Self Made Orphan / Live-Action TV

• Angel:
  • Treated in a bizarrely humorous way after Wesley shoots his father because his father was threatening Fred though it was actually a robot shapeshifter. Wesley was sure it was him, though, and that he would really do such a thing. Angel tries to comfort him, but it doesn't help. The characters bring up both Angelus killing his parents as a vampire and Spike killing his mother.
    Angel: You know, I killed my father. It was one of the first things I did after becoming a vampire.
    Wesley: I hardly see that's the same thing.
    Angel: You're right, dunno why I brought it up.
    (later)
    Spike: Heard you offed your dad. You know I killed my mum, well I mean I'd already killed her but then she tried to shag me so I had to (mimes staking).
    Wesley: Thank you, I really don't need any more comforting.
    (later, again. Wesley is in his office, Fred walks in)
    Wesley: If you're here to tell me about how you murdered your parents...
    Fred: What?
  • Fred's parents are both alive, and Wesley knew it perfectly well. Not only that, but they are the best darn parents in Texas, and until Fred dies it's probably the happiest family in the Buffyverse, so the situation is completely unlike Angel, Spike, or Wesley.
  • Angel: "My parents were great. Tasted a lot like chicken."
• Arrowverse: Played with in the backstory of Mick Rory, AKA Heat Wave. His introductory episode in The Flash (2014) explains that his first crime was burning down his house with his parents inside when he was a kid, but Legends of Tomorrow goes further in depth and reveals that while he did start the fire that killed his parents, he did it accidentally and panicked so much that he ran out of the house without waking his parents, which he still felt guilty for decades later.
• Bates Motel: It's revealed near the end of the first season that Norman killed his father during a psychotic break when Norman saw him hit his mother. Later in season four Norman kills his mother after finding out she was dating someone else, in a botched Murder-Suicide.
• Battlestar Galactica is a semi-example. The Cylons consider humans to be their parents and claim that they have to die for Cylons to reach their potential. It did not work well.
• Beverly Hills, 90210 character Valerie Malone killed her father. However, her mother is still around.
• Every member of Prince Edmund's Quirky Miniboss Squad, the Black Seal, in the first series finale of Blackadder, apart from Edmund himself, but including The Hawk. Edmund does plan on exiling and imprisoning his family though were he successful in taking power.
  Edmund: He murdered his whole family!
  Pete: Who didn't? I certainly killed mine.
  Wilfred: And I killed mine.
  Friar: And I killed yours.
  Sean: Did you?
  Friar: Yes.
  Sean: Good on you, Father.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Adam murders his creator, Maggie Walsh, within moments of coming on-line.
• Creepshow:
  • “Sibling Rivalry”: After becoming a vampire, Lola’s feral hunger makes her murder her parents. She didn't mean to do it and is clearly shaken up when she finally learns the truth, but she still did it.
  • “Mums”: After Bloom is killed by her husband Hank and buried in the garden, their son Jack lets his only surviving parent be killed by Bloom, who has merged with her garden into a Botanical Abomination.
  • “Meter Reader”: When she discovers her father Dalton mortally wounded and dying, Theresa is forced by his final orders to kill her mother Maria and her brother Michael, leaving her the last living member of her family.
• One episode of CSI: NY featured an older couple who were viciously attacked while they lay in bed. The chief suspect is their son, whose alibi doesn't check out. His father was killed and his mother, who suffered severe brain damage, doesn't believe he did it. She's right: it turns out that they had moved into a house owned by another older couple a few years before. The son of that couple went to jail after he raped his girlfriend following senior prom, and his parents testified against him in court. He returned home to kill his own mother and father but ended up attacking the new homeowners instead.
• Several Criminal Minds unsubs have done this. The most prominent examples are Frank (who killed his own mother and never knew his own father), The Reaper aka George Foyet and Billy Flynn (who shot his own mother in what he saw as an act of mercy).
• In one sketch on Dave Allen at Large, a priest knocks on the door of a house, and a little girl answers. The priest says, "I'm collecting for the orphanage." The little girl says, "Hold on a moment," and disappears inside. Two gunshots are heard. The little girl returns and says, "I'm ready."
• The Devil Judge: A tragic and accidental version. Elijah knocked over a candle, starting the fire that killed her parents.
• Averted and parodied in the first episode of Dexter, whose protagonist/narrator is a serial killer, when he explains in a narrative that both his parents are dead, immediately adding "I didn't kill them. Honest." It is revealed in the second season that Dexter actually inadvertently drove his father to suicide, much to Dexter's surprise.
  • Also, Brian, Dexter's brother (also a serial killer), offed their biological father.
• Day Break (2006): Hitman Miguel Dominguez was originally locked up for killing his own parents. It's later revealed that he did this to protect his sister from their abusive father.
