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Laser-Guided Tyke-Bomb

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Iczer-1: I have a sister? What do you want?
Iczer-2: Your death. I was created for one purpose alone — kill Iczer-1. Ready to die?
— Iczer-1

You're the Big Bad and all your Evil Plans are thwarted. The hero can take anything you can dish out and then some, the Mooks cower in the corner whenever he so much as looks at them, and The Dragon is kindly recommending that you run for the hills. Can nobody stop this unstoppable juggernaut of justice? The answer is no.

Enter the Laser-Guided Tykebomb, a henchman with one purpose in life and one purpose only: to take down the good guys. The LGT may be a specially-constructed robot, a human raised from birth to carry out the deed or normal minion promoted from the ranks to fill the role. This nemesis will often have powers designed to counter or match its targets, or be equipped to exploit their Kryptonite Factor.

Another scenario has a character feeling a Face–Heel Turn coming on, so they need someone to kill them as a kind of Suicide by Cop, except no "Cop" is strong enough so they have to make their own.

Can often overlap with Hero Killer or Professional Killer.

Heroes have been known to be created this way to destroy specific villains, in which case their creators are generally morally dubious.

Subtrope of Tyke-Bomb. Likely to suffer from Unfulfilled Purpose Misery if denied their single goal in life.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Afro Samurai:
    • The bad guys constructed a robot version of Afro able to mimic all of his abilities specifically to kill him.
    • They may have also groomed Jinnosuke, Afro's old best friend, for this specific purpose.
  • Android Kikaider: The Animation: Hakaider, Kikaider's Evil Counterpart. This backfires when Hakaider repeatedly spares Kikaider, even attacking other Monsters of the week, so that he can eventually fight and defeat Kikaider at his strongest, bringing the most meaning to his (Hakaider's) existence.
  • Itona of Assassination Classroom was trained and genetically modified by Shiro specifically to kill Korosensei, to the point where every time he fails, he almost dies.
  • Eren Yeager, the main character from Attack on Titan becomes one as a result of witnessing a Titan devour his mother, swearing to exterminate every last one of them. This is aided by him gaining the ability to transform into a Titan, with it hinted his father injecting him with a mysterious substance is the cause.
  • In Bleach Wonderweiss's Resurección turned out to be specifically designed by Aizen to counter Genryūsai Yamamoto's zanpakuto Ryujin Jakka by absorbing its flames. The process of giving him this power stripped him of all higher brain functions, so he's not very useful for anything else.
  • Rin from Blue Exorcist is allowed to live so he can take down his father, Satan. Inverted as well though, since the guy who raised him, raised him as his son.
  • In Dragon Ball Z, all the androids were made and somehow designed to kill Goku in order to avenge the Red Ribbon army. They choose otherwise, anyway.
    • Only 17 and 18 choose otherwise. 19 remains faithful to Dr Gero and 16, while he doesn't seem to lament the loss of his creator, still wants to kill Goku. The last one is bizarre when combined with 16's love of life and extremely calm demeanor.
      • Being purely robotic (17 and 18 are Cyborgs, made by upgrading a pair of human siblings), 16 was initially unable to overcome his core programming. However, he absolutely refused to engage in any violence against anyone or anything other than his designated target until the threat of Cell presented itself. He does meet Goku face-to-face near the end of the saga, but restrains himself from attacking, because that isn't what he wants to do.
  • Fairy Tail: Somewhat inverted. Natsu was originally the deceased younger brother of Zeref, who delved into black magic in order to find out a way to revive him. His studies angered the gods, who cursed him. As long as he valued life, everything around him would die — and they made him immortal to boot, as well. However, he can (in theory) be killed — the demons of the Book of Zeref were originally created to do so but none had the power to do it. Natsu was revived as the potentially strongest demon E.N.D. (Etherious Natsu Dragneel) to not only accomplish Zeref's original goal, but also to create the one being capable of killing his older brother.
  • Schrodinger from Hellsing, who was created for the sole purpose of poisoning Alucard.
  • Lady Snowblood has an extreme example. The protagonist was concieved in jail solely as a means for her mother to take revenge on those who hurt her and her family. Add a lifetime of Training from Hell and a Parasol of Pain, and cut her loose with a list to hunt every last one down. The protagonist even comments that she is not a person, merely a "phantom of [her] mother."
  • In Magic Knight Rayearth The Magic Knights were specifically summoned to Cephiro by Princess Emeraude to kill her.
    • In the second season of the anime, Nova is one of these, aimed at Hikaru.
  • My Hero Academia has Todoroki. His father Endeavor specifically married his mother to produce an heir able to surpass All Might as the Number One Hero.
  • Princess Kraehe in Princess Tutu is an unusual case, since she was raised with a specific purpose in mind as part of the Raven's Evil Plan, but rather than teaching her to hate Mytho, he sets her up to fall desperately in love with him. The Raven tells Kraehe that she's a crow born with a "hideous human body", and as such, no human but the Prince could ever love her. Once Princess Tutu threatens to steal Mytho, Kreahe is willing to do anything the Raven asks if it helps her get him for herself.
  • In Rave Master it's the Big Bad, Lucia who fits the bill. His isolation as a child resulted in him having little contact with sentient creatures other than a fragment of Endless who, despite not having quite enough control over him to be a Man Behind the Man, convinced him that the sole reason he existed was to trigger the world-ending 'Overdrive' explosion.
  • Soul Eater has Crona trained by Medusa specifically to become a being capable of killing Kishin Asura. Shinigami's intention in creating Kid can also be seen as a 'heroic' example of this, as he also fully expected his heir to be able to kill Asura.
  • The Mini-Cons are a race of LGT in Transformers: Armada, created by Unicron to sow strife and feed his hunger for negative energy.
  • In Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-, King Ashura raised Fai to do this to him.

