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Children in times of peace bury their fathers, why wait?
"You see this? They call it the "Fangs of the Serpent". And this one was thrust into a father's heart by his very son! And my own daughter has fallen under this Thulsa Doom's spell. Is there a dagger such as this in her hand for me?"

Fathers can be a terribly bothersome bunch. If you're the hero of an epic tale, half the time they turn out to be your worst enemy. If you're not such a hero, then maybe your father found his own way of pissing you off. Maybe he's set you up to marry the guy you hate, or he plans to hand over his title and fortune to his favorite general rather than you, his eldest son. Even if the title and fortune are intended for you, they're still not yours until the old fart is dead. Maybe your father genetically engineered you to be a Super-Soldier or to power his super weapon and doesn't understand that you are so much more. Maybe you didn't even know it was him and he just got in your way. Maybe it was prophesied and You Can't Fight Fate. Maybe he beats you. Or your mom. Maybe all of these. In any case, your old man made a big mistake when he didn't off the offspring because his days are numbered. Daddy's going down.

Patricide, the act of killing one's father, is one of the most serious crimes throughout history (it being one of the other things Oedipus is famous for). Such a taboo is therefore bound to be found in media. Often there is a degree of My God, What Have I Done? after the deed, reflecting exactly how horrible the crime is considered.

On the other hand, if you're not so very heroic, offing your dad may simply be the next big step in your long and promising political career. It could get you the woman of your dreams. And, let's face it, when you are the hero and your father is still alive, unless he's about to get kidnapped or murdered by the bad guy, then he probably is a horrible villain who deserves to die.

The killing of a parent is certainly very affecting and tells us a great deal about any character who would do it (and equally as much about characters who refuse to do it). When you're looking for some way of characterizing a hero as dark or causing him to grieve heavily, this is always a good trope. What could be considered odd, however, is how often patricide is portrayed in fiction as opposed to matricide. This is probably related to Most Writers Are Male. Note that historically, the word Patricide was used as both a descriptive and personal noun. The act of killing one's father is patricide but the person who kills his father can also be called a Patricide.

Subtrope to Self-Made Orphan and Murder in the Family. Spear Counterpart to Matricide. Compare Archnemesis Dad, The Evil Prince. Contrast You Killed My Father (someone else kills the character's father), Offing the Offspring (the child is killed), and Pater Familicide (the father kills the entire family). The more violent examples of Calling the Old Man Out may well involve this. May well be the life's goal of an Antagonistic Offspring and ultimate act of Betrayal by Offspring.

This is a Death Trope, so beware of spoilers.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • In Attack on Titan, Historia Reiss happens to be the one to kill her father Rod Reiss. After Rod transforms into a Titan and his head is blown apart, Historia slices through the part with his actual body, then publicly claims credit for the kill.
  • Berserk:
    • The Kushan Emperor Ganishka is revealed to have killed his father (after having killed his little brother, favored by their mother). He ends up poisoned by his own son years later, and would have died had he not triggered his Behelit, transforming him into an Apostle.
    • Guts kills his own father (figure) Gambino at a young age, when Gambino got drunk one night and went into his tent to try to murder him. He blamed Guts for the death of his lover Shisu (Guts' foster mother) from the plague. There was considerably less angst after that, especially since Gambino admitted that he was the one who sold Guts to his rapist Donovan for three silver coins.
  • Buso Renkin: After Koshaku Chouno became Papillon, he decides to eat everyone in his household — except those that can tell the difference between him and his (already deceased) younger brother Jiro. Nobody succeeds, including his fathernote .
  • Code Geass:
    • A pre-teen Suzaku Kururugi fell into despair and killed his father, who happened to be Japan's First Minister, in order to make the Japanese troops surrender and stop the bloodbath caused with their (losing) war against Britannia. The trauma was so big that he became a Death Seeker.
    • Lelouch has "kill Father" at the top of his to-do list for much of the series, partly out of revenge for some pretty severe Parental Abandonment, partly because he's the head of the evil empire that Lelouch despises. He eventually succeeds near the end of the series, and decides to kill his mother too while he's at it.
  • Tsubasa from Destiny of the Shrine Maiden Killed his Abusive Father in order to protect himself and and his brother Souma.
  • A tragic example happens in one case in Detective School Q. The Ichinose brothers murdered a medium who claims to have a message from their late mother who died in a plane crash, who the brothers suspect is a fake whose trying to scam them and little sister Kaori into giving her the family's vast fortune they inherit after their mother's death. However, the protagonists revealed the medium is actually their mother who actually missed her doomed flight and went into hiding to protect her children. The ironic part was the mother disguised herself as medium to tell her children to apologize to them and hope they have happier life without her. Naturally, the Awful Truth horrifies everyone with brothers trying to commit suicide.
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), this is Envy's life's goal. He's also got a Cain and Abel thing going on with his half-brothers Edward and Alphonse.
  • Gundam:
    • In the original Mobile Suit Gundam Evil Prince Gihren Zabi murders his father, Sovereign Degwin Sodo Zabi in order to graduate from Dragon-in-Chief to Big Bad. For Gihren this is not a particularly shocking move. Neither is the fact that he uses a Wave-Motion Gun to do it. And then his sister Kycilia confronts him and shoots him, invoking the trope as her reason to do so; Gihren would've been executed for patricide anyway, according to her.
    • At the end of Episode 17 of the second season of Mobile Suit Gundam 00, Andrei Smirnov killed his own father, Sergei, for being involved with the Federation Army's coup d'état in the Break Pillar Incident.
    • An accidental version occurs in the final episode of the first cour of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury. Guel Jeturk, who has been caught up in the Dawn of Fold's attack on Plant Quetta, hijacks one of their mobile suits in order to join the battle and save Suletta. However, he is immediately attacked by his father Vim (who has looking for him ever since he ran off) in his Ace Custom with neither father nor son knowing who is in the other mobile suit as Vim is unable to hear Guel's desperate pleading that he's not the enemy, forcing him to defend himself. Only after Guel impales his father's mobile suit is he able to establish contact and for both men to learn the Awful Truth of whom they have been fighting. Even though Guel tries desperately to rescue his father in spite of what happened, Vim's mobile suit explodes taking him with it. Naturally, Guel ends up breaking down crying over what he has just done, and it is the catalyst for the Heroic BSoD he is in at the start of the second cour.
  • In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood, Dio murdered his father Dario for being abusive. The fact that he blamed Dario for the death of his mother, the only person Dio fully cared for, didn't help. And if you count him killing George Joestar, his adoptive father, he committed patricide twice.
  • In Madlax, Margaret Burton killed her own father Richard in very tragic circumstances. (He had been driven insane via the local Brown Note, she did it on self-defense). She blocked out the memories so well, they created a Literal Split Personality: the titular Madlax. (Or better said, two: the third one is the local Creepy Child, Laetitia).
  • An accidental example happens in My Hero Academia with Eri, who erased her father from existence when her Quirk first awakened. While this wasn't entirely her fault since she was very young and had no control over her ability, Eri's mother was so distraught by this that she handed Eri over to the Shie Hassaikai and disowned her.
    • Tenko Shimura Aka Tomura Shigaraki was a very intentional example however. After he accidentally kills his other family members as a result of his Quirk's awakening, he tearfully reaches out to his father for help and the man attacks him out of anger and fear and Tenko, having suffered abuse from the man for years of his life, completely snaps and lunges at his father and kills him in a bloody heap. Rather disturbingly, he was about the same age as the aforementioned Eri.
  • Naruto: Haku killed his father when he tried to kill him (and did kill his mother).
  • One Piece: Donquixote Doflamingo shot his own father in the head when he was still a child, blaming him for all the horrible misfortunes that fell on the family (including the death of Doflamingo's ill girl mother). The flashback is rather harrowing: his younger brother Rocinante is tearfully begging Doflamingo to stop, while his father doesn't try to resist and simply apologizes for not being a better father.
  • In Saber Marionette R, Star-Face's goal is to kill his own father, Junior, and then to take over Romana. While the two last points fail, he does kill his father before Junior could do anything to stop him.
  • In Tiger & Bunny, Yuri Petrov murdered his father, Mr. Legend, when he started to beat on his wife in a drunken rage following the loss of his powers. It was at this time that his pyrokinetic powers emerged, and he bares a hand-shaped scar on his face from when his father grabbed him with his burning hand, which went on to become an insignia for his mask as the vigilante Lunatic.
  • In the beginning of the film Tales from Earthsea, the main character Prince Arren stabs his kind father, the king, for no apparent reason (under a spell, possibly), steals his Cool Sword and runs away, leaving his old man to die.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: Marik Ishtar suffered a lot of abuse from his father, to the point he developed a dark side to cope with it. One night he finally couldn't stand it anymore and his dark side took over, so he grabbed the Millenium Rod and used its power to pin his father against the wall, before stabbing him to death with the rod's hidden blade. The last part was cut in the English dub, where it's said Marik simply banished his father to the Shadow Realm.

