New Parent Nomenclature Problem

"I don't call him daddy, but he takes care of things
When you pick me up on Friday, are you gonna bring me anything?
Oh, don't worry, Dad, you know, it don't matter what we do
'Cause I don't call him daddy, he can never be like you."

— Doug Supernaw, "I Don't Call Him Daddy"

A character is taken in by a Parental Substitute of some sort, usually of a more permanent variety such as an official foster parent or step-parent, and they're considering calling them "mom" or "dad" despite the lack of biological connection. Agreeing to call them "mom" or "dad" will lead to a greater perceived level of closeness than simply calling them by their first name, but also may lead to the protagonist feeling like they're shunning their birth parents, who are definitely not the person raising them. It typically causes the protagonist tons of angst and is a handy device for exploring the familial dynamics between the characters. This can also sometimes happen with estranged biological parents who have recently re-entered their kid's life.

Compare/Contrast You're Not My Father/Mother, Happily Adopted, Parental Title Characterization, You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious. May be related to lingering feelings from a Parent with New Paramour situation.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In an Allstate commercial within their Mayhem campaign, Mayhem is playing someone's son, who recklessly mows with a riding lawn mower causing rocks to eject from it and break windows in their house and car while distracted listening to a radio call of a football game. One of his lines suggests the father is actually their stepfather.
  Mayhem: Sorry, "Robert". Five dollars doesn't buy my undivided attention.
• A funny example in a Progressive commercial; a single mother introduces Jamie to her sons, saying he'd be helping out from now on. She meant as an insurance agent, but they get the wrong idea and one of them says he's not calling Jamie dad.

Anime and Manga

• One of the characters in Death Parade regrets that he refused to refer to his step-mother as "mom" when he was alive.
• Digimon Frontier: The episode focusing on Kouji's backstory reveals that his father remarried and, while his stepmother has been very kind to him, he has trouble referring to her as "Mom". Things get even more complicated when Kouji learns from Koichi (still as Duskmon) that they're twin brothers and their biological mother isn't dead as he had thought. At the end of the series, however, he accepts his stepmom and gives her a bouquet of flowers as a gift, while later visiting his biological mom with Koichi during their first birthday after they come back from the Digital World.
• In Magi: Labyrinth of Magic, Alibaba seems to have never quite come to terms with meeting his birth father; even when he gets a vision of his dead parents, he starts to say "Father" but then switches to "Previous King of Balbadd."
• According to supplementary material in Lyrical Nanoha, it took a while before Fate could comfortably call Lindy "mother" instead of just "Lindy". Reflection (taking place about six months after her adoption) has this as a minor subplot, and she manages to make the switch after Lindy saves her from Levi's Coup de Grâce.
• A heart-breaking example in Monster; a One-Shot Character who married a widow was struggling for his stepson to accept him as a father. In the episode, the stepson finally called him dad for the first time as he was leaving for work. Unfortunately, he ended up being Johan's latest victim.
• Zigzagged and done subtly in Major. Goro easily takes to accept his kindergarten teacher Momoko as his new mother when his father Shigeharu becomes engaged to her, without feeling he's disrespecting his late biological mother's memory. After Shigeharu dies, and Momoko marries his best friend and former teammate Hideki Shigeno, it's clear that Goro loves both his father and step-father (even taking the latter's surname), though the way he adresses each of them (he calls Shigeharu "otosan", which is a midly formal way to call a father, while he calls Hideki "oyaji", which straddles the line between being affectionate and disrespectful) suggests he has slightly more respect for Shigeharu.

Comic Books

• In the wake of Batman: No Man's Land, Barbara Gordon laments that she never did get around to referring to Sarah Essen, her father's second wife, as "mom" before she died even though she respected her a great deal.
• Batman has four adopted kids and one biological kid, and all of the former just call him by his first name. He also calls his parental figures, Alfred and Dr. Leslie Thompkins, by their first names.
• Last Son: Superman's foster son, Chris Kent, refers to Lois Lane as "Mama Lois".
• Black Canary's adopted daughter, Sin, was trained as an assassin under a cruel martial arts master known as Mother. Since the name had negative connotations for her, she addressed Dinah as "Sister" instead.
• Robin (1993): While Tim Drake thinks Dana is an awesome step-mom and gets along with her, he never once considers calling her by anything but her name, since he doesn't consider her a replacement for his deceased mom.

