Goku: You know, it was awfully nice of you to come join me, Gohan.
Gohan: I never really had a choice. You basically kidnapped me.
Goku: Oh, come on, Gohan. You can't kidnap your own kid.
Gohan: I don't know if that's true. I'll have to read up on that.
Gohan: I never really had a choice. You basically kidnapped me.
Goku: Oh, come on, Gohan. You can't kidnap your own kid.
Gohan: I don't know if that's true. I'll have to read up on that.
— Dragon Ball Z Abridged, "Special Delivery"
A familial kidnapping is what happens when a character is abducted by a parent, spouse, in-law, sibling, child, uncle, aunt, grandparent, thirteenth cousin thrice removed, etc. This not only explains how the kidnapper knows their victim's habits so well, but it also adds a bit of extra drama to an already dramatic/tense situation.
Why the victim's family chooses to kidnap them varies: maybe their mother and father are trying to protect them from something dangerous, maybe their spouse is a Yandere who wants them to be theirs forever, maybe it's a cruel joke from their siblings, maybe the abductee is on it because they and their partner have a thing for Rescue Romances... There are thousands of potential reasons. How the family is involved can also vary: they could be the actual abductors, the masterminds, a pawn in the true mastermind's scheme... So long as a family member is involved in some way, it counts.
While adults can be the victims in this trope, most of the time it happens to children. For example, the kidnapping could be motivated by a Family Relationship Switcheroo (with the child's actual mother wanting their child back). A variant can occur if someone accidentally kidnaps a relative when they really intended to grab someone else.
Compare with The Kindnapper and Kidnapped by an Ally. If the kidnapping is so that the relative can kill the target, then this crosses over with Child Supplants Parent, Offing Ones Offspring, and (depending on the target's age) Would Hurt a Child. May overlap with Evil Uncle or Clashing Cousins. For when someone is kidnapped to replace a person's lost/deceased family member, see Replacement Goldfish.
Please note that (with the exception of special circumstances), Baby Be Mine does not count here: more often than not, the abductor in that situation is not related to the baby or their parents, and does not count as adoptive parents because they rarely try and fill out proper legal adoption paperwork.
Sadly, this trope is Truth in Television: familial child abduction
is one of the stickier parts of family law everywhere and is the most common type of kidnapping in real life.
Because the identity of the kidnapper is often an important reveal in a story, this is a "Spoilers Off" trope, so BEWARE OF UNMARKED SPOILERS!
A No Recent Examples, Please! rule applies to all Real Life examples of this trope, which shouldn't be added for at least 75 years after the relevant event.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Dragon Ball Z: When Gohan was only four years old, his long-lost uncle kidnaps him in order to threaten his father, Goku, into becoming a space pirate. Depending on the translation, Raditz threatens to either kill Gohan or "raise" him as a proper Saiyan warrior. Raditz didn’t count on Goku Taking a Third Option and fighting him to death instead.
- Takopi's Original Sin: When Shizuka discovers her dad has a new family, she kidnaps her dad's two daughters because she believes they might have eaten her dog Chappy, who was taken away from her.
- Case Closed: Early in the series, Conan is kidnapped by a gang of criminals who turn out to be his parents (and Dr. Agasa) in disguise. They kidnapped him to test his detective skills.
Comic Books
- G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel): Billy's backstory is that when he was a young child his father, the future Cobra Commander, left his wife and took Billy. Billy spent his childhood being dragged around America and told his mother was dead, and only learns the truth and reunites with his mother as a teenager.
- Spider-Man: In the story arc Spider Hunt, young Normie Osborn, Norman Osborn's grandson, is kidnapped by a person wearing the Green Goblin identity, and Normie mistakes them for his father Harry, since Harry was the Goblin. Norman's kidnapping was part of Norman Osborn's plan at the time to create in the public consciousness the idea that Norman is not the Green Goblin, and to have Norman appear as a concerned grandparent willing to pay his grandson's ransom.
