Oedipus Complex

"''You murdered your father,

You married your mother.

You rascal!

You're my kind of guy!''"

- Madame Peep, Oedipus Tex by PDQ Bach

The Oedipal archetype deals with any conflict between father and son, particularly where the son must supplant the patriarch or must extricate himself from his father's shadow and find his own place in the world.

Much of the time this presents as the son's aim of removing his father to further himself in the eyes of his mother, not necessarily into her bed. This archetype shares some themes with both the Messianic Archetype (rebirth and renewal) and Tricksters (out with the old, in with the new).

The female equivalent, of wanting to kill the mother and sleep with the father, was called the Electra complex by Carl Jung, but this term was rejected by Freud, saying that 'feminine Oedipus complex' sufficed. This makes sense, since the character of Electra in the plays of both Sophocles (who wrote Oedipus) and Euripides saw her more in filial love and deep mourning for her father and in need of some good revenge against her murderous mother. The story of this family is another trope altogether, anyway.

It's fairly difficult to use this trope explicitly, since the psychological aspects of the mother figure involved are usually lost to cruder imaginations.

Compare Well Done Son Guy, Calling the Old Man Out, and "Atonement With The Father" from The Hero's Journey. If murder seems to be a viable solution, it's probably Patricide.

Oedipus Rex, the Greek Tragedy dramatized in 429 BCE by Sophocles, is the Trope Namer, and Sigmund Freud is the Trope Codifier. Oedipus, however, is not a true example of the trope because Oedipus never knew who his mother and father were until it was too late. He does not discover until long after the fact that he has killed his father, or that he has married his mother, and is horrified on both counts.

Anime and Manga
"Janine: This is Janine. How are you doing? Falkner in Violet City... he’s talking about his dad all the time! Seriously, he’s such a daddy’s boy, he needs to become his own person sometime, you know? What do you mean, I should talk? Ha ha--mind your own business! -click-"
 * Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion is an interesting example. His mother is dead and he wants approval from his father, and resents him for not giving said approval. It would be a lot healthier for Shinji if he just straight up hated his father. And while he doesn't want to sleep with his mother, Shinji is, which is all sorts of intimate.
 * Rebuild of Evangelion pretty much brings Shinji's Oedipus complex to the next level;
 * The manga adaptation adds the additional spin of a reverse-Oedipus Complex; Gendo states that part of why he was such a terrible father to Shinji is that he resented the fact that after Shinji was born he no longer had Shinji's mother to himself.
 * Ayato Kamina from Rah Xephon. Although he only gave vibes to this (considering another trope comes into effect later), while it was more explicit with towards  Your Mileage May Vary on whether or not it's weirder than Shinji and Rei, because neither of these two guys have the benefit of the girl in question being just a clone.
 * Baki from Baki the Grappler starts off wanting to beat his father to make his mother happy, then because he figures out his father is out of his damn mind after he does crap like getting one step from killing an important governmental figure just to prove he can and
 * In Fullmetal Alchemist, although Ed and Al both have crushes on mother figures, Ed is the one who seems afflicted with the full Oedipal syndrome complete with a love-hate relationship with his father, whom he emulated to become an alchemist (originally to please his mom) but also repeatedly insults and beats up (the fact that he also suffers from a bad case of parental abandonment only makes matters worse for him... and for Hohenheim).
 * In the anime,.
 * In the manga,.
 * Seishiro Sakurazuka of X 1999 had an... interesting relationship with his mother, Setsuka, who was one disturbed woman.  Oh, and he killed her. At her request.
 * Dr. Black Jack has some issues to work out concerning his parents. For example: when his estranged father contacts and hires him to conduct reconstructive plastic surgery on his second wife Renka to make her the "most beautiful woman in the world," Black Jack decides to makes her look exactly like his mother -- Half because he wanted to constantly torment his father with the face of the woman he ran out on, and half because he actually did think his mother was most beautiful woman in the world.
 * "Syaoran" of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle has been recently revealed to have this, being in love with what appears to be an alternate universe clone of his mother. Played with a bit in that instead of wanting to kill his father, he wants to be him. To the point that he's been going by his father's name since he was seven and for several years (until it was revealed that he was the son of Syaoran) he was thought to be his father by most of the fandom, as he looks exactly like him, acts similarly, has identical abilities, etc.
 * The problem has later been justified or muddled, its hard to tell, by the fact that his father is apparently his clone, and his mother is a clone of his own Sakura.
 * At precisely which point in the either 4-man or 2-man loop (which one it is depends on perspective) this trope sets in is a matter best left to philosophers on illegal substances with mental disorders. The philosophers have the mental disorders. Probably.
 * The Lancer of Digimon Savers, Touma, is very cool to his father, Franz Norstein, but is endlessly devoted to Relena, his younger half-sister, and clearly adores his deceased mother. This is both made obvious and foreshadowed by his almost instant "crush" on Masaru's mother and younger sister.
 * from Trigun has one big, big problem with his adopted dad / tyrannical father figure. Interestingly, . Also note that there are indications that unlike his manga equivalent,   has genuine affection for his young 'charge', albeit in a completely twisted way.
 * Also note that in the anime, the very same character . When he was six years old.
 * In fact, one could also make a point about anime, who kills a character who acts as a sort of father figure to him.
 * I can think of two of these from Pocket Monsters. In the manga Pokémon Special, Ruby runs away from home to escape his father Norman and prove to him that he can live his dreams. In the end, he sees that everything Norman did was really out of love for Ruby. Later, Silver finds out that his father is Giovanni. He refuses to accept this at first, but Blue talks him out of it eventually. In the games, the implication of Giovanni being Silver's dad remains.
 * And it went from implied to outright confirmed in HeartGold / SoulSilver.
 * No mention of Falkner and Janine? Those kids have got some very apparent daddy issues, not only in the games (in which they're the new gym leaders to their respective gym, overshadowed by their fathers, who were the previous gym leaders), but also in the manga (same issue as above, but both fathers are currently missing, which adds frustration to both of them at one point in the manga). A call from Janine on the Pokegear in HGSS even lampshades this:


