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Offing the Offspring

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Because Asuka didn't have enough issues already.

Munkus: Well, I'm the ninth of six children.
Nate: Hmmm?
Munkus: We only counted the offsprings that Mother didn't eat immediately after giving birth to them.
The Book of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles

Some parents would go through Hell and back to protect their kids. Some even take it just a tad too far at times. Sometimes way too far.

And then there are these parents.

They don't love their children. Really. They don't even like them. Truth is, they'd really rather they didn't exist at all. Sometimes, they will actually go so far as to take a personal hand in this. The motto of this sort of parent is "I brought you into this world, and by God, I can take you out of it." Talk about Parental Issues.

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

There are several subtropes into which a murderous parent may fall:

  • Evil Parent: The child is blameless (or at least not guilty of anything deserving of death); the parent just wants to dispose of the child for some reason. Maybe there's a prophecy about the kid coming back and killing the parent; maybe the parent has to keep a pact made with a dark power in which the child's life is the price; maybe the child is The Un-Favourite, or maybe the child was born as an unacceptable nonconformist. Whatever the reason, the mother or father is ultimately just a murderer.
  • Evil Offspring: The parent actually does love the child, at least a little, but there's something seriously wrong about that kid. Maybe the kid's a sadistic Creepy Child who's exhibiting some seriously Troubling Unchildlike Behavior. Maybe the kid's grown up to be a Serial Killer as an adult. The parent may be the only one who can stop the child, or perhaps feels responsible for doing the deed personally as atonement for bringing them into the world.
  • Extended Suicide: The parent sees no other way but to depart this vale of tears and by no means is he or she prepared to leave the child behind. This may happen for a variety of reasons, often coming down to sparing the child a Fate Worse than Death (or a mode of death worse than the quick and clean kill the parent is going to provide). Sadly, this trope has plenty of precedent in Real Life, as attested by many Jewish parents who killed themselves and their children to escape deportation to Nazi death camps during WWII. However, in some particularly gruesome cases the motivation can be much more sinister: for an example, see the mythical heroine Medea, who killed her infant children before lying upon her own sword, to punish her adulterous husband Jason (making this trope Older Than Feudalism).
  • The Choice of Abraham: The parent loves the child. The child loves the parent. But some other overwhelming force is demanding a sacrifice. Maybe God is testing Abraham. Maybe the Nazis are making Sophie choose. Regardless, no one wants this, but it's going to happen anyway.
  • Accidental Murder: Maybe they were trying to kill someone else, or maybe a chain of unfortunate accidents stemmed from their actions led to their child's death. In any case, they never wanted it, it just happened.
  • Death before Dishonour: This happens in upper class families when facing a defeat in a war. The defeat is certain, the ruthless enemy is at the gates and the children can expect getting raped, maimed and killed at the hands of the victorious enemy, but not necessarily in this order. The parent consider it as their honourary duty to save them from Fate Worse than Death by killing them rather than fall on the enemy hands alive.

In the worst case scenario, your entire species will be like this, in that case, you get Abusive Alien Parents.

Sadly, there have been many cases of real-life parents — both mothers and fathers — who murder their own children. In case you are wondering, the technical term for this kind of murder is "filicide".

For the inversion/opposite of this trope, see Self-Made Orphan, Patricide and Matricide. A subtrope of Murder in the Family.

Usually also a case of Would Hurt a Child, as most examples have the offspring be younger than a teenager. Otherwise, it doesn't overlap.

This trope goes back to Greek Mythology with Hesiod's Theogony, and even further to the Mesopotamian creation story EnĆ»ma EliÅ”. Has nothing to do with The Offspring or Offing the Mouth. Outliving One's Offspring is when the child dies for reasons that are not the parent's fault.

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


Example subpages

Other examples:

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    Comedy 
  • Often implied in Emo Phillips's routines, such as commenting on hearing his parents arguing ("You know how parents argue, saying things like 'I told you he'd live!'") or outright claiming he'd do a better job of parenting than his parents did and recounting an incident where he almost died from drinking bleach. Turns out his mother had "foolishly decanted it into the floor wax bottle".

