Team Dad / Video Games

• For a good-aligned party in Baldur's Gate II, Keldorn can come across very strongly as an evil-smiting paladin Team Dad. His age helps — his daughter is about the same age as most party members, including the protagonist.
• Yanagi in Collar × Malice is considered this by the rest of the detective agency. He is one of the older members (he is the second oldest after Shiraishi) and is the most mature and responsible out of the group. He is an amazing cook and does the cleaning in the shared living space. Okazaki frequently teases him by calling him the group's father and jokes that he gained Ichika's "father"'s approval when Yanagi supported him giving his phone number to Ichika.
• Subverted for Shuuji in Digimon Survive. He is essentially a Corrupted Character Copy of Joe from Digimon Adventure, but he's really only fit for maintaining order in a camping trip. He thinks he is The Reliable One and he's fit for looking after his underclassmen, but he's clearly not mentally fit for leading anyone in life-or-death situations, something Takuma, the real leader of the group is quick to notice. He ends up dying after being Mind Raped by Arukenimon into activating Lopmon's Superpowered Evil Side, but not before trying to offer up himself to her in an attempt to save the others, and in the case where he does survive that to have a change of heart, he relinquishes trying to become the team dad and feels more comfortable deferring leadership to Takuma.
• Aveline, from Dragon Age II is a female example. She's a Da Chief and your Friend on the Force. She often butts heads with the more lawless members of the main group, but it becomes very clear that she's doing her best to protect them. The same group also has a male Team Mom, Varric.
  • Occasionally she'll butt heads with certain types of Hawke, who can also play this role.
• Dragon Quest IV: In the chapter two, Borya acts like a mentor/guardian towards Kyril and mainly Alena, often wishing he could do more to get her to act like a lady.
• Captain Basch fon Ronsenberg in Final Fantasy XII becomes quite warm and fatherly towards Vaan and Penelo. Some would say creepily so. He maintains a rather odd indifference towards Ashe for most of the game, however.
• Sazh Katzroy of Final Fantasy XIII towards Hope and Vanille.
• Fire Emblem tends to give us more than one example, and for some reason several of them double as the Crutch Character.
  • In Genealogy of the Holy War, formerly adorable kid Oifey grows into this in the second part. Lewyn may fill in partially, though he's not that much of a good dad to his own kids if he gets paired up (not completely his fault, as it's implied he suffers of a bad case of Laser-Guided Amnesia).
  • Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade has Marcus the Paladin, who might be more of a team granddad given his old age.
  • Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade:
    • Marcus, twenty years younger than his previous appearance, takes this role once again for the Phereans.
    • Oswin the Knight is a Team Dad towards Hector (who lampshades the trope by calling him "old man"), Serra (whom he can marry through supports) and Matthew. It's even more evident in Hector's route, in which Uther sends him after the runaway Hector with this trope in mind.
  • Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones:
    • Seth the Silver Knight. Bonus for being a Paladin too.
    • King Hayden, Moulder the Priest and Gerik the Mercenary.
  • In Path of Radiance, the Greil Mercenaries had their leader, Greil, who was also the biological father of Ike and Mist. However, Mist only really became part of the team after Greil's death.
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening:
    • Frederick, the most loyal retainer of the Ylissean court as well as the most experienced warrior in Chrom's Shepherds. Kinda lampshaded if he's paired with Sumia, as in his Love Confession he explicitly says that he fell for her while fretting over her Cute Clumsy Girl traits.
    • Among the Second Generation characters, the one who fits the most is Badass Bookworm Laurent (who can potentially be fathered by the aforementioned Frederick). He constantly keeps tabs on everyone else — occasionally to the point of being overbearing and/or creeping them out — and generally tries to keep them in order and in good health.
  • Fire Emblem Fates:
    • The warrior princes Xander and Ryoma are the team "fathers" for the armies of Nohr and Hoshido respectively. Xander helped raise all of the younger family members in the middle of a Decadent Court and is much more of a stern disciplinarian than his Team Mom sister Camilla, though he still has a compassionate heart; in the meantime, Ryoma is incredibly caring for those under him while also being very serious and focused, and as a bonus two of his prospect love interests fall under the Team Mom mantle including Xander's aforementioned sister Camilla.
    • The Second Gen group has a team dad of their own: Prince Shiro who is Ryoma's son and can be the nephew of Xander; as one of the oldest of the group, if not the oldest, he naturally fits into this role. It helps that he also has a very brotherly instinct towards his peers, especially the younger ones (like Kiragi and the Kanas), always doing his best to help them out whenever they need him.