Fan Works

• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Fanfic sometimes take on the issue of how Twilight and Spike view each other. It is a sort of Parent/Sibling/Assistant relation. Official material seems to have settled on "Assistant" and he calls her "Twilight" in-show, though several episodes show that Twilight is the closest thing to a mother that he has. In fanfic just about anything goes.
  • Twilight was mentored by princess Celestia during her youth. As such it is a common topic to explore just what their relation is. Mentor/student? Second mother figure? Princess/Subject? Friend? That Twilight herself got a promotion to princess doesn't make things easier.
  • A few fanfictions featuring Rainbow Dash adopting Scootaloo have brought up this question. Though often there Scoots sticks with calling Rainbow Dash by name.
• In secooper87's Adventures of a Line Hopper series The alternate timeline daughter of the Doctor and Buffy Summers calls the Doctor her "father" as, biologically that's what he is to her, but calls the inter-dimensional being that raised her "Dad" and is very adamant the two terms are not interchangeable. After she begins to be raised by the main-universe Buffy, she calls her "Mom" although she had to remind herself to call her that for some time. A lot of times she'll start to call out for "Buf-I mean-Mom"
• In the Emergency! fic Lost and Found, Roy and Joanne are mama and papa to John's infant daughter Melissa, intending to adopt her after John is abducted and feared dead and her mother doesn't want her. They show her pictures of John and she recognizes him as dada when he is found and brought home. In the sequel, "Reclamation," a psychiatrist tells the couple to find a new designation as John takes his place as the baby's father. The Honorary Uncle thing doesn't work, though, and they end up remaining Mama Joanne and Papa Roy.
• In a now-deleted The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan / Winx Club crossover fic, Anne Chan was so close to her deceased mother that she refuses to call her stepmother her mother and even screams at Layla for accidentally referring to her as such. In the previous crossover, a sign that Alan was under the enemy's control was him accidentally saying "mom" instead of his stepmother's first name. (Though another Chan Clan fic also explains that Scooter and Mimi are the only ones who call her "mom" due to the rest being old enough to remember their birth mother.)
• In I'm a Marvel... And I'm a DC, Harley Quinn hooks up with the Green Goblin and moves into his house, and Harry has this forced on him.
  Green Goblin: You know how your mother is about these things.
  Harry: She's not my mother!
  Green Goblin: Hey! You apologize to New Mom right now and make her a margarita!
  Harry: You're not even married!
• In the Dusk to Dawn series, Damian Wayne has a less tumultuous case of this with Selina Kyle. Their relationship has a (one-sided) rocky start, but they reach a friendly First-Name Basis at the end of the first book, and she grows as his resident maternal figure throughout the following two. When Selina and Bruce are finally married, Damian is ready to call her "Mom" by the wedding's reception. This contrasts how Damian refers to his birth mother Talia with a respectful but formal "Mother," except when she becomes a Broken Pedestal, then he coldly calls her "Talia."
• While not a problem in the canon, it's a fairly popular story device in the Phineas and Ferb fanwork community that Candace originally refused to recognize Laurence as her dad at the beginning of their relationship before moving into the Daddy's Girl relationship she has with him in present day.
• In Live a Hero (MHA), Inko wishes that her adoptive son Izuku would call her "Mom" instead of "Inko-san", though she still considers it a step above the even more formal "Midoriya-san" they started with. Considering that his biological parents left him and his sister for dead and allowed them to get scooped up by the League of Villains to be turned into Tykebombs, it's easy to see why this is the case. Despite this, the narration makes it adamantly clear that Izuku thinks of her as his mom and loves her just as much as his canon counterpart, if not even more so.
• In adel aka's video about rewriting Yang in RWBY, he gave her this problem as a driving element of her character. Yang's biological mother Raven walked out when she was a baby, with Yang's step-mother Summer being the only mother she's ever known. When Yang was very young, Summer died. Yang has always been curious about Raven but her father refuses to tell her. Eventually, he promises to tell her if she becomes a huntress. Throughout her life, Yang has felt uncomfortable calling Summer her mother, which upsets her half-sister Ruby. Yang comes to terms with Summer as her mother after seeing a heartfelt video that Summer made for her. Upon meeting her cold biological mother Raven, Yang disowns her by stating that her mother is Summer.
• In Turning Tables, when Pepper adopts Peter, he is upfront about how he does not intend on calling her "mom". She respects that as long as he acknowledges that she is his guardian. Over time, however, he resorts to calling her "mom" to make it easier on Morgan, who is an infant and only knows her as "mom". As they grow closer, Peter starts to address her as "mom", if not as a habit.
• Discussed early on in the Dangerverse, where the Pack-adults come to the conclusion that, since they are not the biological parents of their "cubs", encouraging the cubs to address them as "Mom" and "Dad" wouldn't really be appropriate. Instead, the cubs simply refer to the pack-parents (who they love very much) by their first names or assorted nicknames. The one exception is Meghan, who calls Sirius and Aletha "Dadfoot" and "Mamaletha" because they are her biological parents.
  • Later on in the story, Remus uses a blood magic ritual to make Harry his biological son. As soon as the ritual is complete, Harry pointedly addresses Remus as "Dad". Cue Manly Tears.
• In Open For All, Peter has a problem with calling Tony "dad" and Tony isn't ready for that either, though he would prefer it if he called him "Tony" and not "Mr. Stark" like old times. Peter insists that it is a sign of respect.
• In Farce of the Three Kingdoms, Sun Quan always calls Lady Wu "Aunt Stepmom" after his mother dies.
• In Mike's New Ghostly Family, Mary (a.k.a. Charlie Emily, the ghost in Marionette) does not call Mike Schmidt "Dad" or variations thereof, unlike the other ghost children who have completely accepted Mike as their new father, even though she's still considered to be a part of family. The reason why was revealed in Chapter 35, when the ghost of her birth father, Henry Emily, addressed the issue, to which she responded that, unlike the other ghosts who forgot their birth relatives (while Liz just straight-up refuses to associate herself with her monster of a father that is William Afton), Charlie still remembered Henry and felt that it wouldn't be right for her to replace him like that, believing that she would disrespect his memory that way. However, Henry assured his daughter that she won't be disrespecting his memory by referring to Mike as "Dad", as he believes that he failed his daughter as a parent by allowing her to get killed by William Afton and sees Mike as a much more worthy father to her than himself, and only from this conversation onwards Charlie started calling Mike "Dad" like the rest of her adoptive ghostly siblings.

