Self-Made Orphan

O...kay... (And did you notice the hint of the Wounded Gazelle Gambit?)

"We took pity on him because he lost both parents at an early age. I think, on reflection, that we should have wondered a bit more about that."

—Lord Downey, Hogfather

What might be considered the inverse of Offing the Offspring, and is equally aberrant behavior is when a villain murders their own parents. Any character behaving this way will probably be Ax Crazy and/or a Psycho for Hire. An Evil Prince can also do that if he's impatient enough. It's the ultimate mark of an Enfant Terrible, and a likely origin of an Evil Orphan.

It can be justified if the parents happen to be abusive or cruel mockeries of humanity from beyond the void—insofar as murder can be, but at least it's then the domain of the dark and troubled protagonists. It's more justifiable if the parent is an outright villain. In addition, there are also instances where the child either unintentionally killed his parents or something genuinely horrific happened to his/her parents that they are forced to kill them.

Contrast with Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas, which is based on the premise that no one, no matter how bad, would act this way. If it happens before the murderer is born, this is the Grandfather Paradox. If only the father is killed and it's played for drama then it would be Patricide. See also Archnemesis Dad, where this Trope is often a character's goal.

One subversion is to have this happen by accident and/or for the parents' death be ultimately caused by their own actions involving the child. If said parent's child also happens to be a Mook of the parent, it can also overlap into The Dog Bites Back.

Examples of Self-Made Orphan include:

Anime and Manga

  • In Monster, Johan kills several sets of adoptive parents from a very young age onwards.
    • And he kills his sister Anna's adoptive parents, too.
  • In the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, Kaiba drove his adopted father to suicide after taking over his company. No mention of what happened to the biological parents; in the Gag Dub Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series, Kaiba claims to have fired them.
    • His biological parents died in a genuine accident. Seto and Mokuba wound up in an orphanage on account of their living relatives only wanting the family's money. Nephews? Forget it.
    • Somewhat understandable in that said adoptive father was an Abusive Parents fanatic who put the boy on a study regime that would have made lesser minds crack long ago. In the anime, he did that to compensate for the loss of his biological son Noah... whom he wasn't exactly caring to either.
    • Not to mention what Marik's dark side did to his father.
  • Tohru Honda of Fruits Basket originally believes she is this, believing that her not telling her mother to come home safe somehow caused her accident.[1] Kyo Sohma, although his father is still alive, also believes himself to be this, because his curse (of being the Cat) caused his mother to commit suicide.
  • Itachi Uchiha killed everyone in his clan except for Sasuke in Naruto.
    • A bit of a twist, since he was following the orders of his government to stop his family from committing a coup d'etat. There is also evidence that he's troubled by his own actions since it's stated that he began acting strangely before the event, and the fact that he couldn't bring himself to kill Sasuke which he was also presumably ordered to do.
      • In fact, Itachi's entire Start of Darkness flashback from relatively early in the series looks very different after the revelation, when you realize that his emotional rollercoaster and remarks like 'I've given up on this hopeless clan!' aren't actually budding psychosis-- they're a soldier struggling to find sufficient reason to reject unconscionable orders, and failing.
      • It's also theorized that he spared Sasuke as the carrot in Danzou's proposition--that as long as he made sure the boy never suspected the massacre had been anything but another high-level ninja going off the deep end, he was allowed to leave him alive. It's already established that he loved Sasuke more than anything. And look where it got Sasuke himself. Thank you, Itachi..
      • Of course, then you get into questions of whether he used Sasuke to kill himself, or just wanted Sasuke to come kill him so he could see him one more time before he died....
    • A partial example is Haku: His father killed his mother once he found out about their bloodline limit, and when he tried to kill Haku, Haku accidentally killed his father in self-defense out of fear.
  • Higurashi no Naku Koro ni has a tragic case of this trope. In her backstory, Satoko had become insane and extremely paranoid as a result of suffering from Hinamizawa Syndrome, to the point where she perceived her own parents as a threat to her and pushed them both off a cliff to their deaths. It was essentially a twisted kind of self-defence.
  • Broly to Paragus in a Dragonball Z movie. Goku also killed his adoptive grandfather Gohan, but that was an accident.
    • Of course, then again, whether Broly himself actually will qualify as an orphan legally is another issue since he is implied to be about thirty during the time of the movie. Plus, in a way, Paragus did deserve his death, considering the fact that he ended up using Broly's powers against Broly's own will and later (even if reluctantly) attempted to abandon him on the doomed planet. It also overlaps into The Dog Bites Back, since Broly, although definitely one of the central main antagonists, was technically a mook to his father.
  • Suzaku of Code Geass killed his father, the Prime Minister of Japan, Genbu Kururugi, during Japan's war against Britannia. He did this in order to force Japan to surrender, thus ending the bloodshed of the war and preventing Japan's total destruction, since Genbu actually was ready to have Japan destroyed rather than under Britannian rule. It worked, but the character is so horribly torn by guilt that the incident gives him Laser-Guided Amnesia for years. To make things worse, it's indicated in some of the background material that if Japan had fought to the end as Genbu wanted, that could have bought enough time for the Chinese Federation and/or the EU to intervene on Japan's behalf.
    • In Nightmare of Nunally Genbu was planning to marry Nunally so that they won't be able to invade his nation due having a Britannian Princess as a political piece, however Suzaku wouldn't had murdered him but Lelouch would have killed Suzaku's father if that had happened.
    • In R2 episode 21, Lelouch killed his father and mother (after spending 90% of the series trying to find out who killed her). They were trying to bring about the end of the world at the time, though.
    • In the light novels, it's mentioned that Blood Knight Luciano Bradley killed his abusive father at a very young age.
  • It is noted in Elfen Lied that most of the diclonius kill their own parents out of volatile fear, although this is not the case with any of the named diclonius in the show, it very nearly is. Actually averted with Lucy/Kaede: her father left her and her mom before little Kaede's abilities kicked in, Kaede herself was separated from her mom some time later and sent to the infamous Orphanage of Fear... and while searching for her, Mama was captured, raped, forcibly impregnated with the first male Diclonius ever, and finally Driven to Suicide by Chief Kakuzawa. Also averted with Mariko Kurama since her mom Hiromi fell victim to Death by Childbirth and the deals with her dad Kurama are... very complicated.
  • Justified with Guts, the aptly-named main character of Berserk, who killed his abusive adoptive father in self-defense. It was either that or dying.
  • Souther from Fist of the North Star was tricked into killing his beloved adoptive sifu, as the final stage of his training. This emotional trauma actually causes Souther to become a Complete Monster.
  • In Mobile Suit Gundam, Prince Gihren Zabi becomes The Starscream and kills his elderly father, Sovereign Degwin, when he was trying to make peace with the Federation. He doesn't get away with it, his Evil Genius sister Kycilia offs him soon, on the grounds of him being a patricidal murderer who would've been executed anyway.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00 has an interesting case: Sohran Ibrahim, the boy who would become Setsuna F. Seiei, the lead protagonist himself, shot his parents to death. In his defense, he and many other kids were brainwashed into doing so by Ali Al-Saachez to "prove their faith" to a cause Ali himself didn't even believe in, and it's definitely not something he's proud of. One reason he's more or less close to Rebellious Princess Marina Ismail is because of her similarities to his dead mother.
    • Andrei Smirnov of the A-Laws kills his own father Sergei, under the mistaken impression that he was part of a coup. To be fair to him, though, after a telepathic epiphany with his stepsister Marie/Soma, Andrei saw the grave error of his actions, and spends the rest of his days atoning for his sin... which he did in a dying blaze of glory during A Wakening Of The Trailblazer.
  • Baccano!'s Czeslaw Meyer is one in a case of The dog biting back where he kills his parental guardian, Fermet by the only means possible for immortals: devouring them. Luckily he gets a better replacement eventually.
  • Narutaru has two examples. First, Hiroko "Hiro-chan" Kaizuka kills her parents with her newly-acquired Mon after certain factors drive her to insanity - and said parents' emotional abuse (at least from Mr. Kaizuka's side, we don't know about the mother) is just the straw that breaks the camel's back for her. Secondly, in the manga only, it's suggested that Naozumi Sudo might be responsible for the "disappearance" of his parents and older brother, though his true involvement in the matter is left ambiguous.
    • There's also how Tomori neglected his sick mother until she starved to death, though after a certain point it's difficult to tell whether he had been doing so for very long before he died.
  • In Inuyasha, young Kohaku is forced to kill his father and other people from his village while Brainwashed and Crazy, with only his older sister Sango surviving. The trauma of this is later brought up to explain why he no longer tries to fight it (because that would mean remembering, which is such an horrifying experience for the kid that he'd rather have Laser-Guided Amnesia).
  • In Mirai Nikki Yuno Gasai's parents kept her locked in a cage and starved her in an attempt to make her into a "perfect" girl. Eventually she snapped., although it's heavily implied even before the reveal.
  • In Rurouni Kenshin, Soujiro killed his whole family when he was a child, fed up with their horrible abuse coming from his position as an illegitimate son. Not exactly a self-made orphan though, his parents were already dead and he was taken in by unspecified relatives on his father's side.
    • They're specified in the manga—the nastiest woman is his father's actual widow, and most of the guys who beat him are his half brothers, though some are his younger uncles.
    • Also, after Yukishiro Tomoe's death, her little brother Enishi is adopted by a wealthy Chinese family who find him in a gutter after he flees Japan. He kills them, both for the huge sum of money they had and because he simply couldn't stand anyone having a happy life after losing his own.
  • The Dagger of Kamui starts with a tragic variation: The protagonist, Jiro, is framed for the murder of his adoptive mother and sister, and forced to flee mob justice. He's rescued by a passing monk, Tenkai, who offers Jiro the chance to take revenge on the Ninja who killed them. This ninja is actually Jiro's Disappeared Dad, who had rebelled against his former master. Tenkai had arranged the murder both as a trap for the rogue, and as the opening act in a Xanatos Roulette revolving around making Jiro into a Tyke Bomb to discover the secrets that died with his father.
  • In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Dio Brando kills his father Dario with a slow-acting poison, making it look like Dario is dying of a disease. He hated his father for being abusive to his mother, whom he loved dearly. He tries to do it again (using the same method, no less!) to George Joestar (for the money), and would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for that meddling Jonathan!
    • Cars in the second part also...well, forget killing his parents, he killed his entire clan, save for his ally ACDC and the infant Wham and Santana. On the other hand, they were trying to kill him before he could put his Artifact of Doom to use.
    • In Steel Ball Run, the AU Dio is a self-made widower, marrying an elderly lady in her eighties before she died six months laters. Unlike that first instance, many, many people suspect Dio of killing her.
  • The fifth Kara no Kyoukai: movie starts with Tomoe killing his mother in self defence, after she murdered his father. Treated oddly sympathetically, despite the rather... strange circumstances that turn out to be surrounding it.
    • To be specific, the Tomoes were all long dead by that point, the family we saw at the beginning were all puppets, including the Enjou we follow through the film, and his mother had actually successfully commited double-murder suicide long ago. Can anyone say Mind Screw?
  • Variation: In X, Seishirou Sakurazuka killed his mother Setsuka not because of hate, but simply because that was the main requirement to become the Sakurazukamori. In fact, Setsuka knew it'd be like that ever since she had him, and she even got to Go Out with a Smile in her son's arms.
  • Tsubasa Ohgami of Kannazuki no Miko killed his abusive father in defense of his younger brother Souma.
  • Noir. Mafia Princess Lady Silvana, aka the Intoccabile, killed her father for violating the Mafia's code of silence, and when she returns from her banishment kills her grandfather (who banished her) as well. These acts cause Silvana to be regarded with awe by the other mafiosi, and even professional assassin Mireille Bouquet is terrified of her.
    • Mireille killed her uncle Claude, who had been her surrogate father ever since her parents and older brother were killed by little Kirika.
    • In the final episode, Kirika arguably fits this trope, when she kills Altena, who is the closest thing to a mother figure that she's ever knowingly had.
  • Implied of the Ax Crazy Chiri Kitsu in one episode of Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei. Itoshiki-sensei is killed and she "replaces" him with a small doll to cover up the crime. She quickly becomes paranoid about the rest of the class and they are replaced by dolls as well. While everyone is shown to actually be hiding safely under the school, it makes you wonder when the next scene appears to be Chiri happily telling her parents about her day- and then you see she is addressing dolls...
  • A pretty convoluted case is shown in Tantei Gakuen Q. The rich widow Hanayo Ichinose fakes her death and uses the insurance money to rebuild her business, then gets plastic surgery and tries to get closer to her relatives (who don't know she's still alive) family under a disguise. Her sons Akihiko and Kunihiko, however, mistakenly think that the "stranger" who tries to worm her way in their lives is an accomplice of their Evil Aunt Sachiyo, a greedy Smug Snake who wants to get the custody of their little sister Kaoru (the rightful heiress to the family fortune)... so they murder Hanayo without knowing who she really is, trying to save Kaoru from Sachiyo's machinations. What follows is heartbreaking.
  • In Yami No Matsuei (Descendants of Darkness), it's revealed that Muraki's half-brother Saki (who was illegitimate, through Muraki's father) killed his parents and Muraki's mother, and tried to kill Muraki himself before being shot and killed by one of the family's bodyguards.
    • Only in the anime, though—the animation contract ran out after the Kyoto arc, and the Kyoto arc is... confusing to say politely, so they made up answers to some obvious questions to save themselves from a Gecko Ending. It only sort of works. However, though we don't know exactly what happened to whom, manga Muraki returns us to this trope by claiming to have killed his mother.
      • He seems to have had good cause, too. And of course, abused little Kazutaka looked frighteningly like little Hisoka, and I don't even know if there's a trope for that, though there's sure as hell psychological terminology....
      • All Men Eventually Become Their Mothers?
      • Manga Muraki hates manga Saki for no adequately explored reason. Something to do with wrecking his (effed-up) family. And his father gets thrown in in connection with the Mark of Cain, literally the only time the man's existence is alluded to. Multiple Choice Past, anyone?
  • Kall Su of Bastard!! had killed his mother in self defense before being taken in by Dark Schneider in a story that is incredibly similar to that of Haku from Naruto.
  • Belphegor of Katekyo Hitman Reborn is hinted to have killed his entire family besides just his brother, though this is only actually mentioned once by Bel himself as an offhand comment to someone whom he was trying to scare.
  • One of the arcs in Shigofumi involved a highschool-age girl who had been forced into pornography by her father. It's unknown what happened to her mom. But when her dad suggested to her that he wanted to get her little sister into the business, she killed him. You could hardly shed any tears for the dad, though.
  • Dlanor A. Knox killed her own father after he violated the Knox Decalogue. After this, she stopped aging.
    • Also, in one arc George Ushiromiya killed his mother Eva. It was mostly in self-defense when her evil side Eva-Beatrice came out in the middle of a heated discussion in regards to her Parental Marriage Veto, though.
  • Mewtwo from Pokémon the First Movie, since the scientists responsible for creating him are technically his parents.
  • Lucille kills his parents in order to protect his sister Ferris from them.
  • Soul Eater: In Ch 87 Chrona kills his... her... eh, their mother Medusa because she was being nice to him/her/them. Also a subversion: Medusa actually counted on that, since it completed Chrona's Black Blood.
  • In Bleach 466, Yukio's backstory has him ruining his father's business and driving his and his mom to suicide, as Revenge for their abandonment. Hitsugaya isn't impressed when Yukio tells him. There's a subversion, though: Yukio claims that he did it happily to punish them, but then Hitsugaya realizes that he's not half as remorseless as he believes,; when Hitsu points it out, Yukio starts defending their memories instead, which leads to a massive Villainous Breakdown.
  • In Saiyuki, Gojyo's older half-brother Jien kills his own mother (Gojyo's stepmother) before she can succeed in killing Gojyo. Her coercing Jien into sex on a regular basis probably had something to do with it, too.
  • In Berserk, Dark Magical Girl Rosine sacrificed her own parents to the Godhand for her wish to become a fairy.
  • Madlax has the main character Margaret, who split herself into her and Madlax to kill her father Colonel Richard Burton. To be fair, she only did it when Richard was Brainwashed and Crazy and about to kill her in his rampage: Margaret's survival instincts kicked in, Madlax came to the surface, and... well...


