Family Extermination

"Every living creature that directly shares your bloodline is dead."

— Vaarsuvius, The Order of the Stick

An entire family has been targeted for murder in a single attack or systematically. This massacre may be carried out by a disgruntled family member, someone with a grudge against the family, or a complete stranger, and for many kinds of reasons, such as Feuding Families, a way to psychologically hurt their target, a way of making their target pay for not doing what they want, a bout of serial killing, specifically wanting to end their lineage, etc.

The devastation can be limited to a set of parents and their offspring (i.e., nuclear family) or target a much wider swath of lineage.

If there are any survivors, they are likely to carry a grudge, or even vengeance, against the killer(s) (if they know who the killers are).

Supertrope of Ruling Family Massacre, Pater Familicide. Compare Final Solution and The Purge for outright genocides. This can be the ultimate goal of a Familial Foe.

As this is a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Henrietta's backstory in Gunslinger Girl has her being the sole survivor of a massacre when masked men storm her apartment and kill her parents and siblings and left her nearly dead after brutally assaulting her. The Social Welfare Agency adopts her after hearing that she wanted to commit suicide due to the trauma.
• The Kurta clan in Hunter × Hunter were exterminated by the Phantom Troupe for their eyes' unique red color which gives them tremendous value on the black market; naturally, this led Sole Survivor Kurapika to swear revenge against both the Troupe and the underground collectors who bought the eyes.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eliminating the Joestar family's bloodline is Dio Brando's desired ambition. After his first defeat at the end of Phantom Blood and return in Stardust Crusaders, Dio holds that the Joestars must be destroyed as he finds their unpredictability to be the one thing that can defy him. Though Dio was defeated by Jotaro, his Dragon Ascendant, Enrico Pucci in Stone Ocean, managed to kill both Jotaro and his daughter Jolyne prior to resetting the universe. However, Pucci's Near-Villain Victory is undone when he is killed by Emporio, and in the process, fully reviving the fallen heroes as new selves.
• In Macross Zero, Shin hates anti-United Nations groups and sympathizers because his family was assassinated by anti-UN fighters when he was young.
• Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka has Asuka Ootori, a well-known anti-Disas magical girl soldier whose family was murdered by Disas creatures in order to get her to stop hunting them. Needless to say, this backfired and it turns into a crusade against the Disas.
• Mobile Suit Gundam 00: Nena Trinity kills Louise Halevy's family out of boredom because they're celebrating a wedding. Louise is the Sole Survivor and her family fortune is used to support the A-Laws which she joins to avenge the deaths of her family.
• In Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, the family of Marie had been utterly destroyed by the Neo-Atlants, including the dog, after attempting to escape.
• The Uchiha Clan Massacre in Naruto was done to prevent their potential uprising against the Konoha village. It was done by their own member, Uchiha Itachi, who's more loyal to the village than to his clan.
• In One Piece, this is the World Government's M.O. when it comes to Gold Roger since he was such an infamous pirate that influenced the Great Pirate Era. As such they try to find any traces of his bloodline or loved ones and snuff them out just to send a message to pirates around the world. This ended up including Roger's then newborn son, Ace, as they were so paranoid they instantly targeted him for death. Ace's mother had to actually hold in her pregnancy with him to fly under the radar of the Marines before giving birth to him. Years later, they ultimately succeed when Ace takes a fatal hit to protect Luffy from Akainu's lava powers and dies.