• Halo: Reach: Jorge-052 acts as this for Noble Team. Since he is a Spartan-II who is almost a decade older than the team's oldest Spartan-III, this makes sense.
• Samos from the Jak and Daxter series fills this role. In addition to being the gruff Parental Substitute for the titular duo, he's Keira's actual father as well as a source of wisdom for the group.
• Kingdom Hearts series:
  • Terra has shades of this in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, to go along with Team Mom Aqua and Ventus, who is more or less their son despite being only two or three years younger.
    • This is even lampshaded in the original Japanese text when Scrooge gave Ven the passes to Disney Town. As opposed to the translation, where Ven was told "to take two grown-ups," he was told to "bring his parents."
  • Xigbar kind-of acts like this toward Roxas in 358/2Days, although he falls under the "twisted" variety due to being a massive troll who likes knowing more than other people. He keeps up the condescendingly-paternal thing when he meets Sora in KHII.
  "Have you been a good boy? Oh... it sounds like you haven't."
  • Sora himself shows shades of this whenever he is dealing with Pinocchio, as he is always trying to keep the latter from trouble.
  • Deconstructed with the Master of Masters to the Foretellers. He shares a close relationship with his disciples, having inculcated an unquestioning loyalty to him within them, and treats them affectionately, though his eccentricity often baffles them. In spite of this, he manipulates them into starting the Keyblade War, without any apparent qualms, and they all either respect him too much or are too loyal to him to suspect his manipulations.
• Chin Gentsai, Maxima, Takuma Sakazaki, Kim Kaphwan, and Heidern from The King of Fighters. Out of them, only the second is not technically a father: Chin has a granddaughter, Takuma has a teenage daughter and a young adult son (plus he helped to raise his kids's best friend), Kim's two sons are pre-teens [and older teenagers in Garou Mark Of The Wolves] and Heidern is both a biological and adoptive father. [Though his bio daughter died])
  • Ironically, Maxima isn't pleased by people pointing out that he's a father/uncle figure to K' and Kula. Terry horrifies him when he directly lampshades the trope via asking him for parental tips, and when NESTS!Kyo does it he snarks back at him.
  • While he doesn't really play the role in KOF canon, Kyo Kusanagi's father Saisyu fits in very well in the KOF: KYO media. The scene in which he tells Kensou, Athena and Yuki about the Kusanagi/Yagami rivalry and its origins strongly reminds of a dad telling a bedtime story to a bunch of children. (Except that the kids are his teenage son's friends and girlfriend and said stories aren't exactly fairy tales.)
• Coach from Left 4 Dead 2, especially towards Ellis and Rochelle.
  • Bill in Left 4 Dead.
• In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III, Rean Schwarzer is this to his students as he will make sure they're taken care of, scold them if they do something wrong, or help them out when they're troubled.
• In Mass Effect 2, Shepard has to take on this role for his (or her) crew, helping them get through their issues and serving as an example. Both Paragon and Renegade versions of Shepard take on the poppa role, especially when conflicts within the crew arise, like the one between Legion and Tali, or Jack and Miranda. Paragon is the "Let's all calm down and talk this out kids, because we have to work together," sort of father, while Renegade Shepard is more of the "Shut up, you stupid kids, you're acting like idiots! Now do what I say before I beat the crap out of you!" father.
• Metal Gear Solid — Big Boss, while he wasn't exactly the world's greatest dad to his clone-sons, has improved the lives of just about everyone who works for him by giving them sanctuary at Outer Haven. Then Solid Snake showed up in a cardboard box.
  • Solid Snake himself becomes Team Dad in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots after adopting Sunny and having acted as Raiden's mentor (especially since he grows a fatherly moustache).
  • The Boss was a female version of this to Naked Snake and the Cobras (as well as Team Mom).
• In NEO: The World Ends with You Minamimoto seems to be one at first, though wuite distant and aloof. After he leaves Beat joins the Wicked Twisters and quickly becomes the real Team Dad.
• The protagonist of Persona 4 slides between this and Team Mom. His biggest team dad moment happens on the road to the true ending when the team is debating whether to throw Namatame into the TV in revenge for his crimes; the protagonist eventually loses his temper and orders them all to "calm the hell down" before they do something they can't take back.