Comic Books

  • Bruce Wayne's childhood friend Thomas Elliot tried to kill his parents at a young age in order to inherit their riches and because his father was an abusive monster and his mother a simpering money hungry lunatic. He only succeeded in killing his father, and, to avoid suspicion, didn't try again, only truly being orphaned when he smothered his raving senile mother in a fit of anger. This left him with a bitter hatred of Bruce, who tragically lost his parents soon after Tommy tried to kill his. Later on in his life, he joins the Riddler (who recently discovered that Bruce was Batman on a vendetta against him, feeling that, not only did Bruce get the riches Tommy wanted, but that he was wasting those riches as well. Predictably, his vendetta eventually causes him to lose everything and become the full time Super Villain Hush.
    • Not the first of Batman's Rogues' Gallery to do so. Black Mask killed his parents in a fire to inherit their business and fortune. Unfortunately, he was a lousy businessman and when he tried to burn down the factory to cover his tracks, he wound up with the facial injury that gave him his villain name.
    • In a look at The Joker's childhood in The Brave and the Bold revival issue #31, as a child the Joker burned down his house with his bickering parents inside.
    • According to The Long Halloween, Jonathan Crane (the future Scarecrow) murdered his mom. On Mother's Day.
      • In the Batman: Arkham City video game, Calander Man reveals that he did the same to his mother, as well as killing his father on Father's Day. Of course, he tells you this on their respective days (or by altering the system clock).
    • And the Penguin murdered his father (along with his brothers) in the miniseries Penguin: Pain and Prejudice so he could be alone with his mother, the only person who loved him.
    • A one-off character in the debut issue of Gotham Knights is a child that kills his parents.
  • It's implied in several stories that the Post-Crisis Lex Luthor murdered his own parents when he was just a child.
    • In turn, on Smallville, Lex's father Lionel killed his parents for insurance money.
      • Still in Smallville, Lex eventually kills his father.
    • Naturally, a young Emil Burbank (the Lex Luthor Alternate Company Equivalent in Marvel's Squadron Supreme), was also shown killing his parents for the insurance money (from a policy on which he forged their signatures).
  • Symbiotic Serial Killer and Spider-Man villain Carnage; he claims his first victim was his own mother, who he killed in response to her killing his father, who was trying to kill him. Or maybe it was the other way around. (He's hopelessly insane.)
    • A far darker version of his origins claimed his parents survived his assaults, but it wasn't pleasant. He did kill his grandmother by pushing her down stairs. He later tortured and killed his mother's dog, and when she caught him doing so, tried to kill her with a power drill. This caused her to snap and try to kill him, but his father intervened and beat her half to death; his son said nothing at his trial.
  • DC Comics' Lobo is not only a self-made orphan, but a self-made Last of His Kind. As he put it in his appearance on Superman: The Animated Series:

"Hah! That's rich. I'm the last Czarnian. *Aside* I fragged the rest of the planet for my high school science project. Gave myself an A."

  • Warlock of the New Mutants is a member of the Technarchy, a technological race where being a Self Made Orphan is the standard - adulthood was confered after you killed your "Siredam". Warlock fled because A) his "mutation" was the realization that this was a strange way of doing things and B) the fact that his father, The Magus, can casually tear apart suns.
  • Rare heroic example: the Runaways were formed when they found out that their parents were a band of supervillains called the Pride, and after initially just trying to avoid their parents, they ended up having to battle them, resulting in the death of all of their parents and the one member of their own who had remained loyal to the Pride.
    • To be fair though, they weren't trying to kill their parents even then. Molly freaked out and destroyed the sacrifice, which caused the Gibborim to decide that the Pride went soft because of their children and proceeded to try to kill everyone in the room. The Pride ordered their children to escape while holding them off and several of the Runaways were visibly upset at the thought of their parents dying and/or held hope that they might survive.
  • Another rare heroic example: Before Bruce Banner became the Hulk, he semi-accidentally killed his abusive father, Brian. In their final confrontation, Bruce lashed out as Brian got ready to attack him, sending Brian crashing into the gravestone of Bruce's mother and cracking his skull.
    • It was self defense however, since his father was trying to kill him and he had killed Banner's mother.
  • The notorious 1954 EC Comics story "The Orphan" [dead link] featured a little girl who kills her abusive father and then frames her neglectful mother and her lover for the murder (resulting in their on-panel execution in the electric chair).
  • In the Sonic the Hedgehog comic, it's heavily implied that Scourge killed his neglectful father Anti-Jules.
  • Technically, Samaritan from Astro City qualifies. He was sent from the future to prevent a disaster that would cause the end of the world centuries down the line, but his success meant that his parents never existed.
  • Evan McCulloch, the second Mirror Master from The Flash series. He was an orphan and end up killing his father by accident in his job as a hit-man. As a result, his mother committed suicide. Another Rogue, Captain Cold, recently confronted his abusive father but couldn't bring himself to kill the man... so he had Heat Wave do it.
  • Hellboy's Liz Sherman became one accidentally, after a Superpower Meltdown of hers created a fire that destroyed an entire city block (among the fatalities were her parents and brother).
  • X-men villain Shinobi Shaw once murdered his supervillain father Sebastian, taking over the Hellfire Club upon doing so. Of course, this being a comic book and Sebastian being a long-established villain, he was eventually revealed to be quite alive and not in a good mood with his son.
  • Catman from Secret Six is technically a Self Made Orphan, although he only shot his mother accidentally because his father pointed the shotgun at her while Thomas was attempting to shoot him. He did finish the job with a machete in the dad's stomach, though.
  • In X-Wing: The Phantom Affair, Loka Hask, the Ax Crazy psycho who killed Wedge Antilles' parents, comments that Wedge should thank him for it, then goes on to muse that he wishes he had had someone willing to do that for him when he was a boy, but no, he had to do it himself.
  • While he has a Multiple Choice Past, one detail that Bullseye keeps bringing up consistently is that he murdered his parents, who were abusive (although the circumstances are sketchy).
    • He offed his dad in Dark Reign: Hawkeye, long after he became a supervillain. Not that he didn't try before though.
  • Misfit is also technically a Self-Made Orphan, though she did it accidentally. When her apartment building caught on fire she tried to "bounce" away with her mother and little brother. That is how she found out that any living thing she bounces with her dies en route. She clings desperately to Barbara Gordon and the Birds of Prey because she needs both a surrogate mother figure and the opportunity to atone for accidentally killing her family.
  • In the ROM comic, there was a half-breed offspring of a human and a Dire Wraith, calling itself Hybrid, who was a true monster, murdering both parents by magically 'aging' them and then impaling his father with a pitchfork. It might not be entirely Hybrid's fault - he was raised by the uber-evil Dire Wraiths, the ultimate form of child abuse. Still, he was as close to pure, self-consciously intentional evil as is likely to be possible.
  • In Locke and Key, Ellie Whedon comes really, really close to pushing her horrible mother off a cliff after she puts a cigarette out on her son's neck, but can't go through with it. However, the evil spirit she unwittingly unleashes a few pages later has no such hesistation.
  • Loki created a Stable Time Loop to ensure his biological parents would die in battle so he would be adopted by the Asgardians.

Fan Works

  • Arestis is this in Arestis' Childhood. Of note is that she did not specifically seek her parent's deaths, but they were a foreseeable consequence of her actions, and not one she seemed to much mind.
  • Harveste, who was living with abusive relatives after his loving parents died protecting him, killed his legal guardians and his cousin, effectively re-orphaning himself at the age of five.


