History Main / PaterFamilicide

* ''For Colored Girls'' has the acoholic, PTSD-suffering war vet toss his kids out of the window when he suspected his wife of cheating (which she did, years earlier), and thought her lover pulled up in a limo one afternoon, saying that it's time to return the kids to their rightful father (the limo actually housed her female boss). The wife tries to save her kids by grabbing them before they fell, but her grip couldn't hold for too long, and no one else managed to get into the room in time.

** Something similar happens in the movie ''TheMist'', but tragically, [[spoiler:the protagonist runs out of bullets just as he's about to turn the gun on himself to end it. And by that time, the titular mist is beginning to clear, making for a harrowing ShootTheShaggyDog ending]].

* ''LawAndOrderCriminalIntent'' had a case similar to List's, in that the father lied about having a job with the UN -- actually, of having a job at all [[spoiler: fortunately the wife was unharmed and the detectives were able to save the kids.]]

The trope gained fame mainly through the murderous antics of John List, arguably the TropeCodifier. Having lost his job and become deeply in debt, List opted to murder his family rather than go on welfare and admit to his family that he was a failure, under the crackhead logic that better to murder his family and send them straight to heaven, than to let them be poor (as List believed that poverty was an affront to God). List then went into hiding and successfully stayed hidden until America's Most Wanted featured him on the show, bringing about his arrest as a result.

Current social mores play a big part in how sympathetic the murderer remains to the audience - while few would suggest that debt is a good reason to kill your family, fantasy situations involving the threat of a Fate Worse Than Death will leave many people arguing that the act was justified.

* In ''PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'', it's eventually revealed that [[spoiler:Kyoko Sakura's]] father killed the rest of her family and then himself [[spoiler:after he realized that the increased number of followers at his church was not due to people actually believing him, but Kyoko's Puella Magi powers making them listen]].

* In {{Maus}}, the protagonist is the only one of his siblings who survived the war, by coicidence - the others, being taken care of by their aunt, were made to eat poison with her in order to [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled avoid a crueler fate at the hands of Nazis]].

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* Joked about in at least one episode of ''FamilyGuy'', in a cut away involving a couple in debt.

* A particularly disturbing variation occurs in [[AdaptationDecay the 1999 remake]] of ''The Haunting'': Hugh Crain, the EccentricMillionaire who built Hill House, not only seems to have killed or [[DrivenToSuicide driven his wife to her death]], but the children from the mills whom he 'adopted' were also slain by him, or else allowed to waste away due to neglect. So even though, presumably, the mitigation of what ruined his life (no offspring) should have made him happy and fulfilled, the industrialist instead destroys the very thing he'd been seeking for so long.

* Thomas Hardy's ''Jude The Obscure'' has a ''frater'' familicide. Jude's family is poor, he is ill and another child is on its way; his eldest son, deciding that his parents would be better off without their children, kills his siblings and then himself.

* A Japanese teacher commented (after 30 years of living in there) that suicide numbers in Japan would be a lot higher were family members dying via familicide counted. According to him, the most usual way is to clean the house, is to get the family in the car, and [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident a fateful driving accident in steep mountains]].
* Jean-Claude Romand: a French drop-out from medical school, managed to make everyone in his family believe that he was a doctor working for the World Health Organization. The biggest irony is that he was knowledgeable enough in medicine so that when genuine doctors would not realize that he was an impostor when they spoke to him, making you wonder why he just did not just [[CutLexLuthorACheck pass his exams and become what he claimed he was]]. He killed his entire family when he was about to be exposed.

* Jean-Claude Roman: a french drop-out from medical school, managed to make everyone in his family believe that he was a doctor working for the World Health Organization. The biggest irony is that he was knowledgable enough in medicine so that when genuise doctors would not realize that he was an impostor when they spoke to him, making you wonder why he just did not just [[CutLexLuthorACheck pass his exams and become what he claimed he was]]

* Voted in top 10 for "the most depressive song ever" in Finland, ''Pimeä tie, mukavaa matkaa'' ("Lightless road, have a pleasant journey") is the voice of a young couple, who have failed to get a loan for buying a home, are disappointed in the society ("suppose they'll soon put a price tag on breathing air"), and are in a car with their children to EndItAll. In the chorus the other parent urges the driving one to "close your eyes, now we're leaving at full throttle" as the children sleep in the back seat, and tells the audience "it's okay to forget us in case we paid too little".

* In {{Maus}}, the protagonist is the only one of his siblings who survived the war, by coicidence - the others, being taken care of by their aunt, were made to eat poison with her in order to [[BetterToDieThenToBeKilled avoid a crueler fate at the hands of Nazis]].

* The teacher for Japanese of ThisTroper commented (after 30 years of living in there) that suicide numbers in Japan would be a lot higher were family members dying via familicide counted. According to him, the most usual way is to clean the house, the get the family in the car, and [[MakeItLookAccidental a fateful driving accident in steep mountains]].

* "UminekoNoNakuKoroNi". Hey, my successors are unworthy and I'm about to die. What is my choice of action? Gee, let's try [[KillEmAll slaughtering them all]] for a magic ritual to revive my [[SealedEvilInACan dead witch lover]]. GOOD PLAN, KINZO. REAL GOOD. [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] when it is revealed that Kinzo was actually dead before any of the games started (and that only an UnreliableNarrator made him appear to be alive), and that he therefore never killed his family]].

* One of the other psychics in Dorothy Gilman's ''The Clairvoyant Countess'' is rescued from one of these.

----
<<|FamilyTropes|>>
<<|NarrativeDevices|>>
<<|OlderThanDirt|>>

* Sethe tries to do this in Toni Morrison's ''Beloved'' to keep her children from being sent back into slavery, although she only succeeds on one count out of four.

* In ''{{Torchwood}}'' series ''Children of Earth'', [[spoiler: a civil servant is told that his two daughters must be sacrificed to the invading aliens in order for the government to save face. He returns home, sends his family to one of the bedrooms, takes a gun and follows them up. [[GoryDiscretionShot The door closes]] and four gunshots are heard]].

* Another real life version was the tragedy surrounding professional wrestler ChrisBenoit, who murdered his wife and son then hanged himself using his weights machine.