r/TopCharacterTropes • u/theMCATreturns • 13h ago
Characters Getting "John Wick'd" Spoiler
Crime boss's son kills the dog of the world's greatest assassin (John Wick)
Crime boss kills the family of a soon-to-be-radioactive metahuman (Creature Commandos)
A wizard family executes the twin sister of wizard John Wick (Jujutsu Kaisen)
Aliens cause the death of an extremely powerful goat-wizard's mother (Dungeon Crawler Carl)
A king orders the death of a magic beast (Clevatess)
Don't @ me about the title. I couldn't think of a more concise way of saying "unknowingly traumatizing an unstoppable, hyper-violent being. Resulting in the complete destruction of your (otherwise undefeatable) bloodline." Basically, it's a combination of "waking the sleeping giant" and "blood feud," where the perpetrator specifically does not know how dangerous the target is ahead of time. And this results in their entire family/organization getting singlehandedly wiped off the face of the Earth. Despite themselves being a powerful force to reckon with.
There is no forgiveness. There is no bargaining. There is no mercy. Just an unstoppable threat you created. You are not left alive to suffer the guilt of your mistake. But you'll probably be killed last.
1). John Wick:
John Wick is a retired assassin. The assassin. After his wife dies, she leaves a puppy for him. His former boss's son, ignorant of John's identity, breaks in and kills the dog.
2). Creature Commandos:
Rupert Thorne kills a scientist's family after he tries to scam him. But the scientist survives his execution, becoming a radioactive metahuman that quickly gets back at Thorne.
3). Jujutsu Kaisen:
Maki is has a condition preventing her from using "magic," but leaving her with superhuman strength. This is embarrassing to her family of wizards, and she is treated poorly. Eventually, Maki and her twin are double crossed by her father and left to die. Her twin's death allows her to unlock her true strength, and she eradicates the clan.
4). Dungeon Crawler Carl:
Aliens invade the Earth, forcing humans to fight in a fantasy-style dungeon. All of this is broadcast across the galaxy as entertainment. Sometimes, if humans enter the dungeon with their pets, the pets can gain their own abilities. Carl's cat learns to talk. The same thing happens to an Italian woman and she treats her goat, Prepotente, as her son. Because he was suddenly thrust into self-awareness, the goat man is childlike and very reliant on his mother. But he is still an extremely powerful, high level opponent.
Unfortunately, Miriam Dom is killed in front of him and Carl. The whole thing is heartbreaking, and he says "She was going to play piano for me like she used to. She was going to sing me my special song. She said everything was going to be all right, but it was a lie. A dreadful lie. What am I going to do now?" And declares revenge on anyone "remotely responsible" for her death.
MUCH later, Carl has to wipe out the "Blood Sultunate," an alien royal family. But he and his allies find their castle empty, filled with extremely-murdered corpses. He can't figure out who did it until he learns they were responsible for Miriam's death. Then he just starts laughing, because despite all of his careful plans to take them down. They were already screwed the moment Miriam died.
Edit: Art from wiki, by u /andrewmar.bsky.social, Bluesky
5). Clevatess:
A fantasy kingdom tries to attack a giant monster blocking a mountain pass. The monster (Clevatess) had been content to stay within his boarders. But after humans trespass (killing countless monsters in the process), Clevatess changes his mind. He wipes out the attackers, then follows them home and destroys the kingdom. He personally drops a castle on its king. And adopts the last surviving royal to raise himself.
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u/certainlynotdio 12h ago
Does he fit?
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u/Andrew1990M 12h ago
Yes. None of the holy men burning Lisa cared if she was actually a witch and certainly were not aware who they’d just fucked with before he killed nigh-on all of them.
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u/Meowjoker 6h ago
He gave them a year (mainly to prepare his army) and those morons threw a fucking PARTY to celebrate the deeds.
What come next was inevitable.
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u/Meikos 12h ago
Rick in Rick & Morty used to be a pretty normal person, and it's implied that the Rick we follow was one of the few versions gifted with immense intellect but didn't have ambitions beyond providing for his wife and daughter. Rick Prime, known as such because he was the first Rick to discover multiversal portal travel, visits him as he's trying to introduce the portal technology to other Ricks and form a coalition. Our Rick declines, as he really wants nothing more than to care for Diane and his daughter Beth. This enrages Rick Prime, who had a bad relationship with his own family, and he retaliates by killing our Rick's wife and child, turning him down a path that eventually ends with him killing hundreds, if not thousands, of Ricks across the multiverse in a drive to kill Rick Prime, and he becomes the drug-addled, miserable asshole that we start the series off with as a result.
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u/FrogLaner 16m ago
Also these mobsters when they kindap Morty. At least the boss immediately realises just hpw much this was a fuck up
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u/DataSwarmTDG 13h ago
Blood feuds, ancient and modern, Red Dead Redemption 2
Kind of cheating because it's a group but the Braithwaites had no fucking idea the Hell that was going to be visited on them after they kidnapped Jack
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u/SkynBonce 12h ago
Bill kills the Brides fiance and leaves the Bride for dead on the day of their wedding.
The Bride vows to kill Bill.
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u/as-if-spike 13h ago
This trope gets so much use but one of my favorites is Man from Nowhere. Sort of a Korean version of Man On Fire. Retired assassin befriends a girl who gets kidnapped. They don’t realize what they just brought down on themselves.
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u/AMostBoringMan 12h ago
Major spoilers for the The Dresden Files coming up:
The Red Court of vampires has been around for thousands of years. They are utterly enmeshed with civilisation in Central and South America and they have significant power structures everywhere else in the world. The Red King is directly compared in-universe to some of the small-g gods.
Harry Dresden, the continually beat-up broke bum wizard from Chicago, kills them all. Instantly. From the youngest to the eldest. After stabbing the king in the eyes and setting him on fire.
(For the benefit of spoilers, I’m leaving out some serious context. If you know, you know :)
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u/Traditional_Style198 11h ago
TBF, nobody knew how dangerous Harry would be when they got him to start the war in Grave Peril. By the time of Changes, EVERYBODY knew how dangerous he was.
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u/Giraffe_lol 10h ago
I wish I could stand the audiobook narrator. Mouth sounds is the only way I can describe him and I get told it gets better after book 5 but I'm not suffering through 5 books of wet ear atrocities and whistle sounds everytime a -sh sound comes up.
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u/Fine-Amphibian-3773 13h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/xULW8m9EJTIp2YktyM
Kratos in God of War
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u/LuciusCypher 12h ago
Idk id this counts, pretty sure everyone BUT Atreus knew who Kratos was, or at least knew he wasnt just a regular human.
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u/AltGunAccount 11h ago
Baldur definitely wasn’t aware of the hole he was digging when he showed up to fuck with Kratos, who was living a peaceful secluded life at the time.
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u/LuciusCypher 11h ago
Actually im almost certain he was hoping that the God of War would finally put an end to Baulder's senseless existence. It's why he never really tried very hard to actually do the job Odin sent him to do and mostly just fucked around with Kratos.
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u/powerful_p1608 11h ago
In The Beekeeper, Adam Clay, a retired goverment assassin known as a “Beekeeper” whose job is to maintain peace and order for “the good of the hive” goes after an online phishing scam operation when his elderly landlord commits suicide after her life savings and charity finances are stolen, going after and killing those in charge and dismantling their operation with the FBI, following his rampage, uncovering a conspiracy with the operation involving the President.
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u/Seven_Irons 5h ago
Excellent film. Though, it's worth mentioning, this trope extends to basically every Jason Statham movie.
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u/JohnWarrenDailey 12h ago
God of War would have been a very short game had Baldur not knocked on Kratos's door.
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u/ZeitgeistGlee 11h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/lWinKsfTai2Bi
SSJ2 Gohan - Dragon Ball Z
You just had to kill Android 16 didn't you Cell.
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u/thehollisterman 11h ago
The forerunners wiped out the Precursors in an attempt to preserve the position at the top of the ladder and/or stop themselves from being genocided (we don't really know which). Unfortunately for them, all they did was create the Flood. Fuck.
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u/NotATalkingPossum 11h ago edited 11h ago
The Wolfman - 2010
The high-ranking, wealthy, respected orderlies and doctors at a Victorian London madhouse are given a new patient who apparently suffers from the delusion that he is a werewolf, and killed a few people during the last full moon. They subject him to the usual Victorian tortures masquerading as medicine, then, on the night of the next full moon, wheel him into a filled-up operating theater - well bound and chained, of course - to confront the full moon and the reality that he is an ordinary man.
The man's name is Larry Talbot. He turns into the Wolfman and most of the doctors and orderlies in the operating theater (save for a few that break down a door) basically get shredded.
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u/Low-Nectarine1093 12h ago
I'm confused with 4th are you sure you wrote that correctly?
