Hitman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the criminal occupation. For other uses, see Hitman (disambiguation).

A hitman (male or female) is an assassin who is hired to kill another person.

In organized crime

Hitmen are largely linked to the world of organized crime. Hitmen are hired people who kill people for money. Notable examples include Murder, Inc.,

Other cases

These are non-Mafia killings, or attempted killings, that involved a hitman. In some of these cases the "hitman" was not necessarily a "professional" hitman, but a paid amateur.

Hitmen

Mad Dog Coll leaving homicide court surrounded by police officers, 1931

Notable victims

  • Li Fuguo, a Tang Dynasty Eunuch killed by a hitman hired by Emperor Tang Daizong
  • Shiori Ino, a 21-year-old University student killed by hitman Yoshifumi Kubota, who served 18 years in prison for the killing. He was paid by her ex-boyfriend and his brother; the case gained some notoriety in Japan.
  • Grady Stiles, freak show performer whose family hired a hitman to kill him because of his abusiveness
  • Ji Yunqing, a Chinese Shanghai Triad boss affiliated with Wang Jingwei's puppet regime in the late 1930s murdered by BIS hitman Zhan Seng.

Notable hirings

According to America's Most Wanted, Walker County, Alabama is the #1 place in America to hire a hitman.

In fiction

Anime

  • In the anime Darker than Black, the main character often performs contract killings for various organizations.
  • In the anime and manga Dragon Ball, a mercenary named Tao Pai Pai is hired by the Red Ribbon Army to kill Goku.
  • In the anime and novel Fate/Zero, the main character is a contract hitman, and skilled mercenary.
  • In the anime Gungrave, the main character is a hitman for the Mafia.
  • The anime Reborn! contains several hitmen, including Reborn, "Lambo" and others. Tsuna Sawada (the main character), along with his school friends, are trained by a hitman to succeed the previous Vongola Family.
  • In the anime Golgo 13, the main character, Duke Togo or "Golgo 13" is a reputed marksman and an unnatural quick draw. Golgo 13 prefers taking his targets with a heavily modified M-16.
  • In the manga X-kai, Kaito Yagami is a hitman by night and runs a flower shop during the day.
  • In the anime "Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom", the story is about a trained assassin, Zwei and his mentor Ein. They wish to escape from Inferno.
  • In the anime and manga Monster, one of the main antagonists, Roberto, is a professional hitman and the loyalist of Johan Liebert.

Comics and cartoons

  • In Adventure Time, the Ice King hires a Hitman thinking that a Hitman only "hits" people and doesn't kill them. Throughout that episode, the Ice King prevents the Hitman from killing Finn and Jake (who think that the Ice King was the one trying to kill them.)
  • Hitman (Tommy Monaghan) is a fictional character, a super powered hitman in the DC Comics Universe. The character was created by Garth Ennis and John McCrea and first appeared in The Demon Annual No. 2 and then received his own series by Ennis and McCrea lasting 60 issues.
  • In The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, Sheldon J. Plankton hires a hitman named Dennis to kill SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star to stop them from retrieving the crown of King Neptune.
  • In the South Park episode "Follow That Egg!", Mrs. Garrison hires a hitman to "kill" an egg because she fears it will led the governor to legalize same-sex marriage in the state after being rejected by his ex-lover following a sex-change operation.

Film

Hitmen have, at times, been a notable part of crime films.

The James Bond film, The Man with the Golden Gun, features Francisco Scaramanga. Scaramanga is a high-priced hit man, supposedly the best in the world, charging one million dollars per kill. He's best known for being "The man with the golden gun", because he only uses bullets made of gold in a fictitious, 4.2 mm cartridge. All of Scaramanga's dealings go through his henchman Nick Nack, which allows Scaramanga to be anonymous.

In the mid-1990s to the 2000s, several "offbeat" portrayals of hitmen arose.

In the 2005 black comedy The Matador, Pierce Brosnan portrays the fictional hitman Julian Noble, an experienced hitman who suffers a mental breakdown, causing him to freeze during the last seconds of the job.

Romantic comedy has included assassins

A few portrayals of hitmen have earned nominations or awards.

In other countries the vision of the hitman is often one of a tragic individual with a solitary existence.

  • In the 1967 French film, Le Samouraï, Jef Costello is an example of this.
  • Furthermore, the film Ghost Dog takes inspiration from it.
  • In the aforementioned Léon: The Professional his existence outside of hits revolves around his houseplant and watching old films.
  • In the 1989 film, The Killer, the main character, Ah Jong, attempts to perform one last hit as a means of setting right an injustice that he had previously caused.

Video games

  • The main character of the video game series Hitman was genetically engineered by a man called Dr. Ort-Meyer in an insane asylum in Romania. He is known only as Agent 47. 47 is highly regarded in the criminal underworld, so much so that many consider him to be a myth. The gameplay revolves around infiltrating an area, executing a target (or targets) and escaping without apprehension. Although it isn't compulsory, the Hitman games encourage the player to use stealth and cunning maneuvers to eliminate targets, as opposed to making use of pure firepower. A film adaption which deviated widely from its source material was released in 2007. The fifth game, Hitman: Absolution was released on November 20th 2012.
  • In the Elder Scrolls series, there is a group called the Dark Brotherhood, which is a group of assassins that are akin to the nature of being a hitman. This group has appeared in all Elder Scrolls games since Daggerfall. Groups like the Morag Tong also perform contract killings in the series, and have been a playable faction in Morrowind. However, the nature of the Morag Tong is different from the Dark Brotherhood, since the Morag Tong is a legal assassination group in the province of Morrowind, and played a more justice-oriented role. Conversely, the Dark Brotherhood plays a role more similar to that of hired assassins.
  • In some videogames, such as the Grand Theft Auto series, the main character is given tasks akin to acting as a Hitman. This is most obviously shown in Grand Theft Auto IV with Niko Bellic, who is frequently hired as a hitman in the game.

See also

References

  1. ↑ http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2013/01/23/ns-hitman-michael-ryan.html
  2. ↑ Boyle, Robert H. (4 June 1973). "End Of A Bloody Bad Show". Sports Illustrated. Retrieved 21 March 2013. 

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.