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{{trope}}
[[File:Tonight-murder-jerk.png|thumb|500px]]
You watch enough mystery shows or read enough mystery stories, and you notice a certain trend: Frequently, the homicide victim is an [[Jerkass|asshole]].
For example, the victim will have been someone who enjoyed crushing people for the fun of it, or who ripped off at least a dozen people, and possibly more, or who was a criminal himself, etc.
The frequent impression left is that [[Pay Evil Unto Evil|"the victim had it coming"]] - an author has a corpse-shaped hole in the story, and decided to fill it with a character the audience won't mourn.
It should be noted, however, that an '''Asshole Victim''' is distinguished from [[Laser-Guided Karma]] and [[Karmic Death]] by virtue of suffering some form of punishment that has nothing to do with their malicious character, whereas the latter two get comeuppance specifically because of their malice.
There are three possible reasons for having an Asshole Victim:
# It's not as depressing
# It's one of the only ways to have a [[Sympathetic Murderer]]. Writers may make the victim an asshole in this case either just to have a sympathetic murderer; or, if the show is a [[Law Procedural|Courtroom Drama]], to make it harder to convict the killer as the jury sympathizes.
# In a mystery show, it [[Everyone Is a Suspect|maximizes the possible suspects]], as just about ''everyone'' involved would have a potential motive to kill this guy. Usually the line, "Well, I certainly ''hated'' X, but I didn't ''kill'' him" will be used repeatedly, and perhaps the extreme variation "Yeah, I ''wanted'' to kill X, but somebody beat me to it." In a few really extreme cases, suspects may even add "I'd kill X ''now'' if I could, but it's a moot point." In rare cases, a suspect admits that "[[I Wished You Were Dead|I wished X was dead]]" before the victim actually died, and now therefore feels [[Be Careful What You Wish For|indirectly responsible]] for it.
Also shows up in
At a minimum, they will have [[Kick the Dog|kicked the dog]] and may be well beyond the [[Moral Event Horizon]], especially in [[Anvilicious|less subtle]] productions. [[Pay Evil Unto Evil]] is when the perpetrator gets away with it because the Asshole Victim deserved it.
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A similar concept unites this trope to the [[Final Girl]]. She survives because she's the only one without sin or character flaws, She doesn't drink, do drugs, have sex outside of wedlock. She's nice and polite. Everyone else in the movie has such a flaw, making it okay for the monster to kill them.
For [[Kick the Dog|dog kickers]] who kick an asshole (not necessarily fatally), it's [[Kick the Son of
In accordance with the "[[wikipedia:Just world hypothesis|Just-world hypothesis]]," people may perceive ''any'' victim as an
Not to be confused with [[Ass Shove|people whose posteriors get violated.]]
{{noreallife|among other reasons, this trope naturally leads to the [[Unfortunate Implication]] that it's okay to kill someone just because that someone is a [[Jerkass]].}}
{{deathtrope}}
{{examples|suf=s}}
== [[Advertising]] ==
* One of the early Got Milk? commercials ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnIjgw5A-iI this one]) starts with a business executive sadistically firing someone over his cell phone as he crosses the street. He's promptly hit by a truck and goes to "heaven" with all the cookies he could want, [[This Isn't Heaven|but all the milk cartons are empty.]] [[Hell|Guess where he is...]]
** [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=301#comic Here,] [[Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal|apparently.]]
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* Occurs often in ''[[Death Note]]'', although the victim is often only inferred to have been an asshole by virtue of having been in prison. In fact, that's part of the point - Light claims that he researches these people to make sure that they really 'deserve' to die before he offs them and that he spares the criminal if the person ''they'' committed the crime against was an asshole victim. How reliably he does this is questionable at best.
** It's worth noting that in Chapter 2, L mentions that his first suspected victim, Kurou Otoharada's crime was the least serious (not including Shibutaku, who L has no reason to know about, since he isn't aware that the Death Note can kill by means other than heart attacks). Keep in mind that Otoharada is the guy who was holding a group of pre-schoolers at gunpoint at the moment Light killed him.
** On the other hand, he kills several law enforcement officers pursuing him, and also intends to kill people who don't contribute to society enough (although it's unclear what criteria he uses or what his standards are).
** This trope is played absolutely straight at least once, without any debate in universe. When Mikami offs Demigawa, even the Kira Task Force didn't hold it against Kira, even mentioning that if anyone deserved getting killed off by Kira, it was him.
* [[Detective Conan]] makes regular use of this trope. The ''vast'' majority of the victims end up being varying degrees of assholes (up to and including [[Driven to Suicide|driving people to suicide]] or even [[Karma Houdini|having themselves gotten away with murder]] in the past.)
** However it was ''memorably'' subverted once. The victim of the day was an [[Idol Singer]], poisoned by his beautiful manager because he subjected her to [[Jerkass|heaps of psychological abuse]] after she got plastic surgery. But the guy actually was a [[Jerk
* One of the most prominent aspects of the series ''[[
** Some of the casual comments used by people outside the main cast abound with harshness. When Lucy is sobbing over Kouta's apparent betrayal, people in the carnival crowd dismiss her as being on drugs. When Mayu offers to take care of the puppy she found to the dog's owner, she is dismissed as being too filthy - something her actual appearance in the episodes introducing her didn't reflect.
* Dr. Heinemann from ''[[Monster (
* Dallas Genoard from ''[[Baccano
** On the contrary. Many would find it amusing.
* In ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist (
** Likewise, in [[Fullmetal Alchemist (
** Frankly, from Scar's point of view, this is his entire modus operandi. He only kills State Alchemists, who were instrumental in the ethnic slaughter of his people. And even if a State Alchemist hadn't participated in that war, like Edward, a State Alchemist's role as a 'living weapon' means it's only a matter of time until they're ordered to do something equally heinous (and Edward ''is''). Far as Scar is concerned, every State Alchemist has it coming.
* This is a staple for the mysteries in ''[[The Kindaichi Case Files]]''. None of the murderers ever kill randomly out of pure insanity or for money. Instead, it inevitably turns out that the murderer was getting revenge for the loss/harming of a lover, family member, friends, or someone very dear who the murder victim royally screwed over in the worst possible way.
** A rare exception: in one case, two victims who were thought to be assholes turn out to be okay people.
* Almost all of the people sent to Hell by those seeking revenge in ''[[
* Taken [[Up to Eleven]] with the second victim in ''[[Bio
** ''[[Bio
*** Cut the only rope that allows them to enter and leave the safe room, for literally no other reason than to amuse themselves by watching the last of the main characters plummet loudly to the ground and alert the nearby Bio Meats to his presence.
*** Sneeringly (and loudly) voice disappointment when the last main character escapes being eaten due to a previously unnoticed weakness in the Bio Meats.
*** Make a "You're Not The Boss Of Me" speech as the escaped main characters are yelling for them to close the entrance to the safe room because all the insults the "Asshole Victims" have been yelling have alerted the Bio Meats, which are now rushing toward the entrance.
*** Continue ignoring the Bio Meats even as they're climbing into the no-longer-safe room, just to yell a few more accusations at the main characters of being responsible for their deaths by creating the escape route that they misused.
* Bellamy in ''[[
** Or when Doflamingo passes off ownership of the "human shop" to Disco after Luffy punches out a Celestial Dragon, or when Doflamingo later apparently kills Moria on orders of the World Government [[You Have Outlived Your Usefulness|for not being strong enough]] to continue as one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea.
** Spandam repeatedly kicked a down and broken Robin who was handcuffed and mentally tortured just for laughs. When she breaks his spine in half you feel as if he is getting off easy. If anything he is the poster boy of this trope.
*** He blamed his group of assassins that he led for everything that happened to the navy in the arc,, and then those assassins are implied to be coming after him.
** Admiral Akainu ordering an entire ship of refugees destroyed just because a scholar might be on it is [[Moral Event Horizon|unforgivably evil]]. However, the civilians of Ohara often acted as [[All of the Other Reindeer]] to Robin because of her Devil Fruit powers, making them considerably less sympathetic than Clover, Olvia and the rest of the scholars.
* Shinji of ''[[Fate/stay
* Makoto of ''[[
* Paragus qualifies as an Asshole Victim in the ending of ''[[Dragon Ball
** In one of its sequels, Bio-Broly, Maloja, the shaman and village idiot, has people sacrificed once a year to appease a monster attacking them. When Goten and Trunks kill the monster he is kicked out so he attempts revenge by bringing Broly's blood to Jaguar, thus resulting in an equally powerful clone of Broly. Jaguar and his cousin Men-Men are saved from the resulting destruction, but Maloja isn't as lucky when the acidic culture fluid enters his room and he speaks his last incantation.
** The genocide of the Saiyans of Planet Vegeta. In the long run, Frieza may have done the universe a favor rectifying his [[Gone Horribly Right]] use of the Saiyans.
** In the anime, the two gunmen whom Evil Buu/Super Buu kills certainly qualify. They kill numerous people for no reason other than that the world is being destroyed, so they might as well. They shoot Hercule and anger Fat Buu into creating another entity who becomes the new antagonist. The second gunman in particular gets perhaps the most brutal death in the series.
*** Speaking of Buu, keep in mind that any character on Earth you can think of not specified to have died already or to be somewhere else is killed either by his Human Extinction Attack or by blowing up the earth. Goten and Trunks' first opponents in the junior division, Master Shu, Emperor Pilaf, Vodka the gangster, the Red Shark Gang, Mr. Musuka the circus man who kidnapped Chobi. Not to mention Mercenary Tao Pai Pai and Captain Ginyu. Granted most of them may not have been considered "evil" enough to remain dead when Dende wishes everyone back except the evil ones.
* Those two misogynists on the train in episode 8 of ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica
* Chaka from ''[[
* Tarukane and Butajiri from ''[[
* The Bandits killed by Inuyasha in the episode 51 of ''[[Inuyasha]]''.
* In the ''[[
* The first people we see [[Ax Crazy|Gaara]] kill in ''[[Naruto]]'' are a team of older genin from Amegakure whose leader is an arrogant bastard who tries his best to kill Gaara unprovoked. It's kind of satisfying seeing his [[Oh Crap]] moment. Of course, the next two victims are his teammates who were begging for mercy at the time, and immediately afterwards we see him right on the edge of killing team 8 as well, so it's immediately clear that Gaara is not a nice person.
** Gaara's dad, the Fourth Kazekage, who basically had his wife die so he could try to harness Shukaku then shunned and tried to (unsuccessfully, of course) kill his son Gaara. You know Orochimaru doesn't have any kindness in his heart, but it's not like you lament that he killed the Kazekage.
* Michio Yuki from ''[[MW]]'' has killed off the people who were part of the cover-up of the titular chemical warfare including {{spoiler|his boss at the bank he worked at}}.
* ''[[Your Lie in April]]'': Wishing death on a parent might be a taboo in nearly every culture. By the time Kousei is shown having done so, though, Saki's abusiveness is well-established enough that when he hits [[Rage Breaking Point]] over her publicly hitting him on the head hard enough to cause bleeding, only the most saintly person would feel the need to stand up for her.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* The Comedian in ''[[Watchmen (comics)]]'' is perhaps the ultimate Asshole Victim, although that had nothing to do with the (primary) motivation behind his murder. By the end, we feel some sympathy for him. But he's still an asshole.
** Moloch, too. Though he hadn't been an asshole in ''years''.
** And then there's Gerald Grice. The plot needed to show Rorschach violently murdering someone, to establish the full onset of his insanity. Grice being a murderer himself make the story a very solid [[Black and Grey Morality]] type.
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** At least one (if not two) exception was the Punisher being unwillingly wacked out of his skull on drugs.
* Most people who get beat up by [[The Hulk]] usually have it coming.
* In the Shadowlands comic series [[Daredevil]] completely loses his shit and murders Bullseye after dislocating his arms. This was supposed to show that Daredevil was descending into darkness, but [[Kick the Son of
* In ''[[Johnny the Homicidal Maniac]]'', most of Johnny's victims are this. Or are implied to be people like this. Or hung out with people like this. Or stood too close to people like this (i.e. around two kilometers). Come to think of it, Johnny doesn't really discriminate once he's gotten going, but it takes a soon-to-be
* From ''[[Dark Times]]'', Dezono Qua.
