Basic Trope: A child kills their parents.
- Straight: Carl shoots his parents, Alice and Bob, in their faces.
- Exaggerated:
- Several characters kill their parents, leading to a Teenage Wasteland if these characters are children.
- Carl, along with his siblings, kill their parents.
- Carl also kills his extended family.
- Carl goes back in time to shortly before he was born. In addition to killing Bob, he also somehow arranges for Alice to not survive giving birth to him.
- Carl commits Genocide from the Inside.
- Carl rapes his sexually abusive mother, Alice to death after torturing his physically abusive father, Bob into pleading for his life.
- Downplayed:
- Carl hires a hitman to murder Alice and Bob.
- Carl severely wounds Alice and Bob but does not kill them.
- Carl only kills one of his parents.
- Carl has the opportunity to prevent Alice and Bob's death, but deliberately avoids doing it.
- Carl plans to kill Alice and Bob, eventually, but not while he's still dependent on them.
- Justified:
- Alice and Bob were Abusive Parents.
- Alice and Bob were villains.
- Alice and Bob never gave Carl what he wants and Carl does this out of revenge.
- Carl is inherently evil.
- Alice and Bob were about to kill him and he did it in self-defense.
- Alice and Bob were about to turn into zombies and asked their son to kill them before they turned completely.
- Carl kills Alice and Bob to save innocent bystanders who were about to be harmed by Alice and Bob.
- Carl wants his inheritance money sooner rather than later.
- Alice and Bob were crippled to the point of near-death by someone else and were unable to recover from their condition, and so poor Carl had no other choice but to put them out of their misery.
- Carl is rebellious and hates Alice and Bob telling him what to do.
- Carl was Brainwashed and Crazy or suffering from Demonic Possession. He was forced to kill his parents.
- Prince Carl wants to immediately rule a kingdom, so he kills his parents to seize the throne for himself.
- Inverted:
- Alice and Bob kill Carl.
- Carl saves Alice and Bob from a murderer.
- Carl resurrects Alice and Bob from the dead.
- Subverted:
- The murder of Alice and Bob was an accident.
- It appears that Carl was framed for killing Alice and Bob.
- Double Subverted:
- This is one of Carl's lies to evade responsibility for his actions.
- It turns out that Carl did kill Alice and Bob.
- Parodied:
- Carl kills Alice and Bob because they grounded him for 20 years for accidentally spilling milk.
- In court, Carl pleads for clemency on account that he's an orphan.
- Carl goes back in time and spits in the primordial soup of the first prokaryotes to alter his family tree to rid Alice and Bob, not realizing he's drastically changing the timeline into a hellhole run by anthropomorphic cats where humanity is a Slave Race.
- Zig-Zagged: It looks like Carl killed his parents, but then it turns out Bob did it. Of course, this is because Alice payed him to, but Alice is bankrolled by Carl... Or rather, Carl's Split Personality, Steven. It then turns it was the 'good' side, Carl, that ordered the hit after a Split-Personality Merge.
- Averted: Carl never kills Alice and Bob.
- Enforced:
- "Okay, so Emperor Evulz gets defeated. We want an early sign that Carl will grow up to be the new Big Bad." "Let's have him kill Alice and Bob."
- "We want an Anti-Hero with a Dark and Troubled Past, let's have him as the son of Emperor Evulz and have him killed his evil parents!"
- Lampshaded: "What have you done, Carl!? They were your parents!"
- Invoked:
- Alice and Bob deliberately raise him to be a murderer.
- Alice and Bob abuse him in the hope that he kills them.
- Exploited:
- In his adulthood, Carl works as a hitman.
- Carl kills Alice and Bob to get his inheritance early.
- Defied:
- Carl refuses to kill Alice and Bob, no matter what they do to him.
- Worried that Carl might be murderous, Alice and Bob give him what he wants so he doesn't kill them.
- After Carl attempts to murder Alice and Bob, they give him up for adoption in another city.
- Discussed:
- "Mom and dad are so evil. I would kill them, but that would be wrong."
- "The term "orphaned" implies someone else made me an orphan... Not so much as it turns out."
- Conversed: "Carl killed Alice and Bob at the end of the story? About time! I never liked them anyway."
- Implied: Carl walks into his Alice and Bob's house carrying a knife. The next time we see him, he's living with his grandparents Gary and Hannah.
- Deconstructed:
- Carl is soon exposed for the murder of Alice and Bob and is tried as an adult. As he becomes an adult, he is sentenced to 25 years in prison.
- Diane and Ethan, Alice and Bob's other children, team up to avenge their parents' deaths by killing Carl.
- Carl realizes too late that this was a terrible idea, and he now misses Alice and Bob. He becomes a pariah to the rest of the world, and his siblings shun him.
- Reconstructed:
- Although this didn't stop him from being satisfied with Alice and Bob. Also, he breaks out at the first opportunity.
- Of course, Diane and Ethan were abusive siblings towards Carl, so Carl kills them successfully.
- Carl is enrolled in an institution that is focused on helping children to earn back their places in society.
- Played for Laughs: Carl's parents ground him. When he kills them as revenge, his friend Frank says "It's good to have you back, Carl!"
- Played for Drama:
- Carl has killed Alice and Bob while making Diane and Ethan watch.
- Carl has a nasty argument with his parents. Carl yells at the both of them, telling them that he wished they were dead, which earns him a slap from Bob. Carl then punches Bob in return, earning the rage of Alice who scolds him for doing that to his own father. Carl pushes Alice down, which then leads to a fight between him and Bob. Losing the fight, Carl grabs a gun out of desperation and shoots Bob, killing him in the process. Carl turns to Alice, who is shocked that Carl would kill his own father, and to her horror, she gets shot and killed too. A few minutes have passed and Carl realizes what he has done and leaves the house with no idea what to do next.
- Played for Horror: Carl hangs Alice and Bob upside down above a pit of spinning circular saws and leaves them there. He also blocks all the possible escape points and kidnaps his entire extended family, places them in front of a huge fireplace, and forces them to watch Alice and Bob scream and plead for mercy as they slowly get lowered into the spinning circular saws. Gary and Hannah begin to cry at witnessing their children getting killed painfully as their blood splashes on their faces as Carl begins to maniacally laugh. Carl then activates a conveyor that straps his family's feet to the ground, which sends them into the huge fireplace to burn them alive. Gary manages to escape, but he gets shot by Carl. Carl begins to maniacally laugh again as his family slowly gets burned alive.
- Plot Foundation: Carl averting Children Are Innocent makes it that much easier to believe he's a Complete Monster later in the story.
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