Films — Animation

• Implied in Up. When Russell mentions how Phyllis told him to stop calling his dad, Carl asks why he calls his mother by her name, to which Russell confusedly replies that Phyllis isn't his mother. Carl quickly works it out in his head and shuts up about it.
• In The LEGO Batman Movie, Bruce Wayne accidentally adopts Dick Grayson, with Batman sharing custody as his co-dad. (Yeah, Dick actually bought this.) He uses a string of "Dad" words that Batman continually rebuffs, but eventually allows "Padre," since he thinks it can also mean "buddy." (Presumably he's mixing it up with "compadre.") Of course, near the end:
  Batman: Don't call me "Padre." Call me...(Dramatic Unmask) "Dads."
• In When Marnie Was There, Anna calls her foster mother "auntie". She began addressing her this way due to a belief that her mother was simply using her for money. Towards the end, she addresses her as "mother" after realizing that her family doesn't take care of her just for the foster care money.
• At the end of Over the Moon, when Fei Fei has accepted Mrs. Zhong, she addresses her as "Zhong ayi," a term which literally means "aunt" but can be used for various kinds of mother figures.
• In Ciao Alberto, a short sequel to Luca, Alberto calls Massimo "Dad" in a Wrong-Name Outburst. The Creative Closing Credits implies that he keeps doing it after they make up, featuring a picture with Massimo labeled as "Dad" and Alberto as "me."

