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"Nothing's more destructive to the metaphysical fabric that binds us than the untimely murder of a human."
Tropes relating to that most heinous crime.
Tropes:
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Categories and indexes
- Adult Fear: Tropes related to realistic fears an adult could have.
- Disposing of a Body: Hiding or destroying a murder victim's corpse to avoid getting in trouble for killing them.
- Genocide Tropes: The organized mass-murder of a very large group or entire category of people, often committed as state-sanctioned atrocities executed by governments and military forces.
- Human Sacrifice: Killing people as part of a religious ritual for honoring their deity.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Human cannibalism, in which people eat the flesh of their fellow man. Not always related to murder, but human meat as food is often acquired after killing someone first.
- Murder by Suicide: Forced suicide, or coercing people into killing themselves by various means.
- Murder in the Family: Familicide, which is when people kill their own family members or other relatives. It's obviously the deadliest form of domestic violence.
- Public Execution: Killing someone who's being held in captivity. Can refer to both hostages getting murdered by criminal kidnappers (which is obviously illegal) and state-sanctioned killings of convicted prisoners as capital punishment for their crimes (a controversial practice which has been abolished in many, but not all, countries).
General/miscellaneous tropes
- Any Last Words?: Someone who is about to be killed is asked if they have any last words. They use the opportunity to turn the tables on the person who was about to kill them.
- Assassination Attempt: When someone tries to kill a particular targeted person (usually an (in)famously notorious individual), and they may or may not succeed in doing so.
- Assassin Outclassin': An assassination attempt ends up failing or getting foiled.
- Body-Count Competition: Two or more people compete to see who can kill the most people.
- Conceive and Kill: A woman becomes pregnant and then kills her mate, often in the act of copulation.
- Conspicuously Public Assassination: When an assassination is done in view of many witnesses.
- Conversation Casualty: Killing someone while talking to them.
- Cradling Your Kill: The killer holds their victim's body in their arms.
- Deadly Euphemism
- Deadly Prank
- Dead Serious: Showing how serious a threat the villain is by having them kill someone the audience cares about.
- Failure-to-Save Murder: Someone is blamed for a death they were unable to prevent.
- Fake Assassination: Killing the target was never the real intent of the crime, that was just a ruse for some other scheme.
- How Would You Like to Die?: The murderer asks the victim how they'd want to die.
- If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: The hero is dissuaded from finishing off a defeated villain because it will sink them down to their level.
- I'll Kill You!: An explicit death threat.
- Implied Death Threat: Indirectly threatening to kill someone.
- Kill Him Already!: Impatiently demanding someone's death.
- Killing Intent
- Kill on Sight: Declaring that someone has been targeted for violent death.
- Kill Steal: Killing something just when somebody else was going to do the same.
- Kill Tally: Someone keeps score of how many lives they've taken.
- Kinslaying Is a Special Kind of Evil: Familicide is considered to be an especially wicked kind of crime, due to being perhaps the worst way someone can betray their own family.
- Leave No Survivors: A massacre where nobody present is allowed to be left alive.
- Lights Off, Somebody Dies: The lights go out and when they come back on, someone has been murdered.
- Make Sure He's Dead: The villain insists that they look for a body in the event that it's hard to tell if the victim died or not.
- Murder-Suicide: Killing another person before killing oneself.
- Mutual Kill: Two people end up killing each other near-simultaneously.
- Never One Murder: If one murder is committed, then there's a good chance there'll be more before the story ends.
- Over-the-Shoulder Murder Shot: The murderer is found crouched over their victim before looking over their shoulder, initially obscuring the crime and/or the perpetrator.
- Pater Familicide: Killing one's whole family, including spouse and kids, usually followed by oneself.
- Prepare to Die: When applied to murderers, they will let their victim know they're about to kill them.
- Prestige Peril: Gaining a lofty position has the downside that any screw-up will result in you getting killed.
- Suicide Attack: When someone simultaneously kills both themself and another person, usually accomplished with explosives.
- Take Me Out At The Ballgame: Killing someone at a sports event.
- Taking You with Me: A person who gets killed makes it so that their killer dies with them.
- These Gloves Are Made for Killin': When someone puts on gloves or wears them to ensure the murder will not be traced back to them.
- Trial by Friendly Fire: The only way to kill the enemy is by shooting through your friend.
- Why Won't You Die?: A character tries to kill someone, only to exasperatedly demand to know why their would-be victim keeps surviving every attempt at doing them in.
