Fan Casting A Real Man Is a Killer in Sort by Tropes

The tradition of killing as an initiation into manhood is at least as old as ancient Sparta, making this trope both Older Than Feudalism and based in reality, not fiction. A fundamental tenant of the hunter-gatherer social order, but largely irrelevant today as a means of testing the mettle of a new member of the hunting troupe. Still, that doesn't stop many buttoned-down, work-a-day suburban fathers fearing their son will go astray if he doesn't go through this rite of passage (which his own ancestors may or may not have had to undergo themselves, at least in TV land).