Well Done Son Guy / Video Games

People desperately seeking parental approval in Video Games.

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• A3 has Homare Arisugawa, as revealed in his Mankai Feature backstage. As a child, Homare often read picture books aloud for his grandmother, Miyako, because he wanted her to praise him. Unfortunately, being an Ice Queen, Miyako never praised him and left the young Homare sad. It is thanks to Homare's father that Homare got better at reading the picture books and finally earned the praise, although to the present day, Homare still tries very hard to impress his grandmother and to some degree, his mother.
  • This is later integrated into the plot of Richard, the character Homare was chosen to play for the backstage set, because Homare wondered if Richard had this trope moments like him at one point in his life. Richard, however, is a deconstruction of this trope. Richard starts off as a new singer in an opera house and hopes to earn his father's approval with his performance, but never manages to no matter how hard he tries. Erik, the primo uomo, is always better than him. Desperate for the approval, Richard starts going down the corrupt path and commits bribery. However, it still fails, and then Richard sees his father applaud for Erik instead. Richard is utterly seething and decides to burn Erik, and in the present day, Richard is known for his ruthlessness in his climb for power in the opera house. But at the end of it all, he accidentally sets his opera house on fire when Erik, the man he tried to kill in the past, came back for revenge. As the fire closes in, Richard falls into delirium and claims to finally hear his father's applause...which is just the sound of fire.
• In Assassin's Creed II, after Vieri de'Pazzi is assassinated, Ezio acquires a letter where the writer informs Vieri's father Francesco that all the young man wanted was his father's attention and approval.
• Baldur's Gate II has Anomen; his dad is a bad-tempered, widowed alcoholic who thoroughly disapproves of his son's aspirations to join The Order of the Radiant Heart. How Anomen deals with this depend upon player choice and the PC's relationship with him. Trying to win his father's approval causes Anomen to fail his test of knighthood and start Slowly Slipping Into Evil (unless he's being romanced by a female PC, in which case he just learns to be less uptight). Refusing to put his father's wishes over his morals will cause his father to reject him, but it helps Anomen become a knight and a better person. No matter what he does at first, he has to give up this trope altogether to successfully complete his romance.
• Bosch from Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter is seriously messed up because of this reason. All throughout his childhood, his dad put him through ridiculous training (including making him fight a monster three times his size) and still wouldn't give him the praise he wanted. This left him willing to do anything necessary to get ahead in life which included nearly murdering his former partner, grafting a monster's arm onto himself and linking with an ancient, evil dragon in return for its powers.
• In Chicory: A Colorful Tale, Clementine dreams of becoming a tattoo artist but is afraid of disappointing her parents with it because she believes that she can't owe up to the sacrifices they've made for the family. Pizza assures her that their parents will love and support her no matter what because what matters most to them is her happiness.
• Deltarune has Lancer, who shows great admiration for his father from his very first appearance, claiming how he wants his dad to make him "son of the month!" It's too bad his dad isn't nearly as loving.
• Nero in Devil May Cry 5 wants to prove himself to his Trickster Mentor Dante and takes it very personally when Dante calls him "dead weight" and seems to push Nero away every time Nero wants to prove him wrong, only fueling Nero's sense of inadequacy and hurt pride since he had lost the Yamato that Dante entrusted to him. On the flip side, Dante knows that Urizen is actually a part of Vergil, Nero's father and constantly tries to distance Nero away because of it. His attempts to shoo Nero away and even criticize V's decision to involve Nero are all done to protect Nero from the truth.
• Dragon Age isn't quite as...overwhelming with its parental issues (though there's no shortage of missing or dead ones). Dragon Age II has a few examples.
  • Saemus Dumar, the rebellious and idealistic son of Kirkwall's Slave to PR Viscount, is the standout.
  • Aveline is the daughter of an Orlesian chevalier exiled when his patron was killed. He raised her to be a knight and sold everything they had so she could join King Cailan's army. Instead, she grew up a principled but very pragmatic soldier, and eventual City Guard.
