History Main / TheWorldsExpertOnGettingKilled

* In Creator/RoosterTeeth's murder mystery ''WebVideo/TenLittleRoosters'', Burnie reveals themselves to be an [[UndercoverCopReveal undercover cop]] who has been tracking the serial killer for years and specifically arranged the banquet they are all trapped at to catch them. After several more guests die (with one done as a HeroicSacrifice to save the cop), they finally resolve to get serious, arm up with as much armor and weaponry they can get their hands on, and hunt the killer down. They then die immediately after their LockAndLoadMontage to one of the killer's traps.

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* ''TabletopGame/OnlyWar'' has a flavor text quote that uses this trope:
-->''This ain't training, trooper, this is the real thing. Those are real bullets and real bombs. This is war. If you want to make it through the next few hours alive, you better do exactly as I say and exactly as I do.''
--->-- '''Sargent Rince Klebb, Baraspian 3rd Rifles, [[TheWorldsExpertOnGettingKilled shortly before being devoured by a xenos horror]]'''
[[/folder]]

[[folder:TapletopGames]]
* ''TapletopGame/OnlyWar'' has a flavor text quote that uses this trope:

* ''LightNovel/HeavyObject'': Qwenthur and Havia's mission with Background Unit begins with an experienced, hardass female officer lecturing the soldiers on their objectives and how half of them are likely to die. She's killed in the first enemy salvo.

* The kung fu movie, ''Film/FlagOfIron'' have a legion of expert killers and assassins, with awesome nicknames like "The Butcher", "Iron Abacus", "Crimson Eagle" and the like, sent to challenge the protagonist, Iron Monkey. They all die in their first battle against him.

** Robert Muldoon from ''Film/JurassicPark'' "knows more about Raptors than anyone" ... but is pretty quickly and easily dispatched by the raptors once they're loose when they use their standard attack pattern. In the book, it's Hammond instead, and Muldoon survives the experience after shooting the T-Rex with a giant tranquilizer dart, blowing at least one raptor in half with a rocket launcher and still continuing to be an untouchable badass even after he finally gets so drunk he can barely stand.
** ''Film/TheLostWorldJurassicPark'' with Dr. Sarah Harding. She's supposedly an animal behavior expert yet makes mistakes that endanger her life and get others around her killed. Most egregious is when she walks through the jungle wearing a jacket stained with blood from the injured baby T-rex she helped mend. Not only does this lead the parents right to her group, but she only realizes her error when she sees the jacket hanging in her tent...right before one of the rexes pokes it head in. The fact that the rex lifts its head up toward the jacket with the tent covering its eyes is the only reason she isn't instantly killed and this leads to the hunters with her being killed instead.[[note]] For whatever reason someone decided to combine her character with the novel’s resident [[TheLoad useless team member]] Richard Levine. Novel Sarah Harding is a complete 180 from her film incarnation, being a competent badass who managed to get the villain into the T-Rex’s jaws as revenge for trying to kill her by throwing her off the ship.[[/note]] Also, there's the paleontologist of Ludlow's team, who gets scared by a harmless little snake behind the waterfall and flees in a panic, only to get eaten by the adult T-rex.
* Carson Wells from ''Film/NoCountryForOldMen'' is a professional hitman of some sort who is the most familiar with the crazed killer Anton Chigurh. Chigurh doesn't even break a sweat in catching up with him. The military veteran, though un-initiated Llewelyn, is much more problematic for Chigurh.
* Major Valentina Koslova from ''Film/TheJackal'' is assigned to help Preston and Mulqueen track down the title assassin, bringing with her all her useful knowledge about the villain. Still, her confrontation with him doesn't last long.
* Charles Remington in ''Film/TheGhostAndTheDarkness'' is the world's authority on man-eating lions, and how to make them dead. After slaying one of them [[TooDumbToLive he gets drunk celebrating with the others]], then is later dragged from his tent and killed by the other lion.
** Mahina, earlier in the film. A physically powerful man who once killed a lion with his bare hands, he is the first victim of the Tsavo maneaters.
* ''Film/{{Jaws}}''
** Quint from the first ''Film/{{Jaws}}'' movie talked a good game but didn't last very long once he actually met the shark. However, both he and Hooper imply that they had never seen a shark like this before. Also, in all fairness, they'd been waiting and drinking for hours, so it's also clear that Quint is pretty hammered by the time the shark shows up.
** Phillip Fitzroyce, from the ''Film/Jaws3D'', is described as a skilled hunter and naturalist who has every confidence he can take down the killer shark that is threatening the movie's fictionalized Sea World park. He lasts about five minutes against the beast.
* The entomologist who knows all about the killer spiders of the movie ''Film/{{Arachnophobia}}'' goes down like a RedShirt. Perhaps a little more acceptable than most examples because he's a scientist, not a hunter or exterminator, but he still wasn't very careful despite knowing how dangerous the spiders were.
* Four Jedi Knights set out to arrest Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious in ''Franchise/StarWars Episode III: Film/RevengeOfTheSith''. They're led by Jedi Master Mace Windu, who had just then been warned by Anakin that Palpatine was a Sith Lord, so there's no excuse for being taken by surprise. And yet Sidious takes them by surprise. Two Jedi ''don't even parry a single slash from Sidious's lightsaber'' before immediately dying, and one more gets in a few blocks before being felled. Only Mace Windu survives long enough to offer a decent lightsaber battle, and might even have won if Anakin hadn't intervened.
* ''Franchise/{{Predator}}'' franchise:
** ''Film/{{Predator 2}}'' has an elite alien-hunting squad tracking and studying the Predator, but they get slaughtered when they try to capture it. Their study didn't cover the multiple filter Predators have when they hunt cold-blooded game.[[note]] This is still a justified trope as there’s no way they could have known about the multi filter function of the mask.[[/note]]