Film

  • Catherine Trammell from the Basic Instinct movies may have killed her parents after writing a book detailing her plan to do so, then used, "right, I wrote out this plan for killing my parents, published it in a book, then did it-- I'd have to be crazy to do that" as a defense. Whether she actually did murder her parents or not is not actually stated, though several characters express their opinions that she did.
  • Addams Family Values (the second Addams Family theatrical movie) has this in the form of Debbie Jellinsky, the kids' apparent nanny and professional "black widow" style Serial Killer who reveals that her first murders were her parents, who got her a Malibu Barbie instead of a Ballerina Barbie on her birthday: "That's not what I wanted! That's not who I was! I was a ballerina! Graceful! Delicate! They had to go." So she burned the family house down with them inside.
  • Roy Batty in Blade Runner, with the interesting twist that Tyrell, a genetic engineer is both a fatherlike and a godlike figure.
  • The Tartutic from M. Night Shyamalan's The Lady in the Water are described as being SO evil that they kill their parents after they're born. (One wonders how the species survives, if they're that uncooperative.)
  • Edgler Vess in the film Intensity Lampshades the Freudian Excuse when he tells the protagonist that his parents were most loving, caring people that could have ever wanted... but he killed them anyway.
  • The incomparable Natural Born Killers has the female lead helping her Badass Anti-Hero boyfriend kill both her parents, who are admittedly Very Bad People.
  • While he didn't kill them, the titular child character of the movie Joshua drove his mother crazy until she was committed and drove his father paranoid until he was arrested, essentially making himself an orphan. All so that he could be adopted by his uncle, who he liked better.
  • In the Wanted movie, Wesley unknowingly became one of these, killing his Disappeared Dad because the Fraternity used him as an Unwitting Pawn -- the one person the rogue assassin who was decimating their ranks could never kill. Naturally, he was told that he was hunting the man who killed his father, instead.
  • In Mikey the title character murders both sets of adoptive parents he gets.
  • In Monsters vs. Aliens Gallaxhar mentions that he wiped out his entire planet starting with his parents.
    • We think. All we know is he found out they were (tube closes), and that he went on the road with a giant (tube closes), a relationship that ended when she (tube closes).
  • In the Brian Bosworth movie Stone Cold, the villain tells one of his soon-to-be-murder victims:

Chains: You know, at moments like this I think of my father's last words, which were... "Don't, son, that gun is loaded!"

"That wasn't very nice of your parents."
"That's what I told them, before I killed them."

    • Of course, he also told the female character that he'd never lied to her... Make of that what you will.
  • It's implied Ginger and Brigitte did this to their abusive parents in Ginger Snaps Back. When they come upon an outpost, Ginger says that their parents drowned - which is soon revealed to the audience to be bullshit. However, when talking privately with Brigitte, Ginger still alludes to their parents being dead, so one wonders why she had to lie about it before. Add in the casual references to them having been beaten before, and the fact that for some reason, they're traveling on their own during winter at the start of the movie, and the fact that Ginger, at least, always had some sociopathic tendencies, and... Yeah.
  • The killer in Mindhunters when he was just a lad.
  • Double subverted in Thor when Loki kills his biological father Laufey while declaring himself the son of Odin. So it looks like he's going to kill his adoptive father in an attempt to appeal to his biological father, but then he kills his biological father in a (completely misguided) attempt to appeal to his adoptive father. Wow.
    • Wait a minute. Laufey is Loki's mother, not his father. His father's name is Farbauti. He's known as Laufeyson rather than Farbautisen because his father rejected him for being a midget.
  • Happens more than once in Village of the Damned. Specially notorious in the 1995 version, where Mara, the ringleader of the Creepy Children, first telepathically forces her mother Barbara to put her hand inside a boiling pot, and then uses her Psychic Powers again to make her throw herself off a cliff.
  • Diane in Angel Face, though she only intended to murder her stepmother through Vehicular Sabotage, and not her father as well.

Jokes

  • There is a joke is about a little dragon who's crying. When asked where his mom and dad are, he says he ate them. When asked if he knows what it makes him, he says "Yes. (sobs) A complete orphan."

Literature

  • One of the first things Luke does in Duumvirate is this.
  • As the first page quote suggests, there is some mystery as to how Psycho for Hire assassin and unsympathetic Psychopathic Manchild Jonathan Teatime came to be an orphan.
    • Mind you the character talking is the one who trained him to put the 'for hire' after the 'psycho,' so there's a certain Even Evil Has Standards at play.
      • (Actually, a lot of it. The Assassins Guild pride themselves on being gentlemen. Their scholarship students tend to be very interesting.)
  • Several instances in the Harry Potter series:
    • In Harry Potter, we learn that Voldemort killed his own father (along with his paternal grandparents, just for good measure).
    • At the end of the same book, we learn that Barty Crouch Jr. did the same thing. Barty makes much of how both he and Voldemort had very disappointing fathers and the pleasure of killing those fathers. He also seems to regard Voldemort as a father substitute.
    • Also, in Harry Potter it's revealed that Ariana Dumbledore accidentally killed her mother Kendra.
  • Crake in Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood is implied to have killed his uncle and possibly his mother, too (his father was killed (executed) while Crake was still a kid, so this leaves him an orphan).
  • In A Song of Ice and Fire, the dwarf Tyrion Lannister murders his father Tywin, who had always hated him for being born deformed after his mother died in childbirth. Tyrion does that to punish Tywin for having destroyed his first marriage, by forcing Jaime to lie about Tyrion's wife being a prostitute.
    • Lord Eon Hunter's sudden death leads people to blame his eldest son Gilwood for the murder. He wasn't the culprit, though. All this time, it was Harlan, the third son, who might also be planning to murder his older brothers so he could be Lord of Longbow.
  • Miriamele in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is forced into this to destroy the Eldritch Abomination possessing her father at the end of To Green Angel Tower. Earlier in the series, Benigaris inherits the throne of Nabban by stabbing his father in the back during the siege of Naglimund.
  • Lois Lowry's The Willoughbys has the children encourage their extremely indifferent parents to go on a long vacation, hoping they'll be killed. Turns out later that's just what happens though it takes several attempts. Actually the children themselves don't have to do anything at all; their parents just seem to love taking risky chances.
  • Alan Campbell's Scar Night: The fallen angel Carnival faces down the god Ulcis, who turns out to be her father, and kills him in a disappointingly easy fight.
  • The title character of Carrie killed her mother in self-defense as her mother was trying to kill her (at least in the original novel, Carrie's father died in a work-related accident before his daughter's birth).
  • In Slan Hunter, Jem Lorry murders his father when he learns the truth about his birth, and to ensure that the story will never be revealed.
  • Children of the Corn. Every single one of 'em.
  • Semi-subverted in Coraline. The Other Mother has put her Mother to to grave, "And when she tries to get out, I put her back in". So the Mother of Other Mother isn't exactly dead, by for all intents and purposes, she is.
  • In The Dark Tower series, Roland Deschain accidentally shot his mother dead.
  • In The Stormlight Archive, Shallan killed her father before the series started.
  • Dillon Cole of Scorpion Shards accidentally drove his parents insane and eventually killed them before he realized that his mere touch could break minds.
  • Beorn from The Shattered World is an inversion, whose parents paid for him to be made a werebear when he was very young, not realizing it wouldn't manifest until puberty. Upon his first transformation, he stumbled home and was mistaken for a genuine bear; terrified, his parents barricaded themselves inside their farmhouse, only to perish when Beorn's panicked battering against the walls tipped over an oil lamp and set the place on fire.
  • In Ship Breaker Nailer's Missing Mom is dead long before the story starts, of an infection. His father, Richard Lopez, on the other hand, is still alive and kicking, much to everyone's regret. When Richard takes over as The Heavy of the novel, it's only a matter of time before he and Nailer end up facing one another. While Nailer doesn't want to fight his dad, Richard has no qualms about Offing the Offspring, or selling Nailer's friend, Nita's organs to the Life Cult, forcing Nailer to kill him in a Knife Fight.
  • Immortal In Death reveals that Eve Dallas killed her father in self-defense after repeated physical and sexual abuse at his hands.
  • Palpatine was revealed to have murdered his parents and siblings when he was a late teenager in the novel Star Wars: Darth Plagueis. It's also implied that he desired to murder his father, at the very least, ever since he was a baby.
  • Strongly implied with Elizabeth Bathory in Count and Countess.
  • In The Bad Place, by Dean Koontz, Frank killed his single biological parent, a hermaphrodite who self-impregnated. This provides a major conflict, as a sibling of said Self-Made Orphan wishes to avenge that act.
  • In his 1968 book The Joys of Yiddish, author Leo Rosten defined chutzpah as "that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan."


