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alt title(s): Its Personal The cardinal rule in going after someone with an intention to kill was not to make it personal — which it almost always ended up being anyway. It did with me.
The protagonist catches bad guys for a living (usually at a rate of about one a week), but this time, the bad guy has decided that he doesn't like the protagonist. Instead of doing what any sensible psychopath would do and simply toss a grenade in the character's window, the psychopath takes creepy photos of the character's kids, abducts the character's wife, kicks the character's dog, and above all, leaves calling cards and clues to ensure that eventually he'll get caught. The bad guy (often a Big Bad) knows about the protagonist's Fatal Flaw and is more than willing to exploit it.
Related trope — In order to establish that a bad guy is really bad (as opposed to the not-so-bad guy last week?) he kills the hero's family, brother, mother, dog, or what have you. Or his own henchmen. Or easily dispatches some other bad guy who's previously been established or otherwise appears to be really bad.
The Stuffed Into The Fridge and Friendly Target tropes are invariably a setup for this.
Usually eventually leads to Not So Different. For a more specific form of this, see You Killed My Father. Often enough, This Means War.
The Disposable Woman is a character who exists only to make Its Personal happen. When it gets personal, characters insist they must work alone.
One common variant is to order/trick allies aside to set up an one-on-one duel without interference. This can be risky but the avenger wouldn't risk anyone else getting hurt/someone stealing his precious right to do that peculiar kill himself!
If a character has this as his primary motivation rather than as part of another quest, then he's Not In This For Your Revolution.
Contrast when it's not personal, or at least they claim it's not.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- Soukou No Strain; as if her beloved older brother killing her whole school didn't already give Sara Werec this complex, he goes and offs Carris too, just after exposing her true identity. True, he did have a bit of a suicide wish...
- The final arc of Rurouni Kenshin has Kenshin fighting Enishi Yukishiro, his brother-in-law because Kenshin accidentally killed Tomoe Yukishiro, Enishi's sister, and Kenshin's first wife. Enishi makes it clear that this is personal, by sending Kenshin into a "living hell" by defeating him and killing Kenshin's lover Kaoru, though he actually only kidnaps her.
- This seems to run a lot in Gundam 00. Dark Action Girl in training Louise Halevy wants a piece of the Celestial Being for what she thought to be massacring her whole family and crippling her. Meanwhile, many people wants a piece of Ali Al-Saachez for several reasons:
- Setsuna F. Seiei wants him dead for manipulating him to kill his own parents and becoming a purposeless child soldier.
- Tieria Erde wants him dead for killing Lockon Stratos, his partner and first love.
- Nena Trinity wants him dead for killing her brothers. Ironically, she's the one who actually killed Louise's family
- And Ali's eventual killer? Lyle Dylandy, the twin brother of the original Lockon Stratos who now took his name. In an aversion of this trope, he didn't exactly kill Ali because he killed his brother.
- Despite already hunting him for the nine-tailed fox, Pain happened to make things very personal for Naruto when he killed Jiraiya, forced Kakashi into a Heroic Sacrifice, and destroyed the Leaf Village. After injuring and potentially killing Naruto's toad allies, his stabbing Hinata after she told Naruto she loved him is enough to force Naruto into his six-tailed state.
- In Yu Yu Hakusho, Toguro capitalizes on this trope in order to get Yusuke to fight him at his full strength. He does this by first killing Genkai before the finals, and then during his fight with Yusuke, seemingly kills Kuwabara, but he had only pretended to. Ironically, 50 years ago, a demon named Kairen had killed all his students and forced him to come to the Dark Tournament, which precipitated his Start Of Darkness.
- In Monster, Eva is only linked to Johan by her connection to Tenma. But when Martin dies, Eva decides she's going to go after him herself.
- Sonic X: Seeing his friends attacked, injured and imprisoned by the Metarex in the episode Testing Time gives us the first appearance of Dark Sonic
 in animated Sonic continuity. And also show us a side of Sonic that we've really never seen in full swing before - namely the part of him that you do not, under any circumstances, piss off.
