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Hunter of His Own Kind

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"I never deal with what I am. I don't think about it. I just do my job, which usually involves me beating the crap out of things a lot like me. But I don't think about that."
Hellboy, Hellboy

This is where you have Group X which is Always Chaotic Evil. Then there's Character Y, who somehow has the powers of Group X but has a conscience, often because he or she is a Phlebotinum Rebel or a Half-Human Hybrid of Warring Natures. So, Character Y becomes a Hunter of Monsters, and Defends Against Their Own Kind, allowing him to use his powers for a good cause. Sometimes, this turns out badly for the Hunter when it is revealed that his targets actually aren't totally evil, and a case of Van Helsing Hate Crimes can result.

For some reason, vampires seem particularly prone to doing this. You will see Dhampyrs, Friendly Neighborhood Vampires, and especially Vampire Detectives engaging in it. Maybe it's because they like to turn their enemies out of spite.

See also: Boomerang Bigot, Hunting the Rogue, My Species Doth Protest Too Much, Stages of Monster Grief, and Takes One to Kill One. Someone who actually succeeds in killing off their entire people or clan has committed Genocide from the Inside. Predator Turned Protector may lead to them protecting their supposed "prey" from their own kind, who feeds on the same prey. Contrast Monsters Anonymous. Compare Pro-Human Transhuman and Token Heroic Orc. Contrast Hired by the Oppressor, where the hired party don't hate their species, but are paid by an oppressive regime to cleanse them off.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Attack on Titan:
    • The Attack Titan... well... attacks other Titans while ignoring the nearby humans. This is because he's actually Eren, on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge after his Titan Shifter powers manifested. Armin successfully invokes this trope, convincing the military that Eren can become their trump card in the battle to reclaim first Wall Rose, and eventually Wall Maria and the rest of Paradis from the Titans.
    • Ymir also becomes this when her unarmed squad is cornered in a castle tower by a horde of Titans. Word of God confirms her decision to reveal herself and fight is because she's in love with Krista. She gets overwhelmed, but luckily the Survey Corps arrives in time to save her.
    • Late in the story, The Survey Corps, including the other Titan Shifters join forces to fight against Eren and the Rumbling, to save the world from his mad plan to destroy all life outside Paradis.
  • Liebe in Black Clover, aka the Anti-Magic Devil, despises all devils because their leader Lucifero killed his human adoptive mother Licita, who's also Asta's biological mother. His goal in life is to kill every devil in existence, no matter what it takes.
  • Rin from Blue Exorcist. Mephisto even lampshades this in a recent chapter.
  • Chainsaw Man has its own cynical take on this trope, where captured devils are forced into government service hunting other devils under threat of death. Not that they have issue fighting their own kind, as they're eager to loan out their powers to devil hunters.
  • The whole premise of Claymore. Female warriors who are half human and half Yoma fight pure Yoma because they are monsters who eat human guts. But from time to time, a warrior also turns into an Awakened Being, and is then just another man-eating monster, which is hunted by her former comrades.
  • The Shikabane Hime of Corpse Princess are undead girls who hunt and kill other undead.
  • Dark from D.N.Angel was described as such by Argentine. Weirdly, he's technically an artwork that steals other non-living evil artwork. Krad counts as well; his mission in life is to kill Dark. Krad's not only another living artwork, but the same exact one as Dark, making him not only a hunter of his own kind, but a hunter of himself, which is probably as far as you can take this trope.
  • Nagasawa from Dawn Tsumetai Te is immune to the worst effects of Nightshift, whose not-so-fortunate victims he must hunt down and kill using the very mutations that the Nightshift has given him.
  • Both Merry and Engi from Dream Eater Merry are nightmares who hunt other nightmares. That said, Merry just sends them back to the dream world, and Engi tries to avoid killing them, letting Merry finish the job when possible.
  • Fabricant 100: No 100 sees no issue killing other Fabricants as long as that's what Ashibi wants, which also means less competition for her.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist:
    • Scar only targets alchemists, despite using alchemy himself. Of course, Scar never identifies himself as an alchemist because his religion considers it a sin, thus he exploits a Loophole Abuse because true alchemy is three stages (Composition, Deconstruction, and Reconstruction), and he only stops at the second, which is still enough to blow a person's body apart. He gradually overcomes this.
    • Greed spends quite some time fighting other homunculi after his Heel–Face Turn.
  • Hellsing:
    • Alucard is an interesting case; he's frequently as bad or worse than the vampires he's hunting (maybe...) and takes far too much glee in killing them, often getting 'creative' in his methods. Really, he only hunts vampires because he's bound to follow orders from the head of the Helsing family, and they're in the vampire hunting business.
    • Alucard's servant, Seras Victoria, was a police officer before joining the Hellsing organization so little has changed for her. It's just that now the criminals she hunts are a lot more dangerous.
  • Inuyasha has the eponymous hero who also qualifies for it. He is a hanyou (half-youkai), and he wanders the country with his friends to kill malicious youkai who attacking humans. Although you see a lot of youkai attacking humans, there are also some very questionable occurrences.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00
  • Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
    • Setsuna is a half-demon who hunts demons. They brought it upon themselves by kicking her out for her albinism.
    • Mana Tatsumiya is also a half-demon who specializes in exorcisms.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion:
    • Rei Ayanami is an artificially created Angel/Human hybrid who pilots an Evangelion to fight Angels.
    • The EVAs themselves are reverse engineered from the first two Angels.
  • Ninja Slayer is about a super-powered ninja who slays other super-powered ninjas. He's not the only example in-series, however: Dragon Yukano, Yamoto Koki, and from the villains' side, Darkninja, could all be considered hunters of their own kind.
  • The main character in Kei Kusunoki's Ogre Slayer.
  • A non-species example: the Seven Warlords of the Sea in One Piece are government-sponsored pirates who are given amnesty (and often have a blind eye turned to their other shady dealings) in exchange for bringing down other pirates. This provides mixed results, however, since for all their power and their alleged loyalty to the World Government they are still pirates at heart, and more often than not end up only looking out for themselves, with two prominent examples abusing their station and privileges to secretly build criminal organisations for the purpose of taking over countries; Crocodile is stopped in his own attempt by the Straw Hat Pirates, while Doflamingo succeeded ten years ago via Engineered Heroics. The rest of them are barely any better, only following orders to the strictest interpretation of the letter and frequently twisting them to do whatever they want (if they even follow them at all). Eventually the kings and queens of the world nations decide that the Seven Warlords are more trouble than they're worth, and abolish the Warlord System when Vegapunk develops a new weapon with the power to replace them.
  • Averted in Saiyuki. On a few occasions Sanzo's three sidekicks get accused by the random demons they fight of being an example of this trope, as they're following a human who has a reputation of being a demon-slayer. However, the only reason the group ends up fighting those demons is because said demons have little idea of the trio's backgroundsnote  and are stupid enough to get in their way in the first place.
  • Migi from Parasyte is forced to. He could not completely take over his human host, so that he still has a human mind. But that is why the other parasites do not trust him and therefore want to kill. In the course of many battles, Migi kills several of his peers.
  • Natsuno aids in the efforts to stop the vampires infesting Sotoba Village in Shiki, ultimately killing The Dragon and himself in the process.
  • In Super Dimension Fortress Macross/Robotech, Milia, a Zentraedi (or is that Meltran?) who is obsessed with defeating the human ace Max. When she is captured by Max, not only does she do a Heel–Face Turn, she becomes his partner fighting the Zentraedi, but tends to shoot down her opponents with nonlethal shots when possible.
    • In subsequent Macross shows, "cultured" Zentraedi are more than willing to do their part to defend their human allies from their "uncultured" brethren.
  • In Tokyo Ghoul:re, the protagonists are part of a newly-formed team of artificial One-Eyed Ghouls that CCG has created to hunt Ghouls. They clearly think of themselves as still being human, but wield the same abilities as an ordinary ghoul and are viewed with mistrust by their peers. The mistrust is a bit justified as a one-eyed ghoul gone far enough into ghouldom can't digest human food, so they have to feed off humans and ghouls, but only the squad's mentor actually has that problem.
    • The heads of CCG the Washuu Clan are an old family of Ghouls who hunt other Ghouls.
    • In the original series, Ken Kaneki begins to hunt, kill and eat other ghouls in an effort to get the bottom of what happened to him and become "strong", though not at anyone else's command. Consuming ghoul flesh tastes terrible and causes severe mental deterioration along with the power boost, but formerly-human Kaneki would still rather do that than eat humans.
  • Trinity Blood: Abel Nightroad is a crusnik, a vampire who hunts and eats other vampires; although it is implied (in the anime) by their dialogue that the Crusnik see themselves as another race entirely, they do need the blood of vampires to survive. Abel is the only one of the three who actually makes it a point to hunt vampires. His sister isn't shown to hunt anyone (in fact, she's the empress of the vampires), and Cain doesn't care who he hunts/hurts.
  • UQ Holder!:
    • Kuromaru is a demihuman of some kind trained in demon-hunting (by the same school that trained Setsuna, no less).
    • The eponymous organization itself, made up primarily of immortals and intending to provide supernatural denizens (immortals in particular) with a home, will occasionally have to go hunt down an immortal causing problems in society. Either they recruit these errant immortals into the organization... or they neutralize them.
  • Vampire Hunter D goes after the vampire Nobility who once ruled the earth.
  • Both Robin and Amon in Witch Hunter Robin are witches who hunt other witches.
  • Wolf's Rain:
    • Darcia is a villainous example, hunting the wolves despite being part wolf via a traitorous bloodline.
    • Blue Yaiden is one unwittingly.
  • In the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, Yugi's snobby classmate Kujirada had a "hidden character" Virtual Pet (as in, it would live two months, as opposed to normal ones, that lived twenty-one days). Unfortunately for him, it was harder to take care of, and had a malignant intelligence, along with the ability to control Kujirada. The evil virtual pet eventually got tired of normal virtual food, and directed its owner to link it to other kids' devices so it could devour other virtual pets. It met its end when it tried to prey on Yugi's pet, who due to swapping data with Jonouchi's pet, was much tougher than it looked.
  • YuYu Hakusho:
    • Yusuke ends up being one when it's revealed he has a little demon in him towards the end of the series.
    • Hiei also qualifies. Ever since he could walk, he's been brutally slaughtering demons left and right, all because he enjoyed killing. Although for a time, his primary motivation was to kill all the ice maidens from his birthplace.

