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Following

Searching for the Lost Relative

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I want to know who I am. And I'd rather die trying to find out that live not knowing. He's slipping in and out. My parents, tell me about my parents.
—Jarod, The Pretender, "Bloodlines" (S2E22)

Sometimes, a relative disappears, not because of estrangement or external factors such as prison or health issues, but because there is no way to communicate with someone whose whereabouts are unknown.

Searching for the Long-Lost Relative can be the main theme of a fiction, with the main character investigating to get clues enabling them to know where exactly this relative is. The adventure can be highly emotional, especially if the relative is someone very near to the character, with the protagonist dealing with the absence of the disappeared and how the meeting will proceed.

If the family member is a parent and they're in danger, it overlaps with Parents in Distress.

Sometimes, the Orphan's Plot Trinket is the sole available clue.

Super-Trope to Gene Hunting; also related to Father's Quest, which often involves a father searching for a missing and endangered child.

See also I Will Find You, Big Damn Reunion, Send in the Search Team, Seeking the Missing, Finding the Dead. Supertrope of Orphan's Plot Trinket.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • The major conflict of the third volume of The Demon Girl Next Door is Momo trying to find her Adoptive Peer Parent Sakura. It turns out Sakura sealed her core in Yuko's body.
  • Fairy Tail: Natsu is introduced in the series looking for his missing adopted dragon father Igneel, with his goal throughout the majority of the series is trying to find him. They do meet up again during the Tartaros arc with The Reveal that Igneel was literally inside of Natsu all along. Unfortunately for Natsu, their reunion is short-lived, as Acnologia kills Igneel not long after.
  • Hello! Sandybell: Sandybell was raised by a single father, and longs for the mother she never met. Ater becoming a journalist, she travels across Europe to find clues about her fate. When she finally tracks down her mother Linda, she's amnesiac and doesn't recognize her. However, her memories are jogged when Sandybell rescues a child that fell into the water - Linda suddenly remembers that years ago, she was on a ship, that suddenly sank after the engine exploded - thus separating from her husband and baby Sandybell. Cue tearful reunion.
  • Hunter × Hunter: One of the reasons that Gon wants to be a Hunter is to be able to follow in his missing father's footsteps, finding him, or living up to his legacy of being a greater Hunter.
  • Kaze no Shōjo Emily: When Ilse was little, her mother died, and her father was too saddened to talk about what happened, shutting down the topic whenever Ilse brought it up. Eventually Ilse got angry decided that to run away from home, believing her mother was out there. It turns out she's Dead All Along, having died in a winter storm on New Moon.
  • Made in Abyss: The inciting incident and majority of the plot revolve around Riko searching for her long-lost mother.
  • In Mobile Fighter G Gundam Domon spends the first few episodes asking anyone he meets if they've seen his brother Kyouji.
  • My-HiME: Mikoto Minagi was sent to Fuuka by her dying grandfather to locate her long-lost brother. Eventually, she finds him. It's Reito Kanzaki but by the time she finds him he has suffered a Grand Theft Me to the series' Big Bad, The Obsidian Prince, since he was Raised as a Host. They're able to become proper brother & sister at the end of the series.
  • Both Nadia and Jean of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water are searching for their lost parents, the former for both (along with her homeland she doesn't even know) and the latter for his father, who disappeared while navigating (his mother having died years ago).
  • Night Raid 1931: Yukina's reason for becoming a spy for the Japanese military is to find her long-lost brother who disappeared with his platoon in Manchuria.
  • This is one of the big reveals from Samurai Champloo. The "Samurai who smells of sunflowers" that Fuu hired Jin and Mugen to find is her father, a Japanese Christian who is a target of the government. He initially left Fuu and her mother to protect other believers, then stayed away after the government performed a harsh purge of the Christians, knowing that he and those around him would be targets for the wrath of the Shogunate. When Fuu finds him in the final episodes, he's on death's door due to tuberculosis, not even able to get up from his bed.
  • Ryu the Cave Boy: Esta was forced to give up her son at birth because the Big Horn Tribe declared his skin colour a curse; nevertheless she still has hopes he is alive and abandons her tribe to find him.
  • Jane Buxton of Secret of Cerulean Sand went to the Orient to seek her missing brother Georges, reported to have been shot for treason.
  • 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother: Marco, an 8-year-old Italian boy, looks for his missing mother in Argentina.

