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Hercules: That'll leave a stink. Icarus: Stop it, no one likes a mocker. Hercules: But that's how secret agents talk!
Starsky: Looks like you just punched your last ticket, amigo.
Hutch: I'm sorry, did you just tough-talk a dead body?
— Starsky & Hutch, (2004)
When the hero has just killed someone, often in a gruesome manner, they do a Bond One Liner.
James Bond does this in every one of his films.
The classic Bond One Liner is typically a bad pun on the manner in which the victim was dispatched. It may be a sign that the character has sociopathic tendencies.
Examples:
- (After making a curve on the road while the chaser (a black station wagon looking like a coffin carrier) doesn't make the same curve and crashes, leading to what looks like a funeral pyre) "I think they were on their way to a funeral."
- (After decapitating someone) "He really lost his head."
- (After disemboweling someone) "I'll say this for him: he had a lot of guts."
- (After forcing a grenade down someone's throat) "Something he ate disagreed with him."
- (After throwing someone to a shark) "He disagreed with something that ate him."
- (After tethering someone to a rocket) "He got rather carried away."
- (After killing someone with ninja throwing stars) "It just wasn't in the stars for him."
- (After shooting someone with a harpoon) "I think he got the point."
- (After shooting someone with a hunting rifle) "Thank you for playing The Most Dangerous Game."
- (After throwing someone out a plate glass window) "Smashing."
- (After throwing an electric heater into someone's filled bathtub) "Shocking."
- (After throwing someone into a piranha pool) "Bon appetit."
- (After ripping someone's heart out) "I always knew you were heartless!"
- (After putting a hapless Mook through an interrogation that would make Jack Bauer proud, finding out that there's only 15 mooks in the building total, and shooting the mook in the head) "You mean fourteen?"
- (After slicing off someone's arms with a circular saw, dunking their legs in liquid nitrogen, incinerating their torso with a flamethrower, kicking their charred body into a refrigerator and condemning them to the bottom of the Arctic ocean) "Ouch."
Note that while William Peterson's one liners on CSI, David Caruso's one liners on the Miami sister show and Jerry Orbach's on Law And Order are often similar in content, they fail the test for this trope, as Grissom and Briscoe were never the killers, only snarkers. But see: Grissom One Liner.
Also, when said before killing, it's a Pre Mortem One Liner.
Examples:
Comics
Film
- Of course, the James Bond movies have used every variation of these, but one of the most memorable is in The World Is Not Enough. The villain Bond is dispatching is a former lover, and she tries to convince him not to do it with "You wouldn't kill me. You'd miss me". Bond's ice-cold reply after shooting her? "I never miss".
- Every movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger in it, except possibly Junior. For example, "Consider that a divorce" after putting a bullet through the head of Sharon Stone (when she says, "You wouldn't kill me, I'm your wife," while grabbing a knife and preparing to stab him) in Total Recall.
- Also from Total Recall: "Hey Benny... Screw you!" *kills Benny the mutant with a drill*
- One of the expansion packs for Red Alert included Tesla Troopers who made oneliners in a Arnie-style Austrian accent. "Shocking."
- Oh, come on. "Let off some steam, Bennet", anyone? Corny and phallic.
- Pound for pound, Commando takes the cake: "Remember how I said I'd kill you last?...I lied." (After dropping Sully off a cliff): "I had to let him go." "Please don't wake my friend, he's dead tired." "I eat Green Berets for breakfast, and right now I'm very hungry." (Arnold's old commander shows up with the cavalry and asks if there's anything left for them): "Only bodies."
- Eraser has him shoot a rampaging alligator (don't ask) and utter the immortal line "You're luggage!" as he shoots it.
- Also in Eraser, he parks the limo containing the celebrating Corrupt Corporate Executives on a set of train tracks just as the train is coming. When he gets back to his allies, he tells them "They caught a train."
- In Predator he puts a big ol' knife into a terrorist and tells him to "Stick around!"
- The Running Man alone could provide a career's worth of these. "First he was Sub Zero, now he's just plain Zero!" *cuts a man in half* "He had to split!" *after defeating Firebal with his own methods* "Need a light?"
- Frequently spoofed on Late Night with Conan O'Brien: the fake Arnold will describe ludicrous scenarios and his "witty" one-liners, such as claiming he beat up an earthquake and then said "Let's get ready to not rumble."