    Comic Books 
  • The Boys: Black Noir, a Homelander clone who is slightly more powerful thanks to refined Super Serum, was created specifically to kill Homelander if he went rogue. Problems arose when Homelander didn't go rogue. Black Noir wanted to fulfill his purpose so he gaslit Homelander by committing atrocities in Homelander's costume (like raping Butcher's wife or eating children) and sending the photos to Homelander, hoping to drive him insane. It worked, and Homelander went full Then Let Me Be Evil.
  • The Flash: Inertia/Thaddeus Thawne II counts as this (as well as an Evil Twin) in Impulse. Cloned from the eponymous protagonist Bart Allen by the evil Thawne family, he was specifically created to take down the Allens (the Thawnes' rivals) and more specifically Bart. Inertia later realizes that he will never earn the Thawnes' approval or be loved by anyone and (understandably) gets very mad. He still wants to and later succeeds to kill Bart, though.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy: Drax the Destroyer was created for the sole purpose of killing Thanos. He succeeds. Thanos doesn't seem to mind.
  • Spider-Man:
    • The Scorpion is a petty crook who got a regrettable upgrade into a powered but ultimately self-serving assassin
    • The Spider-Slayer robots are specialized mindless arachnicides built by Spencer Smythe and his son Alistair.
  • Star Wars: A very unusual kind of LGT was used in Jabba the Hutt: The Art of the Deal. The first issue had the Hutt travel to a meeting with another crime lord, Gaar Suppoon, to trade valuable resources. After a small ceremony in honor of Jabba, the negotiations started off with Suppoon insulting the Hutt for deigning to threaten him with a bomb. Just in case the threat had been real, he had the Empire send one of their best explosives experts, Kosh Kurp, to search the place, and he turned up nothing. The bartering then began in earnest, with each gangster double-crossing and cheating the other, until Suppoon, having been outmaneuvered by Jabba, lost his temper and attempted to have the Hutt killed. Jabba warned him that if he did not regain his temper, he would detonate his bomb. Suppoon, unimpressed, told Jabba to do so, at which point the Hutt called him "Sonopo Bomoor". After a beat, Kosh Kurp turned to Suppoon and asked if he really was the Sonopo Bomoor, the one who razed the city of Bonaka Nueno on Intuci, and encouraged his blood crazed minions to slaughter Kurp's family as he, a mere child, watched. The whole situation does not end well for Suppoon.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The original incarnation were originally the "good guys" version of this trope: Splinter had trained them from birth (or rather, from the moment they had been mutated) in order to kill the Shredder.
  • Transmetropolitan had the hero being followed by a young kid with no head. The hero (and the future) is so off the wall nobody is too surprised by the lack of head. The hero throws the kid out a window, wherein he explodes. Turns out it was literally a laser guided tyke bomb, created by one of his many, many enemies.
  • X-Men: The Sentinels are a series of robots built for the sole purpose of hunting mutants.
    • An earlier version of the Sentinels (retconned into existence) is TESS-One, a robot constructed during World War II for taking down Captain America if he ever went rogue.
    • In AXIS, Inverted Tony Stark unleashes new Sentinels specifically designed to neutralize his fellow heroes.