    Comic Books 
  • Batman:
    • Villain Hush killed his father as a child by cutting the brakes.
    • In Batman/Huntress: Cry for Blood, antiheroine Huntress arranges for her biological father Santo Cassamento to be killed in revenge for the hit job he arranged several years earlier that killed her mother, brother, and legal father.
  • Comic Cavalcade: Etta Candy's neighbor Randy Holcome murders his father when he realizes his dad is considering cutting him out of his will.
  • The Incredible Hulk: Bruce Banner killed his father Brian. In his defense, Brian was an abusive monster who beat Bruce and his mother Rebecca throughout his childhood, before murdering Rebecca when she tried to escape with Bruce.
  • In Jupiter's Legacy, Brandon kills his father the Utopian to take over America.
  • The New Warriors character Vance Astrovik (Marvel Boy, later Justice) killed his Abusive Father in a fight with his powers, then immediately turned himself into jail. He wound up serving fourteen months for negligent homicide, then went back to his superheroics afterward.
  • The Punisher MAX:
    • Nicky Cavella, one of the more unstable bad guys, was shown to have a happy flashback in which he shot his mother, his younger sister and finally his father, as part of a power grab by his aunt.
    • In the Slavers arc, the head of the slavers sends a team to kill his father, who enjoys violence to the point that it's interfering with his human-trafficking business. The old man escapes the attempt, but in the end is killed by Frank.
  • Sabretooth did this very intentionally. His father was an abusive parent who kept him changed in the cellar where he sat in his own waste and was fed like a dog when his father wasn't ripping out his teeth with pliers and verbally abusing him by noting how much or a freak & monster he was. All this made his father the perfect target when he finally got loose.
  • Scion: Crown Prince Bron eventually murders his own father King Viktor when he finds out his father plans to make his sister Ashleigh his successor instead.
    Viktor: I should have smothered you in the cradle.
    Bron: Yes. You should have.
  • In Supergirl storyline Adventures of Supergirl, Caren (Rampage) and Moyer Falqnerr were heiresses to their father's thriving business; though, Moyer did not want to wait any longer to take over the family enterprise, so she talked Caren into poisoning their parent. Unfortunately for them, they were immediately found out and imprisoned.
    Rampage: "It was assumed that my sister Moyer and I would take over my father's business. One day, we'd become as well-respected across the planet as he was. We didn't want to wait for 'one day', however...so on the eve of his 50th birthday, Moyer poisoned— [...] As I was saying... My sister wanted to be rich. Well-respected. I was young and stupid and willing to help. She poisoned our father... Our police force founds out out immediately. I don't know how. Murder is the most grievous sin we have on Byr. Patricide? Doubly so."
  • Thorgal: Thorgal is cursed by the gods for (unknowingly) killing his own father.
  • Twisted Dark: In "Peace And Quiet", Amy stabs her father to death because his snoring was bothering her.
  • Usagi Yojimbo: Noriko is one of the few characters who has committed this crime twice. She poisoned her legal father and stabbed her actual biological father in the back.
  • Wanted: At the very end, Wesley learns that his father, the original Killer, faked his death and ensured that Wesley would take up his mantle. He convinces Wesley to kill him because he's getting old and considers his own flesh and blood to be the only man worthy of the deed.
  • Wolverine does this by accident, as a boy seeing his supposed father John Howlett murdered by the groundskeeper Thomas Logan; James went crazy and popping his claws for the first time and slew Thomas in revenge. But it turned out he was illegitimate son of John and Thomas Logan was his biological father, so poor Wolverine went from two fathers to zero in a short space of time.
  • In X-Men, Gabriel Summers kills his father, leaving him to die in big bro Alex's arms.

    Fan Works 
  • It is revealed in NUMB3RS story The Best Laid Plans, that Philip Bresher's son, Mark, was the one who killed him. Philip was dying of cancer anyway, so Mark was sparing his father of more pain.
  • In Everyone Lives With Knives, there's a very, very justified one by Jin Guangyao, who worsens Jin Guangshan's STD-induced disease until it becomes fatal.
  • Fluttershy in Friendship is Witchcraft kills her abusive father (who is a dragon) at the end of an episode.
  • In Hellsister Trilogy, Orion blasts his abusive, tyrannical father Darkseid to atoms. Unfortunately, Darkseid transfers her conscience to a cloned body he had previously grown in the event of his defeat.
  • It's mentioned in the Super Mario Bros fic A Game of Castles that Ludwig poisoned his father, presumably for political reasons.
  • In The Lost Cause, Jin Guangyao conspires with Nie Huaisang to kill Jin Guangshan via poison. He dies as a result of a poison-induced heart attack.
  • RWBY: Scars:
    • Whitley stabs his abusive father in chapter 83 during a company meeting right after he formally claims Whitley as his heir in front of everyone. He then proceeds to blame it on Maximus, which leads to him being slashed across the face (however, Maximus' reaction only helps Whitley).
    • Mercury killed his abusive father Marcus prior to the story.
  • So Rot Vie Blut: Snow White seduces a man to poison her father because she wants the throne.
  • Itachi kills his father in Son of the Sannin in order to protect the Third Hokage during the Uchiha coup with the trauma of the incident causing him to awaken his Mangekyo Sharingan. His mother also dies around the same time, though unlike in canon he isn't the one responsible.
  • Mastermind: Strategist for Hire: Shouto and Touya Todoroki (now the villains Freezerburn and Dabi, respectively) confront and kill their abusive father, Endeavor, at a press conference he was holding.
  • Us and Them: As Emerald WEAPON is bearing down on Junon, Rufus takes the opportunity to lure his father into its reach, resulting in his death.

