Kinslaying Is a Special Kind of Evil

"O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon't, a brother's murder."

— Claudius, Hamlet

Want to show how evil your villain is? Have them kill members of their own family! Even Evil Has Loved Ones after all, so killing those loved ones would be considered a special kind of evil. The motive can vary from trying to benefit from it, some sort of grievance with the relative, envy, or simply for its own sake, but the point is that it's meant to be a Moral Event Horizon for the character, instead of simply stating the fact that a killing of kin has taken place (that is what Murder in the Family, Offing the Offspring, Self-Made Orphan, and related tropes are for). Often part of a villain backstory if used.

A Sub-Trope of Murder in the Family. Matricide and Offing the Offspring are the most likely familicide types to use this trope because of how love for one's mother is often used as a redeeming trait for a bad guy, and the fact that killing children is seen as especially heinous, though some examples manage to avoid this trope by giving the killer a justified reason for it.

Often overlaps with Treachery Is a Special Kind of Evil, as people are traditionally expected to be loyal to one's family.

See Patricide and Matricide for specific types of kinslaying, both considered heinous.

Not to be confused with The Kingslayer, unless the one who slays the king is his relative.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• Berserk: As people become Apostles by sacrificing someone they care about, occasionally one will become an Apostle by sacrificing someone in their family. Emperor Ganishka, one of the vilest Apostles in the series, became an Apostle by sacrificing his own son.
• Chainsaw Man: When Makima needs to make Denji feel unworthy of a happy life, she forces him to realize his father didn't kill himself; Denji did. Despite being done in self-defense, this revelation send him into a Heroic BSoD, causing Pochita (the original Chainsaw Devil) to take over his body.
• Death Note:
  • Light reaches new levels of depravity when he contemplates killing Sayu, his own sister, to protect his secret, only relenting because of the scrutiny it would draw. While he doesn't directly kill his father, he still has no regrets over being responsible for his death at Mello's hands and later dismisses him as an idealistic fool.
  • In the live action movies, Light does try to kill Soichiro in order to prevent the Death Note from being analyzed; even Misa is shocked.
• Dragon Ball Z: While he does initially try to convince Goku to join him, when Goku makes it clear he won't join Frieza's army, Raditz snaps, declaring his brother a Category Traitor who deserves to die. When Gohan, his four-year-old nephew, attacks and gravely injures him, Raditz immediately tries to kill him too. Thankfully, Goku's Heroic Sacrifice prevents him from doing so.
  Raditz: The true warrior never hesitates to kill... not even to kill his own brother!
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, Shou Tucker, who's considered the most loathsome Hate Sink in the story, becomes a State Alchemist by transmuting his wife together with a dog, creating a chimera that can talk but is in so much pain that she says, "I want to die," and later starves herself to death, thus making Tucker responsible for her death. Tucker does the same thing with his daughter Nina in order to keep his status as a State Alchemist, despite knowing what happened to his wife, and this also results in her death by causing Scar to Mercy Kill her.
• InuYasha: The bat daiyokai Taigokumaru is already a nasty piece of work, going back on a deal he made with a village to stop attacking them almost immediately, but he reaches a whole new level of depravity when he reveals that he killed Shiori's father, ''his own son, for bonding and fraternizing with humans. Upon hearing this, Shiori immediately turns on him and expels him from the barrier, letting Inuyasha take him down.
• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, The Don has Bruno's group bring his daughter Trish to his location, not so he could protect her, but so he could kill her to make sure his identity remains a secret with nothing to trace back to his true identity. This action disgusts Bruno, who already was teetering on remaining on The Boss' side even after the latter was revealed to be the one supplying drugs to the youths of Italy, so much that he immediately turns on The Boss and defects from his side - especially since he knew Trish was an innocent who had no idea of his existence, let alone any plans against her father.
• In Kill la Kill, Ragyo Kiryuin attempts to kill Ryuko Matoi and Satsuki Kiryuin after they betray her and is considered one of the nastiest parents in fiction.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam, Prince Gihren Zabi vaporizes his own father with a Wave-Motion Gun after being disappointed in his attempts to establish peace talks with the Federation. His sister, Kycilia, is not pleased with this and shoots him in the head. But again, Kycilia is already a villain and almost gets away until Char sends her a rocket to the head.
• Naruto: Itachi is one of the earliest villains introduced and is a major threat throughout most of the manga. He's Sasuke's older brother who, at only age thirteen, massacred the entire Uchiha clan except for Sasuke. Subverted with The Reveal that Itachi was Good All Along and the massacre was assigned to him by the village in order to avoid a war. Later sources indicate that he wasn't even responsible for killing most of them, leaving the rest of the clan to Tobi/Obito while he dealt with his girlfriend and parents, who he gave relatively painless or quick deaths.
• One Piece: Kaido, one of the Four Emperors and strongest pirates in the world has a daughter named Yamato. When Yamato became inspired by the courage of a man Kaido killed years ago, he beat her hard and placed on her shackles that he said would explode if she left the island base. Even to the current day, she is unsure if they would really explode, as she doesn't want to believe her father could go that far. When the shackles are removed and tossed away, they result in a powerful explosion that would have seriously hurt her, if not outright have killed her. Enraged by this, she declares herself his enemy and will work to destroy her father.
• Soul Eater: Medusa ultimately tricks her child Crona into killing her. Upon realizing what they've done, Crona considers themself a monster who can at best fulfill their mother's obligations to destroy the world—which was what Medusa was aiming for.
• In Space Runaway Ideon: Be Invoked, Harulu murders her pregnant younger sister, Karala, by shooting her in the head three times. She did it out of jealousy because she gets to have a child with the man she loved while she lost her lover during the war. It doesn't help that their father approves it because Karala's reckless actions brought shame to their family. Unfortunately, the death of Karala and her unborn child set the tide where Ideon begins its invocation to eradicate all life in the galaxy.
• Voltes V: Heinel believes in this, which is why he's sickened when he finds out that Kenichi, Daijirou and Hiyoshi are his brothers, and that Kentaro is his father, Gohl - meaning that he's been fighting against his own flesh and blood this whole time. He tries to appeal to his uncle Zambajil to stop the war, but he refuses and insists they kill Heinel because the Earthern Invasion was his idea. Zambajil bites the dust for that one.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh!, when Marik is first taken over by his own dark side, the first person he kills is his father (granted, the man was an Asshole Victim). Dark Marik also openly wants to murder his adoptive brother Rishid and sister Ishizu (even though, and in fact because, the former is normal Marik's Morality Chain).

