Murder-Suicide

"Now the time has come. I put two bullets in my gun. One for me, and one for you. Oh, darling, it will be so beautiful."

— Annie Wilkes, Misery

A character kills one or more victims and then kills themselves at the end, either because they planned to from the beginning to avoid the inevitable consequences because they've gone on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and they have nothing left to live for, or because they were Driven to Suicide and decided that they were Taking You with Me, or as self-punishment for what they see as a Necessarily Evil murder.

This does not count if the murderer attempts to get away with their crimes and continue their life. It has to be part of the same crime, not a later attempt to avoid guilt or punishment.

This is often a Super-Trope to Suicide Attack, when a soldier or terrorist simultaneously kills both themselves and other people (usually with explosives). Also related to Pater Familicide, where a parent kills their partner and children, (possibly) before ending their own life. Not to be confused with the mutually-consensual Suicide Pact. Related to Suicide by Cop if they organize it so that someone else kills them. Sister tropes to Self-Disposing Villain and Driven to Suicide.

This is Truth in Television, and it has happened WAY too many times. This falls among tropes with No Real Life Examples, Please! noreallife

As a Death Trope,, many if not all spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Steins;Gate, after revealing that he is FB, Yuugo Tennouji/Mister Braun shoots and kills Moeka, and then kills himself to protect his daughter.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Discussed Trope when Riza tells Roy, who's gone mad with his lust for vengeance and lost sight of his ideals, that she is willing to keep her word and shoot him if there is no other option, but then she'll kill herself once the battle is over as she sees no point in living without him. Once Riza makes the latter point, Roy comes to his senses and apologizes.
• Gunslinger Girl:
  • Elsa murdered her handler Lauro and then killed herself because she felt that he could never love her the way she did him, and he actually treated her like shit.
  • Jose later does this to Henrietta as a part of a Suicide Pact. Henrietta accidentally shot Jose and so they decided to die together. This was foreshadowed when Henrietta discussed Elsa's murder-suicide earlier in the manga.
• Early in Inuyasha, Sango, unable to free her little brother Kohaku from Mind Control, plans to Mercy Kill him and then herself. Thankfully, Inuyasha, aware that Kohaku is Fighting from the Inside, stops her before she can carry out the act.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • Asuka's mother Kyouko tried to hang her daughter before doing so to herself. However, Kyouko was so delusion, she thought a rag doll was Asuka and hanged it instead. It's not clear whether Asuka's more angry that her mother committed suicide or that she didn't get to die along with her mother.
  • Naoko Akagi also may have killed herself after murdering Rei Mark I, via throwing herself off a platform (or so Fuyutsuki remembers in flashback—he specifically mentions her suicide in the manga). Though it's also possible (in both the anime and the manga) that Gendo was the culprit.
• Attempted at the end of Scrapped Princess. Prince Forsynth stabs Pacifica and then himself.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • Mami of all people attempts this in episode 10. In one of the alternate timelines, the poor girl completely snaps when she finds out that Magical Girls eventually become the witches they fight, which makes her believe that she and her friends should die before this happens. (And it's not helped by how she finds out: via Sayaka becoming a witch and having to be put down.) With her mind completely shattered, Mami succeeds in killing Kyouko via shooting off her Soul Gem and is this close to doing the same to Homura but is then mercy killed by Madoka who shatters Mami's Soul Gem with her beam arrows before she can kill everyone and herself, and then collapses in tears due to the trauma.
  • And then there's the Pater Familicide carried out by Kyouko's preacher father as a result of him finding out 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. Kyouko was the only survivor, and man, did that little episode ever mess her up.
• Sailor Moon: In the manga and Crystal, the titular heroine attempted to do this on a Brainwashed and Crazy Tuxedo Kamen, but fortunately, neither died. (He was protected by his watch, she by the just-manifested MacGuffin.) In the first anime, however, Moon managed to get to Tuxedo Kamen without killing him.
• Minai from Corpse Princess did this in her backstory. She killed her boyfriend after being beaten and abused by him and then committed suicide, only to come back to become a Shikabane Hime.
• Attempted by the emotionally broken Countess Francoise in Honoo no Alpen Rose, as punishment for her husband Germont's evil deeds.
• In Dear Brother, there are at least two attempts of this:
  • In the first one, Mariko snaps after Nanako tries to leave her home late at night and threatens with this. Luckily, Mariko's mother Hisako reacts fast enough to grab her daughter in a Cooldown Hug and let Nanako go.
  • In the second, a Rei who's feverish and drugged attempts to follow her and Fukiko's old Suicide Pact... with Nanako, whom she mistakes for Fukiko due to the fever. Nanako manages to make her react, and she stops herself only to collapse in tears.
• In Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden, Einosuke Okuda's suicide kills his already dying daughter Takiko by proxy, as by killing himself he somehow ^note (probably because he had the Universe of the Four Gods book and Takiko's hair ribbons with him when he did so) manages to kill the whole Okuda bloodline — and Takiko was the last one left.
• At the height of her horrifying Break the Cutie process, Kagero from Basilisk tries to do this to Gennosuke, the man she's always loved but cannot be with, via giving him a Kiss of Death right before falling victim to terrible internal injuries coming from Cold-Blooded Torture. Subverted in that right at the moment when she's about to fatally kiss him, her love rival Oboro manages to use her Anti-Magic powers and stops her from killing him. Though at least she has the small consolation of managing to die right next to Gennosuke.
• Avoided in Goodnight Punpun. Late into the series, we learn Punpun's mom wanted to commit this with him as a child. His father stopped her, however Punpun came it at the wrong moment and it looked like his dad was abusing her. This caused them to divorce. Punpun's dad was also charged by the police.
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba
  • Early on in the series, Urokodaki tells Tanjiro, whose younger sister Nezuko has been transformed into a human-eating demon, that if Nezuko attacks a human, Tanjiro must kill her then commit Seppuku to atone. It never happens, but it's later revealed that Urokodaki and his other student, Giyu, vowed to commit seppuku alongside Tanjiro.
  • When Rui turned into a demon and ate a human, his parents tried to kill him, intending to commit suicide to atone for their son's transgression, but Rui killed them instead. Rui realizes, too late, that his parents had genuinely loved him.
• Ino-Head Gargoyle: Shizuka Aomori plans to kill herself and Rin by blowing up the aquarium.

