Relative Button

Yeah, you got spirit kid, I'll give you that. More than your old man, anyway. In the joint, Chill told me about the night he killed your parents. He said your father begged for mercy. Begged. Like a dog.

—Carmine Falcone, Batman Begins

A long time ago, Bob brutally murdered Alice's family while she was away at school. Now, Alice has finally found him.

A brutal fight ensues, with all manner of items (we don't quite know how the toilet seat got into the fight). Alice ends up lying on the floor, with Bob seemingly triumphant.

Then he says the following:

You remind me of your mother. Now there was a woman with some spirit in her.

Alice is incensed. With her last reserves of strength, she gets up and beats Bob. See also You Killed My Father.

Examples of Relative Button include:

Anime and Manga

• When Edward Elric's brother sacrifices himself, the person who caused Al to do that has some serious problems. This is after many an Al-related violent encounter. Don't mess with Edward Elric's family. Don't.

Comic Books

• During the Knightfall Saga, the Scarecrow sprays Batman with one of his fear skulls and forces him to relive the memory of the Joker killing Jason Todd. Batman, who has already run himself ragged capturing many other criminals that night, responds with rage by knocking out the Scarecrow with a single headbutt and beating the Joker (who's partnered up with Scarecrow) within an inch of his life, calling Jason's name all the while.
• In DMZ a military commander that main character Matty Roth hates taunts Matty at one point by teasing Matty about his dead reporter girlfriend.
• For both her parents and Chase, never bring up Gert's sad fate from Runaways. Chase gets violent. Her parents start a small scale genocide.

Film

• The Lion King: when Scar thinks that Simba is at his mercy he tries to twist the knife by whispering: "I killed Mufasa.".
• In James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, Camille does it after the general says "I knew your family, I must have been the last person to see them alive..."
  • Not to mention the General saying that the look on her face was just like the look of fear on her mother's.
• Memorably used in Gladiator, except with less of the beatdown effect and instead just provoking Maximus' Implacable Man. Commodus cements his Moral Event Horizon by casually bringing up Maximus' wife's gang-rape and the crucifixion of his son while Maximus is surrounded by the Praetorian Guards. The facial expressions of the Praetorians don't budge, but they allow Maximus to leave without Commodus' permission and give him a small nod of respect as he goes. And then in the final Duel to the Death the Guards refuse to give Commodus a sword after he gets disarmed by Maximus.
• In Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader threatens to turn Luke Skywalker's sister Leia to the Dark Side. Luke reaches the Rage Breaking Point, flies int Unstoppable Rage, and defeats him. Cue What Have I Done and an internal If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him.
  • And with Anakin's motives for turning to the dark side in the first place explored in the prequels, it also counts as a Not So Different moment; it was the fear of losing his only remaining family (wife and child for Anakin, sister for Luke) that drove both of them.
• When a young Bruce Wayne confronts mob boss Carmine Falcone in Batman Begins, he casually relates Joe Chill's highly untrue version of how Chill killed Wayne's parents for little purpose other than to Kick the Dog as his Mooks are about to drag Bruce out of the building.

Literature

• This occurs in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's / Sorcerer's Stone, when Harry, upon meeting Voldemort for the first time, is taunted that he will die like his parents, that they died "Begging [Voldemort] for mercy." Not quite the same, but it gives Harry strength.
  • Insulting Harry's parents is a very effective way of getting him to fly off the handle. Pushing that button was, after all, Aunt Marge's big mistake.
  • In the final book, Bellatrix taunts Molly Weasley about Fred's death while targeting Ginny, resulting in: "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!"
• In an unusually Genre Savvy moment from an animalistic sociopath, Gregor Clegane from A Song of Ice and Fire waits until the moment that he is about to kill someone before pushing their Relative Button.
  • In A Dance With Dragons, Stannis' army gets caught in the middle of marching by an immense snow storm. Bogged down for weeks, some soldiers resort to cannibalism to survive. When caught, they are sentenced to die by burning at the stake. One of the soldiers involved intentionally taunts the executioner about eating the executioner's cousin so that he will be killed quickly by a slit throat instead.

Video Games

• Arl Howe will taunt the Human Noble Warden this way in Dragon Age Origins. Depending on whether you're playing as The Hero or a Villain Protagonist, it could be either played straight or subverted (he dies either way, but it could be you don't care about what he did to your family).

Webcomics

• Happens with pets instead of relatives in this Sluggy Freelance strip.

Jane: Before you go, for the record? I ate your monkeys. Aw, I bet you wish you could smack me with your widdle magic now!

• • No prizes for guessing what Gwynn does next.
• As part of Nale's backstory in The Order of the Stick, he once tried to usurp power from his father. During the conflict, Nale killed several children of his father's friend/adviser Malack. When the two run into each other again, Nale's first comment to Malack is "Malack. How's the family?" Malack goes berserk.

Real Life

• In Spain, a man on parole from his sentence for raping a young girl saw the girl's mother and taunted her by saying, "How's your daughter?" She went home, got a can of gasoline, and set him on fire.
• Evidently, contract killer Richard Leonard Kulinski, also known as "The Iceman" was extremely protective of his family. Between this, and the fact that he was, y'know, a hitman, people who threatened said family tended to disappear. Violently.