Comic Books

• Blackest Night: To establish his position as The Dragon and herald to Nekron, Black Hand kills his brothers and parents, before committing suicide so he can rise as the Black Lantern's champion.
• Cinema Purgatorio has multiple stories covering familial abuse, but the act of killing one's children in particular is always played for horror. The protagonist is slowly revealed to have killed her 10 year old daughter Geraldine, a fact that makes even the prisoners she's shacked up with despise her and kill her in cold blood. It even earns her a spot in Hell as one of the titular cinema's employees.
• Darkseid: He rules a planet whose sole function is to worship him as a God of Evil. Sometimes he'll kill his sons, then resurrect them, then kill them again, etc.
• The Flash: During 2010's The Flash Rebirth, it's revealed that Eobard Thawne had traveled back to his childhood at different points to "fix" his mediocre life. Amongst other things, these includes pulling a Ret-Gone on his brother and later murdering his own parents so they wouldn't interfere with his work.
• Judge Dredd: Judge Death is already established as a nightmarish Omnicidal Maniac in his debut appearance, so when his backstory is later revealed in "Young Death: Boyhood of a Superfiend", it's no surprise that his first victims turn out to be his own relatives. Even the family dog got an early ticket to the grave!
• The Punisher MAX: Nicky Cavella is established as a particularly depraved mafioso in "Up is Down And Black is White", where he guns down his sister, mother and father as a child, as part of a coup with his aunt. He later smothers his aunt after being molested by her.
• In The Sandman (1989), the Furies are feared by everyone from supernatural beings to gods to The Endless themselves. Once loosed on a target, the Furies will hound them and destroy everything they care about until either they kill their target at the end of their rampage or their target hits the Despair Event Horizon and kills themselves. However, the Furies only hunt those who committed an act of kinslaying. Unfortunately for Dream, even a Mercy Kill can be used to invoke them.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW): When Old Hob attempts to hold Agent Bishop's dementia-addled father hostage at gunpoint, Bishop directly orders a Brainwashed and Crazy Slash to kill him, declaring his father is merely a shell of the person he was and whatever Wayne had been lived on in him. Hob, a major Jerkass who hates humans with a passion, is shocked and horrified that Bishop would murder his own father in cold blood.
• Young Justice has Harm/ William Hayes, who, as part of a Deal with the Devil, gains power by killing his adopted sister Greta, whose spirit would become the heroine Secret and join the protagonist team.
• Lex Luthor once cured his sister Lena of a debilitating disease, then promptly reinfected her with it just to prove to the Connor Kent Superboy that he could and vowed to never do anything beneficial to mankind as long as Superman lived.
• Implied in the Chick Tract "Doom Town", in which one evidence of Sodom's irredeemable wickedness is a crowd of people cheering on a man killing his own brother, calling it awesome. However, it's somewhat downplayed, as Chick cares more about the inhabitants' alleged homosexuality.
• Lucifer has Fenris using an act of kinslaying among the roots of Yggdrasil as an act so unspeakable, it confirms the unraveling of the world. The fact that Lucifer himself performs the kinslaying, killing his brother Michael, means the unraveling now extends to his universe as well.

Fan Works

• Child of the Storm has Harry's obliteration of the Red Army of Red Room clones, many of them of him, and some of his cousin, Maddie in the second book characterised as this in the third, after he revealed at the end of the second that he considered it his greatest failure because Clones Are People, Too and they never got the chance to be anything other than Human Weapons. Certainly, Sunniva, an Asgardian - albeit of a prehistoric one - is appalled. However, given the full context, it is generally agreed rather somberly that he had no choice - they had no wills of their own, under the control of a General Ripper, and they were Too Powerful to Live.
• The Makings of Team CRME: While there are other instances of kinslaying in this series such as Cinder and Mercury killing their Abusive Parents, the only unjustified one is by Cinder. In My Name Is Cinder, she killed her own sister under the guise of a Mercy Kill. While she justifies it in the narration by saying she didn't want to subject her to Brigit's fate, this shows the moment solidifies that Cinder has turned to a callous sociopath and she even says she doesn't feel bad about it. It is one thing that shocks Emerald when Mercury reveals this in CRME and makes her rethink everything about her.
• Power Rangers Take Flight has Big Bad Trask on the run from his own people for murdering one of his brethren (though he didn’t intend to do so).
• Zigzagged in The Raven's Plan. For those who don't Remember or died early in the previous timeline, this is played straight. For everyone else, each case is judged by the circumstances surrounding it:
  • The only example universally played straight is Stannis burning poor, innocent Shireen for a blessing to defeat the Boltons in battle. It's regarded as his In-Universe Moral Event Horizon.
  • Another straight example is Randyll Tarly threatening to kill his son Samwell if he didn't take the Black. As it turns out, none of their family were aware of that threat — the moment they find out, a furious Melessa gives Randyll a slap and a short, brutal "Reason You Suck" Speech, while his favorite son Dickon spurns him and sides with Sam during his coup against Randyll. Later on, when Talla visits him during his house arrest, Darvon refuses to leave her alone with him because he can't trust him not to try and harm her like he did with Sam.
  • Old Walder Frey was murdered by his sons Raymund and Aenys. Stevron Frey considered it a deed evilly done, and both Brynden Tully and Patrek Mallister considered it another line crossed. Edmure Tully, Jonos Bracken, and Tytos Blackwood simply thought it was hilarious.
  • Oberyn Martell initially turned against his brother Doran after Doran killed his lover Ellaria and his daughters (sans Sarella). He promptly returned to his brother's side after Doran explained why he killed Ellaria and his nieces (they committed a coup and killed both him and Trystane in the previous timeline, technically making them guilty of kinslaying too).
  • Played with and subverted with Tyrion killing Tywin in the previous timeline. Normally that would be another mark against Tyrion, but Tywin's 0% Approval Rating means no one outside of Casterly Rock really cares, especially since Tyrion and Jaime supported the Targaryens in combating the Second Long Night. Inside Casterly Rock, the only people unnerved by it are Tywin's siblings, and even they supported Tyrion's coup in the end, because even they couldn't deny that Tywin had effectively screwed over the entire family with his ruthlessness.
  • Painfully subverted with Jaime killing Cersei in the previous timeline. By the time that happened, Cersei had already attempted to murder Tyrion numerous times and had in fact already committed kinslaying herself when she blew up the Great Sept of Baelor with wildfire, killing her cousin Lancel and uncle Kevan. Following that, she gradually descended into further insanity, allowing Qyburn to create numerous Eldritch Abominations that were let loose on King's Landing, attacking the Targaryen forces while they were trying to fight off the literal apocalypse, and finally, sending the undead Mountain to kill Jaime, her only remaining loved one. Everyone still alive at that point universally agreed that she had to die and the only thing they felt sorry for is that Jaime had to be the one to do it.
• Dangerverse:
  • As further evidence that this series's version of Dudley Dursley is significantly more evil than his canon counterpart, he arranges the murder of his parents, Vernon and Petunia, to remove any traces of his Muggle parentage and make him register as a Pureblood so that he can join the Death Eaters. Needless to say, doing this erases any pity the reader may have felt for Dudley when Sirius Black savages him to death in dog form.
  • Subverted with Draco Malfoy when he pulls a Kill and Replace on his father Lucius Malfoy to infiltrate the Death Eaters. Draco is not on good terms with his father in the Dangerverse, due to Lucius constantly threatening his loved ones and attempting to brainwash Draco back to the fold. So he's done the heroes a favor by getting rid of Lucius.
  • In this fic, the Malfoy lineage originates from a Lucius Beauvoi, who murdered his cousin William Beauvoi to inherit the title and estates. While Lucius was never convicted, enough people suspected what he'd done for him to be nicknamed "mal foi", or "bad faith", and the name stuck.
• In the J-WITCH Series, multiple characters are horrified to learn about the rumor that Phobos murdered his own parents, and though this rumor is false, it was a large part of the reason the majority of Meridian's inhabitants didn't accept him as their new ruler. Notably, Phobos makes a point of telling Cedric in certain terms that he won't murder his little sister once he no longer needs her, for he doesn't want to become the kinslayer he's believed to be.
• The Mountain and the Wolf: As payment for bodyguarding Tyrion against Bronn, the Wolf demands Bronn's crossbow (which Tyrion had used to murder his father). Tyrion doesn't really see why, but the Wolf says repeatedly using a weapon for a specific crime makes it stronger. Tyrion doesn't pursue the matter, glad the Wolf isn't demanding more gold on top of it.
• The Weirwood Queen:
  • At one point Sansa asks Sandor Clegane why he's never actually tried to kill his hated brother even when he had a golden opportunity to do so with full legal backing when Gregor attacked Loras at the Tourney of the Hand. It's implied that despite his revenge fantasies, he still believes this on some level. And even when her original plan for a champion against Gregor falls through, the author states that she declines Sandor's silent offer to step forward because she doesn't want to make him a kinslayer, even at the risk of her own life.
  • Tywin Lannister's abusive parenting leads to his children being at each other's throats, starting with Cersei successfully plotting Tyrion's death at the Battle of the Blackwater. Then Jaime kills Tywin due to the latter finding out about his incestuous relationship with Cersei. Then Cersei and Jaime kill off each other after their attempts to escape Casterly Rock are in vain.