* Tommy Monaghan, the titular protagonist of [[Hitman (Comic Book)|Hitman]], only takes contracts out on those he considers to be "bad" people.
* In the backstory of ''[[Kingdom Come]]'', [[Nineties Anti-Hero|Magog]] kills the Joker while he's in police custody. Of course, this is '''[[Complete Monster|The]] [[Monster Clown|Joker]]''' we're talking about here, and he was arrested because he went on a rampage in the ''Daily Planet'' offices and killed 75
* [[Lobo]] claims the whole Czarnian race (his own people, whom he wiped out) were this; [[Take Our Word for It|we can only assume that's true]], but if they were anything like Lobo himself they probably were.
* Gorr the God-Butcher (a villain usually associated with [[The Mighty Thor| Thor]]) claims all the gods he has slain are this, as he views gods in general as neglectful, selfish, and cruel, and if his own word can be trusted, most are; he claims he has killed gods associated with fear, war, chaos, genocide, revenge, plagues, earthquakes, blood, wrath, jealousy, death, and degradation. Unfortunately, he also claims to have killed some gods of poetry and flowers.
* This is discussed in one ''[[Spider-Man]]'' story where the mobster Jimmy Six confronts his [[The Don|mob leader father Fortunado]]; Jimmy doesn't intend to kill him, but he rightfully believes this Trope would apply if he did:
{{quote|'''Fortunado:''' So, you are here to kill me?
'''Jimmy:''' Word on the street is I gotta get in line for that priviledge.}}
== [[Fan Works]] ==
* Eleven-year-old Zacharias Smith in the ''[[Harry Potter]]'' fanfic ''The Best Revenge''. Notable in that his killer, the horcrux in Tom Riddle's diary, gets off scot-free in a fic that otherwise has a far lower body count than canon.
* In the ''[[Babylon 5]]'' fanfic ''[[The Dilgar War]]'' has warmaster Len'char, whose actions and political meddling make Jha'dur (whose body count of innocent is so high she's called Deathwalker) make sympathetic, especially as Jha'dur [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|did what she did to save her people]] and just couldn't see a pacifistic solution while Len'char put such survival at serious risk. When Jha'dur finally crossed the [[Moral Event Horizon]], her promise to not kill him ''no matter how much he begged for it'' is quite satisfying.
* Ace Swift in ''[[Turnabout Storm]]''. A pegasus athlete that had rumors about him saying that he reached his victories by less-than-honest methods, which turn out to be true. He blackmailed every opponent that had a chance of beating him into dropping out of the race so he could keep both his victory streak untouched and the money from the numerous bets on his favor.
==
* ''[[Terminator (
** In the first film, the Terminator's very first victim pulled a knife on him, swore at him, and generally made us [[Kick the Son of
*** It seems more like a case of [[Anyone Can Die]], honestly.
** ''[[Terminator (
*** The asylum attendant licks Sarah's face while she's helpless. After she escapes she gives him a brutal beating.
*** Todd and Janelle, John's foster parents, are portrayed as uncaring and unpleasant, respectively. When T-1000!Janelle speaks in a friendly manner to John Conner on the phone, he says "She's never this nice". The T-1000 kills both of them.
* All of Travis Bickle's victims in ''[[Taxi Driver]]''. Despite being something of a [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|psychopath]], he is sympathetic compared to them.
* It's not a murder-mystery, but Steve in the remake of ''[[Dawn of the Dead (2004
** To be fair, while CJ is a bit of a jerk at first he does start to lighten up towards the end, and unlike most of the other examples here, he gets to die in a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] when he blows himself up to destroy a bunch of zombies so that everyone else can get away.
** All the bikers in the original ''[[Dawn of the Dead (
* Most, if not, all of the victims meant to die in the accidents in the [[Final Destination]] series. But especially, [[Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"|The Racist]] in the fourth film.
* Pretty much everyone in ''[[Hostel]]'' spends most of the movie doing everything they can to make you hate them, even after they know their friends are being kidnapped and killed.
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** Apparently this trope was taken into consideration when doing that scene. Originally they had him apologize for his behavior before suffering his fate, but they decided to edit that out to keep him a strict asshole in the eyes of the audience. It worked, since when his scene came up, the audience ''cheered''.
** Like most of the movie, this is probably in reference to ''[[Night of the Living Dead]]'' and in particular the dynamic between Ben and Harry; like Harry, David ''is'' right about a lot of the things that they should be doing, but that doesn't stop him from being an asshole.
* ''[[Sorority Row]]'' probably has a record for the number of deliberately unsympathetic victims; out of all the people killed maybe one or two qualify for [[Jerk
* Mr. Dietrichson in ''[[Double Indemnity]]'', for the sake of making Neff a [[Sympathetic Murderer]].
* In ''[[
* While the Joker killed many innocent civilians in ''[[Batman (film)|Batman]]'', most named characters he killed deserved it, including cruel crimelord [[The Don| Carl Grissom]], his lieutenants Antoine Rotelli and Vinnie Ricorso, and [[Dirty Cop]] Lieutenant Max Eckhardt.
** And in ''[[Batman Returns]], [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] Max Shrek was possibly a bigger scum than the Penguin, making [[Murder by Cremation| his horrid death at the end]] pretty satisfying.
* The black comedy ''Drowning Mona''. Bette Milder played Mona, a woman so universally despised that when she was killed, no one cared about her death (beyond wondering who had finally done the deed) and only her son and husband showed up at her funeral (and even they weren't too broken up about it). This made the jobs of the investigators much more difficult, because practically '''''EVERYONE''''' in town had a reason for wanting to kill Mona, making everyone a suspect.
* The mission director in ''[[Gattaca]]'' was ... not universally liked, making the movie an example of reason number three.
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* In ''[[Se7en]]'', John Doe thinks he's doing this, though less than half of the victims including John Doe himself really qualify as assholes.
* The titular character in ''[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052784 El Esqueleto de la Sra. Morales]'' (Skeleton of Mrs. Morales) suffers a severe case of assholism. To wit: Exploiting a malformation of hers for sympathy, feigning to ba a victim of domestic violence, attempting to poison her husband's pet owl and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|breaking his newly bought camera]].
* ''[[Men in Black (
{{quote|
''(Spaceship crashes into the truck; Edgar proceeds to walk out to investigate)''
'''Edgar:''' ...Figures.
''(Edgar walks to the crash site)''
'''Beatrice:''' What the heck is it, Edgar?
''(Edgar turns around quickly)''
'''Edgar:''' Get your big butt back in that house! }}
** Similarly, after Serleena assumes human form in the sequel, she is attacked by a man with a knife and swallows him whole, then proceeds to spit him out and steal his clothes when she realizes that she gained an immense gut as a result of eating him.
* Harry Tasker ([[Arnold Schwarzenegger]]) uses this justification in ''[[True Lies]]'':
{{quote|
'''Harry:''' Yeah, but they were all bad. }}
** Given that he's under the influence of [[Truth Serum]] at the time, he must really believe it. And given that he fights terrorists and trigger-happy enemy agents, it sure seems like it could be true.
* Dr. David Drumlin deserved to get it in the neck for EVERYTHING he does to screw over Ellie Arroway in ''[[Contact (
* This is the premise of ''[[Boondock Saints]]''. They kill gangsters who couldn't be touched by the police.
* ''[[Eye for An Eye]]'' is about a mother who hears her daughter raped and murdered by a grocery deliverer while talking to her on the cell phone, who gets off on a technicality, and decides to kill him.
* ''Hood of Horror'' the whole film revolves around making people pay for their crimes against man by grotesque brutal death and then hell.
* ''[[Creepshow]]'', being the [[Troperiffic]] delight that it is, has lots of fun with this. We've got Nathan (emotionally abusive, murderous father), Bedelia (his insane, drunk-driving, parricidal daughter), Richard (psychotic, murderous Leslie Nielsen), Billie (emotionally abusive, nagging Adrienne Barbeau), and Upson Pratt ([[Complete Monster]] [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]]). In the final scene of the [[Framing Story]], the boy who was reading the comic is torturing his abusive, hypocritical dad with a voodoo doll.
** That's because the [[EC Comics|EC horror comics]] it's influenced by are just chock-full of
* In the ''[[Saw]]'' saga it's rare to ''not'' find ''asshole victims'', but Danica from ''III'', Xavier from ''II'', Dave from ''VI'' and Ivan from ''IV'' stand out.
** There's also the group of racist skinheads from the final movie that are killed for abusing others.
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* [[Too Dumb to Live|Micah]] from ''[[Paranormal Activity]]''.
* Doc and Mitchy from ''[[Terror Train]]''.
* Most of the victims in ''Madhouse''
{{quote|
* Scotty, in ''The [[Evil Dead]]''. As well as the two rednecks in ''[[Evil Dead]] II''.
* In 2008's ''[[The Incredible Hulk (
* ''[[Dead Silence]]''. As soon as he first appears, we all know that [[Bad Cop, Incompetent Cop|Det. Jim Lipton]] will get what's coming to him by the end.
* ''[[The Ring]]'': Thanks for killing [[Smug Snake|Dr. Emma Temple]], Samara.
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** This troper remembers watching this movie on an online live stream, and the entire chat with about fifty people cheered in unison in the scene where she died. It was glorious.
* Harlan, from ''[[Thelma and Louise]]'', tries to rape Thelma but is thwarted by Louise. This doesn't get him killed right away as Louise tells him to be more considerate of women "in the future." What gets him killed is his insistence at being a [[Jerkass]]...
{{quote|
''Louise'': What did you say?
''Harlan'': I said suck my cock!
''Louise's Gun'': BANG! }}
** Followed later by the police investigation: (NOTE: paraphrased from memory. Could someone clean this up with the actual quotes?)
{{quote|
Cocktail waitress: Me? I'd say some old gal, some old gal's husband. Has anyone asked his wife, she's the one I ''hope'' did it. }}
* In ''[[
* In ''[[Little Shop of Horrors]]'', Audrey II's first victim is the dentist Orin Scrivello, who is sadistic to his patients and abusive to his girlfriend Audrey.
** Audrey II [[Squick|just ate his corpse]]; Orin would have been ''Seymour's'' first victim, but he [[Too Dumb to Live|did himself in before Seymour could]]. Audrey's first ''live'' victim is the emotionally abusive father figure Mr. Mushnik, who's not much less of a jerk. At any rate, the plant [[Lampshade Hanging|uses the line]] "A lot of folks ''deserve'' to die" in relation to Orin's [[Chewing the Scenery]] behaviour during the "Feed Me" [[Crowning Music of Awesome|number]].
*** In the [[Recursive Adaptation|original movie]], the dentist, while not as big an arsehole as Orin, is still practising without a licence. Seymour kills him with the drill (and is then [[Crowning Moment of Funny|forced to operate]] on [[One-Scene Wonder|a young Jack Nicholson]]. Audrey Jr's first actual victim is a hold-up man (whose death was given to Mushnik in the subsequent versions).
* Judging by the trailer, it would seem that the upcoming parody ''Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil'' takes the slasher movie approach to this trope to it's logical extreme; the 'psycho degenerate hillbillies' are actually a pair of well-meaning but not incredibly bright guys who, through various misunderstandings, are taken to be that way by a bunch of prejudiced, elitist college kids. [[Hilarity Ensues|Very gory hilarity ensues]] as the kids, much to the confusion and bewilderment of the two, end up accidentally killing themselves while trying to attack the 'evil killers'.
* Both used and subverted in the film ''[[Heathers]]''
* ''[[The Trouble
* In ''[[V for Vendetta]]'', every named antagonist qualifies as this, with the sole exception of Dr. Delia Surridge. It's no coincidence, then, that out of all the named antagonists, Dr. Surridge is the only one granted a quiet, painless death.