 * Lelouch Lamperouge, the protagonist of Code Geass, has the ultimate goal of learning who killed his mother, and then killing his father the Emperor, whether or not he's responsible. Of course, since momma Marianne is portrayed as only two steps short of sainthood, and poppa Charles is a Social Darwinist Jerkass, his attitude may be justified.
 * Episode 21 of R2 plays it straight:
 * Somewhat twisted in that
 * Big Screwed Up Family, indeed.
 * The main theme of the manga Kamisama Kazoku, as main character Samataro wants to prove that he doesn't need his father, a god, doing everything in his omnipotent (and bumbling) power to make Samataro's life easier. Samataro's goddess mother self-admittedly adores her son like a lover, and repeatedly shocks and embarrasses him with her Innocent Fanservice Girl ways.
 * Female example from Iono the Fanatics, the titular character's love of black hair was because of her mother. Made rarer by the fact that there is no father in the equation. And even weirder since Iono has black hair herself.
 * Mahou Sensei Negima may very well have this is the basis for lead Negi's need to chase his father (or it could just be a traumatic need for love) Also.
 * And on the subject of people who love their parents, almost disturbingly, we have Yuuna and her feelings for her father. This is taken to a disturbing level in the most recent chapter; when Haruna brings up the subject of "deep, passionate kissing" (supposedly for Pactio purposes), Yuuna remarks that she wouldn't mind if it were her dad. The other girls are quite Squicked by this revelation.
 * Andrei Smirnov utterly loathes his father, who he blames for the death of his mother.
 * In the same series, Setsuna is attracted to Princess Marina Ismail on account of her resemblance to his mother.
 * Nataku of Houshin Engi has some serious daddy-issues surrounding the nature of his existence, and his mother is more or less his Morality Chain.
 * Tsuna from Katekyo Hitman Reborn. He develops a huge crush on Kyoko, whom he hardly interacts with or knows much about. One thing is very noticeable about her, however: she looks exactly like his mother. Even their personalities are very much alike. In addition to that, he's very uncomfortable with talking with his father (who was pretty much a Disappeared Dad for a lot of his life).
 * Seto Kaiba's competition with his adopted father forms his Backstory in the Yu-Gi-Oh manga and is given its own arc in the anime version.
 * Kaiba's third Expy on Yu-Gi-Oh GX, Edo Phoenix, also undergoes this when he duels his adopted father in revenge for killing his biological father.
 * In Cardcaptor Sakura, Sakura has a crush on Yukito who looks like her father. She even Lampshades it.
 * Gankutsuou: The manga implies that Albert is looking for a father figure in the Count because he has issues with his authoritarian real father. He also has an interesting relationship with his mother.
 * There's also Andrea who takes this to the logical extreme:
 * Cygnus Hyoga from Saint Seiya with his dead frozen mother Natasha.
 * Hare of Hare+Guu has a bit of an implied crush on his mom. His father isn't likely to be on the best terms with him either.
 * Subverted in the case of Tohru Honda, whose love of her mother reached near-worshipful levels. This lead to her secretly considering her father to be a "bad man" simply because she feared he'd take her mother away (her father loved her very much, and she remembered that he took good care of her). Played straight with
 * In FLCL, Naota's father Kamon is constantly making passes at Haruko and Naota keeps catching them in Not What It Looks Like situations. Meanwhile Haruko is aggressively flirting with Naota. In the fourth episode, Naota snaps and accidentally kills Kamon, but it turns out to be a robotic duplicate of him, and his actual father is a decaying corpse in the closet. He comes Back From the Dead later in the episode and they make up.
 * In Gun X Sword, we have William Will Woo,  Because of this, he seeks redemption by blindly following his father  to to atone for what he did, telling Van he did it all 'for his sake'. Is of the 'worships his mother to extreme levels' type, which allows him to use The Power of Love in his battle against Van, although it's debatable whether it's lust or love, as he is seen naked around her portrait most of the time.
 * In Free Soul, an Electra complex is what drives a good deal of  behavior.