    Comic Books 
  • The Villain Dark Opal from the Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld comic managed to off many (almost all) of his offspring when they came to exact revenge on him for his poor parenting skills. In the end, only his adopted son Carnelin survived the entire original series.
  • Ghost Island: In the first issue, Josh is holding a seance to help a family contact their dead son, Tommy. During said seance, it's revealed that the father killed Tommy by drowning him in a lake because Tommy heard his father and sister in her room every night.
  • Hide: On the day after Kevin's birthday, the next time he sees his family, they try to kill him.
  • Hound: The duel between CĆŗ Cullan and the boy from Alba ends with the boy dying at CĆŗ Cullan's hands as he reveals himself as the only son of CĆŗ Cullan by Eva.
  • Marvel Universe:
    • Captain Marvel (Marvel Comics): Legacy Character Genis-Vell was once under attack by the incorporeal body of the Magus, Adam Warlock's Superpowered Evil Side. In a plan to take over Marvel's body (who could only see him because of his Cosmic Awareness, he employed Marvel's son from the future, who had turned into an Enfant Terrible. Genis at one point in the fight made a horrible decision. This made his son fade away from existence (A la Back to the Future). We're later shown with the gut-wrenching action he had to perform hanging above his son's cradle.
    • ClanDestine: Adam, immortal father of the many Long-Lived Destine siblings, was forced to kill his son Vincent after Vincent spiralled into madness and his powers started warping time and reality. The killing drove a wedge through the surviving siblings and left Adam an emotionally numb Death Seeker for decades.
    • The Eternals: Sui-San, mother of Thanos, tried to kill him as soon as he was born because she saw his future as an Omnicidal Maniac. A'Lars, Thanos's father, stopped her because he saw great potential in Thanos, the first true Eternal child born to Earth's Eternals (a race normally limited by an Immortal Procreation Clause). Unfortunately for the universe, both of them were right.
    • In Immortal Iron Fist, Fat Cobra was forced to kill the hundreds of children he had over the years who got together and tried to kill him, and was horrified finding out (years of booze and fighting also made him forget about most of his past so there was a chance that he didn't know it was his kids at the time). Upon learning this, he burned the biography that he'd commissioned.
    • The Incredible Hulk:
      • The Hulk's Green Scar persona — that is, the one that first appeared during Planet Hulk and World War Hulk — really, really, really wants to kill his son Skaar as he blames Skaar for feeding his mother's spirit to Galactus, killing her off for real (it looks like, anyway). Skaar is equally intent on killing him for abandoning him on a savage planet (Hulk thought he was dead). In the end, they manage to settle things without killing each other.
      • Bruce's father Brian was a nasty piece of work who murdered Bruce's mom and tried to kill him too — while they were visiting her grave no less. Bruce killed him in self-defense. Brian would later briefly come back from the dead in the form of Guilt Hulk — the worst of Bruce's various Hulk personas — to try again. The Green Scar being reminded of Brian during his decisive fight with Skaar, realizing that he's acting no different from his awful father is what causes Greenscar to stop fighting.
    • Spider-Man:
      • Curt Connor's Superpowered Evil Side The Lizard kills Curt's son Billy. The Kravinoff family arranged the whole awful situation in order to "kill" Curt Connor and put The Lizard in control for good. And it worked.
      • During Dark Reign, Norman Osborn brought his son Harry, Peter Parker's best friend, into his Dark Avengers... so he could later have him killed to gain public sympathy, and by extension, support, hitting an all-new low.
      • In Spider-Man: Life Story, an AU Series, Norman Osborn rigs an entire bar with pumpkin bombs to blackmail Peter to follow his instructions, noting that while Spider-Man and Green Goblin would survive such an explosion, the same would not be true of the other patrons. Peter points to Norman that his own son Harry is in the bar, but Norman merely smirks, proving that he doesn't care one bit about using his own son as hostage.
    • Wolverine:
      • In one story, a group of former victims or friends and family of some of Wolverine's Mook Horror Show battles, the Red Right Hand, collected and trained a group of his unknown offspring to be used as enforcers, the Mongrels. He is then informed of their lineage after he had already killed them and the Red Right Hand had killed themselves so he couldn't get any revenge for what they did.
      • His Age of Apocalypse counterpart, Weapon X, kills his daughter Kiriko with his arm cannon, reducing her body to a withered husk. He knew she was his daughter this time, he was just a massive asshole; the main universe Wolverine is the one more upset by it.
      • In Uncanny X-Force, Wolverine kills his son Daken by drowning him. This is arguably worse than the above since the father knew he was killing his son but was forced to do it anyway. He then starts cradling his dead son, weeping and blaming himself for not being able to save his son from going down the wrong path, lamenting the life they could've had together. Just to twist the knife even further, Sabretooth shows up and gloats that he manipulated Daken into forming the new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants just to force Wolverine to kill him, knowing that this would hurt Wolverine worse than anything else Sabretooth had done to him.
    • X-Men: Raven Darkhƶlme a.k.a. Mystique, regularly voted "Marvel's Worst Mother" for several decades, has infamously made two attempts on the lives of her sons, the second time being successful.
      • The first (unsuccessful) attempt was Nightcrawler. Kurtā€™s painful birth caused Mystique to revert from rich Baroness to her natural blue form and get chased out of the German village by a Torches and Pitchforks mob baby in tow, realizing that she could escape by shapeshifting into someone else and the only thing holding her back was the blue little baby in her arms, Raven coldly tossed infant Kurt off a cliff. Depending on the Writer Mystique genuinely regrets her actions... or would willingly do it again. Marvel would retcon this in Nightcrawlerā€™s updated origin, having Raven send Kurt down the river strapped to a log instead, likely in a conservative effort to make Mystique less monstrous.
      • The second is Graydon Creed, whom she had with Sabretooth. Born a normal human, Mystique gave him up to an orphanage and only checked up on him occasionally. When Graydon snuck out to look for her, Mystique revealed her mutant nature and cruelly mocked him. Horrified and embittered by both his patents, Graydon became a mutant hater Boomerang Bigot, leader of the Friends of Humanity and killed the grandson of Mystiqueā€™s girlfriend Destiny. In response, Mystique note  assassinated her own son with a sniper rifle at a presidential rally. For added cruelty, when traversing Hell in Weapon X (2017) and finding Graydon, Mystique was perfectly fine with leaving him there, something that disgusted even Sabretooth!
  • The Alpha in Welcome to Hoxford rips out his sonā€™s heart out and crushes it in revenge for Bakerā€™s betrayal.
  • During the supervillain uprising as depicted by flashbacks in Old Man Hawkeye, Magneto killed Scarlet Witch by impaling her on metal spikes and allowed Quicksilver to be literally crushed underfoot by Atlas.
  • Legion of Super-Heroes villain Universo got tired of having his evil plots thwarted by his son Rond (who was possessed of natural immunity to Universo's hypnotic mind control) and arranged for Rond to die quietly in the hospital after suffering an "accident." Only Rond's secret possession of a Green Lantern Ring kept the plan from working.
  • The Young Justice villain Harm was such a vicious kid that he killed his own sister, Greta/Secret. His parents lived in fear of their lives until his father snapped and shot him. Unfortunately for them, this was part of Harm's Batman Gambit to be a major baddie.
  • In Doomsday Clock, a B-plot revolves around Dr. Manhattan's friendship with a formerly-struggling actor. Manhattan then watches as he's murdered and robbed by his own mother, who had previously kicked him out for being gay and blackmailed him over it. After becoming inspired by Superman's optimism, Manhattan decides to Set Right What Once Went Wrong by convincing him to be honest with himself and avoid this fate.
  • Twisted Dark: In the story "Smile...", Helen visited Derrek O'Malley, a former teacher and lover with whom she had her son Caleb, and his wife. When they part ways, Derrek gives her a smug grin that makes her realize how much he used her, and decides to drown Caleb in a pond.
  • Usagi Yojimbo: the unnamed mother of wicked moneylender Atsuo. Finally unable to tolerate her son's evil, she tricks him into sending his bodyguards away and stabs him in the back. She then begs Usagi to kill her in turn.
  • In MAW, Howie is killed by his mother.
  • In The Sandman (1989) Morpheus kills his son Orpheus (now a disembodied head) at the latter's insistence. This is after he coldly abandoned him to his fate for millennia. His guilt over this and for the killing is one of the reasons Morpheus subconsciously chooses to die in the end.
  • New Teen Titans: The mother of supporting character Frances Kane, driven insane by the recent deaths of her husband and son, decides that Fran is demonically possessed and tries to stab her to death. Since what's actually happened to Fran is that she's developed powerful magnetic abilities, this doesn't work very well.
  • Ultimate Marvel
    • The Ultimates: Thor kills Modi, his son with Hela. Tragically, he tells Modi to his face that he is a disgrace and is happy to kill him, but this is a lie and he is close to tears while he holds his charred corpse.
    • Ultimate X-Men: Magneto tried to kill Quicksilver several times and once even tried to get Wolverine to do the dirty deed.
    • Ultimate Spiderman: Norman Osborn, like his 616 and Spider-Man: Life Story counterparts, tries to murder Harry. Unlike his counterparts, however, he succeeded.
  • In the thirteenth issue of Artifacts the old universe ends and in order to restore the universe Sara tries to kill Hope but was stop by Jackie leading Jackie to create a new universe in which Sara isn't Hope's mother. When Sara finds this out in the new universe Sara suffers from a Heroic BSoD and goes catatonic.
  • Invoked and subverted in the Villains United miniseries. Psycho for Hire Cheshire is blackmailed into joining the Secret Six via threats made against her daughter Lian. The mastermind behind the Six, Mockingbird, has informed her that there is a small bomb implanted in the back of Lian's neck, and if detonated, she would either be killed or left severely brain damaged. Because Cheshire refuses to let anyone control her, and because she's a sociopath with the maternal capabilities of a lizard, she seduces Catman and gets pregnant. This way, not only will she be able to leave the Six regardless of Lian's life because she'll have a replacement baby, it gives a hold on Catman. It isn't until after Cheshire sells the Six out to the Secret Society and gets shot in the chest by Deathstroke that we learn Lian's life was never in danger because Mockingbird lied. Cheshire never found out.
    Cheshire: [Mockingbird] may kill my beloved child. So isn't it fortunate that I'll soon have a replacement
  • Subverted with Lady Shiva, who is twice responsible for the death of her own daughter, Cassandra Cain, but both times brings her Back from the Dead, since she has her own agenda for her.
  • Wonder Woman (2006): The renegade Amazon Astarte ordered her daughter Theana executed when Diana started getting through to Theana with her message about love.
  • The 33rd issue of G.I. Joe: America's Elite had Cobra Commander kill his own son Billy with a poison dart.
  • Played for Black Comedy during the Bizarro World arc of All-Star Superman, where Bizarro asks about the absence of Bizarro Batman after he summons the Unjustice League and Bizarro Green Lantern explains that Bizarro Batman was shot by his own parents.
  • The Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special has a Framing Device where the story is read from a book by a couple who fear how their children will react from discovering neither of them could afford Christmas presents this year because the father was laid off the week before, the book promising that the story is just what is needed to appease the children's wrath. Unfortunately for the couple, the book self-destructs after the last page says the story is only good for one read. This results in the father resorting to shooting his kids.
  • Watchmen at one point has the police investigate the aftermath of a father committing a murder-suicide with his two young daughters.
  • Swamp Thing: The 22nd issue of the original 1972 series had Dr. Daniel Solomon forced to fatally shoot his son John to prevent him from spreading a plague to the surface world.

