[[HomestarRunner http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dashing.jpg]]
[[caption-width:246:Where's my cottage? TROGDOOOOOOOOR!]]

Just to make sure that the hero can't [[RefusalOfTheCall refuse the call of destiny]], his family or loved ones will be brutally murdered by the enemy to drive home the point that [[YouCantFightFate he can't run away]] from his life mission. The extreme of AndYourLittleDogToo.

The hero thus takes up the avenging banner, embittered and hardened for the experience. Many an AntiHero has been shaped by this. HeWhoFightsMonsters almost certainly has.

Related to DoomedHometown, only viciously more [[ItsPersonal personal]]. Contrasts with StuffedIntoTheFridge, where the similarly [[ItsPersonal personal]] tragedy is exceptionally cruel but there was no RefusalOfTheCall and the event seems largely unnecessary for the story.

Related to and sometimes overlaps with DeathByOriginStory. The ForgottenFallenFriend is the name of the trope where, after the hero starts the adventure, he or she gets over the deaths with [[AngstWhatAngst remarkable aplomb]].

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!!Examples:

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[[folder: Comic Books ]]

* [[{{Comicbook/Spider-Man}} Peter Parker]] was taught that power comes with [[ComesGreatResponsibility responsibility]] through the [[DeathByOriginStory death of his Uncle Ben]].
* Matt Murdock loses his strict but loving father when the old man refuses to take a dive in a prizefight. [[DeathByOriginStory Father is killed]], ''ergo'' {{Daredevil}}.
**To be fair, Spiderman and Daredevil were invented by the same person.
* ''ThePunisher''.
** Most conspicuous in ''Born'', set during Castle's time in Vietnam. Castle is seen having an internal monologue with himself, pushing him towards violence and guaranteeing that he could keep Castle's war going on forever. [[spoiler: Towards the end of the book, Castle is in the middle of a truly hopeless battle, alone versus a massive amount of VC. The voice says that it will let Castle live and continue to fight... if he pays a price. Castle agrees, goes on to murder the entire enemy force alone, but promptly leaves the service, planning to live in peace with his wife and children. The voice then remidns him, there's a price to be paid.]]
* In JossWhedon's comic ''Fray'', new slayer Melaka Fray drags her heels over her destiny until [[spoiler: her young friend Loo - TheCutie - is murdered]]. The really awful twist is that [[spoiler: she wasn't killed by vampires, but by MrExposition Urkonn, specifically in order to motivate her]].
** Joss likes this trope. See also, {{Serenity}}. Crew decides maybe they'd better not, y'know, mess with an entire interplanetary government. Then the Operative starts destroying all their safehouses...
* A variant is used in the ''BuffyTheVampireSlayer Origin'' comic. Buffy's family does not come under attack, but her school does - TheCallKnowsWhereYouGoToSchool, perhaps? Later, a character tells Buffy that she is a creature of destiny - in other words, her school wasn't attacked by Lothos because she went there, she went there because it was under attack by Lothos.

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[[folder: Film ]]

* Dates back as far as the 1956 classic ''The Searchers''.
* In ''StarWars,'' Luke is obliged to become a Jedi when his home is burned down with his aunt and uncle left as charred remains outside.
* An oddly literal variation occurs in the first ''PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' film: Elizabeth's cursed gold piece actually 'calls' to the pirates, which brings them to her DoomedHometown.
**Except Port Royal wasn't a doomed hometown. It was just roughed up a little.
*** Same function, less wholesale destruction.
* The beginning of Mel Gibson's ''ThePatriot'' fits this to a tee. Benjamin Martin is a dedicated pacifist, arguing against going to war in the State Assembly and refusing to let his sons join the Continental Army. It's not until the British Col. Tavington [[spoiler: burns down his farm, kills his second son, and drags his oldest son off to be hung as a spy]] that Martin joins the fight.
** Happens first in {{Braveheart}}- William Wallace just wants to 'till fields and maybe raise a family.' Guess what happens to his new wife?
* In a literal case, in ''BruceAlmighty'', Bruce finds a pager which he cannot lose or destroy with a number. When he calls the number, he is told to go to a certain address "or we'll just keep beeping you."
* In ''TransformersRevengeOfTheFallen'' The call knows where Sam goes to school and where his [[MontyPython parents went on vacation]]. It's a very thorough call.
* Anti-hero Josey Wales is content to be a poor dirt farmer in Clint Eastwood's ''The Outlaw Josey Wales''; until the Union's brutal "Red Legs" militia burned his farm and murdered his family, which he barely survives. After he's had time to recover, he's met by and joins up with a Confederate guerilla band; achieving noteriety as a skillful and unrelenting fighter, and a substantial bounty is placed on his head by the Union. After the war, he ends up defending several First Nations individuals from brutal exploiters, and an innocent homestead from former Union Red Legs turned bounty hunters and bandits.
* [[TheLastStarfighter Alex Rogan]] wasn't crazy or stupid enough to hop into the middle of a space dogfight that had absolutely nothing to do with him...until Xur decided to send assassins to Earth to hunt him down and kill him. [[ConservationOfNinjutsu Cue epic one-man god mode wipeout]].

