Hero Killer

"Dread it, run from it... destiny arrives all the same. And now, it's here. Or should I say: I am."

"First Prime, then Ultra Magnus, and now — you. It's a pity you Autobots die so easily, or I might have a sense of satisfaction now."

— Galvatron (to Hot Rod), The Transformers: The Movie

In many works of fiction The Hero isn’t the only hero doing good out there. These other heroes might be recurring minor characters or part of The Order, and may have little impact on the central narrative, but they are heroes nonetheless, often the greatest warriors in the land, conquering evil without fear.

That is, until the Hero Killer comes along.

Exceptionally powerful, incredibly skilled, the Hero Killer has one purpose, which he pursues ruthlessly: kill the heroes. He will hunt down the greatest knights and he will slaughter them, one after the other. What makes him so powerful? Maybe he knows how to exploit heroes' weaknesses. Maybe he was engineered for that very purpose. Maybe he made a Deal with the Devil. Maybe he is fueled by exceptional determination. Regardless, he has earned a reputation for curb-stomping heroes regularly and reliably, often without exception. Expect a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown and/or Curb-Stomp Battle should his prey be unprepared.

Even the noblest, most powerful heroes will quake in fear at the sound of his name. This reputation is indeed key, as ironically they may never be seen actually killing anyone important first-hand because of the lack of a Sacrificial Lion or C-List Fodder to put in their way. Similarly, a hero can be killed by someone who isn't a Hero Killer, although their reputation might explode into being someone they are not.

Closely related to The Dreaded: Their legend may inspire the heroes to train and improve their skills throughout the story, fleeing or avoiding the Hero Killer until such point as the hero is finally ready to face him; even then, they're probably going to need everything they have to stand a chance. If the hero gives the Hero Killer a run for his money, it may be a Moment of Awesome; if he wins, he's defeated the undefeatable. With that in mind, remember character deaths are required for a character to qualify, be they in backstory or present plot.

This character usually invokes The Worf Effect and is often a grim reminder that Anyone Can Die if the work is dark. If the work was fairly light-hearted before this guy appeared, then he's a Knight of Cerebus. He is very often the "Goliath" in a David vs. Goliath scenario. If he's very dogged in his pursuit of heroes he overlaps with Implacable Man. A Cop Killer is this by default in Cop Shows and Police Procedurals. In video games, contrast That One Boss, which is when it is the player and not necessarily the characters that has difficulty beating an enemy. Contrast Villain Killer, a hero who specializes in killing villains or has a reputation for doing so.

As this is a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

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Examples:

• Anime & Manga
• Comic Books
• Films — Live-Action
• Western Animation

Fan Works

• All For Luz:
  • In chapter 10, half of Luz's team, Alpha Squadron, is wiped out by the Heaven's Devils and Foxtrot alliance, special mention goes to Darlene who personally kills Julia Wittebane, Luz's First Friend.
  • In chapter 19, Jonah Smith, an assassin hired by Wittebane to murder Camila Noceda, after his colleagues fail to kill Luz.
  • When he was alive, All For One and his followers had become infamous for killing many heroes who tried to stop them, such as O'clock when he refused to join the villain. This is especially true of the holders of One For All: before All Might killed him in their last battle. During the Ten-Year War in the Boiling Isles, he also maimed Lilith (costing the witch her right eye and arm), mortally wounded Eda (who only survived thanks to her curse's Healing Factor while Playing Possum) and personally killed Harvey Park, one of Willow's dads, and many citizens of the Boiling Isles 14 years before the story began.
• The Azula Trilogy has Wei Ming and Jian Chin (when possessed by Zhang Zhen). Ironically, they were designed to be this role to Azula, who as noted below in Western Animation, is herself one of these.
• In Digimon Fusion Kai, Frieza's expy Burizalor has killed Falcomon, Izzy, Matt and Sora near the end of the Spira arc.
• The Ending of the End - Love and Tolerance Edition: Grogar outright vaporizes Discord and alongside his Legion of Doom, forces Princess Celestia and Luna to make a Heroic Sacrifice to buy time for Twilight and the others to escape, during the attack on Canterlot. These deaths are all undone by the end.
• Guardians, Wizards, and Kung-Fu Fighters: During the climatic fight in Chapter 32, Phobos ultimately kills Uncle by impaling him through the chest.
• Harmony Theory: Max Cash personally kills Melody Drop, a former body guard who was out for Revenge, after he destroyed her old life, during her attempted Big Damn Heroes.
• In The Immortal Game, one of the first things King Titan does is to kill Princess Celestia. Actually he just beats her within an inch of her life and gives her to Terra to torture, but he could full well have killed her. He is such a terrifying force that even his Puppet Avatars are enough to dominate Princess Luna.
• Jaune Arc, Lord of Hunger has Darth Nihilus, who nearly wiped out the Jedi Order in his backstory. Throughout the fic's third act, Nihilus sets to work reestablishing his status as a Hero Killer by racking up a significant body count of Huntsmen. He starts by causing the violent deaths of Qrow, Ivori, Kobalt, and Team ABRN. He also uses his telekinesis to crash Ironwood's airship into Beacon Academy, resulting in the deaths of dozens of Beacon's students, all of whom were studying to become future Huntsmen. During the final battle, he tops his previous accomplishments by brutally murdering Pyrrha, General Ironwood, and Penny.
• In the Infinity Crisis story Infinity Crisis Aftermath: An Amazing New Year, it's revealed that the Miles Warren of Earth-8107 had killed the Peter Parker of his Earth during the chaos causing by the Dusting out of a desire to avenge Gwen Stacy. He also indicates that he wishes to also kill this world's new Spider-Man: Miles Morales.
• Kaiju Revolution:
  • By the end of the first season, Ghidorah had killed the Adult Mothra, King Caesar, Titanosaurus, Zilla, Komodithrax, the male Manda, Radon, Varan, two of the Gorosaurus pack and possibly Ogra.
  • A recently awakened Gaw ambushes and kills the female Gorosaurus. She also killed Kong's parents in the past.
• In Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race, Bass inspires fear in Mega Man, and manages to give both him and ProtoMan a good thrashing before barely losing or leaving due to outside circumstances.
  • Wily later builds Enker, Punk, and Ballade, the Mega Man Killers. They live up to their name; in-fighting is the only reason they don't succeed in their first encounter with Mega Man.
  • Later those two forces fight. Bass wins, and Mega Man is even more afraid.
• In My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic III, Raven is ultimately the one to kill Twilight Sparkle.
• My Hero Academia: Unchained Predator: The Steel Sabers are considered The Dreaded of Heroes all around, their army having killed 246 heroes in their many escapades. All Might and even Re-Destro were wary of these mercenaries. They were the best of the best until they crossed paths with the Slayer.
• Nobody Dies: Every fight had been a cavalcade of craziness for various "seasons". So how do the Cherubim establish that they are dangerous? By having the very first one that appears take on various Evangelions at the same time and win even with them using Super Mode, killing Shinji for a few seconds and nearly destroying Unit-01's core. It took the uncontrolled activation of Unit-01's Berserk Mode for NERV to win the fight... and the repercussions were still pretty hefty.
• The Powers of Harmony: Cetus and Eclipse are both this. They're able to take on Shining Armor and the Princesses evenly, and curbstomp the Mane Six and their Guards including killing Strauss, Elo and Grovi.
• Sailor John in the Thomas & Friends Dark Fic Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure Bad Ending succeeded in killing Thomas the Tank Engine himself. He also indirectly has Gordon’s death on his hands as well. ^note  His murder of Thomas caused the Fat Controller to resign as he blamed himself for yelling at and scolding Thomas before his death, and before his resignation, he punished Gordon (also stricken with guilt for his earlier treatment of Thomas) by banning him from any work that isn’t pulling goods trains or shunting - permanently. Gordon became a hated pariah among the engines, who blamed him for Thomas’ death, and he eventually got Driven to Suicide.
• Yognapped: Sben of becomes this once he's resurrected.
• Code Prime: A few Decepticons have this reputation throughout the story.
  • Megatron has a number of Autobot deaths under his belt back on Cybertron, two of the most prominent being Alpha Trion, one of the original Primes, and Sentinel Zeta Prime, the Autobot leader before Optimus. During the final battle he manages to kill Lelouch, but he's resurrected moments later thanks to the Primes and Marianne.
  • The Combaticons have a reputation for managing to wipe out many Autobot squadrons whether by themselves or as Bruticus. In the R2 chapter Broken Walls, they manage to kill Air Raid and Zi Dien, and force Urabe to commit a Heroic Sacrifice to keep them from escaping with Red Energon.
  • Airachnid, being Megatron's chief interrogator, as well as being one of the most sadistic Decepticons, has slaughtered a number of Autobots, including Arcee's former partner Tailgate. During the Black Rebellion, she injures Dreadwing to the point that he has to sacrifice himself to stop her and the Insecticons from reaching Suzaku, Euphemia and Cornelia.
  • One of the main reasons Trypticon's reactivation is feared is because he has killed more Autobots than any Decepticon.
  • During the final battle, Shin Hyuga Shaing attempts to kill Akito, but instead kills Oigaros/Wizard, who takes the hit for Akito.
  • Through usage of the Damocles, Schneizel and Starscream manage to wipe out nearly half the Autobots and Black Knights' forces during the assault on New Kaon, with casualties including Silverbolt, Chromia, Asahina, Hot Shot, Prowl, Marika, Leonhardt, Inoue, Sugiyama and Minami. Optimus is also seriously injured, but is revived with a new body later on.
• Fairy May Cry: During the Grand Magic Games Arc, it's revealed that in addition to wiping out many dragons and driving said species to near-extinction, Acnologia was also the one who ultimately ended the life of the legendary Dark Knight Sparda.
  • There's also Nelo Angelo from the Edolas Arc. During his time in Edolas, he wiped out many guilds single-handedly, killed the Edolas Fairy Tail's master, and even Lisanna's Edolas counterpart.

Films — Animation

• Barnyard: Otis' father Ben's death is all thanks to Dag and his pack.
• As the Grand Finale for the DC Animated Movie Universe, Justice League Dark: Apokolips War sees Darkseid and his forces kill a lot of heroes. His forces kill Green Lanterns Hal Jordan and John Stewart, Mera, Hawkman, the Martian Manhunter, Shazam!, Zatanna, most of the Teen Titans, Steel, Batwing, Batgirl, Batwoman, Black Orchid, Etrigan, the Suicide Squad, Lois Lane, and Lex Luthor, and Darkseid himself kills Aquaman, much of the rest of the Green Lantern Corps, and Robin. Robin's death didn't stick thanks to Raven; before that, Robin himself used a Lazarus Pit in an attempted to bring Nightwing back, but Dick was driven insane; and Mera, Starfire, Hawkman, and Martian Manhunter were resurrected as The New 52: Futures End-style cyborgs along with Wonder Woman, who didn't die, but did lose an arm thanks to the Paradooms.
• Bryagh, Ommadon's second in command from The Flight of Dragons is dreaded by even Sir Orrin and manages to literally kill off almost the entire Five-Man Band, sparing only Peter because he wasn't there. Granted, they get better, but that does little to change it.
• Green Lantern: First Flight has Sinestro slaughter a lot of Green Lanterns with his yellow ring during his coup against the Green Lantern Corps.
• How to Train Your Dragon 2: Through sheer force and intimidation, Drago Bludvist coerces the dragons under his control into killing the good alpha dragon and Stoick the Vast.
• Syndrome and his Omnidroid from The Incredibles are sort of a Hero-Killing team; Syndrome builds the robot, lures supers to his island, and repairs and upgrades the robot whenever it is defeated, while the Omnidroid does all of the actual killing as it was programmed. Syndrome does this to eliminate competing supers so that he can exploit built-in weaknesses to publicly defeat the robot and look like a hero in the eyes of the people, but the Omnidroid figures out how to defeat Syndrome and tries to kill him too.
• The LEGO Movie has President Business, the one who killed Metal Beard's crew and reduced Metal Beard to a head and robotics. He also kills Vitruvius.
• Ultron in Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow. In the backstory, Ultron has already killed several superheroes, including all but four members of the Avengers ^note Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, & Vision were the only survivors. Ultron has already conquered half of the world by the film's start and has killed millions of people.
• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: The Big Bad Wolf who is later revealed to be a physical manifestation of Death pursues Puss in Boots over the course of the movie. His only goal is to kill Puss, and he does not directly interact with any other character in the movie.
• In Transformers: The Movie, while pirating a transporter, Starscream uses Megatron (in pistol-form) to kill Brawn before Megatron transforms to kill Ironhide. Then, during the invasion of Autobot City, Megatron slays Optimus Prime.

