History Main / ShootTheDog

Compare/contrast with JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope, LightIsNotGood, OmniscientMoralityLicense, WellIntentionedExtremist, KnightTemplar, TheUnfettered, RevoltingRescue, CruelToBeKind and PragmaticHero. If the act is presented as outright wrong (instead of hard but just) it may fall under DesignatedEvil. When a villain does the deed so the hero won't have to, it's BadGuysDoTheDirtyWork.

-->-- '''Giles''', ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS5E22TheGift The Gift]]"

[[folder:Web Videos]]
* Diddybob in ''WebVideo/MindMyGap'' finds himself stuck on the mountains with his only son Jona screaming and crying his head off. Nothing he tries to sooth him helps and the cries become too much for him to bear. He's right at the end of his mind until he's interrupted by the man from the mountains. "You've got a gun in that frikkin suitcase no? What are you waiting for? Use it man!"

* Among the many morally-grey choices characters make in ''Literature/{{Worm}}'' is, in [[http://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/sting-26-6/ Chapter 26.6]], [[spoiler:Weaver]] shooting [[spoiler:Aster]] to prevent [[spoiler:Jack's Slaughterhouse Nine]] from doing their thing and [[spoiler:possibly causing the end of the world]]. What makes this example all the more depressing is [[spoiler: it turned out to be meaningless as it was something else entirely that will cause the end of the world]].

[[folder:Web Videos]]
* Diddybob in ''WebVideo/MindMyGap'' finds himself stuck on the mountains with his only son Jona screaming and crying his head off. Nothing he tries to sooth him helps and the cries become too much for him to bear. He's right at the end of his mind until he's interrupted by the man from the mountains. "You've got a gun in that frikkin suitcase no? What are you waiting for? Use it man!"
[[/folder]]

* In ''ComicBook/FiftyTwo'', [[WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries Renee]] [[ComicBook/GothamCentral Montoya]] and ComicBook/TheQuestion are at the wedding of [[Characters/ShazamBlackMarvelFamily Black Adam]] and Isis looking for a [[SuicideAttack suicide bomber]]. When they find the bomber they discover that it is a young girl, just a kid, but they are too far away from her to reach her before she detonates her bomb. Since an explosion in this crowded space would result in hundreds, possibly thousands of deaths Renee realizes she has no choice and shoots the bomber, killing her before she can activate the device. Charlie, and later Black Adam himself, [[YouDidEverythingYouCould assure her that she had no choice]], but Renee [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone is traumatised by the fact that she]] [[TheseHandsHaveKilled just killed a little kid]].
* In ''ComicBook/{{Absalom}}'', Absalom and his men sometimes kill kittens to draw out vampires.

