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I built a pillar over against his city gate, and I flayed all the chief men who had revolted, and I covered the pillar with their skins; some I walled up within the pillar, some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes, and others I bound to stakes round the about the pillar; many within the border of my own land I flayed, and I spread their skins upon the walls; and I cut off the limbs of the officers, of the royal officers who had rebelled.
—Ashurnasirpal of Assyria
Ahhh...Fresh Meat!
Want to make sure everyone knows exactly how bad your Bad Ass is? Or how crazy your Ax Crazy gets?
Add "The Butcher" onto his name. (The Butcher is Always Male almost Always Male.) You'll never see "The Baker" or "The Candlestick Maker" used this way, we guarantee. One wonders what is the general opinion of this trope to real butchers... (It's probably part of why many now prefer the more prosaic, as well as descriptive, "meat-cutters".)
Used so often in fiction and Real Life that it has started to pop up regularly on characters as an ironic nickname, either because it's the polar opposite of their actual personalities, or because the character is actually a hero stuck with the "bad" name due to enemy propaganda or some kind of major misunderstanding they have been unable to straighten out.
Sometimes it's slapped onto a military figure as a kind of backhanded compliment: "You did what you had to do, and we're glad you got the job done, but just check out that body count you racked up in the process!"
If you encounter "The Butcher" in fiction, you should hope that he's the ironic kind. Otherwise, you should leave. Quickly.
In video games, this is sometimes a title you can earn if you let your on-screen persona behave badly enough. Congratulations...?
Not to be confused with Jim Butcher, author of The Dresden Files. At least, we hope not.
Note that in Real Life this term is never used in the ironic sense, although the "backhanded compliment" (or the "disputed reputation") varieties do appear.
Judging from these examples, the likelihood of being called "The Butcher" doubles if you come from someplace that starts with B.
A common subversion is that a person with this title might turn out to be an actual butcher.
Fictional examples used straight
Anime and Manga
- Both the anime and manga versions of Fullmetal Alchemist have a serial killer named Barry whose actual job is as a butcher. When introducing himself to Al at one point, he notes one of his nicknames was "Barry the Butcher", but adds that he much preferred the name he usually goes by: Barry the Chopper.
- The main villain from the 70s Super Robot anime Zambot 3 is called "Killer the Butcher" - as if just "butcher" wasn't evil enough.
- The main character of Rurouni Kenshin, Kenshin Himura, is also known as the Hitokiri Battousai, or "the Manslayer." Being The Atoner of a violent past as an assassin, Kenshin both subverts this as a peaceful man who adheres to Thou Shalt Not Kill (going so far as to use a reverse-bladed sword to knock opponents out), and plays it straight when an enemy pushes him far enough that his murderous golden-eyed "Battousai" side kicks in.
- In the manga Mercenary Pierre, Pierre is known as "The Butcher" for having murdered the commander he worked under; While most know him only as the illegitimate son of the famed Armand de la Flute, he's notorious throughout the mercenary world for having committed such a grave act.
Comics
- Remi Rome from 100 Bullets who is also works at a meat packing factory.
Film
- Boris the Butcher from the film The Man Who Knew Too Little is something of a parody. He's certainly a brutal and ruthless Career Killer (we're told that he once decapitated a man). But he's also a literal butcher as his day job.
- In the film version of Wanted, the Butcher is a brutal knife fighter.
- In Wild Wild West (1999), General "Bloodbath" McGrath is also known as "The Butcher of New Liberty", for the annihilation of a free slave town that he didn't actually commit.
- Bill "The Butcher" Cutting, the Magnificent Bastard extraordinaire from Gangs Of New York. Bill runs his gang from his butcher shop and uses his skill with knives to his advantage in gang rumbles. He even tutors the art of knife-fighting using a suspended pig carcass.
- In Hitch, the ancestor of a main character is called "The Butcher" for the usual reason. Hitch thought he was just an ordinary butcher and is distressed when the descendant bursts into tears at the mention of his name.
Literature
- The Butcher Boy was one of the people-eating giants in Roald Dahl's The BFG.
- The guerilla 'El Matador' from the novel Sharpe's Gold - pretty much 'The Butcher' only in Spanish.
- Geralt, the main character of Andrzej Sapkowski's The Last Wish (recently turned into a PC game called The Witcher), is known as "The Butcher of Blaviken" after one of the book's stories, a matter of thwarted revenge, a high body count and a really twisted Snow White variant.
- A Song of Ice and Fire introduced King Cleon, who styles himself "the Great" but who most refer to as The Butcher King. He did used to be an actual butcher, but lives up to the traditional implications as well.
