Big Brother Bully
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
- Cardcaptor Sakura: Touya Kinomoto is both this and an overprotective older brother.
- Played for Laughs in Futari Ecchi, where male lead Makoto's older brother Akira keeps butting into his and Yura's sex life whether Makoto wants it or not.
- Bokurano and Kodomo no Omocha play it for drama, as both Jun Ushiro and Natsumi Hayama abuse their siblings Kana and Akito because each one blames their kid sibs for their moms falling victim to Death by Childbirth. And in Jun's case, Mrs. Ushiro wasn't even his mom, as he grew up believing that she was his birth mother but she only was his aunt or the wife of his birth mom's teacher (depending on whether you're watching the anime or reading the manga).
- Inverted with the Kongo Bros in Eyeshield 21; the younger twin tends to pick on the older one.
- Maho from Wandering Son is also picking on her little brother Shuuichi. She also has a Big Sister Instinct though.
- Mairu and Kururi's more unusual... quirks probably stem from having one. Let's face, growing up with Izaya as an older brother can't be easy.
- Gender Inverted by every big sister in Daily Lives of High School Boys. The only big brother in the series is just Not So Different to the main characters.
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
- ET the Extraterrestrial: Elliot's bro normally. He improves.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick, Rodrick, RODRICK.
- Home Alone: Buzz McCallister. He had a tarantula.
- Fanboys: Eric Bottler's older brother constantly belittling him and his friends for their love of Star Wars. In the end of the movie, he shows up while they're in line for The Phantom Menace and chases off two guys who were harshly criticizing Eric's new comicbook.
- Sex Drive: with the big brother constantly giving his brother crap about his supposed sexuality (or lack thereof). On the other hand, the brother does give him a ride to work in his Pontiac Judge and helps him out in the end.
- Weird Science: Wyatt's Jerk Jock older brother Chet.
- Pino to Vito in Do the Right Thing.
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..." |
- 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
- In Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, Guybrush Threepwood's creepy brother Chuckie is a tormentor. It's also the true identity of the villain LeChuck. Because the entire two games were just one big daydream by a young boy in an amusement park. This was thankfully retconned later.
- Leon in Yggdra Union and its related games. In Blaze Union it's pretty clear that this is just a part of his Tsundere nature, but it's Played for Drama in Yggdra Union, where his being a jerk to his little sister Elena and everyone else is representative of the fact that he recently took a dive off the deep end.
- Female example: Beldam from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door towards her little sister Vivian.
Web Comics
- Mike to Angel in The Good Witch, but only in their original history; his memory of that has been erased.
Web Original
- The Other Guy to The Nostalgia Critic. Of course this is only in-character, Rob and Doug play around but could easily be classed as Heterosexual Life Partners.
- It is heavily implied that Marie Swanson of Erikas New Perfume was this to the title character before getting turned into a three-year-old. The sequel had her get turned back into a 16-year-old and strike fear into Erika every chance she got.
Western Animation
- In The Simpsons, Bart is sometimes like this toward Lisa.
- Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy: Eddy's brother
- Inverted with little sister Sarah bullying big brother Ed.
- Mac's cruel older brother named Terrence from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.
- Kick Buttowski's older brother Brad.
- In one episode, Kick gets wrestling lessons from a former wrestler, whose wrestling school was taken over by his own Big Brother Bully, who in turn is teaching Brad as well.
- Raphael in the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon was shown to bully Michelangelo when they were little, although he is a bit nicer to him when they're older he does smack him when he says something stupid.
- South Park: Stan's older sister Shelly
- Also Kyle to Ike in the first season. "Kick the baby!"
- Tommy Turnbull's older brother, Donnie, from Robotboy.
- Duncan Douglas, the older brother of Dexter Douglas.
- Inverted in Avatar: The Last Airbender, where the little sister, Azula, bullies her big brother Zuko.
- Bobby's World: Bobby's older brother Derek
- Hey Arnold!: Gerald's older brother Jamieo
- In the Mega Man cartoon, Proto Man was this.
- Recess: Averted with Vince's older brother Chad, subverted with T.J.'s older sister Becky, since she's nicer to him at the end of Recess: School's Out, but mostly just a Bratty Teenage Daughter, and as for Spinelli's older brother Joey, not much is known about him...except that he's in prison.
- In Rugrats, Drew was like this to Stu when they were kids and doesn't quite seem to have grown out of it.
- Vicky is this to her little sister Tootie in The Fairly OddParents.
- The first few episodes of Stanley depicted Lionel as this; He turned into a Cool Big Brother after that.
- On the U.S. Acres version of Garfield and Friends, Orson is unlucky enough to have three brothers like this. They're not just bullies towards him either, the whole farm is scared of them.
- On Family Guy, Peter has a Big Sister Bully, Karen being a Brawn Hilda of a pro-wrestler who had bullied him since they were children.