Mama Bear / Western Animation

Just goes to show that you just never know who or what has someone bigger looking out for them.

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• Adventures of the Gummi Bears: Both Ursa Barbic and Grammi Gummi are literal Mama Bears. Grammi takes this trope in an every day occurrence, defending Sunni, Cubbi and Tummi from Gruffi's rather harsh and uncaring attitude. When the situation gets rough, she is not afraid to venture into enemy territory to protect her charges. This protectiveness extends to Princess Calla (who suffers from Missing Mom) and Cavin (who is heavily implied to have been raised by his grandfather) as well when they come into their lives. Ursa Barbic, of the Barbic Gummies, takes a more distant approach: watching from afar and trusting Buddi to be able to handle himself. However, when the danger grows, such as when Buddi was captured in Season 5's "return to Ursalia" the only thing stopping her from using their own Ultimate Weapon to blast Buddi's captor away was the knowledge she would hurt him as well.
• Adventure Time: Princess Bubblegum displays a very interesting variation. During the episode "You Made Me!", she realizes that her failed science experiment Lemongrab is not only desperately lonely, but completely insane. She spends the entire episode trying to help him sort out his issues, even as he yells at her, threatens her, and acts like a jackass. It pays off in the end, with one of the most heartwarming moments in the series. Initially, Princess Bubblegum treated Lemongrab like a nuisance and an experiment, (and did so in the earlier episode, "Too Young.") After Lemongrab made his Despair Speech, she began to sympathize with him, and treated him like a person. And at the end, once he's well and happy with his friend (clone) Lemongrab, Princess Bubblegum bids them both good-bye with the words, "Good-bye! Take care, boys!"
• American Dad!:
  • Francine Smith can be one, particularly in "Bully for Steve", which reveals she doesn't take her husband's bullying of her son very well. When she finds out that Stan is the bully, she T-bones his car while he is driving.
  • Hayley becomes this in "Season's Beatings" to her newly-adopted son, who just so happens to be the Anti-Christ.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Princess Ursa of the Fire Nation, who used to provide the main page quote: "That's what moms are like — if you mess with their babies, they'll bite you back"; she knows what she's talking about, having orchestrated the murder of Fire Lord Azulon for ordering her son Zuko's death. There is some debate as to whether this Mama Bear attitude applied to Azula as well; we didn't see enough of Ursa to really know what was up with her. Bonus points for having a name that literally means "bear" in Latin.
  • Also, Katara's mother Kya, who pulled a Heroic Sacrifice to keep the Fire Nation from finding out her daughter was a Waterbender. Not only did she lie about being a Waterbender, she did so right after telling her daughter that everything was going to be okay. With the Southern Raider's commander standing right in front of her, that took a great deal of courage. This is why you don't screw with the Water Tribe.
  • Avatar Kyoshi may have been motivated by this trope when she split her home town off the mainland into its own island, as her backstory reveals she bore at least one child.
  • In a milder, funny example, the saber-tooth moose lion. When Sokka is trapped in a crevice, he befriends a cub of this 8ft tall beast. The feral mother, not caring they had no ill will towards her or her cub, attacks Aang and Sokka for being near her cub.
  • The turtle-duck that attacked young Zuko, prompting Ursa to state the top-quote.
• Blood of Zeus: Electra, despite being a mortal woman compared to her Semi-Divine son Heron and Physical God lover Zeus, proves her Mama Bear badassery in a Flash Back when her Crazy Jealous Guy husband King Periander takes Heron from her and attempts throw him off a balcony. Electra responds grabbing her baby back and stabbing Periander in the eye, making him fall to his death. In the present, Electra saves her son who was getting beaten while trying to protect her from a Witch Hunt mob who believe she is a demon, by scorching herself with a burning poker to prove she's normal.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers: During their missions, the Planeteers mostly run on their own, getting occasional help from Captain Planet. However, in extremely dire circumstances, Gaia steps in to help.
