Asshole Victim

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
This page needs visual enhancement.
You can help All The Tropes by finding a high-quality image or video to illustrate the topic of this page.


When an author has a corpse-shaped hole in the story, and decides to fill it with a character the audience won't mourn.

You watch enough mystery shows or read enough mystery stories, and you notice a certain trend: Frequently, the homicide victim is an asshole.

For example, the victim will have been someone who enjoyed crushing people for the fun of it, or who ripped off at least a dozen people, and possibly more, or who was a criminal himself, etc.

The frequent impression left is that "the victim had it coming".

There are three possible reasons for having an Asshole Victim:

  1. It's not as depressing. For these shows to work, Tonight Someone Dies is a given; having an Asshole Victim makes the audience feel less guilty about the notion of someone being murdered for their entertainment.
  2. It's one of the only ways to have a Sympathetic Murderer. Writers may make the victim an asshole in this case either just to have a sympathetic murderer; or, if the show is a Courtroom Drama, to make it harder to convict the killer as the jury sympathizes.
  3. In a mystery show, it maximizes the possible suspects, as just about everyone involved would have a potential motive to kill this guy. Usually the line, "Well, I certainly hated X, but I didn't kill him" will be used repeatedly, and perhaps the extreme variation "Yeah, I wanted to kill X, but somebody beat me to it." In a few really extreme cases, suspects may even add "I'd kill X now if I could, but it's a moot point." In rare cases, a suspect admits that "I wished X was dead" before the victim actually died, and now therefore feels indirectly responsible for it.

Also shows up in Horror and Suspense films, for much the same reasons (Everyone Is a Suspect frequently gets replaced by a Clear My Name). However, it will generally not apply to victims of The Scourge of God, except sometimes when said scourge is a Poetic Serial Killer. Criminals in a Colliding Criminal Conspiracies generally are this.

At a minimum, they will have kicked the dog and may be well beyond the Moral Event Horizon, especially in less subtle productions. Pay Evil Unto Evil is when the perpetrator gets away with it because the Asshole Victim deserved it.

Sometimes the memorial services for these victims will be... interesting to watch. Occasionally the writers will get some comedy out of Never Speak Ill of the Dead, if everyone knows the victim was a jerk but no one wants to say so.

A similar concept unites this trope to the Final Girl. She survives because she's the only one without sin or character flaws, She doesn't drink, do drugs, have sex outside of wedlock. She's nice and polite. Everyone else in the movie has such a flaw, making it okay for the monster to kill them.

For dog kickers who kick an asshole (not necessarily fatally), it's Kick the Son of a Bitch. Can also be an invoked Take That Scrappy moment. See also Disposable Fiance, which is similar in several respects. When the victim was as asshole for things they did in the process of trying to survive, it's Death By Pragmatism.

In accordance with the "Just-world hypothesis," people may perceive any victim as an Asshole Victim just to keep their belief that people get what they deserve intact.

No real life examples, please; among other reasons, this trope naturally leads to the Unfortunate Implication that it's okay to kill someone just because that someone is a Jerkass. Not to be confused with people whose posteriors get violated.

As a Death Trope, Spoilers ahead may be unmarked. Beware.

Examples of Asshole Victims include:

Advertising


Anime and Manga

  • Occurs often in Death Note, although the victim is often only inferred to have been an asshole by virtue of having been in prison. In fact, that's part of the point - Light claims that he researches these people to make sure that they really 'deserve' to die before he offs them and that he spares the criminal if the person they committed the crime against was an asshole victim. How reliably he does this is questionable at best.
    • It's worth noting that in Chapter 2, L mentions that his first suspected victim, Kurou Otoharada's crime was the least serious (not including Shibutaku, who L has no reason to know about, since he isn't aware that the Death Note can kill by means other than heart attacks). Keep in mind that Otoharada is the guy who was holding a group of pre-schoolers at gunpoint at the moment Light killed him.
    • On the other hand, he kills several law enforcement officers pursuing him, and also intends to kill people who don't contribute to society enough (although it's unclear what criteria he uses or what his standards are).
    • This trope is played absolutely straight at least once, without any debate in universe. When Mikami offs Demigawa, even the Kira Task Force didn't hold it against Kira, even mentioning that if anyone deserved getting killed off by Kira, it was him.
  • Detective Conan makes regular use of this trope. The vast majority of the victims end up being varying degrees of assholes (up to and including driving people to suicide or even having themselves gotten away with murder in the past.)
  • One of the most prominent aspects of the series Elfen Lied is the fact that while the Diclonius tend to have a murderously misanthropic view towards humans, said humans tend to be savagely cruel and inhuman. It's hard to feel sympathy towards some of the murder victims, when said victims just beat the dog to death in front of its kind but quiet owner, when it was the only thing that she loved in the world, force her to watch, and laugh at her. They act so surprised when she slaughters them. Then again, unless you were in on the conspiracy, the expectation that she could was probably reserved for people on hard drugs.
    • Some of the casual comments used by people outside the main cast abound with harshness. When Lucy is sobbing over Kouta's apparent betrayal, people in the carnival crowd dismiss her as being on drugs. When Mayu offers to take care of the puppy she found to the dog's owner, she is dismissed as being too filthy - something her actual appearance in the episodes introducing her didn't reflect.
  • Dr. Heinemann from Monster, as well of many of Johan's other victims.
  • Dallas Genoard from Baccano!! is pretty much a Jerkass to end all Jerkasses, which is why not many people are angry at seeing Luck Gandor give him the Cement Shoes treatment.
    • On the contrary. Many would find it amusing.
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist, Shou Tucker really had it coming when Scar killed him. The gold-toothed doctor also counts when Pride impales him because he's of no more use to the homunculi.
    • Likewise, in the 2003 anime version, Basque Grand is a nasty General Ripper involved with some of the conspiracies of the army. Thus, it's not exactly a tragedy when Scar gives him the usual treatment.
    • Frankly, from Scar's point of view, this is his entire modus operandi. He only kills State Alchemists, who were instrumental in the ethnic slaughter of his people. And even if a State Alchemist hadn't participated in that war, like Edward, a State Alchemist's role as a 'living weapon' means it's only a matter of time until they're ordered to do something equally heinous (and Edward is). Far as Scar is concerned, every State Alchemist has it coming.
  • This is a staple for the mysteries in The Kindaichi Case Files. None of the murderers ever kill randomly out of pure insanity or for money. Instead, it inevitably turns out that the murderer was getting revenge for the loss/harming of a lover, family member, friends, or someone very dear who the murder victim royally screwed over in the worst possible way.
    • A rare exception: in one case, two victims who were thought to be assholes turn out to be okay people.
  • Almost all of the people sent to Hell by those seeking revenge in Hell Girl were getting what they deserved. Apparently.
  • Taken Up to Eleven with the second victim in Bio Meat, an old woman. When we first see her, she's mocking and ridiculing the lead character's mother for daring to not have a husband. (It's implied very shortly after that she was previously married and her husband died, or at least ran out on her) Next, we see her berating a neighbor for roof tiles falling into her yard during an earthquake—then further insulting them for daring to suggest they could clean up the tiles to make it up to her. Next, when she first sees a Bio Meat, she mistakes it for a pig, and calls Animal Control... and when they turn out to be taking too long, she decides to try to stab it to death with a broom handle for no reason. She gets picked off shortly thereafter, but she's still not done being an asshole, as she had decided to attack it in front of a little girl, who gets so traumatized by witnessing what happens to the woman that all she can do when the Animal Control officers finally arrive is repeat the Madness Mantra "Little piggy dragged off the big lady..."
    • Bio Meat even includes Name Tropers, listed in the credits as "Asshole Victims" in the fifth volume. This is a group of the main characters' fellow middle school students who are saved from being eaten when Bio Meats swarm the school by the quick thinking and leadership skills of one main character, and then given an avenue of escape and communication with the outside world by the inventiveness of another, though said escape route has to be used sparingly and carefully lest the Bio Meats use it to invade the safe room. Just as the last of the main characters leaves through the escape route to bring back help, the "Asshole Victims:"
      • Cut the only rope that allows them to enter and leave the safe room, for literally no other reason than to amuse themselves by watching the last of the main characters plummet loudly to the ground and alert the nearby Bio Meats to his presence.
      • Sneeringly (and loudly) voice disappointment when the last main character escapes being eaten due to a previously unnoticed weakness in the Bio Meats.
      • Make a "You're Not The Boss Of Me" speech as the escaped main characters are yelling for them to close the entrance to the safe room because all the insults the "Asshole Victims" have been yelling have alerted the Bio Meats, which are now rushing toward the entrance.
      • Continue ignoring the Bio Meats even as they're climbing into the no-longer-safe room, just to yell a few more accusations at the main characters of being responsible for their deaths by creating the escape route that they misused.
  • Bellamy in One Piece. After he mocked Luffy's dreams and stole an old man's gold, you frankly could not feel any sympathy for him when Doflamingo made Bellamy's own first mate off him.
    • Or when Doflamingo passes off ownership of the "human shop" to Disco after Luffy punches out a Celestial Dragon, or when Doflamingo later apparently kills Moria on orders of the World Government for not being strong enough to continue as one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea.
    • Spandam repeatedly kicked a down and broken Robin who was handcuffed and mentally tortured just for laughs. When she breaks his spine in half you feel as if he is getting off easy. If anything he is the poster boy of this trope.
      • He blamed his group of assassins that he led for everything that happened to the navy in the arc,, and then those assassins are implied to be coming after him.
    • Admiral Akainu ordering an entire ship of refugees destroyed just because a scholar might be on it is unforgivably evil. However, the civilians of Ohara often acted as All of the Other Reindeer to Robin because of her Devil Fruit powers, making them considerably less sympathetic than Clover, Olvia and the rest of the scholars.
  • Shinji of Fate Stay Night was already defeated, so it wasn't entirely justified when he was minced (off-screen) by Berserker. He did, however, just attempt to kill off an entire school's worth of people, and laughed when one of them managed to beg for help. If you've read Heaven's Feel, you know that there really isn't anything he doesn't deserve. And in Heaven's feel, it kind of bites him in the ass.
  • Makoto of School Days. He's murdered by the girl he impregnated and abandoned, and she might count, depending on your interpretation, when her killing Makoto causes his girlfriend to break completely and kill her.
  • Paragus qualifies as an Asshole Victim in the ending of [[Dragon Ball|
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Asshole_Victim?oldid=1281093"