Pater Familicide: Difference between revisions

The trope gained fame mainly through the murderous antics of John List, arguably the [[Trope Codifier]]. Having lost his job and become deeply in debt, List opted to murder his family rather than go on welfare and admit to his family that he was a failure, under the [[Insane Troll Logic]] that it was better to murder his family and send them straight to heaven than to let them be poor (as List believed that poverty was an affront to God). List then went into hiding and successfully stayed hidden until ''[[Americas Most Wanted|America's Most Wanted]]'' featured him on the show, bringing about his arrest as a result.

Current social mores play a big part in how sympathetic the murderer remains to the audience -- whileaudience—while few would suggest that debt is a good reason to kill your family, fantasy situations involving the threat of a [[Fate Worse Than Death]] will leave many people arguing that the act was justified.

While [[Offing the Offspring]] describes premeditated filicide, this trope involves the head of the household unilaterally killing their kids and their spouse. Compare [[Where I Was Born and Razed]]. The occasional [[Real Life]] examples get massive attention in national news -- thesenews—these might be part of what gives this trope its resonance. The examples from [[Greek Mythology]] below make this [[Older Than Feudalism]].

* ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro Nini]]''. Hey, my successors are unworthy and I'm about to die. What is my choice of action? Gee, let's try [[Kill'Em All|slaughtering them all]] for a magic ritual to revive my [[Sealed Evil in Aa Can|dead witch lover]]. GOOD PLAN, KINZO. REAL GOOD. {{spoiler|[[Subverted Trope|Subverted]] when it is revealed that Kinzo was actually dead before any of the games started (and that only an [[Unreliable Narrator]] made him appear to be alive), and that he therefore never killed his family}}.

* In ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica (Anime)|Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]'', it's eventually revealed that {{spoiler|Kyouko Sakura's}} father killed the rest of her family and then himself {{spoiler|after he realized that the increased number of followers at his church was not due to people actually believing him, but because of Kyouko's powers as a Puella Magi (born from her wish to get him more followers) making them listen}}.

* The NYC cops in ''[[Watchmen]]'' arrested a father who admitted to murdering his kids, because he feared that the possibility of nuclear war would make their lives miserable. Of course, the irony of this situation comes twofold: {{spoiler|the war never happened, though that's because NYC was blown up by Veidt and made to look like an interstellar attack. So they would've all died, anyway}}.

* A particularly disturbing variation occurs in the 1999 remake of ''[[The Haunting (Film)|The Haunting]]'': Hugh Crain, the [[Eccentric Millionaire]] who built Hill House, not only seems to have killed or [[Driven to Suicide|driven his wife to her death]], but the children from the mills whom he 'adopted' were also slain by him, or else allowed to waste away due to neglect. So even though, presumably, the mitigation of what ruined his life (no offspring) should have made him happy and fulfilled, the industrialist instead destroys the very thing he'd been seeking for so long.

* {{spoiler|Deputy Billy}} in the horror film ''[[Thirty30 Days of Night (Film)|Thirty Days of Night]]'', in order to [[Better to Die Than Be Killed|save them from what would be (at least for them) a far more horrific death]].

* The [[Death Byby Origin Story|backstory]] of in-universe [[Memetic Badass]] Keyser Soze in ''[[The Usual Suspects]]'' involves a unique take on this; they'd been taken hostage, and he killed them simply to show the hostage-takers how not-to-be-fucked-with he was.

* For the title character in ''[[The Stepfather (Film)|The Stepfather]]'' this got to be a habit, followed by changes of identity to start the process again.

* ''[[Death On Demand|Death on Demand]]'' has [[Deliberately Monochrome|a black and white]] opening which depicts the then-living killer butchering his wife, mother in-law and two daughters during [[Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday|Thanksgiving]] dinner.

* This is what kick-starts the curse of the ''~[[Ju-on~]]'' series of films, as well as the [[Foreign Remake|remake]] series, ''[[The Grudge]]'': In the Japanese series, Takeo Saeki reads his wife Kayako's diary, discovers that she harbours an obsessive crush on her old college friend, Kobayashi, and becomes so [[Green-Eyed Monster|jealous]], paranoid and [[Ax Crazy|outright crazy]] that he starts to believe that a) Kayako is having an affair, and b) that he is not the natural father of their son, Toshio (none of which are true). He then [[Neck Snap|snaps Kayako's neck]], leaving her paralysed but not quite dead until he slashes her with a utility knife, drowns Toshio, and even slaughters Toshio's beloved cat. Takeo himself is later killed when Kayako, now a ''seriously'' angry spirit, takes her revenge. In the American series, the murders and his motives are very similar, except in this continuity, the object of Kayako's desire is instead a university professor named Peter, and there is no suspicion with regards to Toshio's parentage.

