Remember the good old days when the Killer was always "The last guy you'd expect"?

[cthulu2016]

It seems that these days the killer is often the guy with the "Kill Everybody" t-shirt that the entire neighborhood has lived in fear of for a decade.

"It was only a matter of time," is replacing, "He was the last guy you'd ever expect to turn violent."


Saturday Night Live called this back in the 1980s with their "Assassination of Gumby" story. When asked in narrative-pushing leading questions how surprised they were that this guy had shot Gumby, everyone interviewed replied with, "No... it was all he ever talked about."


re, among other things: the Jewish center shooter would turn out to be that guy who has spent his entire adult life trying to organize the assassination of Jews, and was on TV and radio and such, and founded a KKK chapter, and went to jail for conspiracy to murder Jews

This OP is not un-ironic old-foggeyism. I understand that back in the day it was considered impolite to voice one's suspicions on TV... if you don't have anything nice to say, etc.. I have no doubt that when Zeke shot everyone at the town hall meeting in 1950 Zeke was known to all as the guy in town likeliest to shoot up a town hall meeting, but our narrative is that American violence is "out of the blue," which allows us to think our society is not structurally violent. So it may be that people ar just less reticent when talking to reporters.

[Blue_Tires]

1. That "last guy you'd expect..." -line is more often than not bullshit

and it's usually spoken by casual friends/workplace colleagues and neighbors of a shooter, as a pre-emptive abdication of responsibility when the inevitable "Didn't you see any of the warning signs?" gets asked...

The vast majority of these crimes are done by *exactly* the person you'd expect...

[cthulu2016]

2. I agree. The OP is not meant as a statistical claim.

It is more a wry comment on the whole "last guy you'd expect" thing.

It's like when people say, "You have to watch the quiet ones." Okay... but what about the people given to explosive outbursts of rage who everyone in the office is afraid of?

[Dr Hobbitstein]

3. It's the quiet ones you've gotta watch...