** Mainly because she's a remorseful [[Death Seeker]] who [[Genre Savvy|seems to anticipate]] that [[Death Equals Redemption]]. If her journals can be believed, she hated (or convinced herself to hate) the people she experimented on. V managed to form a connection with her, which brought her to confront her actions and apologize to her only living victim.
* The 2006 remake of [[The Wicker Man]] featured a hysterically funny unintentional example. Oh no! Not the bees!
* [[Played for Laughs]] in a scene in horror movie parody ''[[Scary Movie]]''. One of the teenagers being stalked by the masked killer is watching a movie in a crowded theater; she's being loud and obnoxious, ruining the movie for everyone else. The masked killer is then shown to be sitting in the seat next to her... but before he gets the chance, one of the other movigoers steals his knife and stabs her. He then just sits and drinks his soda while ''all the other audience members'' continue to stab her to death. When she stumbles in front of the screen and finally falls dead, they ''applaud''.
* The victim in ''[[Murder
* The Cult members in ''[[Silent Hill (
* The female lead character in [[Catherine Breillat]]'s ''[[Romance (
* The murder victim in the movie ''[[Bully (
* Buck and his customer in ''[[Kill Bill]]''
** Budd, during a moment of contemplation states that all the members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad are this.
{{quote|
* A somewhat failed example of this trope happened in the Vault Of Horror movie. A woman was driven to killing her husband by his OCD need to keep the house neat. However, the actor never really went over the top, and came across more as lecturing than yelling and screaming, to the point where you felt more like they needed to sit down and have a long talk, rather than him deserving to die.
* None of the humans in ''[[Predator
** Dale, Nick, and Mark in AVPR aren't very nice either. Dale, as the leader of the trio, gets the most vicious of the three, the alien's blood burning his face.
* Every single character in the horror movie ''Marcus'' (2006) except Brooke(who's not an asshole) and Marcus(who's not a victim).
* In ''[[Dogma]]'', Loki visits a boardroom of [[Corrupt Corporate Executive
** He did spare the only one who didn't have any sins.
*** Although she did forget to say [[Hair-Trigger Temper|GOD BLESS YOU!!]]
* This was the reason that nobody found any sympathy for the documentary crew in ''[[Cannibal Holocaust]]''. One of their crimes involved ''burning down a village'' for no reason other than to shoot a scene. One critic actually noted "The film crew more than deserved their deaths."
* The first victim of ''[[Bubba
* The guy in ''[[Snakes
* Everyone who is killed in ''The Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane''. Except Gordon.
* A recent updated version of the [[Oliver Twist]] story called "Twist" featured the character of Dodger finally snapping, and shooting Bill. By that point in the movie, Bill had either seriously injured or murdered about three-quarters of the cast. In short, he ''really'' had it coming.
* Patrick and Belch in [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[IT]]''.
* In ''Bride of Chucky'', the fourth ''[[
* Coach Schneider in ''[[A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 2 Freddys Revenge]]''. And this trope is rare in the ''Nightmare'' movies (except ''[[
* ''[[
* Pretty much everyone in ''[[Falling Down]]''. Bill Foster may be [[Beware the Nice Ones|a bit crazy]], but compared to the rest of LA, he's an absolute saint.
* John Strode and Barry Simms in ''[[Halloween (
* [[Lockjaw]]'s protagonists may have stepped over the boundary. The incident that triggers the plot is them running over someone. The major difference between these teens and the teens from ''[[
* Leroy in ''[[Mystery Team]]''.
* [[Invoked Trope]] in ''[[Shoot
* In ''[[Psycho Beach Party]]'' Rhonda spends her days being incredibly rude and insulting everybody so watching her die was rather satisfying.
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in [[M. Night Shyamalan]]'s ''[[Lady in
* Mitchell Laurio in ''[[X2: X-Men
* Harry Prebblie in ''[[The Blue Gardenia]]'' tries to rape Norah, and is promptly killed {{spoiler|just not by her.}}
* Carter Burke in ''[[Alien (
* ''[[Strangers
* Very deliberately invoked in the 2008 nature horror film, "Grizzly Park". The 8 characters forced into community service in Grizzly Park as rehabilitation for their misdemeanors are deliberately set up to be as obnoxious, apathetic and unsympathetic as possible, each appearing to get a [[Karmic Death]] from the bear trying to kill them. In the end it's revealed the bear belonged to the park ranger who trained it to kill any members of the group. The ranger lets the last survivor live, believing she has made a [[Heel Realization]] and learned from her previous mistakes. Nope, he later overhears her (unaware that the ranger was part of the plot) calling her friend telling her she had manipulated him and planned to kill him later - prompting her to be mauled by the bear towards the end of the movie.
* Discussed in ''[[
* ''[[The Silence of the Lambs]]''. Dr. Chilton, who was in charge of the facility where Hannibal Lecter was originally imprisoned. He sleazily hits on Clarice Starling and doesn't take it well when she declines him. Hannibal says that Chilton has harassed in the past and we have no reason to disbelieve him. He reveals the FBI's attempt to trick Hannibal into cooperating - not because he's offended by their dishonesty, but because he wants to cut his own deal and get publicity. At the end of the movie Lecter is seen trailing Chilton and it's made clear that he's going to kill him and eat him ("I'm having an old friend for dinner.").
* {{spoiler|[[Villain Protagonist|The main character, Tony Montana]]}} from ''[[Scarface]]'' might as well be the ultimate kind of this trope. Although he gets a [[Redemption Equals Death]] moment when he {{spoiler|[[Even Evil Has Standards|refuses to blow up the journalist's car, along with said person's wife and children by killing Sosa's hitman.]]}} {{spoiler|Tony}} also paid the price for said incident, however, when {{spoiler|Sosa sent his men to attack him.}} His death wasn't played out in a [[Alas, Poor Villain]] moment either. By the end, we still retain some sympathy for him, but he is still an asshole from start to finish, including when {{spoiler|he killed Gina's future husband, Manny Ribera, because of his over-protectiveness for said sister.}}
** In general, most of the characters could qualify. It's hard to feel sorry for any of these people, since they are all assholes from start to finish, as evidenced by the [[Cluster F-Bomb|constant swearing]] throughout the whole movie.
* Buddy Repperton and his gang from ''[[Christine]]''. This guy is a [[Jerk Jock]] with extra jerk, spending the majority of his screen time bullying poor Arnie Cunningham, referring to him by a… [[Country Matters| vulgar version of his last name]]. When Arnie gets a new car, Buddy and his goons decide to vandalize it… Not knowing that the car is a [[Sentient Vehicle]] with a nasty and vengeful streak. The car proceeds to hunt down Buddy’s gang, crushing one of them, then triggers a fire in a gas station, causing an explosion that kills the other two, and finally runs Buddy himself over. Note that this sort of thing ''is'' pretty common in [[Stephen King]] stories.
* The plot of ''[[Dick Tracy (film)|Dick Tracy]]'' starts when mobster Lips Manlis is murdered - gangland execution style - by his former protege and [[Big Bad]] Big Boy Caprice.
== [[Literature]] ==
* Toyed with in [[Isaac Asimov]]'s ''[[The Naked Sun]],'' where the murder victim qualifies under reasons two and three. . . because he was the perfect embodiment of the planet's social code ("a good Solarian"), that is, an anti-social a-hole. ''Everyone'' had a motive to murder the man who reminded them all of their imperfections.
* Another story by Asimov features a famous researcher die in a lab explosion, and foul play is suspected. The problem is, it turns out this "researcher" never did anything except stealing the ideas and results of others, so not only did everyone have a motive, ''everyone was openly discussing the best way to kill him''.
* Bob Sheldon in ''[[The Outsiders]]'', who is knifed to death while [[Moral Event Horizon|trying to drown the main character in a fountain.]]
* An interesting variant occurs in a 1980s science fiction short story ''Press Enter'' about a hacker who'd been secretly running the world from his computer; although nobody that knew him had any reason to hate him enough to kill him while he was still alive, his posthumous release of all the embarrassing information he'd gathered on the people around him over the years had one police officer remarking that all the townspeople sure wished they could kill him ''now''.
* Scottish police detective [[Hamish Macbeth (
* [[
** Ratchett in ''[[Murder
** ''[[
*** Anthony Marston, the first to die, was a reckless driver who ran over a couple of children, and was only upset about the incident because it resulted in the loss of his driver's license. He was completely self-centered, and showed no remorse or sympathy for his victims. The killer felt that the reckless driver was simply born sociopathic and self-absorbed, and couldn't help not feeling guilty.
*** Many of the other characters, on the other hand, do indeed regret their misdeeds. Interestingly, some of the later killings use the exact opposite logic. For example, the surgeon was drunk, so the deaths he caused under the influence weren't intentional or premeditated, and thus considered not as worthy of retribution as say, the nanny who let the child in her charge drown so that her lover would receive the lion's share of an inheritance.
** Mrs. Boynton in ''Appointment with Death''. After she spends the first part of the book psychologically torturing her family, one could be forgiven for cheering when a public-spirited individual does away with the old crone. Except that the actual killer was more ''private''-spirited in their
** Mr. Shaitana in ''Cards On the Table'', who has a collection of successful
*** As a further sign of Shaitana's arrogance, very late in the book, it is revealed that one of the so-called "murderers" was actually innocent of his original crime, and thus did not deserve to be put through Shaitana's mind game in the first place.
** Simeon Lee in ''Hercule Poirot's Christmas'' is an selfish old millionaire, who plays sadistic mind games with his family. Here, however, the murder was actually personal revenge.
** The sadistic Lord Edgware in ''Lord Edgware Dies''. However, as in ''Appointment with Death'', the murder was committed for selfish motives.
** Colonel Protheroe of ''[[
** Subversion in ''[[
** Joyce Reynolds in ''Halloween Party'' manages to be a prepubescent version of this trope, being regarded by most of the adults and children around her as a lying [[Attention Whore]] and not incredibly well liked as a result. Of course, the fact that she's still a child means that it is ''not'' okay when someone bumps her off. Her brother Leopold is also one of these.
** Some of the deceased in ''Death Comes as the End'' fall into this category, especially Nofret and Ipy.
** Some readers might find the victim, Linnet, from ''Death On The Nile'' to be one of these. In the beginning of the book, she seems like quite a nice person until we find out that she's having a village knocked down and the people moved because they're blocking her view (though she is having new houses built for them at least). Then we find out that she stole her best friend's fiancee. She doesn't look quite so good after that.
*** Though somewhat subverted when we learn that the best friend and the fiance were both in on it. The movie, however, plays it straighter by giving almost other passenger a motive, even if Linnet hasn't brought all of them on herself.
** Masterfully averted in ''Towards Zero'', where the victim is a rather strict and old-fashioned, but very good-natured and kind old lady, liked all around. Her killing is very much intended as a [[Moral Event Horizon]], though Christie was kind enough to make her terminally ill and actually wanting to die to alleviate reader's guilt. Bonus points for ''the police'' discussing the trope and aversion.
* ''[[Sherlock Holmes]]'' dealt with a couple of these, making this [[Older Than Radio]].
** The most evil being Charles Augustus Milverton, who got rich by [[
{{quote|
** Holmes seems to have a tendency to let murders of spousal abusers slide. In Victorian England, hitting women is not okay.
*** The titular character in ''Black Peter'' is a good example.
*** Another example is Sir Eustace Brackenstall, the victim in ''The Adventure of Abbey Grange.'' Brackenstall was a violent drunkard who did everythhing from repeatedly stab his wife Lady Brackenstall with a hatpin to ''douse her dog in oil and light it on fire''. He eventually had his skull caved in by a sailor who'd fallen in love with Lady Brackenstall before she married her husband and had come to defend her from her husband's abuse. Holmes tracks down the sailor, and once he learns what really happened lets the sailor go.
*** Actually, Holmes was a pretty advanced guy in that way--"hitting women" wasn't okay back then, but disciplining your wife to keep her in line was just fine.
