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* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E70AGameOfPool A Game of Pool]]" ends with Jesse Cardiff winning a hard-won game against the ghost of Fats Brown and becoming the new pool champion... and yet, Fats is smiling in relief. It turns out he'd grown tired of having to defend his title from beyond the grave, though his role as a champion forbade him from just throwing the match; he genuinely wanted someone to beat him fair and square, and Jesse has obliged him. The epilogue reveals that [[PyrrhicVictory Jesse is now trapped in the role of pool champion long after his death]], while Fats is finally free to spend his afterlife fishing.

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* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E70AGameOfPool "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S3E5AGameOfPool A Game of Pool]]" ends with Jesse Cardiff winning a hard-won game against the ghost of Fats Brown and becoming the new pool champion... and yet, Fats is smiling in relief. It turns out he'd grown tired of having to defend his title from beyond the grave, though his role as a champion forbade him from just throwing the match; he genuinely wanted someone to beat him fair and square, and Jesse has obliged him. The epilogue reveals that [[PyrrhicVictory Jesse is now trapped in the role of pool champion long after his death]], while Fats is finally free to spend his afterlife fishing.
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* Sometimes, people whose lives are touched by chronic or terminal illness -- or even persecution -- are relieved at the end of their lives by the prospect of not having to deal with their suffering any longer.
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* In the ''Series/RedDwarf'' episode "[[Recap/RedDwarfSeasonVILegion Legion]]," the eponymous villain is a gestalt entity that can only exist when people are alive and conscious aboard his space station. After going to increasingly vicious lengths to force the Boys from the Dwarf to stay with him, Kryten is able to pacify Legion by knocking out the crew one by one, leaving the gestalt with only Kryten's existence to model himself on... and as a mechanoid, Kryten is programmed to help and obey humans -- giving Legion no choice but to help the crew leave. As he carries the unconscious bodies back to Starbug, Legion admits that after sharing the uniquely neurotic personalities of Lister, Rimmer and the Cat, returning to a state of nonexistence feels like ''promotion.''

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* In the ''Series/RedDwarf'' episode "[[Recap/RedDwarfSeasonVILegion Legion]]," the eponymous villain is a gestalt entity that can only exist when people are alive and conscious aboard his space station. After going Legion goes to increasingly vicious lengths to force the Boys from the Dwarf to stay with him, Kryten is able to pacify Legion him by knocking out the crew one by one, leaving the gestalt with only Kryten's existence to model himself on... and as a mechanoid, Kryten is programmed to help and obey humans -- giving Legion no choice but to help the crew leave. As he carries the unconscious bodies back to Starbug, Legion admits that after sharing the uniquely neurotic personalities of Lister, Rimmer and the Cat, returning to a state of nonexistence feels like ''promotion.''
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* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': In [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E9TheMeasureOfAMan "The Measure of a Man"]], due to a lack of legal staff to decide if Data is Starfleet property, the acting [=JAG=] officer tell Riker and Picard to make arguments for and against the notion respectively, with the caveat that the [=JAG=] officer will immediately end the hearing and declare Data Starfleet property on the spot if Riker doesn't try his hardest to win. Riker makes his argument very successfully, and is relieved when he loses anyway.

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* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': In [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E9TheMeasureOfAMan "The Measure of a Man"]], due to a lack of legal staff to decide if Data is Starfleet property, the acting [=JAG=] officer tell tells Riker and Picard to make arguments for and against the notion respectively, with the caveat that the [=JAG=] officer will immediately end the hearing and declare Data Starfleet property on the spot if Riker doesn't try his hardest to win. Riker makes his argument very successfully, and is relieved when he loses anyway.

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* At the end of ''Theatre/{{November}}'', President Smith decides to commit career suicide by officiating a wedding between his head speechwriter and her girlfriend (the play was written back in 2007, before the national Defense of Marriage Act was repealed.) He knows that by breaking a federal law and officiating a same-sex marriage, he will alienate voters and lose re-election, but decides that being President is too stressful and offers too few opportunities for graft.


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* Invoked in ''Theatre/OrdinaryDays'', when Deb throws out the notes for her graduate dissertation when she realizes that she doesn't want it or even know how it's going to improve her life.
* At the end of ''Theatre/{{November}}'', President Smith decides to commit career suicide by officiating a wedding between his head speechwriter and her girlfriend (the play was written back in 2007, before the national Defense of Marriage Act was repealed.) He knows that by breaking a federal law and officiating a same-sex marriage, he will alienate voters and lose re-election, but decides that being President is too stressful and offers too few opportunities for graft.

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