  • Sebastian was the spare to the Spare to the Throne who tactfully describes his parents as "rather traditional". He acted out by turning into a womanizing hedonist and was given to the church in his teens to prevent further embarrassment (and any illegitimate children who could have caused a Succession Crisis further down the line). He ended up liking it there, but his parents and older brothers were assassinated not long after.
  • Carver has feelings like this toward his father Malcolm, because - in playthroughs where he survives the prologue — he was the only one of Malcolm's children who was not a mage, so his father had no time for him. Ironically, it's revealed in the game that Malcolm never wanted to sire mage children and Carver was the son he always wanted; but he had to devote so much time to helping Hawke and Bethany learn to control their magic that he had little time left over for his non-mage boy.
  • This is also hinted to be the case for Varric with his mother Ilsa, though it's only seen if he's taken along for the quest "Night Terrors" and comes under the influence of one of the desire demons encountered.^note Whether the demons will affect him depends on who the other companions present are. His father died when he was a baby, and he spent most of his youth taking care of his Lady Drunk mother, who treated him badly. His response to the demon's temptations is very telling, as he notes that he did everything for his family all his life but his older brother Bartrand was nevertheless the favorite.
  • Dorian Pavus was formerly another example of this in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Some of his party banter with Cole, along with some dialogue in his companion quest, reveal that he used to revere his father and would have done anything to make him happy. Of course, this all went out the window when Dorian found out that his father planned to attempt to make him straight using a blood magic ritual.
• Dragon Quest IV: Alena states in the party talk that she wishes her father respected her fighting ability and would praise her a little. She gets her moment after curing her father of a curse.
• In The Elder Scrolls series, as revealed in Skyrim, this is a trait of Nocturnal, the Daedric Prince of Darkness and the Night who is also associated with Thieves and Luck. Toward both her Nightingale servants and toward all thieves in general, she is described as a mother that offers little praise but always pushes you to do better. She is also very much a Sink or Swim Mentor, and while she does seem to care about her followers, she will not offer any sort of direct Divine Intervention if they get in over their heads.
• Seseri from Espgaluda is this way due to the fact that she believed that her father, King Jakou, never acknowledged her as his daughter. Instead, she was forced to endure him lavishing all his attention towards Ageha and Tateha, who were born from the magical Queen and therefore had untapped magical potential. Contrast to Seseri, who is an illegitimate child, and is not magic at all; aside from her affinity with magical weapons and devices, she was nothing compared to the very powerful Ageha and Tateha. However, Seseri wrongly interpreted that Jakou actually cared for Ageha and Tateha, not realizing that he wanted to turn them into his own psychic tyke-bombs. So Seseri hates her half-siblings, wishing to kill them both so that Jakou might love her. Her efforts are for naught, as she dies defending him (and despite this, Jakou also dies at Ageha and Tateha's hands). She is still brought back as a robotic vessel by the Spirit Society in the sequel, but her purpose is now to seek revenge for Jakou's death, her hatred for her half-sibling twins being paramount. When she is killed for good, she apologizes to her deceased father for her failure, right before her fully robotic body explodes into scrap metal.
• Fate/Grand Order: Mordred is the most prominent example of this trope tying to get the approval of her father Altria Pendragon by any means necessary.
  • The first time she tried to open up to Altria she was told she would not be Altria's successor, which made her think her 'father' hated her. She still wants Altria's approval and her wish is to try to pull the sword from the stone, which she assumes she'll do without a problem. She feels it's the only way to earn daddy's recognition.
  • Taken up to extreme levels in the Camelot Singularity, where Mordred is so eager to fulfill the Lion King's commands that she doesn't bat an eye at slaughtering anyone that gets in her way if the Lion King wills it, and despite knowing the Lion King doesn't care at all about her, she is still willing to go to the lengths she does out of the hope she can earn it even if it means her death.