Fan Works
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon) (MonsterVerse): Played for Horror when Ghidorah dispatches its right head's shed skin to kidnap Monster X— who is the fusion of Ghidorah's severed left head, San (the "Youngest Brother" to the other heads) and Dr. Vivienne Graham (who is perceived by the rest of Ghidorah in her new hybridized state as the "sister-daughter")— and bring them back to Ghidorah forcibly.
- The Blood of the Covenant: Upon discovering that Kallik was born in the Fire Nation, Iroh theorizes that Kallik is the long-lost Prince Zuko. So he has his soldiers arrest Kallik and hold him prisoner on their ship. Iroh plans to take Kallik back to the Fire Nation and reunite the royal family. However, as Lu Ten points out, Kallik has been locked up for weeks, scared out of his mind, and has been told that his cousins and surrogate little brother are dead. In other words, Kallik has no reason to even want to be part of the royal family. Lu Ten is proven right when Kallik manages to escape and frees the Avatar from Admiral Zhao.
- Capturing the Past: At the start of the fic, Phineas and Candace's biological father comes to town, wanting to reunite with his kids now that his second wife (the woman he left Linda for) has walked out on him. Candace reads him the riot act for abandoning them when she was a toddler, and swears that she, Linda, and Lawrence will do everything they can to make sure he never sees Phineas. This leads to Phineas and Ferb getting kidnapped by the former's father.
- The Dragon and the Butterfly: When Stoick finally finds Hiccup on the Encanto, he is determined to bring the boy back. However, he does this first by trying to take Hiccup while he's unconscious, and then by trying to coerce him into leaving with the Vikings. When Hiccup makes it clear that he won't go willingly (and that he has an entire family of magical people willing to defend him), the Vikings realize they can't make him leave and thus have to come up with a new plan.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy: The Teen Series:
- In the chapter Return Of The Ed's, Eddy's parents and the other adults in the cul-de-sac are kidnapped by a gang that's led by Eddy's brother as part of trying to take over the cul-de-sac.
- In the chapter My Ed For You, Marie's biological father Bubba kidnaps her and some other children from women he had affairs with in order to make them live with him in Watermelon Falls.
- Future Is Bright (Danny Phantom): When Bruce Wayne takes custody of Danny Fenton post the Doctors Fentons' arrest, Vlad Masters is furious. He tries using his position as Danny's godfather to supersede Batman's decision that Danny stay with an ally of the Justice League, to no avail. When all of his normal dirty tricks to get his way don't work (as he can't overshadow Bruce due to him wearing the Spector Deflector Danny gave him), he ends up kidnapping Danny from Wayne Manor. Before the Bats come to his rescue, Vlad proves himself an abusive caretaker by beating the crap out of Danny for getting adopted by Bruce.
- Lab Rat: Played for Horror. The Doctors Fenton manage to capture Phantom, and begin subjecting him to interrogation and torture before they begin dissecting him alive. They only realize that they've kidnapped and tortured their own son when Danny reverts to human mid-dissection (only surviving (barely) thanks to his halfa biology).
- Snow Blind: When Donatello is temporarily blinded and severely injured after a fight, the Nightwatcher (aka Raphael) finds him. Thinking he's a stranger (as he doesn't know about Raphael's secret life as a vigilante), Donnie refuses to go anywhere with him. Running out of options, Raphael's forced to kidnap his brother so he can treat his injuries. Donnie only realizes that Raphael and the Nightwatcher are one and the same at the end of the fic.
- Violence in the Library: During a Xenomorph outbreak in a local library, Luke Skywalker is captured by Darth Vader (who both just realized that they are father and son). To Luke's surprise, Vader pulls out all the stops to protect Luke from the monsters, and they agree to work with one another in order to defeat the Xenomorphs. Evidently, both rebels and Imperials can agree that a planet-wide Xenomorph outbreak would be a very bad thing.
- White Sheep (RWBY): Salem, seeking to bring her son Jaune back home after he's run away to Beacon to pursue his dream of becoming a Huntsman, dispatches three Beowolves who are programmed to only obey her orders over his to accomplish the task, and they nearly make off with him in Forever Fall.