- No mention Last Action Hero? (After shooting a bad guy that was chasing him with an Ice Cream Truck, Arnold said, "Iced that guy. To cone a phrase".
- "SEE YOU AT THE PARTY RICHTER!!!!"" *Tosses severed arms off lift*
- Parodied in the Austin Powers films, where Austin uses one of these after another until told to stop. He usually even admits he went a little too far when so admonished.
- A bit of Lampshade Hanging takes place in Hot Fuzz during the following exchange:
Danny Butterman: How's Lurch?
Nicholas Angel: He's in the freezer.
Danny Butterman: Did you say "Cool off"?
Nicholas Angel: Er, no, I didn't say anything actually.
Danny Butterman: Shame.
Nicholas Angel: There was a bit you missed earlier, when I distracted him with a cuddly monkey, and I said, "Playtime's over" and I hit him with the Peace Lily.
Danny Butterman: You're off the fucking chain!
- The movie Speed has Keanu Reeves' character battling Dennis Hopper's Big Bad on top of a speeding subway train. Hopper has the advantage, battering Reeves around and strangling him while talking about winning because he's "smarter". Reeves then pushes his head upwards as a low-hanging light comes up, cleaving the villain's head right off. He then utters the line "Yeah? Well I'm taller!". Later, after rejoining his companion who asks where the villain is, he simply replies "He lost his head."
- It took this troper an embarrassingly long time to get that the "I'm taller" line was a Bond One-Liner. Keanu Reeves is all ready several inches taller than Dennis Hopper.
- In Universal Soldier, Dolph Lundgren's character gets shoved into a wood-chipper at the end of the climactic battle. When Van Damme's character is asked where he is, he simply shrugs and says: "Around."
- Shoot Em Up is filled with Smith, the main character, muttering about things he hates—guys over 40 with ponytails ("It doesn't make you look younger"), drivers who don't obey road rules ("Is it really so important that you get where you're going that much faster?"), and so on. The main bad guy, meanwhile, is clearly someone who feels empowered by his weapon, but is notably timid without it or when it's useless (such as when speaking with his wife)—even as he denies, as a supporting villain obliquely alleges, that he's a "pussy with a gun". At the end of the film, after Smith kills the man who's dogged him all the way through the movie, he reveals the thing he hates most: A pussy with a gun.
- Suprisingly enough, the 2008 Speed Racer film contains THE GREATEST ONE LINER IN ALL OF FICTION.
Pops has just downed a ninja, in runs mom and Trixie
Trixie: Oh my god, was that a ninja?
Pops More like a non-ja.
- The Untouchables: Eliot Ness throws Frank Nitti off a rooftop onto a car; a few minutes later:
George Stone: Where is Nitti?
Ness: He's in the car.
- Brother Gilbert gets off a few Bible-based examples in Dragonheart.
- Played with in Lethal Weapon 2 when Murtaugh is attacked by an assassin in his home. The fight rolls into the garage where Roger picks up (you guessed it) a nail gun. However, after slaying the assassin, he averts the trope by remaining silent. Then another assassin shows up who is similarly dispatched. He then subverts the aversion with, "Nailed you both."
- There are a few of them appearing in TMNT, eventually leading to this conversation after a character has taken a fall:
April: Winters?
Michaelangelo: Looks more like fall. Get it?
Leonardo: Mikey, remember our talk?
- Hudson Hawk has a few of these as well. The butler gives the Corrupt Cop his "cut" via blades in his sleeves. Later, Hawk decapitates said butler and remarks "Guess you won't be going to that hat convention, Alfred!"
- Hellboy, after killing the first Sammael with the third rail of the New York Subway System: "I'm fireproof. [lights a cigar with his still-burning hand] You're not."
- Completely averted in Cobra, at the end of the film. Stallone's character, Cobretti has just impaled the Night Slasher on a hook that eventually carries him into a furnace where the villain burns to death. Considering all the crap this guy has put Cobretti through by this point, it's quite surprising to find that he says absolutely nothing, just watches in silence.
- Parodied in (what else?) Dogma. Bartleby and Loki are intimidating a board of directors, and one of them reaches for the phone to contact security. Loki hurls a switchblade that impales the phone:
Loki: (heavily) All lines ... are currently down.
Bartleby: Will you please cut that out—
Loki: Oh, come on! That was great!
- And although it's not really a Bond One Liner as such, this one from the end of Blade always appealed to this troper: "Some motherfuckers are always tryin' to iceskate uphill."
