History Main / MurderIntoMalevolence

* Creator/JunjiIto's story ''[[http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/6527013.html#cutid1 'The Seashore'']]'' has this. A group of schoolchildren tragically drowned [[spoiler: and seem to be spending their afterlife luring in new people to drown for the sake of killing them.]]

** One quest takes protagonist Geralt to a cursed and haunted island, where he finds the ghost of a young woman pleading to help her spirit leave the island. It turns out that she's a nobleman's daughter and, during a peasant uprising, her entire family was slaughtered and the invaders had planned to rape and murder her. [[spoiler:Instead, she drank a sleeping potion which [[PlayingPossum put her in a death-like state that fooled everyone]]... including her boyfriend, who ran away and wished that everyone would die. Eventually, everyone DID die and she was stuck in her fake death, unable to move as the rats in the tower ate her warm body alive. The combination of the boyfriend's curses, her CruelAndUnusualDeath, and the plague the rats carried (which is a long story in itself) turned the young woman's spirit into a Petra--a Plague Maiden that cursed the entire island.]]

* Invoked in ''Webcomic/GunnerkriggCourt'': the Court's founders [[http://gunnerkrigg.com/?p=654 sacrificed]] a woman [[spoiler:and murdered her lover in front of her]], then bound her [[http://gunnerkrigg.com/?p=777 furious ghost]] to an eternity wandering the river that surrounds the Court, killing anyone who tries to cross over.
* Parodied in ''{{chainsawsuit}}'' where a malevolent ghost kills anyone who wanders into the house where she was murdered. A man Lampshades how ridiculous this is and points out that her killer is long dead and the whole thing is an excersize in futility. The ghost obviously doesnt listen and kills him anyway.

Compare and contrast the VengefulGhost and the vengeful variant of the RevenantZombie: although they might be monstrous, they focus their anger on their killers. Those entities overlap with this trope if they aren't satisfied with avenging themselves on their killers, but also target innocent victims.

* Tấm Cám, the Vietnamese take on Cinderella, is this. Tấm starts out as a naïve, gentle, sweet girl who, with the help of the Buddha, gets the king. She then goes through a TraumaCongaLine:

** "Dead in the Water" has Peter Sweenuy, who was accidentally drowned by two of his childhood bullies. Over the next 35 years, his VengefulGhost enacted a brutal RevengeByProxy, killing those bullies' loved ones until the last surviving bully offers his life to lay the ghost to rest.

** "Dead in the Water" has Peter Sweeny, who was accidentally drowned by two of his childhood bullies. Over the next 35 years, his VengefulGhost enacted a brutal RevengeByProxy, killing those bullies' loved ones until the last surviving bully offers his life to lay the ghost to rest.
** Ghosts in general tend to succumb to SanitySlippage, especially since UnstoppableRage is one of two ways for them to affect the physical world. After [[spoiler:Bobby]] is murdered, he slowly becomes more driven to attack his killer and less concerned about the well-being of others, until he has his HauntedFetter destroyed to stop him from "going vengeful."

** There has been considerable debate over the above ending, which earned the story a place in the high school textbook rather than the primary school one (which had Cám and her mother either struck by lightning or merely banished). The high school version, however, stops at Cám's murder and turns the stepmother/mastermind into a KarmaHoudini, since the ToServeMan was deemed [[MoralEventHorizon too]] [[CrossesTheLineTwice cruel]]. Proponents argue that it's a reasonable for Tấm to pay evil unto evil for the repeated murders, while detractors argue that it's out of character for the kind, gentle heroine and turns her into an unredeemable monster. Pick up any illustrated copy at the local bookshop, and you're most likely to find the LighterAndSofter ending because those are marketed for children.

Compare and contrast the vengeful variant of the RevenantZombie, who might be monstrous, but focuses its anger on its killer.

A SisterTrope to the TorturedMonster and to the MonsterFromBeyondTheVeil. In some works, this makes undeath a form of TheCorruption. Contrast the NonMaliciousMonster. A VengefulGhost is a common result.

