The Caretaker

How do you protect someone from the voices in her head when they aren't hers?

"Some people will always need help. But that doesn't mean they are not worth helping."

— Meera Reed, Game of Thrones

The Caretaker is a parent, spouse, sibling or child of a Cloudcuckoolander, a Delicate and Sickly person, an Ophelia, or a Squishy Wizard who takes care of them. They put their lives on hold to make sure their loved one is well taken care of and hopefully happy, often when the rest of the family actively passes the ball or abandons their relative entirely.

Most of the time they're defined more by their ward than as a character themselves. Since most stories center on their ill relative, they're often relegated to being the overprotective guardian who actively discourages their loved one from any and all self-realization, love, and risky activity in general. And that's if they're attentive; a negligent or resentful Caretaker will put the Dursleys' cruelty to shame. Only rarely is there middle ground for a "dynamic" caretaker who encourages their ward while not completely losing the ability to have a life of their own.

What happens next is even more of a downer. Once their loved one is cured/finds true love/dies, (One of these three always happens, there is no Status Quo Is God where The Littlest Cancer Patient and his ilk are involved) they end up... stuck. They have no life to go back to, as care for their loved one was priority number one, and get stuck on what to do next with their lives. This often leads would be suitors or the loved one calling them out that they need their sick loved one more than the loved one needs them.

When the Caretaker is allowed to take center stage, they often have to deal with metric tons of Angst, both from love, resentment, frustration, sheer sadness, wishing their loved one were dead and guilt at the last four. Honestly, they rarely get the kudos they deserve.

Unless, of course, they become what might be called an "activist" caretaker, in which case they not only care for their relative, they practically quest for a cure or better treatment on the part of society. Activists usually manage a happier ending, either partially or fully healing their ward, carving out a niche for them in society, rehabilitating them, or at least helping others do the above.

Not to be confused with Crusty Caretaker. Or caretakers in general, if you're British. See also Living Emotional Crutch. Has strong overlap with The Champion, indeed is likely to be the same person. The Cloudcuckoolander's Minder is more "babysitting a weirdo" than "caring for an invalid" and thus more comical, though they could overlap, if the invalid in question is well....weird. Compare Protectorate. If the relationship between caretaker and charge becomes romantic, see Florence Nightingale Effect.

