode about telling their kid not to buy illegal drugs, a Knight Templar Parent would track down and kill every drug dealer in town. Just to be sure.

Compare Mama Bear and Papa Wolf, which is more or the same concept but only occurs as an immediate defensive reaction to an emergent threat, and does not necessarily entail vengeance or Disproportionate Retribution. The Evil Matriarch is often an extreme version of the Knight Templar Parent, though by no means always. See also My Beloved Smother and Helicopter Parents. An older brother who will protect/avenge his younger sibling by any means necessary is a Knight Templar Big Brother, which is an extreme version of Big Brother Instinct. For Knight Templar Parents minus the Knight Templar part, see Good Parents. For the non-parental equivalent, see Well-Intentioned Extremist.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • The 2003 Astro Boy series makes Dr. Tenma into one. He doubles as a (deluded) Stealth Mentor who engineers challenges for Astro to face so he can become stronger, all ostensibly for Astro's good. True to the trope, Tenma doesn't care who he bulldozes in the name of helping Astro achieve his "destiny."
  • Berserk:
    • The King of Midland practically destroyed his own kingdom just to make Griffith's life a living hell after he deflowered his precious daughter, Princess Charlotte who he later tried to rape and evidently fell deeper and deeper into insanity afterward.
    • The Count can also count, since he was so determined to keep his daughter Theresia away from the evils of the world with himself being one of them that he locked her in her room for most of her life.
  • A minor suspect in an early Case Closed story locked her own son Akio in the basement of her house for six years so the Statute of Limitations would run out on Akio's accidental murder of his apparently abusive father... even when Akio did acknowledge his guilt and wanted to pay for his crime, and being locked downstairs only made him cross the Despair Event Horizon. Ultimately, Conan and the Detective Boys found out as they sneaked into the apparently abandoned house; Conan uncovered the mother, helped Akio convince her to let him go, and they turned themselves in together.
  • Code Geass pulls this rather surprisingly with both of Lelouch's parents, Emperor Charles (whom he despised) and Empress Marianne (whom he revered); the two formed a plan to change the world for the better shortly after they met, and since Lelouch and his sister Nunnally were their favorites, they intended to let the kids in on it when they were old enough. However, they didn't bother taking into account how the kids would feel about forcibly changing the nature of all of humanity. And all this is before you throw in their Evil Plan to protect the kids which resulted in both kids being mentally and emotionally scarred, and drove Lelouch to try to kill his father in the first place.
    • Lampshaded in the audio commentary for the episode in which the parents' Templar-hood is revealed, when the episode's director comments "They probably thought they were doing the right thing, but Lelouch wanted to say that they weren't Good Parents. We wanted to make sure that was clear."
  • Suits Renton and Eureka to the T in Eureka Seven Ao for their goal to ensure their son Ao's survival after the tragedy that happened to their firstborn daughter.
  • The final arc of Food Wars! reveals that Azami Nakiri was actually this towards Erina. The reason he put her through Training from Hell to cultivate her God's Tongue and tried to create a world of only gourmet cooking was that his wife Mana, whom he loved dearly, eventually developed a tasting disorder, causing her to be unable to enjoy food at all, and he doesn't want that to happen to his daughter. Unfortunately, his means to do so was being a Fantasy-Forbidding Father to the point Erina not only grew into a rather haughty Alpha Bitch as a teenager but became terrified of him.
  • Maes Hughes from Fullmetal Alchemist pulls a gun at a bunch of three-year-old boys who want to play with his daughter, who's of the same age.
  • In His and Her Circumstances, Reiji Arima is extremely protective of his biological son Souichirou, so much so that he is willing to kill Souichirou's mother Ryouko for abusing him during his childhood and leaving him to die when he's been badly beaten up by her when he finally finds him and in fact, is close to doing it until Souichirou intervenes.
  • Jojos Bizarre Adventure:
    • Enya from Stardust Crusaders. She despises Jotaro and his friends, particularly Polnareff, who "mercilessly" killed her "sweet, innocent son". Said son is actually a serial murderer/rapist, who raped and killed Polnareff's little sister long ago.
    • Jojolion:
      • Kaato Higashikata is dedicated to her whole family in general, but she specifically focuses most on Jobin, whom she was willing to cover up for his Accidental Murder of a bully of his, transfer the curse he had as a kid unto the bully, and go to jail for him.
      • Jobin follows on her mother's footsteps as he, above all else, wants to cure his son and the family in general from the curse that plagues themnote . Because of this, he ends up playing as the main antagonist for most of the part.
  • In Maria no Danzai, Mari Nagare loves her son Kiritaka so much that she abandoned her dream of becoming a School Nurse in order to raise him. Then, after he is sent to his death by bullies and she learns that he didn't actually kill himself, Mari decides to avenge her son by killing the bullies with her own hands. She spends the next two years making the necessary preparations, such as divorcing her husband, cutting off all contact with former friends and family, legally changing her name to Maria Akeboshi (her maiden name) and undergoing plastic surgery to completely alter her physical appearance, after which she takes the first step in her plan by becoming a nurse at the school her son's bullies go to. Only once she gains a reputation of Incorruptible Pure Pureness does she begin to hunt her unsuspecting targets.
    Mari: Mere revenge is too soft. They deserve judgement.
  • The manga Mom, Please Don't Come Adventuring With Me! uses this as its main premise (combined with Amazingly Embarrassing Parents and My Beloved Smother): the main character's adoptive mother is a ludicrously overpowered dragon (she casts a level 1 fire spell that's closer to a nuclear explosion) who can shapeshift into a human and is determined not to let anything harm her son, even if she has to clear dungeons of enemies before he goes in, give unfairly strict interviews to potential party members or turn every living creature for miles around into a clone of herself because she's lost sight of him. The subtitle sums up the premise rather well: ~The Boy Who Was Raised by the Ultimate Overprotective Dragon, Becomes an Adventurer With His Mother~.
