You Killed My Father / Live-Action TV

• A favored tactic of Mezalord in Akumaizer 3 is to use someone's loved one against them and, when that doesn't work, kill them to spite the heroes. By the end of the series, just about every one of the main characters has lost someone they loved to him, something Xavitan sums up in their final confrontation.
  Xavitan: Mezalord! You have killed countless good people! You killed Evil's girlfriend, Gabura's friend, Darunia's sister, and my kind mother! I won't forgive you!
• This is Claudia and Leonardo's motivation for attempting to ruin Francesca's life in Al fondo hay sitio. Francesca fired their father from her company, resulting in him hanging himself in despair. Leonardo gets over this, but Claudia never does.
• Andor: Paak's son Wilmon constructs a bomb and pitches it at the Imperials during the rioting to avenge his father's killing. While the explosions killed many and Wilmon safely escaped with Cassian and the others' help, his strike failed to get either of the main instigators of Paak's death, Meero and Captain Tigo.
• Angel: Connor wants to make his real father suffer because he believes that Angel killed his foster father, Holtz. He sinks him in the ocean, but he doesn't die, being a vampire and all. He'll live forever, slowly going insane from hunger.
• Arrowverse:
  • Arrow: This is why Prometheus is going after Oliver and his team (Prometheus's father was on the List given to Oliver by his father before shooting himself, and was killed by Oliver in his first year back). It's also why Talia is helping him (Oliver killed Talia's father Ra's al Ghul). However, Talia's sister Nyssa doesn't feel the same way, because she realized what a monster her father was. The only thing that she's upset about is that she didn't get to kill him.
  • The Flash (2014): Barry feels this way towards the Reverse-Flash for killing his mother 15 years ago. Later, Zoom deliberately murders Barry's father in front of him to elicit this reaction. On Earth 2, Iris feels this way towards Deathstorm and Killer Frost after they kill Joe. Zoom ends up killing both villains anyway.
• Bones:
  • Subverted Trope in "The Woman in Limbo". Brennan accuses a hitman from the strong-arm crew her parents used to belong to of killing her father, but as it turns out, her father is still alive. Said hitman did, however, strike the blow that caused bleeding in her mother's brain, which killed her about two years later. In fact, her father arranges the hitman's death in prison.
  • Played straight in Season 12. Booth killed a war criminal at his son's birthday party. Said son and his sister try to kill Booth and by extension Brennan and their kids. The attack winds up killing Brennan's father and therefore invokes this trope on both sides. The son, Kovac, escapes prison and blows up the lab before Booth finally kills him.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Of course, this show has one of these. Season 7, Robin Wood discovers that Spike is the vampire who killed his mother. Fans could guess it as it was known that Spike murdered two Slayers previous to Buffy, and that one of them was a black woman who was active about the time Robin would have been a child.
• Caïn: Tina infiltrated Caïn's team and put Borrel out of commission in order to take revenge on the two cops who drove her mother to suicide. She succeeds in killing Moretti (after pretending to love him no less) and very nearly gets Caïn himself.
• Castle: Detective Kate Beckett was driven to go into law enforcement after her mother was murdered. She finally manages to bring the person who ordered the hit, Senator William Bracken, to justice.
• In the Chuck episode "Chuck Versus the Ring: Part II", Daniel Shaw kills Chuck's father Stephan in order to break down Chuck's emotions and make him unable to flash.
• Dead of Summer: Garrett shoots Heelan dead after discovering he was the cult leader known as "The Teacher", and the one who killed his father.
• Dexter: It takes several decades, but Dexter ultimately manages to track down and kill all the criminals who were responsible for his mother's murder by chainsaw (and, indirectly, Dexter's own obsession with murder), including the guy who wielded the weapon and the boss who ordered the hit.
• Due South: Deliberately a Subverted Trope, when Fraser refrains from killing his father's killer in favor of due process, both in the pilot and in the episode "Bird in the Hand" — the latter despite the strenuous prompting of Fraser Sr.'s ghost.
• Frontier (2016): Declan Harp's desire for revenge against Lord Benton is because the latter had his wife and son murdered.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Arya Stark's entire goal in a nutshell. She wants to kill the people who caused misfortune to her family and friends. She executes Meryn Trant (who killed Syrio Forel and, unknown to her, beat Sansa on Joffrey's orders), Polliver (who killed Lommy and whose party killed Yoren) and she kills The Waif, who killed Lady Crane. In "The Winds of Winter", she takes revenge for the Red Wedding (where her mother and her elder brother Robb were murdered) by killing the people most responsible for it: Walder Frey along with two of his sons, Lothar and Black Walder. By that point, the other people responsible (Tywin Lannister and Roose Bolton) are already dead. The only ones left are Cersei (for killing Lady and betraying Ned), and Melisandre (for selling Gendry), who noted that they would meet again in the future.