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[[folder: Literature ]]

* God wants [[TheBible Jonah]] to deliver a message of damnation to Nineveh. Jonah says no, because he thinks that if Nineveh will repent, God won't destroy them. Jonah attempts to flee God. Cue great fish.
*{{Eragon}} finds his uncle's house blown up and his uncle dead; abruptly he realizes that dragon ownership comes with responsibilities.....
* In ''{{Animorphs}}'', Marco was reluctant to involve himself in fighting the good fight -- until he discovered that his mother was also controlled by one of the brain-stealing aliens.
* Rand al'Thor and friends in the ''{{Wheel of Time}}'' have their village attacked not once, but twice, because the Pattern is calling them into service.
* In ''LordOfTheRings'', Frodo Baggins never ''actively'' resists the Call, but he drags his feet about leaving the Shire to the point that he just avoids meeting a Nazgul on (literally) his front doorstep. (And it turns out that, at the same time, Saruman's thugs were invading the Shire from a different direction...)
** Being fair to Frodo, the message sent to warn him that he had to leave ''right now'' got lost in the mail.
** You could say that this happened ''literally'' to his uncle Bilbo in ''TheHobbit'', since Gandalf invited the dwarf party, which provided the Call, right into Bilbo's house (without Bilbo's permission). It would've been tough for Bilbo to refuse the Call without injuring his pride or insulting his (unexpected) houseguests.
* ''TheNameOfTheWind'': Kvothe [[spoiler:leaves to gather firewood for five minutes, and comes back to witness the (supposedly fictional) Chaindran kill his entire acting troop, family included.]]
* In both the second and last ChroniclesOfThomasCovenant, Lord Foul exerts influence in our world to torment the previous heroes until they return to the mythical Land to confront him, as his plans [[XanatosGambit require their powers]].
* Hogwarts sent HarryPotter a series of acceptance letters, pinpointing his near-exact location at the time the letter got there. Uncle Vernon went to great effort to [[ScreeningTheCall keep Harry from getting the letter]], up to moving the entire family to a small shack on a rain-swept island - where Harry got the call in the un-ignorable, unavoidable form of Hagrid.
** Destiny seems to have a thing against Harry, since it seems to kill a lot of the people he loves.
* [[MercedesLackey Di Tregarde]], refusing the call to use her Guardianship, ignores an inept sorcerer's plans to summon an inhuman demon that was too strong for him, thinking it's NotMyProblem. Naturally he summoned the thing, it killed him and was wounded in the process, and it then went after Di, because even if she wasn't doing anything with it Guardianship sticks around. She beat it, but the panic attacks triggered by anything that reminded her of it lingered, as did the lesson that ignoring these things, on a purely selfish level, meant that they would meet her on ''their'' terms.

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[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* Happens twice in {{Supernatural}}'s pilot episode for Sam. First, his Dad goes missing and Dean comes to get him. He refuses ''that'' after killing the {{monster of the week}}, but watching his girlfriend burn up on the ceiling like his mother finally forces him to take the call for good.