- The Demon Arc in Mahou Sensei Negima turned out to be very personal indeed for Negi when Wilhelm revealed to him that he was the demon that petrified his hometown. Cue Negi blindly charging, and having to be pulled out of the line of fire by Kotaro.
- Also, Fate Averruncus. Initially, to Negi, it was just a really powerful evil guy that had to go down, but it was personal for Fate because Negi managed to hit him. Subsequent encounters made it personal for Negi as well.
- Happened again with Negi to Governor General Kurt Godell after learning Godell was one of many responsible for the destruction of his hometown. It gets pretty intense after Negi literally turns into a demon. Even got to the point that Shrinking Violet Nodoka couldn't use her mind reading book to tell what was going on inside Negi's head save for three sentences "Make them atone. Don't Forgive. Kill them all."
- Terrorist group in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha that threatens the safety of The Multiverse? Pretty bad, but saving worlds and stopping such threats are part of Nanoha's job description. Terrorist group that kidnapped the Mysterious Waif that Nanoha had taken in as her daughter? Okay, now it's personal.
- In Bleach, Leroux Zommari, on the verge of defeat against Byakuya, rants about Soul Reapers persecuting hollows and declaring that they have no right to judge them merely for eating humans. Byakuya then cuts him down, replying that his actions had nothing to do with Soul Reaper duties, but for Zommari's trying to kill his sister Rukia.
- In Full Metal Panic, it's revealed that Gauron and Sousuke initially had nothing against each other. And then Gauron decided to attack the Guerilla village Sousuke had been living in, mass slaughtering all the citizens while Sousuke and Kalinin were out. Not to mention how, after that, he decided to accept a job from the KGB to go after Sousuke and Kalinin and kill them. After all that... it became personal.
- In Knights, Mist is especially driven to stop the Corrupt Church and their witch-hunts after seeing his own mother burned at the stake, and at his father's hands.
- Anti Villain example: In Eureka Seven, Ray and Charles Beams fight against Gekkostate not merely because the military pays them to (though that is a factor), but also because of a grudge against Eureka, whom they believe is to blame for Ray's infertility.
Comic Books
Film
Literature
Live Action TV
- CSI usually starts or ends a season with an "It's Personal" episode.
- When the investigators fly off the handle, they sometimes violate some of the suspects' rights with their outbursts (Catherine Willows and Sara Sidle are especially guilty of this) or some of the ways they try to obtain evidence. As just one example, getting a suspect to give a urine sample through saying it's required by law, when it actually isn't, sounds like grounds to have the evidence thrown out of court, given that it was obtained under false pretenses, or was coerced.
- In early seasons, even if there weren't a direct relationship between the investigators and the criminals, the nature of the crime would often make the investigator take it personally themselves. For instance: domestic abuse, or overall violence towards women? Sara would sympathize. Broken marriages, or mothers (especially the working kind)? Catherine. Damaged childhoods? Nicky. Grissom himself explicitly stated that drug dealers and people who harm children make him furious.
- "You prey on innocent children, and you think we came all the way out here to bust you for posession, you dumb punk?!"
- CSI Miami, by contrast, features such episodes all the time. And when it's not threatening the characters, it's arresting the characters. It's so frequent, you'd think the whole place would get shut down by Internal Affairs just on...(cue dramatic sunglasses removal)general principles.
- Law And Order, Its Personal episodes give us rare glimpses into the characters' home lives/personal histories (Logan confronts the priest who abused him in childhood, Logan tracks down his partner's killer, Briscoe tracks down his daughter's killer).
- Law And Order: Special Victims Unit's Det. Olivia Benson is searching continuously for her mother's rapist/Benson's biological father. While only one SVU episode dealt with investigating Ma Benson's rape, this Back Story was touched on in any episode involving pregnancy from a rape and at other times as well. Det. Benson has also been stalked by perpetrators at least three times in six seasons. On the other hand, her partner, Elliot Stabler, has his buttons pushed by any crime involving children (which is roughly every episode that doesn't involve a rape). The series itself could be said to be made up almost entirely of Its Personal episodes, with each investigator having buttons that make them consider the case personal. (Why let someone work on a case they are clearly biased towards? No one ever plants evidence in this world, I guess...)