- You Kill It, You Bought It: When you kill someone, you have to take up their title or responsibility.
Accident, murder, or suicide?
- Accidental Child-Killer Backstory: Someone who unintentionally caused a child's death in the past still carries the burden into the present.
- Accidental Murder: When someone unintentionally kills another person.
- Accident, Not Murder: Freaky circumstances cause an accidental death to appear to be a murder.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: Someone commits suicide just to deny giving their enemies any opportunity to murder them.
- The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much: A murder is dubiously covered up by claiming that the death happened because of accident, suicide, or natural causes.
- The Dead Guy Did It: A murder investigation leads to the revelation that the killer was none other than the victim.
- Hunting "Accident": Taking someone along for a hunting trip just to "accidentally" shoot them.
- I Didn't Mean to Kill Him: When the guilty party claims (honestly or not) that the murder was accidental.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: A murder is covered up by making it look like an accidental death.
- Murder by Mistake: When someone ends up killing the wrong person, instead of their intended victim.
- Never Suicide: A murder victim's demise is covered up by making it look like a suicide.
- Obfuscating Postmortem Wounds: Additional wounds are inflicted upon a corpse to mask the true cause of death.
- Ordered to Die: Someone is forced to commit suicide on someone else's command.
- Suicidal Sadistic Choice: Forcing someone into killing themself by threatening to do something worse to them.
- Suicide by Assassin: Someone hires another person to get themself killed.
- Suicide by Cop: Someone intentionally provokes another person into killing them.
- Suicide, Not Murder: A suicide victim is mistaken for having been murdered.
- This Bear Was Framed: Disguising a murder as an animal attack.
Murder methods and weapons
- And Show It to You: Killing someone by removing their heart and showing it to them.
- Animal Assassin: Using a deadly animal (especially a venomous creature) as a murder weapon.
- Appease the Volcano God: A Human Sacrifice ritual in which the victim gets thrown into an active or dormant volcano.
- Attack on the Heart: Killing someone by directly inflicting damage to the heart.
- Bitter Almonds: Cyanide poisoning leaves the telltale scent of bitter almonds.
- Bludgeoned to Death: Killing someone by fatally beating them with a blunt object.
- Boom, Headshot!: Killing someone by firing a single bullet through their brain.
- Cement Shoes: When a (live or dead) victim gets tied down with blocks of concrete so that their body will sink down after being thrown into a body of water.
- Chainsaw Good: Using a buzzsaw or chainsaw to cut people to bits.
- Chute Sabotage: Killing a skydiver by damaging their parachute.
- Cooked to Death: Killing someone by baking, boiling, frying, grilling, or roasting them with kitchen equipment.
- Coup de Grâce: The final blow that kills, often done to finish off a defeated opponent at the end of a fight.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Torturing and killing someone in a very painful and gruesome way.
- Dangerously Close Shave: When a man gets killed with a straight razor under the guise of shaving his beard.
- Deadly Delivery: An assassin poses as a postal worker so they can personally meet their target to kill them.
- Deadly Game: An unusually violent contest in which players are required to survive lethal situations to achieve victory.
- Deadly Remote Control Toy: Remote-controlled toys as murder weapons.
- Death by Falling Over: A push turns fatal.
- Death Flight: Throwing people out of an aircraft, sending them falling to their doom.
- Death in the Clouds: Murder onboard an aircraft.
- Death March: Prisoners are forced by their captors to travel on foot in lethally harsh conditions, leaving few or no survivors.
- Death Trap: An improvised weapon designed to kill anyone who triggers the mechanism and gets trapped by it.
- Demanding Their Head: Ordering to have someone killed with their severed head returned, usually for a bounty.
- Drowning Pit: Trapping people in a room or chamber that's being slowly flooded with water.
- Electrified Bathtub: Killing someone by dropping active electronics into a bathtub filled with water.
- External Combustion: A classic assassination/terrorist tactic in which an explosive device hidden in a motor vehicle is used to kill anyone inside or nearby it.
- Fed to Pigs: Getting rid of a murder victim's body by throwing them over to a pen full of hungry pigs. Sometimes, the victim may not even be dead yet when the hogs start devouring them.
- Fed to the Beast: Killing someone by handing them over to a man-eating animal or monster to be devoured alive by the hungry creature.
- Flaying Alive: Skinning someone while they are still alive, which often proves fatal.
- Fright Deathtrap: Intentionally scaring someone to death.
