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Older siblings as bullies towards their younger siblings as well as others.
Related tropes: Kids Are Cruel, Teens Are Monsters (because the big brother/sister is often a teenager as compared to the younger more sympathetic protagonist).
Compare Aloof Big Brother, Sibling Rivalry. Contrast Big Brother Instinct; oftens mixes with it in the "The only one allowed to bully my little brother is me!" sense.
Unfortunately, very Truth in Television ... and sometimes even a big sister.
Examples of Big Brother Bully include:
Anime and Manga[]
- Cardcaptor Sakura: Touya Kinomoto is both this and an overprotective older brother.
- Played for Laughs in Futari Ecchi, where male lead Makoto's older brother Akira keeps butting into his and Yura's sex life whether Makoto wants it or not. He clearly means well and is quite Happily Married (contrasting with Yura and Makoto who just tied the knot), but still...
- Bokurano and Kodomo no Omocha play it for drama, as both Jun Ushiro and Natsumi Hayama abuse their siblings Kana and Akito because each one blames their kid sibs for their moms falling victim to Death by Childbirth. And in Jun's case, Mrs. Ushiro wasn't even his mom, as he grew up believing that she was his birth mother but she only was his aunt or the wife of his birth mom's teacher (depending on whether you're watching the anime or reading the manga). Natsumi more or less gets better when Sana makes her realize the error of her ways, but Jun takes quite more time to warm up to Kana.
- Inverted with the Kongo Bros in Eyeshield 21; the younger twin tends to pick on the older one.
- Maho from Wandering Son is also picking on her little sister, the trans girl Shuuichi. She also has a Big Sister Instinct towards her, though: if someone else bothers her...
- Mairu and Kururi's more unusual... quirks probably stem from having one. Let's face, growing up with Izaya as an older brother can't be easy.
- Gender Inverted by every big sister in Daily Lives of High School Boys. The only big brother in the series is just Not So Different to the main characters.
- In Umineko: When They Cry, Rosa Ushiromiya was much younger than her siblings Krauss, Eva and Rudolf, so they treated her like crap when she was a child and they were teens or young adults. Even now, their relationship is horribly strained as a result; the first two treat her quite badly, and only Rudolf seems to acknowledge how wrong this was. The only sibling she always got along with was Beatrice Ushiromiya/the Kuwadorian Beatrice, Kinzo's Heroic Bastard, but she didn't know she was her older half-sister - and when Rosa tried to help Beatrice run away from her Gilded Cage so she could experience the outside world, poor Beato fell off a cliff and died in front of Rosa, heavily traumatising her.
Film - Live Action[]
- ET the Extraterrestrial: Elliot's bro normally. He improves.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick, Rodrick, RODRICK.
- Home Alone: Buzz McCallister. He had a tarantula.
- Fanboys: Eric Bottler's older brother constantly belittling him and his friends for their love of Star Wars. In the end of the movie, he shows up while they're in line for The Phantom Menace and chases off two guys who were harshly criticizing Eric's new comicbook.
- Sex Drive: with the big brother constantly giving his brother crap about his supposed sexuality (or lack thereof). On the other hand, the brother does give him a ride to work in his Pontiac Judge and helps him out in the end.
- Weird Science: Wyatt's Jerk Jock older brother Chet.
- Pino to Vito in Do the Right Thing.
Literature[]
- Ender's Game: Peter to Ender and Valentine.
- Harry Potter's cousin/adopted brother Dudley Dursley. He improves too.
- A Song of Ice and Fire has many examples.
- Gregor Clegane, towards Sandor and their unnamed baby sister. He kills the little girl and almost does the same to the little boy, leaving him badly scarred.
- Viserys Targaryen towards his younger sister Daenerys. At first he downplayed it, but when he was 14-15 he sold her to Khal Drogo and started threatening her life regularly.
- Also, Joffrey Baratheon to Tommen and Myrcella.
- Theon Greyjoy's memory of his brothers Rodrik and Maron are cheifly of "Rodrik's drucken cuff and Maron's cruel japes.