Audio Plays

• Iori from volume 2 of Yandere no Onna no Ko, who is unable to cope with the protagonist attracting other girls' attention and her inability to maintain faith in her god, decides to kill the protagonist and herself so that they can be Together in Death.
• Nahiro from volume 3 of Yandere Heaven threatens to do this to him and his sister if she opposes him or doesn't return his feelings.

Comedy

• A man catches his wife cheating on him. He takes his revolver, puts two bullets in it, and holds it to his temple. The wife starts laughing, and he snarls "Keep laughing, bitch, the next one's for you!"

Comic Books

• Sin City:
  • In That Yellow Bastard, John Hartigan commits suicide after killing Roark, Jr., realizing that he's the only link left leading to Nancy (the latest victim). By killing himself, he ensures that she is left alone.
  • Officer Mort, a minor character in A Dame To Kill For is seduced into helping the Femme Fatale, and murders his partner when he tries to make Mort listen to reason. He then kills himself out of remorse.
• X-23 attempts this, tracking down Wolverine with the intent of killing him and then herself to permanently put an end to the Weapon X project, and because she's so broken by everything that's happened to her to this point that she feels it's the only way out. Logan manages to defuse the situation by accepting responsibility for what was done to her since he willingly participated in Weapon X, but pleads with her not to throw her own life away because she wasn't allowed the same choice, making her an innocent victim rather than a guilty party.
• A minor incident in Watchmen involves a man murdering his two young children and then killing himself due to increasing paranoia about a brewing war with Russia.
• Wonder Woman:
  • In Wonder Woman (1987) Myndi Mayer's shooter kills himself by jumping onto an electrified fence rather than face the punishment for what he'd done. His death, and his actions against Myndi, are proven to be even more senselessly wasteful as it's revealed that although he didn't realize it Myndi had died of an overdose before he shot her.
  • Wonder Woman: The Once and Future Story: James shoots his wife, then holds her hostage while she's dying before turning the gun on himself. Diana manages to get there in time to prevent his suicide and fly his wife to a hospital in time to save her life. Understandably his wife finally decides to divorce him after this.
• Happens in a re-telling of the opera Turandot in comic book format. A Liu who has been driven insane after all the Break the Cutie stabs Prince Calaf to death right before he gives Turandot a True Love's Kiss, then cradles Calaf's lifeless body in her arms and tells Turandot this is her punishment for her cruelty, before stabbing herself as well.
• In Truth: Red, White & Black, Canfield's father kills his mother and then himself, believing his son to have been killed while in the army.

Fan Works

• Cor Et Cerebrum: Zsasz freaks out when Jason turns up alive after he'd killed him and carved himself a tally mark. In retaliation he murders the Joker for "tricking" him into targeting Jason and messing up the count and then cuts his own throat.
• In the first chapter of The Powerpuff Girls Re Imagined, Professor Utonium tries to shoot himself and his pet chimpanzee Jojo. He shoots Jojo but is stopped from shooting himself when the Powerpuff Girls come to life and suddenly hug him.
• The finale of For His Own Sake has Mayako locking Kagura and Akemi in a limo and driving them off a cliff, as revenge for them murdering her brother Takeru.

Films — Animated

• Camille in My Life as a Zucchini saw her father commit suicide right after he murdered his own wife (Camile’s mother), resulting in her being left with her emotionally abusive Jerkass of an aunt. Fortunately, at the end of the film, both Camille and Icare/Zucchini are Happily Adopted together by a kind man.

