Self Made Orphan / Literature

• In the Alex Rider book Eagle Strike, the villain Damian Cray lost his parents in an accident when a car fell on them from a falling structure. It wasn't an accident.
• Alien Hunters: Skrum murdered both of his parents after Emperor Lore told him to, all so he could prove his loyalty to him.
• In The Bad Place, Frank killed his single biological parent, a hermaphrodite who self-impregnated. This provides a major conflict, as a sibling of said Self-Made Orphan wishes to avenge that act.
• By the end of The Talon of Horus, Abaddon is one, having killed the clone of his gene-father, Horus.
• Breakfast of Champions, in a few paragraphs' worth of Narrative Filigree discussing the ways people used "a tool whose only purpose was to make holes in human beings," mentions the case of a fourteen-year-old Midland City boy who put holes in his mother and father in the same week that Dwayne Hoover went on a rampage. Motivating factor: the bad report card he got from school and didn't want to show them. Lawyer's strategy: plead temporary insanity.
• Lara of The Bridge Kingdom Archives is seriously considering killing her father, King Silas, after she finally realizes that he lied to her and manipulated her and that he is the reason for the suffering of her people.
• Carrie kills her mother (her father died accidentally prior to her birth) via telekinetically-induced heart failure. To be fair, Margaret had just parked a knife in Carrie's back, fully intending Offing the Offspring.
• The Cat Who... Series:
  • Harley Fitch in book #8 (The Cat Who Sniffed Glue), arguably. He didn't directly kill his parents, nor even intend for them to die, but they both died as a direct result of his actions.
  • In book #9 (The Cat Who Went Underground), the killer is a sympathetic example, who killed not only her father but men who reminded her of her father, is revealed to be a victim of Parental Incest, and has a Split Personality to boot.
  • The killer in book #13 (The Cat Who Moved a Mountain) is Sherry Hawkinfield, a young woman whom Qwill meets when taking a vacation to nearby Potato Mountain, who had her father killed so she could collect her inheritance. The fact that said father was a He-Man Woman Hater and Sherry had a second-class standing in her family as a result also played a role.
  • In book #25 (The Cat Who Brought Down the House), Richard "Dick" Thackeray, the villain of the book, murdered his own father a few years after his mother died.
• Chocoholic Mysteries: Chuck Davidson half-succeeds at becoming one in Clown Corpse, successfully murdering his father Moe and attempting but failing to kill his stepmother Emma.
• Discworld:
  • In Hogfather there is some mystery as to how Jonathan Teatime came to be an orphan. While it's not explicitly stated, Lord Downey is quoted as saying "We should have wondered a bit more about that."
  • In Interesting Times, it's offhandedly mentioned that Lord Hong's rise to Evil Chancellor involved six deaths - the last one being his father. At least he died happy that his son was carrying on a family tradition.
• The Dresden Files: Harry Dresden killed his own foster father and mentor Justin Dumorne. Justified, since Justin was an evil Warlock who tried to enthrall Harry and his foster sister Elaine and had already sicced the Outsider He-Who-Walks-Behind on him. If Harry hadn't killed Justin, Justin would have eventually hunted down Harry and kill/enthralled him. Unfortunately, Harry broke one of the Laws of Magic when he used magic to kill Justin, putting Harry on the White Council's blacklist (he would have been straight up executed if a Councilmember hadn't put his own life on the line for him) and making Harry permanently at risk of falling into The Dark Side.
• In Forced Perspectives by Tim Powers, the villain is guardian to a pair of psychic twins who have an ability to mentally compel others. It's revealed that he gained guardianship of them by manipulating them into mentally compelling their parents to commit suicide.
• Cathy Ames of East of Eden burns down her family home, killing her parents trapped inside the house, and flees from Boston with what was inside the family safe.
• In Lawrence Block's "The Ehrengraf Affirmation" Dale McCandless shot his parents with an assault rifle.
• The Empirium Trilogy: When she was five, Rielle killed her mother by accident. Over a dozen years later, she ends up killing her father during the fire trial.
• Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi: His mother died of illness when he was young, but after years of trying to win any approval or affection from his father, Meng Yao/Jin Guangyao snaps and arranges his father's murder after Jin Guangshan insults him and the memory of his mother one too many times (even saying he intentionally left Meng Shi at the brothel because he didn't like learned women).
