Parental Abandonment/Video Games: Difference between revisions

* ''All'' of the ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' games are like this. You could probably count the number of characters in the whole series that actually ''have'' one parent on one hand, and ''forget'' finding a named character with both a mother and a father.

** All heroes in all versions ([[Video Game Remake|so far]]) of ''[[Final Fantasy I]]'' are amnesiac and, thus do not remember their parents. True, this doesn't necessarily imply that they are dead... but the overall effect is the same, and given the series' track record...

** ''[[Final Fantasy III]]'': The four main characters all turn out to have been orphaned by the same event -- {{spoiler|Cid's airship was torn apart by the cataclysm that froze most of the world in time, and only the four children and Cid himself survived the event, with their birth parents all perishing.}} They aren't the only ones either, since Prince Alus had already lost his mother some time before the events of the game, and then {{spoiler|his father, King Gorn, ''tries to kill him as he sleeps'' and eventually has to commit suicide to prevent himself from carrying out the deed. At least Gorn was being controlled by Garuda, making his actions that bit less horrific.}}

** ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]'': [[Parental Abandonment]] plays a big role in Theodor's transformation into Golbez and Cecil's adoption by the King of Baron. On the same day, Kluya died at the hands of angry humans and his wife Cecilia [[Death by Childbirth|died giving birth to Cecil]]. In addition, Rydia's mother is inadvertently killed by Cecil's hands near the start of the game. {{spoiler|She later finds a new family of sorts in the Land of Summoned Monsters.}} Kain's mother is never mentioned, and it's [[All There in the Manual]] that his father died when Kain was a child. Edge's parents {{spoiler|are turned into monsters by Dr. Lugae, and commit suicide upon realising what they have become.}} Edward's parents are both killed in the assault on Damcyan and are never seen by the player. Rosa's father is dead, but remarkably, her mother is still alive.

* From the makers of ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' we then get [[Ghost Trick]] wich goes all out in taking away poor Camila's parents in the cruelest ways imaginable. {{spoiler|However, thanks to the timeline-altering efforts of the two most loyal pets ever she ends up living happily ever after with both of them alive. Fans of [[Ace Attorney]] collectively cried tears of joy upon witnessing this unexpected outcome.}}

* Many fans of ''Zelda'' have expressed curiosity as to where Link's parents are during ''any'' of his adventures. This is perhaps most glaring in the original game in the series; since ''[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link|Zelda II the Adventure of Link]]'' is stated to be taking place a couple years after the original game, and the game's manual clearly remarks that Link is now sixteen years old, one has to wonder how young he was the first time around.

** Considering how in ''Wind Waker'' Link's grandmother reacted to his quest to save Aryll (becoming ill with grief and anxiety), it's not too hard to imagine why he's an orphan in a lot of these games. It avoids the [[Fridge Horror]] element of asking what kind of parent would allow their young son to go off and experience all of that.

* ''[[Halo (series)|Halo]]'''s Master Chief is taken away from his parents at a young age to be raised by the military.

* Joey La Rocca, the protagonist of ''[[The Sopranos]] Road to Respect,'' is the illegitimate child to Big Pussy Bonpensiero ([[Canon Foreigner|although he's never seen on the show]]).

* The ''[[Mass Effect]]'' squad is often nicknamed the "SSV Daddy Issues." ''There is a very good reason for this.''

** Liara never knew her [[Has Two Mommies|"father"]] and her mother {{spoiler|was brainwashed into joining the [[Big Bad]] of ''[[Mass Effect (video game)|Mass Effect 1]]''}}. The "Lair of the Shadow Broker" [[DLC]] for the second game all but confirms Liara's dad's identity ({{spoiler|Matriarch Aethyta, the bartender at Eternity on Illium}}), and, in the third game, you can encourage Liara to talk to her.

** Wrex never mentions his mother, but does explain that his father {{spoiler|betrayed and tried to murder him, causing Wrex to kill him}}.

** Tali's mom died several years before the beginning of the story, and her father (an Admiral of the Migrant Fleet), while not having ''abandoned'' Tali, was emotionally distant for most of her life. Then, in the second game, {{spoiler|Shepard and Tali find her father's corpse on the science ship he was working on, killed by the geth he was experimenting on in order to "give his daughter the homeworld."}}

** Garrus's mother is never mentioned in the game, but his father is. The "Lair of the Shadow Broker" dossier reveals that {{spoiler|she's dying of an incurable disease}}. In the third game, Garrus only mentions his father and sister when talking about his family, implying that {{spoiler|his mother died in the year between the second and third games}}.

