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Just to make sure that the hero can't refuse the call of destiny, his family or loved ones will be brutally murdered by the enemy to drive home the point that he can't run away from his life mission. The extreme of And Your Little Dog Too.

The hero thus takes up the avenging banner, embittered and hardened for the experience. Many an Anti Hero has been shaped by this.

Related to Doomed Hometown, only viciously more personal. Contrasts with Stuffed Into The Fridge, where the similarly personal tragedy is exceptionally cruel but there was no Refusal Of The Call and the event seems largely unnecessary for the story.

Related to and sometimes overlaps with Death By Origin Story. The Forgotten Fallen Friend is the name of the trope where, after the hero starts the adventure, he or she gets over the deaths with remarkable aplomb.

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Examples:

• Dates back as far as the 1949 classic The Searchers.
• Similarly, Peter Parker was taught that power comes with responsibility through the death of his Uncle Ben.
• It's a big trope in superhero comics. Matt Murdock loses his strict but loving father when the old man refuses to take a dive in a prizefight. Father is killed, ergo Daredevil.
• In Star Wars, Luke is obliged to become a Jedi when his home is burned down with his aunt and uncle left as charred remains outside.
• Eragon finds his uncle's house blown up and his uncle dead; abruptly he realizes that dragon ownership comes with responsibilities.....
• An oddly literal variation occurs in the first Pirates Of The Caribbean film: Elizabeth's cursed gold piece actually 'calls' to the pirates, which brings them to her Doomed Hometown.
  • Except Port Royal wasn't a doomed hometown. It was just roughed up a little.
    • Same function, less wholesale destruction.
• In Animorphs, Marco was reluctant to involve himself in fighting the good fight — until he discovered that his mother was also controlled by one of the brain-stealing aliens.
• The title character of Max Payne initially refused Alex's offer to transfer to the DEA and work for him ("You'd make me work undercover in some hellhole. Sorry, Alex. Michelle and the baby come first."). But all that changed when three murderous junkies hopped up on a new designer drug called Valkyr broke into his home and killed his wife and baby girl.
  • And, literally enough, the Big Bad phones Max's house as this happens to see if her hit worked.
• The beginning of Mel Gibson's The Patriot fits this to a tee. Benjamin Martin is a dedicated pacifist, arguing against going to war in the State Assembly and refusing to let his sons join the Continental Army. It's not until the British Col. Tavington burns down his farm, kills his second son, and drags his oldest son off to be hung as a spy that Martin joins the fight.
  • Happens again in Braveheart- William Wallace just wants to 'till fields and maybe raise a family.' Guess what happens to his new wife?
• The Punisher.
• In Lost Odyssey, the call most definitely knows where Kaim lives. In fact, the call essentially comes (for all the immortal characters) in the form of the main villain, who, years ago, inflicted tremendous emotional pain to the point that the damage to their psyche was literally a fate worse than death, then subsequently sealed off their memories and left them to become walking corpses, eternally (but NOT desperately) searching for their purpose in life.
• Rand al'Thor and friends in the Wheel of Time have their village attacked not once, but twice, because the Pattern is calling them into service.
• Terry McGinnis from Batman Beyond had his father murdered, which made him steal the batsuit and set him on the path of a new Batman. In Justice League Unlimited, it's revealed that project: Batman Beyond was planning to have his parents murdered in a manner similar to Bruce's to inspire him, but scrapped it due to moral restraint... Only to have some villain do their job for them eight years later. Didn't they get lucky?
• In Joss Whedon's comic Fray, new slayer Melaka Fray drags her heels over her destiny until her young friend Loo - The Cutie - is murdered. The really awful twist is that she wasn't killed by vampires, but by Mr Exposition Urkonn, specifically in order to motivate her.
• In ''Peasant's Quest'', Trogdor burninates Rather Dashing's thatched-roof cottage, thus motivating him to liberate the peasant kingdom of Peasantry from the Burninator's influence forever.
  • Too bad Trogdor is totally invincible.
• Happens twice in Supernatural's pilot episode for Sam. First, his Dad goes missing and Dean comes to get him. He refuses that after killing the monster of the week, but watching his girlfriend burn up on the ceiling like his mother finally forces him to take the call for good.
• Avatar The Last Airbender: Aang finds out he is The Chosen One. Aang runs away. His entire race is exterminated. No one ever said the call was subtle.
• In Lord Of The Rings, Frodo Baggins never actively resists the Call, but he drags his feet about leaving the Shire to the point that he just avoids meeting a Nazgul on (literally) his front doorstep. (And it turns out that, at the same time, Saruman's thugs were invading the Shire from a different direction...)
• God wants Jonah to deliver a message of damnation to Nineveh. Jonah says no, because he thinks Nineveh will repent, God won't destroy them, and he'll be labeled a false prophet. Jonah attempts to flee God. Cue great fish.
  • Mammal.
    • Actually, it is a fish. The original Hebrew is דָּג גָּדוֹל (pronounced dag gadol) literally, big fish.
    • Like they knew the difference back then. This troper's old children's bible claims that it probably was a sperm whale.
    • Does it really matter? It's not like it could have actually happened anyway.
    • And then, when Jonah does the Job but hates God for making him do it, God gives him a nice shade tree... Then kills it.
• In both the second and last Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, Lord Foul exerts influence in our world to torment the previous heroes until they return to the mythical Land to confront him, as his plans require their powers.
• In the Stardust Crusaders part of Jojos Bizarre Adventure, Jotaro's mother develops a Stand that's slowly killing her; the only way to save her is to destroy Dio.
• Hogwarts sent Harry Potter a series of acceptance letters, pinpointing his near-exact location at the time the letter got there. Uncle Vernon went to great effort to keep Harry from getting the letter, up to moving the entire family to a small shack on a rain-swept island - where Harry got the call in the un-ignorable, unavoidable form of Hagrid.
• In Transformers Super God Masterforce, Hydra and Buster start killing truckers in order to eliminate Ginrai; since most of their victims are Ginrai's friends, this results in Ginrai being motivated to actually get involved in the fight.
• In a literal case, in Bruce Almighty, Bruce finds a pager which he cannot lose or destroy with a number. When he calls the number, he is told to go to a certain address "or we'll just keep beeping you."

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