History Main / PaterFamilicide

* ''{{Supernatural}}'' has a particular kind of ghost called a "Woman in White" that results from a woman killing her children and then committing suicide. The idea seems to have come from South American legends of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llorona La Llorona]].

* Tana French's ''Broken Harbor'' raises the possibility that this is what happened to the family whose murder kicks off the plot. [[Spoiler: It was actually the mother.]]

* ''TheOthers'' has a GenderFlipped version: a mother, delirious with isolation and worried sick over her husband's fate in {{World War II}}, uses a VorpalPillow on her children, and then, [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone in remorse]], a [[BoomHeadshot shotgun]] on herself. [[spoiler:The TwistEnding is that the main characters ''are'' this family, and "the others" they've been dealing with are the still-living people who have since moved into the house.]]

The murderer, almost always a man, kills his wife and children, (and in rare cases, his in-laws or parents) as a means to "protect" the family from discovering the killer's own failures at life (e.g., [[UnconfessedUnemployment the loss of his job]], financial ruin, or the disintegration of the family unit for some other reason.) After killing his entire family, the killer [[MurderSuicide will then turn his weapon upon himself]], or (if he can't bring himself to kill himself) flee town to escape his crimes.

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 InsaneTrollLogic that it was 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 ''AmericasMostWanted'' featured him on the show, bringing about his arrest as a result.

* In {{Euripides}}'s ''Theatre/{{Medea}}'', Medea kills her children (along with Jason's new wife and father-in-law) as revenge against Jason for leaving her. (In the original legend, she also kills and dismembers he brother. The people of Corinth kill Medea's children.)

* One of the patients that Doctor Kreizler sees at the very beginning of TheAlienist has killed his children to protect them from evil.

* Another real life version was the tragedy surrounding professional wrestler ChrisBenoit, who murdered his wife and son then hanged himself using his weights machine. (Exactly why it happened is not known, but a history of steroid use and some pretty significant brain injuries were likely involved.)
** To elaborate on the brain injuries - the autopsy showed that "Benoit's brain was so severely damaged it resembled the brain of an 85-year-old Alzheimer's patient."

* The [[DeathByOriginStory backstory]] of in-universe MemeticBadass Keyser Soze in ''TheUsualSuspects'' involves a unique take on this; they'd been taken hostage, and he killed them simply to show the hostage-takers how not-to-be-fucked-with he was.

* This is Billy Bedlam's rap sheet introduction in ''ConAir'' after finding his wife had cheated on him.
* ''DeathOnDemand'' has [[DeliberatelyMonochrome a black and white]] opening which depicts the then-living killer butchering his wife, mother in-law and two daughters during [[HorrorDoesntSettleForSimpleTuesday Thanksgiving]] dinner.

* The NYC cops in ''{{Watchmen}}'' arrested a father who admitted to murdering his kids, because he feared that the possibility of nuclear war would make their lives miserable. Of course, the irony of this situation comes twofold: [[spoiler: the war never happened, though that's because NYC was blown up by Veidt and made to look like an interstellar attack. So they would've all died, anyway]].

* A particularly disturbing variation occurs in the 1999 remake of ''Film/TheHaunting'': 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.

* The father of Judith Barsi, young star of many a DonBluth film, killed Judith and her mother, burned their house down, and shot himself. ''TheLandBeforeTime'' and ''AllDogsGoToHeaven'' were actually released posthumously.

* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXCC7_Nu7o8 Frankie Teardrop]] is about a desperate underpaid factory worker doing this.

* Jack in Creator/StephenKing's ''TheShining'' is driven to do this and fails, unlike his predecessor who previously stayed in the cursed hotel.

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

* ''GodOfWar'''s Kratos killed his wife and child in a fit of battle rage induced by Ares. The subsequent nightmares drive him through the game's story and eventually cause him to [[DrivenToSuicide leap off a tall cliff]].

* John List is arguably the first major one of these; he murdered his entire family rather than admit to them that he lost his job and that the family was in dire financial trouble. He went into hiding and adopted an alias and remarried and would have gotten away with his crime if not for America's Most Wanted doing a special on him.

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 InsaneTrollLogic that it was 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 ''[[AmericasMostWanted America's Most Wanted]]'' featured him on the show, bringing about his arrest as a result.

* ''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]].
* In ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'', it's eventually revealed that [[spoiler:Kyouko 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 because of Kyouko's powers as a Puella Magi (born from her wish to get him more followers) making them listen]].

* ''[[DeathOnDemand Death on Demand]]'' has [[DeliberatelyMonochrome a black and white]] opening which depicts the then-living killer butchering his wife, mother in-law and two daughters during [[HorrorDoesntSettleForSimpleTuesday Thanksgiving]] dinner.

