An odd (read: gruesome) question occurred to me, the other day: How many people has Jack the Ripper killed…in fiction?
That is, fictional victims besides the real life “canonical five” victims.
So far, I’ve got (with SPOILER TAGS)
*Pandora’s Box (Play, silent film, and Opera)
-Lulu
*Anno Dracula (1992 Novel)
-Arthur Holmwood
*Star Trek (Episode “Wolf in the Fold”)
-Unnamed Dancer
-Lt. Tracy
-Sybo
-At least 44 unnamed other women, over about 380 years.
Anyone else have any other entries? The only rule is that it has to be, in story, the same person/s who committed the 1888 London murders. No copycat killers, or merely Ripper-like characters need count.
Another is Robert Bloch’s short story Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper, in which some folks who aren’t famous get killed, IIRC. Bloch’s the one who wrote the Star Trek episode “Wolf in the Fold” the OP refers to. It’s not just a case of re-using his old stuff. I think Bloch had a Jack the Ripper fixation. See here:
The story was made into an episode of the TV show “Thriller” in the 1950s.
Here’s a list of Fictional Works inspired by Jack the Ripper, several of which fit this category:
In “A Toy for Juliette”/“The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World” by Robert Bloch/Harlan Ellison he kills the titular Juliette and many others of the futuristic city’s decadent and malevolent denizens for the survivors’ amusement.
Edit: ninja’d - although I also included Ellison’s follow-up.
In the computer game Shadow Man he kills himself when he is recruited by Legion (in order to cross over to Deadside, the land of the dead), and in modern times kills several women in imitation of his original crimes.
Relying entirely on memory since I’m not somewhere I can access my copy, but I recall Jack being featured in the comic book Eternals Annual #1, but I can’t remember if he succesfully killed anyone or was stopped in time.
And, again from memory so someone can correct me, but wasn’t Jack the Ripper the villain in Batman: Gotham by Gaslight?
In those books he killed a pair of uptime journalists and his ‘worshipers’ went on a killing spree in the timestation, a downtime male whore, and was planning on getting his patsy James Maybrick arrested and hung, and he coshed Eddie Albert’s tutor and left him in the care of an innkeeper [sorry without looking it up I can’t seem to remember the guy’s name] I think that is all the alternate victims, it has been a couple years since I last read it.
I do know that in Doctor Who he was killed by Madame Vashtra, swashbuckling lesbian lizard-woman and consulting detective extraordinaire. She ate him. Bring back Vashtra!
There’s an episode of “Fantasy Island” where a journalist wants to go back to 19th century London to find out who Jack really was. She succeeds, but somehow Jack follows her back to the Island. I believe he killed one of the island women before being defeated by Mr. Roarke.
He shows up in an episode of Babylon 5, where he was picked up off the streets of Victorian London by a race of aliens. They’ve kept him alive for centuries, and use him as an inquisitor to make sure would be prophets and saviors are the real deal, or if they’re just frauds and megalomaniacs. Although he doesn’t kill anyone in the episode, it’s implied that people who fail his tests don’t live to talk about it - and that he’s met a lot of failures.
In Amazon Women on the Moon they have a segment of the TV show Bullshit or Not* in which they ask “Was the Loch Ness Monster really Jack the Ripper?” and dramatize Nessie (in a huge top hat and cape) soliciting a prostitute.
Must be seen to be believed. And the movie, while not up to the Landis-directed Kentucky Fried Movie, has its moments. Especially ed Begley Jr as “The Son of the Invisible Man”.
That word: I do not think it means what you think it means.
IIRC, there was a short story where Jack the Ripper turned out to be Doctor Jekyll, such that the murders in Whitechapel were a mere subset of Hyde’s killings.