    Comic Books 

    Fairy Tales 

    Fan Works 
  • Growing Up Impish: Striker's assassination gigs are revealed as his way of funding his hunt for his missing little brother, Moxxie, who vanished after their parents were killed in an extermination. Once he realizes that he almost killed said brother, he is horrified with himself.
  • Not the intended use (Zantetsuken Reverse): In Game of Cat and Cat, it is mentioned that after Julius went missing and was discovered by a farmer, Julius' family did go to look for him, but the farmer assumed the worst (seeing that a bunch of foreigners in expensive clothes were looking for a battered comatose teenager) and led them away, resulting in Julius' family assuming he's dead for 35 years.

    Films — Animation 
  • Anastasia:
    • Orphaned Anya doesn't remember her family, but her Orphan's Plot Trinket necklace that reads "Together in Paris" leads her to search for them once she's old enough to leave the orphanage. When Dmitri and Vlad present the possibility that she might be the long-lost Princess Anastasia, whose grandmother resides in Paris, she agrees to go with them in hopes of finding her lost family (which, happily, she does).
    • On the flip side, Anastasia's grandmother, the Dowager Empress, has spent 10 years searching for her by the time of the film but has become so jaded by the long string of imposters claiming to be her granddaughter for the reward that she's ready to close up shop by the time Anya comes along.
  • In Disney's Coco, Miguel ends up in the world of deceased ancestors and tries to find one of his elders, who appears to be the famous musician Ernesto de la Cruz.
  • Finding Dory is the sequel to Finding Nemo, and its plot involves Dory, Marlin, and Nemo travelling to the Marine Life institute so Dory can find Charlie and Jenny, her long-lost parents.
  • Finding Nemo is all about a clownfish named Marlin looking for his son Nemo after Nemo is taken by divers.
  • Storks: Tulip was raised by the Delivery Storks for basically her whole life after an incident with her assigned stork destroyed the beacon containing her intended address. One of Tulip's main motivations in the film is finding out where her intended family lives.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Annie manages to ask Franklin Delano Roosevelt to search for her parents, using her trinket as a clue; unfortunately, the FBI find evidence pointing to their deaths in Alaska.
  • In Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Credence Barebone seeks out answers about his long-lost wizarding family, following rumors that he might be Corvus Lestrange, Leta's long-lost brother. Leta, however, insists that the rumors aren't true because she accidentally caused Corvus's death as an infant. Credence, however, does discover the truth about his family — he's a Dumbledore, not a Lestrange.
  • The Millennium Trilogy and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), adaptations of the same story: Henrik (and to a lesser extent, Martin) have never stopped looking for his great-niece/his sister, Harriet, who disappeared 40 years ago. She is discovered to have run away after Gottfried and Martin raped her, and is eventually reunited with Henrik after Martin's death.
  • It (2017): Bill Denbrough's main motivation is to find his "missing" brother, Georgie. Georgie was actually eaten by Pennywise. A deconstructed example, as his obsessive search keeps putting him and his friends in dangerous situations, with everyone calling him out on being in denial.
  • James and the Giant Peach: A subject-inverted example, where Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker drive across the ocean, search for him, after the titular James flees them by way of a giant magical peach, James becoming the lost relative in this case.
  • Joe Dirt: Through the use of flashbacks, the titular character spends much of the film recounting his (mis)adventures while trying to find and reunite with his family who abandoned him at the Grand Canyon when he was 8 years old.
  • The entire point of The Journey of Natty Gann is that Natty is searching for her father. He's taken a job as a logger out west, but couldn't bring her with him and was forced to leave her in Chicago. But he's gone for so long that the authorities are about to make Natty a ward of the state because they think she's been abandoned, so she runs away to find her father herself. Her father, meanwhile, learns of her plight and starts searching for her; this gets complicated when he's mistakenly led to believe she was killed in a train wreck.
  • Popeye: This was the titular sailor's whole reason for arriving in Sweethaven, searching for his long-lost father after two years at sea. As it turns out Poopdeck Papi is secretly the Commodore squeezing the townspeople of taxes while his minion Bluto abuses his power to get Olive Oyl to marry him. Fortunately despite his cantankerous and greedy nature, Poopdeck still harbors love for his son and undergoes a Heel–Face Turn in time to help Popeye unlock his spinach-based powers.
  • Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: After the Ten Rings come after his pendant, Shang-Chi seeks out his sister Xialing, whom he left behind when he fled China and their megalomaniac father as a teenager because she carries the other pendant and he believes the anonymous postcard he got in the mail was her cry for help. It turns out their father had sent the postcard to lure both of his children together so he may bring them (by force) back into the fold.
  • SHAZAM! (2019): Since Billy Batson got lost from his mother when he was a small child, he has been looking for her and running from the social services and foster groups he is sent to. He eventually finds her, just to learn that his mother abandoned him on purpose because she was too young, single and no longer could take care of a small child. She doesn't want to have anything to do with him in the present, either, and he finally understands he already has a warm family with his foster parents and the other abandoned kids they took in.