- Gangland Drive-By: Drive-by shootings are an assassination method favored by gangsters, in which gunmen riding in a motor vehicle pull up and spray bullets at their enemies before making a quick getaway.
- Gasoline Dousing: Killing someone by pouring flammable liquids on their body and then igniting them.
- Gladiator Games: Forcing people to engage in mortal combat as some sort of twisted spectator sport.
- Gotta Kill Them All: Murdering everyone named in a hit list.
- Gutted Like a Fish: Killing someone through disembowelment.
- Hanging Around: Killing someone by hanging them with a rope (noose) tied around their neck, causing death by asphyxiation or breaking their neck vertebrae.
- Head Crushing: Squashing someone's head like a watermelon.
- High-Voltage Death: Killing someone by electrocuting them.
- Inn of No Return: A shady hotel where guests have a worrisome tendency to never check out alive.
- Kill It with Fire: Using fire or burning heat as a weapon to kill people.
- Kill It with Ice: Using ice or freezing cold as a weapon to kill people.
- Kill It with Water: Using water as a weapon to kill people (mostly by drowning them).
- Letterbox Arson: Killing someone by pouring flammable liquids through their house's mail slot and subsequently trapping them in a House Fire.
- Literally Shattered Lives: Someone who was frozen alive into a Human Popsicle is killed by being broken like glass into tiny little pieces.
- Machete Mayhem: Using a big, long blade that's not exactly a knife or a sword to kill people.
- Medication Tampering: Tampering with someone's medication, often with lethal intent.
- Moe Greene Special: Killing someone by shooting them through the eye.
- Multiple Gunshot Death: Someone gets killed by being riddled with many bullets.
- Murder by Cremation: Shoving a live person into a (kitchen or crematory) oven to burn them to death.
- Murder by Inaction: Killing someone indirectly by refusing to save their life.
- Murder by Remote Control Vehicle: Killing someone by remotely hijacking their vehicle and making it crash.
- Neck Snap: Killing someone by twisting their neck hard enough to sever their spinal cord.
- Not-So-Fake Prop Weapon: A real weapon disguised as a fake imitation is used to kill somebody.
- Off with His Head!: Killing someone by chopping off their head with a very sharp blade cut through the neck. Sometimes done posthumously to someone killed by another method.
- One-Hit Kill: Instantly killing somebody with just one single attack.
- One-Hit Polykill: Killing multiple people at once with a single hit, usually by firing a bullet that passes through all of their bodies.
- Poison Is Evil: Killing someone with the use of a highly toxic chemical substance.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Using Mind Control to force someone to kill themself.
- Rube Goldberg Hates Your Guts: A Rube Goldberg Device is used as a death trap.
- Sauna of Death: Trapping someone in a sauna or steam room to kill them via dehydration/heat-stroke.
- Severed Head Sports: Adding further insult to injury by throwing or kicking your enemy's head around for an improvised ball game.
- Sickbed Slaying: Killing someone lying in bed from illness or injury.
- Sinister Suffocation: Murder by choking or strangulation.
- Slain in Their Sleep: Killing someone while they're asleep in bed.
- Slashed Throat: Killing someone by cutting their neck open with a blade, though without going for a full-on decapitation.
- Tainted Tobacco: Poisoning someone's smoking materials.
- Torn Apart by the Mob: Someone gets brutally lynched by an angry mob.
- Touch of Death: A single touch causes death.
- Tricked to Death: Intentionally deceiving or misleading someone into getting themself killed.
- Trouble Magnet Gambit: Giving a target an object that is harmless in itself, but will attract lethal attention.
- Uriah Gambit: Sending a troublesome subordinate out to die in battle.
- Vehicular Sabotage: Sabotaging a motor vehicle. Can be lethal if you damage the brakes or steering.
- Vorpal Pillow: Killing someone by smothering them with a pillow.
- Weapon of Mass Destruction
- What a Drag: Torturing or killing someone by dragging them around.
- You Are Already Dead: An attack's effects take a little while to kill the victim.
- You Got Murder: The postal service itself is used to facilitate a murder attempt (such as by sending a mail bomb to the target).
- Your Head A-Splode: Killing somebody by making their head burst or blow up.
Motives for murder
- Adaptational Self-Defense: When a (morally questionable) homicide in the original version of the story is made to look more unambiguously justified in an adaptation.
- Assassins Are Always Betrayed: After a hitman has done their job (successfully or not), they get killed by their boss/client to ensure their silence.