** The two victims in ''A Study in Scarlet'' definitely qualify, being murderers themselves as well as rapists, misogynists, hedonists, and religious extremists who, in turn, abandoned said religion the second it became inconvenient for them. In this case the reader is definitely expected to side with the murderer.
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* Nearly ''everyone'' in [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[Carrie]]'' save Sue Snell (who survives). The famous scene where Carrie kills everyone at the prom is supposed to be [[Deliberate Nightmare Fuel]] in the book and film, but the effect is [[Nightmare Retardant|nullified somewhat]] when you are cheering her on.
** Carrie's date started out this way, but by the time the prom rolled around, he had actually grown to like her. Pity she never found that out...
** In ''Bag Of Bones'', primary antagonist [[Complete Monster|Max Devore]] dies suddenly, an apparent suicide. His most direct victims celebrate his death. The rest of his town [[Sins of Our Fathers|knows what really killed him and wonders which of them is next]]. Nobody mourns for his death, however.
** King's [[Sherlock Holmes]] pastiche, "The Doctor's Case" (in ''Nightmares & Dreamscapes''), features such a victim, physically abusive to his wife and mentally abusive to her and their three sons (all adults). Just to cap it off, the victim plans to leave his wife and sons penniless when he dies (death of natural causes is mere months away and he knows it) by leaving his fortune to a cat shelter. Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade collectively agree the deceased had it coming and basically drop the investigation.
* Several of [[Ellis Peters]]' [[
** In ''The Leper of St. Giles'', a brutish and cruel nobleman is killed the day before he was to marry a much younger and not-entirely-willing lady. Curiously, but in typically compassionate Ellis Peters form, the mystery is solved with the help of someone who was the victim's friend and who saw him as a good man.
** In ''Dead Man's Ransom'', Gilbert Prestcote is severely wounded in battle and then murdered in his bed while recovering. In previous books he was set up as a hardline sheriff who was often too quick to judge, resulting in many races against time for Cadfael and Hugh Beringar to save an innocent person from punishment or keep a criminal from getting away.
*** While he judged quickly, he wasn't cruel and would always recant if shown evidence he was wrong. He wasn't a [[
** In ''The Raven in the Foregate'', Father Ailnoth's death is mourned by nobody, after the residents and reader spend a few chapters being appalled by his cruelty. In the end it turns out that his death was not murder, but an accident which the sole witness considered to be divine judgment.
* In Kate Ross' second Julian Kestrel mystery, ''Whom the Gods Love'', the victim is gradually revealed to have been this.
* ''[[Harry Potter and
** Played with in the case of Barty Crouch. He's introduced as a stuffy man who sacked his House Elf while ignoring her sobbing pleas and tossed his neglected son into Azkaban. He becomes less of an asshole when we realize that he had good damned reason to have his son locked up and the last time we see Crouch alive, he's insane, terrified, and trying his hardest to warn Dumbledore about the planned return of Voldemort.
*** He was also more sympathetic in the movie adaptation where we see his son as a depraved, all-grown-up lunatic before he locked him up rather than a scared, innocent young boy.
** Loxias was such a [[Complete Monster]] that
* The victim in the first [[
* Roughly half the victims in [[Dorothy L. Sayers]]' [[Lord Peter Wimsey]] novels qualify. Most of the others are old and ill enough to have had a life expectancy measured in at most months even before they were murdered.
** Sir Reuben, the victim of the first book, ''Whose Body?'' seems to be a subversion. Generally, if a businessman is killed in a Golden Age mystery novel, he is a [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]], and if the character is Jewish, as Sir Reuben is, this is certainly going to be true. While Sayers goes with the conventional wisdom/racism by having him be a fairly ruthless businessman, against type, he is beloved by his family and liked or at least respected by his servants and business associates.
** ''Strong Poison'': Phillip Boyes. In the immortal words of Lord Peter, "If only that young man were alive today, how dearly I should like to kick his bottom for him."
*** Yeah. Boyes got a woman to live with him out of wedlock by claiming to be above marriage, then proposed to her, and was an emotionally abusive jerk to her during their entire relationship. ''Anyone'' would want to kick his ass. That she was Peter's true love was only icing on the cake.
** ''The Five Red Herrings'' had [[Violent Glaswegian|Sandy Campbell]], a foul-tempered alcoholic who seriously hurt someone at the golf course, threatened people's lives, and physically attacked his neighbor
** If anything, Geoffrey Deacon in ''The Nine Tailors'' is BEYOND an
** ''Murder Must Advertise'': Victor Dean was a [[
** Mr. Plant, the titular victim of the short story "The Unsolved Puzzle of the Man with No Face", is horrible to his subordinates.
* Mr. Wagstaffe from the [[Montague Egg]] short story ''False Weight'' had a wife (using a different name each time) in every town his rounds took him to.
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* Most of the murder victims we actually get any introduction to in ''Burning Water'', by [[Mercedes Lackey]].
** The gang of school bullies who make the fatal mistake of trying their usual shenanigans on Lavan, later known as "Lavan Firestorm" for very good reasons in ''Brightly Burning.''
* Usually not seen in [[Discworld]], where posthumous dialogue between victims and Death tends to paint all but [[Complete Monster|the worst]] villains in a sympathetic light. Used straight with Homicidal Lord Winder from ''[[
** Of course, knowing Vetinari, that may well have been the intended method of assassination.
* [[Robert Heinlein]]'s ''[[Friday (
** Some context: the officer in question is threatening lethal force to try and enforce a detainment order for immigration control, when no one in the scene has shown any weapons, made any threatening gestures or statements, or done anything except calmly insist that a) the internment order should not apply to their one friend as he is on a permanent resident visa and b) that they do not know where the other person the officer is looking for is. (They are admittedly lying, as Friday is just in the next room, but that's not justification for drawing down.) So the scene is framed not so much as a cold-blooded murder as Friday defending her friends from a technically legal (due to martial law being in effect) but ethically completely unjustified incident of police brutality.
** As the officer is alone and faced by three people who are despite their lack of physical violence so far still visibly in absolutely no mood to cooperate, at least one of whom could pick him up and throw him with one hand, he ''could'' have been responding to the implied threat by going for intimidation. Admittedly, that still makes him an idiot as a) it is a major violation of weapons safety rules to aim your weapon at someone for intimidation purposes and b) the fact that it was a very busy night and he did not want to take the time to wait for backup to arrive is not sufficient justification to avoid calling for backup.
*** Of the three people facing Lt. Dickey, Janet was a small woman with no combat training, Georges was a medical doctor with no combat training... and Ian was a very large, muscular veteran combat pilot with a black belt. That Dickey had his weapon aimed at ''Janet'' quite clearly indicates his motive as an attempt to illegally threaten and intimidate, because if he was actually in any fear for his life he'd have been covering Ian first.
* The ''[[In Death]]'' series by J.D. Robb does this at least once with J.D. Robb's usual subtlety (zero). A victim that starts out as a nasty, small-minded prima donna just gets worse with every single thing we find out. The victim would likely have been facing a life sentence if found out by the law before the murderer, and that's mainly because the relevant jurisdiction wouldn't have the death penalty available. It's a good book to read for anyone wondering why a court system might employ justifiable homicide as a separate claim from self-defense. (Though there was a halfway decent "defense of another" argument as well.)
** Another book in the same series threw this type of victim into a killing spree of otherwise sympathetic victims. One of the cops seemed to be really trying to feel bad, and pretty much failing.
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** Granted, the implication was that his behavior was caused by him being drunk, but it still at the very least ''really'' irresponsible of a guy to get drunk on a night when the town's gone insane and undoubtedly needs law enforcement.
** The rest of the town is implied to count as well. Every one of them turns against Sam, and not long after, the lake dries up, [[Inferred Holocaust|suggesting that a number of people died of thirst or had to abandon their homes]].
* In the short story "Nassau: The Arrow of God", [[The Saint|Simon Templar]] investigates the murder of a man given to publicly announcing other people's sins for his own amusement. Templar [[Conviction
** Really, Simon's entire career consists of liberating a succession of asshole victims from (always) their money and (periodically) their lives.
* In the short story "Invitation to a Poisoning", Nechtan confesses to adultery, theft, perjury, election fraud, armed robbery and attempted rape to the respective victims of the crimes and then promptly drops dead of cyanide poisoning. Having been diagnosed with terminal cancer, he committed suicide in a manner calculated to involve his enemies in an inconvenient murder investigation.
* Jack Ritchie's short story ''For All The Rude People''. The protagonist gets fed up with deliberate rudeness and emotional cruelty in society and starts murdering anyone who's rude in his presence.
* Offscreen in the ''[[Darkest Powers]]'' trilogy, [[Jerk
* In the [[Andrew Vachss]] Burke book ''Terminal'', it turns out that Melissa Turnbridge, the girl whose death Burke is supposed to investigate, was a sexually abusive [[Fille Fatale]].
* In ''[[Lonely Werewolf Girl]]'' part of Kalix's [[Backstory]] is she killed her father, when readers briefly meet him in a trip to the afterlife it's pretty clear he got off easy with just death.
* ''[[Atlas Shrugged]]'' has an entire train's worth of people brutally killed in an accident based on poor management choices, but not before the author makes sure to tell us all about what terrible people they all were.
* [[The Black Fleet Crisis]] of the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]] presents us with not one but ''two''
* In the ''[[Mrs. Murphy Mysteries]]'' at least one of the victims in each book will not be missed.
* You are meant to cheer for Tonya's father in ''[[A Time to Kill]]'' when he kills her rapists. By the end of the trial almost everyone in the town is happy that he gets acquitted. Well, everyone but the Ku Klux Klan.
** It isn't certain that the KKK is an exception. An early scene in the book has the victims' families asking the KKK for help, and the KKK members are thinking, "We shouldn't let a black man get away with killing white people, but [[Even Evil Has Standards|frankly these guys had it coming]]."
* The unnamed rapist at the end of ''[[Rivers of London]]'' who discovered his intended victim had a bad case of [[Vagina Dentata]].
** In the sequel ''[[Moon Over Soho]]'' the woman, who is now known as "The Pale Lady" racks up another three victims. All of whom were sexual deviants of one kind or another (including a corrupt ex-police officer with a taste for ''real'' [[Catgirl
* [[Robert Bloch]]'s short story "Sweets to the Sweet" features an abusive father who regularly beats his daughter, blames her for her mother's [[Death
* Ali, {{spoiler|actually Courtney}} in ''[[Pretty Little Liars]]'' is pretty conniving and bitchy to her friends, and ends up going missing and being found dead in her backyard.
* A number of the Dark Spirit's victims in ''[[A Snowball in Hell]]'' are just terrible people, such as Darren "The Daddy" McDade who is very racist and [[Hypocrite|ideologically bankrupt]], and a group of land mine manufacturing execs who are... well, land mine manufacturing execs. That doesn't mean that any of them deserve their [[Cold-Blooded Torture|ultimate fates]], of course.
* Arguably, in [[Fyodor Dostoevsky|Dostoyevsky's]] ''[[
* CC de Poitiers, the victim in Louise Penny's second Three Pines mystery ''A Fatal Grace'', is self-obsessed, emotionally and verbally abusive to her husband and daughter, and universally loathed (even by the man she's having an affair with). Possible motives are not hard to come by.
* The first to victims of arson in the second book of the ''[[Knight and Rogue Series]]'' are a brothel and the home of the resident [[Hanging Judge]], who manages to be far less sympathetic than the brothel by showing more concern for his clothes than any of his clients' legal papers, and by promptly acusing Michael of the fire, demanding he be hung on the spot no less.
** When Fisk and Michael meet, Fisk is on trial for conning a whole slew of asshole victims.
** Subverted in the first book. {{spoiler|While Michael and Fisk spend a good amount of time speculating about how the victim may have had it coming, it turns out he was neither an asshole, nor was he murdered.}}
* Stella Rodes, the [[Hypocrite|seemingly angelic victim]] in [[John Le Carre]]'s second novel, ''A Murder of Quality.'' It turns out that she runs the gamut from taunting people to outright blackmailing them (which is what finally gets her killed).