- In Wild Cards, superpowered secret serviceman Billy Ray goes by 'Carnifex', although he's more of a violent Jerkass than anything else.
- One of the characters in The Bellmaker is a shrike. In both the book and Real Life, shrikes are also known as butcher birds. In the book, the nickname comes from being completely Ax Crazy. (In real life, the nickname comes from what they do with their prey.)
- In James Patterson's Cross, the main antagonist is nicknamed The Butcher. By Himself.
- Aral "Butcher of Komarr" Vorkosigan. A rare not-actually-earned title, though.
- Dirk Provin, the protagonist of Jennifer Fallon's Second Sons trilogy acquired the nickname 'The Butcher of Elcast'. This was the result of being given credit for the Lion of Senet's scheme to pressurize an enemy by executing people at random until the man gave in, and was a case of twisting Dirk's words. The reputation sticks with him and he had at times to take advantage of it, as well as crafting a ruthless persona. It should be noted he was barely 16 when he acquired the name.
- Discworld's Sam Vimes has this as his nickname, in part due to ill-wishers' propaganda.
- In the Flora Segunda books, an important figure in the setting's history is called the Butcher Brakespeare. Let it be noted that this trope is not, in fact, Always Male; the details establish the Butcher as a legendary Fiery Redheaded Lady Of War with a whip.
Live Action Television
- In the Doctor Who episode "The Talons of Weng-Chiang", the villain is Magnus Greel, "The Butcher of Brisbane".
- And anyone who actually lives in Brisbane will find the concept of it being home to anything so exciting as a war criminal hilarious.
- Dexter Morgan of Dexter was dubbed "The Bay Harbor Butcher" after a couple of treasure divers stumbled across his dumping ground. Eventually, the name ends up attached to Sergeant Doakes, who does not actually have anything to do with Dexter's murders but is conveniently dead by the end of the season.
- Bayban the Butcher in the Blakes Seven episode "City at the Edge of the World".
- The title character of the Babylon 5 episode "Deathwalker," Jha'dur, is named such for the war crimes that she carried out during the Dilgar War, and was responsible for cruel experiments on Na'Toth's grandfather and other people, which led to Na'Toth swearing vengeance upon her.
- In the same vein, Sheridan's nickname among Minbari of "Starkiller", for his taking out their ship Black Star during the Earth/Minbari War.
- In the DS9 episode "Duet," a Cardassian who visited the station for medical treatment was suspected of being the war criminal Gul Darheel, known as "the Butcher of Gallitep." It turns out he's actually an idealistic file clerk who had himself surgically altered because he wants to shame Cardassia into admitting their crimes on Bajor.
- In one episode of Monk, the victim turns out to be a war criminal known as the Butcher of Zemenia.
- In Leverage, "The Wedding Job", the following exchange occurs during a con operation at a wedding where one of the con artists, Elliot, is acting the part of the chef:
Parker: The butcher is here!
Elliot: Does he have the baby lamb chops?
Hardison: No, the Butcher of Kiev.
- Later it's lampshaded: "Have you ever been to Kiev? The cake maker of Kiev could whup all our asses, and this is the Butcher."
- The nickname also turns out to be quite appropriate, as the The Butcher's weapon of choice is, in fact, a butcher knife.
- In season 7 of 24, The Dragon is Colonel Dubaku, "Butcher of Sangala".
- Hilary Briss, Demon Butcher of Royston Vasey, on The League Of Gentlemen. He sells some mysterious and highly addictive form of meat to his "special customers". We never learn exactly what it is, but it is implicitly both highly illegal and hideously immoral. The show's creators have Jossed speculation that it was human flesh, claiming cannibalism was far too "mundane". It's something even worse...
- Parodied in Third Rock From The Sun, when Sally dates a man named Sammy the Butcher. The whole family becomes convinced that he is a killer in the mafia, and Sally even starts acting like a mafia princess until they discover at the end of the episode that he's an actual butcher who works in a butcher shop.
Tabletop Games
- From the Iron Kingdoms RPG and Warmachine tabletop strategy game's shared 'verse comes Orsus Zoktavir, the Butcher of Khardov. Complete and utter patriotic nutcase, who got his name when he ordered his men to attack secessionists in a village near the fortress of Boarsgate. The soldiers weren't all too keen to attack unarmed civilians, so he killed them and the locals by himself. With an axe he calls Lola.
- Matsu Gohei is given the nickname of "The Butcher" in Legend of the Burning Sands (a spinoff of Legend Of The Five Rings) due to his tendency to leave a trail of bodies wherever he goes.