Comic Books

 * The 2000 Comic Book run of Captain Marvel has said hero destroy the universe at the behest of Entropy and Epiphany, actually Anthropomorphic Personification children of the Anthropomorphic Personification of the universe. Later he dies and beats up his own dad on the other side.
 * Ultron, the killer robot nemesis of the Avengers, hates his 'father' Hank Pym, and loves his 'mother' Janet Van Dyne.
 * Ultron at one point created a sexy fem-bot using Janet Van Dyne's psyche as the template for her robotic intelligence. As a shout-out to the Trope Namer, he named this fem-bot Jocasta, which is the name of Oedipus' mother.
 * The obsession has gone far enough that in a more recent appearance, Ultron made himself into a herself,using Tony Stark's body/armor in order to form a biomechanical clone body of Janet.
 * The DCU is full of this also it is strictly subtext.There are Batman-the first Robin-Catwoman Batman-the second Robin-Talia Batman-the first Robin-Batgirl Aquaman-Tempest-Dolphin Green Arrow-Arsenal-Black Canary Superman-Superboy-Lana/Lois.
 * To simplify it somewhat, anyone who's A: a sidekick or B: a younger/alternate version of a hero has had iffy subtext with someone they shouldn't have had it with. This goes double (triple?) for Batman and the Robins (even after they've stopped being Robin).
 * And you thought Ultron was sick.
 * AGAIN with DC Comics: Each Brother Blood, the leader of the Church of Blood, has ascended to his position by killing his father (the previous "Brother Blood") and making his mother the new High Priestess.