* In ''[[
* {{spoiler|Tyrion Lannister killing his father Tywin}} at the end of [[A Song of Ice and Fire
* [[Playing
* Used in several [[Cthulhu Mythos]] stories, mostly authors other than Lovecraft. The victim in question tends to be selfish jerks, and some are psychopaths. However, since their fates tend to be really, ''really'' nasty, the reader may feel bad for with them.
** The ''Insects from Shaggai'' also qualify {{spoiler|as their homeworld was destroyed by another abomination}}. But considering how evil and debased they were, the species desvered their fate.
* In the opening scene of ''[[Monster Hunter International]]'' Owen throws his werewolf boss out an office building's window. Said werewolf's body totals a ''double-parked'' car upon landing. The landing is described as hitting the car's center, so the damage would have been avoided or less severe if they parked legally.
== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
* Every detective show has a variation of this exchange at least once or twice in its running: The detective asks, "Do you know of anyone you might've wanted X dead?" The other person snorts and replies, "Who ''didn't'' want X dead?" or "Half the city wanted X dead, and the other half didn't know him." or "People would've lined up for a chance to kill X."
* Probably happens on ''[[Bones]]'' with about the same 50/50 frequency as other crime shows. An example is a [[Parody]] of ''[[The Office]]'', where a hateful manager is dumped down an elevator. It turns out she had an aneurysm burst when one of the couple she busted for a forbidden
** In another episode, involving a rich jerkass killed at a rock-and-roll fantasy camp, Sweets lampshades this by actually admitting he likes the killer better than the victim.
* ''[[
* Happens quite a bit on ''[[The Closer]]''. One really notable example happened in an episode aptly named "Problem Child", where the victim was... well, let's just say that you felt pretty sorry for the actual killer, and half wonder if they didn't actually do the world a favor.
** Used in-character ''twice'' in "Tapped Out", where upon seeing the victim's TV show about teaching men to exploit women emotionally for sex (complete with eight real, not-acting women), Brenda wonders that there's only one bullet in the guy's head; later, she mentions that after the DA saw the show, he decided the case wasn't worth taking to trial and offered a plea bargain, explicitly because the victim was so reprehensible.
** And again in "Heart Attack", where one of the victims actually, all of them avoided conviction for the gang-rape of a child. The killer even says that by killing them, harvesting their organs, and giving the organs to patients in desperate need of a transplant, the young men are finally contributing to society.
* Most of the victims in the first two seasons of ''[[
* One episode of ''[[Crossing Jordan]]'' featured an asshole who had eaten fugu, leaving him paralyzed but still alive hearing all the reasons he was hated and promising to change in his mind. When it's found out and recovers, he promises to sue the main characters for malpractice, then walks out of the hospital and gets hit & killed by an ambulance.
* The title character in ''[[Dexter]]'' retains the audience's sympathy by adhering to a strict code of ethics that includes only killing other killers. Sometimes, there are aversions or complications.
** Dexter takes pity on Jeremy Downs because he was driven to kill to get revenge on a boy who raped him. It was ultimately a mistake.
** In season 3, Dexter does kill two people who are not known to be killers themselves: Oscar Prado, who was not yet a killer, but was trying to kill Freebo, a drug dealer. Also, "Cheerios Guy," a child molester, who made the mistake of triggering Dexter's [[Papa Wolf]] mode by stalking Astor.
** Season 4 has him mistakenly kill Farrow. Dexter feels guilty about killing someone who wasn't a killer, but the guy was such a scumbag misogynist that he quickly gets over it.
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* Jeremy Baines in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode ''Human Nature'' is a [[Jerkass]], and the first to be [[Grand Theft Me|killed and his body used]] by the Family of Blood.
** Davros' assistant, Nyder. It's hard to feel sorry for him when the Daleks kill him carrying out an order of Davros against their will.
** Zimmerman, the first victim of the [[Time Police|Tesselecta]] in [[Doctor Who/Recap/S32
* Mark Goodson from the ''[[
* Most of the episodes of the TV series ''[[Ellery Queen]]'' would qualify.
* Virtually any episode of ''[[Murder, She Wrote]]''.
** There are actually some exceptions scattered throughout the show's long run of some perfectly nice people getting killed, but one in particular stands out as a very deliberate subversion of this trope. It centers around this [[Smug Snake]] [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] where everything about him just seems to ''scream''
* Emmett Byrne is the major [[Jerkass]] in ''[[Chuck]]''. Yet, in the episode ''Chuck Versus the Pink Slip'' he manages to crank his own jerk-ass-ness [[Up to Eleven]], which makes the scene where he is murdered in cold blood all the more satisfying.
* Many ''[[Law
** Another was set up to look like a type 3, since the victim was a neo-
** Still another had a sleazy paparazzo (who had just [[Karma Houdini
** When a notorious drug lord is murdered, Detective Briscoe is less than enthusiastic about finding out who killed the guy. Especially when the prime suspect becomes the father of a boy the victim had led into a life of drugs, and later into death by overdose. But later, a priest comes forward and confesses to killing the drug lord... because God told him to.
* Most, but not all, ''[[Perry Mason]]'' episodes.
* ''[[
** It's really about 50/50 with ''[[
** It's especially true in the episode Blackout, in which literally everyone in the [[Closed Circle]] scene hated the victim.
** And in the episode Justice, where the victim was a college BMOC: handsome, charming... and a serial date rapist. When the cops investigating your murder ''coach the person who killed you'' into claiming it was self-defense (when it really, really wasn't), you know you're an asshole.
* ''[[Homicide: Life
* ''[[Midsomer Murders]]'', about 75% of the time.
** Including one character, played by [[Retroactive Recognition|Orlando Bloom]], who was sleeping with at least three different women (one of whom was paying him for it) until he got pitchforked through the chest in the first five minutes. He was also a petty thief and a vandal with a serious [[Jerkass|attitude problem]].
* Most of the victims on the [[Game Show]] ''Cluedo'' were straight-up ass-lacquers. Definitely helps for a show with a small, recurring cast of potential murderers.
** Similarly, the entire cast of the movie ''[[Clue (
* While he survived, let's not forget J.R. Ewing from ''[[Dallas]]''.
** Similarly, Lionel Luthor from ''[[Smallville]]''. Of course, when he ''did'' die, this trope was averted.
* Subversion in one ''[[CSI: Crime Scene Investigation]]''. The victim is an asshole to his four co-workers, all of whom were the only ones to have access to the room he died in. The audience is led to believe that a combination of two or more of the four are the ones who offed the [[Jerkass]] (all of whom are pretty jerkassy themselves). Turns out it was the janitor cleaning the vents, who killed the man when his hammer fell out of the pocket and through the grate. He didn't know the guy and removed the hammer because he didn't want to go back to jail.
** It happens many, many times in the ''
*** A clingy ex-wife who insisted on making life hell for her ex-husband and children. She tried to ''put a hit on herself'' to frame her ex-husband and when she couldn't do it, she ''tricked her own son'' into killing her for the same reason.
*** An egomaniac Paris Hilton-esque reality show star.
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*** A young man who was poisoned by a cheerleader who he had mocked when she was overweight. After suffering a completely undeserved [[Humiliation Conga]], the girl managed to lose weight and carry out a [[Gambit Roulette]] to get her revenge.
*** A pedophile father who sexually abused his daughter for years and was also setting his sights on ''her'' young daughter that was concieved through his abuse. And also the mother, who was complicit in the abuse to the point that she'd take the daughter by the hand and lead her to the bedroom where daddy was waiting, and then close the door behind her. ''And'' the older brothers of the daughter who also knew what was going on and were old enough to do something about it (mid/late teens), but said nothing. Long story short, when the daughter realized that her father was eyeing her own daughter (who was just reaching the age when her own abuse started) and the entire family yet again was going to stand by and do nothing, she killed them all. She was completely unrepentant when she was busted, saying that she was the ''only'' person in the house who was going to protect her daugher.
* In an early episode of ''[[
* Most victims in ''Whodunnit!''. In the most extreme case, every suspect tried to claim credit for killing the victim (a South American dictator) and the mystery was to work out who was telling the truth rather than who was lying.
* Jenny Schecter in the final season of ''[[The L Word]]''. Each [[The Teaser|teaser]] seems to end with yet another person having a reason to hate her.
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*** Johnny Cooper: leader of a gang of violent surfers, who had tried to keep his brother Rocco from going straight, eventually having him murdered after he helped the police catch him. He allowed Rocco's foster brother to be convicted of his murder and terrorised him in prison. After escaping from prison a year later, he tried to kill Sally, who had taken in Rocco and supposedly turned him against his brother. And finally, not only did he blackmail Sam into hiding him, it was implied that he raped her offscreen.
** Mark Edwards: One of the victims of the Summer Bay Stalker, an ex-boyfriend of Josie who she had a one-night stand with behind her boyfriend's back. After she broke it off and got engaged to Jesse, he blackmailed her, first over the affair, then over a self-defense killing she had committed sixteen years earlier. It was also revealed that he had slept with a fifteen-year-old, information that Josie unsuccessfully used to get him to back off.
** Penn [[Star Trek:
** Stu Henderson, Sasha's [[Domestic Abuser|abusive boyfriend]], though as we learn more about his home life he becomes something of a [[Jerkass Woobie]].
* ''[[
** Also, rather humorously, the obnoxious and bitchy red shirt Neil 'Frogurt' has a particularly satisfying death after 2 or so episodes of generally being an unhelpful dick.
** You only see him for about ten seconds, but Kate's stepdad Wayne is clearly established as creepy, disgusting, and abusive. Richard's murder of the doctor also qualifies, although it may be more manslaughter.
** Martin Keamy ''definitely'' qualifies. ''Both'' times he's killed.
* The vicious street gang that the UnSub starts killing his way through in the ''[[
** A recurring plot point when the team is profiling someone is for the first victim in a string to be responsible for the event that triggered a serial killer, leading to many of them being Asshole Victims.
** Likewise, the Unsub in "A Real Rain" targets victims who were acquitted for crimes. Various members of the cops, reporters, courthouse workers and general public all express ambivalence or even support for his actions due to their own disillusionment with the system. The UnSub from "Reckoner" is a similar vigilante.
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** In almost every instance of female UnSubs, the victims are specifically ''male'' assholes. This, however, is subverted in "The Thirteenth Step" and brutally averted in "I Love You, Tommy Brown".
** With the exception of the deputy sheriff and Mr. Stratman (who were killed out of necessity), every person targeted by Owen Savage in "Elephant's Memory".
* Many episodes of ''[[
** Not entirely innocent - The victims all had a toe removed because the killer was missing it. [[Squick|The husband had a toe in his stomach at the time of death]].
** I think the inference may have been that the wife - the real serial killer - fed the toe to her husband.
** ''NCIS'' also did this in the backstory with Gibbs' murder of Pedro Hernandez (pretty much in cold blood and premeditated), who had murdered Gibbs' wife and daughter earlier. At first this is only sporadically brought up in flashbacks (particularly during the ''Hiatus'' arc while Gibbs recovers from trauma and memory loss). It later comes back to haunt him in the "Rule 51" arc concluding season 7, where the idea of vengeance is also heavily deconstructed.
** Another example is the episode "Caged", where a guard in a women's prison gets stabbed to death, and the team must find out who killed the guard. The guard is blackmailing an inmate's high school daugther for sex. It's implied that said inmate (who had less than one year left on her sentence, and wants to be a mother to her kids) stabbed the guard, but another inmate (on a 175 year sentence), who McGee was sent to get a confession from, confesses to the murder. The team agrees that they won't lose any sleep over that.
** Even the birth of NCIS came about with one of these. The two-parter ''[[
* Nearly every soap opera on the air has employed this trope for one of their "whodunit" murder mysteries. Most notably, on ''[[All My Children]]'' in 1992, Will Cortlandt was bludgeoned to death with a crowbar and had become such a pariah that there were no less than 15 suspects, including his own SISTER.