Films — Animation

• The Lion King:
  • The Lion King (1994): Scar had always been seen as a dark part of the community but his point of no return was when he sent his brother, Mufasa, hurtling to his death and instructed the hyenas to murder his nephew in order to allow Scar to ascend to the throne. When the truth is eventually revealed, the pack turns on Scar and he is exiled under threat of death. Scar had tried to use the hyenas as scapegoats, however, and after he fights back but loses, they eat him.
  • The Lion King II: Simba's Pride: While she doesn't actually succeed at doing so, when her daughter Vitani is the first to see the truth in Kiara's words and pull a Heel–Face Turn, Zira snaps and openly threatens to kill her for doing so. The rest of the Outsiders are utterly disgusted by Zira doing so and desert her en masse.
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: Aaron Davis moonlights as The Prowler, a ruthless mercenary who always gets his mark. When Kingpin sends him to hunt down the new Spider-Man, he is relentless in his pursuit. However, Aaron is beyond horrified when Spider-Man is revealed to be his fourteen-year-old nephew, Miles Morales, with whom Davis has an extremely close relationship. Although the Prowler has undoubtedly killed many other people without remorse and played a role in the death of the original Spider-Man Peter Parker, he is visibly and vocally upset that he nearly killed his nephew without realizing it.

Films — Live-Action

• Aquaman (2018): Both Orvax and Orm are characterized as villains by their willingness to murder their kin, Orvax in sending his wife Atlanna to the Trench to be killed and Orm repeatedly trying to kill off his brother Arthur in order to protect his throne. Nereus, who has sided with Orm, is redeemed by his refusal to allow his daughter Mera to come to any harm even as she is acting against the will of the reigning king of Atlantis.
• Black Panther (2018):
  • Although King T'Chaka was greatly beloved throughout his life, his legacy is tarnished when it is posthumously revealed that he murdered his own brother for what he thought was the greater good and abandoned his nephew to grow up in poverty, never knowing his royal Wakandan heritage. T'Challa is completely shaken to learn the truth about his father and gives T'Chaka one hell of a "The Reason You Suck" Speech when he confronts him on the ancestral plane for the second time. T'Chaka himself took no pleasure in the act and the guilt and grief of it stayed with him for the remainder of his life, but he believed it necessary as his brother had committed treason by helping an outsider with a grudge against Wakanda infiltrate the country and steal a large portion of their vibranium resources in order to spark a global race war and he had been intended to simply take him home and make him face judgement there, but his brother resisted and tried to kill a fellow Wakandan which forced T'Chaka to end his life.
  • It is cemented that Killmonger is a hateful character by how gleeful he is at the opportunity to kill T'Challa, his cousin who has personally never done anything wrong to Erik. Whenever T'Challa engages in ritual combat, he always gives his opponents, including Killmonger, multiple opportunities to yield rather than be killed. Killmonger takes obvious pleasure in throwing T'Challa off the mountain to his apparent death. He also sports the same Slasher Smile when poised to kill T'Challa's younger sister Shuri, despite her also being a blood relative. In fact, Nakia's first action after T'Challa is seemingly killed is to immediately get his sister and mother out of there because she knows they'll be the next ones in his crosshairs.
  • Averted in T'Challa and Killmonger's final fight as the latter had made it clear he would not back down and would continue to target everyone T'Challa loved and cared about simply out of spite, forcing T'Challa to realise his cousin is beyond saving and must be killed to protect Wakanda. The juxtaposition between the two characters is shown when T'Challa offers to get Killmonger the medical care needed to save his life when Killmonger is mortally wounded in their fight.
• The Godfather Part II: Michael Corleone's Moral Event Horizon is ordering the death of his brother Fredo after the latter's unwitting betrayal, even though he had no reason to kill him. Of the many crimes Michael commits in the name of the family, this is the one that haunts him the most.
• King Arthur: Legend of the Sword: One of the ways we know that Vortigern is evil and will never be the rightful king is his willingness to kill his family to gain power and prestige. The only Pendragon he doesn't manage to murder is Arthur himself. Not even Vortigern's wife and daughter were safe from his insatiable hunger for power.
• Sleepy Hollow (1999): Katrina is disgusted when Lady Van Tassel (born Mary Archer) freely admits to killing her own sister just because she helped the heroes, and it's when Mary brushes this off as her simply getting in the way that she loses any shred of sympathy.
• Franz Oberhauser/Ernst Stavro Blofeld crossed the Moral Event Horizon 20 years before the events of Spectre by committing Patricide just because his father took in an orphaned James Bond.
• Star Wars occasionally uses killing family members to signify one has fallen to the dark side.
  • Return of the Jedi: Emperor Palpatine tries to invoke this trope by goading Luke Skywalker to fight and kill his father, Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker. Luke manages to stop himself before he can finish him off, resulting in the Emperor becoming enraged and electrocute him with Force Lightning. Unable to commit this himself through inaction, Vader ends up hoisting the still-lightning-shooting Emperor and tossing him down a nearby bottomless shaft despite the certainty that the wild Force Lightning would mortally cripple his suit life support systems.
  • The Force Awakens: In order to no longer be conflicted by the light side, Kylo Ren crosses his own personal Moral Event Horizon by impaling his father Han Solo with his lightsaber. This backfires as the enormity of his actions only exacerbates his inner conflict. The next movie asks the question if he's even capable of redemption afterward. He goes Rage Against the Heavens Omnicidal Maniac afterwards, blaming the Force itself for being an irreconcilable, warmongering dick to the people it 'protects' and 'empowers' by dividing them into radical factions. Mind you, he's not completely wrong — the Force has a way of making its children obsess over inter-planetary genocide of each other.
• Trash Fire: Violet is a religious hypocrite whose response to her relative Owen's unborn child out of wedlock is to murder them all. She also reveals that she burned Owen's parents to death for the crime of being victims of rape — from a pastor.
• The Usual Suspects: According to Verbal Kint, this was the event that solidified Keyser Soze as The Dreaded years ago. Soze, merely a petty drug dealer at the time, came home one night to find his family being held hostage by Hungarian gangsters, who had already raped his wife and killed one of his sons. His solution is to kill his family, followed by all but one of the mobsters, whom he allowed to escape in order to spread the story.
• In Scream 3, Roman Bridger is revealed to be the Greater-Scope Villain for the entire original trilogy. He manipulated Billy and Stu into murdering Maureen Prescott, his own mother. He even kills his father (although he deserved it) and tries to kill his half-sister Sidney for good measure.
• Jill, from Scream 4 turns out to be worse. In her attempt to get her 15 Minutes of Fame as a Final Girl, she murders her own mother and attempts to murder her cousin Sidney.

