Dead Little Sister: Difference between revisions

{{examples}}

* ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny]]''{{'}}s main character Shinn Asuka has this ''hardcore'' with his literal dead little sister, Mayu, who was accidentally blown up alongside their parents when they got caught in between battle fire. To the point where Shinn carries around her cell phone and listens to her "leave a message after the beep" recording when he gets down. [[Nightmare Fuel|Creepy.]]

** It is in fact lampshaded upon in [[Super Robot Wars Z]], after being taken out of his berserker streak by Stellar Louissier if they saved her earlier. When back at base, Shinn's girlfriend Lunamaria Hawke is concerned that Stellar is going to be a contender for Shinn's heart, but Shinn tells her that he sees Stellar as a platonic brother-sister relationship. Making up for your mistake theres huh Shinn?

* Female version: Himiko Kudo from ''[[GetBackers]]''. Backstory is that Ban killed her brother, Yamato, while they were all theives together.

* Kanae from ''[[Elfen Lied]]'' is a dead little sister, but a non-example, as while Kouta remembers her fondly, he's gotten (sorta) over her death. Lucy's [[Kill All Humans]] mentality, however, began because of the loss of {{spoiler|her puppy}} at the hands of some [[Kids Are Cruel|very cruel kids]]. Her [[Start of Darkness]] was a lethal [[Unstoppable Rage]] at [[All of the Other Reindeer]] [[Kick the Son of a Bitch|you could almost root for]].

*** And Lucy {{spoiler|is the one who killed Kanae and Kouta's father right in front of him!}}

* Dias's motivation in ''[[Star Ocean]] EX'' was literally his dead sister.

* Aside from being Chihaya's dead little Brother this trope is played straight as it gets in the anime version of ''[[The Idolmaster (anime)|THE iDOLM@STER]]''.

* In [[Marvel Comics]], the death of Bucky at the end of [[WW 2]] served as a continual source of angst and self-flagellation for [[Captain America (comics)]].

* [[X-Men (Comic Book)|Magneto]]'s Dead Little Sister? Is ''[[World War II|the Holocaust]]''.

* Various retellings of [[Doctor Strange]]'s origin story give him one to explain how he became [[Dr. Jerk]]. (In the first version he didn't have any real excuse; he was just an ass.)

* ''[[Oldboy]]'', although there {{spoiler|the bad guy was in an incestuous relationship with his sister, which she ended by committing suicide when details of their relationship threatened to be exposed by the 'good' guy.}}

* ''[[Hotaru no Haka]]'' (aka ''Grave of the Fireflies'') (1988). Except for the "hero" part; the character was just an ordinary boy trying to take care of his kid sister. {{spoiler|When she dies, it's the beginning of the end of his own life.}} (There's also much more recent TV series based on the same novel.)

* In ''[[Face Off]]'', Castor Troy's accidental murder of Sean Archer's son is a key event in the backstory of the two characters.

* The book and movie ''Hannibal Rising'' give [[The Silence of the Lambs|Hannibal Lecter]] one of these, elaborating on allusions in the prior book and movie, ''Hannibal''.

* In one of [[J. R. R. Tolkien]]'s other stories in [[The Lord of the Rings|Middle-Earth]], Túrin Turambar's slide into total berserk self-destruction started with a dead little sister. And, oddly, {{spoiler|ended, by suicide, just after the death of his other little sister. Whom he had married and gotten pregnant}}.

* Asher has a dead ''older'' sister in ''[[Someone Else's War]]'', who was shot to death when the two of them tried to escape the LRA. The memory of her violent death prevents Asher from making a second escape attempt until Matteo comes along.

* The original ''[[Dark Shadows (TV series)|Dark Shadows]]'' has {{spoiler|Sarah Collins}} as the motivation for at least some of {{spoiler|Barnabas'}} angst.

* ''[[The X-Files]]'' does this, with Mulder's little sister's disappearance providing probably the biggest motive for a large portion of his adult life and career.

* Annie, Kirby's dead girlfriend in the ''[[Masters of Horror]]'' episode "Cigarette Burns". She killed herself for reasons that are never quite explained, but her copious drug abuse seemed to have sent her in a downward spiral.

* Sayadio in the Iroquois myth of Sayadio was motivated to rescue his sister from the spirit world by this trope.

* George Weathermay, one of the [[Ravenloft]] setting's greatest werebeast hunters, began a downward spiral into self-recrimination and depression when he brought his new fiancee home to meet the family, only to have her reveal herself as a lycanthrope and attack his young nieces. Neither girl died, but he blames himself and is now obsessed with tracking down and destroying this treacherous werewolf, {{spoiler|whom he fears may have infected one of the twins with lycanthropy}}.