* Alec Trevelyan's backstory in ''[[GoldeneyeGoldenEye (Filmfilm)|GoldeneyeGoldenEye]]'' has his father kill his mother and himself so that they won't have to live with the shame of having survived the Soviet purge of Lienz Cossacks.

* In ''[[Downfall (Filmfilm)|Downfall]]'', a German general commits suicide in his apartment during dinner with his wife and three children--bychildren—by detonating a grenade and killing his family along with himself.

* In [[Euripides]]'s ''[[Medea (Theatre)|Medea]]'', Medea kills her children (along with Jason's new wife and father-in-law) as revenge against Jason for leaving her. (In the original legend, she also kills and dismembers he brother. The people of Corinth kill Medea's children.)

* It's mentioned that a main character's father in the novel ''[[Final Destination]]: Looks Could Kill'' went insane at a reunion and killed most of his family, and a number of other random people, before committing [[Suicide Byby Cop]].

* Charles Brockden Brown's ''Wieland'', an early American novel, has a small, tight-knit circle of friends and family haunted by voices that appear to know more than human knowledge can tell. And then the most staunchly religious member -- themember—the eponymous Wieland -- hearsWieland—hears voices from God telling him to kill all his family. He complies. The results aren't pretty.

* An episode of ''[[CSI: Miami]]'' had a guy who did this and then claimed post-partum depression; that is, he claimed his ''wife'' had been suffering post-partum depression in the weeks leading up to the slaughter. Only, she hadn't.

* ''[[Supernatural]]'' has a particular kind of ghost called a "Woman in White" that results from a woman killing her children and then committing suicide. The idea seems to have come from South American legends of [http[wikipedia://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llorona |La Llorona]].

* In the ''[[Torchwood (TV)|Torchwood]]'' miniseries ''Children of Earth'', {{spoiler|civil servant John Frobisher is told that his two daughters must be sacrificed to the invading aliens in order for the government to save face. He returns home, sends his family to one of the bedrooms, takes a gun and follows them up. [[Gory Discretion Shot|The door closes]] and [[Tear Jerker|three gunshots are heard, then a pause followed by a fourth]].}}

* ''[[Law and Order: Criminal Intent]]'' had a case similar to List's (with elements of Romand's), in that the father lied about having a job with the UN -- actuallyUN—actually, of having a job at all {{spoiler|fortunately the wife was unharmed and the detectives were able to save the kids.}}

* The award-winning atmospheric [[HPH.P. Lovecraft]] pastiche [[Interactive Fiction]] game ''[http://www.wurb.com/if/game/17.html Anchorhead]'' has this happen in [[Backstory]] to a distant relative of the player's husband. And he was doing them all a ''favor''.

* Captain Brage in ''[[BaldursBaldur's Gate]]'' gets his hands on a cursed bastard sword, goes berserk and kills his family, along with several of his fellow officers.

* In ''[[Warbot in Accounting (Webcomic)|Warbot in Accounting]]'', the titular character [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|becomes responsible for one of these]] when trying to help out a co-worker who needs a report to file, making one itself. Unfortunately, Warbot being... [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|A warbot]] without human appendages, the report is not in presentable form and the co-worker is fired. [[Downer Ending|The story ends with Warbot reading on the newspaper about the man committing the murder-suicide of his family in grief.]]

* It's suspected that now-deceased James Matory did this to his wife Earlene Williams and their children [https://web.archive.org/web/20130923082036/http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/m/matory_ivy.html Ivy Matory], [https://web.archive.org/web/20130923083754/http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/m/matory_violet.html Violet Matory], and [https://web.archive.org/web/20130511105834/http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/w/williams_yolanda.html Yolanda Marie Williams], along with a small boy staying over at the Matory/Williams household the evening of Earlene's murder, named [https://web.archive.org/web/20130923081734/http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/m/marshall_sir-kristopher.html Sir-Krisopher Clay Marshall] (unrelated to the Matory/Williams family). The last time any of the children were seen was with James at a Denny's in the early morning hours of July 19, 1977. They have never been seen again and James was prosecuted for the four children's murders, but the outcome of that trial is unknown.

* [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Bishop:Bradford Bishop|Bradford Bishop]] is believed to have murdered his wife, mother, and three sons after not getting a promotion at work. The world may never know for sure if he did do it because he disappeared in 1976 long before the bodies were discovered and there hasn't been a sighting of him since 1994. If he is still alive, he'd be well into his seventies by now.

* Back in the early 20th century, Marty Bergen, a well-regarded catcher in Major League Baseball, murdered his entire family with an ax.

* In early 2007, Thai businessman Boonchai Surawuthipong was in debt, and worried that the mafia would abduct his children. [https://web.archive.org/web/20120507011602/http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2007/02/07/headlines/headlines_30026198.php So he shot his wife, his three children, and himself.]

[[Category:Trope Names Fromfrom Other LanguagesLatin]]

[[Category:PaterDysfunctional FamilicideFamily Tropes]]