Matricide

"Matricide is probably the most unbearable crime of all... most unbearable to the son who commits it."

— Dr. Fred Richmond, Psycho

Matricide, the killing of one's mother, is considered among the most heinous crimes throughout history. Killing either one of one's parents (or both) is obviously a traumatic experience that in usual circumstances only comes about as a result of great turmoil between parent and child. Whereas Patricide carries the connotations of killing one's clan leader (or an Oedipus Complex when it's an addendum to earning the love of the mother figure), disposing of dear old mom is possibly even more extreme. After all, this is the woman who carried that person to term for nine months and then took care of them for years afterwards, so it takes an exceptionally heartless character to cross that line.

This can be variously played depending on how sympathetic the mother as well as the child who is committing the act are. Even when the mother was an Abusive Parent or Evil Matriarch, or tried to kill her offspring first, it can cause intense grief that will stay with the character for years or end in their self-destruction. For an Antagonistic Offspring it can be the ultimate way to defy Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas, being played for horror rather than drama.

Also, the trope's flavor is different depending on the age of the murderous child and the child's gender. Young children who kill their mothers are often seen as evil incarnated in the body of a child or the result of Demonic Possession. A grown woman killing her own mother can be an extreme result of the Electra Complex (the Distaff Counterpart to the Oedipus Complex) or more often the deed of The Evil Princess or if the woman's mother's death is the condition for inheritance. A grown man killing his own mother with his own hands is very rare and almost always the mark of a Complete Monster or the result of an Accidental Murder.

When people equate this to Death by Childbirth, the result is Maternal Death? Blame the Child!.

Subtrope of Self-Made Orphan and Murder in the Family. Distaff Counterpart to Patricide. Contrast Offing the Offspring.

This is a Death Trope, so beware of spoilers.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Attack on Titan: One of the final reveals in the story exposes Eren as this. Using the power of the Founding Titan, he commanded the Smiling Titan to ignore a vulnerable Bertholdt and sent her directly to his home. This directly resulted in the death of his mother and the beginning of his descent into darkness.
• Bastard!! (1988): Kall Su had killed his mother in self-defense before being taken in by Dark Schneider in a story that is incredibly similar to that of Haku from Naruto.
• The Garden of Sinners: The fifth movie starts with Tomoe killing his mother in self-defense after she murdered his father. Treated oddly sympathetically, despite the rather...strange circumstances that turn out to be surrounding it.
• X/1999: Seishirou Sakurazuka killed his mother Setsuka not because of hate, but simply because that was the main requirement to become the Sakurazukamori. In fact, Setsuka knew it'd be like that ever since she had him, and she even got to die with a smile in her son's arms while telling him that he would die in the same way.
• Soul Eater: Played with. Crona kills their mother Medusa because she had been nice to them, something Crona was so unused to that it made them think Medusa was actually an imposter. And this was all part of Medusa's plan to make Crona into a new Kishin.
• Black Jack Neo: Black Jack gets kidnapped by a deformed young man named Sarutahikone who wants him to change his face. Simultaneously, the audience is shown a news broadcast of a murdered mother and son; the suspected killer is the twin brother- Sarutahikone. The audience is led to believe that he is attempting to escape, using Black Jack to help him disguise himself. In fact, Sarutahikone had come upon the scene of his brother killing their mother and killed him in self-defense. It's explained that their mother had been sexually abusing the twin before Black Jack removed her brain tumour years ago, and the twin had killed her when she refused to rekindle the relationship.
• Deadman Wonderland: The tiny little Undertaker Hibana Daida was imprisoned for murdering her mother, who had subjected her to horrific abuse.
• Detective School Q: Played with for horrible drama. Kunihiko and Akihiko Ichinose did not know that the Phony Psychic they murdered to protect their sister Kaoru was their mother Hanako (who was believed to be dead) under a disguise. When they're told the truth, both cross the Despair Event Horizon and have to be stopped from going the Murder-Suicide way.
• Goodnight Punpun: Aiko killed her abusive mother who tried to kill her. Originally it seemed as if Punpun had killed her, but Aiko reveals to him later that her mom survived him stabbing her. When he wasn't looking Aiko delivered the final blow.