- Better to Kill Than Frighten: Killing someone is more effective than merely scaring them for a particular goal.
- Board to Death: A villain gathers his accomplices at a meeting so that he can kill them.
- Cold Equation: Considering murder so that others can live longer.
- Contract on the Hitman: When a contract killer gets marked as an assassination target for other hitmen to claim and cash in on.
- Crime of Self-Defense: Someone might still be arrested and prosecuted for a defensive killing, even if it was completely justified.
- A Deadly Affair: An extramarital affair ends in the murder of one or more parties involved.
- Deadly Graduation: To pass the test, you must kill your partner.
- Deadly Hazing: Someone dies during an Initiation Ceremony.
- Death by Mocking: Killing someone for making fun of you.
- Death by Woman Scorned: Committing murder as revenge against a cheating spouse.
- Divorce Requires Death: Someone ends their marriage by killing their spouse.
- Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: A very powerful being kills a much weaker individual who dared to offend them.
- Duel to the Death: When two individuals fight and try to kill each other in mortal combat, usually to resolve disputes over personal honor.
- Final Solution: A genocidal plot to exterminate an entire category of people, especially an extremely marginalized ethnic group.
- Forced Euthanasia: When the murderer performs what they believe is a Mercy Kill even though the recipient clearly wants to live.
- Gaining the Will to Kill: The act of deciding that a murder is necessary.
- He Knows Too Much: Killing someone because they have learned a dangerous secret they can't be allowed to know (or which they possibly plan to share with other people).
- High on Homicide: The killer gets some kind of natural high from having killed someone.
- Homophobic Hate Crime: A violent attack motivated by anti-gay hatred, which may sometimes result in the victim's death.
- Honor-Related Abuse: A form of domestic abuse which may sometimes result in honor killings.
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Someone hunts other humans for sport, killing them like they were wild game animals.
- I'd Tell You, but Then I'd Have to Kill You: Someone claims (jokingly or not) that another person isn't allowed to learn something confidential under the threat of death.
- If I Can't Have You…: Someone tries to murder someone for leaving them or rejecting them romantically.
- Inheritance Murder: Killing someone in order to collect their inheritance.
- Involuntary Battle to the Death: Forcing people to fight and kill each other in mortal combat.
- Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: Someone is killed to prevent them from exposing the hidden existence of the supernatural.
- Killing in Self-Defense: The act of killing an aggressive attacker to protect your own life and safety. Technically not a murder (illegal) but still an act of (justifiable) homicide.
- Leave No Witnesses: Someone tries to avoid getting punished for their crimes by killing everyone who's seen them do the crimes.
- Looks Worth Killing For: A character is so desperate to stay beautiful that they're willing to kill.
- Mercy Kill: Killing someone to spare them from a much more painful and prolonged death (or a worse fate).
- Murder Is the Best Solution: Someone's knee-jerk solution to any problem they may face is to kill the people troubling them.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Someone tries to get together with the person they love by murdering the individual their beloved has chosen to be with.
- Nasty Party: A social gathering organized with the intention of killing someone.
- Offing the Annoyance: Killing someone just for being annoying.
- Offing the Mouth: Killing someone for making a snarky remark.
- Please Shoot the Messenger: A messenger unknowingly delivers a message that tells the recipient to kill them.
- Price on Their Head: All professional killers are motivated to receive a great monetary reward in exchange for eliminating a specifically targeted individual.
- The Purge: When a faction or organization tries to kill off all members suspected of disloyalty.
- Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Ruthless soldiers attack a city or town and go on a merciless rampage of mass rape, robbery and murder against the unarmed civilians who live there.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: A traitor is killed by the enemy they were working for, who may have good reason to not trust somebody who already backstabbed their own side.
- Self-Defense Ruse: Pretending you simply had to kill someone to "defend" yourself, which of course is actually just plain murder.
- Serial Killings, Specific Target: A murderer only really wants to kill a specific individual, but they try to hide their motives by murdering several other random people to make it look like the work of a Serial/Spree Killer.
- Shoot the Dangerous Minion: The villain kills their most competent minion because they could pose a threat to them.
- Shoot the Messenger: Killing a messenger just because they dared to inform you of bad news.
- Targeted Human Sacrifice: A Human Sacrifice ritual necessitates that a specific type of individual must be chosen as the victim.
- Thrown from the Zeppelin: Disposing of an objector immediately and in such a way as to quash further objection.