  • Sansa gives a very poignant calling-out to Theon about betraying Robb and butchering Bran and Rickon, only to discover that her little brothers may still be alive.
  • Harald has despised the Starks ever since Robb executed his father. Yet, he does not seem to be bothered in the slightest when Ramsay murders Roose, who avenged Rickard.
  • Oberyn Martell's main reason for going to King's Landing (asides from filling in as a proxy for his older brother's invitation to Joffrey's wedding) is to get revenge for the deaths of his sister, niece, and nephew, who were killed by Tywin Lannister's bannerman, Ser Gregor "The Mountain" Clegane during the Sack of King's Landing. He finally gets the chance to confront him after volunteering to be Tyrion's champion for the Trial by Combat. Unfortunately, it gets him brutally killed when the Mountain takes advantage of the fight.
  • Aerys Targaryen killed Ned's father and had his elder brother Brandon Driven to Suicide. This action, along with Rhaegar's abduction of Lyanna, incited the Rebellion that led to his downfall and the exile of the Targaryens.
  • Yara accuses Euron of this at the Kingsmoot. Euron confesses and somehow wins over the other Ironborn by (successfully) painting Balon as an Asshole Victim. Yara still hates him for this and for stealing her claim to the throne.
• Unusually, a villain gets this commonly heroic trope in Gotham. Both of the Penguin's parents were murdered (at separate times by two separate bad guys), and he gets personal revenge on each of the baddies responsible in spectacularly brutal fashion. It makes him a rather insteresting Foil to Bruce Wayne, who was also orphaned and comes face to face with his parents' killer - but instead chooses to show mercy.
• In the Here Come the Brides episode "Hosanna's Way," the titular Apache boy's family was murdered by a Hunter Trapper for stealing food. When Hosanna sees the killer selling the trinkets he stole at Ben's general store, he grabs a knife and stabs him in the back, almost killing him.
• Heroes:
  • Immortal Knight Templar Adam Monroe makes perhaps the biggest mistake of his immortal life when he kills Kaito Nakamura, father of the normally happy-go-lucky Hiro Nakamura. When Hiro finally catches up to Adam, he buries Adam alive in the same cemetery where his father was buried as a result of Adam's actions. Do not piss off Hiro.
  • Mohinder's father being murdered by Sylar is one of the driving forces for this character, in Season 1 at least. Hilariously mocked by actor Sendhil Ramamurthy in an episode commentary when they talk about how some characters tend to have "standard lines" that they say a lot. When asked what his own character's standard line is, he replies (paraphrased), "Who killed my father? My father's dead! Someone murdered my father! And variations thereof."
  • Sylar killed Elle's father. She proceeds to kill him repeatedly while yelling "You killed my father!" when Arthur locks them together in a cell.
  • After discovering that Sylar killed Nathan, Claire expresses how much she wants to kill Sylar, telling him, "You killed my father!" She doesn't manage to kill him, but she does stab a pencil in his eye.
• Highlander has Duncan avenging the deaths of several immortal mentors and his father, even though he was cast out and disowned. The first time, Kanwulf survived because Duncan wasn't yet aware that he needed to behead an Immortal to kill him for good. The second time, however, he gets it right.
• A two-part episode of Homicide: Life on the Street had the father of Lewis's friend Detective Jake Rodzinski be murdered by a drug dealer. After the drug dealer is let Off on a Technicality, Jake kills him in cold blood.
• Kamen Rider Kiva: On the Darker and Edgier side of the Toku Coin, this show has Yuri Aso, whose mother was killed by Rook, the Lion Fangire. Eventually, she gets her chance to exact revenge by becoming Kamen Rider IXA and almost killed him. He comes back 22 years later and is promptly finished off by Yuri's daughter, also in IXA's suit, by being hit in the exact same mortal wound that Yuri laid onto him.