• Several instances in the Harry Potter series:
  • In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, we learn that Voldemort murdered his father and grandparents as soon as he discovered they were Muggles and not the Wizards he imagined. And that his father abandoned him and his mother while she was pregnant after she stopped feeding him the Love Potion that had kept him there and he came to his senses.
  • At the end of the same book, we learn that Barty Crouch, Jr. murdered his father. Then transfigured his body into a bone and buried it. Barty makes much of how both he and Voldemort had very disappointing fathers and the pleasure of killing those fathers. He also seems to regard Voldemort as a father substitute.
  • Also, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows it's revealed that Ariana Dumbledore accidentally killed her mother Kendra.
• The Heroes of Olympus:
  • This is the reason why Leo is initially afraid of his fire powers: when he was a kid, Gaia visited the workshop where he and his single mother were, with the firm intention of preventing Leo from becoming a powerful enemy; Leo used his powers to try and protect his mother, but lost control and started a fire, accidentally killing her instead. He still has his father, but since he's the god Hephaestus whom Leo only met at 15...
  • Hazel killed her mother and herself to stop Gaea from raising Alcyoneus back in 1942.
• Heroics: Tess Wechsler kills her father in self-defense.
• The Affectionate Parody How to Be a Superhero recommends this as a method for becoming a superhero.
  Getting Your Parents Shot Dead In Front of Your Eyes
  At first, this might seem like a strange tactic, but if it was good enough to start you know who on one of the most successful crimefighting careers of all time, then it's certainly an avenue worth exploring!
• Implied in the poem Her Parents, as the girl has a reason to take the loss of her parents so well and the poem specifically mentions that she's an "actress".
• Immortal In Death reveals that Eve Dallas killed her father in self-defense after repeated physical and sexual abuse at his hands.
• Iron Widow: In the climax, the Sages try to protect themselves from the protagonist Zetian's Roaring Rampage of Revenge by taking her parents and brother hostage. Unfortunately for them, her parents horribly abused her and her brother abetted them, so she kills them all with one strike from her Chrysalis.
• Miriamele in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is forced into this to destroy the Eldritch Abomination possessing her father at the end of To Green Angel Tower. Earlier in the series, Benigaris inherits the throne of Nabban by stabbing his father in the back during the siege of Naglimund.
• In Midnight's Children, Zafar kills his father, General Zulfikar, after returning from a border skirmish. Saleem implies it is because he discovered Zulfikar's smuggling operations, but says it's impossible to be certain; the Pakistani government denied the scandal, and Zafar may have had other motives.
• Night Shift:
  • The Children of the Corn. Every single one of 'em.
  • This also occurs in "I Know What You Need", although the primary topic of the story is the use of what appears to be voodoo for purposes of seduction.
• Crake in Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood is implied to have killed his uncle and possibly his mother, too (his father was killed (executed) while Crake was still a kid, so this leaves him an orphan).
• ''The Plot: Dianna replaces the batteries of her family's carbon monoxide detector with dead ones and then makes sure her and her daughter's rooms' windows are open. Sure enough, her parents asphyxiate.
• In the Prelude to Dune trilogy, Glossu Rabban ends up killing his father Abulurd for stealing the spice hidden away by the Baron, loudly proclaiming himself as "The Beast". Notably, Baron Harkonnen (Abulurd's half-brother) is angry with Rabban not for killing Abulurd but for doing it without the Baron's approval.
• In The Reader (2016), the final task for the Second to complete before becoming an Assassin is to find and kill their own parents.
• Alan Campbell's Scar Night: The fallen angel Carnival faces down the god Ulcis, who turns out to be her father, and kills him in a disappointingly easy fight.
• Dillon Cole of Scorpion Shards accidentally drove his parents insane and eventually killed them before he realized that his mere touch could break minds.
• The Secret Life of Bees has a tragic example with its protagonist. Lily accidentally shot her mother when she was four years old.
• In Shadow of the Conqueror, Daylen had to kill his own parents during the Fourth Night after they became Shades.