Literature

• Bazil Broketail: Puxdool the troll, champion of Tummuz Orgmeen's arena, manages to kill Nesessitas by crippling her via a lucky shot to the knee, stabbing her in the chest when she is eventually sapped of strength due to pain and blood loss and beheading her. Poor Nessi. Luckily, her death is soon avenged by Bazil.
• More than a dozen show up across The Black Company. The first book has the Ten Who Were Taken, plus the Lady and the Dominator, with the Shadowmasters and the Voroshk turning up later. Of particular note:
  • The Limper kills literally thousands of extras, as well as Bomanz and Silent.
  • Shapeshifter killed Tom-Tom at the start of the series.
  • The Dominator kills so many Company Brothers that the book ends with the Company's roster at seven members.
  • Lisa Bowalk finally kills One-Eye for his involvement in her mentor, Shapeshifter's, death, after more than twenty years of feuding.
  • The Goddess Kina Herself kills Goblin personally and millions of others by proxy.
• An interesting in-universe example occurs in Anthony Ryan's novel Blood Song. The protagonist, Vaelin al Sorna, kills another country's champion during an invasion and is subsequently dubbed "Hope Killer" (the guy he killed was the avatar of hope for the entire nation) by the enemy.
• The Dresden Files: Nicodemus Archleone. He has killed at least a hundred Knights of the Cross and only two have ever gotten away with their lives, and of those, one was permanently crippled.
  • The one who escaped without being permanently crippled so angered Nicodemus that even after Nicodemus had him tortured to death Nicodemus was willing to give the good guys a chance to stop his plan to turn the Archive (a repository of all humanities knowledge, and thus possessor of the launch codes to every nuke on earth among other things) into a Denarian just to get the guy's sword, Fidelacchius.
• Fate of the Forty Sixth: The forces employed by Apex are deadly and really show why Apex is the best. Condor effortlessly defeats Wolf twice, only leaving him alive because his contract says so and he doesn't what to kill off a good opponent with potential. The Justice, an extremely dangerous mech with six barrels filled with shotgun shells, and its pilot, Victory, claim the lives of Andre, Caruso and Red. And finally, the nameless dragon at the end kills Bob, Filch, Murray, Ry and Blaze with Baron, another dragon, finishes off Roy.
• The First Law trilogy contains the aptly named Fenris the Feared. After radiating menace before the Open Council in The Blade Itself, he proves his status as a member of this trope toward the end of Before They Are Hanged, killing one of the most heroic characters in the series, Rudd Threetrees.
• Harry Potter:
  • If you are face to face with Lord Voldemort and your name isn't Albus Dumbledore (who is the one who HE fears), you either run like hell or kiss your butt goodbye. Let's just say that people are afraid to say his name for a reason. To quote Hagrid when he starts telling Harry about Voldemort:
    "Nobody lived once he decided to kill 'em. No one except you! And he killed some of the best witches and wizards of the age. The McKinnons! The Bones! The Prewetts! And you was only a baby, and you lived."
  • Bellatrix Lestrange later became a Dragon form of this with several significant deaths (Sirius, Dobby and Tonks (according to Word of God)) under her belt before she was taken out. Considering that she's one of the vilest characters in the series, this isn't much of a surprise.
  • A lesser one can be found with Antonin Dolohov, one of Voldemort's tougher underlings. In the first war, he was the Death Eater who slew Gideon and Fabian Prewett, who were both powerful and accomplished wizards. In the second, he seriously injured Mad-Eye Moody and almost kills Hermione in Order of the Phoenix and is, according to Word of God, the person who slew Lupin in Deathly Hallows. He also goes up against Harry, Ron and Hermione all by himself after his partner Thorfin was stunned in a cafe and subdues both Harry and Ron before Hermione body-binds him.
• Inheritance Cycle: Murtagh starts entering this role in the second book, especially at the climax, where he slaughters the dwarf king and his magician bodyguards with a single spell before soundly trashing Eragon and Saphira, but letting them go in a moment of mercy.
• In the Malazan Book of the Fallen Kallor's first big hit is Whiskeyjack in Memories of Ice. Then he returns in Toll the Hounds with the intention to 'get himself a throne', whoever stands in his way be damned. When Spinnock does stand in his way, he almost gets to cross the next hero off his kill list.
• The Lord Ruler from Mistborn, figuratively and literally, as he takes down Kelsier effortlessly immediately after the latter has his Moment of Awesome by killing an Inquisitor. Ruin is this trope even moreso.
• In The Mortal Instruments, Jonathan Morgenstern plays the trope straight. He kills some shadowhunters. One of the first victims is the shadowhunter Sebastian Verlac. Later, he kills Max Lightwood and Hodge Starkweather. But he also kills vampires and werewolves, who are the allies of the shadowhunters. Two of his victims are Raphael Santiago and Jordan Kyle.
  • The prequel The Infernal Devices has the demon Marbas who kills a female shadowhunter named Ella Herondale.
  • And the sequel The Dark Artifices has the evil warlock Malcolm Fade. He kills two shadowhunters named John Carstairs and Cordelia Townsend.
• Night Watch (Series): The Mirror from Day Watch, who killed Tiger Cub by literally stripping her flesh from her bones after incapacitating several other high-level Night Watch magicians.
• Old Kingdom: Kerrigor in Sabriel is the most powerful Greater Dead in the history of the Old Kingdom and has spent the last several centuries waging a war of attrition against the Abhorsens, the lineage of necromancers tasked with laying the undead to rest. He spent most of that time winning because he'd turned his mortal body into a Soul Jar so that he could never be fully banished while it existed and hidden it very well, and also wiped out the royal family except for one member and threw the Kingdom into chaos while he was at it. In the end, he's defeated only after a grueling battle that nearly kills Sabriel and Touchstone and even then, he's only turned into a Sealed Evil in a Can, not destroyed.
• The Pirates Covered in Fur has the main villain, Captain Lyle Krinkor. Not including the Decoy Protagonist, he single-handedly kills four of the main protagonists—three of whom are killed in one chapter. And if he hadn't been playing with the Villain Ball, he would've killed five by the time the story wrapped up.
• Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Lu Bu, the baddest ass in a World of Badass. The big three heroes duel him all at the same time and are unable to defeat him. Ultimately they have to kill him with a Honey Trap.
• In The Saga of Darren Shan is the vampaneze Glalda. He attacks with his group of vampanezes to an army of vampires (vampires are in these books not bad). In the fight he kills several vampires (two in the books, three in the manga), and thereafter the female vampire Arra Sails.
  • Furthermore, since even the traitor Kurda Smalth. He kills the vampire Gavner Purl.
  • The main antagonist, Steve Leopard is very nasty and a half-vampaneze. He kills indirectly Larten Crepsley.
• Star Wars Legends: In New Jedi Order, The Yuuzhan Vong basically have this (with a healthy dose of Combat Sadomasochist on the side) as their hat. Even among the Yuuzhan Vong, the voxyn are notorious for this. They're introduced casually hunting down several Jedi and only go up from there. The mission to kill the voxyn queen has the single largest Mauve Shirt casualty count in the series and kills no less a hero than Anakin Solo.
• The Sword of Truth has some examples. The Dreamwalker, a weapon from the Great War, has power over someone directly proportional to their magical talent, with a few exceptions. He can brutally mind-rape (in every possible sense of the expression) sorceresses and (off-screen) wizards, but he can barely touch any of the muggles (who all have some tiny amount of magical power anyway; only a few people in the world are truly devoid of any magic at all).
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • The Silmarillion: Gothmog only ever seems to appear when there is an Elf-Lord to kill. Under his belt are Fëanor, Fingon and Ecthelion, all badass warriors in their own right, though the last one was a Mutual Kill.
  • His master Morgoth gets in on the fun by killing Finwë and Fingolfin.
  • The Lord of the Rings: Sauron kills Gil-Galad and the Dunedain king Elendil during the same battle.
  • Beren and Lúthien: Carcharoth, a giant wolf bred by Morgoth specifically to be the biggest wolf ever, Carcharoth directly kills both Beren (one of the greatest Human warriors) and Huan, and indirectly causes the deah of Lúthien -the only non-divine being who manages to defeat Morgoth in a magic duel- shortly thereafter.
• Warhammer 40,000: In Black Legion the clone of Horus starts killing heroes of the book the moment he arrives on scene. As Khayon puts it:
  And then we started to die.
• Leo Bonhart in The Witcher saga, a Psycho for Hire who managed to kill three Witchers, despite their magically enhanced abilities, just by being a Master Swordsman. Other feats include killing Ciri's highwaymen friends and lover despite being attacked six-on-one and effortlessly cutting down one of Geralt's True Companions Cahir.
• Findo Gask of The Word and the Void, who specialises in killing Knights of the Word.
• Wearing the Cape has Seif-al-Din, a superpowered terrorist who believes that his abilities were given to him by Allah. He proceeds to fight and kill Ajax and Atlas, two heroes so powerful they had power categories named after them.