    Literature 
  • Born Behind Bars: Kabir's appa used to visit him and his amma and put money in their jail bank account. Then he moved to Dubai, where he said his new job would allow him to hire a good lawyer to get his family out of prison. But one day he stopped writing. After nine-year-old Kabir is released, he and his new friend Rani travel to Bengaluru, where Kabir's appa grew up, in the hopes of finding him. They don't, but they do find Kabir's grandparents.
  • In Rob Thurman's Chimera, the protagonist is searching for his long-lost little brother and eventually finds him...except it turns out to be a different person altogether, his actual brother is dead, and he adopts the other kid as a new little brother.
  • Chrysalis (RinoZ): When he's reborn as an ant hatchling, alone in a tunnel, it doesn't take long for Anthony to realise that he must have come from a colony somewhere. Then he comes across a pheromone trail leading deeper into the Dungeon...
  • InCryptid: After her husband Thomas was Trapped in Another World by an Eldritch Abomination, Alice spends the next 50+ years as a Dimensional Traveler searching for him. In the eleventh book, after 56 years, they're finally reunited.
  • Dustbin Baby: April was abandoned as a newborn by her mother. When she sets out on her birthday, she's theoretically going to find her. Though she never finds her, she does get put in touch with the man who found her all those years ago and manages to achieve some peace after a lifetime of abandonment.
  • In "The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo", first volume of Millennium Series, Hendrik Vanger hires Mikael Blomkvist to search for his missing grandniece Harriet. She's well and alive in Australia, fleeing from an incestuous serial-killing brother.
  • In Life And Other Inconveniences by Kristan Higgins, Genevieve's favorite son disappeared as a child. Since no body was ever found, she believes he is still alive and spends the rest of her life searching for him. When her great-granddaughter Riley finds out about it, she joins the search. Eventually the body is recovered — where it would have been found earlier had Genevieve not ended the search for a body because she was so certain he wasn't dead.
  • Safari: The plot of the book is Mansfield hiring Frank to help him find a lost cousin of his named James Oglethorpe somewhere on the Rhodesia-Mozambique border. Oglethorpe is believed to have been dead for two years after a plane he was on crashed in the area, and Mansfield want to find him so he can confirm he's alive and keep both of their inheritances from going to a charity. They ultimately find him in a supply store, having taken over from the original owner after he died. He's also been selling guns to the natives in the area. When Mansfield finds him, Oglethorpe is wary of the story and is certain he actually came to turn him over to the authorities regarding him pushing someone out of a window and killing them. Thus, he has Frank and Mansfield thrown into an old mine shaft.
  • Saintess Summons Skeletons: When Sofia learns that her sister Saria is still alive, she first faints, then puts all her efforts into tracking Saria down. It turns out that Saria had been looking for her, too, but something was blocking divinations from finding Sofia.
  • Venus Among the Fishes: Silver the dolphin left his herd three years ago in search of adventure and hasn't been seen since. After orcas move into Glacier Strait and start picking off dolphins, Silver's siblings Coral and Snapper go looking for him in the hopes that he can help them fend off the orcas, since he was the quickest and cleverest dolphin in the herd. Coral is captured by humans and put to work in a dolphin show. She finds Silver working in the same show, along with his mate Spray and their son Flasher. Silver is happy with his family and doesn't want to leave, but after Spray dies, Silver becomes dissatisfied with life in captivity. He and Coral both eventually escape.
  • A Wrinkle in Time is about two siblings named Meg and Charles Wallace Murray looking for their missing father.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Andor starts with Cassian Andor walking into a brothel while searching for his little sister. His ensuing encounter with a pair of Dirty Cops kicks off a series of confrontations with The Empire and leads to him joining La Résistance.
  • Choushinsei Flashman: The five Flashmen were abducted from their families when they were very young and only returned to Earth as adults. One of their main objectives is to find their families but as the story goes on, they only find Sara's family.
  • Dark (2017): Charlotte as a teenager in the 1980s would like to know who her parents are, but the one she asks about, her non-biological grandfather H.G.Tannhaus doesn't know it either, and by the time we see her in 2019, she seems to have settled with never learning about them. As it turns out, Charlotte was born in 2041 to Noah and Elisabeth, which makes Charlotte her own granddaughter and subsequently brought by her adult self and the oldest self of Elisabeth to 1971 and grew up there as Tannhaus's "granddaughter".
  • The Handmaid's Tale: June spends the first season looking for her daughter, Hannah, who was taken from her when she and Luke tried to flee. She eventually learns that Hannah was adopted by true believers, though she never stops trying for a reunion.
  • The main plot of Jejak Suara Adzan is Dimas' journey to find his older brother Dika, who was given up for adoption by their mother when Dimas was a baby, at his regretful mother's request before she undergoes a heart operation.