    Fan Works 
  • In the Jackie Chan Adventures fic The Stronger Evil, Shendu and his seven Demon Sorcerer siblings were birthed for this purpose. After humans killed Apsu, the husband of Tiamat, Typhon promised her the vengeance she wanted in exchange for birthing his spawn. When her children were old enough, she cast them into the world to wreak havoc on her behalf. They did that and more, but Tiamat was ashamed by the results and put herself in exile.

    Film 

    Literature 
  • Halo: Ghosts of Onyx introduces a good guy example with Spartan-IIIs, who are gathered from children orphaned by Covenant attacks, and trained for en masse suicide missions targeting Covenant facilities; it's explicitly stated that they were created to "trade lives for time", with the vast majority dying by their early teens. The first chapter shows the aftermath of one of these assaults, which leaves only two survivors, one of whom was so traumatized that she became mute. The man who proposed the idea clearly was not a "nice" man, as even the person who created the Spartan-IIs (themselves an example of this trope) views him as overly lacking in morality. The IIIs' Spartan-II commanding officer recognizes both the necessity and horribleness of his task, but does what he can to save as many as possible, even if it only amounts to a drop in the sea.
  • In Harry Potter this is inverted. Voldemort attacked Baby!Harry and Harry grew up to be the most effective weapon against him because he unwittingly placed a piece of his soul in Harry when he inadvertently killed himself when the spell rebounded.
  • The strategists from Ender's Game were trained to take down the formics — Ender was the unlucky one who was the best at it.
  • In The Princess 99 the Well-Intentioned Extremist group Birds of Prey purposely send their assasin to Edgewood Academy in order to kill Princess Aurore, a.k.a. Prof. Colette, who is currently teaching there, in the most public manner possible
  • In Darth Plagueis, the midichlorians of the galaxy created Anakin Skywalker to bring about the downfall of Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious to punish them for the unethical experiments they performed on the midichlorians.
  • In Twig, the Puppeteer is a teacher at a preparatory academy which caters to the children of the rich and powerful who abducts and replaces several of his students with clones that he has grown to take their place over the course of years, for the sole purpose of making them pull a Murder-Suicide against their parents. It doesn't go entirely to plan, as the time requirements mean that not all of the parents are still in positions of power when the clones are mature, and eventually one of the last clones, deciding that she values her life over her creator's plan, outright defects and becomes a Sixth Ranger for the protagonists.
  • In Horus Heresy, Spear is created with a specific purpose of taking down the Emperor of Mankind and so is designed to be a Black Pariah - basically a super-anti-psyker to Emperor's super-psyker. In the end, we don't get to see what the result of their confrontation would be, though, as Spear dies and Horus pulls the plug on any further experiments.
  • In Robert Silverberg's The Alien Years, a man is given the responsibility of raising a child to be able to kill the mind-reading aliens who have enslaved the planet. He trains the child to be able to kill anything without a second thought so that the aliens would not be forewarned of his intentions by reading his mind. It doesn't work. That's why the man also raised his own son to love the aliens, so he could kill them without betraying his intentions.