Live-Action TV

• Grant Ward in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Out of all the villains, he's responsible for killing the most named characters on the show, including Victoria Hand, Eric Koenig, and (spoilers for Season 3) Rosalind Price. He also inflicted an agonizing Cold-Blooded Torture on Bobbi and while he didn't kill her, he almost broke her morale for the job.
• The first villain in Bones to off one of the heroes was Jacob Broadsky. He wanted to kill Booth, but he was aiming by calling Booth on the phone and aiming at whoever held the other end — which, since Booth had passed the phone off to run a trace, was Vincent Nigel-Murray.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Spike himself has personally killed two Slayers, a fact he takes much pride in even after his Heel–Face Turn.
  • Glory. The Scoobies spend the entire season running from her in terror. And her actions directly lead to Buffy's death in the Season 5 finale.
    • Almost an entire season running in terror. Glory's Mind Rape of Tara is what initiated Willow's first Roaring Rampage of Revenge. But the Scoobies still have to plan out literally every single step they take during the final battle with the Hell-bitch (the overall strategy of which amounts to "desperately try to keep her busy without getting killed for a few minutes").
  • Vampire Xander kills Wishverse Angel.
  • The Master kills Buffy herself. Twice, once in the real world, and once in the Wishverse. And supplementary materials reveal that in the past he's killed one Slayer and sired another.
  • Warren fatally shoots Tara and comes impressively close to killing Buffy herself.
  • The Angelus kills Jenny Calendar, and his actions indirectly lead to the death of regular Angel.
  • Drusilla killing two slayers — first Kendra and later Marianne.
  • Caleb. A fanatical, woman-hating defrocked preacher serving as The First Evil's right-hand man. In his debut, a trap he laid for Buffy's friends at the Shadow Valley Vineyard in Season 7's "Dirty Girls", his rampage ends up killing two Potential Slayers — Molly and an unnamed Potential. He also knocks out Buffy with one punch, overpowers Faith and Spike easily, breaks Rona's arm, and most infamously, gouges out Xander's eye with only his thumb, maiming one of the Scooby Gang's core members. It would take the combined efforts of both Buffy AND Angel to defeat him in later episodes.
  • Cyvus Vail, a demonic warlock, kills Wesley Wyndam-Pryce.
  • Nash and Pearl are two half-demons who are very strong and very nasty. They kill in the battles against the protagonists, the three slayers Saabira, Cori and Vanessa. Later, in London, they kill a whole group of other slayers.
  • Even Harmony has one to her credit, killing Soledad. (Of course, it was mostly Soledad's fault, but the act did make Harmony a legit threat for quite a while, as it caused a lot of negative PR for Buffy's group.)
• John from The Fades. Before the other characters learn his name, he's known as the Angelic Killer because he's racked up such a high body count. In fact, he's responsible for the deaths of multiple major characters before the end of the first episode.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Ramsay Snow/Bolton outdoes his already terrifying book version, starting off by doing much worse to Theon Greyjoy than just killing him. He then nearly gets Theon's Action Girl sister in Season 4 (despite Ramsay being half-naked, ambushed, and post-coital at the time), and personally smashes King Stannis's army in Season 5. He becomes this trope in Season 6, though, when he remorselessly kills his own father, stepmother, and newborn baby brother. A couple of episodes later, he easily dispatches fan favourite Osha, too. This is followed by killing Rickon Stark and Wun-Wun the giant in the Battle of the Bastards. His kill count of unnamed characters is through the roof, and that's not even counting his offscreen destruction of the main characters' childhood home.
  • Ser Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane is the strongest man in the Seven Kingdoms and is deadly, bloodthirsty, and widely feared by other heavy hitters. He is notorious for raping and killing Elia Martell and her children during the Sack of King’s Landing. He’s also responsible for maiming and killing Ser Beric Dondarrion though he got better thanks to Thoros of Myr and slaying Ser Hugh of the Vale in a tournament. When Elia’s brother, Oberyn, dueled him in a Trial by Combat and nearly bested him, Gregor got the advantage to bring him down and crushed his head. However, Gregor ended up braindead by Oberyn’s poison so Qyburn turned him into some Humanoid Abomination who became Cersei’s loyal bodyguard. In Season 8, he beheads Daenerys's close adviser, Missandei, and nearly kills his own brother, Sandor, by attempting to crush his head but Sandor stabs him in the eye and pushes him off The Red Keep along with himself.
  • The White Walkers and their army of the wights, led by the Night’s King. At the start of the series, they demonstrate their dreadedness by killing two Night’s Watch rangers and turning them into wights. Later on, they raid Hardhome and slaughter many wildings. In Season 6, they kill several Children of the Forest , Bran’s direwolf Summer, and Hodor with the Night’s King personally killing the Three-Eyed Raven. And by the end of Season 6, winter has finally come and the army of the dead marches south, ready to take out whatever’s left of the main cast. In Season 7, the Night King delivers a One-Hit Kill on Viserion, one of Daenerys's dragons and destroys the entire Eastwatch Castle with the use of the undead Viserion so that his army of the dead can finally match towards the Seven Kingdoms. In Season 8, while they're finally stopped at Winterfell, they kill Dolorous Edd, Lyanna Mormont, Beric Dondarrion and Jorah Mormont before being defeated, with the Night King personally killing Theon Greyjoy before going down.
  • Euron Greyjoy is a terror in battle and, while "hero" is probably the last word most people think of for some of his kills, he still manages to murder Balon effortlessly, slay Obara and Nym in battle, and defeat his badass niece, Yara, in combat, resulting in him taking her hostage. He also kills Daenerys's other dragon, Rhaegal, with a scorpion ballista and fatally stabs Jaime.
• Sylar from Heroes, who besides being one of the most powerful characters in the show's mythology has also racked up by far the highest number of main character and supporting character kills.
• In the series Primeval anyone can be killed. In most cases, this is by a predator from prehistoric times (or from the future). However, there is also Helen Cutter, who becomes an antagonist over the course of the series, kills her husband Nick Cutter, and is indirectly to blame for Stephen Hart's death.
• Robin Hood Played straight with Isabella, who deals a mortal blow to her brother, Guy of Gisborne, after his Heel–Face Turn and poisons Robin himself.
• Supernatural:
  • The demon Meg is an example of this trope. In Season 1 alone, she was able to come dangerously close to killing Sam, Dean, and John, kill two hunters, and capture John. Next season she killed another hunter and almost succeeded in killing Dean and Jo. She was later responsible for the deaths of Ellen and Jo. It is also worth noting that she was the first demon to successfully defeat an angel.
  • Azazel also has killed his share of hunters, most obviously Mary Winchester and everyone who knew her. He also killed John twice, and has indirectly killed both Sam and Dean temporarily. In fact, since it was because of his influence that Sam got the power to kill Lilith and free Lucifer, he's also indirectly responsible for the deaths of Ellen and Jo, and the temporary deaths of Bobby and Castiel.
  • Also, Abaddon, who in her first appearance singlehandedly slaughtered the entire Men of Letters.
  • In "The End", Lucifer crushes the head of a future version of Dean Winchester. In "Swan Song", Lucifer blows Castiel to smithereens with the snap of his fingers, telekinetically breaks Bobby's neck, and in order to defeat him, Sam is forced to sacrifice himself by jumping in the Cage.
  • Dick Roman introduces himself as this in his first appearance when he and his Leviathans tear Castiel apart from the inside out. This is temporary, but he does end up permanently killing both Frank Devereaux and Bobby Singer. In the Season 7 finale, the explosion created by his death drags both Dean and Castiel to Purgatory.
• Though this trope in Super Sentai is somewhat common, it's a massive shock when it happens in Power Rangers, though most don't tend to stick.
  • Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, episode Power of Pink: Psycho Pink uses the power of Cassie's Morpher to unleash a red energy storm from the Savage Sword. Even though Psycho Pink gets destroyed by the combined efforts of the Galaxy and Space Megazords, it is too late to stop the Savage Sword's energy storm. With Cassie at risk of dying without her Morpher and the energy storm threatening Terra Venture, Kendrix sacrifices herself by destroying the sword herself. This results in her body being instantly incinerated by the energy released from the sword. Later, she is restored to life along with the residence of Mironi after the Rangers return the Sabers to their resting place in the season finale. ^note  Actress Valerie Vernon had to leave the show to begin chemotherapy to treat her leukemia, necessitating a reason for her character to be written off.
  • Power Rangers Time Force: The first episode shows the original Time Force Ranger, Alex being struck down by Ransik right before the rest of the team goes into the past after Ransik. This would lead to Wes taking his place, because he is the ancestor of Alex. Later, due to time shifting caused by the team and Ransik's presence in the past, Alex reappears alive in the past.
  • Power Rangers S.P.D.: Mirloc, one of the monsters of the week, is revealed to be the criminal who killed Sky's father, Officer Tate, who was a Red Ranger when Sky was a kid. This would motivate to enroll SPD with the intention of becoming the Red Ranger in honor of his father.
  • Power Rangers Mystic Force: Both Daggeron and Leanbow were killed when they confronted Octomus the Master, only to be revived in the following episode.
  • Power Rangers Operation Overdrive: In the finale, Mack faces off against Flurious. Using all his power, Mack was able to destroy the villain at the cost of his life. As an android, Mack could be rebuilt, the result would not be the same person the Rangers once knew. Fortunately, with the help of Sentinel Knight, Mack’s soul was brought back, this time fully human.
  • Power Rangers Megaforce: After being freed from Vrak's control, Robo Knight went to his lair to save the captive Orion. Vrak, who was presented, wounded the already weak Robo Knight, before setting his underwater base to blow up. While he was able to get Orion out, Robo Knight perished in the lair's explosion, but not before transferring the last bit of his power to Orion, ensuring the Silver Ranger would get out safely. Averted in The Legendary Battle episode, where he is shown participating with the Mega Rangers in the final fight with the Armada fleet.
  • ''Power Rangers Beast Morphers: Steel also sacrifices himself in order to stop Evox from using his body as a vessel. For his bravery, the Morphin Mastes restored him to life, this time with a human body.
  • Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always: The opening shows the Mighty Morphin team fighting the revived Rita Repulsa. During this confrontation, Trini ends up getting killed when she takes a fatal hit from Rita that was meant for Billy. And unlike the other examples listed, she does not come back to life. ^note  Her actress, Thuy Trang, was killed in a car crash twenty years before this special.
• Kaiju in the Ultra Series that kill an Ultraman (or at least defeat them) in their debut series typically become notorious among fans and make many reappearances for this. The two greatest Hero Killers though are:
  • Zetton, the final Monster of the Week in Ultraman, who killed Ultraman by absorbing his Specium Ray and shooting it back at him. In almost all his reappearances, he's considered The Dreaded and is never an easy opponent for an Ultra hero to defeat.
  • Birdon from Ultraman Taro is infamous for having brutally stabbed Taro and Zoffy to death with his massive beak (they did get better in the end). Like Zetton, he's also usually The Dreaded in reappearances but is given a thankful Achilles' Heel in the form of his wattle's venom sacs.
• A few antagonists in The Walking Dead have managed to kill or at least be responsible for the deaths of multiple characters, some more prominent than others:
  • The Governor personally kills Axel, Merle, Milton, and Hershel and causes the death of Andrea.
  • Officer Dawn Lerner, while not around for as long as any of the other antagonists, does deal a crippling blow to the morale of Rick's group by murdering Beth via Boom, Headshot!.
  • Negan makes his introduction offing both Abraham and Glenn.
  • Alpha shows she means business by decapitating ten survivors from the various Washington communities and placing their heads on pikes for all to see. Among the casualties are major characters Tara and Enid as well as Carol's son, Henry.
  • Beta murders reformed Whisperer Gamma and ex-Savior Laura.
  • Undercover Whisperer Dante strangles Siddiq to death.
• Wonder Woman: The Zardor in "Mind Stealers from Outer Space". It was a large, nearly mindless humanoid monster that the Skrill only kept with them for the few threats that they couldn't overwhelm with their laser weapons or mind-stealing technology. He was a serious threat to Wonder Woman.

Myths & Religion

• Norse Mythology:
  • Fenrir and Jormungandr are likely the two best examples, as they are feared long before the apocalypse goes down, have established rivalries with the gods, and take the two strongest gods (Odin and Thor) with them when they go.
  • Surtr is more or less described as one in the mythos proper: "At the end of the world he will go and wage war and defeat all the gods and burn the whole world with fire." He also personally kills Frey in the process.

