Sins of Our Fathers: Difference between revisions

** In fact, regardless of the genre, ''any'' time a Phantom Zone inmate appears as a villain, revenge on Superman will be the motive, despite him having nothing to do with their original conviction or sentencing. More often than not, their actions prove their punishment was well-deserved.

 

* The title character of ''[[The Count of Monte Cristo]]'' plans to kill {{spoiler|his enemy Fernand}}'s son {{spoiler|Albert}} as part of his revenge, [[Invoked Trope|Invoking]] the trope by name.

* ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'':

* In ''[[The Children of Húrin]]'', Morgoth exacts his revenge on Hurin for defying him by cursing his children and [[Forced to Watch|forcing him to watch]] as he slowly destroys their lives.

 

* ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'': In an ep actually named "Sins of the Father." Here Worf's late father, Mogh, is accused of treason, but only to cover up the fact Duras' powerful clan was responsible to avoid civil war. The Klingon High Council figured that since the only relation they knew of to that Klingon is Worf, a United Federation of Planets citizen, then he would be safe from any punishment this judgement would bring. Unfortunately, they didn't know about Worf has a brother, Kurn, and that both would care about their family so much that they would risk everything to travel to the Klingon homeworld to challenge the judgement.

** Played with in the case of Duras. Worf clearly wants revenge on Duras, for Duras' father framing Worf's father for treason. He does not directly challenge him, as with Duras dead, Worf would never have the proof to regain his honour. Then Duras kills Worf's mate (and Alexander's mother), K'ehleyr... [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge|And Worf promptly shoves a Bat'leth through his chest in single-combat]].

* In ''[[2 Broke Girls]]'' Caroline is hated by many people because her father run a [[Ponzi Scheme]] that cost thousands of people their life savings. While Caroline did not know about the fraud, her lavish lifestyle was funded by the stolen money.

 

* The Christian doctrine of [[wikipedia:Original sin|original sin.]] [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|Thanks a lot, Adam and Eve.]]

* In [[The Bible]], the penalty of breaking the second of the Ten Commandments (worshiping an idol or a false god), is that God will descend his punishment unto you, and your descendants up until the fourth generation. However on the flip side, glorifying him in a manner God finds acceptable, means blessings for ''a thousand'' generations.

** The story of Pandora's Box is even more this. Pandora was sent to punish all humanity, forever, because the generation alive at the time accepted fire from Prometheus. The gods introduced old age, disease, and a variety of other nasty curses to humans, which their innocent descendants would have to suffer. Hesiod includes among those curses [[Men Are Generic, Women Are Special|the existence of females,]] and rants about why women are an unmitigated curse to men. Ancient Greeks [[Blatant Lies|weren't sexist at all!]]

 

* Possibly subverted by the Necrons of ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]''. Their original enemies, the Old Ones, are now more-or-less absent from the galaxy, but the Necrons don't seem to go out of their way to kill the creations of the Old Ones, and indeed seem to mostly ignore the Eldar and Orks except when they happen to run into each other.

** It's not so much ignoring as [[Omnicidal Maniac|equal-opportunity-slaughtering]]. The Imperium of Man is just a [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale|few thousand times]] bigger than the handful of Eldar craftworlds, and no one cares or likely even hears of it when they do it to the Orks.

* Heavily used in the ''[[Ravenloft]]'' setting.{{context}}

 

* Ganondorf from ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time]]'' vows to exterminate the descendants of Link, Zelda and the Six Sages after getting [[Sealed Evil in a Can|sealed into the Evil Realm]] in the climax of the game.

** The worst part of the ''Ocarina of Time'' thing? He ''does''. He caused the world to be flooded in ''Wind Waker''... right?

* It is implied in ''[[Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven|Mafia: Definitive Edition]]'' that Salieri had {{spoiler|Frank's wife and daughter killed besides Frank himself for turning state's evidence. This is sadly [[Truth in Television]] as relatives of Mafia pentiti are routinely killed to scare off potential turncoats and as a form of terrorism.}}

 

* [[Inverted Trope|Inverted]] in ''[[Gargoyles]]'' with a family of humans hunting down the immortal Demona (and unfortunately [[Fantastic Racism|all her kind]]) for ''her'' sins.

* In ''[[Spider-Man: The Animated Series]]'', there is an entire large set of episodes named this.

* The episode of ''[[Extreme Ghostbusters]]'', "The Luck of the Irish", the villain is a leprechaun who goes after the descendants of a group who stole his pot of gold and trapped him in a magical prison; none of the victims have any idea what he's talking about. What the leprechaun naturally doesn't mention is that he was imprisoned for terrorizing New York's Irish population by cursing them with bad luck simply for his sadistic amusement, and that the supposed thieves gave the gold to charity. As Egon states, "we are ''not'' dealing with a rational creature here".

 

* There's a big ceremony in the offing in ''[[Lumias Kingdom|Lumia's]] [[Title Drop|Kingdom]]'' and Lumia needs a dress. So some brain genius goes and hires the best seamstress in all the land to make it for her. Unfortunately, this was an incredibly stupid idea because the best seamstress around is a psychotic cannibal who has a blood grudge against Lumia's mother and any descendants thereof (oh shit) because Lumia's mother is the only person to have ever survived a fight with her. As long as she doesn't know who Lumia is, she's safe. So naturally, no one bothers to take the time to explain why she shouldn't bring up her parentage, and Lumia accidentally lets the cat outta the bag.

* ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court]]'': [http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=780 the children living in the protection of a spell bought by her suffering are fair game.]

 

* Ilias has to deal with the possibility of this in ''[[Shadowhunter Peril]]''. He is the bastard child of Oblivion (a [[Physical God]] [[Hero-Killer]] who killed Kyle's father and Puriel's friend, as well as torturing and severely wounding other characters before finally being killed), and Anahita, Nicholas's mother and Bezaliel's lover. Basically when Ilias arrives nearly everyone hates him on sight, and it doesn't help he looks exactly like his father. Then it turns out that Oblivion is [[Not Quite Dead]] after all, and wants to kill Ilias too. So he's basically alone because everyone he knows either hates his guts because of his father's crimes, or wants him dead. But most of them have both feelings.

 

* [[Humans Are the Real Monsters|All too common in any society]] which places family first and all other considerations a distant second. Even in societies that don't, it is all too easy to carry on a societal grudge for things that happened generations ago, as generations of Hatfields and McCoys and other families around the world who carried down feuds through generations can attest.

* The Slave Trade. Far too often, an apology is made which goes something along the lines of "I'm sorry that my great-grandfather enslaved your great-grandfather". This is somewhat more justified than most, considering the amount of influence the institution had (and still has) on American society among several others.