Comic Books

• Back to Brooklyn: The gangster protagonist kills his mother after she freely confesses that she helped kill his friend and doesn't see his brother being a pedophile as that big a deal.
• Played with in a Batman/Alien crossover where the head of a weapons company turns some of Batman's villains (including the Joker and Poison Ivy) into human/alien hybrids. She has the DNA injected into herself as well so they won't attack her, seeing her as the Queen. For whatever reason, it didn't take when Killer Croc was hybridized, and he messily devours her.
• Locke & Key: Ellie Whedon comes really, really close to pushing her horrible mother off a cliff after she puts a cigarette out on her son's neck, but can't go through with it. However, the evil spirit she unwittingly unleashes a few pages later has no such hesitation.
• New Gods: After killing his brother, Darkseid secured his position as Lord of Apokolips by having Desaad poison his mother Heggra. That, and revenge for her ordering Desaad to poison the only woman he ever loved to make sure she can't function as a Morality Chain. It worked, all right.
• Robin (1993) villain Johnny Warren's first murder after gaining Powers via Possession is his own mother, whom he had previously seemed rather fond of.
• As revealed in his origin comic Thanos Rising, after Thanos Jumped Off The Slippery Slope killing his fellow Titans, he eventually killed his mother Sui-San as well. Though he actually apologises to her while doing so, saying he wished they hadn't stopped her from killing him as a baby. This being the Marvel Universe, Sui-San was brought back later and thanks to Resurrective Immortality in Eternals (2021) got killed by her son five more times. She declared to him while being tortured that while she doesn't believe in unconditional love, her hate for him was unconditional.
• Ultimate Origins: Magneto killed his mother in cold blood when he discovered that his parents have held Wolverine for years, while they experimented on him to try to find a cure for mutantkind (which, in the Ultimate Marvel continuity, is the result of a science experiment, not evolution).
• Warlord of Mars: Kajak Thoris poisoned his own mother Heru on the belief he was given as a hostage to a rival city-state when as a child when in reality, he was kidnapped by their enemies and raised to think his family abandoned him.
• X-23: Innocence Lost: As the final act of his descent into evil, Dr. Zander Rice laced X-23's mother, Dr. Sarah Kinney, with the trigger scent. Laura was sent into an Unstoppable Rage and killed her as a result, just as Sarah was putting her plan to escape the Facility with her altogether in motion. However, Laura did eventually reconnect with her genetic father Wolverine.

Fan Works

• In Back to Zero, Giovanni's mother was the previous head of Team Rocket, but was strangled by her son after she sent his lover Miyamoto on a suicide mission and then sent their daughter Jessie to an orphanage once Miyamoto disappeared.
• The Mandela Magazine: Mark mistakes his mom for an Alternate and shoots her numerous times.
• Our Blades Are Sharp: It’s revealed that Ramsay Snow murdered his mother in cold blood to fake his own death as part of his plan to usurp his trueborn half-brother.
• Queens of Mewni: After a spell to see the future goes wrong, and Queen Galaxia is in a comatose state, Venus is forced to smother her mother Galaxia with a pillow to allow the people and her siblings to move on. The incident traumatized her so much that her Kaleidoscope Hair, eyes, and cheek marks are black for an entire year.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! The Thousand Year Door, all six of the original Shadow Spawn tried to assassinate their mother several times and seize the throne of Arcadia, while the current generation considered it a few times. It was hardly a secret to her either. (This tells a lot about the type of mother she was, as the protagonists eventually figure out.)