* Played for (dark) laughs in ''Film/{{Feast}}'', where "Hero", the badass-looking character who bursts onto the scene and actually seems to know what's going on, gets eaten by the creatures within seconds of his first appearance. Then his wife, Heroine, shows up and dies halfway through the film.
* Played for laughs in ''Film/ClubDread'', when the battle-toughened security chief gets offed mid-speech.
* Invoked/justified in the case of Luca Brasi, the Corleones' top hitman in ''Film/TheGodfather''. He doesn't survive his first onscreen encounter with armed opponents and ends up sleeping with the fishes. This was because his killers knew his reputation and didn't even try to take him in a straight-up fight. Instead, they opted to get him InTheBack with a garrote while pinning his hand to a bar with a knife to keep him immobilized. The book takes this a step further by emphasizing that the murder took place in what was considered a TruceZone:
-->'''Tom Hagen:''' By the way, we got the confirmation on Luca. They killed him the night before they shot your father. In Bruno's nightclub. Imagine that?
-->'''Michael Corleone:''' No wonder they caught him off guard.
* Spoofed in the B-Movie ''Film/{{Alligator}}'' with its arrogant, sexist, self-proclaimed “GreatWhiteHunter” being killed by the alligator when he tries to get a random kid he dragged along with him to snap a photo of him with the beast before he’s even killed the damn thing. Same thing happens to [[SequelEscalation an entire family of such characters]] in the sequel.
* PlayedForLaughs in the ''Film/{{Coneheads}}'' movie. As Dan Aykroyd is about to be executed by being forced to fight a Rancor-like creature, the prisoner before him says that he's used his years of imprisonment to study footage of the creature, determine a weak spot where he can strike, and trained until he's positive he can slay the beast. When it's his turn, he goes off confidently to victory and ''immediately'' gets his head ripped off.