- Optimus Prime gets one in during Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. In the grand finale, after thoroughly wrecking The Fallen and dropping his corpse to the ground, he quips "I rise...you fall." Not really much of a pun on the way he dispatched The Fallen, but rather a pun on the name "The Fallen". His earlier cry of "Give me your face!" would qualify if he hadn't meant it literally...
Live Action Television
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer both used and subverted this trope, as Buffy would nearly always have a Bond One Liner after (or just before) killing a baddie, but occasionally she would be mocked for using a stupid-sounding one, or the vampire would interrupt her while she was saying one.
- Brought to the attention of the audience, when Willow tries to do a One Liner in the first episode of season three ("Anne"), and when it doesn't work out, she explains that Buffy always says something clever, and she thinks it throws the bad guys off their guard.
- Also parodied in "The Zeppo", when Xander tries to pull off a Buffy-style one-liner.
Xander: You know, you gotta learn that if you're gonna play with fire then you'll have to be... ''(bad guy runs away) ... HEY! I wasn't finished!
- Used and mocked simultaneously by the Fourth Doctor on Doctor Who: "I suppose you could say the yolk's on him, if you were the sort of person who said that sort of thing, which fortunately I'm not."
- Unfortunately, the Sixth Doctor became that kind of person when, after witnessing two orderlies fall into a horrible certain death in an acid bath (owing to circumstances that the Doctor, if not directly, was at least partially responsible for), he murmurs "Forgive me if I don't join you." with a bit of a smirk on his face. Everyone in the world pretty much agreed that that was a bit too far.
- Far worse was the time he killed one of his enemies (admittedly a murderous cannibal who was chasing him with a knife) by clamping a cyanide pad over his mouth. Not only was he directly responsible for the villain's death, he followed it by quipping "Your just desserts" over his food-obsessed opponent's corpse. He later told his companions that the villain had been "moth-balled".
- Parodied in an episode of She Spies, where D.D. and Shayne spend several minutes trying to guess what one-liner Cassie will use after dealing with the villain of the week.
- The MST3K episode Danger! Death Ray has the bots continuously chiding the Bond-esque hero of the movie, who can't seem to come up with any but the lamest of Bond One Liners (when he remembers to say anything at all).
Crow: Four people down and not a single quip!
- Both a Grissom One Liner and a Bond One Liner, Horatio Caine of CSI: Miami is told he is a dead man. He promptly kills the man who said that and replies "Join the club." Cue the theme music. (YEAAAAAAHHHH!)
- Occasionally used in the 60s spy series The Man From UNCLE, usually delivered by Napoleon Solo after he has dispatched a THRUSH mook. Given when the series aired and its premise, very possibly a deliberate Homage to James Bond.
- A variant from Flashpoint's first-season episode "Planets Aligned". The bad guy has a six-shot revolver, and has spent five, each shot causing the two SRU members chasing him to count it off: "That's three..." Two SRU members are trying to get him to stand down. In desperation, the gunman turns the revolver on himself.
"That's six."
- Played with in The Middleman, after Wendy sneaks up behind a villain and injects him with tranquilizer:
Middleman: Like a Bengal elephant.
Wendy: The one who does the takedown gets to say the catchphrase.
Middleman: Oh. I'm sorry. Be my guest.
Wendy: Swift justice. (blows on tranquilizer gun)
Middleman: Swift justice? Really?
Wendy (defensively): It was in my delivery!
Middleman: Ah.
- One of this troper's favorite sketches from Monty Python's Flying Circus is The Bishop, whose protagonist is a bishop (yes, with the crook and big hat and everything) whose attempts to thwart Mafia-type murders of the clergy always end in Bond One Liners.
- In Heroes, after his twisted game of Russian Roulette, Claire smashes a chair over puppetmaster Doyle's head and tersely says "Show's over."
Literature
- Subverted/parodied in two of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. In The Fifth Elephant, Samuel Vimes mutters "The hell with it" after killing the villain in self-defense, because if he had been able to joke about killing someone, then it would have been too much like murder. In a later novel, Going Postal, the narration indicates that if protagonist Moist von Lipwig had been "a hero," he would have thrown off a one-liner after tricking a monster into a gruesome death, but "since he wasn't a hero, he threw up."
- During the above statement where Vimes remarked about the distastefulness of the Bond oneliner, he did think of a few possible lines, and rejected them.