* In one arc of ''ComicBook/TheAuthority'', a woman comes to the team claiming to be three-year-old Jenny Quantum's mother. In fact, it turns out she's Jenny's twin ''sister'', Jenny Fractal, with all the same reality-warping powers, but absolutely insane [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds because she was kidnapped and brainwashed by a government conspiracy]]. Fractal kills Jenny and tears a hole in the fabric of reality that will destroy the world. The only way to stop her and save Jenny is for Midnighter to go back in time and murder Fractal as a helpless baby, just hoping he can tell the difference between her and his daughter. It works, but he was very reluctant to do it, and can barely stand to look at Jenny once it's over. He might be a textbook SociopathicHero, but that's a line even ''he'' feels rotten for crossing.
* In ''ComicBook/{{Batman}}'', [[Characters/BatmanJasonTodd Jason Todd]] ''thought'' he was doing this for Characters/{{Batman|TheCharacter}} and Characters/{{Nightwing|DickGrayson}} back when he was more AntiHero than AntiVillain. Then he [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope went really dark]].
* ''ComicBook/BeastWarsUprising'' is an extended deconstruction of this. In the GreyAndGrayMorality of the Grand Uprising, many factions and characters are willing to Shoot The Dog if victory depends on it... a fact that does nothing but [[FromBadToWorse make the conflict even worse]], as [[GodzillaThreshold it pushes everybody else into increasingly extreme acts out of fear and desperation]]. Most notably, Lio Convoy's near-constant and ruthless dog-shooting not only leaves him [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone overwrought with crippling guilt]], but also pushes the Builders into unleashing [[spoiler:the Vehicon plague, which quickly spirals out of control and threatens to destroy the entire planet]]. It's also clear that many of the crimes committed for the supposed "greater good" are actually done out of [[HanlonsRazor incompetence or self-gratification rather than intelligent pragmatism]]. In the end, [[spoiler:the real heroes who save Cybertron end up being people like the Ex-Bots or Hot Rod, who refused to let the war corrupt them and did everything they could to find a better way. The DistantFinale shows that most of the dog-shooters get remembered as little more than idiots and bastards who almost got everyone killed]].
* In ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' comic ''ComicBook/{{Bloodquest}}'', Cloten and Lysander are forced to gun down civilians while masquerading as renegade marines, or they would risk blowing their cover. They are utterly disgusted by what they have done, but given that a Chaos invasion was under way and if they just left the civilians to actual Chaos Marines to find them and [[FateWorseThanDeath the horrible things they would put them through]], it was just better to kill them [[MercyKill as mercifully as possible]].
* ComicBook/DoctorStrange will do whatever is necessary to protect the Earth and his loved ones. He'll agonize about it afterward, but he'll still do it.
* ''ComicBook/{{Exiles}}:'' In the second storyline, the team are assigned the job of killing the Phoenix. They initially think this is no problem because, hey, it's just the Phoenix Force replacing Jean, right? ''Wrong.'' They're informed that in this reality, it's just Jean. Suddenly, everyone but Blink (who has less emotional connection to her reality's Jean) gets cold feet. Then the Tallus shows them what will happen if they don't. However, even with this knowledge, they still find it hard, and as a result half that reality's X-Men die. Funnily enough, the next storyline introduces their shadowy counterpart team, Weapon X, whose job is to do the more unsettling parts of fixing reality (and even ''they'' sometimes have complaints about what they do).
* In ''ComicBook/GreenLantern'' ''Corps'' #66, the combined corruption of Parallax and the Black Lanterns have made it impossible to heal [[spoiler:Mogo]]. As long as [[spoiler:Mogo]] is active, he will continue to send out Parallax corrupted Green Lantern Rings across the universe, dooming countless billions to die by the hands of those who should be their champions. Faced with no alternative, John Stewart [[spoiler: channels Black Lantern energy and ''[[EarthShatteringKaboom destroys Mogo]]'']]. Stewart has become kind of a magnet for this sort of thing, as he also [[spoiler:killed a fellow Lantern who had broken under torture and was about to give up the access codes to Oa]].
%%* The ending of the ''ComicBook/HackSlash'' story ''Little Children''.
* ComicBook/{{Invincible}} once [[spoiler: killed future Immortal, who turned into dictator and was begging him to do it]].