* The creators of Penny Arcade and PVP, along with Wil Wheaton, form the D&D gaming group "Acquisitions Incorporated", featured in several podcasts available from Wizards of the Coast. At a live gaming session at PAX 2010 for this group, Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade invoked this trope for his cleric, Omin Dran, when all characters were required by a magic ritual to reveal a hidden secret about themselves.

* In ''[[Fantasia Otome Game Series|Fantasia - Requiem of the Abyss]]'', Nazim has Farah, a little sister he had failed to protect during the war.

* In ''[[The World Ends With You]]'', the player is introduced to a pair of players named Beat (the older and... [[Idiot Hero|slower]] one) and Rhyme (his younger female partner, who does all the thinking). Rhyme {{spoiler|gets erased by Uzuki's Noise}}, and Beat briefly joins [[The Dark Side]]. It gets worse - {{spoiler|Rhyme is actually Beat's kid sister, and it's his fault they were in the Reaper's Game to begin with - one day, she ran out of the house after they got in a fight, and ended up in front of an oncoming car. Beat dove into the street to protect her... and both of them were killed.}} In other words, Beat has ''double'' the guilt.

** Triple, if you remember that the only reason {{spoiler|Rhyme}} was out in that street is because {{spoiler|she was chasing after Beat, who had stormed out of the house.}}

** It's also implied that Neku's refusal to open up is because {{spoiler|his best friend died. Granted, this comes from the non-canonical "Another Day" sidestory, so take it with a grain of salt.}}

*** Well... {{spoiler|it IS canonical, just that it occurs in another parallel world. The main story's Joshua and Hanekoma are present, after all, so perhaps the real world's Neku had the same close friend, as well.}}

* Artina for Valvatorez in ''[[Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten]]''. However, rather than disillusioning him and driving him to cynicism, Artina's death (and his failure to take him promise to [[I Will Definitely Protect You|protect her]] seriously) instead drilled into him a notion that vows should never, ''ever'' be broken.

* Sayuri in ''[[Kanon]]'' has a dead little brother that shaped her into a lonely girl that refused to admit that everything was not all right. It even {{spoiler|changed the [[Third Person Person|way she talked.]] }}

** {{spoiler|Kaori}} treats her [[Ill Girl]] sister Shiori as if she never existed, as a way to avoid the pain of her eventual death. {{spoiler|She gets better.}}

* In ''[[Clannad (visual novel)|Clannad]]'', with {{spoiler|Yukine}}, but this time it's the older brother who's dead.

* ''[[The Wotch]]'': It is strongly implied that Miranda West's distance is because she blames herself for her friends' deaths.

* [[The Order of the Stick|Roy Greenhilt]] has a dead little brother named Eric. It's implied that Eugene was responsible, though Roy blames himself to a certain degree. His comment on Eric's love of music and potential future as a bard may also provide insight on his relationship with Elan.

* In ''[[Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi]]'', Dexter seems to be collecting these. First of all he's got the haunting {{spoiler|death of Dee Dee, his literal dead sister (ironically a dead ''big'' sister)}} hanging over him. Then, not long after, he develops a secondary complex involving his guilt over {{spoiler|Mandark's death in light of Mandark's own little sister promptly moving to Dexter's school after the loss of her sibling}}. One way or another, he’s suffering a lot of angst these days.

* In [http://www.takealemon.com Take a Lemon] Marsh seems to regard his little sister Tina as dead, even though she is standing right in front of him, because {{spoiler|:her memories were apparently altered by the experiment}}.

** Later in the story, Marsh finds out that {{spoiler|his favorite cousin is now [[Ret-Gone]] due to the same experiment}}, leading to a [[Heroic BSOD]].

* Hazel Rainart, one of [[The Dragon]]s to [[Big Bad]] Salem of ''[[RWBY]]'', is not actually outright evil like his compatriots but rather is motivated by his anger at Ozpin for the death of his sister Gretchen while a student at Beacon Academy.

* The [[Justice League (animation)|Justice Lords]] are revealed to have started falling off the slippery slope after {{spoiler|their Flash}} was murdered.

* ''[[Darkwing Duck]]'': An [[Time Travel|alternate timeline]] in "Time and Punishment" showed Darkwing [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope]] as the "[[Knight Templar|crime fighter]]" Darkwarrior Duck when [[The Heart|Gosalyn]] disappeared.

* In ''[[Doctor Strange]]: The Sorcerer Supreme'', Strange has a literal Dead Little Sister named April, who died of a mysterious ailment despite Strange himself performing surgery on her.

* [[Charles Darwin]]'s response to the death of his daughter ([[Alternate Character Interpretation|according to]] ''[[Charles and Emma]]'').

* [[Older Than Feudalism]]: Drusilla, Roman emperor [[The Caligula|Caligula]]'s favorite sister.

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Sibling Tropes]]

[[Category:Dead Herring]]

[[Category:Double Standard]]

[[Category:Ensemble]]

[[Category:Backstory Tropes]]