  • Despite typically being cold and dismissive toward his daughter Hinata until the middle of Part I, Hiashi Hyuga of Naruto has some hallmarks of this, like when he activated his brother's curse seal merely because he sensed that he was considering harming Hinata.
  • Whitebeard of One Piece is an example of this to his "sons," as he considers killing a crewmate to be an unforgivable crime. When Ace, who had gone after Blackbeard for killing his division commander, lost to Blackbeard and was turned over to the World Government, Whitebeard sent his entire fleet of pirates to Marineford to save him, playing into the World Government's plans as well as Blackbeard's.
    • This being Whitebeard however, he was playing a hefty case of Xanatos Speed Chess with the World Government during the encounter and his defeat and demise happened because of unforeseen events such as Blackbeard turning up and Ace being killed, resulting in a Heroic BSoD.
  • Kham's father, the Santovasku Emperor from Outlanders (the manga moreso than the anime). Yeah, he may be just a bit extreme in his methodseven going so far as to brainwash his own daughter, making her forget the "lowly Earth-born human" husband that he does not approve of and encouraging her to murder the boy; he also destroys the entire frikkin' Earth in his rage—he's really not all bad. After all, he has the welfare of an entire pan-galactic empire to look after, and humans like his new son-in-law (who has basically rendered the Emperor's daughter unmarriageable to another man) have basically been infesting, raping and despoiling the sacred Santovasku "Mother World"—yeah, they originated on Earth—since they first began to walk upright. He's got plenty of reason to be a bit pissed off if you think about it.
  • Giovanni from Pokémon Adventures. Wanna find your missing son? Simple, just destroy the Sevii Islands, put other families through hell, nearly kill quite a few people, and put the protagonist through a whole lotta traumatizing shit, etc..
  • Recent chapters of Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- suggest that Syaoran and Sakura Li went this path for their son, [male] Tsubasa. Their moves include getting sealed in separate parts of a glass container for the better part of their offspring's lives as a payment for his safety, Sakura sacrificing a Magic Wand she was given by an alternate universe version of herself so [male] Tsubasa can go to an alternate dimension to help [female] Tsubasa, his love interest, and then facing the Big Bad in a battle that potentially can destroy the multiverse in an AWESOME Big Damn Heroes moment. All this because [male] Tsubasa fell in Love at First Sight with the person his mother was cloned from.

    Comic Books 
  • Batgirl: When Stephanie Brown was younger, one of her villainous father's friends tried to rape her; eight days later, he died of an apparent drug overdose. Stephanie is quite aware that there may have been more to it than that.
  • Blue Beetle Jaime Reyes' friend Brenda had an abusive father, but a very supportive aunt who took her in when said father died in a car accident. An accident that happened shortly after he put Brenda in the hospital. Oh, did we mention that Brenda's aunt happens to be the secret head of El Paso's criminal underworld?
  • The Devil Hulk from The Incredible Hulk — in Avengers: No Surrender and Avengers: No Road Home — thinks that the universe isn’t being very nice to Bruce. His solution: end the world as we know it in order to put everyone out of Bruce's misery. It doesn't help that Bruce apparently wants the world to end, given his wish on the Pleasure Planet Euphoria.
  • Edge of Spider-Verse (2022): Queen Mysteria is determined to protect her daughter. And if that means she has to use an evil magical artifact and kill the heads of all the other kingdoms to do so, then so be it! This results in her obliviously attacking her daughter, who is trying to stop her.
  • Runaways:
    • The twelve members of the Pride are promised six places in a coming paradise. In order to avert infighting about who gets the honor, each of the six couples agrees to grant a spot to their children. Of course, earning these six places involves routine human sacrifice and taking over the world...
    • Geoffrey Wilder bargained with the Gibborim in the present - just because he wanted his to-be-deceased wife and son back (keep in mind that at this time, Geoffrey hasn't even met Alex yet). He also chooses Nico as the sacrifice just because she refused the advances of Alex.
    • There's also the time when the kids are stuck in 1800s New York and Chase meets the past versions of the Yorkes, who were also time-traveling in that date. Upon learning from Chase that their daughter is going to die in the future, Mr. Yorkes tries to attack him. The pair immediately begin making plans to keep Gertrude safe - and bring a nuclear bomb from the future to blow up 1800s New York. As revenge for Getrude dying in any possible future.
  • Mr. Chau from Scott Pilgrim. Once he finds out his daughter, Knives, is dating a 23-year-old white boy (or used to at this point) he did the most logical thing possible... He went around with his ceremonial sword and hunted Scott so he could decapitate him. This eventually helped Scott though as he used Mr.Chau as a distraction in a battle with one of Ramona's evil exes and, after that, made peace with him.

    Fairy Tales 
  • Some adaptations of "Rapunzel" portray the witch this way, possibly to make her seem more sympathetic. Included among them are the Donna Jo Napoli's novel Zel and Stephen Sondheim's musical Into the Woods. In both those versions, the witch truly loved Rapunzel and was trying to protect her.

    Fan Works 
  • Padme from the Star Wars fanfic, By the Grace of Lady Vader, is this for both Luke and Leia. She will do anything to get her family back and keep them safe, to the point of imprisoning one of her own children. Fact that she seems to be a bit delusional and has problems accepting the idea that said child might be in love with someone she doesn’t approve of and make independent decisions, doesn’t help at all. Anakin also shows the same traits but his methods are different.
    • Though to be fair: Padme was locked up in a Sith prison for at least a decade, which is not considered good for your sanity, while Anakin got set on fire, his limbs chopped off...well there is a difference between parents who are like that without an excuse and those who suffered like that.
