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Murder by Mistake: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
To err is human, and for the most part, murderers are as human as the next guy. Sometimes mistakes are made and the victim of a murder turns out to not be the intended target of the one who committed it. In [[Cop Show]]s, especially [[Police Procedural]]s, this can cause investigators to pursue [[Red Herring]]s and make other errors as the mistaken victim is assumed (at least, at first) to be the killer's intended target.
For criminals, hitting the wrong guy means that their intended victim might be alerted that someone's after them. Even worse, the wrong guy might be a person they actually care about.
Occasionally inverted when the killer kills the right person, but purposefully makes things look like '''Murder by Mistake'''. Especially brazen killers make ''themselves'' appear to be the intended target, thus taking themselves off of the police's radar entirely.
In [[Real Life]], this is common enough for the rule of "transferred intent": intent follows the bullet, so that the intent to kill someone makes your killing anyone intentional. The [[Other Wiki]] has [[wikipedia:Transferred intent|more here]]
Compare to [[Accidental Murder]], where the dead people are accidental collateral damage rather than dead by misaimed intention.
{{deathtrope}}
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== Film ==
* In ''[[Legally Blonde]]'', the murderer wanted to kill her step-mother, and planned to kill her as she stepped in to their home. So when the door opened, the murderer took a shot. It ended up being her father.
* In ''[[The Cats Meow]]'', Thomas H. Ince is shot by William Hearst from behind because he was wearing a bowler hat and Hearst mistook him for [[Charlie Chaplin]], his intended target.
* In [[The Movie|the film version]] of ''[[The Firm]]'', DeVasher shoots and kills the Nordic Man thinking that he was Mitch McDeere, through a closed door after seeing a silhouette of the Nordic Man carrying McDeere's briefcase.
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== Literature ==
* In ''The Kennel Murder Case'' by S. S. Van Dine, one of the victims is killed because the killer mistook him for his brother (the intended victim).
* In the [[Nero Wolfe]] novel ''Please Pass The Guilt'' by Rex Stout, a person is killed by a trap bomb, but it isn't clear for whom the bomb was intended.
* In ''The Hollow Needle'' by Maurice Leblanc, the thinly veiled [[Expy]] of Sherlock Holmes pursues Lupin to his hideout and goes for a debilitating shot... unfortunately, it's the perfect height to [[Tear Jerker|murder the only wife that Lupin had been willing to fake his death for]]. Cue, instead of a [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]], a [[Heroic BSOD]] and [[There Are No Therapists|a lifetime of commitment issues for Lupin, despite still sleeping around with one identity a known cad]].
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** Played with in ''[[The ABC Murders]]''. The final murder does not fit the killer's pattern, making it appear that the murderer made a mistake. In reality, the final murder was unimportant to the pattern, and the killer merely chose his victim randomly.
* [[Agatha Christie]] also played this one straight at least once. In ''Sparkling Cyanide'', the killers poisoned their intended victim's glass of wine at a restaurant, but then everyone at the table got up to dance and returned to the wrong chairs, so someone else got the poisoned glass.
* In John Morgan Wilson's ''Spider Season'', the murderer tries to frighten Justice by putting a brown recluse spider in the mailbox. Instead, s/he accidentally kills Fred, one of Justice's elderly landlords.
* The [[Inspector Morse]] novel ''Death Is Now My Neighbour''. The first victim dies because the killer meant to bump off the guy next door, but entered the wrong house.
* In the [[Isaac Asimov]] sci-fi mystery novel ''[[The Caves of Steel]]'', the murderer was initially cleared from suspicion due to a mental scan that revealed that he was [[Thou Shalt Not Kill|psychologically incapable of killing]]. However, he ''was'' perfectly willing to destroy a robot... which is what he ''thought'' he was doing when he pulled the trigger and killed the roboticist who had [[Robot Me|created R. Daneel in his own image]].
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== Live Action TV ==
* This happens very often in ''[[Law and Order]]''. Often, the intended victim will just be wounded, while an innocent bystander is killed.
** Subverted in the ''[[Law and Order Special Victims Unit]]'' episode "Raw", where a sniper shoots several children playing in their school's yard. One of the murdered children is the authentic target; the sniper shot the others intentionally to muddy the waters and make it seem like a random crime.
* ''[[The X-Files]]:'' In the episode "The Blessing Way", Dana Scully's sister Melissa is killed by mistake when Luis Cardinal and Alex Krycek, thinking that Melissa is Dana, shoot her in the head as she enters her sister's apartment.
* In the ''[[Columbo]]'' episode "A Bird In The Hand", a football team owner's gardener is mistakenly killed by a car-bomb. The killer is caught after Columbo watches a video tape of the explosion and notices the team owner's nephew wince as the gardener gets into the rigged car.
* In the ''[[Queen of Swords]]'' episode "Vengeance," a local noble is killed, causing everyone to think that an ongoing feud is escalating. The assassin was actually aiming at the doctor standing next to the nobleman, and missed.
* In Season 6 of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', Warren shoots Tara accidentally while trying to kill Buffy. This launches Willow into a double plus [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]].
** What, are we forgetting about what caused Faith to turn evil (even though it was at least half Buffy's fault)?
* An episode of ''[[Foyle's War]]'' had a man who accidentally killed someone with a similar name to the depraved RAF officer who impregnated his daughter, then drove her to suicide.
* In the fifth season finale of ''[[Highlander the Series]]'', Duncan MacLeod is hunting around an abandoned racetrack in the dark, looking for a demon who is taunting him by prancing around wearing the faces of student [[Like a Son to Me|Richie Ryan]] and conquered enemies [[Horsemen of the Apocalypse|Kronos]] and [[Complete Monster|James Horton]], who all appear at the same time and trap him between them. They all disappear, Duncan whips around...and in his confusion beheads the ''real'' Richie, who was there [[Idiot Ball|even though everyone told him not to go.]]
* The third episode of the French series ''[[Empreintes Criminelles]]'' starts with a scientist being shot in a brothel, from an unknown source. It turns out an [[Asshole Victim]] was being killed next room, and one of the bullets overpenetrated through the guy and the wall.
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== Theatre ==
* In ''[[Hamlet]]'', the title Prince stabs Polonius through a curtain, thinking him to be his [[Evil Uncle]], Claudius, who he has sworn vengeance again.
** Later, Queen Gertrude drinks from a poisoned goblet of wine that Claudius had intended for Hamlet.
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== Webcomics ==
* The moment ''[[
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== Real Life ==
* The very first attempt on the life of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria involved the would-be assassin throwing a hand grenade at the Archduke's car and missing. The explosion injured several innocent bystanders instead. Ironically, the Archduke was finally assassinated while he was on the way to visit several of the casualties of the explosion.
** The Archduke's wife, Duchess Sophie, was shot by mistake as well. She was sitting next to her husband in the back seat of their open touring car, across from General Potoriek, the military governor of Bosnia, another intended target of the assassination conspiracy. Gavrilo Princip testified that he was so shocked by the presence of the lady right in the path of his intended victims that he didn't even take aim when he fired, but shot with his eyes closed. He expressed great remorse over Sophie's death, stating that he had never intended to deprive the Archduke and Duchess' children of their mother. (Additionally, some accounts of the murder have Princip's arm being grabbed by a plainclothes police officer who was standing next to him, thus deflecting the bullet that was meant for General Potoriek so that it hit the Duchess instead.)
* One of the seemingly infinite theories about the Kennedy Assassination is that Lee Harvey Oswald was actually trying to kill someone else who was in the car with the president.
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[[Category:Death Tropes]]
[[Category:Murder Tropes]]
[[Category:
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