* Jack in StephenKing's ''TheShining'' is driven to do this and fails, unlike his predecessor who previously stayed in the cursed hotel.

[[folder:TabletopGames]]

* The award-winning atmospheric HPLovecraft pastiche InteractiveFiction game ''[[http://www.wurb.com/if/game/17.html Anchorhead]]'' has this happen in BackStory to a distant relative of the player's husband. And he was doing them all a ''favor''.

* In the mediocre game ''Spy Fiction'', the villain, Scarface, married a female terrorist and had a son by her. Then he discovered she was a {{double agent}} killed her and shot his son in the head. [[spoiler: [[StartOfDarkness The kid survived to become the other villain]].]]

* In ''DeadSpace2'', Nolan Stross killed his wife and child in a fit of madness induced by contact with the Aegis VII Marker.

* [[http://www.fredvanlente.com/cthulhutract/pages/ ''Why We're Here'']] is a Lovecraftian parody of the infamous JackChick tracts. In it, a good family man talks to Old Man Whateley who converts him to the Truth of the {{Cthulhu}} Mythos. The good family man promptly chops up his family with an axe to spare them from the horror of the Elder Gods.

The murderer, almost always a man, kills his wife and children, (and in rare cases, his in-laws or parents) as a means to "protect" the family from discovering the killer's own failures at life (e.g., [[UnconfessedUnemployment the loss of his job]], financial ruin, or the disintegration of the family unit for some other reason.) After killing his entire family, the killer will then turn his weapon upon himself, or (if he can't bring himself to kill himself) flee town to escape his crimes.

* In ''{{Maus}}'', the protagonist is the only one of his siblings who survived the war, by coincidence - 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]].
* The NYC cops in ''{{Watchmen}}'' arrested a father who admitted to murdering his kids, because he feared that the possibility of nuclear war would make their lives miserable. Of course, the irony of this situation comes twofold: [[spoiler: the war never happened, though that's because NYC was blown up by Veidt and made to look like an interstellar attack. So they would've all died, anyway]].

* A particularly disturbing variation occurs in the 1999 remake of ''Film/TheHaunting'': 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.

* This is what kick-starts the curse of the ''[=~Ju-on~=]'' series of films, as well as the [[ForeignRemake remake]] series, ''TheGrudge'': In the Japanese series, Takeo Saeki reads his wife Kayako's diary, discovers that she harbours an obsessive crush on her old college friend, Kobayashi, and becomes so [[GreenEyedMonster jealous]], paranoid and [[AxCrazy outright crazy]] that he starts to believe that a) Kayako is having an affair, and b) that he is not the natural father of their son, Toshio (none of which are true). He then [[NeckSnap snaps Kayako's neck]], leaving her paralysed but not quite dead until he slashes her with a utility knife, drowns Toshio, and even slaughters Toshio's beloved cat. Takeo himself is later killed when Kayako, now a ''seriously'' angry spirit, takes her revenge. In the American series, the murders and his motives are very similar, except in this continuity, the object of Kayako's desire is instead a university professor named Peter, and there is no suspicion with regards to Toshio's parentage.

* An episode of ''CSIMiami'' had a guy who did this and then claimed post-partum depression; that is, he claimed his ''wife'' had been suffering post-partum depression in the weeks leading up to the slaughter. Only, she hadn't.

* Back in the early 20th century, Marty Bergen, a well-regarded catcher in Major League Baseball, murdered his entire family with an ax.

* A particularly disturbing variation occurs in 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.
* [[spoiler: Deputy Billy]] in the horror film ''30 Days of Night'', in order to [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled save them from what would be (at least for them) a far more horrific death]].

* For the title character in ''TheStepfather'' this got to be a habit, followed by changes of identity to start the process again.

* Alec Trevelyan's backstory in ''{{Goldeneye}}'' has his father kill his mother and himself so that they won't have to live with the shame of having survived the Soviet purge of Lienz Cossacks.

* In {{Euripides}}'s ''{{Medea}}'', Medea kills her children (along with Jason's new wife and father-in-law) as revenge against Jason for leaving her. (In the original legend, she also kills and dismembers he brother. The people of Corinth kill Medea's children.)

[[folder:Western Comics]]
* In {{Maus}}, the protagonist is the only one of his siblings who survived the war, by coincidence - 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]].
* The NYC cops in {{Watchmen}} arrested a father who admitted to murdering his kids, because he feared that the possibility of nuclear war would make their lives miserable. Of course, the irony of this situation comes two fold: [[spoiler: the war never happened, though that's because NYC was blown up by Veidt and made it look like an interstellar attack. So they would've all died, anyway]].
[[/folder]]

* In DeadSpace2, Nolan Stross killed his wife and child in a fit of madness induced by contact with the Aegis VII Marker.