* Happens towards the end in ''Film/SpyKids3DGameOver'' where a teen comes in who calls himself [[TheChosenOne "The Guy"]]. He enters the last level before the others do. You'd think a video game expert would last long, [[OneHitKill but one hit]] [[InstantDeathBullet and all 100 hit points he had were]] ''[[CurbStompBattle gone]]''.
* This happens in ''Film/{{Nighthawks}}'' when the heroes' trainer is ambushed by the villain's sidekick.
* In ''Film/TheGoonies'', the kids discover the bones of treasure hunter Chester Copperpot, who was apparently killed by the very first pirate booby trap he encountered. Rather than be horrified and turn back, the kids manage to use it as inspiration that they've made it farther than the expert.
* ''Film/PacificRim'':
** Hannibal Chau, a man who deals in {{Kaiju}} organs, is killed by a baby Kaiju moments after confidently declaring that it was dead. Subverted, however, in that he turns out to be alive in TheStinger.
** The Chinese and Russian Jaegers and their crew also count. For all their InformedAbility as highly skilled, their on-screen performance is abysmal. They're tasked with defending against two Kaiju, but the Chinese are killed and the Russian's crippled by just one Kaiju, the second one only needed to squash their HopeSpot. In their defense, they put up a decent fight, and these are the biggest kaiju seen to date. It's also implied that the human scientist attempting to drift with the kaiju in the previous scene allowed the kaiju HiveMind to see how the Jaegers work and how to counter them.
* At the beginning of ''Film/WorldWarZ'', a young scientist fresh out of college believes he knows what's responsible for the zombie outbreak. During the first zombie attack, the scientist panics and falls on top of his gun, killing himself. This leaves Brad Pitt's reporter character to find the solution.
* In the first ''Film/{{Cube}}'', the group of people trapped in the death maze is quickly joined by Rennes aka "The Wren", a notorious escape artist who has gotten out of six different prisons around the world. He introduces the idea of checking trapped rooms by throwing their boots in, advises the others to focus only on getting out [[AHouseDivided lest they turn on each other]], and promises to get them all out of there if they can keep up. He dies minutes after being introduced due to a molecular-chemical sensor he didn't notice.
* In ''Film/ChernobylDiaries'', Uri, the extreme tour guide and grizzled veteran, is the first person killed after going out of the car alone at night.
* In ''Film/FridayThe13thTheFinalChapter'', an older brother of one of Jason's victims has been tracking him since his sister's death, seeming to set him up as the big hero who will finally put an end to Jason's rampage. In a NegatedMomentOfAwesome combined with a bit of {{Narm}}, [[DecoyProtagonist Jason kills him]] in an [[AntiClimax anti-climatic fashion]] while he screams "[[CaptainObvious He's killing me! He's killing me!]]".
* In ''Film/TheDarkKnightRises'', after Bane takes over Gotham City, some Special Forces operatives who are experts on terrorist and hostage situations are brought in to stop him. They are killed off a couple of scenes later with ease.
* Despite getting top billing in ''Film/ExecutiveDecision'', special forces operative Creator/StevenSeagal makes a SacrificialLion play at the very beginning of his team's mission to make sure it succeeds, making civilian specialist Creator/KurtRussell carry the rest of the narrative.

* ''Film/FreaksOfNature'': When vampires and zombies are rampaging across the town of Dillford, Dag and his girlfriend Lorelei are rescued by a college teacher who is revealed to be a badass fighter and quickly dispatches vampires in his introduction. He proceeds to get devoured by zombies since he doesn't know how to fight them.
* ''Film/IntoTheForest'': The family father has all of the practical skills and knowledge, but he gets killed in the first act, leaving his daughters to fend for themselves during the BigBlackout.
* In ''Film/EscapeRoom2019'', Danny, one of the nerds of the group, brags about being a puzzle room expert who cleared over 90 live puzzles, including all the popular ones. During the movie, he refuses to believe him and the other members of the group are in danger, despite growing evidence that they are, until he falls through a sheet of ice during the second puzzle room and becomes the group's first casualty.
* ''Film/EnemyAtTheGates'': Kulikov is brought in as a new partner for Vasily to help take down Konig as he was actually trained by Konig himself and knows how he operates. Konig instinctively realizes that he's being lured into a trap and kills Kulikov during his first mission with Vasily.
* Surprisingly subverted in ''Film/KillerCrocodile'', where the resident [[Film/{{Jaws}} Quint]] {{Expy}} survives his apparent death and shows up at the climax to help the protagonists kill the mutant crocodile.
* In ''Film/KingCobra1999'', the herpetologist brought in to catch the titular giant snake [[AcquiredPoisonImmunity injects himself with snake venom to make himself immune to the snake’s bite]]. It works the first time, but he dies after being bitten multiple times by the snake and fighting it in hand-to-hand combat.
* ''Film/Tremors4TheLegendBegins'' has "Black Hand" Kelly, noted to be one of the greatest gunfighters in the land, who gets hired by the people of Rejection to clear out the "dirt dragons" infesting the silver mine. Unfortunately, by the time he actually arrives to do the deed, the "dirt dragons" have since evolved into much more dangerous graboids, and he gets killed easily.