- Sorta played straight in Guards! Guards! After the Watch corner the villain, Captain Vimes orders Carrot to "throw the book at him". Carrot, who has trouble with metaphors, literally throws his copy of The Laws and Ordinances of the Cities of Ankh and Morpork at the villain, causing him to stumble backwards over a ledge and fall to his death. Sergeant Colon remark that he was "killed by a metaphor," which Nobby Nobbs follows up with "Looks more like it was the ground."
- Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain novels are replete with these, some witty, some silly, all hilarious.
- In the very first Animorphs book, Visser Three kills Elfangor by morphing into a monster and eating him.
Visser Three: <Nothing like a good Antarean Bogg morph for.. taking a bite out of your enemies.>
- Painfully subverted in the fourth book of Warhammer 40000: Gaunt's Ghosts.
- If this Star Wars example doesn't count, it comes seriously close. In Luke Skywalker's fight with Lumiya, when she slips and falls, he grabs her arm. After saying "I'd never let you fall" he cuts her head off. Awesome!
- Judges 15:16- Then Samson said, "With a donkey's jawbone I have made donkeys of them. With a donkey's jawbone I have killed a thousand men." Even more awesome when you substitute "ass" for "donkey."
Machinima
Radio
- Also parodied in one of the "Party Planner" sketches on BBC Radio 4's That Mitchell and Webb Sound (and on the TV adaptation). When the two characters are trying to decide whether or not to invite James Bond to a party, one recounts an event from a previous party at which Bond threw somebody out of a window for saying that his cigarette case was "gay". The victim landed on a railing spike and was paralysed.
Webb: Everyone's in shock, apart from James, who strolls over to the window, looks down and says: "What a piercing bore."
Mitchell: "Piercing bore"? There's no such expression!
Webb: Well, the railing was next to a crusher. It was pretty clear that he'd meant to say "crushing bore", but had missed, and was making the best of a bad job.
Magazines
- The magazine Slate features the results of a contest
 for reader-submitted Bond One Liners.
- The winner of that contest was "Flights of angels sing thee to thy rest, pissant."
Western Animation
- The Simpsons:
- Being a thinly-disguised version of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rainier "McBain" Wolfcastle uses these.
- Or the one where Wolfcastle popps out of an ice sculpture, shoots everybody at the table down, and then quips, "Ice to see you."
- This was strangely prophetic of Arnie's role in Batman & Robin...
- Another McBain has the hero jumping onto a jet in mid-air, tearing open the cockpit and breaking the pilot's neck. Marge, upon watching, makes a comment about "breakneck speed." Bart immediately admonishes her, "Mom, a man just died."
- This troper recalls another particularly hilarious Wolfcastle one liner, as he's eating ice cream he utters this gem, "I'm baskin in your pain! And I'm robbin you of your life!"
- Also seen in a Radioactive Man comic when the titular superhero tosses a villain into the sun and asks, "Hot enough for you?"
- After killing the vengeful sentient scalp of an executed murderer, Chief Wiggum quips "That's what I call a bad hair day".
- Lampshaded in the episode "Itchy and Scratchy Land": While the Simpson family is in Itchy and Scratchy Land the Itchy and Scratchy robots run amok and can only be killed by the flash of a camera. Bart deliver a one-liner and a Wolfcastle/Schwarzenegger spoof while Homer fails only seconds later.
- Bart: (German accent) "Hey mouse...say cheese." (snaps picture; an Itchy robot collapses) "With a dry, cool wit like that, I could be an action hero." (the family snaps more photos and kills more robots; Homer emerges from a pile of robots)
- Homer: "Die, bad robots, die!" (laughs) "With a dry, cool wit like that, I could be an action hero."
- In Aladdin, Jafar during "sorcerer mode" says a lot of these (e.g. trapping Jasmine in a giant an hourglass while shouting "Your time is up!", and saying "I'm through toying with you!" as he turns Abu into a wind-up cymbal-playing monkey).
- In the 3D Horton Hears a Who, Horton is being pursued by Vlad the Vulture, and in one scene escapes by sending Vlad off on a Tree Buchet, quipping, "This is where I get off," as he does. This is then hung with a lampshade when he remarks that he usually doesn't think of those until sometime later.
Webcomics
- Subverted in this Dominic Deegan strip. "Aw man, I totally should've shouted that afterwards!"