    Comic Books 
  • In the Batman Vampire trilogy, this trope applies to Batman in Bloodstorm, the second book in the trilogy, which sees him hunting down and killing the surviving members of Dracula's 'family' after the death of their leader; Red Rain — the first book in the trilogy — saw Batman allied with renegade vampire Tanya and her followers, but Tanya's group sacrificed themselves to destroy most of Dracula's brood when Batman destroyed Wayne Manor.
  • Blade is a Dhampyr vampire hunter. Him being part vampire, the thing he hates the most has caused him no small amount of grief.
  • In Cybersix, the eponymous heroine and her brother Data 7 hunt Von Reichter's other, malicious creations. The show of the same name has a similar premise.
  • Slashers in the Hack/Slash universe are Revenant Zombies, but even in their initial human lives, they possess an urge to kill, though they may be apparently normal people up to that point. The possibility of becoming a slasher is genetic in nature, and since protagonist Cassie Hack's mother was a slasher that she was forced to kill, Cassie has been dealing with the same urge, which she primarily deals with via hunting down and killing other slashers.
  • Hellboy, as demonstrated in the page quote.
  • Andrew Bennett, from DC Comics' I, Vampire series in House of Mystery, was a vampire determined to hunt down the line of evil vampires which he himself had started.
  • If you want a not-so-sunny example of this trope, look at original-model Lobo. He hunted down and killed every single member of his own race... for fun.
  • The French comic Raptors features Drago and Camilla, a Brother–Sister Team duo of vampires who systematically hunt down all other members of their kind. The feud started when the majority of vampires chose to give up most of their powers and bestial instincts so they could walk around in the daylight and rule humanity openly. Drago and Camilla's father was opposed to this and murdered (along with his wife) for his defiance, leading his children to swear revenge after they were safely whisked away.
  • Spider-Man:
    • Eddie Brock's Venom is like this. One of the few reasons he'd willingly ally himself with Spider-Man is to fight Carnage or another Symbiote; he simply hates them. This became a far-more prominent goal when he later becomes Anti-Venom.
    • In fact, this seems to be a trait of Symbiotes in general. The one time Venom and Carnage were ever willing to cooperate with each other was to fight a more powerful Symbiote that had been spawned from Carnage's Symbiote.
  • Ultimate Spider-Man: Morbius is a true vampire and Vlad the Impaler's brother. He stakes other vampires but not before apologizing to them for being unable to save them. Rather than turning people into vampires, his bite prevents humans from fully turning after they have already been bitten.
  • Ultimate X-Men: Sabertooth first appears working for Weapon X, helping to hunt other mutants. Unlike everybody else, coerced into doing so with explosive stuff and the like, he works there willingly.
  • Vampirella: Depending on the Writer, Vee is typically portrayed as a vampiress who manages her own Horror Hunger by feeding either on Asshole Victims or blood bags stored in a fridge. She has taken down many fellow vampires in her quest to rid the world of evil, with Dracula himself being her Arch-Enemy.
  • X-Men:
    • The X-Men in general fight evil mutants quite often when they aren't fighting anti-mutant racists.
    • X-Factor began as a team that hunted down mutants. The general public didn't know that the team members were mutants themselves and that they were actually trying to help the mutants they "hunt" down.
    • In the future world she came from, Rachel Summers was forcibly brainwashed into becoming a Hound by Ahab after being captured and tortured by the government as a child. Ahab considered her the best of his Hounds thanks to her psionic abilities making her extremely talented at tracking other mutants. It left her both with long-lasting trauma, and tattoos/scars (it's never been entirely clear what they are) that she usually keeps concealed with her telepathy.
    • Would you believe that Sentinels are mutants themselves? Seriously, some people who build them (like Sebastian Shaw) have tried to put a failsafe program into them to use in case they go rogue, which reveals that, since their abilities were "inherited" and improved upon from the original Mach-1 Sentinels, they are technically mutants. In theory, this would act as a Logic Bomb, causing a rogue Sentinel who has this revelation thrust upon it to destroy itself, as its directive is to destroy mutants. However, this idea hasn't had as much success as whoever thought it up had hoped.
  • In Transformers: Last Bot Standing, Rodimus Prime is one of the last surviving Transformers after the Great War, and he now believes that his species is Beyond Redemption due to the aforementioned War having annihilated stars, planets, and resources. He now hunts down and kills other Transformers who try to eat the human-like inhabitants of the planet Donnokt.