- With Pearl and Ruby Glowing:
- Prima's dad kidnapped her and took her on "vacation", where he sexually abused her and convinced her that her mom didn't want her.
- Ayuka ran away from her sexually abusive dad, who got her pregnant with twins, and later came back to kidnap the kids to protect them.
- Morticia discovered her nephew Norman Jr. was poisoned by his mom Normina (Morticia's sister), so she and Gomez carried him out of his house and went to court for custody over him.
Film — Animation
- Justice League vs. Teen Titans: In the backstory, Raven accidentally doomed the world of Azarath, where she was being raised, when she summoned her missing biological father, the demon Trigon, without realizing the danger she was unleashing — Trigon proceeded to raze Azarath to a lifeless ruin, sparing only Raven, whom he subsequently took with him back to his hellish home dimension, until Raven grew so sick of the trauma he caused her that she imprisoned him in a crystal.
- Kubo and the Two Strings: Kubo's mother, Sariatu, is a former yokai who gave up most of her powers to marry a human warrior named Hanzo and give birth to their son. Her father, the Moon King, was furious and decided the only way to rectify the situation was to remove Hanzo and his daughter and take Kubo to the Moon Kingdom... which would involve taking his eyes so he'd be blind to humanity. Fortunately, before he could take both of the baby's eyes, Sariatu managed to escape. For the next decade, she forbade Kubo from leaving their home after dark, as the Moon King and his soldiers (her sisters and Kubo's aunts) still search for him at night. When Kubo asks her why they hate him, Sariatu explains that they don't: they do see him as family, but they want to kidnap him and take him away from the world and people he loves. She's proven right when the first thing the Sisters say to Kubo when they meet is "Come to your aunties!"
Film — Live-Action
- Fargo: Jerry hires two thugs to kidnap his wife so he can extort a ransom from his wealthy father-in-law, which he intends to use to pay back a fraudulent loan he took out in secret. It doesn't take long for the police to get involved, and once they do, the plan rapidly falls apart.
- This is the plot of the 2000 Hong Kong film Fist Power, where Charles (Anthony Wong), a disgruntled ex-marine-turned-mercenary, held a school hostage to take back his son from his ex-wife about to leave for the US, while main character Brian (Vincent Zhao), a former partner of Charles whose nephew is in the same school, attempts to suppress the situation by talking Charles out of his plans.
- Girl in the Basement is a Lifetime movie about an 18-year-old girl named Sara who gets kidnapped by her controlling father Don, moments before she was about to leave the house. She is then imprisoned for twenty years as Don abuses and even rapes her, resulting in her giving birth to three kids and suffering a miscarriage later on. Said film was part of Lifetime's Ripped from the Headlines series, being based off the real life case of Elizabeth Fritzl.
- Guardians of the Galaxy (2014): The sequel reveals that Peter Quill's abduction at the start of the first film was arranged by his father, Ego. Yondu, however, knew what Ego's plan for Peter was, and ended up raising him to be a Ravager instead of delivering him to his father.
- House Arrest: The whole plot happens because Grover Beindorf decides to take some extremely drastic measures to prevent his parents from divorcing — namely, locking them up in the basement and keeping them there until they make up. Things become more complicated when various other kids in the neighborhood who have parents seeking divorce discover the Brindorfs' abduction and convince Grover to put their parents in the basement as well. The police eventually arrive to investigate the mass disappearance and one of the parents loses their job because of all the days without contact with their boss.
- Kindergarten Cop: Dominic's real father, Crisp, arrives at the school and starts a fire in the library as a distraction to kidnap him, then uses him as a hostage when Kimble arrives to arrest him.
- Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back: At the start of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker's climactic duel in Cloud City, Vader tries to simply kidnap Luke by trapping him in a freezing chamber and encasing him in carbonite. However, Luke's Force abilities have grown stronger, and he's able to leap out of the chamber before he's frozen. Minutes later, Darth Vader gives his most famous line, revealing that he's Luke's father.
