Disappeared Dad

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"What you taught me was that I was less important to you than people who had been dead for 500 years in another country. And I learned it so well that we've hardly spoken for 20 years."

—Indiana Jones to his father, The Last Crusade

A subtrope of Parental Abandonment: The father of a character or characters is missing or absent.

Perhaps he's died. Perhaps he's left and there's bitterness involved. Perhaps he's off fighting evil. Or maybe it's psychological absence—he's physically there, but is completely negligent in his fatherly duties. Regardless of what happened—and regardless of whether or not the viewers find out what happened—Mom seems to have raised her children on her own, or with the help of a father substitute.

There's a bit of a Double Standard in fiction regarding single parents. A Disappeared Dad is far less likely to have his absence explained than a Missing Mom. When he's not in the picture, it's often taken for granted that he's either dead or a deadbeat. But if he is alive, he is more likely to either return and reconcile, or be a non-entity who sporadically appears just to remind the hero that Daddy doesn't care about them. It is also possible for the Disappeared Dad to have not ever met the child at all or even know that they exist, unlike the Missing Mom, since fathers don't actually have to be present during childbirth. Sometimes, a Disappeared Dad is not aware of being one, when that type of Disappeared Dad is actually an established character, you get Luke, You Are My Father.

However, the flipside is that if both parents are absent, the character is far more likely to be obsessed with his or her lost father. Characters who have lost both parents often do not mention the lost mother at all.

Happens most frequently in animated series, but other media are not immune.

Compare and contrast this with Missing Mom. Combine the two, and you get Parental Abandonment. Sometimes, though, Daddy Had a Good Reason For Abandoning You. If Dad is dead, we may see a Happier Home Movie. If he is simply too busy to be with his child, it's When You Coming Home, Dad?. See also: Tell Me About My Father, So Proud of You, Turn Out Like His Father. Contrast "Well Done, Son" Guy.

Examples of Disappeared Dad include:

Comic Books[]

Spider-Man became a crime fighter after his uncle Ben, who acted as a father, was killed by a burglar.
Shaman of Alpha Flight abandoned his daughter to learn magic. Technically, she kicked him out of her life (angry that he'd failed to save her mother / his wife as promised); but given she was maybe 12 at the time, most of the blame lies with him.
Elissa Megan 'Emp' Powers knows exactly what happened to her father. She watched him drop dead of a brain hemorrhage one fine morning while she was eating her favorite breakfast cereal.
Amulet has an extreme version: we actually see Emily's father die before our eyes, and his death is a large part of her current personality.
Teddy of Young Avengers never knew his father. Cassie's was murdered.
Wanted starts with Wesley Gibson discovering his disappeared father was a recently killed assassin. In the movie, the one the "supposed dad"'s killer was Wesley's actual father.

Fan Works[]

In some Alternate Universe Fics, we have this be the case when it comes to Ryuuko and Satsuki's parents. In one fic (before it was deleted), Sounds of Silence, Soichiro mostly appears in flashbacks but doesn't in the present, although Ragyo mentioned an accident, implying that he had passed away in said accident. Likewise, some fics by other authors have him be deceased while others simply don't bring him up.
Ren becomes this in Gensokyo 20XXV, when he passed away of an unknown cause, sometime before chapter 109.

Newspaper Comics[]

In Dilbert, the title character's father, who never appears in the comic, has been living in an all-you-can-eat restaurant in the mall since Christmas 1992; he won't leave until he's literally had all he can eat. When Dilbert's girlfriend Liz expresses astonishment that neither he nor his mother have so much as visited him in all this time, Dilbert replies, "We're waiting for a sale." The joke is recycled for the animated series, where the father, still living in the restaurant (since 1979 in this version), does appear, but his face isn't shown.
- No, they were originally waiting for a sale to go to the mall to look for him. When his mom finally found him, Dilbert decided not to go to the restaurant to visit until they were serving a special he liked.

Theater[]

In William Inge's Picnic (as well as in the 1955 film adaptation), the father of the Owens family has long since abandoned them.
In the musical version of Les Misérables Cosette's father apparently took off sometime before or shortly after her birth, causing her to be sent to live with the Thenardiers and her mother Fantine to be forced into prostitution. Though she does later gain a father figure in Valjean.
- Cosette's father in the novel is Felix Tholomyes. His three friends are paired up with Fantine' three friends, and men abandon their women as a joke of sorts; Fantine either doesn't have a chance to tell him or finds out just afterwards that she's pregnant.
  - Actually, Cosette was two years old when Tholomyès abandoned them. It says in the novel that only ten months after he left, Fantine drops off the nearly-three Cosette to live with the Thénardiers. Fantine had three letters written pleading for him to come back, but he didn't.

Web Original[]

In The Gamers Alliance, Omaroch vanished from the lives of his sons Refan and Kareth but later returned to guide them. It turns out he was kidnapped by his brothers who then tortured and brainwashed him to serve the dark god Mardük, and he returned only to use the sons for fulfilling an ancient prophecy about Mardük. He eventually snaps out of it, but by that time it's too late; the damage has already been done, and he has not only lost the trust of his sons but also indirectly causes the Cataclysm and the birth of the Godslayer.
Erika's New Perfume: So far there has been no mention of the patriarch of the Swanson family in the original story or in any of the sequels or related comics. He does end up appearing eventually. According to the author, there was an ugly divorce, which is why he didn't show up for some time; Veronica (Mrs. Swanson) was likely deliberately avoiding talking about him.
While what actually went on is unclear, The Nostalgia Critic still lives with his abusive mother. His Dad, who Critic still appears to have scary memories of, is implied to have left the family a while ago and it's also likely that he died before the Alaska review. (This is all in-character, of course, Doug's parents are lovely and helpful.)