Evil Parents Want Good Kids: Difference between revisions

 

{{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}}—despite being rather morally bankrupt himself. He does have his reasons for it, though; {{spoiler|he owns the media empire that capitalizes on documenting and marketing the exploits of superheroes. What better superhero to sell out than a [[Bishounen|good-looking]] [[The Ace|ace persona]] who considers you the only family he has left and is thus okay with enduring all the bureaucratic rubbish the job puts him through because it makes you happy?}}

 

== Comic Books ==

** 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.

* Played with in ''[[Kick-Ass]].'' Chris D'Amico, {{spoiler|a.k.a. Red Mist}}, is entirely aware of what his father Frank does for a living, and wants to be a part of the family business, but his dad won't allow it. Oddly, it seems like it's more because he has no faith in his son's abilities (telling Hit-girl that he wishes he had a kid like her) than because he wants a better life for him.

* ''[[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.

* 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.

 

== Film ==

* Michael Sullivan in ''[[Road to Perdition]]''.

* In ''[[The Godfather]]'', Vito Corleone initially wants Michael, at least, to have a legitimate career and become a politician after he leaves the army... however, it's reasonably ambiguous whether he really wants to save him from the family business, or just wants to manipulate Michael's youthful [[Defector From Decadence]] tendencies to give the family a front of respectability and a whole new level of power.

* 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 ==

* ''[[Artemis Fowl]]'' is a case of this. Artemis comes from a family of ''very'' successful criminals, but his father was moving their money into legitimate fields shortly before he went missing. Artemis spent the years they were apart maintaining the family fortune (through crime), funding the search for his father (ditto) and looking after his depressed, bedridden mother. After his father's rescue, there's some friction between what Artemis's parents want for him and the life he's used to.

* 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.

* [[Judge Knott]]'s father is a bootlegger (retired) who is very proud of his law-enforcing daughter.

* ''[[The Scarlet Pimpernel (novel)|The Scarlet Pimpernel]]'' [[Villain Episode]] sequel ''Sir Percy Hits Back'' reveals the extents Chauvelin went to in order to conceal his job from his daughter.

* 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.

* 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 ''[[Criminal Minds]]'', a pair of serial killers on death row had a child. The official story is that the mother killed her baby, but Gideon doubts that. {{spoiler|Turns out he's right, and the mother has been hiding her son all these years to keep him away from his father's influence. He doesn't know who his biological parents are, and eventually the team decides to leave him be and not tell him (which, consequently, means his perfectly innocent mother got executed by the state- her choice, but still a bit of a [[What the Hell, Hero?]] moment).}}

* Lionel Luthor in ''[[Smallville]]'' raises [[Lex Luthor|his son]] as a bitter, resentful [[Bastard Understudy]] and grooms him to take over his [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|corrupt corporate empire]]....until he undergoes a [[Heel Face Turn]], at which point he plays this trope straight (albeit, with a few bumps along the road). These mixed messages, along with the fact that he starts treating local do-gooder [[Superman|Clark Kent]] like he should have treated his own son, just makes Lex even ''more'' of a bitter, resentful [[Bastard Understudy]] {{spoiler|and culminates in Lex murdering him.}}

* ''[[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 ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' may be a cold-blooded assassin who sees himself as nothing but a weapon doing the deeds of other people, but he definitely does not want his son Kolyat either finding out or following in his footsteps, something that becomes the entire basis of his Loyalty Mission.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

** 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 (animation)|Sidekick]]'', Trevor's father (or may or may not be the [[Alter Ego]] of XOX) tries to raise Trevor with love and prevent him from turning out evil. It's not working very well. This frustration often switches him to his XOX persona, who wants to kill his son, who admires XOX.

* 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.

 

== 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.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Criminals]]

[[Category:Evil Parents Want Good Kids]]