Films — Live-Action

• The school shooter in April Showers kills thirteen others and then himself.
• The Bourne Supremacy: It's revealed that Vladimir Neski's murder by his wife, who then turned the gun on herself, was actually a coverup of Neski's assassination and both Neskis were killed by Bourne who framed it so the police would think his wife was responsible.
• This is the main protagonist Richard's plan in Dead Man's Shoes.
• Fearless (2006), a martial arts movie, uses this as a turning point. The hero Huo Yuanjia killed a rival martial artist on the latter's birthday, only for the martial artist's adult son to exact Revenge by Proxy via killing Yuanjia's mother and daughter. When Yuanjia confronts him, the son kills himself in a last act of spite.
• Full Metal Jacket: After Private Pyle kills Sgt. Hartman, he seems to realize that he'll be severely punished, perhaps even executed, for his crime, and shoots himself in the mouth. He stops just short of killing Private Joker as well, only backing down when Joker approaches him as a human being and calls him by his real name (Leonard).
• The Hazing: Hack House, the supposedly Haunted House where the pledges have to spend Halloween night, was the scene of a grisly murder/suicide 60 years earlier. Jeremiah Hackford came home to find his wife in bed with the stable boy. He then went on a rampage: killing his wife, her lover, and everyone else in the house before killing himself.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: After Denethor becomes insane, he decides to burn himself and his last surviving son Faramir (who's unconscious, although Denethor believes he's dead) on a pyre in the House of the Stewards.
  Denethor: No tomb for Denethor and Faramir. No long, slow sleep of death embalmed. We shall burn like the heathen kings of old! Bring wood and oil!
• The Downer Beginning of Midsommar has this being the reason why Dani is the Sole Survivor of the Ardor family - her bipolar sister Terri, using carbon monoxide, killed herself and took their parents with her.
• Exaggerated Trope for laughs: At the end of Penn and Teller Get Killed, Teller accidentally kills Penn, then shoots himself. A guy who was just an actor, hired by Penn to play a trick on Teller to make it look like someone was trying to kill Penn, realizes that What With One Thing And Another there was no proof that it wasn't him, so he kills himself. Then his friend and a friend of his show up, whom he had invited to party with P&T after the planned Reveal to Teller. They kill themselves because there was nothing to prove that they didn't do it. Then the cops come in, see the situation, and off themselves too. A long zoom out occurs, as more and more people come in, discover all the dead bodies, and shoot themselves. We hear these rather than see them. The End.
• Princess Cyd: Cyd's brother killed their mother and then himself.
• Possessor: After each assassination, hitwoman Vos tries to make the person she's possessing for this kill themself, and it appears this is her employer's standard means of tying up loose ends. However, in neither case can she make this work.
• Robin and Marian: This film reinterprets Robin Hood's death scene from the medieval ballads, in which he is left to die by a treacherous abbess as he is being medically bled, into this. Marian, in the role of the abbess, poisons him as he lies wounded following a duel with the Sheriff, then takes the poison herself.
• The Sixth Sense: In the opening of the film, Malcolm's former patient Vincent shoots him before committing suicide. It appears that Malcolm survived the incident until the ending reveals that he has been Dead All Along.
• Star 80 is the dramatization of the infamous real-life case of Dorothy Stratten, whose Crazy Jealous Guy of a soon-to-be-ex-husband raped and shot her before offing himself.
• Stella Maris:
  • While learning about the outside world, Stella reads in a newspaper how a mother killed herself and her child rather than watch them starve to death.
  • The protagonist, Unity, kills Louise and then herself at the end of the film. Everyone thinks it was revenge for Louise beating her up three years ago, however John and Stella know better. Unity was trying to protect them from Louise.
• At the end of The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Walter shoots Martha and then kills himself.
• Titanic (1997): William Murdoch shoots and kills a fictional third-class Irish passenger, then commits suicide from guilt. A Historical Villain Upgrade, as the real William Murdoch was regarded as a hero and was last seen helping passengers.
• In Tomorrow Never Dies, Dr. Kaufman is a professor of forensic medicine and an assassin who uses his knowledge to expertly kill his victims in ways that look unsuspicious. He kills Paris Carver in a hotel room via strangulation and leaves her body on the bed for Bond to find and then tries to kill Bond with a headshot to make it look like a classic case of this. After a brief struggle, Bond manages to overpower the villainous professor and shoot him in the head with his own gun, fulfilling the doctor's plan, but not quite in the way he intended!
• In When Evil Calls, Kirsty kills Molly and then herself after wishing that the two of them would 'be together until death'.
• The pilot in the introductory story of Wild Tales gathers all people who contributed to his failed career as a composer on an airplane which he then rams into the ground, killing himself, all the people on the plane.