  • In "Summit to Save Earth, Part 1", when the Planeteers are captured by Zarm and unable to defend themselves, she shows up, looking absolutely furious (for the first time in the entire show), and gets in an intense fight against Zarm to show him exactly why he shouldn't mess with "her" kids. Not that it stops him from almost killing her or returning a few more times.
    Gaia: Zarm! I should have known. This time, you've gone too far. Well, I'm gonna put a stop to it right now.
  • Downplayed in "OK at the Gunfight Corral". The Planeteers have followed Hoggish Greedly, Rigger and Sly Sludge into the past to stop them from turning the Grand Canyon into a dump site. During the climax, when one of Greedly's henchmen is about to fire at the kids, Gaia shows up as a hologram and scares him away. However, given that the threat was posed by a human, rather than an evil spirit, she doesn't do anything else to the would-be attacker, instead focusing on the Planeteers and their new friend, Keeyani.
    Henchman: You ain't going nowhere, boy.
    Gaia (angrily): But you are.
    Henchman: Aah! (flees)
• Classic Disney Shorts: In the 1941 Mickey Mouse cartoon, "The Little Whirlwind", Mickey's yardwork around Minnie's house is interrupted by the eponymous sentient whirl and ends up driving Mickey crazy with their mischievous antics. As seen in the current page image, when a frustrated Mickey begins chasing the little twister away with a rake, they begin crying for their mama. "Mama" (a massive full-scale tornado) quickly arrives less than pleased with Mickey and proceeds to chase and toss him around the area before depositing the now very dizzy Mickey in a fountain and leaving with the child tornado (and subsequently leaving Minnie's yard in ruins and Mickey in trouble with Minnie as a result).
• Codename: Kids Next Door:
  • The adults in this series are either useless or evil, and the same goes for the parents of the main cast. Most of the time. In "Operation: T.O.M.M.Y.", the Common Cold's victory over the team is crushed by Numbuh Two's mom, who shoots down his Humongous Mecha with a giant cannon loaded with chicken soup.
  • Numbuh Three is like this towards Bradley, a skunk that she finds in "Operation: C.A.M.P." and assumes to be an orphan, showing maternal instincts towards him and being fiercely protective towards him. (Bradley's actual mother - and his father - who show up at the end of the episode, are the same.)
• Cybersix: The titular character is this to Lucas, but also very much to Julian. In Julian's introductory episode, we see that this is because he reminds Cybersix of her dead brother whom she failed to save when he fell off of a cliff right next to her.
• Danny Phantom: At least two episodes have the Danny's mother, Maddie Fenton, kicking all sorts of ass towards a group of ghosts to protect her son. One of which involves an Ecto-induced lightsaber. She's a 6th degree black belt who was already an Action Mom and whose response to a threat not directly aimed at her son is normally overkill. When she goes Mama Bear, prepare for a butt kicking.
• Daria: Helen Morgendorffer. Never has a matter of fact threat of litigation been so badass.
  Helen: Alright, Ms. Li, let me make sure I have this straight; you took my daughter's poster from her, altered its content, exhibited it against her will and now are threatening discipline because you claimed she defaced her own property, which you admit to stealing? ...Ms. Li, have you ever heard of violation of civil liberties? ...And the phrase "big fat lawsuit"?!
• The Deep (2015): Do not threaten Ant or Fontaine Nekton. Their mother Kaiko Nekton will make you regret it.
• Dragon Hunters: Jeanneline is very protective of her daughters Zoria and Zaza and will lay into you if you let anything happen to them. She's somewhat bitter about the fact that Gwizdo and Lian-Chu trained Zoria to become a dragon hunter and wants her to get married and have children.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • Wanda will get violent if either Timmy or Poof are threatened.
  • Mrs. Turner has her moments of Mama Bear, too, in spite of her usual condition of neglectful parent.
  • Both of Timmy's parents, despite being comically irresponsible enough to leave him with an evil babysitter, have gone to crazy lengths to protect Timmy. This came to the fore when Timmy wishes they had superpowers, and he ends up using this to his advantage when convincing them to give up their powers to save him. In one episode, his wishes for his parents to stop caring about what he does, resulting in them becoming irresponsible slobs who don't pay attention to his needs... until he is in danger from a crocodile and his parents break the spell by force of will alone and wrestle said crocodile.