* Mr. Tanner in ''[[The Vampire Diaries]]''. Despite being universally disliked when Damon killed him it actually did make Stefan call him irredeemable, mostly because he still murdered the first guy he saw just to prove a point.
* Common on ''[[
* Irina, Preston's Russian fiancee in ''[[Desperate Housewives]]''. A heartless goldigger she makes the mistake of sneering at the wrong nerdy guy, who it turns out is the local murderer.
* There are plenty of these in ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'', and when someone has to die to show the [[Monster of the Week]] means business, it's usually them. [[Averted Trope|Or the most innocent person, for the lulz.]] This is because many Monsters of the Week on this show pursue a warped idea of justice that becomes less discriminate vengeance. Others just want to eat people.
* In the ''[[
* Similarly, during ''[[
* A recurring feature on ''[[Law and Order SVU]]''.
** One episode featured a psychiatrist who took advantage of a newborn boy's apparently extremely botched circumcision to manipulate his parents into having sex changed into a girl so he could run a long term experiment to prove the idiotic idea that "nurture, not nature, determines sexual identity," and is later revealed by the girl/boy's identical twin brother to have had the twins effectively dry hump each other to supposedly "reinforce their gender roles." And when the female psychologist on the detectives' team finally reveals the truth about her/his birth to Lindsay/Lucas, the bastard ''still'' refuses to accept his "theory" is wrong even as she/he is standing there screaming, "I NEVER ONCE FELT RIGHT!" even threatening have the other psychologist's career ended. The twin boys put together a plan where they go to a double feature, and one slips out during the second film and smashes his head in!
*** This was based on a true story ("Brenda" was the "girl" in question), though the therapist wasn't killed in real life.
** In another, a doctor who had been written about in a magazine kills his pregnant lover in her third trimester and fills a syringe with someone else's blood to spoof the detectives' paternity test, but the blood turns out to belong to a child rapist with at least two victims. Before he can find a way out of that, the rapist himself finds and [[Acquitted Too Late|kills him]]. Of course, then they have to find ''him''.
** An entire episode in Season Two entitled "Victims" was made entirely of this trope. Victims include a man who raped an young girl and slashed her face, leaving her for dead. Stabler is outraged at having to work their murders, feeling they had it coming.
** The very first episode had a Serbian war criminal responsible for at least sixty-seven rapes being beaten, stabbed and having his penis severed by two vengeful women.
** In the episode ''Signature'', they find the latest victim of a serial killer, as well as a dead man right next to her. The episode changes gears quickly when they find out that their male victim is the serial killer.
** In "Angels", the victim is a child molester who had kidnapped two boys from
** In the episode "Chameleon", the first act of the episode is devoted to chasing down a serial rapist and killer - who is then slain by a ''different'' serial killer, who ''[[Pay Evil Unto Evil|specifically targets these types of characters]]'' in order to elicit sympathy from the general public. She almost gets away with it, as it seems the jury is sympathetic, but the fact that she kills to get what she wants [[Hoist
** A tween rapist is forcing his victim into getting an abortion (and may have been been close to taking matters into his own hands) when he's killed by a meek boy with a crush on her.
* In the Hong Kong comedy detective show ''To Catch The Uncatchable'', majority of the victims are often [[Jerkass]] and should [[Pay Evil Unto Evil|had it coming to them]]. The female protagonist's previous boss had several affairs and tried to rape the protagonist as well. Turns out his jilted lover was the one to kill him. Another man was a cult leader who put drugs into his believers' drinks so they would follow his orders and would later force the drugs down a believer's throat for disobeying him and also going out with his son. His wife tried to stop him from killing the girl and accidentally pushed him too hard, causing him to fall off the building. There was a woman who was a model who chased after men, then dumped them after she had exploited them for all they are worth. She was pushed off the stairs by a fan of hers, after she insulted him for being worthless.
* In ''[[Flashpoint (TV series)|Flashpoint]]'', if the killer/hostage taker is at all sympathetic, it's because the victim was a gigantic asshole.
** One episode deals with a football coach who verbally abused his players, even bullying other players to physically attack weaker players.
** Another had an abusive husband, who also tried to kill his wife's sister when she [[Mama Bear|came after him]]. He tried to get away with it, like he had always done with his wife's abuse, but the SRU team caught him red-handed choking his wife's sister and recorded him saying just that.
** And in other episode was a group of [[Jerk Jock|jerk jocks]] tormented a classmate, especially since he had a crush on the leader's much nicer girlfriend. They humiliated him in front of her and then recorded the event and posted it up on the Internet. He comes to school with a gun to get them. {{spoiler|But not to kill them, just to humiliate them the way they humiliated him.}}
** In the episode "Acceptable Risk", it toyed with this trope when a widow went after the people who dropped charges on a pharmaceutical company after they were bribed by the company into keeping quiet about the drug's potential dangers, which led to the widow's husband's death. She never really gets to [[Sympathetic Murderer]] status, as she's shown being extremely calculating and cruel to the people she kills, understanding that she has a limited amount of time before the police stop her, and she crosses the [[Moral Event Horizon]] when she tries to kill one of her target's innocent wife who [[Go Through Me|was standing between her and her target.]] She comes across as much more terrifying than sympathetic.
* ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'' gets in on this in season 6 when Chase murders a patient, due to said patient being a ruthless African dictator, who let slip that the first thing he was going to do when he got back to his country was order a full out genocide of some ethnic minorities he thought were a threat to his regime.
** Toyed with maybe, the killer is racked by guilt for quite some time and probably only did what they did in the end because they felt '''directly''' responsible for having saved his life earlier (having shouted a warning when an assassin was spotted). The scene where the assassin explains [[Nightmare Fuel|exactly what happened back home]] makes you realize that this dictator is waaaaaaaay past
* ''[[
* In ''[[
* Played with in an episode of ''[[Law and Order: Criminal Intent]]'': the victim was a registered sex offender (he'd committed statutory rape, but the DA's office had railroaded him and convicted him of flat-out rape), and as the episode continues, Logan gets increasingly angry over the fact that a man has been decapitated and mutilated, but because he was a sex offender, no-one seems to care.
* A very real concern for the title character of ''[[
* Used sometimes on ''[[Boston Legal]]'', such as when Catherine Piper kills Bernard, who gloats about his two murders making him feel godlike, or when a man who used his money to get him skilled lawyers who engineered a not guilty plea is killed by his victim's mother.
* Several victims in ''[[Primeval]]'' qualify as this.
** The journalists from season three who get a bunch of people (and themselves) eaten by a Giganotosaurus just to get a story.
** Christine Johnson, the person who took over the ARC, tried to arrest the entire main cast, and had [[Benevolent Boss|Lester]] forced out of the ARC, who is pushed into a Future Predator-full anomaly by Helen Cutter.
** Henry Merchant from 5x03, who tries to get Emily institutionalized just for the sake of his reputation, and then shoots her, and then threatens to shoot Matt if she doesn't come back with him to the 1860s where she'd probably hang for murders that she didn't commit.
* ''[[The Onedin Line]]'' has a storyline in series one with a discussion of a disputed death of a shipmate, covered up by the original captain but which probably was murder, four years prior to the events of the series. When Annie calls it a brutal murder, James claims he was a brutal man - so that's all right then...
** James was looking at it from a sailors pov. He knew how much power a tyranical captain had, and that having one could be a [[Fate Worse Than Death]].
* In the pilot of ''[[The Unusuals]]'', the late Detective Kowalski is revealed to have been a [[Corrupt Cop]], an adulterer, a blackmailer and an all-around [[Jerkass]] for the purpose of making [[Everyone Is a Suspect|everyone a suspect]]. However, his widow is shown to love him and genuinely mourn him.
* The ''[[City Homicide]]'' episode "Cut and Dried" has a convicted child molester murdered in prison, and few of the detectives are motivated to investigate too thoroughly. It's then subverted when it turns out he was genuinely repentant, was intending to give evidence against the pedophile ring he belonged to, and was in fact silenced by two of the prison ''guards''.
* Pretty much everyone on ''[[Oz]]'' qualifies for this, since they're in a maximum security prison. Especially nasty pieces of work were William Cudney, who murdered the son of the doctor that gave His wife an abortion, and
* In the third season finale and fourth season premiere of ''[[The Mentalist]]'', Jane ended up killing the man believed to be Red John. Of course, it's later revealed that he wasn't actually Red John, but it ultimately didn't matter because the guy who was killed, as well as his wife, were a couple of kidnappers.
* At the beginning of season nine of ''[[Two and
* ''[[Crownies]]'' has Ray Stone, an abusive husband who terrorized his wife Joanne and sister-in-law Heather-Marie, until he was beaten to death with a boltcutter. Erin's sympathies lie with Joanne Mervich, though she tries to avoid letting it get in the way of her job, even contributing to Rhys's closing arguments.
** Played with in ''[[Arrested Development (TV series)|Arrested Development]]''. The narrator gives a [[Tonight Someone Dies]] monologue, and the scene immediately cuts to an old woman making a racist remark. He comments: "Okay, I'll just tell you right now. She's the one who dies." {{spoiler|Later turns out to not be a straight example, as it's not a murder, but an accident.}}
* More than one victim of the [[Headless Horseman|headless biker]] in ''[[
* This trope is also used in multiple incarnations of ''[[Kamen Rider]]''.
** The enemies in [[Kamen Rider Faiz]] are called Orphenochs. They proclaim to be the next step in human evolution and most find it perfectly OK to kill regular humans. Yuka Osada, one of the protagonists, also kills normal humans, but only criminals.
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* In ''[[Downton Abbey]]'', there are: {{spoiler|Pamuk and Vera}}.
== [[Music]] ==
* "Goodbye, Earl" by the Dixie Chicks.
* "Janie's Got A Gun" by Aerosmith is about [[Rape
* "I Remember Larry" by [["Weird Al"
* [[Mercedes Lackey]]'s filk "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night." The Countess, a talentless would-be musician, dies in a locked tower to which her husband has the only other key. But she was such an unpleasant person that:
{{quote|
''That '''every''' moment of the Count was vouched for on that night.
''The castle folk by ones and twos came forward on their own
''To swear the Count had never once that night been all alone.
''So though the Tower had been locked tight, with two keys to the door,
''One his, one hers; the Count of guilt was plain absolved for sure. }}
* "38 Years Old" by [[The Tragically Hip]] is about a man imprisoned for murdering his sister's rapist.
* "Terror Starts at Home" by Beneath the Sky is another example of this. A man rapes his own daughter and she responds by cutting his penis off. The music video shows it in graphic detail.
** "Testicular Manslaughter" by Cattle Decapitation and "Blunt Force Castration" by [[Cannibal Corpse]] are also about a rapist being castrated.
* Alt-Rapper Jesse Dangerously's song ''Outfox'd (When Pacifists Attack)'' is about one getting what's coming to him
{{quote|
''Plus [[Angrish|got called a Faggot by a Gay-Rights Activist]]
''In broad daylight, hey guys
''[[Passive-Aggressive Kombat|My place for a lesson in aggression in passiveness]] }}
* Implied to be the impending fate of an abusive husband in [[Miranda Lambert]]'s song [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWQdEDtveB0 "Gunpowder and Lead]''.
== [[New Media]] ==
* While many characters in ''[[Survival of the Fittest]]'' [[Kill the Cutie|clearly don't deserve getting killed]], there are also many who are enough of a [[Jerkass]] to the point where it's hard to sympathize with them. Some of these border on [[Karmic Death]], such as Anthony Burbank (who was repeatedly stabbed [[Groin Attack|in the groin]] by the same cousin who he had bullied) and Philip Ward (beaten to death by [[Miles Gloriosus|Jimmy Brennan]], a character he had previously beaten up in a hockey game in [[Developing Doomed Characters|pre-game]]). A notable aversion, though, would be Monty Pondsworth of v4 pre-game. Although he was the most prominent [[Jerkass]] in pre-game, he did not make an appearance on the island, [[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot|much to the disappointment of many handlers]].