• Leverage: Nate's con-artist dad is double-crossed and blown up for good measure by Dubenich (the team's first client/target, who double-crossed them and tried to blow them up) and Latimer (an amoral investor who wanted to use the team's good work to make money with insider trading). They utterly destroy Latimer's business by dumping invasive clams into his new dam, blowing up his prized possessions in front of wealthy investors, and sending him to the Cayman Islands with a briefcase full of cash and his not-really blown up possessions when he's supposed to be at a Congressional hearing. When Nate finally confronts the two after insinuating that he's going to shoot them with his father's gun, he winds up pointing out that neither one can let the other survive if the other wants to remain free and lets them fight over the gun at the edge of a cliff instead.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Galadriel's entire goal in a nutshell. She wants revenge on Sauron, who caused the death of her beloved brother, Finrod, and spends next centuries continuing his mission of preventing the evil but that's only a pretext for revenge desire on Sauron.
• Lost:
  • When Sawyer confronts Anthony Cooper for the indirect killing of his parents, he is finally sure once and for all that Cooper is indeed the guy he's been looking for all his life when he confirms that he's been to Sawyer's hometown of Jasper, Alabama. Cooper grins and asks, "Why? Don't tell me I'm your daddy!" To which Sawyer, replying so gravely that it wipes the smirk off the man's face, says, "No... you killed my daddy." You can imagine what soon ensues.
  • Ben kills Jacob, the closest thing to a father Ilana had, so she makes him dig his own grave at gunpoint, only for this to be an Averted Trope. Not only does Ben survive, he's allowed to join the group after explaining himself.
• Lost Love in Times: Yuan Ling discovers Yuan An killed his real father. When he returns he confronts him about it.
  Yuan Ling: Then what should I call you? Your Majesty? Uncle? Or the murderer of my father?
• Luna Nera: Pietro undergoes a Face–Heel Turn after seeing Ade stab his father to death.
• Merlin:
  • Morgana discusses this with Uther, having heard the rumors that Uther arranged the death of Gorlois, the man she thought was her father — this was long before she found out Uther was her father.
  • Uther's death is also a case for Arthur. He knows that magic did it, but what he doesn't know is that the sorcerer in question was actually trying to heal him before being foiled by a magical pendant that reversed the healing magic and magnified the damage tenfold.
• Miami Vice: Gina Calabrese is willing to help the East German intelligence agent Herzog kill the drug dealer Pedrosa because Pedrosa killed Gina's mother twenty-six years ago.
• The Musketeers: Subverted in the series premiere when Athos is framed for several murders, including that of D'Artagnan's father. The grieving young Gascon makes his way to the Musketeer garrison and actually paraphrases Inigo Montoya's quote (see the Quotes page). Athos is perplexed and Aramis is amused, but D'Artagnan remains implacable throughout the scene. Naturally, they do eventually clear up the misunderstanding over the course of the episode and become Fire-Forged Friends.
• NCIS: Los Angeles features a variation in that one of the heroes is the killer. Mowahd "Moe" Dusa, an orphaned Sudanese boy whom Sam Hanna brought to America, is upset when he learns that Sam killed his father. (For good reason — Moe's father was with the Janjaweed, and Sam killed him to protect civilians.) He responds by joining a terrorist group — but doesn't get his revenge against Sam. Instead, he has a change of heart and decides to help NCIS defeat a terrorist leader and dies doing so.
• Nikita: Deconstructed Trope: Alex's whole motivation is to get revenge on the organization that killed her parents. Not until the end of the first season does she learn that Nikita, the former agent who has been her mentor, was the one who actually pulled the trigger.
• In the Once Upon a Time episode "The Bear King", Merida's father Fergus is killed on the battlefield by Arthur. Months later, Merida finds Arthur and they point their swords at each other. When Merida threatens him for killing her father, Arthur defends his actions by saying that he did what he had to on the battlefield as a knight. This is technically true, as Arthur didn't murder Fergus but killed him in battle, though he did stab him In the Back.
• The Outpost: Naya finds out that Dred killed her mother and sister a long time ago, and she immediately stabs him to death in revenge.
• Revenge (2011):
  • For most of the first season, Emily's quest for vengeance against the Graysons is purely in response to them framing her father, David, for terrorism and sending him to prison for life. However, near the end of the season, she discovers that Conrad Grayson, in addition to the above, also had David murdered in prison to keep him from exposing him. Emily's vendetta then shifts to finding the assassin responsible and executing him, although she later forfeits this plan.
  • In Season 3, Niko Takeda, daughter of Emily and Aiden's revenge sensei, comes to the Hamptons to restart her relationship with Aiden and assassinate the person who killed her father. Unfortunately, that person is also Aiden. Once Niko figures out the truth, she attempts to lure Emily to her father's house and kill her as retribution, but is easily dispatched by Emily.
• Revolution: Inverted Trope. Rachel Matheson becomes obsessed with killing Sebastian Monroe because her son Danny got killed off by Monroe's helicopters in "The Stand". The episode "Children of Men" has her accusing him of killing her son to his face. He points out that he wasn't even there when that happened, and that much is true.
• The Secret Circle: In the season 1 finale, Jake gets his revenge on Eben, who killed his parents — and it was a long time coming.
• A recurring motive on Shakespeare & Hathaway - Private Investigators (which draws a lot of plot points from the plays of William Shakespeare), notably in "This Rough Magic" (though the killer accidentally kills the intended target's wife), and Gender Flipped in "The Chimes at Midnight".
• Stargate SG-1:
  • The show has a weird version of this with Cronus, the Goa'uld who executed Teal'c's father in a You Have Failed Me moment and exiled Teal'c and his mother. Teal'c finally gets his chance for revenge in the episode "Double Jeopardy", where he fights his father's murderer in one-on-one combat, only to end up losing. He would have been killed if his robotic clone hadn't shot Cronus in the back.
    Clone Teal'c: For our father.
  • The episode "Talion" reveals that Teal'c's mother was (supposedly) killed by a rival in a Revenge by Proxy scheme. After killing him, Teal'c reveals that while he may have ordered it, he was far too cowardly to do it himself. He killed the actual assassin years ago.
  • Teal'c was on the other end of this trope in "Cor-ai". He is put on trial for killing a man's father during his time as Apophis' First Prime. Teal'c is willing to be executed for this since he's The Atoner and he wants to be able to grant closure to at least one of his past victims. However, Teal'c later helps save the locals from another Jaffa attack. His accuser is moved to forgive Teal'c, invoking That Man Is Dead on his behalf by claiming that Teal'c "killed" the Jaffa who murdered his father.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series: A variation shows up in "Day of the Dove", where Chekov wants revenge against the Klingons for killing his brother... except that he never had a brother, and it's a false memory created by an Emotion Eater that feeds on hatred.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: Another weird version appears, where the android Data does eventually get his "father"'s killer... who happens to be his "brother", Lore.
  • Worf's general hatred of Romulans can be seen as a version of this, as that race was responsible for the massacre where his parents were murdered.
  • In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Dax", Ilon, the leader of the Klaestron 'extradition' team, is the son of the man that Curzon Dax supposedly betrayed to his death. Although Curzon himself is dead, he tries to kidnap Dad's subsequent host, Jadzia.
  • Star Trek: Voyager: Averted in "Dark Frontier". Seven of Nine was assimilated by the Borg as a child, then called Annika Hansen.
    Borg Queen: I remember Annika. Does she remember us? She wasn't afraid, why are you?
    Seven: You attacked us. You murdered my family!
    Borg Queen: We did no such thing. We gave them perfection.
    [a drone steps forward; it's Magnus Hansen]
    Seven: [faintly] Papa?
• Supernatural: The Winchesters' fight against Azazel seems to be more about dead family members than the whole trying-to-take-over-and-or-end-the-world thing. John starts his whole mad quest thing when Azazel sets fire to his house and ceiling-kills his wife. The boys go with the whole you-killed-my-mother thing, and Sam adds on his girlfriend for good measure. In "In My Time of Dying", Dad gets added onto the list. Dean finally gets revenge when he shoots the Demon with the Colt. A few years later, they discover that Azazel also killed their grandparents, but since they've already killed him at that point, it doesn't have the same impact.
• Super Sentai/Power Rangers:
  • Seijuu Sentai Gingaman/Power Rangers Lost Galaxy:
    • Black Knight Bullblack/Magna Defender is out for the villains' blood because they killed his little brother/infant son. The problem is, he doesn't care how much collateral damage he causes in the process...
    • Later on in Galaxy, Trakeena's main motive for attacking the Rangers is because Leo, the Red Ranger, killed her father in battle.
  • Power Rangers Wild Force: Cole learns that the Big Bad used to be human, and a colleague of his parents... who murdered them both after they got together. After defeating him and reducing him to the bitter waste of space he once was, Cole decides that he's Not Worth Killing and walks off. Of course, the season isn't over yet...
  • Power Rangers Ninja Storm: Lothor killed Blake and Hunter's adopted parents at some point before the series began. The reveal is mainly done to clear Sensei Watanabe, whom the brothers believed to be the actual killer thanks to Lothor. The fact that they're fighting their parents' murderer is kind of dropped afterwards, although it probably would've clashed with the season's general tone.