• Doctor Who:
  • It's pretty likely that the Doctor killed his parents at the end of the Last Great Time War, although we don't really know whether or not his parents were still alive when he wiped out the Time Lords. Word of God from Russell T Davies is of the opinion the Doctor killed his mother when he ended the Time War. Given that dialogue in "The End of Time" reveals Time Lords were being killed and resurrected repeatedly during the War, this may be viewed as something of a release.
  • "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood": Daughter of Mine is indicated to have killed the parents of the little girl whose body she stole.
  • "The Sound of Drums": The Toclafane killed millions of their ancestors before their own birth, thanks to a "paradox machine" holding the Grandfather Paradox at bay.
  • "Spyfall": Daniel Barton, one of the villains, has an extremely strained relationship with his mother. So strained, in fact, that he hands her over to the Kasaavin to have her killed via the scrambling of her DNA.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Tyrion Lannister caused the death of both of his parents, although of course he didn't actively try to kill his mother; his mother died while giving birth to him, and as an adult, he murdered his father Tywin. He is undoubtedly viewed as this by Cersei and apparently Jaime following his murder of Tywin. Tyrion admits as much.
    Tyrion: I killed my mother Joanna Lannister on the day I was born. I killed my father Tywin Lannister with a bolt to the heart. I am the greatest Lannister killer of our time.
  • Later on, Ramsay Snow/Bolton kills his father and stepmother in rapid succession, along with their newborn son (whom he'd regarded as a threat), thereby taking control of House Bolton and the North.
  • Season 2 extras (and the books) all but state outright that Gregor Clegane murdered his father, and probably his (unnamed) sister as well.
• Gotham:
  • Barbara Keane murdered her parents, claiming this was because they were abusive. It's left unclear if they really were, however.
  • Jerome Valeska is introduced after he killed his own mother, whom he absolutely despised for her promiscuous lifestyle. After being sent to Arkham Asylum, he escapes and becomes a Psycho for Hire to Theo Galavan, and murders his biological father to pin the escape on him.
• Heroes:
  • Sylar killed his mother semi-accidentally, in the fight after she tried to stab him with a pair of dressmaking scissors.
  • Peter Petrelli attempted to kill his pop Arthur. He failed, but his attempt was finished by Sylar, who'd been suckered into believing that Arthur was his father as well.
  • Narrowly subverted in Shades of Gray when Sylar tracks down his father, Samson Gray. Samson seems indifferent when he meets Sylar, and when Sylar announces his intentions to kill him, he reveals he is already dying from cancer. Samson also reveals he has a power similar to Sylar's, including an acquired ability that paralyzes a person as if they were drugged. He also shares knowledge of Sylar's methodology, picking easy, helpless targets rather than going after "big game." When Samson witnesses Sylar heal instantly after accidentally cutting himself, he tries to take the ability from Sylar by paralyzing him. Sylar, however, manages to override it. Samson points out that taking his ability will not harm him as he can heal, but Sylar says he doesn't wish for his father to have such a power, and decides to leave. Samson begs Sylar to kill him, but Sylar says his cancer will eventually do so anyway, and leaves.
• Inhumans: Black Bolt vaporized his parents using the voice ability which he has.
• The Judge: One episode focused on a mental fitness hearing for a young man claiming that he was insane when he killed his parents. However, a mental health expert immediately sees inconsistencies in his behavior and is able to expose him as a very clever actor who killed for a large inheritance. Eventually, the man is exposed and he comes out, admitting his crime. Judge Shield is very angry and orders the man held over for trial, and the assets he would have inherited given to his elderly uncle.
• Kamen Rider Ryuki: At the age of 13, serial killer Takeshi Asakura/Kamen Rider Ouja burnt down his family house, which killed his parents.
• Done on Law & Order original flavor at least once; the girl in question even received a college scholarship. (The admissions board had nicknamed her "Little Orphan Annie.") She was seriously disturbed and committed another murder. A key part of getting her for the latest murder was charging her with fraud for accepting the scholarship under false pretenses.
  • Also occurs in a Season 1 episode based on real-life case of the Menendez Brothers.
  • One Season 5 episode has a man attempting this, but he was so drunk that he forgot that he and they no longer lived in his childhood home, so instead of his parents he ended up killing the random couple that just happened to live there.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has a few rare sympathetic examples where the victim was, or was thought to be, an Abusive Parent, and is killed either by the child they were abusing or by one of their other children trying to protect their sibling.
  • A fully straight example occurs in the Season 11 episode "Shadow", with a wealthy, sociopathic heiress killing her parents in order to inherit their money.
• Parker from Leverage certainly seems to be a case. In flashback, we see her having a favored toy taken away by her foster father. Next scene shows her holding the toy while walking down the driveway. Then the house explodes.
• Benjamin Linus, the Big Bad of Lost, may have lost his mother to perfectly innocent Death by Childbirth, but he hated the resentment from his father so much that he killed him and the rest of the Dharma Initiative with a painful-looking nerve gas.
  Ben: You know, I've missed her too. Maybe as much as you have. But the difference is, for as long as I can remember, I've had to put up with you. And doing that required a tremendous amount of patience. Goodbye, Dad.