  • In My Hero Academia fanfic Conversations with a Cryptid, All For One is fiercely protective of his child Izuku. This leads him to torture and experiment with the child's childhood bullies, spying on his family to extremely invasive levels, setting Shigaraki to be his fall guy and slaughtering the entire prison staff and Izuku's kidnappers who were keeping him from saving the critically injured Midoriya. The kid, obviously, is horrified when they realized the truth and has to spend most of the sequel trying to either run away from their father or rein him in.
  • Crimson and Noire: Plagg might come off as abrasive, but he cares deeply for Marinette and wants to keep her safe compared to his previous holders. This ends up deconstructed as he has a tendency to go too far.
  • In the Naruto fanfic A Father's Wrath, instead of the yondaime, Naruto's father is Orochimaru. He's so enraged by Naruto being made into a jinchuriki, that in this continuity it's his primary motive for forming the sound village and attempting to destroy Konoha. In sound, he also makes Tayuya something akin to a slave for Naruto for slapping him. It's implied he would have had her killed if Naruto hadn't spoken up about being in a panic at the time and that she'd been trying to calm him down. Otherwise, however, he seems to be a just ruler and a devoted parent.
  • Played for laughs in For the Glory of Irk, where Professor Membrane and his new wife Moira's initial solution to any problem that Dib and Gaz have is to provide them with high-grade weaponry.
  • In Heir of the Nightmare: The whole reason Luna became Nightmare Moon and cover Equestria in Eternal Night was because her daughter was nearly murdered by a cabal of religious fanatics. Only by casting Celestia down, along with the moon, she reasoned she could scare anypony from harming Twilight.
  • In The Immortal Game, Esteem claims that everything he did to Rarity — Training from Hell, emotional (and possibly physical) abuse, killing her mother (who opposed his plans) — was all for her own good, to make her strong enough to survive and rule by his side in the new order he'd help Titan create. note  She calls him out on this during their confrontation and disowns him.
  • Darth Vader in Missing and Presumed Dead is practically a (paternal) Yandere towards his son, Luke. After Luke managed to escape from him on Bespin, he began desperately pursuing him by any means necessary, including kidnapping and torturing members of the Rebellion for information. When he learns that his son is dead (not really, just faking it), he goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. After he learns that Leia is also his child, he kidnaps her to make sure that she doesn't die like his son did.
  • Shattered Heir Saga: After the deaths of Lois Lane and his unborn child, Superman becomes dangerously overprotective of Jon, to the point of either confining him to the Watchtower or having other heroes escort him when he wants to go out.
  • Son of the Sannin: Babysitting children is normally a mission given to Genin fresh out of the academy. Shizune on the other hand demands from the Hokage that her children be watched by a squad of highly trained Jonin, and only by ones that she personally trusts if possible. Considering the fact that both of the kids were nearly kidnapped by Danzo's minions to be raised as Tyke Bombs and the one responsible managed to escape, it's understandable that she'd be a bit overprotective, even if the chance of the kidnappers returning is almost nonexistent.
  • The Sun Will Come Up And The Seasons Will Change: Dana Summers is a deconstruction. She sees herself as one, fighting Mary every day to help her blend in with the world and fight her autism. However, to Mary herself and everyone (except Dr. Goldman and Dana's own mother, Irene), she's an abusive, self-righteous Control Freak of a mother who refuses to take any responsibility for her actions and treats Mary like garbage simply for existing.
  • Amber Harrison in Zero Context: Taking Out the Trash has a zero-tolerance policy for anyone harming her children, and is noted to make hobbies out of Disproportionate Retribution and reality warping. When her daughter gets a light scratch during combat, she chases after the person who did it, violently transforms him into the thing he hated most, and leaves a warning message on the person's spinal column not to do it again.note 

    Film — Animated 
  • In Hotel Transylvania, Dracula is fiercely protective of his daughter Mavis due to his promise to his dead wife that he'll protect her no matter what. He tries to instill within her his fear and hatred of humanity and built a massive hotel for monsters as a safe haven for her. He even builds a fake human village with his zombie minions playing a human mob (complete with torches and pitchforks) so that his daughter loses her wanderlust.
  • In Turning Red, Ming acts like this throughout the movie but most especially in the film's climax, where she becomes so overwhelmingly angry over Mei disobeying her that she crashes the 4*Town concert and causes a lot of property damage.

    Film — Live-Action 
  • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: Wanda Maximoff initiates an orgy of murder throughout two universes to capture America Chavez, absorb her powers, and travel to a universe where her counterpart has children, ergo killing and replacing her so she can have the children all to herself. Disregarding the second part aside, Wong points out that she can just ask for America to teleport her to said universe without resorting to absorbing her powers, but Wanda counters with the insane assumption that her children may suffer an illness whose cure lies in the multiverse, so the power must be standby at all times.
  • In Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill!, the killer who's been taking out Remington's low-life friends turns out to be Nick's seemingly-oblivious mother, Mindy.
  • Reverend Shaw of Footloose: after losing his son in a car crash, he goes full Knight Templar and convinces the town council to enact draconian laws to ban, among other things, controversial books, rock music, and dancing so that his remaining daughter Ariel can grow up without the temptations Shaw believes led to his son's death.
  • Cindy's parents from The Generation Gap, but especially her father; refusing to allow his daughter to pursue her passion, which is a career in music, he goes as far as to smash her guitar right in front of her and snaps at her for crying after that. When Cindy is driven to run away from home, the father instead brands Cindy's lover Ling as a kidnapper.
  • Hubie Halloween: Hubie's mom kidnaps four of Hubie's tormentors and decides to burn them alive in her backyard as vengeance for bullying him. Hubie himself lampshades it.
    Hubie: "Mommy, I would have been satisfied if you put itching powder in their sleeping bags. This is extreme."