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[[folder: Video Games ]]

* The title character of ''MaxPayne'' initially refused Alex's offer to transfer to the DEA and work for him ("You'd make me work undercover in some hellhole. Sorry, Alex. Michelle and the baby come first."). But all that changed when three murderous junkies hopped up on a new designer drug called Valkyr broke into his home and killed his wife and baby girl.
** And, literally enough, [[spoiler: the BigBad phones Max's house as this happens to see if her hit worked]].
*** ''"Is this the Payne residence?"''
* In ''LostOdyssey'', the call most definitely knows where Kaim lives. In fact, the call essentially comes (for all the immortal characters) in the form of the main villain, who, years ago, inflicted tremendous emotional pain to the point that the damage to their psyche was literally a fate worse than death, then subsequently sealed off their memories and left them to become walking corpses, eternally (but NOT desperately) searching for their purpose in life.
* Happens ''twice'' in ''[[BaldursGate Baldur's Gate]]''. First, the protagonist's foster father is killed. Later, [[spoiler:almost everyone in your entire home town is killed and replaced by evil shapeshifters loyal to the BigBad.]]
* Fei from ''{{Xenogears}}'', not only is his [[spoiler:mother (who was taken over by one of the {{Big Bad}}s) is killed by his father (who is taken over by a previous incarnation of Fei)]]. Then, his [[spoiler:adopted hometown is burned to the ground]] by a battle from the ongoing war.
* At the start of ''StarshipTitanic'', the titular starship literally [[BreakingTheFourthWall demolishes the fourth wall]] by crashing into the player's house.
* ''{{Infamous}}'': To be honest, there was no way Cole could have possibly avoided TheCall. [[spoiler: Kessler knew where he worked, asked for him to deliver a package by name and took him to an area with a large number of people before having him open it, so he could absorb plenty of neuro-electric energy to make him as powerful as possible. Kinda hard to avoid TheCall when the guy who's making it is you from the future and knows pretty much all there is to know about you.]]
* ''[[DevilSurvivor Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor]]'' somewhat inverts this; your character has a mighty destiny that he can take hold of in any way he wishes. However, he also has the option of [[RefusalOfTheCall running away from it all]]; the result of this course of action, however, is that [[spoiler: the huge majority of his friends, along with ''hundreds of thousands'' of other innocent people, die in a manner so horrific that it will {{Squick}} you out if you think about it too hard; it's so bad that ''the top Seraph of Heaven'' comes to bitch you out for being a coward]]... and the player ''knows'' this is how things will play out before committing to the option.

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[[folder: Web Original ]]

* In ''[[HomestarRunner Peasant's Quest'']], Trogdor burninates Rather Dashing's thatched-roof cottage, thus motivating him to liberate the peasant kingdom of Peasantry from the Burninator's influence forever.
**Too bad Trogdor is [[spoiler: totally invincible]].
* Active in ''DeptHeavenApocrypha'', where [[BecauseDestinySaysSo fate]] was so insistent that Nessiah wind up exactly as messed-up as [[YggdraUnion his canon self]], his only place of sanctuary--his previous school--was destroyed when [[spoiler:his unstable magic went out of control]].

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[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* Terry [=McGinnis=] from ''BatmanBeyond'' had his father murdered, which made him steal the batsuit and set him on the path of a new Batman. [[spoiler:In ''JusticeLeagueUnlimited'', it's revealed that project: Batman Beyond was planning to have his parents murdered in a manner similar to Bruce's to inspire him, but scrapped it due to moral restraint... Only to have some villain do their job for them eight years later. Didn't they get lucky?]]
** And Hello? The original Batman was set on his life's path by the death of his parents.
* ''AvatarTheLastAirbender'': Aang finds out he is TheChosenOne. Aang runs away. His entire race is exterminated. No one ever said the call was subtle.
* In the Stardust Crusaders part of ''JojosBizarreAdventure'', Jotaro's mother develops a Stand that's slowly killing her; the only way to save her is to destroy [[BigBad Dio]].
* In ''TransformersSuperGodMasterforce'', Hydra and Buster start killing truckers in order to eliminate Ginrai; since most of their victims are Ginrai's friends, this results in Ginrai being motivated to actually get involved in the fight.
* In ''BarbieAndTheDiamondCastle'', Liana [[JumpedAtTheCall jumps at the call]] (despite her friend Alexa's [[RefusalOfTheCall reluctance]]) after their home is destroyed by the BigBad's [[TheDragon literal dragon]].

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[[folder: Real Life ]]

* During World War II, the US was reluctant to enter the conflict, instead aiming for a peaceful resolution. The bombing of Pearl Harbor pushed them over the edge and precipitated the US's active involvement in the war.
** Note this was 1941, and Hawaii was not a state yet. So it was specifically The Call Knows Where Your Strategically-Located Island Territories With Military Installations Are.

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