    Fairy Tales 
  • In the first edition of The Brothers Grimm' Fairy Tales, Snow White's and Hansel and Gretel's own mothers tried to have them killed. This was Bowdlerised to a Wicked Stepmother in the second edition, but the father still (reluctantly) cooperates in Hansel and Gretel.
  • Evil mothers-in-law are fond of accusing their daughters-in-law of this, as in "The Six Swans" and "The Twelve Wild Ducks". The heroines are almost executed by being burned at the stake for it, but they're saved by the titular Ducks/Swans (or better said, their transformed brothers) and the mothers-in-law either fall dead right there (Six Swans) or are executed (Wild Ducks)
  • In "The Lassie and Her Godmother" and "Our Lady's Child/ "Mary's Child", this is regarded as the most plausible explanation for the heroine's newborns disappearing. Both accusations turn out to be wrong, and the heroine is saved by divine intervention (since a big, yet babies-unrelated mistake/sin was the cause for the newborns being taken away by the Virgin Mary in the first place) and gets to be reunited with her kids. Also, in the first tale, a mother-in-law is involved, but in that case it's more about her also believing said rumors rather than spreading them, and she repents once the girl turns out to be innocent.
  • In "Daughter of the Skies", the heroine's father threatens her life if she doesn't tell him what happened to her children because he is afraid she has killed them.
  • In the Slavic fairytale "The Twelve Months", a Wicked Stepmother tries to get rid of her stepdaughter by sending her to find flowers or fruits in the winter. She discovers the twelve-month brothers, who can change the seasons. When the stepmother and her biological daughter try to find what she found, January turns the weather against them, with fatal results.
  • The Arabian Nights stories have some examples of fathers offing (or trying to off) their female offspring after said offspring has been (falsely) accused of premarital sex.
  • In "Morozko", the old woman hates her stepdaughter so much that she forces her husband to abandon her in the woods. Her stepdaughter survives, but her murderous scheme accidentally causes her beloved biological's daughter's demise.
  • In "The Three Snake Leaves", the king sentences his daughter to death when she murders her husband.
  • In "The Three Little Men in the Wood", the evil stepmother attempts to murder her stepdaughter several times. Her methods include to force her to go out into the woods nearly naked in the dead of winter, and throw her out of a window.

    Fan Works 
Arrowverse
  • The Legends of Tomorrow fic Cycle of Death features a temporary and unknowing variant. The Legends go to the eighties to capture an escaped Time Pirate, and collide with a robbery crew led by Leonard's father Lewis, whom he previously killed in 2015. Leonard ends up getting shot by the younger version of Lewis, and Leonard flatlines on the operating table for 32.1 seconds.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

  • Absolute Trust: Much like with the shows' examples seen below with Zuko, Ozai had lost all patience with Azulas' repeated constant failings brought about by Alec and the Gaang that in Book II when in talks with Long Feng to take over Ba Sing Se from within; he ordered the head of the Dai Li to have Azula killed off and pin her death on the Avatar to turn his daughter into a Martyr for the Fire Nation. Alec has Katara heal Azula with Spirit Water, and after finally coming to terms with the abuse she had suffered all her life from Ozai, learning why exactly Ursa left them, and finally reconciling with the rest of her family, Azula joins as Team Avatars' Co-Firebending Teacher and Political informant to defeat Ozai and help transition the Fire Nation out of a wartime government.

Crossover

  • Dungeon Keeper Ami: As said in regards to Keeper Malleus in Moving On:
    he sired children for the sole purpose of sa-sacrificing them!
  • Lord of the Castle (Castlevania (2017) and Justice League): A tragic, heroic version of this occurs. In the main universe, Dracula was consumed by grief and lashed out against humanity to unleash Hell on Earth after his wife Lisa's death, while his son Alucard chose to listen to his mother's wishes not to lash out and protect them, forcing him to kill his father with the help of Trevor Belmont and Sypha Belnades. In the Justice Lords' universe, the roles of Dracula and Alucard are swapped. Dracula was ultimately still able to heed his wife's last wishes even despite his heartbreak (he still killed the members of the Corrupt Church responsible for Lisa's death, but they were Asshole Victims in the canon universe as well), but Alucard was consumed by grief and, unable to forgive humanity for killing his mother, lashed out and unleashed Hell's armies. As such, Dracula worked alongside his universe's version of Trevor and Sypha to protect humanity and was ultimately made to kill his son.

Danny Phantom

  • 2nd Chance starts with Danielle Phantom being brutally tortured to death by Vlad Masters, who was the one who made her from Dannyā€™s DNA in the first place.

Disney Animated Canon

  • MERIDA'S VILLAIN SONG - Touch the Sky by Lydia the Bard: Fergus had Hamish, Hubert and Harris killed after they became bear cubs permanently and lost their humanity.
  • The Female of the Species has something between the "Evil Parent" and "Choice of Abraham" variants. There is a ceremony where new kings kill off the cubs of rival males. The problem for Scar's ex-mate Sarafina is that only the youngest of her two cubs is Scar's. Sarabi convinces Scar to kill his flesh and blood son Mheetu in exchange for letting Nala live. She reminds him about how sickly Mheetu is, how it's unlikely that he'll survive to adulthood, and how, even if he did, he'd likely always be weak. Nala may not be Scar's actual daughter but at least she's strong. Scar agrees to kill Mheetu with the same ease that he (unknowing to Sarabi) also killed off his own brother.

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi / The Untamed

  • Gold Poisons sees Jin Guangshan attempt this after having been presented as the person behind the plot to murder Lan Xichen, as Jin Guangyao is the one who outed him as the attempted murderer.

Hellaverse

MonsterVerse

  • Abraxas (Hrodvitnon):
    • In the official post-story timeline, one of the impregnated Russian women tries to strangle her own baby after it's born, forcing Monarch to separate them.
    • Word of God says that Walter Simmons plans to have his daughter Maia assassinated if she defects to Monarch and becomes a whistleblower.

My Little Pony

  • In Bubbles, Derpy's mother tries to poison her daughter because she's disabled. Derpy's dad takes her to the hospital when he comes from work. No one connects the incident to Derpy's mother, so several days later Derpy's mom opts to abandon her in a forest.
  • The Immortal Game: Titan casually kills his son Empyrean after he was forcibly depowered, justifying it by claiming that without his divine power he was weak and unworthy of existence.
  • In Living The Dream Richard had his son Frederic beaten and killed because he refused to embrace the Canadian Mob back on Earth. Post-rapture, he asks god to send him to Equestria so he can kill his son a second time, but is unsuccessful in killing him again. He tries and fails a third time during the Nightmare Arc.
  • Maternal Instinct (MLP): In this My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction, in a fit of unbridled rage, Queen Chrysalis exploded in a vicious tirade against her heavily mentally and physically disabled daughter and heir, Princess Pupa, and proceeded to beat her. Savagely. But when Chrysalis came to her senses and saw her daughter on the floor, barely conscious and with blooding oozing out from wounds on her crown and temple, the aghast and repentant Queen immediately threw herself at her daughter's mangled form, kissing her face and trying to stop the bleeding, mentally crying, ā€˜Kami above, forgive me! Please, forgive me!ā€™
  • In the Pony POV Series, Diamond Tiara's mother Golden Tiara aka Screwball tried to strangle her own daughter for going through her jewelry. The pressures of living in high society had done a number on her sanity, and her daughter's "crime" was the straw that broke the camel's back. Only the intervention of her husband saved their child's life. Discord breaks Diamond's mind by recovering her suppressed memories of the incident and blaming her for it. It's so traumatizing that she becomes a Nightmare.
    • Discord's mother, Entropy, erased her eldest child from existence because ____ talked back to her.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

  • Doing It Right This Time: In this story Rei was Naoko's daughter. Even so, she still choked her first incarnation with her own hands for badmouthing her, right like in canon.
  • Higher Learning: Done indirectly. In the original timeline Shinji locked his son into the Geofront after the latter murdered his wife Asuka. Since they never saw him again Kaoru thinks that he probably died down there.
  • In The Second Try Asuka attempts to induce a miscarriage via starvation after she gets pregnant (something that Shinji notes is more dangerous to her than the baby), but she changes her tune after the first ultrasound. This comes back to haunt her during the Mind Rape scene.