Pro Wrestling

• Ivan Koloff: In 1971, the "Russian Bear" did what few people thought possible: defeat then-unbeatable WWWF World Champion Bruno Sammartino cleanly, in the center of the ring, on his home turf at New York City's Madison Square Garden. Koloff completely dominated the match and, after knocking the Living Legend down with a clothesline, dropped the top-rope knee on his prone body. Surprisingly, an exhausted Sammartino never attempted to lift his shoulders. The crowd sat in stunned silence as Koloff celebrated in the ring with his manager, the evil Captain Lou Albano... and rumor had it that an announcement that Koloff was the new champion was never made for fear of angry fans starting a riot.
• Ox Baker had in fact already killed one man, but what really cemented him as one was the defeat he suffered to Ray Gunkel in August of 1971, as Gunkel succumbed to the injuries he had received at Baker's hands after being declared the victor, proving that even winning a match against Baker didn't mean it wouldn't be your last.
• The Iron Sheik: Easily defeated then-WWF hero Bob Backlund to win the WWF World Championship. Backlund, who had held the title for nearly six years, had been injured by the nefarious Sheik a few weeks earlier during a Persian club-lifting challenge, and when it came time for the title match, Backlund – who already had at least one nationally televised pinfall victory over the evil Iranian – was no match for the Sheik. Not to worry: a new hero was waiting in the wings … .
• Hulk Hogan: Of course, the Hulkster had several wrestlers attempt to break him as well, most notably King Kong Bundy, André the Giant and Earthquake. Even though both Bundy and Earthquake injured Hogan, and André scored a controversial win, Hogan always averted the trope … until one June day in 1993, when the Japanese sumo wrestler Yokozuna flattened Hogan, in dominating style, in his final match during his most famous WWF run; Hogan sold being burned in the face as he was led from the ring following his loss … and for nine years, that was the last image WWF viewers had of him – a broken, defeated hero with the villain and his stooge, Mr. Fuji, gloating in the ring over their victory.
• Vader's run in WCW in the early 1990s began with him effectively squashing Sting in a decisive fashion, winning the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. He also sent Nikita Koloff into retirement, legitimately broke Joe Thurman's back and beat Cactus Jack to a bloody pulp. He's widely considered the best monster heel in all of professional wrestling.
• In the dying days of WCW, Scott Steiner was this, credited with putting Sting, Diamond Dallas Page, Kevin Nash, Booker T and Sid Vicious out of action by "injuring" them.^note At NWA Clash of the Champions IX, November 15, 1989, Steiner botched a fallaway slam on Sid during the Steiner Brothers-Skyscrapers (Sid and Dan Spivey) match, resulting in a collapsed lung. Sid was out for months and was replaced by a young guy coming in from Memphis who was given the name "Mean" Mark Callous.
• This was essentially the point of Randy Orton's "Legend Killer" gimmick; he severely injured several of WWE's most famous and legendary personalities, in some cases even forcing their retirement. He's been doing something similar with his head punt of DOOM, which has put several people on the injured/reserve list for months with concussions. It's wrestling, so you can't quite stretch Kayfabe to cover killing the faces, but Orton comes about as close as you can.
• Madison Rayne was infamously given a "career killer" gimmick, where TNA would credit the knockouts it released (Roxxi Laveaux and Tara) to her. Although she was eventually defeated by a released knockout TNA decided to bring back (Angelina Love).
• Mark Henry in his heel turn. He took out Big Show and Kane by breaking their legs with a steel chair and a squash, leaving them out of action for weeks and a few months respectively. He even went to the point of even giving Randy Orton who was World Heavyweight Champion a hard time. The result at Night Of Champions? He becomes World Heavyweight Champion!
  • Before that, he had taken out the likes of Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, and Batista.
• Brock Lesnar: 2014 is shaping up to be the former NCAA champion's greatest year in wrestling, and it's easy to see why. The Beast ended The Undertaker's WrestleMania winning streak at 21, in arguably a hard-fought victory. But the greatest moment was yet to come, as he completely dismantled and dominated John Cena to win the WWE World Championship at SummerSlam 2014; Lesnar rarely, if ever, sold any of Cena's offensive moves while crushing the now former champion with 16 consecutive suplexes. After both matches, Lesnar's manager, Paul Heyman, used Moment of Awesome promos to put over Lesnar as a conquerer who cannot be beaten and that the fans' heroes are not only ineffective but inept in taking down the Conquerer. Following this, Lesnar rarely loses any of his matches and went several years defeating other top stars.
• Speaking of the Undertaker, he's one of the most notorious heels in the industry (prior to the Streak being broken in 2014 and his retirement in 2020), and a match against the Undertaker had a long-standing reputation of being almost certain doom for whatever poor babyface had gotten himself into it.
• Zack Sabre Jr. used the 2018 New Japan Cup to establish himself as this, reaching the finals by defeating crowd favorites Tetsuya Naito, Kota Ibushi and SANADA and winning the whole thing by making Hiroshi Tanahashi submit.

Roleplay

• Shadowhunter Peril:
  • Lilith. Her wrath is inescapable, and every single character knows that when she appears, it is time to run. Even Valentine knows that he shouldn't mess with her. She is one of the few characters in the entire story that can fight on equal terms with an angel (and possibly win). She is completely ruthless and has absolutely no qualms about killing any of her own family: she shoved her hand through her son Umbra's chest, and squeezed his heart till it exploded, then dropped him unceremoniously onto the ground and laughed, all just so she could psychologically disturb the watching Resistance.
  • Oblivion eventually surpassed Lilith as the Hero Killer. While Lilith is powerful in her own right, it's revealed that she CAN be defeated by Umbra and Nicholas if they work as a team (Umbra distracting her while Nicholas powers her up and then hits her with a dragon made completely of fire and wind). Oblivion is no such thing. He beat Umbra within an inch of his life and tossed Nicholas aside. Even Puriel, who is the most powerful character on the Light side, is pushed to his limit whenever he meets Oblivion. It's really shown in the final battle, where Oblivion effortlessly kills Ra (a giant phoenix god-king who commands an impressive army of 9-foot-tall phoenixes) in the first few moments of the final battle. Then he finally kills Nuriel, an angel of God who is, for all things considered, Shadowhunter Peril's God of Blizzards. This manages to drive Puriel into a Heroic BSoD. When Puriel snaps out of it, his ensuing battle with Oblivion rips up half the city and it only ends when Puriel manages to rip out Oblivion's heart and then finally kill him. And even then, there's evidence that he might not be totally dead.

Tabletop Games

• Changeling: The Lost has the Huntsmen, which are specifically designed to hunt down and capture Changelings. They can remain indefinitely in the mortal world without difficulty and shift into any human form they like, they can craft snares that negate a changeling's ability to escape, and uniquely among Fae creatures they do not suffer from the bane of iron and can freely use it as a weapon. While they cannot actually break the protections granted by the seasonal Bargains, they know exactly how to exploit the chinks in those protections. And finally, a Huntsman's heart is not in his breast but hidden within the dreams of some mortal. If you actually kill him, he will be reborn within a month so long as the Heart remains undisturbed.
• In Cyberpunk, Adam Smasher is the tabletop equivalent of an SNK Boss and will initiate any Hopeless Boss Fight on any edgerunner willing to fight him. In Firestorm books, he brutally killed Johnny Silverhand with a shotgun before he attempted to kill Morgan Blackhand in their first standoff.
• Jasper Stone in Deadlands (the dude on the cover of the main book). He ends up specifically assigned to this role by the Big Bads.
• Dungeons & Dragons
  • It's only level 20, but the Heroslayer Hydra in 4e is meant to fill this role. It's designed to make "tank and spank" strategies useless or near-so by dishing out a lot of damage from multiple attacks, and getting a large damage bonus against anyone who "marks" it and tries to force it to attack them. The ability is appropriately enough called "heroslayer."
  • Mephistopheles from 4th and older editions of D&D. Other archdevils do as well, but Mephistopheles is the most visible.
  • If an entire dungeon can count, the classic Tomb of Horrors module and Forgotten Realms' Undermountain definitely belong on this page.
  • The Tarrasque was created as basically the single most powerful monster in the world that didn't live in another world. It was essentially Godzilla for D&D.
  • Orcus was supposed to be this in 4th Edition, but this mostly led to people custom-building parties to beat him and then bragging about it.
  • Dragons also tend to be more powerful than their Challenge Rating would suggest, partly so that encounters with them would be more memorable.
  • Elminster, the iconic wizard of the Forgotten Realms setting, manages to invert this; with many groups gathering their party for the not-terribly-difficult task of killing him despite his status as one of the strongest and most important people in the setting. The developer's official stance on this practice is "Nuh uh, he's too smart."
• Exalted features one of these in the corebook in the form of Octavian, a Second Circle Demon. For comparison, the Solar Exalted are designed to be bastions of good, the righteous god-kings of Creation, with all the corporeal and celestial power that comes with the office. Octavian carries three of their severed heads on his belt — and as a Second Circle, there's all the Third Circle Demons above Octavian even before you reach the Yozis...
  • Hilariously, due to the glitchy nature of early Second Edition, he's only a mild threat, and thanks to sorcery, it's quite possible he never actually gets as far as a fight-a comic has an impatient Arianna blast him with Adamant Circle Banishment, sending him screaming back to Malfeas. One assumes he doesn't consider being banished an actual loss, since his opponent cheated. A better example would be the Wyld Hunt, the organization of Dragon-Bloods devoted to, among other things, killing Celestial Exalts before they become a threat to the Realm.
  • This is also the primary role of Day Caste Abyssals and Scourge Caste Infernals. Unfortunately for their respective groups of Big Bads, the signature Day Caste has as his primary goal getting into Harmonious Jade's pants, and the signature Scourge is so arrogant he even annoys Adorjan.
• Mechanically speaking, Tsabo Tavoc of Magic: The Gathering. Her abilities stop other legendary creatures from damaging, blocking or even targeting her at all, and she can kill them easily with her activated ability. In the storyline, Gerrard beats her, despite this being all but impossible in-game for the aforementioned reasons.
  • For a storyline example, we have the vampire lord Crovax. He kills the cat-woman Mirri, his "guardian angel" Selenia, and repeatedly kills and tortures the immortal goblin Squee. He is the commander of the Phyrexian invasion of Dominaria, which winds up causing a lot of death and destruction. He even kills and eats the aforementioned Tsabo Tavoc when she fails to kill Gerrard Capashen.
• The Necessary Evil RPG, in which the Super Villain PCs are La Résistance on Vichy Earth, has Hero Killer ammunition, known as HK rounds. Basically, bullets designed for killing people who are Immune to Bullets.
• OblivAeon in Sentinels of the Multiverse takes out Ra and the entire Ennead in an early appearance, causes the death of the Scholar (who gives his life to save Guise), and is such a massive threat that Nightmist has to sacrifice herself to buy a chance at beating him. He's even worse on the actual tabletop, where his game mode is best described as hurling hero cards into a meat grinder in order to buy a chance; it's extremely rare to defeat him without at least one incapacitation, and losing fourteen people◊ in games the heroes win is not unheard of.
• This is the point of the 'character-killer' build for heroes in Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. The Eldar Farseer's Mind War psychic power is a particularly good example.
  • Skulltaker from the Daemon books is quite literally made for this. The fantasy version has Killing Blow on 5+ and the 40k version wounds anything and inflicts Instant Death on 4+. Of course, a significant amount of characters are immune to Killing Blow or Instant Death, which reduces his utility somewhat.
    • The fantasy version also had Karnak, an who had the ability to mark an enemy unit and re-roll and failed hits or wounds against it.
    • Fantasy also has Wulfric the Wanderer, a champion of Chaos with the unique ability to force anyone to duel him one-on-one, allowing him to take out heroes not suited for melee such as wizards, or even just weaker heroes who would normally want to avoid fighting him.
  • There's also a whole style of magic in Fantasy based on this. The Lore of Death is packed full of some of the most powerful damage spells in the game, but they focus primarily on targeting heroes in a crowd and sniping them for massive, if not instantly fatal, damage.
  • The Blood Angels's Sanguinor has the ability to choose one enemy Independent Character and re-roll To Hit and To Wound dice in close combat against said character for the game's duration.
    • Also from the Blood Angels is Mephiston, who has an ability that forces an enemy character in contact with him to take a leadership test with a minus 4 modifier, and he gets to re-roll any failed To Hot and To Wound rolls for the round of combat if they fail, which coupled with the fact that he has Force Sword, means whatever he's fighting is likely to die in that unless it's not immune to instant death. Of course, Mephiston is strong that enemy characters will generally die against him regardless.
  • The 5th Edition Tyranid codex brings us the Swarmlord, a unique Hive Tyrant that the Hive Mind reincarnates when a hive fleet can't beat its prey through normal means. Not only is the thing a cunning strategist, it wields four energy-charged swords, and was capable of beating Marneus Calgar, Chapter Master of the Ultramarines, in hand to hand combat (given, Hive Tyrants are large, so that may not be as hard as it seems).
    • In game, the Swarmlord follows this in that is swords force an enemy to re-roll successful invulnerable saves and inflict instant death, though the Swarmlord is so expansive it's probably only worth using in an Apocalypse game.
  • The 7th edition Warriors of Chaos rulebook tends to somewhat encourage keeping hero killing in mind when building an exalted hero or chaos lord since they can roll on the eye of the gods table and, likely, get stronger from it. Oddly a Chaos Lord getting rolls on this makes him stronger than a Daemon Prince.
  • 6th edition codex Chaos Space Marines brings us the Murder Sword, nominate a target, when the bearer is in base to base contact with the target, the sword becomes double strength, ignores armor, and gains instant death. Wait for enemy player to challenge, swap the challengee with a model in base to base with the challenger, laugh manically while your daemon prince has a fun time
  • In-universe, Fulgrim. So far, canonically, including the Horus Heresy novels, he's killed one Primarch, came within inches of killing a second (admittedly one on his side), and is ultimately going to mortally wound a third. Any Traitor Primarch could qualify if the loyalist heroes they've butchered get counted, but Fulgrim goes the extra mile by being the one with the most Primarch blood on his hands.
  • The Officio Assassinorum is the Imperium's answer to tough questions that need to answered a single, surgical attack against enemy leaders. The types of assassin include:
    • Callidus shapeshifting infiltrators that get close to targets to kill them with a special phase sword.
    • Culexus are humans with 'empty souls', psychic blanks that disorientate their targets.
    • Vindicare are extremely accurate sharpshooters.
    • Eversor assassins are drug crazed close combat monsters capable of ripping apart an entire enemy command structure, often finishing the job by literally exploding.
    • Venenum are infiltrating poisoners, often tasked with large scale secret massacres.
    • Vanus assassins are master intelligence gatherers, putting into Just as Planned actions that take out their targets without anyone even suspecting an assassin was involved.
  • Warhammer Fantasy now boasts three with Games Workshop finally changing the status quo, with Arkhan the Black, Otto Glott and Tyrion killing several major characters in the End Times books along with several named playable characters including Eltharion, Kurt Helborg and Orion.