Literature
- Freak the Mighty: Towards the end of the novel, Maxwell is kidnapped by his father, who has been granted parole. He intends to go back to his criminal ways, now with his son as his Dragon. Fortunately, Max is saved by Freak showing up with a squirt gun full of "acid" (actually dish soap, vinegar, and curry powder) and a police squadron. Max's father is taken back to jail, and the mountain of evidence against him forces him to plead guilty in court.
- If You Find Me revolves around a teen and her younger sister who were kidnapped by their mother years ago and hidden in a national park, and the sudden shock of normal life when their father finally finds them.
- Kidnapped: David, the main protagonist, learns after his father's death that he's the heir to everything his grandfather left his two sons. His uncle, not wanting to give up anything (or miss out on gaining all of his late brother's worldly possessions) arranges for David to be kidnapped and taken to sea.
- Little Anna Mark: Young Philip and Anna are shanghaied by their respective fathers, Captain Stansfield and Saul Mark.
- This forms the main twist of Piece of My Heart; Johnny, who was adopted as a baby, is kidnapped by a man who turns out to be his biological father, Daniel. He had no idea Johnny existed until a few months ago, when his former affair partner confessed to having gotten pregnant and put their son up for adoption. Daniel had lost custody of his daughter when his ex-wife left him due to his increasingly unstable and violent behaviour, and he becomes fixated on being reunited Johnny at any cost. At one point, Johnny's adoptive family suspect his mother and/or maternal grandmother may be involved in the kidnapping but both turn out to be innocent, with his birth mother being completely ruled out due to her being dead.
- The Rules of Survival: After a long, brutal custody battle, Matthew, Callie, and Emmy are finally freed from their abusive, drug-using, psychotic mother Nikki when she's sent to prison. Several months later, when Nikki finishes her sentence and realizes that tormenting her sister and son won't get her her old life back, Nikki kidnaps her five-year-old daughter Emmy.
- This is the entire premise of Vanishing Acts: Delia, herself a search-and-rescue professional, learns that her father, Andrew, kidnapped her as a four-year-old and fled with her from Arizona. His first apparent motivation is that her mother, Elise, was an Alcoholic Parent. It turns out that his most pressing motivation was that he saw Elise's lover, Victor, molest Delia/Bethany. Delia is able to remember being raped by Victor, which gets Andrew found not guilty.
- In the Vorkosigan Saga novel Brothers in Arms, Captain Galeni goes missing, and it turns out to be because he was abducted by his father, Ser Galen. Miles only learns this after he is abducted by his clone-brother Mark, who Ser Galen had created to impersonate Miles.
- Walk Two Moons: While telling the story of how her grandparents got married, Sal mentions that in their hometown, it was tradition for the groom's father, brothers, cousins, and a friend or two to kidnap him from the reception, take him into the woods, and get drunk with him (a bit of a second bachelor party). Sal's grandfather had noticed that his groomsmen were all acting suspiciously during the ceremony, and thought that his family was going to pull this on him.
- Without Looking Back revolves around a father kidnapping his children without them being aware of it, with the protagonist Louis only realizing when he sees his own face on a Missing poster.
Live-Action TV
- All Her Fault: In a rare overlap with Baby Be Mine, this turns out to be what happened to Milo. Carrie Finch is believed to be just another nanny at his school who randomly kidnapped him. However, she turns out to be Milo's biological mother, Josephine. She and Milo's biological father, Kyle, orchestrated several supposedly chance meetings with him and kidnapped him from Marissa and Peter... because Peter had actually switched their son with the real Milo right after a car accident where the real Milo was killed. She and Kyle only wanted him back.
- Bones: In "The Mastodon in the Room", Cam is under intense scrutiny for not being able to identify the skeleton of a young child, thought to be the missing Logan Bartlett. Logan's parents are divorced and his mother has sole custody, but his father, though the initial first suspect because of this trope, has an alibi, subverting it. Double Subverted when the skeleton is found to be a different child and Logan was with his father all along.