- Gohei was named "the Butcher" before that - more specifically during the Clan Wars and his utter devastation of a number of Crane holdings, among them Violence Behind Courtliness City.
- In Warhammer 40000 the Carnifex (Latin for "butcher") is a tank-sized Tyranid creature, a biological killing machine that looks like a cross between a dinosaur and a beeetle, armed with razor-sharp teeth and huge scything talons and protected by a meter-thick carapace. Somewhat subverted, however, in that you're as likely to see a Carnifex hanging in the back blasting enemies with its spasming, quivering gun-organs as you are to see one charging madly into combat, screaming and bellowing and tossing foes aside or crushing them under its bulk.
- "The Butcher" is one of the most feared serial killers in Deadlands; he's apparently a deranged military surgeon who gave Hank "One-Eye" Ketchum his nickname. The Butcher, though, isn't a human, or even a monster. It's a scalpel that possesses its owner, possibly including a Player Character.
- The Dungeons and Dragons Campain "Anarchy's Edge", by Pathfinder, has the criminal gang known as the "Cow Hammer Boys", pretty close in meaning, and in work. They're a group of mercenaries acting under the front of giving free meat to the people people of the city, at the butchery "All the World's Meat". Of course, the free meat mostly comes from the victims of the mercenary work.
Theater
- Shakespeare's 2 Henry VI features a minor character called Dick the Butcher who takes part in an uprising in London. Although he's another actual butcher, he is comfortable with butchering people as well (he's the character who says the famous "kill all the lawyers" line), and, more to the point, his name foreshadows the coming of Richard III, who makes his first appearance at the end of the play (and is often called a butcher by other characters).
- Mack "the Knife" from the Threepenny Opera as well as one of his mooks, known as Robert "the Saw". In the original Beggar's Opera, one highwayman character is known as Wat (Walter) Dreary, with Dreary meaning something like "bloodthirsty" back then.
Video Games
- "The Butcher" in the first Diablo game is a demon with a huge cleaver who's taken up residence in the church and slaughtered many of the townsfolk. He's easily the hardest monster you'll face for several floors.
- He also makes a cameo appearance in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne as a Bonus Boss during the Alliance campaign.
- In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the main character Tommy Vercetti is known as "The Harwood Butcher" because of a hit that went down badly.
- Pops up briefly in Lost Odyssey, where one of the Dreams of a Thousand Years concerns a long-dead general who was known simply as 'The Butcher', due to his habit of slaughtering EVERYONE who got in his way - destroying entire villages, leaving no survivors, so as to ensure that there wouldn't be any surviving brothers or sons who would later seek him out for vengeance. Believing in this philosophy, he actually takes pride in his nickname. He came to a rather horrid end...
- Silent Hill Origins features a character literally named "The Butcher", a combination of the Implacable Man and Cutscene Power To The Max who leaves mangled monster corpses all over Silent Hill (and is only seen in butcher shops and kitchens). It's implied in one of the endings that he is actually the protagonist's alter ego.
- In Romancing Sa Ga: Minstrel Song, Pirate captain Hawke's Rival is known only as 'The Butcher'. The main point of contention between them is that The Butcher favors Kill Em All, while Hawke is supposed to be more compassionate and sensible. (Though that doesn't bar the player from butchering the entire crew of the ships he attacks in his prologue...)
- Villainous Coalition ace star pilot Ivan Petrov from the space fighter combat game Starlancer is nicknamed "The Butcher" for his participation in several war crimes.
Web Original
- In Imperium Nova's Gemini galaxy, Patrice Rey Barte, the Butcher of Dnoces.
Fictional examples used ironically
Film
- Boris the Butcher is one of the main villains in The Man Who Knew Too Little. Ironic because he is known for thoroughness as an assassin rather than violence, and his nickname comes from the fact that he's an actual butcher.
- In the movie version of The Running Man, Ben Richards becomes known as "The Butcher of Bakersfield" for a slaughter of a crowd he didn't commit. In fact, he tried to prevent the slaughter after the orders came through.
Literature
- In the Discworld novel Monstrous Regiment, Sam Vimes is referred to by the Borogravians as "The Butcher" or "Butcher Vimes". Anyone remotely familiar with the character of Sam Vimes will find this insanely funny (which is the point, of course.) When Vimes meets up with the protagonist and her fellow soldiers, he tells them Borogravia "needs to work on their propaganda techniques".
- Also, while he is never directly called "the Butcher" there, in The Fifth Elephant Vimes is thought to have killed "thirty men and a dog" during a battle with bandits and has the damnedest time explaining how it really went.
