Papa Wolf/Playing With

Basic Trope: A man fiercely defends his loved ones.

• Straight: A man's children are threatened and he leaps to their defense.
• Exaggerated: A man inflicts Disproportionate Retribution on anyone who even annoys his children -- even justifiably. See Knight Templar Parent.
• Justified: They're his children, and his protectiveness is an expression of his love for them.
  • The protective dad is a wolf.
• Inverted: A man will protect any and every one but his children, whom he will abuse for getting into trouble.
  • Or the adult children fiercely defend their aging father against all threats.
  • Or the father is fierce and defensive until you threaten his kids. Then he becomes a docile, Bumbling Dad.
  • Offing the Offspring
• Gender Inverted: Mama Bear
• Subverted: A man's defense of his children keeps them too sheltered to survive when he dies, so they end up worse off than before.
  • The father tries to be a Papa Wolf, but proves woefully inadequate against the threat against his children...
• Double Subverted: He arranged for a Parental Substitute, since no matter how hard they tried, they would never have been able to face their dangers.
  • ...but his attempt buys them enough time to escape anyways.
• Parodied: Unending conflicts between fathers over real and imagined slights to their children.
• Deconstructed: Fathers obsess over their children to the neglect of what else is their duty, and shelter them into helplessness.
• Reconstructed: A father learns his Aesop and teaches his children to defend themselves, and brings them along to help others.
• Zig Zagged: The little girl who the old man goes out of his way to protect at all costs is under a magical effect that has reduced her to the appearance of a child. She's his mother.
  • The father and the daughter are a Battle Couple protecting each other fiercely.
• Averted: Disappeared Dad
  • The father is too cowardly to try to protect his kids.
• Enforced: "If he doesn't protect his kids, it means he doesn't care about them, and it makes him look like a Jerkass.
• Lampshaded: "Just because he's a shop clerk doesn't mean we can risk his seeing us harm his kids!"
• Invoked: "I knew if they did that, they would bring down the father's wrath on them."
• Defied: "I know my kids can take care of themselves -- I won't steal their thunder."
• Discussed: "He would do anything to protect his kids."
• Conversed: "You have to write in a son for him. It gives him a motive. Men in stories like that will punch out God to save their son."

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Back to Papa Wolf, and get your hands off my son!