History Main / ContractOnTheHitman

* In Franchise/TheDCU, the Hook was executed by the League of Assassins for failing to kill the circus aerialist Deadman, although ironically it turned out he hadn't actually failed - Boston Brand happened to have an identical twin brother who took his place in the act, leading to the confusion. This is standard League of Assassins fare; if you can't close the deal, you've got not place among the elite killers of the world.

[[folder: Radio]]

->''"The first rule of assassination: kill the assassins."''
-->-- '''Kirk''', ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry''

-->-- ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry''

* In ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands 2}}'', one optional mission has [[BigBad Handsome Jack]] (in the throes of a VillainousBreakdown) contact you and offer you a nice reward to kill yourself. He instructs you to go to a specific cliff and throw yourself off of it. Alternately, there is a phone there which will contact a suicide hotline, which tells you "Thank you for calling the Hyperion Suicide Prevention Hotline, Handsome Jack regrets to inform you that you are a coward". Whatever you do, it doesn't really matter; the Hyperion New-U station will instantly resurrect you if you die, taking a portion of your money but earning you 12 Eridium as a reward; Jack knows this, he just wants to watch you die for kicks. If you call the hotline instead, you get no Eridium, but triple experience for the quest.
* Attempted several times on Jimmy in ''Videogame/MafiaII''. All fail.

* A CrazyAwesome version of this trope is pretty much the plotline in both ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes'' games.

* In ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'', Curare is targeted by the League of Assassins for failing to carry out a contract (due to Batman's interference). She then turns the trope around on the League and hunts all of ''them'' down, causing the last surviving member to come to Gotham and blackmail Batman for help by hiding a bomb somewhere in the city and [[DeadManSwitch rigging it to explode if he fails to regularly input a code remotely]]. [[spoiler: He doesn't survive. Curare is luckier, but still ends up in jail.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Hitman}}'', naturally, has this a ''lot.

* ''VideoGame/{{Hitman}}'':

* ''VideoGame/Hitman2016'': The ICA's new rivals, Providence, have put a hit on THEIR top assassin, code-named Shadow Client, for going rogue. 47 isn't sympathetic to Shadow Client's cause (most notably because of all the intentional chaos Shadow Client is causing) and is more than willing to use Shadow Client as a stepping stone to hunt down Providence, but Shadow Client has spared 47 multiple times for reasons unknown.

* The 1995 Venezuelan film ''Sicario'' has a group of Columbian street kids being trained for an assassination by a cartel boss. He picks the best one, the protagonist Jairo, and kills all the others. Despite a speech by the cartel boss how they're NotSoDifferent, Jairo knows full well he's next on the list after he carries out the assassin, so draws a gun on his best friend who's driving his getaway motorbike, only to be forced to kill him when he refuses to let him just walk away. Jairo and his girlfriend then try to get out of the city, only for Jario to be gunned down by another street kid like himself.

** In ''Redemption Games'' Rain and Dox find themselves on Mossad's hit list after they bungle an assignment, apparently killing two CIA agents in the process.
** In ''The Killer Ascendant'', Hilger kidnaps Dox and uses him as leverage to force Rain to kill three people. Rain quickly works out that the last target is nonexistent. Rain himself is the intended victim, as Hilger has no intention of having [[TheDreaded Rain]] come after him once the job is done.
** In ''The Detachment'', our anti-heroes find themselves on the Presidential hit list, blamed for a series of terrorist acts they were actually trying to stop.

* In ''Film/TheInformer'' the leader of a murder for hire organization starts having his killers murdered to prevent the police from climbing the food chain to get to him

* In ''Film/JohnWick'' the BigBad puts out a two million dollar bounty on the eponymous back-from-retirement assassin when the latter seeks vengeance on the BigBad's son for wrongs done to him. It happens again in [[Film/JohnWickChapterTwo the sequel]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Hitman2016}}'': The ICA's new rivals, Providence, have put a hit on THEIR top assassin, code-named Shadow Client, for going rogue. 47 isn't sympathetic to Shadow Client's cause (most notably because of all the intentional chaos Shadow Client is causing) and is more than willing to use Shadow Client as a stepping stone to hunt down Providence, but Shadow Client has spared 47 multiple times for reasons unknown.

* In "This Gun For Hire" - employers of hitman Raven pay him with recorded bills and report him as a violent robbers, telling the police to shoot to kill [[spoiler: Overall it's a stupid plan]]
* In "The Informer" the leader of a murder for hire organization starts having his killers murdered to prevent the police from climbing the food chain to get to him

* This is the premise of the game ''BushidoBlade''; your character is trying to escape from the clan of assassins he or she belongs to, and the rest of the cast wants you dead.

* In ''Film/JohnWick'' the BigBad puts out a two million dollar bounty on the eponymous back-from-retirement assassin when the latter seeks vengeance on the BigBad's son for wrongs done to him.

* ''Film/{{Gomorra}}'' (2008). Two teenage hoodlums have been running out of control in the local Camorra clan's territory, despite warnings from the mob boss to behave themselves or die. They ignore this warning, stealing a cache of weapons hidden by the Camorra. An older mobster points out they'll have trouble with the police if two youngsters are killed publicly, so he approaches them with a deal -- for 10,000 euros they return the weapons and kill a mobster who has betrayed him. The youths follow their target to an isolated location, only to be murdered in an ambush and their bodies carted away by a bulldozer to be disposed of.

** Holding also wrote "The Photographer and the Undertaker". The Photographer is hired to kill a mortician, but realizes that the mortician is also stalking him. He determines that their mutual employers wanted to downsize staff, by setting their best hitmen to eliminate one another and retaining the services of the best one.

* Max Allan Collins's ''Quarry'' novels an inversion of this; the main character is a hitman, who after fatally breaking with his handler, keeps tabs on fellow hitmen, alerting their targets that they are in the crosshairs and offering to remove both the assassins and those who hired them.

* Handled more subtly in ''Film/MrAndMrsSmith''; the two assassin organizations found out their best employees were married to someone on the other side, decided this was bad for business, and set them on a collision course so that they'd have to kill each other. The result is alternatively tense (as a straight up action thriller) and wryly amusing (as a metaphor for a troubled marriage).
** After they end up refusing due to a mutual InLoveWithTheMark (only after much drama, naturally), both organizations try a more traditional way of getting rid of them. [[spoiler: [[BattleCouple They fail.]] ]]