Films — Live-Action

• In The Sand Lot main character Scotty's mother had just married a new man he doesn't connect with off the bat. After gaining new friends and learning about baseball, he begins to find some more common ground with him and says in the closing narration he soon had no problem calling him "dad".
• Step Brothers plays this for laughs.
  Brennan: I'm not gonna call him Dad.
  Nancy: Brennan, you're 39 years old. I wouldn't expect you to call him Dad.
  Brennan: Well I'm not going to, ever! Even if there's a fire!
• Shaun of the Dead has the recurring line, "He's not my dad, he's my stepdad" from Shaun about his stepfather Phillip. It stems from Shaun viewing Phillip as a Jerkass, rather than the Jerk with a Heart of Gold he is. Before turning into a zombie Phillip tells Shaun he's always loved him and Shaun finally acknowledges Phillip as his dad.
• In The One And Only Andy's new mother-in-law tells him to call her Mom, but his father-in-law (who doesn't especially take to him) won't let Andy call him Dad. They're "Mom and Tom."
• Pitch Perfect: While we never see Beca and her stepmother interact, Becca is obviously resentful since she calls her "the step-monster."
• In Halloweentown Marnie's widowed mom, Gwen, meets the mayor of Halloweentown, Kalabar, and it's clear from their interaction that the two used to date. Marnie is currently angry at her mother, so she keeps bringing this up, at one point quipping that if the two get married, she's not calling him "Dad".
• In Enchanted, Edward addresses his Wicked Stepmother as "Mother" the first time he sees her, but switches to "Narissa" once he realizes her true colors.
• The Thief: Little Sanya's widowed mother Katya has taken up with Toljan, a thief. Toljan and Katya both insist that Sanya call Toljan "Daddy". Sanya refuses, calling his quasi-stepdad "Uncle Toljan". Meanwhile, Sanya has visions of his long-dead real father. Near the end when Toljan is being taken away to jail. Sanya runs after the prison van, saying "Daddy! Don't leave us!" The voiceover reflects that after that, Sanya never saw the vision of his real father again, because he had "betrayed him."
• In Boy, the title character initially addresses his estranged father Alamein as "Dad," but Alamein asks his not too, saying that it feels weird. Instead, he suggests that Boy call him "Shogun." (Alamein may be a deadbeat and an aspiring gang leader, but he is also a massive dork.)
• In The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, the fact that the title character doesn't want his presumptive son to call him this is a sign of his immaturity.
  Ned: I can't believe I asked if I could call you "Dad." Of course you said no.
  Steve: I let you call me "Stevesie." It sounds better.
  Ned: It doesn't mean the same thing.
• In Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Bill actually seems to think that he has to call Missy "Mom," despite the fact that she's about three years older than him.
• In Babe, Babe initially calls his border collie Parental Substitute Fly by her name, but after her puppies are sold, he asks if he can call her "Mom," and that's what he calls her throughout the rest of the film.
• Love Actually: It's unclear how long Daniel was married to Sam's mother before she died and throughout the movie they're still struggling to build a connection. For most of the movie Sam refers to Daniel by his first name. It's only after they spend a lot of time bonding that Sam finally starts to call him "Dad".