== [[Oral Tradition]], [[Folklore]], Myths and Legends ==
* In [[Classical Mythology]] its a reoccurring theme. Ouranos and Kronos lose any sympathy points when they are brutally overthrown due to their treatment of their kids. The Olympians often punished mortals for being complete assholes, but were not limited to this.
** Hercules was known for his rages involving lots of death. What sets him apart from some other Greek heroes is the victim usually had it coming by cheating Hercules or being a complete a-hole Herc usually accepted punishment when he was in the wrong.
** In other media, whenever Zeus or another
* [[Norse Mythology]] is often very brutal with [[Grey and Gray Morality]]. The gods usually come off slightly better by the giants being massive assholes first.
* Most villains in fairy tales are jerkasses. However, the Danish fairy tale [[w:Esben and the Witch|"Esben and the Witch"]] deserves special mention for having four asshole victims, one of whom is the hero!
** Sir Red is mentioned as being smug and disliked by everyone but the king.
** The witch tries to kill Esben's brothers once, and tries to eat Esben.
** Esben's brothers ridicule and taunt Esben and refuse to acknowledge his help.
** Esben causes the witch to kill eleven of her daughters, [[Kleptomaniac Hero|steals the witch's magic items]] then kills the other two daughters.
* [[The Bible|Amnon and Absalom]] both fall under this heading. The former raped his half-brother Absalom's (half?) sister Tamar. Since his father David evidently felt his own philandering had undercut any authority he had to punish Amnon for this, Absalom eventually took matters into his own hands and had his men assassinate Amnon during a banquet. [[Ambition Is Evil|Drunk on his success]], Absalom later rebelled against David, whose [[Token Evil Teammate]] Joab managed to catch Absalom at a vulnerable moment and kill him. As the final link in this chain of treachery and murder, David's heir Solomon, in accord with David's instructions on his deathbed, later put Joab to death at his earliest legal opportunity.
** Many later kings qualified, including (but by no means limited to): Nadab, Elah, Zechariah, Shallum, Pekahiah, and Pekah of Israel; Joash and Amon of Judah; Sennacherib of Assyria; and Co-Regent Belshazzar of Bablyon.
*** Special mention should go to Jehoram of Judah, whom God struck down with some kind of intestinal plague (possibly cholera). As noted in Chronicles, his death was [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Chronicles+21&version=NIV "...to no one's regret..."]
== [[Theatre]] ==
* Karl Baumer in ''Margin for Error'' is a Nazi of the least likeable sort. When [[Adolf Hitler]] is making a speech, he turns up the volume on the radio so loud that nobody hears the gunshot that kills him.
* Pirelli in ''[[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (
** And at the end, Mrs. Lovett and [[Villain Protagonist|Sweeney Todd.]]
* The title character in ''[[
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* Subverted in ''[[Nobilis]]'': one example of play in the second edition rulebook involved an attack on the concept of Treachery that relied on [[Reality Warper|warping reality]] so that a nice person who had been murdered by her boyfriend [[Retcon|retroactively]] ''became'' an Asshole Victim. This would, apparently, have undermined Treachery by mixing in justice where it wasn't supposed to be, undermining reality. ([[Humanoid Abomination|Excrucians]] are [[Omnicidal Maniac|not nice people]])
== [[Video Games]] ==
* Every single target in ''[[
** In ''[[
*** It's much worse than that: as your informant Shaun tells you, Dante's boss coveted his wife, and so tried to [[Murder the Hypotenuse]]. He survived but with severe brain damage, reverting him to a child-like state. This led his boss to manipulating Dante into divorcing his wife and becoming his [[The Dragon|Dragon]]. The poor guy was probably the only named victim in any of the ''AC'' games you could feel any real sympathy for.
**** Of course, such only adds to potential justification for killing said boss.
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** Finally subverted in Assassin's Creed: Revelations, when after assassinating him on a count of treason, Tarik Barleti reveals that he was executing his own scheme against the Templars, having sold them defunct firearms in an attempt to lure the them out of hiding.
*** Worse yet, Tarik doesn't even blame [[My God, What Have I Done?|Ezio]] for his death, instead blaming his own hubris. Instead of his traditional "Requiscat in pace," Ezio's final words to him are, "[[Tear Jerker|I am sorry.]]"
* Subverted in ''[[
* The first victim of the supernatural serial killer in ''Phantasmagoria 2 - A Puzzle of Flesh'' is the bullying asshole of a coworker at the protagonist's work place, causing Curtis a lot of concern as to whether or not he may have killed him during a psychotic black-out. Of course, then the people he ''likes'' start dying, and the otherworldly antagonist gets a lot less subtle.
* ''[[
** Ironically, this winds getting such a massive case of [[Alas, Poor Scrappy]] it winds getting subverted, especially because his replacement is such a shameless, spiteful whore that even the teenage guys who hated the first person hate the successor MORE because she manages to outdo the
* In ''[[Knights of the Old Republic (
** Later in the game, the PC gets to do play detective/lawyer again, but this time the trope is completely inverted: though the victim is a Dark
*** The game does not force you into saving the murderer, however.
* Almost everyone of Agent 47's targets in the ''[[Hitman]]'' series is some kind of big-time criminal. Sex traffickers, mobsters, terrorists, and corrupt politicians are just some of 47's victims. However in cutscenes, 47 has murdered a presumably innocent postman to protect his identity, and Requiem in Blood Money has him kill a priest and reporter to protect his identity. In terms of targets, stand out "innocents" are the failed private investigator in that biker level and possibly others like Joseph Clarence (who is probably not a bad person, just an utter failure.) Completely innocent targets are still in the minority by a great margin.
** Joseph Clarance ran an amusement park with terrible safety regulations that killed 30 people. He isn't in the league of a sex trafficker or terrorist, but he has blood on his hands.
* ''[[Condemned]]: Criminal Origins'', All the victims of Serial Killer X/Leland were all serial killers themselves. He would kill them the way they killed their victims. Needless to say all the murders were fairly brutal.
* Playing with this trope: in ''[[The Elder Scrolls IV
** First few are still assholes. You've got a pirate, a rapist, a guy who had the brotherhood kill his own mother to save his skin (unfortunately he lives if you finish it "right"), a warlord, that mouthy dark elf from the tutorial, and a mooching drug addict. The only person on the list of slaughter victims who wasn't a jerkass of one stripe or the other was Baenlin.
* In ''[[Mass Effect]] 2'', Thane's loyalty quest goes to great lengths to show that the target of Kolyat's assassination attempt is corrupt. Even in the outcomes where he winds up dead, everyone cares more about what's going to happen to Kolyat; you can even talk the C-Sec officer into not pressing charges for attempted murder. Thane's role as [[The Atoner]] involves specifically targeting these. In fact, you meet him during what was to be his last job, a [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] [[Bad Boss]].
* Ozette in ''[[
* Ragou and Cumore in ''[[
* While the player commits many atrocities in the Death Knight starting quests in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', often against civilians, the primary opponents are the [[Knight Templar|Scarlet Crusade]], which tortures and kills perceived enemies, and whose leadership leaves many of the civilians to die in order to flee and attack the Scourge in Northrend. The Lich King's forces may still be worse, but the Scarlet Crusade is also considered an enemy by the other groups fighting the Lich King because of their [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|extremist]] positions.
** By "perceived enemies," they mean "anybody who might be corrupted by the Scourge." And by "anybody who might be corrupted by the Scourge," they mean "anybody who isn't part of the Scarlet Crusade."
** Also in [[Warcraft]] 3, on the one hand we have Varimathras, a demon lord of the Burning Legion that intends to conquer Azeroth and destroy everything. We also have Grand Marshal Garithos, commander of the last surviving forces of Lordaeron fighting to the end to save his homeland from demons. So why are we applauding when Varimathas kills Garithos? Because Garithos is just ''that huge'' of a smug, sneering, racist asshole. [[General Failure|Also, he's an idiot.]]
** In Mount Hyjal, your character infiltrates the Twilight's Hammer to conduct sabotage. To prove your loyalty, you have are ordered to execute some of the failed applicants who are held in detention. Luckily for you, the Twilight's Hammer functions on [[Klingon Promotion]] and every single prisoner is more than happy to attack you and offer your blood as a sacrifice to the [[Eldritch Abomination|Old Gods]].
* In ''[[
** To clarify: the Midgar is a bustling metropolis. The terrorist group he was seeking to "deal with" amounted to five members, plus the mercenary. So to get rid of the organization, he blew up the plate over the slum they were based out of, to kill them, destroying about an eighth of the city in the process ([[What an Idiot!|and only managed to kill three of the six people he was aiming for]]). Not many tears were shed upon his demise, save for finding out his successor was [[It Got Worse|even worse]] and the fact that ''we didn't get to kill him ourselves!!''
* In ''[[Free Space]]'', we learn through an [[Apocalyptic Log]] that the Shivans killed off a species of [[Precursors]] (the Ancients) 8,000 years prior to the game. This log, written by the Ancients, paints them as victims of horrific destruction at the hands of the Shivans. It also, however, chronicles the rise of their empire, during which they met other advanced life, "And we subdued it, or we crushed it." In other words, the Ancients traveled around the galaxy enslaving and annihilating other species to expand their own powerbase. It's kinda hard to see the Shivans as the bad guys during that conflict.
** The fan project Ancient-Shivan War, which covers this area of Freespace's history, portrays the Ancients as a very stuck-up warrior culture who consider all other forms of life automatically inferior and who glory in the genocide of a less advanced species early in the game. Fans are somewhat mollified by knowing [[Foregone Conclusion|exactly what's going]] [[Precursor Killers|to happen]] to the Ancients in later installments.
* Carla Boone in ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'', who made no secret of hating the town of Novac; even a character who's sympathetic towards her (and doesn't think she just left town) admits she had a habit of complaining about everything. The culprit (who sold her into slavery, which led to her death) is Novac's resident [[Bitch in Sheep's Clothing]], who is deeply invested in her "little oasis."
** In what may be a subversion, it is commented both in-game and in the fandom that while Carla may have been an unpleasant person, neither she nor her unborn baby deserved getting sold to slavery.
** The town of [[Wretched Hive|Nipton]] also qualifies. The town was destroyed by [[
*** Also, Vulpes ''is'' lying. In several places in town you will find corpses of townfolk lying next to dropped weapons, and surrounded by the corpses of dead Legionnaires.
** Then there's Benny the guy who shot the courier and buried him/her. He dies either in two ways. One you hunt him down for Mr. House. Or he is captured by Caesar and you get to choose how to kill him.
** The Great Khans tribe qualifies as well. On the one hand, a rather severe foul-up on the NCR's part led to a massacre that saw the Khans getting absolutely devastated; years later they still haven't recovered. On the other hand, the Khans were openly hostile to the NCR long before the event in question, and not terribly nice even amongst each other. Their leader outright brags about how they laid ruin to defenseless NCR settlements, and a former Khan that later defected to the NCR will angrily comment that the group got exactly what was coming to them.
* In ''[[Heavy Rain]]'', at one point the story hits this point. Ethan is forced to go kill a man in order to find a clue to his son. The victim is a drug dealer who chases Ethan around the apartment with a shotgun until they reach the daughters room and the victim runs out of ammo. To make the choice a slightly difficult one however, at the last minute he reveals he has two daughters and begs Ethan not to shoot, however he has already chased Ethan around like a jerk and revealed his occupation.
** The same happens to the owner of the Blue Lagoon who turns out to be a pervert and a rapist, but is shot by the Origami Killer.
* In ''[[The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim]]'': the first target for the Dark Brotherhood assassin's guild is a cruel orphan matron, when you first enter the orphanage, you find her threatening to beat them if they don't step up their chores, telling them they're her slaves until they come of age and she can kick them out, and that if they think of escaping like Aretino (the orphan who called the hit on her) she'll make them suffer for it. She then ends off by making the children force themselves to say that they love her. If you forgo silence and just decide to kill her in view of the orphans, they ''cheer''.
