Siblings in Crime

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Joe, Jack, William and Averell Dalton.

The dark side's version of the Sibling Team - antagonists who take brothers or sisters along for the ride, sometimes ending up looking like a fraternal version of an Outlaw Couple, also typically a pair. Sometimes they can play off each other as Morality Pets or at least Humanity Pets while other times their partnership can be begrudging underneath or have them tripping over Sibling Rivalry.

Can overlap with Big Bad Duumvirate or Those Two Bad Guys, may involve Sibling Yin-Yang or Stronger Sibling.

See Also: The Family That Slays Together if parents and other relatives join the siblings on serious crime sprees.


Examples of Siblings in Crime include:

Anime and Manga

  • The Slicer Brothers in Fullmetal Alchemist- they were criminals/murderers in life, and were turned into an undead guard- one forms the head and the other forms the body.
  • Hansel and Gretel of Black Lagoon.
  • The Toguro Brothers.
  • Luke and Jan Valentine in Hellsing who are Different As Night and Day while still both being psycho villains.
  • Sakon and Ukon of Naruto.They're both sadistic, violent psychos, but hey, they have family values. Brothers stick together. In this case, to the point where they share a body...
  • The Wong-Chang-Lee brothers in Daphne in the Brilliant Blue. Unusual in that they're all half-siblings.

Comic Books

  • Fenris (Andrea and Andreas von Strucker) in the Marvel Universe.
    • The X-Men meet a lot of these: in the Silver Age Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and the Ultimate Universe version of same, it was the ambivalently villainous siblings Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch; in the Acolytes, the successor to the Brotherhood, it was the Kleinstock Brothers; even X-Men Spin-Off team X-Factor once clashed with the siblings Slab and Thumbelina, who were usually on two entirely different teams of baddies.
  • In the Bronze Age, Captain America battled a pair of brothers, the Eel and the Viper, who were part of the first Serpent Squad.
  • The Blood Brothers, a pair of minor alien villains in Marvel Comics, actually increase in strength the closer they are to one another.
  • Spider Woman and Iron Man respectively battled two pairs of villains called the Brothers Grimm, though only the second version are actually brothers - and twins, at that.
  • Superman's demonic enemies Blaze and Satanus are brother and sister.
  • Strontium Dog had two separate groups of these: The Weerd Brothers; Hiss, Cuss, and Silent, and the Creepy Mutant Twins known only as Stix.
  • The Beagle Boys. Not just brothers but cousins as well, a whole extended family of crime.
  • Judge Dredd has frequently contended with the surviving sibling members of the Angel Gang, a clan of murderers from the radioactive wastelands beyond Mega-City One. In their first appearances, they were The Family That Slays Together.
  • Invincible has recurring minor villains the Mauler Brothers, who are not actual brothers; they're clones.
  • The Dalton brothers from Lucky Luke. They may not be especially competent, but they're determined to stick to their life of crime.
  • The Roark brothers don't seem to like each other much, but they are still the heads of the most powerful and evil family in Sin City.
  • Minor Batman foes, the Trigger Twins.

Film

  • Quentin Tarantino's storied universe has an interesting, somewhat unintentional subversion with Vic and Vincent Vega. Both characters are hardened criminals, Word of God makes it clear that they're supposed to be related to each other and have had a history together, but the two characters have never been seen together in movies. For a while, Tarantino was apparently working on putting together a Vega Brothers movie, but he ended up abandoning such a project around 2007 when he concluded that the principle actors, Michael Madsen and John Travolta, would be too old now to reprise their roles.
    • From Dusk till Dawn, however, begins with the audience following the escapades of the Gecko Brothers, Seth and Richie.
  • Charlie and Mikey Burns in The Proposition
  • The Gruber brothers, Hans and Simon, from the Die Hard movies. Like the Vegas, they're a bit of a subversion in that they turned up separately and apparently didn't like each other much in real life.
  • In the Korean film The Crucible, Headmaster Lee Gang-bok and Admin Head Lee Gang-seok (who are Creepy Twins to boot) inflict horrific sexual abuse on the female students of their Boarding School of Horrors. Their adoptive sister, Yun Ja-ae, is also complicit in their crimes, and deals out plenty of (physical) abuse herself.