Comic Books

• During Grant Morrison's run in DC Comics' Animal Man the family of the titular character was murdered as a retaliation for his eco-activism. It was later undone by Morrison themselves.
• Batman's parents were murdered by a criminal; Depending on the Writer, this is either an example of this — i.e deliberate targeting of the Waynes — or just a tragedy of them being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Either way, again unfortunately for the (DC) underworld, there was a Sole Survivor.
• Geoff Johns' opening arc for Justice Society of America focused on immortal villain Vandal Savage orchestrating the murders of entire superhero families in order to stop the hero identities from being passed on through the generations. By the first issue, he's already wiped out the last remaining blood relatives of patriotic heroes such as Mr. America, Minute-Man, and General Glory. He has the Neo-Nazi team the Fourth Reich attempt to murder everyone at the Heywood Family reunion (the Heywoods being descendants of Commander Steel). Only a handful of kids and Nate Heywood survive, with the events ironically leading to Nate's transformation into Citizen Steel. Meanwhile, a new Mr. America, one who was friends with the previous version and with no blood relation to the original or his family, takes up the mantel showing Savage's plan was never going to fully succeed.
• The Punisher:
  • The backstory of just about every version involves the Castle family being killed by gangsters, usually by accident (they saw said gangsters killing someone and the gangsters went Leave No Witnesses). Unfortunately for the underworld, there was a Sole Survivor.
  • In The Punisher MAX, Bullseye has been hired to kill Frank and decides that To Know Him, I Must Become Him, and accordingly has several families tied up and shot down while he's pretending to have a picnic with them, something the Kingpin finds disturbing after the third time.
  • Punisher (2023) begins with the Garrison household being bombed, killing everyone except for the patriarch Joe. Joe then goes on his own revenge mission, becoming the new Punisher in the process.
• During Post-Crisis Supergirl's book, supervillain Reactron murdered Supergirl's father, and then attempted to murder her and her family systematically and doggedly, until he finally managed to wipe her mother and her whole race out. Kara and her cousin were the only survivors.
• Superman & Batman: Generations: The Ultra-Humanite in Lex Luthor's body arranged for several of Superman's loved ones to be murdered during the Man of Steel's absence just to upset Superman. His victims included Jimmy Olsen, Jimmy's wife Lucy Lane, their son Clark and Clark's own wife and children.
• X-Men: The End Of Greys story-arc had a group of Shi'ar decide to wipe out the entire Grey family due to the association between Jean Grey and the Phoenix Force. Jean was dead at the time, so the only two survivors were Rachel and Nate (who was Not Quite Dead at the time). Rachel took her revenge, killing the main assassin behind it. She doesn't kill the man who recommended it (and actually saves his life, albeit after giving serious consideration to letting him get eaten), instead opting to share her grief and pain with him, leaving him shell-shocked.

Fan Works

• In Christian Humber Reloaded, the protagonist, Vash, responds to his friend Soku turning him in to the police by not only brutally murdering her, but also killing all her friends and family members, and destroying her village.
• Throughout the course of Code Prime, the Britannian Royal Family, which comprises of Emperor Charles and his many consorts and children, is cut down a lot. By the time R2 ends, the remaining members left alive are Lelouch, Nunnally, Cornelia, Euphemia, Rai, Marrybell, Odysseus, Carine, and Laila.
• In Infinity Train: Boiling Point: After Persephone Brae was raped by Alador Blight, due to him being brainwashed by his wife Odalia, Persephone asked Prometheus Urodela to murder every single member of the family in revenge. All that's left are the parents and their children.
• At age nine Neo from re:Bound (RWBY) was forced to kill an entire family in their sleep.
• Seta Suzume:
  • Several of Luna Vetvier's relatives are reaped and die in the Games.
  • Pal Fields' mother and sisters die in a mysterious factory explosion after he rubs the Capitol the wrong way.