  • Subverted with King Stefan in Maleficent. While he does order every spindle to be burned to prevent Princess Aurora from succumbing to the titular fairy's curse, as well as having the princess hidden away with the Three Good Fairies, it becomes clear rather early that Stefan's concern is not with Aurora so much as with keeping his power and proving himself superior to Maleficent. Notably, when Aurora returns to him as a teenager, he's too preoccupied with finally being able to defeat Maleficent that Aurora is nothing more than a thorn in his side.
  • Meet the Parents: Jack Byrnes is an ex-CIA guy who puts Greg Focker, the guy who wants to date his daughter, through the wringer, up to and including slipping him truth serum. He is so adamant about finding an excuse to kick Greg out that both his daughter and his wife call him out on his Boyfriend-Blocking Dad ways toward the end.
  • Linda's mother in Next of Kin (1982) has her sister Rita relocated to a nursing home in order to get her share of the money and thus receive enough funds to take care of her daughter's future needs. This sets in motion a nasty chain of events that eventually leads to Rita's killing spree seen in the film.
  • Jacob in October Baby is perfectly fine with violating the Hippocratic oath, lying, and generally being a dick to his adopted daughter Hannah if it means keeping her under his thumb.
  • In La piel que habito, the father of a nearly raped girl goes out of his way to punish the perpetrator.
  • The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom is based on the true story of Wanda Holloway, a woman who plotted to kill her daughter's cheerleading rival.
  • Prisoners: Over the course of the film, Keller Dover went from being appropriately paranoid about his missing daughter and her friend to outright kidnapping Alex Jones, just because he suspects that the man is responsible for their kidnapping.
  • Anakin Skywalker of Star Wars. Heartbroken by the seemingly impending death of his wife and possibly of his child (whose future he cannot see in his visions), he goes on a savage killing spree to immerse himself in the powers of the Dark Side of the Force, in order to gain the power to save Padme Amidala and, if need be, the baby too. (Note that this is not precisely clear in the movies — the novelization makes it much more apparent.)
  • Bryan Mills from Taken is the Trope Codifier. When his daughter gets kidnapped, he becomes The Unfettered to pretty much everyone.
  • Christof in The Truman Show takes this to the extent of trapping his adoptive son Truman in an entire "perfect" fake world, with actors playing every person in Truman's life, so that Truman will never be exposed to the evils of real life.
    • At least this is what he claims. The fact that he then TELEVISES this as "the ultimate reality show" rather makes that doubtful as his real motive. He even instills a phobia of flying or sailing in Truman to keep him from finding out he's in a huge dome.
  • Twice-Told Tales: Taken to psychotic levels by Giacomo Rappaccini in "Rappaccini's Daughter". Many years ago, Rappaccini abruptly quit academia and became a recluse after his wife ran away with a lover. Rappaccini has treated his daughter Beatrice with an exotic plant extract that makes her touch deadly; he does this to keep her safe from unwanted suitors, but it makes her a prisoner in her own home.
  • Underworld (2003): Viktor, to the point where the entire Vampire-Lycan War began due to his being so much of one that he had his daughter, Sonja, executed after finding out she was pregnant with the child of a Lycan. Naturally, when several centuries later he discovered his adoptive daughter, Selene, had begun to consort with a Lycan, he doesn't take it well.
  • X-Men: The Last Stand: Warren Worthington II, given that his son is a mutant.

    Literature 
  • Beren and Lúthien: Thingol is obsessed with protecting his daughter Lúthien from any harm, including boyfriends (who of course will NEVER be good enough for her). Not only does Thingol send away Lúthien's suitor Beren on an impossible quest with the intention of getting around his promise not to kill him (which he only made, reluctantly, at his daughter's insistence), but also imprisons her in a treehouse when she tries to go after Beren to help him.
  • The Count of Monte Cristo: Played with. Madame de Villefort will go to any lengths to ensure that her son inherits a large fortune; which includes poisoning nearly every member of her family, including her step-daughter
  • Dogtooth: Both parents keep their kids in the confines of their estate, crafting images of the world outside as highly dangerous and suspicious. This leads to their portraying cats as "the most dangerous animal of all," for example.
  • Both Charity and Michael in The Dresden Files can qualify. Especially after what Charity goes through to get Molly back.
    • Harry Dresden himself in Changes. The Red Court took his daughter, and he will do whatever it takes to get her back. Including becoming the Winter Knight and causing the genocide of the entire Red Court.
      • It goes beyond that. He mentions to Mab that if she didn't take him up on his request, he'd be willing to take up Lasciel's coin and join the Denarians, an organization of fallen angel-possessed immortals whose goal is to literally cause as much suffering to humanity as a whole as possible. And if that failed, he'd summon a Darkhallow, murdering hundreds of thousands and becoming, basically, a god. All of this, just to ensure his daughter's safety.
    • The Red Court screwed Harry over during a duel to the death, with the vampire in question trying to toss a dozen bruisers into the ring to kill Harry. Ebenezar McCoy didn't take that very well and proceeded to drop a Soviet satellite on said vampire's home, wiping him out.
  • Harry Potter features a clever heroic inversion with Narcissa Malfoy. She is willing to betray her sworn master Lord Voldemort just to protect Draco, up to the point of hiding the fact that Harry was not killed by Voldemort as he thought.
    • It also includes a more traditional version with Molly Weasley: the otherwise soft-hearted and kind mother kills Bellatrix Lestrange. Doubly surprising considering how strong and experienced her opponent was but works as an in-universe version of the mythical mother lifting a car off her child. "Not my daughter you bitch!"
    • Xenophilius Lovegood tries to sell out Harry, and by extension the entire Wizarding and Muggle worlds in order to protect Luna from being harmed by the Death Eaters. Harry even unintentionally compares him to his own mother when he tries to do it.