- Castle (2009): This trope is the twist in the episode "Little Girl Lost". The girl's adoptive mother had grown sick to death of her Lazy Husband choosing to spend all day painting instead of raising their child or finding a job to help the mom cut her hours, making her work her fingers to the bone. She figured her husband would fight her for custody in divorce court, so she worked with her sister to "kidnap" the child while the girl was under his watch, the ransom being all of their savings, leaving her husband with nothing to fight her when the divorce happened.
- Chicago Fire: In the episode "Two Ts", Brett is on the scene of a car accident where two of the victims are a father and his little son. She notices while the two are brought into the hospital that the father's story (that his wife is dead) doesn't match his son's (as the boy asks if someone's going to take him to his mom's). A little investigating reveals that the father lost custody of his son when divorcing from his drug-using wife, and that he kidnapped his son in an attempt to get him away from her.
- Criminal Minds:
- In the episode "Gabby", a little girl is Kidnapped While Sleeping after her aunt briefly left her in the back of a car so she could make a quick grocery run. Upon a bit of investigation, the BAU realize that the aunt had actually arranged for the kidnapping, with the grocery run being her attempt at an alibi. The aunt, as it turns out, was molested by her uncle, Gabby's grandfather, and sought revenge on his daughter, her cousin, Gabby's mom by getting Gabby kidnapped. The aunt tried to get Gabby's father (who separated from her mother a while ago) in on the scheme, but he refused and tried to shut the operation down before Gabby got hurt.
- In "Seven Seconds", Katie is revealed to have been sexually abused by her uncle. When she goes missing in a mall, he and her other close family members (including his son) come under suspicion. The kidnapper is revealed to be Katie's aunt, who was hoping to cause Katie's death because she saw her niece as destroying their marriage and family.
- In "It Takes A Village", Chloe kidnapped her son just to hurt his father, Ian Doyle, for forcing her to carry him to term.
- Family Law (2021): In "Truthiness", Abby takes on the case of Elaine, an anti-vaxxer mother who is being challenged for custody by her ex-husband because she wants to take her daughter overseas without vaccinations. Despite Abby's best efforts, Elaine is unreasonable and unlikely to win the case, so Elaine tries to grab her daughter and make a run for Europe before her ex-husband can stop her.
- Found (2023): Some cases involve kidnappings by relatives, sometimes for misguided, well-meaning reasons.
- Grimm: The episode "Bad Moon Rising" kicks off with Carly Kampfer being kidnapped by her uncle and cousins and dragged back to their farm. As it turns out, the family is Coyotl, and the more traditionalist side of the family wants Carly forcibly inducted into their pack - complete with a Rite of Passage that's basically a ritualized gang-rape enacted by Carly's all-too-eager cousins.
- Heroes: In the first season, Hiro's father has several of his employees kidnap his son, allegedly to end his journey bring him home safely. It turns out later though that this was really a Secret Test of Character.
- Law & Order: Several times, child kidnapping cases have been the case of the week:
- In "Custody", a black child is kidnapped from his white adoptive parents by his biological mother, who lost custody of him for neglect due to her drug addiction.
- In "Tabula Rasa", an extremely psychologically abusive father kidnapped his daughters after his wife was granted full custody.
- In "Married with Children", this happenes twice: Having falsely claimed to have adopted her daughter solo (in order to get around the ban on gay couples adopting in Florida), Lisa ran away with her to prevent her ex-wife, Renee, challenging her. Having murdered Lisa, Renee then kidnapped their daughter Sophie (though claiming Lisa was on a business trip rather than dead).
- In "Brazil", Dana technically committed this with her daughter, Nicole. Following Dana's messy divorce with her ex-husband, Philip Shoemaker, the courts gave shared custody of their daughter but she wasn't willing to accept this, defying the court's decision by fleeing to Brazil with Nicole, believing that her ex-husband wouldn't be able to follow her. To further spite her ex, Dana even told Nicole that her father was dead. Undeterred, Philip would enact a complex scheme to draw Dana back to New York with Nicole in tow, supported by Dana's own parents who resented their daughter's selfish decision to take their granddaughter.