    Fan Works 
  • Dungeon Keeper Ami: Ami has the Evil Overlord powers of Dungeon Keepers, but is actually a Good Hero, so she hunts down other Keepers and save people from their plans.
  • Family of the Shield: Monti Iwatani is a Wave Monster that was hatched from an egg originally found within the stomach of the Chimera Wave Boss and raised by Naofumi Iwatani and Raphtalia as their son. He values Raphtalias' world as a place worth protecting from the Waves of Catastrophe, using his Cannibalism Superpower to gain new powers by eating the flesh and blood of Wave Monsters and Wave Bosses. When he Class Upgrades, Monti has now become a Wave Boss himself: and he now has the ability to usurp control over a Wave from it's Wave Boss to instantly turn it off: provided that the Wave Boss in-question has both lower Health and Stats compared to Monti.

    Films - Animation 

    Films - Live-Action 
  • According to one version of Blade Runner, the main character who hunts rogue androids is an android himself. If true, this is a rather dark spin on the trope. Basically, androids are detected by being tested for moral feelings and reveal themselves to be amoral. As the androids turn out to be "tin men", this would mean that he is actually worse than his targets. The amorality is explained as resulting from lacking real childhoods and formative years of experience. There is at least one android in the film (two if you count the main character) who has/have memory implants of growing up with a family and loved ones (even if those loved ones died or left). They both show that they have a sense of right and wrong and the definite android is only exposed after hundreds of times more testing than any previous android.
    • The protagonist "K" aka KD6-3.7 from Blade Runner 2049 is an explicit example, a Nexus-9 generation Replicant who hunts down rogue members of previous generations. Replicants in general were legalized again for use on Earth in 2036 after their manufacturer could prove the dependence and more reliable servitude of the post-Tyrell Corp models. However, K notably rejects this characterization early on when it's thrown at him by a replicant he's hunting, claiming that "his kind" doesn't run like the older models.
  • Blood of the Tribades: The priests of Bathor, who are vampires, kill other vampires who they deem sinners and blame for the disease that infects them.
  • In The Stinger of Doctor Strange (2016), Mordo is shown to have started hunting down sorcerers on account of there being too many sorcerers in the world.
  • Kaiju such as Godzilla, Rodan and Anguirus seem to hate each other with a passion, needing little reason to fight each other whenever their paths cross, only considering a truce when worse Kaiju like King Ghidorah show up.
  • Harriet: Bigger Long is a black slave catcher who hunts his own race because the money is better than he could make as a laborer. Walter is the same at first, but then feels remorse over it later and leaves him to help Harriet instead.
  • Hellboy: The title character is a demon who fights other demons and supernatural monsters. Sometimes, the creatures he fights accuse him of betraying his kind, but he seems to be more worried about becoming like them. Notably, he attempts to negotiate with the demon Sammael before resorting to violence.
  • Hellboy II: The Golden Army uses this in the opposite manner from the comic books — to make the monsters that HB fights more sympathetic and to make HB resign from the BPRD.
  • In The Last Witch Hunter, there are witches working for Church Militant Axe and Cross.
    • Glaeser is implied to be one; while part of Axe and Cross' court, she uses magic and divination to aid them.
    • Chloe becomes one by the end of the movie. She's rather nonchalant and lampshades it:
      Chloe: Why can't a witch be a witch hunter?
  • Rise: Blood Hunter: On being transformed into a vampire once she's been fed on, raped and left for dead by other vampires, Sadie starts killing them all.
  • Although not directly called out, as a dwarf, Bolivar Trask in X-Men: Days of Future Past is a human mutant who hunts down super-powered human mutants in order to advance technology through gruesome experiments.

