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Older siblings as bullies towards their younger siblings as well as others.
Related tropes: Kids Are Cruel, Teens Are Monsters (because the big brother/sister is often a teenager as compared to the younger more sympathetic protagonist).
Compare Aloof Big Brother, Sibling Rivalry. Contrast Big Brother Instinct; oftens mixes with it in the " The only one allowed to bully my little brother is me!" sense.
Unfortunately, very Truth in Television ... and sometimes even a big sister.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- Sonic in Sonic The Comic is this to Tails, though they're not blood related. He's constantly calling him "Pixel Brain" and berating him, though it's shown he does care for him.
Film - Live Action
Literature
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer starts off with the suggestion of this, when Tom scraps with the local dandified boy; each boy swears he'll get his big brother to beat up the taunter, with Twain adding that both big brothers were imaginary.
- Ender's Game: Peter to Ender and Valentine.
- Harry Potter's cousin/adopted brother Dudley Dursley. He improves too.
- A Song of Ice and Fire has many examples.
- Gregor Clegane, towards Sandor and their unnamed baby sister. He kills the little girl and almost does the same to the little boy, leaving him badly scarred.
- Viserys Targaryen towards his younger sister Daenerys.
- Also, Joffrey Baratheon to Tommen and Myrcella. It's strongly implied that he actually raped them.
- Theon Greyjoy's memory of his brothers Rodrik and Maron are cheifly of "Rodrik's drucken cuff and Maron's cruel japes.
- It seems to run in the Greyjoy family. Theon's uncle Aeron still has nightmares about his older brother Euron Crow's Eye. As with Joff above, it's strongly implied Euron raped Aeron.
- Edmund Pevensie is this to Lucy in the beginning of The Chronicles of Narnia, despite not being the oldest. In fact, Peter harshly calls him out on it when he pretends to side with her and then humiliates her.
- In the first movie, it's explained why he does this: he feels empty without his father, who's off at war.
- Played for Drama in When She Was Good by Norma Fox Mazer. Em's older sister Pamela brutally abuses her, physically and emotionally. In fact, she is suspected by psychologists to have some sort of mental illness. Em and Pamela end up moving out, and Em works while Pamela stays at home and forces her to have a very strict routine, cooking for her and cleaning for her. The book deals with what happens after Pamela unexpectedly dies of a stroke.
- In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Rodrick. Just like in the movies, he's a complete Jerk Ass who just abuses Greg and his friends gets away with it. Greg has his moments and had intended to become this to Manny, but he's much less of a jerk than his brother and a couple times when he's done stuff to Manny it was usually good-natured. (Likely because he can't get away with a thing with Manny.)
- Fisk claims that his older sister Judith in the Knight And Rogue Series was and perhaps still is one of these (he expresses a desire repeatedly for her to turn out to be the criminal they're tracking). While some of the past actions he claims sound rude at best, she does nothing worse than one-up him in arguments while present in the story.
- Amelia Peabody got this from pretty much all her brothers, but especially her oldest brother James:
"Dear Amelia. You haven't changed since you were a little girl. Do you remember the time..."
There he stuck, probably because he couldn't recall any fond memories of our childhood. I certainly had none that included him.
- Charlie Angelfield in The Thirteenth Tale intends to make a victim of his much younger sister. This doesn't work as planned, and they instead become more like partners in crime.
- Corelle enjoys picking on and deriding her slightly younger brother Jerin in A Brothers Price. Frustrated, he wants to hit her but is afraid of her retaliation. As the book goes on and under the eye of Eldest, she becomes more protective of him and less hostile.
- Aun in The Shamer Chronicles beats his younger half-sister, Rose.
- Patricia AKA "The Troll" in Patrick Mc Manus's humorous stories of his childhood.
Live-Action TV
- Ian and Paul Branagh to Robin in Young Dracula.
- The Wonder Years: Kevin's big brother Wayne.