A SisterTrope to the TorturedMonster and to the MonsterFromBeyondTheVeil. In some works, this makes undeath a form of TheCorruption. Contrast the NonMaliciousMonster.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'' has similar rules on ghosts as ''D&D'', but doesn't necessarily include an alignment change; it only notes that this trope is likely because the inherent trauma that would cause a spirit to linger could also cause an alignment shift to ChaoticEvil.

* ''The Autopsy Of Jane Doe'' reveals that the titular Jane Doe was a victim of the witch trial hysteria and was horrifically tortured/murdered. Her rage over this and the baseless, hypocritical reasons for it happening seemingly turn her into a "witch": a powerful malevolent entity that haunts (and preserves) her corpse, who is still killing innocent people generations after her actual murderers died.

* In the first ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'', it's implied that the [[PerversePuppet animatronics]] are haunted by the ghosts of murdered children, and one of the possible reasons they're targeting the player is that they can't tell the difference between their killer and Mike Schmidt.

* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'', fiends are the souls of humans whose [[GhostlyGoals unfinished business]] kept them on earth until they became bitter, angry monsters with no other purpose than to attack the living. Sin's attacks often leave huge numbersof souls that will quickly become monsters if they aren't sent on by a summoner.

** Banshees are ghosts of elven women slain during Arthas' conquest of Silvermoon, with [[MakesMeWannaShout only their voices left]] to express their hatred and suffering.

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* This gets applied to the titular Doctor of ''Series/DoctorWho'' in the episode "Hell Bent" after the events of "Heaven Sent." [[spoiler:After being killed and cloned in a cycle for several billion years, the Doctor deposes the government responsible and begins to abuse time travel technology to try and prevent a friend's death in a way that threatens the entire space-time continuum.]]

** 1[[superscript:st]] Edition AD&D ''Fiend Folio'': the revenant is an undead that can be created when a humanoid creature dies a violent death. It is dedicated to hunting down the creature that killed it, as well as any creatures that helped in the killing. Once it finds them, it will try to strangle its killer(s) to death.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'' has similar rules on ghosts as D&D, but doesn't necessarily include an alignment change; it only notes that this trope is likely because the inherent trauma that would cause a spirit to linger could also cause an alignment shift to ChaoticEvil.

* The Girl In Red, a.k.a. [[spoiler:Sachiko Shinozaki]] in ''VideoGame/CorpseParty''. Just a normal little girl in life, who [[spoiler:saw her mother murdered for no reason, and then was chased down and killed by the murderer, who might have also later returned and mutilated her corpse based on his own gnawing guilt.]] End result: a spirit so angry and vengeful that it creates a wholly separate reality to pull in and cruelly murder hundreds of victims.

** One quest takes protagonist Geralt to a cursed and haunted island, where he finds the ghost of a young woman pleading to help her spirit leave the island. It turns out that she's a nobleman's daughter and, during a peasant uprising, her entire family was slaughtered and the invaders had planned to rape and murder her. [[spoiler:Instead, she drank a sleeping potion which [[PlayingPossum put her in a death-like state that fooled everyone]]...including her boyfriend, who ran away and wished that everyone would die. Eventually, everyone DID die and she was stuck in her fake death, unable to move as the rats in the tower ate her warm body alive. The combination of the boyfriend's curses, her CruelAndUnusualDeath, and the plague the rats carried (which is a long story in itself) turned the young woman's spirit into a Petra--a Plague Maiden that cursed the entire island.]]
** A Baron and his wife were in an unhappy marriage [[spoiler:where he beat her constantly and she found herself pregnant with a child she didn't want. The wife was eventually visited by three evil witch spirits who offered to get rid of the unborn child if the wife agreed to serve them for a year. She agreed, and not long afterward, her husband beat her so badly that she miscarried. The wife and her other daughter decided to escape from the Baron that night and left the dead fetus on the bed. The Baron found his dead child and, in his grief, buried it in an unmarked grave without giving it a name]]. The dead child transformed into a Botchling--a malevolent and murderous spirit created from babies that died unwanted or unloved.
* Downplayed with Charlie as of ''Videogame/StreetFighterV''. Back in ''Videogame/StreetFighterAlpha'', he was murdered by getting shoved off his helicopter by one of his fellow Air Force comrades... who turned out to be a disguised Shadaloo member. Then Urien and Helen, members of Illuminati, brought him back to life (albeit LivingOnABorrowedTime) with a single mission: to stop M. Bison, leader of Shadaloo. Charlie, who's filled with rage and grudge due to what happened to him, simply obliges; he also becomes a cold and dead serious guy who won't hesitate in killing people if they hinder him and has nothing good to say for his old friend Guile. Despite all that, however, he's still one of the good guys, and later come to the realization that he can't do all this alone.