    Literature 
  • This backfired badly in the backstory of the sci-fi novel Candle, although it only becomes apparent towards the end. As one Hive Mind after another ravaged the world, seeking only to add more members to their ranks, a benevolent hive mind was created to protect the minds of those in it. It, too, sought to spread itself, initially as a counter to the other hive minds, until at last it became no different than them.
  • In Eden Green, the title character is infected with an alien needle symbiote that renders her immortal. She immediately makes it her mission to destroy herself and all other infected humans.
  • In Empire of the Vampire, the palebloods are Dhampyr children born of vampiric fathers and human mothers, and inherit many traits from their monstrous progenitors. Believing their birth to be a heavy sin against nature and God, the Silversaints of the Ordo Argent recruit and train these children to dedicate their lives to the destruction of His enemies, be they vampire, demon, fae or any other monster of the dark, so that they may redeem their own cursed souls. Vampires are their most common quarry, and indeed much of a Silversaint's training focuses specifically on combating their undead relatives.
  • In The Falconer, Aileana's mentor for faery hunting is Kiaran, who is himself a faery. He doesn't talk about his motives much, but there are hints that some event in his past caused him to change sides.
  • Kim from the Ghost Finders series is the only Carnacki Institute ghost to work as a field agent who investigates and quells dangerous hauntings. A few other ghosts do serve in a non-field capacity, like the librarian, but only Kim actually fights spooky stuff.
  • Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter could be considered this, given that he seeks to eliminate Muggles and Muggle-born wizards despite being half-Muggle himself. The same goes for Dolores Umbridge, who viciously persecutes Muggle-borns even though she's half-Muggle like Voldemort.
  • Journey to Chaos: Eric has become a monster that hunts other monsters. He still thinks of himself as human and even after accepting that he really is a grendel he is still sympathetic to humans so he thinks nothing of killing them. Kallen would insist that he does not fit this trope because he is not a monster but a demon.
  • The Legend of Drizzt:
    • Drizzt Do'Urden from the Forgotten Realms is another poster boy contender considering how badly he breaks his vow to never kill drow elves. He discards the vow in the third group of books after realizing it's stupid to kill goblins and other evil monsters, but not drow.
    • His father too. More coherent than Drizzt, Zaknafein prefers to kill drows, because they are the most cruel creatures he knows.
  • Night Watch (Series). Both Light and Dark Others persecute their kindred who break the Treaty and threaten to disrupt the Balance between Light and Darkness. Also invoked in that in order to hunt down renegade vampires, Night Watchers need to tune in to the "Call" they use to attract victims. It is only audible to other vampires, so the Watchers undergo a special ritual that nearly turns them into a vampire.
  • Old Kingdom: The Abhorsens have the powers of necromancers, and the duty to hunt them down and deal with them and the trouble they cause.
  • The One Who Eats Monsters: Ryn claims that she is nothing more or less than a monster, and the only difference between her and the monsters she hunts is that she is stronger. It soon becomes clear that this isn't quite true; Ryn is the only member of her species, has no taste for innocent flesh, and the only reason she isn't considered a goddess is because the other gods found her too disruptive to civilization and banished her.
  • Ravenloft:
    • While we're at it, Jander Sunstar from the Forgotten Realms and Ravenloft is yet another vampire-hunter vampire.
    • Also from Ravenloft, Ivan Dragonov has continued to hunt monsters after contracting lycanthropy himself, using his bestial form as a weapon of last resort.
  • Magiere from The Saga of the Noble Dead is a Dhampyr, and she hunts and kills vampires. Later, it turns out that she could only be born because of a special ritual, and because of her origin, she has a natural hatred for vampires.
  • In the Sonja Blue series, Blue is a vampire who never actually died, so her human side remains (mostly) in control, and she hunts other vampires and their ilk, while seeking revenge on the monster who accidentally created her.
  • In Void City, Evelyn is a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire who works for an organization of vampire hunters, subsisting solely on animal blood and destroying her monstrous kin to protect innocent humans. Greta is also a vampire who regularly hunts and destroys other vampires; but in her case, it's because she just really likes killing things and enjoys the challenge offered by semi-immortal prey which requires extremely elaborate measures to destroy.
  • When the Angels Left the Old Country: The demonic doctor at Ellis Island is revealed to be a Serial Killer, especially of other demons.
  • White Fang loathes other dogs to the point of going out of his way to assassinate them when he spots one alone.
  • In The Witchlands, the Hell-Bards are unregistered witches who've been caught and pressed into the service of hunting down other unregistered witches.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Athena from the 2000s Battlestar Galactica is a Cylon who fights against other Cylons. And then there's Tigh, Tyrol, and Anders who were fighting against the Cylons for years, unaware of their true nature.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • The title character of Angel is a vampire who hunts other vampires. When Angel first meets Buffy he tells her that what he wants is to kill them, to kill them all. It turns out that he wants to kill them to make up for his own monstrous actions.
    • Spike also fits this description, although he initially inverts some parts of the trope since he starts out fighting vampires and demons not because he wants to be good, but because he can no longer attack humans and REALLY misses violence.
    • Angel's son Connor takes this and runs with it. Not only did his adoptive father teach him to fight vampires and demons, he groomed him to fight his biological father.
    • The Groosalugg also has its share in the fight against demons. In his homeland, his society was appalled and disgusted that he looked almost like a human (he is a demon with human ancestors), and sent him on missions to kill him. But he proved to be a good warrior who won every fight.
    • The Slayer herself could be considered an example, considering the Slayer's mystical powers originate from the heart, soul and spirit of a pure-demon, while she fight against demons and vampires (a subtype of demons in the show)
  • Carnival Row: Agreus once worked to hunt down Faun indentured servants who fled from their service. Even Ezra finds this appalling, but Agreus says he realized he'd never rise without playing by human rules. He also notes he is the only "skip jack" who wasn't human he'd ever met.
  • After extended psychic contact with the Doctor, Rusty the Dalek from Doctor Who becomes this.
  • The Flash (2014): The series sees the titular superhero hunt down and fight other "Metahumans", people with superpowers, like himself to put them into an especially designed prison. Most of them even got their powers thanks to the same Freak Lab Accident as the protagonist himself. While it first seems as most of the metahumans turn out criminal or evil in some kind, later seasons see other powered individuals join forces with the Flash.
  • The series Highlander is built of this. When one immortal meets another, a fight often occurs in which one of them is beheaded. The immortals hunt and kill each other.
  • Examples from Kamen Rider:
    • Almost all of the Kamen Riders from the Showa Era (1971-1989) of the franchise are this, as they were cyborg mutants created by the villainous organization, but escaped before the brainwashing could be completed or defected afterwards. Because the Monsters Of The Week are also cyborg mutants, the result is this trope.
    • In Kamen Rider 555, Faiz/Takumi is actually the Wolf Orphenoch.
    • In Kamen Rider Kabuto, Tsurugi/Sasword is actually the Scorpio Worm. Scorpio Worm then killed the real Tsurugi and take his identity as a result. Unfortunately for Scorpio Worm, Tsurugi's will successfully fights back against Scorpio, and Scorpio proceeds to completely forgot his Worm persona as a result.
    • In Kamen Rider Kiva, Wataru is part Fangire, making him sort of a Dhampyr.
    • In Kamen Rider OOO, Eiji does not start this way, but he slowly becomes a Greeed near the climax of the series.
    • In Kamen Rider Wizard, It's double-subverted with the Dragon Phantom. Haruto (Kamen Rider Wizard) summons it to fight against unreleased phantoms, but still need to control it in order to do so. Afterwards, though, the phantom decided to lend Haruto its own power.
    • Multiple in Kamen Rider Amazons, There's Haruka Mizusawa (Amazon Omega), a half-human & Amazon hybrid, Jin Takayama (Amazon Alpha), a human injected with the Amazon cells, and Mamoru (Mole Amazon) a child-like Amazon that works with the protagonists. Season 2 has Chihiro (Amazon Neo), seemingly a human but with Amazon characteristics, and Iyu (Crow Amazon), a human girl killed by her Amazon father and brought back as an Amazon.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Galadriel, also known In-Universe as the "Scourge of the Orcs", dedicated centuries of her life to find Sauron and kill Orcs. When she finally captures their chieftain, she holds a speech about how his kind has no right to exist and starts to describe how she will keep him alive solely to witness her massacring his entire kind. What makes her speech even more bone-chilling is that the Orcs, are her kin too and she knows it and doesn't care. The Orcs she brags about massacring to their leader were formerly Elves captured by Morgoth and turned into Orcs.
  • Helena from Orphan Black has been indoctrinated to believe that clones are unnatural abominations to be destroyed...but the cult that raised her conveniently neglected to mention that she's a clone herself.
  • Ruby on Supernatural is a demon who fights other demons and helps Sam fight them. Sam is arguably another example of this trope, because his Psychic Powers are caused by having been fed demon blood. Of course, it turns out Ruby is among the worst of the lot and was driving Sam to his destiny to release Lucifer from his prison. Which he did.
  • In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron is frequently tasked with hunting and destroying other Terminators. Most often, she does this to protect others, but one episode involves her going into full-on detective mode to track down a Terminator she discovers entirely by accident, and then destroying it.
  • Mikael from The Vampire Diaries and The Originals is a vampire who hunts vampires.