  • In Let Me Call You Sweetheart, Dr Charles Smith was this to his daughter Suzanne, to the point of stalking her. In particular, after stumbling across his daughter's body, Smith believed that her husband Skip had murdered her after learning she was having an affair. He worried that Skip would be treated more leniently by a jury, so he hid the evidence of the affair and testified that Skip was unjustly jealous so that he would get a harsher sentence as punishment for killing Suzanne. This created a huge problem, because it turns out Skip was innocent; it was one of Suzanne's lovers who killed her and has gotten away with it for eleven years thanks to Smith's actions.
  • My Sister's Keeper: Deconstructed with Sara. She's an unfailing Determinator in getting her oldest daughter Kate quality medical treatment for her severe leukemia. Unfortunately, that takes the form of exploiting her youngest daughter Anna as a source of genetic material to support Kate's health. She also neglects her older son Jesse once it is found out he is not a genetic match for Kate. After Kate's kidneys fail, Sara and her husband want to use Anna's kidneys. Anna decides she's had enough and sues them for medical emancipation. With Kate's blessing.
  • Queen Cersei Lannister in A Song of Ice and Fire is terrified that something will happen to her children (not an unjustified fear, given they're born of incest with her brother and are thus treason to her royal husband) and protecting them is a large part of her motivation in some of the most immoral acts in her regency. It's easily her most favorable attribute.
  • Ed Coleman in Patricia Highsmith's Those Who Walk Away is a painter whose daughter marries a man he already despises, Ray Garrett. When she kills herself he puts the blame squarely on Ray and begins an implacable campaign to kill him.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Alias:
    • Jack Bristow. In the course of protecting his daughter, Jack has tortured and killed people, faked people's deaths, played multiple simultaneous games of Gambit Roulette, shot his own wife in the head when he'd thought she'd put a contract out on Sydney, counter-brainwashed Sydney to resist programming, endured radiation poisoning, and eventually sacrificed his own life. Never, ever, find yourself so much as threatening his daughter. It will not end well.
    • Irina reaches this status as well, for villainous reasons. She uses both her daughters as nothing more than pawns in her endgame, but god help you if you attempt to interfere with that plan.
  • Mr. Bennet on Heroes seems a little too eager to protect his daughter, despite her being almost physically invincible. It later emerges that he's trying to protect her from being imprisoned and experimented on by his bosses, who ordered him to return her to them if she ever developed a superpower.
    • Angela Petrelli. She even said at one point that her generation "mortgaged their souls" for the current heroes' generation. Her most obvious manifestation of this would be that she has tried to make her eldest son President by blowing up New York City.
  • Lost: Ben is so worried Alex will get pregnant (which on the island is a death sentence) that he jails her boyfriend and then orders him brainwashed in a Clockwork Orange fashion. Michael is also willing to pull a Face–Heel Turn to get him and Walt off the island.
  • On Misfits, Nathan leers at a girl named Jessica and then is beaten to death by a mystery person (luckily he has Resurrective Immortality). They find that another guy who flirted with Jessica also died. Simon goes on a date with this girl and they try to warn him, assuming she's a Black Widow. It's later revealed that her father is the one killing all the boys that so much as look at her.
  • Gibbs from NCIS might not be the biological father of anyone on his team, but he plays the role of Team Dad often enough (and well enough) to generally count here. Heaven help you if you hurt one of his agents - especially Abby.
    • A fact that Team Gibbs is fully aware of, as Abby proved in one episode when he asked why she hadn't told him about her crazy stalker ex:
      Abby: Because I wanted him restrained...not bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat.
    • The episode "SWAK" revolves around the CEO of a biological research company and mother of a rape victim sending a letter containing a genetically mutated strain of pneumonic plague to NCIS (which Tony ends up inhaling). In the letter, she declares that she will only release an antidote for the strain if NCIS stop hiding the identity of the midshipman who raped her daughter. In the episode's final act, it is revealed that the CEO has a terminal, inoperable brain tumour and is no longer acting rationally; the microbiologist who developed the strain of plague encoded a suicide gene which kicks in after 32 hours, meaning that Tony's survives the sickness; and the CEO's daughter was not raped, but tied to a hotel bed as part of a sex game with a midshipman who, before untying her, stepped out for fast food and was killed in a hit and run accident.
  • Once Upon a Time: While Emma occasionally slides into this, Rumplestilskin is a definite, absolute example of this. He gains dark magic to save his son from going to war, and then afterwards repeatedly uses those powers unnecessarily when anything remotely bad ever happens to the boy afterwards.
    • In season two, Belle's father becomes this when he tries to forcibly remove all of her memories of the Enchanted Forest just because he wants to get her away from Gold. He has good reason not to approve, but his methods aren't exactly reasonable.
      • He pulls this trick again in season 6, where he refuses to wake a pregnant Belle from the sleeping curse because while she is in the coma, she is not with Rumplestiltskin. While Moe certainly has reasons to doubt his son-in-law, he takes away his daughter's agency and endangers both her life and that of her child. Moe might not know about the threat to her life, but it is still an awful thing to do to your own daughter: being under the curse means Belle is trapped in an eternal nightmare from which she cannot wake up by herself.
  • Yoo Won Gook in Vampire Prosecutor kills any one who so much as hints at harming his daughter, Jung In. The fact that she's a prosecutor working hard to arrest him complicates matters. To this end, he even distances himself from her so that she won't be implicated when he is indicted.
    Jung In: He's the bad guy. He's someone I have to lock away. But when the reason he did those bad things is because of me, I can't call him the bad guy. I can't even hate him.