  • Played for Laughs during the first Summer event. Mordred continually shows off and requests the most outlandish buildings in hopes of impressing Altria, only to continually get the cold shoulder.
• Even though he hates his father, Tidus from Final Fantasy X desperately seeks to measure up to him, especially after realizing he's following his exact same footsteps. Likewise, Yuna wishes to make her own father, High Summoner Braska, proud of her own pilgrimage. In the end, they exceed both of their parents, by destroying Sin rather than just delaying it until next time.
  • Braska obviously loved Yuna, and she just didn't want his death to be in vain.
  • Revisited in Dissidia Final Fantasy, where Jecht was specifically chosen as the villain representative of Final Fantasy X due to his emotional connection with the hero. It's especially visible in the cutscene after Tidus beats him:
    Tidus: I hate you. I hated you so much. I've always wished you'd be gone. But deep down what I really wanted was just... your approval. For you to... tell me that I've grown strong.
    Jecht: Looks like the kid will never grow up.
    Tidus: That's not my fault. I can't help it. I'm your son, after all.
    Jecht: Hehe... I guess you are.
    [Both laugh.]
    Jecht: Hey, cry-baby... You've grown strong.
• In Final Fantasy XIV, Sekka is positively desperate for her father's approval that he might take her on as an apprentice swordsmith. But he continually disparages her and tells her that she has no future in the art while barring her from every forge in Kugane. Her burning desire to please him leads her to sail halfway around the world to learn from the smiths at the Blacksmiths' Guild to learn what she is missing. This is actually what's holding her back, as she's more focused on gaining his approval than actually being a good swordsmith.
• Hugh in Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade is this. Talent for dark magic runs in his family, but he didn't get any of it, which is the reason for his insecurity issues. In his A support with his grandmother Niime, he concludes that he can't be his father's son or her grandson because he didn't get the family talent for dark magic, and calls himself pathetic for it.
  • Prince Zephiel. Ever dutiful, ever charismatic Prince of Bern whose wish is just for his family to reconcile, by having his father acknowledge him. Poor kid doesn't know that his father is very much a jerkass who really wants him dead. When Zephiel learns it the hard way, take a wild guess what Zephiel turns into.
• This is one of the bases for the May–December Romance between Oswin and Serra in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade. She treats him more respectfully than her other possible love interests (Matthew and Erk)and seeks his approval, but when Oswin reprehends her in their B support, Serra mistakes this as him hating her as a person and almost has an Heroic BSoD. Their A support is about them clearing the misunderstanding.
  • Nino. All she wants is to earn Sonia's love and approval and agrees to go on a dangerous mission in which she would very well be killed just for the reward of her mother holding her hand and stroking her face.
  • A less harsh example is Erk towards his mentor and adoptive father Pent, especially in their B support.
• Forrest in Fire Emblem Fates starts out angry at his father for criticizing his Wholesome Crossdresser habit, but once they start communicating better he expresses a desire to make his father proud despite being afraid to fight, and to wield the tome Leo uses and that Forrest will someday inherit.
• In God of War Atreus tries to desperately prove his worth to his father the series-established badass Kratos, which is already a tall order in of itself. Deconstructed however when over time, as Kratos continues to be harsh, often condescending, and even seemingly (albeit unintentionally) abandoning his son for a period of time, Atreus starts to seriously question why he should impress such a jerk of a father. Reconstructed when Kratos learns to open up more and they repair their relationship.
• In Growing Up, Sam is obsessed with American football and aims to win the big game in high school, but he wants to quit because he's only doing this for his father, who's pressuring him into believing that winning is everything.
• In Guilty Gear XX, this discussion can occur when Kliff Undersn fights his adoptive son, Testament:
  Testament: Father... I...
  Kliff: You've grown to be a fine man... I have no further regrets.