Literature

• The Alice Network: Subverted. Eve planned to kill herself after shooting Bordelon. However, her friends stopped her before she could actually go through with it.
• Johannes Cabal the Necromancer: At the novel's climax, Cabal has been driven to utter villainy to get souls signed over to Satan (for most of the book his victims were going to hell anyway) and Horst's brother is disgusted by this, disgusted that he was a part of it. He reveals to Cabal that he had stolen a contract (planning to get it signed for Cabal if he was doing it the right way) but Horst considers his brother too far gone. They have a brief conversation and Horst realizes he can't make Johannes understand his position, and vice-versa. Horst doesn't actually kill Cabal himself but knows that losing his wager with Satan means Cabal will die all the same- Horst considers it a kind of Karmic Death since Cabal was responsible for Horst becoming a vampire himself, a kind of death itself. This is ultimately subverted since while Horst does kill himself by walking into a sunlight field, Cabal is able to outsmart the Devil in the end but it still stands since Horst and Cabal were both believed he would die.
• Jude the Obscure: Jude's son, nicknamed "Little Father Time" for how somber he is for his age, hangs his two younger half-siblings and then himself because he believed that his father Jude and his surrogate mother Sue would be better off without their children; the family was poor, and Jude being shut out of the house they were granted shelter in for the night because there wasn't enough room was the nail in the coffin for his abysmally bleak outlook on life. The note he leaves behind simply says, "Done because we are too menny." Sue's grief causes her to miscarry less than a few days later and she takes the children's deaths as punishment from God unto her for marrying her cousin; she leaves Jude to remarry her ex-husband (who she didn't really love) as a form of self-flagellation, and Jude remarries his ex-wife (who he also didn't really love) in a drunken stupor — he later falls ill and dies in misery.
• Agatha Christie used this trope a few times:
  • And Then There Were None: Judge Wargrave commits suicide after arranging the deaths of everyone else, as he felt himself to be no better than his victims and he was fatally ill anyway.
  • In Death on the Nile, one of the murderers performs a Mercy Kill on the other, whom she loves, and then immediately commits suicide.
  • In Crooked House the Serial Killer is revealed to be a child. Her terminally ill great-aunt decides to commit a murder-suicide to spare the child from a life in a mental asylum (or worse, committing more murders as she grows up) and take the full blame for the murders to avoid the scandal.
  • In Elephants Can Remember, Poirot eventually finds out that General Ravenscroft killed Dolly (who was impersonating his dead wife Molly... whom she murdered) and then himself.
  • And in Curtain, Poirot himself kills Mr. X (i.e., Stephen Norton) in his only-ever Vigilante Execution to prevent him from committing any more murders-by-proxy; though Poirot doesn't shoot himself but sets the murder weapon (i.e., the gun) into Norton's hands, he does, however, choose an alternative way to die as atonement by keeping his heart medication out of reach so that he can have a calm, dignified end via heart condition with hours to spare.
• In Death Note: Another Note, Beyond Birthday is his own final victim.
• Brave Story, Mitsuru's father killed Mitsuru's mother and sister and then himself, which is Mitsuru's Freudian Excuse for being a complete dick. Another character also attempts murder-suicide, but fortunately doesn't succeed at either.
• This is how Deanna lost her family in The Girl in 6E: Her mother killed her other two children, her husband, and then herself.
  • Later, it's revealed that Deanna was the one who killed her mother. It was assumed to be a suicide because Deanna was assumed to have been at her grandparents' house the whole time — even by her grandparents.
• In The Great Gatsby, George Wilson shoots himself over the death of his wife Myrtle, taking Gatsby with him.
• An accidental case in A Brother's Price. Keifer got his wives to take him to a theater that his family had rigged to explode. He was supposed to get to a bathroom where he could weather the blast, but didn't show; the head of his family went in to fetch him and they both died, along with half the royal family.
• Jonathan Stonagal's and Joshua Todd-Cothran's death at the hands of Nicolae Carpathia in the Left Behind series is made out to be this through Carpathia brainwashing those present to witness the event at a secret meeting at the United Nations, with Buck Williams being the only one present not affected by the brainwashing because of God's protection on him. Chaim Rosenzweig, who at the time was brainwashed into believing this was the case, would later come to learn the truth once he becomes a believer.
• In My Ántonia, it happens to a nasty couple of money-lenders. Mr. Cutter kills his wife and then himself. He does it because he doesn't want her family to inherit their money.
• Evillious Chronicles:
  • In Evil Food Eater Conchita, Carlos Marlon attempts this after becoming afraid of what his beloved Banica had become. It didn't work out as planned. Namely, he tried to poison both of them and she was at that point immune to all poison.
  • In The Muzzle Of Nemesis, Nemesis Sudou attempts this after being ordered to kill her lover by the espionage force she works for. This doesn't work out as planned. After she kills Nyoze, she tries to shoot herself in the head, but survives due to a demon contract she unknowingly was part of.
• Heroes: Francis Cassavant openly declares in the first chapter that he intends to kill Larry LaSalle out of revenge. Later on, it's revealed that Francis plans to kill himself after the deed is done.
• Occurs in House of Sand and Fog, although it is changed to a double suicide in the film version.
• Near the end of The Bad Seed, Christine decides to do this with her Enfant Terrible eight-year-old daughter after finding out that she murdered two people, one right in front of her at that. She shoots herself and overdoses her daughter on sleeping pills. Christine ends up dying however Rhoda survives. Subverted in the 1956 adaptation. The Hays Code had a rule that antagonists could not get off scot-free. As a result, Rhoda was Killed By The Adaptation by getting hit by lightning at the end while Christine was Spared by the Adaptation.
• In Les Misérables, Éponine attempts to do this By Cop when she sends Marius to the barricade, then follows him there. She intends for them to die together rather than lose him to Cosette forever. Fortunately for Marius, she ultimately backtracks on the "murder" part by Taking the Bullet for him. Note that this only applies to the novel: in the popular musical, Marius's decision to go to the barricade is an independent one, Éponine is given substantial Adaptational Heroism, and she only follows him there to "be with him."
• Harry Potter: Helena Ravenclaw was killed by the Bloody Baron before he committed suicide.
• In the Transformers: Timelines short story Deadly Aim, Implied Love Interests Alpha Bravo and Offroad both form part of an uncontrollable Combining Mecha that could wreak destruction on the universe if left unchecked. To keep this from happening, Alpha Bravo decides to render the combiner inoperable by removing two of its components (removing just one would result in Impactor stepping in to fill the role) - he kills Offroad, and moments later is killed by one of their teammates for it.
• The Cat in the Stacks Mysteries: Book 10 ends with Charlie learning that Gerry Albritton's murderer was found dead by self-inflicted cyanide poisoning.
• When My Heart Joins the Thousand: As Alvie grew older, her mama became increasingly desperate to "fix" her autism. Finally, when Alvie was eleven, her mama drugged her to make her compliant, then drove off a pier into a lake with her. Alvie managed to escape from the car, despite her mother's efforts to drag her down. For months, the trauma left her Dumb Struck in a psychiatric hospital, but by suppressing the memories in what she calls the Vault, she eventually recovered enough to be placed in foster care. This is the reason Alvie is afraid to get close to Stanley - her mama insisted that she was killing her for her own good out of love, which makes her mistrust the whole concept of love.
• Petals on the Wind by V. C. Andrews features a mother killing herself and her 3-year-old son on the kid's birthday because she couldn't stand her abusive husband anymore. They both drown.