  • Also, Kate killed her step-father, who then turned out to have been her birth father, for abusing her and her mother.
    • And depending on how you look at it, when Locke forced Sawyer to kill Locke's father.
    • Let's be fair – Locke didn't force Sawyer to do it as much as he manipulated him into doing it. It looked like Sawyer was going to pass on killing Cooper, until Cooper, in a boast about his long career as a con man, admitted to using the name "Tom Sawyer" during a previous con. Oops...
    • Sawyer symbolically played this trope straight, since Cooper was the con man who destroyed Sawyer's family, which led Sawyer to a life in the same business.
• Luke Cage (2016): Tilda ends up poisoning her mother Mariah.
• In the Masters of Horror episode "Imprint", the disfigured prostitute tells Christopher how she beat her father to death after he raped her when she was still a child.
• Morgana in Merlin (2008): her mother and the man she believed was her father were already dead, but she gave Agravaine an amulet to kill the wounded Uther, her birth father.
• Million Yen Women: One of the women was abused by her father and later turns out to have gotten both her parents killed because of it.
• My Name Is Earl: Catalina mentions that her mother is dead. But you shouldn't feel bad, because "it was her or me". In a later episode, this is elaborated upon (yet still Played for Laughs)^note The crate to smuggle them into America was only big enough for one person, so they fought to the death on the spot..
• Once Upon a Time:
  • Regina killed her father in order to enact her curse. Her mother survived longer, but Regina was manipulated into killing her in Season 2. By Snow.
  • Season two shows that Red killed her mother, though that was an accident.
  • Rumplestiltskin killed his father Peter Pan twice, first by stabbing him in the back to kill his mortal body, and then again during the trip to the Underworld in season 5 by using water from the Acheron river to send Pan's soul to the Worse Place. He finishes the job by killing his mother Fiona, the Black Fairy, in the season 6 finale. Given both parents were villains, nobody was particularly upset.
  • Hook killed his own father (his only identified parent) out of anger at being "replaced" by a younger son after Brennan had sold Hook and his older brother into servitude aboard a ship in order to escape being arrested.
  • Cruella de Vil tells the Author that her mother is a Black Widow who's kept her locked up in the attic to keep her from telling the truth. Her mother on the other hand tells the Author that Cruella was The Sociopath from the beginning and killed first her father, then her mother's next two husbands, and was locked up to keep her from harming anyone else. This is the actual truth, as the Author finds out when Cruella uses the magic powers he gave her to kill her mother, who'd been protected by dogs until Cruella could control them.
• Our Flag Means Death: In episode 6, it's revealed that Ed murdered his abusive father to protect his mother when his was a child, and it continues to haunt him.
• A Prince Among Men: Episode 3 gives us John the Murderer, who deliberately pushed his parents into the River Mersey. Understandably, Prince doesn't to be anywhere near the guy.
• The Sinner:
  • The second-season premiere opens with a young boy poisoning his parents. It turns out they aren't, though.
  • As a child, Harry set fire to his house in the hopes that he would be rid of his abusive mother. At the very least, he succeeded in having her lose custody of him.
• Scrubs: The episode My Saving Grace jokingly implies Dr Cox murdered his Abusive Parents.
• Smallville:
  • Lex Luthor murders his Archnemesis Dad Lionel as his final step into true villainy. Lionel himself is revealed to be one of these earlier in the series, having had his friend Morgan Edge kill his Alcoholic Abusive Parents in a gas fire. One can only wonder what Lex's children will do, should he have any...
  • Technically, Tess kills Lionel as well, though it's his Alternate Universe counterpart. Regardless, he is still considered her father even by Tess herself, and she kills him in self-defense.
• Star Trek uses this trope in Klingon mythology. According to it, the gods created Klingons, who then turned around and killed them for the trouble.
• Supernatural:
  • The Enfant Terrible villain of the episode "Provenance". Twice — her birth family and her adoptive one.
  • Bela is revealed to have killed both her parents by making a deal with the demon Lilith for them to meet with an accident. The other characters are allowed to believe it was for the insurance money, while the audience is shown scenes that strongly imply her father sexually abused her. "They were lovely people."
• V (2009): In the Season 2 finale, Papa Wolf Ryan was finally reunited with hybrid daughter Amy, who Anna had been holding hostage this season to make him work for her. However, in his absence, she has become an Enfant Terrible and the little girl strangles and kills her father when he tries to save her and declares her loyalty to Anna.
• The titular hero of Wynonna Earp accidentally killed her father when she was twelve while trying to shoot the demons abducting him. Wynonna grew up in psych wards and foster homes after that, and the guilt still weighs on her despite later reveals that her father was not the greatest man.
• The X-Files: In the episode "Eve", two girls who appear to be identical twins who live on opposite sides of the country kill their fathers at the same time. It turns out the two girls are part of a cloning project that was originally carried out by the government but is now being continued by another one of the clones. The clone adult that created the two girls wasn't behind the murders... the little girls were just evil.

---