Big Brother Bully

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Older siblings as bullies towards their younger siblings as well as others.

Related tropes: Kids Are Cruel, Teens Are Monsters (because the big brother/sister is often a teenager as compared to the younger more sympathetic protagonist).

Compare Aloof Big Brother, Sibling Rivalry. Contrast Big Brother Instinct; oftens mixes with it in the "The only one allowed to bully my little brother is me!" sense.

Unfortunately, very Truth in Television ... and sometimes even a big sister.

Examples of Big Brother Bully include:

Anime and Manga

Comic Books

  • Spider-Man villain Sergi Kravenoff (aka Kraven the Hunter) was this to his younger half-brother (and later partner in crime) Dmitri, aka the Chameleon. Downplayed, as Dmitri didn't know until several years after Sergi's suicide that he and Sergi were half-brothers.

Film

Literature

  • Ender's Game: Peter to Ender and Valentine.
  • Harry Potter's cousin/adopted brother Dudley Dursley. He improves too.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire has many examples.
    • Gregor Clegane, towards Sandor and their unnamed baby sister. He kills the little girl and almost does the same to the little boy, leaving him badly scarred.
    • Viserys Targaryen towards his younger sister Daenerys.
    • Also, Joffrey Baratheon to Tommen and Myrcella. It's strongly implied that he actually raped them.
    • Theon Greyjoy's memory of his brothers Rodrik and Maron are cheifly of "Rodrik's drucken cuff and Maron's cruel japes.
      • It seems to run in the Greyjoy family. Theon's uncle Aeron still has nightmares about his older brother Euron Crow's Eye. As with Joff above, it's strongly implied Euron raped Aeron.
  • Edmund Pevensie is this to Lucy in the beginning of The Chronicles of Narnia, despite not being the oldest. In fact, Peter harshly calls him out on it when he pretends to side with her and then humiliates her.
  • Played for Drama in When She Was Good by Norma Fox Mazer. Em's older sister Pamela brutally abuses her, physically and emotionally. In fact, she is suspected by psychologists to have some sort of mental illness. Em and Pamela end up moving out, and Em works while Pamela stays at home and forces her to have a very strict routine, cooking for her and cleaning for her. The book deals with what happens after Pamela unexpectedly dies of a stroke.
  • In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Rodrick. Just like in the movies, he's a complete Jerkass who just abuses Greg and his friends gets away with it. Greg has his moments and had intended to become this to Manny, but he's much less of a jerk than his brother and a couple times when he's done stuff to Manny it was usually good-natured. (Likely because he can't get away with a thing with Manny.)
  • Fisk claims that his older sister Judith in the Knight and Rogue Series was and perhaps still is one of these (he expresses a desire repeatedly for her to turn out to be the criminal they're tracking). While some of the past actions he claims sound rude at best, she does nothing worse than one-up him in arguments while present in the story.
  • Amelia Peabody got this from pretty much all her brothers, but especially her oldest brother James:

"Dear Amelia. You haven't changed since you were a little girl. Do you remember the time..."
There he stuck, probably because he couldn't recall any fond memories of our childhood. I certainly had none that included him.

  • Charlie Angelfield in The Thirteenth Tale intends to make a victim of his much younger sister. This doesn't work as planned, and they instead become more like partners in crime.

Live-Action TV

  • Ian and Paul Branagh to Robin in Young Dracula.
  • The Wonder Years: Kevin's big brother Wayne.
  • Malcolm in the Middle plays this quite well. The real oldest brother, Francis, is away from the family nearly the entire series, and he's more of a Big Brother Mentor during the series, but still has moments that fall under this trope. The next eldest brother, Reese fills this role for Malcolm & Dewey for the majority of the series, although Malcolm gives as much as he he receives and joins in with bullying Dewey; and after the birth of Jamie, neither one bullies him & both assume similar roles to what they share with Francis. Dewey, being the youngest for most the series, doesn't fall under this but gets a few The Dog Bites Back episodes; and after Jamie's born, complains that it's not fair that Reese & Malcolm got the Cool Big Brother Francis when they were kids, but Francis left for military school before Dewey form any memories of having a cool big brother - Francis then reveals that he treated Malcolm & Reese the same way they treat Dewey when he was younger.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: Robert Picard to Jean-Luc, as shown in "Family".
    • Also Lore to Data.
  • That '70s Show: Female example, with older sister Laurie being this to Eric. No wonder he and his friends call her "the witch".
  • Brad and Randy to Mark on Home Improvement, especially in the earlier episodes, when they were too young to really know better.
  • Frasier: Crane has elements of this towards his little brother Niles. However, Niles is far from a poor helpless victim of his brother's torment, and can usually give as good as he gets.

Video Games

Web Comics

  • Mike to Angel in The Good Witch, but only in their original history; his memory of that has been erased.

Web Original

Western Animation