- In a sense, Vimes' reputation is not totally undeserved. As we see in Thud!, Sam Vimes is quite capable of slaughtering his way through a group of armed soldiers equipped with axes and Steampunk-style flamethrowers. Of course, he was possessed by a quasidemonic entity of pure vengeance at the time. But given that he managed to expel said entity by sheer inner force after the fight, that may not count. Vimes probably deserves the title, at least from the point of view of his enemies, by virtue of extraordinary Bad Ass-ery.
- In another Discworld novel, The Last Hero, Card Carrying Villain Evil Harry has a henchman simply named "Butcher" (Cohen The Barbarian himself approves). Harry's "Butcher" is an archetypical dungeron keeper - Meaning he's fat, lazy, gullible, and keeps his dungeon keys where the heroes can easily reach them.
- Doesn't actually using a giant butcher's cleaver as a melee weapon in Guards! Guards! count for anything? The occasion is used to point out the sheer practicality of picking a weapon designed purely for chopping flesh.
- In Lois Mc Master Bujold's Barrayar books, Aral Vorkosigan earns the name "The Butcher of Komarr" for supposedly having ordered the massacre of two hundred strong Komarran Senate after they surrendered on terms during the Conquest of Komarr. In fact, he had nothing to do with it and it was the sort of military behavior he abhorred. However, he was in charge at the time, so he got blamed despite killing the officer who gave the order on the spot with his bare hands — plus his political enemies kept saying there had been "secret orders", a rumor he found it impossible to disprove.
- In Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos, Colonel Fedmahn Kassad is known as "The Butcher of South Bressia." This is a backhanded compliment acknowledging that Kassad, something of an "ultimate soldier" figure, accomplished a military feat thought to be impossible — but that he had to stack the bodies of both his own forces and the enemy to the ceiling in order to do it.
- Nevil Clavain in Redemption Ark (2002) was dubbed "the Butcher of Tharsis" for "authorising the use of red-mercury, nuclear and foam-phase weapons" in a battle there about 400 years before the main plot. In reality he saved lives by bringing the war to an end, but he still regrets what he had to do: "I've killed innocents for military ends. I've made orphans. If that's honour, you can keep it.".
- Admiral Kutuzov of The Mote in God's Eye was called "The Butcher" at least once, just those two words with capitals. His reputation stemmed from sterilizing a rebelling human colony planet (meaning to prevent a greater war).
Table Top Games
- Dungeons And Dragons module The Tomb of Haggemoth features Lord Frohman, The Butcher of Skago, who turns out to be, in fact, a wealthy merchant well known for the quality of his meats.
Video Games
- In Psychonauts, the next-to-last boss, a mental projection of Coach Oleander's father, actually is a butcher. He appears monstrous and disfigured, wielding two massive cleavers, so perhaps the title is appropriate in more ways than one.
Western Animation
- One of the villains in WordGirl is called simply "The Butcher". He's an actual butcher whose superpower is control over meat.
Video Game "accomplishments"
Video Games
- In Mass Effect, if you choose the 'Ruthless' reputation-trait, you can - later in the game - run into your old commanding officer, who recognizes you as "The Butcher of Torfan", where you apparently sent your own men to their deaths, and killed slavers as they dropped their weapons in surrender - all in the name of ensuring the complete obliteration of the place.
- The Evil Genius game had a recruitable henchman called The Butcher. He was a Hannibal-type mad surgeon who turned to evil after accidentally transplanting a cursed pancreas into himself.
- A cursed pancreas? Really?
- He wears a Hannibal Lecter mask and his primary skill is sharpening his cleavers to 'motivate' your men. It's that kind of game.
- In Neverwinter Nights 2, you get the "Butcher of Ember" feat after being framed for massacring an entire village.
- If you have one of your generals in the Total War series slaughter the populace of a recently conquered city enough times, then he can end up with this epithet.
- Butcher is a rank the player will receive in Hitman: Silent Assassin if they kill several people during the mission. It's actually a mark of shame, way below Silent Assassin (killed only the target) and just a bit above Mass Murderer (killed just about "everyone").
- In RedAlert2 when you finish a misson you get a description of the results of it which are better and more badass if you finish under par time. If you finish the mission in France to turn the Eiffel Tower into a giant Tesla Coil electrocuting men and destroying buildings around it under par time, it states that they fear your command more than Soviet Tanks and that you are known as The Butcher.