* In ''Sacrifice'', Characters/{{Wonder Woman|TheCharacter}} [[spoiler:snapped Maxwell Lord's neck, in order to break his mind control over Superman. The latter wasn't too happy when he found out]].
* In the Creator/MarvelUK event ''ComicBook/RevolutionaryWar'', Mephisto has brainwashed the hero Killpower into leading a demonic invasion of Britain for him. In the final issue, his former partner Motormouth manages to re-access his heroic personality, who begs her to kill him before Mephisto reasserts his control. Motormouth refuses, as she's a hero, but Colonel Liger of the ''ComicBook/{{Warheads}}'', Major Hauer of the Supersoldiers, and Comicbook/DeathsHead I and II point out that they are most certainly ''[[AntiHero not]]'' heroes and empty copious amounts of lead into him.
* In Creator/AlanMoore's ''{{Comicbook/Miracleman}}'', the titular character [[spoiler: executes the innocent Johnny Bates]] to permanently prevent [[spoiler: his evil alter-ego Kid Miracleman from resurfacing]]. Subverted in that [[spoiler:Miracleman had already thrown a bus full of people at Bates/Miracleman without a second thought. The caption implies he did so while with at least partial awareness of the innocent deaths that would cause. It didn't hurt Bates anyway. Which Miracleman may have known]]. Miracleman also [[spoiler:kills Gargunza's dog to stop it from turning back into a monster. With a ''rock'']].
* [[Characters/MarvelComicsLogan Wolverine]] was recruited into the ''ComicBook/NewAvengers'' specifically so that they'd have someone willing to shoot the dog on the team. With [[Characters/MarvelComicsSteveRogers Captain America]], [[Characters/MarvelComicsPeterParker Spider-Man]], Characters/LukeCage, and [[Characters/MarvelComicsTonyStark Iron Man]] on the team at the time, the argument was that they needed a dog-shooter for those situations when a hard moral choice might be necessary.
* ''ComicBook/TheAvengersJonathanHickman'' revolves around whether or not ComicBook/TheIlluminati (a secret group of some the world's most influential heroes, including Iron Man, [[Characters/FantasticFourTheFantasticFour Mister Fantastic]], ComicBook/BlackPanther and [[ComicBook/SubMariner Namor]]) are willing to shoot the dog. Shooting the dog, in their case, means potentially destroying an entire alternate version of the planet Earth due to a phenomenon known as "incursions." During an incursion, two universes clash, with their respective Earths being the collision point. If the two Earths collide, the universes are destroyed, so the only way to save both universes is to destroy one of the Earths. [[spoiler:For the most part, the Illuminati avoid committing genocide because most of the alternate Earths end up being destroyed by people other than them, with the first case in which they had to choose the destruction of an Earth by themselves having said Earth devoid of life. When the time comes to choose to destroy an inhabited world, everyone but Namor decides it's not worth it, so he destroys the Earth himself, prompting the rest of the Illuminati to kick him out. Then, Namor assembles a group of villainous monsters to destroy the ensuing colliding Earths until the final incursion between the last two universes.]]
%%* Everything [[Characters/SHIELDDirectors Nick Fury]] does in the Franchise/MarvelUniverse falls into this category.
* In the GrandFinale of ''[[ComicBook/RatMan1989 Rat-Man]]'', a broken and defeated [[BigBad Topin]] mocks Rat-Man with the fact he, being a superhero, can't kill, thus he'll come back again and [[spoiler:kidnap and brainwash his daughter]], and if he kills him he won't be a superhero anymore... But before Rat-Man can decide if to take the risk or kill him [[BadGuysDoTheDirtyWork former Big Bad Janus Valker kills him]], [[PapaWolf keeping his son from taking a life]].
* In ''ComicBook/ShadeTheChangingMan'', Shade is forced to kill an enemy that can't be reasoned with or contained.

* In the fourth issue of ''ComicBook/SupergirlCosmicAdventuresInThe8thGrade'', Streaky the Supercat appears to be de-stabilizing a reactor core to blow the school up, so Lena decides to shoot him. However Characters/{{Supergirl|TheCharacter}} stops her.