Literature

• Earth's Children:
  • In Clan of the Cave Bear Ayla sees some Clan children using a special sign which means "Mother" and starts using it on Iza, who is deeply touched.
  • in The Mammoth Hunters: Ayla teaches Rydag, a half-Clan child ^note Though most of the half-Clan characters can speak verbally, Rydag is one of the exceptions. raised by Cro-Magnon humans, some Clan sign language including Mother, which he then uses on the woman who is taking care of him.
• In Good Night, Mr. Tom by Michelle Magorian, which takes place during World War II, a young London boy named Willie is sent to live with a Grumpy Old Man named Tom, who lives in the rural village of Little Weirwold, as part of the evacuation of London's children to the countryside to protect them from air raids. Tom turns out to be a Cool Old Guy, and he figures out quickly that Willie has been badly abused by his religious fanatic single mother. The book documents how Willie begins to blossom as he is treated well by Tom. Near the end of the book, after the boy's mother disappears and kills herself, Tom is allowed to adopt Will, and a big moment in their relationship happens when Will first calls Tom "Dad".
• Natalie's children in Catherine Anderson's Bright Eyes are officially adopted by Zeke Coulter and have no problem seeing him as "dad" due to their biological father not having been the best guy around. Isaiah even mentions this to Laura when the kids make an appearance in My Sunshine. On the flip side, as much as the Harrigan children love their new stepmother Dee Dee they never call her "Mom" or any variant — she's simply "Dee Dee". Having helped raise the Harrigan kids as their housekeeper for years before she married their father, Dee Dee is unfazed by this, knowing how much their mother meant to the family.
• The Haunting: Barney and his siblings always refer to their stepmother by her given name. Them calling her their mother eventually.
• At the end of The Mysterious Benedict Society, Reynie is confused on what to call his new adopted mother Miss Perumal. He believes "Mom" doesn't feel right and thus ends up calling her "Amma", which is Tamil for "Mom".
• In A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Meg (who addresses her own parents as "Mother" and "Father") calls her crotchety mother-in-law, Mrs. O'Keefe, "Mom" because that's what we own kids call her; however, she privately thinks that it feels strange to call her anything. Oddly enough, her brother Charles Wallace calls her that too, but after some Time Traveling adventures switches to her childhood nickname, Beezie.
• At the end of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Coriolanus Snow isn't sure what to call Strabo Plinth. "Father" doesn't feel right since Plinth couldn't legally adopt him because he's 18 and therefore made him his heir instead. He ends up calling him "sir" a lot.

