History Main / BlackWidow

[[folder:Real Life]]
* "Black Widow" is the ''official'' FBI designation for this type of killer.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ann_Cotton Mary Ann Cotton]] ("she's dead and she's rotten"), who poisoned three husbands and at least eleven of her children with arsenic in Victorian County Durham, to a large extent for the insurance money. Their deaths were attributed to stomach fevers, and nobody suspected her until she happened to slip up and mention that her last (then apparently healthy) little boy would "probably go like the rest of them" while speaking to a local preacher.
* [[http://murderpedia.org/female.L/l/lyles-anjette.htm Anjette Lyles]] used the same method to slowly poison her two husbands, her mother-in-law, [[OffingTheOffspring and her daughter Marcia]] for the insurance money. She also is believed to have intended to kill her daughter Carla for the same reason.
* Black Widow Spiders, Praying Mantis, and too many insects to count. Though interestingly, the spiders that give this trope its name have a number of different species, and most do not kill their mates and let them hang around in their webs for a while. Also, usually the male spiders ''offer'' themselves because they could only mate once anyway and if the female gets to eat, they usually have a higher chance of having offspring.
** There's also (controversial) speculation that at least some of these occurrences may actually be ''caused'' by the very lab conditions under which they're usually observed, i.e. cases of stressed animals under human-imposed conditions showing 'unnatural' reactions that they might well not while mating normally in the wilderness and the close confines of the lab can make it difficult or impossible for the male to employ tricks to escape from the female that would work in the wild.
** [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allocosa_brasiliensis Allocosa brasiliensis,]] a species of spider from South America. Their males often kill and eat the females.
* The whole point of the Oxygen channel's show ''Snapped''. The show highlights women who killed their husbands (usually for insurance money). At least, when the show isn't making [[AssholeVictim the victim out to be an asshole]], which tends to give the show a kind of YouGoGirl vibe.
** The Investigation Discovery show ''Deadly Women'' also regularly focuses on women who kill for insurance money.
* Annie Palmer, the (in)famous "[[Myth/TheWhiteWitchOfRoseHall White Witch of Rose Hall]]", who resided at the eponymous plantation outside of Montego Bay, St. James in Jamaica, and who is reported to have murdered three husbands and countless lovers, as well as many of her slaves.
* [[http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/11/16/48hours/mysteries/main318363.shtml Margaret Rudin]], who married five times, and at least two of her husbands perished in very strange circumstances. The fifth one, Ron Rudin, turned out to be smarter [[ThanatosGambit than believed]]...
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Gunness Belle Gunness]] was a Norwegian immigrant to the United States who killed both of her husbands, all of her children, and numerous other suitors and boyfriends to collect insurance money. Gunness advertised in personals columns in newspapers throughout the midwest looking for victims. She also killed other individuals such as hired hands to cover her tracks and may have killed as many as 40 people, netting a total of $6.3 million adjusted for inflation. [[KarmaHoudini She was never brought to trial]] having apparently been murdered by an accomplice, but it is widely believed she [[FakingTheDead faked her death]]. She may have been a woman named Esther Carlson, who was incarcerated in 1931 at the age of 72 for allegedly killing ''another'' husband for insurance money. She died before trial.
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanche_Taylor_Moore Blanche Taylor Moore]] was a North Carolina woman who was convicted in 1990 of murdering 2nd husband Raymond Reid by arsenic poisoning; as well as being charged with the killings of 1st husband James Taylor and mother-in-law Ilsa Taylor and the attempted murder of her last husband Dwight Moore[[note]]who ended up setting a record of sorts for the highest levels of arsenic in a person who lived to tell about it[[/note]] and was suspected in the death of her father; ultimately being sentenced to death (the sentence has not as of 2020 been carried out due to a lengthy series of appeals).
* [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stacey_Castor Stacey Castor]] was convicted of murdering her second husband by antifreeze poisoning and suspected of killing her first husband the same way (but was never tried). In addition, she attempted to kill her younger daughter with alcohol spiked with prescription drugs, after concocting a fake 'suicide note' claiming the daughter had murdered her father and stepfather.
** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Turner_(murderer) Lynn Turner]] also murdered her two husbands, Glenn Turner and Randy Thompson, with antifreeze.
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nannie_Doss The Giggling Granny.]] She eventually plead guilty to poisoning four of her husbands, her mother, her sister, her grandson, and her mother-in-law, and may or may not have murdered another grandson as well.
* [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyda_Southard Lyda Southard]] had four husbands during her lifetime. Three died suddenly, alongside two children and one brother-in-law. A relative of her first husband was suspicious and had his body exhumed, determining he was poisoned with arsenic. The bodies of Southard's other victims were then exhumed, confirming she had poisoned them too. She was sentenced to 10 years to life and died while out on parole.
* [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillie_Klimek Tillie Klimek]], the "High Priestess of the Bluebeard Clique", had three husbands and a boyfriend who died after she had supposedly predicted their deaths in dreams. Then her fourth husband fell ill and discovered Klimek had been slowly poisoning him. An investigation found that all the people whose deaths Klimek had "predicted" had been killed with rat poison. Several of Klimek's neighbors and relatives had also died from poison, as had a dog whose barking annoyed her. Klimek died in prison in 1936.
* [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfriede_Blauensteiner Elfriede Blauensteiner]] was accused of seducing and marrying rich old men, poisoning them, and then gambling away the money she inherited, rinse, repeat. She was convicted of poisoning two of her husbands and is suspected of killing another seven, plus one female neighbor.
* [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Lou_Beets Betty Lou Beets]] married five men during her lifetime. She divorced Husband #1 citing DomesticAbuse. Husbands #2 and #3 both divorced her and accused her at various times of trying to kill them. Husband #4 disappeared. Husband #5 was also reported missing, presumed dead in a [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident fishing accident]]. However, Beets' children told police that they had seen her shoot Husband #5 and bury the body at their house. Police found Husband #5's body, and also dug up the body of Husband #4, who had been shot in the head and buried on the property. Beets was executed in 2000.
* [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_Halliday Lizzie Halliday]] was convicted of murdering her sixth husband and two neighbours. Her first and second husbands also died suddenly soon after the wedding, she was accused of trying to poison her fourth husband and her fifth husband mysteriously disappeared two weeks after the marriage. She also allegedly admitted that she had had another husband whose existence was not known who she had killed.
* [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anula_of_Anuradhapura Queen Anula of Anuradhapura]] is credited by traditional histories with having poisoned five consorts before being overthrown and burned at the stake, although the validity of these accounts is disputed.
* [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Green_Carl Clara Green Carl]] was convicted of murdering her second husband and her father with arsenic and was suspected of doing away with her first husband the same way.
* [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Gerzsany Mária Gerzsány]] had five husbands. Two survived, with the other three dying from poison just after having a sizable life insurance policy taken out on them. She also sold arsenic to a number of other women who wanted to kill their husbands, including the wife of her brother, who she had a life insurance policy on.
* The [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Makers_of_Nagyrev Angel Makers of Nagyrév]] were a larger-scale version, consisting of around 20 - 30 of the women of Nagyrév in Hungary. Angered when their husbands returned from UsefulNotes/WorldWar1 and put an end to the relative freedom they enjoyed while they were away, they all poisoned their husbands with arsenic flypaper. They soon [[MurderIsTheBestSolution began poisoning anyone else who annoyed them]], including parents, lovers, and children, at the urging of the ringleader, a midwife named Fazekas. They killed at least 40 people before they were finally exposed in 1929.
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* Debbie Jellinsky from ''Film/AddamsFamilyValues'' is one of these. It's only her latest M.O., as she's been killing since childhood, and often gets rid of people who fail to meet her needs (usually money-related), starting with [[SelfMadeOrphan her parents]], [[DisproportionateRetribution whom she killed for not giving her a Ballerina Barbie for her birthday]]. She gets her claws into Fester and marries him, but, Fester being one of the Addams clan, she doesn't quite succeed at the killing part. Once the Addamses understand the depths of her [[AxCrazy issues]], they all start to really empathize with her and regret not really getting to know her. [[spoiler:After she dies, she is buried with honors in the family graveyard.]]

** ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealsm'': In 2nd Edition, weredragons -- a species of dragon who spend most of their lives in human form -- provide for themselves by marrying rich suitors and then killing them.

* ''Film/TheCondemned'': Yasantwa's file reveals that she was on death row for murdering men who she seduced. On the island, she manages to do the same with Kreston.

* ''Series/{{Grimm}}'' has a literal example; a type of Wesen called a Spinnetod (Death Spider), who will suffer from premature aging (and possibly death) if she doesn't take the life force from men. They don't actually have to marry or have sex with their victims, but the one in the episode seduces them, just as a way to get them to a secluded location for the kill.

* Series/Batman1966 once had to capture a criminal known as the Black Widow. Her deceased husband's name was Max ''Black'' (yes, she really is "the Black widow"). However, instead of having to prevent her from killing husbands for money, he had to prevent her from robbing banks.

* Minus the wealth part, on ''{{Series/CSI}}'' [[spoiler:the youngest daughter of a compulsive hoarder seduced boys from the halfway house where her brother worked and after she killed them to make sure they wouldn't leave she hid them around her mother's cluttered house. When mom found out what was happening she handcuffed her daughter to her bed and barricaded her behind a wall of boxes, and when her other daughter found one of the bodies she got hit on the head and left to die in a pile of newspapers.]]
** They also did an episode where two women conspired to act as wife and secretary for their victim and poisoned him with Selenium (and further investigation revealed they had done the same previously). Unusually, our heroes weren't able to prove either of them guilty.
*** Slightly subverted in that the wife actually fell in love with her husband, despite his numerous infidelities, and was considering backing out of the deal.

* ''Film/Heatwave2022'': Eve has her husband Scott murdered for his money. Then she also tries to murder her girlfriend Eve so she'll take the fall after being framed for it.

* In the Creator/LaurelAndHardy short film ''Oliver the Eighth'' Ollie courts a wealthy widow - only to discover on the wedding night that she has murdered her seven previous husbands who were all named Oliver. HilarityEnsues. Partly a subversion, since it is Ollie who was hoping to benefit financially from the marriage.

* In the Creator/LaurelAndHardy short film ''The Private Life of Oliver the Eighth'' Ollie courts a wealthy widow - only to discover on the wedding night that she has murdered her seven previous husbands who were all named Oliver. HilarityEnsues. Partly a subversion, since it is Ollie who was hoping to benefit financially from the marriage.

Compare {{Yandere}}, ComfortingTheWidow, WillAndInheritanceTropes and CartwrightCurse. When pregnancy is involved, this intersects with ConceiveAndKill. See also LiteralManeater, which is an actual monster that uses the disguise of a woman to lure in its prey, and MantisMatingMeal, for another animal notorious for the female killing the male.

* Fujiko from ''Manga/AnaSatsujin'' has killed at least three of her husbands after checking out large life-insurance claims for them. She is constantly getting underground plastic surgery to fool the police but she has noticeable beauty marks on her shoulder. Rio wants to [[SerialKillerKiller kill her]].
* ''Manga/CaseClosed'': Gender-flipped example when it's revealed that the groom of the story's wedding is actually the real villain. His plan was to seduce the bride, get married, and the kill her somewhere discreet after sucking her finances dry. His partner disagreed and just wanted to rob the girl's house, so he murdered his own partner in front of the girl and played it off as a rescue attempt against a serial killer to get her to fall for him.
* [[spoiler:Roxanne]] in ''Manga/{{Claymore}}'' was a low ranked warrior, who consistently would become the [[HideYourLesbians best friend]] of a higher ranked warrior, learn her techniques through Yoki synchronization, and kill her to get reassigned to someone better. This continued until she became one of the strongest and most notorious Claymores in history.[[note]]Her last partner was where she drew the line, as her 'technique' was to perform an inhuman limbo dodge that looked like she was eating dirt off the ground, something Roxanne constantly insults her former partner about.[[/note]]
* In ''Manga/TheKindaichiCaseFiles -- 20 Years Later'' series, this is the first SerialKiller Kindaichi captures. However, neither of her two victims in that arc are her actual target--[[spoiler:the first one is a rival for her target's affections, while the second one is one of her former husbands who recognizes her]]. Fortunately, Kindaichi manages to catch her before she could actually hit her mark.

** ''Fanfic/BlackSky'' shows her under a more heroic light, as she was HappilyMarried with her first husband... who died because of the Death Eaters. She didn't take it well and decided to marry, bankrupt and kill his killers one by one. Her home country Sabina considers her a heroine for this.