    Films — Animation 
  • Subverted in The Lion King (1994): Simba thinks he (accidentally) killed his father, until it's revealed (to him) that his uncle Scar did it.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Nick in Anna and the Apocalypse, though not by choice. His father had been bitten and that was his last request.
  • All the films in the "Thin Man" series had a The Dog Was the Mastermind ending. In Another Thin Man, Col. MacFay's supposedly sweet and gentle daughter Lois is revealed to have murdered her own father, because she'd fallen in love with a gangster and wanted to get her hands on her inheritance.
  • BloodRayne: Rayne kills Kagen, who had conceived her through rape and murdered her mother, as revenge.
  • Bloodthirsty: Grey kills Vaughn, her birth father, to stop him murdering ever again near the end.
  • Breaking the Girls: Alex murdered her father David to gain her inheritance.
  • The Clovehitch Killer: In the end, Tyler, with Kassi's help, puts his father down for good, rather than turn him in to the police.
  • In Death Note: The Last Name Light attempts to do this to his father Soichiro in order to get the Death Note Soichiro had in his possession by writing his name in the other Death Note. It turns out the Death Note Light already had was a fake, and everything was set up by the thought-to-be-deceased L to prove once and for all Light was Kira. He then tries to get Ryuk to murder Soichiro and the other task force members for him after getting caught. The look of horror and heartbreak on Soichiro's face is heart-wrenching. Probably the one time being Spared by the Adaptation really was the worse option, as in the manga he died before he could find out Light was Kira. Notably, even Light's Love Martyr Misa was horrified he was willing to murder his own father.
  • Gladiator: Marcus Aurelius takes Commodus aside to tell him that he intends to make Rome a republic again and entrusts Maximus to oversee the transition, meaning Commodus will never be Emperor. Commodus reacts by then smothering his father to death and then trying to pass it off as the old man dying in his sleep.
  • Godzilla vs. Kong: Concept designer Jared Krichevsky has described Mechagodzilla as Walter Simmons' "son", and the moment the Mecha becomes sentient, it zeroes in on Simmons and makes him its very first kill as a sentient construct. The novelization hints that the Mecha might have targeted Simmons in retribution because it knew he was trying to control it.
  • Hawk the Slayer: When his father denies his right to their Ancestral Weapon because he's now working for an evil wizard, Voltan murders pa in retaliation. Later after he slaps down Drogo and his humiliated son starts to draw a dagger, Voltan warns him against trying the same.
  • Horrible Bosses 2: Rex Hanson kills his dad Bert using a Colt Python with 2 bullets, and then lets out an evil laugh while doing so.
  • It's a Wonderful Knife (2023): Winnie has to kill her dad in the alternate timeline, who's been put under Water's spell and is now killing for him, when he's attacked her.
  • James Bond:
    • In The World Is Not Enough it's revealed that Elektra ordered the assassination of her father at the start of the movie.
    • Die Another Day: Gustav Graves/Colonel Moon shoots dead his own father after the man dreads what his son has become and tries to stop his plan that will plunge the world into war.
    • It's revealed that years before the events of Spectre, Franz Oberhauser a.k.a. Ernst Stavro Blofeld killed his father out of resentment and jealousy for favoring Bond over him.
  • The Man in the Iron Mask: At the end of the film, King Louis XIV stabs D'Artagnan, his true father, when he tries to stab his brother Philippe.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • Thor: Double subverted with Loki who appears to be plotting his adoptive father's murder, but it turns out to be a part of a (completely misguided) ploy to impress his adoptive father by apparently saving his life. But the same ploy involves killing Laufey — whom he has just discovered to be his biological father and who left an infant Loki to die.
    • Subverted at the end of Thor: The Dark World, when Loki disposes of Odin and impersonates him to take the throne. Many speculated that this trope was in play, but since the event in question occurred offscreen, it was never confirmed. Four years later, Thor: Ragnarok finally revealed that Loki actually didn't kill him, just wiped his memory and banished him to Earth.
    • Played straight in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 with Peter Quill/Star-Lord as he destroys his father Ego the living planet, since Ego had killed Peter's mother by putting a brain tumour in her head, was about to absorb every planet in the universe, and crushed Peter's Walkman given to him by his mother.
  • Mercenaries from Hong Kong: Madam He Ying, the only child of a wealthy executive and employer of the titular mercenaries, claims that her father was assassinated by a business rival, who then escaped to South East Asia, and sends the mercenary team to the hostile jungles of Cambodia to hunt down her father's killer. But the truth is later revealed by the captured assassin, Wen, that Ying actually arranged for her father's assassination herself, and the mission is to eliminate any witnesses to her wrongdoings. Things naturally goes From Bad to Worse for the mercenaries once Ying's true colours are exposed.
  • Tonny from Pusher 2 kills his father in the climax of the film after having been belittled and antagonized for too long.
  • Road to Perdition: Symbolically, Michael Sullivan murders his adoptive father John Rooney so that the Chicago Mob will stop protecting John's son Connor and Michael can take revenge on Connor for murdering Michael's family.
  • Scanners: Revok orders Keller to kill Dr. Ruth if he discovers their plot, who is later revealed to be Revok's father and responsible for Revok's turn towards evil.
  • In SHAZAM! (2019), after Sivana throws his brother through a glass window and orders the Sins to massacre the entire boardroom, he murders his Abusive Dad by feeding him to Greed.
  • A Simple Favor: Emily killed her abusive father along with her sister by burning down their house with him inside.
  • Sorceress: Mara kills Traigon, her birth father, in the finale.
  • Star Wars:
    • Luke's original mission in the first trilogy, was to train with Obi-Wan and Yoda, so that he could eventually fight and kill Darth Vader and then the Emperor. It's strongly implied that Obi-Wan and Yoda had planned to get Luke to unwittingly kill his father, by deliberately distorting Anakin's past. Once Luke finds out the truth, he's appalled at what his masters set him up to do, and even more so when they insist he do it even after learning the truth. During the throne room confrontation both Vader and Palpatine push his buttons to do it, but he rejects it at the end, and in the process Vader betrays Palpatine and achieves redemption.
    • Kylo Ren in the sequel trilogy sets out to undo the legacy of his parents and uncle, and fulfill Vader's destiny. He does so by crossing lines that they they never would, most notably when he kills his father Han Solo at the end of The Force Awakens. This seems to have been a difficult thing for him to do and it causes continuous Villainous Breakdown and at the end of The Last Jedi, Luke affirms that Han will always haunt Kylo for the rest of his life. Plus much like Grandpa Vader he kills his dark master Snoke who acted as a second father.
    • Darth Vader killing Emperor Palpatine at the end of Return of the Jedi is possibly a variant of this trope with the implication in Revenge of the Sith that Palpatine helped create Anakin Skywalker, who would eventually become Vader. Palpatine worked with Plagueis to create an Artifical Human and young Anakin was born to Shmi Skywalker via virgin birth, so Darth Sidious is more his creator than his father.
  • Tamara: Tamara forces her father to kill himself by eating glass with her new power after coming back as evil.
  • Thelma: Thelma was asleep when her father was killed in the lake. During the burgeoning of her powers but also because of repression, much of her psychokinesis happens when she's dreaming. Her father was killed as his hands caught fire and it spread throughout his body. He would have burned to death but he resolved this by drowning himself in the lake instead. Upon realizing this as she woke up, Thelma was completely horrified then and remorseful over her father's death.
  • Kevin kills his father and sister before going to his local high school and killing an additional seven people in the film We Need to Talk About Kevin.