Theme Parks

• The premise of Island Under Siege during the 2002 Halloween Horror Nights at Universal's Islands of Adventure was Carnage leading an army of super villains and killing the Marvel heroes.

Video Games

• Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown has Mihaly A Shilage, a legendary Old Soldier of an enemy Ace Pilot. He hunts down Brownie and shoots her down as you're helpless to do anything, with the game not even allowing you to lock on to him. Later, Champ and Wiseman try taking him on in two separate encounters, both leading to their deaths at his hands.
• Vordred fits this trope to a T in AdventureQuest Worlds, and he has quite a list ahead of him. First off, he turns paladins undead and adds them to his "trophy collection", plus his skull-covered armor is almost invincible to any attack, even light-based attacks. Also, there's an area named after him where you fight him and find that he takes NO DAMAGE whatsoever, resulting in a Hopeless Boss Fight (at least until the Doomwood Part 1 finale with the Multiple Endings and a challenge fight). And as if that's not enough, the experiment performed on him by ArcAttack, with (believe it or not) help from the hero, manages to make him EVEN MORE POWERFUL. Oh, snap.
• Shay Cormac, the protagonist of Assassin's Creed: Rogue is a former member of the mostly heroic Assassin's Order, who defects to their archenemy, the Templars, making him a rare protagonist version of this trope. In the game, he ends up killing Adéwale, who was the protagonist of Freedom Cry and is responsible for reducing the Colonial Assassins down to simply Achilles, the mentor of Assassin's Creed III. As the epilogue reveals, he was the man responsible for killing Arno Dorian's father in Assassin's Creed: Unity.
  • In the modern day, Otso Berg is the leader of Sigma Team, an elite squad dedicated to hunting down and eliminating Assassins. While he's been very capable in the past, a recent rash of failures have led some of his higher-ups to question his Hero Killer status.
• Baldur's Gate 2 has Irenicus, who opens the game by whittling your party down from six members to four. You don't even stand a chance against him until the endgame, even though you are the child of a god. There's a part after the middle where you need to recruit a bunch of crazy wizards to attack him; if you try to face him without them, he'll insta-kill your whole party. He's level 30 in a game where your characters become really powerful because they can reach levels around 17.
• Borderlands 2 has Handsome Jack. One of the sidequests you get in the beginning of the game reveals that in-between games Jack killed Helena Pierce, a major NPC in the first game. Later on, he ends up killing Bloodwing and more importantly, Roland. There's also Wilhelm, who is stated to have been capable of defeating the Vault Hunters of the first game.
• Call of Duty:
  • Vladimir Makarov in the Modern Warfare Trilogy. Every time he appears in the flesh, without exception, a Player Character either dies or gets critically wounded, usually along with other important characters as well. He kills Allen at the end of "No Russian"; he guns down Harkov when hijacking the President's plane; he sets up the ambush that kills both Kamarov and Soap; and he kills Yuri at the end of the third game. Basically, anytime Makarov appears, it is bad news. In addition, though he doesn't appear when he does it, he also detonates the nuke that kills Jackson and Vasquez in "Shock And Awe" and is responsible for the attack on London that kills the Davis family at the end of "Mind the Gap".
  • Nikita Dragovich in Call of Duty: Black Ops. One of his introduction in Reznov's flashback showing him killing Dimitri Petrenko, the Player Character of the previous game. Also his dragon, Kravchenko, tries to be one, but almost always foiled, even when he returned briefly in Black Ops 2, when he again, failed to kill Mason and Woods, even then he indirectly killed Bowman.
  • Raul Menendez in Call of Duty: Black Ops II is an even straighter example. Just count how many named characters he killed, more than half are playable.
  • Gabriel Rorke in Call of Duty: Ghosts. While the only ones he killed onscreen are Ajax and Elias, it is implied that he killed many other Ghosts as well. He also drowned in a burning train and shot in the chest and ultimately walked away just fine like nothing happened just minutes after that and kidnapped the player character about halfway after the credits roll.
• Misery from Cave Story kills King and Balrog forces Toroko to eat the Red Flowers which makes her go rabid and die. However Misery and Balrog are being controlled by The Doctor who killed Arthur Toroko older brother so he’s technically more responsible.
• Lavos from Chrono Trigger kills the main character, Crono. It's entirely possible to proceed to beat the game without him, unless you carry out a sidequest to bring him back using the titular Chrono Trigger.
• In City of Heroes we have Captain Mako of the main villain group, Arachnos. Mako is by far the most figuratively and literally blood-thirsty member of the group (being a shark-like mutant), who is a former pirate and serial-killer, hired onto Arachnos for his murderous ways. While Mako has other duties from time to time, his main employment purpose is to murder heroes, not "defeat", not "capture", not "foil", murder. His go-to-method is to stalk his prey, wait for an opening and then tear them apart - he is fast enough where the only time his slows down is for the kill, so countering him is quite a challenge. He even wears a necklace adorned with the teeth, one from each hero he has killed - it's quite a large collection.
• Adam Smasher in Cyberpunk 2077. He kills Johnny Silverhand (but not really as he just defeated runner and brought him in to be experimented on by Arasaka) and can potentially kill Rogue or Saul in the final assault on Arasaka Tower. In Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, he kills both Rebecca and David, and in Cyberpunk 2020 he's the one who attempts to kill Morgan Blackhand on top of Arasaka HQ.
• The Pursuer from Dark Souls II is known to roam the land of Drangleic in order to track down and kill the Bearer of the Curse, and, considering his quiver of weaponry, is implied to have been successful up until your arrival. Not only does he show up in various early-game locations to kill you at the most inopportune moment, but there's more than one Pursuer if Castle Drangleic is anything to go by.
• Deep Rock Galactic: Most of the Rival Corporation's robots are mainly used as defense against Hoxxes' native wildlife and intruders such as the player Dwarves. However, the Nemesis is a robot that's designed with the explicit purpose of finding, luring in and killing the Dwarves, and is indeed very capable of doing so with its grab attacks that incapacitate up to two Dwarves and pretty much One-Hit Kill on higher difficulties.
  • And then there's the Detonators. Among giant spiders which can breathe fireballs tank nearly everything, these are known to be the most lethal giant gyphids in the entire species. The dwarves will freak out if they spot one, because they now have to deal with a giant monster that can explode the air around it, and after killing it they have to deal with the megaton self-destruction which spawns an additional cluster of exploding meteors (the latter of which is typically a lead cause of greenbeard death). Dreadnaughts may be more challenging, but at least they give off enough signatures for mission control to warn you that it's going to ruin your day. This thing can just show up, dig out of the ground right next to you, and explode without warning.
• Doppelgangers in .hack//G.U..
  • Tri-Edge/Azure Kite. The dude is just... plain... unstoppable. Pretty much every appearance he makes involves someone getting Data Drained and comatose. He's only defeated twice in the series, which barely slows him down at all.
• Dragon Quest III: King Hydra, a multi-headed dragon who serves Zoma directly, is responsible for the death of the Hero's father and predecessor, Ortega.
• The disciples of Rykard and Mogh in Elden Ring all count.
  • Rykard's crew, based out of Volcano Manor, refer to themselves as Recusants. They deliberately hunt down Tarnished who attempt to become Elden Lord and end the Shattering. The Recusants reject the meddling of the Greater Will as embodied by Marika's Golden Order. By slaying would-be Elden Lords, they seek to prevent the Golden Order from regaining control of the Lands Between. The big issue here being that the Player Character is a Tarnished seeking to become Elden Lord. Unusually, you can join their order and kill your fellow Tarnished, at least until you kill their leader, Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy. Though, to be fair, you don't actually need to kill him to finish the game.
  • White-Faced Varre of Mogh's Dynasty also advocates killing other Tarnished. There are two major differences between Varre and Volcano Manor. The first is that, while he also opposed the Golden Order, he advocates killing other Tarnished for the challenge moreso than as a means to an end. The second is that Volcano Manor's quest line has you assassinating named NPCs. Varre's quest serves as the tutorial to Invasion multiplayer, and has you trying to invade and assassinate other players.
• In The Elder Scrolls series' backstory, the ancient Atmorans (Precursors of the modern Nords) went to war with Skyrim's native Falmer (Snow Elves) after the Falmer sacked and slaughtered the Atmoran colony of Saarthal in Skyrim, with the Atmorans going so far as to attempt to drive the Falmer to extinction. After nearly wiping them out on the mainland, the Atmorans pursued the remaining Falmer to the barren, frozen island of Solstheim. During the Falmer's Last Stand at the Battle of the Moesring, an individual known only as the Snow Prince single-handedly turned the tide of the battle, killing many prominent Atmoran heroes in the process including Ulfgi Anvil-Hand, Strom the White, Freida Oaken-Wand, and Heimdall the Frenzied. The Atmorans, despite their hatred of the Falmer, considered the Snow Prince such a Worthy Opponent for his deeds that, after his death, he was buried with full honors befitting any great warrior, with guards even stationed at his tomb, which would one day become Jolgeirr Barrow.
• Etrian Odyssey features an entire army of hero killers in the form of FOEs. Although they're not particularly important to the plot, they do get a textual introduction in each game warning the player not to foolishly try to fight them, which in this series is not an empty threat. Players that don't get the hint often mistake the first FOE they come across for a particularly nasty Early-Bird Boss (a mistake made easier by EO's general Early Game Hell). Avoiding them requires three things: the realization that you are supposed to avoid them, knowledge of their movement pattern and prayer that regular enemies won't slow you down as you run the hell away.
• Because you play as a Villain Protagonist in Evil Genius, this game inverts this trope: the five super agents are the only ones capable of permanently killing your henchmen. However, you can play this trope straight by doing special sidequests to permanently defeat each agent.
• Fallout 2 has Frank Horrigan, a titanic Power Armored super mutant, who's the Enclave's best soldier and the Final Boss of the game. The first time he's seen is when he slaughters a random townsperson and his family. Whenever he shows up, somebody's going to die, including the talking Deathclaws in Vault 13 (who he punches in half with his bare hands) and Matt, the Brotherhood of Steel member manning the San Francisco outpost. When you finally go toe-to-toe with him at the end of the game (and you have to, because unlike the previous Final Boss there is no talking your way out of it,) you find he has 999 HP (for comparison, the Final Boss of the previous game had half that,) 10 of every stat (even though in-universe he's not particularly smart,) and a plasma gun and melee weapon that are the most powerful energy and melee weapons in the game, respectively. Thankfully, the player can turn the Enclave base's turrets on him and gain the help of a nearby Enclave squad to help them out.
• The Emperor in Final Fantasy II racks up no small total of heroes slain. Most notable are Cid, who is fatally wounded by the Emperor's Cyclone, and Ricard Highwind, whom the risen-from-Hell Emperor kills personally when Ricard pulls a You Shall Not Pass!.
  • The Not-So-Harmless Villain Count Borghen's actions lead to the fall of Fynn and the death of Prince Scott. He even has the distinct dishonour of being the first villain in the series to kill off a party member, Josef, who dies saving the others from Borghen's boulder trap.
• Final Fantasy VII: Sephiroth. You spend most of the first disk following Sephiroth and observing dozens of bloody murders in his wake, including several key NPCs, three impaled party members, and the Midgar Zolom hanging from a tree.
  • While he gets his actual significant kill in the game, it's really in the movie Advent Children that he shows the power backing up his claim for the title. As soon as he appears, he forces Cloud to stretch himself to twice as superhuman feats as he has so far (and that's saying something), while he himself doesn't even get out of breath. Especially in the extended version, where he beats Cloud within an inch of his life before the inevitable Heroic Second Wind kicks in. Cloud has already defeated opponents like the ridiculously powerful Remnants of Sephiroth and a gigantic dragon god, but his reaction upon first seeing Sephiroth can be described as "Eep!".
  • The Shinra Electric Power Company who Sephiroth previously worked for are technically responsible for more deaths than him. In Disc one they butcher Wedge, Biggs and Jessie of AVALANCHE then kill everyone in Sector 7 families and children included. Not to mention gunning down dear Zack Fair in Flash Back.
• Sin from Final Fantasy X. Cuts a swathe of destruction and leaves nothing but ruins in its wake wherever it treads. Still, that does not deter the many organizations that rise up to Spira's defense and try to defeat him. Just ask the Crusaders how well that went....
• Alma in F.E.A.R.. It kind of helps that bullets do jack against ghosts.
  • Alma is a special case in that she's an accidental Hero Killer. In F.E.A.R. she just wants to HUG Point Man because he's her son but her presence is so lethal that even such a harmless action can kill. It's kind of heartbreaking — all she wants is a hug, but letting her do that will kill you, so you have no choice but to shove her off. And in Project Origin she's got a gigantic crush on Beckett, and wants to mate with him. That, incidentally, is also why at several points in the game she actively lashes out against anyone who's even looking at you funny. She ends up getting what she wants and nailing Beckett in the ending. He somehow survives the intimate contact with his life and body intact, which probably means he's the most badass character in the series, but unfortunately, his mind is likely a different story.
• Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade: Jaffar acts as The Brute to Nergal. It stands to reason that he's dubbed The Angel of Death, and is the first Assassin class character in the series. To drive the point home he kills Leila, a capable spy and thief that had integrated herself into the villains forces, effortlessly.
  • Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War's Arvis kills Sigurd for the greater good.
  • The Black Knight in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance kills Greil, Ike's father.
• General RAAM from Gears of War. He kills Minh Young Kim in his very first cutscene, and then, in the RAAM's Shadow DLC, he offs Alicia Valera, and almost kills Jace Stratton, not to mention the countless Gears and Onyx Guards he murders.
• Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned has an unusual example with Niko Bellic, who kills Johnny's friends Jason Michaels and Jim Fitzgerald, whose assassinations are missions in the original game! What makes this example strange, the first spoiler aside, is how Niko never antagonizes Johnny and acts as an ally in two missions (where, in their final mission together, Johnny remarks that he wouldn't want to piss off Niko, after witnessing him slaughter dozens of mobsters on his own) and Johnny and the Lost never find out what he did.
  • And then in Grand Theft Auto V, Johnny himself shows up when the game introduces Trevor. He lasts about a minute before Trevor hits him in the face with a bottle and, while he's on the ground, stomps his face in.
• Infinity Blade has the God King. The initial mandatory tutorial places you as a nameless swordsman, bent on facing him. The prospect of your insisting to fight excites him, but he has his guard "Dark Knight" fathom your potency instead. Once you strike him a few times (having learned some basic controls) he immediately disarms you, and an impressed God King then slays you. Cut to actual gameplay: twenty years later, you are the son of the tutorial protagonist and you have arrived at the castle of the God King (who anticipates and desires your arrival, hoping to kill someone stronger than your father) - avenge your father. That is the entire game.
• Witches in Left 4 Dead. Normal zombies, even in a horde, are fairly easy to survive; smokers and hunters are usually just an annoyance; tanks are deadly and very scary, but an effective team can take them down without getting hurt; but the only appropriate response to a witch is Don't Ask, Just Run.