* Invoked in ''Webcomic/GunnerkriggCourt'': the Court's founders [[http://gunnerkrigg.com/?p=654 sacrificed]] a woman [[spoiler:and murdered her lover in front of her]], then bound her [[http://gunnerkrigg.com/?p=777 furious ghost]] to an eternity wandering the river that surrounds the Court, killing anyone who tries to cross over.

* In both the original Japanese version of ''Film/TheGrudge'', ''Ju-On'', and its western remake, Kayako Seiki is an innocent woman with NoSocialSkills, who is killed alongside her child by her jealous husband and returns as an Onryo ghost. She kills her murderer first... then stays in her house and murders absolutely everybody who crosses her path or even telephones her house.

* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'': Shrieker was serial killer in life who died because his final victim was a woman whom he murdered in front of her young son. The terrified child tripped the killer, who fell to his death over a balcony and transformed into a Hollow, a ravening creature that consumes the souls of the living and the dead. By keeping the child's soul trapped inside a misfortune-creating bird, he was able to force the child to act as a lure for hapless souls by continually promising him that he would soon be reunited with his (dead) mother. While Soul Reapers can rescue Hollows by cleansing them of the sins their [[UnfinishedBusiness lingering attachments]] to the mortal world cause them to commit, a Hollow that was evil in his mortal life is beyond their ability to save. While they could rescue the soul of the child, all they could do for Shrieker was cleanse him of his Hollow sins then allow Hell to claim him, a realm of damnation for the truly wicked.

* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'': Shrieker was serial killer in life who died because his final victim was a woman whom he murdered in front of her young son. The terrified child tripped the killer, who fell to his death over a balcony and transformed into a Hollow, a ravening creature that consumes the souls of the living and the dead. By keeping the child's soul trapped inside a misfortune-creating bird, he was able to force the child to act as a lure for hapless souls by continually promising him that he would soon be reunited with his (dead) mother. While Soul Reapers can rescue Hollows by cleansing them of the sins their [[UnfinishedBusiness lingering attachments]] to the mortal world cause them to commit, a Hollow that was evil in his mortal life is beyond their ability to save. After the soul of the child is rescued, Shrieker is cleansed of his Hollow sins and then sent to Hell, a realm of damnation for the truly wicked.

* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'': Shrieker was serial killer in life who died because his final victim was a woman whom he murdered in front of her young son. The terrified child tripped the killer, who fell to his death over a balcony and transformed into a Hollow, a ravening creature that consumes the souls of the living and the dead. By keeping the child's soul trapped inside a misfortune-creating bird, he was able to force the child to act as a lure for hapless souls, while continually promising him that he would soon be reunited with his (dead) mother. While Soul Reapers can rescue Hollows by cleansing them of the sins their [[UnfinishedBusiness lingering attachments]] to the mortal world cause them to commit, a Hollow that was evil in his mortal life is beyond their ability to save. After the soul of the child is rescued, Shrieker is cleansed of his Hollow sins and then sent to Hell, a realm of damnation for the truly wicked.

* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'': Hollows are human souls that were not sent to Soul Society by a Soul Reaper (or if evil, sent to Hell), and turn into monsters that prey on the souls of both living and dead humans. They usually target their own families first, and can sometimes create other Hollows from their attacks on humans.

A SisterTrope to the TorturedMonster and to the MonsterBeyondTheVeil. In some works, this makes undeath a form of TheCorruption. Contrast the NonMalevolentMonster.

** Victims of undead with the "create spawn" ability (such as wights and ghouls) always fit this trope: they return as AlwaysChaoticEvil shadows of their former selves (literally in the case of LivingShadows), which must be slain to resurrect them or allow them to pass on to the afterlife.