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"Nothing's more destructive to the metaphysical fabric that binds us than the untimely murder of a human."
Tropes relating to that most heinous crime.
Tropes:
Related indexes:
- Accidental Murder: When someone unintentionally kills another person.
- I Didn't Mean to Kill Him: When the guilty party claims (honestly or not) that their killing was accidental.
- Murder by Mistake: When someone ends up killing the wrong person, instead of their intended victim.
- Always Murder: In police/detective shows, the vast majority of the crimes they investigate involve a dead body.
- Animal Assassin: Using a deadly animal as a murder weapon.
- Assassination Attempt: When someone tries to kill a particular targeted person (usually an (in)famously notorious individual), and they may or may not succeed in doing so.
- Assassin Outclassin': An assassination attempt ends up failing or getting foiled.
- Conspicuously Public Assassination: When the assassination is done in view of many witnesses.
- Fake Assassination: Killing the target was never the real intent of the crime, that was just a ruse for some other scheme.
- Blood-Stained Letter
- Bloodbath Villain Origin: The villain's backstory involves them committing a massacre.
- Board to Death
- Body-Count Competition
- Body in a Breadbox
- Carpet-Rolled Corpse: Wrapping up a dead body with a rug.
- Chute Sabotage
- Cop Killer: A person who kills a police officer.
- Cop Killer Manhunt: The police take the killing of their own very seriously.
- The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much: A murder is dubiously covered up by claiming that the death happened because of accident, suicide, or natural causes.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: A murder is covered up by making it look like an accidental death.
- Hunting "Accident": Taking someone along for a hunting trip just to "accidentally" shoot them.
- This Bear Was Framed: Disguising a murder as an animal attack.
- Never Suicide: A murder victim's demise is covered up by making it look like a suicide.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: A murder is covered up by making it look like an accidental death.
- Cramming the Coffin
- A Deadly Affair: An extramarital affair ends in the murder of one or more parties involved.
- Deadly Delivery: An assassin poses as a postal worker so they can personally meet their target to kill them.
- You Got Murder: The postal service itself is used to facilitate a murder attempt (such as by sending a mail bomb to the target).
- Deadly Graduation
- Dead Man's Chest
- Death by Falling Over
- Death in the Clouds
- Death March: Prisoners are forced by their captors to travel on foot in lethally harsh conditions, leaving few or no survivors.
- Drowning Unwanted Pets
- External Combustion: AKA car bombing; a classic assassination method, in which an explosive device hidden in a motor vehicle is used to kill anyone inside or nearby it.
- Family Extermination: Eliminating everyone from an entire family.
- Ruling Family Massacre: Slaughtering all members of a royal dynasty.
- Forced Miscarriage: Causing a miscarriage without the mother's consent.
- Fright Deathtrap
- Gaining the Will to Kill
- He Knows Too Much: Killing someone because they have learned a dangerous secret they can't be allowed to know (or which they possibly plan to share with other people).
- Leave No Witnesses: Someone tries to avoid getting punished for their crimes by killing everyone who's seen them do the crimes.
- Hero Killer: The villain has successfully killed at least one hero who tried to stop them.
- High on Homicide
- High-Voltage Death: Killing someone by electrocuting them.
- Electrified Bathtub: Killing someone by dropping active electronics into a bathtub filled with water.
- Human Sacrifice: Killing someone as part of a religious ritual.
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: A human hunts other humans for sport, like they were game animals.
- I'm a Humanitarian: If a cannibal kills another person with the intention of eating their body.
- Inexperienced Killer: Someone who has little to no experience in killing and has never actually killed anyone before.
- Inheritance Murder: Killing someone in order to collect their inheritance.
- Inn of No Return: A shady hotel where guests have a worrisome tendency to never check out alive.
- Kill It with Fire: Using fire or burning heat as a weapon to kill people.
- Murder by Cremation: Shoving a live person into an oven to burn them to death.
- Kill It with Ice: Using ice or freezing cold as a weapon to kill people.
- Kill on Sight: Declaring that someone has been targeted for violent death.
- Kill Tally: Someone keeps score of how many lives they've taken.
- Kill the Host Body
- The Killer Becomes the Killed: A murderer ends up murdered themselves.
- Killer Cop: A murderous policeman.
- The Kingslayer: Someone who commits the murder of a monarch (regicide).
- Tyrannicide: Someone kills a brutal tyrant.
- Leave No Survivors: A massacre where nobody present is allowed to be left alive.
- Lights Off, Somebody Dies
- Lotsa People Try to Dun It: It turns out that all the suspects tried to kill the victim.
- Make Sure He's Dead: The villain insists that they look for a body in the event that it's hard to tell if the victim died or not.
- Medication Tampering
- Mercy Kill: Killing someone to spare them from a much more painful and prolonged death (or a worse fate).
- Mistaken for Murderer: A person is mistakenly believed to have killed someone or be planning to kill someone.
- Mistaken for Own Murderer: A transformed or disguised person is mistaken for having killed their true self.