    Literature 
  • The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga: Book one, Ice Forged, starts with Blaine McFadden running his own father through with a sword after years of beatings culminate in him raping his daughter/Blaine's sister. Blaine is convicted of his murder, but given the circumstances the King commutes the mandatory death sentence to banishing Blaine to a Penal Colony on Velant.
  • Played with in Black Legion — in the finale, Abaddon kills clone of Horus, his gene-sire, who has complete set of original's memories and even calls Abaddon his son.
  • The Bounty Hunter Wars: Bossk kills his own father Craddosk, taking over the Bounty Hunters' Guild by doing so.
  • The Brothers Karamazov, in which two of the sons are accused/believe themselves guilty of their father's murder. The novel uses Patricide as a personal noun and "becoming a Patricide" is used as is "committing Patricide".
  • The Cat Who... Series: The victim of book #22 (The Cat Who Robbed a Bank), Mr. Delacamp, is murdered by his own illegitimate son. Neither of them knew of the relation at the time though.
  • In the traditional Child Ballad "Edward" (or at least in the version by Bishop Thomas Percy) the titular character's shocking secret is that he has killed his father (and his mother put him up to it).
  • The Chronicles of Dorsa: Tasia is accused of having her father the Emperor murdered after he named her heir so she could take over. She didn't do it however.
  • In Dragon Bones, Ward remembers that his father once, while drunk, told him that he'd killed his father (Ward's grandfather), with the intent to enforce Klingon Promotion, and disguised it as accident. Ward himself doesn't do it, but is constantly in danger because his father thinks he would do it if given the chance.
  • In Eileen, 14-year-old Leonard Polk is in prison for cutting out his own father's throat. Many characters in the story are very curious as to why; Rebecca Saint James goes to extreme lengths to find out. As it turns out, it was a crime of revenge/self-protection as the boy had been molested by his father for many years.
  • The Empirium Trilogy: In an effort to harm Corien, Rielle lets loose her powers and winds up killing her father in the process.
  • Forest Kingdom: In Book 2 (Blood and Honor), it's widely believed that one of King Malcom's sons committed this, or at least had it ordered. The final chapter reveals he was indeed murdered by one of his children. The catch is, it was his daughter, who suffocated him via her air magic.
  • Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi: The Big Bad is revealed to have killed his own father after being mistreated for too long and finally losing hope of ever winning his love and approval. Because his father was notorious for his promiscuity, he gathers some old, disfigured prostitutes to gang-rape him to death.
  • In the Harry Potter series, both Voldemort and Barty Crouch, Jr. killed their respective fathers, Voldemort also killing his father's parents and framing his maternal uncle for the murders.
  • The Heroes of Olympus: The final book reveals that, years ago, Reyna killed her father in self-defense. Broken by his experiences as an Iraq War veteran, he slowly turned into a mania upon returning home, which made him unable to tell what's real or not. Eventually, he regressed to the point of trying to kill Reyna and her sister, Hylla, therefore Reyna had no choice but to kill him. The Romans consider patricide to be the worst kind of crime, so when Bryce Lawrence, a fellow Roman, learns about this, he attempts to condemn Reyna to capital punishment.
  • I Am Mordred: Mordred kills Arthur, his father, in the end.
  • In Death: Immortal In Death reveals that Eve Dallas killed her own father when she was 8-years-old. She had been suppressing memories of that time for years. As the series goes on, it is revealed piece by piece that her father Richard Troy raped her and abused her for years, and that he intended to make her into a prostitute and sell her to child molesters. He caught her trying to feed herself and forced himself on her to punish her. Her arm got broken, she went crazy, and she managed to grab the knife she was using on the food. She killed him with the knife.
  • In one Judge Dee story, the murderer was the victim's son, who had been having an affair with one of his father's wives. The judge verbally destroys the guy (Chinese society at the time placing a very great deal of importance on ancestor worship), who ends up Driven to Suicide.
  • According to Arthurian Legend, King Arthur was mortally wounded by his illegitimate son Mordred.
  • Kushiel's Legacy:
    • In Dart, though Drustan is the Cruarch's heir he is forced to flee when the Cruarch's son kills his father and takes his title.
    • Daeva Gashtaham murdered his own father and ate his heart in order to become an Aka-Magus and receive power over death.
  • In Lisey’s Story, by Stephen King, Scott's final story, addressed to his wife, tells of his killing his father at the father's request, and it was in a way a Mercy Kill when he was ten.
  • In the first book of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Benigaris kills his father Duke Leobardis of Nabban as part of his Face–Heel Turn.
  • In Midnight Robber: The moment that changes everything. On Tan-Tan's 16th birthday, her father tries to rape her again, but this time she realizes she has a knife she just received as a birthday present, and may be able to defend herself. Death was not the plan — but it is the result.
  • The Obelisk Gate: Nassun's father sees her magical abilities as something disgusting and monstrous, and murdered her baby brother for having the same powers. When his fear of her overwhelms his love for her, he tries to kill her too, so she very deliberately petrifies him, slowly enough for him to know it's happening.
    Nassun: I'm sorry, Daddy. I tried to keep loving you, but it was too hard.
  • Quarters: Vree kills Neegan, who it turns out is the father of her and Bannon, to save them since he'd been sent to kill them both as deserters.
  • Romance of the Three Kingdoms: One of the reasons Lu Bu is so infamous is that he betrayed and killed not only his birth father, but two adoptive fathers after him as well (Dong Zhuo being the last). To the Ancient Chinese, who followed Confucian values, killing one's father was one of the worst crimes a person could possibly commit, and Lu Bu had committed it three times. One of his most disparaging nicknames, "The Bastard of Three Fathers", is a direct reference to this.
  • In the Seeker Bears book called Island Of Shadows, Nanulak the polar bear/grizzly bear hybrid uses Toklo mainly as a hitman in order to kill his polar bear father. Toklo backs off for two reasons: the first is that he was amazed to see the polar bear as Nanulak's dad, and the second was that he found out that Nanulak tricked him all along..
  • The Shadowhunter Chronicles:
    • Centuries ago, Magnus Bane killed his mundane stepfather, who attempted to drown him upon learning that he is a warlock.
    • Gabriel Lightwood has to kill his father, Benedict, after the latter succumbs to demon pox and turns into a demon.
    • Julian Blackthorn is forced to kill his father, Andrew, to protect his brother Ty. By this point, Andrew has been turned into an Endarkened Shadowhunter, so killing him would be an act of mercy more than anything, but the experience still leaves Julian shell-shocked.
    • The thousands of years old Unseelie King meets his end at the hands of his least favorite son, Kieran.
  • Ship Breaker: Nailer ends up killing his father, Richard Lopez in the climax of the book. Since Richard was a drug addicted ex-gladiator who was seeking to kill Nailer and his friend Nita at the time, it's pretty justified.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • Tyrion Lannister kills his father Tywin Lannister after years of psychological abuse and discovering that he had deceived him into thinking his wife and first love Tysha had been a prostitute. A kinslayer is cursed by the gods in Westerosi society, but killing one's sire is worse than killing a brother.
    • Lord Eon Hunter, a man of over 80, died suddenly and is suspected of being killed by his eldest son, the new Lord Gilwood Hunter. According to Littlefinger, Eon's third son Harlan Hunter was responsible.
    • According to the Free Folk's tales, the King-Beyond-the-Wall Bael the Bard once seduced and impregnated the daughter of Lord Brandon Stark. Their son was then legitimized and eventually became the new Lord Stark. When Bael and this Lord Stark finally met on the battlefield, Bael couldn't bring himself to fight his own son and didn't even try to defend himself. Lord Stark, unaware that Bael was his father, did not hesitate to cut him down and took his head as a trophy.
  • Split Heirs: After King Gudge falls off his horse and dies, the guards think Wulfrith (who they believe is Arbol) did it (not that they mind). It's stated too the common way the sons of Gorgarian kings succeed their fathers means simply assassinating them, so they're fine with him (apparently) following the old tradition.
  • At the end of the first book of The Stormlight Archive, it's revealed that Shallan was somehow responsible for her father's death (though he probably deserved it).
  • Sword of Truth: Richard kills his father, Darken Rahl. This was wholly justified, as his father was an evil tyrant attempting to take over the world. He also didn't even know they were related until then.
  • In The Tommyknockers, one of the pieces of information Becka picks up is that an offscreen character killed his father via Hunting "Accident". The killer thought it was a straight-up Inheritance Murder, but narration mentions that he's very thoroughly repressed memories of sexual abuse by his father.
  • Villains by Necessity: Sam, in the final battle. Though he didn't know that Mizzamir was his father until minutes before killing him for unrelated reasons.
  • Derfel in The Warlord Chronicles kills his father Aelle, albeit at Aelle's request; he's been mortally wounded in battle, and having Derfel kill him quickly and cleanly in a duel gives him an Honorable Warrior's Death, as well as a death at the hands of a famed enemy warlord. It just happens to be that said warlord is his own long lost biological son. Derfel, telling the story many years later, is clearly disturbed by the memory.
  • Warrior Cats:
    • Brokenstar killed his father in order to become leader — as deputy, he was Raggedstar's successor.
    • Like his son, Raggedstar kills his own dad, a kittypet named Hal.
  • Wings of Fire has an interesting variation of this trope. When Tsunami is forced to fight in Queen Scarlet's Gladiator Games, she is randomly paired up against Gill, a prisoner who had attempted to revolt. Tsunami was forced to kill Gill because he had been tortured into insanity as a result of his little rebellion, and was so unstable by that point he'd been drinking his own blood. It's later revealed that Gill was not only king of the SeaWings, but also Tsunami's father. Naturally, she is extremely disturbed and horrified by the whole situation.
  • In "The Worst Crime In The World", Father Brown solves one of these.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Angel:
    • Angel when he became the evil Vampire Angelus ate his father and mother as well his little sister for good measure. You’d think a few centuries later and “blessed” with a soul he’d be really cut up about it... nope. In "Sense and Sensitivity" to he actually joked to a evil psychiatrist that his parents tasted like chicken when asked about them. Since Angel was a miserable "Well Done, Son" Guy when he was human, it’s not too surprising.
    • In "Lineage", Wesley seemly shoots his father Roger when he makes a move towards Fred. Doubly subverted though as not only does Wesley vomit his lunch up immediately afterwards but it turns out it was actually a Cyborg pretending to be his father. Wesley is also further horrified when Angel and Spike try to comfort him, by sharing the times they killed their parents.
  • Brave New World: John accidentally kills his father, the Director.
  • Chucky: Junior kills his father Logan after being manipulated by Chucky.
  • Dexter: New Blood: In the end, Harrison kills Dexter, at his urging.
  • In the second season of Fate: The Winx Saga, Sky reluctantly kills his father, Andreas, to stop him from murdering his adoptive father, Saul.
  • Game of Thrones universe:
    • Game of Thrones:
      • Ramsay murders his father Roose to become Lord Bolton. He then kills his stepmother and newborn brother for good measure.
      • Tywin's final fate, at the hands of Tyrion.
    • House of the Dragon: Larys Strong arranges for his father Lyonel to perish in a fire at his castle of Harrenhal. Larys' brother Harwin also dies in the fire, which might have been intended as well since Larys became Lord of Harrenhal as a result.
  • Hanna: Marissa ends up killing Gordon Evans, her abusive father, to stop his misdeeds.
  • Gotham Knights (2023):
    • While in a drug-induced state, he recalls that the first time his other personality emerged, he killed his father.
    • Duela has carried a bullet she wants to kill her father the Joker with for years it turns out. When she learns her father is really Harvey Dent, Duela shoots him at her mother's urging. However, he lives due to a coin stopping the bullet which was in his front pocket.
  • Interview with the Vampire (2022): In the Season 1 finale, Louis de Pointe du Lac and Claudia attempt to murder their vampire father Lestat de Lioncourt — who has been psychologically and physically abusive towards them — by poisoning him with dead blood and cutting open his throat, but they don't succeed because Louis refuses to burn his lover's body despite Claudia demanding that they do so. A clip near the end of the episode shows that Lestat did survive, and Daniel Molloy deduces that he can eat the rats at the garbage dump.
    Louis: Could the children murder the father? [Lestat] was stronger than us, quicker than us, in possession of ancient powers that had been passed on to his progeny only in a diminished form.
  • Kamen Rider's done this a few times as well, though they're very odd examples.
    • Kamen Rider Decade has Tsukasa have Wataru defeat a Fangire that took over his throne (so it's also technical regicide), but unbeknownst to Wataru (Tsukasa found out moments before the Fangire died), said Fangire was Wataru's dad.
    • Kamen Rider Drive has Gou kill his own father. However, unlike most other examples, though, said father was the Big Bad and was plotting on getting away before Gou stopped him. In fact, this ends up being a sort of reverse Moral Event Horizon for Gou, as after this, he's back to his old self again.
    • Kamen Rider Ghost has Adel murder his own father twice. The first time he destroyed his Soul Jar, the second time he destroyed his actual body.
  • Kingdom (2019): Queen Consort Cho has always known her father Lord Cho Hak-ju hates her for being a daughter and not a son. So she happily poisons him when he discovers her plan to pass off a commoner baby as her son.
  • The King's Woman: Ying Zheng kills Lü Bu Wei, his biological father.
  • The Law According to Lidia Poët: In 1x3 a young man confesses he'd murdered his father. However, it turns out that he'd been framed by his brother, who was really the murderer.
  • Legacies: Jed kills his father in a flashback to when he was a child, because he was an Abusive Parent, and tried to force Jed to fight in a Duel to the Death with his childhood crush in order to activate his werewolf gene.
  • Legend of the Seeker:
    • Mord-Sith are forced to kill their fathers as the final part of the training they undergo.
    • Rahl thought he did, but it turned out that his father survived the sword in the chest. Many years later, Rahl schemes to do this for real.
  • Morgana, on Merlin (2008) indirectly. She doesn't actually do the deed, but she enchants the amulet that does the deed and gives it to Agravaine to use.
  • Midsomer Murders: Though it's not shown onscreen, the episode in which the psychologist's middle-school kids are the murderers, they reveal at the end that the fall that killed their father wasn't accidental in the least.
  • Mouse (2021):
    • Jae-hoon apparently stabs his adopted father to death. Subverted when it's revealed his father's death was accidental.
    • Much later Jae-hoon/Ba-reum kills his biological father Seo-joon.
  • Murder in the First: Erich Blunt has his own father murdered (by his maternal grandfather, no less).
  • Next (2020): Shea kills her father for kidnapping her son, afraid he'll remain a danger otherwise since Next was responsible for releasing him in the first place.
  • On Once Upon a Time, lots of villains are patricides.
    • Regina kills her father, Henry. Sadly, she really did love him, which was why she killed him. She needed the heart of the one she loved most for the curse she wanted in order to fulfill her quest for vengeance.
    • Killian Jones (Captain Hook) kills his father, Brennan. In this case, patricide is a test of allegiance. Before accepting him as an ally, Regina orders Killian to kill his father. Brennan had sold Killian and his brother Liam into servitude and fled. At first, Killian wants him to escape, but when he discovers that Brennan has had another son he named Liam, just like his late brother, he kills him out of rage.
    • Rumplestilskin kills his father, Malcom/Peter Pan twice. First he kills him to stop him from wreaking havoc in Storybrooke; later, in the Underworld, he destroys him with water from the River of Lost Souls. Let's just say that between the neglect, abandonment, blatant statements that his father hated him, and threats on the lives of Rumple's wife and son, Rumplestiltskin was glad to be rid of him.
  • Jafar of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland is a Royal Bastard who was rejected by his father, the former Sultan of Lower Agrabah, who tried to drown him but he survived, grew up to be an Evil Sorcerer, and took his father prisoner; his primary motivation for changing the Laws of Magic is to force the old Sultan to love him. When, in the last episode, he does manage to change the Laws and win his father's love, he instantly kills him, stating that he wanted his father to know how it felt to be murdered by someone he loved.
  • The Outpost: Garrett executes his father to prove he's loyal after being indoctrinated into believing in the Three.
  • Episode 7 of Peacemaker has the title hero finally killing his abusive father for all the trauma he caused him growing up.
  • Person of Interest:
    • One of Carl Elias' goals in Season 1 is to get revenge on his father for ordering the death of his mother and trying to kill him. While Elias is arrested at the end of the season, his right-hand man Scarface gets to do the honors with a Car Bomb.
    • Scarface's Start of Darkness is revealed to be when he murdered his father for abusing his mother; that confrontation was how Scarface recieved the scar that serves as his most distinguishing mark.
  • Psychopath Diary: In-woo holds his brother at gun-point while his father begs him to spare him. Then In-woo turns the gun on his father and shoots him repeatedly.
  • Defied in Riverdale when Betty refuses to kill her father despite knowing he's the Black Hood, and instead only disarms him by shooting at his fingers. Penelope then kills him herself.
    • Played straight in the sixth season when Veronica arranges the assassination of her father Hiram for his crimes against Riverdale, which ultimately proves successful. She ends up regretting it, however.
  • Romper Stomper: Gabe kills her father. He raped her in the past.
  • Sense8: Wolfgang Bogdanow's father Anton was a bigoted drunk who regularly abused his wife and son. When Wolfgang was ten he finally had enough of seeing his mother being beaten and strangled his father to death. The murder went unsolved for years and the rest of the family had no idea who killed Anton until Wolfgang finally told his uncle the truth before shooting said uncle for ignoring Anton's absuive actions.
  • A Luthor family tradition on Smallville. Lionel Luthor killed his parents (which would include his father), and Lex killed Lionel. Lionel would go on to be killed by one of his children again in Season 10, however this was his Alternate Universe counterpart who had entered the primary universe, and Tess technically killed him in self-defense.
  • Shadowhunters:
    • Clary, in 2x20, justifiably kills her father Valentine for killing Jace and wanting to use the wish of the angel to kill the entire downworld.
    • She also does this again, after she brought Valentine back from the dead in 3x10.
  • Supernatural:
    • During Season 6, Soulless Sam asks the rogue angel Balthazar for a spell that will allow him to keep on being soul-free. Balthazar tells him he has to taint the vessel with a spell that requires him to commit an abominable act: spilling the blood of one's father. When Sam points out that his father (John Winchester) is already dead, Balthazar clarifies: you need the blood of the father, but the father needn't be blood (Bobby Singer).
    • During Season 7, backstory reveals that Bobby Singer killed his father when he was a child, under sympathetic circumstances.
  • Taken:
    • Played with in "Acid Tests". Although Eric Crawford did not directly kill his father Owen, he brought on the stroke that killed him by telling him that Sam, the favored son, was dead. In revenge for Owen treating him like dirt for his entire life, Eric taunted him as he died, which may have exacerbated his death.
    • In "God's Equation", Eric's daughter Mary believes that her father has grown weak and is a liability to the UFO project because he has come to regret all of the terrible things that he has done over the course of the last 30 years. When Eric intervenes and attempts to stop her from killing Charlie, Lisa and everyone who stood in the way of capturing Allie, Mary has one of the project's agents shoot Eric in the back. As was the case with his father Owen, the last thing that Eric sees is his vengeful child's face.
  • War of the Worlds (2019): Sacha leaves his uncle/father to die in revenge for raping his mother, which had conceived him.
  • Willow: Poor Jade has to not only fight Ballantine, her adopted father, but then euthanize him at his request because he's so gravely wounded by the Gale's possession of him, crying afterward over his body.