  • Vlad Taltos is slowly being revealed as being trained to be one, including through the form of his previous reincarnations, for an unknown purpose. Possible guesses including killing Verra, since he's now in possession of "Godslayer", predicted to be her downfall (as of Issola), and destroying the Cycle that controls Dragaeran society. The second one has some evidence towards having already started, according to Verra herself (in Vallista).
  • God-Emperor of Dune features a variation of this in Hwi Noree. While she was born and raised to be the instrument of Leto II's downfall, it is not because she's well suited to kill him. Instead, Hwi was raised to be the perfect Honey Trap for Leto II. The idea was to shake Leto II's commitment to his Golden Path by reminding him of his humanity. The Ixians went so far as to raise Hwi in a no-chamber her whole life to ensure that Leto II wouldn't predict her arrival with his prescience.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: It can be argued that both the Vorta and the Jem'Hadar are the Founders' personal laser guided tykebombs, with the Vorta as the propaganda bombs that disperse leaflets, and the Jem'Hadar as the regular bombs that follow after if the first batch doesn't work.
  • Connor from Angel, with the Oedipal complication of being raised to kill his biological father.
  • Stargate Atlantis has the good guys create a gynoid to destroy the planet of the Asuran Replicators. She is creepily fine with it, despite being fully aware that she will die in the process.
  • In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, they have all but said outright that John isn't being trained to be a great leader or a hero or a soldier, but a weapon aimed at Skynet. Which apparently is exactly how John's own future self planned it.
  • Melody Pond in Doctor Who, aimed at the Doctor. The good news is that the Doctor realizes this Tykebomb will become the good guy River Song, whom he's already met at much later points in her timeline. The bad news is that her younger self choosing not to kill him once she gets to know him threatens to destroy the universe because it's a fixed point in time...but the Doctor has ways around that.
  • Helena on Orphan Black was raised by the Prolethean cult to assassinate clones — though the Proletheans neglected to inform her that she herself was a clone.
  • Van Helsing (2016): Late in Season 4, it's revealed that Hansen created Violet and Jack as the next stage in Vanessa and Scarlet's hybridization, designed to be capable of killing Dracula.

    Music 

    Myth And Legend 
  • Older Than Feudalism: The monster Typhon in Greek mythology, spawned by Gaia to take down Zeus. (Failed, of course.)
    • Gaia also spawned an army of snake-legged giants to overthrow the Olympians — an entire army of tykebombs. They also failed, thanks to Heracles' aid.
    • Zeus himself was a tykebomb raised by Gaia to overthrow his father Cronus. He succeeded — all too well for Gaia's tastes.
  • In Norse mythology, Váli is born to avenge Baldr, and he kills Höðr when he is one day old.
  • In most modern tellings of the Arthurian Legend, Sir Mordred is one of these, raised to kill his father Arthur by his mother Morgause.

