Self-Made Orphan: Difference between revisions

 

{{quote|"''We took pity on him because he lost both parents at an early age. I think, on reflection, that we should have wondered a bit more about that.''"

 

What might be considered the inverse of [[Offing the Offspring]], and is equally aberrant behavior is when a villain murders their own parents. Any character behaving this way will probably be [[Ax Crazy]] and/or a [[Psycho for Hire]]. An [[The Evil Prince|Evil Prince]] can also do that if he's impatient enough. It's the ultimate mark of an [[Enfant Terrible]], and a likely origin of an [[Evil Orphan]].

 

{{examples}}

* In ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]'', [[Complete Monster|Johan]] kills several sets of adoptive parents from a very young age onwards.

** {{spoiler|And he kills his sister Anna's adoptive parents, too.}}

* [[Madlax]] has {{spoiler|the main character Margaret, who split herself into her and [[Enemy Within|Madlax]] to kill her father Colonel Richard Burton. To be fair, she ''only'' did it when Richard was [[Brainwashed and Crazy]] and about to kill ''her'' in his rampage: Margaret's survival instincts kicked in, Madlax came to the surface, and... well...}}

 

* [[Batman|Bruce Wayne]]'s childhood friend {{spoiler|Thomas Elliot tried to kill his parents at a young age in order to inherit their riches and because his father was an abusive monster and his mother a simpering money hungry lunatic. He only succeeded in killing his father, and, to avoid suspicion, didn't try again, only truly being orphaned when he smothered his raving senile mother in a fit of anger. This left him with a bitter hatred of Bruce, who tragically lost his parents soon after Tommy tried to kill his}}. Later on in his life, {{spoiler|he joins the Riddler (who recently discovered that Bruce was Batman}} on a vendetta against him, feeling that, not only did Bruce get the riches {{spoiler|Tommy}} wanted, but that he was wasting those riches as well. Predictably, his vendetta eventually causes him to lose everything and become the full time [[Super Villain]] Hush.

** Not the first of Batman's Rogues' Gallery to do so. Black Mask killed his parents in a fire to inherit their business and fortune. Unfortunately, he was a lousy businessman and when he tried to burn down the factory to cover his tracks, he wound up with the facial injury that gave him his villain name.

* [[The Mighty Thor|Loki]] created a [[Stable Time Loop]] to ensure his biological parents would die in battle so he would be adopted by the Asgardians.

* Ahem, [[Thanos]]. One of his many atrocities was murdering his own parents.

 

* [[Enfant Terrible|Arestis]] is this in ''[[Arestis' Childhood]]''. Of note is that she did not specifically seek her parent's deaths, but they were a foreseeable consequence of her actions, and not one she seemed to much mind.

* [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6341291/1/Harveste Harveste], who was living with abusive relatives after his loving parents died protecting him, killed his legal guardians and his cousin, effectively re-orphaning himself at the age of five.

 

* Catherine Trammell from the ''[[Basic Instinct]]'' movies ''may have'' killed her parents after writing a book detailing her plan to do so, then used, "right, I wrote out this plan for killing my parents, published it in a book, then did it-- I'd have to be crazy to do that" as a defense. Whether she actually did murder her parents or not is not actually stated, though several characters express their opinions that she did.

* ''Addams Family Values'' (the second ''[[The Addams Family|Addams Family]]'' theatrical movie) has this in the form of {{spoiler|Debbie Jellinsky, the kids' apparent nanny and professional "black widow" style [[Serial Killer]] who reveals that her first murders were her parents, [[Rant-Inducing Slight|who got her a Malibu Barbie instead of a Ballerina Barbie on her birthday]]: "That's not what I wanted! That's not who I was! I was a ballerina! Graceful! Delicate! They had to go." [[Disproportionate Retribution|So she burned the family house down with them inside]].}}

* There is a joke is about a little dragon who's crying. When asked where his mom and dad are, he says he ate them. When asked if he knows what it makes him, he says "Yes. (sobs) A complete orphan."