• Persona 5 gives us the Hierophant confident, Sojiro Sakura. The man who takes the P5 protagonist in during his year of probation, he starts out as a gruff and mildly cynical cafe owner/curry chef, but he's revealed to be a very cool and reliable man who ends up bonding with the protagonist as you go through his arc. It's heavily hinted that Sojiro was once very much like Joker as a young man, and he ends up viewing him like the son he never had, even if does get flustered at the thought of Joker calling him dad should the protagonist pursue a relationship with Futaba (though he admits he's not uncomfortable with the idea.) He also has everyone call him "Boss" and while it's not visible, it's clear all of the Thieves have deep respect for him in a paternal sense (very noticeable since all of the lack father figures in their life and their parents in general aren't much involved, barring Ryuji's mom and even then she never makes an appearance.) Heck, Sojiro is the adoptive father of Futaba, whose mother was a former co-worker and long had a soft-spot for.^note Futaba implies that she liked him too, but did not pursue a relationship with him due to her work. However, given how Wakaba mentioned she'd spend more time with Futaba upon finishing her work, it's all but explicit that had she lived, she would've ended up with Sojiro. He's such a strong example of thus that the fanbase calls him "Coffee Dad" alongside "Sojibro" and "Brojiro."
• Phoenix Wright becomes this in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies. He's the boss of two younger attorneys, Apollo Justice and Athena Cykes, and even has an adopted daughter of his own, Trucy.
• Vashyron from Resonance of Fate is at least ten years older than his partners, possibly around his thirties. He'd be better if he didn't teach his teenage companions to kill mooks indiscriminately.
• RosenkreuzStilette beings us Graf Michael Sepperin, the kind of Affably Evil Team Dad who became the Big Bad at first by making a Deal with the Devil, becoming a vampire, and learning the dark arts, among them necromancy, just to (supposedly) protect his biological daughter and because he cares for his own fellow magi that much. As he himself would say, "Creating a world for Magi and ensuring my daughter's safety are one and the same."
• The Boss shows shades of this in Saints Row IV towards both Shaundis. Attempted this with Carlos in Saints Row 2 but he died too soon.
• Peppy Hare from the Star Fox series is the oldest member of the current team, having been a member of the original team alongside Fox McCloud's father, James. More recently, he has retired from piloting duties but still offers tactical advice and acting as mentor to the team. He is also very much a father figure (especially to Fox) and at one point, Falco even jokingly calls him "Gramps".
• Super Robot Wars Original Generation — Kai Kitamura; his deceased mentor Kar-Wai Lau must've rubbed on him a lot. Captain Daitetsu is more like the Team Grandpa, but otherwise fits.
• Tales Series:
  • Kratos during the Journey of Regeneration in Tales of Symphonia. When he leaves the party later on, Regal eventually joins and fulfills the role to a lesser, if more traditional, degree.
  • In Tales of the Abyss, Jade Curtiss will categorically deny any such title, but mostly fulfills the role anyway out of sheer necessity, while Guy and Tear alternate the Team Mom role.
  • Asbel from Tales of Graces is this to the team (mostly to Sophie) being the calm, understanding yet coddling "dad" to Cheria's stern, gentle and sometimes overprotective Team Mom. Pascal even lampshaded it:
  Pascal: We could be like a family. Asbel could be the dad and Cheria the could be the mom...
  • Female example from Tales of Xillia in Milla. Prefers to alternate between strict, goofy or playful parenting styles while Team Mom Jude uses the more gentle approach.
  • Tales of Arise Has Zephyr start out as one and The Mentor to Alphen. After Zephyr's death Alphen grows into the role, Rinwell even straight up calling him the Team Dad, while Kisara is the Team Mom... and Law is the pet dog.
• This trope is mentioned outright in Wild ARMs 5, with Greg being referred to as the team dad.
• Dunban fulfills this role in Xenoblade Chronicles 1, being the team's oldest Homs member, most experienced fighter, and main The Smart Guy. Though not technically a father, Dunban has been responsible for taking care of younger sister Fiora from a fairly young age, and similarly acted as a role model for the similarly orphaned Shulk and Reyn even before the adventure. There are also a few moments where the Older Than He Looks Nopon Riki - who's at first glance much more like a Team Pet - shows shades of this, much to the surprise of the others. It makes sense, given Riki is the only member of the party who is an outright parent.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has several characters who fit. Azurda is more of a Team Grandpa, but still nonetheless acts as a wise figure in the group and more or less raised orphaned protagonist Rex prior to the game. Dromarch fills a similar role and often acts as a peaceful and mature Voice of Reason, especially next to his rather catty driver Nia. Given he was both a blade belonging to her father and has been with her since shortly after his death, this isn't too surprising. Vandham is likely the straightest example, acting as a tough but kind father figure towards the group, especially Rex, who he acts as a more straightforward The Mentor towards than Azurda and goes so far as to sacrifice his life to protect - it's heavily implied in some battle dialogue that Vandham himself lost a child, likely explaining his affinity for the role.

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