  • As time goes by and people learned proper tactics for handling witches, serious Villain Decay set in. High level players outside of tournament matches have made a sport of killing witches in the most outrageous ways possible, such jumping over her, spinning around, and shooting her point blank with a shotgun for an instant kill. In competitive play, if something's going to kill an entire team of survivors, it will be a tank.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past takes place in the timeline where Ganondorf managed to kill the Hero of Time, resulting in him and the Sacred Realm being transformed to reflect his dark desires.
  • In the backstory to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Calamity Ganon easily defeats all five of Hyrule's champions upon his return — Daruk, Revali, Mipha, Urbosa, and even Link himself — despite them being the strongest warriors in the land who had been deliberately preparing to defeat him. Four of the champions were imprisoned in the Divine Beasts and presumed dead (they are), while Link was only kept alive by the swift actions of his allies and was forced to slumber for a full century in order to recover. Because Link failed in his duty to stop Calamity Ganon, many of the people he encounters blame him for the deaths of the others and the subsequent ravaging of the kingdom.
• Marvel's Spider-Man 2 has a variation in its depiction of Kraven the Hunter, who has come to New York to hunt the most dangerous game: the city's local villains. He is shown brutally killing Scorpion, and he also has trophies from killing the Vulture and Shocker.
• Mass Effect:
  • The Collectors in Mass Effect 2 can be seen as this, though it depends a lot on player choice and skill. From the first scene, you know they're bad news when they kill your character from the first game. In later story encounters, they tend to be very difficult fights, and the team has to pull out a lot of stops just to survive; in the final mission against them, it's possible for everyone to die, and without excellent planning, at least one or two characters will die. In one case a Harbinger-controlled Collector deals the deathblow.
  • Mass Effect 3 gives us Kai Leng, who had previously established his credibility in the Mass Effect novels. Unfortunately his stealth-assassin skills don't translate well to direct confrontation, making him look less effective in the game proper and his competence is disproportionate to Shepard's, meaning that as long as the player keeps certain people alive and warns others of him they can make Leng look quite incompetent, with his only successful kill being Thane Krios, a terminally-ill Drell that he was largely fighting to a stalemate because Thane is a badass. It should also be noted that Leng failed to kill his actual mark, the Salarian Councilor.
• Vile in his first appearance in Mega Man X (though he suffers from Villain Decay in his subsequent appearances). He starts out the game utterly trashing X in a Hopeless Boss Fight, requiring a Big Damn Heroes moment from Zero to drive him away. Near the end of the game, X has likely picked up tons of upgrades and gotten the weapons of all the other Mavericks... and he still can't beat Vile. In fact, this time Vile beats Zero beforehand, requiring Zero to pull a Heroic Sacrifice after X's second beating just to destroy his Ride Armor and give X a fighting chance.
• Dark Samus of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. The game introduces three other bounty hunters. By the end of the game, Dark Samus has killed and absorbed all three of them.
• Modern Combat: Edward Page kills numerous Phantom Unit soldiers, including Anderson, the main protagonist of the 2nd game and a major support teammate in the 3rd game. He also almost kills Walker, the main protagonist of the 3rd game, but gets killed by player character Blake in a sudden surprise attack.
• LeChuck from the Monkey Island series. Though he plunders, tortures and even kills hundreds upon hundreds of people (and even forms his own skeletal army from these corpses), his plans to rule the entire Caribbean keep getting thwarted upon many defeats (and deaths) at the hands of the main protagonist Guybrush Threepwood. It is not until Tales of Monkey Island that, after spreading his own Pox on the entire Gulf of Melange (while becoming human himself), LeChuck proceeds to kill bounty huntress Morgan LeFlay by stabbing her with her own blade in Chapter 4, and then saves Guybrush's life from the gallows... only to kill him with the Cutlass of Kaflu later on in the chapter when all the Pox is absorbed from the entire Gulf of Melange into the legendary Esponja Grande, which LeChuck then uses to reabsorb the Voodoo powers back into himself and then, while using the power of his hypnotized monkeys, to gain his powers from the Crossroads and become the Pirate God capable of unleashing destruction upon the entire Carribean.
• Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance: Shang Tsung (with the help of Quan Chi) killed Liu Kang, starting a multi-arc Wham Episode spanning DA, Deception, and Armageddon.
• In Mortal Kombat 9:
  • a Brainwashed and Crazy Sindel becomes one for all of thirty seconds.
  • Shao Kahn delivers a Neck Snap to an unsuspecting Kung Lao. Liu Kang paid him back in full.
• Mortal Kombat X introduces us to D'Vorah, who manages to kill Baraka and Mileena in her debut. Mortal Kombat 11 has her kill the present-timeline Hanzo Hasashi, AKA Scorpion himself, earning her the hatred of a great amount of the fanbase.
• No More Heroes III has FU. As a stark contrast to every previous Big Bad, he immediately goes after Travis and shows how ruthless he can be. He crippled Shinobu, then killed Badman outright, while Travis only gets a cut on his stomach before he can do anything about it and passes out. All that just because Travis killed his servant Mr. Blackhole (whom, as it should be pointed out, FU had previously committed complete genocide on his homeworld, out of a whim).
• Nyx from Persona 3. Ryoji tells the heroes, at least half a dozen times, that "Nyx cannot be defeated." He's right. There is no way to defeat Nyx. The main character puts his entire being into an ultimate attack, effectively commiting suicide, just to make her leave.
• The chief antagonist in Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon can turn Pokemon into stone, and has their eyes set on Legendary and Mythic Pokemon, who are some of the most powerful and respected/feared beings in their world. Rayquaza, the mediator between behemoths of land and the sea who also saves the world from the occasional meteor? Flees the planet while saying that it's the first time he ever felt fear after seeing it. Latios and Latias, twin dragons that can out speed jet planes and have enough psionic firepower to destroy a tsunami? Literally dropping like rocks after they failed to escape. The Legendary Beasts, who over power and are feared by the protagonists? Petrified with zero fanfare. Arceus, the very creator of the world? Well, what do you expect what happens to him at this point?
• The Dahaka in Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is a being whose only point in existence is to be this. When a being somehow avoids their own fate, in and of itself a rather admirable fate, a Dahaka is created to destroy them. The Prince can only defeat it with the Infinity +1 Sword; otherwise he cannot even harm the beast.
  • The Dahaka is so well known for this, a lesser-known band called Merkabah actually has a song about it, appropriately named: "Dahaka". A transcript of the Metal Growled opening (lyrics are difficult to retrieve on the internet, and no easier to understand): "Sometimes it was whispered; sometimes it was read: the secret incantation that filled with the enemy with dread. If you knew it, if you used it, you could reach back to [unsure]. But stop and [think?; if one can see it]: Sole Master Of Your Destiny You Would Be. Dahaka is released. Dahaka: the Guardian of the Timeline. [A sentence; possibly "Eternal pursuer for fiddling with time."] NO ONE ESCAPES THE DAHAKA."
• In [PROTOTYPE], interestingly enough, the player character is the hero killer, for a given value of 'hero', that is. The game compensates through timed missions and zerg rushes.
• In Red Dead Redemption II we have Micah Bell, a career criminal and hitman, who is responsible for the downfall of the gang thanks to working with the Pinkertons as well partially responsible for Dutch's downward spiral and murdering Miss Grimshaw. He's also an absolute beast of a gunslinger. The final fight against him as John Marston is almost impossible because Micah is not only incredibly deadly, but he can No-Sell Dead-Eye and dynamite. Oh, and Micah will not hesitate to kill Arthur Morgan if the latter is low on honor as well.
• ZODIAC Virgo from RefleX establishes its danger credentials early on by one-shotting the most powerful boss the game had thrown at you thus far from offscreen. In subsequent stages it can be seen flying around in the background, getting chased and yet not destroyed by friendly forces, and finally effortlessly kills another boss that had been specifically built in order to counter it and destroy it. At this point, you take it on, but after a bit it gets serious and kills you with an overwhelming barrage you have no hope of surviving. It's only by virtue of 11th-Hour Superpower activated upon your death that you (or, more accurately, your machine) gains the means to stop Virgo's rampage.
• Resident Evil:
  • In the main series, Albert Wesker is responsible for the deaths of all S.T.A.R.S members with the five exceptions of Chris, Jill, Barry, Rebecca and Brad... the last of whom is killed by aforementioned Nemesis. In Resident Evil 5 Wesker almost kills Chris in a Flash Back making Jill do a Heroic Sacrifice to stop him and Sheva tries to do the same before Chris saves her.
  • Implied in the novelization of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis: the book discusses the trope. Not knowing that Nemesis is the name of the monster, Jill refers to it as the "S.T.A.R.S. killer". Fittingly too, as his Establishing Character Moment involves killing Brad with his bare hands, turning to you, ominously growling "STARS...", and proceeds to stop at absolutely nothing to kill you too.
  • Alexia in Resident Evil – Code: Veronica turns Steve into a massive monster and then kills him.
  • Saddler from Resident Evil 4 kills Leon’s best buddy Luis and would have effortlessly killed Leon too, had Ada not shown up to harmlessly pump dozens of bullets into him before blowing up Leon's escape route instead.
• In Sakura Wars (2019), there is Yaksha, an Evil Doppelgänger of Sakura Shinguji who ends up, near the end of the game, killing up Anastasia, Claris, Azami and Hatsuho in rapid succession.
• Mephiles the Dark from the infamous Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). In the Last Story, he actually kills Sonic to get Princess Elise to cry, setting the chain of events that nearly destroyed time itself.
  • About 12 years later, there is Infinite from Sonic Forces. Powered by the reality-warping Phantom Ruby, Infinite is Dr. Eggman's ultimate weapon and probably one of the most violent and sadistic characters ever in a Sonic game; he defeats and seemingly kills Sonic in their first battle, kills several Resistance fighters on-screen and enjoys graphically taunting characters about how painfully he's going to kill them.
• Starcraft: Sarah Kerrigan as Queen of Blades. She has used her Swarm to kill six people with major roles, all of whom were badasses of their own rights, was the mastermind behind the deaths of two more and drove a last one into suicide after defeating him in despite being seriously outnumbered. The sequel also sets up the Hybrid to be this, although they hadn't yet has the chance to present this, but whenever the protagonists encounter them, they are a source of fear and can cause Non-Standard Game Over by killing your hero.
• Subverted with Akuma "The Raging Demon" from Street Fighter as, despite his reputation for murder, canonically he’s only killed about two dudes. For a while, it was a big deal that Akuma killed his brother Gouken Ryu and Ken’s sensei, but SFIV reveals that Gouken put himself in a coma and woke up healthy.
  • Played straight with M. Bison, whom counting the Alpha series, the Udon comics and SFV, has killed Charlie Nash five times. Bison also killed Chun-Li’s dad, Juri’s parents and T.Hawk’s dad, though for him it was all Tuesday.
    • Bison’s proud Number Two F.A.N.G killed Rashid’s female scientist friend, killed März one of the Dolls and poisoned Rashid himself.
• Suikoden: Childrich of Suikoden V can serve as one, particularly during the Final Duel against him. The player can elect to take along several other heroes with personal grudges against him, who then all try to call Leave Him to Me! at once; you can select which one fights him... and they can die if he beats them, forcing somebody else to step in and take up the fight.
• Super Paper Mario has Dimentio, a Monster Clown with the ability to manipulate dimensions at his will. At the end of Chapter 6, he kills a hypnotized Luigi after deciding that two failures is far enough, then kills the rest of the playable cast utterly out of the blue. Luckily, the heroes manage to get better; less luckily, he counted on it.
• Barbatos Goetia from Tales of Destiny 2. The first and foremost thing he's known for is killing the prequel's hero Stahn and he's off to claim the heads of other heroes, namely Philia and Garr. His legend as a Hero Killer has even stretched to Tales of Vesperia, where he reappears as a bonus opponent in the battle arena and his name is Killer of Heroes. Indeed, it turns out that his entire purpose in life is to kill the heroes of the first game under the orders of the Big Bad to remake the timeline. Nothing less can be expected of one voiced by Norio Wakamoto.
• Undertale has King ASGORE, who Toriel informs you has caused the deaths of every other fallen human before you - which doesn't *sound* impressive on paper until you recall that a human can easily defeat most Monsters just from having enough intent to kill. Him being able to defeat six other humans before you - one of which fell armed with a gun - is no easy feat for one of his kind. Ultimately, though, he isn't even the biggest threat you have to face in the Neutral Route, and in True Pacifist and Genocide he isn't even a battle at all.
  • In a rare inversion, Sans. One conversation you can wind up having with Flowey has him describe to you all the trouble they have caused him and how they'd caused him his fair share of resets. Should you decide to go on a genocidal path for yourself, you will find that they haven't weakened a bit since Flowey dealt with them, and that they are one of the hardest boss battles of the entire game.
• Arthas Menethil, The Lich King, from Warcraft and World of Warcraft. He killed many named characters and many of them are badass in their own right.
  • Although it comes back to haunt him in a big (not to mention literal) way. His runeblade Frostmourne steals and entraps the souls of everyone it kills (oh, and his, too). At the climax of his encounter in Wrath of the Lich King Frostmourne is shattered by an attack and all the souls in question are freed — including his own.
  • Warcraft lore also has Orgrim Doomhammer, who kills Sir Anduin Lothar in a Combat by Champion during the Second War. It proves to be a hollow victory, though, as Lothar's lieutenant Turalyon takes up Lothar's broken sword and defeats Orgrim, after blinding him with the Holy Light (it helps that Doomhammer unintentionally resolves Turalyon's Crisis of Faith by revealing that Orcs aren't native to Azeroth).
• In Warframe the Grustrag Three are meant to be this, given that they inspire such fear that the normally calm and collected Lotus pleads for you to forget the mission and run when they're about to drop in. If you didn't bring your best gear they will uphold that reputation.
  • The Stalker also qualifies, at least in the early game, as an extremely rare inversion of the trope. He is an Ambiguously Human hunter who may or may not be undead, wearing a modified suit of Excalibur armor with unique weapons, immunity to the player's magic void powers, and above all else a determined hatred for his target. Rather than being a specific boss fight, The Stalker has a 1.5% chance of interrupting any regular mission, so long as the player has a 'death mark' from killing a boss. It is no exaggeration to say a new player who's still stuck wearing their own Excalibur suit will die inside of four seconds, usually as little as two.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has the Face Mechon. Metal Face Kills Fiora (she gets better, though, yet returns as a Mechon), Zanza ^note Even thought he is not a "hero" per se and the High-Entia Emperor. Bronze Face devours the entirety of Colony 6 sans Sharla, Juju, and Otharon.
• Amante Furlair in ZoE: Fist of Mars who is either directly or indirectly responsible for every single notable character death aside from Ares and Ned and she's only 15. Amante is essentially the Azula of mecha games. It's a real shame the cast has not appeared in SRW, as she'd likely have a reputation equivalent to that of Simo Hayha with a Colony Drop being the FIRST response to any sighting of her. She even mindrapes then kills Team Pet bishounen Philbright, turning him against you before discarding him as being useless as a pilot. And to top it all off she gets away with it all too because Kojima got too wrapped up doing endless spinoffs of Metal Gear Solid to have time to return to ZoE! In the end she is revealed to be a top-ranking soldier of BAHRAM, the terrorist organisation from the original ZoE, and inserted herself as the coquettish psycho clingy girlfiend to everyone merely to off BOTH sides of the civil war so BAHRAM could move in unopposed. While she isn't totally successful, considering the player's team is the only opposition remaining on Mars it's a good bet the BIS would have had an amazing uphill battle of Sisyphean proportions.