  • Considering that at that point Testament has completed his Heel–Face Turn and is The Lancer to Friend to All Living Things Dizzy, it's no wonder that the father approves.
• While Zagreus of Hades has grown to openly hate his father, he still craves his long-denied approval on a base level. So he's taken forcing or tricking Hades into admitting his worth and immediately rubbing it in his face. He's completely blindsided when his attempt to lord his appearance on the Featured Houseservant Board over Hades is met with a blunt admission that Hades himself put him up there as a sincere commendation of his recent work.
• Zote of Hollow Knight could possibly be this, given his dialogue when Dream Nailed in the Fool's Colosseum.
  I'll kill a thousand more... Will that be enough, father?
• The Kid, from I Wanna Be the Guy, a game whose extremely peripheral story involves nothing more than an incredibly hard quest to become The Guy. The Kid wants to become The Guy. The Father of The Kid is The Guy. The Kid is sent on his quest by Former Grandfather The Guy, who was replaced as The Guy by The Father The Guy, who The Kid now seeks to replace in turn to become The Guy. It doesn't get much more "Well Done, Son!" Guy than that.
• The Prince in Katamari Damacy seeks nothing but the King of All Cosmos' approval, and for good reason: disapproval means More Dakka eye beams.
  • In later games we find out that the King had a similar relationship with his father.
• In an example of the hero's friend, Sora reveals at the end of Kingdom Hearts II that he's always striven to be as good at everything as his best friend, Riku. This was hinted at during the beginning of the original game, as well. In true form, Riku also reveals that he was always jealous of the way his friend lived his life.
• In Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, The Exile's Evil Mentor Kreia/Darth Traya is an Evil Matriarch who has a tendency to act motherly to her apprentices and hold them to unreasonable expectations until they disappoint her and she discards them. Loath though he is to admit it, her apprentice before you Darth Sion is desperate for his old master's approval, to the point where he tries to hunt down and kill the Exile to prove that he is not the failure she believes him to be.
  • Party member Handmaiden suffers from this as well. She's heavily implied to be Kreia's biological daughter while seeing her mentor Atris as a surrogate mother, and fails to receive the approval of both while also being the Black Sheep to her sisters. While she herself was unaware of her relationship with Kreia, Kreia despised her for her blind loyalty to Atris while Atris was Driven by Envy over her love for a male Exile and resented Brianna for living the life she was too afraid to.
• Zelda in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was treated rather strictly by her father, who wanted her to put off the more scholarly and archaeological pursuits she preferred and focus on unlocking the Royalty Super Power that would let her defeat Calamity Ganon. His methods may have actually hindered her from doing so even more than if he had simply let her be herself, but Zelda nonetheless tearfully blames herself when he, the Champions, and everyone in Hyrule Castle get killed by an unimpeded Ganon.
• There is...quite a lot of this in Mass Effect. To start with, there's Garrus, whose father is a standard, by-the-book military-minded turian. Garrus feels that rules are good and all, but following them to the point of blindness will let the bad guys get away with worse stuff, so it's necessary to break the rules every once in a while. This leads to his eventually uncomfortable position as a Cowboy Cop on the Citadel. Then there's Tali, whose father is a member of the Admiralty Board which controls the Quarian Flotilla, and the quarian race. Accordingly, everyone expects her to bring back some massively important gift from her Pilgrimage, and she hopes that in doing so, she will get her some notice from her otherwise distant father. No pressure. And then there's Liara T'Soni, whose mother is an extremely important spiritual figure. Her mother apparently mated with another member of the same species, which is a big no-no in their culture, so she's been ostracised nearly her entire life, leading her to run away from home and go on archaeological digs in the hopes of being known for something other than being her mother's daughter. That's the first game.
  • Wrex, who attended a Crush (meeting of tribes) at his father's request despite knowing that it was most likely a trap. (Granted, Wrex got to resolve his father issues by killing him, but Wrex spends the rest of his life fighting against his father's policies and beliefs, which most Krogan still share.)