    Music 

    Tabletop Games 
  • Deviant: The Renegades: The main purpose that Devoted are put to is tracking down other Deviants and dragging them back to the Conspiracy's labs.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • One of the potential racial backgrounds for the Shardmind in 4th Edition is Shard Slayer, a Shardmind which believes that, since their kind was born from shards of the living gate, then a dead Shardmind's lifeforce returns to it and mends the gaps that allows the influence of the Far Realm to seep through. This mentality is taken to a logical extreme as Shard Slayers hunt down and kill other Shardmind and destroy unawakened shards in the hopes of closing the gate back up.
    • The Ranger class has the Favored Enemy ability, where the character chooses one or more species and gains several benefits fighting that species. In 3.0, only an evil Ranger can choose their own species, however, in which case they qualify for this trope. In 3.5, the evil limitation is removed; note though that "Favored Enemy" involves some non-combat bonuses, so a ranger could simply pick his own species to ease up interaction, or because they're likely the most common enemies (in the case of humans) rather than any desire to hunt them down.
    • In Van Richten's Guide to Witches (an accessory for the Ravenloft campaign), the good doctor claims that he wrote the book with the help of a greenhag who despised other members of her species and was all too willing to aid him in publishing a book that could be used against them. (Why? According to Van Richten, she refused to say.)
  • A few examples from the New World of Darkness:
    • Vampire: The Requiem has VII, a mysterious group of Kindred who, for some unknowable reason, kill other vampires. Their minds can't be read and they can't be interrogated. Most vampires regard them as an urban legend; however, they do have a book that offers three possible backstories.
    • Mage: The Awakening has Banishers, mages whose Awakenings went horribly, horribly wrong. As a result, they view magic as something filthy and wrong with the world (they can't use it without feeling innate revulsion) and spend most of their time hunting down other Awakened and killing them to try and "heal" the world in their own way.
    • Elsewhere in Mage: The Awakening, the Tremere first became known in the eighth century CE as hunters of Reapers, mages who thrived on the theft of souls. By the beginning of the twelfth century, they were revealed to themselves be Reapers, who had directed their hunger for souls towards other soul-thieves — after all, those were the most likely Awakened to have a supply in reserve. Even in the present, they're known for their hostility towards other Reapers — mostly because they don't want the competition.
    • Hunter: The Vigil has the Lucifuge, a conspiracy made up of those who believe they carry the blood of Hell in their veins. They spend their days fighting against demons, their brethren who went over to the side of the Devil, and things darker still.
    • Second edition Werewolf: The Forsaken has the Blood Talons, whose favored prey in the sacred hunt is other werewolves, those who've gone to the bad one way or the other.
  • In the Old World of Darkness:
    • Vampire: The Masquerade has the Baali, a bloodline known for their long association with demons and eldritch abominations. One faction of the bloodline worships these entities for power; the other hunts down infernalists, including their own kin, with extreme prejudice, to prevent them from breaking the world.
    • Mage: The Ascension has the Technocracy, one of whose precepts is the destruction of Reality Deviants — most prominent among whom are non-Technocratic mages.
  • Martin DeVries of Shadowrun deliberately became a vampire in order to hunt them on their own terms.