Film
"Dr. Ben Sobel: Oedipus was a Greek king who killed his father and married his mother.
 * Luke Skywalker, who goes straight from Parental Abandonment into Oedipus Rex territory following the now famous Luke I Am Your Father moment.
 * Actually, Luke doesn't seem to have much of a problem with this. He does ask Leia briefly about his mother, but he doesn't seem particularly attached to her. And once he learns Vader is his father he wants to save him, rather than kill him.
 * Anakin Skywalker is a much better example. He's practically obsessed with his mother. He marries an older woman who looks like his mother. His mother's death is one of the things that drives him to the Dark Side. He supposedly doesn't have a biological father, but Palpatine is hinted to have used the Force to create him and acts as a father figure. Obi Wan is also a father figure to Anakin. Guess what happens to both of them.
 * Perhaps this is In the Blood, since in the Star Wars Expanded Universe (Fate of the Jedi: Allies onward), Luke's son Ben likes a girl who's similar to his (dead) mother, and sides with her over his father in every argument...
 * Back to The Future has a lot of fun with this, but most obviously comes down on the side of 1inversion; neither Lorraine or George are aware that 'Calvin Klein' is their future son Marty, but Lorraine wants to get very close to Marty (much to his horror), and rather than supplanting his father Marty has to do the exact opposite and build him up to make sure that his family fortunes end up okay.
 * Amusingly mentioned in Analyze This:

Boss Paul Vitti: Fuckin' Greeks."


 * Junior, also known as Engine Trouble, featured a bizarre version where the protagonist attempts to seduce the mentally disabled title murderer, by dressing as his mother and then proceeding to grab his crotch to get him to drop his weapon. She then sets him on fire. This works.
 * This seems to be at play in Psycho.
 * While Lilli never knew her birth mother in Snow White: A Tale of Terror, her initial hatred of her stepmother is sparked by jealousy that someone else was taking her father's attention away. This leads to one interesting scene, where Lilli wears one of her mother's dresses to a party, in the hopes of impressing her father.

Literature

 * Hesiod made a plot of this in his Theogony, in which the god Cronos overthrows his abusive father Ouranos, then abuses his own children until his son Zeus overthrows Cronos.
 * A recurring theme in Dennis Lehane's Kenzie and Gennaro Series. The Hero, Patrick Kenzie, hates his abusive father more than anybody else on Earth. Also, the first book features gang leader Roland Angeline and his father Marion Socia, who end up waging a brutal gang war against each other. And the third book subverts it by featuring.
 * Brave New World: John the Savage really likes his mother.
 * In Harry Potter, Voldemort killed his Disappeared Muggle Dad.
 * Adding to this, it is also apparent in his later years that Voldemort at least respected his mother for giving birth to him, while still despising his father. Even more interesting is that Severus Snape also hated his father enough for fans to speculate that's where his muggle prejudice stemmed from while attaching himself the name "Prince", taken from his mother, and being fond of Lily Evans who had maternal attributes. Then there's Harry Potter who practically married Lily 2.0, minus the green eyes. Not to mention he has showed much devotion to her memory throughout the series, a great deal more than his father. And although Harry never hated his father, he was disgusted with James's behavior in Snape's memory enough to wonder why Lily ever married him in the first place.
 * Interestingly, in the case of Voldemort, we see that it starts out as an inversion. He excitedly figures that he inherited his magical powers from his father, because in his mind, his mother was too weak to have them because she died. (Not exactly love, but it's as close as the Creepy Child ever got)
 * William de Worde from The Truth hates his father, but his mother is a complete nonentity.
 * The Oedipal conflict between King Arthur and Mordred is what brings down the Round Table.
 * This is taken Up to Eleven in The Once and Future King, when Mordred
 * The main character's son in Boris Johnson's Seventy Two Virgins is referred to as having an Oedipus complex; the book opens with a number of examples of his sinister behaviour towards the protagonist.
 * Nicholas Harpole and Alec Checkerfield from The Company Novels have a real doozy of a situation:
 * An inversion occurs in Washington Square--Aunt Penniman and Morris correspond heavily throughout the story (she fancies herself a match maker for her niece), and while she finds him attractive and charming, she also loves him like the son she never had with her late husband. Morris, on the other hand, despises her.
 * In John C Wright's The Golden Age, the amnesiac Phaethon learns that he is suing to have his father Helion declared dead. Later he offers Helion the information he needs to restore a lost hour to his memory and so be the same person -- at a price. Only in The Golden Transcedence does Daphne reveal to Helion that
 * Haruki Murakami's Kafka On the Shore has this...plus 1.
 * Older Than Dirt: The ancient Hittite story called "The Kingship of Heaven" tells the myth that may have inspired Hesiod's Theogony: The god Alalu is overthrown by his son Anu, he's then overthrown by his son Kumarbi, and he in turn gets overthrown by his son Teshub. Teshub is a thunder god like Zeus, and Kumarbi bites off sky-god Anu's genitals, just as Cronos later castrated the sky-god Ouranos. Like Cronos, Kumarbi produces some of his children from his own body, though in this case it's male pregnancy resulting from said castration.
 * In the Twilight series, Bella constantly refers to Edward as a father figure and is cared for by him in a parental fashion (he holds her in his lap, carries her around, sings her to sleep, etc). Interestingly, Bella doesn't interact in any of those ways with her actual father.
 * In-story example: in Tender Is the Night, a group watches the aptly-named movie Daddy's Girl at the end of which a young woman comes back to her father. Although most of the audience is overjoyed by the ending, the psychanalist Dick Diver is described as wincing because of the obvious implications of Oedipus complex. Yes: somewhere, a psychanalist is wincing.
 * In Devon Monk's Allie Beckstrom novel Magic to the Bone, Allie fought quite hard to extricate herself from her father.