- If you want to take the "evil path" through Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura, you have to prove your dedication to the villains' cause by utterly slaughtering the town of Stillwater. Doing this will award you a new karma title, "The Butcher of Stillwater".
Real Life examples who have appeared in fiction
Film
- Bill the Butcher in Gangs Of New York was based on a real person of the same name (and habits). Being an actual butcher, he took it literally. Nasty piece of work.
Literature
- "The Butcher of Riga"- Edward Roschmann, Nazi War Criminal, antagonist of The Odessa File.
Live Action Television
Other Real Life examples
- "Butcher" Harris- Arthur Travers Harris among the RAF for the sheer number of bomber crew that were killed during raids on Germany, said raids (especially Dresden) being highly controversial themselves.
- Abdullah the Butcher was one of the first Garbage Wrestlers in Professional Wrestling; he's managed to make a very long career out of it, having had his first match in 1958 and continuing to wrestle to the present day in Puerto Rico and Japan. He's best known for slashing his opponents open with a large fork, and for the network of deep scars across his forehead.
- The late Slobodan Milosevic was known as "The Butcher of Belgrade."
- Pompey the Great's father was known as "The Butcher" in Latin, and Pompey the Great himself was known as "Kid Butcher" when he was younger. He adopted "Magnus" later.
- By the way: "Kid Butcher" sounds suitably snappy and scary, but in the original Queen's Latin, young Pompey was nicknamed adulescentulus carnifex. No Really.
- The Duke of Cumberland was known as "The Butcher" among Jacobite, and in modern times, Scottish nationalists. Squashed the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. Accounts of his character vary greatly: some sources cite him as a ruthless and vicious man who terrorised his own men as well as the enemy, while others have him enforcing strict discipline on his men to ensure fair treatment of surrendering Jacobites. One accusation levelled at him was that instead of tending to wounded enemy soldiers on the battlefield (as the warfare etiquette of the time dictated) he simply slaughtered them - hence, "The Butcher."
- General Weyler of the Spanish Army, pre-Spanish American War, was known in the United States as the "Butcher" for his actions in Cuba in suppressing the rebel groups. This might have been slightly exaggerated due to the yellow journalism of the era, but still, worth noting for his use of reconcentration camps.
- Nikita Khrushchev was known as the "The Butcher of the Ukraine" in the late 1940's for ruthlessly carrying out Stalin's orders.
- Nicolae Ceausescu was known as "The Butcher of Bucharest" for ordering the slaughter of civilian demonstrators just before his fall from power and execution in 1989.
- A high Nazi official, Baron Otto von Bolschwing, was also called "The Butcher of Bucharest".
- During the American Civil War, General Grant was referred to this way by his own troops because of his willingness to fight large-scale battles in which large numbers of soldiers on both sides were killed.
- This troper is certain he heard Saddam Hussein referred to as the "Butcher of Baghdad".
- The Shankill Butchers, a Northern Irish Protestant terrorist group. Horror movie level sick.
- John Clifford the Lord Skipton, a participant in the War of the Roses, is commonly thought to have gotten the moniker for killing Richard Plantagenet's helpless preteen son. Nowadays, this is thought to be a Shakespearean twist, since the son was well into fighting age for that time. It's more commonly believed that he received the title for getting his hands dirty in battle; a rare thing for nobles. ...The more you know?
- One of the nicknames given to the unknown perpetrator of the Cleveland Torso Murders was "The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run".
- Before his death, Che Guevara oversaw "La Cabaņa," a prison for political prisoners in Cuba, and personally ordered the death of thousands of people, earning him the nickname (mostly among Cuban exiles) of "El Carnicero de La Cabaņa". (The Butcher of La Cabaņa.)
- Armin Meiwes, German cannibal known for killing and eating a voluntary victim he had found via the Internet, is known as "Der Metzgermeister" (the Butcher).
Subversions
Anime and Manga
- Black Lagoon has an interesting twist with "Sawyer the Cleaner". She "cleans" up bodies with a chainsaw, and
sometimes most of the time it seems like those bodies are still alive.
Literature
- Twisted in Iain M. Banks novel "Use of Weapons" (part of The Culture) where an important character is called "The Chairmaker". The name comes from his Moral Event Horizon.
- The Night Butcher from The Schwa Was Here is just a butcher who works at night.
Live Action Television
Music
- Andy Mrotek, drummer for The Academy Is..., has the nickname "The Butcher."
Web Original
Western Animation
- The PBS superhero Word Girl has a villain called The Butcher. He wears an old-fashioned butcher's uniform, has some sort of giant cut of meat strapped to his back, and has meat-themed powers.
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