Film — Live-Action

• Alien: Resurrection: Played with. The Newborn, immediately after being born, inspects the Queen Alien and kills her. However, he then thinks of Ripley as his real mother and acts affectionately toward her.
• Feed (2005): Michael Carter, the archvillain of this Aussie horror flick, smothered his obese mother when he was a child. He's locked into a cycle of repeating the same murder as an adult.
• Psycho: Norman Bates is one of the most iconic modern examples. His mother Norma sheltered him extensively after the death of her husband, making Norman form a codependent attachment to his mother. When she found a new paramour, Norman murdered his mother, causing him to develop a second personality modelled after her to conceal this crime from himself.
• Dragonheart: After the tyrannical King Einon's mother tries to kill the dragon who provides Einon with immortality as long as their hearts are shared, he murders her without remorse to cement how evil he is.
• Carrie: The title character kills her mother Margaret in self-defense as her mother was trying to kill her.
• Taking Lives: Soon after the Serial Killer's mother reveals his identity to the police, she's found in an elevator with her head sawed off by her blood-drenched son.
• Scream:
  • Scream 3: The Ghostface who turns out to have been The Man Behind the Man for the one from the first movie reveals that he arranged for his biological mother to be murdered by his accomplice because he was revolted that he had been born of rape and deemed her a whore.
  • Scream 4: The new Ghostface willingly kills her own mother to replicate the missing-mother motif that Sidney Prescott had to live with.
• Spider (2002): Clegg is horrified to discover that he murdered his mother during one of his hallucinations as a kid. It's the reason he's been institutionalized ever since.
• Blade: Blade discovers that Deacon Frost had turned his mother into a vampire when he inadvertently made the unborn Blade a dhampyr. Blade is eventually forced to destroy her for good when he sees how horrible she has become.
• Funeral Parade of Roses: Eddie kills his mother after catching her having sex with a man. Eddie has a lot of issues.
• Joker (2019): Arthur was initially very close to his mother Penny, but after learning (or being lied to) that she has adopted him and allowed him to put with intense abuse, he smothers her to death without any second thoughts.
• Subverted in The Strange Thing About the Johnsons, in which Isaiah attempts to kill his mother Joan by shoving her into the fireplace after she confronts him over molesting his father to suicide, but Joan thankfully manages to bludgeon Isaiah in self-defense.
• In The Loved Ones, Bright Eyes turns out to be Lola's mother. She smothers her with a pillow.
• Freaky: It's mentioned on a news broadcast briefly that the Butcher murdered his own mother and left her head outside a Dairy Queen in 1992.
• The Dark (2018): Mina murdered her mother via Neck Snap, blaming her for letting Mira be raped by her mom's boyfriend.

Literature

• A Brother's Price has villains who are evil enough to do this. The reason being they needed to sacrifice someone of their family to make themselves look like fellow victims, and their mothers had become senile and were talking about family secrets too carelessly.
• The Camp Half-Blood Series: Leo Valdez accidentally killed his mother when he suffered a Power Incontinence and ended up burning their house (Leo himself was unhurt since he is fireproof).
• Carrie. Abusive Margaret is killed off by her daughter Carrie while she was stabbing the latter in a manic fit. Carrie's father died in a work-related accident before his daughter's birth.
• In Chronicles of the Kencyrath, the Earth Wife's backstory: "There was an old woman who dug her son's grave. When she was done, he buried her in it." Her death occurred at the moment the Kencyrath came into Rathillien, and that surge of power turned her into a goddess.
• Coraline: Implied. The Other Mother has put her mother to the grave, "and when [she] caught her trying to crawl out, [she] put her back in". So the Other Mother's mother might not exactly be dead, but for all intents and purposes, she is.
• The Dark Tower: Roland Deschain accidentally shot his mother dead.
• The Empirium Trilogy: Part of Rielle's backstory includes her unwittingly killing her mother.
• Harry Potter: Ariana Dumbledore accidentally killed her mother Kendra due to her Power Incontinence.
• I Am Mordred: Gawain and Garet kill their mother along with her lover when they catch them in bed together.
• Mr. Mercedes: Accidental example as the villain Brady poisons a hamburger in his fridge (intended for a dog) which his mother Deborah eats and dies horribly. This nudges the already murderous Brady From Bad to Worse as his mother was one only person who cared about him... rather too much.
• Old Kingdom: Kerrigor, the Big Bad of the first book, personally murdered his mother as part of his plan to break the Great Charter Stones. However, he wasn't able to use her blood to break a third stone (the first two having been broken with the blood of his sisters) due to the arrival of the Abhorsen, which caused him to drop the cupful of her blood (that he had decided to gloat to his horrified half-brother, who was supposed to be next to die, helped as well).
• Oliver Twisted: Bullseye recollects the first time when his brother Bill Sikes, a werewolf, shifted into wolf form and attacked their mother. Bill ended up burying the pieces that were left of her.
• The Shadowhunter Chronicles:
  • Nate Gray killed his mother by sending her poisoned chocolate.
  • In Thule, Jonathan Shadowhunter killed Lilith in order to take over her demon army. While Lilith was not his biological mother, she gave his blood to him and was considered his "real" mother.
• Sleeping Beauties: After being fired from his job as a prison guard, Don Peters goes home and kills (already sleeping and cocooned) mother. Then he sets the house on fire to cover his tracks.
• Sword of Truth: Oba Rahl kills his mother with a shovel. She was an abusive harpy, though he's no better.
• A Tale of...: Gothel killed her abusive mother Manea in self-defense so that she could save her two sisters. Manea would have otherwise killed Primrose and Hazel.
• Third Time Lucky: And Other Stories of the Most Powerful Wizard in the World: In "Third Time Lucky" Magdelene's son Tristan really wants to kill her, and tries but fails since she's just too powerful for him.