- Also played with at the end of the War In Hell arc. After his enemy is dispatched by Stonewater using an ice attack on his earthly form, Karnak muses that this is the perfect time to deliver a line like, "Hell's frozen over," but Karnak's always hated those jokes.
- Something witty.
- Similarly, one issue of Scud The Disposable Assassin has Scud stick his gun in a target's mouth and say "Something funny." before pulling the trigger.
- The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: Gordito kills a ghost wizard, then waits until the end of the chapter before delivering his quip. The Alt Text on the page lampshades this.
- We got this far without mentioning the Dashing Swordsman prestige class from Order of the Stick?! As a class deriving their strength from Charisma, the strength and effect of their attacks get stronger and weaker after how good their puns and one-liners are.
Anime and Manga
- At the end of the first episode of the Read Or Die OVA, Nancy uses one of these just before she applies an anchor to Otto Lilienthal's glider, sending him spiraling to his death on the Statue of Liberty. "Thanks for flying the friendly skies."
Video Games
- Ford Cruller gets his Crowning Moment Of Awesome (to this troper) in Psychonauts when he turns the Big Bad's main weapon (super-strength sneezing powder that makes the victim literally sneeze their brains out) on him in the climax. The one liner? Geshundheit. However, said villain survived.
- In the first game of theLegacy of Kain series, Moebius tells the vampire Kain that he has seen his future and tha he will die, then Kain calmly reminds him "But I am dead, and so are you" and then chops off his head.
- Many boss battles in The House Of The Dead III and 4:
James: (after defeating Temperance, a several-stories-tall obese zombie) "Temper this, buddy!"
Kate: (after defeating the same boss) "How do you like my no-fat, all-lead diet?"
Lisa: (after defeating the Sun, a tree-like creature) "I never was any good at gardening."
Kate: (after defeating That One Boss The Star, who had challenged Kate and James to a "test of strength") "Looks like you're the one who failed the test!"
- Even more so in House of the dead Overkill, Where everyone (including the narrator) do this all the time:
Agent G: (after killing a clown in the carnival) "Stop clowning around."
- Lampshaded in Kingdom Of Loathing, at the end of the level 12 quest. In fact, there are two versions, depending on which side you defeated:
After blowing up the hippy camp via gas leak: You stare open-mouthed at the carnage that used to be the hippy camp, then remember you're obligated to make a witty remark. "Thanks, guys," you say, as you strut off the battlefield, "it's been a gas."
After blowing up the frat house: You stare blankly at the destruction around you, then realize you're obligated to make a witty remark. "Remember, kids," you say as you strut off the field, "idiots and explosives don't mix."
- The video game Gun uses this in Hoodoo Brown's death.
Hoodoo Brown: I'M HOODOO BROWN!
*BANG* *CRASH*
Colton: You were.
- Obligatory Metal Gear Solid reference: in the original MGS (meaning, the PSX one), Snake uttered this after shooting down Liquid in his Hind:
- Interestingly, World of Warcraft contains a few of these. Prety much any major Bosses will give some quips when they kill someone. While most are just general boasting, a few qualify. From Memory:
Ionar(Lightning Elemental): "Shocking, I know"
- The characters in Team Fortress 2 will drop their own Bond One Liners, independent of the player's input. This often happens when you kill the same player 3 times without being killed by them in response, earning a "Domination"
Scout killes one-eyed Demoman: "Depth Perception! Look into it!"
Sniper: "I've slept in the corpses of water buffalo tougher than you!"
Heavy: "What kind of sick man sends BABIES to fight me!?!"
The Demoman: "Och there goin' ta hafta gloo yoo back togetha IN HELL!"
- Parodied/lampshaded in the "Dashwood and Argyle" radio series in Fallout 3 after Argyle dispatches a traitorous Femme Fatale:
Dashwood: Good God Argyle, you ripped out her heart!
Argyle: I always knew this broad was heartless...get it boss? Heh-heh, heartless...
Dashwood: Your kung-fu skills are unparallelled old chum, but your comic delivery leaves something to be desired.
- In the original Command And Conquer, Seth is Nod's Second in Command, giving the player briefings for the first half of the Brotherhood's campaign. He eventually plans to betray Kane and the player; in a briefing where he's about to send the player into a hopeless attack on the Pentagon, he claims "You see, power shifts quickly in the Brotherhood". Seth is shot by Kane about thirty seconds after this; shoving the corpse aside, Kane says "Yes... power shifts more quickly than some people think".
Web Original
Music
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