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: As the premise of the show is sexual crimes and crimes against children, it's not so surprising that this topic appears several times:
- Played with in "Escape", where Baxter kidnaps his stepson Lee because of Lee's False Rape Accusation against him.
- In "Birthright", Michelle is so traumatized by the deaths of her husband and other daughter that she kidnaps her biological daughter, born from her embryos that went unused in a clinic until they were used by another loving couple, who knew nothing of the doctor's scheme to reuse them.
- In "Haystack", Laura's missing son Kendall was fathered by her abusive ex-boyfriend, James. She hid that from her new husband, but James kidnapped the baby from her in an effort to please his own obsessive mother.
- In "Stranger", it turns out that, in reality, Kristen was kidnapped by her Pervert Dad Carl and sexually abused by him for years.
- "Shattered" revolves around the efforts of Sophie and her ex-husband, Paul, to secure custody of their son. It's revealed that Paul paid a professional kidnapper to kidnap their son, Nicholas, using a credit card taken out in Sophie's name. Nicholas is killed in an accidental car crash when the "hostage" situation goes wrong.
- In "Vanity's Bonfire", Dia kidnapped Tessa from her loving adoptive parents because their lawyer had forged the adoption papers and taken Tessa from her. This leads to Dia's murder.
- In "Gone Baby Gone", Noah's biological grandmother, Sheila, briefly kidnaps Noah from Benson.
- In "Blast", a young girl named Carly is kidnapped for ransom by her big brother, Daniel, who is estranged from the family because of his drug addiction.
- Modern Family: In "A Tale of Three Cities", Gloria's sister, Sonia, kidnaps Manny. Her ransom is Gloria's secret hot sauce recipe. Manny seems to realize the whole situation is a bit ridiculous, as he's fairly calm the whole time.
- The Rookie: In one episode, two cops investigate a domestic violence call. The woman, Ms. Mitchell, admits that her soon-to-be ex-husband burst in on her the night before when she was with a date, threatening the other man with a firearm and scaring Ms. Mitchell. The police learn from her that her soon-to-be ex is Jeremy Hawke, a Dirty Cop who was demoted to a teacher at a police academy and now has no contact with his son. Realizing that he could lose his job and career over his wife confessing to what he did, Hawk kidnaps his son and attempts to go on the lam. Fortunately, he's captured before he gets too far, and the boy is returned to his mother.
- S.W.A.T. (2017):
- In "Kingdom", a young activist, Amina from the Middle East becomes abducted for speaking out against her home country's human rights abuses. LAPD SWAT ultimately learn that the young activist's aunt and uncle are responsible for despite growing up and living in America, they valued their status back in the Middle East more than their niece. As such, they viewed Amina's outspoken rallies against their home country's crimes as an embarrassment. The Aunt and Uncle hope that handing over their niece to their country's government (where she will likely be tortured and executed) would restore their status.
- In "Family", LAPD SWAT go on the hunt for Naomi who aims to abduct her niece, Jaime. As the daughter of her sister, Virginia, Jaime is the only thing left of her. Having had a nightmare of a childhood, from their father being sent to prison, their mother being institutionalized, being separated in foster care, Naomi would ultimately lose her sister after she was raped by her foster father and gave birth to Jaime, as Virginia committed suicide. This would cause Naomi to go on a rampage against those who she believes are responsible for ruining her own and her sister's lives before taking Jaime with her to Oregon to live on a farm with her aunt, regardless if that means abducting her from a loving couple who adopted and raised Jaime.
Video Games
- Final Fantasy XIV:
- In the Stormblood White Mage quests, Sanche Orwell took her daughter Gatty and fled to the Fringes, raising Gatty in a remote, isolated cabin and threatening to shoot anyone from Gridania who approaches them. As the quests go on, Sylphie and the Warrior of Light learn that Gatty is a budding Padjal, meaning Sanche would be obligated to surrender her to Stillglade Fane by the Gridanian authorities. Sanche couldn't stomach the thought of losing her only family after her husband passed away, leading to her kidnapping her own daughter.
