Evil Parents Want Good Kids: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
Raising children is one of the most daunting challenges a parent can face. You have to supply material needs like food and shelter, as well as providing a moral education by teaching through example. You can see where this would be problematic when a parent supplies the latter by breaking kneecaps or [[The End of the World
Some parents make ends meet through frowned-upon trades like [[Hooker
What ends up happening is that the dad (and it's usually the dad who's the villain) hides his villainy one way or another. The easiest and hardest is to give the child up for adoption or abandon the mother. Non-deadbeats create a [[Secret Identity]] where they have a mundane, even boring job. If he doesn't bother hiding his nasty day job, he will either whitewash it to not seem villainous (replace "mob hit" with "rat infestation", for example) or say "do what daddy says, not what daddy does" without a trace of shame. If he's possessive and/or overprotective and has the means to, his children may become a [[Lonely Rich Kid]] [[Mafia Princess]] who is trapped in a [[Gilded Cage]].
Of course, their kid is going to find out the truth and either be [[Calling the Old Man Out|horrified]] at the [[Double Standard]], or naively eager to become their dad's [[Sidekick]]. Sometimes, to dad's dismay, they will prove that villainy is [[In the Blood]] despite his best intentions. The realization (and some heroic coercion over revealing the truth to his kids) may lead to pulling a [[Heel Face Turn]].
Compare [[White Sheep]], [[Turn Out Like His Father]]. Contrast [[
{{examples|Examples:}}▼
== Anime and Manga ==
* In ''[[Tiger and Bunny]]'', {{spoiler|Albert Maverick encouraged (and even downright manipulated) Barnaby and persuaded him to take up a career as a superhero}}
== Comic Books ==
* In X-Men while not evil, [[Wolverine]] is fine with killing when necessary but he really doesn't want [[X-23]]
** In "Schism", Logan feels this way about ''all'' of the younger mutants, and rebuilds the Institute in Westchester to give young mutants a chance to be kids.
* [[Daredevil]]'s father "Battling Jack" Murdock was clearly not evil, but he was adamant that his son not be regarded as a muscle-bound moron like him. So he insisted that young Matt forego athletics entirely and spend all his time studying. As a result, Matt became quite a bookworm, and other kids called him "daredevil" as a sarcastic insult, a name which would later inspire his ''nom de guerre''. Neither his father nor anyone else knew that Matt was actually trying to train himself in secret, although it wouldn't actually be until he met his mentor Stick that he became good enough to become the Man Without Fear.
* Played with in ''[[Kick
** Subverted again by Damon Maccready, a.k.a. Big Daddy, who despite looking like [[The Simpsons (animation)|Ned Flanders]], raises his little girl to be a ruthlessly efficient vigilante in order to exact revenge on D'Amico
* ''[[Road to Perdition]].''
* ''[[Runaways]]'' has The Pride, made up of six couples who led double lives to conceal their supervillainy from their children, while trying to raise them to be normal kids (at least until they destroyed the world for their kids as they planned to). The very fact that their kids ''happen'' to be good is what causes them to run away the moment they see the parents kill someone in a ritual blood sacrifice.
* The toy maker in ''[[Wanted]]'' had his wife and daughters fooled he was a regular and even [[Sickeningly Sweet]] and fastidiously proper toymaker and not a supervillain. Interestingly, he enjoyed the services of hookers in other dimensions.
* Onomatopoeia from [[The DCU]] leads a double life as a loving family man with a wife and two kids while spending his time away from home as a masked [[Serial Killer]] who hunts [[Badass Normal]] vigilantes.
* ''[[Astro City]]'' has the original Quarrel intending for his daughter to have a better life than he does, one where she won't be a criminal. In a sense, he succeeds; she becomes a hero, using his name, equipment, and a costume patterned after his. In another sense, he fails; he's not around to see it happen, and she's bitter about the fact that her father was a criminal, to the point that she refuses to talk about him.
* In one issue of the ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'' spinoff comic, Mirror Master has a young son whose room is full of superhero paraphernalia up to and including a [[The Flash|Flash]] action figure. He is shocked to discover that a fellow villain wears his costume in front of the baby.
* The Phantom Blot is a [[Card-Carrying Villain]] in many [[Disney Comics]] who ''loves'' making his mark as he outwits the law and his arch-nemesis [[Mickey Mouse]] . But he'd rather his daughter be left out of it. In one story, his solution to explain to her why daddy is in jail is to tell her his side of it like a fairy tale (with him the hero and Mickey the villain) then tell her to go home and dream of a "happy ending".
* In ''[[Injustice 2]]'', [[Harley Quinn]] gave her daughter Lucy to her sister to raise, not wanting her influence (much less [[The Joker| Lucy's father's]]) to make her grow up bad.
== Film ==
* ''[[Repo!
* The backstory in ''[[Coward Of The County]]''
* Michael Sullivan in ''[[Road to Perdition]]''.
* In ''[[
** Everyone always talks about Michael, but this already happened before, with Sonny. When Sonny comes to his dad and asks to be part of the family business, and dad asks why, he reveals he followed his dad and watched him murder a man and dispose of the evidence. The Don realizes the indelible effect this had on his eldest son and reluctantly brings him into the
* In the second ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'' film, Will Turner's father Bootstrap Bill is rather upset to discover his son followed his footsteps into a life of piracy.
