Worst Dads Ever
I don't see these guys faring well come Father's Day. List includes foster fathers as well as biological ones.
List items
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Foster-father of Thrall, who basically brought him up as a gladiator
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Yes, since it turns out that the Daughters of Aku were, in fact, his biological daughters.
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Insofar as he was Altair's foster-father figure. For a refresher, he lied to him, manipulated him, slapped him, stabbed him, and tried to kill him. Sounds pretty bad to me.
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Sometimes depicted as having kids. And no, he doesn't care about them except as tools (though to be fair, many of his kids are just as vile as he is).
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Abused his son when he was a child and was even willing to kill him when he got in the way of him trying to kill Captain America.
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Was actually HAPPY when his son died, admitting that he "owed" Norman Osborn for it. He was also the reason his kids became supervillains in the first place.
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Frank Miller's version in All-Star Batman and Robin, which was one of the main reasons that story was and is highly controversial and divisive.
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Especially when you remember he conceives his kids by raping women. In Total War: Warhammer III he outright dismisses his son Archaon as "weak" and whines that he should have been the one to be the Everchosen.
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More sympathetic example than most of these, but nevertheless not a very good dad.
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It's like Darth Vader, but, you know, without the redeeming qualities.
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Arrowverse version, who is the absentee and manipulative father of Felicity Smoak
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Of course, it's mostly his son-in-law that he's awful to, but still.
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Essentially his daughter's arch-enemy and sees her as a nuisance to be eliminated, so...
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Another abysmal foster-father, and while this is more true of the Disney version than it is of the Victor Hugo original, the latter still qualifies too.
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Father of Madame Masque
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What else would you call a guy who eats his children? Even if it was technically done without killing them?
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A sociopathic supervillain, just like his son
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In keeping with how all of the Runaway's parents are villains
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Whether it be treating one of his sons (Kalibak) like useless, expendable garbage, or regularly beating the tar out of/trying to kill or corrupt his other son (Orion), Darkseid is the quintessential terrible father. Much like Black Manta, it's like Darth Vader, but without any redeeming love for his kids.
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Ironically, I would argue that Vader is one of the BEST dads here, because while plenty evil, it was ultimately his love for his son that redeemed him, with Vader sacrificing himself to save him. That's more than I can say for most of the other dads here.
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I mean, it's the main reason his daughter Rose hates him and wants to kill him. He's also technically responsible for his son Jericho getting his throat cut, albeit not intentionally.
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Is a father, and outside of Heroes of the Storm, there's no indication that he cares about his kids at all.
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Technically Leah's father, so he counts
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Tried to kill his daughter and wishes she'd never been born, so...
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Of several of the characters in his game series
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The Castlevania version, at any rate. Like Vader, he's one of the more sympathetic characters on this list...but still plenty evil, and still a terrible dad.
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MCU version, who replaces J'son as Star-Lord's evil father
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And Geralt can tell him so in the third Witcher game
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In the Disney canon at least, since he did technically have a son.
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As an adult
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Pretty much, when you consider the character is a representation of every mean-spirited, verbally abusive father who can't control his temper that there ever was.
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There's nary an Avatar fan out there who doesn't know this one.
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Though he was once a loving father, he was eventually corrupted, becoming a pretty terrible one as a result.
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Yes, as he's the biological father of Lor-Zod
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Technically a foster-father, but close enough.
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Hm. Two bad Pokemon dads in a row. And both leaders of criminal organizations. I'm sensing a pattern.
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Oh yes. With the exception of the Willem DaFoe version, who's relationship with his son is more complex, most versions of Norman are very blatantly cruel and unloving towards Harry Osborn, which also sets the stage for his transformation into a second Green Goblin.
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Another more sympathetic/nuanced example, but even so. To put it into perspective, he forced his son to dress up in woman's clothes and treated him like a woman, just because he considered the magic he specialized in to be "girl's magic". Seriously.
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Possibly the DCAU version, if his claim of being Wonder Woman's father is true.
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This one's actually a little debatable. True, he wasn't there for his son, but that was, if I remember right, because he didn't know he existed for the longest time. And upon reconnecting with him as an adult he does care about him, and genuinely wanted Connor on his side. He even admits that he's proud of Connor before dying...though also that he should have killed him earlier. So there is that.
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Mr. Bad Hair-day here is one video game's more infamous examples I'd say. But as we'll see later in this list, he learned from the best.
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Let's run it down:
1) Viewed his kids as a dynasty and not as people
2) Strongly implied to have killed the designer babies he made prior to Miranda because they "disappointed" him
3) Also strongly implied to be the reason Miranda is infertile
4) Repeatedly tried to have Miranda killed
5) Used his other daughter, Oriana, as a human shield
I'd say that all adds up to an utterly hateable father myself.