- In the Gunbreaker quests, Radovan and the Warrior of Light are hired to defend a woman from her husband, whom she believes will try to take their child away from them. After they successfully scare him off, Sophie realizes something isn't right and asks her friends to check on the woman and her child. They soon find the mother kidnapping her child and trying to sell him into slavery for cash to fuel her somnus addiction. She had duped them into chasing off her concerned husband who was trying to get her treatment.
- Mass Effect 2: Henry Lawson, Miranda Lawson's father, is obsessed with cementing his "legacy" in the galaxy, leading him to genetically engineer his offspring, which led to Miranda's conception and that of her sister, Oriana. However, seeing the egomaniacal monster her father is, Miranda absconded with Oriana and gave her to a loving couple so her sister could live a happy, normal life. Furious, Henry would spend years and a considerable fortune in locating Oriana, such as hiring Eclipse mercenaries to kidnap her though Miranda with the help of Commander Shepard thwarting them. In the franchise's third installment, Henry actually succeeds in reacquiring Oriana, as part of a deal with the Illusive Man, leading Miranda to rescue her sister on her own before Shepard arrives to assist.
- The Park: During the exploration of the House of Horrors, Lorraine stumbles upon a letter from her mother accusing her of siding with her abusive husband and running away from home to be with him. On another repetition of the loop, the letter has been graffitied with an angry scrawl of "I didn't run away, Dad took me!" Given that Lorraine remembers her father as an extremely mean-spirited alcoholic, it's clear this was yet another layer of misery in Lorraine's extremely troubled life, and another reason why the Park hates her.
Visual Novels
- Played with in Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit. Eustace Winner is found tied up in his own father Excelsius's home. After some questioning, though, Edgeworth deduces that he wasn't the intended victim - it was Shaun Fenn, whom Edgeworth and Kay Faraday had actually come to Excelsius's house to look for, but the men he sent after Shaun were so stupid that they kidnapped Eustace instead.
Web Original
- Creepypasta: In "My neighbors are acting suspicious and their children aren't aging", Valentina Ambrosio has kidnapped her adult children - even snatching her son Billy on the way back to his college dorm - and regressed them to childhood so they won't leave her ever again.
- If I Was The Dad In A Young Adult Fantasy: One of the reasons the Granddad is banned from the Dad's house is because he kidnapped Timmy in an attempt to make the boy a vampire hunter.
- SCP Foundation "SCP-8607" (AKA Lucy's House) eventually reveals that Lucy's father kidnapped her following a messy custody battle with her mother and is keeping her in a Prison Dimension modeled on the family home. For added horror, he's so obsessed with keeping Lucy exactly as she was before the divorce, the containment procedures note that "for her safety and convenience, Lucy will remain nine (9) years old."
Western Animation
- Adventure Time: After learning that he's not actually a magic dog, but half dog, half shapeshifting alien, Jake's true second parent, Warren Ampersand, arrives in Ooo and abducts him, allowing him only to leave a brief message for Finn ("BRB.")
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: When invited to join Team Avatar to become Aang's Earthbending teacher, Toph has to run away from home to do so, as her overly protective and strict parents refuse to believe she's capable of defending herself. Toph's father, refusing to believe that Toph left of her own accord, hires a professional Earth-bending fighter and Toph's teacher to capture his daughter and bring her home. Towards the end of season two, the two men manage to capture Toph, and nearly succeed at getting her back to the Beifongs... only for Toph to discover metalbending and escape.
- Batman: The Animated Series: In the episode "See No Evil", an ex-con and thief named Lloyd Ventrix steals a special cloth that can bend the light around it, turning it (and anyone/thing wearing it) invisible. He uses his invisibility suit to spend time with his daughter Kimmy, whose birth he missed due to being incarcerated. His ex-wife refuses to let him anywhere near Kimmy, and is planning on moving herself and her daughter out of Gotham to stay away from him. He's furious when he learns this, and resorts to kidnapping his daughter. Fortunately, Batman learns of the planned abduction before Ventress can get too far, and manages to put him behind bars again.