Live-Action TV

• The Brady Bunch: Greg, Peter, and Bobby call their stepmother, Carol, "Mom" immediately; likewise with Marcia, Jan and Cindy, they address stepfather Mike as "Dad." (Indeed, the concept of stepmother and stepfather was downplayed, only referred to in a couple of episodes during the first season, and by the end of that first season, it's as though they had always known Mike and Carol as "Mom" and "Dad.")
• Drake & Josh: During the first couple seasons, Drake and Megan call their stepdad, Walter, "Dad"; while Josh addresses his stepmother, Audrey, as "Mom". Later during the show's run, Drake and Megan start addressing Walter by his first name, to which a confused Walter asks when they started doing that.
• The Sarah Jane Adventures:
  • Luke is very quick to call Sarah Jane "Mum", but she asks him not to because she's new to the whole parenting thing and isn't quite ready for that level of closeness. They get over it by the end of the second serial and she's "Mum" to Luke for the rest of the series.
  • Luke's Suspiciously Similar Substitute/adopted sister Sky, on the other hand, calls Sarah Jane by her first name. The series was canceled due to the untimely death of the lead actress before it could be further explored as to why.
  • In the serial "The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith", before Luke meets Peter Dalton (Sarah Jane's boyfriend) for the first time, he wonders if he is going to call Peter "dad". We never see what he decides to call Peter, due to the wedding's... interruption... at the hands of the Tenth Doctor, and Peter's subsequent death.
• Strangely averted in The Good Place. After Jason marries Janet, he has no problem referring to Michael as "Dad", despite the fact that a) Michael is opposed to the marriage due to Janet having been made to essentially be Siri in human form, and b) he is not Janet's father, as she has no parents.
• Diff'rent Strokes: When Willis and Arnold start living with the man who eventually adopts them, they call him Mr. Drummond. They eventually ask his permission to call him Dad, which he gives (even before he officially adopts them). They explicitly do not call him Papa, which was their name for their biological father.
  • Later in the series, when Drummond remarries, Arnold and Willis (and Kimberly, too) refer to Maggie by her given name, even though she is their stepmother. (The only one that gets the term "mama" is Arnold and Willis' biological mother.) Maggie's son, Sam, always addresses Drummond as "Mr. D," even though he is now his stepfather.
• All in the Family: We never see a flashback episode about how they arrive at this, but Mike calls his mother-in-law "Ma" (as does his wife/her daughter) while he usually calls his father-in-law by his given name, though there was one episode in which they were drunk he addressed Archie as "Dad", with no repercussions.
• In Sirens (US), after Cash starts dating Hank's mom, he tries to get Hank to start seeing him as a father figure, suggesting several possible affectionate terms that he could use.
• Webster: the titular kid refers to the woman who adopted him as Mam. Because it was "close to Mom."
• In Roseanne, David lives with the Conner family for a long time, during which he calls Roseanne "Mrs. Conner." In one episode, he admits to thinking of her as his mom, which she finds sweet; he asks if she'd like him to actually call her "Mom," and after a moment of thought, Roseanne quips that she'd rather hear her own kids call her "Mrs. Conner."
• A variant on Gilmore Girls—Rory's dad has been somewhat flighty in his involvement, and now she's meeting his parents for the first time since she was a baby. Right before they come in, she wonders what she's supposed to call them—Grandma and Grandpa? Mr. and Mrs. Hayden? Their first names? It doesn't really matter since it turns out they're disinclined to like her no matter what she tries.
• Kutner from House had his parents killed in front of him when he was six, and then was adopted by a wealthy family. Given the circumstances, they're understanding that he prefers to call them by their names and don't push the subject. Eventually, after a couple of years, he started referring to them as "Mom and Dad" and even changed his last name.
• Averted in Sons of Anarchy. When we meet Jax and Clay, it is clear that Clay has been married to Jax's mother, Gemma, for many years. However, despite the fact that Clay often calls Jax "son", Jax always refers to Clay by his name. It's possibly due to the fact that by the series' timeline of when JT, Jax's biological father, died, Jax was already a teenager and had known Clay for years as JT's best friend. Later, when Jax and Clay are more often at cross purposes, Jax begins to correct people when they refer to Clay as his father and he explicitly tells Clay to stop calling him "son."
• Subverted in Outlander. When Brianna finally meets Jamie face to face, she's unsure what to call him. Although, Jamie is her biological father, she's spent nearly her entire life believing she was Frank Randall's daughter, both in name and blood. She and Frank were very close and even thinking of Jamie as her father makes her feel disloyal, but simultaneously she feels disrespectful calling Jamie by his name when he is her biological father. Since she called Frank "daddy", they settle on her calling Jamie "Da".
• Discussed between Frasier and Niles in an episode of Frasier, when their dad is dating a woman named Sherry, and the two wonder what they'd have to call her if she and Martin marry. The concept of calling her "maw" drives Niles to tears.
  • Inverted in the final episode, where Martin marries his girlfriend Ronnee, who tries calling herself their mother, only to find this too weird.

Music

• Doug Supernaw's song "I Don't Call Him Daddy" is about the biological parent on the other side of this debate reflecting on the new father figure in his son's life now that his wife has remarried. In the chorus his son tells him
  I don't call him daddy, but he takes care of things
  When you pick me up on Friday, are you gonna bring me anything?
  Oh, don't worry Dad, you know, it don't matter what we do
  Cause I don't call him daddy, he can never be like you.

Web Animation

• In Teen Girl Squad, So-and-So once refers to her stepmother as "Judith" in a very sneering tone.
• A retroactive version of this occurs with Yang in RWBY. Yang's biological mother Raven ran off when she was a baby, leaving her step-mother Summer as the only mom she's ever known. She didn't know that Ruby wasn't her full sister until after Summer had died. When talking to Blake about her in Volume 2, she refers to Summer as "our mom". But by Volume 5, she's reverted to exclusively calling Summer "Ruby's mom" and refers to Raven as her mother. Though the case could be made that Yang is making a deliberate distinction between her mother, Raven, who gave birth to her, and her mom, Summer, who loved and cared for her.

Video Games

• In BitLife, if one of your character's parents re-marries, the game will ask you how you want your character to refer to their new step-parent. This can range from calling them "Mom" or "Dad" to calling them a nickname like "Buddy" to calling them a honorific or simply referring to them by their first names.
• In Young Souls, the twin protagonists were adopted recently as teens. In the beginning of the game, the player has a choice whether they should refer to their adopted father as "dad" or not, and the "he's not actually our dad" dynamic comes up over the course of the game. By the end, they call him "dad" without player input, showing that they finally accept their role in the family.