* Debbie Jellinsky from ''Film/AddamsFamilyValues'' is one of these. It's only her latest M.O., as she's been killing since childhood, and often gets rid of people who fail to meet her needs (usually money-related), starting with her parents, [[DisproportionateRetribution whom she killed for not giving her a Ballerina Barbie for her birthday]]. She gets her claws into Fester and marries him, but, Fester being one of the Addams clan, she doesn't quite succeed at the killing part. Once the Addamses understands the depths of her [[AxCrazy issues]] they all start to really empathize with her and regret not really getting to know her. [[spoiler:After she dies, she is buried with honors in the family graveyard.]]

* ''Film/{{Stepmonster}}''. There was also a screwed up bit of Gift of the Magi in there, as the monster is a comic book creature and only a specific, very rare and very valuable issue explained how the monster can be defeated. So the kid pawns the violin his dad gave him to buy the comic book; [[spoiler:unfortunately, his dad has something serious against comic books and rips it up, not realizing its significance (or value), and it's not until the kid finds the one missing piece - that's right, ''one panel out of the entire comic book divulged the monster's weakness'' - that the kid realizes how screwed he is. The dad redeems himself at the movie's climax in a BigDamnHeroes moment where it turns out he bought back the violin and proceeds to dispatch the monster.]]

* ''Literature/TheFacelessOldWomanWhoSecretlyLivesInYourHome'': Eleanor [[ZigZagged zigzags the trope]] - she truly loves Theodore, but has decided that after a lifetime of being controlled by her father, the relative freedom of being a rich widow is worth the cost of murdering her husband.

* ''Series/{{Community}}'': PlayedForLaughs. During the [[SeriousBusiness absurdly serious paintball game]] in "Modern Warfare," [[spoiler:Jeff and Britta]] have sex. She immediately turns on him (though they get interrupted before she can "kill" him) so that she can win the game. She insists that she didn't sleep with him to kill him, she slept with him and now, unrelated, she is going to kill him. He notes that it's suspicious how skilled she is at putting on her panties with one hand while holding a gun in the other.

-->'''Leona:''' Some girls scrapbook. Others marry, then eliminate, martial-arts millionaires. Don't get me wrong, I scrapbook too.

* ''Series/ThePractice'' had an episode where they defended a woman accused of being a black widow, due to her habit of marrying much older men. Her most recent husband had died of a heart-attack [[OutWithABang induced by Viagra]].

* ''Radio/RoundTheHorne:'' Mrs. Cunterblast, many times. Many, many times. Many, many ''many'' times. And it's something she freely admits to, though by the time she does it's several decades after the fact.

* ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'': Natasha Kerensky is actually a subversion. She became known by her moniker after her lover (who was one of the founders of the renowned Wolf's Dragoons) was taken hostage and later killed by Anton Marik, due to a [[CreativeDifferences fallout]] in relations. She reacted [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge violently]] to this and lead her unit to storm Marik's stronghold and kill him and his remaining forces. She's also of Clan Wolf, and descended from genetic material they acquired when they Absorbed Clan Widowmaker (the widowmaker spider being an even deadlier variant of black widow spider). Using spider iconography is a link to her heritage.

** ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealsm'': In 2nd Edition, weredragons -- a species who dragon who spend most of their lives in human form -- provide for themselves by marrying rich suitors and then killing them.

* ''VideoGame/{{Deadbolt}}'' has Madam Stela, a narcissistic vampire who is stated to have gone through several husbands, killing them for [[DisproportionateRetribution incredibly frivolous reasons]]. Of the two mentioned in the game, the one before her current husband was killed for not enjoying dance (while Stela loves to dance), and the one before that for liking the undead, who Stela hates [[BoomerangBigot despite being a vampire herself]]. It's unclear how many husbands she's gone through by the time the game takes place, though since she's an ancient vampire that number could potentially be vey high indeed.

* ''VideoGame/GhostbustersTheVideoGame''. In the second visit to the Hotel Sedgewick you fight the "Spider Witch", the ghost of a woman who murdered her previous husbands who takes the form of a [[GiantSpider giant spider]]. She hung them upside down and drained them of all their blood in the service of [[ReligionOfEvil Gozer's cult]]. It's not clear if she did this before or ''after'' she killed them.