Films — Live-Action

• In The Boondock Saints, the "Sick Mob Man" carries out one of these.
  Rocco: This guy takes out a whole family... wife, kids, everyone... like he's ordering fucking pizza.
• City War have the two protagonists, Ken and Dick, the former who have a family consisting of his loving wife, daughter, and son. Halfway through, rival mobsters after the duo attacks Ken's house with Dick as a dinner guest, and in the confusion, Ken's wife and daughter were pumped full of lead while his son was injured and last seen in a hospital ICU - leading to the duo's Roaring Rampage of Revenge in the climax.
• In Con Air, Billy "Bedlam" Bedford is in prison for killing his wife's entire family after finding her in bed with another man. He even shot the dog.
• Early in Dredd, crime lord Ma-Ma orders the citizens of Peach Trees Hab-Block to assist her gang in hunting for the Judges trapped inside, with a warning that if any of them assists the Judges, Ma-Ma will not only kill them, but the next generation of their families.
• In The Godfather Part II, Don Ciccio orders the whole family of Antonio Andolini killed, for fear that they might grow up to take revenge in vendetta-obsessed Sicily. They are all killed except for Antonio's son, Vito, who escapes to America and becomes Vito Corleone. Sure enough Vito returns decades later and kills Don Ciccio.
• The Hobbit: Though the origin of his grudge is mysterious, Azog the Pale Orc has vowed to systematically wipe out the royal bloodline of Durin. To that end, he beheaded Thorin's grandfather in view of the latter, and Thorin has reciprocated Azog's enmity ever since. In the final film of the trilogy, Azog and his son Bolg respectively succeed in killing both of Thorin's nephews, and Thorin himself is finally killed by Azog in a Mutual Kill.
• The Messengers: It turns out John murdered his wife and children, leaving only him.
• Dr. Philip Decker from Nightbreed is a Serial Killer who is obsessed with exterminating the human race. His Establishing Character Moment shows him breaking into a family's home to kill them all, and later scenes indicate that targeting "breeders" is his modus operandi.
• In No Time to Die, main antagonist Lyutsifer Safin's family was assassinated by Mr. White on orders from SPECTRE. The film opens with a flashback of Safin gunning down Mr. White's wife — Madeline's mother — during Madeline's childhood in revenge, with this desire for vengeance in turn motivating his agenda during the film's main events.
• Once Upon a Time in the West begins with Frank killing Jill's new husband and his children. He was supposed to just scare them so they'd leave their farm, but Frank decides that killing them is simpler.
  Frank: People scare better when they're dying.
• The Professional begins with a family being wiped out by Ax-Crazy Norman Stansfield (the father was in bed with corrupt cops and DEA agents involved with the drug trade and tried to rip them off): the only survivor is the little girl Mathilda Lando (Natalie Portman), who finds herself being guarded by contract killer Leon (Jean Reno), who develops a fatherly feeling for her and teaches her how to use firearms.
• The Punisher (2004): Frank Castle's backstory is even more dramatic compared to the comics: His entire family and his wife's entire family is exterminated during a family reunion, not only his wife and children. Three whole generations are wiped out in a quasi-genocide.
• In Return of Count Yorga, Yorga becomes smitten with a girl named Cynthia and wants her to willingly accept him and become a vampire. To do so, he sends his brides to her household and has them feed on the entire family save her (though Cynthia's sister Helen is turned and becomes a bride) then having Cynthia brought to his manor where he claims she was in a car accident that killed her family. Over the course of the movie, however, she slowly starts to regain her memory.
• Shocker: Horace Pinker targets the family of the police detective who has been investigating his murders, and also because the same detective previously adopted Pinker's biological son Jonathan (Pinker had killed his own wife as well), killing almost his entire adoptive family in front of him.
• A rather unusual example in The Usual Suspects. Keyzer Soze's family was taken hostage by enemy criminals, who murdered one of his sons in front of him to make a point. Soze responded by personally killing the rest of his family, then slaughtering all but one of the criminals. He left the last one alive to tell the story and make it clear using Soze's loved ones against him just doesn't work.
• Vengeance 2009 (Heroic Bloodshed movie) literally opens with the massacre of Sophie Costello's family, with her husband and sons getting gunned down by mobsters and herself barely surviving, leading to her father, Retired Badass and former mob enforcer Francis Costello to discover the circumstances behind her demise and avenge her family.