Live-Action TV

• In 24, Julia Milliken does this in the season 3 finale, killing Sherry Palmer (whose earlier actions led to the death of her husband) and then turning the gun on herself.
• The Andromeda Strain: Due to causing blood clotting in the brain, the people infected by Andromeda can become insanely violent, and kill themselves as well as anyone around them. One cop shoots multiple people in a diner before shooting himself in the head and several of the soldiers that become infected start firing at their fellow soldiers and off themselves if there's no targets left.
• Clarice: Tyson kills Nils, his father, and then himself.
• A number of killers in Criminal Minds do this rather than be caught. One of the most heartbreaking examples is the ending of the Season 8 episode Zugzwang wherein Diane, a stalker, having realised that the woman she was stalking, Dr. Maeve Donovan, was the girlfriend of BAU team member Spencer Reid, kills both herself and Maeve with a single bullet through both of their heads. The episode ends with Reid crying over his girlfriend’s corpse.
• Generally played straight on CSI, though it was inverted in one episode where a stalker attempted suicide in his crush's house, resulting in three people dying.
• The Devil Judge: Attempted twice, then subverted since the person planning to commit suicide survives.
  • Ga-on plans to kill himself and Professor Min. Yo-han interrupts him before he can go through with it.
  • Yo-han locks himself and the corrupt politicians in the courtroom then blows it up. He survives, but they don't.
• In the Korean Historical Drama Emperor Wang Guhn when Gung Ye is deposed and on the run, he has his highest General kill him by cutting off his head. The general has his second kill him, and then the second commits Seppuku.
• The horror anthology The Hunger (1997) has this in its second-season premiere "Sanctuary" as the backstory of its host character, Mad Artist Julian Priest: having lost his audience via his increasingly grisly work, even his agent no longer believed in him. Julian murdered the agent and proceeded to turn his own death into a grisly piece of performance art, figuring he would attain immortality as an artist this way...
• In Breaking Bad, Hector Salamanca did this when he and Walt colluded to find a way to kill Gus. Walt attached a car bomb to Hector's wheelchair and Hector detonated it when both Gus and Tyrus were in the same room as him, killing all of them.
• This happens in an episode of Inspector Rex, namely Moser's death. After Kurt Hauff inflicts Moser a fatal shot, he shoots himself.
• Dexter: In a season 6 episode Dexter solves one case of murder/suicide super quickly and the new detective is very impressed with his skills in blood spatter analysis.
• The X-Files: In the episode "Demons", Agent Mulder's weapon has been used in a crime and he doesn't remember what happened. He's suspected of murder and arrested, but it's found out that the couple's death was as a result of a murder-suicide.
• At the end of the Masters of Horror episode "Cigarette Burns", Kirby kills his late girlfriend Annie's murderously unhinged father under the evil film's effects because they both keep bringing her back with their remaining love for her. Moments afterwards he eats his own gun after pleading at another vision of her that he's sorry for everything.
• "Lines of Fire", a season 7 episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, dealing with a hostage negotiation with an unstable father holding his son and daughter hostage ended this way: the daughter escaped unharmed, but the father killed the son and himself. Mike Giardello, the cop in charge of the negotiations, ended up repeatedly kicking the man's dead body, screaming he didn't care that the man killed himself, but should have left his son alone.
• Oz: Guillaume Tarrant, a weak inmate who got his stint after demolishing an important statue, quickly finds himself bullied by several other inmates. When he gains possession of a gun through Adebisi, he kills his tormentors in front of everyone. He then turns the gun around on himself when the SORT team corners him.
• The Fall (2013): At the end of series three, Spector strangles a fellow patient and then himself, the former act being to hide himself in the man's room where he wouldn't be found right away.
• Supernatural:
  • In "Provenance", the Creepy Child killed her parents, her parents who adopted her and her own family, and then herself.
  • At the orphanage in "The Real Ghostbusters", Mrs. Gore killed three orphans before committing suicide.