- Van Helsing Hate Crimes: If a monster hunter goes too far and tries to kill innocent monsters who were never actually hurting anyone else.
- Vigilante Execution: Killing someone accused of a crime without the permission of the judicial system, which of course is an illegal homicide.
- Virgin Sacrifice: When the victim (usually a young woman or girl) is required to have never had sex before.
- You Have Failed Me: The villain kills an underling as punishment for failing them too often or too severely.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The villain kills an underling after they've done what they were ordered to do.
- You Killed My Father: Someone wants revenge for the murder of their loved one. As you may have guessed, this often means trying to kill their loved one's killer.
Killers and murderers
- Anonymous Killer Narrator: Some sections of a story are written from a murderers' POV, though without giving away their identity.
- Ax-Crazy: A person who is both mentally unstable and violent; very likely to commit murders.
- Black Widow: A woman who kills her own husband (mariticide).
- Bleed 'Em and Weep: Someone cries after killing someone.
- Bloodbath Villain Origin: The villain's backstory involves them committing a massacre.
- The Bluebeard: A man who kills his own wife (uxoricide).
- Carnival of Killers: A wide assortment of assassins, usually attracted by an open contract on someone's hide.
- Children Forced to Kill: Kids are coerced into committing murder. This typically happens to Child Soldiers.
- Cold Sniper: Many assassins favor sniper rifles for taking out their targets from a distance.
- Cop Killer: Someone who has killed a police officer.
- Going Postal: A disgruntled postal worker goes crazy and will likely start killing people.
- Hero Killer: The villain has successfully killed at least one hero who tried to stop them.
- Hitman with a Heart: A friendly or sympathetic assassin.
- Holy Hitman: An assassin who is devoutly religious despite their sins of murder.
- Immortal Assassin: An undying hitman.
- Indirect Serial Killer: A Serial Killer who prefers to manipulate others to kill for them.
- Inexperienced Killer: Someone who has little to no experience in killing and has never actually killed anyone before.
- Jack the Ripoff: A copycat killer who uses the modus operandi of another serial killer.
- The Killer Becomes the Killed: A murderer ends up murdered in turn.
- Killer Cop: A police officer who has murdered people, whether as a result of Police Brutality or some other reason unrelated to their job.
- The Kingslayer: Someone who commits regicide, which is the murder of a monarch.
- Matricide: Killing your own mother.
- Murder, Inc.: A larger gang or organization of contract killers.
- Murder Makes You Crazy: Killing people isn't too good for your mental stability.
- Murderer P.O.V.: A murder is depicted from the killer's perspective; their identity may or may not be concealed.
- Murderers Are Rapists: A criminal rapes their victim before killing them.
- Patricide: Killing your own father.
- Person of Mass Destruction: A person with a weapon of mass destruction-level powers, skills, or abilities.
- Poetic Serial Killer: They like to use an ironic method against each of their victims.
- Professional Killer: Also known as a hitman, assassin, or contract killer. They make a living by murdering other people for a paycheck.
- Psycho Knife Nut: When applied to psychotic murderers, who may favor using a knife to do the deed.
- A Real Man Is a Killer: Taking a life to prove one's masculinity.
- Resurrected Murderer: Sometimes killers don't stay dead.
- Self-Made Orphan: Someone kills their own parents.
- Serial Killer: A murderer who gradually kills a series of individual people, one after another.
- Serial-Killer Killer: A (vigilante) serial killer who targets other murderers.
- Spree Killer: A mass-murderer who kills multiple people during a (relatively) short rampage.
- Stock Slasher: The stereotypical Slasher Movie villain, a homicidal maniac who kills off most of the cast through various gory ways.
- "Strangers on a Train"-Plot Murder: Two people who wish to kill someone swap victims.
- Sympathetic Murder Backstory: A person's Dark and Troubled Past involves them being a sympathetic killer.
- Sympathetic Murderer: A killer has a sympathetic motive for their crime (such as getting revenge on someone who seriously wronged them).
- Team Killer: A treacherous member of a group murders their own comrades.
- Terminally Ill Criminal: A character commits a serious crime, often murder, after learning they have a fatal disease.
- Theme Serial Killer: This murderer has a predictable gimmick as part of their modus operandi.
- These Hands Have Killed: Someone looks down at his hands with intense shock after the first time he has killed.
- Til Murder Do Us Part: Someone kills their own spouse.
- Tyrannicide: Someone kills a brutal tyrant.