• Family Guy:
  • One episode had Lois go out of her way to stage elaborate revenge against the cool kids for humiliating Meg at a football game.
  • Lois also gets a moment with the Straw Feminist Gloria Ironbox. At first, she just makes some snarky comments about Gloria's extremist opinions, but then the offending strawwoman insults her children. Cue the Cat Fight.
  • And you don't want to steal her baby's candy. For that matter, you don't even want your kids taking her baby's candy. Seriously, she's harsh. "Take back her baby's candy, and take your kid's candy, and take $80 from you" harsh.
  • In "Meg and Quagmire", after she and Peter save Meg, who just turned 18 and is now legal, from having sex with Quagmire, Lois threatens to cut off his penis and feed it to Brian if he ever touches Meg again.
• Gargoyles:
  • At the end of the 'Odyssey' arc, it is revealed that Fox is actually the half-fey daughter of Titania, the Queen of the Fae, but she's been unable to use her magical powers due to being raised amongst humans. Then Titania and Oberon try to steal away her newly born baby, Alexander, and a united front by the Gargoyles, Cyberbiotics, Xanatos and (in a last-minute effort) Puck, fails to stop them. Then, Fox proceeds to blast Oberon through a wall in her first and last display of her true powers. It may actually have been ''planned'' that way by Titania, in an effort to force Fox into displaying her potential by deliberately invoking this trope... Xanatos isn't the only one in the series who can throw a good gambit.
  • Also, Demona in the episode "The Reckoning". She and Thailog have the Clan at their mercy - until Thailog threatens to kill her daughter Angela, at which point Demona first turns on Thailog and then frees Goliath and the rest of the Clan rather than allow her daughter to be killed.
  • Do not try to attack sixty-something-year-old Princess Katharine's adopted gargoyle children when she's around. Bringing a laser gun to the battle will just make things worse.
    "Nobody threatens my eggs!"
• Goof Troop: Peg goes to great lengths to protect her children from both outside threats and her husband, Pete, (whether he's actually abusing one of them or just being a bad influence). She also gets this way about the neighbors, Goofy and Max, mainly because Goofy is not the sharpest tool in the shed and is the only parent Max has, while Pete loves to manipulate them, especially Goofy. However, when push comes to shove, and outside forces threaten Pete, she will not hesitate to protect him as well. In this way, she manages to serve as a Team Mom and Mama Bear to the entire cast.
• Hazbin Hotel: The Overlord Carmilla Carmine has two daughters, Odette and Clara^note How exactly they're related we don't know yet since Sinners in Hell can't reproduce, so presumably they were either her daughters when they were alive and reunited in Hell after death, or she adopted them in Hell, who are more important to her than anything. She gets an entire musical number (shared with Vaggie, who's expressing similar sentiments about her girlfriend Charlie) in episode 3 called "Whatever It Takes" where she reveals she was the one who killed one of the angelic Exorcists, who were previously believed to be invincible, during the last Extermination event to protect her daughters, despite not even knowing she could.
• Hilda: The title character's mother Johanna doesn't usually accompany her on her adventures, but when she finally does in the second season finale, she proves herself completely willing and able to stare down a troll to protect her daughter.
• Hunky and Spunky: Hunky was a Mama Burro.
  • When the other barnyard animals ganged up on her bratty offspring, Spunky, she whooped them all to save her baby (then proceeded to spank Spunky for still being a brat).
  • She also delivered a serious beatdown to a prospector who attempted to turn Spunky into a pack mule.
• Johnny Bravo: Bunny Bravo, who is one of the only characters to whom Johnny shows any sign of not being a total jerk. Even if her son is a muscle-bound grown man, he's still her baby. Mess with Johnny and she'll make you regret being born.
• Johnny Test: Lila Test leaves an enormous pro wrestler an inch from death after he picks up Johnny. Hugh even admits that her fighting prowess is why she wears the pants in the relationship.