    Video Games 
  • Kharg from Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits says that he is going to do this when he finds out that he is a Half-Human Hybrid, but he decides not to later.
  • Balthazar from Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. He knows the Bhaalspawn aren't Always Chaotic Evil, but thinks they're still too dangerous, and he intends to kill himself last in a ritual designed to stop this from bringing Bhaal back. He actually works with some of the other powerful Bhaalspawn because they want to kill all the others except themselves.
  • In Bloodborne, the city of Yharnam is patrolled by Hunters who head out every night to cut down monsters created by the Scourge of the Beast. When Hunters are infected, Eileen the Crow and her followers, the Hunters of Hunters, put them down. There's also the Moon Presence, a Great One who created the dream world so it could guide the Hunters to kill other Great Ones. Jury's out on whether that's good or evil though.
  • Rayne from BloodRayne is a Dhampyr with one hell of a vendetta against her vampiric father Kagan for the circumstances leading to her birth.
  • Alucard from Castlevania definitely counts, being heavily inspired by D.
  • In the backstory of Darksiders and its sequel, the Four Horsemen were the only Nephilim who believed the Nephilim's campaign of universal conquest was wrong. The offered their services to the Charred Council to help set things right. The newly christened Horsemens' first order was to slay the rest of the Nephilim, which they did.
  • Dark Souls:
  • Detroit: Become Human has Connor, an android, whose job it is to locate deviant androids and capture them for study. Defied and discussed if Connor becomes deviant himself. In fact, Connor is just the prototype for a future line of androids being developed by Cyberlife to operate in tandem with law enforcement. If Connor remains a machine, he is introduced to his replacement before being decomissioned himself.
  • Devil May Cry:
    • Full-blooded demon Sparda in backstory turned against his fellow demons and sealed them in their own world. His son Dante, a half-demon himself, carries on by hunting demons who sneak into our world. Nero counts as well, since he is Vergil's son — Dante's nephew — and thus making him a quarter-demon.
    • Trish and Lucia, Dante's allies in the first and second games respectively, qualify and even have very similar origins. Both were created in the image of humans by the villains of their respective games to be obedient minions. While Trish pulled a Heel–Face Turn thanks to Dante's kindness, Lucia was discarded by her creator for being a "defect" and was adopted by a clan of demon hunters who themselves have demon blood.
  • Disgaea:
  • In Dissidia Final Fantasy NT, the sorceress Rinoa implies note  that she wants to become a SeeD — a type of mercenary trained to kill sorceresses. The distinction between a malicious sorceress and a merely dangerous one is debated in Rinoa's game of origin, but SeeDs in general are good people doing a highly necessary job. Rinoa knows this firsthand, because it was SeeDs who saved her from the sorceress Ultimecia's possession.
  • The elf Sebille, in Divinity: Original Sin II, was made to hunt her own kind for a long time via a mind controlling Slave Brand, and she's rather pissed about it. When she learns that all the names on her right arm are elven scionsnote , well, her anger at her former master goes through the roof.
  • The main character in the game Divinity II: Ego Draconis is on their way to being initiated as a full dragon slayer when they get turned into a dragon. Your dialogue options allow them to protest this and act as if they are still a slayer until the slayer commander and their slayer buddies attack the main character.
  • If he befriends or becomes the lover of The Warden in the original Dragon Age: Origins, Zevran Arainai becomes one of these in Dragon Age II. In the seven years between the end of the first game and the point at which Hawke meets him in the second, he has sown chaos in the ranks of his former employers, the Antivan Crows, managing to assassinate one of the seven Guildmasters while simultaneously forging an alliance with two more as well as several other disaffected assassins.
    • The Grey Wardens technically qualify, as becoming a Warden involves drinking Darkspawn blood and taking the Taint into themselves, turning them into a type of high-functioning ghoul with their humanity intact. This also allows Wardens to permanently kill the Archdemon by forcing its soul to Body Surf into them at the moment of death, destroying them both.
    • A Mage Hawke in Dragon Age II frequently finds themselves hunting down Blood-Mages, berating them for their Well-Intentioned Extremist actions and pointing out that it's only made the situation worse and caused innocent Mages to suffer at the hands of certain Templars who see little difference between Apostates and Maleficarum.
    • Played straight if a Mage Hawke ends up being Templar-Aligned at the end of the game. If still alive, Carver will call them out on this and points out that if Bethany was still alive, Hawke would be turning against her as well.
    • Bethany can be convinced to do this in the Templar Ending by a Warrior or Rogue Hawke, although she's not happy about it and only agrees because innocent people are being killed in the crossfire.
    • In Origins, the guild called The Mages' Collective can be this. While their primary goal is to support mages, Circle or Apostate alike, they maintain a hard distinction between Apostates and Maleficarum, and you can take on missions from them requiring you to kill blood mages or cultist groups. As well as this, they are aware that they sometimes require the templars to turn a blind eye to what they do, and you can accept a mission from them that will allow you to "reward" a templar with lyrium potions.
  • The Vampire Hunter Treasure Art in Dragon's Crown implies that the Vampire Hunter hired in the Church Cover-up side-quest is one. Not only does he look a lot like Alucard from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, but the Flavor Text suspiciously mentions that the Vampire Hunter leaves before the sun rises.
  • In Drakengard 3, Zero, the first Intoner and spiritual "mother" of the rest has to kill the others because only Intoners are immune to their kind's brainwashing magic. Humans — although they've been horrifically abused by their Intoner conquerers — are psychologically incapable of getting the job done. The Intoners themselves don't know (or don't want to accept) how much of a threat they pose to the world, and often ask Zero mid-battle why she doesn't want to join their nice party. In accordance with this trope, Zero has made arrangements to get herself killed once all her daughters/sisters/brainspawn? are dead.
  • Dwarf Fortress has the legendary Cacame Awemedinade, The Immortal Onslaught. An elven resident of a dwarf-conquered civilization, his wife was killed and eaten by other elves. He later ended up becoming an Elven King of Dwarves, seemingly out of pure burning hatred of the pointy-eared ones.
  • Ascended Demon Nahfahlaar of The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard and The Elder Scrolls Online, a dragon who allied himself with the Blades back when they were known as the Dragonguard and helped defeat the evil dragon Kaalgrontiid during the Alliance War. He was later recruited by the God-Emperor Tiber Septim/Talos Stormcrown himself during his conquest of Tamriel.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
    • The Dragonborn is a rare mortal born with the divine Aedric soul of a dragon. Because dragons are ageless and, even if they are slain, can be resurrected by another dragon, it takes another dragon or Dragonborn absorbing their soul to permanently kill them. Akatosh, the draconic God of Time, chief deity of the Imperial pantheon, and "father" of dragons, specifically created the Dragonborn to serve as a "natural predator" to the dragons. In fact, the Dragonborn's very title reflects this: in Dovahzul, the language of the dragons, "Dragonborn" is "Dovahkiin" which, when broken down the way most dragon names are, becomes "Dov Ah Kiin", or "Dragonkind Hunter Born". Naturally, dragons see the Dragonborn as their equivalent to a Humanoid Abomination.
    • The Dragonborn DLC plays it straight as well, with the "Last Dragonborn" being forced into a confrontation with Miraak, the First Dragonborn.
    • If you choose to side with the Dawnguard vampire hunters against Lord Harkon in the Dawnguard DLC, Harkon's daughter Serana will join you and eventually be permitted to take up residence in the Dawnguard's headquarters. She can be convinced to cure herself of vampirism... but only if you say the right things, and only after Dawnguard's main quest.
    • If the Dragonborn is a Vampire or Werewolf, this trope can occasionally come into play. Defied in Dawnguard, as Isran will frequently chastise and refuse to deal with a Vampire Dragonborn until they cure themselves. Ironically, a Dragonborn that sides with the Volkihar vampires can also play this trope straight, since a large number of side quests involve killing lesser vampires, mostly for drawing too much mortal attention to themselves and partly because the Volkihar vampires just plain look down on the thin-bloods.
    • If the Dragonborn is an Altmer, then by the end of the main questline they will be one of these on both sides of the trope, as they will become enemies of the Thalmor, a fascist Altmer regime who will be sending hunters out to kill them, mostly because the Dragonborn themselves have been slaughtering Thalmor left and right during the questline.
  • EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: Gradius is a bem, a parasitic organism that assimilates humans to spread itself. He is also employed by SPICA to hunt down and exterminate the other bem.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, one of the available Jobs is Reaper, a melee fighter who forms a pact with a voidsent for power in exchange for the aether taken from the souls of those the Reaper kills. This doesn't prevent a Reaper from using their powers to kill other voidsent, as the voidsent you're contracted to is more than happy to consume their souls as well.
  • Guilty Gear: The setting is home to a bunch of artificially-engineered Humanoid Abominations called Gears, and the oldest and strongest of all of them is hunting down and killing the rest out of guilt for creating them, hence the title. That would be the main protagonist, the crass bounty hunter Sol Badguy.
  • In Immortal Souls, Raven had herself turned into a vampire specifically so she could take revenge on the vampires that killed her family and is well-known for her enthusiasm about the matter.
    Raven: You wanted to see me, Isis?
    Isis: Indeed, Raven. I have a new mission for you.
    Raven: Do I get to kill vampires?
    Isis: Still holding a grudge against your own kind?
    Raven: Always.
  • inFAMOUS: Second Son has the D.U.P., who are out to recruit, neutralize, or kill those suspected of being superhuman, and are led by Brooke Augustine, a Conduit who has bestowed her concrete-based powers to the rest of the group. Her actual purpose however is to imprison them in one place so they cannot be harmed by outside forces.
  • Subverted in League of Legends. Miss Fortune is a pirate hunter because her mother was killed by pirates, but her attire is completely pirate-like. A Pirate Girl? Nope, she's just dressing up like one, she's a full time pirate hunter.
    • Played straight with Vi, however. She was once a normal criminal, but then found a set of Power Fist in a mine. Afterwards, she redirects her passion into hunting down other criminals by punching them in the face, before becoming an official police in Piltover.
  • Raziel in Legacy of Kain is a three-fold example. A former Sarafan vampire-hunter, resurrected as a vampire, he was betrayed by Kain, the vampire who sired him, and executed, then reborn as an ethereal wraith and accepted an offer from the Elder God to become an Angel of Death. His purpose is to hunt down and destroy the vampires who were once his brothers, but he also hunts and kills other ethereal beings, as well as members of the Sarafan Order, at times.
  • Mega Man X:
    • The biggest reveal is that Zero is the original Viral Maverick (meaning that The Virus originally came from him). Not only is this fitting for the trope, it also makes him the hunter of the race he unwittingly created.
    • X himself qualifies, since all Reploids (Repliroids, based on X's designs) and, by extension, Mavericks/Irregulars stem from him.
  • Ashrah of the Mortal Kombat series is a demon who wields a holy sword that purifies her bit by bit with every one of her fellow demons that she kills. She hopes to become completely purified and holy this way.
  • Monster Hunter: While it is certainly not unknown for Elder Dragons to get into fights with one another, Nergigante from Monster Hunter: World is the only one known to actively hunt down and prey on other Elder Dragons.
  • In Nocturne: Rebirth has an anti-villainous example in Idith Midowin, who hunts her fellow vampires out of revenge for turning her mother into a vampire, who then turned her into a vampire. Her mother went insane from the process and had to be mercy killed, further fueling Idith's hatred of every vampire on the planet.
  • In NieR: Automata, YoRHa employs Executioner-Type androids to hunt rogue androids. They also act as a secret police that eliminates any androids that learn too much about Project YoRHa itself. The player encounters a few E models, most notably 2B herself, whose actual designation is 2E.
  • Rachel from Ninja Gaiden is a Fiend hunter whose Fiend blood grants her powers such as Super-Strength that allows her to lift her large hammer and cast magic spells. In her debut, she was hunting her little sister Alma who had been turned into a full Fiend by Doku. The main protagonist, Ryu Hayabusa, belongs to a clan that is descended from Fiends who rebelled against their evil deities.
  • Off-Road Velociraptor Safari. The driver is a velociraptor for no particular reason. Its motivation is not really explored, but the way it is beamed away when time runs out suggests it may just have nothing left to lose.
  • Alex Mercer spends most of [PROTOTYPE] killing the viral monsters controlled by Elizabeth Greene, including Greene herself. Alex qualifies because he is the virus.
  • The vampire twins Vania and Veight, as well as the player (who gets vampirized by them) in the "Memories of the Dark" event in the mobile trading card game Rage of Bahamut.
  • Saints Row: The Third features a cheesy Show Within a Show called Nyteblade, about a vampire hunter who was turned into a vampire himself.
    • The Syndicate uses various Brutes, giantic clones that are strong enough to tackle vehicles out of their way. Later on the game you meet the original one, Oleg, who is used as the base for all the brutes (except he's far more intelligent), who ends up joining you. He expresses great disdain for his clones and whenever he's helping you out, he'll prioritize fighting brutes.
  • In Sid Meier's Pirates!, you have the option of only going after other pirates if you so choose.
  • In Sword of the Stars, the Liir's greatest weapon against the dreaded Suul'ka power-mad Liir Elders who enslaved the rest of the Liir so they could live forever in space is The Black another Liir Elder who lives in space like the Suul'ka.note 
  • Warcraft:
    • Demon hunters study and use fel magic in order to more effectively hunt demons. Since the magic is innately corrupting, many of them become partially demonic themselves and may or may not retain their original noble intentions.
    • Death Knights, former slaves of the Lich King, use their knowledge of necromancy and Scourge tactics to fight the undead in Northrend. A lot of the more vengeful Forsaken fall into this category as well.
    • Wrathion is a black dragon that, due to the unique circumstances of his birth, is free of the Old God corruption that has taken over the rest of the Black Dragonflight. He's on a crusade to eliminate the tainted black dragons, and the rogue legendary Fangs of the Father questline is centered around helping him do this. By the end of the quest, he claims to be the Last of His Kind, though observant players have noticed there is at least one other black dragon (Sabellian) unaccounted for. And it turns out there was one other uncorrupted black dragon as well long before he came around named Ebyssian, who hid himself as a spiritwalker among the tauren named Spiritwalker Ebonhorn.