- Multiple Gunshot Death: Someone gets killed by being riddled with many bullets.
- The Murder After
- Murder by Inaction: Killing someone indirectly by refusing to save their life.
- Murderers Are Rapists: A criminal rapes their victim before killing them.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: A character's knee-jerk solution to any problem they may face is to kill the people troubling them.
- Murder Makes You Crazy
- Murder-Suicide: Killing another person before killing oneself.
- Suicide Attack: When someone simultaneously kills both themselves and another person, usually accomplished with explosives.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Someone tries to get with the person they love by murdering the individual their beloved has chosen to be with.
- Mutual Kill: Two people end up killing each other near-simultaneously.
- Nasty Party
- Never One Murder
- Not-So-Fake Prop Weapon
- Offing the Annoyance: Killing someone for being annoying.
- Offing the Mouth: Killing someone for making a snarky remark.
- Offing the Offspring: Killing your own children.
- Ordered to Die: Someone is forced to kill themselves by someone else's command.
- Over-the-Shoulder Murder Shot
- Pater Familicide: Killing one's whole family, including spouse and kids, usually followed by oneself.
- Poison Is Evil: Killing someone with the use of a highly toxic substance.
- Prestige Peril: Gaining a lofty position has the downside that any screw-up will result in you getting killed.
- Professional Killer: Also known as contract killers, hitmen, or assassins. They make a living by murdering other people for a paycheck.
- Carnival of Killers: A wide assortment of assassins, usually attracted by an open contract on someone's hide.
- Contract on the Hitman: When an assassin gets targeted for death themselves.
- Murder, Inc.: An organization of contract killers.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Using Mind Control to force someone to kill themselves.
- Rube Goldberg Hates Your Guts: A Rube Goldberg Device is used to kill someone.
- Self-Made Orphan: Someone kills their own parents.
- Serial Killer: A murderer who gradually kills a series of individual people, one after another.
- Jack the Ripoff: A copycat killer who takes after the infamous Jack the Ripper.
- Serial-Killer Killer: A (vigilante) serial killer who targets other murderers.
- Serial Killings, Specific Target: A murderer who only really wants to kill a specific individual, but they try to hide their motives by murdering several other people to make it look like the work of a serial/spree killer.
- Theme Serial Killer: This murderer has a predictable gimmick as part of their modus operandi.
- Poetic Serial Killer: They like to use an ironic method against each of their victims.
- Shoot the Dangerous Minion
- Shoot the Messenger: Killing a messenger just because they dared to inform you of bad news.
- Sibling Murder: Someone kills their own brother or sister.
- Slain in Their Sleep: Killing someone while they're asleep in bed.
- Sickbed Slaying: Killing someone lying in bed from illness or injury.
- Snuff Film: A recorded film of someone getting murdered.
- murder.com: A website that hosts videos of people getting killed.
- Spree Killer: A mass-murderer who kills multiple people within a short span of time.
- Going Postal: A disgruntled postal worker goes crazy and will likely start killing people.
- "Strangers on a Train"-Plot Murder
- Suicidal Sadistic Choice: Forcing someone into killing themselves by threatening to do something worse to them.
- Suicide by Assassin: Someone hires another person to get themselves killed.
- Suicide by Cop: Someone intentionally provokes another person into killing them.
- Suicide, Not Murder: A suicide victim is mistaken for having been murdered.
- Suspect Existence Failure: The lead suspect of a murder gets killed by the real culprit.
- Sympathetic Murderer: The killer has a sympathetic motive for their crime (such as their victim being a bad person).
- Take Me Out At The Ballgame: Killing someone at a sports event.
- Taking You with Me: A person who gets killed makes it so that their killer dies with them.
- Ten Little Murder Victims: A group of people are stuck somewhere. One of them is a killer, the rest are potential victims.
- Thrown from the Zeppelin
- Til Murder Do Us Part: Someone kills their own spouse.
- Black Widow: A woman who kills her own husband.
- The Bluebeard: A man who kills his own wife.
- Trail of Blood
- Tricked to Death: Intentionally deceiving or misleading someone into getting themselves killed.
- Trouble Magnet Gambit
- Unfriendly Fire: A soldier gets killed by a fellow soldier from the same army — and it wasn't an accident of war.
- Uriah Gambit
- Vehicle-Roof Body Disposal
- Vehicular Sabotage
- Vigilante Execution: Killing someone accused of a crime without the permission of the judicial system.
- Vorpal Pillow: Killing someone by smothering them with a pillow.
- Wax Museum Morgue: A museum where the "statues" are really the preserved corpses of the owner's victims.
- Whodunnit to Me?
- Who Murdered the Asshole?: An unsympathetic person has been killed, but it's hard to determine who killed them because the victim was such a dick that there is no shortage of people who despise the victim.
- You Have Failed Me: The villain kills an underling as punishment for failing them too often or too severely.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The villain kills an underling after they've done what they were ordered to do.