Literature

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: The climax of the Grangerford/Shepherdson feud. It's a Roaring Rampage of Romance set off by the elopement of Harvey Shepardson and Sophia Grangerford. By the end, all of the men (and teenage boys) of the family who have taken Huck in are dead, along with many of their relatives and at least some of the other side.
• Always Coming Home: After The Condor executes his son, he also executes his wives, concubines, other children, and slaves.
• The Book of Lord Shang advocates this as a punishment for magistrates and police who break the law.
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote is about the murder of entire families, the Clutter family at the hands of robbers, and the Andrews family by their son Lowell.
• In the Courts of the Crimson Kings: Done for entirely pragmatic reasons as the genome of Martian royal bloodlines is used to control their biotechnology, so if you don't eliminate your rivals and their ancestors for several generations you could have your power wrested from you. It's a ruthless system, but one that preserves that system (at the cost of stagnation) and avoids the destructive wars seen on Earth.
• The Dresden Files: Changes: The Red Court kidnaps Harry's daughter in order to sacrifice her in a Sympathetic Magic ritual to wipe out their entire family in particular Harry's grandfather Ebenezer McCoy, the Blackstaff. Instead Harry substitutes a newly-turned Red Court vampire in order to render the Red Court extinct.
• The Godfather: Vito Corleone had to flee Sicily to escape the extinction of his bloodline by a rival family.
• "The Hound (1924)": While back in Holland to return the amulet to the undead Dutchman, the narrator is robbed of the precious cargo. That night, the hound attacks the thief's or thieves' household, tearing to shreds the entire family residing there.
• The Hunger Games: President Snow threatens Katniss Everdeen of murdering lots of her relatives if she doesn't keep her pretended couple with Peeta Mallark. This was the fate of Johanna Mason's family.
• Iron Widow: Referenced, as the penalty for murdering a Chrysalis pilot in the Imperial China-inspired setting is execution for the killer's entire family. Zetian reflects on this before beginning her plan to kill the pilot who murdered her sister — then thinks about how her family treated her and her sister like worthless objects for their entire lives and decides she'll be fine with it.
• Judge Dee: In "The Chinese Bell Murders", Lin Fan arranges for the murder of a rival family (his in-laws). Unfortunately, one of the adult daughters survived and has been tailing him ever since, accusing him of the murders before every new magistrate that gets assigned to the town. Except the surviving daughter was actually his wife, which he couldn't reveal without also admitting his guilt.
• In the science fiction book Kill Ratio, strains of an engineered plague that only targets specific bloodlines are released in the United Nations' headquarters on the moon. The first victims of the plague are members of an Arabian family that run a small French restaurant in the lunar complex. The only survivor of the attack is a member of their kitchen staff who married into the family — an anthropologist who studies the mysterious deaths notes that the survivor is Kabyle.
• In the second book of the Last Herald-Mage Trilogy, two families are struggling for control of two microkingdoms on the edge of Valdemar. The Mavelan family kills all but one of the rival Remoerdis family using magic (and manages to get the survivor framed for it); Herald-Mage Vanyel in turn annihilates the Mavelans when they all join up in a Psychic Link behind their patriarch, allowing him to magically Chain Lightning through them all.
• In the Malloreon, emperor 'Zakath vows to wipe out the entire bloodline of Murgo king Taur Urgas after a scheme of the latter's got his fiancée executed. The only way to stop him from killing the surviving prince Urgit is by revealing that the Queen cheated on Urgas with a Drasnian emissary, and the reason he was the surviving "son" was the mental advantage of being the only one not Royally Screwed Up.
• In One Hundred Years of Solitude, 16 of Colonel Aureliano Buendía's sons are killed at the same time when he threatens to arm them against the government. The only ones not killed here are Aureliano José who was killed earlier, Aureliano Amador who manages to escape until he is killed much later.
• Redwall: In The Pearls of Lutra, there is the Lutra otter clan that got exterminated (except for a Sole Survivor) because of the beautiful pink pearls they owned that the Big Bad wanted for his crown. He never got the pearls anyway, and Martin the Warrior (the Second) shouted the name of Lutra when killing him.
• Ringing Bell has the titular protagonist's flock being eaten alive by a wolf named Woe, beginning his Start of Darkness and gradual fall into an Anti-Hero.
• A Song of Ice and Fire has House Reyne and House Tarbeck, who rebelled against their liege lords, House Lannister. Tywin Lannister retaliated by marching on their respective seats of power. Tywin first attacked the Tarbecks at Tarbeck Hall, and after defeating them, he had all the men of the family beheaded, before burning down Tarbeck Hall, with the family matriarch, Lady Ellyn trapped inside. The Reynes and their retainers, meanwhile, attempted to seek protection from the Lannister army in their keep, Castamere, which was a large underground castle, carved out from an old mineshaft. But instead of besieging the keep, Tywin instead had a nearby river redirected to that it would flood the keep and blocked all exits to prevent any escape. The latter house's downfall is popularized in-universe in the song "The Rains of Castamere", which features as a symbol of the Lannisters' intimidation and power.
  "And so he spoke, and so he spoke, that lord of Castamere. But now the rains weep o'er his hall, With not a soul to hear."
  • The Reynes and Tarbecks are the most famous examples, but it seems to be standard policy to totally annihilate a rebelling house - to do otherwise leaves one open to reprisal from the survivors. This gets deconstructed in the aftermath of the Red Wedding - attempting to wipe out a beloved and honorable family through one of the most repugnant acts of betrayal imaginable results in the Lannisters, Freys, and Boltons facing the wrath of the Northerners and the Riverlanderers, which encompasses so many people that they can't be subjected to this trope because they are not just one family, but thousands.
• In A Tale of Two Cities, Madam Defarge wants to wipe out the House St. Evremonde, including children.
• Talion: Revenant: Nolan's whole family was murdered apart from him as a result of their having a claim to the Hamisian crown that could endanger its royal family.
• "Talma Gordon": Captain Gordon, Mrs. Gordon, and their baby son are killed together.