Not to Be Confused with the musician The Caretaker, or the eponymous entity from the pilot episode of Star Trek: Voyager.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Farnese ends up taking up this role for Casca in Berserk when she joins Guts' group. She has something of an inferiority complex about it seemingly being the only thing she does; she's usually just as helpless as Casca in a fight. It prompts her to start learning magic so she can contribute (and gratefully, she takes her first real lesson right when Casca gets cured).
• Exaggerated in A Channel. Run is so ditzy that she pretty much would have gotten herself killed if not for Tooru, and Tooru is so protective of her that she threatens Run's male classmates with a baseball bat for simply talking to her.
• The backstory of Chrono Crusade reveals that Rosette almost took on this role for her little brother Joshua. After they became orphaned, Joshua developed holy powers which also caused him to be constantly sick. Rosette tells Chrono that she wants to become a doctor to cure him (giving up on her dream of being an explorer), but Joshua overhears her and attempts to defy the trope by agreeing to become a member of the Magdalan Order. However, Aion gets to him first and promises him the chance to gain enough power to control his illness...and kidnaps him, which sets off the events of the main storyline.
  • The manga also has the minor character Beth, one of Rosette's old friends from the Order that later grows up to be her doctor.
  • Later Joshua also gets Fiore as his caretaker — not because he's sick, but because the power Aion promised him drove him completely insane. She seems to be around to protect other people from Joshua as much as she's around to take care of Joshua himself.
• Lelouch of Code Geass takes on the The Empire, and eventually the entire world with almost no qualms about the sacrifices it would take specifically to build a world where his little sister can live peacefully, though he realizes that he has been using his sister as an excuse for his real motive: to make a better world.
• In Eureka Seven, Will B. Baxter tends to his catatonic wife Martha's every need without complaint or despair. She's probably not aware of the situation, and hasn't been able to move, at all, in years. At least, until she gets up to see Will immediately before they both die.
• Played With in Fruits Basket. Akito frequently either pretends to be sick or conveniently gets sick (whether it's intentional or not, the root is clearly psychological) in an attempt to invoke this response. It works on Hatori, at any rate (Hatori's the family doctor, and Akito's the head of the family, so he doesn't really have a choice). Kureno also seems to think of himself as Akito's caretaker (looking more toward Akito's emotional needs), although his attempts to help really just make things worse for both of them. In the end, Akito ends up getting better both emotionally and physically thanks to Tohru, and later she lets go of both Kureno and Hatori as well as the rest.
• Played for Laughs in K-On! with Yui and Ui. Ui is often shown taking care of Yui, and has become hyper-competent as a result (which is thoroughly lampshaded by the rest of the cast). However, she has no idea what to do with herself when Yui isn't around. Late in the second season, their positions are briefly reversed, which leads to Yui writing the song "U&I" as a heartfelt gesture for everything Ui has done for her.
• In Madlax, Elenore Baker is the caretaker of Margaret Burton — an amnesiac, infantile, and slightly insane last descendant of a rich family. Of course, Elenore is also a Ninja Maid who gets paid for her service, but her Undying Loyalty to Margaret clearly goes beyond professional duty.
• My-HiME's main character, Mai Tokiha, completely defines her life around taking care of her equally selfless younger brother. This was brought on by an accident in which their mother saves Takumi but later dies. Before she died, she made Mai promise to always look after Takumi and she took it to heart. He eventually calls her out to find a reason to live besides him, or else he won't agree to his treatment. This can be seen in how she naturally falls into taking care of Mikoto as her roommate.
• Cornelia, for Juliet in Romeo × Juliet.
• Shannon and Raquel are both caretaker and protector to their sister not really Pacifica in Scrapped Princess. Though Pacifica isn't actually ill, she is hunted by agents of the state and religious authorities.
• Sakura from Zombie Land Saga straddles the line between this and Cloud Cuckoo Landers Minder. Her subject of care after the first episode is Tae, who happens to be a literally mindless zombie. Sakura is the one who keeps her from eating markers, dresses her up before performances, and gives her the commands necessary to be part of the Idol Singer group the zombies compose. She's also the only one to consistently talk to Tae like an actual person, albeit a very naive person. Unusually for this trope, this is portrayed with few if any negative implications; Sakura is living her (un)life to the fullest she can, and does not appear to be dependant on or manipulative of Tae in any manner. It probably helps that she is The Heart of the group as a whole.

Comic Books

• Sunnyville Stories: A positive example - Sam to Rusty, who keeps an eye on him, acts as a voice of reason and even goes as far as to feed him and introduce him to the townspeople in the very first story.
• Superman is possibly an example of this trope, as odd as that may sound; as he is usually depicted as leaping into a situation based on his own assumption that he is doing what other people want, generally without bothering to actually stop and ask first. It's also implied that being a Caretaker for humanity is Supes' only real reason to exist.

Fan Works

• In The Feel of Feelings, Hermione assumed this role for a partially crazy Harry after his release from two years unjustly spent in Azkaban, only to be chided by a mutual friend that treating Harry like a child wouldn't exactly foster his ability to take care of himself.
• Flag Flying High has Harry assuming the burden of being Mo Xuanyu's only positive support, as his abusive family would rather tend to worsen his mental state. However, Harry mentally acknowledges how tiring it is for a teenager to watch over a mentally ill grown up man liable to self-harm or to make sexual advances on his friend, leading Harry to grow some resentment.

