Murder-Suicide

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A character kills one or more victims and then kills themselves at the end, either because they planned to from the beginning to avoid the inevitable consequences, because they've gone on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and they have nothing left to live for, or because they were Driven to Suicide and decided that they were Taking You with Me.

Super-Trope of Pater Familicide, where a parent kills their partner and children. Not to be confused with the mutually-consensual Suicide Pact. This does not count if the murderer attempts to get away with their crimes and continue their life. It has to be part of the same crime, not a later attempt to avoid guilt or punishment.

Related to Suicide by Cop if they organise it so that someone else kills them. Sister tropes to Self-Disposing Villain and Driven to Suicide.

No real life examples, please; although this is Truth in Television, the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment indicates we should not speak ill of the dead.

As a Death Trope, Spoilers ahead may be unmarked. Beware.

Examples of Murder-Suicide include:

Anime and Manga

  • Fullmetal Alchemist: Discussed Trope when Riza tells Roy that she is willing to keep her word and shoot him if there is no other option, but then she'll kill herself too as she sees no point in living without him.
  • Gunslinger Girl: Elsa murdered her handler Lauro and then killed herself because she felt that he could never love her the way she did him, and he actually treated her like shit.
    • And later Jose does this to Henrietta as a part of a Suicide Pact.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion
    • Attempted by Asuka's mother Kyouko, except the "Asuka" that was murdered was the rag doll that Kyoko thought to be Asuka. It's not clear whether Asuka's more angry that her mother committed suicide or that she didn't get to die along with her.
    • Naoko Akagi also may have killed herself after murdering Rei Mark I, though it's also possible that Gendo was the culprit.
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Mami of all people attempts this in episode 10. In one of the alternate timelines, she completely snaps when she finds out Magical Girls eventually become witches. She succeeds in killing Kyouko, but is then mercy killed by Madoka.
  • Sailor Moon: The titular hero attempted to do this on a Brainwashed and Crazy Tuxedo Kamen, but fortunately, neither died. (He was protected by his watch, she by the just-manifested MacGuffin.)
  • Minai from Shikabane Hime did this in her backstory. She killed her boyfriend after being beat and abused by him and then committed suicide, only to come back to become a Shikabane Hime.
  • Attempted by the emotionally broken Francoise in Honoo no Alpen Rose, as punishment for her husband Germont's evil deeds.
  • Akuma no Riddle: Haruki Sagae attempted this with Haru and Tokaku but only managed to severely injure herself without actually killing any of them. In the manga, Tokaku was prepared to fulfill the "suicide" half of this trope after shooting Haru, but Haru herself talked her out of it, convincing her to live on and protect everything that was important to her instead.

Comic Books

  • Sin City: Hartigan commits suicide after killing Roark, Jr., realizing that he's the only link left leading to Nancy (the latest victim). By killing himself, he ensures that she is left alone.
    • Also, a minor character in A Dame To Kill For is seduced into helping the Femme Fatale, and murders his partner when he tries to make him listen to reason about her. He then kills himself out of remorse.

Film

  • This is Richard's plan in Dead Man's Shoes.
  • Full Metal Jacket: After Private Pyle kills Sgt. Hartman, he seems to realize that he'll be severely punished, perhaps even executed, for his crime, and shoots himself in the mouth.
  • Exaggerated Trope for laughs: At the end of Penn and Teller Get Killed, Teller accidentally kills Penn, then shoots himself. A guy who was just an actor, hired by Penn to play a trick on Teller to make it look like someone was trying to kill Penn, realizes that What With One Thing And Another there was no proof that it wasn't him, so he kills himself. Then his friend and a friend of his show up, whom he had invited to party with P&T after the planned Reveal to Teller. They kill themselves because there was nothing to prove that they didn't do it. Then the cops come in, see the situation, and off themselves too. A long Zoom (Optics) Out occurs, as more and more people come in, discover all the dead bodies, and shoot themselves. We hear these rather than see them. The End.
  • Titanic: William Murdoch shoots and kills a fictional third class Irish passenger, then commits suicide from guilt. A Historical Villain Upgrade, as the real William Murdoch was regarded as a hero and was last seen helping passengers.

Literature

  • Agatha Christie often uses this trope to deliver Karmic Death to particularly nasty murderers:
    • In The ABC Murders, the murderer tries to commit suicide, but Poirot prevents it, because he doesn't believe that the murderer deserves an easy death.
    • And Then There Were None: Judge Wargrave commits suicide after arranging the deaths of everyone else, as he felt himself to be no better than his victims and he was fatally ill anyway.
    • In Appointment with Death, the perpetrator commits suicide to avoid exposure and prosecution.
    • In Death on the Nile the perpetrator commits one final murder (of an accomplice) before turning the gun on themselves.
  • In Death Note: Another Note, Beyond Birthday is his own final victim.
  • Brave Story, Mitsuru's father killed Mitsuru's mother and sister and then himself, which is Mitsuru's Freudian Excuse for being a complete dick. Another character also attempts murder-suicide, but fortunately doesn't succeed at either.
  • In The Great Gatsby, George Wilson shoots himself over the death of his wife Myrtle, taking Gatsby with him.
  • This comes up in a few Lord Peter Wimsey books:
    • In Whose Body?, Peter stops the exposed murderer from committing suicide, so he can stand trial.
    • Conversely, in Murder Must Advertise, he reluctantly encourages the murderer to take actions that are tantamount to suicide (going out alone at night when there's a gang of drug smugglers who want to kill him) to prevent his inevitable exposure from ruining the lives of his family.

Live-Action TV

  • Generally played straight on CSI, though it was inverted in one episode where a stalker attempted suicide in his crush's house, resulting in three people dying.
  • A number of killers in Criminal Minds do this rather than be caught.
  • In the Korean Historical Drama Emperor Wang Guhn when Gung Ye is deposed and on the run, he has his highest General kill him by cutting off his head. The general has his second kill him, and then the second commits Seppuku.
  • The horror anthology The Hunger has this in its second-season premiere "Sanctuary" as the backstory of its host character, Mad Artist Julian Priest: having lost his audience via his increasingly grisly work, even his agent no longer believed in him. Julian murdered the agent and proceeded to turn his own death into a grisly piece of performance art, figuring he would attain immortality as an artist this way...

Theatre

  • Arguably, Brutus and Cassius in Julius Caesar, though the suicides happen well after the murder.
  • In Othello, Othello stabs himself after he realizes that his wife who he just killed wasn't actually cheating on him.

Video Games

  • In Remember 11, Utsumi does this in two Bad Ends, killing Keiko and then herself (and Satoru in the second one).

Web Comics

Web Original

Santa Claus: "Looks like it's time for a good old murder-suicide."

Western Animation

  • In her debut appearance in Batman: The Animated Series, Mary Dahl, a.k.a Baby-Doll, attempted to kill her former co-stars along with herself which is foiled when Robin disguises himself as one of the co-stars.
    • She attempted another when when she found out Killer Croc never loved her (though in his defense, Mary Dahl's condition keeps her looking like a toddler so even though she's in her 30s, being in a relationship with her would be a bad idea) and started a nuclear meltdown hoping to kill herself, Croc and all of Gotham. Her plan is foiled by Batman and gets her and Croc arrested.