** Jacob's father was the Executive Officer of an freighter which disappeared in 2176, almost nine years before the events of the second game. During the course of Jacob's loyalty mission, Shepard and Jacob discover that {{spoiler|the freighter crashed on an uncharted planet with plant life that causes neural degradation in humans. As the crew succumbed to the effects of the toxic food, Jacob's dad set himself up as the cult-like leader of the crash's survivors, killing off anybody who questioned his rule and making a harem out of the female survivors. Of the three options the player has of dealing with him, two lead to his death.}}

** Jack never knew her parents, having been raised in a laboratory and experimented upon to create the ultimate biotic. Her "Lair of the Shadow Broker" dossier reveals that {{spoiler|when Jack (then named Jennifer) was a baby, her mother sent her in for a routine checkup. The doctor, noting that the infant had great biotic potential, convinced the woman that her daughter had died from a seizure and sent Jack off to Pragia to be studied}}.

** ''[[Mega Man Star Force]]'': Geo Stelar-his mom is alive but his dad is missing.

*** ''Star Force'' also takes it one step further with Sonia Strumm, as her mom died 3 months before the main story and Pat Sprigs, who like Roll Caskett, Vent and Aile has both parents missing.

** The player character's father is ''mentioned'' in Platinum, but only so that Mum can say that you're just like him. What happened to him is, as ever, not explained.

*** I believe the mom also makes a comment like that in either Red/Blue/Yellow or Gold/Silver Crystal.

* ''[[Overlord]] II'': Not only is the Overlad's father stuck in The Abyss, {{spoiler|his mother Rose soon after giving birth to him leaves him in a village where [[All of the Other Reindeer|he's hated]] for being a [[Creepy Child]] who shoots lightning out of his hands to assist [[The Empire]] in what she thought would be the restoration of order to the lands by assisting Florian's conquest of the lands.}}

* ''[[Ace Combat]] 04: Shattered Skies'', where the narrator's parents die after a downed plane crashes into the cape where the family home is. In ''Joint Assault'' {{spoiler|Sulejmani's}} [[Freudian Excuse]] is that he was sold off by his parents to be a [[Child Soldiers]].

** The sequel, ''Lunar: Eternal Blue'' plays this trope straight, however. Hiro is raised by his grandfather, with no mention of any parents.

* In the ''[[Jak and Daxter]]'' series, there are only five fathers and mothers are only mentioned in passing.

** Youmu Konpaku was apparently abandoned (if left with [[Honorary Uncle|honorary aunt]] Yuyuko) when Youki Konpaku went on a "journey for enlightenment" completely out of the blue, and dumped all his duties on his prepubescent daughter.

** Sakuya is a lone human [[Meido]] working for a family of [[Our Vampires Are Different|vampires]], a [[Witch Species]], and humanoid [[Youkai]] of unidentified species, and a host of fairies, with absolutely no canon backstory whatsoever. She gets paid purely in food and shelter (when she prepares the food - even the vampire's food, and all that entails - and maintains the house) for her services, has fanatical loyalty to "[[The Ojou|ojou-sama]]", and has bizzare and extremely [[Superpowerful Genetics]] that giver her power of [[Time Stands Still]]. Fanon reinterpretations of Sakuya's [[Origin Story]], however, are a dime a dozen. The simple ones involve Sakuya being from a vampire hunter clan that lost, and she was the only survivor, psuedo-enslaved by Remilia, while others have Sakuya being abandoned and abused as a "monster" for having the superpowers she has, adopted by Remilia since Sakuya is noted by others to be "more like a youkai than the youkai she lives with".

** Despite coming from the Outside World, AKA modern Japan, Wind Priestess Sanae Kochiya's parents are utterly unmentioned and unaccounted for, with her goddesses (one of them being her distant ancestor) often acting as substitute parents for her in [[Fanon]].

* ''[[Rune Factory 3]]'' nearly takes this [[Up to Eleven]]. ''No one'' has two parents, and most of the cast has none whatsoever, and there is absolutely no explanation. The missing relatives are as follows: Raven, Gaius, Pia, Kuruna, Oromis, Zaid, Daria, Shara, Monica, and Marion have no parents. Sakuya and Karina have no father. Sofia, Evelyn, Colette, and Rusk have no mother. To the best of my knowledge, the only character who actually acknowledges the fact that she has no living family is Raven. {{spoiler|The hero's father gets one line of dialogue in a flashback, and the hero calls for his mother in the same flashback, but otherwise they never appear.}}