Films — Live-Action

• Jenny, the sister to blind Virgil in At First Sight. She's incredibly overprotective, but gets to justify her reactions as years of disappointment of quack doctors, as well as receiving a Promotion to Parent for her brother at a young age. Though she is called out on her faults, she gets a chance to see them and mend her ways while her brother is temporarily cured of his blindness.
• Benny from Benny & Joon. An important subplot throughout the film is his struggle with the realization that Joon, his mentally ill sister, can take care of herself better than he thinks and that he uses her reliance on him as an excuse to not live his own life. By the end of the film he understands this, and is able to enter a real romantic relationship for the first time, while Joon is allowed to get her own apartment.
• In Eternals, Gilgamesh has been taking care of Thena since she started going insane from having more memories than her mind can hold. Partially because her mindwipe after their last mission didn't fully take, and she's remembering the destruction of the last world they were sent to.
• Nell in the remake of The Haunting (1999) was the caretaker and daughter of an abusive bedridden mother. She had no life savings from taking care of her mother, and her sister was taking possession of their mother's house. Oh, and she dies at the end while taking down the evil ghost of the mansions owner. I believe the term "martyr" had people like her in mind.
  • In the original film, and the book it's based on, it's Eleanor that was the caretaker, even to living as a recluse — the haunting took advantage of her feeling of isolation and resentment.
• Lorenzo's Oil has a startling two parents work as Caretakers for Lorenzo, all while being Activists and independently researching a possible cure for his slow mental shutdown and helping dozens of others as the ending Montage advertises. Needless to say they were able to pull it off because they could rely on each other to care for Lorenzo, but they (especially Michaela) did become overprotective on his behalf. You also get an example of how not to be a Caretaker by watching Nancy (Jennifer Dundas) who assumes Lorenzo has no mind left whatsoever and treats him like an inanimate object.
• In Molly (1999), Buck finds himself the caretaker of his autistic and intellectually impaired sister, Molly, after her institution shuts down. He is not happy about this.
• In Repo! The Genetic Opera, Nathan Wallace's wife Marni dies, leaving him to raise their newborn daughter, Shilo. He ends up keeping her locked in her bedroom for seventeen years to protect her from the outside world. And then he exhibits the "co-dependent" and "overprotective" parts of this trope by administering a poison for those same 17 years to keep her bedridden and dependent, so she will never leave him. And this after he killed Marni trying to cure her! (Well, that's what he thought anyway.)
• Mrs. Medlock in The Secret Garden. She watched over the young lord's "ill" son Colin assiduously, and scolded Mary for being reckless when she worsened his condition. Mrs. Medlock goes so far as to lock Mary in her bedroom and force Colin to take baths in freezing water, while he screams that he's fine. When it turns out it was years of overprotective care that left Colin unable to walk, which Mary cured, Medlock was reduced to a near friendless crying heap.
• In The Whales of August, elderly Sarah has devoted herself to caring for her similarly elderly, but also blind and much more frail, sister Libby. Sarah wonders if maybe Libby isn't too much of a burden in Sarah's own old age.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past has Hank, who stays with Charles and looks after him for ten years of drunken misery.
  • Logan begins with Logan and Caliban looking after Charles, who is becoming senile and unable to control his powers in his old age.