** And then the initiation ritual has you kill a barbarian with a hidden [[Blood Knight]] streak, a feisty and crass woman who has murdered people with her foul words and temper and a [[Complete Monster]] Khajit (Thief, murderer and rapist) who expects this to be his death. {{spoiler|With a broader definition of "asshole", you can also [[Take a Third Option|kill the Dark Brotherhood assassin who brought you there]].}}
** Nearly all of the people the Thieves Guild sends you after are this. Examples including an oppressive, penny pinching beekeeper, a slave driving meadery owner, an Argonian con artist, and {{spoiler|the man who betrayed and murdered the original guildmaster}}. Though in the case of the Con Artist, he just agrees to work with Guild and becomes a fence for you.
** Thanks to being smug, genocidal Nazi elves, every member of the Thalmor deserves whatever horrific death they suffer at your hands. The Stormcloaks ''and'' their Imperial allies agree: murdering Thalmor agents in Stormcloak territories won't even register as a crime, and while you ''are'' punished for killing Thalmor agents in Imperial territory, said "punishment" is an easily-paid 40 Septim fine as opposed to the 1000 Septims you'll need to pay to avoid jailtime for murder.
* ''[[Strange Journey]]'' gives us [[Evil Counterpart|Jack's Squad]]. [[Alliteration|Absurdly amoral assholes]] who happily jump into [[Mad Scientist]] [[Complete Monster]] territory, Jack's Squad is used to deconstruct the idea of [[Brainwashing for the Greater Good]]. Even as [[Holier Than Thou]] zombies, they're ''still'' idiot jerks.
* The comment under [[Tabletop Games]] for "dungeons" applies to numerous video games as well. For example, in [[The Elder Scrolls]] series, if you see a small cavern complex, you can rest assured that at least nine times in ten it will be full of Necromancers of Conjurers or the undead or other perfectly acceptable targets you may ruthlessly cut down without a single ding to the [[Karma Meter]]. You can then with no guilt grab everything in the place and haul it back to the nearest marketplace. The remaining one time in ten you will speak with the inhabitants. Half the time, you will put them all to the sword because someone told you to, then take their stuff and sell it.
* When [[Big Bad|Regalla]] launches her attack on the Carja/Tenakth embassy in ''[[Horizon Forbidden West]]'', [[Smug Snake|whiny, pompous Sun Priest Vaudis]] and [[Obstructive Bureaucrat|beaurucratic hardass Nazar]] are among her rebels' victims. However, despite the trouble they caused Aloy their deaths are treated with the tragic horror that they deserve, and a friendly military officer sadly comments on how no one deserved to die the way they did, with a solemn Aloy silently agreeing.
* {{spoiler|Dr. Bumby}} in ''[[Alice: Madness Returns]]''. Yeah, what Alice does to him in the end is clearly murder, but it is doubtful many players would hold it against her.
=== [[Visual Novels]] ===
* The ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' games like this trope. At least one victim in each game was pretty explicitly Not A Nice Person—many of them are criminals themselves.
** In ''Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney'' (the first game):
*** The victim in the third case turned out to have been intentionally trying to frame your client, Will Powers, one of the nicest characters in the series, out of jealousy, by drugging him and stealing his costume. The real killer acted in self-defense, though they wouldn't have needed to if they hadn't been blackmailing him in the first place.
*** The fourth case's victim was a defense attorney who sought to get not guilty verdicts even if it meant harm to his clients, and was killed by one of said clients who had been genuinely innocent but had his entire life destroyed as a result of the false insanity plea.
*** While not the victim of a standard homicide, [[Crime After Crime|Joe]] [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Darke]] of the fifth case could be considered an
** In ''Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice for All'' (the second game):
*** The second case's victim, Turner Grey, was a real [[Dr. Jerk]] killed by a former employee who alleged he had drugged her, causing her to crash her car and kill {{spoiler|her little sister.}} (Whether he actually ''did'' drug her is somewhat unclear, but being one of the few victims met before their demise, his [[Jerkass]] persona is well-evident.)
*** Juan Corrida of the fourth case initially seems like a nice guy, but it becomes increasingly evident that the feud between himself and Matt Engarde was an ugly reflection on both of them, and often wound up with other people in the crosshairs: most notably, {{spoiler|when Juan found out his fiancee had once been an item with Matt, he called off their wedding and Celeste committed suicide. Her protege, Adrian Andrews, blamed them both for her mentor's death.}}
** In ''Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations'':
*** The first case's victim, Doug Swallow, is a subversion: Although he's Dahlia's ex and Phoenix refers to him as a "stuck-up British wannabe", in truth he was trying to give Phoenix a ''very'' important warning about his girlfriend.
*** Kane Bullard from the second case counts, for being a greedy [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] and blackmailing [[Magnificent Bastard|Luke Atmey]].
*** In the fourth case, the victim is Valerie Hawthorne, a police officer who helped engineer a fake murder/kidnapping that ended with her and her sister in possession of a small fortune stolen from their father, and their co-conspirator sentenced to death for a crime that had not been committed. The twist is that she was killed because had she finally decided to come clean about everything, and the murderer stood to lose everything from her attack of conscience. Sad case all around.
** In ''Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney'':
*** The first case's victim, Shadi Smith, is a bit of a complicated case, as his real identity (and the motive of his murderer) isn't clear until the very end. However, even before that it's made known that he was trying to rig a game of cards against the defendant, and when the plan failed he [[Grievous Bottley Harm|clocked his co-conspirator over the head with a bottle of grape juice]].
*** The victim of the second case, Pal Meraktis, not only dealt with the criminal underworld and covered up a botched operation on Wocky, but he tried to kill Alita Tiala. He failed quite miserably, and she shot him instead.
** In ''[[Ace Attorney Investigations
*** The third case initially appears to play this straight; [[Significant Anagram|Oliver Deacon]]/Colin Devorae is thought to have been an escaped felon who betrayed his accomplices in Lance Amano's kidnapping for the money, but it turns out that Lance threatened his daughter's safety to force him to falsely kidnap him, and that his previous "crimes" were [[Taking the Heat]] for Ernest Amano.
*** One of the victims of the fifth case, Manny Coachen, was a man who was heavily involved in an international smuggling ring and counterfeiting operation that almost destroyed another country's economy, and had gotten away with at least one murder in his lifetime.
** In ''[[Ace Attorney Investigations:
*** The victim in the second case {{spoiler|is actually the ''culprit'' from the first case--although later revelations make his death rather tragic in retrospect}}.
*** In the third case, the victim {{spoiler|was an infamously greedy sculptor apparently [[Only in It For
*** Then, {{spoiler|in the final case, the victim (who had been met way back in the first case) turns out to have been ''much'' more assholish than had been initially suspected--he was in fact a former body double for the head of state who had arranged the man's assassination, taken his place, fabricated his own kidnapping to defraud the country of millions and killed or tried to kill anyone who could have exposed his real identity. By comparison the game's actual [[Big Bad]] comes off as downright sympathetic, who would probably have been seen as justified if he hadn't [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope|jumped off the slippery slope]] while [[He Who Fights Monsters|fighting the monsters]] who had terrorized him for most of his life.}}
* In ''[[Nine Hours, Nine Persons
* Matou Shinji in [[Fate/stay
** And if you wanted his anime counterpart dead too, don't worry. That happens too.
* The victim in the [[Murder Mystery]] [[Visual Novel]] ''[[
* Rina Mamiya from ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro
** [[Complete Monster|Teppai Hojo]] is a [[They Killed Kenny]]
** Onryu Sonozaki in the Cotton Drifting and Eye Opening chapters by Shion.
== [[Web Animation]] ==
* ''[[College Humor]]'' has the [[Monopoly (game)|Monopoly]] Man going bankrupt. At first, Uncle Pennybags seems to be sympathetic, as he had worked hard his entire life to build up his fortune. However, he then reveals that he had engaged in human trafficking.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* ''[[Something
** And then you had Avagadro's former sex slave, Pepito. Once freed from Avagadro's clutches, he proved every bit the [[Jerkass]] Avagadro was. And then [[Cruel and Unusual Death|he was torn apart by rabid anime fangirls]].
* ''[[
* ''[[
* In ''[[Kevin and Kell]]'', many of the prey species (and occasionally, predators) that get themselves eaten are often established as jerks, and often die as a result of their transgressions. For example, one [[Jerry Springer]] parody character tries to get Kell to eat Kevin by bringing up his online affair, but when it [[Milholland Relationship Moment|turns out to be with her]], and he persists in trying to provoke her, she eats him.
* [http://xkcd.com/562/ This] ''[[
{{quote|[[Alt Text]]: Police reported three dozen cheerful bystanders, yet no one claims to have seen who did it. }}
* Many of the clientele in ''[[Suicide for Hire]]'' fall into this category, particularly Ty Montlet and the guy from the mall.
* ''[[Dominic Deegan]]'' has [[Jerk Jock]] Brett Taggarty and [[Smug Snake]] Serk Brakkis who met a grisly gory death at the powerful magic of [[The Dragon|Celesto Morgan]]. And with good reason, too: Brett was a drunken misogynist, a bully, assaulted a nurse and the titular hero's younger brother, Gregory. Serk Brakkis, on the other hand, tried to force the people living in the devastated town of Barthis to sell their property to him to make a stadium for the deceased Taggarty, owns five dummy companies and the Slaughterball team Taggarty was in, [[Strawman News Media|the local newspaper]] for smear campaigns against Gregory and Donovan, as well as plotted the murders of several people including Dominic '''''AND''''' Celesto.
* In ''[[Freak Angels]]'', Luke is caught raping a woman he's placed under [[Mind Control]], a firefight breaks out, and he's finally shot and killed. Repeatedly. It doesn't stick.
* In ''[[Spacetrawler]]'' the Eebs, the oppressed [[Slave Race]] that the protagonists are trying to free, used to be one of the most dangerous and violent species in the galaxy; the only reason they didn't terrorize other planets was because they were too lazy.
*
* ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'', occasionally. Such as [http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/070119 these].
== [[Web Original]] ==
* On ''[[Tonight's Episode]]'': [https://tonights-episode.tumblr.com/post/183082696839/tonights-episode-its-still-murder-if-hes-a IT'S STILL MURDER IF HE'S A JERK] (which serves as our page image).
* Parodied in the article [https://web.archive.org/web/20100314111812/http://www.theonion.com/content/node/51380 "No Leads Sought In Asshole's Murder"] at ''[[The Onion]]''.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Although he survived, the shooting of Mr. Burns on ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]''
* ''[[Darkwing Duck (
* ''[[Batman: The
* Jokey Smurf, the resident [[Jerkass]] prankster, accidentally became this in ''[[The Smurfs]]'' episode "The Kaplowey Scroll" when he made Grouchy angry enough to [[The Scottish Trope|say the word "kaplowey"]] which made Jokey disappear. Fortunately, Papa Smurf reversed that.
* In ''[[
* Most of the times Eustace is killed on ''[[Courage the Cowardly Dog]]'' ([[Our Hero Is Dead| which happened more often than it should have]]), he was asking for it.
* He doesn't die, but Nelson Nash of ''[[Batman Beyond]]'' is a pretty good example. In one episode, he gets attacked by a classmate with [[Psychic Powers]], leading to the following exchange between Bruce and Terry:
{{quote|'''Bruce''': ''"And is there anyone who held a grudge against this Nelson Nash kid?"''
'''Terry''': ''"Starts with me and goes around the block - twice."'' }}
* In ''[[Ben 10: Alien Force]]'', [[The Atoner|Kevin]] averts [[Save the Villain]] by leaving his nemesis Ragnarok fall in the Sun. Considering the guy was an [[Omnicidal Maniac]] who killed his father from cold blood and attempted to destroy Earth's sun for the sake of selling its energy, it's hard to blame Kevin for this act.
** And again in ''[[Ben 10: Ultimate Alien]]'', Kevin, after turning psychotic again, goes on a [[Roaring Rampage
* In ''[[Helluva Boss]]'', the [[Villain Protagonist]]s are both demons and [[Murder, Inc.| hired killers]], but most marks are this; many of their clients are damned souls who want someone they hold responsible for their own deaths to burn in Hell with them.
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