• Harrow: In "Mens Rea" ("Guilty Mind"), Harrow is on duty when a murder/suicide pair is dropped off at the morgue. Harrow when the murdered half turns out to be a colleague of his. He is shocked when the 'suicide' half wakes up and proceeds to hold him hostage.
• At the beginning of Game of Thrones Season 7, we see that the farmer and daughter that Sandor had, his statement to Arya that he would never steal from anyone notwithstanding, taken silver from after spending the night there three seasons before because he didn't think they would be able to survive the onset of winter, have indeed died... The farmer stabbed his daughter, then himself, as they huddled, starved, in one of their rooms.
• The I-Land: K.C. killed her sons and then tried to kill herself, though she survived, ending up in prison.
• Near the end of the Loving murders storyline, two characters found themselves trapped in a car that was rapidly filling with carbon monoxide. Fortunately, they were rescued Just in Time. When it later turned out that one of them was the Serial Killer, both the other characters and viewers realized that she had been attempting to kill herself and take one last victim with her.
• Nos4a 2: Bing tries to kill himself and Manx by destroying the Wraith in a crusher. Wayne stops him, however.
• Defending Jacob: Laurie tries to kill Jacob and also herself at the end. Both survive.
• American Horror Story: Double Feature: After Mickey goads her into taking the Muse as part of a Sadistic Choice (the other option having been to be devoured by the Pale Ones), Karen kills him in retaliation by ripping his throat out. Then, not willing to live as a vampiric sociopath, she slits her own wrists and walks into the sea.
• In Day Break (2006) the conspiracy sometimes covers up murders that way, as illustrated by the dialog of two hitmen after the designated Fall Guy kills four of their colleagues and runs away:
  Buchalter: [into the phone] We're way past framing him now, sir. [listens to new orders]
  Fencik: So?
  Buchalter: Change of plans.
  Fencik: No more snatch and grab?
  Buchalter: Guy wanted for killing an assistant D.A. runs off with his girl. How's that make him look?
  Fencik: Desperate.
  Buchalter: Guilty as sin.
  Fencik: You know, desperate people, capable of anything, even murder.
  Buchalter: [wistfully] Murder-suicide... my specialty.
• World on Fire: Mrs. Rossler kills Hilda and then herself to spare her daughter being "euthanized".

Music

• The concept album Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory by Dream Theater involves this concept. A man named Nicholas undergoes hypnotherapy to discover that he lived a previous life as a woman named Victoria, who was murdered by her former lover - he arranged it to look as though her current lover (his brother) shot her and then committed suicide himself.
• Jimmy Buffett's song "Cuban Crime of Passion" has one at the end of the first verse, where pianist Billy Voltaire kills Shrimper Dan after finding the latter with his lover. All told in a jauntily upbeat manner.
  Then he pulled a knife/ Took poor Danny's life/ And then he turned his own cold hand.
• Kate Bush's song "The Wedding List" is about a Crusading Widow killing the man who shot her fiancé, then killing herself (along with the unborn child she didn't know she was carrying).
• Eminem:
  • In "Stan", Stan kills himself and murders his pregnant girlfriend by tying her up in the trunk of his car, then driving off a bridge.
  • The last track from Encore album ends with Eminem thanking the crowd, before shooting them and killing himself. A robotic voice ends the album saying, "See you in hell, fuckers."
  • In "Space Bound", Slim snaps his girlfriend's neck for cheating on him, then shoots himself in the head.
  • In "Bad Guy", Matthew Mitchell - Stan's little brother - kidnaps Eminem, throws him in the trunk of his car, and commits a murder-suicide by driving him off a bridge. However, this wasn't his original plan - he'd initially wanted to throw Eminem into the river, and only killed himself when he realised the cops were circling him.
• Martina McBride's "Independence Day" involves a battered wife burning down the family home with her and her abusive husband inside after their community refuses to help. The entire incident is narrated from the POV of their eight-year-old daughter, now an adult.
• German punk band Die Toten Hosen's Crazy Jealous Guy song "Alles aus Liebe" ("All For Love") ends each chorus with the singer promising "I'll show you how great my love is and kill myself for you", which in the last chorus changes to "...and kill us both." The song then ends with a Dramatic Gun Cock, two gunshots, a brief pause, and then a third. Yeah.

