Evil Parents Want Good Kids: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

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]].

* In X-Men while not evil, [[Wolverine]] is fine with killing when necessary but he really doesn't want [[X-23]] evolved in that type of lifestyle and wants her to have a normal life. Her mother Sarah Kinney under went a [[Heel Face Turn]] to try and secure a normal life for her. it ended [[Tear Jerker|tragically]].

** 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.

** Subverted again by Damon Maccready, a.k.a. Big Daddy, who despite looking like [[The Simpsons|Ned Flanders]], raises his little girl to be a ruthlessly efficient vigilante in order to exact revenge on D'Amico {{spoiler|not really revenge, he was just bored with his life and wanted his daughter to have an interesting life}}.

* ''[[Road to Perdition]].''

 

== Film ==

* The backstory in ''[[Coward Of The County]]''

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

** 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 bussines.

* 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.

 

== 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]]!!'' has a case of this. The Awakusu-kai are rather known local yakuza family. Awakusu Akane is a really good kid who wasn't aware of her family's shady dealings and how much the parents of her classmates go out of their way to look out for her well being, like teaching their kids to always obey her, in fear of the Awakusu name.

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

* Tony Soprano of ''[[The Sopranos]]'' is adamanent that his son AJ doesn't go into the life like him, partly because he's simply not cut out for it. Jackie Aprile also felt this way towards his own son, and arranged with Tony to make sure this wouldn't happen before {{spoiler|he himself died in the fourth episode. Tony doesn't succeed and Jackie Jr. ends up dead later on, further strengthening his decision to keep AJ out of it}}.

* ''[[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.

 

== Video Games ==

 

 

== [[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.