Web Animation

• Blood Falcon of CPU Championship Series who is the ONLY killer in the series, killing Parsec Captain Falcon, King Dedede and VINCENT, before he is defeated by Skillshare Kirby.
• Mecha Sonic of Super Mario Bros. Z. Every single fight he's picked with the heroes has been a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, starting from his first appearance where he very nearly killed Yoshi. Then later on with two chaos emeralds, he utterly annihilated the Koopa Bros. and the Axem Rangers within about two minutes of each other before completely wiping Yoshi's Island off the face of the Mushroom Kingdom. The heroes only narrowly managed to escape the same fate through a conveniently-placed Super Star, because not even Shadow could scratch him in a straight-up fight. And that's not even including what Mecha Sonic did to everyone on Mobius in the backstory...
• Any DEATH BATTLE! winner who either is a villain or anti-hero, or has beaten a hero or anti-hero.
• The Meta from the Red vs. Blue Recollection trilogy, especially in the first part of the trilogy (Reconstruction) and the final episodes. He hunts down the Freelancers, an elite group of soldiers each a One-Man Army, and kills them himself, stealing their AI and Armor Enhancements. It takes the combined efforts of the Red and Blue teams and one of the last few remaining Freelancers to finally bring him down for good.
• RWBY:
  • In Volume 3, Cinder Fall orchestrates Penny's destruction, and personally kills Amber, Ozpin, and Pyrrha, the latter two within minutes of one another. In Volume 8, she kills the rebuilt Penny personally, this time for good, and drops most of the heroes into the Void Between the Worlds. They survived, but were presumed dead by almost everyone.
  • Tyrian Callows and Hazel Rainart kill almost every Huntsman in the Kingdom of Mistral with aid from Leonardo Lionheart.
  • Adam Taurus cuts off Yang's arm for trying to defend his ex Blake. He later kills Sienna Khan, who, as High Leader of the White Fang, wasn't quite a hero, but was A Lighter Shade of Black compared to Taurus' plans of wiping out humanity entirely.
  • And then there's Salem, who killed her daughters with Ozpin along with at least one of Ozpin's incarnations. Hazel pulls a Heel–Face Turn and Heroic Sacrifice just to slow her down for a few hours.