Live-Action TV

  • The Hunter unsubs of the Criminal Minds episode Open Season turn out to be a pair of brothers who abduct other humans, set them loose in the middle of the woods, and have a blast chasing and killing them. They basically get discovered due to the elder brother petting the dog (the younger is severely wounded when their prey fights back, and he starts a fire to signal for help), and this is actually somewhat made a point.
    • Criminal Minds did this another time besides the Most Dangerous Game one, but with a horrible twist: one brother is quadraplegic, the other is physically able but seriously mentally impaired. The former manipulates the latter, who doesn't really know what he's doing, into all the crimes.
  • Earl and his brother Randy, until Karma got to Earl. At one point Randy was expecting that after Earl finished doing all the stuff on The List they'd go back to stealing stuff.
  • 24. Ramon Salazar and his brother Hector Salazar in Day 3.
  • Monty Python's Flying Circus: The Piranha Brothers.
  • Mr. Cain and Mr. Abel in "Meltdown", the Reservoir Dogs homage episode of The Pretender
  • A "two brothers, one not all there" type is true of Ryan and Cyril O'Reily in Oz. Before Cyril's accident (which caused severe brain damage, leaving him in that state), they were a more typical example of the trope as described above.
  • Danny and Albert Cho (respectively, Kamen Riders Spear and Imperer) in Kamen Rider Dragon Knight.
  • Simon and River Tam in Firefly. In their case it was hardly their fault.
  • A relatively rare positive version of this trope is sibling con artists Emma and Sean Kennedy in Season 5 of Hustle.
  • Danny and Tony Driscoll in Only Fools and Horses and The Green Green Grass.

Literature

  • The fourth Kitty Norville book contains a very nasty case of this. The sister is a skinwalker, a practicioner of one of the most evil kinds of magic. She killed one of her sisters to get the power. Her twin brother is a werewolf; she became a skinwalker essentially to keep him company when he turned wolf, with none of the drawbacks of lycanthropy. Both are muderous and out of control.
  • Dave and Banjo Lilywhite in Hogfather
  • In the second Circle of Magic book, the pirate queen Pauha and her chief mage Enahar are sister and brother.

Video Games

  • The Ashford Twins from Resident Evil - Code: Veronica - sister Alexia is the Big Bad of the game while brother Alfred is her devoted Dragon.
  • Eventually subverted by Carlito and Isabela Keyes in Dead Rising. The two originally cooperate in a plan mostly Carlito's to turn all of America into zombies in vengeance for their Doomed Hometown. Isabela was actually conflicted about the whole thing and goes through a Heel Face Turn shortly after meeting Frank. She tries to confront Carlito and tell him to stop the operation only to get a bullet in her shoulder for her trouble, and spends the rest of the game trying to do the next best thing by aiding Frank.
  • Ace Attorney had Dahlia and Iris, although Iris was only trying to help her sister.
  • Gol and Maia Acheron, the original Jak and Daxter's Big Bad Duumvirate.
  • The Mendez Brothers in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories.
  • The Go-Rock Quads in Pokémon Ranger, each with signature bent-to-my-will Pokemon and matching musical instruments.
  • Packie, Derrick and Gerry McReary from Grand Theft Auto IV are a non-antagonistic version.
    • Knowing that their father used to be the gang leader and that their mother has a criminal record, too, qualifies the McRearys as The Family That Slays Together. The only person in the family without a criminal record is Kate.

Web Original

  • Ashlynn Harris and her half-brother Jake Myers from Strange Little Band fit this trope more than that of the Sibling Team inspite of being protagonists. For example one of their escapades is non-consensual experiments on humans with recreated alien technology. Once their parents get over their personal issues the entire family becomes The Family That Slays Together.
  • Icee and Flare from Waiting for A Miracle.

Western Animation

Real Life

  • Frank and Jesse James
  • A heroic version of this Trope was Hans and Sophie Scholl.
  • The Krays, subjects of a movie by the name, twin London gangsters famous in the 60's.
  • The Dougherty family - Ryan, Lee and half brother Dylan were wanted for an alleged bank robbery in Georgia and the attempted murder of a Florida police officer.
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