Literature

• Bardic Voices: Subverted in The Lark and the Wren. Rune and Talaysen are disturbed to find that their new apprentice, Jonny Brede, is really the son of the old king of Birnam. Six years ago, Jonny escaped the coup that killed his father and put his father's brother Rolend on the throne. Rolend has now sent assassins to find and kill his nephew, the escaped prince. However, when Rune and Talaysen investigate further, they find that the old king was cruel and a spendthrift who imposed ruinous taxes and then wasted the money on high living for himself and his cronies. In sharp contrast, King Rolend is a good man who is working hard to rebuild the Kingdom and its wealth. He sent the assassins only to make sure that the lost prince couldn't be used by his enemies to foment another coup, and he hated the fact that he had to do it. When Jonny renounces the throne in a convincing-enough way, Rolend gladly calls off the assassins.
• The Beast Player: Damiya orchestrates the assassination of his aunt, the Yojeh Halumiya, for his ambition to rule Lyoza as the new Yojeh's husband. Ialu and Seimiya both find it abominable, motivating the latter to accept Shunan's proposal for the good of the kingdom at the expense of the purity generations of Yojeh have protected for three centuries.
• Chronicles of Ancient Darkness: The seventh book states that killing one's bone kin would be breaking one of the oldest laws that results in being permanently cast out. It's for that reason that Torak and Renn cannot directly kill their new enemy Naiginn because his parents are Torak's Evil Uncle Tenris and Renn's Evil Matriarch Seshru.
• Gods and Warriors: People who kill their own flesh and blood are chased and driven mad by the Angry Ones, the horrific spirits of air and darkness. Akastos has been on the run from them for over a decade because he killed in combat his brother who was deceived by the Crows to turn on him. Telamon has also become their prey in the last book for allowing his aunt Alekto to be killed by the Nile's crocodiles in the penultimate book. Akastos manages to rid himself of the Angry Ones by killing one of the last highborn Crows and letting his brother's ghost feast on the blood. Telamon attempts the same by casting the dagger of Koronos inside Mount Lykas so that his ancestors would keep it safe forever, but he's killed by a lightning strike before he can find out if his plan will work.
• Harry Potter:
  • Near the end of Goblet of Fire, Barty Crouch Jr. admits under a Truth Potion that he killed his own father, Transfigured his remains into a bone, and buried it in the Forbidden Forest. One chapter later, Crouch Jr. becomes the first (and only) named victim of the Dementor's Kiss.
  • In order to make his first Horcrux, Voldemort murdered his own father and paternal grandparents. While they were rich snobs and his father had abandoned Voldemort's pregnant mother (after she herself had used a Love Potion on him, mind), it's clear they didn't quite deserve to go out in such a horrible way. He also framed his maternal uncle for the deed, effectively condemning him to a Fate Worse than Death in Azkaban.
  • Bellatrix, arguably the second most evil character in the series, kills her cousin Sirius Black and niece Nymphadora Tonks.
• Judge Dee: "The Chinese Maze Murders" has the judge in full Tranquil Fury mode when speaking to an (attempted) patricide, a young man who tried to poison his father and frame another man for it because he was having an affair with one of his father's concubines (to Tang dynasty values, this is basically Parental Incest despite them being the same age and unrelated by blood). Even the fact that the father was an Asshole Victim (a general who'd deliberately sent his troops to be massacred as part of a deal with the enemy) and killed by someone else (a court official who'd learned of the crime and presented the general with a spring-loaded poison dart pen to kill him once the official was dead) is not enough to get the son off the hook. The son takes the hint and commits suicide shortly after, along with the concubine.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Kinslaying is seen as one of the two worst crimes someone in Westeros can commit, the other being violating guest right. Even Roose Bolton, who participates in the Red Wedding, refuses to kill off his psychopath of a son (despite the trouble his open sadism causes) because of this taboo.
  • Both Randyll Tarly and Tywin Lannister have tried to get around the taboo so they can get rid of the son they hate the most, Samwell Tarly and Tyrion Lannister respectively. Randyll threatens Samwell by saying he'll be involved in a Hunting "Accident" unless he removes himself from the succession by joining the Night's Watch, while Tywin hopes Tyrion will get himself killed in battle. Tywin's hatred of Tyrion stems from considering him a kinslayer as his mother died giving birth to him. Eventually, he fingers Tyrion for King Joffrey's murder in hopes he'll get executed, leading to Tyrion becoming an actual kinslayer by shooting him with a crossbow in retribution.
  • In addition to his brutal actions during war and Serial Killer nature, Gregor Clegane is established as a horrible person early on when Littlefinger reveals his brother Sandor's face is burned because Gregor tried to kill him by holding him in a fireplace for playing with his toy. It's also heavily implied he murdered both his father for the inheritance and his sister For the Evulz.
  • Euron Greyjoy has contempt for the Ironborn traditions, including this trope. He killed his half-brothers Harlon and Robin, is heavily implied (and later outright confirmed) to be behind his full brother Balon's death and wants to kill his full brother Victarion. He uses the fact that the gods have yet to punish him for it as proof the taboo against kinslaying doesn't mean anything. His disregard for traditions and his kinslaying are the main reasons the rest of his siblings despise him, though their own belief in the taboo has kept them from killing him.
  • Played with concerning Stannis Baratheon. He kills his brother Renly Baratheon through dark magic practiced by his advisor, the sorceress Melisandre. However, Renly was the younger brother who was trying to usurp the throne himself basically through having a bigger army than anyone else and clearly intended to kill Stannis for not submitting to him, showing no remorse at this. By contrast, Stannis after his brother's death is distraught. It's also an Ambiguous Situation how much Stannis knows about Melisandre's use of a Living Shadow assassin to bump off Renly.
  • The wildling women sent with Mance Rayder by Jon Snow and Melisandre to rescue the girl they think is Arya Stark (actually Jeyne Poole) denounce Theon Greyjoy as a kinslayer since he supposedly killed Bran and Rickon Stark (although it was actually two other, equally innocent boys). Theon's not actually related to Bran and Rickon by blood, but being Ned Stark's ward/hostage makes them effectively foster brothers.
  • Rickard Karstark warns Robb Stark the consequences of the kinslaying taboo by reminding him that the Starks and Karstarks are related by blood, shortly before he is executed for killing Robb's hostages. Word of God from George Martin, however, is that Rickard was stretching the definition to try to get Robb to spare him, since their relation is very distant. invoked
  • On top of violating guest right, the Red Wedding is seen by Tytos Blackwood as proof that the Freys do not value their kinsmen, because the Blackwoods are one of the houses slaughtered despite the fact that Walder Frey married a Blackwood woman and had several children with her. Merrett Frey's epilogue chapter in A Storm of Swords implies that the Freys at the very least still consider the kinslaying law sacred for those who carry the family name.
  • Part of the reason Maegor I was so despised is that he killed his own nephews Aegon and Viserys, all to eliminate them from potentially deposing him. Maegor eventually met his unceremonious end upon the blades of the Iron Throne, which some of the more superstitious believe was the gods' punishment for kinslaying. In fact, every Targaryen who committed kinslaying died violent deaths: Prince Aemond (killed his nephew Lucerys Velaryon) and Prince Daemon (sent assassins to kill his great nephew Jaehaerys) both perished with their dragons in their duel above God's Eye; Aegon II (fed his sister Rhaenyra to his dragon) was poisoned by his own supporters; and Maekar I (accidentally killed his brother Baelor during a Trial of the Seven) was crushed to death by a boulder while dealing with a rebellion in the Reach.^note Even those suspected of kinslaying haven't ended their lives with their head held high; Aegon IV (strongly believed to have poisoned his father, Viserys II) died of what was likely a venereal disease after twelve years of misrule and corruption.
• Star Wars:
  • Darth Plagueis: A young Palpatine ends up killing his entire family to ensure he can train under and eventually usurp Darth Plagueis. It's also stated that Palpatine has wanted to kill his father as long as he could remember, in order to establish that he was born evil.
  • Star Wars: The Rising Storm: Marchion Ro kills his cousin Kufa after she shows him where the Great Leveler is. It also turns out he killed his father Asgar after he discovered him dying from an assassination attempt, as he was abusive to him.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • In The Silmarillion Fëanor and his sons perform the First Kinslaying, killing their Teleri cousins at their haven at Alqualondë. And the Second (killing many of the Sindar of Doriath) and Third (at the mouths of the Sirion), too, while trying to reclaim the Silmarils. Due to these deeds (among others), they lose the right to ever reclaim the Silmarils successfully.
  • Any instance of Elf fighting against Elf falls under this trope. For example, Maeglin's betrayal of Gondolin — including his uncle, Turgon — is widely considered one of the greatest evils perpetrated in Middle-earth.
  • There's also Sméagol, who strangled his cousin Déagol to steal the ring from him, and then fled into a cave and slowly turned into Gollum.

