Laser Guided Tykebomb

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Iczer-1: I have a sister? What do you want?

Iczer-2: Your death. I was created for one purpose alone - kill Iczer-1. Ready to die?
—Iczer-1

You're the Big Bad and all your Evil Plans are thwarted. The hero can take anything you can dish out and then some, the Mooks cower in the corner whenever he so much as looks at them, and The Dragon is kindly recommending that you run for the hills. Can nobody stop this unstoppable juggernaut of justice? The answer is no.

Enter the Laser Guided Tykebomb, a henchman with one purpose in life and one purpose only: to take down the good guys. The LGT may be a specially constructed robot, a human raised from birth to carry out the deed or normal minion promoted from the ranks to fill the role. This nemesis will often have powers designed to counter or match its targets, or be equipped to exploit his Kryptonite Factor.

Another scenario has a character feeling a Face Heel Turn coming on, so they need someone to kill them as a kind of Suicide by Cop, except no "Cop" is strong enough so they have to make their own.

Can often overlap with Hero-Killer.

Heroes have been known to be created this way to destroy specific villains, in which case their creators are generally morally dubious.

Subtrope of Tyke Bomb.

Examples of Laser Guided Tykebomb include:

Anime and Manga

  • Part of the reason Naruto had the Nine Tails sealed into him was so he could use its power to defeat the masked man. Naruto was a newborn at the time.
  • Iczer-2 in Iczer-1, as described in the page quote.
  • In Magic Knight Rayearth The Magic Knights were specifically summoned to Cephiro by Prlincess Emeraude to kill her.
    • In the second season of the anime, Nova is one of these, aimed at Hikaru.
  • In Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, King Ashura raised Fai to do this to him.
  • Hakaider, Kikaider‍'‍s Evil Counterpart. This backfires when Hakaider repeatedly spares Kikaider, even attacking other monsters of the week, so that he could eventually fight -- and defeat -- Kikaider at his strongest, bringing the most meaning to Hakaider's existence.
  • The Mini-Cons are a race of LGT in Transformers Armada, created by Unicron to sow strife and feed his hunger for negative energy.
  • Tsukihime has a whole family of them, known as Demon Hunters. Notably, they don't hunt demons, because that's a job best left to priests with access to exorcism and other forms of anti-demon magic. They hunt people with any traces of demon or otherwise non-human blood, who by nature of their heritage have demonic magic and powers, and the inevitable risk of one day losing their human traits entirely and going insane. Therefore we get a family of Badass Normals who get Training from Hell since birth and feel an irresistible impulse to brutally kill anything that feels inhuman but looks human (they're also slightly psychic).
    • To be specific, exorcism rites and binding spells don't work on hybrids, so you have to deal with something that's as strong as a demon, actively violent and can't be slowed by magic or taken down from a distance easily. Also, Arcueid with regards to the fallen True Ancestors. They're True Ancestors who aren't bothering to suppress their blood lust anymore and are therefore too powerful to be killed normally. Well, they were.
  • In Dragonball Z all the androids were made and somehow designed to kill Goku in order to avenge the Red Ribbon army. They choose otherwise, anyway.
    • Only 17 and 18 choose otherwise. 19 remains faithful to Dr Gero and 16, while he doesn't seem to lament the loss of his creator, still wants to kill Goku. The last one is bizarre when combined with 16's love of life and extremely calm demeanour.
      • Being purely robotic (17 and 18 are Cyborgs, made by upgrading a pair of human siblings), 16 was unable to overcome his core programming. However, he absolutely refused to engage in any violence against anyone or anything other than his designated target until the threat of Cell presented itself.
    • Goku himself is an example. The Saiyans sent their infants out to conquer less powerful planets. Goku just took a knock on the head when he was young and lost his Saiyan hostility.
  • Near and Mello from Death Note fall under the "created to destroy specific villains" subtrope. They were raised to compete with each other constantly and serve as L's successor, but ultimately forced to work together to bring down Light, all according to L's contingency plan.
  • In Bleach, Wonderwice's Resurección turned out to be specifically designed by Aizen to block Genryūsai's flame zanpakuto's powers.
  • Schrodinger from Hellsing, who was created for the sole purpose of poisoning Alucard.
  • Lady Snowblood has a extreme example. The protagonist was conceived in jail solely as a means for her mother to take revenge on those who hurt her and her family. Add a lifetime of Training from Hell and a Parasol of Pain, and cut her loose with a list to hunt every last one down. The protagonist even comments that she is not a person, merely a "phantom of [her] mother."