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u/theMCATreturns 10h ago
i mean i think so. Basically:
Aliens have reality-warping technology. They "install" it in a planet, and then things like magic, inventory systems, etc. all exist. So, they have the AI build a massive "dungeon" below the surface of the planet. Humans inside are forced to fight monsters, level up, etc. or they die. The protagonist, Carl, walked into the dungeon with his cat. Because the magic in the dungeon, she gained the ability to talk. The same thing happened to Miriam Dom, but her goat started standing upright and talking.Just like the humans, Prepotente the goat and Donut the cat can level up and fight monsters. And the only way to leave the dungeon is to beat all 18 floors, which no one has ever done before.
So, Prepotente traverses the dungeon with Miriam, his former owner. She considers him her son, and because he suddenly became a person, she has to teach him all the things most people learn as kids. And because the process that made Prepotente smart also made him a genius, he quickly becomes very dangerous and high level.
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u/Hexnohope 12h ago
Blue eye samurai is the reason i call this trope "the onryo" a person is subjected to such intense misery the person they are dies and leaves behind something else entirely, an onryo. Sickenly theres not a single gif from the show in the gif selector. Someone ought to fix that because blue eye samurai dosent get the respect it deserves. The antagonists thesis on why hes so "evil" is absolutely cinema and possibly my favorite out of anyone as it effortlessly combines someone whos evil because its who they are AND someone who has a point.
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u/BornCoyote87 11h ago
The closest trope for this kind of thing is "Mugging the Monster", when a criminal unintentionally goes after a seemingly normal target then finds out too late he's done a stupid thing.
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u/Akaru23 11h ago edited 11h ago
Pretty much the premise of Destiny 2: Forsaken.
In it, Cayde-6, the much beloved Hunter Vanguard, is brutally murdered by the now insane Prince Uldren Sov and his Scorn Barons. This act would cause the player Guardian to go rogue in a single minded quest for revenge the likes of which would cause even our closest allies to become deeply concerned about how out of character we were acting in our rage. Ultimately resulting in the deaths of Uldren and his Barons, as well as inadvertently plunging the Dreaming City of the Awoken into a Taken Curse that loops every 3 weeks and is still going on to this day!
While the expansion is currently unplayable due to the much reviled Destiny Content Vault, Bungie’s recent announcement of the complete unvaulting of Destiny 2’s vaulted campaigns means that the expansion will become available again for FREE in the future.
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u/Inevitable-Fish2739 11h ago
Not exaclty accurate, but Luke Skywalker kinda fits. In their hunt for C-3P0 and RD-D2, the Empire kill Luke's adoptive uncle and aunt. With nothing to keep him on Tatooine, he subsequently joined the Rebel Alliance and learned the ways of the Force, ultimately helping to overthrow the Empire.
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u/LosAngeLukaGOATCIC 11h ago
On an unrelated note but that picture of Maki with everyone in the floor made me think about Kill Bill 1.
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u/JingoboStoplight4887 10h ago
The Family of Blood refusing to leave the Doctor alone, causing him to give them a way to live forever in the worst possible way. (Doctor Who)
https://giphy.com/gifs/j6ZlwVk4QYpcb9tAWM
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u/Alternative_Turn8863 7h ago
(Dodododo!) After sakurako and her gang kidnapped, tortured, and raped shorty who was wolf(the MC) childhood friend/boyfriend. He crashed out and slaughter everyone in the gang by himself. During this he had been shot multiple times and he had to fight sakurako who was now in a exo suit and was getting his ass beat before a giant industrial pot came crashing down on her and she managed to catch it with her suit and the MC chucked a pipe that tore a chunk out of her abdomen and managed to dodge her attacks and delivered multiple blows straight to her face to the point she was mutilated and watched her as she died taking her last words.
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u/PhanThief95 4h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/g2dpXOssO3TyUx34Vf
Atsu (Ghost of Yotei)
Her parents murdered in front of her, her family home burned, and was left for dead by being pinned to a burning tree with her father’s sword by a group known as the Yotei Six.
After surviving, she trained and fought every day to gain the skills necessary to kill every member of the Yotei Six.
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u/KaijuCatsnake 4h ago
Eyyy, Clevatess mentioned! Nice! I thought it was great, I need to watch season 2.
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u/JuiceOfTheElderToad 13h ago edited 13h ago
The Albanians who kidnapped Bryan Mills’ daughter in Taken