    Video Games 
  • The Spartan-IIs and IIIs of Halo are examples made by the good guys:
    • The Spartan-IIs, including the Master Chief himself, were originally kidnapped by the UNSC at around age six in order to be trained to crush colonial rebellions through assassination and sabotage. It just turned out that they were really good at fighting genocidal aliens too. Nonetheless, while the IIs themselves are acknowledged as true heroes, later media has also explored the tragedies and less-than-stellar ethics behind their creation.
    • As noted in the "Literature" section, the Spartan-IIIs were designed to be deployed against high-value Covenant targets, with all of them expected to die by their early teens. Nonetheless, their commanding officer managed to transfer several particularly promising trainees into (slightly) less-suicidal elite units, both because he genuinely wanted as many to live as possible and because he felt their talents would have been wasted on the typical III suicide mission. One of these elite S-III units, Noble Team, are the protagonists of Halo: Reach.
  • Bass/Forte in Mega Man (Classic) was built for the sole purpose of destroying Mega Man. His "brother" Zero was originally supposed to destroy Mega Man X.
    • Another example would be Mega Man Battle Network 6's Cybeast Falzar, which was created to eliminate Cybeast Gregar. Unfortunately, it went rogue and became just as much of a menace as its target.
  • The main character in BioShock is a artificially-aged, genetically engineered, mind-controlled assassin created by one Big Bad to take down another.
    • In the sequel, Eleanor, literally - you can use the Summon Eleanor plasmid to drop a Tykebomb on any unruly foes.
    • And again in BioShock Infinite: Elizabeth was raised to lead Columbia and eventually wage war on the surface world below. Luckily, Booker rescues her very early in her indoctrination, and so it's only when she's recaptured and tortured for years that she breaks and becomes the ruler Comstock wants her to be. And then she undoes it by sending Booker back in time to save her before it happens.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Solid Snake is one. His modified FOXDIE virus planted by Naomi Hunter was made to kill EVA, Ocelot and Big Boss by merely contacting them, and it would have lost control if it wasn't for Snake's Rapid Aging. This is also the exact reason why he Did Not Get the Girl — being a Walking FOXDIE makes you a Cartwright Curse, after all.
  • The Player Character in Jade Empire is the Laser-Guided Tykebomb against the Big Bad. Of course, you can blame The Man Behind the Man for that one...apparently good guys cannot create a LGT.
    • But the player is technically a laser-guided tykebomb against the Big Bad's rival for power.
  • The Novus from Universe at War: Earth Assault are an entire species of robots made for the purpose of destroying the Hierarchy, the alien conglomerate that destroyed their creators.
  • Famously, in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, Fayt, Maria and Sophia are specifically genetically engineered by their own parents to be able to enter 4D Space and be able to combat anything that they find there.
  • Tidus in Final Fantasy X is the Laser-Guided Tykebomb against the Big Bad Sin. Of course, you can blame The Fayth for that one...apparently good guys can create a LGT.
  • Starkiller from The Force Unleashed is a sort of subversion. He was raised like a Laser Guided Tykebomb against the Emperor, but was really raised with the purpose of being bait against anyone who might try and start a rebellion.
  • Crunch from Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex.
  • Metal Sonic from the Sonic the Hedgehog games was created for this purpose.
  • Kirah in the penultimate level of Gitaroo Man. Our hero definitely didn't see that coming.
  • In Dust: An Elysian Tail, it's eventually revealed that Dust himself is one of these, specifically created and groomed to stop General Gaius and his army.
  • Kratos from God of War can be considered one since he was meant to destroy Olympus. He was raised in the warrior culture of Sparta. He was spared by the war gods of Olympus for use in the future. Eventually, his "training" was taken over first by Ares. After they had a falling out over the incident with Kratos' family Athena took over his training and targeted him toward Ares. Ironically, other events set him back on course to destroying Olympus which may or may not have also been in Athena's plans.
  • All of the Vessels in Hollow Knight, are this, created as hollow shells with no mind, will, nor voice in order to be able to contain an infection that preyed on dreams. They include the player character, the titular Hollow Knight, and the Lost Kin. All are children of the Pale King, thrown into the Abyss to make them Vessels- a process that claimed the lives of most of them. The Hollow Knight was supposed to be the perfectly empty 'Pure Vessel', but somehow it gained an idea that made it not completely hollow (the game implies it was a familial connection to either the Pale King or the player character), giving the infection a foothold and leading to the situation at the start of the game.
  • Ultraxion of World of Warcraft was raised being constantly fed the energy of nether drakes, knowing that his sole purpose in existing was to kill the Aspects and bring about the end of Azeroth with his own death.
  • BlazBlue: The purpose of Nu-13's existence is to terminate and become one with Ragna the Bloodedge, triggering an Apocalypse How. Everyone else is an obstacle that needs either avoiding or destroying. In Chronophantasma, it becomes apparent that she can't understand living any other way. For most of the series this is just her following her programming, but later she actually takes this as a personal goal and her own personal dream. Lambda-11 shows lesser extents of doing the same, due to her and Nu's connection - except Lambda decides she wants to be with Ragna so she can protect him forever.
  • Type: Null in Pokémon Sun and Moon was created specifically to be able to defeat Ultra Beasts.