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

* ''Series/DoctorWho'' examples:
** In "Aliens of London", during an alien crash landing in public, the world's greatest experts on aliens were called together -- only for it to turn out to be a trap to kill them all. {{Subverted}}, since the Doctor was one of them, and survived thanks to his BizarreAlienBiology.
** The Torchwood Institute, which is supposed to be Earth's best defense against aliens, keeps getting completely wiped out by them. ''Children of Earth'' has a particularly nasty example: after much fuss from Torchwood and its allies about letting the alien experts do their job, Jack and Ianto charge in and threaten the aliens... with ''no plan at all''. It goes exactly how you'd expect.

* ''Series/TheXFiles'': In the episode "First Person Shooter", the owner of the VR game brings in [[InformedAbility "world-renowned hacker"]] Daryl Musashi that even the Lone Gunman drool over like fanboys. The game AI murders him by cutting off his hands and head before he fires his first shot.

* In ''[[VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin]]'', Snake Fist[=/=]Terry Halford is your best chance of bringing down Alma. Which results in [[SurprisinglySuddenDeath an Assassin ripping his head off]] seconds after you meet him.
* In ''VideoGame/TheWitcher'', Raymond Maarloeve, a private eye motivated by the death of his family at the hands of the organization known as Salamandra, had amassed information on the group and its head, Azar Javed, with the hopes of bringing them down. Raymond decides to aid the protagonist, Geralt, in dismantling Salamandra. The endeavor doesn't end well for him, despite Geralt successfully defending him from Salamandra's initial backlash.
** Azar Javed himself kills Maarloeve and begins impersonating him using magic, which Geralt may or may not discover early on, depending on the player's actions.

-->'''Tomasso di Viterbo:''' The assassin will not appear in front of you. The assassin will come out of the shadows [[KilledMidSentence and--]]
-->'''Ezio:''' (''rushes on foot right up to Viterbo's side, pulls him leg first off of the saddle and stabs him through the throat with the Hidden Blade as he lands'')