  • How I Met Your Mother: Barney used to believe that Bob Barker is his father though he grows out of it. Later on, he finds out that "Uncle Jerry" who used to take him on trips when he was young is actually his real father. When Marshal's father passed away, Barney decides to find his real father. When he finally meets him, Barney is upset that his father has another family. But he and his father eventually reconcile.
  • Kamen Rider Geats: Ace Ukiyo's wish in joining the Desire Grand Prix is to find his missing mother. As the show goes on, he finally finds her but he doesn't the truth very well upon learning why she went missing.
  • The first part of Killer and Healer shows Doctor Chen Yuzhi going to Hong Kong to find his missing sister.
  • Kung Fu (1972): The Shaolin monk and Martial Pacifist Kwai Chang Caine will wander the earth in search of his brother, Daniel. He seems to always be less than a week behind Daniel in his travels, despite taking time out to help the downtrodden, like a knight errant.
  • A prominent theme in Once Upon a Time:
    • The first Dark Curse gets cast as one of the chief parts of Rumplestiltskin's plan for finding his son who fell through a portal to another world.
    • In a twist, Ingrid searches for two women who could act as a Replacement Goldfish duo for her two deceased sisters since it was prophesized to her that she'd succeed in that search. However, it's revealed that there is a Prophecy Twist, and she ends up finding closure for her past quarrel with her actual sisters and gets reunited with them in a Together in Death scenario.
    • Maleficent, once brought Back from the Dead in Season 4, looks for her daughter, who got sucked into the Land Without Magic when she was only a baby.
  • Jarod of The Pretender was abducted by the Centre as a child, and told that his parents had died in a plane crash. At the beginning of the series, he discovers that the plane crash victims couldn't have been his parents, and escapes from the Centre to go in search of his real family and find out who he really is. Every time he comes close to a reunion with his family, the Centre's attempts to recapture him interfere; he manages occasional brief meetings with some individual family members, but always gets separated again.
  • Power Rangers:
    • Andros in Power Rangers in Space is looking for his sister Karone, who was kidnapped as a child. She turns out to be brainwashed and operating as the series Big Bad, Astronema, but is saved at the end of the season. The following year, she redeems herself by becoming a Power Ranger.
    • Nick in Power Rangers Mystic Force is looking for his real parents (he was adopted). His mother turns out to be the team mentor Udonna, but her husband Leanbow is brainwashed as the evil Koragg. Near the end of the season, he gets rescued and becomes the final member of the team as the Wolf Warrior.
  • Red Dwarf: An interesting example occurs in the minor plotline in Series X of Lister searching for his girlfriend Kochanski (who had been revealed in "Back to Earth" to not have died as he had once thought, but had left Red Dwarf in search of a way back to her home universe) in that "Ouroboros" had previously revealed that she's actually his mother thanks to some timey-wimey shenanigans. He never does find her, however, and the plotline is dropped by Series XI.
  • The Sandman (2022): Rose Walker's parents divorced when she and her younger brother were young, but her father refused to relinquish custody of her brother, Jed, and the siblings were separated. As an adult, after her mother's death, Rose searches for her brother, who is in foster care, hoping to be reunited. Unfortunately, she is constantly blocked from doing so, as even after finding Jed in his dreams and getting his location she's forced to continue her search due to the Corinthian's interference.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Interface", Geordi La Forge seeks out his mother, Capt. Silva La Forge, who disappeared along with her ship, the USS Hera. Eventually, however, he gives up after finding an alien pretending to be Mrs. La Forge.
  • A Very Secret Services: In Season 2, André is searching for his mother, who diseappeared during World War 2, even joining the KGB to comb the Soviet archives.
  • Westworld:
    • This is Maeve's main motive at the end of Season 1 where instead of leaving the park as Ford intended, she chooses to stay behind to find her daughter. In Season 2, she and her companions travel across the Westworld and the Shogun World park to look for her. When she finally found her, her daughter already has another mother. Then, they get separated again after the Delos personnel incapacitated her and the Ghost Nation take her daughter to lead her and the rest of the hosts to the Sublime. However, this doesn't stop Maeve from fulfilling her promise to protect her. In the Season 2 finale, she helps out the Ghost Nation to protect the hosts who are going to the Sublime. Once her daughter is safe in the Sublime, Maeve knows that one day, she may reunite with her again in the future.
    • In the middle of Season 4, Frankie Nichols joins forces with Bernard who she believes is the only person who can help her find her father, Caleb. Unfortunately for her, Caleb died 23 years ago after failing to stop Hale's plan of controlling humanity and gets resurrected many times as a host who gets subjected to many tests by Hale. By the time Frankie finally reunites with her father in the penultimate episode, she's confused about his youthful appearance until Caleb tells her that he's a host and his mind is slowly breaking down just like the rest of his copies. In the end, Caleb tells his daughter to leave him and Frankie has to tearfully accept that her father's gone.