Live-Action TV

• Arrow:
  • In an attempt to stop Adrian Chase's deadly crusade to destroy Oliver's life, Adrian's wife, Doris Chase is brought in hoping she could be a Morality Pet. Adrian is furious at his wife becoming involved and visibly saddened, but to prove his dedication to his revenge over his loved one, he stabs Doris while hugging her and effectively cut off his one final tie to humanity.
  • In Season 6, Oliver uses this as a barb when he and Diggle get into an argument about who should be the Green Arrow. Diggle accuses Oliver of being blindly destructive, pointing out how many people Oliver had killed as collateral damage in his mission to protect Star City, destroying families. Oliver reminds Diggle that Diggle has destroyed families as well. This cruel reminder shifts the fight from verbal to physical.
  Oliver: "He pulled a gun on me! Do you think he gave me a choice?!"
  Diggle: "I think that you leave a trail of bodies every damn place that you go! Sure you've changed, but what comfort is that to William (Oliver's son) whose mother is dead because of the bad decisions that you've made?"
  (Oliver pauses, visibly shaken): "My trail of bodies doesn't include my own brother."
• Game of Thrones:
  • Oberyn Martell's bastard daughters, the Sand Snakes, are disappointed with their uncle and cousin's lack of support for their revenge plan against the Lannisters for the deaths of their relatives, including their father. Though their father's lover, Ellaria, was the one who murdered their uncle so that they could take over Dorne, the eldest daughter, Obara, kills her cousin by stabbing him in the back of the head with a spear. This is against what Oberyn intended because while he also wanted revenge on the Lannisters for the brutal deaths of his sister, niece, and nephew, he abhorred killing children, making it tragic that his own daughter murdered his nephew in the name of "revenge".
  • Lord Karstark tries to invoke this when Robb orders his execution for killing Lannister hostages, since House Karstark is a cadet branch of House Stark.
  • Ramsay Bolton hits the point of no return when he kills his father, stepmother, and newborn brother in order to take control of his house.
  • In the Season 6 finale, Cersei Lannister herself not only kills her enemies, the Faith Militant and the Tyrells, but also her uncle Kevan and her cousin Lancel with wildfire at the Sept of Baelor. She has no concern about who died. In her mind, all of those who opposed her in King's Landing are gone now. However, the facts that his wife Margaery Tyrell died in the conflagration and that this incident proved he was just a Puppet King drive Cersei's son Tommen to suicide, which she's less happy about.
• Justified:
  • In Season 5, the Crowe family is introduced as the season-long antagonistic force. Although the siblings repeatedly talk about the sanctity and importance of family above all else, the true darkness of eldest Daryl is revealed when he orders Danny to kill Dilly who has accidentally attracted federal attention. Despite verbally asserting his deep care for his family, Daryl shows a willingness to manipulate and sacrifice any member if it will protect Daryl himself. The season-long arc concludes when sister Wendy finds out the truth about Dilly's death and shoots and kills Daryl in what could be argued self-defense in order to save Kendall, the youngest Crowe who Daryl has set up to take the fall for Daryl's attempted murder of a federal officer. Despite their constant talk of family, nearly the entire clan dies primarily at the hands of other family members.
  • Although his gambits are never successful, Arlo's attempts on his son Raylan's life, once via attempting to walk him into an ambush and later by shooting and killing someone he believed to be Raylan, show how despicable, dangerous, and irredeemable Arlo truly is.
• Poirot: In the adaptation of Taken at the Flood, David Hunter is revealed to be even worse than his book counterpart after he's revealed to be behind the death of his sister Rosaleen through planting a dynamite time bomb at the house she shared with her husband.
• Sons of Anarchy:
  • In the penultimate episode, Jax discovers that his mother Gemma is actually the one that killed Tara, Jax's wife. This meant that every murder he'd committed based on the cover story she gave him was unjustified and his friends who died as a result died in vain. Jax is hell-bent on finding Gemma. Nero, seeing that Jax is hurt and angry, warns him that murdering his own mother is something Jax can never recover from. Sure enough, after murdering Gemma, Jax goes on a suicide run, unable to live with the weight of what he's done in the name of vengeance.
  • Along those lines, Gemma murdering her daughter-in-law Tara based on a misunderstanding moved her from 'overbearing but well-meaning' to a 'corporate poison that needed to be rooted out'. This is emphasized over the next season as she sits back and watches her son, who generally operates as an anti-hero, devolve into a murder machine after she lies and tells him a rival gang killed Tara. It makes her eventual murder at Jax's hands feel more justified, particularly when you remember that all series long, Jax has suspected Gemma of being a part of the suspicious accident that killed JT, Gemma's husband and Jax's father.
• Supernatural: In "Red Sky at Morning", the ghost, having been killed by his own brother, targets people that were involved in the murder of family members.