Comic Books

  • The Scorpion and the Spider-Slayer robots in the animated Spider-Man series as well as the comics.
  • The Marvel Universe has the Sentinels, a series of robots built for the sole purpose of hunting mutants.
  • Marvel also has Drax the Destroyer, created for the sole purpose of killing Thanos. He succeeds. Thanos doesn't seem to mind.
  • Transmetropolitan had the hero being followed by a young kid with no head. The hero (and the future) is so off the wall nobody is too surprised by the lack of head. The hero throws the kid out a window, wherein he explodes. Turns out it was literally a laser guided tyke bomb, created by one of his many, many enemies.
  • The original incarnation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were originally the "good guys" version of this trope: Splinter had trained them from birth (or rather, from the moment they had been mutated) in order to kill the Shredder.
  • A very unusual kind of LGT was used in Jabba the Hutt: The Art of the Deal. The first issue had the Hutt travel to a meeting with another crime lord, Gaar Suppoon, to trade valuable resources. After a small ceremony in honor of Jabba, the negotiations started off with Suppoon insulting the Hutt for deigning to threaten him with a bomb. Just in case the threat had been real, he had the Empire send one of their best explosives experts, Kosh Kurp, to search the place, and he turned up nothing. The bartering then began in earnest, with each gangster double-crossing and cheating the other, until Suppoon, having been outmaneuvered by Jabba, lost his temper and attempted to have the Hutt killed. Jabba warned him that if he did not regain his temper, he would detonate his bomb. Suppoon, unimpressed, told Jabba to do so, at which point the Hutt called him "Sonopo Bomoor". After a beat, Kosh Kurp turned to Suppoon and asked if he really was the Sonopo Bomoor, the one who razed the city of Bonaka Nueno on Intuci, and encouraged his blood crazed minions to slaughter Kurp's family as he, a mere child, watched. The whole situation does not end well for Suppoon.

Film

  • The Terminator, time-travelling tykebomb.
  • Leeloo from The Fifth Element is another example of LGT targetting the Big Bad.
  • Zoolander is Brainwashed so that he'd become a ruthless killing machine and assassinate the prime minister of Malaysia upon hearing the song "Relax".
  • The title character of Hanna fits the trope to a tee.
  • In The Lion King 2, Zira raised Kovu to be this. It didn't exactly work out for her.
  • Arguably, the Skywalker twins were set up as a pair of these to take down The Empire and the pair of Sith in charge, with Obi-Wan and Yoda using a combination of Jedi Truth and BatmanGambits to set Luke against his father, even dismissing the notion of trying to redeem Vader / Anakin.
    • The novelization of Revenge of the Sith defies this trope. Obi-Wan and Yoda ultimately decide not to train the two to fight the Sith (seeing how their training failed against the Sith's conspiracy) and left the twins' fate to the will of the Force.
  • Hit Girl of Kick-Ass has been trained by her (also badass) father to take down mob boss Frank D'Amico.
  • In the 2009 Wolverine feature film, mutant Wade Wilson is transformed into Weapon XI (AKA The Deadpool) when Colonel Stryker grafts various stolen mutant powers onto him: turning him into the ultimate "mutant killer".

Literature

  • The Spartan-IIIs in the Halo Expanded Universe, gathered from children orphaned by Covenant attacks, trained for en masse attempts at destroying Covenant facilities. The first chapter of Ghosts of Onyx shows the aftermath of one of these assaults, which leaves only two survivors. In all honesty, the man who proposed the idea clearly was not a "nice" man, while the Spartan-III commanding officer recognises the most definitely horrible necessity of his task and wishes that he had no need for this Dirty Business.
    • The protagonist Spartan-IIs like the Chief count too, as they were originally kidnapped and created to crush colonial rebellions through assasination. The fact they proved useful in fighting genocidal aliens is merely a lucky accident. It's hard to notice, given the setting, but the UNSC as a whole is far from nice.
  • In light of the seventh book, Harry Potter. A combination of a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy no one saw coming and the Xanatos Roulette that took advantage of it.
  • The strategists from Ender's Game were trained to take down the formics—Ender was the unlucky one who was the best at it.
  • In The Princess 99 the Well-Intentioned Extremist group Birds of Prey purposely send their assasin to Edgewood Academy in order to kill Princess Aurore, a.k.a. Prof. Colette, who is currently teaching there, in the most public manner possible
  • In Darth Plagueis, the midichlorians of the galaxy created Anakin Skywalker to bring about the downfall of Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious to punish them for the unethical experiments they performed on the midichlorians.