** Will didn't follow him into a life of piracy (he broke the law, but the law was [[Aristocrats Are Evil|Lord]] [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|Cutler]] [[Lawful Evil|Beckett]], so that just makes him [[Chaotic Good]]); it's still an example because he doesn't want that life for him, but he's only upset that Will found out and that he wasn't there for him when he needed him.
* Paul Newman's character in ''[[Absence Of Malice]]'' had a father who was a bootlegger. After being caught by his father in doing something illegal his father locked him up in a cabin for a period of time. However the purpose wasn't to necessarily prevent the son from being bad just showing what he should get used to if he goes into a life of crime.
* In ''[[Face Off]],'' the villain's girlfriend Sasha's dying words are "don't let [our son] grow up to be like us."
== Literature ==
* ''[[
* In the Robert Crais novel ''The Two Minute Rule'', bank robber Max Holman mentions how he used to pray every night that his son Richie wouldn't end up like him. Might be seen as a subversion: Aside from being a bank robber, Max is more or less a good guy. He even stopped robbing a bank to save a man who was having a heart attack, which resulted in his arrest.
* A Japanese light novel ''[[Durarara
* [[Judge Knott]]'s father is a bootlegger (retired) who is very proud of his law-enforcing daughter.
* ''[[The Scarlet Pimpernel (
* In the Spanish novel ''The Last Caton'', main character Ottavia Salina, a nun with a doctorate in Paleography and History of Art, eventually discovers from a girl she knew in her infancy that her father was a ''capo'', that her mother is now the Don of the ''famiglia'' Salina, and that the reason her mother pushed her and two of her siblings to become part of the Church was because she wanted them to act as the white face of the family.
== Live Action TV ==
* In an early episode of ''City Homicide'', a bank robber stayed out of his illegitimate son Brett's life to avoid "tainting" him. Then he disappeared and Brett got involved in his father's gang, quickly proving himself to be a [[Complete Monster|violent sociopath]] anyway.
* In the classic ''[[Star Trek:
* The Wests from ''[[Outrageous Fortune]]'' try to turn away from their life of crime after the patriarch is arrested and sent to jail for four years. It doesn't go entirely as planned.
* In the episode "Riding the Lightning" of ''[[
* Lionel Luthor in ''[[
* Tony Soprano of ''[[The Sopranos]]'' is
* ''[[Home and Away]]'' has done an older brother/younger brother variant of this, with Darryl Braxton trying to keep teenage brother Casey Braxton in school and out of their family's criminal activities. In a subversion, their mother [[Evil Matriarch|Cheryl]] has no such desires, kicking Casey out after he decides to stay in school. Middle brother Heath is somewhere in the middle - though he willingly takes part in Cheryl's activities and is similarly scornful of Casey's decision, he has shown ''some'' morals, not least of which was when he refused to sell April stimulants for her studies.
** Brutally subverted by [[Complete Monster|Johnny Cooper]], who actively thwarted his brother Rocco's efforts to go straight after his release from juvenile detention, eventually having him murdered when Rocco betrayed him to the cops.
* [[Dexter]] panicked when his girlfriend Rita got pregnant because of this trope. He's terrified that his kid will grow up to be a serial killer like him.
== Tabletop RPG ==
* ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'' has Lazouril, Zulkir of Enchantment in [[The Magocracy|Thay]] and possibly the most charismatic of all villains in the setting. In ''Simbul's Gift'' it turns out that he realized that the position of a Zulkir marks him not only as being among the greatest masters of arcane magic on the planet, but also as a monster. Accordingly, his daughter discovered this fact only by accident. He even kept her far away from any Thayan magic, starting from his own... not that it helped much, given that her father was a magical talent this bright ''and'' her mother was a daughter of his predecessor.
== Video Games ==
* Thane Krios from ''[[
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Felicia Hardy's father in ''[[Spider-Man:
** However, in the animated series at least, he wasn't so much evil as an unwitting dupe for evil people, and he did a [[Heel Face Turn]] when he figured it out.
* In ''[[Sidekick (
* In ''[[Ben 10: Ultimate Alien]]'', space criminal Pops Vreedle enrolls his sons Octagon and Rhomboid in the [[Space Police|Plumbers Academy]], so they can have a better life then he did.
* ''[[Batman Beyond|Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker]]'' introduces two Jokerz "hench-wenches", the twins Delia and Deidre Dennis (who called themselves Dee-Dee as a team). It's unknown who their parents are, but {{spoiler|their [[Harley Quinn|Grandma Harley]]}} clearly doesn't approve of their crimes.
* A late-season episode of ''[[Jackie Chan Adventures]]'' reveals that ''every'' member of the Enforcers has a niece that is Jade's age. They have no idea what their uncles do, and the Enforcers don't want them to know.
== Real Life ==
* Many real-life Mob men don't want their sons to go into "the life"---their attitude is "hey, kid, here's all this money I made the hard way. Go do something wonderful with it." Meyer Lansky moved heaven and earth to get his son into West Point.
* One of Osama bin
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