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I can handle things, I'm smart! Not like everybody says, like, dumb. I'm smart and I want respect!
~ Fredo confronting his brother Michael


Fredo Corleone is a supporting antagonist in the late Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather, as well as the trilogy of films based on it.

He is the second son of crime boss Don Vito Corleone and his wife Carmela, the younger brother of Sonny Corleone, the older brother of Michael and Connie Corleone, and the adoptive brother of Tom Hagen. While he is sensitive and caring, he is insecure and not very bright, and so is given the family's unimportant businesses to run.

When Vito is shot in the street by drug lord Virgil Sollozzo's thugs, Fredo tries to return fire, but drops the gun and falls to the ground weeping, paralyzed with shock. Sonny, now acting head of the family, sends Fredo to Las Vegas under the protection of mob boss Moe Greene, who runs several casinos. Fredo learns the casino trade, but also becomes a womanizer and an alcoholic. At one point Greene, angry that Fredo's habit of "screwing cocktail waitresses two at a time" is hurting business, slaps him in public.

Years later, after Greene refuses to sell his casino to Michael, Fredo defends him; afterward, Michael warns him to never again take sides against the family. Green is later killed on Michael's orders.

After Vito's death, Michael becomes Don of the Corleone Family, which creates a rift between the brothers; Fredo feels that, as Vito's eldest surviving son following Sonny's murder, he should have taken over. He is also embittered by having only nominal power in the family, and because Michael gives him only trivial jobs to do, such as running a brothel in Salt Lake City and transporting family allies to and from the airport.

Michael's nemesis Hyman Roth uses Fredo as part of a plot to kill Michael by having his henchman Johnny Ola promise to give Fredo something "on his own" if he could help him and Roth; it is never specified what exactly Fredo does, or how he is rewarded. Regardless, Roth and Ola use whatever "help" Fredo gave them to attempt to assassinate Michael, although fortunately the attempt is unsuccessful. Fredo is horrified that Roth and Ola manipulated him, and refused to have anything more to do with him.

Fredo later goes with Michael to Cuba, where Michael and Roth have orchestrated a plan to work with dictator Fulgencio Batista's regime. During a New Year's Eve party at Batista's mansion, Fredo gets drunk and lets slip that he knows Ola, despite having told Michael previously that they had never met; from this, Michael deduces that Fredo is the family traitor who helped Roth try to kill him. Michael gives Fredo the "kiss of death", and says he knows of his treason. Moments later, Fidel Castro's army takes over the country, ruining Michael's plan, and Fredo runs away from his brother during the ensuing chaos. He is later persuaded to come home.


Michael later talks with Fredo, who reveals that he withheld important information about Roth's connection to the Senate commission investigating Michael, and that he resents being "passed over" for control of the family. Michael disowns Fredo, and tells his personal assassin Al Neri that nothing is to happen to him while their mother is alive, the implication being that he is to be killed after she dies.

After Carmela passes away, Fredo attends Carmela's funeral, and is saddened when Michael refuses to see him. Connie asks Michael that Fredo is lost without him, which seemingly motivates Michael to forgive him. As they embrace, however, Michael levels a cold stare at Neri signaling that he wants him to kill Fredo.

Soon afterward, Fredo offers to take Michael's son Anthony fishing on Lake Tahoe, but Anthony is called away at the last minute to go to Reno with his father. Fredo instead goes fishing with Neri, who shoots him in the back of the head as he says a Hail Mary, an old trick for catching fish. The official story of Fredo's death is that he drowned, which Connie chooses to believe.

Having Fredo killed haunts Michael for years afterward, and strains his relationship with his ex-wife Kay and Anthony, who both know what really happened. He later confesses to ordering Fredo's death to Cardinal Lamberto, the future John Paul I, and breaks down in tears. He also calls out Fredo's name while having a diabetic stroke.

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