    Music 
  • Aerosmith's "Janie's Got a Gun" has the title character using the title gun on her own father for what he did to her.
  • In the song To Keep My Love Alive, Sir Atherton is guilty of this, along with Fratricide. Then his loving wife does him in.
  • The narrator in "Father" by The Front Bottoms has a dream about beating his dad to death with a baseball bat.

    Myths & Religion 
  • According to Buddhism, intentional murder of one's father is one of the Five Grave Offenses that will get you reborn into the lowest hell, Avici.
  • Greek Mythology has Oedipus. He killed his father on the road outside Thebes, although some authors also make it an accident. In any case, he didn't know it was his father at the time, and had no hesitation about killing a stranger who got in his way.

    Podcasts 
  • Plumbing the Death Star: The natural conclusion of Liar Liar, in the Plumbing Boys' eyes, is that Jim Carrey's character will eventually be killed by his reality-warping son after the boy realizes Carrey only valued him for his magical wishes.

    Roleplay 
  • In V3 of Survival of the Fittest before he's put on the island, Liam Black killed his father by cutting the brakes of the family car and causing it to crash. He got away with it scot-free.

    Tabletop Games 
  • This is just one of the many things that makes Caleb Davion so easy to despise in the BattleTech Dark Age setting, killing his father, widely beloved First Prince Harrison Davion, by pushing him off a balcony. Unusually, it genuinely was an accident and not born of malicious intent, but Caleb is so phenomenally delusional and narcissistic (not to mention suffering from a major case of disassociative identity disorder) that he manages to somehow end up spinning it into some sort of mad fabrication to suit his own selfish purposes.
  • One of the major elements in the cosmogony of Warhammer 40,000 is that the Primarchs, genetically engineered Super-Soldier sons of the God-Emperor, were stolen and later corrupted by Chaos. His favored son Horus fell the hardest, and eventually led the rebellion against him, until they faced off in a duel. Though he (Horus) died in the attempt, the Emperor was essentially turned into a barely more than a corpse, hooked up to an enormous machine that allows his body to continue living while his spirit continues to guide humanity (literally, in the case of the Navigators).

    Theatre 
  • The Playbody of the Western World begins with Christopher Mahon on the run after killing his father in an argument.
  • Played with in Little Shop of Horrors: Seymour kills Mushnik shortly after being adopted.
  • In Pippin, Pippin kills his father Charlemagne. He gets better.