* In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots'', the Metal Gear RAY, which was specifically built as a counter to the Metal Gear REX models being built by the other countries, is destroyed by none other than the (half-demolished but operational) original Metal Gear REX.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Exile}}[=/=]VideoGame/{{Avernum}} 3'', the first expedition to the surface is composed of hand-picked and trained members of the underworld's military and equipped with items personally made by a brilliant (if profoundly weird) archmage, and end up dead in various corners of TheEmpire within a few months. Your band of adventurers, with standard military equipment and limited support, saves the world.
* In the first mission of ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'', Shepard is supervised by an elite Spectre named Nihlus. He's killed by [[BigBad Saren]] when he had his back turned halfway through the mission. Justified in that Saren is Nihlus's old friend and former mentor (thus, someone that Nihlus implicitly trusts) who, unbeknownst to Nihlus, has recently made an off-screen FaceHeelTurn.
* In ''VideoGame/TombRaider2013'', [[{{Jerkass}} Dr. James Whitman]] is the leading archeologist on the ''Endurance'' expedition to Yamatai, and boasts that he has two [=PhDs=], one of them in East Asian mythology, while [[TheHero Lara]] herself is basically an inexperienced student. However, it's made pretty clear through the game that [[KnowNothingKnowItAll Lara's the one who actually knows what she's doing]]. Whitman eventually [[TooDumbToLive gets himself stupidly killed]] trying to strike up a conversation with two undead samurai guardians, ''in English'' - the only Japanese word he knows is the one for "queen", which triggers the fanatical guards and they chop him to pieces.
* ''VideoGame/UntilDawn'' has the Stranger, also known as [[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep Flamethrower Guy]]. Despite having hunted the Wendigos for decades and actually having managed to largely defeat them, after one cutscene explaining Wendigos to most of the cast and a conversation with Chris explaining a bit more about them, he gets killed in his very next fight with them (likely due to keeping his eye more on Chris’s safety than on his immediate surroundings, as [[IWorkAlone he’s always hunted by himself]]). The cast finds out anything else they need to know from a book found in his belongings at the lodge.
** Another reason he goes down might be that the Wendigo that killed him acts in ways that contradicts his explanations for how they hunt.[[note]]Attacking to kill straight away, rather than dragging him away and slowly devouring him piece by piece. The same Wendigo is later shown fighting the others, cementing it as one that doesn't play by the rules.[[/note]]
* ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'': The entire order of Grey Wardens in Ferelden, many of them with decades of experience of fighting darkspawn, goes to Ostagar to stop the Blight. They are all killed off in the prologue, among them the mentor, leaving just the two newest recruits to succeed where they failed. Though to be fair, the Wardens were betrayed by an ally, who took it on himself to withdraw his forces from the battle rather than uphold his part in it, leading to the annihilation of ''the entire army'' (including the King, who was also his ''son-in-law'') that was fighting alongside them.
* In the ''VideoGame/HalfLife'' chapter "We've Got Hostiles!", a friendly NPC scientist you meet shouts, "Follow me! I'm the one person who knows what's going on!" He is then immediately gunned down by hostile soldiers.
* In ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'', the Vigilants of Stendarr are specialized in hunting down Daedra worshipers and Daedric creatures. However, when the vampires (who were warped into their state by the Daedric Prince Molag Bal) start going on the offensive, they're slaughtered and their main base of operations, the Hall of the Vigilant, is razed. Oftentimes, you will find groups of vampires posing as Vigilants after having murdered the actual Vigilants and taken their clothes. However, [[SubvertedTrope the foremost expert on vampires among them, who left the Vigilants to reform the Dawnguard, does much better]]. He '''can''' get killed, but only if [[OneManArmy The Dragonborn]] joins the Volkihar vampires, and not at the very start of the quest chain.
* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarIV'' has Alys, a female bounty hunter who is famous worldwide for being a great warrior and always getting her target. Along with her young partner Chaz, who is still a rookie and inexperienced, Alys is made aware of a great evil threat and sets out to stop it. This eventually leads them to their first encounter with dark sorcerer Zio, in which he fires a dark wave attack fatally wounding Alys who dies from it days later, leaving Chaz to get revenge and stop the evil threat.
* ''VideoGame/FarCryNewDawn'' begins with a group of beleaguered survivors of the nuclear apocalypse calling in a guy named Thomas Rush, a former soldier who's made a name for himself wiping out bandits and rebuilding civilization across the US. Rush agrees to help and brings his army with him to Hope County, but his arrival is so pompous that the Highwaymen he's supposed to defeat immediately ambush his train, kill almost everyone and take him hostage. Once [[PlayerCharacter the Captain]] frees him, Rush briefly leads the defense of the survivors' home base (which also gets a lot of people killed), then leaves for some scouting and... gets himself captured. Again. Then he gets unceremoniously killed via BoomHeadshot with a shotgun, and the Captain's attempt to rescue him again almost gets them killed, too. The only actually helpful thing he does in the whole game is pulling the Captain (his NumberTwo, mind) from the wreckage of his train, and that's literally the very first thing he does, in the very first cutscene, which also makes this a very weird example of CutscenePowerToTheMax.
* ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaV3KillingHarmony'' has Rantaro Amami, who earned the title of Ultimate Survivor for surviving a past Killing Game, only to be the first person murdered in the current Killing Game. In a twist, it's only revealed that he was the World's Expert on Getting Killed long after his death.

