Basic Trope: An Asshole Victim is murdered, and was such an asshole that there are numerous suspects with their own reasons for wanting them dead.
- Straight: Bob was an absolutely horrible person who ruined many lives; when he is murdered, Alice, Chris, Evelyn and Dave all have motives for killing him and so must all be investigated as suspects.
- Exaggerated:
- It turns out that Alice, Chris, Evelyn and Dave all murdered Bob.
- Alice, Chris, Evelyn and Dave are only the initial suspects. The longer the investigation goes, the more suspects appear, every single one with a significant motive and plenty of opportunity (and a few who come out of the woodworks to confess because of trying to protect someone else or because they believe the infamy would do them some good), to the point that the investigator needs to figure out how to remove the whole damn town (all several thousand people in it) from the list by the story's climax. Bob really was that much of an asshole.
- Downplayed:
- The suspect attempted to murder Bob, but failed, so it's more 'Who tried to murder the asshole?'
- Bob was a bit of a Jerkass, but still had some people who liked him.
- Bob was a smug rich jerk, so everyone has a motive for robbing or scamming him.
- Alice, Chris, Evelyn and Dave all have been scammed by Bob, but the detective notes that it's not proof in and of itself. Indeed, a brief investigation drops them as suspects and brings up a more likely culprit, Bob's partner in crime, Frank.
- Bob is a notorious bully who is found severely beaten (but still alive). The police investigate to find out who put him in the hospital.
- Justified:
- Bob managed to do something extremely horrible that had a knock-on effect on all the suspects - he's the root cause of their misery.
- Bob was trying to kill or harm the suspect and was killed in self-defense.
- All the suspects were present at the murder scene and had equal opportunity to kill Bob.
- Bob was fatally injured by something he did to himself and they decided to commit Murder by Inaction - effectively letting God decide whether Bob lived or not.
- Inverted:
- Bob is a wonderful person who is loved by almost everyone, and no one can think of anyone who would want to harm him.
- Bob is a Nice Guy who, through no fault or conscious action of his own, has a list of enemies who would benefit from his untimely demise a mile long.
- Whether Bob was or wasn't an asshole is unimportant to the plot, but the investigation on his death exposes the Hidden Depths of everybody else in town... which demonstrates that Bob lived in a murderous World of Jerkass.
- Bob, a Complete Monster, is brought Back from the Dead. He has many close friends (also assholes) who had their own reasons to resurrect him. A Vigilante Man tries to find out who did it so he can administer the appropriate punishment.
- Bob was murdered by the one person in town, if not the whole universe, around which Bob was never an asshole.
- Bob was an asshole. His murderers are worse.
- Bob receives an anonymous favor. Since he is such a kind person, almost everyone received some sort of kind deed from Bob that they would want to repay.
- Subverted:
- It turns out that Bob's death was actually an accident, not murder, so technically, no one murdered the asshole.
- Detective Sharon finds out who killed Bob... nobody. Turns out it was guilt-induced suicide.
- The real killer, Faye, had a completely different motivation, and had never even met Bob; she was his estranged niece, and wanted to get his fortune as soon as possible.
- The killer had no real reason to want Bob dead; they're just insane.
- Double Subverted:
- It's revealed that one of the suspects set up the accident, so whilst none of them was directly responsible for killing Bob, they still contributed to his death.
- Once More, with Clarity — turns out that Bob committed Psychic-Assisted Suicide, including being forced to write a "Goodbye, Cruel World!" letter. Detective Sharon never finds out because this is an Outside-Context Problem.
- Turns out that the person who gave Faye the information that led to Bob's murder-for-inheritance was Jim, the man that had his dad Driven to Suicide because of Bob's Corrupt Corporate Executive ways. Jim, a very feeble and sick man, couldn't kill the asshole... not directly, at least...
- Further analysis then reveals that the killer's madness is based around killing people he thinks are irredeemable assholes. Bob may have been a target of opportunity, but he did himself no favors by painting a huge target on himself with his attitude.
- Parodied:
- Bob is an asshole Played for Laughs (probably just more 'persnickety about where he likes to sit on the sofa' than actual 'bullying jerk') or the killer has a Hair-Trigger Temper and what sets him off is something really jerk-ish, but small-fry (like wanting to complain for a badly-made hamburger) compared to the other dastardly things Bob has done to everybody else.
- Bob is a very timid man, but his constant shy requests and opinions are believed by everybody else in the cast to be as nasty as running over dog parades with a dump truck modified with a street-wide cow catcher while playing a "Mein Kampf" audiobook over loudspeakers and laughing about it; thus this Trope is played (disproportionately) straight.
- Bob is murdered. An investigation is put out to identify the killer - not to arrest them, but to congratulate them with a cash prize and free vacation.
- Bob is murdered. The list of people he angered, injured and slighted is humongous and loaded with Noodle Incidents that zig-zags between Bob being the biggest Butt-Monkey of the universe and its most loathed man (how the heck did Bob ticked off the President of the United States, anyway?).
- Zig Zagged: Bob was killed and the investigators are puzzled because he was such a jerk than everybody has a rock-solid motive to kill him... then it turns out that Bob's alive and the guy that died is Bob's perfect look-alike of a twin Jim that was pretty much a saint, so the investigation needs to focus away from possibilities that involve Bob being a jerk... and the fact Bob becomes even more of an asshole because of his grief and he makes people so angry that once the killer finally murders the "right" twin, the investigators have an even bigger list of suspects than the one that they started with.