- Unfriendly Fire: A soldier gets killed by a fellow soldier from the same army — and it wasn't an accidental casualty of war.
- Villain Killer: A hero known for taking out villains without mercy.
Murder victims and their bodies
- Asshole Victim: A loathsome jerkass or villain ends up getting murdered, and it's really hard to feel sympathetic to their demise.
- Body in a Breadbox: A corpse is found in a very unusual container.
- Carpet-Rolled Corpse: Wrapping up a dead body with a rug.
- Constructive Body Disposal: Hiding a dead body in a man-made structure.
- Corpse Temperature Tampering: Interfering with the natural cooling of a dead body to obfuscate time of death.
- Cramming the Coffin: Disposing of a body by hiding either in or under an occupied coffin.
- Dead Man's Chest: Stuffing a corpse into a convenient container.
- Disposable Sex Worker: Prostitutes and strippers tend to be poor and unnoticed by most people, thus making them easy victims of murder by angry pimps, clients or serial killers.
- Disposable Vagrant: Most people don't really notice or care about what happens to homeless people, which makes them very easy targets for (serial) murderers.
- Family Extermination: Eliminating everyone from an entire family.
- Killing Your Alternate Self: Someone slays their own Alternate Self.
- Kill the God: Committing deicide, which is the murder of a deity.
- Kill the Host Body: Getting rid of some body/mind-controlling entity by fatally wounding their victim.
- Kill the Ones You Love: Killing your own loved one(s).
- The Murder After: Waking up next to a corpse, with no idea how it got there.
- Not the First Victim: The killer has previous victims that weren't discovered before their publicized crimes.
- Offing the Offspring: Killing your own children (filicide).
- One Twin Must Die: Killing one of two twin siblings for superstitious reasons.
- Ruling Family Massacre: Slaughtering all members of a royal dynasty.
- Sibling Murder: Someone kills their own brother (fratricide) or sister (sororicide).
- Ten Little Murder Victims: A group of people are stuck somewhere. One of them is a killer, the rest are potential victims.
- Terror at Make-Out Point: Teens canoodling at the local Make-Out Point become victims of murderers or monsters.
- Vehicle-Roof Body Disposal: Getting rid of body by placing it on top of vehicle heading out of town.
- Wax Museum Morgue: A museum where the "statues" are really the preserved corpses of the owner's victims.
- Would Harm a Senior: Some people are willing to kill senior citizens.
- Would Hit a Girl: Some men are willing to kill women.
- Would Hurt a Child: Some adults are willing to kill children.
Investigation and prosecution
- Always Murder: In police/detective shows, the vast majority of the crimes they investigate involve a dead body from a homicide.
- Better Manhandle the Murder Weapon: Someone gets accused of murder because they got caught touching the murder weapon after the murder happened.
- Blood-Stained Letter: Often a clue in a murder case, left by either the killer or their victim.
- Bluffing the Murderer: Tricking a killer into revealing their guilt.
- Cop Killer Manhunt: The police take the killing of their own very seriously.
- The Corpse Stops Here: A person gets accused of murder just for being near the body.
- Felony Murder: Laws which deem someone's death caused by another person committing a felony crime to be first-degree murder.
- Found the Killer, Lost the Murderer: Catching the trigger man, but the mastermind behind the crime escapes.
- Lotsa People Try to Dun It: It turns out that all the suspects tried to kill the victim.
- Manslaughter Provocation: Voluntary manslaughter, a (semi-)intentional killing that is still illegal, but not sentenced with the same severity as a full-blown murder conviction.
- Mistaken for Murderer: A person is mistakenly believed to have killed someone or be planning to kill someone.
- Mistaken for Own Murderer: A disguised or transformed person is mistaken for having killed their true self.
- murder.com: A website on the Internet that hosts videos of people getting killed.
- Snuff Film: A recorded film of someone getting murdered. Obviously a very critical piece of evidence for the crime.
- Suspect Existence Failure: The lead suspect of a murder gets killed by the real culprit.
- Team Mercy vs. Team Murder: A conflict of interest between two parties with the same goal, but one side is willing to kill to achieve it while the other believes mercy is an option.
- Trail of Blood: Often left behind following a murder.
- Who Murdered the Asshole: An unsympathetic person has been killed, but it's hard to determine who killed them; because the victim was such a douchebag, that there's no shortage of people who despised them enough to be their possible killer.
- Whodunnit to Me?: Someone (such as a ghost) must solve their own (attempted) murder.