    Video Games 
  • In Akai Katana, the Final Boss, Emperor Basho Saionji, is opposed by his own two children Botan and Kikyou (among other protagonists). Choosing that pair means that they end up killing their own father to stop his tyrannical imperialistic rampage.
  • The Assassin's Creed series has two very dark examples, featuring a villainous and heroic Big, Screwed-Up Family.
    • Rodrigo Borgia the Big Bad of Assassin's Creed II decides that his Visionary Villain son is getting a bit much so he resolves to murder him with poisoned apples which Cesare imbibes only for his sister to warn him in time. Cesare then stuffs the rest of the apples down his father's throat.
    • In the Assassin's Creed III Haytham Kenway and his son Connor are on the opposite factions of the Templars and Assassins side, with Haytham being Archnemesis Dad, still both of them hope that they can form a bond and set aside their difference but alas Poor Communication Kills and Haytham tries to choke his son to death with the latter stabbing him in self-defense. Both of them feel pretty bad about this in the time they have left.
  • Breakers: In his ending, Dao-Long is forced to kill his demonically possessed father Bai-Hu in self-defense. The mournful look on his face clearly tells us that he does not feel happy about it.
  • Cyberpunk 2077: During the Heist at Konpeki Plaza which ends Act 1, Yorinobu Arasaka offs his father Saburo in a crime of passion by strangling him to death, leaving V and Jackie (who just happened to be hiding in the room) as the only two surviving witnesses and ultimately leading to Jackie's death and V being betrayed by Dexter DeShawn and kicking off the events of the game proper.
  • In Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, Lady kills her father Arkham, completely justified since he not only sacrificed her mother but used Lady's blood to open the Demon World. Lady bursts into tears after she does the deed, and it's clear in later games that killing him has left a scar on her soul.
    • In Devil May Cry 5, Nero learns what everyone had long suspected — that he's Vergil's son (and Dante's nephew). Both Dante and Lady tell him to stay out of the game's climactic battle so he won't have his father's blood on his hands. But the sudden realization that he has family awakens Nero's demonic strength and he intervenes to stop the fight so he won't lose either of them. Just before kicking the ever-loving shit out of Vergil himself because he still has a few issues with him to work through.
  • In act V of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, Adria, who has already made her evil clear by sacrificing her own daughter to resurrect Diablo as the Prime Evil, is revealed in her journals in the Blood Marsh to have murdered her own father. Sevrin, the father in question, was neglectful, preferring the company of his wealth to hers. He unwittingly sets her on the path of evil by taking her to a witch burning; eventually, she burns him alive, revealing to him in his final moments that she has become a witch herself.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • Shows up in the lore on the Masque of Clavicus Vile in The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. A disfigured noblewoman named Avalea used to masque to improve her reputation leading her to marry a powerful baron (the masque doesn't improve her looks instead making her more charming and influential). Of course, the Daedric Prince takes away his masque after a year and a day and a pregnant Avalea is banished from the baron's realm. Unusually for this trope, the child is a daughter who murders the baron when she grows up.
    • Downplayed in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, wherein Serana helps the player to obtain Auriel's Bow, a divine weapon that you'll need to use later during the bossfight with her father, Lord Harkon. She helps you attack during said bossfight as well, though rarely will she deal the final blow unless you make an active effort to let her do so.
  • Near the end of Exit Fate, Daniel kills his own father, Emperor Siegfried, who tried to determine his life via demonic possession.
  • Final Fantasy XIV:
    • While he didn't do the deed directly, Aymeric confesses to a dragon that while the Warrior of Light did the deed in killing his father, he is also responsible for said father's death since he asked the Warrior of Light to stop him.
    • In the Shadowbringers expansion, Zenos murders his father Varis because the latter was going to use Black Rose against the Eorzean Alliance, which would have killed the Warrior of Light and denied Zenos the rematch he craves.
  • Fire Emblem:
    • Twice in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War: Manfroy goaded Chagall into killing his father to seize the throne of Augustria, while Andrey killed his father, Lord Ring, in order to seize control of Jungby and the Beige Ritter. Even Andrey's fellow conspirators were disgusted.
    • In regards to Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade... Guess how Prince Zephiel got the throne of Bern? To be fair, this also doubles as The Dog Bites Back: his father and victim, King Desmond, had tried to assassinate him repeatedly (with one attempt being a major plot in the prequel).
    • Possible to pull off in Fire Emblem: Awakening if the player has the Avatar deal the killing blow on Validar. Even if this isn't the case, the fact that the Avatar is on the army opposing Validar certainly doesn't hurt.
    • In Fire Emblem Fates the Greater-Scope Villain Anankos is the true father of ]the Avatar, and the ultimate goal is to kill him... but it can only be done on the Revelation route.
    • In Fire Emblem Gaiden and its remake Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Emperor Rudolf's mix of Zero-Approval Gambit and Thanatos Gambit included him being slain by La Résistance... led by his estranged son Alm, who has no idea that Rudolf is his dad until Rudolf himself tells him in his last words. Naturally, the poor guy does not take this well.
    • Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
      • You can invoke this in the Crimson Flower route by having Felix kill his estranged father, Rodrigue.
      • On the same route, it's possible for Annette to kill her equally-estranged father, Gilbert — though, unlike Felix, she did want to reconnect with him, and both express regret it came to this point.
      • As part of Edelgard's purge of the corrupt nobles, Hubert willingly assassinated his father, Marquis Vestra. Hubert also has a personal reason for this: Marquis Vestra was a collaborator in the Insurrection of the Seven, which led to Edelgard and her now-dead siblings getting captured and experimented on by those who slither in the dark.
      • Prior to the events of the game, Jeritza, then still going by the name Emile, completely snapped and killed his father after hearing the latter state that he would take Emile's half-sister Mercedes as a wife (due to the two's mother being too old to bear any more Crest-bearing children).
    • Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes:
      • On the Azure Gleam route, you can have Bernadetta kill her abusive father Gregoire in the finale. Not that he didn't have it coming.
      • The Scarlet Blaze route has a non-invoked example, where Ferdinand personally executes his father, Ludwig, for his crimes after he escaped imprisonment and attempted to stir up a rebellion against Edelgard with support from those who slither in the dark. This one hits the killer particularly hard, since despite everything their father has done they still cared about him (and in fairness, that love is reciprocated), but Ferdinand is well-aware letting Ludwig live at this point simply can't be allowed due to how much of a danger he is. Ludwig for his part accepts this and simply resigns himself to his end at Ferdinand's spear rather than try and hurt his son.
  • The first Galaxy Angel videogame opens up with Prince Eonia carrying out an Orbital Bombardment on Planet Transbaal, killing off the entire royal family including his own father, Emperor Gerald.
  • God of War: Like in several Greek myths examples, Zeus hears a prophecy that his son Kratos would try to kill him and usurp his throne. This prompts Zeus to kill Kratos and send him to Hades, in turn prompting Kratos to escape and kill Zeus. This becomes a very sore subject for him in the Norse era, where whenever the subject of patricide comes up Kratos' reaction is to awkwardly remain quiet. In fact, one sidequest involves a reaver who killed his own father so he can lead the crew himself whom should be noted also killed his own father himself. Of course by the time you find the killer, he is already dead, killed by his own crew for his crimes.
  • Horizon Zero Dawn: Avad, the 14th Sun-King of the Carja, earned his throne by personally killing his father, the 13th Sun-King Jiran. He did this because his father was The Caligula who had gone insane and was raiding every surrounding tribe for blood sacrifices; the vast majority of people, Carja and foreigners alike, consider this a tragic but just story. A good chunk of his own people, however, hated him for being a patricide and a kingslayer; they formed the "Carja in Shadow" and left the capital to live in exile. While the Shadow Carja leaders were mostly made up of those who worked with Jiran and were just using the patricide as an excuse to get out before they had to answer for their crimes, many of the common people were genuinely horrified by his actions. In the second game, Aloy can meet some peaceful Shadow Carja remnants who still refuse to be ruled by a patricide. In the Liberation miniseries, we see the overthrow of the Mad Sun-King. Avad didn't kill Jiran. In the end, he was too much of a Nice Guy and hesitated before killing his own father. His foreign bodyguard/maybe girlfriend Ersa struck the final blow, but they decided to give Avad the credit to ensure a smooth transition of power.
  • In Mass Effect 3, if Miranda survived the events of the previous game, she kills her father Henry in order to rescue her sister Oriana, whom he has kidnapped. Seeing as he was an abusive father who only created his daughters in order to start his own dynasty, and he used the Sanctuary facility as a trap to lure refugees into being guinea pigs for his experiments to find a way to control the Reapers, nobody misses him.
  • In Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, the titular character kills his father Big Boss when he goes rogue. Snake is later called out on this in Metal Gear Solid by his support-worker Naiomi.
  • In Mortal Kombat 11, one of Erron Black's character intros with Cetrion has her expressing disgust that at one point in the past he shot his father to death, but he retorts, "Son of a bitch had it coming."
  • In Mystery Case Files: Broken Hour, Harold Wallace gets iced by his completely unhinged daughter Meredith because he did not follow the house rules, even if it arguably wasn't his fault. And we mean iced as literally as possible.
  • In Octopath Traveler II, this happens early in Hikari's route. Mugen kills his and Hikari's father, King Jigo, at the climax of Hikari's first chapter. This is because Jigo wanted Hikari to be king instead of Mugen, as Jigo realized that Hikari would be a far better ruler due to caring more about Ku's people. Unfortunately, Mugen heavily subscribes to Ku's former Might Makes Right mentality, so he offs Jigo and takes the throne for himself.
  • Odin Sphere:
    • When Gallon, former king of Titania, used the Darkova spell to fend off an invasion from Valentine, the spell twisted and destroyed his mind, causing him to eventually turn upon his own kingdom. Edmund, Gallon's son, was forced to use the Psypher blade Almacia to kill Gallon, smashing out all of his teeth in the process. Seeing the blade again (given to Cornelius by a then-unknown Gallon in Netherworld Endelphia) causes a now much older Edmund to have a panic attack. King Valentine outright calls it patricide when revealing this to Cornelius and takes great pleasure in doing so.
    • Ingway, prince of Valentine, seeks to do this to his father, Demon Lord Odin of Ragnanival, out of combination of hatred for his father seemingly caring nothing for him and self-loathing trauma for saving said father by destroying the country of Valentine. He goes to great lengths to learn the Darkova spell just to ensure he's strong enough to pull it off. However, his transformation aborts and he's beaten down by a combination of Odin and Velvet. Ironically, he indirectly causes Odin's death when he transforms again during Armageddon in an attempted Heroic Sacrifice, which riles up King Gallon in the Netherworld into a killing frenzy and he leads the army of the dead onto the land of the living, which destroy Ragnanival in the process.
  • Pyre: Patricide is considered the foulest of crimes in the Commonwealth. This is the crime that Erisa committed to get exiled. After a lifetime of abuse after her brother's death, she killed her own father.
  • Soul Edge/Soul Blade: A young Siegfried Schtauffen and his band of rogues attack a group of knights that they believe to be deserting the army. Unbeknownst to them, the group in question was simply returning home after their victory. Siegfried engages in battle with the leader of this group and beheads him; holding up the head in the moonlight reveals the identity of his prey: his own beloved father, Frederick, whom he had been searching for. The realization pretty much shatters his mind, forcing Siegfried to go into denial, believing that someone else killed his father. He decides to search for Soul Edge in order to defeat this murderer, and the rest of the tale is history.
  • Tekken:
    • Kazuya wanted to kill his father Heihachi for throwing him off a cliff as a boy and for killing his mother Kazumi (though it should be noted that was self-defense since Kazumi was trying to kill Heihachi first), so after many years of training Kazuya attempted to kill Heihachi many times but failed usually thanks to outside interference and Heihachi's own insane power. Not until Tekken 7 does Kazuya gets his revenge killing Heihachi in a fistfight and throwing his father's body into a volcano. While he did become more villainous than Heihachi it's hard to deny that Kazuya's actions aren't somewhat justified. You can even see a degree of pity on Kazuya’s face after he toasts Heihachi, which is surprising considering the amount of shit Heihachi pulled.
    • In his Tekken 5 ending, Kazuya murders his grandfather Jinpachi which is even more screwed up and tragic as unlike Heihachi, Jinpachi did show love to Kazuya as shown in flashbacks, though that didn't stop Kazuya sadistically killing Jinpachi with a grin.
    • Jin likewise wants to kill Kazuya, his father, but was convinced not to do so by his mother Jun. In Tekken 7 he's right back on the mission: kill Kazuya. The Mishimas are one Big, Screwed-Up Family.
  • Warcraft:
    • Under the Lich King's influence, Arthas Menethil kills his father for the crown of Lordaeron after being turned into a Death Knight in Warcraft III. A mook even calls him out on it, demanding to know "How could you murder your own father?"
    • In World of Warcraft, the last quest in the Rogue legendary quest chain in Cataclysm is called "Patricide", and involves Wrathion ordering the rogue to kill his father, Deathwing.
  • Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus includes a rather heroic example. BJ's abusive father, Rip Blazkowicz, is a racist, bigoted, sadistic, and overall repulsive asshole of a human being who manages the impressive feat of being one of the vilest characters in a game with actual Nazis in it, and who only married BJ's mother, a kind Jewish girl named Zofia, for her business connections. Rip's introduction during a flashback sees him getting downright furious at a young BJ for being friends with a black girl named Billie, knocking his wife out cold for trying to protect their son from his wrath and choking his son almost to unconsciousness, before forcing him to shoot the family dog (named Bessie) to teach him to be "strong"; Rip will just shoot the dog himself if the player doesn't. When the two reunite for the first time in years, the latter reveals that he sent Zofia to a concentration camp and tries to kill him. BJ finally bites back and makes the old bastard pay for everything he's done, cutting off Rip's left arm and burying a hatchet in his chest.