- Futurama: In one episode, Bender has a one-night stand with a robotic vending machine named Bev, which results in their having a robot baby named Ben. Bev abandons her son and partner, leaving Bender to raise Ben. After he turns fifteen (as in he's been alive for fifteen days), Bev returns and files for custody of Ben (which is granted because of Bender's extensive criminal record). Since Ben is obviously unhappy with his mother, Bender goes to her home and kidnaps his son back. The whole thing turns out to be pointless because Bev got pregnant with another robot while searching for her son and decides she'd rather raise the new baby then her old one.
- Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: Back when he was a normal monkey, Scarlemagne (then Hugo) was raised and eventually mutated by Doctors Leo and Song Oak. They viewed him as a surrogate son, even planning to take him with them when they left the DNA Burrow and raise him as baby Kipo's older brother. Unfortunately, Dr. Emilia's plans ruined this, and caused the start of Hugo's fall into Scarlemagne. At the end of season one, Scarlemagne kidnaps Leo and holds him hostage for all of season two, and at the end of that season manages to kidnap Kipo as well (though Kipo used this to her advantage).
- The Simpsons: In "The Joy of Sect", after Marge escapes from the Movementarians when she's one of the few people not to fall victim to the organization's brainwashing, she enlists the help of Reverend Lovejoy and Groundskeeper Willie to kidnap Homer and the kids, and then has them tied up in Ned Flanders' basement for deprogramming.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The infant son of Jabba the Hutt is being held hostage in an abandoned monastery. Count Dooku claims it's the doing of the Republic, seeking to compel Jabba into granting their forces carte blanche in his territory. It turns out that Jabba's deceitful brother Ziro was the culprit, expecting to be rewarded richly for finagling Hutt territory to the Separatists. Jabba is understandably enraged when he learns this, and later arranges for Ziro to be killed in revenge.
- Steven Universe:
- A few months after Steven was born (and Rose died giving birth), the Crystal Gems visit him and Greg at the latter's temporary residence. When Steven's gemstone glows for the first time, the Gems spontaneously decide that if Steven has Gem magic, they need to be the ones to raise him, not Greg. Thus, they kidnap Steven and steal Greg's van to give them a quick getaway. However, as soon as they're alone with Steven, they realize that they have no idea what they're doing. When Greg catches up to them, the four realize that Steven will stand a better chance with all four of them raising him. Hence the Gems acting as adoptive mothers throughout Steven's life.
- When Blue Diamond has a conversation about grief with Greg, she decides to take him with her back to Homeworld, intending to put him in the Diamonds' People Zoo as a means of sparing Greg from the Diamonds' attack on Earth. With the eventual reveal that Rose Quartz and Pink Diamond were the same person, it's becomes clear that Blue basically kidnapped her brother-in-law.
Real Life
- Michel Navratil was a passenger on the Titanic, along with his sons Michel, Jr and Edmond. Michel and his wife had been having problems with their marriage, with Marcelle Navratil finally deciding to separate and take the children. Refusing to lose his kids, Navratil took his boys (ages four and two) and decided to start anew in a new country, where his wife couldn't find them. He bought a ticket under the false name Louis Hoffmann. He was never able to see his plan through due to the ship's infamous sinking. Navratil did not survive, though he did manage to place his sons in a lifeboat, ensuring their survival. Upon the survivors' arrival in America, newspapers started spreading the story of the "Titanic Orphans" around the world. Marcelle recognized the boys in a newspaper picture, and was able to reunite with her sons.
- In 1879 there is The Coolidge Custody Battles. Henry and Belthiede Coolidge famously snatched their daughter back and forth from each other in New York while awaiting a divorce, culminating in a public struggle where they pulled the child in opposite directions.
- St. Thomas Aquinas was famously kidnapped by his own brothers, on his parents' orders. His powerful family had arranged to make young Thomas an abbot at a prestigious and influential monastery, but the boy scuttled their plans at 19 by becoming a wandering Dominican friar... which at the time seemed socially little better than a street preacher. Thomas was imprisoned in the family castle for over a year, but in the end his determination outweighed his relatives'.