Theater

• In Othello, Othello stabs himself after he realizes that his wife who he just killed wasn't actually cheating on him.
• King Lear: Goneril stabs herself off-stage after a My God, What Have I Done? moment after poisoning her younger sister Regan out of jealousy and lust for Edmund during the final scene.

Video Games

• In the last level of The Classroom 1, a student comes in late to the classroom and pulls a gun on the teacher and another student, before shooting himself. He does not actively try to kill you but you have to be careful to not be between him and his target.
• The bad endings of Cry of Fear involve Simon killing Sophie and/or Doctor Purnell before turning the gun upon himself.
• Dead Space (Remake): This was the fate of protagonist Isaac Clarke's parents in the remake of the game. While the original game kept it vague on their status during the background log you got after completing the game, the remake adds more details on what happened to them before Isaac arrived at the Ishimura. Due to Isaac's father Poul Clarke being constantly away from the family on engineering jobs in space, his wife Octavia Clarke ended up joining the Church Of Unitology and ended up bankrupting the family because of her devotion while forcing Isaac to attend a lesser known college instead of the one he wanted to go to. Eventually, Isaac's girlfriend Nicole Brennan tried to convince Octavia to leave the church and caused her to have a crisis in her faith. After Poul came back from an engineering job, Octavia killed him and then took her own life with their bodies taken away by the church before Isaac could give them a proper burial. Because of this, Isaac's relationship with Nicole became strained as a result and eventually led him to push her to join the crew of the Ishimura and inadvertently got her killed as a result of the Necromorph outbreak in the game.
• In Fallout: New Vegas, this is a possible ending for Boone if you complete his companion quest by making him vengeful over the events of Bitter Springs, and complete the game as an NCR-allied character. It's stated that he loaded a pistol with only two bullets and traveled back to California in search of the NCR officer who ordered the attack on Bitter Springs.
• Gilius Thunderhead of the Golden Axe franchise intends to kill Death Adder, then promptly kill himself to be with his dead twin brother in death.
• In The King of Fighters 97, Yashiro kills Chris and Shermie and then himself in the New Face Team ending, to make the three into human sacrifices for Orochi. As Shermie dies in Yashiro's arms, he lampshades the trope by promising her that he will join her and Chris soon.
• Defied in Morimiya Middle School Shooting — while the Villain Protagonist doesn't care about the possibility of her rampage ending with her death, she has no intention of taking her own life, stating that she refuses to be "just another suicide statistic". Indeed, the only way to kill yourself is to accidently blow yourself up with a pipe bomb.
• In Persona 3, during the night of the Full Moon operation against the Strength and Fortune Shadows, Ken confronts Shinjiro, intending to kill Shinjiro for causing his mother's death two years ago. Takaya claims that Ken was planning on killing himself after the murder since he felt he had nothing left to live for. The claim about Ken being suicidal seems to be proven when Ken, after learning that Shinjiro is Secretly Dying, falsely claims to be the Persona-user who's helping S.E.E.S. find and defeat the Full Moon Shadows knowing that Takaya will kill him. Instead, Shinjiro sacrifices himself to save Ken, who, after a days-long Heroic BSoD, regains his will to live for his mother and Shinjiro's sake.
• In Planescape: Torment, it is possible to defeat the Transcendent One at the Fortress of Regrets by killing yourself with the Blade of the Immortal, as he will be destroyed if the Nameless One dies permanently.
• This is actually required for the good ending of Rule of Rose. When Stray Dog (Gregory Wilson) is made to murder the girls in the orphanage, he succeeds, and the following revelation that Wendy was masquerading as Joshua to manipulate him drives him to kill her, then kill himself. The other option is to simply kill him, which results in the other ending.
• In The Spectrum Retreat, this was Alex's original plan prior to his internment at the Penrose - to kill everyone he believed responsible for his son's death and finally themselves.
• In the Team Fortress 2 comics, Sniper's mother Lar-Nah promises to subject her incompetent husband to this once she runs out of wine, which she's been drowning herself in since he destroyed New Zealand and got them locked up in an underwater lab. She's made such a threat so many times Bill-Bel has grown desensitized to it.
  Bill-Bel: You know what would be nice, Lar-Nah? To get through one day without you proposing a murder-suicide.
• You can *ahem* ''persuade'' someone to do this for you in Yandere Simulator as a way of getting rid of your current romantic rival whilst getting no blood on your own hands. Honestly, just killing them both yourself is the kinder fate. In SNAP mode, after getting a Game Over and being unable to be with Senpai, Ayano stabs Senpai and then herself, killing anyone else she comes across. As seen in the live-action promo, this includes her rival if they manage to confess their love to Senpai.