Live-Action TV

  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: It can be argued that both the Vorta and the Jem'Hadar (though more heavily and obviously the latter) are the Founders personal laser guided tykebombs.
  • Connor from Angel, with the Oedipal complication of being raised to kill his biological father.
  • Stargate Atlantis has the good guys create a gynoid to destroy a planet. She is creepily fine with it.
  • In The Sarah Connor Chronicles, they have all but said outright that John isn't being trained to be a great leader or a hero or a soldier, but a weapon aimed at Skynet.
    • Don't forget John's other love interest from the future.
  • Melody Pond in Doctor Who, aimed at the Doctor.

Music

Myth and Legend

  • Older Than Feudalism: The monster Typhon in Greek mythology, spawned by Gaia to take down Zeus. (Failed, of course.)
    • Gaia also spawned an army of snake-legged giants to overthrow the Olympians—an entire army of tykebombs. They also failed, thanks to Heracles' aid.
    • Zeus himself was a tykebomb raised by Gaia to overthrow his father Cronus. He succeeded -- all too well for Gaia's tastes.
  • In Norse mythology, Váli is born to avenge Baldr, and he kills Höðr when he is one day old.
  • In most modern tellings of the King Arthur mythos Sir Mordred is one of these, raised to kill his father Arthur by his mother Morgause.

Video Games

  • Bass/Forte in Mega Man; also Maverick Zero who is supposed to destroy Mega Man X.
  • The main character in BioShock (series) is a artificially-aged, genetically engineered, mind-controlled assassin created by one big bad to take down another.
    • In the sequel, Eleanor, literally - you can use the Summon Eleanor plasmid to drop a Tykebomb on any unruly foes.
  • The Player Character in Jade Empire is the Laser-Guided Tykebomb against the Big Bad. Of course, you can blame The Man Behind the Man for that one...apparently good guys cannot create a LGT.
    • But the player is technically a laser-guided tykebomb against the Big Bad's rival for power.
  • The Novus from Universe At War: Earth Assault are an entire species of robots made for the purpose of destroying the Hierarchy, the alien conglomerate that destroyed their creators.
  • Famously, in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, Fayt, Maria and Sophia are specifically genetically engineered by their own parents to be able to enter 4D Space and be able to combat anything that they find there.
  • Tidus in Final Fantasy X is the Laser-Guided Tykebomb against the Big Bad Sin. Of course, you can blame The Fayth for that one...apparently good guys can create a LGT.
  • Starkiller from The Force Unleashed is a sort of subversion. He was raised like a Laser Guided Tykebomb against the Emperor, but was really raised with the purpose of being bait against anyone who might try and start a rebellion.
  • Crunch from Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex.
  • Metal Sonic, from the Sonic the Hedgehog games was created for this purpose.
  • Kirah in the penultimate level of Gitaroo Man (as this page quote above fits this trope quite nicely) and it pretty much makes it a Let U-1 and Kirah Fight concept of the game.

Web Comics

  • Shade Tail / Grace from El Goonish Shive. A rare case of LGT targetting the Big Bad, though the creators of this genetical custom build were far from innocent themselves.
  • Hitlerella, crafted by Those Wacky Nazis to take out the Silver Age Wonderella, awakens in the modern age with her single-minded obsession intact, only to find that the current Wonderella is a flighty party girl.

Web Original

  • The Sailors in Sailor Nothing are groomed by Magnificent Kamen specifically to be his weapons against the Dark Queen, just as Cobalt creates the "super Yamiko" specifically to kill the Sailors.

Western Animation

  • Doomsday in Justice League Unlimited, as the page quote explains, was designed for the sole purpose of killing Superman. This is likely a subtle Mythology Gag to the fact that Doomsday was written into the DCU for the sole purpose of making a "Superman's Death!" storyline.
  • In Afro Samurai, the bad guys constructed a robot version of Afro able to mimic all of his abilities specifically to kill him; they may have also groomed Jinnosuke for this specific purpose.
  • In the second season of The Legion of Superheroes, Superman X is a heroic version whose sole purpose is to defeat Imperiex.
  • The Young Justice cartoon incarnation of Superboy. He was created by Project Cadmus (under the orders of the Light) to either replace a missing Superman or take out a rogue one. The villains' tendency to call him "the weapon" suggests they were leaning towards the latter.
  • In Samurai Jack, the protagonist is a heroic case of this. He was raised to kill Aku. He had a fairly normal life (for an emperor's son) until Aku broke free. His parents had already had a contingency plan for this and evacuated Jack to elsewhere for him to train to kill Aku.
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