Basic Trope: A male character kills his entire family and then either kills himself or escapes from his crime.
- Straight:
- Bob murders his wife Alice and his three children Charlie, Darcy, and Earl. As they're dead, he decides to kill himself.
- Bob murders his family and leaves town to escape from the police.
- Bob murders his family and wounds himself. When the police arrive he claims that he was injured trying to protect them.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob murders his wife, children, in-laws, parents, siblings, uncles, aunties, cousins, nephews, nieces, grandparents, his dog, and himself.
- Bob does the above, but leaves the state, goes by "Joe" now, and basically gets to Starting a New Life.
- Downplayed: ???
- Justified:
- Bob has a hard time looking for a job in several months. He can't let his family know about being unemployed and being unable to provide for them, so he needed to spare them of this information.
- Bob is in the risk of losing his money and home. He believes that he needed to kill his family so they won't have to suffer financial ruin.
- Bob as well as his family is extremely and irrevocably dysfunctional.
- Bob's children and wife are about to suffer a Fate Worse than Death and there's nothing he can do to stop it other than give them a Mercy Kill. Afterwards, he can't live with what he's done, so he elects to join them.
- Inverted:
- Charlie kills Alice and Bob, his parents, and his two siblings Daniel and Emily, and them himself.
- Gender-inverted — Alice murders her family and then either kills herself or escapes town.
- Bob resurrects his family.
- Subverted:
- It turns out that Bob was framed for killing his family.
- Bob attempts to kill his wife and children. His wife pulls a ninja move and kills him in self defense.
- Double Subverted: The accusations were later revealed to be true.
- Parodied: Bob is an average joe who hates his life because his wife nags him everyday, his oldest son is a lazy video game addict, his daughter always whines about getting her material possessions like her fancy clothes and jewelry all dirty, and his youngest son keeps him awake every night with his crying. Fed up with this, he pulls out his gun from out of nowhere and shoots all of them and walks out of the house shouting "I'm free from my shitty family life!"
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: ???
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Despite whatever hardship he's experiencing and how his family is, Bob refuses to kill them and himself.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied:
- It's never clear whether the fire that killed Bob and his family was accidental or arson.
- Bob is the only one in the family who isn't panicking as the car drives over a cliff.
- Played For Horror: Bob was an abusive father and husband and killing the family was the final ultimate act of abuse.
Back to Pater Familicide