- It seems to run in the Greyjoy family. Theon's uncle Aeron still has nightmares about his older brother Euron Crow's Eye. AI's strongly implied Euron raped Aeron.
- While Sansa didn't beat up her younger sister Arya, she still was very verbally bitchy to her.
- Edmund Pevensie is this to Lucy in the beginning of The Chronicles of Narnia, despite not being the oldest. In fact, Peter harshly calls him out on it when he pretends to side with her and then humiliates her.
- Played for Drama in When She Was Good by Norma Fox Mazer. Em's older sister Pamela brutally abuses her, physically and emotionally. In fact, she is suspected by psychologists to have some sort of mental illness. Em and Pamela end up moving out, and Em works while Pamela stays at home and forces her to have a very strict routine, cooking for her and cleaning for her. The book deals with what happens after Pamela unexpectedly dies of a stroke.
- In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Rodrick. Just like in the movies, he's a complete Jerkass who just abuses Greg and his friends gets away with it. Greg has his moments and had intended to become this to Manny, but he's much less of a jerk than his brother and a couple times when he's done stuff to Manny it was usually good-natured. (Likely because he can't get away with a thing with Manny.)
- Fisk claims that his older sister Judith in the Knight and Rogue Series was and perhaps still is one of these (he expresses a desire repeatedly for her to turn out to be the criminal they're tracking). While some of the past actions he claims sound rude at best, she does nothing worse than one-up him in arguments while present in the story.
- Amelia Peabody got this from pretty much all her brothers, but especially her oldest brother James:
"Dear Amelia. You haven't changed since you were a little girl. Do you remember the time..." |
- Charlie Angelfield in The Thirteenth Tale intends to make a victim of his much younger sister. This doesn't work as planned, and they instead become more like partners in crime.
Live Action TV[]
- Ian and Paul Branagh to Robin in Young Dracula.
- The Wonder Years: Kevin's big brother Wayne. It's heavily implied and sometimes outright said it's due to jealousy (Kevin has a more active social life and is well-liked, while Wayne has maybe one true friend and horrible luck with girls) and Middle Child Syndrome (he's sandwiched between hippie older sister Karen and baby of the family Kevin). That said, he can be decent to Kevin now and then.
- Malcolm in the Middle plays this quite well. The real oldest brother, Francis, is away from the family nearly the entire series, and he's more of a Big Brother Mentor during the series, but still has moments that fall under this trope. The next eldest brother, Reese fills this role for Malcolm & Dewey for the majority of the series, although Malcolm gives as much as he he receives and joins in with bullying Dewey; and after the birth of Jamie, neither one bullies him & both assume similar roles to what they share with Francis. Dewey, being the youngest for most the series, doesn't fall under this but gets a few The Dog Bites Back episodes; and after Jamie's born, complains that it's not fair that Reese & Malcolm got the Cool Big Brother Francis when they were kids, but Francis left for military school before Dewey form any memories of having a cool big brother - Francis then reveals that he treated Malcolm & Reese the same way they treat Dewey when he was younger.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: Robert Picard to Jean-Luc, as shown in "Family".
- Also Lore to Data.
- That 70s Show: Female example, with older sister Laurie being this to Eric. No wonder he and his friends call her "the witch".
- Brad and Randy to Mark on Home Improvement, especially in the earlier episodes, when they were too young to really know better.
- Frasier: Crane has elements of this towards his little brother Niles. However, Niles is far from a poor helpless victim of his brother's torment, and can usually give as good as he gets.
Video Games[]
- In Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, Guybrush Threepwood's creepy brother Chuckie is a tormentor. It's also the true identity of the villain LeChuck. Because the entire two games were just one big daydream by a young boy in an amusement park. This was thankfully retconned later.
- Leon in Yggdra Union and its related games. In Blaze Union it's pretty clear that this is just a part of his Tsundere nature, but it's Played for Drama in Yggdra Union, where his being a jerk to his little sister Elena and everyone else is representative of the fact that he recently took a dive off the deep end.
- Female example: Beldam from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door towards her little sister Vivian.