  • It would take way too long to list all examples from the second game. Suffice to say, there are few characters who aren't on either the giving or the receiving end of this trope to some degree.
  • At the very least we have to mention Thane and his son Kolyat. Thane's whole loyalty mission is him trying to stop Kolyat from following in his footsteps and becoming an assassin, and in the end convincing his son that he was always proud of him is what really turns him away from it in the end. There's a reason it's called "Cat's in the Cradle."
    Thane: I've taken many bad things out of the world. You're the only good thing I ever added to it.
  • Meanwhile, if you have the spacer background, Commander Shepard gets to have a nice friendly chat with his/her mother.
  • David Anderson in the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC for the second game is revealed to have this relationship with his own son due to Anderson's workaholic nature estranging him from his family.
  • It may be easier to mention the characters who don't have fathers like these: Shepard, due to his/her parents being either dead, absent, or in the military themselves, Jack, who never knew her parents, but makes up for it in other ways, Ashley, who was very much Daddy's Girl before her father died and is more concerned with general family honor, and Kaidan, who seems to get along with his. Samara and Thane are this to their children, the rest have daddy issues except for Legion, who's a robot. This trope is lampshaded and mocked when Shepard talks with EDI in the third game.
    Shepard: How's your focus, EDI? Any big questions?
    EDI: No.
    Shepard: Any small questions?
    EDI: No.
    Shepard: Any lingering issues?
    EDI: About what?
    Shepard: An imperfect designer who could be seen as a warped father figure, maybe?
    EDI: Definitely not. Did something prompt this line of questioning?
    Shepard: I've just learned you have to ask about these things.
  • The geth are an entire race of robots who suffer from this. It turns out that the quarians initiated the Robot War and the geth only fought back to defend themselves, with every time the geth attempted to lay down arms, the quarians took advantage of the situation by opening fire, thus leading the geth to believe they would never back down. Despite this, they don't want to hurt them, still desperately want their creators' approval and will be terrified of doing any form of retaliation, let alone launching a preemptive attack against the quarians. The ensuing vulnerability of their situation is why some of the programs end up allying themselves to the Reapers, create the heretic geth, and clashes with the nonaggression stance of the mainstream geth, completely giving up any chances to reconcile with their creators.
    • In Mass Effect 3, Shepard sees a recording of a geth in the middle of being dismantled by a quarian engineer, desperately asking to know what they did wrong? What did it do that was so terrible, you might wonder? Ask if it had a soul.
  • A comic has Garrus remembering how his father taught him to shoot. This fast-forwards to his days as the Archangel on Omega to the point of his one-man stand-off against three gangs. He calls his father to have one last chat. When asked why so urgent, Garrus calmly states that there are too many targets. His father tells him to forget the final father-son conversation and gets all business about Garrus's assets and ammo, insisting that he survive so that he can come back to Palaven and talk things over. Garrus takes another look in the scope and sees the N7 logo on an armor. He tells his dad that the odds just went up before ending the call.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy and The Only One Allowed to Defeat You aside, all Bass of Mega Man (Classic) infamy wanted was for his creator Dr. Wily to acknowledge him as his greatest creation. Sadly, with the advent of Wily creating Maverick Zero and the Maverick Virus, Bass might be wrong.
• Metal Gear
  • Liquid Snake from Metal Gear Solid may have been this at one point, but has built up a deep-rooted resentment for his father as well as the one his father did show approval of: Solid Snake.
    • The Last Days of FOXHOUND exaggerates this part of Liquid's character to ridiculous proportions. Then it's revealed that Big Boss is doing it on purpose to help manipulate the boy better.
  • Solid Snake himself in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots doesn't feel like he's accomplished anything until Big Boss shows up to tell him 'well done'.
• Various dialogue in Neverwinter Nights 2 shows that the player character is frustrated at his foster father's lack of praise and emotional reactions. However, said foster father (Daeghun Farlong) has emotional problems of his own and did spend months looking for the player character after he vanished after the battle with the king of shadows.
• Odin Sphere:
  • For most of the game, Gwendolyn is constantly trying to prove herself as a warrior so that her father King Odin would be proud of and love her — a fact which Odin repeatedly uses to manipulate her. Eventually Gwendolyn wises up and gives up on her father in favor of choosing to be with Oswald, who earnestly cares for her. Ironically enough, she does this around the point Odin seems to start having a Heel Realization about his own actions toward her, but all he can do by that point is just let her go to Oswald.
  • Oswald himself strives single-mindedly to do whatever his adoptive father orders and admits that he could die happy as long as his father approved of him and loved him. Unfortunately, on his deathbed, his father spitefully rejects him for his failure and admits he never loved him, viewing Oswald as only a means to an end for his ambitions, little more than a tool. Soon after, Oswald is taken to the Netherworld by the Halja, having lost the will to protect himself in despair. With several chapters of his story left to go, however, he breaks out and finds a new meaning to live for.
  • Before the final boss of Velvet's book, it's revealed that the destruction of Valentine was caused by Ingway, who tampered with the Cauldron in order to save Odin from being killed in battle against Valentine's superior forces and didn't anticipate the scale of the reaction that would result. In the aftermath, Odin claimed the cauldron with nothing but a callous "Well done, traitor" for Ingway, inspiring Ingway to go to rather extreme lengths to call him out for it later on.
• Several conversations in Overwatch suggest that Pharah's relationship with her missing mother Ana is somewhere between this and Calling the Old Man Out.
  Mercy: Your mother always wanted you to follow in her footsteps.
  Pharah: She did? Funny, she never mentioned that to me...
  
  Soldier 76: Your mother would have been proud of you.
  Pharah: (dryly) You didn't know my mother very well, then.
  • It turns out that Pharah's bitterness was actually towards Overwatch itself for turning her mother into a Shell-Shocked Veteran. Ana is proud of what Pharah's become but never wanted her to become a soldier like herself. Pharah knows this, so her mother's colleagues saying otherwise rubs her the wrong way.
• Persona:
  • Persona 4 has this in some of its social links.
    • Kanji reveals near the end of his social link that he'd been haunted by one of the last things his father said before he died — that as a man, he has to be strong. Kanji, ashamed of his interest in and talent for handicrafts, gradually turned to dying his hair and acting as a Delinquent out of a false belief that it was what his father had in mind but eventually came to realize that true strength lies in the courage to be himself.
    • Shu Nakajima, a student the player character can tutor, is an exceptional student, and his mother often brags about him. Unfortunately, this leads him to conclude that the only way he can be connected with her is if he does well at school, so when a transfer student shows up and threatens his spot as the top student in the class, Shu is threatened enough to cheat on a test. After an explosive argument with his mother, the two apologize and vow to start over as a family after talking through their issues.
  • Persona 5 has a variation on this with the Niijima sisters: Sae is both Makoto's older sister and legal guardian, the latter occurring due to their father dying in the line of duty. Makoto works hard in order to lighten the burden on Sae, so she's greatly upset when Sae, in a fit of anger, calls her a burden. It later turns out that Sae is secretly jealous of Makoto's strong will and ability to fight for what she believes to be right.
    • A more tragic example is Goro Akechi, the wunderkind detective who's secretly working as The Dragon for Big Bad Masayoshi Shido. Goro reveals to the party in Shido's dungeon that he's his illegitimate son, and all of the horrifying things he has done for Shido — mostly involving driving his political opponents insane — was done as a part of a grand scheme that would end with him humiliating his father by revealing his parentage to the public. However, as revealed by a cognitive shadow of Goro -- a double representing how Shido sees him as a disposable puppet — deep down, he's also helping him because he wants to desperately be recognized by him as his son, to almost histrionic degrees.