Live-Action TV

  • Several Criminal Minds unsubs have done this. The most prominent examples are Frank (who killed his own mother and never knew his own father), The Reaper aka George Foyet and Billy Flynn (who shot his own mother in what he saw as an act of mercy).
  • Beverly Hills, 90210 character Valerie Malone killed her father.
  • Just about every member of Prince Edmund's Quirky Miniboss Squad, the Black Seal, in the series finale of The Black Adder, apart from Edmund himself, but including The Hawk. Edmund does plan on exiling and imprisoning his family though were he successful in taking power.

Edmund: He murdered his whole family!
Pete: Who didn't? I certainly killed mine.
Wilfred: And I killed mine.
Friar: And I killed yours.
Sean: Did you?
Friar: Yes.
Sean: Good on you, Father.

  • Benjamin Linus, the Big Bad of Lost, may have lost his mother to perfectly innocent Death by Childbirth, but he hated the resentment from his father so much that he killed him and the rest of the Dhama initiative with a painful-looking nerve gas.

Ben: You know, I've missed her too. Maybe as much as you have. But the difference is, for as long as I can remember, I've had to put up with you. And doing that required a tremendous amount of patience. Goodbye, Dad.

    • Also, Kate killed her step-father, who then turned out to have been her birth father, for abusing her and her mother.
      • And depending on how you look at it, when Locke forced Sawyer to kill Locke's father.
        • Let's be fair—Locke didn't force Sawyer to do it as much as he manipulated him into doing it. It looked like Sawyer was going to pass on killing Cooper, until Cooper, in a boast about his long career as a con man, admitted to using the name "Tom Sawyer" during a previous con. Oops...
        • Sawyer symbolically played this trope straight, since Cooper was the con man who destroyed Sawyer's family, which led Sawyer to a life in the same business.
  • In the Doctor Who Expanded Universe, the Faction Paradox Cult have this as part of their initiation ritual, served with a side order of Temporal Paradox, in that you're sent back in time to off your ancestors... before you were born. Faction Paradox is weird.
    • It's also pretty likely that the Doctor killed his parents. Although we don't really know whether or not his parents were still alive when he wiped out the Time Lords.
      • It's actually 100% likely. The Doctor didn't just "wipe out" the Time Lords, he erased them from time itself! That's why he's the last Time Lord barring the Master's occasional re-appearance, otherwise they could have just used their TARDISes to continue travelling through time after Gallifrey was destroyed.
        • Jossed by The End of Time. The Time War, and everything in it, is sealed in a Time Lock, which prevents anything inside from escaping. The Doctor didn't really kill his parents, as much as he kept them in a prison. This is possibly to ensure that the Time Lords can be brought back whenever (witness the End of time). The Time Lock means that anything on Gallifrey (i.e. all the Time Lords except 2 and all Daleks except 4) as of the moment it was activated can no longer influence the Universe, i.e anything they were going to do later in life never happened.
      • Russell T. Davies is of the opinion the Doctor killed his mother when he ended the Time War. Given that dialogue in The End of Time reveals Time Lords were being killed and resurrected repeatedly during the War, this may be viewed as something of a release.
    • The Toclafane killed millions of their ancestors before their own birth, thanks to a "paradox machine" holding the Grandfather Paradox at bay.
  • The Enfante Terrible villain of the Supernatural episode "Provenance". Twice - her birth family and her adoptive one.
    • Also in Supernatural, Bela is revealed to have killed both her parents by making a deal with the demon Lilith for them to meet with an accident. The other characters are allowed to believe it was for the insurance money, while the audience is shown scenes that strongly imply her father abused her. "They were lovely people."
  • Treated in a bizarrely humorous way on Angel after Wesley shoots his father because his father was threatening Fred though it was actually a robot shapeshifter. Wesley was sure it was him, though, and that he would really do such a thing. Angel tries to comfort him, but it doens't help. The characters bring up both Angelus killing his parents as a vampire and Spike killing his mother.

Angel: You know, I killed my father. It was one of the first things I did after becoming a vampire.
Wesley: I hardly see that's the same thing.
Angel: You're right, dunno why I brought it up.
(later)
Spike: Heard you offed your dad. You know I killed my mum, well I mean I'd already killed her but then she tried to shag me so I had to (mimes staking).
Wesley: Thank you, I really don't need any more comforting.
(later, again. Wesley is in his office, Fred walks in)
Wesley: If you're here to tell me about how you murdered your parents...
Fred: What?

    • Fred's parents are, of course, both alive, and Wesley knew it perfectly well. Not only that, but they are the best darn parents in Texas, and until Fred dies it's probably the happiest family in the Buffyverse, so the situation is completely unlike Angel, Spike or Wesley.
  • Sylar on Heroes killed his mother semi-accidentally, in the fight after she tried to stab him with a pair of dressmaking scissors.
    • Peter Petrelli attempted to kill his pop Arthur. He failed, but his attempt was finished by Sylar, who'd been suckered into believing that Arthur was his father as well.
    • Narrowly subverted in Shades of Gray when Sylar tracks down his father, Samson Gray. Samson seems indifferent when he meets Sylar, and when Sylar announces his intentions to kill him, he reveals he is already dying from cancer. Samson also reveals he has a power similar to Sylar's, including an acquired ability that paralyzes a person as if they were drugged. He also shares knowledge of Sylar's methodology, picking easy, helpless targets rather than going after "big game." When Samson witnesses Sylar heal instantly after accidentally cutting himself, he tries to take the ability from Sylar by paralyzing him. Sylar, however, manages to override it. Samson points out that taking his ability will not harm him as he can heal, but Sylar says he doesn't wish for his father to have such a power, and decides to leave. Samson begs Sylar to kill him, but Sylar says his cancer will eventually do so anyway, and leaves.
  • Averted and parodied in the first episode of Dexter, whose protagonist/narrator is a serial killer, when he explains in a narrative that both his parents are dead, immediately adding "I didn't kill them. Honest." It is revealed in the second season that Dexter actually inadvertently drove his father to suicide, much to Dexter's surprise.
    • Also, Brian, Dexter's brother (also a serial killer), offed their biological father.
  • On Smallville Lex Luthor murders his Archnemesis Dad Lionel as his final step into true villainy. Lionel himself was revealed to be one of these earlier in series, having had his friend Morgan Edge kill his Alcoholic Abusive Parents in a gas fire. One can only wonder what Lex's children will do, should he have any...
  • Parker from Leverage certainly seems to be a case. In flashback, we saw her having a favored toy taken away by her (it's assumed) biological father. Next scene shows her holding the toy while walking down the driveway. Then the house explodes.
  • Battlestar Galactica is a semi-example. The Cylons consider humans to be their parents and claim that they have to die for Cylons to reach their potential. So Cylons 'tried to becoma Self-Made Orphan... and then It Got Worse.
  • The season 2 (and perhaps series) final of V2009 version “Mothers Day” has two examples of daughters killing their parents
    • After a Hope Spot which saw Diana take power back from her evil child and declare an era of peace with humans. Anna then returned claiming that she now understand human emotion like love and caring. However she then snuck up behind her mom and impales her with her tail cementing her status as queen.
    • The other was even more heartbreaking Papa Wolf Ryan was finally reunited with hybrid daughter Amy who Anna had been holding hostage this season to make him work for her. However in his absents she has become an Enfant Terrible and the little girl strangles and kills her father when he tried to save her and declared her loyalty to Anna.
      • Lisa almost became one in the same episode as the fifth column used her as a Decoy Damsel to lure her Big Bad mother out so she could stab her in the back and end the war. However the Manipulative Bitch convinced her that she had changed her ways and now cared about her and her To Dumb To Live daughter actually believed it. After murdering Diana Anna even boast about how she manipulated her child telling her “now that is how you kill your mother”
  • Star Trek uses this trope in Klingon mythology. According to it, the gods created Klingons, who then turned around and killed them for the trouble.
  • In the X-Files episode Eve two girls who appear to be identical twins who live on opposite sides of the country kill their fathers at the same time. It turns out the two girls are part of a cloning project that was originally carried out by the government but is now being continued by another one the clones. The clone adult that created the two girls wasn't behind the murders...the little girls were just evil.
  • In one sketch on Steve Allen At Large, a priest knocks on the door of a house, and a little girl answers. The priest says, "I'm collecting for the orphanage." The little girl says, "Hold on a moment," and disappears inside. Two gunshots are heard. The little girl returns and says, "I'm ready."
  • Morgana on Merlin-her mother and the man she looked to as a father and believed for a long time was her father were already dead, but she gave Agravaine the amulet to killt he wounded Uther-her birth father.