Live-Action TV

• Breaking Bad: Gus Fring's ultimate goal is to wipe out the entire Salamanca bloodline, and all of their cartel associates, as revenge for Hector Salamanca executing his friend/partner/boyfriend many years ago. Most of the Salamancas are gradually killed off over the course of both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, but Gus eventually succeeds in eradicating all but Hector when he tricks all the cartel members into drinking poisoned tequila (although the last one, Hector's grandson, is shot to death by Jesse in self-defence shortly afterwards), and then relishes rubbing their deaths in Hector's face. Hector later gets his revenge on Gus in a Suicide Attack.
• Criminal Minds labels murderers that kill entire families as "Family Annihilators". The most (in)famous example from the show is probably Karl Arnold AKA The Fox. A Psycho Psychologist, Arnold targeted families he judged were falling apart due to a lack of a "strong paternal figure" (read: a father that ruled over them with an iron fist). He would murder the father first, then the families after a few days of acting as the head of the household and making it appear as a murder-suicide committed by the father.
• Foundation (2021): The Galactic Emperor makes Azura an Un-person by ordering the assassination of everyone related to her through her great-great-grandparents, as well as everyone she's ever had a meaningful relationship with. The first group comprises 712 relatives.
• This is Patrick Jane's basic Tragic Backstory in The Mentalist. Jane was a celebrity "psychic" using cold reading and psychology to make people think he could read minds and talk to dead loved ones. After he insulted a serial killer, Red John, on live TV, Jane came home to discover Red John had killed his wife and young daughter. In the series, Jane works as a consultant for the California Bureau of Investigation and has vowed to catch Red John and do to him what he did to Jane's family.
• NCIS: Los Angeles has this as G. Callen's backstory when he remembers that the Comescu crime family wiped out his entire family as retribution for his OSS agent grandfather assassinating the Comescu patriarch due to his Axis sympathies. It traumatized him so much that the memory of his mother being assassinated in front of him as a child was suppressed for a long time even before he joined NCIS.
• Star Trek:
  • The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Vengeance Factor" features this twice over. A century earlier, the planet Acamar was caught up in an endless series of blood feuds between rival clans, one of which, the Tralesta, was nearly completely destroyed by another clan, the Lornak. The handful of survivors agreed to turn one of their own into a biologically immortal assassin so that she could hunt down every single Lornak no matter how long it took. By the time the episode takes place, the few other remaining Tralesta are all long dead, only the assassin, a mild-mannered "young" woman named Yuta, remains. While she's long since grown weary of the killing and death, the process that made her stop aging also seems to have locked her in a state of grief and pain over losing her clan and she's very close to completing her mission. As she puts it to the penultimate Lornak, "I am the last of my line, but my clan will outlive yours!". Her chemistry with Riker is almost enough to convince her to give up on the vendetta but not quite, and he is forced to vaporize her before she can finish off the last survivor (an important political leader engaged in peace talks).
  • In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Tacking into the Wind", the Dominion executes all of the members of Damar's family because of his leading the Cardassian Rebellion.
• Utopia (US): Two whole families are massacred by Harvest agents, Wilson's and even one of their own employees who objected against planning another massacre.

Music

• "Bad Bad Things" by Andrew Jackson Jihad is about a man bragging about how he killed someone's family and is now going to kill them too.

Tabletop Games

• In Godbound, the "Sever the Line" power from the Fertility word renders the target sterile and does damage (which if they are ordinary humans will likely kill them) to all descendants up to the fifth generation. The user may choose to spare particular descendants.
• In Magic: The Gathering, Nicol Bolas was killed by Tetsuo Umezawa. Once he returns to life he responds by scouring Dominaria and Kamigawa for any Umezawa and anyone even remotely involved with that family (including the Myojin of Night's Reach, the kami that transported Tetsuo's ancestor Toshiro across the planes) for a mass murder. Luckily he wasn't through enough, as at least two survivors have managed to last into the present.

Theatre

• In Macbeth, Macbeth orders the whole Macduff family to be exterminated after being told to "beware Macduff". Unfortunately, Macduff himself isn't at home when the slaughter is carried out, and even more unfortunately, Macduff hits the criteria of No Man of Woman Born due to being born via C-section. Sure enough, Macduff is the one to kill him in the final battle.