    Visual Novels 

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 
  • The Sailors in Sailor Nothing are groomed by Magnificent Kamen specifically to be his weapons against the Dark Queen, just as Cobalt creates the "super Yamiko" specifically to kill the Sailors.
  • Mecha Sonic in Super Mario Bros. Z. When he was first created as Metal Sonic, like the rest of Eggman's badniks, his sole purpose was to kill Sonic, but failure after failure to do so fueled his desire to kill Sonic, transforming it into pure hatred until finally, he merged with 3 other Robot Sonics to become the monstrosity he's portrayed as. In his new form he completely annihilates Mobius and kills everyone that Sonic and Shadow love, prompt them to be teleported to Mario's dimension via Chaos Control.
  • Worm:
    • The Case 53s are the failed experiments of Cauldron's cape-creation project. We later learn that Cauldron's deliberately kept them alive and around to serve a secondary purpose of hiding the scent of regular capes from Scion due to their powers originating from Eden's shards, not his own.
    • Scion's last words to Eidolon just prior to killing him, suggests the latter had some role in creation of the Endbringers.

    Western Animation 
  • Doomsday in Justice League Unlimited was designed for the sole purpose of killing Superman. This is likely a subtle Mythology Gag to the fact that Doomsday was written into The DCU for the sole purpose of making a "Superman's Death!" storyline.
  • The Young Justice (2010) incarnation of Superboy. He was created by Project Cadmus (under the orders of the Light) to either replace a missing Superman or take out a rogue one. The villains' tendency to call him "the weapon" suggests they were leaning towards the latter.
  • The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) version of Karai. Shredder kidnapped her as an infant, raised her as his daughter and kunoichi minion, and had her believe that Splinter killed her mother. As such, she wants Splinter dead. Except Splinter is her father, and Shredder killed her mother...
  • In the second season of Legion of Super Heroes (2006), Superman X is a heroic version whose sole purpose is to defeat Imperiex.
  • In Samurai Jack, the cadre of assassins known as the Daughters of Aku were born and raised for exactly one purpose — hunt down and kill Jack. It's Deconstructed, however, as this means that they have no social skills or understanding of the world outside their training whatsoever. Since they were also always told to kill Jack and trained relentlessly for agility and physical strength, they also have no teamwork—when together, they all fight like as if they're alone, allowing Jack to use their attacks against each other and even use one Daughter to conceal an attack meant for another.
  • In X-Men: Evolution, X-23 was created and raised since birth to be a killer for HYDRA. At first X-23 blames Wolverine for her wretched existence and tries to kill him, but relents when she realizes that he had nothing to do with her creation or emotional and mental abuse. She, later, makes it her sole mission to take down HYDRA.
  • DuckTales (2017) had Project 87, which was started by F.O.W.L. to defeat Scrooge once and for all by creating an Opposite-Sex Clone of him known as April so they could obtain a powerful magical artifact known as the Papyrus of Binding that could only be found by his direct descendant. The project would be put on hold when Mrs. Beakley (back during her days as Agent 22) found the infant April during a raid on a F.O.W.L. base and — not knowing her exact purpose — decided to raise her as her own granddaughter so she wouldn't be used for evil, giving her the name Webby Vanderquack.

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