PokƩmon

Red Dwarf

  • The Fifty Shades Series: Rimmer is revealed to have been killed in this fanfic when his Dementia-ridden father fired a loaded gun in his direction. Although Lister thinks it was accidental, Rimmer doubts it.

RWBY

  • A flashback in RWBY: Scars shows that Winter's mother tried to strangle her as a young child. Willow wasn't in the right mind and didn't even remember the incident until her daughter told her years later. Winter always held onto that moment, not understanding her mother had been hallucinating at the time.

The Sims

Star Wars

  • Fulcrum: At the end of the Reylo fanfic, Kylo Ren kills his son Sheev to resurrect his wife, Rey.

Team ICO Series

  • In Enlightenments, Wander chooses to kill at least one of his daughters and an adopted son rather than let them be used as either the Queen's latest body or fuel to power the spell that lets her body hop.

Unsorted

  • Hivefled: One of the many trolls who ended up being killed by the Condesce and Grand Highblood (after a variety of other activities) was Laneen, who was probably Condesce's daughter. They also have some interesting plans for their confirmed offspring, Gamzee and Feferi, though death may be the least of their worries.
  • In the WWE AU story 4 Horsewomen - Family Is Forever, this is Charlotte Flair's backstory. Her father, Ric Flair, was a prominent politician until he snapped one day, killed Charlotte's siblings (Megan, David and Reed) and tried to do the same to her. David and Reed died instantly, but Megan held on long enough to be taken to the hospital and died there. This combined with Wicked Stepmother led to Charlotte being adopted by Triple H and Stephanie McMahon.
  • Not actually involving parents but relatives: in A Sad Story, Uncle Vernon's abuse eventually leads to Harry's death.
  • A subversion occurs in Gensokyo 20XX, with a then mentally ill Ran and Reimu, in that the latter is a child she does look after, but she does attempt to kill her in a murder-suicide, through via leaving her where danger can get her. To worsen this, Reimu would not have seen it coming.
  • After the reveal in Chapter 13 of the MCU fanfic Canid, this applies to Loki's murder of Coulson, who is actually his son Fenrir bound in human form.
  • In one of the last chapters of the W.I.T.C.H. fanfic Ripples, the former Queen Allora murders her daughter Queen Weira — who has just given birth to Elyon — so that she can retake Meridian's throne, get rid of Prince Phobos, and later make the newborn princess her Puppet Queen.
  • The Hands of Fate:Invasion: On Earth-2, Robert Queen and Oliver both survived the sinking of the Queen's Gambit. Unlike Earth-1, here Robert explained to Oliver why it was sunk and what they had to do, but Oliver only cared about getting home to Laurel. So Robert killed him, deeming him too weak to do what was necessary. Tellingly, he uses this as an example of how he does know the meaning of sacrifice, instead of seeing it as a horrific thing to do.
  • This doesn't actually appear in Little Fires, but it is referenced. A cat teases another with "Your mother should have eaten you when she had the chance". This references the rare occurrence where mother cats eat their own young. It only occurs in extreme, high-stress circumstances, so Clan cats don't shame the mother for doing so and it doesn't break the Warrior Code's rule on not killing unless needed.
  • Hellsister Trilogy: During the battle between the Earth's heroes and Darkseid's forces, Trigon attempts to kill his daughter Raven after torturing her.
    Trigon looked out upon an astonished sea of heroes, picked out his daughter Raven, and smiled.
    He would save her for last. The rest would not take that long.
  • In Shards of a Memory, Shredder had convinced Karai that Tang Shen would have killed her at infancy rather than "stay" with her and Oroku Saki.
  • Subverted in Son of the Sannin. Fugaku thought he had successfully killed Itachi in their battle, but it quickly turned out to have been a clone and Itachi in turn fatally injures him a few seconds later. However, those few seconds before he realized the truth were enough to trigger his Mangekyo Sharingan.
  • In Everqueen, the Emperor mentions he had to do this a number of times in ages past, and might have to do so again.

    Films ā€” Animation 
  • In Moana, Maui's mother threw him into the ocean when he was a baby. Fortunately he was brought to the gods and became a demigod instead.
  • In Turning Red, Mei comes close to being crushed by her mother's Kaiju-sized hands several times during the climax.

    Manhwa 
  • Lady Oran/Oreadia of Faeries' Landing does, to some degree, love the children she had with a human man when she was trapped on earth. However, she continued to resent them, as they were a constant reminder of her relations with a human, which was considered taboo in the faerie's world. As the volumes went on, Oran's plan is unraveling, most likely with the desire to kill her daughter Fanta.

    Music 
  • Flower of the Plateau, in which Mikulia kills two people, an ex-suitor/client and her own son because they're the only ones who know that she used to be a prostitute. The imagery really doesn't help.
  • "The Rake's Song" by The Decemberists fulfills this trope — if the rake's wife hadn't died giving birth to their fourth child, he'd probably have killed her too, quite happily. As it is, he poisons one child, drowns the second, and possibly beats the third to death. Why? Because he didn't like having to take care of kids, and would have preferred the single, unattached life. And this turns out to be a colossally bad idea, because they come back to haunt him while he's busy trying to abduct Margaret. Sucks to be him.
  • Child Ballad #20, "The Cruel Mother", is about a girl who kills her two babies born out of wedlock, the children's' spectres coming back to haunt her. The song also goes under various names such as "Down by the Greenwood Side" and "Bonny Greenwoodside".
  • The video for Martina McBride's "Concrete Angel" features a boy who has a crush on his cute next-door neighbor. The girl is heavily abused and later beaten to death by her abusive mother. The "concrete angel" is her grave's marker.
  • GWAR can be described as this, as the band is responsible for the creation of mankind, and thus, all humans are their children, and the band wants them all dead.
  • The first verse of Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" restages the Choice of Abraham. God in this version seems much less likely to give Abe the out he got in the Bible.
  • "Down by the Water" from To Bring You My Love by PJ Harvey has the speaker drown her daughter for talking back.
  • The Violent Femmes's "Country Death Song" tells the story of a destitute man who takes his youngest child out to the forest and throws her in a well (presumably because he couldn't afford to feed her). Afterwards, in a fit of remorse, he hangs himself in the barn
  • This happens in the music video to Melanie Martinez's "Sippy Cup". A woman kills her husband and his mistress in her house. Her teenage daughter finds the corpses and understandably freaks out. Her mother comes up behind her, drugs her, ties her up while she's knocked out, then feeds her something poisonous when she wakes up. According to the prequel song, "Dollhouse", she has a brother but he's never shown in the music video.
  • The second song on Akiko Shikata's album Utau Oka ~Ar=Ciel Ar=Dor~, which is about the mythology of Ar Ciel, opens with an emperor sacrificing his daughter to ensure victory in a war (not unlike Agamemnon below).
  • Czech folklore-inspired band Čechomor has a surprisingly large number of entries in the "woman kills an unwanted child" genre. This presumably harkens back to a time when birth control was hard to obtain and unreliable, and a child out of wedlock could often ruin a woman's life, so some women resorted to this - although probably not this often.
    • "Katova předtucha" (Executioner's Premonition/Suspicion) is about a woman who has an affair with a soldier, which results in the birth of a son. She murders him, but is discovered and executed.
    • "Andulka" (just Andulka - it's a Czech diminutive of Anne) is similarly about a woman who drowns her newborn son in Danube just after birth. She's similarly executed for this.
    • "PivničkovĆ”" (again, just PivničkovĆ” - in the context of the song, it's a surname) also features a woman murdering an unwanted newborn, this time by slitting his throat. By the way, that woman is not PivničkovĆ” (a.k.a. old PivničkovĆ”, as she's referred to in the song), but her daughter.