Webcomics

• Lord Dragos from The Beast Legion falls invokes fear in everyone he comes across.
• 564 from Chiasmataand the Chiasm ARG counts. While mostly offing civilians, 564 has exactly one survivor from one of his attacks. He has a bodycount in the thousands, and is bar none the most powerful superhuman in the setting. He's more dangerous than a man who has turned the southwestern United States into a glass bowl.
  • Nilhil sat in the same place and still managed to kill waves and waves of would-be attackers.
• Psi-Void became this in Deviant Universe by killing Great Man with ease.
• Played for Laughs In Ensign Sue Must Die, the titular ensign is nigh-perfect, unstoppable, and armored with the heaviest Plot Armor available. But there's one thing that can fell even such a nigh-omnipotent entity. Give her a Red Shirt and let nature take its course.
• Kore from Goblins was feared by the main cast of goblin adventurers even before they had met him. In their first encounter with the dwarven paladin, they were barely able to wound him. Notably, that fight ended with the death of Chief.
• Jack Noir, the Disc-One Final Boss of Homestuck, fulfills this role, along with being the Knight of Cerebus. His tally of protagonists killed includes Bro, John (twice), a second alternate universe Dave, the Dreamselves of most of the Trolls, a thousand Aradia clones, Mom and Dad, Rose, and Alpha universe Dave in "Game Over". He also killed his own king and queen, slaughtered two entire armies, destroyed three inhabited moons and twelve planets as well as all of the Exiles save PM and WV (the latter of whom only survives thanks to being healed by a dead alternate timeline Feferi), along with that entire universe.
  • Gamzee, after sobering up, is a downplayed version of this trope. His killing spree sees two victims—Equius and Nepeta—before he is calmed down, but he is still certifiably insane and his friends are constantly on edge since they never know when he'll snap again. Later, in "Game Over", he also kills Karkat and at least plays a significant role in Terezi's death, considering she dies from receiving numerous injuries, most of which were inflicted by him. Thankfully, John's retcon powers are able to fix this so it doesn't happen in the new alpha timeline. In an alternate timeline he went crazy much earlier and was able to kill all of the other trolls without much trouble.
  • Once Aranea comes back to life and is revealed to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist, she becomes this in her extreme measures to defeat Lord English, since she fully believes her way is the only right way and is willing to kill anyone who opposes her in the name of the greater good. Her victims include Jade, Jake, and Jane, and she, like Gamzee, is significantly responsible for Terezi, due to causing the latter to stab herself with her own sword; Terezi bleeds out later. Luckily, these deaths are also part of the "Game Over" timeline that John erases, meaning Aranea never gets the chance to be relevant at all to the new alpha timeline.
  • The Condesce, a.k.a. Betty Crocker, is certainly this as well. In the backstory of the post-Scratch (B2) version of Earth, she directly killed the B2 iterations of Rose, Dave, and Jade, and eventually caused almost all of humanity (save for Dirk and Roxy) to die out. She later kills Kanaya and B1 Rose (and also Aranea, but she's a villain rather than a hero), though the former two deaths get retconned like the rest of "Game Over", and in the final battle, apparently kills at least Kanaya and Rose again (though they are revived by Jane), and possibly Jane as well (who is also healed).
  • Lord English tops them all. Technically, most of the people he's "killing" are already dead, but exist as sentient ghosts in dream bubbles; he is able to completely destroy these dream bubbles and erase all ghosts within them from existence. This includes the alternate universe Dave that Jack killed, the John from Davesprite's timeline, and countless versions of the trolls.
• 6 Juggernaut Star Scours the Universe from Kill Six Billion Demons. The Prophecy of the Successor says that Zoss, the Conquering King, will fall from Heaven and pick his Successor to annihilate the Seven Black Emperors who rule the universe. 6 Juggernaut Star is not one of them, but its job in the prophecy is to kill Zoss, which it accomplishes via decapitation on the sixth page of the comic. The universe is eventually revealed to be stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop and 6 Juggernaut Star is one of the very few people to be aware of this fact, meaning it remembers every time it has had to kill Zoss and is by now pretty tired of the whole thing. As for the Successor, the reason the universe keeps getting reset is because Omnicidal Maniac Jagganoth keeps killing him, requiring the Greater-Scope Villain to keep resetting the whole thing. Jagganoth, too, is (vaguely) aware of the time loop and knows he's fought and killed the Successor possibly billions of times.
• Levi Cole in The List is a professional superhero assassin. Though many heroes underestimate him, his reputation seems to have grown since the beginning of Season 2, when he killed the second in command of the Superior Six
• Xykon from The Order of the Stick has killed many heroes before the start of the series, including Lirian, Dorukan, and Fyron, that last one prompting Roy's father to pursue a quest of vengeance that Roy takes up upon his death. In the series itself, Xykon kills Roy too, and then the entire Sapphire Guard. Later, he curb-stomps soul-spliced Vaarsuvius in spite of their insane power.
  • After the Order are seemingly killed, Hobgoblins hand out T-shirts saying, "I killed a PC and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."
• Pluton from Sidekicks was introduced as a villain who had killed 4 superheroes and 5 sidekicks before finally being subdued and taken to villain prison.
  • Metheos' group of villains turn into hero killers whilst collecting superpowers.
• Unordinary: The shady organisation known as EMBER have recently been going around executing self-titled superheroes.

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• Deathlist of the Whateley Universe. He's got the name because of the huge list of superheroes he has already killed, including Champion. The only person we know of who has survived this killer cyborg is Lady Astarte in the Halloween story, and she had help from a Reality Warper, a precognitive, and a really huge blaster. She still couldn't polish him off.
• Worm:
  • The Eldritch Abomination Endbringers — Behemoth, Leviathan, and the Simurgh. Before a fight against Leviathan a veteran hero notes that one out of every four parahumans dying during the fight is considered a good day. Leviathan and Simurgh both due their fair share of killing, but Behemoth is specifically referred to in-setting as the "Hero killer" due in large part to it's "Instant Death" Radius. Most heroes who come to help against him don't even fight since they either can't do anything to him, they just use their powers for support and logistics. For meta points, Wildbow has revealed that for the first Endbringer appearance he rolled dice for every single character involved in the battle to see whether they'd live or die (yes, including the protagonist; he had a backup protagonist in mind in case she died).
  • The Slaughterhouse Nine collectively also qualify, as they are basically parahuman serial killers/terrorists. They tend to show up in areas that are struggling to survive in the wake of Endbringer attacks or similar disasters and kill more or less indiscriminately. Needless to say a lot of unpowered individuals die as a result of their actions, but whatever they're trying to accomplish is generally focused specifically on other capes. They also are fans of a Fate Worse than Death, in particular, Bonesaw tortures and nearly kills Grue soon after the Nine arrive in town and the former member Gray Boy had a power which had no function other than inflicting this on people. It's also revealed late in the story that their leader, Jack Slash, has a second power that gives him both enhanced intuition and a degree of emotional control where parahumans are concerned, which does explain his tendency to focus on other para humans.
  • Contessa is a parahuman who is informally known as "the boogeyman" among the cape community, in that pretty much every cape (hero or villain) that has ever tried to fight her has died or otherwise been defeated. It says something about her reputation when people with actual superpowers consider her an unstoppable monster, and one character's advice to the protagonist is Don't Ask, Just Run when they know Contessa is in the area. In fairness, she's not actually all that violent, she's not wandering around killing capes at random, it's just that when your power is knowing exactly how to accomplish any goal she sets her mind to trying to fight back is a pretty meaningless exercise.

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• Similarly, Lord Vyce from Atop the Fourth Wall is a villain who is said to have killed the Champions of numerous universes before entering the Awesomeverse, and beats Linkara within an inch of his life in their first encounter. Not only that, but he remains a dangerous opponent through the entire Vyce Arc. Oh, and he comes back, too.
• Critical Role:
  • Raishan is both an Ancient Dragon and one of Exandria's most powerful wizards. Despite being the Chroma Conclave's Squishy Wizard, she's tough enough to shrug off Grog's attacks and take off half of Vox Machina's health with a single Breath Weapon attack in her initial appearance. Even the DM believed confronting her before a certain point would have only resulted in a Total Party Kill, and she makes good on that presumption, causing a total of four Player Character deaths — Vex, Percy, and Scanlan twice — the most out of any foe the party has ever fought.
  • While he doesn't kill as many Player Characters as Raishan, Vecna deserves extra credit for how quickly he manages to do so. Within seconds of Vox Machina engaging him, they realize they don't stand a chance when he kills Vax and Vex almost effortlessly- and killing the former in a way that makes resurrecting him impossible (for anyone short of "basically Gods").
  • In the second campaign, we witness the first truly permanent player death at the hands of Lorenzo, who kills Mollymauk.
  • In the third campaign, we meet Otohan Thull, who immediately establishes herself as this to an insane degree, at various different points in the campaign. To start with, she was behind the attack on the Air Ashari that killed Orym's husband Will. During the Hells' first real encounter with her, she manages to permanently kill Laudna, and temporarily killed Orym and Fearne, all while demolishing the rest of the party. After clashing with the party, she heads to Jrusar and murders Lord Eshteross, the party's employer, while the Hells are busy in Whitestone reviving Laudna. Then, during the battle at the Mallius Key, she effortlessly took down Keyleth in seconds and would have killed her if not for the intervention of Vax, which she and her master, Ludinus, had been expecting and even counting on to further their goals. Then, when the Hells' were forced to fight her again, she immediately temporarily killed Chetney before engaging in another brutal Curb-Stomp Battle that almost resulted in a TPK, until Fresh Cut Grass blew himself up in order to finally kill her resulting in the second truly permanent player death.
• Malachite from Suburban Knights. Within his first scene he violently kills a man who annoys him, and his plot to destroy all technology in world is played much more seriously than Critic's feud with the Nerd or the reviewers' attempt to invaded Molassia. Orlando Belisle's subtle acting marks a sharp contrast to TGWTG's usual World of Ham. Also, he actually does kill Ma-Ti.
• Monitors in Tales From My D&D Campaign are uber-powerful Kua-Toa Bare Fisted Monks, legendary for their sheer ridiculous power. The one time a Monitor is seen in the videos, it One Hit Kills a troll just because the troll happened to be in its way.

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