Mythology And Religion

• The Bible:
  • Cain is known as the father of murder after he kills his younger brother Abel. God marked him so anyone who encountered him would know that Cain is to be shunned and that murdering him will encounter punishment from God, as Cain is intended to live a long life of shame as punishment for his crime.
  • Subverted with Abraham and Isaac. God asks Abraham to sacrifice his only son, knowing that in addition to the grand taboo around kinslaying, Abraham and Sarah prayed for decades for a son and considered Isaac their miracle baby. The sacrifice is a test of Abraham’s faith and love for God. When Abraham moves to do as asked, God stopped Abraham and sent a ram to be slaughtered instead.
• Classical Mythology: Greco-Roman myth considers the slaying of one's offspring or that of one's parents to be a Moral Event Horizon alongside cannibalism and violating Sacred Hospitality.
  • Theogony: Cronus, King of the Titans, ends up consuming his children out of fear that they would overthrow him as he and his siblings did to their own father. This ends up being a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy when the youngest child, Zeus, manages to escape and free his siblings from their father's belly. Cronus ends up torn into pieces and unceremoniously scattered throughout Tartarus.
  • Ixion, a king of the Lapith people, became the first kinslayer after murdering his father-in-law and was consigned to eternal torment in Tartarus for that and certain other blasphemies.
  • Tantalus, in an effort to prove the gods are fools due to his hubris, murders and cooks his son Pelops and serves him to them, showing they aren't even wise enough to know what they're having for dinner. The gods' reaction is to resurrect his son and banish Tantalus to Tartarus where he'll be eternally thirsty and hungry, out of disgust for his indulging in kinslaying, cannibalism and betraying his guests.
  • Several instances of the House of Atreus (descendants of Tantalus). Atreus found out his wife had been screwing his brother Thyestes. Instead of taking out his anger on Thyestes directly, Atreus killed Thyestes' sons and served them up to Thyestes.
  • Lycaon, the first werewolf, was punished for making a stew of an infant who may have been his own grandson (depending on the version).
  • Medea:
    • She took her brother along with her when she fled with the Argonauts. When their father's navy drew near, she killed the boy and dropped him piece by piece over the side, forcing the king to stop and retrieve every piece from the sea so as to give the boy a proper burial.
    • She killed her own children and her husband's intended when he put Medea aside, planning to marry a (rich and titled) Grecian wife.
    • All that said, she still somehow becomes a Karma Houdini for her kinslaying, because the story is mostly to showcase the hubris of the aforementioned husband, Jason, the hero she fell in love with and dedicated the first kinslaying for (with a tinkering from the Gods, particularly Aphrodite). Her kinslaying on Jason's family is portrayed as karma catching up to Jason instead where he's the one who loses out the favor of the Gods and everything due to his hubris and increasingly stupid actions.
    • After fleeing from Corinth and Athens, Medea returns to Colchis and helps her son Medus to kill her uncle Perses, who himself usurped the power by killing Medea's father Aeëtes.
  • The story of Philomela and Procne. The two women served up the son of Procne to the boy's father, Procne's husband. The husband had raped Philomela, Procne's sister, then tore out her tongue so she won't be able to tell. But she could still weave, and such interesting pictures too. When he found out and tried to kill them, they all got turned into birds.
  • The hero Orestes becomes a matricide when he slays his mother Clytemnestra; although he did this in revenge for Clytemnestra slaying his father and on the direct instructions of the god Apollo, his act of kinslaying still drove the Furies, supernatural spirits of vengeance and pursuers of criminals, to hound and torment him for many years as punishment for his deed. He was only able to get the Furies off his back after defending himself in a trial presided over by Athena and with Apollo as his defense attorney, which also more or less redefined the universal laws governing vengeance, justice, and retribution as it did so.
  • This trope is also the reason why many children (either unwanted or prophesied to be the downfalls of their families/fathers/grandfathers) are left exposed in the wilderness - the justification being that even a baby may be saved from being exposed if it is found by a human or animals, whereas kinslaying is a big taboo, and indeed all exposed children do survive these myths in various ways.
  • Keep in mind that this is is one of the reasons Oedipus the King is considered a tragedy. Not only did he slept with his mother, but he ended up killing his father without him ever knowing, being a victim of fate. Such act force him to cut his own eyes, and leave his kingdom in exile.
• In Buddhism, a person murdering one's father and/or mother will earn themselves a stay in Avici, the lowest of the Narakas, and the one with by far the longest duration of rebirth and punishment.
• In Native American Mythology, skinwalkers are often said to be kinslayers who took on bestial forms as a result of their crimes. This also corresponds with some European werewolf legends.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer Fantasy: Subverted in the northern lands, where kin-slaying seems to be a part of life, depending on the area (and given that one of the gods worshipped there is literally a god of traitors...) Sigvald the Magnificent is known to have murdered his own father and fled into the Chaos Wastes, while one king named Viglundr gained his father's approval by murdering all eight of his brothers, then his throne by murdering his father. The prince of a rival tribe conspired with Viglundr to have his father Torgald murdered to take his throne, although this backfired on both of them when the killer proved too much to get rid of, resulting in their humiliating deaths.