Literature

• In Are You Seeing Me? Justine has been the caretaker to her autistic twin brother Perry since their father died of cancer shortly before their eighteenth birthday.
• The Old Man in Being There, with his maids, was this to the mentally challenged Chance the Gardener. The story proper begins when the Old Man dies and the now-middle-aged Chance is forced to venture out into the world for the first time, as the Old Man forbade him to leave their townhouse, with the threat of institutionalization if he did. What's particularly sad about this is the possibility that Chance is his (unknowing) son. In the movie version, the black maid Louise is a kindly caretaker and was likely closer to Chance than the Old Man... but she resents his later success as "Chauncey Gardiner" because she knows he's an idiot; as she sees it, he gained power solely because he's white.
• In the Dragonlance books, Caramon Majere takes on this role for his Squishy Wizard brother, Raistlin, who greatly resents needing the help. Made particularly toe-curling by the fact that Raistlin is perfectly capable of murdering his caretaking brother, a fact which Caramon is well aware of — and yet, he stays. True to the trope, when Raistlin overcomes his sickness and achieves godlike power, Caramon is left as a drunken wreck without a direction in life...
  • Until Tika comes along...
• Will Parry in His Dark Materials starts out as a caretaker for his mother who suffers from mental illness and having to leave her for a time weighs heavily on him.
• In Ivanhoe Rebecca the beautiful Jewish maiden cares for the Knight Ivanhoe when he is wounded.
• Jeeves and Wooster: In-universe, a lot of people think that Jeeves is this to Bertie. It's not far from the truth.
• Jo, towards Beth in the second half of Little Women. When poor Beth dies... Sniff.
• George to Lennie in Of Mice and Men, with a bit of Cloudcuckoolander's Minder thrown in for good measure. This results in a serious Tear Jerker when George has to Shoot the Dog.
• In The Overstory, Dorothy ends up caring for her husband, Ray, after he suffers a stroke that leaves him with severe brain damage, despite how she was about to divorce him when he was healthy.
• Many of Jodi Picoult's novels have this, though usually the caretaker is somewhat narcissistic. The caretaker is always a mother taking care of her child, who has a chronic, usually life-threatening illness. They often will ignore anyone else and focus solely on the child. Sara in My Sister's Keeper cares about her daughter Kate to the point of having a child specifically to donate blood and tissue to Kate and ignoring the other child. Charlotte in Handle with Care actually sues her best friend so she can get money to take care of the child.
• Nadine Cross in The Stand to an orphan she calls "Joe" who had been rendered mute and feral due to the trauma of seeing his family die of the plague. True to the trope, she ultimately needed him much more than he needed her. Things go downhill fast the moment he recovers from his trauma and he doesn't need her to such an extent anymore.
• Princess Marya in War and Peace acts as The Caretaker for her old father until his death, and then becomes the primary caretaker of her nephew, whose mother died in childbirth and whose father is off to war.

Live-Action TV

• Absolutely Fabulous: Saffron Monsoon could fit this trope. She is the most sane and mature character in the show, constantly being the Voice of Sanity to her mother (who is a middle-aged woman with a teenager's behavior and a toddler's emotions). Later episodes upset the balance by having her do things like spying on a "normal" family by hiding in their cupboard.
• Arrested Development: On the opposite side of the coin, there is the highly dysfunctional relationship of Lucille Bluth and her son Buster. She switches back and forth from coddling to abusive based apparently on what will cause her son the most psychological damage. It's funnier than you'd think.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Willow briefly became this after Tara was driven insane by Glory.