    Radio 
  • The Lone Ranger: A storyline in 1943 sees the Lone Ranger locate his nephew Dan Reid, son of the Lone Ranger's older brother. The Ranger and Tonto pursued a crook all the way to the Canadian border and found Dan there, living with a woman that he believed to be his grandmother. The Lone Ranger had wanted to find his nephew ever since his brother died, but had never known where to look.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Several characters of Arkham Horror are searching for lost relatives.
    • Jenny Barnes is searching for her sister Isabelle, abducted in Paris by a cult, and will always find her. The only difference is whether she will be alive and in one piece...or several.

    Video Games 
  • Chrono Trigger: At the end of the game and if you spared him, Magus leaves to look for his sister, but unfortunately she melded with Lavos to become the Dream Devourer which becomes the Final Boss of Chrono Cross.
  • Cursed Mountain: The plot of the game is that Eric Simmons is climbing Chomolonzo in search of his little brother, Frank, who climbed it without circling the base seven times first, causing it to fall under a curse.
  • Dragon Quest V: The Hero's children spend almost a decade looking for their parents after he and his wife are turned to stone on the night the children are born.
  • Expeditions: Rome: Bestia Tabat's personal questline revolves around his search for his long-lost sister. Both of them were sold into slavery as children, but Bestia has won his freedom again in the gladiatorial arena and begun looking for clues about what happened to his sister in the meantime.
  • Fatal Frame series: In this Japanese survival horror series, some entries have a character whose motivation is this:
    • In Fatal Frame, teenager Miku Hinasaki braves the haunted Himuro Mansion to find her older brother Mafuyu Hinasaki.
    • In Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly and its remake, Deep Crimson Butterfly, Mio Amakura searches the whole game for her twin sister Mayu, who got lost in the forgotten All Gods' Village.
    • In Fatal Frame III: The Tormented, one of the side characters, Kei Amakura, travels to the Manor of Sleep in his dreams, trying to find his lost niece, Mio Amakura.
    • In Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water, Miu Hinasaki is searching for her lost mother, Miku Hinasaki.
  • Fire Emblem Fates: Corrin's adopted sister Hinoka of Hoshido has this as the basis for her character, but it's most explored in the Birthright branch of the story. Corrin was kidnapped by King Garon at a young age and spirited away to Nohr, and Hinoka resolved to become a Pegasus Knight so as to be strong enough to find Corrin and be able to rescue them from wherever they were being held. Corrin eventually reunites with their Hoshidan siblings years later due to a separate series of circumstances, but Hinoka's personal quest then changes from finding and rescuing Corrin to now protecting her family and loved ones from future abductions.
  • HAAK: One of the first missions in the game is "Brother, Where Art Thou", which involves Haak looking for his brother Baak.
  • The events of Hades begin with Zagreus, Hades' son, discovering that the goddess of night Nyx is not his birth mother as he'd been told his whole life. Wondering what else his father has been keeping from him, Zagreus attempts to escape the Underworld and reach the surface to find his mother. Meanwhile, Hades tries to thwart his every attempt even as the Olympians lend their aid to Zagreus.
  • In THE iDOLM@STER: SideM, the backstory of THE Kogado's Takeru Taiga states that he's been separated from his kid brother and sister. He wishes to use his newfound fame as a beacon so they can recognize him, or to use his connections to get to them directly.
  • Inazuma Eleven: In the third game, Natsumi goes to Liocott Island on her own to search the whereabouts about Endou's grandfather Daisuke after finding out he might still be alive. She succeeds and helps reunite Endou with his grandfather during the Foorball Frontier International, which takes place on Liocott Island.