- Benson took it to the extreme when someone who was convicted because of her testimony and was later cleared by DNA evidence eight years later started actually killing people. Other people she had brought in and testified against. She took it so personally that she said she would accept responsibility for the man's crimes. He committed Suicide By Cop before the situation was resolved.
- Law and Order: Criminal Intent did it too, with Goren and Eames finally solving the murder of Eames' late husband and also with the illness and death of Goren's mother.
- Happens with some frequency in ER.
- This is the entire character description for Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel villain Angelus. And, for that matter, his Nemesis, Holtz.
- Also, Oz references the line as a suggestion after some failed quipping during sans-Buffy patrolling at the beginning of Season 3.
- Punned in Doctor Who episode "The Runaway Bride":
The Doctor: It was all in the job title: Head of human resources.
Lance: This time, it's personnel.
- A suspiciously similar joke was made by Rory Bremner on Mock The Week about David Blunkett.
- It's possible that "The Idiot's Lantern" went this way after the Wire fed on Rose, since the Doctor says upon finding out:
The Doctor: There's not a force on the planet that can stop me now!
- Used as a Story Arc in Profiler and season one of Millennium.
- After distinguishing itself in the beginning by not having episodes of this type, Without A Trace has since had at least three.
- 24 features this in pretty much every series. Over six hellish days, Jack has had to deal with people he's already killed, his former partner, his former mistress, his mentor and his own family. He seems to have accepted this as standard practice, though- he gets quite upset early on when his wife is murdered, but when his best friends are killed in Series 5 he barely even blinks.
- Alex Mahona and Wyatt in Prison Break.. And it's not the cool kind.
- Common on NCIS, which contains quite a few examples of members of the team being either targeted for or accused of murder, in addition to the fact that Gibbs especially takes his ties to both the Navy and the Marine Corps seriously.
- If there is an episode of The X-Files that involves anything relating to Samantha Mulder, it's probably this trope.
- A more subtle example is in Season 3's "Revelations," where Scully, investigating a case of a young boy with stigmata, is forced to confront the gulf between her Catholic faith and the scientific procedures she must follow as a federal agent.
- Used twice in the pilot to Leverage. Dubenich gets Nate to take on the job because the company they're targeting is ensured by Nate's old company, who refused to pay for the procedure that could have saved his son. When Dubenich turns on Nate and the team, Nate strikes back because he used his son's death as emotional blackmail.
- ''Survival Of The Fittest has another example of this being done to a villain. Lenny Priestly takes any attack (or anything he ''thinks'' is an attack) as personal and immediately becomes even more psychotic than usual. Justified one at least on occasion though, where somebody had, to be fair, stabbed his sister through the chest.
- Played with on Little Mosque On The Prairie when Reverend Magee beats Baber in a Koran quiz and the two of them have a fight over it: on accepting a rematch, Magee declares that this time it's personal, but Baber points out it was personal for him the first time, too. "Seriously, my feelings were hurt."
- In Lost, The Others tend to see the survivors of the plane crash as interlopers on their island, and take a somewhat detached attitude to them, but their decisions, particularly abducting Walt, end up being personal for the survivors, especially when Sawyer executes Tom after he surrenders "for taking the kid off the raft".
- In a pivotal scene in Firefly, Mal and his tormentor are struggling near the edge of a Malevolent Architecture pit when Mal's allies arrive. It is played straight at first: Jayne raises his gun to shoot the tormentor, but is stopped by Zoe. "Jayne. This is something the Captain has to do for himself." Then they invert it. Mal: "No! No it's not!" Zoe: "Oh." The ensemble promptly riddle the tormentor with bullets.
- In Life, Crews has pretty much taken the Roman situation to an Its Personal level after finding out that his partner's been abducted, probably by Roman, who has shown an increasing interest in her.