Video Games

• Possible to accomplish in Crusader Kings. In a meta-example for the second game, the Karlings (the family of Charlemagne, who exists in the 769 start) are so hated by players that Paradox Interactive used to sell a promotional t-shirt depicting a player wiping out their family tree.
• In Dragon Age: Origins, if the Warden makes Bhelen King of Orzammar, he launches a campaign of extermination against his rival Harrowmont's entire extended family. As of Dragon Age II, exactly one of Harrowmont's nephews has managed to escape, although he needs help to get far enough away to where King Bhelen can't get to him.
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion really likes this trope:
  • One Dark Brotherhood quest sees the player character given a contract to wipe out an entire family line. The first target is the clan matriarch, who believes the player to be a courier that will deliver birthday presents to her children—so she's prepared a detailed list of their locations and schedules. The player even has the opportunity to mock the kids about how much their mother bled before killing them, too.^note It's even tactically advantageous to do so with one son; telling him will cause him to fly into a rage and attack, which will make an out-of-earshot Guard in the same room come to your defense and kill your target for you.
  • This is Mankor Camoran's plot for the game. He murders Emperor Uriel Septim and his three sons, which means that there is no one to wear the Amulet of Kings, a magical artifact that was granted to the first Empress of Tamriel by the dragon god Akatosh. The Amulet is a Cosmic Keystone that needs to be worn by someone of royal blood to keep the Dragonfires, magical flames that protect Tamriel from evil creatures known as Daedra, burning. It turns out that Camoran struck a bargain with Mehrunes Dagon, the Daedric Prince of Destruction: if he removed the Dragonfires from the equation and allowed Dagon to invade the physical realm, he'd take Camoran, his children, and their followers to "paradise." The player character's main quest involves finding the emperor's illegitimate son and elevating him to the throne, preventing Mehrunes Dagon from destroying all of creation.
  • The quest given by Mephala, the Daedric Prince of Plotting and Schemes (it's not for nothing she's also called "Webspinner"), has the player invoke this trope. Two families that share a single village have their roots in conflict, but have maintained peace among themselves — and Mephala can't have that. The player must kill the patriarchs of both clans, then steal an item belonging to them and leave them at the opposite crime scene, framing the members of the opposing family for the murders. When the bodies are discovered, any chance at pacifism goes out the window, and the members of the clans brutally murder each other in the streets until only one survivor remains.
• Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir: The Killer/Kyonosuke Kanda wants to exterminate every living Ayashiro as revenge. He almost succeeds, managing to take the lives of five Ayashiros in total, before being stopped from killing the protagonist by Kazuto.
• Galaxy Angel sees this in the first game, as exiled prince Eonia fires an orbital barrage that kills all but Shiva (who spends most of the following events on board the Elsior). Eonia was exiled because he wanted to use Lost Technology to expand the empire.
• Grand Theft Auto V: Trevor Phillips does this to the O'Neil brothers after they replaced him in a business deal with Wei Cheng.
• The King of Fighters: In the backstory, Goenitz, one of the "8 Heads of Orochi", visited a fellow member, Gaidel, to ask him for his aid in resurrecting Orochi. Gaidel refused, saying that he chose to live free with his family. Disappointed by his non-cooperation, Goenitz induced "Riot of the Blood" on Gaidel's daughter Leona, who proceeded to murder her family and relatives. The sheer trauma she got after she went back to normal left her with amnesia.
• Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep has a rare case where the family in question deserved it. In the Castle of Dreams, Aqua plotted to murder Lady Tremaine and her daughters because they're demons, and their petty and sociopathic nature makes them a threat to the universe. Subverted when she's stopped by the Fairy Godmother since using light against darkness is also dangerous. Then double-subversion when the Tremaines summon the Cursed Coach to murder Cinderella out of sheer hatred, only for a bomb coming from the Unversed to drop on the demonic family and incinerate them alive, with the implication that they became Heartless or got thrown into the Lake of Fire.
• Sly Cooper:
  • Clockwerk, the Big Bad of the first game, has this as his overall goal. A massive owl that's thousands of years old, he so despises the Cooper family that he's gradually replaced his entire body with cybernetic parts just so he can keep tormenting them across the centuries. He's spent his immortal life trying to wipe out every single one of the raccoon thieves (succeeding in a few cases, including Sly's father), and it's eventually revealed that the combination of his determination to massacre them and the sheer hatred in his heart have made him functionally immortal, he wants to kill the Coopers so badly that he can't die until he does.
  • Same goes for Le Paradox in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, who intends to use time travel to erase the Cooper family from history out of vengeance towards Sly and his father for being the one who indirectly caused Le Paradox's father to go to jail.