- Malcolm in the Middle plays this quite well. The real oldest brother, Francis was implied to be this before being sent to military school; however he's more of a Big Brother Mentor during the series though he can still have moments that fall under this trope. The next eldest brother, Reese fills this role for Malcolm & Dewey for the majority of the series, although Malcolm gives as much as he he receives and joins in with bullying Dewey; and after the birth of Jamie, neither one bullies him & both assume similar roles to what they share with Francis. Dewey, being the youngest for most the series, doesn't fall under this but gets a few The Dog Bites Back episodes; and after Jamie's born, complains that it's not fair that Reese & Malcolm got the Cool Big Bro Francis when they were kids, but Francis left for military school before Dewey form any memories of having a cool big brother - Francis then reveals that he treated Malcolm & Reese the same way they treat Dewey when he was younger.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: Robert Picard to Jean-Luc, as shown in "Family".
- That '70s Show: Female example, with older sister Laurie being this to Eric. No wonder he and his friends call her "the witch".
- Brad and Randy to Mark on Home Improvement, especially in the earlier episodes, when they were too young to really know better.
- Frasier: Crane has elements of this towards his little brother Niles. However, Niles is far from a poor helpless victim of his brother's torment, and can usually give as good as he gets.
Video Games
Visual Novels
- In the first season of Cause Of Death, constant abuse from his sister eventually causes Brian Resler—better known as Eric Mills—to snap, kill her, and ultimately become the Serial Killer known as the Maskmaker.
Webcomics
- Mike to Angel in The Good Witch, but only in their original history; his memory of that has been erased.
Web Original
Western Animation
- In The Simpsons, Bart is sometimes like this toward Lisa.
- Although more often than not, Lisa is smart enough to outmatch Bart, and turn the table on him.
- Ed Edd N Eddy:
- Eddy's brother.
- Lee and Marie Kanker to their younger sister May.
- Inverted with little sister Sarah bullying big brother Ed.
- Mac's cruel older brother named Terrence from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.
- Kick Buttowski's older brother Brad.
- In one episode, Kick gets wrestling lessons from a former wrestler, whose wrestling school was taken over by his own Big Brother Bully, who in turn is teaching Brad as well.
- Raphael in the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon was shown to bully Michelangelo when they were little, although he is a bit nicer to him when they're older he does smack him when he says something stupid.
- The tradition continues in the new Nick Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, where Raphael's tendency to smack Mikey around a bit extends to Donatello and even Leonardo (the last of which, at least, will hit back). A lot of Raphael's humor involves various insults leveled at his brothers.
- South Park:
- Tommy Turnbull's older brother, Donnie, from Robot Boy.
- Duncan Douglas, the older brother of Dexter Douglas.
- Inverted in Avatar The Last Airbender, where the little sister, Azula, bullies her big brother Zuko. Eventually this turns into a Cain and Abel relationship.
- Bobby's World: Bobby's older brother Derek
- Hey Arnold: Gerald's older brother Jamieo.
- In the Mega Man cartoon, Proto Man was this.
- Recess: Averted with Vince's older brother Chad, subverted with T.J.'s older sister Becky, since she's nicer to him at the end of Recess Schools Out, but mostly just a Bratty Teenage Daughter, and as for Spinelli's older brother Joey, not much is known about him...except that he's in prison.
- In Rugrats, Drew was like this to Stu when they were kids and doesn't quite seem to have grown out of it.
- Vicky is this to her little sister Tootie in The Fairly Oddparents.
- The first few episodes of Stanley depicted Lionel as this; He turned into a Cool Big Brother after that.
- Family Guy inverts this with Chris, Meg, and Stewie. Meg is the eldest sibling, but she is constantly abused and bullied by Chris, who is the middle child. Stewie, being the youngest (and a baby) of the three, also abuses Meg, but not as much as Chris and has made attempts to stick up for Meg on a few occasions.
- Fred's brother from Time Warp Trio.
- The third season of Superjail! introduced "The Triplets", a group of older brothers to the Twins. Immediately in their introduction, they proceed to verbally intimidate the Twins. After they all meet face-to-face, the Triplets proceed to beat the Twins up and humiliate them. We then learn that sibling rivalry can escalate to the point of wars on their planet if the younger siblings don't properly respect their elders.
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