[[folder:ComicBooks]]

[[folder:Film]]

* Russell Franklin from ''Film/DeepBlueSea''. The movie is about a team of scientists and assorted staff members trying to survive a flooded science station infested with killer mind-enhanced sharks. Fortunately, Russell Franklin is well prepared for this situation, as he has survived a similar dire life-threatening incident before when he was stranded on top of a mountain range. Unfortunately, [[NegatedMomentOfAwesome he is ripped apart by sharks right as he's giving a big speech telling everyone how to handle their predicament]]. On the other hand, the ActionHero who actually ''works'' with these sharks on a daily basis survives to the end of the film, in no small part ''because'' of said expertise.

* Russell Franklin from ''Film/DeepBlueSea''. The movie is about a team of scientists and assorted staff members trying to survive a flooded science station infested with killer mind-enhanced sharks. Fortunately, Russell Franklin is well prepared for this situation, as he has survived a similar dire life-threatening incident before when he was stranded on top of a mountain range. Unfortunately, [[NegatedMomentOfAwesome he is ripped apart by sharks right as he's giving a big speech telling everyone how to handle their predicament]].

* Charles Remington in ''Film/TheGhostAndTheDarkness'' is the world's authority on man-eating lions, and how to make them dead. One of the lions takes him in his sleep, it seems.

''Franchise/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'': In ''The Deathless'', newly turned vampire Katherine heavily researched Slayers during the years she spent as a VampireVannabe, and is actually happy to be fighting two Slayers at once due to arrogantly thinking that she can win and establish good VillainCred. She is clever about removing the evidence of her rise from the grave and she has some good fighting moves, but she ends up desperately running for her life before the Slayers catch and stake her.
* ''Literature/HarryPotter'': [[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheHalfBloodPrince Book 6]]; Dumbledore, an expert in magic and Voldemort, gets himself cursed by making a foolish move while retrieving Voldemort's ring horcrux. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] by the fact that, by his own admission, his desperation to see his lost family and beg their forgiveness clouded his judgment.
** Mad-Eye Moody in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows''. He is described as a master duelist and an expert in fighting Dark Wizards but is killed personally by [[BigBad Voldemort]] while escorting Harry to a safehouse. This is also somewhat justified, however, considering that Moody [[LetsSplitUpGang was acting as one of several decoys]] and was [[HeroicSacrifice fully aware that his reputation all but guaranteed he would be the first one targeted]].
*** ''Avada Kedavra'' is unblockable through spellwork, so he could only have survived if he dodged it or conjured a barrier. Considering Mundungus Fletcher disapparated, distracting him and probably throwing his broom off-balance, it's not likely he was able to.
** Gilderoy Lockhart is a parody of this trope. He's amazing. A genius. He's defeated evil monster after evil monster--and his written works on how he did it have made him famous. Oddly enough, he seems rather hesitant to do anything in real life. Turns out that he's not an expert at all, [[FakeUltimateHero but a total fake]]. He's been stealing the defeats of evil monsters off other people, and [[LaserGuidedAmnesia erasing their memories]], that being the ''one'' form of magic he has any talent for at all.
** What about Quirrell? He knows all about the theory of defensive magic, but the one time that he goes off to try to fight the dark side, he comes home possessed by Voldemort.
*** In ''Order of the Phoenix'', it's shown that theory of defensive magic is much less effective than having a hands-on learning experience, [[FridgeBrilliance so it just goes to show how actually having experience is much more useful than simply knowing theory.]]

** ''Film/TheLostWorldJurassicPark'' with Dr. Sarah Harding. She's supposedly an animal behavior expert yet makes mistakes that endanger her life and get others around her killed. Most egregious is when she walks through the jungle wearing a jacket stained with blood from the injured baby T-rex she helped mend. Not only does this lead the parents right to her group, but she only realizes her error when she sees the jacket hanging in her tent...right before one of the rexes pokes it head in. The fact that the rex lifts its head up toward the jacket with the tent covering its eyes is the only reason she isn't instantly killed and this leads to the hunters with her being killed instead. Also, there's the paleontologist of Ludlow's team, who gets scared by a harmless little snake behind the waterfall and flees in a panic, only to get eaten by the adult T-rex.

* Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' "[[WesternAnimation/TreehouseOfHorror Treehouse of Horror VII]]", when dolphins were plotting to recapture the land. The Sea Captain monologues about how he's the only one who knows how to stop them and is KilledMidSentence.

* In the Season 3 finale of ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'', Ahsoka is kidnapped by Trandoshan sporthunters and is released on an island on a jungle moon, as prey. There she encounters three Jedi younglings, led by a girl named Kalifa. It's stated that Kalifa has been held there for the longest time, and has out-lived other Padawans, despite being only a youngling herself. She even told the older and better-trained Ahsoka, to her face, that she had the experience in surviving the hunt. Naturally, Kalifa is killed soon after Ahsoka's arrival. Subverted in that, she was an expert in hiding from and avoiding the Trandoshans as much as possible. She only died after Ahsoka convinced them to go on the offensive, and they were ambushed while scouting the Trandoshan's base.

* In the Season 2 premiere of ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' when zombies attack the Mystery Shack, Soos says he's been preparing for this moment all his life... only to immediately get bitten. He gets turned back at the end.
** He turns the trope on its head as a zombie, however, knowing every trick in the book to keep zombies out and using tools to defeat the defenses of the Mystery Shack, significantly increasing the pressure on Stan and the twins.

->''"I thought you said I was 'too boring' to be the killer? Maybe I was the twist. What do you think, huh? You're the expert. You know what eventually happens to the expert?" [Does a throat cut motion]''
-->-- '''Liv [=McKenzie=]''', ''Film/{{Scream 2022}}''

* The Anti-BM unit in ''Manga/{{BioMeat|Nectar}}'' gets eaten mere moments after reaching the infested building. [[TooDumbToLive Would it hurt them to put those fancy suits on BEFORE leaving the chopper?]]

** The Torchwood Institute, which is supposed to be Earth's best defense against aliens, keeps getting completely wiped out by them. ''Children of Earth'' has a particularly nasty example: after much fuss from Torchwood and its allies about letting the alien experts do their job, Jack and Ianto charge in and threaten the aliens... with ''no plan at all''. It goes [[KillEmAll exactly how you'd expect]].

** ''Film/{{Predator 2}}'' has an elite alien-hunting squad tracking and studying the Predator, but they get slaughtered when they try to capture it. Their study didn't cover the multiple filter Predators have when they hunt cold-blooded game.

* ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'': The Survey Corps are essentially an entire ''army'' of this trope. Notable examples include: Dita Ness, Armin's squad leader during the 57th expedition and the Female Titan's first victim; the entire [[spoiler:Spec Ops squad; Mike Zacharius,]] the in-universe [[WorldsStrongestMan World's]] [[AlwaysSomeoneBetter SECOND]] [[WorldsStrongestMan Strongest Man]] [[spoiler:who's totally unprepared for the Beast Titan;]] and his squad, killed while protecting the unarmed 104th at Castle Utgard.

* Four Jedi Knights set out to arrest Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious in ''Star Wars III: Film/RevengeOfTheSith''. They're led by Jedi Master Mace Windu, who had just then been warned by Anakin that Palpatine was a Sith Lord, so there's no excuse for being taken by surprise. And yet Sidious takes them by surprise. Two Jedi ''don't even parry a single slash from Sidious's lightsaber'' before immediately dying, and one more gets in a few blocks before being felled. Only Mace Windu survives long enough to offer a decent lightsaber battle [[spoiler: and might even have won if Anakin hadn't intervened]]. Windu is not this trope. The other three Jedi are.

* In ''Film/KingCobra1999'', the herpetologist brought in to catch the titular giant snake [[AcquiredPoisonImmunity injects himself with snake venom to make himself immune to the snake’s bite]]. It works the first time, but he does after being bitten multiple times by the snake and fighting it in hand-to-hand combat.

** What about Quirrell? He knows all about the theory of defensive magic, but the one time that he goes off to try to fight the dark side, he comes home [[spoiler:possessed by Voldemort]].

* ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaV3KillingHarmony'' has Rantaro Amami, who [[spoiler:earned the title of Ultimate Survivor for surviving a past Killing Game]], only to be the first person murdered in the current Killing Game. In a twist, it's only revealed that he was the World's Expert on Getting Killed long after his death.

* In Creator/RoosterTeeth's murder mystery ''WebVideo/TenLittleRoosters'', [[spoiler:Burnie]] reveals themselves to be an [[UndercoverCopReveal undercover cop]] who has been tracking the serial killer for years and specifically arranged the banquet they are all trapped at to catch them. After several more guests die (with one done as a HeroicSacrifice to save the cop), they finally resolve to get serious, arm up with as much armor and weaponry they can get their hands on, and hunt the killer down. They then die immediately after their LockAndLoadMontage to one of the killer's traps.

* Robert Muldoon from ''Film/JurassicPark'' "knows more about Raptors than anyone" ... but is pretty quickly and easily dispatched by the raptors once they're loose when they use their standard attack pattern. In the book, it's Hammond instead, and Muldoon survives the experience after shooting the T-Rex with a giant tranquilizer dart, blowing at least one raptor in half with a rocket launcher and still continuing to be an untouchable badass even after he finally gets so drunk he can barely stand.
* ''Film/TheLostWorldJurassicPark'' with Dr. Sarah Harding. She's supposedly an animal behavior expert yet makes mistakes that endanger her life and get others around her killed. Most egregious is when she walks through the jungle wearing a jacket stained with blood from the injured baby T-rex she helped mend. Not only does this lead the parents right to her group, but she only realizes her error when she sees the jacket hanging in her tent...right before one of the rexes pokes it head in. The fact that the rex lifts its head up toward the jacket with the tent covering its eyes is the only reason she isn't instantly killed and this leads to the hunters with her being killed instead.

Unfortunately for them, [[DecoyProtagonist they're not the hero of the story]] and hence cannot rely on PlotArmor. Even more unfortunate, they're just useful enough to the hero that their death will make our heroes even more vulnerable, and their plight more dramatic. Worse still, since they're the expert on The Threat, their death by the Threat will augment the advantage the villain has over the heroes -- after all, if this Expert couldn't win against them, what shot do our non-Expert main heroes have?

->"I thought you said I was 'too boring' to be the killer? Maybe I was the twist. What do you think, huh? You're the expert. You know what eventually happens to the expert?" ''[Does a throat cut motion]''
-->'''Liv [=McKenzie=]''', ''Film/{{Scream 2022}}''

-->'''Liv [=McKenzie=]''', ''Film/{{Scream2022}}''

-->'''Liv [-McKenzie-]''', ''Film/Scream2022''

->'''[[Film/Scream2022 Liv McKenzie]]''' : I thought you said I was 'too boring' to be the killer? Maybe I was the twist. What do you think, huh? You're the expert. You know what eventually happens to the expert?

-> ''[Does a throat cut motion]''

->'''[[Scream2022 Liv McKenzie]]''' : I thought you said I was 'too boring' to be the killer? Maybe I was the twist. What do you think, huh? You're the expert. You know what eventually happens to the expert?

->''"This ain't training, trooper, this is the real thing. Those are real bullets and real bombs. This is war. If you want to make it through the next few hours alive, you better do exactly as I say and exactly as I do."''
-->-- '''[[TabletopGame/OnlyWar Sergeant Rince Klebb, Baraspian 3rd Rifles]]''', shortly before being devoured by a xenos horror

* In ''Film/EscapeRoom'', Danny, one of the nerds of the group, brags about being a puzzle room expert who cleared over 90 live puzzles, including all the popular ones. During the movie, he refuses to believe him and the other members of the group are in danger, despite growing evidence that they are, until he falls through a sheet of ice during the second puzzle room and becomes the group's first casualty.

* Surprisingly subverted in ''Killer Crocodile'', where the resident [[Film/{{Jaws}} Quint]] {{Expy}} survives his apparent death and shows up at the climax to help the protagonists kill the mutant crocodile.