Basic Trope: A father is an antagonist towards his child(ren).
- Straight: Bob becomes a world-conquering villain just as his son Charlie becomes a people-saving hero, and they end up on opposite sides.
- Exaggerated: Bob is a Complete Monster who tried to kill Charlie in his crib, murders his mother, and kills off all his friends one by one, and Charlie dedicates his entire life to destroying his evil father.
- Downplayed:
- Bob dislikes Charlie and undermines all his plans out of spite.
- Bob and Charlie become business rivals.
- Justified:
- Bob is foretold by a prophecy that his son will be his sworn enemy, and he antagonizes his offspring until it becomes a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
- Bob wasn't the best parent to Charlie.
- Inverted:
- Gender-Inverted: Charlie's mother, Evil Matriarch Alice, is the Big Bad and he opposes everything for which she stands.
- Subverted: Bob is Charlie's ultimate nemesis, until it's revealed that he was forced to oppose his son by Emperor Evulz.
- Double Subverted:
- It's further revealed to be a "The Man in Front of the Man" situation; Bob controls the other bad guy, and his joy in life is to torment and defeat his son.
- Evulz may be Bob's superior, but he does not care about Charlie, while Bob see's Charlie as his personal nemesis.
- Parodied:
- Charlie considers his Bob his greatest enemy because ... he got him the wrong toy on his eighth birthday.
- All men of the Smith family turn evil at age 40, and their sons are the ones to always stop them, only to continue the cycle when the get old enough.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob repeatedly goes back and forth between loving his son and trying to crush his dreams.
- Averted:
- Bob doesn't have children.
- Charlie's father is completely out of the picture.
- Bob and Charlie love each other.
- Enforced: The work is Based on a True Story about a man who came to oppose everything for which his father stood.
- Lampshaded: "Gotta say, Pops, I'd be enjoying our family time a lot more if you weren't holding a gun to my head."
- Invoked: Bob purposefully antagonizes his son so he has someone to fight and call his enemy.
- Exploited: Dave uses Charlie's hatred of Bob to destroy them both.
- Defied: To avoid the prophecy, Bob becomes the best father Charlie could ever have, and they love each other.
- Discussed: "You were my father once ... now, you're just an evil SOB."
- Conversed: "Last episode it turned out that the father was the evil mastermind."
- Deconstructed: Bob and Charlie have to deal with the psychological turmoil of fighting their family member, wishing how things could have been different.
- Reconstructed: Charlie hates the idea of fighting his father and offers several Last-Second Chances but is resigned to the fact that he might have to kill him to stop him. Likewise, Bob makes several We Can Rule Together speeches because he doesn't want to kill his son but will if he has to.
- Played for Laughs:
- Bob is a Harmless and/or Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain whom Charlie considers his greatest enemy.
- Charlie is a Failure Hero who can't grasp that he can never defeat Bob.
- Played for Drama: Bob and Charlie have an incredibly good relationship which has been demonstrated to the audience. Not only do both Charlie and Bob feel the emotional pangs of this fight, but the audience is shown flashbacks of times they got along so closely to hammer home how devastating this encounter is.
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