  • Subverted in The Good Wife. Lemond Bishop is the biggest drug kingpin in Chicago and is known to have had his own people killed on mere suspicion they might turn state's evidence, and is devoted to his son Dylan, so when Kalinda discovers Dylan's being bullied she tries to keep it from Bishop. Bishop just calls the bully's father and tells him about the problem like a normal, non-drug-dealing parent (though admittedly you can hear a little fear in the other guy's voice). He then tells Kalinda that he's determined to give Dylan a normal, safe childhood because he didn't get one.
  • In Madam Secretary, the Russian foreign minister's daughter is one of Henry's students at Georgetown, specifically in Ethics. The irony of him trying to get Henry to change his daughter's grade in "The Operative" is not lost on anyone. Henry flatly refuses to give her an A for C work, even when the foreign minister makes it a condition of helping Liz free a US operative from Pakistani death row. They eventually meet halfway with Henry giving her an incomplete so she can retake the course.
  • Stargirl (2020): Larry and Paula are very devoted to their daughter Artemis. Unfortunately, that means they're willing to murder her coaches if they discipline Artemis for any misbehavior.
  • Ray Velcoro of True Detective. In the first episode he viciously pulverizes his son's bully's father and forced the bully to watch, and threatened that if he should do it again, he will either kill or rape his parents.
  • Accused: Mo, with her own mother aiding and abetting, pulls out all the stops to keep her son Jake out of jail. In the process, she perverts the course of justice, betrays every principle she espouses, repeatedly deceives her best friend Sue whose own son, Sean, Jake was coerced into killing, and even states under oath that Sean would have done the same in Jake's position. In the end, Jake gets the maximum sentence of twelve years, Sue bitterly spurns Mo, and Mo and her mother become pariahs.

    Music 

    Mythology and Religion 

    Video Games 
  • In Borderlands 2, Handsome Jack himself. Late in the game, Angel is begging you to kill her, and he is screaming at her to stop, saying that all the bandits he's killed and people he's manipulated and the world of pure order he's trying to establish is to protect her. Keep in mind that by this point, Angel has spent most of her life imprisoned due to her Siren powers and used as a biological computer by her father, and has spent the last five years being used as a living catalyst to charge the Vault Key with Eridium, so her father's pleas sound hollow to everyone but himself and his extremely twisted viewpoint.
  • The Bunker has John's mother go past Mama Bear straight into this when she enlisted her son's aid as an Unwitting Pawn to poison every other occupant, allowing their meager rations to stretch for the 20-30 years it would take for the radiation levels outside to drop.
  • Dyztopia: Post-Human RPG: After the death of her husband, Morgalia becomes extremely controlling towards her daughter Chase and insists she knows what's best for the two of them. She goes as far as to sell out Vulcanite to Zeta just so the two of them can live in luxury, and executes Chase's anti-occupation friends. Morgalia notes the irony that her extreme actions to protect her family caused Chase to run away from home, but she refuses to own up to her abuse and tries to have Chase brainwashed to obey her.
  • Queen Dowager Almedha from Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is so determined to save her son Pelleas's life, that she's willing to let the kingdom of Daein be destroyed if that's the key to undo Pelleas's Deal with the Devil. More ironic if we see that Pelleas is not her child. Soren is.
  • Friday Night Funkin': Daddy Dearest, Girlfriend's father, starts out as a fairly reasonable dad. After he's beaten in a rap battle, however, he goes Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and hires an assassin to take Boyfriend out! When it turns out said assassin had a past history with Boyfriend, Daddy Dearest makes another attempt on Boyfriend's life by trapping him in a video game, where it's revealed that he's done so to countless other victims. The fact that his daughter is present for all of these attempts, and probably would get extremely upset with him if any of them did work out, doesn't seem to phase him. He's implied to be much worse in the Ludum Dare version, as the description for it says he was out for Boyfriend's blood from the get-go and the rap battle was meant to get him to calm down. Mommy Mearest, Girlfriend's mother, is not much better, gleefully challenging Boyfriend to a battle on a moving vehicle and helping Daddy Dearest crash the couple's concert while holding a Mall Santa hostage.
  • Galaxy Angel: On Mint's route, her father Darno Blancmanche sends his servants to the Elsior during a resupply, and put a sleeping agent on her tea before extracting her hidden in one of her mascot costumes. He claims he did it out of concern for her safety, but she's naturally very upset when she wakes up and they have a heated argument until Tact comes to rescue her.
  • In God of War (PS4), the goddess Freya made her son invulnerable to all threats, physical and magical, so that he would Feel No Pain. Too bad for him that this meant he could feel nothing else, and he went insane over it. When the player meets Freya, she fully admits that her desire to save her son was selfish, but also refuses to break the spell, even saying that the spell can't be broken, when it easily can and she knows how. When Kratos and Atreus figure out his weakness anyway (by sheer happenstance) and kill him, Freya swears eternal vengeance on Kratos and Atreus, even though it was a Mercy Kill and they did it to save her. She only gets over herself when the Norns call her out on how she was the one who drove Baldur to the point where he needed to be killed, even throwing in an illusion of Freya snapping Baldur's neck while declaring that nobody gets to hurt him "except me!" for good measure.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky The 3rd: Erika Russel is extremely protective of Tita, especially when it comes to Tita's Precocious Crush on Agate. When first arriving to visit, Agate senses Killing Intent, and Erika is present with Glowing Eyes of Doom, putting the oblivious Agate through comedically over the top death traps.
  • The Deku King from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. When his daughter went missing trying to cleanse the poisonous waters of Woodfall Swamp, he was so angry and worried that he planned to torture the first suspicious character he came across, in this case a monkey. So focused was he on retribution that he never bothered to find out that the monkey was actually helping the Princess try to save Woodfall.
  • Onmyōji: It is understandable that Tamamo no Mae is very upset when his kids are murdered, but burning down entire towns with innocent people living in them just to find this one murderer? Come on, Mae.