Theatre

• Hamlet: Claudius murdered his brother, and everyone who learns of it are outraged. Claudius even lampshades it, calling it 'the primal eldest curse'.
• This is the premise of Eumenides: The Erinyes believe that someone killing their parent is unforgivable regardless of context, while forgiving other murders, so they resolve to pursue and torment Orestes for killing his mother for the rest of his life.
• Westeros: An American Musical: A couple of lines in "The Siege of King's Landing" allude to this:
  Even to the villainous,
  Kinslaying is prohibited

Video Games

• Batman: Arkham Asylum: At one point, the player can hear various mooks discussing what Joker required them to do in order to join his gang. One guy says that Joker instructed him to kill his sister, which he did as he always hated his sister. Another guy says that the Joker kept telling him the same thing, even though he didn't have a sister; so he just killed some random woman. Joker approved.
  • In Batman: Arkham City, one of the Joker's men boasts about killing his mother by force feeding her a poisoned birthday cake.
  • Also in City, Calendar Man talks about murdering his mother on Mother's Day and father on Father's Day.
• In Castlevania 64, Actrise's worst crime is sacrificing her child to Dracula for eternal life. Carrie, who had a close bond with her stepmother despite not being related by blood, and was saddened by having to kill her vampirized cousin, considers Actrise utterly despicable for this.
• Crusader Kings:
  • Crusader Kings II: Executing or being caught murdering one of your relatives or dynasty members causes your character to get the trait "Kinslayer" (subdivided in the 2.8 update into degrees of severity depending on how closely related you were). This inflicts significant penalties to the Diplomacy stat and other characters' opinions of you, and getting rid of the trait is very difficult. There are exceptions, though:
    • Muslims are exempted because succession and decadence mechanics often require kinslaying, a loose adaption of Ottoman princes' historical tendency to murder each other to take the throne. Offering a close relative as a Human Sacrifice in pagan rituals (e.g. Norse blots) doesn't count as kinslaying, either, nor does killing a relative as a Germanic pagan in a Holmgang event. Holy Fury also downplayed it with members of Tribal governments, whose version of the Kinslayer trait gives a minor opinion penalty with family members but makes you more romantically attractive.
    • Other work-arounds include throwing a family member in the oubilette until they die of "natural causes," appointing them the commander of a group of soldiers you then order into a hopeless battle, and refusing to summon the court physician if they fall deathly ill. Since death is only a potential outcome of these actions, it doesn't count as murder!
  • Crusader Kings III controls the reaction via religious doctrine, making kinslaying range from being considered high crime to being considered no worse than any other murder.
• Darksiders has the story of the Nephilim, warriors of angel and demon blood, who waged a war on reality itself for not being given a realm of their own. Four of them grew dissatisfied with the bloodshed and sided with the Charred Council, who gave them incredible power and made them the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Their first task was to correct the senseless violence of the Nephilim by killing every last one of them. Death became infamous for his role in the genocide of their brothers, personally slaying Absalom, the first of their kind, and imprisoned their souls in an amulet. One of his many titles is “Kinslayer” as a result, and despite his claims to the contrary, he’s the only one of the four to hold regrets over his actions.
• In Final Fantasy Tactics, two of the more evil characters engage in kinslaying, inspiring horror from those who learn about their crimes.
  • Late in the game, it is revealed that Barbaneth Beoulve did not die of illness, but was poisoned by his eldest son. The killer's brother is outraged by the action, and calls the murderer out on it, saying that it's worse than even the latter's killing of their liege lord. Shortly after being defeated, the murderer transforms into a Lucavi and kills his brother in a cutscene; while the Lucavi may have been in control, the host had no qualms with fratricide.
  • Folmarv Tengille transforms into his Lucavi form at Riovanes castle, killing his son. When his daughter learns the truth, she turns against him, at which point he tries to kill her, too.
• Fire Emblem
  • In Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, Lundgren, the main antagonist of Lyn's Tale, establishes himself as an especially despicable villain by poisoning his brother, the Marquess of Caelin, to seize his title, and trying have his niece Lyndis (aka Lyn) killed in order to remove the only other people who could oppose him. The narrator describes him as a man who'd kill his own kin for power.
  • Fire Emblem Warriors: During the game's climax, Darios ends up sacrificing his father to resurrect Velezark. Even though Oskar waged war against Aytolis for the purpose of reviving Velezark to gain his power, was planning to sacrifice Queen Yelena, Rowan and Lianna's mother, to that end, and was perfectly willing to kill his own son for the sake of his goals, the heroes are all absolutely shocked and horrified that Darios would kill his own father in cold blood.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses has Dimitri believe this. On the Crimson Flower route, if Felix is recruited and fights Dimitri, Dimitri will be furious to learn that his former friend Felix killed his own father Rodrigue, a Parental Substitute to Dimitri, and vow to kill Felix himself. He also despises Edelgard under the mistaken belief that she killed her own mother, along with Dimitri's father and many others, in the Tragedy of Duscur.
  • The sentiment is present to some extent in Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. At the end of Part 1 of the Blue Lions route, Dimitri personally executes his uncle Rufus, who'd led a coup and tried to start civil war within the Kingdom. While Rufus' punishment is deserved and necessary, Shez feels a bit disturbed by witnessing Dimitri be the one to carry it out, but Felix replies that doing so i Dimitri's duty as king.
• God of War:
  • Kratos earned the title Ghost of Sparta after accidentally killing his first family during a berserker rage, something arranged by Ares; the oracle of the village where it happened proceeded to use a spell to fuse their ashes to Kratos' skin, ensuring the mark of his "terrible deed" would be known to all. Kratos himself was so horrified that he instantly renounced his servitude to Ares. In III, Cronos spitefully calls him "a coward who kills his own kin," though he has little room to talk.
  • Subverted in God of War (PS4). Atreus expresses shock and disgust when they encounter a ghost of a man who was killed by his son. The idea of a son killing his father clearly is unfathomable to Atreus. Several times he questions out loud to Kratos what would lead someone to do such a thing. Players who have seen Kratos' extensive backstory know that Kratos personally murdered his own family, both mortals and gods, so he defers from answering. Later, when they find the murdered body of the son, Atreus says that the son got what he deserved. However, when Kratos' patricide is revealed to Atreus, the boy is more distressed by the idea that as a god, he may be destined to end up killing Kratos. When Kratos assures him that this doesn't have to be their fate, Atreus accepts his word and their relationship resumes as normal.^note If anything however, the Giants' prophecies appear to be pointing towards Atreus unintentionally killing Kratos for real and deep regret at the loss.
  • Baldur, who has been driven insane from Sense Loss Sadness, obsesses over murdering the woman who cast the curse on him — his mother. Even after Atreus breaks the curse, he still wants her dead. Kratos decides he needs a dirt nap until Ragnarok (eventually) brings him back.^note It don't; the nine realms don't realize the fates/norns/oracles see (or make) the most predictable outcomes rather than a deterministic fate - and gods are predictable.
  • God of War Ragnarök: During Ragnarok, Odin snaps (yet again) and stabs Thor to death in a fit of Control Freak-induced anger.
• inFAMOUS: Second Son: Delsin Rowe spends the entire game looking for a cure to the malady that plagues his tribal reservation. If you play Delsin as a paragon, his tribe welcomes him back as a hero and a savior. However, if you play Delsin as a renegade, he is shunned for the campaign of destruction he waged on innocent citizens. In response to this rejection, Delsin's last act in the game is to use his powers to nuke his entire tribe, leaving no survivors, a stark contrast from Paragon Delsin who is completely distraught when his older brother Reggie dies to save Delsin (Reggie is the only tribe member to die in the Paragon run).
• In Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Lady Tremaine and her daughters snap from anger and jealousy and try to murder Cinderella, the daughter of Tremaine's last husband, after keeping her imprisoned as a scullery maid for about 13 years. Aqua considers an evil stepfamily torturing and murdering an orphaned, defenseless daughter for petty reasons the most heinous crime imaginable, and shows relief when the Cursed Coach drops a bomb on them, killing them or turning them into Heartless.
• In King of Dragon Pass, kinslaying is considered to be one member of a clan killing another member (with slaves being exempt) and is an extreme crime, which is why those guilty of other crimes are typically outlawed so they are no longer part of your clan and can be killed freely. There's a reason for this: kinslaying invites the forces of Chaos and curses the clan wherein it happens for years on end. One event chain in the game involves a drunken brawl ending in a kinslaying, and your entire clan ends up greatly disheartened and you have a much higher chance of suffering negative events for the next few years before the curse passes. Another event chain involves your clan accepting an outlawed warrior only to later find he is guilty of kinslaying and his former clan is seeking revenge.
• In Tyranny, this is part of the standard recruitment process for the Scarlet Chorus. After conquering a region, they round up the survivors and set them against their own friends and family, to kill or be killed. This serves to identify those who are strong and/or depraved enough to join The Horde as well as helping to break them down emotionally into savage killers.