 

* One of the first things Luke does in ''[[Duumvirate]]'' is this.

* As the first page quote suggests, there is some mystery as to how [[Psycho for Hire]] assassin and unsympathetic [[Psychopathic Manchild]] Jonathan Teatime came to be an orphan.

*** (Actually, a lot of it. The [[Murder, Inc.|Assassins Guild]] pride themselves on being gentlemen. Their scholarship students tend to be ''very'' interesting.)

* Several instances in the ''[[Harry Potter]]'' series:

** At the end of the same book, we learn that Barty Crouch Jr. did the same thing. Barty makes much of how both he and Voldemort had very disappointing fathers and the pleasure of killing those fathers. He also seems to regard Voldemort as a father substitute.

* Crake in ''[[Oryx and Crake]]'' by Margaret Atwood is implied to have killed his uncle and possibly his mother, too (his father was killed (executed) while Crake was still a kid, so this leaves him an orphan).

* In ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'', {{spoiler|the dwarf Tyrion Lannister murders his father Tywin, who had always hated him for being born deformed after his mother died in childbirth. Tyrion does that to punish Tywin for having destroyed his first marriage, by forcing Jaime to lie about Tyrion's wife being a prostitute.}}

* In ''The Bad Place'', by [[Dean Koontz]], {{spoiler|Frank killed his single biological parent, a hermaphrodite who self-impregnated}}. This provides a major conflict, as a sibling of said Self-Made Orphan wishes to avenge that act.

* In his 1968 book ''[[The Joys of Yiddish]]'', author Leo Rosten defined ''chutzpah'' as "that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan."

 

* Several ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' unsubs have done this. The most prominent examples are Frank ({{spoiler|who killed his own mother and never knew his own father}}), The Reaper aka {{spoiler|George Foyet}} and Billy Flynn ({{spoiler|who shot his own mother in what he saw as an act of mercy}}).

* ''[[Beverly Hills, 90210]]'' character {{spoiler|Valerie Malone}} killed {{spoiler|her father}}.

* Morgana on ''[[Merlin (TV series)|Merlin]]''-her mother and the man she looked to as a father and believed for a long time was her father were already dead, but she gave Agravaine the amulet to killt he wounded Uther-her birth father.

 

* [[Tom Lehrer]]'s song ''The Irish Ballad'' details the life of one of these:

{{quote|''About a maid I'll sing a song who didn't have her family long

* Jim Morrison fantasized about killing his father (and also knocking off Brother and Sister Morrison for good measure) in the 1967 performance piece "The End" (oh yeah, and then he raped his mother). It was later parodied by Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman in 1993's "Wasted Youth".

* [[Dir En Grey]]'s song "Berry" tells the story of a nine-year-old girl who gets sick of her parents abusing her, takes her father's gun, and shoots them. If that's not disturbing enough, the girl's favorite food is jam on bread, and the blood her parents shed is referred to as raspberry jam.

== New Media ==

* In ''[[Descendant of a Demon Lord]]'' Edrilanish (who is a dragon) said that it used to be the case that a dragon wasn't considered an adult until it killed the dragon that raised it.

 

* [[World Wrestling Entertainment|WWE]]'s [[The Undertaker]] ''may'' be a self-made orphan, or may not be. All we really know is that his parents died in a fire at the funeral home they owned and operated. At various points, we've been told that he set it on accident, he set it on purpose, his half-brother [[Kane (wrestling)|Kane]] set it, etc. It's all very confusing and pointless.

** Nah, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNCRvCc4XY0 Undertaker definitely started the fire.]

** Then again, this ''was'' during Taker's [[Ministry of Darkness]] [[Face Heel Turn|phase]], when he was allied with [[Paul Bearer]] again, so there's definitely a hint of ambiguity/unreliability as to who did what. For we know, ''[[Devil in Plain Sight|Bearer]]'' could've torched the home.

