History Main / OffingTheOffspring

* In ''TheRing'', either the father (Japanese) or the adoptive mother (American remake) kills the child because of the terrible and dangerous power she has. Especially poignant in the latter version, where the Morgans couldn't conceive on their own and desperately wanted to love Samara, who drove them mad with uncontrollable psychic visions.

* ''StarWars'':

** It's safe to say ''LawAndOrder'' has two major variations of this plot - "Mommy/Daddy Has Issues" ("Precious", with an endemic case of Munchausen By Proxy; "Angel," with a woman who kills her baby girl because she doesn't want the daughter to grow up in so ugly a world) and "I'm Putting Them Out of Our Misery" ("Mother's Love," "Mother's Day," and "Choice of Evils," where a mother kills her son because she's afraid he's inherited the violent tendencies of his biological father).

* ''StarWars'':
** Darth Vader and his son Luke Skywalker, though after learning he's his son he really didn't ''want'' to kill him until ''Return of the Jedi'', and his [[RedemptionEqualsDeath last-minute]] HeroicSacrifice was because of Luke.
** After reading DarthPlagueis and learning that Darth Sidious was involved [[NiceJobFixingItVillain (albeit not quite as he or Plagueis had hoped)]] in Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader's creation, his telling Luke in ReturnOfTheJedi to [[SelfMadeOrphan kill his father]] after defeating Vader can easily be interpreted as this trope.
* ''Film/CurseOfTheGoldenFlower'': Says [[@/{{Earnest}} one editor]]: "If there's something out there that has a higher rank in the fratricide, patricide, and incest scale... I don't want to know."
* ''ClashOfTheTitans'' features Queen Cassiopeia being forced to sacrifice her virgin daughter Andromeda to the Kraken, due to having slighted the goddess Thetis ''in her own temple''.

* ''The Reaping'': In the town of Haven, there is a cult that follows a whole religion based on killing every child born after a couples' firstborn. They then hang their bodies up in mass graves.

* The ''{{Eraserhead}}'' baby is killed for one of the first two reasons. It's [[MindScrew hard to say which]].
* In ''TheRing'', either the father (Japanese) or the adoptive mother (American remake) kills the child because of the terrible and dangerous power she has. Especially poignant in the latter version, where the Morgans couldn't conceive on their own and desperately wanted to love Samara, who drove them mad with uncontrollable psychic visions.
* Happens in ''TheGoodSon'', to the audience's sorrow. [[CreepyChild The "good" son]] Henry kills his younger brother by drowning him, builds a crossbow with which he shoots at a cat and hits a dog with, drops a homemade scarecrow onto the street from an overpass causing a lot of car crashes, throws his sister onto thin ice during a skating trip (she gets away), and pushes his mother off a cliff. And while the mother is holding the two children, the "good" son and his cousin Mark, to prevent them from falling to their deaths, but only has the strength to pull one of them up. She drops her evil son in order to help Mark. More horrific, [[PlayingAgainstType the "good" son is played by that kid in ''Home Alone'']].

* [[WalkHard Dewey Cox's]] father tries to kill him after stewing for decades over Dewey accidentally cutting his brother in half with a machete and [[RunningGag repeatedly telling him]] [[TheUnfavorite "the wrong kid died!"]] [[spoiler: This culminates in Dewey's father accidentally cutting HIMSELF in half, causing him to forgive Dewey after discovering just how easy it is to cut someone in half with a machete by accident.]]

* ''Film/AlienResurrection''. Ripley considers the Newborn (a murderous abomination) her "son", as well as the other Aliens ("I'm the creature's mother"). She ends up killing both of them.

Generally, only one parent of the pair feels this way (otherwise you probably wouldn't exist in the first place, or wouldn't have lived long enough to [[{{Wangst}} feel bad]] about the situation.) But the other parent may be dead, or [[ParentalAbandonment vanished]], or simply not strong enough to offer protection. If the other parent is [[MamaBear actually]] [[PapaWolf protective]], there will likely be major fireworks when he or she finds out what the spouse intends to do with the sprout.

** [[spoiler: During ComicBook/DarkReign, NormanOsborn brought his son Harry, Peter Parker's best friend, into his Dark Avengers... so he could later have him killed to gain public sympathy, and by extension, support, hitting an [[MoralEventHorizon all-new low]].]]

* In [[Aura Battler Dunbine]], [[spoiler: the wife of the main villain, Louser Luft, shoots her daughter Riml Luft in the head during the final battle when Riml comes after her with a knife.]]

* In ''TheDresdenFiles'', book version, Lord Raith, the Incubus head of the White Court vampires, adopts this attitude toward all of his male children: once they get old enough to be a threat, he kills them. The girl children he forces into sexual slavery to him. Not a nice guy. He meets his match when [[spoiler: he tries to kill off his youngest adult son, Thomas, who happens to be the half-brother (on the mother's side, obviously) of Harry Dresden, hero of the series. Thomas enlists Harry's help in bringing his father down, and then control of the White Court is handed off to Thomas' big sister Lara, who turns the tables on Daddy by seducing HIM into sexual slavery to HER instead.]]

* In the thirteenth issuse of [[WitchBlade Artifacts]] [[spoiler: the old universe ends and in order to restroy the universe Sara tries to kill Hope but was stop by Jackie leading Jackie to create a new universe in which Sara isn't Hope's mother.]]

* In the thirteenth issuse of [[Witchblade Artifacts]] [[spoiler: the old universe ends and in order to restroy the universe Sara tries to kill Hope but was stop by Jackie leading Jackie to create a new universe in which Sara isn't Hope's mother.]]