• Beorn from The Shattered World is an inversion, whose parents paid for him to be made a werebear when he was very young, not realizing it wouldn't manifest until puberty. Upon his first transformation, he stumbled home and was mistaken for a genuine bear; terrified, his parents barricaded themselves inside their farmhouse, only to perish when Beorn's panicked battering against the walls tipped over an oil lamp and set the place on fire.
• In Ship Breaker Nailer's Missing Mom is dead long before the story starts, of an infection. His father, Richard Lopez, on the other hand, is still alive and kicking, much to everyone's regret. When Richard takes over as The Heavy of the novel, it's only a matter of time before he and Nailer end up facing one another. While Nailer doesn't want to fight his dad, Richard has no qualms about Offing the Offspring, or selling Nailer's friend, Nita's organs to the Life Cult, forcing Nailer to kill him in a Knife Fight.
• The Ship Who...:
  • In PartnerShip, Darnell mentions having killed the father who established the shipping company that Darnell is now heir to.
  • It's mentioned that due to their harsh culture, all Kolnari in The City Who Fought and The Ship Avenged hate their fathers and seek to kill them, and are killed in turn if they fail or are too unsubtle about it.
  • In The Ship Who Won, Plennafrey defended herself when her father tried to kill her, accidentally killing her brothers as well in the process. She's a Token Heroic Orc - to become a mage, an Ozran has to kill a mage and take their power item or items, and Plenna is wracked with Survivor's Guilt and hates even thinking about murder.
• Simon Ark: In "The Treasure of Jack the Ripper", having exposed the murderer, Simon goes on to say that her first victims were almost certainly her parents, who died a house fire when she was 12.
• In Slan Hunter, Jem Lorry murders his father when he learns the truth about his birth, and to ensure that the story will never be revealed.
• In Ray Bradbury's short story "The Small Assassin", a baby kills its parents.
• In Donald Westlake's "The Sound of Murder" ten-year-old Amy Walker kills her mother and stepfather because she doesn't like being told no.
• In Spinning Silver, Sergey accidentally kills his drunken father when he was beating his siblings Wanda and Stepon.
• Star Wars:
  • Palpatine was revealed to have murdered his parents and siblings when he was a late teenager in the novel Darth Plagueis. It's also implied that he desired to murder his father, at the very least, ever since he was a baby.
  • X-Wing Series had The Spymaster of The Empire, Ysanne Isard. She was The Sociopath and fanatically loyal to Palpatine because they were both power-hungry sadists, and to prove her worth to him she performed a Klingon Promotion on her own father.
  • Not directly, but General Armitage Hux arranged to have his father Brendol assassinated by conspiring with Captain Phasma to poison the latter. Although Brendol's cause of death was subsequently written off as illness, the young General would claim responsibility of his father's death when he's about to execute Admiral Brooks (who was a friend to Brendol).
• In The Stormlight Archive Shallan killed her father before the series started. In the second book, it's revealed that she killed both her parents. Her mother tried to kill her when she started developing the powers of a Radiant, and she killed her in self-defense. Her father allowed others to believe he did it and became an abusive drunk. She poisoned him after he really did kill his second wife and was beating her brother to death, then strangled him when the poison failed to finish him off.
• The Veldt: At the end of the story, Peter and Wendy trap their parents in the nursery and have the (holographic) lions eat them.
• Lois Lowry's The Willoughbys has the children encourage their extremely indifferent parents to go on a long vacation, hoping they'll be killed. Turns out later that's just what happens though it takes several attempts. Actually, the children themselves don't have to do anything at all; their parents just seem to love taking risky chances.
• Monarchies in Wings of Fire require children to kill their parents. A daughter must challenge her mother and kill her to claim her throne. The exception to the rule is the Actual Pacifist RainWings who have a rotation of queens whom they choose through non-violent competition. The series begins with a twenty-year war caused by the last SandWing queen being killed by a human. This sent her three daughters into a war for the throne, where they got the other dragons involved as well.
• Wonder Woman: Warbringer: Jason implies that Alia (unintentionally) caused their parents' deaths, because their parents died in a car crash while fighting, and Alia's mere presence causes fights and brawls to break out.
• Regent from Worm aspires to this, but since his father is the Emotion Eater villain Heartbreaker who enslaves women and forces the children he has by them through Training from Hell this is pretty justified.