    Myths & Religion 
  • Happened several times among the The Greek Gods:
    • Because Cronus had been prophesied to be overthrown by one of his children, he ate all of his offspring alive, except Zeus who was saved by his mother. Though as they were gods, this didn't kill them. They matured inside his stomach.
    • Cronus' father Ouranos had earlier shoved Cronus' siblings into Tartarus.
    • Zeus himself ate one of his many consorts when she was pregnant, as a male child by her was prophesied to be greater than Zeus himself. That one backfired, though, because the child born was Athena - who, being a daughter instead of a son, was not greater than Zeus, and a total Daddy's Girl.
    • Zeus also killed his son Iason out of anger for sleeping with the goddess Demeter (who also had been Zeus's lover... and sister, of course).
  • Quite a few parents of Greek heroes tried to Screw Destiny by having their children killed. Of course, since You Can't Fight Fate, this frequently backfired.
    • Oedipus the King: Oedipus' father, King Laius, pierced his feet and left him on a hill to die, in an attempt to prevent him from fulfilling the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother. This only resulted in a Meaningful Name for Oedipus (meaning "swollen foot") and the "Laius complex".
    • Perseus' grandfather Acrisius locked the newborn and his mother Danae in a trunk and set them out to sea since it was prophesied that kid would kill him when he grew up. With a little help from the Gods, they were saved by drifting to an island, and Perseus would grow into one of the most famous heroes of Greek myths.
  • Other characters from Classical Mythology killed their own children for vengeance, madness, to appease the gods or just For the Evulz:
    • To bring shame on the gods, Tantalus had his own son Pelops killed and cooked to serve him to the gods (the boy was later restored to life, though).
    • Heracles famously was driven insane by his stepmother, Hera, which led to him killing his first wife Megara and their children. The myths vary on how many children, but the best-known account is that of Euripides's play Heracles which describes three sons.
    • Phaedra, the second wife of Theseus, was attracted to her stepson Hippolytus and after declaring her love to him (or raping him in some versions) she felt so ashamed and fearful that he might tell his father that she accused him of raping her. Theseus believed her and cursed his son, asking Poseidon to kill him. Poseidon was his bud and so he caused Hippolytus' horses to go wild and drag the poor guy to his death. The story is told in Euripides' Hippolytus.
    • When Meleager was born, the Fates predicted he would only live until a brand, burning in the family hearth, was consumed by fire. Overhearing them, his mother Althaea immediately doused and hid the brand. When he grew up, Meleager killed his uncles Iphicles and Eurypylus (Althaea's brothers) in an argument; Althaea was so pissed that ran back to the house, retrieved the brand from its hiding place, and put it on the fire, killing her son.
    • In his Metamorphoses, Ovid tells the story of Queen Procne of Thracia: Her husband, King Tereus, raped Procne's younger sister, Philomela, and then cut out her tongue so she couldn't tell anyone. Philomela weaved the event onto a tapestry, which she showed to Procne; Procne, in a fit of anger, killed Itys, her son by Tereus, and served him to his father for dinner.
    • Cepheus and Cassiopeia, who had offended the Nereids, were willing to sacrifice their daughter Andromeda to a sea monster, since otherwise their kingdom would be destroyed by it. To the parents' relief, however, Perseus killed the monster and saved Andromeda.
    • Agamemnon ordered the sacrifice of his own daughter Iphigenia to obtain the Gods' favor on the Greek campaign to Troy. According to Euripides, Iphigenia was spirited away by the Gods to the Taurians at the last minute, but in the older version, the sacrifice was indeed carried out. The sacrifice of Iphigenia is also often given as the original reason for Clytemnestra's grudge against her husband, which later led to her murder of Agamemnon. As The Cartoon History of the Universe put it:
      Narration: Torn between duty to brother, love of daughter, sympathy for wife, and fear of army, Agamemnon tricked Clytemnestra into bringing Iphigenia to the sacrifice.
      Clytemnestra: (visibly angrily walking away) You haven't heard the last of this, boy!
      Agamemnon: (running from the altar, arms open) But Clytemnestra!
    • Ironically, Clytemnestra later treated her other daughter Electra like crap because she would not forget her father. In the tragedy Electra, she gets the poor girl locked away in a cave to die of starvation and thirst.
      • Totally his own fault, too, as he only needed to sacrifice Iphigenia because he had angered the goddess Artemis before. He really should have known better than to insult a goddess. And also he started the war to a certain extent so it's not like he was forced into that situation.
    • According to Euripides' Medea, the eponymous Taurian princess killed her own children by Jason when she learned that Jason planned to leave her for another woman.
  • According to history and myth, Lucius Brutus (Ancestor of the assassin Marcus Junius Brutus) the founder of The Roman Republic did this. Two of his sons worked defected to Tarquin. In order to prove that the Republic played no favorites, Lucius Brutus was forced to Make an Example of Them and ordered the death of his own sons.
  • Examples from The Bible:
    • Subverted in the so-called "Binding of Isaac": God orders Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac; but when Abraham is just about to go through with it, an angel appears and grabs his hand, revealing that it was only a test. It's also a sort of Chekhov's Gun in that God has already explicitly said to Abraham that Isaac will be the son through whom his descendants are counted (Book of Genesis 21:12). Funnily enough, The Qur'an tells the same story...only it's Ishmael who gets trussed up, rather than Isaac. No mention is made of "the son who counts", however.
    • Played straight with Queen Athaliah, except in this case it's Grandchildren Genocide. She tried to kill off all the heirs to her son Ahaziah's throne (in those times the queen was the mother, not the wife of the king) to seize power. Only one, Jehoash survived.
    • Played with somewhat when Jephthah made a promise to God that he would give Him the first thing that came out of his door to greet him as a burnt offering if God would give him the victory over his enemies. And, as it turned out, the first thing that did greet Jephthah when he came home from his victory was his only daughter. "And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed. and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel, that the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year."
    • Endorsed in Deuteronomy 21:18-21: parents are allowed to bring their incorrigibly disobedient children to the elders of the city to be stoned to death. Also, in Exodus 21:15 and 17, children who simply strike or curse their parents were to be stoned to death.
  • Older Than Dirt: The Mesopotamian god / Eldritch Abomination Apsu tries to slaughter all of his descendants, including his immediate offspring, in EnĆ»ma EliÅ”. After they kill him in self-defense, his mate Tiamat picks up where he left off, even though she's the one who tried to stop Apsu and then warned them of his attack. She also ends up killed by the younger gods.
  • Arthurian Legend:
    • The most famous case is Arthur and his Antagonistic Offspring Mordred, who fight at the Battle of Camlann. They pull what would have been a Mutual Kill, except that Arthur is supposedly taking a centuries-long respite on Avalon to heal. Though note that, these legends being what they are, there are older versions where Mordred isn't Arthur's son and/or didn't turn evil.
    • An old Welsh tradition, related as early as Historia Brittonum, says that Arthur had a son named Amr, killed him, and buried him in a tomb that inexplicably changes size every time people measure it. We have no other context for why Athtur killed him, though it may have influenced the later, more famous legend about Mordred.
  • Germanic heroic legend has the story of the hero Hildebrand who returned to his native land after thirty years of exile: When, on a reconnaissance mission, he ran into an enemy warrior, he was challenged to combat. He realized that the hostile warrior was his own son Hadubrand, but Hadubrand, who thought Hildebrand was dead, accused him of being an impostor and forced him to fight for his life. It ended with Hildebrand inflicting a deadly wound on his own son. Hildebrand's tragic fight with Hadubrand is the subject of the oldest surviving piece of German heroic poetry, "Hildebrandslied" ("Lay of Hildebrand"). In the 13th century, an alternate version arose that provided a Happy Ending by letting Hadubrand survive.
  • "La Llorona", the ghost of a woman who murdered her children.
  • Celtic Mythology: Cu Chulainn's illegitimate son Connla had three Geas placed on him. He must never turn back on a journey, must never turn down a challenge, and must never give his name. One day, Connla decided to go on a quest to meet his father for the first time. When he finally met Cu Chulainn, he was challenged to a fight for refusing to introduce himself. Cu Chulainn only figured out who he was fighting after Connla was killed, and was struck with grief.
  • In the Mwindo Epic of the Nyanga people of the Congo, the evil chief Shemwindu vowed to kill any male children his wives produced (the reason why depends on the version of the myth being told - either he was afraid that a son would depose him or he wanted only daughters so that he could become rich by betrothing them to wealthy husbands), and thus when one of his wives gave birth to a son, Mwindo, he makes several attempts to kill Mwindo, including burying him alive and chucking spears at him, before sealing Mwindo into a drum and throwing the drum into a river. Naturally, his efforts failed, and Mwindo grew up to lead an army against Shemwindo.
  • Japanese Mythology:
  • What started the creation of the ocean, according to TaĆ­no Mythology. Yaya killed his son Yayael in a bout of anger, and out of remorse, put all of Yayael's bones inside a gourd he hung from the ceiling. One day, he took down the gourd and saw that it was full of endless fish. He and his wife tried eating some and still the fish would keep in number. Nearby, Itiba Cahubaba gave birth to quadruplets, the oldest named DeminĆ”n Caracaracol. When Yaya was absent, they took down the gourd to eat from it too, but in their hurry to put it back, the gourd burst, and from it, came out so much water and all the fish, and that is how the ocean came to be.
  • In the very beginning of Mahabharata, Shantanu met a beautiful woman on the banks of the Ganga River and wanted to marry her. She agreed, on the condition that he would not question anything she did afterwards. As the years went on, the pair conceived seven sons, but the woman drowned them one by one, which shocked Shantanu. Eventually, when she gave birth to an eighth son and was about to drown him, Shantanu stopped her, at which point she revealed that she was actually the divine personification of the Ganga, and she drowned the children not because she hated them, but because they were reincarnations of gods who were cursed to become mortal in their previous lives, and she was trying to deify them once more. Because Shantanu had broken the promise, she had to leave him forever, and the surviving son was cursed to live a long but ascetic life. Said son later grew up to become Bhisma, a major figure in the events leading up to the Kurukshetra War.