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The thing about Homer, is that he's legitimately both a bad parent AND a good one (at least in earlier seasons). A recurring element of Homer is that, for all his many faults, he is genuinely loyal to his family, and almost always ends up doing right by them when it matters most. Enough so that I'm actually not sure Homer belongs on this list at all. He's definitely the best of the dads here by a good margin.
But of course, he does habitually strangle his son.
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Has a son in 616, and there's no indication that he had any love for him.
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Has a son in Descendants, and brought him up as a thief and a bully. Small change compared to most of the other folks here, but still not good parenting.
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Another more nuanced example, but even so his relationship with his son Tidus is infamously toxic.
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Told ya Heihachi learned how to be a terrible dad from the best (or worst, rather)
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His treatment of Raziel at the start of the second game in the series is sufficiently horrible that Raziel wanting to kill Kain in retaliation becomes his driving motivation for much of his story going forwards.
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Similar to Bel'akor, he conceives kids by raping women, and with the same goal of producing an Anti-Christ figure.
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He IS where the loathsome Frieza and Cooler come from, after all.
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In some comics at least, he's depicted as being a less than ideal father for his son, Richard. Something of a tragic irony, given that Kingpin himself had an abusive father.
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Yes, as in both Marvel and Norse mythology, he's the father of Hel/Hela, as well as Fenrir/Fenris and the Midgard Serpent.
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While he does technically love his children, he's also done some ethically objectionable things involving them, and they generally acknowledge that he's a fairly toxic influence in their lives (especially Scarlet Witch). So like Vader and Castlevania Dracula, a more nuanced and sympathetic example, but still bad enough to count.
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Pure evil demon who is the father of Blackheart (and also Satana in Avengers Alliance).
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Revealed to have fathered a child in one episode, and quickly comes to view said child as a nuisance.
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Father of the superheroine Quake
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Alternates between this and a genuinely loving father, sometimes within the same episode!
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Initially sympathetic and clueless-but-loving, before getting flanderized into a just plain bad parent
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As the infamous (and meme-spawning) Season 1 finale of the show lets us all know quite clearly.
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Essentially a much more consistently abusive and awful version of Homer Simpson. Especially where Meg is concerned.
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Many of his acts of rape have produced children.
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Left his daughter Nyssa to fend for herself during the second World War, which led directly her to becoming a victim of the Holocaust. She survived, but not unscathed, and either way, it shows that Ra's is a lousy father. This isn't even getting into how he often treats his other daughter, Talia.
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MCU version, though he does try to be better and genuinely loves his daughters in spite of how he let them down. So another more sympathetic example.
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Ironic thing is, the real life Rodrigo Borgia adored his children, and there's an overwhelming amount of evidence to support it. The Assassin's Creed version seems to at least care about Lucrezia, but his relationship with his kids overall is a lot more toxic than it was in real life.
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When depicted as a father, there's a 9/10 chance that he's going to be one of these. This especially holds true of his Saint's Row and Marvel depictions, both of whom have daughters.
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Confirmed to have had children in The Lion King 2, and there's no evidence he loved any of them.
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Another crappy foster father, as his treatment of Kitana neatly demonstrates.
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The 2003 and 2012 cartoon versions both raised Karai as their daughter, and both were lousy at it (especially the pure evil Utrom Shredder).
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Another one who does technically love his kid, and is not entirely unsympathetic. But for all that, STILL a terrible dad, and his daughter is usually the first to point it out.
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Revealed in Arcane to have a daughter. Though by all appearances he seems to care about her, he is also not shown to be a part of her life, and is a depraved mad scientist regardless.
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Very much so, considering his callous treatment of them caused two of his kids to turn into villains, and the third to get killed by his own brother.
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Young Justice version
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Much like Peter Griffin, Stan is an animated "black comedy" example of a terrible father.
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Whether it be his biological kid (Thane), or adopted ones (Gamora and especially Nebula), Thanos tends to be a lousy parental figure.
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Hoo boy, yes. A lot of the many, many messes with the Primarchs are at least partly his fault.
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Yes, as he has a daughter (Sin), and has as little love for her as he does for everyone else. It's the Red Skull, what else did you expect?
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As the foster father of Billy Candle, as he was abusive to him
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A darkly realistic portrait of an abusive father, albeit one who did technically come to recognize and feel remorse for, his own awfulness.
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Oh look, ANOTHER pure evil demonic being who conceives would-be Anti-Christs through rape.
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Scandal Savage's upbringing is evidence enough of this.
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While most versions of Zeus do love or care about their kids to some extent, it is nevertheless the case that nearly all versions of Olympus' top god are lousy dads as well as husbands. To the point that almost every modern depiction of Greek Mythology calls it out at least once or twice.
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