Music

  • Tom Lehrer's song The Irish Ballad details the life of one of these:

About a maid I'll sing a song who didn't have her family long
 Not only did she do them wrong, she did every one of them in..

  • Ira Gershwin's "The Saga of Jenny" starts with the accidental deaths of the protagonist's parents(and siblings);

Jenny made her mind up when she was three
 She herself was going to trim the Christmas tree
 Christmas Eve she lit the candles, tossed the tapers away
 Little Jenny was an orphan on Christmas day

  • Aerosmith's song "Janie's Got a Gun". She shoots her dad because of the abuse he inflicted on her.
  • Jim Morrison fantasized about killing his father (and also knocking off Brother and Sister Morrison for good measure) in the 1967 performance piece "The End" (oh yeah, and then he raped his mother). It was later parodied by Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman in 1993's "Wasted Youth".
  • Dir En Grey's song "Berry" tells the story of a nine-year-old girl who gets sick of her parents abusing her, takes her father's gun, and shoots them. If that's not disturbing enough, the girl's favorite food is jam on bread, and the blood her parents shed is referred to as raspberry jam.

New Media

  • In Descendant of a Demon Lord Edrilanish (who is a dragon) said that it used to be the case that a dragon wasn't considered an adult until it killed the dragon that raised it.

Professional Wrestling

  • WWE's The Undertaker may be a self-made orphan, or may not be. All we really know is that his parents died in a fire at the funeral home they owned and operated. At various points, we've been told that he set it on accident, he set it on purpose, his half-brother Kane set it, etc. It's all very confusing and pointless.


Tabletop RPG


Theater

  • In the play The Revengers' Comedies, the Ax Crazy Clingy Jealous Girl who acts as a Poisonous Friend to the protagonist is strongly implied to have started the fire that killed her parents when she was eleven because they did something minor to displease her.
  • In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, George killed both of his parents by accident.
  • In Electra, Orestes enacts vengeance against his mother Chytaimnestra and step-father Aigisthos for their murder of his father Agammemnon. Though Electra doesn't actually wield the blade, she is guilty too.


Video Games

  • Played cruelly in Ace Attorney, with Miles Edgeworth thinking he accidentally killed his father for fifteen years and had constant nightmares about it.
    • Subverted, in that it was proven that he was wrong.
  • The Id of Fei Fong Wong in Xenogears.
  • Kibagami Genjuro claims to have killed his parents. His murder of his mother is All There in the Manual, at least.
  • Psycho Mantis of Metal Gear Solid woke up one morning to find his entire village in flames, all its inhabitants, including his father, dead, victims of his psychic powers (his mother was a victim of Death by Childbirth). Well, that's how he tells it. He probably just did it for shits and giggles.
    • As his powers began to develop as a child, he started to hear his father's thoughts. He came to the realization that his father really and truly hated him because he was responsible for his wife's death, though he acted like he loved him. One day, Psycho Mantis burned his entire village to the ground out of pure hatred for humanity, and especially his father.
    • The trope is also used symbolically, and for the protagonists even, with Snake killing his "father" Big Boss, Raiden killing his "father" Solidus, and Big Boss killing his "mother" The Boss.
      • That first one, while not lacking for symbolism, isn't symbolic in the way implied with the quotation marks, what with Big Boss actually unambiguously being Snake's biological father. Well, a little ambiguously.
  • Calendar Man, in Batman: Arkham City. Visit his cell on Mother's Day and Father's Day and he relates how both murders occurred.
  • In God of War, Kratos' mother's note in Hades confirms her death, and the ending of the game has him slaying his father, Zeus.
  • The backstory for the Demoman in Team Fortress 2 claims that his fascination with explosives began at age six with an attempt to kill the Loch Ness monster. That first attempt cost him both his original adopted parents.
  • Quite tragic case in The King of Fighters: Emotionless Girl Leona did not want to kill her father and the people in her village, but did so under More Than Mind Control from Magnificent Bastard Goenitz. He provoked her into doing so to get back at her father, ex Orochi Head Gaidel, for refusing to re-join his Quirky Miniboss Squad. Poor Leona went into an Heroic BSOD and wandered in the jungle for several days, afflicted with Laser-Guided Amnesia, until she was adopted by Colonel Badass Heidern (who had lost his daughter and wife a while ago, at the hands of Rugal).
  • In Fatal Fury, Wolfgang Krauser killed his father in a Duel to the Death to become the Earl of Strolheim. He honors his father once a year by playing the old man's favorite music in his organ.
  • Maya from Legaia 2: Duel Saga, accidentally killed both her parents at a young age when she lost control of her magical powers. The event left her mute, but she gets over it later.
  • In Baldur's Gate II, Valygar, whose family had been long-plagued by necromancy practice, destroyed his parents after his mother raised his father from the dead as a zombie, unwilling to accept his death, and then later joined him in undeath.
  • Arthas Menethil, of Warcraft fame. After losing his soul to the runeblade Frostmourne, he returned to Lordaeron and slaughtered everyone, up to and including dear old dad. In fact, the cinematic trailer for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion lays on the irony by juxtaposing his dad's words of wisdom with the the now-Lich King commanding his vast undead armies.

King Terenas: W-what are you doing?!
Prince Arthas: Succeeding you, father. (stab)

