Worst father in animation

Ugh... you could not create such a poll as there are SO MANY terrible fathers in animation

Seriously, they are so common place there are like several different tropes that they can fall under
Parental Abandonment
Abusive parents
Offing the Offspring
(allow me to doom you with several TV Tropes links, MAHAHAHAHAHA)

Granted those include mothers too, but it's mostly fathers since their the ones who tend to be more bad...
Still even those list don't include every bad dad, most of the worst though...
Some are unknowingly horrible

Take Goku of DBZ for instance... seems like such a genuine caring guy; but it takes more than just caring... allowing your 5 year old son to take part in fights that put him in mortal danger; staying away from home for month's at a time to train, the first time meant leaving his son in the hands of an old enemy; and the second time(after freeza) meant leaving his whole family alone with an even more dangerous former enemy (and he didn't even have an excuse aside from, "these guys can teach me cool stuff"); choosing to stay dead even though he has an unborn child that will never know him; having a chance to come back only to spend it going to a tournament instead of spending time with said son...
 
Fire Lord Ozai is the one I remember the most, because not only did he burn his son's face for speaking out of turn, but attempted to kill him twice.

Peter Griffin...he would count if the nature of the show wasn't comedic.
 
Maybe it's just me, but it seems that saving the earth since you're the only one strong enough to defeat the villain of the month takes precedence over raising your kids. Goku wasn't really that abusive, and during training for the Cell games, even took a little break to spend quality time with his son and wife, and at times of peace even doted on him. YMMV, but hardly worst father ever material, IMHO.:shrug:
 
But there WERE also times when Donald was the one who did cruel things to the boys to begin with, without being provoked (much like how he usually behaves towards whatever little chipmunk or ant he comes across). Like in one short where he sleds right into a snowman the boys have just built, and then rolls around on the ground laughing at them.

But of course, it's this borderline sadistic side of him that makes him one of the funniest cartoon characters of the entire golden age.
 
That reminds me of that King of the Hill episode where Bobby and Joseph were caught smoking, Dale gave Joseph some pamphlets, while Hank bought a whole carton full of cigarettes. Hank made Bobbu smoke every pack, he even told him the "proper way" to hold a cigarette. They even covered how much of bad parenting it was during a group meeting where one guy in charge asked Bobby how he got into smoking, his response was "Since my dad made me smoke a whole carton." everyone gasped at that. While Hank Hill is a great father, that was one of his dumbest moments.

As for my pick, Clay from Moral Orel, if only for beating his son everyday for following his own advice, and of course what happened in the camping episode.
 
I don't watch KOTH much, but I definitely remember this one. Funny thing is that, during the Smoker Anonymous meeting (or something like that) when everyone was scolding Hank for forcing his underage son to smoke a whole carton of cigarettes, Hank even tried to defend his position by saying his punishment was proper or something.

I believe this was all the way back in season 1, so I guess they were still experimenting with the characters.
 
Yeah, you're right, Riley deserves a good beating. But Robert has done plenty of bad things in spite of that, like during his "acting career" or when he took the kids to the movies.
 
I never thought I'd see the day Peter Griffin and Fire Lord Ozai competed at ANYTHING.

I'm also surprised that Tsukasa's unnamed father from .hack//sign hasn't gotten a mention yet.
 
To be honest, I never thought of Ozai as a bad father. He was the leader of the nation and especially its military. Zuko was an overzealous brat who shouldn't have been in the war meeting in teh first place. Ozai couldn't show favoritism so he did what he had to do. He was the only person to actually support Azula who turned out to be especially loyal and smart.

My vote would actually go to the 4th Hokage (Naruto). He should have known what kind of life Naruto would have especially without his mother or father around, but he sealed a demon within him anyway.
 
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