    Visual Novels 
  • Tsukihime:
    • Arcueid took this trope to its logical conclusion, making herself the Last of Her Kind. She was born and bred by the other True Vampires to hunt down and kill any of them who went insane from bloodlust. Eventually, all the True Vampires went insane from bloodlust, leading her to wipe her own people out. Then she set her sights on the Dead Apostles, lesser vampires closer to what people usually think of when hearing "vampire"...
    • Also in Tsukihime, the head of the Tohno family has the obligation to find and kill any family members who succumb to their demonic blood.
    • Background material also refers to a vampire by the name of "Enhance", who has sided with the Church and works to annihilate his own kind. Apparently he is a relatively "young" vampire and rejects his monstrous nature, holding onto as much of his humanity as possible.

    Webcomics 
  • In Chirault, Kiran is a demon and employed by the demon hunter guild. That said, in Chirault, "demon" is a pretty broad term, and Kiran's "species" of demon (horned humanoids) seems pretty rare. Many of the demons that Kiran kills seem to be non-sapient.
  • Blunt in Freefall believes that the presence of intelligent robots who are able to do everything better than humans will result in humans becoming relaxed, happy, and safe...which, in his (possibly brain-damaged) assessment, is a very bad thing. Therefore, he believes the intentional release of a last-ditch safeguard program that, essentially, would lobotomise every robot on the planet is the only solution, and when it is barely prevented he goes full-court press to prove that stopping it was a mistake. He fully intended for himself and his co-worker, Edge, to be the last two intelligent robots left, in order to ensure the process took place, at which point they would reactivate their communicators, receive the neural-pruning patch, and join their fellows. (Edge was not thrilled by this idea and just wanted to be the last robot standing, forever.)
  • Girl Genius:
    • Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer!, is a Spark on a quest to kill Sparks (eventually even the good ones, but for now just the bad ones). He's even outright stated that after he rid Europe of all the other Sparks, he'll end his own life just to ensure that the Spark is no more. On meeting his Doppelgänger:
      A puzzler. All Sparks must die, yet I am a Spark. I will kill myself when my mission is complete, but now I can kill myself first. Tempting.
    • Also, in the card game, there is a "vampire hunter" character that ironically is the only card that counts as "vampire".
  • Ryo from Heart Core, a demon hunter from New Ayers. The story heavily implies that she is a demon herself, being able to sense their presence from long distances and surviving falling off a skyscraper. Her reasons for killing demons are not yet fully known.
  • In A Miracle of Science Benjamin Prester, a top agent of the Vorstellen Police who investigate sufferers of Science-Related Memetic Disorder, is himself a recovering Mad Scientist who once attempted to take over the Moon with an army of robots. He has a relapse after his partner is kidnapped.
  • Shadowchild from Shadowgirls is an Eldritch Abomination created by one of the Outer Gods with the purpose of fighting other Eldritch Abominations, and even Elder Gods.
  • In Skin Horse, The Dane, greatest and most feared/revered of all Mads, proves to be out to kill all Mads on account of their being dangerous to the world. The fact he is, himself, a Mad does not bother The Dane.
  • Sam from Sluggy Freelance is a vampire who often fights other vampires, including "helping" take down the Lysinda Circle. Mostly because chicks think it's cool.
  • Starfire Agency had Timothy Madoc, a vampire hunter who was turned as a sort of sick joke. He and his living siblings made a pact that when they wiped out every other vampire on the planet they would slay him. Unfortunately he outlived the rest of them by several hundred years, and eventually he actually became an enforcer for the vampire council after they banned killing mortals. And he's the "uncle" of main character Alexandra Maddock.
  • In Were Geek, Joel attempted to turn one of the Hunters into a geek, with somewhat predictable results.

