Basic Trope: Anyone who commits or is open to committing murder has also committed (or at least is open to committing) rape.
- Straight:
- Bob rapes and kills the same victim.
- Bob kills one victim, and rapes someone else.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is both a Serial Killer and Serial Rapist.
- Bob cannot interact with people in ways other than murder and rape or setting up for one or both.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is a murderer, and if he has the chance to become a rapist he may or may not become one, but rape is not a major part of his Modus Operandi nor his life.
- Bob is a rapist, but relies on questionable consent as opposed to weapons and threats, and while being, therefore, a detestable human being, has so far not killed anyone - unless you count the victims who were Driven to Suicide.
- Justified:
- Rapists, not wanting to suffer harsh punishments, kills their victims in a desperate attempt to remove evidence.
- Unfortunately Truth in Television: there are Serial Killers who are also serial rapists, and sex crimes are crimes of violence even if no one is killed - so the Truth in Television is actually the subversion below: that someone who is open to committing a sex crime is more likely to be open to committing murder.
- Inverted:
- Bob is a Serial Killer - of rapists, on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
- Even Evil Has Standards, and while Bob, the commanding general of a Nazi-like army, sees nothing wrong with engineering genocide, he personally kills anyone who commits rape in the process and, when given the opportunity himself, declines it and frees or kills the victim instead.
- A rapist has a problem with killing people.
- Truth in Television as well: there have been murders where the ''victim'' was believed to be a rapist by the killer or killers, Rape and Revenge going all the way back to being Older Than Dirt to not being a Dead Horse Trope even now. Rape (though it was usually defined by force alone) wasn't a smart decision for men who wished to stay alive in many societies, and in some contexts (child victims, the victim being connected to a gang or organized crime) is still a fast way to end up dead.
- Subverted: The subversion is actually Truth in Television more often than being played straight. While rapists are likely to be open to committing murder (since they're already committing violent assaults against other people with at the very least no regard for their lives), those whose first/only crime is murder aren't necessarily as open to being rapists. The reason being that murder, as a crime, has motives so diverse as to write a library worth of books on, and sex/sexual gratification is only one reason (and power/domination, which is the most common rape motive, only one other one) why one human being would choose to kill another or would negligently kill another (other common motives being anger, greed, lack of concern, revenge, war...). So as the short version: rapists usually have one or two motives, while murderers can have a plethora of them, and only on a select few occasions do they overlap.
- Double Subverted: Bob gets sexual pleasure from the act of killing itself.
- Parodied:
- Bob is introduced in the credits as "Killer McRapington."
- Bob kills his victims, then rapes them.
- Zig Zagged: Bob is a Serial Killer but generally does not commit rape - until he is imprisoned and his cellmate attempts Prison Rape. Bob's reply is to fight off the rapist and then rape him, either to prove his dominance in an attempt to cement his place in the prison hierarchy or to be put in solitary.
- Averted: None of the killers in the story are rapists, and their motives are shown to be nonsexual.
- Enforced:
- The story is Truth in Television about a sexually violent predator or Serial Killer and serial rapist.
- The writer wants to make us hate the villain quickly, possibly constrained by time limits or such.
- The writer wants to shock and horrify the audience, in a work before this became such a common trope.
- The writer is being Strictly Formula, after Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Criminal Minds and similar made this such a common trope.
- Lampshaded:
- Homicide detectives are assigned to rape cases, never mind that most real police departments separate the divisions.
- Someone asks the Serial Killer why he's not raping someone.
- Invoked: A killer is given the opportunity to rape. Does he take it or not?
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- Bob refuses to commit rape because Even Evil Has Standards.
- Meta case - The writer of the story loathes the trope and would far rather create a more complex setup than "Bob kills and rapes, someone calls the FBI, Bob goes to jail/gets in shootout, roll credits!"
- Discussed:
- A news report or a show similar to America's Most Wanted In-Universe or in Real Life mentions the manhunt for a Serial Killer and serial rapist.
- A military unit is being given orders In-Universe and the commander explicitly tells his Sociopathic Soldier not to rape anyone "this time."
- Conversed:
- "Having the killer be a rapist is so overdone. It's like someone threw Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Criminal Minds into a blender with CSI. I'm going for a complicated mystery, not sweeps ratings."
- "Let's depict Bob as a white supremacist and active member of the Westboro Baptist Church, show him in the act of killing multiple people For the Evulz, and imply he's raping the corpses. There is no way anyone can have sympathy for him after that..." months later on the author reading all of the Draco in Leather Pants Fan Fic about the character "I give the fuck up."
- Implied:
- Someone's criminal record is being listed or otherwise described, and it mentions both rape or another sex crime, and murder.
- The victim is described as having been sexually assaulted.
- Some uses of the Gory Discretion Shot and Rape Discretion Shot
- Deconstructed:
- As above under Inverted, Rape and Revenge is a deconstruction: the murderer(s) are wanting to kill the rapist(s), not be rapist(s).
- Meta case: the invocation of the trope makes the story Strictly Formula, the characterization far less complex, the plot less believable and like a Lifetime Movie of the Week, and turns what would have been a great Murder Mystery into a far less interesting Crime Time Soap.
- A repentant killer who was released on parole is wrongfully convicted of rape partly because of this assumption, despite his protests of "It's Not Me This Time!"
- Reconstructed:
- A well written take on the subversion (rapists are murderers), or a Ripped from the Headlines or Truth in Television story.
- Meta case: the trope must be invoked to justify the law enforcement response or the revenge or the Cycle of Revenge or whatever else the response to the crime is: as in, the FBI generally doesn't investigate serial rapists, but does serial killers, and/or the world is such a Crapsack World that no one really cares if someone else "just" gets killed, but if someone gets raped, that brings out everyone from enraged family to bounty hunters to take down the rapist.
Someone call the SVU and BAU, we've got a killer rapist on the loose.