    Podcasts 
  • Sick Sad World:
    • "The Dangers Of Being Disabled" has a case of a man murdering his daughter in a supposed mercy kill.
    • In the episode ā€œMarginalized In True Crimeā€, Dev and guest host Kitty have a long discussion about the murder of 11 year old Riya Rajkumar by her father. They both found it hard because she could have been one of their family members. They also realized her mother would constantly be reminded of it because Riya went missing on Valentineā€™s Day, which was also her momā€™s birthday.

    Tabletop Games 
  • The Emperor killing Horus in Warhammer 40,000. One of the more justified examples, as Horus at that point had just led a daemon-empowered invasion of Terra, ripped the Imperium apart in civil war that had claimed trillions of lives, corrupted half of his brothers, killed one of his brothers who remained loyal to the Emperor, consorted with daemons, destroyed multiple planets, laid siege to the Emperor's palace and was at that moment trying to eviscerate the Emperor. As with everything, when Warhammer 40,000 justifies a trope, it doesn't do it by halves. It says a lot about how much the Emperor loved Horus that none of that was actually enough to force the Emperor to kill Horus. Even as he was being torn apart, he still hoped that Horus could be redeemed. Then a lone soldier (who prior to retcons, was an ordinary human being with absolutely no chance of hurting Horus) stood before Horus in a futile attempt to defend the Emperor. Horus casually flayed the man alive with a glance. This cold-blooded murder is what finally convinced the Emperor that Horus needed to die. So the mortally wounded Emperor launched a psychic attack of such power that it obliterated Horus and sent the four Chaos gods who had possessed Horus screaming back to the Warp.
  • Valkia the Bloody in Warhammer. Before she became one of Khorne's greatest champions, Valkia was once the chieftain of a Barbarian Tribe in Norsca with her twin-daughters, Eris and Bellona. Valkia was later killed by daemons near the end of her quest to present a great tribute to their patron god in the Chaos Wastes, with most of her followers having abandoned her to her fate. Khorne was mightily impressed by her efforts, however, and thus he brought her back to life as Valkia the Bloody. One of her first acts as a Champion of Chaos was to exact vengeance on her former tribesmen, who were now led by Eris (Bellona was already dead at this point). Valkia's army utterly wiped out the Norscans and she personally slew her daughter in single combat without remorse. On the flipside, she commended Eris's bravery and skill in battle by personally taking her skull to the Skull Throne.

    Theatre 
  • In Dorothy L. Sayers' The Emperor Constantine, Constantine's wife tricks him into killing his son by his first wife.
  • The Greek play Agamemnon describes the eponymous character's murder by his wife as vengeance for sacrificing their daughter to allow his armies to go to war with Troy. The play contains one of the more horrifying moments in Greek literature, as it describes Iphigenia (Who is typically believed to be twelve to thirteen years old, if that) begging for her life along the lines of "Daddy, please don't!" before being killed.
  • Electra, based on later events of the abovementioned story, has Iphigenia's murder in the background, but more importantly features the threat of Electra being sealed up in a cave to die. Clytemnestra's excuses about Iphigenia ring a little more hollow here.
  • Medea is the Trope Codifier, at least when it comes to women. After being scorned by her husband Jason in favor of a more politically advantageous fiancĆ©e, she kills said fiancĆ©e and then murders her two sons, both to keep them safe from being abused as fugitives of the law and/or prisoners of the fiancĆ©e's father, and as one last spite to Jason.
  • Tamamo-no-Mae Asahi no Tamoto: Washizuka Kintōji, the messenger of the Big Bad Usugumo, is under said prince's order to steal a precious sword from the late Fujiwara Michiharu's family's possession. Kintōji then goes to the family's mansion and demands that they hand over the head of Lady Katsura, the woman Usugumo is lusting after if they want the sword back. Her mother refuses since Katsura was adopted from a temple, meaning she may or may not be under the gods' protection, and suggests that her biological daughter, Lady Hatsuhana, go in her place. Kintōji agrees, but then he goes ahead and hacks Katsura's head off anyway. The catch? Katsura is his biological daughter. He kills her in order to spare the widow's daughter.
  • The protagonist of Titus Andronicus cuts down one of his sons at the beginning of the play in a fit of anger when the latter defies him. Later, Titus kills his daughter Lavinia in what he believes to be an act of mercy after she is raped and mutilated.