* In the ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'' storyline ''ComicBook/TheSupergirlSaga'', Superman is the last living bastion of good in an alternate universe and must pass judgement on three Kryptonian criminals [[ApocalypseWow who just went and murdered the entire Earth]]. As he would reason with the Cleric during the ''ComicBook/SupermanExile'' storyline, they threatened to escape to his Earth and destroy it as well and he felt that trying to try them on his Earth wouldn't even fly, so he is forced to play judge, jury and executioner and kill the trio with Kryptonite. [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone Superman is so distraught by this]] that it's part of the reasoning for his exile from Earth.
* ''Comicbook/{{Thorgal}}'' has one case of this when Thorgal and [[ClingyJealousGirl Shania]] end up petitioning one of the gods for the return of Thorgal's wife. Said god lives on a box floating in the middle of a void filled with threads, with each thread representing a single human life. All the god requires to return Thorgal's wife is for Thorgal to take his bow and fire an arrow in any given direction, which will be certain to at some point sever a thread and kill ''someone''. When Thorgal can't bring himself to do it, Shania takes the bow from him and does it instead. [[spoiler:The thread she severs turns out to be her own.]]
* In ''ComicBook/UltimateXMen2001'', an unfortunate teenager wakes up one morning and discovers that he's a mutant [[BlessedWithSuck whose sole ability]] is to emit an InstantDeathRadius [[WalkingWasteland of a few hundred feet that kills every living thing around him]]. By the time he realizes what's happening, he has unwittingly killed his entire town including his family and friends. Frightened out of his mind, he hides in a nearby cave. Then Wolverine, who is able to survive thanks to his HealingFactor, appears. He gives the kid a beer and tells him what happened. In the end, to keep the kid from accidentally hurting anyone else and to keep his existence a secret (since news of a mutant with that kind of power would destroy any chance of peace between mutants and humans), Wolverine kills him. By that point it's almost a MercyKill since the kid can't live with being responsible for so much death.
* In ''ComicBook/UncannyXForce'', it is revealed that a resurrected [[Characters/MarvelComicsApocalypse Apocalypse]] will bring about the Age of Apocalypse. To prevent this, X-Force, an already morally ambiguous team that's entire purpose is to shoot the dog, decides to kill Apocalypse. However, it's revealed that Apocalypse is actually a child, who is still innocent. The team is split, with Angel the most adamant about killing Kid Apocalypse, saying that Kid Apocalypse won't be able to control his nature, and that doing this will save millions of lives. However, he stops himself, and the team decide to take Kid Apocalypse back for training. Then Fantomex shoots him in the head. Later on, Deadpool of all people is the one to call the team out on this, and Wolverine says it was the right thing to do, and that sparing him was just a moment of weakness. Fantomex himself secretly cloned Kid Apocalypse.
* In ''ComicBook/TheWalkingDead'', [[spoiler:one of the children in the group, Ben, kills and cuts apart his twin sibling. This prompts an eight-year-old Carl Grimes, son of the protagonist, to shoot Ben, because he was "too dangerous" and his father WouldntHurtAChild]].
* [[spoiler:Ozymandias]]'s plan in ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' is a ''nuke'' the dog. Then later [[spoiler: he has to disintegrate his beloved pet, a genetically engineered lynx, in an attempt to destroy Dr. Manhattan]].
* ''ComicBook/XMen'':
** As Wolverine puts it so often, he's the best there is at what does, and what he does... isn't very nice. Often Logan will take it upon himself to do whatever no-one else on the team is able to bring themselves to do, such as disposing of a guard blocking them from getting to a vital area.
** During ''The Dark Phoenix Saga'', at the end everyone acknowledges that with Jean's level of power, killing her probably ''is'' the most sensible decision, monstrous though it is. They just can't bring themselves to do it. In the end, Jean does it herself. Then later retcons reveal it wasn't Jean, just the Phoenix Force imitating Jean.

* In ''ComicBook/UltimateXMen'', an unfortunate teenager wakes up one morning and discovers that he's a mutant [[BlessedWithSuck whose sole ability]] is to emit an InstantDeathRadius [[WalkingWasteland of a few hundred feet that kills every living thing around him]]. By the time he realizes what's happening, he has unwittingly killed his entire town including his family and friends. Frightened out of his mind, he hides in a nearby cave. Then Wolverine, who is able to survive thanks to his HealingFactor, appears. He gives the kid a beer and tells him what happened. In the end, to keep the kid from accidentally hurting anyone else and to keep his existence a secret (since news of a mutant with that kind of power would destroy any chance of peace between mutants and humans), Wolverine kills him. By that point it's almost a MercyKill since the kid can't live with being responsible for so much death.

* Characters/{{Wolverine|JamesLoganHowlett}} was recruited into the ''ComicBook/NewAvengers'' specifically so that they'd have someone willing to shoot the dog on the team. With Characters/{{Captain America|TitleCharacter}}, [[Characters/SpiderManPeterParker Spider-Man]], ComicBook/LukeCage, and ComicBook/IronMan on the team at the time, the argument was that they needed a dog-shooter for those situations when a hard moral choice might be necessary.

