- Alternative Character Interpretation: Did Bruce genuinely care about Ron or not? While he did kill him, he was also drunk and on edge, before that point he was shown to have some awareness about maintaining the family and his son’s birthday, additionally, he clearly felt awful, after he was sober, about murdering his son.
- Jerkass Woobie: Ron’s mother. She was a negligent mother and spouse, who lied to her son about forgetting his birthday, while guilt tripping him into giving her sympathy. But, she’s also the only provider of the family who has to deal with the physically abusive, alcoholic, and ungrateful Bruce as her husband, and when she’s on her way to pick up Ron after her and her husband finalize their divorce, she comes back to find her son dead in the closet, and it’s clear she’s devastated. Granted, it showed how neglectful she was when she left her son alone with her abusive husband after announcing that she was divorcing him. But still, it was shown that she was genuinely heartbroken at the loss of her son, and she probably blames herself for his death for leaving him with her abusive husband.
- Memetic Mutation: Bad Parenting Effect explanation
- Realism-Induced Horror: Take away the supernatural elements of Mr. Red Face and the ghost of children; the series' first story shows a genuine issue of parental abuse and neglect and how it harms the child and destroys both the parents and the child.
- The first story shows a family of an abusive alcoholic father who drinks all day and abuses his son and a Workaholic, neglectful mother who well may or may not be having an affair and is spending a lot of time away from the house than being a wife and mother. And then you have a sweet, innocent child who, despite the neglect and abuse he is suffering, loves both his parents and wants to be happy with them. As stated before, the father is an abusive alcoholic who gives no care to his son, and the mother, despite not being abusive, is neglectful to the point where she doesn’t spend time with her son, even when she promises that she will spend a day with him. When she broke her promise, the son was not surprised, stating that she broke her promise again.
- This all comes ahead when, after an argument and some hitting, the mother decides that she has had enough and is going to leave her husband. She decides she will leave the house, and if the husband is still there, she and her son will leave. The mother left the house, not worried about leaving her son with her abusive, alcoholic ex-husband. Eventually, the husband snapped because of the divorce, killed their son, and ran away, and the mother, returning home, found her son's body to her heartbreak and explained what happened to the police. This is a tragedy, all too real in the real world where a family is so toxic and dysfunctional because of the parents, selfishness, and their child dies an applicable death because neither of them would think about the child in the situation. Eventually, the child dies, and the parents are destroyed because of their selfish and toxic actions.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ymmv/BadParenting
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