    Visual Novels 
  • In Area X, towards the end of Livan's route, you discover that Pedoe does this to his children when they reach 13, in an attempt to preserve their innocence. In the bad ending, he succeeds in killing Ursin.
  • Two instances of this occur within Full Metal Daemon Muramasa:
  • Mamiya Shinzo kills his son and then commits suicide in one ending of Kara no Shoujo. Type two, but kind of his own fault.
  • In Hatoful Boyfriend, it's revealed in the Bad Boys Love route that Yuuya's stepfather ordered him to smash Sakuya's egg, due to it being laid between Yuuya's mother and father. Instead of doing that, Yuuya hid Sakuya's egg until his mother and stepfather had an egg together, then switched that egg with Sakuya's, smashing the other one.
  • In Heart of the Woods, this almost happens with Evelyn and Morgan Fischer. Evelyn has long planned on using Morgan as her next vessel, which would kill Morgan (or at least result in her becoming a ghost like Abigail). In the climax, however, Evelyn decides to steal Tara's body, since she wants to take the guise of a famous internet personality and leave Eysenfeld. Evelyn then tells Tara that she'll spare Morgan if she doesn't interfere, but will kill her if she tries to stop Evelyn, and tries to make good on that threat. Evelyn ultimately fails, though, and the only ending in which Morgan dies has her pull a Taking You with Me on Evelyn.
  • From the Shall We Date? franchise:
    • Destiny Ninja 2 has a Type 3: the heroine is cursed so that Yamato Island will be destroyed unless she dies. Her parents knew about the curse but were unable to break it and so had to send her on the journey that would ultimately kill her. Luckily, in the good endings, her curse is broken.
      • Kikyo's father is a Type 1, who planned his son's death as part of a plot to take over all of Yamato Island.
  • Your Turn to Die:
    • As a member of ASU-NARO, Gashu Satou was complicit in throwing his biological son Kai into the Death Game, resulting in him slitting his own wrists to avoid a grisly execution. Later on, he shoots his artificial son Rio Ranger in the head, then kicks it off his corpse.
    • The Stinger of Chapter 2-2 reveals that Sara's father is also a member of ASU-NARO, meaning that he approved of the calculated 84.5% chance of his daughter dying in the Death Game.

    Web Animation 
  • RWBY: One of the villains once had children whose lives were lost due to a tragic incident; this informs at least some of their villainous behaviour. When Ozma realized that Salem's methods of uniting humanity weren't compatible with his own, threatened his ability to complete the divine mission the gods had given him and also endangered the lives of their children, he decided to abandon her. He gathered up their four daughters and attempted to steal away in the night. Salem caught him red-handed. Their fight was so brutal that it destroyed their castle, killed all four of their children, and each other. Being immortal, Salem reformed immediately while Ozma reincarnated into a new host. The children, however, were mortals whose lives were lost forever. Ozma and Salem have been trapped in a Forever War for the fate of humanity ever since.

    Webcomics 
  • Unicorn Jelly - Chou's father forms an anti-nonhuman cult and tried to kill his daughter after she is transformed into a crystalline-human hybrid.
  • Dominic Deegan:
    • The first major story arc involves Croona Travoria's gamble on driving her youngest daughter Luna to suicide while a royal knight is visiting since a generous compensation package is given to the family should a family member die while a knight is visiting. Instead, Croona is killed by said knight. She does get some measure of revenge from beyond the grave, as she leaves Luna nothing in her will.
    • It's later revealed that some of the other children in Callan born with tusks due to an Orc curse were killed when they were born as well.
  • YU+ME: dream - as part of the huge reveal halfway through the story, Fiona finds out that her mother not only killed herself, but tried to take Fiona with her instead of letting her be raised by the woman who stole her husband.
  • The Order of the Stick - Tarquin kills his son Nale after the latter confesses to murdering the former's best friend. Take note of how similar the situation is to Elan and Nale's first meeting. "You don't want to be with me? *stab stab*".
  • Girl Genius
    • In the backstory, Prince Aaronev Sturmvoraus put his own daughter in a machine that, if it had worked, would have completely overwritten her mind with the one of the woman with whom he was madly in love. Instead, it grievously injured her.
      Tarvek: After Father put Anevka through that damn machine, it was clear she was dying. Of course, only then was he sorry.
    • Lucrezia Mongfish (aka the Other) has tried to off Agatha several times, and was in some form or another responsible for the death of Agatha's older brother, who died as a child during the Other's attack on Castle Heterodyne. (Although there's still a great deal that's not clear about that attack and the Other's exact nature and identity.)
  • Homestuck: While she didn't do the deed personally, Betty Crocker, aka Her Imperious Condescension did order her great-granddaughter Jane's dream self to be killed, and is heavily implied to be behind the multiple assassination attempts in the real world. Luckily, thanks to Jane's Life powers and GCAT respectively, neither works.
  • Drowtales:
    • Though the child is adopted, Quain'tana Val'Sarghress winds up doing this to Syphile. While the threat had certainly been there before, it's only once Syphile tries to pull the Self-Made Orphan routine (and promptly gets curb stomped) that Quain finishes her off. Also subverted in that Quain actually seems proud for the first time that she actually had the guts to try and kill her, even though she failed.
    • Zala'ess Vel'Sharen wanted to do this after Yaeminira the adopted "protector twin" of her daughter Vy'chriel killed Vy'chriel, but Zala's own sister instead forced Zala'ess to adopt her and take Vy'chriel's place. Zala later gets her wish when she has Yaeminira killed via a Uriah Gambit.
    • And a subversion occurred with Val'Sharess Diva'ratrika, who was extremely angry at three of her daughters for willingly tainting themselves and says that she seriously considered killing them, but ultimately couldn't do it. Considering that said daughters later betrayed her and had her killed, she probably wishes she'd just done it.
    • A Commoner woman is seen in one chapter crying by the riverbank. The reason? She was just forced to drown her infant son because she couldn't afford to feed him and the only other possible outcomes were death by starvation, death by sickness, or join a group of Mad Scientist bioengineers and go insane with mutation. It's presented in-story as a Mercy Kill.
    • Snadhya'rune later shows that she's not like her mother when she kills Kalki after the latter proves to be a Wild Card she cannot control who seriously disrupted her plans. She does this with all the emotion of discarding a faulty toaster and declares that her daughter has always just been a tool for her.
    • Out of spite against Quain'tana, Mel'arnach shoots her brother with a crossbow and tries to do the same to her daughter, Ariel, due to Ariel becoming Quain'tana's heir. She ends up missing Ariel's head by inches and quickly gives up, deciding to wish Ariel luck in dealing with the Sarghress clan's coup.
  • Dragon Ball Multiverse: Cell killed his Cell Jr in order to create a more powerful kid.
  • An interesting example involving time travel in The Non-Adventures of Wonderella: Wonderella's future daughter traveled back in time to kill Wonderella in revenge for her piss-poor parenting. Wonderella negates her daughter's entire existence by going back on the pill. (Queen Beetle points out that even had her daughter succeeded in killing her, she would have negated her own existence through Grandfather Paradox.)
  • Slightly Damned: Rhea's mysterious murderer is revealed to be Moonshade, her own father. His plan to "inherit" the power of his family's divine ancestor Moku the Snake Guardian of Earth required him to be Moku's sole living descendant, so he murdered all others, daughter included. When Moonshade finds out she's Back from the Dead he fully intends to kill her a second time. It's telling that one of his cohorts, the demon Azurai seems disgusted that he's so willing to murder his own flesh and blood.
  • I'm the Grim Reaper: The missing boy that Chase and Scarlet look into turns out to have been killed by his own mother. Scarlet is quick to write her off as another crazy murderer, but it gets a little muddled when her past is revealed and it turns out her son was terminally ill. However, it's also important to note that her past isn't used to justify the murder.
    • Revealed to be a major part of Chaseā€™s backstory. After his fatherā€™s death, his mom went off the deep end and killed his two younger siblings and tried to kill Chase in an attempted murder suicide. She fell down the stairs and stabbed herself before she could kill him, however.
  • #Killstagram: The second season introduces the protagonist Sarang and her beloved daughter Jia. Sarang then winds up in a Deadly Game and wonders why. As she pieces together that the participants are violent people and that they committed crimes against children, she comes to remember that she strangled her own daughter in a fit of rage.
  • Muted:
    • Athalie offered the soul of Avaline's older twin to a demon in exchange for a triple murder.
    • Athalie also tries to kill Avaline to eat her heart.