  • Kingdom Hearts χ: A major part of the plot is Lauriam and his friend Elrena looking for his missing sister Strelitzia, unaware of the fact that she was just murdered. When he does find out eventually he does not take it well. Then Kingdom Hearts IV reveals that she's alive but in another world...
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The main plot of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is kicked off when King Roc mistakenly flies off with Link's sister Aryll, rather than its intended target Tetra. Link convinces Tetra to take him along to where Aryll is being held, which leads to an even greater quest.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: Mayor Dotour and Madame Aroma are missing their son Kafei who disappeared without a trace. Madame Aroma hires Link to find her son.
  • Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth: The plot of the game concerns Ichiban Kasuga traveling to Hawaii to find his birth mother, only to discover she is at the center of a complex criminal plot. If that wasn't enough, part of the Big Bad Duumvirate orchestrating it is revealed to be his biological half-brother.
  • Luigi's Mansion: The plot of the first game involves Luigi going to his new mansion, which he won in a contest he didn't enter. Mario went first, and Luigi followed that night to meet up with him. Unfortunately, Mario is nowhere to be seen, and it turns out the mansion is haunted by tons of ghosts. After meeting Prof. E. Gadd, the professor informs Luigi he saw Mario go inside the mansion, but didn't come out. So, armed with the Poltergust 3000 and the Game Boy Horror, Luigi must scour the mansion, suck up the ghosts inside, and locate his missing brother.
  • This is the premise of Resident Evil games that featured Ethan Winters as the protagonist:
    • In Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Ethan goes to Lousiana to find his supposedly long-dead wife, Mia, after receiving a message from her, telling him to find her.
    • In Resident Evil Village, after Chris raided his home, killed Mia, and took his daughter, Rose, from him, Ethan travels into a mysterious European village to find his daughter.
  • This is the whole premise of Silent Hill (1999): writer Harry Mason searches every nook and cranny of deserted resort town Silent Hill for his missing (adoptive) daughter, Cheryl.
    • In Silent Hill 2, James Sutherland receives a letter from his dead wife Mary and goes to Silent Hill to see if she is there somewhere.
  • The Sims Medieval: When you create a Sim, you can assign them the trait of Hopeful Orphan, which gives them interactions related to this, where they're able to ask others for possible info on their family. The game has no way for these Sims to ever actually find their family, but they can obtain mementos of their relatives which can be used for a quick and easy way to increase their mood.
  • Skyland 1976: The whole plot of the game is that Simon Hopper has been looking for his missing sister Alice since she disappeared in the forest of Grayson, Massachusetts in October of 1976. He finally gets a lead in 1991, which brings him to the Skyland compound.
  • Treasure Hunter Man 2: The mother of the protagonist of the first game is doing this, arriving to find her son in Kruz Island who got lost there after the first game.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed: Matthew's primary goal is to find people who survived the destruction of the first City, in particular his younger sister Na'el.
  • Yandere Simulator: According to the Headmaster tapes, Ichiko Saikou, the daughter of the founder of Saiko Corp., Saisho Saikou, refused to inherit Saikou Corp. after graduating from Akademi Academy and preferred to dedicate her life to search for her missing twin sister, even though there are no known reports of said twin sister existing, with her only other sibling being her younger brother Ichirou. Fun Girl's dialogue, if enabled via editing the Fun.txt file, imply that she is Ichiko's missing twin sister from another timeline in which Saisho erased her from history via a machine that cannot be replicated, and apparently Ichiko is the only one who can hear her.

