The most famous is “the butler did it,” which is a cliche with that apparently predates the reference.
This article in The Guardian suggests a story where the butler did it earlier than that - The Strange Case of Mr Challoner in 1921.
Even so “the butler did it” is still a great example of a cliché that hardly ever actually happens.
I could easily believe the cliché originated independently from any particular book, purely as a piece of writing advice meaning “don’t be obvious!”
Perhaps “the butler did it” stems from real life, wherein correctly or not, the butler is an immediate suspect when someone who has hired help happens to be murdered in their home? Surely the master/servant relationship fosters resentment/ill will.
Even if not, I’m sure they’re a wonderful scapegoat for an inheritance seeking child or slighted spouse when they commit the murder.
If you do a write-up like that you should probably include some information which works you are talking about.
No need, I’d trust this account with my life. You don’t ask Prof Brian Cox for his sources, do you?
I don’t know if this counts, but:
In the 80s, when horror movies were super popular, there was sort of a generic killer that was sometimes used to broadly reference the slasher movie: Hockey mask and chainsaw. The only two specific references I can think of off the top of my head were a Bloom County strip, and the Cape Fear episode of The Simpsons.
The hockey mask is obviously Jason Voorhees, but he never once used a chainsaw (unless he did in the remake, I haven’t seen it in a long time). The chainsaw was intended as a reference to Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The closest thing that Jason ever used to a chainsaw was a gas-powered tree saw which is a circular blade on a long stem; he used this in Part 7. Jason used a lot of weapons, many of which were household appliances, but his signature weapon was a machete, not a chainsaw.
Oooo good pull. I’ve been idly considering this question at work this morning and I haven’t yet come up with anything, but this seems to fit the bill.
It’s kind of funny that the horror franchise I associate most with chainsaws is the Evil Dead series, and not the franchise named after the implement itself lol
The concept of the evil step-parent or surrogate parent getting the “You’re not even my real dad!” argument made me really appreciate its total absence in the Spider-Verse movies. Miles has disputes with his stepfather, but it’s never even suggested that Miles sees him as anything less than his real father.
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