    Visual Novels 
  • Beatrice Frega kills her father in Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane. She always saw him as an "unstoppable, tyrannical force" who sought every excuse to belittle her, control her, and ensure that she would never inherit House Frega despite being a very powerful mage and his firstborn, to the point she left home five years prior to the game because she couldn't take it anymore. He also wasn't very nice towards her younger sisters. It's implied she didn't really plan to kill him when she returned (instead she just wanted to blackmail him into surrendering the entire estate to her so she could fulfill the terms of a Deal with the Devil she had made), but was "forced" to improvise a murder plot when the blackmail backfired. Of note is that she thinks of herself as an accomplice to the crime and not really responsible for it, when in actuality she indirectly ordered her familiar to kill him. He couldn't have done it without her explicit permission to harm him.

    Web Animation 
  • In RWBY, Cinder Fall and Emerald initially go to Mercury Black's house in search of his father Marcus, a notorious assassin. Upon their arrival, Marcus is dead by Mercury's hand, their house is on fire, and Mercury is severely battered.

    Webcomics 
  • In And Shine Heaven Now, when Walter chooses to be Mercy Killed rather than be bound to Integra in the wake of becoming Brainwashed and Crazy, Yomiko insists that Walter's daughter Maggie be the one to do the deed, saying that one day she'll be glad to have given him the death he wanted. Considering Yomiko killed her own lover under similar circumstances, she has a point.

    Western Animation 
  • Arcane: Powder is indirectly responsible for the death of her first adoptive father Vander through her reckless monkey bomb forcing him into a situation that killed him, much to her horror. As Jinx, she straight up shoots her 2nd adoptive father Silco with a gatling gun on instinct to protect her sister Vi, which she also regrets. That's 2 out of 3 of their fathers whose deaths can be laid at their feet.
  • You know how Ursa from Avatar: The Last Airbender was thought to have killed Azulon to protect Zuko? Well, in The Search, it's revealed that she just created the poison to do so. It was actually Ozai who killed his own father to get the throne.
    • Subverted with Zuko and his father Ozai during the Day of the Black Sun. After Ozai tried to kill him with lightning Zuko caught the lightning and had the Fire Lord at his mercy. However, he chose to spare him instead. On the other hand after Zuko joins Team Avatar, he is the most fervent advocate for killing Ozai because Ozai intends to burn down the Earth Kingdom.
  • In Blue Eye Samurai this is Mizu's goal in life. She has never seen her biological father and does not know his name, but the fact that there were only four Caucasians in Japan at the time of her conception means that there is a reasonable-to-her number of people to track down and kill. She is confirmed to have eliminated one Violet before the time of the series and is convinced to spare Abijah Fowler for the time being at the end of the first season when he tells her that his old business partners are now in London and she will need a native guide if she wants to reach them.
  • Tragic version in the Final Battle of Castlevania Season 2 as Alucard puts a stake through the heart of his unresisting father Dracula and then Trevor beheads him. Justified as Drac was going to end all of humanity because of Alucard's mother Lisa's death and was just begging to die anyway making it a tear jerking Mercy Kill rather than a glorious victory. The act of taking down his father also hits Alucard much harder than the games as he cries when his friends leave him alone.
  • In Legion of Super Heroes (2006), Timber Wolf brutally murders his father in front of a live audience. However, it turns out to be a clone; his real father concocted this elaborate scheme to get his son to work with him again involving nanites implanted in his son's brain. It's ultimately averted at the end when Timber Wolf refuses to kill his father.
  • Since The Simpsons has father-son antagonism as a major theme, it's not surprising this has been played with a number of times.
    • In "Tennis the Menace", Lisa explains the concept of an Oedipus Complex to Homer after he becomes anxious when Marge replaces him with Bart as her doubles partner. Homer then dreams of Bart killing him and mounting his head on the wall.
    • The Dream Intro for "Papa Don't Leech" has Homer killing Abe in a parody of a similar scene from The Sopranos.
    • In "Treehouse of Horror XXVII", the "MoeFinger" segment makes Bart a secret agent whose nemesis turns out to be Homer, believed to have died in the line of duty. Bart tells him that he wants to make up and dispatches him with a Deadly Hug.
    • In "Flanders' Ladder", Bart's Adventures in Comaland take an upsetting turn when he commits an Accidental Murder of Homer. He apologizes to Homer's ghost, who's a good sport about it.
      Homer: Oh, don't worry. Patricide is just a part of life. Oooh, your vocabulary really goes up when you die.
    • "I, Carumbus" tells the story of Ancient Roman-slave-turned-senator Obeseus the Wide and his upstart son Bartigula (zero points for guessing which characters they resemble), who end up combining this and Offing the Offspring in an impressive Mutual Kill.
  • In South Park, Cartman winds up arranging the death of his father, though he would only learn that they were related several seasons later; he was informed by his vengeful half-brother, Scott Tenorman. Cartman's naturally mortified, because it means that he's half-ginger.
  • Street Fighter: When Chun Li attacks M. Bison for killing her father, Bison replies:
    Yes, yes. I killed your father. What is it with you women anyway? I killed my father too and you don't hear me whining about it!!!!
  • In The Venture Bros. , two former boy-detectives, Lance and Dale Hale, murdered their father. Despite their best efforts to keep this a secret, Rusty directly calls them out for it.
  • Occurs in Voltron: Legendary Defender when Lotor murders his father in a duel.


 
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"Succeeding you... father."

Prince Arthas, driven insane by the runeblade Frostmourne, kills his father. We only see the act silhouetted in shadow.

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