Webcomics

• In Something*Positive, Rory decides to start calling Davan "Dad" in this strip. Davan isn't anything "official" in regard to Rory (they checked), but he's been a Parental Substitute for as long as he can remember.
• In this El Goonish Shive strip, socially-awkward Noah struggles with what to call his adoptive guardian Mr. Raven, who had recently admitted he considers Noah to be family. Noah previously called Raven "Sir" despite the latter not liking that. It finally gets resolved in this strip.

Western Animation

• In The Cleveland Show, Roberta and Rollo refer to Cleveland (their stepdad) by his first name while Junior (Cleveland's son through his first wife, Loretta) more respectfully refers to Donna (Roberta and Rollo's mom/Cleveland's second wife) as "Miss Donna".
• Averted in Phineas and Ferb, where Phineas and Candace refer to their stepfather, Lawrence, as "Dad." Ferb, when he talks that is, refers to Linda as Mother.
• The Legend of Korra gives us this exchange between Baatar Sr. and his mother-in-law, Toph.
  Baatar Sr.: ...So, how have you been, Mother?
  Toph: I told you never to call me that.
  Baatar Sr.: :-(
• On Dan Vs., Chris tries calling his in-laws "Mom and Dad," despite the fact that they don't like him. Elise Sr. lets him, but Don dryly corrects him.
• On one episode of The Simpsons, Milhouse's dad gets annoyed that Milhouse refers to his mom's current boyfriend as "Weekday Dad."
• On the South Park episode "The Poor Kid", Cartman is put into foster care; when he asks Mrs. Weatherhead if she's his "new mom," she replies that he can call her "Mom" if he wants. She will not, however, tolerate his whiny behavior the way that his real mom does.
  Cartman: Oh, hell, no! Mom! Dad's being mean to me! Mooom! MEOOOM!
  Mrs. Weatherhead: My name. Is not. Meom.
• Inverted on King of the Hill; at one point, Bill gets engaged to Luanne's mother. They break up by the end of the episode, but apparently he still introduces Luanne as his "daughter" for a while. He's needy that way.
  Peggy: The parent-child bond is very strong, even when it is not real.
• In the Steven Universe episode "Drop Beat Dad," Sour Cream addresses his stepfather by his first name, "Yellowtail," in the opening scene. However, once Yellowtail proves to be a more competent parent than Sour Cream's biological father, he switches to "Yellow-Dad" and then just "Dad."
• In Batman Beyond "Earth Mover", Terry's friend Jackie addresses her legal guardian Bill Wallace by name. Noticing her friends' confusion, Jackie clarifies that Bill isn't actually her dad; he's her dad's old friend who took her in when he disappeared. After the harrowing events of the episode (real dad came back as a crazy supervillain, blaming Bill for his near-death), Jackie finally accepts Bill as her new father and calls him "Dad."
• In The Dragon Prince, it's clear that Callum and his stepfather, King Harrow, think of each other as family, but neither seems quite able to spit it out, and Callum addresses him as "My King" or "the King," which his half-brother Ezran even comments on. He actually does call out "Dad!" just before Harrow is murdered.
• The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: In the episode "Find Her Keep Her," Rabbit becomes the Parental Substitute to a lost baby bird, Kessie. He won't let her call him "Daddy," tries to teach her to say "Rabbit," and is annoyed at first when she calls him "Rabby." But before long he becomes attached to the nickname, and in the sequel episode "A Bird in the Hand," he's dismayed when Kessie comes back all grown up and now calls him "Rabbit."
• In the Sofia the First Pilot Movie Once Upon a Princess, Sofia struggles with how to address her new stepfather. She starts off with "Your majesty," but he requests that she call him his name—Roland—or at least "You with the crown," or (hopefully) "Dad." By the end of the movie, she's adjusted better to palace life and her new family and starts calling him "Dad." Roland's biological children, Amber and James, call their stepmother "Mother" and "Mom," respectively.

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