- Sylvain Jose Gautier in Fire Emblem: Three Houses was abused continually by his older brother Miklan, who was jealous and bitter at being denied the chance to be the leader of the clan because Sylvain was born with a crest and he wasn't. He tries to kill Sylvain more than once, and ends up fully disinherited as a result. It comes to a head when Miklan, now the leader of a bandit gang, steals the family's Hero's Relic and ends up turning into a monster after using it, forcing Sylvain to put him down.
- Part of Anesthesia's plan to for Evil Rose in Rumble Roses was aside from helping her and her true ultimate creation Lady-X through brainwashing, to bully her baby sister Reiko and not let Reiko stop her plans. Evil Rose's Big Sister Instinct however allowed her to undo Anesthesia's influence and save Reiko instead.
Web Comics[]
- Mike to Angel in The Good Witch, but only in their original history; his memory of that has been erased.
Web Original[]
- The Other Guy to The Nostalgia Critic. Of course this is only in-character, Rob and Doug play around but could easily be classed as Heterosexual Life Partners.
- It is heavily implied that Marie Swanson of Erikas New Perfume was this to the title character before getting turned into a three-year-old. The sequel had her get turned back into a 16-year-old and strike fear into Erika every chance she got.
Western Animation[]
- In The Simpsons, Bart is sometimes like this toward Lisa. Other times he has Big Brother Instinct towards her.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy: Eddy's brother
- Inverted with little sister Sarah bullying big brother Ed.
- Mac's terrible older brother named Terrence from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.
- Kick Buttowski's older brother Brad.
- In one episode, Kick gets wrestling lessons from a former wrestler, whose wrestling school was taken over by his own Big Brother Bully, who in turn is teaching Brad as well.
- Raphael in the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon was shown to bully Michelangelo when they were little, although he is a bit nicer to him when they're older he does smack him when he says something stupid.
- South Park: Stan's older sister Shelly
- Also Kyle to Ike in the first season. "Kick the baby!"
- Tommy Turnbull's older brother, Donnie, from Robotboy.
- Duncan Douglas, the older brother of Dexter Douglas.
- Inverted in Avatar: The Last Airbender, where the little sister, Azula, bullies her big brother Zuko.
- Bobby's World: Bobby's older brother Derek
- Hey Arnold: Gerald's older brother Jamieo
- In the Mega Man cartoon, Proto Man was this.
- Recess: Averted with Vince's older brother Chad, subverted with T.J.'s older sister Becky, since she's nicer to him at the end of Recess: School's Out, but mostly just a Bratty Teenage Daughter, and as for Spinelli's older brother Joey, not much is known about him...except that he's in prison.
- In Rugrats, Drew was like this to Stu when they were kids and doesn't quite seem to have grown out of it.
- Vicky is this to her little sister Tootie in The Fairly Odd Parents.
- The first few episodes of Stanley depicted Lionel as this; He turned into a Cool Big Brother after that.
- Scowler from Walking with Dinosaurs
- Glen Maverick from Surf's Up
- Mabel Pines from Gravity Falls has no compunctions in selling out her own little brother for her own personal gain and when Dipper is about to leave her to pursue his goals, she is fully willing to hand over the rift to Bill fully aware it's going to cause an apocalypse just so that Dipper will not end up leaving with her. But most of the time she's usually pretty decent to him.
- In contrast to Stanley or the Pines twins who showed a Big Brother Instinct, Stanford Pines himself is both physical and emotional example of this trope, in that he doesn't hesitate to disown Stanley just for a single mistake and doesn't give a damn about any of his problems, hardships or even maternal feelings from him best shown when he only called ten years later just for a menial task and later one when after his younger brother has spent thirty years just to save him, he "thanked" him by demanding that he move out of the Shack immediately once summer ends, despite the fact that he is fully aware that Stanley Pines is dead to the public and will leave him as a homeless criminal. As a result, it is hardly surprising that Stanley point blank tell Ford that twins are the only family left to his face and the latter doesn't care about it. Also whenever he and Stanley engage in physical violence, it is always Ford the one to initiate it, whether by provoking him or simply just attacked him first.