  • Raphael from the Soul Series has repeatedly tried to claim an incredibly evil sword on behalf of his adopted daughter, Amy. One time, it was to try and give it to a country he hated so its leaders would kill each other over it. The other was so he could destroy an artifact that was curing people of the vampirism he was infecting them with so she wouldn't feel left out, having contracted vampirism from him as a result of his last attempt to get the sword. As Amy is an Emotionless Elegant Gothic Lolita we have no idea how she feels about his insane plots.
    • Apparently she just doesn't take him seriously at all, given that in her ending sequence of Soulcalibur 4's story mode after Raphael claims Soul Calibur to create a new world for her... she pushes him into a pit during the requisite Evil Laugh.
  • A foster parent example in The Walking Dead: Season One. If the player does so, Lee can become a bloodthirsty man who is willing to kill anyone who so much as harms Clementine.

    Webcomics 
  • Castle Swimmer: Queen Susna altered the mural of their prophecy meant to life the cure slowly killing her people off by switching the places of her son Siren and The Beacon as Siren is supposed to be killed by The Beacon to end the cure in an attempt to spare him and when the citizens start becoming impatient, she has a silent breakdown and out of desperation, tries to kill The Beacon herself in order to satisfy them and even locks up Siren to prevent him from interfering. She also insists on doing it even after Elder Selkie points out that killing The Beacon could potentially cause the other kingdoms to declare war on them, which they will not survive.
  • In Girl Genius, Klaus Wulfenbach is willing to go to significant lengths to protect his son, Gil. Refusing to see any difference between his Psycho Ex-Girlfriend and her daughter, Agatha, he is even willing to use Mind Manipulation to ensure Gil cannot form a relationship with her, despite Agatha herself being innocent. And when the Big Bad threatens his son, he threatens to break sanctuary and kill everyone in the monastery.
  • Taken to horrifying extremes in No Rest for the Wicked. A woman and her children are driven out of their village after her husband dies, as she is accused of being a witch. Starving in their cottage in the woods, her son dying, she is so very worried about her children being hurt by the world that she ultimately kills and eats them so that they will be safe with her always. And then plays it out over and over again with any lost children she finds. The names of her original children? Hansel and Gretel.
  • The Order of the Stick:
    • In comic #639, after dealing with an Ancient Black Dragon who showed up to avenge her son in a brutal fashion, Vaarsuvius uses the spell Familicide on her, which kills not only her family, but the family members of her other family members, and so on ad infinitum. V estimates that they killed a whole quarter of the black dragon population in the OotS universe. However, Karma lines up to give the perpetrator a kicking. The power required to do it was acquired via a Deal with the Devil, so V's soul is pledged to three separate Fiends, and it's further revealed that included among the bloodline was the family of Girard Draketooth, one of the legendary heroes who guards the gates imprisoning the Snarl. Perhaps most notably concerning this trope, though, V's mate is so appalled at what they did that they file for divorce.
    • This goes on with Elan's father Tarquin. He has some very specific ideas on what his son should aspire to and when Elan is content with what he has Tarquin assumes that Elan's natural talents are held back by the rest of his group, so he tries to murder them. Warped due to Tarquin seeing everything and everyone as characters and plot devices in the story of Tarquin's life.
    • Sigdi Thundershield, Durkon's mom. She tells Hilgya that sometimes you have to leave your kids home to kill everything that might remotely threaten them.
  • Junko's father from Stalker x Stalker. He casually offers to murder Junko's classmates because they've been bothering her. After she tells him not to, he decides to murder her bullies' parents instead of allowing them to get away with it.

    Western Animation 
  • Adventure Time: In "Nemesis", Peppermint Butler becomes the target of Peace Master, a monster hunter who is convinced that Peppermint Butler put a curse on his family to make his children rowdy and disobedient. Played for Laughs in that Peace Master's children are just ordinary kids rebelling against his strict parenting style and there is no curse, though Peppermint Butler does get cheesed enough to turn two of the kids into monsters (not that they seem to mind).
  • In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Over the Edge", Jim Gordon of all people loses it when Batgirl is killed and goes on a rampage to hunt down Batman (who he blames) in vengeance. He is even willing to release Bane if it will help him capture Batman. Fortunately, it's All Just a Dream experienced by Batgirl herself, a result of the Scarecrow's fear gas; apparently, this sort of scenario is something she has dreaded happening ever since she became Batgirl.
  • In the Codename: Kids Next Door episode "Operation: S.A.F.E.T.Y.", a scientist builds an army of Safety Bots designed to keep children safe by any means. Unfortunately, they take their programming too far when they determine that the biggest danger to children are adults themselves.
  • Played for Laughs in El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera with Manny's eventual father-in-law Chief Suarez, chief of police of the Wretched Hive of Miracle City. He's a fierce Papa Wolf who (understandably) doesn't trust Manny with his youngest daughter Frida and is constantly itching for a reason to release the hounds on the poor kid.
    Suarez: El Tigre! My daughter may not receive visitors after 8 pm!
    Manny: Well then, I'll just be go—
    Suarez: ATAQUE EL GATO!
  • Pre-Flanderization Family Guy has Lois and Peter Griffin as this during the series' early days. They can react violently to an idea of anything happening to their kids. For example, Peter (in his usual idiot self) assaults his daughter's purse when she says she hates him, and Lois has Quagmire visit the bully who humiliates Meg in another episode. This shows how far they have fallen since the Flanderization occurred...
  • Considering the fact that Goliath from Gargoyles comes from a Proud Warrior Race, you would expect this of him regarding Angela, but the unique "not knowing your parents" communal-raising style of the Clans has him tempered somewhat. At least when he's not being empowered/corrupted by the Eye of Odin and ends up doing some... questionable things to "protect" her and Elisa. Then there was the time the Quarrymen almost killed her; it wasn't pretty.
  • While not strictly their father, Charles Offdensen of Metalocalypse is definitely the closest thing most of the band has to one, even if they don't realize it and generally misinterpret his presence in the Dethklok organization at all. He's also personally responsible for the utter ruin of everything that threatens the band in any way; the show's main antagonists (the Tribunal and the Revengencers terrorist cult) are the threats he hasn't been able to find yet.
  • Miraculous Ladybug:
    • Gabriel Agreste obsessively micromanages his son Adrien's life, to the point that he crosses into abusive territory, and essentially kept him under house arrest for all his life prior to the show, all in the name of protecting him from some unspecified danger, all while never even being around to do any of that in person, instead doing it by proxy through his assistant. And that's just as Gabriel. As Hawk Moth, he's willing to cause massive devastation across Paris (and in one case, risk killing everyone on Earth) in the name of reviving Adrien's mother. He's also either an enormous hypocrite or totally lacking in self-awareness, since on several occasions he has akumatized children who found themselves in similar situations to Adrien, and has always expressed anger that someone would be so strict or neglectful towards a child, and when akumatizing Anarka Couffaine, he once again expresses anger at "the suppression of a soul demanding liberty and freedom". In perhaps the ultimate display of his hypocrisy, every time he has learned that Adrien is Cat Noir, all that talk about protecting his son goes right out the window, and his immediate reaction is to first emotionally break Adrien by revealing his own identity and showing him his comatose mother, then akumatize him. As of Season 4, this has happened twice, but time travel was used both times to set everything back to normal.
    • The akumatized villains Weredad (Tom Dupain) and Ikari Gozen (Tomoe Tsurugi) both imprison their respective children (Marinette and Kagami) to protect them from the outside world, much like Gabriel does to Adrien. Justified in that akumatization enhances the emotion that the akuma preyed on to the point that it completely consumes the victim and becomes all they can think about, so if that emotion was "protect my kid", then you're going to get a Knight Templar Parent.
    • Hell, Tomoe is this normally. She once said that Gabriel is too permissive with his son.
  • In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo", adult Candace inadvertently creates a Bad Future when she alters the past so that Phineas and Ferb's first project (the rollercoaster) is seen by their mother. Parents overreact to the point that they eliminate everything fun (dismantling playground equipment, coloring coloring books ahead of time, and in the lines) before finally resorting to storing children in People Jars until adulthood. These actions cause the Tri-State area to become bleak and demoralized, allowing Doofenshmirtz to take over.
  • Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty is this towards his daughter Beth and his grandkids Summer and Morty. Trying to hurt or kill any of them will result in an immediate, often gruesome death.
  • Sofia the First: In "The Floating Palace", Queen Emmaline is extremely protective of her younger daughter Oona, and goes as far as to cause a storm to sink the floating palace just to rescue her from Sofia's family, mistakenly believing that they kidnapped her when it was Cedric who did it instead.
  • Parodied quite a few times on South Park. To give just a few examples, in "Child Abduction Is Not Funny", after misinterpreting statistics that show most children are abducted by their parents, the parents of South Park end up banishing the kids from town to protect them from being abducted. In "My Future Self 'n Me", they pay actors to pretend to be washed-up loser versions of their kids from the future in order to scare them straight. And let's not forget the many things Kyle's mom Sheila has done to "protect" the children of South Park, like the war with Canada and the public execution of Terrance and Phillip in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.

    Real Life 
  • Tom Carder, the CAP Alert man is an excellent (real-life) example of this trope, if you're to believe that he searched his kids' electric sockets to try to find satanic symbols.
  • Christophe Fauviau, who doped the drinks of at least 27 tennis players due to face his son and daughter. After one match, one of these opponents passed out at the wheel of his car due to the medication he had been slipped. He was killed in the ensuing accident.
  • There was the infamous Stage Mom who sought out a hitman to kill the mother of a cheerleader who'd beaten her on the team - thankfully, her ex-brother-in-law (whom she'd asked to find one) immediately informed the police.
  • A protective father Helmut Seifert takes the law into his own hands when he hears his daughter is sleeping with an older man. And decides to personally castrate him while he was conscious to experience the whole thing. Yes, being upset was perfectly warranted. However, when it gets to Body Horror, it crosses into Knight Templar Parent territory.
  • In 1984, Gary Plauché ambushed Jeff Doucet, the man who kidnapped and molested his son, and shot him in the head in full view of the police officers who were escorting Doucet through Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport to face trial. Due to the nature of the crime, the judge sympathized with Plauché (what he did was legally wrong, but it was very difficult to condemn him on moral grounds) and after pleading no contest, he was given a suspended 7-year sentence, only serving 5 years probation and 300 hours of community service. Up to his dying day Plauché had zero regrets about killing his child's rapist, saying "If it had been your kid, you'd have done the same thing."
  • In 2010, Kent and Jill Easter, a couple in Orange County, California, conspired together to plant drugs (including marijuana, Vicodin, and Percocets) in the car of a Parent-Teacher Association mother whom Jill claimed had disrespected her son, then anonymously called the police. The alleged disrespect consisted of the mother leaving him behind a locked door while other children were being rounded up and brought to their parents after an after-school program. The boy was brought to the pickup site about 6-8 minutes later. Jill Easter complained to the school administration that the mother had left her son behind for more like 19 minutes, and called him "slow" (as in intellectually slow). The school administration dismissed the Easters' complaints, as did the Irvine Police Department when they complained to them. They also filed a civil lawsuit claiming "false imprisonment" and "intentional infliction of emotional distress", but the suit was dropped. After the drugs incident was investigated and found to be an attempted frame-up, the Easters were arrested and indicted. Both were sentenced to brief jail sentences, and Kent, a lawyer, was disbarred. The mother countersued and was awarded $5.7 million in damages.

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