• A particularly tragic example in Pillars of Eternity. The Old Engwithan King Od Nua's son and heir Manos Nua was by all means an extremely average and unremarkable child, but Od Nau still loved him dearly. In spite of this, Manos, however, believed that he still had to prove himself to his father somehow, and tried becoming a soldier, but this just resulted in him dying an ignoble death as he was slain in one of the very first battles he participated in. His death drove the gentle king mad with grief.
  Od Nua's Ghost: He wants only that I should be proud of him. How can a father convince his son that he might accomplish nothing, and still be the light of his life? How, if he is gone?
• Pony Island: Satan has a fit of rage when you cheat, revealing he is secretly desperate to win his father's praise.
• In Potion Permit, Runeheart is at odds with her mother because the latter's stern with her training to make her the successor to her smithing business. Runeheart's stubbornness isn't helping Opalheart either, and it culminates with them yelling at each other when Runeheart doesn't listen to Opalheart and ends up breaking the tool the former's forging. That's why Runeheart asks the Chemist for help in gathering materials to fix it and prove her worth to Opalheart. While Opalheart is proud that her daughter is reaching up to her standards, Runeheart confesses that she still didn't feel happy because she feels that she's being molded into her mother's image instead of developing her own style. Thankfully, the Chemist points out to her that she's good at mixing alloys, and this inspires her to specialize in them so she can forge her own identity.
• In Psychonauts, Raz's "inner demon" is a manifestation of his father, constantly taunting him for being a disappointment and a psychic. Eventually his real father, who looks nothing like the twisted monster that is Raz's internal interpretation of him, enters his mind and tells him that he just wanted Raz to be happy and safe.
  • It's actually even nicer than this — Raz believed the entire time that his father hated psychics and that he would hate Raz if he knew that Raz was psychic — when in fact his father is a psychic himself and didn't want Raz displaying his talents, not out of resentment but out of fear that ACTUAL psychic haters would persecute or harm him.
• An extremely unorthodox version happens in Splatoon 3 Side Order. The main villain of the campaign is a Digital Abomination named Order, who was created for the exact purpose his name implies. After being defeated, he is turned into a smaller, less violent version known as Smollusk (causing it to lost all of its power), who can be repeatedly fought with each weapon to release the trapped souls of other inklings and octolings. The thing that upsets Smollusk the most is the fact that it was programmed to create a perfectly orderly world where nothing changed, and it did exactly that, and yet its creator, Marina, is unhappy with it (given it was trying to basically delete free will). It cannot understand why since it was explicitly programmed for this purpose, and it is more upset that Marina isn't praising it over the fact you beat it again and again. In the end, it does earn this respect from Marina as an end-game boss for the spire as part of a new rehabilitation initiative.
• While not his father, Richard from Suikoden V is wicked attached to his father figure, Mueller, and is always trying to get his attention, impress him, and make him happy. Seriously, this kid's entire world revolves around Mueller, so much that he's willing to carry any Idiot Ball if it's for Mueller and it embarrasses Mueller.
  • An observant or min-maxing player might notice that Richard's stats and skills make him the most powerful character in the game. Presumably not a coincidence.
  • A straighter example is Suikoden IV's Snowe Vingerhut, who longs to please his powerful, manipulative father. He even calls his sword 'Daddy Blade'. If the blade is leveled up sufficiently, it is renamed to "Snowe Blade", which implies he grows past this.
• Super Mario Bros.: Bowser Jr. will do anything to make his father proud. However, it's a downplayed example, as Bowser is already extremely proud of his son, and he knows it; he just wants to keep making his dad proud.
• Luke from Tales of the Abyss has this sort of feeling towards Van till the end of the game, even after discovering his true intentions. He manages to outlive it though, finding his reason to live.
  Luke: I finally understand what it is I wanted. I wanted you to acknowledge me. To accept me as a human being, not a replica.
  Van: Yes. And you have become a human being.