- Averted
- Bob doesn't gets murdered.
- Bob's actions did not warrant him being murdered.
- Bob was murdered, but him being a jerk was completely unimportant to the killer's motive (ex. he wanted to kill Bob for his Cool Car, or he was just a passer-by target of opportunity for his murder spree).
- Bob was murdered, but it was because the killer wanted to Leave No Witnesses to some other crime he was performing (like a completely separate murder).
- Bob was murdered, but he was a decent person. Not an asshole, but not a nice guy either.
- Enforced:
- The writer wants a murder mystery, and with a cast so full of nice (and/or Genre Savvy) people it takes Complete Monster of a Jerkass that can justifiably drive even the most saintly of people past the Rage Breaking Point with his antics to make sure Everyone Is a Suspect.
- Bob is a Criminal Case character.
- Lampshaded:
- "Bob is such a fucking asshole that it's amazing someone didn't tried to kill him until now..."
- "All right, let's start by writing down the names of everyone who has a motive on this piece of paper... We're gonna need more paper."
- "At this point, I'm wondering if we should drop charges and start offering a reward for service to community. It'd certainly be easier..."
- Implied: A scene that is occurring in a bar goes silent when the news of Bob's murder appear on the TV... and then explodes on celebration.
- Invoked: Tim wants Bob dead so he can cash in his inheritance, so he pulls an elaborate Gaslighting scheme that will end with Bob acting like an irredeemably colossal jerk to everybody and everybody will be pissed off enough to want to hurt or even kill him.
- Exploited:
- Tim engineers things so Alice, Chris, Evelyn and Dave will be stuck on a Closed Circle with Bob, knowing that Bob's such a horrible man that any of them will end up at least trying to beat him to a pulp after a few hours.
- Tim is a Serial Killer that makes a business hunting down and killing Jerkass members of the community, knowing that they are such horrible human beings that the police will have a pretty large amount of potential suspects to go through, buying him time to get away.
- Defied:
- Bob takes steps to make sure that anybody who wants to kill him will suffer greatly for it, so nobody (even in the most blind of rages) decides to take their chances doing so.
- The investigation into Bob's murder explicitly refuses to focus on emotional motives—there's many other possibilities for Bob's death than him being the town asshole, and at most it was probably what "broke the camel's back" rather than the primary reason.
- People either leave town or do anything and everything to unleash their rage on something that isn't a living being, let alone one that they believe deserves it but know would end with them in jail. As a result, Bob the asshole is never murdered.
- Discussed: "Isn't it normal for assholes to be killed around Ms. Fletcher?" "What do do you mean with that? What kind of person deems 'normal' that assholes die around her?" "Because assholes are the type of people that are more prone to trigger the kind of 'burst of passion' regular to an impulsive murder, and are easier to bounce back from killing."
- Conversed: "The asshole is the most normal type of victim on a murder mystery series because we need him dead by the first commercial break."
- Deconstructed:
- The fact Bob was an asshole keeps people from placing focus on the fact that a human being was killed in cold blood by someone who had a burst of Ax-Crazy mania. By the end of the episode, the detective has a Heroic BSoD and goes into a screaming tirade that a whole village let pettiness prevent justice from being done, making them hypocrites just as bad as (or a hell of a lot worse than) Bob had ever been in life.
- The hundred people willing to look the other way or trying to maintain a secret about harboring a desire to kill an Asshole Victim are on the wrong end of an Obstruction of Justice or Felony Murder charge if/when they run into John Law. Especially if the law enforcement officer is a Knight Templar.
- Reconstructed:
- The murderer, a Well-Intentioned Extremist, believed that Bob's toxic influence had turned the town into a World of Jerkass and had to be removed ASAP. After the first couple of weeks where everybody actually enjoys Bob died, the feelings of humanity come roaring back. Where it will go from there... it's really hard to tell.
- Maybe if they were very vocal about wishing death on Bob, the Amoral Attorney they hired can save some of them by pulling the card of "Freedom of expression is still A Thing in this society, and beg you pardon, but if anybody deserved to have people screaming about how he had to die, it was Bob. You lived with him. You knew him. You know, deep in your hearts, that this was the only way he was going to end."
- Played For Laughs: The response to Bob's death is the whole town breaking out the party supplies. Every single scene that follows has a Funny Background Event directly related to the "Bob's Dead, Hooray! Carnival."
- Played for Drama: People are, quite understandably, horrified when the police interrogates them for Bob's murder and it looks like the police believes Bob being an asshole with a history of pissing them off was the reason they (presumably) killed him.
- Played For Horror: Bob is the first man to die in "The Hedgerow Slasher" film, and it's an X-rated bloodbath. In-Universe nobody cares about investigating he murder even while Jim, The Hero and the Only Sane Man, insists that it must be done because someone killing Bob like that is probably not going to stop at one person. His warning is not only unheeded until it's too late, but it is explicitly revealed that had the investigation actually been done, that would have saved the lives of the 24 people slaughtered by the Slasher.
See the long list of suspects at Who Murdered the Asshole