    Web Original 
  • 7-Second Riddles: One riddle involves a mother murdering her daughter, only to then use Crocodile Tears the next morning while setting the table... for only three family members, hinting that she already knew her daughter wasn't going to be there for breakfast.
  • Dragon Ball Z Abridged: In Episode 60 Part 1, Cell (and Piccolo) assume Goku did this indirectly after the former temporarily dispatched Gohan, as Goku was the one who sent Gohan to fight Cell, only for Gohan to reveal himself later. In Part 2, Gohan as a Super Duper Saiyannote  calmly gives the definition of 'filicide' before ripping apart Cell's Cell Juniors under this same notion.
  • In Dream SMP, Philza's first action upon being whitelisted and logging on to the server is to try to convince his son, Wilbur, not to blow up L'Manburg and himself in the process. When that fails, Phil protects Wilbur from the explosion, but Wilbur convinces Phil to kill him anyway, to which Phil eventually complies.
  • In The Gamer's Alliance, every Distreyd Thanadar tries to kill his children when they're about to come of age; if he doesn't, said children will kill him to take his place as the high cleric of MardĆ¼k. This is also a twisted way for every Distreyd to ensure that only the strongest of his children survive and kill him off to carry on his legacy as the next person to hold the name of Distreyd Thanadar.
  • In LOCAL58's video "Contingency," a PSA by the "Department for the Preservation of American Dignity" orders all Americans to commit suicide in the face of national defeat. Parents are urged to kill their children (and pets) before offing themselves. Though the station insists this was just a hoax, there are some clues to the contrary...
  • Quipped about in The Nostalgia Critic's Let's Play of Bart's Nightmare, as he mutters that he's not surprised his own mother (established to be a horror) would try to kill him.
  • SCP Foundation: SCP-089 is a clear-cut "The Choice of Abraham" example. It's a statue that causes (or predicts) disasters, and the only way to mitigate the disaster is for a mother to sacrifice their child by burning them to death. To make it as brutal as possible, not only do the mother and child have to have a healthy, loving bond, the mother must sacrifice the child out of their own free will, and the more they hesitate, the worse the disaster will be.
  • Sword Art Online Abridged: Shouzou Yuuki, in a massive Adaptation Deviation from the source material, attempts to kill his comatose daughter to get out of the climbing medical bills, only to stop himself at the last second due to Kirito getting in between them and Shouzou remembering his lawyers' advice that killing his daughter will cause much greater problems for him. He settles for marrying her to Sugou.

    Western Animation 
  • The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Copycats" it's implied that the knock-off versions of the Wattersons killed or at least abandoned their version of Anais, due to their website having her entry replaced with "Women no right to celebrate in republic of people." It's a jab at both Miracle Star'snote lack of an Anais clone as well as China's One-Child Policy.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Fire Lord Ozai tries to flash-fry his teenage son Zuko when the boy starts mouthing off to him. Granted, it was treasonous talk of the worst kind, but Ozai seemed tickled pink that he finally had a good excuse to just kill the boy, who he never seemed to like much anyway.
    • Earlier, Ozai was also prepared to kill off his then-10-year-old son on his father's command (possibly) in order to remain in Azulon's good graces. Ozai's wife Ursa got wind of it and prevented it from happening, but Ozai later confirmed to Zuko that he really was willing to do it.
    • The comic continuation The Search has a flashback where Ozai explains to a very, very young Zuko that he was planning and prepared to kill him the day he was born due to "not having that spark in his eye" that baby firebenders supposedly have, because it would have been a disgrace for his firstborn son and heir apparent to be a nonbender. But actually it's because he overheard Ursa saying it would have been better if Zuko wasn't his son at all. For those of you playing along at home, that's three separate instances where Ozai attempted to murder his son. It is no wonder that Zuko stops calling him 'Father.'
    • In The Legend of Korra, Hiroshi Sato ends up trying to kill his daughter. He is a horrible father indeed.
  • Drawn Together: Spanky Ham does this twice.
    • "Unrestrainable Trainable": Captain Hero lamenting that he is a worse father than Spanky is followed by Spanky's wife giving birth and Spanky grinding his newborn son into sausage.
    • "Charlotte's Web of Lies" has Spanky eliminate the spider Charlotte and the children they had together by squishing them with a restaurant menu.
  • Family Guy:
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In "Little Miss Interprets", a series of miscommunications leave Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup thinking the Professor wants to kill them with a knife and throw them in the garbage can then replace them with new Powerpuff Girls. Subverted: He was only preparing a surprise party for them. Whoops.
  • Final Space:
    • In Episode 6, Avocato reveals to Gary that the Lord Commander once made all his generals (of whom Avocato himself was one) prove their loyalty to him by killing their own first born child. It was this act that made Avocato rebel against the Lord Commander.
    • Another example is with Sheryl Goodspeed in ā€œDescent Into Darknessā€. She teams up with Todd Watson to help get revenge on her son, Gary, in exchange for Todd helping her find dimensional keys. This is especially despicable because even though she successfully steals the key, her primary goal, she still tries to appease Todd and capture Gary anyway, threatening him and Nightfall with a laser blade. This really says a lot, considering all the things Sheryl did not keep her word on... Fortunately, she is defeated in both of her objectives, and even later reforms in the S2 finale.
  • Golan the Insatiable: In "Winter is Staying", Dylan and Golan throw snowballs at a moving car, which causes the family to crash. Trying to keep themselves warm, the couple accidentally burn their baby in the fire. Realizing their mistake, they use a fire log as their replacement child for the rest of the episode. This was until Golan destroyed the log in the episode's climax.
  • Harley Quinn (2019): Harley's parents, who have already outlived their son and Harleyā€™s brother Barry, attempt to kill their daughter after finding out there was a bounty of one million dollars on her.
  • Rick and Morty: Rick lost his original wife and daughter in an explosion set up by another Rick from an alternate dimension.
  • South Park: In "Butters' Very Own Episode" Butters' mother learns her husband is going to gay movies and bathhouses. She tries to drown her son by driving the car into a lake while explaining to him "If a mommy has to end her life, she can't let her baby alone in the world to be raised by a sick pervert". His Abusive Parents haven't attempted to kill him since and just settle for grounding him all the time.
  • Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Terminal Provocations", because Rutherford programmed Badgey, the latter addresses the former as "Father", and Rutherford acknowledges Badgey as his "son". In the end, Rutherford needs to kill Badgey by snapping his neck to protect himself and Tendi from Badgey's murderous rampage.
  • Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Eclipsa is ultimately forced to do this to her own villainous daughter. The whole scene was milked for all its Tear Jerker value, with the daughter crying out in fear of what her mother is about to do, and the mother shedding tears and breaking down. It has a happy ending, though, with the daughter then rebooted into a baby instead.
  • W.I.T.C.H.: Subverted. Despite being the Big Bad, Caleb's mother, Nerissa, deliberately spares him and tries to keep him out of battles.
  • Young Justice (2010): The immortal Vandal Savage casually, though still regretfully, kills his daughter Olympia, who could probably pass as his mother. His much younger daughter Cassandra is clearly horrified, but stammers that it was a Mercy Kill due to Olympia's increasing senility.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Offing Ones Offspring, Filicide

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N, Ghondor, and Na'el

Faced between the choice of his granddaughter Na'el, who has be possessed by an omnicidal entity, or his father, who has joined the ranks of Moebius and slaughtered the City just to draw out said entity, Ghondor jumps between the two and takes a fatal blow for Na'el, preventing N from killing his great granddaughter. N is horrified that his son died by his hand, but Ghondor chose to place his faith in the next generation to guide the world.

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