    Web Animation 
  • Octocat Adventure: What little coherent plot there is, concerns Octocat wandering the Earth looking for his lost parents.

    Western Animation 
  • Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: In "Tails's New Home," Sonic seeks a new place for Tails to stay because he doesn't want the fox to get hurt staying with him. After several disasters, the two discover a fox couple looking for the son they lost, laying claim to be Tails's actual parents. Once alone though, Sonic realizes the two are lying because they continually referred to his friend as Tails, rather than his real name; Miles.
  • BoJack Horseman: Season 4 has BoJack meet a teenage filly named Hollyhock who was adopted by eight gay men, but suspects BoJack is her biological father. She wants his help to find her unknown biological mother. It turns out that Hollyhock is the result of an affair BoJack's father had with a maid, making them half-siblings; despite a tragedy causing Hollyhock's fathers to cut BoJack off from her, BoJack finds the necessary information to connect Hollyhock with her birth mother.
  • The finale of CatDog has the duo search for their unknown parents. The series concludes with them instead finding the ones who raised them when they were infants: their sasquatch mother and frog father.
  • Donkey Kong Country: In "The Kongo Bongo Festival of Lights", it's revealed that what Kaptain Skurvy wants more than the Crystal Coconut is to reunite with his long-lost brother, who just so happens to be General Klump.
  • DuckTales (2017): Dewey's goal for most of season one is to discover what happened to his mother, Della Duck, who went missing at some point before he and his brothers hatched from their eggs.
  • Gravity Falls: Stan Pines has spent the last 30 years trying to find a way to rescue his twin brother Ford, who was sucked into a portal and Trapped in Another World. In this case, he knows where the person is, just not how to get there.
  • Hey Arnold!: In the Christmas Episode "Arnold's Christmas", Mr. Hyuhn reveals he is searching for his daughter for the past 20 years. Hyuhn had lived in Vietnam during the Vietnam War and after the Fall of Saigon, US helicopters arrived to evacuate its citizens. But after learning the helicopters can only carry one more person, Hyuhn gives the pilot his daughter so she can live a better life. In the 20 years since, Hyuhn arrives in America to search for her. And with Arnold's help, they are eventually reunited.
    • Hey Arnold! The Jungle Movie: The entire premise of the film, a follow-up to the episode "The Journal", is Arnold and his classmates winning a trip to San Lorenzo, to the last known location of his missing parents before they both disappeared. After an encounter with the infamous river pirate Lasombra, Arnold, Helga, and Gerald end up going into the jungle to look for Arnold's parents, as well as evade Lasombra and his men.
  • In Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, Jayce and his friends look for Audric, his scientist father, through the space. His search is more than missing a lost-long parent because Jayce and Audric need to reunite in order to join the two halves of the Root, a magic medallion able to defeat the armies of vegetable mutants called Monster Minds.
  • Martha Speaks: In "Martha's Thanksgiving", Martha seeks out her mother and siblings (who got adopted by separate owners when the siblings were puppies) so she can invite them all to Thanksgiving.
  • Meet the Robinsons: Taking advantage of Lewis's desire to find the mother who left him at the orphanage is how Wilbur Robinson gets the other boy's help to fix the time machine. Of course Wilbur is lying because as it turns out Lewis is actually the younger form of Wilbur's father Cornelius.
  • Popeye: Looking for his dad Poopdeck was also what brought Popeye to Gooney Island. Sadly after infiltrating the hostile island and finding his curmudgeonly father, Popeye discovers the man is uninterested in escaping, let alone reuniting with his son. It takes the goons attacking Popeye and trying to kill him to inspire Papi to use a discarded can of spinach to help out his son.
  • Saban's Adventures of Oliver Twist is a very free adaptation of Dickens' book. In it, Oliver looks for his mother, from whom he was separated accidentally.
  • Xiaolin Showdown: In "Omi Town", on Chinese New Year's Day, Omi tries to look for his family and finds a village inhabited by people that look similar to him. His parents aren't at all what he expected. Except everybody turns out to be a robot disguised as Omi's relatives.

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