Live-Action TV

• In Renegadepress.com's "Sullengirl16", rumours and speculation fly about a new posting on renegadepress.com in which a girl claims to have killed her mother.
• Sons of Anarchy. Jax Teller ultimately kills his mother Gemma in the last season after he discovers that she's betrayed the club and murdered Jax's wife Tara. Nero notes that the severity of the act will destroy Jax, and he admits that despite everything she's done he still loves his mom. It's enough for Jax to wilfully arrange his own death in the series finale.
• V (2009)
  • After a Hope Spot which saw Diana take power back from her evil child and declare an era of peace with humans, Anna then returned, claiming that she now understands human emotion like love and caring. However, she then sneaks up behind her mom and impales her with her tail to cement her status as queen.
  • Anna's daughter Lisa almost became one in the same episode as the Fifth Column used her as a Decoy Damsel to lure her evil mother out so she could stab her in the back and end the war. However, the Manipulative Bitch convinced her that she had changed her ways and now cared about her and her Too Dumb to Live daughter actually believed it. After murdering Diana, Anna even boasts about how she manipulated her own child, telling her "now that is how you kill your mother".
• In the backstory of WandaVision, it's revealed that Big Bad Agatha Harkness killed her mother and several other witches by draining them of their magic in what was supposed to be Agatha's ritual execution for her crimes against witches. The brooch Agatha/"Agnes" wears was pried off her mother's corpse.
• Once Upon a Time
  • Red accidentally kills her mother Anita in an attempt to protect Snow White. It's quite traumatizing, as they had just recently reunited.
  • Snow White later tricks Regina into killing her mother Cora, pretty much the last person left that Regina loves. To make it worse, Cora had just recently had her heart returned, meaning she remembered just how much she loved Regina right before her death.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: It's revealed in "Lies My Parents Told Me" that Spike resurrected his mother as a vampire after her untimely death, but losing her soul made her become a vile monster. After she tells Spike how much she hates him and tries to seduce him, the horrified Spike stakes her to kill her for good.
• The Sopranos: Subverted in "I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano". Livia Soprano manipulates Uncle Junior to arrange a hit on her son Tony (Junior's nephew) out of resentment for putting her in a nursing home. After Tony's faction wins the civil war against Junior, Tony tries to smother Livia with a pillow, but ultimately decides against it. Instead, he just cuts her off completely.
• Millennium (1996): The Monster of the Week in the season 1 finale "Paper Dove" kills his mother after he becomes fed up with her overbearing behavior. He was already a Serial Killer before that, unbeknownst to her.
• Dexter: The major antagonist of the final season ends up killing his own mother after she realizes that he's an irredeemably cold-blooded killer. He had already killed his brother when he was younger.
  Mother chose the wrong son... again.
• Orphan Black: Helena stabs her birth mother Amelia for separating her from her twin sister Sarah. Helena grew up in a Ukrainian convent run by abusive nuns while Sarah ended up a foster kid in England. However, Sarah wanted to get to know Amelia and disowns Helena for killing her.
• Luke Cage (2016): Villainness Mariah Dillard, after one murdering spree too extreme, is finally poisoned by a Kiss of Death from her daughter.
• My Name Is Earl: Catalina was forced to fight her mother to the death over who would get to go to America and who would wind up dying to give a kidney to the smuggler's sister.
• Nos4a 2:
  • Charlie's revealed to have killed his mother.
  • Millie killed her own mother after turning evil.
• Kiss Me First: It would have been a Mercy Kill at her mother's request, but Leila took matters into her own hands and dosed her mother without telling her, leading to her mother calling Leila's name as the drugs took effect, while Leila wept in her room.
• Killing Eve: Villanelle kills her mother due to the latter rejecting her when they reconnect.
• Stargirl (2020): It's strongly implied Cindy killed her mother, though she claims it was accidental.
• In Stranger Things: The first human victim of Henry the Hidden Villain of the series was his own mother Virginia, as using his Mind over Matter powers he lifts her into the air and snaps her bones and pushes her eyes into her skull and then kills his sister Alice shortly after. Worse of all, Henry believes he was delivering mercy upon his mother and sister for the pain of their existence. His father Victor survived thanks to music playing in the other room.
• The Pillars of the Earth: William smothers his mother after too many creepily "affectionate" gestures.
• L.A.'s Finest: Nico shot his and Nancy's mom dead to protect Nancy when she was beating her.
• Dracula (2013): Lucy; maybe. In the final episode, her first act as a vampire is to bite her mother. If she changed her into a vampire or not is unknown due to the series cancellation.