Live Action TV

 * Lee Adama on Battlestar Galactica is presented as forever looking for a way out from under his father's influence. As Lee is a fighter pilot and his father is his commanding officer, this is more than a little difficult. He gets a bit closer to actually doing so in Season Four.
 * And on the Cylon side, complete with frakking his humanoid Cylon "mother".
 * Lost is chock-full of this. Nearly every character has some sort of paternal baggage, and
 * Jim Profit, on Profit, takes this archetype to the logical extreme --by murdering his father and having sex with his (step)mother.
 * Possibly Matt McNamera on Nip/Tuck.
 * Connor on Angel, paralleling Oedipus to an unusually large extent -- to many viewers' disgust. No, Cordelia wasn't Connor's mother, but she did change his diapers. The previous year.
 * It's lampshaded by the captured Angelus: "Doing your mom and trying to kill your dad. Hmm. There should be a play." Of course this taunt is clearly meant for viewers; Connor was raised in another dimension and has no idea what he's referencing, and in any case from his perspective has no reason to see Cordelia as someone maternal.
 * In a rare maternal case, in Two and A Half Men Charlie and Alan loathe their mother, Evelyn. Although not shown or implied to hate their father(s), considering how many husbands she went through (at least four) during their childhood, it's not likely that they'd actually care about him/them, either.
 * In one episode, Charlie dates a woman who dresses and acts eerily similar to Evelyn.
 * Merlin -
 * In The X Files, Scully once admitted to being turned on by men who reminded her of her father.
 * Inverted with Francis in Malcolm in The Middle, he absolutely hates his mother, yet doesn't seem to mind his dad too much. He does, however, end up dating and marrying an Eskimo lady who had a very similar demeanor as his mother, though.
 * The Monk episode Mr. Monk and the Three Julies had the Red Herring suspect, a schizophrenic man named Matthew Teeger, being almost completely obsessed with his mother, almost to Norman Bates levels, once even severely injuring his stepdad under the belief that the stepdad was hurting her, and even taxyderming his mother after she died in order to keep people thinking that she was still alive, including himself apparently. However, despite these facts, it turns out that he's completely harmless, or at least not the person targeting the various Julie Teegers.
 * Boardwalk Empire features James Darmody, who is extremely close to his (thirteen years older) mother, Gillian. Eventually, we learn that