Web Comics

• In the backstory of Dragon Sanctuary, the Kiatas were all attacked and killed by Big Bad Ghalena's followers to prevent another chosen Kiata from being born. Only Merno and Utero (who were unchosen) were spared, but Merno's brother Kie (the current Chosen Kiata) was not.
  Merno: The zealots got fearless. They wiped out whole cities in Su'un. Massacred Slayers by the hundreds. Then... they — I used to have so many cousins, aunts, and uncles. My grandparents, my mother. My father was spared... so they'd have someone to give Kie's head.
• In Gumball Warrior, Bate's entire family is subjected to this fate at the hands of Co-Dragons Mara and Lucian. The latter would do more of the hands-on work, also being responsible for the murders of some of Bate's close friends during his life. All of this was an attempt by the real Big Bad, Shieff, in an attempt to destroy Bate's will. When that fails, he makes things personal in Chapter 13.
• The Order of the Stick: Vaarsuvius uses their borrowed epic magic to cast "familicide" to wipe out an entire bloodline of black dragons, on the basis that since the current one attacked them to avenge the death of her child, someone else from the family would try to avenge her death unless V wiped them all out in one fell swoop. The victims turns out to include the dragon-blooded Draketooth clan of humans, who would otherwise have been allies (if uneasy) of the Order.
• This is the short-term goal of Mysto Majora Kijadhimov, the Big Bad of the roleplays of White Dark Life — specifically, she seeks to exterminate the Belnades family to undo a protective spell they cast on the Vatican so that she can proceed with her longer-term goal of completely eradicating the Abrahamic religions in order to secure the security and prosperity of the old Slavic faiths and their followers. ^note Mysto's brother, Mysta, is also attempting this trope, but he fits better under the Ruling Family Massacre subtrope.

Web Videos

• Everyman HYBRID: Stephanie's Dark and Troubled Past involves her coming home from school and finding her entire family not only killed by Slender Man but dismembered and shoved into bloody garbage bags hanging from the trees. This caused her to burn down her house with her family's corpses inside and flee to New Jersey, where she met the EverymanHYBRID boys, and this was done simply because Slender Man is possessive and wanted to hurt her. Later subverted, as it turns out her family may not have existed at all apart from her memories.

Western Animation

• Harley Quinn (2019):
  • The Queen of Fables pulls a pretty brutal massacre over the course of a few minutes at the Praxis Family Reunion. She explains to Harley's crew why she wanted to be as thorough as possible.
    Harley: But why?!
    Queen of Fables: You were there... that guy ratted us out so I killed that guy. Then everyone saw me kill that guy, so I killed everyone. You gotta end the bloodline and prevent any revenge killing. I mean that's just Evil 101.
  • Sure enough, Harley sees the Sole Survivor and leaves him hidden... and he comes back with Shock and Awe powers looking for revenge.
    Queen of Fables: That's why you always end the what?
    Everyone: The bloodline...
    Queen of Fables: The motherfucking bloodline, yes!
• The Legend of Vox Machina: When the Briarwoods staged a coup in Whitestone, they ambushed the ruling family while they were having dinner, and slaughtered Lord and Lady de Rolo and most of their children where they stood. The only survivors were Percy and Cassandra de Rolo, who were subsequently imprisoned and tortured for information. They eventually escaped, but during their escape, Cassandra was shot in the back by multiple arrows, forcing Percy to leave her for dead. When he encounters the Briarwoods again years later, Percy unleashes a Roaring Rampage of Revenge that spans the majority of the first season.
• Paradise PD: Discussed. A criminal states he committed familicide just so Gina, a violent policewoman, would "wreck [his] turdcutter". The fact this show has loads of Black Comedy should tell you if this was played seriously or not.

Real Life

• Back in Imperial China, this was a common punishment for treason. If even one person was found guilty of treason, then they will be killed, along with the rest of their family. Severe cases would even extend to their extended family, which means their siblings, their side of the family, their parents, their aunts and uncles, their grandparents, their children, their grandchildren, their nephews and nieces, their spouses and their side of the family will all be purged, to ensure the complete erasure of the bloodline. One case in the Ming Dynasty even had their dead ancestors' graves desecrated.

---