Visual Novels

• Subverted in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony. One character puts forth the theory that the second victim of the third case killed the first victim, then committed suicide in such a way that their death would be mistaken for a murder, thus causing the others to fail to solve the case and be executed. However, this ends up not being the case for a few reasons.
• In Remember11, Utsumi does this in two Bad Ends, killing Keiko and then herself (and Satoru in the second one).
• In Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair, Hiro tells the story of a Clingy Jealous Girl whose possessive attitude toward her boyfriend alienated him and caused him to break up with her, resulting in her stabbing him to death and hanging herself. This ends up being the truth behind the case, with Momoko killing her boyfriend Hiro due to believing that he'd cheated on her with Kamen and killing her accomplice Kotoba (partly because she didn't like him and partly to tie up loose ends before hanging herself.
• Umineko: When They Cry: What Sayo was planning to do, though the Ushiromiya siblings end up killing each other (and everyone else on the island except for EVA and Battler) while they lay unconscious from a (blank) gun going off in their face. Sayo still ends up committing suicide out of guilt over planning and setting up the events which lead to the incident.

Webcomics

• Bug has an example where it's played for laughs when the bug exacts revenge on his web server by doing this.
• At the end of the first arc of Cheating Men Must Die, Liu Ruyan stabs the drugged emperor with the hairpin he gave her, then stabs herself in the neck.
• Two Guys and Guy has a report of this happening.
• The protagonists mother attempted to do this in YU+ME: dream . She succeeded but only in the "suicide" part.
• In Swageon and Glacigeon, Sylveon kills a dragon and then kills herself by the next comic.
• Welcome to Hell begins with Sock burying his parents after (accidentally) killing them. He then proceeds to stab himself in the chest. Afterwards, he wakes up in hell.

Web Original

• Spoofed in College University:
  Santa Claus: Looks like it's time for a good old murder-suicide.
• The Bad Seeds in Twig do this to the parents of the children they've replaced, essentially single-use assassination weapons in the forms of children.
• Player Two Start:
  • The O. J. Simpson case is far more open and shut in TTL; O.J. Simpson kills Nicole Brown before killing himself. Ron Goldman in this timeline would discover the bodies.
  • The culprit of the Valentine's Day Massacre, Chris Chandler, turns the gun upon themselves after shooting 21 people dead.
  • After committing the Kadokawa Massacre - targeting dozens of anime personnel associated with Kadokawa Entertainment, Kensaka Haku takes his own life.

Western Animation

• In The Legend of Korra, Tarrlok does this to himself and his brother Noatak, AKA Amon, when the two are escaping Republic City in the boat after the latter's defeat, using one of the Equalists' shock gloves to ignite the boat's fuel supply. It had been revealed that both were the sons of a powerful bloodbending criminal who raised them as agents of his revenge after being depowered and escaping the city, and Tarrlok had realized that the two of them would only continue their father's cycle of evil in spite of both having tried to change things. And yes, even though the series is Darker and Edgier than Avatar: The Last Airbender, it remains a kid's show, on which the murder-suicide is not merely implied or given a Discretion Shot, but happens on-screen.
• South Park:
  • In one episode, the kids pretend to be detectives and actually join the state police. Towards the end, they find out two cops were in with the mob. Then one of them killed his partner, fearing that he'd betray him. Then he figured the only one left who could possibly betray him is... himself, so he ties up the last loose end.
  • At the start of "Dances With Smurfs", the kid who does the morning announcements, Gordon Stolski, is suddenly attacked by a crazed man who mistakes him for a truck driver who's sleeping with his wife simply because their names are similar. The jealous husband murders a teacher who tries to make him leave, then Stolski, and finally himself.
    [After shooting Stolksi] Look at you now. We're all dead. [gunshot]
• Used in the Hey Arnold! episode "Ghost Bride". The titular phantom was a woman whose fiance left her at the altar and married her sister instead. She murdered her sister and brother-in-law, and when the police showed up and saw her, she jumped out the window and died.
• This happened at the end of the Mr. Magoo Frankenstein special where Dr. Frankenstein destroyed the monster's lab, taking both him and the monster with it.
• One flashback in Metalocalypse shows us that William Murderface's parents died this way; his father killed his mother with a chainsaw, then killed himself. With the same weapon.
• Batman: The Animated Series:
  • In "Baby-Doll", the title character kidnaps the rest of the cast of her old show and gathers them around a cake with a Dynamite Candle, with no sign that she intends to get out of the blast range. Fortunately, one of the captives is a disguised Robin ready for his Big Damn Heroes moment.
  • Baby Doll does this again in "Love is a Croc". After discovering that Croc never loved her, she tricks him into helping her blow up the nuclear power plant, intending to kill herself, Croc, and all of Gotham.

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