  • Spike started out as essentially an evil version of this, taking care of a weakened Drusilla.
• Fellow Travelers:
  • In 1986, Maggie cares for her dying brother Tim.
  • In 1968, Marcus looks after his ailing and elderly father.
• Firefly: Simon Tam frequently takes on this role when it comes to his sister River. He is genuinely caring toward her and constantly strives to find out what was done to her at the hands of the Alliance so he can find a way to "cure" her, putting him squarely in the Activist role. Not to mention that he gave up a rich, comfortable life and a very promising medical career for a dangerous life on the run to do the above mentioned.
  He suppresses any irrational blame for River and is never too smothering, though very affectionate. He is very protective and those who might harm her find that he is also a Papa Wolf when necessary. And to top it all off, he manages to have characteristics beyond caretaker ones — the show and The Movie make him a Deadpan Snarker with a somewhat bumbling approach to love. He does acknowledge that he's been ignoring what he wanted for himself by the end, though.
  • And River inverts it in The Movie, by saving him and the entire crew by willingly locking herself in a room with an army of Reavers. Needless to say, those stupid Reavers get their asses kicked.
• Fringe: Peter Bishop reluctantly takes this role to get his Mad Scientist father, Walter, out of the mental institution where he's been held for the last 20 years, since Walter can only be released into the care of a blood-relative. Over time however, Peter comes to see that it was the institution itself that mentally damaged his father, to the point where when a case requires Walter to readmit himself to speak to another patient who holds vital information, Peter is furious at the suggestion.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022):
  • "In Throes of Increasing Wonder...": Louis de Pointe du Lac is responsible for his mentally ill younger brother Paul after promising their dying father he would look after him.
  • "Like Angels Put in Hell by God": Claudia takes care of her older vampire brother Louis (she no longer wants to be treated as his adoptive daughter, and they are siblings in vampire terms) after he's thrashed to a pulp by his boyfriend Lestat de Lioncourt. She even develops a vampire form of physical therapy to help Louis regain his mobility.
    Louis: A few shattered vertebrae, a punctured lung... blind in one eye for five weeks. Two months, was it? [...] Excruciating pain was the proof I was still alive. [...] [Claudia] dedicated all her energy to my rehabilitation.
• Kamen Rider Ex-Aid has the duo of Taiga Hanaya and his patient, Nico Saiba. Their relationship is complicated by Taiga's load of issues, Nico's habit of endangering herself ^note It's a trait they share leading to them driving each other mad at times. and their mutual care.
• Mother and Son: This trope was the premise of this sitcom, with the son both the caretaker and The Un Favourite of a senile mother.
• Revolution: Charlie is this to Danny, hence why she's so set on getting him back.
• Seinfeld: Played for Laughs several times, where Elaine's boyfriends have a tendency to wind up horribly injured, suffering a heart attack, or going through heroin withdrawal just as she's about to dump them.
• Star Trek: Voyager: There's a literal "the caretaker". He's taking care of the Ocampa after accidentally frying their planet to a barely inhabitable mess.
• Supernatural:
  • Dean Winchester, especially in regards to his Sammy. Dean is naturally nurturing and protective by nature. However, Dean has made it his purpose to take care of Sam his entire life.
  • In Season 7, after Castiel absorbs Sam's madness, Meg gets a job as a nurse at the mental hospital to protect him.
    Castiel: Will you look at her? My caretaker. All of that thorny pain. So beautiful.
    Meg: We've been over this. I don't like poetry. Put up or shut up.