** This also applies to humans. Infanticide is remarkably common throughout history, and many scientists hold post-partum depression is meant to allow time for a woman to seriously consider whether she is better off investing more calories in the current child or putting it down quickly and saving her strength. It was common for abandoned infants to be tossed to the streets or smothered, and in some places "soothing compounds" that could be given in lethal doses were used. This has been a topic in evo-psych and other fields of science, not the armchair reasoning of pseudo-intellectual horrible people, and in medicine, where early detection of post-partum depression and its stronger cousin psychosis are part of routine care post-partum nowadays. [[https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-3-319-16999-6_3692-1 Source 1]]. [[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23107563/ Source 2.]] [[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8845528/ Source 3.]] The conclusion of the researchers is that women in desperate situations were the most likely to commit infanticide. They state hardness of life, not heart, was responsible, and in our time of abundance, we have the means to prevent these tragedies.
** Similarly, the pro-life-vs.-pro-choice debate often results in a moral dilemma: should unborn babies have rights, or do women's rights matter more? The way the pro-choice side sees it, abortion is the lesser evil if the woman either [[RapeAsDrama has been raped]] or [[BodyHorror is suffering an ectopic pregnancy]], where the embryo has attached itself outside the uterus. Even the fervently pro-life Catholic Church will permit the removal of the unborn child if the woman's life is in danger.

* ''ComicBook/IdentityCrisis'': Some ComicBook/{{Justice League|OfAmerica}} members [[LaserGuidedAmnesia erased Dr. Light's memory]], and when Batman found out about it, [[spoiler:they did the same to him]].

* In ''Fanfic/AFrozenFlower'', Oprah and Otto stumble across Orchid and Till, the former of whom is ensnared by vines and the latter of whom is unconscious from a nasty blow to the head delivered by a vine. Orchid manages to get herself free. Oprah calls to Grimes and his group that she's found her and tells her to come back to them, citing that she can't run away from her problems any longer, but the ''lambero'' counters by saying that Oprah is only creating new problems and shoots her square in the shoulder using a bit of her energy before running away.

* The above panel comes from the ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'' storyline ''ComicBook/TheSupergirlSaga''. Superman is the last living bastion of good in an alternate universe and must pass judgement on three Kryptonian criminals [[ApocalypseWow who just went and murdered the entire Earth]]. As he would reason with the Cleric during the ''ComicBook/SupermanExile'' storyline, they threatened to escape to his Earth and destroy it as well and he felt that trying to try them on his Earth wouldn't even fly, so he is forced to play judge, jury and executioner and kill the trio with Kryptonite. [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone Superman is so distraught by this]] that it's part of the reasoning for his exile from Earth.

** ''VisualNovel/Danganronpa2GoodbyeDespair'' has an absolutely heartbreaking moment in Chapter 5, when [[spoiler:Chiaki turns out to be the [[AccidentalMurder accidental]] killer ''and'' the Future Foundation [[TheMole spy]]. You have to play a few more mini games to convince everyone else that she is the spy, meaning that, in order to survive, you have to ''actively condemn Hajime’s {{Love Interest|s}} to death'', all while the others ''beg and plead'' for you not to]]. Try not to feel like [[YouBastard a bastard]] afterwards...
** ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaV3KillingHarmony'' has a similar situation with [[spoiler:[[GentleGiant Gonta]], who was manipulated by Kokichi into commuting the murder and lost his memories of it. You must prove this and condemn him to die, despite the desperate protests of nearly everyone else, except for Kokichi [[KickTheDog who just mocks you for it]]]]. This is often considered to be a MoralEventHorizon for [[spoiler:Kokichi]] who [[ManipulativeBastard set it all up in the first place]].

* In ''Fanfic/{{Fractured}}'', a ''Franchise/MassEffect''[=/=]''Franchise/StarWars''[=/=]''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'' [[MassiveMultiplayerCrossover crossover]], Samantha Shepard experiences a HeroicBSOD that tilts her away from her usual paragon self, but in the sequel ''Fanfic/{{Origins}}'', she has MyGodWhatHaveIDone breakdown that makes her question why anyone else would keep her around. Others justify retaining Shepard (rather than imprisoning her for war crimes) based on [[IDidWhatIHadToDo She Did What She Had to Do]]. There are plenty of other morally-questionable actions throughout that may or may not have been {{justified|Trope}} InUniverse through IDidWhatIHadToDo but nonetheless qualify as shooting the dog: