History UsefulNotes / JackTheRipper

* Who could forget ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventurePhantomBlood'' and its Vampire Jack the Ripper, transformed by a super powered Aztec mask-awakened arch-vampire, of a sort bred by ancient superbeings to be consumed? No, really.

* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Possibly. At the end of the “Night of the Double Murder” (wherein both Elizabeth Stryde and Catherine Eddowes were killed), someone is purported to have written “The Juwes are not the ones who will be blamed for nothing”. The Police reportedly had this scrubbed before any photos could be taken and circulated.

The Ripper case is particularly tantalizing for writers who want to make AnAesop or HistoricalInJoke about VictorianLondon, as the case was never solved and much of the documentary evidence associated with it has been either lost or destroyed. It is also fairly common in stories whose pitches involve the phrase "VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory". As a testament to his infamy, Jack the Ripper was voted the worst Briton of all time by the BBC.

* There is a deathcore band called Music/{{Whitechapel}}, named in reference to the area in which the murders were carried out. Their first album, ''The Somatic Defilement'', is a ConceptAlbum based on Jack the Ripper and their murders.

* A 2009 Creator/{{ITV}} drama called ''Series/{{Whitechapel}}'' has someone re-creating the Ripper murders in 2008 London. More or less, as location filming problems and the changing geography of the city (most of the relevant streets have now gone in slum clearances) has meant some murders have moved location slightly, something noted by the characters. The first episode does have someone stabbed 39 times in line with the Martha Tabram murder (one of the non-canonical ones before the five), but survives when the one aimed for her heart glances off a rib.

* ''ComicBook/TwoThousandAD'' had dealt with this a couple of times.

* Gets mentioned in a volume of ''ComicBook/AmericanVampire''. Prince Albert committed the murders because he went insane after a brief encounter with the corpse of {{Dracula}}.
* The ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' comic spin-off "Tales of the Vampires" included a story in which the Ripper was a vampire, the twist being that the policeman investigating turned out to be a vampire as well, who eventually killed the Ripper for being too splashy and risking exposing the existence of vampires to the public. The comic "The Origin" claimed that the Ripper used to be UsefulNotes/{{Caligula}}.
* The first ''Series/{{CSI}}'' graphic novel had a Jack the Ripper copycat killing prostitutes in Las Vegas during a convention of Ripperologists.

** The first ''{{Elseworlds}}'' graphic novel, ''ComicBook/GothamByGaslight'', features a Victorian era Franchise/{{Batman}} tracking the Ripper to Gotham City. Surprisingly enough, no attempt was made to link him to any of Batman's usual villains. His identity is revealed to be Jacob Packer, an American doctor-turned-lawyer and former friend of the Wayne family. In a ''very'' shocking change, when [[WesternAnimation/BatmanGothamByGaslight this story was adapted into an animated film]], the identity was changed to [[spoiler:''[[AdaptationalVillainy Commissioner Gordon]]''.]]
** The {{Elseworlds}} ''ComicBook/WonderWomanAmazonia'' is set in a world where Jack has become King, and the British Empire is a misogynistic dystopia.
** ''{{ComicBook/Hellblazer}}'': In the Royal Blood arc, the cause of the original murders was the crown prince getting a prostitute pregnant. Queen Victoria went batshit and ordered the royal family's surgeon to dispose of the evidence. As he lacked the stomach for murder, he was made the host for the demon Calibraxis, which cheerfully went and killed several other prostitutes. Now it's being tried again, with a politician deciding to have the Prince of Wales possessed by the same deamon in order to give him the backbone to turn the county into a fascist nightmare, resulting in the prince going around and eating people until Constantine tricks the demon into entering the politician.
** A story in the ''ComicBook/{{Justice League of America}}'' series fused with Creator/HGWells' ''Literature/TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau'' and features Jack the Ripper as an orangutan (which is also a ShoutOut to Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's ''Literature/TheMurdersInTheRueMorgue'').
** The ''ComicBook/MadameXanadu'' series also involves the Ripper, but rather than reveal his identity his actions are described by the [[ComicBook/ThePhantomStranger Phantom Stranger]] to be the universe's "balancing act" response to actions undertaken by Madame Xanadu centuries ago. As it goes, Jason Blood / ComicBook/{{Etrigan}} fathered a child on one of the Ripper's victims, and had she carried the child to term, it would have been the greatest horror that could ever walk the Earth. The Ripper murders were a byproduct of the universe attempting to prevent this from happening, and ultimately succeeded. Afterwards, Stranger, while not actively interfering, does take matters into his own hands, and arranges for the Ripper to fall and break his neck rather than continue, because while he "only observes" what takes place, he was as repulsed as any by the murders, even though he accepted the necessity of them.
** Or, just possibly, he was ComicBook/VandalSavage, and was stopped by ''ComicBook/ResurrectionMan''.
** In an issue of ''ComicBook/{{Superboy}}'', Project Cadmus is hired to analyze the Ripper's DNA and find out who he was. Instead, MadScientist Dabney Donovan uses the sample to create a monster called Ripjak.
** Or he was Mary Kelly's boyfriend, encouraged by the demon Buzz from Peter David's ''ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}''.
** In an early 1970s ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'' story, the ghost of the Ripper fell in love with Lois Lane while she and Clark Kent were doing an extended visit with one of his descendants; the ghost arranged a form of mystical time travel to send Lois back to Whitechapel to be murdered by his earlier self so she could join him in the afterlife, only to be foiled by his own obsessions -- the earlier Ripper refused to harm Lois because she "was not like the others".
* In the ''ComicBook/DoctorWhoIDW'' storyline "The Ripper's Curse", the Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory face an alien war criminal called Mac'atyde, who uses a human disguise hide in Victorian London, but needs to consume chemicals produced in human organs when in a state of fear, and therefore commits the murders to feed. The graffiti about "Juwes" is an attempt to pin the murders on his enemies, the Ju'wes, who of course the London authorities have never heard of. The publisher blurb claims "it's the first time ever that the Doctor goes up against JACK THE RIPPER!", which it isn't (see Literature, below).
* Creator/AlanMoore's ''ComicBook/FromHell'' is a deconstructive and metafictional examination of the Ripper murders. The title is a reference to the letter to the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee that contained what was claimed to be Catherine Eddowes' kidney. The graphic novel is considered one of the most detailed and accurate portrayals of the period and setting. It uses a widely discredited theory by Steven Knight that noted physician Sir William Gull committed the murders because the victims knew of a child Prince Albert Victor (not Victoria's husband, but her eldest grandson, who died before she did) had with a commoner as its base, but Moore explicitly states that he doesn't actually believe it. In the Appendix, "Dance of the Gull-Catchers" he states clearly ([[Quotes/JackTheRipper see the quotes page]]) that the crime is unsolvable and ultimately people should focus on improving the treatment and protection of sex workers and women in general.
* In ''ComicBook/HackSlash'', Jack the Ripper is heavily implied to have been a [[RevenantZombie slasher]].
* A ''ComicBook/{{Hellraiser}}'' comic reveals that Ripper became a Cenobite.
* In ''ComicBook/TheLeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen'' (by Creator/AlanMoore, again), [[Theatre/TheThreepennyOpera Macheath]] is Jack the Ripper -- he fled to Buenos Aires after the last Whitechapel murder, and returned to London in 1910. Naturally, he never stopped killing. As a sidenote, he claims to have committed the original murders when he was only 19.
* In the Italian comic book ''ComicBook/MartinMystere'', a vampire Richard Van Helsing discovers that the Ripper is an ancient mythical force, divided into several knives, which force their holders to kill. Van Helsing searches for and destroys the knives, including one which is destroyed by Franchise/SherlockHolmes.

** A horror comic story (''Astonishing'' #18) with a few historical accuracy issues had an adventurer visiting the grave of Jack the Ripper (with the absurd inscription 'Jack the Ripper -- Murderer') and being killed by the Ripper's ghost. The story was later reprinted in ''Dead of Night'' #6.
** An issue of ''ComicBook/DoctorStrange'' had it that he was possessed by a servant of the DimensionLord Dormammu.
** Issue #100 of Marvel Comics ''ComicBook/{{Master of Kung Fu}}'' (1981) featured a story titled "Red of Fang and Claw, All Love Lost". In it, the Ripper was an experiment of Fu Manchu's, who escaped and hid in London. The hero fought him at the end of the story.
** ''ComicBook/TheMightyThor'' #372, featuring an immortal(ish) serial killer whose preferred method was killing women with his knives, included a carefully hedged speculation that he might have been Jack the Ripper.
** During ''Volume 4'' of ''{{ComicBook/Nightcrawler}}'', a spirit with a fondness for knives and pretty women, heavily implied to be Jack the Ripper, is a commander in Azazel's army.
** In ''ComicBook/{{Thunderbolts}}'' #166-167, the Ripper is Mr. Hyde, with the assistance of Satanna, and finally [[spoiler:the other Thunderbolts and Inspector Abberline, once they learn the prostitutes have been possessed by evil spirits.]]
** Paul Cornell's ''ComicBook/{{Wisdom}}'' has the eponymous hero battling hundreds of Jack the Rippers. A villain basically opens up portals to Alternate Universes and unleashes their versions of Jack the Ripper onto the streets of modern day London, with plenty of [[ShoutOut Shout Outs]] to other versions of Jack the Ripper in popular culture.
* An issue of ''ComicBook/TheMazeAgency'' had a killer picking off members of a group of 'Ripperologists' (people interested in the mystery of Jack the Ripper) by cutting their throats, using a twisted interpretation of the poems the Ripper sent to the newspapers to determine the order.
* Cybil in ''ComicBook/NightmaresOnElmStreet'' studies Jack the Ripper, and Freddy bases her nightmares around that theme.
* In the French DarkerAndEdgier {{Prequel}} to ''ComicBook/PeterPan'' by Regis Loisel, Jack murders Peter's abusive prostitute mother apparently out of pity for him, but still clearly traumatizing the poor boy. Furthermore, it's implied that this event in fact launched the Ripper murders, as it apparently made Jack loathe all prostitutes as abusive monsters.
* In the UrbanFantasy graphic novel series ''ComicBook/RachelRising'', a demon called Malus claims to a young girl named Zoe Mann that her great grandfather was Robert Mann, one of the many suspects for the Ripper, and later he gives her a very special knife that he calls "Jack". [[spoiler:Later still, the origin of the knife turns out to be even darker than that, as the "knife" is actually the remains of Lucifer's sword that broke when he fell from Heaven, and Malus has given it to any number of profoundly evil people to wield over the years.]]
* A ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' comic drove [[PhlebotinumBreakdown holodeck problems]] about as far as they could go by having the alien Jack the Ripper (from the episode below) take over the system.