• Justice League Unlimited: A mother and her daughter are trapped in a car that just fell from a suspension bridge. Hawkgirl comes in and rips the roof off with her mace. Rather than wait for rescue, the mother does not hesitate to grab her kid and throw her up to Hawkgirl. Hawkgirl rescues both of them. Even the nameless extras in the DCAU are badass.
• Kaeloo: Kaeloo, who is a sort of Parental Substitute to Quack Quack, will get very, very mad if you dare to hurt him.
• King of the Hill:
  • Peggy Hill has a tendency to do this. When her niece/adoptive daughter Luanne's biological mother, Leanne, returns and starts treating Luanne like crap, being a crappy mom in general, and as the final straw, humiliating her by giving Luanne's boyfriend a lap dance in front of the whole neighborhood, Peggy finally snaps and tears into Leanne in a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
  • Also inverted when Bobby kicks Hank in the groin and then takes advantage of his injury to calmly play a video game, even though he was banned from doing so, while forcing his father to limp around the house after him. When she sees this, Peggy attacks her own son, even giving him a noogie, because "If you show disrespect toward the man I love, you are going to have to deal with Peggy Hill!" Hank then reinforces her demonstration by telling Bobby, "I can get her to do that any time, you know".
• The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack: What's even worse than a Mama Bear? A Mama WHALE named Bubby. Laying a hand on her boy in front of her will be a terrible mistake.
• Molly of Denali: Layla is, like most mothers, very protective over her daughter and will do ANYTHING in her power to keep her safe.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot: Dr. Wakeman is shown to be quite protective of her daughter and will not tolerate anyone threatening Jenny while she’s around.
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends:
    • In the episode "Bright Lights", the mothers among the ponies were more than ready to tear Knight Shade limb from limb after the baby ponies' shadows were stolen, which meant that they'd soon become Empty Shells.
    • In that same episode, Knight Shade's own mother is willing to stand between her son and an angry mob of ponies who had their shadows stolen. She does give him a stern talking to, however.
    • Megan herself is like this: Threatening the ponies generally leads to her and them finding a way to stop the person who intends to cause harm.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • Fluttershy of is like this toward her friends. Although normally painfully shy and quiet, when her friends are in danger, she not only is able to rise to the occasion, she will get so mad she can face down a full-grown dragon (the one creature she fears) with such ferocity that she reduces it to tears. Or stare down a cockatrice as its gaze is turning her to stone.
    • Princess Celestia is this in regards to all of the ponies she rules over. The number of times she's gotten even slightly angry over the course of the series can be counted on one hand; the more extreme (by far) half of these instances were in response to large-scale threats against her beloved subjects. The second time this happened, she even attempted to scorch the assailant with a massive Projectile Spell.
    • Rarity has an instance with this as well. When Spike is being threatened by teenage dragons, she instantly jumps up with this gem.
      Rarity: Fighting's not really my thing, I'm more into fashion, but I'll rip you to pieces if you touch one scale on his cute little head!
• The Owl House:
  • Over the course of the show, Eda develops a strong maternal instinct for her apprentice Luz (as well as Luz's friends). Luz being put in danger is pretty much the only thing that can make her drop her carefree attitude and fight with the utmost seriousness. When she thinks Belos has killed Luz, Eda goes berserk with rage.
  • Following Lilith's Heel–Face Turn, Luz slowly grows attached to her as Lilith stops being Belos's Sycophantic Servant and starts being herself. Lilith herself begins to grow protective of Luz as they spend more time together, culminating in her punching Philip Wittebane in the face and breaking his nose after he recklessly and unrepentantly puts Luz in danger for his own ends.
  • Luz's biological mother Camila is no slouch either. When she learns that what she thought was her daughter is actually a basilisk named Vee, she is initially disturbed. However, after seeing how terrified Vee is, Camila reassures her, threatens to call the police on Jacob if he doesn't let them go, and when he refuses to let up, beats him over the head with her sandal and locks him in the cage he was holding Vee in for some "self-reflection". In the third season this also extends to Luz's friends, who end up in her care after being trapped in the human realm. She dives into a lake with zero hesitation to save Hunter from drowning, knocks Kikimora out with a baseball bat after she tries to kill Luz and Amity, and openly states her wish to beat Belos into a pulp.
• Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension: Candace-2 is a Sister Bear to Phineas-2 and Ferb-2, with her whole La Résistance movement largely based on keeping them safe.
• Porky Pig: In an old cartoon that parodied the French Foreign Legion, Porky and the young camel that he uses as a ride are rodeated by the enemies. The camel's mother hears the commotion from far away, shrieks "MY BABY!", and immediately rushes to help them, her paws mimicking a freaking locomotive in her way there.
• Rugrats: Betty DeVille is very protective of her twins Phil and Lil. One notable early example is the episode "Baby Commercial" where Lil wanders off onto an overhead catwalk while Phil is being filmed, and Betty is enraged at the commercial director for his blatant lack of concern for the twins' well-being. Understandably, she refuses to let Phil and Lil star in any commercials again.
• The Secret Saturdays: Drew Saturday. Mess with her "boys" (her biological son and a cat-gorilla cryptid) and prepare for a world of hurt. She's already an Action Mom trained in martial arts, armed with a Flaming Sword, and has survived conditions and situations on a daily basis that would kill an average person, and is part of a Bad Ass Family. And that's when she's not in Mama Bear turf.
• The Simpsons: Marge gets her own moments every now and then.
  • When she was treating Nelson all nice, and giving him money, Nelson's own mother came by and yelled at Marge. Her reply? "Go home, Mrs. Muntz... AND TRY NOT TO HAVE INTERCOURSE ON THE WAY!" The reaction of her family was priceless.
  • This is the sweet-tempered House Wife who saved her daughter from an erupting volcano. After the "feminist career woman" that Lisa admired abandoned little Lisa to her luck.
  • In "The Great Wife Hope", Marge ends up fighting the guy in charge of a shallow pastiche of Ultimate Fighting. She gets one-punched to the floor, Bart comes to her aid, and when her opponent picks up Bart and threatens to hit him, she growls, "That's...my...SON!" and proceeds to beat up the guy.
  • And then there's her calling out everybody for almost making Bart commit suicide.
• The Smurfs (1981):
  • Smurfette is like this with Baby Smurf, especially when she was changed back to her old un-Smurfy self and Gargamel wants to use Baby Smurf to test out his gold-making formula. Realizing Gargamel would stoop to that level made Smurfette change back to her good self, and she immediately kicked the wizard's ass for thinking about doing that.
  • Another episode had a very grouchy Fairy Godmother who was more than willing to use violence and turn people into mice when her godson was kidnapped, in order to find him.
• South Park:
  • Kyle's mom Sheila takes this trope a bit too far, as she starts World War III and nearly triggers Armageddon all in the name of protecting her son from toilet humor in the media.
  • The other mothers also count, as they finally realize that she's gone too far with the above mentioned starting of the war, and quit M.A.C.^note Mothers Against Canada so they can save their kids.
    Sharon: My God, this is terrible!
    Sheila: This is what we wanted. We wanted our children to be brought up in a smut-free environment.
    Sharon: But we didn't want THIS! (She and the other mothers begin walking towards the battlefield)
    Sheila: Where are you going!?
    Sharon: We're going to find our boys! For God's sake, Sheila, we're going to get them killed!
• Star Wars Rebels: It's not a good idea to mess with Ezra or Sabine when Hera Syndulla is around. She especially has this towards her droid Chopper.
• Steven Universe: All of the Crystal Gems are this to Steven. Here are some highlights:
  • Garnet, when she sees Steven is about to fall into a lava pit, grabs him and carries him through a room full of death traps.
  • When Sugilite accidentally sends a rock the size of a small car hurtling towards Steven, Pearl, who is probably the weakest Crystal Gem when it comes to raw strength, steps in front of him and kicks it in half.