Music
"I'm callin ya Daddy
 * There are Electra overtones in Lady Gaga's music, most notably:
 * The line "Daddy, I'm so sorry, I'm so s-s-sorry, yeah" in "Beautiful, Dirty, Rich";
 * The line "Her boyfriend's like a dad, just like a dad" in "Alejandro";
 * The line "Papa-Paparazzi" in, well, Paparazzi, always spelled "Papa" and not "Pa-Pa".
 * Speechless is apparently about her father.
 * Also, Regina Spektor's song "Oedipus".
 * The Doors' "The End".
 * "Momma's Boy", by Chromeo.
 * Erika Shevon in Twista's "Wetter":

Can you be my daddy

I need a daddy

Won't you be my daddy"


 * There once lived a man named Oedipus Rex/You may have heard about his odd complex/His name appears in Freud's index/'cause he loved his mother...

Theater
""Oedipus won't bomb/if he winds up with mom""
 * Though Oedipus Rex is not a true example, the story of Phaedra is more Oedipal. Kinda. Phaedra, wife of Theseus, is in love with her stepson, Hippolytus. He is appropriately squicked out, and this drives her crazy so she tells Theseus that Hippolytus raped her. It all ends with Hippolytus being eaten by a sea monster in the middle of the grassland, and Phaedra drinks some poison to kill herself.
 * Euripides's tragedy Hippolytus recounts this myth, though with the monster sent from Poseidon causing Hippolytus's chariot to crash and Phaedra hanging herself.
 * Harold Pinter's plays. Though, to be honest, everybody hates everybody in the Pinter verse.
 * Hamlet. Although the title character ostensibly wants to kill his stepfather/uncle in order to avenge his father, generations of Shakespeare scholars, directors and actors have seen a deeper, less conscious motive. Let's just say that Hamlet may have more than the normal filial affection for Gertrude. Mel Gibson's 1990 film version especially plays up this aspect of their relationship.
 * Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra adapts a classic Greek tragic trilogy, the Orestia, relocating it to New England after the end of the Civil War. Incestuous undertones are a major motivation of the murderous actions of the characters--at the least, both of the children display unhealthy obsession with the parent of the opposite gender, and deep-seated dislike of the parent of the same gender.
 * In Peter Pan, Wendy had subtle undertones of an electra complex.
 * Taken Up to Eleven in the 2003 movie.
 * The Phantom of the Opera - part of Christine's attraction to The Phantom is that he reminds her of her father.
 * Pointed out in The Producers song "Keep It Gay"

Video Games

 * Final Fantasy X is the most Oedipal game ever. Tidus, The Hero, hates his father, Jecht, with a passion. Not only has his entire blitzball career played out in the shadow of his famous father, as a child he was also constantly competing with him for the mother's attention. The fact that his father was basically an insensitive, alcoholic bastard might also have had something to do with it, though... and of course,  Compounding the Freudian sub text is one of the game's primary antagonists, Maester Seymour Guado. To sum up: He loved his mother deeply, but she out of misguided love for him felt that the only way for him to be accepted in a xenophobic world would be for him to become a High Summoner and use her as his Final Aeon. The end result was Mommy dearest becoming this. As for his father, Jyscal, Seymour kills him before the game even starts to gain his position as Maester (think fantasy!pope, or maybe just a cardinal) as part of a long and convoluted Evil Plan to Mercy Kill the entire planet, and presumably as revenge for his father exiling him. In addition to the practical gains made by removing Jyscal, the backstory hints at how Jyscal was not a loving parent--nor even a presence in his life, really, as he spent his childhood in seclusion with his mother--hence Seymour grew to resent and hate him. And none of this is going into Yuna's ...relationship with her father. Truly, the issues of the characters in this Final Fantasy iteration are staggering.
 * Of course, by the end Tidus' mother is long since dead and he . It's more explicit in Dissidia, where Tidus is explicit about his feelings.
 * Persona 2 had a Five Man Band, and their fathers...
 * Hinted at with Sephiroth of Final Fantasy VII but completely exaggerated in the fandom. That said, he is obsessed with what he perceives as his "mother" and he absolutely hates his father, (even if he doesn't know who his father is)
 * Funnily enough, he doesn't seem to pay much attention to his birth-mother (well, of the regular kind), Lucrecia, most likely not even knowing she existed.
 * Dissidia Final Fantasy (as noted above) not only features a streamlined (but ultimately less hostile) version of the Tidus/Jecht conflict, but has another example that you need to read inbetween the lines to uncover. Cosmos and Chaos have a substantial amount of Foe Yay going on between the scenes. It is later on revealed that despite their status as the Goddess of Harmony and God of Discord, the two once benevolently ruled the world together in bliss, apparently as lovers. Now here comes the Squick: There are so many Freudian and Oedipal overtones just oozing from this.
 * Like Luke Skywalker, it goes for Lloyd Irving from Tales of Symphonia (although, of course, considerably less famously).
 * Devil May Cry bleeds Oedipal subtext, no shortness of thanks going to Dante's love interest who looks exactly like his mother. The new game looks poised to continue this tradition with the new main character's non-blood mother-figure.
 * Laharl has shown signs of this, claiming that he wanted to kill his father. (How much of that is just bluster is unknown). His Implied Love Interest, Flonne, is also stated to be very much like his dead mother, and this trope is brought up when Thursday and Captain Gordon, Defender of Earth! find a picture of the late Queen in Laharl's bedroom in Disgaea Infinite.
 * Mao spends almost all of Disgaea 3 training to kill his father. Subverted when it turns out that
 * Sasha Nein of Psychonauts has no mother, as the player finds out when accessing his memories. He remembers her death, and as a child practised his unfamiliar psychic abilities on his father, who was tight-lipped about his mother. His father unknowingly supplies many of his own memories of Sasha's mother via psychic means, including one nearly-explicit memory that makes Sasha retreat like a bat out of hell.
 * Raz himself also has this going on, since he states that his father has him train constantly as an acrobat and rejects his attempts to use his psychic powers, as well as psychic gypsies cursing his family with Super Drowning Skills, which leads to Raz's mental image of his father as a psychic-hating sadist.
 * Coach Oleander, as a child was traumatized by the fact that
 * Basically deconstructed as Raziel's entire character arc in Legacy of Kain. His entire motivation initially seems to be to exact revenge on his father Kain after an apparently very Oedipal preventive attempted infanticide. However,
 * In Garou: Mark of the Wolves, Rock Howard is pretty much defined by his hate of his Disappeared Dad, Geese.
 * The simplest way of describing the entire plot of the Metal Gear saga is this trope. For every major character in it. Yes, all of them.
 * Bonus points to Naked Snake for having an Oedipus complex plot with a woman who is, biologically, unrelated to him.
 * Electra complex in Silent Hill Shattered Memories. "I love my daddy," indeed.
 * A good part of the reason why  from Fire Emblem Jugdral is so fucked up comes from this, since
 * But wait! There's more! It's pretty much all but stated in the Oosawa manga and side materials that
 * It Got Worse. That was planned by a Complete Monster Magnificent Bastard, and
 * But then again,
 * It's not explicitly stated in the story itself, but Akai Ito can be approximately summarized as Oedipus Complex meets Girls Love. Of the girls that the main character (a girl named Kei) can end-up living together with, two of them are as if mother to her. Another one come from a family of her mother.
 * There's an interesting example in Metal Gear Solid. The members of the Cobra Unit all regard The Boss as a mother figure... including The Sorrow who would go on to become her Love Interest and the father of her child. This is, unsurprisingly, made fun of in this strip of The Last Days of Foxhound.
 * In Double Switch, gives off very strong vibes of this, because he apparently wishes that his father was dead, and he loves his mother. In fact, he did say something like "Why don't you just get out of our lives?!" to his father.