  Luke: ...But that's not enough.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • According to the "Meet the Sniper" video, the Sniper's adopted parents do not care for the Sniper's career choice. He spends quite a bit of the video speaking on the phone to his unseen father, who seems to think that the Sniper's some kind of crazed gunman. The "Old Wounds" comic reveals that they came to terms with their son's job — or, considering that they've been dead for some time and the Sniper died the Medic's operating table when he "met" them in "Heaven", this may be the Sniper indulging in some wishful thinking. This ends up becoming an Idiot Ball of epic proportions when it turns out the Sniper's biological parents are pure evil: the father created the world's first successful spaceship by destroying his own city and using one ton of Australium as PAINT, and the mother's a bickering alcoholic. The Sniper puts his blind faith in them anyway, even while they're leaving him to die at the bottom of the ocean.
    • Granted, a later issue confirms Heaven (and Hell exists), so it appears that Sniper's vision may be genuine.
  • The Demoman's mother, on the other hand, disapproves of the fact that he only works three jobs and hasn't yet rid himself of more than a single eye because she knows that he'll eventually be blinded in the line of duty and unable to work.
    Mama Degroot: Mark me, Boy! No Demoman worth his sulfur has had an eye in his head past thirty!
  • Fanon says that the Soldier's issues are because of an overbearing (if not outright abusive) father (supplementary material states that the Blu Soldier has the real name of "Jane Doe", and while he is enough of a Cloud Cuckoolander to think that this is a brilliant pseudonym, this also could be a "Boy Named Sue" sort of situation), whereas the Scout's are because of a lack of stable male role models in his life.
    • The Scout thing is a confirmed but really complicated one: In the latest issue of the comic, the Scout, revealed to be named Jeremy, is dying and the Spy (in the guise of Tom Jones reveals that he is Scout's biological father. Scout has been hinted at having serious issues with Spy due to the Spy being intimate with his mom. Given how he's had dreams and possible suspicions of the Spy being his dad, there's possibly a part of Scout that wants Spy to accept him, but is also barred by their personalities clashing and the fact that Spy did run out on him when he was born.
• In the Tekken series Lee and Jin (a "Well Done Grandson Guy") all at some point or another felt this way towards Heihachi. Eventually, they learn that doing this won't get them anywhere and thus went off their own way.
  • Kazuya started this way as well. Heihachi throwing him off a cliff kind of ended that dream, though.
    • Adopting Lee into the family was actually supposed to induce this emotion in Kazuya, giving him someone to compete with and pushing him to achieve. Again, though, the cliff thing derailed that.
• Mondo Zax of WildStar had a terrible, terrible childhood, being the #13 of 13 children, tiny, and constantly looked over by his father. The mysterious disappearances of all 12 of his siblings (which he had no part of) was helpful in trying to get his attention, but unfortunately, "a heated argument over-engineering principles led to a familial schism between the two - one that was left unresolved when Mondo's father was inexplicably vaporized during a routine bot recalibration."^note From the official WildStar blog post about Mondo Zax and Victor Lazarin.
• Xenosaga Episode I and the first bits of Episode II have M.O.M.O. obviously trying to get approval from Juri Mizrahi. Since she looks so much like her big sister, Sakura, Juri is less than accepting, if not outright frightened of the girl, giving her manipulative bitch status when she told M.O.M.O. that they can live together only to keep her stabe during the Y-Data analysis. It's sad when Ziggy shows more parental love for the poor thing who went through being kidnapped, mind-raped, possibly raped for real. and helping save Second Militia. It takes Ziggy's advice and M.O.M.O. shutting down her mind to prevent Albedo from grabbing the Y-data to wake Juri up. By III, it seems M.O.M.O. and Juri have finally become a real family.
• Yes, Your Grace: If the player gets to the end of the game, Ivo will turn out to have accomplished many of his questionable acts in hope of impressing his Parental Neglect prone father.

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