Theater

• In Keely And Du, a pregnant woman is kidnapped by a radical anti-abortion group that kidnaps her and tries to force her to have her baby. While there are male characters, the play mostly focuses on the Closer to Earth relationship between the contentious kidnapped mother and the the sweet, elderly nurse taking care of her.
• In Les Misérables, Jean Valjean becomes a cross between this and a Parental Substitute for little Cosette. When she's grown up, she loves him very much but is confused by his secretive behavior (among other things, he doesn't tell her who her mother was).
• Dogged Nice Guy Dan spends a couple decades being this for his wife Diana in Next to Normal, bordering on Heroic BSoD himself.
• Annie in The Norman Conquests takes care of her bedridden mother, with only occasional help from her brother Reg (and no help at all from her sister Ruth).

Video Games

• Big Daddies in BioShock protect the Little Sisters from any Splicer that wants to get their hands in the ADAM they produce. And given how they are giant men in diving suits with either: a drill equipped with a grappling hook, a giant riveting gun that doubles as a machine gun and mines, a giant laser gun, or remotely controlled mini-turrets and a rocket launcher, and on top of all that, sometimes Plasmids; Splicers rightly consider attacking the Protectors suicide.
• The end of the A route in Blaze Union shows Nessiah supporting Gulcasa in a combination of this role and Living Emotional Crutch, as it falls to him (the only one who knows enough about Brongaa's blood and its effects) to make sure Gulcasa regularly kills something to sate his natural bloodlust (no matter how much Gulcasa himself does not want to) and nurse him back to health should he fall ill from overusing or underusing his powers with his body still unstable. He also takes Siskier's place as Gulcasa's confidante and adviser, as well as becoming his love interest. In a variation on the trope, Nessiah shows no sign of minding having to do this for three years; after all, when he's strung out after using Brongaa's power, Gulcasa is awfully easy to manipulate, so Nessiah has plenty to gain from being devoted.
  • Though there are some emotional attachments Nessiah makes in the process that cause him problems in the end.
• Mio from Fatal Frame II towards her twinsister, Mayu. While Mio's the younger of the two, she watches over Mayu and frequently checks up on her. Part of this comes from Mayu being weaker than Mio and more susceptible to spiritual influence, the other part coming from a certain amount of guilt because Mio blames herself for Mayu having fallen down a cliff and permanently injuring her leg.
• Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number reveals that Richter, the man who was sent to shoot Jacket in the first game, is actually a pretty decent guy, with his main redeeming trait being that his mother is stricken with an illness of some sort and he has to help her with her daily activities.
• In I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, Auntie Seedent is the head of the Stratospheric's creche who raises the colony children there.
• Axel fulfills this role toward Roxas in Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days after he is assigned to mentor the younger Nobody who recently joined Organization XIII. After Roxas befriends Xion and starts hanging out with her, Axel also becomes her caretaker as well. Axel eventually turns into a Psycho Supporter when obsessed with keeping Roxas and Xion as his friends, he lies to them, does questionable stuff behind their backs, and if they try to leave the Organization of their own free will, he attempts to bring them back by force. Following Xion's death, Axel is the only member of the Organization to miss Roxas when the latter defects. And in Kingdom Hearts II, Axel's dying wish was to see Roxas again.
• One of Akiha's endings in Tsukihime has Shiki Tohno playing this role toward Akiha herself. Definitely a tragic version, as poor Akiha has been reduced to a more or less mindless, catatonic, blood sucking monster, and the already anemic Shiki insists on providing that blood himself, due to a sense of responsibility for her condition as well as love for her.
• Lisa Garland, the nurse who who took care of Alessa in Silent Hill. In exchange for her care, she was granted a degree of protection from the horrors of the Dark World of Silent Hill, which she couldn't leave because Kaufman had killed her, trapping her there. Fan theories speculate Alessa cared for Lisa, and was using her to manipulate Harry into ceasing his search for Cheryl. In the end, she reverts to a blood covered monster when Harry rejects her and she realizes what she is. She does get a comeuppance by killing Kaufman in the Good + ending, though.
  • In the movie, she was just an ordinary nurse who curiously looked at Alessa while agonizing after being near burned to death. Alessa responded by "blasting" her eyes and upper face with third degree burns that remain on her permanently even in the Dark World. Alessa does seem to regret it though... the evil inside her admits Lisa wasn't guilty of anything, and while she doesn't (can't?) heal her, she keeps her nearby instead of having Pyramid Head kill her.
• Wildstar has a character named Caretaker, who is a sentient program left behind to maintain and monitor the Eldan's various experiments and Drusera.

Visual Novels

• In Air, Haruko takes care of the weak and cursed Misuzu, and her feelings conflict between protecting her from herself and loving her.
• The Bishojo game Kana: Little Sister practically revolves around this trope, with the main character of the story (Takamichi aka Taka) being the Littlest Cancer Patient's big brother. He manages to escape the curse of being a Satellite Character, for better for worse, becoming darker and more complex (And less sympathetic... and sane) as the story goes on. How he ends up depends on your choices through the game, from publishing a book about Kana and using the funds to train as a doctor, saving Kana and then having her leave him when she realizes he's become co-dependent, to transforming into a despairing schizophrenic mess.
• In Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, it turns out that Santa was this to Akane, taking care of her after she was orphaned, protecting her during the first time around in the Nonary Game, and helping to arrange for the second game, so she could really be rescued.