  • Power Rangers S.P.D.: Mirloc had killed Sky's father. Sky is able to defeat and arrest him when he escapes from prison.
  • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger: "Something I Don't Want to Lose" pits Ahim against the monster who killed her parents and destroyed her whole planet. Ahim, at any other time the nicest Gokaiger by far, snaps and tries to take him on single-handed. Her teammates talk her out of it.
• The Swamp Fox: A young man named Gwynn works his way into Marion's brigade wanting revenge on Marion, whom he thinks killed his father. He only finds out that he's wrong when he sees Marion's wrists, which don't have scars like the killer's. The real killer was Amos Briggs, a Tory sympathizer, and after Gwynn is put in the brig temporarily, Briggs is caught and thrown in, leading to Gwynn killing him.
• Unforgettable: The goal of the killer in the episode "Lost Things" is to carry out a Vigilante Execution on the leniently sentenced owner of a factory whose unsafe conditions led to a fire in which his father and brother died. The murder that started the episode was just an attempt to silence someone who would have compromised his plan.
• In Utopia, The Network are rather fond of manipulating people by threatening their loved ones. As a natural consequence of this and being extremely ruthless, they kill the father of Wilson Wilson and the mother of Alice. Alice (a twelve-year-old girl) exacts revenge by murdering one of their agents, but Wilson joins the conspirators.
• Veronica Mars: In "Not Pictured", Veronica is nearly driven to murderous rage when she thinks that Season 2's Big Bad killed her father. Thankfully, he didn't, and another character stops the Big Bad from being killed in what would not strictly be self-defense. Of course, many fans would've given her a pass since it turned out that he did rape her and had intended to kill her father, only there was a mix-up and her father hadn't (unbeknownst to them) got on the plane that the Big Bad blew up.
• VR Troopers: Subverted Trope when Ryan Steele's father doesn't actually die but is badly injured, but it's played straight the rest of the way. Generally, Ryan fights the mutants fairly and only uses his finisher as a last resort, but when they begin attacking his recently rescued father, he begins killing them with the lightning hand without even giving them the chance of a fair fight. Even Decimator, who usually defeated Ryan Steele fairly easily up to that point, finds himself overmatched and quickly flees on his go-kart after seemingly mortally wounding Ryan's father. After that, Ryan is the one delivering the beatdown to Decimator, and not the other way around.
• The White Queen: When Richard of Gloucester spots the deposed Henry VI in the courtyard, he immediately grabs the sword of a nearby guard and yells, "Then let us take vengeance for our father he murdered!" Richard has to be restrained by his two brothers and two of his in-laws. King Edward IV commands his youngest sibling to not seek revenge and explains, "He is an anointed king. And how should we be any better if we match him in his butchery?" Richard is disgruntled, but obeys.
• Xena: Warrior Princess:
  • Callisto's entire reason for living is to avenge her parents' deaths at the hand of Xena. One episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys subverts this when Callisto is sent back in time and ends up accidentally killing both of her parents, but the entire thing is prevented from happening by the episode's end.
  • Autolycus's career as the King of Thieves began when a crooked merchant named Tarsus murdered his older brother Malacus when Malacus confronted him over being swindled. Autolycus robbed the merchant of everything he owned as payback. In "Vanishing Act", circumstances lead to Autolycus confronting Tarsus again. This time he decides that robbing Tarsus isn't enough and resolves to kill him to avenge Malacus. Xena talks Autolycus down by asking him if this is really what his brother would have wanted him to become.
• The X-Files: In "Anasazi", Mulder's father is killed by Agent Alex Krycek. Mulder is already a little off-balance anyway, thanks to some LSD derivatives put into the water in his building, and this doesn't help matters. He runs into Krycek and threatens to shoot him for killing his father. Scully arrives on the scene, and tries unsuccessfully to get Mulder to not shoot Krycek, no matter how much he deserves it, because Mulder is being framed for his father's murder and if he shoots Krycek, there will be no way to prove that he didn't kill his father. She winds up shooting him in the shoulder, and Mulder will always be grateful that she's a good shot.
• Young Blades:
  • In the opening of "Wanted", Cardinal Mazarin orders Jacqueline's father killed; she kills the henchman in revenge, and spends the rest of the series disguised as a man in order to avoid capture and hopefully get revenge against Mazarin.
  • "Secrets" features Jacqueline's brother being killed by Mazarin's new henchman; she promptly kills him, too. Amusingly, they're both played by the same actor.