Big Screwed-Up Family: Difference between revisions

{{quote|"''Never trust a relative. It is far worse than trusting strangers. With a stranger there is a possibility that you might be safe.''"|'''Corwin''', ''[[Book of Amber]]''.}}

 

 

 

This family is often contrasted by the existence of a more traditional, if poorer, family, where everyone loves and supports each other despite occasional bickering.

* The Vongola family in [[Katekyo Hitman Reborn]] is the biggest Mafia family in the story and has its share of [[Cain and Abel]] [http://www.onemanga.com/Katekyo_Hitman_Reborn/1/32/ killings] and freakish [http://www.onemanga.com/Katekyo_Hitman_Reborn/31/07/ traditions]. This is initially played for laughs but following the manga's [[Genre Shift]], it means that the [[Unexpected Successor]] Tsuna receives daily death threats {{spoiler|to the point that he claims he'll destroy the family if he has to carry on its bloody legacy}}.

* ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]:''

** The former British Empire. Canada and Seychelles are pretty much [[Butt Monkey|ignored.]] Nobody cares about [[The Unfavourite|Sealand]]. England had a terrible relationship with his other siblings, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and also possibly has an [[All Love Is Unrequited|unrequited]] love towards [[Love Hurts|America]], whom he [[Brother-Sister Incest|adopted]].

** The Asians. China is an [[Adult Child]] [[Woobie]] who getsa no respect anywhere, Japan is a [[Inscrutable Oriental]] who is ''very'' complex to say it politely, Korea is a [[Keet]] who isn't taken seriously even by Japan and China, Hong Kong is a [[Trickster]] with a perfect poker face, Taiwan is arguably one of the most normal and yet she can't also take China seriously, etc.

* ''[[Repo! The Genetic Opera]]'' has the Largo family. It has [[Manipulative Bastard|Rotti]], [[The Brainless Beauty|Pavi]], [[Psychopathic Manchild|Luigi]], and [[The Vamp|Amber]]. They're [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder|constantly bickering]], and Luigi and Amber are [[Brother-Sister Incest|eerily close]].

* ''[[The Royal Tenenbaums]]''. They'd probably be happier if it weren't for [["Well Done, Son" Guy|dad]].

* The titular family in ''The Magnificent Ambersons'', in Orson Welles' movie as well as the original book.

* ''[[The Lion in Winter]]'', film and play. Henry II of England, his estranged wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, three sons, and one French king (who's also the boyfriend of one of the princes). Each plots against most or all of the others, over the course of the story. Lampshaded by Eleanor: "All families have their little ups and downs."

* The Prescotts in the ''[[Scream (film)|Scream]]'' series. Sidney's mother was [[Really Gets Around|the village bicycle]] who was murdered for breaking up a marriage, her father was in jail after being {{spoiler|wrongly}} accused of killing her, she had a [[Long-Lost Relative|long-lost half-brother]] who {{spoiler|became a film director and then tried to kill her because "she got all the attention"}}, her little cousin was {{spoiler|a narcissistic, fame-hungry psychopath who engaged in mass murder to try and make herself a celebrity like Sidney}}, and of course, Sidney herself is frequently stalked by [[Serial Killer|serial killers]].

* Madea's family in ''[[Madea's Family Reunion]]''. Her niece Lisa is in an abusive relationship with a man she doesn't love. Meanwhile her sister Vanessa was allowed to be raped by her stepfather so that he wouldn't leave her mother, Victoria, who was sold by ''her'' junkie mother for 10 dollars and a fix.

* The Browns from ''[[Buffalo '66]]'' fit this trope. The mom is a sports nut that ignores anything that doesn't have to do with the Buffalo Bills, the father is a basket case who lip synchs to old records and accuses his son of trying to stab him (a knife was on the dinner table), and Billy is a [[Man Child]] who resorted to a life of crime.

* ''[[Melancholia]]'': The only issue-free person is Clair's little boy, who's also the only person who can make severely depressed his aunt smile. {{spoiler|And then a planet falls on top of them.}}

** The Freys are the ''biggest'' of the screwed up families present. Their current patriarch has fathered over 25 legitimate sons, to say nothing of his many daughters and bastards (plus grandchildren, great grand children, grand bastards etc.), and if half of what is said of the machinations of his progeny is true (particularly those surrounding Black Walder) they have already begun clandestine murderous maneuvering against one another in addition to the constant complex political moves to curry favor, and need only the death of the head of the family (currently over 90) to erupt into open struggling.

** Craster's family. It doesn't ''exactly'' fit the description (though they are relatively well-set for wildlings), but "big and screwed up" doesn't begin to describe it. Craster has nineteen wives, [[Parental Incest|most of whom are his daughters]] and it's understood that his [[Tangled Family Tree|grand-daughters of the right age are/would also be his wives]]. He rules the family with an iron first, makes the women do all the work and forbids them to speak to strangers as well as the strangers - to them. Oh, and the skeleton in his cupboard? His wives sometimes bear him sons, which he then sacrifices to the Others.

* ''[[Gormenghast]]:'' The House of Groan is the ''epitome'' of this trope.

* The Do'Urden family from ''[[The Dark Elf Trilogy]]'' and pretty much ''every'' dark elf family from Menzoberranzan in the [[Forgotten Realms]] universe; [[Exclusively Evil|comes with the territory]].

* The Lopez family of [[The George Lopez Show]]. Max is dyslexic, but there's nothing wrong with that. However, later, he gets mixed up with a gang, gets in a knife fight, frenches behind a dumpster until he gets hungry, then shoplifts, and launched a bottle rocket that destroyed the garage and put the family in horrible debt, and tore up a perfectly good pillow. Carmen got featured in a rap video, having a pillow fight, if you know what I mean, then went to a party with beer, then drank beer (elsewhere from the beer party), then planned her pregnancy with a boy she was dating (and she was very [[Crazy Prepared]] for it, too), and insulted her father in her diary. Their GRANDMA, even, is alcoholic, addicted to smoking, and hit a guy in the nuts this one time. George Lopez... nothing too wrong with him. He lies. A lot. Then Angie, who... actually, she's the sole refugee from this trope in the family, even though she does tend to scold George for things he can't help at all.

* Half of the ''[[Midsomer Murders]]'' episodes feature a feud between two Big Screwed Up Families.

* The Wilkerson Family in ''[[Malcolm in the Middle]]'', as part of an effort to make the worlds worst dysfunctional family.

* Blanche's family in ''[[The Golden Girls]]'' is a comical example. In the episode "Adult Education", Rose is quizzing Blanche in psychology and asks, "Who said that the son wishes to extract revenge on the father by having sex with the mother?" Blanche responds, "I don't know who said it, but my cousin did it!"

* The Lannisters from [[Game of Thrones]] fit the above description perfectly, which isn't surprising, since the series centres around a [[Deadly Decadent Court]] and [[Feuding Families]]. They will indeed instantly band together to destroy you if you attack one of them, despite not liking each other. They have a [[Tangled Family Tree]], as being one of the great families, they have studiously married into all of the other noble families, to form alliances. Tywin is the [[Magnificent Bastard]] and [["Well Done, Son" Guy]], Tyrion is the [[The Unfavourite]], and you don't want to know [[Brother-Sister Incest|what's up]] with Jaimie and Cercei. All that's missing is an [[Evil Matriarch]], as Mummy Lannister [[Death by Childbirth|died giving birth to Tyrion.]]

* The Pendragons on ''[[Merlin (TV series)|Merlin]]'', composed of a tyrannical king, his emotionally-damaged son, their illegitimate daughter/sister who keeps trying to kill them both, and an [[Evil Uncle]] (who seems to have a thing for the earlier-mentioned niece).

** Dear god it is the [[Repo! The Genetic Opera|Largo children]]!!!

* ''[[Once Upon a Time]]'' has Emma Swan's family. Emma is twenty eight and is roughly the same age as her mother [[Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs (novel)|Snow White]], her father [[Prince Charming]], and her mother's step mother Regina the Evil Queen, and because of a curse they are under none of them know they are related to each other and from another world. And then there's her fight with Regina over who's her son Henry's real mother, the one who gave him up at birth or the one who adopted him. this also being a story with Snow White, you know there's already a few murder attempts and entire kindoms hanging in the balance, not to mention the way the writer's take liberties with the original story lines, particularly Charming's.

== Music ==

* The [[Tom Waits]] song "Cemetary Polka" runs through a list of aunts and uncles, each of whom is screwed up in their own unique way.

 

 

** Yeesha (younger sister) is a bit of a creepy but naive [[Cloudcuckoolander]] who {{spoiler|helps her brothers escape their prisons by mistake, is briefly imprisoned in [[Journey to the Center of the Mind|Dream]] and [[Grand Theft Me|possessed]] by her older brother}} and comes out of the whole mess with a [[Messianic Archetype|Messiah complex]] and [[Prophecy Twist|an inability to communication clearly]].

*** Oh, yeah. And just about all of them are capable of carefully [[Rewriting Reality]]. {{spoiler|''Especially'' Yeesha, who is apparently right about being the Messiah.}} This bodes not well.

* In ''[[First Encounter Assault Recon|F.E.A.R.]]'' you're a [[Heroic Mime|mute supersoldier]] known as the Point Man. The man you've been sent to kill, Paxton Fettel ({{spoiler|who is your brother}}) is a cannibalistic, psychic psychopath who is going on a violent rampage with his army of telepathic soldiers and merely gets pissed when you kill him. Alma {{spoiler|Wade}} ({{spoiler|who is your mother}}) is a homicidal ghost out for revenge (and to protect {{spoiler|her children}}). Harlan Wade ({{spoiler|your grandfather}}) is the person who caused this mess by working with an evil corporation to experiment {{spoiler|on his own daughter who happens to be the aforementioned ghost that is your mother}}. Note that this is just the ''first'' game. In the second one, Alma decides to add {{spoiler|Michael Becket}} to your relations by {{spoiler|[[Stalker with a Test Tube|using him to father another child]]}}, but this is ''after'' a gene-splicing operation that {{spoiler|directly links him to your bloodline}}. By the third game, Alma is expecting ''again''. On top of that, {{spoiler|while grandpa is still dead, the worst parts of him are ''back'' and want you dead too.}} And at the very end, {{spoiler|the Point Man and Fettel face off, and one of them gets killed/consumed, leaving the other to raise the newborn as their own.}}

* Most families in ''[[Crusader Kings]]'' ends up this way after a while. Favorite gameplay example when playing as the Sverkers: Son gets "You have fallen in love with a girl in your court." event... With his SISTER. A week later sister gets "Death By Suicide". A generation later the son-and-heir assassinated his father...

** Surprisingly subverted with the von Karmas. While von Karma himself is an [[Amoral Attorney]] of the highest caliber and {{spoiler|murdered Miles Edgeworth's father before adopting him with intention of raising him to be another [[Amoral Attorney]] before having him convicted of his own father's murder fifteen years later}}, he seems to have treated both Miles and Fransiska with no more unkindness than your average demanding parent. The {{spoiler|murder thing}} is still sort of messed up, though.

** Although not all of them are actually related, the Gramarye Troupe from ''Apollo Justice'' certainly fit this trope. {{spoiler|Accidental shootings, blackmail, suicide, frame-ups}}...Trucy's lucky that she's not being raised by them, really.

** The Clover family. The father, [[Evil Genius|Relius]], is a [[Lack of Empathy|sociopathic]] [[Complete Monster]] who turned his daughter into a machine and then used the experience to turn his wife into a superior version... [[For Science!]]! All while, his [[Parental Abandonment|abandoned]] son, Carl, who was forced to finish the experiment that his father begun, because Relius couldn't be bothered to finish the job on Carl's sister, was understandably deeply traumatized by these events. He now greatly distrusts adults and will do ''anything'' to return his sister to normal and get revenge. When they eventually reunite? Relius brags about how he has [[Large Ham|"ACHIEVED PER-FEC-TION"]] with his wife and promptly tries to [[Offing the Offspring|demonstrate her power on his children]].

* The Mishima family from ''[[Tekken]]''. It's [[Badass Family|badass]]... and it's also ridiculously shattered. By ''Tag Tournament 2'', there are certifiably ''five'' family members competing (Jinpachi, Heihachi, Kazuya, Jin, and Lars), spanning ''four'' generations (plus Lee, the adopted son of Heihachi), and you can basically draw a web of who wants to kill who and why. The only one who is 'good' in the general sense of the term is Jinpachi (he has a good heart but is unable to fight the engulfing evil force that has possessed his mind and body; Lars is heroic but is still willing to kill Heihachi unprovoked when the two encounter each other).

* ''[[No More Heroes]]'' features the Touchdown family, which in the last 10% of the game is revealed to be incredibly expansive. There's Travis Touchdown, otaku assassin; {{spoiler|his mother, murdered; his father, who cheated on Travis's mother with another woman, who committed suicide, resulting in resulting in the murder of himself and his wife at the hands of his mistress's daughter Jeane (who Travis was dating, unaware that she was his half-sister); this is all revealed after Jeane kills Dark Star, the number 1 ranked assassin who also claims to be Travis's father. In an unrelated plot, Travis discovers that his rival, Henry, is actually his twin brother, and is married to Sylvia, the woman Travis was pursuing. And they have a daughter, also named Jeane. You might as well count Travis's cat, Jeane, as part of the family to round out the hat-trick.}}

* [[BioShock (series)|The Ryans....and The Lambs]]

* [[Metal Gear Solid]] ''loves'' this trope. First off we have Big Boss who is the most gifted soldier of the 20th century and would be recognized by America as their greatest asset, but after many hardships, betrayals, and tragedies were thrown his way by the government he swore his life to, he became disillusioned and drifted the world as a mercenary. Eventually his disillusionment reached such a point that he sought revolution, overthrowing America and the corrupt forces behind it, the Patriots, who controlled everything in secret, thus bringing a new birth of freedom to the country. Meanwhile the Patriots cloned Big Boss so as to have copies of the greatest living soldier in the world to use at their disposal, and the sons of Big Boss would go on to agree with their father's stance (Liquid and Solidus both try making their own Outer Heavens) and have feuds (Snake and Liquid fought their father) with their genetic father, and the protagonist of the series Solid Snake would eventually defeat his father in single combat, being the lapdog of America that Big Boss had once been. Liquid Snake, failing in his feud with Big Boss, took up his cause in order to prove he was better than his father by succeeding in the dream of defeating the Patriots where his father had failed, and Solidus the third son takes up his father's cause as well, but both brothers are stopped in part by their brother Solid Snake just as he had stopped their father. The Snake family only knows how to fight one another, which comes off as sad as all of them have noble causes but they all get manipulated so that they have to fight each other, and even when this is brought to their attention their differences are never settled.

** Don't forget Ocelot, who's The Boss's son, but comes to admire Big Boss as a father figure, too, in his own way. Or the Emmerich family, as elaborated upon in ''Peace Walker''. Hell, it's even suggested that Otacon's mother is [[Depraved Bisexual|Strangelove]]!

* The Matou/Makiri in ''[[Fate/stay night]]''. Not the best family to {{spoiler|give your extra daughter away to}}. Also the Einzberns. Chasing after the Holy Grail and nothing ''but'' the Holy Grail for a thousand years? Turning your girl children into homunculi? Trying to summon the devil to win the Grail War? They must be so pissed when {{spoiler|the Grail is destroyed in every route without Ilya ever even getting to the finals}}.

** The Tohno's of ''[[Tsukihime]]'' are kind of this trope as well. Luckily, {{spoiler|it seems they've been killing themselves and each other for so long that by the end there's only Akiha and the relatively normal branch families left.}} Yay!

* ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni]]'' features the Ushiromiya family, starting with the family head, Kinzo, who is completely insane, obsessed with black magic and with the Golden Witch, Beatrice, {{spoiler|who happens to be a [[Legacy Character]], and in fact is based on two people: his mistress Beatrice Castiliogni, and his daughter Beatrice II, with whom [[Parental Incest|he had a child with]].}} He's also hostile to his own children and is, in fact, {{spoiler|[[Dead to Begin With|dead.]]}} Oddly enough, though, they also qualify as a [[Badass Family]].

** His eldest son, Krauss, is a failure as an investor and doesn't get along with his siblings for being a [[Manipulative Bastard]]. This causes much stress for his wife Natsuhi, who in turn puts a lot of pressure on their daughter Jessica to be a suitable heiress to the family. In fact, poor Natsuhi is so seriously [[Maternally Challenged]] that {{spoiler|it wound up leading to her first child falling off a cliff. Said child later starts making creepy calls to Natsuhi and possibly attempted to frame her for murder}}.

* The bloodline-obsessed Jansen clan and the Calley family in ''[[Concession]]''. Raj Jansen, the good ol' [[Evil Matriarch]] of the clan, {{spoiler|had one of her nieces raped in order to carry on her bloodline}}, and ...Jesus Christ. Joel Calley is a Satanist with magical powers and one of the most massive and convoluted [[Evil Plan|evil plans]] I've ever seen, because {{spoiler|his brother Julian murdered Joel's twin sister Miranda when they were kids AND took over his late father's company rather than letting his mother have it. The aforementioned father was a religious douchebag, a [["Well Done, Son" Guy]] and, possibly, an [[Abusive Parent]].}} The only one who seems anywhere near normal is Lorelei Calley. {{spoiler|Oh wait, she's tried to seduce several of Joel's friends (including his boyfriend, unsuccessfully). Never mind.}}

* In ''[[Digger]]'' there's Grim Eyes, {{spoiler|whose mother went insane and beat up her father, further encouraged by her aunt due to jealousy. When she was born, her mother started abusing her as well, and her father killed her in order to protect his daughter, resulting in his exile from the tribe and leaving her all alone. In short, the only member of her family who wasn't completely insane [[Disappeared Dad|ended up leaving her]].}} It's a wonder she grew up to be relatively normal and stable.

 

== Web Original ==