* ''VideoGame/LaytonBrothers'': The second case, full-stop. The killer is clearly seasoned in the con game as she has multiple dead husbands on record and seduced a lottery winner before he was stabbed to death, but hadn't actually been convicted outright. It turns out she made an icicle knife and melted it in her cooking pot when she was done, but she made a simple yet critical mistake; ''she never learned how to cook spaghetti'', meaning her laughably lackluster attempt at 'cooking' was clearly not meant for making food.

** She attempted this solo in her [[Recap/BatmanTheAnimatedSeriesE5PrettyPoison debut episode.]] First seducing Harvey Dent before giving him a [[DruggedLipstick tainted]] goodnight kiss which sends him into a life threatening coma. Then, when his best friend Bruce Wayne tries to console a [[CrocodileTears sobbing]], grief stricken Isley she briefly tries to put the moves on him, complimenting Wayne on his loyalty to Dent and leaning in for a friendly smooch on the lips, which [[ProperlyParanoid Bruce]] quickly turns into [[KissDiss a hug]] instead.

* The whole point of the Oxygen channel's show ''Snapped''. The show highlights women who killed their husbands (usually for the insurance money). At least, when the show isn't making [[AssholeVictim the victim out to be an asshole]], which tends to give the show a kind of YouGoGirl vibe.

* [[http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/11/16/48hours/mysteries/main318363.shtml Margaret Rudin,]] who married five times and at least two of her husbands perished in very strange circumstances. The fifth one, Ron Rudin, turned out to be smarter [[ThanatosGambit than believed]]...

* [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stacey_Castor Stacey Castor]] was convicted of murdering her second husband by antifreeze poisoning and suspected of killing her first husband the same way(but was never tried). In addition, she attempted to kill her younger daughter with alcohol spiked with prescription drugs, after concocting a fake 'suicide note" claiming the daughter had murdered her father and stepfather.

* [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillie_Klimek Tillie Klimek,]] the "High Priestess of the Bluebeard Clique", had three husbands and a boyfriend who died after she had supposedly predicted their deaths in dreams. Then her fourth husband fell ill and discovered Klimek had been slowly poisoning him. An investigation found that all the people whose deaths Klimek had "predicted" had been killed with rat poison. Several of Klimek's neighbors and relatives had also died from poison, as had a dog whose barking annoyed her. Klimek died in prison in 1936.
* [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfriede_Blauensteiner Elfriede Blauensteiner]] was accused of seducing and marrying rich old men, poisoning them and then gambling away the money she inherited, rinse, repeat. She was convicted of poisoning two of her husbands and is suspected of killing another seven, plus one female neighbor.

* The [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Makers_of_Nagyrev Angel Makers of Nagyrév]] were a larger-scale version, consisting of around 20 - 30 of the women of Nagyrév in Hungary. Angered when their husbands returned from UsefulNotes/WorldWar1 and put an end to the relative freedom they enjoyed while they were away, they all poisoned their husbands with arsenic flypaper. They soon [[MurderIsTheBestSolution began poisoning anyone else who annoyed them]], including parents, lovers and children, at the urging of the ringleader, a midwife named Fazekas. They killed at least 40 people before they were finally exposed in 1929.

* Played with but averted in ''[[Literature/TalesOfDunkAndEgg The Sworn Sword]]'' with Lady Rohanne [[ThemeNaming Webber]] aka the "Red Widow". She is undeniably a FemmeFatale, but all her husbands really did [[CartwrightCurse die of war or natural causes]]. Her reputation is a combination of a smear campaign and the ruthless front she maintains to [[TheWomanWearingTheQueenlyMask survive as a female ruler]] of her lands.

* ''Manga/DetectiveConan'': Gender-flipped example when it's revealed that the groom of the story's wedding is actually the real villain. His plan was to seduce the bride, get married, and the kill her somewhere discreet after sucking her finances dry. His partner disagreed and just wanted to rob the girl's house, so he murdered his own partner in front of the girl and played it off as a rescue attempt against a serial killer to get her to fall for him.