* In ''ImmortalIronFist'' [[spoiler: Fat Cobra was forced to kill the hundreds of children he had over the years who got together and tried to kill him, and was horrified finding out (years of booze and fighting also made him forget about most of his past so there was a chance that he didn't know it was his kids at the time). Upon learning this, he burned the biography that he'd commissioned.]]

* In ''TheQuickAndTheDead'', the Kid, whose entire character arc was about [[WellDoneSonGuy trying to please his father Herod]], is heartlessly gunned down when the two of them duel.

* Many children with disabilities (most commonly autism and cerebral palsy) or [[IllGirl fatal]] [[LittlestCancerPatient illness]] have been not only been killed by their parents, but in many cases the parents themselves are seen in the media and by supporters as sympathetic and admirable for their actions, as they claim to do it it after crossing the DespairEventHorizon and because [[MercyKill they want to spare their kid from more suffering]] or don't believe that they can get the kid the proper care to live a comfortable life. Examples include Robert Latimer, Danielle Blais and Karen [=McCarron=].
** Often the the parents [[DrivenToSuicide kill themselves as well]] [[TogetherInDeath to not leave their kids alone in death]].
** There have also been at least three cases where the parent has performed a MercyKill at the request of a severely disabled and/or dying son or daughter who is unable to carry it out themselves.

* In Chile, one of the most heartbreaking and recent cases has a hairstylist named Jeannette Hernandez killing one of her two kids and seriously injuring the other [[DropTheHammer with a hammer]]... [[MoralEventHorizon to "punish" her husband]] (who also was her VictoriousChildhoodFriend until then) [[{{Yandere}} over a supposed infidelity.]]
** A similar case is Mary Ann Brough; the motivation (to "punish" the husband) was the same, though he was the one who accused her of cheating. She slit the throats of their six children, then tried to kill herself.

* Supposedly, the gay guy who wrote ''DesperateHousewives'' was inspired for this series when he read a story about a mother killing her four children, asking his mother whether she could imagine having done this, and she answering affirmatively.
* Unfortunately for people who grew up watching TheLandBeforeTime, Judith Barsi, the original voice of Ducky, [[TearJerker was killed by her father]] three months before the film's release.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Garner Margaret Garner]] was an escaped slave who, in 1856, murdered her two year old daughter and attempted to murder her other children to prevent them from being returned to slavery. Dubbed "The Modern Medea," there was debate, then and now, over whether or not she was justified in mercy-killing her child. Her case served as the inspiration for a major plot point in the novel ''[[spoiler:Beloved]]''.

* Many animals will do this, particularly insects. A few birds of prey kill the runt of their brood to supply food to their stronger children in harsh climes.

* In ''PrincessTutu'', [[spoiler:The Raven]] [[HeartTrauma threatens to eat the heart of]] [[spoiler:his daughter, Princess Kraehe]] to sustain himself--and it's implied that he actually attempts to, and she barely escapes. [[spoiler:It turns out he kidnapped her as a baby, and she isn't his actual daughter. He still raised her abusively and made her believe she was his child.]]

* In the VCAndrews novel ''Flowers in the Attic'', Corrine tries to poison her four children when her father's will states that if she had any children with her first husband [[spoiler:who was her half-brother]], then her inheritance would be forfeit. She manages to kill her son, Cory, [[spoiler:and hide his body in the attic]] before her other children escape. [[spoiler:She later claims that she was poisoning them in an attempt to make them sick, so she'd have an excuse to remove them from the attic one by one.]] Yeah, right.

* Played with in ''{{The 4400}}'' third season finale when [[spoiler:Richard stabs Isabelle with the syringe he (and everyone else, audience included) thinks is the only thing that can kill her, but she just loses her powers instead.)]]

* In ''ShutterIsland'' it turns out [[spoiler:the protagonist's wife killed their children, and he was so traumatised by this that he invented a whole new delusional reality to deal with it]].

** During the persecution of Jews in eastern Europe brought on by an unofficial crusade (led by a monk between Urban II's call to crusade and the sanctioned departure time of the First Crusade), there were similar stories of Jewish women killing their children to avoid their dying a worse death or being forcibly converted.
** Similarly, as the Spanish and the Portuguese conquered America and enslaved the natives, many women either killed their children or got abortions so their kids wouldn't end up under the rule of the conquerers.

** Male bears are known to kill cubs to weed out potential competition for mates. They're why the female bear is a MamaBear, and why that trope's SpearCounterpart is not Papa Bear, but PapaWolf.

** Same to Constantin the Great.
* A depressing number of girls in Western countries are murdered by their own parents for "betraying their culture." More than a few of them are cases of HonorRelatedAbuse.
* Practiced in a roundabout way by the Ottoman Royalty: In order to prevent [[SuccessionCrisis Succession Crises]], the crown prince was allowed (indeed, encouraged) to off his brothers, and the whole practice was very strictly codified in the legal system. In essence, though he did not do the actual killing, the Sultan knew that ThereCanOnlyBeOne and implicitly agreed for his other sons to be killed when he picked his successor.
** In an ironic twist of fate, the abolishment of the system and the subsequent measures to ''prevent'' the princes from killing eachother by placing them under strict security led to a string of Sultans who had grown up out of touch with the world and drove the empire to the ground at a time it was facing new challenge from Europe and desperately needed strong, experienced leaders.

* How about abortion? This is actually ''legal''.

* In Creator/StephenKing's ''TheDarkTower''/''TheGunslinger'', [[spoiler: Roland must choose between his goal of The Dark Tower and a child he loves as a son, Jake. Roland chooses his obsession, the tower. It's ok, he comes back. To be fair, Roland was completely torn between the two, not being able to choose, until Jake tells him to let go because the Tower was more important. But then again, Roland didn't hesitate after being told this...]]