Web Original

• AsteroidQuest: It's mentioned a few times that the mafia don, Father Zozu, doesn't kill his sons. And since it's the mafia, it's all a big family, right? Technically, he's still heavily biased towards his biological sons like Maklata, but when the latter's multiple murders of family members catch up with him, Father Zozu makes a point of disowning him before having him shot to death.
  Father Zozu: I do not kill my sons. But in light of your recent actions, you are no longer any son of mine.
• Tribe Twelve: The big thing that marked Mary Asher as "The Selfish" was her lack of concern for her family. Not only did she kill her most recent husband during the course of the story, but her son Milo's journals feature her not only lying to, brainwashing and using him, but also claim she not only tried to kill Milo's father, but also attempted to burn down her sister's, brother-in-law's, and young nephew's house to kill them as well.

Webcomics

• In Girl Genius, Anevka Stormvoraus fires a powerful electrical charge that sets her dress on fire at her father Aaronev while his back is turned. Then she quickly retorts that he used her (alongside many other girls) as a test subject for a resurrection machine that crippled her when it failed, and would have caused Loss of Identity and the return of his old lover (squick included) if it had succeeded. Still, the way she casually discarded him defines her ruthless character.
  • This is later subverted, as it turns out Anevka's extended family, the Stormvoraus dynasty and its cadet branches, is a Big, Screwed-Up Family and murder of family is extremely common in it. When one of Anevka's cousins, Martellus, starts going on a murdering spree to secure his claim as head of the family no-one really bats an eye, and Violetta (another distant cousin) at one point comments that she liked one of her aunts because she's pretty sure she never intentionally tried to have her killed... Or at least wasn't trying very hard if she was.
    Martellus: Don't get me wrong, I could kill family members all day and know I was making the world a better place.

Western Animation

• Dragons: Riders of Berk: Dagur the Deranged is introduced having replaced his father Oswald the Agreeable as chief of the Berserker Tribe with it heavily implied that he killed Oswald. Subverted when it's later revealed that Oswald disappeared and Dagur just let everybody think he killed Oswald to look strong.
  • Hiccup convinces Heather to spare Dagur citing this trope after revealing that they are siblings.
• DuckTales (2017): Magica de Spell routinely abuses her niece while showing little concern for her, and seemingly kills her personally for her Heel–Face Turn.
• Elena of Avalor:
  • The backstory of the show is that Elena's cousin Esteban betrayed his family to Shuriki, out of a promise of power and out of revenge for feeling unloved. However, the deal was that Shuriki would only depose them from the throne, not kill them, which she broke, and guilt-ridden from losing his family, Esteban continued to help her rule Avalor. When his cousins and grandparents are freed from their magical seals while his aunt and uncle remain dead, he spends most of the show trying to keep it a secret out of fear of being disowned, which proves true when they do end up finding out. The cast find him reprehensible (even more so when he breaks out of jail with dangerous criminals including the current Big Bad to avoid his punishment), to the point that Elena sentences him to banishment on a remote island.
    • On the other side, no one raises an eyebrow at Elena making kill shots at Esteban after he becomes a fugitive, as he's become dangerous enough that lethal force may be necessary.
  • Elena's other cousin Cristobal was fine with his father's death, as it meant he inherited his fortune, and he also has no problem with betraying his family to a group of dangerous villains because Shuriki promised him money. After the bad guys are defeated and he's being arrested, he pleads to Elena that they're familia, only to be retorted that he has no concept of what "familia" really is.
  • After Ash risks Carla's life in one of her evil schemes, Victor puts his foot down and decides he and Carla are no longer a part of her plans. In response, Ash unhesitatingly petrifies him (he gets better), which ends up sealing Victor and Carla's Heel–Face Turn.
• The Owl House: Emperor Belos has committed numerous evil actions in his long reign on the Boiling Isles with no regrets. But the one crime that actually haunts him to this day is the murder of his brother, Caleb, after discovering he had been in a relationship with a witch. Belos cannot stand reliving that memory and shows genuine fear when he sees the ghostly hallucination of Caleb with a dagger above his head. However, Belos refuses to take responsibility for his brother's death and instead tries to remedy his crime by creating clones of Caleb... whom he eventually kills for not being the Caleb he wanted.
• Played With in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, during the Umbara arc, Captain Rex along with General Pong Krell receive a transmission from a member of the 212th squadron informing them that the Umbarans have seized their armor and are using it for a disguise. Due to secretly being a traitor, Krell takes advantage of this and tells the 212th squadron that the same thing happened to them. This leads to the two clone squadrons attacking each other, resulting in several deaths before Captain Rex catches on. this is treated as Krell's Moral Event Horizon In-Universe, and results in all of the clones (excluding Dogma) turning on Krell.
• Young Justice: Similarly to the comics version, Harm gains his power by killing his sister Greta. This version does this to become "pure evil" so he could wield the mystic sword of Beowulf. Seeing the ghost of his sister removes the "purity" from his heart, rendering him unable to wield the sword.

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