- Although on Stargate SG-1, the team seems to take it personal every time one of the main characters is hurt/threatened/kidnapped/killed/whatever, the conflict with the Goa'uld were personal for both Daniel (because of what happened to his wife) and Teal'c (because of his history as Apophis' First Prime). The team actually gets called on taking things too personally a few times, but they generally shrug it off.
- Fundamental to the show The Mentalist, where the titular mentalist, Patrick Jane, is only helping the California Bureau of Investigation because they're his best shot at catching Red John, the Serial Killer who murdered Jane's wife and daughter. Also the reason why, at the start of the second season, the CBI has taken the Red John case away from the team Jane works with, because the team head was also losing her detachment from the case and indulging Jane's recklessness too much.
Video Games
Web Comics
Web Original
- Doctor Horrible's rivalry with Captain Hammer is more or less a fact of life for the both of them, with the Doctor trying to take down Hammer with nonlethal means, and getting thoroughly pounded on every time by the Captain. However, when Hammer announces to Horrible that he's going to sleep with Penny "just because you want her," it gets personal. The normally pacifistic Doctor upgrades his Stun Ray to a Death Ray, and makes his intentions quite clear with his next song:
It's a brand new day, and the sun is high
All the birds are singing that you're gonna die!
Western Animation
- Spoofed in the Kids Next Door episode "Operation DODGEBALL", where the self-proclaimed "Dodgeball Wizard" lures Numbuh 4 into a dodgeball match by kidnapping his family. After finding the ransom note, Numbuh 4 dramatically declares "This time, it's personal!". When Numbuh 2 points out neither of them have ever met this Dodgeball Wizard, Numbuh 4 responds he just wanted to use that line.
- An episode of The Simpsons has recurring character Sideshow Bob attempting to rig the election for Mayor of Springfield by including the names of dead people and animals as those who voted for him. When Lisa's cat Snowball appears on the list, she angrily declares that "now Its Personal!" Bart points out that Bob had previously tried to kill him.
- Another episode has Alec Baldwin use this line (in reference to Homer). When Kim Basinger and Ron Howard just look at him, Alec says, "What? He has our underwear!"
- Another episode subverts with little subtlety - in an episode of Police Chief Wiggum becoming determined to be a good cop (for the episode, of course), he realizes evidence for a case which involves a food. He tells the other cops that they're going to the Kwik-E-Mart. Lou says with exasperation "Chief, you already sent us there two times today.", to which Wiggum answers "Yeah, but this time, its not personal."
- Parodied in an episode of Futurama, when giant alien brains are trying to gather all knowledge in the universe.
Fry: So they're trying to learn things? The bastards!
Nibblonians: Yes. Then, once it has collected all data in the universe it will open its protective shell, so as to scan itself.
Fry: I'm as mad as I've ever been!
Nibblonians: Then, it will destroy the universe, so no new information can come about.
Fry: Now it's personal.
- Subverted in Batman Beyond. Terry believes his relationship with Season One Big Bad Blight is personal. Blight is ignorant of this.
Blight: [being stalked from the shadows by Batman] Who are you?!
Batman: [unseen, pauses] You really want to know?
Blight: Yes!
- Then again, Blight was turned into a "walking meltdown" thanks to a fight with Batman, and Batman kept foiling his various schemes, to the point where Blight visably lost his temper at even the mention of Batman's name. So in a way it was personal for Blight too...just for completely different reasons.
- In the Kim Possible episode "Car Alarm", the tweebs supe up Kim's Cool Car after Motor Ed blows outruns them. Emphasized by the shifty camera angle and the fact that they actually say "This time its personal!"
- Kim herself claims that it's way personal when Ron is kidnapped. And after everything that happens to her in So the Drama, can you blame her for wailing on Drakken and damn near cold bloodedly killing Shego?
- The fighting that goes on between The Powerpuff Girls and Mojo Jojo is taken to a new level when it revealed early on (and mentioned several times afterward) that Mojo could actually be considered the girls' true father, since he was directly responsible for their creation.
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