  • Amethyst is more of a Cool Big Sis, but she does fit this trope on occasion. She has no problem with attacking Jasper, a Gem twice her size and strength (who poofed Garnet seconds earlier), when Steven is being threatened by her.
  • Outside of the main trio of Gems, Lapis Lazuli likes Steven a lot more than she likes just about any other character in the show, since he was the first person in several thousand years to actually be kind to her. So when Jasper attacks him in a fit of rage, Lapis summons a huge fist made of water and punches her over the horizon.
  • On the human side of things, in a flashback episode where Vidalia leaves her infant son in Greg's care for the day, she lets him know in no uncertain terms that he'd better not mess it up.
    Vidalia: "And if anything bad happens to my kid, you better pray your space goddess' magic can bring people back from the dead, because I will destroy you."
• Spirit: Riding Free: Cora Prescott manages to defend her niece, Lucky at least twice throughout the series. In "Lucky and the Lion", Cora saves Lucky from a mountain lion by scaring it off with a shotgun. In "Lucky and the Train Tycoon", Cora supports her brother, Jim as he stands up to their father in his attempt to force Lucky back to the city with him.
• Superman: The Animated Series: In the episode "New Kids in Town", when Brainiac comes after her son, Martha Kent picks up a shotgun and gives him both barrels.
• TaleSpin: Rebecca Cunningham is a literal example. While usually not much for the teams' action packed heroics, she really steps up a mile whenever Molly is threatened. The others tend to suffer quite an earful whenever they inadvertently put her in danger as well.
• Teen Titans (2003):
  • In the episode "Hide and Seek", Raven has to escort three very young superpowered kids to a monastery. She resents the job at first, but eventually comes to care for her charges, culminating in the line "Nobody messes with MY kids!"
  • Starfire also behaves like this towards her Extreme Omnivore pet, Silkie.
• Totally Spies!: The mothers of all three of the protagonists qualify, particularly in the fourth Season Finale, when they form a temporary team to rescue their daughters from the inventor behind the SUDS project.
• Transformers: Prime:
  • Arcee is normally a Cool Big Sis to Jack, but will lay down a serious amount of hurt on anyone who threatens his safety. This extends to verbal lashings to teammates who inadvertently put him in harm's way.
  • Jack's mother June is equally, if somewhat less impressively (hard to combat with a giant robot who can lazer any threat off) this trope. When Raf gets hurt by getting caught up in a conflict between the Autobots and Decepticons, she drags Raf away from the base, and is clearly furious when both Jack and Miko defies her orders (besides being Jack's mom, she's a nurse and therefore was legally able to demand Raf go to the hospital for treatment).
• The Venture Bros.: Billy Quizboy's mother Rose seems like a kindly old woman on the surface, but it's revealed that she was a superhero in The '60s. Whenever she's not babying her grown son, she's delivering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to anyone who threatens him, as Billy's Arch-Enemy St. Cloud learns the hard way when he breaks into her house to try to harass Billy.
  Rose: I'll let you take the first swing. And if you don't put me down, I'll beat the living shit out of you till my arthritis kicks in. And I just took my Humira.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender: Keith's mother Krolia is fiercely protective of her son and will (and does) do anything to keep him safe.
• Wander over Yonder: Although normally a Deadpan Snarker who is often annoyed by his energy and love for adventure, Sylvia is very protective of Wander, as confirmed by Craig McCracken. She even resembles Ripley in an episode where she thinks he's dead. She also becomes quite protective (although reluctant to admit it) of an egg Wander orders to look after.
• Winx Club: Somewhat off-screen and crossing with Papa Wolf is Miriam (Bloom's Mom). After both she and her husband think both their daughters to be dead, they according to one account went completly berserk at the ones responsible; the Ancient Coven. Considering how high they are in among other's Faragonda's and Baltor's regard, that says something about the power which was unleashed.
• W.I.T.C.H.: Big Bad Nerissa is this for her son, Caleb, making him one of the only people in the universe she won't harm.

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