Web Comics

• Syphile played this to Ariel in Drowtales. Granted, it was more of a Promotion to Parent than anything else, but Syphile knew Ariel was the product of a Drow-Spider mating, and saw Ariel as a literal monster to be looked after rather than a daughter or even sister. Combined with lingering resentment over being rejected by her mother, she took it out on Ariel with brutal "combat training" and impossible tasks as part of her studies.
• Daniel in The Guide to a Healthy Relationship claims to be this for his mentally ill romantic partner Julian, except he abuses and gaslights them all the time. Julian actually has a much more caring relationship with their childhood best friend Apollo; the two of them tend to take turns in looking out for one another: Apollo for Julian in that they eat enough and stay grounded, Julian for Apollo by being his guide when his bad eyesight is getting the worse of him and he can't navigate foreign terrain.
• Mob Psycho 100: Reigen is a mixed bag of this for Mob. It's obvious that he cares a lot about Mob and has no problem rushing into dangerous situations to save him, chewing people out for "stressing out" his "mentally weak" student. Unfortunately, he can also be a possessive and selfish jerk who tries to manipulate Mob and keep him from hanging out with friends. He eventually gets his comeuppance when he takes things too far and Mob leaves him, and he's humiliated on national television. It's only after this that he realizes he's become more reliant on Mob than helpful to him and that he's lost sight of his own goals and on what's really important (namely, Mob's happiness, and trust in him). He gets better and becomes more of a Benevolent Boss and friend — although he still runs into dangerous situations, and occasionally lies in order to spare Mob's feelings.
• Suzy in The Sanity Circus not only squees and celebrates over seeing Fletch again after a long time, she also fusses over him and checks things like whether he's eating enough.

Web Videos

• The video "Take Care" is a bitter-sweet 8-minute documentary about a normal woman struggling to care for her daughter and ailing grandfather while trying to improve her own situation. It's heartbreaking and beautiful.
• As in canon, the Emperor of Mankind in If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device is interred on the Golden Throne, unable to move, and so the job of Caretaker was made to look after him. Kitten mostly keeps him company and informs him about the state of the Imperium, but other duties include sponging down his immobile body and cleaning out the sewers.
  • Kitten later loses his position to his brothers, who are competent enough at the cleaning part. The emotional aspects, not so much. The emotional void is filled by Rogal Dorn, one of the Emperor's sons.
  Rogal Dorn: "While my siblings are being lost, I came here to keep our rambling, paraplegic father company. Because I love him more than any other."
• Benny from The Nostalgia Critic looked after his mentally ill sister, and is Hyper's Only Friend.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • General 'Uncle' Iroh voluntarily follows his nephew Zuko in exile, and cares for him as a son. Unfortunately, he only gets yelled at, insulted, abandoned, betrayed and imprisoned in return. It's not that Zuko doesn't care about his uncle, because he does; he's just way too obsessed with proving himself to his Evil Overlord father, Fire Lord Ozai, to have eye for the more important things in life.
    • After 51 of 61 episodes, the message finally gets through, and he tells daddy (along with his Heel–Face Turn) that he will from now on consider Iroh his father. After 59 of 61 episodes, we finally get to see his tearful apology, and that Iroh doesn't hold a single bit of grudge on him. Which is not surprising at all when you consider that Iroh was still trying to help Zuko while in jail because of him.
    • Iroh's affection for Zuko might the result of Iroh's own son getting killed. But this might be a small part of it, and it may be even irrelevant towards the end.
  • We see a toxic variant with the lengths Lao Bei Fong will go to keep his "blind, delicate, and helpless" little girl Toph safe from harm.
• The Darkwing Duck episode "Time and Punishment" has a non-familial variant; when Darkwing goes catatonic after his daughter Gosalyn disappears, his Heterosexual Life-Partner Launchpad attempts first to help him find her and then to help him adjust. Neither is very helpful, although not for lack of effort.

Real Life

• C. S. Lewis married (legally) a woman to protect her from her abusive husband (from a religious marriage); he later found out she was going to die of cancer but chose to take care of her.
• Several of the Righteous Gentiles from World War II obtained that status, not by great and exciting deeds but by taking in Jews and providing the necessities that were difficult or impossible for them to obtain. A long, terrible, and boring job done at tremendous peril.
• According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "more than 50 million people provide care for a chronically ill, disabled or aged family member or friend during any given year" in the United States. The Other Wiki has more information on caregiving. If the U.S. figures are indicative of the post-industrial world as a whole, about 17 out of every 100 people are this trope for a relative or friend. Meaning, if there are 1,000 active tropers present on this site (a conservative estimate), 170 of us could potentially be caretakers in real life.
• Doug Walker has thanked his wife for going to a work where she gives memory therapy to older patients, and then coming back home to look after him.

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