    • Fortunately, karma came back with a vengeance, as Terenas' soul resurrected the heroes who killed him after Frostmourne was broken.
  • Adell in Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories is forced to Mercy Kill his Brainwashed and Crazy blood-parents (by their own request) near the last few levels of the game, without even knowing who they are. What's worse is that it's heavily implied that his adoptive mother was planning to tell him who his birth parents were after the end of the game. Now that's going to be an uncomfortable conversation...
  • In Final Fantasy IV, Edge is forced to kill his parents after they are turned into chimera by Lugae.
  • In Dirge of Cerberus, one of the games in the Final Fantasy VII metaseries, Nero the Sable, one of the Tsviets, inadvertently sent his own birthmother into another dimension while she was giving birth to him due to his powers, which also acted as the reason why Shinra bound his arms as well as presumably limited his overall power.
  • In Final Fantasy X, Seymour kills his own father before the game starts. The reason why is because his father had him and his mother exiled after several Guado, in a case of Fantastic Racism, decried the Unholy Matrimony. Guado's father's statements in the sphere indicated that he accepted his fate fully as atonation for this sin.
  • In Fire Emblem: Sword of Seals, after numerous attempts on his own life from his father, King Desmond, Zephiel decides to turn the tables. He fakes his own death, then at his funeral, when Desmond opens the coffin to check on his son, Zephiel stabs him dead on the spot.
  • The Big Bad of Fire Emblem Path of Radiance, King Ashnard, is revealed to have killed not only his parents but his entire family. You see, he was pretty far back in the line of succession, so if he wanted to become king, some pruning of the family tree was required...
    • In Radiant Dawn an ending sequence only available on a New Game+ implies that Soren, a mandatory recruit, is Ashnard's son. The Irony.
  • In Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu's second part, we have the Lopto!possessed! Prince Yurius attacking his mother Diadora and his younger sister Yuria. Diadora manages to use her Warp staff to save Yuria, but isn't lucky enough herself, and dies at Yurius's hands. Similarly, in the first half King Chagall of Augustria and Duke Andorey of Jungby killed their fathers to ascend to their respective thrones. (The second earns the scorn of his fellow conspirator Duke Langobalt for that)
    • Also, for major Video Game Cruelty Potential, in both halves you can have some of your own units kill their Archnemesis Dads: Tailto (daughter of Duke Reptor) and Lex (son of the aforementioned Duke Langobalt) for the first part, either Johan or Johalvier (sons of King Danan) in the second.
  • The Many, that annelid Body Horror from System Shock 2, certainly want to do this to the "Machine Mother" who created them. Instead, the avatar of SHODAN kills them.
  • Wrex from Mass Effect is from the Krogan, an entire race of Blood Knights. However, after the Krogan rebellion, the Council more or less sterilized his entire race; their birthrate became so low, they are slowly going extinct. Wrex's father, the leader of their clan, had wanted to go to war again, while Wrex had the foresight to try and figure out a way to save their race. Wrex had to kill him in self-defense, then decided to abandon his people.
      • Note: The details of this get fudged a bit in Mass Effect 2. The fertility rate is set to 1 in 1,000 to compensate for the Krogan being catapulted into the stars (they were needed for the war against the Rachni). It's not an attempt at extinction so much as an attempt to prevent a Baby Boom of epic proportions, resulting in the Krogan trying to wage war on the universe. But they're Blood Knights, after all, so they still tend to get themselves killed at alarming rates...
    • Liara provides a rare heroic example if you bring her with you on Noveria - she helps you kill her own mother, Matriarch Benezia. Of course, Benezia was an outright villain.
    • In Mass Effect 2, if you can resist Morinth's mind control, you and she can kill her mother.
    • And also in Mass Effect 2 you can convince Jacob Taylor to abandon his father on a planet with several insane people who want his head. You can even leave him a near-empty pistol...
    • Another heroic example in Mass Effect 3, if she's still alive, Miranda will kill her father who's holding her sister hostage, the second he's convinced to let her go. Hard to say he didn't deserve it.
  • In Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, the Prince has to kill his own father in a boss fight after the latter is transformed by the Sands.
  • Devil May Cry 3 has Lady killing her father to avenge her mother's murder. Which doesn't count the other thing he tried to do...
  • In BioShock (series) 2, depending on the players actions Eleanor will either save or drown her mother.
  • In Left 4 Dead, Zoey had to kill her own father to prevent him from turning into a zombie after he had been bitten by his zombiefied ex-wife. Turns out later that Zoey is immune, something that is inherited to females from the father, meaning that her father was also immune to the infection and would have survived anyway. When she realizes this, she breaks into tears for having killed him when he would avoid zombiefication completely.
  • Deconstructed in the canon route of Blaze Union, where for practical and symbolic reasons, Gulcasa must kill his Missing Mom, and she's the one who bullies him into doing it. He does not want to, but kills her anyway because by that point he has no choice if he actually wants the power to protect his loved ones. She doesn't seem to hold it against him, but this event (among others) leaves him badly messed-up for quite some time.
    • Additionally, Route B, starring Aegina. Ordene wouldn't have died if he hadn't refused treatment. Using Aegina for this is actually very practical, gameplay-wise, as Ordene will not use Crusade on her.
  • Baek Doo San in Tekken killed his father in a training accident. The fact that his mother had abandoned them after his father fell into alcoholism didn't exactly do wonders for Baek's mental stability after the fact. Meanwhile, the Mishima tend to try to achieve this. Constantly.
  • Apparently, The Wolf from Stronghold:

The Wolf's past is shrouded in mystery and what is known of his history is mainly patched together from stories and unreliable rumours alone.
This aside, it is believed that both his parents died from natural causes in close succession shortly after his eighteenth birthday.

M. Bison: All you women ever do is whine! I killed my father too, and you don't see me crying about it!

Web Comics

  • In Drowtales, the three Sharen sisters send mommy dearest to her room permanently so they can rule Chel'el'Sussoloth in a demonic triumvirate. Their dialog as they do it is especially cold.
  • Early in the prequel "Start of Darkness" (to Order of the Stick), Xykon decides to leave home and turns his parents into zombies on the way out. He had previously done the same to his grandmother.
    • We don't know if Xykon killed his grandma or she just died of natural causes and he zombified her then, but he definitely did kill his parents by siccing zombies on them and then zombified them.
      • Mozenrath from Disney's Aladdin did much the same to his mentor/master, who was apparently raising him at the time.
  • Used as a threat in the comic that succeeded Lowroad75, The Smashing Adventures Of The Bottomleys:

Dad: Um... Well, you see... erm... I'm building this new machine in the basement and the TV had some really useful part...
Alice: Dad, If you finish that sentence I will be forced to make myself an orphan...

  • Keith Keiser of Twokinds killed his drunken father in self-defence after said father had killed his own wife. On top of it, he was accused of both murders and banished.
    • Although half the fanbase seems to think there more to it like, Keith being order (his race's hat is they can't disobey orders) to kill them and think it was self-defense.
      • Turns out the intelligent general murdered her when he found out she was form the other Bastin nation, the one without the compulsion to follow any order.
  • Black Mage from 8-Bit Theater may be this; we know he's killed his (blind) brother and has said he "wouldn't use the present tense for any member of my family" (with a blood splatter in the background, no less).
    • "It would have been cruel to let him live after what I did to his eyes."
  • The Uricarn from The Wotch is a self made Last of His Kind. It's likely he killed his parents, because in an aside, he regrets killing them all while he was still a kid. He wishes he left a female alive.
  • Richard of Looking for Group admits having killed his own father. In fact he's proud of it. Actually, he thinks of it as a funny story. But then again, anything involving killing is funny to Richard.
    • As he mentioned later, his father tried to sacrifice him. Which The Archmage admitted setting up, obviously as a part of his plan to make Richard more or less what he became.
  • Jared murdered his own father, the fate of his mother is as of yet unrevealed, though it's likely she met the same fate.
  • Homestuck: "Au revoir, Spidermom". But to be fair, she would have died soon enough anyway due to the avalanche.
  • Archipelago: Captain Snow. Started off with birds and squirrels. Later, killed his parents and apparently the rest of his family, sparing his nephew but forcing him to work for his crew. Went on to become the most feared and hated pirate captain in the world until he died of a brain tumor. And now he's back.


Web Original

  • Dr. Sloth from Neopets did this.
  • In Survival of the Fittest version one, Cillian Crowe and Daphne Rudko both murdered their own parents, though Cillian was confined to an insane asylum due to his actions while Daphne got off scot free.


Western Animation

Mr. Burns: Cause of parents' death?..."Got in my way."

Warden: [sombre] When I was a young boy, I saw my father murdered in front of my eyes. [suddenly cheerful] By me.

Bison: Yes, yes, I killed your father! What is it with you women anyway?! I killed my father too and you don't hear me whining about it!