Compare {{Yandere}}, ComfortingTheWidow, WidowWoman (for other widow tropes), WillAndInheritanceTropes and CartwrightCurse. When pregnancy is involved, this intersects with ConceiveAndKill. See also LiteralManeater, which is an actual monster that uses the disguise of a woman to lure in its prey, and MantisMatingMeal, for another animal notorious for the female killing the male.

* [[spoiler: Roxanne]] in ''Manga/{{Claymore}}'' was a low ranked warrior, who consistently would become the [[HideYourLesbians best friend]] of a higher ranked warrior, learn her techniques through Yoki synchronization, and kill her to get reassigned to someone better. This continued until she became one of the strongest and most notorious Claymores in history.[[note]]Her last partner was where she drew the line, as her 'technique' was to perform an inhuman limbo dodge that looked like she was eating dirt off the ground, something Roxanne constantly insults her former partner about.[[/note]]

* ''Fanfic/BadAlertTheExtreme'', while mostly a fan's response to the way a few villains are portrayed in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'' and ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClankUpYourArsenal'', is partly based on the theory that [[spoiler: [[{{WesternAnimation/Cinderella}} Lady Tremaine]] murdered Cinderella's father after marrying him for his money]].

* Mike Myers parodies the trope in ''Film/SoIMarriedAnAxeMurderer'' -- his character believes he is dating the mysterious "Mrs. X." [[spoiler: She's not. Turns out ''her sister'' was an insane ClingyJealousGirl who murdered all of the poor girl's previous husbands (she thought they had all just up and left her).]]
* ''Film/{{Stepmonster}}''. There was also a screwed up bit of Gift of the Magi in there, as the monster is a comic book creature and only a specific, very rare and very valuable issue explained how the monster can be defeated. So the kid pawns the violin his dad gave him to buy the comic book; [[spoiler: unfortunately, his dad has something serious against comic books and rips it up, not realizing its significance (or value), and it's not until the kid finds the one missing piece - that's right, ''one panel out of the entire comic book divulged the monster's weakness'' - that the kid realizes how screwed he is. The dad redeems himself at the movie's climax in a BigDamnHeroes moment where it turns out he bought back the violin and proceeds to dispatch the monster.]]

* Minus the wealth part, on ''{{Series/CSI}}'' [[spoiler: the youngest daughter of a compulsive hoarder seduced boys from the halfway house where her brother worked and after she killed them to make sure they wouldn't leave she hid them around her mother's cluttered house. When mom found out what was happening she handcuffed her daughter to her bed and barricaded her behind a wall of boxes, and when her other daughter found one of the bodies she got hit on the head and left to die in a pile of newspapers.]]

* ''Series/{{Gotham}}'' has Oswald Cobblepot's stepmother. She and her (adult) kids are trying to kill Ozzie's real father by tampering with his medication. After Oswald comes into the picture, he becomes his father's favourite (he is his only real son) and his most likely heir. [[spoiler: This causes the step-mom to poison Ozzie's drink, only for his dad to drink it instead. (Un)fortunately, Oz later finds the poison, and [[SiblingMurder bad]] things [[{{Matricide}} happen]] to the step-family.]]

* ''Series/{{Monk}}'' had this in the episode [[spoiler: "Mr. Monk Goes to a Wedding". Natalie's brother was about to marry a Black Widow, and she murdered the photographer after he recognized her.]]

* The band My X was the main attraction at Ride/BuschGardens' Theatre/HowlOScream 2010. It used to be called XY, but female lead Sylvie took over the band and renamed it when the male lead/her ([[spoiler: apparently abusive]]) boyfriend [[spoiler: mysteriously vanished]]. Now Sylvie spends her nights picking out guys from the concert crowd, hooking up with them backstage, and bringing them to her dressing room [[spoiler: where she hangs them up, chops off their fingers, and kills them]]. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjEJbmAuIWw Check out their signature song.]] (My X was actually an unsigned band from Tampa; they renamed the band and wrote three new songs for the park's Halloween special.)

* ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneyTrialsAndTribulations'': The BigBad [[spoiler: Dahlia Hawthorn]] is one. She has had three known boyfriends and at least ''attempted'' to kill all three when they [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness outlived their usefulness]], only stopping because Mia Fey managed to get her convicted of murdering her second boyfriend. [[spoiler: She convinced Terry Fawles to commit suicide, got Doug Swallow electrocuted, and poisoned Phoenix's cold medicine- which he only didn't take because Dahlia stole it and used it to frame him for Doug's murder.]]

** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' as well. You can even [[spoiler: seduce Benny and [[SlainInTheirSleep kill him in his sleep]]]] if you have the perk. ''New Vegas'' also adds Cherchez La Femme (for female [=PCs=]) and Confirmed Bachelor (for male [=PCs=]), which are isosexual versions (other females if you're female, other males if you're male).

* There's a player challenge for ''VideoGame/TheSims2'' that revolves around creating one of these. [[http://forums.sims2community.com/archive/index.php/t-29254.html See it here]].

* Jill from ''Webcomic/{{Darken}}'' is introduced that way [[http://darkencomic.com/?webcomic_post=20040710 here]]. She's also an ActionGirl who kills things with ''fans''.
* ''Webcomic/DocRat'' [[http://www.docrat.com.au/default.asp?id=strip&thisItem=117 plays it]] [[http://www.docrat.com.au/default.asp?id=strip&thisitem=1163 for laughs]]. She is a [[TruthInTelevision praying mantis]], after all.

** [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allocosa_brasiliensis Allocosa brasiliensis]], a species of spider from South America. Their males often kill and eat the females.

* [[http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/11/16/48hours/mysteries/main318363.shtml Margaret Rudin]], who married five times and at least two of her husbands perished in very strange circumstances. The fifth one, Ron Rudin, turned out to be smarter [[ThanatosGambit than believed]]...

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nannie_Doss The Giggling Granny]]. She eventually plead guilty to poisoning four of her husbands, her mother, her sister, her grandson, and her mother-in-law, and may or may not have murdered another grandson as well.

* [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillie_Klimek Tillie Klimek]], the "High Priestess of the Bluebeard Clique", had three husbands and a boyfriend who died after she had supposedly predicted their deaths in dreams. Then her fourth husband fell ill and discovered Klimek had been slowly poisoning him. An investigation found that all the people whose deaths Klimek had "predicted" had been killed with rat poison. Several of Klimek's neighbors and relatives had also died from poison, as had a dog whose barking annoyed her. Klimek died in prison in 1936.

** [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allocosa_brasiliensis Allocosa brasiliensis]], a species of spider from South America. Their males often kill and eat the females.

* {{Subverted}} in the Book of Tobit: a woman named Sarah has lost seven husbands before any of her marriages could be consummated, but it's because a demon named [[HornyDevils Asmodeus]] is in lust with her and doesn't like the competition. The {{Archangel Raphael}} fixes this problem by advising her cousin, Tobias, to marry her, and teaching him how to drive Asmodeus away.

** In a two-parter featuring a villain known as the Sandman (not [[ComicBook/TheSandman that one]]) who plans to marry and rob a rich insomniac widow (he's posing as a sleep doctor). However, when she starts prattling on about the fates of her previous four husbands the viewer is left to wonder if she's a Black Widow or just ridiculously unlucky.

* [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_Halliday Lizzie Halliday]] was convicted of murdering her sixth husband and two neighbours. Her first and second husbands also died suddenly soon after the wedding, she was accused of trying to poison her fourth husband and her fifth husband mysteriously disappeared two weeks after the marriage.

* [[ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anula_of_Anuradhapura Queen Anula of Anuradhapura]] is credited by traditional histories with having poisoned five consorts before being overthrown and burned at the stake, although the validity of these accounts is disputed.

Black Widows' methods may vary, but poisoning is often favored: it doesn't demand superior strength or leave obvious marks, and it's traditional for wives to do the cooking for their husbands. Also, many types of poisoning can have symptoms similar to those of common illnesses, which makes it easier for a Black Widow to collect life insurance money (a very common motivation).

* Poison Ivy in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries''. She figures, why seduce one billionaire herself when she can create a small squad of male and female plant clones, have them seduce ''dozens'' of rich bachelors and bachelorette at once, then have said clones lead them to their doom upon a yacht that she sinks? Through her clones, she'd inherit ''multiple'' fortunes. Her only flaw here: Bruce Wayne is one of her targets.