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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.

Examples:
  • (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) "Something he disagreed with 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) "He got the point."
  • (After throwing an electric heater into someone's filled bathtub) "Shocking."
  • (After beating someone to death with a chair, incinerating their corpse with a flamethrower, ripping their charred remains into pieces, locking them into sealed containers and condemning them to the bottom of three various oceans) "Ouch."

Note that while William Peterson's one liners on CSI 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. But see: Grissom One Liner.
Examples:
  • 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".
    • Casino Royale, as a somewhat grittier remake of the series, mostly avoids this.
      • But still gets it in during the opening sequence when Dryden, trying to distract Bond, assures him that while the first kill is always difficult the second will be easier. Well, he was about to say "easier" when he gets a bullet in the head and Bond informs the corpse "Yes, considerably."
  • 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.
    • 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.
    • The show even goes so far as to imply that this is one of her Chosen One powers: when she (temporarily) loses her abilities in "Helpless," she remarks to a recently-defeated foe "If I were at full Slayer strength, I'd probably be punning about now."
    • On the show OneLiners are apparently the most tricky part of programing a life like sex robot as the Buffybot always screws those up...though they're still funny, if only because they're surreal.
      • Speaking of Buffy, the original movie used one to subvert a vampire's self-important rant: When the vamp brags to Buffy about how powerful and invincible he is, Luke Perry's character suddenly comes from behind, impales him on a piece of wood, and says: "And now, you're a coat rack!"
  • 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 in Total Recall.
    • One of the expansion packs for Red Alert included Tesla Troopers who made oneliners in a Arnie-style Austrian accent. "Shocking."
  • 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."
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Comic/Amerimanga Lampshade Hanging: in Dirty Pair: A Plague of Angels, Kei and Yuri reveal that their employer, the 3WA, included a "Combat Quips" course teaching this trope along with the rest of their training.
  • Parodied in episode 33 of the machinima series Red vs Blue, when Church pulls off a string of these at O'Malley while Tex mutters in the background - "You're a real headache-" "What?" "-and I've got a gun full of aspirin." "That was terrible!" "It's time to split, -" "Now that's just embarrassing." "-personality..."
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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!
    • In the commentary, Simon Pegg admits that Jessica Stevenson (who co-wrote and co-starred in their sitcom Spaced) later came to him after seeing the movie herself and told him he should have used the pun, after Lurch falls into the frozen-pea-filled freezer, "Rest in peas."
    • Lampshade hung again after the heroes have watched the villain manage to escape after all their efforts...only to crash his car into a tree less than 100 yards away, thanks to judicious use of swan.
      Nicholas Angel: I feel like I should say something smart.
      Danny Butterman: You don't have to say anything at all.
  • 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!
  • 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."
  • 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."
  • 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."
  • In The Simpsons episode "Itchy & Scratchy Land", before Bart dispatches a robotic mascot with a camera flash he says: "Hey mouse... Say Cheese!"
    • He immediately lampshades this by saying "With a dry, cool wit like that, I could be an action hero..."
    • And is further parodied later when Homer, doing his own fair share of robot-mascot-slaying, yells "Die! Die! DIE!"... and then chuckles and says "With a dry, cool wit like that, I could be an action hero." Everyone ignores him.
    • Being a thinly-disguised version of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rainier "McBain" Wolfcastle uses these.
  • Subverted in this Dominic Deegan strip. "Aw man, I totally should've shouted that afterwards!"
  • 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."
  • 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.
  • 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!)
  • In Aladdin, Jafar during "sorcerer mode" says a lot of these (e.g. putting Jasmine into an hourglass while screaming "Your time is up!").