* In the ''ComicBook/StrangersInParadise'' arc "Molly & Pooh", a pair of high society killers believe they've discovered the identity of the Ripper and dispatch him in his old age. This story has [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment virtually nothing to do with the rest of the series, and never connects back with it in any appreciable way.]]
* The comic ''ComicBook/WhitechapelFreak'' (2001) by David Hitchcock uses Jack the Ripper as an underlying background figure in a story that focuses on a traveling freak show. The Ripper is a legless man strapped onto the shoulders of a midget.

** Paul Cornell's ''Wisdom'' has the eponymous hero battling hundreds of Jack the Rippers. A villain basically opens up portals to Alternate Universes and unleashes their versions of Jack the Ripper onto the streets of modern day London, with plenty of [[ShoutOut Shout Outs]] to other versions of Jack the Ripper in popular culture.

* ''WesternAnimation/CloneHigh'': One of the new clones introduced in the revival. As it turns out, Jack the Ripper was actually a Black woman (an InkSuitActress for her voice actress Creator/JackeeHarry). Due to the circumstances of the show, she's friends with fellow historical villains Christopher Columbus, Ivan the Terrible, Lizzie Borden, and Vlad the Impaler.

* Who could forget ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventurePhantomBlood'' and its Vampire Jack the Ripper, transformed by a super powered Aztec mask-awakened arch-vampire, of a sort bred by ogres to be consumed? No, really.

* In the 8-bit era, a TextAdventure called simply ''Jack The Ripper'' was released for the UsefulNotes/ZXSpectrum, UsefulNotes/Commodore64, and UsefulNotes/AmstradCPC. It was the first game ever in the UK to be [[RatedMForMoney rated "18"]] by the British Board of Film Classification, due to its graphic murder scene images. The Ripper is working for supernatural entities wanting to bring about the decay and destruction of the world, but is stopped just in time by the protagonist.

* Annie Chapman (8 September)

* Jack the Ripper appears in the Sega platform game ''VideoGame/{{Master of Darkness}}''.

One of the first, and likely still most famous serial killers. Not just ''a'' serial killer: ''[[TropeCodifier THE]]'' SerialKiller. The failure to conclusively discover the Ripper's identity has made a large contribution to the case's fame, and it is one of the main StockUnsolvedMysteries used in fiction.

The Ripper is commonly held to have killed at least five prostitutes in the Whitechapel area of {{UsefulNotes/London}}'s East End during the fall of 1888 - although it's worth mentioning that far less well known serial killers have reached far more impressive numbers and what made the Ripper's fame was the media coverage and panic among the citizenry:

However, there is some controversy concerning the actual total, with some investigators including other prostitute murders performed in a broadly similar fashion before and after the 'canonical' five. In addition, there is (and will likely always be) a lack of consensus in the case of Elizabeth Stride, the only canonical victim to show no signs of [[DesecratingTheDead postmortem mutilation]]. All five of the canonical victims died with their throats cut, and all but Stride were heavily mutilated; this, combined with a witness report and the fact that Stride's body was still warm when police arrived, led investigators to assume that in Stride's case the killer was interrupted, leading to the attack on Eddowes later the same night (what has come to be known as the "Double Event").