 

* In the ''[[Champions]]'' adventure "The Coriolis Effect," the villainess murdered her own parents by turning them into pools of slime.

* ''[[Paranoia]]'' describes Chutzpah (a major stat in 2nd edition, a skill in XP) as [[Refuge in Audacity|standing before a judge to be sentenced for murdering your parents -- and pleading for clemency because you're an orphan.]]

** Which, as noted above, is also the typical explanation of chutzpah in Jewish lore.

 

* In the play ''The Revengers' Comedies'', the [[Ax Crazy]] [[Clingy Jealous Girl]] who acts as a [[Poisonous Friend]] to the protagonist is strongly implied to have started the fire that killed her parents when she was eleven because they did something minor to displease her.

* In ''[[Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?]]'', {{spoiler|George killed both of his parents by accident}}.

* In ''[[Electra]]'', Orestes enacts vengeance against his mother Chytaimnestra and step-father Aigisthos for their murder of his father Agammemnon. Though Electra doesn't actually wield the blade, she is guilty too.

 

** Subverted, in that it was proven that he was wrong.

* The Id of Fei Fong Wong in ''[[Xenogears]]''.

* Psycho Mantis of ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' woke up one morning to find his entire village in flames, all its inhabitants, including his father, dead, victims of his psychic powers (his mother was a victim of [[Death by Childbirth]]). Well, that's how ''he'' tells it. He probably just did it for shits and giggles.

** As his powers began to develop as a child, he started to hear his father's thoughts. He came to the realization that his father really and truly hated him because he was responsible for his wife's death, though he acted like he loved him. One day, Psycho Mantis burned his entire village to the ground out of pure hatred for humanity, and especially his father.

* In ''[[Mortal Kombat 11]]'', one interaction between Cassie Cage and Erron Black has Erron tell her he killed his own parents. A similar interaction between Frost and Jax has Frost tell him she killed her mother when she was twelve.

 

* Early in the prequel "[[Start of Darkness]]" (to ''[[Order of the Stick]]''), Xykon decides to leave home and turns his parents into zombies on the way out. He had previously done the same to his grandmother.

** We don't know if Xykon killed his grandma or she just died of natural causes and he zombified her then, but he definitely did kill his parents by siccing zombies on them and then zombified them.

* In ''[[Nodwick]]'', Orville is a species of dragon who are driven by instinct to kill their fathers, and this works to the heroes' advantage in one story. The dark priestess Elonan uses a spell that causes the heroes to perceive her zombie minions as their parents or former mentors, intending to fool them into being vulnerable to their attacks, and this ''almost'' works. However, because Orville regards his father as an enemy, he becomes enraged and incinerates them.

 

* Dr. Sloth from ''[[Neopets]]'' did this.

* In ''[[Survival of the Fittest]]'' version one, Cillian Crowe and Daphne Rudko both murdered their own parents, though Cillian was confined to an insane asylum due to his actions while Daphne got off scot free.

 

* In ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'', Mr. Burns fills out a health form:

{{quote|'''Mr. Burns:''' Cause of parents' death?..."Got in my way."}}

* It is very subtly implied in the episode "Easy as One, Two, Three..." of ''[[The Legend of Calamity Jane]]'' that Conrad killed the mother of him and his two brothers. He spends the episode repeating her advice and what her opinion would be of their actions, but when one of his brothers asks why he cannot just leave her in her grave, he responds that he ''did'' leave her in her grave.

 

* One recent{{when}} case in Medicine Hat, Canada. A young girl, influenced by her much older boyfriend, murdered her entire family.

** Recently{{when}} in Finland a teenaged girl coaxed some older boys to kill her mother over domestic differences; fortunately, the crossbow bolt intended to do the job only grazed her skull, and she managed to escape.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Murder Tropes]]

[[Category:Orphaned Index]]

[[Category:Villains]]

[[Category:Dysfunctional Family Tropes]]