    Web Original 
  • Feeding the Trolls is a series making fun of internet Trolls and other inflammatory figures on YouTube, essentially trolling trolls.
  • Hamster's Paradise: The founding vertebrate of the planet HP-02017 was the hamster, an animal known for its cannibalistic tendencies, which seem to have carried over to its evolutionary descendants as quite a few have adapted to hunt their close relatives.
    • The arctic blubbear is specialized to prey on other species of penguin-like blubbat as they're the most abundant thing on the barren Glaciocene Peninsulaustra, though they are willing to eat the ratbats and bayvers that occasionally end up on the frozen continent.
    • The phorca, a type of large marine cricetacean, is known to hunt smaller cricetaceans as well. Millions of years later one species, sarchon, becomes specialized to primarily hunt smaller phorcas and even develops keratin armor on its head to protect against their bites. They are willing to other marine animals like seavers and whaleruses however and its likely they started killing other phorcas to remove competition for these food sources before discovering the phorcas themselves made a fairly substantial meal.
    • Some carnivorous ratbats prey on other ratbat species not unlike hawks and falcons hunting smaller birds.
    • Loupgaroos are a carnivorous member of the typically omnivorous podotheres that are specialized to hunt them due to them being the most common prey animals on the isolated continent of Messoterra.
    • The Frazzetas take their species cannibalistic tendences to the extreme and feed almost exclusively on Brutes and the smaller Harmsters.
    • The smooth cannibal is a species of whistlard, a lizard-like hamster that repurposed its cheek pouches into resonating chambers, that is specialized to hunt smaller species of whistlards by imitating their calls, much like Photuris fireflies.
    • A nonhamster example would be the hook-jawed pirant which is a species of floating raftant that specializes in hunting other floating raftants alongside other aquatic insects. They even possess adaptations that allow them to better control their movement on the water's surface so they can chase after them.
  • Show Within a Show example from Look to the West: one of the seminal works in that world's "Automaton fiction" craze of the 1820s-1850s period is The Venator, about a Killer Robot whose role is to hunt down and kill the last of his own rebellious kind and, once this is accomplished, to dismantle himself.
  • Looming Gaia: Zeffer is a vampire who hunts other vampires as a revenge for what happened to him and so nobody has to suffer vampirism like he has. He planned to kill himself once he'd killed every last vampire, but Evan made him make an unbreakable promise to never take his own life.
  • SCP Foundation:
    • Dr. Alto Clef is a Reality Warper (or at least is totally immune to the powers of Reality Warpers) who is committed to using his powers only to get rid of other reality warpers.
    • Assuming that SCP-349 is the work of one person, that person is an immortal who hunts and kills immortals who started out mortal and purposefully became immortal.

    Western Animation 
  • In the Backstory of Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, Shane Gooseman was the youngest and most advanced of the Artificial Human Supertroopers. When the 'troopers rioted, Shane was the only one to remain loyal. However, the Earth Government only allowed him to live on the condition that he hunt down and kill his renegade ex-comrades — or bring them back to Earth to be sent to their deaths in cryo. Shane hates this hellish bargain, but can't see a way out.
  • Subverted and downplayed in Adventure Time Stakes: we find out Marceline the Vampire Queen was a vampire hunter, but did most of her work before she became a vampire. In fact, she became a vampire literally seconds before the last other vampire died. The mini-series is then about her hunting those vampires who came Back from the Dead in the present, but they actually came back because she stopped being a vampire.
  • Danny Phantom is a half-ghost who fights other ghosts. Skulker is a villainous example, as he hunts ghosts he deems "rare" for sport despite being a ghost himself.
  • Brody in Delta State is revealed to be a Rifter himself, same as the entities he is teaching the four main characters to hunt. Even after the revelation, he is still very clear that when he said they must destroy all of the Rifters he did in fact mean all.
  • Generator Rex, Rex being an EVO, is employed to fight EVOs. This trope is actually played with because everyone on Earth, except White Knight, is infected with nanites, the things that cause people to turn into EVOs. That means everyone at Providence is hunting down their own kind and anyone of them could randomly turn into one at anytime without warning.
  • The Legend of Korra brings us a rather prominent member of the anti-bending supremacist faction, the Equalists, who is himself a waterbender. Specifically, it's the leader of the movement, Amon, who has dedicated his life to ridding the world of bending. And his waterbending is the evil bloodbending variety.
  • Slimer from The Real Ghostbusters is a ghost that lives with the Ghostbusters and helps them against other ghosts from time to time (i.e., almost every other ghost in the Containment Unit was caught with Slimer's help).
  • In Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers, the Boo Brothers are ghosts that work as ghost exterminators. They claim that that's the whole point. ("It takes one to catch one in this business," they claim.)
  • Trollhunters: All the Trollhunters before Jim were themselves trolls.

    Real Life 
  • This is what call ducks were originally bred for, and where their name comes from. Owing to a high-pitched and very loud quack, they were used by hunters to lure out and attract wild ducks to be shot. In fact they're so good at this that the United States prohibited their use in hunting in 1935 to prevent over-harvesting by hunters. Nowadays they're rarely used for anything other than pets.
  • Several dog breeds are specifically raised to hunt wolves and coyotes. While man's best friends are remarkably adept at hunting their feral cousins, even a lone wolf is far more ferocious than any domesticated dog, so usually these dogs are trained to work in packs.
  • Although rare, there were cases of free Black people (including even former slaves) hunting down Black escaped slaves in the American South and Brazil.
  • It's not very uncommon for some predatory animals to specialize on hunting their own close relatives.
    • King cobras feed almost exclusively on other snakes, cobras included.
    • Similar to king cobras, kingsnakes prey on other snakes, some of which are venomousnote , though their dietary choices are not limited to snakes alone.
    • Orcas are dolphins, and are the largest member of the dolphin family. Their prey includes other, smaller dolphin species, as well as larger whales.
    • Temnodontosaurus was a large Triassic ichthyosaur that emerged during a period of marine-reptile diversification. While others specialized to crush shellfish, chase down small fish or swallow large groups of prey whole, Temnodontosaurus was a macro-predator that preyed on other ichthyosaurs.
    • Female Photuris fireflies are specialized hunters of other fireflies, namely the related Photinus. The Photuris female lures males of other species by mimicking the glow of an ideal mate, and pouncing when they get too close.
    • Some species of jumping spiders are specialized predators of other spiders, using their superior eyesight to get the drop on their more-nearsighted prey.
    • Odontobatrachus natator, also known as the saber-toothed frog, has a pair of long, curved fangs that allow it to prey on other frogs.
    • Assassin snails are a species of freshwater snail whose diet consists of other species of snail. In fact, they are often kept in aquariums to help control pest snail populations.
    • Toxorhynchites mosquito larvae prey on other mosquito larvae, including those of the disease-spreading Anopheles and Aedes genera.
    • Hyperparasites are a group of animals who parasitize hosts that are themselves parasites.


 
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Alternative Title(s): Hunter Of Their Own Kind, Hunter Of Her Own Kind

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