Music

• Macabre: Nero killed his mom just to see where he came from.

Podcasts

• The Sick Sad World episode "Writers Who Kill" includes a case about two friends who end up murdering one's mother.
  • "Killer Confessions" brings up Ed Kemper, whose victims included his mother.

Religion & Mythology

• In Brazilian Folklore, several monsters came to be as punishment for this crime:
  • The Cabeça-de-Cuia (Gourd-Head) is an aquatic monster with an oversized head who drowns and eats women swimming in his river. He was once a poor fisherman named Crispim who lived with his mother at the shores of the river Parnaíba and struggled to feed themselves. One day, his mother had to cook a thin soup with only bones for the dinner, and Crispim, in a rage, started a heated argument that ended up finishing with him throwing one of the bones of the soup on his mother's head, accidentally killing her. In her final breath, the woman cursed him to become a monster until he devoured seven women named Maria.
  • The Corpo-Seco (Dry Body) is said to be a man so cruel he humiliated, tortured, and killed his mother. As punishment, neither Heaven nor Hell accepted his soul, and he was cursed to forever roam the Earth as a decrepit undead.

Theatre

• The Adding Machine: Zero, in the afterlife, meets another murderer who believes his own matricide to be a more heinous crime than Zero murdering his boss. Even though he killed her accidentally while trying to slice a leg of lamb, he accepted the minister's word that this was absolute proof of his sinful nature and he would surely be doomed to suffer in Fire and Brimstone Hell for eternity (which turns out not to be the case).

Video Games

• BioShock 2: Depending on the player's actions, Eleanor will either save or drown her mother.
• In The Binding of Isaac the Final Boss Isaac faces on the first playthrough is Mom, with the theme that plays during the fight in Rebirth is even titled "Matricide". In this case, it's slightly more justified because your Mom has seemingly heard the voice of God telling her to kill you and decided to prove her faith by doing so.
• Chrono Trigger: If you take Magus onto the Black Omen he will take part in slaying Queen Zeal. They even have a unique exchange and the boss theme even changes to Magus' theme for the battle with her One-Winged Angel form, Zeal. The sad thing is, only Magus (Janus) himself is aware of the kinslaying going on, Zeal doesn't recognize her now adult son, unhooded, in front of her declaring he will kill her.
• Dirge of Cerberus: Nero the Sable, one of the Tsviets, inadvertently sent his own birthmother into another dimension while she was giving birth to him due to his powers, which also acted as the reason why Shinra bound his arms as well as presumably limited his overall power.
• In God of War: Ghost of Sparta, Kratos is forced to kill his mother after Zeus turns her into a monster when she tries to tell him who his father is.
• Lev kills his mother in self-defense towards the end of The Last of Us Part II.
• Mass Effect:
  • Mass Effect: If you take Liara on the Noveria mission, she takes part in the death of her own mother, Benezia, who is under the Reapers' control. While Liara and Benezia's relationship had been strained prior to the mission, Liara mourns Benezia and remembers her fondly.
  • Mass Effect 2: If you can resist Morinth's mind control, you and she can kill her mother.
• System Shock 2: The Many, that annelid Body Horror, certainly want to do this to the "Machine Mother" who created them. Instead, the avatar of SHODAN kills them.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening features a subversion. Regardless of how the game is played, Lucina decides to try and kill the Avatar to try and avert the Bad Future that she came from. If a female Avatar is her mother, Lucina even says "I know this is matricide...". However, regardless of if the player elects to accept her judgement or not, Lucina loves her too much to go through with it.
• It is revealed in Mystery Case Files: Escape from Ravenhearst that Charles Dalimar killed his extraordinarily abusive mother Abigail. By feeding her a pie stuffed with dynamite.

Visual Novels

• If Diabolik Lovers wasn't dark enough as it is, over the course of its first plotline it reveals that more than one of the love interests murdered their mothers. An alarming number of them, in fact - although in most of the cases mom was so abusive that it is really hard to blame them for it. On the other hand, one of the murders was premeditated, cold-blooded, and while the responsible party experiences occasional pangs of conscience about it, he suffers very few consequences.
• In Heart of the Woods, Morgan Fischer plays a role in defeating The Moonsick One, which is possessing her mother's body and plans to do the same to Morgan.
• In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations, the possibility that Maya Fey killed her own mother Misty without knowing her identity comes up. It takes the entire trial (which lasts over 7 hours in-universe) to prove that no, it wasn't matricide. In a tragic turn of events, the killer was a man who wanted to protect Maya all along, Godot. It's important to note that he only killed the woman because she was channeling a spirit who was trying to murder Maya at the time.
• Toward the end of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, Athena Cykes (much like Miles Edgeworth) believes that she killed her mother Metis when she was very young, even though Simon Blackquill was convicted and sentenced to death for it. Again like Edgeworth, this is not the case but she suffers from Trauma-Induced Amnesia which messes up the deal even more- but unlike Edgeworth's case, it's believed that Metis used Athena as a guinea pig in her experiments, and that's why she snapped on her mom. If the game's played right, what truly happened is revealed: Metis never mistreated Athena but was actually trying to help her; little Athena stepped on her mother's murder scene, tried and failed to attack the killer, then fell in an Ophelia-like Heroic BSoD and that is when Blackquill found her and decided to frame himself to protect her...
• In Shining Song Starnova, Nemu Akimoto becomes convinced that her mother is trying to destroy the Starnova idol group, and attempts to kill her to prevent it from happening. She succeeds in her Bad Ending but is prevented from doing so in her Good Ending.

Webcomics

• Drowtales: The three Sharen sisters send mommy dearest to her room permanently so they can rule Chel'el'Sussoloth in a demonic triumvirate. Their dialog as they do it is especially cold. Made worse by the fact that to elves and drow, killing one's own mother is viewed as the worst crime one can commit, with someone who does it or willing to do it being viewed as the worst kind of person. Drow insults reflect this, with "Motherkiller" and "Motherkilling" being the most used insult and curse by their race.
• Gunnerkrigg Court: An interesting example, where Annie kills her mother without realizing it by simply being alive, due to them both being fire elementals. However, in chapter 36, her father is confirmed alive.
• In Headless Bliss, the demon queen Diov apparently killed her own mother for going against the natural order of demon existence by providing a loving, nurturing relationship to those under her rule.
• In Nodwick, Orville is a dragon whose species is driven by instinct to kill their mothers, and this works to the heroes' advantage at one point. Elonan uses a spell that causes the heroes to perceive her zombies as their parents or former mentors, intending to fool them into being vulnerable to their attacks, and this almost works. However, because Orville regards his mother as an enemy, he becomes enraged and incinerates them.
• In Sailor Moon Cosmos Arc Usagi let a brainwashed Chibiusa do this. It ends up breaking Chibiusa and Endymion's brainwashing.

Western Animation

• The Legend of Calamity Jane: It is very subtly implied in the episode "Easy as One, Two, Three..." that Conrad killed the mother of him and his two brothers. He spends the episode repeating her advice and what her opinion would be of their actions, but when one of his brothers asks why he cannot just leave her in her grave, he responds that he did leave her in her grave.
• South Park: Subverted in "Tsst", when Cartman decides that his mother Liane has to die after she stops indulging him and finally succeeds in disciplining her bratty son. This attempt on his mother's life causes Cartman to go through a Split Personality struggle as he destroys his evil side (parodying a scene from Altered States).
• A truly heroic example in Samurai Jack Season 5, when Ashi pitches an arrow through her mother's back when the latter is leaping to kill a meditating Jack.
• In Brickleberry, the leader of the Russian marijuana cartel sees his favorite employee Mario Brothers sneeze. When the leader's mother doesn't say gesundheit, the leader promptly shoots her in the head which splatters her blood all over Mario's face.
• Before he Took a Level in Kindness, Stewie Griffin of Family Guy was an Enfante Terrible characterized by a persistent desire to do this. He eventually gave up after the milestone two-part episode "Stewie Kills Lois"/"Lois Kills Stewie", where his simulation of what would happen if he actually did it ended in his death.

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