  • In an episode of Batman the Animated Series there was an Enfant Terrible boy wizard who turned his parents into mice and fed them to his pet cat.
  • The 201st episode of South Park revealed that Scott Tenorman's dad was Cartman's dad, making him an example of this trope.
  • A variation on Jimmy Two-Shoes: Every member of the Heinous Family has frozen their father and taken over Miseryville. Since the family is pretty much different generations of Satan (a fact clearer in the original pitch) you get the impression that this is as close to death as they can get.
  • Fire Lord Ozai from Avatar: The Last Airbender, although he used an assassin (his own wife).
    • Agency in this case is somewhat obscured. Due to the timeslot, they had to be pretty oblique about the whole assassination thing, but it's more a matter of seriously invoking the confused perspective of a relatively normal child (Zuko) in the middle of all this. Possibly Ozai pressured Ursa. Possibly Azula (age eight) engineered it all.
      • Possibly not only did Azula engineer it, Azulon didn't even intend to have Zuko executed, though since he ran away when it got scary and Azula always lies, we'll never know for sure. Alternate reading of what dialogue we actually got would be that Azulon meant to take Zuko away from Ozai and give him to Iroh.
        • ...that would have been interesting. Iroh's Heel Face Turn is hard to date precisely, but if his father had survived he'd probably be a different man.
      • Azulon, after all, had Iroh as his heir for over twenty years before Ozai was even conceived, and his vision of the future had probably involved popular, talented Iroh as Fire Lord and his sneaky, brilliant younger brother making everything work from behind the scenes. Handing Zuko over to Iroh as heir (and incidentally putting him ahead of Ozai in the succession) would have set this dynamic up to persevere for two generations. Shyeah, right. But old people can be very set in their ways.
  • The Omnicronians of Futurama eat their mothers when they grow up. Leela understandably regrets telling a baby Omnicronian that she hoped he would always think of her as a foster mom after he tells her this.
    • Leela nearly does this herself when she and her mutant parents are reunited. She takes the photos they have of her as proof that they are creepy stalkers who murdered her birth parents. Her parents go along with it because they'd rather die than let their daughter live with the shame of being a mutant. Fortunately, Fry and the others arrive just in time to reveal the truth.
  • In Spider-Man: The Animated Series, the Kingpin is about as heavily implied to be this as the show's heavy censorship would allow. After being left for the police by his father in a robbery gone south, he walked out of prison with the physical strength, connections and mentality needed to build his empire. It's not made clear what he did to his father, but Smythe is shocked that even the Kingpin could be so ruthless. Near the end of that storyline, the Kingpin makes his own son Richard take the fall for Kingpin's exposed scheme. After his wife leaves him for this betrayal, the Kingpin is left alone holding a photo of his shattered family, bitterly wondering when his own son would take his revenge.
  • In Iron Man: Armored Adventures, it is heavily implied by many characters, including Justin himself, that Justin killed his father to take control of the company.
    • In one episode a Jerkass classmate implies that Tony did this to his father because of their (actually friendly and good-spirited) competition to one-up each other's inventions. It's completely false, of course, and Tony does not take it well at all.
  • It is very subtly implied in the episode "Easy as One, Two, Three..." of The Legend of Calamity Jane that Conrad killed the mother of him and his two brothers. He spends the episode repeating her advice and what her opinion would be of their actions, but when one of his brothers asks why he cannot just leave her in her grave, he responds that he did leave her in her grave.


Real Life

  • One recent[when?] case in Medicine Hat, Canada. A young girl, influenced by her much older boyfriend, murdered her entire family.
    • Recently[when?] in Finland a teenaged girl coaxed some older boys to kill her mother over domestic differences; fortunately, the crossbow bolt intended to do the job only grazed her skull, and she managed to escape.
    • In 1954, an incident happened in Christchurch, New Zealand where Pauline Parker and her friend Juliet Hulme killed her mother. Their story was made into film by Peter Jackson, Kate Winslet starred as one of the girls.
  • Older Than Radio: Lizzie Borden (allegedly) in 1892. Note: she was acquitted, and there are a variety of books offering various theories of the case, with a range of possible suspects, including Lizzie's older sister Emma (who if guilty, would qualify as well).
  • Caril Ann Fugate, the teenage girlfriend of 50's spree killer Charles Starkweather, was allegedly involved in the murders of her mother, stepfather, and sister. Like Lizzie Borden however, it will probably never be known for sure the true extent of her guilt (or innocence) in the case.
  • Gina Grant was a 19-year-old orphan when Harvard admitted her. What she didn't mention on the form was that the reason she was an orphan was that she bludgeoned her alcoholic mother to death with a candlestick when she was 14. She served six months and went back to school (not a full example as her father had died of cancer a few years earlier).
  • Brian Blackwell bludgeoned his parents after he used their expenses to fabricate being a semi-pro tennis player, and they called him to explain. During the murder he was 18 years old, and even left their bodies to decompose for a year in what was once their house until the police found them. He is now serving a life sentence, although his case was notable for being the first example of using Narcissistic personality disorder as a defense before a court.
  • Then, of course, there's the infamous example of the Menendez brothers who killed both their parents with shotguns to gain their considerable wealth in August 1989.
  • 14-years-old John Caudle kills his mom and stepdad to get out of doing his household chores.
    • He's insane. So, what happened to him?
    • According to the Denver Post Website he was sentenced for 22 years after a plea deal. He'll be out June 8, 2033.
  • Suzane von Richthofen is a Brazilian girl that is in prison for killing both her parents when she was 19 years old (with help from her boyfriend and his brother). Made quite a sensation in the media.
  • One that changed (a small part of) history: One fine summer evening in Nepal, the Crown Prince, Dipendra walked into a family dinner and shot the whole place up, killing his father, King Birendra, his mother, Queen Aishwarya, two of his siblings, and five other relatives, before killing himself (although he would then take a few days to die). As a result, his uncle Gyanendra took the throne. Through a long series of events, this massacre leads to the abolition of the Nepalese monarchy in 2008.
    • That's the official version, anyway. Many in Nepal accused Gyanendra of arranging the massacre (in collaboration with Chinese spies) and framing Dipendra, so that he could have the throne for himself. Fueling this theory is the claim that the right-handed Dipendra was "shot himself" in the left side of his head, which is a relatively unlikely suicide.
  • Catalina de los Ríos y Lisperguer aka La Quintrala, a legendary female landowner from Colonial Chile, poisoned her father with the help of her mother as revenge for taking her off his testament and leaving all of the family riches to the Catholic Church. Of course, that wasn't the only crime she did or was accused of commiting. Her Quintrala nickname, coming from her red hair, is a synonym in Chile for "a really, REALLY evil adult woman".
    • Of course, both of the telenovelas based on her life keep this "anecdote". In fact, the newest one (La Doña) shows Villain Protagonist Quintrala (played by Claudia Di Girolamo) trying to kill her father (played by José Soza) already in the first episode. Alongside many other things.
  • In Savannah, Georgia, a girl named Lottie was raised by her aunt Louisa and her uncle Aaron and got along well with Anna, her stepmom's sister. She once caught Anna kissing her uncle/dad; after an Heroic BSOD, she killed Anna by lacing her tea with poison to "protect" her family. It turned out that Anna was her long-lost mother, who had her as a teen and left her in the care of her sister and brother-in-law, asking them to not tell the truth. Whoops. (Lotti was acquitted, but soon she went crazy and was commited to an asylum for the rest of her life. Her ghost supposedly haunts the house she lived in, now a hostel named Forsyth Park, once featured in Haunted Houses.)
  • A rather infamous one in Amityville, Long Island, New York. Basically, Ronnie DeFeo shot and killed his parents and four siblings in bed November 13, 1974 at 3:15 am. The hauntings the book and movies based off of the book implies aren't real, though, just the crime.
  • Kip Kinkel killed his parents after he brought a gun to school and he was worried what they might do to him and after years of in his eyes failing to live up their expectations and apparently loving his older sister more, he then went on a shooting spree at his school killing two students and while he was reloading some students managed to gang up on him and disarm him, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
  • Date Masamune subverted this trope, despite killing his father and put his mother into exile. He killed his father under a Shoot the Hostage situation in which his father was the hostage-- and asked Masamune to kill him and the kidnapper. On the other hand, his mother never liked him because he was blind in one eye, and unsuccessfully poisoned Masamune.
  1. ↑ Though this is more of a Never Got to Say Goodbye sort of thing.
  2. ↑ It is. Follow the link.
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