Web Comics

 * In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob, Molly the monster goes through a brief period of this with Bob, but concludes she was just confused about her feelings.
 * In Blip, one of the girls gets set up on a blind date with a guy who ends up mentioning his mom a little bit too much. This turns out to be one of the least creepy things about him.
 * In Impure Blood the father tries to foil the son's plots by persuading him to give them up.
 * In Endstone, father and son argue about the Banestone.
 * In Our Little Adventure, Julie's big brother quarrelled with their father and left home.

Web Original
"Slowbeef: Oedipus would be like, "This kid is fucking creepy"."
 * Slowbeef pointed this out in Retsupurae's A Son's Revenge Retsuflash

Western Animation
"Walt: (right after being insulted and slapped by Mom) "Some day I want to marry a girl like her.""
 * The South Park episode "201" retcons "" into this:
 * While not biologically his dad, this is pretty much textbook example of this trope between Danny Phantom and Vlad Masters/Plasmius. The fandom couldn't be happier.
 * Another Two Words: Prince Zuko.
 * His sister, Princess Azula, could be argued to have something of an Electra Complex herself.
 * Azula is Daddys Little Villain and doesn't have a prevailing complex about him, which stands in stark contrast to Zuko, who's borderline obsessed with earning his love up until his Heel Face Turn (and, notably, has no complex toward his mother as this trope may imply at first glance).
 * Thailog of Gargoyles is an Evil Twin of Goliath, cloned by Doctor Sevarius and trained by Xanatos; his goal in life is to upstage all three fathers (or at least Goliath and Xanatos, Sevarius not so much). Taken to unsettling extremes concerning the women in Goliath's clan, as he has seduced Goliath's ex-mate Demona and made a pass at his daughter. At one point, he cloned Evil Twins of the rest of the clan, and while he was at it he cloned a concubine, Delilah, for himself, made from a combination of DNA from both Goliath's previous and current love interests. Creepy...
 * The latter was one of Thailog's major Kick the Dog moments, since Demona had no idea he would create Delilah (she was involved with the cloning of the others), and he more or less stated outright that Delilah was her replacement.
 * Tai Lung and Shifu of Kung Fu Panda. Though never explicitly stated in the film (par for the course for this trope), both the Subtext and information revealed elsewhere imply that by naming Tai Lung "Dragon" and filling the snow leopard's head with dreams and fantasies about becoming the Dragon Warrior, Shifu was living vicariously through his son -- trying to turn the foundling into what he was not and could never be. By the same token, it's fairly clear that aside from wanting to earn the red panda's pride and approval, Tai Lung fully intended to prove himself Shifu's better and replace him, both at the Jade Palace and as the ultimate kung fu warrior in the valley.
 * Clay from Moral Orel, largely courtesy of the fact his mother spoiled him rotten and ignored his father to the point of leaving him to eat Clay's leftovers. His Oedipus Complex is played quite disgustingly in the episode Nesting, in which . Needless to say, Clay's antagonism towards his father is also very intense.
 * Walt from Futurama. It's supposedly what keeps him in line, although he's not especially bright in any case. Most worryingly, when he shamelessly admits it, his brothers actually smile in a manner that suggests they agree with him.


 * In an episode of The Simpsons, Homer fears that Marge and Bart have fallen in love. Lisa brings up this term when talking to Homer.
 * Stan seems to really like his mother.
 * Hell, the episode's title is "Oedipal Panties".
 * In Adventure Time, Marceline has issues with her dad and fond memories of her mom. At one point, she gets in a scrap with her father that he takes to be Marceline "finally trying to take down [her] old man", although she's rather upset by the suggestion.